Miller as Chalabi Stenographer

Franklin Foer's profile of Judith Miller of the NYT and the way in which her over-dependence on the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmad Chalabi besmirched her journalistic career asks an implicit question. It is, "How could she have avoided this disaster?"

I think the problem came about because she started doing a different type of reporting. There is a difference between getting a story about bureaucratic infighting in Washington and getting a story about Iraq's weapons programs. In the first sort of story, you can rely on principals to some extent, who are actually doing the fighting. You have to take into account that they are principals, of course, and seek some balance by talking to people on the other side. But the principals do have a fight going on, and are eager to put a good light on their role in it, to get out their side of the story. And if the story is their side of the story, then you've got it if you have the right people in the rollodex.

But Iraqi weapons programs or internal politics were a different type of story altogether. Miller had no access to the Iraqi principals. And the INC and the US Department of Defense were interested parties and outsiders, who were alleging things not in evidence. It wasn't like Washington infighting.

Miller's mistake could have been avoided by going outside the INC circle to other Iraqi experts. For instance, there were Iraqi nuclear scientists in the West unconnected to INC and Chalabi who were disgusted at the propaganda and said openly that the nuclear program was dismantled after the Gulf War. These were insiders of a sort. Miller did not seek them out or listen to them. Imad Khadduri [scroll down after clicking] was such a source, and I wrote about his account at length in February of 2003 before the war. (I.e. I was right and Miller was wrong).

Miller could also have asked around in the Iraq Middle East Studies establishment for academic views outside the beltway. Although some academics are themselves policy advocates, very large numbers are actually trying to see the world as it is, and often offer a good corrective to more self-interested accounts.

Foer does not make much of the fact that Miller co-authored her book about Saddam with Laurie Mylroie, a major purveyor of disinformation to the Washington power elite. Mylroie's assertions are so bizarre that they in my view raise the question of whether someone somewhere is actually paying her to say these weird things. That Miller has some kind of close association with her raises other questions. The book that Miller and Mylroie co-authored, by the way, at one point professes puzzlement as to why in the world Eisenhower grew angry and made Israel give back the Sinai after the 1956 war. Inability to understand that an American president would be unhappy about a secret neocolonial plot against Egypt sprung suddenly in late October just before an American election points to an ideological hard edge that may explain why Miller got so many things so wrong.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kufa Fighting Flares; Bombs in Baghdad

Fighting flared again Sunday and Monday between Mahdi Army militiamen and US troops, who are apparently trying to reconquer the police stations in the city. Fierce fighting continued late Monday. 2 US troops and dozens of Mahdi Army fighters are dead. CNN reports that local US military commanders insist that Muqtada either disavow the Kufa fighters for breaking the ceasefire, or he will be held accountable for the attacks on US troops (no mention of gradual US military encroachment on key points in the city).

Taking the police stations as "anchors" of the Shiite urban communities was a widespread tactic of the Mahdi Army when the insurgency broke out in early April. One US counter-strategy, little reported on in a systematic way, has been gradually to take back these anchor points. The problem for the US is that the real power centers of the Mahdi Army are the slum tenements where the armed youth live and organize, and which are impenetrable to the US military (and they were relatively impenetrable to Saddam's secret police, too.)

The drum of violence beat on: a big bomb also went off near the Green Zone; two US troops were killed in separate incidents; British civilian contractors were ambushed Sunday; and a woman and her child were killed by a mortar round on Sunday in Mosul.

Bill Safire in his New York Times column today begins with a litany of unreported good news. One item is that attacks on US troops were half in May what they had been in April. This sort of statistic is profoundly dishonest. In April, the US launched assualts on both Fallujah and the Shiite south with specific goals in mind. In both cases, the US military failed for political reasons and had to back off. May saw instead negotiation and background military maneuver, including increased dependence on local proxy fighters. Of course the attacks on US troops were many fewer in May. But that datum is useless in a vacuum. April had seen the greatest violence since the end of the war in April of 2003. Safire's way of putting makes it seem as though there were a linear, secular improvement of the security situation. There is no such thing (see above), and it is a form of lying to imply that there is.

The Financial Times reported last week that Iraqi petroleum exports were down by 1 million barrels a day in May, much more than initially estimated. Bombings at a facility in the south and of the Kirkuk line in the north have been devastating. The bombings wiped out the entire OPEC increase in production quotas and are part of a new phenomenon in which insecurity is driving prices higher through speculation. (About $10 a barrel of the current $40 a barrel price is estimated to be owing to speculation). The Khobar terrorist incident in Saudi Arabia on Sunday will likewise probably drive prices higher.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Portrait of a Rebellion

In These Times has made my analysis of the Shiite rebellion of the past two months available online. It came out about a week ago and so before the recent "truce," but is still valuable for a narrative of the background.

In these Times
May 24, 2004
"Portrait of a Rebellion
Shiite insurgency in Iraq bedevils U.S."

By Juan Cole


The Great Uprising of early April 2004 boiled along into May, leaving Iraq in continued turmoil. The Bush administration unwisely provoked rebellions in both Fallujah and Najaf (and other southern Shiite towns) by deciding to put down small symbolic acts of defiance with massive force. In Fallujah, Geroge W. Bush ordered the American military to retreat from that Sunni Arab city and to rehabilitate the Baathist forces once associated with Saddam Hussein to help restore order. Yet in Najaf, Bush has been unyielding in his determination to arrest or kill the young radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and destroy his militia. That determination could tip the Shiite south into long-term instability.

Given the drumbeat of bombings and assassinations, most recently of Izzedine Salim, president of the interim government of Iraq, the country cannot take much more instability. The transfer of sovereignty scheduled for June 30 is not in doubt, since it simply requires some appointments and paperwork. But endowing the new government with any popular support and political reality will be difficult if the country is in flames. By mid-May, the Najaf home of the preeminent mainstream Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, was being sprayed by machine gun fire from unknown assailants. This raises the specter of his loss to assassination, as well, which could further radicalize the Shiites.

Al-Sadr, 30, inherited a large and active Shiite dissident movement from his father, who, under the nose of Saddam Hussein, had established it in the Shiite slums of the southern cities. The Baath Party found it difficult to penetrate and control the teeming ghetto of East Baghdad, allowing the Sadrist organization to flourish there. In 1999, Saddam had Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, Muqtada’s father, killed along with Muqtada’s two older brothers. Muqtada Al-Sadr went underground and emerged over the next four years as a new, sectarian leader of Iraq’s dispossessed, guided by an ideology that differed little from that of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, his father’s teacher.

Read the rest here.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Wrangling over President delays Announcement

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the WP summarizes the deadlock on the new prime minister among the Iraqi Governing Council, Paul Bremer, and special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The Council opposes the naming of Adnan Pachachi as transitional president, because he is perceived as too complaisant toward the US. It wants Shaikh Ghazi al-Yawer of the Sunni Shammar tribe. Al-Hayat said that Bremer had compromised by giving the Council a choice of 4 outsiders.

The US is clearly maneuvering here, to have the Iraqi government that it can deal with after the June 30 transition. Al-Yawer is known to be nationalistic, and was especially vocal about the siege of Fallujah.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sites of the Day

Veteran journalist Helena Cobban's Just World News site is worth checking out. She writes frequently on the Middle East and knows it well.

Abbas Kadhim, Calling it Like it Is. Viewpoint of an Iraqi Shiite philosopher at UC Berkeley on current affairs and the Iraq crisis.

Joshua Landis has begun a web log on Syria that is very much worth checking out. If David Wurmser, now on Cheney´s staff, gets his way, that one will be our problem, too.

TomDispatch.com always has cogent and fascinating discussions of left politics, and often of Iraq issues.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Muqtada Misses Friday Prayers; More Violence Near Najaf

Reuters reports Friday that a day after an apparent agreement between the Interim Governing Council and Muqtada al Sadr, his followers were disappointed to find that he did not appear for Friday prayers in Kufa (he has been hiding out in nearby Najaf). Some 5,000 followers had gathered to hear him, and were disappointed and angry, blaming the US for his inability to appear. They chanted, "yes, yes to jihad!" Meanwhile, the US military, which had largely withdrawn to a base outside the city, came under fire on Friday. Although the US had welcomed Muqtada´s truce offer, they had threatened to come back if there was more violence. There seems to be a contradiction in the press reporting, with some saying that the US accepted a provision that the arrest warrant against Muqtada be suspended for the time being, while this Reuters report seems to suggest that the U.S. would still very much like to apprehend him. If the latter is true, it would help explain his reluctance to come out in public at a time when he has agreed to dissolve his militia in the holy cities, and when his fighters in Kufa, in any case, have taken heavy casualties.

Ash Sharq al Awsat/Reuters report that Muqtada was convinced to remove his militia from Najaf by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and that the final negotiations actually took place in Sistani´s house. Sistani had condemned both the Mahdi Army and the US military for fighting in the holy city. He was convinced that a major US military push into Najaf was not far away, and that it was urgent for Muqtada to back down. Sistani has a great fear of social disorder, and was well aware that the Bush administration was capable of risking massive Shiite riots by fighting into Najaf in a frontal assault if that were the only way to get Muqtada. He also knew that Muqtada´s troops would not shrink from themselves using rpg´s and other potentially damaging weapons in the holy city.

Meanwhile, Salama Khafaji, a Shiite woman who has served in the Interim Governing Council, barely escaped assassination on Thursday as she returned to Baghdad after taking part in the negotiations with the Sadrists that produced the truce. She is all right, but one of her bodyguards is dead, another severely wounded, and her son, Ahmad Fadel, is still missing (he dove into the river to avoid the machine gun fire directed at their car). It is incredible that members of the IGC are not safe; if they aren´t, it is likely that nobody is. Khafaji replaced Aqila al Hashemi, another Shiite woman, who was assassinated last September. Khafaji has been among the most effective and outspoken of the women on the IGC. She followed Rajaa al-Khuzai's lead in helping reverse the plan of the clerics on the IGC to implement Islamic personal status law in the place of civil law. And, she had been active in the negotiations with the Sadrists.

Friday had been declared a day of mourning in Iran for the desecration of the holy city of Najaf by the fighting in it (which Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei blamed on the U.S.) and the consequent damage to the shrine of Ali.

Guerrillas killed two Japanese journalists as they were returning from Samawah, where the Japenese Self Defense Forces are stationed, to Baghdad.

Hussain Shahristani, the favored candidate for post of prime minister by special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, withdrew because he could not gain the support of powerful Iraqi politicians who had been expatriates and who now want the job for themselves, according to the WP. Ali Allawi of the Iraqi National Congress (a nephew of Ahmad Chalabi), Ibrahim Jaafari of the al Da´wa Party, and Adel Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq all want the job themselves. Al Da´wa has the biggest grass roots, and Jaafari is the third most popular political-religious figure in Iraq, according to a recent poll (behind Sistani and Muqtada). But Brahimi does not want the PM to come from a party with grass roots, lest he use the advantages of incumbency to stay in power.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Wedding Party Bombing Controversy

The controversy on the US bombing of what appears to have been a wedding party near Syria continues to boil, with this al Jazeerah editorial taking the con side to the story, while Gen. Kimmit sticks to his guns. I thought readers might be interested in an assessment by an academic with long experience in the region.

McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago writes:

As someone who has worked for more than 35 years in Iraq, and for several years in Syria, right up against the Iraqi border, I can add some information on the situation there. All along both sides of the border are small settlements of people, who make their living by herding. Any village or encampment on either side will have in it a mixture of people who were born on the other. Many women from villages in Iraq marry relatives who live in Syria, and vice versa. In fact, in the village of Hamoukar where I was digging from 1999 until 2001, probably half of the families have close relatives in Iraq or were born there. The border is relatively undefended and unfenced, and in the past people could cross, but they took risks in doing so. There was a certain
amount of smuggling, usually consumer goods, and I would be very greatly surprised if there has not been a greatly enhanced degree of trading across the border, given the demand for products that exists in Iraq now. A few years ago, Iraq and Syria both thawed relations and allowed visits, and a lot of villagers in Syria went to Iraq to see relatives whom they had not seen in years, and some Iraqis were allowed to visit Syrian relatives. Iraqi taxi cabs, easily identifiable by their orange and white colors, were numerous on the roads of Syria in the past five years. In the current situation, with the Iraqi secret police no longer getting reports from agents among the populace, the visits by Syrians would have been greatly increased. As far as I have been able to find out, there were some attempts to control the border points at Tell Kochek,Abu Kemal and on the superhighways to Syria and Jordan, but I would be surprised if the long desert border has been much controlled. That there were men from Syria in the Iraqi village that was attacked would not be at all surprising, given the fact that there was a wedding
and that there was and is commerce across the border. The arrival of the guests might have looked very suspicious on satellite images That there should be foreign money is also not surprising. There is a lot of foreign money in Iraq and there has been for years.

Everything you have been saying about the Shia also rings true. I have worked most of my career in the south of Iraq, at Nippur (near Afak, Diwaniyah area). What I know to be the case is that most people would have preferred a secular government, that the Shia do not want to split the country up, and that the US and British blunders in the south have been based on no information, outdated WW I concepts, or distorted information from self-serving people who have been outside the country for many years. The Occupation authority has made it almost impossible to have a political base other than religion or ethnic community, and we are thus creating splits and tension between Iraqis that have not been very noticeable in the past.

McGuire Gibson
Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology
Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

They Even Changed its Name?

Nathan Brown, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, writes:

"With little fanfare, the name of Iraq seems to have been changed.

In light of all that is happening, this is hardly the most significant issue facing Iraq at the moment. But in view of the brief flap engendered by the Governing Council's decision to adopt a new flag, I thought the name change might still be of some minor interest.

The country's official name in 1920 was the "State of Iraq." Following the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, the name was changed to the "Republic of Iraq" (or, more literally, the "Iraqi Republic.")

At some point last year, the older name--the "State of Iraq"--was restored. I do not know precisely who did this and why, but it seems to have been done by the CPA some time last year. CPA legal documents are now issued for the "State of Iraq." UN Security Council Resolution 1511 (passed last October) uses the restored term, and the transitional Administrative Law--signed in March 2004 but named (as far as I know) for
the first time in November 2003--is formally the "Law of Administration of the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period." (However, some internal Iraqi documents still refer to it as a republic.)

Since the current Iraqi political order could hardly be described as a republic, there is some honesty in the new title. But it seems odd that an interim administration would feel comfortable changing the name of the country.

Nathan J. Brown
http://home/gwu.edu/~nbrown

Site of the Day

Christopher Allbritton is back in Iraq, doing independent journalism.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Abuse of Women Detainees

Iraqi women were also abused at Abu Ghuraib, according to the Taguba report and reports of photographs seen by the US Congress. As this Islamist PakNews story notes, most of the reporting on torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghuraib has focused on men. It is clear, however, that Iraqi women were also made to strip naked, were photographed in that compromising position, and it is alleged that some were raped by US military personnel. Although, of course, the soldiers who behaved this way and the officers who authorized or allowed it were not "crusaders," as the article alleges, the abuse of women was designed to take advantage of Muslim and Arab ideas concerning female honor.

A scandal that has not yet broken in the press is the story of how many women ended up in US prisons. The fact is, few were suspected of having themselves committed a crime or an act of insurgency. Rather, they were taken as hostages or potential informants because their husbands or sons were wanted by the US military. This kind of arrest, however, is a form of collective punishment and not permitted under the Fouth Geneva Convention governing military occupations of civilian populations. The sexual abuse of these women is therefore a double crime.

Eventually these photographs of abused or tortured Muslim women are likely to leak, and the reaction in the Muslim world will be explosive. One shakes one´s head in bewilderment as to what the Bush administration thought they were doing. William Polk´s guest editorial today is all the more a propos in light of these revelations.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Thoughts on Torture

Guest Editorial

By William R. Polk

Displays of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated in American military prisons have shocked not only Arabs and Europeans but also most Americans. They need not have been surprised – torture is not new.

Widely practiced by the Germans during World War II, it was standard French procedure during the Algerian war. One of the most influential books on that war, written by Colonel Roger Trinquier, a French paratrooper, argued that torture is to “modern war” what the machinegun was to World War I. Horrified by what they learned was happening, French critics called torture the “cancer of democracy.” Using it, the French not only destroyed their claim to legitimacy in Algeria but also nearly destroyed French civil life.

If there was a lesson to be learned by the Algerian experience, it certainly was not heeded.

Influenced by the French – Trinquier’s book was translated and made available by the CIA -- American soldiers and “special forces” used torture in Vietnam. Israeli troops and security forces have employed it for years against the Palestinians. Routinely, almost casually, it is employed in prison systems throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. It is more common in Europe than most would admit. From Greece, under the regime of the colonels, came a macabre episode: the men employed to torture prisoners, complaining of long hours at low pay, went on strike.

Studies of torture raise two questions that lie behind the horrifying images in the press in recent days: “does torture work?” and “why do governments do it?”

If the objective of torture is to get information, as is usually said, the answer to the first question is “sometimes.” The French in Algeria found that they could “break” a prisoner and find out where his colleagues were hiding or what kind of an operation was being planned. Often, of course, the person being tortured would just say what he thought his tormentors wanted to hear – anything to get them to stop. He knew that he was likely to be killed after he had been “debriefed.” But they had ways to check what he said and, keeping him alive, increased his pain if he lied.

Even if torture often failed to get the sought-after information, it was still an attractive option. Why? I think there are two answers: first, security officers think it might work and they have few other options. Much more important, I believe, is the second reason. Some circumstances almost demand brutality.

A century of careful medical and psychiatric studies tell us that the juxtaposition of absolute weakness and absolute power provokes violence. The bound and hooded Iraqi prisoners lying naked on the floor of Abu Ghraib prison invited attack.

So shocking is such a statement that few of us have wanted even to consider it. To deal with its implications requires us to reexamine our very concept of our humanity. So to get around that inhibition, some scientists, like the Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, posed “our” problem to animals. What he found was that those animals that have “weapons systems,” like the lion with its claws and fangs, have evolved to practice restraints. Had they not done so, their species might not have survived. So the winner in a fight among lions will make ferocious noises but will usually stop short of killing the lion he has just knocked down. In contrast, those creatures, like that symbol of peace, the dove, that do not have lethal weapons have not evolved to practice restraint. They did not need to. Lorenz observed a dove actually torturing another to death.

Our evolution, students of violence assert, has made us more like doves than lions. True we have massive weapons systems but they are external; our ancestors were not forced to incorporate them into our behavior. So, when we see in the pictures of the Iraqi prisoners cowering on the floor, bound, hooded and defenseless we notice that the upright, armed and dominant guards do not show compassion. Rather, they feel stimulated to attack.

Surely, we say, these are aberrations. Normal people do not do such things. Alas, there is much evidence to the contrary.

Cultural, religious, ethnic and age ethnic differences do not seem to influence the willingness of human beings to torture others. Torture has been reported almost everywhere among peoples of all religions and historical experiences. It does have a racial or cultural dimension, however: men are more likely to torture people of a different color or culture than their own kind. Setting them apart is often easy. In Vietnam, American soldiers derided “gooks” and in Iraq “ragheads;” Germans despised untermenschen; Israelis treat Palestinians as subhuman and so on. Regarding the victim as unimportant makes it easier to attack him. Remember the phrase, “Asians feel no pain.”

Can ways be found to prevent these horrors?

One that we have found is generally ineffective is education. The Germans of the 1930s were certainly among the most educated people in the world; yet they set up the concentration camps. The French of the 1950s were a model for the rest of the world in their dedication to reason and intellect; yet some of their most cultured people were implicated in their sordid policies. Even more surprising, some Frenchmen who had fought in the underground against the Nazis to preserve French freedom went on to do to the Algerians what the Nazis had been doing to them. They too built concentration camps. Clean-cut, decent American college graduates who felt strongly about civil liberties were prepared to do to Vietnamese what they abhorred in America. We have only to look at photographs of the crowd of White American participants at a lynching to see how thin is the veneer of civilization. So I think that the best we can say is that education is necessary but not sufficient.

Two actions offer some hope to those who wish to stop torture.

The first is to demand “transparency” in whatever prison systems are believed to be necessary everywhere. This means that we cannot close our eyes and ears to abuses as we naturally would prefer to do. Nor can we accept any justification for torture. Those who do it and those who authorize it must both know for certain that they will be held responsible for a crime against humanity. That is, to be clear, a crime against both the humanity of the victims and against us as those whose humanity they thus debase.

The second is much more important because more likely to work. It is that we must make as a major goal of national policy solution of situations that promote the use of torture. An obvious first step is to work toward a world which recognizes that the basic political right is that of self-determination. Unless or until this is at least approached, we can expect others to fight for it with every means at their disposal and that those who oppose them will similarly use the means at their disposal: guerrilla warfare/terrorism will be met with various forms of suppression including torture. Only when it is no longer “needed” will torture be put aside.

We can draw many historical proofs that it then will be put aside. Take just one example. After centuries of severe repression including torture of prisoners, England finally granted Irish independence. Torture then stopped because it was not longer useful.

A policy embodying the quest for self determination will not be easy to implement. Nor will the benefits appear quickly. There will be shortfalls and setbacks. But in evaluating such difficult actions as will be required, we must bear in mind that, however much some people will wish to try the shortcuts that torture will seem to offer to avoid attacks or break terrorist cells, doing so not only will impact upon the victims but also brutalize those who employ or sanction it. That was the real lesson of Algeria. It should also be a lesson of Iraq. That is what the pictures from Iraq show us – not just the anguished faces of the prisoners but the gloating smirks of the torturers. Lest those looks appear in our own mirrors, we simply and finally cannot “afford” torture.

© William R. Polk, May 6, 2004

William R. Polk is senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation. A graduate of Harvard and Oxford, he taught Middle Eastern politics and history and the Arabic language at Harvard University until President Kennedy appointed him a Member of the Policy Planning Council of the U.S. Department of State. He was in charge of planning American policy for most of the Islamic world until 1965 when he became professor of history at the University of Chicago and founded its Middle Eastern Studies Center. Later he also became president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Among his many books are The United States and the Arab World; The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century; Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs; and Polk’s Folly, An American Family History. His books The Birth of America and Iraq: Out of the past toward an Uncertain Future will be published in New York in the spring of 2005.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

America's Incompetent Colonialism

Guest Editorial
by Keith Watenpaugh

America’s Incompetent Colonialism: The Failures of the US Administration of Iraq

A year ago, word began to filter out of Baghdad that in addition to the National Museum, the Iraqi National Library and Archive had also been looted, and burned, not once, but twice. Like the current scandal of systematic abuses of human rights by members of the US military, the CIA and its sub-contractors, the burning evoked a host of emotions most notably shame, revulsion and anger. The anger was primarily directed against the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense who failed to heed the near-unanimous warnings of the probability of post-war instability and the vulnerability of Iraq’s cultural heritage and take appropriate preventative measures. Their failure to fully grasp the reality of the situation in Iraq was among the earliest examples of continuing gross and criminal ineptitude of which the gruesome images from Abu Ghuraib are the most recent manifestations.

