Informed Comment

Glasgow Airport Incident

Apparent car bombing attack at Glasgow Airport. The two drivers appear to have been arrested.

The eyewitness description suggests rank amateurs with no training. They didn’t actually get close enough to do much damage, and their behavior suggests that something went very wrong– what with one of them on fire and trying to get into the trunk.

Larry Johnson points out that Friday’s similar incident in London was similarly a SNAFU.

Long may terrorists be clueless screw-ups who can’t start fires in cars because they leave the windows rolled up and starve the flames of oxygen, and who scramble around to manually detonate things while on fire themselves.

Just remember what screw-ups these guys are when Alberto Gonzales comes to you with a plea to repeal the Bill of Rights in order to deal with them.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Mika: Iraq is More Important

Bravo Mika Brzezinski, the anchor who refused to read a story about the release from jail of socialite Paris Hilton as the lede on her MSNBC news program.

Click in the middle of the video to play.

Posted in Iraq | Comments Off

Sunni Bloc Pulls out of Government
US Raids Sadr City, Kills 26
Talabani Slams Arab Neighbors

Early Saturday morning, US forces raided into Shiite Sadr City, presumably challenging Mahdi Army commanders. They killed 26 in the course of the action. The Mahdi Army is loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who calls for a quick US withdrawal from Iraq.

The Iraqi Accord Front, the Sunni fundamentalist bloc with 44 seats in parliament, says that it is withdrawing its 6 cabinet ministers from the national unity government of PM Nuri al-Maliki.

The whole concept of a ‘national unity government’ as thought up by then US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Iraqi president Jalal Talabani in spring of 2006 has now more or less fallen apart. The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance has lost two important components, the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) and the Sadr Movement. The former pulled their 15 MPs out of the alliance, the latter pulled its 6 cabinet ministers out of the government. Now the Sunni Arabs appear to be decamping, to protest the arrest of one of their own (on charges of having the sons of a fellow Sunni MP whacked).

The “surge” was intended to ‘create political space’ for ‘reconciliation’ between Sunnis and Shiites. Now the only Sunnis who were willing to cooperate with the political process are threatening to pull out of the al-Maliki government. Wouldn’t that be going backward? Then what is the ‘surge’ for?

The killing of 5 US troops in an ambush by Iraq guerrillas was announced on Friday, making the past quarter the deadliest for American soldiers since the war began (see also William Blanchard’s comments on this issue at IC yesterday– scroll down). McClatchy reports other political violence on Friday.

Two years later, the injuries he sustained in Iraq finally killed Sgt. Frank Sandoval.

While the Bush administration keeps hinting around that Iran is at the root of the problems in Iraq, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani is telling it like it is. He blamed Iraq’s Arab neighbors for conniving at the destabilization of the country, in part out of anti-Shiite prejudice. Talabani recently visited Iran, which which he has excelent relations.

I guess Talabani didn’t get the memo.

Muqtada al-Sadr has postponed his proposed ‘million man march’ on the largely Sunni Arab city of Samarra north of Baghdad. The USG Open Source Center translated the comments of a Sadrist leader as carried on al-Iraqiya Television:

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Shaykh Ahmad Safi, the representative of Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Karbala, spoke in his Friday sermon of the security operation in Diyala province. He said it was going well, but warned Iraqi troops against withdrawing from dissident neighborhoods and allowing the guerrillas to return, as had been done in the past. He also said his sources in Baquba told him that caches had been found of state-of-the-art weapons as the guerrillas retreated. Where did these come from, he asked. He concluded that surrounding (Sunni Arab) states must be supplying them to the Sunni Arab guerrillas. They came in, he said, across Iraqi borders or through Iraqi air space that the Iraqi military did not control. He demanded a return by the US of Iraqi sovereignty over its own air space and borders, so that this smuggling of sophisticated weapons could be stopped. He also questioned whether the alleged $19 bn. in US military aid to Iraq had actually been spent for the approved purpose, of building the Iraqi military, implying that it had been embezzled or never actually granted. The tone of this representative of Sistani has become increasingly bitter toward the American inability to supply public order and security in Iraq. This is the first time I’ve heard of a representative of Sistani demanding a return by the Americans of Iraqi sovereignty over its air space.

McClatchy reports expert doubts on the wisdom of putting too many eggs in the basket of tribal sheikhs in Iraq, given their famed independence and loyalty mainly to the tribe. The meeting between the sheikhs and Shiite leaders in the Mansur Hotel on Monday that got bombed came as a surprise to the US military, the sheikhs’ supposed ally. All this is not to mention that the tribes have a segmentary political system in which infighting and feuding and kaleidoscopic alliances and break-ups are common.

Editor & Publisher on the increased US by military and Bush spokesmen of the term “al-Qaeda” as a means of describing the guerrilla movement among Sunni Arabs in Iraq.

