Negotiate With Iraqi Insurgents ???
- Thread starter QueEx
- Start date
Man the religious right wing in America don't care about dark skinned people dying in another country.
Everyday hundreds of Iraqis get some type of death in their lives from this war that destabalized the region.
We went there to rescue these people, if you believe that bullshit, but now nobody cares about the thousands dying.
Everyday hundreds of Iraqis get some type of death in their lives from this war that destabalized the region.
We went there to rescue these people, if you believe that bullshit, but now nobody cares about the thousands dying.
QueEx said:
<font size="3" color="#000000" face="georgia">He's talking about the fake Christians, whether those fake Christians are Creflo Dollar or Too Big Jakes, or Pat ‘Lunatic’ Robertson, or Jerry FLAWwell. They are fake because they are not following the dictates of their proclaimed Messiah, Jesus Christ. They wear and sell bracelets that say W.W.J.D. –What Would Jesus Do – meanwhile they do the opposite of Jesus’ New Testament teaching. These fake Christians are not following the faith in the manner of someone like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They are using religion to ‘pimp’ their congregations and laugh all the way to their private jets and 40,000 square foot mansions. If you believe in hell then there is a special extra hot place waiting for them when they get there.
READ:
Right Wing Politics and Religion: The Unholy Alliance Exposed
<img src="http://www.howlingdogpress.com/rwpr_files/image3141.jpg">
<p>
<h2>Henry Bechthold radio comments</h2></font>
<object classid="CLSID:05589FA1-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A" width="200" height="70"><param name="FileName" value="http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/audio/HenryBechthold.mp3">
<param name="type" value="application/x-mplayer2">
<param name="PlayCount" value="1"><param name="Volume" value="1"><param name="ShowControls" value="true"><param name="ShowDisplay" value="true"><embed type="application/x-mplayer2" playcount= "1" width="320" height="46" filename="http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/audio/HenryBechthold.mp3" volume="1" showcontrols="true" showdisplay="true" src="http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/audio/HenryBechthold.mp3">
</embed>
</object>
<p><img src="http://images.thetimes.co.uk/images/TIMESHeadBGLogo_1.gif">
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
US In Secret Truce Talks With Insurgency Chiefs</font>
<font face="verdana" size="3" color="#000000">
<b>
by Marie Colvin - The Sunday Times UK
October 22, 2006</b>
AMERICAN officials held secret talks with leaders of the Iraqi insurgency last week after admitting that their two-month clampdown on violence in Baghdad had failed.
Few details of the discussions in the Jordanian capital Amman have emerged but an Iraqi source close to the negotiations said the participants had met for at least two days.
They included members of the Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the main Sunni militias behind the insurgency, and American government representatives. The talks were described as “feeler” discussions. The US officials were exploring ways of persuading the Sunni groups to stop attacks on allied forces and to end a cycle of increasingly bloody sectarian clashes with members of the majority Shi’ite groups.
According to the source, the key demand of the Islamic Army was the release of American-held prisoners in allied jails.
The Islamic Army has been held responsible for the killing of Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist kidnapped in Baghdad in August 2004, and the execution of three Macedonian engineers working for the American army two months later.
The talks with Sunni insurgents, a further sign that US forces in Iraq are rethinking their tactics, came amid parallel efforts to persuade Shi’ite militias to quell their own violence.
Nouri Al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister and a former Shi’ite political activist, held talks with Moqtadr al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric who leads the Mahdi Army and controls 30 of the 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament. Maliki is believed to have urged him to control his men.
But there were further clashes yesterday when gunmen loyal to Sadr fought with police near Baghdad, a day after hundreds of his militiamen attacked police stations and Iraqi forces in the south of the country.
The escalation of Shi’ite infighting in Amara, where up to 300 gunmen clashed with police, left at least 31 people dead. It is believed last week’s violence was sparked by the arrest of the brother of the local leader of the Mahdi Army.
About 700 Iraqi troops were sent on Friday to restore order, but the violence highlighted the weakness of the Maliki government in keeping order as rival Shi’ite groups jostle for power. Last night it appeared that the Iraqi troops had succeeded in stopping the fighting and they were manning checkpoints around the city.
Only two months ago British troops handed Amara to Iraqi control stating that the security situation there was “relatively quiet”. Yesterday the troops, based in Basra, were on standby, ready to go back in if the Iraqi army loses control.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2415692,00.html
</font>
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
US In Secret Truce Talks With Insurgency Chiefs</font>
<font face="verdana" size="3" color="#000000">
<b>
by Marie Colvin - The Sunday Times UK
October 22, 2006</b>
AMERICAN officials held secret talks with leaders of the Iraqi insurgency last week after admitting that their two-month clampdown on violence in Baghdad had failed.
Few details of the discussions in the Jordanian capital Amman have emerged but an Iraqi source close to the negotiations said the participants had met for at least two days.
They included members of the Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the main Sunni militias behind the insurgency, and American government representatives. The talks were described as “feeler” discussions. The US officials were exploring ways of persuading the Sunni groups to stop attacks on allied forces and to end a cycle of increasingly bloody sectarian clashes with members of the majority Shi’ite groups.
According to the source, the key demand of the Islamic Army was the release of American-held prisoners in allied jails.
The Islamic Army has been held responsible for the killing of Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist kidnapped in Baghdad in August 2004, and the execution of three Macedonian engineers working for the American army two months later.
The talks with Sunni insurgents, a further sign that US forces in Iraq are rethinking their tactics, came amid parallel efforts to persuade Shi’ite militias to quell their own violence.
Nouri Al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister and a former Shi’ite political activist, held talks with Moqtadr al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric who leads the Mahdi Army and controls 30 of the 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament. Maliki is believed to have urged him to control his men.
But there were further clashes yesterday when gunmen loyal to Sadr fought with police near Baghdad, a day after hundreds of his militiamen attacked police stations and Iraqi forces in the south of the country.
The escalation of Shi’ite infighting in Amara, where up to 300 gunmen clashed with police, left at least 31 people dead. It is believed last week’s violence was sparked by the arrest of the brother of the local leader of the Mahdi Army.
About 700 Iraqi troops were sent on Friday to restore order, but the violence highlighted the weakness of the Maliki government in keeping order as rival Shi’ite groups jostle for power. Last night it appeared that the Iraqi troops had succeeded in stopping the fighting and they were manning checkpoints around the city.
Only two months ago British troops handed Amara to Iraqi control stating that the security situation there was “relatively quiet”. Yesterday the troops, based in Basra, were on standby, ready to go back in if the Iraqi army loses control.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2415692,00.html
</font>
We should beat them at their own game, if they want terror give em terror setting up and killing the leaders then destroying everything they represent is one way of doing that. Then when a new leader emerges he will know whats up, it won't happen because the American public don't have the stomach for a hard fought war anymore, the reaction to Gitmo, Abu Gahrib, Fallujah and our torture policies pretty much handed the war to Al Qaeda, just as OBL planned.
muckraker10021 said:
sounds like someone is hating.
