Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Friday, August 31, 2007

Rubin on Hostage Release, Drug Policy in Afghanistan

Here's some light reading for your Labor Day weekend. Afghanistan is pretty clearly becoming a problem for the US diplomatically and militarily of a major sort that would be front page news if it weren't for the even more deadly horror show in Iraq.

Barnett Rubin weighs in on the release of the Korean hostages and the Taliban's ability to negotiate directly with a government and get pledge of troop withdrawals. (Scroll down). The top post is another on drug policy. Afghanistan has become the world's largest produce of the poppies from which heroin is made, and the threat of narco-terrorism looms large. Rubin makes suggestions about what should be done (hint: not just burn the fields).
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Arguments over Night of the Living Dead in Iraq

A Government Accounting Office report has found that the Iraqi government has not met 13 of 18 benchmarks set by the US Congress. The report was leaked before it could be doctored by the Bush administration, which promptly denounced it and pledged to . . . doctor it.

Another thing that could be said is that of the 18 congressional benchmarks some are frankly trivial. The trivial ones are the only ones met.

I personally find the controversy about Iraq in Washington to be bizarre. Are they really arguing about whether the situation is improving? I mean, you have the Night of the Living Dead over there. People lack potable water, cholera has broken out even in the good areas, a third of people are hungry, a doubling of the internally displaced to at least 1.1 million, and a million pilgrims dispersed just this week by militia infighting in a supposedly safe all-Shiite area. The government has all but collapsed, with even the formerly cooperative sections of the Sunni Arab political class withdrawing in a snit (much less more Sunni Arabs being brought in from the cold). The parliament hasn't actually passed any legislation to speak of and often cannot get a quorum. Corruption is endemic. The weapons we give the Iraqi army are often sold off to the insurgency. Some of our development aid goes to them, too.

The average number of Iraqis killed in 2007 per day exceeds those killed in 2006. Independent counts by news organizations do not agree with Pentagon estimates about drops in civilian deaths over-all. Nation-wide attacks in June reached a daily all-time high of 177.5. True, violence in Baghdad has been wrestled back down to the levels of summer, 2006 (hint: it wasn't paradise), but violence levels are up in the rest of the country. If you compare each month in 2006 with each month in 2007 with regard to US military deaths, the 2007 picture is dreadful.

I saw on CNN this smarmy Bush administration official come and and say that US troop deaths had fallen because of the surge, which is why we should support it. Just read the following chart bottom to top and compare 2006 month by month to 2007. US troop deaths haven't fallen. They are way up. Besides, they would be zero if the US were not occupying Iraq militarily, so if we should support a policy that leads to fewer troop deaths, that is the better policy.

Here are the US troop death via Icasualties.org.

8-2007 77     8-2006 65
7-2007 79     7-2006 43
6-2007 101    6-2006 61
5-2007 126    5-2006 69
4-2007 104    4-2006 76
3-2007 81     3-2006 31
2-2007 81     2-2006 55
1-2007 83     1-2006 62

I mean, how brain dead do the Bushies think we are, peddling this horse manure that US troop deaths have fallen? (There are always seasonal variations because in the summer it is 120 F. in the shade and guerrillas are too heat-exhausted to fight; but the summer 2007 numbers are much greater than those for summer 2006; that isn't progress.) And why does our corporate media keep repeating this Goebbels-like propaganda? Do we really live in an Orwellian state?

I'm at a conference. I would make a chart to illustrate the above if I had the time. Somebody else please do it. Maybe we bloggers can unite to keep the debate from being conducted on false premises for once.

(Thanks just a million to Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly and all the others who responded to my call for a graph here. It is striking when you see it that way. Look in comments for more such links.)

Repeat: US troop deaths in Iraq have not fallen and that is not a reason to support the troop escalation. And, violence in Iraq has not fallen because of the surge. Violence is way up this year.

-----------------
At the Napoleon's Egypt blog: "The Washington of France."
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Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Nation: Corruption the Norm in Iraqi Gov't
USG Reports Al-Maliki has Impeded investigations

The Nation has gotten hold of a secret USG report that says that profound corruption is the norm in the Iraqi government. The intrepid David Corn writes:


' according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.

The draft--over 70 pages long--was obtained by The Nation, and it reviews the work (or attempted work) of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), an independent Iraqi institution, and other anticorruption agencies within the Iraqi government. Labeled "SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED/Not for distribution to personnel outside of the US Embassy in Baghdad," the study details a situation in which there is little, if any, prosecution of government theft and sleaze. Moreover, it concludes that corruption is "the norm in many ministries."

The report depicts the Iraqi government as riddled with corruption and criminals-and beyond the reach of anticorruption investigators. It also maintains that the extensive corruption within the Iraqi government has strategic consequences by decreasing public support for the U.S.-backed government and by providing a source of funding for Iraqi insurgents and militias.'


Read the whole thing.

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Cheney & Iran: Here We Go Again?

Barnett Rubin relays a message from a well-connected friend in Washington on the Cheney Administration's plans to roll out a military confrontation with Iran in September. He writes at the Global Affairs blog:

" My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:


They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran."

-----

Cole: there has been some recent similar reporting. For instance, just on Tuesday Raw Story covered a paper by two British academics arguing that the US has the capability and perhaps the intention of launching an aerial assault on Iran's enrichment facilities.

Earlier, McClatchy reported on Aug. 9 that Cheney has been urging bombing of Iranian trails to Iraq. This position struck me as eerily reminiscent of Nixon-Kissinger's treatment of Cambodia (which is what really caused the Khmer Rouge horrors, not, as Bush said the other day, US withdrawal from Vietnam; we dropped enormous amounts of ordnance on that country and severely disrupted it).

Also at Raw Story on Aug. 10.

And Gareth Porter on Aug. 16 responding to the McClatchy article.

So, maybe something is up.

If you want to see what I think of a war with Iran, see this golden oldie.

Read Rubin's whole piece.

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Sistani Aides Held by JAM
Muqtada freezes Paramilitary for 6 months

Two senior aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani--Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i and Ahmad al-Safi-- were kidnapped on Tuesday by the Mahdi Army and are still being held as captives, according to the Kuwaiti News Organization. This report seems to confirm that the Mahdi Army attempted to take over the shrine of Imam Husayn in Karbala under the cover of the festival of the birth of the 12th Imam, which had brought a million pilgrims into the city. The shrine is worth millions if not hundreds of millions in pilgrimage revenue annually, and is also a source of prestige among Shiites. The two kidnapped clerics had preached there.

PM Nuri al-Maliki confirmed that militiamen had attempted to take over the shrine, but he muddied the waters by calling the attackers "remnants of the Baath" and suggesting that they wanted to blow it up. Far more likely, they wanted to displace the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council from it and to start appropriating the monies from the pilgrimage trade for themselves.

Al-Maliki fired 1500 policemen in Karbala on Wednesday and dismissed the police chief, Major General Saleh Khazal Al-Maliki, on grounds of dereliction of duty. (It may be that the police were in some part recruited from or highly sympathetic to the Mahdi Army, and so they declined to intervene in its push to take the shrine by force).

In the aftermath of the fighting Tuesday in the holy city of Karbala between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, and then attacks on SIIC offices in Baghdad by Mahdi Army fighters, the militia's leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, called Wednesday for it to lay down its arms for 6 months.

My guess is that Muqtada realizes that his men went too far, in trying to take the shrine of Imam Husayn by main force, and in disrupting a major Shiite festival. These actions would be highly unpopular in the Shiite street, and could cost Muqtada some of his otherwise impressive popularity in the South. Aljazeera showed him speaking in Najaf, by the way, putting the lie to Bush administration allegations that he had gone into hiding in Iran (that was just a smear, since he prides himself on his Iraq nationalism).

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Muqtada said: "We considered it beneficial to freeze the Mahdi Army without exception, in order to rebuild its structure in such a way as to preserve its doctrinal heading-- for a period of 6 months from the issuing of this decision." He added, "We also announce three days of mourning, and the closing of the offices of the Martyr Sadr thoughout Iraq, the wearing of black, the holding of mourning sessions." He urged the public to investigate what had occured in Karbala.

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Akhavi on Neocolonialism

Khody Akhavi at IPS covers my talk last Friday at the New America Foundation, on my book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East. He writes:


'In Cole's view, the Bush administration's rhetoric of "liberating Iraq" from the clutches of a tyrannical leader with a hankering for weapons of mass destruction can't mask its long-term neo-colonial ambitions. Like Napoleon, Bush has a tendency to believe his own propaganda. Both invasions deployed rhetoric of liberation. Like the French general, Bush had a desire to create a "Greater Middle East", only to face an insurgency that viewed the foreign presence as an occupation, not liberation.'


Read the whole thing.

Video of my talk at NAF is available here.