And that allegation that “al-Qaeda” blew up the minarets of the al-Askariya Shrine in Samarra? Maybe, maybe not. No proof for it. (My own money is on the Baathis.)

Four female ex-employees of Kellog, Brown and Root (KBR),formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton, have filed suit alleging sexual harassment while in Iraq. KBR contests the charges, and Halliburton, which sold KBR after receiving $9 bn. in no-bid government contracts for work in Iraq (which probably saved it from bankruptcy), says that it had nothing to do with Iraq. Thanks for the memories, Halliburton, or should we say, thanks for the amnesia? The former CEO of Halliburton, 1995-2000, is . . . VP Dick Cheney.

Post-Fetal Abortion Ban could shut down Iraq War. Pro-life legislation through age 20.

Posted in Iraq | Comments Off

Hacking Muqtada

The USG Open Source Center reports on the hacking of the Sadr Movement’s website and its hijacking for anti-Shiite polemics. Cyberwar as part of the Iraq War is nothing new, as I noted in this column last February. The sectarian civil war in Iraq is being fought at every level, from poisoned watermelons and dog-bombs, to decapitated bodies, to DOS attacks and hacking web sites.

Posted in Iraq | Comments Off

Bomb Defused in London

As I write, London police are using a robot to investigate a parked car near Buckingham Palace. The operation comes hours after a car was discovered packed with explosives and ready to detonate outside a nightclub in Picadilly Circus.

The proper response of Americans to these events? Book a vacation in London immediately and make sure to visit Picadilly Circus.

Whoever planned this operation at the height of the tourist season is trying to hurt the UK economy.

Britain is perfectly safe, in fact the murder rate there, including political violence, is one-fourth that of the US. A ticket to the UK can be found inexpensively and there are reasonable places to stay, and as urban historians have pointed out, London is a giant toy that is endless fun to play with.

In solidarity.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Bush Turns Iraq into Israel/Palestine;
Gaffe endangers US Troops

Bush said in a speech on Thursday that he hopes Iraq will be like Israel, a democracy that faces terrorist violence but manages to retain its democratic character:

‘ In Israel, Bush said, “terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.” ‘

These words may be the stupidest ones ever uttered by a US president. Given their likely impact on the US war effort in the Middle East, they are downright criminal.

The US political elite just doesn’t get it. Israel is not popular in the Middle East, and it isn’t because Middle Easterners are bigots. It is because Israel is coded as the last European colonial presence in the region, an heir to French Algeria, British Egypt, and Dutch Indonesia– and because the Israelis pugnaciously continue to try to colonize neighboring bits of territory. (This enmity is not inevitable or eternal; in 2002 the Arab League offered full recognition of Israel in return for its going back to 1967 borders, but the Israeli government turned down the offer.) But for the purposes of this analysis it does not really matter why Israel is unpopular. Let us just stipulate that it is. Why would you associate American Iraq with such an unpopular project, if you were trying to do public diplomacy in the region? Bush had just announced a new push to get the American message out to the Muslim world, the day before.

Let’s just take the analogy seriously for a moment. Israel proper is a democracy of sorts, though its 1 million Arab citizens are in a second class position. But it rules over several million stateless Palestinians who lack even the pretence of self-rule. It is hard to characterize a country as a democracy when it has millions of disenfranchised subjects. Bush manages to only think about Jewish Israelis in the above analogy, wiping out millions of other residents of geographical Palestine who don’t get to participate in ‘democracy’ or exercise popular sovereignty.

It is true that the Israelis managed to blunt the terror attacks of Islamic Jihad, the Qassam Brigades, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades over the years after the eruption of the 2nd Intifada. But there are still attacks, including by rocket. The reason for those attacks is that the Palestinians had mostly been driven from their homes and off their land, and were militarily, politically and economically subjected to the Israelis. The Israelis reduced the terror attacks by essentially imprisoning millions of stateless Palestinians in the territories, further restricting their movements, destroying their trade and livelihoods. The Israeli government continues to grab Palestinian land and put more colonists on it, even as we speak.

Israel-Palestine is among the world’s hottest trouble spots, and the conflict has poisoned politics throughout the Middle East. It was among the motives for Bin Laden’s attack on the US on September 11, so it has spilled over on America, too. A second one of those would be a good thing?

So who would play the Palestinians in Bush’s analogy? Obviously, it would be the Sunni Arabs, who apparently are meant to be cordoned off from the rest of Iraqis and put behind massive walls and barbed wire, and deprived of political power. That is not a desirable outcome and is not politically or militarily tenable in the long run.

And, let’s just stop and think. Even if it were true that an Israel-Palestine sort of denouement were in Bush’s mind for Iraq, was it wise for him to make it public?

