Holy Day attacks Kill at Least 56

Sunni Arab guerrillas seeking to provoke further fighting in Iraq's sectarian civil war targeted Shiites on the holy day of Ashura, Tuesday, killing 56 and wounding dozens. Many of the Shiites targeted were in smaller towns or cities, or were hit by mortar shells. The deployment of 11,000 men from the army and police in the holy city of Karbala forestalled attacks there.

Reuters reports this and other political violence. Note that Baladruz and Khaniqin, where Shiite mosques and worshippers were targeted, are east or northeast of Baghdad and are in mixed Sunni-Shiite regions.

McClatchy reports that a British base at Basra in the south received an intensive mortar shell bombardment on Ashura'. Some nationalistic Shiite militias in Basra deeply resent the foreign troop presence there.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush Comment on Najaf Farcical;
Hawatimah Tribe of Diwaniyah involved in Mahdist Uprising?

Attempts are being made to knock down all kinds of stories about the Najaf uprising. Bush expressed happiness that the Iraqi Army (actually the Badr Corps fundamentalist Shiite militia) acquitted itself well against the rebels. But in fact, the Iraqi security forces were surrounded, cut off and nearly destroyed by heavily armed cultists--and had urgently to call in US troops, tanks and close air support.

Bush told National Public Radio on Monday, "My first reaction on this report from the battlefield is that the Iraqis are beginning to show me something."

So does the US military not tell Bush when their Iraqi allies get into deep trouble fighting a few hundred cultists and they have to go bail them out? Or was Bush briefed on the situation and he came out and told a bald faced lie to the public about what had happened?

Either thing at a time the country is at war is truly horrifying.

The radical Sunni Arab newspaper Mafkarat al-Islam and the moderate Arab nationalist newspaperal-Zaman weighed in with yet a fourth account of the fighting in Najaf on Sunday and Monday.

In this one, an innocent poor little tribal group from Diwaniyah, the Hawatimah, got up a night-time convoy to the holy city of Najaf on their way to Karbala for Ashura. They happened to have raised anti-Iranian slogans and placards. (At night or early dawn? How could they be seen?) The evil Najaf government authorities, themselves proto-Iranian, suddenly and for no reason launched a massive attack on the Hawatimah, massacring them, as they approached Najaf. In this narrative, the Diwaniyah tribal group had nothing to do with any millenarian cult (al-Mahdawiyah), and were just killed at the instigation of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Badr Corps (pro-Iranian political and paramilitary groupings who basically run Najaf) because they dared object to Iranian influence in Iraq. It is even being alleged in al-Zaman that the Hawatimah were only implementing Bush administration strictures against Iranian machinations in Iraq.

Note that the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which controls Najaf, is Bush's major ally in Iraq even though it is close to Iran. Those fighting the Najaf government and Iraqi army forces were anti-Iranian. Rightwing bloggers seem confused on these points.

It is, of course, possible that the Hawatimah got caught up in the fighting between the Mahdawiyah and the Badr Corps as they were proceeding toward Karbala. And the Najaf authorities did themselve no favors by trying to depict this Shiite group as al-Qaeda (a hyper-Sunni movement) or related to the old Baath Party.

But the story in Mafkarat al-Islam makes no sense at all. If the Hawatimah convoy was heading to Karbala, why would it need to go into downtown Najaf? And what was a big convoy of armed tribesmen doing heading for downtown Najaf at night? At night? With Iraq's lack of security? The al-Zaman narrative even justifies them being heavily armed on the grounds that they were traveling at night. But doesn't explain why they were operating under cover of darkness in the first place. The traveling at night thing seems suspicious to me.

In contrast, al-Hayat reports in Arabic that its stringers interviewed residents of Zarqa just north of Najaf who confirmed that the Mahdist sect leader, Diya' Kazim Abd al-Zahra, who also went by Ahmad Hassaan al-Yamaani, of Diwaniyah, 38, had indeed bought orchards there and settled there with hundreds of followers. They kept bringing in truckfuls of sand. When asked why, they said that they wanted to build barriers to mark of "their property."

Hmm. The Mahdist leader was from Diwaniyah. The Hawatimah were from Diwaniyah and were coming in a big armed convoy at night toward Najaf.

If we set aside the claims of this group of Hawatimah to be innocent victims and assume that they were Mahdists coming to help with a planned assault on Najaf (empty and unguarded while all the other Shiites converged on Karbala for Ashura), then it would explain a lot. Heavily armed tribesmen could easily have overwhelmed the Iraqi army, if they had RPGs and automatic weapons. They would have the element of surprise, esprit de corps, and probably some would have served in the old Baath army and might well have much more military experience than the green Iraqi army troops thrown against them. Tribesmen are formidable and often outfitted like private armies. And if they were coming to support the Mahdawiyah cultists in the orchards, that explains where the high-powered weapons came from. They so devastated the Iraqi forces that the US had to send troops, tanks and helicopters to rescue the latter.

If we posit an involvement of the Hawatimah from Diwaniyah in the Mahdist uprising at Najaf, it raises the question as to whether they were the "rogue elements" that launched an uprising in Diwaniyah itself in late August, 2006. At the time, this violence was blamed on the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, but spokesmen for Muqtada at the time complained that "rogue elements" not under his control were stirring up trouble there. The Mahdawiyah was founded in 1999 by Abdul Zahra, a young civil engineer from Diwaniyah who had been a follower of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (Muqtada's father) but established a group that split off from the Sadrists.

Admittedly, a lot of what I have written is speculative, and I'm open to being corrected by better evidence. (That is the fate of all historians but especially those who try to catch history on the run.) But I think it is pretty easy to resolve the contradictions among the major accounts by assuming that this was a Mahdist uprising aimed at taking Najaf, centered on the coming of the Promised One, to which a group of Hawatimah clans were coming to lend aid. The Hawatimah story of their innocence, as reported in the Sunni press, seems to me to have a lot of holes in it.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole in Salon.com: Bush's Anti-Iran Fatwa

My Salon.com column this week is now available:
"The danger of Bush's anti-Iran fatwa":

The president's decision to use force against Iranian "agents" inside Iraq could snare innocent pilgrims, and raises the risk of open warfare.

Excerpt:

' George W. Bush last week announced that American troops in Iraq were henceforth authorized to "kill or capture" any Iranian intelligence agents they discovered in Iraq. The announcement came on the heels of his pledge in the State of the Union address to bring another aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, a move that clearly targeted Iran. A prominent Iranian parliamentarian responded to Bush's threat by saying, "Such an order is a clear terrorist act and against all internationally acknowledged norms." Iraq's deputy prime minister, meanwhile, put a pox on both Iran and the U.S. for conducting their geopolitical battle on Iraqi soil. '

Read the whole thing.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Mahdist Cult Almost Defeated Iraqi Army at Najaf
Wave of Bombings, Mortar attacks in Baghdad

Marc Santora of NYT reveals that the Iraqi army was very nearly overwhelmed and defeated by the Army of Heaven militia of the Mahdawiya millenarian movement near Najaf on the weekend. They had to call in not only US airstrikes but also US troops to save themselves from being surrounded and killed.

The Mahdawiya is a splinter group of the Sadr movement, which broke away in the late 1990s, and was led by Ahmad al-Hassaani al-Yamani of Diwaniya. He styled himself styled himself Ali b. Ali. b. Abi Talib, that is, he was claiming to be the return of an (otherwise unknown) son of Ali (d. 661), whom Shiites believe was the true successor to the Prophet Muhammad. The Mahdawiya leader is alleged to have been killed in Sunday's battle.

Al-Hayat's identification of this movement with another Sadrist splinter group, that of Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi, appears to have been incorrect.

The buzz in the Right blogosphere that the Mahdawiya is somehow linked to Iran is a profound falsehood. Sadrist splinter groups in Iraq generally are Iraqi nativist and deeply distrust Iran. These cultists wanted to kill Sistani (an Iranian).

The LA times reports:

' Every day someone claims he's the Mahdi," [Iraqi security official Ali Nomas] said.

Nomas said the leader of the hitherto unknown Heaven's Army had told followers that he was a missing son of the Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. Ali's remains are entombed in Najaf.

"They believe that the Mahdi has called them to fight in Najaf," Nomas said, adding that fighters had converged on the Najaf area from other predominantly Shiite cities in Iraq.

He lamented that Iraq's death and destruction had convinced some Shiites that the end of days was coming.

"There's nothing bizarre left in Iraq anymore," Nomas said in a telephone interview. "We've seen the most incredible things." '

McClatchy wire service gives some more details of the leader, including further pseudonyms.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Ahmad al-Hassaani claimed to have descended directly from the heavens.

For more on the ideas of al-Hassaani, see Reider Vissar's comments at Helena Cobban's Just World News.

The claim of the Najaf authorities that the Mahdawiya has "al-Qaeda" ties is just propaganda and should not be taken seriously. They are embarrassed that there was Shiite on Shiite violence.

Dan Murphy of CSM has more on the background of Shiite millenarianism. I am quoted to the effect that the hatred of the Mahdawiya for the grand ayatollahs is akin to the sentiment among some Protestants that the pope is the anti-Christ.

Reuters reports numerous car bomb and mortar attacks in Baghdad on Monday. Also a sectarian attack in Kurdish territory:

' *TUZ KHURMATO - Five worshippers were killed when a rocket propelled grenade hit a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Tuz Khurmato, 70 km south of Kirkuk, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three mortars killed 11 people and wounded 28 more in Zaafaraniya, southeast of Baghdad, a police source said . . .

BAGHDAD - A bomb planted inside a minibus killed four people and wounded five others near al-Mustansiriya Square in northeastern Baghdad, police said. . .'

McClatchy says that police found 21 bodies in Baghdad on Monday. There was also heavy fighting in Baquba, Diyala province.

LAT also reports on the renewed tensions over the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra, the blowing up of which last Feb. threw Iraq into a whole new level of communal violence.

'OK, if you say so' Department:

The USG Open Source Center translates:

Iraqi Kurdish leader, Al-Sadr delegation discuss ties
Kurdistan Satellite TV
Monday, January 29, 2007 T14:46:23Z

Iraqi Kurdish leader, Al-Sadr delegation discuss ties

Text of report by Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) satellite TV on 29 January

(Iraqi) Kurdistan Region President Mas'ud Barzani received yesterday a delegation of the Al-Sadr Current, led by the head of the movement's bloc in parliament, Nassar al-Rubay'i, and comprising Al-Sadr leadership member and MP Falah Hasan Shanshal, leadership member and head of parliament's Legal Committee Baha al-A'raji and leadership member and MP Salih Hasan Al-Agili.

In a meeting, relations between the people of Kurdistan and the Al-Sadr Current were discussed and the need for further cooperation in moving Iraq's political process forwards was stressed. Moreover, views on the security situation in Baghdad were exchanged.

The visiting delegation shed light on the Al-Sadr Current's operations within the political process and in the federal government of Iraq.

The need for cooperation between the people of Kurdistan and the Al-Sadr Current, with a view to serving the interests of the people of Iraq, was stressed.

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

City/Source: Salah-al-Din

Muqtada is also sending his people to talk to fundamentalist Sunni leaders.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is still promoting the idea of a Shiite regional confederacy, an idea the Sunni Arabs and the (Shiite) Sadrists vehemently oppose.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole Interview on CNN Monday

Cole on CNN.

YOUR WORLD TODAY Aired January 29, 2007 - 12:00 ET

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, from the raging battle outside Iraq, to the political posturing by Washington and Tehran, what's really at stake? Earlier, we spoke with Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan, first asking him about that cult that was allegedly aiming to reshape religious and political history.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JUAN COLE, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: The Iranians are coming into Iraq for development aid. They've pledged a billion dollars, there are going to be joint refineries. And the U.S. announcement that it would kill or capture anyone that it thought was an intelligence agent has the potential for roiling relationships between the two.

CLANCY: Now, the U.S., Washington, clearly upset with Iran's nuclear program, but it's important to remember here there's a complete difference between Iran and other countries in the Middle East, and that's say it's not only because it's Shia, and these are Iranians and the other countries are Arabs. It's because if you go to the street in Iran, you will find people that are very supportive of Americans, want good relationships, while leadership is very anti- American.

This is the opposite what you find in other Arab countries. How important is it for Washington to take that into account as they go ahead with what appears to be confrontational policy?

COLE: Well, the Iranian public is very pro-American, and it's one of the few publics in the Middle East, I think, that would reform, if it could, in a way that was friendly to U.S. interests. If the United States goes into a frontal confrontation with Iran, however, it will push the Iranian public away. The Iranians are very nationalistic and they don't want to be dominated by the U.S.

CLANCY: Let's go back and focus though on the situation in Iraq. This short-term troop increase appears to be a last-ditch effort to improve security in the country.

What chance does this mission have and the overall mission in Iraq?

COLE: Well, I think it's very difficult for the United States to establish security in Iraq now. We simply don't have enough troops to do proper counterinsurgency. And the country really is now mobilized politically.

As we have just seen, you know, the Shiite south was considered to be relatively calm. Then out of nowhere you get this millenarian movement that thinks the promised one of Islam is about to come, and invades Najaf, so the country is really in a great deal of chaos. And securing a few neighbors in Baghdad just isn't going to do it.

CLANCY: What would do it? Will anything do it? Does anyone have an answer?

COLE: Well, I think the big Iraqi political leaders, who are usually communal leaders as well, need craft a national pact, a compromise that they can all live with and convince each other to put away their arms. This is the kind of thing that ended the Lebanese civil war in 1989. That's the only thing really that would work in Iraq.

CLANCY: We don't see much leadership there in Baghdad. Often the elected leaders wait until someone form outside the country comes in with these ideas.

Does Iraq have a leadership problem?

COLE: Well, there are big communal leaders -- Abdul Aziz al- Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Kurdish leaders. The problem is that they're not willing to compromise with one other.

They're pushing for their maximum goals. And I think the U.S. could do the most good by just knocking some heads together and getting them to compromise.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CLANCY: Some advice there for Washington coming from Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Fighters for Shiite Messiah Clash with Najaf Security, 250 Dead
Over 60 Dead in Baghdad, Kirkuk Violence

Well, a big battle took place at the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday night into Sunday, but there are several contradictory narratives about its significance. Iraqi authorities, claimed that the Iraqi army killed a lot of the militants (250) but only took 25 casualties itself. The Shiite governor of Najaf implied that the guerrillas were Sunni Arabs and had several foreign Sunni fundamentalist fighters ("Afghans") among them. He said that they based themselves in an orchard recently purchased by Baathists. Other sources said that the militants were Shiites. I'd take the claim of numbers killed with a large grain of salt, though the Iraqi forces did have US close air support. I infer that the guerrillas shot down one US helicopter.

That's one narrative. Here is another. The pan-Arab London daily al-Hayat reported that the militiamen were followers of Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. It says one of his followers asserted that the fighting erupted when American and Iraqi troops attempted to arrest al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. The latter tried last summer to take over the shrine of al-Husayn in Karbala. It may have been feared that he would take advantage of the chaos of the Muharram pilgrimage season to make a play for power in Najaf. Al-Hayat says that although As'ad Abu Kalil, governor of Najaf, said the attackers were Sunnis, the director of the information center in Najaf, Ahmad Abdul Husayn Du'aybil, contradicted him. The latter said, "At dawn, today [Sunday], violent clashes took place between security forces and an armed militia calling itself "the Army of Heaven," which claims that the Imam Mahdi will [soon] appear." He added, "The goal of this militia is the killing of clergymen and the grand ayatollahs." The group follows Ayatollah Ahmad al-Hasani al-Sarkhi, called al-Yamani, who is said by his followers to be in direct touch with the Hidden Imam or promised one. In the fighting 10 Iraqi security police were killed and 17 wounded. One official said that the death toll among the militants was not known.

Al-Hayat, however, quotes a member of the group, Abu al-Hasan, who is said to be close to al-Hasani al-Sarkhi. He said that the rumors that the group intended to conduct a campaign of assassinations inside Najaf was "devoid of truth." It says that an attempt had been made to arrest al-Hasani al-Sarkhi, who was present in the al-Zarkah, an agricultural area east of Najaf, which caused his followers to revolt.

Al-Hasani al-Sarkhi's followers had earlier burned down the Iranian consulates at Basra and Karbala, and demonstrated in Hilla and elsewhere.

Sawt al-Iraq in Arabic says that a number of al-Hasani al-Sarkhi's aides were arrested early last week as part of the current crackdown in preparation for the American surge.

Then there is yet a third narrative. Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that on Saturday night into Sunday morning, a Shiite millenarian militia calling itself "The Army of Heaven" (Jund al-Sama') attempted to move south from the Zarqa orchards just north of Najaf to assassinate the four grand ayatollahs of Najaf-- Ali Sistani, Bashir Najafi, Muhammad Ishaq Fayyad and Muhammad Said al-Hakim. The holy city of Najaf, where Ali is buried, is the seat of Shiite religious authority in Iraq. The militiamen, devotees of an obscure religious leader named Ahmad Hassaani, are said to have infiltrated the area from Hillah, Kut and Amara. The well-armed, black-clad militiamen were heard to call upon the Mahdi, the awaited Promised One of the Muslims, to return on that night.

This group is not the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which bears no enmity toward the grand ayatollahs, but rather a separate and different sect altogether. Shiite clerics told the NYT that the sect is the Mahdawiya of Ahmad al-Basri (possibly Ahmad Hassaani al-Basri?). Although the NYT was told that this millenarian sect (it believes that the end of time is around the corner) was supported by Saddam, you can't pay any attention to that sort of allegation when it comes to Iraqi sectarianism.

It seems most likely that this was Shiite on Shiite violence, with millenarian cultists making an attempt to march on Najaf during the chaos of the ritual season of Muharram. But who knows? It is also possible that the orthodox Shiites in control of Najaf hate the heretic millenarians and the threat of the latter was exaggerated. Darned if I know. The reports of the Army of Heaven being so well armed make no sense if it was a ragtag millenarian band. But those reports could be exaggerations, too.

It seems most likely that the Mahdawiya is the sect of Sheikh Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi and that al-Basri was the founder of the sect. That would be a way of reconciling al-Zaman with al-Hayat.

The dangers of Shiite on Shiite violence in Iraq are substantial, as this episode demonstrated. Ironically, given Bush's mantra about Iran, the trouble makers here are a sect that absolutely hates Iran.

According to Reuters, Sunday would have been a horror show in Iraq even if you hadn't had the Najaf clashes. Three US troops were killed Sunday, and more were announced killed. Police found 29 bodies in the capital, victims of sectarian violence. Over 20 people died in bombings in the capital, including a mortar strike on a girl's school. More deadly bombings in the northern oil city of Kirkuk.

NYT strikes me as being a little breathless about Iranian plans for investment and development aid in Iraq. These plans were negotiated by two Iraqi prime ministers, Ibrahim Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki on trips to Iran where wreaths were laid on the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini. They were reported on at length at the time of those visits, and there is nothing new here. As for American officials, when asked about such plans in the past, they said that they hoped Iraq would have good relations with all its neighbors and understood that there would be economic relations with Iran. I can't see what the big crisis is. By the way, the Iranians are building an airport at Najaf to bring in the Shiite pilgrims, too.



Hillar Rodham Clinton made the reasonable point that George W. Bush has a responsibility to get the US back out of Iraq and end the quagmire by January 2009, instead of bequeathing this disaster to his successor.

Unfortunately, Cheney, who really decides these things, thinks the US will be there for decades. Of course in the 1940s Winston Churchill thought Britain would be in India for decades. Dreams of empire die hard; empire, that goes away quickly.

Sabrina Tavernise of the NYT says goodbye to Iraq and to any illusions she might have had. She's done a great job there, and has illumined the situation for us in a clear-eyed way. She also told us more about the situation of women and families than most other reporters.

You have to wonder whether Iraq can any longer be reported on in any ordinary sense of the word.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Elhanan Guest Editorial: Another Way for Israel

Another Way for Israel

Elik Elhanan
Combatants for Peace
Via The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace

This is the message we want to bring to the American Jewish community: Let us try another way. In the eyes of many, the key to this conflict lies in the US. Your support is invaluable just as the lack of it is disastrous. Israel is now refusing to negotiate with Syria, the reason being that Washington wants it so. My question is: What do you want?

For many people in Israel this bleak picture serves to prove that indeed there is no partner and that the formula of land for peace does not work. These attitudes are supported by the political system both in Israel and internationally, and are frequently promoted by the media as undisputable truths. Both societies, the Palestinian and the Israeli, seem to be locking themselves in a violent nationalistic mindset where the needs of the other simply do not exist.

How should one deal with such a situation? The simplest answer would be to play along. The other answer is to confront these false notions, to insist on telling truth to power, to work and expose the contradictions that exist in any black-and-white vision of reality.

Our organization, Combatants for Peace, is trying to do just that. Through our dialogue group, where Israeli and Palestinian former combatants meet regularly, we try to touch the hearts and minds of both societies. We try to help our communities become more aware of the reality of the other side, so that nobody can say "I didn’t know." We want Israelis to comprehend the full scale of the oppression inherent to the Israeli occupation, and we want the Palestinians to know that behind the occupation there are humans, who are also suffering. We want both sides to understand the price of violence. Our message is simple: Peace is possible. The only way to reach peace is through dialogue and negotiations, and the only solution is a two state solution -- an end the occupation, in keeping with UN resolutions.

People frequently respond to us as if we were detached from reality, yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Our Palestinian members were all active in violent opposition to the occupation, serving long prison terms for their activities; the Israelis among us all served many years as combat soldiers on the conflict's front lines. We know the lay of the land, and we know the reality. We know the price we’ll have to pay for peace, and we’ve learned with our very flesh that the price of war is a hundred times greater. We live among our peoples and we see and suffer the consequences of this conflict.

