25 Dead in Sectarian Killings in Mosul;
Muqtada Calls for Massive Demonstrations;
Talabani admits that US is Occupying Iraq

The sectarian killings in the northern city of Tal Afar appear to have spilled over onto another northern city, that of Mosul, where police found 25 bodies Thursday according to Reuters.

Amer Mohsen at Iraqslogger summarizes Iraqi press reports on the reluctance of Iraqi authorities to punish 18 Shiite policemen from Tal Afar who were implicated in attacks on Sunnis. Many policemen in Iraq were recruited from the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the leading party in the ruling Shiite bloc.

US diplomatic officials have been scrambling to contain the damage done by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia when he addressed the Arab League and complained of the "illegitimate" American "occupation" of Iraq. They now have a new headache! Iraqi President Jalal Talabani agrees with King Abdullah! The generally pro-American Talabani, a major Kurdish leader as well, admitted that the US presence had turned into a ruinous occupation for his country, when his turn came to address Arab League delegates.

The controversy is a little silly. As Al-Jeeran.Net notes, US officials have in the past repeatedly admitted that under international law their troops in Iraq fall into the category of occupation forces.

According to Sawt al-Iraq writing in Arabic, young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had a sermon read out in his name in Kufa and Baghdad mosques on Friday in which he called for massive anti-US demonstrations in Najaf on April 9, the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to US forces in 2003. That Muqtada chose this date is deliberately ironic, since pro-American Iraqi expatriate politicians have argued for making that date a sort of Iraqi Independence Day. There had earlier been a debate over whether it was appropriate to honor a day that witnessed a Western military incursion into the country.

Shaikh Abd al-Hadi al-Muhammadawi read out the sermon in the Kufa Friday Prayers Mosque. Muqtada demanded that US troops leave the country "even if the American Congress were to decide they should stay in Iraq." He insisted, "The issue of whether US troops should remain in Iraq depends on the Iraqi people, and no one has a right to extend their stay or to demand that they remain."

He added, "The departure of American forces from Iraq at the present time will bestow security on Iraq, represent a victory for peace, and mete out defeat to terrorism." He called on the Iraqi people "to fly the Iraqi flag above their homes and buildings and government offices to signify Iraqi sovereignty and independence."

He also pressed on all sections of the population "the necessity of letting the entire world hear that Iraqis reject the occupation."

He criticized "what has befallen Iraq during the Occupation, including tyranny, despotism, and the shedding of the blood of innocents." He complained about the lack of health and city services."

He added, "The Occupiers did not content themselves with all this, but also isolated Iraq from the Arab and Islamic worlds" and he accused the US, saying "they have proved able to sow the seeds of sectarian and ethnic conflict among Arabs and others, including between Arabs and non-Arabs among Muslims and others." He called on the people of Iraq to aid Iraq and to stand with it. An English language AP report on the speech is here.

In Najaf, Sadr al-Din al-Qubanchi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq preached a sermon at the Mosque of the Shrine of Ali in which he complained that the final communique of the Arab League summit on Iraq neglected to condemn terrorism and the practice of arbitrary excommunication. [He is saying that the Sunni Arabs dominating the Arab League have a blind spot about the atrocities committed against Shiites in Iraq by Sunni Arab guerrillas and about the pernicious practice of takfir or excommunication, in which radical Salafi Sunnis declare that Shiites are not Muslims at all and therefore deserve to be killed.]

Al-Qubanchi added that Baathists are guilty until proven innocent. [This statement was his protest against plans to grant Baathists amnesty and restore to them jobs in the government.]

Meanwhile, Ilaf reports in Arabic that Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, the clerical agent in the Shiite holy city of Karbala of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, attacked in his Friday sermon the political parties in parliament that he said support terrorsm. [He is referring to Sunni Arab blocs].

Al-Karbala'i also expressed reservations about a recent plan to give jobs to Iraqis who had belonged to the Baath Party. He urged caution lest it "give criminal individuals from the security agencies of the former regime a loophole that allows them to return to important jobs."

AP notes that this step is one of four pressed on the Iraqi government by Bush:

' The Bush administration has set out four benchmarks for al-Maliki's government. One is passage of the de-Baathification law as a way to reconcile with Sunni insurgents. Aides say al-Maliki has been warned by U.S. officials they will withdraw support for his shaky government if that proposal and three others -- one on fair distribution of oil revenues, one setting a date for regional elections and several constitutional amendments -- aren't passed in parliament by June 30. All four would benefit the Sunni minority that ruled over the oppressed Shiite majority for decades. '

That both the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution of Iraq and Sistani appear to be opposed to amnesty for leading Baathists augurs ill for the new government plan. Frankly, it augurs ill for Iraq.

Tomdispatch.com serves up a rich smorgasbord of analysis on Iraq, including Tony Karon on Condi Rice and diplomacy, and Mike Davis on how car bombings are wrecking the new security plan.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bombers kill over 130, wounding over two Hundred
US Embassy Orders Personal Armor in Green Zone

Oh, yeah. Those rightwing Iraqi bloggers that Bush depends on for his news about the country have sure imposed security on Iraq by their sunny faces.

Reuters reports on the horrific and massive bombings carried out by Sunni Arab guerrillas against Shiite civilians in markets that left at least 130 dead and over 200 wounded. At a market in the Shaab district of Baghdad two suicide bombers wearing bomb belts killed 76 persons, mainly women and children, and left about 100 wounded. Reuters says that a senior Iraqi health minister said, "It is impossible to tell the exact number of dead because we are basically counting body parts."

The bombers in Baghdad had to use bomb vests because increased security and checkpoints have made it more difficult to pull of a big car bombing in the capital. I had thought that car bombings could actually be stopped with better security techniques. But I don't know what you could possibly do to stop the deployment of a bomb belt in a market by local inhabitants. This development is very depressing.

On the other hand, in Diyala Province, which is not getting the same number of troops or checkpoints as Baghdad, is a place they can still carry off truck bombings. And the guerrillas did, deploying 3 car bombs and mortar strikes in the small town of Khalis against the Shiite minority there. They killed 53 and wounded 103. They saved the third bomb for when the police showed up to respond to the second, setting it off on their arrival and killing a lot of them.

