Iraqi Vice President Accuses High Official

The Shiite Vice President, Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has accused a high ministry official of attempting to kill him in a bombing on Monday. The deputy Minister of Labor, Ghazi al-Anbari, died in the blast, along with 10 others.

The Bush administration keeps saying that the US will stand down as the Iraqis stand up. But if the government officials are killing each other, they are more likely to lie down than stand up. This is not a good scene.
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Iraqi Vice President Accuses High Official

The Shiite Vice President, Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has accused a high ministry official of attempting to kill him in a bombing on Monday. The deputy Minister of Labor, Ghazi al-Anbari, died in the blast, along with 10 others.

The Bush administration keeps saying that the US will stand down as the Iraqis stand up. But if the government officials are killing each other, they are more likely to lie down than stand up. This is not a good scene.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

4 US GIs killed
Army of Heaven Cult Arrested

A suicide bomber killed 7 in Mosul and wounded 28 at a police station.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Tuesday. Guerrillas killed 3 US GIs north of Baghdad, and Shiite militiamen killed a fourth down at Diwaniyah. In Baghdad there were several bombings, one in Karrada that killed 5 and wounded 10. McClatchy reports that 17 bodies were found in Baghdad on Tuesday. On Monday 25 bodies had been found.

The Bush administration has suddenly changed course and decided to attend the meeting of the foreign ministries of countries that neighbor Iraq, in hopes of harnessing diplomacy to end the crisis. This step requires that the US be willing to talk to Iran at least informally about outstanding bilateral issues. It is among the few pieces of good news we have had from Washington.

Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said on Tuesday that Iraq violence has become self-sustaining. He denied sure knowledge of any direct link between the EFPs hitting US troops and the Iranian leadership.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that US and Iraqi troops near Diwaniya had arrested 142 members of the Army of Heaven Shiite militia.
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Suicide Bomber Kills 20 at Bagram with Cheney inside

A suicide bomber killed 18-20 persons at the entrance to Bagram Base in Kabul while US Vice President Dick Cheney was on the premises. The vice president was unharmed.

I guess violence in Afghanistan is in its last throes, too.
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Public Works Minister Seriously Wounded
Vice President Abdul Mahdi narrowly Escapes Assassination
New Oil Law Passes Cabinet

Sunni Arab guerrillas attempted on Monday to assassinate Iraq's Shiite vice president, Adil Abdul Mahdi, 59, as he visited a the offices of the ministry of public works and municipalities in the upscale Mansour district of the capital. Abdul Mahdi was hurt but escaped serious injury; the force of the blast knocked him down. A Shiite cabinet member, Public Works Minister Riyad Gharib, was seriously injured, and 10 others were killed. Wire services estimated the wounded at between 18 and 32. The bomb had been planted in the office, pointing to an inside job-- i.e. someone in the Iraqi government who knew the itinerary of the Vice President and leaked it to the assassins. Abdul Mahdi has often been mentioned as a possible successor to current prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. He belongs to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The leader of SCIRI, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, had been the target of a bombing over the weekend, and some observers are now saying that the guerrillas are targetting members of that Shiite party.

So as of Monday both Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, and one of two vice presidents, are in hospital.

Iraq's other (Sunni fundamentalist) vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, in the meantime slammed the current security plan, which has so far mainly involved sweeps in Sunni neighborhoods of the capital. He complained that the plan does not respect residents' rights and implied that it consisted of a Shiite government cracking down on Sunnis only. He said that the Shiite militias have to be taken on, and that the US needs a plan B in case the surge fails. He also criticized the al-Maliki government for refusing seriously to reach out to the Sunni Arab guerrilla leadership.

In Ramadi, a major Sunni Arab city west of Baghdad, a suicide bomber used ambulance to attack a police station, killing 14 and wounding 10. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sunni imam of the Mu'awiya Mosque in Ramadi was killed on Monday, as part of an ongoing conflict between tribal forces and "al-Qaeda" (Salafi Jihadis) in al-Anbar. Some 15 bodies were found in the streets of Baghdad on Monday. US and Iraqi troops attempted a sweep of a Baquba neighborhood. There were clashes between Shiite militiamen and British troops in Basra.

Also in Basra, al-Hayat reported that Muqtada al-Sadr's representative in that city, Baha' al-A'raji, read a statement from him that said, "The decision of the British to withdraw is a sign of the victory of the Resistance there." He added, "The partial withdrawal of the British forces from the city constitutes a defeat for the forces of Occupation, and is the fruit of the struggle and jihad of the sons of the city."

Elsewhere in al-Anbar Province, Sunni Arab guerrillas killed a US marine.

There were other scattered bombings and mortar attacks, in Baghdad, Iskandariya, Abbasi, and Mosul.

Pepe Escobar on Iraq's new oil law, which he sees as a giveaway to US Big Oil.

Reuters reviews the main outlines of the proposed petroleum law, which has been approved by the cabinet but must now get 138 votes in parliament. Since the Kurds have been given the clauses that they want, guaranteeing their ability to act semi-autonomously, and since the Shiites crafted this law, it is likely to sail through.

Note that contrary to US hopes, it does not privatize petroleum, putting it under a government holding company instead. Receipts go to a government account for distribution to the population, a la Alaska. Some critics believe it will make possible deals that are overly generous to the oil companies and which essentially cheat Iraqis, given that the present government is desperate to jump-start new development and foreign companies won't try to operate in blood-soaked Iraq unless the deal is sweetened enormously. On the other hand, Husayn Shahristani, the oil minister, is an Iraqi nationalist close to Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and had no motivation to see Iraq cheated. I will try to get some readings from oil industry experts and report back.

[By the way, five Western governors committed to reducing carbon emissions as a way of fighting global warming, saying that if the Federal government is not going to do anything about it, they will. Good for them! Send messages of support or they won't know we're happy about it!]

Egypt's Nilesat satellite television company has stopped carrying al-Zawra', a channel that favored the Iraqi Sunni Arab guerrillas and showed graphic footage of attacks on US troops. Nilesat said that the decision was based on technical considerations, but there is speculation that the Egyptian government intervened after US or Saudi/Jordanian pressure. The Shiite government in Baghdad was furious at Cairo for allowing the channel to be carried.

The Minorities Rights Group has issued a study warning that Iraq's religious minorities, once perhaps five percent of the population, are in danger of disappearing from the country as they flee abroad because of the bad security. The report, in PDF format is here.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al Gore, Global Warming, the Oscars and the Iraq War

That the Al Gore film "An Inconvenient Truth" was legitimized by an Oscar Sunday night for "Best Documentary" has wider implications for the future of the United States than it might seem, though admittedly it is a small step.

We know that Exxon Mobil is a significant funder of the American Enterprise Institute and has used it to attempt to bribe "scientists" to cast doubt on global warming. Lee Raymond, who was CEO of Exxon Mobil until 2005, is the vice-chair of AEI's board of directors.

We also know that the American Enterprise Institute is the most hawkish of the Washington "think tanks," and that its staffers were key to thinking up and promoting the Iraq War with lies and propaganda.

A=B, B=C, therefore A=C. Exxon Mobil is a big behind the scenes player in the Iraq War by virtue of its support for AEI. In fact, I think a boycott of its gas stations is in order until the company cuts off AEI and stops promoting the Iraq War and muddying the waters on global warming. (It pledged to do the latter in the past, but obviously was lying).

So the point is that the American Enterprise Institute symbolizes the intersection of Oil and War, which are the two most menacing threats to the future of America.

Only by a Manhattan Project-scale government effort to develop green energy can we hope to avert the worst consequences of global warming, which is likely to raise sea levels at least a foot, and possibly 7 feet over the next century or century and a half. (That would put a lot of cities on both coasts under water). The arctic and antarctic ice shelfs are already falling into the ocean at rates that have astonished climate scientists. The arctic alone lost perennial ice cover the size of Texas in 2004-2005! Warm water takes up more space than cold water* and the loss of white ice cover is bad because it radiates a lot of sunlight back out to space. So it is a double whammy.

But the other problem with petroleum and gas as sources of energy is that they are getting scarcer. No big new fields have been found for some time. And in one recent year China generated 40% of new demand for petroleum. If a billion Chinese and a billion Indians adopt the American lifestyle and all want 1.5 automobiles and superhighways to crawl along on, the existing stocks of oil will become objects of fierce competition. This process has already begun, and there is a sea change from the mid-1990s, when oil was still cheap and competition for it limited.

Iraq is an Oil War in the mind of politicians like Dick Cheney. It was necessary to deny it to China and other rivals thirty to fifty years in the future. It was necessary to open its vast petroleum fields up for exploration and cast aside anti-American Baath socialism.

Likewise, the religious rigidity of the Pushtun peoples of Helmand province is not the real reason for the US insistence on occupying Afghanistan. It is the vast Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan gas fields that Cheney has his eye on. It was the US hope to use a pipeline from Turkmenistan to supply Pakistan and India, and so forestall a deal by those two countries with Iran. The inability of the Bush administration to calm things down in Afghanistan sufficiently for anyone to dream of putting in such a pipeline and having it avoid routine sabotage has made it likely that Iran will break out of the Bush boycott toward the East.

Hunger for future rights to petroleum and positioning the US to remain a superpower in a world of hydrocarbon scarcity is also driving the campaign to get up a war against Iran. Why can Pakistan have a nuclear weapon, and that is all right, but Iran cannot? Pakistan has very little petroleum. Iran has a lot, and maybe 750 trillion cubic feet of gas in the southwest. If it gets a bomb, regime change becomes impossible, and if Iran wants to tie its supplies up in proprietary contracts with China and India, locking out the United States, it will be able to do so.

Continued heavy dependence on gas and oil therefore not only turns the world into a hothouse, with rising seas, ever more destructive hurricanes, and possibly disastrous shifts in the ocean currents, but it also drives the United States to more and more wars.

And, note that the wars are not even successful in allowing a practical oil grab of the sort Cheney and Lee Raymond dreamed of.

Indeed, you could now, in retrospect, turn their whole argument around on them. US militarism cannot secure petroleum and gas supplies from places such as Iraq, because the pipelines are so easily sabotaged and local nationalisms and religious activism make it impossible for people to accept that kind of US hegemony.

Since the Pentagon cannot practically speaking hope to safeguard US petroleum supplies from the Gulf, national security requires a massive and rapid research and development program of green energy. A lot of green technology, especially solar, would come down in price rapidly if enough government money were thrown at it. We need to press Congress on this, and maybe Californians can craft some of their famous referendum items. That would be one way to promote a new generation of electric cars.

Green energy-- wind, thermal, solar, maybe ultimately fusion, etc.-- is what would allow the US to retain its autonomy and independence into the next century, and what would allow it to avoid losing more cities the way Bush and Cheney lost New Orleans. Oil and War will, in contrast, ruin us all.

===

*Sorry, I initially misspoke, mentioning ice instead of cold water. It was late.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

University Bombing Casts Doubt on Security Plan
Muqtada Calls on Iraqi Army to Act without US Help

A suicide bomber with a bomb belt got into the lobby of the School of Administration and Economy of Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and managed to set it off despite being spotted at the last minute by university security guards. The blast killed 41 and wounded a similar number according to late reports, with body parts everywhere and big pools of blood in the foyer as students were shredded by the high explosives.

The Arabic press generally saw the bombing as a significant setback to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's security plan. It certainly was a psychological blow to it. And the adaptability of the guerrillas, who moved from car bombs to less easily detected but also powerful suicide bomb belts, is pretty frightening. Car bombs at least you could search for at checkpoints. Belt bombs, I can't imagine how you could stop that if you had people in the city determined to set them off and willing to kill themselves.

There were several other bombings in Baghdad on Sunday, as well, bringing the death toll in the capital from explosions to around 60, according to the Arabic daily al-Hayat.

A representative of Muqtada al-Sadr read a statement by him, according to BBC Arabic, that said: "I say to the Iraqi security forces, and in particular the army and the police: You can protect Iraq and its people by virtue of your faith and sacrifices, your patience and solidarity and sincerity toward the peole. But you cannot do it via help from the airplanes and tanks of the occupier." He added, "I am confident, like all persecuted Iraqis, that no security plan can succeed or produce any good by depending on the Occupation." Al-Wasat gives a further passage: "Stay away from them and God will keep you away from mischief and harm . . . Make your plan Iraqi and independent, not sectarian or dictatorial, so that you will be victorious. Stay away from oppression and harming others, so that others will have no case against you. Let your reputation be that of being Iraqi . . ."

Some are misinterpreting these remarks to say that Muqtada has turned against the security plan. In fact, he is strongly supporting it, he just wants it to be a national plan and a national victory, and wants Iraqi troops to be able to do without American air and other support.

The BBC story says that many Iraqi Shiites in Baghdad would have felt safer in their neighborhoods if they were still being patrolled by the Mahdi Army. But the al-Maliki government, which they see as subservient to the Americans, has pressured Muqtada to get the Mahdi Army off the streets. But in its absence there have been massive bombings of Shiite markets, which the Baghdad Shiites are therefore blaming on the US.

The al-Maliki government may in any case be collapsing. KarbalaNews.net alleges in Arabic that fair numbers of cabinet ministers and parliamentarians have fled abroad, going AWOL with no permission. It says that a couple of weeks ago a web site published a list of 360 names of Iraqi officials that the US military is determined to detain, without any permission from the Iraqi government. The list contained both Sunni and Shiite names, and those listed are accused either of administrative corruption or of ties to death squads. Many of those who went abroad were on the list. Personally, I can't understand on what grounds US troops can arrest elected Iraqi officials. Force majeure? In any case, you can't run a government if dozens of its officials are living in Amman and Jordan (the problem of absenteeism actually has been a longstanding one.)

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that neighborhood leaders of Adhamiya in Baghdad, a Sunni neighborhood, complained bitterly to the government that Sunday's sweep by (largely Shiite and Kurdish) Iraqi security forces had resulted in the arbitrary arrest of large numbers of Sunni Arabs against whom there was no evidence of wrongdoing. They demanded their release. It was said that some apartment buildings were virtually emptied of their men.

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that a delegation of tribal sheikhs from Falluja was in Damascus Sunday to meet with Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Sharaa. They gave out a statement in which they said that they did not accept the legitimacy of the new security plan of the government of Nuri al-Maliki. They said they were unconvinced that it was based on the principle of national reconciliation, and they complained that the al-Maliki government was based on ethnic quotas, which they rejected. The delegation leader said that the security plan had failed and had in fact been dead on arrival.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is being treated in hospital in Jordan.

The Iraqi government, the supposed ally of the US in the Gulf region, now says that Iran has ceased giving any aid to Shiite militias in Iraq. It is a fiendishly clever way of blunting the campaign by some in the US government to blame Iran for the difficulties they face in Iraq. Now whenever anyone charges Iran with that crime, it can be thrown in their faces that the Iraqi government says it has stopped.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

American Jews, Blacks, Fiercest Opponents of Iraq War

77% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according to a new Gallup poll. Only Black Protestants are more opposed, at 78%.

(Given that the Pope and the bishops oppose the Iraq War, you'd think Catholics would be against it in large numbers, too. But only 28% know what position their religious leaders have taken on it, so the Church has not been good at getting out the word. And, the hierarchy has seen its moral authority on such things deeply eroded by its silly stance on birth control and more recently by the pedophilia scandals.)

Both Jews and Blacks have a long history of preferring government spending on social justice to giving billions away to the (largely white Protestant) Military-Industrial Complex. And, of course, both overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party. American Jews were far less enthusiastic about going to war in 2003 than were other Americans (Only 50-some percent supported the war as opposed to 75% of the general public).

My suspicion is that the Israel factor does not play a significant role in this attitude, and that it has an almost wholly American context. Some 37 percent of American Jews say they are disturbed by Israeli policies, and less than half say that caring about Israel matters "a lot" to their sense of Jewishness.

Besides, if one did care about Israel, one couldn't take a lot of heart from the transformation of Iraq into a failed state full of determined bombers and guerrillas in training. Falluja just isn't that far from Tel Aviv. Even Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence agency, admitted last year that Israel may end up missing Saddam Hussein: "When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos," he said. "I'm not sure we won't miss Saddam." (Israeli television was recording him, unbeknownst to him).

Neoconservative Jews in the US like Richard Perle, Frederick Kagan and Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute who vocally support the Iraq War (and have gotten rich off it) are a minority of a minority, and even are at odds with the Israeli security establishment! Moreover, the American Enterprise Institute, which crafted the Iraq War, gets funding from Exxon Mobil, and last I checked it was run by white Protestants. The vice chair of AEI is Lee Raymond, former CEO of Exxon Mobil and surely Dick Cheney's old golf partner in the Dallas years. That is, the Kagans and the Rubins, who identify with the Revisionist Zionist movement on the Israeli Right, are useful idiots for Big Oil, not movers and shakers in their own right.
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Barratt: British Troops Not Withdrawing, being Redeployed to Afghanistan

Keith Barratt writes:

"I should like to correct a myth that has been accepted by much of the media and accepted by the majority on the Right and Left because it fits their various agendas.

It is not true that a firm commitment has been made that the British are to withdraw from Iraq.

What is happening is simply a redeployment of some vitally required troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, because of the deterioration in that country and concerns about the ability of the existing small number of allied troops to deal with the Spring offensive of the Taliban. An announcement is expected on this in Parliament on Monday, according to Ministry of Defence sources, who also state that any plans for Iraq are “aspirational” and “"if conditions worsen this process could still slow up". As the BBC Defence Correspondent wrote when the news of announcement was first leaked last week: “reports that all troops will have returned home by the end of 2008 was "not a fair representation of what is true at the moment".


This is why, if the claim is in any way correct that Basra is now capable of being handed over to the Iraqi army and which the most recent Pentagon report denies, the apparently surplus UK military are not simply being transferred to assist the escalation of US troops in Baghdad.

It should be remembered that the actual number of troops being re-deployed by the British represents no more than 0.9% of the US and allied occupational force in Iraq.

