Dozens Kidnapped at Higher Ed Ministry;
Other Killings leave 117 Dead
Western news organizations were able to identify 117 killings in Iraq's civil war on Monday, though one suspects they only scratched the surface. Reuters surveys the carnage.
' BAGHDAD - A car bomb ripped through a crowded market area in Rasheed Street in central Baghdad, killing 10 people and wounding 25, police said. . .
BAGHDAD - Mortars killed four people and wounded six in al-Zuhur, in Baghdad's northern outskirts.There was a significant battle in Ramadi between Marines and guerrillas that left 11 guerrillas dead and perhaps twice that many civilians.
MOSUL - Police found 11 bodies with gunshot wounds on Tuesday in the city of Mosul, north of Baghdad, police said. . .
BAQUBA - Iraqi police, backed by U.S. forces, discovered the bodies of 10 kidnap victims, bound, blindfolded and with gunshot wounds, inside a house in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad . . .'
Sudarsan Raghavan of WaPo reports that a highly organized band of 80 guerrillas dressed as policemen invaded the Ministry of Higher Education building in Karrada and kidnapped dozens of people inside-- from janitors to Ph.D.s, and of all religious backgrounds. Iraqi government spokesmen variously estimated the number of kidnapped at from 50 to 150. I saw on Aljazeera that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said when he heard about the episode he got on the phone to the ministers of defense and interior and had them intervene. Iraqi government spokesmen first claimed that everyone had been released, but that turned out to be mere spin. Then they said they got 30 released, but that is not clear either.
There was a lot of speculation as to who did this and why. The minister of higher education is a Sunni from the fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front. But the people kidnapped included all sorts, and Karrada is in a Shiite area. Some reports are blaming Shiites, saying it is a reprisal for the kidnapping of Shiites. But the operation does not fit the reprisal modus operandi.
Abed Dhiyab al-Ujaili, the Minister of Higher Education, initially threatened to suspend university classes as a result of the attack. Apparently in Baghdad, at least, nobody has been showing up for class for weeks, anyway. But then he backtracked and told Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic that he would never close down the universities.
The facades of a normal society are gradually dropping in Iraq. It isn't a place where you can go to the book bazaar and buy a book anymore. It isn't a place where you can go to college like a normal student or professor. It is a dark, despairing, violent arena. People go about their lives, of course. But they never know when, abruptly, the Grim Reaper will grasp them as they shop for eggplants or fill up their tanks with gasoline or drop the kids off at school. And because they never know, the scope of these daily activities is curtailed more each day.
A big operation like this can only happen if the police are crooked or incredibly lazy. They couldn't notice all those careening cars with 80 commandos in them going for miles? 5 police commanders were arrested on suspicion of collaboration.
And this is another problem with Maliki's reaction, which was after the fact. If you have ministries in Iraq that are outside the Green Zone, wouldn't you give them security details from the new army? Did the minister asked for more than 17 guards? (The guards were kidnapped!) Didn't it occur to Maliki (it would to me)?
Iraq's health minister talks about the disaster that has struck his country in part because of American mistakes.
Gary Kamiya at Salon.com suggests that funeral services for Neoconservatism are premature.
The 'What did we ever do to them?' column: Haaretz reports that the United States has plummeted in the estimation of the Lebanese public as a result of Bush's encouragement to Israel to go on hitting the poor little thing during the war this summer. That was just mean, and the Lebanese recognize mean when they see it.
Al-Qaeda famously hates Shiites and kills them on sight. Iran's leaders hate al-Qaeda. So when Con Coughlin writes silliness about Iran rearing the next generation of al-Qaeda leaders, you have to ask yourself why he is saying these crazy things? Either he has what he thinks is an inside source, but which is really feeding him disinformation. Or. . . Well, I don't know what else. Something that would explain why someone writes things that are ridiculous on the face of it. Coughlin was also a big cheerleader for the Iraq War, of which he has repented. Like the Neoconservatives, all this penitence about how bad Iraq went is just a way to try to wipe the slate clean so that they can recover some credibility and get up the next war, this time against Iran.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/15/2006 12:35:00 AM
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Regarding the Coughlin article, did you notice that if you click on the link purporting to show in what way Iran always "maintained close relations" with al-Qaeda (sic), it rather surprisingly goes to an artile by Tim Butcher about an entirely separate subject, as far as I can tell (Iran warns US by test firing missiles)?
Neoconservatism may appear to be on life support but, like Frankenstein's Monster, will regenerate and reappear at the first opportune time.
However, I do not think Neoconservatism is so much an ideology as it is a raw lust for power and power grabbing is much more politically correct among the GOP currently.
The current president has always liked the idea of being "The Head Honcho" when he was getting his way and relying on family retainers to clean up any inconvenient messes. The Neocon push to restore the Imperial Presidency that was lost by Nixon appealed to him because he got to start on home plate with a home run to his credit before the first pitch.
The Neocons will be back the same as the Brits have their monarchists and the Germans their Nazis; it is just the next time around we have to hope that the 33% of the nation who still believes we were stabbed in the back in VN and believes we can still win "victory" in Iraq will realize the true costs of their aspirations before the Neocons launch their next feckless adventure.
Even Rudyard Kipling eventually renounced imperialism, albeit it took the death of his only son in WWI for him to do so.