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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Shiite Militia Clashes at Karbala Killl 52, Wound 206
Mahdi Army Rampage against SIIC offices in Baghdad

Clashes between rival militias in the Shiite holy city of Karbala left some 52 dead and 206 wounded on Tuesday, according to late reports from Iraqi security officials. About a million Shiite pilgrims had converged on the city to commemorate the birthday of the Twelfth Imam, the 12th in the line of succession from the Prophet Muhammad, who Shiites expect to appear supernaturally at the end of days.

The fighting let the government to declare a curfew and to insist that the pilgrims disperse. The government sent some buses from Baghdad. Reuters says its stringers in Karbala identified the two sides as the Mahdi Army of the Sadr Movement and the Badr Corps of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). Three hotels in downtown Karbala were burned in the disturbances.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic two stories about what happened. The first is a somewhat implausible story that Iraqi police just began firing at the pilgrims indiscriminately when they chanted slogans criticizing the government of Nuri al-Maliki for its repressive policies in the south.

So what's going on here? The Supreme Council controls the shrine and mosque of Imam Husayn in Karbala, among the holiest shrines in the Shiite world. Pilgrims give donations when they visit the shrine, worth millions every year, and being able to preach at its mosque lends prestige to the incumbent. Al-Zaman says that the Sadrists, which in 2003 for a while controlled the shrine, were using the cover of the enormous crowds to steal a march on the Badr Corps, seeking to occupy the shrine. Badr appears to have fought them off. A lot of Karbala police were recruited from Badr, so it is always hard to tell militia on militia violence from police on militia violence.

That the Shiite government of Nuri al-Maliki cannot maintain order in the supremely Shiite city of Karbala during a major holy rite is very worrisome. In a way, Karbala's violence during the past two days reminds me of the Shiite on Shiite violence in Basra. The south seems less and less stable, as the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps square off against one another, each seeking to control as many provinces as possible.

Leaders of the Mahdi Army and the Supreme Council in Karbala were said to be meeting urgently with the Shiite Grand Ayatollahs in an effort to find a way to get the two groups to stop fighting.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Mahdi Army elements attacked offices of the Supreme Council in several places in Iraq in reprisal for SIIC fighting with the Mahdi Army in Karbala. McClatchy reports of these clashes:


'Gunmen broke in the office of Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) in Kadhemiyah neighborhood north Baghdad around 5,00 pm and kidnapped 4 guys and burnt the office. . .

5 people killed and 20 injured in clashes between gunmen and guards of an office of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) in Habibiyah neighborhood east Baghdad. The clashes broke out around 6,00 pm and still ongoing.

Gunmen attacked the office of SIIC in Amil neighborhood southwest Baghdad around 7,30. The clashes stills ongoing and no casualties reported.

Gunmen attacked the office of the SIIC in Husseiniyah town north Baghdad around 7,30 Pm. No casualties reported.'


McClatchy rounds up other political violence in Iraq for Tuesday. Sunni Arab guerrillas were attacking Shiite pilgrims. There are all these underground wars in Iraq.

' Baghdad: 4 pilgrims were wounded when gunmen attacked them in AlBo’etha area south Baghdad around 7,30 am. . .

6 pilgrims were injured when gunmen attacked them in Mahmoudiyah town south Baghdad around 7,45 am. . .

A civilian was killed and 3 others wounded in a parked car bomb explosion in Sheikh Omar neighborhood downtown Baghdad around 10,30 am. . .

Gunmen broke in the mosque of Haj Isma’il in Qahira neighborhood north Baghdad around 5,00 pm killing 3 men and kidnapping another 3 men . . .

Police found 13 unidentified bodies in Baghdad today. . .

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Bush, Ahmadinejad Trade Barbs
Iranian Delegates Arrested, Released by US

First Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was read to step into the vacuum when the US was forced out of Iraq. He oddly said that Iran's friends, including Saudi Arabia, would help in this task. The hyper-Sunni Saudi government is actually not very friendly with Shiite Iran at all.

Then Bush rattled sabers against Iran putting the regime in Tehran on the same level as al-Qaeda as a threat to US interests. That seems a bit shrill.

Then US troops arrested 7 Iranians, mostly part of a delegation of the electricity ministry, but swiftly later released them.

The problem with the two leaders talking big against one another is that the provocations might suddenly get out of hand and suddenly there would be a war.

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Cole in Salon: The War on al-Maliki

My Salon column for Wednesday is now available: "The war against Iraq's prime minister:"

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are calling for Nouri al-Maliki's ouster as a way of attacking Bush's Iraq policy. But do they understand the consequences?"

Excerpt:


' In his remarks to the American Legion in Reno, Nev., Bush said that the Iraqi government was America's shield in the region against both of these forces of "Islamic extremism," and said of Maliki, "The prime minister of Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki, has courageously committed to pursue the forces of evil and destruction."

Bush was defending Maliki, even at the cost of implausibly depicting the leader of the fundamentalist Shiite Islamic Call (al-Da'wa) Party as an opponent of Iran and Hezbollah, because the prime minister has been under virtual siege from Washington politicians for the past week and a half. He's become the favorite whipping boy of opponents of continued U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Maliki has been unafraid to mount his own defense against his American critics. On Sunday, he slammed Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton for calling for the Iraqi parliament to oust him. He accused the senators of acting as if Iraq were "the feudal estate of this person or that," a metaphor that went over the head of most American observers. Modern Iraqi political parties such as the Islamic Call were formed in part as a reaction against the landlord class that dominated Iraq under the British-installed monarchy. Maliki was saying the senators were bringing back colonialism and disregarding the Iraqi political process. "They are Democrats," he quipped of Clinton and Levin, "so they should respect democracy and its results." '


Read the whole thing.

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Rubin: Proposal on Narcotics in Afghanistan

Barnett Rubin has just posted another entry in his brilliant series on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan.

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Gonzales Gone for Wrong Reasons

The great shame of it all is that Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General despite it being widely known that he had played a central role in attempting to authorize the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. He had tossed aside the US Constitution's own prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment" (such a wimpy bleeding-heart liberal document). It is an index of the corruption of the Republican Party, which then controlled Congress, that they made this man attorney general in the first place.

The great shame of it all is that Gonzales was hounded out of office not because he authorized torture and assaulted the basic principles of the US constitution, but because he fired US attorneys for partisan pro-Republican reasons. Torture people all you like, is the message he sent, but if you're if you are fair to the opposing party, you are fired.

He tossed aside the Geneva Conventions, which were crafted to prevent any reemergence of Nazism in the post-war period. While Gonzales is not a Nazi, if you get rid of an anti-Nazi legal instrument you are in effect aiding and abetting potential fascism.

MSNBC wrote at the height of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which Gonzales had implicitly encouraged:


By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by NEWSWEEK [pdf], it was clear that Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, which was written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told the president that Powell had "requested that you reconsider that decision." Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. "As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales wrote to Bush. "The nature of the new war places a —high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians." Gonzales concluded in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."


The Geneva conventions, to which the United States is a signatory (i.e. it is a treaty with the force of American law) cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand.

The great shame of it all is that Gonzales is being ousted for what amounts to selectively abetting voter fraud.

His role as torturer-in-chief would not have forced him from office.

It is a great shame.

----

A canny reader writes: "How appropriate that Gonzales's resignation is effective September 17: September 17 is Constitution Day."

On a related subject at Salon.com: "Did Chertoff lie to Congress about Guantánamo?"
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The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Terrorism

At the Global Affairs group blog, Farideh Farhi tells us how Tehran is reacting to the Bush adminstration's threat to declare sections of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a 'terrorist organization.

She argues that through such threats, Bush is merely strengthening the Iranian Right.

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War in a Time of Cholera

Violence at Karbala, Baghdad, Falluja dogged the al-Maliki government on Monday, while the significance of the agreements reached by the presidential council on national reconciliation remained in doubt. Unless parliament passes them, they remain a dead letter. The Sunni Arabs continued to decline to rejoin al-Maliki's government.

Meanwhile, the public health crisis that is Iraq worsened over the weekend:

The USG Open Source Center translates a report on Kurdistan television on a cholera outbreak in Sulaymaniya. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that there are fears of the disease spreading through the northern provinces.

Iraqi Kurdistan health minister announces five cholera deaths
Kurdistan Satellite TV
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Document Type: OSC Summary

Iraqi Kurdistan health minister announces five cholera deaths

The Kurdistan Region minister of health has announced, in a news conference, the death of five patients from cholera in the region, Kurdistan Democratic Party-run Kurdistan Satellite TV reported on 26 August.

The TV broadcast excerpts from a news conference by the regional minister of health, Ziryan Uthman, who announced the death of five people from cholera in the cities of Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. "There have been a few cases of diarrhoea recently in Kirkuk. There have been also about 2,000 cases of severe diarrhoea in Sulaymaniyah, and medical examinations showed that three of the cases in Sulaymaniyah were cholera cases. This means that most of the diarrhoea cases in Sulaymaniyah were cholera cases," the minister said.

He added: "We have requested assistance from the World Health Organization, the Red Cross, and the centre's Ministry of Health in Baghdad in fighting the disease."