The UK government has been under considerable pressure about the need for re-enforcement in Afghanistan from its own military. The ability to do this fully with a seriously over stretched military has been difficult. In October, 2006 the Observer newspaper reported that “Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, the former head of Britain's armed forces, has broken ranks to launch an attack on the current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, warning that British forces risk defeat in Afghanistan. “

At the same time, General Sir Richard Dannatt, wrote an extraordinary article as the newly appointed UK Chief of the Army, saying: "I want an Army in five years time and 10 years time. Don't let's break it." (These words are very similar to those used a year earlier by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve, “...the Army Reserve's inability under current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force.”)

The lack of troops in Afghanistan has been made worse by the refusal of many European countries in recent weeks to increase the numbers committed to NATO for deployment to that country. Many nations, such as France and Germany, have accepted only passive rules of engagement concerned with defending reconstruction work for those small number of troops that they have made available. (Indeed, a threat to the funding of even the relatively small number of existing Italian troops in Afghanistan was one of the reasons for Prime Minister Prodi's resignation last week) .

So, the redeployment out of Iraq of 1600 troops by the British has been an enforced measure with which the Pentagon has had to concur, despite the risks.

Blair (I say with little pleasure) has handled the spin on this adroitly. First, he has split the announcement (albeit sources say by only a week) of the draw down of troops from Iraq to an almost identical increase of troops in Afghanistan (Pro-Iraq War Conservative Opposition Defence Spokesman Liam Fox described this politically inspired handling as "cowardice"). Secondly, Blair has encouraged the view that this is the beginning of British withdrawal from the hugely unpopular Iraq war, although every statement in this regard has been hedged with the same cautious caveats that surrounded the proposed draw down that never occurred last September. In this way, he has quietened down the left-wing of his Labour Party and removed some of the problems that would be encountered on the doorsteps in the run up to the UK May local elections. Cynically, it can be said to be a preparation of the revised history that will describe the "legacy" of his time in office after his expected resignation in the Summer.

Coupled with this, he has promulgated the claim that Basra and the South are a success for the British Army and the justification of his decision to support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

Bush has recognised the difficulties the British face in Afghanistan and, not wanting to draw attention to the difficulties there - despite his own recent announcement of the need to increase US troops in that theater of war - has been happy to support the Blair projection of what is happening in Iraq. Indeed, he has used the Blair spin to claim the illusion of success and to falsely justify the "surge" in Iraq.

How has this myth that the British are "withdrawing" from Iraq come about and gained such traction?

The Left in the States has bought into the Blair spin because they want to believe that it shows a rift between Downing Street and the White House. It supports their claims that the escalation in US troops is nonsense when the British are stepping down and it reinforces their question as to why the United Sates cannot follow an identical pattern and get the troops out of Iraq immediately.

The Right buys into it because the "success" in Basra gives credence to their claim that the strategy is working and any diminution in the number of allied troops justifies the need for more US forces. It should not be forgotten, either, that the idea of being abandoned by other nations can also have the subliminal effect of invigorating their base by re-enforcing the message that the United States stands alone in facing down “the world wide fundamental Islamic terror”. This can be as powerful in maintaining the dogged support of part of the electorate as the message that it still has allies has with others.

I have tried to combat this misinterpretation of what is actually happening by two diaries on Daily Kos as the events unfolded during last week here:

“The deception of the story of UK troop withdrawals “

and here:

“UK Troop Withdrawal Truth Finally Now Revealed”

Sadly, once announced it is almost impossible to remove the beliefs that this sort of spin creates. That British troops are withdrawing remains the understanding in many of our blogs and I heard it today on C-Span.

Ignoring the underlying truth has two effects: The ease with which the myths surrounding the supposed British withdrawal have been accepted by all parts of the political spectrum is a forewarning of what will be achievable by the Republicans in the run up to the 2008 elections. More importantly, it disguises the failures in Afghanistan to secure that country and the distraction that the Iraq invasion has been to the initially stated 9/11 goals of the current Administration.

Those seeking a rapid withdrawal from Iraq do not need buy into the illusions created by Bush and Blair to justify their position. The reality is sufficient to condemn this whole Middle East adventure.

Kind regards

Keith Barratt

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Hakim Targeted with Car Bomb;
Thousands of Shiites Protest US in Najaf;
Enormous Bomb Hits Habaniya Mosque

Late Saturday, the US Air Force launched a series of bombing raids on southeast Baghdad. This is absolutely shameful, that the US is bombing from the air a civilian city that it militarily occupies. You can't possibly do that without killing innocent civilians, as at Ramadi the other day. It is a war crime. US citizens should protest and write their congressional representatives. It is also the worst possible counter-insurgency tactic anyone could ever have imagined. You bomb people, they hate you. The bombing appears to have knocked out what little electricity some parts of Baghdad were still getting.

Guerrillas used a car bomb to target the residence of Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in Baghdad on Saturday. Al-Hayat says that they killed 3 civilians and wounded 7 others. This report says that they killed one guard and wounded four. These were likely Sunni Arab guerrillas hoping that al-Hakim would see the attack as an American one. The US arrested al-Hakim's son on Friday, contributing to a fraying of US relations with Shiite Iraqis, especially those loyal to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Nearly 10,000 Iraqis demonstrated in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday against the US arrest of Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim the previous day. Smaller demonstrations were held in other southern Shiite cities, including Kut and Basra. This young cleric is the son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament and an ally of the US.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani called for the US military personnel who arrested Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim on Friday to be disciplined. He decried al-Hakim's treatment at US hands. Talabani, a Kurd, is typically a strong ally of the US.

A truck bomb devastated the congregation of a Sunni mosque in Habbaniya on Saturday, killing 45 and wounding 110.

AP speculates that the mosque was being punished for the stance of its imam against "extremism." The Baath Party and the Salafi Jihadis that dominate al-Anbar Province frequently kill other Sunnis whom they view as "collaborators" with the foreign occupation forces.

This article also discusses the way that the security plan in Baghdad and al-Anbar has displaced many guerrillas into Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad, where direct attacks on US troops are up 70 percent!

In Baghdad itself, three bombings and a mortar attack contributed to a death toll of some 20.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Khalilzad Apologizes for Arrest of Ammar al-Hakim
Maliki Government stalls Changes in Debaathification

The US has released Ammar al-Hakim and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad apologized profusely for his arrest. The US military is giving three reasons for his arrest: He entered Iraq at a closed border station, his passport was expired, and his party was armed to the teeth. In fact, however, his passport was valid until September 17, 2007, and nobody travels overland in Iraq without being armed. It is most likely that the US doesn't want Shiite leaders slipping over to Iran in this way, because it is trying to reduce Iranian influence with US allies in Iraq. That is, al-Hakim's offense was probably his trip itself, though that cannot be admitted by Washington.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that al-Hakim complained of being hooded and treated roughly while in US custody. Al-Zaman says that al-Hakim's cell phone was confiscated, and hints broadly that the real reason for the arrest was to get access to his telephone records and the documents he had with him. The US suspects the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq of getting aid from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Washington wants it stopped.

Al-Zaman provides two other interesting but unconfirmed narratives. One is that al-Hakim's party came under fire as they entered Iraq near Kut and one or two of his guards were actually killed. The paper also reports an allegation that the US in arresting al-Hakim was acting on a tip from the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is popular in the Kut region and is a rival of the al-Hakims.

In contrast, al-Hayat reports that the US may have been hoping that the convoy coming from Iran was that of Muqtada al-Sadr, whom they have determined to arrest. In that case, the incident would be a case of mistaken identity.

Al-Hakim says his guards were abused and still have not been released. US military sources say that they were following procedure in verifying his identity, since passports can be forged, and that the issue had to go to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for resolution since the latter had prohibited lower-level officials from just releasing detainees.

I am unconvinced by this explanation, since there was not good reason to doubt al-Hakim's passport, and it can't have taken 12 hours to call al-Maliki. There is also the question of why US troops were even in the area, since it is a Polish sphere of operations. They had to have come over for some specific purpose. The likelihood is that it was an intelligence operation of some sort.

The incident, which produced a small demonstration in Basra and a lot of bad feeling among Iraqi Shiites, demonstrates the dangers of Bush's cowboy policies in Iraq, such that he recently urged suspected Iranian agents be shot on sight. If Ammar had been killed instead of arrested for 12 hours, there would have been hell to pay.

The same al-Zaman article says that the security plan in Baghdad has been altered because of guerrillas increasing successes in shooting down US helicopters, and their recent use of attacks on chlorine gas trucks. Without as much chopper support, and facing the possibility of being gassed, US and Iraqi troops have been forced to change their tactics (obviously, the details are not specified).

Guerrillas in Hilla, a Shiite city south of Baghdad, set off a bomb under an automobile, wounding 6. There was scattered mortar fire in Baghdad, and five bodies were found there.

Paul Richter of the LA Times reports that a keystone of Bush's surge policy, reconciliation between Shiites and Sunni Arabs, is being impeded by the refusal of the Iraqi parliament to reconsider the guidelines for Debaathification. Since most Sunni Arabs had family members with Baath ties, they have been hurt economically and politically by the firings. When you systematically screw over 20% of the population, you create a civil war.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Sunni Pious Endowments Board has suspended its activities in protest against the firing, by Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, of its head. The former head had pushed for an international investigation into the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by Shiite security personnel. A strike by the endowments board is potentially powerful symbolic politics. Sunni religious foundations in Iraq are numerous and often wealthy and influential. Al-Maliki seems just to have lost their confidence.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that six Sunni Arab guerrilla groups have vowed to take revenge for the rape. (Presumably by attacking Shiite police).

Even voters in the southeastern states (Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia), which have in recent decades been strongly Republican, have turned against Bush and against the Iraq War. Personally I think certainly Virginia and maybe North Carolina is there for the taking by the Democratic candidate for president in 2008, if the candidate conducts a good campaign. If I were in charge, I'd put about posters showing the schools in those states that haven't been painted while Bush has been pouring money into the Iraq maelstrom the way a drunk gambler pours money into the gaming tables at Las Vegas.

Sarah Smiles reports in The Age that even the Defense Minister of the hard line Howard government in Australia, Brendan Nelson, has admitted that a conventional victory in Iraq is elusive. This is like saying that a successful landing of The Titanic in New York was elusive.

Some 800 civilian contractors (many of them functioning essentially as military police) have been killed by guerrillas in Iraq, and over 3,000 have been wounded. This is a "hidden cost" of the war that most news stories and politicians' speeches ignore.

Barbara Karkabi on the differences between Sunnis and Shiites and on Sunni-Shiite relations, both in the US and Iraq.
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Breaking News: US Arrests Ammar al-Hakim

US troops arrested Ammar al-Hakim, the son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, on his return from Iran. There are conflicting reports on whether he has been released.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is the leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, the major bloc in parliament, and is enormously powerful and influential in Iraq. He also heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its Badr Corps paramilitary. He visited Bush in the White House on Dec. 4. If the arrest of his son was deliberate, it could be a significant break between the US and its Shiite allies in Iraq. If it was an accident, it was inexcusable stupidity.

It is also possible that the MEK terrorist organization, which Saddam had given a base in Iraq from which it could blow things up in Iran, is funneling disinformation to the US military. The MEK operatives are still in Iraq and their spies monitor the border, and I have a sense that they are trying to drive a wedge between the US and SCIRI. SCIRI has repeatedly called for their expulsion from the country.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole in Salon on British Troop Withdrawal

My article,
The British retreat from Iraq brings peril for U.S. Troops: Vice President Cheney says the British are leaving southern Iraq because things are going so well. In the real world, Basra is a mess is out in Salon.com

Excerpt:

' In reality, southern Iraq is a quagmire that has defeated all British efforts to impose order, and Blair was pressed by his military commanders to get out altogether -- and quickly. The departure has only been slowed, for the moment, by the pleas of Bush administration officials like Cheney. And far from the disingenuously upbeat prognosis offered by the vice president, the British withdrawal could spell severe trouble for both the Iraqi government and for U.S. troops in that country. '

Read the whole thing.

Also catch Glenn Greenwald's always stimulating blog, which has a guest piece on whether it is a good idea (as some on the Right have said) to assassinate Iranian scientists . . .

It is a wonderful, daily webzine, and one can avoid the commercial by subscribing, at an amazing low price.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bombing in Tal Afar, Clashes in Ramadi
Dems Plan to bring Troops Home in spring, O8

Senate Democrats are crafting legislation that would bring US troops home by spring of 2008.

Reuters rounds up political violence on Thursday. Bombings in Kirkuk, clashes in al-Anbar province, bodies found in Baghdad. 2 US GIs killed.

Saeed Shah at the Independent discusses the current draft of the new petroleum investment law in Iraq, and the jockeying for position of the oil majors. He reveals that the third draft of the law gives big prerogatives to regions, and quotes an expert who fears it will break up the country.

The LA Times marks the fist anniversary of the destruction of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra. Iraqis commemorated the date on the lunar calendar, a couple of weeks ago.

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases Iraqi press items for February 22:

' Tariq al-Sha'b carries on the front page a 460-word report on the statement issued by the Iraqi Journalists Association yesterday, 21 February denouncing US forces for raiding the association headquarters and arresting 10 guards. . .

Al-Mu'tamar publishes on the front page a 350-word report on the statement issued by the Babil Advisory Council yesterday, 21 February confirming that the council has decided to form an investigation committee to question Governor Salim Salih al-Musalimawi and the Council's Projects Committee on their failure in the implementation of the 2006 development projects in the governorate. . .

Al-Sabah al-Jadid carries on page 3 a 300-word report citing Basra Federal Workers Union Undersecretary Abd-al-Karim Abd-al-Sadah condemning British forces for attacking the union headquarters. . .

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

British Withdrawal May bring Militia, Iranian Influence
Najaf Bomb Kills 18

Rick Jervis of USA Today--reporting from Baghdad-- suggests that the British drawdown from Basra could allow greater Iranian and militia influence in the Shiite deep south of Iraq.

LA Times says that the British are drawing down in Iraq because they cannot fight both there and in Afghanistan without overtaxing their army and facing "operational failure."

A Marine was killed by guerrillas in al-Anbar; guerrillas shot down a US helicopter but the crew and passengers were rescued; a car bomb killed 16 and wounded 40 at the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Sunni Arab guerrillas are attempting to provoke Shiite militiamen to come out for revenge, knowing that they would likely then be curbed or shot by the US military.

Reuters reports on other political violence on Wednesday, of which there was a lot. The number of bodies found in the capital appears to have gone back up after a lull.

Guerrillas also struck at a second chlorine truck, causing Baghdad residents to sicken and go to the hospital with problems breathing. The guerrillas are deliberately attempting to use gases of various sorts to spread chaos.

Underestimating Vice President Dick Cheney's influence with Bush would be a big mistake. I don't think Condi Rice is on the same level at all.

The decline and fall of the coalition of the willing in Iraq.

David Ignatius reports on the growing anger toward the US in the Arab world. We are down to a 12 percent favorability rating. Ignatius rightly points to the security threats engendered by Bush's failures in policy and in public diplomacy.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The US, Petroleum, and Nigerian Democracy

For those interested in the issue of US foreign policy and petroleum, the paper "Convergent Interests: U.S. energy security and the "securing" of Nigerian democracy," by Paul Lubeck, Michael Watts and Ronnie Lipschutz at The Center for International Policy de rigeur.

Scroll down at the executive summary for the pdf link to the whole report.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Blair to Draw Down British Troops

Tony Blair is taking 1600 troops out of Basra in the next few months and will aim to be down to only 3,000 or so (from 7,100 now) by the end of the year. Denmark is also going home.

This is a rout, there should be no mistake. The fractious Shiite militias and tribes of Iraq's South have made it impossible for the British to stay. They already left Dhi Qar province, as well as sleepy Muthanna. They moved the British consulate to the airport because they couldn't protect it in Basra. They are taking mortar and rocket fire at their bases every night. Raiding militia HQs has not resulted in any permanent change in the situation. Basra is dominated by 4 paramilitaries, who are fighting turf wars with one another and with the Iraqi government over oil smuggling rights.

Blair is not leaving Basra because the British mission has been accomplished. He is leaving because he has concluded that it cannot be, and that if he tries any further it will completely sink the Labor Party, perhaps for decades to come.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rape Case Political Football in Iraq
Iraq War has Caused Spike in Global terrorism

Iraqi security forces, Shiites, raided a house looking for a possible Sunni Arab insurgent named al-Janabi. They found only his wife at home. They took her into custody (probably as a hostage). They accused her of cooking for insurgents. Then the police gang-raped her. She went on Aljazeera and told her story. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite head of a Shiite government, at first said he would have a commission look into her charges. Then he reversed himself and accused the woman of lying and implying that she was put up to it by the Sunni insurgency. Marc Santora of the New York Times managed to interview the nurse who treated her, and found that Mrs. al-Janabi's story was corroborated.

In essence, the Shiite prime minister is shielding Shiite police commandos from being charged with a crime against a Sunni Arab woman. Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Ahmad Abdul Ghafur al-Samarra'i of the Sunni Pious Endowments Board was demanding that the victim be sent to Europe for treatment. Update: Al-Samarra'i has just been fired from the board by PM Nuri al-Maliki for making this comment!

Riverbend meditates on the meaning of the rape, and laments that the incident is being interpreted in the terms of religious ethnicity.

The US is considering attempting to go into Sadr City after the Mahdi Army and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute is now in favor. He says he over-estimated the Mahdi Army and under-estimated Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki earlier. Kagan doesn't have the slightest idea what he is talking about when it comes to Iraq, and he is advising Bush what to do, who knows even less. Sadr City is quiet because the Mahdi Army made a policy decision to cooperate with the security plan, and al-Maliki is in on this deal. The Mahdi Army is the street gangs of the Sadr Movement, to which millions of Iraqis have given their allegiance. You can't uproot a social movement with a few patrols and firefights. Sadrism will be there long after the US is forced to withdraw from Iraq.

Bush's Iraq War has driven a big increase in terrorist attacks in the world.

Iraq through an Iraqi's eyes. It doesn't sound like Cheney's description.

Blair may pull out thousands of British troops from the Basra area.

