Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Bush Will Speed Turn-over of Security Responsibilities
Maliki Skipped Weds. Banquet, Snubs Bush over Memo


Bush will speed the transfer of security responsibilities to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, it was announced at their summit in Amman. Al-Maliki has been pressing Washington for some time to give him the authority to order much bigger battle units into action without securing permission first from the US military. The PM has been frustrated that he isn't allowed to set security policy but then is blamed for not achieving security. He also assured Bush that he can handle the Sadr Movement and the Mahdi Army militia. The Sadrists in parliament suspended their membership in protest against al-Maliki's meeting with Bush. In an ordinary parliamntary system, al-Maliki would be considered a minority PM and might well lose a vote of no confidence. But Iraq actually seems to be run as an oligarchy, and too many of the major politicians now live in London to permit ordinary politics to play out.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki actually blew off US President George W. Bush and Jordanian King Abdullah II on Wednesday, declining to show up at a scheduled formal banquet! Talks between him and Bush have been postponed until today.

Bush talked to Abdullah II on a bilateral basis on Wednesday, and will meet one on one with Maliki today.

The no-show was presumably Maliki's protest against the highly critical memo of US National Security Council adviser Stephen Hadley about Maliki, leaked to the New York Times and published on Wednesday. Maliki needn't have bothered. Informed experts find the memo mediocre at best and wholly impractical at worst. I have to say I was shocked at Hadley's lack of understanding of the parliamentary system in which Maliki works, such that his government could easily fall.

Some have also speculated that Maliki minded discussing bilateral US-Iraqi affairs with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the room, and was annoyed at the Jordanian monarch's attempt to insert the Israeli-Palestinian issue into the talks.

Maliki may also have intended to show he was his own man, in the face of heavy criticism from the Sadr Movement members of parliament and of his own cabinet. Some 32 members of parliament loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suspended their membership in the legislature at 6 pm on Wednesday, and the 5 Sadrist cabinet members also resigned contingently.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Shiite cleric and leader of the largest bloc in parliament, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, also met Wednesday with King Abdullah II. But after the meeting, al-Hakim, head of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was quoted as having said that if Iraq went to all-out sectarian civil war, the Sunni Arabs would be the losers. This belligerant threat provoked consternation among observers, presumably because it had been hoped that al-Hakim's meeting with a neighboring Sunni monarch was aimed at improving relations with Sunni Arabs.

Al-Zaman also notes that Iyad Allawi has flown to Amman [from London, where he now mostly resides along with many other Iraqi politicians]. The head of the Iraqi National List and formerly an appointed prime minister, a Shiite with a Baathist past, Allawi has been marginalized in Iraqi politics but still has patrons in Washington.
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Health Ministry Attacked
Khamenei Calls for US Withdrawal


Iraq's Shiite-run Health Ministry was attacked again Weds. morning, presumably by Sunni Arab guerrillas.

Thomas Ricks and Robin Wright at WaPo examine the increasing tendency of the American political class to blame the Iraqis for the political turmoil there.

I see. The US invaded their country, abolished their army, gutted their civil service, occupied their cities, and now it is the Iraqis' fault.

Iran's Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei said in talks with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that the US must withdraw from Iraq for there to be peace.
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Tuesday, November 28, 2006

King Abdullah II: It's Palestine, Stupid
US Troops may Leave al-Anbar


A surprise for Americans: The most urgent and destabilizing crisis in the Middle East is not Iraq. It is, according to King Abdullah II of Jordan (who will meet Bush today), the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is a major engine driving the radicalization of Muslims in the Middle East and in Europe. It seldom makes the front page any more, but the Israelis are keeping the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in Bantustan penitentiaries and bombing the ones in Gaza relentlessly, often killing signficant numbers of innocent civilians. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Rubin, David Wurmser and other Likudniks who had managed to get influential perches in the US government once argued that the road to peace in Jerusalem lay through Baghdad. It never did, and they were wrong about that the way they were wrong about everything else.

In fact, September 11 was significantly about the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, and as long as the Israelis continue their actual creeping colonialization of Palestinian land while they pretend to engage in a (non-existent) "peace process," radicalism in the region will only grow. Polls taken in the last few years have shown that 64 percent of Egyptians expressed satisfaction with the Mubarak government, but only 2 percent had a favorable view of US foreign policy (i.e. knee-jerk pro-Likud policy) in the Middle East. That is, the argument that authoritarian government breeds radicalism is either untrue or only partial. It is the daily perception of a great historical wrong done to a Middle Eastern people, the Palestinians, that radicalizes people in the region (and not just Muslims).

Back to Iraq. The US military is considering withdrawing from Anbar province! I think this is all that they can do. As I said Monday, there is not a military mission that can obviously be achieved by keeping our troops there any longer. The argument could be made that the attempt to subdue al-Anbar province has been a major radicalizing factor for not only the province itself but for Sunni Arab Iraq in general. The destruction of Fallujah, which is nevertheless still not secure, was a negative turning point in the guerrilla war. The Iraqi troops of the Nuri al-Maliki government will have to keep order or learn to compromise with al-Anbar, one or the other.
Money quote:


' "If we are not going to do a better job doing what we are doing out [in al-Anbar], what's the point of having them out there?" said a senior military official. '


UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is offering to host a United Nations-sponsored conference of Iraqi parties and their neighbors. The idea is modeled on the relatively successful 2001 Bonn conference on Afghanistan. This is the most help the UN has offered in a long time. It is a long shot, but the offer should certainly be accepted.

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed three Fort Hood soldiers.

Two contract service providers to the US military, one a driver and the other a security man, were killed by guerrillas in Iraq.

US troops took fire from guerrillas in Ramadi, then attacked their safe house, which appears to have actually been a family domicile. They may have winged a guerrilla, but they mainly killed 5 girls and women and an unidentified man. It is said that this sort of firefight happens almost daily in Ramadi. I guess we only get a report on casualties where an attempt is being made to head off a public relations disaster.

Police found 50 torture victims of the Iraqi civil war in Baghdad and Baquba.

Reuters reports other civil war violence on Tuesday, including a mortar attack on the Sunni Arab district of Baghdad, Ghazaliyah that wounded two dozen persons.
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Hizb and Mahdi: Do they or Don't they?

The NYT was told by somebody in Washington that Hizbullah has trained between 1,000 and 2,000 Mahdi Army militiamen. I don't know if I believe it, and I am not sure it is significant if true. There are thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen, and some have much more direct war experience, fighting the Marines in 2004, than does Hizbullah. Their popularity has anyway more to do with their charitable work, as WaPo pointed out Monday, than with their military prowess, such as it is.

The logistics are suspicious here. To get from southern Iraq to Lebanon you have to go through Iraqi Sunni Arab territory, which would get most Shiites killed. And, why take the militiamen for training all the way to Lebanon when Iran is right next door and easy to get to via Kermanshah or Basra?

Nor can the effect of the training be seen on the ground. Hizbullah's signature tactic is setting shaped charges, which is rare for the Mahdi Army but is often engaged in by the Sunni Arab guerrillas, who are not to say the least being helped by Iran or Hizbullah. And, it is being alleged that Mahdi Army is being trained to kidnap and torture. That needs training?

There is a real possibility that this report is disinformation "leaked" by the Cheney/Wurmser axis in order to forestall a move to negotiation with Iran and Syria over Iraq, which the Baker-Hamilton Commission will likely recommend.
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Will Bush Rehabilitate the Baathists?

Al-Zaman [in Arabic] is under the impression that Bush's talks with al-Maliki in Amman will aim in part at politically rehabilitating members of the Baath Party. The "Debaathification Commission" of Ahmad Chalabi (who anyway lives in London) will be abolished, it says. Discussions will be held with the neo-Baathist leadership (grouped politically as the al-`Awdah or Return Party) of the armed resistance. The resistance cells will be offered amnesty if they come in from the cold. Their enemies, the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps, among the Shiites will be dissolved. And Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, in Amman, will be deployed to make these contacts and concessions, along with reaching out presumably to the Salafi Sunni revivalists, as well.

I am paraphasing the article even though I don't think it sounds plausible. Al-Dhari, a wanted man, is calling on the Arab League to turn against the al-Maliki government. Though Jordanian King Abdullah II is said by al-Hayat to be conducting a furious round of meetings with expatriate Iraqis in Jordan, including al-Dhari, in preparation for Bush's summit on Wednesday. [Link below in Arabic].

And Nuri al-Maliki, head of the al-Da`wa al-Islamiyah Party (Islamic Call [Shiite]) will make all those concessions to the Baathists over his own dead body. (Remember he is already being stoned when he goes to Sadr City; what do you think the Shiite masses will do to him if he kisses and makes up with the remnants of the Baath officer corps?)

On the other hand, I have long argued that the neo-Baathist and Baathist-cum-Salafi guerrilla movements are the central political actors in Sunni Iraq, and something like the process described by al-Zaman will have sooner or later to be attempted.

