Iraqi Vice President Accuses High Official

The Shiite Vice President, Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has accused a high ministry official of attempting to kill him in a bombing on Monday. The deputy Minister of Labor, Ghazi al-Anbari, died in the blast, along with 10 others.

The Bush administration keeps saying that the US will stand down as the Iraqis stand up. But if the government officials are killing each other, they are more likely to lie down than stand up. This is not a good scene.
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Iraqi Vice President Accuses High Official

The Shiite Vice President, Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has accused a high ministry official of attempting to kill him in a bombing on Monday. The deputy Minister of Labor, Ghazi al-Anbari, died in the blast, along with 10 others.

The Bush administration keeps saying that the US will stand down as the Iraqis stand up. But if the government officials are killing each other, they are more likely to lie down than stand up. This is not a good scene.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

4 US GIs killed
Army of Heaven Cult Arrested

A suicide bomber killed 7 in Mosul and wounded 28 at a police station.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Tuesday. Guerrillas killed 3 US GIs north of Baghdad, and Shiite militiamen killed a fourth down at Diwaniyah. In Baghdad there were several bombings, one in Karrada that killed 5 and wounded 10. McClatchy reports that 17 bodies were found in Baghdad on Tuesday. On Monday 25 bodies had been found.

The Bush administration has suddenly changed course and decided to attend the meeting of the foreign ministries of countries that neighbor Iraq, in hopes of harnessing diplomacy to end the crisis. This step requires that the US be willing to talk to Iran at least informally about outstanding bilateral issues. It is among the few pieces of good news we have had from Washington.

Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said on Tuesday that Iraq violence has become self-sustaining. He denied sure knowledge of any direct link between the EFPs hitting US troops and the Iranian leadership.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that US and Iraqi troops near Diwaniya had arrested 142 members of the Army of Heaven Shiite militia.
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Suicide Bomber Kills 20 at Bagram with Cheney inside

A suicide bomber killed 18-20 persons at the entrance to Bagram Base in Kabul while US Vice President Dick Cheney was on the premises. The vice president was unharmed.

I guess violence in Afghanistan is in its last throes, too.
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Public Works Minister Seriously Wounded
Vice President Abdul Mahdi narrowly Escapes Assassination
New Oil Law Passes Cabinet

Sunni Arab guerrillas attempted on Monday to assassinate Iraq's Shiite vice president, Adil Abdul Mahdi, 59, as he visited a the offices of the ministry of public works and municipalities in the upscale Mansour district of the capital. Abdul Mahdi was hurt but escaped serious injury; the force of the blast knocked him down. A Shiite cabinet member, Public Works Minister Riyad Gharib, was seriously injured, and 10 others were killed. Wire services estimated the wounded at between 18 and 32. The bomb had been planted in the office, pointing to an inside job-- i.e. someone in the Iraqi government who knew the itinerary of the Vice President and leaked it to the assassins. Abdul Mahdi has often been mentioned as a possible successor to current prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. He belongs to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The leader of SCIRI, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, had been the target of a bombing over the weekend, and some observers are now saying that the guerrillas are targetting members of that Shiite party.

So as of Monday both Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, and one of two vice presidents, are in hospital.

Iraq's other (Sunni fundamentalist) vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, in the meantime slammed the current security plan, which has so far mainly involved sweeps in Sunni neighborhoods of the capital. He complained that the plan does not respect residents' rights and implied that it consisted of a Shiite government cracking down on Sunnis only. He said that the Shiite militias have to be taken on, and that the US needs a plan B in case the surge fails. He also criticized the al-Maliki government for refusing seriously to reach out to the Sunni Arab guerrilla leadership.

In Ramadi, a major Sunni Arab city west of Baghdad, a suicide bomber used ambulance to attack a police station, killing 14 and wounding 10. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sunni imam of the Mu'awiya Mosque in Ramadi was killed on Monday, as part of an ongoing conflict between tribal forces and "al-Qaeda" (Salafi Jihadis) in al-Anbar. Some 15 bodies were found in the streets of Baghdad on Monday. US and Iraqi troops attempted a sweep of a Baquba neighborhood. There were clashes between Shiite militiamen and British troops in Basra.

Also in Basra, al-Hayat reported that Muqtada al-Sadr's representative in that city, Baha' al-A'raji, read a statement from him that said, "The decision of the British to withdraw is a sign of the victory of the Resistance there." He added, "The partial withdrawal of the British forces from the city constitutes a defeat for the forces of Occupation, and is the fruit of the struggle and jihad of the sons of the city."

Elsewhere in al-Anbar Province, Sunni Arab guerrillas killed a US marine.

There were other scattered bombings and mortar attacks, in Baghdad, Iskandariya, Abbasi, and Mosul.

Pepe Escobar on Iraq's new oil law, which he sees as a giveaway to US Big Oil.

Reuters reviews the main outlines of the proposed petroleum law, which has been approved by the cabinet but must now get 138 votes in parliament. Since the Kurds have been given the clauses that they want, guaranteeing their ability to act semi-autonomously, and since the Shiites crafted this law, it is likely to sail through.

Note that contrary to US hopes, it does not privatize petroleum, putting it under a government holding company instead. Receipts go to a government account for distribution to the population, a la Alaska. Some critics believe it will make possible deals that are overly generous to the oil companies and which essentially cheat Iraqis, given that the present government is desperate to jump-start new development and foreign companies won't try to operate in blood-soaked Iraq unless the deal is sweetened enormously. On the other hand, Husayn Shahristani, the oil minister, is an Iraqi nationalist close to Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and had no motivation to see Iraq cheated. I will try to get some readings from oil industry experts and report back.

[By the way, five Western governors committed to reducing carbon emissions as a way of fighting global warming, saying that if the Federal government is not going to do anything about it, they will. Good for them! Send messages of support or they won't know we're happy about it!]

Egypt's Nilesat satellite television company has stopped carrying al-Zawra', a channel that favored the Iraqi Sunni Arab guerrillas and showed graphic footage of attacks on US troops. Nilesat said that the decision was based on technical considerations, but there is speculation that the Egyptian government intervened after US or Saudi/Jordanian pressure. The Shiite government in Baghdad was furious at Cairo for allowing the channel to be carried.

The Minorities Rights Group has issued a study warning that Iraq's religious minorities, once perhaps five percent of the population, are in danger of disappearing from the country as they flee abroad because of the bad security. The report, in PDF format is here.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al Gore, Global Warming, the Oscars and the Iraq War

That the Al Gore film "An Inconvenient Truth" was legitimized by an Oscar Sunday night for "Best Documentary" has wider implications for the future of the United States than it might seem, though admittedly it is a small step.

We know that Exxon Mobil is a significant funder of the American Enterprise Institute and has used it to attempt to bribe "scientists" to cast doubt on global warming. Lee Raymond, who was CEO of Exxon Mobil until 2005, is the vice-chair of AEI's board of directors.

We also know that the American Enterprise Institute is the most hawkish of the Washington "think tanks," and that its staffers were key to thinking up and promoting the Iraq War with lies and propaganda.

A=B, B=C, therefore A=C. Exxon Mobil is a big behind the scenes player in the Iraq War by virtue of its support for AEI. In fact, I think a boycott of its gas stations is in order until the company cuts off AEI and stops promoting the Iraq War and muddying the waters on global warming. (It pledged to do the latter in the past, but obviously was lying).

So the point is that the American Enterprise Institute symbolizes the intersection of Oil and War, which are the two most menacing threats to the future of America.

Only by a Manhattan Project-scale government effort to develop green energy can we hope to avert the worst consequences of global warming, which is likely to raise sea levels at least a foot, and possibly 7 feet over the next century or century and a half. (That would put a lot of cities on both coasts under water). The arctic and antarctic ice shelfs are already falling into the ocean at rates that have astonished climate scientists. The arctic alone lost perennial ice cover the size of Texas in 2004-2005! Warm water takes up more space than cold water* and the loss of white ice cover is bad because it radiates a lot of sunlight back out to space. So it is a double whammy.

But the other problem with petroleum and gas as sources of energy is that they are getting scarcer. No big new fields have been found for some time. And in one recent year China generated 40% of new demand for petroleum. If a billion Chinese and a billion Indians adopt the American lifestyle and all want 1.5 automobiles and superhighways to crawl along on, the existing stocks of oil will become objects of fierce competition. This process has already begun, and there is a sea change from the mid-1990s, when oil was still cheap and competition for it limited.

Iraq is an Oil War in the mind of politicians like Dick Cheney. It was necessary to deny it to China and other rivals thirty to fifty years in the future. It was necessary to open its vast petroleum fields up for exploration and cast aside anti-American Baath socialism.

Likewise, the religious rigidity of the Pushtun peoples of Helmand province is not the real reason for the US insistence on occupying Afghanistan. It is the vast Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan gas fields that Cheney has his eye on. It was the US hope to use a pipeline from Turkmenistan to supply Pakistan and India, and so forestall a deal by those two countries with Iran. The inability of the Bush administration to calm things down in Afghanistan sufficiently for anyone to dream of putting in such a pipeline and having it avoid routine sabotage has made it likely that Iran will break out of the Bush boycott toward the East.