The destruction so enraged an international group of junior historians of the Arab Middle East, that we organized an assessment visit to the country last June to find out what had happened at Baghdad’s library and archives. What we also sought to do was record the needs of Iraq’s academic and intellectual community as it rebuilds itself in the face of a generation of brutish rule by Saddam Hussein, a decade of debilitating UN sanctions, a brief and humiliating war, and an open-ended American-led military occupation. All of us spoke Arabic, had lived in the region and conducted research in Iraq or in its neighboring countries before. The report of our findings is available for free download from the H-Net (http://www.h-net.org/about/press/opening_doors/) website. Downloaded several thousand times in the last year, our report is still among the only independent assessments of cultural and intellectual conditions in Iraq. Current status of the libraries and museums can be also be accessed from the following: IFLA-Blue Shield (http://www.ifla.org/VI/4/admin/icbs-iraq.htm), Iraq Crisis (https://listhost.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/iraqcrisis) SAFE (http://www.savingantiquities.org/k-safe-resources.htm).

Conducting research for the report required us to meet with civilian and military administrators of the CPA in the Green Zone. Aside from discovering that when American men are overseas they all - including me - wear khaki slacks and blue button-down shirts, I experienced what could only be termed “de ja vue all over again.” My own area of expertise is the interwar Middle East when France and Britain controlled the several states of the Arab Eastern Mediterranean as League of Nation’s Mandates. And while the League imposed humanitarian requirements on both, the Mandates were merely colonialism in drag. Sitting across the table from CPA administrators I listened to the same language of democratization and development being employed as part of a broader, concerted plan to turn Iraq into a dependent and docile American client; and key features of Iraqi society, including higher education, media, culture, and the arts would be subordinated to that program.

What also struck me about those conversations - and the events of the intervening year have confirmed my suspicions - is that the CPA, and here I mean not just the American diplomats and bureaucrats seconded to the DOD and the token representatives of “Coalition Partners,” but also the vast array of civilian contractors and subcontractors, have been infected by the pathologies of colonialism. As I have discussed in an earlier essay for Middle East Report, (http://www.merip.org/mer/mer228/228_watenpaugh.html)
the civilian and military administrators of Iraq have grown contemptuous of Iraq and Iraqis and have convinced themselves of their hosts’ essential incompetence. Blaming the victim has always proved an effective strategy in justifying colonialism.

The CPA’s colonial culture has limited its effectiveness on behalf of the Iraqi people and thus the US taxpayer is not getting a good value for its billions of dollars. And while unique elements of the CPA have made significant contributions to the rebuilding of Iraqi society, here I note especially the work of John Russell in the recovery of Iraq’s ancient heritage, those successes are not balanced by the abuses, corruption, cronyism and incompetence on the other side of the ledger. In part this has been caused by the exportation of domestic US politics to the Green Zone and the appointment of individuals whose sense of Iraqi, Arab, and Islamic cultures (if they have any at all) is shaped by a narrow partisan, cultural or religious agenda - and in some cases the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This was reinforced recently by the discovery that the CPA’s massive press/propaganda office is peopled primarily by Republican Party activists, lead by Dan Senor, himself a former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) intern, as well.

An exemplary token of this phenomenon is the civilian contractor John Agresto, appointed last year as senior advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education. Senior advisors play a paternalistic role in the CPA akin to colonial administrators of the inter-war French and British Mandates and exert a tremendous amount of power over Iraqi institutions and agencies through the control of budgets, security and as gatekeepers to the upper echelons of the Department of Defense. Prior to going to Iraq, Agresto was briefly the president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an institution known for its Eurocentric “Great Books” curriculum and he now runs his own educational consulting firm, Agresto Consultants. Agresto has no training in Middle Eastern society or culture and no experience in the region. He served briefly as interim chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to which he was appointed by Ronald Reagan. Along with William Bennett, and Lynne Cheney, the wife of the current Vice President Dick Cheney, Agresto was one of the leading right-wing figures in the “culture wars” of the 1980s.

More problematic for the future of higher education in Iraq, the ostensible reason he is there, is that his appointment signaled that the CPA was intent on peopling its bureaucracy with politically loyal agents, rather than those most objectively qualified to assist Iraq. The clearly political nature of Agresto’s position sent a chilling signal to those academic institutions interested in working in Iraq that their efforts - regardless of how disinterested, or how much they believe that they could change the system from within - would be part and parcel of the administration’s current policy objectives and cronyism. And in the short-term, while these programs have the potential to aid Iraqis as they rebuild their educational structures, in the long run they will tar all American educational initiatives and American academics with the same neo-colonialist brush. Being perceived as, or in fact being, allied to the military occupation of Iraq or as agents of American domination will hinder the creation of permanent, collegial and productive relations between the US and Iraqi academic communities as equals. The ultimate cost of failing to create viable and permanent relationships and of confusing what appears to be voluntary cooperation with a strategy to survive is that the core values of open exchange, freedom of inquiry, women’s participation in higher education and faculty self-management may all be dismissed as “American” values and moreover as anti-Muslim despite our assertion of their inherent universality.

While the CPA is supposed to go out of business on June 30, what elements of it will persist in the next iteration of the American role in the civil administration of Iraq is unclear. Dan Senor recently used the euphemistic construction “close partnership” to describe that relationship as he dismissed the possibility that an independent Iraqi government might ask us to leave. Fear of being asked to leave may be the leading factor in the administrations rejection of the technocratic solution suggested by the UN’s Lakhdar Brahimi. While US diplomats will in all likelihood occupy a role similar to that played by current administrators, what I suspect will also be the case is that a significant portion of American policy in Iraq will be implemented by contractors. At this juncture, Congress should exercise due diligence and mount an independent audit and investigation of the CPA; it should also introduce legislation that would hold contractors liable to US and Iraqi law and moreover give the FBI enforcement powers and responsibilities. In other words, US citizens should enjoy no extraterritorial rights in Iraq, nor should the contractors simply be allowed to police themselves.

As a rule historians should avoid the use of history to predicate the future. Yet, in an essay I wrote shortly before the war for Logos, I opined that thinking about the exit strategies of the various interwar colonial powers could shed light on what the US would do in Iraq. At the time, I argued that the way the British left Iraq – install a loyal client leadership backed by a strong military, gain basing rights and oil concessions – would be repeated. I was convinced that the US would not leave Iraq like the British left Palestine in 1948: merely abandoning it to the UN and laying the groundwork for a half century of ongoing and unremitting war and suffering. I think I was wrong.

------------------
Keith Watenpaugh is Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern History at Le Moyne College; he also serves as the college’s Associate Director of Peace and Global Studies. In the Fall he will be a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is the third generation of his family to have lived and worked in the Middle East. He speaks and reads Arabic and Modern Turkish. Dr. Watenpaugh has written extensively on Arab intellectual history, the formation of the Baath and urban and communal violence. His book Being Modern in the Middle East: Colonialism, Modernity and the Middle Class will be published by Princeton University Press.


In June of 2003 he led a multinational team of Middle Eastern historians to Iraq to assess the conditions of Baghdad’s libraries, archives and universities * and more broadly observe the emergence of civil society and intellectual life in Iraq. The group’s findings are included in the report Opening the Doors: Intellectual Life and Academic Conditions in Post-war Iraq. Copies are available at h-net.org. The report is the first comprehensive account of Iraq’s intellectual and cultural scene after the war and provides the most detailed study of Iraq’s university system as it begins to rebuild in the wake of the war.


Dr. Watenpaugh has spoken on humanitarian issues confronting Iraq at Harvard, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, the University of Utah, as well as the annual meetings of the American Historical Association, the Middle East Studies Association and the College Art Association. His work has been covered by The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, The Syracuse Post-Standard and National Public Radio.



Keith D. Watenpaugh
Associate Director
Peace and Global Studies


Assistant Professor
Eastern Mediterranean and Islamic History
Department of History
Le Moyne College
Syracuse NY 13214


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Zinni on What Went Wrong

In the wake of Gen. Anthony Zinni's 60 Minutes appearance, it is worth looking in detail at his recent essay on what went wrong.

The Center for Defense Information has put up a concise diagnosis of the follies of the Bush administration Iraq policy by Gen. Zinni has presented a concise diagnosis of the follies of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy. A summary by way of excerpts (I've omitted ellipses, but these grafs are not continuous with one another):

"And I think that will be the first mistake that will be recorded in history, the belief that containment as a policy doesn't work. It certainly worked against the Soviet Union, has worked with North Korea and others.

"The second mistake I think history will record is that the strategy was flawed. I couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move. That the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds of others things will work out.

"The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind.

"We failed in number four, to internationalize the effort.

"I think the fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task . . . You are about to go into a problem that you don't know the dimensions and the depth of, and are going to cause you a great deal of pain, time, expenditure of resources and casualties down the road.

"The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas" from London. We bought into their intelligence reports.

"The seventh problem has been the lack of planning . . . And I think that lack of planning, that idea that you can do this by the seat of the pants, reconstruct a country, to make decisions on the fly, to beam in on the side that has to that political, economic, social other parts, just a handful of people at the last minute to be able to do it was patently ridiculous.

"The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground. There were a lot more troops in my military plan for operations in Iraq.

"The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there. No one can tell me the Coalition Provisional Authority had any planning for its structure.

"And that ad hoc organization has failed, leading to the tenth mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the ground. De-Baathifying down to a point where you've alienated the Sunnis, where you have stopped having qualified people down in the ranks, people who don't have blood on their hands, but know how to make the trains run on time . . .

"Almost every week, somebody calls me up, if it's not Mark Thompson it's somebody else, and says "What would you do now?" You know, there's a rule that if you find yourself in hole, stop digging. The first thing I would say is we need to stop digging. We have dug this hole so deep now that you see many serious people, Jack Murtha, General Odom, and others beginning to say it's time to just pull out, cut your losses. I'm not of that camp. Not yet. But I certainly think we've come pretty close to that.

"I would do several things now. But clearly the first and most important thing you need is that UN resolution. That's been the model since the end of the Cold War, that has given us the basis and has given our allies the basis for joining us and helping us and provided the legitimacy we need."

Other Zinni links:

Before the war: 'What Planet are They Living On? - Salon.com".

September 2003 - Lehrer News Hour

May 15, 2004 - Abu Ghraib and other issues.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Continued Fallout of War of Holy Cities

Even though Karbala has fallen quiet, there were clashes on other fronts. 20 people were killed and 50 wounded in clashes between the US and the Mahdi Army militia in Kufa, the stronghold of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

In the fourth such incident in a week, angry Islamist students in Tehran attempted to attack the British embassy in protest over the fighting in the holy cities of Iraq. They clashed with riot police and were eventually forced back.

Iran also demanded formally that the United States withdraw altogether from Iraq, and expressed its anguish over the desecration of the holy cities. The BBC reports that sympathy may be growing among Iran´s hardliners for Muqtada.

Even the chief ally in Iraq of the US, the United Kingdom, produced an internal memo harshly critical of US heavy handedness in Iraq, instancing the prison torture scandal, Fallujah, and Najaf.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

A Shiite International?

There was more heavy fighting in Karbala early on Friday, after which the city fell eerily quiet. By Friday night into early Saturday morning, Mahdi Army militiamen had mysteriously ceased fighting, and the US had withdrawn from sites like Mukhayyam mosque near the shrine of Imam Husain. Meanwhile, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to continue to fight even if he is killed.

There were big demonstrations Friday throughout the Shiite world, including Lebanon, Bahrain, Iran and Pakistan, against continued US fighting in Karbala, a key holy city for Shiite Muslims.

Geo-strategically, this entire episode is a huge disaster. Some Americans may feel it is unfair of Shiites to blame only the US for the fighting, when it is Muqtada's militia that is firing from the shrines. But life is unfair. People always mind what foreigners do to the symbols of their native identity more than they mind what their own radicals do.

Al-Qaeda's declaration of war on the US was a ploy to turn Sunni Muslims, especially hard liners like Wahhabis and Salafis, against America and recruit them as foot soldiers. In 2002 and 2003, the Pentagon replied in part by seeking Shiite allies. These included the Hazaras, who were part of the Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. They also included the Iraqi Shiites, which the Department of Defense wooed as allies against Saddam and the Baathists. In his unwise decision to try to get Muqtada al-Sadr dead or alive and to send GIs into Shiite holy places with heavy firepower, Bush is in the process of turning the Shiite world decisively against the US and perhaps creating new centers of anti-American paramilitary action.

The demonstration in Islamabad, Pakistan, was small, but there were anti-American sermons in Shiite mosques throughout the country. Pakistan's population is 140 million or so, and I estimate Shiites at 15%. If I'm right, that's 21 million angry South Asians. Pakistani Shiites are afraid of al-Qaeda and its allies, like the radical Sunni group, Sipah-i Sahabah (Army of the Prophet's Companions), who assassinate Shiites for sport. They had been a support for Gen. Musharraf's policy of turning against the Taliban and allying with the US. Now Bush's attacks on Karbala and Najaf have begun deeply alienating them from the US. Someone give Bush a copy of "How to Make Friends and Influence People," quick!

I have commented on the demonstration, 5000-strong, in Manama, Bahrain, below. It produced a political casualty. The king fired the Interior Minister and declared his opposition to what the Americans are doing in Karbala and Najaf, as well as what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. ' "We share the anger of our people over the oppression and aggression taking place in Palestine and in the holy shrines (in Iraq). People had a right to peaceful protests. We are investigating," the agency quoted the king as saying. ' This is a formal, non-NATO American ally speaking! Bush is even pushing his closest friends into dissociating themselves from him, at least rhetorically.

The biggest demonstration was in Lebanon, called by the Hizbullah, perhaps numbering in the tens of thousands. Lebanon's population is only 3 or 4 million, about 40% Shiite. I figure ten percent of Lebanese Shiites may have come out for this rally!

The irony for me here is that I often give the Shiites of Lebanon as an example of how radical Shiites can evolve into democratic, moderate ones. The AMAL party was more or less a terrorist organization from an American point of view in the early 1980s, but in the 1990s it became a middle class parliamentary party and gave up its paramilitary. Its rival, Hizbullah, tended to appeal to poor Shiites in the slums or peasant villagers in the South, and it retained 5000 fighters in its paramilitary. It remained militant in order to get the Israelis back out of Lebanon, in which it finally succeeded in 2000 (once Sharon steals your land, it isn´t easy to get it back). Hizbullah seemed on the way to evolving into a parliamentary party, as well (it hasn't been involved in international terrorism for many years to my knowledge).

There is some danger of joint US and Israeli policies re-radicalizing Lebanese Shiites, and making the more militant Hizbullah more popular than the sedate AMAL. All you have to do is fire helicopter gunship missiles into civilian crowds in Gaza and then bombard Karbala, and somehow it mysteriously angers a lot of Lebanese Shiites.

In Iran, as well, of course US military action in the holy shrine cities is a gift to the hardliners. The latter have long tried to paint the reformists who want more democracy as traitors in cahoots with America to destroy Shiite Islam and Iranian culture.

I said the other day I thought Bush was pushing Europe to the left with his policies. I think he is at the same time pushing the Shiite world to the radical Right, and I fear my grandchildren will still be reaping the whirlwind that George W. Bush is sowing in the city of Imam Husain. I concluded in early April that Bush had lost Iraq. He has by now lost the entire Muslim world.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Guest Editorials

I'm going to be doing some traveling this coming week. I will be posting more guest editorials than usual, and may not be able to comment as often on hard news. Back to normal by May 31. In the meantime, the guest editorials are first rate, and it will be worth checking in for them.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shiite Demonstrations in Bahrain

Violent demonstrations broke out in Bahrain protesting the US fighting in Karbala.

"Violence broke out on Friday after police fired tear gas to disperse thousands of mainly Shia Muslim demonstrators demanding the withdrawal of US forces from the southern Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala. One police car was set on fire. "Death to America...death to Israel," chanted the protesters in the pro-Western Gulf Arab state, home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet."

You wonder whether, when Bush gave the order to get Muqtada "dead or alive", initially to the Spanish and then to the US military, whether he even knew that a majority of the population in Bahrain, where the US has a major naval base, is Shiite or that they would mind if the US army demolished much of the Mukhayyam Mosque in Karbala trying to get at Muqtada's militiamen.

In all probability? No.

Could these dmonstrations in Bahrain be significant? Yes. Bahrain has a Sunni monarchy. Lately it has taken baby steps toward democracy and more open elections, but these did not benefit the Shiites because they wanted even more open elections, and boycotted them. Therefore, the Sunni fundamentalists largely won the seats (and the Sunni fundamentalists don't even represent most Bahraini Sunnis much less the Shiites). So the situation there is potentially volatile. The US is doing nothing to make it less so, and everything to exacerbate it.

The other shoe? Will the Shiites of al-Hasa in Eastern Arabia, where the oil is and where there are 5,000 Americans at Dhahran, be the next to riot?

It is most unwise for the US miitary to fight in downtown Najaf and Karbala near the shrines. I say it again.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Heavy Fighting in Holy Cities

The Associated Press reports that

"American tanks and AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions near two shrines in the center of the holy city of Karbala early Friday, and the U.S. military said it killed 18 fighters loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighting began after insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks patrolling Karbala's so-called ''Old City,'' said U.S. Army Col. Pete Mansoor of the 1st Armored Division. The tanks returned fire, and more than two hours of heavy fighting followed. Smoke billowed from burning buildings. A rebel weapons cache was hit, the military said. Much of the fighting was near the city's Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines, which U.S. forces allege are being used by militiamen as firing positions or protective cover. Mansoor said the shrines were not damaged."

Even if the shrines were not damaged, you can't imagine how much Shiites don't want to hear phrases like "American tanks and AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions near two shrines in the center of the holy city of Karbala early Friday . . . " I cringed when I saw it. I don't see how Iraqi Shiites are going to forgive us for this. Ever.

There was also more fighting in the other holy city, Najaf. Al-Hayat reports that Muqtada al-Sadr met with local tribal chieftains from Najaf and its environs, who gave him a letter asking his forces to vacate the holy places of Najaf. The letter threatened that if he did not do so voluntarily, the tribes are strong enough to kick him out.

See Omayma Abdel Latif in al-Ahram for analysis of Shiite politics at the moment. The threat, mentioned at the end, that Sistani might give up his quietism seemed chilling.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More on Chalabi Raid

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat: Chalabi aides said that 10 computers and lots of files were carted away from Chalabi's house, which they turned upside down. His nephew, Defence Minister Ali Allawi, who lives with Chalabi (the two stay in the house without their families) was at home, and was holding a meeting with the Foreign Minister (Hoshyar Zebari). An Iraqi National Congress spokesperson told the London newspaper that this was not the first time Coalition troops had come into the house, but it was the first time such an incident was made public. The troops said they wanted to arrest two members of the INC, but Chalabi told them they were not present in the house."

Chalabi told the newspaper that he believed the raid took place because he had been outspoken recently, and the Americans do not like it when a person speaks his mind.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sullivan on Iraq War, Sept. 1, 2002

There has been no accountability for all the war hysteria whipped up by media pundits and politicians about Iraq in the year before the U.S. invaded. Although it is true that Doug Feith's various special offices in the Pentagon, and VP Dick Cheney's politburo of Scooter Libby and John Hannah, along with Ahmad Chalabi and others fed false and misleading information to the government and the press, many talking heads were pitifully gullible.

Let's start with Andrew Sullivan, who, at the beginning of the September before the war, published in the London Times a vicious tongue-lashing of the New York Time's Howell Raines for not being on board with the program. I present excerpts below:

Sunday Times (London), September 1, 2002
The liberal cheerleader getting a bad name

Andrew Sullivan

"At the beginning, few readers noticed any change. The new executive editor of The New York Times, Howell Raines, took over last September and was immediately embroiled in the biggest New York story in decades. The coverage of the 9/11 massacre was superb, detailed and thorough - exactly what the American elite demands of its paper of record.

"And then the rot set in. The New York Times has gone from being America's most reliable (if sometimes PC) compendium of news to being one of the most suspect media entities around . . .

"Why on earth should anyone care? The answer is, in fact, a critical one in assessing the current American debate about war against Iraq. Since September 11, polls have shown that a hefty majority of Americans favour a military effort to prevent weapons of mass destruction being used by Saddam and his allies against American allies and the homeland itself . . .

"Beginning in July, [Raines] used America's most authoritative front page to run inflammatory non-stories about the impending conflict. On July 30, the Times detailed how war "could profoundly affect the American economy". Duh.

Cole: Note that Sullivan dismisses the argument that the war could have a deep impact on the US economy as a commonplace. But in fact, Bush administration officials consistently low-balled the American public about the cost. It was to be $60 billion. Iraq's oil would pay for reconstruction. There would be no long-term impact on oil prices. Raines was right and the Bush administration officials were wrong. Sullivan here calls the prediction that the war would have a big impact on the US economy an "inflammatory non-story" (which by the way is a meaningless phrase and therefore bad writing. A non-story cannot be inflammatory. What he presumably means is that Raines ran inflammatory stories about the economic impact that were inaccurate. But they almost certainly underestimated the economic impact of the Iraq war, the full dimensions of which we can now only begin to guess.)

"After the first day of Senate hearings on Iraq, the headline was: "Experts warn of high risk for American invasion of Iraq". In fact, the hearings had been dominated by defectors' tales of Saddam's imminent nuclear capacity. Every other major outlet led with that troubling news. The Times buried it."

Cole: Sullivan here castigates Raines for not swallowing the crock of shit that Saddam had an imminent nuclear weapons capacity. No serious analyst thought Iraq had an imminent such capacity. At this point in time, Ambassador Joe Wilson had already demonstrated to the CIA and Cheney that Iraq had not bought yellowcake uranium from Niger. The defectors' tales were fairy tales. Sullivan not only swallowed this crock whole, he licked his lips, asked for more, and beat up on Raines for not wanting any.

"It was slowly becoming clear that Raines was intoxicated with the power of his position - and you can see the temptation. The Times has influence beyond its reach as a paper for the most influential people in the most powerful country on earth . . ."

Cole: Not content to question Raines's journalistic judgment, Sullivan now goes for the jugular of character. What is the explanation for Raines's puzzling reticence about the case for an Iraq war? Why isn't he buying the stories of a menacing Saddam, sitting atop massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and within a year or two of having a nuke, plotting to strike the United States? Is it possible that Raines just can't see reliable sources for such tales, corroborated by other, unconnected reliable sources? Is it possible that there is an honest difference of opinion here? No, Raines must be a megalomaniac, drunk on power.

