Informed Comment

*Iraqi guerrillas attacked a US military convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire, killing two soldiers and injuring a third. The attack came near Tel Afar, west of Mosul. All the casualties were from the 101st Airborne Division.

*There was another big demonstration in Najaf on Sunday, several thousand strong, by supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr against the US presence in the city. The NYT maintained that many of the demonstators had been bused in from East Baghdad, but offered no evidence that this was the case. At one point a Sadr cleric read a list of demands to the the US commander, including immediate evacuation of US troops from the holy city. He also wanted an end to US interference in the running of the local television station, according to AFP.

In return, the translator for the US forces told the crowd they would have to show respect or be considered a threat to US forces. He had been instructed to tell them to disband. Sadr Movement leaders promised another demonstration on Monday, and some were talking about bringing their guns. Apparently the helicopters and extra humvees in the city on Saturday had been intended to provide security for Wolfowitz, but the Sadr supporters took them as a sign that the US was about to arrest Muqtada. The local commander says he has no interest in arresting Muqtada. It is interesting that Muqtada assumed after his defiant sermon on Friday that the US would move against him. In part he may have based this expectation on what used to happen under Saddam. But in part it might come from knowing that Sadr Movement preachers have occasionally been detained by the Us briefly, apparently as a sort of warning not to go too far.

*On Meet the Press on Sunday, Paul Bremer responded to a question about Muqtada al-Sadr:

Tim Russert: We had a situation the other day where one of the ranking Shiite clerics in Iraq called for an Islamic army, saying no to America, no to the devil. This was the scene yesterday as many of his supporters were protesting American presence. Would it be helpful, in order to deal with Iraqis like this, and the clerics solder, that there be more of an international flavor to the occupying force, so it would not be perceived by the Iraqis as simply a made in America operation?

Ambassador Paul Bremer: That I don’t think is the problem here. What we’re seeing is an understandable reaction by the Shia whom he — he is a Shia cleric. They were crushed by Saddam over a period of really decades, and in fact, for centuries. We had last week, a week ago today, the first governing council established with a majority of Shia. The Shia had never been in the majority today and they’re delighted. And I should add that you showed this story, but in the same story in the Washington Post two members of the governing council, who are leading Shia, basically said — basically distanced themselves from him and said, look, we’ve got an ability now in the governing council to carry out the desires of the Shia people. And I think that’s where the concentration should be now.

It is interesting that Bremer characterizes Muqtada’s identification of America with Satan and his call for an Islamic militia as “understandable” given that he is a Shiite clergyman and given that Saddam crushed the Shiites for decades. He sees how the Sadr Movement comes out of Baath brutalization and at times virtual genocide. The problem with quoting members of the appointed Governing Council against Muqtada is that none of them has his following in the country. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq representative, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is widely seen as an Iranian pawn by ordinary Iraqi Shiites and only has influence in a few towns in the east near Iran. Ayatollah Muhammad Bahr al-`Ulum is a good man, but he has been in London a long time and does not have a grassroots organization. Nobody among the Sadrists thinks that the Communist or the ex-Baathists on the Council are real Shiites.

*Ibrahim Khayyat writes in al-Hayat that Wolfowitz’s visit to Baghdad was in part for the purpose of “closing the file” on the Defense Department’s involvement in the civil administration of Iraq. He says that Wolfowitz told his loyalists, seeded in the civil administration earlier, that the State Department is now taking over, and that things may be hard for those who remain behind (many, Khayyat says, are leaving). Also imperilled are some members of the Governing Council who were picks of the Pentagon, like Ahmad Chalabi.

Khayyat speculates, however, that Bush may not leave Bremer himself in place. Bremer is talking about Iraqi elections in late 2004 or early 2005, and Bush is said to want them out of the way before the US presidential election, so it can be portrayed to the American people that the US has handed off Iraqi sovereignty to an elected government. If Bremer looks like he can’t get the job done that fast, Khayyat thinks, the Bremer himself may be dismissed in favor of someone more agile.