This political negotiation with the Sunni Arab guerrillas would be one point of involving Syria, since elements of the Syrian Baath might still have credibility with the `Awdah Party, which is reportedly strong along the Syrian border.

Likewise, President Jalal Talabani's discussions in Tehran may be aimed at convincing them to help convince the Shiite militias to lay down their arms. Since the major Shiite militia is the Sadr Movement's Mahdi Army, though, and since a lot of Sadrists don't like or trust Iran, I'm not sure that is going to work. And, Time magazine is reporting that VP Richard Bruce Cheney and NSC adviser Stephen Hadley oppose greater Iranian involvement, according to al-Hayat (I'm traveling and don't have time to look up the English.)

This process sounds so muddled because Washington is flailing around without the slightest idea of what could be done, practically speaking, in Iraq, according to Time: "Several officials who are in touch with commission members said that with violence appearing to spiral out of control in Iraq, the group has been flummoxed about finding a solution. "There's complete bewilderment as to what to do," one official said. "They're very frustrated. They can't come up with anything. For the last couple months, they've been thrashing around, calling people, trying to find ideas."

The real reason for the muddle is, as I said yesterday, that the Bush administration has not defined a realistic and achievable set of military goals in Iraq. Its original political goal of establishing a unified Iraq with a pro-US government that would let oil contracts on a favorable basis for Houston, would ally with Israel, and would form a springboard for further US pressure on Iran and Syria, is completely unrealistic. Cheney's inability to let go of those objectives is the biggest problem we have in Iraq. Move on.

More from Reuters on Monday's death toll in Iraq (excerpts):


' FALLUJA - A U.S. F16 warplane crashed northwest of Baghdad with one pilot on board, the U.S. military said. A spokeswoman said she had no information on the fate of the pilot or the cause of the crash. Residents said they saw the pilot eject but that he was killed, and television footage filmed by a local journalist appeared to show the pilot dead near the crash site. . .

BAGHDAD - Baghdad police retrieved 39 bodies in the 24 hours to Monday evening, most apparently victims of death squads and kidnap gangs, an Interior Ministry source said . . .

BAGHDAD - An Interior Ministry source said five people were killed and at least eight wounded during a U.S. raid in Husainiya, a mainly Shi'ite area on the northern outskirts of Baghdad. . .

BAGHDAD - Three mortar rounds landed on a residential district, killing three people and wounding 15 in Baghdad's southeastern Diyala Bridge area, an Interior Ministry source said.

TAL AFAR - Clashes erupted between gunmen and police during the night, killing three policemen and one gunman in Tal Afar, about 420 km (260 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .

'


For the implications of the crash and some challenging comments on the situation in Iraq, see EBW's posting at Wampum.

Then there is this item: "BASRA - France's Defence Ministry said a French intelligence officer was killed by a local militia during an inspection at a checkpoint in Basra on Nov. 21." What is that all about?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged Monday to help with Iraq's security problems:

'"The Iranian nation and government will definitely stand beside their brother, Iraq, and any help the government and nation of Iran can give to strengthen security in Iraq will be given . . . We have no limitation for cooperation in any field . . . '


On the other hand, ISNA reports that his cooperation is premised on a US withdrawal:

' "You said you wanted to bring forth freedom but from the moment you got to Iraq, over 150 thousand people were killed and you are stuck in a quagmire where can never get out of it by any means. Iran is ready to help and save you on the condition that you resume behaving in a just manner and avoid bullying and invading. Return to your own country and stop the occupying, because in the persistence of such methods lies nothing but loss and misery for you," declared Ahmadinejad.

"Today the nations of the world have become awake and there is no point in isolating and deterring countries from their path of progress. Such attempts no longer have a way in the world. Come and be friends of the nations. You came here under the pretext of confronting Saddam and weapons of mass destruction, but in truth you had come here to take over the oil of the region," he concluded. '


I suspect that the hardliners in Iran are signalling that the price of their help in dissolving the Shiite militias will be a US pledge to withdraw militarily from Iraq. That would in my view be a pretty good bargain assuming the Iranians could deliver. Personally, I doubt that they could. Washington's tendency to code the Iraqi Shiites as cat's paws of the Iranians does injustice to the strong strain of Iraqi Arab nationalism in its Shiism.
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The End of Academic Freedom and the Israel Lobby

Terri Ginsberg and Rima Abdelkader survey the wreckage of a once proud tradition of American academic integrity.

This is what I wrote last week on the subject:


' Academics at Risk
Please Donate to MESA


A report on the Iraqi professors' panel at the Middle East Studies Association meeting that just wrapped up in Boston. Their stories of everyday life on Baghdad campuses are heartbreaking.

There is also a McCarthyite and frankly racist campaign being waged by far rightwing Zionist groups in the United States to corrupt the academic hiring and tenuring process. Yellowbellied or corrupt academic administrators who bow to it should be thrown out by their outraged faculties.

To help the Middle East Studies Association defend academic freedom and keep blogs like this one going, donate to the Committee on Academic Freedom. The cart works in $10 increments, so if you change the "1" in the "quantity" box to "3" (e.g.), you would be donating $30.

Pennsylvania's legislature was conned by the Neocon master of Disinformation and the Big Lie, David Horowitz, into wasting taxpayer money to investigate if professors mistreat their students because of the latter's politics. The commission found that such instances are "rare" and that nothing further need be done. D'oh. There is not any way to know how students vote, and why would you bring that in to grading their paper on Moliere's plays? Pennsylvania voters should consider whether Rep. Gibson C. Armstrong, R-Lancaster, deserves to sit in their legislature if he is going to waste their hard-earned money on these silly wild goose chases. Isn't there a Pennsylvania (or better, Lancaster) bloggers' network that can bring Armstrong's record in this regard before the public? [Ooops, see the comments. The good people of Pennsylvania have already dumped him in favor of someone who can think straight!].

Mark Lynch discusses issues in academic blogging (the rightwing reaction to which has often threatened academic careers and freedom of speech), in the course of commenting on a blogging panel at the Middle East Studies Association this weekend in Boston. Participants included Lynch, Josh Landis of Syria Comment, and Helena Cobban of Just World News, as well as As'ad AbuKhalil, Leila Hudson (no longer blogging?) and myself.

The general tone of the participants' comments suggested that academic blogging has severe drawbacks and, with regard to Middle East bloggers, has not produced a 'second generation' after the crop of 2002. One reason in my view is that academics who blog on the Middle East are relentlessly harassed and cyberstalked by Likudnik crazies and other sorts of wingnut. You have to have very thick skin and, I think, you have to just not care about the career ladder or social climbing of other sorts to risk it. In my case, I think it helped to have been an army brat. You're always being transferred to another base and you can't count on friendships lasting very long, so you just become self-reliant. And, of course, the ethos of the army encourages you to stand up to bullies. But I take Mark Lynch's point that it isn't everyone's cup of tea.

There is something wrong with our society if simply sharing one's expertise for free is actually punished. We should do something about that. Please give money to MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom (scroll down). '

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Monday, November 27, 2006

What is the Mission? Or, Russian Roulette

Reuters reports::


' BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said three of its soldiers were killed and two others wounded by insurgents in Baghdad on Sunday.

RAMADI - U.S. forces killed two suspected insurgents on Sunday after observing them loading weapons from a cache into a vehicle in the insurgent stronghold city of Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. . .

RAMADI - The U.S. military said four Iraqi civilians were wounded, including three boys aged 6, 13 and 16, when mortar bombs fired by U.S. forces against insurgents hit them. The wounds were not life-threatening, a statement said. '


Well, something clearly was going on in Ramadi on Sunday, though it isn't clear from these staccato and desultory items what exactly it was. As I understand it, there are daily battles between US forces and local ones in Ramadi and its environs. This Sunni Arab city of 400,000 west of Baghdad is under continual siege. I want to ask a question here. Why? When and under what conditions will it be lifted?

What are we to think when we see an item like this one, which says that the elected Iraqi PM, Nuri al-Maliki, was pelted by stones by his own constituency in Shiite Sadr City; that 21 villagers were captured by guerrillas in Diyala; or that 25 bodies (7 of them little girls) were found in Baquba, the capital of that province; or that (as al-Zaman reports in Arabic) Sunni Arab guerrillas fought a pitched battle with police in the city of Buhriz near Baquba, defeated them, chased them out of the HQ and set it on fire, and completely took over the city? What about the reports in al-Zaman of car bombings in al-Huswah and in al-Hilla, killing a dozen? When you hear these things, ask yourself 'What is the mission? When and how could it reasonably be expected to be accomplished?'

The Iraq Study Group or Baker-Hamilton Commission will urge intensive diplomacy with Syria and Iran to help deal with the Iraqi civil conflict but will not urge a phased pull-out of US troops.

If they don't, they should specify the mission. What is the mission of the US military in Ramadi? I hope my readers will press their representatives in Congress and the executive branch to answer this question. What is the mission? When will it be accomplished?