People often say "but you're just a few good people. The majority feels differently." But this is not the case. First of all, we’re not good people. Indeed, until not long ago, we were very bad. As soldiers we killed and maimed, we bombed and tortured. Our Palestinian counterparts stabbed, and shot and planted bombs, killing and maiming as they went.

But we’ve changed. We understood that power has limits and that violence can only lead to more violence; that non-violence is better, as both a tactic and as way of life. Like us there are many more "bad" people who might change, who will change, if they’re given just a bit of hope.

In some cases our members are even treated as traitors. But we have all proven our merits in long years of service. Though we're presented as radicals, we don't contest the national values of our respective peoples; on the contrary, we struggle for them. We don't contest the right of Israel to exist in security and prosperity; nor do we contest the right of the Palestinians to resist the occupation and achieve their own state. We question only the methods that have been employed to achieve these goals in the past. These methods were not only ineffective, they were wrong.. Israel is not safe, Palestine is not free, and only the cemeteries are flourishing. Let us try another way.

It is very easy not to believe in peace. The chances of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian agreement in the near future seem slimmer than ever. The mistaken perception that Israel has “no partner” and that “we gave everything and got nothing” is still widely held. The radical elements currently in play in both political systems, Hamas on one hand and right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman on the other, combined with the violence between Israel and the Palestinians, between the Palestinian factions, and between Israel and its neighbors can make the search for peace seem at the very least misguided.

Elik Elhanan
Combatants for Peace
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

7 US Troops Killed
Bombing kills 13 in Baghdad, 40 Bodies Found
Massive Anti-War Protest on Mall in DC

It was announced Saturday that 7 US soldiers have been killed by guerrillas deploying roadside bombs in the past 3 days.

I cannot see any sign in this Reuters roundup of violence in Iraq on Saturday that guerrillas in Baghdad are lying low or relocating in expectation of the arrival of further US troops.

Police gathered the usual macabre harvest of 40 tortured bodies in the capital. Guerrillas cheekily fired rockets into the Green Zone, the US HQ in Iraq. They detonated car bombs in one neighborhood, killing 13 and wounding 43. Guerrillas dressed as special police commandos kidnapped 8 persons from a computer store downtown. In Diyala province, guerrillas attempting to elude US troops were bombed to death by the US from the air. In Ramadi, a member of the Iraqi National Congress, a secular party headed by Ahmad Chalabi, was kidnapped and killed.

In the US, tens of thousands of protesters gathered at the Mall in a major rally against the Iraq War.

That event was not the only reminder of the Vietnam era. Senator John Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, remembers with regret not having spoken out more forcefully during the Vietnam War, when the generals kept coming and saying they just needed another increas of 10,000 troops to win this thing.

Iraq much more than Vietnam can only be settled through political negotiation, as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki on Friday. It is unlikely that the extra troops the US has available could prevail in the sense of bringing order to the country or even just the capital (see the opening paragraph for what such order does not look like).

Tehran is trying to control the flow of thousands of Shiite pilgrims into Iraq for the commemoration on Tuesday of the martyrdom of al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Husayn's tomb is at Karbala in Iraq, a holy site for Iran's some 62 million Shiites. My advice to the US military is not to try to kill or capture these thousands of Iranian pilgrims even if some of them may be spies--whatever Bush says. Shiites are touchy during Muharram, especially about infidels killing or capturing them in their own holy land, where they don't think the infidels have any business being in the first place.

The US is building an alliance with 50 tribal sheikhs in Ramadi. The US military reports good results in the sense that entire neighborhoods controlled by Sunni militants are now rare. But the radical Salafis clearly still have a presence in the city, and tribal sheikhs are notoriously factional and fickle. I'd say that is a check that may well bounce. The larger problem is that people in Ramadi just don't want US troops there, and don't want Shiite or Kurdish troops there, either. To the extent that the sheikhs are successful in authorizing and allowing the recruitment of local police, that might be a real achievement. On this one, I'm from Missouri (i.e., "show me!").

The Bush administation upbraided Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma who called Bush's war on Iraq on the basis of its possession of WMD a "mistake". Isn't that just common knowledge? Why protest such an obvious statement? The new Abe government is rapidly slipping in the polls at home, and is presumably more afraid of the Japanese public than it is of Bush, who owes the Japanese a lot of money. A big majority of Japanese in polls opposed the extension of the Japanese Self Defense Forces mission in Samawa, Iraq, which was therefore withdrawn. Bush has fewer friends abroad with every passing day. Aznar of Spain, Berlusconi of Italy, Koizumi in Japan-- who used to run interference for him-- are all gone.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Dabbous Guest Editorial: Getting Home in Beirut

My View from our Sunni-Beiruti Neighbourhood

Eugène Richard Sensenig-Dabbous

'For those of you who know Beirut, I drove from my office at the Maronite Catholic Notre Dame University Zouk Mosbeh up the hill from Jounieh) Thursday, via Sassine Square to Sodeco/Damascus Street at the north-western edge of predominantly Eastern Orthodox Achrefieh, on my way home from work. Crossing Bechara El Khoury Avenue (where his statue stands) I wanted to traverse this major metropolitan intersection in order to drive straight towards Basta and ultimately reach Mar Elias Street, which I call home. The police wouldn't allow me to drive forward and they didn't have a clue what a resident should do.

So I did what many say was the worst possible thing, I must have had a guardian angel or God was watching over this lost soul; I turned left down Bechara El Khoury Avenue toward Barbir and then took the first available right turn, hoping to drive to the main road above the Salim Slem highway tunnel, which leads to the Sports Centre and the Rafic Hariri International Airport; and of course to the predominantly Shi'ia, Hizbollah controlled, suburban towns called Dahiyeh.

Burning all bridges

I drove right into street fighting in Barbour & Wata Mossaitbe, hardcore Amal territory. Looking up the streets I crossed, as I drove in the direction of Mar Elias Street and Mossaitbe proper, I could see burning tires at both ends of these streets. In this pocket of Shi'ia minority population, an island in a larger Sunni sea of humanity, people looked as scared as everyone I had seen in my neighbourhood, as they were terrorising us the previous Tuesday. I guess in the end it really doesn't matter "who started it!"

I parked my semi-new, but very dirty Toyota Corolla in front of the Sunni mosque above the Salim Slem highway tunnel; I couldn't drive into Mossaitbe because guys with yellow scarves were blocking the access roads. So I walked home, past the large Baptist School and the inconspicuous Shi'ia Husseinnyah (prayer centre). Dima wasn't home; she was out getting the army and local Sunni vigilantes to find me. These young boys are primitively armed with broom sticks and wooden flag poles, baseball bats haven't caught on yet in this otherwise very trendy country, thank God!

We then gave a young fighter (who turned out to be Shi'ia) my car keys and begged him to go up on his motor scooter and retrieve my car. He came back 10 minutes later, having traversed the various road blocks. As night fell and the curfew was introduced, Dima and I were safe at home and her daughter Farah was at her grandparents, only 5 blocks away, but not within reach because she would have had to cross Mar Elias Street. The Syrian and Palestinian snipers, who many claim have been brought into town by the Ba'ath Party and the Damascus secret service, in order to kill indiscriminately and thus lead us all to another civil war, were shooting at civilians on Mar Elias Street, so you didn't want to be out on foot either.

What is to be done?

It's now Saturday morning and we have had a full day of "normality," i.e. guarded peace or at least no immediate threat of open violence. I have been asking around about what the next step could be, in order that none of the conflicting parties loses face and we can return to our jobs, be with our families and help develop this amazingly thriving country and ensure that it reaches its full potential. Nobody seems to know. Most are still concentrating on the blame game. I guess you can indeed teach young dogs old tricks.

I suggest that those of us who are of good faith and actually care about all the people of this country, concentrate on things that can be dealt with immediately and solved in the foreseeable future. These include 1) a debate on the Draft Election Law of 31 May 2006; 2) a movement to enforce the already existing regulations on quarrying stone, gravel and sand (so closely linked to the re/construction industry); and 3) discussing the social implications of the Paris III agreement for the middle classes and working poor. These three issues are all largely technical and affect the overwhelming majority of the population equally. Let's allow doing hard work and re-establishing cooperation be the litmus test to determine who really cares about Lebanon. '

Greetings from Mossaitbe,

Eugen Dabbous

Professor Eugène Richard Sensenig-Dabbous, MA PhD
sensenig a_t_ cyberia d o t net d o t lb

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Gul: A Partitioned Iraq Means "Endless War"
Bombings, Killings in Baghdad Leave 50 Dead

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is warning the US not to just leave Iraq in chaos, allowing a civil war that leads to partitioning the country-- a situation that he says will lead to "endless war." Gul is right about all that. If Iraq breaks up, it will undo the post- WW I Lausanne settlement altogether and open all the cans of worms in the Middle East at once. He says it might draw Turkey into Iraq. But it would also draw Iran and Saudi Arabia in.

Bombing of a Shiite mosque in Mosul during the beginning of the month of Muharram, the most sacred 10 days of the Shiite ritual calendar: Not good.

McClatchy wire service reports that 27 bodies were found in Baghdad on Friday.

In the western Baghdad districts of Shurta, Khamsa, Rai and Muwasalat, Iraqi police and guerrillas fought running street battles.

Guerrillas detonated a bomb at Alawi al-Hilla in downtown Baghdad, killing 2 Iraqi soldiers and injuring 14 other persons.

Clashes in and around Muqdadiyah in Diyala Province east of Baghdad left several people dead and dozens injured. In Barwana and Thiyaba villages outside the city took deadly mortar fire.

Reuters reports on political violence on Friday in Iraq. A bombing of the Ghazil pet market in Baghdad killed 15 and wounded 55.

Another bombing near a Shiite mosque killed 2.

Another US GI was killed at Fallujah.

There were other assassinations and bombings around the country.

Bush says US troops are authorized to "kill or capture" suspected Iranian intelligence agents operating in Iraq. Thousands of Iranians go in and out of Iraq as pilgrims to the Shiite holy sites, so personally I'm skeptical you can know which ones are spies. And, like, it wouldn't be good to kill the pilgrims. Might cast the US in a bad light with the Shiites and all that. I'd say this man is looking for a pretext for another war.

Plus, when you look at where US troops are being killed, it is in Sunni Arab al-Anbar Province, and Sunni Arab Salahuddin, Diyal, Mosul, and West Baghdad. Those Sunni guerrillas are not being helped by Iran. They are being helped by Sunnis in countries allied to the US.

And then, the US hold over 10,000 prisoners swept up on suspicion of insurgent activity in Iraq. What number of them is Iranians? Slim to none. More Syrians and Jordanians and Saudis by far than Iranians.

So if 99 percent of the problem is with the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, why all this big talk about Shiite Iran?

Because this man is looking for a pretext for another war.

Tom Engelhardt says that the rural areas of the US are paying the price of the Iraq War.

AP is reporting new details on the killing of 5 US troops in an operation that began at Karbala a few days ago. The troops were helping plan security precautions to stop Shiite pilgrims being blown up during the Muharram commemorations of the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson, al-Husayn. Guerrillas dressed in US uniforms and speaking English showed up, infiltrated the building, killed a GI, and captured 4 others, taking them to Mahawil in Babil province, and then executing them there.

Mahawil, a mixed Sunni-Shiite city, is a Sunni Arab guerrilla arena of action, and it now seems likely to me that this was a Sunni Arab operation aimed at harming security arrangements. Shiite Mahdi Army ghetto militiamen don't know English. If I were in charge of Karbala, I'd put extra extra security around the city for Tuesday's Ashura commemoration of Imam Husayn's martyrdom. The only thing I can't figure out is that it clearly was an inside job, and so how would there have been Sunni Arab guerrilla sympathizers at this police and army meeting at Shiite Karbala. Maybe mixed units were involved?

This is a good roundup of the week's events in Iraq. That only 160 of 275 members of parliament were present for the vote on al-Maliki's security plan is incredible. That is barely a quorum (a simple majority is 138) for perhaps the most important vote parliament will take this year.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Karrada Bombing kills 26, 40 Bodies Found
Maliki Threatens Sunni MP


Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq's ongoing civil war.

In Baghdad:

*Police found 40 bodies on Thursday, most of them showing signs of torture.

*Guerrillas set off a car bomb in a shopping district of the Karrada neighborhood of downtown Baghdad, killing 26 persons and wounding 40.

*Guerrillas detonated a car bomb in the Muraidi market of Sadr City (Shiite east Baghdad), killing one person and wounding 13.

*Guerillas fired rockets into the Green Zone in central Baghdad, site of the US embassy and Iraqi government offices. The attack seriously wounded one person and lightly injured 5 others. The Green Zone has often taken mortar fire, but seldom has suffered casualties. That nearly 4 years into the war, the US HQ in Iraq is subjected to rocket fire just underlines how helpless Gulliver is before the supposed Lilliputians.

Guerrillas set off other bombs in Baghdad, some of which killed as many as 4 persons. There were also bombings in Tal Afar and Fallujah, and violence in several other cities.

The NYT reports that PM Nuri al-Maliki presented his security plan to parliament for approval. Sunni Arabs claimed that the plan punished Sunnis and let Shiite militias off the hook. In the course of the debate, he got into a shouting match with a Sunni Arab MP, Abdul Nasser al-Janabi, whom he then accused of being directly involved in the kidnapping of 150 persons from his district.. The PM threatened to release information about the man. The speaker of the house Mahmoud al-Mashahani tried to call for order, then threatened to resign, himself. In the end, the plan was passed by parliament, but only after an ugly scene in which Sunni-Shiite conflict and resentments erupted.

Al-Janabi is a member of the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalists). Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that after the meeting, al-Janabi attempted to approach al-Maliki, but the security would not let him get close.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr gave its unstinting support to al-Maliki's security plan. It was speculated that this step is an attempt to avoid a confrontatation with US forces. The London daily also confirms that the Sadrists have appointed a negotiator to talk directly to the Americans on behalf of the commanders of the Mahdi Army militia. It says that some Mahdi Army commanders have scattered to Kut, Babil and Taji or even to neighboring countries, and that al-Maliki has avoided having to choose between his American partners and his Sadrist allies by convincing the Mahdi Army to fade away for the moment. It says US ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad expressed concern that gunmen in Iraq may go into hiding during the US "surge," and then reappear when it is over.

I think that is what Gen. Abizaid tried to warn about when he argued against an escalation.

Iraq is in talks with Chevron and Exxon regarding the building of a $3 bn. oil facility.

When I said that the attack on the US embassy in Athens would prove to have something to do with the Amerian war in Iraq, there were those that scoffed.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Battle at Haifa Street kills 30
Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejects Escalation

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 12 to 9 for a non-binding resolution condemning the Bush administration's escalation of the war. All but one of the 10 Republicans on the committee voted against it. The dissenter was Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

US forces with some Iraqi army accompaniment fought a pitched battle with Sunni Arab guerrillas at Haifa street just north of the Green Zone that houses government offices and the US embassy. They killed thirty persons whom they identified as "insurgents".

That Iraqi guerrillas killed 3 more US troops was announced on Wednesday.

Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

* Police found 33 bodies in Baghdad. Several showed signs of having been tortured.

*Guerrillas clashed with Iraqi army troops in Suwayra 25 miles south of the capital. 3 soldiers are said to be missing.

Iraqi Shiites rejected Bush's comparison of Iraqi Shiite militias to al-Qaeda. They said that the militias are mainly neighborhood protection committees, not a global terrorist organization aimed at the US.

Patrick Cockburn of the Independent continues his indispensable and clear-eyed reporting from Iraq with this piece on the paralysis of Baghdad. Major points:

*The crew of the Blackwater helicopter may have survived being shot down, but then they appear to have been executed on the ground.

*The toney al-Mansur district of Baghdad is now too dangerous to visit and its posh restaurants have long been closed.

*Baghdad residents are being shanghaied into militia service.

*Baquba is very dangerous but is not addressed in the Bush Baghdad/al-Anbar escalation plan.

The Palestinians, kicked out of their own country by groups like the Stern Gang, are now being kicked out of Iraq. The Palestinians are a homeless nation.

The average percentage by which esteem for the US fell in a BBC poll of publics in 25 country was 7%, i.e. from 36% to 29% in just a couple of years. In the late Clinton period, 75 percent of Indonesians reported that they held the US in high regard. It is now less than 30%.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraqi Television on Bush's State of the Union

It is odd that US media seem completely uninterested in how Bush's State of the Union speech was received in Iraq, where half of it would be implemented. The Open Source Center of the US Government did a report on this issue, below. Note that former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari says that Iraq does not need the 21,500 US troops Bush is planning to send. Jaafari worked closely with the Americans as prime minister and his views should be considered. The report follows:

=======

Iraqi TVs' Treatment of President Bush's State of the Union Address
Iraq -- OSC Report
Thursday, January 25, 2007 T01:06:19Z . . .

Cairo Al-Rafidayn Satellite Channel in Arabic -- Pro-Sunni, anti-US Iraqi channel believed to be affiliated with the Association of Muslim Scholars;

Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah Television in Arabic -- government-sponsored television station, run by the Iraqi Media Network;

Cairo Al-Baghdadiyah Satellite Television in Arabic -- Private Iraqi television known for its opposition to the US presence in Iraq;

Baghdad Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic -- Independent, private news and entertainment channel focusing on Iraq, run by Sa'd al-Bazzaz, publisher of the Arabic-language daily Al-Zaman; and

Baghdad Baghdad Satellite Television in Arabic -- television channel believed to be sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party

-- are observed on 24 January to report and react to President Bush's State of the Union Address as follows:

Al-Rafidayn TV: During its 1600 GMT news summary, following a six-minute security roundup, Al-Rafidayn Satellite Channel carries the following report: "Democrats in Congress have accused US President George Bush of demonstrating recklessness by involving the United States in the war in Iraq. In a harsh response to his State of the Union address, they called for withdrawing US troops from Iraq. In his address, Bush urged the Americans to give a chance for what he called his new strategy in Iraq. Bush deemed early withdrawal from Iraq a nightmare for the United States, as he put it, claiming that such a step would serve Washington's enemies. The US president affirmed his determination to continue with his strategy of promoting what he called democracy in the Middle East, considering it a critical element in the war on what he calls terror."

Al-Iraqiyah TV: Following a security roundup and other local news, Al-Iraqiyah Television at 1713 GMT carries the following report: "In his State of the Union address, US President George Bush reiterated his support for the national unity government and his willingness to support it in all areas. He also urged the Senate leaders to back his Iraq plan, particularly the part of the plan pertaining to Baghdad, to protect it from terrorists."

This is followed by a report by Ali Shakkur, Al-Iraqiyah TV correspondent in Washington, who says: "For its part, the Democratic Party expressed its view toward the US president's speech in a statement read by Senator James Webb, Congressman for the Democratic Party. In the statement, the party members expressed their concern over the president's new policy on Iraq, saying that this war hurt the reputation of the United States and squandered many opportunities to defeat world terror."

Shakkur continues: "The latest opinion polls published in US newspapers indicated a decline in the approval ratings of the US president, as 64 percent of the American people do not support the way the Bush administration is managing the country's affairs."

Immediately afterward, Al-Iraqiyah TV newsreader Thamir al-Shammari reads the following report: "The reactions of Iraqi politicians to the address of US President George Bush have varied. A member of the Council of Representatives affirmed that Iraq needs support for its troops as well as intelligence information more than it needs an increase in the number of (US) troops in Iraq."

Then, former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja'fari is shown saying: "In my assessment, we do not necessarily need an increase in the strength (of US forces). We are not engaged in a conventional war against an invading army or something of the sort. We are facing terrorist actions which can be handled by precise security operations, by upgrading the security performance, and by getting the necessary information and intelligence data."

Al-Shammari adds: "Another member of the Council of Representatives affirmed that Iraq is not suffering from religious extremism. However, there are parties that seek to make gains using the Iraq question.
Then, Iraqi MP Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir is shown saying: "What I would like to say is that victory against terror cannot be achieved by sloganeering; rather, certain mechanisms and policies that are indicative of a proper diagnosis of terror must be adopted. The war on terror must be waged based on this diagnosis and knowledge. Unfortunately, US policies have been driven by what it knows about terrorism, not by what is happening in Iraq."

At 1726 GMT, Al-Iraqiyah TV carries a live satellite interview with Alberto Fernandez, director of the Office of Press and Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Near East Affairs at the US Department of State, in Washington, speaking in Arabic, on President Bush's State of the Union address. Fernandez says that "there is a sort of consensus on the importance of Iraq, and the importance of making progress in Iraq." He plays down reports on "differences between the US Administration and the Iraqi Government."

Al-Baghdadiyah TV: At 1513 GMT, following a few reports on security developments and local news items, Al-Baghdadiyah Satellite Television carries the following report: "US President George Bush has urged the American people and his adversaries in Congress to give his plan to dispatch 21,500 additional troops a chance for success. In his annual State of the Union address at a joint session of both houses of the US Congress, Bush said that the United States is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq. He called for giving this strategy a chance for success."

In a follow-up report, the TV channel says: "Bush affirmed that Al-Maliki's government should honor the undertakings it has taken upon itself, warning it that the US commitment to Iraq is not open-ended."

Al-Sharqiyah Channel: During its 1400 GMT, 1600 GMT, and 1900 GMT newscasts, Al-Sharqiyah was observed to repeat the same factual report that was carried in earlier newscasts. No commentaries or reactions were carried.

Baghdad Channel: Baghdad Channel was observed at 1628 GMT to carry an announcer-read report over video on the comments of Abbas al-Bayyati, representative of the Unified Iraqi Coalition in the Iraqi Council of Representatives, on the State of the Union address.

The report says: "Member of the Iraqi Coalition Abbas Al-Bayyati has said that there was nothing new in Bush's speech which was delivered yesterday. He noted the importance of providing the Iraqi Government with the needed support to enable it achieve stability.

