Samarra' Assaulted by Guerrillas

The LA Times reports that guerrillas launched a major attack in Samarra on Wednesday. Carloads of gunmen came into the city and attacked a building used by security forces with rocket propelled grenades. They then attacked the hospital, until US and Iraqi government forces responded to attacks. When ten carloads of guerrillas can just drive into town and shoot it up, you know no one is really in control of the place. Samarra is an important city north of Baghdad, with a population of nearly 200,000. Its early Islamic monuments make it symbolically important.

The LA Times says that guerrillas also killed Kamal Khalid Zebari, a Kurdish security chief of Mosul.

The murder two days ago of a Shiite parliamentarian has set off a debate among Shiites about using paramilitary forces to defend themselves from Sunni guerrilla actions. The debate was made especially bitter by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's admission last Sunday that the US is talking behind the scenes to leaders of the Sunni guerrilla movement, a move that many Shiites denounce.

The Arab News reports from wire services:

' Furious Shi'i deputies suggested that the time had come to counter relentless attacks that have targeted their community. Khodr Al-Khozai of the Shi'i-dominated United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) appealed to the three biggest Sunni organizations in Iraq: “We call on the Committee of Muslim Scholars, the Waqf (state-run endowment group) and Iraqi Islamic Party to take a clear stand regarding murders and attacks on Shi'is.

“We are on the edge of a precipice that could swallow us all. The ministries of interior and defense have proved incapable of defending us and in this case the people have the right to self-defense,” Khozai said.

A deputy from the Mehdi Army of Shi'i cleric Moqtada Sadr suggested neighborhood committees be created with religious and community leaders to work with the interior and defense ministries. “These committees would know how to find the terrorists,” Fatah Al-Sheikh promised." '

Meanwhile, the movement for southern autonomy is growing, according to Ed Wong of the New York Times. The movement is opposed by the hard line Shiite nationalists of the Sadr movement, and not especially favored by Grand Ayatollah Sistani, either. Although Wong highlights the secularists arguing for regional autonomy, there are Shiite religious figures who want it, as well, as reported by al-Zaman.
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Another US Helicopter Downed, This Time in Afghanistan
17 Dead

Taliban used some sort of rocket to shoot down a US helicopter in Afghanistan, killing all 17 servicemen aboard.

This is the second US helicopter lost this week. Earlier in the week, Iraqi guerrillas north of Baghdad downed one, killing two US soldiers.

It is not clear if these are rocket propelled grenade strikes, which are difficult to pull off and therefore rare, or if Taliban and Iraqi guerrillas are getting hold of shoulder-fired missiles, which would be more dangerous to the US in both places. What kind of missile used, if so, would also be telling. Old SA-7s, manufactured by the Soviet Union, don't appear to be very sophisticated and are seldom still in good working order (one of these was used unsuccessfully against an Israeli jet liner at Mombasa). SA-14s and SA-16s are more deadly, with electronic heat-seeking capability. I'm told that despite the serial numbers, SA-14s are deadlier.

Milt Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan during the 1980s, has long held that the US provision to the Mujahidin (predecessors of the Taliban) in Afghanistan of Stinger missiles to use against Soviet helicopter gunships was key to their victory.

If the sophistication of the weaponry in Afghanistan and Iraq increases, it could signal a two-front, hard-fought war for the US. I am not sure how many shoulder-fired missile launchers are out there on the world market already.

Meanwhile, Bush's speech on Iraq appears to have drawn a remarkably small audience on television. NBC's broadcast of it only drew about 5 million viewers. That is not a very good prime time statistic. If I'm not mistaken, Jay Leno's late-night comedy and interview show does something on that order. My guess is that Americans do not like the subject of Iraq because it is clearly bad news, and did not expect Bush actually to give them any good news. They were right, of course.
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Guest Opinion: Iraq Avalanche Unstoppable: Richards

"The Iraq Avalanche Cannot be Stopped"

by Alan Richards

University of California Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA
June 24, 2005

I have been reading the debate . . . on "What next in Iraq?" ("Unilateral withdrawal? UN forces? Staying the course?") with great interest. There is a way, however, in which I am troubled by what I perceive as a tacit assumption--a very American assumption,--underlying most of the discussion. It seems to me that even "pessimists" are actually "optimists": they assume that there exists in Iraq and the Gulf some "solution", some course of action which can actually lead to an outcome other than widespread, prolonged violence, with devastating economic, political, and social consequences.

I regret to say that I think this is wrong. There is no "solution" to this mess; it is sometimes not possible to "fix" things which have been broken. I can see no course of action which will prevent widespread violence, regional social upheaval, and economic hammering administered by oil price shocks. This is why so many of us opposed the invasion of Iraq so strenuously in the first place! We thought that it would unleash irreversible adverse consequences for (conventionally defined) US interests in the region. I am very sorry to say that I still think we were right.

Let me get specific:

1) As you have often pointed out, our continued presence de-legitimizes the current Iraqi government, which is, in any case, largely a Shiite Islamist and Kurdish tactical alliance. As Patrick Cockburn has pointed out (London Review of Books), the Kurds destabilized Iraq for half a century, and the Sunnis can certainly do the same. No Sunnis, no deal, no way-as you have repeatedly stressed. And the polls, which you courageously cite, which show some 40% of the population backing the insurgents, at least in principle, demonstrates-as you have repeatedly argued-that a large number of Iraqis want us to get out.* This means, as you say almost every day, that our current policy ("unilateral presence", if I may call it that) is unsustainable. The insurgents, and many Iraqis, want us out, by any means.Our continued presence cannot succeed.

2) Your scenario for a regional Lebanese or Thirty Years? War style conflict in the wake of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal seems very plausible. Indeed, since I think that the U.S. cannot stay, and since I (regrettably) think that the U.N. option is also not viable (for some of the reasons your correspondents have stated), such a scenario may be the most prescient prediction. But the U.S., as a polity and culture, will simply not sustain this war, not without huge damage to other interests, to the military itself, and to what remains of American democracy. Our continued presence only postpones the evil day, and the U.N. is not, I think, likely to step in.

3) Salafi jihadis and Iran are the big winners in all this-and they hate each other. I can see NO possible way for outsiders to defuse this: not with the U.S. in Iraq, not with the U.N., not with a power vacuum. People from outside the region (U.S., E.U., U.N., India, China, whoever) can do very, very little about this. It seems to me that, as usual, only Muslims can ameliorate the problems of Muslim governance.

4) Finally, there is a tacit assumption in the discussion so far that low oil prices, including current levels, are viable. I don't think this is true, for at least two reasons. A) The terrifying truth is that how we consume energy now both in the U.S. and elsewhere is entirely unsustainable for environmental reasons. Denial is the national past-time on this; and it is deeply destructive. Global warming is a reality, it will get worse, and the consequences will be extremely serious. I now work surrounded by biologists and environmental scientists, many of whom would cheer (even as they paid a heavy price in lost jobs and income) if the price of oil hit $100 a barrel, because they are in a panic about the consequences of our current profligate behavior. B) The jury is still out on the "Hubbert's Peak" or "Peak Oil" hypothesis, but the viewpoint is hardly silly. If it should prove to be correct, oil prices will rise, steeply-until we get serious about fostering the kind of changes in consumption and technology which are necessary, in any case (see A). To repeat: assuming that low oil prices are viable is very dubious at best, and at worst, constitutes a species of denial.

5) Who will pay the price for high oil prices? As you rightly say, poor people, especially in the Global South. Will they know this? Certainly. Will they thank rich countries like us? Hardly. Might this lead to other violent social movements, particularly given all the other problems in the Global South? I can't see why not. Of course, there are ways in principle of dealing with this problem which could minimize the pain. Every competent economist knows the litany of price changes, technology subsidies, and quantitative mandates which we should have implemented, decades ago. We should still do this now, even at this late date. Of course, every indication suggests that the necessary steps will not be taken, thanks, in large part, to American culture and politics. After all, no one, from either party, in the political arena is saying anything even remotely commensurate with the threat which most scientists see to the future of the planet. No one with any power is talking sensibly about energy use, global poverty, and their interrelationships. No one at all.

6) My last pessimistic point: my reading of history is that the only way large changes occur is as responses to large crises. I don't like this, but it seems true to me. And, I hasten to add, change in a crisis is hardly guaranteed to be humane, decent, or to have any claim on our ethical allegiance. We might get a new Roosevelt, but we also might get a new Hitler.

Please don't misunderstand me: I am not advocating regional-crisis-cum-oil-price-spike. I simply think that it is probably unavoidable. If we leave, there will be violence, mayhem, slaughter, and instability, and if we stay there will be violence, mayhem, slaughter, and instability. If there is (as I tend to think) a large crisis looming on the horizon, it will certainly be ugly, even hideous. And then-something else will happen. The one thing I don?t think is possible is to avoid it.

So let me close where I began: I think it is delusional to imagine that there exists a "solution" to the mess in Iraq. From this perspective, the folly of Bush, Cheney and Company in invading Iraq is even worse than most informed observers of the region already think. Starting an avalanche is certainly criminal. It does not follow, however, that such a phenomenon can be stopped once it has begun.

-----

*[Ed. note: The Boston Globe in May cited a US "internal poll" showing 45 percent support for attacks on US troops; reader Alex Easton says he called the Globe and confirmed that this was 45 percent of the Sunni Arabs. However, other polls have shown a majority of Iraqis wants US troops out of the country. 7/4/05]
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Some Iraqis Criticize Bush's Speech
Looming Health Crisis in Qaim Area

An Iraqi response to Bush's claim that he is fighting terrorism by drawing terrorists to Iraq:

' "Why don't they find another place to fight terrorism?" asked Abdul Ridha al-Hafadhi, 58, head of a humanitarian aid group. "I don't feel comforted by Bush's remarks; there must be a timetable for their departure." '

On Wednesday, a grenade attack wounded two Polish troops near Diwaniyah, and a bombing in Tel Afar killed four. On Tuesday, a bombing near the Japanese base at Samawah killed two Iraqis. Thousands of people came out for the funeral of slain parliamentarian Dhari Ali al-Fayyadh.

On Tuesday, guerrillas killed US troops at Balad and Tikrit; several were also wounded.

Reuters also reports that on Wednesday US forces arrested Dhahir al-Dhari, a major clan leader whose brother heads up the Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard line Sunni clerical group. Likewise:

' But another Sunni leader, Ayham al-Samarai, a former minister in the previous, U.S.-backed interim government, launched a new political movement, saying he aimed to give a voice to figures from the "legitimate Iraqi resistance". "The birth of this political bloc is to silence the sceptics who say there is no legitimate Iraqi resistance and that they cannot reveal their political face," he told a news conference. '

Al-Zaman: The Ministry of Labor is opening an inquiry into why several major Iraqi factories have closed down.

Iraq's health minister has warned against a building humanitarian crisis in the Qaim area. US military operations in the cities near the Syrian border have left made refugees out of 7,000 families, some of them now living in tents in the desert. It is alleged that the US is not allowing ambulances and humanitarian aid into the cities, and that there is danger of some refugees starving.

Although the primary stated goal of US campaigns in places such as Qaim is to root out guerrillas using them as bases, the massive force employed clearly announces that a subsidiary goal is to terrify the Sunni Arab population and to "encourage" them to report on the guerrillas from now on. Jane Arraf of CNN when reporting on the al-Qaim campaign showed a picture of what looked like a large community center being blown up by American planes. I thought to myself that it couldn't possibly be necessary to destroy that nice building. And, at the same time, the US is talking to the guerrilla leaders. Saddam called this sort of policy "tarhib wa taqrib": first you terrify your subjects, then you find ways of pulling them close to you. It does not reflect well on the US that the techniques it is now using look so familiar.
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Arguing with Bush

Bush's speech.

"The terrorists who attacked us and the terrorists we face murder in the name of a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance and despises all dissent.

"Terrorists" are not a cohesive ideological category like "Communists" as Bush suggests. Lots of groups use terror as a tactic. The Irgun Zionists in 1946 and 1947 did, as well. Also ETA in Spain, about the terrorist acts of which Americans seldom hear in their newspapers (they are ongoing). The Baath regime in Iraq engaged in so little international terrorism in the late 1990s and early zeroes that it was not even on the US State Department list of sponsors of terrorism.* Bush could take the above rationale and use it to invade most countries in the world.

"To achieve these aims, they have continued to kill: in Madrid, Istanbul, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Bali and elsewhere.

Yes, and these were al-Qaeda operations, and you haven't caught Bin Laden or al-Zawahiri.

"The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base, General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

This is monstrous and ridiculous at once. The people in Fallujah and Ramadi were not sitting around plotting terrorism three years ago. They had no plans to hit the United States. Terrorism isn't a fixed quantity. By unilaterally invading Iraq and then bollixing it up, Bush and Vines have created enormous amounts of terrorism, which they are now having trouble putting back in the bottle.

"Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others."

Maybe 8 percent of the fighters in Iraq are foreign jihadis. Of the some 25,000 guerrillas, almost all are Iraqi Sunni Arabs who dislike foreign military occupation of their country. You could imagine what people in Alabama or Kentucky would do if foreign troops came in and tried to set up checkpoints in their neighborhoods.

Moreover, many of those jihadis fighting in Iraq wouldn't even be jihadis if they weren't outraged by Bush's invasion and occupation of a Muslim country.

The fact is that the US went in and convinced the Sunni Arabs of Iraq that we were going to screw them over royally, driving them into violent opposition. They aren't inherently terrorists and could have been won over.

There are no Iraqi military units that can and will fight independently against the Sunni guerrillas, so all those statistics he quoted are meaningless.

Almost all the coalition allies of the US have a short timetable for getting out of the quagmire before it goes really bad. Bush's quotation of all that international support sounds more hollow each time he voices it.

An interesting Flash presentation on Coalition casualties can be found here, demnstrating their geographical extent throughout the country.

The political process in Iraq has not helped end the guerrilla war. It has excluded Sunnis or alienated them so that they excluded themselves. It offers no hope in and of itself.

There was nothing new in Bush's speech, and most of what he said was inaccurate.

Tomdispatch.com takes apart Bush's moral relativism or amoral relativism and is worth a read.

----

*This statement was a mistake on my part. Iraq was taken off the list in the 1980s and again in the early 1990s. It was on the list in the late 1990s and early zeroes, but the annual report noted that it had undertaken no terrorism against the US since 1993. See this set of reader responses.
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Tel Afar and the North

We have not heard much lately about the US campaign in the northern, largely Turkmen city of Tel Afar. The city has been a perennial security problem. There is evidence of local Turkmen guerrilla groups cooperating with Arab guerrillas, and the city seems to be part of an underground railway for the infiltration of foreign jihadis from Syria. An informed observer with experience in Iraq explains the dynamics of ethnic and religious disputes in the Iraqi north, especially among the Turkmen:

"Quick clarification on your June 16th post regarding Tel Afar. The US and the Iraqi forces are having such a hard time because the Turkmen in Tel Afar are actually Sunni, not Shia'. They are nearly all Ottoman-era Sunni migrants, rather than Shia' descendants of the Akqoyunlu and Karaqoyunlu tribes who make up a majority of Turkmen in Kirkuk.

While the Ba'ath used tribal proxies everywhere, they generally recruited "direct hires" in the security services from a much narrower base in specific communities. Nearly all Turkmen who had significant positions in Ba'ath security were from Tel Afar. Tel Afar had land conflicts with the Kurdish Mirani tribe - who were allies of Mustafa Barzani - and backed the government in the Kurdish wars of the 60's and 70's. Saddam subsequently recruited heavily in Tel Afar for Maktab al-Amin positions because many of them speak Kurdish. Tel Afar will remain an insurgent stronghold because it is historically as much a Ba'athist city as any city of the same size in al-Anbar.

The Turkmen-Kurdish conflict in Kirkuk is a little different. Unlike in Tel Afar, Turkmen in Kirkuk are unlikely to join the present insurgency because they really dislike both the Ba'athists and the Sunni jihadist types. The Turkmen in Kirkuk are a minor impediment to Kurdish control over the oil but the Kurds are more likely to repress them out of a fear of Turkish government influence. A Turkish special forces team attempted to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk in July 2003, in coordination with Turkmen in the city. I'm convinced Kurdish abduction, torture and abuse of Turkmen is intended to intimidate alleged collaborators with Turkey rather than the insurgency. Make no mistake - the Kurds fully intend to be independent, even if it takes another decade. The Kurdish policy in Kirkuk is to control Turkish intrigue long enough for demographics to shift in their favor, without provoking Turkey to the point that they close the border. That occurred when the US accidentally arrested that Turkish hit squad.

. . . I have no doubt that the Kurds are abducting Turkmen, but I also have some suspicions about the objectivity of the [State Department memo] and the scale of the problem. Kurdish abduction and torture of Sunni Arabs is a much more serious problem, but neither the US nor Turkey are likely to protest too strongly. This conflict seems to be on an inevitable and tragic path towards a shadow war in which pesh mergha and the Badr Brigade - maybe wearing Iraqi uniforms, maybe not - start going after the insurgents using their own methods and tactics. Both the U.S. and Turkey have an incentive to draw the line if Turkmen are the victims . . .

I don't support a "shadow war" in which the Kurds and the Shia' political parties start fighting fire with fire. I think there needs to be pressure on them to prevent abuses, and I think there needs to be rigorous monitoring. But I hope I don't give the impression of moral equivalence between the pesh mergha and Shia' parties on the one side, and the former Ba'athist/jihadists on the other. The former are more responsive to public and international opinion and there's a certain degree of internal self-control that usually places some limits on their behavior. Not to mention Sistani, who . . . deserves the Nobel Prize. The Ba'athists and jihadists are another matter . . .

Interesting history... Too bad the US doesn't understand it."

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SCIRI Rejects Negotiations with Baathists

Against the backdrop of the London Times report that the Americans are negotiating with Iraqi guerrillas, confirmed recently by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Gilbert Achcar writes:

Excerpt from the lead article on Iraq in Al-Hayat, June 28:

The Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim) [the main Shia fundamentalist pro-Iranian force in Iraq and the main component of the Parliament's majority United Iraqi Alliance] warned the Americans against concluding a settlement with the Baathists and supporters of the previous regime.

Ali al-Aadhad, a member of the leadership of the SCIRI, told Al-Hayat that "the terrorist attack that hit the Shia-inhabited al-Karada aera in Baghdad represented a turning point in the strategy of the alliance between the Takfiri forces [fanatical Sunni fundamentalists] and Saddam Hussein' bunch. This turn meant basically a shift from attacks aimed at the US and [Iraqi] army and police men to attacks aimed at Shias as was the case in al-Karada."

He considered that "such terrorist attacks constitute a means of pressure on the Americans to speed up the conclusion of a settlement with Saddam's bunch, allowing them to return to political life." He maintained that "the Americans use sometimes labels like 'Sunni Arabs' in order to justify the talks, but the SCIRI knows that the talks are held with Saddam's bunch."

He accused the Americans of attempting "to by-pass Shia religious forces" [the SCIRI leader specified "religious" because "secular" former US-designated Prime Minister, Iyad al-Allawi, is the main architect of the strategy of a US deal with the Baathists], maintaining that "the timing of the US settlement with Saddam's bunch means that the Americans want to involve this bunch in the drafting of the constitution and the forthcoming elections." He added that one of the most important goals of the al-Barq [Lightning] operation was "to accelerate the weakening of Saddam's bunch in a way that contradicts the ongoing attempts to conclude an American settlement with this bunch."

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Parliamentarian Assassinated

Guerrillas assassinated a member of parliament in Baghdad on Tuesday. They cut down Dhari Ali al-Fayadh, along with his son and three bodyguards. Al-Fayadh had run for office as part of the largely Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. The oldest member of parliament, he served as speaker of the house when it first met. He is the second member of parliament to be killed.

Reuters reports:

"In other incidents on Tuesday, a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman blew himself up in a hospital in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 13. A car bomb killed two bodyguards in a failed assassination bid on the chief of traffic police in the ethnically divided northern oil city of Kirkuk and police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the southern city of Samawa wounding seven."

US forces began a new campaign at Haditha.

45% of Americans in a new poll say that the US will never succeed in Iraq. Some 49% thought it could, but most of those believed it would take five years (a very optimistic time scale).

Iraq's new government is trying to get out of a United Nations-imposed program that subtracts 5 percent of its oil revenues to pay compensation to Kuwait and others for damage done by Iraq in the 1990-1991 invasion of Kuwait. Iraq wants the ability to negotiate bilateral deals rather than being under the UN thumb on this. The Iraqi government is only able to pump about 1.4 million barrels a day because of sabotage, and needs every cent to run the government and work against the guerrilla movement. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and others, however, want the payments to continue, figuring Iraq owes them $50 bn. for damages.
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Guerrillas Shoot Down US Helicopter
Bombings in Baghdad
Bush Presses Blair for More Troops

Guerrillas using a shoulder-held missile launcher, probably an SA-16, shot down a US Apache helicopter Monday north of Baghdad, killing both servicemen aboard. AP reports, ' "Witness Mohammed Naji told Associated Press Television News he saw two helicopters flying toward Mishahda when "a rocket hit one of them and destroyed it completely in the air" . . . Heavy gunfire was heard at the time of the crash and shots also were heard afterward, the AP reporter said. ' If this is the future of the guerrilla war, US casualties will rise dramatically.

In another attack on Monday, guerrillas detonated a massive bomb aiming at a US military convoy in Baghdad during the early evening, but missed. It went off between the al-Bida'a Cinema and the Sunni al-Samarra'i Mosque, killing at least four Iraqi by-standers and wounding 16 others. AP says people were shopping in the New Baghdad area "before the curfew." There's a night-time curfew in Baghdad?

Elsewhere in the capital, guerrillas targeted a police patrol in the northern Azamiyah neighborhood (largely Sunni), but appear to have missed, killing two innocent by-standers.

Wire services report, "Seven Iraqis were also wounded when a rocket slammed into a restaurant in the centre of the capital as attacks continued in Baghdad despite a security clampdown. The seven, three waiters and four customers, were wounded when a rocket exploded in Al-Yassir restaurant near a busy taxi and bus terminal off the capital's central Museum square."

Former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi admitted in Cairo recently that Syria is not actively backing the jihadi infiltrators coming into Iraq across the Syrian border. Allawi will have been in a position to see the intelligence on this matter when he was in office, so this is a crucial admission. It contradicts the charges bandied about by members of the Bush administration and the Neoconservatives in the US.

A Two-Front War

Tony Blair and the British military are caught between Iraq and a hard place. The Bush administration is putting enormous pressure on the British to send more troops to Afghanistan, where the Taliban are regrouping and launching an Iraq-style guerrilla war. So the British began making noises about reducing the number of their troops in southern Iraq (around 10,000) and shifting them to Afghanistan.

But no. Bush recently told Blair that Iraq is on the brink of disaster, and that the British need to send more troops to that country, in addition to sending new units to fight the Taliban.

The Scotsman reveals that

' Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month. Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that Blair is preparing to rush thousands more British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, amid warnings the coalition faces a "complete strategic failure" in the effort to rebuild the nation. '

If the Pushtuns turn against the Karzai government in large numbers, rallying around neo-Taliban, the country could fall back into war. This danger was always the hidden cost of Bush going on to Iraq before stabilizing Afghanistan.

I don't think the British public will put up with being dragged into a two-front hot war, and you wonder whether the Blair government might fall over such a development.

The mystery to me is why the Americans think they need more British troops in southern Iraq. Most of that area has fallen into the hands of religious Shiite militias anyway, and I doubt the British get out of their barracks all that much. When they do, they appear to be angering a lot of the Shiites, as in Maysan, the provincial government of which yesterday launched a non-cooperation campaign against the British. Do the Americans want to move the British up to the hot zone in the Sunni heartland? Is the South more unstable than it looks on the outside (e.g. is the Mahdi Army reconstituting itself down there?)

Ironically, even as the Afghanistan venture appears on the verge of collapse, Dick Cheney instanced it in his Wolf Blitzer interview on Sunday as evidence of the undue pessimism of his critics and a reason to be optimistic about Iraq.

About three quarters of Americans believe that the guerrilla movement in Iraq is either maintaining its strength or growing in strength. Only 1/4 agree with Dick Cheney that it is weakening.

Arundhati Roy reports from the mock tribunal in Istanbul trying George W. Bush for the Iraq War.

The Egyptian cleric kidnapped by the US Centeral Intelligence Organization from Milan in February of 2003 was involved in Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group, and was preparing false passports and aiding in other ways the transport of radical volunteers to go to Iraq, where the group had a base in the north. An Italian magistrate has issued arrest warrants for the CIA personnel involved. It is not entirely clear why the US couldn't get the Berlusconi government to move against the cleric itself.

I'm posting this a little early because am traveling on Tuesday, but will try to post more late afternoon.
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Rumsfeld on Vietnam and Government Secrecy

These quotes from Congressman Rumsfeld, circa 1966, are amusing and tragic in retrospect.

' A 1966 article in the Chicago Tribune quoted Rumsfeld as saying the following: “The administration should clarify its intent in Viet Nam,’ he said. ‘People lack confidence in the credibility of our government.’ Even our allies are beginning to suspect what we say, he charged. ‘It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy,’ he said. ‘With the secrecy, it’s impossible. The American people will do what’s right when they have the information they need.” [Chicago Tribune, 4/13/66] '

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50 Killed in Guerrilla Violence
Al-Hakim: Sectarian War Could Engulf Middle East
Al-Akhbar: Internationalize Iraq Crisis

Guerrilla violence killed at least 50 persons in Iraq on Sunday and left a similar number wounded, according to Al-Sharq al-Awsat. Among the killed was a US soldier killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad (two other US servicemen were wounded in the incident).

The biggest death toll came in Mosul. The casualties in the bombing of the police station mentioned here on Sunday rose to 12 dead, two of them civilians, with 8 wounded. Later, a suicide bomber killed 16 persons and wounded 7 -- mostly civilians -- in the parking lot of an Iraqi army base at the edges of Mosul. Yet another attacker with bomb belt blew himself up in Mosul's Jumhuri Teaching Hospital, targeting a room used by police guards and killing 5 and wounding 8 of them, and wounding 4 civilians, as well.