At what point will the people of Ramadi wake up in the morning and say, 'We've changed our minds. We like the new government dominated by Shiite ayatollahs and Kurdish warlords. We're happy to host Western Occupation troops on our soil. We don't care if those troops are allied with the Israeli military, which is daily bombing our brethren in Gaza and killing them and keeping them down. We're changed persons. We're not going to bother to set any IEDs tonight and we've put away our sniping rifles.'

(You could substitute Tikrit, Samarra', Baquba, and other Sunni Arab cities for Ramadi).

It is not going to happen. In fall, 2003, 14 percent of Sunni Arabs thought it was legitimate to attack US personnel in Iraq. Now over 70 percent do. Isn't it going toward 100 percent? How would more or less keeping the people of Ramadi in a cage help things in that regard, especially if they perceive us to be doing it on behalf of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (founded by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran) and the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Israeli army?

(Despite the denials of Bush administration officials such as Condi Rice, the Arab and Islamic opposition to US presence in Iraq has at least something to do with local perceptions that the US invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel, and Iraqis often refer to US troops as "al-Yahud," "the Jews." This is conspiracy theory thinking and wrong-headed, but it is the reality on the ground. Even the notorious attack on the four mercenaries in Falluja was done in the name of the murdered Palestinian leader Sheikh Yassin. The deeply unpopular US support for Israel's depredations against the Palestinians was one of the things that foredoomed a US military occupation of a major Arab country.)

The idea that al-Anbar tribal forces will pull the US fat from the fire is a non-starter. Some of the tribes are openly agitating on behalf of Saddam Hussein. Any who are fighting the Salafis or Muslim fundamentalists are doing it as a grudge match. Tribes are notoriously factionalized among themselves and seldom unite for very long. The rural tribes just aren't a big center of power in Iraq any more-- it is largely urban and the power centers are urban political parties and their paramilitaries. Those urban forces have vast hinterlands of practical and monetary support in the region-- Iran for the Shiites, the Oil Gulf and small-town Jordan and Syria for the Sunni Arabs. They are not going to decline in importance.

Syria and Iran are not responsible for the resistance in Ramadi or Baquba and probably can't do anything about it. Therefore negotiating with them is not a silver bullet, though it might be useful in its own right.

What is the military mission? I can't see a practical one. And if there is not a military mission that can reasonably be accomplished in a specified period of time, then keeping US troops in al-Anbar is a sort of murder. Because you know when they go out on patrol, a few of them each week are going to get blown up or shot down. Reliably. Each week. Steadily. It is monstrous to force them to play Russian roulette every day unless there is a clear mission that could thereby be accomplished. There is not.

Senator Chuck Hagel's argument for withdrawal is powerful, but it focuses on the botched character of the American enterprise in Iraq and the monetary expense and cost to our military force structure. Those are important arguments, but could be countered by the White House as insufficiently urgent to require a withdrawal.

That is why I think it is important to keep the focus on the question of the US purpose in occupying the Sunni Arab regions of Iraq. Every time you hear someone say that we have to keep the troops in Iraq, press that person to explain what the mission is exactly and how and when it will be accomplished.
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Sunday, November 26, 2006

Tribal/Fundamentalist Violence
Guerrillas Economically self-sustaining


That a tribal group and Sunni fundamentalists clashed in al-Anbar is believeable. That the tribe lost 9 and "al-Qaeda" lost 55 is not, unless it was a sneak attack.

The NYT says that oil smuggling, antiquities smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, and fraud raise as much as $200 million a year for the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. I suspect money comes in from the Oil Gulf, as well. There has been no success in cutting the funding off.

John Tirman on regionalizing Iraq: "Few if any peace processes can succeed without the neighbors' active consent."
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Dozens of Bodies Found
Firefight at Taji
Dhari Urges Arabs to turn on Maliki


Police found 17 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday. They found 21 bodies of Shiites in Balad Ruz, a small Sunni city near Baquba northeast of the capital. US forces said they killed 22 Iraqis at Taji in a fight with guerrillas.

As for a fear of civil war, that cow has been out of the barn for some time.

Harith al-Dhari, Secretary-General of the Association of Muslim Scholars said in Cairo that the Arab League and the United Nations should withdraw their support from the Shiite-dominated government of PM Nuri al-Maliki.
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Peshmerga to Guard MPs: Mashhadani

The USG Open Source Center translates this item from the Kurdistan press:



'Iraqi Parliament To Entrust Kurdish Peshmerga With Guarding MPs
Unattributed report: "Al-Mashhadani recommends the peshmerga to guard Council of Representatives' members"

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan WWW-Text
Saturday, November 25, 2006 T20:56:20Z

Iraqi Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani recommended entrusting peshmargas with guarding members of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. Al-Mashhadani made his recommendation during the council's in camera session that discussed the members' safety, today 23 November 06. Al-Mashhadani's proposal comes following an unsuccessful assassination attempt against him in which his convoy was targeted by explosive devises.

Iraqi Council of Representatives' Member Azad Chalak told PUKmedia that Al-Mashhadani made the recommendation to entrust peshmargas with guarding council members during today's session. He added that nobody had voted against the proposal. Chalak added that the council decided to vote on a bill for preventing the guards of the council members from entering the parliament carrying guns.
On Al-Mashhadani's proposal, Minister of Region for Peshmerga Affairs Shaykh Ja'far Shaykh Mustafa told the PUKmedia that guarding council members was a patriotic mission; we were ready to discuss it.

(Description of Source: (Internet) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan WWW-Text in Sorani Kurdish -- Patriotic Union of Kurdistan media website) '

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Saturday, November 25, 2006

Sunnis Set Afire, Mosques Attacked
Nearly 100 Killed in Reprisals
Muqtada Challenges Dhari


The death toll in Thursday's massive assault on Sadr City by Sunni Arab guerrillas has risen above 200. Trains of bodies have been delivered to the Valley of Peace cemetery outside Najaf, which is said to contain 2 million graves.

Friday morning, Shiite militiamen in Sadr City largely ignored clerical calls for restraint and continued to target Sunni Arab neighborhoods with mortar fire.

The Scotsman reports that then the Mahdi Army invaded the mixed Hurriyah district of the capital:


' Shiite gunmen took their revenge. One group stormed the Sunni-dominated Hurriya district of Baghdad, burning four mosques and several homes. A police source said 30 people had been killed and 48 wounded. Rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns were used as the militants rampaged through the area.

Imad al-Din al-Hashemi said 14 people had died when the mosque in Hurriya where he had been praying was attacked. He said he had heard of ten deaths in another mosque. "They attacked four mosques with rocket-propelled grenades and machinegun fire," the university academic said. Six of those killed were grabbed as they left Friday prayers, doused with kerosene and burnt alive near an Iraqi army post. The soldiers did not intervene, according to police. '


Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that at one point the Mahdi Army rounded up Sunni youths in the District of al-Jamilah and took them to a square and publicly executed them. The Sunni quarter of Adhamiyah took a constant rain of katyusha rockets.

The US military went into Sadr City to contain the Shiite guerrillas. At one point a US aircraft took out a mortar emplacement that was hitting a nearby Sunni quarter. Al-Zaman says that they killed three persons.

Ed Wong of the NYT reports that at the same time, there were heavy sectarian clashes in the city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. The US military raided Sadr's offices in that city. Soon thereafter Sunni Arab guerrillas blew the offices up. The LA Times says that in response Shiite guerrillas blew up a Sunni mosque.

A Sunni mosque in the northern mixed city of Kirkuk was also damaged by a bomb.

The LA Times adds:

' In the southern port city of Basra, rocket-propelled grenades damaged a mosque, the headquarters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and an apartment complex, injuring 15 people.

In Fallouja, a restive Sunni city in western Al Anbar province, a car bomb exploded at an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing at least six soldiers. '


In the northern city of Mosul, 3 bodies were found, according to Al-Zaman.

AP says that 31 bodies were found in Baghdad on Friday, most showing signs of torture.

Young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gave a sermon in Kufa on Friday before a congregation of thousands in which he demanded [Ar.] that Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari issue fatwas to the following effect:

1. Sunnis must avoid killing Shiites
2. Sunnis must not join al-Qaeda
3. Sunnis must rebuild the Askariyah Shrine at Samarra, destroyed last February. It is dedicated to the Twelfth Imam of the Shiites.

(Aljazeera is running a clip of this part of the sermon, which I've seen.)

The government of Nuri al-Maliki has issued a warrant for al-Dhari, the Secretary-General of the Association of Muslim Scholars [Sunni]. Muqtada said he would oppose that warrant if al-Dhari issued these fatwas. Al-Dhari has in the past condemned attacks on Shiites.

Muqtada also renewed his demand that the United States set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Members of Muqtada's bloc in Parliament, such as Faleh Hasan Shanshal, have threatened to pull out of the al-Maliki government if the prime minister follows through with his plans to meet US President George W. Bush in Amman on Wednesday. Bush's spokesman say that the meeting would be held nevertheless. Why US news services feel the need to report the rest of what the spokesman said, especially fairly high up in the article, is beyond me. Nonsense such as that Iraq is not in a civil war or that the violence will be "high on the agenda" at the Amman meeting is only worthy of being ignored or derided. If Bush was able to do anything about the violence in Iraq, he wouldn't have to meet al-Maliki in the neighboring country of . . . Jordan. I think the Pentagon has concluded that Baghdad is just too dangerous and unpredictable to allow Bush to go there anymore.