I haven’t seen this sort of report on US infighting in the American press, and it is interesting, but I can’t vouch for its accuracy.

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*A U.S. soldier was killed in Baghdad by a sniper on Saturday while guarding a bank. Four U.S. troops were wounded when their convoy was struck by a remote control bomb.

*Over 3,000* Shiite demonstrators came out into the streets of Baghdad on Saturday, according to AFP, to protest the US military’s action in surrounding the house of Najaf firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr’s spokesman, Mustafa al-Ya`qubi, told Agence France Presse that US military forces showed up at Muqtada’s house in Najaf shortly before noon on Saturday and surrounded it, while military helicopters hovered overhead. After some time, the Americans departed. Muqtada apparently was not home at the time, anyway.

When word spread of the US action, large demonstrations began in Najaf, Baghdad and Basra, demanding that Muqtada be released. Baghdad crowds chanted “Down with the USA!” and “We are all soldiers of Sadr!” (They really have to get some new slogans.)

US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was visiting Najaf Saturday, and may have almost got caught up in the protests.

Friday had already seen a demonstration by Sadr Movement followers in Basra, who demanded that the appointed Governing Council be expanded through the addition of elected members. These demonstrations in Basra were renewed on Saturday, this time with the added demand that Muqtada be released immediately. AFP thought around 2,000-3,000 protesters showed up in downtown Basra, as well. At one point they felt threatened by an approaching Western vehicle and threw stones at it, assuming it to be British military. It was in fact a civilian vehicle. The Shiites maintain that the persons in the vehicle shot at them, wounding three demonstrators, including a cleric, Sheikh Ali al-Asadi, Muqtada’s representative in Basra. The British military denies firing at the crowd, and maintains that the story of the surrounding of Muqtada’s house was a misunderstanding.

The US military has promised to clarify exactly what happened in Najaf. It seems to me possible that it was alarmed by the sermon Muqtada gave Friday, urging nonviolent noncooperation with the US and pledging to establish an alternative government and military force to compete with the Governing Council appointed by Paul Bremer. (He also called for the closure of US radio and television stations in Iraq). It may also be that they wanted to immobilize Muqtada during Wolfowitz’s visit so as to ensure his safety. If so, Wolfowitz inadvertently caused a lot of unnecessary trouble with this gratuitous victory lap. (I would have advised him against trying to visit Najaf; it is a very holy city for Shiites, and a highranking Defense Department official going there could easily injure local sensibilities).

*Al-Hayat put the number of Baghdad demonstrators at 100,000. I can’t explain the discrepancy of 97,000 with the AFP estimate. Two possibilities present themselves. One is that al-Hayat was counting demonstrators out in the neighborhoods of East Baghdad as well as the smaller crowd in downtown Baghdad. Another is that the AFP reporter had more experience estimating crowds (which is not an easy thing to do–the situation is chaotic and few vantage points would let you see everyone, much less count them). But, there are some little tricks for estimating crowds, like trying to estimate the size of the rally in square yards and then counting persons per square yard.

*The Bremer-appointed Governing Council has been unable to select a president from among themselves. They have therefore decided to have a rotating presidency. The three members most likely to fill that role are Adnan Pachachi, an 80-year-old Sunni Iraqi nationalist, Ayatollah Muhammad Bahr al-`Ulum (age given as 78 or 80), a Shi`ite moderate, and Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, deputy head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and leader of its paramilitary, the Badr Corps. Note that the Pentagon’s favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, is not apparently in the running (nor could he win an election in Iraq, where he is widely viewed as a corrupt carpetbagger and American puppet).

