Making Sense of Iraq's Vote

QueEx · Dec 21, 2005

<center>Religious parties deal blow to US hopes for Iraq</center>

Guardian & Mail
Wednesday, December 21, 2005 5:02 PM

The Bush administration's hopes for a government of national unity in Iraq, led by its favoured candidate, Ayad Allawi, the secular and pro-Western former prime minister, received a setback on Tuesday night.

Preliminary results showed that most voters opted for Sunni and Shi'ite religious parties in a Parliament in which nationalists who want an early timetable for a withdrawal of United States and British troops will have a stronger voice.

Allawi's camp, which includes liberals, communists and his own secular followers, cried foul on Tuesday, as did the main Sunni coalition known as the Consensus Front, which includes the Islamic party. The election commission has at least a week to examine hundreds of complaints of violations on polling day and this is likely to be followed by weeks of haggling over government posts.

But the results suggest that the Shi'ite religious bloc, which dominates the current government, will retain most, if not all, the 140 seats it holds, giving it a majority in the 275-seat Parliament. It needs two-thirds to choose a president -- a mainly ceremonial post -- along with a prime minister.

Senior Shi'ite figures said on Tuesday that they will probably exclude Allawi from the government.

"We've started talks with the Sunnis and Kurds. Not many of us are eager to take Allawi on board. I don't think he stands a chance," said Haider Abadi, spokesperson for the Dawa party of the Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Washington and London had been hoping Allawi would emerge as a compromise candidate for the top post. During his years in exile in the Saddam Hussein period, he had close links with the CIA and MI6. As prime minister for nine months until April this year, his tough law-and-order image chimed well with US policy.

The US and British governments, which praised last week's poll as a triumph, are likely to paint the hung Parliament, the complaints of fraud and the bargaining over portfolios as further signs of healthy competition. But there was no disguising Washington's disappointment on Tuesday.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, said: "It seems sectarian identity and ethnic identity have played the dominant role."

Although he went on to say the US would wait for "the principal groups to form a broad-based national unity government", it was not clear on Tuesday night that they would. A Shi'ite-Sunni-Kurdish alliance without Allawi looked the most likely option.

Angry and convinced there was fraud, Allawi's group is considering a boycott of the Parliament.

"We'll be meeting tomorrow to decide whether to do this if the election commission doesn't investigate the complaints properly," said Thair al-Naqeeb, Allawi's spokesperson, on Tuesday night.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of the Consensus Front, called for a rerun of the vote in Baghdad. The election commission says it has received 20 complaints serious enough to swing a seat unfairly. Final results will await its verdict on them.

The putative Parliament will include a higher number of anti-occupation nationalists. Moqtada al-Sadr, the young Shi'ite cleric whose militia confronted US forces in Najaf last year, had 30 candidates on the main Shi'ite list. A more radical wing of his movement, running separately as "the Messengers", took another 3% in the Shi'ite south.

On the Sunni side, a bloc known as the Front for National Dialogue led by Saleh al-Mutlak, a former Ba'athist, did better than expected.

In the current government, the Kurds are the Shi'ites' main partners. But the current President, Jalal Talabani, one of the main Kurdish leaders, made it clear before polling day that he did not want to continue and hoped for a full executive role in the next government.

Allocating seats on the basis of the results released on Tuesday is complex. About 230 seats in the 275-member Parliament are filled from quotas given to each province: 59 to Baghdad, for example, and nine for Anbar.

The other 45 are split, partly on the "best loser" principle, whereby small parties that did not win enough votes for a seat in any province have their votes totalled nationally. If this figure surpasses a certain threshold, they get a seat. After this is done, the remaining seats are split among the big winners in proportion to their national tallies. This will give the Shi'ite alliance even more.

Estimates are that the Kurds will have slightly more seats than the two main Sunni blocs combined, which is why the Sunnis are crying foul. They say their population easily exceeds that of the Kurds. --

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.asp...aking_news/breaking_news__international_news/

QueEx · Dec 21, 2005

<center>Iraq election losers unite to contest result</center>

21 Dec 2005 14:22:55 GMT
Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Sunni Arab and secular political groups in Iraq formed a united front on Wednesday to demand a rerun of last week's election, alleging massive fraud, and said they might otherwise boycott the new parliament to cripple it.

"There was a meeting ... and we all agreed to contest and reject the results of the election," Thaer al-Naqib, an aide to secular former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, told Reuters.

"We want the Electoral Commission dissolved and the election rerun across Iraq," he said. "We will take to the streets if necessary. We might even not take up our seats in the new parliament and so any new government would be illegitimate."

Others among 70-80 politicians present, including secular Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlak, said representatives of three main blocs and several others took part; all felt hard done by after results showed the Shi'ite Islamists would remain dominant.

The Electoral Commission, which the disaffected leaders accuse of partisanship, has said it will examine complaints but, in common with U.S. and U.N. officials, has said it does not think irregularities had a major impact on the overall results.

The prospect of rerunning the election seem slim as a result; the protests, which come amid warnings of renewed insurgent violence among Sunnis, may also be intended to step up pressure on the triumphant Shi'ite Islamist Alliance to share power -- something Washington is also encouraging it to do.

Mutlak said his own Iraqi Unified Front, Allawi's Iraqi National List, the Sunni Islamist-led Iraqi Accordance Front and several other groups had formed committees and would take their complaints not only to the Electoral Commission but also the Arab League, European Union and United Nations.

Electoral Commission chief Hussein al-Hindawi told a news conference that 10,893,413 voters took part on Thursday, putting national turnout at 69.97 percent. The figures were in line with estimates given by officials on polling day.

They were much higher than the 58 percent who participated in January's ballot, when many in the Sunni Arab minority stayed away from the polls, and also an increase on the 64 percent turnout for the constitutional referendum held in October.

Among the regional votes, turnout in western Anbar province, a stronghold of Sunni insurgents, hit 55 percent, in part thanks to an informal rebel truce. That compared to just two percent in the Jan. 30 election for an interim assembly.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/MAC149443.htm

QueEx · Jan 20, 2006

<center>Iraq Shiites Win, but Must Form Coalition</center>

Jan 20, 10:20 AM (ET)
Associted Press
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - An alliance of Shiite religious parties won the most seats in Iraq's new parliament but not enough to rule without coalition partners, the election commission said Friday. Sunni Arabs gained seats over previous balloting.

A top Sunni politician, meanwhile, appealed for the release of American journalist Jill Carroll and urged U.S. and Iraqi forces to stop arresting Iraqi women, as a deadline set by kidnappers was set to expire.

The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance captured 128 of the 275 seats in the Dec. 15 election, down from the 146 it won in January 2005 balloting, said commission official Safwat Rasheed. It needed 138 to rule without partners.

A Sunni ticket, the Iraqi Accordance Front, won 44 seats. Another Sunni coalition headed by Saleh al-Mutlaq finished with 11 seats, Rasheed said. A few other Sunnis won seats on other tickets.

That will give the Sunni Arabs a bigger voice in the legislature than they had in the outgoing assembly, which included only 17 from the community forming the backbone of the insurgency. Many Sunnis had boycotted the January vote.

Despite a better showing, one Sunni politician, Salman al-Jumaili, expressed disappointment and renewed complaints about election irregularities. Nevertheless, he said the Sunnis will "take part in the coming (parliament) and government and present our (election) challenges to the Iraqi judicial system."

Kurds saw their seat total reduced. An alliance of the two major Kurdish parties won 53 seats, down from the 75 they took in the January 2005 vote.

A rival Kurdish ticket, the Kurdish Islamic Group, won five seats, a gain of three from the outgoing parliament.

A ticket headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, won 25 seats, down from 40 in the outgoing assembly. The United States installed Allawi as interim prime minister in 2004 and applauded both his tough stand against insurgents and his secular approach to politics.

This time, however, U.S. diplomats appeared resigned to the fact that Iraqis would generally vote along sectarian lines and that secular candidates would not fare well.

U.S. officials here had said privately they hoped only that religious Shiites would win fewer seats to curb their power somewhat, and that more-moderate Sunnis candidates like Adnan al-Dulaimi would fare better than hard-liners - which was the case.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Tom Casey said the Americans would "continue to support efforts of Iraq's political leaders to form a unity government."

Saad Asem al-Janabi, a prominent member of Allawi's ticket, said his group's showing was unexpected and "a real disappointment for the democracy in Iraq."

"These results are not true and the Iraqi national unity is facing a real threat from foreign elements to divide Iraq," he said in apparent reference to the Shiite religious parties, which some Iraqis consider tied too closely to Iran.

Sunnis fared better - and Kurds poorer - because of a change in the election law between the two national elections last year. In the January 2005 balloting, seats were allocated based on the percentage of votes that tickets won nationwide.

Last month, candidates competed for seats by district. This meant that Sunnis were all but guaranteed seats from predominantly Sunni areas.

Politicians have four days to contest the results, which were largely in line with preliminary returns. Officials then will have 10 days to study any complaints before they certify the results and parliament convenes to appoint a new government.

U.S. officials hope that a greater Sunni voice in political affairs will help defuse the insurgency so American and other international troops can begin withdrawing.

The results were announced a day after an international review group said the election was flawed but generally fair, considering Iraq's security crisis. Sunni politicians had demanded the review after raising allegations of fraud. Al-Mutlaq had called for a new election.

The decision to have the election reviewed by outside experts was an attempt to mollify Sunni complaints and encourage them to join the political process.

Sunni Arabs dominated political life in Iraq for generations but are believed to comprise about 20 percent of the country's estimated 27 million people. Shiites form about 60 percent and Kurds 15-20 percent.

Many Sunnis contest those figures and assumed they would win more seats since the voting in Iraq's three ballots after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein has been along sectarian lines.

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20060120/D8F8FVBG7.html?PG=home&SEC=news

muckraker10021 · Feb 17, 2006

<table border="6" width="600" id="table1" bordercolorlight="#000000" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4" bordercolordark="#000000" bgcolor="#FFEFDF" height="700"><tr>
<td><center>
<img src="http://www.fcnl.org/images/iraq/iraq_multiple_bases.jpg">
</center>

Why is the U.S. building permanent bases in Iraq — in a country that is only twice the size of the state of Idaho?

U.S. engineers [ (Halliburton - KBR ( Kellog, Brown & Root) ] —are constructing 14 "enduring bases," to serve as long-term encampments for thousands of American troops.

These troops will be "The Spear" of US Imperialism in the entire Middle -East. These permanent bases are to replace the US military bases in Saudi Arabia that were closed.

What the Pentagon calls 14 "enduring" bases (twelve of which are located on the map) – all of which are to be consolidated into FOUR MEGA-BASES. </td>
</tr></table>



"It may be hard to do, given the skimpy coverage, but keep your eyes directed at our "super-bases." Until the administration blinks on them, there will be no withdrawal from Iraq"

<hr noshade color="#FF0000" size="14"></hr>


Can You Say 'Permanent Military Bases'? 


by Tom Engelhardt
Feb. 15th 2006 

We're in a new period in the war in Iraq – one that brings to mind the Nixonian era of "Vietnamization": A president presiding over an increasingly unpopular war that won't end; an election bearing down; the need to placate a restive American public; and an army under so much strain that it seems to be running off the rails. So it's not surprising that the media is now reporting on administration plans for, or "speculation" about, or "signs of," or " <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=184742006">hints </a>" of " <a href="http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap02-09-111004.asp?reg=mideast&vts=2920061134">major draw-downs </a>" or withdrawals of American troops. The figure regularly cited these days is less than 100,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2006. With about 136,000 American troops there now, that figure would represent just over one-quarter of all in-country U.S. forces, which means, of course, that the term "major" certainly rests in the eye of the beholder.
 In addition, these withdrawals are – we know this thanks to a Seymour Hersh piece, " <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051205fa_fact">Up in the Air </a>," in the Dec. 5 New Yorker – to be accompanied, as <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html?mode=print">in South Vietnam </a> in the Nixon era, by an unleashing of the U.S. Air Force. The added air power is meant to compensate for any lost punch on the ground (and will undoubtedly <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=48180">lead to </a> more "collateral damage" – that is, Iraqi deaths).
 It is important to note that all promises of draw-downs or withdrawals are invariably linked to the dubious proposition that the Bush administration can "stand up" an effective Iraqi army and police force (think "Vietnamization" again), capable of circumscribing the Sunni insurgency and so allowing American troops to pull back to bases outside major urban areas, as well as to Kuwait and points as far west as the United States. Further, all administration or military withdrawal promises prove to be well hedged with caveats and obvious loopholes, phrases like " <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020901197_pf.html">if all goes </a> according to plan and security improves…" or "it also depends on the ability of the Iraqis to…"
 Since guerrilla attacks have actually been <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0209-12.htm">on the rise </a> and the delivery of the basic amenities of modern civilization (electrical power, potable water, gas for cars, functional sewage systems, working traffic lights, and so on) <a href="http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=9332">on the decline </a>, since the very establishment of a government inside the heavily fortified Green Zone has <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/13776596.htm">proved </a> immensely difficult, and since U.S. reconstruction funds (those that haven't <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/09/60minutes/main1302378.shtml">already disappeared </a> down one clogged drain or another) are drying up, such partial withdrawals may prove more complicated to pull off than imagined. It's clear, nonetheless, that "withdrawal" is on the propaganda agenda of an administration heading into mid-term elections with an increasingly skittish Republican Party in tow and congressional candidates worried about defending the president's mission-unaccomplished war of choice. Under the circumstances, we can expect more hints of, followed by promises of, followed by announcements of "major" withdrawals, possibly including news in the fall election season of even more "massive" withdrawals slated for the end of 2006 or early 2007, all hedged with conditional clauses and "only ifs" – withdrawal promises that, once the election is over, this administration would undoubtedly feel under no particular obligation to fulfill.
 Assuming, then, a near year to come of withdrawal buzz, speculation, and even a media blitz of withdrawal announcements, the question is: How can anybody tell if the Bush administration is actually withdrawing from Iraq or not? Sometimes, when trying to cut through a veritable fog of misinformation and disinformation, it helps to focus on something concrete. In the case of Iraq, nothing could be more concrete – though less generally discussed in our media – than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has long been building in that country. Quite literally multi-billions of dollars have gone into them. In a prestigious engineering magazine in late 2003, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, was already speaking proudly of <a href="http://enr.construction.com/news/bizlabor/archives/031020.asp">several billion dollars </a> being sunk into base construction ("the numbers are staggering"). Since then, the base-building has been massive and ongoing.
 In a country in such startling disarray, these bases, with some of the most expensive and advanced communications systems on the planet, are like vast spaceships that have landed from another solar system. Representing a staggering investment of resources, effort, and geostrategic dreaming, they are the unlikeliest places for the Bush administration to hand over willingly to even the friendliest of Iraqi governments.
 If, as just about every expert agrees, Bush-style reconstruction has failed dismally in Iraq, thanks to thievery, knavery, and sheer incompetence, and is now <a href="http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060131-115025-7965r">essentially ending </a>, it has been a raging success in Iraq's "Little America." For the first time, we have actual descriptions of a couple of the "super-bases" built in Iraq in the last two and a half years and, despite being written by reporters under Pentagon information restrictions, they are sobering. Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post paid a visit to Balad Air Base, the largest American base in the country, 68 kilometers north of Baghdad and "smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq." In a piece entitled " <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302994_pf.html">Biggest Base in Iraq Has Small-Town Feel </a>," Ricks paints a striking portrait:
 The base is sizable enough to have its own "neighborhoods" including "KBR-land" (in honor of the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the base-construction work in Iraq); "CJSOTF" ("home to a special operations unit," the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, surrounded by "especially high walls," and so secretive that even the base Army public affairs chief has never been inside); and a junkyard for bombed out Army Humvees. There is as well a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye's, "an ersatz Starbucks," a 24-hour Burger King, two post exchanges where TVs, iPods, and the like can be purchased, four mess halls, a hospital, a strictly enforced on-base speed limit of 10 MPH, a huge airstrip, 250 aircraft (helicopters and predator drones included), air-traffic pileups of a sort you would see over Chicago's O'Hare airport, and "a miniature golf course, which mimics a battlefield with its baby sandbags, little Jersey barriers, strands of concertina wire and, down at the end of the course, what appears to be a tiny detainee cage."
 Ricks reports that the 20,000 troops stationed at Balad live in "air-conditioned containers" which will, in the future – and yes, for those building these bases, there still is a future – be wired "to bring the troops Internet, cable television, and overseas telephone access." He points out as well that, of the troops at Balad, "only several hundred have jobs that take them off base. Most Americans posted here never interact with an Iraqi."
 Recently, Oliver Poole, a British reporter, visited another of the American "super-bases," the still-under-construction al-Asad Airbase (" <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/11/wirq11.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/02/11/ixworld.ht">Football and Pizza Point to U.S. Staying for Long Haul </a>"). He observes, of "the biggest Marine camp in western Anbar province," that "this stretch of desert increasingly resembles a slice of U.S. suburbia." In addition to the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, there is a football field, a Hertz rent-a-car office, a swimming pool, and a movie theater showing the latest flicks. Al-Asad is so large – such bases may cover 15-20 square miles – that it has two bus routes and, if not traffic lights, at least red stop signs at all intersections.
 There are at least four such "super-bases" in Iraq, none of which have anything to do with "withdrawal" from that country. Quite the contrary, these bases are being constructed as little American islands of eternal order in an anarchic sea. Whatever top administration officials and military commanders say – and they always deny that we seek "permanent" bases in Iraq – facts-on-the-ground speak with another voice entirely. These bases practically scream "permanency."
 Unfortunately, there's a problem here. American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words "permanent," "bases," and "Iraq" should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report. While a LexisNexis search of the last 90 days of press coverage of Iraq produced a number of examples of the use of those three words in the British press, the only U.S. examples that could be found occurred when 80 percent of Iraqis (obviously somewhat unhinged by their difficult lives) <a href="http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=60162">insisted in a poll </a> that the United States might indeed desire to establish bases and remain permanently in their country; or when "no" or "not" was added to the mix via any American official denial. (It's strange, isn't it, that such bases, imposing as they are, generally only exist in our papers in the negative.) Three examples will do:
 The secretary of defense: " <a href="http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/13750080.htm">"During a visit </a> with U.S. troops in Fallujah on Christmas Day, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said 'at the moment there are no plans for permanent bases' in Iraq. 'It is a subject that has not even been discussed with the Iraqi government.'"
 Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmett, the Central Command deputy commander for planning and strategy in Iraq: " <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/257398_general28.html">We already </a> have handed over significant chunks of territory to the Iraqis. Those are not simply plans to do so; they are being executed right now. It is not only our plan but our policy that we do not intend to have any permanent bases in Iraq."
 Karen Hughes on the Charlie Rose Show: "CHARLIE ROSE: [T]hey think we are still there for the oil, or they think the United States wants permanent bases. Does the United States want permanent bases in Iraq? KAREN HUGHES: We want nothing more than to bring our men and women in uniform home. As soon as possible, but not before they finish the job. CHARLIE ROSE: And do not want to keep bases there? KAREN HUGHES: No, we want to bring our people home as soon as possible."
 Still, for a period, the Pentagon practiced something closer to truth in advertising than did our major papers. At least, they called the big bases in Iraq "enduring camps," a label which had a certain charm and reeked of permanency. (Later, they were later relabeled, far less romantically, "contingency operating bases.")
 One of the enduring mysteries of this war is that reporting on our bases in Iraq has been almost nonexistent these last years, especially given an administration so weighted toward military solutions to global problems; especially given the heft of some of the bases; especially given the fact that the Pentagon was mothballing our bases in Saudi Arabia and saw these as long-term substitutes; especially given the fact that the neocons and other top administration officials were so focused on controlling the so-called arc of instability (basically, the energy heartlands of the planet) at whose center was Iraq; and especially given the fact that Pentagon prewar planning for such "enduring camps" was, briefly, a front-page story in a major newspaper.
 A little history may be in order here:
 On April 19, 2003, soon after Baghdad fell to American troops, reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt wrote a front-page piece <a href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/042103B.shtml">for the New York Times </a> indicating that the Pentagon was planning to "maintain" four bases in Iraq for the long haul, though "there will probably never be an announcement of permanent stationing of troops." Rather than speak of "permanent bases," the military preferred then to speak coyly of "permanent access" to Iraq. The bases, however, fit snugly with other Pentagon plans, already on the drawing boards. For instance, Saddam's 400,000 man military was to be replaced by only a 40,000 man, lightly armed military without significant armor or an air force. (In an otherwise heavily armed region, this insured that any Iraqi government would be almost totally reliant on the American military and that the U.S. Air Force would, by default, be the Iraqi Air Force for years to come.) While much space in our papers has, of late, been devoted to the administration's lack of postwar planning, next to no interest has been shown in the planning that did take place.
 At a press conference a few days after the Shanker and Schmitt piece appeared, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A7264-2003Apr21&">Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld </a> insisted that the U.S. was "unlikely to seek any permanent or 'long-term' bases in Iraq" – and that was that. The Times' piece was essentially sent down the memory hole. While scads of bases were being built – including four huge ones whose geographic placement correlated fairly strikingly with the four mentioned in the Times article – reports about U.S. bases in Iraq, or any Pentagon planning in relation to them, largely disappeared from the American media. (With rare exceptions, you could only find discussions of "permanent bases" in these last years at Internet sites <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=3025">like TomDispatch </a> or <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/">Global Security.org </a>.)
 In May 2005, however, Bradley Graham of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100611_pf.html">the Washington Post </a> reported that we had 106 bases, ranging from mega to micro in Iraq. Most of these were to be given back to the Iraqi military, now being "stood up" as a far larger force than originally imagined by Pentagon planners, leaving the U.S. with, Graham reported, just the number of bases – four – that the Times first mentioned over two years earlier, including Balad Air Base and the base Poole visited in western Anbar Province. This reduction was presented not as a fulfillment of original Pentagon thinking, but as a "withdrawal plan." (A modest number of these bases have since been turned over to the Iraqis, including one in Tikrit transferred to Iraqi military units which, according to Poole, promptly stripped it to the bone.)
 The future of a fifth base – the enormous <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/victory-imagery-01.htm">Camp Victory </a> at Baghdad International Airport – remains, as far as we know, "unresolved"; and there is a sixth possible "permanent super-base" being built in that country, though never presented as such. The Bush administration is sinking between $600 million and $1 billion in construction funds into a new U.S. embassy. It is to arise in Baghdad's Green Zone on a plot of land along the Tigris River that is reportedly <a href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021206D.shtml">two-thirds the area </a> of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The plans for this "embassy" are almost mythic in nature. A high-tech complex, it is to have "15-ft. blast walls and ground-to-air missiles" for protection as well as bunkers to guard against air attacks. It will, according to Chris Hughes, security correspondent <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16541084%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=exclusive%2d%2dbillion%2ddollar%2dbunker%2d-name_page.html">for the British Daily Mirror </a>, include "as many as 300 houses for consular and military officials" and a "large-scale barracks" for Marines. The "compound" will be a cluster of at least 21 buildings, assumedly nearly self-sufficient, including "a gym, swimming pool, barber and beauty shops, a food court, and a commissary. Water, electricity, and sewage treatment plants will all be independent from Baghdad's city utilities." It is being billed as "more secure than the Pentagon" (not, perhaps, the most reassuring tagline in the post-9/11 world). If not quite a city-state, on completion it will resemble an embassy-state. In essence, inside Baghdad's Green Zone, we will be building another more heavily fortified little Green Zone.
 Even Tony Blair's Brits, part of our unraveling, ever shrinking "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, are reported by Brian Brady of the Scotsman (" <a href="http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=183752006">Revealed: Secret Plan to Keep UK Troops Permanently in Iraq </a>") to be bargaining for a tiny permanent base – sorry a base "for years to come" – near Basra in southern Iraq, thus mimicking American "withdrawal" strategy on the micro-scale that befits a junior partner.
 As Juan Cole has pointed out at his <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2006/02/nearly-2-dozen-dead-in-attacks-us-uk.html">Informed Comment blog </a>, the Pentagon can plan for "endurance" in Iraq forever and a day, while top Bush officials and neocons, some now in exile, can continue to dream of a permanent set of bases in the deserts of Iraq that would control the energy heartlands of the planet. None of that will, however, make such bases any more "permanent" than their enormous Vietnam-era predecessors at places like Danang and Cam Rahn Bay proved to be – not certainly if the Shi'ites decide they want us gone or Ayatollah Sistani (as Cole points out) were to issue a fatwa against such bases.
 Nonetheless, the thought of permanency matters. Since the invasion of Saddam's Iraq, those bases – call them what you will – have been at the heart of the Bush administration's "reconstruction" of the country. To this day, those Little Americas, with their KBR-lands, their Pizza Huts, their stop signs, and their miniature golf courses remain at the secret heart of Bush administration "reconstruction" policy. As long as KBR keeps building them, making their facilities ever more enduring (and ever more valuable), there can be no genuine "withdrawal" from Iraq, nor even an intention of doing so. Right now, despite the recent visits of a couple of reporters, those super-bases remain swathed in a kind of policy silence. The Bush administration does not discuss them (other than to deny their permanency from time to time). No presidential speeches deal with them. No plans for them are debated in Congress. The opposition Democrats generally ignore them and the press – with the exception of the odd columnist – won't even put the words "base," "permanent," and "Iraq" in the same paragraph.
 It may be hard to do, given the skimpy coverage, but keep your eyes directed at our "super-bases." Until the administration blinks on them, there will be no withdrawal from Iraq.
 Copyright 2006 Tom Engelhardt

