Guerrillas Kill 25
Sistani supports Gradual US Withdrawal

Bombings and assassinations left some 25 persons dead in Iraq on Saturday, including 17 who just showed up in the street dead, with some showing signs of torture.

70 GIs have been killed in Iraq in the past month, and over 2400 have been killed since the war began.

Turkish military action against the Kurdish Workers' Party along the border with Iraq has heated up, with Turkish mortars falling on the Iraqi city of Zakho, according to this report. That's what we needed, more mortars falling on an Iraqi city from yet another quarter.

The curfew has been lifted in Baqubah, allowing the city to slump back toward semi-normalcy (Baqubah is a dangerous place). It was the site of an unusually large attack on checkpoints by 100 guerrillas.

Trudy Rubin, who knows a thing or two about Shi'ite politics from firsthand interviews, profiles the new PM-designate, Nouri al-Maliki.

The Iraqi Accord Front [Ar.], according to al-Hayat, has suggested the creation of a new ministerial position, the ministry of state for Arab foreign affairs. The sggestion comes as an attempt to end the deadlock over apportioning cabinet posts. The Sunni Arabs want the foreign ministry, held in the outgoing government by the Kurds, who won't give it up. The Sunni Arabs say you should have a Sunni Arab to deal with the Arab League states.

Adil Abdul Mahdi, one of two vice presidents, went to see Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,and he says that the ayatollah said that he agreed with the idea of ending the US troop presence in Iraq gradually.

The Bush administration used to boast that Iraqis were more optimistic about their future than Americans. I'm afraid his policies have led to a surge in pessimism in both places. A new poll in Iraq shows that a majority of Iraqis thinks their economy is bad and getting worse. 3/4s say that security is bad.

For a wounded soldier with brain damage to later get a bill from the Bush administration for the cost of the weapon he left in Iraq's sands is just about the worse thing I have ever heard.

The LA Times reports that "An American initiative to use private security companies to protect Iraq's oil and power infrastructure collapsed amid reports of possible fraud, missing weapons and destroyed documents . . ."

Nearly half of the Japanese are afraid that events are moving toward a war with North Korea or China. I hope they are wrong. The US would get involved i such a thing, but doessn't currently have an army available for it.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Susan Sarandon and Death Threats

Susan Sarandon's description of how alone and obviously afraid she felt as she received death threats and faced massive hostility from the public over her opposition in 2003 to the war is touching.

' In an interview to be shown on the Jonathan Dimbleby programme today, Sarandon recalled how she was labelled a “bin Laden lover” for raising concerns about the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Oscar-winning actress, 59, said the way she and her family had been targeted for her moral stance by newspapers, radio phone-ins, teachers and people on the street was “horrifying” . . .

“I don’t think I ever thought someone would ever really kill me, although there were some people who said ‘I’d like someone to knock her off’ on the radio and stuff like that,” she said. “I don’t think I thought I’d really never work again, but when there is nobody else, when you look out on the field and everybody is quiet and they’re all looking away and nobody’s saying anything, it’s a really scary place to be.” '

It is a reminder that we can't ever take our democracy, and the right to dissent, for granted. It has to be reasserted and reaffirmed in every generation.

Probably in this generation the practice of calling a signature a "John Hancock" has lapsed. It was a nice piece of folk wisdom. Hancock's signature on the Declaration of Independence was bold and prominent,and while he did not say the things about it often attributed to him, it is certainly the case that he was signing his own death warrant if he lost. It wasn't his signing in large script that was significant, but that he was the first to sign. We all have at least once in our lives to sign a John Hancock-- to take a principled stance that could get us, if not killed, at least in serious trouble. Otherwise, we'll have led the life of a timid slave and betrayed our own ethical beings, and we won't even have anything interesting to put on our tombstones.

Here is what John Hancock really did say about his defiance of King George:

' May that magnificence of spirit which scorns the low pursuits of malice, may that generous compassion which often preserves from ruin, even a guilty villain, forever actuate the noble bosoms of Americans! But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No; them we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon's brains; 'tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death. '

John would have been mortified that over two centuries later some poltroons among our contrymen should have acted like the rowdy redcoats in trying to revoke an American's liberty, and in making death threats against Susan Sarandon.

My hat is off to her and Tim.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

IAEA Finds no Proof of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program

In its April 28 report, the International Atomic Energy Agency mentioned the UNSC mandate to Iran of last February:

' • re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities,
including research and development, to be verified by the Agency;

• reconsider the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water;

• ratify promptly and implement in full the Additional Protocol;

• pending ratification, continue to act in accordance with the provisions of the Additional
Protocol which Iran signed on 18 December 2003;

• implement transparency measures, as requested by the Director General, including in GOV/2005/67, which extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement
and Additional Protocol, and include such access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and
development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations.

Despite not being fully in compliance with these demands, Iran maintains that it is in fact fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty.

The IAEA found no smoking gun.

Here is its conclusion, which others will not quote for you at such length:

' 33. All the nuclear material declared by Iran to the Agency is accounted for. Apart from the small quantities previously reported to the Board, the Agency has found no other undeclared nuclear material in Iran. However, gaps remain in the Agency’s knowledge with respect to the scope and
content of Iran’s centrifuge programme. Because of this, and other gaps in the Agency’s knowledge, including the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear programme, the Agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.

34. After more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran’s nuclear
programme, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern. '

This ambiguity is being twisted by the Bush administration to make it seem as though Iran has done something illegal. The report can be read to say that there is no evidence that Iran is doing anything illegal.

In fact, under the NPT, countries do have the right to do the sort of experiments Iran is doing. Most of the complaints are not about substance but about something else.

Iran's president pledged to continue to cooperate with UN isnspectors.

More about Iran later. For now see the next item, where an Iraqi VP says all hell would break loose in Iraq if the US attacked Iran.

This is the site for the IAEA report (pdf).
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraq VP Warns Bush against Iran Attack
Ramadi Fighting Leads to Evacuation of One District

Adil Abdul Mahdi, whom the Americans wanted for the prime minister of Iraq, warned Washington Friday not to attack Iran. “We will not allow anyone to attack anyone," He said. (Since Iraqi politicians can't keep bombs from going off all around them, this comment is somewhat grandiose). Abdul Mahdi is one of two vice presidents in Iraq, a largely ceremonial post. He is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which was hosted by Iran from 1982 through 2003. Its leaders are generall close to the hard line clerics of Iran, but they have also made a fairly close marriage of convenience with the US Pentagon.


Reuters reports guerrilla violence in Iraq on Friday, including three killed in Falluja and a US soldier killed north of Baghdad.

The NYT reports that US military deaths have spiked to their highest level in 5 months. It also reports more on the battle for Baqubah. Apparently the guerrillas consider western Diyala province with a fertlie plain that opens onto the capital, to be analogous to Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, the control of which usually had implications for control of the capital.

Al-Zaman reports that there was renewed fighting between guerrillas and Marines in Ramadi on Friday. The US military forced an entire downtown city quarter to evacuate, so they could make it their HQ inside the city, apparently in preparation for moving against the guerrillas. I am pessimistic that the Marines are ever going to subdue the guerrillas in Ramadi, without just destroying it the way they did Fallujah (which still isn't safe). These search and destroy missions and displacement of populations just anger the locals and drive them into the arms of the guerrillas.

Well, so much for "fly-paper" or "fighting them over there" or attacking Iraq to end terror. The US government is now admitting that the Bush war in Iraq is generating anti-Western Terrorism. So far Madrid and London have been hit over it, and that is only the beginning. The jihadis getting training fighting Marines in Iraq will be a threat for decades, all over the world.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number 2 man in al-Qaeda, whom Bush and Cheney have left at liberty to taunt us after it planned and arranged for the implementation of 9/11, is at it again. He tells the radical Muslims that the guerrillas have broken America's back in Iraq. He also calls for the overthrow of Perverz Musharraf, the General-President of Pakistan.

Al-Zawahiri lies when he tries to take credit for 800 suicide bombings in Iraq. He had nothing to do with them. But his claim will be widely believed in the region, and an image of al-Qaeda as resurgent is being created. Such an image itself endangers US national security. Meanwhile, I don't see Bush going to Congress to ask for a special appropriate to get Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. It doesn't seem very important to him, compared with his unconnected drive to reduce the small city of Fallujah to rubble.

Al-Zaman reports insider speculation on negotiations over the shape of the new government. Since Iyad Allawi got no high posts (his list only got 9% of seats in Parliament), he is making a play for head of the national security council, a body envisaged to work like the one in Pakistan, constraining the civilian prime minister on security issues. There is some resistance to Allawi filling this post, among the Shiite religious deputies and among the Sunni hard liners of the Iraqi Accord Front. Al-Zaman says that the United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite) is increasingly tending toward claiming the ministries of petroleum and of finance, and relinquishing the ministry of the interior, which they say has caused them so many headaches. (I cannot imagine that this report, sourced to Sami al-Askari, who is said to be close to PM designate Nouri al-Maliki, is true.)

A Japan/Iraq timeline is now available via the Shigetsu Institute.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraq and the Oil Crunch?

Update: See Alan Richards's reply at end

Jim Krane of the Associate Press quotes analysts who seem to blame the high price of petroleum in part on the shambles in Iraq. Iraq could be exporting nearly 3 million barrels a day (bbd) if the guerrilla war was not resulting in massive sabotage. In 2005, Iraq did only 1.4 million bbd on average, down from 2.8 mn. bbd before the American invasion. Not only is Iraqi production way off (less than a million bbd per day on average in January of this year!), but Iraq actually imports over $4 billion a year in petroleum products, taking them off the market for other consumers.

I have to be very careful how I say this, because the oil market is a complicated subject and I am not an economist. But I can't imagine that Iraq really is much of a factor here. The world petroleum production is on the order of 86 million barrels a day. so the lost 1.4 million bbd of Iraq is about 1.6% of the total. Even if you factor in Iraq's imports (and remember it doesn't have much of an economy at the moment), I can't imagine that Iraq production issues account for very much of the current price spike.

Some economists argue that there is a lot of speculation, including a security premium, built into the current price, because you have war and rumors of war (i.e. Iran) going on in the Oil Gulf. A ten percent security premium is the difference between paying $3.00 a gallon for gas and $2.70. A 10% security premium of a speculative sort, deriving from nervousness about the future of Iraq and Iran, is actually much more consequential than the 1.6% reduction in world production because of sabotage in Iraq. The NYT implies that petroleum today, like the South Seas stocks or the tulips of the 18th century, is characterized by speculative investment bubble, just because the run-up in prices attracts investors. That really isn't an Iraq effect.

Although I am not an economist, primary commodity markets are pretty sensitive to simple things like supply and demand that most of us can grasp without greek letters. Troubles in Nigeria, Venezuela and Mexico have taken 2 million barrels a day off the market, i.e. a good 2 percent. So with Iraq, that is a 3 1/2 percent production shortfall.

The main bottleneck in supply isn't raw petroleum production but a shortfall in world refining capacity (in other words we have more crude oil than we have gasoline). And the rapid rise in demand is partially seasonal, with Americans and Europeans hitting the road in the summer (and the anticipation of it), along with an ongoing secular upward pressure on prices coming from the with heated economies in China and India.

So you know me. If I thought Iraq was a big cause of our frustration at the pump, I'd have no hesitation in saying so. I doubt it is all that important in this regard.

One of the economists seems to be arguing that over five to ten years, Iraq could have had an impact, if there hadn't been all that sabotage and if $30 bn. had been invested in the industry. This is true. But for this summer, there are other and bigger phenomena driving Americans' sticker shock at the pump.

The fact is that if Americans did some serious conservation, they could reduce consumption by 1/3. Since they use about 20 million barrels a day of petroleum, they could replace the production of both Iraq and Iran (Iran produces 4 million bbd and exports 2 of it) all by themselves, just by going on the kind of diet Europe did in the early 1980s. But the last politician who dared tell you that was Jimmy Carter and no one will ever, ever go on television and talk that way again, who aspires to hold public office.

=========

Alan Richards, a real economist, at UC Santa Cruz, replies:

' Dear Juan:

On the question of oil prices: I think you are underestimting the impact of the actual and threat of war in the Gulf on oil prices in your discussion today in your invaluable blog.

http://www.juancole.com/

. The key is that the price of oil is an "asset price". That is, the price of a barrel of oil is like the price of your house. It reflects, certainly, conditions of current supply and demand. But because oil, like your house, can be stored, forecasts of the future are critical to its current price.

The war in Iraq and, even more, the saber-rattling around Iran have deeply spooked the market. They are right to be spooked--if the U.S. persists in its confrontational stance in the region, there will be more violence, more instability, more potential oil off the market (al-Qaeda did, after all, try to attack Abqaiq...).

Even more important from an expectations perspective is that for supply to be able to keep up with demand in the future, most analysts agree that there must be much investment in oil production IN THE GULF. This is basically for reasons of geology--it's where the oil is. Violence scares this off (as, of course, does continued nationalism and other policies already in place).

Consider the following back-of-the-envelope consideration.

1) Let's say, as you plausibly do, that the quantity reduction is some 3.5%

2) Price has risen from (about) $26/bbl in the run-up to the war to some $73/bbl today.

3) Conventional studies of short-run price elasticity (percentage change in quantity divided by percentage change in price) are usually somehwere between 0.2 and 0.4.

So: take the midpoint estimate for elasticity: 0.3

Then: 0.3 = % change in quantity/%change in price.

So, 0.3 = .035 (= % change in quantity)/%change in price.

so: % change in price = .035 / 0.3 = 11.6%

But: the observed % change in price is roughly 94% ($73-$26/($73 + $26)/2 = 0.94. The so-called, "mid-point arc elasticity", which uses the average of the starting and ending points as the basis for the percentage change in price calculation). Result? The observed change in price is over 800% larger than what one would expect based on previous market behavior (which is where estimates of elasticity come from).

There are then several possibilities: a) previous estimates of elasticity do not reflect current conditions--this is tantamount to saying that the oil market today is somehow fundamentally different from the way it was from 1972-2003. Maybe so, but one would then want to know how, exactly, the market has been so transformed. War and related stupidities would surely play a role here.

b) A much more plausible, and simpler, hypothesis: expectations, as argued above.

Calling these expectations, as the press often does, "speculative" leads to ideas of "herd behavior" and manias, evildoers in eyeshades, etc. Without denying that bubbles exist (I think they do), one can just say, as most economists would: "The price of an asset reflects the collective judgement--right now--of all market participants about future demand ans supply conditions".

In short, I think you are selling short the impact of the neo-cons' lunacy on the oil market.

And, you are, of course, entirely correct that we could, and must for other reasons, get serious about conservation.

Alan Richards

Cole: I'm deeply grateful for Professor Richards' intervention. Just to say that the oil analysts tell me that the market is in fact radically different now than in the 1970s-1990s, and that a key difference is the massive and continuing rise in demand from South and East Asia. I did say that I thought the "security premium" was likely a much bigger part of the price rise than the reduction in Iraq production. I am persuaded that the security premium is a central part of this story and is of course deeply related to Bush administration aggressiveness in the Oil Gulf region.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Petition to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

My readers who teach or have taught in post-secondary education continue kindly to be invited to sign the petition against stigmatizing our colleagues John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard as "anti-Semites" merely for writing a critical appraisal of the role of the Israel lobby in US Middle East policy. They can be right or wrong, but that the paper is out of bounds because it is racist is absurd and also an idea dangerous to intellectual life.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kaplan in Slate on Global Americana

Many, many thanks to Fred Kaplan for his write-up in Slate of the Global Americana Institute project to translate American political thought and history into Arabic.

Also

Props to Michael Berube for having my back on the giant slug that's pursuing me. Salt is a good idea.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

30 Dead in Baqubah Battles
Shiites Seek to Keep Interior

A battle between 100 guerrillas and Iraqi army forces in Baqubah (northeast of Baghdad) on Thursday left 30 persons dead, with casualties on both sides. Local Iraqi forces spoke of a guerrilla force as big as 500! It is unusual for guerrillas to field such a comparatively large force. Local Iraqis also said that US forces came in to aid them when called on. You have a sense that if the US troops weren't around to be called on, Baqubah would pretty quickly fall to the guerrillas altogether. I suspect the guerrillas were mostly Iraqi, not foreign jihadis.

Guerrillas used a roadside bomb to kill a US soldier late Thursday

Guerrillas also killed 3 Italian troops and a Romanian, putting pressure on the new Italian PM to accelerate the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq.

Historian Alfred McCoy considers Abu Ghraib and torture as official US policy at the Amnesty International site.

The direct cost of the Iraq War is now $320 billion and rapidly climbing. Some economists think it will reach $1 trillion, i.e. a million million.

Senator Russ Feingold will introduce a bill calling for US troops to be out of Iraq by the end of this year. They should be gotten out sooner if possible.

The Middle East Policy Forum has a discussion up of whether there is a responsible exit from the Iraq quagmire.

Turkey is deploying its military on the Iraqi border, to face down what Ankara sees as the threat of thousands of radical PKK Kurdish separatists taking refuge over the border in Iraq. It is also trying to snuff out renewed PKK activism in eastern Anatolia itself.

AP points out that the formation of a government in spring of 2005 did not spell an end to violence in Iraq. There is no reason to expect that Maliki's cabinet will halt it, either, though this suggestion is continually made by various officials of both the US and Iraqi governments. The guerrilla movement doesn't want the new government there, and its formation will simply be an incentive to attack more.

KarbalaNews.net reports that Prime Minister-designate Nouri ("Jawad") al-Maliki said in an Iraqi television interview that the key ministries of defense and interior will probably go to independents not affiliated with any specific political party. The major blocs themselves support this step. The minister might be from one of the broad blocs, but should not have a record as a specific partisan, and should be unconnected to any militia group. It should be pointed out that the minister of defense in the outgoing government was an independent, Saadoun Dulaimi-- a Sunni Arab intellectual. But Interior was dominated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the minister allowed members of its Badr Corps militia to be recruited into the special police commando units of the ministry.

Al-Maliki said that his predecessor, Ibrahim Jaafari, had suffered from often having ministers who represented their party or ethnicity rather than the interests of the ministry. Ministries in the past three years have been governed on a spoils system, such that the party in control packed them with employees from that party. Al-Maliki said that he would not tolerate the use of a ministry as spoils for a particular party and will fire any minister that tries it.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat of London on the other hand says that Kurdish MP Fuad Masoum revealed that the ministry of the interior had been offered by al-Maliki to the Kurds in return for their giving up the foreign ministry. He said that the Kurds, however, declined, viewing Interior (sort of like the US Dept. of Homeland Security plus FBI) as a headache they did not want. He said the Kurds feared being accused of recruiting into the special police commandos members of the peshmerga militia. He also said that Interior is a mess, such that if the Kurds came in and reformed it, they would meet substantial resistance, but if they did not, they would be roundly criticized. He said they would have nothing to do with it. He said that the United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite religious parties) refused to relinquish the ministry of petroleum.

MP Rida Jawad Taqi, of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told the paper that SCIRI might retain the ministry of the interior if the Iraqi Accord Front (fundamentalist Sunni) managed to get the ministry of defense, as an offset. He admitted that the ministers of defense and interior would have to be approved by all the major political blocs, as well as by the Americans.

Al-Hayat reports that 93 relatives of prominent Sunni politicians cooperating with the new political order have been assassinated during the past year. The sister of Iraqi Islamic Party leader Tariq al-Hashimi is only the most recent. Of course, relatives of politicians from other ethnic groups have also been killed in some numbers. The Sunnis are darkly hinting that the killing of their relatives is supported by a "regional power" (Iran) that has an interest in spreading ethnic unrest in Iraq. This charge is frankly ridiculous. Sunni Arab member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, Isam al-Rawi, accused al-Qaeda and Baath remnants of being behind the killings of Sunni Arab politicians and their families as punishment for coooperating with the new regime. He said some deaths were the work of rival non-Sunni militias. Al-Rawi is an honest man, far more honest than those who go all the way to Tehran to find a scapegoat. Most Sunni Arab politicians have reverted to depending heavily on kin members as bodyguards, since they trust them.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Petition to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

(I've set up a new petition site at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/
takeaction/875967959 because the first one was overwhelmed with trolls.) The troll attack will have confused a lot of potential signers. Please circulate the URL of this posting, i.e. http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/
petition-to-conference-of-presidents.html to academic friends and urge them to sign. I can throw off the fake names easily at the new site, and no one can be signed up fraudently because they get an email to the address entered. One troll technique is to invent plausible-sounding false entries that are actually e.g. porn authors. I think I have caught all these but would appreciate some readers vetting the signing list via google for authenticity in case I miss something.

I must require some kind of academic affiliation to leave your name up, even if it is a past or informal one (please state that). Let us redouble our efforts; obviously someone is very afraid that we will demonstrate that most American professors stand against these tactics. I have preserved as many names as possible from the first petition below, and they are already an important witness. If you are listed here, no need to re-sign.

I'm glad to do press interviews about the petition. Note that it has already garnered hundreds of academic supporters from across the US, and I think it is the first time the academic world has petitioned the Conference of PMAJO on such an issue.

I'm starting a petition drive for college and university teachers to defend John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from baseless charges of anti-Semitism. I apologize for limiting the petition base this way, but others are welcome to create other petitions that anyone can sign. I feel it is time for teachers in higher education to stand up and be counted on this issue of the chilling of academic inquiry through character assassination. At a time when the use of congressional funding to universities to limit and shape curricula and research is openly advocated, all of us academics are on the line. And if scholars so eminent as Mearsheimer and Walt can be cavalierly smeared, then what would happen to others?

To: Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

We note with dismay that when eminent political scientists John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard published their “The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy” in the London Review of Books, they were subjected to a barrage of ad hominem attacks. In particular, they were smeared as “anti-Semites”. This epithet was hurled at them by the Anti-Defamation League, Eliot A. Cohen, Alan Dershowitz, Representative Eliot Engel, Richard L. Cravatts, and many others.

Merriam-Webster gives the following definition of anti-Semitism:

an•ti-Sem•i•tism
Function: noun
: hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group

We protest the character assassination of eminent American academics, firm supporters of civil rights for all, as racist bigots for their academic analysis of the domestic dimension of US foreign policy. No paper about other ethnic lobbies’ impact on foreign policy (e.g. Cuban-Americans, Irish-Americans or Armenian-Americans) would have elicited such over-heated and patently unfair charges of racism.

We fear that the real motive in the brandishing of the serious charge of “anti-Semitism” so readily at any discussion of the US relationship with Israel is an attempt to chill public debate and to discourage the critical evaluation of American Middle East policy and of Israeli policy in the region. Such a misuse of the word “anti-Semitic” is profoundly anti-democratic. Democracy requires free public debate of all issues affecting the public weal.

We deeply fear that this practice is becoming a form of “crying wolf,” and that the force of the term “anti-Semite” is being rapidly eroded as a matter of moral sensibility. True anti-Semitism does exist and is an evil. Let us vigilantly combat it rather than mischaracterizing academic papers.

We also fear that an impression is being created that elements in the American Jewish community are hostile to academic freedom of speech and inquiry, and are hostile even to the first amendment of the US constitution. As admirers of the historic role the American Jewish community has played in furthering civil liberties in the United States, we are concerned and saddened at this development.

We call upon the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations forthrightly to condemn the smearing of Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, and of other academics who subject Middle East policy issues to critical inquiry, as “anti-Semites.”


Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Name Affiliation (for Identification Purposes Only) Comments


Andrew J. Zweifler, Professor Emeritus of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan
Robert D. Acland, Professor, University of Louisville School of Medicine
Andrew Arato, New School University
273Philip E. Converse, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, Director Emeritus, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford,

Thomas Richardson, Dept. of Mathematics, Western Michigan Univ., 1992-1999
Robert Asher University of Connecticut, Professor of History Emeritus
Barry Wilson University of Northern Iowa
Francis Mlynarczyk Adjunct Assistant Professor, New York University, 1969-1970; Instructor, Purdue Univesity, 1965-1968
John George ERAU,retired.
Richard Needleman Wayne State University School of Medicine
Scott Erb Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Maine Farmington
Andrew Slade Philosophy, University of Dayton
Shelley Baranowski University of Akron
Alex Stein www.falsedichotomies.com
Joanne Aboud McGahagan Instructor, Humanities Division, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Carmen Brissette Grayson retired prof. of history, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia
Thorne Anderson Former Adjunct Professor, American University in Bulgaria
laura camille agoston dept of art and art history trinity university
Daniel Tompkins Temple University
Robert Daniels Professor of Accounting San Francisco State University
Michael Munk retired-last taught at Rutgers
brant hinrichs Drury University
Steven M. Zielke Oregon State University
James Bratt Dept of History Calvin College
Jason Hodin Stanford University
To quote Mearsheimer and Walt: "Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts - or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites - violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends." Here in the USA we saw a parallel situation in that any criticism of Bush's belligerence in the wake of 9/11 was labeled "unpatriotic." We will be dealing with the consequences of such undemocratic responses for years to come. In the meantime, countless innocents suffer.

Michael Byron San Diego Mesa College, San Diego, CA
250Ann El Khoury Macquarie Uiversity
Sean Lee l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
frank Belcastro Frank P. Belcastro, retired, University of Dubuque. Reckless charges tend to chill academic inquiry which retards the acquisition of knowledge.
Sandy Polishuk formerly Portland State University
Dominic Holland UCSD Neuroscience
Joshua Cole Department of History, University of Michigan
Dino Feldman engineer
Michael Martini Franklin Pierce College
Faheem Khan Graduate Student. Civil Engineering Wayne State University.MI
L. G. Moses Department of History Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK
David Shibley - Santa Monica College, CA
Felipe Gómez G., Post-Doctoral Fellow, Spanish Department, The University of Michigan
Chuck Van Wey former instructor New Mexico State University
Edwin Duncan, Towson University
Chuck Blackledge, Department of Physics, Oklahoma State University
Alan Balboni, Ph.D., Professor , Community College of Southern Nevada.
Gregory B. Stone, Louisiana State University
Mark D. Higbee, History, Eastern Michigan University
Geoffrey Wong ICP
Shawn Oakley Columbia Law School
David Jonah Mathematics Department, Wayne State University
James Goldfarb Devine Loyola Marymount University
Josh Buermann Chicago, IL
Jeffrey Rudolph Marianopolis College The issue isn't whether the authors are right or wrong, pro- or anti-Israel, etc. The issue is their freedom to express an opinion; especially an unpopular opinion. Perhaps there is a clash of civilizations between those who support liberal freedoms and those who don't.

Moses Seenarine Former Adjunct Assistant Professor, Hunter College, CUNY
Stacy Haldi US Naval War College, CDE
Stephen Philion St. Cloud State University, Sociology
Kenneth Miller Columbia University
Dr. Sam Noumoff McGill Universiy
Rudi H. & Laureen Nussbaum Portland State University
J B Meilands Prof Emeritus Biochem UCB
Peter Meyer Filardo Tamiment Library, NYU
Merrill Ring California State University, Fullerton
Carolyn Eisenberg Hofstra University
Gary Murrell Grays Harbor College
Douglas Sloan Teachers College, Columbia University
Michael McIntyre DePaul University
Richard C Thomson retired
Brice Harris Occidental College
Joanna Picciotto UC Berkeley English
Martin Love Durham Academy, Durham, NC
Victor Wallis Berklee College of Music
Stephen Fox Emeritus Professor of History, Humboldt State University
Mary C Wilson University of Massachusetts Amherst
Claude Garrod Emeritus Professor of Physics, UC, Davis It's a very dangerous although tempting tactic to recklessly use charges of anti-semitism

Matthew Kester Brigham Young University Hawaii
Sally Guttmacher New York University
Christopher Turner University of Iowa Its about time that the American People realize who is asking for your children and money to fight in the Middle East to protect Israel!