(Begin Al-Bayyati recording) There is nothing much in Bush's speech; the US strategy was announced prior to this speech. Perhaps the speech was primarily meant to address the domestic audience, because it has the tone and marks of the democrats, whose voices have begun to grow louder.

We believe that supporting the current national unity government will enable it to carry out its duties and mission. Therefore, we cannot be pressured to do certain actions. We need support to do them." (end recording)

This report was followed by a repeat of the factual report that was carried in earlier newscasts . . .
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Another Helicopter Downed, 5 Americans Dead
Mahdi Army Pledges not to Respond to US Arrests

Sunni Arab guerrillas used some sort of surface to air rocket or missile a heavy PKC machine gun of a sort the US has trained the Iraqi Army in to shoot down a Blackwater helicopter guarding a high-level US ground convoy.* This downing of a helicopter is the second such attack in the past few days. See Today in Iraq.

Guerrillas (probably Shiite militiamen) wounded 7 British troops in Basra on Tuesday with bombings or mortar attacks.

In Baghdad and Mosul, a further 45 persons were killed by new violence or showed up dead in the streets, and US forces killed a further 16 in clashes. Guerrillas detonated five car bombs in the capital, including one in the Karrada district. Some districts of Mosul, according to al-Zaman, witnessed pitched battles most of the afternoon on Tuesday. Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that guerrillas in Mosul killed 5 policemen and wounded 3.

US and Iraqi troops launched an operation in the Sunni Adhamiya district of Baghdad.

Reuters reports a US firefight with guerrillas at Ramadi, guerrilla attacks in the supposedly pacified cities of Fallujah and Tal Afar, and killings and assassinations in a wide number of Iraqi cities.

US forces have captured some 600 Mahdi Army militiamen since the current push against guerrilla violence began.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that leaders of the Mahdi Army are saying they will not retaliate for the arrests. Baha' al-A'raji, a Sadrist MP, said that the followers of young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr would not stand against the Baghdad security plan.

Oh, great. Now Bush's Iraq War is in danger of destabilizing Pakistan, too.

Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) will introduce a bill forbidding Bush from undertaking military action against Iran without Congressional authorization. Good for him! Maybe someday we'll get our Constitition back.

-----

*Thanks to readers who corrected this point and provided additional information.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Arguing With Bush

Yet one question has surely been settled - that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.

Actually, it is unclear what "taking the fight to the enemy" means in Bush's ill-conceived "war on terror." He is probably still trying to sneak Iraq into the struggle against al-Qaeda through the back door. If so, that dog won't hunt. By launching an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression on a major Arab Muslim country, Bush hasn't "carried the fight to the enemy" but has rather dishonored the 9/11 dead by using their killings as a pretext to carry out his own preconceived and Ahab-like plans to "take out" Saddam Hussein. Nothing could be better calculated to increase the threat of terrorism against the United States than an attempt militarily to occupy Iraq, with all the repression and torture it has entailed. And, if Bush was so good at taking the fight to the enemy, why is Ayman al-Zawahiri still free to taunt him by videotape. Al-Zawahiri was a major force behind the September 11 attacks. Why is he at large?

Bush then claims some successes in breaking up terror plots. But these plots were broken up by old-fashioned detective and intelligence work, with some substantial dependence on our allies. It has even been suggested that Bush broke the news about the alleged airplane liquids plot in the UK before British intelligence was ready for it to become public. In any case, it is hard to see what these counter-terrorism successes have to do with his expansion of the US military or his quixotic war in Iraq.

Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the shoreless ambitions of this enemy. The evil that inspired and rejoiced in Nine-Eleven is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a Nation at war.

Do we have to be at war? Couldn't we just be vigilant and do good counter-terrorism. Isn't "war" a distraction from the latter?

Our enemies are quite explicit about their intentions. They want to overthrow moderate governments, and establish safe havens from which to plan and carry out new attacks on our country. By killing and terrorizing Americans, they want to force our country to retreat from the world and abandon the cause of liberty.

Yes but it isn't so important what your enemy's intentions are. You always have enemies with bad intentions. What is important is your enemy's capabilities. Al-Qaeda was never very large or powerful, and it is increasingly clear that the September 11 attacks were a fluke. The fact is that al-Qaeda cannot overthrow the Egyptian government, or any other government, and cannot actually harm the United States or its way of life in any prolonged or serious way. This small band of 5,000 to 12,000 men in Afghanistan, now largely killed or scattered, cannot possibly be a pretext for keeping all Americans on their toes all the time, and keeping them willing to cede their constitutional liberties to Bush.

It has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah - a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.

The major Shiite religious parties with long histories of anti-American rhetoric and activity are the Islamic Call or Da'wa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Both of these Shiite religious parties are now allies of Bush. The Iraqi Da'wa actually helped to form the Lebanese Hizbullah in the early 1980s. A major figure in its Damascus bureau at that time was Nuri al-Maliki, now the Prime Minister of Iraq and a Bush ally. Al-Maliki supported Hizbullah versus Israel in the war last summer. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is close to the Iranian regime but whom Bush hosted in the White House on Dec. 4.

So if these Iraqi Shiite parties and militias can be brought in from the cold, why is it that Bush demonizes and essentializes other Shiite groups that are equally capable of changing their policies given the right incentives?

As for the Lebanese Hizbullah, it was formed in 1984 and so was not responsible for the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. That was carried about by the Islamic Amal faction of Abbas al-Musawi. Elements of the latter may have later joined Hizbullah.

Hizbullah's energies have not been put into killing Americans during the past two decades, but rather into getting the Israelis back out of their country. In fact, it isn't clear that the Lebanese Hizbullah has done anything to the US for 20 years.

It is arguably the Israeli invasion and military occupation of south Lebanon that created Hizbullah in the first place. Prior to that, the southern Lebanese Shiites weren't very political and often were pro-Israel.

What every terrorist fears most is human freedom - societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies - and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy. The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security . . . we must.

First of all, "terrorists" are just political activists who commit violence against noncombatants. Lots of political movements have used this technique including some whose goal was liberal democracy. So it simply is not true that all those who deploy terror have the same goals.

Second, people in capitalist democracies resort to terrorism all the time. Indeed, the most horrific regime of modern times, that of the Nazis, came out of the liberal parliamentary Weimar Republic and was elected to office. The Baader-Meinhoff gang in liberal West Germany, the Japanese Red Army, the McVeigh-Nichols "Christian Identity" terrorism in Oklahoma-- all of these examples prove Bush's premise wrong.

And, even if it were the case that capitalist democracies don't produce terrorism (which it is not), Bush cannot spread democracy in the Middle East by his so-far favored military means. Ask any Middle Easterner if he or she would like to have a situation such as prevails in Iraq. They will say, if that is democracy I want none of it. Bush has actively pushed the Middle Eastern publics away from democracy for an extra generation or two.

In the last two years, we have seen the desire for liberty in the broader Middle East - and we have been sobered by the enemy's fierce reaction. In 2005, the world watched as the citizens of Lebanon raised the banner of the Cedar Revolution ... drove out the Syrian occupiers ... and chose new leaders in free elections.

What universe does Bush live in, that he brings up Lebanon as though it were not in flames these days, with 3 killed and 100 wounded in the opposition strike. I mean, he did once admit he doesn't read the newspapers. But couldn't he listen to the radio or something?

Note, too, that the "Cedar Revolution" government was joined by the Lebanese Hizbullah. It was a national unity government. The US ambassador in Lebanon encouraged this development. What destabilized that government was the brutal Israeli war on Lebanon of last summer. Bush collaborated in that war and even worked against the early cease-fire called for by the Seniora government. Bush can't pretend to be a friend of the Lebanese government and yet approve publicly of a sanguinary war on it by Olmert. Bush puts all the blame for instability in Lebanon on Syria, which is implausible.

Bush then goes on to complain that "the enemy" has adjusted its tactics and thrown up new challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in reality, Bush just imposed a 'winner-take-all, devil-take-the-hindmost' situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, generating profound ethnic and religious resentments that have exploded into violence.

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in. Every one of us wishes that this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.

Puh-lease. Spare us the Rumsfeldisms. Either we are in charge or we are helpless leaves being blown by the wind of the enemy. If we aren't in charge, then we have already lost.

As for the idea that we still have the power to shape the outcome, that is contradicted by his previous admission that we have been maneuvered into a different kind of war that we hadn't planned on. We couldn't shape the outcome, which is why the war is going badly. We cannot now shape the outcome by main force. We have to negotiate, with the insurgents and with Iran and Syria, if we are to avoid a catastrophe.

We are carrying out a new strategy in Iraq - a plan that demands more from Iraq's elected government, and gives our forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete their mission.

You don't have a new strategy. You may have some new tactics, but that remains to be seen. Iraq's government in any case has already rejected the idea that it must meet artificial US 'benchmarks.' And, the "government" is anyway weak and divided. Most of the major political figures are linked to guerrilla or militia groups. It cannot stop the fighting because its members provoke the fighting.

And in Anbar province - where al Qaeda terrorists have gathered and local forces have begun showing a willingness to fight them - we are sending an additional 4,000 United States Marines, with orders to find the terrorists and clear them out. We did not drive al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq.

I'm confused. I thought Bush and Cheney maintained that Iraq under Saddam was already a safe haven for al-Qaeda. Now he is saying that he won't let Iraq become such a safe haven, implying that it wasn't before.

Bush's cynical use of "al-Qaeda" to confuse the American public hides the simple fact that the vast majority of violence in Iraq is perpetrated by Sunni Arab Iraqis who want an end to what they see as a foreign military occupation of their country. Most are either Baathists or Salafi Sunni revivalists. There isn't really any al-Qaeda in Iraq in the sense of a group directly tied to Bin Laden. How would they even find him to give him fealty?

If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country - and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective.

Yes, Mr. Bush, and you are the one who got us into this mess. Nor can you get us back out by 'staying the course' or with a mere 21,500 further troops. Any other ideas how to extract us from the dilemma?

And out of chaos in Iraq, would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens... new recruits ... new resources ... and an even greater determination to harm America.

When Britain got out of Kenya, no Kenyan terrorists took advantage of the withdrawal to plot bombings of London. Kenyans were pretty happy about the British getting out. When the US got out of Vietnam, no Vietnamese terrorists followed us to the US mainland to inflict terrorism on us. Bush's charges are just propaganda.

The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others. That is why it is important to work together so our Nation can see this great effort through.

The struggle against al-Qaeda proper is over with. No big new arrests have been made in its ranks for years. There are other counter-terrorism targets, which should be monitored and broken up on a continual basis. That isn't a war and doesn't require the Pentagon. The 'war on terror' as a trope won't succeed Bush by even a day from his last moments in office.

Americans can have confidence in the outcome of this struggle - because we are not in this struggle alone. We have a diplomatic strategy that is rallying the world to join in the fight against extremism.

Of all the lies and misrepresentations, this is the most egregious. Bush's policies have left the US isolated and deeply unpopular throughout the world. Some 75 percent of Indonesians had a positive view of the US before W. It has more lately been around 30% and at one point fell to 15%.

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran, and made it clear that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agcency hasn't certified that Iran even has a nucear wapons esearh program. Iran was, at least a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Bush may be pushing it out of the treaty.

Bush has exacerbated conflicts throughout the Middle East. He has contributed heavily to the outbreak of three civil wars, in Iraq, in Palestine and Lebanon. His incompetence and self-contradictory policies have deeply endangered Americans and American interests. Now he is holding his own failures over our heads to blackmail us into throwing good money after bad.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ashura Massacres Shake Iraq
At Least 130 Killed

The Western press reported on 130 of the iraqis killed in political violence in Iraq on Monday, and the some 200 wounded.

It isn't ordinary time in Iraq for the Shiites, it is ritual time, sacred time. It is a time of deep mourning, of grief and the beating of chests and even flagellation with chains. It is the season for commemorating the martyrdom, the cosmically wrongful killing of al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who led the people of Kufa in what is now Iraq against the tyrannical empire of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid. His generals cut the plucky scion of the House of the Prophet down without mercy, along with his relatives and followers. They are said to have carried Husayn's head aloft on a stave and to have deposited it before the caliph in his palace in Damascus. The death of Husayn is the "passion" of Shiite Islam, their Good Friday. His shrine is in the Iraqi city of Karbala, where guerrillas dressed as American troops killed 5 American soldiers on Sunday. Emotions run high already. A sense of the meaning of the commemoration for Shiites can be gained from this British Shiite web site.

The Sunni guerrillas' killing of over 100 Shiites in Baghdad and Khalis on Monday was therefore no ordinary carnage, even in an Iraq where to have 70 persons blown up by a single bomb is no longer a novelty to say the least. But for it to be done during these days is to drive Shiites wild with grief, to push them to take revenge. It is to universalize the martyrdom of Husayn, making all Shiites martyrs. The guerrilla movement depends on people taking revenge, from every side.

That blackhawk helicopter that crashed, killing 13 Americans on Saturday was probably shot down with a shoulder-held missile launcher. If the guerrillas ever get hold of a big supply of those, we'd be in big trouble. The Soviet-made SA-14s and SA-16s, with good guidance systems, are available on the international arms market and have occasionally shown up in Iraq. The more common SA-7s, mostly from a big batch made by the Soviet Union in 1971, are by now a hit or miss sort of thing.

Richard Engel points out that Bush's escalation plan for Iraq concentrates solely on Baghdad and al-Anbar provinces, ignoring hotspots such as Diyala Province, where Sunni-Shiite violence is extreme.

Shiite militiamen have demanded that all Palestinians leave Iraq on pain of death. Yes, no doubt they should go back to their own country. Ooops. I forgot. They don't have one.

So long, Iraqi Christians. Their new sobriquet? Syrian Christians.

Another translation of Muqtada al-Sadr's interview with an Italian newspaper.


On the all but forgotten eastern front, a suicide bomber in eastern Afghanistan killed 10 and wounded 14 just outside a US military base.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rightwing Smearers of Obama Don't know a School from a Madrasa

The rightwing smear campaign against Barack Obama, waged by a magazine funded by the far rightwing Korean businessman and part-time messiah, the Reverend Moon, has foundered on CNN's good reporting. The allegation was that he had gone to a radical "Saudi-funded" madrasah. Wolf Blitzer had the professionalism to send out an experienced reporter to the school that Obama attended when he was 6 years old in Indonesia. He found it just an ordinary modern school with boys and girls and both male and female teachers, which taught modern subjects.

The smear campaign would be hilarious if it weren't so satanic.

First of all, let's explain about the word madrasah. In Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew, words are mostly made up of three-letter roots. In Indo-European languages, words tend to have two-letter roots. In roots, you don't count short vowels. So in Arabic, the root for to learn (as in school learning) is d* r *s*. Arabic is an elegant, almost mathematical language. If you put those three-letter roots in certain "molds," it produces a linked vocabulary. Dars is a lesson. Darrasa with a doubling of the "r" is "to teach." You make a noun of place by putting an "m" in front and a soft "h" at the end. Thus, madrasah is the place where you study. Thus, madrasah means . . . school.

Now, there are lots of kinds of school, after all. But an ordinary elementary school attended by boys and girls and offering a modern curriculum would be called a madrasah in Arabic, i.e. a school. And this word has gone into lots of languages, especially ones spoken by Muslims, as a loan word.

So, yes, if one is speaking Arabic, Barack Obama went to a "madrasah," i.e. an elementary school! So did you.

The schools for young children that train them in specifically Muslim subjects are not properly called madrasah/school but rather they are maktab (from the root kataba, to write) or kuttab.

Now, it is true that there are higher seminaries for training clerics that are called madrasat al-`ulum, or "seminary for religious sciences" (`ulum is the plural of `ilm or knowledge, which here means 'religious science'). That phrase is shortened sometimes to madrasah. But you don't send 6-year-olds to a seminary for higher education. They have to start studying religion in a maktab. Apparently in Pakistan the distinction is sometimes lost, but they are not native Arabic speakers.

By the way, very few terrorists or suicide bombers have ever graduated from a seminary/ madrasah of `ulum. The lead hijackers on 9/11 had all gone to modern schools and Western universities. Relatively few seminary students or graduates in Pakistan even bothered to come out and demonstrate in fall of 2001 against the building US war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In places like Egypt, Muslim political activists tend to be engineers with a modern university education, whereas the clerics trained in seminaries/ madrasahs of `ulum are typically coopted by the regime and are relatively moderate. So not all Muslim seminaries are hotbeds of radicalism.

A lot of words in Arabic have both an older, religious meaning and a newer, secular one. Thus, `ilm means "science" in modern Arabic but can also still mean "religious branch of knowledge." Someone who specializes in `ilm is an `aalim, plural `ulama'. But in Arabic you can only tell by context if someone is talking about `ulama'/scientists or `ulama'/ clerics. Thus dual meaning is also characteristic of the word madrasah or school.

So the entire report was brain dead and deeply ignorant and offensive. Let's judge Barack Obama on what kind of person he is, how likely he is to prove a great public servant. Who his father was or the religion of his paternal ancestors is not relevant.

By the way, most Europeans have some Muslim ancestors if you go back. The British royal family is descended in part from Muhammad. Many Sicilians have Arab ancestors. A lot of Latinos/Latinas have direct Muslim background, given the forced conversion of hundreds of thousands of Spanish Muslims to Catholicism from the 1400s and subsequent intermarriage with them. In fact, by the principles of population genetics, almost all persons of European heritage probably by now have some Arab ancestry. You have a million ancestors if you extrapolate back a few centuries. How likely is it that none was from Southern France, from Sicily or from Spain, where there had been Arab Muslim populations in the medieval period?

The real question is why foreign billionaire cultists own so much of America's media. Lou Dobbs, who is so concerned about illegal immigration, should leave the poor alone long enough to look into the rich and influential, rightwing aliens. This smear was brought to us by the media owned by the Reverend Moon (who did jail time for tax evasion) and by Rupert Murdoch (which picked it up shamelessly). Americans will never get back their purloined liberty until they stop letting the super-rich tell them what to think.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadrists Rejoin Government
Talabani: US Should Talk directly to Syria

Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq on Sunday. Two more US troops were killed, and the death toll in al-Anbar for Saturday was revised up to 5. In Baghdad, "A bomb killed at least six people and wounded 15 when it destroyed a minibus in Karrada, in central Baghdad . . ." McClatchy reports that 29 bodies were found in Baghdad on Sunday. US troops arrested a member of the Salahuddin Provincial Council, a chief of the Dulaim tribe. The Dulaim are a large and important tribe. I don't think they are going to like this. US troops at the same time raided the house of a member of the Association Of Muslim Scholars.

AP reports that US military intelligence has convinced Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr contains groups acting as death squads, and that al-Maliki's support for it is isolating him in the (largely Sunni) Arab world.

Muqtada and his followers lie low in times when they are under direct military pressure, which is why the Sadrists in parliament and the cabinet have gone back to work and stopped their boycott of the al-Maliki government, and are storing their arms in their closets. But what happens a year from now when they can come back out?

Iraqi President Jalal Talibani is calling on the US to talk to the government of Bashar al-Asad in Syria. Good geopolitical strategy would be to detach al-Asad from Iran. All it would take would be, as a new friend pointed out to me this weekend, a demilitarization of the Golan Heights and its return to Syria. (Well, there'd probably have to be movement on the issue of the Palestinians, too, but Golan is the key). But see Joe Biden's quote below.

CSM writes on new counter-insurgency efforts by US in Iraq. The article points out that such efforts depend on good intelligence on the enemy. I'm not sure how we are going to get that.

In the US, the Democrats are warning Bush not to ignore their objections to his Iraq policies. Senator Joe Biden rejected VP Richard Bruce Cheney's allegation that Democratic opposition is emboldening Bin Laden [a McCarthyite smear technique, or maybe it is time to attribute the technique to Goebbels as is only right]. Biden said that Bin Laden is not now the issue, but if Bush goes on like this, he may become an issue, adding,

"The issue is there's a civil war...That's what we have. That's what the president has to deal with. And he's doing it the exact wrong way. And he's not listening to his military... To his old secretaries of state... To his old friends. He's not listening to anybody but Cheney, and Cheney is dead-wrong. . ."

Zaid al-Ali argues for US withdrawal from Iraq.

Steven Silberman of Wired Magazine is reporting that the treatment and evacuation medical facilities for treating US troops injured in Iraq have become infected with an opportunistic bacterium, acinetobacter baumanii, that under intense exposure to antibiotics has evolved to become immune to them. The Pentagon initially suggested that the pathogen was in the soil in Iraq, but an investigation showed that actually they were picking it up in the hospitals to which they were evacuated. While this bacterium largely preys on the already-weak and ailing, it isn't good news that we've evolved it to be untreatable.

Here's the link to the Wired piece.

A US officer who gave his soldiers in Iraq (they say) the impression that they should not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, leading to the murder of 4 Iraq men (one 70 years old), has been punished with . . . a reprimand.

This Bloomberg wire service report is about how historians will view the Bush administration. The consensus appears to be that he'll be ranked toward the bottom of presidents. The only contrary views the reporter seems to have been able to elicit are not from historians but rightwing political figures. I think the domestic failures will bulk larger than this article incidents, especially the New Orleans fiasco, the gutting of government science, and the opposition to efforts to reduce global warming. That last one will really, really bother historians in the future. They like their archives dry and above the water line.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

22 US Troops Announced Killed
29 Bodies Found in Baghdad

Reuters reports that police found 29 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday and 5 more in the northern city of Mosul.

There was other major violence, with bombings, mortar attacks and assassinations in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and elsewhere.

A suicide bomber attempted to get a car full of explosives into the Green Zone where US diplomatic and Iraqi government offices are located.

