Informed Comment

First Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was read to step into the vacuum when the US was forced out of Iraq. He oddly said that Iran’s friends, including Saudi Arabia, would help in this task. The hyper-Sunni Saudi government is actually not very friendly with Shiite Iran at all.

Then Bush rattled sabers against Iran putting the regime in Tehran on the same level as al-Qaeda as a threat to US interests. That seems a bit shrill.

Then US troops arrested 7 Iranians, mostly part of a delegation of the electricity ministry, but swiftly later released them.

The problem with the two leaders talking big against one another is that the provocations might suddenly get out of hand and suddenly there would be a war.

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My Salon column for Wednesday is now available: “The war against Iraq’s prime minister:”

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are calling for Nouri al-Maliki’s ouster as a way of attacking Bush’s Iraq policy. But do they understand the consequences?”

Excerpt:

‘ In his remarks to the American Legion in Reno, Nev., Bush said that the Iraqi government was America’s shield in the region against both of these forces of “Islamic extremism,” and said of Maliki, “The prime minister of Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki, has courageously committed to pursue the forces of evil and destruction.”

Bush was defending Maliki, even at the cost of implausibly depicting the leader of the fundamentalist Shiite Islamic Call (al-Da’wa) Party as an opponent of Iran and Hezbollah, because the prime minister has been under virtual siege from Washington politicians for the past week and a half. He’s become the favorite whipping boy of opponents of continued U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Maliki has been unafraid to mount his own defense against his American critics. On Sunday, he slammed Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton for calling for the Iraqi parliament to oust him. He accused the senators of acting as if Iraq were “the feudal estate of this person or that,” a metaphor that went over the head of most American observers. Modern Iraqi political parties such as the Islamic Call were formed in part as a reaction against the landlord class that dominated Iraq under the British-installed monarchy. Maliki was saying the senators were bringing back colonialism and disregarding the Iraqi political process. “They are Democrats,” he quipped of Clinton and Levin, “so they should respect democracy and its results.” ‘

Read the whole thing.

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Barnett Rubin has just posted another entry in his brilliant series on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan.

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The great shame of it all is that Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General despite it being widely known that he had played a central role in attempting to authorize the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. He had tossed aside the US Constitution’s own prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” (such a wimpy bleeding-heart liberal document). It is an index of the corruption of the Republican Party, which then controlled Congress, that they made this man attorney general in the first place.

The great shame of it all is that Gonzales was hounded out of office not because he authorized torture and assaulted the basic principles of the US constitution, but because he fired US attorneys for partisan pro-Republican reasons. Torture people all you like, is the message he sent, but if you’re if you are fair to the opposing party, you are fired.

He tossed aside the Geneva Conventions, which were crafted to prevent any reemergence of Nazism in the post-war period. While Gonzales is not a Nazi, if you get rid of an anti-Nazi legal instrument you are in effect aiding and abetting potential fascism.

MSNBC wrote at the height of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which Gonzales had implicitly encouraged:

By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by NEWSWEEK [pdf], it was clear that Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the memo, which was written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told the president that Powell had “requested that you reconsider that decision.” Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future. “As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war,” Gonzales wrote to Bush. “The nature of the new war places a —high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.” Gonzales concluded in stark terms: “In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

The Geneva conventions, to which the United States is a signatory (i.e. it is a treaty with the force of American law) cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand.

The great shame of it all is that Gonzales is being ousted for what amounts to selectively abetting voter fraud.

His role as torturer-in-chief would not have forced him from office.

It is a great shame.

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A canny reader writes: “How appropriate that Gonzales’s resignation is effective September 17: September 17 is Constitution Day.”

On a related subject at Salon.com: “Did Chertoff lie to Congress about Guantánamo?”

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At the Global Affairs group blog, Farideh Farhi tells us how Tehran is reacting to the Bush adminstration’s threat to declare sections of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a ‘terrorist organization.

She argues that through such threats, Bush is merely strengthening the Iranian Right.

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Violence at Karbala, Baghdad, Falluja dogged the al-Maliki government on Monday, while the significance of the agreements reached by the presidential council on national reconciliation remained in doubt. Unless parliament passes them, they remain a dead letter. The Sunni Arabs continued to decline to rejoin al-Maliki’s government.

Meanwhile, the public health crisis that is Iraq worsened over the weekend:

The USG Open Source Center translates a report on Kurdistan television on a cholera outbreak in Sulaymaniya. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that there are fears of the disease spreading through the northern provinces.