Hunger for future rights to petroleum and positioning the US to remain a superpower in a world of hydrocarbon scarcity is also driving the campaign to get up a war against Iran. Why can Pakistan have a nuclear weapon, and that is all right, but Iran cannot? Pakistan has very little petroleum. Iran has a lot, and maybe 750 trillion cubic feet of gas in the southwest. If it gets a bomb, regime change becomes impossible, and if Iran wants to tie its supplies up in proprietary contracts with China and India, locking out the United States, it will be able to do so.

Continued heavy dependence on gas and oil therefore not only turns the world into a hothouse, with rising seas, ever more destructive hurricanes, and possibly disastrous shifts in the ocean currents, but it also drives the United States to more and more wars.

And, note that the wars are not even successful in allowing a practical oil grab of the sort Cheney and Lee Raymond dreamed of.

Indeed, you could now, in retrospect, turn their whole argument around on them. US militarism cannot secure petroleum and gas supplies from places such as Iraq, because the pipelines are so easily sabotaged and local nationalisms and religious activism make it impossible for people to accept that kind of US hegemony.

Since the Pentagon cannot practically speaking hope to safeguard US petroleum supplies from the Gulf, national security requires a massive and rapid research and development program of green energy. A lot of green technology, especially solar, would come down in price rapidly if enough government money were thrown at it. We need to press Congress on this, and maybe Californians can craft some of their famous referendum items. That would be one way to promote a new generation of electric cars.

Green energy-- wind, thermal, solar, maybe ultimately fusion, etc.-- is what would allow the US to retain its autonomy and independence into the next century, and what would allow it to avoid losing more cities the way Bush and Cheney lost New Orleans. Oil and War will, in contrast, ruin us all.

===

*Sorry, I initially misspoke, mentioning ice instead of cold water. It was late.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

University Bombing Casts Doubt on Security Plan
Muqtada Calls on Iraqi Army to Act without US Help

A suicide bomber with a bomb belt got into the lobby of the School of Administration and Economy of Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and managed to set it off despite being spotted at the last minute by university security guards. The blast killed 41 and wounded a similar number according to late reports, with body parts everywhere and big pools of blood in the foyer as students were shredded by the high explosives.

The Arabic press generally saw the bombing as a significant setback to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's security plan. It certainly was a psychological blow to it. And the adaptability of the guerrillas, who moved from car bombs to less easily detected but also powerful suicide bomb belts, is pretty frightening. Car bombs at least you could search for at checkpoints. Belt bombs, I can't imagine how you could stop that if you had people in the city determined to set them off and willing to kill themselves.

There were several other bombings in Baghdad on Sunday, as well, bringing the death toll in the capital from explosions to around 60, according to the Arabic daily al-Hayat.

A representative of Muqtada al-Sadr read a statement by him, according to BBC Arabic, that said: "I say to the Iraqi security forces, and in particular the army and the police: You can protect Iraq and its people by virtue of your faith and sacrifices, your patience and solidarity and sincerity toward the peole. But you cannot do it via help from the airplanes and tanks of the occupier." He added, "I am confident, like all persecuted Iraqis, that no security plan can succeed or produce any good by depending on the Occupation." Al-Wasat gives a further passage: "Stay away from them and God will keep you away from mischief and harm . . . Make your plan Iraqi and independent, not sectarian or dictatorial, so that you will be victorious. Stay away from oppression and harming others, so that others will have no case against you. Let your reputation be that of being Iraqi . . ."

Some are misinterpreting these remarks to say that Muqtada has turned against the security plan. In fact, he is strongly supporting it, he just wants it to be a national plan and a national victory, and wants Iraqi troops to be able to do without American air and other support.

The BBC story says that many Iraqi Shiites in Baghdad would have felt safer in their neighborhoods if they were still being patrolled by the Mahdi Army. But the al-Maliki government, which they see as subservient to the Americans, has pressured Muqtada to get the Mahdi Army off the streets. But in its absence there have been massive bombings of Shiite markets, which the Baghdad Shiites are therefore blaming on the US.

The al-Maliki government may in any case be collapsing. KarbalaNews.net alleges in Arabic that fair numbers of cabinet ministers and parliamentarians have fled abroad, going AWOL with no permission. It says that a couple of weeks ago a web site published a list of 360 names of Iraqi officials that the US military is determined to detain, without any permission from the Iraqi government. The list contained both Sunni and Shiite names, and those listed are accused either of administrative corruption or of ties to death squads. Many of those who went abroad were on the list. Personally, I can't understand on what grounds US troops can arrest elected Iraqi officials. Force majeure? In any case, you can't run a government if dozens of its officials are living in Amman and Jordan (the problem of absenteeism actually has been a longstanding one.)

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that neighborhood leaders of Adhamiya in Baghdad, a Sunni neighborhood, complained bitterly to the government that Sunday's sweep by (largely Shiite and Kurdish) Iraqi security forces had resulted in the arbitrary arrest of large numbers of Sunni Arabs against whom there was no evidence of wrongdoing. They demanded their release. It was said that some apartment buildings were virtually emptied of their men.

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that a delegation of tribal sheikhs from Falluja was in Damascus Sunday to meet with Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Sharaa. They gave out a statement in which they said that they did not accept the legitimacy of the new security plan of the government of Nuri al-Maliki. They said they were unconvinced that it was based on the principle of national reconciliation, and they complained that the al-Maliki government was based on ethnic quotas, which they rejected. The delegation leader said that the security plan had failed and had in fact been dead on arrival.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is being treated in hospital in Jordan.

The Iraqi government, the supposed ally of the US in the Gulf region, now says that Iran has ceased giving any aid to Shiite militias in Iraq. It is a fiendishly clever way of blunting the campaign by some in the US government to blame Iran for the difficulties they face in Iraq. Now whenever anyone charges Iran with that crime, it can be thrown in their faces that the Iraqi government says it has stopped.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

American Jews, Blacks, Fiercest Opponents of Iraq War

77% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according to a new Gallup poll. Only Black Protestants are more opposed, at 78%.

(Given that the Pope and the bishops oppose the Iraq War, you'd think Catholics would be against it in large numbers, too. But only 28% know what position their religious leaders have taken on it, so the Church has not been good at getting out the word. And, the hierarchy has seen its moral authority on such things deeply eroded by its silly stance on birth control and more recently by the pedophilia scandals.)

Both Jews and Blacks have a long history of preferring government spending on social justice to giving billions away to the (largely white Protestant) Military-Industrial Complex. And, of course, both overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party. American Jews were far less enthusiastic about going to war in 2003 than were other Americans (Only 50-some percent supported the war as opposed to 75% of the general public).

My suspicion is that the Israel factor does not play a significant role in this attitude, and that it has an almost wholly American context. Some 37 percent of American Jews say they are disturbed by Israeli policies, and less than half say that caring about Israel matters "a lot" to their sense of Jewishness.

Besides, if one did care about Israel, one couldn't take a lot of heart from the transformation of Iraq into a failed state full of determined bombers and guerrillas in training. Falluja just isn't that far from Tel Aviv. Even Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence agency, admitted last year that Israel may end up missing Saddam Hussein: "When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos," he said. "I'm not sure we won't miss Saddam." (Israeli television was recording him, unbeknownst to him).

Neoconservative Jews in the US like Richard Perle, Frederick Kagan and Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute who vocally support the Iraq War (and have gotten rich off it) are a minority of a minority, and even are at odds with the Israeli security establishment! Moreover, the American Enterprise Institute, which crafted the Iraq War, gets funding from Exxon Mobil, and last I checked it was run by white Protestants. The vice chair of AEI is Lee Raymond, former CEO of Exxon Mobil and surely Dick Cheney's old golf partner in the Dallas years. That is, the Kagans and the Rubins, who identify with the Revisionist Zionist movement on the Israeli Right, are useful idiots for Big Oil, not movers and shakers in their own right.
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Barratt: British Troops Not Withdrawing, being Redeployed to Afghanistan

Keith Barratt writes:

"I should like to correct a myth that has been accepted by much of the media and accepted by the majority on the Right and Left because it fits their various agendas.

It is not true that a firm commitment has been made that the British are to withdraw from Iraq.

What is happening is simply a redeployment of some vitally required troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, because of the deterioration in that country and concerns about the ability of the existing small number of allied troops to deal with the Spring offensive of the Taliban. An announcement is expected on this in Parliament on Monday, according to Ministry of Defence sources, who also state that any plans for Iraq are “aspirational” and “"if conditions worsen this process could still slow up". As the BBC Defence Correspondent wrote when the news of announcement was first leaked last week: “reports that all troops will have returned home by the end of 2008 was "not a fair representation of what is true at the moment".


This is why, if the claim is in any way correct that Basra is now capable of being handed over to the Iraqi army and which the most recent Pentagon report denies, the apparently surplus UK military are not simply being transferred to assist the escalation of US troops in Baghdad.

It should be remembered that the actual number of troops being re-deployed by the British represents no more than 0.9% of the US and allied occupational force in Iraq.