Whenever a writer replies to an argument with an attack on his opponent's character, calling him "immoral" or "unscrupulous" or "full of pride," you are in the presence of propaganda. The reasoned response to an argument is a counter-argument. It is not always inappropriate to call someone unscrupulous. I have long felt that the unscrupulous deserve the epithet. But an argument made by an unscrupulous person can nevertheless be correct, and would need to be refuted on its own merits even after one was done with the name calling.

"Why would the Times risk its reputation as a liberal but fair paper of record to lurch to the left of The Guardian? Since Raines won't speak to the general press, it's hard to know for sure. Part of it, perhaps, is to do with his generation of liberals. Scarred by Vietnam, they see every war as a replay of that hell and assume war critics always have the moral edge over war supporters. Raines is also a white liberal from Alabama, eager to prove that he isn't a Southern bigot. He won a Pulitzer for a guilt-ridden memoir of his black nanny when he was a child. So he overshoots."

The lessons progressives drew from the Vietnam War were that it is unwise for the US to become embroiled in an Asian land war, that Asian nationalism is a potent force that Washington consistently underestimates, that wars cost innocent lives and brutalize those who prosecute them, and that you should not go into a war without an exit strategy. The chief post-Vietnam strategic thinker on these issues was Colin Powell, by whose guidelines the Iraq war should not have been fought. How Raines's alleged white liberal guilt could possibly have an impact on this argument is beyond me, but I guess when you are libelling someone mercilessly, you may as well throw in the kitchen sink.

"But there is also a paranoid hatred of the president among the paper's chief columnists. Almost universally, they hate Bush in the way that some extreme conservatives once hated Clinton. Payback, perhaps. These major voices are not simply anti-Bush for good, defensible reasons. They have entered the realm of conspiracy theories, knee-jerk suspicion and profound cynicism about an administration thrust into one of the most dangerous national security crises in decades . . ."

Cole: Yes, it was quite wrong of Raines to be in any way suspicious of the Bush administration. Why, it would not try to scare us with a reference to nuclear purchases in a State of the Union address that the CIA refused to validate, now would it? It wouldn't keep dropping hints about Saddam and al-Qaeda that were wholly unsubstantiated by the president's own admission, would it? It would not keep things secret from the American public, would not violate the Geneva Conventions on a massive scale, would it?

In actual fact, most Democrats gave the Bush administration far too much credit for sincerity, and allowed themselves to be duped into confusing the addled, weak Saddam with Dr. Strangelove.

"More conservative voices have been purged. After criticising the new direction of the Times, I was told that Raines had barred me from contributing to the paper. That's his prerogative, of course, But it helps reveal the closed mind running the most influential paper on the planet."

I just am too embarrassed to comment on this paragraph.

"Recently, there have been signs of improvement. Two weeks ago, the man who lost out to Raines in the race to be editor, Bill Keller, penned an op-ed all but chastising his boss. "The three Republican foreign policy luminaries who have been identified in the press as sceptics - Mr (Brent) Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger and Henry Kissinger - spend much of their time courting well-paying clients who would rather not rock boats in the Middle East," wrote Keller."

Cole: It is true that Kissinger was misunderstood by the Times's reporter. But Scowcroft and Eagleburger had legitimate cautions about the rush to war that now seem quite prophetic, if insufficiently pessimistic in retrospect. Keller turns out to have been wrong and Raines was right. But here Sullivan slams Raines (and Scowcroft and Eagleburger).

"The real opponents of the war in America, therefore, are outside the elected political branch and are threefold: The New York Times, the men who left Saddam Hussein in power in 1990 and are thus partly responsible for the current crisis (Scowcroft, Colin Powell), and gun-shy military brass, who also opposed the first Gulf war. The three have worked together during the dog days of August to prevent a war. And they have made great headway, as polls have shown a slow decline in public support. But so far this has been a phoney war - between newspaper ideologues and security has-beens defending their own complicity in Saddam's survival."

Cole: Note that Sullivan again resorts to character assassination to undermine Scowcroft, Powell and others. They are not sincere, he says, and he does not even bother to recapitulate their arguments or try to refute them. Since they are abject human beings, he implies, he does not have to engage them at that level. In other words, he uses propaganda. Powell (who was later bamboozled into presenting false intelligence to the UN) had actually fought in a war. I suspect Sullivan has not, nor has he in all likelihood even lived in a war zone for any extended period of time. He had no standing to launch a vicious attack on the officer corps of the United States Army and Marines, accusing them of cowardice (I take it that is the meaning of "gun-shy.")

"Soon, the real debate will take place. The president will speak. Congress will vote. And the war, despite Raines's hysteria, will, barring unforeseen events, almost certainly follow."

Cole: An accurate prediction, even though actual debate was forestalled by a campaign of misinformation and intimidation. However, the blame for "hysteria" is placed on entirely the wrong party. It was ol' "Yellowcake Bush" who played chicken little.

Ironically, the NYT later acquiesced in the hysteria, and alowed Judith Miller to act as stenographer for Ahmad Chalabi's lies on the front page. That is grounds for slamming the New York Times. Sullivan's rant was wrong-headed from beginning to end.

By the way, I think that despite this particular shocking instance of lack of elementary journalistic judgement and knowledge of Middle Eastern society, Andrew Sullivan can't simply be dismissed as "unreliable" or "hopelessly biased." I find his arguments for gay rights cogent and persuasive, for instance. You can refute and dismiss an argument. It is harder to dismiss an entire human being.

Muslim mystics attribute to the Imam Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, the saying that "And you think that you are a but a tiny body, while in fact an entire universe is enfolded within you." That's true of each of us.

Truth in advertising: Sullivan attacked me on his weblog Thursday as having lost all "moral compass" because I dared to point out that the US Department of Defense and its allies are now killing Marsh Arabs around Kut, Amara and Majar al-Kabir--the very Marsh Arabs Mr. Wolfowitz said he was invading Iraq to protect from Saddam, who also used to kill them. In those days they were called the Iraqi Hizbullah. Many of them now are allied with Muqtada al-Sadr. There is an enormous difference in scale between what Saddam did to them and what the Coalition has done since the beginning of April. But it is early days, after all. And in issues of ethics and hypocrisy, scale is less important than principle.

I take it as a compliment that the Right is so afraid of this observation (the recent fate of the Marsh Arabs is not being discussed anyplace but the much-maligned Guardian) that they feel it necessary to resort to character assassination ("unreliable," "no moral compass") in my regard, in hopes of marginalizing me quick before the observation gains traction.

"Saving" the Iraqi Shiites was maybe the last rationale for their war that hadn't been discredited. Since April 2 they haven't been saving them any more. They have been killing them.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Martin and Malcolm, Chalabi and Muqtada

An informed Iraqi Shiite writes:

" 1.Chalabi is setting himself up to be Martin Luther King to Muqtada's Malcolm X. I predict he will head to Najaf soon to mediate.

"2. You are absolutely right: Muqtada has won, and alive or dead the movement he has sponsored will keep fighting the American forces until they leave. I think the likelihood of theocracy in Iraq has skyrocketed. What is the United States to do? Install Ayatollah Sistani as the anti-theocracy voice of secularism? Preposterous isn't it. History will record the Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr was the first hero of the Islamic Revoloution in Iraq. Iran's islamic republic has taken over 20 years and still hasn't evolved into a "real" democracy. I hope it won't take that long in Iraq. The war against the Americans will likely be followed by a civil war to oust whoever the Americans install as dictator. Then the Islamic Republic will be established and hopefully eventually evolve into a democracy, but that could take 50 years. I am not optimistic.

"3. I get your point with the analogy, but please do not compare Muqtada to David Koresh. I think a better analogy is that Ayatolah Sistani is the grandfather or patriarch of the family, and Muqtada is a teenager with issues. Like the kid who says "I hate you Dad!" but doesn't really mean it, or acts out anger or frustration. At the end of the day Muqtada has respect for Sistani (he has offered to disband his militia and leave Najaf if Sistani commands him to.) and Sistani considers Muqtada one of his own and will not critisize him by name publicly (i.e. outside the family).

"4. Your warnings to other Shia groups are right on target, anyone seen as siding with the US against Muqtada is politically doomed. The issue is not Muqtada's popularity vs. Sistani's the issue is Muqtada's popularity vs. Paul Bremer's. Six months ago most Iraqis would have prefered Bremer, now it is Al-Sadr by a landslide. Chalabi's attempts to distance himself from the US highlight that point.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Chalabi's House Raided; He is Suspended from the Interim Governing Council

Ahmad Chalabi's house was raided in Baghdad by US troops on orders of an Iraqi judge. He is said to have been suspended from the Interim Governing Council, though he maintains that Ghazi al-Yawer, the current president of the IGC, has called him to a meeting on Friday afternoon at 4 pm Baghdad time.

Rumors are swirling in Baghdad that Chalabi had been taking a percentage of some contracts or that he had been trying to transfer government assets to the Iraqi National Congress before the transfer of sovereignty on June 30. There are also rumors that his militia, which Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had flown into Iraq last year on a Pentagon aircraft, has engaged in coercive or extortionate activities. The problem is that these sorts of rumors have been swirling in Baghdad for many months. So why did the US move now?

Chalabi is charging that the crackdown on him is an attempt by the United Nations to squelch investigations into the bribes Saddam had paid UN officials under the oil for food program, and on which Chalabi had information. The Pentagon had quite outrageously turned over to the Iraqi National Congress the intelligence files of the old Saddam government, which Chalabi has threatened to use to blackmail officials of neighboring governments. Chalabi's charge is implausible and he is just trying to waft some smoke into the public's eyes.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the special UN envoy, had made it clear over a month ago that he would not appoint Chalabi to the caretaker government. In response, Chalabi has become increasingly critical of the US. He complained that rehabilitating the Baathists after the siege of Fallujah failed was tantamount to putting Nazis in power. He has recently loudly complained about the crackdown on the militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, saying that it has cost 1500 Iraqi lives, more than should be spent to arrest a single man.

Chalabi came on television on Thursday and said his message to the US was "Let my people go!" He is now playing an Iraqi Martin Luther King! He says he wants an immediate turn-over of all authority in Iraq to the Iraqis. I.e. he now has adopted the Dennis Kucinich position. Assuming that he manages to stay out of jail, Chalabi will run for political office in January, 2005, and will probably represent himself as an anti-Occupation Iraqi nationalist. You know, the wily old chameleon could still come out ahead.

Chalabi was for long a darling of the Department of Defense and VP Dick Cheney, and their initial plan had been to turn Iraq over to him. The State Department, the CIA and (I am told) Tony Blair all intervened in April 2003 to stop DoD from simply handing the country over to him. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress supplied to the US government and to Judith Miller of the New York Times false and misleading "intelligence" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear weapons program, and was connected to al-Qaeda. Chalabi later all but admitted that these allegations had been false, and said they didn't matter because Saddam had been overthrown.

The State Department and the CIA became increasingly less enamored of Chalabi in the course of the 1990s. In part, he could not account for the money they gave him. In part, his harebrained schemes to overthrow Saddam went awry. He retained strong supporters in Neoconservative circles, however, especially Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld and Cheney were also big boosters, at least until recently. The CIA and State Department appear to have leaked to Newsweek a couple of weeks ago intelligence that Chalabi had been sharing sensitive information with Iran, and was tilting toward Iran. Some Neocons have felt betrayed by Chalabi's inability to get Iraq to recognize Israel or provide it with petroleum, as he appears to have pledged to them.

One problem with the way the US has been behaving in Iraq, whatever the merits of this case, is that it is alienating all major political forces in the country. First its radical debaathification (so that a high school teacher out in Ramadi who had joined the Baath party but never done anything criminal was fired and excluded from civil society) alienated the Sunnis. They have not been mollified by recent steps belatedly to reverse this policy. Then the US came after Muqtada al-Sadr and began alienating a lot more Shiites. Now it has turned the Iraqi National Congress against it. The INC, whatever one thinks of it, has strong Kurdish and Shiite allies. What happens to a ruler without strong allies? Can you say Louis XVI?

Andrew Cockburn is worth reading on all this. But 1) I think calling what Chalabi had in mind a "coup" is exaggerated; 2) I think the idea that the Sadrists would follow a multi-millionnaire dapper expatriate is implausible and 3) the issue of Chalabi's nepotism and financial irregularities cannot be underestimated as an impetus for the raid. Brahimi and Bush in some sense need now to get back the Iraqi government from Chalabi's carefully planted nephews, sons-in-law and long-time associates, who control key ministries. In some senses, it is the CPA that made the coup.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rockets Fired at Italian Base

News from Italy about Iraq via a kind reader there:

Drawing on ANSA News agency (Rome): "Two rockets (NB: Italian journalists aren't very precise with military terminology, you never know what really was fired) exploded today at dawn inside the "Tallil" base near Nassiriya, where most of the Italian contingent live. No injuries. Ansa got the information from local military sources. It's the first time that the super-protected base of Tallil has come under fire; besides Italians there are military people from other countries.

' "We saw where the explosions came down. We're now investigating to figure out where they came from," said Colonel Giuseppe Perrone, speaker for the Italian commander, without explaining exactly where the rockets landed. In any case, he said, there were "no consequences." Most of the Italian "Antica Babilonia" contingent has recently transferred to the Tallil base. There's Camp Mittica, with the brigade headquarters, the ROA (Autonomous Operating Group) of the Italian Air Force, the MSU of the Carabinieri and other groups. There are also Portuguese and Romanian military included in the Italian contingent, Korean soldiers, Americans and people from other countries.

==========

"Radio Popolare this morning described Berlusconi's conversation with Bush (carried on TV during the night, so nobody saw it) as being really hi-there-buddy-good-to-see-ya-again with no mention being made (in public) about the political difficulties here. Berlusconi declared (ansa carried this) that most Italians support the Antica Babilonia mission.

"On Bruno Vespa's important talk show "Porta a Porta" ("Door to door) last evening, Gianni De Michelis, leader of the resurrected Socialist Party, came out firmly in favor of staying, with only Fausto Bertinotti, of Rifondazione Comunista, loudly insisting for withdrawal. Marco Pannella of the Radical Party also favors staying. The argument for staying is fear of what would happen if the Coalition abandoned Iraq, and even fear of leaving the US alone with the problem. Not present on the program were the political leaders (on the left) who have to support Italy's contribution to world affairs but whose potential voters include a large number of no-global, anti-capitalist, and crypto-anarchist organizations, screw-the-public transport unions, knee-jerk anti-americans, peace-at-any-price flag-wavers and nostalgic Catholics, whose attitude is "screw Bush at any price." These leaders are in trouble.

So Berlusconi's "support" should be read as "most Italians realize that the Coalition is stuck with the problem and has to finish the job." "

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Wolfowitz and the Marsh Arabs

Mickey Kaus responds to my explanation (below) of my view of the relative authority of Muqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He says, however, that I compared Wolfowitz to Saddam and that I was in his view too "shrill" to be "completely reliable" as a result. But this is what I said:

When I say Muqtada has won politically . . . I mean that he has made the US look like an oppressive tyrant. Paul Wolfowitz kept crowing last summer about how the US saved the Marsh Arabs from Saddam, but now that many of them have joined the Sadrists in Kut and Amara, Wolfowitz is having the Marsh Arabs killed just as Saddam did, and for the same reasons.

I did not "compare Wolfowitz to Saddam." I compared the killing of dozens of Marsh Arab fighters in Kut and Amara by the US Department of Defense to the killing of dozens of Marsh Arab fighters by Saddam. I said that Muqtada has maneuvered the US into looking to the Marsh Arabs as though it is behaving like Saddam.

As for my reliability, well that depends on a record. Go back and read the Web Log over the past year and show me where I've been unreliable.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US War Planes Kill 40 Iraqis Near the Syrian Border

The NYT report on the US helicopter gunship attack that killed 40 Iraqis, including 15 children and 10 women is typical of reporting on this incident in showing puzzlement at what actually happened. The US military claims that they were hitting arms smugglers coming across the border from Syria, and have good evidence in the form of captured materials that that is what they did hit. Local people told reporters that the US had hit a wedding party. My suspicion is that the US military mistook the wedding party, which included celebratory fire, for combatants. They did this once before, in Afghanistan. And I wish the US military spokesmen could be more gracious about such errors. They seemed to deny having hit civilians, and insisted it was a righteous strike, even as all the reports were coming on the Arab satellite channels about the dead at the wedding party.

Can't they just say that they are deeply sorry for the Iraqis' loss, and that they are not sure what went wrong, and will investigate? If they did kill so many women and children, surely that is a mistake no matter how you parse it, and they may as well admit it. It is this arrogance and instistence that the US is always right that has caused almost 90% of the Iraqis to come to view the Americans as occupiers rather than liberators.

Update 5/20: I just saw Gen. Kimmit on television denying that US forces saw any children at the site that was hit. But video and Arab television and press reports clearly show women and children casualties! This way lies a further erosion of the credibility of the US military in Iraq.

A reader writes:

As someone who has spent 8 years in the Middle East, mostly in Saudi Arabia, I just had to shake my head when I read the following quote;

"Ten miles from Syrian border and 80 miles from nearest city and a wedding party? Don't be naive," said Marine Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis in Fallujah. "Plus they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?"

This guy obviously doesn’t know Arabs or Arab culture. On many occasions, Saudis I know spent the weekend “in the desert” for a wedding or other celebration. On one occasion, a Saudi that I worked with . . . asked me if we could trade cars for the weekend so he could attend a relatives wedding being held “in the desert”. I had great fun driving his Mercedes around Riyadh that weekend while he had great fun driving my jeep to and from the desert. And his “30 males of military age” comment? That’s truly ridiculous. I’ve been to LOTS of weddings that had “30 males of military age with them”. That comment was just plain stupid."

Cole here: I concur. In my trips to the Gulf I was always taken to the desert late at night by my hosts for a kind of extended picnic, with lots of (gender segregated) festivities, poetry, singing.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sistani and al-Sadr: Demonstrations and Counter-Demonstrations

Mainstream Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the young sectarian leader Muqtada al-Sadr are now locked in a battle of wills, according to az-Zaman.

Several hundred Sistani supporters braved the dangerous streets of Karbala Wednesday to protest the continued battles near the shrine of Imam Husain and demanding that all combatants leave Karbala with their arms. Sistani had called for such demonstrations. Later in the day in Karbala, at least 7 Iraqis were killed and 13 were wounded on Tuesday night through Wednesday in clashes between the US and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.. One of those killed was journalist Bassam al-Azzawi, who was covering the events there. Tanks spread through the city. It was deserted except for the one demonstration mentioned above.

Scheherezade Faramarzi of AP reports of Karbala: "Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. military officials yesterday accused fighters loyal to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of firing on American forces from one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines. Sheik al-Sadr's militia was operating from the Imam Hussein shrine in the center of Karbala, said Capt. Noel Gorospe, spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division. "They use mainly the windows of the second floor of the shrine [to fire at troops]," Capt. Gorospe said at Camp Lima, a coalition base on the outskirts of Karbala. Insurgents were using small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, and their use of the shrine was more noticeable in the past three days, he said. Witnesses said American troops and militiamen fought yesterday near a militia checkpoint 100 yards from another holy site in Karbala, the Imam Abbas shrine."

About 300 supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, on the other hand (many of them apparently from elsewhere in Iraq and newly arrived) staged a rally in the center of Najaf protesting Sistani's call for an end to armed hostilities in the holy city. AP reports that fighting started back up in Najaf, as well.

"In Najaf, about 50 miles south of Karbala, strong explosions could be heard late Wednesday along with the rattle of machine gun fire. Fighters from al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army were seen on the streets despite a call Tuesday by the premier Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, for both the Americans and the militia to vacate the city."

az-Zaman says it was told by informed sources that the elders of the Sadrist movement begun by Muqtada's father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, oppose Muqtada's policies and his resort to armed violence. They are remaining silent, however, for fear of being killed by his partisans. The newspaper also received a communique signed by major clerics of Najaf condemning the gathering of extremists in the city and accusing Muqtada of having ordered that Sistani's house be sprayed by machine gun fire.

Al-Hayat is reporting a breaking development, saying that US Coalition leaders have backed off their hard line toward Muqtada al-Sadr and are offering him a truce and direct negotiations. I'm not sure this overture is actually a backing off of Coalition demands that Muqtada surrender himself to Abu Ghuraib prison, something he obviously will never do. (Would you?)

Meanwhile, a US military commander in Kut is hiring members of the Mahdi Army who will put down their weapons to help rebuild an old and now rusted amusement park. They figure the men would rather earn a living than fight in a militia.

' "Call it 'Six Flags Over Al Kut,' " quipped Col. Brad May, the regiment's commander. '

Give that man a medal.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Poll: Muqtada Second Most Popular Politician in Iraq

Roula Khalaf of the Financial Times reports the results of a poll of 1600 Iraqis from all major ethnic groups.

The results confirm that radical young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is holed up in Najaf as his militiamen fight the Americans, has emerged as among the more popular politicians in Iraq, already suggested by a poll done in late March and reported in the Washington Post.

"Respondents saw Mr Sadr as the second most influential figure in Iraq, next only to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most senior Shia cleric. Some 32 per cent of respondents said they strongly supported Mr Sadr and another 36 per cent said they somewhat supported him. Ibrahim Jaafari, the head of the Shia Islamist Daawa party and a member of the governing council, came next on the list."

Nearly 90 percent of Iraqis surveyed saw the US troops as occupiers, not liberators. This is up from 20 percent in October of 2003 and 47 percent in January, 2004. Not a good curve for the US. Over half want US troops out now. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll done in late March had found that 56 percent of Iraqis wanted the US troops to depart immediately.

This poll was done before the Abu Ghuraib prison torture scandal broke, so I suspect the negative numbers for the US have increased.

Mickey Kaus at Slate.com contrasts my views on Muqtada al-Sadr to those of Amir Taheri, says that one or the other of us is dead wrong, and complains that is is hard for non-experts to know which it is.

In blogging Shiism in Iraq, I am trying to convey very complex social and intellectual realities from another society as I read them, to a wider audience. It is really tough material to get across. Journalism is quite rightly about trying to boil complex things down to something relatively simple and digestible. Academics are about understanding complex things in all their complexity. I confess to favoring the second, even as I realize that some simplification is necessary to communicate information.

I say this because I don't see a stark contradiction between what I have been saying and what Taheri wrote. The reason Mr. Kaus thinks there is a contradiction is that he is seeing religious authority as a zero-sum game. This is a game where there is one pie, and two or more pieces, such that if one person gets a bigger piece, the other person's piece must shrink. If Sistani has more authority, he reasons, Muqtada must have less. Thus, Taheri is saying Sistani has more; I am saying Muqtada is gaining more; and therefore one of us must be wrong or the pie comes out to 150 percent.