AP reports that the killings of 22 US troops were announced on Saturday. Thirteen died in a helicopter crash in Diyala Province that may or may not have been a shoot-down. Diyala is the scene of a great deal of political violence and guerrilla activity. Militiamen at the Shiite holy city of Karbala south of the capital killed another 5. Guerrillas killed two more on Saturday, one in Baghdad and one in Mosul. Another two were announced killed on Friday, one in Mosul and another in al-Anbar province.

The killing of US troops in Shiite Najaf and Karbala has been a rare event since hostilities ending in late August 2004 between the American military and the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The resurgence of lethal hostility in this Shiite area almost certainly has to do with the ongoing US crackdown on the Sadr Movement.

Shiite militiamen also killed a British soldier with a roadside bomb.

68 percent of Americans oppose Bush's escalation of the Iraq War.

John Edwards called on Congress to oppose the "troop surge."

The current draft of the proposed Iraqi petroleum bill vests decisions in the central government, as the Sunni Arabs had wanted. The Kurds had argued for a more decentralized system.

Qatar-based Sunni preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi called on Iran to cease trying to "Shiitize" the region and accused it of playing an unhelpful role in Iraq. Al-Qaradawi was for a long time party of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Tom Engelhardt discusses the US war on Islam. It is well worth reading.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Militiamen Wound 6 British Soldiers
Sadrist Rejoin Parliament

Shiite militiamen fired mortars at a British base at Basra, seriously wounding one British soldier and lightly injuring 5 others.

The Sadr Bloc of deputies in Parliament, who had staged a walkout to protest PM Nuri al-Maliki's meeting with George W. Bush, are now returning to the United Iraqi Alliance (the Shiite fundamentalist coalition). They did so despite the arrest by US and Iraqi forces of Abdul Hadi Darraj, a major Sadr aide.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Muqtada al-Sadr's lieutenants are predicting major chaos if the US moves against him.

Mclatchy reports on political violence in Iraq, including several bombings and 17 bodies showing up in the street on Friday

Iraq's system of higher education was near to collapsing even before the recent bombing at al-Mustansiriya University. Attendance is down by as much as half, and thousands of professionals have fled the country.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US moves on Sadr Aide
Bombings Wrack Baghdad, Mosul
Baathists Plan Convention in Damascus

US and Iraqi troops arrested Sadr aide Abdul Hadi Darraji in East Baghdad at midnight Iraqi time last night. The Sadr movement maintains he is just a spokesman and is not involved in militia operations. The US accuses him of running private religious courts in which people are punished for being lax with regard to implementation of Islamic law. Young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is enormously popular in the Shiite south and a US confrontation with him could throw that region into turmoil.

Mahdi Army figures in Sadr City say they are under siege and that five commanders have been killed or captured in the past week.

UpdateMuqtada al-Sadr has sent his family into hiding in anticipation of an American crackdown on his movement. He appears to anticipate an attempt to arrest or kill him. He maintains that the crackdown has been underway for a month, with 400 of his followers arrested. He is accused of maintaining a private militia, the Mahdi Army, that is implicated in death squad activity against Sunni Arabs. Local Shiites often see the militia as a kind of neighborhood watch that keeps them safe from Sunni incursions when the central government does not.

A direct US conflict with Muqtada al-Sadr could throw the Shiite south into turmoil.


*Shorter Condi Rice: Maliki's government is on borrowed time.

*Shorter Bush: Maliki is hard to support.

*Shorter Maliki: The Bush administration is the one living on borrowed time, after the November elections. And, if there is no security it is because Bush would not give Iraq troops sufficient arms and armored vehicles.

(This mutual taunting is immature. It points to how difficult the Bush-Maliki partnership has it in getting Americans to support the president.)

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Thursday:

*Police found 26 bodies in Baghdad, bearing signs of torture. Police in the large northern city of Mosul found 9 bodies.

*Guerrillas detonated 3 car bombs in a wholesale vegetable market in Dura, south Baghdad, killing 10 and wounding 30. Guerrillas set off several other bombs and mortar attacks. They detonated a car bomb in Saadoun Street, killing 4 and wounding 10. Another in East Baghdad killed 3 and wounded 7.

*Several attacks were launched in Mosul, where the security situation appears to be rapidly deteriorating. One car bomb targetting a police patrol killed a civilian and wounded 4 policemen. Others tossed a bomb that killed a policemen and wounded another. Guerrillas shot up a wedding convoy, killing 2 and wounding 4.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani revealed that during his visit to Tehran last month, Iranian authorities evinced their willingness to engage in talks with the Americans in order arrive at a mutual understanding that both sides would be pleased with-- and which would stretch from Afghanistan to Lebanon. Talabani explained the circumstances that caused both meetings that he attempted to arrange between the two to collapse.

Talabani spoke to al-Hayat at the presidential palace in Damascus, where he is currently visiting as president a city that had greeted him many times in the past as a leader of the opposition to Saddam Hussein. He discussed his profound pain and grief and disappointment in the security measures that had been taken in Iraq, when he reads about the number of corpses received by the morgue in Baghdad. He complained bitterly about the terrorist groups, especially "al-Qaeda," whom he accused of launching a genocide against the Iraqi people.

He admitted that death squads had infiltrated the police apparatus and that they engaged in ehtnic cleansing. He expressed optimism about the new plan for security in Baghdad, and expected it would be successful insofar as security duties were being transferred to Iraqi hands. He said he did not expect a precipitate American withdrawal from Iraq, saying that the Democrats in Congress did not agree that the US troops should leave without achieving an acceptable situation in Iraq. He pointed out how dangerous that would be.

The president admitted that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites are killing one another, but insisted that the prerequisites for an all-out general civil war are absent. He praised the role being played by Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in preventing the outbreak of civil war. [Sistani forbids Shiites from engaging in reprisal killings against Sunnis; but it has to be said that his authority in that regard has weakened over time, contrary to what Talabani implies].

Talabani said that he had no foreknowledge of the moment when Saddam would be executed, and that he learned of it from the radio. He again stated his opposition to capital punishment, though at the same time he admitted that the execution had ended the fantasy among some elements [i.e. the Baathists] that they might yet return to power. He said most Kurds and Shiites were satisfied with the execution.

He stressed the need for Iraq to be ruled in accordance with the consensus of all major groups. No one group should try to monopolize power. He again called for the abolition of the "Debaathification Committee."

He expressed his satisfaction with his consultations with President Bashar al-Asad. He denied that the latter gave him a letter for Washington. He did say that improved Syrian-American and Iranian-American relations would benefit Iraq. He also said that Syria and Iran have begun helping the Iraqi government.

Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that Iraqi Baathists are organizing a party conference in Damascus to found a joint leadership for the Arab world some 30 years after the Syrian and Iraqi branches of the Baath split with one another. They would also elect a new leadership of the Iraqi branch of the party that would show willingness to participate in the political process if the Iraqi government agrees to abolish the "Debaathification Committee." (That committee excludes Baathists above a certain rank from participation in public life even if they have not been found guilty of any particular crime).

But Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, formerly a vice president of Iraq under Saddam, warned in a letter against a "plot" led by schismatics who broke off from the real Baath Party. Another communique warned that the Damascus conference was an American conspiracy.

Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad is warning of a US plot to topple the al-Maliki government in Iraq. The USG Open Source Center translates from the Iranian "al-`Alam" satellite channel:

' Iranian President Warns Against 'US Plan Aimed at Toppling' Iraqi Government
Al-Alam Television
Thursday, January 18, 2007 T21:19:54Z

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad has warned against a US plan aimed at toppling the Iraqi government. He said during a visit to the Iranian media organization that Washington was seeking to sow division in the region, destabilize security in Iraq and weaken its government in order to justify its presence (in the country). He added that its (US) interests were achieved in a climate of sedition. The president went on to say that the occupation forces were releasing the terrorists arrested by the Iraqi government.

The Iranian president also said during his meeting with Sudanese Minister of Defence Abd-al-Rahim Muhammad Husayn that creating disagreements between Muslim Shi'is and Sunnis served the interests of the arrogant and Zionist powers. He urged the need for resistance to foil the arrogant plans.

(Description of Source: Tehran Al-Alam Television in Arabic -- IRIB's 24-hour Arabic news channel, targetting a pan-Arab audience) '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cheney blew off Iran in 2003
For the Love of God Impeach this Man

Lawrence Wilkerson, an aide to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state says that Iran in 2003 offered to help stabilize Iraq and to cut off aid to Hizbullah in Lebanon and to Hamas. Wilkerson says that the State Department was interested in pursuing the offer, which presumably came from reformist president Mohammad Khatami. He says that when the issue was broached with VP Richard Bruce Cheney, Cheney shot down any notion of "talking to evil." As if Mohammad Khatami is evil and Richard Bruce Cheney is not. (Cheney's lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and connection to 9/11 have gotten hundreds of thousands of people killed).

Because Khatami kept promising that his reforms would make Iranians better off, and because the US rejected all his overtures and left him with no achievements to show for them, the Iranian electorate turned against the reform movement and put Mahmud Ahmadinejad into power, a loud-mouthed braggart of a sort that Cheney's Likudniks could then build up into a bogey man to frighten Americans with. Cheney created Iran as a menace.

What this article doesn't mention is that the rightwing Likud cabal in Cheney's office, such as Irv Lewis Libby, with its connections to the Israeli far right, almost certainly played a key role in this rejection. I think John Hannah was already there then, too. David Wurmser came later, after getting up the fraudulent case against Iraq in the Pentagon "Office of Special Plans" (i.e. foreign policy plumbers) set up by Likudnik Douglas Feith, then the number 3 man in the Pentagon.

Libby is now on trial for lying to the special prosecutor about his role in betraying CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. Wilson had been working on anti-proliferation efforts versus . . . Iran. She was outed to punish her husband for publicly challenging Cheney's lies about WMD in Iraq.

Cheney is the most fascistic high official in US government in history. He recently implied that al-Qaeda is glad that the Democrats won the mid-term elections, as his way of trying to create the impression that anyone who disagrees with him is a terrorist-loving traitor. But it is Cheney who is the traitor, with his office having betrayed Valerie to the Iranians (and everyone else in the world).

Fascism depends on the creation of straw man enemies said to be dire threats to the Homeland. Iran is a poor weak third world country and poses no threat to the US. It hasn't aggressively invaded another country for over a century. But Cheney needs Iran to substitute for the old Soviet Union, otherwise how could he get you to agree to let him listen in on your telephone calls without a warrant, or let him torture people?

Cheney is the much bigger threat to the integrity of the US constitution than any foreign force. He should be impeached. If lying about a tawdry affair that did not even get to third base is grounds for impeachment, then lying us into a war, slapping Iran's overtures away and setting the stage for another war, and outing a CIA operative certainly are.

At least let us investigate the extent of his crimes.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole Appearance in SF Cancelled

"Juan Cole will be speaking in San Francisco at the First Universalist Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin St. at Geary, Saturday, January 20 at 5:00 pm."

Alas, my hosts could not make this happen after all. So sorry for the inconvenience.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bombings in Sadr City, Kirkuk-- Dozens Dead
Al-Hakim Criticizes Bush on Irbil Raid

Another big bombing by guerrillas in Shiite Sadr City killed 25. Guerrillas in Kirkuk set off a bomb that killed 10 and wounded 48.

Militiamen in Basra used a roadside bomb to kill two Coalition, probably British troops. Reuters reports other political violence.

Shiite cleric and leader of the United Iraqi Alliance in parliament, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim condemned the US raid on an Iranian consulate (the application paperwork had been filed with Kurdistan authorities). He complained that it was an affront to Iraqi sovereignty and expressed the wish that it not happen again. The US had also arrested Iranians in a raid on al-Hakim's own compound. Al-Hakim had been feted at the White House in early December and is among Bush's major allies in Iraq, but obviously he is playing both ends against the middle with his Iranian connections alongside his American ones.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic on an interview with old-time Sunni Arab nationalist politician Adnan Pachachi from Abu Dhabi. The old-time politician argued that US troops should be replaced by an Arab and Islamic force under UN military control, since the Americans are an occupation force and the Sunni Arab guerrillas will never accept them. Pachachi also urged that a new government be formed around Nuri al-Maliki.

In the US, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Bush's "surge" strategy of escalating the war, and called for a cap on the number of US troops in Iraq.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

125 Killed, Hundreds Wounded by Bombings, Assassinations
Guerrillas kill 4 US Troops
UN Says 34452 Iraqi Civilians Killed in 06
Resolution Condemning Escalation Introduced in Senate

Reuters reports that the death toll from the bombings at Mustansiriya University on Tuesday rose to 70, with 180 wounded. A lot of them were 17 and 18 year-old girls. I report these attacks every day, and have seen some violence in my time, but this one is tough. You think about 70 families in black, their little girl's or little boy's pieces laid quickly to rest. And the wounded. How many disfigured or left incapacitated for life by a raging fireball enveloped by black smoke?

McClatchy's reporting was hard to read: 'One man searched for his son and finally found his head and torso but no legs. "Where is his other half?" he asked and then shook with violent sobs. '

The female university students are among Iraq's few hopes for the future. Iraqi women were once 75% literate, but US/UN sanctions and the poor economy of the 1990s drove down the percentage to only 25%. So women well-educated enough to get to university are a small minority in Iraq. Fewer and fewer families feel comfortable letting their girls go out under these circumstances.

We should be clear why these bombings are taking place. It is because Bush's policy in Iraq was total victory, along with his Shiite and Kurdish allies, over the previously dominant Sunni Arabs. Bush did this thing as a zero sum game, one where there is only one pie and if one person gets a bigger piece, someone else gets a tiny sliver. The Sunni Arabs-- among the best educated and most capable people in the country-- were offered the tiny sliver. They won't accept US troops in their country for the most part, and won't accept reduction to a small powerless minority. They have succeeded in provoking the Shiites to form guerrilla groups and engage in reprisal killings, as well, as a way of destabilizing the country. Bush's allies won't share power and wealth with them, and Bush himself keeps pushing for what he calls "victory." Today is what his victory looks like after nearly 4 years, and it is highly unlikely to look different any time soon.

On any other day, the killing of 4 US troops in Mosul, Ninevah Province, would itself be the big news. Bush withdrew 3,000 troops from Mosul and sent them to Baghdad for "Operation Forward Together," which did not operate, did not go forward, and did not create togetherness. That left US troops in Ninevah more exposed.

Another horrible piece of violence that would have been enough on its own: Al-Zaman reports that guerrillas set off a roadside bomb and then a motorcycle bomb near the Sunni shrine to Sufi saint Abdul Qadir Gilani in Baghdad, killing 15 and wounding 70. The Qadiriya Sufi order that coalesced around him in the medieval period is still popular in Sunni Iraq, West Africa, Pakistan and India. All we need is for another shrine to get blown up. Devotees mind that sort of thing.

Read the Reuters and McClatchy links above for more. It is difficult to stomach, but it is important to see reality with a clear and unflinching gaze. If more Americans had done so in 2003, we might not have come to this pass.

KarbalaNews.net reports that a joint American-Iraqi (apparently American-led--see the picture) force invaded the offices of the elected provincial council of Wasit in the Shiite South and arrested two elected members of the council. They took away Qasim al-A'raji and Fadil Jasim Abu al-Tayyib without making any announcement of the charges.

This is sort of as though in the US, federal troops attacked the South Carolina State House and arrested the elected secretary of state and treasurer.

Presumably the arrestees are suspected of militia activity. But I don't know. You can't celebrate elections and purple fingers and self-determination, and then have foreign troops involved in arresting elected officials. It looks colonial.

The Sunni Arab Gulf states gave a lukewarm endorsement to Bush's plan after some of them met with Secretary of State Condi Rice. Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, among the more anti-Iranian, anti-Shiite figures in the cabinet, put the onus for improving things in Iraq on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, leader of the fundamentalist Shiite Islamic Call (Da'wa Islamiya) Party.

One thousand active-duty soldiers and Marines have come out to call for a quick US withdrawal from Iraq. Take that, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute!

Senators will introduce a bipartisan resolution in the senate condemning Bush's escalation of the Iraq War with an extra 21,500 troops.

I remember doing a briefing on the Hill in June of 2004 on Iraq, to a distinctly less than full room of staffers and I think no congressional representatives. Some of the staffers came up and gave me their cards and sheepishly admitted that it was very hard to get their bosses interested in taking a stand on Iraq. It seemed to me that Congress had completely abdicated its Constitutional authority over war-making. This resolution and the new energy in both houses of Congress are such welcome signs of change on this front.

If the newly elected Democratic majority didn't do anything about Iraq, I think they would risk public wrath. The public wants us out of there. Before Bush made a big push for it, 11% thought sending more troops would be a good idea. Concern is being expressed that Republicans might vote for a non-binding resolution condemning the plan but then vote money for sending extra troops, succeeding in having it both ways with the public. I don't know if I would worry too much about that. The public seems to have figured out which is the war party. And the trend lines for their awareness show a sharp upward curve over time (look at the difference between 2004 and 2006).

Al Franken had me on his radio show on Air America Tuesday and suggested that Congress and Bush could play bad cop, good cop with PM al-Maliki. As I understood the argument, he suggested that Congress cut off funding for the extra troops such that it would run out by the end of this summer. Bush could then tell al-Maliki that there has to be substantial progress on curbing militias and national conciliation by then, because Bush can't guarantee a sustained US commitment now that his party has lost Congress. I told Al that his plan sounds good to me. I do think a lot of the problem here is that the top Shiite and Kurdish leadership doesn't feel a need to compromise with the Sunni Arabs because they know if the latter make trouble, the US will deal with them. They might not be so cocky, and might compromise more readily, if they thought they'd have to fight them themselves.

The UN estimates that over 34,000 civilians were killed in political violence in Iraq in 2006. The Lancet study suggests that if you count everyone killed by violence, including criminality and clan feuds, above what was common in 2002, actually it would be 200,000.

Ben Lando of UPI writes on the possible consequences to south Iraq, fuel convoys, and petroleum export of a US attack on the Mahdi Army.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies

The first issue of the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies is up on the Web and freely accessible. There are several good articles. The table of contents is:

The Islamist imaginary
Islam,Iraq,and the projections of empire
Authors: Raymond W. Baker

Media and lobbyist support for the US invasion of Iraq
Authors: Janice J. Terry

Beating the drum:Canadian print media and the build-up to the invasion of Iraq
Authors: Tareq Y. Ismael

The United States in Iraq:the consequences of occupation
Authors: Stephen Zunes

Toward regional war in the Middle East?
Authors: Richard Falk

Reconstructing the performance of the Iraqi economy 1950-2006: an essay with some hypotheses and many questions
Authors: Roger Owen

Book Review
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Breaking News: 60 Dead, 110 Wounded in University Bombing

Guerrillas used a car bomb and a suicide bomber to kill 60 persons, wounding 110 more, at the entrance to the Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, , according to Reuters. The article quotes a university official saying that most of the casualties were female students returning home.

CNN is reporting that a suicide bomber had placed himself so that when the police came in response to the first attack, he blew them up, too.

The bombings come just after the execution of Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar, Saddam Hussein's two co-defendants. They also come at a time of renewed US and Iraqi army pressure on guerrilla cells in the capital, and at a time when the Iraqi press is reporting renewed vigor and organization in the deposed Baath Party.

University officials have cancelled classes for two days. This past fall, university professors had increasingly called off classes for security reasons, but the al-Maliki government, under US pressure to show progress toward normalization, threatened to fire instructors who did not hold classes. The government did not, however, provide any extra security to the universities.

On December 23, it was reported in the Iraqi press that female students at Mustansiriya University had been kidnapped, raped and killed. The Iraqi government vehemently denied these reports and closed a television channel that had carried them.

Although there is not exact continuity, a Mustansiriya College was founded in 1232 by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir, and was one of the world's early universities. It was disrupted by the Mongol invasion of 1258.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

70 Killed in Orgy of Bombings, Kidnappings
Shiites Consult Sistani on Iran/Mahdi Army Strategy
Ankara Conference on Kirkuk: Kurds disinvited

So there is no sign yet that the guerrillas and militiamen in Iraq are lying low in fear of a new US offensive. They set off numerous bombs all over the capital, targeted Kurds in Mosul, and bombed other cities, massacred dozens, assassinated people, fought firefights with government forces, etc. etc.

McClatchy and the Reuters wire service report political violence in Iraq on Monday. Some of the incidents:

* Police found 30 bodies in Baghdad on Monday. These are victims of sectarian violence and often show signs of torture.

*In Baghdad, guerrillas set off roadside bombs in Rustamiya, Karrada, Khadraa, Jadiriya, Nidhal and Saidiya, killing at least 9 persons, including several policemen, and wounding many others.

*In Baghdad, guerrillas captured 5 mechanics in al-Jadida and are probably holding them for ransom. Assailants also kidnapped Professor Abdul Karim al-Janabi from a technical university in downtown Baghdad.

*11 bodies were brought to the morgue or found by police in Baquba. Baquba also saw clashes between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite Iraqi troops, which left 6 dead. Baquba has a Sunni majority but a Shiite government.

*Guerrillas in Mosul set off a huge car bomb at the HQ of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, killing 5 and wounding 28 persons. Mosul is a largely Sunni Arab city. It is coveted by Kurdistan nationalists, and the Arabs are said to have forced 70,000 Kurds to flee the city. Arabs and Kurds are also contending over the nearby oil city of Kirkuk.

*In Kirkuk, guerrillas set off a car bomb near the HQ of the Turkmen Front Party, killing 2 persons and wounding 5. Militants also detonated a car bomb near the house of the owner of an automobile dealership, wounding 11 persons.

The Bush administration put pressure on the Shiite leadership of Iraq to 1) cut itself off from Iranian influence and 2) disarm and marginalize the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. Shiite leaders have been going to Najaf to consult with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in hopes of settling these issues before US troops do it for them.

