Bush uses Sudan, Iran Assets in Iraq US GIs Killed, Trapped in Bridge Rubble;
Al-Mashhadani Dismissed as Speaker;
Clashes, Demonstrations in Sadr City
Remember all that Bush administration bluster against Sudan? Turns out that the CIA is using Sudanese spies against the Iraqi guerrillas. Bush sees no enemies among the oil states, only opportunities to be exploited. Most Americans don't realize that Bush has also de facto deployed Iran-trained Badr Corps fighters against the Sunni Arabs in Iraq, as well. So Iran and Sudan are the great bogeymen in Bush rhetoric, but the pillars of his Iraq policy in reality.
That is why Senator Joe Lieberman's call for aggressive air strikes on Iran are unlikely to eventuate. Bush needs Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council in order to avoid immediate and complete defeat in Iraq, and SIIC is very, very close to Iran. Lieberman doesn't seem to understand, by the way, that Iraqi Shiites would mind the US bombing their coreligionists and would probably massacre the entire British garrison in Basra as well as interdict US fuel convoys to the north from Kuwait and Basra. His irresponsible warmongering would get a lot of US troops killed for no good reason. One only hopes he isn't talking this way primarily for the purposes of Israeli PM Ehud Olmert's rightwing government; he just met with Olmert and: "The two also discussed U.S. policy toward Iraq and the West's capabilities for dealing with the Iranian threat." If Lieberman and Olmert want to start another war, they should please do it themselves and leave American servicemen out of it.
Controversial speaker of the Iraqi parliament Mahmud al-Mashhadani (a Sunni Arab) has been ousted from his post by the combined opposition of Shiite, Kurdish and some Sunni Arab MPs. He has scuffled more than once with other MPs and was accused of using his bodyguards to abuse a Shiite representative from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). This Arabic report maintains that last week, special police commandos of the Interior Ministry had kidnapped some of al-Mashhadani's bodyguards. The police commandos are mainly Badr Corps, the paramilitary of SIIC. But Ibrahim Jaafari is alleged to have brought some Mahdi Army elements in, as well, late in his tenure. These are loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. PM Nuri al-Maliki has been conducting personal negotiations with the Mahdi Army to get al-Mashhadani's bodyguards released. So the speaker's bullying of the SIIC MP is rooted in resentment over the kidnapping, and isn't just a sign of him being bad-tempered. You get the sense that a session of the Iraqi parliament is sort of like Tony Soprano's family reunion.
I warned of this scenario in a piece for Salon last August.
Three US troops were announced killed on Sunday. Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that over 100 persons were killed or found dead in bombings, shootings and other violence in Iraq on Sunday.
The Iranian and Turkish militaries are coordinating artillery shelling of PKK Kurdish refuges along their borders with Iraqi Kurdistan. The two governments accuse the PKK (leftist Kurdish Workers Party) and its Iran branch, PEJAK, of blowing up things in their territory. Both Turkey and Iran have substantial Kurdish populations of their own, and they fear separatist sentiments among them lest they be dismembered. Iraqi Kurdistan has given safe harbor to some 5000 PKK guerrillas. Turkish authorities accused the PKK of a recent major bombing in the Turkish capital, Ankara. The US is said to be dismayed by this Turkish-Iranian cooperation. But Bush set the stage for it.
Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr condemned the Turkish shelling of Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday and threatened retaliation if it continues. Al-Sadr had angered Kurds on Saturday with his call for a postponement of the referendum on oil-rich Kirkuk being added to Kurdistan. He is now attempting to take the edge off by championing them against Turkey. This talk is mostly posturing, since Muqtada does not have forces in the north that could do anything to the Turks. (He has followers among the Iraqi Shiite Turkmen minority, but they are pro-Turkish).
Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that Muqtada also met late Sunday with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The two discussed a wide range of political and religious issues. The meeting was said to be intended by Sistani to "reassure" al-Sadr with regard to Sistani. The two have in the past sometimes had bad relations. I'd say that Sistani- al-Sadr cooperation would be just about Bush's worst nightmare in Iraq.
A guerrilla suicide bomber took out a bridge 6 miles from Mahmudiya (half an hour south of Baghdad) on Sunday. There was a US military checkpoint on the bridge that appears to have been hit, killing soldiers and pinning some under rubble:
' Soon the outpost sergeant in charge was organizing a search for his missing men, Smith said. The Armor Group team climbed up with first-aid kits, stretchers and other aid. With the Army's quick reaction force, they struggled to lift concrete shards off the men, pinned along the slope of what was once a roadway . . . Then a shout went up, "Morphine! Morphine!" and a black T-shirt-clad Briton administered painkiller to the freed man. "Another poor fellow looked crushed beneath a concrete slab," said Campbell of Armor Group. During the rescue, U.S. armored vehicles opened up with suppressing fire, possibly having spotted movement in the surrounding countryside, flat and baking in 100-degree-plus temperatures. '
No word, as I write, about the number of casualties. Apparently the bomb took out one lane of a two-lane bridge and the remaining lane has now been opened. It appears to be the way civilians got from Babil province and points south up to Baghdad and vice versa.