William T Burke Professor Law Emeritus
200 Beth Cleary Macalester College, Theater Department
Douglas Anderson Southwest Minnesota State University
Mark Crispin Miller New York University
Bertell Ollman Dept of Politics, NYU
Peter Z McKay University of Florida
Wendy Kaufmyn City College of San Francisco
Noor V Gillani University of Alabama in Huntsville
Brian Palenik UCSD
Dr Andrew Strycharski University of Miami
Wythe Holt University of Alabama (emeritus)
John F Ronan Valdosta State University
Michael Nash New York University
Adele Kubein Oregon State University
Olaf Berwald University of Tennessee
Roger Beck University of Toronto
Albert Krauss Dartmouth College, BA; San Francisco State College Language Arts postgraduate studies This preposterous, opportunistic and politicized bugbear is being evoked shamelessly Please help to expose its baselessness

John Melby Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jack Draper University of Missouri, Columbia Mearsheimer and Walt's excellent article in the LRB was written precisely to expose this kind of attempt to stifle open debate about Israel's place in US Middle East policy Let's rely upon the power of open debate and the exchange of new ideas to reduce violence in that region , rather than the power of fear of being unjustly labeled a bigot to stifle debate and maintain the status quo

F Gregory Gause, III University of Vermont
William W Hansen Professor of International and Comparative Politics, ABTI American University of Nigeria, Yola, Nigeria
Frank Connolly Professor of Mathematics, University of Notre Dame
Peter Rachleff History Department, Macalester College I am an American Jew and these organizations do not speak for me on this issue

Ceasar Albert Retired
Protecting against anti-semitism is of the utmost importance, but it should not result in the suppression of academic investigation.

Hardy Bryan Catholic University, MA student in World Politics I never thought I would defend Stephen Walt or John Mearsheimer. The need for this petition is outrageous.

Christopher A. Fox Newman University, Wichita, KS As an academic and an American who is proud of his Jewish roots, I believe that those who seek the truth must be allowed to do so, wherever it leads and whoever it affronts.

Ben Piggot University of Washington
Deborah A. Gordon Women's Studies, Wichita State University
Yoram Gelman Lehman College, City University of New York
Richard A Shook FCCOL
Herman DE LEY Ghent University (Belgium)
Matthew Abraham University of Tennessee at Knoxville In the Name of Academic Freedom

Nabil Al-Tikriti University of Mary Washington
Benjamin Mini History instructor, Waynflete School, Portland, Maine
Cynthia L Meredith University of Texas at San Antonio
Stephen Day independent researcher
Dr Sadu Nanjundiah Central Connecticut State University It is time to challenge the McCarthyite type tactics of the Israeli lobby which tries to smear every critic of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people with the taint of "anti-Semitism", thereby squelching discussion on the appalling treatment of Palestinians by Israel and denying them their just aspirations to freedom with justice

Kristin Kopp University of Missouri, Columbia
Victor L Tomseth Retired foreign service officer and former ambassadorIn -plus years working on US national security and foreign policy I saw at close range the power of the Lobby to stifle honest debate of the relationship of Israel to US policy interests A public discussion of the this important issue is long overdue

Andrew McLennan University of Sydney Economics
John S Williams Professor Emeritus, U of the Pacific
Rosemary Sayigh (dr) visiting professor, Birzeit University
Lynne Knight Contra Costa College
Grace Said Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace
Richard DiMatteo Retired-Phi Beta Alpha The very need for this petition speaks volumes about the validity of the issue
Jane H Hill University of Arizona Department of Anthropology
Terry Walz Council for the National Interest Foundation
Steve Cormier PhD Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute
Helmy Y Mostafa Boston University
Karol M Morphew Arapahoe Community College (Ret)
William T Lynch Wayne State University
150George Bisharat Hastings College of the Law
Richard Mulliken, PhD Fordham University (ret)
John Mineka Lehman College, CUNY
Denis A White University of Toledo
Kevin Fulton University of Texas at Austin Go back home!
Irene Padavic Florida State University
Stewart Grant University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, Alaska The local jewish community was especially vicious in shutting down a performance of a local author's play about Corrie Rachel

Naseer Aruri Professor Emeritus, Unversity of Massachusetts Dartmouth Terri Ney Reading Area Community College
Stephan Cohen Assistant Professor, Lesley University I support an open dialogue and I state this as an American Jew

Vicente Sanchez East Los Angeles College
Kathryn Vestal retired attorney Public discussion of Israel's influence on American foreign policy, for good or ill, is *not* anti-semitism

Scott Erb University of Maine at Farmington
Brian Ulrich Beloit College, University of Wisconsin
Robert Olson University of Kentucky
Helen Fox University of Michigan
Gary Mort Lane Community College
Dr Charles S Young Southern Arkansas University More open debate occurs in Israel than the US It is irresponsible and dishonest to stigmatize these academics

Arnold J Oliver Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Heidelberg College
John E Adkins University of Charleston
Seth Wigderson Professor of History University of Maine at Augusta
Ena Lorant ADAIPP Freedom of speech is a right which we cherish and must work to protect

Noel Maurer Harvard Business School
Claudio Gallo Journalist
Nathan Leon Pace, MD, MStat University of Utah
Erhard Kock ACLU
Friderike Heuer Lewis&Clark College
John J Geyer Rutgers University (retired)
L Michael Lewis Professor Emeritus, History, Eastern Kentucky University
Robert Emmett Curran Georgetown University
Charles Postel california state university, sacramento
jack schaller & Joan de la Cova Retired
Steven R Heidemann Michigan State University Having read the article, I found nothing anti-semitic about it Rather, it was a plausible discussion of the issue

Lance Segars, PhD San Diego State University
Donald M Reid Georgia State University (Emeritus)
Joseph Martinelli Retired
Arthur S Keene University of Massachusetts
Dr Terri Ginsberg formerly Dartmouth College, Jewish Studies
john w livingston assoc prof middle east hist and Islamic civilization
Frank Thompson University of Michigan
John Bass University of British Columbia
James Bieri University of Texas at Austin, retired
Phyllis Mansfield Penn State University
Julia Stein Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, CA
Stephen Twing Frostburg State University
Bill Bush UNLV
Herbert P Bix Binghamton University
Ranjit Singh University of Mary Washington
Jerise Fogel Marshall University
Richard Shekelle University of Texas School of Public Health (retired)
Natraj Sitaram MD Professor, Wayne State University School of Medicine
100. David Kolb Charles A Dana Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Bates College
Eliana Moya-Raggio University of Michigan, Lecturer Emerita
Elaine C Hagopian Prof Emerita of Sociology, Simmons College, Boston Thanks to Juan Cole for confronting this wretched smear campaign of respected academics
Eliana Moya-Raggio University of Michigan, Lecturer Emerita
Alan Macdonald Luther College
Richard B Barnett University of Virginia
leo stolbach, MD Reformed Jewish I certainly have concerns about AIPAC'S actions At some point we have to recognize that what is good for the Palestinians is not necessarily bad for Israel The only hope for Israel as a Jewish state is to have a state solution that is fair and equitable for both peoples

John Exdell Kansas State University, Department of Philosophy
Susan Crowell University of Michigan
Yakov M Rabkin University of Montreal
90. Aram Harrow Univ of Bristol
David Ray, PhD University of Oklahoma Associate Professor of Political Science
Gerhart Maas Webster University
Henry Farrell Dept of Political Science, the George Washington University
Peter Morris Penn State Emeritus
Jennifer Wicke Professor of English, University of Virginia
Robert Carlsen University of Colorado at Denver
Henry Greenspan University of Michigan There is no shortage of antisemitism in the world Although hedgy in places--the words don't entirely match the music--I do not believe the article in question is one of its expressions

Thomas E Weisskopf University of Michigan
David Ede Western Michigan University
80. Anne Mac Gregor Retired
Robert S Knapp Reed College
Thorne Anderson former Adjunct Professor, American University in Bulgaria Stephen Broadbridge University of Sheffield
Philip Leitner Saint Mary's College of California
Leonard Koscianski Anne Arundel Community College
Lelon Oliver University of Alabama Huntsville
Donnelly, Denis Siena College
David Waldner Department of Politics, University of Virginia
Max Heirich University of Michigan Professor and Research Scientist Emeritus
Debra Hill University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
70. Mike Tharp Part-time instructor, California State University Fullerton
Kerby Miller University of Missouri
John F Robertson Central Michigan University
Ira Glunts Half Moon Books
David Mazel Associate Professor of English, Adams State College
Brian Johnston Carnegie Mellon University
Rao Nagisetty University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio
eleanor roffman Lesley university
Regan Boychuk University of Calgary
M Shahid Alam Northeastern University
60. G Sam Sloss Indiana University Southeast
George Grantham McGill University
Erik Lichtenberg University of Maryland
David R Applebaum Rowan University
John Spritzler Harvard School of Public Health
Evan Haefeli Columbia University
Richard W Todd Adj Professor, West Texas A&M University
J David Velleman New York University My comments are at http://leftrighttypepadcom/main///the_a_wordhtml

Darrell K Fennell attorney
Barry Wilson University of Northern Iowa Academic freedom is at stake here as well as providing an atmosphere for reasoned debate rather than the polarized polemics that seem to characterize too much of what is printed today

50. Gregory Nagy Harvard University
Elizabeth Seymour Penn State Altoona
David Galezo Tompkins Cortland Community College
Paul Lyons Stockton College
will rickenbach retiered
Bill Matthews Bates College
Alan Singer University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Peter Pape Retired chemist I feel that when anyone criticizes the actions of Israel, that person is branded an anti-semite I am not an anti-semite, but I feel that Israel is as much to blame for the continuing problems in the Middle East as are the Arabs and Palestinians via the Israeli's terrorist-like responses to any incident
Ahab Bdaiwi University of Exeter wwwbdaiwiblogspotcom
Mary Ellen Lundsten retired, Augsburg College
40. Harry Ungar Cabrillo College Good work, Juan
Jonathan House MD Columbia University Ctr for Psychoanalytic Training and Research
Lydia Howell Independent journalist,host of "Catalyst" on KFAI Radio
Alan Marwine Green Mountain College
William Burns Howard University
Mark Weinstein None
Robert Davis Laboratory Manager Univ of Missouri
Costa Sakellariou Binghamton University study history!
Thomas Dickson Cabrillo College Instructor of Chemistry emeritus
Willard Hardman Adjunct, Catholic University of America also US Army, Retired
30. Olga Davidson Wellesley College
Jan Meier American citizen/voter Suppression of the truth must stop
Jefferson Gray The University of Chicago
Joanne Aboud McGahagan University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Alastair Northedge Université de Paris I
Mark D Higbee Eastern Michigan University
William Van der Kloot SUNY @ Stony Brook
Richard A Rand University of Alabama
John W Farley UNLV
Michael Martini Franklin Pierce College
20. Bruce Tyberg Independent
Steven Pierce History, University of Manchester
Campbell Craig University of Southampton
FM Ratliff, II Researcher
Da'ud X Mohammed Oregon Coast News Signal
Roger V Stevenson Southern Oregon University
daniel cassidy New College of California Irish Studies Program Beannacht, a chara
Harold Johnson University of Virginia
John Hartman Western International University
Dr Anthony Crow Yakima Public Schools
10. Dave McLane
Joel Andreas Johns Hopkins University
John K Fabiani
Roger Whitney San Diego State University
Calvin Schrotenboer Foothill College
Kevin Monahan Hokuriku University, Kanazawa, Japan
Karin Jaeger CECE / Euromed-Marseille
Stephen Roddy University of San Francisco
Hugh J Lester None
Juan Cole University of Michigan
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

31 Killed in Guerrilla Violence
Kurdish Situation Angers Turkey

AP reports Iraq violence Tues-Weds. There were major car bombings in Baghdad, and some 15 bodies showed up dead there and in Karbala. There were also deaths near Baqubah and in Kirkuk. AP counted 31 dead altogether.

Al-Zaman also reports a bombing in Fallujah.

The sister of new Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, Maysoon, has been killed in a drive-by shooting. His brother, Mahmoud, was killed two seeks ago. Al-Hashimi is a Sunni Arab from the fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, and one of two vice-presidents. The Sunni Arab guerrilla movement is notorious for viciously punishing what it sees as "collaborators" with the new regime. Since al-Hashimi is in the protected "Green Zone," they had to try to get at him through his familiy.

The guerrillas also killed 3 other "collaborators."

I have been complaining for years now about this allegation that US and Iraqi officials make that the problems are "only in 4 provinces." I say they are in 7 or 8, and they are among the more populous provinces in Iraq. Now the GAO agrees with me.

Turkey denied charges that its troops had made an incursion into Iraq. Turkey charges taht 5,000 Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) activists and guerrillas have taken refuge on the Iraqi side of the border, and they want them turned over.

The US has pledged to be more helpful to the Turks in stopping infiltration. But since the US has hardly any troops up in the northeast, and since Iraqi Kurds are sympathetic to the plight of their Turkish cousins, I'm not sure exactly what the US can do, if it if really wanted to do something.

Der Spiegel warns of a building "intifadah" or uprising among Turkish Kurds in eastern Anatolia.

The continued publicity stunt visits of Rice and Rumsfeld to Iraq (where they have to sneak in and out unanounced because otherwise they would be in severe danger) are not going over very well with Iraqis. LA Times money quotes:

' "It would be more appropriate if they would leave us alone," said Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish legislator. "Let us solve our problems by ourselves."

"Enough is enough," said Sheik Mahmoud Sudani, a politician affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. "Rice's trip to Iraq at this critical time is just another desperate move by the Americans to try to impose themselves on our new government. But they have lost their influence." '

Iraqi officials charge that 90 women become widows every day. 15 policemen alone die each day, according to this report. There are some 300,000 widoes in Iraq, and their situation is deteriorating because of the poor economy.

The 90 husbands dying per day presumably includes deaths from natural causes. But the police are mentioned as dying specifically from guerrilla violence. If 15 policemen a day really are being killed, a) we're not hearing about it in the press and b) that is 5400 a year! By David Singer's definition, you only need 1000 deaths a year among government forces to qualify for having a civil war.

Brain injuries among Iraq vets are sometimes hard to diagose, Robert Bazell argues. As I mentioned before, such injuries sometimes get the person discharged from the military on terms that preclude access to veteran medical care!
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Zarqawi Makes Recruitment Tape
Crackdown on Mahdi Army in Najaf

Reuters reports 18 deaths during a relatively light day of violence in the Iraqi civil war.

With regard to American casualties, the Pentagon does not even announce the wounded each day unless a soldier is killed. If you had 7 wounded, we'd never hear abour it. And, they are being badly wounded, often. Spinal damage, limbs blown off, and, MSNBC says, brain damage.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi appeared in a videotape on Monday, urging that the fight continue against the American presence in Iraq. The tape was a typical jihadi recruitment video. The foreign fighters such as Zarqawi constitute a small part of the Iraqi guerrilla movement. The Iraqi minister of the interior estimates them as a less than a thousand in the whole country. They can be deadly because of their bombing techniques and willingness to carry out suicide bombing.

I saw part of the tape on Aljazeera. At one point Zarqawi shows two rocket launchers named "al-Qaeda" and "Jerusalem." Zarqawi clearly believes that the road to the liberation of Jerusalem from Israeli occupation lies through the destabilization of Iraq.

The bad news for Zarqawi: That theory about anything in Jerusalem "going through" Baghdad was tried out by the Washington Isntitute for Near East Policy (the Likud Party offices on the Potomac), the American Enterprise Institute (to the right of the Israeli Likud Party), AIPAC, and other Neocon think tanks, in 2003. It hasn't worked out for them. It won't work out for Zarqawi.

Nowawdays, ironically, the neo-conservatives are mainly arguing that there is no relationship between Iraq and the Palestinian issue. But all religious Iraqi Sunnis, and probably most Arab Iraqis, support Hamas to the hilt. The likelihood is that the killing of the four contractors in Fallujah that did so much to sink American Iraq was in revenge for Ariel Sharon's murder of the old man in a wheel chair, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the chief ideologue of Hamas.

If Megan Stack is right that Sunni-Shiite tensions are rising in Eastern Arabia because of the Iraqi civil war, it could be a big threat to the world economy. Eastern province, where the Shiites live, produces 11 percent of the world's petroleum every day. If it goes up in smoke the way Kirkuk has, you'd better get used to walking everywhere. The price of gas will be astronomical. I recommend Eco walking shoes.

Al-Zaman [The Times of Baghdad] reports, dateline Najaf [Ar.] that the long-simmering crisis between the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi troops and their American allies, in the Shiite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad, has come out into the open.

Sahib al-Ameri, the leader of the Sadr Movement in the city, said that the American forces had arrested two brothers from the Movement, and had killed a third brother, Abd Muslim al-Nu`mani, after invading their home. The attack happened hours after an agreement was signed that required the surrender of security missions in the city to Iraqi forces. Al-Ameri said that the attack, killing and capture constituted an escalation and a humiliation by American forces of the Sadr Movement.

An official in the municipal government denied that American troops had been involved in the house invasion or the arrests. The source, who insisted on anonymity, said that the assault and the arrest were carried out by Iraqi forces-- after the judicial authorities issued an arrest warrant for `Ala' Abd Muslim, who stands accused of activities damaging to security in the city, including the manufacture of roadside bombs. The source said that the only US participation in the campaign will be the provision of close air cover to Iraqi forces. Iraqi forces received complete control of security in Najaf from the Americans in a ceremony held last Monday.

Al-Zaman also says that Washington has warned against the induction of entire units of sectarian militias into the Iraqi security forces, insisting that they were welcome to join as individuals.

Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki said that if the militias are not dissolved, they will drag Iraq into civil war. He said all weapons must be under the control of the security apparatuses. He said that there is no conceivable situation in which militias are necessary for security. (Al-Maliki needs to take a walk around Baghdad!)

Jonathan Finer says that Shiite militias are deploying to Kirkuk. The Kurdish militia in Kirkuk has another name: the police.

The FT says that al-Maliki is ready to compromise to form a government.

It is a toss-up as to whether corruption or sabotage is the bigger threat to the Iraqi oil industry.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Blogger David versus WSJ Goliath

This is day three since John Fund of the Wall Street Journal did a nationally-read hatchet job on me in which he made up quotes and falsely attributed them to me. He has still not retracted, and has not apologized. Neither has The Wall Street Journal. Hint: I wouldn't want my business news or investment advice from a newspaper that just makes things up. I have complained directly to the Opinion Journal. But still nothing. The lies are still out there, online, damaging my reputation.

Update 4/25/06: Thanks to all who wrote. You had an effect. The WSJ finally rather ungraciously admitted the error. I am told they almost never do so, so it is a big win.



Fund's lies and smears are typical of the far right, which controls so much of corporate media. Much of corporate-owned "news" is increasingly just bubbly entertainment, put on in a ceaseless search for at least 15% profits (on news!). As Tom Fenton has argued, corporate news dropped the ball in the 1990s on covering al-Qaeda (props to the hardy few like Peter Berger and John Miller, among a handful who did the hard work), and therefore bears significant responsibility for allowing America to be blindsided on September 11.

Now it has largely gone back to business as usual. They almost never report on Afghanistan or the regrouping of the Taliban. Do Americans even know that we have 18,000 troops in that country. Do citizens of the US even know that brave Canadian troops are risking their lives against the neo-Taliban and al-Qaeda in Qandahar, and that some were recently killed? No. Because it mostly isn't being covered in the mass media inside the US. It would not generate 15% profits. Nothing will, but sensationalism and lies.

The lies have even corrupted our political process. Indeed, Senator John Kerry could never have been swiftboated during his presidential bid unless corporate media jumped aboard and gave all the falsehoods enormous play. They threw the election, folks. Those editors and journalists knew that the swiftboaters had no case. The media caesars put them on anyway, to play lions to Kerry's Christian. Even Kerry was unable to get his message out. A humble college history teacher has as much chance of winning against the billionaire smear machine as a union organizer has of keeping her job in a Walmart.

(When I complain about Faux "news" often being mere propaganda, Fund accuses me of "intolerance"!) If it weren't for this little blog, I wouldn't even have had a way of challenging Fund's and the WSJ's falsehoods. (And, if the media corporations can take "net neutrality" away from us, they'll remove that avenue of reply, too.)

If it were just a matter of ruining my reputation with false quotes, the issue would not be world-shaking, though it is a sad day for America when giant corporations can just crush red-blooded Americans at will. But the paid-for lies of the John Funds of the world have profoundly endangered the security of the United States by plunging it into a quagmire in Iraq.


Iraqi Shiites protest against United States and against Terrorism, March, 2006.

And, the accelerating threat of global warming cannot be addressed because people like Fund shout the evidence down with their cable- and satellite-provided megaphones-- provided by Rupert Murdoch and General Electric.

Not only was Fund wrong about the "weapons of mass destruction" threat in Iraq, a mistake that has cost the US nearly 2400 lives and 14,000 severely wounded, but he is wrong about the threat of global warming. I found that on January 25, 2003, he managed to be wrong about both things all at once! Here he is on Hardball in late January, 2003, urging on the Bush administration Titanic toward twin glaciers!

' MSNBC
SHOW: HARDBALL 21:00
January 31, 2003 Friday

MATTHEWS: John Fund, do you know what turned him [Colin Powell] around from a man who is perceived by the public to be dovish to a man who is the hard line fellow, very much like his fellow Cabinet members, Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney?

JOHN FUND, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Complete frustration Chris. He basically decided that Saddam Hussein was never going to come clean, that the process was completely flawed.

You know the same people who believe that global warming is absolutely proven and they're not going to listen to anything else are the same people who will accept absolutely no evidence that Saddam Hussein is hiding something and including weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell basically finally threw up his hands and said we have to act because the alternative is to let Saddam Hussein win the game, set and match, and the world cannot be blackmailed that way. '

Actually, Iraq let the UN inspectors in. They inspected 100 of 600 sites designated as suspicious by the CIA. They found nothing. As Fund was talking, Iraq had complied with Bush's demand. Fund wanted to go to war anyway.

He castigated those, like myself, who refused to believe that Iraq formed a danger to the US, as being like people who believe in global warming!!

Why be wrong once when you can be wrong twice? Or, if you throw his manufactured quotes attributed to me into the kitty, three times. Indeed, you begin to wonder if Fund ever gets anything right.



In fact the melting of the ice caps both at the arctic and the antarctic has accelerated beyond scientists' expectations.

Mr. Fund should explain to the people of New Orleans about how warming seas are a myth.

A humble college history teacher is like a canary in the mine. If he starts being strangled for air, it is a sign that we all are in grave danger. People like John Fund are taking our country, and our world, down into the deadly methane of propaganda and falsehood.

Here is my complaint on Day 1.

This is my complaint on Day 2.

------------

Dennis Perrin has more.

James Wolcott weighs in, too.

Also FAIR.

Justin Raimondo.

BTC News.

Corrente Wire makes the interesting point that my blogging may be part of the issue here.

Jane Hamsher.

Glenn Greenwald on the background to the controversy.


See the comments section for Fund's replies.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Nearly 60 Dead, 80 Wounded in Bombings, Assassinations
34,000 Shiites Have Fled

Guerrilla violence killed 25 in Iraq on Monday, 10 of them in a coordinated set of 7 car bombs in the capital that also wounded 80.

Iraqi police discovered 32 bodies of recent recruits to the new security forces at two sites in Baghdad and another in Mosul on Monday. Some 15 of the bodies belonged to recruits from Ramadi. The victims were therefore Sunni Arabs. Guerrillas have focused on recruits from Sunni cities before.

The Washington Post adds, "In a statement Monday, a government agency said more than 5,600 Shiite families comprising nearly 34,000 people have fled their homes in mainly Sunni regions of Baghdad and central Iraq because of violence. "

Al-Hayat [Ar.] reports that MP Ali al-Adib of the United Iraqi Alliance (religious Shiite parties) said Monday that his bloc "supports the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front in its nomination of one of its members for the portfolio of minister of defense, rather than having a Kurd. The reason is that Iraq is a member of the Arab League, and as long as the presidency went to the Kurds, it is necessary to achieve balance through having an Arab figure in Defense, so that Iraq will reach out to the Arab World."

Sources in the UIA said that US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is trying to get the defense ministry for Hajim al-Hasani, the former speaker of the house, on the grounds that he is "a moderate Islamist and an independent Sunni personality" after his withdrawal from the Iraqi Islamic Party last year. Moreover, Khalilzad is held to believe, he enjoys the confidence of the Shiites and Kurds.

Actually, Hajim al-Hasani (al-Hassani) was expelled from the Iraqi Islamic Party in November of 2004 because he refused to resign from the government of Iyad Allawi, where he was minister of industry. The IIP had pulled out of the government to protest the US assault on Fallujah, which damaged 2/3s of the buildings in the city and killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent civilians. My guess is that the IIP doesn't forgive al-Hasani for this, and Khalilzad's championing of him will actually hurt.

Khalilzad is reported to be pushing Ahmad Chalabi or Qasim Da'ud, secular Shiites, for the post of minister of the interior. Neither has links to the fundamentalist Shiite militias, but both have enormous baggage in Iraqi politics.

Al-Hayat maintains that Chalabi still has the trust of the Sadr Movement and the Dawa Party, as well as a number of independents, and is seen as "the Pentagon's man" in Iraq.

It says that Qasim Daud faces severe opposition from Sadr, who accuses him of collaborating with Washington. Daud was minister of state during the fighting in 2004 between US forces and Muqtada's Mahdi Army, and took stances then for which the Sadrists have never forgiven him.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Dahab Bombings did Not Involve Kamikazes

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reports that Egyptian police are saying that the Sinai resort bombings on Monday do not appear to be the work of suicide bombers. Rather, the explosives were set off by remote control.

The police also do not think it unlikely that the same cell is behind this attack as carried out the previous two big tourist bombings in the Sinai.

But since this is the third, why didn't Egyptian security see it coming and have better precautions?

Egypt depends heavily on tourism for its economic survival. Wouldn't a wise Egyptian government focus in on stopping this sort of thing after the first two?

Euronews wryly gives as its headline,, "Bush and Hamas condemn Attack." For all Bush's bluster, he hasn't caught Ayman al-Zawahiri, who helped plan out the attack on New York and the Pentagon. An Egyptian physician, al-Zawahiri may also have played a role in enouraging the Sinai attacks. So Bush's threat to get the perpetrators is empty. All these years later, he still hasn't gotten al-Zawahiri. How is he going to track down some half-urbanized bedouin malcontent in the middle of the Sinai desert? It is all swagger, no delivery.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

John Fund Libel of Juan Cole Still Not Retracted

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal attacked me in a column on Monday in which he alleged that I had called Israel the "most dangerous regime in the Middle East."

This quote is a sheer fabrication. Mr. Fund put it forward as a reason for which I should not have a professorship. Yet I never said it. He knows that I never said it. He has still not retracted it or apologized for this and other falsehoods he spewed about me in his column.

What kind of journalist just makes falsehoods up and puts them in someone's mouth? What kind of newspaper allows that? And in order to damage someone's career? Isn't that a tort?

By the way, has John Fund ever apologized for his repeated assertions in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" and that therefore the United States needed to go to war and get thousands of its young men and women blown up? What else has he gotten wrong? With this kind of track record of grievous error, why does he deserve a privileged perch as an influential talking head?
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Breaking News: Bombing at Dahab

30 appear to be dead, 100 wounded in the bombings of a Red Sea resort.

Although Egyptian secret police have for some years controlled the radical fundamentalists in the Nile Valley, the radicals appear to have established some cells in the Sinai, a rugged, desert environment that is like Afghanistan in offering lots of cover, thin government coverage, and poor, resentful populations to provide foot soldiers (Bedouins, displaced Gazans, etc.)



See these previous reports:

Taba Trial

Al-Qaeda and Sharm-el-Sheikh
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Fund Smears Cole with Barrage of Lies

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal editorial page has published a large number of falsehoods about me.

The most egregious is this:

' He calls Israel "the most dangerous regime in the Middle East." '

This a lie. I never said that. Try googling it. (All that comes up is the circular allegation I said it, never sourced. It never comes up on my site, because I did not say it, or say or imply anything like it.)

I did say that then-Israeli policies of assassinating people like Sheikh Yassin were dangerous to US interests in the Middle East. Since those policies also inspired such sympathy with Hamas that they went on to win the recent elections, the policies were dangerous to Israeli interests, too.

I presume Mr. Fund will apologize for libelling me and smearing me in an apparent attempt to interfere with my professional life.