But religious authority in Shiism is not a zero-sum game. It is overlapping and nested. Shiites can follow both Sistani and Muqtada. They overlap. The poll cited above proves my point. Sistani gets approval ratings in the 70s or 80s, and Muqtada gets them in the 60s. This result is impossible in a zero sum game. But it is possible if we have an altogether different sort of game, where you throw different-sized blankets on top of a bed to see which covers it best. No blanket covers 100 percent of the bed, but some blankets can cover 66 percent and others can cover 80 percent without either detracting from the size of the other.

I don't contest Taheri's estimation of Sistani's enormous moral authority. What I do insist on is that Muqtada al-Sadr is very widely admired; that he is very strongly supported by about a third of Iraqis (I have been saying this for a year), and that he has fanatical followers and cadres in the tens or hundreds of thousands. The polling, the military and popular movements, all of the primary sources I read in Arabic, confirm these points over and over again.

When I say Muqtada has won politically, I mean that he has stood up to the US for a month and a half, has survived, is continuing to defy it, and his forces still occasionally show an ability to surprise the coalition (as when they briefly tossed the Italians off their base near Nasiriyah earlier this week). I mean that he has enhanced his popularity nationally. I mean that he has made the US look like an oppressive tyrant. Paul Wolfowitz kept crowing last summer about how the US saved the Marsh Arabs from Saddam, but now that many of them have joined the Sadrists in Kut and Amara, Wolfowitz is having the Marsh Arabs killed just as Saddam did, and for the same reasons. Muqtada may well be doomed, but his movement is not going to go away, and his doom will just make him a national martyr and cause all sorts of new problems for the US. If Sistani comes out strongly against Muqtada, that will make the game more like a zero-sum one, but a lot of Shiites will try to avoid choosing sides, even as the strong partisans of each come into starker conflict.

If Taheri underestimates Muqtada, he is not alone. Most Western observers do, including George W. Bush. But what he says about Sistani can be true even if I am right.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

All Bush Wants to do is Dance

It seems clear that the weird Bush policy of doing the most destructive thing possible is likely to continue in Iraq until the Apocalypse. (See below.) In view of today's news (see below) I now formally propose an anthem for the Bush endeavor in Iraq. The Drudge story that Bush once got naked when drunk (he was apparently mostly drunk for about 20 years) and danced on a bar top is probably untrue. But I can only imagine there has been a lot of drunken dancing of one kind or another in his past. Reminds me of the Hindu God Siva and his Nataraja dance of destruction. Anyway, this one is dedicated to George's Yale partying days, and with apologies to Don Henley (sung to the tune of the Eagles' "All She wants to Do is Dance"):

All Bush wants to Do Is Dance

They're pickin' up the prisoners and puttin'
'em in the pen
And all Bush wants to do is dance, dance
Rebels been rebels since I don't know when
And all Bush wants to do is dance
Molotov cocktail-the local drink
And all Bush wants to do is dance, dance, dance
They mix 'em up right in the kitchen sink
And all Bush wants to do is dance
Crazy people walkin' round
with blood in their eyes
And all Bush wants to do is dance, dance
Wild-eyed pistol wavers
who ain't afraid to die
And all Bush wants to do is-
And all Bush wants to do is dance
and make romance
Bush can't feel the heat comin' off the street
Bush wants to party (oooo)
Bush wants to get down (oooo)
And all Bush wants to do is-
And all Bush wants to do is dance

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Thousands March against US, UK in Iran
Molotov Cocktails thrown at UK Embassy

Heavy fighting continued on Wednesday between the Mahdi Army in Karbala, which was firing from the shrine of Imam Husain, and US troops. The US admitted to having used an AC-130 to fire on militiamen near the shrine on Monday. Meanwhile, several hundred young men answered the call of Muqtada al-Sadr and travelled to Najaf to demonstrate in front of the shrine of Imam Ali (this takes real courage, since lots of armed Sadr supporters have been killed in that vicinity by the US lately).

The other shoe has now dropped. The BBC is reporting that several thousand angry protesters came out on Wednesday in Tehran to denounce the continued US military operations in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. (Iran is a largely Shiite country of some 70 million, and many Shiites go on pilgrimage to those shrines and treasure them as sacred). The demonstration got out of hand when one group of protesters broke off and headed for the UK embassy, hurling "petrol bombs" at its grounds. No one was hurt.

Since the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979, there has been a strong tradition of vigilanteism in radical Iranian Shiism. I can only think that if they become sufficiently enraged, substantial numbers of Revolutionary Guards, Basij and other semi-irregular fighters will begin slipping across the border into Iraq to hit US-associated soft targets. Although some observers have attempted to make the case that this phenomenon is already common, I haven't seen good evidence for it on any kind of scale so far. The Sadrist movement of Muqtada al-Sadr is homegrown ghetto kids. But, it was always a possibility that Iranians would become radicalized by US encroachments on Shiite holy sites. The Iran-Iraq border is very long and rugged and would be impossible to police (even Saddam could not do it). Iranian vigilantes could also help smuggle in arms and explosives.

My advice to the White House is to get US troops and tanks out of Karbala tout de suite and stop bombing it aerially. Otherwise, the quagmire is going to spread to Iran and become 3 times bigger. An extra 4,000 troops stolen from the Korea division isn't going to be sufficient to deal with that.

Meanwhile, the antiwar.com blogger asks why the Khaleej Times is reporting that 200 young followers of Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated outside the home of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Wednesday, if Sistani is the preeminent Shiite religious authority.

Think about Sistani as like an Episcopalian (Anglican) Bishop, and think of Muqtada al-Sadr as a much more popular David Koreish. Both are Protestants, but they wouldn't agree about much, and Koreish's followers had a suspiciously large stockpile of guns. Of course it is not an exact analogy. But you can see how an Episcopalian bishop like John Spong would speak for a lot of American Christians and be respected by them, whereas Koreish's message would resonate mainly in sectarian circles like Christian Identity and maybe beyond to some evangelicals.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Apocalypse Now in the White House

Rick Perlstein of the Village Voice acquired a damning memo ("you're not supposed to have that") demonstrating the hold the looney Christian far Right has on Bush Middle East policy. The gem in the article is the account of how Iran-Contra criminal mastermind and current National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams tried to reassure the Christian Zionists that an Israeli "withdrawal" from Gaza will not interfere with Jesus coming back because it wasn't part of ancient Israel. Actually, this is right. Gaza was in Philistia, not Judah, which was to its east. But for that matter, when the kindoms split, the West Bank wasn't in "Israel" either, it was in Judah. So the looney tunes Christians who are trying to kill and dispossess the poor Palestinians to drag Jesus back may as well just give it up. He wasn't treated well enough by humankind the first time to want to come back, so we're on our own, and we may as well stop being barbaric to one another in his name.

It has for some time been obvious to me that the Bush foreign policy in the Middle East is driven by irrational and often puzzling considerations. But I hadn't stopped to consider, until Perlstein's excellent piece, that the White House is trying to bring about an apocalypse that would hasten Christ's return. And a damn fine job they're doing of it, if that's what they are up to. Why the place is more apocalyptic every day. The one downside for Bush is that he is beholden not just to the far right Christian looney fringe but also to Wall Street, and the latter can't actually be very happy with the roller coaster ride his policies are producing for their investments. Unlike poor people, moreover, the monied both vote and give to political campaigns.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sistani vs. Muqtada vs. US in Najaf

Daniel Williams, Scott Wilson and Saad Sarhan of the Washington Post report on the new test of wills between the young sectarian leader Muqtada al-Sadr

"Sadr had invited all Iraqis to come to the southern city and support his uprising, which U.S. troops are struggling to contain. The revolt is one of several serious security issues that U.S. officials face before the scheduled transfer of limited authority to an Iraqi interim government on June 30. "So rise up my beloved people," Sadr said in the statement issued by his office in Najaf. He called on "the people of great Iraq to express your opinion" in Najaf "as a reply to the serial violations, in order to be the best people for the best sacred shrines."

In response, az-Zaman says, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani demanded on Wednesday that the Shiite holy cities Najaf and Karbala be cleared of weapons and that security be turned over to the Iraqi police. He also asked Iraqis to demonstrate against the fighting in these cities by gathering at mosques in their own localities.

He asked his followers from among the tribesmen of Najaf, Diwaniyah, al-Hillah, and Samawah not to come to Najaf to demonstrate or protect him, responding to their requests to come in. He said, "We call on the citizens not to head for Najaf, because of the seriousness of the security situation in the city." He did ask that "all forms of arms must be expelled from the holy cities, and the police must be allowed to undertake their role in safeguarding security inside the cities." He thanked the Iraqis "for their willingness to defend rights and sanctity."

Tuesday night, 500 tribesmen from Shamiyah near Diwaniyah visited Sistani, expressing their regret for the incident in which his house was prayed with machine gun fire and saying they wer ready to defend it. Sources inside Sistani's office said that the new statement was largely intended as criticism of the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Eyewitnesses in Najaf reported that fighters loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr attacked an American base on the outskirts of the city on Tuesday with mortar rounds. The eyewitnesses said that two tanks positioned around the main police station 2 kilometers from the Imam Ali shrine set out toward the base and received rocket propelled grenade fire. No casualties were reported.

Eyewitnesses in Karbala said that American troops and the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr clashed early in the morning and that 8 Iraqis were killed and 13 wounded. (Other source report 9 killed.) One of the fiercest battles occurred only 100 meters (yards) from the Shrine of Imam Husain. Mahdi Army militiamen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at an American tank advancing on the city center.

Meanwhile, ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that a truce has been concluded between the US military and the clan elders of Sadr City (the slums of East Baghdad). It stipulates that militiamen must stop carrying arms in public, and that the US will not attempt to send patrols into Sadr City for several days.

Asahi Shimbun reports that the fighting in Samawah has raised tough legal questions for the government of Junichiro Koizumi. Japanese Self Defence Forces can only be deployed abroad in non-combat zones, and there is growing question whether the southern city of Samawah fits that description. A reader writes from Japan:

"About 10 days ago, on a TBS newscast, we were treated to a government video
on Iraq. It showed Iraqi's in SUV's, with Iraqi and Japanese flags, (the
old Iraqi flag, and where did they those Japanese flags, are Japanese flags
just laying around in Iraq?) streaming out of the windows, screaming Japan
is great, drive up tohe gate, and present the Japanese colonel with a
bouquet of roses. The video went to show Japanese Defense Ministerr beaming
in Tokyo, "See what a good job we are doing in Iraq?!) After the video,
Japanese's Chikushi Tetsuya (our equivilent of Walter Cronkite) went on to
explain that Japanese troops performed peacekeeping duties for 20 days in
March, and 10 days in April. It is not safe to go off base. A Japanese
reporter toured Al-Samawah. One year ago, he was welcomed and offered food.
Now people sullenly demanded, "Hey! Where is our electricity?"

"

Sam Dagher of Mideast-Online.com writes of how many ordinary Iraqis have begun seeing Muqtada as a Robin Hood figure or as playing David to the American Goliath.

For analysis see Rami El-Amine's "The Shia Rise Up."

A reader writes after a phone call to Najaf:

"Najaf appears to be a community filled "swing voters" right now. My friend told me of the planned big demonstration in Najaf two or three days ago. It was supposed to be a demonstration protesting against the actions of the US Army. People feel the occupation army is acting irresponsibly, by sealing off the city, indiscriminate bombing/grenading causing unrest. They´re ripping up the southern Iraq neutral stand! But so far they apparently haven't moved into the core of Najaf.

The same night the demo was announced bombs went off/missiles were fired into streets/grenades lobbed there. (Take a pick because nobody seems really know for sure what it was or where from it originated ) To my informant it appeared to be a swift reaction to the fact that the demo was issued to start next day.

Next day, as the demo took off, rumours got out about car bombs and after a while this big demo dispersed.

People are really scared now. Electricity and water is gone due to bombing and clashes and the Americans are occupying the hospital between Najaf and Kufa. US Army claims shots were fired from that location so they sealed it off.

Now there´s just a private hospital inside Najaf working - a hospital that doesn´t perform so well as the public one. My informant has got a friend who used to work inside the public one, and he now was forced to move over (or volutarily moved over) to the smaller inner city hospital.

A lot of people - civilians - are caught wounded in clashes and bombings/grenading and hospital capacity is far from sufficient caused by the US hospital occupation. It seems being another "hospital move" like the Falluja one. Do you remember the Americans prohibiting people reaching the Jordanian hostpital outside Falluja?

The holy mosqe is slightly damaged. The big door and some damage on top of it. And people do not dare approach the vicinity. US Army suggests that ex-Baathists might be responsible for the damages. Armed people fire warning shots from inside and from nearby. A block attached to Sistanis office was bombed/grenaded/rocketed. Two of his guardmen are said to have been wounded. What's going on? Anyway a lot of Najafis blame the Americans.

I was told that the murdered Dawa party member/head of Governing Council [Izzaddin Salim] visited Sistani recently. Now there is a [false] rumour in Najaf that he passed information to Sistani disadvantaging the Americans - and that´s why he was finished off - by the Americans!

Whatever facts and rumours - the Americans are swiftly causing divides inside Najaf. Siding with the "anti-occupation party" in this conflict I cannot stop myself thinking that this might be their aim right now. If so - how stupid.

Now, this is just a phone call, and as you put it, "a pinch of salt" should be added. " "

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Italians Retake Base
Nasiriyah Library in Flames

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants out of Iraq with honor, according to Italian sources. He is down in the polls and keenly aware of what happened to rightwing Spanish PM Aznar. The Italian public is increasingly against an Italian presence in Iraq, and opposition politicians are calling loudly for withdrawal. Even Berlusconi's own cabinet is drawing up withdrawal plans behind the scenes.

Bush may be pushing Europe to the Left. He may have already helped elect Gerhard Schroeder, who ran against the war before the fact, and PM Zapatero in Spain. Berlusconi could well fall victim to the same trend. There may yet be a Labor Party revolt against Tony Blair, similar to the one mounted by Michael Heseltine against Maggie Thatcher among the Tories over a decade ago, which indirectly led to her being dumped for John Major.

Xinhua reports:

"In Nasiriyah, the occupation forces said that it killed about 20 resistance members during battles with elements of the Mehdi Army to the south of Nasiriyah, which is under the control of the Italian forces. A fighter airplane for the occupation forces bombed Tuesday morning five targets, five vehicles said to be unloading ammunition, killing 20 Iraqis in the process, according to an American military spokesman. Medical sources in Nasiriyah announced that 16 Iraqis were killed and 26 others injured Sunday night and early Monday morning in clashes between the Iraqis resistance and the Italian military men in the city. The Italian Ministry of Defense announced that an Italian soldier was killed in the battles of Nasiriyah, which is the first Italian soldier to be killed in battles in Iraq . . . The coalition forces withdrew, under heavy resistance, from one of its bases in Nasiriyah, but it was taken back when the resistance withdrew after negotiation between the Italian officers and the local heads of clans.

A reader writes from Italy, quoting from Italian wire services:

(ANSA) - ROMA, 17 MAG - 2004-05-17 - 16:55:00

The base called "Libeccio" (trans: southwest wind; ndt: where they lost the young soldier), abandoned yesterday evening by the Italian military, was retaken today. There was no fighting. The militia has in fact left the city, according to Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, head of Defense (something like joint chiefs of staff).

News media yesterday made a big deal out of the fact that the Italians were NOT
returning fire since a great deal of the shooting was coming from a hospital.

Corriere della Sera noted that a library in Nassiriyah containing some 4,000 volumes was set on fire by unknown persons. They reported on some six hours of fighting ("bombing")
in Nassiriyah with help from "other coalition forces" since the Italians are equipped with fairly light weapons and only armored cars, no tanks and no helicopters. No information is available about the nature of the counterattack (secret).

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Reader Comment on Torture Interrogations

Michael Pollak writes:

Dear Juan,

On Sunday you wrote:

"First, torture does not work, and there is no evidence that it worked at Abu Ghuraib."

I quite agree, and it's occurred to me that, on the face of it, Abu Ghuraib might in fact be a classic example of torture leading people to tell the interrogators what they want to hear.

Throughout the entire Fallujah crisis and still now afterwards, the army has steadfastly stuck to its story that the resistance there was almost entirely manned and organized by outside fighters. Nobody outside the US military seems to believe this, and there seems to be no evidence for it.

(As you well know, the number of foreigners captured is very small, and even most of them seem to belong to cross border tribes, who aren't really foreign.) But Joe Ryan, in his online diary of an interrogator, states in several places that he was completely convinced by his interrogations that it was all caused by foreign fighters. If he is representative, it gives the impression that this is why the army is so sure about the foreigners when all the other evidence is against it. It's not just because they want to believe it, but *because what they want to believe has was confirmed through interrogations.* Which unfortunately doesn't make it true, but rather proves these methods don't work.

- Michael Pollak
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sistani Calls for Iraq-Wide Protests

The BBC reports that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has again called for all military forces to be withdrawn from Najaf and Karbala, the two holiest cities for Shiites. His statement seems calculated to put pressure on both sides. He wants the US to stop being so aggressive. And he wants the Muqtada al-Sadr supporters to leave Najaf. Muqtada has apparently called for Shiites to come to Najaf from all over Iraq to make a stand against the Americans, and Sistani is trying to countermand him.

Instead, Sistani is calling for the Shiites to gather at mosques in their own provinces to protest the fighting. (Implicitly this step would equally condemn the US and the Sadrists). The BBC reports that Sistani's spokesman said:

"It's permissible... to demand the withdrawal of all military vestiges from the two cities and allow the police and tribal forces to perform their role in preserving security and order," Mr Sistani said in a rare statement released by his office in Najaf.

"The office of Ayatollah Sistani calls on citizens in all of the cities and governorates not to head to holy Najaf due to the dangerous circumstances that the holy city is passing through," the statement said.

It urged protesters to convene in mosques and provinces around the country, "to protest violations of the sanctity of the two holy cities".

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

50 Sadrists Killed by Americans in Karbala and Nasiriyah
Sistani's House Sprayed by Machine Gun Fire

An aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani reports that his house in Najaf was sprayed with machine gun fire (-al-Hayat). (If Sistani gets killed in the current fighting in Najaf between the US and the Mahdi Army, there will be hell to pay.) Since the US is using Sistani, heretofore the most respected Shiite religious leader, couldn't it at least keep his house from being shot up?

Heavy fighting continued on Monday in the holy city of Karbala near the shrine of Imam Husain, with the US killing about 30 fighters of the Mahdi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Fighting in Nasiriyah, which the Sadrists control for the moment, was also fierce, and there was gunplay in Amara, as well, which produced most of the rest of the casualties. A wire service, probably AFP reported:

' Ali Al Khazali and his armed men huddled at the entrance of a shopping centre off Al Abbas street in the centre of Karbala, smoking cigarettes and taking turns to peer at US soldiers and tanks standing 100 metres away. “Everyone, I mean everyone, refuses to escape or surrender,” Khazali said. “The only way they (US forces) can go into Karbala is if their tanks crush our bodies.” He said that during lulls in fighting he and his men talked about what Hazrat Imam Hussein and his men lived through in this same spot about 14 centuries ago.

The Imam, a grandson of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), led a revolt against the corruption and injustice of the ruling caliph at the time. He trekked with his family and followers from the Arabian Peninsula to Karbala, where most were martyred in battle with the caliph’s men. Legend has it that Hazrat Hussein’s brother Abbas kept on fighting until all his limbs were severed.

Both men are believed to be buried under the two sacred golden-domed shrines in the centre of Karbala.

“My men are saying that every day they feel they are getting closer to the chance of winning the same honours attained by Hazrat Hussein’s followers,” said the tall, bearded Khazali.

The Umayyad Caliph who sent military forces against Imam Husain, the grandson of the Prophet, and had him and his family and his party slaughtered, was named Yazid. The story of Yazid killing Husain is the central theological and ritual basis of Shiite Islam. It is like the passion of the Christ for devout Christians. And just as you wouldn't want to be identified as Judas by believing Christians, so the last thing you would want if you were among Shiites would be to be seen as in some way like Yazid.

For many Iraqi Shiites, the United States has become Yazid. And that is not something a colonial power can easily recover from. It will get worse. If the US is responsible or perceived as responsible for Muqtada's death, Muqtada will achieve iconic status as a martyr, as like Imam Husain, and his legend will inspire some portion of Shiites to fight the US to the death. Nor are Muqtada's partisans afraid of martyrdom. Achieving death at the hands of the new Yazid brings them and their families honor. And, for these poor slum boys, life anyway hasn't been that great. They know death; they are not afraid of it.

It was always my nightmare that the US Army would come to fight Shiites in Karbala and Najaf near the shrines. They seemed pretty canny about the dangers until about March of this year. And then all of a sudden, they risked being Yazid. I conclude that this does not come from the US officer corps. I conclude that it comes from the desk of George W. Bush. We don't have any officers in Iraq stupid enough to want to be Yazid. But we have civilian politicians who know nothing about Iraq who gave them an order to get Muqtada at all costs. Why that was so urgent is still not obvious, but, like everything in this war, it will be revealed to be a plot.

Newsweek reports on what it is like to try to fight in Sadr City, the Shiite slum of East Baghdad, and mentions the possibility of it erupting again (which it will if anything happens to Muqtada al-Sadr).

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Powell Admission Begs Question

By now most persons with a television and an interest in US affairs will have seen the bizarre scene in which Deputy Press Secretary Emily Miller, an aide to Colin Powell, attempted to pull him off camera and stop him from answering a question put by Tim Russert of Meet the Press. What is bizarre is that she actually tried to lie to Powell and convince him that Russert had finished the interview. If I were Powell, I'd try to find out for whom she is really working. When Powell told her to get out of the way and came back on camera, he made a startling admission, in bold, below.

MR. RUSSERT: Thank you very much, sir.

In February of 2003, you put your enormous personal reputation on the line before the United Nations and said that you had solid sources for the case against Saddam Hussein. It now appears that an agent called "Curve Ball" had misled the CIA by suggesting that Saddam had trucks and trains that were delivering biological chemical weapons.

How concerned are you that some of the information you shared with the world is now inaccurate and discredited?

SECRETARY POWELL: I'm very concerned. When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully. We looked at the sourcing and the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate, and so I'm deeply disappointed.

But I'm also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment, of the intelligence community, but it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that I'm disappointed, and I regret it.

Powell for the first time has gone beyond admitting that the intel on Iraq WMD was inaccurate to calling some of it deliberately misleading. If it was deliberately misleading, however, that implies that someone deliberately misled. That is, there are human actors with intentions. If a government official deliberately misled Powell on this matter, that is clearly a crime that should be prosecuted.