*The unilateralists in the Bush administration, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, are going to have to eat crow and bring the United Nations aboard to help them rebuild Iraq. They can’t get India, Russia, Egypt or anyone else to lend troops to the effort of providing security without an explicit UN mandate. The UN Security Council, moreover, is not going to give them such a mandate for free. It would have to make the rebuilding and decision-making about the future of Iraq much more multilateral. (You will note that Wolfowitz has stopped boasting about how France would be “punished” for its opposition to the war). UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has even called for an explicit timetable for US withdrawal. The Washington hawks are openly contemptuous of the UN, and their need for it is extremely humiliating. They never thought Kofi Annan would have *them* by the balls. But the numbers are undeniable. The occupation of Iraq is costing the US nearly $4 bn. a month; Bush’s tax cuts provoked a $450 bn. budget deficit (which doesn’t even include the Iraq expenses); and there are not enough US troops to cover Korea, Japan, Germany, Afghanistan and Iraq and also provide for frequent troop rotation so that our guys can get home after six months rather than stretching the tour of duty to a whole year. A whole year in a combat zone is a long time.

*All those who read Jim Hoagland’s fluff piece on Wolfowitz of Arabia in the WP on Sunday should also look at Jason Leopold’s article on Wolfowitz’s slanting and politicizing of intelligence to sell the Iraq war. See

http://www.liberalslant.com/jl071903.htm.

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*Al-Hayat reported that Adnan Pachachi and another member of the Iraq Governing Council are in Rome for a conference of socialists. Asked about recognizing Israel, Pachachi replied that Iraq is a member of the Arab League and would abide by League policy in this regard. Apparently Ahmad Chalabi, another GC member, had earlier given the US neocons to understand that the first thing he would do if they put him in power was to recognize Israel. Given the disorder into which the country has fallen, the conviction of 41% of Baghdadis that the war was fought for Israel’s sake, the fatwas by radical Shiite clerics calling for assassinations of foreign Jews who come to Iraq to buy land, this prospect of a new Iraqi government suddenly embracing and supporting Ariel Sharon seems to have receded dramatically.

*For the possibility that senior Bush administration officials punished Ambassador Joseph Wilson for blowing the whistle on the Bush administration’s story about Iraqi uranium by outing his wife as a CIA field officer involved in tracking weapons of mass destruction, see

http://thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=823

Journalist David Corn notes that the punishment for such outing of an intelligence field officer is 10 years in prison, but that no investigation has yet been launched. The Bushies play hardball, and are sending a signal to other potential whistleblowers that bad things will happen to them if they come clean about the Iraq war WMD deception.

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*Two American servicemen were killed in Iraq on Friday, AP says. Someone shot and killed a soldier from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in Baghdad about 5:30 p.m. yesterday according to Corp. Todd Pruden, a spokesman for the military. Also on Friday afternoon, in Falluja a guerrilla set off a remote controlled bomb as a US convoy was nearing the main bridge over the Euphrates, killing a soldier from the 3rd I.D. AP says that a Falluja crowd chanted “America is the enemy of God,” while the US Army towed away the burned out hulk of the bombed Humvee. And, the Americans found and demolished yet another bomb in Falluja.

Demonstrators in Falluja defied the US-imposed curfew to shout, “With our spirits, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Iraq!” “Iraq” doesn’t rhyme as well in this Arabic phrase (al-dam is the Arabic word for “blood”) as “Saddam” used to. They need a new chant.

*Then, the Sunni clerics mounted the pulpit in their mosques in Baghdad on Friday and denounced the US occupation and the Governing Council. They said it was shameful for the GC to declare April 9, the beginning of a foreign occupation, to be a national holiday.

After the Friday prayers, Sunni crowds poured into the streets to demonstrate, saying that the new Governing Council did not reflect “the Iraqi reality.” They gathered at the Umm al-Qura Mosque in west Baghdad, with placards asserting that the Governing Council was appointed by dictators, and “April 9 is a day of infamy.” They came up with a lot of rhymes to chant, though some of them depend on “Baghdad” being the last word, so they don’t do the people in Falluja much good. One chilling chant was “O Baghdad, revolutionary! Let Bremer’s fate be that of Nuri!” The reference is to Nuri al-Sa`id, the conservative pro-British Prime Minister who was mangled and killed by revolutionary mobs during the republican coup of 1958. (-al-Hayat)

So, we heard from the Sunni Arabs on Friday.