muckraker10021 · Mar 23, 2006

<img src="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/ap/bushcheneycloseup3.jpg">

Cheney-Bush Junta says:
'Troops Will Be In Iraq Until At Least until 2008'

<hr noshade color="#333333" size="14"></hr>

From bush press conference March 21st 2006 
REPORTER: "Will there come a day, and I’m not asking you when — I’m not asking for a timetable — will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?"

baby BUSH : "That, of course, is an objective. And that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."

Is anyone out there still stupid about what US Imperialism in Iraq is all about?

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<img src="http://www.ap.org/media/images/logo.gif">

Iraqis See U.S. In Their Nation To Stay

By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
March 18th 2006

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq -- The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States.

At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.

At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.
"I think we'll be here forever," the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.
The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

The question of America's future in Iraq looms larger as the U.S. military enters the fourth year of its war here, waged first to oust President Saddam Hussein, and now to crush an Iraqi insurgency.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim prime minister, has said he opposes permanent foreign bases. A wide range of American opinion is against them as well. Such bases would be a "stupid" provocation, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, former U.S. Mideast commander and a critic of the original U.S. invasion.

But events, in explosive situations like Iraq's, can turn "no" into "maybe" and even "yes."

The Shiite Muslims, ascendant in Baghdad, might decide they need long-term U.S. protection against insurgent Sunni Muslims. Washington might take the political risks to gain a strategic edge - in its confrontation with next-door Iran, for example.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other U.S. officials disavow any desire for permanent bases. But long-term access, as at other U.S. bases abroad, is different from "permanent," and the official U.S. position is carefully worded.

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman on international security, told The Associated Press it would be "inappropriate" to discuss future basing until a new Iraqi government is in place, expected in the coming weeks.

Less formally, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about "permanent duty stations" by a Marine during an Iraq visit in December, allowed that it was "an interesting question." He said it would have to be raised by the incoming Baghdad government, if "they have an interest in our assisting them for some period over time."

In Washington, Iraq scholar Phebe Marr finds the language intriguing. "If they aren't planning for bases, they ought to say so," she said. "I would expect to hear 'No bases.'"

Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete.

In 2005-06, Washington has authorized or proposed almost $1 billion for U.S. military construction in Iraq, as American forces consolidate at Balad, known as Anaconda, and a handful of other installations, big bases under the old regime.

They have already pulled out of 34 of the 110 bases they were holding last March, said Maj. Lee English of the U.S. command's Base Working Group, planning the consolidation.

"The coalition forces are moving outside the cities while continuing to provide security support to the Iraqi security forces," English said.

The move away from cities, perhaps eventually accompanied by U.S. force reductions, will lower the profile of U.S. troops, frequent targets of roadside bombs on city streets. Officers at Al-Asad Air Base, 10 desert miles from the nearest town, say it hasn't been hit by insurgent mortar or rocket fire since October.

Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The proposed 2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man's-land and build new security fencing around the base, which at 19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the Yellow or Blue bus routes to get around the base, or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers.

The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi electricity grid - a typical sign of a long-term base.

At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facility, Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a double perimeter security fence with high-tech gate controls, guard towers and a moat - in military parlance, a "vehicle entrapment ditch with berm."

Here at Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy 40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.

Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a $16 million ramp to park the Air Force's huge C-5 cargo planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports; and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp, the length of 13 football fields, filled with attack, transport and reconnaissance helicopters.

Turkish builders are pouring tons more concrete for a fourth ramp beside the runways, for medical-evacuation and other aircraft on alert. And $25 million was approved for other "pavement projects," from a special road for munitions trucks to a compound for special forces.

The chief Air Force engineer here, Lt. Col. Scott Hoover, is also overseeing two crucial projects to add to Balad's longevity: equipping the two runways with new permanent lighting, and replacing a weak 3,500-foot section of one runway.

Once that's fixed, "we're good for as long as we need to run it," Hoover said. Ten years? he was asked. "I'd say so."

Away from the flight lines, among traffic jams and freshly planted palms, life improves on 14-square-mile Balad for its estimated 25,000 personnel, including several thousand American and other civilians.

They've inherited an Olympic-sized pool and a chandeliered cinema from the Iraqis. They can order their favorite Baskin-Robbins flavor at ice cream counters in five dining halls, and cut-rate Fords, Chevys or Harley-Davidsons, for delivery at home, at a PX-run "dealership." On one recent evening, not far from a big 24-hour gym, airmen hustled up and down two full-length, lighted outdoor basketball courts as F-16 fighters thundered home overhead.
"Balad's a fantastic base," Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, the Air Force's tactical commander in Iraq, said in an interview at his headquarters here.

Could it host a long-term U.S. presence?

"Eventually it could," said Gorenc, commander of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing. "But there's no commitment to any of the bases we operate, until somebody tells me that."

In the counterinsurgency fight, Balad's central location enables strike aircraft to reach targets in minutes. And in the broader context of reinforcing the U.S. presence in the oil-rich Mideast, Iraq bases are preferable to aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, said a longtime defense analyst.

"Carriers don't have the punch," said Gordon Adams of Washington's George Washington University. "There's a huge advantage to land-based infrastructure. At the level of strategy it makes total sense to have Iraq bases."

A U.S. congressional study cited another, less discussed use for possible Iraq bases: to install anti-ballistic defenses in case Iran fires missiles.

American bases next door could either deter or provoke Iran, noted Paul D. Hughes, a key planner in the early U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Overall, however, this retired Army colonel says American troops are unwanted in the Middle East. With long-term bases in Iraq, "We'd be inviting trouble," Hughes said.

"It's a stupid idea and clearly politically unacceptable," Zinni, a former Central Command chief, said in a Washington interview. "It would damage our image in the region, where people would decide that this" - seizing bases - "was our original intent."

Among Iraqis, the subject is almost too sensitive to discuss.

"People don't like bases," veteran politician Adnan Pachachi, a member of the new Parliament, told the AP. "If bases are absolutely necessary, if there's a perceived threat ... but I don't think even Iran will be a threat."

If long-term basing is, indeed, on the horizon, "the politics back here and the politics in the region say, 'Don't announce it,'" Adams said in Washington. That's what's done elsewhere, as with the quiet U.S. basing of spy planes and other aircraft in the United Arab Emirates.

Army and Air Force engineers, with little notice, have worked to give U.S. commanders solid installations in Iraq, and to give policymakers options. From the start, in 2003, the first Army engineers rolling into Balad took the long view, laying out a 10-year plan envisioning a move from tents to today's living quarters in air-conditioned trailers, to concrete-and-brick barracks by 2008.

In early 2006, no one's confirming such next steps, but a Balad "master plan," details undisclosed, is nearing completion, a possible model for al-Asad, Tallil and a fourth major base, al-Qayyarah in Iraq's north.
---
EDITOR'S NOTE - This report is based on interviews with U.S. military engineers and others before and during the writer's two weeks as an embedded reporter at major U.S. bases in Iraq.
AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.

QueEx · Apr 1, 2006

<center>Insurgent Violence Escalates In Iraq
while the new government is caught up in
power struggles over cabinet positions</center>

Washington Post
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 24, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, April 23 -- Violence is escalating sharply in Iraq after a period of relative calm that followed the January elections. Bombings, ambushes and kidnappings targeting Iraqis and foreigners, both troops and civilians, have surged this month while the new Iraqi government is caught up in power struggles over cabinet positions.

Many attacks have gone unchallenged by Iraqi forces in large areas of the country dominated by insurgents, according to the U.S. military, Iraqi officials and civilians and visits by Washington Post correspondents. Hundreds of Iraqis and foreigners have either been killed or wounded in the last week.

"Definitely, violence is getting worse," said a U.S. official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "My strong sense is that a lot of the political momentum that was generated out of the successful election, which was sort of like a punch in the gut to the insurgents, has worn off." The political stalemate "has given the insurgents new hope," the official added, repeating a message Americans say they are increasingly giving Iraqi leaders.

This week, at a checkpoint bunker in Tarmiya where insurgents downed a helicopter, a teenager in sunglasses clutching an AK-47 marked the limits of the Iraqi army's authority. "I wouldn't advise going there," the young Shiite Muslim recruit said, referring to Tarmiya, a Tigris River town a few hundred yards up the road that is dominated by Sunni Muslim landowners who were loyal to Saddam Hussein. "Those are some bad people there."

Up the road, insurgents run relatively free, and last week they appeared to have used a hilltop outside of town to fire what they later said was a shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missile. The missile hit a chartered Russian-made helicopter Thursday, killing six Americans and five other foreigners, including a survivor executed by the guerrillas afterward.

Another U.S. soldier was killed on Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy west of Baghdad, the Reuters news agency reported.

The U.S. official said this week that overall attacks had increased since the end of March. Roadside bombings and attacks on military targets are up by as much as 40 percent in parts of the country over the same period, according to estimates from private security outfits.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi leadership remains in limbo.

The attacks, coming as officials continued to haggle over government posts, have eroded some of the hope that followed the elections. Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and secular leaders, most of whom are building the first democratically elected Iraqi government of their adult lives, have let power struggles fill nearly one-third of their government's planned 11-month run.

At best, deal-making on some key posts appears stuck where it was two weeks ago, when Ibrahim Jafari, a formerly exiled Shiite leader, accepted the prime minister's job and the task of forming a promised national-unity government.

There was increasing talk that dissenters within the governing coalition, led by Shiites and Kurds, are trying to prolong negotiations until Jafari misses an early May deadline to form a government. This could put the prime minister job into the hands of another Shiite candidate.

Soldiers and police across much of Iraq have fallen into inaction. The Defense and Interior ministries are run by interim chiefs slated for replacement. Initiatives by the Iraqi forces against the insurgents have all but ceased.

The insurgency has found new hideouts, gathering points and recruiting areas in western and central Iraq, and in eastern Iraq along the Tigris River, as well as in other locations.

"The government is useless! I have stopped depending on it," Ali Hali, a 29-year-old Shiite, cried last week. He was among hundreds of wailing residents of the southern city of Najaf who gathered in anger after scores of bodies were found in the Tigris. How the people were killed is not known, but Shiites said they presumed them to be victims of Sunni extremists.

Tensions over the killings in the area focused on the town of Madain, where rumors that Sunnis are kidnapping and killing Shiite townspeople were rife. Some Shiite national leaders have warned of sectarian war. In Shiite strongholds, there were threats of retaliatory violence against innocent Sunnis.

Even with accusations about Madain circulating on the streets, in newspapers and on television, Iraq's Interior Ministry waited a day to place a call to the town to ask about the situation.

The ministry's police had withdrawn from the town long ago, and phone lines were bad, said Sabah Kadhim, a ministry spokesman. Journalists noted that police waited three more days, after plenty of notice, to send forces sweeping through the town, only to say they had found neither kidnappers nor hostages.

Meanwhile, officials describe setbacks in the security situation in the Sunni Muslim city of Husaybah on the Syrian border, near the area where fighters tied to al Qaeda had staged the second of two well-planned attacks on a U.S. military installation this month. An Iraqi army unit that had once grown to 400 members has dwindled to a few dozen guardsmen "holed up'' inside a phosphate plant outside of Husaybah for their protection, a Marine commander said.

Maj. John Reed, executive officer for the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, which has a company in Husaybah, said the Iraqi guardsmen retreated to the phosphate plant compound with their families after insurgents attacked and killed scores of people in recent months.

"They will claim that they've got hundreds ready to come back and fight," said Reed, whose company seldom patrols inside Husaybah. "Well, there are no more than 30 of them on duty on any given day, and they are completely ineffective."

At Tarmiya, along the heavily Sunni-populated banks of the Tigris, Shiite recruits sent by the government usually stay well out of town unless accompanying U.S. patrols, a correspondent for The Post observed. Police officers man a station inside Tarmiya, but they are Sunnis from the same tribes as the townspeople. Even they are seldom seen.

In city after city and town after town, security forces who had signed up to secure Iraq and replace U.S. forces appear to have abandoned posts or taken refuge inside them for fear of attacks.

''We joined the police, and after this, the job became a way of committing suicide,'' said Jasim Khadar Harki, a 28-year-old policeman in Mosul, where residents say patrols are dropping off noticeably, often appearing only in response to attacks.

Tips from Mosul's residents have dropped off as well, with residents doubtful that police can protect informants from retaliation. When a school principal in Mosul saw insurgents place explosives outside the gates of a police station next door, the principal didn't tell police -- only quietly dismissed pupils for the day, townspeople said.

The Interior Ministry is a distant force to which the police appeal for supplies, Harki said, "but they rarely respond."

Guerrilla campaigns also are fought psychologically, by intimidation, Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp., said in a telephone interview. Along that line, this month has shown a return of grim videos showing distraught hostages and executions, while daily bombings make every trip out of the house a calculated risk for Iraqis.

"Insurgencies can't necessarily be measured in attacks but in overall security," Hoffman said. "It's still enormously uneven even in country's capital."

He pointed to the downing of the helicopter north of Baghdad's airport and to bombings along the airport road that have claimed dozens of injured and dead this month.

Iraq's political leaders acknowledge increasing pressure from the United States and Iraqis to wrap up a government to deal with the violence.

"It's natural that our friends would be pointing" to the problem, "as well as our constituents," said Barham Salih, the former interim deputy prime minister and a lead figure for the Kurds in the government formation talks.

"There is a serious security challenge, and we will be held to account," he said.

For residents of Baghdad, where security forces that are comparatively well engaged have been unable to stop daily bombings, the return to violence has already brought some residents to despair.

"This is terrible," said Waleed Sharhan, outside a mosque where two children were among the nine dead from a bombing Friday. "There is no hope that this country will be better."

Correspondent Steve Fainaru at the Syrian border and special correspondents Naseer Nouri at Tarmiya, Marwan Ani in Mosul and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12417-2005Apr23.html

QueEx · Apr 2, 2006

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ l

<center>Shiites Call On Premier to Quit
Ibrahim Jafari loses key supporters over his inability
to form a new Iraqi government. The U.S. blames
inaction for the growing violence</center>

Los Angeles Times
By Solomon Moore, Times Staff Writer
April 2, 2006

BAGHDAD — Prominent Shiite politicians deserted beleaguered Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari on Saturday and revealed that they had started looking for a less polarizing figure who could help overcome differences blocking the formation of a unity government.

Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular blocs all have lined up against Jafari, but members of the governing Shiite bloc had stuck with him. U.S. and Iraqi officials said last week that the White House also had sent a message to Iraqi officials asking that the prime minister be replaced.

Opposition to Jafari among Kurds and Sunni Arabs has been a main stumbling block to the formation of a new government since the Dec. 15 elections. On Saturday, a senior U.S. military official said the resulting leadership vacuum had allowed sectarian violence to fester and spread.

"What we want to see is the rule of law with the government in control and governing in Iraq," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's tough when the government has not been stood up."

Violence has increased since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite mosque in Samarra, which unleashed a spate of reprisal attacks by Shiite militia forces against Sunni Arabs.

Shiite calls for the interim prime minister to resign came after the other blocs formally reiterated their opposition to his candidacy and Jafari made last-ditch efforts to convince them that he should remain.

The most damaging development for Jafari, a religious scholar with close ties to Iran, is the erosion of his support within the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, a dominant Shiite party. A high-level strategist suggested Saturday that the party would be willing to withdraw its support for Jafari if it was unable to persuade the other ethnic and religious blocs to accept him.

"If we find that the road is blocked and other alliances are insisting on him leaving, and we cannot form the national unity government, then we will do what we must to have an agreement between all the blocs for the sake of the political process," said Ridha Taqi. "We don't want to hinder the political process."

Hasan Shammari of Al Fadila al Islamiya, or the Islamic Virtue Party, said that stymied attempts to form a unity government and vigorous opposition by the Kurdish Alliance and the Sunni Arab bloc had moved the Shiite coalition to reexamine Jafari's bid.

SCIRI had its own candidate for prime minister, economist Adel Abdul Mehdi, Shammari said. Mehdi was edged out by a single vote in an election within the Shiite alliance in February. "They think that Jafari is not suitable for the coming era," Shammari said, adding that his own party and some members of a third alliance group opposed Jafari.

Three other alliance members including the slate associated with firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr expressed their continuing support for Jafari on Saturday.

The Shiite alliance holds 130 of the 275 seats in parliament. But the members of the Cabinet must be approved by a two-thirds margin, so the Shiites need the support of other parties.

Jafari's hold on the prime minister's office has been tenuous since the close vote in February within the Shiite alliance.

Kurds, who hold the presidency, accuse Jafari of hoarding power and failing to restore Kurdish communities in Kirkuk and other northern cities subjected to "ethnic cleansing" under Saddam Hussein. Sunni Arabs blame Jafari for allowing militias to assume control of police forces that have carried out waves of illegal arrests and death squad operations in Sunni Arab areas.

Taqi said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had delivered a "personal message" from President Bush to Abdelaziz Hakim, the Shiite alliance leader, last week, expressing his hope that Jafari would step down. The ambassador asked that the president's message also be relayed to Jafari, Taqi said.

U.S. Embassy officials denied Taqi's account, but a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity last week, confirmed it. Shiite politicians have expressed anger at what they consider U.S. meddling in Iraqi politics.

A Western diplomat interviewed Saturday said that four Shiite political groups within the Shiite bloc, including SCIRI and Fadila, had given an ultimatum to Jafari: Gain the support of the Kurds, Sunni Arabs and secular parties within three days, or step aside.

"They kind of had this deadline for Jafari," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The cracks in the fragile Shiite alliance have come at a crucial time. Representatives of the four main political groups, including Kurds, Sunni Arabs and the secular national blocs, are putting the finishing touches on the formal structure of the government before making political appointments.

The office of President Jalal Talabani on Saturday announced the creation of a ministerial committee on national security, which will develop intelligence, military and police policies.

The U.S. military official suggested that the government crisis was hurting efforts to curtail militias and contributing to security woes and confusion on the streets. He said a new government could at least formulate a clear-cut policy on the sectarian militias and what coalition forces could do to disarm them.

The political wrangling took place amid a backdrop of continuing violence Saturday. U.S. military officials announced the death of a Marine in "enemy action" in the western province of Al Anbar but did not specify the type of attack or area where the incident had occurred.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq2apr02,0,3760.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Greed · Apr 9, 2006

Report on Iraq offers bleak assessment

Report on Iraq offers bleak assessment
By Mussab Al-Khairalla
1 hour, 24 minutes ago

An internal US embassy report on Iraq's provinces and obtained by the New York Times concluded in January that the stability of the strategic Baghdad region is a serious concern.

The 10-page report, dated January 31, three weeks before the insurgent bombing of a Shi'ite shrine pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war, says the governorate is plagued by intimidation and assassinations of public officials, Iraqi security forces and civilians.

The report rates the stability of each of Iraq's 18 provinces according to their governance, security and economy.

It finds six provinces, mainly in Sunni-populated northwestern Iraq, have a "serious" security situation, with the rebellious desert province of Anbar suffering from "critical" economic and security problems.

Those areas are the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency gripping central Iraq.

Security in Iraq's nine southern Shi'ite provinces was seen as "stable," or "moderate," with the exception of oil-rich Basra governorate, home to Iraq's second largest city.

"A high level of militia activity including infiltration of local security forces. Smuggling and criminal activity continues unabated," the report said of the predominantly Shi'ite city.

The report finds the relatively calm semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north as stable in governance, security and economy.

In the holy southern Shi'ite cities of Kerbala and Najaf, the report says the local government is stable but warns of increasing Iranian influence.

"Government is functioning and improving. However, there appears to be increasing association with the Iranian government. The local population ... are concerned about their growing influence."

The report also warns of "strong and growing influence of the SCIRI party" on Baghdad's provincial council.

SCIRI is one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite Islamist parties and is accused of having close links to the anti-US regime in Tehran. Sunni Arabs accuse SCIRI of sanctioning militia death squads, a charge it denies.

But despite the high level of violence, Baghdad, whose stability is crucial for the progress of the whole country, has "an economy that is developing slowly" and a "government that functions, but has areas of concerns," according to the report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060409/ts_nm/iraq_usa_report_dc

Greed · Apr 10, 2006

Iraqi Troops Start Rolling Out in Ramadi

Iraqi Troops Start Rolling Out in Ramadi
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 57 minutes ago

The troops didn't go far, the mission didn't last long and the neighborhood wasn't the most dangerous in town. But when Iraqi army troops moved out on a recent patrol in central Ramadi, they took a crucial step forward, rolling out in their own armored Humvees for the first time.

Until now, this unit has mostly patrolled their small, relatively quiet slice of downtown on foot, leaving the worst parts of the turbulent city center to better-equipped U.S. troops.

American commanders want Iraqi units to operate independently in the more dangerous downtown areas of Ramadi, about 75 miles west of Baghdad. But they lack equipment — especially proper transport. Though they have their own trucks, they rely heavily on U.S. forces to move around.

In recent weeks, that's begun to change.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry has begun distributing armored Humvees to Iraqi units that look nearly identical to their tan-colored U.S. counterparts. The Iraqi vehicles are equipped with bulletproof glass and radios, painted outside with the Iraqi flag and chocolate chip camouflage markings.

"This is a huge step," said Marine 2nd Lt. Ryan Hub, who accompanied Iraqi troops on a foot patrol Friday while the Humvees provided back-up.

Tracing a finger along a satellite map of central Ramadi, Hub circled a roughly one-square-mile area near the Marine base which the Iraqis patrol. He then pointed to other Marine-controlled zones he hoped Iraqis troops would soon patrol in Humvees.

"It means we can extend their battle space," said the 25-year-old from Sumter, S.C.

On Tuesday, the Humvees proved useful as Iraqi forces evacuated a soldier shot in the leg, said Lt. Col. Steve Neary, who commands the Marine's 3rd Battalion, 8th Regiment. Previously, such tasks would have been carried out by the U.S. military.

On Friday, an Iraqi 2nd lieutenant named Ahmed was in the first Humvee of a four-vehicle convoy leaving a U.S. Marine base. Marine commanders asked that his full name not be used for fear he could be targeted by insurgents.

Taking a drag off a cigarette a few blocks on, Ahmed was startled to see two of his own vehicles — they had taken a wrong turn — coming in the opposite direction. "Follow me!" he yelled into the radio. "Follow me!"

Soon, all four Humvees were circling the block in unison, passing rusted-out cars, blown-out apartment blocks and children raising their fists in the air to show support.

Unlike other joint missions, only the Iraqis were radioing their minute-by-minute progress back to base.

Ahmed's role was to provide back-up support for the foot patrol, which swept the apartment complex with several Marines in tow. Ahmed said if need be, his Humvees could evacuate casualties, or open fire with heavy machine guns.

Such support has traditionally been the job of the U.S. military. Marines weren't taking chances Friday, though, and had a separate supporting patrol that halted traffic so the Iraqi convoy could move unhindered.

The Iraqis didn't go far. The base's barbed-wire-topped wall was often visible as the Humvees repeatedly circled past it. Following the Marines' advice, the Iraqi gunners kept their heads down in their turrets to avoid snipers. Less than two hours later, Ahmed was back on base.

"It's baby steps," said Marine Capt. Carlos Barela, commander of Lima Company. "They're nervous, but that's good. If they weren't, they'd be careless."

It was a quiet first trip out, though it might not have been. Insurgents, apparently, had been watching. A Marine in a watchtower spotted a man planting a roadside bomb one street over from where the Iraqi Humvees had been circling.

Ahmed praised the newly arrived vehicles, but expressed a deep concern for lack of other equipment. Although his men had uniforms, kneepads, and aging Kalashnikov rifles, they have no mortars, sniper rifles or rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Capt. Jabar, an Iraqi commander who directed Ahmed's movements from base, agreed.

"The insurgents are better armed than us," Jabar said. "The Humvees will help. And we can still fight them, but we depend on the Americans for everything" — medics, logistics, firepower, air support.

Jabar said his 90-man company had only two sets of night-vision goggles. Another Iraqi commander, who made similar complaints about equipment at an army recruiting drive in Ramadi last week, said his unit had to share armored vests to go on patrols.

Barela said American commanders were aware of the complaints — and Iraqi soldiers' concerns over pay — but ultimately, those were issues for the Iraqi Defense Ministry to overcome.

"We could solve all their problems for them, but if we do it all, that's going to make them dependent," said Barela, 35, of Albuquerque, N.M. "We're standing up a military from scratch. There's going to be growing pains."

A lot more training will be needed before Iraqi forces can stand on their own. In central Ramadi, for example, only Marines are going out on night patrols.

The U.S. command in Baghdad says the Iraqi army numbers about 111,000 troops, and is expected to reach full strength of 130,000 next year.

But they are struggling to retain those who've already joined up. Some quit because of the hazards of duty, others because of low pay.

Iraqi troops deployed here get one week of vacation after every three-week stint. "Every month, two, three, five members of each company don't come back," Jabar said. "At this rate, our companies will be reduced to single platoons."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060410/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_rolling_on

Greed · Apr 10, 2006

Mubarak Questions Loyalty of Iraq Shiites

Mubarak Questions Loyalty of Iraq Shiites
By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
Sun Apr 9, 10:36 PM ET

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak angered Iraqi leaders Sunday by saying Shiites there and across the Middle East are more loyal to Iran than to their own countries as he gave a startlingly frank warning about possible civil war in Iraq.

The flap highlights the escalating tensions between predominantly Sunni Arab countries — alarmed by possible Kurdish and Shiite domination of their neighbor — and Iraqis who say they are not getting enough support from their Arab brothers.

"Definitely Iran has influence on Shiites," Mubarak said in an interview broadcast Saturday evening by Al-Arabiya television. "Shiites are 65 percent of the Iraqis ... Most of the Shiites are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are living in."

He also said civil war "has almost started" in Iraq.

"At the moment, Iraq is almost close to destruction," he warned.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said Mubarak's comments were not accurate.

"It is true that there are some kind of clashes among Sunnis and Shias. But it is not civil war," he told Britain's Channel 4 News.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw reiterated that civil war in Iraq was neither imminent nor inevitable but accepted that the situation was "very serious."

Mubarak has rarely commented on the situation in Iraq and his statements usually are broad, vague expressions of concern over the violence and political turmoil there. Arab leaders also generally avoid pointed criticism of their fellow leaders.

So the interview startled not only Iraqis but also the Shiites who form large communities in a number of Mideast nations — particularly the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Some of them said Mubarak's comments only fuel momentum toward civil war.

Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awad, tried Sunday to soften the impact. He said the president was talking about Shiite sympathy with Iran "in view of its hosting of (Shiite) holy shrines."

"The president's statement about Iraq was only reflecting his increasing worries about the deteriorating situation and his keenness to maintain Iraq's national unity," Awad said in a statement carried by the state news agency MENA.

That did not seem to mollify Iraqi leaders.

"This is a stab in their (Shiites') patriotism and their civilization," Iraq's three highest-ranking Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders — Talabani, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Parliament Speaker Adnan Pachachi — said in a joint statement Sunday.

"Reality and historical facts show that the Shiites always have been patriotic and genuine Iraqis. This unfair accusation against Shiites is baseless," Talabani, a Kurd, later told Iraqi television.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari complained to Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit about Mubarak's remarks, an Iraqi diplomat in Cairo said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Mubarak's comments are likely to fuel complaints by Iraq's new Shiite and Kurdish leaders that Sunni-led Arab nations are biased toward the country's Sunni Arab minority and do not consider their government legitimate.

Last month, Zebari lashed out at Arab leaders in a summit in Khartoum, Sudan — that Mubarak did not attend — telling them they are to blame if Iran has influence because they have not supported Iraq since Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003.

Iraq has demanded Arab countries follow through on promises to send ambassadors to Baghdad, and it sees their failure to do so as a lack of support and recognition. Iraqi leaders also want their Arab neighbors to forgive their debt and condemn the insurgents, most of whom are Sunni Arabs.

But Arab nations appear increasingly worried about Iranian influence in Iraq and the possibility that Shiite power there will stir up Shiite minorities in their countries.

Last year, Jordan's King Abdullah II warned that Iran was seeking to create "a Shiite crescent" that would disrupt the balance of power in the region. Saudi Foreign Minister Saudi al-Faisal made similar warnings.

Arab leaders at the Khartoum summit expressed deep concern over plans for U.S.-Iranian talks over Iraq, fearing that meant they were being squeezed out of a say in the country.

Arab governments are countering by trying to form their own united stance on Iraq. Arab foreign ministers are due to meet in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss Iraq.

Last week, Arab diplomats told The Associated Press that top intelligence officers from several Arab countries and Turkey have been meeting secretly to coordinate their governments' strategies in case civil war erupts in Iraq and to block Iranian interference.

Turkey, a key non-Arab Sunni Muslim nation bordering Iraq, is worried about Iraq's split into sectarian and ethnic entities that will give rise to Kurdish ambitions for independence.

The Cairo-based Arab League also is planning a meeting of leaders of the Iraqi factions ahead of a proposed conference that will bring together representatives of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in June.

For Shiites around the region, Mubarak's remarks hinted at Arab governments lining up against their community.

"We do not beg for certificates of allegiance to our countries from Mubarak or others," Kuwaiti Shiite lawmaker Hassan Jawhar said in a press conference held in parliament.

The comments are "the engine which drives the whole region toward civil war," Fouad Ibrahim, a prominent Saudi Shiite writer, told The Associated Press from exile in London.

Shiites are the majority in Iran and Iraq and have significant minorities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and Yemen.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060410...NZI2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

Greed · Apr 22, 2006

Iraq's Maliki says militias must join armed forces

Iraq's Maliki says militias must join armed forces
29 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Prime Minister- designate Jawad al-Maliki said on Saturday the country's militias must merge with the armed forces, despite calls from the United States to disarm them.

"Arms should be in the hands of the government. There is a law that calls for the merging of militias with the armed forces," Maliki said in his first policy speech after he was asked by President Jalal Talabani to head Iraq's new government.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060422...KZZ.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

Greed · Apr 22, 2006

Iraqi Lawmakers End Months of Deadlock

Iraqi Lawmakers End Months of Deadlock
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
20 minutes ago

Iraq's president formally designated Shiite politician Jawad al-Maliki to form a new government Saturday, starting a process aimed at healing ethnic and religious wounds and pulling the nation out of insurgency and sectarian strife.

The move ends months of political deadlock among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that threatened to drag the nation into civil war. Al-Maliki has 30 days to present his Cabinet to parliament for approval.

Parliament elected President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to a second term and gave the post of parliament speaker to Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab. Al-Mashhadani's two deputies were to be Khalid al-Attiyah, a Shiite, and Aref Tayfour, a Kurd.

The tough-talking al-Maliki was nominated by the Shiites on Friday after outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari gave up his bid for another term. Al-Jaafari's attempt to stay in office was adamantly opposed by Sunnis and Kurds, causing a monthslong deadlock while the country's security crisis worsened in the wake of December's election.

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope that a national unity government representing Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds will be able to quell both the Sunni-led insurgency and bloody Shiite-Sunni violence that has raged during the political uncertainty. If it succeeds, it could enable the U.S. to begin withdrawing its 133,000 troops.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration is hopeful that the latest political developments in Iraq will lead to significant progress in forming a permanent government.

"We hope to see good progress in the coming days," McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush to California. "We'll be watching."

Suspected insurgents, meanwhile, set off two bombs in a public market in central Iraq, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 17. The second blast was timed to hit emergency crews arriving at the scene.

The first bomb exploded at 7:30 a.m. in the middle of Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, causing a large fire, police said.

When fire engines arrived, the second bomb went off, killing a firefighter and a civilian, and wounding 17 civilians, police said.

The bullet-ridden bodies of 10 Iraqis were found in and around Baghdad, many blindfolded with their hands and legs bound in rope. Some appeared to have been tortured, and one had been decapitated, police said.

Police also found a body with signs of torture floating in the Tigris River in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, said Hadi al-Ittabi, an employee of the Kut Forensic Center.

In Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car sprayed a police patrol with machine-gun fire, killing one officer, police said. Gunmen killed a civilian riding in a car, and a roadside bomb wounded two policemen, police said.

On Friday, at least 22 Iraqis were killed, including six in a car bombing in Tal Afar in western Iraq and six off-duty Iraqi soldiers slain in Beiji in northern Iraq, police said.

An Australian soldier shot himself in the head in a "tragic accident" inside Baghdad's Green Zone housing the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government buildings, Australian defense officials said Saturday.

He was the Australian military's first casualty since the Iraq war began in 2003. Last year, an Australian-British citizen serving in Britain's Royal Air Force was killed.

Al-Maliki has a reputation as a hard-line, outspoken defender of the Shiite stance — raising questions over whether he will be able to negotiate the delicate sectarian balancing act.

From exile in Syria in the 1980s and 1990s, he directed Dawa guerrillas fighting Saddam Hussein's regime. Since returning home after Saddam's fall, he has been a prominent member of the commission purging former Baath Party officials from the military and government.

Sunni Arabs, who made up the backbone of Saddam's ousted party, deeply resent the commission.

Al-Maliki also was a tough negotiator in drawn-out deliberations over the new constitution passed last year despite Sunni Arab objections. He resisted U.S. efforts to put more Sunnis on the drafting committee as well as Sunni efforts to water down provisions giving Shiites and Kurds the power to form semiautonomous mini-states in the north and south.

Sunnis and Kurds blamed the rise of sectarian tensions on al-Jaafari, saying he failed to rein in Shiite militias and Interior Ministry commandos, accused by the Sunnis of harboring death squads. Those parties refused to join any government headed by al-Jaafari.

Al-Jaafari, prime minister since April 2005, was nominated by the alliance for a second term in February by a one-vote margin, relying on support from radical, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Jaafari had stalwartly rejected pressure to give up the post until Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sent word that he should go. On Thursday, al-Jaafari gave the alliance the go-ahead to pick a new nominee.

The new prime minister nominee will now face the task of putting together a national unity government, meaning divvying up the ministries among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties.