QueEx said:
When you're in a war of course you want to kill the leaders, and you should expect new ones to take their place, the goal is to let the new leaders know that you can and will kill them, and if you get rid of enough of them eventually their progeny will get the message. But the point I was trying to make is terror should be met with terror, America's hands are tied by public opinion, the people want to take the high road while the insurgents don't have those problems. So there's really not much of a fight all terrorist have to do is kill enough innocents along with some coalition troops and outlast the invaders and they will be declared the winner even though we have killed tens of thousands Iraqis and virtually destroyed the country.
... I guess they haven't gotten the message, yet. We've killed a lot of them and new ones even more determined appear to rise in their fall. Something about a "State of Mind" or "Cause" isn't it? - you kill the people but the thoughts just keep rising in the next crop. White people killed and demoralized to an unGodly extent Black people but that didn't stop the thoughts of Black people rising from continuing generation to generation ... except, of course, arguably the present generation.nittie said:
I thought we were supposed to be "Better Than That." So, what you're telling me is that those lofty goals that we preach, we really don't hold. Fuck winning hearts and minds -- kill some souls! Right?
Didn't you know this going in ???
QueEx
I think that this is the time for our nation *no matter the race* needs to stand strong about a number of things. Talking to insurgence isn't one of them. In fact, we should make them WANNA talk instead of the other way around. If we offer a truce to them, they will believe that we *western civilization* have conceded defeat. I say lets kill more, and let the rest figure out their chances. I know it sounds evil, but who cares. They won't mind killing any one of us if we were viewed as valuable for a political statement.
A Battle of Wills? Who's the meanest, the strongest, America can't fight a war like that with bleeding hearts at home crying because we're too brutal, we're killing innocent people, when part of our enemies strategy is to kill innocents so they can sway public opinion in America. It's called War for a reason, people get hurt, defining what's war and how it's fought is half the battle and Insurgents are winning on that front. I don't see how Blacks in America fit in the equasion, two different struggles as I see it, but if you want to argue the right is stronger than might I would refer you to the last paragraph in your arguement..it seems the system is getting the better of todays Black youth...if we go by your observation anyway.. of course I got my own observations.
Like I said earlier too many of U.S. citizens hold the "We are better than that" illusion. I don't think so, not when the future of Western Civilization is at stake, the philosophy should be fight fire with fire, the bigger the headache the bigger the pill.
That's the million dollar question imo. There was two sides to this debate in the Republican Party. Ol Skoolers felt like Saddam should be dealt with diplomatically, while Neo's felt he should have been overthrown during the first war. But Powell, a member of both admins had a doctrine of overwhelming force and for some reason it was only used in one phase of the war. Beats the hell outta me.
I'm not going to lie and say I read this whole thread, but I feel like as an American soldier, and Iraqi War vet that I should add my 2 cent. I agree with whoever said the bleeding hearts at home don't have the stomach for the hard fought war. We are a military force. Our mission is to fight the nations wars and win. Plane and simple. WE ARE NOT PEACE KEEPRS. That being said, I don't think we can negotiate with these people. Besides that asking the U.S. military to do it is asking for trouble.
Now on the subject of fake christians, I agree 100% because I've seen creflo dollar's house. He ain't doing nothing but getting rich off the people who follow his crooked ways of teaching the Bible.
Now on the subject of fake christians, I agree 100% because I've seen creflo dollar's house. He ain't doing nothing but getting rich off the people who follow his crooked ways of teaching the Bible.
muckraker10021 said:
You're right, the military's mission is to fight and fight to win. Thats military ideology and shouldn't be any other way. End story.LiL BiLL said:
On the other hand, the military and military missions are under "Civilian Control" ... and thats the way that should be. Civilians create and carry out foreing policy and civilians say when and where the fight is; the military's role is to carry out those orders.
If bleeding heart civilians (the president, congress and the American people) say diplomacy or negotiation is in the best interest of this country, so be it. If those same bleeding hearts say fight, so be that.
Thats the way it is and, in my opinion, the way it should remain. The military (the tail) doesn't wag the dog.
QueEx (American Veteran)
`
muckraker10021 said:
I agree with what they are doing, but i must cosign for the person who posted this. They are trying to mock people who say that war may not have been the smartest boat to float on in regard to Iraq. Some people, namingly myself, knew that going into Iraq would end up very dirty in the end. I don't believe that Martin Luther King totally went against violence. He grew up in a country filled with violence of all sorts. He wanted people to exhaust all other venues of non violence before violence was looked into as probable solution.
The philosophy sounds more like common sense than anything to me.
Thomas Jefferson believed America should have a revolution every 20 yrs to keep blood fresh and the revolution alive. He believed every Politican and Clergyman should be hanged from their guts in the public square. Dr. King used peaceful resistance not because it was the best course but the only viable course, he knew a violent resistance would get a bunch of people killed.
If this argument is to be based on opinions of past leaders at least acknowledge that all great men and women understood that change is inevitable.
As We march into a new century it would be remiss of us to not understand that the battleground has changed and we have to change also. Tactics that brought victory decades ago no longer work to our advantage. It's time for Us to call upon the character of our fallen leaders to remind us that innovation, our ability to not only adapt but to lead is what makes us great.
We are not followers or pacifist and we should never let those vain impulses get the better of us.
If this argument is to be based on opinions of past leaders at least acknowledge that all great men and women understood that change is inevitable.
As We march into a new century it would be remiss of us to not understand that the battleground has changed and we have to change also. Tactics that brought victory decades ago no longer work to our advantage. It's time for Us to call upon the character of our fallen leaders to remind us that innovation, our ability to not only adapt but to lead is what makes us great.
We are not followers or pacifist and we should never let those vain impulses get the better of us.
nittie said:
Here is some help...
Ansar al-Sunnah Army
Base of Operation: Iraq
Founding Philosophy: Ansar al-Sunnah (Followers of the Tradition) is an Iraqi Jihadist group, dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic state based on Shari’ah in Iraq, which they aim to achieve by the defeat of coalition forces and foreign occupation. They believe that jihad in Iraq has become obligatory for Muslims. The group’s membership is varied, and is comprised of operatives from the Kurdish terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam, foreign al-Qaeda operatives, and Iraqi Sunnis.
Targets have included coalition military personnel, members of the Iraqi National Guard, new Iraqi governmental institutions, and Kurdish political establishments, which the group sees as puppet regimes of the American occupation. Ansar al-Islam itself claims to have carried out a total of 285 attacks since May, 2003, killing 1,155 and injuring 160, although many of its claims are unsubstantiated. The group has also threatened to strike US forces with a missile they call the “Khattab-2.” The group is reportedly responsible for the kidnapping of a group of Nepalese contractors, as well as the beheading of an Iraqi military officer, a tape of which was distributed on the internet in November, 2004.