*Now for the Shiites. In his Friday Prayer Sermon in Kufa on Friday, Muqtada al-Sadr, 30, called for nonviolent noncooperation with the US administration and the transitional (“illegitimate”) Governing Council it has established, calling them infidels. He said he would oppose them even if it cost him his life. “They have delivered this peaceful Muslim country to the foreign forces.” He then called for the establishment of an alternative shadow government for Iraq, in cooperation with other Islamic forces. He also wanted an alternative convention to draft a constitution in accordance with Shiite law. He insisted according to AP, “Eventually, we’ll have a referendum separate from the Americans and, God willing, elections separate from the Americans.” He also announced the formation of the “Mahdi Army,” i.e. a formal militia of Shiites loyal to him (as far as I can see, this militia has actually existed for some time, and it appears to control Kufa, much of East Baghdad, and perhaps some neighborhoods in other Shiite cities such as Najaf, Karbala, and Basra).

Agence France Presse quoted Muqtada as saying, “This government is not legitimate and has no popular support. There can be no justice from an unjust council. We want a government which is Islamic where everyone is represented. It is like this we will build Iraq’s unity and draft a constitution.” AFP says that ‘He disparaged the council as a feeble attempt to cobble together Iraq’s mosaic of ethnic groups. The council members “pretend to be Muslims, democrats and pious”, but “it would have been better for them to follow the Marjaiyah”, the Shiite religious authority.’

I think Muqtada should be taken seriously over the long term (one or two years) but not in the short term. He and his followers got out 10,000 demonstrators in mid-May (on a day that was anyway a holy day commemoration), but since then the crowds have dwindled to 2500 in early June and then just to a few hundred whenever the Sadr Movement has called for anti-US rallies in Baghdad. So, it is not at all clear that most Iraqi Shiites, even in the Muqtada heartland of East Baghdad, are ready to take direct action, even just to come out for protests. Muqtada is arguing to them that they must do so, to strangle the authority of the Governing Council in the cradle, or risk it attaining legitimacy and then sidelining the religious forces down the road. When Muqtada can call for a rally in Baghdad and get 20,000 or 30,000, even 100,000 people to show up, then he will be dangerous to the US presence in Iraq. At the moment, he is a dark cloud on the horizon. I think it would be dangerous for the Coalition to arrest him–that might be precisely the kind of catalyst that would bring out the big crowds or turn the Shiite militias loyal to him violent. Maybe that kind of arrest and symbolic martyrdom is even what he is angling for.

The potential for violence among Shiite factions themselves remains high. Iran Network 1 announced on July 17, “Another news from Iraq is that an attempt was made on the life of Shaykh La’ith, known as Abu Du’a, who is in charge of distributing Ayatollah (Ali) Sistani’s stipends for seminarians, by unidentified assassins, today, in Najaf. After this, he was transferred to hospital.” (BBC monitoring). Well, if we had to start compiling a list of suspects, the Sadr movement would have to be high on it. Just for Sgt. Friday to interview them, mind you.

*Asharq al-Awsat reports from Kuwait that the Sunnis in Basra have taken back possession of the administrative offices for Sunni pious endowments from the Sadr Movement, which had invaded them on Weds. They found the offices empty but denuded of their extensive files on Sunni religious properties in the city. The Sunni spokesman claimed that 15,000 Sunnis demonstrated against this move by the radical Shiites, in front of Basra’s Great Mosque after Friday prayers. They had originally planned then to walk in procession to the British HQ, but decided not to, for fear they might come into violent confrontation with the Sadr Movement. They reported that at the stationary Great Mosque demonstration, they were joined by members of the Shi`ite Al-Da`wa Party, as well as members of the al-Fadilah Party, a breakaway Sadrist group that follows Sheikh Muhammad Ya`qubi instead of Muqtada. These Shiite forces expressed their solidarity with the Sunnis. But the Sunni leaders nevertheless warned of the danger of an outbreak of sectarian violence should the Sadr Movement attempt further expropriations of Sunni property. It is incredible to me that the Western press has so far completely missed this story.