The US embassy in Baghdad circulated a memo to all Americans working for the US government in the Green Zone. It ordered them to wear protective gear whenever they were outside in the Green Zone, including just moving from one building to another. Guerrillas have managed to lob a number of rockets into the area in recent days, and killed one US GI on Tuesday.

The Green Zone is therefore actually the Red Zone. I.e., it is no longer an area of good security contrasting to what is around it. Senator McCain was more wrong than can easily be imagined. Not only can American officials not just stroll through Baghdad districts unarmed and unprotected by armor, but they can't even move that way from one building to the next inside the Green Zone!

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic confirmed that Shiite police particiapted in the massacre of Sunnis on Sunday at Tel Afar. Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi called for a purge of Shiite militia elements from the Iraqi security forces.

The US Thursday expressed puzzlement over the statement by Saudi King Abdullah that the US was engaged in an illegitimate occupation of Iraq. Various government spokesmen pointed to UN Security Council resolutions authorizing US troops in Iraq.

But those ex post facto resolutions cannot go back and change the fact that the Bush administration violated the UN charter when it invaded Iraq in spring of 2003. I think that is what King Abdullah was driving at.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shiite Fighters Kill 70 Sunnis in Tal Afar
Saudi King Abdullah Condemns Illegitimate US Occupation of Iraq

Kim Gamel of AP reports that Shiite militants and some Shiite policemen went on a rampage in the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar on Wednesday, killing 70 Sunnis indiscriminately, injuring another 30, and kidnapping 40 others. The Shiites were taking revenge for a Sunni truck bombing of Shiites on Tuesday that killed 80 persons and wounded 185. According to what I was told by a knowledgeable US resident of the city a couple of years ago, Tal Afar is 80 percent Turkmen, and the Sunnis are a slight majority there. Gamel says that the Shiites are the majority.

Guerrillas have been firing rockets at will into the Green Zone, the supposedly safe district of downtown Baghdad where the US embassy and Iraqi government offices are located. Reuters reports that on Wednesday they killed a US soldier in the Green Zone that way, and wounded another. On Tuesday they had killed a US contractor in the zone. Also on Tuesday, guerrillas had killed a US Marine in al-Anbar province. Folks, when guerrillas can kill a US soldier inside the Green Zone, Baghdad is just not safe.

Guerrillas in Fallujah attacked Iraqi and American troops with a chlorine gas truck, wounding 7 US GIs and 8 Iraqi troops. There were scattered bombings and killings in the rest of the country.

Saudi King Abdullah said on Wednesday at the opening of the Arab League meetings, "“In beloved Iraq, blood is shed among our brothers while there is an illegitimate foreign occupation and a hateful sectarianism that is threatening to develop into a civil war . . .”

King Abdullah followed up on these harsh criticisms of the US by cancelling his planned appearance at a White House dinner in April. The Saudi royal family is fit to be tied that Bush gave Iraq away to fundamentalist Shiite parties that have close ties to Iran.

Although the Saudi statement is remarkable for its brutal frankness and coldness toward the United States, its real significance is its slam of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Abdullah has not only said that the US presence is an illegal occupation, he has said that the al-Maliki government is nothing more than Shiite sectarian hegemony. The Saudis are known for their behind the scenes diplomacy and their public discretion. King Abdullah is hopping mad, to talk this way. It augurs ill for US-Saudi relations. Abdullah is also angry that Bush is letting the Palestine issue fester and that he pushed for open Palestinian elections but then cut off the Hamas government once it was elected. Abdullah thinks Bush is pursuing irrational policies, the effect of which is to destabilize the Middle East. He is so angry that he sounds a bit like Iraqi Sunni fundamentalist leader Harith al-Dhari, who is connected in some shadowy way with the Sunni guerrillas fighting the US. (See the interview, below).

Iran is offering to settle the issue of its capture of 15 British sailors and Marines in what it maintains were Iranian waters, if only the British will admit they were in the wrong.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Dhari on Year 4 of American Iraq

The US government Open Source Center translates an interview with Sunni fundamentalist leader Harith al-Dhari, a leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, printed by al-Safir newspaper in Lebanon.