The minister said that the casualties were all elderly people suffering from other diseases. He added that "there are about 150 to 200 (cholera) cases in Sulaymaniyah".

(Description of Source: Salah-al-Din Kurdistan Satellite TV in Sorani Kurdish -- Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) satellite TV)

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Churchill on When to Throw in the Towel on Iraq

Glenn Greenwald once remarked that "the highest achievement to which one can aspire in the neocon universe it to be compared to Winston Churchill."

So Churchill would advocate another surge and toughing it out forever in Iraq, right? Here is what he wrote in 1922, a couple of years after Britain was awarded Iraq by the Versailles Treaty as a 'mandate' (i.e. colony). [Britain was forced out as mandatory power in Iraq in 1932, when it became an independent country, though of course it was influential until 1958.]


"Winston S. Churchill to David Lloyd George (Churchill papers: 17/27) 1 September 1922

I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible. Our forces are reduced now to very slender proportions. The Turkish menace has got worse; Feisal is playing the fool, if not the knave; his incompetent Arab officials are disturbing some of the provinces and failing to collect the revenue; we overpaid £200,000 on last year's account which it is almost certain Iraq will not be able to pay this year, thus entailing a Supplementary Estimate in regard to a matter never sanctioned by Parliament; a further deficit, in spite of large economies, is nearly certain this year on the civil expenses owing to the drop in the revenue. I have had to maintain British troops at Mosul all through the year in consequence of the Angora quarrel: this has upset the programme of reliefs and will certainly lead to further expenditure beyond the provision I cannot at this moment withdraw these troops without practically inviting the Turks to come in. The small column which is operating in the Rania district inside our border against the Turkish raiders and Kurdish sympathisers is a source of constant anxiety to me.

I do not see what political strength there is to face a disaster of any kind, and certainly I cannot believe that in any circumstances any large reinforcements would be sent from here or from India. There is scarcely a single newspaper - Tory, Liberal or Labour - which is not consistently hostile to our remaining in this country. The enormous reductions which have been effected have brought no goodwill, and any alternative Government that might be formed here - Labour, Die-hard or Wee Free - would gain popularity by ordering instant evacuation. Moreover in my own heart I do not see what we are getting out of it. Owing to the difficulties with America, no progress has been made in developing the oil. Altogether I am getting to the end of my resources.

I think we should now put definitely, not only to Feisal but to the Constituent Assembly, the position that unless they beg us to stay and to stay on our own terms in regard to efficient control, we shall actually evacuate before the close of the financial year. I would put this issue in the most brutal way, and if they are not prepared to urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner I would actually clear out. That at any rate would be a solution. Whether we should clear out of the country altogether or hold on to a portion of the Basra vilayet is a minor issue requiring a special study. It is quite possible, however, that face to face with this ultimatum the King, and still more the Constituent Assembly, will implore us to remain. If they

Page 2

do, shall we not be obliged to remain? If we remain, shall we not be answerable for defending their frontier? How are we to do this if the Turk comes in? We have no force whatever that can resist any serious inroad. The War Office, of course, have played for safety throughout and are ready to say 'I told you so' at the first misfortune.

Surveying all the above, I think I must ask you for definite guidance at this stage as to what you wish and what you are prepared to do. The victories of the Turks will increase our difficulties throughout the Mohammedan world. At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having."

From Martin Gilbert, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL IV, Companion Volume Part 3, London: Heinemann, 1977, pp. 1973-74.

From: This web site, winstonchurchill.org.

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Monday, August 27, 2007

Williams Guest Op-ed: W. and Graham Greene

John S. Williams writes:

"One of the most curious comments in Incurious Boy George's recent speech before the Veterans of Foreign War in Kansas City was his totally uninformed reference to Graham Greene's novel about American involvement in Vietnam, The Quiet American. Perhaps the best article on the matter I've read thus far is one by Frank James entitled "Why would Bush cite 'The Quiet American'?" that I quite accidentally stumbled upon.

I have long been interested in the themes of naive idealism, frequently taking the form of innocence (as in ignorance, in the religious sense of ignorance of good and evil, the dreaming innocence of childhood, immaturity), and the evil and havoc that can be the consequence of such innocence or equally important the discovery of the power of evil through the loss of innocence. Think Fitzgerald's Gatsby, or Melville's Billy Budd, or Faulkner's Sutpen for the former; or Twain's Huck Finn, or Salinger's Holden Caulfield or Faulkner's Ike McCaslin for the latter.

Graham Greene, a Brit, understood this aspect of the American character just as well as do American writers. But in the article I've linked above and in the other things I've read, all have missed the crucial sentence in Greene's great novel that stands as an indictment of Alden Pyle, the young naive, idealistic, innocent (Greene's word, not mine) CIA agent. This sentence is equally an indictment of our strutting, smirking President and apparently his current speech writers who put the words in his mouth. Greene's indictment is: "He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance."

Incurious Boy George may have not learned about irony in a literature course in college, but one would have hoped his speech writers had! "
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Al-Maliki Threatens Journalists
Al-Hashemi Plays Hard to Get

Al-Maliki tells off US pols., threatens journalists with libel lawsuits. A hint to Mr. al-Maliki: This kind of shrillness does not look prime ministerial and just hurts your cause. Muzzling criticism in the press is a contradiction of your claim to legitimacy because of a democratic victory in the polls.

Tariq al-Hashimi was in Ankara for consultations and announced that he would not lightly rejoin the Iraqi government. Al-Hashimi is a vice president of Iraq and leading figure in Iraqi Islamic Party and its current coalition, the Iraqi Accord Front. He has a list of 6 major demands. He and his party are being wooed by the 5 party coalition that is supporting al-Maliki. He got some of what he wanted on Friday, including pledges to release Sunni Arab detainees who were not going to be formally charged, and a change in the Debaathification laws. Turkish politician Abdullah Gul urged al-Hashemi to return to the al-Maliki government.

British troops withdrew from a Joint Operations Command Center in Basra on Sunday. Gradually the remaining 5,500 British troops in the south are being concentrated near the airport, having left most security duties to the Iraqi 10th Army Division and local police. When the British left, a crowd of Sadrists gathered, celebrating and claiming victory. A force of Mahdi Army militiamen attempted to invade the site, but they were fought off by security forces, according to Reuters.

The Sadrists are declining to return to the al-Maliki government, even though their differences with it are minimal.

A high official of the Islamic Call (Da`wa) Party of PM Nuri al-Maliki, Jawad Talibi, give this explanation of American politicians' calls for al-Maliki to step down. It derives, he said, from the way the American political class is divided internally.

The Iraqi Presidential Council announced Sunday that some agreements had been made among its members on Bush's benchmarks (they did not put it that way). But they mentioned the issue of Iraqi detainees in Iraqi prisons, the petroleum law, and so forth.

Reuters rounds up political violence for Sunday. McClatchy has more. Note that during the Shiite holy days commemorating the birth of the 12th Imam, death squad killings in Baghdad have fallen to 10 or 11 a day. Alas, probably won't last.

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Who is the US Fighting in Iraq?

Who exactly is the US fighting in Iraq? Graphed by self-confessed identity of captives, it is largely Sunni Arab Iraqis, often motivated primarily by the opportunity to earn some money from the resistance leaders.


Source: New York Times, 2007/08/25.

The second largest group is Salafi Takfiris, i.e. fundamentalists who do not consider Shiites to be Muslims and who believe they may be harmed with impunity. The third group is Shiite militiamen (how many of these are non-ideological paid employees is not specified). Self-identified al-Qaeda are only 1800 of the 24000 in captivity, about 7 percent. (Of course, most of these fighters are not really al-Qaeda in the sense of pledging fealty to Usama Bin Laden or being part of his organization; they are using "al-Qaeda" to mean "bogeyman": i.e., 'be afraid of me'.) Foreign fighters at 280 are about 1.1 percent. While it could be argued that it would take bold captives to declare themselves al-Qaeda, there would be no downside to telling the Americans one was a takfiri. There is no reason to think the over 11,000 unspecified Sunni Arabs is fundamentalists. Opinion polling still shows a majority of Sunnis favoring the separation of religion and state.

The odd tendency of the US military and press to refer to all guerrillas in Iraq as "al-Qaeda" is obviously not justified by their own subsequent interrogations of captured suspects. Readers should write and complain when they see al-Qaeda used indiscriminately to describe Sunni Arab fighters.

And when you hear Cheney say we have to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, you will know that most of the people the US is fighting there are no such thing.

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Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East

The video of my appearance at the New America Foundation is now online. Many thanks again to kind host Steve Clemons. The short version, covering some of the same points, can be read at Tomdispatch.com, which is carrying my essay on Bonaparte and Bush.