One source of conflict is likely to be the powerful Interior Ministry, which currently is held by SCIRI. Sunnis probably will push for a change and demand the uprooting of Shiite militias from the ministry's security forces.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060422/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Greed · Apr 24, 2006

Iraqi Bloggers Weigh in on Changing Nation

Iraqi Bloggers Weigh in on Changing Nation
By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer
Sat Apr 22, 12:08 PM ET

Zeyad is a 27-year-old dentist. He works for a government clinic with broken dental chairs and no anesthetics. At home, when gunfire rattles his neighborhood, Zeyad's family cowers in one room murmuring prayers while he types away on his computer.

Zeyad is a blogger.

Unheard of in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, blogging is providing ordinary Iraqis with a voice — a chance to vent and reflect on the changes reshaping their country.

For the outside world, the generally anonymous Internet postings offer raw insider views and insights in which sorrow and joy, hope and despair, fear and defiance coexist as the violence of the insurgency and now sectarian divisions swirl around Iraqis.

"The West should listen to the opinions of the simple Iraqi people. They only hear from analysts and politicians," said Zeyad, who agreed to discuss his blogging only if his family name wasn't revealed for security reasons. "This is a good window into the world."

Zeyad penned his first entry in his Healing Iraq blog in October 2003 about Iraq's new currency, calling it "wonderful and so symbolic" that the distribution of the new dinar coincided with the anniversary of a referendum that re-elected Saddam. He has gone on to chronicle his thoughts on all aspects of life in the new Iraq.

A self-described agnostic born into a Sunni Muslim family, Zeyad reacted angrily in 2003 when the then interior minister announced that people found eating in public during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan would be detained for three days and fined.

"I wanted to kill someone after reading all that," Zeyad wrote. "Free country my ass."

In later postings, he seethed at the growing influence of Muslim clerics, saying it made him fear for the future of freedom in Iraq.

"I want to be able to buy my vodka without having to look left and right. I want to be able to walk with my girlfriend in the street while holding hands together without people glaring at me. Is this TOO MUCH to ask?" he wrote. "Do I have to immigrate and leave my country for wanting to do all that?"

But there were moments of pride and exhilaration, too.

One came when Iraqis voted for an interim legislature in January 2005, their first democratic election in decades.

"Hold your head up high. Remember that you are Iraqi," Zeyad wrote that day.

"My mother was in tears watching the scenes from all over the country," he added. "Iraqis had voted for peace and for a better future, despite the surrounding madness. I sincerely hope this small step would be the start of much bolder ones."

More recently, his blog has tackled grimmer subjects: explosions, assassinations, street fighting — common themes in many Iraqi blogs.

"Please don't ask me whether I believe Iraq is on the verge of civil war yet or not," Zeyad wrote. "All I see is that both sides are engaged in tit-for-tat lynchings and summary executions."

Zeyad said Health Ministry officials deem the trip to his clinic on the outskirts of Baghdad too risky. That's why the chairs haven't been fixed and the anesthetics were not provided. "We don't work," he said.

Still, Zeyad knows that under Saddam's regime, he couldn't have dreamed of having a blog, let alone publicly criticizing the government.

Like Zeyad, who moved with his family to Britain when he was 1 and returned to Iraq at 7, most Iraqi bloggers seem relatively young and well-educated — and they write in English.

While they often mull over the same events, their opinions vary, often along sectarian lines.

Take a March 26 raid by U.S. and special Iraqi forces on a mosque compound in northern Baghdad during which at least 16 people were killed.

Zeyad wrote simply that American soldiers clashed with Shiite Muslim militiamen who resisted the search, but another blogger who uses the pen name Hammorabi took a sharply different view.

"American forces' crime against the worshippers," screamed a headline in Hammorabi's blog. "The killing of the worshippers in al-Moustafa mosque by the American forces should be investigated and those who are responsible for it should be punished."

Some bloggers scorn the "men in black," a gibe at Shiite militiamen accused by many Sunnis of targeting them. Others lash out at "terrorists," an apparent reference to Sunni insurgents frequently attacking Shiites.

The third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq also evoked divergent emotions among bloggers.

While lamenting the violence in Iraq, a blogger who uses the pseudonym The Mesopotamian praised the war that ousted Saddam.

"The blood and sacrifices by the American soldiers and people will never be forgotten," The Mesopotamian wrote. "It was right, it was just and it was ordained by God that a murderer and tyrant should be overthrown."

Not really, argued a woman blogger who calls herself Riverbend. Writing in her Baghdad Burning blog, she said the war "marked the end of Iraq's independence."

"I don't think anyone imagined three years ago that things could be quite this bad today," Riverbend wrote.

Riverbend's writings brought international attention to Iraqi blogging. Some of her blog entries were published in a book that is available in the United States and Britain and that won her a Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage.

Her Web musings, often critical but also sprinkled with humor, have drawn mixed reviews, with some readers questioning whether she really is an Iraqi woman.

She hasn't been deterred, offering up her dismay at the hardships of daily life.

"The thing most worrisome about the situation now is that discrimination based on sect has become so commonplace," Riverbend wrote. "The typical Iraqi dream has become to find some safe haven abroad."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...ap/20060422/ap_on_hi_te/iraq_blogger_s_view_1

muckraker10021 · May 11, 2006

I’m surprised no one has posted this article since I first read it in early February. Buckley is “Mr. Conservative”, but he was never a fascist Neo-Con like the bush junta.
Liberal intellectual giant John Kenneth Galbraith died recently and unlike the fascist Neo-Con’s who gleefully trashed his work and spit on his grave, Buckley gave the man his proper respect in a well written tribute. Say what you will about “Mr. Conservative” he was always a member of the “reality-based” community. In the article below, he acknowledges the obvious about Iraq, that the 31% of the “faith-based” zealots who are still in-the-bunker with their “Dear Leader” will never see. 

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<img src="http://beta.nationalreview.com/images/logo_old_AFBEE0.gif"><img src="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/images/banners/buckley.jpg">  William F. Buckley
  editor at large


It Didn't Work

by William F. Buckley
February 25, 2006
http://www.nationalreview.com/

"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes -- it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunnis and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samarra and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that "the bombing has completely demolished" what was being attempted -- to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are "Zionists." It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each other's throats.

A problem for American policymakers -- for President Bush, ultimately -- is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.

One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom. The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymakers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. It can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa and in much of Asia. The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and anti-democratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail -- in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) that we simply are not prepared to take?

It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

QueEx · May 21, 2006

[frame]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5002196.stm[/frame]

QueEx · May 22, 2006

<center>Why Iraqis Aren't Cheering Their New Government
U.S. officials are more optimistic than the locals
about a new cabinet that looks a lot like the old one,
and leaves vacant the most contentious posts</center>

TIME
By APARISIM GHOSH/BAGHDAD
Posted Saturday, May. 20, 2006

U.S. officials are spinning the formation of Iraq's new government as a triumph of democracy and the first step toward stabilizing the civil war-ravaged country. But Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet, sworn in Saturday after five months of bickering and brinkmanship has been greeted with a mixture of incredulity and skepticism by many Iraqis. "All that time spent in negotiations, and they couldn't fill the most important positions," says schoolteacher Salah Ubeidi, referring to three security-related posts that have been left vacant for now. "Why should we trust them to make the important decisions that need to be made?"

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, desperate for the creation of a "national unity" government that includes representatives of all the ethnic and sectarian groups, has declared Maliki's 37-member cabinet a giant leap forward. "With the political change that has taken place, with the emphasis on unity and reconciliation, with effective ministers, with associated activities, conditions are likely to move in the right direction and that would allow adjustments in terms of the size composition and mission of our forces," Khalilzad said. Expect that sentiment to be echoed by Bush Administration officials in Washington, where political progress is regarded as essential to allow a drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq. Reading from the same script, Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, America's staunchest ally in Iraq, said Saturday's ceremony "provides a good omen to our people that the government will achieve for them security, stability, peace and prosperity."

But for many Iraqis, such optimism is hard to justify, especially since the new government includes several of the inept, corrupt and thoroughly discredited leaders who had made such a hash of the interim administration under the previous Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari. Indeed, the most discredited of them all, former Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, has received a promotion.

During his year as Interior Minister, Jabr had become the symbol of governmental failure — and that was the charitable view. Others, especially the minority Sunnis, accused him of looking to other way as Shi'ite militias infiltrated the police force and, shielded by their uniforms, launched a campaign of kidnapping, torture and assassination of Sunnis. Jabr is himself connected to the Badr Brigades, a Shi'ite militia that was created and funded by Iran. Although he denied that death squads were at large in the police force, he failed to halt the killings, which currently run at around 1,000 a month in Baghdad alone.

In the new cabinet, Jabr has been made Finance Minister. "The message this sends to Iraqis is that incompetence is acceptable, even in the most crucial ministries," says a Western diplomat in Baghdad. "Any cabinet that has Bayan Jabr in a top position is starting with a huge credibility gap."

For Iraqis, the main talking point was Maliki's failure to secure all-party consensus on the ministries most crucial to Iraq's security — defence, interior and national security. Maliki has appointed a hitherto unknown Sunni, Salam al-Zaubai, as "interim" defense minister. Kurdish leader Barham Saleh is temporarily in charge of national security. And the Prime Minister, a Shi'ite with no previous administrative experience worth the mention, is keeping the interior portfolio to himself until, he says, a more suitable candidate can be found.

It's unclear how long the temporary ministers will serve, or how they are expected to succeed where their predecessors failed. The biggest question mark hangs over the Interior Ministry, where Maliki's main task — to reduce the influence of Shi'ite militias in the police force — will put him in conflict with his own political base. As a member of the Shi'ite alliance that has the largest bloc of seats in Parliament, Maliki is tied to the parties that control those very militias, and they won't take kindly to any crackdowns. Indeed, Maliki would not be Prime Minister without the consent of militia leader Moqtada Sadr.

Unsurprisingly, the announcement of temporary ministers for the security roles did not go down well with many Sunnis. The parliamentary faction of Sunni leader Saleh Mutlak walked out of the legislature in protest. Mutlak had told TIME earlier in the week that Maliki and other Shi'ite leaders were using the guise of "temporary ministers" as a way of creating a fait accompli. "After some weeks or months, they will say, look, the Interior Ministry is being run by a Shi'ite anyway, so let's make that permanent," he warned.

Maliki's failure to find acceptable permanent candidates for these vital positions doesn't bode well. And it makes a nonsense of the Prime Minister's promise that he will deliver "an objective timetable" for the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces from Iraq.

It's worth remembering that Maliki is himself a compromise candidate — a relative unknown figure with negligible street credibility, he was picked because his party boss, former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, had become unacceptable to Sunni and Kurdish parties. Inside political circles, Maliki had been known as a strident Shi'ite hardliner. Since his nomination, he has struck a more conciliatory pose, talking up unity and inching away from the anti-Sunni positions he had previously defended. His reinvention has been aided by U.S. officials keen to present him as Iraq's best hope. Khalilzad has described him an a "patriot, a tough-minded leader" who has "taken tough positions against terrorists and the insurgency and Baathists."

In the next few months, Maliki will have the opportunity to follow through on those positions. But few Iraqis are holding their breath.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1196366,00.html

muckraker10021 · May 22, 2006

The interview below with Antonia Juhasz highlights true facts about Iraq that I’ve highlighted in earlier post in this thread such as the permanent “Bremer Orders”. The corporate media focuses on the latest puppet government, rather than the American & British corporate agenda , for whose benefit the military occupation is for. Bechtel, Halliburton, The Big Oil Companies etc. in close conjunction with the “Bush Crime Family” are running Iraq. There is NO Iraqi sovereignty That was never the plan. The American (Democrats & Republicans) propaganda about a ‘Democratic Iraq’ is exactly that; Propaganda! There is no similar outcry for democracy to come to Saudi Arabia or Jordan. Most hypocritically there is no American call for elections in a country that was complicit in blowing a western aircraft out of the sky, killing hundreds; LIBYA. <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="200" border="2"> <tbody><tr><td align="middle"><img src="http://www.masnet.org/cms_article_files/article_1074/pic2.jpg" alt="BlairInLibya" border="0" /></td></tr><tr>
<td>British Prime Minster Tony Blair and Libyan leader Moamer Ghaddafi met outside Ghaddafi's tent in a meeting that brings Libya back into the International $$$$$$$ fold.</td></tr></tbody></table>

Colonel Ghaddafi cut a deal $$$. Ghaddafi paid $2 Billion restitution in a deal that was cut with Clinton & Blair in 1999. 
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<td>
The Faulty Premise of Pre-emption

by Geoff D. Porter. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jul 31, 2004. pg. A.17

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C10FB35590C728FDDAE0894DC404482

The Bush administration took a new approach to North Korea this month: it suggested that Kim Jong Il follow the example set by Muammar el-Qaddafi. John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, urged North Korea to follow Libya's "strategic choice" and voluntarily dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.

But if this approach is based on the assumption that Libya acted to avoid a pre-emptive attack, then its premise is flawed. The United States' pre-emptive invasion of Iraq did not play a large role in bringing about Libya's rapprochement. Contrary to the Bush administration's assertions, Libya's dismantled weapons program is not evidence that a policy of pre-emptive strikes works, and it is disingenuous to argue that it will produce the same results in North Korea.

There are several problems with the notion that Colonel Qaddafi's decision to come clean was a direct result of an aggressive United States foreign policy. For one, the history of Colonel Qaddafi's turnaround does not bear out the administration's assertion. Second is the disproportionate weight the administration gives to its foreign policy's influence on Libyan decision makers. Libya has its own social, economic and political concerns and these concerns have always been uppermost in Colonel Qaddafi's efforts to maintain hold on power.

It is possible that the Bush administration's policy did nudge Colonel Qaddafi forward, but discussions for Libya's return to the international community began under the Clinton administration. In 1999, Libya extradited two men implicated in the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, a decade earlier. The same year, it agreed to pay compensation for the victims of the bombing of a French airliner, UTA Flight 772, whose destruction over Niger was traced back to Libya. Discussions between the United States and Libya about its weapons of mass destruction programs also began that year. These discussions finally bore fruit last fall with Colonel Qaddafi's decision to renounce these weapons. It is true that this announcement came after Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed, but is a mistake to link these two events.</td>
</tr>
</table>


It’s all about imperial power and corporate -$$$$$$$$$ -peeps, not true democracy. The ‘illusion’ of true democracy is perpetuated in order to keep the overwhelming majority of Americans from seeing that the corporate elite view them as nothing more than ignorant sheep, whose function is to buy, buy, buy; go into debt and then buy, buy, buy some more.



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[/RM]

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 AMY GOODMAN: Our guest today is an author who has been tracking the Bush administration's goals in Iraq since the invasion. Antonia Juhasz has written about them in a new book.