' Head of Iraqi Muslim Scholars Interviewed on 4th Anniversary of 'Invasion': Interview with Shaykh Harith al-Dari, head of the [Sunni] Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, by Khalil Harb; Date and place not given: "Harith al-Dari tells Al-Safir the solution lies in the departure of the occupation, the formation of a national army, and the abolishing of the political process; Al-Dari praises firmness of Syrian stand, hopes for a Saudi role to rescue Iraq and for rapprochement with Iran; the resistance will remain and attacks on civilians is not jihad; Al-Maliki is worse than Al-Ja'fari and our relationship with Al-Sadr is deteriorating." ' Al-Safir Tuesday, March 27, 2007 (Harb) Four years have passed since the occupation of Iraq. What does this mean to you? (Al-Dari) It means the worst four years of my life and the life of every sincere Iraqi citizen that is loyal to his homeland and nation. (Harb) In your opinion, what are the most dangerous consequences of the war? (Al-Dari) If the war continues and the occupation does not leave soon, the most dangerous consequences of the war would be the disintegration of the Iraqi social fabric, the partition of Iraq, God forbid, and the transformation of its demographic structure. Another serious consequence would be deepening the social rifts among the sons of Iraq. On the level of the neighboring countries and the region, many problems and incidents would erupt and only God knows their magnitude. Many signs pertaining to these problems and incidents have already begun to loom. (Harb) In light of the position of the Association of Muslim Scholars regarding what has been happening in Iraq during the years of the occupation, do you think that you have been wrong in any of your positions? Have the events demonstrated that the positions you have taken on the major issues been sound positions? Would you cite some examples? (Al-Dari) I do not think that we in the Association of Muslim Scholars made a mistake in any position we have taken so far both on the political level as well as on the level of Shari'ah. The events have demonstrated the soundness of our positions. For instance, take our position on the so-called political process. From the very beginning, we said that it is a failed process that would not lead to the liberation of Iraq and to rescuing it from the situation in which the occupation has put it. Furthermore, this process does not provide us with the security and social living conditions that are needed. The events have shown the soundness of what we had expected. This political process was designed to be a cover to the US project and was established on sectarian and ethnic foundations. There is also our position on the constitution that was imposed by the occupation and the forces that have imposed their hegemony on Iraq. These forces inserted articles and paragraphs in the constitution that might lead to dividing the land of Iraq and the people of Iraq and might destroy Iraq's Arab and Islamic identity. Another example, which is the most important, is our position on the occupation. From the start, we demanded the departure of the occupation - and at least the scheduling of this departure - and we said that it is the basis of the whole problem. As the days passed, we saw the savagery, butchery, and bad intentions of the occupation that led to the strengthening of the resistance against it. Those that opposed our position in the past are now asking for scheduling. Another example is our position on the federation that is intended to divide Iraq and that many known internal and external quarters are endorsing. We took an opposing stand to this federation and we rejected it because it represents the wishes of the enemies of Iraq, especially Israel. Last but not least, there is our unionist, moderate, and patriotic Islamic approach that we took and to which we adhered from the first days of the occupation. We stuck to this approach despite the psychological and security pressures that were used against us in order to drag us to adopt sectarian and factional discourses. (Harb) In your opinion, what is the ideal way out from what Iraq is going through? (Al-Dari) (The ideal way out) is canceling the political process that has brought all these evils and calamities to Iraq and that has brought it to the brink of the abyss that was expected. This political process should be replaced with a strong government that is reinforced with the nucleus of a strong national army that is loyal to Iraq and to all its sons rather than to the sectarian and factional parties and militias. This should be accompanied with a serious scheduling of the total withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq without delay. As we have repeatedly pointed out and warned, the events and the positions have shown that it is the occupation that holds all the threads of this dirty game. (Harb) Do you consider Al-Maliki's government is generally better than its predecessors and why? (Al-Dari) Al-Maliki's government is worst than the governments that preceded it. It is worse even from the government of his colleague Ibrahim al-Ja'fari. Al-Maliki's government is considered an extension of Al-Ja'fari's government in objectives, trends, and conduct. It is openly biased on the sectarian level. Al-Maliki's government protects the criminal and killing gangs and it defends the actions of the militias. (Harb) Your stand opposing the occupation had been clear from the start. Did the Americans try to contact you in the past few years to win you over to their policy in Iraq? When and how? (Al-Dari) The Americans did not contact us directly except once at the beginning of 2005 and prior to the first elections. They asked the French ambassador to act as mediator because we knew him from his frequent visits to the association - especially after the abduction of the French journalists - and he sympathized with us and was dissatisfied with the practices of the occupation in Iraq. We accepted his intercession. A delegation came to us made up of the US Charge D'Affaires - in lieu of the ambassador called Negroponte - and a number of US Army generals and officers. We and a number of members of the Association of Muslim Scholars met with them in Egypt and the association met with them in Baghdad. The purpose of the visit was to confirm the support of the association for the elections. They said that the elections would contribute to bringing security and stability in Iraq. We told them: What would contribute to bringing security and stability in Iraq is giving hope to the Iraqi people that they will leave Iraq and not the elections that will bring a weak government that will ask you to remain in Iraq. He said: We do not agree. I told him: Yes, we do not agree and the meeting was over. After this meeting, we have not met with any of them to this date, praise be to God. (Harb) Many have wagered that the resistance against the occupation would come to an end, but the days have shown that this did not take place. What is your comment? (Al-Dari) Yes, many have wagered and many have conspired that the resistance would end or would be stopped but it continued. It disappointed them and dashed all their expectations. In fact, it gained strength and became more effective against the enemies and their agents. The resistance foiled and continues to foil their schemes in Iraq because it was not driven merely by emotions or incorrect calculations of the material power of the enemies as some have wrongly thought. Therefore, the resistance will continue as long as the occupation is on the land of Iraq. Anyone that thinks otherwise would be wrong. (Harb) Some are arguing against the resistance operations. How do you distinguish between the resistance against the occupation forces and the attacks against civilians by any faction or sect? (Al-Dari) The difference between the resistance and other forces is very clear except to those that hate the resistance against the occupation forces or think badly of it either because they are agents or are envious of the resistance. We - and others like us that recognize the legitimacy of resistance and the right of nations to resist against their enemies and occupiers - believe that the resistance should be against the occupying enemies and their obvious agents that cooperate with, support, and fight with the occupiers. Those that target innocent and peaceful Iraqis from all sects, denominations, and faiths are condemned criminals that transgress against Shari'ah and are outside the law and the national values. They are like the enemies and occupiers of the homeland regardless to which sect or faction or faith they belong. (Harb) How true are the reports that are spread every now and then that the resistance is a Sunni resistance only, that the death squads are Shiite, and that the suicide bombers are Sunni terrorists? In your opinion, what is the purpose of using such classifications? (Al-Dari) The resistance in Iraq is an Islamic and national resistance in which most of the components of the Iraqi people participate and the majority are Sunnis. As for the death squads, most of them belong to the militias of the Shiite parties and the Kurdish political parties that are participating in the government. These do not represent the masses of our Shiite and Kurdish brothers. They represent the agendas of the parties to which they belong only. Most of the Shias and the Kurds are against them and they dissociate themselves from their criminal deeds. As for the suicide bombers, the majority of them are Sunni Iraqis and others that represent the policy of one known faction of the resistance. At first, their operations were directed against the occupation forces only and later expanded to include the government forces these forces helped the occupation forces to repulse the resistance and to attack some cities that reject the occupation, such as Al-Fallujah, Samarra, Al-Najaf, and other cities. It is noted that this kind is almost ending with simpler alternatives although the media outlets sometimes mention this in official inaccurate announcements that are often hasty. From the start, the association opposed this style because it is not necessary and due to the dangers inherent in its tragic consequences in most cases. (Harb) For quite a time, your relationship with the Al-Sadrist current was good, but in recent months, it appears that this relationship has deteriorated. Why? (Al-Dari) Yes, our relationship with the Al-Sadrist current and its leader Al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr was good due to his patriotic position in the beginning that rejected the occupation, the political process, and the federation. But he retreated, handed over the arms of his