The UK government has been under considerable pressure about the need for re-enforcement in Afghanistan from its own military. The ability to do this fully with a seriously over stretched military has been difficult. In October, 2006 the Observer newspaper reported that “Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, the former head of Britain's armed forces, has broken ranks to launch an attack on the current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, warning that British forces risk defeat in Afghanistan. “

At the same time, General Sir Richard Dannatt, wrote an extraordinary article as the newly appointed UK Chief of the Army, saying: "I want an Army in five years time and 10 years time. Don't let's break it." (These words are very similar to those used a year earlier by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve, “...the Army Reserve's inability under current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force.”)

The lack of troops in Afghanistan has been made worse by the refusal of many European countries in recent weeks to increase the numbers committed to NATO for deployment to that country. Many nations, such as France and Germany, have accepted only passive rules of engagement concerned with defending reconstruction work for those small number of troops that they have made available. (Indeed, a threat to the funding of even the relatively small number of existing Italian troops in Afghanistan was one of the reasons for Prime Minister Prodi's resignation last week) .

So, the redeployment out of Iraq of 1600 troops by the British has been an enforced measure with which the Pentagon has had to concur, despite the risks.

Blair (I say with little pleasure) has handled the spin on this adroitly. First, he has split the announcement (albeit sources say by only a week) of the draw down of troops from Iraq to an almost identical increase of troops in Afghanistan (Pro-Iraq War Conservative Opposition Defence Spokesman Liam Fox described this politically inspired handling as "cowardice"). Secondly, Blair has encouraged the view that this is the beginning of British withdrawal from the hugely unpopular Iraq war, although every statement in this regard has been hedged with the same cautious caveats that surrounded the proposed draw down that never occurred last September. In this way, he has quietened down the left-wing of his Labour Party and removed some of the problems that would be encountered on the doorsteps in the run up to the UK May local elections. Cynically, it can be said to be a preparation of the revised history that will describe the "legacy" of his time in office after his expected resignation in the Summer.

Coupled with this, he has promulgated the claim that Basra and the South are a success for the British Army and the justification of his decision to support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

Bush has recognised the difficulties the British face in Afghanistan and, not wanting to draw attention to the difficulties there - despite his own recent announcement of the need to increase US troops in that theater of war - has been happy to support the Blair projection of what is happening in Iraq. Indeed, he has used the Blair spin to claim the illusion of success and to falsely justify the "surge" in Iraq.

How has this myth that the British are "withdrawing" from Iraq come about and gained such traction?

The Left in the States has bought into the Blair spin because they want to believe that it shows a rift between Downing Street and the White House. It supports their claims that the escalation in US troops is nonsense when the British are stepping down and it reinforces their question as to why the United Sates cannot follow an identical pattern and get the troops out of Iraq immediately.

The Right buys into it because the "success" in Basra gives credence to their claim that the strategy is working and any diminution in the number of allied troops justifies the need for more US forces. It should not be forgotten, either, that the idea of being abandoned by other nations can also have the subliminal effect of invigorating their base by re-enforcing the message that the United States stands alone in facing down “the world wide fundamental Islamic terror”. This can be as powerful in maintaining the dogged support of part of the electorate as the message that it still has allies has with others.

I have tried to combat this misinterpretation of what is actually happening by two diaries on Daily Kos as the events unfolded during last week here:

“The deception of the story of UK troop withdrawals “

and here:

“UK Troop Withdrawal Truth Finally Now Revealed”

Sadly, once announced it is almost impossible to remove the beliefs that this sort of spin creates. That British troops are withdrawing remains the understanding in many of our blogs and I heard it today on C-Span.

Ignoring the underlying truth has two effects: The ease with which the myths surrounding the supposed British withdrawal have been accepted by all parts of the political spectrum is a forewarning of what will be achievable by the Republicans in the run up to the 2008 elections. More importantly, it disguises the failures in Afghanistan to secure that country and the distraction that the Iraq invasion has been to the initially stated 9/11 goals of the current Administration.

Those seeking a rapid withdrawal from Iraq do not need buy into the illusions created by Bush and Blair to justify their position. The reality is sufficient to condemn this whole Middle East adventure.

Kind regards

Keith Barratt

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Hakim Targeted with Car Bomb;
Thousands of Shiites Protest US in Najaf;
Enormous Bomb Hits Habaniya Mosque

Late Saturday, the US Air Force launched a series of bombing raids on southeast Baghdad. This is absolutely shameful, that the US is bombing from the air a civilian city that it militarily occupies. You can't possibly do that without killing innocent civilians, as at Ramadi the other day. It is a war crime. US citizens should protest and write their congressional representatives. It is also the worst possible counter-insurgency tactic anyone could ever have imagined. You bomb people, they hate you. The bombing appears to have knocked out what little electricity some parts of Baghdad were still getting.

Guerrillas used a car bomb to target the residence of Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in Baghdad on Saturday. Al-Hayat says that they killed 3 civilians and wounded 7 others. This report says that they killed one guard and wounded four. These were likely Sunni Arab guerrillas hoping that al-Hakim would see the attack as an American one. The US arrested al-Hakim's son on Friday, contributing to a fraying of US relations with Shiite Iraqis, especially those loyal to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Nearly 10,000 Iraqis demonstrated in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday against the US arrest of Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim the previous day. Smaller demonstrations were held in other southern Shiite cities, including Kut and Basra. This young cleric is the son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament and an ally of the US.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani called for the US military personnel who arrested Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim on Friday to be disciplined. He decried al-Hakim's treatment at US hands. Talabani, a Kurd, is typically a strong ally of the US.

A truck bomb devastated the congregation of a Sunni mosque in Habbaniya on Saturday, killing 45 and wounding 110.

AP speculates that the mosque was being punished for the stance of its imam against "extremism." The Baath Party and the Salafi Jihadis that dominate al-Anbar Province frequently kill other Sunnis whom they view as "collaborators" with the foreign occupation forces.

This article also discusses the way that the security plan in Baghdad and al-Anbar has displaced many guerrillas into Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad, where direct attacks on US troops are up 70 percent!

In Baghdad itself, three bombings and a mortar attack contributed to a death toll of some 20.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Khalilzad Apologizes for Arrest of Ammar al-Hakim
Maliki Government stalls Changes in Debaathification

The US has released Ammar al-Hakim and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad apologized profusely for his arrest. The US military is giving three reasons for his arrest: He entered Iraq at a closed border station, his passport was expired, and his party was armed to the teeth. In fact, however, his passport was valid until September 17, 2007, and nobody travels overland in Iraq without being armed. It is most likely that the US doesn't want Shiite leaders slipping over to Iran in this way, because it is trying to reduce Iranian influence with US allies in Iraq. That is, al-Hakim's offense was probably his trip itself, though that cannot be admitted by Washington.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that al-Hakim complained of being hooded and treated roughly while in US custody. Al-Zaman says that al-Hakim's cell phone was confiscated, and hints broadly that the real reason for the arrest was to get access to his telephone records and the documents he had with him. The US suspects the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq of getting aid from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Washington wants it stopped.

Al-Zaman provides two other interesting but unconfirmed narratives. One is that al-Hakim's party came under fire as they entered Iraq near Kut and one or two of his guards were actually killed. The paper also reports an allegation that the US in arresting al-Hakim was acting on a tip from the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is popular in the Kut region and is a rival of the al-Hakims.

In contrast, al-Hayat reports that the US may have been hoping that the convoy coming from Iran was that of Muqtada al-Sadr, whom they have determined to arrest. In that case, the incident would be a case of mistaken identity.

Al-Hakim says his guards were abused and still have not been released. US military sources say that they were following procedure in verifying his identity, since passports can be forged, and that the issue had to go to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for resolution since the latter had prohibited lower-level officials from just releasing detainees.

I am unconvinced by this explanation, since there was not good reason to doubt al-Hakim's passport, and it can't have taken 12 hours to call al-Maliki. There is also the question of why US troops were even in the area, since it is a Polish sphere of operations. They had to have come over for some specific purpose. The likelihood is that it was an intelligence operation of some sort.

The incident, which produced a small demonstration in Basra and a lot of bad feeling among Iraqi Shiites, demonstrates the dangers of Bush's cowboy policies in Iraq, such that he recently urged suspected Iranian agents be shot on sight. If Ammar had been killed instead of arrested for 12 hours, there would have been hell to pay.

The same al-Zaman article says that the security plan in Baghdad has been altered because of guerrillas increasing successes in shooting down US helicopters, and their recent use of attacks on chlorine gas trucks. Without as much chopper support, and facing the possibility of being gassed, US and Iraqi troops have been forced to change their tactics (obviously, the details are not specified).

Guerrillas in Hilla, a Shiite city south of Baghdad, set off a bomb under an automobile, wounding 6. There was scattered mortar fire in Baghdad, and five bodies were found there.

Paul Richter of the LA Times reports that a keystone of Bush's surge policy, reconciliation between Shiites and Sunni Arabs, is being impeded by the refusal of the Iraqi parliament to reconsider the guidelines for Debaathification. Since most Sunni Arabs had family members with Baath ties, they have been hurt economically and politically by the firings. When you systematically screw over 20% of the population, you create a civil war.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Sunni Pious Endowments Board has suspended its activities in protest against the firing, by Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, of its head. The former head had pushed for an international investigation into the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by Shiite security personnel. A strike by the endowments board is potentially powerful symbolic politics. Sunni religious foundations in Iraq are numerous and often wealthy and influential. Al-Maliki seems just to have lost their confidence.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that six Sunni Arab guerrilla groups have vowed to take revenge for the rape. (Presumably by attacking Shiite police).