0060846879.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_V54829324_.jpg

It's called The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. The book tracks the radical neo-liberal economic program the Bush administration has tried to impose on Iraq, which threatens to leave Iraq's economy and oil reserves largely in the hands of multinational corporations. It's an agenda, says Antonia Juhasz, that the Bush administration is trying to bring to all corners of the globe.
 Antonia Juhasz joins us in our Firehouse studio. She’s a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. For years she was Project Director at the International Forum on Globalization. Welcome to Democracy Now!
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Thanks for having me, Amy.
 AMY GOODMAN: And congratulations on this book.
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
 AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the leadership of Iraq?
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, I would argue that the most important member of the new leadership is Adel Abdel Mahdi, who has been in every U.S.-appointed Iraqi government post-the-invasion. He was the Finance Minister of the interim government, the Vice President of the transitional government and was just named Vice President of the permanent government. He was actually the man that the Bush administration wanted to be the new prime minister of Iraq. The deal that was worked out was that another member of the Dawa Party, just like Mr. Jaafari, would become prime minister, and then Mahdi, who is a member of the SCIRI Party, would be vice president.
 It’s a position that allows him to continue to be the most aggressive advocate of the Bush agenda in Iraq, which I argue is opening Iraq -- continuing to open Iraq to U.S. corporate invasion. Currently, 150 U.S. corporations have received $50 billion worth of contracts, as you said in the introduction, to utterly fail in reconstruction in Iraq, but the money has still been granted. And Mahdi is the person who advanced Paul Bremer's one hundred orders in Iraq that opened up the economy. But more importantly to the Bush administration, he is the person who has most aggressively pushed their agenda for a new oil law in Iraq, which would open up Iraq’s oil sector, the vast majority of Iraq's oil sector, to private foreign corporate investment.
 AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the Bremer orders. You spend a lot of time in the book on them. Can you talk about Paul Bremer, Bremer's blueprint by BearingPoint, the orders themselves? 
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. You know, in the report that you were quoting in the beginning of the hour, which said that the reconstruction failed because of poor planning, it’s a myth that there was not a post-war planning done by the Bush administration. The reason why it failed was because the interests it was serving were U.S. multinationals, not reconstruction in Iraq.
 That plan was ready two months before the invasion. It was written by BearingPoint, Inc., a company based in Virginia that received a $250 million contract to rewrite the entire economy of Iraq. It drafted that new economy. That new economy was put into place systematically by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation government of Iraq for 14 months, who implemented exactly one hundred orders, basically all of which are still in place today. And everyone who is watching who is familiar with the policies of the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Bank, the I.M.F., will understand the orders.
 They implement some of the most radical corporate globalization ideas, such as free investment rules for multinational corporations. That means corporations can enter Iraq, and they essentially don't have to contribute at all to the economy of Iraq. The most harmful provision thus far has been the national treatment provision, which meant that the Iraqis could not give preference to Iraqi companies or workers in the reconstruction, and therefore, U.S. companies received preference in the reconstruction. They hired workers who weren't even from Iraq, in most cases, and utterly bungled the reconstruction.
 And the most important company, in my mind, to receive blame is the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco. They have received $2.8 billion to rebuild water, electricity and sewage systems, the most important systems in the life of an Iraqi. After the first Gulf War, the Iraqis rebuilt these systems in three months' time. It’s been three years, and, as you said, those services are still below pre-war levels.
 AMY GOODMAN: BearingPoint. Why have we never heard of this company? Where does it come from?
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: BearingPoint was KPMG Consulting, but had to change its name in the wake of the Arthur Andersen scandal, but BearingPoint picked up all of Arthur Andersen's old clientele and is essentially just the reborn KPMG. And BearingPoint, you probably haven't heard of, though, because they work in the back room. They write things like new economic policies, but are not the people seen on the ground implementing the policies.
 Actually, there’s a wonderful story that I tell in the book by a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation government in Iraq, who says, ‘One day these people from this place called BearingPoint came up and started telling us about these economic policies that were so unrealistic. I didn't know who they were and what they were talking about.’ Well, what they were talking about was an economic agenda that seemed completely ridiculous for the people on the ground who are looking at sewage flowing through the streets and Iraqis saying over and over and over again, ‘The most important thing we need is electricity. Just electricity. Just give us our electricity back,’ and failing to do it.
 But this was BearingPoint, and they are still there. Their contract was renewed. They’re still focusing in particular on privatization of Iraq's state-owned enterprises. That's almost the sole focus of their current contract, and that contract goes, I believe, until 2007.
 AMY GOODMAN: You have a quote of Lakhdar Brahimi, who is the U.N. Special Adviser to Iraq. A few years ago, he said, “Bremer,” talking about L. Paul Bremer, “is the dictator of Iraq. He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country.”
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Bremer became the dictator of Iraq. His orders laid out the law. Now, probably the most important thing to know is that that was completely illegal under international law. The Geneva Conventions are very specific about what an occupying power should do. It must provide basic security and services. It cannot change the laws or the political structure of the country it occupies. The Bush administration did exactly the opposite -- changed all the fundamental economic and political laws and utterly failed to provide for the security and the basic needs of the Iraqi people. What you hear most often in Iraq today is people saying, “Please just put us back where we were before you came.”
 AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Antonia Juhasz, author and activist, wrote The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. Now, gas is over $3 in many places. What's the connection?
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, here's the connection. The Bush administration is the most beholden administration probably in American history to the oil and gas industry. This is the first time in history that the President, Vice President and Secretary of State are all former energy company officials. In fact, both Bush and Rice have more experience as energy company officials than they do as government leaders. Cheney outbeats them. He’s spent 30 years working for government. However, his five years at Halliburton have been so profitable that you might say that his Halliburton years outweigh their oil years, because Bush was a very bad oil company executive. But their links to the oil sector are deep.
 The oil industry provided more than 13 times more money to the Bush-Cheney ticket in the first round of elections than it did to his competitor, nine times more in the second. And this industry has been absolutely coddled by the Bush administration: enormous tax subsidies, deregulation, and, I would argue, a war waged on their behalf.
 Now, there's two intimate connections between the war and the price of gas. But first, I think it’s very important for people to understand that the vertical integration of the oil industry, which has been absolutely exacerbated under the Bush administration. For example, ChevronTexaco and Unocal merging into one company, the completion of Exxon and Mobil's merger, all of these little companies merging into enormous behemoths, so that you have ExxonMobil being the company that has received the highest profits of any company in the world, over the last two years, ever in the history of the world. That is because of the vertical integration and monopoly power of these companies. That means that they control exploration, production, refining, marketing and sales.
 The price of oil at the pump is about 50% the price of a barrel of oil, about 25% taxes, and then the rest is marketing and just the price determined by the company at the pump. So that means that about 18% to 20% is absolutely determined by the oil companies themselves and governed by the companies themselves. So they could reduce the price of oil and reduce their profit margin, or they could jack up the price of oil and increase their profit margin. They have chosen to do the latter.
 And one of the things that has helped them do that is, first of all, the United States is receiving a tremendous amount of oil from Iraq. Oil is down in overall export and production, but not tremendously so. We were -- at prewar was 2.5 million barrels a day. We’re now at about 2 or 2.2 million barrels a day. But 50% of that, on average, is coming to the United States, and it’s being brought to the United States by Chevron and Exxon and Marathon. The myth of dramatically reduced supply has helped them create an argument to the American public, which is, you know, it’s a time of war, we’re suffering, gas prices are going to go up, everyone needs to come in and support this because this is war. Well, that's just not true. The companies are using that as a myth to help make it okay for them to receive these utterly ridiculous profits.
 AMY GOODMAN: In your chapter "A Mutual Seduction," you have a quote of Ken Derr, the former C.E.O. of Chevron, 1998. I know his tenure well. It was the time in the Niger Delta that Chevron was involved with the killing of two Nigerian villagers, who were protesting yet another oil spill of Chevron and jobs not being given to the local community as they drilled for oil. But your quote here says, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas, reserves I would love Chevron to have access to.” And then you follow that by a quote of John Gibson, Chief Executive of Halliburton Energy Service Group, who says, “We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don't like being kept out of markets, because it gives our competitors an unfair advantage.”
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: I love it when they’re honest. It doesn’t happen very often. Yeah, these companies have been explicit, for decades, that they want in, particularly to Iraq. The reason is obvious. Iraq certainly has the second largest oil reserves in the world, but some geologists believe it has the largest, at least on par with Saudi Arabia. That's a tremendous pool of wealth. And not just have the companies been clear that they want access to that oil, U.S. leaders -- for example, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld -- have all been explicit for the past 20 years that what the U.S. needs to do is gain increased access to the region's oil, and most explicitly during the ‘90s, Iraq's oil, that this is something that shouldn’t be in the hands of Saddam Hussein.
 The difference, going into the current Bush administration, was that the rhetoric changed to and the reality changed to not just we need a new leader, we need a new -- a fully new political and economic structure in Iraq, and we need to be in that country to make sure that that structure gets put into place. And that is exactly what they have achieved, and now Halliburton, Chevron, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin have profited tremendously from this process already. Chevron’s -- the U.S. value of Iraqi oil, imported Iraqi oil, has increased by 86% between 2003 and 2004. Those profits have gone to Exxon, Chevron and Marathon.
 Chevron has seen its most profitable years in its entire 125-year history over the last two years. They are making out like bandits. They have been at the forefront of advocating for decades for increased U.S. economic access to Iraq. And now, they are one of the few companies that are poised once the new oil law is implemented. And that oil law has its history in the U.S. State Department, in the Iraqi Oil and Energy Working Group that formed right before the war.
 A member of that working group whose last name is Aloum, and I'm blanking on his first name [Ibrahim Bahr], became Oil Minister of Iraq. He's the man who eviscerated all of the pre-existing oil contracts that Saddam Hussein had signed. At the end of Saddam Hussein's tenure, he had signed about 30 contracts with companies from all around the world to give them access to Iraq's oil sector. None of those contracts were with the United States or U.S. oil companies. The Cheney Energy Task Force, that met at the very beginning of the Bush administration, mapped out foreign suitors to Iraqi oil, listed all of the companies, all of the countries, the fields that they had access to, within a document that said we need --the U.S. needs to get greater access to Middle East oil.
 AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us who Cheney met with?
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Cheney met with -- thank goodness for the Supreme Court, that ruled to release these documents, because otherwise they were completely secret. He met with Bechtel, Chevron, Halliburton, Exxon, all of the largest oil companies and all of the largest oil engineering companies, and they decided we need to increase our access to Middle Eastern oil.
 Aloum then became Iraq’s Oil Minister.
 AMY GOODMAN: Ibrahim Bahr Al-Aloum.
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Thank you very much.
 AMY GOODMAN: From your book.
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: From my book. It’s good to remember what's in my book. Canceled all of the pre-existing oil contracts. Now, Abdel Mahdi has said several times, “The new oil law, when it’s put in place, is going to be very good for U.S. oil companies.” Chevron, Exxon, the other companies are sort of hovering on the outside. They’ve signed what are called “memoranda of understanding,” essentially free services. Chevron has been training Iraqi workers in the United States for years, mapping -- doing mappings, free services, so that they are ready, when the permanent government is in place, to sign contracts. And then, I believe, once those contracts are signed, they will get to work, but they need security. And what better security force than 150,000 American troops. And I do not think that those troops will leave, unless we all have something to do about it, until the oil companies are safely at work.
 AMY GOODMAN: In our next segment we’re going to talk about the protest in this country, but I wanted to ask you about Henry Kissinger and his role in this.
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, Henry Kissinger is a fascinating character in all realms. He has been fascinating for me to follow, because in that chapter that you talked about, “Turning Toward Iraq,” I look at U.S. business interests and how they aggressively pursued a greater U.S. relationship with Iraq.
 Henry Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates the same year that Ronald Reagan opened up for first time economic relationships between the United States and Iraq. Reagan was the hottest pursuer, until George Bush, Sr. came onto the team and really pushed for better relationships was Saddam Hussein. But Kissinger and Associates was a lead advice --providing advice to multinational corporations on how to operate abroad, and one of the lead advocates of enhancing the U.S. economic relationship with Iraq.
 Then, one of his managing directors, L. Paul Bremer, left Kissinger and Associates and went to found his own crisis management company, which essentially advised multinational corporations on how to operate under the horrible consequences of corporate globalization policies. He wrote a wonderful paper where he said, you know, the policies of corporate globalization create inequality, increase the cost of services, creates hostilities, so corporations, you really need to buy my insurance, because that's the only way to protect yourself against these policies. And then he went on and implemented those policies in Iraq.
 But Kissinger aggressively lobbied, as well, for the second Iraq war and wrote some blistering op-eds, in particular, arguing for the need to invade. And I would imagine, although the records of Kissinger Associates are remarkably secret, that he is now working to help advance the interests of his companies.
 But one of the things that has happened is that while U.S. companies have received billions of dollars for the reconstruction, the environment in Iraq is not safe. It’s not what the Bush administration had hoped for three years in, and so the companies are sort of waiting on the edges, just like the oil companies are waiting on the edges, to take advantage of this new economic environment. While they wait, however, the U.S. Middle East Free Trade Area advances, and that's where the trillions of dollars are already starting to flow.
 AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz is our guest. Her book is The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. You write, “To replace the Bush agenda, we must address each of its key pillars individually -- war, imperialism and corporate globalization.” Can you outline your vision of an alternative to the Bush agenda?
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. The last chapter of the book provides the whole analysis, so I will do it shortly here. But the most important thing, I guess, to say at the outset is I believe that we are already doing this, that we have incredible activist movements that have made it so that only 30% of the population even trusts the President today, only 35% even believe in the war -- that is because of the tremendous organizing that has taken place -- and that what we have to do is enlarge the mobilizing that we are already doing and just bring more people into the fold, that what we are doing is working. But the first is, on the war, obviously, I believe that we have to bring the troops home. But we also have to bring all of the economic transformers home, like the BearingPoints. We have to cancel all of the reconstruction contracts. And we have to make all those companies give back the money for their failed reconstruction.
 AMY GOODMAN: Make Bechtel give back $2.8 billion?
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: $2.8 billion. Absolutely. For utterly failing in its contractual obligations. That’s Parsons with almost -- I'm going to get the numbers wrong -- with $5 billion, Shaw Group International with something like $5 billion. And these are all companies that should sound familiar to people who are following the reconstruction in New Orleans. And these companies are also failing in New Orleans. They shouldn't get our money if they fail. If they did a great job, they can have my money -- I'm fine with that -- but not if they utterly fail and create more hatred and animosity towards the United States. So they need to give back their money.
 And that money, I believe, needs to be put into a reconstruction trust fund that is directed exclusively towards Iraqi companies and Iraqi workers, and in the book I outline the dozens, if not hundreds, of Iraqi private and public companies that are more than capable of performing this work -- they just need money -- and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers who are absolutely capable of performing this work. The money just needs to get to them.
 AMY GOODMAN: I think most people would be surprised hearing you say this.
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Absolutely.
 AMY GOODMAN: That Iraqi soldiers are not ready, and certainly they hear nothing about the Iraqi business community or corporations that could be involved in this reconstruction.
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Absolutely. I mean, there are hundreds of state-owned enterprises, factories, consulting businesses, engineers. After the first Gulf War, Iraqi engineers rebuilt bridges, roads, electricity, water. All of these -- as I said, both private and public companies are still there.
 What happened with the soldiers isn't that they weren’t capable of being soldiers. It’s that Paul Bremer fired the entire Iraqi army in his first week of being in Iraq. Half a million men were sent home with their weapons into an unemployment environment that was 50% to 70% unemployment. They then were joined by 120,000 of Iraq's leading bureaucrats, who were also all fired by Paul Bremer at the beginning of the occupation, because he didn’t want people to stand in the way of his new economic regime.
 They all then watched as American companies came in and took billions of dollars in reconstruction money and failed. And it created enormous hostility and anger. And of the half a million men that were members of the Iraqi army, only some 200,000, at the best, are now back in the military, and they’re being trained under the American occupiers, and there's tremendous hostility still. So I don't think that the Iraqis are poor soldiers. I think they’re pissed at the occupation, and they are also facing an incredibly hostile environment within which they are working. And so, they’re having a difficult time. Again, that was a private company that made the decision to fire the Iraqi military. Ronco Consulting had the contract of what to do with the military, and they’re the ones, I imagine, that decided they should all be fired.
 So, reconstruction can happen. The money just needs to get to the Iraqis. I also think that there is just some tremendous work that's been done by groups around the world who have followed reconstruction, that have demonstrated that the more local the decision-making is in a post-war country, the more likely you’re going to get to see reconstruction really hit where it needs to be met and the more likely people are going to commit to a locality, so, as much as possible, directing reconstruction funds down, devolving them to the local level and disbursing the reconstruction funds not in one huge spurt so that you get a wild west mentality, which is ‘We’ve got to spend it now, we’ve got to spend it fast,’ which breeds corruption, when suddenly $50 billion is dropped into anyone's lap, but to disburse it and make it a guaranteed amount over even ten, even fifteen years, so that the reconstruction can be done thoughtfully, and again, so that it can devolve to the local level.
 And I say, because I believe, unfortunately, that the new Iraqi government is simply not reflective of the people of Iraq -- however, it is the Iraqi government -- that there should be an international monitoring board that partners with the Iraqi government, made up of non-governmental groups with specific knowledge in reconstruction, obviously Iraqi civil society groups and people from the appropriate United Nations offices that have expertise, and maybe one representative of the United States government, since most of the money would be U.S. taxpayer money, but certainly not with, you know, oversight over the rest of the every member of the committee.
 AMY GOODMAN: And the troops? The U.S. troops?
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: U.S. troops have to be withdrawn. There’s just no -- there's no way around it. It’s not going to be pretty. And I think we fool ourselves if we say peace will rain on Iraq as soon as the U.S. soldiers leave. But it is still unquestionable that U.S. troops are creating more hostility than they are solving.
 AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll have to leave it there. In our next segment, talk about the peace protests in this country. Antonia Juhasz has been our guest. Her book is called The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. Thank you for joining us.
 ANTONIA JUHASZ: Thank you, Amy.


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muckraker10021 · May 26, 2006

The reality of what's going to happen militarily in Iraq has already been acknowledged by the GI (Government Issue) Solider on the ground in Iraq. This is despite the fact that the “Decider” occupying the oval office, hasn’t been told the truth about what's left of the Neo-Con dream for Iraq by Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove.


"Containment" is "Doable" but not "Victory" says top US army officer.

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Washington's New Watchword: Containment

As Iraq’s weak new government takes shape, the Bush administration’s best hope is for a non-bloodbath

NEWSWEEK WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY

By Michael Hirsh

May 22, 2006

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12920385/site/newsweek/

May 22, 2006 - An old word is gaining new currency in Washington: containment. You may be hearing a lot more of it as the Bush administration hunkers down for its final two years. Containment of Iraq’s low-level civil war, which shows every sign of persisting for years despite the new government inaugurated this week. Containment of Iran’s nuclear power, which may lead to a missile defense system in Europe. Containment of the Islamism revived by Hamas and Hizbullah, by the Sunni suicide bombers in Iraq, as well as by the “Shiite Crescent”—as Jordan’s King Abdullah once called it—running from Iran through Southern Iraq and into the Gulf.

During the cold war, containment doctrine was based on the premise that the Soviet Union was a powerful force that was going to be around for a long time to come. Containment’s chief author, George Kennan, concluded that the best Washington could do was to keep the Soviet bloc penned up in its sphere of influence until it expired of its own internal problems (though Kennan later despaired that containment had become too militarily focused, culminating in Vietnam). The policy was carefully laid out in NSC-68, the basic blueprint for containment, in the spring of 1950. Forty years later, the policy succeeded.

No such strategizing surrounds the current version of containment. Indeed, few people in the Bush administration will even concede they are thinking in such terms, because the president has not permitted an honest reckoning of the difficulties he faces. On Monday, Bush again appeared to sidestep the realities, calling the new “free Iraq” “a devastating defeat for the terrorists.” Back in Iraq, however, it was just another typical day: some 20 Iraqis died in bombings and drive-by shootings, with few or no arrests.

So today’s containment is a furtive policy being developed willy-nilly behind the scenes, as Bush’s pragmatic second-term officials seek to clean up the vast Mideast mess left by the ideologues who dominated in the first term. A series of cautious concepts similar to those that came to dominate the cold war are emerging as the least worst way of holding off powerful forces that are also going to be around for along time: disintegration in Iraq, expansion in Iran, Islamism all over.

In Iraq, U.S. officials say they are pleased with the forcefulness and straight talk of the new prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, especially compared to his mumble-mouthed predecessor, Ibrahim Jaafari. But every meager step forward in Iraq comes at the price of horrible bloodshed and months of indecision. According to U.S. officials, Maliki failed to fill the critical defense and interior ministry posts over the weekend because every well-known candidate was deemed too sectarian or too associated with militias. As a result, whoever is chosen, it is becoming clear that Maliki’s government will likely become a government of nobodies—in other words, inoffensive but weak individuals.

That in turn means the sectarian groups—Shia, Sunni and Kurdish—will become even more influential, as will the powerful provincial governors who approve police trainees for the troubled national force. So the very best that can be hoped for in Iraq, probably for many years to come, will be a non-bloodbath, a low-level civil war that doesn’t get worse than the current cycle of insurgent killings and Shiite death-squad reprisals. This is bad, but it could be much worse. Containment, says one Army officer involved in training in Iraq, is at least "doable." He adds: "The only real question is: How do we keep Iraq from becoming a permissive environment for terrorists."

The U.S. military is already gearing up for this outcome, but not for “victory” any longer. It is consolidating to several “superbases” in hopes that its continued presence will prevent Iraq from succumbing to full-flown civil war and turning into a failed state. Pentagon strategists admit they have not figured out how to move to superbases, as a way of reducing the pressure—and casualties—inflicted on the U.S. Army, while at the same time remaining embedded with Iraqi police and military units. It is a circle no one has squared. But consolidation plans are moving ahead as a default position, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has talked frankly about containing the spillover from Iraq’s chaos in the region.

On Iran, Western officials are increasingly skeptical that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can be persuaded to give up his nuclear program as he consolidates power and Bush refuses to engage him directly. The New York Times reported Monday that the Bush administration hopes to establish an antimissile site in Europe design to forestall Iranian attacks. (Shades of the cold war). “I think you could describe our approach as containment,” says a senior U.S. official. Similarly with Hamas’s control of the Palestinian government, U.S. officials concede they are in for a long period of waiting until the radicals agree to recognize Israel, renounce terror and join the international community. Whoever becomes the next president will inherit most of these problems—and, it is likely, the policy of containment as well. If they win, the Democrats, insecure as ever over their national security-credentials, will almost certainly be placed in the position of the Eisenhower administration in 1953. Ike’s presidential campaign had been filled with anti-containment rhetoric (the hardliners wanted “rollback” of the Soviets), but within six months of taking office the former general had decided that containment was the only practical approach to the Soviets.

The biggest problem with the new embrace of containment in this era, of course, is that it is largely unconscious—and it has gone unacknowledged in public. It may be time to call it by its name.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

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QueEx · May 28, 2006

<center>The reality of Iraq starts to dawn on Bush</center>

The New York Times
SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2006

When President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain talked about progress in Iraq at a joint news conference last week, one thing was evident. The two world leaders who plotted the original invasion have, at least, come a long way in realizing how many things have gone wrong. Bush and Blair, who have always been the cheerleaders for the Iraq initiative, seemed downbeat, even as they insisted that democratization would make everything right in the end.

Iraq now does have a constitutional government, elected by the Iraqis themselves. But that will make no difference at all unless that government can provide all its citizens with basic order and security.

Right now armed gangs of thugs, many of them wearing government uniforms, are spreading terror throughout Iraq. Some were trained by U.S. forces to work for the Interior Ministry, but actually do the bidding of Shiite political and religious leaders. They harass, kidnap and murder people who follow different religious practices or support competing politicians, often with the help of weapons and equipment provided by a U.S. government that had very different objectives in mind. The New York Times reported last week that Sunni forces working for the Ministry of Defense who were supposed to be guarding Iraq's oil pipeline were instead freelancing as death squads, assassinating people who cooperated with the same government that paid the gunmen's salaries.

Of all of Bush's many arguments for the invasion, the only one that has survived exposure to reality is that Iraqis deserve something better than a brutal dictatorship. But right now Iraq appears on the way to a civil war among the armed groups competing to impose order on their own terms. To avoid repeating a very bad history, Iraq's security forces must be brought under control by people who have both the will and the capacity to truly unite the nation.

The fact that the current government avoided naming any officials to the posts that control the military and internal security forces when it announced its first cabinet was a clear sign of how difficult that task would be. And coming up with acceptable nominees is just the first and easiest step. The current military and civilian police forces must be purged of their brutal and lawless elements, and the numerous private militias must be made to stand down and disarm.

U.S. forces can never be a substitute for Iraqi soldiers and police officers who take seriously their duty to protect all the people, regardless of religion or ethnicity. Bush's premise that U.S. troops should simply stay on the ground until Iraq gets things right and defeats all insurgent forces and terrorist groups, however long it takes, is flat wrong. The U.S. presence is dangerous - to the soldiers themselves, to American standing in the world, and most tellingly to large numbers of innocent Iraqis.