AP rounds up political violence in Iraq on Tuesday
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Attack on US military Base Kills 2 wounds 17;
Running Battles leave Capital's Streets Deserted;
Pentagon Thinks Big concerning attack on Iran

In making continency plans for war against Iran, the Pentagon is thinking big. Not just surgical strikes on the civilian nuclear energy program, but hitting virtually everything of importance in the country. The Air Force kept telling us they could bomb Vietnam into submission. They couldn't. Then it was shock and awe in Iraq. Didn't work. Just remember, it is always the Army that has to come in and clean up the mess.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that numerous running gun battles and mortar strikes were witnessed in Baghdad on Monday as US and Iraqi forces clashed with guerrilla fighters. The mounting death toll of the past few days caused the government of Nuri al-Maliki to reapportion troops, assigning some urgently to "hot areas" as opposed to areas of "routine operations." Sweeps also resulted in numerous arrests, but a leader of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front maintained that some 30 young men arrested on Monday were innocent. As a result of the street battles, Baghdadis rushed to their homes for fear of a further deterioration in the security situation, leaving the capital looking like a ghost town.

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed 6 US GIs on Sunday and Monday in Iraq. They killed two of them Monday with a car bomb and mortar attack on a newly set up US base at Tarmiya north of Baghdad, also wounding 17.

Reuters reports a minibus bombing in Baghad, another at Zaafraniya, and the discovery of 8 bodies in Mosul. Also two bombings in Ramadi. McClatchy reports the discovery of 20 bodies in Baghdad and other violence.

The explosion of a fuel tanker near Taji north of Baghdad killed 5 persons and sent 138 persons to the hospital from inhaling the fumes. Those affected were having trouble breathing and were vomiting.
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Big Military Establishment Harms Liberty: Washington

I understand Bush tried to invoke George Washington as a supporter of the Iraq War.

Here is what George actually thought about maintaining large scale military institutions on a permanent basis for the purpose of fighting foreign wars:

' While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Security Plan Mocked by Massive Explosions
Al-Hashimi Seeks "Terrorist" Status for Sadr Movement

Reuters reports that 2 US soldiers were killed by guerrillas on Saturday. In addition to the massive bombings at a Shiite market in East Baghdad that killed 70 and wounded 150 (- al-Hayat) on Sunday, another bomb, detonated in a restaurant in Sadr City, killed 2 and wounded 11. Police found 5 bodies in Baghdad and another three in Balad. In Basra and Mosul, clashes broke out with local militiamen.


Many Iraqis lack safe drinking water and are forced to resort to river water high in bacteria. In al-Anbar Province, where the US destroyed the city of Falluja, water pipes and all, and created hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, the incidence of diarrhea in children rose 70 percent in 2006! Diarrhea in very young or in sick or malnourished children is often fatal and contributes to high infant mortality rates. 60 percent of Iraqis in the Baghdad and al-Anbar Provinces use river water!

Iraqi Vice President (Sunni fundamentalist) Tariq al-Hashimi called Sunday for the US government to classify the Sadr Movement of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a terrorist group. Sadrists form a key component of the ruling bloc in parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, and they run Maysan Province. It is a little unlikely that al-Hashimi will get his way. The other day, in contrast, he praised the Sunni Arab guerrillas as noble and sincere. If the top echelons of the Iraqi government are this divided over the nature of political reality, it isn't a good sign for the country's future.

Iran has again denied that Muqtada al-Sadr is in that country. Bush spokesman Tony Snow has admitted that the US does not know where Muqtada is.

Here is what I told friends who inquired:

Muqtada al-Sadr is *highly* unlikely to be in Iran.

1. The al-Sadrs, Muqtada and his father, made endless fun of the al-Hakims for fleeing Iraq to Iran under Saddam. Muqtada's claim to greater legitimacy would be undermined were he now to flee to Iran from the Americans.

2. Muqtada successfully hid out from Saddam in Kufa for 4 years. He can hide from the Americans. He has tunnels, safe houses, and trustworthy aides who won't inform on him. He also escaped this way from Najaf and the Marines in Aug. 2004.

3. No Sadrist source says Muqtada is in Iran.

4. No Iranian source says Muqtada is in Iran.

5. A UN source says he is hiding out in Kufa, which is what he used to do under Saddam:

6. Al-Hayat says he is hiding out in the southern Marshes, also plausible. The Marsh Arabs are now mostly Sadrists.

7. The story of his being in Iran has three sources: Gen. Caldwell of the US military, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and Jalal Talabani. All have an interest in Muqtada being humiliated and undermined, and all have an interest in removing his Iraqi nationalist credentials by tying him to Iran. For al-Hakim and Talabani, both with strong Iran ties themselves, it levels the playing field. None is likely actually to know where Muqtada is.

It is sort of old news, but by 2004 the UN found that one third of Iraqis had fallen into poverty and 5 percent were in dire poverty. Iraq in the 1970s had had a fair standard of living but Saddam's wars, the UN/US sanctions, and the disruption of society caused by Bush's invasion, had clearly driven people into substantial poverty by 04. It must be worse, now.

Raed has a translation of the new Iraqi petroleum law.

Petty Larseny says we should declare victory and leave. An ironic reading of Mission Accomplished.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Car Bombs in Shiite East Baghdad Kill 55, Wound 128
Baathis, Salafis Baiting Shiites into Attacking

Sunni Arab guerrillas detonated two huge car bombs in a mainly Shiite market in east Baghdad on Sunday, killing 55 and wounding 128.

These bombings of Shiite markets are provocations against the Mahdi Army. The Sunni guerrillas want it to come out and fight, and then to turn surged US firepower on it by stealth.

The allegations that all the explosively formed projectiles set off against US troops in Baghdad in recent months were Shiite operations are in this context extremely fishy. The Baathis are entirely capable of deliberately buying Iranian components on the open market and using them in their attacks on the US, so as to throw suspicion on Mahdi Army fighters. Some were found in the Sunni district of Mansur. Very suspicious.
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Senate Comes Close to Condemning Iraq Escalation
Twin Bombings kill 11, Wound 65 at Kirkuk

The US Senate came very close to passing a resolution condemning Bush's escalation of the Iraq War. It needed 60 to pass and got 56. Several Republicans voted for the resolution. In fact, if only 4 more had, it would have passed. This vote is very bad news for Bush's Iraq policy, because it seems pretty likely that over the next few months, at least another 4 Republican senators will join the anti-war chorus.


AP reports that a US GI was killed on Friday in al-Anbar province.

The LA Times reports that the large number of wounded Iraqi Vets has overwhelmed the tracking system at Walter Reed Hospital, and that many may have fallen through the cracks. At least 4,000 US GIs have been very seriously injured in Iraq, out of a total of over 20,000.

On Saturday, two huge carbombings that targeted a Kurdish market in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. They killed 11 and wounded 65:

' Police and witnesses said the first blast occurred near shops and a bus depot. Minutes later, a suicide car bomber attacked the same area. The back-to-back blasts shattered about 20 shops and terrified shoppers fled screaming in panic amid burning cars and debris. Restaurant owner Saman Ahmed lay screaming on the sidewalk, his body soaked with hot cooking oil after one of the blasts hurled him onto the curb. '

The Kurdish officials in Kirkuk have been urging Arab families transplanted there by Saddam to leave for the south, raising ethnic tensions in the city.

The report also says that Secretary of State Condi Rice was told on her surprise visit to Baghdad that the Mahdi Army of young nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to cooperate with the security plan and that East Baghdad (Sadr City) is quiet. Why, the al-Maliki government asked, should resources be devoted to an area that is not a problem? This explanation aimed at excusing the sole concentration of the security plan on Sunni Arab areas in West Baghdad.

There were two significant firefights between US troops and Sunni Arab guerrillas in Ramadi, which the US Air Force decided in favor of the US, killing 8 guerrillas.

Reuters reports that there were also significant firefights in the al-Anbar city of Hit between guerrillas and police, with 2 police killed and 8 wounded, and some 50 suspected guerrillas arrested.

Guerrillas also tried to detonate a car bomb at the Shiite holy city of Karbala, but were foiled at a checkpoint, where they set it off instead. Two policemen were wounded. If Sunni guerrillas ever succeeded in hitting the shrine of Imam Husayn at Karbala, that might be the end of Iraq.
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Austrian Rifles via Iran?: Another Crock

An extremely well-informed observer sent me this comment on the story that Iran is sending high-powered Austrian rifles to Iraqi Shiites. Like the whole USG story about Iran supplying deadly weapons to dangerous Shiite militias, this one turns out to be riddled with falsehoods.

' Please allow me to comment on the Austrian Sniper rifles.

There was a deal between Steyr-Mannlicher and the Iranians in the last year of Khatami's presidency, which followed as usual legal procedures, thus the Iranians handed out an end-user certificate. Originally the Iranians wanted 800 but in the end only 300 were delivered.

The rifle has no automatic capability but can pierce metal plate at a distance of 1000meters. The Iranian border guards allegedly use it to shoot at long distance into the motor blocks of the SUVs and pickups of the Drug gangs operating alongside the Afghan border.

There were American and I think also British protests when the deal was concluded. It is important that this was before Ahmadinezhad did his odious speech on Israel and the Holocoust, otherwise I cannot imagine that the Austrians would have concluded the deal.

The original article about Austrian rifles in Iraq appeared in the Daily Telegraph and is full of inconsistencies. For instance they say that the US found 100 of these rifles in Iraq and 170 American and Coalition troops have been killed by that weapon.

As far as I know 170 is the total of US and Coalition troops killed by Shiite militias; total combat casualties are about 3000! The vast majority has been killed by IEDs and other explosives. The article bases its accusations on a US display of weaponry designed to prove that Iran has been supplying Shia insurgents in Iraq, but there is no single line about the Austrian rifles.

But both articles put the Iranian nuclear issue centre stage! Meanwhile the US are unable to provide the Austrians with the guns' serial numbers. Steyr-Mannlicher also hinted at the fact that these guns can easily be rebuilt as the licencing has expired and one can buy them in countries like Canada. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Congressional Resolution on Iraq Blasts Bush Policies
56% Say Iraq War is hopeless.

The House passed a non-binding resolution opposing the escalation of the Iraq War by a significant margin, 246 to 182. Only 17 Republicans broke ranks to vote with the Democrats on the "surge," while 2 Democrats rejected the resolution.

The resolution is not important for immediate policy-making, but rather as a straw in the wind. Sooner or later, Congress is going to begin cutting off money for the Iraq War, and then the troops will just have to come home.

Most Republicans in the House seem to think they can go on playing the patriotism and support the troops and Islamic radicalism cards, and somehow all this will at some point start working for them again. In my view, that outcome is unlikely barring some big unforeseen event, and they will be sunk in 2008 if they stick to this line.

56% of Americans now feel that the Iraq War is hopeless. I can remember when it was a third. The trend lines are not favorable to the war supporters. Their talk about the Dems wanting to 'cut off funding to our troops in harm's way' will increasingly just raise questions in the public's mind about who put the troops in harm's way and why.

Reuters reports that 11 bodies were found in Baghdad on Friday and another 4 in Mosul. Guerrillas killed 3 bodyguards of Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari at a phony checkpoint. A roadside bomb in Kirkuk killed or injured 4. In the southern port city of Basra, clashes between militiamen and British troops broke out.

The guerrillas and militiamen are beginning to lie low, according to al-Zaman in Arabic. One of their hopes is that their rivals will fight the Americans and so be destroyed or much weakened. Since no one is volunteering to fight openly, however, it is possible that guerrillas will attempt to provoke US-militia fights so as to achieve the same result. Those recent huge bombings in Shiite districts of Baghdad were probably intended to make the Mahdi Army commanders rethink their policy of melting away temporarily, and come out to fight the Sunnis and then the Americans when they intervene. We are liable to see more of that kind of thing.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni Arab praised the Sunni Arab guerrillas as "honorable" and "sincere" and said that the Iraqi government and the US must negotiate with them, given American failure.

Al-Hashimi also slammed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for not cracking down on Shiite militiamen (who, I guess, are not in his view either honorable or sincere). He also lashed out at the Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard line Sunni religious group that has been deeply critical of people like al-Hashimi for serving in a government they see as American puppets. I personally think al-Hashimi is right and that a negotiating track must be opened up with the Sunni guerrillas. The Kurds and Shiites in the government won't go for it, though.

Tom Lasseter on the way the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary controls Kirkuk and the trouble that is likely to cause. He points out that Iraqi Army units in the province are mostly actually Peshmerga. The article doesn't talk much about police, but the police is even more Peshmerga than the army. Arabs and Turkmen see this situation as dangerous.

The International Organization for Migration in Geneva predicts that up to one million Iraqis will be forced out of their homes this year if current rates of violence continue.

Don't miss Roger Morris on the Rumsfeld legacy at the indispensable Tomdispatch.com
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53% of Americans Want US Out of Iraq
Car bombs, 20 Bodies in Baghdad Despite Crackdown

The percentage of Americans in a Pew Research Center poll who want US troops out of Iraq surged by 5 percent in the past month to 53 percent.

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed a US GI in al-Anbar Province on Thursday.

In Suwayra, US and Iraqi forces targeted a Mahdi Army cell that Reuters calls "rogue."

Police found 20 bodies in Baghdad on Thursday, and guerrillas set off at least 4 deadly car bombs at three separate sites.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Muqtada al-Sadr and several leaders of his movement as well as commanders of his Mahdi Army are present in the southern marshlands of Iraq, a place in which dissidents in the former Baath regime used to hide out. The marshes have been re-flooded and are at 40% of their original area, and they do give good protection to anyone wishing to hide out. The Marsh Arab inhabitants of the swamps have largely become followers of Sadr, and so would protect him. They are in an area of Iraq that borders Iran and which serves as a smuggling route between the two countries, which may have given rise to the idea that Muqtada was on his way to Iran. He more likely is holed up in the marshes. This is the most plausible story I have seen yet on Muqtada's disappearance.



Jalal Talabani's account that Muqtada ordered his aides to Iran makes no sense at all given Muqtada's longstanding problem with Iran's authority in Shiism and his and his father's position that Iraqis should stay in Iraq even if they are in danger.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Iraqi security forces on Thursday morning closed off Saadoun St., which leads to Liberation Square in downtown Baghdad. They also put up barricades on the bridges that link al-Rusafa, east of the Tigris, with Karkh on the west of the river. At checkpoints coming into the city, soldiers are searching automobiles, checking the vehicle's temperature, and checking drivers' i.d.'s and bona fides. In a city that is constantly being blown up, you have to wonder why they didn't start doing this years ago.

Near Karrada in al-Taharriyat, Iraqi troops searched storehouses, factories and homes looking for weapons.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat writes in Arabic that Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the (Sunni religious) Iraqi Accord Front, warned the government with severity not to target Sunnis alone in its security sweep.

Ben Lando of UPI reports on the remarks of former Iraqi petroleum minister Issam al-Chalabi (no relation) at an oil conference in Houston:

' The global energy information firm Platts reports Iraq`s production in January dropped to an average 1.66 million barrels a day from nearly 1.9 million in December. Around 96 percent of Iraq`s budget comes from selling oil, and exports dropped to about 1.2 million barrels, Chalabi said . . .

'They can`t increase; the only way is for production to go down,' said Mohamed Zine, regional manager of the Middle East for energy analyst firm IHS.

'There`s been no improvement, nothing,' said Zine, whose views on the situation in Iraq are often less dramatic than Chalabi`s. 'It`s getting worse.' '

Before the war, Iraq was producing 2.6 mn barrels a day, with a capacity of 3. In January it could only do 1.6 mn barrels a day. There are widespread reports of rapid deterioration of facilities and fields being polluted with water. Lando adds:

' Iraq also pays billions of dollars annually to purchase oil products for transportation, heating and cooking, a change from before the war when Iraq sold such products, Chalabi said . . . Last year an oil ministry spokesman said smuggling is worth $700 million monthly that should go to federal coffers. '

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases the Iraqi press for Feb. 15:

' Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah on 14 February carries on the front page a 200-word report citing special political sources saying that the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front are suffering from dissidence and disputes.

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah on 14 February carries on the front page a 300-word editorial by Chief Editor Sattar Jabbar strongly criticizing the campaign against Nuri al-Maliki and Baqir Jabr al-Zubaydi led by Harith al-Dari and others. . .

Al-Bayyinah on 14 February carries on the front page a 180-word exclusive report citing Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim [leader of the main bloc in the Iraqi Parliament, who visited the White House on Dec. 4] saying that the leaders of Iran, the UAE, and Bahrain are with Iraq in combating terrorism . . .

Al-Mu'tamar carries on the front page a 300-word report saying that the Public Committee for Supporting the Baghdad Security Plan led by Ahmad al-Chalabi held a meeting that was attended by tribal shaykhs and notables. . .

Al-Manarah on 13 February carries on page 2 a 130-word exclusive report citing Jabir Khalifah Jabir, member of the Oil and Gas Committee at parliament, saying that Iraq's oil is being imported without using oil meters. . .'

Condi Rice lied for Bush when she said she could not remember a major 2003 peace offer from Iran. Flynt Leverett called her on it.

Also of interest is the following article:

' Defense Minister Denies Presence of Al-Sadr in Iran or Supplying Weapons to Iraq
Aftabnews WWW-Text
Thursday, February 15, 2007 T16:31:05Z . . .

The Iranian defense minister has denied reports that (Iraqi Shiite cleric) Muqtada al-Sadr is in Iran. Speaking to an Aftab news correspondent, Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, having denied the presence of al-Sadr in Iran, added; You should ask this question from those who spread such rumors.

Asked for his response to American allegations that the Qods Corps in Iran is supplying Iraqi rebels with weapons, the defense minister said: Such statements are lies and false accusations. Why would we be supplying Iraqis with weapons when we ourselves are calling on America to leave the region so that security may be established? The insecurity (in Iraq) has a bad effect on our country.

Najjar said: Such actions and remarks by America are more like a puppet show.

The defense minister stressed: Iran does not supply Iraq with any weapons. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Brandeis Defunded by Rich Likudniks

Super-wealthy donors have retaliated against Brandeis University for inviting former president Jimmy Carter to speak on campus in connection with his book on Israeli Apartheid in the West Bank. They said they will withold further donations to the school.