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Rubin on Narcotics in Afghanistan

At the Global Affairs group blog, Barnett Rubin gives us the second in a series of three posts on the effort to confront narcotics production and trafficking coming out of Afghanistan. It is an issue intimately tied up, potentially, with counter-terrorism efforts, but is often neglected by analysts. Rubin is among our foremost Afghanistan experts.
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Sunday, August 26, 2007

Surge in Deaths
85 percent in US custody Are Sunni Arabs

The Bush administration talking points on the Iraq War are that the troop escalation has reduced violence and made Iraq safer for Iraqis, that the major threat in Iraq is self-avowed al-Qaeda devotees, and that Iran and the Shiites are just as deadly a threat as the Sunni Arab guerrillas.

The facts? The Associated Press points out the following

Deaths per day from political violence in 2007: 62
Deaths per day from political violence in 2006: 33

Yeah, things are obviously much safer. The report does say that violence is down in Baghdad this year, but the 'surge' just displaced it to other provinces. AP adds:


Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. The AP accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006.

•Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.'Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. The AP accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006.

The guerrillas have dealt with the surge by a doubling of violence in Iraq as a whole, and the US has only succeeded in wrestling the problem in Baghdad back down to where it was in summer of 2006.

Al-Hayat comments in Arabic on this NYT story that the number of detainees held by the US military in Iraq has risen from 19,000 to 24,400 in the course of the surge. Of these over 24,000, 85% are Sunni Arabs (20,740 of the current total). These numbers make absurd the comments of some US officers that the Shiite militias are as big a threat as the Sunni Salafi 'insurgents,' or that Iran is the major trouble maker in Iraq.

Indeed, since most Mahdi Army fighters deeply dislike Iran, those 15% in custody from among the Iraqi Shiites probably represent Iraqi nativists.

I read 85 percent of detainees being Sunni as meaning that most attacks were in Sunni Arab neighborhoods and so those arrested were from that community. Iran is not backing Iraqi Sunni Arabs because it could not do so without essentially collaborating in attacks on Iraqi Shiites (it is a different situation than Palestine, where there are no Shiites and there therefore is no downside to supporting Hamas).

The NYT says that of the 24,400, only 1800 openly say that they are "al-Qaeda." That is about 7 percent of the whole. Another 6,000, or about a fourth, say they are takfiris, i.e. Salafis who are willing to excommunicate Shiites from Islam and to declare them non-Muslims.

The conclusion is that the vast majority (certainly 2/3s report themselves as neither al-Qaeda nor takfiri). Even if we exclude the Shiites, a majority may well not even be religious.

Meanwhile, Sunni Arab VP Tariq al-Hashimi wants these thousands of detainees formally charged with some crime or released. He says whether his resignation goes through depends on his party's decree. His coalition, the Iraq Accord Front, has withdrawn from al-Maliki's "national unity cabinet." Al-Hashemi's resignation would significantly weaken al-Maliki.

The withdrawal of 3 more cabinet ministers, of the National Iraqi List.

The trial of Baathis involved in suppressing the spring 1991 revolution is barely underway, but it is creating anger against the US since the Bush senior administration called for the uprising and then stood aside as Saddam massacred the rebels.

Reuters rounds up political violence in Iraq for Saturday,

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Cole on Air America with Sam Seder, Sunday

Catch my interview at Air America with Sam Seder on Sunday, August 26 at 6 pm, regarding my new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East.
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Saturday, August 25, 2007

Troops on Ground tune out "Happy Talk" from Bush

Tina Susman of the LAT finds that the privates and specialists among US troops in Iraq are dismissive of the 'happy talk' they hear from Bush and some of their commanders about the way the war is going. They see the realities on the ground, they lose friends to roadside bombings, they see evidence that the Iraqi Army is not trustworthy. So 'happy talk' doesn't impress them.

Meanwhile, among the high generals, there is a dispute about how fast to draw down troops from Iraq. Gen Peter Pace seems to be denying it now but it was rumored that he might suggest going down to less than 100,000 in 2008.

Big database, small arrest yield. Raises fears for civil rights and privacy considerations.

Reuters rounds up civil war violence on Iraq for Friday. Among the incidents:


BAGHDAD - At least 13 people were killed in clashes between U.S. forces and gunmen in the Shula district of northwestern Baghdad overnight, a police source at a hospital said. U.S. force said they killed eight militants in the clash.


Was looking for follow up to Thursday's big attack in Diyala, but no word.

At the group blog, Barnett Rubin posts the first of three installments on the drug problem and Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, remember how some Pentagon spokespeople keep saying that explosively formed projectiles must come from Iran even when used by Sunni Arab Iraqis? Well, what about this report that EFPs with a distinct signature are being used in Afghanistan? There is no evidence for an Iranian provenance over there. And Afghanistan is a fourth world country compared to Iraq.

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Friday, August 24, 2007

Ahmed on Sharif Decision, Pakistan

Don't miss Manan Ahmed's important comment at our Global Affairs group blog on Pakistan's Supreme Court decision that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif may return to Pakistan.

See also Sameer Lalwani's comments at the Washington Note on the same issue.

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C-Span covers Cole at New America Foundation

This talk will be broadcast on C-Span at some later date, but will be available later on Friday at the web site of the New America Foundation.

New America Foundation



Juan Cole: Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East

Friday, August 24, 2007
12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave, NW, 7th Floor
Washington, DC

Cole will discuss his new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East and the relevance and lessons of Napoleon’s expedition in Egypt to the current American occupation of Iraq. New America Foundation/American Strategy Program Director Steve Clemons will offer comments and moderate the discussion.

Juan is a professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan, the President of the Global Americana Institute, and the publisher of Informed Comment, a blog that specializes in providing translations and commentary on the modern Middle East.

Featured Speakers
Juan Cole
Author, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East
Publisher, Informed Comment

Steven Clemons,
Senior Fellow and Director
American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
Publisher, TheWashingtonNote.com

To RSVP for this event: communications@newamerica.net with name, affiliation, and contact information.

If you have questions, call or email Liz Wu at (202) 986-2700 x315 or wu //a t// newamerica.net

The New America Foundation • www.NewAmerica.net
1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20009

----

At the Napoleon's Egypt blog: "British Navy Sink's Bonaparte's Fleet, Marooning French Army in Egypt."
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Iranian Troops Come into Kurdistan

Iranian troops came into the Iraqi territory of Kurdistan, seeking revenge on the PEJAK faction of Kurds that has launched terror attacks on Iranian soil.

Senator John Warner called Thursday for Bush to take out 5,000 US troops from Iraq before Christmas Day. Although Warner protrayed the move as symbolic,, insofar as it would signal to the region that the US was serious about getting out, most analysts felt that his position was so foreign to Bush that it had little chance of acceptance.

McClatchy reports political violence on Thursday:


' Baghdad . . .

- Around 9 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded at Na’iriya area of New Baghdad neighborhood ( east Baghdad) killing 1 person and injuring 5 others.

- Soldiers from Troop C, 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, were targeted by insurgents while patrolling in Jisr Diyala, southeast of Baghdad, Aug. 21. U.S. Soldiers were unhurt, but two local children were caught in a roadside bomb explosion, killing one child and injuring another. . .

Anbar

- On Tuesday ( August 21) , a suicide bomber targeted a police check point at Dam street in Falluja (62 km west of Baghdad) injuring two people and he was killed by police.

Kirkuk

- Wednesday night, a car bomb targeted a convoy for a member of Hawija council board ( west of Kirkuk) injuring one guard who was transferred to hospital.

- Wednesday night, police arrested the media man of 1920th battalions in Kirkuk during a raid in Wahid Huzayran ( June 1st ) neighborhood in Kirkuk city. . .

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Thursday, August 23, 2007

OSC Press Roundup
Maliki visit to Syria

The USG Open Source Center rounds up Iraqi media reaction to the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to Damascus.

Iraq-Syria: Media, Officials Call Al-Maliki Visit 'Success' Despite Differences Iraq, Syria
-- OSC Report Friday, August 24, 2007
Document Type: OSC Report Word Count: 749

Iraq-Syria: Media, Officials Call Al-Maliki's Visit 'Successful' Despite Differences During his 20-22 August visit to Damascus, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pushed to enlist Syria as a partner in Iraq's fight against terrorism, casting the problem as a threat to both sides. While Iraqi government officials and media portrayed the visit as an overall success, media close to the government expressed reservations about Syria's reliability as an ally. Syria for its part reiterated its objections to the presence of the Multinational Forces in Iraq, but nonetheless called the visit a success, drawing attention to agreements to import Iraqi fuel.

During the visit, Prime Minister Al-Maliki sought to enlist Syria's aid in Iraq's fight against terrorism. Iraqi leaders and media have long complained that Syria has served as a staging area for insurgents seeking to enter Iraq.

Al-Maliki said during an interview with Syrian television, for example, that "it must be clear to the world, and it has become clear to the brothers in Syria," that terrorism represents "a dark onslaught without any values or ethics" (Syrian Space Channel TV, 22 August).

Media sources close to the Baghdad government, however, expressed doubts that Syria would prove to be a reliable ally.