Even voters in the southeastern states (Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia), which have in recent decades been strongly Republican, have turned against Bush and against the Iraq War. Personally I think certainly Virginia and maybe North Carolina is there for the taking by the Democratic candidate for president in 2008, if the candidate conducts a good campaign. If I were in charge, I'd put about posters showing the schools in those states that haven't been painted while Bush has been pouring money into the Iraq maelstrom the way a drunk gambler pours money into the gaming tables at Las Vegas.

Sarah Smiles reports in The Age that even the Defense Minister of the hard line Howard government in Australia, Brendan Nelson, has admitted that a conventional victory in Iraq is elusive. This is like saying that a successful landing of The Titanic in New York was elusive.

Some 800 civilian contractors (many of them functioning essentially as military police) have been killed by guerrillas in Iraq, and over 3,000 have been wounded. This is a "hidden cost" of the war that most news stories and politicians' speeches ignore.

Barbara Karkabi on the differences between Sunnis and Shiites and on Sunni-Shiite relations, both in the US and Iraq.
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Breaking News: US Arrests Ammar al-Hakim

US troops arrested Ammar al-Hakim, the son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, on his return from Iran. There are conflicting reports on whether he has been released.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is the leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, the major bloc in parliament, and is enormously powerful and influential in Iraq. He also heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its Badr Corps paramilitary. He visited Bush in the White House on Dec. 4. If the arrest of his son was deliberate, it could be a significant break between the US and its Shiite allies in Iraq. If it was an accident, it was inexcusable stupidity.

It is also possible that the MEK terrorist organization, which Saddam had given a base in Iraq from which it could blow things up in Iran, is funneling disinformation to the US military. The MEK operatives are still in Iraq and their spies monitor the border, and I have a sense that they are trying to drive a wedge between the US and SCIRI. SCIRI has repeatedly called for their expulsion from the country.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole in Salon on British Troop Withdrawal

My article,
The British retreat from Iraq brings peril for U.S. Troops: Vice President Cheney says the British are leaving southern Iraq because things are going so well. In the real world, Basra is a mess is out in Salon.com

Excerpt:

' In reality, southern Iraq is a quagmire that has defeated all British efforts to impose order, and Blair was pressed by his military commanders to get out altogether -- and quickly. The departure has only been slowed, for the moment, by the pleas of Bush administration officials like Cheney. And far from the disingenuously upbeat prognosis offered by the vice president, the British withdrawal could spell severe trouble for both the Iraqi government and for U.S. troops in that country. '

Read the whole thing.

Also catch Glenn Greenwald's always stimulating blog, which has a guest piece on whether it is a good idea (as some on the Right have said) to assassinate Iranian scientists . . .

It is a wonderful, daily webzine, and one can avoid the commercial by subscribing, at an amazing low price.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bombing in Tal Afar, Clashes in Ramadi
Dems Plan to bring Troops Home in spring, O8

Senate Democrats are crafting legislation that would bring US troops home by spring of 2008.

Reuters rounds up political violence on Thursday. Bombings in Kirkuk, clashes in al-Anbar province, bodies found in Baghdad. 2 US GIs killed.

Saeed Shah at the Independent discusses the current draft of the new petroleum investment law in Iraq, and the jockeying for position of the oil majors. He reveals that the third draft of the law gives big prerogatives to regions, and quotes an expert who fears it will break up the country.

The LA Times marks the fist anniversary of the destruction of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra. Iraqis commemorated the date on the lunar calendar, a couple of weeks ago.

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases Iraqi press items for February 22:

' Tariq al-Sha'b carries on the front page a 460-word report on the statement issued by the Iraqi Journalists Association yesterday, 21 February denouncing US forces for raiding the association headquarters and arresting 10 guards. . .

Al-Mu'tamar publishes on the front page a 350-word report on the statement issued by the Babil Advisory Council yesterday, 21 February confirming that the council has decided to form an investigation committee to question Governor Salim Salih al-Musalimawi and the Council's Projects Committee on their failure in the implementation of the 2006 development projects in the governorate. . .

Al-Sabah al-Jadid carries on page 3 a 300-word report citing Basra Federal Workers Union Undersecretary Abd-al-Karim Abd-al-Sadah condemning British forces for attacking the union headquarters. . .

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

British Withdrawal May bring Militia, Iranian Influence
Najaf Bomb Kills 18

Rick Jervis of USA Today--reporting from Baghdad-- suggests that the British drawdown from Basra could allow greater Iranian and militia influence in the Shiite deep south of Iraq.

LA Times says that the British are drawing down in Iraq because they cannot fight both there and in Afghanistan without overtaxing their army and facing "operational failure."

A Marine was killed by guerrillas in al-Anbar; guerrillas shot down a US helicopter but the crew and passengers were rescued; a car bomb killed 16 and wounded 40 at the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Sunni Arab guerrillas are attempting to provoke Shiite militiamen to come out for revenge, knowing that they would likely then be curbed or shot by the US military.

Reuters reports on other political violence on Wednesday, of which there was a lot. The number of bodies found in the capital appears to have gone back up after a lull.

Guerrillas also struck at a second chlorine truck, causing Baghdad residents to sicken and go to the hospital with problems breathing. The guerrillas are deliberately attempting to use gases of various sorts to spread chaos.

Underestimating Vice President Dick Cheney's influence with Bush would be a big mistake. I don't think Condi Rice is on the same level at all.

The decline and fall of the coalition of the willing in Iraq.

David Ignatius reports on the growing anger toward the US in the Arab world. We are down to a 12 percent favorability rating. Ignatius rightly points to the security threats engendered by Bush's failures in policy and in public diplomacy.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The US, Petroleum, and Nigerian Democracy

For those interested in the issue of US foreign policy and petroleum, the paper "Convergent Interests: U.S. energy security and the "securing" of Nigerian democracy," by Paul Lubeck, Michael Watts and Ronnie Lipschutz at The Center for International Policy de rigeur.

Scroll down at the executive summary for the pdf link to the whole report.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Blair to Draw Down British Troops

Tony Blair is taking 1600 troops out of Basra in the next few months and will aim to be down to only 3,000 or so (from 7,100 now) by the end of the year. Denmark is also going home.

This is a rout, there should be no mistake. The fractious Shiite militias and tribes of Iraq's South have made it impossible for the British to stay. They already left Dhi Qar province, as well as sleepy Muthanna. They moved the British consulate to the airport because they couldn't protect it in Basra. They are taking mortar and rocket fire at their bases every night. Raiding militia HQs has not resulted in any permanent change in the situation. Basra is dominated by 4 paramilitaries, who are fighting turf wars with one another and with the Iraqi government over oil smuggling rights.

Blair is not leaving Basra because the British mission has been accomplished. He is leaving because he has concluded that it cannot be, and that if he tries any further it will completely sink the Labor Party, perhaps for decades to come.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rape Case Political Football in Iraq
Iraq War has Caused Spike in Global terrorism

Iraqi security forces, Shiites, raided a house looking for a possible Sunni Arab insurgent named al-Janabi. They found only his wife at home. They took her into custody (probably as a hostage). They accused her of cooking for insurgents. Then the police gang-raped her. She went on Aljazeera and told her story. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite head of a Shiite government, at first said he would have a commission look into her charges. Then he reversed himself and accused the woman of lying and implying that she was put up to it by the Sunni insurgency. Marc Santora of the New York Times managed to interview the nurse who treated her, and found that Mrs. al-Janabi's story was corroborated.

In essence, the Shiite prime minister is shielding Shiite police commandos from being charged with a crime against a Sunni Arab woman. Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Ahmad Abdul Ghafur al-Samarra'i of the Sunni Pious Endowments Board was demanding that the victim be sent to Europe for treatment. Update: Al-Samarra'i has just been fired from the board by PM Nuri al-Maliki for making this comment!

Riverbend meditates on the meaning of the rape, and laments that the incident is being interpreted in the terms of religious ethnicity.

The US is considering attempting to go into Sadr City after the Mahdi Army and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute is now in favor. He says he over-estimated the Mahdi Army and under-estimated Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki earlier. Kagan doesn't have the slightest idea what he is talking about when it comes to Iraq, and he is advising Bush what to do, who knows even less. Sadr City is quiet because the Mahdi Army made a policy decision to cooperate with the security plan, and al-Maliki is in on this deal. The Mahdi Army is the street gangs of the Sadr Movement, to which millions of Iraqis have given their allegiance. You can't uproot a social movement with a few patrols and firefights. Sadrism will be there long after the US is forced to withdraw from Iraq.

Bush's Iraq War has driven a big increase in terrorist attacks in the world.

Iraq through an Iraqi's eyes. It doesn't sound like Cheney's description.

Blair may pull out thousands of British troops from the Basra area.