Outside Sadiyah, an hour and a half's drive north of Baghdad, guerrillas shot down 6 Iraqi soldiers at their base.

There were two bombings in Kirkuk, one of them using a booby-trapped dog, which left 6 persons injured.

Al-Hayat: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and of the United Iraqi Alliance that controls parliament, warned Sunday that "the launching of a sectarian war in Iraq would mean the outbreak of war in the entire region." He called on Arabs and Muslims to "stand decisively against those who spread terror" to Iraq. His statement was distributed at a wake held for the victims of attacks last Wednesday and Thursday on the largely Shiite neighborhoods of Shu'lah and Karradah in Baghdad.

He said, "Zarqawi-- the criminal and the wreaker of corruption in the land-- and his helpers and supporter from among the sectarians, and the orphans of the dead-and-buried Saddam regime, and the excommunicators, have unveiled the ugliness of their visages more and more by targeting innocent civilians from among the Shiites." He added, "These criminal groups have openly announced to the multitudes their sectarian war against the Shiites in Iraq, and have issued Islamic legal rulings declaring them excommunicated and unbelievers, saying that it is a duty to kill Muslims who follow the family of the Prophet, after having initially hidden for the previous span of time behind the pretext of confronting Occupation and those who collaborated with it." He affirmed that the Iraqi people "will not be drawn into these criminal, terrorist plots, rather Sunni and Shiite organizations will strengthen their bonds."

Then there is this item:

' Iraq's Al-Hakim Praises Egyptian Grand Imam for Condemning Terrorist Attacks
MENA (MIDDLE EAST NEWS AGENCY)
Sunday, June 26, 2005 T19:03:23Z

BAGHDAD, June 26 (MENA) - Chairman of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim hailed Sunday the stance of Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Mohammad Sayed Tantawi on Iraq.

Sheikh Tantawi had condemned attacks targeting innocent Iraqis, Hakim told a ceremony mourning those recently killed in a cluster of bombings in Al-Karada and Al-Shuala districts in Baghdad.

The SCIRI leader asked Muslim scholars and religious authorities to make public their stances on attacks against Iraqis.

He stressed that Iraqis need to unite in the face of terrorist attacks. '

Al-Hakim was glad for the denunciation of the killing of innocent Muslims by the Rector of al-Azhar, who is among the foremost religious authorities in the Sunni world. Tantawi has also forbidden Sunnis to excommunicate Shiites, i.e., to allege that they are not really Muslims. His statement calling on Muslims in Iraq to unite across the sectarian divide came after he had met with former interim PM Iyad Allawi.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the provincial Governing Council of Maysan province, along with political parties and civil society organizations, has called for a boycott of British troops and a non-cooperation drive with regard to them. The non-cooperation movement comes in protest against what the GC calls the continued "excesses" of the British troops against inhabitants of the province. They cited home invasions, one of which cause a pregnant woman to miscarry, the incarceration of "a number of innocents," and mistreatment of government bureaucrats from the circles of the minitry of trade. The governing council also lodged a complaint about these incidents with the national parliament. Maysan politics is dominated by the Sadr movement of nationalist Shiites, many of them influenced by Muqtada al-Sadr or by his rival, Muhammad Yaqubi.

Egypt's government is afraid that the US will withdraw, leaving Iraq a mess in the Middle East that will blow back on other Arab states.

At the same time, the government-owned al-Akhbar in an editorial urged the United States to seek international help in Iraq in a way that it refused to do in the past. (This reference may be to the United Nations or the Arab League-- it isn't clear). Via FBIS:

' Cairo Paper Says Washington Should Ask for International Help in Iraq Editorial
The Difficult American Option in Iraq!"
AL-AKHBAR
Sunday, June 26, 2005 T21:52:23Z

"This is a fact proven by the rising number of Americans killed in Iraq, the continuing Iraqi bloodletting, the incessant explosions that claim tens of Iraqis every day, and the size of the terrifying destruction that has turned this Arab country into wrecks and ruins.

Perhaps the only way to come out of this fix is an admission by the United States of the dimensions of the Iraqi predicament and a very determined quest to involve the international community in searching for a solution--even if this solution meant Washington's adoption of some difficult decisions it had not taken into consideration when it took this dangerous decision to invade Iraq.

(Description of Source: Cairo Al-Akhbar in Arabic -- State-Owned Daily) '

George Hunsinger warns of a Thiry Years' War on the part of the US in the Middle East.

I share al-Hakim's fear that civil war in Iraq could ignite the entire eastern portion of the Middle East. He is a man of the region and attention should be paid to him on this. Likewise, I agree with the Egyptians that a precipitate US withdrawal would very likely spark the sectarian war that al-Hakim warned about. I also agree with the al-Akhbar editorial that it is time for the US to bring in the international community. The Egyptians know Iraq and know the region. The Americans, who have shown themselves incredibly ignorant of both, should listen carefully to what they are saying.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

It Depends on What "Throes" Is

It started when Cheney went on "Larry King Live" last month and said this:

' "I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time," Cheney said. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." '

This is the man who "knew where exactly" Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction were and who was sure Iraqis would deliriously greet the US military as liberators.

Virtually nobody agreed with Cheney. Senator John McCain, when asked if it was the last throes, sighed "No." Senator Chuck Hagel suggested Cheney was disconnected from reality.

Then there was this exchange at a senate hearing between Sen. Carl Levin and General John Abizaid, the Pentagon's senior officer in the Gulf:

' Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.: "General Abizaid, can you give us your assessment of the strength of the insurgency? Is it less strong, more strong, about the same strength as it was six months ago?"

Gen. John Abizaid, top U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf: "In terms of comparison from six months ago, in terms of foreign fighters, I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago.

"In terms of the overall strength of the insurgency, I'd say it's about the same as it was."

Levin: "So you wouldn't agree with the statement that it's in its last throes?"

Abizaid: "I don't know that I would make any comment about that other than to say there's a lot of work to be done against the insurgency." '

In other words, a lot to be done and no progress in the past 6 months.

So then Wolf Blitzer at CNN came back to Cheney and asked him again about the last throes.

BLITZER: The commander of the U.S. Military Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid has been testifying on Capitol Hill.

CHENEY: Right.

BLITZER: He says that the insurgency now is at a strength undiminished as it was six months ago, and he says there are actually more foreign fighters in Iraq now than there were six months ago. That doesn't sound like the last throes.

CHENEY: No, I would disagree. If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period -- the throes of a revolution. The point would be that the conflict will be intense, but it's intense because the terrorists understand if we're successful at accomplishing our objective, standing up a democracy in Iraq, that that's a huge defeat for them. They'll do everything they can to stop it. [Cheney then invoked the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944.]

Cheney contradicts himself here. On the one hand he redefines "throes" as capable of lasting a long time. Then he goes back essentially to predicting that the Iraqi guerrilla war will be over in about six months. Isn't that the implication of his invoking the Battle of the Bulge?

Then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld goes on Fox Cable News and says this:

' Rumsfeld said: "We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years." '

So now not only has there been no progress for six months, not only is there a lot of work to do, but we are not in December, 1944 of WW II at all. We are in 1963 of the Vietnam War, with 12 years to go, and we can't win. The Iraqi ARVN has to win.

But my real question is whether "throes" can mean what Cheney alleges.

The Oxford English dictionary defines a "throe" as

' 1. A violent spasm or pang, such as convulses the body, limbs, or face. Also, a spasm of feeling; a paroxysm; agony of mind; anguish. '

That just doesn't seem to me to be the sort of thing that could last for several years at a time. A spasm has to be over with pretty quickly.

The Bard gives us this: "Their pangs of Loue, with other incident throwes That Natures fragile Vessell doth sustaine." [SHAKES. Timon V. i. 203] So here a throwe [throe] is a pang, as in a pang of love. (Spelling it without the "w" seems to be a seventeenth century practice that only arose late in Shakespeare's lifetime; i.e. it is a late innovation).

A lot of early modern writers used "throes" to refer to a mother's birth pains:

Milton says, "My womb..Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes." [1667 MILTON P.L. II. 780]

And Pope writes, "Her new-fall'n young..Fruit of her throes." [1715-20 POPE Iliad XVII. 6]

Defoe has, "Frequent Throws and Pangs of Appetite, that nothing but the Tortures of Death can imitate." [1719 DE FOE Crusoe (Hotten's repr.) 408] Again, a pang, as in a pang of appetite. I wouldn't say a pang of appetite could go on for years ordinarily.

But Cheney didn't just speak of a "throe." He said "the last throes, if you will." Apparently we won't. But in any case, the last throes are the spasm of a dying body, of the sort that actors find it so difficult to do convincingly. Afficionadoes of classic silly comedy movies will remember when the dying prospector kicks the bucket in "A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." I mean, his foot actually strikes the bucket as he dies. That's the throes, Dick.

OED says the Scottish spelling of this was deid-thraw. I thought that had an ominous ring to it, sort of like something you'd find in Frank Herbert's Dune books. "The deid-thraw of Abu Musab."

Spenser in the Faerie Queene gives, "O man! have mind of that last bitter throw." (I. x. 41)

I thought this entry rather good: "The agony of . . . outrage transcends the throes of dissolution." [1833 H. MARTINEAU Tale of Tyne vi. 113 ]

In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how just about everyone feels about Cheney's assertion about the throes in Iraq.

Cheney is wrong to mix up two separate usages of "throes." The "last throes" are the "paraxysm of death," and imply a quick end. The "throes of revolution" are a different sense of the word.

The OED gives, "When a nation is in the throes of revolution, wild spirits are abroad in the storm." [1856 FROUDE Hist. Eng. (1858) II. ix. 373]

You can say that again. Also watermelons and dogs rigged up with bombs.

The throes of a revolution is a figurative sense of throes, drawing on its meaning of "convulsion, paroxysm," and perhaps invoking its archaic connotation of the pangs of childbirth. It just isn't the same as "the last throes" unless you actually were speaking of "the last throes of the revolution."

So, I have to reject Cheney's explanation to Wolf Blitzer of what he meant by the "insurgency" being in "its last throes, if you will." He wasn't talking about the throes of revolution. He was talking about kicking the bucket. Pretty soon. And the guerrilla movement in Iraq just isn't in the last throes of anything. It is in throes all right, of some sort. But there's no death rattle to be heard except that of its victims. And we can expect this to go on for years (I'm agreeing with Rumsfeld! Help!)

The OED on etymology or the origins of words is sometimes hard to follow. But I waded through what it had to say about "throe." And I conclude that the whole thing is probably a series of mistakes, something like Bush's malapropisms. Throe as a word was given to us by a series of people very like Bush. It should probably be the "thrawes of death."

[Throe is a late alteration (noted first in 1615) of the earlier throwe, throw (which survived as late as 1733). The origin and history of ME. {th}rowe (found c 1200), and its northern form {th}raw(e, {th}raw, thrau (known c 1300, and still in use in Sc.) is not quite clear.

It may come from the verb throwen or thrawen, which early on (i.e. when the Buyids of northern Iran ruled Baghdad) meant "to twist, rack, torture." That works for me. But there are apparently reasons to think it got mixed up with other verbs over time.

Such a series of linguistic errors is hard on dictonary makers. Bush produces them by the bushel.

Bush has refered to America as the world's "pacemakers" instead of "peacemakers". Or he has spoken of the need for the Americas to be an "economically vile hemisphere." He has called for "the end of terriers," which appears to be a mongrel dog made up of "tariffs and barriers". Or he said, "I understand there's a suspicion that we—we're too security-conscience." Or "Who could have possibly envisioned an erection — an election in Iraq at this point in history?" (Jan. 10, 2005)

In the same way, some Bush ancestor seems to have messed around with thrawen and thrawe and turned it into throw and then later on misspelled it throe.

And then Dick Cheney came along and reinterpreted it as something that could last for twelve years in a row.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Hayat on US contacts with AMS
Chalabi Favors Timeline for US Withdrawal

Gilbert Achcar writes:

Quite interesting excerpts from an article written from Baghdad by Basil Muhammad in today's Al-Hayat, reporting on an interview he made with Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a prominent leading member of the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the most respected Sunni group vocal against the occupation.

Excerpts:

' ...On the dialogue with the Americans, he said that the contacts that the AMS had with them were "interrupted," explaining that "the previous dialogue between the two parties was very obscure and we don't know whether it was a tactial dialogue or a strategic one." He added that "the dialogue that we hear of between the dissolved Baath party and the Americans seems different." He also added that "the ground on which the AMS stands in any dialogue is patriotic whereas the Baathists have different choices, including their return to power; the AMS doesn't want any power, but seeks a specific goal that is the withdrawal of occupation forces."...

He described the meeting held recently by Iraqi Vice-Prime Minister Ahmad al-Chalabi with the leadership of the AMS as "a step toward the dialogue with al-Jaafari's Government." He said also that "al-Chalabi agrees with our position calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops... We told him that we won't join the political process as long as State terror is carried on in al-Qa'im, al-Anbar and Baghdad districts."

He maintained that "the patriotic camp calling for the withdrawal of occupation forces and for quickly establishing a timetable for their withdrawal has become larger than anytime before."

Al-Hayat has learned from other sources that there is a current within the Government holding a position in favor of a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

This current, of which al-Chalabi is a prominent member, has accused American parties of refusing the idea of concluding an agreement on the status of foreign troops, and of wanting to preserve the current status quo. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ahmadinejad Uses Bush's Tactics

Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei gloated Saturday that the Iranian public had "humiliated" Bush by electing hard liner Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president. But in fact, the campaigning style of the two men suggests that in some ways they are soul mates.

Newly elected Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad won in some part by using the same electoral tools as George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

1. Smear Tactics

Ahmadinejad's supporters smeared his chief rival, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by spreading all sorts of false rumors about him. Negative campaigning is illegal in Iran, but complaints to the rightwing judges went nowhere because they support Ahmadinejad. (See below).

Bush supporters in South Carolina in the 2000 elections smeared his Republican rival for the nomination John McCain by falsely suggesting (via a phony telephone poll) that he had had an interracial affair that produced an illegitimate child. In the 2004 campaign, the White House directed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to smear John Kerry as a liar and coward with regard to his distinguished military record, while chicken hawk Bush, who did not even properly serve out his time as a reservist back in the US, was depicted as some sort of war hero.

2. False Consciousness

Ahmadinejad, a rightwinger, poses as a champion of the common people, and once dressed up as a street sweeper. He thus got a lot of working class people to vote for him, even though he will do the bidding of billionaire clerical hardliners who have done little for ordinary folks.

Likewise, George W. Bush affects a southern drawl (he is from Connecticut) and makes himself out to be a friend of the common man, with his "tax cuts" and program to "save" social security. In fact, everything Bush does primarily benefits the rich and actually hurts the interests of workers and farmers. Nevertheless, as with Ahmadinejad, he gets many in the working classes to vote for him.

3. Posing as a Critic of the Government You Run

Ahmadinejad is allowed to attack the Iranian government because he has impeccable credentials as a rightwinger and loyalist to Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. He can therefore complain about state corruption without being pilloried or punished. His anti-government rhetoric struck a chord with many Iranians and helped him get elected. If a liberal reformer had spoken that way about the Iranian government, he would have been accused of disloyalty and lack of patriotism.

Likewise, George W. Bush affects a rhetoric of "cleaning up Washington" and breaking the gridlock and overcoming partisanship. In reality, corruption has flourished in his regime, with severe questions constantly being raised about lobbyists essentially bribing Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham and others. The grandson of a senator and son of a president who calls the white-tie corporate crowd his "base" represents himself as an outsider to Washington and a critic of the government! Yet liberals like Dick Durbin who criticize the government are pilloried as traitors.

4. Benefitting from Dominance of the Judiciary

Ahmadinejad was supported by the clerical rightwing judiciary and Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. When other candidates complained about ballot stuffing, the rightwing judges backed Ahmadinejad.

Bush: Five words: Florida and the Supreme Court.

5. Religious Congregations and the Military

Ahmadinejad was supported by many mosque preachers all over the country, as well as by religious volunteers for a paramilitary called basij. Some 300,000 basij all over Iran essentially acted as a political party to support Ahmadinejad.

Bush depends heavily on the support of evangelical and fundamentalist churches in the United States, which abuse their tax-exempt, non-partisan status by actually becoming foot soldiers for the Republican Party. The US military is also disproportionately Republican and supports Bush. Air Force cadets are apparently put under enormous pressure to become evangelicals, under the Bush regime.


By the way, speaking of cadets, Space Cadet Michael Ledeen over at the American Enterprise Institute alleged last week that hardliners brought two million Pakistanis over to vote for Ahmadinejad. Presumably they would have been brought in to Zahedan in Iranian Baluchistan from Quetta.

Ledeen fancies himself a Middle East expert and is trying hard to get up a US war on Iran, having been helpful in getting up the Iraq War, which he promised us would go so well.

Let me explain a few basics to Mr. Ledeen.

1. You can't move 2 million people through the Baluchistan desert in a short period of time. A population movement that massive could even be seen by satellite.

2. Pakistanis are largely Sunnis. They don't like the Iranian regime, which is their rival. They would not go vote in Iran. Even the Shiite minority would not, and it wouldn't vote for Ahmadinejad if it could.

3. The voting rolls for Iranian Baluchistan show about 800.000 voters. Where are the two million Pakistanis?

4. Baluchistan voted for reformist candidates. (Most Baluchis are Sunnis and are afraid of the Shiite hardliners).

Can you imagine that people like Ledeen are actually allowed to come on television as "experts" or to publish in political journals despite spewing complete nonsense? If your son or daughter gets drafted and sent to die in Iran, it will be in some part because of the propaganda spread by people like Ledeen, who, by the way, has some sort of weird relationship both to the more fascistic elements in Italian military intelligence and to the Likud extremists in Israel. NB: The false Niger uranium documents were forged by a former agent of Italian military intelligence . . .

All that said, it is probably true that there was some ballot stuffing by Ahmadinejad supporters. It was alleged by clerical moderate Karrubi, and it is plausible. These presidential elections are the least free and fair since the early 1990s, though all along there has been a problem of the exclusion and vetting of candidates by the clerics. On the other hand, it seems undeniable that Ahmadinejad's campaign struck a chord with many Iranians tired of corruption and economic stagnation. He may well have won the second round even without those "extra" ballots.

By the way, rightwing US commentators often slam Iranian elections because the candidates are vetted by the clerical Guardian Council for their loyalty to the Khomeinist ideology. In the past two years, the vetting has grown ever more rigorous, excluding relative liberals from running for parliament or president. The commentators are correct.

However, in the United States the "first past the post" system of winner-takes-all elections and the two-party system play a similar role in limiting voters' choices of candidates. Neither libertarians nor socialists are likely to be serious contenders for the presidency in the United States, since neither of the two dominant parties will run them. The US approach to limiting voter choice is systemic and so looks "natural," but US voters have a narrower range of practical choices in candidates than virtually any other democratic societ
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Mosul Police Station blown Up, many Dead
31 Killed Saturday, Dozens Wounded

Mosul: A suicide bomber detonated his payload at the central police station in Mosul on Sunday morning, bringing down part of the wall and killing at least 5 persons, 4 of them officers. At least 7 were wounded. The rubble was still being searched Sunday mid-morning Baghdad time.

On Saturday, wire services report, , "a suicide attacker rammed his vehicle into an Iraqi police patrol on a bridge in southwest Mosul, killing at least five and wounding two . . ." This attack aimed at killing the provincial chief of police, but he was not in the convoy.

Tel Afar In the northern, Turkmen city of Tel Afar, Reuters reports, "Residents and officials at Tal Afar . . . where U.S. troops have cracked down this month, said three bomb attacks were followed by a battle involving U.S. tanks and helicopters that lasted about three hours. Hospital officials said at least two civilians were killed."

Samarra: The Associated Press reports that on Saturday, a suicide bomber targeting the home of a special forces police officer instead killed 9 persons on the street.

Ramadi: On Friday, 20 guerrillas captured 8 policemen at a checkpoint near the city, took them to their offices, and mowed them down with gunfire.

Baghdad: On Sunday morning, guerrillas assassinated Col. Riyad Abdul Karim, the deputy head of one of Baghdad's main police departments.

Guerillas fired three mortar rounds at a thronging cafe in a mostly Shiite district of western Baghdad Saturday evening. They killed 5 civilians and wounded 7.

Guerrillas killed two police commandos patrolling West Baghdad on Saturday. Another policeman was found assassinated.

Amara: Guerrillas assassinated three policemen 46 miles south of Amara on Saturday.

Kirkuk: On Saturday, three Iraqi policemen were killed in Kirkuk, along with two Kurdish truck drivers delivering cement to the Americans:

From FBIS

Saturday, June 25, 2005 T20:59:22Z

"KIRKUK, June 25 (MENA) - Two Kurdish drivers were killed Saturday when their trucks came under fire by unidentified gunmen on Kirkuk-Tikrit road in northern Iraq. The truckers were carrying cement to US forces in northern Iraq, said eyewitnesses, adding that the attackers were dressed in Iraqi army uniform . . ."

KIRKUK, June 25 (MENA) - An Iraqi police convoy came under fire in Iraq's northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Three Iraqi policemen were injured in the attack that took place in Kirkuk's Al-Alamin district. Meantime, Kirkuk's Multaqa municipality chief Hiroush Abdel Karim survived an attempt on his life earlier in the day when an explosive charge went off near his motorcade. Two civilian cars were destroyed and a citizen was injured in the blast . . ."

The New York Times reports that Iraqi reconstruction efforts are plagued by graft.

Peter Beaumont reports for the Guardian from Baghdad that sectarian reprisal killings are on the rise in Iraq, and increasing hatred between Sunnis and Shiites are fueling them.

At least 70 radicalized British Muslims are fighting on the side of the guerrillas in Iraq, according to the Times of London. There are about 1.7 million Muslims in the UK excluding Northern Ireland, which does not keep statistics on them. (The UK population is approximately 60 million). Many second-generation Muslims are not well integrated into UK society and say they face discrimination and unemployment, especially in smaller cities like Bradford, the site of a race riot. On the other hand, 70 out of 1.7 million is not very many.

Reports from the Iraqi press via BBC World Monitoring for June 23:

"Al-Da'wah publishes on the front page a 70-word report stating that 40 National Assembly members presented to the assembly a bill regarding the formation of the southern federal bloc that comprises Basra, Al-Nasiriyah, and Maysan Governorates . . .

Al-Furat publishes on page 2 a 100-word report on the conclusion of the recent conference of the Advisory Councils of the southern governorates in Basra. The report says that the conference demanded 17% of Iraq's budget [i.e. oil income]. . .

Al-Adalah carries on page 1 a 150-word report citing Vice-President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi as saying that the there are no differences between the Unified Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdistan Coalition on adopting federalism as a form of government in Iraq . . .

Al-Hawzah publishes on page 1 a 200-word text of Muqtada al-Sadr's answers to questions by a number of "militant speaking Hawzah" regarding participation in the municipal councils' elections as candidates and electorate. Al-Sad says that religious scholars are not allowed to become candidates, while others are granted this right "under the condition that they are selfless, able to resist earthly temptation, and work to gain Iraq's independence."

Al-Bayan carries on page 2 a 100-word report citing chairman of the Baghdad Governorate Council saying that the council has made all arrangements for the elections of the municipal councils in Baghdad, scheduled for the end of July . . .

Al-Zaman publishes on page 4 a 600-word part 1 of a report on an interview with National Assembly member Mufid al-Jaza'iri, who says that a deadline for drafting the constitution is not [far] enough [off]. He adds that the government's decision to extend the stay of multinational forces has been taken without consulting the National Assembly . . .

Al-Dustur publishes on the front page a 300-word report stating that Iraqi tribal chiefs continued their sit in demanding that the Iraqi government review its recent decision to extend the stay of multinational forces in Iraq. The report cites the organizer of the sit in, Ali Hudhayfah, as saying that the reason behind the sit in is "to inform the elected Iraqi government that the Iraqi people are opposing the presence of these forces." He added that a number of National Assembly members, namely Falah Shanshal, Karim al-Bakhati, and Baha al-A'araji, have visited and declared solidarity with us. The report cites Shaykh Hatam Hashim al-Sadkhan, chief of the Al-Hamid tribe in Dhi Qar Governorate, as saying: "We have come to this place to support the National Assembly's decision of the withdrawal of US forces and to denounce the Iraqi government's decision regarding extension of the stay of multinational forces in Iraq." . . .

Al-Furat publishes on the front page a 300-word report citing well-informed US sources affirming that 80% of the funds allocated by the US for the reconstruction of Iraq have disappeared. The report says that this indicates large scale embezzlements and corruption. . . [This is a vast exaggeration - JC]

Al-Furat publishes on the front page a 160-word report citing Iraqi sources in Basra and Al-Nasiriyah Governorates asserting that a large number of the Al-Bidun, who were expelled by Kuwait after the Gulf War in 1991, are now working as informants for the US Army . . .

Al-Mada publishes on the front page a 150-word report saying that strict security measures have been taken by the Iraqi police to protect 3,000 people who staged a demonstration in Al-Najaf Governorate demanding the release of all detainees from the prisons, especially those from the Al-Sadr trend. . . .

Al-Furat publishes on page 2 a 200-word citing a health source as saying that 67,196 diarrhea cases were reported in Iraq in 2004. The source predicted that the number of cases will increase this summer due to drinking water pollution . . .

Al-Mashriq publishes on page 4 a 300-word report saying that the Ministry of Health has warned the citizens against drinking the water supplied through pipelines without boiling it, adding that diarrhea is currently spreading among people.

Al-Mashriq publishes on page 4 a 300-word report saying that the Environment Ministry has warned against the increase of environmental waste allover Baghdad . . .

Al-Manar al-Yawm carries on page 3 a 300-word article criticizing the Mojahidin-e-Khalq Organization for being a terrorist organization during the time of the former regime. . .

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

6 US Military Personnel Killed, 13 Wounded at Fallujah
Women Targeted

A bomber targeted a Marine convoy near Fallujah coming back from a checkpoint, then guerrillas sprayed machine gun fire. They killed 6 Marines, including 4 women, and wounded 13, 11 of whom were women.