Current Goals: Ansar al-Sunnah has reportedly released a joint statement, along with the banned Arab Socialist Ba’th Party and the group of insurgent Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, in which the groups pledged to “step up and double” their attacks on coalition targets. The statement, written by the Ba’ath party, was in response to the Sharm al-Shaykh conference, which focused on the establishment of general elections in Iraq in January, 2005. Ansar al-Sunnah has also threatened to strike polling centers and candidates in the upcoming Iraqi elections, claiming that elections for a government that will impose man-made laws is considered infidelity.
^^Thank you Man. What I see here is a war of values and there are alot of traitors involved. We can't defeat enemies abroad when our establishment is against a raise in the minimum wage. Right is Right, there's no way Bill Gates should have 50 billion and the average American can't pay a fucking phone bill. Bush imo was right when he said this is the ideological war of the 21st century. I do believe we will prevail, it might take the new congress taking a dose of reality but eventually we will get it str8 that freedom isn't free.
^Thanks but woman, not man. Some sistas are more aware of "wordly" struggles...
Many will lead you to believe that this is not important, but im going to tell you it is...
$2 Million Paid On Behalf Of Fox News For Release Of Kidnapped Reporters...Money Used To Buy Weapons...
Americablog | Posted November 14, 2006 11:54 PM
From guardian.co.uk/huffingtonpost.com
Someone, on behalf of FOX News, reportedly gave terrorist organizations $2m that the terrorists now say they used to buy weapons to kill Israelis? FOX says "it's possible" money was paid to terrorists? And the Bush administration, they were heavily involved in this effort to free the FOX reporters - were they aware that someone was paying off terrorists? Were they the ones who arranged the payment? This is abominable if true.
Palestinian terror groups and security organizations in the Gaza Strip received $2 million from a United States source in exchange for the release of Fox News employees Steve Centanni and Olag Wiig, who were kidnapped here last summer, a senior leader of one of the groups suspected of the abductions told WND.
$2 Million Paid On Behalf Of Fox News For Release Of Kidnapped Reporters...Money Used To Buy Weapons...
Americablog | Posted November 14, 2006 11:54 PM
From guardian.co.uk/huffingtonpost.com
Someone, on behalf of FOX News, reportedly gave terrorist organizations $2m that the terrorists now say they used to buy weapons to kill Israelis? FOX says "it's possible" money was paid to terrorists? And the Bush administration, they were heavily involved in this effort to free the FOX reporters - were they aware that someone was paying off terrorists? Were they the ones who arranged the payment? This is abominable if true.
Palestinian terror groups and security organizations in the Gaza Strip received $2 million from a United States source in exchange for the release of Fox News employees Steve Centanni and Olag Wiig, who were kidnapped here last summer, a senior leader of one of the groups suspected of the abductions told WND.
<font face="verdana" size="4" color="#333333">
If it weren’t for the reality that Iraq probably has more oil, (that hasn’t yet been discovered) than Saudi Arabia, the US would be totally out of Iraq as of yesterday.
The US Treasury (tax-payers money) is being bleed at the rate of <b> $2 Billion dollars per week!!!</b>
The Neo-Con lead, right-wing Israeli supported, American empire building, delusional scheme of seizing Iraq and making it into an US client-state with a fake veneer of democracy, like Egypt, is over.
Iraq will be a client-state with a fake veneer of democracy controlled by IRAN.
Iran is the victor.
The US is now trying to find a way to undo the Iranian victory.
After having sided with the Shia over the Sunnis, foolishly not realizing how connected the Shia were to Iran, and how unrelenting the Sunni resistance to being vanquished would be, the ‘clean-up-the-mess-crew’ lead by Bush crime family consigliere James Baker is making a last ditch effort to pacify the Sunnis and cut them a $$$$$$$$ deal they can live with to stop the insurgency.
At stake is access and de-facto control over possibly the world’s largest untapped oil reserves. Can US imperialism snatch victory away from the <font color="#0000ff"><b>Iranian Mullahs?</b></font>
We’ll see.
</font>
<hr noshade color="#ff0000" size="8"></hr>
<font face="arial black" size="6" color="#d90000">
U.S. Retreat from Iraq? The Secret Story </font>
<div align="right">
<table border="4" width="200" id="table1" height="329" bgcolor="#000000" align="right">
<!-- MSTableType="layout" --><tr><td>
<img src="http://husseinandterror.com/jpeg%20pics/10sized.jpg" width="200" height="270"><center>
<font face="Arial Black" color="#FFFFFF">TARIQ AZIZ</font></center></td></tr></table></div><font face="tahoma" size="4" color="#0000ff"><b>
Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister, would be released from detention by the end of this year, in hope that he will negotiate with the US on behalf of the Baath Party leadership.
</b></font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000"><B>
November 21, 2006
<img src="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/06/briefs/hayden.jpg">
by TOM HAYDEN</B></font>
<p><strong><em>Special to the Huffington Post</em></strong>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000">
According to credible Iraqi sources in London and Amman, a secret story of America's diplomatic exit strategy from Iraq is rapidly unfolding. The key events include:
First, James Baker told one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers that Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister, would be released from detention by the end of this year, in hope that he will negotiate with the US on behalf of the Baath Party leadership.</p>
The discussion recently took place in Amman, according to the Iraqi paper al-Quds al-Arabi.
Second, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice personally appealed to the Gulf Cooperation Council in October to serve as intermediaries between the US and armed Sunni resistance groups [not including al Qaeda], communicating a US willingness to negotiate with them at any time or place. Speaking in early October, Rice joked that if then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "heard me now, he would wage a war on me fiercer and hotter than he waged on Iraq," according to an Arab diplomat privy to the closed session.
Third, there was an "unprecedented" secret meeting of high-level Americans and representatives of "a primary component of the Iraqi resistance" two weeks ago, lasting for three days. As a result, the Iraqis agreed to return to the talks in the next two weeks with a response for the American side, according to Jordanian press leaks and al-Quds al-Arabi.
Fourth, detailed email transmissions dated November 16 reveal an active American effort behind the scenes to broker a peace agreement with Iraqi resistance leaders, a plot that could include a political coup against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Fifth, Bush security adviser Stephen Hadley carried a six-point message for Iraqi officials on his recent trip to Baghdad:</font>
<blockquote><b>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Include Iraqi resistance and opposition leaders in any initiative towards national reconciliation;general amnesty for the armed resistance fighters;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Dissolve the Iraqi commission charged with banning the Baath Party;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Start the disbanding of militias and death squads;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Cancel any federalism proposal to divide Iraq into three regions, and combine central authority for the central government with greater self-rule for local governors;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Distribute oil revenues in a fair manner to all Iraqis, including the Sunnis whose regions lack the resource.
</font>
</b></blockquote>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000">
Prime Minister Al-Maliki was unable to accept the American proposals because of his institutional allegiance to Shiite parties who believe their historic moment has arrived after one thousand years of Sunni domination. That Shiite refusal has accelerated secret American efforts to pressure, re-organize, or remove the elected al-Maliki regime from power.