So, will the other shoe now drop? Is Powell laying the groundwork for an impeachment of Douglas Feith or Paul Wolfowitz?

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Moving to a More Secure Camp

Daniel Williams of the Washington Post wonders if Iraq can be salvaged. The article is one of the more clear-eyed I have seen:

Some quotes:

' "We could not imagine the deterioration leading to such a point. It's getting worse day after day, and no one has been able to put an end to it. Who is going to protect the next government, no matter what kind it is?" said Abdul Jalil Mohsen, a former Iraqi general and member of the Iraqi National Accord . . '

' "There's no question: A small band of people can paralyze the country," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the council. "They are armed and organized and this is the difficulty. The people who did this have no respect for anything of value. It's a real danger to Iraq, the Iraqis and to an agenda to achieve any kind of democracy." '

' "Just look around," said Bakran Ohan, who sells baby clothes. "Do you see any police? Any soldiers? There is a complete lack of security. It won't change from day to night on June 30." '

' [Gen.] Kimmit denied that the Italians had retreated [from Nasiriyah]. "They just moved to a more secure camp," he said. '

One thing Williams does not bring up is the degree to which much of the turmoil is the direct result of poor American decision-making. The decision to dissolve the Iraqi army. The decision to try to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr. Decisions, the rationale of which most observers would have difficulty seeing. The whole Iraq enterprise has been run from the beginning as a plot, with no transparency and all kinds of ulterior motives, and that is what has sunk it.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Gay Marriage in Massachusetts and the Egyptian Boathouse

This Web Log has focused on Iraq so much in the past year that sometimes readers complain if I stray into other subjects. But it was originally created after September 11 to have a pretty wide purview, and I've talked about all sorts of things, from Pakistan elections to Mel Gibson's movie about Jesus. Sometimes the Iraq-oriented readers complain if I stray, so I suggest they skip this item.

What is on my mind is that the opposition to gay marriage in Massachusetts seems to me almost entirely religious in nature. I don't know of any organized agnostics or atheists agitating against it. The religious want to pass a Massachusetts law making gay marriage illegal. This development is disturbing for a number of reasons, but most of all because I think the religious people want to use the power of the state and Federal governments to impose their will on U.S. society. And that is a contravention of the First Amendment and of the Lemon Test put forward by the Supreme Court in 1971. Chief Justice Burger wrote,

"Every analysis in this area must begin with consideration of the cumulative criteria developed by the Court over many years. First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances or inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster and excessive government Entanglement with religion."

A law against gay marriage seems to me to fail the "secular purpose" test, and insofar as the political base for passing it is conservative churches, it would seem pretty entangled with religion, too. And that is my reply to Senator Rick Santorum and others who argue that gay marriage is equivalent to many deviant practices frowned on by society. There is a secular purpose for forbidding marriage of close relatives, since it exposes the offspring to heightened genetic danger. There is a secular purpose for forbidding pedophilia and pederasty, indeed there are many secular purposes fulfilled by such a ban (forbidding the manipulation through intimacy of the young by persons much their senior, which is unfair, and keeping the young from developing all sorts of neuroses and personality problems as a result of an inappropriate relationship for which they are unready). It is said that gay unions offend against the sanctity of marriage. Actually the secular state has no business marrying anyone if it is thereby affirming the "sanctity" of anything. That would severely contravene the Lemon test.

But I cannot think of a secular purpose that is served by banning gay marriage. All the arguments against it are religious. It is said to be unnatural. But it is not, if by that it is being argued that same-sex behavior does not occur in nature (look at our close cousins, the bonobos). The "unnatural" argument is really an appeal to religious ideas of what is "natural," i.e., what is in accord with the will of the Creator as known by His revelation. From a purely secular point of view gay marriage has many benefits for society. Sex within marriage is safer with regard to health issues than is promiscuity. Gay marriages do not produce offspring, and so they reduce population growth rates and reduce the strain on the world's limited resources (the old custom of forcing gay men to marry women and father children was pro-natalist, i.e., contributed to population growth). Etc.

The argument that past American society forbade gay marriage and so it must be constitutional won't pass muster. The American experiment with political liberty is an evolving one. Until fairly recently the Federal government forbade the practice of Native American religion, even though that clearly violates the First Amendment. Past American society often passed laws or engaged in practices inconsistent with the letter and/or the spirit of the constitution. We are getting to know the implications of the document over time, and many of those implications could not be foreseen by its framers. Thomas Jefferson would not be at all surprised by this conclusion. He wrote,

"this ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe, at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together. it is our glory that we first put it into motion."

The ball of liberty is not some known quantity that we control and the limits of which are immediately apparent, in this view. It has a will of its own and goes places we may not have initially intended. We just "set it in motion."*

I am sure others have made this argument about the Lemon test, but I've been too busy reading Iraqi newspapers to notice.

It is relevant to my interests because homophobia is deeply embedded in radical Islamism, and I think the intolerance that leads to terrorism must be fought across the board. The Taliban and the Khomeinist regime in Iran passed laws making gay affairs a capital crime. Yes, people were killed for being gay. For the Taliban, this harsh attitude derived in part from concerns about military discipline. Taliban society was highly gender-segregated, so the males mainly socialized with other males. Out in the field there was a lot of fooling around and sexual experimentation, but of course it reduced discipline to have two guys in the same platoon sleeping with each other. So if they were found out they were executed on the spot. The Taliban were expert at seeking out the weirdest and least reliable of the sayings attributed by the folk process to the Prophet Muhammad, and then applying them in a literal way to the law. So, they found some saying that a wall should be pushed down on homosexuals, and probably for the first time in Islamic history they implemented it.

Even in less regimented societies, like Egypt, gays have been scapegoated and even tortured. Egypt is not an Islamic state but rather a military dictatorship. It does have a strong dissident Islamist movement (think Ayman al-Zawahir, Bin Laden's number 2). It does not even formally have a law making homosexuality illegal, but prosecutors have nevertheless prosecuted gays. President Mubarak has occasionally yielded to Western pressure to lighten up on the persecution.

While persecuting gays and not letting them marry are different things, both measures stem from intolerance and a depriving of some persons of rights enjoyed by others.

Religion should not be telling governments what laws they must pass or mustn't pass, where there is no secular purpose served by the law. That is a cornerstone of the US Constitution, and the world would be much better off if everyone adopted this principle. If religious people want to engage in some practice because their religion tells them too, fine. They are free to do it. But they are not free to try to pass their religious beliefs into statute and dictate to the rest of us. That commandeering of the state for the purpose of imposing religion is what Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda are centrally about. It leads to oppressing religious minorities and secular people and women and gays. The same impulse of religious intolerance that led to September 11 is what lies behind much opposition to gay marriage. So we have to decide if we are Americans or Taliban.


---

*I know whenever you quote Jefferson now people throw it in your face that he owned slaves. But surely the abolition of slavery was another one of those effects of setting the ball of liberty in motion, which even some of those who helped it slip its moorings might not have been able entirely to foresee or absorb. Besides, most premodern persons of the sort you might quote (including, in all likelihood, some of the apostles of Jesus and early church fathers) owned slaves. It was a horrible practice, but its pervasiveness in the past should not paralyze us from learning from the past.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ezzedin Salim

People have been asking me about the slain president of the Interim Governing Council, Ezzedin Salim (Izz al-Din Salim). The best profile I have found is a compilation of newswire reports at a South African site. He is said to have been a founding member of the Shiite al-Da`wa Party in 1958 when he was 18 and teaching history at Basra. He fled Iraq in 1980 for Kuwait and then Tehran, when Saddam made al-Da`wa Party membership a capital crime.

I looked him up in OCLC Worldcat and found two Arabic books by him. One, published in 1982 in Tehran, was about the "Line of the Imam Khomeini" and it appears that at that point Salim had become a Khomeinist. Another, in 1990, was a general book of essays about the Shiite Islamic "rennaissance," published in Beirut. We have it but, alas, in storage, and anyway his views probably changed.

I wrote on September 30, 2003:

"Although the IGC itself is largely secular or moderate, having been appointed by the Americans, many, many Iraqis want the constitution to be based on Islamic law. Izz al-Din Salim, a former member of the Shiite al-Da`wa Party from Basra, called "unlikely" the prospect that the constitution would be based on Islamic law or shariah, according to al-Zaman. (The Basra branch of al-Da`wa is said to have rejected Khomeini's notion of the rule of the jurisprudent, and Salim may in any case now be an independent). He added that the constitution must recognize the pluralism and religious diversity of Iraq."

So, he seems to have given up his earlier enthusiasm for Khomeinism by the time he got on the Interim Governing Council.

He is the third IGC member to be assassinated, after Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim and Aqilah al-Hashimi, all three of them Shiites.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

President of Interim Governing Council Assassinated

A suicide car bomber assassinated the current president of the Interim Governing Council on Monday as he was waiting at a checkpoint outside the Green Zone or the HQ of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Abdel-Zahraa Othman, also known as Izzadine Saleem, had been a leader of the Shiite al-Dawa Party in the southern city of Basra. AP's Christopher Torchia writes:

"Ammar al-Saffar, a Health Ministry official, said the victims included five people in Saleem's entourage and two members of the Iraqi security forces. Fourteen Iraqis and an Egyptian were injured, he said. Two U.S. soldiers also were slightly injured in the bombing near the coalition headquarters . . . "

A shadowy group called the Arab Resistance Movement took credit. A whole group of IGC members were nearby waiting to get into the Green Zone, including Adnan Pachachi and Ahmad Chalabi. Predictably, Gen. Kimmit suggested the bombing was the work of Zarqawi. In contrast, Ahmad Chalabi hinted darkly that it was the work of ex-Baathists based in Fallujah, and that, moreover, it was the Americans' decision not to finish off the insurgents in Fallujah that allowed this bombing to happen.

No one thinks the incident will delay the "transfer of sovereignty," since all that is envisioned is the appointment of 4 high officials by the CPA and the United Nations, and since relatively little sovereignty is actually going to be transfered (something Chalabi has also been grumbling about. See the WSJ article on the way the US is establishing "commissions" that will retain control over key sectors of Iraq.

Ghazi al-Yawer, a tribal leader from the Sunni heartland, was selected to succeed Saleem. IGC member Salama al-Khufaji suggested that the bombing had been intended to foment sectarian violence.

Another bombing in Baghdad near US troops on Saturday had involved the use of sarin gas. Two US soldiers suffered slight reactions to the gas. This was probably just an old 1980s shell of the sort used against the Kurds and Iranians, and nothing suggests many of these remain or are still operative. The insurgents who used it may not even have known what it was. (It was not marked). A couple left-over stray such shells does not prove that there were WMD in Iraq in any signifcant sense. No doubt it will set off a frenzy among the latter-day Juan Ponce de Leones looking vainly for the Fountain of WMDs. It is virtually a non-story.

US aircraft bombed Karbala overnight. Now that is a story.

I can't believe I just wrote the words above. I would not be writing them if Bush had any idea whatsoever what he was doing in Iraq. Bombing Karbala. It must be being seen by Shiites as like a sci-fi Terminator sort of Yazid.

Every time I think things cannot get worse, they do.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Continued Clashes in Karbala Lead to Closure of Shrines

al-Zaman: On Sunday, Shiite religious authorities in Karbala formally closed the shrines of Imam Husain and his half-brother Abu'l-Fadl Abbas, to pilgrims. This rare procedure has not been implemented for decades. It was felt necessary because although militiamen (including Badr Corps) loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani hold the shrines, they have been infiltrated recently by gunmen of the Mahdi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, who are using them for cover in their fight against the Americans.

Local Karbala clerical leader Shaikh Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi had called for a demonstration on Sunday, and despite the poor security situation, some 1500 are said to have come out for it briefly. They were demanding that both the Mahdi Army and the US military depart Karbala. The march was infiltrated, however, by members of the Mahdi Army, who began chanting pro-Muqtada slogans. The other marchers grew alarmed that they might be mistaken for Sadrists by the US army and fired upon, so they quickly dispersed and the march thus collapsed.

The US sent 10 tanks into downtown Karbala on Sunday, positioning them not far from the two shrines. US troops clashed with Mahdi Army fighters in Karbala, and the Sadrists were forced to withdraw. Before they did so, they lobbed mortar shells and fired rocket-propelled grenades at US troops.

Rings of thieves took advantage of the breakdown of law and order in Karbala, looting the storehouses belonging to the wholesale merchants in the al-Dahanah Market. They also looted all the shops in the market. The streets and government buildings were deserted, according to eyewitnesses.

In Kufa, nine trucks full of food and medicine arrived from Fallujah, as an expression of support for Muqtada al-Sadr by the Sunni Arabs of al-Anbar province. The Sadrists had joined in sending a convoy of supplies to Fallujah when it was being besieged in early April.

A spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islami Revolution in Iraq urged US forces to remain in Iraq until order was restored. SCIRI is a rival for power in the Shiite areas with Muqtada al-Sadr.

Hamzah Hendawi of AP offers a useful set of observations about the rising popularity of Muqtada and offers some insight into what Grand Ayatollah Sistani is thinking:

' Some remain confident the senior clerics will prevail at the end. One person with close links to al-Sistani's office said the ayatollah has concluded that speaking out now would only turn Shiite against Shiite. ''Powerful tribal leaders and supporters come to his office daily asking him to permit action against Muqtada, but he is refusing,'' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. '

But what I heard from my sources is that Paul Bremer was the one who nixed the idea of using tribal levies to deal with the Army of the Mahdi.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Italians, Pushed out of Nasiriyah, Tell Bush to Back Off
10 Italian Troops Wounded, 20 Iraqis wounded, 2 Killed

More heavy fighting at Nasiriyah on Sunday. AP reports that the Mahdi Army in Nasiriyah has tossed the Italians off their own base, just as had been done to the Ukrainians at Kut in early April. The present feat is more impressive, since the Italian contingent is larger and better trained.

AP says, "Two Iraqi fighters were killed and 20 were wounded in battles in Nasiriyah, mostly at two bridges crossing the Euphrates River, residents said. The Italian troops evacuated as their base came under repeated attack. Portuguese police were called out to support the Italians, seeing action for the first time since the force of 128 deployed to Nasiriyah in November, a Portuguese duty officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. At least 10 Italians were wounded, one critically, contingent spokesman Lt. Col. Giuseppe Perrone said by phone. He said the Italians relocated to the nearby Tallil air base. Elsewhere in Nasiriyah, a convoy transporting the Italian official in charge of the city, Barbara Contini, came under attack as it neared the headquarters of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, Perrone said. Two Italian paramilitary police were wounded."

But Suleiman al-Khalidi of Reuters scooped all the other wire services by focusing on the Italian domestic fallout from the fighting in Nasiriyah and the Abu Ghuraib photos.

Khalidi points out that the Abu Ghuraib prison torture scandal has severely undermined the US in Italy, where the public was always much more ambivalent about the war than the rightwing government of Silvio Berlusconi. (Italy's force is the third biggest in Iraq, after the US and Britain, and is deployed around Nasiriyah). Berlusconi has sent out his foreign minister, Franco Frattini, to upbraid the US.

"Frattini . . . told Washington it must mete out "severe and public" punishment for crimes that have dominated Italian media. Nine Italian soldiers were wounded on Sunday in Nassiriya, where Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia has staged what U.S. commanders call a "minor uprising" across the south provoked by U.S. assaults on its main bases in the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. "We have asked the Americans to avoid frontal attacks on Iraqi holy cities and to hand over military control of these cities to Iraqi forces," Frattini wrote in a newspaper. The Italian official running the administration in Nassiriya, Barbara Contini, was in a convoy which came under fire."

Then, Ahmad Chalabi, the long-time expatriate Iraqi politician who was once the darling of the Defence Department neoconservatives, weighed in:

"Chalabi, once the voice of exiled Iraqis opposed to Saddam Hussein and himself a Shi'ite, sharply criticised U.S. tactics. He said Washington's demands that Sadr let himself be arrested for murder was complicating Iraqi efforts to resolve the crisis. "Enforcing Iraqi law should not be a U.S. military objective," Chalabi said. "I wonder why the price for enforcing an arrest warrant should be more than 1,000 Iraqi lives?" . . . Sadr aides accused British troops of murdering prisoners and mutilating their bodies. The guerrillas buried 22 men they said died at British hands near Amara on Friday. "

The Italians and Chalabi are telling the Bush administration publicly what the British have been telling it privately for weeks. This Ahab-like fixation on getting Muqtada al-Sadr at all costs may well completely discredit the United States in Iraq, given the damage already done to the sanctity of the shrine cities. Can you imagine what the elections are going to look like this coming winter if they are held? Won't all the candidates in the Arab areas actually be running against the United States?

By the way, the Berlusconi government is not brighter or less arrogant than that of Bush. It is just that the Italians have a small, exposed force, and they know it is US policy that is endangering it, and they know that the policy grows out of unnecessary and adventurist goals.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Patel on Religious Authority

For a quick primer on religious authority in Iraq, Sunni and Shiite, from an academic who has been living there for the past year, see David Patel's piece, just published by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Patel writes,

"Freed from state control, religious authorities—drawing on their moral authority and extensive mass communication networks, and benefiting from the weakness of secular forces—quickly filled the political void created by the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. A year later, these authorities remain the principal shapers of public opinion among most Iraqi Arabs."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iran Strongly Condemns US Operations in Najaf, Karbala

Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran finally broke his silence about the US military operations in Najaf and Karbala on Sunday. I had presumed that his earlier caution was a function of his support for Sistani and al-Hakim versus Muqtada al-Sadr. But apparently the rage in Iran has reached the point where he felt he had at least to speak out.

"Addressing theological students, the Supreme Leader stressed that the world of Islam, in particular the Shiites along with the entire Iranian nation, will not tolerate the profanity committed by US military forces on Islam`s holy shrines in Iraqi cities. Denouncing the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces which have been exposed only recently, Ayatollah Khamenei referred to the US system as being an icon of hatred, oppression and indifference towards human dignity.

"Today, the US in Iraq and the occupying regime in Palestine are committing the most shameful acts in human history, the Supreme Leader stressed.

Iran can easily destabilize Iraq, and although this speech may be posturing, if it signals a policy shift it could be fateful.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rumsfeld Plays "M", Gives License to Kill

Sy Hersh's expose of an ultra-secret 00 unit of two hundred inside the Pentagon is probably the nail in the coffin of Rumsfeld's tenure at the Department of Defense, and may well be a factor in the presidential elections.

Disturbingly, Sen. Joe Lieberman endorsed torture as an information extraction mechanism on Wolf Blitzer's show on Sunday. He gave the tired example of whether, if one of the 9/11 hijackers had fallen into US hands, one wouldn't have wanted all means used to extract information about the coming attack? Here's the transcript:

"And I want to go back to the first part. Let us acknowledge that we're in a war on terrorism. It's a different kind of war. If there was a special interrogation unit that really was focused on suspected terrorists, and, for instance, we had such a unit before September 11th, and it could have gotten information out of those terrorists or others working with them that would have allowed us to stop September 11th, I don't think there are many Americans who would say we shouldn't use whatever means are necessary to extract that information. That's one question. There's a long way from that to Abu Ghraib and the prisoners we've seen."

There are several things wrong with this stance. Although Lieberman was trying to distance himself from the Abu Ghuraib practices, he was slipping in a justification of torture under some circumstances. In fact, there is every evidence that "that" was not a long way from Abu Ghuraib at all, and it was precisely Lieberman's reasoning that led to it, starting at Gitmo and spreading. First, torture does not work, and there is no evidence that it worked at Abu Ghuraib. (It may work tactically on a limited basis, but it doesn't work strategically; it throws up bad information with the good and creates lots of enemies; if it worked Algeria would be French soil). Second, the argument that the ends justify the means always turns human beings into monsters. If something is morally wrong, you don't do it if you hope to remain a moral society. Society would be a lot safer if all known heads of identified criminal organizations were taken out by police snipers. We don't do that. Why? Sen. Lieberman should think about it. That way lies a descent into barbarity before which September 11 would pale.

Third (as a reader reminded me) there were no terrorist suspects at Abu Ghuraib, only persons suspected of knowing something about the insurgency or being involved in it (and apparently from what the Red Cross says, a lot of them were picked up in error anyway).

We Americans either stand for something or we don't. What I always assumed we stood for was the US Constitution. Our State Department annually rates other countries by how well their record stacks up against the US Bill of Rights. That custom seems an implicit admission that we hold these rights and values to be universal, not limited to US soil or only a privilege of citizens. And here is what the founding generation of Americans thought about Abu Ghuraib and torture:

Article 8:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Implication of Shiite Divisions

Scott Wilson of the Washington Post says that "A Divided South Moves to the Fore in Iraq."

The main point of the article is that the situation in Najaf is different from that in Fallujah because the Shiites are themselves divided, whereas in Fallujah the Sunnis were relatively united. Thus, the US could establish a Fallujah Brigade of ex-Baathist soldiers and that was acceptable to most Sunnis. In contrast, in Najaf, he says, the Shiites are so at odds with one another that a similar solution would not work.

Mr. Wilson's point is not untrue, but the analysis gives the wrong impression. The reason the disunity of the Shiites is important is not that it would prevent the formation of a "Najaf Brigade" that included elements of all the Shiite paramilitaries. It would not prevent this move, which would be the desirable one. (If Wilson is correct, Gen. Dempsey lost the bureaucratic battle he was waging in the army to have it adopted).

The reason the disunity matters is that it allows the US to be more successful in its siege of Najaf than it was in Fallujah. If the city of Najaf put up the kind of fight that Fallujah had put up across the board (with ex-Baathists and Sunni fundamentalists united), the US would have to back off and seek a compromise. Because Grand Ayatollah Sistani and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim are actively colluding with the Americans to destroy Sadr and his militia, the US can hope to succeed by force, without having to do the hard work of making a political deal with the Sadrists.

Muqtada himself is largely responsible for his lack of significant Shiite allies, since he has deliberately alienated them all by bullying and threatening them. But Sistani and al-Hakim are unwise to allow themselves to be used this way by Bush, since their political standing with the Shiite public will certainly suffer greatly as a result. Nor is it wise for the US to blunt Sistani's moral authority in this manner. He had been the one man who could keep the Shiite south largely calm with a single fatwa. It is not clear that he will have that same clout after this episode, especially with the more nationalistic of the Iraqi Shiites, and as a result the south may well be much less stable going forward.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Heavy Fighting in Karbala, Amara, Nasiriyah, Samawah
5 Americans Dead; British Kill 20 Near Amara

The Shiite uprising of Muqtada al-Sadr continued Saturday, as it clashed with Coalition forces throughout the south of the country.

Guerrillas killed 3 US soldiers Friday night or Saturday, while two others died of non-combat-related causes.

al-Hayat and ash-Sharq al-Awsat: British troops killed 20 Iraqis on Saturday in battles with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr near Amara. British sources maintained that their forces had been ambushed by the Sadrists, including by roadside bombs.