army to the government, and participated in the military operation. The militias of his army - the Al-Mahdi Army - became involved in the ethnic cleansing operations. They turned into tools manipulated by the occupation, the Iranian intelligence service, and the Badr organization that breached his ranks and steered him toward the despicable designs of sectarian cleansing that led to the fall of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. However, Al-Sayyid Muqtada did not condemn or denounce these criminal acts clearly and called for them. Thus, it was natural for the relationship between us to lose trust and to deteriorate. (Harb) One of the consequences of the invasion and occupation are the attempts to foment a sectarian conflict in Iraq. How are you dealing with this? (Al-Dari) One of the goals - not the consequences - of the invasion and the occupation was to foment sectarian and ethnic strife in Iraq. This was obvious in several matters: For instance, weapons were left to be looted by anyone without any objection by the occupation forces. The Governing Council was formed on sectarian bases. The drafting of the constitution that consecrated hegemony was left in the hands of the Shiite and Kurdish political leaders that support the US project. Other components of the people were marginalized, including the majority of the Shias and the Kurds that reject the occupation. The elections that were overseen by the occupation were rigged in favor of the interests of its known allies. Despite all these exposed to foment sedition, the occupation did not succeed. This is due to God Almighty first and to the steadfastness and fraternal and patriotic cohesion of the Iraqis throughout history. When they failed to ignite civil war, they resorted to the satanic act of detonating the mausoleums of the two imams Ali al-Hadi and Hasan al-Askari, may peace be upon them. This act was carried out by the security organs of the Interior Ministry with the supervision of the intelligence service of a neighboring country and the knowledge of the Americans. This led to the organized criminals deeds that were masterminded by the security forces of the Iraqi government that was led by Dr Ibrahim al-Ja'fari. These criminal deeds were reinforced with fatwas several religious authorities issued that and that were based on the statement issued by the highest Shiite religious authority that accused a specific side minutes after the news was announced without verifying the quarter that actually carried out that heinous criminal deed. The religious authority accused the Saddamists, the takfiris (Muslims that hold other Muslims as infidels), and the Al-Nawasib (pejorative term used by Shias to describe Sunnis). He and his followers know who is meant by Al-Nawasib. He accused them of committing the atrocious criminal deeds that were actually perpetrated by mobs and militias that are part of certain Shiite political components that are well known, such as Badr, the Al-Mahdi Army, and others. Despite all this, the situation did not deteriorate into a civil war due to the self-restraint and discipline that the Sunnis demonstrated. The Association (of Muslim Scholars) urged this self-restraint in order to contain the sedition that was planned by those we just mentioned. In our efforts, we were helped by brothers Shaykh Jawad al-Khalisi, Ayatollah Al-Sayyid Ali al-Baghdadi, Ayatollah Al-Sayyid Mahmud al-Husni al-Sarkhi, and other figures and well known patriotic authorities. (Harb) In your opinion, who is the primary beneficiary from the sectarian sedition and the slaughtering on the basis of one's identity card? Why do some organizations of the resistance sometimes claim responsibility for attacks against civilians? Is this not wrong? (Al-Dari) The immediate beneficiary from the sectarian sedition and the slaughtering on the basis of one's identity card are the enemies of Iraq and the enemies of Iraq's unity and power led by the occupation. It has been proven with irrefutable evidence that the occupation stands behind many of the evil and criminal quarters that target the sons of our people. After the occupation, those that stand to gain are its allies, the advocates of sectarian and separatist schemes, and the agents of the countries that hate Iraq and that do not wish the welfare of Iraq. As for the targeting of civilians, this is due to many factors. Some of these factors are purely sectarian in character, other factors are ideological, and others are destructive and intended to foment sedition and shuffle the cards in order to reach a certain specific goal or objective that may include pure vengeance and revenge. This serves the interests of those that promote sectarian sedition and slaughtering on the basis of one's identity card. Some organizations of the resistance sometimes endorse such actions for reasons of their own. But this is a wrong endorsement and is prohibited by Shari'ah. It is not an act of acceptable jihad and does not help its proponents to reach their legitimate goals, if they have legitimate goals. We in the Association (of Muslim Scholars) have denounced such un-Islamic and inhuman acts and methods. We pray to God to distance us from such perpetrators regardless to which faction or sect they may belong. (Harb) How do you think can the Arab countries help in rescuing Iraq from its current situation? Which are the countries that are most influential in this regard? (Al-Dari) The Arab countries can rescue Iraq from its current conditions by using their geographic, material, and political potentials and resources. They can also rescue Iraq by using what the Iraqi resistance made available to them when it obstructed and foiled the US schemes and made the United States consult these countries or seek their help to resolve its predicament in Iraq. As to how the Arab countries can rescue Iraq, there are many ways to do so and these ways are obvious to these countries. God Almighty will guide those that are willing to bear the responsibility for such an honor. The countries that can play such a role are first, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in view of its known weight in many vital aspects. Saudi Arabia is followed by Egypt and then the rest of the Arab countries that are ready to play such a role. (Harb) Is it possible to see a better relationship between you and Iran in the near future since you are saying that Iran is determined to evict the occupation from Iraq, which is your primary goal as well? Is it possible to have a rapprochement between you since this would create a positive climate in the Iraqi street and the region? (Al-Dari) Since we became afflicted with the occupation, we have been concerned to have a good relationship with all the neighbors although some of them, particularly Iran, cooperated with the occupation against us. Despite this, we wish to have a stronger relationship with Iran than with others in view of its good neighborliness and the good effect this has on conditions in Iraq for many reasons. Unfortunately, however, our hopes were dashed when we saw Iran entering Iraq, meddling in its affairs, and favoring one faction of the sons of Iraq over others and overlooking their wishes and conduct even if they are at the expense of Iraq's unity and the interests of Iraq's other sons. Iran is accepting and blessing the political process although it is illegitimate. It is keeping silent over all the practices and actions carried out by its allies and parties and currents that support it despite our advice to Iran through some of its officials that have visited Iraq. We remained silent and did not comment on Iran's intervention and bias for about the first three years of the occupation. When we lost hope that they would reconsider their stand, we expressed our opinion and we were among the last to express our opinion on their blatant intervention in Iraq and their designs on Iraq. Nevertheless, we hope they would reconsider their stand on Iraq for their sake in the future and for the sake of Iraq and the region. We hope that they would shut the doors of evil that are open against us and against them. We hope they would realize that good neighborliness is in the interest of all and will lead to the security and stability that we need and that the whole region needs. As for your question on a possible rapprochement between us, we say that this can happen if Iran can show us that it is dealing with all the Iraqis without being biased in favor of one faction and if it gives up its designs and ambitions in Iraq. (Harb) How do you describe your relationship with Syria? What is your position on the accusations leveled against Syria that it supports the terrorists in Iraq? (Al-Dari) Our relationship with Syria is good. It is based on respect and appreciation for its firm fraternal stands toward Iraq and the Iraqis that are represented by its opposition to the occupation of Iraq. Syria does not bargain on Iraq or on its interests despite the strong pressures and threats against it. It describes the occupation as occupation and the resistance that targets the occupation as resistance rather than terrorism as others call it. Syria warmly hosts more than one million Iraqis that have been displaced by the abnormal conditions in Iraq. For these stands and other stands, we appreciate Syria. We owe Syria a debt of loyalty for its Arab and humanitarian stands toward its brethren in Iraq that are going through hard times. In view of Syria's opposition to the occupation and in view of the fact that it was not dragged behind its schemes, we are not surprised that Syria is being subjected to all sorts of chargers, including the charge of supporting the terrorists. If what is intended by the term terrorists are those that are resisting against the occupation, I do not know of an Arab country - regardless of whether it is Syria or another Arab country - that is supporting them materially. However, if what is intended (by the word terrorists) are those that are targeting the innocent sons of Iraq from all the factions to carry out their hostile schemes and agendas against Iraq and its sons, these are supported only by the enemies of Iraq and the enemies of Iraq's unity. Syria supports Iraq and its independence and unity. It does not support its enemies. (Harb) Do you contemplate returning to Iraq soon? The Iraqi government has ordered your arrest. Are you worried that it might ask the Interpol to apprehend you? (Al-Dari) Yes, I think of returning soon and when the reasons are available. As for the Interpol, I am not worried about that. The Interpol is not a policeman of the Iraqi government that carries out its orders or its arbitrary and illegal demands.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