<Font size="4"><strong><u>The Backstory</strong></u></font>
Underlying these developments are three American concerns: first, the deepening quagmire and sectarian strife on the battlefield; second, the mid-year American elections in which voters repudiated the war; and third, the strategic concern that the new Iraq has slipped into the orbit of Iran. It remains to be seen if Iran will exercise influence on its Shiite allies in Iraq (the Grand Ayatollah Sistani was born in Iraq, and the main Shiite bloc was created in Iran by Iraqi exiles). But that is the direction being taken by Baker's Iraq Study Group and former CIA director John Deutch in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/opinion/15deutch.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">a <em>New York Times</em> op-ed</a>. The principal US track, in addition to a declared withdrawal plan, should be to work towards a hands-off policy by Iran, at least for an interval, according to Deutch.
This possible endgame has been in the making for some time. Even two years ago, US officials were probing contacts with Iraqi resistance groups distinct from al-Qaeda. Recent polls indicate sixty percent Iraqi support for armed resistance against the United States, while approximately eighty percent of Iraqis support some timetable for withdrawal, an indispensable indicator for Iraqi insurgents laying down some arms.
Even before the 2003 US invasion, peace groups like Global Exchange and the newly-forming Code Pink sent delegations to create people-to-people relations with Iraqi opponents of the occupation and members of civil society. This writer met with Iraqi exiles in London, who suggested further meetings in Amman. Those contacts were facilitated in 2005 by a former Jordanian diplomat, Munther Haddadin, who supported open-ended discussions with Iraqis in exile, Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan, and with intermediaries from the insurgency who made the dangerous 15-hour drive from Baghdad to Amman on more than one occasion. A reporter for the <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em>, Rob Collier, also interviewed Iraqi insurgents and was helpful in providing contacts. Earlier this year, an American peace delegation, including Cindy Sheehan, found themselves in two days of meetings with Iraqis of every political stripe. US Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) was crucial in making these contacts by his persistent efforts at mid-east dialogue. Dal LaMagna, a self-described "frustrated peacemaker" made both trips to Amman, and provided this writer with videos and transcripts of the interviews on which this article is based.
It must be emphasized that there is no reason to believe that these US gestures are anything more than probes, in the historic spirit of divide-and-conquer, before escalating the Iraq war in a Baghdad offensive. Denial plausibility - aka Machiavellian secrecy - remains American security policy, for understandable if undemocratic reasons.
Yet Americans who voted in the November election because of a deep belief that a change of government in Washington might end the war have a right to know that their votes counted. The US has not abandoned its entire strategy in Iraq, but is offering significant concessions without its own citizens knowing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/us-retreat-from-iraq-t_b_34675.html</font>
<p>
<hr noshade color="#333333" size="4"></hr>
<p>
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
Documents Reveal Secret Talks Between
U.S. and Armed Iraqi Resistance </font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000"><B>
November 25, 2006
<img src="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/06/briefs/hayden.jpg">
by TOM HAYDEN</B>
Failures on the battlefield and in the recent American elections are propelling the Bush Administration to consider significant changes in Iraq policy. Having placed the Shiite majority in power, the Administration now wonders if the country is being delivered to Iran. Having fought the Sunni-led insurgency for three years, the Administration wonders if negotiations are the only way to reduce American casualties.
It is not for holiday purposes that George Bush and Condoleeza Rice are meeting next week with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman while Dick Cheney rushes to Saudi Arabia. The only question being kept from the American people is what the high-level talks are about.
On November 21 on the Huffington Post, <font color="#0000ff"><b>I revealed that American officials have contacted Sunni nationalist insurgents to explore a cease-fire</font></b> and even the possible replacement of the al-Maliki government with an interim one. This plan would reduce US casualties against the Sunni-led insurgency [recently one hundred deaths per month], while consistent with the Pentagon desire to focus firepower on the Shiite Mahdi Army, led by "radical cleric" Moktada al-Sadr, the most prominent Shiite leader calling for an American withdrawal from Iraq. The current obstacle to an all-out American offensive against al-Sadr's stronghold in Sadr City happens to be Prime Minister al-Maliki, whose governing coalition includes al-Sadr.
Today's car bomb explosions in Sadr City and the violent attacks against Baghdad's health ministry are aimed at two main al-Sadr power bases [his representatives run the health ministry].
Sensing that al-Maliki will agree to anything Bush demands, al-Sadr now is demanding that al-Maliki call off his meeting with the President.
Questions have arisen in the media concerning the evidence of my November 22 report that Americans have been involved in direct contacts with the Sunni armed resistance. The evidence is confirmed by a recent impromptu meeting in Amman between a resistance representative and US Congressman Jim McDermott, in the course of two days of discussions facilitated by a former Jordanian diplomat, Munther Haddadin.
More specific are documents dated November 13 and November 16 by an American adviser sketching detailed ongoing discussions with insurgent Sunni leaders aimed at a cease-fire. The plans can only be paraphrased and the adviser's name withheld for reasons of confidentiality. It is not clear that the blueprint awaited an okay at the highest level as of November 16, or whether it was moving forward with plausible deniability. But there is no doubt as to its authenticity.
Here is the plan, paraphrased briefly, as proposed by the source who serves as an authorized back-channel link to the insurgent groups:
Leaders of the organized Sunni resistance groups are seeking immediate meetings with top American generals towards the goal of a cease-fire. Meetings with lower-level US officials already have occurred.
The resistance groups reject the ability of the al-Maliki government to unify its government, and therefore wants an interim government imposed before new elections can be held.
The former Baathist-dominated national army, intelligence services and police, whose leaders currently are heading the underground resistance, would be rehired, restored and re-integrated into national structures under this plan.
Multinational Force [MNF-I] activities aimed at controlling militias to be expanded.
The US-controlled Multi-National Force [MNF-I] would be redeployed to control the eastern border with Iran.
A Status of Forces agreement would be negotiated immediately permitting the presence of American troops in Iraq for as long as ten years. Troop reductions and redeployments would be permitted over time.
Amnesty and prisoner releases would be negotiated between the parties, with the Americans guaranteeing the end of torture of those held in the detention centers and prisons of the current, Shiite-controlled Iraqi state.
De-Baathification edicts issued by Paul Bremer would be rescinded, allowing tens of thousands of former Baathists to resume military and professional service.
An American commitment to financing reconstruction would be continued, and the new Iraqi regime would guarantee incentives for private American companies to participate in the rebuilding effort.
War-debt relief for Kuwait and other countries.
These are essentially similar proposals to those offered by Sunni nationalists and armed resistance groups since 2005. Low-level contacts have been reported before. What is new, apparently, is the November American election result showing a public demand to disengage and sharply reduce American casualty levels. The American neo-conservatives have been discredited and, in their place, a faction of bipartisan "realists" has emerged in the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker. Condoleeza Rice is thought to have aligned herself with these realists. In an October speech, she urged America's Gulf allies to serve as intermediaries to the resistance, according to an Arab diplomat who was present.