The American women were deployed at the checkpoint to pat down Iraqi women. Arab culture insists on gender segregation, and it is considered unacceptable for male foreigners to pat down Muslim women.

The Marines appear to have had their guard down. Fallujah has been relatively quiet since it was invested by US troops last November, and much of its population is still living elsewhere as refugees. There have been occasional firefights in the city, or firing of mortar rounds by guerrillas. Friday's attack was the most audacious since the city was reduced.

The guerrillas clearly had the women under surveillance and deliberately targeted them. Attacking each other's women is a major feature of imperial warfare in history. The Sepoys in India in 1857 who rebelled against their British officers often invaded the British cantonments and attacked their women. Indeed, when the British troops were sent out from Britain to reconquer North India in 1857-58, they underlined avenging the massacres of white women as among their primary goals. In Bosnia, Serb irregulars used rape as a deliberate tool of war. In most cultures, ideals of masculinity are wrought up with the protection of women (feminism hasn't penetrated most militaries), so attacking the enemy's women is a way of humiliating and rattling him

The Marines responded by putting all of Fallujah under a strict curfew. Al-Jazeera is saying that the Marines are sending automobiles through the streets with loudspeakers, calling on the residents to inform on the guerrillas to the Americans, and threatening that if they did not, they would be trapped in their homes by a continued curfew. The US military frequently employs forms of collective punishment in Iraq, and resorts to locking down an entire city where it feels it necessary.

The Guardian writes that

"gunmen on Friday killed an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric. Police said two bodyguards were also killed trying to protect Shiite cleric Samara al-Baghdadi, who represented al-Sistani in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite al-Amin district. Iraqi security forces also discovered the bodies of eight beheaded men - at least six of whom were Shiite farmers - in a region north of Baghdad on Friday. It was unclear why the men were killed."

Al-Hayat reports that Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari privately asked congress to tighten its economic boycott of Syria as a way of forcing Damascus to be more forthcoming about policing the Syrian borders to prevent the infiltration of Sunni jihadis into Tel Afar and other flashipoints. Jaafri will travel to Damascus himself soon, though I think his reception just got chillier.

al-Sharq al-Awsat also says that a young men in Najaf are being arrested for wearing blue jeans.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Student Unions [in Iraq] Call for Withdrawal of Occupation Troops

Gilbert Achcar kindly sends along his translation of this newspaper article:

' Student Unions [in Iraq] Call for Withdrawal of Occupation Troops

Baghdad – Abdel-Wahed Tohmeh – Al-Hayat, June 24, 2005

11 Student Unions approved the call made on al-Jaafari’s Government to set a timetable for the withdrawal of multinational forces and considered that the request made [by the Government at the UN] for the extension of their presence is “an infringement on Parliament’s prerogatives.”

The 11 Unions issued yesterday a statement, of which Al-Hayat got a copy, supporting the members of the Independent National Bloc and other MPs [see the article by the same author dated June 20] and calling on “al-Jaafari’s Government, the United Nations and its Security Council to adopt these demands.” The statement also said: “We have taken part in the election and voted, risking our lives going to the polling stations, only for one essential issue that the electoral slates adopted and put in their political programs, and that is the demand for the withdrawal of occupation troops from Iraq.”

The Unions called on the lists that won the election “to remain faithful to their promise and put their political programs into practise so that the people could respect them.” Their statement also called on the Government “not to adopt crucial decisions without referring to the representatives of the people in the National Assembly.” The statement also expressed bewilderment at “al-Jaafari’s and his Government’s support for maintaining occupation troops at a time when the US Congress is asking for their withdrawal.”

The statement was signed by the Student Unions at the Universities of Baghdad, Mustansariyya, Kufa, Qadissiyya, Basra, Diali, Ramadi, Mosul, the Technological University, the Islamic University and the Organism of Technical Education.
The president of the Student Union of the University of Baghdad, Mustafa Shabar, said that “the students of Iraq are resolute to get the Government and the National Assembly to abide by anti-occupation demands.”

Moreover, 18 students representing Iraq’s 18 governorates ended a sit-in at al-Firdous Square in the center of Baghdad, meant as a protest against the Government’s decision to extend the presence of multinational forces. Shabar said that “the choice of al-Firdous Square for our sit-in came as a result of the refusal of the Government to let the sit-in be held in front of the Parliament building.” Member of Parliament Falah Hassan Shneishel added that “a big rally will take place today at Kadhimiyya with the participation of tribes which came to Baghdad from all Iraqi governorates in support of the demand by the MPs to the Government to put a timetable for the withdrawal of occupation troops.” '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Does Karl Rove Hate our Liberties and Way of Life?

' At a Manhattan fund-raiser Wednesday night, the flamboyant architect of Bush's two presidential campaigns and now White House deputy chief of staff told members of the Conservative Party of New York State: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." '

Now we know where the Bearded Lady of the Carnival Right, Ann Coulter, actually gets her material. She is just channeling Karl Rove, who believes that "liberals" wanted to put terrorists on the psychiatrist's couch or wanted to put them on trial rather than declaring them "enemy combatants" (i.e. persons with whom Bush and Rove could do as they pleased, without reference to any law). And, he implies that Conservatives knew what to do instead. Why, they got out their shotguns and went hunting for the varmints. Rove must not have heard that the Senate just apologized for not objecting to the practice of lynching in the old days.

So Rove is saying this about the "Conservatives" (and I apologize to the real conservatives for bringing him up in this context, but he is the one who used these words). He is saying that they don't indict terrorists or consider them mentally ill. Right?

But wait. Is Rove saying that the Bush administration didn't prepare any indictments as a reaction to 9/11?

What about this, from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, whom--I believe--George W. Bush appointed?

"This morning, a federal grand jury indictment charging Nuradin M. Abdi, a 32-year-old Somali national, was unsealed in Columbus, Ohio. Abdi was arrested on immigration charges and has been held by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since November 28, 2003. I note that an indictment is merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The charges against Abdi are:

* Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists;
* Conspiracy to provide material support to al Qaeda; and,
* Two counts of fraud and misuse of documents."

Gee, Rove must have been just furious at Ashcroft. Not only did he deal with Abdi with a mere indictment rather than personally taking him out and putting two bullets behind his ear, but he openly announced that he was presumed innocent!! What a wimp. What a marshmallow. And he calls himself a "Conservative"!

But surely Ashcroft wimped out here because he was just accusing someone of planning a bombing. He'd deal someone who pulled one off differently, right?

Nope. This from 2003:

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced May 15 that a federal grand jury in Manhattan has indicted two Yemeni fugitives for the October 2000 bombing attack on the USS Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, that killed seventeen Americans and wounded more than 40 others.

It is worse. He had to indict them in absentia because the Conservatives hadn't got them in custody, despite all that rooting around with their shotguns. Hmmm. So Rove all along seethed because he considered Ashcroft a goddamned Liberal.

So the "Conservatives" might have indicted some terrorists instead of just blowing their brains against the Oval Office walls. But surely they didn't excuse them by saying that they are mentally ill, right? Terrorists like Saddam and Bin Laden are just evil, not insane. Isn't that the implication?

Oooops. Bush slipped up and said this about his decision to go after Saddam, to the Republican National Committee:

"Do I forget the lessons of Sept. 11th and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time."

But he just slipped up once, right? Nope.

Bush liked the line. Put "the word of a madman" and "Bush" into google and see how often it comes up.

George! Say it isn't so. First the indictments. Now putting Saddam on the couch and calling him a madman. Could it be W. is a closet Liberal?

But then the "Liberals" are unconcerned with terrorism, right? Isn't that what Rove is saying?

But here is what Ted Kennedy said about his position on the Iraq War:

" I voted against that resolution and war with Iraq because I was not persuaded that Iraq posed an imminent threat to our national security, and because of my belief that war with Iraq, especially without broad international support, would undermine our ability to meet the gravest threat to our national security - terrorism against the United States by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups."

But, the Rove "Conservatives" would say, Kennedy is just a partisan Liberal who won't give Bush the benefit of the doubt and doesn't understand the American values that are key to taking on the terrorist threat. Right?

Nope.

"Let me say it plainly: I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us. And let me say with the same plainness: Those who agree with that course have an equal obligation – to resist any temptation to convert patriotism into politics. It is possible to love America while concluding that is not now wise to go to war. The standard that should guide us is especially clear when lives are on the line: We must ask what is right for country and not party. That is the true spirit of September 11th — not unthinking unanimity, but a clear-minded unity in our determination to defeat terrorism — to defend our values and the value of life itself."

The little things standing between Karl Rove's "Conservative" approach to "terrorists" are numbered 4-7. Rove has worked for decades to erase them from the American Constitution. What do you call an American who despises the Constitution?

"Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

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

Rove and his un-p.a.t.r.i.o.t. act want to declare some US citizens "enemy combatants" and to get rid of the Bill of Rights in their regard the way the John Travolta character got rid of dead bodies in a vat of acid in Pulp Fiction. As for non-citizens, Rove has declared the Geneva Accords "quaint" and wants an end to international law.

But remember, Rove is neither insane nor a mere criminal. You figure out what he is. But remember that he seems to hate our liberties and way of life.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Jaafari in Washington
Weeping Madman in Sweltering Baghdad

Robin Wright and Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post profile the meeting of Ibrahim Jaafari with George W. Bush.

As reported here yesterday, on Thursday morning back in Baghdad, four bombings left 17 dead and 70 wounded. (-Al-Sharq al-Awsat).

Richard Reeves predicts that the US will be in Iraq for 6 or 7 more years, and that when it withdraws it will be a "tragedy." He has no idea.

Every time the interim leader of Iraq has a photo op with US officials, he seems to feel a need to say all kinds of unrealistically optimistic things. It used to happen with the rotating presidency of the Interim Governing Council. Izzedin Salim went on saying optimistic things right up until he was killed while waiting on the Marines to let him into the Green Zone. Allawi came and said that the problems were only in four provinces (he didn't mention that one of them was Baghdad).

Now Jaafari is saying that progress is being made against what he calls "the terrorists," and that all that is necessary is an acceleration of the training of Iraqi troops (with maybe some other countries than the US helping [NATO already is].)

Most observers I know of who know anything serious about military training don't expect an effective Iraqi army to be stood up for five to ten years, so if Jaafari thinks there is a quick fix in this regard, he is just wrong.

The Post adds

' With just seven weeks until a constitution is due, Jafari also insisted that the Iraqis will make the deadline even though nothing has yet been written. "We know there are challenges and we know there are difficulties, but certainly the difficulties in writing a constitution will be not as severe or as intense as they were during the elections . . . in putting together the government," he said in the interview with The Post. '

I am quoted saying it is very unlikely that they can write a whole constitution by August 15 when it has taken them up to now to form a government and even form a drafting committee. As I reported yesterday from al-Zaman, the drafting committee is not meeting this week because the parliament building had no water or electricity because of sabotage. (Water service returned on Thursday.)

Andy Mosher and Bassam Sebti with Naseer Nouri draw the curtain back on the real Baghdad, a Mad Max scene of unpredictable explosions, scattered body parts, inadequate and undependable electricity, lack of refrigeration, water sabotage, and weeping madmen: ' Nearby, a scruffy young man in dirty pants and an unbuttoned shirt stood staring at vegetables scattered on the ground by one of the explosions. Bending over and picking up an onion spattered with blood, he began to cry. "Every one of you in Karrada calls me Crazy Ali," he said to no one in particular. "But I would never do such a thing. I am better than you sane people. At least I do not hurt you." '

Salon.com reports on how many Iraqi girls have been forced into prostitution abroad. One of the subjects is a victim of the Fallujah campaign.

Looted artwork and antiquities from Iraq are helping fund terrorist activity, rather as blood diamonds in West Africa did.

Somehow the rhetoric about freedom in Iraq seldom extends to the rights of workers and trade unions. They are demanding input into the writing of the permanent constitution. Free trade unions were key to the post-war order in Japan and Germany, but the Bushies are not as wise as the New Deal diplomats of that era were, who had lived through the Great Depression and knew the importance of a living wage.

The good news is that the Grand Mufti of Egypt has condemned the bombings in Iraq that kill innocent civilians. The bad news is that he says that "resistance to Occupation" (i.e. killing US and Coalition troops) is quite all right. The mufti, Egypt's chief Muslim jurisconsult, serves at the pleasure of the Egyptian government. If he is being allowed to talk this way, it is because the military dictatorship that controls Egypt is peeved at the US for trying to make it open up the electoral system. Allowing this statement to appear in the official newspaper, al-Ahram, is a small act of revenge. It also has the advantage of making it seem to the Egyptian public as though the Mubarak government opposes the US occupation of Iraq (which is highly unpopular in Egypt), while in fact the Egyptian military has offered extensive logistical aid to the US.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Duri Leads Baath
Birth of His Daughter in Mosul

Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri [al-Douri] just had a daughter in Mosul, according to al-Hayat. The article says, roughly:

Al-Hayat has learned from sources close to Iraq's armed groups that the former vice president of the Revolutionary Command Council and the present Secretary-General of the dissolved Baath Party, Izzat al-Duri, was blessed with a baby girl, his eleventh child. She was born to a wife he married after the American attack. He has named her "Tahrir" (Liberation).

The sources affirmed that al-Duri received congratulations from the leadership of the Baath inside Iraq and outside it. He visited his wife, who gave birth in Mosul before leaving for parts unknown.

The sources said that al-Duri is in excellent health, and only suffers from occasional problems. He had a wide network of communications inside the country and without, which facilitates financial and political support, and donations, to the armed groups.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that police officials in Kirkuk are reporting that the United States forces have detained "Sufyan," the father-in-law of Izzat al-Duri. They say he is being interrogated at a holding cell out at the Kirkuk airport.

Yesterday, al-Quds al-Arabi carried the following (trans. FBIS):

Iraqi Ba'th Party Statement Confirms Commitment to Resistance
Unattributed article from London:
"Ba'th Party Confirms its Commitment to Resistance Option"

AL-QUDS AL-'ARABI
Thursday, June 23, 2005 T03:09:21Z
Document Type: FBIS Translated Text
Word Count: 747

The Iraqi Ba'th Party issued a statement commemorating the sixteenth anniversary of the death of Michel Aflaq in which it confirmed its commitment to the option of armed resistance in Iraq. The following is the text of the statement:

"With encouragement for the struggle, comradely deference, and ideological commitment, the Ba'thist mujahidin in resisting Iraq and their comrades in the lands of the Arab Nation and the diaspora salute the sixteenth anniversary of the death of the late commander, founder, and comrade Michel Aflaq. Commemorating the anniversary is a manifestation of the Ba'th allegiance and honoring the anniversary is a confirmation of the fighting commitment. It is a remembrance of the founding commander and of his life, his ideas, and his struggle to oversee the future of the (Arab) Nation and its eternal message.

"The resisting Ba'th Party embodies the age of heroism as it was heralded and called for by the comrade founding commander. The Ba'thist mujahidin, who are recording the pages of honor, pride, and dignity of their resisting land and their new nation, nevertheless embody the thought, pursuit, and struggle of the Ba'th Party at both the levels of the political struggle and the jihadist battle from the Comrade Commander Secretary General Saddam Husayn on down to the dear comrades at the broad base of the party.

"The struggling Ba'thists have not, and will not abandon their nation. Commander Saddam Husayn is a fighter and holy warrior who has not, and will not abandon Iraq, its people, or its nation. The comrade Ba'thist resisters have not, and will not abandon the Ba'th Party, the founding commander, the secretary general, and their Iraq and their nation.

"On this anniversary that we revere, we recall the rightful wagers of the founding commander on Iraq, on its leadership, and on the role of the Ba'th Party there. Through the commander and the comrades, Iraq's influence has been extended to the (Arab) Nation in all its various countries. Here, the anniversary brings us back more than 60 years, when the comrade founding commander put Iraq into the heart of the Nation's emancipative struggle. That gave true weight to Iraq, the struggle of its lively political powers, and its anticipated Arab role. He called for supporting Iraq when its fighters rose up at that time.

"The founding commander taught us that Iraq represents the true meaning of nationalism. Iraq today is targeted for its Arabism just like it is targeted for its nationalism, the sovereignty of its people, and the unity of its territory. The not-so-distant history paved the way for the standard of living in Iraq now and the challenges being warded off by the resisting Ba'th Party. For the Ba'th Party, with the brave army of Iraq and its proud people, fought and triumphed against the Persian Shu'ubist onslaught that was based on religious reactionism and backward Islam. How today resembles yesterday and how what was said by the founding commander at that time still rings true now and applies to the situation of the battle of Iraq's liberation: 'The Arab Nation has awakened to Iraq's call and to the splendor of the leading role and honorable virtues it has embodied. Its historical steadfastness is the line of demarcation between conditions of impotence, deviation, and treachery and the new phase that will no longer permit anything other than the honest, open stance with the national truth that Iraq represents.'

"This is a time in which the Ba'th Party, through its struggle and jihad in Iraq and within the span of a short time period, can enable the Arab Nation to once again discover itself, assess its capabilities, and promote its history not just to awaken from Iraq's jihadist call, but to share in meeting the call, carrying the message, and honoring the jihad by the honest, open stance with the national truth that resisting Iraq represents.

"The Ba'th Party, in its . . . jihad [resistance] in Iraq and its commitment to the option of the armed resistance, is not the renegade. It embodies and affirms what was said by the commander founder: 'The Ba'th is, above all else, the love of Arabism and the love of Islam and the experience of the party in Iraq has asserted these ideas actively and heroically.'"

(Description of Source: London Al-Quds al-Arabi in Arabic -- London-based independent Arab nationalist daily with an anti-US and anti-Saudi editorial line; generally pro-Palestinian, tends to be sympathetic to Bin Ladin)

On June 18, wire services reported that Muhammad Yunis Ahmad, a former high Baath party official, is a principal funder of the guerrilla movement in Iraq, and that the US Department of the Treasury was freezing his known assets.

On May 3, Patrick Cockburn of the Financial Times wrote, "The insurgents are less interested in participation in the present government than in direct talks with the US, a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces and the right to rebuild the Baath party. In Sunni Arab towns and cities a so-called New Baath party is beginning to emerge and is said to be very well organised."

Then there was this:

"MOSUL, Dec 10 [2004] (MENA) - The dissolved Iraqi Baath party has started regrouping by electing Tayeh Abdul Karim and Naeem Haddad as its leaders. The party has also started publishing newspaper Al-Thawra as its mouthpiece, Iraqi sources, who requested anonymity, told MENA. The paper is being publicly circulated in Mosul and other several cities across Iraq, they added."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

UN and Trying Bush

More on my UN Option for Iraq. By the way, someone over at the Kos discussion (scroll down) said that there "was no civil war" when the US withdrew from Vietnam. But mainland southeast Asia from the mid-70s is a pretty stark cautionary tale. Khmer Rouge take-over of Cambodia, genocide (one million killed out of a population of 6 million); North Vietnamese victory in the south and imposition of reeducation and Communism; exodus of Chinese Vietnamese as refugees; Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and decade-long occupation; Communist takeover of Laos; hostilities between Vietnam and China. If all *that* is awaiting the Oil Gulf after a US withdrawal, it will be a world-class catastrophe. Southeast Asia wasn't central to the world economy.

Nabil Tikriti writes from Istanbul:

"Unfortunately, I'm not sure that your UN idea would actually work in practice. I was in Somalia in the spring of 1993 with Medecins sans Frontieres /Doctors Without Borders, and I saw how Somali militias cut to pieces armed and fully engagement-authorized Pakistani peacekeepers in Modadishu -- the precedent to the infamous "Blackhawk Down" incident several weeks later that summer.

Iraqis have long been furiously anti-UN, due to the UN's role in the sanctions regime in the 90's -- especially when they contrasted the international community's enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions demanding Iraq's withdrawal from occupied Kuwaiti land vs. the international community's inaction concerning Israeli occupation of formerly Jordanian, Egyptian, and Syrian territory following the 1967 war.

Iraqis also compared their entire economy being strangled by the UN due to their pre-1990 WMD programs (which, in retrospect, apparently ceased to be a going concern by 1995) while the state of Israel had well over 200 nuclear missiles ready to strike Iraq or any other regional society whenever deemed necessary. In a nutshell, no Iraqis seemed surprised -- or saddened -- by the August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

In addition, there is something of a superiority complex in the Arab World vis-a-vis Africans and South Asians, and I'd pity the poor "Southern" troops who might find themselves in the Iraq meat grinder with insufficient weaponry, logistics, and backup.

While I'm glad that someone out there is actually trying to float an idea for US withdrawal, I don't see the UN idea working either.

Perhaps the US should just depart and write a compensation check for damages rendered to whatever Iraqi government eventually emerges. Considering the tens of thousands of deaths, the complete destruction of all state structures, and the 13 years of UN sanctions which preceded the 2003 invasion, I'd guess about 600 billion USD might begin to compensate for the torts involved.


2) Tonight the "World Tribunal on Iraq" opened in Istanbul, which appears to be a continuation of an initiative started by Ramsey Clark et al to put Bush and others on a mock trial (www.worldtribunal.org).

It will feature Arundhati Roy, Fred Halliday, Samir Amin and several other scholars."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Stirling Newberry on UN Option
And the Great Oil Price Shock of Gulf War IV

Stirling Newberry doesn't think the UN has enough troops for Iraq, either; and he instances the Congo as an example of things going bad.

"What’s wrong with staying in: Realistically any change of occupation policy will require a change of regime in the United States. Given that the current Executive controls both houses of Congress, and there is no even improbable scenario which brings to the White House anyone of different persuasion – indulge your most arcane avian bird flu and Presidential succession scenario – its war hawks all the way down the depth chart – realistically, it means than any occupation scenario is basing its judgement on 2009. By 2009, at reasonable estimates, there will be another 3500 US military fatalities in Iraq, there will be another 250 allied fatalities. There will be another 2000 mercenary fatalities. There will be some 40,000 Iraqi military dead – including government and rebel fighters. There will be some 200,000 incremental deaths in Iraq because of direct consequences of conflict, deprivation and crime. We are not talking, then, about “can we turn Iraq around today”. We are talking about “can we turn Iraq around after another 3 and a half years of civil war?” It is useful to look, then, at two example failed states and their experiences. One is the Democratic [Republic] of the Congo. The other is Lebanon. "

Michael Pollack writes in clarification of my point about Gulf War IV likely being a guerrilla struggle that has every reason to sabotage Gulf petroleum production, unlike the Iraqi and Iranian states in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, which I think is better termed the First Gulf War.

I also noticed . . . that you made a small change to your earlier post in line with my suggestion:

"We already saw petroleum spike to $40 a barrel in the early 80s, in 1980 dollars, which is probably $80 a barrel in our money. Cause? [A run of speculation in the markets prompted by the] Iranian Revolution and Iran-Iraq War. Only a kind of MAD prevented Saddam and Khomeini from destroying each others' oil fields; at that, they were sometimes attacked. Guerrillas do not give a rat's ass about MAD."

And although this is a refinement, I think it still isn't getting across your keystone point . . .

What I think is [significant] -- and I emphasize that I think your argument here is very important, and new -- is that Iran/Iraq war didn't sustain the price spike.

Here's my precis of your argument as I understand it:

[Precis:]

Prices shot up in 1979-80, crushing the world economy. But they didn't stay there -- even though the war raged on and got progressively worse. The worse the war got, the more prices fell. And the reason is MAD -- that both countries were deterred -- even in a macabre war to the death that involved nerve gas and suicide minesweeping -- from attacking each other's oil fields.

And this has caused a mass unjustified complaisance. The Iran/Iraq war was the longest conventional war of modern times. An obscene number of people died. It took place in the very heart of the oil producing gulf. And yet most people in the West barely noticed it at the time, and barely remember it now.

But now, replay that scene without MAD -- because that's what you'd have now in what you are calling Gulf War IV. Take the oil spike from 1979 -- which is graven in everyone's memory -- and continue it for 8 years. And not at a level price, but at one that continually increased from that initial spike.

And then imagine what would have happened to the world economy. You'd have the great depression. With no exaggeration.

[end precis]

That's your argument, as I understand it, as you clarified in email, and I think it's very powerful one. And I think it deserves to be spelled out -- perhaps in a new short post -- or people will miss it. Because the central point is very subtle -- you're talking about the dog that didn't bark, the crisis that didn't happen. And the empirical point is one that most people have never really registered -- that prices crashed in the 1980s, after their initial spike. And to that you're adding to it something that I don't remember anyone else ever pointing out before -- that they did it in the middle of a horrible middle eastern war.

I think that's an awful lot to leave tacit. I think all that has to be spelled out before the average (or even the attentive) reader will really grasp just how stark your scenario is -- and how tightly your reasoning is based in recent history and present reality.

(Especially because so many . . . people have been waving around apocalyptic oil-shock scare scenarios for so long that many of us have a tendency to glaze over unless you shake us out of it.)

Michael

Another response, from Ireland, by email:

"I'd like to make a comment on your UN proposal, from the narrow perspective of an Irish citizen.

There is tremendous support for multi-lateral structures such as the EU and UN in Ireland, probably in large part because of our inability to defend ourselves by military means alone and our need for "international law" to protect our interests. We have declined to join overt military alliances such as NATO and the WEU, despite our close ideological and economic links to the Anglo-American world and the EU. Our army has only two tasks: internal security, mainly against paramilitary threats such
as the IRA, and UN peacekeeping (including the DRC, Liberia, Lebanon, Bosnia and East Temor).

I think Americans generally underestimate the degree of anger and disgust in the West, and the loss of good-will to the US and Britain, engendered by the Iraq war, and the propaganda, lies and bullying that led up to it. The US and UK forces in Iraq and their allies have no legitimacy in many Irish minds. Tony Blair was wildly popular here after the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. He is now widely mistrusted and even disliked.

On the other hand, a small nation such as ours cannot afford to piss off our economic bread-butterers, and there has been little political fall-out for our government allowing the bulk of US military personnel and supplies to Iraq to pass through Shannon airport. People don't like it, but accept it as politically necessary - probably not the most moral attitude to take.