The president of Brandeis, Jehuda Reinharz, once commented on Middle East Centers at major American universities, saying, "My problem is not the anti-Zionism or even that many of them are anti-American, but that they are third-rate." Why exactly should he judge their scholarship by whether or not they are Zionists? Does everyone have to be a Zionist? As for the Red-baiting and vague, general put-down of the works of other academics, it is too despicable for words. Reinharz notoriously thought well of the "scholarship" of Joan Peters, whose "From Time Immemorial" was dismissed by Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath as a forgery.

So I have to say it is delicious that Reinharz himself is now having the economic plug pulled on him by rich old bullies who think, by virtue of his invitation to Jimmy Carter, that he is anti-Zionist, anti-American and third rate.

Carter's book, by the way, is mostly just Christian Zionism. It ignores 1400 years of Muslim history in Palestine and Jerusalem, accepts Peters's false thesis of significant in-migration of Arabs in the interwar period, and only dares raise some timid protests about the execrable treatment of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by Israeli occupiers and colonists.

If even Carter can't protest even this much without causing a whole university to be defunded, then there is something radically wrong with higher education in the United States. And what is wrong with it has nothing to do with the (quite high) standard of scholarship in Middle Eastern studies. It has to do with radical intolerance of any views that depart from a rightwing Zionist orthodoxy, and a willingness by upholders of that orthodoxy to deploy big money to punish anyone or any institution that departs from it.

By the way, I have several friends on the Brandeis faculty, and their academic scholarship is first-rate. I hope they can go on enlightening us. Scholarship, pace Reinharz, is not a zero sum game. We are all enriched by the work of good scholars everywhere.
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5 US Troops Killed in Sunni Arab Areas
US Raids Office of SCIRI Leader Saghir

The US military is reporting the deaths of 6 US troops in Iraq. Four were killed by a roadside bomb in Sunni-majority Diyala Province where the US has been fighting Sunni Arab guerrillas. Another was killed "north of Baghdad" (i.e. Sunni territory). The sixth was a non-combat death. Despite the brouhaha about alleged Iranian support to Shiite militias, The five KIAs were all killed by Sunni Arabs who are hostile to Iran. This situation is the typical one in Iraq. So why isn't Bush talking about Sunni Arab insurgents instead of about Iran? (See Gareth Porter on this issue-- he shows that the recent US briefing demonstrated the opposite of what it was going for; also Best Guess.)

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraqi soldiers set up big concrete barriers around the city as part of the new security arrangements on Wednesday, causing traffic backups.

The same source says that US troops invaded the offices of Jalal al-Din Saghir, a cleric who preaches at the Buratha Mosque in northern Baghdad, and confiscated his private papers. Saghir said he believed that the Americans suspected him of being linked to Iran.

(This raid is further proof that the US is not worried about Iranian aid to the Mahdi Army, with which it has clashed, but rather to the Badr Corps, its putative ally. The Badr Corps paramilitary belongs to the Supreme Council for Islamic REvolution in Iraq, of which Saghir is a leader.)

Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times reports that Sadrist member of parliament Fattah Shaikh says he saw Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf four days ago. The US military had reported that the Shiite nationalist cleric had left for Iran last month.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that a number of the leaders of the Sadr Movement and its paramilitary, the Mahdi Army, have relocated to Iran. Some say they are on pilgrimage to the shrine of the 8th Imam in Mashhad, eastern Iran. Others are in the Iranian seminary city of Qom or in Tehran. They appear to be lying low in this way during the security crackdown of the al-Maliki government and the US military, now underway. An eyewitness named al-Khafaji said that Mahdi Army militiamen abruptly vanished from the city squares of Najaf recently.

A source in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior told SA that the US military has given the Ministry lists of Mahdi Army commanders considered to be guilty of murder or crimes of ethnic cleansing. Getting them off the streets is considered key to the new security plan. The names include both Sunnis and Shiites.

(But note that the Ministry of the Interior was for a long time under the control of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and still has a big contingent from that party, so essentially the US is helping SCIRI remove its rivals among the Sadrists and Sunni Arabs.)

A British military transport plane appears to have been damaged by an explosive as it was landing in Maysan province. Its crew had to be rescued and the plane was destroyed. Maysan is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraqis are using Google Earth to plot routes to work that avoid neighborhoods of the opposite sect of Islam, while guerrillas are using it to find their targets.

France broke up a ring of Sunni fundamentalist recruiters for volunteers to fight US forces in Iraq. Two of the French citizens were detained in Syria by the secular Baath Party. So, France and Syria just helped save the lives of US troops. If the US far right ever finds out about this, it should give them a huge ice cream headache.

Austrian rifles sold to Iran are showing up in the hands of Iraqi snipers. Iran is notorious for its black market arms smuggling (in which Ronald Reagan and Ollie North once got involved). I guess now Bush will have no option but to go to war with Austria. I hate to tell Arnie, this, but Washington has been known to intern foreign nationals in California of countries against whom we are at war . . .

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

Baghdad:

*Police found 5 bullet-ridden bodies in the street.

*Guerrillas deployed a car bomb to kill 4 and wound 10 near a hospital in the Christian Camp Sara district.

*Guerrillas in Bayaa used a car bomb to kill 2 and wound 7.

*Guerrillas fired mortar rounds at northern Rashidiya (north Baghdad), killing one and wounding 16.

*Guerrillas trying to hit a police patrol killed 1 and wounded 3 in al-Sulaikh, northern Baghdad.

*Guerrillas fought Iraqi army troops in the Yarmouk district, leaving 3 troops wounded. Also in Yarmouk, guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb, killing 1 civilian.

In Arab-Jubur, the US military used air strikes to kill 15 Iraqis it said were insurgents.

In Ramadi, a suicide car bomber killed 5 and wounded 20 when he detonated his payload at the entrance to a police station. They killed the head of the station.

In the northern city of Mosul, guerrillas used a car bomb to kill 3 and wound 20.

Militiamen killed a policeman in the southern Shiite city of Samawa, causing local authorities to impose a curfew.

McClatchy gives some more details, including that one target of the mortar strikes in Baghdad was a Shiite mosque.

KarbalaNews .net reports in Arabic that Ayatollah Muhammad Ya`qubi, the spiritual leader of the Fadila or Virtue Party, called in Najaf for Iraqis to use the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the blowing up of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra to come together to demonstrate their unity as Iraqis. He spoke against sectarian violence.

Congressman John Murtha will partner with MoveOn.org to in broadcasting a message opposing Bush's escalation of the US troop presence in Iraq.

Cable television 24 hours "news" channels in the US thought the death of Anna Nicole Smith more important than Iraq or other world news last week, devoting 15 percent of their air time to the story.
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Cole Appearance on Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Suspicions about Pentagon's Iran Weapons Story

The video of my Monday night appearance on Countdown with Keith Olbermann is now available on the Web. Scroll down to the link with my picture and click on "launch." Olbermann, at 8 pm on weekdays on MSNBC, does perhaps the best consistent job of asking hard questions about the MSM news of the day of anyone in the serious news business (i.e. other than Jon Stewart).

This worked better for me in I.E. than other browsers, and even then it took a couple of tries.
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On the Mystery of Muqtada al-Sadr's Disappearance

US government sources are saying that nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fled to neighboring Iran three weeks ago. Sadrist aides denied the report.

This on a day when two major bombings left 66 persons wounded or dead in the capital, and 20 bodies were found in the streets of Baghdad. In the southern city of Amara, two Mahdi Army fighters were killed in clashes with the police.

This USG report about Muqtada broke after midnight Baghdad time, so there has not been time for the Arabic or Persian press to react. I'll know more Thursday morning.

Sadr aides denied to the LA Times that Muqtada is in Iran, saying he is in hiding in Iraq.

Some are taking exception to the word "fled."

The press record I assembled, below, does not support Muqtada's disappearance to Iran. It is possible but not likely that Muqtada would go to Iran. He and his family have endlessly made fun of the al-Hakim clerical leaders for fleeing to Iran to escape persecution by Saddam Hussein, when the al-Sadrs insisted on staying in Iraq. Muqtada's father was killed in 1999 by Saddam's agents because he stayed and gave defiant sermons. So it would be a lot of crow to eat for Muqtada to go to Iran to escape the Americans. Plus, there is nothing in the Iranian press about him showing up in Qom, and an Iranian diplomat denied the story. Without more and better evidence, this account strikes me as suspect, and I would guess that if Muqtada disappeared, it is inside Iraq.

It might be useful to construct a timeline for Muqtada's recent activities.

It would begin on January 16. On that date, former Shiite prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim Jaafari, met in Najaf with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. One thing the two discussed was the prospect that the followers of Muqtada in the Iraqi parliament would cease their boycott of the legislature, which had begun last fall when the current prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, met with George W. Bush:

' Al-Jaafari told reporters after meeting the country's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will end their six-week-old political boycott "very soon." Speaking about the 30 Iraqi legislators and six Cabinet ministers who follow al-Sadr, whose return is being discussed with the Shiite bloc in parliament, al-Jaafari said "the suspension of activities by the Sadrist bloc will end very soon, God willing." The boycott has kept them from parliament and Cabinet offices since they walked out over the late November meeting between Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan. '

Two days after this article appeared, on Jan. 19, it was reported that a key aide to Muqtada in East Baghdad, Abdel Hadi Daraji, was arrested by US forces on suspicion of being involved with death squad activity and helping the shadowy Mahdi Army terrorist, Abu Deraa.

On the day of that arrest, an interview with Muqtada appeared in La Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. BBC World Monitoring translated it. Here are the relevant passages:

' Wanted Iraqi Shi'i militant leader Muqtada al-Sadr has said immediate US withdrawal is the only solution to Iraq's security problems. He said his militants were facing action against them by "at least four armies", including "a 'shadow' army that no one ever talks about, trained by US military intelligence in the Jordanian desert in the utmost secrecy". He said the Sunnis must "mark their distance from the Saddam-ites, from the radical groups, and from Bin-Ladin's men, as well as reiterating their 'no' to the United States" for action against them to cease. Following is text of an interview with Al-Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr by Renato Caprile in Baghdad on 18 January, headlined: "'A secret army against us, but the Shi'is will prove capable of resisting';" published by Italian newspaper La Repubblica on 19 January; first paragraph is La Repubblica introduction

Baghdad: He feels hounded, and he is in hiding. He never sleeps in the same bed two nights running any more. Some of his die-hard loyalist followers have already turned their backs on him. He has even transferred his family to a secret place. Muqtada al-Sadr feels that the end is near. There are too many foes, too many enemies infiltrated among his people. Yet he does not have it in for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom he considers to be little better than a puppet, so much as for Iyad al-Alawi, the former prime minister on whom the United States has apparently never ceased placing its money. He, al-Alawi, is apparently the true puppet master behind the operation aiming to wipe Al-Sadr and his Al-Mahdi Army off the face of Iraq.

[Caprile] How come Al-Maliki, whose government contained fully six ministers from your faction until a short while ago, has suddenly woken up to the fact that the real problem that needs to be resolved is the religious militia groups, yours in particular?

[Al-Sadr] Between myself and Abu-Asara (the "father of Asara," the name of Al-Maliki's daughter - La Repubblica editor's note), there has never been much feeling. I have always suspected that he was being manoeuvred, and I have never trusted him. We have met only on a couple of occasions. At our last meeting he first told me: "You are the country's backbone," and then he confessed that he was "obliged" to combat us. Obliged, you hear me?

[Caprile] The fact remains that an iron-clad fist is about to come down on your people.

[Al-Sadr] Actually, it has already begun to do so. They arrested over 400 of my people yesterday night. It is not us they wish to destroy, it is Islam. We are simply an obstacle in the way. We will not put up any resistance for the time being.

[Caprile] Are you saying that you plan to hand over your weapons?

[Al-Sadr] During muharram (the sacred month commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn, which took place over six centuries ago - La Repubblica editor's note), the Koran forbids killing. . .

[Caprile] Some people maintain that the Army and the police force are heavily infiltrated by your men, and that the US Marines on their own will never succeed in disarming you.

[Al-Sadr] The exact opposite is true: It is our militia group that is crawling with spies. Of course, it does not take much to infiltrate a grassroots army. And it is precisely these people who, in staining their hands with unworthy actions, have brought discredit on the Al-Mahdi Army. There are at least four armies ready to swing into action against us: a "shadow" army that no one ever talks about, trained by US military intelligence in the Jordanian desert in the utmost secrecy. Then there is the private army of Al-Allawi, the infidel who will soon succeed Al-Maliki, and that army is training in the former military airport at Muthanna. Then there are the Kurdish peshmerga. And finally, there are the regular US troops.

[Caprile] If what you say is true, then you have no hope of withstanding the onslaught.

[Al-Sadr] There are very many of us, too. We represent a majority in the country that does not want Iraq to become a nonconfessional state and a lackey of the Western powers, which is what Al-Allawi is dreaming of.

[Caprile] You have officially been in the firing line for a week. The government maintains that the religious militia groups are militarily weaker without their leaders.

[Al-Sadr] I am aware of that. That is why I have transferred my family to a safe place. I have even made a will, and I move around constantly, acting in such a way that only very few people know exactly where I am. But even if I were to die, the Al-Mahdi Army would continue to exist. Men can be killed, but faith and ideas cannot. . .

. . . In my view, there is only one option for achieving a solution: immediate US withdrawal.

Source: La Repubblica, Rome, in Italian 19 Jan 07 '

Muqtada admitted that he had moved his family to a safe place, and also said that he was in hiding and was varying his place of residence.

On January 22, al-Hayat carried a denial from Sheikh Muayyid al-Khazraji that Muqtada had left Najaf for Iran. As translated by BBC World Monitoring, it reads:

"Shaykh Mu'ayyid al-Khazraji, one of Muqtada al-Sadr's aides, denied that the Shi'i leader had left Al-Najaf city and told Al-Hayat: "Media reports that Al-Sayyid Muqtada and his family had left Iraq and went to Iran after Al-Darraji's arrest are baseless." He added that "Al-Sayyid Muqtada is still in his house in Al-Hananah, old city of Al-Najaf, and has received several pilgrims after their return to the city", calling reports that he had left Al-Najaf for Tehran "a tendentious rumour" aimed at harming his image. The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad also denied any knowledge that Al-Sadr is visiting the country and a diplomatic source in it told Al-Hayat: "Al-Sayyid has not asked for a visa to enter Iran. We have no knowledge so far that he is in Iran." '

The rumors were not laid to rest. On Feb. 7, as translated by BBC World Monitoring, the London pan-Arab daily reported,

'There is much talk in Al-Najaf streets, and specifically among Al-Sadr's supporters, about Muqtada al-Sadr's disappearance and travel to Iran. But Hasan al-Hilu (one of the staff in Al-Sadr's office) told "Al-Hayat" that "Muqtada al-Sadr disappeared after having a meeting with former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja'fari during his recent visit to Al-Najaf." '

The "but" in al-Hilu's statement suggests that he did not agree with the story that Muqtada went to Iran, though he admitted the disappearance. The detail about the disappearance coming after Jaafari's visit to Najaf on Jan. 16 gives us an idea of the time frame. It may be that this al-Hayat story about gossip in Najaf is the basis for the USG announcement about Muqtada having fled to Iran. If so, it isn't a very solid story. And its details are contradicted by the Jan. 22 al-Hayat article.

On January 26, Borzou Daragani reported that Muqtada's spokesmen were announcing his cooperation with the new security plan. Daragahi quotes US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad:

' "There's a change of behavior that we can see," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters this week. "If it's a change of heart, that's a good thing. If it's a change of tactic, we need to be cautious."

Allies of Sadr suggest he has begun heeding the appeals of other Shiite leaders, including Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, to temper his actions in order to preserve unity in the Shiite-dominated government.

"We were not going to be dragged into a trap to clash with the government or any other of our people," said Nassar Rubaie, a member of parliament who is close to Sadr. "We are aware such a thing could happen." '

At this point, neither the well-connected Daragahi, nor US ambassador Khalilzad, gives evidence in his diction that he thinks Muqtada has fled the country. On the contrary, they speak of him as a local power to reckon with.

On January 29, Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune reported that Muqtada al-Sadr "has ordered his militia not to confront U.S. forces and has endorsed negotiations aimed at easing the deployment of American troops in his strongholds, according to Sadrist and other Shiite officials." It doesn't sound as though he was doing so from abroad.

The Jan. 17 disappearance is brought into question by a February 2 article in al-Hayat. It says that Muqtada al-Sadr was giving the responsibility for deciding if the Mahdi Army should be dissolved to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Ayatollah Kadhim al-Ha'iri (or Haeri, resident in Qom, Iran)

The article ends with this passage: 'For his part, Suhail al-`Iqabi, a Sadr aide and official in charge of publicity in Baghdad, told al-Hayat, "Al-Sadr visited Sistani and discussed the issue of dissolving the Mahdi Army, and the latter declined."

So al-`Iqabi is alleging that Muqtada surfaced in Najaf and held consultations with Sistani there. Why is this offer to the grand ayatollahs to dissolve the Mahdi Army being publicized on February 2 unless the offer was made on Feb. 1 or in very later January? The article does not say that it is reporting weeks-old news. Hence, Muqtada was likely in Najaf for a meeting with Sistani in late January.

The Feb. 7 al-Hayat story continues,

'An aide to Al-Sadr in Al-Najaf told "Al-Hayat" that the "American forces have closed all Al-Sadr City's exits with armoured vehicles and tanks with the support of the Iraqi army" and pointed out that Muqtada al-Sadr instructed all leaders of "Al-Mahdi Army" and the "Trend" "to hide and leave Baghdad because we are certain that this plan is targeting the Trend and its supporters." He added that the recent bombings, which claim the lives of hundreds of Shi'is every day, "will continue because there is no response in the absence of leaders like Abu-Dar' and Abu-Sijad who had left Iraq to a neighbouring country." He stressed that the "takfiris have exploited this gap with the Americans' help and started to send the booby-trapped vehicles to the Shi'i markets." '

This report suggests that the most notorious death squad leaders among the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army have fled to Iran. But it doesn't give evidence that Muqtada has.