If Bush's consultations with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan and with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in Washington in recent weeks had those two goals as their center, imagine how disappointed Bush must have been to learn that subsequently Iranian intelligence operatives were visiting the compound of al-Hakim and advising him on the cabinet reshuffle sought by al-Maliki.

And, it is likely that al-Maliki will tip the Mahdi Army to lay low rather than disbanding and disarming it. It is among his few pillars of power. There is no evidence that Grand Ayatollah Sistani can persuade the Sadrists to disarm. The hard line Sadrists complain that Sistani is "the silent religious authority" whereas Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (d. 1999) had been the "speaking religious authority." Al-Sadr had organized the Shiites of Sadr City, East Baghdad (pop. 3 million) in the mid to late 1990s, establishing widespread cells under Saddam's nose. The idea that the US can waltz into this densely populated slum with its folk traditions and turn people away from Sadrism and its paramilitary component (the Mahdi Army) just strikes me as extremely unlikely. Al-Sadr's son Muqtada now leads his movement.

On another contentious front, the Global Strategy Institute is holding a conference in Ankara, Turkey, on the future of Kirkuk. Invited were the small Turkmen parties, the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, the Shiite Fadhila or Virtue Party, members of the Kurdistan Provincial Council, etc. Conspicuously absent were the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which al-Zaman reports in Arabic was a deliberate snub! These Kurdish parties desire to annex Kirkuk province to the Kurdistan Regional Government, a provincial confederacy that now comprises Irbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniya. Because Kirkuk is a petroleum area, and because the Turkmen and Arabs of this province desperately do not want to become citizens of Kurdistan, this plan is controversial. A referendum is scheduled for late 2007 on the future of Kirkuk, which the Kurds can probably win because they have flooded into the province and are probably now a slight majority.

The Turkmen, Sunni Arab and Shiite speakers at the conference reject the referendum and the annexation of Kirkuk to Kurdistan. Because the Turkish government sees itself as a protector of the Iraqi Turkmen, who are linguistically and culturally close to the Turks, the fate of Kirkuk and of its Turkmen are vitally important to Ankara. As if there weren't enough wars in Iraq, this confrontation over Kirkuk could turn into yet another.

Comments at the conference:

Salih Mutlak, Sunni secularist National Dialogue Front: The referendum on Kirkuk should be nation-wide, not just in one province.

Karim al-Ya'qubi (Shiite) of the Virtue Party: conflict in Kirkuk could spill over into the rest of the country.

Khalid Uthman (Sunni fundamentalist) of the Iraqi Islamic Party urged that the opinions of all of Kirkuk's major groups, and of its neighbors, be taken into account.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole in Bay Area

Here is how things have shaped up for later this week when I'm on the West Coast.

Wednesday Jan 17, 7 pm.
UC Santa Cruz:

"Juan Cole, professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan and moderator of the "Informed Comment" blog will give a talk on the Iraq War at 7 p.m. , Wednesday, in the College Nine and Ten multipurpose room at UC Santa Cruz."


Friday, Jan. 19, 5:30 pm
University of the Pacific, Stockton:

' Juan Cole, U. Michigan, President of the Global American Institute, will be speaking at Pacific, at 5:30 p.m on Friday January 19, at George Wilson Hall (Old Callison College offices). His topic is: "Islamic Politics and US Failures in Iraq and Afghanistan." '


Saturday Jan. 20, 5 pm

Ruth Group:

"Juan Cole will be speaking in San Francisco at the First Universalist Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin St. at Geary, Saturday, January 20 at 5:00 pm."

Alas, this event has had to be cancelled. Sorry for the inconvenience.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

"Sleeping through the Revolution": Martin Luther King on the Evils of War

Here are some excerpts on war from Martin Luther King, Jr., "Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution. The comments in italics are mine.

' I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. '

Dr. King was not saying that war cannot solve military problems, you will note. He was saying that it cannot solve social problems. He would have scoffed at the Neoconservative idea that you can spread democracy by war or can improve peoples' economy by war. He thought that the mid twentieth century was witnessing a revolution in human affairs that made war increasingly unacceptable. He probably had in mind nuclear weapons, the use of which normal people consider too horrible to contemplate. He may also have been thinking of Gandhi's attempt to use non-violent non-cooperation in India to expel the British without resorting to guerrilla war.

President Kennedy said on one occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." The world must hear this. I pray to God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war. I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. '

Dr. King recognized that all wars involve the commission of war crimes. Just as no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no commitment to principles like the Geneva Conventions survives actual warfare in populated areas. The only way to stop war crimes, he is implying, is to stop war.

Update: An informed reader writes:

'In this case, Dr. King's objections were much more specific. The Geneva Accord of 1954 partitioned French Indochina into Laos, Cambodia, and North and South Vietnam, with the Viet Minh gaining immediate control over North Vietnam, and with the status of South Vietnam to be determined two years later in an internationally supervised election. As Dr. King noted, we, as a non-signing party to that accord, failed to enforce the accord's terms, and effectively tore up the accord. '

' It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. '

The United States is a peculiarly war-like country. In the last a little over a century it has militarily intervened in other countries, it is said, some 100 times. If true (and it depends on what you count as an intervention), that is once a year! It is also the industrialized democracy with the greatest gap between the wealthy and the poor, where enormous corporations that make money off war have disproportionate influence on government through lobbying and campaign donations and graft. Is there a connection between these two statements? Dr. King seems to have thought so.

' It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor. It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty. '

As the destruction of New Orleans and the failure of the Bush administration to rebuild it while spending $2 billion a week on the war in Iraq demonstrate, some things never change.

And here is the rest of the passage I have excerpted. Try substituting "Iraq" for "Vietnam":

' Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together. The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind," and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam, because if it continues, we will inevitably come to the point of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation.

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine. '

While we are busy chasing through the deserts of western Iraq after Sunni Arab Iraqis who don't want us in their country, the important challenges facing the world are going unadressed. In particular, global warming will require substantial resources, which we won't have if we borrow $400 billion a year to pay for an Iraq War that seems to mainly produce burned out cars. The Inferno of which Dr. King warned might indeed be hotter than Dante could have imagined.

There are so many revolutions through which we are sleeping.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraq for Land: Can Jordan, Egypt and other Sunni Arab States Get a Real State for the Palestinians, Peace for Israel, and Peace for Iraq all at Once? Will Bush even let them Try?

Bush admitted that he needs the help of the governments of Sunni Arab states neighboring or in the vicinity of Iraq in stabilizing that country. They have concluded that since Bush wants something from them, he should give them something they want. The governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc. have been being destabilized by the continued expropriation of the Palestinians by rightwing Israeli governments. The publics of those countries see the injustices daily-- the Israeli theft of Palestinian land, the unemployment, the malnutrition of Palestinian children under military occupation, the web of checkpoints that prevent people from getting to a hospital, the bloody reprisal attacks on civilians for the actions of a handful of terrorists. See John Berger on the situation.

And, they want to know why their supposedly Arab Muslim governments just lie down and let it happen. So now Mubarak and the Abdullahs want Bush to pressure Olmert to come back to the bargaining table in earnest and pick up where things were left off in 2000.

It isn't a bad offer, and if they really could get a settlement in Palestine and help resolve the crisis in Iraq, we would all be much better off. By "all," I mean the United States, the Israelis, and the Arabs. The Israelis are stuck in a dead end by their contradictory policies toward the Palestinians, and their occupation of another people is turning Israel increasingly toward ugly attitudes like those of Avigdor Lieberman, now legitimized by being in the Israeli cabinet. The Israelis are becoming increasingly isolated in the world and a little pressure for their own good to get them to go back to something close to 1967 borders and let the Palestinians alone would be all to the good.

The problem is that Bush at some point (around November or December of 2001, I think) sold his soul to the wealthiest and most rightwing elements of the Israel lobby in the US. He put Iran-Contra felon Elliot Abrams in control of Middle East policy in his National Security Council.

So, "Iraq for Land" is likely to go nowhere fast, despite the obvious consideration that it would do the United States a world of good and be the single most effective policy that could be adopted to reduce the threat of terrorism against this country.

I urge readers to take a moment and send a message to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee urging them to support Hosni Mubarak and Abdullah II's "Iraq for Peace" initiative. Those two governments have a peace treaty with Israel and if Olmert had any sense he would listen to them.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Saddam's Execution and the Revival of the Baath Party in Iraq

Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and the head of his revolutionary court were hanged early on Monday. An Iraqi government spokesman came out and said that Barzan's head came off during the hanging. I don't think most Sunni Arabs will accept that this was an accident, and likely they'll suspect sectarian revenge again.

These executions and that of Saddam Hussein himself have, according to the Iraqi newspaper al-Zaman, breathed new life into the Iraqi Baath Party and its successors, such as the `Awdah Party.

The four successor parties to the Baath are responsible for a significant amount of the political violence in Iraq. That violence continued on Sunday, according to Reuters. Another report on violence is given by McClatchy. Among the major incidents:
* Guerrillas using a roadside bomb killed one US soldier north of Baghdad and wounded another.

* Police in Baghdad found 40 bodies in the streets during the previous 24 hours, they announced on Sunday. These are typically victims of sectarian violence and show signs of torture.

* Guerrillas set off a roadside bomb near al-Tayaran Square in downtown Baghdad, killing one person and wounding 6.

*Guerrillas stormed a carpenter's market in Baghdad, opening fire and killing 7 persons.

*Guerrillas set of a roadside bomb in Amil district of Baghdad, wounding two civilians.

*Haifa and Palestine streets in the city center saw fighting or mortar attacks.

* Guerrillas in Mada'in just south of Baghdad killed 4 Iraqi policemen.

*In Iskandariyah south of Baghdad, guerrillas attacked a factory and killed 3 persons, wounding a fourth. (This is the sort of thing that might get in the way of Bush's plan to reopen Iraqi factories.)

* Mosul: 9 bodies were found in the streets. Guerrillas opened fire on a gathering, killing 3 persons and wounding another 3. Guerrillas assassinated 2 other persons.

*Iraqi troops in Diyala province fighting near Baladruz claim to have detained 50 guerrillas and to have captured 2000 katyusha rocket rounds.

*Militiamen in Basra set a roadside bomb that killed a British soldier.

Reuters and McClatchy list lots more deaths and violence.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Interior Minister Jawad Bulani is warning Iraqi government employees against joining the Awdah Party. "`Awdah" means "the Return," and it is a successor to the Baath Party that the US overthrew in 2003. Al-Zaman says that informed sources in the Iraqi government have told it that the execution of Saddam Hussein caused many Iraqis to join the Baath Party and helped its activists restore their contact with thousands of local party leaders and with cadres who had earlier been on the fence. Thousands of invitations to join the party have been distributed in the largely Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin, al-Anbar, Diyala and Mosul. The sources say that party activists continue their political and military work in Baghdad and even in the largely Shiite provinces of the south. (About half of the middle- and lower-ranking Baath Party officials were Shiite, though the top leadership tended to be Sunni. So there were plenty of Shiite Baathists, and they have been targeted for assassination by the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps. Maybe some of them have decided to fight back instead of just waiting for the sniper's bullet . . .)

The sources emphasized that party activists focus, in their political work, on criticizing former policies (i.e. of Saddam), but they concentrate on resistance to the Occupation and the Iraqi government, which they characterize as a client of Iran and of the Iraqi militias. The renewed contacts have led to the proliferation of party cells. The informed sources say that after April, 2003, the Baath Party divided into four separate parties or tendencies. [I take it that the Awdah Party is one of these four.]

Bulani strictly warned in his memo against anyone joining a party, the goal of which is tearing back down Iraq. He recalled the Baath Party's bloodthirsty past and its rule by terrorizing the population. He warned anyone who thought of joining this defeated fascist party that Iraqi security forces would be watching him.

The US Government Open Source Center has recently translated some Iraqi Ba`thist communiques that have appeared on the internet, which give a flavor of this corner of contemporary Iraqi politics:

' 'Saddam's Fedayeen' Promises Revenge for Saddam's Execution, Posts Video
Jihadist Websites -- OSC Report
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 T17:35:20Z

Saddam's Fedayeen responded to the execution of Saddam, Barzan al-Tikriti, and Awad al-Bandar and eulogized Saddam Husayn as a martyr who "fought with bravery against the Zionist enemy in defense of the Arab nation" and praised his "courage in the face of his execution." It condemned his Shia executioners and promised "to kill and slaughter the enemies" including "Al-Maliki, Al-Hakim, and Muqtada al-Sadr."

The group said that by executing Saddam, "Al-Maliki wanted to send the Sunnis a message that Shia are the masters now, and that the Sunnis must kneel before them." The group also announced its "pledge of allegiance to Izzat al-Duri as the new and legitimate president of Iraq and the secretary general of the Ba'th Party" and declared war against "every follower of Muqtada al-Sadr and Al-Hakim except for women and children" and promised to target them "just like the occupation forces and the traitors."

Saddam's Fedayeen called on all insurgent groups to refrain from speaking unkindly of Saddam and the Ba'th Party and added that they are "willing to listen." They claimed that the group has carried out many operations in cooperation with many groups and warned of the media's attempt to "limit the resistance in a few groups." '

And then there is this one, which shows how some Sunni Arab nationalists see the US as having collaborated with Iran in installing a pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad.

' Iraqi Ba'th Party Comments on President George Bush's Speech Regarding Iraq
Jihadist Websites -- OSC Report
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 T03:23:20Z

Terrorism: Iraqi Ba'th Party Comments on President George Bush's Speech Regarding Iraq On 20 December, a jihadist website posted a statement issued by the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party in which the group commented on President Bush's speech regarding the status of the Iraqi war.

A summary of the statement follows:

The Arab Socialist Ba'th Party said that "in his speech today, the American President George Bush revealed the extent of the defeat that America is facing in Iraq. In addition to repeating the admission that the Iraqi resistance is winning and progressing and that America is being defeated and is failing, his military leaders and civilian officials have lately expressed their belief that the American forces in Iraq are standing at the edge of complete collapse."

It reiterated that "strategic resolution has been achieved to the advantage of Iraq and its armed national movement . .. and resorting to killing based on sectarian identity is only expressing the deep feeling that strategic resolution has taken place." The group argued that the US failure in Iraq cannot be remedied and that the "Iraqi resistance depleted (the war's) sources of monetary, human, and psychological financing."

Some of the signs of this, according to the group, were "the lack of financial liquidity to cover the war expenses that are multiplying due to the multiplying of the Iraqi resistance operations, the decline in the enlistment of American citizens, the inability to acquire the necessary numbers to join the army so as to compensate for the dead or disabled, and the complete collapse of the American army's morale." It emphasized that "the collapse is strategic, not just military, and therefore goes beyond the Iraqi borders to encompass the entire world."

The group also argued that "in light of this dangerous global and regional strategic position, it is possible that America and Iran will resort to a major operation in Iraq, characterized by the reinforcement of their alliance against Iraq, under the guise of their fabricated struggle," which will focus on regaining control over "liberated areas in Baghdad by force," followed by "the liberated cities and provinces."

It called all "fellow Iraqi national resistance groups, parties, and characters, to prepare for this possibility on the military, political, organizational, and media levels, to reinforce the cooperation between all Iraqi nationalists, and avoid any American ploy to infiltrate this or that regime, whether it be under the facade of negotiation, including (them) in the government, or the formation of a new government, for all these calls are methods of deceit and toppling of national forces and characters."

The group also reemphasized that "the resistance and the party are able to foil the new plot and completely vanquish it, not only because the resistance is supported by the entire people, but also because the multi-headed enemy used everything it had from the start the invasion and until now, and the resistance still defeated it in the great battles that occurred. All Iraq needs now is to strengthen the unity between all of the armed resistance groups and to avoid anyone whose intention is to create discord and internal conflicts." It reiterated its opposition to "the so-called national reconciliation called for by the agent Al-Maliki through Bush's direction," claiming that it was an attempt to change defeat into victory. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Misreading the Enemy

My op-ed at the Mercury News, "Misreading the Enemy," argues that "As long as the Sunni Arabs of Iraq are so deeply unhappy, they will simply generate more guerrillas over time. Bush is depending on military tactics to win a war that can only be won by negotiation."
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Mahdi Army Lowers Profile
Sunni Guerrillas now Mainly fight Shiites

McClatchy reports that Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad have adopted a low profile as they await the arrival of extra US troops, storing their weapons and taking down their checkpoints. The weapons, says one informant, are still nearby.

Ghaith Abdul Ahad of the Guardian sheds loads of illumination on the situation on the ground in Iraq. He talks to Sunni Arab guerrilla leaders about the way in which the struggle has turned into a battle not so much against US troops as against Shiite militias, which seem increasingly to be winning the battle for Baghdad.

Important points

*The disciplined anti-American insurgency among Sunni Arabs of 2004-2005 has deteriorated into youth street gangs mainly killing and robbing Shiites.

*Sunni guerrillas now need more weaponry than they can loot from old Baath munitions depots and are smuggling it from the weapons given by the US to the Iraqi goverment through graft.

*Sunni Arab guerrillas are blaming the strategy of attacking Shiites solely on "al-Qaeda." [This is not entirely honest. Baathists have attacked Shiites, too.]

*Militant Sunni Arabs of a fundamentalist cast still want to fight a two-pronged war against the Americans and the Shiites. Some dissent and think they should make up with the Americans so as to protect themselves from the Shiites.

*The guerrilla groups are increasingly based in neighborhoods rather than in city-wide cells.

* Contributions from businessmen, neighborhood levies by guerrilla groups, and looting and theft (especially from Shiites) are major sources of income for them.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran writes about the Bush administration's sudden desertion of free market principles in Iraq in favor of trying to repair and jump-start Baath-era factories. US proconsul in Iraq in 2003 Paul Bremer was convinced that the invisible hand of the market would magically repair the economy all by itself. But Iraq after the invasion was in a Great Depression, and it needed a New Deal, not Reaganism. Chandrasekaran recognizes the challenges to doing this now-- lack of electricity, lack of security in the Sunni Arab areas, etc.

When I was in Beirut in 1975 during the beginnings of the Civil War there, I remember that the Christian Phalangist militia bombed a Christian cookie factory downtown. I was puzzled and asked around as to why they would do that. The best guess of my friends was that they were trying to create unemployment so that the workers would take a pay cut to work as militiamen instead. My guess is, that the attempt to revive the factories is going to meet with a lot of sabotage.

My recent interview with Rajiv Chandrasekaran concerning his book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, is here (part 1) and then for part 2, here.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

If the Shoe were on the other Foot

Europeans who use a credit card to buy an airplane ticket to the United States open themselves to further scrutiny by US authorities. Even special food preferences indicated to the airline would be communicated to US law enforcement (i.e. if you order a kosher, vegetarian or halal meal), and those could be the basis for requests for more information. Investigations kicked off by these minor details would concern not only possible ties to terrorism but also anything the US considered criminal activity.

These details, only now revealed to the European public, have provoked a good deal of controversy there.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Attempts at Marginalizing Carter Intensify

Fourteen members of the Carter Center have resigned in protest over former president Jimmy Carter's book,"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." AP hints that they were mostly themselves Jewish Americans. The Jerusalem Post says all were. This is only 7% of his board, which has 200 members.

The lobby is drawing wagons around this one, even though Carter's book is actually very biased toward Israel and makes historical errors in Israel's favor. AP reports:

' "You have clearly abandoned your historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side," the departing members of the center's Board of Councilors told Carter in their letter of resignation. '

What is really being demanded by the Zionist expansionists is that Carter ignore the creeping Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, ignore the way in which Israel makes Palestinians' lives miserable, ignore the datum that under Israeli occupation 15 percent of Palestinian children are malnourished. If he ignored all that, then he'd be being even-handed.

The invocation of even-handedness is ironic. We all know what happened to Howard Dean when he even so much as suggested that the US play the role of honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The conditions under which Palestinians beyond the green line under Israeli occupation live are actually much worse than what most black South Africans suffered under Apartheid. Within Israel proper, Arabs with Israeli citizenship suffer discrimination. A frankly racist law prevents family unification for Israeli Arabs married to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, singling them out on racial grounds for discriminatory treatment not visited on Jewish Israelis.

Amazon.com isn't being fair to Carter's book, either.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Maliki Said to Have Pledged Mahdi Crackdown

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that its sources in the Iraqi government are saying that there are some secret paragraphs to the agreement between the Bush administration and the al-Maliki government in Iraq to act against militia leaders. The article suggests that the model of the US raid on an Iranian liason office in Irbil might be deployed against Mahdi Army leaders and against Sunni Arab guerrilla commanders. That is, such raids would be small, targeted, quick and involve kidnapping suspected wrongdoers.

The article also quotes US ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, as saying that al-Maliki promised Bush that he would confront the [Shiite] Mahdi Army.

It says that Jabir al-Khafaji, a lieutenant of Muqtada al-Sadr who preached at his mosque in Kufa on Friday, condemned the "new politicians" and charging that "their strategy and goal is to get rid of the pious believers who have opposed the occupation." Hmm. I'd say he thinks there is about to be a fight with the Mahdi Army.

The LA Times reports that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has appoint Abud Qanbar of Amara to be the top military commander in Baghdad. Qanbar is a Shiite, though nothing is known of his political affiliations. He would be in a position to tip off Shiite politicians and militia leaders about US plans. The US had pushed for another officer, but al-Maliki vetoed their choice and appointed his own man.

Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front in parliament, criticized Qanbar's appointment as a unilateral act of the prime minister that came with no consultation with parliament.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Friday. Reuters reports violence in Iraq on Thursday.

Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan says he will, too, invade Iraq if he wants to. And who, he says, is the US to tell others they can't invade Iraq at will?

More on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's endorsement of the Bush administration's goal of pushing Iranian influence out of Iraq.