Neither the Pentagon nor the realists are committed to bringing American troops home in the near future. Instead, they seek to reduce American casualties, check the influence of Iran, and redeploy US troops to permanent bases. The draft plan for a Status of Forces Agreement is based on the models of Germany and Japan.
An even more realistic position, though not yet an acceptable one, is that of former CIA director John Deutch, calling for an American troop withdrawal combined with a diplomatic initiative to Iran, seeking non-intervention by Teheran in exchange for the US leaving.
Secretive wars include secretive diplomacy. The American people will be the last to find out what future is being prepared in the flurry of events beginning now. But these documents offer clues. #
<em>TOM HAYDEN is teaching a course on Iraq at Pitzer College. A former anti-Vietnam war leader and state senator, he has interviewed Iraqis from all major parties and associations during two visits to Amman, Jordan, during the past year. For more information go to www.tomhayden.com</em>
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/documents-reveal-secret-t_b_34834.html </font>
If it weren’t for the reality that Iraq probably has more oil, (that hasn’t yet been discovered) than Saudi Arabia, the US would be totally out of Iraq as of yesterday.
The US Treasury (tax-payers money) is being bleed at the rate of <b> $2 Billion dollars per week!!!</b>
The Neo-Con lead, right-wing Israeli supported, American empire building, delusional scheme of seizing Iraq and making it into an US client-state with a fake veneer of democracy, like Egypt, is over.
Iraq will be a client-state with a fake veneer of democracy controlled by IRAN.
Iran is the victor.
The US is now trying to find a way to undo the Iranian victory.
After having sided with the Shia over the Sunnis, foolishly not realizing how connected the Shia were to Iran, and how unrelenting the Sunni resistance to being vanquished would be, the ‘clean-up-the-mess-crew’ lead by Bush crime family consigliere James Baker is making a last ditch effort to pacify the Sunnis and cut them a $$$$$$$$ deal they can live with to stop the insurgency.
At stake is access and de-facto control over possibly the world’s largest untapped oil reserves. Can US imperialism snatch victory away from the <font color="#0000ff"><b>Iranian Mullahs?</b></font>
We’ll see.
</font>
<hr noshade color="#ff0000" size="8"></hr>
<font face="arial black" size="6" color="#d90000">
U.S. Retreat from Iraq? The Secret Story </font>
<div align="right">
<table border="4" width="200" id="table1" height="329" bgcolor="#000000" align="right">
<!-- MSTableType="layout" --><tr><td>
<img src="http://husseinandterror.com/jpeg%20pics/10sized.jpg" width="200" height="270"><center>
<font face="Arial Black" color="#FFFFFF">TARIQ AZIZ</font></center></td></tr></table></div><font face="tahoma" size="4" color="#0000ff"><b>
Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister, would be released from detention by the end of this year, in hope that he will negotiate with the US on behalf of the Baath Party leadership.
</b></font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000"><B>
November 21, 2006
<img src="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/06/briefs/hayden.jpg">
by TOM HAYDEN</B></font>
<p><strong><em>Special to the Huffington Post</em></strong>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000">
According to credible Iraqi sources in London and Amman, a secret story of America's diplomatic exit strategy from Iraq is rapidly unfolding. The key events include:
First, James Baker told one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers that Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister, would be released from detention by the end of this year, in hope that he will negotiate with the US on behalf of the Baath Party leadership.</p>
The discussion recently took place in Amman, according to the Iraqi paper al-Quds al-Arabi.
Second, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice personally appealed to the Gulf Cooperation Council in October to serve as intermediaries between the US and armed Sunni resistance groups [not including al Qaeda], communicating a US willingness to negotiate with them at any time or place. Speaking in early October, Rice joked that if then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "heard me now, he would wage a war on me fiercer and hotter than he waged on Iraq," according to an Arab diplomat privy to the closed session.
Third, there was an "unprecedented" secret meeting of high-level Americans and representatives of "a primary component of the Iraqi resistance" two weeks ago, lasting for three days. As a result, the Iraqis agreed to return to the talks in the next two weeks with a response for the American side, according to Jordanian press leaks and al-Quds al-Arabi.
Fourth, detailed email transmissions dated November 16 reveal an active American effort behind the scenes to broker a peace agreement with Iraqi resistance leaders, a plot that could include a political coup against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Fifth, Bush security adviser Stephen Hadley carried a six-point message for Iraqi officials on his recent trip to Baghdad:</font>
<blockquote><b>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Include Iraqi resistance and opposition leaders in any initiative towards national reconciliation;general amnesty for the armed resistance fighters;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Dissolve the Iraqi commission charged with banning the Baath Party;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Start the disbanding of militias and death squads;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Cancel any federalism proposal to divide Iraq into three regions, and combine central authority for the central government with greater self-rule for local governors;</font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#0000ff">
• Distribute oil revenues in a fair manner to all Iraqis, including the Sunnis whose regions lack the resource.
</font>
</b></blockquote>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000">
Prime Minister Al-Maliki was unable to accept the American proposals because of his institutional allegiance to Shiite parties who believe their historic moment has arrived after one thousand years of Sunni domination. That Shiite refusal has accelerated secret American efforts to pressure, re-organize, or remove the elected al-Maliki regime from power.
<Font size="4"><strong><u>The Backstory</strong></u></font>
Underlying these developments are three American concerns: first, the deepening quagmire and sectarian strife on the battlefield; second, the mid-year American elections in which voters repudiated the war; and third, the strategic concern that the new Iraq has slipped into the orbit of Iran. It remains to be seen if Iran will exercise influence on its Shiite allies in Iraq (the Grand Ayatollah Sistani was born in Iraq, and the main Shiite bloc was created in Iran by Iraqi exiles). But that is the direction being taken by Baker's Iraq Study Group and former CIA director John Deutch in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/opinion/15deutch.html?_r=1&oref=slogin">a <em>New York Times</em> op-ed</a>. The principal US track, in addition to a declared withdrawal plan, should be to work towards a hands-off policy by Iran, at least for an interval, according to Deutch.
This possible endgame has been in the making for some time. Even two years ago, US officials were probing contacts with Iraqi resistance groups distinct from al-Qaeda. Recent polls indicate sixty percent Iraqi support for armed resistance against the United States, while approximately eighty percent of Iraqis support some timetable for withdrawal, an indispensable indicator for Iraqi insurgents laying down some arms.
Even before the 2003 US invasion, peace groups like Global Exchange and the newly-forming Code Pink sent delegations to create people-to-people relations with Iraqi opponents of the occupation and members of civil society. This writer met with Iraqi exiles in London, who suggested further meetings in Amman. Those contacts were facilitated in 2005 by a former Jordanian diplomat, Munther Haddadin, who supported open-ended discussions with Iraqis in exile, Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan, and with intermediaries from the insurgency who made the dangerous 15-hour drive from Baghdad to Amman on more than one occasion. A reporter for the <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em>, Rob Collier, also interviewed Iraqi insurgents and was helpful in providing contacts. Earlier this year, an American peace delegation, including Cindy Sheehan, found themselves in two days of meetings with Iraqis of every political stripe. US Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) was crucial in making these contacts by his persistent efforts at mid-east dialogue. Dal LaMagna, a self-described "frustrated peacemaker" made both trips to Amman, and provided this writer with videos and transcripts of the interviews on which this article is based.