Iraqi Kurdistan health minister announces five cholera deaths
Kurdistan Satellite TV
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Document Type: OSC Summary

Iraqi Kurdistan health minister announces five cholera deaths

The Kurdistan Region minister of health has announced, in a news conference, the death of five patients from cholera in the region, Kurdistan Democratic Party-run Kurdistan Satellite TV reported on 26 August.

The TV broadcast excerpts from a news conference by the regional minister of health, Ziryan Uthman, who announced the death of five people from cholera in the cities of Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. “There have been a few cases of diarrhoea recently in Kirkuk. There have been also about 2,000 cases of severe diarrhoea in Sulaymaniyah, and medical examinations showed that three of the cases in Sulaymaniyah were cholera cases. This means that most of the diarrhoea cases in Sulaymaniyah were cholera cases,” the minister said.

He added: “We have requested assistance from the World Health Organization, the Red Cross, and the centre’s Ministry of Health in Baghdad in fighting the disease.”

The minister said that the casualties were all elderly people suffering from other diseases. He added that “there are about 150 to 200 (cholera) cases in Sulaymaniyah”.

(Description of Source: Salah-al-Din Kurdistan Satellite TV in Sorani Kurdish — Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) satellite TV)

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Glenn Greenwald once remarked that “the highest achievement to which one can aspire in the neocon universe it to be compared to Winston Churchill.”

So Churchill would advocate another surge and toughing it out forever in Iraq, right? Here is what he wrote in 1922, a couple of years after Britain was awarded Iraq by the Versailles Treaty as a ‘mandate’ (i.e. colony). [Britain was forced out as mandatory power in Iraq in 1932, when it became an independent country, though of course it was influential until 1958.]

“Winston S. Churchill to David Lloyd George (Churchill papers: 17/27) 1 September 1922

I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible. Our forces are reduced now to very slender proportions. The Turkish menace has got worse; Feisal is playing the fool, if not the knave; his incompetent Arab officials are disturbing some of the provinces and failing to collect the revenue; we overpaid £200,000 on last year’s account which it is almost certain Iraq will not be able to pay this year, thus entailing a Supplementary Estimate in regard to a matter never sanctioned by Parliament; a further deficit, in spite of large economies, is nearly certain this year on the civil expenses owing to the drop in the revenue. I have had to maintain British troops at Mosul all through the year in consequence of the Angora quarrel: this has upset the programme of reliefs and will certainly lead to further expenditure beyond the provision I cannot at this moment withdraw these troops without practically inviting the Turks to come in. The small column which is operating in the Rania district inside our border against the Turkish raiders and Kurdish sympathisers is a source of constant anxiety to me.

I do not see what political strength there is to face a disaster of any kind, and certainly I cannot believe that in any circumstances any large reinforcements would be sent from here or from India. There is scarcely a single newspaper – Tory, Liberal or Labour – which is not consistently hostile to our remaining in this country. The enormous reductions which have been effected have brought no goodwill, and any alternative Government that might be formed here – Labour, Die-hard or Wee Free – would gain popularity by ordering instant evacuation. Moreover in my own heart I do not see what we are getting out of it. Owing to the difficulties with America, no progress has been made in developing the oil. Altogether I am getting to the end of my resources.

I think we should now put definitely, not only to Feisal but to the Constituent Assembly, the position that unless they beg us to stay and to stay on our own terms in regard to efficient control, we shall actually evacuate before the close of the financial year. I would put this issue in the most brutal way, and if they are not prepared to urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner I would actually clear out. That at any rate would be a solution. Whether we should clear out of the country altogether or hold on to a portion of the Basra vilayet is a minor issue requiring a special study. It is quite possible, however, that face to face with this ultimatum the King, and still more the Constituent Assembly, will implore us to remain. If they

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do, shall we not be obliged to remain? If we remain, shall we not be answerable for defending their frontier? How are we to do this if the Turk comes in? We have no force whatever that can resist any serious inroad. The War Office, of course, have played for safety throughout and are ready to say ‘I told you so’ at the first misfortune.

Surveying all the above, I think I must ask you for definite guidance at this stage as to what you wish and what you are prepared to do. The victories of the Turks will increase our difficulties throughout the Mohammedan world. At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”

From Martin Gilbert, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL IV, Companion Volume Part 3, London: Heinemann, 1977, pp. 1973-74.

From: This web site, winstonchurchill.org.

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