My main point is that, even with a UN security council and General Assembly mandate, I think it would be nigh on politically impossible for any Irish Government to send Irish troops to Iraq, particularly on the kind of dangerous "peace enforcing" mission you envision."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Abizaid: "Cost in Blood and Treasure"
2nd Lt.: "The War is Lost"

Vice President Dick Cheney needs to talk to his generals more often. Michael Hedges of the Houston Chronicle reports that Gen. John Abizaid, who has recently consulted with US commanders in Iraq, said today that the guerrilla movement in Iraq is as strong now as it was 6 months ago. Dick Cheney recently said it was in its "last throes." If so, the throes appear likely to go on for decades. Abizaid, however, conveyed an unrealistic impression that the Iraqi forces will take over the heavy lifting any time soon, and he continued to deny that the US needed more troops on the ground. CNN's Jane Arraf reported on Wednesday from Anbar province that virtually no one among the Lt. Colonels and fighting troops on the ground in Iraq thinks they have enough boots on the ground.

Abizaid said,

' "The most important thing I saw this time is that there is increasing confidence in Iraqi security forces to get the job done," said Abizaid. Abizaid dismissed the notion that more American troops were needed in Iraq. "There are more troops on the ground than ever before," he said. "Iraqi troops are coming on line and they are fighting." . . . Among Abizaid's other concerns was the danger of a civil war in Iraq. . . Abizaid . . . was told that the U.S. war effort would likely stretch into the indefinite future. "It is like running a marathon. You hit the wall at 21 miles or 22 miles," he said Friday. "If you give up, then you lose the prospect for victory or success. We're not at the 21-mile mark yet, but we are heading for the wall. "We need to work our way and fight our way through the wall. It is not going to be done without work and without sacrifice. And it is not going to be done without cost in blood and treasure."

General Abizaid has always been a straight shooter, and as a Lebanese-American Arabic speaker, has a more detailed and realistic idea of the situation than most US officers. But if he was quoted accurately, I don't think he was delivering any good news.

There appears to be a big gap in attitudes in Iraq between the generals and the subaltern officers and servicemen. An academic sent me this:

"Yesterday I talked with a 2nd Lt and West Point grad who has just come back from Iraq. He says flat out that the war is lost, that "we" only control territory when the troops are there in massive numbers and that "they" take over as soon as the troops leave, that the army is over-extended and morale is terrible -- drug use is escalating -- that there still isn't enough armor, that the Iraqi army and police are worse than useless, and that senior officers are convinced that it is Vietnam redux. One of his classmates a 23-year old was killed last week -- for nothing. There are signs that this story is belatedly beginning to sink in across the country, but he, and I, fears that it is too late."

We saw this sort of thing in Vietnam, too. The Generals are the last to know, and they always think victory is around the corner if only they can convince the US public to commit "blood and treasure" for a few decades.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Brussels Conference Inconclusive
32 Dead in Guerrilla Violence

The Brussels conference of foreign ministers on Iraq seems to me to have yielded little practical result. The real action will come at the donors' conference in Amman, Jordan, next month. The world community has pledged billions to Iraq, but has only delivered about $2 billion, in large part because the security situation makes it impossible to send teams out to evaluate projects or to actually disburse the funding in a practical way.

The Iraqis say that they are $125 billion in debt (the US government estimates it at $110 billion), and want massive debt relief. Without it, it is difficult to see how the country can get back on its feet. The Europeans will forgive them $40 billion. But a lot of the debt is owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, who are less willing to give up their claims. In fact, neither had up to this point even sent an ambassador to Baghdad. The Kuwaitis suffered enormous damage at the hands of the Iraqi army to their petroleum fields at the end of a brutal Iraqi occupation in 1990-91, and are in no mood to forgive Iraq's debts or forego reparations.

Some observers suspect that the Saudis are nervous about doing anything that would build back up Iraq too quickly with too much strength until they are assured that the victory of the Shiites in the Jan. 30 elections will not translate into a Baghdad-Tehran axis hostile to Saudi interests. But the Saudis did pledge $1 bn. in reconstruction aid at Brussels, and have promised to send an ambassador. Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait also said they would establish diplomatic missions in Iraq, and Egypt has already done so.

The rest of the world put pressure on the Jaafari government to be more inclusive of the Sunni Arabs. Jaafari is committed to deep debaathification, which punishes Sunni Arabs for simply having been a Baath Party member, regardless of whether he or she had done anything wrong. The guerrilla war, however, is being fueled in part by fears among Sunni Arabs that such attitudes will harm them for the long term. Back in Baghdad, al-Zaman reports that Vice-Premier Ahmad Chalabi visited Shaikh Hareth al-Dhari, leader of the hard line Sunni Association for Muslim Scholars. Chalabi later expressed shock at what he heard from al-Dhari about the excesses committed by Iraqi troops against ordinary Sunnis during the recent Operation Lightning. He promised to convey al-Dhari's concerns to the cabinet.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi attended, and expressed confidence in the future of Iraq. The Tehran Times reports:

' Turning to economic cooperation with Iraq, Kharrazi said Iran's project for promotion of tourism and visits to holy shrines for about 100,000 visitors a month to Iraq will generate $500 million annually. Plans are also being worked out for a swap operation of Iraqi oil up to 400,000 barrels per day. Credit facilities up to $1 billion have been allocated by Iran's credit banks for exports of goods and investments. Iran is preparing to participate in oil and gas projects in Iraq and to invest in the banking and financial sector either bilaterally or through other countries. '

It is obvious that Iranian relations with Iraq are going to be central to the country's economic development. This reality puts the Bush administration in a bind. They hate the regime in Iran and would dearly love to do something to it. But they need Iranian support for their Iraq venture. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is therefore constrained to say she wants good relations between Iraq and Iran. The Bushies have such a contradictory set of policies in the Middle East that everyone is confused about what they want, exactly.

That Iraq has been captured by leaders of Shiite religious parties was underlined dramatically when Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari declined to shake hands with women at the conference. He is a physician, not a cleric, but as a devoted leader of the Shiite al-Dawa Party, he respects the norms of gender segregation.

As if to remind the world of the real Iraq, guerrillas initiated a bombing wave in the capital. On Thursday morning they detonated three bombs, killing at least three policemen and wounding 15 others. On Wednesday eveing, guerrillas detonated four big bombs in the capital, killing 23 and wounding around 50. Three of the bombs, two at restaurants and one at a bus station in the Shiite Shu'la district, were coordinated and virtually simultaneous. A fourth hit an Iraqi army convoy in a Baghdad suburb. Veteran AP reporter Hamza Hendawi quotes an eyewitness to the restaurant bombings, ' ``The body parts of the dead were scattered everywhere, along with fragments of broken glass from nearby shops and the meat from the meals,'' said police Maj. Musa Abdul Karim, who was at the scene. ``Blood was everywhere.'' '

Perhaps even more significant were the assassinations of Jassim al-Issawi, a law professor and former judge who was a candidate for the committee to draw up a permanent Iraqi constitution. His son, a newspaper editor, was also shot down. The attack appears to have been part of a brutal campaign of intimidation aimed at discouraging Sunni Arabs from cooperating with the new order in Iraq.

Although Sunnis may have been successful in filling out the 25 slots alloted them on the constitution drafting committee, the committee's work has been postponed for a week. Sabotage has left several Baghdad neighborhoods without water or electricity, and the parliament building is in an affected area, prompting the postponement.

(I have to say that when prospective members of the drafting committee are being shot down, bombs are going off all over the capital, and the parliament can't meet because basic services have been sabotaged, the constitution drafting process seems a bit surreal and highly unlikely to amount to anything without an end to the guerrilla war.)

In Kirkuk, a major Turkmen leader narrowly escaped assassination. Four of his body guards were wounded.

The day before, 3 US Marines had been killed by guerrillas near Ramadi.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Questions on UN Option in Iraq

A reader with a US military background writes:

"I noted your recent proposal for increased UN military involvement with some questions.

1. With great oversimplification, the civil war in Iraq is being fought by factions who desire to have the long term control of either the government of the whole country, or their own particular region (ie Kurdistan, or to a lesser extent Sadrist Basra).

To that end, although the violence is extremely messy, violent, and disproportionately affects non-political actors--it is being utilized to the most basic of political ends, and thus has a "motive". Although all of us are revolted to see scenes of bloody children and destroyed markets, the tactic is not "random" and seeks to undermine confidence in the new goverment.

Hence, the idea that UN involvement would reduce the violence due to its [being] relatively less partisan was probably at least partially destroyed with the UN building in August 2003 (where my unit was involved with rescues). No one involved in Iraq, be it the Red Cross, UN, or nearly any other group, can hope to see itself as "neutral", if their presence or actions serve to deter any one faction (particularly the Baathist faction now, but any others would be capable.)

Unlike the sucessful UN operations (Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor), in Iraq the factions are fighting because they believe they can win what they want. Iraqi factions (both the ones we've met and the ones we haven't) believe in violence and fear, and the general public has not yet displayed the complete frustration from the violence that in some part enabled the peace process in Bosnia (although the military strength of Croatia certainly helped a lot too).

One article I recently read was from a Baathist who blatently said that their goal was to first throw out the United States, so that they could return to power on the lines of the coups of the 1960s. (the comment on your site on picking the right time for peace processes I found to be particularly instructive.

2. Contributing troops to a UN force will neither end the conflict nor support a negotiated settlement on their own.

Your mandate would be militarily insufficient to end or even limit the hostilities. If the new government of Iraq is to have any legitimacy, it cannot have insurgent armies forming in Anbar and Diyala, and then using civilian vehicles and highways to cause bombings and assasinations in Najaf, Baghdad, and Mosul. It would seem a mandate to "keep the factions" apart would do nothing to the insurgents, but handicap the goverment from any sort of "official" military or police operation, and resort instead to assasinations and bombings of its own. I'm not sure the people in Iraq are willing to wait for their force to be trained during this time, and it doesnt bode well when your government's security strategy involves SCIRI hit teams (the most dangerous trend in Iraq, in my opinion).

The problems of the original UNPROFOR in Bosnia, which had a similar limited mandate, are well documented. Keeping the sides of a civil conflict like this apart are almost impossible, and a purely defensive UN force would still have to resort to being supplied on the roads. Logistics were severely hampered by the Serbs in Bosnia, and we all know how it works in Iraq.

So much of the violence is fought at a very low level--ie shooting the local guy who works at the tax office--that a generally passive UN mandate would be more of the same in Iraq, or even worse.

Again, if a negotiated settlement is the goal--what sort of negotiated settlement would have any authority when it would be voted down by the guys with the guns? While supporting those who want to participate in the goverment is to be welcomed, its not clear, as you have made clear, that they could carry the day back home.

3. Military force must be backed by political will--my experience with coalition forces from all over requires that. Even if the force is well trained, it has to be allowed to do its job. For instance, when the well-trained South Koreans deployed, they received assurances that they would not be used for offensive operations, even house raids. I'm not sure if that helped the instability in Kirkuk at all. Peacekeeping and enforcement is more than just doing footpatrols and opening new gas stations--it requires national consensus to both take, and sometimes inflict, casualties. India, South Africa, Brazil are some militaries that come to mind, but I'm not sure any would be interested.

If free access to oil didn't convince countries in March 2003, I'm not sure who it would convince now. Most of the world's large militaries are designed to operate in their own countries for the purposes of domestic order (with less than democratic ideals), and given some other peacekeeping operations, inviting many of these militaries would make us look back fondly at the mild days of Abu Ghraib. My experience is also that, in general, Iraqis don't like to be occupied, but they especially won't like being occupied by the countries of the Third World (a problem of escalating expectations and self image, I guess).

Lastly, supporting any peacekeeping force in Iraq would require an immense logistical effort. Right now, only the United States has the global and transportation resources to manage such a force. In the near term, at the least that would require a large American logistical presence (although things like truck companies could of course be provided by the contributing countries).

4. Your point is an excellent one--and I see it has produced some lively debate already. The question of how to turn over management of the struggle to the Iraqis has not been satisfactorily faced. I'm quite interested to see to what extent your proposal [is taken up]. We who have served in Iraq hope for a political solution that will end the violence and allow opportunity to some great young people--but there are some tough characters out there who are playing for keeps.

Thanks again for your contribution to open-mindedness and free debate in our country."

Cole: These are all excellent and well taken points. The only clarification I would make is that I am not advocating a passive UN "peace-keeping" mission. Rather, I'm arguing for a UN army with an active peace-enforcing mandate. I don't deny it is a tall order. But then, the US military mission is a tall order as it is. The reader correctly sees that I envisage it as a transitional phase from US military occupation to full Iraqi sovereignty.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kos Discussion of UN Option

Many thanks to "Mark in San Francisco," who runs a diary at Daily Kos, for provoking an extensive and often acute discussion of my piece on the "UN Option" there.

The first thing I should say is that people shouldn't get too hung up on the exact composition of a UN force. The UN member states are numerous, and if the UN takes this on, it will be responsible for finding the peace-enforcing troops. It has before, in Cambodia, East Timor, etc. I envisage the US continuing to provide a couple of divisions, as well, until things wind down, under the general UN command.

The main response I have is to the diarists who remain unconvinced that an Iraqi civil war would draw in the neighbors, because the neighbors have too much invested in stability. I was in Lebanon in 1974-75 when everyone said that the troubles would never escalate to a civil war because the Lebanese wealthy classes had too much to lose, and that the neighbors had every reason to want a stable Lebanon. In fact, the various factions began fighting, and if the bourgeoisie objected it was taken out and shot. Mostly it went to Paris. And then virtually everybody in the world began actively intervening in Lebanon, often by backing one faction or another. The US, France, Israel, Syria, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Italy-- you name it, they were there. The Lebanese Civil war led directly to the Israeli invasion of 1982, which involved some actual fighting between the Israelis and the Syrians, though mostly the Syrians stayed out of it. Likewise you had wars of the camps between Palestinians and Shiites. And you eventually had fights between the bourgeois Shiites and the peasant Shiites (Amal and Hizbullah), with the latter backed by Iran. So frankly all this optimism about how an Iraqi civil war won't break out or won't involve the neighbors is naive.

Similar international interventions occurred during the Iran-Iraq War, one of which was marked by Donald Rumsfeld's two visits to Baghdad to make an alliance with Saddam and to assure him it was all right if he gassed the Iranians.

Anyway, here is the beginning of the exchange. The discussions are great.

Juan Cole's response regarding "the UN Option"

by MarkInSanFran

Wed Jun 22nd, 2005 at 06:58:48 PDT

Cross-posted at BoomanTribune.com

Recently the noted historian, middle east expert, and blogger opined that a pullout of US troops from Iraq could be accomplished by way of a UN Option. This marks somewhat of a shift from his email response to me a month ago, in which he said that the US would be in Iraq for many years, and I welcome his new thinking.

There has been criticism of this plan, However, or at least the following aspect:
[Cole wrote:] "As for getting anyone over at the UN to take on Iraq, I fear I think there are few third world armies that couldn't be enticed by a couple of billion dollars-- the kind of money they would probably be rewarded with if they really could help Iraq."

Yesterday I emailed Prof. Cole to ask his perspective on this. He was kind enough to reply and our email exchange is quoted below.

Diaries :: MarkInSanFran's diary :: :: Trackback ::

My email to Prof. Cole:

Prof. Cole:

I'd like to thank you again for responding to my (and others) request for your views concerning the possibility of the US pulling out of Iraq (my email of 5/22/2005 and the dailyKos diary ).

There are now comments at dailyKos and BMT concerning your comments today regarding third-world militaries shouldering the burden in Iraq (under UN auspices) in return for financial rewards. I think this is an interesting approach, however many seem to believe that you were seriously advocating this approach rather than simply mentioning the possibility (the latter is my take).

Which is it? I and many others rely on your expertise regarding the middle east and I don't want to see your credibility damaged by internecine warfare, at which we on the left seem to be very accomplished.

Please let us know, either in your blog or as an email response, which I will post on the blogs mentioned above.

Many thanks for your hard work. You have my vote for Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs (or at least a fat consulting contract) in the next administration.

MarkInSanFran

Prof. Cole's reply:

Dear Mark:

I have been unable to convince many of my readers of what I know. A US withdrawal could well throw Iraq into civil war. Civil war in Iraq would bring in the Iranians, the Saudis and the Turks. The success of petroleum pipeline sabotage and refinery sabotage in Iraq will suggest it as a tactic to the guerrillas fighting in this Fourth Gulf War.

If Saudi and Iranian petroleum production is sabotaged, gas in this country will go to $20 a gallon and the US will be plunged into the Second Great Depression. The unemployment rate will skyrocket to some 25%. Not only will you and I likely end up unemployed, but the global South will be de-industrialized. Countries making progress like India and Pakistan will be thrown back 30 years.

We already saw petroleum spike to $40 a barrel in the early 80s, in 1980 dollars, which is probably $80 a barrel in our money. Cause? [A run of speculation in the markets prompted by the] Iranian Revolution and Iran-Iraq War. Only a kind of MAD prevented Saddam and Khomeini from destroying each others' oil fields; at that, they were sometimes attacked. Guerrillas do not give a rat's ass about MAD. The oil shock in the 1970s virtually de-industrialized Turkey for a while, and very badly hurt the Caribbean (islands depend on boat transport even for basic foodstuffs). I have seen this kind of scenario. It is not inevitable but it is entirely plausible.

Since the US military seems incapable of winning the guerrilla war in Iraq either militarily or politically, someone else will have to do it if we are to avoid Gulf War [IV] and its consequences. The Europeans cannot do it. They only have a surplus capacity of about 10,000 troops for deployment outside the continent, and they are already in Afghanistan. You could argue that they should reform their militaries so that they did have more troops for external deployment, but that would take time we don't have.

That leaves a United Nations command leading troops from the global South, with perhaps, one or two remaining US divisions. The Southerners are culturally better suited to negotiating an end to the Iraq hostilities anyway, and some of them have excellent militaries. Gulf War [IV] and Very High Oil Prices would hurt them more than it would hurt the US and Europe, so they have every interest in intervening. Moreover, they will be richly rewarded with billions in future Iraq contracts, which they need more than Texas does.

Some are construing this proposal as me having the poor people in the global South suffer for Bush's mistakes. But at $60 a barrel they are already suffering for Bush's mistakes. Do you know how many factories will have to close over this, or will never open in the first place, in Pakistan and India? Factories are very sensitive to energy costs, which have tripled, and could go even higher. Iraq is adding $10 to $15 a barrel to the current price because of uncertainty and speculation, and the removal through sabotage of about 1.5 million barrels a day also contributes to the problem.

I am saying that the UN and the global South can solve the problem, that they have every incentive to solve the problem, and that they will be richly rewarded for solving the problem.

Moreover, this way of proceeding would deeply hurt the whole American nationalist war party. It would be a victory for cosmopolitan multi-lateralism. It would dampen down US militarism by creating an Iraq Complex. It would put two US divisions under a United Nations command, setting a precedent. It would strengthen the United Nations so that the US Right can't just order around or ignore it the way the Bushes do their kitchen help. It is progressive in every way. And it is a perfect reply to the Right's insistence that the US has to remain in control until 'the job is done.' No, it doesn't. This is a job for the world.

In other words, it isn't all about us, in the sense of US. It is about what would be good for the world.

Cheers Juan

I wrote back to him:

Prof. Cole,

Thank you so much for writing back to us. After reading and thinking about your words I have to say that you have convinced me. The regional destabilization that would be risked by a US pullout would indeed be an economic disaster for the world as well as a potential (increased) humanitarian disaster in the middle east.

Offering other nations the possibility of securing Iraq as well as its borders under UN auspices is clearly an excellent approach to legitimizing a foreign security force in Iraq, a force that is currently seen by the vast majority of Iraqis as illegitimate. The internal US political effects that you mention are, of course, additional advantages, both for the administration's opponents as well as the country in general.

I will argue this on BoomanTribune and dailyKos in diaries that I will post Wednesday morning so as to ensure wide visibility (I got home a bit late to post this tonight).

Cheers to you too!

MarkInSanFran

What do you think?

[The discussion.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush's Iraq Incubator of Terror
Syria Deploys 7,000 to Block Infiltrators

The New York Times reports that the CIA is growing increasingly alarmed about Bush's Iraq as an incubator of terrorists, and the probability that at some point they will target the US at home.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP: Demonstrators in Baghdad from the center and south of Iraq demanded Tuesday that Coalition troops leave their country. They are considering staging a two-day sit-in at Firdaws Square at the center of the capital. Their spokesman, Mustafa Shabar, said, "The demonstrators represent their provinces, since it is not possible to call all the notables and elite to this place." He added, "the object of this demonstration and the sit-in afterwards is to project the voice of Iraq, which demands that the occupation forces depart from our country." Hashem Mahdi of Amara, 70, said that the clans of his region had elected him to represent them at the demonstration. He said Iraqis could defend themselves. One of the demonstrators quoted, Hadi Ismail, 33, was a Kurd from Diyala, who complained that the government wanted US troops to remain.

Syria has deployed 7,000 troops along its border with Iraq to forestall its territory being used as for transit to Iraq by radical jihadi volunteers. The Baath government of Syria is dominated by esoteric Alawite Shiites. Both their minority, Shiite background and Baath secularism lead the Syrian elite to be extremely alarmed at the rise of radical Sunnism in Iraq, fearful that it could blow back on Damascus. In 1982, the Syrian regime killed 10,000 persons in Hama, claiming that they were radical Sunnis bent on overthrowing the regime and instituting a theocracy. The London Times explains the attractions of the Syrian route for the jihadis.

Police in Manchester, UK, arrested a North African man of French nationality on evidence they found in Iraq. His flat mate had been killed fighting US troops in February. North African radical Muslims have increasingly been drawn to volunteer to fight in Iraq. With the victory of the secular government in Algeria, and the effective semi-police states in Morocco and Tunisia, the radicals have little room for maneuver at home, making the possibility of fighting in Iraq attractive to them. One US general estimated that 25 percent of North African militants have left their home bases to go fight in Iraq. It is not clear to me what population he is thinking of. The Armed Islamic Group in Algeria? If it is the GIA, this statistic could make sense. See above, concerning Manchester.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the emergency room physicians of Basra have announced a one-week strike to protest their treatment by Iraqi troops, who had beaten them up after bringing in a wounded soldier.

Meanwhile, unemployment may hover around 50 percent in reality in Iraq, and for many Iraqis it is scarier than the staccato of bombings and sniping.

Then there is that epidemic of corruption.

On that score, the US, with its often corrupt contractors and carpet baggers, is not in a position to lecture the Iraqis. About $100 million is missing from just one south-central project, drawing the interest of the US attorney general for the eastern district of Virginia.

The Iraqi minister of justice criticized the US for limiting Iraqi government access to Saddam Hussein. He suspects that there are things that the US does not want Saddam to spill the beans about. He said, "it seems there are lots of secrets they want to hide". Donald Rumsfeld was sent to Iraq in 1984 to reassure Saddam that State Department condemnations of him for using chemical weapons were pro forma and that the US nevertheless wanted an alliance with him against Iran.

Lt. General John Vines is hoping that the US will be able to send home from Iraq one division (about 20,000 men) in spring of 2006, if the Iraqis are able to hold successful elections in December of 2005. He is assuming that the permanent parliament will have more legitimacy and that it will help wind down the guerrilla war. He warned that everything would depend on the conditions on the ground. So far, it must be noted, no political process or event has had the slightest impact on the guerrilla movement. And, the prospect of there still being 118,000 US troops in Iraq next year this time isn't exactly call for uncorking the good champagne.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

War on Terror or War on Each other?

Dawn tells an unedifying little story of a crisis that was not covered by most US corporate media.

So, first the Afghan security services broke up what they said was a plot by three armed Pakistanis to assassinate Zalmay Khalilzad, who had been the US ambassador to Afghanistan and is now in Baghdad as the new envoy to Iraq.

Pakistani government officials were absolutely furious that the Afghans had implicated their nationals. Anwar Iqbal says that they demanded that Afghanistan produce proof "or stop making false claims."

So now the Afghans are angry, and they charge that Pakistan has been supporting insurgents in the southern Pushtun areas. The spokesman for President Karzai, Javed Ludin, said that Pakistan was not doing enought to stop the infiltration into Afghanistan of militants like the one who carried out a suicide bombing in a mosque at Qandahar recently.

Iqbal writes, ' Pakistani foreign office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said he was ‘surprised’ by Mr Ludin’s comments and reminded him that President Karzai also had acknowledged Islamabad’s contribution to the fight against terrorism. '

So things were getting pretty tense over the past couple of days, to the point where President Bush had to intervene directly. On Tuesday he called up Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president. Musharraf then called Karzai, and they appear to have patched up the dispute for the moment.

The Pakistani government has been sensitive to any charge that al-Qaeda operates from its territory, and Pakistani officials typically charge that Bin Laden is in eastern Afghanistan somewhere. Nerves in Islamabad will have been frayed by CIA director Porter Goss's recent comments saying that he had a good idea of where Bin Laden was, but was impeded in getting him by diplomatic considerations. These remarks were widely interpreted as suggesting that he a) thought Bin Laden was somewhere in Pakistan and b) Gen. Musharraf's hold on power was too weak to allow the US to push hard for nabbing the al-Qaeda leader.

Everyone is afraid of pushing Pakistan too hard on the Bin Laden issue, lest radical Muslim junior officers or military intelligence types be provoked to make a coup, giving the world a radical Islamist state with an atomic bomb.

But the fact is that no one knows exactly where Bin Laden and Zawahiri are, or they would have been apprehended. They are rumored to be in the rugged Waziristan tribal area. But other high al-Qaeda officials have been captured in urban mansions, so that I'm not so sure. Bin Laden's videotape released before the US election demonstrates that he had seen Fahrenheit 9/11, which would be hard to do in a cave. Moreover, Bin Laden did have bases in Afghanistan for 20 years, and that he is in Paktika or someplace can't be ruled out.

By the way, Ayman al-Zawahiri's latest tape, issued last week, got amazingly little play. Marc Lynch did an interesting analysis of how al-Jazeera handled the broadcasting of it.