It must be emphasized that there is no reason to believe that these US gestures are anything more than probes, in the historic spirit of divide-and-conquer, before escalating the Iraq war in a Baghdad offensive. Denial plausibility - aka Machiavellian secrecy - remains American security policy, for understandable if undemocratic reasons.
Yet Americans who voted in the November election because of a deep belief that a change of government in Washington might end the war have a right to know that their votes counted. The US has not abandoned its entire strategy in Iraq, but is offering significant concessions without its own citizens knowing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/us-retreat-from-iraq-t_b_34675.html</font>
<p>
<hr noshade color="#333333" size="4"></hr>
<p>
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
Documents Reveal Secret Talks Between
U.S. and Armed Iraqi Resistance </font>
<font face="georgia" size="3" color="#000000"><B>
November 25, 2006
<img src="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/01/06/briefs/hayden.jpg">
by TOM HAYDEN</B>
Failures on the battlefield and in the recent American elections are propelling the Bush Administration to consider significant changes in Iraq policy. Having placed the Shiite majority in power, the Administration now wonders if the country is being delivered to Iran. Having fought the Sunni-led insurgency for three years, the Administration wonders if negotiations are the only way to reduce American casualties.
It is not for holiday purposes that George Bush and Condoleeza Rice are meeting next week with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman while Dick Cheney rushes to Saudi Arabia. The only question being kept from the American people is what the high-level talks are about.
On November 21 on the Huffington Post, <font color="#0000ff"><b>I revealed that American officials have contacted Sunni nationalist insurgents to explore a cease-fire</font></b> and even the possible replacement of the al-Maliki government with an interim one. This plan would reduce US casualties against the Sunni-led insurgency [recently one hundred deaths per month], while consistent with the Pentagon desire to focus firepower on the Shiite Mahdi Army, led by "radical cleric" Moktada al-Sadr, the most prominent Shiite leader calling for an American withdrawal from Iraq. The current obstacle to an all-out American offensive against al-Sadr's stronghold in Sadr City happens to be Prime Minister al-Maliki, whose governing coalition includes al-Sadr.
Today's car bomb explosions in Sadr City and the violent attacks against Baghdad's health ministry are aimed at two main al-Sadr power bases [his representatives run the health ministry].
Sensing that al-Maliki will agree to anything Bush demands, al-Sadr now is demanding that al-Maliki call off his meeting with the President.
Questions have arisen in the media concerning the evidence of my November 22 report that Americans have been involved in direct contacts with the Sunni armed resistance. The evidence is confirmed by a recent impromptu meeting in Amman between a resistance representative and US Congressman Jim McDermott, in the course of two days of discussions facilitated by a former Jordanian diplomat, Munther Haddadin.
More specific are documents dated November 13 and November 16 by an American adviser sketching detailed ongoing discussions with insurgent Sunni leaders aimed at a cease-fire. The plans can only be paraphrased and the adviser's name withheld for reasons of confidentiality. It is not clear that the blueprint awaited an okay at the highest level as of November 16, or whether it was moving forward with plausible deniability. But there is no doubt as to its authenticity.
Here is the plan, paraphrased briefly, as proposed by the source who serves as an authorized back-channel link to the insurgent groups:
Leaders of the organized Sunni resistance groups are seeking immediate meetings with top American generals towards the goal of a cease-fire. Meetings with lower-level US officials already have occurred.
The resistance groups reject the ability of the al-Maliki government to unify its government, and therefore wants an interim government imposed before new elections can be held.
The former Baathist-dominated national army, intelligence services and police, whose leaders currently are heading the underground resistance, would be rehired, restored and re-integrated into national structures under this plan.
Multinational Force [MNF-I] activities aimed at controlling militias to be expanded.
The US-controlled Multi-National Force [MNF-I] would be redeployed to control the eastern border with Iran.
A Status of Forces agreement would be negotiated immediately permitting the presence of American troops in Iraq for as long as ten years. Troop reductions and redeployments would be permitted over time.
Amnesty and prisoner releases would be negotiated between the parties, with the Americans guaranteeing the end of torture of those held in the detention centers and prisons of the current, Shiite-controlled Iraqi state.
De-Baathification edicts issued by Paul Bremer would be rescinded, allowing tens of thousands of former Baathists to resume military and professional service.
An American commitment to financing reconstruction would be continued, and the new Iraqi regime would guarantee incentives for private American companies to participate in the rebuilding effort.
War-debt relief for Kuwait and other countries.
These are essentially similar proposals to those offered by Sunni nationalists and armed resistance groups since 2005. Low-level contacts have been reported before. What is new, apparently, is the November American election result showing a public demand to disengage and sharply reduce American casualty levels. The American neo-conservatives have been discredited and, in their place, a faction of bipartisan "realists" has emerged in the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker. Condoleeza Rice is thought to have aligned herself with these realists. In an October speech, she urged America's Gulf allies to serve as intermediaries to the resistance, according to an Arab diplomat who was present.
Neither the Pentagon nor the realists are committed to bringing American troops home in the near future. Instead, they seek to reduce American casualties, check the influence of Iran, and redeploy US troops to permanent bases. The draft plan for a Status of Forces Agreement is based on the models of Germany and Japan.
An even more realistic position, though not yet an acceptable one, is that of former CIA director John Deutch, calling for an American troop withdrawal combined with a diplomatic initiative to Iran, seeking non-intervention by Teheran in exchange for the US leaving.
Secretive wars include secretive diplomacy. The American people will be the last to find out what future is being prepared in the flurry of events beginning now. But these documents offer clues. #
<em>TOM HAYDEN is teaching a course on Iraq at Pitzer College. A former anti-Vietnam war leader and state senator, he has interviewed Iraqis from all major parties and associations during two visits to Amman, Jordan, during the past year. For more information go to www.tomhayden.com</em>
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/documents-reveal-secret-t_b_34834.html </font>
<br>
<img src="http://proquest.umi.com/i/pub/7818.gif">
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself</font>
<font face="trebuchet ms, helvetica, verdana" size="3" color="#000000"><b>
November 26, 2006
By JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE</b>
BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.
The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.
As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year.
A copy of the seven-page report was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq.
The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.
“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”
Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times criticized it as imprecise and speculative. Completed in June, the report was compiled by an interagency working group investigating the financing of militant groups in Iraq.
A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group’s existence. He said it was led by Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, and was made up of about a dozen people, drawn from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the United States Central Command.
The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.
But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.