The press record shows that Muqtada is in hiding inside Iraq, not in Iran. It also suggests that he has ordered his Mahdi Army to keep a low profile during the present security operation.

But we'll see. Stay tuned.
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139 Killed, as Iraqi Public Doubts Security Plan
16,000 Demonstrate in Karbala

AP reports that political violence killed 139 persons in Iraq on Monday and must have wounded hundreds more. The biggest loss of life came with three coordinated truck bombings of the Shiite Shurja market, which brought down buildings and killed 70. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was giving a speech at the time and the enormous explosions cause his aides to flinch on camera, then a plume of smoke is visible.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that eyewitnesses report that a nearby market took mortar fire at the same time as the bombings. The "Times of Baghdad" says that the enormous explosions and massacre of innocents, coming on the heels of a similar attack last week, has shaken the confidence of the Iraqi public in the new security plans of PM al-Maliki and of the Bush administration.

Reuters reports other political violence on Monday, including other bombings of Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad! In the northern city of Mosul, six policemen were wounded in a firefight with guerrillas. Some 27 bodies were found in the capital on Monday, as usual.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the editor of the Iraqi newspaper al-Safir, Husain al-Juburi, suffered deep wounds in an assassination attempt in the Dura district of Baghdad. He was transferred to hospital.

In the holy Shiite city of Karbala, Some 16,000 demonstrators came out on the anniversary, in the Islamic lunar calendar, of the blowing up of the Askariyah Shrine in Samarra in February, 2006. This report says,

' About 16,000 demonstrators flooded the main street of the southern city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, marching toward Shia shrines there. Participants rallied with placards reading, “No to terrorism” and “Iraqis are one people, whether Shia or Sunni.” Hundreds of policemen guarded the area, and no violence was reported.'

Thousands of Iraqi children, some orphaned by US airstrikes, have been forced into the streets to beg for a living.

And, begging is the least of it. Street children are being drawn into drug use, criminality, prostitution, and even terrorism.

If last fall's Lancet study is correct and 600,000 extra Iraqis have died from violence since April 2003, that would have created a lot of widows, orphans and street children.

A new crisis is brewing for Iraqis caught in the crossfire of violence at home, who wish to emigrate. Syria is closing its borders to new immigrants and imposing relatively restrictive visa rules. Syria, with a population of 19 million, has over 800,000 Iraqi refugees, and they have increasingly become an economic burden. The Bush administration, whose policies helped create the crisis in Iraq, has been offloading costs like refugee care onto regional governments. The US has admitted on the order of 200 displaced Iraqis. The local countries are now saying, "no more." Egypt and Jordan have come to the same conclusion. A demand on Europe and the US for money to care for the refugees seems the likely next step.

Leila Fadel of McClatchy writes of how Iraqis view the downward spiral of their country into sectarian war.

The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference warns that if the US just pulls up stakes and leaves Iraq with no force replacement, all hell will break loose. The OIC is the regular conference of the foreign ministers of Muslim-majority states. Last summer at an OIC meeting, the Malaysian prime minister raised the possibility of providing peacekeeping troops to Iraq. The Reuters report says,

' However Ihsanoglu also warned that apportioning blame would not prove helpful in resolving the crisis, adding that under current conditions a “withdrawal of American troops from Iraq would, without having substitutes from national forces and international forces, lead to more bloodshed”.

Quoting a Turkish proverb which says that “if a mad man throws a stone in a well, 40 wise men would find difficulty in getting this stone out of the well”, he said: “Whom to blame is not the issue. The issue is how to find a way.” '

Well, if Ihsanoglu is offering peacekeeping troops, someone quick take him up on it!

Some 15 percent of US veterans of the Iraq War suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome, but only 2,000 have been diagnosed with it. Various pressures, some of them possibly political, militate against their problems being recognized and properly treated. In other words, in addition to nearly 25,000 killed or wounded in combat, we can expect to have a similar number with significant psychological problems.
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Wealthy Gulf Shiites Allegedly Funding Iraqi Shiite Militias

International arms dealers are supplying enormous amounts of arms to guerrilla groups in Iraq. A Maltese businessman was recently arrested, part of a multi-national smuggling ring that has provided 500,000 machine guns and 10 million rounds of ammunition.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is unwilling to allege that the Iranian government itself is deliberately providing deadly weaponry to militiamen in Iraq.

The USG Open Source Center reports on and translates a message at a Sunni jihadi discussion board that alleges that Saudi Shiites are bankrolling Shiite parties and militias in Iraq. These allegations should obviously be taken with a grain of salt. But at a time when the US is trying to blame everything on Iran, it is interesting to see this evidence that the situation is substantially more complex.

Saudi Shiites predominate in al-Hasa or the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where most of the kingdom's petroleum reserves are. They account for 10 percent of the Saudi population (i.e. 1.5 to 2 million persons). Traditionally repressed by the hyper-Sunni Wahhabi majority, the Saudi Shiites have recently been more emancipated.

Here is the report:

' Forum Participant Claims Saudi Shiites Co-Financing Badr Corps, Al-Mahdi Army
Jihadist Websites -- OSC Report
Monday, February 12, 2007 T16:57:27Z

Terrorism: Forum Participant Claims Saudi Shiites Co-Financing Badr Corps, Al-Mahdi Army On 5 February, a Sunni participant posted a message to a jihadist website claiming that Saudi Shiites are co-financing Iraqi Shiites, Badr Corps, Al-Mahdi Army, and the "death squads" to the tune of "863 million riyals ($228 million) annually." The unconfirmed number was attributed to contributions by merchants from Saudi Arabia and other places to the Shiite's war efforts and groups in Iraq. The participant named a few Shiite companies and called for a "boycott of Shiite businesses" so that Sunni money will not support the Shiite causes and the killing of Sunnis in Iraq.

A summary of the message follows:

In his message, the participant claimed that "one-fifth of the income of every Shiite collected by the Shiite leaders is being routed to the efforts of spreading Shiism in the Middle East. That amount is 863 million riyals ($228 million) annually and a big part of it is coming from Sunnis in Saudi Arabia since these Sunnis buy goods from Shiite owned businesses."

The participant called for "the boycott of Shiite businesses and goods throughout the kingdom and the Arabian Gulf," naming a few of them such as fish producers in the eastern province . . . and some others. The participant suggested starting a list of all Shiite companies to be boycotted.

A few participants responded and named other Shiite owned businesses . . . '

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Police Massacre at Dour Near Tikrit, 30 Dead
Iraqi Government distances Itself from US charges against Iran

Sunni Arab guerrillas deployed a truck bomb against Iraqi police in Dour near Tikrit (a Sunni city of over 100,000 north of Baghdad), killing 30 persons (many of them police) and wounding 50. Tikrit is in the province of Salahuddin, i.e., neither in Baghdad nor in al-Anbar Province, where the "surge" plan is being implemented. We may expect to see major violence in Salahuddin, Diyala, Ninevah and Babil provinces during the current "surge," since they are not included in the plans for increased security.

(On the surge, see Michael Schwartz at Tomdispatch.com)

Speaking of Diyala, US forces have been fighting at close quarters against Sunni Arab guerrillas who had taken over, and booby-trapped, the small town of Buhriz. It took 8 hours to clear a half-mile corridor. One US and one Iraqi soldier have been killed in the fighting, and one of each has been wounded. Several guerrillas were also killed, though some of the dead may have been townspeople caught in the crossfire.

The police chief of Baladruz, also in Diyala, was almost killed by a roadside bomb as his convoy was entering the provincial capital of Baquba.

All of which is not to say that all is well in Baghdad. There were two bombings and a machine gun attack in the capital, and police found 30 bodies in the streets.

In Mosul, police found 5 bodies. There was also a guerrilla attack north of Mosul, which left 8 security guards dead.

Note that Dour, Tikrit, Mosul and Buhriz are all largely Sunni Arab areas.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi government distanced itself on Sunday from US charges against Iran. Maryam al-Rayyis, National Affairs Adviser to PM Nuri al-Maliki, said that Iraq has deep respect for Iran and other neighbors. She said that the Iraqi constitution prohibits Iraq from being an arena of contestation between other countries.

The same report says that Nassar al-Rubaie, a parliamentarian of the Sadr Movement led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, insisted in an interview that his bloc has never received any support from Iran and he is sanguine that it is not included in the American allegations. (In fact, Pentagon briefers specifically mentioned the Mahdi Army, though they appeared to allow that it was splinter groups from it that set these roadside bombs that killed US troops.)

Almost all roadside bombs in Iraq are set by Sunni Arab guerrillas who deeply dislike Shiites and hate Iran.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tried to convince NATO that it has a stake in success in Iraq.

French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy replied that the primary issue is Iraqi sovereignty (i.e. the US should get out of Iraq and let it be an independent country.) Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin had called last week for the US to be out of Iraq by the end of 2008.

Amit Kumar Singh argues that engagement with Iran is crucial to US success in Iraq.

Lauren Frayer of AP reports on the unfinished, non-functioning Youssefiya power plant, now a US military base. I fear I don't see anything hopeful in the facts presented by the article.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is not equipped to help Iraq vets with post traumatic stress disorder, a widespread problem with returnees.

On the Iran weapons story, Al McKee writes:

"Here is my take on the US Killed In Action (KIA) statistics for 4th quarter 06:

Total US KIAs (hostile action) were 265.
Of those, Anbar 112,
Baghdad 107,
Salah al-Din 18,
Diyala 15,
Tamim [Kirkuk] 10,
Ninawa [Mosul] 3.

As you say, one can leave Anbar and the other four provinces to the north out of the equation as they are predominantly Sunni, at least in most areas where US troops are operating.

Of the Baghdad total of 107,
KIAs reported at Taji were 17,

so subtracting that from Baghdad Province yields 90 for the City itself.

The US statement was that less than a quarter of the total US casualties were as a result of these Iranian EFPs.

That equates to roughly 60 of the 265 total. Therefore 2/3 of the Baghdad city US KIAs (60/90) were caused by these Iran-produced EFPs, the implication being that they are all attacks by Shia militia.

But, we don't hear anything like 2/3rds of attacks in Baghdad are by Shia militia. Indeed, this issue continues to be very strange.

How about this as a hypothetical partial explanation. They are produced in Iran, shipped to the Badr Brigade in Iraq who stockpile them for later use. Lots of them then end up on the ubiquitous Iraqi arms black market, and most of them then end up with Sunni insurgents in Baghdad. For some reason (maybe less financial means or a result of competing factions) they don't get to Sunnis in Anbar (The Marines have reported no sign of EFPs in Anbar). I don't konw if this makes any sense, but very little does in this matter."

Patrick Cockburn pokes holes in the US Department of Defense's Sunday briefing blaming Iran for all the US troops killed in Iraq by sophisticated shaped charges.

My own take on the issue: isn't it much more likely that most shaped charges are smuggled in or made by Sunni Arab guerrillas, and that the DoD is leaping to the conclusion from a handful of Iranian ones that all are Iranian supplied? It isn't plausible that something could be made in Tehran but not in a workshop in Baghdad; Iraq is an advanced society. And, how much is left from one of those charges afterwards, that you could tell where it came from? This is the same US military that mistakenly attacked a Shiite Husayniya (mourning hall for the martyred grandson of the Prophet) as a death squad safe house, and then announced that they did not know if it was a Sunni or Shiite edifice. They also apparently don't necessarily know whether they are in Sunni or Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, or how to judge the likelihood that a shaped charge was set by a Sunni Arab guerrilla as opposed to the Shiite militias. I.e. it isn't necessary to deny that some Iranian weapons are getting in to conclude that they are a tiny proportion of the problem.

And, of course, if US troops weren't in Iraq, they wouldn't be being killed by anyone's shaped charges.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Jaafari Expresses Regret over US Capture of Iranian Diplomats

At a time when the Bush administration is making wild and unsubstantiated charges against Iran, a leader of Iraq's ruling Da'wa Party is in Tehran expressing profound regret for the US arrest of Iranian diplomats. He called on Saturday for US troops to depart the country.

IRNA reports on the second day of former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's visit to Iran.

Jaafari, who headed the Iraqi government 2005-2006, praised Iran for its support of the Iraqi state and urged other countries to follow its example.

The article continues:

"Following talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Ebrahim Jafari in a joint press conference congratulated Iranian people and government on the anniversary of the victory of Islamic Revolution. He said he shared in the Iranian nation's happiness and wished prosperity for the nation. . .

[The h]ead of Iraqi Dawa political party said boosting ties between Iran and Iraq benefits all the regional countries. Pointing to his previous visit to Iran as prime minister and also visits by the current Iraqi president and prime minister, Jafari said two-way visits strengthen ties.

He expressed his sorrow at the arrest of Iranian diplomats in Iraq and said efforts are underway by Iraqi president and prime minister with all concerned sides on the issue. The Iranian foreign minister said the stubborn US action in abducting Iranian diplomats should be ended as soon as possible and called on Iraqi government to hold serious talks with occupying US forces to free them.

Mottaki said the pivotal element in the US Iraq policy is to weaken the legal government of Iraq and to jeopardize good and brotheryly relations of the neighboring countries.

Mottaki said that democracy was institutionalized in Iraq during Jafari's tenure, noting that during the period a referendum was held and Iraqi constitution was ratified in the neighboring country.

Mottaki said Iran supports Maleki government in Iraq and helps with security and peace establishment in this neighboring state.

Iranian foreign minister called for more economic cooperation with Iraq and said Iran has assigned one billion dollars for project in Iraq."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

NYT Falls for Bogus Iran Weapons Charges
Completely Implausible Numbers are Thrown Around
Repeat of Judy Miller Scandal

This NYT article depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to Shiite militias:

' In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.'

This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months. Day after day, the casualty reports specify al-Anbar Province or Diyala or Salahuddin or Babil, or Baghdad districts such as al-Dura, Ghaziliyah, Amiriyah, etc.--and the enemy fighting is clearly Sunni Arab guerrillas. And, Iran is not giving high tech weapons to Baathists and Salafi Shiite-killers. It is true that some casualties were in "East Baghdad" and that Baghdad is beginning to rival al-Anbar as a cemetery for US troops:

Robert Burns of AP observes,

"The increasingly urban nature of the war is reflected in the fact that a higher percentage of U.S. deaths have been in Baghdad lately. Over the course of the war through Feb. 6, at least 1,142 U.S. troops have died in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, according to an AP count. That compares with 713 in Baghdad. But since Dec. 28, 2006, there were more in Baghdad than in Anbar - 33 to 31."

Over all, only a fourth of US troops had been killed Baghdad (713 or 23.7 percent of about 3000) through the end of 2006. But US troops aren't fighting Shiites anyplace else-- Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin--these are all Sunni areas. For a fourth of US troops to be being killed or wounded by Shiite EFPs, all of the Baghdad deaths would have to be at the hands of Shiites!

The US military often does not announce exactly where in Baghdad a GI is killed and so I found it impossible to do a count of Sunni versus Shiite neighborhoods. But we know that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was running interference for the Mahdi Army last fall, and it seems unlikely to me that very many US troops died fighting Shiites in Baghdad. The math of Gordon's article does not add up at all if this were Shiite uses of Iran-provided EFPs.

So the unnamed sources at the Pentagon are reduced to implying that Iran is giving sophisticated bombs to its sworn enemies and the very groups that are killing its Shiite Iraqi allies every day. Get real!

Moreover, there is no evidence of Iranian intentions to kill US troops. If Iran was giving EFPs to anyone, it was to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary, for future use. SCIRI is the main US ally in Iraq aside from the Kurds. I don't know of US troops killed by Badr, certainly not any time recently.

It is far more likely that corrupt arms merchants are selling and smuggling these things than that there is direct government- to- militia transfer. It is possible that small Badr Corps stockpiles were shared or sold. That wouldn't have been Iran's fault.

Some large proportion of US troops being killed in Iraq are being killed with bullets and weapons supplied by Washington to the Iraqi army, which are then sold by desperate or greedy Iraqi soldiers on the black market. This problem of US/Iraqi government arms getting into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas is far more significant and pressing than whatever arms smugglers bring in from Iran.

We now know that Iran came to the US early in 2003 with a proposal to cooperate with Washington in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and that VP Richard Bruce Cheney rebuffed it. The US could have had Iran on its side in Iraq!

The attempt to blame these US deaths on Iran is in my view a black psy-ops operation. The claim is framed as though this was a matter of direct Iranian government transfer to the deadliest guerrillas. In fact, the most fractious Shiites are the ones who hate Iran the most. If 25 percent of US troops are being killed and wounded by explosively formed projectiles, then someone should look into who is giving those EFPs to Sunni Arab guerrillas. It isn't Iran.

Finally, it is obvious that if Iran did not exist, US troops would still be being blown up in large numbers. Sunni guerrillas in al-Anbar and West Baghdad are responsible for most of the deaths. The Bush administration's talent for blaming everyone but itself for its own screw-ups is on clear display here.

For more skepticism, see this column at Huffington;

and Glenn Greenwald

and

Think Progress .
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Putin Denounces Unilateral US Iraq War
Jaafari Calls for US Troops to Depart

The US military on Saturday announced 3 GIs killed and 4 wounded in al-Anbar province.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq for Saturday, including a car bombing in Karrada that killed 5 Iraqis and wounded 10. There also other killings, in east Baghdad and points south. See also Daily War News, which points out that a US forward base for the "surge" strategy in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of the capital, was attacked as soon as it was set up.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari of the Islamic Call (Da'wa) Party, is visiting Iran. IRNA reports,

' Concerning occupying forces in Iraq, Jafari said the best way for them is leaving Iraq adding even public opinion in their own countries supports their departure from Iraq. '

Jaafari was the first elected Iraqi prime minister since 1954, and all that enthusiasm in the US in January, 2005, about the purple fingers was in essence enthusiasm for the government that he formed (April 2005-March 2006). His call, in Tehran, for US troops to go, now, should be front page news and lead the cable news cycle on Sunday. It will not be.

Jaafari also congratulated his Iranian hosts on the 28th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Shiite religious parties that now rule Iraq are full of people who feel the same way Jaafari does about 1979.