McCain Checks into Cloud Cuckooland
116 Iraqis Killed in Day of Carnage

Senator John McCain has contracted Rumsfeld's Disease. This malady consists of a combination of bad temper, misuse of language to obfuscate reality, and a Panglossian optimism in the face of stubborn, sanguinary facts on the ground.

McCain, for instance, hailed that deployment of Iraqi brigades "at or above 75% of their programmed strength"! Put another way, a quarter of the Iraqi troops ordered to Baghdad technically speaking went AWOL instead! If a quarter of all US troops ordered to Iraq fled to Canada or refused to leave their home base, that would be a catastrophe. But McCain manages to deploy weasel words to make this incredible statistic seem a positive thing. Moreover, even his basic facts may be wrong. Last I knew, one of the Iraqi brigades ordered to Baghdad only came at half strength.

McCain alleged that only about 500 civilians were killed in political violence in Baghdad in February, down from December's toll.

But McCain is wrong to look only at Baghdad. Here is what I wrote on March 1:

An Iraqi official leaked government figures on Iraqi civilians killed in January and February, and tried to spin the US press by saying that there had been a significant drop in such casualties.

But this official reported deaths for 1-31 January and compared them for the toll 1-27 February. Uh, the per day total isn't that different, it is just that February is a short month and the figures were given through the day before it ended!

1990 divided by 31 is 64 per day.

1646 divided by 27 is 61 per day.

While human life is precious and a drop of 3 a day is welcome, I wouldn't call that drop significant.

That is, the Iraqi government statistics for deaths in February were not 500 but 1646. And, as I pointed out, the decline in daily deaths is so far small. In addition, it would not actually be good news that 500 innocent civilians were slaughtered in Baghdad alone in February. Baghdad is a fourth of Iraq by population-- that would be a monthly death rate of about 2000, some 24,000 a year (the Lancet study published last fall found that deaths from violence occur at a similar rate throughout the country). All the real numbers are much worse than the above discussion implies, since passive information- gathering is notoriously unreliable.

McCain ignores the incredible violence against Shiite pilgrims during Ashura, in which hundreds were massacred, mostly outside Baghdad. That is, concentrating on Baghdad is a fallacy. The indications are that the guerrillas are compensating for the higher cost of their operations in Baghdad by shifting some their activities to other cities, such as Baquba and Tal Afar. But they have by no means given up the fight in Baghdad itself, as anyone who followed violence there could tell you.

Then there is this sad exchange on CNN between Wolf Blitzer and McCain:

[Blitzer Clip]: Everything we hear if you leave the so-called Green Zone, the international zone, and you go outside of that secure area, relatively speaking, you’re in trouble if you’re an American.

[McCAIN CLIP]: That’s where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee. I think you oughta catch up. You are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don’t get it through the filter of some of the media. But I know for a fact that much of the success we’re experiencing, including the ability of Americans in many parts. Not all, we have a long, long way to go. We’ve only got two of the five brigades here to go into some neighborhoods in Baghdad in a secure fashion.

So then Wolf Blitzer asked Michael Ware, the intrepid CNN correspondent who is actually in Baghdad, about this comment. Ware replied:

WARE: Well, I’d certainly like to bring Sen. McCain up to speed if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now Wolf, that’s because of the helicopters circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing away just a few blocks down the road. Is Baghdad any safer? Sectarian violence, one particular type of violence, is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Sen. McCain’s confidence. I mean, Sen. McCain’s credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, is now being left out hanging to dry. To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.

And to think that Gen. David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed humvee? I mean, in the hour since Sen. McCain’s said this, I’ve spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There’s multiple humvees around it, heavily armed. There’s attack helicopters, predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection. So, no, Sen. McCain is way off base on this one.