For Washington, the report’s most dismaying finding may be that the insurgency now survives off money generated from activities inside Iraq, and no longer depends on sums Mr. Hussein and his associates seized as his government collapsed. American officials said that as American troops entered Baghdad, Mr. Hussein’s oldest son, Qusay, took more than $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank of Iraq and stashed it in steel trunks aboard a flatbed truck. Large sums of cash were found in Mr. Hussein’s briefcase when he was captured in December 2003.
But the report says Mr. Hussein’s loyalists “are no longer a major source of funding for terrorist or insurgent groups in Iraq.” Part of the reason, the report says, is that an American-led international effort has frozen $3.6 billion in “former regime assets.” Another reason, it says, is that Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile loyalists, realizing that “it is increasingly obvious that a Baathist regime will not regain power in Iraq,” have turned increasingly to spending the money on their own living expenses. The trail to these assets “has grown cold,” the report adds.
The document says the pattern of insurgent financing changed after the first 18 months of the war, from the Hussein loyalists who financed it in 2003 to “foreign fighters and couriers” smuggling cash in bulk across Iraq’s porous borders in 2004, to the present reliance on a complex array of indigenous sources. “Currently, we assess that these groups garner most of their funding from petroleum-related criminal activity, kidnapping and other criminal pursuits within Iraq,” the report concludes.
One section of the report is dedicated to the role played by “sympathetic donors,” including Islamic charities and nongovernmental organizations. It says that “intelligence reporting” indicates that only 10 to 15 of the 4,000 nongovernmental groups support terrorist and insurgent groups, but that those few take advantage of lax Iraqi regulation to divert funds to insurgent and other armed groups and, in some cases, “to provide cover for insurgent recruitment and the transport of weapons and personnel.”
The possibility that Iraq-based terrorist groups could finance attacks outside Iraq appeared to echo Bush administration assertions that prevailing in the war here is essential to preventing Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven, as Afghanistan became under the Taliban. But that suggestion was one of several aspects of the report that drew criticism from Western terrorism and counterinsurgency experts working outside the government who were given the outline of the findings.
While noting that the report appeared to reflect a major effort by the administration to learn more about the murky world of insurgent financing in Iraq, the experts said the seven-page document appeared to be speculative, at least in its estimates of the funds available to the insurgent and terror groups. They noted the wide spread of the estimates, particularly the $70 million to $200 million figure for overall financing, the report’s failure to specify which groups the estimates covered and the absence of documentation of how authors had arrived at their estimates.
While such data may have been omitted to protect the group’s clandestine sources and methods — the document has a bold heading on the front page saying “secret” and a warning that it is not to be shared with foreign governments — several security and intelligence consultants said in telephone interviews that the vagueness of the estimates reflected how little American intelligence agencies knew about the opaque and complex world of Iraq’s militant groups.
“They’re just guessing,” said W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who now runs a security and intelligence consultancy. “They really have no idea.” He added, “They’ve been very unsuccessful in penetrating these organizations.” He said he was equally skeptical about the report’s assertion that the insurgent and militant groups may have surpluses to finance terrorism outside Iraq. “That’s another guess,” he said.
“A judgment like that, coming from an N.S.C.-generated document,” he said, is not an analytical assessment as much as it is a political statement to support the administration’s contention that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. “It’s a statement put in there to support a policy judgment,” he said.
Several analysts said that, except for the possibility that Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia might be transferring money to Qaeda factions elsewhere, the assertion that insurgent money might be flowing out of the country was doubtful considering the single-minded regional focus of most of the militants operating here.
Dr. Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College, an author of extensive studies of the Iraqi insurgency, said he doubted Iraqi groups were ready to finance terrorism outside the country. “There’s very little evidence that they’re preparing to export terrorism from Iraq to the West,” he said. “I think it’s much too early for that.”
The document tracing the money flows acknowledges that investigators have had limited success in penetrating or choking off terrorist financing networks. The report says American efforts to follow the financing trails have been hamstrung by several factors. They include a weak Iraqi government and its nascent intelligence agencies; a lack of communication between American agencies, and between the Americans and the Iraqis; and the nature of the insurgent economy itself, primarily sustained by couriers carrying cash rather than more easily traceable means involving banks and the hawala money transfer networks traditional in the Middle East.
“Efforts to identify key financial facilitators, funding sources and transfer mechanisms are yielding some results, but we need to improve our understanding of how terrorist and insurgent cells interact, how their financial networks vary from province to province or city to city and how they use their funds,” the report says. It also says the United States must help the Iraqi government “to excise corrupt officials from its law enforcement and security services and its ministries” and “to prevent smuggled Iraqi oil from being sold within their borders.”
Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to “stop paying ransoms.” It gives no details, but American officials have said previously that France paid a multimillion-dollar ransom for the release in December 2004 of two French reporters held hostage by an insurgent group. Italy, these officials have said, paid ransoms on at least two occasions, in September 2004 for the release of two women, both aid workers, and in March 2005, a reported $5 million for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for the Rome newspaper Il Manifesto.
Several American security consultants, all former members of government intelligence agencies that deal with terrorism, said in interviews that the ineffectiveness of efforts to impede the revenues to the insurgents was reflected in the continuing, if not growing, strength of Iraq’s militants. “You have to look at what the insurgency is doing,” Mr. Lang said. “Are they hampered by a lack of funds? I see no evidence that they are.”
Jeffrey White, a defense fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also a former Middle East analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, agreed. “We’ve had some tactical successes where we’ve picked off a financier or whatever, but we haven’t been able to unravel a major component of the system,” he said. “I’ve never seen any indication that they’re strapped for cash, never seen any indication that they were short on weapons.”
He said the insurgency had demonstrated tremendous regenerative properties. “The networks fix themselves, they heal themselves,” he said. He pointed to the success of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in withstanding the loss of hundreds of combatants and dozens of major leaders. “They keep coming back,” he said, “and I think the same thing has happened to the financial system.”
</font>
<p>
<hr noshade color="#ff0000" size="12"></hr>
<p>
<img src="http://proquest.umi.com/i/pub/7818.gif">
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself</font>
<font face="trebuchet ms, helvetica, verdana" size="3" color="#000000"><b>
November 26, 2006
By JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE</b>
BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.
The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.
As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year.
A copy of the seven-page report was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq.
The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.
“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”
Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times criticized it as imprecise and speculative. Completed in June, the report was compiled by an interagency working group investigating the financing of militant groups in Iraq.
A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group’s existence. He said it was led by Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, and was made up of about a dozen people, drawn from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the United States Central Command.
The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.
But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.
For Washington, the report’s most dismaying finding may be that the insurgency now survives off money generated from activities inside Iraq, and no longer depends on sums Mr. Hussein and his associates seized as his government collapsed. American officials said that as American troops entered Baghdad, Mr. Hussein’s oldest son, Qusay, took more than $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank of Iraq and stashed it in steel trunks aboard a flatbed truck. Large sums of cash were found in Mr. Hussein’s briefcase when he was captured in December 2003.