Meanwhile, Iranian Expediency Council Chairman and former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, implied that Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq is an American plot and said that Muslims need to confront it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also called for the setting of a timetable for US withdrawal on Saturday, in an interview with Aljazeera. I can't find a link on the internet . . .

' MOSCOW. Feb 10 (Interfax) - The new U.S. strategy in Iraq will work only if a date for withdrawing the foreign military contingent is set, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

"It seems to me that a date for the withdrawal of foreign forces should be set," Putin said in an interview with Al-Jazeera. . . the U.S. has officially declared that it plans to hand over full authority, primarily in the law enforcement and security areas, to Iraqi agencies, Putin said.
"But I think this won't work if we don't decide beforehand when the foreign contingent should be withdrawn. Because, as it happens in any conflict and in any country, people should know that they have to be prepared to take on full responsibility inside the country by a certain date. When they do not have a definite date and when it is unclear when the maturity of relevant organizations in this country should reach a certain appropriate level, then everything is shifted off to the foreign contingent," Putin said.

The situation in Iraq should be stabilized by strengthening the Iraqi security forces, withdrawing the foreign military contingent from that country, and providing the Iraqi people with the chance to decide their fate on their own, Putin said.'

Putin also critiqued the Bush administration policy of unilateralism, saying that since countries can no longer be sure of the protection of international law, they are turning to possession of nuclear weapons. In other words, Putin is saying that Washington has been producing its own worst nightmare by its illegal aggressions, and that you can have nuclear non-proliferation or you can have unilateralist disregard for the UN Security Council and international treaty obligations, but you cannot have both.

An English translation of the speech is here.

USG Open Source Center paraphrases items in the Iraqi Press for Feb. 10:

' Al-Adalah carries on the front page a 250-word report citing Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's Representative Ahmad al-Safi during the Friday prayer sermon in Karbala yesterday, 9 February, calling for a peaceful demonstration on the first anniversary of the Samara bombing on 12 February. . .

Al-Adalah runs on page 2 a 240-word report on the statement issued by the Governmental Communications Office yesterday, 9 February, on the conference organized by the National Security Affairs Ministry on 8 February to discuss the expulsion of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization from Iraq. . .

Al-Da'wah on 8 February carries on the front page a 600-word report on parliament members' calls to replace Mahmud al-Mashhadani. The report adds that the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front has rejected the calls to replace Al-Mashhadani. . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 4 a 650-word report citing Harith al-Ubaydi, parliament member from the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front, calling on Saudi Arabia to hold a conference attended by Iraqi political forces to solve the Iraqi crisis. The report cites the Kuwaiti Prince calling on the United States and Britain to conduct talks with Syria and Iran to solve the Iraqi crisis. . .

Dar al-Salam on 8 February carries on page 10 a 200-word report confirming that US Army officers apologized for killing civilians by mistake in southern Baghdad. . .

Al-Bayan carries on page 2 a 530-word report saying that the Health Minister Ali al-Shammari has decided to increase the number of ambulances from 288 to 1,080 and establish 76 health centers in Baghdad. . .

Al-Da'wah on 8 February carries on page 2 a 200-word report saying that Al-Sadr Office in Al-Taji arrested a gang involved in stealing electricity wire and handed it over to the tribes to punish them. . .

Dar al-Salam on 8 February carries on page 10 a 700-word report entitled "In Basra, Intellectuals Talk About Campaign To Expel Them From City; Anger at Iranian Officials Pictures in Southern Governorates. . . "

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Guerrillas Kill 3 GIs
US Accidentally Kills 8 Kurdish Policemen

Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq on Friday.

Three US GIs were announced killed by enemy fire in al-Anbar Province.

In the southern port city of Basra, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb that killed one British soldier and wounded 3 others.

*Guerrillas in the northern city of Mosul set off a roadside bomb that wounded 17 persons, among them 10 policemen.

*Car bombs killed or injured in Hilla (south) and Kirkuk (north)

*The US air force trying to hit a Salafi Sunni cell instead killed eight Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen and wounded 6 others. They were serving in Mosul's police force.

Another US air strike at Arab Jbour near Baghdad killed eight persons and destroyed a building. The air strikes were in response a request from US ground troops, who apparently were put in some difficulty by the guerrillas.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, a major prayer leader in Najaf and a figure close to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, criticized Iranian influence in Iraq and called on Tehran and Washington to avoid turning his country into "an arena of contestation" between them.

Al-Hayat also says that the 1920 Revolution Brigades (also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement) refused to join the "Islamic State of Iraq" coalition or "al-Qa'eda and its allies on the other side. The US has called on the group to enter talks with Washington.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Feith in the Situation Room: Three Lies

Former No. 3 at the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, has been found guilty by the Inspector General of "inappropriate" behavior in setting up a rogue unit inside the Pentagon to cherry pick intelligence so as to get up a war. Of course, the Inspector General was careful to say, this treasonous activity was not "illegal." Lying about sex is illegal. Lying the country into a war that kills or wounds 25,000 US troops is just "inappropriate."

Senator Jay Rockefeller is looking into whether in fact US law was broken by Feith and his collaborators.

Feith came on Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room Friday and told three lies, for all the world as though he were still in a position to manufacture reality for the rest of us to study, however judiciously. Here is the transcript with the lies corrected.



BLITZER: Did you and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney and Scooter Libby and the president make a mistake?

FEITH: Well, I mean, in the -- lots of mistakes were made and lots of right things were done.

BLITZER: In your analysis?

FEITH: The issue here was not that we did an analysis. The issue was we criticized the CIA's analysis.
===

Feith's "Office of Special Plans" did not just critique Central Intelligence Agency conclusions. It requisitioned raw intelligence and cherry-picked it for the conclusions Feith was seeking. And, the group itself was not neutral analysts but was rather drawn from the Neoconservative network close to Israel's Likud Party:

Jim Lobe wrote, "The heads of NESA and OSP were Deputy Undersecretary William Luti and Abram Shulsky, respectively. Other appointees who worked with them in both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud 'Jerusalem Post'; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski." [Update: Kwiatkowski in an email disavows the allegation about Chris Lehman, saying she was misunderstood by the reporter. JC]

Feith decries the "filter" the CIA had put on its intelligence on Iraq. Mr. Feith, that is called "intelligence analysis." Raw, undigested tips are not intelligence and they can be extremely unreliable if not weighted properly. It then funneled those conclusions to Cheney's office directly, by-passing real intelligence agencies. Its members also quite illegally briefed high ranking administration officials on the intelligence. See my earlier remarks on all this.

====
BLITZER: But right now.

FEITH: Hang on a second.

BLITZER: Are you ready to acknowledge there were no WMDs ...

FEITH: You're not letting me explain the essence of the problem.

BLITZER: I will let you explain but quickly. Are you ready to acknowledge there was no WMD, are you ready to acknowledge that there was no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda?

FEITH: We did not find WMD stockpiles. We found WMD programs. And the Duelfer report as I'm sure you know, was very clear on what we found in the WMD area, although we did not find the stock piles. We found that he had the facilities, he had the personnel, the intention. So there was a WMD threat but it wasn't the way the CIA described it.

In fact, the Duelfer report found no sign of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or any active capacity to produce any of them:
===
"In his final word, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has “gone as far as feasible” and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion. “After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he issued last fall."

BLITZER: There wasn't the stockpiles. What about on the al Qaeda connection?

FEITH: On the al Qaeda connection, George Tenet on October 7th, 2002 wrote an unclassified letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee laying out the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

BLITZER: So you believed there was a connection?

FEITH: I believed George Tenet.

Oh, now he has blind faith in the CIA? I thought it was completely unreliable because of its "filters" and had to be contradicted by Abram Shulsky?

BLITZER: But now you know that was now false.

FEITH: I never heard it was false.

Abu Zubayda was debriefed to this effect in 2002, and Khalid Shaikh Muhammad confirmed it on his capture in spring of 2003. Feith as the number 3 man in the Pentagon cannot have been unaware of what they were telling interrogators. He is therefore lying. James Risen wrote in summer 2003,
===
"Al-Qaeda did not work with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, two of the terrorist network's senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say.

Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda planner and recruiter who was captured in March 2002, told interrogators last year that such co-operation had been discussed among the group's leaders, but was rejected by Osama bin Laden.

The al-Qaeda chief had vetoed the idea because he did not want to be beholden to Saddam, Zubaydah said.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's chief of operations who was captured in Pakistan on March 1, has also said in a debriefing that the group did not work with Saddam.

The Bush Administration has not made these statements public, although it has frequently highlighted intelligence reports supporting its claims of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda as it made its case for war. "
===

BLITZER: You believe Saddam was working with al Qaeda?

FEITH: I believe that what George Tenet published in October of 2002 was the best information on the subject. And as far as I know, that is largely -- I mean, there may be -- look, I've not been in the government the last year and a half.

There may be some more intelligence on that subject. I'm telling you from the time George Tenet published his findings on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship which is that they had a relationship for 10 years and they talked about various things, bomb making and save haven and other issues, that that was the U.S. government's best understanding of the subject. I never criticized that in public or in private.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadrist Deputy Health Minister Arrested
Day of Carnage with Over 100 killed.

AP reports that the Sadrist deputy Health Minister, Hakim al-Zamili, detained on Thursday was handcuffed by US troops accompanying a Special Operations unit of the Iraqi army that was vetted by the US. When the Sadr Movement joined the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, in fall of 2005, it was clear that they would get seats in parliament (they have 32) and cabinet posts. They preferred the "service" ministries, such as health, so that they could get street credit for government clinics and other good works. It is alleged that the Sadrists have used their control of the Ministry of Health to further the activities of their Mahdi Army militia, and that al-Zamili was a major figure in this activity.

AP also says that 4 Marines were reported killed in al-Anbar Province, and that 104 Iraqis were killed in political violence on Thursday.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Thursday. 16 bodies were found in the norther city of Mosul. Another 20 were found in Baghdad.


Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that a guerrilla with huge car bomb in the southern Shiite city of Kut killed 20 persons and wounded at least 45.

Al-Hayat also says that US officers met on Thursday with clan elders and Sadrist leaders in largely Shiite Sadr City [East Baghdad]in an attempt to find a way for the extra US troops to enter Sadr City peacefully. The US rejected the suggested that popular committees participate in sweeps and arrests. The talks were aimed at defusing tensions between the Mahdi Army and the US military and avoiding a confrontation.

The deputy governor (Ibrahim Hasan) of Diyala province to the east and northeast of Baghdad admitted that Sunni Arab religious radicals were in control of many of the province's cities and towns, and that the Iraqi government has almost no presence in the cities of Baquba and Muqdadiyah. He said that the security situation was very bad, and called on American and Iraqi military forces to intervene immediately to save the people from ethnic cleansing operations. He is said to want Diyala province added into the new security plan (which concentrates on Baghdad and al-Anbar province.

The Provincial Council had fired the old governor of Diyala and expelled 1500 policemen and army soldiers after gunmen from "al-Qaeda" occupied the governor's mansion.

Tom Engelhardt weighs in with a warning on the building conflict between the US and Iran.

Check out the American Torture websited.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Crash Kills 7 GIs
Arab Demonstration in Kirkuk

A helicopter crash killed 7 US GIs on Wednesday. AP interviewed an Iraqi farmer in the area who said he heard a missile being fired before the crash, and a radical Muslim group took responsibility. Only an investigation will settle if it was a shoot-down, but the previous four such crashes clearly were. It is not clear whether the Sunni Arab guerrillas are getting better weaponry for use against US helicopters.

Hundreds of Arabs demonstrated in Kirkuk on Wednesday against the decree of the Committee for Normalization, which would send Arabs who were brought to the province during the Baath period back to the center or south of the country. The demonstrators maintained that as Iraqis they could live where they liked. Al-Zaman reported that Sunni and Shiite Arabs along with Turkmen all joined in the rally. They shouted or carried placards proclaiming, "No to the Partition of Iraq! Yes to National Unity!"

What they were alleging was that the Kurds are planning to grab Kirkuk province, add it to their Kurdistan Regional Government, and then have all four of their provinces secede from Iraq, taking Kirkuk's petroleum with them.

Kurdish spokesmen maintained that the program, which provides about $15,000 in compensation, is voluntary. Arabs and Turkmen appear afraid that it is not.

Al-Zaman quotes Raad al-Sarkhi, head of the Sadr Movement office in the city, saying that both Islam and Arabism forbid the partition of Iraq. He said that that was the reason he and others had come out, on instructions from the leadership in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, to protest the expulsion of Arabs from the province. He said that most Arabs in Kirkuk had come 30 years ago, and no longer had property or homes in the south or even a place in local government registers, and no amount of compensation would allow them to replace their homes and shops in Kirkuk. Sheikh Abdullah Sami al-Asi of the local Council said that he rejected a second Palestine in Iraq [i.e. the expulsion of people from their homes by settlers]. Kurdish Kirkuk authorities estimate that 7400 Arab families would be affected by the expulsion decree. (At an average of 7 members per family, that would be over 50,000 individuals).

Iraqi Turkmen also allege that they are being ethnically cleansed, and warn that they will boycott the planned December referendum on whether Kirkuk will join the Kurdistan confederacy.

Iraqis in general are being displaced from their homes, with 1 in 7 having fled abroad . Intrepid journalist Warren Strobel writes, "Every day, violence displaces an estimated 1,300 more Iraqis in the country; every month, at least 40,000." That would be half a million displaced persons a year.

The Bush administration has been happy to see Jordan and Syria swamped with the refugees, but has taken in hardly any, itself.

This article says it is the biggest such set of displacements since the Palestinians were expelled or fled in 1948.

That is absolutely true if one is concerned with the proportion of the population affected. Off the top of my head, what I remember is that some 950,000 out of 1.3 million Palestinians lost their homes and were made refugees. With regard to absolute numbers, there have been bigger disasters. In Afghanistan 1980-2001, 5 million were displaced abroad and more millions internally. The displacements from Lebanon 1975-1989 were also substantial as a proportion of the population.

More on sectarian displacement in Iraq

Police found 33 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Reuters reports that guerrillas carried out deadly bombings in Baghdad and Suwayra. A mortar attack killed 4 in Falluja. Police found 3 bodies in Mahmudiyah and 2 in Yusufiyah.

The USG Open Source Center translates the following report:

' Former police officer beheaded in public north-east of Baghdad - website
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Internet Version-WWW)
Wednesday, February 7, 2007 T17:29:20Z

Former police officer beheaded in public north-east of Baghdad - website

An insurgent group have beheaded a former Iraqi police officer in a public park in Sharaban area, north-east of Baghdad, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, website reported on 7 February.
The website quoted a security source from Sharaban area as saying the former lieutenant, Firas Khalifa al-Jaburi, had been abducted in the morning of Wednesday, 7 February, in the Al-Ibara area before he was taken away to Sharaban.

The website said the insurgents called on people to go to a public square in Hay al-Mu'alimin to see the beheading of Al-Jaburi.

The report said Al-Jaburi left his job with Dyiala police three months ago after he was threatened by insurgents that he and his family would be abducted if he would not quit the police.

(Description of Source: (Internet) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic -- Patriotic Union of Kurdistan media website) '

The statistics coming out of Iraq are dreary. A story like this, of a single person, is even more depressing.

[PDF} A Chatham House report on how likely it is that terrorist groups could deploy WMD in the UK. Apparently, not so much.

Jeff Cohen on Jonah Goldberg's wretched bet, which I declined as inhumane. As Cohen points out, the worst travesty of all is that the Tribune Corp. that owns the LA Times fired Bob Scheer, who has a great deal of sound judgment, and hired Goldberg, who couldn't find even his behind with both hands. NPR also gave Goldberg a perch, apparently to fend off the troglodytes in Congress. It isn't right, but, well, the US is run by cranky old rich white men, and some of them like what Goldberg has to say. Has nothing to do with whether he actually knows what he is talking about. As his foolish bet shows, he hasn't the slightest.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

3 Month Record For US Troops Killed
Da'wa Terror Figure Member of Parliament

More US troops were killed in the past 3 months in Iraq than in any comparable period since the war began.

The kidnapping by guerrillas in Iraqi army uniforms of the second secretary of the Iranian embassy in Baghdad has raised tensions between Iran and the US. Iran blames the US for the abduction, which Washington denies. But the US has arrested several Iranian officials in Iraq recently. George W. Bush recently announced that the US military would kill or capture Iranians in Iraq that it considered intelligence operatives. I said at the time that this announcement and this policy were a big mistake in a chaotic situation like that of Iraq (not to mention that the US "arrests" Iranians invited into Iraq by the Iraqi government or other high officials, which seems rather colonial.) So now Bush's threat is affecting how the Iranians see the kidnapping of their embassy official.

Iraqi police often sell their weapons on the black market. A Sunni Arab guerrilla interviewed in The Guardian admitted that the insurgents buy a lot of their weaponry from the Iraqi government.

On ly 2,000 of the expected 8,000 extra troops PM al-Maliki ordered to Baghdad had shown up by the beginning of February. The two Kurdish brigades coming from Irbil and Sulaymaniya, which were supposed to have 3,000 troops each, are not actually coming at full strength. One showed up with only 1500 troops. The other was only coming with 1,000. So that is 2,500, not 6,000. They won't make their extra 8,000 that way. And, Dan Froomkin says that this is already a missed benchmark.

This story about the Islamic Da'wa (Islamic Call) Party member of parliament, Jamal Jaafar Muhammad, who is alleged to have participated in the 1982 attack on the US consulate in Kuwait, strikes me as very fishy. First of all, that operation was a Da'wa Party operation, ordered by the leadership in exile in Tehran. So how many big expatriate Da'wa Party leaders were *not* implicated in it in some way? The first prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, Ibrahim Jaafari, was Da'wa and was in Tehran at that point. Did he really not know about this? Nuri al-Maliki was in Damascus and the Da'wa in Syria and Lebanon helped to form the Lebanese Hizbullah.