Less and less jumping up and down for joy among the people of Iraq.

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*A Sunni group in Basra (pop. 1.3 million) is calling for massive Sunni demonstrations after Friday prayers today, in protest of the occupation on Wednesday by the Sadr Movement of a building housing the headquarters of the Sunni Pious Endowments administration (-al-Hayat). In a telephone call from Kuwait to al-Hayat, the Sunni activist warned of a big sectarian disturbance in Basra if the situation was not rectified. Haqqi Ismail Abd al-Rahman, the Sunni Endowment administrator, told the paper that hundreds of Sadr Movement members invaded the building and occupied the offices, which contain the files for 90% of the Sunni endowment property in Basra.

He expressed the fear that their long-term goal was to usurp the mosques and properties of the Sunni community and to add them to their Hawzah (Shiite religious establishment). A meeting of three hundred men at the Sunni Grand Mosque in Basra on Thursday morning to consider the situation was harassed by Sadr Movement hecklers, who shouted sectarian slurs, with one sermonizing at them that they were infidels. Haqqi Ismail said his group had complained to the city council and to the British authorities, so far without effect. They had also contacted the office of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf but had heard back nothing. Thus, the plans for a big demonstration, which will draw on the congregations of the city’s 150 Sunni mosques.

Shiites have reportedly usurped large numbers of Sunni mosques in South Iraq, seeing them as attempts by the Baath regime to plant Sunnism in Shiite soil, a plot that can now be safely reversed. These usurpations have been condemned by Grand Ayatollah `Ali Sistani, but the radical Sadr Movement clearly feels differently about the matter. Especially in Basra, some minority Sunnis loyal to Saddam brutalized and terrorized the Shiite population, and for some Sadrists this move may be the beginning of payback.

Just to explain the “endowments.” It is a custom in Muslim societies to dedicate the proceeds of land or other forms of wealth to religious purposes, such as the building and upkeep of a mosque. Property dedicated to a pious endowment is theoretically alienated for this purpose in perpetuity. Families often retain oversight rights, and fees, from the endowments, or give these to clerics. Many Sunni clergymen in Basra may depend for their livelihood on endowment income, especially given the collapse of the Sunni state, so that usurping it would bankrupt the Basra Sunni religious establishment. Usurping mosques leaves believers with nowhere to gather and pray publicly, which is a way of denying them a place in the public sphere.

There is, of course, a grave danger that Sunnis and Shiites in other parts of Iraq will hear about this dispute and become polarized over such issues, so that the fighting could spread. The British authorities should move quickly to resolve this problem. The problem, of course, is that if they come into armed conflict with Sadrist militias, that could also be destabilizing.

*The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies say that armed criminal gangs pose a severe threat both to Coalition troops in Iraq and to international aid workers. The spokesman in Amman, according to Al-Sharq al-Awsat, maintained that there were 100,000 persons in these gangs throughout the country and that they came largely from the hardened prison population released by the Baath regime and the war. They engage in looting, burglary, kidnapping, etc., and began by concentrating on government buildings and institutions but have now branched out.

*AFP reports an opinion poll taken in Baghdad by a British concern: “And an opinion poll released in Britain found that half the people of Baghdad believe the US and Britain were right to invade Iraq, but most say the city is a more dangerous place since Saddam’s regime fell on April 9. The YouGov survey, commissioned by Britain’s independent Channel 4 News network and The Spectator magazine, found:

50 percent thought the war was right

27 percent said it was wrong.

47 percent said that they thought the conflict was about oil

41 percent said it was to help Israel

23 percent who said it was to liberate the Iraqi people a

6 percent who thought it was to deal with Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

47 percent expressed no preference for rule by the Americans or rule under Saddam Hussein,

29 said they preferred to be ruled by the US

9 percent favored being ruled by Saddam.