That he can't get something so basic right, of course, says it all about the rest of his screed, during which he also accuses me of being a racist bigot for complaining about the then influence of Ariel Sharon and the Likud line on Bush administration policy toward the Middle East.

Mr. Fund should take it up with the Republican Party. Look at former National Security Council adviser under Bush senior, Brent Scowcroft: "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft told London's Financial Times. "I think the president is mesmerized."

Then Secretary of State Colin Powell told W. that Douglas Feith, the number 3 man in the Pentagon was a "card-carrying member of the Likud." Powell also routinely referred to the Neocons in the Pentagon as the "Gestapo."

Fund calls me "anti-Israel." I have a funny way of showing it, if so. What he really demands is not that I be pro-Israel, but that I support Bibi Netanyahu. Why should I, Mr. Fund? Explain that to me.

Mr. Fund goes on to attempt to link me in some way with the Taliban. I am mystified by that particular smear. What similarity, exactly, does he see between an American member of the Democratic Party who voted for Clinton, Gore and Kerry, and the devotees of Mullah Omar?

Fund inaccurately says that I am alone among academics in arguing that the Mearsheimer and Walt paper on the Israel lobby should be given a hearing. He ignores Mark Mazower, Tony Judt, and a host of others. Fund accuses me of saying that AIPAC is powerful in Congress. La di la.

Mr Fund has clearly never read a word I've ever written. He has just cobbled together some snarky smears from other pundits who also have never read my work. Indeed, I know how to fix this Rightwing smear machine that has revved up against me. We'll make a rule that they can't criticize me unless they read my scholarly works first. :-)

As for the Web log being unscholarly or polemical, there are some issues about which some sharp writing is necessary. Fund can't make up his mind as to whether the problem with me is that I have written books about the 19th century Middle East, or that I comment extensively on contemporary developments. I'm not sure what business it is of his, anyway. But he should not lie so blatantly about me.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bin Laden Urges Jihad in Sudan

In another reminder that George W. Bush has still not caught the man responsible for September 11, while he has mired tends of thousands of US troops in an unrelated Iraq quagmire, the murderous lunatic Usamah Bin Laden spoke again on Sunday. I don't know how Bush lives with himself. He has squandered 5 years of unparalleled power and opportunities, and has nothing to show for it but national bankruptcy and national humiliation.

Former US diplomat John Brown is eloquent on Bush's failures at Tomdispatch.com.

Bin Laden [Ar.], in a new videotape played on Aljaazeera, called on holy warriors and their supporters in the Sudan and neighboring areas, including the Arabian peninsula, to prepare to conduct a long-term war against “the Crusader thieves in Western Sudan.” (I.e. Bin Laden expects that US or European troops will intervene, perhaps under a UN banner, in the Darfur conflict. He urged them to become knowledgeable on western Sudanese tribes. He warned that Western powers intended to exploit “some of the disputes among the tribesmen, and to provok war among them that eats both the green and the dessicated, in preparation for the sending of Crusader forces to occupy the region and to steal its petroleum und the cover of preserving order there.

The mass killer said that his goal is to defend Islam and its people, not to prop up the Sudanese government. He said that the Sudan crisis is taking place in the framework of “a continuing Crusader and Zionist war against the Muslims.”

In fact, of course, regional separatism on the part of the Muslim Darfur people has been met with attacks by Arabic-speaking black Africans insistent on keeping the region part of Sudan, ruleed from Khartoum. Tens of thousands have been perished or been displaced by the conflict, which has nothing that I can discern to do with the United States or Israel, except that they have condemned the killing. There is no petroleum to my knowledge in Darfur.

Bin Laden also denounced the treaty that ended the civil war with the largely Christian and animist southern Sudanese, saying that it promised them too much autonomy from Khartoum.

He said the US had adopted an old British imperial plan for the division of the Sudan, and that the British had divided the Sudan from Egypt. (I think actually that the Sudan has the territory it does because it was a British colony and that was what the British wanted in it. They could have divided it easily when they ruled it. As for division from Egypt, you'd have to talk to Sudanese nationalists about that; I recollect that they weren't eager to be ruled from Cairo. Modern Egypt only began conquering the Sudan in 1822, and never ruled it with any firmness before the British took both in the 1880s, so it isn't as if Sudan has always been part of Arab, Muslim Egypt or anything).

Bin Laden also maintained that the siege mounted against the Hamas government in Palestine once it won the recent elections proves that there is a "Crusader, Zionist war" against the Muslims. He notes that Ayman al-Zawahiri had counseled Hamas from getting involved in the political process.

Actually, what all this proves is that the United States and Israel allowed Hamas to run in the Palestinian elections, and to win them. That's a war? And now all they ask is that Hamas renounce terrorism and recognize the parties with which it will have to negotiate, which its leaders refuse to do. (One has to admit, though, that letting Hamas win and then punishing it in various ways hasn't been the most productive way to proceed).

Hamas quickly moved to distance istself from Bin Laden's pronouncements, saying that they were his personal interpretation, and Hamas had its own. The Palestinian movement constantly has to attempt to keep outsiders from hitching a ride on their popularity in the Muslim world, most often for purposes extraneous to the true welfare of the Palestinian people. They won't let Bin Laden coopt them.

Bin Laden has survived, and he is still taunting the US, and still attempting to polarize Muslims and Westerners. His tapes have far more influence and resonance than Americans realize. He needs to be caught and silenced, and US and Israeli actions that needlessly alienate the Muslims need to cease, as well. Otherwise, our world is willy nilly being seduced by the inferno of hatred at the core of al-Qaeda and its Christian and Jewish counterparts.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

3 GIs Slain, 27 Iraqis
Slavery Revived by Contractors on US Military Bases

A car bomb aimed at a police patrol in Baghdad killed three and wounded at least 25 persons Monday morning near the Ministry of Health.

Guerrillas killed another three GIs on Sunday, and 27 Iraqis died in guerrilla violence. Four Iraqis were killed in the northern city of Mosul. April has been a deadly month for US troops in Iraq.

Al-Zaman says that 22 bodies were discovered in al-Adhamiyah and al-Sink in Baghdad, and in Fallujah (2 in the latter city). They had been killed execution-style.

A huge fire has broken out at a northern Iraqi petroleum installation. Although the report says that it is unknown whether this conflagration is the result of guerrilla sabotage or an accident, let's just say I find the former more plausible.

PM-designate Jawad al-Maliki's call for an end to militias in Iraq appears to have alarmed President Jalal Talabani, who insisted that the Kurdish peshmerga is not a militia but rather a "regulated force." He said that they will never be dissolved. Al-Maliki wants all militias disbanded or absorbed by state security and military forces. The Kurds say that federal forces will never set foot on Kurdistan soil, and that the peshmerga is the army of the Kurdistan regional confederacy.



Al-Zaman / AFP report [Ar.] that a political solution has been proposed to the ethnic fighting in the Sunni Arab district of al-Adhamiyah in the capital. Ahmad al-Kubaisi announced that the National Iraqi Guards concluded an agreement with the people of the quarter that guarantees that Ministry of Interior police commandos will be kept out of the district. On the other hand, attacks on army outposts will cease. The people of Adhamiyah will protect their district. Despite the discovery of 6 bodies there Sunday, each killed by a bullet behind the ear, a curfew has dampened down the violence that broke out last week when Shiite police commandos came in. Most shops remain closed and the city streets are deserted most of the time.

Sami Moubayad can't see the difference between incoming Iraqi PM Jawad al-Maliki and outgoing PM Ibrahim Jaafari.

After all the shootings of innocent Iraqis out for a drive, after the torture and illegal detentions at Abu Ghraib, after the indiscriminate bombing of Iraqi cities, there were few blots remaining as imaginable on the American escutcheon in Iraq. But, well, we just weren't thinking big enough. There was after all the possibility of the revival of slavery! Some of the civilian firms supplying "military support services" at US military bases in Iraq have been using slave labor. This report confines itself to speaking of "human trafficking" and "confiscated passports," but it is obviously talking about slavery pure and simple. I have long been against all the boondoggles of corporate socialism in the defense industries, whereby jobs that could be done efficiently and inexpensively by GIs are farmed out as pork barrel patronage to private firms, who do them inefficiently and very expensively. And, it turns out that the corruption in Iraq among American "contractors" has been mind-boggling. But even I could not have imagined slavery.

The US military is planning to be in Iraq for at least a decade.

Now the guerrillas are targetting Shiite street sweepers in Baghdad!

Kurdish journalist Ayub Nuri visits Baghdad from Sulaymaniyah and finds it terror-haunted . Nuri was a suppporter of the war and had high hopes for a new Iraq, which have been dashed. His descriptions are so vivid that they are worth excerpting:

' What I found was a virtual ghost town, where residents are afraid to leave their homes after dark and heavily armed militias roam the streets . . .

He was the only guest at the once-bustling Palestine Hotel, where a legion of foreign journalists and businessmen once crowded together:

' To get into the building, I had to maneuver around concrete barriers, barbed-wire fences and pass through two checkpoints. . . '

I went back to my old neighborhood, Karada — a predominantly Christian area where Shiites and Sunnis also lived in peace — late one afternoon to see how things had changed over the last three years. Although shops in the area once stayed open until midnight, many were already preparing to close . . . A car bombing, apparently aimed at a Shiite mosque across the street, had heavily damaged the neighborhood stores where I used to buy fruit and vegetables. The streets I remember as being filled with children and families doing their late-night shopping were now empty, dark and sad . . .

[Shiite taxi drivers] told me that while they worked as taxi drivers during they day, they patrolled the streets at night as members of the feared Mahdi army . . .

. . . ironic are the posters praising the bravery of the Iraqi army. “No one must worry about Iraq. We are here to protect it,’’ they promise. It’s largely an empty promise.

Many residents still do not have access to drinking water or electricity. Pregnant women afraid to venture out after curfew are often forced to give birth at home. Garbage piles up everywhere in the city. And so do the bodies of victims of the various militias that own the night . . . '

As for Bush, he gave us more imaginary solutions to pressing problems on Sunday. His solution to the Iraq crisis is to depend on an Iraqi army that does not exist and would be deeply divided on ethnic grounds if it was ever deployed in a large scale battle. His solution to the energy crisis is to talk up hydrogen, which is years away. It is like a child with ADD. There are real emergencies, including the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. And we just get banjo playing from this president, not action.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

All Right, Not All Right

Today at Informed Comment, we are going to play the game of "All Right, Not All Right," known in Washington, DC, as "business as usual," but otherwise castigated by the moral philosophers as hypocrisy.

It IS all right for Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove

to leak classified intelligence about the identity of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative.


It is NOT all right for CIA employee Mary McCarthy to leak classified information and blow the whistle on secret torture prisons maintained by the US government in Eastern Europe. (There is disagreement on who the criminals are here, however.)

It is NOT all right for Larry Franklin, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's "go-to" man for Iran at the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Iran desk

to pass classified documents to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which then passed them on to a spy, Naor Gilon, in the Israeli embassy.

It IS all right for Secretary of State Condi Rice

to discuss with AIPAC Middle East operative Steve Rosen some of the same things that were in the documents passed to him and Keith Weissman by Larry Franklin, who is in jail for it.


It MAY be all right for AIPAC lobbyists Steven Rosen

and Keith Weissman to pass classified US Defense documents to Naor Gilon, a spy in the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC.

It IS all right for AIPAC to seek to continue to secretly employ Rosen under the cover of the Zionist Organization of America , while publicly declaring that it had cut all ties with the indicted spy.


It is NOT all right to be a registered lobbyist for the foreign interest of the Sudan, accused of killing and displacing populations in its rebellious Darfur province.


It IS all right for AIPAC not to register as the agent of a foreign power, while lobbying on behalf of a government that has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, which continues to steal their land, and which killed 20,000 persons during its 1982 illegal invasion of Lebanon.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

President Talabani asks al-Maliki to Form a Government;
6 Dead in Sunday Mortar Barrage;
5 US Troops, 26 Iraqis Killed Saturday

The guerrilla movement replied to the political developments in Iraq on Sunday morning raining 11 mortar strikes down on various parts of the capital. Three mortar shells fell in the Green Zone where parliament meets. A mortar shell landed near the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad, killing 5 there alone. Early reports gave 6 killed altogether in the barrages.

Guerrillas killed 5 US troops in Iraq on Saturday.

Al-Hayat says that guerrilla violence killed 26 Iraqis on Saturday, with two big explosions in a popular market at Miqdadiyah and a multitude of other attacks around the country.

The Associated Press details some of Saturday's attacks:

' In a sign of the security challenge, suspected insurgents exploded two bombs Saturday in a market in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 17. The second blast was timed to hit emergency crews arriving at the scene. The bullet-ridden bodies of 10 Iraqis were found in and around Baghdad, many blindfolded with hands and legs bound in rope. Some appeared to have been tortured, and one was decapitated, police said. Police also found a body with signs of torture floating in the Tigris River in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. In the capital, gunmen in a speeding car sprayed a police patrol with machine-gun fire, killing one officer. Gunmen killed a civilian riding in a car, and a roadside bomb wounded two policemen. '

The LA Times reports on the election of key officers of the Iraqi government by parliament on Saturday. Borzou Daragahi and Bruce Wallace report that 266 of 275 elected legislators convened a a convention center [where the air conditioning is broken], and cast their votes in the sweltering heat of a Baghdad late April. The US military guards the Green Zone, a 4 square mile area of downtown Baghdad that is cordoned off with concrete blocks and razor wire, but apparently can't fix air conditioners for a government that has a $17 billion a year budget.

Money quote from Mithal al-Alusi, a tolerant Sunni who has pledged to vote with the United Iraqi Alliance of PM-designate Jawad al-Maliki:

' "I don't think there is a plan to end the violence," said Mithal Alusi, a Sunni Arab legislator who has been mentioned as a possible defense minister. "There are some ideas which are beautiful ideas but which are not that far away from dreams." '

The London daily Al-Hayat [Life] reports [Ar.] on the breakdown of the voting. Why am I the only one over here interested in this little detail?

Mahmoud al-Mashadani, a Sunni Arab fundamentalist and a physician, received 159 votes out of 256 cast. Note that 159 votes is not all that great. He needed 138 for a simple majority. There was obviously a lot of opposition to him, even though he was apparently running as the only candidate for the post among Sunni Arab delegates! In all the celebratory reporting about the "end" of the "logjam" and the "glimmer" of hope, it appears that no one is stopping to ask how stable the new political process is. If 20 MPs had declined to support him, Mashadani would have failed.

Al-Mashadani had been a member of the constitution drafting committee and hated the final product, of which he said, "We have reached a point where this constitution contains the seeds of the division of Iraq." Last December, he told Knight Ridder of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, "Perhaps it will be difficult to control them." He was among those who led the charge to unseat outgoing prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Since the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurdistan Alliance are very committed to the constitution, he is unlikely to get along with them.

After a government is formed (if al-Maliki can succeed in putting one together), parliament will have four months to revisit the permanent constitution passed by referendum on October 15. Sunni Arab delegates are determined to overturn the provisions that allow provinces to form confederacies and to claim 100 percent of future oil and other natural resource finds, denying those resources to the federal government. Since Sunni Arabs have no such resources presently, they will be severely disadvantaged by such a system. Since Mashadani is speaker of the house, he will presumably have a certain ability to set the legislative agenda, and to influence the negotiations over the constitution.

Al-Hayat reports that in the voting for speaker, 97 blank ballots were cast. Apparently among those who abstained in this way were the delegates of Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National List (25 MPs) and Salih al-Mutlak's National Dialogue Council (11 delegates). These two largely secular parties, which include many ex-Baathist nationalists, were protesting the "sectarian" character of the new government. It will be dominated by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni fundamentalists, and Kurdish autonomists. Allawi and al-Mutlak and their secular MPs have apparently been cut out of cabinet and other high posts, since their lists garnered so few seats in parliament and the religious parties decline to forgive them for their secularism and the Baathist pasts of many of them. Allawi, for instance, has frequently publicly attacked Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's influence on Iraqi politics, a stance that inevitably makes him a pariah for most of the fundamentalist Shiites.

For more on the way Allawi and al-Mutlak have been sidelined and their reactions, see Swopa's Needlenose.

It is not clear who cast the other 61 blank ballots, but it seems clear that some Shiites and/or some Kurds could not go along with the deal worked out by their party leaders.

Parliament then elected the president and two vice presidents. Talabani received 198 votes, with 57 blank ballots cast. He is clearly substantially more popular across the board than is Mashadani. Talabani then asked al-Maliki to try to form a government.

al-Maliki announced that his first priority would be to induct members of militias into the regular Iraqi military and police. (Note that everyone implicitly excuses the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary from such plans; it is only the Shiite militias to which objections are raised by the US and its Iraqi allies).

KarbalaNews.net says that al-Maliki added that future politics in Iraq will not be pursued "on the basis of distinctions, sectarian contradictions, and racism." He continued, "From now on, our struggle will be to efface all these concepts and to work on the basis of an Iraqi identity and on the basis of national sharing." Al-Maliki has a history as a Shiite hard liner from the fundamentalist Dawa Party, but he has also been a strong Iraqi nationalist. He will have to convince the other forces in parliament of the latter if he is to form a stable government.

One problem: Al-Maliki only has 132 sure votes in parliament. He has 128 from the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, and 2 from the Risaliyun, followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni Arab with a single seat, has said he will vote with the UIA, and so has the Chaldean Christian MP. That gives Al-Maliki 132. He needs to find at least 6 more to get to 138, which is 51%, though of course that would be a razor thin margin and ideally it should be much greater.

The problem is that there are not six obvious votes for al-Maliki in what is left of parliament. The 58 Kurdish MPs have said that they will vote as a bloc. On many issues, the 44 Sunni fundamentalists of the Iraqi Accord Front will be opposed to UIA stances and al-Maliki could not depend on them. The 11 Sunni secularists of the National Dialogue Council and the 3 Sunni secularists of the Reform and Conciliation party have a lot of ex-Baathists in their ranks and would not be acceptable partners. Some of the Allawi National Iraqi List is similar.

But you wonder whether among the 25 MPs of the National Iraqi List, some of them ethnic Shiites, there might not be some possible defectors. For instance, Judge Wa'il Abd al-Latif of Basra, although he is a staunch secularist, worked with some of the UIA leaders when he was on the Interim Governing Council (revised). If the UIA can find ways of attracting 6 such individuals to join it, it can form a government. Likewise the Yazidi religious minority and the Turkmen ethnic minority each have one seat, and some promises might be made of tolerance for them in the new system. Al-Maliki could also do as former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon used to do, and depend on different parties as partners for different votes, operating a kaleidoscope in which the ruling party always comes out barely on top.

It won't be easy, and the result would be fragile, but I suppose al-Maliki could just pull it off. Under ordinary circumstances, I would predict that this parliament would fall before too long. It faces extremely contentious and divisive issues, and does not have a strong and cohesive majority. But the consequences of the government falling are so horrible, that maybe sheer self-preservation will make the MPs reluctant to allow it to happen.

Al-Hayat also reports that its Iraqi sources in Basra and Nasiriyah say that the Italians are making preparations to begin gradually pulling their troops out of Iraq.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

17 Killed in Guerrilla Violence
UN: thousands Detained Illegally

Guerrilla violence took the lives of 17 Iraqis on Friday, with major bombings in Mosul and Baghdad.

At Baiji, guerrillas captured 6 troops and executed them.

Al-Zaman says that the guerrillas killed or wounded some 28 policemen alone on Friday.

In one of the worst incidents, a car bombing targetting the police chief of Tal Afar in northern Mosul. The bombing killed 6 policemen and wounded 11 police and civilians.

The police chief of Ninevah denied a rumor that 50 policemen had been arrested for secretly belonging to the al-`Awdah Party, the secret successor to the Baath Party. He said that two policemen were found with pamphlets of al-`Awdah and "the Army of the Future."

Two bombings in Baghdad wounded 11 policemen.

the UN is complaining about thousands of Iraqis being held illegally or outside the law in Iraq, both by various government ministries and by the US military. The UN officials argue that only the Iraqi Ministry of Justice and its subsidiaries can legally incarcerate Iraqis. The Defense and Interior Ministries and the US military are not so authorized by the Iraqi constitution.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Maliki Acceptable, Say Kurds, Sunni Arabs

The Financial Times reports on the reaction of the Kurdish and Sunni Arab blocs to the selection of Jawad al-Maliki, 56, as the candidate for prime minister of the United Iraqi Alliance:

' “We have no objection to Jawad al-Maliki,” said Iyad al-Samarrai, of the Sunni-led Iraqi Islamic party. “Although there is not much difference [from Mr Jaafari] from the ideological point of view, we have a feeling he is more practical, more willing to solve problems. We don’t want to complicate the process [further]. It’s better to move on.’’ Independent Kurdish politician Mahmoud Osman said: “We don’t object as the Kurdistan coalition?.?.?.?We hope he will succeed. It’s about time to move forward.’’

Al-Zaman [The Times of Baghdad] reports that there was an internal agreement within the United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite religious parties) among the seven major parties to put forward Jawad al-Maliki of the Islamic Dawa Party as the candidate for prime minister. Jawad al-Maliki is the nom de guerre of Nuri Kamil al-`Ali.

Actually, only 6 of the 7 major constituent parties accepted al-Maliki. The seventh, the Virtue Party (Fadhila), insists on putting forward its own candidate for prime minister, Nadim al-Jabiri of Basra. Al-Jabiri is likely to lose badly.

Informed sources in Baghdad told al-Zaman that the decision was taken quickly in an atmosphere of American pressure, as part of a deal among Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (head of the UIA), Jalal Talabani of the Kurdistan Alliance and Tariq al-Hashimi of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

Among their goals was to deny a prominent role in the new government to Iyad Allawi (ex-Baathist leader of the Iraqi National List) and Salih Mutlak (Sunni ex-Baathist and leader of the National Dialogue Council). Al-Zaman's sources worried that by forming a government that excludes the ex-Baathist secular parties, the top leaders have set the stage for further sectarian violence. (A lot of the violence in Iraq is actually committed by Baathists, neo-Baathists, and ex-Baathist nationalists, to whom Allawi and Mutlak were best positioned to reach out, in this way of thinking).

The source said that after a week of discussions in the Shiite UIA, the delegates reached an agreement easily on Friday with virtually no dissent. The source said that the Kurdistan Alliance had greenlighted any choice of the UIA aside from Jaafari.

Hasan al-Sunaid, MP-Dawa, said that discussions had taken place among the two branches of the Dawa Party and the Sadr Bloc, which led to a consensus on al-Maliki. They only agreed to withdraw Jaafari's name after the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq agreed not to put forward again its candidate, Adil Abdul Mahdi. Mr. Abdul Mahdi is likely to remain vice president, a relatively powerless and unimportant post.

The candidate for president will be Jalal Talabani. The candidate for speaker of the house will be Mahmud al-Mashadani from the Iraqi Accord Front (fundamentalist Sunni Arab).

Al-Maliki is the number two man in the Dawa Party. Born in Babil Province, he fled Iraq for Iran in 1980 when Saddam Hussein made it a capital crime to belong to the revolutionary Shiite Dawa Party, which was working for an Islamic state. He later left Tehran for Damascus, where he was in Dawa's political office. The Iraqi Dawa was engaged in anti-Western attacks in Lebanon during the 1980s, and helped form the Lebanese Hizbullah in 1984. It is not clear if al-Maliki had been involved in any of those activities.

Al-Maliki came back to Iraq after the fall of Saddam in 2003. Since then he has filled a number of posts, including chair of the Iraqi parliament's national security committee. He has also been the spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance. He led the effort to pass legislation against terrorism in the parliament. He also served as vice chair of the Debaathification Board constituted by US civil administrator Paul Bremer.

Jaafari withdrew his own candidacy in a brief statement broadcast on Iraqi state televion shortly after midnight early Friday morning. He pledged to work for the Iraqi people in some other capacity.

Hamed al-Hmoud, writing in al-Hayat, warns that al-Maliki has to work harder than Jaafari did to curb the Iraqi militias. The Dawa Party has only a small paramilitary, but its parliamentary ally, the Sadr Bloc, maintains a large and militant Mahdi Army.

===========

More from the Open Source Center on al-Maliki, from 2005. Note especially the long interview in al-Adalah for Feb. 2, 2005.

--------

Iraq: Candidate Outlines Strong Points of Iraqi Unified Coalition
Iraq Election; Article by Kawthar Abd-al-Amir: "Iraqi Unified Coalition Strength Lies in its Integrity and Concern for Interests of Iraqi People"
AL-ADALAH
Wednesday, February 2, 2005 T15:42:48Z
Journal Code: 9089 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Translated Text
Word Count: 1,196

A glimpse into the life of the deputy speaker of the National Assembly: Nuri Kamil Muhammad Hasan Abu-al-Mahasin, alias Jawad al-Maliki, assumed during his years in opposition, joined the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party in the late 1960's. He is currently the official spokesman of the political bureau of the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Usul al-Din (the tenets of religion) College in Baghdad and a master's degree in Arabic literature and is currently working toward a doctorate.

(Abd-al-Amir) Apart for the fact that the Iraqi Unified Coalition electoral list contains well-known figures, what is the secret of its strength?

(Al-Maliki) I believe it is not just the secret of strength that makes this list the backbone of the upcoming elections. The forces and figures behind the list are not unknown. They have not been involved in criminal acts committed by the agencies of the former regime. Rather, they were political forces who held out in opposition and entered bloody and violent battles against the dictatorial regime. Indeed, they were one of the main symbols of opposition to the former regime.

At the forefront of these forces is the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party, Al-Sadr Trend, and other forces and figures who made their presence felt.

It should be recalled that some of the electoral lists contain elements that were possibly part of the machinery of the old regime, i.e. Ba'thists who are subject to the de-Ba'thification law, intelligence agents or those who got involved in the Iraqi Intelligence Service immediately before the collapse of the regime, or elements accused of misusing public funds.

This makes our list with its honest elements the kind of list that may be deemed capable of securing the aspirations of the Iraqi people in terms of welfare, integrity, concern for public funds, and the interests of the Iraqi people.

On the other hand, most people know that the ideas expressed on election platforms are merely pie in the sky. In fact, it is not a big deal to come up with something that cherishes people's dreams. What really matters is to publicize an election platform in keeping with the political history of this or that entity.

Again, one of the factors which gave our list a boost is the adoption of the same manifesto that was advocated while in opposition to the former regime, thus giving us credibility and trust among the electorate. We are using the same language that we used while in opposition. It is this consistency, history, and conformity that lend credence to the list, not the chanting of slogans.

Like other entities, we could have claimed that we would eradicate unemployment or that we would abolish corruption. I would ask those who currently hold a post in the government where corruption is running rampant: "Why do you want to tackle the problem later? Indeed, why not tackle it now?" We know that the electorate is concerned about these slogans. They know that once the candidates come to power these slogans will be forgotten.

One other strong point is the fact that this list has received the endorsement of the religious authority. The religious authority is not a lay figure, since he keeps track of the political situation. Thus, when he throws his weight behind a specific list, it implies that he finds that list trustworthy, competent, and capable of realizing the aims and aspirations of the people.

(Abd-al-Amir) What gives you hope for the next elections? What is your level of anticipation for success?

(Al-Maliki) What gives us hope is our integrity, our history of struggle, the Iraqi people's affection and kindness toward us, and the ordeal they have suffered, and the hope that one day honest people, to whom they can entrust the lives of their families and children, take the leadership. Also, the Islamic identity of the Iraqi people, which we believe will be best preserved under our leadership, is another assurance. As for our success, we believe that it will be great, since the Iraqi people endorse this list. Each of the figures on the list has wide support among the Iraqi people. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, this list enjoys a rich history, the endorsement of religious authority and the tribes, and the support of those who are eager for justice under the public identity, which is the Islamic identity of the Iraqi people.

(Abd-al-Amir) The Iraqi Unified Coalition is seeking election on a platform of federalism. What do you mean by federalism? Is it ethnic, sectarian, or administrative?