Ezzedin Salim, , whom Paul Bremer appointed to the Iraqi Governing Council and who was killed outside the Green Zone in May, 2004, when he was de fact president of American Iraq, was also al-Da'wa. In the 1980s he wrote in favor of Khomeinism and Shiite activism.

Da'wa hated the United States in the 1980s because Washington was seen as an ally of Saddam Hussein, whom Da'wa wanted to overthrow. Also because the US wanted to undermine Khomeini's Islamic Republic in Iran, with which Da'wa was allied.

I have spoken about this terrorist past for Da'wa before. I could never understand why the members of the Republican Party in the US were so delirious with joy that their president had installed the Da'wa Party in power in Iraq.

But the US intelligence agencies knew all this. So why are they making a big deal about MP Muhammad now?

I do not know. But I entertain deep, dark suspicions that this leak is a means for the US to put pressure on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. He is surely vulnerable to this sort of blackmail himself, since no Da'wa activist in Damascus in the 1980s can have been completely innocent of the organization's then darker side. I suspect the message to al-Maliki is, back off from the Mahdi Army and back off from Iran, or we can arrange to put you in the same docket as MP Muhammad.

As for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, another main component of the ruling bloc in Iraq, it was a Khomeinist organization in the 1980s and 1990s that ran a guerrilla paramilitary, the Badr Corps. I don't know that it ever hit a specifically American target. But it wasn't exactly a US ally. To say the least.

If you start worrying about the Shiite government of Iraq having people in it who were anti-American in the 1980s, you'd have to arrest the lot of them. This is self-evident to US intelligence agencies. Therefore, making a big deal out of Muhammad is likely a way of telegraphing a threat.

CIA buddy Landed Iraq Deal for Contractor. The title says it all. Actually, if you changed it to Department of Defense, you'd have many more headlines and many billions in "deals" for "buddies."

The Bush administration can't account for up to $12 billion handed out in Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Only 10 percent of it seems to have gone to firms or persons with written-down contracts. There are fears that some of it went to the building insurgency. Wolf Blitzer asked today on CNN why it had to be in cash, and didn't they have banks? That one is easy. The banking system in Iraq collapsed and the Bush administration had made no plans for reviving it. So the CPA had to deal in cash. It was given out arbitrarily. Rory Stewart's Prince of the Marshes tells some of that story; see also Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Also they gutted the Baath government ministries, fired party members, and let the records be burned, so there was no auditing capacity.

I was complaining about the missing billions years ago. It is finally on television only, I guess, because the Dems took the House. Why do US journalists feel they have to be authorized to write the news by majority political parties?

Speaking of scams, Neoconservative Douglas Feith is teaching at Georgetown. So in the run up to the 2003 war, I'm told, Douglas Feith was challenged by a State Department official who knows the Middle East about what in the world the US would do in Iraq once it won the war.

State Dept. Official: "Doug, after the smoke clears, what is the plan?"

Feith: "Think of Iraq as being like a computer. And think of Saddam as like a processor. We just take out the old processor, and put in a new one--Chalabi."

State Dept. Official: "Put in a new processor?"

Feith: "Yes! It will all be over in 6 weeks."

State Dept. Official: "You mean six months."

Feith: "No, six weeks. You'll see."

State Dept. Official: "Doug."

Feith: "Yes?"

State Dept. Official: "You're smoking crack, Doug."

Feith: "Oh, so you're disloyal to the President, are you?"

Doug Feith betrayed the United States by getting up a false case for war with Iraq. He made it clear in 1996 that his motivations for an Iraq War had to do primarily with Israel, and, indeed, with a far Right agenda of simultaneously pushing to destroy the Labor Party in Israel, to permanently annex the West Bank, and to overthrow Syria. At the Pentagon, he also ran an authoritarian shop that punished and marginalized anyone who stood in his way. He allegedly had State Department personnel spied on and excluded from meetings. He is not "mild-mannered." He just doesn't show the iron fist in public. He is writing a book, but needn't bother. The Dems are likely to subpoena documents that will make for far more interesting reading.

Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq on Tuesday. Several bombings in Baghdad killed or wounded dozens of Iraqis. Police found 25 bodies in the streets.

Reuters says that US troops arrested the mayor of Tikrit. McClatchy says instead that it was a general in the new Iraqi army and his brother, a municipal administrator who has worked with the Americans. Either way it seems pretty obvious that the Sunni Arabs of Tikrit who on the surface looked like they were cooperating with the new order were in fact often linked to the resistance.

Nick Turse on America's secret air war in Iraq. I don't think the Geneva conventions envisaged occupying powers bombing cities they have occupied for several years.

The outbreak of outspokenness in Japan continues to build. Leader of the Japanese Democratic Party, Ichiro Ozawa, now says that he would have warned Bush not to start the "absurd" Iraq War. Ichiro-san, that would not have worked; lots of people tried, and they were run over by a Mack truck of marginalization driven by Exxon Mobil and the Neoconservatives (i.e. the American Enterprise Institute).
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Republican Senators Block Debate on Iraq
al-Hakim in Tehran seeks Regional Cooperation

The Republican Party blocked a debate in the Senate over Iraq War policy. The Republicans not so long ago were trying to get rid of the consensus rules, filibuster and other techniques the minority has at its disposal. They are singing a different tune now that they are the minority. Anyway, I'm sure everyone will remember in the next elections that almost all Republican senators joined to stop any constructive steps from being taken on Iraq.

Bush's new budget is bad for the sick, the elderly, the weak. It expands the Pentagon budget though, just so you can tell what is really important.

This NYT story about the killing of Ali Khazim al-Hamadani by US and Iraqi troops reports the official US story of a rogue leader that makes no sense in the light of the other details gathered by the intrepid Mr. Oppel. NYT shows that Khazim is said to have worked as an informer for the US last summer, and had striven to reduce the violence of the Mahdi Army. So did he in the meantime turn on the US and is this payback? Or did he start to know things he wasn't supposed to? The accounts of his death are also contradictory, with the US saying Iraqi troops raided his house and shot him when he picked up a gun to resist them. The Sadr Movement spokesman said he was bayoneted to death (suggesting he was unarmed when killed).

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that 1,000 Arab notables and clan leaders gathered in Kirkuk, where they rejected the idea of joining Kirkuk to the Kurdistan Regional Government. A December referendum in the province will decide the issue, probably in favor of the Kurds, since they are now a majority in the province after 3 years of pouring people (many of them originally from there but expelled by Saddam) into it. The Arab and Turkmen populations in Kirkuk generally oppose annexation.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim met Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Monday. The Arabic press is saying his agenda is to start talks between the US and Iran.

Syria's al-Asad says that his country can play a key role in calming things in Iraq.

The office of Sadrist splinter leader, Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi maintains that numerous arrests have recently been made of his followers in the Najaf region, according to the Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat. Al-Sarkhi's followers have repeatedly clashed with British and Iraqi government troops, and are thought responsible for burning the Iranian consulate in Basra.

Police found 25 bodies in the streets of Baghdad on Monday. A series of five car bombs killed at least another 24 and wounded over 100 persons. One bomb went off near a children's hospital. McClatchy has more details.

There was guerrilla fighting in the Sunni district of Adhamiya. In the Janabiyin neighborhood of Amil, Shiite militiamen dressed as police pulled Sunnis out of their apartments and murdered at least 8, then set 5 apartment buildings afire.

There was also fighting in the mixed Sunni-Shiite province of Diyala east of Baghdad. In the southern city of Basra, two British soldiers have been killed in recent days and bases have taken heavy mortar fire. A mosque was bombed, but there were no casualties in that incident.

Police found 6 bodies in Haditha, a Sunni Arab town in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad. This was Sunni on Sunni violence, whatever it was.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Is Tokyo Going Wobbly on Iraq?

The Shengetsu Newsletter follows:

' Newsletter No. 508 News-Analysis February 6, 2007

IS TOKYO "GOING WOBBLY" ON IRAQ?

Just two weeks after Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma described the US invasion of Iraq "based on an assumption that weapons of mass destruction existed" in Iraq a mistake, comes a new remark from the somewhat more surprising source of Foreign Minister Taro Aso.

On the 3rd, local media in Kyoto reported Aso to have said that the US "launched a very immature operation that did not work so well, and that is why there is trouble." This comment was then picked up by the national and international media, and broadcast around the world. Beleaguered Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki tried to explain, "I understand what he meant to say was that soft policies should have been used more skillfully... I think the word 'immature' was inappropriate, but I think his true intention was to suggest using Japan's knowledge in building peace."

An interesting interpretation of this event has been presented by Steven Clemons of The Washington Note:

"Prime Minister Koizumi -- at one time believed to be a populist-leaning prime minister who would assert a new, more robust yet healthy nationalism based on Japanese interests rather than American designs -- actually went the other direction. When Bush set the US towards a new war against Iraq, Koizumi sacrificed Japanese sovereignty and re-fixed Japan as a lapdog of US interests. The dog is out of the lap, apparently. And Taro Aso -- a grandson of the famed post-WWII bureaucrat turned prime minister Shigeru Yoshida -- is testing the waters of a less-tethered Japan."

Is Clemons correct that the "dog is out of the lap"? Not even close.

I appreciate that Steven Clemons has now come to realize how disastrous the Iraq War has been for global US interests. On that point he is absolutely correct. But like many others on the left of the US political establishment (although he considers himself a 'radical centrist'), Clemons is eager to see in Kyuma and Aso's comments the signs of a major change in Tokyo's appraisal of the Iraq War. But this is simply not the case -- at least, not yet.

In the first case, Kyuma has always been a skeptic on the war. His personal opinion never really changed. In the second case, Aso simply talks too much, and is too eager to be seen as a clever fellow. He was never really deeply committed to the war, nor is he deeply against it now.

Iraq is a simply sideshow for most LDP politicians and MOFA bureaucrats. They only became involved in Iraq to please Washington, and now that Washington itself is divided and weak, they are waiting for clearer signals to emerge about the future of US policy.

The dog may be sleepily looking around the room, but it is still firmly in its master's lap.

Tokyo has not "gone wobbly" on the US-Japan Security Alliance. In all likelihood, that theme will not appear until some years in the future, probably based on political developments in East Asia, not the Islamic world.

What has "gone wobbly" is the premiership of Shinzo Abe. His handling of a series of domestic issues has been remarkably inept, and his popularity is plummeting (just as I predicted it would in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 391 in September 2006). Now, Abe's own colleagues are sensing his weakness, and they no longer fear him. That's why their discipline is breaking down.

Kyuma is just speaking his real mind. Aso is trying to position himself as Abe's successor, and is groping for the political formula that will put him in the Kantei. But neither man represents a real sea change in Tokyo's attitude toward the United States.

***************************
The Shingetsu Institute for the Study of Japanese-Islamic Relations Website: http://www.shingetsuinstitute.com 1-10-203 Wakafuji-machi, Kokurakita-ku Kitakyushu-shi 802-0063 JAPAN
shingetsu_institute a t hotmail d o t com '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

1,000 Killed in Iraq in Past Week;
Parliamentarians call for Expulsion of Arabs, Iranians

The Reuters headline says it all: 'Iraq: Children living without limbs lack support.'.

Al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that a tit for tat debate broke out in the Iraqi parliament on Sunday. Shiite delegates from the United Iraqi Alliance demanded the expulsion of all Arabs from Iraq. By "Arabs," they mean the foreign nationals of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, etc. These persons are Sunnis and the Shiites are implying that they tend to be recruited for terrorism.

In response, the Sunni speaker of the house, Mahmud al-Mashhadani, suggested that "non-Arabs" also be expelled, by which he meant Iranians.

Then Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh charged that 50 percent of Arab jihadis infiltrate Iraq through Syria. Syria denies the charge.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Sunni members of parliament are demanding a formal investigation of the Najaf authorities (and perhaps the US air force) for the killing of hundreds of persons last Sunday and Monday. They maintain that Iraqi troops and US pilots mistook innocent members of the Hawatimah and Khaz'al tribes for insurgents and killed them along with their women and children. They were said to have been coming to Najaf to commemorate the martyrdom of al-Husayn, the Prophet's grandson. The Sunnis are archly comparing what they are calling a massacre to the killings at Dujjail in 1982. It was for killing 150 or so persons there, in response to their attempt to assassinate him, that Saddam Hussein was hanged. The Sunnis are implying that now that the Shiites are in power, it is they who are massacring people when they prove troublesome, and that maybe some more hangings are in order.

I still can't understand why you would go to Najaf for that commemoration. Husayn's tomb is in nearby Karbala, and 2 million other people went there, including people from Najaf. Maybe this kind of suspicious detail is the reason for which only Sunnis are taking the allegations seriously.

Iraqi authorities estmate that 1,000 Iraqis have been killed in political violence in the past week. The US military admitted that 4 military helicopters have been shot down by guerrillas in recent weeks, killing 20 servicemen, along with one helicopter belonging to civilian security guards. It raises the question of whether the guerrillas are getting better shoulder held missiles.

AP counted 100 dead in Iraq on Sunday but admits that the statistics were largely drawn from Baghdad. With the information added by al-Zaman, the toll from political violence is closer to 150. In the capital, police found 46 bodies in the streets. (Cole says that a lot of those were Sunni Arabs killed by Shiites in revenge for the massive truck bombing on Saturday). Two car bombings killed another 7, and 7 died in mortar attacks, apparently mostly in Adhamiya, a Sunni district near Shiite areas. Al-Zaman says that the actual toll from the mortar shells was 15 dead and 56 wounded, and lists a number of other violent incidents in the capital that apparently came after the English wire services filed, including a car bombing that killed 4 policemen. Outside Baghdad, Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that another 14 bodies were found in various cities, including 8 in Falluja, 3 in Kut, 2 in Tikrit.

A car bomb in Baquba, a mixed city northeast of Baghdad, killed 4 and wounded 20.

McClatchy has more details. It also reports that in the city of Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's birthplace), American forces on Sunday evening raided the house of Sheikh Hamid Iqab, the chieftain of the powerful Dulaim tribe in Tikrit and a member of the Salahuddin Provincial governing council. (Salahuddin north of Baghdad is a major Sunni Arab province with a population of a little over a million). His brother said that American forces warned the Iqab family against allowing their house to be filmed by Iraqi media, and said that if that were allowed, the American troops would take the women of the household into custody. (In conservative parts of Iraq, for a woman to be alone in the company of unrelated males-- for example, US Marines-- permanently casts doubt on her chastity and brings shame upon the family of a sort that may require someone's death-- the Marine's, or the woman's-- to expunge.) US forces also raided the house of Dr. Basim al-Ghaishi, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars in Tikrit.

The significance of this report is that the political leadership of Sunni Arab Tikrit, the people who on the surface look as though they are cooperating with the new order, are actually suspected of themselves being involved with the insurgency. It also suggests that US forces use hostage-taking and threats of dishonoring women in a desperate attempt to control the locals. But I can tell you that these techniques will backfire big time. You don't mess with the women of a Dulaim sheikh unless you want a century-long feud with the whole Dulaim tribe. Then Bush says he's worried they'll came after us over here if the troops leave. No wonder he's worried.

Al-Zaman reports that in the southern port city of Basra, gunmen shot and killed Sheikh Khalil al-Maliki, a leader of the Sadr Movement in the city.

In Hilla, the body of Col. Aqil Khalil of the Iraqi army was found, riddled with bullets.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shams's Parody of Bush: Video Clip as Resistance

When I hear Bush and Cheney keep talking about "getting the job done" in Iraq, the thing that most amazes me is that they don't know they are laughingstocks in the region. It isn't just that they are widely hated, or distrusted, or viewed as failures. It is that people are laughing at them. No surge can fix that.

The Arab singer Shams shows her disdain of George W. Bush in an MTV-style video clip that is popular in the Arab world these days. She says, "Hi! How are you?" as a cardboard Bush smiles and raises his shoulders idiotically. "No one is like you," she adds, "and there certainly aren't two of you." She shakes her head in front of a White House stage prop.



YouTube: Shams - Ahlan Ezayak

Update
See also
Abu Sinan's reading of the video.

Natali Smolenski commented on this posting, adds some descriptions of scenes and translated a little more of the lyrics:

'I had even forgotten your features, where you had come from, your look. You remind me of some guy I haven't seen for two years.

Other tidbits:

I'm not your relative, I'm not your sweetheart.

My aunt and your aunt [women who often arrange marriages in Arab society] have quarreled/become separated. Whether you've been hurt by my heart or you've fallen in love with me, I refuse you in both cases.

Go buy yourself and get away from me'

Thanks to Natalie for joining in!

As she implies, some of the video is a critique of Westernizing Arabs who go in for superficial imitations of the American lifestyle and ruin their own beauty and authenticity in the process. This kind of parodic critique of the Westernizer is at least 140 years old, going back to comedic dialogues in newspapers of the 1860s. Shams is aware that she could be accused of Westernizing herself, and shows her veiled "double", presumably authentic self, in a prison mug shot (implying that Bush would lock up any authentic Arabs). There is also a scene where it is implied that the Arab governments are puppets of Bush, and Shams takes delight in snipping the strings.

She sings in front of a sign that says "Democracy." She chases away confused US troops. She mugs for the camera and does a little belly dance. She has the statue of liberty lady join in the dance. She lies down on the word "Guantanamo," referring to the allegations of the use of torture there, a counterpoint to the block letters "Democracy" earlier.

It is the oddest thing, but certainly a "resistance" video of a sort.

What is most striking of all is the tone of familiarity and intimacy along with the contempt. Bush has become an Arab leader, like Mubarak or Asad, and is subject to all the same parodying and jokes that they are in the Arab street.

Another straw in the wind is that Shams is Kuwaiti, and Kuwaitis were for a long time the most pro-American Arabs, grateful for having been rescued from Saddam in the Gulf War. Some Kuwaiti op-ed writers have taken strong exception to the video.

And, on the other side of hybridity (all-mixed-up-ness), she has signed a $2 mn contract with an American production company called "Surprise," after she was abruptly and mysteriously dropped by Rotana.

===

And, it turns out Helena Cobban just published on this, as well, in The Nation.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunni Arab Guerrillas Massacre 155 Shiites, Wound 305
Sunni Guerrillas Kill 4 US GIs
A Majority of Americans Wants Troops out within Year

The US military announced on Saturday the killing of 4 more US GIs. A fifth died of a heart attack.