75 percent said that Baghdad was more dangerous since the US invasion.

See

2003/07/18/2003059884.

One can always read statistics in various ways, but it could be concluded that only 29 percent of Baghdadis are positively happy to be ruled for any length of time by the Americans; that 75 percent don’t think the Americans are doing a very good job of providing security; that most people are cynical about American motives, and less than a quarter think the war was fought for the sake of liberating the Iraqi people; and that only half are even glad the war was fought at all.

*This news item from IRNA seemed to me awfully weird: “AFTAB-E YAZD:

during the recent days there.”

Some 34 Iranians were killed in Iraq in “recent days”?? Doing what? Are they getting in the middle of firefights between the Badr Brigade and Sadrist militias? Idle visitors cannot be being killed at this rate!

*The continued lack of security in Iraq is severely impeding the movement of women, who fear going out because they might be kidnapped or raped.

See

0717IraqWomen17-ON.html .

This article is an excellent corrective to the US conservative line (by white males) that things are getting better every day in Anglo-American Iraq.

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*Another rocket propelled grenade attack killed one American soldier and wounded three others on Wednesday, near the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad. Also, in West Baghdad a guerrilla tossed a grenade into a US military vehicle that was guarding a bank, killing an 8-year-old Iraqi child and wounding the American driver. Yet more assailants sprayed machine gun fire at the car of the pro-American mayor of Haditha (150 mi. northwest of Baghdad), Mohammed Nayil al-Jurayfi, killing him and his son. Another guerrilla fired an anti-aircraft missile at an AC-130 landing at Baghdad airport, but missed. This is an al-Qaeda tactic, used in Mombasa, and I wonder if it was another one of those 1972 Soviet-made SA-7s (they don’t seem to work that well any more). But, let’s say that Baghdad airport won’t be open to civilian airliners for a bit. Gen. John Abizaid, who has an MA in Middle East Studies from Harvard and so is one of Us, has bitten the bullet and admitted that we are faced with a guerrilla war.

*The Germans are really worried about NATO members pulling troops out of Afghanistan under US pressure so that they can be sent to Iraq. Afghanistan is in a fragile state and could easily collapse back into Talibanism and Qaedism. I always said that starting this Iraq business when they did was a bad idea, given that the Bush administration has left the job in Afghanistan half done. (Less).

*According to the Iranian Webzine Baztab on Weds. 7/16, Sadr Movement notable Sheikh Muhammad Ya`qubi of Najaf has finally declared himself an Object of Emulation, making formal the split of his al-Fadilah group from the Muqtada al-Sadr loyalists. His followers demonstrated against threats to him in Najaf, though the Muqtada group maintained that he had no local support and just brought in some armed tribesmen to stage the demonstration. Ayatollah Kazim al-Ha?iri is said to have blessed Ya`qubi?s schism, saying he had the prerequisites for being an Object of Emulation. Al-Ha’iri is pretty obviously now sidelining Muqtada, and wants to become the Ali Khamenei (Supreme Jurisprudent or Wali Faqih) of Iraq. Al-Ha’iri is an awful person, and were he to get that kind of power he would run Iraq right into the ground. Muqtada and Ya`qubi don’t sound very nice, either, to say the least. My guess, though, is that the Sadr Movement, which is dedicated to the memory of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, Muqtada’s martyred father who was killed by Saddam, will tend to remain loyal to Muqtada in the main. And, even if the movement splits with regard to leadership, it seems that all three potential leaders agree on the need for a rigid, puritanical, exclusivist, and intolerant Iraq. Ugh.