(Al-Maliki) This is a matter for the elected National Assembly. However, generally speaking, we believe that administrative federalism has been successful in most countries and that its implementation in Iraq will provide answers to many obstinate historical problems. Also, it will be an opportunity to emancipate citizens from the draconian centralization that crushed them under dictatorial regimes, as power sharing means the involvement of people in the administration of the country. Finally, federalism will preserve the unity of the country. Therefore, we believe that administrative federalism in contrast with ethnic or sectarian federalism is the safest option.

(Abd-al-Amir) What is the level of relations with the multinational forces?

(Al-Maliki) The presence of the multinational forces in Iraq is in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1546 (2004), which governs their presence, restricts their responsibilities, sets a timetable for their departure from Iraq, and grants the elected Iraqi Government the right to request the departure of these forces when it finds their presence of no significance. That is to say, the next Iraqi Government, according to the law, has the right to demand the departure of the multinational forces on the condition that it provides adequate military and security capabilities to protect the Iraqi people from foreign terrorist attacks.

(Abd-al-Amir) Do you encourage foreign investment?

(Al-Maliki) Yes, we do. Foreign investment will support the economy of Iraq. However, we flatly reject investments which undermine the national sovereignty of the country or its security, or influence the country's political developments, such as investment in the oil sector, airports, and so on, on the grounds that we do not wish to pledge the future of Iraq to political or security quarters disguised as foreign investors.

These are generally the most important principles. In addition, we would like to create relationships with regional countries based on good-neighborly policies and cooperation so as to secure peace, commercial and economic exchange, and the provision of services to the Iraqis such as travel, scholarship, commerce, etc. We are working to promote academic and educational aspects as the main engines of development and fight the practices of the old regime, such as the falsification of academic achievements and its blatant disregard for education, which gave rise to the decline in education, which is regarded as the main impetus in western universities.

(Description of Source: Baghdad Al-Adalah in Arabic -- Daily issued by the Justice House of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq)

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' Iraqi Shiite, Kurdish Lists Hold Ongoing Talks on Key Ministries, Kirkuk
Unattributed report: "Kurdistan coalition wants to determine the issues point by point; Dr Al-Ja'fari's advisor: We will sign a working paper with the Kurds"
KURDISTANI NUWE
Wednesday, March 9, 2005 T12:51:37Z
Journal Code: 8289 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Translated Text
Word Count: 503

Talks between the Kurdistan Coalition List and the United Iraqi Alliance for forming a new government are still ongoing. Many key issues have been discussed so far. A further meeting to the effect is expected to be held today.

Member of the alliance Sami Askari has told the Kurdistani Nuwe: The two lists have agreed on many issues so far. However, other articles are still to be negotiated with the view to determining them prior to the first session of the assembly on 16 March.

He added: The two sides are in agreement about the issue of Kirkuk and that it should be determined in accordance with the State Administration Law. And regarding the peshmerga forces, he indicated that the alliance believed that the number of peshmergas was to many, and that the new Iraq did not need a big army. Therefore, it is better to reduce the number of peshmergas, to employ part of them in the governmental institutions, to amalgamate another part with civil establishments and for another part to be retired.

Regarding the sharing out of the ministries, Sami Askari said: We have not went into details. Nevertheless, the Kurdish list demands two key ministries. And so we at the Alliance List believe that based on the assumption that there were six key ministries, it would be logical for the Kurds to hold two of them. However, if they were only five ministries, then, it is not possible for the Kurdistan Coalition to have two key ministries.

In another development, Dr Ibrahim al-Ja'fari's advisor Jawad Talib al-Maliki told the Kurdistani Nuwe: We and the Kurds and are in negotiations regarding several key ministries such as the defence, foreign and oil, the talks are still ongoing.

He expressed his pleasure at the agreement on the settling of the issue of Kirkuk's internally displaced people, and that the alliance list would try to ensure their speedy return to the city in the transitional phase. He added: We will sign a working paper with the Kurds so as to work on it continually in the transitional phase.

Regarding the issue of peshmergas and Kirkuk, he said: Talks in this regard will be postponed until the drafting of the permanent constitution and until a referendum is held in the country.

However, a well-informed source in the Kurdistan Coalition List said: The Kurds want to discuss the issues point by point, and to be agreed upon later on, particularly the issue of Kirkuk and the peshmerga. But the alliance wants to sign an agreement on the whole issue at once.

The source also explained that the issue of Kirkuk was not discussed at the meeting on the day before yesterday, and that this was postponed to today's meeting between the two sides, he said: They are in agreement on the points, in principal; and that the Kirkuk question might be determined today.

(Description of Source: Al-Sulaymaniyah Kurdistani Nuwe in Sorani Kurdish -- daily newspaper published by Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)) '

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Iraqi Politician Stresses Need To Purge Security Services of 'Hateful Elements'
Report by Fawzi Shekhani from Baghdad, exclusive to Al-Ta'akhi: 'Jawad al-Maliki: 'Hateful elements have penetrated the security services and we must purge them'
AL-TA'AKHI
Friday, April 15, 2005 T08:55:58Z
Journal Code: 9091 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Translated Text
Word Count: 267

United Iraqi Alliance (subhead)

With regard to the security services, member of the United Iraqi Alliance list, Dr Jawad al-Maliki stressed that it is necessary for the multi-national force to understand the reality of the security situation in Iraq. For there are provocations with serious dimensions and repercussions, as we think. Certain divisions were formed blindly and haphazardly. They were penetrated by the former regime's services and we want a review of the matter. Also, there is a state of dissatisfaction, for it is an unbearable situation.

When I explained the picture to the US Secretary of Defense, he started to understand that the need to review and reassess the situation has become a hotter matter in Iraq. The issue will not grow so life threatening because the security services are linked to people's lives and what is needed is clean security services (as he put it) because the government possesses a legislative resolve. He added that the security theory in Iraq fails to understand the reality of the state of affairs. They do not understand the magnitude of the suffering from the friendship of the current bets. Some people drew upon the legislative backgrounds of a section mentioned in the Resolution 1546 issued by the United Nations.

Before a crowd of journalists, Wednesday, he reaffirmed: 'We believe that the security services have been penetrated by hateful elements that do not want the welfare of Iraq and we have to purge them from these elements resolutely and severely.

(Description of Source: Baghdad Al-Ta'akhi in Arabic -- daily newspaper published by Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP))

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Report: Political Blocs 'Trade Accusations' Over Constitution Drafting Delay
Iraqi Constitution: Report by Fa'iz Jawad and Khalid Talib in Baghdad, Mursi Abu-Tawq in Washington, and Khalid Al-U'aysir in London: "Political Blocs Trade Accusations; European Fears From Extremist Radical Iraq; Tough Week To Break Ice of Constitutional Differences"
BAGHDAD AL-ZAMAN
Friday, August 19, 2005 T16:33:53Z

. . . Dr Jawad Al-Maliki, member of parliament for the Unified Iraqi Coalition and member of the Constitution Drafting committee, affirmed that the issue of religion and the state has not been resolved. He said yesterday: "If we meet with good intentions to reach a solution to the two basic concepts; namely, the unity of Iraq and its territories, and Islam and the relationship between religion and the state, then we can conclude our work in a week."

On the way to solve some of the unresolved issues, especially the concept of a federation, Al-Maliki said: "What is important is to finalize our work. The draft must not necessarily be 100% acceptable to all parties," adding, "What matters is for the majority to approve of it." He went on to say: "In any event, the Iraqi people will ultimately decide through the general referendum the fate of the draft constitution."

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Al-Arabiyah TV Talk Show Discusses Iraqi Violence, Calls for Troop Withdrawal
"From Iraq" talk show, moderated by Elie Nakuzi -- recorded
AL-ARABIYAH TELEVISION
Tuesday, June 28, 2005 T18:11:22Z
Journal Code: 9153 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Report
Word Count: 2,644

Dubai Al-Arabiyah Television in Arabic at 1910 GMT on 27 June carries a new 50-minute edition of its weekly program "From Iraq," moderated by Elie Nakuzi. Guests of the program are Dr Layth Kubbah, spokesman for the Iraqi Government, via satellite from London; Jawad al-Maliki, member of the Iraqi National Assembly and a leading member of the Shiite Al-Da'wah Party, and Dr Muhammad Bashar al-Faydi, official in charge of foreign relations at the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), via satellite from Baghdad; and Brigadier General Muhammad al-Askari, Iraqi expert in strategic affairs, in the Dubai studio. The current violence in Iraq and the calls made for scheduling the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq are the main topics of discussion.

Nakuzi begins by asking Kubbah about the purpose of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja'fari's visit to Washington and talks with President Bush. He says Al-Ja'fari's traveled to Kuwait, Brussels, and Washington to explain what is taking place in Iraq and talk about "the real progress made after the elections" as well as Sunni participation in the political process, the security situation, and the need to improve public services in Iraq and expand the labor market.

Asked if he agrees with some US analysts that the security situation in Iraq will need seven to 13 years to stabilize, he says: "I believe that Iraq can restore its security within a short period of time if its people unanimously agree to rebuild Iraq."

The moderator then asks Muhammad Bashar al-Faydi about Sunni demands and the methods that can be used to persuade fighters in Iraq to lay down their arms. He says: "Let us first ask about the reasons which prompted the Iraqi people to carry arms against the occupation forces. Every observer knows that resistance in Iraq began on 30 April. On that day there was no Governing Council, no sectarian or ethnic quota system, and no political, sectarian, or ethnic crisis. There was only occupation and the resistance came in response to that occupation. This means we will not be able to stop resistance as long as occupation continues." Continuing, he says: "I am really surprised by the deterrent policy pursued by the former and present governments, thinking that this policy will succeed. If the deterrent methods used by the United States, the superpower, could not stem this resistance, why do the Iraqi governments insist on pursuing the same methods? Had the current government or prime minister taken the initiative to ask the Americans or President Bush to schedule their withdrawal, he would have solved half of the problem. Frankly speaking, his step was frustrating because the Iraqis believe that keeping the occupation forces means keeping problems."

Asked if Sunni participation in the next elections will "limit the resistance operations" in Iraq, Al-Faydi says: "We believe that the Sunnis will largely participate in the next elections not out of conviction in the political process but because they were frustrated by the behavior of the state organs, which regrettably were sectarian in many areas. This made them feel that they were treated unjustly in their absence from the elections and they must be present to restore balance. They will do so not out of belief in the next elections. Therefore, I want to say that even if the Sunnis largely participate in the next elections, the Iraqi problem will not be solved and resistance and problems will continue."

Turning to Jawad al-Maliki, the moderator asks if resistance can stop before the end of occupation. He says: "When talking about the Sunni brothers I mean the broad segment representing them. I do not hold the Sunni brothers responsible for the actions of the outlawed armed and terrorist groups. I am talking about the Sunnis who participate with us in the government and in writing the constitution and who announce their support for the political process. When we called on the others to participate in the political process, we did not mean that the process would be complete with their participation in the elections. The political process has only started and it will not end except with the completion of the process of writing and approving the constitution by the people and then holding constitutional elections. When we reach the day when elections are held on the basis of the permanent constitution, which will be written with the participation of the Sunni brothers, we can talk about the political process which will end the occupation as we have earlier said. At the end of the remaining period of time, that is, at the end of the constitutional process and elections and the advent of a new government, we will come face to face with the pressing need of telling the occupation and foreign forces that the process is over. We have reached the shore of safety we sought to reach and there must be withdrawal."

The program then airs a three-minute report by Ahmad al-Salih on the security situation in Iraq. He cites Iraqi security reports as saying that armed operations have dropped by 80 percent in Iraq although there is escalation in areas known as the Sunni triangle. The Iraqi interior minister is then shown saying: "The Iraqis are extending support to us day and night. We receive information from all Iraqi factions and political entities about the terrorists and their headquarters. All this shows that we count on the people, who stand by our side and fight with us. We will triumph, God willing."

The moderator then asks Muhammad al-Askari if he agrees with the saying that "resistance" will end only with the end of occupation, and if more operations are expected after Al-Ja'fari's statement that scheduling withdrawal will not be discussed at present. He says: "All the Iraqis and not only Mr Al-Faydi reject occupation. All Iraqis, including the prime minister, the president, and all parties and citizens, reject occupation." Continuing, he says: "Is Iraq now prepared for the departure of the multinational, occupation, or US forces? Iraq is not ready for this." Asked if this will lead to a civil war, he says: "Yes, certainly. The US forces are now a guarantee against this. During the present elected government's term, we began to feel that there are defense and interior ministries as Iraqi units began to go out to the street. There was no real army, no real police force, and no real duties in the past. This government has now started to activate them." He adds: "We do not advocate the stay of the US forces, but the de facto situation says that in order to preserve the unity of Iraq and avoid a civil war, we should not call for the departure of the US forces now because we are still not ready to protect the borders and the Iraqi citizens. More than 150,000 foreign soldiers are now in Iraq and more than 145,000 Iraqi policemen and soldiers are also present. Nevertheless, there are operations, car bombs, and mass killings in all Iraqi cities. How can we then ask the foreign forces to leave at this difficult time? What is gladdening in this regard is that in spite of the difficult security situation and what the Iraqi people and government are exposed to, there is success in the political process. We have held elections, there is a committee in charge of drafting the constitution, and a government has been elected. Had the political process been suspended or affected by the security situation, we would have said that what Shaykh Al-Faydi said was true. But the continued success of the political process in this remarkable manner and under such difficult circumstances will be a credit for the National Assembly and Iraqi Government."

Asked if "the dialogue taking place today between the US forces and armed resistance" can lead to a solution to the security situation in Iraq, Kubbah says: "I salute all those who want these foreign forces to leave Iraq as soon as possible, but I do not want others to use the departure of these forces as a pretext to build armed militias or criminal networks. The present elected National Assembly and the assembly which will be elected at the end of the year, God willing, can make a decision. Its decision will be a sovereign one and can get these forces out of Iraq. There is something called a peaceful, political, and legal resistance. There are also some who insist on carrying arms on the pretext of resistance. We in Iraq today have a mechanism capable of getting these forces out. The National Assembly will be responsible for what happens in the country after these forces' departure. If Dr Al-Faydi is a member of this Assembly, he will participate in this parliament and call on all the other brothers to join the political process."

Commenting on Kubbah's remarks, Al-Faydi says: "Do the Americans wait for a permission from the National Assembly to withdraw? This is illogical. We saw on television how the US soldiers offended the Assembly members in a humiliating manner. The issue is that there is a force in control of the country and it does not wait for a National Assembly decision about it as deemed fit." He then calls for the foreign forces' withdrawal within a reasonable period of time, during which the Iraqi forces can be prepared to replace them.

Continuing, he says: "The day the US forces announce they will withdraw I can stop the resistance and tell it: Enough, the US forces will withdraw and there is no reason to use weapons. But I cannot do this now. If I ask them now in the form of a fatwa (religious ruling), invitation, or appeal to stop fighting, they will tell me that the Americans are still in the country killing people, destroying houses, and violating sanctities." He adds: "If withdrawal is scheduled, we will be able to address all the Iraqi people and tell them: Stop bloodshed and fighting because the US forces have started to withdraw. The one who continues to fight will then distinguish himself as a terrorist rather than a resistance member. This will make all the Iraqis join hands in fighting him."

Commenting on this, Kubbah says: "Are the thousands of the Iraqis killed these days killed at the hands of the US soldiers? Are these car bombs not detonated by networks operating within our circles?" Responding, Al-Faydi says: "I, too, ask if it was patriotic to kill thousands in Al-Fallujah at the hands of the Americans and National Guard forces, and others in Operation Spear in Al-Qa'im, and others in Operation Lightning. I hope that we will be fair so that we can reach a solution. We should not view things from one angle."

Asked if withdrawal can be linked to the completion of the building of the Iraqi military institution, Al-Faydi disagrees and says: "Resistance will not stop as long as occupation continues." He adds: "When the occupation forces schedule their departure and begin to withdraw, there will be no reason for resistance."

On the way to end the current "security chaos," Al-Askari says: "The solution lies in two ways. The first is the continuation of the use of force. Force is necessary because there are terrorist groups and organized gangs and the Iraqi Government is duty bound to protect the citizens. Continuing to use an iron fist against these elements to cleanse the Iraqi cities from them is necessary but on condition that this is accompanied by strong work in the political field and by dialogue. Today we heard about dialogue with five factions in Balad north of Baghdad as admitted by Rumsfeld." Asked what this dialogue might lead to, he says: "Yes, some wonder if they can stop these operations. If they succeed in controlling them by 10 or 20 percent, this will be an accomplishment for the Iraqi people and government. In this case, we will involve five factions in the political process, the Iraqi Government, and National Assembly. It will then be easy to draw a dividing line between resistance and terrorism." Continuing, he says: "Had the government not embarked on Operation Lightning and other operations, which were carried out on a high level at the rate of 90 operations a day, some would have appeared on television and said the government was weak and could not protect the citizens and therefore it must resign."

Asked if force can restrain what is happening today, he says "force will certainly be one of the solutions" and adds that forcing the "terrorists" to leave Baghdad will make it easy for the government to control them in the other cities.

On whether he agrees with the "theory of force and dialogue" and if the government will take more stringent measures in the Iraqi cities, Kubbah says: "The force used by the Iraqi Government is primarily directed against the takfiri (radical Muslim trend accusing other Muslims of being infidels) and indiscriminate killing networks. The Iraqi Government said that all channels are open for dialogue with the ones who are resisting occupation through armed or political means. In the presence of an elected government and political mechanisms, they can achieve their aims through the political channel. As for the other groups which carried out indiscriminate and reckless killing of the people, only the language of force can be used against them."

The moderator then asks if he is satisfied with the level of Sunni participation in the political life and if an Iraqi constitution will be approved on time, Jawad al-Maliki says: "The remnants of the Ba'th Party want to return to power. This party is the one manipulating the ignorant takfiri elements. It is the one behind the killings. These are political demands that have no end and they are not related to occupation. They are today negotiating with occupation so that they can return to power. Accordingly, Shaykh Al-Faydi and others must know that they might be victims of the criminal Ba'th Party plans to return to power rather than see an end to occupation. Ending the occupation was only a banner it raised because such a banner appeals to the Iraqi people. The Iraqis, just like any other people, want their country to be free of any multinational forces. As for the issue of writing the constitution, yes I am satisfied. The Sunni Arab brothers' response was good. The names they presented for participation in the constitutional committee were acceptable except for a few who lacked the qualifications required in persons nominated for National Assembly membership."

Commenting on what the others said, Al-Faydi says: "First of all I would like to say that the AMS is so enlightened, God willing, that it will not fall victim of anyone. Second, I disagree with the two brothers. The force the government is using through its Lightning, Spear, Dagger, and other operations will only exacerbate the crisis and inflame the resistance for two reasons. The first is that most of the people targeted by these operations are innocent people who have nothing to do with terrorism or resistance. The second is that the Iraqi people are now viewing the government policy as a sectarian policy. I wish it is not so, but we have scores of incidents pointing in this direction. I have a list of 35 mosque imams and preachers who were arrested and killed in one month although only 80 were arrested during the occupation. This means the government arrested in one month half of the number of imams arrested by the Americans."

(Description of Source: Dubai Al-Arabiyah Television in Arabic -- independent television station financed by Arab businessmen )

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Iraq Constitution-Drafting Committee Member Interviewed on Ongoing Deliberations
Al-Arabiyah Television
Friday, August 26, 2005 T15:50:34Z
Journal Code: 9153 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Report
Word Count: 432

Dubai AL-Arabiyah Television, in Arabic, at 1410 GMT on 26 August carries a 5-minute live telephone interview with Jawad al-Maliki, member of the Iraqi Constitution-Drafting Committee, in Baghdad; by anchor May al-Shirbini.

Asked about the suggestions proposed by Shiite sides to the Arab Sunnis and Kurds, Al-Maliki says: "There are some basic issues that we cannot make concessions on, and issues which can be subject to discussion. We, in the coalition, have offered much and responded to many demands out of our keenness to ensure that everyone takes part in approving the constitution. However, there are basic issues which we believe constitute ways to arrive at the new Iraq, including the federalism and the position on the Ba'th party."

He adds: "The issue of federalism should receive guarantees that it would not be obstructed by additional measures or constraints in the future. With regard to the issue of the Ba'th, our stand is clear and the National Assembly adopted a unanimous decision to consider the Ba'th Party a banned terrorist organization. Therefore, the decision should continue to ban this terrorist organization from political work and pursue its symbols who committed crimes against the Iraqi people."

Al-Maliki goes on to say: "I believe we have reached the limit and cannot give more because it does not harm our personal interests, but the future interests of Iraq and the Iraqis."

Asked about the points which he believes will end the disagreement, Al-Maliki says: "We agreed on a formula which we presented to the brothers on the issue of federalism that guarantees the possibility of forming federalisms in the future through a demand from one third of the governorate's residents or a third of the governorate council members and under the consent of the majority of the National Assembly."

Asked if the Sunni rejection of the concessions made regarding the federalism could lead to a political crisis, Al-Maliki says: "From the legal aspect, the draft constitution has been presented." He adds: "If the brothers agree to it, we would have all agreed on voting for this constitution. If however the issue becomes a series of concessions which target the basis of the draft constitution as we heard those who belong to the former regime rejecting the constitution in part and parcel, then we will not stop at the demands of those who are speaking in the name of the Ba'th and its crimes."

(Description of Source: Dubai Al-Arabiyah Television in Arabic -- independent television station financed by Arab businessmen )

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Iraqi Official Reacts to Al-Qa'ida Threats Against Iraqi Military Personnel
Al-Arabiyah Television
Monday, November 7, 2005 T21:05:05Z
Journal Code: 9153 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Report
Word Count: 337

Dubai Al-Arabiyah Television in Arabic at 1822 GMT on 7 November carries a live telephone interview with Jawad al-Maliki, chairman of the Iraqi National Assembly's Security and Defense Committee, in Baghdad, by anchorman Talib Kan'an in the Dubai studios.

When asked whether the Iraqi National Assembly's Security and Defense Committee takes seriously a statement issued by the Al-Qa'ida Organization in which it warned that it would shake the lands of the two rivers (Iraq) and demolish the houses of all Iraqi policemen, Al-Maliki says: "Yes, we do. We think that these people have never failed to attack civilians and the houses of military personnel and civilians throughout the country." He adds: "This is their policy and their code of ethics, which we have known throughout their march in Iraq. Yes, they are making threats. Nonetheless, they will not be able to carry out their threats. This is because these strikes (the ongoing anti-insurgent attacks in western Iraq) have shown that they have been pained. This is what prompted them to make these threats. God willing, whenever an area, a city, or the dwellers of a certain city or village seek the help of our troops to save them from terrorists, our troops will head to the area in question and strike with iron fist regardless of such pronouncements, utterances, and threats, which will bring the terrorists no benefit."

When asked whether this statement by the Al-Qa'ida Organization was an indirect response to recent statements by Iraqi Defense Minister Sa'dun al-Dulaymi, Al-Maliki says: "Definitely, the minister did not mean to say that he will seek to kill children or women who provide terrorists with a safe haven." Al-Maliki adds: "We seek to save the sons, children, and women of Iraq from terrorists. How then could we target them? The hostile media took advantage of these remarks."

(Description of Source: Dubai Al-Arabiyah Television in Arabic -- independent television station financed by Arab businessmen )

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Baghdad Sat TV Reports Protests To Election 'Fraud,' Al-Tawafuq's Call for Rerun
Iraq -- OSC Report
Sunday, December 25, 2005 T15:14:58Z
Journal Code: 9241 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: OSC Report
Word Count: 806

Baghdad Satellite Channel has been observed on 24 December to dedicate the first 20 minutes of its main newscast at 1800 GMT to rallies and demonstrations held in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq to protest the "fraudulent" initial results of the Iraqi elections. The channel highlights a call by the Sunni bloc, the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq (Accord) Front, for a rerun of the elections.
The station begins its newscast with a video clip showing Adnan al-Dulaymi, leader of the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front, addressing a rally in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, saying: "They wanted through the announcement of these false results

to say that we are a minority in this country."
Reporting on these demonstrations and rallies, the station's correspondent says: "Iraq yesterday witnessed a demonstration with the participation of one million people in protest against the partial results of the Iraqi elections which were announced earlier by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI). This demonstration came in response to a call by the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front, which brings together the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Conference of the People of Iraq, and the National Dialogue Council. In Baghdad, the demonstrators who assembled in Al-Yarmuk area, raised banners critical of the election fraud and demanded the replacement of the IECI and a rerun of the elections. Adnan al-Dulaymi and Tariq al-Hashimi, two prominent members of the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front, reiterated in speeches before the protestors their rejection of these results."
"We reject a political process that some wanted to be tailor-made to accommodate their own desires. We reject a political process based on fraud, rigging, and lies. We reject a political process when the rival serves as the judge," says Tariq al-Hashimi, secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party.
The station's correspondent also reports that some 10,000 citizens demonstrated in Samarra in northern Baghdad, carrying banners "denouncing sectarianism and discrimination among the one people." He adds that "thousands of demonstrators marched from Al-Khudr mosque in Mosul heading toward the governorates premises in the city center, demanding a rerun of the elections."
Reporting on a similar demonstration in Tikrit, he says that "thousands demonstrated in Tikrit, condemning the IECI and calling for the dismissal of its members."
The station's correspondent then notes that "the political blocs running in the elections were displeased with the results, challenging them as fraudulent and casting doubts on the fairness and integrity of the IECI."
"We did not mean by setting up this bloc to launch an opposition bloc. The elections are truly fraudulent, as evidenced in all the documents and proofs we have provided. The next parliament will be illegitimate and illegal. Yes, there was rigging. One entity won the largest number of votes. We will not act as oppositionists because we reject the whole process in part and parcel," says Ibrahim al-Janabi, one of the candidates of the National Iraqi List during a news conference.
Commenting, the station's correspondent says that "observers have reported acts of political pressures, bribing IECI members who were offered sums of money and promised government posts if they endorse the results." She adds: "The representatives of 35 political Sunni, Shiite, and secular entities agreed to set up a joint operation room to ask the interim government and the international community to rescind the election results and hold new elections under the supervision of a national and independent commission."
The station then cites the US advisor for the IECI as belittling the complaints. Commenting on the retirement of Dr Farid Ayar, IECI member, the station's correspondent wonders whether his retirement at this particular time is intended to avoid "the question mark." "His request for retirement coincided with complaints of rigging, bribes, and pressures on the IECI to take a biased and dishonest stance," she adds.
The sta tion's reports are followed by an interview with Dr Usamah al-Tikriti, member of the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front, in which he says that the current atmosphere is "very tense" and welcomes President Talabani's "serious effort" to bring the different adversaries together.
"However, we were very astonished at the stance of some politicians whom we thought were thoughtful and wise enough to avoid fanning tension and augmenting congestion in the Iraqi arena. Mr Jawad al-Maliki's statements, which represent the Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC), were very surprising and added to the current tension," Al-Tikriti says.
He adds that "if the UIC is confident of its position in the political process, why should it fear the rerun of the elections and barricade itself behind fraudulent results?"
Al-Tikriti calls upon Al-Maliki to help "prevent the augmentation of this tension," adding that "this requires wisdom and insightfulness on the UIC part before judging that this is the irreversible will of the people."

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For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Maliki the Shiite Candidate

Breaking news: CNN is reporting that United Iraqi Alliance has informally decided to replace Ibrahim Jaafari with MP Jawad al-Maliki of the Islamic Dawa Party as its candidate for prime minister. The formal decision will be made on Saturday.

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Here are some documents from the Open Source Center of the USG on al-Maliki, beginning in 2002. Note that in 2004 he was a major spokesman for Islamic law being implemented in Iraq and expressed reservations about the Interim Constitution on those grounds. Likewise, he is obviously fairly anti-Israeli, wondering if Israeli troops were operating in Iraq disguised as US soldiers, and worried that Israelis might be able to own property in Iraq.

He is also a hardliner on debaathification and I don't think the Sunni Arabs are going to like him better than Jaafari.

Maliki played a major role in mediating between the US and Muqtada al-Sadr during the fighting of spring, 2004 (which killed Cindy Sheehan's son among many others).

The item dated December 17, 2002 is particularly ironic, since al-Maliki was warning that US policies might produce a civil war after the overthrow of the Baath government. And, he said, ruling an Iraq full of widows, orphans and heavy debt would be no fun. He might get to try.