Tomdispatch has an important piece, on America's "sacrificial victims."

Sven Gustafson on the reaction to Bush's speech among Arab-Americans in Michigan (I am quoted as well).

Jebediah Reed at Radar Magazine makes the point that pundits who were wrong about the Iraq War have been well rewarded, whereas those like Bob Scheer and others who warned about its dangers have been fired or marginalized even though they were right.

This is because punditry is not about being right or wrong or exhibiting good judgment. It is about producing and reproducing elite American political discourse for the masses. It is more important that they can continue to justify changing elite policy than that they supported past policies that didn't work out very well. All the real reporters I know at all well are deeply unhappy at their workplaces, where they typically have wealthy far rightwing bosses who interfere from time to time in the newspaper or magazine and make the reporter's life hell. That is why it is unfair (as I have been reminded when I fall into it) to criticize reporters for where they work. Good reporters work for the Washington Times or UPI, i.e. for the Rev. Moon. But ultimately it is the Rev. Moon who decides who gets to be pundits for his media outlets. Apparently almost everyone in the news business is in pretty much the same position.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole in Salon: Did the US just Provoke Iran?

My article, "Did the US Just Provoke Iran," about the Irbil attack and other US-Iranian tensions over Iraq, is just out in Salon.com.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Terror Attack on US Embassy in Athens

Terrorists fired a rocket from across the street into the US embassy in Athens on Friday morning. The rocket exploded in the bathroom on the third floor but did not cause casualties.

Greek leftist groups have targeted the US embassy and its personnel in the past, and passions run high in Greece against the US role in Iraq, which is generally seen as mere predatory imperialism and capitalist grasping.

Among significant terrorist actions listed by the State Department are below, with a couple of interpolations from the press:

' Naval Officer Assassinated in Greece, November 15, 1983: A U.S. Navy officer was shot by the November 17 terrorist group in Athens, Greece, while his car was stopped at a traffic light. . . .

Aircraft Bombing in Greece, March 30, 1986: A Palestinian splinter group detonated a bomb as TWA Flight 840 approached Athens airport, killing four U.S. citizens. . . .

Attack on U.S. Diplomat in Greece, June 28, 1988: The Defense Attaché of the U.S. Embassy in Greece was killed when a car-bomb was detonated outside his home in Athens. . .

[In February 1996, unidentified assailants fired a rocket at the US embassy compound in Athens, causing minor damage to three diplomatic vehicles and some surrounding buildings.]

Diplomatic Assassination in Greece, June 8, 2000: In Athens, Greece, two unidentified gunmen killed British Defense Attaché Stephen Saunders in an ambush. The Revolutionary Organization 17 November claimed responsibility. . . '

This is not terrorism, but in fall of 2006: ' "In November last year, Greek riot police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators marching to the US embassy in Athens who chanted slogans including "Bush the butcher, out of Iraq" and "The USA is the real terrorist" '

The November 17 group is a major suspect, even though it was allegedly disbanded. Its members didn't go anywhere, and their anger over Iraq may have brought them out of retirement.

Just as the London underground (subway) bombings of 7/7/2005 were in some large part impelled by anger over the Iraq War, I am sure that when we know more about the Athens Embassy attack, we will find Iraq at the bottom of it.

The bombings in Madrid and London, and now possibly Athens, give the lie to Bush's constant refrain that the Iraq War is making us safer. It is the greatest generator of terrorism perhaps ever created. Republican Senators like Frist who make the silly argument that there have been no major al-Qaeda attacks because of the invasion of Iraq are heartlessly insulting the victims of Madrid and London, not to mention of Karbala and Kadhimiya. The continental US is hard for foreign-based terrorists to get at and most of the really dangerous security gaps, like unfortified cockpit doors on airplanes, have been closed. But all US allies are extremely nervous about where this Iraq thing is taking the world, and some of them have dire reasons for concern.

It is of course possible that this attack was the work not of Greek leftists but of Muslim radicals. We'll see, maybe. But one good lesson implied by the history of such attacks in Greece is that persons of Christian European heritage have engaged in terrorism, and that it is not just Muslims.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Forces Storm Iranian Consulate in Irbil

The US military stormed the Iranian consulate in the northern Iraq Kurdistan city of Irbil on Thursday.

Irbil is the fief of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. The Kurdistan Regional Government, which he leads, is semi-autonomous and maintains a regional army, the Peshmerga, of 60,000 men. Kurdistan authorities say that no federal Iraqi army troops may set foot in Kurdistan.

Kurdistan is eager to retain its semi-autonomy, and hopes ultimately for independence. It cannot expect the Baghdad government to fund its military. Sunni guerrillas have sabotaged oil exports from Kirkuk.

One scenario you could imagine is that Iran was sending some aid and weaponry to the Peshmerga on condition it be shared with the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The US raided a compound of SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim recently and captured Iranian intelligence officials there, who had come to consult about the shape of the Iraqi government.

Kurdistan authorities have long had good relations with the Badr Corps, to which they gave bases in Kurdistan late in the Saddam period when they were jointly trying to overthrow him.

Although Bush keeps implying that Iran is supplying weapons and aid to US enemies in Iraq, the circumstantial evidence is that it was helping the two main US allies in Iraq with their paramilitary capabilities-- Kurdistan and SCIRI. But it is likely that the money and weapons do bleed over into insurgent groups and have a destabilizing effect.

The most strident complaints about Iranian aid to Peshmerga and Badr come from the Sunni Arab political leaders. One wonders if this is a last gift to them by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad before he goes out, and a sign that the US is trying to get them back to the negotiating table?

Stay tuned.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland

To listen to Bush's speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland. That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is shameful.

The answer to "al-Qaeda's" occupation of neighborhoods in Baghdad and the cities of al-Anbar is then, Bush says, to send in more US troops to "clear and hold" these neighborhoods.

But is that really the big problem in Iraq? Bush is thinking in terms of a conventional war, where armies fight to hold territory. But if a nimble guerrilla group can come out at night and set off a bomb at the base of a large tenement building in a Shiite neighborhood, they can keep the sectarian civil war going. They work by provoking reprisals. They like to hold territory if they can. But as we saw with Fallujah and Tal Afar, if they cannot they just scatter and blow things up elsewhere.

And the main problem is not "al-Qaeda," which is small and probably not that important, and anyway is not really Bin Laden's al-Qaeda. They are just Salafi jihadis who appropriated the name. When their leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed, it didn't cause the insurgency to miss a beat. Conclusion: "al-Qaeda" is not central to the struggle. Izzat Ibrahim Duri and the Baath Party are probably the center of gravity of the resistance.

Bush admitted that the Sunni guerrilla destruction of the Askariyah (Golden Dome) shrine at Samarra set off an orgy of sectarian reprisals. But he does not seem to have actually absorbed the lesson here. The guerrillas did not have to hold territory in order to carry out that bombing. They just had to be able to sneak into a poorly guarded old building that Bush did not even know about and blow it up. The symbolic and psychic damage that they did to the Shiites was profound. Blowing up hundreds of worshippers on Ashura had not had nearly this impact, since the damaged shrine was dedicated to the hidden Twelfth Imam or Mahdi, the Shiite promised one. Many religious Shiites in Iraq are now millenarians, desperately waiting for the Promised One to reveal himself and restore the world to justice. The guerrillas hit the symbol of that hope.

There are other such targets. The Shrine of Imam Kadhim at Kadhimiya, the shrine of Ali in Najaf, and the shrine of Husayn in Karbala, and the person of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani himself, also the person of Hujjat al-Islam Muqtada al-Sadr. (The arrogance and ignorance of the US chattering classes is such that they openly talk about "taking out" al-Sadr, as though that would calm the Iraqi Shiites down. Saddam thought like that when he offed Muqtada's father; didn't work.) The US and British military nevertheless seem set to attack the Mahdi Army. Investments in guarding those sites (the most exposed of which is Kahdimiya) would be worth far more than temporarily intimidating angry Sunnis who have picked up a gun in the Dura neighborhood of Baghdad.

Bush could not help taking swipes at Iran and Syria. But the geography of his deployments gives the lie to his singling them out as mischief makers. Why send 4,000 extra troops to al-Anbar province? Why ignore Diyala Province near Iran, which is in flames, or Babel Province southwest of Baghdad? Diyala borders Iran, so isn't that the threat? But wait. Where is al-Anbar? Between Jordan and Baghdad. In other words, al-Anbar opens out into the vast Sunni Arab hinterland that supports the guerrilla movement with money and volunteers, coming in from Jordan. If Syria was the big problem, you would put the extra 4,000 troops up north along the border. If Iran was the big problem, you'd occupy Diyala. But little Jordan is an ally of the US, and Bush would not want to insult it by admitting that it is a major infiltration root for jihadis heading to Iraq.

The clear and hold strategy is not going to work in al-Anbar. Almost everyone there hates the Americans and wants them out. To clear and hold you need a sympathetic or potentially sympathetic civilian population that is being held hostage by militants, and which you can turn by offering them protection from the militants. I don't believe there are very many Iraqi Sunnis who can any longer be turned in that way. The opinion polling suggests that they overwhelmingly support violence against the US.

This strategy may have some successes here and there. It won't win the day, and I'd be surprised if it did not collapse by the end of the summer.

If part of the strategy is to assault the Mahdi Army frontally, that will cause enormous trouble in the Shiite south. I would suggest that PM Nuri al-Maliki's warning to the Mahdi Militia to disarm or face the US military is in fact code. He is telling the Sadrists to lie low while the US mops up the Sunni Arab guerrillas. Sadr's militia became relatively quiescent for a whole year after the Marines defeated it at Najaf in August, 2004. But since it is rooted in an enormous social movement, the militia is fairly easy to reconstitute after it goes into hiding.

The Arab allies of the US put pressure on Bush not to just withdraw from Iraq, fearing regional chaos.

James Ridgeway at Mother Jones compares Bush's speech to Kissinger's indirection during the 1972 negotiations with the N. Vietnamese. Making people think you are making progress when you are not has been a finely honed skill of this administration, far beyond anything Nixon could have dreamed of. But the dream machine is running up against Lincoln's dictum that you can't fool all the people all the time.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Groundhog Day in Purple Heart Boulevard
50 Dead in Clashes, 46 Bodies Found

US and Iraqi forces fought a significant street battle at Haifa Street in the Karkh section of Baghdad on Tuesday. Ground forces were supported by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships. The fighting left 50 persons dead, which the US said were Sunni Arab insurgents. The Shiite government of Iraq announced the discovery of several terrorist storehouses in the course of the operation.



Courtesy al-Zaman.

In contrast, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni religious association, described the operation as a "bloody sectarian massacre." The Sunni Arab narrative, enunciated over the weekend by MP Adnan Dulaimi, is that the Shiite militias are attempting to drive Sunni Arabs from their neighborhoods in the capital, and that the Mahdi Army had attacked Haifa Street Sunday and been driven back. Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that locals say a (Shiite) militia invaded the quarter on Sunday and captured and killed 15 residents, then threw their bodies in the street. In this context, some Sunni Arabs see the US as having been duped by the Shiites to join in the ethnic cleansing of the Karkh district.

Haifa Street has been an important thread in the saga of Iraq's civil war. In In July of 2004 we saw the huge "Operation Haifa Street," involving 3000 US troops. There was the massive carbombing there of a police station in 2004, which doesn't seem to show that "Operation Haifa Street" was exactly a success. Even at that time, the US GIs called it "Grenade Alley" and "Purple Heart Boulevard" and fought constantly with locally based guerilla groups. It has been radicalized and supposedly pacified over and over again. By March 2005, the NYT found that the tide was turning on Haifa Street. CSM reported that it had calmed down under Iraqi army supervision by May of 2005. A year and a half later, and it is still a "terrorist stronghold" and we have yet another pacification effort. Or maybe by now it is just being levelled by airstrikes. Or maybe we really have been duped into ethnically cleansing it on behalf of the Mahdi Army. Bush's Iraq War is like Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray science fiction film about the guy doomed to live the same day over and over again. How is 2007 different on Haifa Street from 2004?

The Americans keep putting their eggs in the basket of "standing up" the Iraqi army. Nancy Yousself reports on how difficult that is, given sectarian divisions. The problem with using armies to settle civil conflicts is that the army inevitably becomes infected by the same sectarian or ethnic passions that inflame the general population, so then it cannot be the solution.

Carl Conetta of the Project for Defense Alternatives doesn't think this surge thing is going to work out very well. He gives his reasons.

Another US soldier died Tuesday of wounds inflicted on him by guerrillas.

Police found 40 bodies on Tuesday in Baghdad and another 6 in Mosul. Mosul is now Iraq's second largest city, and a major Sunni Arab center. That it is beginning to generate dead bodies in the street is a very bad sign, since security forces are likely to be withdrawn from there for duty in Baghdad in coming months. Reuters reports other bombings and killings around the country.

Militiamen kidnapped Sunni pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia. Sunni MPs are accusing the special police commandos of the Interior Ministry in the kidnappings. The police commandos have been heavily infiltrated by Shiite militiamen of the Badr Corps (the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and, it is alleged, from spring 2006 by elements of the Mahdi Army. (Some rogue networks inside Badr are alleged to collaborate with the JAM).

An Iraqi judge is alleging that elements of the Mahdi Army have infiltrated the Green Zone, the area behind concrete barriers where the Iraqi government offices are. Sunni Arab guerrillas have long been said to be trying to figure out a way to get into the Green Zone and conduct a major operation there. So far they have failed, but was the truly credible threat from a different quarter?

A UNICEF staffer was shot in his car in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Iraq is too dangerous for some children even just to go to school.

Trudy Rubin of the Inquirer on Gen. David Petraeus's past successes and present challenges.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Victims of Violence Triple
Bush to offer more Power to al-Maliki

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic says that Da'wa Party official Hasan al-Sunaid, a member of parliament, has information on Bush's plan for Iraq. He learned of it through Bush's consultations with PM Nuri al-Maliki:

* Strengthening the Iraqi government so that it can take over security duties in the provinces and then in Baghdad.

* Increasing the prerogatives of the Prime Minister as commander in chief of the armed forces

* Replacing some US military units in Iraq with more well-trained and seasoned troops better able to tackle terrorism

* Support for the Iraqi government in its quest to regain authority over the Iraqi military, and raising its level of readiness.

In contrast, a former Iraqi cabinet minister, Ali Allawi recently put forward in the Independent a more promising peace proposal. It is worth reading in full, but here are the money grafs:

' The first step must be the recognition that the solution to the Iraq crisis must be generated first internally, and then, importantly, at the regional level. . . No foreign power, no matter how benevolent, should be allowed to dictate the terms of a possible historic and stable settlement in the Middle East. . .

Secondly, the basis of a settlement must take into account the fact that the forces that have been unleashed by the invasion of Iraq must be acknowledged and accommodated. These forces, in turn, must accept limits to their demands and claims. That would apply, in particular, to the Shias and the Kurds, the two communities who have been seen to have gained from the invasion of Iraq.

Thirdly, the Sunni Arab community must become convinced that its loss of undivided power will not lead to marginalisation and discrimination. . .

Fourthly, the existing states surrounding Iraq feel deeply threatened by the changes there. That needs to be recognised and treated in any lasting deal for Iraq and the area. . .

The Iraqi government that has arisen as a result of the admittedly flawed political process must be accepted as a sovereign and responsible government. No settlement can possibly succeed if its starting point is the illegitimacy of the Iraqi government or one that considers it expendable.

Mr. Allawi's plan was widely hailed by politicians and by journalists and analysts in Britain, but in the insular US it has barely gotten a hearing.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq, including the killing of a Shiite family by Sunni guerrillas as they were packing up to leave the largely Sunni Arab neighborhood of Dura. A mini-bus full of Shiite workers was bombed. Two US troops were announced killed.

The number of Iraqis killed in political violence tripled in the second half of 2006 according to official statistics. Just multiply the official figures by about 7 and you'd be close to the true number.

If this is what it is like for US troops on the edge of Sadr City . . . No wonder the warbloggers hate AP for telling it like it is.

Nir Rosen profiles Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni religious "National Accord Front, which has 44 seats in the Iraqi parliament. Nir calls him Iraq's most sectarian politician, but there are lots of candidates for that award.

Was the drafting of the new Iraqi petroleum law outsourced to a US contractor?

The American Historical Association took a major step toward a strong anti-war resolution. It has to be approved by the board, but the membership clearly is dismayed by the news coming out of Iraq. But in the face of the superior geopolitical judgment of schlock pundits and "provocative" cable television hosts, who are mere historians, to have an opinion?
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Are we Winning Yet?
Submarines, Iran & Gulf
Somalia, Afghanistan, Palestine

Iranian officials point out that they don't need a bomb to stop petroleum exports through the Straits of Hormuz. And they say they will, if the US bothers them too much about their nuclear energy program. Iranian sabotage in the Straits of Hormuz could deprive the world of 40 percent of its petroleum. Ouch. And, as the US has discovered in Iraq, stopping sabotage isn't easy.

As if to illustrate the point, a US nuclear submarine collided with a Japanese oil tanker in the busy, crowded Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf on Monday. While it is not true that a sunken supertanker would block the Straits, it is true that it wouldn't be so hard to sink some supertankers.

The last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program predicted it was at least 10 years away even if it was trying and the atmosphere was permissive. Are Cheney's new appointments intended to alter that NIE?

The US used a navy AC-130 to attack suspected al-Qaeda in Somalia. Those hit are alleged to have played a role in the bombings of US embassies in 1998. But was the price of overthrowing the Islamic Courts Union throwing Somalia back into failed-state status? And might that condition not generate/ give safe harbor to terrorism . . ?

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator of Pakistan, is worrying out loud that religious extremists in his country are seeking a confrontation that could drag it into civil war. [Don't we already have enough of those?]

The bad news: the Karzai government in Afghanistan is rapidly declining in popularity. The good news: people really, really loathe the Taliban, despite their military resurgence.

Is all that Muslim infighting in the Middle East really just a volunteer activity?
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunnis in Parliament Criticize al-Maliki's Security Plan
Pelosi warns Bush on Purse Strings

The killing by Iraqi guerrillas of 5 US troops was announced on Sunday. Three of them were airmen assigned to a bomb squad.

Reuters reports other violence in Iraq, including the discovery in the capital on Sunday of 17 bodies.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi got out ahead of a lot of Democratic lawmakers on Sunday, calling for Bush to justify the spending on sending extra troops to Iraq. It is an old and key principle in parliamentary regimes that parliament controls the purse strings. Pelosi is attempting to remind Bush of this control.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is quoted as saying that 80% of Iraq's militiamen are probably OK and could be put into the Iraqi security forces, while the other 20% may have to be "captured or killed."

This comment seems to me a welcome evidence of realism, much better than the conviction that the Sadr Movement can be defeated militarily. But I fear that the "more extreme" militiamen are the cousins of the ones who are OK, and if you kill the cousin of an Iraqi, he has to kill you to restore clan honor. So if you kill the 20%, you turn the "moderate" militiamen into your deadly enemies. Americans are so individualistic, they can't seem to get their minds around clans and clan feuds. This failure of understanding or imagination has underpinned a lot of the failure in Iraq. What you do is to make a deal with the clan leaders and make them responsible for reining in the extremists, setting things up so that they are denied financial rewards if they fail to do so. Of course this plan depends on your ability to guarantee the safety of the clan leaders, which at the moment the US military cannot do.

Rob Collier of the SF Chronicle reports on those experts who believe that negotiating with the Sunni Arab guerrillas is the only way out of the quagmire. Saddam's execution has caused the neo-Baath angrily to pull out of talks.

Even the Jordanian parliament, a conservative and relatively pro-Western body with nary a Baathist among them, denounced the execution of Saddam Hussein.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic on the new security plan for Baghdad put forth by PM al-Maliki. Musa Abu Tawq and Ali al-Musawi write that some members of parliament have denounced the plan as unconstitutional because parliament has never been given the opportunity to vote on it. MP Hussein al-Faluji of the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni religious)insisted that the plan must be presented to parliament.

Others are criticizing the plan because it concentrates on Sunni West Baghdad and exempts Shiite Sadr City in the east. Members of parliament warned that this lack of even-handedness would exacerbate civil conflict rather than ending it. Kurdish politician Mahmud Osman objected to the planned use of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who are in Iraqi army units, saying he worried that it might provoke fighting between Arabs and Kurds. He admitted that the plan had been approved by President Jalal Talabani and the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Masoud Barzani. Three Iraqi army brigades are expected to head down from northern Iraq to the capital, two of them Kurdish. MP al-Faluji also said that the use of the Peshmerga should be presented to parliament for its approval.

Al-Zaman maintains that militiamen [a code word for the Shiite Mahdi Army] attacked the Baghdad district of al-Rahmaniya on sunday, killing 3 persons and wounding 10 among locals who were defending their homes. The militiamen set fire to 10 dwellings. At the same time, the Mahdi Army in Sadr City has begun a conscription drive to expand its ranks. Every family with a male between the ages of 15 and 45 is being forced to relinquish him to the militia.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that "al-Qaeda" in Fallujah assassinated Muhammad Mahmud, the head of the 1920 Revolution Brigades in the district of al-Saqlawiya, threatening al-Anbar Province with a feud between the two Sunni guerrilla groups. (I fear this business of the Sunni guerrilla groups fighting each other is a minor phenomenon, though al-Hayat has been playing it up for a year. During that year, any such tensions have had no effect on the deadly effectiveness of the guerrillas. Besides, I thought the US military was taking retinal scans of everyone who returned to Fallujah and that it was now hunky dory even if 2/3s of the buildings had been damaged by the 2004 US assault. So how come there are all these guerrilla groups in the city?)

It says that the Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard line Sunni clerical group, called on the former officers of the Iraqi military to liberate Iraq from occupation.