Ahmad al-Safi of Karbala, a key agent of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, said in his Friday prayers sermon that any cabinet minister in the al-Maliki government who cannot stop the violence should resign [Ar.]. He said that Iraqis could no longer accept excuses from the ministers of defense and the interior in particular.

In Najaf at the Husayniyah Fatimiyah, Sayyid Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) preached a sermon in which he pointed out that guerrillas have killed 7,000 Iraqis in the past two months but in four years have only killed 2876 foreign troops. "Is this a resistance or a slaughter of the Iraqi people?" he asked. He demanded that neighboring countries expel remnants of the former regime and cease instigating in their media. He also called on Shiites to avoid any "undisciplined" reprisals for the Thursday bombings. [You have to wonder if he thinks the "disciplined" reprisals will be quite enough. SCIRI has a feared paramilitary, the Badr Corps.)

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that in the northern Turkman city of Tal Afar, guerrillas detonated a car bomb and a belt bomb that killed 22 persons and wounded 24. The Sunni Turkmen who form the majority of the population of Tal Afar are complaining that the Iraqi police barged into a Sunni mosque Thursday evening and mistreated the worshippers, even beating some of them. The police are said to be mostly Shiites. The US military invested Tal Afar in August of 2005 in an attempt to stop Sunni Turkmen guerrilla actions there. The US at that time used Kurdish Peshmerga troops as allies and employed Shiite Turkmen as spies and informants. The city of 350,000 is increasingly riven by sectarian and ethnic tensions.
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Friday, November 24, 2006

233 Dead in Civil War Carnage
Health Ministry Besieged
3,000 Widows Created Each Month


So as Thursday began, Sunni Arab guerrillas surrounded and attacked the Ministry of Health, which is dominated by followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The guerrillas trapped 2,000 employees in the compound and threatened to kill any who came outside. They also subjected the building to mortar fire. The ministry guards, who are probably Mahdi Army, kept them at bay but lost 7 men doing it. It took US and Iraqi forces 2 hours to respond, and the guerrillas were only finally dispersed by helicopter gunships. The siege probably came in revenge for the Mahdi Army attack on the Sunni-run Ministry of Higher Education two weeks ago.

Then US troops searching for a kidnapped US soldier in Sadr City were a approached by van traveling at a high speed, which did not slow as they instructed it. They shot up the van, killing 4 civilians and creating some unhappy families in Sadr City; then this incident was overshadowed by several big attacks.

Steven R. Hurst of the Associated Press reported that the death toll in the string of car bombings targetting Sadr City and other Shiite neighborhoods on Thursday has risen to 161, with 257 wounded. Altogether, he says, "Counting those killed in Sadr City, at least 233 people died or were found dead across Iraq on Thursday." Oh, my. Since Iraq is 11 times smaller in population than the US, that would be like the deaths of 2,563 Americans. On September 11, on the order of 2,783 Americans were killed, and several hundred of other nationalities.*

Armed Shiites came into the streets amid the charred and bloody corpses, says al-Hayat, cursing Sunni Muslims and firing their automatic weapons in the air in frustration and rage. They were taking mortar fire. The footage from Sadr City on Aljazeera looked like the seventh level of hell, with vehicles burning, the air thick with smoke, and mortar shells and small arms fire boiling in the background.

KarbalaNews.net reports in Arabic that after the car bombs were detonated in Sadr City, the Sunni Arab guerrillas set up checkpoints and attacked ambulences and rescue crews, stopping further ambulances from getting through. The Sunni Arab guerrillas also surrounded hospitals near to Sadr City and prevented cars bearing the wounded from getting through, firing on them.

The Iraqi government imposed a curfew on Baghdad and closed the Baghdad and Basra airports, cutting the country off from the outside worlds. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Basra ports were also closed "until further notice."

How bad the situation is in Iraq is suggested by this email I just got from a professional who used to be in Iraq but now is in a nearby country:


' It is desperate in Iraq, worse then ever and there is no end in sight. I had lunch with [a former high ranking medical educator in Iraq] two days ago. [He]noted that Iraq no longer has neuro-surgeons, no cardiac surgeons, few pediatric doctors - they are all gone, killed or fled to neighboring countries like him. He was given seven days to get out or be killed. He is one of the lucky ones. He and his family have an opportunity for a new life in the US. But what about all the others. Where are they to go?

Another friend, a Sunni sheikh of the Shammar tribe noted to me that thousands of former officers are prepared to assault the G[reen] Z[one]. It is no longer a matter of can they do it, they are only mulling over the timing. The breach of the Green Zone security the other day was a test of their ability to get in, and not a real attempt at a coup, though it is reported as such. Every Iraqi I talk to says unambiguously that the resistance attached to the former regime would take out the Shiite militias with barely a fight, but that the resistance will not commit wholesale revenge against the Shiite population. They just want to get rid of the "carpet baggers" from Iran. '


Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite nationalist cleric, is said to be afraid that he cannot constrain his Mahdi Army militiamen from taking revenge on the Sunni Arab community for Thursday's mass slaugher.

AP reports:

' In a TV statement read by an aide, al-Sadr urged unity among his followers to end the U.S. ``occupation'' that he said is causing Iraq's strife. Al-Sadr said the attacks coincided with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a revered Shia religious leader. The anniversary reckoning was by the Islamic calendar. ``Had the late al-Sadr been among you he would have said preserve your unity,'' the statement said. ``Don't carry out any act before you ask the Hawza (Shia seminary in Najaf). Be the ones who are unjustly treated and not the ones who treat others unjustly.''

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent Shia religious figure in Iraq, condemned the bombings and issued condolences to family members of those who were killed. He called for self-control among his followers. '


In fact, Shiite guerrillas went ahead and took some revenge on Thursday, lobbing mortar shells at the HQ of the hardline Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars as well as at the mosque and shrine of Imam Abu Hanifa, which they damaged. Most Turks, Pakistanis, Indian Muslims, and many Lebanese and Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis follow the Hanafi legal rite founded by Abu Hanifa. His is an important shrine, an attack on which will inevitably produce a Sunni backlash of some severity.

Harith al-Dhari, a leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars [Sunni revivalist clerics], told al-Sharq al-Awsat that he had not sought out Arab states as mediators between himself and the Iraqi government. Baghdad issued a warrant last week for his interrogation on suspicion of instigating terrorism. The Arab League has intervened on his behalf. He is visiting Egypt for a conference but resides in Jordan and has not been taken into custody. In Thursday's interview, al-Dhari insisted that he would travel back to Iraq at a time of his choosing, undeterred by the warrant. He said that those who have taken up arms against the American occupier would not relinquish them for the sake of entering the political process. He expressed pessimism that the establishment of diplomatic relations with Syria would change the situation in Iraq.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that Raja' al-Khuza'i, a secular Shiite woman physician and the head of the National Council for Iraqi women, announced Thursday that Iraqi women are subjected to increasing violence and that 3,000 become widows each month. Al-Khuza'i served on the Interim Governing Council during the tenure of US proconsul Paul Bremer and had fought against the imposition of religious law on Iraq's women. Speaking in Vienna, al-Khuza'i said that a large number of female activists had been assassinated, along with large numbers of school teachers, female physicians, and woman police officers. She said the 100 new widows every day were often left with no means of supporting themselves and their children.

Ed Wong reports on sophisticated training camps in Diyala for Sunni Arab guerrillas of a Salafi or Sunni revivalist bent (they are not actually Wahhabis for the most part, i.e.-- Wahhabis predominate in Saudi Arabia). The guerrillas were able to stand and fight US troops in a pitched battle, deploying platoon-sized units.

Aljazeera reports that ex-Baathist Sunni fighters of the Awda [Return] Party have asserted control in the region near the Syrian border, driving Salafi Sunni revivalists out. Awda's paramilitary is called the Army of Muhammad even though it is secular.

---
*Corrected text; thanks to a kind reader-- see comments.
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Thursday, November 23, 2006

Breaking News: Mass Slaugher in Baghdad

A string of car bombings in Sadr City and Kadhimiya (Shiite neighborhoods) wrought vast slaughter and destruction, leaving a death toll creeping toward 150 and over 200 wounded. Shiite guerrillas fired mortars at Sunni neighborhoods in response.

I just saw the news conference of President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Tariq Hashimi, and Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim on Aljazeera. They called for an end to this violence and a new vision. Hashimi, a Sunni, called on the Resistance to join the political process. They all looked dejected and bowed, reminding me more of prisoners on death row than vigorous leaders of a country. Hashimi was the least bowed.