A great swath of the American public will believe anything about the evils Eye-ran (or Eye-rak, what's the diff?) and accept the destruction of Lebanon, or Tehran, to deter terror attacks on Israel. It's not just the neocons or Coughlin, who might have used Ledeen, Woolsey, or Boykin as his "intelligence" source. The far larger element is the Christian Right. Broadcasts, videos, and books in this community have far larger audience than The Weekly Standard. The masses who read "Left Behind" and follow evangelistic broadcasting have no problem with equating Amahnijead with Hitler or the need to destroy him before he wipes out the Holy Land and its Chosen People. Sample the videos of the Rev. John Hagee. People who quote God get lots of audience traction and are difficult to ridicule in debate.
On Con Coughlin's sources, this might be of interest:
[In 1995], readers of the Sunday Telegraph were regaled with a dramatic story about the son of Col Gadafy of Libya and his alleged connection to a currency counterfeiting plan. The story was written by Con Coughlin, the paper’s then chief foreign correspondent, and it was falsely attributed to a “British banking official”. In fact, it had been given to him by officers of MI6, who, it transpired, had been supplying Coughlin with material for years.
That article does not suggest that Coughlin was being deliberately dishonest. It does strongly suggest that that he has in the past been manipulated by British intelligence services in order to disseminate propaganda.
Juan,
The paragraph which begins, "The facades of a normal society..." is a searing statement which gives anybody with an ounce of compassion left in their soul pangs of sorrow and shame that our country has brough this to pass.
If it wasn't about something so ugly, I would call it a pearl!
Your posting of the Salon link suggests another article.: "Une commission parlementaire américaine : 237 mensonges officiels"
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2006/09/A/13918
New York Times : “Witnesses said as many as 50 gunmen [dressed in Iraqi police commando uniforms and driving vehicles with Interior Ministry markings] arrived at the Ministry of Education compound at midmorning, forced their way past a handful of guards and stormed through a four-story building, herding office workers, visitors and even a delivery boy outside at rifle point. After women were separated, the men were loaded aboard a fleet of more than 30 pickup trucks and two larger trucks, then driven away through heavy traffic toward mainly Shi'ite neighborhoods on the City's eastern edge, officials and witnesses said.”
Reading this, most Americans will surely ask, "Where the hell were our troops?"
It is "double shocking" because ~ what has not been clear to most Americans is how utterly dis-associated their military presence is from the people and places that their forces are supposedly occupying. For all their might, American Troops for all intents and purposes have been rendered impotent: They are quite literally barricaded in their own Green Zones and Forward Operating Bases; their vital/incessant convoys, more like high-speed subway trains, running through one-way tunnels from which "IRAQ" must seem but a blur; their reconnaissance limited to bird's eye aerial views of what must look like some vision of Hell out of Hieronymous Bosch.
In the past i have stated in this forum how important it was for Americans to understand that "The Mission" in IRAQ was "occupation," rather than some vague notion of War On ________ ~ knowing that thought, "We are occupiers," is understandably difficult for American idealists to accept; ie., there is no Glory here.
Today i shall go so far as to say that we are not now beginning some vague process of a withdrawal; rather, imho it is important for Americans to understand that We are engineering a rescue of AngloAmerican forces : They are in-check captives, entirely isolated, holding on to otherwise meaningless lilly pads in the midst of an almost inconceivable Hell of our own leaders' making.
Dear Professor Cole
Thank you for the disinformation alert.
I will seek independent confirmation before I believe any more stories that raise an eyebrow.
On Iraq, it's also interesting to note that some sources merely refer to the kidnappers as "geurillas" while others claim it was the police themselves who committed the act. Simultaneously, the police claimed (in many sources) credit for the release of "some" of those who were kidnapped, and of course Malaki jumped on the opportunity to grab some positive attention, claiming that he was involved in their release as well. That begs the question: why are the police forces apparently kidnapping educators?
I think a logical conclusion might be that those who have gained power in the Iraqi civil war (can I call it that yet, or do a few tens of thousands more have to die before that label can pop up?) are most easily able to exert their influence over the ignorant or uneducated (as is often the case with tyrants), and as such would like to politely dissuade people from becoming educated.
I was also made aware that some of those kidnapped came from the education ministry's department that handled scholarships for those looking to travel overseas. Perhaps there are those in the halls of power in Iraq that don't want to see more of their educated/educators leave and not come back, and so attacked one of the venues that allow for such an exit to occur.
At this stage I also think that any intonation by the Bush Administration or their supporters that someone or something has some relation to al qaeda should be immediately viewed with suspicion. "Al Qaeda" is being used as a tool by Bush much the same way as "the communists" was used as a tool by Hitler, and "nationalist spies" was used as a tool by Mao, and so on. As Iran is the next desired neo-con target, somehow the predictable "ties to al qaeda" are likely to seep into the media.
I was actually not aware (until my recent perusal of an Iraqi blog site) that there was a Juan Cole blog. I have in fact referenced the professor on an occasion or two (or three, or four, or..), and I'm delighted to get some insights from him on a regular basis.
Yes Virginia, there is a Professor Juan Cole..............
Iraq right now is suffering a brain drain of remarkable proportions. Not only are educators targeted but also doctors and nurses, lawyers and judges and every member of the mangerial middle class. Hundreds have died and hundreds more have fled.
This flight of talent will take Iraq more than a generation to recover from, if the US will refrain from helping any more. Otherwise it could take two or three generations.
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