Sunni Arab guerrillas drove a truck packed with a ton of explosives into a busy Shiite market, al-Sadriya, and detonated it. The enormous fireball brought down 10 surrounding buildings and scattered blood and charred body parts over the street, leaving a deep crater. Bodies are still being pulled out of the buildings. The bombing took place on the eve of the beginning of a new security sweep by the al-Maliki government.

This market has been hit several times before. So I cannot understand why they don't cordon it off and make it a walking-only market. It wouldn't stop terrorists using belt bombs, but you couldn't get a truckful of explosives there any more. And while getting supplies into the shops and delis might be harder, it could still be done with dollies. I'd put the incoming goods through an inspection regime. Unemployment is high in Iraq. It would be worth spending some money on local Shiites as guards and inspectors.

As it is, the Shiites keep being hit. People are pointing out darkly that Sunni neighborhoods like Adhamiya are not being bombed. The Shiite clans will have to take revenge on some Sunnis somewhere, since this bombing started hundreds of feuds. That was the point of it.

In fact, Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that after the bombing, mortar shells fell on a number of Sunni neighborhoods.

That wasn't even the only major violence in Iraq on Saturday, bad as it was. McClatchy reports that police found 19 bodies around the capital (mostly in Sunni Arab neighborhoods) on Saturday. There were several other deadly bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad.

Sunni Arab guerrillas also set off a string of 8 bombs in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, targeting the HQs of the two major Kurdish parties that are trying to annex Kirkuk to the Kurdistan Regional Government. A handful of people were killed. Kurds complained that the guerrillas are attempting to derail the December referendum on the status of Kirkuk, which the Kurds will win since they have flooded into the province in the past 3 years. Annexation is resisted by many Turkmen and Arab residents, who together are probably nearly half the population. Because Turkmen speak a language akin to Turkish, the Turkish public and government is deeply concerned with their fate. Kirkuk is the next powderkeg, which the referendum could set off.

In the northern Sunni Arab city of Mosul, neighborhood clashes between guerrillas and local police and army caused the municipal government to declare a curfew.

In the southern oil port of Basra, al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic, a group calling itself the Imam al-Husayn Brigades plastered leaflets all over the city warning Iraqis not to have dealings with the British and not to go near their bases.

Some 52 percent of Americans want their troops out of Iraq by January, 2008. Actually that number includes 12 percent who want them out now, ahora, immediatamente. Only 9 percent think we should send more troops.

Rupert Murdoch, who gives you Bill O'Reilly, Daniel Pipes, and other fantasists of the hard Right, by his ownership of a vast media empire, admitted at the Davos conference that his companies had "tried" to propagandize for Bush's Iraq War. He said that they were critical of the execution of the war, though. He doesn't watch or read his own media if he thinks that. It is never a discouraging word and 'what were the RNC talking points today?' over there in Foxland.

Murdoch's remarks are a good reason for which the news conglomerates should be broken up so that a wider range of views can be published. While Murdoch complains about competition from the internet, the fact is that far more people watch television than get their news from any blogger.

Murdoch's media have done more to cheapen American values and drive the country toward fascistic ways of thinking than anything since the McCarthy period in the 1950s. The airwaves belong to the public, and this man only licenses them. When will the public take them back and use them for purposes of which Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin would have approved?

Tom Lasseter discovers that the boots on the ground are not that optimistic about Bush's plan for an escalation of the Iraq War by putting in an extra 20,500 troops:

' "Once more raids start happening, they'll (insurgents) melt away," said Gill, who serves with the 1st Infantry Division in east Baghdad. "And then two or three months later, when we leave and say it was a success, they'll come back." '

Ain't it the truth.

Babak Dehghanpisheh of Newsweek tried to make sense of last week's millenarian uprising at Najaf.

This Reuters photograph of a burned out, captured truck belonging to the cult shows that it is mounted with a machine gun n anti-aircraft battery! So much for the story that Najaf authorities just suddenly fell on innocent noncombatants. Now the other question is, where in blazes did they get this an anti-aircraft weapon?

Update: Rob Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:

' The truck in the photo you mentioned today looks exactly like those that I saw in a big militia parade in Baghdad of the "Quds Army," which mainly comprised the Fedayeen Saddam, on March 15, 2003. I'm quite sure the truck in your photo is of that vintage. I very vividly recall seeing those trucks in the parade and thinking the mounted machineguns were ridiculous and would be of no use in a real battle against U.S. helicopters.

Rob '

So it was more equipment looted from the old Baath bases and depots.

Check out his A primer from the Past for Iraq Diplomacy" part III.

Radio Sawa also presents evidence that the millenarian group had extreme views, and interviews several principals, including a cult member and the governor of Najaf.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat alleges that it was told by a Shiite parliamentarian from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance that the death toll from the Army of Heaven uprising was 2500 and that it included women and children (presumably at the cult compound at Zarqa). This number sounds improbably high to me.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso called US post-war policy in Iraq, set by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "immature." The comments come on the heels of remarks by Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma that going to war in Iraq had been a "mistake" on the part of the US. I was told that Kyuma was probably not speaking for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But if Aso is also saying these things, it is hard not to conclude that Abe, who is sinking in the polls, has decided to distance his government from the policies of his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, which supported the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Either that or Abe isn't in control of his cabinet, in which case he can't last long. The Bush administration expressed its displeasure with Kyuma's remarks. Bush seemed to encourage Koizumi toward greater Japanese nationalism and remilitarization. He is finding out that nationalism is a two-edged sword.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Realists in US Tone Down Iran Accusations;
Baquba Dean Executed in Public

Two US GIs were announced killed in al-Anbar Province on Friday. Police found 23 bodies in Baghdad. Iraqi authorities made several arrests, in the small southeastern Shiite city of Kut, of members of a messianic cult that attacked the holy city of Najaf on Sunday.

McClatchy reports that there were two roadside bombings in Baghdad, wounding 3; and a katyusha rocket attack on the Shiite shrine district of Kadhimiya in Baghdad, wounding another 3. In Baladruz in the Diyala province east of Baghdad, guerrillas killed 6 persons. In Diyala's capital, Baquba:

' Dr.Walhan Hameed Al-Timimi, Dean of the College Physical Education in Dyala University was assassinated in full view of the teachers on campus. His son was with him and suffered the same fate. The Staff point an accusing finger at the President of the university, Dr. Alaa' Al-Atbi, saying that he is involved with armed groups and facilitates their tasks by setting up the targets and doing nothing in way of calling for assistance if any attacks took place . . .

The big briefing planned by the Bush administration on supposed Iranian weapons shipments to Iraq had to be postponed because the presentation was judged exaggerated and unsubstantiated by Secretary of State Condi Rice and by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. So that raises the question of who was spearheading this presentation inside the Bush administration? Getting Iran is an obsession of the Neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and their plants inside the administration, such as Iran-Contra felon Elliot Abrams in the National Security Council and David Wurmser and John Hannah on Cheney's rump Veep national security council. Many Neoconservatives and other sorts of wingnut have a secret alliance with the Marxist Islamist MEK terrorist organization, which feeds them allegations about Iran in Iraq just as Ahmad Chalabi used to with regard to the Baath regime in Iraq.

So have the Cheney Neoconservatives been at least somewhat reined in by a new Rice-Gates axis of Realists?

As for the Karbala operation where US troops were kidnapped, a reader with experience in Iraq sends along extensive evidence for the ability of the Sunni Arab guerrillas to pull off sophisticated such attacks, including the infiltration of the lunch room at a US base at Mosul.

Tom Teepen recalls that in the Korean War, Truman and Eisenhower could easily have escalated to conflict with the Soviet Union on the grounds that it was aiding the enemy war effort, but declined to do so. Sometimes one enemy is enough to deal with.

Iranian officials suggest that it is US failures, in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, that drive Bush to scapegoat Iran. Also, Iraqi authorities lifted a curfew in Najaf and surrounding towns as turmoil died down from the conflict with millenarian Shiites of the Army of Heaven.

Jim Lobe has further response to the Iraq National Intelligence Estimate. I am quoted, pointing out that the NIE explicitly acknowledges that a civil war is being fought in Iraq, but that other sorts of violent conflict are also occurring. I'd say that is worse than just a civil war.

The Bush administration is asking for another $100 billion ($100,000,000,000.00) for Iraq (and a little of it goes to the war in Afghanistan). This is off the budget books. It may get figured in eventually, but when the budget deficit estimate was made this fall, it was not included even though Bush knew he would ask for this money. Bush is also planning to ask for another $145 billion, which is also not in the regular budget. Basically, around the time Bush goes out of office we may know what the real deficits were that he ran. Cost of his wars so far adjusted for inflation: $663 billion ($663,000,000,000.00)
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Internet Wars in the Middle East and Iraq

The London Pan-Arab daily, Al-Sharq al-Awsat ["The Middle East"] reports in Arabic that sectarian guerrilla groups and militias in Iraq have enlisted hackers to take their struggle into the internet. These jihadi hackers attempt to break into the sites of their rivals and deface them or steal the data stored on their servers.

The website "Bint al-Rafedain" (Daughter of Mesopotamia) faced the third major attack on Friday aimed at shutting it down, launched by persons unknown. One of the site's proprietors told SA, "This time, the destruction encompassed the mail of the city, as well, and the personal mail of its members." This spokesperson added, "Terrorism targets free speech and awareness that strives to build our new Iraqi society on the basis of democracy and respect for opinions and for persons."

Such attacks are launched every hour on Iraqi internet sites, according to a number of bloggers, who helped put al-Sharq al-Awsat in touch with some hackers. Among them is Bibu (Ibrahim) Arab, who trains a group of young persons in hacking, describing them as independent hackers. He explained that hacking sites is a relatively new phenomenon in Iraq and its impetus was the rise of sectarian conflict. He said that there are no effective sanctions against hacking in Iraq. Therefore, groups sought out hackers and paid them handsomely to attack rival sites, the ideas of which the groups disagreed.

Another hacker goes by "Hudhud Sulaiman" (the hoopoe of Solomon-- the ancient prophet is said in Islamic lore to have known the language of the birds, and I take it the hackers are making an analogy to knowing code). Hudhud says that he learned how to be a hacker and gained vast experience when he visited a neighboring country (Iran? Turkey?) and then he came back to train others. He stresses that he is very well paid. He speculates that Iraqi hackers may be employed to attack sites in other countries, since, given Iraq's chaotic security environment, it would be almost impossible to find them and punish them there.

That is, the US has created Iraq as a failed state from which internet terrorism may be launched with impunity. Lots of key systems in the US are vulnerable to hacking. Some terrorism specialists, such as Marc Sageman, are convinced that the internet is the next arena for jihadi terrorism. This article lends credence to his view.

Then the US Goverment Open Source Center has translated the following item from the Turkish press about plans for a massive online protest the organizers hope will attract a million participants.

' Turkey: Online Rally Being Organized To Protest US Middle East, Iraq Policy
Report: "Iraq Occupation to be Protested On Line"
- AA Anatolia

Ankara (A.A) - 31 Jan 2007 - DISK (Confederation of Revolutionary Workers Unions), KESK (Small Tradesmen and Artisans Confederation) and trade chambers are going to organize an on-line campaign to mark the fourth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq between 20 February and 20 March.

According to information received, the campaign, which is still being prepared, will be announced to democratic mass organizations and political parties in the days ahead and its program will be finalized.

The targets of the campaign have been identified as "protesting the occupation of Iraq" "protesting US Middle East policy" "protesting the AKP's (Justice and Development Party) pro-US policies" and "stepping up the struggle for peace."

A logo will be determined for the campaign, billboard posters, posters, flyers, pamphlets, brochures and stickers will be prepared, and briefing notes for the press and commercial spots will also be prepared.

In the campaign, which will emphasize that approximately 1 million people have lost their lives because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, they will try to ensure the participation of 1 million people in the activities that are going to be held.

The campaign's slogan has been determined as: "There is a voice saying stop to the occupation and fighting in Iraq at 2000 (Local) on 20 March (20M20), when the first bomb fell... Light a light."

The work to be done nationwide and in the provinces will be run by the contributing organizations. Organizations can also conduct their own independent events. Among the joint activities planned are: forming a peace chain, peace festivities, pan and whistle protests at market places.

It is planned to announce the campaign to the public on 19 February 2007 with participation by party chairmen.

The campaign will see panels, open sessions and conferences arranged as well as meetings in coffee houses and work places.

The campaign will end with an event at 2000 (Local) on 20 March, when the United States began bombing Iraq. The event will take the form of switching off lights for 10 minutes, lighting candles and calling, "Stop the war."

Rally Site The Internet

In addition to customary protest demonstrations the campaign will also apply the "e-rally" method.

The e-rally will be organized on the 20M20 website that is to be set up.

The rally comprises internet users visiting the site and staying there for a specific period of time and voicing their views on the occupation of Iraq using the means provided by the electronic environment.

The aim here is to increase participation in the event planned for 20 March and to provide moral support for the participants.

New Address For Protests

The first "digital" rally in Turkey took place in 1996 with the demand "Do not kill the internet."

The online protests increased in parallel with the spread of the internet.

Today the internet is used to protest almost everything.

Among the groups that use the internet the most as a vehicle for their protests are anti-globalization groups.

Anti-globalization groups get together online, exchange views and set up large action organizations at various locations all over the world that tens of thousands of people from various countries participate in.

(Description of Source: Ankara Anatolia in Turkish -- Semi-official news agency; independent in content) '

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National Security Estimate

Key findings of the Iraq National Security Estimate have been posted (pdf) at the Director of National Intelligence web site.

Josh Marshall and colleagues have links to early comment and reaction.

Important points from TPM commenters:

*It is a civil war but in some ways it is worse than just civil war, since other kinds of violent conflict are also going on.

*Iraq's neighbors, such as Iran, are not significant drivers of the violence, which is internally generated.

In other words, Negroponte's shop has shot down everything Tony Snow was sent out by Karl Rove to say for the past year.
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Guerrillas Kill 45 in Hilla Massacre
Security Plan May strengthen Shiites

Guerrillas detonated two bombs in Hillah on Thursday, killing 61 and wounding 150. Hillah is a largely Shiite city, and the guerrillas were likely Sunni Arabs based in Sunni areas to the north. The guerrillas are trying to throw Iraq into civil war by targetting innocent Shiites in such places.

Police found 30 bodies in the street of Baghdad on Wednesday. Guerrillas killed a dozen or so persons with mortar fire.

Reuters reports further political violence.

Tom Lasseter reports that the new US security plan may only strengthen the Shiite Mahdi Army militia. One might add that to any extend that the US cracks down on the Sunni Arabs, they will be perceived as doing the Mahdi Army's work for it.

Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune writes of the anxieties being expressed by Iraqi political leaders that the US and Iran will tangle with one another in the Iraqi arena. If the US and Iran are to tangle, these Iraqi politicians want it to be elsewhere.

The new National Security Estimate for Iraq will say that things are bad and getting worse.

These authors point out that the US press is falling for Administration spin again, this time with regard to Iran.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic surveys some millenarian groups of Shiites in Iraq that expect the last days any moment. It also reports that Muqtada al-Sadr has offered to dissolve the Mahdi Army if he is told to do so by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf or Sayyid Kazim al-Ha'iri, now resident in Qom.
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4 US Troops Announced Killed
Troops lack Basic Equipment in Iraq
Bush Admin. launches anti-Iran propaganda campaign

The mission of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is being impeded by lack of armored vehicles and other weapons.

State Dept. figure Nick Burns made a lot of vague and unsubstantiated charges against Iran on Wednesday. Most egregious was his hinting around that the US was "investigating" whether Iranians were involved in the kidnapping and killing of US troops at Karbala recently. Announcing that the US is investigating such a thing is a lazy media way of smearing someone without having to provide any evidence of the charge.

The US announced the killing of 4 US troops on Wednesday. Note that they were killed "north of Baghdad" and "west of Baghdad," i.e. in Sunni Arab areas. Such announcements almost never say the US troops were killed in Shiite areas, such as might be getting Iranian military aid. I conclude that the real problems facing US troops in Iraq are not with Iran, and the innuendoes of officials such as Burns are disingenuous.

There are some reasons to think that the kidnappers at Karbala may have been Sunnis.

1. They busted up a meeting between the US military and Karbala authorities planning for security arrangements to prevent Sunni Arab guerrillas from blowing up the pilgrims in Karbala during Ashura. Why would Shiites want to interfere with those arrangements? More likely Sunnis wanted intelligence on how best to bomb Karbala then, and wanted to send a message to the Shiites that the Americans could not protect them. They probably tortured the Americans to extract what information they could from them about those arrangements.

2. They headed north to Hilla and then Mahawil. They got suspicion from Hilla police (Shiites) which shows that they weren't in cahoots with them. And they killed the US troops in Mahawil and dumped the vehicles there. Mahawil is mixed but a base for Sunni Arab guerrilla operations and part of the Triangle of Death thing. From there they could have gone north to West Baghdad and Sunni havens.

If they had been Iranians why not head east to Kut and thence to Shiite East Baghdad or on to Iran?

The one piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit is that clearly someone on the inside gave them info about the meeting in Karbala. But the Iraqi military had that info and is full of Sunnis, many of whom are double agents.

I don't actually know of any incidents in which Shiite guerrillas in Shiite areas deployed shaped charges to kill American troops. The US casualties I see in the wire services are all in Sunni areas. There are British casualties in the deep south at the hand of Shiites, but those Shiites are anti-Iranian ones like the Garamsha Marsh Arab tribe or the Sadrist splinter group of Mahmoud Hasani al-Sarkhi (which burned down the Iranian consulate in Basra).

Reuters reports on political violence on Wednesday in Iraq. A suicide body used a fuel troop to injure 9 Iraqi soldiers at Muqdadiya in Diyala province. Six bodies showed up in the streets of Falluja. McClatchy reports 3 dead car bombings in Baghdad and a mortar attack on the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiya.

Tomdispatch.com has Chalmers Johnson on Nemesis and Empire.
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