Remember when, in summer of 2003, Donald Rumsfeld asserted that there was no guerrilla war in Iraq? Remember when he implied that the violence there was no worse than a little race riot in Benton Harbor, Michigan? McCain increasingly sounds like that.

McCain has fallen ill with Rumsfeld's Disease in part because he is losing in the polls because the public doesn't like his gung ho stance on Iraq. If only, he thinks, he could convince the public that actually things are turning around there.

And in part he has succumbed to it because of frustration with his colleagues in the Senate, who just voted to get US troops out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. McCain thinks things have improved so much that his colleagues are basing their decisions on old information.

The greatest fallacy of all is in McCain's assumption that short-term changes in the Baghdad security environment, produced by deploying an extra US division there, can necessarily be translated into long-term gains. It is much more likely that guerrillas are just lying low and will come right back out when the Americans draw back down (the US can't keep an extra division in Iraq forever.)

McCain is typical of the hawks of his generation, which lost the Vietnam War. For many of them, a war on Iraq promised vindication and restoration of pride. It had all the delights of a Rambo movie, but the advantage of being real. The problem is that in both cases, Vietnam and Iraq, the US fought local nationalisms dressed up in universal ideologies (Communism, Islamism & Baathism). It is a losing proposition, for the most part. Local nationalisms mostly win out these days.

On Tuesday, AP reports that two massive truck bombings ripped through a market in the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar, killing 63 persons and wounding dozens.

Al-Hayat, writing in Arabic, estimated the death toll from political violence in Iraq on Tuesday at 116. Truck bombers killed 17 and wound 32 in the Sunni Arab city of Ramadi north of Baghdad.

Reuters rounds up political violence in Iraq for Tuesday.
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Green Zone Takes Rocket Fire
New Offer of Jobs to Baathists

Guerrillas fired a rocket into the Green Zone on Monday, shaking the US Embassy and Iraqi government offices but causing no casualties.

Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, has weighed in with Tehran to release 15 British sailors and Marines captured in what the Iranians claim were their territorial waters. Zebari says that they British were in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government and in accordance with UNSC resolutions, and were operating in Iraqi waters.

Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray called for the immediate release of the British sailors, but admitted that the Iranians had a legal case for objecting to their activities. They were in disputed waters and checking for smuggled automobiles. Murray can't figure out how automobile smuggling in the Persian Gulf is any of the business of the British navy. He says it would be different if they had been checking on arms smuggling.

(Murray in a more recent posting points out that the
BBC reported that British scientists concluded that the Lancet report of last fall finding 600,000 excess violent deaths in Iraq since the Bush/Blair invasion was based on 'best practice.' The Blair government denounced the study when it appeared and seems to have buried the scientists' report, which it requested.)

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani will put forward new legislation offering an amnesty program for Baath officials. If they come in from the cold within 3 months, they can be restored to high office. The Debaathification Commission, headed by corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi and on which Nuri al-Maliki played the role of hardliner earlier on, had excluded such figures from a role in public life. The problem is that the mere announcement of a three-month amnesty is highly unlikely to bring in from the cold the people who are now heading the Sunni Arab guerrilla movements. And, at a time when security is so bad that the vice premier is blown up with the connivance of his own security guards (and tribesmen), it can't be a pleasant prospect to be a Baathist branded as collaborator. AP suggests that the real motive for the measure is twofold. First, its announcement may take some pressure off the Iraqi government at this week's Arab League summit, where, as Iraqslogger notes, a draft proposal is said to urge abolition of the 'Debaathification Commission' and disbanding of Shiite militias. Second, rehabilitating the Baathists and being nicer to the Sunni Arabs is the platform on which former appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has been campaigning to form a new political bloc-- a campaign that has been met with some favor in neighboring Sunni Arab states and Egypt.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put his foot in his mouth by saying that US troops should stay in Iraq, otherwise the resulting chaos might cause the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan to fall. Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel and puts up with Israeli colonization of the West Bank even while condemning it-- i.e. Jordan functions as a de facto ally of Israel. Olmert sees its potential loss as a threat to Israeli security. The Jordanians are hopping mad about Olmert's comments. They see their regime as perfectly stable, whereas they wonder how long Olmert's government can last, with only 2% of Israelis expressing trust in him in polls. And, the Jordanians believe that the real threat to regional security is Israel's steadfast refusal to grant the Palestinians their own state within recognized and viable borders.

What the Jordanians are not saying, but is worth saying, is that if chaos in Iraq was a threat to the stability of Israel's neighbors and therefore to Israel itself, it was foolish for Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert to act as cheerleaders for an Iraq War back in 2002 and early 2003. War has unpredictable consequences. Olmert is wrong about the fragility of the Hashemite monarchy, but is right-- too late!-- that the violence in Iraq may well rebound against Israel.

Sunni Arab politicians meeting in Amman, Jordan are critical of the draft Iraqi petroleum law that has been presented to parliament by the Iraqi cabinet. The Monday Morning (Beirut) article contains these quotes:

' Faleh al-Khayat, a former head of planning at the Oil Ministry, warned that “major foreign oil firms are greedy and will covet Iraq’s oil wealth” if the bill is adopted. “If Iraq’s giant oilfields are developed, they would yield 80 percent of Iraq’s proven reserves estimated at 115 billion barrels”, he argued.

MP Saleh Mutlak of Iraq’s National Dialogue Front echoed him: “We have no need of foreign companies. We’re experienced enough to reap the fruit of our wealth”. Mutlak also said he feared the bill may not live up to government hopes that it will unify Iraq. “We don’t want a new law that will further divide us. We need a law that will unite the Iraqi people”. . . Motlak said Parliament in Baghdad should not ratify the bill “until we reach the appropriate climate for investments in Iraq”.

MP Ali Mashhadani agreed. “Our oil wealth is black gold that must be kept underground until security conditions are appropriate to take advantage of it. It has been entrusted to our safekeeping by the people we represent”. According to Mashhadani “Iraq has sold 125 billion dollars’ worth of oil since the start of the US-led occupation.” The Iraqi people have not benefited from this revenue and “are eating garbage”, Mashhadani said, suggesting that income from oil sales be given to the people in the form of state-subsidized “monthly ration cards” . . .