AP rounds up political violence in Iraq on Tuesday
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Attack on US military Base Kills 2 wounds 17;
Running Battles leave Capital's Streets Deserted;
Pentagon Thinks Big concerning attack on Iran

In making continency plans for war against Iran, the Pentagon is thinking big. Not just surgical strikes on the civilian nuclear energy program, but hitting virtually everything of importance in the country. The Air Force kept telling us they could bomb Vietnam into submission. They couldn't. Then it was shock and awe in Iraq. Didn't work. Just remember, it is always the Army that has to come in and clean up the mess.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that numerous running gun battles and mortar strikes were witnessed in Baghdad on Monday as US and Iraqi forces clashed with guerrilla fighters. The mounting death toll of the past few days caused the government of Nuri al-Maliki to reapportion troops, assigning some urgently to "hot areas" as opposed to areas of "routine operations." Sweeps also resulted in numerous arrests, but a leader of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front maintained that some 30 young men arrested on Monday were innocent. As a result of the street battles, Baghdadis rushed to their homes for fear of a further deterioration in the security situation, leaving the capital looking like a ghost town.

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed 6 US GIs on Sunday and Monday in Iraq. They killed two of them Monday with a car bomb and mortar attack on a newly set up US base at Tarmiya north of Baghdad, also wounding 17.

Reuters reports a minibus bombing in Baghad, another at Zaafraniya, and the discovery of 8 bodies in Mosul. Also two bombings in Ramadi. McClatchy reports the discovery of 20 bodies in Baghdad and other violence.

The explosion of a fuel tanker near Taji north of Baghdad killed 5 persons and sent 138 persons to the hospital from inhaling the fumes. Those affected were having trouble breathing and were vomiting.
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Big Military Establishment Harms Liberty: Washington

I understand Bush tried to invoke George Washington as a supporter of the Iraq War.

Here is what George actually thought about maintaining large scale military institutions on a permanent basis for the purpose of fighting foreign wars:

' While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Security Plan Mocked by Massive Explosions
Al-Hashimi Seeks "Terrorist" Status for Sadr Movement

Reuters reports that 2 US soldiers were killed by guerrillas on Saturday. In addition to the massive bombings at a Shiite market in East Baghdad that killed 70 and wounded 150 (- al-Hayat) on Sunday, another bomb, detonated in a restaurant in Sadr City, killed 2 and wounded 11. Police found 5 bodies in Baghdad and another three in Balad. In Basra and Mosul, clashes broke out with local militiamen.


Many Iraqis lack safe drinking water and are forced to resort to river water high in bacteria. In al-Anbar Province, where the US destroyed the city of Falluja, water pipes and all, and created hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, the incidence of diarrhea in children rose 70 percent in 2006! Diarrhea in very young or in sick or malnourished children is often fatal and contributes to high infant mortality rates. 60 percent of Iraqis in the Baghdad and al-Anbar Provinces use river water!

Iraqi Vice President (Sunni fundamentalist) Tariq al-Hashimi called Sunday for the US government to classify the Sadr Movement of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a terrorist group. Sadrists form a key component of the ruling bloc in parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, and they run Maysan Province. It is a little unlikely that al-Hashimi will get his way. The other day, in contrast, he praised the Sunni Arab guerrillas as noble and sincere. If the top echelons of the Iraqi government are this divided over the nature of political reality, it isn't a good sign for the country's future.

Iran has again denied that Muqtada al-Sadr is in that country. Bush spokesman Tony Snow has admitted that the US does not know where Muqtada is.

Here is what I told friends who inquired:

Muqtada al-Sadr is *highly* unlikely to be in Iran.

1. The al-Sadrs, Muqtada and his father, made endless fun of the al-Hakims for fleeing Iraq to Iran under Saddam. Muqtada's claim to greater legitimacy would be undermined were he now to flee to Iran from the Americans.

2. Muqtada successfully hid out from Saddam in Kufa for 4 years. He can hide from the Americans. He has tunnels, safe houses, and trustworthy aides who won't inform on him. He also escaped this way from Najaf and the Marines in Aug. 2004.

3. No Sadrist source says Muqtada is in Iran.

4. No Iranian source says Muqtada is in Iran.

5. A UN source says he is hiding out in Kufa, which is what he used to do under Saddam:

6. Al-Hayat says he is hiding out in the southern Marshes, also plausible. The Marsh Arabs are now mostly Sadrists.

7. The story of his being in Iran has three sources: Gen. Caldwell of the US military, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and Jalal Talabani. All have an interest in Muqtada being humiliated and undermined, and all have an interest in removing his Iraqi nationalist credentials by tying him to Iran. For al-Hakim and Talabani, both with strong Iran ties themselves, it levels the playing field. None is likely actually to know where Muqtada is.

It is sort of old news, but by 2004 the UN found that one third of Iraqis had fallen into poverty and 5 percent were in dire poverty. Iraq in the 1970s had had a fair standard of living but Saddam's wars, the UN/US sanctions, and the disruption of society caused by Bush's invasion, had clearly driven people into substantial poverty by 04. It must be worse, now.

Raed has a translation of the new Iraqi petroleum law.

Petty Larseny says we should declare victory and leave. An ironic reading of Mission Accomplished.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Car Bombs in Shiite East Baghdad Kill 55, Wound 128
Baathis, Salafis Baiting Shiites into Attacking

Sunni Arab guerrillas detonated two huge car bombs in a mainly Shiite market in east Baghdad on Sunday, killing 55 and wounding 128.

These bombings of Shiite markets are provocations against the Mahdi Army. The Sunni guerrillas want it to come out and fight, and then to turn surged US firepower on it by stealth.

The allegations that all the explosively formed projectiles set off against US troops in Baghdad in recent months were Shiite operations are in this context extremely fishy. The Baathis are entirely capable of deliberately buying Iranian components on the open market and using them in their attacks on the US, so as to throw suspicion on Mahdi Army fighters. Some were found in the Sunni district of Mansur. Very suspicious.
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Senate Comes Close to Condemning Iraq Escalation
Twin Bombings kill 11, Wound 65 at Kirkuk

The US Senate came very close to passing a resolution condemning Bush's escalation of the Iraq War. It needed 60 to pass and got 56. Several Republicans voted for the resolution. In fact, if only 4 more had, it would have passed. This vote is very bad news for Bush's Iraq policy, because it seems pretty likely that over the next few months, at least another 4 Republican senators will join the anti-war chorus.


AP reports that a US GI was killed on Friday in al-Anbar province.

The LA Times reports that the large number of wounded Iraqi Vets has overwhelmed the tracking system at Walter Reed Hospital, and that many may have fallen through the cracks. At least 4,000 US GIs have been very seriously injured in Iraq, out of a total of over 20,000.

On Saturday, two huge carbombings that targeted a Kurdish market in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. They killed 11 and wounded 65:

' Police and witnesses said the first blast occurred near shops and a bus depot. Minutes later, a suicide car bomber attacked the same area. The back-to-back blasts shattered about 20 shops and terrified shoppers fled screaming in panic amid burning cars and debris. Restaurant owner Saman Ahmed lay screaming on the sidewalk, his body soaked with hot cooking oil after one of the blasts hurled him onto the curb. '

The Kurdish officials in Kirkuk have been urging Arab families transplanted there by Saddam to leave for the south, raising ethnic tensions in the city.

The report also says that Secretary of State Condi Rice was told on her surprise visit to Baghdad that the Mahdi Army of young nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to cooperate with the security plan and that East Baghdad (Sadr City) is quiet. Why, the al-Maliki government asked, should resources be devoted to an area that is not a problem? This explanation aimed at excusing the sole concentration of the security plan on Sunni Arab areas in West Baghdad.

There were two significant firefights between US troops and Sunni Arab guerrillas in Ramadi, which the US Air Force decided in favor of the US, killing 8 guerrillas.

Reuters reports that there were also significant firefights in the al-Anbar city of Hit between guerrillas and police, with 2 police killed and 8 wounded, and some 50 suspected guerrillas arrested.

Guerrillas also tried to detonate a car bomb at the Shiite holy city of Karbala, but were foiled at a checkpoint, where they set it off instead. Two policemen were wounded. If Sunni guerrillas ever succeeded in hitting the shrine of Imam Husayn at Karbala, that might be the end of Iraq.
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Austrian Rifles via Iran?: Another Crock

An extremely well-informed observer sent me this comment on the story that Iran is sending high-powered Austrian rifles to Iraqi Shiites. Like the whole USG story about Iran supplying deadly weapons to dangerous Shiite militias, this one turns out to be riddled with falsehoods.

' Please allow me to comment on the Austrian Sniper rifles.

There was a deal between Steyr-Mannlicher and the Iranians in the last year of Khatami's presidency, which followed as usual legal procedures, thus the Iranians handed out an end-user certificate. Originally the Iranians wanted 800 but in the end only 300 were delivered.

The rifle has no automatic capability but can pierce metal plate at a distance of 1000meters. The Iranian border guards allegedly use it to shoot at long distance into the motor blocks of the SUVs and pickups of the Drug gangs operating alongside the Afghan border.

There were American and I think also British protests when the deal was concluded. It is important that this was before Ahmadinezhad did his odious speech on Israel and the Holocoust, otherwise I cannot imagine that the Austrians would have concluded the deal.

The original article about Austrian rifles in Iraq appeared in the Daily Telegraph and is full of inconsistencies. For instance they say that the US found 100 of these rifles in Iraq and 170 American and Coalition troops have been killed by that weapon.