Al-Hayat maintains that Baghdad looks half empty, with residents fearful to go out for fear of a guerrilla or militia attack.

Newsweek reports on the ways in which the US is losing the information war in Iraq, with guerrillas cannily spreading around images of attacks on US troops. The chilling suggestion is made that some attacks are staged precisely to generate propaganda footage, i.e. the guerrillas are making snuff films with the GIs as victims.

Simon Jenkins compares Bush's surge in Iraq to other last-ditch failed attempts by leaders to rescue a failed war effort.

The Independent sees the new Iraqi oil law as "American-drafted" and as incredibly generous to investors and outside corporations, beyond the industry standard.

JLK has further comments on this issue.

Young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr met Sunday with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani about "security issues." The Iranian press has reported that Sistani is attempting to restore the unity of the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, from which Sadrist MPs have been alienated since PM Nuri al-Maliki met with US President George W. Bush.

Tim Phelps of Newsday considers the real possibility that Iraq was always mission impossible.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Maliki threatens Diplomatic Relations with Protesting States

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with countries that criticized the execution of Saddam Hussein. He defended the decision to execute him on the Sunni feast of sacrifice, saying that Saddam had profaned religious holidays. Note to al-Maliki: 1. Don't compare yourself to Saddam and 2. when you have a capital so dangerous that countries are afraid to send embassies, it isn't really that much of a threat when you say you'll cut off diplomatic relations.

Another 47 bodies were found in Baghdad through midnight Friday but not fully reported until Saturday. Guerrillas tried to car-bomb the chief of Baghdad police, Maj. Gen Ali Yasir, but missed and killed and wounded innocent by-standers. If this is what the life of the police chief is like, imagine that of ordinary people.

The major newspapers and wire services say that Bush will put as many as 20000 further troops into Baghdad and al-Anbar provinces. Wesley Clark says it won't work. Col. Paul Hughes at the US Institute of Peace thinks it would take hundreds of thousands of troops, based on experience in the Balkans.

The real need is for some political initiatives. Shiites cannot rule a majority Sunni province like Diyala without there being a lot of trouble. There need to be provincial elections in places like Diyala so that the US has representative Sunnis to talk to.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bay Area

I'm going to be in the Bay Area, Ca., for talks Jan. 17-20. Thanks so much for your kind responses. The itinerary is full except for Saturday when I will be in SF proper.

Public talks on this trip have now been arranged:

UC Santa Cruz

January 17 (Wednesday, 7 PM, College 9/10 Multipurpose Room):

"The Crisis of Iraq as America’s Crisis"

Juan Cole, History, University of Michigan


And, Jan. 19, evening at

University of the Pacific
School of International Studies
3601 Pacific Avenue
Stockton, CA 95211
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ethnic Cleansing in Battle for Baghdad
Sistani Aide Claims threat to Islamic Line

McClatchy reports a mortar attack on Zafaraniya in Baghdad, which killed 5 and wounded 15. Another two civilians were injured in al-Amil by mortar attacks. Police found 12 bodies in Baghdad.

Gunmen abducted an American civilian and two of his Iraqi aides on Friday in Basra.

Reuters reported a deadly attack by guerrillas on a checkpoint in Dhulu'iya, where guerrillas killed 4 Iraqi soldiers.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, an aide to Sistani in the holy city of Karbala in the south, said Friday that a failure of the al-Maliki governmen might well discredit the whole "Islamic line." He urged the government to act before it was too late. It would be ironic if the collapse of Iraq really did discredit political Islam. But I fear it is more likely to discredit democracy and the United States. It is hard to discredit utopian ideologies. Studies have shown that members of sects whose leaders predict the end of the world on a certain date are actually more committed to the leader when the date comes and goes with nothing happening. Apparently they had so much time, money, and social networks invested in him that they didn't want to lose it all.

On Thursday, the Association of Muslim Scholars (or now some are calling it the Muslim Clerics Association) issued a warning that Sunni Arab districts in Iraq were going to be attacked by militias, implying that there was government connivance in all this. On Friday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had his office issue a statement: "The statement from the Muslim Clerics Association is totally baseless and raises tension, and we hold the Muslim Clerics responsible for any action that results from this." The Association's statement did not explicitly mention Shiites, but they seem to have had the Mahdi Army in mind.

Al-Hayat reported in Arabic that Adnan Dulaimi, the leader of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front in Parliament said that Baghdad had entered a decisive battle after the success of Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army, in implementing a campaign of the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from eastern districts of the capital, which they are following up with an identical plot in West Baghdad. Dulaimi said that the battle had begun when Shiite militias launched attacks in the districts east of the Army Canal, in the neighborhoods of Sadr City, Talibiya, Shaab, Ur, al-Ubaidi, and New Baghdad, none of which now has a single Sunni family living there. Then the militias took the battle to the area west of the canal, including Rusafa, Salikh, Tunis, Adhamiya, Karrada, Jadiriya, and Palestine street, where Sunnis were once 30 or 40 percent of the population before the fever of ethnic cleansing took over in the districts of al-Amil and Baya' of West Baghdad.

Dulaimi maintained that in some other districts where Sunnis had been more than half the population, such as Kharkh, there were now no Sunnis, including in Hurriya, Shu'la, Tubji, and Kadhimiya. He said that there is now a battle for control of the districts of Adl, Mansur, Ghazaliya, Amiriya, and Dura, that is, the last Sunni strongholds in the Kharkh region of Baghdad, and Adhamiya in Rusafa.

Dulaimi maintained that the Mahdi Army was not reacting to Sunni guerrilla provocations, but was rather implementing a carefully thought out plan that was supported by the Iraqi government. He said that Iran was suppying new, state of the art, mortar launchers to the militias, which they were now using against Sunni neighborhoods.

In contrast, Shiite MP Jalal Saghir of the United Iraqi Alliance maintained that the Sunni Arab ethnic cleansing of Shiites has been going on some time, including in the districts of Abu Ghraib, Khadra, Amiriya, Adhamiya, and Dura, all of which are now nearly empty of Shiites. Saghir maintains an Arabic web site, BurathaNews.com, where he gives news of ethnic cleansing attempts.

LAT says that a US military sweep in Diyala province east of Baghdad turned up few guerrillas, since they melted into the countryside.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole on Air America

Al Franken had me on the show Friday to discuss Iraq.

Al played the notorious clip from Bill Kristol decrying the "pop sociology" that Iraqi Shiites wanted a religious state and that there would be Sunni-Shiite violence. It was a trip down memory lane.

Bill Kristol still has more influence on Iraq policy than anyone in the reality-based community.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Adults take Charge
The Reality Based Community Strikes Back in Iraq

The professionals take charge. Bush is bringing in Ryan Crocker, a distinguished career foreign service officer, as the new US ambassador to Iraq. And Gen. David Petraeus will replace Gen. Casey as top ground commander in Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing ambassador to Iraq, will go as ambassador to the United Nations, replacing the lying blowhard John Bolton.

I'm stricken with a case of the "what ifs" and "if onlys"! What if Gates had been at the Pentagon in 2003 and Petraeus had been in charge of the US military in Iraq and Crocker had been there instead of Paul Bremer? These are competent professionals who know what they are doing. Gates is clear-sighted enough to tell Congress that the US is not winning in Iraq, unlike his smooth-talking, arrogant and flighty predecessor. Petraeus is among the real experts on counter-insurgency, and did a fine job of making friends and mending fences when he was in charge of Mosul. Crocker has been ambassador to Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan, and knows the region intimately (as does Khalilzad). Bremer had been ambassador to . . . Holland. Despite all the talk of the resurgence of the Neoconservatives with their "surge" (actually ramped up occupation) plan, this team is the farthest from Neoconservative desires that you could possibly get.

I wish these seasoned professionals well. They know what they are getting into, and it is an index of their courage and dedication that they are willing to risk their lives in an effort that the American public has largely written off as a costly failure. If the US in Iraq can possibly have a soft landing, these are the individuals who can pull it off. It is a big if.

What they are up against comes through clearly in the reporting on the situation in Iraq on Thursday. Police found 47 bodies in the streets of Baghdad on Thursday. Guerrillas set off two car bombs in the al-Mansur district, killing 13 persons and injuring 22. The NYT gives a graphic eyewitness account of the gruesome aftermath.

Guerrillas killed a US soldier in Baghdad with small arms fire.

Sunni Arab guerrillas also launched a mortar attack on the Shiite Shu'la district of Baghdad, injuring 9 civilians. The NYT piece mentions several other such attacks, as does Reuters. Police found four bodies in Hilla, in the mixed Sunni and Shiite province of Babel (Hilla is largely Shiite).

The Associated Press has been vindicated in having reported on an incident of sectarian violence based on an interview with Jamil Hussein. The Iraqi government initially denied he existed, and the US military put pressure on AP to retract. Now it turns out he does exist but will be punished for speaking to the press!

Gee, it turns out AP is more reliable on Iraq than Michelle Malkin after all. Since she's so eager to intern people, maybe she can do penance by putting herself under house arrest for the rest of the war as a punishment for spreading war propaganda.

The diary of the last two months in the life of the director of the Iraqi National Library and Archives. It is harrowing.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iranian Diplomats Consulted on Iraq Cabinet Changes
Sistani Aide Killed in Karbala

While American press reporting on the US military's arrest of Iranians at the compound of Iraqi cleric have focused on the possibility that they were bringing arms, British intelligence has a different take. They say there is no conclusive evidence in the documents captured that the Iranians are supplying weaponry for attacks on Coalition troops.

In contrast, what concerns the British is evidence that the Iranian diplomats and intelligence officials had come to consult their Iraqi Shiite colleagues about the viability of the al-Maliki government and how the cabinet should be changed to make it more stable and viable. A UK official said, "There was discussion of whether the Maliki government would succeed, who should be in which ministerial jobs... It was a very significant meeting . . . The fact of who some of the Iranians were is very significant."

This purpose of the visit makes more sense to me than arms smuggling. If they were there to consult with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim about the shape of the Iraqi government and how to keep the new Shiite regime in power, that would make perfect sense. The take of the Rupert Murdoch press in the US, that they came to help radical Sunni guerrillas, strikes me as plain silly. (This is not to deny that Tehran has lines into some of the Sunni guerrilla groups, but to blame Iran for most of what they do and let Jordanians and the Sunni Arab Gulf populations off the hook is bizarre. Only in America can common sense be so offended against so blithely.)

British intelligence is concerned that such a high-level meeting was held with Iranian officials to plot political strategy. But why is this such a surprise? The leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, was given refuge by Tehran in 1980 and headed up the Badr Corps paramilitary, which was trained and funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. So Bush puts the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, al-Hakim's organization, in power in Baghdad, and then there is surprise that he is consulting with the Iranians? What would be surprising is if he suddenly cut them off.

The London daily al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Kurdish politician Mahmud Osman and Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, both believe that the al-Maliki government is close to collapse. Dulaimi said that the sectarian character of the execution of Saddam Hussein so annoyed Iraq's (Sunni) Arab neighbors and the wider international community that it ensures a rapid demise for al-Maliki's government.

Ali al-Adib, a Shiite MP from the United Iraqi Alliance, contested this expectation. He said that al-Maliki's recent outburst in which he said he did not want to finish out his term was probably a way of putting pressure on US commanders to increase his own prerogatives of control over the Iraqi military.

Sadrist MP Baha' al-A'raji said that it appeared the "Al-Maliki was not prepared to bear the responsibility."

Rida Jawad Taqi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq affirmed his party's continued support for PM al-Maliki. SCIRI, which leads a large parliamentary bloc and has many allies, affirmed that it would not allow the al-Maliki government to fall.

Basically, it is a parliamentary gain. As long as al-Maliki can put together a 51 percent vote in the legislature in favor of him and his followers, he can stay. And contrary to what Dulaimi thinks, al-Maliki's constituency is the Shiites, who are mostly delighted to see Saddam executed.

Gunmen set up a phony checkpoint in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and stopped and killed Shaikh Akram al-Zubaydi, an important cleric and aide of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. They also killed his guards. MENA says that a curfew has been imposed on the city by local authorities.

[Karbala is far enough south and distant from the Sunni Arab areas that this action looks like Shiite on Shiite violence. That is the reason for the curfew, since in the South, Shiite on Shiite fighting is the big threat to security. Karbala has some Sadrist splinter groups that dislike Sistani and could have been responsible for this assassination.]
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Hate Radio and a Disney SLAPP

Daily Kos has the saga of one person's campaign against hate radio.

Spocko's problem, that he was posting audio files and has been threatened with a suit by Disney, is easily solved, it seems to me. He should just type up 600-word short excerpts from each file and post them instead. The posting of audio clips might or might not be fair use. The posting of 600 words a small portion from a work is already defined as such by the courts.

The excerpts can also be included in letters to the advertisers. From the sound of it, 600 words a program would be damning enough.

[As commenters point out below, there isn't a fixed amount of words that is fair use, and I should have just said "a small portion." Since Spocko's site is non-profit, I was suggesting that putting short excerpts online would be lawsuit-proof. I wasn't saying that posting the audio files is necessarily wrong. But if Spocko doesn't have money for lawyers, he might not be able to prove that he isn't engaging in Napster-like behavior. Quoting small portions of text online is already proved legal for nonprofits and the judge would laugh a suit out of court.)
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sunnis

Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles saw the Mehr report that I linked to yesterday and inquired,

' [I was baffled] by how Sadr could be negotiating to form an alliance with Sunnis at this point. It would be a big service to other non-experts if you could explain how this is possible. . .'

I replied on the fly, but here is a slightly revised version, below. I referred to the possibility of a Sadrist alliance with some Sunnis in this post on Dec. 20.*

It is an abiding paradox of contemporary Iraq that the Mahdi Army and the Sunni Arab guerrillas are slaughtering each other daily, but that young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (the leader of the Mahdi Army) has a better political relationship with Sunni Arab MPs and leaders than any other Shiite.

During the first siege of Fallujah in late March and April of 2004, Muqtada's Sadrists sent aid convoys to the besieged Sunnis there. In spring of 2005, the Association of Muslim Scholars (hardline Sunni) accused the Shiite Badr Corps paramilitary of having formed anti-Sunni death squads inside the special police commando units of the Ministry of the Interior. This open accusation caused a political crisis between AMS and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite fundamentalist party that sponsors the Badr Corps. It was Muqtada al-Sadr who engaged in shuttle diplomacy to calm the two parties down. He could play this role because he had credibility with both sides.

From his side, Muqtada makes a distinction between "Sunnis" on the one hand, and "Saddamis" and "Nawasib" on the other. (Nawasib are those Sunnis who have a violent hatred for the Shiites and the family of the Prophet, and nowadays in Iraq "al-Qaeda" would be such a group in Muqtada's eyes.)

So many Sunni fundamentalist MPs and officials of the Iraqi Accord Front (some of them rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood) are acceptable to Muqtada. He would argue that the Mahdi Army is not killing Sunnis, only Saddamis and Nawasib.

From the Sunni Iraqi side it makes most sense to think of it in negative terms. Most Sunni Arabs in Iraq now hate the United States and Iran. Muqtada hates the United States and expresses resentment of Persian dominance of Shiism. So if you think of them as Iraqi nativists, they have a lot in common. If the fundamentalist Sunnis could gain the Sadrists as allies, they would have a better chance of getting rid of the Americans, their main goal in life. And, allying with Shiite Islamists who are perceived as real Iraqis isn't so hard for them.

The hardline Salafis in the mold of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the hardline neo-Baathists, both ethnically Sunni, reject this strategy of talking to Muqtada.

In contrast, the National Dialogue Front led by secularist Salih Mutlaq is said to be tight with Muqtada. Some elements of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front are also relatively friendly to him. A politically connected Iraqi explained all this to me as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

I agree that it is baffling. But it isn't just the Iranians who perceive it this way.

Mickey kindly followed up:

'(Also, is there a possibility that if we leave a Sadr-Sunni alliance could actually produce relative stability?)'

I replied,

About your last question, it is a really interesting one. It would require a kind of mixture of Iraqi nationalism and pan-Islam.

You could argue that the Northern Alliance (i.e. the current government) in Afghanistan pulled this off, with an alliance of the Jami'at-i Islami (Afghanistan Muslim Brotherhood) and the Hazara Shiites (the Vahdat Party was Khomeinist in the 80s and 90s).

But somehow I fear that the Iraqis as things now stand couldn't pull this off, and that if the US left the Sadrists and the Sunni fundamentalists would gradually fall on one another. Dislike of the US presence is after all among the main things they have in common, and that would be gone.

----

*I had written:

' It would also be possible for Muqtada and allies to put together a significant bloc:

Da`wa: 22
Sadrists: 32
Fadila: 15
Salih Mutlak's list: 11
Mishaan Juburi list: 3
Part of the Iraqi Accord Front?: 10?

Sadr could find enough deputies to block the formation of a new government. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Maliki Hints at Early Departure
Saddam Executed by Militiamen

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said that he would like to step down before the end of his 4-yeat term and that he certainly would not seek a second term. Al-Maliki has been criticized for failing to restore security to Iraq, for not cracking down on Shiite militias, and for allowing the hanging of Saddam Hussein to turn into a fundamentalist Shiite circus.

Al-Maliki is defending his hasty execution of Saddam, which one judge called illegal because 30 days were supposed to pass after the appeal ruling. The PM says he was afraid that guerrillas would storm Saddam's prison and free him. That doesn't make any sense. Saddam was in US custody at a US base. Can Mr. al-Maliki name any US bases that have been stormed by guerrillas in Iraq?

The NYT says that Iraqi authorities arrested a guard for his alleged role in illicitly videotaping the execution with a cell phone. Prosecutor Munqidh Faraon has alleged that the real videotapers were high Shiite officials. The NYT also reports more pro-Baath demonstrations in Sunni Arab areas:

' The manner of Mr. Hussein’s execution appeared to give a boost to the remnants of his outlawed Baath Party. In the town of Huwaish, north of Baghdad, hundreds of people led by gunmen calling themselves the “mujahedeen of the Baath Party” marched in protest, and in the once prosperous Baghdad neighborhood of Monsour, a large black banner proclaimed that Mr. Hussein’s death would set off fighting against “the Americans and their followers.” The banner was signed, in nicely printed lettering, “Baath Party.” '

A Ministry of Interior official admitted to Reuters on Wednesday that Saddam's execution was carried out by militiamen rather than by IM security guards, as planned. It is alleged that militiamen infiltrated the guards. That is, the earlier Sunni charges that Saddam was handed over to the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr for execution were more or less correct. The Sunni-owned al-Zaman is having a field day with this.

Even the noose that hanged Saddam has ended up in the possession of Muqtada al-Sadr. A Kuwaiti businessman is trying to buy it as a momento. Saddam killed Muqtada's father and also invaded Kuwait.

The same al-Zaman article reports that there is a real possibility that al-Maliki will be replaced as prime minister, either by current vice president Adil Abdul Mahdi or by Iyad Allawi, both of whom are considered more likely to be able to make peace with Iraq's Sunni Arabs than al-Maliki. I can't imagine the current parliament coming up with 138 votes (out of 275) for Allawi, an ex-Baathist with an animus against Iran, and am baffled as to why al-Zaman even brings him up. Abdul Mahdi, in contrast, has a real shot if he can mollify the Sadrists, the Virtue Party, and the Da`wa Party within the Shiite coalition.

Then, John Negroponte doesn't want his job, either. The director of national intelligence is alleged to consider the patchwork of intelligence agencies under his purview "a mess" and is taking a demotion to become an assistant secretary of state. If the Times of London is right that he will be in charge of defending a medium-term increase in the number of US troops in Iraq, my guess is that he hasn't yet seen what a real mess looks like.

See Tom Engelhardt on the "surge" option and "let's do it again."

Saddam's execution has provoked further tensions between Iraqi Shiites and the Sunni world, but it is doing wonders for Iraq-Iran friendship, according to the Iranian press.

Solomon Moore of the LAT reports on the increasing violence in Diyala Province to the northeast of Baghdad. Diyala, where a strident Shiite minority rules a sullen Sunni majority, is the best argument for the need to hold new provincial elections without delay.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

UIA woos Muqtada
Inquiry Launched into Saddam Execution Irregularities

MENA, the Egyptian news agency, reports a demonstration of hundreds of persons on Tuesday in Habhab near Baquba, protesting Saddam's execution. The demonstrators denounced the Iraqi and American governments.

An Iraqi observer at Saddam's execution, prosecutor Munqidh Faraon, maintains that two senior Iraqi government officials took the footage with their cell phones. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has launched an investigation. But national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Ruba'i admits that the footage, which includes Shiite sectarian chanting and taunting, is extremely damaging to the government.

An Iranian wire service reports that the parties making up the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (the leading bloc in parliament) met with young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in hopes of convincing him to ask the 32 parliamentarians who follow him to return to the alliance. The effort is being guided by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who spearheaded the formation of the UIA in fall, 2004. This Iranian interpretation of the meetings suggests that they are intended to forestall an alliance of the Sadrists with Sunni Arab parties, which would have the effect of dividing the Shiites. Mehr also explains Muqtada's prerequisites for rejoining the UIA, which his deputies left when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met with US President George W. Bush in Amman. Muqtada, the report says,

' has said that his supporters will return to parliament and cabinet sessions if a timetable is set for the withdrawal of foreign troops. He also totally rejected the proposals to merge the Mahdi Army with Iraq’s armed forces, saying that would only be possible after the withdrawal of U.S. troops.'