That sort of scenario is precisely the propaganda message broadcast by the Jihadi websites in Iraq and the Arab world! They say that the US military occupation of Iraq, in alliance with Shiites, has turned the Sunni Arabs into Palestinians! Bush could not have handed the guerrillas a better rhetorical gift. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that DVD’s of Bush’s comments will be spread around as a recruiting tool for jihadis, and that US troops will certainly be killed as a result of this speech. You could say that the US military presence is already pretty unpopular in the Sunni Arab areas. But what of the progress in al-Anbar Province? Will Bush’s speech help or hurt Sunni Arabs who want to ally with the US against the foreign Salafi Jihadis? Hurt, obviously.

If Bush had said something like that in 2002, you could have written it off as inexperience and lack of knowledge of the Middle East. But he has been the sitting president for so many years, and has had so much to do with the Middle East that this faux pas is just inexcusable. I don’t know the man and can’t judge if he is just not very bright. I can confirm that he says things that are not very bright. And, worse, he says things that are guaranteed to put more US troops into the grave in Diyala, Baghdad, Salahuddin and al-Anbar Provinces.

I don’t know whether to sob in grief or tear my hair out in frustration. How much longer do we have to suffer?

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

20 Decapitated Bodies Found;
Turks Brand US Biggest Threat;
Muqtada calls for a million Man march on Samarra

AP says at least 60 persons died in political violence in Iraq on Thursday. It is being reported that twenty decapitated bodies were found in Salman Pak south of Baghdad, in another macabre instance of sectarian death squad killings. McClatchy reports that 15 bodies were found in the streets of Baghdad on Thursday. In Basra, British forces killed 5 persons in clashes. In Baghdad, roadside bombs and mortar attacks killed more individuals and left dozens wounded.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is still insisting on leading a million man march next Thursday to the large Sunni city of Samarra, north of Baghdad (where a major Shiite shrine has twice been bombed). Iraqi politicians have warned that it would be a very dangerous move, and the Iraqi government is urging that it be postponed until the security situation might allow it.

Muqtada issued a statement denying rumors circulating among Sunni Arabs that he wants to lead a mob up to Samarra who would toss Sunni Arab families out of their homes and settle Shiites there, turning it into a Shiite city.

The same al-Hayat article says that some families are beginng to flee Samarra for fear that it will become a sectarian battleground if the march goes forward.

The Sunni Sheikh Abd al-Sattar Abd al-Jabbar, member of the Council of Clergy of Iraq, charged that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps intended to surreptitiously join the million man march into the Sunni heartland and to commit acts of violence during the rally. [This is a wild and inaccurate charge; I don’t believe there have been any IRGC fighters h\captured among the 19,000 guerrillas arrested by the US military.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is warning of a “vast and dangerous plot” by the “al-Qaeda” organization, which is preparing to move its activities to neighboring countries, though he did not name them.

The Voice of America reports that many in the Turkish public are worried that their military will make a cross-border incursion into Iraq to chase PKK Kurdish guerrillas holing up in Iraqi Kurdistan. Many doubt that such an incursion would actually resolve the problem of PKK terror attacks inside Turkey. The Turkish military has been shelling PKK positions in and around border villages inside Iraq, producing new refugees. Iraq didn’t need more of those.

The VOA article contains the depressing statistic that in recent polls, Turks named the United States as th number one threat to their well-being, after the terrorist group, the PKK:

‘ In a recent opinion poll measuring what people in Turkey perceive as the country’s biggest threat, the United States was first and Iraqi Kurds were second. Leyla Tausanoglu, a political columnist for the independent Cumhuriyet newspaper, says many Turks are skeptical of American plans because of the Iraq war, and are now suspicious of U.S. ties with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.’

Many Turks reason that the US is the military power in Iraq, and if 5,000 PKK guerrillas have safe harbor in Iraqi Kurdistan, it must mean that the US supports the PKK. (In fact, it is on the State Department list of terrorist organizations).

Before W. got into the White House and ruined the world, 56% of Turks had a favorable view of the United States and the country was a firm NATO ally. Last I knew, the favorability rating had fallen to 12%, largely because Turks are afraid Bush’s misadventure in Iraq will blow back on them. Now they think the US is a greater threat to them than the major terrorist organization that has menaced them for the past 30 years! It would be like the English public saying the US is a greater threat than the Irish Republican Army, or the French public saying the US is a greater threat than the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Armé).

You just want to weep and tear your hair out at the results of these polls around the world on what people think of the United States. It is as though they have concluded we are madmen bent on messing up their lives. And, well, we did put W. in power at least once. It is like a 4-year-old with ADD having the power to order the Pentagon to do things.

The Sunni Arab bloc in parliament, the Iraqi Accord Front, continues to insist on Mahmud al-Mashhadani as speaker of the Iraqi parliament, while the Shiite and Kurdish parties insist that he has been dismissed from that post. Al-Mashhadani was accused of assaulting other MPs and has a record of making inflammatory comments.

Posted in Iraq | Comments Off