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Monday, including guerrillas' use of a roadside bomb in Zaafaraniya, Baghdad, to kill one policeman and wound 3 others. The report also says, 'A curfew was imposed in the town of Iskandariya 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad after clashes erupted between gunmen and security forces, police said. Mortars also landed in a central residential district, killing two and wounding four. ' In central Baghdad, a bombing killed 2 and wounded 5.

Sean Penn at an antiwar rally in San Francisco:

"Let's make this crystal clear: We do support our troops, but not the exploitation of them and their families. The money that's spent on this war would be better spent on building levees in New Orleans and health care in Africa and care for our veterans. Iraq is not our toilet. It's a country of human beings whose lives that were once oppressed by Saddam are now in 'Dante's Inferno.' "

Tom Engelhardt on how Americans are not actively protesting a war that opinion polls show them to widely oppose.
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Guerrillas Kill 5 US Troops
Shiite Reprisals in Haswa
Allawi Bid for New Coalition Founders

Iran is considering trying the 15 British sailors it captured at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, in what it claims were Iranian territorial waters. British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran that it should not underestimate the seriousness of the capture. The sailors were taken captive at a time of increased US sabre-rattling toward Iran. This weekend, the UN Security Council voted to sanction Iran for its nuclear enrichment program, which Iran says is purely for civilian purposes.

Sunni Arab guerrillas deployed roadside bombs to kill five US GIs on Sunday. Clashes erupted between local guerrillas and Iraqi security forces in the working class Fadil District of Baghdad. Police found 22 bodies, most of them in Baghdad. Another ten persons died in other violence. Reuters gives details of other political violence, including a Shiite attack on Sunni mosques in Haswa in reprisal for Saturday's attack on a Shiite mosque.

McClatchy describes the violence in Haswa:

' In retaliation for yesterday['s] bombing in the mixed city of Haswa (50 Km south of Baghdad) gunmen burned 4 Sunni mosques and attacked the Iraqi Islamic party (IIP) headquarter in the city. Around 1 p.m. and during the funeral of yesterday bombing victims, Shiite gunmen attacked and burned two mosques, Abdullah Al Jubouri and Hiteen mosques. The gunmen set a bomb in Usama bin Zaid mosque and burn it. The fourth mosque, Al Anwar mosque, gunmen bombed the Minaret and burned the mosque after no resistance were noticed. Almost at the same time the gunmen attacked the IIP headquarter in the city and a clash started between the guards and the attackers till around 4:30 p.m. The three hours continues clashes and sectarian violence stopped after the arrival of the American and Iraqi troops. Police said 2 men were injured only but sources of the IIP said 15 of the attackers were killed. '

The Iraqi Islamic Party sits in parliament.

Marid Abd Hasun, a political conselor to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, held a reconciliation meeting in Basra in an attempt to resolve the disputes between the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadilah) and the Sadr Movement-- quarrels that led to open fighting last Thursday. The conference ended without achieving any real reconciliation.

90 Iraqi members of parliament called on prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to allot emergency funds to care for the intellectuals and artists inhabiting the famed al-Mutanabbi Street, favorite site of booksellers in Iraq, which was recently blown up by guerrillas.

The facilitator for the assassin in the attempt on the life of vice premier Salam al-Zawba'i was a distant relative of the official who had fought alongside Sunni Arab guerrillas but been pardoned at al-Zawba'i's request. Some reports are saying up to three of his bodyguards were involved in the plot. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi government is blaming the assassination attempt on the Baath Party. (Note that the Western press was almost unanimous in blaming "al-Qaeda;" but the Iraqi government is better placed to know who is trying to kill its officials). Al-Zawba` is a Sunni Arab clan, the leader of which has, like the vice premier, been willing to cooperate with the Americans. The incident shows the ways in which ideology is sometimes more powerful than kinship ties in today's Iraq. The hope sometimes expressed that tribes could step up and stop the guerrillas founders on such data.

Al-Hayat also says that the "Islamic State of Iraq," the fundamentalist guerrilla group active in western Iraq, has demanded that the city of Tikrit accept its rule, in return for which it would release Sheikh Naji Jabarah al-Juburi, the chieftain of the powerful, largely Sunni Arab Jubur tribe.

KarbalaNews.net, a Shiite web site, argues that the attempts of former appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi to form a new parliamentary bloc have foundered. Allawi, an ex-Baathist and old time CIA asset, was attempting to group political forces against the Shiite fundamentalist majority. The leader of the Iraqi National List (25 seats in parliament) billed himself as seeking a non-sectarian alliance, though in fact it would have been an anti-Shiite one. Among the coalitions he hoped would join is that Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, and Adnan Dulaimi, a high official in that group, had seemed to signal its willingness. But now Iyad al-Samarra'i, the no. 2 man in the Iraqi Accord Front and a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party has denied that the fundamentalist Sunni MPs (44 out of 275 in Parliament) are interested in allying with Allawi. He said that Dulaimi had been too hasty in his pronouncment on the issue. Then Dilshad Miran, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, denied that Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani had indicated any interest in joining the new bloc. Then Izzat al-Shabandar, a leader of Allawi's Iraqi National List, admitted that the effort had been unable to garner any American support. Finally, Nadim al-Jabiri, the leader of the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadilah), said that his group had no interest in bringing down the al-Maliki government. Virtue (15 seats in parliament) had recently withdrawn from the Shiite fundamentalist United Iraqi Alliance, and there was speculation that it might join up with Allawi. That seems unlikely in light of al-Jabiri's statement. So, in short, the whole effort appears to have fallen apart. Nor was there any real prospect that such a diverse coalition could have held together for very long even if it had been formed. And, any success Allawi would have had in marginalizing and sidelining the Shiite fundamentalist majority would have just thrown Iraq into greater turmoil. You can't mobilize people politically and then just tell them to sit down and shut up. That's how revolutions are created (e.g. Algeria 1991)

The prayer leader of the shrine of Ali in Najaf, Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, visited Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Sunday. Sistani urged politicians to sacrifice sectorial, personal and sectarian goals for the sake of Iraq's national interests.