The emerging story about what happened in November in Haditha, where at least two dozen Iraqi men, women and children were apparently shot by a small group of U.S. marines, is only the latest indication of what terrible things can happen when soldiers are required to occupy hostile civilian territory in the midst of an armed insurrection and looming civil war. A military investigation is deciding whether any of the marines should be charged with murder, and whether a cover-up took place. All these questions have awful resonance for those who remember Vietnam, and what that prolonged and ultimately pointless war did to both the Vietnamese and the American social fabric.

It was somewhat reassuring that Bush and Blair have stopped trying to pretend that everything has gone just fine in Iraq, since most of the rest of the world already knows otherwise. But it was very disturbing to hear them follow their expressions of regret with the same old "stay the course" fantasy. It's time for Bush either to chart a course that can actually be followed, or admit that there is none.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/28/opinion/ediraq.php

QueEx · Jun 26, 2006

<center>7 Sunni insurgent groups reportedly seek truce
under reconciliation plan </center>

Sameer Yacoub, Canadian Press
Published: Monday, June 26, 2006

BAGHDAD (AP) - Seven Sunni Arab insurgent groups have contacted the government to declare their readiness to join in efforts at national reconciliation, a key Shiite legislator said Monday.

The seven lesser groups, most of them believed populated by former members or backers of Saddam Hussein's government, military or security agencies, have said they want a truce, said Hassan al-Suneid, a legislator and member of the political bureau of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party.

The contact by the insurgent organizations, which could not be independently verified, would mark an important potential shift and stand as evidence of a growing divide between Iraqi insurgents and the more brutal and ideological fighters of "al-Qaida in Iraq," who are believed to mainly be non-Iraqi Islamic militants.

Al-Maliki was considering a possible meeting with leaders of the groups or contacts through intermediaries, al-Suneid said.

He identified only six of the seven organizations by name, listing them as: al-Ashreen Brigades, the Mohammed Army, Abtal al-Iraq (Heroes of Iraq), the 9th of April Group, al-Fatah Brigades, the Brigades of the General Command of the Armed Forces.

The al-Ashreen Brigades operate primarily in Anbar province, the violent insurgent stronghold in the desert west of Baghdad. The organization claims its operations have only been conducted against U.S. forces. They and other insurgents were said to have protected polling places against attacks by other insurgent groups in Anbar province during December parliamentary voting.

The Mohammed Army is made up of former members of Saddam's Baath party, members of his elite Republican Guards and former military commanders. It, too, has focused attacks on the U.S. military and played a role in the November 2004 battle for Fallujah.

Al-Maliki unveiled his 24-point national reconciliation initiative on Sunday, offering amnesty to insurgents who renounce violence and have not committed terror attacks.

"To those who want to rebuild our country, we present an olive branch," al-Maliki told applauding legislators. "And to those who insist on killing and terrorism, we present a fist with the power of law to protect our country and people."

The much-anticipated plan lacked important details, but issued specific instructions to Iraqi security forces to rapidly take control of the country so U.S. and other foreign troops can leave eventually. It did not include a deadline for their withdrawal.

Al-Maliki said Iraq also must deal with the problem of militias, which are blamed for a surge of sectarian bloodshed that has worsened violence in Iraq - where nearly 40 people have been killed in the last 24 hours.

© The Canadian Press 2006

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=33478aa0-45a0-471e-bc00-7dae49ddd989&k=52772

QueEx · Jul 26, 2006

[frame]http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG27Ak03.html[/frame]

QueEx · Aug 9, 2006

<center>Break Point: What Went Wrong</center>

STRATFOR
Geopolitical Intelligence Report
By George Friedman
August 8, 2006

On May 23, we published a Geopolitical Intelligence Report titled "Break Point." In that article, we wrote: "It is now nearly Memorial Day. The violence in Iraq will surge, but by July 4 there either will be clear signs that the Sunnis are controlling the insurgency -- or there won't. If they are controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. If they are not controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. Regardless of whether the [political settlement] holds, the U.S. war in Iraq is going to end: U.S. troops either will not be needed, or will not be useful. Thus, we are at a break point -- at least for the Americans."

In our view, the fundamental question was whether the Sunnis would buy into the political process in Iraq. We expected a sign, and we got it in June, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed -- in our view, through intelligence provided by the Sunni leadership. The same night al-Zarqawi was killed, the Iraqis announced the completion of the Cabinet: As part of a deal that finalized the three security positions (defense, interior and national security), the defense ministry went to a Sunni. The United States followed that move by announcing a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq, starting with two brigades. All that was needed was a similar signal of buy-in from the Shia -- meaning they would place controls on the Shiite militias that were attacking Sunnis. The break point seemed very much to favor a political resolution in Iraq.

It never happened. The Shia, instead of reciprocating the Sunni and American gestures, went into a deep internal crisis. Shiite groups in Basra battled over oil fields. They fought in Baghdad. We expected that the mainstream militias under the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) would gain control of the dissidents and then turn to political deal-making. Instead, the internal Shiite struggle resolved itself in a way we did not expect: Rather than reciprocating with a meaningful political gesture, the Shia intensified their attacks on the Sunnis. The Sunnis, clearly expecting this phase to end, held back -- and then cut loose with their own retaliations. The result was, rather than a political settlement, civil war. The break point had broken away from a resolution.

Part of the explanation is undoubtedly to be found in Iraq itself. The prospect of a centralized government, even if dominated by the majority Shia, does not seem to have been as attractive to Iraqi Shia as absolute regional control, which would guarantee them all of the revenues from the southern oil fields, rather than just most. That is why SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim has been pushing for the creation of a federal zone in the south, similar to that established for the Kurdistan region in the north. The growing closeness between the United States and some Sunnis undoubtedly left the Shia feeling uneasy. The Sunnis may have made a down payment by delivering up al-Zarqawi, but it was far from clear that they would be in a position to make further payments. The Shia reciprocated partially by offering an amnesty for militants, but they also linked the dissolution of sectarian militias to the future role of Baathists in the government, which they seek to prevent. Clearly, there were factions within the Shiite community that were pulling in different directions.

But there was also another factor that appears to have been more decisive: Iran. It is apparent that Iran not only made a decision not to support a political settlement in Iraq, but a broader decision to support Hezbollah in its war with Israel. In a larger sense, Iran decided to simultaneously confront the United States and its ally Israel on multiple fronts -- and to use that as a means of challenging Sunnis and, particularly, Sunni Arab states.

The Iranian Logic

This is actually a significant shift in Iran's national strategy. Iran had been relatively cooperative with the United States between 2001 and 2004 -- supporting the United States in Afghanistan in a variety of ways and encouraging Washington to depose Saddam Hussein. This relationship was not without tensions during those years, but it was far from confrontational. Similarly, Iran had always had tensions with the Sunni world, but until last year or so, as we can see in Iraq, these had not been venomous.

Two key things have to be borne in mind to begin to understand this shift. First, until the emergence of al Qaeda, the Islamic Republic of Iran had seen itself -- and had been seen by others -- as being the vanguard of the Islamist renaissance. It was Iran that had confronted the United States, and it was Iran's creation, Hezbollah, that had pioneered suicide bombings, hostage-takings and the like in Lebanon and around the world. But on Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda -- a Sunni group -- had surged ahead of Iran as the embodiment of radical Islam. Indeed, it had left Iran in the role of appearing to be a collaborator with the United States. Iran had no use for al Qaeda but did not want to surrender its position to the Sunni entity.

The second factor that must be considered is Iran's goal in Iraq. The Iranians, who hated Hussein as a result of the eight-year war and dearly wanted him destroyed, had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And they had helped the United States with intelligence prior to the war. Indeed, it could be argued that Iran had provided exactly the intelligence that would provoke the U.S. attack in a way most advantageous to Iran -- by indicating that the occupation of Iraq would not be as difficult as might be imagined, particularly if the United States destroyed the Baath Party and all of its institutions. U.S. leaders were hearing what they wanted to hear anyway, but Iran made certain they heard this much more clearly.

Iran had a simple goal: to dominate a post-war Iraq. Iran's Shiite allies in Iraq comprised the majority, the Shia had not resisted the American invasion and the Iranians had provided appropriate support. Therefore, they expected that they would inherit Iraq -- at least in the sense that it would fall into Tehran's sphere of influence. For their part, the Americans thought they could impose a regime in Iraq regardless of Iran's wishes, and they had no desire to create an Iranian surrogate in Baghdad. Therefore, though they may have encouraged Iranian beliefs, the goal of the Americans was to create a coalition government that would include all factions. The Shia could be the dominant group, but they would not hold absolute power -- and, indeed, the United States manipulated Iraqi Shia to split them further.

We had believed that the Iranians would, in the end, accept a neutral Iraq with a coalition government that guaranteed Iran's interests. There is a chance that this might be true in the end, but the Iranians clearly decided to force a final confrontation with the United States. Tehran used its influence among some Iraqi groups to reject the Sunni overture symbolized in al-Zarqawi's death and to instead press forward with attacks against the Sunni community. It goes beyond this, inasmuch as Iran also has been forging closer ties with some Sunni groups, who are responding to Iranian money and a sense of the inevitability of Iran's ascent in the region.

Iran could have had two thoughts on its mind in pressing the sectarian offensive. The first was that the United States, lacking forces to contain a civil war, would be forced to withdraw, or at least to reduce its presence in populated areas, if a civil war broke out. This would leave the majority Shia in a position to impose their own government -- and, in fact, place pro-Iranian Shia, who had led the battle, in a dominant position among the Shiite community.

The second thought could have been that even if U.S. forces did not withdraw, Iran would be better off with a partitioned Iraq -- in which the various regions were at war with each other, or at least focused on each other, and incapable of posing a strategic threat to Iran. Moreover, if partition meant that Iran dominated the southern part of Iraq, then the strategic route to the western littoral of the Persian Gulf would be wide open, with no Arab army in a position to resist the Iranians. Their dream of dominating the Persian Gulf would still be in reach, while the security of their western border would be guaranteed. So, if U.S. forces did not withdraw from Iraq, Iran would still be able not only to impose a penalty on the Americans but also to pursue its own strategic interests.

This line of thinking also extends to pressures that Iran now is exerting against Saudi Arabia, which has again become a key ally of the United States. For example, a member of the Iranian Majlis recently called for Muslim states to enact political and economic sanctions against Saudi Arabia -- which has condemned Hezbollah's actions in the war against Israel. In the larger scheme, it was apparent to the Iranians that they could not achieve their goals in Iraq without directly challenging Saudi interests -- and that meant mounting a general challenge to Sunnis. A partial challenge would make no sense: It would create hostility and conflict without a conclusive outcome. Thus, the Iranians decided to broaden their challenge.

The Significance of Hezbollah

Hezbollah is a Shiite movement that was created by Iran out of its own needs for a Tehran-controlled, anti-Israel force. Hezbollah was extremely active through the 1980s and had exercised economic and political power in Lebanon in the 1990s, as a representative of Shiite interests. In this, Hezbollah had collaborated with Syria -- a predominantly Sunni country run by a minority Shiite sect, the Alawites -- as well as Iran. Iran and Syria are enormously different countries, with many different interests. Syria's interest was the domination and economic exploitation of Lebanon. But when the United States forced the Syrians out of Lebanon -- following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February 2005 -- any interest Syria had in restraining Hezbollah disappeared. Meanwhile, as Iran shifted its strategy, its interest in reactivating Hezbollah -- which had been somewhat dormant in relation to Israel -- increased.

Hezbollah's interest in being reactivated in this way was less clear. Hezbollah's leaders had aged well: Violent and radical in the 1980s, they had become Lebanese businessmen in the 1990s. They became part of the establishment. But they still were who they were, and the younger generation of Hezbollah members was even more radical. Hezbollah militants had been operating in southern Lebanon for years and, however relatively restrained they might have been, they clearly had prepared for conventional war against the Israelis.

With the current conflict, Hezbollah now has achieved an important milestone: It has fought better and longer than any other Arab army against Israel. The Egyptians and Syrians launched brilliant attacks in 1973, but their forces were shattered before the war ended. Hezbollah has fought and clearly has not been shattered. Whether, in the end, it wins or loses, Hezbollah will have achieved a massive improvement of its standing in the Muslim world by slugging it out with Israel in a conventional war. If, at the end of this war, Hezbollah remains intact as a fighting force -- regardless of the outcome of the campaign in southern Lebanon -- its prestige will be enormous.

Within the region, this outcome would shift focus way from the Sunni Hamas or secular Fatah to the Shiite Hezbollah. If this happens simultaneously with the United States losing complete control of the situation in Iraq, the entire balance of power in the region would be perceived to have shifted away from the U.S.-Israeli coalition (the appearance is different from reality, but it is still far from trivial) -- and the leadership of the Islamist renaissance would have shifted away from the Sunnis to the Shia, at least in the Middle East.

Outcomes

It is not clear that the Iranians expected all of this to have gone quite as well as it has. In the early days of the war, when the Saudis and other Arabs were condemning Hezbollah and it appeared that Israel was going to launch one of its classic lightning campaigns in Lebanon, Tehran seemed to back away -- calling for a cease-fire and indicating it was prepared to negotiate on issues like uranium enrichment. Then international criticism shifted to Israel, and Israeli forces seemed bogged down. Iran's rhetoric shifted. Now the Saudis are back to condemning Hezbollah, and the Iranians appear more confident than ever. From their point of view, they have achieved substantial psychological success based on real military achievements. They have the United States on the defensive in Iraq, and the Israelis are having to fight hard to make any headway in Lebanon.

The Israelis have few options. They can continue to fight until they break Hezbollah -- a process that will be long and costly, but can be achieved. But they then risk Hezbollah shifting to guerrilla war unless their forces immediately withdraw from Lebanon. Alternatively, they can negotiate a cease-fire that inevitably would leave at least part of Hezbollah's forces intact, its prestige and power in Lebanon enhanced and Iran elevated as a power within the region and the Muslim world. Because the Israelis are not going anywhere, they have to choose from a limited menu.

The United States, on the other hand, is facing a situation in Iraq that has broken decisively against it. However hopeful the situation might have been the night al-Zarqawi died, the decision by Iran's allies in Iraq to pursue civil war rather than a coalition government has put the United States into a militarily untenable position. It does not have sufficient forces to prevent a civil war. It can undertake the defense of the Sunnis, but only at the cost of further polarization with the Shia. The United States' military options are severely limited, and therefore, withdrawal becomes even more difficult. The only possibility is a negotiated settlement -- and at this point, Iran doesn't need to negotiate. Unless Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric in Iraq, firmly demands a truce, the sectarian fighting will continue -- and at the moment, it is not even clear that al-Sistani could get a truce if he wanted one.

While the United States was focused on the chimera of an Iranian nuclear bomb -- a possibility that, assuming everything we have heard is true, remains years away from becoming reality -- Iran has moved to redefine the region. At the very least, civil war in Lebanon (where Christians and Sunnis might resist Hezbollah) could match civil war in Iraq, with the Israelis and Americans trapped in undesirable roles.

The break point has come and gone. The United States now must make an enormously difficult decision. If it simply withdraws forces from Iraq, it leaves the Arabian Peninsula open to Iran and loses all psychological advantage it gained with the invasion of Iraq. If American forces stay in Iraq, it will be as a purely symbolic gesture, without any hope for imposing a solution. If this were 2004, the United States might have the stomach for a massive infusion of forces -- an attempt to force a favorable resolution. But this is 2006, and the moment for that has passed. The United States now has no good choices; its best bet was blown up by Iran. Going to war with Iran is not an option. In Lebanon, we have just seen the value of air campaigns pursued in isolation, and the United States does not have a force capable of occupying and pacifying Iran.

As sometimes happens, obvious conclusions must be drawn.

Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.

`

QueEx · Sep 5, 2006

[frame]http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/index.htm[/frame]

QueEx · Sep 12, 2006

<center>Situation Called Dire in West Iraq
Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says</center>

Washington Post
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 11, 2006; Page A01

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq.

One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

The "very pessimistic" statement, as one Marine officer called it, was dated Aug. 16 and sent to Washington shortly after that, and has been discussed across the Pentagon and elsewhere in national security circles. "I don't know if it is a shock wave, but it's made people uncomfortable," said a Defense Department official who has read the report. Like others interviewed about the report, he spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name because of the document's sensitivity.

Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.

Devlin offers a series of reasons for the situation, including a lack of U.S. and Iraqi troops, a problem that has dogged commanders since the fall of Baghdad more than three years ago, said people who have read it. These people said he reported that not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence.

Those conclusions are striking because, even after four years of fighting an unexpectedly difficult war in Iraq, the U.S. military has tended to maintain an optimistic view: that its mission is difficult, but that progress is being made. Although CIA station chiefs in Baghdad have filed negative classified reports over the past several years, military intelligence officials have consistently been more positive, both in public statements and in internal reports.

Devlin, as part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) headquarters in Iraq, has been stationed there since February, so his report isn't being dismissed as the stunned assessment of a newly arrived officer. In addition, he has the reputation of being one of the Marine Corps' best intelligence officers, with a tendency to be careful and straightforward, said another Marine intelligence officer. Hence, the report is being taken seriously as it is examined inside the military establishment and also by some CIA officials.

Not everyone interviewed about the report agrees with its glum findings. The Defense Department official, who worked in Iraq earlier this year, said his sense is that Anbar province is going to be troubled as long as U.S. troops are in Iraq. "Lawlessness is a way of life there," he said. As for the report, he said, "It's one conclusion about one area. The conclusion on al Anbar doesn't translate into a perspective on the entire country."

No one interviewed would quote from the report, citing its classification, and The Washington Post was not shown a copy of it. But over the past three weeks, Devlin's paper has been widely disseminated in military and intelligence circles. It is provoking intense debate over the key finding that in Anbar, the U.S. effort to clear and hold major cities and the upper Euphrates valley has failed.

The report comes at an awkward time politically, just as a midterm election campaign gets underway that promises to be in part a referendum on the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war. It also follows by just a few weeks the testimony of Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee early last month that "it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."

"It's hard to be optimistic right now," said one Army general who has served in Iraq. "There's a sort of critical mass of tough news," he said, with intensifying violence from the insurgency and between Sunnis and Shiites, a lack of effective Iraqi government and a growing concern that Iraq may be falling apart.

"In the analytical world, there is a real pall of gloom descending," said Jeffrey White, a former analyst of Middle Eastern militaries for the Defense Intelligence Agency, who also had been told about the pessimistic Marine report.

Devlin, who is in Iraq, could not be reached to comment. Col. Jerry Renne, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said Saturday that "as a matter of policy, we don't comment on classified documents."

Anbar is a key province; it encompasses Ramadi and Fallujah, which with Baghdad pose the greatest challenge U.S. forces have faced in Iraq. It accounts for 30 percent of Iraq's land mass, encompassing the vast area from the capital to the borders of Syria and Jordan, including much of the area that has come to be known as the Sunni Triangle.

The insurgency arguably began there with fighting in Fallujah not long after U.S. troops arrived in April 2003, and fighting has since continued. Thirty-three U.S. military personnel died there in August -- 17 from the Marines, 13 from the Army and three from the Navy.

A second general who has read the report warned that he thought it was accurate as far as it went, but agreed with the defense official that Devlin's "dismal" view may not have much applicability elsewhere in Iraq. The problems facing Anbar are peculiar to that region, he and others argued.

But an Army officer in Iraq familiar with the report said he considers it accurate. "It is best characterized as 'realistic,' " he said.

"From what I understand, it is very candid, very unvarnished," said retired Marine Col. G. I. Wilson. "It says the emperor has no clothes."

One view of the report offered by some Marine officers is that it is a cry for help from an area where fighting remains intense, yet which recently has been neglected by top commanders and Bush administration officials as they focus on bringing a sense of security to Baghdad. An Army unit of Stryker light armored vehicles that had been slated to replace another unit in Anbar was sent to reinforce operations in Baghdad, leaving commanders in the west scrambling to move around other troops to fill the gap.