' Al-Da'wah Party Denies IntentionTo Participate in Opposition Conference
London Al-Zaman in Arabic 18 Sep 02 p3
AL-ZAMAN
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Journal Code: 7914 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 496

Report by Abd-al-Zahrah al-Rikabi in Damascus: "Al-Da'wah Party: No One Represents Us in the Preparatory Committee of the Opposition Conference"

(FBIS Translated Text) Muhammad al-Haydari, chief of the Political Bureau of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), told the press that the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party will be represented in the preparatory committee of the Iraqi opposition conference that is due to be held in the next few weeks. He said the party is now the seventh member of the committee, which originally was made up of representatives of six groups.

Commenting on this statement, Jawad al-Maliki, official spokesman for the Al-Da'wah Party's Political Bureau, said: "The Al-Da'wah Party has a clear position toward participation in the scheduled meeting and its preparatory committee. It set its conditions for attending any conference for the Iraqi opposition. As for the statement of SCIRI Political Bureau chief Muhammad al-Haydari, in which he said that brother Izz-al-din Salim will participate as the seventh member in the six-member committee to represent most of the trends within the Al-Da'wah Party, we say that the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party has its leadership, press, and official spokesman, as well as official spokesmen for its Political Bureau. The party has stated its position toward recent developments and toward the conference."

He added: "Brother Izz-al-din Salim (Abu-Yasin) became a member of the provisional General Secretariat of the Islamic Forces Association after he left SCIRI. It is true that he was invited to attend and that he consulted the leadership of the Al-Da'wah Party, but the answer was negative. He decided to participate in his personal capacity and not as a representative of the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party. We regret that Al-Haydari used the phrase 'most of the Al-Da'wah Party trends' because that suggested that the unity of the party is weak. We do not accept this from Al-Haydari, especially since we know that he is an honest, sincere man with good intentions and positions."

Al-Maliki said: "Many people are close to certain parties and movements.

If anyone close a party can represent it, then all of these people can represent the parties and movements they are close to. And why should the Al-Da'wah Party choose someone who is close to it to be its representative? We respect the opinion and choice of Izz-al-din Salim.

But duty and right require us to clarify this matter to avoid any confusion."

(Description of Source: London-based independent Iraqi daily providing coverage of Arab and international issues, including extensive reporting on Iraqi opposition activities; has an anti-Iraqi regime orientation, and is headed by the former editor of the Iraqi daily Al-Jumhuriy) '

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' Al-Da'wah Party Official on Iraqi Opposition Conference, Possible War
Beirut Al-Safir (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic 17 Dec 02
AL-SAFIR
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Journal Code: 406 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 857

Report by Khalil Harb: "Seven Pieces of Advice From Al-Da'wah Party to the Participants in the London Conference; Al-Maliki Tells Al-Safir: Those Who Rule After Saddam Cannot Be Envied"

(FBIS Translated Text) The Iraqi Islamic Al-Da'wah Party yesterday called on the participants in the London conference (for Iraqi opposition) not to struggle among themselves for power in Baghdad. The party addressed seven "pieces of advice" to the conferees, mainly "not to go too far in reliance on international forces", and "to spare the Iraqis future disasters and conflicts through their differences".

On the possibility of civil war in Iraq, Al-Da'wah Political Bureau member Jawad al-Maliki, also known as Abu-Isra, told Al-Safir that so far the Iraqi opposition has been generally discussing things with a sense of responsibility and stressing the need to avoid anything that might cause split. "The danger to Iraq lies in the possibility of the US Administration making mistake in its supervision of this crisis," he said.

Asked to address "a last-minute advice" to the conferees in London, Al-Maliki said: "We hope they will not relinquish the interests of the Iraqi people and that they will spare the Iraqis disasters and possible conflicts. We hope they will adopt the agreed-upon political discourse as the basis of their plans for the Iraq of the future. We hope they will not endanger Iraq's unity, that they will give the Iraqis a chance to chose their alternative government, that they will not go too far in reliance on international forces, and that they will avoid the language of party and factional interests."

Noting the massive burden that any new government in Iraq will have to shoulder, Al-Maliki said the opposition should "steer clear of personal interests and power sharing". He said: "Those who will rule Iraq after Saddam Husayn cannot be envied. Don't fight for ruling an Iraq full of widows and orphans and burdened with heavy debt."

Asked why Al-Da'wah Party did not participate in the London conference, Al-Maliki said that the party had set a number of conditions for its participation. These conditions, he explained, were the need for independent decision, correct representation and eligibility, clear objectives, responsive reaction from the other national forces, and absence of American hegemony.

He dismissed the idea of an alternative conference for other Iraqi forces as "dispersal and exhaustion of the opposition forces".

Asked if his party is ready to join bodies that the London conference might form, Al-Maliki replied: "We did not participate in the conference.

How can we participate in bodies that have no influence and that do not suit our party?" But if the idea is presented to the party, he added, "we will present our vision of a joint plan. But we do not automatically join." He recalled what he called the party's constant principles that prevented it from participating in the London conference.

Asked about reports that the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is dominating Shiite representation, Al-Maliki said: "The Shiite field is large and diversified. It is too big for any single faction to accommodate. Each of us can claim that it represents a segment proportional to its size and influence."

On his party's position toward a possible war, he said: "We are against the war in the first place, not because we want to protect Saddam Husayn but because we fear the repercussions of this war on the Iraqi people and infrastructure. We hope the fall of the regime will not result in mass catastrophes. If faced by resistance, the Americans will use their massive power and kill thousands. If the war was against Saddam, the issue could be discussed, but only after exhausting all efforts to avoid it."

"To prevent war," he added, "we hope Saddam Husayn will step down and leave the Iraqi people determine their future."

Asked what position the Al-Da'wah Party will adopt if a war breaks out, Al-Maliki said: "We will not serve as a bridge for any international force coming to attack Iraq. We will not defend Saddam Husayn, either.

But still, we will not stand as spectators."

If a despotic regime emerges in Iraq after Saddam Husayn, Al-Maliki said, "we will be careful not to drag Iraq to any civil war or armed clash, but we will resist the military government, and if a war is declared on us, we will defend ourselves."

Asked what kind of future government the Al-Da'wah Party would like to see in Iraq, he said: "We prefer the democratic game. What the people decide is the thing that matters, away from sects and ethnicity. This is although we call for an Islamic -- not religious -- state as long as the Iraqis voluntarily and willingly support such a state."

(Description of Source: Beirut Al-Safir (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic '

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Iraqi Al-Da'wah Party Official on Meeting With Khalilzad, US Offer
Beirut Al-Safir (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic 18 Jan 03
AL-SAFIR
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Journal Code: 406 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 1,233

Report by Khalil Harb: "Al-Da'wah Party's Story of the Meeting Between Zalmai Khalilzad and Al-Ja'fari; Al-Maliki Tells Al-Safir: They Offered Us One-Third of the Follow-up Committee"

(FBIS Translated Text) A senior leader of the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party has disclosed that the United States offered this Iraqi opposition group a one-third share in the expanded follow-up committee emanating from the London conference for the Iraqi opposition. It also offered the formation of a joint steering committee for the opposition factions in which the Al-Da'wah Party would have a big share. The official stressed that the party will boycott the opposition conference that will be held in February.

US special envoy Zalmai Khalilzad has recently met in Washington with Al-Daw'ah Party Spokesman Ibrahim al-Ja'fari in an attempt to persuade the party to join the US-sponsored efforts of the Iraqi opposition.

Not much details were leaked about the meeting, the offer that Khalilzad made to Al-Ja'fari, or the party's response. But Al-Da'wah Party Political Bureau member Jawad al-Maliki told Al-Safir that the party rejected the American offer. He criticized "America's unilateral handling of the crisis" and "its flagrant interference". He said the United States wants to turn the opposition into merely a "cover" for the impending war and "an obedient tool to implement its designs". The Al-Da'wah Party, he said, wants "independent opposition decision". He noted that some countries in the region "have not encouraged us because they are not happy with what is happening and they fear the results".

Al-Maliki, nicknamed Abu-Isra, said the meeting between Al-Ja'fari and Khalilzad "took place after Al-Ja'fari's participation in the Islamic Society's conference, which has been held in the United States for 25 years, and which is attended by people from the Gulf, Iraq, and Lebanon".

He said Al-Ja'fari "did not travel to the United States to meet with Khalilzad or others". "While he was there he was invited to the meeting" with the special US envoy, he said.

Asked what issues Khalilzad raised in the meeting, Al-Maliki said the American official "invited the Al-Da'wah Party to join their plan, in which they absorbed the participating Iraqi opposition factions to cover for the American military strike."

He added: "After our rejection of the principle of participating in a plan that lacks national principles, the concerned Americans and some opposition activists working with them kept trying with us, believing that the rejection was due to differences over posts or numbers in the conference or in the follow-up committee or the preparatory committee."

He went on: "In the meeting with Al-Ja'fari the issues they raised were against this background and belief, such as giving the party the right to add 35 new members to the follow-up committee and establishing an opposition leadership consisting of 9-15 members in which the Al-Da'wah Party would play a key role." He said the Americans expressed their "dissatisfaction with the results and mechanisms of the London conference" and stressed that the presence of the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party "completes the picture in the way they like."

Asked how Al-Ja'fari responded, Al-Maliki said: "The answer was definitely not positive. The principles that prompted the party to boycott (the London conference) remain unchanged. The party cannot join a plan that does not rise to the required level" of "the opposition's independent decision, comprehensive consensus, and a political and operational program to handle the crisis".

He said the leaders of the Al-Da'wah Party in the region and Europe held meetings "to discuss the situation. Decision-makers in the party soon got on touch and the natural climate was to reject (the American offer)". He said the party did not send a written reply to the Americans because its does not have an official relationship with the US Administration. He said an American representative in London was informed of the party's position, and the reply was also announced by Al-Ja'fari himself and by Abu-Bilal al-Adib, spokesman for the party's Political Bureau, in statements to newspapers and television channels.

Al-Maliki stressed that "there is no need for any further official replies." He drew a distinction between "accepting the dialogue and the invitation to it and accepting the offers made to us".

Al-Maliki said that the Americans were told that the party "discusses any plans with the concerned parties; namely, our partners in the Iraqi opposition". In essence, he added, our reply "underlines the mistake that the US policy made in the past in its approach to the Iraqi crisis, when the United States imposed itself as the alternative to the opposition. We reiterated our opinion about the Administration's mistake without rejection cooperation with any party, including the United States, when it offers a helping hand on the basis of common interests".

He explained: "We told them that beating the drums of war in this way will destroy what is left of Iraq and will open the gates of hell to the Iraqis and their interests. We repeatedly told them: If you want to cooperate, leave the Iraqis decide what they want and you help us through the activation of the resolutions on human rights and the provision of media and political support." He added: "But the history of common action by the Iraqi opposition shows flagrant American interference to foil the plans that were drawn up without American contribution. This shows that the United States does not want us to handle our crisis through our own will and without going through its will and interests."

Asked what Washington expects from the opposition, Al-Maliki said: "It expects us to be obedient tools in the formidable US policy machine, implementing its plans. They expect us to accept to serve as a banner and a cover for the war and as a tool in a political system with incomplete sovereignty and will, giving America's strategic interest precedence over Iraq's interest."

Al-Maliki said it is necessary to recognize the forces "that have a base and influence. There is no use giving positions to forces with not extension or ability to influence part of the Iraqi people". He expressed appreciation of the fact that the main opposition factions encouraged the Al-Da'wah Party to "stand by them because they know the party's weight and influence and the danger of its staying out of any plan."

Asked if the party was encouraged by regional governments to join current preparations, Al-Maliki said that this "did not happen because we firmly believe that these countries are not happy with what is happening and they fear the results".

He stressed that the Al-Da'wah Party will boycott the forthcoming opposition conference. He said: "Unless our firm principles and the reasons behind our boycott are addressed in a way acceptable to us, the boycott decision remains valid and irrevocable. If we boycotted the main conference, it is natural for us to boycott its products, namely, the forthcoming meeting in Kurdistan."

(Description of Source: Beirut Al-Safir (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic

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Iraqi Kurdish KDP, Islamic Al-Da'wah Leaders Discuss Bilateral Ties
Salah-al-Din Kurdistan Satellite TV in Sorani Kurdish 1830 GMT 24 Sep 03
KURDISTAN SATELLITE TV
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Journal Code: 7781 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 180

(FBIS Translated Text) (Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP) Leader Mas'ud Barzani in Salah-al-Din today received a high-level delegation of the Islamic Al-Da'wah Party comprising members of the political bureau Jawad al-Maliki and Dr Sadiq al-Rikabi.

The general situation in the region and Iraq, and ways of dealing with the ongoing developments to ensure the consolidation of stability, establishment of security and development of the country were discussed at the meeting.

The two sides expressed their satisfaction with the relations between them in the stages that led to the downfall of the deposed regime and stressed the need to strengthening them in cooperation with all the other political parties and sides with a view to serving joint objectives, especially the building of a democratic, federal and pluralist Iraq, within the framework of which the rights and duties of citizens of all nationalities and sects would be guaranteed.
------

Program Summary: Tehran Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External Service in Arabic 1830 GMT 25 Dec 03
Tehran Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External Service in Arabic 25 Dec 03
VOICE OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Journal Code: 2749 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 517

(FBIS Report)

Newscast
E. Interview with Jawad al-Maliki, Political Bureau member in the Iraqi Islamic Al-Da'wah Party, who notes the important talks in Iraq between Iraqi and Arab League officials. Iraqis are determined to get the regional and international bodies involved in the Iraqi crisis. '

=====

Iraq: Shiite Leader Muqtada Al-Sadr Reportedly Agrees to Proposed Truce
Beirut Al-Manar Television in Arabic 1430 GMT 10 Apr 04
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Journal Code: 9079 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 102

Announcer-read report

(FBIS Translated Text)

As regards the negotiations currently held with Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr in holy Al-Najaf, Al-Manar correspondent has learned that Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a proposed truce. Jawad al-Maliki, a leading figure in the Islamic Daw'ah Party which is mediating between Al-Sadr and the US forces, said that he relayed to Sayyid al-Sadr's office a letter written by the command of the US forces demanding the dissolution of Al-Mahdi Army and withdrawal from the state institutions.

(Description of Source: Beirut Al-Manar Television -- Affiliated with the pro-Iranian Hizballah)

============

Program Summary: Tehran Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External Service in Arabic 1830 GMT 10 Apr 04
Tehran Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External Service in Arabic 10 Apr 04
VOICE OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Journal Code: 2749 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 532

(FBIS Report)

Newscast

Reception: Good

A. News:

1. The US troops in Iraq handed Muqtada al-Sadr written proposals to end the confrontations, according to Jawad al-Maliki, who belongs to Al-Da'wah Party. He handed the proposals to Al-Sadr. The US troops are calling for the disbanding of Al-Mahdi Army and the withdrawal of gunmen from public buildings. Al-Sadr called for the withdrawal of the US troops. (1 min)

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Iraq's Al-Da'wah Official Says Party Not Comfortable With Interim Constitution
Beirut Al-Nahar (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic 14 Mar 04
AL-NAHAR
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Journal Code: 405 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 920

Report on an interview with Jawad al-Maliki, Political Bureau member of the Iraqi Al-Da'wah Party, by Radwan Aqil in Beirut; date not given

(FBIS Translated Text)

Al-Da'wah Party in Iraq has been occupying a prominent position on the political map for years in a country that is torn by divisions and party struggles. Its leadership emphasizes that its true popularity will emerge when the first parliamentary elections are held that will allow each power to show its presence. The party is highly organized and its officials and members have been subjected to countless harassment by the former Ba'th regime, so much so that Saddam Husayn once expressed his admiration for the high sense of tolerance demonstrated by its leaders while being subjected to the cruelest types of torture. Despite this, they never retreated from their beliefs and doctrine, not even when they were on death row. This happened a number of times. Al-Da'wah is represented in the Governing Council by its president Ibrahim al-Ja'fari.

It also has two government portfolios, health and telecommunications. Its members occupy a number of high-ranking positions in several ministries. Despite this, the party believes that it has not gained the natural place that it deserves in the country.

In a private visit to Beirut, Political Bureau Member Jawad al-Maliki told Al-Nahar that he objects to some articles of the State Administration Law (constitution). His criticism did not spare the Kurdish leaders and representatives.

He added: We have a number of observations about the articles of the constitution, and we mentioned these observations during the dialogue and discussions and voiced them in a special statement. During the signing ceremony, Dr Al-Ja'fari expressed his objection to a paragraph that allows two-thirds of the population in three governorates to obstruct what the majority decides. We expressed our reservation regarding this paragraph. Although it is not exclusive to the Kurds only, it ultimately gives the minority the ability to impede the decision of the majority, which is against democracy. Everyone in Iraq is thinking of ways to create guarantees for himself because of the past history of fear. We believe that these guarantees will impede the work of the constriction in the future. We are not comfortable with this constitution. We believe that the fact that this reservation has been taken note of means that the issue could be reconsidered, particularly since a large group of members of the Governing Council made the same reservation. This paragraph will be a bomb that will obstruct the constitution if the Kurds use it arbitrarily.

He added: What forced the Al-Da'wah to accept the constitution was the desire to end the political crisis and avoid setting up an ethnic federalism. It was agreed that Kirkuk would not be part of Kurdistan. This constitution is an interim law issued by the appointed Governing Council, which does not represent the broad base of the Iraqi people. The occupation authority has appointed the council, which has limited powers. When the new council is formed and a new administration is established, everything will change. What made us accept the constitution is that we care about the political process in Iraq. Of course we are upset with the behavior of the Kurds, who are operating on the basis of ethnic considerations. The constitution did not focus on the question of the rights of the Shiites, although we are not speaking from an ethnic viewpoint but rather out of our care for the homeland.

Al-Maliki denied that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has imposed his ideas on the Shiite representatives at the Governing Council. He added:

If Al-Sayyid Al-Sistani issues a fatwa (religious verdict) prohibiting the constitution we will follow him because he is highly popular among the masses.

Al-Maliki reacted strongly to Iraqi voices that accused the Shiite and Al-Sistani followers of operating with an Iranian mentality. He noted that such talk echoes the logic of Saddam. If we hear this talk from any state official, no matter how senior he might be, we will demand his dismissal and his trial to leave no room for sedition, he noted.

Al-Maliki pointed out that his party and other forces have managed to reach agreement on a paragraph in the constitution that stipulates that it is impermissible to draft legislations that are contrary to Islam, although the US Civil Administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer said earlier in Karbala that he prefers not to see Islam as the source of legislation in the constitution. Al-Da'wah, however, decided to handle the situation according to its circumstances, considering that the law is an interim law that will remain in force until the new constitution is drafted at the end of 2005.

He noted that Al-Da'wah Party agrees to see the Kurdish language used in the Kurdish areas but it objects to equating it with Arabic. He added: Everything in this regard will be discussed in the new constitution.

Al-Maliki noted that there are no visible Israel offices in Baghdad, but he does not deny that the Mossad has managed to hide under the occupation troops. We do not have figures to indicate the purchases of land and homes, he added, noting that the Al-Da'wah Party will strongly object to any permission that allows the Israeli airlines, El Al, to cross Iraqi airspace.

(Description of Source: Beirut Al-Nahar (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic -- Independent, moderate, centrist, and christian; root URL: http://www.annahar.com.lb)'

=============

Shiite Radio: Allawi Orders Quick Implementation of De-Ba'thification Decisions
(Clandestine) Voice of the Mujahidin in Arabic 1530 GMT 25 Nov 04
(CLANDESTINE) VOICE OF THE MUJAHIDIN
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Journal Code: 9214 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: Daily Report; News
Word Count: 141

(FBIS Translated Text)

The prime minister's office has issued strict directives to all ministries to expeditiously implement the de-Ba'thification decisions. Jawad al-Maliki, deputy speaker of the interim parliament, said that the recent incidents in Mosul proved that the Iraqi security services have been penetrated by members of the former regime. He stressed that the government discovered that a large number of police members did not perform their duties, adding that it turned out later that those members have links with gunmen and the Ba'th Party in particular. Al-Maliki welcomed the government's directives to re-implement the decisions, which the prime minister cancelled after assuming office, on the dismissal of Ba'thists from state institutions.

(Description of Source: (Clandestine) Voice of the Mujahidin in Arabic -- Shiite radio believed to be affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq)

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Jaafari seeks Party Re-Vote on his Candidacy

AP reports that Ibrahim Jaafari, nominated in February for a second term as prime minister by the United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite religious parties), has agreed that a party convocation should reconsider his candidacy on Saturday. The meeting of parliament planned for that day has been put off. AP quotes Mahmoud Osman, a Kurdish independent, as saying that what made the difference in Jaafari's new flexibility was the visit to Najaf of UN envoy Ashraf Qazi, implying that Kofi Annan managed to convince Sistani to intervene to resolve the gridlock in forming a new government. Sistani will not have wanted to intervene in details of governance such as the nominee for prime minister. But he is said to be extremely alarmed by the rising sectarian violence and displacement, and may have finally stepped in. He appears to have hit on a compromise that would allow him to avoid choosing the prime minister, which Sistani would consider undemocratic. That is to reconvene the parliamentarians of the United Iraqi Alliance and have a second vote. But remember that Jaafari could still win it. That outcome seems a little unlikely, though.

The chief candidates of the UIA now seem to be Jawad al-Maliki, a long-time Dawa Party activist exiled for decades to Syria, and Ali al-Adib of the Dawa Party's Tehran branch. It is so amusing that the saviors of the Bush administration's political process in Iraq are beholden either to Syria or Iran-- Bush's chief targets for demonization-- for their political survival in the Saddam years.

It is not as if, anyway, the formation of a government will have any impact on the ongoing guerrilla and civil wars.

Al-Hayat reports that [Ar.] Iraqi government security forces maintain that guerrillas from Ramadi have infiltrated Adhamiyah, a district of Baghdad, and are smuggling in arms. There are allegations that large amounts of weaponry were being brrought in.

Some Iraqis believe that Iyad Allawi is going to try to make a coup.

Jonathan Steele of the Guardian reports that Baghdad mosques have become vigilante weapons warehouses. Most mosques have a militia attached.

Jonathan Finer of the Washington Post profiles the al-Hakim and al-Sadr clerical families, their history, and the current rivalry between Abdul Aziz and Muqtada. It has great information on family ties and clerical intermarriages. Bravo!

58 percent of Americans now say the Iraq War was unnecessary. News Flash: 42 percent of Americans are not paying attention.

The Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal,, has called for the de-nuclearization of both Iran and Israel. Israel has a stockpile of hundreds of nuclear weapons. Iran has none.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cost of War Heading toward One Trillion Dollars

Some less ethical automobile salesmen will deploy a tactic called "low-balling." The young naive couple comes in and sees a coupe they like. They think it is beyond their means, maybe in the $30,000s. He'll quote them $26,000. There will be financing. They get excited. Maybe, just maybe, it can work. They can have their dream car. So the salesman says, let me talk to my boss. The couple sits in the car. They dream of driving it home. The salesman comes back glum, shuffling with embarrassment. My manager, he says, over-ruled me. We couldn't let it go for less than $32,000. So the couple is crushed. But they had already driven the car home in their minds. They liked the color of the floor model. They ran their fingers over the upholstery. They smelled the newness inside. O.K. They'll cut back on luxuries. No vacation for a few years. They sign up. It comes to $35,000 loaded.

This item says that Bush administration officials told the American people that the Iraq War would cost $50 billion. A reader reminds me that the head of US AID actually put the cost at $1.7 billion. Paul Wolfowitz, that great economist now neoliberalizing the World Bank, even implied that Iraqi petroleum would pay for Iraq reconstruction. The cost of the war is rising toward a thousand billion dollars, i.e. a short-scale $1 trillion. Bush is still keeping this sum off the official budget (why?), and so it does not show up in the official figures for the budget deficit. But the money for the war is being borrowed, so that our grandchildren will still be debt slaves of Halliburton and Boeing. Folks, we've done been low-balled. The difference between us and that young couple with the coupe, though is at least they have a coupe. We've got rubble in the Middle East for our $1 trillion, on which we're paying interest every month.



Meanwhile, at least somebody got something out of this miserable war. Millions in ill-gotten gains and jail time.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

WSJ: $20 Billion a Year in Lost Arab Tourism

Meanwhile, hassling Arab visitors and making their visas difficult to get and being mean to them while they are here is costing the US $20 billion a year in lost tourism, and universities have lost $42 million in tuition money, and hospitals have lost wealthy Arab patients. My guess is that we are also losing big time in the area of exports to the Arab world, and that these losses will accelerate over time.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

20,000 Kidnapped?
Parliament to Open Amid Continued Violence

Guerrilla violence killed at least 19 persons on Wednesday in Iraq. Some reports say that among the victims were two school teachers in a Shiite district, who had their throats slit in front of their students, by terrorists. There are reports that local police are denying the veracity of these reports. Al-Hayat, on the other hand, says the reports were confirmed to it by the Iraqi State Ministry for National Security [Ar.]. Al-Hayat also says that the Iraqi Ministry of Education has designated April 12 an annual day for the commemoration of "martyred students."

Al-Zaman says that hot fighting is still going on between the Marines and guerrillas in Ramadi.

Those killed on Wednesday included 4 Fijian contract workers delivering supplies to a US base. A car bombing in Baghdad, one of several, killed 7 and wounded 20.

A report prepared by 125 NGOs and released in Karbala says that 19,548 persons have been kidnapped in Iraq since the beginning of 2006, and 15,462 persons have been wounded. The article reports that "The 19,548 people kidnapped includes 4,959 women and 2,350 children . . ."

On the one hand, these numbers strike me as unrealistically high. I presume they come from the first three months of the year. The article does not say where the statistics come from, though I presume they are from the Iraqi police. On the other hand, the precision of the numbers suggests that there are real statistics behind the report, not just wild guesses. What takes me aback is that I would figure 20,000 kidnap victims would require on the order of 100,000 kidnappers to pull the operations off. That would make kidnapping one of Iraq's major industries.

Parliament will convene on Thursday, according to CNN. This meeting suggests that some progress has been made in negotiations to choose high government officials. Ibrahim Jaafari, the candidate of the (Shiite fundamentalist) United Iraqi Alliance for prime minister, says that it is "out of the question" for him to step down. He is opposed by the Bush administration, the Kurdistan Alliance, and many Sunni Arabs.

The Sunni Arab fundamentalist bloc, the Iraqi Accord Front, has dropped Tariq al-Hashimi as its candidate for speaker of the house, and is proposing Adnan Dulaimi instead. The religious Shiite parties shot down al-Hashimi, apparently in revenge for the Sunni Arab opposition to Jaafari. Knight Ridder explains the disconnect between the feuding politicians in the green zone and the ordinary Iraqis that elected them, and are exposed to violence in the Red Zone (i.e. Iraq).

Al-Zaman reports that MP Sami al-Askari, member of the United Iraqi Alliance, said that the parliament will vote on the speaker of the house and his two deputies now that the major parties have agreed on which candidates to put forward for these posts. The Sunni religious coalition, the Iraqi Accord Front, will field Usamah al-Tikriti and Adnan Dulaimi. The Kurdistan Alliance has put forward Adil Tayfur for deputy speaker. The candidates from the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance are Jawad al-Maliki (Dawa Party), Humam al-Hamudi (Badr Organization), and Khalid al-Attiyah (Independent).

Al-Askari alleges that the United Iraqi Alliance has dropped its earlier opposition to Tariq al-Hashimi, and is now sanguine about his running for vice president. The Shiite UIA candidate will be Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

(Cole: I presume that the reemergence of al-Hashimi comes because he has dropped his opposition to Jaafari as prime minister. Al-Hayat says that Dulaimi admitted that the Sunnis of the Iraqi Accord Front had offered to drop al-Hashimi's candidacy if the Shiites would drop Jaafari. But it was the Shiites who had the upper hand, and they forced al-Hashimi out to make a point, without giving up anything at all. The Shiites played hard ball on this one).