You have to ask yourself, where is the US military? Where is the Iraqi Army? Where is the Iraqi police?
It is as though nobody was home except the Sunni Arab guerrillas, who seem to be closing in on a takeover of the Green Zone.
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36 Killed in Iraqi Civil War
Britain may Leave Iraq


British troops could withdraw from Basra by this spring. It is widely felt that the 7200 remaining troops are trapped in the south and probably cannot expect to achieve a great deal more in the way of providing security to the area. Late this coming spring, Prime Minister Tony Blair will step down in favor of his successor, Gordon Brown, who will face the Tories in 2009. Brown will not want the Iraq albatross around his neck.

The Iraqi government will talk to leaders of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movements next week, according to the London Times.

Vice President Dick Cheney will stop in Saudi Arabia Saturday for talks. In conjunction with Bush's planned meeting with PM Nuri al-Maliki next Thursday in Amman, these movements suggest building momentum for a new direction in Iraq, the contours of which are still unknown.

Guerrillas killed 3 Marines in al-Anbar Province on Wednesday.

Reuters reports that it could identify another 33 of the persons killed in political violence in Iraq on Wednesday. Major incidents:


' MOSUL - Police said they recovered 14 bodies, including three women in different areas of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. (A mostly Sunni Arab area with Kurds and Turkmen in the north). . .

NEAR RAMADI - Police found the bodies of three people near Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - Two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession, wounding two policemen when they went to retrieve the bodies of three people in Haifa street in central Baghdad, police said.

NEAR MUQDADIYA - A car bomb near an Iraqi army checkpoint and an attack by gunmen killed four people . . and wounded three civilians, near the town of Muqdadiya . . .

ISKANDARIYA - A roadside bomb planted near members of the Facility Protection Services (FPS) killed seven and wounded another on Tuesday in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. . .

BAQUBA - Gunmen attacked a police patrol and killed three policemen in the religiously mixed city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.'


Al-Sharq al-Awsat / Reuters report that Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, leader of the [Sunni] Association of Muslim Scholars, has said that the current Iraqi government is a plot aiming at partition of the country and the purging of the opposition. The ealier summons to al-Dhari for an investigation of his views by an Iraqi court has apparently lapsed in the wake of international outrage.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq Hashimi met Wednesday in Baghdad with Iranian ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi. Hashimi: "Tareq al-Hashemi said Iran plays a valuable security role in the region, so we must strengthen our ties with Tehran in all fields." He also called for closer ties between Iran and Iraq.

Hashimi is a fundamentalist Sunni, and generally his party is suspicious of Iran and Shiite Islam, which predominates in that country. So this lovefest is unexpected. I suspect it is a sign that the Americans do plan to negotiate with Iran about Iraq. Such a plan would require the approval of at least some Sunni Arabs. Hashimi was invited to Iran and says he will go.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish Sunni, will go to Tehran on November 25 for bilateral talks.
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Revolutionary Guards Head: 'US Forces in Middle East 'Extremely' Vulnerable

The USG Open Source Center translates the following piece from Persian:



'Iranian Guards Chief: US Forces in Middle East 'Extremely' Vulnerable

Fars News Agency (Internet Version-WWW)

Tuesday, November 21, 2006 T19:35:28Z

The commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps has said: If America attacks Iran, its 200,000 troops and 33 bases in the region will be extremely vulnerable, and both American politicians and military commanders are aware of it.

The defense correspondent of Fars new agency reports that, addressing the students of Sharif Industrial University at the invitation of basijis students, Maj-Gen Rahim Safavi talked about the geopolitical importance of Iran in the region, and added: From a global and regional point of view, we live in a sensitive and transitory period of uncertainty and mistrust which is also fateful and complex.
Stating that Iran has an important and sensitive geopolitical position in the region and beyond, Safavi said: Iran can be instrumental in the establishment of organizations in the region and affect their performance, and their political progression.

Stressing that the unique geographical position of Iran and its proximity to the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz are its wining cards in terms of foreign policy, the IRGC commander said: Iran can control at will the Strait of Hormuz through which 17 million barrels of oil are transported (as published).

Talking about the effects of the (1979) Islamic revolution on Muslims and the freedom-loving people of the world, the general stated: Muslims have learnt from Iran that Islam is a complete way of running a country and we are witnessing the effects of this understanding in Iraq, Lebanon and other countries.

At the end of his talk, asked about the aim of the latest US military maneuver, Safavi said: America has fallen into the quagmire of Iraq and Afghanistan and it can neither make headway nor retreat, and if it attacks Iran, it 200,000 troops and 33 bases in the region will be extremely vulnerable and both American politicians and military commanders are aware of it.

Safavi went on: Americans can start a war, but its ending will not be in their hands, taking into account that we have not yet asked the people of Iraq to take any action (as published).

The general's words were met with enthusiasm by the students, and continuing with his talk, he added: After the military exercises, one of the American generals in Kuwait said the same way that the combatants of Hezbollah and their missiles took us by surprise, so did Iran's missile capability.
In reply to another question about the defeat of the American plan for the Greater Middle East, the IRGC commander stressed: They have tried hard and so far have spent 400bn dollars in Iraq, but we are the beneficiaries. Moreover, two of our major adversaries, Saddam and the Taliban, are no longer there and our influence in the region has increased to the extent that we are the strategic winner in the Middle East.

Finally talking about the film clips of an American aircraft carrier (shown in Iran) Safavi said the aircraft that filmed the ship was built by Iranian students (like you), and we have full intelligence about extra-territorial forces in the region.

(Description of Source: Tehran Fars News Agency (Internet Version-WWW) in Persian -- (Khabargozari-ye Fars) is a privately-owned news agency. It began operating in mid November 2002. Its managing editor is Mehdi Faza'eli, the editor in chief of the Javan daily and a member of the managerial board of the Association of Muslim Journalists. The other members of the board of directors of the news agency, are Alizera Shemirani, of Farda newspaper, Abdollah Moqaddam and Akbar Nabavi of Resalat newspaper, the former director of Farabi Foundation Hasan Eslami-Mehr, and university professor Abolhoseyn Ruholamin.) '


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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Bush's Cedar Revolution Collapses in Yet Another Policy Failure

The assassination of Lebanese cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel on Tuesday has thrown that country further into yet more turmoil.

The crisis is a further testament to the bankruptcy of George W. Bush's Middle East policy. Under the dishonest rhetoric of 'democratization,' what Bush has really been about is creating pro-American winners and anti-American losers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Bush's vision is not democratic because he always installs a tyranny of the majority. The vanquished are to be crushed and ridiculed, the victors to exult in their triumph. It is like a Leni Riefenstahl film.

The problem is that when you crush the Pushtuns of Afghanistan, who traditionally ruled the country, they have means of hitting back (ask the Canadian troops in Qandahar). When you crush the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, who had traditionally ruled Iraq, they have ways of organizing a guerrilla movement and acting as spoilers of Bush's new Kurdish-Shiite axis in Baghdad. When you crush Hamas even after they won the elections in early 2006, they have means of continuing to struggle.

In Lebanon, Bush egged on the pro-Hariri movement against the Syrians and their allies. Then he egged on Israel to bomb the Shiites of southern Lebanon (and, mysteriously, the rest of Lebanon, too). So he tried to create the March 14th alliance around Hariri as the winners who take all in Lebanon.

So obviously there will be trouble about this. Everything Bush touches turns to ashes, bombings, assassinations. He doesn't know how to compromise and he doesn't know how to influence his neo-colonial possessions so that they can compromise.

Lebanon for the past two years has been caught between several outside forces. The Hariris represent Saudi interests. Hizbullah and Amal, the Shiite parties, are aligned with Syria. The Gemayels have an old, longstanding behind the scenes alliance with Israel and the United States.

As I read the record, Syria provoked the initial crisis in fall, 2004, by overplaying its hand and making the Lebanese accept its choice for president, Gen. Emile Lahoud, for a further 3-year term. PM Rafiq al-Hariri resigned over this heavy-handed interference and looked set to challenge Damascus in the spring, 2005 elections. He was then assassinated in February, 2005. The assassin was himself a Sunni fundamentalist, but the operation may have been encouraged by Syrian or pro-Syrian actors.

The assassination of Hariri touched off a mass protest demanding that Syrian troops finally leave Lebanon (a peacekeeping force came in in 1976 with a US green light, during the civil war). The Syrians were supported by the Shiite Hizbullah, which staged demonstrations nearly as big as those of the pro-Hariri forces. Hariri was a Sunni, but the coalition put together after his death included Christians and Druze, as well.

Syria did withdraw. At that point, Lebanese politics became less polarized, and elections produced a national unity government that Hizbullah also joined.

But then in summer of 2006, Israel launched its long-planned war on little Lebanon, wreaking vast destruction on south Lebanon and on the southern slums of Beirut where Hizbullah was based. Israeli policy was in part to attempt to divide and conquer the Lebanese by making the reform government of Fuad Seniora attempt to disarm Hizbullah, which maintains a small paramilitary force of 3,000 to 5,000. The Lebanese government is too weak to take on Hizbullah, but members of the March 14th reform movement did lay the blame for the war at its feet.