As far as I know 170 is the total of US and Coalition troops killed by Shiite militias; total combat casualties are about 3000! The vast majority has been killed by IEDs and other explosives. The article bases its accusations on a US display of weaponry designed to prove that Iran has been supplying Shia insurgents in Iraq, but there is no single line about the Austrian rifles.

But both articles put the Iranian nuclear issue centre stage! Meanwhile the US are unable to provide the Austrians with the guns' serial numbers. Steyr-Mannlicher also hinted at the fact that these guns can easily be rebuilt as the licencing has expired and one can buy them in countries like Canada. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Congressional Resolution on Iraq Blasts Bush Policies
56% Say Iraq War is hopeless.

The House passed a non-binding resolution opposing the escalation of the Iraq War by a significant margin, 246 to 182. Only 17 Republicans broke ranks to vote with the Democrats on the "surge," while 2 Democrats rejected the resolution.

The resolution is not important for immediate policy-making, but rather as a straw in the wind. Sooner or later, Congress is going to begin cutting off money for the Iraq War, and then the troops will just have to come home.

Most Republicans in the House seem to think they can go on playing the patriotism and support the troops and Islamic radicalism cards, and somehow all this will at some point start working for them again. In my view, that outcome is unlikely barring some big unforeseen event, and they will be sunk in 2008 if they stick to this line.

56% of Americans now feel that the Iraq War is hopeless. I can remember when it was a third. The trend lines are not favorable to the war supporters. Their talk about the Dems wanting to 'cut off funding to our troops in harm's way' will increasingly just raise questions in the public's mind about who put the troops in harm's way and why.

Reuters reports that 11 bodies were found in Baghdad on Friday and another 4 in Mosul. Guerrillas killed 3 bodyguards of Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari at a phony checkpoint. A roadside bomb in Kirkuk killed or injured 4. In the southern port city of Basra, clashes between militiamen and British troops broke out.

The guerrillas and militiamen are beginning to lie low, according to al-Zaman in Arabic. One of their hopes is that their rivals will fight the Americans and so be destroyed or much weakened. Since no one is volunteering to fight openly, however, it is possible that guerrillas will attempt to provoke US-militia fights so as to achieve the same result. Those recent huge bombings in Shiite districts of Baghdad were probably intended to make the Mahdi Army commanders rethink their policy of melting away temporarily, and come out to fight the Sunnis and then the Americans when they intervene. We are liable to see more of that kind of thing.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni Arab praised the Sunni Arab guerrillas as "honorable" and "sincere" and said that the Iraqi government and the US must negotiate with them, given American failure.

Al-Hashimi also slammed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for not cracking down on Shiite militiamen (who, I guess, are not in his view either honorable or sincere). He also lashed out at the Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard line Sunni religious group that has been deeply critical of people like al-Hashimi for serving in a government they see as American puppets. I personally think al-Hashimi is right and that a negotiating track must be opened up with the Sunni guerrillas. The Kurds and Shiites in the government won't go for it, though.

Tom Lasseter on the way the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary controls Kirkuk and the trouble that is likely to cause. He points out that Iraqi Army units in the province are mostly actually Peshmerga. The article doesn't talk much about police, but the police is even more Peshmerga than the army. Arabs and Turkmen see this situation as dangerous.

The International Organization for Migration in Geneva predicts that up to one million Iraqis will be forced out of their homes this year if current rates of violence continue.

Don't miss Roger Morris on the Rumsfeld legacy at the indispensable Tomdispatch.com
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53% of Americans Want US Out of Iraq
Car bombs, 20 Bodies in Baghdad Despite Crackdown

The percentage of Americans in a Pew Research Center poll who want US troops out of Iraq surged by 5 percent in the past month to 53 percent.

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed a US GI in al-Anbar Province on Thursday.

In Suwayra, US and Iraqi forces targeted a Mahdi Army cell that Reuters calls "rogue."

Police found 20 bodies in Baghdad on Thursday, and guerrillas set off at least 4 deadly car bombs at three separate sites.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Muqtada al-Sadr and several leaders of his movement as well as commanders of his Mahdi Army are present in the southern marshlands of Iraq, a place in which dissidents in the former Baath regime used to hide out. The marshes have been re-flooded and are at 40% of their original area, and they do give good protection to anyone wishing to hide out. The Marsh Arab inhabitants of the swamps have largely become followers of Sadr, and so would protect him. They are in an area of Iraq that borders Iran and which serves as a smuggling route between the two countries, which may have given rise to the idea that Muqtada was on his way to Iran. He more likely is holed up in the marshes. This is the most plausible story I have seen yet on Muqtada's disappearance.



Jalal Talabani's account that Muqtada ordered his aides to Iran makes no sense at all given Muqtada's longstanding problem with Iran's authority in Shiism and his and his father's position that Iraqis should stay in Iraq even if they are in danger.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Iraqi security forces on Thursday morning closed off Saadoun St., which leads to Liberation Square in downtown Baghdad. They also put up barricades on the bridges that link al-Rusafa, east of the Tigris, with Karkh on the west of the river. At checkpoints coming into the city, soldiers are searching automobiles, checking the vehicle's temperature, and checking drivers' i.d.'s and bona fides. In a city that is constantly being blown up, you have to wonder why they didn't start doing this years ago.

Near Karrada in al-Taharriyat, Iraqi troops searched storehouses, factories and homes looking for weapons.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat writes in Arabic that Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the (Sunni religious) Iraqi Accord Front, warned the government with severity not to target Sunnis alone in its security sweep.

Ben Lando of UPI reports on the remarks of former Iraqi petroleum minister Issam al-Chalabi (no relation) at an oil conference in Houston:

' The global energy information firm Platts reports Iraq`s production in January dropped to an average 1.66 million barrels a day from nearly 1.9 million in December. Around 96 percent of Iraq`s budget comes from selling oil, and exports dropped to about 1.2 million barrels, Chalabi said . . .

'They can`t increase; the only way is for production to go down,' said Mohamed Zine, regional manager of the Middle East for energy analyst firm IHS.

'There`s been no improvement, nothing,' said Zine, whose views on the situation in Iraq are often less dramatic than Chalabi`s. 'It`s getting worse.' '

Before the war, Iraq was producing 2.6 mn barrels a day, with a capacity of 3. In January it could only do 1.6 mn barrels a day. There are widespread reports of rapid deterioration of facilities and fields being polluted with water. Lando adds:

' Iraq also pays billions of dollars annually to purchase oil products for transportation, heating and cooking, a change from before the war when Iraq sold such products, Chalabi said . . . Last year an oil ministry spokesman said smuggling is worth $700 million monthly that should go to federal coffers. '

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases the Iraqi press for Feb. 15:

' Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah on 14 February carries on the front page a 200-word report citing special political sources saying that the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front are suffering from dissidence and disputes.

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah on 14 February carries on the front page a 300-word editorial by Chief Editor Sattar Jabbar strongly criticizing the campaign against Nuri al-Maliki and Baqir Jabr al-Zubaydi led by Harith al-Dari and others. . .

Al-Bayyinah on 14 February carries on the front page a 180-word exclusive report citing Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim [leader of the main bloc in the Iraqi Parliament, who visited the White House on Dec. 4] saying that the leaders of Iran, the UAE, and Bahrain are with Iraq in combating terrorism . . .

Al-Mu'tamar carries on the front page a 300-word report saying that the Public Committee for Supporting the Baghdad Security Plan led by Ahmad al-Chalabi held a meeting that was attended by tribal shaykhs and notables. . .

Al-Manarah on 13 February carries on page 2 a 130-word exclusive report citing Jabir Khalifah Jabir, member of the Oil and Gas Committee at parliament, saying that Iraq's oil is being imported without using oil meters. . .'

Condi Rice lied for Bush when she said she could not remember a major 2003 peace offer from Iran. Flynt Leverett called her on it.

Also of interest is the following article:

' Defense Minister Denies Presence of Al-Sadr in Iran or Supplying Weapons to Iraq
Aftabnews WWW-Text
Thursday, February 15, 2007 T16:31:05Z . . .

The Iranian defense minister has denied reports that (Iraqi Shiite cleric) Muqtada al-Sadr is in Iran. Speaking to an Aftab news correspondent, Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, having denied the presence of al-Sadr in Iran, added; You should ask this question from those who spread such rumors.

Asked for his response to American allegations that the Qods Corps in Iran is supplying Iraqi rebels with weapons, the defense minister said: Such statements are lies and false accusations. Why would we be supplying Iraqis with weapons when we ourselves are calling on America to leave the region so that security may be established? The insecurity (in Iraq) has a bad effect on our country.

Najjar said: Such actions and remarks by America are more like a puppet show.

The defense minister stressed: Iran does not supply Iraq with any weapons. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Brandeis Defunded by Rich Likudniks

Super-wealthy donors have retaliated against Brandeis University for inviting former president Jimmy Carter to speak on campus in connection with his book on Israeli Apartheid in the West Bank. They said they will withold further donations to the school.