He said that Iyad Allawi, the secular ex-Baathis Shiite and former interim PM, had no luck in his bid to become a vice president, given these party decisions.

He said that the Dawa Party met on Wednesday and took a final decision to back Jaafari for prime minister.

As for the Kurdish opposition to Jaafari, al-Askari said that the United Iraqi Alliance will do a deal with Jalal Talabani, who wants to be president. Talabani needs a 2/3s majority in parliament to become president, and cannot get it without the United Iraqi Alliance, which has 128 members and has 4 other MPs who have announced that they will vote with it. Al-Askari says that the UIA will only pledge to support Talabani if he retracts his opposition to Jaafari.

(Cole: The Shiite fundamentalists are in striking distance of having a simple majority in parliament, and are much more united, despite some frictions, than their opponents. It was always the case that if they maintained their unity, they would be able to impose their will with regard to the incumbents of high political positions. The attempt made by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and former interim PM Iyad Allawi to marshall the Kurds, Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites against Jaafari appears to have been defeated, by simple steadfastness on the part of the UIA.)

Al-Askari said that a subsequent session of parliament will elect the president and his two vice-presidents. In the Iraqi constitution, the president must offer the prime ministership to the candidate nominated by the largest party in parliament. According to the constitution, he has one month to form a government. If Jaafari gets it, he will have to find at least 6 MPs who will vote with the UIA. Some of the secular-leaning Shiites in Allawi's National Iraqi list may desert him for an opportunity to join a majority government rather than remaining a small, powerless bloc with only 9% of the seats in parliament, who are locked out of major (and lucrative) positions. After all, if Jaafari becomes PM again, he will head a government with some $17 billion a year in oil and other revenues, which in Iraq is a lot of money. It is controlled by the state, i.e. by the majority bloc in parliament, and there will be a temptation to jump on that gravy train. Although some parliaments have rules against crossing the aisle once a member is elected, I doubt there is any such constraint in Iraq.

UN envoy Ashraf Qazi met Wednesday with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, urging him to work to end the political deadlock in Baghdad. One is struck by how much more useful this UN mission seems likely to be than the visit of Rice and Straw, which backfired and made Jaafari dig in his heels. And, of course, Sistani would never have agreed to see them. There is an Arabic proverb that "The worst of the learned is the one who visits princes."

Al-Zaman says that Qazi conveyed to Sistani the UN's deep concern about the rise in sectarian violence after the destruction of the Askariyah Shrine in late February.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat remarks on that an article that recently appeared in Newsweek that says a shadowy force of 146,000 security men has emerged to guard the major Shiite shrines, and that the federal ministries of defense and interior say they know nothing about it. Indeed, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr blames them for acts of terror! It is worth remembering that Sistani called for such a militia force after the Samarra bombing. See also this comment at BTC.

There are 5,000 orphans in Baghdad alone. The whole capacity of Iraqi orphanages is 1,600.

Iraqi families are fleeing mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in large numbers.

A RAND study says that the US government botched the opportunity to improve health care in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A cynic would say that the Iraqis are lucky if US firms in Iraq didn't loot their health care budget and just ship it to private accounts in Switzerland.

Scott Ritter's most recent interview is well worth reading. He has the distinction of being able to say to us all, "I told you so!"

Little known fact department: Maintenance and repair of US military vehicles in Iraq is far more expensive than replacing the vehicles blown up by the guerrillas. Whatcha wanna bet the spare parts are very expensive, on purpose? The military industrial complex has families to feed, too.

Feminist activist Yanar Muhammad explains why she thinks women's rights in Iraq have deteriorated.

An Iranian shipping company will form partnerships with Iraqi and Omani lines.

Thanks for the kind words to Sam Freedman. Money quote: "As for FOX, it's a fascinating political movement, but it's not a news organization in any way I recognize. If that's scolding, then I'm guilty as charged."

My condolences to Mohammed and his brothers at Iraq the Model on the tragic loss of their brother-in-law. Even just losing friends to war, as I have, is deeply traumatizing, and losing a family member is much worse. We haven't always agreed politically (though I think our views have converged over time), but I admire their fighting spirit. Reporting these awful statistics every day is almost numbing, but when it affects someone you feel you know (even just by reading them), it brings home the reality.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism 2005

I kept meaning to blog the nice award ceremony held April 12 in New York at Hunter College, at which the 2005 James Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism were handed out.

The unsinkable Molly Ivins was given a lifetime achievement award. She couldn't be there in person, but sent a wonderful videotape in which she warned against the corruption of news by the info-tainment industry and the demand of big corporations that news make a 15% profit for them. (This level of profit cannot be generated by real news, thus the rush to substitute scripted soap operas.)

Anthony Lewis, author and longtime columnist for the New York Times, also received a lifetime achievement award. He was there in person and it was a great honor to meet him.

Freelance cartoonist Kirk Anderson

received the award for his politica cartooning. You must check out his illustrations of Bush administration policies in the style of Maoist social realism. My favorite is, "Rugged individualism is strongest when we obey." Some publisher should get him to do a whole book!

Gary Fields of the Wall Street Journal (yes!) received an award for his courageous reporting on a bloated prison system collapsing under its own weight.

Kevin Fagan and Bryant Ward were recognized for making the homeless in San Francisco (15,000 strong) a "beat," reporting on them for the past 3 years. Fagan and Ward have explored innovative solutions to the problems of the homeless, about half of whom are families fallen on hard times and another third of whom have mental problems. They got the ear of Mayor Gavin Newsome and some of their suggestions have been implemented in SF, with already noticeable good results. My heroes.

Tracie McMillan of City Lights was honored for her reporting on the "disconnected," young adults who are "not in school, not working and not looking for work," and for her work on the working poor and the "new safety net."

For the first time, an award was given in the category of social justice blogging journalism, and Informed Comment was the recipient.

The "Notes on the Winners" says here:

Blogging at its Best: Juan Cole, Informed Comment.

' Blogging represents a significant new form of communication--sometimes merely scurrilous, sometimes a vital extension of public debate--and of journalism. "Informed Comment," Cole's Iraq War web log, shows the form reaching its highest social value. Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, brings his scholarly expertise to the analysis of daily events. He speaks Arabic, Persian and Urdu and has lived for long periods in various places in the Middle East. As a blogger, he becomes a sort of hybrid scholar/journalist as he gathers links to US and international news, then draws from his professorial expertise to provide running commentary on the insurgency, the American military response, and nuances of Middle Eastern politics and religion. His easy, humorous style recalls I. F. Stone's Vietnam-era newsletters and makes his dispatches an indispensable tool for understanding the social justice implications of this complex conflict. '

My thanks to Peter Parisi and the other members of the award committee. I am humbled and honored to be in this company, and want to acknowledge that I couldn't do what I do without depending heavily on a legion of brave and perspicacious journalists and on courageous and principled progressive bloggers, many of whom will no doubt be winning this award over the years. And, of course, I get absolutely indispensable help and support from my wife, Shahin M. Cole. Thanks so much to the award committee for being so far-sighted as to include the blogging category!

--------

PS Just to remind everyone of my current project, to get Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and others translated and published in Arabic. Help is most appreciated, and we are well on our way!
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

A Golden Oldie: Character Assassination

You really only have to write the reply once; the smears don't change over time.

From December 2004:

Yes, I'm aware that Daniel Pipes of the so-called Middle East Forum sent some puppy out to slime me over at David Horowitz's Frontpagerag. So this is the way it goes with the Likudniks. First they harass you and try to have you spied on. Then they threaten, bully and try to intimidate you. And if that fails and you show some spine, then they simply lie about you. (In this case the lies are produced by quoting half a passage, or denuding it of its context, or adopting a tone of pained indignation when quoting a perfectly obvious observation).

The thing that most pains me in all this is the use of the word "antisemite." Pipes already had to settle one lawsuit, by Douglas Card, for throwing the word around about him irresponsibly.

Israel is not being helped by extremists like Pipes and his associates (see below). It is being harmed, and its very survival is being placed in doubt by aggressive annexationist policies, and by brutal murders and repression, which Pipes and his associates support to the hilt.

Moreover, among the real targets of Pipes and Co. is liberal and leftist Jews. Indeed, the article attacking me begins with a vicious attack on Joel Beinin, a past president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes are encouraging a new kind of antisemitism, which sees it as unacceptable that Jews should be liberals or should crticize Likud Party policies.

Regardless of whether one supports it unreservedly or not, Israel poses a practical problem for American academics studying the Middle East, because it still has bad relations with countries like Syria (part of which Israel still occupies). Obviously, if you want to do field work in Syria and use the Syrian manuscripts, you are better off not going to Israel. I've had friends who admitted to Syrian border police that they had so much as been in the West Bank, and who were refused entrance to the country.

I say this to give a context for the following anecdote. In the 1990s some Israeli academics came to me and wanted to have a joint project on Middle East Studies, partially funded by Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University. I felt that these academics, who are doves, should be supported, and gladly joined in. I was kindly hosted at one point, as well, at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva. I was well aware of the choice I was making, and I felt it was important to stand with my progressive Israeli colleagues.

I remember when in Israel talking to these leftish academics about politics. I had once met Shulamit Aloni here in Ann Arbor, and I said I admired her. My Israeli colleagues were appalled that I should speak so well of what they thought of as a paternalist party like Meretz, and wanted to move me substantially further to the left. That is an aspect of the real Israel, a place where the full range of political views is debated. It is completely unlike the discourse on Israel in the United States, where anyone who departs from the Likud line is punished and pilloried.

Then one of our joint conferences was planned just after Jenin, and some of the Israeli academics didn't feel right about holding it. They were furious at Sharon and wanted to boycott their own government. I felt the conference should be held. The Israeli invasion of Jenin was horrible, and it left 4000 innocent people homeless, but it wasn't a reason to cancel our conference. I pointed out that the US had killed 2 million Vietnamese peasants in the 1960s and 1970s, and if we were going to cancel conferences over such matters, we probably should never have a conference in the US again. I mean, I was making this argument to Israelis for heaven's sake.

When a movement sprang up to boycott Israeli academics in Europe, I wrote against it in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the Middle East Studies establishment in the United States, I have stood with Israeli colleagues and against any attempt to marginalize them or boycott them.

But of course, for the pro-Likud forces, all that means nothing. Being fanatics and often even cultists, they will accept nothing less than a toeing of the party line. And they have perverted the word "antisemitic" to simply mean "won't go along with Gush Emunim's plans." I think there is some danger of the word "antisemitic" as a result becoming useless and being discarded altogether. Why not just speak of racism or bigotry? We don't have a special word for anti-Black racism, and the African-Americans suffered their own Holocaust in the centuries of the slave trade. If someone accused me of being a racist because I objected to Israeli colonization of the West Bank, the full absurdity of the accusation would be obvious. "Antisemitism" has become so wrought up with Likud propaganda that it now can be employed in dishonest ways, as a cover for aggression and expropriation.

Here is the information on the "Middle East Forum" (which isn't a "forum" at all, it is just some sugar daddy giving Pipes $20 million a decade, on which he pays no taxes, apparently for the purpose of smearing and bullying people with whom he disagrees).

Revenue: $2,136,592

Expenses: $2,024,412

Assets: $519,519

Liabilities: $185,966


MIDDLE EAST FORUM
1500 Walnut St
Ste 1050
Philadelphia, PA 19102


Board of Directors
DAVID P STEINMANN, CHAIRMAN

Steinmann is also President of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a pro-Likud warmongering organization that seeks "total" war against Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians, and which helped drag the United States into its current Iraq quagmire. The Pentagon's Douglas Feith is a long-time JINSA activist.

JACK BERSHAD, CHAIRMAN (here identified as legal adviser to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

IRWIN HOCHBERG, CHAIRMAN (Irwin Hochberg, the national campaign chair of Israel Bonds, chairman of the International Commission of the Anti-Defamation League, and former chairman of the Jewish Federation of New York; Board Member of the Zionist Organization of America, which has steadfastly supported Israeli colonization of the West Bank and the dispossession of its Palestinians. Of the recent proposed peace plan worked out by Israeli and Palestinian doves at Geneva, Morton A. Klein, the president of ZOA said: "It is outrageous for individuals acting in opposition to the democratically-elected government of Israel to negotiate an 'accord' that undermines Israel's security by putting pressure on Israel to retreat to indefensible borders and divide its own capital, Jerusalem.")

ALBERT WOOD, CHAIRMAN (Prominent philanthropist connected to the Zionist Organization of America)

STEVEN LEVY, CHAIRMAN

DANIEL PIPES, PRESIDENT

SCOTT ROSENBLUM, CHAIRMAN (Member, "Golden Circle" of far rightwing "U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon" that unites Likud supporters and Phalangist brownshirts)

LAWRENCE GOULD, CHAIRMAN

LAWRENCE GRODMAN, CHAIRMAN

JERRY SORKIN, CHAIRMAN

Is Sorkin really still on? Eyal Preiss writes at the Nation
'During this same period [after 9/11], Sorkin says, the diversity that had once characterized the Middle East Forum's board vanished. "I sat at one board meeting and thought to myself, am I at a ZOA [Zionist Organization of America] meeting?" says Sorkin, whose views on the Arab-Israeli conflict are moderate. Sorkin told me he respects Pipes and always felt welcome at the Middle East Forum. Eventually, however, he decided to move on, and says he was not alone...'

Clearly, what most of the MEF board members want is Israel's further colonization of the West Bank and large-scale theft from and dispossession of the Palestinians living there. The way they deal with anyone who objects to this massive land grab, which creates hatred for Israel and for the United States in the Muslim world, is pretty clear. They have been getting their way in Washington and in the corporate media for so long that they seem shocked that anyone should dare stand up to them.

I don't have $20 million a decade to compete with Pipes. It is just me and my little Web Log, which costs only a few hundred dollars a year. I can't go toe to toe with JINSA (one of whose fiercest members is Douglas Feith, [then] the number 3 man at the Pentagon), or with ZOA, or AIPAC, or any of the other organizations that stand behind the Middle East Forum.

But what I would do is to ask my many Jewish friends to please stop giving these people money. (And I appeal to everybody to stop going on those propaganda tours that JINSA hosts). Liberal Jews are being cynically used by rightwingers who secretly despise them, but know they are a soft touch for any appeals to the welfare of Israel. Liberal Jews need to found more of their own organizations and become more active in lobbying for their humane vision of Israel. Give money to Brit Tzedek v'Shalom or Tikkun, and found more, and more progressive such organizations. Cut the fanatics of the ZOA and JINSA off without a dime. The plan of the leaders of these latter organizatons is to gradually shift the American Jewish community toward Revisionist Zionism and Likudism, so as to make it a permanent pillar of the right wing of the American Republican Party. The right wing of the Republican Party is decisively not "for others." It is about the rich being selfish. And Revisionist Zionism of the Likud is not "for others." It is the supreme selfishness, the erasure of another people. And that is not what the American Jewish community has stood for for hundreds of years. It isn't what the Jewish tradition is about.

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?" - Rabbi Hillel.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Political Crisis Worsens as Sectarian War Threatens

The Financial Times reports further on the fighting in Adhamiyah on Monday and Tuesday, asking whether the incident suggests greater Sunni Arab backing for the guerrillas. But I am told, and the Baghdad press also reports, that the real significance here was that the Shiite death squads in the ministry of interior tried to operate in force and in daylight in a Sunni Arab neighborhood. Earlier, they had had to kidnap and kill at night.

Al-Zaman / AFP / Reuters report that that the parliamentary crisis got even worse on Tuesday. The National Iraqi list of Iyad Allawi insisted on putting him forth for one of vice president positions. He has been rejected by the Sunni Arab religious coalition, the National Accord Front, on the grounds that Allawi is a Shiite and would forestall there being a Sunni Arab vice president.

Tariq al-Hashimi of the Sunni religious Iraqi Accord front attacked the fundamentalist Shiites for insisting on their candidate for prime minister. The (Shiite) United Iraqi Alliance has rejected al-Hashimi as speaker of the house on the grounds that he is too sectarian. Al-Hashimi is now putting forth his deputy, Iyad al-Samarra'i, as candidate for speaker.

Abdul Razzaq al-Kadhimi, a spokesman for Jaafari, complained to al-Zaman that there were forces attempting to split up the United Iraqi Alliance (the coalition of Shiite religious parties), and to interfere in its internal affairs. He said their goal is to have Iraq restored to its old way of doing things.

For his part, al-Hashimi said that that the UIA has already been given too much time form a government, and that the other blocs should create a coalition in parliament that would allow them to nominate a prime minister.

Al-Zaman/ AFP report that the grand ayatollahs in Najaf, including Sistani, have decided not to attend the conference to be held in Amman this Saturday, at the invitation of King Abdullah II. No reason was given. But this is a blow to the hope of getting the clergy, at least, to come to an understanding at the Amman conference. In contrast, young nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will send a representative. Likewise, provincial clergy of both major branches of Islam, from Mosul to Basra, are planning to attend.

[The Jordanian embassy on Wednesday denied the report that Sistani will not send a delegate. A spokesman said the grand ayatollah is still committed to the conference. Obviously something is going on, but what?]

Joost Hilterman sensibly argues that the US and Iran should put aside their differences and work to restore stability in Iraq.

The LA Times reports that the Kurdistan Confederacy is developing its own oil ministry, a further step toward autonomy from Baghdad.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shiites Stick with Jaafari
26 Dead, with clashes in Adhamiyah, Ramadi

26 Iraqis died in guerrilla violence on Monday. 17 corpses surfaced in Baghdad, and another 9 persons died in violence around the country.

American sources say that in the northern Baghdad district of Adhamiyah, a neighborhood militia fought a 9-hour-long pitched battle with Iraqi troops and police, with the Americans coming in to settle it.

But Arabic sources suc as Al-Zaman , al-Hayat and Aljazeera reported in such a way as to make it look like the brave stand of local (Sunni Arab) men against the predations of (Shiite) death squads masquerading as police. The latter were accused of coming into Adhamiyah in order to kidnap, kill and pillage. The special police commandos of the minstry of the interior are widely believed to comprise Shiite militiamen.

Guerrillas in Ramadi launched a coordinated attack on the Marines, fighting a pitched battle. The US forces damaged a mosque in the course of the fighting.

US casualties in Iraq have risen sharply in April.

The Dawa Party and the Shiite religious coalition have decided to support Ibrahim Jaafari as their candidate for prime minister unless he himself decides to step down. He has said that he was elected by a democratic vote, and will not step down.

The idea of having Dawa put forward Ali Al-Adib as an alternative to Jaafari appears to have faltered. Aljazeera reports that Salih Mutlak, leader of the neo-Baathist National Dialogue Council, dismissed al-Adib as no better than Jaafari, and in some ways worse, since he lacked the latter's political experience. (I have all along wondered who the Sunni Arabs thought they could get from the UIA as a prime minister who would be different in basic policies and outlook from Jaafari).

Al-Zaman reports that [Ar.] the alliance between the Sunni Arab fundamentalists and the secular party of Iyad Allawi has faltered. Allawi's Iraqi National List had hoped that the loose coalition of Sunnis, Kurds and secularists would put Allawi up for vice president. But in the end the fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front declined, saying that Allawi is a Shiite, and the post must go to an IAF Sunni Arab.

Large numbers of Iraqi families continue to be displaced by sectarian violence or the threat of it.

The guerrillas' campaign of assassinations against professors and other white collar professionals in Iraq is provoking a major brain drain. On Monday, a doctor and three engineers were kidnapped.

Baghdadis are complaining that the curfew is impeding their access to health care.

Tom Lasseter reveals that the US knew all along about the problem of the infiltration of Iraqi government security agencies by Shiite militias, but declined to act because they could not afford to alienate the Shiites too much at a time of Sunni Arab insurgency.

The Japanese involvement in Iraq is documented here. The governor of Samawah says he wants them to stay . . .
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Americana in Arabic Library

There has been a wonderful public response to my plea for contributions to the Global Americana Institute and our hopes to get the works of Ben Franklin, Thomas jefferson, and others into Arabic.

The interest has been so great that I thought I would tip readers to two important web sites on public diplomacy.

One is the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

The other is The Public Diplomacy Web Site of the United States Information Agency Alumni Association.

I am arguing that US government-backed public diplomacy is just not getting the job done, and that we have to move to a new model of civil society organizations and grass roots support for it.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

A Canadian Fix for the Iran Crisis? Can do, or CANDU?

Guest Editorial by Jim Borynec

' Iran and the USA are involved in a major diplomatic tussle over nuclear technology.

USA claims that Iran is building a bomb while IRAN claims that peaceful nuclear power is their right under article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For the moment, lets assume that Iran really does want peaceful nuclear power. How can they get it?

To obtain peaceful nuclear power the Iranians will need to build a reactor and obtain fuel for it. The quickest way to get a reactor is to buy it from some friendly country (Russia). Similarly, Iran could simply buy the fuel (enriched uranium) from Russia. However, buying the fuel poses a problem for the Iranians. If the country selling the fuel gets annoyed by Iran (or co-opted by someone else), they can stop selling more fuel to Iran.

Then, when Iran runs out of the existing stockpile of fuel, there is no electricity and the lights go out in Tehran. This is clearly an undesirable outcome for the Iranians.

Fortunately, Iran has good deposits of uranium ore. They could mine it themselves and not be dependent on the good graces of some third party except that ore isn't the same thing as fuel. To obtain fuel, you have to turn the ore into uranium (easy) and turn the uranium into enriched uranium (hard). This is why the Iranians want to have enrichment capability.

It is also where the "catch" comes in. If you can enrich uranium enough to make reactor fuel, it isn't all that hard to enrich it even more to build a bomb. Thus, the americans don't want Iran to obtain enrichment technology.

Luckily there is a way around this catch.

Canadian CANDU reactors operate on natural uranium. Iran could buy a CANDU reactor and use its own natural uranium to supply power independent of third party control.

With natural uranium fuel, there is no need for an enrichment cycle and Iran will have a tougher time building a bomb. Also, CANDU reactors have other nice properties (like improved efficiency and on-power refueling).

A CANDU reactor should meet all of the Iranian's publicly stated ambitions for peaceful nuclear power.

On the other hand, the Canadians were involved in building a (non-CANDU) reactor for India which was used by the Indians to get the bomb in 1974.

It was a nasty shock and it made Canada wary about selling un-protected nuclear technology. Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL) then devoted a lot of attention to designing safeguards ensuring that purchasers of CANDU reactors won't use the technology to build bombs.

These safeguards should meet the Americans and the IAEA's requirements on meeting Iran's obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A CANDU isn't a silver bullet. The reactor has aging problems like all other nuclear reactors. However, it may be a way to dodge the next war in the Middle East. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Salon.com on Mearsheimer and Walt

My article on the Mearsheimer and Walt piece, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," is out in Salon.com. Actually, my discussion focuses on the noise around the article, not its substance.

The substance seems to me unobjectionable. A congressman told me not so long ago, "Juan, I'm glad you're speaking out on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, because we can't." He meant by "we" the US Congress. What has happened to Mearsheimer and Walt is illustrative of what he meant by "can't." Mearsheimer admits that the two of them will never now be considered for a government position (e.g. National Security Council).

In contrast, a known Neocon sleazeball, who shredded the US Constitution and lied to Congress, such as Elliot Abrams, can be forgiven and then brought into the National Security Council to run US policy toward . . . Israel and Palestine. After Abrams lied to them, Congressional leaders vowed in the late 1980s that Abrams would never be allowed to come before them again. But they just rolled over when W. brought him into the White House.

See also the response of Michele Goldberg, also at Salon.

The links to the original are given here.

What is striking is that no mainstream American publication has to my knowledge published an Arab-American response. They are after all millions strong, and generally have an interest in the subject. One Arab-American response is that of Joseph Massad, which faults the article for shifting blame from the rightwing, anti-liberation policies of the US for decades onto the Israel lobby.

Actually, I think Joseph is wrong about this one. Eisenhower, e.g., had a policy of fighting communist movements in the third world but of supporting national liberation movements that did not strike him as likely to ally with Moscow. Thus, he twisted De Gaulle's arm to get out of Algeria. He thought that it was dangerous to allow colonial powers to repress mere nationalist movements, lest the nationalists be pushed to the left and into Moscow's arms. Assumptions of constant perfidy in Washington are as unrealistic as assumptions of constant idealism. In this regard, realists like Mearsheimer and Walt are right.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Americana in Arabic
A Challenge to Philadelphia

Long-time readers know that as a result of the September 11, 2001, attacks and subsequent events, I decided a couple of years ago that something had to be done about the woeful lack of understanding between the United States and the Muslim world. There will always be differences, but there need not be differences based on ignorance or fantasy. The Arab world alone has a population of 300 million and a combined economy of some 1 trillion dollars a year.

My response has been to found, with some colleagues, the Global Americana Institute, which aims, initially, at getting central works of American thought and history into Arabic. I think we also have to try to endow a chair at an Arabic-speaking university, but more on that later. It has taken a long time to get all the state and Federal permissions, but we are finally done. The Global Americana Institute is a fully recognized 501(c)3 charity, and donations are tax deductible. I am coming to the public with a plea to support us. We will, of course, also be approaching foundations and other funders, but I am hoping that this project is something that can garner grassroots support.

Frankly, we have been failed by our government and foundations in getting the message of what America really is out to the rest of the world. We have no ministry of culture, unlike France, and no British Council or Goethe Institute. The United States Information Agency was gutted in the mid-1990s, virtually defunded, and folded into the State Department as a poor sister. Its libraries, with American books, in Amman, Istanbul, and elswhere, were shut down and the books remaindered. The AMPART program to bring American lecturers to the Middle East has been slashed to the bone, and politicized (when USIA went into State, it gave the ambassadors more say over who gets invited, and many ambassadors are political appointees). Our major foundations avoid the Middle East as a program priority for the most part. There are dedicated people in the US government who try to make a difference, of course, and there are small publishing programs in Cairo and Amman, though they don't seem to me to get good distribution. Folks, we mostly are going to have to do this ourselves.

In my visits to Japan, I had become aware of the very substantial and sophisticated American Studies establishment at Japanese universities, most of which have a center for American studies. Books from and about the US are translated in large numbers and there is good press coverage.

In contrast, there is, as far as I can tell, not a single Arabic-speaking university that teaches about the United States in Arabic. There is a bit of American studies in Arab universities, but it is almost always conducted in English, and it is usually sited in English departments. American literature is virtually the only area of American studies taught in the region, and then rarely and often fitfully. And since the universities and normal schools don't teach it, it is also usually not taught in high school social studies classes. There is a two-tier system in the Arab world. The elite knows English or French, whereas the majority of the population functions almost entirely in Arabic. Most American outreach to the Arab world focuses on the English-speakers, the ones who least need it!

What is not available in Arabic is startling. American political thought is almost completely absent. You cannot go into a bookstore and get Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, John Dewey, W. E. B. Dubois, or Martin Luther King. I was told the story of how a Lebanese professor went looking for the Arabic text of the US constitution and could not find it. Of course, it exists. I complained to a State Department official about this sort of thing, and he replied that he used to give out pocket copies of the constitution in Arabic to visitors to the US embassies in the Middle East all the time. He didn't seem to grasp that the text is not in the bookstores or in the libraries, and so is essentially inaccessible.

There is also little history, even recent historical works that are accessible and get on the US bestseller lists. Despite the obsession with the Israel lobby, there are no good translations of recent histories of the American Jewish community, or of solid histories of the Holocaust by American historians. It is like a black hole. If Arabic speakers do not know English or French, they only know about the United States what is in the Arabic newspapers or on television and radio-- mostly US soldiers killing Arabs in Iraq or US money and weaponry being used by Israeli troops against Palestinians. The US government in its wisdom even abolished the Arabic service of the Voice of America soon after 9/11!

American literature has been well translated, but it most often does not stay in print. Ihsan Abbas's masterful translation of Moby Dick, his life's work, appears to be out of print. I visited dozens of bookstores and went to the Lebanese Book Fair in December, 2005, and never saw a copy. Since American studies are not taught in high school or in university in Arabic, there is no engine driving demand for such translations. That is why a charitable foundation will have to kickstart things. In my consultations in Beirut with publishers, I found a lot of interest, and am assured we can find good partners with high production values.