As a result, Hizbullah has pulled out of the government. With Gemayel's assassination, the government will fall if it loses even one more cabinet minister. Worse, the society has now been economically devastated by Israeli bombing raids and is increasingly polarized. The Olmert government's plan for the second Lebanese civil war seems increasingly plausible. Syria has stupidly played into Israel's hands in this regard. The Lebanese themselves are in danger of once again allowing themselves to be used as proxies by people like Bush and Asad and Olmert. The positive achievements of the national unity government of summer-fall 2005 have been undone. Lebanon is on the brink.

Can the Middle East withstand another unconventional war, alongside those in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, without unravelling altogether? And if it unravels, will it still produce petroleum for US automobiles? Will Israel be held harmless?

Stay tuned.
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Car Bomb in Green Zone
Parliamentarians Trade Accusations


The intrepid Edward Wong of the New York Times reports that a car bomb targetting the Iraqi speaker of parliament, Mahmud Mashhadani [Sunni], was detonated inside the Green Zone on Tuesday. The Green Zone is a 4 square mile area of downtown Baghdad behind concrete walls, with a heavy US military guard. It houses the main political institutions of the new Iraq, and many parliamentarians live there. Likewise the US embassy and other Coalition institutions are based there. This is the most serious incident inside the Green Zone for some time.

The United Nations counts 3700 Iraqi civilian deaths in October.

MP Jalal al-Din Saghir of the [Shiite] Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq got into a shouting match on the floor of parliament with Adnan Dulaimi, a Sunni fundamentalist. Saghir condemned Sunni attacks on Shiites in two districts of Baghdad and said that they were encouraging Shiites to turn to militias. Dulaimi angrily retorted that Sunni Arabs were the ones being targeted by Shiite militias, and were being treated like "Jews and Iranians" in Iraq.

The Iraqi government is paralyzed, argues Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times, by the system of government by consensus imposed by the United States. Thus, the US forced a "national unity government" on the country last spring, which involved giving cabinet ministries to the parties that joined the government. But then if they are incompetent or corrupt or dangerous, the ministers cannot be fired because that would cause his or her party to withdraw from the government.

The real problem is that politics has been arranged on a sectarian basis. If al-Maliki, the elected prime minister, attempted to rule with a heavy hand, it would be rejected by the Kurds, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs, because his Shiite coalition does not represent them. There is no party that is truly a national party.

Tom Hayden tries to piece together what he sees as a secret set of US negotiations with Sunni Arab guerrilla groups that might position Washington for a withdrawal from Iraq. It is a valuable piece. But it does not reckon with the weight of the Shiites and the Kurds, who would not put up with talking to violent Baathists.

The sick, the old, women and children are suffering most from the breakdown in Iraqi society. They are disproportionately likely to be forced out of their homes, and, once displaced, to be left destitute and even hungry.

I am glad to report that Senator Barack Obama has adopted a position on a phased withdrawal from Iraq that is very similar to the one that I hold. He has it absolutely right. Pressure the government and pressure the factions to compromise by getting our guys out of the line of fire among them.
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Academics at Risk
Please Donate to MESA


A report on the Iraqi professors' panel at the Middle East Studies Association meeting that just wrapped up in Boston. Their stories of everyday life on Baghdad campuses are heartbreaking.

There is also a McCarthyite and frankly racist campaign being waged by far rightwing Zionist groups in the United States to corrupt the academic hiring and tenuring process. Yellowbellied or corrupt academic administrators who bow to it should be thrown out by their outraged faculties.

To help the Middle East Studies Association defend academic freedom and keep blogs like this one going, Please donate here to the Committee on Academic Freedom. The cart works in $10 increments, so if you change the "1" in the "quantity" box to "3" (e.g.), you would be donating $30.

Pennsylvania's legislature was conned by the Neocon master of Disinformation and the Big Lie, David Horowitz, into wasting taxpayer money to investigate if professors mistreat their students because of the latter's politics. The commission found that such instances are "rare" and that nothing further need be done. D'oh. There is not any way to know how students vote, and why would you bring that in to grading their paper on Moliere's plays? Pennsylvania voters should consider whether Rep. Gibson C. Armstrong, R-Lancaster, deserves to sit in their legislature if he is going to waste their hard-earned money on these silly wild goose chases. Isn't there a Pennsylvania (or better, Lancaster) bloggers' network that can bring Armstrong's record in this regard before the public? [Ooops, see the comments. The good people of Pennsylvania have already dumped him in favor of someone who can think straight!].

Mark Lynch discusses issues in academic blogging (the rightwing reaction to which has often threatened academic careers and freedom of speech), in the course of commenting on a blogging panel at the Middle East Studies Association this weekend in Boston. Participants included Lynch, Josh Landis of Syria Comment, and Helena Cobban of Just World News, as well as As'ad AbuKhalil, Leila Hudson (no longer blogging?) and myself.

The general tone of the participants' comments suggested that academic blogging has severe drawbacks and, with regard to Middle East bloggers, has not produced a 'second generation' after the crop of 2002. One reason in my view is that academics who blog on the Middle East are relentlessly harassed and cyberstalked by Likudnik crazies and other sorts of wingnut. You have to have very thick skin and, I think, you have to just not care about the career ladder or social climbing of other sorts to risk it. In my case, I think it helped to have been an army brat. You're always being transferred to another base and you can't count on friendships lasting very long, so you just become self-reliant. And, of course, the ethos of the army encourages you to stand up to bullies. But I take Mark Lynch's point that it isn't everyone's cup of tea.

There is something wrong with our society if simply sharing one's expertise for free is actually punished. We should do something about that. Please give money to MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom (scroll down).
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Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Street Battles in Baghdad;
75 Bodies Found;
Diplomatic Ties with Syria Bruited


Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that on Monday running street battles erupted in several districts of Baghdad between guerrillas and Iraqi police. In Salikh, the Bank district, Sumer, and Tujjar, residents were forced to flee their homes lest they be exposed to kidnapping or caught in the cross-fire. The fighting, mainly with small arms fire, began when guerrillas attacked a police checkpoint. Police attempted to close off the affected neighborhoods. They also closed Salikh Bridge, which is among the main point of access to Baghdad from northern provinces such as Diyala, Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. The closing created traffic jams and forced drivers to use an alternative route into the city.

The toll of killed and injured from this fighting was not known when reporters put al-Zaman to bed.

Reuters reports political and sectarian violence in Iraq for Monday.

Iraq and Syria agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations, for the first time since 1982. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was for a long time the Da'wa Party's bureau head in Damascus, in the 1980s and 1990s. Many Iraqi Shiites see the Syrian regime as Baathists and they will not forgive them for that. But al-Maliki's experience of being given refuge from Saddam by the Baathists in Damascus gives him a different point of view. My suspicion is that al-Maliki has been working on this rapprochement behind the scenes since he was elected to office. It is probably happening now because it coincides with the Baker commission recommendation that the Americans talk to Syria about stabilizing Iraq.

Although Washington is always accusing Syria of letting jihadis into Iraq, I'm unconvinced it is deliberately doing so. The Baath regime in Damascus is dominated by Shiite Alawis, a kind of local folk Shiism that doesn't have ayatollahs and accepts a sort of mythological way of thinking. The Baath regime's biggest enemy is Sunni fundamentalism. So the idea that Bashar al-Asad is deliberately building up a fundamentalist Sunni statelet right next door just strikes me as unlikely. The border is 800 miles long, and probably can't be controlled. If relations warm between Baghdad and Damascus, Syria may try even harder to round up the Sunni jihadis.

President Jalal Talibani will go to Tehran soon to consult with Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Canada.com / AP report that:


' In all. 25 Iraqis were killed Monday in a series of attacks in Baghdad. Ramadi and Baqouba. police said. The bodies of 75 Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured also were found on the streets of the capital. in Dujail to the north of Baghdad and in the Tigris River in southern Iraq. '


I was also sad to read that guerrillas shot and killed Fulayeh al-Ghurabi, a Shiite professor at Babil University.

At the Middle East Studies Association meeting in Boston, several Iraqi professors spoke on the horrible situation at the universities.

My Salon.com article, 'White Collar Crime,' on the rash of sectarian kidnappings in Iraq, is on the web.

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, asks 'Who's Running the White House Now?'.
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The joint letter of the Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors on the killing of Iraqi academics:



'November 10, 2006

Honorable Nouri Kamal al-Maliki
Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq
c/o The Embassy of Iraq
1801 P Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036 USA
Fax: (202) 462-5066

Dear Prime Minister al-Maliki:

We write to you on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and the American Association of University (AAUP) to express our grave concern over the killing of two of Iraq’s most prominent academics: Isam al-Rawi, a professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Baghdad and president of the Union of University Professors, and Jassim al-Asadi, Dean of the University of Baghdad's School of Administration and Economics.