But the report says Mr. Hussein’s loyalists “are no longer a major source of funding for terrorist or insurgent groups in Iraq.” Part of the reason, the report says, is that an American-led international effort has frozen $3.6 billion in “former regime assets.” Another reason, it says, is that Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile loyalists, realizing that “it is increasingly obvious that a Baathist regime will not regain power in Iraq,” have turned increasingly to spending the money on their own living expenses. The trail to these assets “has grown cold,” the report adds.
The document says the pattern of insurgent financing changed after the first 18 months of the war, from the Hussein loyalists who financed it in 2003 to “foreign fighters and couriers” smuggling cash in bulk across Iraq’s porous borders in 2004, to the present reliance on a complex array of indigenous sources. “Currently, we assess that these groups garner most of their funding from petroleum-related criminal activity, kidnapping and other criminal pursuits within Iraq,” the report concludes.
One section of the report is dedicated to the role played by “sympathetic donors,” including Islamic charities and nongovernmental organizations. It says that “intelligence reporting” indicates that only 10 to 15 of the 4,000 nongovernmental groups support terrorist and insurgent groups, but that those few take advantage of lax Iraqi regulation to divert funds to insurgent and other armed groups and, in some cases, “to provide cover for insurgent recruitment and the transport of weapons and personnel.”
The possibility that Iraq-based terrorist groups could finance attacks outside Iraq appeared to echo Bush administration assertions that prevailing in the war here is essential to preventing Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven, as Afghanistan became under the Taliban. But that suggestion was one of several aspects of the report that drew criticism from Western terrorism and counterinsurgency experts working outside the government who were given the outline of the findings.
While noting that the report appeared to reflect a major effort by the administration to learn more about the murky world of insurgent financing in Iraq, the experts said the seven-page document appeared to be speculative, at least in its estimates of the funds available to the insurgent and terror groups. They noted the wide spread of the estimates, particularly the $70 million to $200 million figure for overall financing, the report’s failure to specify which groups the estimates covered and the absence of documentation of how authors had arrived at their estimates.
While such data may have been omitted to protect the group’s clandestine sources and methods — the document has a bold heading on the front page saying “secret” and a warning that it is not to be shared with foreign governments — several security and intelligence consultants said in telephone interviews that the vagueness of the estimates reflected how little American intelligence agencies knew about the opaque and complex world of Iraq’s militant groups.
“They’re just guessing,” said W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who now runs a security and intelligence consultancy. “They really have no idea.” He added, “They’ve been very unsuccessful in penetrating these organizations.” He said he was equally skeptical about the report’s assertion that the insurgent and militant groups may have surpluses to finance terrorism outside Iraq. “That’s another guess,” he said.
“A judgment like that, coming from an N.S.C.-generated document,” he said, is not an analytical assessment as much as it is a political statement to support the administration’s contention that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. “It’s a statement put in there to support a policy judgment,” he said.
Several analysts said that, except for the possibility that Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia might be transferring money to Qaeda factions elsewhere, the assertion that insurgent money might be flowing out of the country was doubtful considering the single-minded regional focus of most of the militants operating here.
Dr. Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College, an author of extensive studies of the Iraqi insurgency, said he doubted Iraqi groups were ready to finance terrorism outside the country. “There’s very little evidence that they’re preparing to export terrorism from Iraq to the West,” he said. “I think it’s much too early for that.”
The document tracing the money flows acknowledges that investigators have had limited success in penetrating or choking off terrorist financing networks. The report says American efforts to follow the financing trails have been hamstrung by several factors. They include a weak Iraqi government and its nascent intelligence agencies; a lack of communication between American agencies, and between the Americans and the Iraqis; and the nature of the insurgent economy itself, primarily sustained by couriers carrying cash rather than more easily traceable means involving banks and the hawala money transfer networks traditional in the Middle East.
“Efforts to identify key financial facilitators, funding sources and transfer mechanisms are yielding some results, but we need to improve our understanding of how terrorist and insurgent cells interact, how their financial networks vary from province to province or city to city and how they use their funds,” the report says. It also says the United States must help the Iraqi government “to excise corrupt officials from its law enforcement and security services and its ministries” and “to prevent smuggled Iraqi oil from being sold within their borders.”
Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to “stop paying ransoms.” It gives no details, but American officials have said previously that France paid a multimillion-dollar ransom for the release in December 2004 of two French reporters held hostage by an insurgent group. Italy, these officials have said, paid ransoms on at least two occasions, in September 2004 for the release of two women, both aid workers, and in March 2005, a reported $5 million for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for the Rome newspaper Il Manifesto.
Several American security consultants, all former members of government intelligence agencies that deal with terrorism, said in interviews that the ineffectiveness of efforts to impede the revenues to the insurgents was reflected in the continuing, if not growing, strength of Iraq’s militants. “You have to look at what the insurgency is doing,” Mr. Lang said. “Are they hampered by a lack of funds? I see no evidence that they are.”
Jeffrey White, a defense fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also a former Middle East analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, agreed. “We’ve had some tactical successes where we’ve picked off a financier or whatever, but we haven’t been able to unravel a major component of the system,” he said. “I’ve never seen any indication that they’re strapped for cash, never seen any indication that they were short on weapons.”
He said the insurgency had demonstrated tremendous regenerative properties. “The networks fix themselves, they heal themselves,” he said. He pointed to the success of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in withstanding the loss of hundreds of combatants and dozens of major leaders. “They keep coming back,” he said, “and I think the same thing has happened to the financial system.”
</font>
<p>
<hr noshade color="#ff0000" size="12"></hr>
<p>
B
Blkvoz
Guest
Let us revisit history. Whenever an enemy cannot or will not be defeated, there will always be negotiations.QueEx said:
A friend of mine Boston Blackie used to say enough ants will eat up an elephant.
The mighty USA military cannot be defeated on the field of battle at this present time. By the same token, the US military cannot win a protracted war, there are too many people in the world with little or nothing to lose, willing to nip away at the mighty American Eagle.
It will either be capitulation as in Viet Nam, or negotiation. We may call it something else, but how long can we remain in a war costing us untold Billions in addition to untold lives?.
Again I say revisit history. The mighty German Army defeated almost every country in Europe, in each of those countries, there was an underground, insurgents by any other name, still kicks ass.
The underground did not win the war against, Hitler, but they nipped away at the Viermacht. Until the Allies got their shit together, you know the ending.
The Russians in Afghanistan, how long did they stay there eight years. I seem to remember them having to leave without a victory.
If you don’t learn from history.......
Negotiations of some sort or by another name is inevitable. Of course we could just get the hell outta dodge, as we did in Nam. Then we can invade Panama again
An ex-Russian soldier, i spoke to while awaiting his background check to purchase his 25th firearm, here in the U.S., described the Russian-Arab conflict in one word..."horrible". No less that the war in Iraq, is horrible. The key to settle is to negotiate with the nations funding and sending Jihadists into the battlefield. Revisit the words of Saddam, on this one, "the real war will be fought on the ground".
how about this? Why wont we just let Israel "negotiate" for us?
QueEx said:
HUH?
Similar threads