Devlin's report is a work of intelligence analysis, not of policy prescription, so it does not try to suggest what, if anything, can be done to fix the situation. It is not clear what the implications would be for U.S. forces if Devlin's view is embraced by top commanders elsewhere in Iraq. U.S. officials are wary of simply abandoning the Sunni parts of Iraq, for fear that they could become havens for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

One possible solution would be to try to turn over the province to Iraqi forces, but that could increase the risk of a full-blown civil war. Shiite-dominated forces might begin slaughtering Sunnis, while Sunni-dominated units might simply begin acting independently of the central government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001204.html?referrer=email

QueEx · Sep 12, 2006

<center>Pentagon Weighing Report On Anbar
Violence Negated Plan to Pull Troops</center>

Washington Post
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; Page A19

The Pentagon is taking "very seriously" a classified intelligence report concluding that the U.S. military has fought to a stalemate in Iraq's western Anbar province as political conditions also worsen in the "epicenter" of the country's Sunni insurgency, a senior defense official said yesterday.

In congressional testimony on security in Iraq, Pentagon officials also said the rise of "ethno-sectarian violence" has laid the conditions for civil war, aborting plans by U.S. commanders to begin withdrawing U.S. troops. Gaps in the capabilities of Iraqi security forces leave open the prospect that U.S. forces may have to stay in the country for as many as five or more years, they said.

Calling Anbar "a very hot zone on the battlefield," Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric S. Edelman said the secret report on the volatile, strategic province was gaining high-level attention at the Pentagon.

"It is an important report. We've taken it very seriously," Edelman told a panel of the House Government Reform Committee. "This is an operational assessment by one very good intel officer," he said, adding that "a lot of us are looking at it very closely" and are seeking a further assessment on Anbar from top U.S. commanders in Iraq.

The report, first outlined publicly in The Washington Post yesterday, said a shortage of U.S. and Iraqi troops in Anbar and the collapse of local governments have left a vacuum that has been exploited by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. It painted a bleak picture of security prospects in Anbar, a large province bordering Syria and Jordan that includes the troubled cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

"Anbar has been the epicenter of the insurgency," Edelman said, adding that "a purely military solution to any insurgency is not possible." He said the report was a "snapshot" that does not represent the entire country.

Edelman prompted an angry retort from Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) by saying that it would not be "productive" to discuss the classified report on the conflict in Anbar in a public hearing.

"But wouldn't it be of interest to the parents of American soldiers who are being sent to fight, that they would know that a report existed that said that a province was beyond repair and the thing couldn't be won militarily? Wouldn't that be of interest, Mr. Edelman?" Kucinich replied. Edelman explained that he was concerned because "the enemy, you know, is clearly following the discussion."

On overall security in Iraq, lawmakers pressed Edelman and Rear Adm. William D. Sullivan, vice director for strategic plans and policy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on why the growth of Iraq's military and police forces has not yet permitted a reduction in the number of U.S. troops, which increased to 140,000 over the summer.

Iraq expects by December to have completed the training and equipping of 325,000 security forces, including 137,000 military personnel and 188,000 police and other Ministry of Interior forces, Sullivan said. And the U.S. military has turned over 53 of its 100 bases in Iraq to the Iraqi government. But he said the emergence of sectarian violence in addition to the Sunni insurgency has led U.S. commanders to decide "that they cannot afford to draw down our own troop levels while the Iraqis are still building up theirs."

Sullivan conceded that in the longer term, because Iraq's military has been trained and outfitted primarily to fight an insurgency, rather than to defend Iraq against foreign attack, U.S. forces could be required as backup for many years.

"Am I wrong in making the assumption that we're going to have American troops there or nearby for a long time . . . in order to defend this nation?" asked Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the Government Reform subcommittee on national security.

"It is very much a possibility," Sullivan replied. He said the intent in developing Iraq's military was to create a force "that would have a modicum of its own self-defense capability without being an army that could threaten its neighbors." Iraqi leaders are still trying to "figure out what kind of military ultimately they need," he said.

Edelman said he did not know whether U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Iraq in five or fewer years. Asked whether they would be home in 10 years, he replied: "I certainly hope so."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091101005.html

QueEx · Nov 22, 2006

[frame]http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK23Ak02.html[/frame]

QueEx · Nov 29, 2006

<center>

"This marks a shift in tone from earlier debate
about the responsibility of the United States to
restore order after the 2003 invasion, and it seemed
to gain currency in October, when sectarian violence
surged. Some see the talk of blame as the beginning of
the end of U.S. involvement."

</center>

[frame]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801499.html?referrer=email[/frame]

muckraker10021 · Dec 8, 2006

muckraker10021 said:
<table border="6" width="600" id="table1" bordercolorlight="#000000" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4" bordercolordark="#000000" bgcolor="#FFEFDF" height="700"><tr>
<td><center>
<img src="http://www.fcnl.org/images/iraq/iraq_multiple_bases.jpg">
</center>

Why is the U.S. building permanent bases in Iraq — in a country that is only twice the size of the state of Idaho?

U.S. engineers [ (Halliburton - KBR ( Kellog, Brown & Root) ] —are constructing 14 "enduring bases," to serve as long-term encampments for thousands of American troops.

These troops will be "The Spear" of US Imperialism in the entire Middle -East. These permanent bases are to replace the US military bases in Saudi Arabia that were closed.

What the Pentagon calls 14 "enduring" bases (twelve of which are located on the map) – all of which are to be consolidated into FOUR MEGA-BASES. </td>
</tr></table>



"It may be hard to do, given the skimpy coverage, but keep your eyes directed at our "super-bases." Until the administration blinks on them, there will be no withdrawal from Iraq"

<hr noshade color="#FF0000" size="14"></hr>

Iraq Study Group on Permanent Bases

December 6th 2006

<img src="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contributors/bill-scher/headshot.jpg">
by Bill Scher 
Here's what the just released <a href="http://www.bakerinstitute.org/Pubs/iraqstudygroup_findings.pdf" target="_blank">Iraq Study Group report</a> has to say about permanent bases. Starts off good, then in classic bipartisan centrist fashion, falls apart.
<blockquote>The United States should also signal that it is seeking broad international support for Iraq on behalf of achieving these milestones. The United States can begin to shape a positive climate for its diplomatic efforts, internationally and within Iraq, through public statements by President Bush that reject the notion that the United States seeks to control Iraq's oil, or seeks permanent military bases within Iraq. However, the United States could consider a request from Iraq for temporary bases.
 ...
 RECOMMENDATION 22: The President should state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. If the Iraqi government were to request a temporary base or bases, then the U.S. government could consider that request as it would in the case of any other government.
</blockquote>
 In the context of a report that does not envision any sort of timetable for withdrawal, and does envision the "imbedding of substantially more U.S. military personnel in all Iraqi Army battalions and brigades, as well as within Iraqi companies," for "some time," "temporary" can easily be perceived by the Iraqi people as a cloak for "permanent."
 <a href="http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/043006.htm#050506">LiberalOasis warned back in May</a>, that if Democrats succeeded in banning funding for permanent bases, the Bushies could just get cute about what they called those bases.
 Which is exactly why <a href="http://www.liberaloasis.com/2006/11/sunday_talkshow_breakdown_10.php">last month, LiberalOasis said about the ISG members:</a> "watch to see if they renounce and begin to dismantle the permanent bases." (emphasis added)
 Remember, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11072377/" target="_blank">these bases already exist</a>. as the AP reported back in March:
<blockquote>The concrete goes on forever [at Balid air base], vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States.
 At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.
</blockquote>
 And much like the way the Iraq Study Group said we should only have "temporary bases" if Iraq made a "request" for them, that's how the Bush Administration has talked about them. From the same AP story:
<blockquote>...U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about "permanent duty stations" by a Marine during an Iraq visit in December, allowed that it was "an interesting question." He said it would have to be raised by the incoming Baghdad government, if "they have an interest in our assisting them for some period over time."
 In Washington, Iraq scholar Phebe Marr finds the language intriguing. "If they aren't planning for bases, they ought to say so," she said. "I would expect to hear 'No bases.'"
 Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete.
</blockquote>
 And that's how <a href="http://www.liberaloasis.com/2006/10/love_them_bases.php">Dubya himself deals with such questions</a>, this from a press conference two months ago:
 JIM RUTENBERG, NY TIMES: Does the United States want to maintain permanent bases in Iraq? And I would follow that by asking, are you willing to renounce a claim on permanent bases in Iraq?
 DUBYA: Jim, any decisions about permanency in Iraq will be made by the Iraqi government.
 And, frankly, it's not in much of a position to be thinking about what the world is going to look like five or 10 years from now. They are working to make sure that we succeed in the short-term. And they need our help. And that's where our focus is.
 But remember, when you're talking about bases and troops, we're dealing with a sovereign government. Now, we entered into an agreement with the Karzai government. They weren't called permanent bases, but they were called arrangements that will help this government understand that there will be a U.S. presence so long as they want them there.
 And at the appropriate time, I'm confident we'll be willing to sit down and discuss the long-term security of Iraq. 
 It's not hard for the Iraqi people to see any future "request" from the their government being bogus and illegitimate, made under duress from our own occupying force.
 The one upside from the ISG report is that they clearly stated that permanent bases are a major obstacle to achieving a diplomatic solution.
 That gives us some additional rhetorical ammo with which to push the issue.
 But to actually change the political dynamic in the region, and restore American political credibility and moral authority, there needs to be tangible evidence these bases are not staying.
 Word games won't cut it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-scher/iraq-study-group-on-perma_b_35690.html

QueEx · Mar 3, 2007

<center>Iraq PM Vows Cabinet Shakeup in 2 Weeks</center>

Mar 3, 9:29 PM (ET)
Associated Press
By ROBERT H. REID and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's prime minister said Saturday he will reshuffle his Cabinet within two weeks and pursue criminal charges against political figures linked to extremists as a sign of his government's resolve to restore stability during the U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also told The Associated Press during an interview at his Green Zone office that Iraq will work hard to ensure the success of a regional security conference.

The conference in Baghdad, tentatively set for next weekend, is expected to bring together all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria, as well as the United States and Britain to find ways to ease this country's security crisis.

Iran has not announced whether it will attend, but Iraqi officials believe that Tehran will send a representative.

Al-Maliki has been under pressure from the U.S. to bring order into his factious government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds since it took office last May. Rumors of Cabinet changes have surfaced before, only to disappear because of pressure from coalition members seeking to keep power.

Nevertheless, al-Maliki said there would be a Cabinet reshuffle "either this week or next."

After the changes are announced, al-Maliki said he would undertake a "change in the ministerial structure," presumably consolidating and streamlining the 39-member Cabinet.

The prime minister did not say how many Cabinet members would be replaced. But some officials said about nine would lose their jobs, including all six Cabinet members loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an al-Maliki ally.

Al-Sadr also controls 30 of the 275 parliament seats, and his support for al-Maliki has been responsible for the government's reluctance to crack down on the cleric's Mahdi Army militia, blamed for much of the Shiite-Sunni slaughter of the past year.

U.S. officials had been urging al-Maliki to cut his ties to al-Sadr and form a new alliance of mainstream Shiites, moderate Sunnis and Kurds. Al-Maliki had been stalling, presumably at the urging of the powerful Shiite clerical hierarchy that wants to maintain Shiite unity.

But pressure for change has mounted since President Bush ordered 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq last January despite widespread opposition in Congress and among the U.S. public - weary of the nearly four-year-long war.

Last month, U.S. and Iraqi troops arrested Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili, an al-Sadr ally, for allegedly diverting millions of dollars in government funds to the Mahdi Army and allowing death squads to use ambulances and government hospitals to carry out kidnappings and killings.

During the interview, al-Maliki said other top officials would face prosecution for ties to insurgents, sectarian militias and death squads - including members of parliament.

"There has been coordination between us and the Multinational Forces ... starting at the beginning of this year ... to determine who should arrested and the reasons behind arresting them," he said.

Al-Maliki did not elaborate on the U.S.-Iraqi coordination but said Iraqi judicial authorities were reviewing case files to decide which to refer to an Iraqi investigative judge, who must decide whether there is enough evidence to order a trial.

Al-Maliki said he was encouraged by Iraqi public response to the new Baghdad security operation - which has led to a sharp drop in violence in the capital.

He also defended his government, saying it managed to "achieve a lot of harmony and stability" despite attacks by al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein loyalists.

The prime minister did not say how many politicians and officials might be targeted for formal investigation, an Iraqi legal step that corresponds to a grand jury probe.

But five senior Iraqis - two of them generals and three from Shiite and Sunni parties - have told the AP that up to 100 prominent figures could face legal proceedings.

The five spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the subject to the media. All five had direct knowledge of the case review.

U.S. officials have said privately that a number of prominent Iraqis were believed to have ties to armed groups.

One Shiite parliament member, Jamal Jaafar Mohammed, is believed to have fled to Iran after U.S. authorities learned that he was convicted by a Kuwaiti court in absentia and sentenced to death in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait.

Mohammed fled Kuwait for Iran before he could be arrested and returned after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. U.S. officials have alleged he was a conduit for Iranian weapons and supplies smuggled to Shiite militias.

U.S. military officials have expressed concern over alleged Iranian weapons shipments and financial support to Shiite parties allied with al-Maliki. The Shiite-led government hopes the upcoming regional conference will ease tensions between the U.S. and Shiite-dominated Iran - and allay Washington's fears of Tehran's influence here.

The U.S. also hopes the conference will encourage Syria and other Arab countries - most of them Sunni-led - to increase their support for Iraqi's leadership, despite regional unease over the Shiite-led government's ties to Iran.

"In fact the importance of the upcoming conference lies in the fact that the Iraqi government has the ability to serve as a proper venue for solving conflicts," al-Maliki said.

"So we will exert the utmost effort to find solutions to all pending questions, either among regional countries themselves or between them and Iraq, or between them and powers such as the U.S. and Britain and the international community."

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20070304/D8NL2UN83.html

QueEx · Aug 24, 2007

<center>A new intelligence report
paints a bleak picture of Iraq</center>

852-16web-USIRAQ-12-OL.embedded.prod_affiliate.91.jpg

By Warren P. Strobel and Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, August 23, 2007

WASHINGTON — A new assessment of Iraq by U.S. intelligence agencies provides little evidence that the American troop "surge" has accomplished its goals and predicts that the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will become "more precarious" in the months ahead.

A declassified summary of the report released Thursday said that violence remains high, warns that U.S. alliances with former Sunni Muslim insurgents could undercut the central government and says that political compromises are "unlikely to emerge" in the next 12 months.

Perhaps most strikingly, U.S. intelligence analysts concluded that factions and political players in and outside Iraq already are maneuvering in expectation of a drawdown of U.S. troops — moves that could later heighten sectarian bloodshed.

"The national intelligence assessment confirms what we feared the most: The U.S. has become deeply embroiled in Iraq's civil war," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.

A White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said the report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, showed that President Bush's decision to send an additional 28,000 troops to Iraq is beginning to have an effect.

While it said that the surge has brought "measurable, but uneven improvements in security," the report didn't repeat recent military assertions that civilian deaths have decreased by 50 percent. Instead, it said, "the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high."

It also suggested that while violence is no longer increasing, any progress might be temporary. "The steep escalation of violence has been checked for now," the report said, noting, "Overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks." It provided no specific statistics.

The report also said that al-Qaida in Iraq "retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks," and it warned that the current U.S. tactic of recruiting former Sunni Muslim insurgents to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq — one of the pillars of efforts by Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq — could backfire.

Nor has the surge brought about Sunni reconciliation with al-Maliki's government, the report said. Worse, it said, such "bottom-up" security initiatives could pose risks to the al-Maliki government by undermining central authority and reinvigorating armed opposition to the government in Baghdad.

U.S. military spokesmen in Baghdad weren't available for comment.

The report's main conclusions, known as "key judgments," were declassified 2 { weeks before Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to testify to Congress on Iraq's performance on 18 political, economic and security benchmarks.

The report didn't address each of those points directly, but it concluded that the "broadly accepted political compromises required for sustained security, long-term political progress and economic development are unlikely to emerge unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments."

"To date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively," it said.

In recent days, several U.S. lawmakers have suggested that al-Maliki should step down, and Bush on Tuesday gave the Iraqi leader a less-than-ringing endorsement.

The intelligence estimate says that al-Maliki, while increasingly hemmed in by his opponents, is likely to remain in power — if only because other Shiite Muslim leaders realize that trying to replace him could paralyze the government.

"It's difficult to see an obvious replacement that would garner the majority support you would need," said a senior U.S. intelligence official, one of three who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the estimate frankly.

An Iraqi official close to al-Maliki said the embattled Shiite prime minister has become more isolated from his Shiite and Kurdish allies. Al-Maliki, who's from the Dawa party, the smallest and least powerful in the Shiite alliance, depended on those allies to win his position.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst now with the Brookings Institution, a center-left Washington policy organization, said that with summer ending and little real progress in Iraq, Bush has to blame someone.

"The president promised that people will see political progress by the end of the summer, it's here, and the only progress is the Sunnis turning on al-Qaida. Maliki's government is not likely to embrace these Sunnis because the Sunnis are not interested in embracing a Shiite government," Riedel said.

Briefing reporters on the report, a second senior U.S. intelligence official said that when U.S. troops leave Iraq, some Sunni groups "could turn on one another to encourage a greater degree of intra-sectarian conflict."

A similar dynamic is now being seen among Shiite militias in southern Iraq as British troops reduce their presence there.

On other topics, the declassified judgments found that:

_Iraqi Security Forces, while more competent than before, haven't improved enough to conduct major operations independent of U.S. and allied troops.

_Iran "will continue to provide funding, weaponry and training to Iraqi Shia militants" despite U.S. protests.

_Syria has cracked down on Sunni extremist groups trying to infiltrate fighters into Iraq because they threaten Syria's stability, but is providing support to other groups inside Iraq to try to increase its influence there.

———

(Strobel reported from Washington, Fadel, from Baghdad.)

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/19175.html

QueEx · Aug 24, 2007

<center>Bush left with few options, even
fewer chances for success in Iraq</center>

By Warren P. Strobel
McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, August 24, 2007

WASHINGTON — One way to look at the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq released this week is to review what it describes as the best-case scenario.

In that scenario, Iraq's security will improve modestly over the next six to 12 months, but violence across the country will remain high. The U.S.-backed central government will grow more fragile and remain unable to govern. Shiite and Sunni Muslims will continue their bitter feuding. All sides will position themselves for an eventual American departure.

In Iraq, best-case scenarios have rarely, if ever, come to pass.

Four and a half years after President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, and after countless strategies, plans and revisions have failed to pacify the country, Bush next month faces what may be the final major decisions he can make about the war.

But even before top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker report to Congress, now set for Sept. 11, the president appears hemmed in by decisions he and others made months or years ago.

His generals are calling for troop cuts in Iraq because the strain has limited the Army's ability to respond to other crises. There is widespread agreement that the additional 28,000 U.S. troops dispatched under the so-called surge will have to begin coming home next April when their 15-month tours will start to end.

Bush's one-time hope in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who was installed in April 2006 after intervention by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has stuck to a narrow Shiite agenda. Maliki has failed to unify the government, improve basic services or pass major legislation.

Bush's surge has bought "measurable but uneven" security improvements, in the words of the intelligence estimate — but utterly failed to achieve its goal of spurring political reconciliation that would unify the country. The level of civilian casualties and attacks remains high, the estimate found.

Bush can try to move backward, by initiating a troop withdrawal. He can try to move sideways, by seeing if there's some way to replace Maliki and his democratically elected government. Or he can try to move forward, by staying the course.

Each direction carries danger.