Fierce battles also raged in Nasiriyah Friday night into Saturday between Italian troops and Mahdi Army forces after the latter bombarded the Coalition HQ in that city, in which 20 state employees and journalists had taken shelter.

BBC monitoring reports,

" Three hours of fighting overnight in Al-Nasiriyah: Italian soldiers clashed with members of the Al-Mahdi Army militia overnight in the centre of Al-Nasiriyah, AFP reported on 15th quoting an Italian military spokesman. The spokesman said the fighting lasted for three hours, but that no coalition forces were wounded . . . Italian troops returned fire against militiamen armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. However, a house was destroyed and several others were damaged along with some shops. Electricity officials said power had been cut in five districts of the city. (AFP 0719 gmt 15 May 04) "

In Karbala, clashes between Iraqi Civil Defense forces and Sadrists resulted in the deaths of 3 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 7 others. The battle broke out Saturday morning. Ali al-`Ardawi, the director of Karbala's Emergency Room, was the one who provided the casualty figures. Eyewitnesses said that American forces in the city destroyed the office of al-Sadr, where his fighters had been surrounded. Helicopter gunships fired missiles at Mahdi Army positions, and American snipers spread out on rooftops near the shrine of Imam Husain and his half-brother Abbas. Karbala police denied reports that the Sadrists had kicked them out of their police station or had captured weapons stores from them. US soldiers used megaphones to urge Karbala residents to evacuate from the downtown area, suggesting that they were on the verge of launching a new offensive. Mahdi Army leader Shaikh Hamza al-Ta'i held a news conference in which he released a member of the Karbala police force, who had been captured by Mahdi Army forces a couple of days ago. Al-Ta'i announced, "This is the last policeman we release. If we capture any police in future, we will execute him as a collaborator with the occupation."

An aide of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Karbala, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, on being asked about Sistani's position, said that the grand ayatollah had called on the people of Karbala "to mediate between the two sides to resolve the crisis in peaceful ways."

US military fire killed 3 Mahdi Army militiamen and (by accident) an Iraqi policeman in the east Baghdad slum, Sadr City.

BBC World Monitoring Reports from the Japanese Kyodo News site,

" Gunfire broke out late on 14th and early 15th in Samawah around an area where armed supporters of Shi'i cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr had gathered, and a separate explosion in the city killed at least one Iraqi security force member, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported quoting police and eye-witnesses. A spokesman for the British forces in Basra said some of the gunfire was aimed at Dutch troops in Samawah, where Japanese troops are also deployed. The explosion occurred around 12.55 am. on 15th ; an ambulance was later seen heading for the southeastern section of the city. Witnesses said the shooting lasted about 10 minutes around 11.30 pm. in the heart of Samawah near the building where 20 to 30 supporters of Al-Sadr gathered earlier in the afternoon. Another round of small-arms fire was heard near a police facility in the city around 2.45 am. Sporadic shooting including near a local police facility, followed until early on 15th . . . Many of the supporters were masked and armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, witnesses said. This was one of the most violent outbreak in Samawah since US President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq in May last year. (Kyodo 0223 gmt 15 May 04)

Ali al-Addad, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq," told al-Hayat that his organization's Badr Corps militia would fight alongside the Mahdi Army in a holy war if it were ordered to do so by the grand ayatollahs in Najaf. (I.e. he is saying that they would turn on the Americans in a New York minute if Sistani ordered them to). The office of Abu Bakr al-Sa`idi, supervisor of the Badr Corps, however, denied any intention to intervene on one side or the other.

A prominent official of the Badr Corps in Sadr City told al-Hayat that the leadership of the Corps had ordered all its troops in the city to avoid all sites associated with the Mahdi Army. He admitted that rumors were circulating that Badr Corps fighters were betraying to the Americans the hiding-places of Mahdi Army officials.

Udayy al-Asadi, a well-known Sadrist in Baghdad, said that the faction within SCIRI headed by Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji supported the American operation to curb or destroy the Army of the Mahdi "because some of them will greatly benefit if the Sadrist movement is extinguished."

Meanwhile, the Board of Muslim Clerics, a fundamentalist body with substantial authority for Sunni Arabs, announced "its support for Sadr, and called on the Shiites to unify their ranks." It strongly denounced American troops for conducting military operations in Najaf and Karbala. (Ali, whose tomb is in Najaf, is both the first Imam of the Shiites and the fourth Caliph of the Sunnis. It is sort of like the situation of St. Peter in Christianity, where he is given primacy by Catholicism but is secondary to Paul among many Protestants. Anyway, Sunnis are just as worried about the sanctity of Ali's tomb as Shiites are).

The Board's statement encouraged "our brethren in Najaf and Karbala to show solidarity among themselves, and to stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of those who desire evil for them." The Sunni clerics called on the Shiites to "beware of falling into the snare and to refuse to allow any internal faction fighting to flare up."

(When hardline Sunni clerics are dismayed that the Shiites are divided, you know things are bad. This would be like the Vatican upbraiding Ian Paisley for not working closely enough with other Protestants.)

Harith al-Dhari, the head of the Board of Muslim Clerics, said that he stood by any "free Iraqi who is confronting the forces of Occupation." He added, "National values that reject Occupation join us together with the leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, and we deeply appreciate these values, with which he is adorned." He said that the Fallujah agreement, which ended the American siege of that Sunni Arab city, would not lead Sunnis to leave Muqtada al-Sadr to confront the Americans by himself. He said that the simultaneous nature of the attacks on Fallujah and on Muqtada al-Sadr had inspired a conviction that there was some sort of connection and coordination between the resistance in Fallujah and that in Najaf, but he denied any such formal cooperation.

Senior Iranian cleric Hosain Nuri Hamedani ' referred to the US forces operations as savage attacks on Muslim holy sites in the two Iraqi cities, and called them "painful and intolerable." '

Reuters reports that an umbrella group of Kuwaiti Shiites, the "Congregation of Muslim Shiite Ulama in Kuwait," which includes an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a statement condemning both the US and the Sadrists for fighting in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

"We strongly demand that these forces put out the fire of strife raging in holy Najaf and Karbala by pulling out from the two holy shrines. The Shi'ites of the world did not expect this hasty and wrong behavior from the coalition forces in Iraq by entering the holy sites."

About 15% of the Kuwaiti population is said to be Shiite, and the community there is intellectually and institutionally important for other Gulf countries and for Basra in particular in Iraq. It has a lot of wealthy merchants and some important Islamic institutes.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

New Template

I get a lot of messages complaining about web presentation. Some people did not like the blue background. Some people did not like the use of italics to show quotations. Some people found serif fonts difficult. Some people found sans-serif fonts difficult. The text wasn't large enough. It was too large. Some people like Times New Roman. Some people like Arial. No one liked Garamond. Whenever I tried to fix some feature for one reader, it seemed to make things worse for another. It tells me that the software engineers are still behind the curve. Web pages ought to be dynamically generated on a viewer's browser according to the specifications set by the viewer. It wouldn't be so hard to do, and IE does use dynamic fonts already. But my readers shouldn't have been having all these problems with a simple thing like viewing a web site.

My own advice to people with these problems is to use the latest version of Netscape or its open-source analogue, Mozilla. Under View, it has a text zoom function. You can set it to say 120% if the text seems too small. I am puzzled by the trouble people have with viewing the site, since I travel a lot and use lots of different computers at internet cafes or hotel business centers, and I have never ever found it difficult to read on any of the machines I've used.

But, anyway, I've decided to upgrade the template. I'm using Douglas Bowman's Minima (www.stopdesign.com), with warm thanks to Mr. Bowman. The new design seems to me to solve most of the problems people have complained to me about. No doubt it will create new ones. People with browser problems could use an rss feed like that at livejournal.com (which might solve a lot of the problems readers have with the blog itself).

Blogger has upgraded its services and seems to be functioning really well now, and I feel very comfortable with it. The new template is one of the standard ones they now provide. In a way, it is not a big deal, since I could after all simply design an HTML page and update it, and ftp the updated page myself. The automatic inclusion of archive anchor links is nice, though, and that is something I would otherwise have to do myself. If I get too many complaints, that is what I might start doing, though.

By the way, please use the email address listed at the side bar. This site is mostly analytical, but occasionally politics does enter in, and I should use private resources to communicate about politics. I may not always be able to reply to comments and suggestions, for lack of time. I appreciate the many expressions of support.

cheers Juan

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Muhammadawi Slams Bremer

BBC world monitoring summarizes headlines in

Al-Shira' [Baghdad, independent political daily]: Bloody fighting rages in Al-Najaf, Karbala as Al-Najaf truce agreement is rejected by occupying forces \… Shaykh Karim al-Muhammadawi lashes forcefully at US intransigence, describing Bremer as extremist \… Al-Zubayd tribe chieftain: "Al-Hawzah [religious seminary in Al-Najaf] is Iraq's brain and we are its strong arm."

This snippet doesn't make clear that Abdul Karim Mahoud al-Muhammadawi, the leader of the Iraqi Hizbullah (which organizes southern Marsh Arabs) blames Paul Bremer for refusing to compromise with Muqtada al-Sadr, and has come to consider Bremer an "extremist" and an obstacle to social peace in Iraq. Al-Muhammadawi last summer expressed firm support for the US, and served on the Interim Governing Council until early April, when he suspended his membership in protest against heavy-handed US tactics. But al-Muhammadawi has cultivated a lot of insider sources, and if he is fingering Bremer as the problem, that is credible. Bremer in turn is now taking his orders from Robert Blackwill and Condi Rice, which is to say, from George W. Bush. So I think we know who the real extremist is. And, al-Muhammadawi knows an extremist when he sees one.

It deeply worries me that Bremer/Bush is so deeply alienating even Shiite allies. It isn't as if they had a lot of Sunni ones. And, the US cannot maintain a strong position in Iraq merely on the basis of its relationship to the Kurds.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shrine of Ali Damaged;
Uprisings in some southern Cities

Heavy fighting continued Friday between US troops and the Mahdi army in downtown Najaf and Karbala. The dome of the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf was disfigured by four bullet holes, news that inflamed passions against US troops. US helicopter gunships blasted ares inside the graveyard that is considered sacred ground by pious Shiites.

' [US statements] did little to assuage the anger of many Shiites in Najaf. By early evening, thousands gathered around the Imam Ali shrine to inspect the damage. Some shook their heads in disbelief. Others mumbled prayers. "The Americans had better leave Iraq after this," said Jassim Mohammed. Abu Zahraa al-Daraji, added: "The Americans have crossed a red line." '

Yes, it is worth noting that Gen. Kimmit's statement that the damage was done by the Sadrists, whether true or not, is unlikely to get much traction. The foreigners will be blamed for the damage to the shrine.

There were also major Sadrist uprisings in other southern cities. The Sadrists appear to have taken over Nasiriyah, and to have trapped 10 Coalition staffers and 10 drivers. ' "It's an inferno," Maria Cuffaro, a journalist for Italy's state-run RAI network, said during a brief live report on Italian television late Friday. "We're all OK, if a bit shaken." '

Amara and Samawah were affected:

The article reports that ' And in the southern city of Amarah, al-Sadr aide Farqad al-Mousawi warned Iraqi police and civil defense corps members that they risked assassination if they helped U.S. soldiers fight al-Sadr's militia. '

' Japan's Kyodo News service reported shooting erupted late Friday in the center of Samawah, a southern city where Japanese and Dutch troops are based. The shooting broke out after armed al-Sadr supporters began sealing off streets in the downtown area. '

In his Friday sermon in Kufa, Muqtada

described President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "the heads of tyranny" and accused them of ignoring the suffering of Iraqis in coalition prisons while drawing attention to what he described as the "fabricated" case of Nicholas Berg, an American civilian who was beheaded by militants. '

'
More of his sermon was reported elsewhere:

(AFP/al-Hayat): ' Muqtada also warned the Shiite movement, especially the Badr Corps, against standing with the Coalition. He said in his sermon before dozens of adherents (down from thousands because of the poor security situation), "I single out as a source of internal turmoil the Badr Brigade, which had been the biggest supporter of my father [Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr] in the time of oppression. So what has happened? I do not know what has tipped the scales." He added, "I single them out to draw their attention to these matters, especially that the enemy is sending spies among the ranks of our victorious army, and we no sooner uncovered them than they declared that they were Badr Corps agents." [The militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.] He concluded, "I do not belive this. It is an attempt to ignite turmoil between us." '

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani again spoke through an aid insisting that both American troops and Mahdi army militiamen leave town.

Wire services report, meanwhile, that Hamid Reza Asefi, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, said Friday, "We are concerned at the intensification of the fighting in Iraq especially in Najaf and Karbala, and we condemn the killing of innocent Iraqis . . . The responsibility for the insecurity in Iraq falls on the occupiers, and we want the occupying forces to leave Iraq as soon as possible and give authority back to the Iraqis."

Iranian television said that the US had crossed a "red line" by fighting in downtown Najaf and Karbala.

al-Hayat reports that Muhammad Husain Fadlallah, the grand ayatollah in Lebanon, encouraged Najaf's religious leaders to continue to insist that Najaf is a "red line," and that the sacredness of the holy places must be preserved before the Occupation of Iraq. He warned against "civil war (fitna) among the sons of a single column." That is, he is also worried about a split in Shiite ranks, with Badr Corps siding with the US and fighting against the Mahdi Army for the foreigners.

Cole: While such a situation may be a short-term tactical gain for the US, it threatens the long-term destabilization of the Iraqi south, which cannot be a good thing for US Iraq policy.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More on Berg Murder

Matthew B. Stannard of the San Fransisco Chronicle has a thoughtful piece on the Berg murder.

He quotes me on two points, the first having to do with the point of the murder:

' One motive, said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan, is to frighten Americans, especially the nongovernmental groups and the population of some 25,000 civilian contractors -- mainly security personnel -- working in Iraq who provide a sizable armed "auxiliary" to the U.S. military and the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"The reason this video was made was an attempt to destroy that auxiliary, " Cole said. "It's not going to scare the U.S. troops out of the country, and it's not going to get rid of the CPA. But there are a lot of (nongovernmental organizations) and contractors that are going to decide this is not the time to be doing business in Iraq." '

and he reports a debate among journalists and others in the information field about how much attention we should give such incidents:

' But Brigitte Nacos, adjunct professor of political science at Columbia University in New York, said the media also needed to recognize that terrorists were using them to get their message across, to spread fear and to recruit members . . . "I'm not saying the traditional media ought not to report on this," she said. "My concern is ... once you have reported it, especially on television, it is played and replayed, and I think that magnifies the impact. I think that there has to be some restraint. I'm not talking about censorship ... but there probably is a limit where you say that's enough."

Opinion on where the media should draw that line varied among the experts . . .

Cole, who writes the influential Web log "Informed Comment," said the benchmark should be the number of people affected by an individual terrorist act -- a formula that he said should have relegated the video story to two paragraphs well inside a daily newspaper.

"(Berg's slaying) was done in order to get on the front page of the New York Times, and the New York Times should resist that temptation," he said. "I think we should be very careful about giving a lot of space and a lot of attention to what is essentially a monstrous, horrendous publicity stunt."

But other experts said the American media had a responsibility to cover the video in a significant yet proportionate way -- even if that meant risking being used by the terrorists to further their agenda. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

6 US Soldiers Wounded, 22 Iraqis Killed in Holy City Fighting

More fighting in Karbala and Najaf over Thursday night to Friday morning, according to Reuters:

" At least four Iraqis were killed and 13 wounded in overnight fighting in Kerbala, Saleh Hasnawi, director of the main hospital, told Reuters. Fighting died down after dawn. " US troops and equipment operated just half a mile from the tomb of Imam Husayn, among the holiest in the Shiite world.

There was also a firefight in Najaf:

"In nearby Najaf, heavy machinegun fire and the sound of rocket-propelled grenades broke out around 8:40 a.m. (12:40 a.m. EDT) after a relatively quiet night. The clash was concentrated around a main square about two miles from Najaf's main mosque and shrine district. "

Al-Hayat reported that three Iraqis were killed in the heavy fighting in Najaf near the Imam Ali shrine, and 7 wounded.

In Najaf, the police revealed that Mahdi Army militiamen had attacked the main police station Wednesday night, had taken the deputy police chief captive briefly, and had emptied a weapons storehouse of its contents.

Al-Hayat reported the total Iraqi death toll Thursday-Friday as 22, with six US troops wounded. A wide swathe of buildings in Karbala had been destroyed even before fighting began again. The streets of the city were empty on Friday, when they normally bustle with the faithful going to mosque.

On Thursday, Muqtada al-Sadr accused the Americans of putting obstacles in the way of attempts to arrive at a peaceful solution of th crisis in the two cities. He said in a newspaper interview, according to al-Hayat, " We always seek peace, but the American forces disrupt these efforts to resolve the crisis. I am ready to do anything the highest [Shiite] religious leadership asks of me to find appropriate solutions and to avoid shedding pure Iraqi blood . . .

"The resistance of the Iraqi people to the occupation forces is a legitimate right. It is a decisive response to the crushing of demonstrators with tanks, besieging holy cities, the torture of Iraqis, and the violation of all human values and principles with regard to this ancient people, which has a long history and a civilization that is deeply rooted in the past."

A reader drew my attention to a Washington Post article reporting on a newly released poll about Muqtada:

" In the poll, which was taken just before the April uprising of the militia led by radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, a large proportion of Iraqis from the central and southern parts of the country said they backed him, with 45 percent of those in Baghdad saying they support him, and 67 percent in Basra. Those numbers are striking because the U.S. military and the occupation authority have declared Sadr a public enemy whom they want to kill or capture.

I am surprised by the high numbers in Basra, where I think the rival al-Fudala branch of Sadrism is more important. The level of support for Muqtada has almost certainly increased greatly since late March when the poll was done.

My own view is that Muqtada has now won politically and morally. He keeps throwing Abu Ghuraib in the faces of the Americans. He had his men take refuge in Najaf and Karbala because he knew only two outcomes were possible. Either the Americans would back off and cease trying to destroy him, out of fear of fighting in the holy cities and alienating the Shiites. Or they would come in after Muqtada and his militia, in which case the Americans would probably turn the Shiites in general against themselves. The latter is now happening.

The Americans will be left with a handful of ambitious collaborators at the top, but the masses won't be with them. And in Iraq, unlike the US, the masses matter. The US political elite is used to being able to discount American urban ghettos as politically a cipher. What they don't realize is that in third world countries the urban poor are a key political actor and resource, and wise rulers go out of their way not to anger them.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kurdish Dimension of Muqtada al-Sadr Crisis

It seems clear that Iraqi Shiite leaders such as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum at the very least greenlighted the US attack on Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia. As the country prepares for elections this coming winter, these Shiite leaders who do not have nearly Muqtada's following had to be afraid that he would do much better in open elections than they would. Having the Americans clear the decks for them seemed to them like a good idea.

It now appears to me that the Shiite leaders on the Interim Governing Council had allies in promoting the attack on the Sadrists among the Kurds. Muqtada al-Sadr has repeatedly called for a strong central government in Iraq and has denounced Kurdish plans for semi-autonomy. He also denounced Kurdish designs on the oil city of Kirkuk, and sent 2000 fighters up there to support the Arabs and Turkmen. Many Turkmen are Shiites and apparently many follow Muqtada al-Sadr.

So Muqtada has made himself unpopular among the Kurdish leadership. Evidence for this animosity was provided by BBC Monitoring, which translated an article from the Kurdish newspaper Khabat (Irbil, May 11) denouncing the Sadrists. Excerpts follow:

"HEADLINE: IRAQI KURDISH PAPER SAYS AL-SADR "PROBLEMS" NEEDS QUICK SOLUTION

"Text of article by Sami Shorish "Al-Sadr's fire will possibly burn down Iraq and the region as well", published by Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) newspaper Khabat on 11 May

"If what Muqtada al-Sadr is doing in Al-Najaf, Baghdad and Al-Amarah, is not thwarted with a pre-emptive act, it may kindle a huge fire not only in Iraq, but also in the entire region of the Gulf, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Have any of the rights of the Shi'is been usurped? Definitely, the same as an important proportion of the rights of the Kurdish people have been usurped in Iraq, and so far, despite all the sacrifices and sincerity of the Kurds, those rights have not been gained. Exactly in the same way, some of the rights of the Shi'is, Turkomans, Assyrians and Arabs have been usurped.

"It is important to be aware of the fact that it will be difficult to establish democracy, pluralism, and a civil society in the new Iraq unless all the constituents and all sides of the Iraqi community waive a part of their own rights and unless they head towards a sincere compromise. Iraq is a state that is founded on a number of legally crooked and fraudulent criteria . . .

"As we see, Al-Sistani [and] Al-Hakim* do not demand the state of the guardianship of jurisprudence [i.e. Khomeini's theory of clerical rule]. As we see they are not keen on the formation of a religious state and an Islamic republic. As we see, to a certain extent they approve of federalism and the Kurds' rights. These are true.

"However, the emergence of a phenomenon such as Muqtada al-Sadr is an obstacle in the way of reconciliation of the different sides within the Iraqi community. It is an impediment against heading towards the rhetoric of politics and peace to address the problems and difficulties. It impedes a mutual understanding between Kurds and Arabs, the Shi'is and Sunnis for a compatible life within the framework of a democratic state. For the above reasons, confrontation and standoff against Muqtada al-Sadr is not the duty only of the Americans, rather it is the duty of the Iraqis in the first place. Actually it is incumbent on the Shi'is and the Shi'i religious sources of emulation themselves before any other individual or group."



-------
*Actually I think al-Hakim does believe in clerical rule, along the lines of Khomeinism, but he is willing to wait for it, unlike Muqtada, who is impatient.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Caretaker Government may Contain the Expatriate Politicians

Alissa Rubin of the LA Times reports that the original Brahimi plan has had to be abandoned, a victim of the prisoner torture scandal. Washington and Brahimi had wanted to appoint a caretaker government of faceless bureaucrats. The heads of Iraqi parties with some grass roots and popularity, however, are fighting this Brahimi plan, and may have been winning recently. The US no longer has the moral authority, after the prisoner abuse and torture scandal, to dictate terms to the Iraqi politicians.

I saw a clip of Wolfowitz testifying on the Hill on Thursday. He was pressed as to whether keeping someone in a hood for 36 hours was a crime. Wolfowitz hemmed and hawed and said he didn't "know what that means." The democratic senator interviewing him called him "unresponsive."
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Partition of Iraq Would be Wrong: Dawisha

Adeed Dawisha an Iraqi political scientist, explains why talk of partitioning Iraq is wrong.