According to AP via The Age, a guerrilla using a fuel truck as a bomb blew up the police HQ in Al-Bu Ajil, a town near the city of Tikrit, destroying a building with 40 persons in it and more gathered around it. Early reports put the death toll at 15, with 50 wounded. It is said that some officers trapped in the rubble were calling for help with their cell phones. Unfortunately it appears that the death toll is likely to rise. Tikrit, north of Baghdad, is near the birthplace of Saddam Hussein.
Reuters reports other political violence on Sunday.
Among the major incidents reported by AP (link above) were firefights between US troops and local guerrillas in Shiite Sadr City or East Baghdad that left 5 Iraqis dead and 15 wounded. A big crowd appears to have gathered to protest, and US helicopters dropped warning flares on the demonstrators.
McClatchy reports that 15 bodies were found in the streets of Baghdad on Sunday, likely victims of sectarian death squads. A rash of bombings of gas stations hit Baghdad, leaving several persons dead or wounded.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson said Sunday that he would pull all US troops out of Iraq and not leave any in the country. His rival, Senator Hilary Clinton, has talked about the desirability of stationing US troops in Iraqi Kurdistan for some time to come. (! See first para. above).
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/11/2007 12:30:00 AM
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13 Comments:
I haven't heard Senator Lieberman plead for the avenging of the 34 dead sailors of the USS Liberty...
Mashhadani has always had a lot of enemies, especially the Americans. Why is the US not on the list of parties coordinating Mashhadini's ouster?
Juan Cole in August 2006 on the previous effort to remove Mashhadini. Masshadini on the US occupation. Mashhadini on the Jewish agenda he believes operates in Iraq.
The United States and its policies, especially US support for Zionism, are unpopular in the Middle East with everyone who is not directly on the US payroll.
There cannot be a legitimate Iraqi leadership that is not anti-American and anti-Israel like Sadr and Mashhadini, and if anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism could hold the interests represented by Sadr and Mashhadini together, then the US could survive its invasion of Iraq with its empire.
1- To pretend the US Embassy is silent, doing nothing to influence Iraqi politics, is to go along with and enable US influence over Iraqi politics.
2- US maneuvers in Iraqi politics, which isolate the only Iraqis who could be seen as legitimate leaders by the Iraqi population are the most effective possible anti-American policy because they hasten the breakup of the country which will end the US empire's reach into the Middle East.
The people effectively destroying the US position in the Middle East are not Sadr and Mashhadini, they are Rice and Crocker.
Here is where I think the next conceptual battle will be waged: will the United States leave in place the physical infrastructure to support a decades long occupation of Iraq, or will the United States leave Iraq in reality?
If we do not want to see the further decline of the United States as a moral / political / economic force in the world, I believe we must leave totally and completely.
Here is where Professor Cole could exercise intellectual and moral leadership in the immediate future: pointing out the dangers of occupation, and calling for a complete withdrawal. No troops. No bases.
Sentators Lieberman and Clinton get counsel and money from similar constituencies and will "stay the course" or push the envelope on Iran. Obama is learning. By mid 2008, he too will parrot the same concepts and thus past muster on "foreign policy experience."
Even a renegade Republican candidate may have trouble advocating an all-out withdrawal. The mega-bases are something of a "poison pill." One cannot abandon them, or their equipment, for fear they would come under hostile control. Willful demolition of facilities costing hundreds of billions would also be hard to swallow.
Either way, the post 2008 horizon is likely to fit tongue in groove with what Bush and Cheney would do anyway. Both can exit smirking.
What do you think of this quote from the story on ousted al-Mashhadani, in particular the open admission about participation or facilitation of sectarian killings?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/11/iraq.main/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Speaker removed
Iraqi parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani -- known for his blunt personality and lack of diplomacy -- was removed from his leadership post in a closed-door session Monday because of remarks he made last month, a Shiite lawmaker said.
...
As the parliamentary session descended into chaos, al-Mashhadani banged his gavel and chided his fellow legislators with a smile: "Three-quarters of those sitting here are responsible for displacement and killings; don't pretend to be the nationalists here."