Professor al-Rawi was killed by unknown gunmen on October 30, 2006, on his way to work. Then, on November 2, 2006, in an act which many observers see as revenge for the earlier killing, unknown gunmen murdered Professor al-Asadi, his wife and son as they passed by car through the neighborhood of al-Adhamiyya.

Their murder highlights the startling fact that over 180 university professionals in Iraq have been killed since the 2003 US-led occupation and thousands of academics, teachers, clinicians, writers and artists have fled your country. We note that entire academic departments at Baghdad University and on other campuses have been forced to close down and are no longer able to fulfill their educational and research missions.

As we have previously noted, the present Government of Iraq has done little to ensure the safety of academics since it took office. A significant portion of the current violence against academics has been perpetrated by sectarian militias affiliated with the ruling political coalitions. Professors have been threatened, harmed, kidnapped and assassinated because of their actual or alleged political affiliations, or because they failed to respond resolutely to demands of students for special treatment. Communities of students are becoming politicized in a way that threatens the institutionalization of tolerance and the protection of intellectual diversity.

We ask your Excellency to recognize that the destruction of Iraq’s intellectual and academic class through murder and mass exodus is a profound challenge to the future of Iraq and that you take immediate action to:

1) Secure the campuses in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq;
2) Affirm the independence of Iraq’s system of higher education,
immunize it against sectarian politics as far as possible and provide
for it a budget that is institutionally protected from partisan or sectarian
pressures; and
3) Identify the murderers of Professors al-Rawi and al-Asadi and bring
them to justice.

Please know that we remain ready to take steps, together and with sister organizations, to promote programs and policies in Iraq and on behalf of the international community of scholars and researchers that will resolutely address this disturbing situation.

Sincerely,

Juan R.I. Cole
MESA President

Roger W. Bowen
AAUP General Secretary

cc: Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie
The Embassy of Iraq
1801 P Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036 USA
Fax: (202) 462-5066 '


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Monday, November 20, 2006

Kissinger Says no Victory Possible;
Bombings in Baghdad, Hilla Kill 74;
Chaos in Baquba


Bush's visit to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, has elicited protests. In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians thought well of the United States. Now, only 30% do, according to polling.

Henry Kissinger now thinks the Iraq War is unwinnable and that the goal of a stable democratic pro-American state is unlikely to be achieved.

A Pentagon review sees three options in Iraq-- Go big, go long and go home. The generals seem to favor a combination of the first (increasing troop levels temporarily) and second (getting down to 60,000 US troops but stepping up the training of the Iraqi army). I'd suggest instead a phased withdrawal in a relatively short time frame. A long-term presence of 60,000 US troops just provokes Iraqis and inflames the situation.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Syria's foreign minister, visiting Baghdad, called for the US to set a timetable for withdrawal of its troops from Iraq. He discussed with Hoshyar Zebari, his counterpart, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Syria and Iraq, which were cut off in 1982.

Guerrillas kidnapped Iraq's deputy minister of Health on Sunday. The Ministry of Health is a Sadrist stronghold, with many employees following young Shiite nationalist cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that guerrillas established control over four city districts in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.

Guerrillas opened fire on season workers returning to Baghdad from orchards in the east of Baquba, killing 8.

Authorities said that on Saturday guerrillas had attacked a police checkpoint (killing two policemen and wounding two others) and opened fire on residents after pulling them from their homes or automobiles.

Police had declared a one-day curfew after attacks in the city on Saturday, but guerrillas still controlled several city quarters.

The police said that in a separate incident, guerrillas loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr set fire to numerous shops in the market in revenge for attacks on their own offices in the city.

On Sunday morning the curfew was lifted but the main street was closed off. The guerrillas still had 4 districts, and they attacked another police checkpoint.

Al-Zaman's correspondent says that Baquba is living through a parlous security situation. Police patrols disappear from the principal streets early in the day and various armed groups thereafter have enormous sway. A policeman who declined to be named said that no day passes but dozens of persons are killed, whether from gunfire, bombs, or being assassinated. This has been going on for months.

Note that no newspaper or wire service is reporting "dozens" of daily deaths in Baquba. That so many are being missed lends credence to the higher estimates for deaths of the Lancet study.

There were several assassinations in Fallujah, including one attributed to a Marine sniper.

Guerrillas in Basra fired a katyusha rocket at a residence in the southern Abi al-Khasib section of Basra next to al-Jahiz School.

Baghdad and Hilla were hit by a wave of suicide bombings that left at least 74 dead and dozens others wounded.

Iraqi authorities said that bombers detonated three car bombs in Mashtal in the southeast of Baghdad, killing at least 10 and wounding 54. The toll will likely rise.

Another bomb in southeast Baghdad aimed at a police patrol killed 3 civilians and wounded 3 policemen.

Guerrillas kidnapped a judge, Muzaffar al-Ubaidi, from his home in al-Khadra, West Baghdad.

Reuters reports that on Sunday:


' HILLA - At least 17 [al-Zaman says 22] people were killed and 49 wounded when a suicide bomber exploded his vehicle among day labourers waiting to be hired in Hilla, 100 km (62 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded six people in Baghdad's southern Saidiya district, an Interior Ministry source said. '


Al-Hayat says that a Sunni Arab guerrilla cell claimed that it carried out the Hilla bombing in revenge for the kidnapping last Tuesday of Sunni employees from the ministry of higher education.
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Sunday, November 19, 2006

18 Dead in Baquba Battle;
Rice Urges Iraq to be more like Vietnam (???!!)


AP says that Secretary of State Condi Rice asserted Saturday that Iraqis only have a future if they stay within a single state. She pointed to Vietnam's success in reforming its economy and making up with the United States and held it out as a model to Iraq.

Whaaat?

Rice surely knows that the way in which Vietnam achieved national unity was . . . for the radical forces to drive out the Americans, overthrow pro-American elements, and conquer the whole country. They only went in for this capitalism thing fairly recently. Rice, a Ph.D. and former Provost of Stanford University, shouldn't be saying silly things like that Iraq should emulate Vietnam. I guess if you hang around with W. long enough, you catch whatever it is that he has.

Speaking of which, UK PM Tony Blair admitted to David Frost on Aljazeera's English channel that Iraq has been a disaster:


' Mr Blair was challenged by Sir David over the violence in Iraq, saying it had "so far been pretty much of a disaster".

The prime minister replied: "It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? " '


His office now says he was just acknowledging the question. Sure.

AP reports that US and Iraqi Army forces fought Sunni Arab guerrillas for many hours in the streets of Baquba on Saturday. Rocket propelled grenades and light arms fire caromed through the city, leaving 18 persons dead and 19 wounded. It was unclear how many of the casualties were guerrillas.

The long-violent mixed Sunni-Shiite city of Baquba in equally mixed Diyala province has been the scene of continued sectarian warfare that has worsened in recent weeks.

US troops also searched two sections the Shiite slum of Sadr City (East Baghdad) for the hostages taken last Tuesday from the ministry of higher education building.

Reuters reports that the Ministry claims that 66 hostages are still unaccounted for. Several released hostages say they had been tortured, and had seen other captives killed.

Big car bombs wounded scores in Tikrit and Mosul, Reuters reports, among other political violence in Iraq, including the discovery of 20 bodies in Baghdad and more bodies elsewhere. Wire services were able to identify 53 persons killed out of the many more that must have been.

Guerrillas assassinated a Shiite politican and his wife on Saturday. Ali al-Adhadh had been a high official in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the neo-Baathist guerrilla group, the Army of Islam, has threatened to continue in attempts to hit the Iraqi government.

Al-Hayat also says that the arrest warrant issued for Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari, now in Amman, continued to stir controversy. Al-Dhari, a leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, stands accused of stirring sectarian passions. The Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front demanded that the warrant be withdrawn. The National Iraqi List of Iyad Allawi also criticized it. Mahmud al-Mashhadani, speaker of the Iraqi parliament, expressed his anger and disgust with the warrant.

On the other hand, Abdul Sattar Abu Rishah, a prominent member of the Tribal Grouping of al-Anbar, said he was suing al-Dhari for calling his organization "a pack of thieves and highway robbers."
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Saturday, November 18, 2006

Dhari Controversy;
security Guards Killed


Traveling and I am posting via my Treo so no hyperlinks.

14 Bodies found in Baghdad, 2 near Fallujah.

3 more private security guards attacked Friday in south. 5 kidnapped Thursday unaccounted for -- WaPo.

[Reuters reports scattered political violence in Iraq on Friday, with 14 bodies found in Baghdad showing signs of torture, and two near Fallujah.

Of the five private security guards kidnapped in the south on Thursday, apparently none has been released or is known to have been killed. The governor of Basra, Muhammad al-Wa'ili of the Fadhila or Virtue Party (Shiite fundamentalist) mistakenly announced that two had been released and one killed. He was confusing that situation with an incident on Friday:

WaPo reports that


' On Friday afternoon, in the incident that Basra's governor apparently confused with the Crescent kidnapping, a shootout erupted between security contractors and Iraqi police in Zubair. A foreign security contractor was killed and a British contractor was wounded, the British military said in a statement.

Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces, said British troops conducted a raid on Safwan early Friday morning to root out "individuals suspected of being involved in terrorist acts." As the troops moved on the group, they were fired upon by gunmen in a building. A firefight followed in which two gunmen were killed.


Zubair is a largely Sunni Arab town in the most Shiite south.]

Al-Zaman says some Iraqi Shiites, such as Ayatollah Baghdadi and Mahmud Hussaini Sarkhi are defending Harith al-Dhari as an Iraqi patriot. The Kurds seem not to have known about or to have approved his arrest warrant. He is a leader of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars. The Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq condemned him. He is accused of inciiting to terrorism.

Bush went to Vietnam and boasted about how we would have won if we had not quit. This was, he said, the lesson for Iraq of the Vietnam War. He managed to be wrong about two wars at once and to anger both his hosts (how churlish!) and the Iraqi public. The American Right never admitted that they lost in Vietnam, thus the Rambo movies and, Melani McAllister argues, the US admiration for Entebbe. Iraq was their chance, they thought, to get it right. Bush had also said insulting things to the Philiippines about how wonderful it was thst we had colonized them (and killed 400,000).

Colonialism is over with. When will they get that through their heads?

And actually we can't win in Iraq by just staying. Just like when you are sinking in quicksand, staying put is not a virtue.
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Friday, November 17, 2006

Arrest Warrant for Harith al-Dhari of AMS;
Higher Education Abductees Tortured;
Militias Capture 14 Western Security Guards


Militiamen in southern, largely Shiite Iraq took 14 private security guards captive, employees of the Crescent Security Group. Four of these civilians were thought to be Americans.

Four US troops were announced killed on Thursday, three of them in Diyala Province. Reuters also reports other political violence, including bombings in the capital and the spraying of bakery workers and customers with machine gun fire.

The Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for Shaikh Harith al-Dhari, the leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars and a major Sunni Arab clerical figure. Al-Dhari in opinion polling is among the most popular Sunni figures in the country. The AMS, which he heads, has been accused of having strong links to the guerrilla groups, including the 1920 Revolution Brigades. This arrest warrant, coming after the attack by Interior Ministry Special Police Commandos on the Sunni-led Ministry of Higher Education and recent kidnappings by the Sunni Arab guerrilla groups of Shiites-- all this activity points to a war among Iraq's major parties, many of whom have parts of the government under their control.

I was sent a copy of an Arabic fatwa by the Association of Muslim Scholars that said that since so many Sunni families had been forced out of Shiite neighborhoods into "our" neighborhoods, and since there was no way to house them, these Sunni Arab refugees should be put up in the homes of Shiite families who had fled Sunni neighborhoods. I guess the implication might have been to encourage an ethnic cleansing of Shiites in largely Sunni neighborhoods, so as to free up housing for internall displaced Sunnis.

Minister of Higher Education Abd Dhiyab al-Ujayli said Thursday that he had heard reports that torture and the breaking of limbs had been inflicted on the some 70 hostages still being held from Tuesday's kidnapping of 140 persons from the ministry building in Karrada, Baghdad. The government of PM Nuri al-Maliki maintains that 40 were kidnapped and only 5 remained hostages.

The comparison that leapt into my mind at this prospect of a cabinet minister so at odds with his own prime minister was to Kabul in 1995. Then, the prime minister, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, fought a destructive battle for control of the Afghan capital against the forces of the president, Burhanuddin Rabbani. Much of the city was destroyed and an estimated 60,000 were killed. The Sunni-Shiite battle within the government (and without)is wreaking destruction on a similar scale, though the buildings in Baghdad have not been hit so hard because the opposing militias cannot fight set piece battles as long as the US military is there.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that a Sunni Arab leader of the Iraqi Accord Front, Adnan Dulaimi, asked the Sunni world for help in stopping Iranian interference in Iraq, "lest Baghdad become a capital for the Safavids." He spoke at a commemoration in Amman of the centenary of the birth of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Dulaimi's party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, part of the IAF coalition, is a direct descendant of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which established a branch in Mosul in the 1930s. The Safavids were the Iranian Shiite dynasty that pushed Iranians to convert to Shiisma from 1501 forward. The Safavids actually did rule Baghdad 1508-1534 and again in the late 1500s and early 1600s under Shah Abbas. They were succeeded by the Sunni Ottoman Empire, which favored the Sunni Arab population and so made it an elite, something George W. Bush tried to undo. The Sunnis are not going quietly. When the Ottomans took back over from Shah Abbas in the 1600s, they mounted investigations and persecutions of the Iraqi Arab Shiites, whom they coded as "acem" or Qizilbash, i.e. as Safavid Iranians. That is, Dulaimi's rhetoric in Amman has a pedigree going back at least to the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s and 1600s. But it is important to note that in the 20th century, Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq was rare, and Iraqi national identity grew in strength.

CIA Director Michael Hayden gave testimony that strikes me as refreshingly frank on Thursday. In fact, it is ironic that the supposedly public and straightforward politicians and cabinet members, such as Cheney and Rice, mostly retail fairy tales to the US public. But the chief of the country's clandestine intelligence agency? He's telling it like it is. He revealed that daily attacks in Iraq are up from 70 in January to 100 last spring after the Samarra bombing, and then to 180 a day last month. He also said that there were only 1300 foreign al-Qaeda volunteers fighting in Iraq, whereas the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement was "in the low tens of thousands" strong. If there are 40,000 guerrillas, then "al-Qaeda" is only 3.25 percent of the "insurgency." That is why Dick Cheney's and other's Chicken Little talk about al-Qaeda taking over Sunni Arab Iraq is overblown, at least at the moment. Most Iraqi fundamentalists are Salafis, which is a different sort of movement than al-Qaeda. And the Baathists and ex-military and tribal cells cannot be disregarded by any means.
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Thursday, November 16, 2006

Abizaid Opposes Withdrawal, Increase in Troop Levels;
Nearly 100 Killed, including 6 GIs
Hayden: Almost Satannic Terror


Reuters was able to find out about and report nearly 100 killings in the ongoing Iraqi civil war on Wednesday. Police discovered 55 bodies in Baghdad alone, and there were car bombings, firefights and assassinations. The deaths of 6 US troops were announced.

Here's how I interpret the contretemps Wednesday between Gen. John Abizaid and Republican Senator John McCain.. McCain wants to send another division, about 20,000 US troops, to Iraq.

Abizaid told him:

1) that would produce only a temporary improvement since the US doesn't have a spare division to send to Iraq for the long term and

2) Increased US troop levels are counterproductive because they remove the incentive for the Iraqi government and army to get their acts together and fight the guerrillas and militias effectively and

3) If Iraq is going to come back to better days, it will have to be primarily with Iraqi troops and

4) Iraqi troops are not now doing the job, so if more US troops are sent to Iraq it should be as trainers and units available for joint patrols, not as independent combat troops.

I'd just like to point out that most of Abizaid's arguments could also be deployed for a phased withdrawal, which he opposed. My senator, Carl Levin supports the phased withdrawal idea, and so do I. What if it isn't just an increased US presence that would remove the incentive for Iraqi leaders to compromise and/or fight effectively? What if *present* troop levels do that? I say, let's take out a division ASAP (20,000 men) and make it clear that we're never putting a division back in to replace it. Then let the Iraqis try to fill the resulting vacuum themselves. Give them armored vehicles, tanks, helicopter gunships, and a nice wood-panelled room where they can negotiate with one another.

And then after a couple of months I would pull out another US division.

Such a phased withdrawal is not guaranteed to succeed. It has a better chance of succeeding than the current policy.

Matthew Stannard at the SF Chronicle on the Ministry of Higher Education kidnappings.

Nir Rosen's anatomy of a civil war.

Here's what Director of Central Intelligence Michael Hayden really thinks of the Iraq situation:


' MICHAEL HAYDEN: In Iraq today there is criminality and lawlessness on a broad scale. In Iraq today there are rival militias competing for power.

Any Iraqi leader, no matter how skilful, is going to be hard-pressed to reconcile the divergent perspectives that I've mentioned. Divergent perspectives that Shi'a and Sunnis and Kurds bring to the table and also unfortunately very often bring to the streets.

And to deal with that, against a backdrop of an intentional al-Qaeda campaign of almost satanic terror.'


Here's what Bush makes him say:

' MICHAEL ROWLAND: The CIA chief believes progress is being made in Iraq, but the gains are very slow. '


You can't see it because this is not video, but I am doing one of those Jon Stewart double takes at the juxtaposition of these two assertions.

Louise Roug of the LA Times reports that Iraq's health system is very ill.

The 'I hate to say I told you so' Department: French Foreign Minister Dominique Villepin let Washington have it on Wednesday, complaining that the US-induced civil war has made Western policy success in the Middle East far more difficult. I guess we'll have to go back to calling them French Fries, even if the French never knew what we were talking about in the first place in that regard. They just call them 'fried potatoes' and I think they think they are American in origin.
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