The president of Brandeis, Jehuda Reinharz, once commented on Middle East Centers at major American universities, saying, "My problem is not the anti-Zionism or even that many of them are anti-American, but that they are third-rate." Why exactly should he judge their scholarship by whether or not they are Zionists? Does everyone have to be a Zionist? As for the Red-baiting and vague, general put-down of the works of other academics, it is too despicable for words. Reinharz notoriously thought well of the "scholarship" of Joan Peters, whose "From Time Immemorial" was dismissed by Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath as a forgery.

So I have to say it is delicious that Reinharz himself is now having the economic plug pulled on him by rich old bullies who think, by virtue of his invitation to Jimmy Carter, that he is anti-Zionist, anti-American and third rate.

Carter's book, by the way, is mostly just Christian Zionism. It ignores 1400 years of Muslim history in Palestine and Jerusalem, accepts Peters's false thesis of significant in-migration of Arabs in the interwar period, and only dares raise some timid protests about the execrable treatment of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by Israeli occupiers and colonists.

If even Carter can't protest even this much without causing a whole university to be defunded, then there is something radically wrong with higher education in the United States. And what is wrong with it has nothing to do with the (quite high) standard of scholarship in Middle Eastern studies. It has to do with radical intolerance of any views that depart from a rightwing Zionist orthodoxy, and a willingness by upholders of that orthodoxy to deploy big money to punish anyone or any institution that departs from it.

By the way, I have several friends on the Brandeis faculty, and their academic scholarship is first-rate. I hope they can go on enlightening us. Scholarship, pace Reinharz, is not a zero sum game. We are all enriched by the work of good scholars everywhere.
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5 US Troops Killed in Sunni Arab Areas
US Raids Office of SCIRI Leader Saghir

The US military is reporting the deaths of 6 US troops in Iraq. Four were killed by a roadside bomb in Sunni-majority Diyala Province where the US has been fighting Sunni Arab guerrillas. Another was killed "north of Baghdad" (i.e. Sunni territory). The sixth was a non-combat death. Despite the brouhaha about alleged Iranian support to Shiite militias, The five KIAs were all killed by Sunni Arabs who are hostile to Iran. This situation is the typical one in Iraq. So why isn't Bush talking about Sunni Arab insurgents instead of about Iran? (See Gareth Porter on this issue-- he shows that the recent US briefing demonstrated the opposite of what it was going for; also Best Guess.)

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraqi soldiers set up big concrete barriers around the city as part of the new security arrangements on Wednesday, causing traffic backups.

The same source says that US troops invaded the offices of Jalal al-Din Saghir, a cleric who preaches at the Buratha Mosque in northern Baghdad, and confiscated his private papers. Saghir said he believed that the Americans suspected him of being linked to Iran.

(This raid is further proof that the US is not worried about Iranian aid to the Mahdi Army, with which it has clashed, but rather to the Badr Corps, its putative ally. The Badr Corps paramilitary belongs to the Supreme Council for Islamic REvolution in Iraq, of which Saghir is a leader.)

Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times reports that Sadrist member of parliament Fattah Shaikh says he saw Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf four days ago. The US military had reported that the Shiite nationalist cleric had left for Iran last month.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that a number of the leaders of the Sadr Movement and its paramilitary, the Mahdi Army, have relocated to Iran. Some say they are on pilgrimage to the shrine of the 8th Imam in Mashhad, eastern Iran. Others are in the Iranian seminary city of Qom or in Tehran. They appear to be lying low in this way during the security crackdown of the al-Maliki government and the US military, now underway. An eyewitness named al-Khafaji said that Mahdi Army militiamen abruptly vanished from the city squares of Najaf recently.

A source in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior told SA that the US military has given the Ministry lists of Mahdi Army commanders considered to be guilty of murder or crimes of ethnic cleansing. Getting them off the streets is considered key to the new security plan. The names include both Sunnis and Shiites.

(But note that the Ministry of the Interior was for a long time under the control of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and still has a big contingent from that party, so essentially the US is helping SCIRI remove its rivals among the Sadrists and Sunni Arabs.)

A British military transport plane appears to have been damaged by an explosive as it was landing in Maysan province. Its crew had to be rescued and the plane was destroyed. Maysan is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraqis are using Google Earth to plot routes to work that avoid neighborhoods of the opposite sect of Islam, while guerrillas are using it to find their targets.

France broke up a ring of Sunni fundamentalist recruiters for volunteers to fight US forces in Iraq. Two of the French citizens were detained in Syria by the secular Baath Party. So, France and Syria just helped save the lives of US troops. If the US far right ever finds out about this, it should give them a huge ice cream headache.

Austrian rifles sold to Iran are showing up in the hands of Iraqi snipers. Iran is notorious for its black market arms smuggling (in which Ronald Reagan and Ollie North once got involved). I guess now Bush will have no option but to go to war with Austria. I hate to tell Arnie, this, but Washington has been known to intern foreign nationals in California of countries against whom we are at war . . .

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

Baghdad:

*Police found 5 bullet-ridden bodies in the street.

*Guerrillas deployed a car bomb to kill 4 and wound 10 near a hospital in the Christian Camp Sara district.

*Guerrillas in Bayaa used a car bomb to kill 2 and wound 7.

*Guerrillas fired mortar rounds at northern Rashidiya (north Baghdad), killing one and wounding 16.

*Guerrillas trying to hit a police patrol killed 1 and wounded 3 in al-Sulaikh, northern Baghdad.

*Guerrillas fought Iraqi army troops in the Yarmouk district, leaving 3 troops wounded. Also in Yarmouk, guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb, killing 1 civilian.

In Arab-Jubur, the US military used air strikes to kill 15 Iraqis it said were insurgents.

In Ramadi, a suicide car bomber killed 5 and wounded 20 when he detonated his payload at the entrance to a police station. They killed the head of the station.

In the northern city of Mosul, guerrillas used a car bomb to kill 3 and wound 20.

Militiamen killed a policeman in the southern Shiite city of Samawa, causing local authorities to impose a curfew.

McClatchy gives some more details, including that one target of the mortar strikes in Baghdad was a Shiite mosque.

KarbalaNews .net reports in Arabic that Ayatollah Muhammad Ya`qubi, the spiritual leader of the Fadila or Virtue Party, called in Najaf for Iraqis to use the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the blowing up of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra to come together to demonstrate their unity as Iraqis. He spoke against sectarian violence.

Congressman John Murtha will partner with MoveOn.org to in broadcasting a message opposing Bush's escalation of the US troop presence in Iraq.

Cable television 24 hours "news" channels in the US thought the death of Anna Nicole Smith more important than Iraq or other world news last week, devoting 15 percent of their air time to the story.
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Cole Appearance on Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Suspicions about Pentagon's Iran Weapons Story

The video of my Monday night appearance on Countdown with Keith Olbermann is now available on the Web. Scroll down to the link with my picture and click on "launch." Olbermann, at 8 pm on weekdays on MSNBC, does perhaps the best consistent job of asking hard questions about the MSM news of the day of anyone in the serious news business (i.e. other than Jon Stewart).

This worked better for me in I.E. than other browsers, and even then it took a couple of tries.
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On the Mystery of Muqtada al-Sadr's Disappearance

US government sources are saying that nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fled to neighboring Iran three weeks ago. Sadrist aides denied the report.

This on a day when two major bombings left 66 persons wounded or dead in the capital, and 20 bodies were found in the streets of Baghdad. In the southern city of Amara, two Mahdi Army fighters were killed in clashes with the police.

This USG report about Muqtada broke after midnight Baghdad time, so there has not been time for the Arabic or Persian press to react. I'll know more Thursday morning.

Sadr aides denied to the LA Times that Muqtada is in Iran, saying he is in hiding in Iraq.

Some are taking exception to the word "fled."

The press record I assembled, below, does not support Muqtada's disappearance to Iran. It is possible but not likely that Muqtada would go to Iran. He and his family have endlessly made fun of the al-Hakim clerical leaders for fleeing to Iran to escape persecution by Saddam Hussein, when the al-Sadrs insisted on staying in Iraq. Muqtada's father was killed in 1999 by Saddam's agents because he stayed and gave defiant sermons. So it would be a lot of crow to eat for Muqtada to go to Iran to escape the Americans. Plus, there is nothing in the Iranian press about him showing up in Qom, and an Iranian diplomat denied the story. Without more and better evidence, this account strikes me as suspect, and I would guess that if Muqtada disappeared, it is inside Iraq.

It might be useful to construct a timeline for Muqtada's recent activities.

It would begin on January 16. On that date, former Shiite prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim Jaafari, met in Najaf with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. One thing the two discussed was the prospect that the followers of Muqtada in the Iraqi parliament would cease their boycott of the legislature, which had begun last fall when the current prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, met with George W. Bush:

' Al-Jaafari told reporters after meeting the country's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will end their six-week-old political boycott "very soon." Speaking about the 30 Iraqi legislators and six Cabinet ministers who follow al-Sadr, whose return is being discussed with the Shiite bloc in parliament, al-Jaafari said "the suspension of activities by the Sadrist bloc will end very soon, God willing." The boycott has kept them from parliament and Cabinet offices since they walked out over the late November meeting between Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan. '

Two days after this article appeared, on Jan. 19, it was reported that a key aide to Muqtada in East Baghdad, Abdel Hadi Daraji, was arrested by US forces on suspicion of being involved with death squad activity and helping the shadowy Mahdi Army terrorist, Abu Deraa.