" . . . nothing that has happened on the ground imposes[partition]. There has been no bloodshed among and between Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis. Indeed, in a brief moment in April, Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr extolled the "heroic insurgents of Fallujah," and the Sunni Fallujans jubilantly hoisted Sadr's portrait for the benefit of the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyya satellite stations. A newly formed Iraqi Army battalion, which had large contingents of Kurds and Shiites, refused to fight alongside the US early on in the battle of Fallujah; and thousands of Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis descended upon the city offering blood, food and medical supplies.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Condemnations of Prisoner Abuse, Berg Murder in Middle East

From BBC World Monitoring:


"Egypt condemns Iraq torture, beheading: Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Mahir on 13 May condemned pictures showing Iraqi prisoners being abused and the decapitation of a US civilian, the Egyptian news agency MENA reported. He described the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners as a "despicable crime" and the beheading of US civilian Nick Berg as a "heinous crime" that went against human principles. (MENA news agency, 1352 gmt 13 May 04)"

"Nothing justifies killing" - Jordanian paper on beheading: An editorial in Jordan Times web site on 13 May deplored the beheading of US captive Nick Berg by Muslim extremists. It said Berg's killing, which was ostensibly committed in retaliation for the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers in Abu-Ghurayb prison, could not avenge their mistreatment. "Taking the life of a man who obviously had nothing to do with the prison conditions in Iraq only trivialises the Iraqis' ordeal and plasters the repulsive face of the occupation with a mask of acceptance of such gross violence. It is also likely to deflect anger from those responsible for the inhumane treatment of detainees, weakening the case for bringing them to justice," it said. "Perpetrators of crime have to be brought to justice. Whoever and wherever they are. International conventions and the rule of law must be observed. Humanity cannot be held ransom to barbarity and nothing justifies killing," it said. (Jordan Times web site, 13 May 04) "




For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Did Israel Try to Take out a US Ambassador?

There is strong evidence in recently released diplomatic papers that Israel's secret police, Mossad, attempted to assassinate the US ambassador to Lebanon, John Gunther Dean, in 1979, but failed--this according to Ambassador Andrew Killgore.

Killgore writes The Dean paper--which include documents, messages, reports and telegrams--constitute hard evidence on the stultifying influence of the Israeli lobby as Dean tried to get answers from the Department of State on the Israeli assassination failure. Nobody was willing to talk with him because the subject was just too “sensitive.” The papers include documentation of efforts by the Palestinians to help the U.S. with the American hostages in Iran. They demonstrate that, unlike today, the United States administration considered the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) “valid interlocutors” in the search for a negotiated settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict. In fact, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and an assistant made a special visit to Iran, where they succeeded in gaining the immediate freedom of several of the American diplomatic hostages. Arafat performed a real favor for the United States for which he never received any thanks—perhaps because, once again, it would have been too “sensitive.”

Another Middle East historian wrote me subsequently,

Andrew Kilgore is [unreliable]; he also believes that Mossad was behind the assassination of JFK. In Gunther Dean's lengthy interview with Le
Monde last year, he did not allege what Kilgore was alleging.

I certainly would want to dissociate myself from the views alleged! Historians will have to weigh the allegations by sifting through Dean's papers when they become available.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Negotiations Collapse amid Fierce Fighting in Karbala

US forces, having collapsed half of the historic al-Mukhayyam Mosque and set 7 hotels on fire in its environs in Karbala, are continuing to fight Mahdi Army militiamen in the area around the shrine of Imam Husain. Az-Zaman reports that fighting is also heavy in the eastern, al-Abbasiyah neighborhood of the holy city. 20 to 30 Mahdi Army men were killed, as they holed up in mosques and other buildings, putting civilians at risk. Hundreds of Iraqi and Iranian pilgrims to the tomb of Imam Husain cowered in their rooms as the firefights grew hot.

The US was given the green light by Karbala governor Saad Sufuk, who says he is determined to get the Army of the Mahdi out of Karbala.

Muqtada al-Sadr, in the meantime suddenly announced that he would dissolve and disarm his militia if these steps were requested by the grand ayatollahs in Najaf. Observers suggested that this was a clever move by Muqtada, since he has now placed the onus on the heretofore somewhat silent senior Shiite leaders.

Some sources are blaming Muqtada for the breakdown of negotiations with the Americans. Others say the problem is Paul Bremer, who is insisting that Muqtada be taken into custody immediately and dealt with before the turn-over of sovereignty on June 30.

I don't care what Sufouk told them the Americans are most unwise to engage in major combat in Karbala so close to Husain's tomb. They make themselves look like Yazid. If they, or whoever is reading this, don't know who Yazid is, then they have no business being in Iraq, much less in Karbala.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Reader Comment: Where is Sistani?

Hayder Gallaghan writes,


"The silence of Sayyid Sistani has become deafening. An historic masjid destroyed, along with neighboring hotels and the better part of a shopping district. One report says that they were stacking bodies in the streets. But no U.S. soldiers killed! One Iraqi who witnessed the carnage said the even Saddam had not used that kind of firepower in Karbala.

"It seems the U.S. has got what it wants, the acquiescence of Sistani and the active support of SCIRI in rooting out the Mehdi Army. But at what cost to these parties credibility? A . . . friend who has very little understanding of Shia' Islam approached me today and asked me why Sistani was not saying anything. I didn't know what to tell him. It's embarrassing.

Just a couple of months ago it was Sistani who was reaching across sectarian lines, invoking the 1920 rebellion and urging the pan-Iraqi nationalism that you have just written about. He's pretty much shot that in the ass with his cave in to the Americans. If the majority of the Shia' population of Iraq chooses to line up behind Sistani and let these atrocities go unanswered, then there will be a civil war, with
nationalists both Shia' and Sunni attacking those who have chosen to collaborate with what can only be described as a brutal imperialist occupation.

Peace,

Hayder Gallaghan

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraqi Leaders want to See Karpinski in the Docket with Saddam

az-Zaman Iraqi political figures Wednesday condemned Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinsky, head of the Military Police in charge of prisoners at Abu Ghuraib prison last fall, as responsible for the abuse and torture of the inmates there. They called for her to be tried in the same docket with Saddam Hussein.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Muslim Authorities Condemn Berg Killing

Muslim authorities at al-Azhar Seminary, the preeminent center of learning for Sunni Islam, vehemently condemned the brutal murder of Nick Berg by terrorists in Iraq, according to Sobhy Mujahid.

' "Islam respects the human being, dead or alive, and cutting off the American's head was an act of mutilation forbidden by Islam," [said] Ibrahim Al-Fayoumi, a member of Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy . . . '

Sobhi adds, ' Mahmoud Emara, another member of the Academy [said] "The mutilation even of enemies is rejected by Islam. A mistake could not justify another . . . " The scholar cited the respect Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) had paid to bodies in the battle of Badr when he ordered the burial of the dead irrespective of their religion. The Prophet urged his Companions on the day of Badr to be kind to their captives and treat them with clemency. '

These scholars are major voices of the Muslim mainstream. They should be listened to on such matters.

Even the much more radical Lebanese Shiite Hizbullah (Hezbollah), according to the Sydney Morning Herald, ' harshly criticised the beheading and questioned the timing of a "horrible" act which drove the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US-led forces from the headlines. "Hezbollah denounces this horrible act which does an immense wrong to Islam and Muslims by a group which falsely pretends to follow the precepts of the religion of pardon and essential human values," the party said in a statement. ' (Hizbullah, as Shiites, has nothing but contempt for the Sunni radical Zarqawi).

It adds, 'Ezzedine Salim, this month's chief of the Iraq Governing Council, insisted that "decapitations and mutilations are unacceptable and have nothing to do with Islam". '

Even the conservative and fundamentalist religious leaders in Iraq expressed the same sentiments.

Samir Haddad quotes Muthanna al-Dhari, secretary general of the Board of Muslim Clergy (a hardline Sunni organization that in the past has had members who stockpiled arms in mosques; it was a major mediating force at Fallujah). Al-Dhari ' strongly denounced the killing, saying it runs counter to the teachings of Islam and "does disservice to our religion and our cause." The Sunni scholar stressed this is a condemned operation whether carried out by Iraqis or non-Iraqis and whether the slain was a civilian or a military personnel. "Even if he was a military personnel he should be treated as a prisoner who, according to Shari'ah, must not be killed," he told IslamOnline.net. Deputy Head of the Islamic Party Iyaad Samarrai said the abhorrent treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers should never give an excuse for treating U.S. prisoners the same way. "This is absolutely wrong," he told IOL, asserting that "Islam does prohibit the killing or the maltreatment of prisoners." Samarrai said such acts harm the interest of the Iraqi people and their cause to end the U.S.-led occupation.

We'll be hearing for years from the talking heads on US cable news about how the Muslim world failed to condemn what was done to Berg. It would be as though a set of high-ranking cardinals in the Vatican condemned something unreservedly and then people kept saying the Church remained silent.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Helps Revive the Old Pan-Islamic Project In Iraq

My article, "US Failure Helps Revive the Old Pan-Islamic Project," is now available in English at the
Le Monde Diplomatique Web Site.


THE Iraqi rebellion in April signals the re-emergence of Iraqi nationalism and perhaps even of Arab nationalism, as an important factor in the post-Ba’ath period. The discredited Ba’ath party had trumpeted a nationalism that was both local and regional: it glorified Iraq’s civilisation through history and claimed the heritage of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar. Baghdad under Saddam also attempted to displace Cairo as the main champion of the interests of the Arab world. But because the Ba’ath was so odious, many Iraqis reacted against these glib expressions of nationalism.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein the Palestin ians, whom Saddam had sheltered in Iraq as symbols of Arab unity, became objects of suspicion and resentment. Pan-Arabism fell from favour and pan-Arab media like al-Jazeera were criticised by Iraqi politicians for being soft on Saddam. Iraqis condemned the Sunni-dominated Arab League for its expressions of concern about the rising power of the Shia and Kurds in Iraq.

Radical religious movements among the Shia seemed to owe more in their ideology to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini than to any Iraqi thinker. The preeminent Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, is himself Iranian. Sunni Arabs were open to Arab nationalist currents and fundamentalist movements coming from Jordan. But this spring’s uprisings in Falluja, a Sunni stronghold, and throughout the Shia south show how the United States-led occupation may be encouraging the re-emergence of a nationalism that transcends sectarian divisions. The rebellion in Falluja appears to have been sparked by the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, on 22 March. In retaliation a local Islamist group named after Yassin killed four private security guards, who had once been US Navy Seals, and townspeople desecrated their bodies. The US Marines retaliated by surrounding and besieging the city, using heavy firepower and causing many civilian deaths. Al-Jazeera and al- Arabiya television correspondents provided images of the siege of Falluja that provoked indignation throughout Iraq and the Muslim world.

The Salafi revival in Falluja happened because the trucking trade from Jordan passed through the city on the way to Baghdad. A form of literalist Sunni political Islam had become popular in the small cities of Jordan, such as Maan and Zarqa (home of the famed terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), and this spread to western Iraq. Towards the end the Ba’ath party had removed some restrictions from these religious movements, now seen as potential allies against the US.

At the same time, the US decided to go after the young Shia radical, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose newspaper, Al Hawzah, had also been stirring up anti-Israel and anti-US feeling after Sheikh Yassin’s assassination. They closed the newspaper and on 3 April issued 28 arrest warrants for his associates. Convinced that the US was coming for him, al-Sadr launched an insurrection in Kufa, Najaf, East Baghdad, Nasiriyah, Kut and Basra, where his followers formed militias.

Moqtada al-Sadr, though he seeks an Iran-style Islamic republic, also invokes Iraqi patriotism. He has complained bitterly about Iranian dominance insisting that Iraq’s Shia must be led by an Iraqi. His stance directly contradicts the claims of Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei, to be the highest legal and spiritual authority for Shia everywhere. Moqtada’s movement was begun by his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, whom the Ba’ath party had assassinated in 1999. Sadiq al-Sadr had promoted the holding of Friday prayers - which Saddam had forbidden to the Shia - in slums that the Ba’ath could not penetrate easily.

Al-Sadr Sr had preached against Israel and the US and reached out to rural Shia with a tribal background, attempting to get them to forsake tribal custom for scriptural Shi’ism. His movement was puritanical and theocratic: he aspired to a Khomeinist Islamic republic in Iraq. His constituency was Iraq’s very poor, especially the young. His chief rival for religious authority among the Shia was Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani: though Sistani kept quiet under Saddam and believed that clerics should stay out of governmental affairs.

Although Salafi Sunnis and Sadrist Shia normally have little time for one another, a solidarity based on Iraqi nationalism and pan-Islam surfaced as both confronted coalition forces. The Shia neighbourhood of Kazimiyah in Baghdad had an old rivalry with its neighbour, the relatively upscale Sunni Azamiyah quarter. But they put their enmity aside to raise a convoy of 60 trucks of relief supplies and headed for Falluja on 8 April. Accompanying crowds waved posters of Sheikh Yassin and Moqtada al-Sadr. Hapless US Marines had to let them through.

The Board of Muslim Clergy, a hardline Sunni group headed by Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, gained some prestige from stepping in to negotiate between Falluja and the Americans. It also issued a communiqué on 17 April announcing its support for Moqtada al-Sadr and calling on all Iraqis "to expel the occupation". Mohammed Ayyash al-Kubaisi, the board’s representative outside Iraq, told al-Arabiya that all Iraqis who oppose the forces of occupation, including Moqtada, are working for the same goal and would not allow themselves to be divided.

These examples suggest that, despite being open to political and religious currents from neighbouring countries, the Iraqis have forged a profound national identity in the past century. Sectarian groupings in the country do not see their religious identities as superseding their national ones.


Read the rest.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Heavy Fighting in Karbala

AP is reporting heavy fighting in Karbala between Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and US forces, with the Shiite militiamen taking heavy casualties, some 25 estimated dead. The US used heavy firepower in the sacred Shiite city, destroying half of the historic al-Mukhayyam Mosque not so far from the shrine of the Prophet's martyred grandson, Imam Husain. For Shiites, this is as though a Muslim army was fighting in Vatican City and damaged a Renaissance-era church near the basilica of St. Peter. You wonder if the US can survive its victory in Karbala.

Quotes from Muqtada al-Sadr today:

"I appeal to the fighters and mujahedeen in Karbala to stand together so as none of our holy sites and cities are defiled. We are prepared for any American escalation and we expect one . . . Let remind you of Vietnam. We are an Iraqi people that has faith in God, and his prophet and his family. The means of victory that are available to us are much more than what the Vietnamese had. And, God willing, we shall be victorious . . . Look at what they have done. Look what the torture they have committed against our detainees. Could anyone who came to rid us of Saddam do this?"


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Taguba and Cambone Clash on Prison Torture Responsibility

No one is a better friend to historians than a military or civilian official who doesn't know he is supposed to lie about some things. The WP reports,

"Taguba said that when control of the prison was turned over to military intelligence officials, they had authority over the military police who were guarding prisoners. But Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon's undersecretary for intelligence, said that was incorrect, that authority for the handling of detainees had remained with the MPs. "

What is going on here is that Taguba is giving an honest and faithful account of what happened. He says that the militiary intelligence guys got command control of the MPs. Cambone knows that this is against army regulations and should be denied, not openly admitted. Either way, Taguba is right that this is what happened.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Signs of a Negotiated Settlement in Najaf
But Clashes Continue at Kufa, Karbala

az-Zaman: The Coalition and Muqtada al-Sadr exchanged letters via mediators during the past thirty-six hours, which may be fateful. Signs of flexibility were apparent in Muqtada's response to ending the crisis, assuming that the American side would accept negotiations on the basis of his spokesman, Qais al-Khazali. At the same time, the new American-appointed governor of Najaf intimated that there is a possibility that any criminal proceedings against Muqtada al-Sadr may be suspended if his militia stood down, disarmed, and left Najaf.

A statement issued by Muqtada's office in Najaf suggested that he would end his insurgency in the Shiite south on condition that the Americans agree to direct negotiations with him, a demand that the US had rejected up until this point.

The grand ayatollahs of Najaf clearly anticipate a major blow-up if these final negotiations fail. They have sent their wives and children to stay with relatives outside Najaf, but are remaining in the city themselves. The four grand ayatollahs include Ali Sistani, Muhammad Sa'id al-Hakim, Bashir al-Najafi, and Muhammad Fayyad.

Al-Hayat says that in recent negotiations betwen Muqtada and the sons of the grand ayatollahs, they have managed to convince him that he will simply have to leave Najaf.

Tensions rose high in Najaf Tuesday because the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq staged a demonstration, about a thousand strong, in downtown Najaf demanding that the Sadrists leave town. (I saw footage of the demonstration on CNN; it was relatively small, and all the banners were those of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.) Sadr's Mahdi Army menaced the demonstrators and fired gunshots in the air.

In the other major shrine city, Karbala, US troops clashed with Mahdi Army fighters and for the first time attacked their positions in the al-Mukhayyim Mosque, not so far from the sacred shrine of Imam Ali.

Likewise, US troops fought Sadrists at Kufa near Najaf, killing 13 and capturing 14.

The new governor of Najaf, Adnan Dhurufi, promised that the court proceedings against Muqtada with regard to the murder last year of Abdul Majid al-Khoei would be suspended if he disarmed his militiamen.

On Tuesday, American forces killed 13 Sadr supporters in Kufa. His followers in Karbala have gathered again in the al-Mukhayyim Mosqu near the shrine of Imam Husain. Saad Sufouk, the governor of Karbala, has announced that this mosque would be turned into a hospital.

Nicholas Pelham reports another startling development. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of the Najaf area now, is forming a Najaf Brigade on the model of the Fallujah Brigade. Az-Zaman says it will be some 4,000 strong, and will include tribal levies as well as members of the paramilitaries of the Shiite parties.

We appear to finally have someone in charge, in the person of Gen. Dempsey, who knows what he is doing. (Dhurufi also seems to me to be taking a wise course) Dempsey's plan is is crucial, since most successful transitions from failed states with fractured paramilitary gangs to successful new states have involved incorporating the militias into national military structures. On the other hand, Dempsey is drawing the wrong conclusion if the thinks the lesson here is that the US should have gone after Muqtada earlier. That would have just produced the insurgency earlier. His movement did not spread that much or get that much more weaponry in the past 6 months. This movement goes back to the early 1990s!

az-Zaman is less optimistic and notes that the new Najaf Brigade could also be used to expel the Mahdi Army elements if they do not prove cooperative. The paper reveals that the old Najaf police set up by the Americans after the fall of Saddam had largely defected to the Mahdi Army when the insurgency began. This tidbit helps explain how Muqtada suddenly gained control of Najaf, where he hadn't been strong. Presumably his missionaries had gradually recruited the police there.

A reader suggested to me that the apparent new flexibility on the part of the Coalition regarding Muqtada may have had to do with the successful attack on oil exports in the South on Sunday. That may well be. But the general threat to the south from an ongoing Sadrist insurgency must have been the framework for the decision, with the issue of oil pipeline security being only one part of that puzzle.

Likewise, the prison torture scandal must be involved in the US decision to back down. After all, what they were saying was that they wanted to put Muqtada, a scion of the Prophet and of major clerical lineages, in Abu Ghuraib. No major political leader would agree to that at this point, and Muqtada's followers would never accept it. Likewise, the threat to "capture or kill" him no longer looks macho in the wake of investigations into over two dozen deaths of prisoners in US custody. Moreover, one of the charges against Muqtada and his aides was that they were running an informal parallel court system and were trying and imprisoning people in the basements of their party HQs. The US isn't any longer in a strong position to criticize Muqtada's rough justice.

Even without the Abu Ghuraib scandal and the pipeline issue, the Coalition had never really been strong enough in the South to take on Muqtada successfully. The 7500 British troops in Basra and points somewhat north are extremely exposed and thin on the ground. Basra's population is 1.3 million! Even if only 1 percent of them would fight for Muqtada, and it is probably more, they would outnumber the entire British contingent two to one!

But, as the US military attack on Karbala's al-Mukhayyim Mosque demonstrates, we are not out of the woods yet, and an American war with the Army of the Mahdi could still break out. It seems to me that it would certainly destabilize Iraq for some time.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sistani Favors Brahimi Plan

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, according to UN sources, approves of the transition plan of Lakhdar Brahimi for Iraq, which consists of establishing a caretaker Iraqi government on June 30 and then holding elections no later than January of 2005. Sistani at this point fears social chaos above all else, and wants the Muqtada issue settled and elections held as soon as humanly possible. He holds that without elections there can be no legitimate government in Iraq.

Brahimi has been holding extensive talks with Iraqi notables, including Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

AsiaNews profiles the disputes among Iraqi Shiites over Sistani's unwillingness to take a public stand in the recent conflict between Muqtada al-Sadr and the Americans (he prefers to work behind the scenes).

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadrists Launch Wider Insurgency in South

az-Zaman Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers Monday to widen the scope of their military operations against the Coalition to the entirety of Iraq, in an attempt to escalate the military situation after the breakdown of negotiations aimed at mediating between Muqtada and the Coalition. They foundered on the Coalition demand that Muqtada surrender himself for trial. Informed sources in Najaf told az-Zaman that the escalation came in part as a response to the grand ayatollahs and other high Shiite authorities, some of whom had threatened to have the Mahdi Army forcibly disarmed if they didn't put down their guns voluntarily.

Battles raged between Mahdi Army fighters and US forces in the environs of the al-Faqir Quarter of East Baghdad both before and after the US employed helicopter gunships to demolish al-Sadr's headquarters there. (I continue to maintain that firing a missile from a helicopter gunship into an inhabited building in Baghdad is a violation of the basic international law of occupation). Some 35 Sadrists were killed in East Baghdad in recent clashes altogether, as that part of the capital has gone out of the control of the Americans altogether. East Baghdad boiled with fury at the Americans, especially since some of the wounded were innocent bystanders.

In Kut, clashes between Sadrists and the Marines led to the deaths of 21 Mahdi Army militiamen.

In Kufa, fighting between the two sides produced 21 deaths among the Sadrists. The Mahdi Army spread out through Kufa establishing checkpoints. The US set up a siege of the city.

Guerrillas subjected the governor's headquarters north of Najaf to Katyusha rocket and to mortar fire fire, inflicting substantial damage on the building. (The US recently installed a new governor, al-Dhurufi, from the Da'wa Party, who had been in exile in Chicago and Detroit).

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq appears to be planning a massive rally on Friday in Najaf, which American officers fear may spark massive violence and draw them into fighting in the sacred center of the city.

Muqtada is now offering a $350 reward to anyone who informs on an "agent" among the Shiites of the Coalition.

It seems to me as though the Sadrist insurgency is likely to just go on in one form or another for months or years. That is, I think Bush's decision to go after the Sadrists has thrown parts of the Shiite south into the same low grade guerrilla conflict mode as has dogged the center-north for the past year.