I think the Lebanese book fair, which had thousands of volumes, had maybe 30 translations of American works. Mostly they were recent political books, like those of Bob Woodward and Richard Clarke. Michael Moore's Stupid White Men seemed to be popular. There were also works of Jack London, Toni Morrison, and Edward Said. It was almost haphazard, and very, very minor. None of the works translated by the State Department programs in Cairo and Amman were to be found. In contrast, the Goethe Institute had a whole booth. One Saudi publisher had brought out short biographies of great American businessmen, including Bill Gates, but that sort of book is mainly popular in the Gulf. In the Levant, it was the political books that did well. But "well" is relative. One publisher told me that he would typically print an Arabic translation of an American work in 3000 copies, and would sell 1000 in the Levant (mainly Lebanon and Jordan), then send the other 2000 to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, where there was more interest in the US.

In the OCLC catalogue, I found an old translation of the autobiography of Ben Franklin, published in Cairo in the early 1950s before the freeze set in, which is now a rare book. It is on the shelf at the American University in Cairo, and I'd love to have a volunteer do a quality photo offset so that we could then bring it back out. I'm also eager to do a volume of Thomas Jefferson's basic writings. There are lots of other possibilities, for translation and bringing things back into print. But we have to start somewhere, and the basics are largely lacking. I'd like to build in money for distribution to bookstores and to libraries (Egypt's neighborhood library system has been expanding, in part owing to the efforts of Suzanne Mubarak).

So, let me launch some challenges. Philadelphia is now celebrating Franklin's tricentenary. I visited the exhibit and found one book shelf with Franklin's autobiography in various languages. None of them were Middle Eastern languages. Can't the Franklin Foundation, or other Philadelphia donors, or just the people of Philadelphia (other Pennsylvanians and indeed other human beings of all sorts welcome, too) come up with the paltry few thousand dollars it would take to bring back out Ben Franklin's autobiography in Arabic and distribute it? Does Philadelphia have any sister cities in the Arab world to whom it could be presented as a gift in honor of the tricentenary? Can any readers from Philadelphia put us in touch with funders?

What about Virginia and especially Charlottesville? Don't they want Thomas Jefferson available in Arabic? Can anyone there help with putting us in touch with funders?

Of course, these challenges are not limited geographically. This is a project that I think a lot of Americans, and a lot of world citizens, are going to care deeply about.

Earlier on when I announced this project, some kind journalists showed a great deal of interest. Now's the time for some stories, folks.

-------------

Checks can be sent by land mail to Juan Cole, 1029 Tisch Hall, Department of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Government Talks Postponed as 35 Die
Shiites Reject Hard Line Sunni Speaker

The Shiite religious parties of the United Iraqi Alliance took revenge Sunday on the Sunni Arab religious parties that had joined an attempt to unseat UIA prime ministerial candidate Ibrahim Jaafari. The UIA rejected Tariq al-Hashimi, the secretary general of the Iraqi Accord Front, as candidate for speaker of the house. They thus demonstrated that if other parties start vetoing Shiite candidates, two can play the game. UIA spokesmen said that al-Hashimi has a history of strident rhetoric of a Sunni sectarian sort.

Meanwhile, there were more bombings in Baghdad, Mahmudiyah and elsewhere, with dozens of casualties. Altogether, least 35 persons were killed or found dead on Sunday. Guerrillas killed 4 US troops in Anbar Province. Three persons were assassinated in Basra. It really is sort of pitiful that as the country goes up in flames around them, the politicians are wrangling over who gets what post.

Early Monday morning, there was a firefight between Iraqi government troops and Sunni Arab guerrillas in the Adhamiyah district of Baghdad. Substantial casualties are feared.

The poor Christians of Iraq, some 3 percent of the population, commemorated Easter in a low-key way, and there was extra security at churches, since the guerrilla movement has targeted them in the past. A lot of Christians are emigrating to Syria.

Al-Zaman/ AFP/ DPA report that there was a firefight between Iraqi police and guerrillas on the road between Nasiriyah and Suqul Sheikh. In another engagement, Iraqi army troops and police in the Nasiriyah region captured a large number of members of a neo-Baathist cell, belonging to the Awdah Party.

Al-Zaman reports that [Ar.] it is said that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has requested that the United Iraqi Alliance choose a compromise candidate for prime minister, neither Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party nor Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The request appears to have been behind the scenes, since it is reported that Jaafari replied that he won't resign unless Sistani personally asks him to.

Borzou Daragahi, in Najaf, explores the increasingly political role of the holy city. He reveals that Shiite parliamentarians routinely pass legislation by its clerics to ensure it is in accord with Islamic law. This is Iran lite.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim proposed that Adil Abdul Mahdi become the prime minister, but only for a year, after which there would be new elections. It is unknown what sort of reception this suggestion received.

The Iraqi Accord Front put forth Adnan Dulaimi for vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi for speaker of the house, and Shaikh Khalaf al-`Ulya as vice-premier. IAF spokesman Dhafir al-Ani said that it would take into account the views of other blocs, so as to achieve consensus.

There was also controversy over a proposal to make Iyad Allawi a vice president. (Since the Shiite religious bloc will get a vice presidency, and since Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, will likely be president, Allawi's appointment as VP would essentially deny the post to a Sunni Arab. Allawi is a secular, ex-Baathist Shiite. Since Allawi's party only got 9 percent of the seats in parliament, he doesn't actually have the moxie to land such a high post anyway).

Dhafir al-Ani said that he hoped that decisions weren't being taken on a an emotional basis. (He was referring to the likelihood that the Shiite rejection of al-Hashimi was revenge for the Sunni rejection of Jaafari).

The US military is seeking to move up the date of provincial elections in Anbar Province, in hopes of producing a new political leadership that can dampen down the endemic violence. It has never worked before there, so why do they think it will work this time? If 80 percent of the local people are with the guerrilla movement, electoral politics itself inevitably gets distorted. The Rumsfeld assumption that main force on the one hand and elections on the other can defeat the guerrilla movement was challenged in fall of 2004 by the uniformed military, but he dismissed their findings. The military assessment would have brought into question the wisdom of the Fallujah campaign, which just stirred the Sunni Arabs up more.

Tom Engelhardt cannily explores the ways that history has ambushed Bush over Iraq and corruption.

The Guardian profiles Kirkuk's doctor of death. This war will not be short.

It turns out that body washers and morticians have a lot of work these days in Iraq.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Afghanistan Between Opium and Taliban

Yes, there still is a war in Afghanistan. Seven were killed in it on Sunday, and over 40 on Saturday. Accusations against the US are swirling of having killed innocent civilians. Meanwhile, a suicide bomber wounded 3 British troops.

See also Barnett Rubin's expert appraisal of the situation in Afghanistan.

There has been much less trouble in post-war Afghanistan than in post-war Iraq. This result comes in large part because most Afghans, including a lot of Pushtuns, despised the Taliban. It turns out that the Iraqi Baathist Socialist Party had more grass roots, at least among Sunni Arabs. In contrast, the large Pushtun Taliban were not liked by a lot of Pushtuns. A city like Qandahar was relatively cosmopolitan and chafed under the restrictions of the mostly rural Taliban fighters, with their almost Monty Python puritanism.

But there were districts, tribes, and regions where the Taliban were in fact popular, and these have not gone away. Indeed, over time some of the Taliban (and perhaps other disgruntled local forces) have regrouped.

This minor revival does not matter in most of the country. The Tajiks (who speak a form of Persian) were always die hard opposed to Talibanism, as were the Hazara Shiites for their own reasons. And as for the 10 percent of the population in the north that is Uzbek, well, they massacred thousands of Taliban in Mazar when the unwary seminarians took the city and let their guard down.

So the Taliban revival is a mostly Pushtun phenomenon, affecting places like Hhost and Qandahar, old al-Qaeda stomping grounds. A US base near Khost gets so much enemy fire that it is called Rocket City.

The British are doubling their forces in that area and planning to do search and destroy missions against the Taliban. It seems pretty clear that they are hoping that this move will allow them to draw down their forces in southern Iraq, who are in constant danger of being massacred by millions of angry Shiites. The question is whether they are jumping from the ffrying pan into the fire. Are the US forces in Afghanistan hoping to withdraw in favor fo the British and the Canadians (yes)?

Warlordism and a revived poppy trade are intertwined with the problems in the south. The small Taliban revival is being funded by opium and heroin. Half of Afghanistan's GDP is probably from the drug trade, and there is danger of narco-terrorism on a Colombian scale. Some of the clashes we've heard about may be in reaction to poppy eradication campaigns, which are deeply unpopular with farmers, who are seldom properly compensated. Eradication efforts are not going well.

Afghanistan could be an important route for revived overland Asian trade. You could theoretically drive a truck from New Delhi to Beijing via Kabul and Tashkent. But India charges that Pakistan is blocking this development.

If the US had not run off to the Iraq quagmire, and had stayed the course in Afghanistan and properly rebuilt it, we could have completely uprooted al-Qaeda and the Taliban, put an end to the poppy trade, and created an economic efflorescence that linked major Asian powers in the kind of trade networks that discourage war and instability.

Instead, Afghanistan is still a mess, and Iraq is ever more of one. Bush has the opposite of the Midas touch-- everything he touches turns to rubble.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraq Swindled of Millions by US Firms
Instability Spills over onto Lebanon's Nasrullah

Guerrilla violence killed 11 in Iraq on Saturday, including a British soldier in Basra. Guerrillas set off two car bombs in Baghdad, one that targeted police in a Shiite area. In a separate incident, a US soldier was killed in a bombing near Fallujah.

The War against the Shiite bakers in Iraq goes on unabated.

The London Times predicts a second war of liberation for Baghdad. Apparently the US military despairs of getting out of Iraq if the new Iraqi government cannot at least control the capital. They are therefore planning to have the new Iraqi military try to do effective counter-insurgency, clearing and holding Baghdad neighborhoods now infested with guerrillas.

The guerrillas in Iraq are nasty pieces of work, and I really wish they could be defeated by the forces of the elected Iraqi government. These are people that blow up children buying ice cream cones, or that bomb a wedding and then come back later and bomb the consequent funeral. But I just very much doubt that they can be defeated this way. Too many Sunni Iraqis support them by now, and hate the US and its Iraqi allies. And, the new Iraqi military is too listless and sectarianized to make something like this work over the long term.

Farah Stockman reports in the Boston Globe that US companies swindled the Iraqi government out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Then Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority blithely granted them amnesty just before it was dissolved. ' ''In effect, it makes Iraq into a 'free-fraud zone,' " said Alan Grayson, a Virginia attorney who is suing . . . ' Well, I'm just glad that the Bush administration was able to teach those hopelessly corrupt Middle Easterners the high standards of the American way of doing business. CPA apparently stood for "The Crooks are the Police Around here."

The US is just handing out weaponry and munitions to Iraqi police with no oversight and no accounting, according to a US government memo that the Chicago Tribune has gotten hold of. There are worries about the US inadvertently arming death squads, in contravention of the Leahy amendment. Well, we all remember what Dick Cheney said to Patrick Leahy.

Hamza Hendawi of AP has a perceptive piece on the recent attempted assassination of Shaikh Hasan Nasrullah, a clerical leader of the Shiite fundamentalist Hizbullah (Hezbollah) Party in Lebanon. He says there is some evidence that it was a plot by Salafi Jihadis, who belong to a militant revivalist stream of Sunni Islam, and who were seeking to avenge the deaths of Sunni Iraqis at the hands of Shiite mobs in recent disturbances in Iraq. As Hamza notes, this motivation suggests in a most worrisome way that Iraq's instability is beginning to spill over into the rest of the region. Hizbullah is now in the Lebanese government, but has had frictions with Druze, Christians and pro-Hariri Sunni Muslims because it continues to defend Syria. The other forces blame Syria for the assassination of former Sunni prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri.

Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times presents an interesting analysis of the flurry of activity by the major Shiite clergymen of Najaf to end the political deadlock. They are afraid, he says, that if the (Shiite religious) United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) does not resolve the crisis itself, a "national unity government" will be imposed from above by fiat, perhaps led by secular ex-Baathist Iyad Allawi. They also want to forestall a process whereby the Shiite prime minister is chosen essentially by the Sunnis in parliament, because of a split within the Shiite bloc.

A spokesman for the UIA, MP Rida Jawad Taqi, came out early Sunday morning to say that the problems would be resolved within 24 hours. Al-Sharq al-Awsat explains that there will be pre-arranged candidates for president, prime minister and speaker of the house, who are broadly acceptable. But there have been many such breathless statements and promises. We'll see.

There are increasing signs that Ibrahim Jaafari, to whom the Kurds and Sunni Arabs and Americans object, will step aside for another candidate from his Dawa Party (a key component of the UIA coalition). My suspicion is that the Sunnis were trying to ensure that the prime minister would be from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), another UIA component, in hopes that SCIRI would then give up the Ministry of the Interior. That ministry has been accused of allowing elements of the paramilitary, Iran-trained Badr Corps to infiltrate its special police commando units, and then to carry out death squad attacks on Sunni Arabs suspected of links to the guerrilla movement.

Daragani also has an excellent follow-up piece on the mystery of the attack on the Mustafa Husayniyah last month. Unfortunately, the whole episode seems still shrouded in mystery. My own best guess is that there was some sort of Sunni-Shiite struggle within the Iraqi special forces, into which the US got caught up.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attempted to dampen the controversy over his charge that Arab Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to their own governments, saying that he only wanted to warn against the danger of a break-up of Iraq.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Christian-Muslim Riot in Egypt

Coptic protests in Alexandria, Egypt, got so out of control on Saturday--turning into a Christian-Muslim riot-- that Egyptian police intervened to arrest 15 persons. The protests were against the knife attack on Easter Friday by an unbalanced man at Coptic churches, which left one man dead. Copts charged that Muslim fundamentalists were behind the attack, and rejected the description of the man as unbalanced. The Muslim Brotherhood condemened the attack, but a spokesman on Aljazeera managed ungraciously to add that a lot of Muslims get beaten up and hurt by the Egyptian government (i.e. implying that Copts are coddled by Mubarak while good Muslims get the jack boot.)

In fact, the attacker was likely from al-Zawahiri's Islamic Jihad, i.e. al-Qaeda, and was trying to polarize sectarian relations in Egypt. It worked.

The real mystery? Why this isn't news in the United States.

Egypt comprises one-third of the Arabs, and the Copts are probably 6 or 7 million strong, and so are the biggest Christian community in the region.

I guess those small town American murder mysteries and missing white women just take precedence.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Guerrilla Attack Kills 2,Wounds 22 Marines in Anbar
Sunni Mosques Bombed in Baqubah

US Marines appear to have fought a major engagement with a company of guerrillas in Anbar Province, which left 2 Marines dead and 22 wounded, two of those critically.

Guerrillas set off bombs in two Sunni mosques in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province on Friday, killing 4 and wounding 8.

Diyala, population about 1.2 million, is a mixed Sunni-Shiite province with a bare Sunni Arab majority, and was the site of several Baath military installations. Old Baath military rat lines have been used to attack Shiites relentlessly in Diyala, including numerous attacks on the new police force, which has brought in a lot of Shiite recruits. Baqubah has a population of around 150,000. This bombing is likely a reprisal attack by Shiite militiamen from either the Badr Corps or the Mahdi Militia on Sunni Arabs, coming in response to the blowing up on Thursday of a small shrine to Imam Rida, the 8th divinely appointed leader of the Shiites who almost succeeded to the Abbasid caliphate in the medieval period.

The escalating sectarian violence, with tit for tat and serial mosque and shrine bombings, threatens to tip Iraq over into hot, large-scale civil war.

Gunmen kidnapped 11 employees of a building company on Thursday, and then killed them.

The death toll in Thursday's ambush of a police convoy near Taji has risen to thirty policemen, most of them Shiites from Najaf.

Reuters details several other violent episodes around the country:

TAJI - Gunmen in cars killed three Iraqi contractors working for a U.S.-Iraqi military base in Taji . . .

NEAR DUJAIL - Police said they found the bodies of four men with multiple gunshot wounds after they were kidnapped by gunmen near Dujail, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad . . .

HAWIJA - Five policemen were wounded when their patrol was struck by a roadside bomb in Hawija, 70 km (45 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, a joint U.S.-Iraqi military centre said.

NEAR BASRA - Two civilians were killed and eight people wounded, including four British soldiers, by a roadside bomb near Basra, 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, a British military spokesman said. The Iraqis were killed as their car was passing a British patrol targeted by the bomb.

Those with strong stomachs may wish to see some photographs of the real situation in Iraq, photographs that American news outlets systematically refuse to print. Warning: they are often graphic. It should be noted that these sorts of scenes are shown on Arab satellite television all the time. For the past 3 years, American audiences have seen a sanitized Iraq, whereas the rest of the world has seen the real thing. When CNN interviewed Iraqi foreign minister Barham Salih recently, they showed him with a peaceful Baghdad backdrop. But in fact, Salih could not have so much as taken a stroll in West Baghdad without being immediately shot down dead.

The Shiite politicians of the United Iraqi Alliance say that they will attend the parliamentary session next week even if they have not achieved a deal on who will fill what government post.

Al-Zaman reports that its sources close to the Iraqi government say that all of the blocs in parliament have now been enmeshed in an open-ended political crisis in the wake of the failure of the United Iraqi Alliance to choose an alternative to Ibrahim Jaafari, and in the wake of the other parties' failure to put forward a candidate acceptable to them.

A delegation from the (Shiite fundamentalist) United Iraqi Alliance led by Adil Abdul Mahdi arrived in Irbil for consultations with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.

Another delegation went to Najaf to consult with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who earlier this week announced that he would not intervene to favor one candidate from the Shiite bloc over another.

Sistani's son, Muhammad Rida, went to the house of Muqtada al-Sadr to consult with him about the crisis.

The (Sunni fundamentalist) Iraqi Accord Front withdrew its candidate for president on Friday, but reserved the right to field him again later. The Kurds have had the presidency since Jan. 30, 2005, and recently the Sunni Arabs have begun considering challenging them for it.



Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that hundreds of worshippers demonstrated Friday in Najaf after Friday prayers against the comments made last Saturday by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, in which he alleged that most Arab Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. Hundreds poured out of the Great Husayniyyah Fatimiyyah Mosque near the HQ of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, heading toward the old city, chanting slogans against Mubarak. They carried placards proclaiming the nationalist credentials of Iraqi Shiites, such as "Shiites are the Origin of Iraq," and demanded that Mubarak apologize.

Meanwhile, in Karbala, Shaikh Ahmad al-Safi (the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani), criticized Mubarak in a sermon, saying that the Egyptian president "Does not know who the Iraqi Shiites are." He said, "It behooves the Egyptian president to review the history of Iraq and learn who the Shiites are. If he can't find the sources, we ware prepared to provide them to him."

Shaikh Safi also complained that the process of forming a government had taken too long, and that the ones responsible for the delay were the parties that won the December 15 elections.

Shaikh Hazim al-Araji, a follower of nationalist young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said at the mosque attached to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim in Kahdimiyah (northeast Baghdad) that the political parties should form a government as quickly as possible. He said everyone had to stand shoulder to shoulder to combat the terrorism engulfing Iraq.

On the Sunni side, Shaikh Mahmud al-Isawi, the preacher at the mosque attached to the shrine of Abdul Qadir Gilani, said in his Friday sermon that he hoped God would make the end of George W. Bush like that of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon (who slipped into a permanent coma in January). He thundered, "The American forces and American officials, and at their head the great Satan George Bush, are the ones responsible for the killing and the displacement of people now occurring in Iraq." He added, "The Occupation forces are killing Iraqis wholesale while Iraqi officials look on . . ."

Shaikh Mahmud Mahdi al-Sumaidaie, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, accused the Iraqi political leadership of working for their personal interests. He was sermonizing at the Umm al-Qura mosque in West Baghdad. He blamed the politicians for not having formed a government, and concluded that Iraqis would continue to be humailiated and abject as long as they continued to "oppose the religion of God." (I.e. he condemned Iraqis for being too secular.)

The US military has spent only 40% of the money set aside for training Iraqi and AFghan troops.

The sectarian tensions in Iraq are spilling over onto Bahrain, according to Hassan Fattah. Bahrain is a navy base for the US in the Oil Gulf.

Graham Fuller, a long-time Middle East hand and former CIA analyst, questions whether the US can afford to break with its Shiite allies in Iraq. He points out that prominent Shiites have been important in keeping the south relatively stable. He is scathing on the naked US attempt to dictate to the United Iraqi Alliance who its candidate for prime minister must be.

US troops unlawfully shot a Reuters news crew to death last summer, according to an official inquiry.

The finding comes after officers from another unit were relieved of command over the alleged shooting of 15 unarmed civilians in Haditha last winter.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Retired Generals Besiege Rumsfeld

Retired Major General John Batiste said Friday of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “We went to war with a flawed plan that didn’t account for the hard work to build the peace after we took down the regime . . .” and added, “We also served under a secretary of defense who didn’t understand leadership, who was abusive, who was arrogant and who didn’t build a strong team.” He is the latest in a string of retired generals to call on Rumsfeld to step down.

There has been some snarking that Gen. Batiste did not speak out while in uniform. These comments come from civilian chickenhawks. Moreover, in the kind of shop Rumsfeld has been running, the US field commander, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, was almost fired for simply remarking on the guerrilla tactics of the Saddam Fedayeen, saying, "This is not the war we gamed for." His innocent and entirely accurate remark sent Rummy ballistic and Tommy Franks almost fired him. Franks was furious that Wallace and others wanted to deal carefully with the dangerous guerrillas, and told them he didn't care about keeping US casualties low. He actually put his hand over his mouth and yawned to show his uninterest in casualties. Rumsfeld was the one who pushed on Wallace a tiny military force that could not deal with, and never was able to deal with the guerrillas. US civil administrator Paul Bremer also admitted that we never had enough troops on the ground, and he told Rumsfeld so. He got no response. Rumsfeld keeps saying that no one told him things like that. But people did. He just wasn't listening. He should go.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

65,000 Displaced in Iraq
52 Killed and Another Shiite Shrine Blown Up

Major violence in Iraq on Thursday:

*Guerrillas set off three bombs in Baqubah, destroying the dome of the Imam Rida Shrine in that city. It honors the 8th of 12 Shiite Imams or divinely appointed vicars and relatives of the Prophet Muhammad. The major shrine for Imam Rida is in Mashad, Iran, but folk religion in Iraq has thrown up its own. Shiites are still outraged over the blowing up of the Askariyah Shrine in Samarra, the tomb of the 10th and 11th Imams.

*Guerrillas detonated a bomb at a market in the small town of Sabea al-Boor north of Baghdad, leaving 15 dead.

*Guerrillas launched a daring attack on a police convoy near Taji, made up of Shiites from Najaf who were picking up vehicles up north. They destroyed all the cars and killed 17 police officers.

Assassins killed the brother of Sunni Arab religious leader Tariq al-Hashimi, a leader of the National Accord Front.

The Washington Post adds of violence on Thursday:

' At least 18 other Iraqis were either killed by gunmen or found dead elsewhere in the country, according to police and news service reports. Among the dead were seven Sunni employees of a construction company in the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra who were among 10 people kidnapped on Thursday morning. The other three workers were released, while an interpreter who had been working with British troops in Basra and had been kidnapped on Wednesday was found dead. '

Two US soldiers were announced killed.

A suicide bomber attacked a police station in Mosul on Friday morning, wounding at least 7.

Take a look at Mike Davis's provacative history of the car bomb over at Tomdispatch.com.

The concerned Iraqi ministry announced Thursday that 65,000 more Iraqis have been displaced during the past two weeks by ethnic violence and reprisal killings. If this rate of displacement continued for a year, it would result in a million and a half Iraqis being made internal refugees! Iraq is heading toward Afghanistan-scale catastrophe.

Aljazeera is reporting that the Kurds are rejecting Sunni Arab calls for the next president of Iraq to be a Sunni Arab. The incumbent, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd, and he hopes to retain his position.

Al-Hayat reports that [Ar.] Muqtada al-Sadr has called for greater unity with the Sunni Arabs so as to form a political front "on nationalist foundations." He also called on his followers not to join in the struggle of "foreign parties (including Iran") that are trying to settle their conflicts with the United States in Iraq."

Muqtada al-Sadr signalled that he differs from Iranian policy in Iraq. His communique said that his followers should "decline to join in any Western plots designed to steal our security and unity, whether the prime minister is Jaafari or someone else."

He added, "Do not join with foreign parties that desire to settle their accounts with America. Be responsible." Responding to charges that his Mahdi Army is cooperating with Iranian intelligence to make trouble, Al-Sadr declared, "Creating problems for this reason is forbidden, rather it is religiously prohibited (haram)." He said anyone who did not obey him on this issue is a "rebel."

Muqtada said that his refusal to obey any other party had sometimes led to political boycotts of him.

He called on the warring foreign militaries and paramilitaries in Iraq to "keep the Iraqi people far from your disputes."

He denied the charge that his Mahdi Army had attacked Sunni mosques in the aftermath of the bombing of the Golden Shrine in Samarra.

He warned that Iraqi internal disputes "must not come to serve the joint Israeli and imperial enemy."

He condemned plans to "put Shiites behind a moat" with the plan for loose federalism and for giving the Sunnis the security portfolio. This was a slam at Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Muqtada favors a strong central government and hopes to entice the fundamentalist Sunnis into an alliance with his forces on pan-Islamic grounds.

After the United Iraqi Alliance failed yesterday in another attempt to settle the dispute over Ibrahim Jaafari's candidacy for the prime ministership, Muqtada put the ball in his opponents' court, calling on them to choose a speaker of the house and his two deputies, as well as a president and two vice presidents, before taking up the issue of the prime minister, "in accordance with the text of the constitution."
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kiriyenko: Iran's Method "Unfeasible" for Fissionable Material

Here is what a nuclear official who has no interest in getting up a war on Iran says about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claims earlier this week to have slightly enriched a small quantity of uranium:

' MOSCOW (AP): Russia's nuclear chief on Thursday said Iran is far from being capable of industrial-scale uranium enrichment, the Interfax news agency reported. Russian Federal Nuclear Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko said the enrichment facility in the Iranian city of Natanz, equipped with 164 gas centrifuges, could not produce any significant amount of enriched uranium, which can be used to fuel power plants or produce atomic weapons. "These centrifuges allow Iran to conduct laboratory uranium enrichment to a low level in insignificant amounts," Kiriyenko was quoted as saying. "The acquisition of highly enriched uranium is unfeasible today using this method."

How refreshing, a high government official who isn't LWB (lying while breathing).
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

65 Killed, including at a Shiite Mosque
Pachachi calls Parliament

A car bomb killed 30 and wounded 70 near a Shiite mosque in Huwaidir, near Baquba northeast of Baghdad (-KarbalaNews.net). Shiite tempers are at the boiling point. Guerrillas set off three car bombs in Baghdad, killing 8, and other violence, including near Mosul, killed 14. In a continuing national horror show, 11 bodies, some beheaded, showed up in the streets. Guerrillas killed another 3 US troops. I count 65 persons announced dead in all, after collating various wire service reports.

Adnan Pachachi will call parliament into session in Iraq next week in an attempt to break the logjam in the formation of a new government in Iraq. The Post also reports on Wednesday's violence:

An Interior Ministry spokesman said Iraqi police had discovered the bodies of 11 people who had been beheaded and shot in areas in and near Baghdad. Three roadside and car bomb explosions also killed at least eight people in the capital, police Maj. Mohammed Sultan said, and police officials said 14 people were killed in other bombings and shootings around the country. Three U.S. soldiers were killed Wednesday in two roadside bomb attacks south and east of Baghdad . . .

Al-Zaman reports [Ar.] that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party met for an hour on Wednesday but failed to reach an agreement about the candidate for prime minister that their United Iraqi Alliance would put forward. Al-Hakim is said to have clung to the idea of convincing Jaafari to step down in favor of SCIRI candidate Adil Abdul Mahdi. The paper says that supporters of Jaafari exercised pressure and used their influence to keep his candidacy alive. The United Iraqi Alliance postponed a formal meeting on the issue until Thursday.