Police found 53 bodies in Iraq on Tuesday: 45 in Baghdad, 5 in nearby Nahrawan to the southeast, and another 3 in Mosul. Political violence left about 10 persons dead on Tuesday. A bombing wounded 3 Iraqi policemen in Kirkuk. Another bombing killed 5 persons in central Baghdad.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Adnan al-Kadhimi, a member of the Dawa Party politburo told its reporter that the new strategy of the al-Maliki government will stand on three pillars: 1) taking security duties over from Americans; 2) making alterations in the Iraqi cabinet, and 3) and implementing a plan for reconciliation so as to gather as many Sunnis as possible [on the side of the government].

Check out Ranger against the War.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Apocalypse II in Samarra
US Kills 6 at National Dialogue Front Office

CBS/AP report that an angry crowd of Sunni Arab demonstrators in the northern city of Samarra, protesting Saddam's execution, broke "broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the executed former leader."

Folks, this is very bad news. The Askariyah Shrine (it isn't just a mosque) is associated with the Hidden Twelfth Imam, who is expected by Shiites to appear at the end of time to restore the world to justice. (For them, the Imam Mahdi is sort of like the second coming of Christ for Christians). The Muqtada al-Sadr movement is millenarian and believes he will reveal himself at any moment.

The centrality of the cult of the Twelfth Imam, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad who is said to have vanished in 873 AD, helps explain why the bombing of the Golden Dome on February 21 of 2006 set off a frenzy of Shiite, Sadrist attacks on Sunni Arabs. Last February, stuck in a Phoenix hotel because of a missed flight and without an internet connection for my laptop, I blogged from my Treo that it was an apocalyptic day. Sadly, it was, kicking off a frenzy of sectarian violence that has grown each subsequent month.

For Sunni Arabs to parade a symbolic coffin of Saddam through the ruins of the Askariya shrine won't be exactly good for social peace in Iraq. Can't that site be properly guarded or something?

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that hundreds of demonstrators marched in Dur, near Tikrit on Monday, protesting the execution of Saddam Hussein. Young men carried machine guns and fired them in the air, chanting "Muqtada, you coward," and "Hakim! Yellow-belly! Agent of the Americans!" They unveiled an enormous mosaic of Saddam Hussein inscribed, "The Martry-Hero."

There was also a demonstration in the northern Baghdad district of Adhamiya, at which protesters shouted condemnations of Muqtada al-Sadr, according to al-Zaman. Some of those present at Saddam's execution shouted "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" Saddam mocked them, asking if this was their sign of manliness. (Personally, I believe this is Saddam's reference to rumors in Iraq that Muqtada's wife left him, saying that he is actually gay. He is saying that chanting Muqtada's name is a sign that they are also not real men.)

KarbalaNews.net gives in Arabic the sermon preached on Saddam's execution by Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mudarrisi, an old-time Shiite activist in Karbala. He called the dictator "the graven idol of Iraq" and said that the punishment was just given Saddam's long years of tyranny.

Sudarsan Raghavan of WaPo reports that many Iraqi Shiites fear that the US is turning on them. Money graf:

' "Who are the secularists?" demanded [Ali] Adeeb, the Shiite lawmaker, his eyes tightening. "The secularists are the Baath Party. . . It means the base of their thinking is not stable," he continued, referring to the Americans. "They are going to lose the Shiites. And they won't win the Sunnis back, because they attacked them at the beginning. So now both sides will lose confidence in the United States." '

AP adds, "Police reported finding the bodies of 40 handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad on the first day of the New Year."

Reuters reports on political violence on Monday, and gives the most plausible brief account I have seen of the fighting between US troops and members of the National Dialogue Front. Reuters says that the US soldiers were raiding a Salafi ("al-Qaeda") safe house when they came under fire from the nearby offices of Salih Mutlak's National Dialogue Front party. They say they counter-attacked and killed 6 paramilitary fighters. Mutlak insists that they killed 2 security guards, wounded 2 more, and killed members of a civilian family in an adjacent building. Some press reports got mixed up and suggested that Mutlak was harboring al-Qaeda. He is a representative of secular Sunni nationalism, and much closer to the Baath than to the fundamentalist Salafis. Indeed, if his guards fired on US troops, it was likely because they were driven by Baathist sympathies to want revenge for Saddam's execution. The LA Times has a longer treatment.

The Iraqi government closed the al-Sharqiya television station, headed by Saad al-Bazzaz, accusing it of instigating sectarian hatred during its coverage of the execution. It was also accused of carrying a report of the killing of three female college students that turned out to be false (I summarized that report at the time; I don't know if it is false or not and a government practicing censorship is an untrustworthy arbiter of such things.)

The first judge in the trial of Saddam, Rizgar Amin, a Kurd with no brief for the dead tyrant, complained Monday that his execution was illegal in Iraqi law:

' The implementation of Saddam's execution during Eid al-adha is illegal according to chapter 9 of the tribunal law. Article 27 states that nobody, even the president (Jalal Talabani), may change rulings by the tribunal and the implementation of the sentence should not happen until 30 days after publication that the appeals court has upheld the tribunal verdict. The hanging during the Eid al-Adha period (also) contradicts Iraqi and Islamic custom. "Article 290 of the criminal code of 1971 (which was largely used in the Saddam trial) states that no verdict should implemented during the official holidays or religious festivals," he said.'

David E. Sanger, Michael R. Gordon, and John F. Burns of the NYT report on how Bush administration strategy went bad in 2006.

Al-Hayat says that the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, once allied with Iran, has demanded that the government of King Abdullah II close the Iranian embassy in Amman. The MB, which is an opposition party in Jordan, blamed Iran and the US for the execution of Saddam Hussein. Al-Hayat calls this demand "an index of the depth of the political changes in the Arab world."

Also in Amman, the MB joined several political parties and professional unions at a protest rally where Raghad, Saddam Hussein's daughter, made a brief appearance. She thanked those assembled for remembering her father, "the martyr." The Minister of Political Development attended this rally, but when al-Hayat asked about his presence, the government hastily replied that it did not express the position of the Jordanian government. His presence will be a sore point in Jordan's relations with the Maliki government, though. Many speakers at the rally vehemently condemned Iran, blaming "the Safavid magi" for the "assassination of Saddam." They shouted slogans condemning Iran, Israel and the United States. One speaker denounced Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni Arab fundamentalist, as a "cowardly agent," which caused a disturbance that had to be calmed before the rally could continue.

(There are an estimated 800,000 Iraqis in Jordan, a country of 5.4 million; they are mainly Sunni Arabs and some are wealthy ex-Baathists who have brought enormous amounts of money into the Jordanian economy. Many others, though are destitute refugees.)

A mourning ceremony for Saddam was held by Iraqi expatriates in Damascus, al-Hayat reports, attended by thousands of mourners and by some of Saddam's relatives.

In Egypt, the Journalists' Guild began a mourning session for the late dictator.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Conflicting accounts of CIA and Saddam, 1959-1963

My posting last Saturday, For Whom the Bell Tolls: Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein has elicited a very interesting account by a US government insider contesting the allegations about CIA-Saddam connections early in his life, specifically 1959-1963, and which denies CIA complicity in the first Baath coup of 1963 or the use of the Baath to destroy the Iraqi Communist Party.

The former official reports that Agency case officers in Cairo in 1960-1962 maintain that they never had heard of Saddam Hussein and that it was impossible that meetings should have been held with him without their knowledge. He says that he had looked into these allegations and had also contacted a number of Foreign Service Officers who were in the Cairo embassy at that time, and they also had no recollection of any contact with Saddam. (Another retired USG official who was in Cairo in this period also denied any such contacts, so I have it from two insider eyewitnesses.)

This source maintains that a national security official in Washington, DC, with Iraq oversight duties reports that he was called back to the office the evening of February 8, 1963, to find that the CIA chief of station in Baghdad was reporting that the Ba'this had overthrown and killed `Abd al-Karim Qasim and that "to convince the public of the demise of Qasim Iraqi TV showed a film of a Ba'thi officer holding up for view Qasim's severed head." This US government old-timer writes, "I assure you that the Ba'thi coup came as a TOTAL surprise to the US intelligence and diplomatic community . . . No one in the Washington community had ANY prior knowledge that this coup would take place, let alone having been involved in fomenting it . . ."

This source quotes an Agency case officer in Baghdad 1963 as saying that there was no connection whatsoever between the CIA Station and the Baath Party of Iraq "or with any element of the Iraqi government." There were penetrations of the Party, "but no liaison with it. It did not happen. Nor was there any significant contact between the Ba'thi government and the Political Section of the Embassy or with the Ambassador."

He writes, "In November 1963, civil war erupted between two factions of the Ba'thi Party of Iraq. [The civil war was, eerily, suspended for one day that month when leaders of the two factions laid down their arms and came to a US Embassy sponsored memorial ceremony for John F. Kennedy.] The losing faction, including leader Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, Air Force Commander Munthir al-Windawi, and, presumably, a junior Saddam Husayn, then fled the country, most going to Damascus. This faction returned to take power in 1968."

I'm sorry to say that I cannot give more detail than this, but I would like to underline that the person I talked to is an eyewitness and insider, is not an apologist, and is about the best source a historian could hope for on this issue.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Reaction to 1963 Baath Coup

Since the 1963 Baath coup has come up here twice this week, I thought readers might be interested in the three pieces of correspondence below, from the Foreign Relations of the United States, which is now being put on line. FRUS is anything but complete, and critics complain that it left out the whole 1953 US coup against Mosaddegh in Iran.

This correspondence shows that even in February of 1963, US officials were aware that they might be accused of fostering the coup, and wanted to take steps to avoid being seen as its instigator. But they also were obviously relieved that Qasim was gone, and were positively eager to work with the Baath. This optimism and eagerness seems counter-intuitive, unless they just preferred anyone at all to Qasim, but I personally think that it came of their conviction that the Baath would be anti-Communist in a way that Qasim never was.

The IPC, mentioned below, is the Iraqi Petroleum Company. A much later State Department memo explained, "IPC has six shareholders: British Petroleum (BP), Shell Petroleum, and Compagnie Francaise des Petroles (CFP), each with 23.75%; the two American oil companies, Mobil and Standard Oil (New Jersey), are equal partners in the Near East Development Corporation and jointly own another 23.75%; and the C.S. Gulbenkian Estate owns the remaining 5%." From 1961, IPC was limited to the Kirkuk fields, since Qasim had essentially cut these investors out of the rich Rumaila oil fields down near Basra.

====

149. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Iraq/1/

Washington, February 5, 1963, 9:17 p.m.

/1/Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL 1-3 IRAQ-US. Secret; Priority. Drafted by Killgore and Davies on February 1, cleared by McGhee, and approved by Strong. Repeated to Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Jidda, Kuwait, London, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Ankara, and Basra.

209. Baghdad's 362./2/ Chargé, members Country Team and all participants highly commended on excellent and detailed estimate Iraqi situation at year's end. We sympathize with staff's desire break US public silence in face of attacks from Qasim and agree validity of number of points made in Embtel 362. We concur situation in Iraq disturbing but as yet by no means clear Iraq actually becoming Soviet base.

/2/Dated January 22. (Ibid. 787.00/1-2263)

Department considering carefully whether on balance US interests would be served this particular juncture by abandoning policy of avoiding public reaction to Qasim's charges while objecting through normal diplomatic channels. Through our posture, US has sought maintenance American presence in Iraq, and, concomitantly, avoidance of open controversy with Qasim regime; readiness to respond to any Iraqi desire improve official relations; and continuance official and unofficial American contacts with view not only of influencing Iraqi attitudes but also of acquiring valuable intelligence. If we are at some point to undertake line of action Embassy proposes, a more specific objective would be required and there would have to be probability of success.

Qasim's latest remarks perhaps deliberately designed provoke US reaction which could then be used as "proof" US hostility to Iraq and serve as basis for increased level of attacks which, having reacted once, we could not well ignore. US statements cannot be disseminated without distortion within Iraq, and shortwave broadcasts would not have impact on wide group. Qasim would have freedom within Iraq to twist US representations to provide basis for increasing tempo of anti-US campaign and intensifying harassment of Embassy and Consulate Basra. We cannot be sure Qasim might not proceed to length of expelling various officers of our missions, thus threatening reduce "presence" which constitutes important US asset [1 line of source text not declassified].

Qasim regime not highly regarded anywhere in Arab world. Our position and prestige in other Arab countries determined by factors other than our relations with Iraq or Iraqi propaganda. Department believes you should continue press for meeting with Prime Minister for presentation along lines Deptel 148, December 3./3/ Should harassment of mission operations accompany rise in Qasim's critical propaganda, Department would wish consider counter moves./4/

/3/In telegram 148 to Baghdad, December 3, 1962, the Department of State provided guidance to Chargé Melbourne for a forthcoming conversation with Qasim. The Department indicated that it was mystified about Iraq's receptivity toward false allegations of U.S. hostility toward Iraq and of U.S. support for the Kurds, and affirmed the U.S. desire to continue friendly relations with Iraq. (Ibid., 787.00/11-2762) For text, see the Supplement, the compilation on Iraq. The Chargé was unable to obtain the proposed audience with Qasim.

/4/On February 7, the Department of State sent the White House the Embassy's analysis of the situation in Iraq and its recommendation that the United States actively move to counter Qasim's continuing public criticisms of the United States. The Department indicated its disagreement with the proposed course of action. (Memorandum from Brubeck to Bundy; Department of State, Central Files, POL 1-3 IRAQ-US; for text, see the Supplement, the compilation on Iraq)

Rusk


154. Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy/1/

Washington, February 9, 1963.

/1/Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL 16 IRAQ. Confidential. Drafted by Killgore (NEA/NE) and cleared by Talbot, Knox (EUR/BNA) (in draft), and Bracken (NEA/GTI) (in substance). Attached to the source text is a "Proposed Statement on Recognition of New Iraqi Republic Regime," drafted on February 9 by Davies (NEA/NE). Talbot forwarded this memorandum to Rusk on February 9 with a recommendation that he sign it. (Memorandum from Talbot to Rusk; ibid.)

SUBJECT
Request for Contingency Authority to Recognize the New Iraqi Regime

A coup d'etat reportedly led by Colonel Abdul Karim Mustafa was mounted in Baghdad in the early morning of February 8, 1963. Former Prime Minister Qasim is reported dead. Affirmations of support for the new regime have come from military and civil leaders in all parts of Iraq. Barring the unforeseen, the new regime seems likely promptly to establish itself in full authority in the country.

The leaders of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command and the members of the Cabinet have a nationalist orientation with a strong Pan-Arab bent. They appear to be anti-Communist. We have neither evidence nor reason to believe that the United Arab Republic will wield any undue influence in Baghdad. In our opinion the new regime is likely to be an improvement over that of former Prime Minister Qasim, which had few friends either internally or externally.

Our Chargé d'Affaires at Baghdad is under instructions to convey informally to the leader or leaders of the Revolutionary Command friendly overtures from the United States Government after he has first satisfied himself the Command is in firm control of the country./2/ He will explain United States criteria for recognition of a new Government and will indicate that the United States would welcome public affirmation that the new Iraqi regime intends to carry out Iraq's international obligations. He will also ask for assurance that the new regime will safeguard American citizens and interests in Iraq./3/

/2/Telegram 220 to Baghdad, February 9, conveyed criteria for recognition of the new regime. (Ibid.) The criteria are taken from a memorandum from Lawrence Hargrove (L/NEA) to Killgore, February 8. (Ibid., L/NEA Files: Lot 70 D 165, Iraq)

/3/Melbourne executed these instructions on February 10 during a conversation with Foreign Minister Talib Husain Al-Shabib, who assured Melbourne that U.S. citizens and interests would be protected and that Iraq would honor its international obligations and follow a nonaligned foreign policy. (Telegram 409 from Baghdad, February 10; ibid., Central Files, POL 16 IRAQ)

The desired public Iraqi affirmation may be forthcoming soon. It would appear to be in our interest to grant early recognition to the regime when the prerequisites to recognition have been met. For this reason we should like to have contingency authority to recognize. Six Arab countries, including Jordan and Kuwait, have recognized the new regime, and we are now undertaking close consultations with the British, Turkish, and Iranian Governments on the recognition question.

In requesting this authority I must state the possibility that Saudi Arabia may wish to defer recognition and may seek to persuade the United States to delay. Should our policy on recognition diverge from that of our Saudi friends, we may expect criticism from them beyond that already levied against us because of our policy on Yemen. On balance, the advantage lies in prompt recognition when circumstances otherwise warrant.

Finally, as you recall, our Ambassador to Iraq was withdrawn at Iraqi request in June 1962. Following our recognition of the new Iraqi regime, assignment of a new Ambassador will be required./4/

/4/The United States announced its recognition of the new Iraqi regime at noon in Washington on February 11. (Circular telegram 1398, February 10; ibid.) For text of the U.S. statement, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1963, p. 598.

Dean Rusk/5/

/5/Printed from a copy that indicates Rusk signed the original.

157. Memorandum From the Department of State Executive Secretary (Brubeck) to the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)/1/

Washington, February 13, 1963.

/1/Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL -3 IRAQ-US. Secret. Drafted by Strong and cleared by Talbot and McGhee.

SUBJECT
United States Relations with Iraq

Within the framework of non-alignment, Iraq is likely to wish to conduct friendly relations with the United States. Our posture should be that of a friend whose presence is known and appreciated but is not overshadowing. Any indication of interference in Iraqi internal affairs must be avoided. We must also be careful to avoid creating the impression that we sired the regime or are now trying to father it. This philosophy will be worked into the telegram which will be sent in pursuit of (2) below.

Apart from the instructions already sent, we have the following in preparation:

(1) Arms policy toward Iraq (must be limited).

(2) Economic assistance policy.

(3) Instructions to the Embassy at Baghdad to discuss with the new authorities the dates problem.

(4) Telegram to London seeking UK views on IPC (Iraq Petroleum Company).

(5) Reminder to the Embassy quietly to encourage the new regime to release, or to handle expeditiously the case of, our Army Attache's local employee.

Without seeking to smother Iraq with kindnesses or create misconception as to what we are willing and able to do, we have in mind looking into whether Iraq needs PL 480 because of drought, offering counter-insurgency and police training after the Kurdish problem is settled (as we think it will be), and if the new regime has immediate budgetary problems, we would support an Iraqi request to IPC for a loan. We shall of course encourage American businessmen to seek opportunities in Iraq and we shall as appropriate encourage the Iraqis to do business with them. We are keeping an eye on the Shatt al-Arab situation and shall speak to the Iraqis if need be.

In general, we shall wish to avoid advising Iraq on the conduct of its Arab policy (we should avoid any reference to the Fertile Crescent and should not push Iraq as an alternative to Nasser) but we shall encourage a constructive Iraqi role in the Yemen problem. We shall watch closely Iraqi policy toward Kuwait. With regard to Turkey and Iran, we shall try to foster good relations between them and Iraq.

In the world arena, we shall take pains to explain our views to the GOI and encourage as positive approach as possible on cold war issues. In the UN it would be appropriate to support selected Iraqi candidacies.

Oil

As yet there have been no clear indications of Iraqi policy in this field. The new Iraqi Government has a large number of issues to square away, but oil will no doubt be high on its priority list. While awaiting signs of Iraqi intentions we are seeking a UK assessment of the situation and an indication of its thinking for the future. Next week we plan to discuss with the American shareholders the question of what the IPC approach might best be, but there would appear to be merit in letting the Iraqi Government take the initiative. We think the company should proceed cautiously in formulating its proposals.

A fundamental underlying all the foregoing is that while the new regime appears to be a vast improvement over Qasim, we cannot consider that it will be pro-American or that it will be free from internal pressures of an extremist nature. It remains to be seen how cohesive it remains, and how responsibly it acts./2/

/2/On February 15, the Department of State sent the White House a paper entitled "Implications of the Second Iraqi Revolution." (Memorandum from Brubeck to Bundy; ibid., POL 26 IRAQ; for text, see the Supplement, the compilation on Iraq)

E.S. Little/3/

/3/Printed from a copy that indicates Little signed the original above Brubeck's typed signature.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rosen on Shiite Execution of Saddam

Nir Rosen at Iraqslogger has a fine analysis of the Sunni Arab reaction to the hanging of Saddam, and includes a partial transcript of the highly sectarian, Shiite chanting at the scene by Iraqi politicians in attendance. I can confirm that Rosen's partial transcript is accurate.

Cindy Sheehan's son died fighting the Mahdi Army; Bush delivered Saddam into the hands of MA's political wing.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Saddam Buried
Maliki's New Strategy?

Saddam Hussein was laid to rest in the village of al-Awjah near Tikrit, his birthplace. In Salahuddin Province there is anger about the haste with which Saddam was executed and its timing, early on the morning of the Eid al-Adha.

Although the US press is reporting that there weren't many demonstrations by angry Sunni Arabs and those were subdued, Aljazeera is providing videotape of several demonstrations, in places like Dhuluiya as well as in Bagdad, that look to me substantial.

There were also demonstrations throughout India (see also this link) and in Pakistan.

Libya declared three days of mourning. Jordan, Egypt and the Palestine authority protested the execution.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Baath Party has announced that Izzat Ibrahim Duri is now the leader of the party and the rightful president of Iraq.

Al-Hayat is saying that some Sunni Arabs who viewed the videotape of Saddam's execution are suggesting that he was turned over to the Shiite Mahdi Army for implementation of his sentence.

Al-Maliki will now, the paper says, redouble his efforts to reach out to former Baathists. The "debaathification" commission will be disbanded or much weakened. There are even hints that the former Baathists will be exonerated and former Baath officers will be allowed to return to the military.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Press on 3,000 US troops Killed in Iraq

Allen Breed of AP writes poignantly about , the section at Arlington cemetery that contains the remains of some of the 3,000 GIs killed in combat in Iraq.

Editor and Publisher breaks down the deaths of US troops in Iraq by category.

Nadia Malik of the Chicago Daily Herald reports on what it is like for US troops to be hit by an improvised explosive device or roadside bomb.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.