There are now about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and, even if Bush does nothing, that number will fall to pre-surge levels of 130,000 in about a year, because of limits on the length of time soldiers can be deployed into Iraq. The secretary of the Army said this week that there will be no extensions; those lead to stress and an increase in suicides, he said.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is expected to urge the president to reduce U.S. troops to 100,000 by next year, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The expected recommendation reflects deep concern with the toll that large and repeated deployments have taken on the Army and other services, hurting the military's ability to respond to other emergencies.

Bush "has backed himself into a huge corner ... because all the way back in 2002 when they dreamed up this war, they chose not to expand the size of the U.S. forces," said Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and professor of international relations at Boston University. The president now has "a lousy range of options," he said.

Senior Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia on Thursday urged Bush to announce in mid-September a withdrawal of troops, possibly 5,000, to give the Iraqi government a wake-up call. Warner made clear, however, that he wouldn't support Democratic-led efforts to force the White House to bring the troops home.

Enticing as it is, a troop withdrawal carries real risks.

Declassified portions of the intelligence estimate, which is the consensus view of all U.S. spy agencies, say that narrowing the U.S. military's role to supporting Iraqi forces and conducting counterterrorist operations "would erode security gains achieved thus far."

In other words, violence, still at unacceptable levels, would get worse, and the gains U.S. troops and Sunni tribesmen have had fighting the terrorist group al Qaida in Iraq might evaporate.

There has been growing speculation — fueled in part by Bush's own words this week — that the United States might be preparing to engineer Maliki's ouster. Rumors of a coup swept Baghdad this week, and several U.S. senators have jumped on the dump-Maliki bandwagon.

The intelligence report underscores "a growing recognition that, for all practical purposes, there is no legitimate government in Iraq," Bacevich said, and therefore "no light at the end of the tunnel."

How the United States would replace Maliki is anything but clear. He was elected by the Iraqi parliament, which was elected by the Iraqi people and there's no major push among Iraq's major political parties to remove him.

But even if Maliki were replaced, it's hardly certain that that would make much difference.

Maliki has carried out the will of Iraq's dominant but long-suffering Shiites to exert political power. Any other leader would have to do likewise.

During the Vietnam War, U.S. presidents hoped that one South Vietnamese leader after another would strengthen that country. None ever did.

The White House has given every indication that Bush will argue for the third option — staying the course and keeping a large U.S. combat force in Iraq for the rest of his presidency.

That, too, seems unlikely to bring success. Nevertheless, Democrats and some Republicans may be worried that the turmoil that's likely to follow a U.S. withdrawal would more likely be blamed on a decision to retreat rather than on the president's decision to invade Iraq in the first place.

( Renee Schoof and John Walcott contributed to this report.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/19222.html

QueEx · Aug 28, 2007

694-aria070826.slideshow_main.prod_affiliate.91.jpg

Robert Ariail / The State (Columbia, S.C.) (August 26, 2007)

QueEx · Sep 17, 2007

<center>Muqtada strikes another political blow</center>

Asia Times
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - "We have absolutely no intention of pushing Prime Minister [Nuri al-]Maliki out," said a spokesman for the Sadrist alliance on Sunday. This came after Muqtada al-Sadr finally decided to walk out of the ruling Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).

For obvious reasons, the prime minister did not believe the assurances, realizing that ever since he broke with Muqtada this year, the rebel-turned-politician has been bent on bringing down the entire Maliki administration in revenge.

Muqtada has been giving Maliki nightmares - serious ones. Step 1 of his "coup" was six of his supporters walking out on the Maliki cabinet, depriving it of Sadrist legitimacy and keeping key positions vacant, such as Transport, Commerce, and Health. Maliki promised a cabinet reshuffle in the summer to fill in the vacant posts, but to date he has not done so.

Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Maliki government, refused to comment on the latest embarrassing drawback, saying: "It is not our affair. It is the affair of Parliament." This was the last thing, however, that Maliki needed, given that he has already lost most of his parliamentary allies, mainly the Sunnis in the Accordance Front and seculars in the Iraqi National List of former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

The walkout on the UIA deprives the all-Shi'ite alliance of 32 deputies from the Sadrist bloc in the 275-member Parliament. It is targeted against two people, Maliki and his patron, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim (a traditional opponent of the Sadr family in Shi'ite politics and leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council - SIIC).

Muqtada, who has been threatening a walkout for some time, claims that the UIA (which is headed by Hakim) has failed to respond to his numerous demands. One of the complaints is that Maliki no longer consults the Sadrists on affairs of state. Another is that Maliki, after his falling out with Muqtada, started arresting members of his Mahdi Army, although Muqtada promised a truce with government authorities and US forces that would last for six months, starting in August.

In effect, Maliki is now cracking down on the same people who have protected his regime since it came to power in May 2006. The walkout is in direct response to a new alliance comprising Maliki, Hakim and two Kurdish leaders, Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Maliki says they are "moderate architects" of a new Iraq. As far as Muqtada is concerned, they are nothing but puppets for the United States, working to transfer control of oil-rich Kirkuk to Kurdistan, in return for Kurdish support for the prime minister.

The UIA, which has already lost the Shi'ite Fadila Party and runs a high risk of being voted out of power if new elections are called for or if Maliki receives a vote of no confidence within the chamber, is frantic. Maliki now only has a razor-thin majority.

Abbas al-Bayati of the UIA said it would try to persuade the Sadrists to return. "They will not go too far away from the alliance; their withdrawal is not decisive." Members of the Sadrist bloc, however, claim the move is final, with no turning back.

Muqtada is very aware - often too aware - of his political weight within the Shi'ite community. Although Hakim and Maliki are powerful among Shi'ite businessmen and the middle class, Muqtada is king among young people and the community's poor. People follow Muqtada because he offers them services such as free hospitalization and protection. When they are wronged, he offers them revenge.

The Mahdi Army, seen as a militia by Iraqi Sunnis and the United States, is extremely popular among young Shi'ites. If these young people, who are frustrated because of unemployment, abandon the UIA, then the coalition of Shi'ite powers is in great trouble, although they refuse to admit it.

Many Shi'ites are already frustrated by the UIA's refusal to call for a timetable for US troop withdrawal. They are equally angered by Maliki's recent crackdown on the Mahdi Army, to please the George W Bush White House. In addition to protection, the Mahdi Army provided them with jobs.

Hakim, who competes with Muqtada for leadership among Shi'ites, is still strongly in favor of creating an autonomous Shi'ite district in southern Iraq. The UIA backs him in this, but Muqtada is curtly opposed to further federalization of Iraq, claiming the country should remain united.

Many Iraqis, who remain Arab nationalists at heart, are opposed to the carving up of Iraq along sectarian lines, despite their Shi'ite nationalism. The UIA is also strongly allied to, and funded by, the mullahs of Iran. Muqtada claims that Hakim is a stooge of Tehran for having lived there in the 1980s and mobilized his militia, the Badr Brigade, to fight against the Iraqi army in the Iran-Iraq War of that decade. Although Muqtada dreams of a theocracy in Iraq, he nevertheless wants it to be independent of the Iranian regime.

This also puts him at odds end with the UIA. The UIA, originally created for the parliamentary elections of 2005, was composed of several Shi'ite parties that were headed by the Da'wa Party of Maliki, the SIIC of Hakim, and al-Fadila, all under the patronage of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

They held 130 of the 275 seats in Parliament. The Sadrists, originally seen as a junior party in the UIA, started playing an increasingly stronger role with their 32 seats, and the ministerial jobs given to them by Maliki. Their influence stemmed from two elements: Muqtada's popularity, and his undeclared alliance with the prime minister.

Maliki gave Muqtada protection from US persecution and Muqtada reciprocated with giving Maliki legitimacy among Shi'ites in the slums of Baghdad. The two men began to disagree in late 2006 on how to deal with the US. Muqtada wanted Maliki to confront the US. But Maliki simply could not say "no" to the US, since he owed it his political existence.

By 2007, Muqtada had become a political embarrassment for Maliki. The US was pressuring him to get rid of him and crack down on the Mahdi Army, if he wanted to stay in office. Arab states were pressuring Maliki to abandon his Shi'ite nationalism in favor of a pan-Iraqi stance. They believed that Muqtada's growing influence in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq was due to Maliki's leniency with the Mahdi Army.

The targeting of Sunni neighborhoods, attacks on Sunni mosques and the assassination of Sunni notables were all believed to be the doing of Muqtada. The Sunni street made Muqtada the scapegoat for all the sectarian violence in Iraqi, even if he were not responsible.

Maliki survived the wave of condemnation from the Arab world by holding on to a strong domestic alliance of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. When that began to snap, things began falling apart on all fronts. First the Arab world abandoned him. Then came the US, which started to lose faith in his wisdom and doubt his sincerity in bringing stability to Iraq.

The Sunni Accordance Front walked out on the prime minister, along with al-Fadila, the Allawi team, and now finally and completely, the Sadrists. The UIA now only has 136 deputies (53 of them Kurdish allies), and Maliki sees that now - more than ever - his days are numbered. If the Sadrists say "no" to the prime minister from within Parliament, that would bring the total number of his parliamentary opponents to 127 out of 275.

Adding to Maliki's worries is rising Sunni anger over the recent assassination of tribal leader Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who was killed by a bomb near his home in Ramada, believed to be the work of al-Qaeda. A year ago, Abu Risha, an ally of both the US and Maliki, launched Anbar Awakening, bringing dozens of Sunni tribal leaders together to work with Iraqi and US forces to combat al-Qaeda in Iraq.

His assassination proves just how fragile security is under Maliki, who can neither help control the situation nor even protect his leading allies who are working for the same objectives.

National Security Adviser Muwafaq al-Rabei described Abu Risha as a "national hero" who was "unparalleled" in the nation's history, adding that his murder was a "national disaster".

Had Muqtada (who is vehemently anti-Qaeda) been around, working with Abu Risha and Maliki, then perhaps the clout of Osama bin Laden's network would not have been that powerful and the prime minister's Baghdad security plan would not have been in shambles.

Maliki began the US-backed plan after falling out with Muqtada this year, and instead of concentrating his efforts on combating al-Qaeda, focused on the Mahdi Army to please the Americans. As a result, al-Qaeda continued to thrive, and the Mahdi Army turned against Maliki.

Neither the Americans nor the Sadrists were pleased, and the ones to pay the price were the Iraqi people. As if Sunni anger were not enough, Maliki received more troubling news this week when the disbanded Ba'ath Party announced that it would be willing to work with Allawi, who has his eyes set on replacing the prime minister.

The Izzat Douri branch of Ba'ath announced that it is "more than willing to work with Allawi, because we see him as a nationalist and Iraqi patriot, and not a sectarian figure". Although its members do not agree with all that he did when serving as prime minister in 2004, "we have no doubt that he would represent the interests of Iraq, not of Shi'ites, or Sunnis, or any other group", a clear reference to Maliki.

More than ever before, Muqtada is proving to be a pragmatic politician who has surpassed all expectations. Who is the mastermind behind his political scheming, however, is unclear, since Muqtada clearly could not formulate strategy and take political initiatives of the sort he is doing without the advice of seasoned statesmen.

Inspired by Hezbollah, Mugtada Wants Iraq

When he rose to fame in 2004, many speculated that he was a temporary star, a radical cleric wanna-be who would never become a serious player in Iraqi politics. Neither his age (in this 30s) nor his religious credentials, experience or alliances were enough to make him a national leader.

Muqtada learned fast, however, probably inspired by the Hezbollah model in Lebanon and the character of its very popular and charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The Lebanese chief also came to power at an early age, in his early 30s, and managed to impose himself on everybody and everything in Lebanon within a relatively short time.

This is becoming increasingly true of Muqtada. Many believed initially that Muqtada had one prime objective - evacuation of US troops. They saw him as a political player only when it came to combating the US, not thinking that he had a serious political agenda for himself and his followers.

Today, three years later, it is clear that Muqtada's agenda surpasses withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. He has a much more ambitious aim: ruling Iraq. Wisdom started showing when he laid down his arms at the request of Sistani, to avoid a bloodbath for the Shi'ite community. He promised to take part in the political process and came across as an obedient man who would listen to advice from veterans like Sistani.

His uprising against the US in 2004 and then prime minister Allawi gave him all the legitimacy he needed to shake off his immature image. It gave him war medals that he could use to tell ordinary Iraqis: "If I join the political process, one cannot blame me. At least I tried to win independence with arms, unlike Iraqi politicians who are acting like stooges for the United States. If I work with the political system, it will be 'honorable cooperation' aimed at gradual independence."

Survival after such a war with the US, he claimed, was in itself a victory. The Iraqis - at least Iraqi Shi'ites - believed him and forgave him for taking part in a US-created political system, the same system he had originally denounced. It would have been very difficult for Muqtada to join the political system without having first waged war against it.

From within it, however, he began to apply the Hezbollah model through the wide array of charity organizations he operated. Poor people became increasingly dependent on him for survival. Meanwhile, Muqtada was cultivating alliances within political circles. People said yes to him fearing his wrath and rising political influence.

Then came Maliki, who needed him for legitimacy, giving Muqtada the opportunity of a lifetime by granting the Sadrist bloc posts within the government. In return, Muqtada told his followers to support the prime minister. Muqtada milked the government offices given to him, stretched them to their potential and then, when done with their benefits, walked out on them and the prime minister.

Muqtada's credibility has not been shaken by having been part of the Maliki regime. It was Maliki's reputation that suffered from being a friend to Muqtada. The young cleric did not need to prove himself to anybody: his war medals were still shinning. Maliki, however, had a lot of explaining to do, to Sunnis, Kurds and the US, as to what exactly was the nature of his relationship with Muqtada.

This is not how things were supposed to turn out, after all. Weren't the Shi'ites supposed to remain united rank-and-file behind the prime minister? Wasn't Muqtada going to help Maliki root out Sunni militias in exchange for the prime minister's promise never to crack down on the Mahdi Army?

Maliki actually faced an unbearable situation. He had to please either the increasingly ambitious Muqtada or the increasingly demanding George W Bush. He tried to walk the tightrope and please both - something that apparently was impossible.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II18Ak03.html

QueEx · Jan 12, 2008

<center>Ban eased on Saddam-era officials </center>

BBC NEWS
Saturday, 12 January 2008

The Iraqi parliament has passed legislation allowing former officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath party to return to public life.

The US had been urging Iraq's Shia-led government to approve the move in a bid to reach out to minority Sunni Arabs.

It will allow thousands of former party members to apply for reinstatement in the civil service and military.

The new law was passed as US President George W Bush, who is in the Gulf, said hope was returning to Iraq.

Reconciliation

Saddam Hussein was executed on 30 December 2006 after a special tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity.

His regime was predominantly Sunni and many figures were removed from government after his fall in 2003, under an edict from ex-US administrator Paul Bremer.

WHO ARE THE BAATHISTS?

The party was the political instrument of Saddam Hussein's rule

An estimated 2.5 million Iraqis were party members

Banned and broken up by US administrator in May 2003

Baathism was a pan-Arab secular nationalist movement

The army was disbanded, thousands of teachers, university lecturers and civil servants were sacked and anyone who had been a member of the higher tiers of the party was banned from government employment.

Some were reinstated after the US found that it had cleared out key ministries and the military without having any replacements.

After the Americans handed over power to an Iraqi government in 2004, they urged the Shia-led administration to ease the measures further in an effort to promote national reconciliation.

Much of the Sunni insurgency is thought to be centred on dismissed military men from the Baathist regime.

'Heavy blow'

The new legislation - called the Accountability and Justice Law - was approved on Saturday by all 143 lawmakers present in the 275-member house.

It creates a three-month period for the ex-members to be challenged, after which they will be immune from prosecution over the Saddam era.

The law excludes former Baath members charged with crimes or still sought for them.

However, it will grant state pensions to many former Baathist employees even if they are not given new posts.

The BBC's Humphrey Hawksley in Baghdad says the legislation is seen as an attempt by the government to end the deep sectarian divide between the Shia and Sunni communities.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Baghdad told Reuters news agency that it showed "that the political process is working in Iraq".

Meanwhile, Mr Bush said there had been a dramatic improvement in the country since the US troop "surge" last year - when 30,000 extra soldiers were sent to the Baghdad area.

"Hope is returning to Baghdad, and hope is returning to towns and villages throughout the country," he said during a visit to a US base in Kuwait - one of the stops on his Middle East tour.

He added that US and Iraqi soldiers had dealt "heavy blows" to al-Qaeda, and that the country was "now a different place from one year ago".

He said the withdrawal of 20,000 troops by July was on track, but no decision had been taken to bring home more.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7184906.stm

QueEx · Mar 28, 2008

<center>
We're fighting for survival, says Mahdi army commander
One Shia faction (Supreme Islamic Council faction)
seeking to obliterate another Shia faction
(Moqtada al-Sadr-led movement)
ahead of September elections</center>

Mahdi army militiamen aim RPGs in Basra. Photograph: Khaldoon Zubeir/
Getty

Guardian UK
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Friday March 28 2008

A senior commander in the Mahdi army said today the militia was fighting a battle for survival in Basra against a rival Shia faction seeking to obliterate it ahead of September elections.

Fighting broke out in Basra on Tuesday when Iraqi government forces launched an offensive against Shia militia in the city. Overnight, US jets carried out air strikes in support of Iraqi forces in at least two locations.

Shiek Ali al-Sauidi, a prominent member of the Moqtada al-Sadr-led movement in Basra, said his men were being targeted not by the Iraqi government but by government militias loyal to the rival Supreme Islamic Council faction.

"They are a executing a very well drawn plan. They are trying to exterminate the Sadrists and cut and isolate the movement before the September local elections," he said in a telephone interview with the Guardian.

"The Sadrists are the only Shia resistance movement against the occupiers and we have wide popularity. We are going through a battle of existence we will fight to the end. We either survive this or we are finished."

The fighting has spread to Baghdad and other cities in Iraq, claiming the lives of at least 200 people since Tuesday. In the capital, a US helicopter fired a missile into the Sadr City district, while rocket and mortar attacks killed two guards outside the Iraqi vice president's office, inside the Green Zone. Reuters reported that in Nassiriya, Mahdi army fighters loyal to Sadr had taken over the city centre.

Sauidi said the Mahdi army was well equipped for the fight ahead. "We have captured lots of their vehicles, machine guns and mortars. We have new RPGs we got from their supply trucks. Our fighters know how to use the side streets as their battle space."

As fighting between the Shia Mahdi army and Shia Iraqi soldiers continued, witnesses described the scenes in Basra.

A resident of the poor neighbourhood of Hayaniya said: "The situation is very difficult in Basra, all the side streets are controlled by the Mahdi army. Even if the army has lots of tanks, the Mahdi fighters are controlling the streets. The fighters are driving in captured Iraqi Humvees and waving new guns."

Said Abu Saleh, 30, said: "Yesterday we were in the street and saw a black car coming. They stopped and two men opened the trunk. They dragged out an Iraqi soldier and threw him in the street and they drove away.

"He was a young soldier dressed in a military uniform, he had a bullet hole in his head and there was blood on his face. Even his boots were covered with blood.

"We found his ID card, his name was Ahmad Raad el Helfy. We went through his mobile phone and found a number marked 'mum', we dialled and an old women answered. I told her that her son had died and that she was a mother of martyr she started screaming and wailing."

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, today extended his deadline for Shia militants to hand over their weapons by more than a week and offered cash to those who complied. "All those who have heavy and intermediate weapons are to deliver them to security sites and they will be rewarded financially. This will start from March 28 to April 8," he said.

Sadr, who helped Maliki to power after an election in 2005 but later broke away from him, has called for talks with the government. Maliki has vowed to battle what he calls criminal gangs in Basra "to the end".

The fighting is a test of Maliki's ability to prove Iraqi forces can stand on their own and allow US and UK forces to withdraw. British combat troops – who last year handed over responsibility for security in Basra province to Iraqis – have remained in their base at Basra airport during the upsurge in violence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/28/iraq1

Making Sense of Iraq's Vote

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