I guess in weird Bushworld, if you want to be ignored and left alone, the best approach is to kill 3000 Americans and blow up the Pentagon.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

History and Genetics in Madagascar

Genetics and history have joined forces to explain the origins of the people of Madagascar (the world's fourth largest island, off the coast of East Africa). Early Muslim chronicles speak of the peopling of Madagascar from the islands to its far east, i.e., Indonesia. Geneticists have found that about half of the island's people have Y chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA that most resemble that of the people of Borneo. Note that all the people in Madagascar by now have Indonesian ancestors and lots of genes from there. The other half of the markers go to East Africa. There must, however, also be an Arab heritage. Some 7 percent of the inhabitants of Madagascar are Muslim, and Muslim chronicles speak of several waves of immigration from places like Yemen.

Historical linguists have long been convinced that Malagasy is an Austronesian language (other members of the family include Malay and Bahasa Indonesia, but also Hawaiian). Since historical linguistics is by now a firmly grounded science, there really was no doubt about this. Malagasy also has some Bantu words and phrases, and the people of Madagascar use East African material culture. Africa is so much closer than Borneo (20 times) that it is incredible that this big group of people emigrated across the Indian Ocean beginning around AD 400-700, and that relatively few Africans ever ventured over in comparison.

In this article, surprise is expressed that Malagasy as a language dominates and displaced Bantu among African immigrants (who in turn intermarried with the population from Borneo). But that sort of thing is common in history. German and Italian haven't survived very well in the New World despite millions of immigrants. Arabic displaced Coptic and Aramaic in the Near East as people converted to Islam, from the seventh century through the medieval period. Anatolians gave up Greek and other languages and started speaking Turkish as they adopted Sufi Islam from Turkish mystic masters.

This kind of genetic research strikes me as just fascinating. I loved Bryan Sykes's "Seven Daughters of Eve," which demonstrates that the Polynesians probably came from the aboriginal population of Taiwan and not, contrary to what Thor Heyerdahl thought, the pre-Colombian population of South America. Some research has been done on the Middle East. I saw one study that suggested that the mitochondrial DNA of the Kurds is distinct from the Iranians (that is, although they speak an Indo-European language, they are probably mainly descended from the ancient Hurrians). And, Palestinian and Jewish males tend to have similar markers in their Y chromosomes. I just saw someone question Palestinian descent from the ancient peoples of Palestine. But we are all descended from the Moabites, and Palestinians and Jews are more likely to have the traces of that descent in their mitochondria and Y chromosomes than the rest of us (we're all cousins of a sort, but they are closer to being first cousins).

(Geneticists focus on the Y chromosome and the mitochondria because they do not divide in each generation and so do not change very quickly, allowing comparisons among populations long separated. A lot of us are afraid that this distinction will be lost on the general public and that they will take mitochondria or Y chromosomes as markers of "race." All human beings are descended from most people who lived 50 generations ago, it is just that we may by now only have an infinitesimal genetic heritage from some of them. There are statistical aggregations of genes, just because some lineages are more likely to intermarry, but there are no "races" in the Romantic European sense of pure bloodlines. Y chromosomes and mitochondria are a tiny, tiny part of the human genome, and they just accidentally freeze a certain narrow kind of ancestry; they tell relatively little of the whole story. The whole story, of course, is that we all go back to a common origin in South Africa only about 100,000 years ago; we're a very young species and haven't had time to differentiate much except with regard to stupid little things like amount of melanin in our skin.)
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole on Knowing his Own History; and Isaiah Berlin

I don't usually bother to reply at any length to my Neocon critics. Mostly this is because they are simply insincere, and say what they say maliciously and in knowledge of its falsehood. In some instances they have quite unethically subjected their opponents to harassment of a sort that is illegal in some states. They are purely political beasts, for whom all statements are instrumental, and therefore they can never engage in useful dialogue.

What Neocon has come out and said, "Ooops, we were wrong. The road to peace in Israel/ Palestine did not lie through Baghdad, as we kept telling everyone in 2002. Iraq did not pose a dire threat to Israel with its WMD in 2002. Iraq was not 2-5 years from having a nuclear weapon. The Iraqis didn't welcome us with garlands. Baghdad isn't going to recognize Israel and there isn't going to be an oil pipeline from Iraq to Haifa. We did not realize that most Iraqi Shiites had turned to religious Muslim parties, several of them little different from Lebanon's Hizbullah. We did not realize that the Iraqi Sunni Arabs would and could wage a years-long guerrilla war that had the potential for destabilizing the entire Middle East." Virtually everything these people said was wrong, but none of them has owned up to it. They believe that the best defense is a good offense, so their response to their miserable failure as policy wonks is to systematically harass and hound historians at Columbia University, for all the world like offended Scientologists.

These people should read less Jabotinsky and Strauss and more Isaiah Berlin. Berlin made the key point that most ethical and social philosophers had assumed that a person could simultaneously pursue two virtues. That is, let us say that both beauty and truth are goods and we want them both. Berlin is saying that in the real world, there are situations in which you can only have the one or the other. The truth is ugly, and the prettied up beautiful story is false. So then you have to decide, do you want the truth? Or do you want beauty?

In the run-up to the Iraq War, I had two values. One was justice I believed that the Saddam regime was genocidal and that the international community had a responsibility for doing something about it. That is why I said that removing Saddam would be a noble enterprise. In and of itself, it was, and I stand by that.

But the other value is the rule of law. The United States is signatory to the UN charter, and can't just get up in the morning and decide to go about invading other countries. I all along maintained that an Iraq war would be legitimate only if there were a UN Security Council resolution authorizing it.

Up until early March of 2003, I was not forced to choose between Justice and the Rule of Law because it appeared entirely plausible that the UNSC would pass a resolution authorizing the war, or that a majority, at least, would vote for it. It was during that period that I said I could not bring myself to protest the building war. It was because I knew Saddam's mass murders, and thought there was still a chance that he could be removed within the framework of international law.

When the UNSC declined to do either, very late in the game, it became apparent that I could have either justice or the rule of law. At that point I chose the rule of law. I did not see the invasion, the war, or the subsequent occupation as legitimate.

Just because I chose the rule of law over justice, however, does not mean that justice as a consideration had evaporated. The US troops who gave their lives to depose Saddam and free Iraqis from his yoke were helping achieve justice, which any Kurd or Shiite in Iraq will tell you. I stand by that, and I assure every grieving parent who has lost a child in the Iraq war that it was a meaningful sacrifice, because the Baath system was monstrous. But this achievement was deeply flawed (and may yet be undone) because it was done illegally.

Bush's turn to illegal aggression contained the seeds of the failure of his Iraq policy. If he had remained within international law, he would have either had to give up the invasion or he would have gone in with the full support the international community, which would have given him the kind of troop strength and administrative expertise that might have made a success of it all.

The Neocons cannot for the most part imagine such a thing as a fraught internal debate over ethics on the part of the individual. This because they are mostly, quite frankly, sleazeballs.

Isaiah Berlin knew that we often cannot have it all. We have to choose among virtues. We have to decide which one trumps the other. These can be fraught decisions. And that is why I do not fault those who chose justice over the rule of law among the liberal hawks like Ignatieff and Friedman.

The response to this posting on the part of my critics will just be more propaganda, more carping, more cheap shots, more obfuscation.

But for some perspective, check out this future timeline. Look especially at what happens 2 to 6 billion years out. Most problems won't seem so big in that light.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Can they Handle it? Hawi as Communist

A reader writes:

' I noted with some relish the subtleties of perception. You and Al-Jazeera identify Georges Hawi [up front] as a communist. CNN and others identify him as an anti-Syrian politician. They [later] add "former secretary-general" leaving his present membership in the party up in the air. This is clearly some version of the "pretty girl in protest march" perception of the Middle East politics. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Beirut Bombing Kills Communist Opposition Leader

The victory in Sunday's polling of the anti-Syrian faction in Lebanese politics has not led to social peace. The coalition of Saad Hariri won in the north in part by having Sunni clerics mount their pulpits in mosques and play on sectarian feelings to defeat Maronite General Michele Aoun's supporters and other pro-Syrian figures. Ironically, the Syrians originally gerrymandered the north in 2000 so as to give an advantage to the Sunnis over the Christians. In this election, Hariri's Sunni supporters were anti-Syrian and many of the Christian candidates were pro-Syrian.

Among the primary demands of the victorious parties is the removal of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. This aim will be difficult to accomplish, since the opposition has a small majority in parliament and it is not even clear how a president, as opposed to a prime minister, could be removed.

The first major event of the new regime was the assassination of Georges Hawi, a former secretary-general of the Communist Party of Lebanon, who had thrown in with the anti-Syrian opposition. His is the fourth high-profile assassination by bombing in the past year. Many Lebanese believe that Syrian intelligence and/or pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud is behind the assassinations. Gen. Aoun, despite having earlier fought Syria, has defended Lahoud from such charges, saying that they are unfounded. Aoun has about 20 seats for his list in parliament.

The US analysts who called the anti-Syrian movement of last spring, in the wake of the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, a "Cedar Revolution" or an "Arab Spring" profoundly misread the situation. While it is true that the Syrians had outworn their welcome for most Lebanese, and could be induced to withdraw their troops, Lebanon remains deeply divided, unlike post-election Ukraine, e.g. The Shiite parties, Hizbullah and Amal, support President Lahoud, as does Aoun and his list. Minority factions among the Sunnis and Druze do, as well. But most Sunnis turned against Syria with Hariri's assassination, and the majority of Druze follow Waleed Jumblatt, who has also come out against Lahoud.

The question is therefore whether a drive to remove the president on the part of Hariri and his allies will so polarize Lebanon as to bring back the social violence of the Civil War years. Hawi's killing on Tuesday is not a promising omen in that regard.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Condi Can't Count

Condi Rice seems extremely confused about military affairs and the nature of guerrilla wars:

Interviewed on CNN during her visit to the Middle East, Dr Rice was asked about the recent claim by the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, that the insurgency in Iraq was "in its last throes". She did not comment directly on the claim but said Americans needed to understand Iraq does not need an army of hundreds of thousands, "because it isn't facing an enemy like that. What they face is an insurgency and they need to be able to run counter-insurgency operations. Once they can do that, we can begin to start a withdrawal process."

Let's do some figuring. The US-led Coalition has 160,000 well-trained, well-equipped, often experienced troops in Iraq. It is losing the guerrilla war. So contrary to her assertion that Iraq "does not need an army of hundreds of thousands," every indication is that it does, too. Condi is just channeling Rummy, who was wrong on this from day one.

The Iraqi military needs to be bigger than the current Coalition force, since that isn't big enough. So, if Iraq did need a trained military of say, 300,000, how long would that take to stand up? (You can't count the traffic cops in this total, as SecDef Rumsfeld has been wont to do; I mean soldiers.) The new recruits to the Iraqi military are mostly green and apparently in large part Shiite Arab. The experienced military men are mostly on the side of the guerrillas. So the new Iraqi military really needs training, maybe 5 years worth or more.

Moreover, there is a real question as to whether you will ever get the troops of the new Iraqi government to fight in a thoroughgoing way on behalf of what they mostly think of as an imperial power (the US). It turns out that a lot of the officers in the South Vietnamese Army were actually working for the North Vietnamese even while they were hanging around with their US military counterparts. Newsweek reports that Iraqi officials admit that the new security services are infiltrated by the guerrillas. Numbers won't solve this problem of legitimacy, and nor will time.

Dr. Rice's comments imply that she thinks a counter-insurgency effort can be handled with a small force that can be stood up relatively soon. That is not true. And if her comments were intended to make the US public confident that US troops could be withdrawn from Iraq any time soon, then she was actively misleading them.

Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor examines the debate over whether the US military is making progress in Iraq or not. I am quoted saying that every indication is that the guerrillas have gained in popularity in the Sunni Arab areas over the past 2 years. Other quotes:

' "We've won every fight they've given us, but there always seem to be just as many people fighting us as when we got here,'' says one career Marine officer, who recently finished a tour in Iraq.

Anthony Cordesman, a former director of intelligence for the Office of the Secretary of Defense who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and has produced a series of detailed studies on the war in Iraq, quotes a Marine counterinsurgency expert in Iraq in a recent paper as saying "seizing the components of suicide bombs [is] like making drug seizures: comforting, but ultimately pointless.... Both sides are still escalating to nowhere." . .

In the city of Tal Afar in the north, violence still rages, despite three major US offensives there in the past two years; and while the once notorious Haifa Street in central Baghdad was pacified by joint US and Iraqi military efforts this spring, suicide attacks continue in other parts of the city.

"The Iraqi Government and US can scarcely claim that they are clearly moving towards victory,'' Mr. Cordesman wrote at the end of May in "Iraq's Evolving Insurgency,'' [pdf] a 70-page analysis of the situation . . . While Cordesman acknowledges large weapons seizures made by "tireless" US operations in the country, he doubts the supply of weapons and bombmaking materials is going to dry up soon. '

The Boston Globe recently wrote:

' Meanwhile, a recent internal poll conducted for the US-led coalition found that nearly 45 percent of the population supported the insurgent attacks, making accurate intelligence difficult to obtain. Only 15 percent of those polled said they strongly supported the US-led coalition. '

[Reader Alex Eaton says he called the Globe and confirmed that the 45 percent figure referred only to Sunni Arabs. 7/4/05]

The Daily Star is alleging that some of the attacks on Kirkuk pipelines have been carried out by tribal groups as a sort of protection racket. The charge is that they are hoping to be paid handsomely to guard the pipelines from further attack.

As for the political process, , it is moving with the speed of molasses in winter. Sunni Arab groups who were given the opportunity to appoint 15 members to a committee for the drafting of a permanent constitution have been wrangling over how exactly to appoint them.

Billmon over at the Whiskey Bar suggests that my call for turning Iraq over to the United Nations is unrealistic.

Oh, I agree entirely. It is highly unlikely that Bush, who is trying to destroy the UN by sending John Bolton there, would even consider such a thing. And UN member states may well decline to send their boys into the Anbar meat grinder, especially if they think of it as cleaning up Bush's mess.

On the other hand, the Right is always coming up with unlikely plans and managing to get them implemented, and we on the Left may have to simply learn to be more tenacious. After all, it was highly unlikely that Bush would get the opportunity he had long yearned for, of invading Iraq and deposing Saddam. Moreover, you have to set up issues in such a way as to make your opponent take the fall. If centrists and progressives go to the American public next year and say, "We want to hand Iraq over to the United Nations, but the War Party insists on keeping our young men and women there in harm's way for the sake of their corporate sponsors," I think that may resonate pretty powerfully. As a line, it would have the virtue of associating the UN with problem-solving and the War Party with greed and stupidity.

As for getting anyone over at the UN to take on Iraq, I fear I think there are few third world armies that couldn't be enticed by a couple of billion dollars-- the kind of money they would probably be rewarded with if they really could help Iraq. Progressives are usually people of principle, and they often can't imagine the cupidity of the world, or how to play on it. Dwight Eisenhower was a past master of that sort of thing; he got DeGaulle out of Algeria before the latter could go Communist by threatening to call in US loans to France. If the US and Iraq both wanted blue helmets on the Tigris, I think it could be made to happen. Whether it would be successful I don't know. But the Bush administration's policies in Iraq are demonstrably unsuccessful, so it is worth a try. If it succeeded, it would enormously bolster the prestige of the UN and help make the world a safer place.

My main point was to try to find a progressive/centrist approach to Iraq that avoided the two extremes of a) agreeing with the Bushies that we should stay 'until the mission is accomplished' or b) simple-mindedly chanting 'bring the troops home' with no thought for the world-class disaster that might befall us from the resulting power vacuum.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

37 Dead in Attacks on Monday

Al-Zaman, the 'Times of Baghdad,' refers to "a sudden and unprecedented deterioration of the security situation in Baghdad" on Monday. The biggest single attack, however, took place in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil.

Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times reports that suicide attackers killed 36 [the Scotsman says 37] persons in Iraq on Monday and wounded well over a hundred. She writes,

' The bloodiest attack took place in a dusty field behind Irbil's traffic-police headquarters, where a suicide car bomber killed 13 [late reports say 15] and wounded 100 during police officers' morning workout. In a second attack in the mainly Kurdish town, a suicide bomber killed a local security official and two of his guards as their convoy passed a cemetery. '

The Scotsman describes the bomb attack on the police chief of Halabja, which killed him and three bodyguards. The Kurds of Halabja were gassed by Saddam in 1988, leaving 5000 dead.

There was also an attack on a checkpoint outside the disputed oil city of Kirkuk, killing 4 soldiers.

Guerrillas launched 5 separate attacks in Baghdad, including one at a military checkpoint on the airport road. Another military checkpoint received mortar fire.

al-Zaman: Fourteen neighborhoods of Baghdad near Karkh were deprived for a second straight day of drinking water, after a water main had been sabotaged early Sunday morning.

Armed guerrillas disguised in the uniforms of Iraqi army troops assassinated two leaders of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq after they invaded their homes in the Abu Saida quarter of the city of Baquba. This according to a police colonel who asked not to be identified.

A funeral procession was held in Basra for Shaikh Abd al-Salam Alwan, a tribal chieftain of the al-Ghanim clan. He had been kidnapped, tortured and killed, his body dumped in the al-Haritha district.

Shaikh Usama al-Jadaan al-Sanad, who described himself as chief of the Karabilah tribe, said in a press conference on Monday in Baghdad, "We ask that first aid be sent to the districts of Qaim and Karabilah because they lack the simplest medical facilities." He added, "The secretary-generals of the parties that run the government in Iraq must stop the shedding of innocent blood in Qaim and Karabilah that is being carried out under the pretext of the presence of Arab and foreign terrorists."

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani warned that those who oppose (loose) federalism in favor of centralized government in Iraq are in reality working for a partition of the country.

The Sunni Pious Endowments Board issued a plea that the usurpation of Sunni mosques in the southern, largely Shiite city of Amara cease. It alleged that a group of persons supported by Iraqi police occupied the Hatin Mosque in Amara. The governor of Maysan province then ordered that the mosque by locked up until the question of its ownership could be decided. Several other Sunni mosques, it alleged, have also been usurped there.

Maysan province is politically dominated by followers of Shiite nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Helman on UN Option

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman writes:

". . . On replacing the US with the UN in Iraq[:] It seems clear that US public opinion is ready for a real exit strategy. But I suspect that the Administration has not yet given up its hope of turning Iraq into a long-term strategic base and asset allowing control of the Middle East and the oil that goes with it. And to turn it all over to the UN would be humiliating. Much would depend upon how the process is rolled-out. Here's an exampe:

--The US would announce a phased withdrawal, to be completed one year hence.

--(by prearrangement) Iraq and the Arab League (or a collection of Arab states) would ask the UNSC to establish a transition political, economic development and peace enforcement authority to assist the Iraqi Government in it recovery efforts.

--The US would offer logistical (we're the only one capable) and financial support, as well as military units, on a transitional basis, under UN command (we might be able to swallow the humiliation if the commander is a Brit or German). The UK, Japan, the oil Arabs and others can contribute lots of money. NATO could provide much of the staff, planning and headquarters personnel. But competent boots on the ground might be harder to come by.

I agree that the Cambodia operation (and, more recently, East Timor) could serve as a model. While Cambodia was a mixed success, it was nevertheless a success."

[Helman has written professionally in this area; see:

Helman, Gerald B. and Steven Ratner. 1992. "Saving failed states". Foreign Policy. Volume 89. Number 3.

Helman "was United States Ambassador to the European Office of the United Nations from 1979 through 1981."]
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The United Nations Strategy as a Resolution of the Iraq Crisis

The United States has failed militarily in Iraq, and the situation there is deteriorating rapidly. A protracted guerrilla war is increasingly becoming an unconventional civil war. The US can mount operations against infiltrators on the Syrian border, but cannot permanently close off those borders. The US can prevent set piece battles from being fought by militias. It cannot prevent night-time raids. Seven bodies showed up Sunday in East Baghdad, executed. They were almost certainly victims of this shadowy sectarian war.

Eighty-two Iraqi parliamentarians have sent a letter to the speaker of the house demanding that the United States withdraw its troops from Iraq. Some of the leaders of this movement come from the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of religious Shiite parties that has a majority of the 275 seats. Their demand is still that of a (sizeable) minority and has not been endorsed by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. The demand will certainly come from an ever greater number of parliamentarians as time goes on. At the moment, most Iraqi politicians already wish the US would leave, but are afraid that the guerrilla movement would kill them without US protection.

As its allies draw down their forces in the next few months, the US looks increasingly as though it is going it alone in Iraq. As a unilateral power there, it lacks legitimacy. It is not going to be able to stay in that country, and will not be given permanent bases there by an elected Iraqi government.

The United States will eventually have to go to the United Nations and request that it send a peace-enforcing mission to Iraq, as the US military withdraws. The relevant model is the UNTAC experience in Cambodia, which, while it had substantial flaws, was also a relative success. In the long term, perhaps 5-10 years, the Iraqi government may develop its own military that could keep order. That development is far enough off, however, that there is likely to be a significant gap between the time the US leaves and the time the Iraqis can fend for themselves.

A US withdrawal without a United Nations replacement would risk throwing Iraq into civil war. Such a civil war, moreover, would very likely not remain restricted in its effects only to Iraqi soil. A civil war in Iraq would certainly lead to even more sabotage of petroleum production, reducing Iraq's production from the current 1.5 million barrels a day to virtually nothing. If a civil war broke out that drew in Iran, the unrest could spread to Iran's oil-rich Khuzistan province, which has a substantial Arab population, and which has seen political violence in recent months. The instability could also spread to Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, which is traditionally Shiite but dominated since 1913 by the anti-Shiite Wahhabis.

If the petroleum production of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia was put offline by a vast regional conflict that involved substantial terrorism and sabotage, the price of oil would skyrocket. Only 80 million barrels of petroleum are typically produced daily in the world. Much of that is consumed by the producing country. What is special about the countries of the Gulf is that they have relatively small populations and little industry, and therefore export a great deal of their petroleum. Saudi Arabia produces 9 million barrels a day, and can do 11 in a pinch. Iran produces 4 million. Iraq could produce 3 million on a good day without sabotage. If nearly 20 percent of the world's petroleum supply became unavailable, and given ever increasing demand in China and India and political instability in Venezuela and Nigeria, the price could rise so high that it would throw the world into a Second Great Depression.

The old dream of James Schlesinger and Henry Kissinger that the United States could in such an emergency simply occupy and secure the Saudi oil fields has been shown to be a dangerous fantasy. Petroleum is produced in a human security environment. Where the political structures are felt by a substantial portion of the population to be illegitimate, they can and will simply sabotage the petroleum pipelines and refineries.

The US cannot risk this scenario, which while a little unlikely, is entirely possible as a consequence of its withdrawal from an Iraq that it radically destabilized.

The United Nations force put into Iraq should be a peace-enforcing, not a peace-keeping, force. That is, its rules of engagement should allow robust military operations to prevent the parties from massacring one another, and UN troops should always be permitted to defend themselves resolutely if attacked. Further, the United States should lend the United Nations forces close air support upon their request.

Moreover, the UN must at the same time enter into serious negotiations with the warring parties (Kurds, Shiites, Sunni Arabs) to seek a political settlement.

Satish Nambiar writes,

"It is a matter of record that it is not possible to have successful peacekeeping without a determined and successful peace process. Peacekeeping and peace-building activities are not self-sustainable, they have to be nurtured by a process of negotiations, or peacemaking, during which the parties to the conflict are made to redefine their interests and develop a commitment to a political settlement. The fact that most successful missions in the last decade, or even the partially successful ones - Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia and Mozambique - were the result of years of negotiations, in which many third-party international actors, including the USA, participated, is no accident Although the wars in these areas went on for a long time, they illustrate that it is better to take the time to get the details of a settlement right, than to initiate a peacekeeping process that is flawed in its concept and content, as so glaringly made apparent in the inadequately planned and prepared United Nations deployment in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia. It takes firm political resolve and unified concerted action from outside actors to make the parties to the conflict come to terms with one another, and work towards a negotiated settlement."

All Iraqis would see the United Nations as having more legitimacy than the United States. The UN would be much more likely to be able to negotiate a settlement among the Sunnis and Shiites than is the US. And, the world has more troops than the US does. (The Europeans are over-stretched, so the force would mainly come from the global South. Iraq does not want neighbors involved, so South and Southeast Asia seem likely providers of troops.)

Would the Iraqi government accept a United Nations military mission? Almost certainly. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has often attempted to involve the UN, and would welcome such a development. The Sunni Arabs would also much prefer to deal with the UN than with the US.

Would the United Nations be willing to take it on? It would be a very hard sell. But remember that if the members of the military mission succeeded, they would have gained enormous good will from the Iraqi government, which would soon be able to pump 5 million barrels of petroleum a day. That is, participation could be worth billions in future contracts. The US could also provide substantial incentives. For countries like Pakistan, India, and Malaysia, such benefits could prove decisive.

Would the Americans be willing to cede Iraq to the blue helmets? It is not impossible. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appears to want to draw down US troop strength in Iraq on a fairly short timetable, and even he must realize the need for a replacement. Of course, the Bush administration may well resist this move right to the end. But that makes this plan an ideal platform for the Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008. Instead of Kerry's vague multilateralism, let us specify an UNTAC-like mission for the UN. The entire world depends on Gulf petroleum; the entire world should step up to ensure security for Iraq and the region. The US will continue to have to bear a significant share of the costs, but these would become bearable if several allies shared them.

As recently as the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower still saw the United Nations as a noble project eseential to the welfare of the United States, and he denounced the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel for endangering the UN ideal. Ironically, the Bush administration's attempt to do a unilateral end run around the United Nations could afford the American Left the opportunity to make international cooperation and international law popular again with the US public. The alternative for Americans is to continue to squander blood and treasure on a task too big for one country, even the world's sole superpower.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

45 Dead, Dozens Wounded in Guerrilla Attacks
Restaurant Bombing Mocks Operation Lightning

The Associated Press reports that a guerrilla wearing a bomb belt walked into a restaurant near the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad that was popular with Iraqi police and soldiers, and detonated his payload, killing 23 and wounding 45. Patrick Quinn writes,

' The Baghdad bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest at the Ibn Zanbour restaurant, 400 yards from the main gate of the heavily fortified Green Zone _ U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters. The cafe was popular with Iraqi police and soldiers. The dead included seven police officers. The bodyguards of Iraqi Finance minister Ali Abdel-Amir Allawi and 16 other police were injured, police and hospital officials said. The minister was not in the restaurant. '

Quinn's details make me wonder if the finance minister sometimes did eat at Ibn Zanbour, and if the guerrillas thought he might be there. At the very least, wounding a man's body guards is a pretty obvious threat against his person. Allawi is related to current Vice Premier Ahmad Chalabi and to former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. A number of high Iraqi government officials have been assassinated in the past two years, and even more middle managers.