The US military is fighting the Sadrists as though they were a rival army. They are not. The fighters may be relatively small in number, but the cadres (who are all potential fighters) run to the tens of thousands, and followers to the hundreds of thousands. This is a movement, and it is not possible to make it disappear by mere military operations. The latter can curb the paramilitary aspect of the movement, but that is a relatively small part of it, and can easily be reconstituted. (Residents of East Baghdad were already busy repairing the Sadrist HQ that was destroyed on Monday).

Meanwhile,

'"A group of armed Iraqis calling themselves Al-Taf Martyrs Brigades, meanwhile, threatened to kidnap and murder workers employed by foreign companies around Basra, in a videotape broadcast today by al-Jazeera television . . .

Iraq's rebuilding efforts suffered a major setback as Sunday's blast halved loading of exports from 80,000 barrels per hour, according to engineer Ali Nasr al-Rubai, the terminal's director." About a fourth of Iraq's exports were affected.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Ordered Spanish to Bring in Muqtada 'Dead or Alive'
Spanish Command predicted "Large-Scale Military Response"


The new Spanish Minister of Defense, Jose Bono, is drawing the curtain from some of the events of early April when the US authorities in Iraq decided to attempt to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr in the wake of his self-identification with Hamas. It appears that at first the Coalition Provisional Authority and the US military command approached the poor Spanish about carrying out the arrest of Muqtada. The Spanish were in charge of Kufa and Najaf, where Muqtada is based.

The post-Franco, post-fascist Spanish military must have been absolutely astounded and disgusted by the Texan demand that they deliver Muqtada to the US "dead or alive." And, they immediately refused. Obviously, if the Spanish had taken the US bait and carried out the arrest, their forces would have faced the full fury of the Sadrists, who are capable of quite a lot of fury. This whole episode strikes me as shameful and cowardly on the Americans' part. It seems obvious that Bush, who must have made the decision to launch the largely unprovoked attack on Muqtada, was hoping to make the Spanish the fall guys. (Two pieces of evidence point to Bush: 1)We now know he was the one who ordered that "heads must roll" at Fallujah, so these major military campaigns are his idea; and, 2) the phraseology "take him dead or alive" is distinctively his.)

The Spanish response? "Fool me once, shame ... shame on ... you." Long, uncomfortable pause. "Fool me — can't get fooled again!"


The Spanish commanders also appear to have worried about the possibility of being implicated in American war crimes. They insisted, as of April 13, that the situation around Najaf was no longer covered by UN Security Council resolutions 1483 and 1511, which they felt authorized their participation in peace-keeping operations in Iraq, but did not cover military aggression of the sort the US was pursuing against the Sadrists.

This anecdote sheds further light on the haste with which Prime Minister Zapatero has withdrawn Spanish troops from Iraq. The knowledge that the US tried to arrange for the Spanish to take the fall for going after Muqtada must have convinced him that he should get out quick before the US dragged his country into deadly confrontation. The Spanish, having been in Najaf and Kufa for eight months, and, unlike the Americans, having actually made a study of the local situation, knew very well that going after Muqtada would stir up a hornet's nest, and perhaps plunge the south into a "large-scale military conflict" or at least a continuing low-grade guerrilla conflict, with themselves on the front lines.

The revelations also cast the Americans in an even poorer light as ignorant and arrogant incompetents. They were clearly completely unprepared for the insurgency throughout the South mounted by Muqtada's followers beginning April 4, the day after they came after his aides. It is one thing to be unprepared for a major military confrontation. It is another to be unprepared for it after you were warned about it by your close ally who was in charge of the affected area!

Here's the passage (my humble attempt at translation):
the Diario Malaga reports that, ' The minister of Defense, Jose Bono, revealed yesterday that the Spanish troops in Iraq were asked "to turn over dead or alive" "a certain religious leader", a reference the radical Shiite Muqtada Al Sadr, something which the Spanish command refused to do. In fact, the highest ranking Spanish officers in the Arab country sent a report at the beginning of April to the North American command in which they argued that increased harassment of the devotees of al-Sadr would trigger an aggravation of the situation.' But the Spanish refused: ' "The Occupying Powers can engage in offensive operations. The countries that are simply in the coalition, as in the case of Spain, cannot participate in offensive operations and, therefore, we said clearly that we were not prepared to deliver, as had been requested, a certain religious leader dead or alive." '

"We were there to help with pacification," [Bono] said. The highest-ranking Spanish military officers in charge in Iraq sent a report at the beginning of April to the North American command in which they observed that increased harassment of Al Sadr and his devotees would aggravate the situation in Iraq and would provoke "a large-scale military operation". '



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Israel Connection to Abu Ghraib Scandal?

Wayne Madsen a former National Security Council staffer, explores the evidence for an Israeli connection to the prison torture scandal in Iraq. He seems to suggest a possible nexus between Israeli ex-security men trained in anti-Palestinian torture techniques and the private security contractors.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More Arguments with Bush

I just want to make a few observations about President Bush’s remarks on Monday:
Transcript: Bush Gives Rumsfeld Vote of Confidence

Monday, May 10, 2004; 12:32 PM

"BUSH: Mr. Secretary, thank you for your hospitality, and thank you for your leadership. You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror. You are doing a superb job. You are a strong secretary of defense. And our nation owes you a debt of gratitude . . . "

Mr. Rumsfeld's leadership has brought the country to the brink of international disaster. It was his leadership that allowed dozens of Iraqi prisoners (the Red Cross estimates 90% of all prisoners held by the US were innocent) to be tortured, some tortured to death. His determination to create spaces of extra-judicial status contributed centrally to the practice of torture at Abu Ghuraib. Rumsfeld is personally responsible for most of the things that have gone wrong in Iraq. His one good enterprise, the war in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda, now appears to have been undertaken with great reluctance, half-heartedly, and to have been abandoned as soon as possible, all so he could plunge the US into the Iraq quagmire. He even stole $700 million from a Congressional appropriation for Afghanistan and spent it on Iraq. The sums involved dwarf even the Iran-contra scandal.

"The United States has a vital national interest in the success of free institutions in Iraq as the alternative to tyranny and terrorist violence in the Middle East . . . "

I've decided that what he means by "free institutions in Iraq" is actually a laissez-faire economic system where workers cannot unionize and a small class of robber barons can ride roughshod over everyone else. It is, in short, a mirror image of Texas robber baron capitalism. If democracy were at issue, Bush wouldn't have sent Jay Garner to turn Iraq over to corrupt expatriate Ahmad Chalabi. (It was only Tony Blair who saved us at least from that).

"BUSH: Like other generations of Americans, we have accepted a difficult and historic task. We have made clear commitments before the world, and America will keep those commitments . . . In and around Fallujah, U.S. Marines are maintaining pressure on Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters and other militants. We're keeping that pressure on to ensure that Fallujah ceases to be an enemy sanctuary . . . "

There are no Saddam loyalists in Fallujah and no or only a miniscule number of foreign fighters. It is time for the President to simply admit that a lot of ordinary Iraqis don't like being occupied by the Americans, and that often the brutality of the occupation has pushed them to take up arms against it.

"BUSH: And our forces are also helping to ensure the delivery of humanitarian supplies to families that suffer as a result of the chaos in certain communities created by the terrorists and those who want to halt the advance of freedom . . . "

Not so long ago, Bush's policy in Fallujah was to besiege and starve the city. US troops prevented civilian aid convoys from getting through. Even some members of the American-appointed Interim Governing Council made it public that they thought the siege was being conducted in ways that contravened the Geneva Conventions, involving collective punishment against innocent civilians.

"In Najaf, a major Shiite population center, in the holy site, our military is systematically dismantling an illegal militia that has attempted to incite violence and seize control . . . "

Muqtada al-Sadr's militia had been careful not to attack US troops and it had been largely excluded from Najaf. On April 3, Bush gave the order for Muqtada's arrest, which provoked a massive Shiite uprising throughout the South and created the chaotic conditions that allowed Muqtada's militia to take over the shrine and city center. Muqtada had not done anything to provoke such a precipitous move against him, and Bush was remiss in not preparing for a blow-up if he insisted on moving in this way against him.

At the moment, the main US plan for curbing Muqtada's militia is to depend on another militant Shiite militia, the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Bush has coddled this Iran-backed movement and its Iran-trained militia. The US has not taken a strong stand against sectarian militias. Rather, it has simply tried to exclude the ones that are not bosom buddies with corrupt expatriate and American proxy, Ahmad Chalabi.

"Elements of this militia have been ejected from the Najaf governor's office and a legitimate governor has been appointed . . . "

No one in Najaf, least of all Grand Ayatollah Sistani, believes that it is within the gift of the Americans to appoint a "legitimate" governor of Najaf! Sistani views the American Occupation as essentially illegal. If Bush had held proper elections in Najaf, instead of appointing a series of corrupt incompentents, maybe things wouldn't have deteriorated to this extent to begin with.

"Our second great commitment in Iraq is to transfer sovereignty to an Iraqi government as quickly as possible. Decades of oppression destroyed every free institution in Iraq, but not the desire to live in freedom. Like any proud country, the Iraqi people want their independence. The Iraqi people need to know that our coalition is fully committed to their independence and we're fully committed to their national dignity. This is the reason the June 30th transfer of sovereignty is vital . . . "

This "transfer of sovereignty" is just a publicity stunt without substance. The caretaker government to be appointed for this summer is just a set of appointees. They won't have been elected by anyone in Iraq and we won't be sure that they even represent any Iraqis. If general elections had been allowed to go forward, that might have produced a legitimate government. This one is just another dreary subcommittee of the Occupation Authority.

"The United Nations' special envoy, Mr. Brahimi, is now back in Iraq consulting with diverse groups of Iraqis. In the next few weeks, important decisions will be made on the makeup of the interim government . . . "

Can you imagine how difficult you have made Brahimi's job, with the Fallujah and Najaf sieges (neither of them growing out of military necessity), and now with these sadomasochistic porn shots?

"Third, because America's committed to the equality and dignity of all people, there will be a full accounting for the cruel and disgraceful abuse of Iraqi detainees. Conduct that has come to light is an insult to the Iraqi people and an affront to the most basic standards of morality and decency . . . "

A full accounting should start with us calling it what it is. It is torture, not just abuse. By the time you sic German shepherds on naked shivering prisoners to take a chunk out of their legs or you are sticking broomsticks up their rectums, that isn't abuse, Mr. President. It is t o r t u r e.

"One basic difference between democracies and dictatorships is that free countries confront such abuses openly and directly. In January, shortly after reports of abuse became known to our military, an investigation was launched. "

In other words, Rumsfeld sat on this for months in hopes it wouldn't come out, and thinking in his own mind it wasn't a big thing. And now that it is out, a few privates are going to be hung out to dry while Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cambone and Boykin, who set the tone that allowed all this to happen, do not have to take any responsibility or suffer any accountability at all.

"Millions of Iraqis are grateful for the chance they have been given to live in freedom, a chance made possible by the courage and sacrifice of the United States military. "

Military occupation by a foreign power is not freedom, which is why a large majority of Iraqis wants the US military out right now. Being guinea pigs for pet Republican experiments like a flat tax or economic "shock therapy" and a fire sale on all Iraqi assets-- no Iraqis think this is "freedom." Everyone recognizes our debt to the brave men and women of the US military for bringing the genocidal Saddam regime to justice (however much we might debate whether there were better means to accomplish that goal than military action). But the policies of your administration in the aftermath have been a huge disaster, and it is wrong of you now to wrap yourself in their uniforms and make them share the blame for poor civilian leadership.

"We have great respect for the people of Iraq and for all Arab peoples, respect for their culture and for the history and for the contribution they can make to the world. "

This statement is poorly crafted, even if the intention may have been a good one. It makes it sound like the Arabs, for all their culture and history, haven't yet made "the contribution" to the world that they could if only they fell under American tutelage. In fact, of course, the Arabs' contributions to the world have been crucial, from algebra to the lateen sail, from Sufi spirituality to key discoveries in astronomy.

"We believe that democracy will allow these gifts to flourish, that freedom is the answer to hopelessness and terror, that a free Iraq will lead the way to a new and better Middle East and that a free Iraq will make our country more secure . . . "

So far American-ruled Iraq has been the biggest black eye for democracy since the Reichstag fire. And, the photographs now circulating of prisoner torture are the biggest recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and other anti-American terrorism that Bin Laden could ever have hoped for. The US occupation of Iraq has been so incompetently handled that it has made all Americans less secure by an order of magnitude.

"END"

Unfortunately that isn't true, either. This is only the beginning, and not of anything good.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Hersh: Photographing Torture Was itself a Form of Coercion

Journalist Seymour Hersh came out with several revelations concerning US torture of POWs on Sunday. He reveals the logic behind it, and says he has seen a picture of an Iraqi prisoner with a gaping hole in his leg where he was bitten by a military attack dog. I wonder if Rummy will consider that merely abuse, or will use the T word. When Rumsfeld warned us that worse pictures are coming, he spoke truly. One worries that somewhere there is a snuff film with a rape scene coming out of Abu Ghuraib.

On Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, Hersh said he thought that the photographs of the abuse and torture were themselves attempts to manipulate prisoners, since they were threatened with the revelation of their humiliation to friends and family.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

East Baghdad Rebels against US Rule

Daniel Williams of the Washington Post penetrates the fog of war and concludes that the US has been thrown out of the Shiite ghetto of East Baghdad, called Sadr City. He says that the cadres of Muqtada al-Sadr have set up checkpoints, set garbage and tires afire, and mobilized to keep the US out. The move comes in response to two raids by US forces that killed 18 militiamen and snatched Amr Husaini and Amjad al-Suwaidi, two supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr who are important to his political organization in East Baghdad. Six other members were also captured.

AFP noted, ' The US military killed 19 members of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia in Baghdad on Sunday after arresting two key aides in a midnight raid. Eighteen were killed in one clash when US troops moved in after militiamen began setting up checkpoints in Sadr City, the military said. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director of the coalition, told reporters that three Iraqi police and six civilians were also killed in bomb and gun attacks in the capital. They included a roof-top attack on a police patrol by four black-clad militiamen. '

The US also moved deeper, with tanks and armored humvees, into the small city of Kufa than ever before. The city saw fierce fighting Sunday for two full hours, with four Iraqis killed and 12 injured, including 4 children. Three homes were destroyed, and a kindergarten and school were damaged near the Kufa grand mosque. AFP reports, 'Two young boys along with their father were injured when a projectile hit their home which is behind the Muslim bin Aqeel shrine, part of the mosque complex, according to their mother. ' CPA and US military figures seem to think that Kufa is not a holy city for Shiites, but they should be aware that it very much is.

US forces in the center of the shrine city of Karbala battled Mahdi Army militiament loyal to Muqtada on Sunday, with two militiamen killed and two seriously wounded. It is touchy for the US to be fighting in the midst of a holy shrine city like this, but the Mahdi Army is not liked in Karbala and this gives the US some leeway with the other Shiites.

The problem with the strategy of gradually encroaching on Muqtada's organization in its various southern strongholds is that his cadres might think up counter-strategies. Trying to draw the British in, as they did in Amara and Basra on Saturday, and using the impenetrability of urban slums for cover are two they have come up with so far.

It should be noted that the Sadrist movement was established by Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (d. 1999) under the nose of Saddam Hussein and all those Baathist spies. It was possible precisely because an area like Sadr City is hard for outsiders to penetrate. It is a set of Shiite clans, all of whom have come from the countryside since about 1961 (when Madinat al-Thawrah or Revolution Township was established by Col. Abdel Karim Qasim). They could detect Tikriti Sunni outsiders, and closed ranks against them. Just as the Sadrists were able to operate despite Saddam's opposition, they will retain some freedom of movement in the face of US crackdowns, as well. The Sadrist movement cannot be destroyed, and certainly killing Muqtada will not destroy it (just as Saddam's assassination of Muqtada's father did not).

Many conservative commentators are crowing that the other Shiite groups are helping the US deal with the Sadrists. What is really happening is that the other major Shiite leaders all along have cut the Sadrists out of the process, and the US has consistently been manipulated by them in this regard. Now they are trying to use US troops to finish off Muqtada's militia while they try to find a way to convince Muqtada to surrender himself. The danger here is in alienating and excluding a very large number of Shiites, while including and favoring Shiite political leaders who have much smaller followings than Muqtada does. Down the road, this policy could backfire badly on the US and on the caretaker government.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim Makes his move

al-Hayat: The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq organized a demonstration in Najaf Sunday in support of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. (Implicitly, this rally served as a protest against Muqtada al-Sadr, the young radical whose sectarian movement challenges Sistani's authority).

ash-Sharq al-Awsat: At the same time, SCIRI organized a rally in Firdaws Square in downtown Baghdad, attended by 2000 demonstrators, against the rehabilitation of former Baath party members to serve in the army and as teachers. They carried posters saying "No to the Baathists!"

My interpretation of these two demonstrations is that SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is maneuvering for his political future. His Badr Corps militia is a keen rival of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and benefits in some ways if the US removes Sadr as a political player.

On the other hand, many Iraqis will see SCIRI as a traitor for collaborating with the Americans against a fellow Shiite. SCIRI already suffers from image problems in Iraq, because it was formed under the auspices of the hardline ayatollahs in Iran, and sided with them against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988.

Many Iraqi Shiites code SCIRI as "Iranian" even though it is made up of Iraqi expatriates who were living in Iran, and their Iraqi supporters. So, anyway, holding a demonstration against the Baathists in Baghdad and for Sistani in Najaf is an attempt to balance out these issues. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had earlier been spoken of as a possible candidate for one of the two vice president posts in the upcoming caretaker government.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

36 Die in Bloody Sunday

AFP reports that 36 Iraqis were killed in violence in that country on Sunday.

Guerrillas detonated a bomb in a crowded market in the Bayaa district of southern Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 6 and wounding 13.

In Mosul, guerrillas fired mortar rounds at a US base, killing one US soldier and wounding another.

Young guerrillas assassinated a senior police official in Baquba, Col. Ali al-Azzawi.

AFP adds,' Elsewhere, a roadside bomb wounded three British soldiers in Basra, a British military spokesman said. A British patrol was caught in "a large explosion" in the city centre, he said, without giving further details. Witnesses said at least one Iraqi civilian was also wounded. '

Guerrillas also sabotaged a southern oil pipeline, setting it ablaze 60 km south of Basra.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bremer Still Writing Laws for Iraq

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reports that US proconsul in Iraq Paul Bremer has unilaterally issued more laws, this time attempting to limit the scope of operation of the new Iraqi intelligence agency (it isn't to spy on legitimate Iraqi parties), and to place time limits on former intelligence and military officers requiring that they wait eighteen months before taking up a political post. Actually it keeps being assumed by US observers that Saddam's government was military. It wasn't. He never served in the military, and came from the civilian wing of the Baath Party. He always distrusted the military and had it intensively spied on. So these restrictions may be salutary, but they do not address the Baath Party, which was civlian in nature and leadership. As Pincus's interviewees point out, it is highly unlikely that Bremer's laws will survive his departure from the country for very long.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

New Sunni-Shiite Political Grouping

Several readers asked me what I thought of the al-Jazeerah article about the formation of a new pan-Iraqi, Pan-Islamic group that will work to end US occupation and refuses to recognize the Interim Governing Council or any government appointed by the US. My answer is that so far this is 500 persons, and we don't know yet whether it is significant. There are already 50 political parties in Iraq, most of which are obscure to the American audience. This is one more. We'll see if it amounts to anything.

One thing the conference showed was that even though Muqtada has lost support among Shiites he has gained support from some Sunnis.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Coalition Battles Sadrists in East Baghdad, Amara, Basrah

The Sadrist movement deliberately attempted to provoke the British on Saturday in Amara and Basra. Their provocative actions appear to me likely to be calculated. I think they are hoping that if the British feel insecure in the South, or feel that the Americans are endangering them by pursuing radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, then Blair will warn Bush to back off.

Mike Williams reports that Shaikh Abdul Sattar Bahadli provoked the violence in Basrah by mounting his pulpit on Friday and putting bounties on Coalition soldiers:

' Al-Sadr's followers were roused Friday by Sheik Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, a senior aid to the radical cleric, who promised cash bounties of $150 for each British soldier killed, $300 for each one captured and that fighters could keep captured female British soldiers as slaves. '

Meanwhile, US troops assaulted Sadrist offices in East Baghdad, and British forces fought Sadrists in Amara and Basra.

Shaikh Amer al-Husaini, a supporter of Muqtada, was taken into custody by the Americans in East Baghdad.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Some Senior Officers in Iraq Say: We're Winning Battles, Losing the War

George W. Bush's elective decision to besiege Fallujah in revenge for the killing of four Western private commandos produced revulsion throughout Iraq. It is an example of how the US can win the battles but lose the war. And, some senior officers are afraid that US policy in Iraq is producing such a dire result, according to veteran military affairs reporter Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post.

Ricks writes, hauntingly: ' Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are." Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an interview Friday. "I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in." '

Some military analysts apparently are privately calling the Iraq enterprise "Dead Man Walking."

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that Iraqi newspaper editorials continue to be angry about the photographs prison torture that have surfaced, and are demanding concrete steps to correct the abuses.

Cole here: The US has lost ground in Iraq by being exclusionary rather than inclusive. Radical debaathification and a punitive attitude toward Sunni Arabs pushed them into insurgency. The Americans excluded the Sadrists early on, and are now having to fight them everywhere in the South. If they actually do kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, it will be Americans killing or holding a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, husband of the daughter of revered Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, and beloved son of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. A lot of Shiites who are now on the fence will turn against the US, maybe radically.

Contrast these policies to Afghanistan, where the US has been inclusive, even of the Pushtun cousins of the Taliban, and where there is much less anger toward the US and much less in the way of violence against US troops. That is a remarkable comparison. Afghanistan was supposed to be the graveyard of empires, and Iraq was supposed to be a cakewalk, according to the Bushies. The answer to the puzzle is that situations are fluid, and are what you make of them. If you screw up, you create disasters.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

NATO to Bush: You Broke it, You Own it

Paul Richter of the LA Times reports that NATO has had second thoughts about coming in to play a role in Iraq this summer. The ongoing insurgency, the overwhelming unpopularity of the American war in Iraq with the European public, and (probably) the breaking prison torture scandal, have all convinced NATO leaders to wait until after the November elections in the US before making a determination about their possible role in Iraq.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ongoing crisis around Muqtada al-Sadr

Muqtada al-Sadr taunted US troops who are seeking to arrest or kill him. In his Friday prayers sermon in Kufa. Muqtada said,

"What sort of freedom and democracy can we expect from you [Americans] when you take such joy in torturing Iraqi prisoners?" asked Sadr, demanding that the US guards who have been charged with abuse be handed ove