A commentator in one of the dailies of Iraqi President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan described the new phase in Syria-Iraq relations as a chance for Syria to "minimize the accusations leveled against it" but noted that any security agreement needed an "appropriate and realistic mechanism" to ensure that Syria lived up to its commitments (Kurdistani Nuwe, 23 August). The government-run channel Al-Iraqiyah reported that "the Syrian side responded favorably to (Iraq's security) demands," but added: "The real results of this visit will materialize in the upcoming stage based on what is implemented on the ground" (22 August).

In addition, Iraqi media critical of the government reported that Damascus rejected Baghdad's demand that it extradite hundreds of persons wanted in Iraq.

While the predominantly Saudi-owned Al-Arabiyah TV reported that Syria handed over 13 persons sought by Iraq (21 August), Dar al-Salam, the paper of Iraq's leading Sunni party, reported that Damascus rejected Baghdad's demand to hand over more than 300 other "politicians, military men, and Iraqi personalities opposing the Al-Maliki government" (23 August). Reporting that Al-Maliki had returned "empty-handed" from Damascus, the independent daily Al-Zaman cited an unidentified Syrian source as remarking: "Al-Maliki has forgotten that he himself, and some of the senior officials accompanying him . . . were political refugees in Syria" during the Saddam era (22 August).

A further point of contention was the presence of the Multinational Forces (MNF), which Al-Maliki insisted were in Iraq with the government's approval while Syria pushed for a timetable for their withdrawal.

Al-Maliki said during his interview with Syrian television that the extension of the presence of the MNF had been "approved by all of the political blocs in the government and the Council of Representatives" (Syrian Space Channel TV, 22 August).

While the privately-owned Syrian daily Al-Watan played down the "contentious" MNF issue, saying that both sides were eager to highlight "points of agreement" (23 August), official Syrian sources continued to put heavy emphasis on a timetable for the MNF withdrawal as a precondition for Iraqi security, stability, and reconciliation (SANA, 20 August; Al-Thawrah, Tishrin, Al-Watan, 21 August). The joint statement issued at the end of the talks was closer to Baghdad's stance, stressing as a precondition for the MNF withdrawal a "political and security atmosphere" enabling Baghdad to assume responsibility for protecting its citizens (SANA, 22 August). Syria Emphasizes Economic Agreements

On the Syrian side, officials and media portrayed the meetings as a success, highlighting several economic agreements, the most prominent of which dealt with the export of Iraqi fuel to Syria.

Syrian Prime Minister Itri said of Al-Maliki's visit that it was "important in its implications and symbolism and successful in its results" (SANA, 22 August). He also highlighted the prevailing "fraternal" spirit and Syria's desire to "move forward to broader horizons" between the two countries. Syrian media widely reported agreements to link Iraq's Akkas gas field with the Syrian Dayr al-Zawr refinery and to "rehabilitate the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Banyas" (SANA, Tishrin, 22 August). This OSC product is based exclusively on the content and behavior of selected media and has not been coordinated with other US Government components.
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Napoleon, Bush & the Republic Militant

My piece on "Pitching the Imperial Republic," comparing Napoleon's fiasco in Egypt to Bush's quagmire in Iraq (since he likes historical analogies) is now available at Tomdispatch.com. Please link back to Tom's site if you reference it.

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Military Coup Planned for Iraq?

A rumor is circulating among well-connected and formerly high-level Iraqi bureaucrats in exile in places like Damascus that a military coup is being prepared for Iraq. I received the following from a reliable, knowledgeable contact. There is no certitude that this plan can or will be implemented. That it is being discussed at high levels seems highly likely.

"There is serious talk of a military commission (majlis `askari) to take over the government. The parties would be banned from holding positions, and all the ministers would be technocrats, so to speak. . . [The writer indicates that attempts have been made to recruit cabinet members from the ranks of expatriate technocrats.]

The six-member board or commission would be composed on non-political former military personnel who are presently not part of the government OR the military establishment, such as it is in Iraq at the moment. It is said that the Americans are supporting this behind the scenes.

The plan includes a two-year period during which political parties would not be permitted to be part of the government, but instead would prepare and strengthen the parties for an election which would not have lists, but real people running for real seats. The two year period would be designed to take control of security and restore infrastructure.

. . .[I]t is another [desperate plan], but one which many many Iraqis will support, since they are sick of their country being pulled apart by the "imports" - Maliki, Allawi, Jaafari et al. The military group is composed of internals, people who have the goal of securing the country even at the risk of no democracy, so they say. "

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Hillary develops Foot in Mouth Disease on Dumping al-Maliki

PM Nuri al-Maliki responded to Senator Carl Levin's (D-Michigan) call for him to be unseated, and Bush's failure to support him on Tuesday by unwisely getting hot under the collar and saying he can find other friends in the world to support his endeavor. I predicted that Levin's unwise and inappropriate comment (in a conference call with Tel Aviv!-- Americans have no clue about Middle Eastern politics) would elicit an angry response. Levin managed to make it look as though he were ordered by the Israeli government to see al-Maliki gotten rid of because he was making economic deals with Syria (thus strengthening the latter). I underline that such an interpretation is unfounded, but that is how many in the region see it. Levin is usually sure-footed and careful on Middle East issues, including especially Iraq, so I can't understand why he wants to appoint himself secretary of state all of a sudden.

The serial episodes of unwisdom are lengthening and feeding on one another. Now Hillary Clinton has urgedthat al-Maliki be unseated.

But as Farah Stockman of the Boston Globe and Damien Cave of the NYT point out, it may not be easy for parliament to dump al-Maliki. And, Senator Clinton should be more careful about this sort of thing. Here's a scenario: al-Maliki survives and is PM in January 2009, and Hillary is inaugurated as US president. She now has to deal with him in arranging for an orderly withdrawal of US troops. She needs him, depends on his sway with Shiite militias to have them avoid harassing our troops on their way through the Shiite south to Kuwait. And he should put himself out to help her at that point. . . why?

Of course, al-Maliki's survival is a little unlikely (see above), but it is not out of the bounds of the possible and wisdom would dictate taking that possibility into account.

Presidential candidates should not box themselves in on foreign policy issues by making categorical statements of this sort. Hillary Clinton has to stop talking like a junior senator and start thinking like a president if she wants to succeed abroad.

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Fox does unto Iran as it Did unto Iraq

Rupert Murdoch wants to kill your 18 year-olds in a fruitless war with Iran. Robert Greenwald's video shows how Faux Cable News is running the same scam on Iran that it ran on Iraq, with side by side footage so you can see the Goebbels techniques at work. Liberals don't like anything that smacks of censorship, but I really think our body public won't be safe from this nefarious media conspiracy until we mount an effective campaign of advertiser boycott against the corporations who underwrite this fascist horse manure.




Originally posted at Fox Attacks.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Bush, Sistani back off Support for al-Maliki;
Iraq, Syria, seek Energy Cooperation

When pressed on the future of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush declined to back him as forcefully as in the past. He said it was up to the Iraqis to decide. I don't think things look good for al-Maliki.

Al-Quds al-`Arabi [pdf] reports in Arabic that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is "disgusted" with the al-Maliki government. He complains that it has 'filled his heart with pus' by donning his robes and then neglecting to establish security or provide services to the people.

If Sistani has soured so badly on al-Maliki, he really could be in trouble. The old man still has enormous moral authority.

And, if both Bush and Sistani have given up on him, it is hard to see how he can survive.

Residents of the city of Khalis staged a big demonstration against the lack of security and constant mortar barrages. When a US convoy came through, they maintain, the soldiers tried to disperse their demonstration and wounded 17 or so persons with gunfire. The US military denies it. After the convoy left, the demonstration continued. This incident is a little window into what the Iraqi street is thinking, which is that the al-Maliki government and the US military owe them security, and they aren't receiving it from them.

Alexandra Zavis of the LA Times has a truly excellent report on Dora district in Baghdad, where Sunni Arab guerrillas are under siege by the US military and fear Shiite encroachments from the east. Getting a story like this in present circumstances was no easy thing and we have seen relatively little recent reporting from the ground. The article shows clearly the conceptual confusion in the US military, of seeing Dora-based militants as "al-Qaeda" and as foreign to the neighborhood. Many of the guerrillas are mostly just local good ol' boys, folks, and that is the reason they can hide so effectively from the US in their daytime civvies.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that, as expected, the deal offered to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was more security in return for greater economic cooperation. (See also the OSC press summary below).

UPI reports that the cooperation focused on reviving the oil pipeline from Iraq through Syria, and on linking Iraq to the Syrian (and Arab) gas pipeline network. It should be noted that if the Syrian oil pipeline could be reopened, the tolls would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars a year for Damascus. In a good year, the Iraqi petroleum pipeline was worth a billion dollars a year to Turkey.

Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani has overseen the building of a new pipeline to Turkey through northern Iraq, which will be guarded by a new protection force, and Iraq hopes also to begin pumping from the Kirkuk fields again soon. I suppose the success or failure of this effort would tell us whether the revival of the Syrian pipeline is feasible.

A Sunni family of 7 was brutally cut down on Tuesday in Mahaweel by (presumably) a Shiite death squad. A lot of the ethnic feuding in Iraq has been caused by Saddam Hussein's Arabization programs, of planting Sunni Arab populations in Shiite or Kurdish areas. Northern Babil province is like that. The displaced Shiites have come back for their old land and homes, and want to chase the Sunni Arabs out of them. Now, establishing a Sunni Arab ring around south and west Baghdad is important to the Sunni Arab guerrillas, while Shiite militias want to extend their sway north from Hilla. Competition over land and resources was also important to the Sunni Arab guerrilla bombings of those Yazidi villages, where McClatchy says the stench of death still hangs in the air.

DPA/ VOA report:


In political developments, the so-called Sadrist bloc, loyal to Shiite radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, proposed Tuesday a new political initiative that could possibly end country's impasse, a Sadrist legislator told VOI.

The Sadr bloc have walked out of Premier Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet after the latter failed to force the US military to set a timeline for withdrawal.

"The initiative rests on collective participation and is composed of a consultative body to consider critical decisions in the country," Falah Shanshal said.

"The body would comprise 15 persons from all political groups based on parliamentary representation," he added.

He claimed that their initiative so far have been met with approval by most representatives of the political blocs.

"All minorities will be represented in this suggested consultative body," Shanshal said, adding that the decisions of the body, which will mainly monitor the work of state institutions, would be debated in parliament or by the cabinet."


At the Napoleon's Egypt blog: "Bonaparte orders Dissidents Beheaded." And we thought beheading was only something al-Qaeda does.

At the Global Affairs Blog, the USG Open Source Center summarizes Taiwanese reports on economic development in Kyrgyzstan & Uzbekistan and on geopolitical rivalry over Central Asia between Russia, China and the US.

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al-Hayat: al-Duri Seeks Political Role, Turns on Salafis

Al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that the Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri wing of the Baath Party (one of four major Baath factions) has decided to break with the Salafi Jihadis ('al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia') and to open negotiations with the Iraqi government and with the American military. So said Baath figure Wisam al-Jash`ami in a telephone interview.

If true, this development is surprising, since al-Duri had been the most hard line of the 4 Baath cell leaders about rejecting political negotiations, and he refused to allow his faction to participate in a planned Baath congress in Damascus last winter on the grounds that formalizing the Iraqi Baath in a conference might lead to negotiations with the Americans. Of course, the whole report could be disinformation aimed at demoralizing the Mosul Baath Party, which is loyal to al-Duri. Just a month ago, al-Quds al-Arabi (Arab Jerusalem) carried the following report, translated by the USG Open Source Center:


' Iraqi Izzat al-Duri's Bath Party Calls for Conference of Anti-Occupation Forces
Report by Hani Ashur, datelined Baghdad: "Ba'thists, Islamists. and Resistance Factions to Attend a Damascus Conference Next Week, Conference Will be Attended by Al-Duri's Wing, While Yunus al-Ahmad's Wing Has Not Been Invited."
Al-Quds al-Arabi (Internet Version-WWW)
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Baghdad - Reports citing Iraqi figures say that a conference of Iraqi forces that oppose the occupation and represent Ba'thist and Islamic sides and armed factions will be held (in Damascus) from Monday 23 July 2007 to Wednesday 25 July 2007 to unify the efforts of those who oppose the occupation and the political process in a new front.

The sources of the reports say that the Ba'th Party wing led by (Izzat) al-Duri will participate in the conference, as well as the wing of the Iraqi Ba'th Party led by Fawzi al-Rawi which is close to the Syrian Ba'th command.

The sources said that the conference will be attended by factions such as the Al-Murabitun Army, the Liberation Battalions (Kata'ib al-Tahrir), Al-Jihad, the Muhammad al-Fatih Army, the Al-Nasir Salah al-Din Brigades, the Azadi Battalions for the Liberation of Iraq, the Imam Ali Brigades, and the Al-Husayn Brigades have agreed on a united vision that adheres to the national constants that provide for thwarting the occupiers' plan and the Constitution it produced.

The sources said that the Iraqi Ba'th Party wing led by Muhammad Yunus al-Ahmad have not been invited, while political sides opposed to the political process - including the Arab National Progressive Trend (Al-Tayyar al-Taqaddumi al-Qawmi al-Arabi), Shaykh Jawad al-Khalisi, the Iraq Front for Resistance and Liberation, the Iraqi Grouping for Liberation and Construction, and the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) have been invited. However there have been reports that Shaykh (Harith) Al-Dari (AMS head) has not yet announced his agreement to participate in the conference, and perhaps Bashar al-Faydi, AMS spokesman, will participate.

The conference is being held at a time in which the political forces opposing the occupation have become fragmented and their names have multiplied. Six months ago the Iraq Front for Resistance and Liberation was formed as an organizational framework to unify the Iraqi resistance forces so as to liberate the country, expel the occupier, and thwart his plans. '


Moreover, it is a little unlikely that al-Duri's Baath faction was cooperating with Salafi Jihadis in the first place, such that it had to break with them.

So, I'm from Missouri on this one. The al-Hayat report doesn't sound right to me, and it may be disinformation aimed at demoralizing al-Duri's followers, and even saying that al-Duri had turned on 'al-Qaeda' might be a way of smearing him as having been an al-Qaeda collaborator.

As regular readers know, I believe the remnants of the Baath Party constitute a more important element in the guerrilla movement than is usually acknowledged.


If it were true, it would be significant.

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Syrian Newspapers Optimistic on al-Maliki Visit

The USG Open Source Center rounds up Reactions of Syrian Newspapers to the visit to Damascus of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki


Syrian Papers Expect Al-Maliki's Visit To 'Reflect Positively' on Region
Syria -- OSC Summary
Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Syrian newspapers on 21 August note the importance of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's visit to Syria and stress that the solution to Iraq's problem lies in the withdrawal of the American forces from Iraq and the achievement of political reconciliation in the country.

Damascus Tishrin in Arabic, a government-owned newspaper, says Damascus welcomed the Iraqi Prime Minister hoping his visit "will mark a new and serious stage in the relations between the two sisterly countries in all fields and help resolve all the pending issues." In a 400-word editorial by Umar Jaftali, the paper maintains that "the American occupation is the reason behind the tragedy of Iraq and all the Iraqis, not the neighboring countries, as the occupation claims."

The paper says that Syria, which is "greatly pained at the security deterioration" in Iraq, "extended its hand to the Iraqi brothers, removed all the excuses that the American occupation gave, resumed the diplomatic relations with Iraq, signed many economic cooperation agreements with Iraq and worked to activate them to serve the two countries and peoples, and hosted about 2 million displaced Iraqis and gave them special treatment."

The paper adds: "Now that Al-Maliki's visit has added a new block to the relations and cooperation between Syria and Iraq, the visit also provides an opportunity for the Iraqi prime minister to learn the Syrian viewpoint and Syria's cooperation with every measure that would end the suffering and the tragedy of the Iraqis at home and abroad."

It goes on: "There is no doubt here that the Iraqi brothers' endeavors to schedule the withdrawal of the occupation forces, up to the full removal of this occupation, and to achieve a political reconciliation, which is indispensable to strengthen the Iraqi people's ability to confront the hard circumstances, constitute the strong foundation for the unified Iraq of the future within its Arab family."

The paper concludes by saying: "Syria will not hesitate to help the Iraqi brothers fulfill their aspirations and to effectively contribute to the easing of their suffering so that Iraq can return to the Arab fold united and recovered from all the harm caused by the occupation."

Damascus: Al-Thawrah [Revolution] in Arabic, another government-owned newspaper, says when Al-Maliki decided to visit Damascus, "he realized in advance that it is the capital that is closer to Iraq on the political and popular levels, the capital that spared no effort to ease the suffering of the Iraqis as it hosts about 2 million Iraqis and shares with them its air, buildings, streets, restaurants, schools, and even universities."

In a 500-word article by Ali Qasim, the paper says: "In Damascus, Al-Maliki found and sensed facts that many have tried for long to suppress, and in some cases to distort and twist. He saw firsthand the huge efforts that Syria is making to help the Iraqis come out of their crisis, and he clearly heard the ideas and proposals, and even the bases, that can form the genuine framework for any solution in Iraq."

The paper notes that Syria from the very beginning announced its position against the occupation of Iraq and clearly determined the difficult challenges the region would face as a result of the occupation. "In this visit," the paper adds, "necessity dictates that the Iraqi prime minister rearrange the equation in light of the Syrian reading of the Iraqi situation, especially when this reading offers the true formulas that ensure Iraq's unity and stability and help the country preserve its independence and existence." It says "the Iraqi prime minister, who is facing all kinds of challenges, and who is coming under immense pressure from the occupation's administration, realizes this fact, especially when the occupation tries to blame the Iraqis and other countries in the region for its crisis and failure."