It seems obvious that this massive bombing at a key strategic site, near the Green Zone, at a place frequented by the bodyguards, police and troops of the elected government officials, was intended as a refutation of claims made by Interior Minister Bayan Jabr that the sweep of southwestern Sunni neighborhoods in the capital, called "Operation Lightning," has impeded the ability of the guerrillas to operate in Baghdad.

Al-Zaman says that a car bomb near Kazimiyah killed two policemen and two civilians and wounded 9 others.

In the Amariyah district of Baghdad, 7 unidentified corpses were discovered on Sunday.

Wire services reported that two policemen were gunned down in north Baghdad. It adds,

"Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and 13 wounded in a suicide car bombing outside a former palace of ousted leader Saddam Hussein in Tikrit now used as a US military base."

Guerrillas fighting back against current Marine operations in Western Iraq killed one Marine on Sunday. The US claimed to have killed or captured dozens of guerrillas, some of them foreigners. Al-Zaman reports that the Sunni hardline organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, claimed that US bombing and operations have killed women and children and destroyed homes and other edifices in the area around Karabila and Qaim. Hamdi al-Alusi, a spokesman for the local hospital, said he had seen 10 corpses brought in and that 17 wounded had been treated. He said most of the victims were women and children. A spokesman for the International Red Crescent said that 300 families in Karabila have been left without food or water.

Two former senior Baathists have been shot down near the Shiite holy city of Karbala recently.

Mortar attacks on a police station in Mosul left a 12 year old child dead and 5 other persons wounded.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Fixing the Intelligence Around the Facts Part Deux

AP has gotten hold of the text of some more Downing Street Memos.

Mark Danner at Tomdispatch.com has further thoughts about the Downing Street Memo and reactions to the dismissals of its significance in the mainstream press.

Justin Raimondo explores one source of the controversy around the Democratic Party hearings held by Congressman John Conyers, which was the criticism voiced by one witness of Israel and its rightwing Zionist supporters in the Bush Administration, for having helped push the US into war against Iraq.

Well, gee, I wonder what was the position of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on whether the US should go to war against Iraq? Ooops, one war wasn't good enough for him. He wants our young men and women to die in Iran, as well. (Iran is 3 times more populous than Iraq and much bigger geographically--3 times the size of France). Then Sharon and other high Israeli officials tried to peddle the line to the gullible American public that Saddam transferred his (non-existent) chemical and biological weapons to Syria. I can't prove this was a lie; I know it to be ridiculous on the face of it, and strongly suspect it was another Israeli disinformation campaign aimed at getting the US to go to war against Syria. So if the controversy is over whether the Sharon government egged the US on to war, it isn't actually controversial. In fact, from Sharon's point of view the US hasn't fought enough wars in the Middle East yet.

American Jews were less likely to support the Iraq war than the general US population. So no one should blame "the Jews" for the Iraq War. Mainly they should blame Bush and Cheney and Delay and Frist. But the case for an Iraq War was significantly bolstered by American supporters of Ariel Sharon (by no means all of them Jewish) high in the Bush administration.

By the way, I've recently been criticized by Michael Rubin, once of the Pentagon the Office of Special Plans for linking to Bob Dreyfuss. (Rubin charges that Dreyfuss once was involved with Lyndon LaRouche, a political crazy, but then actually admits that Dreyfuss has long ago dissociated himself from the Larouchies for veering to the Right!) This is an old McCarthyite tactic. Rubin smears veteran investigative reporter Dreyfuss, then smears me for linking to him. It is an attempt to create taboos and non-persons. Rational public discourse requires that we all examine ideas put forward by members of the Republic of Letters. These ideas can be rejected or accepted on reasoned grounds. But to say "so and so is beyond the pale" about someone like Dreyfuss is an essentially Stalinist tactic. It is also clear that the Zionist Right especially targets liberal Jewish intellectuals, attempting to revive the kind of anti-Semitism prevalent in late 19th century Europe, which displayed a fear of Jews as progressives.

As in the case of another famous Dreyfus, I give the same answer as Zola: J'accuse!

By the way, Rubin's ploy is rich given that Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute brought a former LaRouchie in to brief the Pentagon on Saudi Arabia when he was chair of the Defense Advisory Board. Will Rubin promise never to cite or refer to or use any ideas coming from Perle as a result? And, of course, it is a real question as to why anyone would listen to Rubin after he served in Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans, which cherry-picked intelligence and perpetrated the fraud of the Iraq-al-Qaeda and Iraq WMD fantasies on the American public. And it is further rich that Rubin publishes his screed in David Horowitz's Frontpagemag, which is if anything more certifiable than the LaRouchie rags. But it isn't his associations that we should interact with in Rubin; it is his ideas. If the ideas are flawed, the flaws should be demonstrated. Who he has been hanging out with is less important than whether he has something useful to say in any particular instance. In this particular instance, his keyboard has produced nothing more interesting than a stool sample.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US & UK Bombing raids on Iraq in summer 2002 were illegal

Michael Smith of the London Sunday Times continues his reporting on leaked British memos from 2002 that shed light on the decision-making process that led to the Iraq war. Today he explores the implication of the US/UK bombing campaigns against Iraq, which Gen. Tommy Franks called "spikes of activity." The US and British governments intended the bombing of Iraq to produce two desirable outcomes. First, they hoped that Saddam would retaliate, a retaliation that the Western Powers would be able easily to paint as an act of naked agression against the US and the UK, thus providing a pretext for war against Iraq.

The British government had legal advice that the bombing raids were illegal under the United Nations Charter. (The Charter forbids aggressive war, which is how the bombing was interpreted by the lawyers).

Arguments over the meaning of the UN Charter in the UK come as a surprise to an American, since our government-- the Bush Administration-- not only disgregards the UN charter as "quaint" but also is actively seeking to destroy the international organization.

Smith points out that Bush's bombing of Iraq in summer of 2002 was also unconstitutional if it aimed at provoking war (which it did, as the memos demonstrate). The US Constitution invests the power to declare War in the Congress.

In the US, however, political and legal discourse is so debased that George W. Bush can get away with declaring that we went to war in Iraq "because we were attacked" on September 11. Bush has never produced any documentary evidence to support his allegation of a Saddam- al-Qaeda link, which most professional intelligence analysts and Middle East experts consider impossible.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Hakim Hails Iran for its Cultural and Religious Privileges

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the United Iraqi Alliance list that dominates the Iraqi parliament and head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has been visiting Iran for the past few days. He met with Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei and several other high Iranian officials. He said to an Iranian VP,

' For his part, Hakim appreciated the Islamic Republic's policies toward Iraq. He hailed the massive turnout of Iraqis in election and also briefed Aref on Iraq's latest developments and problems, particularly in the fields of economy and reconstruction. Hakim said Iran enjoys cultural and religious privileges that other states are deprived of.'

I'm confused. US President George W. Bush more or less put al-Hakim in a leading position in Iraq. Al-Hakim thinks well of Iran and praises its system. But Bush trashes Iran as an execrable dictatorship and theocracy.

Reports from the Iraqi Press for June 16 via BBC World Monitoring:

' Al-Da'wah . . .: Security plan to include armed militias within army ... Al-Ja'fari receives Japanese, UK ambassador in Baghdad ... ... Twenty-three Iraqi army members martyred in Ba'qubah ... [MP] Shirwan al-Wa'ili: Islam is the state's official religion, main source of legislation ... New measures to defuse fuel crisis ... Flights between Baghdad, Europe resumed (news agencies quoted) ... Wasit governorate records highest unemployment rate in Iraq . . .

Al-Hawzah [Young Shiite nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr's weekly]: Russian ambassador discusses Iraq's political future with Muqtada al-Sadr ... Delegation of [Sunni] Al-Ramadi, Al-Fallujah tribes visit Muqtada al-Sadr ... Mounting pressure on Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq ... De-Ba'thification committee warns of Ba'thist comeback ... Health minister attacked in Al-Najaf ... Full text of the letter sent by Shaykh Ahmad al-Shaybani from Abu-Ghrayb prison ... The real motives behind attacks on barbershops ... Who are the sponsors of terrorism? ... '

For June 15:

' Al-Furat publishes on page 3 a 250-word article by Husayn al-Samarra'i criticizing the electoral list system, which was adopted in the 30 January election in Iraq, because voters do not know for whom they are voting.

Al-Furat publishes on page 3 a 700-word report citing a number of Iraqi women expressing their views regarding drafting the constitution and the importance of ensuring women's rights in the permanent constitution. . .

Al-Zaman carries on the front page a 150-word report citing a well-known tribesman in Al-Ramadi saying that the Independent Iraqi Popular Forces Grouping will hold an important conference tomorrow, 16 June, which will discuss participation in the drafting of the constitution and the next elections.

Al-Dustur publishes on page 6 a 100-word report saying that a number of activists in the civic organizations in Al-Diyaniyah Governorate held a meeting to discuss the establishment of the Middle Euphrates Union . . .

Al-Mada publishes on page 2 a 200-word report quoting Muwafaq al-Rubay'i, the National Assembly member and National Security adviser, as saying that Arab Sunnis should have proper representation in the committee drafting the constitution to ensure a true Iraqi constitution for all Iraqis. The report adds that al-Rubay'i visited Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in his house in Al-Najaf.

Al-Mada publishes on page 2 a 120-word report saying that al-Diwaniyah Governorate Council has decided to restore the name of "Al-Diwaniya" instead of "Al-Qadisiyah," which was used during Saddam's tenure . . .

Al-Manar al-Yawm runs on page 3 a 2,000-word article by Taha Arif criticizing the Mojahidin-e-Khalq Organization for its terribles crimes it has carried out. The writer says that the recent explosions in Iran were carried out by this organization. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush Helps Hardliners
Neoconservative Ahmadinejad in Lead

The Iranian voting public put a hardliner and a conservative pragmatist into a run-off election with their ballots on Friday. With a turnout of 62 percent or more, voters rejected reformist youth calls for a boycott and some said they meant their vote to be a slap in the face of US President George W. Bush. In the lead is Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Tehran and a hardliner close to the Islamist vigilantes ("Basij") of the grass roots Khomeinist movement. Coming in close second is former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a conservative pragmatist who dealt with the Americans during the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal. They will face each other in a run-off next Friday.

Wire services report,

' “I picked Ahmadinejad to slap America in the face,” said Mahdi Mirmalek after attending Friday prayers at Tehran University.

At Tehran University, the leader of Friday prayers, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, told worshippers that voting “strengthens the pillars of the ruling Islamic establishment.” Followers then joined in with the common chant of “Death to America!” '

The vote is a repudiation of the relatively timid reform movement of outgoing president Mohammad Khatami, which never delivered an improved economy or administration. Its attempts to open up the Khomeinist system to greater personal liberties and greater freedom of speech were relentlessly blocked by the hardline clerics that controlled the judiciary and other oversight bodies. The Right closed dozens of reformist newspapers and cracked down on student demonstrations. The most outspoken reformist on the ballot, Mostafa Moin, did poorly. He had initially been excluded by the hardline clerics that vet Iranian candidates, but was put back on the ballot at the insistence of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. A more moderate reformer, Mehdi Karrubi, came in third and charged ballot fraud by the Revolutionary Guards who supported Ahmadinejad.

It is likely that the Iranian electorate's swing to the Right reflects in part a deep unease about being surrounded by the United States, which has troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Post-revolutionary Iranians are nationalistic and determined to maintain their national independence, and all the talk by the Bush administration about regime change, aggressive action against Iran over its nuclear research program [which so far appears to have been conducted within the limits set by the Non-Proliferation Treaty], and the illegitimacy of the Iranian elections themselves, appears to have contributed to the greater success of the hardliners.

Ahmadinejad is a very bad character, with a long history of essentially fascist activity in suppressing points of view other than those of the hardline Khomeinists. He is said to have plotted the murder of novelist Salman Rushdie and to have been involved in planning terrorist actions by Iranian agents in the 1980s. Ironically, in Iranian terms he is a "Neoconservative," the opposite number of the Cheneys, Perles and Feiths in the United States.

Ahmadinejad is a champion of Iran's nuclear energy program and rejects US interference in Iranian affairs. He also has posed as a champion of the poor of Tehran, once dressing up as a street sweeper. This anti-imperialist and populist rhetoric of Ahmadinejad has clearly stood him in good stead.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Fallujah Massacre of Iraqi Troops, with 14 Dead

On Friday in Fallujah, a suicide bomber targeted a gathering of Iraqi troops near the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party. He killed 14, and wounded 8. The IIP has been targeted by guerrillas for its relative willingness to cooperate with the US. US officials have on more than one occasion boasted that Fallujah is the safest city in Iraq in the aftermath of last November's US assault on it, which left 2/3s of the buildings damaged and most of the population refugees.

Reports are confused, and it is not clear if all the killed and wounded are Iraqi soldiers, or if any Americans were among the casualties. US military personnel were in the vicinity.

Guerrillas also fired mortar shells at the Babel Hotel in downtown Baghdad; no word of casualties yet.

UPI says:

' The police also said that overnight fighting and early Saturday killed ten people, including a woman, and around 12 were injured in separate armed attacks and car bombings in different parts of the country. The casualties included Iraqi civilians, troops and policemen. '

BBC World Monitoring reports from Al-Arabiyah on June 17:

' At 1405 gmt, Al-Sharqiyah said: "A mosque in the Al-Habbaniyah Sub-District in Al-Anbar Governorate was the target of a booby-trapped car, which claimed the lives of five civilians. A US Army statement said that the car blew up yesterday afternoon, and that 15 civilians were also wounded in the explosion. '

A Sunni mosque in Anbar? Why would Sunni guerrillas hit that? Is this another attack on pro-American Sufis? Did the local imam cut a deal? Will try to find out more.

All this against the backdrop of two military operations by US Marines in Anbar province near the Syrian border against guerrillas and jihadi infiltrators, in which the Americans are claiming to have killed dozens of guerrillas.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

First Round of Iran's Presidential Elections Inconclusive
Turnout Stronger than Expected

The Presidential elections in Iran produced a messy result that will require a run-off between the two top candidates. The final outcome won't be clear until Saturday afternoon at least, but it seems that former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will be one of the two.

Turnout was about 60 percent, better than expected. That is slightly bigger than the turnout in Iraq's recent elections.

The problem for voters seeking genuine change is that the hardline clerics have found ways to blunt progressive movements. It remains to be seen if a new president will be able to outmaneuver them. The Iranian public appears to be voting for candidates with strong personalities who might be able to accomplish something nevertheless.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Mosque Attack Wounds 4
US Raids against al-Dhari, Muqtada

Sibernews reports, 'A car bomb has exploded close to a Shia mosque in eastern Baghdad as people were emerging from Friday prayers, injuring at least two people [the Guardian reports 4 wounded]. The driver seems to have rammed a fuel lorry passing through the Kamaliya district, police sources said. '

The Guardian reports "a suicide bomber rammed an army convoy in northern Iraq wounding seven people."

About 1000 Marines and some Iraqi troops fought in Operation Spear against suspected guerrillas and jihadi infiltrators in western Iraq (Anbar province) near the Syrian border. The campaign involved the dropping of 500-pound bombs. Local hospitals reported that 6 Iraqi corpses were brought in, including a woman. Previous such operations have had only a temporary and limited effect, because the Marines would attack and then later withdraw. The US does not have enough troops in Iraq effectively to secure Anbar Province (where there are only 10,000 for a population of nearly some 800,000, with long borders with Syria and Jordan).

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a hardline Sunni group, protested the operation and threatened a strike if it continued.

AP/ al-Hayat report that 20 armed guerrillas surrounded a mosque in Ramadi to privent a meeting of tribal chieftains, who had assembled to discuss cooperating with the central government and to explore the issue of the constitution.

The Guardian reports that Ramadi has been taken over by guerrillas, who terrorize the population and are importing armor-piercing weaponry to deal with the Americans.

al-Zaman reports that the Association of Muslim Scholars protested a US raid on the home of its leader, Shaikh Harith al-Dhari. It also denounced the similar raid on the information office of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad. The AMS demanded in a communique that such raids be stopped, along with "arbitrary" arrests of Iraqis in general and of national symbols in particular. The raid on al-Dhari's home took place Wednesday, while the Sadr office was searched on Thursday. The statement called upon the United Nations and international and regional organizations to intervene to stop what it called "terrorist and repressive practices against the principles of humanity." It also called for an investigatory commission to examine the the conditions and realities in the prisons and holding cells.

ADN Kronos International reports that the Zarqawi terrorist network in Iraq has threatened to kill any Iraqis who cooperate with the US or the new Iraqi government. The threats came in response to the indications that tribal leaders and other notables in Mosul are willing to work against the guerrilla moveement as long as they and theirs are amnestied and promised a better deal with the central government.

Richard Whittle of the Dallas Morning News explores the likely consequences for Iraq of an early US military withdrawal there.

Turkey is concerned about the reports in the Washington Post earlier this week that Kurds have detained large numbers of innocent Turkmen from Kirkuk. The nationalist Turkish government sees itself as protector of the Iraqi Turkmen, who constitute about 3 percent of the Iraqi population.

Malaysia will offer some reconstruction aid to Iraq and Palestine.

Most Virginians are pretty conservative politically, but are also fiscal conservatives. When Roanoke newspaper editorials begin worrying about the impact of the $5 billion a month the US spends on Iraq in direct costs, and that it is not being acknowledged in Bush's federal budget plans, then Bush is starting to get into some trouble. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is gearing up to give Bush another extra payment for Iraq of $45 billion.

Al-Qaeda is bringing Arab suicide bombers into Afghanistan in hopes of creating the same sort of instability and hostile environment for the 20,000 US troops there as that tactic has produced in Iraq. This according to Rahim Wardak, the Defense Minister.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Zarqawi and the Scarlet Pimpernel

WESTLEY: ' Well, Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. So he took me to his cabin and told me his secret. "I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts," he said. "My name is Ryan. I inherited this ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts, either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia." Then he explained the name was the important thing for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westley." '

-William Goldman, "The Princess Bride"

Billmon's "Form over Substance" goes beyond expressing skepticism about the shadowy stories coming out of Iraq about top aides of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi being arrested. He suggests that the stories are a combination black psy-ops operation to influence public opinion, and scripted Hollywood entertainment value. I would only add that it is now often forgotten that the major politicians running Iraq are the same people who lied to the US public about Saddam's WMD and about Baath links to terrorism, etc. Vice-Premier Ahmad Chalabi, Member of Parliament Iyad Allawi, and others told bald-faced lies or provided to Western intelligence defectors who told bald-faced lies. They told Tony Blair that Saddam could launch a chemical weapons attack on Western interests "within 45 minutes." Chalabi's lies and those of his cronies would fill a multi-volume print encyclopedia. How likely is it that now that they are running the Iraqi government, we can suddenly trust everything their spokesmen tell us? Yet the Western press dutifully reports these allegations about the attrition against the Zarqawi network as though it is gospel. I almost never refer to such reports, because they seem to me obviously questionable and impossible to verify, except that obviously someone continues to go on blowing things up in Iraq despite Iraqi government claims about all these arrests.

Meanwhile, Reuters says that an internet site associated with the Zarqawi network denies that any Zarqawi aides were arrested recently in Iraq or in Spain, as had been reported in the press. There is no way of knowing who posts these supposed communiques, and there is every reason to be suspicious of the information in them.

[See here for The Scarlet Pimpernel.]
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

6 US Servicemen Killed at Ramadi
10 Iraqis Killed, 38 Wounded

Guerrillas near Ramadi detonated a roadside bomb on Wednesday as a Marine convoy went by, killing 5 Marines. A sailor attached to the Marines in Ramadi was shot down dead in Ramadi, as well. Altogether, Guerrillas killed nearly 60 persons in the past month.

A suicide bomber rammed his car into a truck Thursday. The truck was traveling along the Airport road. The bomb killed at least 8 persons, and injured at least 28.

In Mosul, guerrillas assassinated a judge and his bodyguard.

In northern Baghdad, guerrillas detonated a car bomb by remote control, leaving 5 Iraqi soldiers injured.

In Kirkuk, a car bomb hit a convoy of military vehicles, injuring 5 Iraqi soldiers and a young boy.

Armed pirates in Basra robbed a supertanker, according to Reuters. Given that the price of petroleum now seems to have a new target, of around $50 a barrel, this report is a Willie Sutton moment. You rob the supertanker because that is where the money is.

As the scandal of the Downing Street Memo continues to percolate, it was confirmed on Thursday that the United States military used napalm-like incendiary bombs called MK77 in the Iraq War and then lied to their British allies about it. MK77 and napalm materials cling to the skin an inexorably burn the victim, and most countries in the world consider their use barbaric and something close to a war crime. The UK is signatory to a pledge not to use the weapons. British parliamentarians are now revisiting the question of whether MK77 was used against Fallujah last November. Persistent rumors circulated that the US used chemical weapons in that attack. Although MK77 is not classified as a chemical weapon, if it were used, it might help explain the rumors.

Professor Adel Saffy of Bahcesehir University in Istanbul compares the Bush-Blair agreement in April, 2002, to get up a war against Iraq through the manipulation of their publics to the Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France during WW I that led to the Middle East being carved up into small weak states (and involved the British duplicitously promising Syria both to the French and to Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the ancestor of Jordan's King Abdullah II).

Newsday points out that Iran is probably the best friend the new government in Baghdad has in the Middle East region. Contrary to those who blame Iran for guerrilla attacks, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has contributed to the insurgency in any significant manner.

Congressman John Conyers held a minority Democratic hearing on the Downing Street Memo and mounting evidence that the Bush administration fixed the intelligence on the basis of which they said they were going to war against Iraq. House Democrats are seeking formal congressional hearings.

Cindy
Sheehan's speech, given at the hearings, is online. She is the mother of a US soldier killed in Sadr City in April 2004.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shiites Compromise with Sunnis over Constitution Drafting Committee

al-Sharq al-Awsat and AFP Jawad Maliki, the deputy leader of the Da`wa Party led by Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, affirmed yesterday that the parliamentary constitution-drafting committee agreed to increase the number of Sunni Arab members to 25. Of these, 10 would be non-voting advisors. Initially, Shiites in parliament were offering the Sunnis only 2 voting members on the committee and another 13 advisory members. Maliki admitted that the 10 advisory members "will not play a big role in the discussions."

Salih al-Mutlaq of the Iraqi National Dialogue Council (a Sunni organization) said, "The Sunni parties will immediately begin choosing the 13 new members and the 10 advisors on the committee." He added, "The advisors are experts who will draft the constitution, and the members will supervise them." He explained that the Sunni parties attending the meeting compirsed the Dialogue Council, the Nationalist Tendency, the Reform Party, the Ninevah Front, the Iraqi Islamic Party led by Muhsin Abdul Hamid, and the Sunni Pious Endowments Bureau led by Adnan Dulaimi.

Mutlaq entered a caveat. "Even so," he said, "the constitution is not heading in a direction that benefits Iraq and the Sunnis . . . the constitution is heading in the direction of federalism, and we oppose federalism."

Dr. Fu'ad Masoum, the vice-chair of the constitution drafting committee, said that it would begin its work next week. Another member of the 70-member committee, Dr. Qasim Da'ud, said that the constitution would be drafted by consensus rather than by a simple yes or no vote.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Friedman and Imaginary Troops

Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, makes several policy decisions with regard to Iraq. The first is to stay the course until an effective Iraqi force could be stood up. Another is to find ways of re-involving the United Nations in Iraq. Both of these ideas have things to recommend them, though Bush is highly unlikely to go for the latter.

The third is to double US troop strength in Iraq to 260,000 servicemen.

I'm not sure why Tom doesn't know this, but we don't have the troops to do that. There are only 10 fighting divisions in the Army, and standing up more would take 5 years. (A division is typically between 20,000 and 25,000 troops). You can't put all ten into Iraq (remember Afghanistan and South Korea?), and couldn't keep them all there permanently if you could. Friedman's suggestion literally cannot be implemented.

As early as 2003, military journalists were pointing to the problems in maintaining troop strength in Iraq. At that time, it seemed the only hope was to widen the coalition. That did not happen, and probably now cannot. The alternative is to kidnap the reservists and keep them in Iraq for 18 months at a time. That is what has been done, and it isn't likely to help recruitment of reservists.

Moreover, a counter-insurgency is not always best fought with large numbers. We had 500,000 men in Vietnam, and that did not go well. Counter-insurgency requires political successes in which you get the people on your side and manage to entice the insurgent leaders into giving up violence. (Hint: So far little sign of successful counter-insurgency in Iraq.)

So the suggestion is impractical. And if it were practical, it would not work.

It is an index of how desperate the US political class is that impractical ideas are put forward by major journalists in newspapers of record that have already reported on their impracticality.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

48 Dead in Guerrilla Violence
Suicide Bombing in Khalis Targets Iraqi Troops

Knight Ridder reports that a suicide bomber in an Iraqi army uniform detonated his bomb belt in the midst of Iraqi soldiers eating lunch in Khalis north of Baghdad, killing at least 26 persons [AFP] and wounding 29. Early details were confused and conflicting. AFP reported that wounded soldiers said that the bomber had been a member of their unit and detonated the bomb in an on-base mess hall. Knight Ridder knows that narrative but reports an alternative one, that the soldiers were eating in a restaurant off base and that the bomber was wearing civilian clothes.

Wire services reported conflicting accounts of the fate of two counter-terrorism police from Kirkuk. AFP said that they were visiting Khalis and were shot by guerrillas while driving in their car. Knight Ridder says they were kidnapped in Kirkuk itself.