Meanwhile, Iyad al-Samarra'i of the Sunni National Accord Front said Wednesday that the post of president should go to a Sunni Arab. The current incumbent, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd. Kurdish MP Mahmoud Osman, who nominated Talabani, said that the Kurds are sticking to their candidate and would be happy to have parliament vote to decide which figure becomes president. He admitted that some Sunni Arabs objected to the Kurds having both the presidency and the post of foreign minister.

Bayan Jabr, Iraqi Minister of the Interior, admitted on Wednesday that death squads were operating out of private security firms hired to guard Iraqi ministries. He said that the firms were not under Iraqi government control. His ministry has been accused of recruiting Badr Corps militiamen into the special police commandos, and of using them to kill and terrorize Sunni Arabs suspected of supporting the guerrilla insurgency, chages that Bayan denies.

France is expressing support for the idea of a regional confederacy in southern Iraq, a plan championed by Basra provincial council members and by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
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Poll: Bush Can't be Trusted on Iran

The good news is that a majority of Americans does not trust George W. Bush to deal with Iran and its nuclear program. The bad news is that 2 in 5 Americans want to attack Iran if it continues its nuclear energy program.

Former Iranian president and current head of the Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani affirmed on Wednesday,

"We are not threatening anyone. Our (nuclear) capabilities will be at the service of peace and cooperation with others."

He also said that a peaceful resoluiont of the crisis between the US and Iran is still a possibility.
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Top Reasons You Wouldn't Want a Mobile Biological Weapons Lab

Not only did Bush and Cheney and Libby tell bare-faced lies about the alleged "mobile biological weapons labs" in Iraq, the idea of such never made any sense anyway.

1. How could you have a clean room in a mobile biological weapons laboratory?

2. Petrie dishes might vibrate off the table.

3. Germs might get carsick. Now that's something you don't want to have to clean up.

4. Biologists keep pulling up at the drive-through at McDonald's.

5. What if you hit a big bump while working on the plague?
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50 Dead in Violence
Jaafari Refuses to Step Down

Robert H. Reid of AP reports on deaths in Iraq on Tuesday:

* The US announced the deaths of 5 US soldiers, 3 killed by a guerrilla bomb on Tuesday and another two on Sunday.

* Guerrilla violence killed 23 Iraqis on Tuesday. Reid writes, "A car bombing killed five people, and three others died when a bomb exploded on a minibus, both attacks in Shiite areas of the capital, police said."

*Police found 24 corpses, mostly in Baghdad, the victims of sectarian reprisal killings.

Reid also writes about the rivalry between clerical politicians Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr within the United Iraqi Alliance, which is in part responsible for the political gridlock. A government has still not been formed, and the Iraqi government appears basically not to be functioning, according to Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times.

Al-Zaman /AFP report [Ar.] that sources in London from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) are saying that Ibrahim Jaafari has absolutely refused to step aside as candidate for prime minister of the United Iraqi Alliance. One way to unseat him now would be to have another internal party vote, but he might win that again. Another way would be for the Iraqi parliament to elect a president, and for the president to appoint Jaafari prime minister, and then for Jaafari to lose a vote of no-confidence in the Iraqi legislature. The problem with that scenario is that no government can be formed and no president selected without a 2/3s majority in parliament. That cannot be had without the UIA, and the UIA won't instruct its MPs to vote for a president who will turn around and try to depose the UIA prime minister. Catch-22.

Iraq will not attend a meeting of neighboring foreign ministers in Cairo to protest the recent remarks by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak criticizing Shiites for being more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. Iraqi Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari of the fundamentalist Association of Muslim Scholars expressed regret that Iraq would not attend.

Mubarak either through a blunder or deliberately has put off the table any possibility for the deployment of Egyptian troops in Iraq under an Arab League or United Nations banner. The Iraqi Shiite majority would never easily have accepted them, except out of desperation. Now they will never accept them under any circumstances. I almost think Mubarak deliberately set out to anger the Shiites to produce this result. He is now off the hook, and if Cheney has been pressuring him to send a division to Iraq, that pressure will cease.

Infant mortality in Basra is up by 30% since the end of the Baath regime, according to some health officals in the southern, largely Shiite port city. This is where we came in. We used to all complain that US sanctions on Iraq were killing babies and children by denying them medicine. The sanctions are long gone. But now political insecurity and government paralysis and civil war are producing even worse results.

If the victory in Italy's elections of Romano Prodi survives the challenge to a recount launched by Silvio Berlusconi, Prodi will almost certainly pull Italy's troops out of Iraq on a short timetable. The likely result, it seems to me, is that Nasiriyah will be taken over by the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Some Turkish politicians and journalists are accusing the United States of sheltering terrorists in northern Iraq, i.e. the PKK or Kurdish Worker's Party, a violent group that has fought along guerrilla action against Ankara.

What a fall from 9/11, when the US was seen as the archetypal victim of terrorism. Now its friends call it an enabler of terrorists. And, don't forget about those Mojahedin-e Khalq fighters at Ashrafiyah Base in Iraq, Iranian terrorists of whom the Pentagon just doesn't seem able to let go.
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Iran Can Now Make glowing Mickey Mouse Watches

Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran "going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they "cascade."

The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb.

The crisis is not one of nuclear enrichment, a low-level attainment that does not necessarily lead to having a bomb. Even if Iran had a bomb, it is hard to see how they could be more dangerous than Communist China, which has lots of such bombs, and whose Walmart stores are a clever ruse to wipe out the middle class American family through funneling in cheaply made Chinese goods.

What is really going on here is a ratcheting war of rhetoric. The Iranian hard liners are down to a popularity rating in Iran of about 15%. They are using their challenge to the Bush administration over their perfectly legal civilian nuclear energy research program as a way of enhancing their nationalist credentials in Iran.

Likewise, Bush is trying to shore up his base, which is desperately unhappy with the Iraq situation, by rattling sabres at Iran. Bush's poll numbers are so low, often in the mid-30s, that he must have lost part of his base to produce this result. Iran is a great deus ex machina for Bush. Rally around the flag yet again.

If this international game of chicken goes wrong, then the whole Middle East and much of Western Europe could go up in flames. The real threat here is not unconventional war, which Iran cannot fight for the foreseeable future. It is the spread of Iraq-style instability to more countries in the region.

Bush and Ahmadinejad could be working together toward the Perfect Storm.
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3 US troops Killed;
Muqtada al-Sadr's Bloc backs alternative to Jaafari

The Pentagon announced Monday that 3 US soldiers had been killed.

Sunni Arab leaders in Iraq affirmed again on Monday their opposition to Ibrahim Jaafari as candidate for prime minister from the Shiite fundamentalist United Iraqi Alliance. The Kurds said much the same thing Sunday.

Al-Hayat reports that [Ar.] after four months of gridlock, the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr in the new parliament signalled their willingness to give up on the candidacy of Jaafari to be prime minister if a consensus emerged to do that in the United Iraqi Alliance. Al-Hayat interprets this new flexibility among the Sadrists, who have 32 seats in the new parliament, as signal that the door is now wide open to a change. The London daily notes that the Sadr Movement has rejected Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq as a candidate.

Sadrist MP Karim al-Bakhati said that his bloc would support the candidacy of the number two man in the Dawa Party, a component of the UIA, Jawad al-Maliki. Other candidates acceptable to the Sadr bloc include Ali al-Adib of Da`wa and national security council adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie. Also mentioned has been Abdul Karim al-`Anizi, leader of the Islamic Dawa Party - Iraq Organization.

Aljazeera is reporting that the Virtue (Fadhila) Party, which is strong in Basra, is willing to put forward a candidate for prime minister if Jaafari's candidacy falters.

Shiites afraid of civil war are fleeing south.

The courageous and clear-sighted correspondent Patrick Cockburn tells it like it is in Iraq. Things are so bad that he has begun to question the survival of the country whole.

Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, is afraid of civil war in Iraq, and wants US troops to stay.

Insufficient medical supplies plague physicians in war-torn Anbar province.

Iraq elected a beauty queen "Miss Iraq" recently, but she has resigned because of death threats. She is from a Christian Armenian background, but the whole idea of beauty pageants is anathema to conservative Iraqis. They see a "Miss Iraq" as a brand of shame rather than something to be proud of.
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Political Gridlock, Violence, Continue
Protests Against "Liberation" Day

Violence left 16 dead and others wounded on Sunday, the anniversary of the fall of Saddam (see below).

Shiite leaders met Sunday to attempt to resolve the gridlock over the formation of a new government led by Ibrahim Jaafari. It failed. Now the leaders say they will meet with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds to find out why they oppose Ibrahim Jaafari so vehemently. Haven't they been listening? The Kurds also renewed their objections to Jaafari. In fact, they dislike him because he favors a fairly strong central government and opposes the loose federalism favored by Kurds, as well as their plans of grabbing Kirkuk for themselves.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani appears to have been unhappy about the continued stalemate. He wrote the United Iraqi Alliance leaders asking that they form a government quickly.

The fundamentalist Sunni Iraqi Accord Front continued to express its opposition to Jaafari. The Sunni Arabs feel that Jaafari has not effectively reined in Shiite death squads. I also suspect that they feel they can't dislodge the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq from the Ministry of the Interior, where it has brought in elements of the Badr Corps paramilitary that was originally trained by Iran, unless they give it the prime ministership as a booby prize.

Al-Zaman says that there were demonstrations on Sunday in Mosul [Ar.] by protesters against the designation of April 9 (the fall of Saddam and the US occupation of Iraq) as a national holiday. Iraqis divided about whether the US presence is a liberation or an occupation. But in Mosul, a city of over a million with about 80% of the population Sunni Arab, there is less uncertainty about which it is. a representative of the Association of Muslim Scholars in Mosul spoke of the "shame" of celebrating the day on which Iraq was occupied. The demonstrators challenged the University of Mosul to forbid the commemoration.

In Baghdad, Association of Islamic Scholars leader Ahmad al-Kubaisi said that the US has completely failed in Iraq.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), had a statement read to a crowd of protesters in Basra explaining that the commemoration was of the collapse of the Saddam regime, not of a foreign military occupation. (This incident is an indication that there is unrest about the holiday among Shiites, too.)

The Iraqi Accord Front, made up of religious nationalists, urged that the day be commemorated by demonstrations against the US occupation.

The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party likewise rejected the commemoration of April 9 as a national holiday, and lamented all the Iraqi lives lost during the US invasion and subsequently.

They can't even agree on whether April 9 is a national holiday or not!

The over-emphasis on the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the US and even Iraqi press is the direct result of a concerted Department of Defense propaganda campaign, according to the Washington Post. Military correspondent Thomas Ricks writes, "Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist."

Long-time readers know that I have long railed against the "Zarqawi myth." (Click on the Billmon link for more). Mostly the US has been fighting Iraqi guerrillas, especially those with a background in the Fedayee Saddam, military intelligence, and the officer corps. Contrary to the fevered fantasies of VP Richard Bruce Cheney, the Baath regime was afraid of Zarqawi and once put out an APB on him when they thought he might have come into Iraq. Another piece of proof that propaganda usually betrays itself.

David Enders and Dan Murphy at the CSM report on the increasing difficulty Shiite leaders are having in restraining their rank and file from reprisals against Sunni Arabs for the guerrillas' attacks on Shiites. Sunni newspapers linked to mainstream leaders have also exacerbated this crisis. They get a fascinating interview with a lower-level official of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq who urges that top fundamentalist Sunni Arab leaders should be killed. This thing is not going anywhere good.

Saud al-Faisal has also been so impolite as to point out the Iraq is in fact having a civil war: "The definition of civil war is that the people (of a country) are fighting each other ... I don't know what we can call (what is happening) in Iraq except a civil war."

Kurdish and Shiite leaders Sunday condemned Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for his charge that Arab Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. So too did Kuwaiti Shiite members of parliament.

Veteran BBC correspondent John Simpson says that Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal predicted before the Iraq war that it would bog down the US and Britain for years, set Shiites and Sunnis at each others' throats, and give an opening for greater Iranian influence. Simpson had asked Saud al-Faisal what the US said when he told them this. He said they did not even seem to be listening. Simpson had asked Saud al-Faisal why he though the Bush administration wanted to go to war. He said that Cheney had told him, "because it is do-able." Simpson explains all the reasons for which it wasn't really. And, anyway, what the hell kind of reason is that to go to war?

It turns out that the Ramadi insurgents are . . . good at insurgency.

Another retired general has called for the resignation of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and complained about the lack of backbone in the active-duty officer corps in standing up to his daft plan for invading Iraq with only 100,000 men; that would have been fine if you didn't have to rule it once you conquered it.

Hassan al-Fattah of the NYT points out that the problem with the Bush administration argument that American Iraq would be a new exemplar for the region and spread democracy is that when Iraq went bad, so did the democracy project.

Senator Arlen Specter called on Bush and Cheney to fully explain the leaks in summer of 2003 to the American people. Specter wouldn't be speaking out this way if congressional Republicans weren't petrified that this scandal will sink their party in 06.

Bush's defense is that he has an "inherent right" to declassify documents. What BS. Declassification is a bureaucratic process with rules. Bush can initiate it. He can't just arbitrarily declare some parts of some documents leakable for petty political purposes. The number of "inherent rights" of the presidency, from torturing people to prancing around their living rooms when they are out at a ball, keeps exponentially increasing. Next he'll be asserting a claim to deflower our daughters.

Caleb Carr argues that maybe the Iraqis just need to have their civil war. He makes analogies to the United States in the 1860s.

But Iraq is not like the US in the 1860s. It is an industrialized, modern country floating in modern armaments. A million or more people could die in such a war, and millions be displaced. For another thing, Iraq unlike the US is not a virtual island. It is deeply imbricated in social, religious, political and economic relations among Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Turkey, etc. That is, a civil war in Iraq won't stay a purely Iraqi affair. If Shiites are massacred and look as though they may lose, Iran will come in on their side. Likewise the Saudis will fund a defense of the Sunni Arabs, and the vast Sunni Arab hinterland gives them strategic depth. And, a Kurdish massacre of Turkmen, if that happened in Kirkuk, would certainly bring in the Turkish government.

Not only would an Iraq civil war not stay in Iraq, it would not leave the world unscathed. A regional guerrilla war with pipeline sabotage could take 15% of the world petroleum production off the market. If you don't know that the total production is 85-86 million barrels a day, and don't know what Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait produce and export of that, you shouldn't be prescribing civil war in the region.
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Another Shrine hit, with 6 Dead
Mubarak Warns on Civil War, US Withdrawal

Reuters reports that guerrillas hit yet another Shiite shrine on Saturday this one at Musayyib, killing 6 and wounding 21 (-Al-Sharq al-Awsat). Guerrillas ambushed police in Baquba, wounding 4, along with 4 civilians. In a separate attack in that city, they managed to kill a Lt. Col. in the new Iraqi military. There were several attacks in and around Kirkuk, leaving a number of police and others wounded. Four bodies of Iraqi military men were found in Riyad south of Kirkuk; they had been captured in Tikrit earlier. Another 7 bodies were found in Karbala.

In Basra, gunmen fired on workers leaving a mill, killing 2 and wounding 3.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the clerical leader of the Shiite fundamentalist United Iraqi Alliance, warned Shiites on Saturday not to turn to reprisal killings against Sunni Arabs for the atrocities guerrillas are visiting on Shiites.

AP reveals that a senior Iraqi official has admitted that Iraq has been in a civil war for at least a year:

' Despite the violence, U.S. officials have discounted talk of civil war. However, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday that an ``undeclared civil war'' had already been raging for more than a year. ``Is there a civil war? Yes, there is an undeclared civil war that has been there for a year or more,'' Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal told The Associated Press. ``All these bodies that are discovered in Baghdad, the slaughter of pilgrims heading to holy sites, the explosions, the destruction, the attacks against the mosques are all part of this.'' Kamal said the country would still be spared from all-out sectarian war ``if a strong government is formed, if the security forces are given wide powers and if they are able to defeat the terrorists.''

The only reason it is even controversial that Iraq is in civil war is because the Bush administration spinmeisters are resisting the term, for PR purposes. Why doesn't the US press just ignore them when they start saying ridiculous things like that?

And now you have this big food fight between Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice over her admission that the US has made a thousand tactical errors in Iraq. The US has made tens of thousands of tactical errors in Iraq. Rice was underestimating the problem. And, the US has made large numbers of strategic ones, too. Both Rice and Rumsfeld are responsible for the strategic ones. In a system with any accountability, their government would lose a vote of no confidence at this point and they would be history. Rice's attempt to maintain that there were lots of little errors (Rumsfeld's and the troops) but that the over-all strategy was sound (i.e. her's and Bush's) is absurd. A sound strategy will usually survive some tactical errors. A bad strategy is doomed even if the tactics are gotten right.

The leaking of an internal, realistic assessment of how bad things are in Iraq, generated by the US government, has sent Bush administration officials scurrying to put the best face on it. As I have pointed out several times, the problems are not in three provinces, they are in seven. And, they are among the more populous provinces in the country, including Baghdad, which has 6 million or almost a fourth of the country. And they are very serious problems and getting worse.

I argue at the New York Daily News that the US should stop trying to pretend that Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement don't exist, and stop trying to cut them out of the political deal, and should engaged them politically. You can't have stability in Iraq if one of the major forces is sidelined.

Muqtada denied Saturday [Ar.] that the Mahdi Army is a militia. He said it was an "army based on belief."

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said on Saturday that Iraq is already in an ethnic civil war; that the problem with the country is that it is too diverse ethnically; that the current crisis was caused by Saddam not having ruled more justly; that the United States must not leave, or all hell will break loose; and that Arab Shiites a secretly more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. The degree of ignorance and prejudice revealed by the last phrase is mind boggling, but it is a very common sentiment in the Sunni Arab world. Nor is it a good sign, since the Shiites are becoming empowered in the eastern Arab world, and the Sunnis are going to have to get used to it.

As for Mubarak's caution against a US withdrawal, it strikes me as self-serving. If the US withdraws, regional leaders may have to step up.
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3 US Troops Killed
Al-Saghir Blames Sunni Arab Parties, Press for Mosque Bombing

The US military announced the deaths of 3 GIs in Iraq on Friday.

Jalal al-Din al-Saghir is the Shiite politician who may have been targeted by the suicide bombing of the Buratha mosque on Friday that killed over 80 and wounded at least 130. Al-Hayat reports that he has now blamed Sunni Arabs for the bombing. He also accused the al-Basa'ir newspaper of the Association of Muslim Scholars and the al-I`tisam newspaper of Adnan Dulaimi's Sunni fundamentalists for what he called a campaign of distortion and lies against the Buratha Mosque, insofar as they alleged that it was being used as a secret prison and even mass-grave site for captured Sunnis.

In his Friday prayer sermon, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i (the lieutenant of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani) called in Karbala for a solution to the political gridlock through compromising on some issues. He warned that Sistani's willingness to shepherd the United Iraqi Alliance depends on the party maintaining its unity. He said of Sistani's concern for the party, "This fatherly shadow cannot continue to be cast if separation and division occur." He urged the UIA to feel its responsibility.

In Najaf, Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji preached at the Imam Ali Mosque, saying that all UIA members should resort to Sistani "and accept the choice of the religious institution" as a means of resolving the current crisis.

Al-Qubanji is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has failed in a bid to convince Jaafari to allow three candidtates to go before the parliament for a non-confidence vote.

Nir Rosen bravely reports the reality on the ground in Iraq.

Chaim Kaufman says Iraq is descending into civil war and ethnic cleansing, and that US troops have a responsibility to stop the ethnic cleansing from becoming a massive phenomenon before they depart.

An Iraqi blogger argues that the UIA is looking around for a compromise candidate, since Jaafari won't step down and Abdul Mahdi is now seen as an American pawn.

The saga of the incredible shrinking presidency continues to unfold, with Bush's poll numbers sinking again, especially on his handling of Iraq. And, the US public no longer trusts Republicans more on issues of national security. I guess they have concluded that the Republican war in Iraq has endangered our national security. If so, they'd be right.

Austrian-Kurdish journalist Kamal Karim Qadir barely avoided going to jail for 30 years for criticizing Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. He is determined to continue his work, but says he will tone down his language. I guess so; he was threatened with life imprisonment. A thing like that doesn't leave you unscathed. We all think we are autonomous human beings here in the US, but most of us could be broken by torture. Qadir wasn't tortured physically, but the threat of being deprived of liberty for a lifetime is a sort of psychological torture for a writer.

Hundreds of members of the Marxist PKK, a Kurdish party outlawed in Turkey, demonstrated in Iraqi Kurdistan where they have fled.

Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer argues that the Bush administration could destabilize Pakistan by pushing Gen. Musharraf to act too obviously against the national interest.
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Breaking News: 78 Dead, Dozens Wounded in Shiite Mosque Attack

Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports that suicide bombers detonated their bombs at the Shiite Buratha in the northwestern Baghdad just after Friday prayers ended but before the worshippers began exiting. KarbalaNews.net says that Iraqi security forces report that the bombers were mingling with the worshippers. It says that one bomber was inside the mosque with the men praying, while another was dressed in women's clothing and detonated his payload outside the mosque among visitors.

KarbalaNews.net reported 78 dead, and 140 wounded, some of them badly. The mosque is affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major component of the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest single bloc in parliament. The preacher at this mosque, Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, is also a member of parliament, and it is presumed that he was a target of the attack, but it appears that he is unharmed.


Courtesy KarbalaNews.net

KarbalaNews.net reports that a group of clerics in Najaf blamed the bombing on Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, insofar as he is the head of the armed forces, and on the American military (i.e. both should be preventing such attacks and aren't). They called on Jaafari to resign and let someone more capable take up the candidacy for prime minister in the next government. The unsigned communique reprinted at the site represents itself as coming from a group of clergymen, but gives no names. Presumably these clerics are affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which lost the internal UIA election by one vote. Its candidate, Adil Abdul Mahdi, has called on Jaafari to step down.

Buratha is over toward Karkh, and is an old mosque with value as an ancient monument among Iraqi antiquities.

Sunni Arab guerrillas continue to attack Shiite targets in hopes of provoking Sunni-Shiite civil war. They believe that the eruption of large-scale ethnic fighting will force the US out of the country and pave the way to a neo-Baath or Salafi coup. Shiites have largely refused to take the bait, but their patience is clearly wearing thin. After the Golden Shrine was blown up in Sammara in late February, angered Shiites attacked over 100 Sunni mosques, and mobs and death squads have probably killed well over 1,000 Sunnis in reprisals.
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Wounded US Troops Face Lifetime of Disabilities
Karbala Province breaks off Relations with US

Reuters reports the other guerrilla violence in Iraq besides the car bombing in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, which killed at least 13 and wounded 40:

'HASWA - Five civilians were killed and another two wounded when gunmen shot at their cars near a police station . . . south of Baghdad, police said.

RAMADI - A U.S. patrol was struck by a roadside bomb south of Ramadi . . . west of Baghdad . . . [No word on casualties.]

KIRKUK - Gunmen seriously wounded a Kurdish captain in the Iraqi army. . . [Also a traffic policeman was shot dead, and the beheaded body of a peshmerga militiaman was found.]

BAQUBA - Eight people were wounded, including six civilians, when a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded . . . '

Al-Hayat reports [Ar.] that tensions are running so high within the United Iraqi Alliance UIA] that its two major wings-- the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI] and the Sadr Movement-- are declining to talk. The Sadrists, followeres of young Shiite nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr, cancelled a meeting that was supposed to be held with SCIRI on Thursday. The Mahdi Army, the Sadrist paramilitary, is stockpiling arms in expectation of an American attack on them in Najaf.

Ibrahim Jaafari, who was elected the candidate for prime minister by the UIA by an internal party vote, said he preferred to have parliament decide whether he was acceptable, rather than repeating the UIA internal party vote. Actually, the Iraqi constitution requires that the president appoint as prime minister the candidate put forward by the largest bloc in parliament, so constitutionally there is no doubt that Jaafari should be so appointed, if the rule of law and democratic voting mean anything. But like any other prime minister, Jaafari would have to be able to survive a vote of no-confidence in parliament, which would require him to have the support of 138 MPs (out of 275). He only has 132 at most, assuming the UIA stands behind him, along with the Christians and Mithal al-Alusi. It is not clear where the other 6 would come from.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Baghdad, said of the building US confrontation with Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, "We have our ways in any struggle with any movement, and we encourage all to involve themselves in the political process." He warned against the growth of sectarian militias in Iraq, which threaten the stability of the country.

The elected civil government of Karbala province announced that it had severed relations with the Americans in protest against a Marine raid in the city against a Mahdi Army safe house, which the Americans carried out without any coordination with the local government.

American troops appear to be fanning out in Najaf after the car bombing there on Thursday, raising suspicions of the Sadrists in the city.

KarbalaNews.net says that a curfew has been imposed by the governor of Najaf until further notice.

KarbalaNews.net reports [Ar.] that Ayatollah Hadi al-Mudarrisi met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Tuesday. Al-Mudarrisi complained that an attempt was being made to steal the Dec. 15 election by the erection of a so-called "national security council" that will constrain the elected prime minister. He said that if there was a dispute, it should be settled democratically, by a national referendum.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports [Ar.] that the "Committee for the Support of Democracy in Iraq" has called on the United Nations to intervene in the country immediately to protect Iraqi civilians from the daily death toll that they face. They warn that "a descent into a thoroughgoing civil war" could encompass the entire region with its flames. The Committee is made up of thinkers, politicians, academics, and businessmen and has a center in London. they also called on the Iraqi parliament to play an effective role. The parliament met for only the second time since the elections on Wednesday.

AP looks at the impact on US-Iraqi relations of the tendency of US troops in Iraq to shoot first and ask questions later. Of course, US troops have faced car bombs and have to be careful when a vehicle speeds at them. But from all accounts, some have been cavalier with innocent Iraqi lives. The incidents have caused tension with Iraqi leaders.

Reuters also reports on the impact of Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence on mixed Sunni-Shiite families. Young Iraqis from such families jokingly call themselves "Sushis." The NYT did an article in which they argued that the incidence of such mixed marriages is plummeting because of sectarian hatreds.

The LA Times discusses a seldom-explored subject, the thousands of wounded Iraq veterans. Many of these Vets will need special help the rest of their lives, but the Bush administration has actually cut their medical benefits.

And, tricks are used to put them off the books. Some of the wounded stay in the service in Iraq, but head wounds or post traumatic stress disorder often make them discipline problems, and they are given less than honorable discharges, which have the effect of denying them access to the VA hospitals!
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Bush: Leaker-in-Chief?
Bush as Johnson + Nixon

Irv Lewis Libby, the former chief of staff for trigger-happy VP Richard Bruce Cheney is now alleging that Cheney told him that W. himself authorized the leak of classified Iraq information. Although he is probably referring to the leak of the National Intelligence Estimate, his implication is that once he was given the go-ahead by Bush and Cheney to leak classified information for political purposes, tat led to his outing of a covert CIA operative's name. Both leaks were part of White House damage control over the Iraq scandal breaking in spring-summer 2003, as it became clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Bush had invaded the wrong country for the wrong reason. Ooops.

I have explained the whole scandal here, with pictures and links, and readers have told me that it is useful.

Late night comedian Conan O'Brian does a shtick where he has a silly computer program meld the faces of two celebrities to see what their kids would look like, only the program works to exaggerate the features of each, so that you always have a freakish result.

The news today makes me think that it would be worthwhile melding Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to see if the result looked like W. Because George W. Bush faces the weight of a long Asian land war gone badly wrong, just as Johnson did. And he faces the charges of high-level corruption and illegal wiretapping that dogged Richard Nixon. He has become both "Mah feller Amurcans" Bush and "tricky Georgie." W. has survived all this relatively well, given the dreadful facts of it.

Unlike Johnson, he does not operate a hated draft, but depends on gung-ho volunteers (some of whom are a little too gung-ho and have made a lot of unnecessary trouble in Iraq by shooting a lot of people for DWI, Driving While Iraqi). The volunteers' families and friends are not clamoring for an end to the war with the fervor that those of the draftees did in the 1960s and early 1970s. Johnson was in the end defeated by powerful challenges from within his own party, which caused him not to seek another