*Employees at the Iran offices of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq are fuming at being told to come back to Iraq with their families immediately for face being cut off without a cent, according to al-Zaman. Those who want to stay have complained that they are in effect being denied a pension, and have protested to Ali Khamenei, whom they are styling “Guardian (Wali) of the Muslims” (i.e. they accept his authority over Iraqi as well as over Iranian Shiites), and to Chief Justice Mahmud al-Hashimi al-Shahrudi, who is an Iraqi and former head of the Supreme Council. Many of these employees fought against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and have prices on their heads in Baghdad, and apparently they are still afraid to return for fear of Sunni reprisals. When Iraqi Shiites are afraid to be in Iraq, I’d say it is a bad neighborhood for the stationing of US troops.

*A group of former intelligence officers has called for Dick Cheney’s resignation. But it is Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith they should be after. Cheney played a role, but all he had was behind the scenes influence. This distortion of intelligence for political aims was carried out by the top civilians in the Defense Department.

*Julian Borgess deconstructs Douglas Feith’s Office of Strategic Plans inside the Pentagon for the Guardian. His explains of how this “open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House” allowed Israelis to just walk into the Pentagon without being cleared, on Feith’s say-so, along with the Iraqi opposition, and to funnel “information” to Bush that performed an end-run around the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. OSP coordinated with its counterpart in Ariel Sharon’s office. ‘”None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,” said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith’s authority without having to fill in the usual forms. The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel’s Likud party.’ Meanwhile, our NATO allies who were pointing out that US Iraq intelligence was deeply flawed were being vilified as venal cowards. But, the Likud connection to the Iraq debacle will have no traction in the US, where the media and Congress have been properly subjected to party discipline.

*For an excellent analysis of the limitations of the US in facing a determined Iraqi guerrilla war see Col. Dan Smith in Counterpunch..

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*US forces were ambushed while leaving an ammunition depot between the cities of Ramadi and Habbaniya on Tuesday, but took no casualties. They fought back, killing five Iraqis and capturing one.

*There have been five attacks on US troops in the largely Shiite town of Miqdadiya (pop. 300,000), 50 miles north of Baghdad, in recent days, including ones using anti-tank weapons, hand grenades, and one suicide attack (AFP via al-Zaman). They don’t appear to have produced US casualties. One wonders how much of this sort of thing is going on in the towns of the Sunni triangle without our hearing much about it (although the town might be majority Shiite, it is in the Sunni area and the attacks are likely Fidayee Saddam or Sunni radicals). Miqdadiya is in Diyala province, where a new regional council was set up on Monday, including Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Turkmen. Diyala is a mixed province on the border with Iran. The regional council has just appointed a new governor, Abdullah Hasan Rashid al-Juburi, a notable of the Sunni Juburi tribe of northern and eastern Iraq who had been in exile in London (-Agence France Presse). I hadn’t seen anything in the US newspapers about regional councils; are they being formed by the US military, or in consultation with the Iraqi Governing Council? It is a refreshing break from most Middle Eastern political custom to have the governor chose from the province, rather than from the center, and I hope that can be institutionalized.

*Egypt has joined India, France, and Germany in refusing to send troops to Iraq, rebuffing an American request (-az-Zaman). Robert Reid of AP pointed out that the daily attacks on US and Iraqi forces have helped deter other countries for volunteering to make their men sitting ducks in Iraq. The justice of the US cause has also been badly damaged by the inability to find weapons of mass destruction or even significant programs to produce them, which also discourages others from wanting to get involved. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted recently that we may need to send more men to Iraq in addition to the 140,000+ who are already there, and that they would be there some time. (He earlier rebuked Gen. Shinseki when the latter suggested we would need 200,000 troops in Iraq for some years to rebuild and provide security).

France made explicit that French troops could only be involved after a period of United Nations trusteeship over Iraq. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shot his mouth off last spring about the “old Europe” and pointed to the support for the Iraq war from the former Soviet bloc. But Lithuania and Estonia aren’t sending many troops now that we need them, and with all due respect, they aren’t capable of what the French are capable of (the French have a mobile gendarmerie with extensive experience in the global South, which would be very useful at this point). Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was boasting about how France would be “punished” for failing to support his trumped up charges against Iraq. When the whole record is examined, it seems increasingly clear that France was objectively right, and Rumsfeld was wrong about almost everything.