Knight Ridder adds,

"In Baghdad, 10 people were killed when a suicide attacker drove a car bomb into two squad cars. Dozens of bystanders were wounded, and several nearby civilian vehicles were burned. Five Iraqis were killed and eight others were injured when three errant mortar shells landed in a Baghdad kebab restaurant Wednesday. In the western end of the capital, one civilian was killed and six police officers were injured in a gun battle with insurgents."

In Telafar in the Turkmen north, Iraqi government forces battled guerrillas, in clashes that left two policemen and 5 other persons dead.

The NYT says that US troops keep taking the northern border town of Telafar and then losing it againt to the guerrilla movement. Telafar is largely Turkmen, and most of the Turkmen there are Shiites of some sort. But some are radical Sunnis, and foreign fighters, especially Syrians, find it easy to get to Telafar from Syria.

Spain announced that it had busted up and arrested members of a terrorist group that recruited young Muslim men in Europe to go as fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq. The Spanish say the group was linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network and to Ansar al-Islam.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP report that the governing council of Karbala province has fired the police chief of the holy city of Karbala for "misusing his office." Col. Abbas Fadil Abbud al-Hasani was also said to have fallen short in the performance of his duties.

His interim successor is Razzaq Abd `Ali.

Al-Hasani expressed perplexity at the decision. He denied that there had been any security lapses with regard to the religious pilgrims who come to Karbala in the hundreds of thousands.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq controls most of the southern provincial governments and has gradually been putting its own men in power.

The Los Angeles Times profiles the leaked British cabinet memos that detail the decision-making that led to the Iraq war. Reporter John Daniszewski certainly makes a good case.

Australian hostage Douglas Wood was found and freed. I know people who know him, and can't say how happy and relieved I am that he is safe.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Apartheid for Arabs in Irbil?
Iranian Kurds Riot

An eyewitness has described for me by email driving through the north of Kurdistan and seeing enormous posters of Massoud Barzani (the new president of the Kurdistan super-province) after the manner of a cult of personality.

When the Kurdistan parliament is in session, Irbil is closed to Iraqi Arabs. Iraqi Arab immigrant laborers are said to be stopped at checkpoints and turned back.
There is apparently a plan to have Iraqi Arabs visiting Irbil register with the Kurdistan ministry of the interior.

Reports from northern Kurdistan suggest that there is a severe gasoline shortage. Some suspect it is deliberate, as a way of cutting down on traffic that might endanger security.

In his speech at his swearing-in earlier this week, Barzani had pledged himself to the ideals of the rule of law, constitutionalism, and the unity of Iraq.

On hearing of Barzani's swearing-in as president of Kurdistan Iranian Kurds celebrated riotously in Mahabad. Iranian police intervened to suppress the celebrations. Iran, with some 4 million Kurds of its own, fears that Kurdish nationalism could lead to the break-up of the country. Iran has Persian-speaking populations on the central plateau, but on the peripheries are ethnic and religious minorities, including Turkic Azeris, Kurds, Lurs, Arabs, Baluch, Tajiks and Turkmen. Aside from the Azeris and Qashqai, most of the peripheral minorities are Sunnis. Most Iranians are Shiites.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Gitmo-by-the-Sea: 5-Star Holidays for Oppressed Christians: Fisher

Guest Satire by William Fisher

"Oppressed Christians: Looking for a five-star holiday? Have we got a deal for you!

GITMO-By-The-Sea"


Don’t laugh, folks. Our Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could just be poised to become the country’s hottest tourist destination for folks of faith.

It’s hard to see how it could lose, since it’s being promoted by America’s hottest new tourism entrepreneurs -- Alabama’s Senator Jeff Sessions and California congressman Duncan Hunter, chairman of the powerful Armed Services Committee. It’s got a business plan, a high-profile Board of Directors, and all the other bells and whistles of a venture capitalist’s dream.

And Sessions and Hunter and their colleagues aren’t being a bit bashful about selling the idea – with taxpayers’ money.

Senator Sessions made his first pitch during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The Navy’s prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he gushed, is ideally placed, “overlooking the water…It would make a beautiful resort.” Obviously looking for endorsements from influential opinion leaders, he urged his fellow senators to be sure to pay a visit soon, courtesy of the Defense Department.

A day earlier, in a U.S. Capitol meeting room, Sen. Sessions’ partner, Rep. Hunter, gave the press a peek at GITMO’s five-star cuisine: Lemon fish, two types of fruit, two types of vegetables. "This is lemon fish,” he told a press conference. “And this is what the 20th hijacker [of the September 11th attacks] and Osama bin Laden's bodyguards will be eating this week in Guantanamo," he added.

And, as if the idyllic Caribbean views and all this healthy grub wasn’t enough, we learn from Rep. Hunter that the management is throwing in invaluable incentives: A Qoran in every bed table (guaranteed dry), oil, beads, slippers, and five supervised prayer services daily (rugs included).

But that ain’t all! For every carefree night you while away at GITMO, you earn points on your FAP program. FAP is GITMO’s Frequent Abuse Program. This qualifies you for free upgrades on the CIA Gulfstream to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other popular ‘rendition’ destinations, and deep-discount trips to Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base.

Seeking to dispel what may be GITMO’s few remaining negative images, Rep. Hunter assures us there is no real abuse "unless you consider eating chicken three times a week real torture."

Other members of the resort’s new Board of Directors are also weighing in. At a news briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld boasted that "at Guantanamo, the military spends more per meal for detainees" than it does on rations for U.S. troops. Rummie assures us that this level of extravagance will continue.

Then there are the spiritual benefits. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh paints the detention center as the picture of religious freedom that "may be a great vacation spot for oppressed Christians in the United States."

So who could resist? It may take a tad longer to get rid of GITMO’s present tenants, but trust me, it’ll be well worth the wait.

Finally, all you B-School types need to know about the most fun part of the business plan. Sessions and Hunter are thinking about franchising their GITMO-By-The-Sea idea to rich Middle East business tycoons as a way to spread democracy and market-based capitalism in the Muslim world.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Guerrillas Kill 29 Iraqis Tuesday, Wound over 100 in North
3 US Servicemen Dead
Kurds Abducting Arabs, Turkmen in Kirkuk

The Associated Press reports

"And an American soldier was killed when a roadside bomb hit his convoy in southern Baghdad, the military said, adding that two other soldiers assigned to a Marine unit died in a similar attack Monday in Ramadi, 60 miles west of the capital."

A suicide bomber killed 23 persons and wounded nearly 100 when he detonated his payload outside a bank in Kirkuk as seniors stood in line to cash their pension checks.

In Kan'an, a half-hour drive north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber targeted an Iraqi military checkpoint, killing 5 troops and wounding 2.

Hospitals in Baghdad received the macabre shipment of 24 corpses of men who had been ambushed by guerrillas in the west of Iraq.

In Ramadi, a suicide bomber attacked a military checkpoint and killed one Iraqi soldier. In the aftermath, US Marines and Iraqi soldiers opened fire on civilians in cars behind the suicide bomber, killing 5 civilians. AP implies that they were in fact innocent civilians.

Steve Fainaru and Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post report that the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan have used their police and security units in Kirkuk to kidnap hundreds of Arabs and Turkmen in the city. They have been held in prisons outside any legal framework, and some have been tortured. The two intrepid reporters have gotten hold of a US State Department memo on the issue:

'A confidential State Department cable, obtained by The Washington Post and addressed to the White House, Pentagon and U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the "extra-judicial detentions" were part of a "concerted and widespread initiative" by Kurdish political parties "to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner." '

Kirkuk is a powderkeg. AFter the fall of Saddam, the city of about 1 million was estimated to be about 1/3 each Turkmen, Arab and Kurdish. But many Arabs have been chased out, and many Kurds have come into the city (in many cases returning to a place from which Saddam had expelled them). Fainaru and Shadid now seem to suggest that the Kurds are about 48 percent of the population, with Turkmen and Arabs a quarter each.

The kidnapping tactics extend to Mosul and perhaps to Tel Afar.

Arab on Kurdish violence could provoke a civil war. Kurdish on Turkmen violence could bring Turkey into northern Iraq, since Ankara sees itself as a protector of Iraq's 750,000 Turkmen.

US military and Kurdish officials denied the abductions or said they had ended, but obviously the State Department does not agree, and Fainaru and Shadid find plenty of evidence that they are continuing.


Hamza Hendawi reports that Sunni Arab demands that they have 25 representatives on the constitution drafting committee in parliament probably spring from an over-estimation of their proportion of the population. The Shiites won't give them more than 15, the same as the Kurds, on the grounds that both minorities are about 20 percent of the population. The Sunni Arabs often maintain that they are a majority. They are a small minority, however, and I personally suspect they are a samller proportion of the population than 20. (5 percent of Iraqis are Christians, Turkmen and other smaller minorities, and about 62 percent are Shiites. That only leaves 33 percent for the Kurds to split with the Sunnis).

Wrangling about the composition of the constitution drafting committee has held up its work, to the point where President Bush phoned Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president of Iraq, on Monday to urge him to find a compromise so that the constitution could get written. Talabani, however, probably isn't seen by the Sunni Arabs as an honest broker (see above).

The Shiite dominated government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari received a vote of confidence from the Shiite dominated parliament.

Reuters reports that a new radio station focusing on women's issues has begun broadcasting in Baghdad.

Ed Wong of the New York Times writes, ' Joost R. Hiltermann, director of the Middle East office of the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization, said in a recent interview that the White House should ensure that the national Iraqi government administer Kirkuk rather than the Kurds. Otherwise, he said, the potential for large-scale civil conflict will increase. '*

This last from Hiltermann was a misquote, which the Times later corrected, on 6/22/05

*New York Times

Corrections: For the Record
Published: June 22, 2005

A front-page article last Wednesday about a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq riven by political and sectarian tensions, misstated the view of a conflict-resolution specialist on who should govern the city. The specialist, Joost R. Hiltermann, director of the Middle East office of the International Crisis Group, said the White House should ensure that Kirkuk has administrative autonomy, not that the central Iraq government should run it.

Hiltermann wrote me by email:

Joost writing: ' Actually, I also didn't use the phrase "the White House should ensure that Kirkuk has administrative autonomy". I probably said what I always say: That Kirkuk should become a federal region by itself in the new federal Iraq, just as Baghdad is expected to become a federal region. Of course, it is difficult to be precise when Iraqis themselves have yet to decide what sort of political structure they want for the new Iraq. My point is that for the sake of peace, stability and justice in Kirkuk, Kirkuk governorate (reconstituted) should fall neither under the direct control of the central government nor of the Kurdistan Regional Government. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

21 Dead, 40 Wounded in Guerrilla Violence

AFP reports

*At a checkpoint between Baghdad and Baquba (to the northeast of the capital) at Khan Bani Saad, guerrillas sprayed a police checkpoint with machine gun fire, killing 4 and wounding 7. When help came, a car bomber struck, wounding another three soldiers.

*In Tikrit a guerrilla in a car bomb detonated his payload near an Iraqi police patrol. He killed 3 persons [Knight Ridder] and wounded 17.

*In Samarra, a car bomber targeted an Iraqi army checkpoint. He killed 3 soldiers and wounded another 5. A roadside bomb killed another Iraqi soldier. A major battle was fought at Samarra, involving 70 guerrillas ranged against Iraqi security forces, that left two Iraqi police commandos and two soldiers dead.

*In Baghdad, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb, killing 2 Iraqis (at least one a police officer) and wounding 5.

Al-Zaman, depending on the Interior Ministry, said that altogether car bombs in the capital killed 3 and wounded 20 on Monday.

*An Iraqi gendarme guard was shot dead near Baiji, a center of oil refining.

*In Dhulu'iyah guerrillas assassinated a businessman as he was leaving a US base.

*In Baghdad, six bodies were found, most of them having clearly been tortured before being killed.

*In Dur, the body of an Iraqi soldier was discovered in the river.

*Al-Zaman reports that a roadside bomb killed one child and wounded another in Salman Pak on Monday.

Mortar shells fell on a wake in the al-Hurriyah district, wounding 7 civilians.


Iraqi tribes are said to have decided to turn over suspects to the central Iraqi government.

Guerrillas kidnapped Jaymon Qadir, a Kurdish women's rights activist in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday. She is an activist in the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

*Aamer Madhani of Knight Ridder reports:A guerrilla in a car bomb targeted the HQ of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a relatively moderate Sunni group. The explosion came only 10 minutes after the departure of the acting US ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, who had been conducting consultations with the IIP leadership. The car bombing wounded two US soldiers and killed a 6-year-old little girl.

Although the ambassador was probably not the target of the blast, it is a hell of a note when the acting US ambassador cannot go out of the green zone without risking bodily harm. The bombing was probably intended to punish the Iraqi Islamic Party for cooperating with the Americans.

Al-Zaman/AFP The constitution drafting committee in parliament began work Monday on writing the new constitution, even though the issue of Sunni representation remains unsettled.

Reuters reports, "Iraqi doctors say they are concerned over an increase in Tuberculosis (TB) cases in the southeastern city of Amarah, fueled by a shortage of medicine and poor living conditions." Iraqi governments during the past 50 years had gotten the problem under control in that region.

My count of dead and wounded for Monday is many times higher than that in the mainstream media, whether the Washington Post or even the wire services. The numbers are arrived at by collating incidents reported in AFP and by Knight Ridder, and adding in incidents and casualties reported in the Baghdad daily, al-Zaman. Bad as things are in Iraq, I still don't think the full tragedy is getting out to the American public.
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Barzani President of Iraqi Kurdistan

UPI transmits from al-Hayat a report that the Kurds are upset with Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's high-handed decision-making style. They say they will leave their coalition in parliament with the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance if Jaafari does not start consulting them more.

It is not clear in the interim constitution that a Kurdish withdrawal would matter. Although a 2/3s majority is required to form a government, it can be kept in power by a simple majority. The United Iraqi Alliance and its close allies have at least 54 percent of seats in parliament.

Meanwhile, Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party has become president of Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous provincial confederation in the north made possible by over a decade of US protection under the no-fly zone.

Governing councils in the nine southern Shiite provinces have spoken of forming from themselves 3 larger provinces and a regional confederation to be called "Sumer", to offset the weight of Kurdistan.
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The Downing Street Memos and the Revenge of the Bloggers

When Michael Smith of the London Times wrote about a further leaked British cabinet document on decision-making about the Iraq war in July 2003, he did not simply report the revelations in the document.

Most commentators on the Smith story have missed his open acknowledgment of the role of the blogging world in turning the Downing Street Memo and other leaked British documents from a provincial Whitehall story into a world (and American) phenomenon. Smith writes,

"The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure, particularly on the American president, because of the damaging revelation that Bush and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002 and then looked for a way to justify it.

There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by last month’s publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host of citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know why the Downing Street memo (often shortened to “the DSM” on websites) has been largely ignored by the US mainstream media." [Emphasis added.]

If this story had broken in the 1970s, it probably would just have been buried by the mainstream US press and remained an oddity of UK's Fleet Street. But here you have the Times of London actually acknowledging the wind under its sails from the blogging world!

Smith continues:

"Frustrated at the refusal by the White House to respond to their letter, the congressmen [led by John Conyers] have set up a website — www.downingstreetmemo.com — to collect signatures on a petition demanding the same answers.

Conyers promised to deliver it to Bush once it reached 250,000 signatures. By Friday morning it already had more than 500,000 with as many as 1m expected to have been obtained when he delivers it to the White House on Thursday.

AfterDowningStreet.org, another website set up as a result of the memo, is calling for a congressional committee to consider whether Bush’s actions as depicted in the memo constitute grounds for impeachment.

So Smith not only acknowledges the pressure put on the US corporate media by the bloggers, but he also points to a virtual social movement around the DSM, with emails and petitions circulating in the hundreds of thousands and giving the Democrats in Congress their first high-profile investigatory opportunity of the Bush presidency.

The seeping of blogistan into the pages of the Times of London with regard to its own scoops seems to me a bellwether of the kinds of changes that are being produced in our information environment by the blogging phenomenon. The gatekeepers at the New York Times and the Washington Post can no longer decide whether a leak is a story or a non-story. The public decides what a story is.

The magnitude of the change is clear in the coverage at the Washington Post. The post, like the New York Times, Newsday, and others, ignored the original Downing Street Memo, published in the London Times on May 1.

The first Washington Post story on the Downing Street Memo was not published until May 13, nearly two weeks after the leak. Walter Pincus, despite doing an excellent job in explaining the significance of the Memo, was however relegated by the editors to page 18.

Admittedly, the leaked memo did pose problems for the mainstream media. In order to protect its source, the Times of London had not made available a facsimile of the original, but just retyped it and put it up in HTML. After the trouble Dan Rather got into last summer over the document purportedly about Bush's service record, any news editor would be nervous about jumping on the DSM bandwagon. Wikipedia notes, "On June 8, 2005, USA Today printed an article by their senior assignment editor for foreign news, Jim Cox, saying with respect to the memo, "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source. ... There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing." Bloggers made fun of Cox for "not knowing where to find the memo," but they don't have to worry about this issue as much, since they mostly aren't professional journalists. If the memo turned out to be a fake, they could just say "ooops," what did I know? As a professional historian, I had more at stake. But I felt that the wording of the leaked memo, its details, and its fit with what else we knew, were sufficient to authenticate it.

Further, professional journalists have a credo that they don't just poach on other people's scoops. You would want to develop your own sources and have something to add to the story before doing a front-pager on it. I would argue that this credo is counter-productive and easily dealt with. You could kick it to the op-ed page and do commentary. (This is how the bloggers handled it, and the indispensable Paul Krugman weighed in on May 16 this way for the New York Times.) Or you could do a story about the reaction to the leak in the UK, which would give you your own hook. I personally think that editors who don't want to cover a story use their lack of original leads as an excuse to sit on it.

The cabinet briefing paper leaked on Sunday is instructive. This time a companion piece was written by Walter Pincus for the Washington Post, and it received front-page treatment.

Pincus writes,

"That memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith, who writes for the London Sunday Times. Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post, and the material was confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter."

This passage is worded in such a way as to suggest that Smith himself made the documents and some British contacts available to Pincus. If so, it was both remarkably generous and also very smart of him. He solved some of the main problems that the US press had had in covering the story, at least with regard to the Post, and ensured that it reverberated on this side of the pond. I don't mean to take anything away from the prowess of Pincus, a first-rate reporter, who may well have in the meantime developed his own sources in London. I'm just going by the diction, which admits that Smith first obtained the new briefing paper and then goes into the passive mood, saying that excerpts "were made available" to the Post.

The positioning of Pincus's article is clearly in part a result of the enormous pressure the bloggers and the public have put on the Post on this issue. Indeed, it is probably the case that having "ombudsmen" at the papers of record, who discuss and explain editorial decisions, is itself a response to the interactivity of contemporary culture, exemplified by the internet.

Linguist Jean-Philippe Marcotte at Stanford, in an email to me today, contrasts the Pincus article to the treatment given the new revelations at the New York Times:

You may by now have seen the NYT's deeply buried take on the new DSM, written by David Sanger, "Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made", which turns on a tendentious reading of the phrase "no political decisions". In the context of the memo, it seems clear that these decisions concern the strategy by which the conditions or framework for military action [are created]; but Sanger interprets it to mean what the article title says, and misses completely the bit about using the UN process to justify, not avoid, the war. The tone is strikingly defensive, effectively claiming that the Times reported on this memo two weeks before it was even written.

The contrast with the London Sunday Times reading, and yours, is stark. At least when the Washington Post missed the point they put their story on the front page...

Thanks,

Jean-Phlippe Marcotte

Think Progress, a progressive Web site, surveys the whole batch of leaked British cabinet documents on war decision-making, and concludes that they demonstrate a full knowledge on the part of the Blair government of the flimsiness of the pretexts being put forward for going to war against Iraq. Like Marcotte, they think that the Washington Post missed this aspect of the story.

The bloggers have forced the issue into the corporate media, and are helping create a real buzz around the Conyers hearings scheduled for Thursday.

Conyers and his staff are well aware that ordinarily hearings held by members of the minority party in Congress (which therefore are unlikely to have teeth) are routinely ignored by the corporate media. They are placing their hopes in the blogging world to cover the hearings and get the word out. They are planning to release further documents corroborating the Downing Street Memo.

This entire affair could be a harbinger of what is coming in 2007. If the Democrats can take back the Senate in 2006, all of a sudden they could schedule real investigatory hearings at the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Senate Armed Services Committee, into Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans, into Cheney's pressure on the CIA analysts, into the fabrication of intelligence and the political lies that dragged this country into the Iraq quagmire. Imagine what the Republicans did to Bill Clinton for merely fibbing about a desultory relationship (13 meetings) with a young woman that did not even involve intercourse. What would be the appropriate punishment for lying about Iraq's non-existent nuclear weapons program? Or launching a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter? Bush knows very well he will be a lame duck by January 2007. The real question is whether he will end up being roasted duck.

Certainly, the end of the story will depend far less on the contemporary equivalents of Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee, who gave Woodward and Bernstein their heads in uncovering the Watergate scandal, than would have otherwise been the case. Such members of the press and editorial elite used to get to decide whether to bury a scandal or pursue it. Now, that power has been democratized by the world wide web. Bloggers will help to decide the end of the story.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Top Ten Things You Wouldn't expect to Happen if You Listened to Bush and Cheney


10. You wouldn't expect Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Prison to have been put in "stress positions," or physically poked and shoved, or subjected to "The Invasion of Space by the Female," or to have had their heartbeat driven down to 35 beats a minute by the constant harassment, or to have them ask for crayons to write a will because they had decided to commit suicide. Some of the log of an interrogator has been published by Time magazine.

9. You would not expect that Iraq,
instead of being a beacon of democracy to neighbors like Iran, seems instead to have been a beacon of car bombings. Nine persons were killed in bombings around Iran on Sunday. Some of the bombings occurred in the oil-rich Khuzistan region, which is half Arab. The crazed Ledeenites and others who desperately want war against Iran or turbulence inside Iran are not actually going to like it if Ahvaz becomes so unstable that petroleum can't be pumped (as has already happened in Iraq.) Take more petroleum off the world market, and the price will jump from an already high $52 a barrel.

8. You wouldn't expect the pro-Syrian Hizbullah (Hezbollah) and its allies in Lebanon to get 10 seats in the Bikaa Valley, bringing the total number of seats held by Hizbullah and its allies to 33 out of 128.

7. You wouldn't expect the anti-Syrian "Lebanese Forces" faction of Christians to be crushed by returned Gen. Michel Aoun, whose list won 15 of 16 seats in the largely Christian district northeast of Beirut.

6. You wouldn't expect the resurgent Taliban to have used a roadside bomb to wound 4 US troops in Qandahar, Afghanistan. After all, resources were pulled out of Afhganistan beginnning in late winter of 2002, on the grounds that it was all taken care of.

5. You wouldn't expect 7 Marines to have been killed in Iraq since Friday. More than 1700 US military personnel have died in Iraq since the war began.

4. You wouldn't expect 28 bodies of Sunni Arabs to be found in Baghdad, their bodies riddled with bullets.

3. You wouldn't expect Republican members of Congress to demand a timetable for the withrdrawal of US troops from Iraq!

2. You wouldn't expect nearly 6 in ten of Americans to say they want at least some troops withdrawn from Iraq.

1. You wouldn't expect Sunni Arabs of Iraq to say that now is the worst they have ever had it.

-----

Will blog more Monday afternoon.
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The International Criminal Court and Blair/Bush: Amy Ross

Guest Comments by Amy Ross

"The International Criminal Court and Blair/Bush"

"Regarding accountability and the ICC: It does seem that the Blair administration was much more cognizant of the potential conflict with the ICC. Indeed the prominent British human rights lawyer Cherie Booth (aka Mrs. Blair) wrote in an essay on the ICC in 2003 that "...it is of singular importance to note that no one-- not even a serving head of state --will be able to claim immunity from the jurisdiction of the Court." (in "From Nuremberg to The Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice," Philippe Sands editor.)

Britain's House of Lords had previously asserted in the Pinochet case (1998) the lack of immunity for certain crimes under international law: the judges stressed that
accountability was ESPECIALLY important for state figures.

However, the ICC is unlikely to open a case against the British in Iraq. For starters, the member states have only agreed to include the crime of aggression in the ICC's statute (alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide) in 2009. At the ICC's first major press conference in The Hague (July 16 2003), the Chief Prosecutor acknowledge that nearly 1/4 of the 'communications' his office had received in the institution's first year concerned complaints related to Iraq. But, said Mr. Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC did not envision taking up these cases due to the principle of complementarity, which says that national courts have the first chance to investigate and prosecute incidents attributed to its nationals. It is only if a state is 'unable and unwilling' that the ICC's jurisdiction kicks in. At this early stage in the ICC's development, I would be surprised if Moreno-Ocampo decided to take on a member of the Security Council. I suspect he needs British cooperation too much in Uganda, the DRC and the Sudan to risk the antagonism.

I do believe that Bush and other high-level administration officials will face a court someday, but I think it will be after 2009, and probably in a national court such as Brussels or Madrid (exercising universal jurisdiction) rather than the
ICC. . .

Re: the ICC and complementarity. In theory, since the British have a functioning judiciary, capable of handling investigations and prosecutions, the ICC can refrain from issuing an indictment of Blair EVEN IF there is evidence of crimes within its jurisdiction. The same should be true regarding the United States, even though the US is not a party to the treaty. As long as the US, (and Britian and Australia and Italy) demonstrates competency in regard to prosecuting and punishing crimes of international concern, the ICC is supposed to stay out of the way. However: if the
US fails to investigate/prosecute (proves to be unable or unwilling') than the ICC, and foreign courts, can assert jurisdiction. That's why it is so important that we demand an investigation of Bush, now. If such a move is blocked, that opens up possiblities (later) in international arenas.

Amy Ross
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia
30602

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush and Blair Committed to War in April, 2002
Leaked Cabinet Briefing Shows British Knew War was Illegal

The London Times has dropped another bombshell document concerning the planning of the Iraq war in Washington and London.

The leaked Cabinet office briefing paper for the July 23, 2002, meeting of principals in London, the minutes of which have become notorious as the Downing Street Memo, contains key context for that memo. The briefing paper warns the British cabinet in essence that they are facing jail time because Blair promised Bush at Crawford in April, 2002, that he would go to war against Iraq with the Americans.