"In this climate," the paper says, "the visit appears important for the Syrian-Iraqi relations, and its results will reflect positively on the region." It concludes by saying: "The region, which is experiencing the most dangerous situation in its history, remains, with it countries and peoples, the more able to fulfill the ambitions of its peoples and determine the best ways for its relations. The starting point is the end of the occupations, from which the region is suffering."

Damascus: Al-Watan [The Nation] in Arabic, an independent newspaper, mentions some Syrian-Iraqi border incidents in which "the Americans who supervise the border on the Iraqi side deliberately spread chaos and create crises for the Syrians and then publicly accuse Syria of non-cooperation to control the border and blame it for the failure of all their policies and plans in Iraq."

In a 500-word article by Ibrahim Darraji, the paper says it hopes the Syrian officials will explain to Al-Maliki "the lack of cooperation from the other side of the border, which is controlled by the Americans, and the security and humanitarian problems this lack of cooperation creates for Syria, which has the right to complain from the failure to cooperate with it to control the border."

The paper concludes by saying: "We hope Al-Maliki will be told about all the efforts that Syria is making to control the border, including cooperation with the international organizations, such as the International Organization for Migration, to bring in experts and equipment to identify the points of weakness and strengthen the ability to discover forged documents. This is in addition to the security efforts, which led to our border forces coming under more than 100 attacks from inside Iraq and resulting in the martyrdom of six of our soldiers and the wounding of 17 others. This is what Syria is doing. What did the others offer other than further intentional chaos and plenty of accusations and lies, which appear to have become the main characteristic of the policies of many countries these days?"

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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Second Shiite Governor Slain
Levin Calls for al-Maliki to be Unseated
al-Maliki in Damascus

Reuters reports that the governor of Muthanna province, Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, was assassinated on Monday by a roadside bomb. This killing was the second in recent days of a provincial governor from the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC). In both Muthanna and Qadisiya, the site of the other assassination, the Badr Corps paramilitary of SIIC has been locked in power struggle with the Mahdi Army of the Sadr Movement, loyal to young Shiite nationalist, Muqtada al-Sadr. SIIC and Badr are very close to Tehran, and some southern Shiites see them as unpatriotic. The Sadrists have complained that the provincial government of Muthanna is corrupt and has not delivered necessary services to the people. Since some observers don't get this right, I just want to underline that these assassinations have been strikes against Iranian influence in Iraq, by nativists probably at least loosely connected to the Sadr Movement. Likewise, if an EFP was used in the bombing, it is unlikely to have come from Iran, since Tehran has no interest in knocking off its own clients (SIIC and Badr), and, indeed, would go out of its way to protect them.

The killing of a second governor in the Shiite south is very bad news. This is the sort of thing that used to happen in al-Anbar Province. It is a sign of an increasingly virulent Shiite on Shiite power struggle between SIIC and the Sadrists, between the Badr Corps and the Mahdi Army. It is also a bad sign that the Sadrists have managed to get hold of increasingly effective roadside bombs.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in Damascus on Monday, seeking deals with the Syrian government. He is said to have pledged to reopen an Iraqi oil pipeline through Syria if Damascus would do more to stop jihadis from infiltrating Iraq from Syrian territory.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin called Monday for the Iraqi parliament to replace al-Maliki. Even if it could be done, why does Levin think someone more effective would emerge? And the last two times you got a new PM, it took many months to form a new government. Does Iraq need that kind of paralysis at this point? I guess I don't think it is the place of American legislators to intervene in such matters. You can imagine the firestorm if a prominent French parliamentarian called on the US Congress to impeach Bush.

Farah Stockman of the Boston Globe reports on State Department attempts to keep al-Maliki in power by jawboning the various Iraqi factions in parliament, which, however, don't seem to be going very well. I think there is some question of whether the entire political system might fall apart if the elected PM keeps being replaced.

Muqtada al-Sadr was interviewed in Kufa by reporters from the Independent. Note that the US military has been spreading that propaganda line again that Muqtada had decamped to Iran. It simply is not true, as the Independent confirmed. Here are Muqtada's main points:

1. The British are being forced out of Basra by effective guerrilla tactics

2. Britain endangered its own security by attacking Iraq and thus angering the Muslim world

3. The security situation in Basra will generally improve once the British leave, though there will be some trouble because Iran is seeking influence there.

4. The Sunnis of Ramadi who have turned against the Sunni Jihadi radicals have adopted a historic position for Iraq

5. He and his movement would welcome greater United Nations involvement in Iraq

6. The days of the al-Maliki government are numbered and it will soon collapse because he is seen as an American puppet and because even the Americans are dissatisfied with him.


British officials, in response, denied that the UK was being driven out of Iraq. They maintain that the Iraqi police and military is capable of keeping order in the provinces from which they have withdrawn, and that is why they left.

Mahdi Army fighters have admitted to getting a month-long training course in insurgency tactics in south Lebanon, according to the Independent.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Monday, with 12 bodies discovered in the streets of the capital. Other major attacks:


"Baghdad

- Around 10 a.m., a motorbike exploded at Al-Risafi intersection (downtown Baghdad) killing one civilian and injuring 12 others.

- Around 3.30 p.m., a car bomb exploded at Sadreen square ( in Sadr city) killing 5 people and injuring 20 others.

- Around 4 p.m., a roadside bomb exploded near Zafaraniyah petrol station in Zafaraniyah ( east Baghdad) injuring 4 people.

Anbar: Yesterday afternoon , 4 mortars hit 2 houses in Al-Hesewat neighborhood ( north of Garma) which is north of Falluja killing 2 people and injuring 8 others including a woman and a child. . .

Kirkuk

- Before noon, a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol near Sarha bridge ( 40 km south of Kirkuk ) killing 1 soldier and injuring two others. . . '


At the Napoleon's Egypt Blog: Gen. Bonaparte Defeats Ibrahim Bey at Salahiya.

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Rubin on Herat

See Barnett Rubin's latest blog entry at the Global Affairs blog, "Return from Herat: Wherein one Pessoptimist Meets Another."
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Monday, August 20, 2007

Cole in Salon:
The Poisonous Legacy of Karl Rove

My Salon column is out: The poisonous rhetorical legacy of Karl Rove

Even Fox's Chris Wallace wants to know why Bush's newly departed advisor had to paint Democrats as traitors.


Excerpt:


' [Chris] Wallace followed up by asking Rove to justify the notorious June 22, 2005, speech he gave before the New York Conservative Party, in which he alleged that Democrats were soft on terror. It is worth recalling at length what Rove said on that occasion: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban; in the wake of 9/11, liberals believed it was time to ... submit a petition."

Rove's diatribe depended for its effect on a series of deft substitutions, both explicit and implied. First, he misrepresented liberals by coding MoveOn.org, the grass-roots Internet activists who did urge alternatives to a frontal assault on the Taliban, as representative of liberal opinion generally. Then, by mentioning Democratic Party figures such as Howard Dean and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, he implied that he was speaking about that party. Unless we assume that most Democrats are not liberals, then the attack was certainly partisan. It was also false. In polling soon after the 2001 attacks, 84 percent of self-identified liberals supported military action in response, and 80 percent of Democrats favored war against Afghanistan. Democratic members of Congress largely supported the Afghanistan war as well, with the senators voting for it unanimously. '


Read the whole thing.
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Mortar Shells Kill 10 in downtown Baghdad

US Mil organizes Sunni Neighborhood Watch

The NYT reports that the US military is setting up neighborhood militias in Sunni Arab areas, called "Guardians," to patrol and curb Salafi Jihadi gangs. Two questions come to mind. Why is it that those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi police cannot do this job (it is after all their job)? And, will the Sunni Guardians be loyal to the Shiite government of PM Nuri al-Maliki, most of whose Sunni Arabs have jumped ship?

American military thinkers and officials are saying that Britain has lost Basra, that the British departure from the city "could be ugly," and that in the aftermath a major fight among Shiite militias may break out in Iraq's only major port. The British, who seem intent on leaving over the next year, defend their work in the city. There are fears that British preparations to leave, and to allow the political and military situation in Basra to be what it will be, may enter into fierce congressional debates in the US around the awaited Sept. 15 report on Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

The US military hasn't found any Iranian trainers in Iraq or any training camps, but like Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, that you can't find them doesn't mean they are not there. What I cannot understand is why the Pentagon needs Iranians in Iraq as a plot device. The Iraqi Badr Corps, tens of thousands strong, was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and it has been alleged that some Badr corpsmen are still on the Iranian payroll. It is the paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, America's chief ally in Iraq. What would the IRGC know that Badr does not? Why bother to send revolutionary guardsmen when the country is thick with Badr fighters anyway (who have all the same training)? I think the US is just embarrassed because Badr is its major ally in Iraq, and Pentagon spokesmen are over-compensating by imagining Iranian training camps inside Iraq. What an idea. I mean, don't we have, like, satellites that would see them? Wouldn't they be visible on google earth? Every day the Pentagon b.s. about Iran gets more fantastic and frantic. Methinks some people, like Patton, are upset that the politicians always pull them back and leave them one more war to fight.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the US military will draw back down the extra 30,000 troops inserted into Iraq from the escalation called 'the surge' beginning in March, 2008. Presumably Bush will attempt to influence the fall, 2008 presidential campaign by attempting to make it appear that Iraq is going well enough to allow such a draw-down. The article also addresses the Pentagon's war of words against Iran.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that moves are afoot to create a dissident alternative to the 4-party alliance (Da'wa, Supreme Council, & the 2 Kurdistan parties).