What I dislike most about these two is that they are bullies. When they were after al-Qaeda, I was happy about it, because al-Qaeda is made up of bullies, and who better to take them on? But they endangered us all by taking the focus off al-Qaeda. And, the way in which Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz villified everyone who disagreed with them about Iraq and tossed aside NATO and the United Nations as a framework of international action sickened me. The horrible thing is that the people who are paying for this arrogance and disregard for the truth are our poor troops on the ground. The 3rd ID is stuck in Iraq for the foreseeable future because India declined to send a division after all. Poetic justice would be for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to have to man checkpoints in Falluja.

*Mourners at the funeral of Shaikh Ahmad al-Wa’ili in Kazimiya employed the procession to protest against the Governing Council that announced itself July 13, saying it was unacceptable because it was unelected. I presume these protesters are part of the Sadr Movement, which refuses to cooperate with the US presence. It was a tacky thing to do at a funeral. (Newsday via al-Zaman).

*Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi of Karbala warned against the Lebanonization of Iraq and called for a pluralistic government in Iraq on Tuesday. He said it must respect the rights of minorities in a national framework. He said it should be an advanced state, but retain moral values, it should be a state characterized by liberty but within the framework of the law. He cautioned against Iraqis dividing along ethnic and political lines and falling into civil conflict of the sort Lebanon underwent 1975-1989. He said that the various political factions and activities require greater consultation and cooperation among themselves in order to exit from the crisis. He emphasized that the problems of the country were not limited to just one, such as the American occupation, the continued existence of Baathist elements, or the collapse of national institutions. Rather, all of them had to be faced, and required a “public reason” (`aql jam`i) that could think them through with profound wisdom. He rejected the idea of attempting to force Coalition troops out of the country, saying that he wanted that outcome eventually very much, but not in a way that would plunge the country into a new war it might not survive. He said, “We want to build a modern country, but not at the price of losing our independence. We want the return of our institutions, but without the dominance of a single sectarian group; we want pluralism without chaos; we want unity without oppression.” He ended by saying that it would not be right to have a silent majority and a vigorous minority, since that would be fertile ground for dictatorship.

Mudarrisi is the leader of the Organization of Islamic Action, which is a largely Karbala-based party. He founded it in 1979 before being forced by persecution to go to Iran. It was briefly part of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, but split over differences. It is accused of sending agents over into Iraq to blow things up (i.e. of terrorism) during the 1980s. It also had a Damascus branch, though, and wasn’t as close to Ayatollah Khamenei as the Hakims of SCIRI were. He came back to Iraq in April with a retinue of 60 men, and was arrested by the Mujahidin-i Khalq, who turned him over to the US. His brief incarceration provoked demonstrations in Karbala. He was released after 12 hours. Karbala has been roiled in recent weeks by a fight over the right to give the Friday sermon from the mosque attached to the shrine of Imam Husayn, between followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and followers of Grand Ayatollah Sistani (in the end they have decided to alternate). The OIA doesn’t seem to be involved and may lack the strength of these two other tendencies.

Al-Mudarrisi also told al-Hayat on Tuesday that it would be “suicide” for Shiites to launch attacks on the Americans, and he clearly thinks they are needed to provide order for the time being. It is not clear whether he fears the reestablishment of the Baath if they suddenly leave, or whether he is afraid that Muqtada al-Sadr will behave like a Lebanese warlord with militias, and plunge the country into civil war. His speech on Tuesday quoted by al-Zaman sounds moderate and almost Rousseauan, appealing to reason rather than primarily to revelation, and stressing Iraqi pluralism as an antidote to dictatorship or social chaos. It resembles a speech made by Muhammad Bahr al-`Ulum in Baghdad a couple of weeks ago, which also stressed pluralism. (Bahr al-`Ulum is now serving on the new Governing Council). But al-Mudarrisi appears to be terrified that the security situation in the country could deteriorate rapidly and decisively.

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