As Michael Smith reports for the London Times, "regime change" is illegal in international law without a United Nations Security Council resolution or other recognized sanction (national self-defense, or rescuing a population from genocide, e.g.). Since the United Kingdom is signatory to the International Criminal Court, British officials could be brought up on charges for crimes like "Aggression."

Smith quotes the briefing and then remarks on how it shows Bush and Blair to be lying when they invoke their approach to the UN as proof that they sought a peaceful resolution of the Iraq crisis:

' “It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.

The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003. '

The Cabinet briefing makes crystal clear that Blair had cast his lot in with Bush on an elective war against Iraq already in April, 2002:

"2. When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine Crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq's WMD through the UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted."

This passage is unambiguous and refutes the weird suggestion by Michael Kinsley that the Downing Street Memo did not establish that the Bush administration had committed to war by July, 2002.

British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith is quoted in the Downing Street Memo:

"The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change."

The briefing paper discusses this issue further:

"11. US views of international law vary from that of the UK and the international community. Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law. But regime change could result from action that is otherwise lawful. We would regard the use of force against Iraq, or any other state, as lawful if exercised in the right of individual or collective self-defence, if carried out to avert an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe, or authorised by the UN Security Council."

It makes me deeply ashamed as an American in the tradition of Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and King, that in their private communications our international allies openly admit that the United States of America routinely disregards international law. The Geneva Conventions were enacted by the United Nations and adopted into national law in order to assure that Nazi-style violations of basic human rights never again occurred without the threat of punishment after the war. We have an administration that views the Geneva Conventions as "quaint." The US has vigorously opposed the International Criminal Court.

The cabinet briefing, like Lord Goldsmith, is skeptical that any of the three legal grounds for war existed with regard to Iraq. Iraq was not an imminent threat to the US or the UK. Saddam's regime was brutal, but its major killing sprees were in the past in 2002. And, the UNSC had not authorized a war against Iraq.

"The legal position would depend on the precise circumstances at the time. Legal bases for an invasion of Iraq are in principle conceivable in both the first two instances but would be difficult to establish because of, for example, the tests of immediacy and proportionality. Further legal advice would be needed on this point."

The tactic of presenting Saddam with an ultimatum that he should allow back in weapons inspectors, in hopes he would refuse, is again highlighted in this document:

"14. It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject (because he is unwilling to accept unfettered access) and which would not be regarded as unreasonable by the international community. However, failing that (or an Iraqi attack) we would be most unlikely to achieve a legal base for military action by January 2003. "

In his report about the Cabinet briefing, Walter Pincus focuses on the passages that worry about the apparent lack of planning by Bush for the day after the war ended.

The briefing says:

"19. Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks. . . A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the US military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired endstate would be created, in particular what form of Government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the timescale within which it would be possible to identify a successor. We must also consider in greater detail the impact of military action on other UK interests in the region."

The British were clearly afraid that the US would get them into Iraq without a plan, and then Bush might just prove fickle and decamp, leaving the poor British holding the bag.

The briefing is also prescient that the Middle East region would be hostile or at most neutral with regard to an Iraq war, and that less international participation would lessen the chances of success.

I found the passage on the information campaign chilling:

"20. Time will be required to prepare public opinion in the UK that it is necessary to take military action against Saddam Hussein. There would also need to be a substantial effort to secure the support of Parliament. An information campaign will be needed which has to be closely related to an overseas information campaign designed to influence Saddam Hussein, the Islamic World and the wider international community. This will need to give full coverage to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, including his WMD, and the legal justification for action. "

The polite diplomatic language hides the implications that there would be a global black psy-ops campaign in favor of the war, conducted from London. Since the rest of the briefing already admits that there was no legal justification for action, the proposal of an information campaign that would maintain that such a justification existed must be seen as deeply dishonest.

One press report said that the British military had planted stories in the American press aimed at getting up the Iraq war. A shadowy group called the Rockingham cell was apparently behind it. Similar disinformation campaigns have been waged by Israeli military intelligence, aiming at influencing US public opinion. (Israeli intelligence has have even planted false stories about its enemies in Arabic newspapers, in hopes that Israeli newspapers would translate them into Hebrew and English, and they would be picked up as credible from there in the West.

The International Criminal Court home page is here. We find in its authorizing legislation, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Section on Jurisdiction, which reads as follows:

"Article 5
Crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court

1. The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. The Court has jurisdiction in accordance with this Statute with respect to the following crimes:

(a) The crime of genocide;

(b) Crimes against humanity;

(c) War crimes;

(d) The crime of aggression."

It is not clear to me that the court is yet able to take up the crime of aggression, because legal work remained to be done in defining the crime precisely and in having that language adopted by the UNSC.

If it were able to do so, some groups in Europe may now feel that there is a basis for proceeding against the Blair government for knowingly committing an act of aggression. They might argue that when, in March, 2003, it became clear that the United Nations Security Council would not authorize a war against Iraq; and when it was clear from the reports of the UN weapons inspectors that they were finding no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs; and when it was murky as to whether Saddam was actively killing any significant numbers of Iraqis in 2001-2003--that Blair should have pulled out and refused to cooperate in an Iraq invasion. The cabinet brief and the memo of the July 23 meeting demonstrate conclusively that members of the Blair government knew that they were involved in plans that were as of that moment illegal, and that no legal basis for them might be forthcoming. Ignorance is no excuse under the law, but here even ignorance could not be pleaded.

The US has not ratified the ICC--and in fact has been attempting to undermine it. The Bush administration became especially alarmed about its implications in 2002. It has attempted to put US officials beyond its reach by concluding a series of bilateral treaties with other nations such that they would hold US personnel harmless despite their being signatories to the ICC. It may therefore be difficult for anti-war groups to use it against Bush. [Thanks to the diarists at Atrios.com for this link and clarifications.]
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More than 35 Killed by Iraqi Guerrillas
US Kills 40 Fighters with Missile Strike

CBC/AP reports:


The new wave of violence began Friday evening when a suicide bomber targeted patrons of a falafel restaurant in the Shiite Shula quarter of Baghdad, killing 10 persons, some of them children waiting for ice cream.

On Saturday, a former commando of the Interior Ministry's Wolf Brigade blew himself up at its HQ, attempting to assassinate the commanding officer, but killing 3 other persons instead.

Likewise, another Interior Ministry brigade, in the Mansur quarter of Baghdad, was attacked with machine gun fire from a car, which killed 3.

In Diyara, an hour south of Baghdad, guerrillas shot 11 Iraqi construction workers in their minibus. They were employed at Iraqi government and US bases.

A suicide bomber detonated his payload in front of the Slovakian Embassy, wounding 4 persons. Presumably he was protesting the presence of 109 Slovak troops among the coalition forces in Iraq.

In southern Baghad, guerrillas shot two petroleum ministry employees to death, and wounded a third man.

Guerrillas detonated a bomb in a cemetery in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, killing 2 Iraqis and wounding 3 other family members.

U.S. soldiers shot to death two Iraqis and wounded two others in Baghdad when their car came too close to an American armoured patrol, military spokesman Lt. Jamie Davis said.

Iraqi police broke up a garage that was manufacturing car bombs, arresting 5.

US Marines fired seven missiles at guerrillas near Qaim, and it is alleged that they killed 40 of them.
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Cole on Iraq, 2002-2003

By the way, it has been alleged by some of my detractors that I supported the Iraq War. My position on the war was in fact very complex. I thought it was a terrible idea, but declined to come out against it because I believed that if Saddam's genocidal regime could be removed by the international community in a legal way, that some good would have been accomplished. But the bottom line is that I thought a war would be legal only if the United Nations Security Council authorized it. I can produce witnesses to my having said that if the UNSC did not authorize the war, I would protest it. When Bush threw aside the UNSC, I became a critic. I still resist the notion that US and UK troops have died in vain, but my conviction that they wouldn't did not actually suggest support for the war on a political plane, as some have alleged.

This is what I was thinking in February, 2003, in response to someone at H-Diplo who demanded complete US control over Muslim radicals throughout the world. I'm not sure how anybody reads this as an endorsement of an Iraq war!

Nor is it clear that going about having serial wars with Iraq, Iran, Syria, N. Korea, and apparently ultimately China [these are the ideas thrown out by the Richard Perle/ Paul Wolfowitz circle that controls our Defense Department] is going in any way to help with this task of surveillance and infiltration. Surely serial wars in the region are a distraction from the struggle against terrorism, especially since those
countries are not doing anything to the US.

Moreover, the idea that a US military occupation of Iraq will deter as oppose to provoking more attacks on US interests is awfully optimistic. The main problem an organization like al-Qaeda has is to recruit further members and keep current members from melting away in fear. They recruit best when the young men are angriest. What are they angry about? The Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza; the almost daily shooting by the Israeli army of innocent noncombatants; the progressive colonization of Palestinian territory by--let us say--idiosyncratic settlers from Brooklyn (all of this is on t.v. every day over there); the harsh Indian police state erected over the Muslims of Kashmir; the economic stagnation and authoritarian policies of many Middle Eastern governments that are backed by the US; and the poverty and prejudice Muslim immigrants to places like France and Germany experience daily.

I don't have any idea how to resolve all these grievances; but the young men are very angry about and humiliated by them, and al-Qaeda plays on that anger to seduce them into attacking US interests. A US occupation of Iraq is not going to address the grievances, and is likely to create new bitterness and so help the recruitment drive. If the US really wanted to stop terrorism, it would invade the West Bank and Gaza and liberate the Palestinians to have their own state and self-respect, instead of heading to Baghdad.

Iraq is rugged; tribal forces are still important; and the majority population is Shiite, as is that of neighboring Iran. What will happen if US bombs damage the Shiite shrines, the holiest places for 100 million Shiite Muslims in Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bahrain? What will happen if there is a riot in a shrine city like Karbala and US marines put it down by killing rioters? Do we want 100 million Shiites angry at us again? (Lately they have calmed down and it is the radical Sunnis that
have given us the problems). What happens if the Iraqi Sunni middle classes lose faith in secular Arab nationalism because the Baath is overthrown, and they turn to al-Qaeda-type Islam, in part out of resentment at American hegemony over their country? What will happen if we give the Turks too much authority to intervene in Kurdistan, and fighting breaks out between the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds, and if the
Iraqi Kurds turn against the US?

Colin Powell explained in Qatar last week on an Arabic talk show that the US war will be followed by a period of US military administration of the country by a general, followed by a year or two of US civilian administration of the country. This plan is an abandonment of earlier pledges to Iraqi expatriate dissidents that there would be a direct transition to a new Iraqi government. There has been a howl of outrage and betrayal by Kanan Makiya and other dissidents, once close to the Bush White House. If our friends and supporters among Iraqi dissidents are so unhappy now, will everyone in Iraq be just delighted to still be under US administration a year or two from now?

So, this business about controlling everybody all around the world just sounds to me like pie in the sky, and the same sort of thinking that got us mired in the jungles of Vietnam.

I will be ecstatic to see Saddam go. But I have a bad feeling about this, as Han Solo once said prophetically.

posted by Juan @ 2/27/2003 08:28:45 AM

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5 Marines Killed, 4 Wounded
21 Bodies Found
Sunnis Reject offer on Constitutional Committee

Guerrillas killed 5 Marines near Haqlaniyah in Anbar Province on Thursday.

Some 21 bodies were discovered near Qaim in western Iraq, some executed mafia style with a bullet to the back of the head. Two were beheaded. Twenty Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped recently in that area, but it is unknown whether any of the bodies belonged to those captured.

Reuters reports a string of violent attacks on Thursday and Friday:

"Near the northern oil refining town of Baiji, a suicide car bomber wounded four soldiers in a U.S. military convoy on Thursday, the military said. . ."

"Two worshippers were wounded after Friday prayers at a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad's troubled Dora district when gunmen opened fire on the building . . .

In the northern city of Kirkuk, where Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen are vying for control of vast oil resources, the head of the anti-terrorist police -- a Kurd -- was shot dead in his car."

Al-Zaman clarifies that the man killed was Lt. Col. Rahim Uthman Said, the director of counter-terrorism in Kirkuk. Also killed was his deputy, Major Ghanim Jiyad Jabbar.

It adds that in Basra, police Gen. Karim al-Daraji, the commander of the police academy for southern Iraq and his brother were killed in a hail of bullets when their car was cut off by another vehicle. Al-Daraji, who had survived two earlier assassination attempts, is the highest-ranking member of the security forces killed in Basra since the fall of Saddam.

Al-Zaman says that the American general in charge of Operation Lightning, a sweep of Sunni Arab neighborhoods in Iraq, has caused the guerrillas to switch from car bombings to assassinations as their primary tactic. He admitted that there might well be reprisals from the guerrillas for the arrest of about 1000 suspected militants during the operation. About 50 of those arrested have been Arab foreign nationals.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that a roadside bombing intended for an American convoy in South Baghdad instead killed an Iraqi and wounded another.

Reuters says that the Sunni Arabs rejected an offer to add 15 Sunnis to the 55-member parliamentary committee that is charged with drafting the constitution. There are only two Sunni members of parliament on the committee at present. Only MPs have the right to vote on the committee. The additional members would only be able to consult, though several top Iraqi politicians have given undertakings that the committee will seek broad consensus on all contentious issues.

The Sunni Arabs want 25 additional seats, more than the 15 that the Kurds have. In part this demand reflects their unrealistic estimation of the size of their ethnic group. They often assert that Iraq has a Sunni Arab majority. In fact, Shiites probably form 62 percent and Kurds may be 18 percent. Given that Christians, Turkmen and some other small minorities make up 5 percent, Sunni Arabs could be as little as 15 percent of the population.

Given that it is June 11 and the constitutional committee has still not been finalized, the likelihood that a whole constitution can be drafted by August 15, which always seemed a stretch, has become completely absurd.

The International Crisis Group is anyway recommending that the Iraqi government take its time and invoke the provision in the interim constitution that allows it to postpone the deadline for finalizing the constitution for 6 months.

Al-Zaman: The Iraqi Islamic Party said Friday that it was not enough for the American government to issue statements deploring the desecration of the Quran by US military interrogators at Guantanamo prison. The Bush administration statement condemning the incidents cannot erase them, he said. The statement made fun of the allegations by the Americans ("and the Zionists") that these were isolated incidents in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Buca and the Occupied Territories of Palestine.

It asked, "What impelled the Zionists and the Americans to desecrate a book revealed by God, if not a culture of hatred and an attempt to erase the Other?" It added, "The perpetrator is one, the crime is premeditated, and the hatred for Islam and Muslims is ongoing and without let in an unlimited series."

Iraqi petroleum production will not exceed 1.5 million barrels at day for some time, according to Petroleum minister Ibrahim Bahru'l-Ulum. Iraq had been producing nearly twice that before the war.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Attacks in Yusufiyah, Mosul, Kut
Islamic Parties Meet to Shape the Constitution

A vehicle accident near Hit in Iraq left a Marine dead on Wednesday, according to AP. 1,683 US military personnel have died so far in Iraq.

al-Sharq al-Awsat: A mortar attack aimed at a military site at Yusufiyah instead hit two civilian homes and killed two Iraqis and wounded 3. Guerrilla attacks in Mosul killed two policemen and wounded several other persons, including the wife, children and relatives of one of the policemen, whose house was targetted. The other policeman died when mortar shells rained down on the police station in Mosul. 5 were wounded in that attack. In Telafar the day before yesterday, a car bomb went off prematurely and killed 4 guerrillas. In Kut, police said that the day before yesterday, a grenade attack on the center of the Islamic Action Organization in the city left 2 persons wounded and wrought extensive damage to the building and its environs.

al-Sharq al-Awsat A source in the Iraqi Islamic Party said that an Islamic consultation committee has been formed from Sunni and Shiite religious parties and boards to discuss some constitutional issues before proposing them to the parliamentary committee charged with drafting the permanent constitution. The committee includes the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Sunni Pious Endowments Board, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Dawa Party, and the Badr Organization.

Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru explain why the new Iraqi Army is unlikely to take over security duties effectively any time soon. The last sentence of the report is chilling.

Borzou Daragani in the LA Times reports on back channel contacts between the US Embassy in Baghdad and the Sunni Arab guerrilla movements. Some observers quoted in the article express skepticism about the sincerity of the contacts on both sides.

Major General Joseph Taluto admits that "good, honest Iraqis" form part of the guerrilla movement fighting the US presence. Taluto admits that 99 percent of fighters captured by the US in Iraq are Iraqis. He also offers a realistic assessment of the character of the guerrilla movement:

""I think there is a small core of foreign fighters. I don't know how big that is but there is some kind of capability here, and it's being replenished. Then there is a group of former regime personnel they're the facilitators. They make all the communications, move the money, they enable things to happen. Their goal isn't the same as the foreign fighters but they're using them to do what they want to do.">

Tidbits from the Iraqi Press via BBC World Monitoring:

For June 8, 2005:

Al-Dustur publishes on the front page a 100-word report citing Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling for the inclusion of the "multiplicity" principle and the recognition of the majority's opinion in the new permanent constitution, and adding: "The role of religious authorities is to study the legal fatwa from all aspects." . . .

"Al-Manarah publishes on page 2 a 1,000-word article by Ali al-Husayni criticizing the people who claim that the formation of the southern federal bloc will lead to fragmentation of Iraq. The writer says that citizens of Basra and other southern governorates have been deprived of their share of natural resources even after the downfall of the former regime, and thus they have the right to benefit from the resources and develop their region.

Al-Manarah publishes on the front page and on page 6 a 900-word editorial by Chief Editor Dr Khalaf al-Munshidi strongly criticizing the chaotic situation in the country. The writer says that both Basra and Maysan police chiefs have announced the presence of unofficial police commando brigades in their governorates. The writer adds that the Advisory Council in a number of governorates has declared Thursday as the weekly holiday while in others it is still on Saturday. The writer notes that this chaos indicates the continuing political vacuum in the country. . .

Ishraqat al-Sadr carries on page 1 a 100-word report citing Muqtada al-Sadr calling on the Iraqi Government to "refrain from accusing the Arab Sunnis of backing terrorism." Al-Sadr is cited as saying that such accusations "kindle sectarian strife," adding that the government must "include all Iraqis in the political process." Ishraqat al-Sadr runs on page 1 a 150-word report citing Muqtada al-Sadr accusing the US forces of "collaborating with terrorists," during a meeting with Karbala Governorate Council, adding that "the Ba'thists, terrorists, and occupation" Are enemies of Iraq. Ishraqat al-Sadr publishes on page 1 a 300-word text of a statement issued by the Iraqi Elites Group calling on the Iraqi Government to release detainees belonging to the Al-Sadr trend. . .

Ishraqat al-Sadr runs on page 8 a 1,500-word report citing Muqtada al-Sadr's replies to a number of questions posed to him by Iraqi women. The questions revolve around the current political and constitutional process and the role of women in social and political issues. . .

Al-Zaman carries on the front page a 250-word report citing a statement by the Association of Muslim Scholars condemning the decision of the Transitional Government to extend the stay of "the occupation" forces in Iraq. The report cites Shaykh Abd-al-Salam al-Kubaysi, a member within the Association, saying that Operation Lightning is targeting those who are against "the occupation". . .

Al-Dustur publishes on page 4 a 100-word report saying that the Sunni Waqf Diwan has denounced the raids carried out by the Al-Husayn Commandos Brigade, affiliated to the Interior Ministry, in the mosque at Al-Za'faraniyyah area, and the arrest of the brother of the mosque's imam. The report adds that the brigade also conducted raids on a mosque in Sab abkar Sunni District and arrested 45 persons including the head of the agricultural department at the Sunni Waqf. . .

Al-Zaman carries on page 8 a 150-word report citing Diya al-Sa'di, the general secretary of the Iraqi Lawyers Association, saying that the ban on the Iraqi Judiciary from dealing with lawsuits against "the occupation" forces represents a violation of the Geneva Convention. . . .

Al-Mada publishes on the front page a 500-word report saying that the newspaper has learned that the Al-Ramadi Emergency Squad is preparing itself for peace keeping operations in the city, paving the way for the withdrawal of the US forces, which have imposed a siege on the city for over three months. . .

Al-Dustur publishes on page 6 an 80-word report saying that the Interior Ministry has called on the people with expired weapon licenses to renew them at the ministry. . .

Al-Manarah publishes on page 3 a 250-word report citing Justice Minister Abd-al-Husayn Shandal asserting that the ministry has asked the Iraqi government to demand that the multinational forces lift the right of veto from some files. . .

Al-Mada publishes on page 2 a 200-word report citing the new fuel crisis in Al-Muthanna Governorate. [This province is the site of the rich Rumaila oil field, which has 500 wellheads.]

Al-Mashriq publishes on page 5 an 80-word report quoting oil sources as saying that Iraq intends to reduce oil production at Basra to 1.5m barrels per day . . .

Al-Furat publishes on page 3 a 300-word unattributed article saying that due to the frequent electricity outages, most Iraqi people are dependent on electric generators, a matter that contributes significantly to the fuel crisis in the country. The writer believes that it is more feasible from an economic point of view to construct power plants. . . .

Al-Zaman carries on page 5 a 400-word article by Rabah Al Ja'far commenting on the similarity in the tragic situation of Palestinians and Iraqis. . .

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Piles of Smoking Guns

Kind readers have drawn my attention to other leaked documents on the British side that lend support to the implications of the Downing Street memo, which alleges that Bush had decided on a war against Iraq by summer, 2002 and would fix the intelligence around the policy.

The Daily Telegraph for 18 September 2004 first quoted from a leaked memo by Christopher Meyer, UK ambassador in Washington, describing his meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in March, 2002.

A pdf file of the original of this memo was on the web earlier, but I cannot now find a copy. Perhaps a kind reader can provide the URL. [The memos are at Boozle.net in .pdf form]. In the meantime, it has been typed up and published at Scoop. Here are some revealing passages. Meyer notes the need to "wrongfoot" Saddam with regard to WMD inspections (this is a constant refrain among officials of the Blair government, that Saddam could be tricked into war if the US and UK just demanded the return of weapons inspectors, which they thought he would refuse, supplying a casus belli). Then Meyer reports Wolfowitz's remarks:

"If the UK were to join with the US in any operation against Saddam, we would have to be able to take a critical mass of parliamentary and public opinion with us. It was extraordinary how people had forgotten how bad he was.

"4 Wolfowitz said that he fully agreed. He took a slightly different position from others in the Administration, who were focussed on Saddam's capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction. The WMD danger was of course crucial to the public case against Saddam, particularly the potential linkage to terrorism. But Wolfowitz thought it indispensable to spell out in detail Saddam's barbarism. This was well documented from what he had done during the occupation of Kuwait, the incursion into Kurdish territory, the assault on the Marsh Arabs, and to his own people. A lot of work had been done on this towards the end of the first Bush administration. Wolfowitz thought that this would go a long way to destroying any notion of moral equivalence between Iraq and Israel. I said that I had been forcefully struck, when addressing university audiences in the US how ready students were to gloss over Saddam's crimes and to blame the US and the UK for the suffering of the Iraqi people.

"5 Wolfowitz said that it was absurd to deny the link between terrorism and Saddam. There might be doubt about the alleged meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11, and Iraqi intelligence (did we, he asked, know anything more about this meeting?). But there were other substantiated cases of Saddam giving comfort to terrorists, including someone involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center (the latest New Yorker apparently has a story about links between Saddam and Al Qaeda operating in Kurdistan).

"6 I asked for Wolfowitz's take on the stuggle inside the Administration between the pro- and anti- INC lobbies (well documented in Sy Hersh's recent New Yorker piece, which I gave you). He said that he found himself between the two sides (but as the conversation developed, it became clear that Wolfowitz was far more pro-INC than not). He said that he was strongly opposed to what some were advocating: a coalition including all outside factions except the INC (INA, KDP, PUK, SCIRI). This would not work. Hostility towards the INC was in reality hostility towards Chalabi. It was true that Chalabi was not the easiest person to work with. Bute had a good record in bringing high-grade defectors out of Iraq. The CIA stubbornly refused to recognise this. They unreasonably denigrated the INC because of their fixation with Chalabi. When I mentioned that the INC was penetraded by Iraqi intelligence, Wolfowitz commented that this was probably the case with all the opposition groups: it was something we would have to live with. As to the Kurds, it was true that they were living well (another point to be made in any public dossier on Saddam) and that they feared provoking an incursion by Baghdad, But there were good people among the Kurds, including in particular Salih (?) of the PUK. Wolfowitz brushed over my reference to the absence of SUnni in the INC: there was a big difference between Iraqi and Iranian Shia. The former just wanted to be rid of Saddam."

The document shows that Wolfowitz knew very well that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were not a presssing issue. The Defense Department consistently pretended otherwise in 2002 and 2003. It shows that he consistently misunderstood Iraqi Shiites as non-ideological and unreligious, contrasting them to Iranian Shiites. It shows that he was touchingly trusting of Chalabi's ability to provide good intelligence on Iraq. It shows that he was concerned to differentiate the Iraqi regime (which invaded and occupied Kuwait) from Israel (which invaded and occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and earlier had invaded and occupied Sinai). His method was to focus on Saddam's mass murders. Israel had been brutal, had expelled a lot of people from their homes, but unlike Saddam had not murdered tens of thousands. (Israeli's 1982 invasion of Lebanon is estimated to have killed 10,000 innocent civilians, but if one is playing a numbers game, the Iraqi Baath was worse by several orders of magnitude).

A good overview of the record of Iraq decision-making as revealed in leaked British memos is at the BBC Panorama site.

Helpful readers have sent me another piece of evidence that George W. Bush was determined to have a war against Iraq even while running for president in 1999-2000, long before September 11:

by Russ Baker (HOUSTON) October 28, 2004 -- Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

For more evidence, see my "The Lies that Led to War" at Salon.com.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Downing Street Memo and "Fixing Around"

At least one commentator has been quoted in the press as questioning what British Intelligence chief Richard Dearlove meant in the Downing Street Memo by the phrase "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." The full passage reads, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through mil