On the day of that arrest, an interview with Muqtada appeared in La Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. BBC World Monitoring translated it. Here are the relevant passages:

' Wanted Iraqi Shi'i militant leader Muqtada al-Sadr has said immediate US withdrawal is the only solution to Iraq's security problems. He said his militants were facing action against them by "at least four armies", including "a 'shadow' army that no one ever talks about, trained by US military intelligence in the Jordanian desert in the utmost secrecy". He said the Sunnis must "mark their distance from the Saddam-ites, from the radical groups, and from Bin-Ladin's men, as well as reiterating their 'no' to the United States" for action against them to cease. Following is text of an interview with Al-Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr by Renato Caprile in Baghdad on 18 January, headlined: "'A secret army against us, but the Shi'is will prove capable of resisting';" published by Italian newspaper La Repubblica on 19 January; first paragraph is La Repubblica introduction

Baghdad: He feels hounded, and he is in hiding. He never sleeps in the same bed two nights running any more. Some of his die-hard loyalist followers have already turned their backs on him. He has even transferred his family to a secret place. Muqtada al-Sadr feels that the end is near. There are too many foes, too many enemies infiltrated among his people. Yet he does not have it in for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom he considers to be little better than a puppet, so much as for Iyad al-Alawi, the former prime minister on whom the United States has apparently never ceased placing its money. He, al-Alawi, is apparently the true puppet master behind the operation aiming to wipe Al-Sadr and his Al-Mahdi Army off the face of Iraq.

[Caprile] How come Al-Maliki, whose government contained fully six ministers from your faction until a short while ago, has suddenly woken up to the fact that the real problem that needs to be resolved is the religious militia groups, yours in particular?

[Al-Sadr] Between myself and Abu-Asara (the "father of Asara," the name of Al-Maliki's daughter - La Repubblica editor's note), there has never been much feeling. I have always suspected that he was being manoeuvred, and I have never trusted him. We have met only on a couple of occasions. At our last meeting he first told me: "You are the country's backbone," and then he confessed that he was "obliged" to combat us. Obliged, you hear me?

[Caprile] The fact remains that an iron-clad fist is about to come down on your people.

[Al-Sadr] Actually, it has already begun to do so. They arrested over 400 of my people yesterday night. It is not us they wish to destroy, it is Islam. We are simply an obstacle in the way. We will not put up any resistance for the time being.

[Caprile] Are you saying that you plan to hand over your weapons?

[Al-Sadr] During muharram (the sacred month commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn, which took place over six centuries ago - La Repubblica editor's note), the Koran forbids killing. . .

[Caprile] Some people maintain that the Army and the police force are heavily infiltrated by your men, and that the US Marines on their own will never succeed in disarming you.

[Al-Sadr] The exact opposite is true: It is our militia group that is crawling with spies. Of course, it does not take much to infiltrate a grassroots army. And it is precisely these people who, in staining their hands with unworthy actions, have brought discredit on the Al-Mahdi Army. There are at least four armies ready to swing into action against us: a "shadow" army that no one ever talks about, trained by US military intelligence in the Jordanian desert in the utmost secrecy. Then there is the private army of Al-Allawi, the infidel who will soon succeed Al-Maliki, and that army is training in the former military airport at Muthanna. Then there are the Kurdish peshmerga. And finally, there are the regular US troops.

[Caprile] If what you say is true, then you have no hope of withstanding the onslaught.

[Al-Sadr] There are very many of us, too. We represent a majority in the country that does not want Iraq to become a nonconfessional state and a lackey of the Western powers, which is what Al-Allawi is dreaming of.

[Caprile] You have officially been in the firing line for a week. The government maintains that the religious militia groups are militarily weaker without their leaders.

[Al-Sadr] I am aware of that. That is why I have transferred my family to a safe place. I have even made a will, and I move around constantly, acting in such a way that only very few people know exactly where I am. But even if I were to die, the Al-Mahdi Army would continue to exist. Men can be killed, but faith and ideas cannot. . .

. . . In my view, there is only one option for achieving a solution: immediate US withdrawal.

Source: La Repubblica, Rome, in Italian 19 Jan 07 '

Muqtada admitted that he had moved his family to a safe place, and also said that he was in hiding and was varying his place of residence.

On January 22, al-Hayat carried a denial from Sheikh Muayyid al-Khazraji that Muqtada had left Najaf for Iran. As translated by BBC World Monitoring, it reads:

"Shaykh Mu'ayyid al-Khazraji, one of Muqtada al-Sadr's aides, denied that the Shi'i leader had left Al-Najaf city and told Al-Hayat: "Media reports that Al-Sayyid Muqtada and his family had left Iraq and went to Iran after Al-Darraji's arrest are baseless." He added that "Al-Sayyid Muqtada is still in his house in Al-Hananah, old city of Al-Najaf, and has received several pilgrims after their return to the city", calling reports that he had left Al-Najaf for Tehran "a tendentious rumour" aimed at harming his image. The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad also denied any knowledge that Al-Sadr is visiting the country and a diplomatic source in it told Al-Hayat: "Al-Sayyid has not asked for a visa to enter Iran. We have no knowledge so far that he is in Iran." '

The rumors were not laid to rest. On Feb. 7, as translated by BBC World Monitoring, the London pan-Arab daily reported,

'There is much talk in Al-Najaf streets, and specifically among Al-Sadr's supporters, about Muqtada al-Sadr's disappearance and travel to Iran. But Hasan al-Hilu (one of the staff in Al-Sadr's office) told "Al-Hayat" that "Muqtada al-Sadr disappeared after having a meeting with former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja'fari during his recent visit to Al-Najaf." '

The "but" in al-Hilu's statement suggests that he did not agree with the story that Muqtada went to Iran, though he admitted the disappearance. The detail about the disappearance coming after Jaafari's visit to Najaf on Jan. 16 gives us an idea of the time frame. It may be that this al-Hayat story about gossip in Najaf is the basis for the USG announcement about Muqtada having fled to Iran. If so, it isn't a very solid story. And its details are contradicted by the Jan. 22 al-Hayat article.

On January 26, Borzou Daragani reported that Muqtada's spokesmen were announcing his cooperation with the new security plan. Daragahi quotes US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad:

' "There's a change of behavior that we can see," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters this week. "If it's a change of heart, that's a good thing. If it's a change of tactic, we need to be cautious."

Allies of Sadr suggest he has begun heeding the appeals of other Shiite leaders, including Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, to temper his actions in order to preserve unity in the Shiite-dominated government.

"We were not going to be dragged into a trap to clash with the government or any other of our people," said Nassar Rubaie, a member of parliament who is close to Sadr. "We are aware such a thing could happen." '

At this point, neither the well-connected Daragahi, nor US ambassador Khalilzad, gives evidence in his diction that he thinks Muqtada has fled the country. On the contrary, they speak of him as a local power to reckon with.

On January 29, Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune reported that Muqtada al-Sadr "has ordered his militia not to confront U.S. forces and has endorsed negotiations aimed at easing the deployment of American troops in his strongholds, according to Sadrist and other Shiite officials." It doesn't sound as though he was doing so from abroad.

The Jan. 17 disappearance is brought into question by a February 2 article in al-Hayat. It says that Muqtada al-Sadr was giving the responsibility for deciding if the Mahdi Army should be dissolved to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Ayatollah Kadhim al-Ha'iri (or Haeri, resident in Qom, Iran)

The article ends with this passage: 'For his part, Suhail al-`Iqabi, a Sadr aide and official in charge of publicity in Baghdad, told al-Hayat, "Al-Sadr visited Sistani and discussed the issue of dissolving the Mahdi Army, and the latter declined."

So al-`Iqabi is alleging that Muqtada surfaced in Najaf and held consultations with Sistani there. Why is this offer to the grand ayatollahs to dissolve the Mahdi Army being publicized on February 2 unless the offer was made on Feb. 1 or in very later January? The article does not say that it is reporting weeks-old news. Hence, Muqtada was likely in Najaf for a meeting with Sistani in late January.

The Feb. 7 al-Hayat story continues,

'An aide to Al-Sadr in Al-Najaf told "Al-Hayat" that the "American forces have closed all Al-Sadr City's exits with armoured vehicles and tanks with the support of the Iraqi army" and pointed out that Muqtada al-Sadr instructed all leaders of "Al-Mahdi Army" and the "Trend" "to hide and leave Baghdad because we are certain that this plan is targeting the Trend and its supporters." He added that the recent bombings, which claim the lives of hundreds of Shi'is every day, "will continue because there is no response in the absence of leaders like Abu-Dar' and Abu-Sijad who had left Iraq to a neighbouring country." He stressed that the "takfiris have exploited this gap with the Americans' help and started to send the booby-trapped vehicles to the Shi'i markets." '

This report suggests that the most notorious death squad leaders among the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army have fled to Iran. But it doesn't give evidence that Muqtada has.

The press record shows that Muqtada is in hiding inside Iraq, not in Iran. It also suggests that he has ordered his Mahdi Army to keep a low profile during the present security operation.

But we'll see. Stay tuned.
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