Reuters reports that:


' * BAGHDAD - Ten people were killed and 42 wounded by four mortar rounds which fell in a residential area of Shi'ite al-Obeidi district in eastern Baghdad, police said. '


McClatchy reports that police found 14 bodies in the streets of Baghdad on Sunday, victims of sectarian death squads. Other significant incidents not quoted above:

' Around 9 a.m. Several mortar shells slammed into the Green Zone.

- Around 11 a.m. A parked motorcycle bomb in Al Khulafaa square killed one civilian. . .

- Around 1:30 p.m. Gunmen stopped a bus in Bab Al Muatham area. The gunmen took 15 passengers to Al Azza area in Al Fadhil.

- Around 2 p.m. A road side bomb not far away from Mishin compound. 1 civilian was killed and 5 were injured. . .

Kirkuk . . . Two IEDs targeted police vehicles in Kirkuk. The first explosion targeted a police vehicle; police responded and sent more police vehicles to the site. Another bomb went off. 3 policemen were injured according to police.'


At the group blog, the Taliban in Afghanistan seek to rebrand themselves, and reach out to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization .

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Eagan Guest Op-Ed

A Vietnam Vet Recognizes Iraq Frustrations

In response to the NYT op-ed by specialists and sergeants on Sunday, Jerry Eagan writes with his own experiences:

Dr. Cole. In July, 1967, while back home in Indiana on "convalescent leave" from an Army hospital, I wrote a similar, albeit, shorter letter to my hometown newspaper. As these men are, I was a "grunt," an infantryman 11B -- light weapons infantryman. I'd been seriously wounded on 3 November, 1966, and was still recuperating until roughly the end of August, 1967. When I returned from convalescent leave, therefore, in August, 1967, the doctor who "ran" the hospital informed me that since I "liked to write letters, about the war, and how we're losing the war," that I had "too much time on my hands." I was being returned to duty. He said he wished he could return me to an infantry unit, but that wasn't possible because my right arm, which had been severely damaged by an AK-47 round, was too weak to even slide the bolt back on an M-16 rifle.

Someone had apparently turned me in, either to Army Counter Intelligence, or the FBI, because I was seen as "anti-war" and who knows ... a commie? At any rate, I arrived mainly independently, but with some discussions with some other soldiers who were convalescing ... that the war was lost. That was 1967. Of course, coming around to that conclusion wouldn't have **happened** had I not BEEN to Vietnam, and seen things which caused me serious "cognitive dissonance."

This essay by these soldiers in their letter to the NYT is deeply insightful of what the more intelligent soldiers on the ground see: dramatic, glaring, sometimes nearly mad incongruities between what must be happening in Iraq, on the ground, and what comes out of the White House. In the last month or so, many reports, including yours, have highlighted that a tactical maneuver on the ground, ostensibly fashioned by General Petraeus, has begun, whereby we are Sunni tribal sheiks to fight "al-Qaeda" in Iraq. And, Petraeus, and his Yul Brenner buddy, General Odierno, have touted great successes in whipping al-Qaeda.

The unspoken leaden shoe that's possibly going to drop soon is: by arming Sunni Arab tribal sheiks, we now have a "proxy army" which is effectively being used against al-Qaeda (Salafist) terrorists). The successes racked up to these new proxy units seems impressive. I read one article which indicated these tribal Sunni militia, were given 10 rounds to fire. I guess someone thought, they can't get into too much trouble with ten rounds. But unspoken, of course, and generally unnoticed by most American journalists save Michael Ware, of CNN, is what these tribal units will do once al-Qaeda is effectively broken!

I'd contend, every Iraqi shiite knows exactly what these Sunni militia will be used for once al-Qaeda is broken: namely, they will join the Americans in fighting Shiite militia. As you know, I suggested to a Washington Post writer he zero in on what's happening in southern Iraq -- Basra, specifically -- with the Brits. 34 at least killed this year alone. When the Brits leave Iraq (perhaps all of them by year's end), what happens then? The Brits have always been in Basra; they have a distinctly different occupational role learned from years in Northern Ireland, that is more refined than the typical American steamroller approach. And yet, in 2007, they've suffered greater losses, are hunkered down in their equivalent of "the Green Zone," and appear to be more than eager to get the hell out of Iraq.

When they leave, the U.S. will see a yawning vacuum open up in Basra. The fact is, if any section of Iraq appears to be headed towards "Shia-stan," it's Basra and surrounding area. Will the U.S. just meekly allow that to happen? To allow rampant internecine warfare between Shia militia consume Basra city and province? Or will we send in a large force, to quell such violence, and keep that vital sector of Iraq open for oil shipments, production, etc? If we go, what happens up north? In Baghdad and other localities, which are supposed to be nailed down and made more secure by a greater American military presence?

The fact that most Americans don't yet get seems to be: the Shia of Iraq have been abused, discriminated against, persecuted, tortured and slaughtered by Sunnis. The Shia of Iraq are well aware of the 13 centuries of discrimination, vilification, and persecution they've suffered from a Sunni dominated Islamic power structure across the Hub of Islam. They know darned well they're going to be squeezed by those same Sunni Islamic forces, when and if the Americans leave. I think the "if" is really no longer a question: the "when" is what's being hammered out now by Congress and Bush.

I think the body language I saw, when al-Maliki and Ahmadinejad walked out of their meeting several weeks ago, two Shia Iranian/Iraqi men walking hand in hand, with al-Maliki so relaxed it looked like he'd dropped some Quaaludes, told me every- thing I need to know about what will happen if the Brits leave, and the Americans want to go into Basra. They'll run into a wall. It's possible al-Maliki will actually ask for Iranian assistance in quelling the internecine violence in the South. Will Bush allow that? What shock waves would that send coursing through our Administration, if Maliki DOES ask Iranian help in the south of Iraq? How could Bush allow that to happen?

Bush and Petraeus, at their different levels, appear to have already decided to side with the Sunnis. At the higher level, Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates talked directly to the Saudis. A massive $20 billion arms transfer deal was proposed to sweeten the pot for the Saudis, so they would step on the suicide bombers going from Saudi Arabia to Iraq ... and also, to arm them for an eventual fight against Iran. Regardless of whether strategic or tactical in nature, these decisions have clearly been seen by Iraqi Shiites. They know the forces of Sunnism have once again been arrayed against them. They have seen it in Lebanon, and they have begun to see it with the arming of Sunni militia.

The question must be asked then: how do individuals such as yourself, get air time on CNN, and other networks (since most people don't spend much more than 30 minutes a day watching the news), to explain to the American people that not only have we found ourselves in the middle of a civil conflict ... we've now actually begun arming/aligning ourselves with one side. And, with the side which once again shows that American foreign policy is hypocritical. The national elections of Iraq elected individuals who are predominantly Shia or Shia aligned. The Sunnis have once again bailed out of the political process. Significant violence will occur when those British forces leave. If al-Qaeda IS effectively hammered into silence, the real fighting will begin. Sunni against Shia.

That fighting will be the proxy level war we've decided must be fought to "win" Iraq. I'd contend, we've already begun our war against Iran. Arming Sunni tribal sheiks and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf nations, are the opening rounds of our war with Iran. Bush will do all he can to instigate an Iranian military response. I'd guess, in the near future, sometime this year, if Sunnis begin battling Shia in open militia combat, al-Maliki will ask Iran for Quds Brigade support in the south. Bush won't allow that. He'll intervene, hoping -- hoping -- he can finally precipitate an open military strike against Iran.

If you agree with this position, I'd say: unless individuals such as yourself get out there more, and speak this very real possibility, the American people will be slammed into a crisis of Bush's making. He will not allow Iraq to "go into Iran's sphere of influence," and if that's the case, he will use force to deny them that maneuver. By then, it will be too late. We'll be in a new war. This President has to have a scape goat to lay this terrible Iraqi fiasco on. Iran will be it. I hope that if you agree, you'll try and get out there more, to try and explain this dark future we may have in store for ourselves.

Once again, the Iraqi people will be the ones doing most of the dying. This criminal President knows no bounds when it comes to aggrandizing his plans. He does, after all, have a pipeline to Jesus.

Jerry Eagan
Silver City, NM

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