Lawmakers groaned as al-Mashhadani adjourned the session.
CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq, Cal Perry, Saad Abedine and Jomana Karadsheh contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 CNN.
Mr Evans is partly correct, but the "US position in the Middle East" was effectively destroyed by Reagan/Bush first, and has only degenerated from there, provided of course that the US position was to promote peace and better relations amongst Middle East nations. This of course was never the case. From the perspective of the Imperial mind-set, the "US position" in West Asia is just dandy as it cares not one iota about the human cost--a most important, primary point proved by Imperial behavior over the prior 2 presidential administrations along with the current.
On Sistani and Sadr meeting, I think we'll soon see a very concentrated effort to use parliament to state on the record Iraqi's demand that US troops leave ASAP as with Bush's "Korea Model" noew out of the bag there is no longer any Iraqi politico who can say the US has good intentions and will eventually leave when its "mission" is completed.
Last, I see a particular stategic thread in the campaign to blow up certain bridges that will challelize the US's resupply routes and tactical movements which will eventually lead to increased ferocity of insurgent attacks on occupation forces.
I read somewhere that Israel is desperate to bring Syria into the Sunni Egyptian-Jordanian-Saudi camp and that the Syrian government is prepared to abandon the alliance with Iran. They have two conditions, the return of the Golan Heights to Syria, which Israel is prepared to do--but the sticking point is that they want the U.S. make nice with Syria, and that isn't happening.
So it seems you have the situation where Israel wants to coopt Syria, but the Neocon supporters of Israel want to keep beating Syria with a stick while Syria is desperately trying to kiss their hand. At this point it would be an improvement if the Neocons really DID take orders from Israel.
I'm really not sure about the impact of Sistani's "cooperation." From my limited knowledge, I believe traditional Shi'ite clerics are pacifist, and I don't think Sistani has done anything out of the ordinary in meeting and conversing with a politically powerful militia leader.
I think a pattern of deliberate "divide and conquer" is coming out more and more clearly in New York Times articles citing the comments of US generals in Iraq. The western powers have always used this tactic in the Middle East, from the time the French actually bombed Damascus and the Druze of the Hauran(Syria's breadbasket, but also the powerhouse of the anti-colonialist movement)...to the period of the creation of Israel where the Israelis "favored" the Druze, to the point where now the Druze chieftans--at least in Lebanon(Jumblatt) are no longer the "powerhouse of anti-colonialism" but just the opposite. By alternately persucuting and then favoring a minority in Egypt--the Copts, the British created the anti-Coptic/pro-Coptic furor in Egypt that is now taken up by the Mubarak from time to time. What the US is doing in Iraq has its roots in Bernard Lewis's work on the "Assassins"--his PhD thesis--for which he must have gotten his first job with British intelligence, and for which he was brought to the US. Not to say that Bernard Lewis was any more of an accurate academic theorist than Sir Walter Scott, whose novel, The Talisman, obviously became policy for the Foreign Office. Actually I think Sir Walter Scott--not to be confused with the Michael Scott of Roger Bacon's time, who translated Avicenna and Khuwarizmi into Latin--is also the bible of the thinkers in the Pentagon and the State Department today.
How to prevent an Iran war? Troops out now, that's how, whereupon, empowered by our victory over the powers that be, we go on to change the world. Then there'll be no war no more, nowhere, never, not even one.
The idea that the U.S. won't attack Iran because it would be a disaster is wishful thinking on your part. Even if the Bush Administration and crazies like Lieberman were able to envision the obvious disaster, it wouldn't even slow them down. If they thought they could get away with it, they would do it in a hearbeat. I don't think they even think complete chaos and a widening war in the Middle East is a bad thing. Bush just got rid of Pace, because he wants someone who will go along with attacking Iran. Frankly, I think it is inevitable. Congress should have already passed limitations on Bush expanding his bogus "War on Terrorism" into Iran and they are afraid to do so. The fact is Bush wants to go after Iran out of desperation for his failed presidency (and whatever religious lunacy he harbors) and Cheney has had a hard-on for it since the mid 90's. It will happen unless they are impeached and I think it is obivous that this Congress is unwilling to go to the mattresses with Bush. Logic and sanity has nothing to do with it.
Re: Conor's comment about Sistani and Sadr: You seem to forget that Sistani mobilized massive demonstrations which stopped Bush/USA from demolishing Sadr. Both Sistani and Sadr are sincere nationalists, they have a lot in common.
How to stop the bloodshed? Troops out now, that's how, whereupon, empowered by our victory over the powers that be, we go on to change the world - that there be no war no more, nowhere, never, not even one.
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