Barack Obama said Sunday, according to this site, that 'the Iraq war is diminishing America's standing in the world and diverting millions of dollars that should be spent on health care, education and alternative energy research in the United States . . . "We have to recognize that if we don't make some fundamental changes right now that we could be the first generation in a very long time that leaves an America behind that is a little poorer and a little meaner than the one we inherited from our parents, and that's unacceptable . . ." '
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

90 Killed in Wave of Bombings, Violence


Two US troops were announced killed on Saturday.

AP reporter Kim Gamel details a wave of bombings and mayhem across Iraq on Saturday. The deadliest attack was a suicide truck bombing at a police station in Baghad, which killed 20 and wounded 28, many of them police. Guerrillas bombed a pastry shop in the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar, killing 10 and wounded 3. A truck bomber killed 11 and wounded 45 in Haswah, south of Baghdad. Suicide car bombers killed 20 and wounded 30 in attacks on police at Qaim near the Syrian border.

Reuters gives other incidents and estimates that 25 bodies were found in Baghdad on Friday, 8 in Fallujah, and another 4 in Mosul. The found-body count, of nearly 40, is much higher than in the AP story. Al-Hayat estimated the day's death toll from political violence at 90.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the British made a security sweep in the southern, largely Shiite port city of Basra on Friday, killing one Iraqi and arresting 28. The fighting was with Shiite militiamen, presumably.

As'ad Abu Khalil points out that the graffiti on a wall in a photo published by the New York Times is not by a native Arabic speaker, since it is full of spelling and vocabulary errors (in just four words!) The word "dam," blood, which has a short "a" or fathah, is spelled with an alif, making it long. And the word for infidels is spelled incorrectly. Some of his readers pointed out that there are non-Arab guerrillas in Iraq. Others seemed convinced that the graffiti had an American origin. I don't think the latter is likely, since most American troops in Iraq don't know Arabic at all, and the ones who do know it know it better than this.

Veteran AP journalist and long time bureau chief in Baghdad, Steven R. Hurst, reviews the tenure of outgoing US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad. It is a keen examination of the issues, though I'd have added Khalilzad's roll in the crafting of the constitution, in pulling the Sunni Arabs into the electoral system with unfulfilled promises they could then tinker with the constitution, and in unseated Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafar in favor of Nuri al-Maliki (both of them from the Shiite fundamentalist Da'wa Party). Khalilzad to his credit tried to reach out to the Sunni Arabs, but seemed ultimately unable to convince the Shiites and Kurds to make significant concessions to them. What he did not realize was that American military and diplomatic might, having been put largely at the service of the Shiites and Kurds, made it unnecessary for the latter ever to compromise with the Sunni Arabs. He was interfering with his own efforts just by being there.

Even the intrepid Patrick Cockburn of the Independent can't go most places in center-north Iraq. Where he can go, he finds the notion that things are just fine outside Baghdad and al-Anbar Province to be a tragic myth.

Hacking the IED network in Iraq.

Kanaan Makiya, an intellectual architect of the Iraq War, admits it is a disaster but insists he has nothing to apologize for. Makiya is still peddling the Neoconservative myth (as an ex-Trotskyite, he is a genuine Neoconservative) that everything would have been all right if the US hadn't occupied Iraq after conquering it. How likely was that? Makiya, after having tried to convince us all that Ahmad Chalabi is a really great guy and not a fraud, now wants to convince us of other things. Why should we agree to be convinced by someone so wrong about so much? Couldn't he please work out his intellectual theories in ways that don't get more US troops killed?

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Reality-Based Legislation: House Dems Demand end of US War in Iraq in 08

The Democrats in Congress passed a supplemental funding bill for the Iraq War that included a demand that troops be withdrawn by August of 2008.

Contrary to what John McCain alleged, the bill does not micromanage the conduct of the war. It declines to continue funding it after a date certain. Congress has the right in the Constitution to control the purse strings, and no president can fight a war that Congress declines to fund (except by engaging in criminal embezzlement, as with Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra).

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly says that Congress has the right

' To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years . . . '

The Founding Fathers did not want even so much as a standing army, much less a standing war. It was the clear intent of the Constitution that any funding for any military effort be strictly limited in time. The idea that Bush could take the country to war for 4 years and never face any Congressional scrutiny or limits on funding is wholly antithetical to the US constitution.

What Pelosi and the Democrats did is not only constitutionally permitted, it is required. That is why McCain and other opponents of the legislation are attempting to muddy the waters by claiming that it micromanages the war. If it did so, the legislature really would be treading on a prerogative of the president. But the Congress hasn't said that the military should attack Ramadi on October 8. What it is saying, it has the right and duty to say.

The pro-war forces keep pretending that the November 2006 elections never happened, and that they haven't lost both houses of Congress and that the American public doesn't want an end to the war. The pretence is often weirdly allowed to stand by the corporate media. But here in Realityland, aka the blogosphere, we don't have to play those games.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraqi Vice Premier Badly Wounded in Attack
Iranians Take British troops Captive

A Salafi Jihadi operative infiltrated the entourage of Iraqi Vice Premier Abdul Salam al-Zawba'i and detonated a belt bomb in his house on Friday, seriously injuring al-Zawba'i and hurting 17 other persons (some reports say it left 6 of his associates dead). Al-Zawba'i has been part of a recruitment effort to get Sunni Arab tribespeople to fight the Salafi Jihadis (fundamentalist radicals now referred to in the US press as "al-Qaeda," though in fact they have not pledged fealty to Usamah Bin Laden). Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports, however, that the assassin was in fact from al-Zawba'i's' tribe.

A vice premier is a high officer of state in Iraq, and this assassination attempt underlines that no one in that country is safe from the ongoing violence.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards took 15 British sailors captive on Friday, claiming that their skiffs had strayed into Iranian waters. There is speculation that the Iranian action is related to Saturday's expected vote at the United Nations Security Council on imposing sanctions on Iran because it declines to halt its uranium enrichment attempts.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Friday, including the discovery of four bodies in Mosul and a bombing in East Baghdad (Sadr City) that left 7 dead and 20 wounded, according to al-Zaman.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

4 US GIs Killed
House Dems set to Pass '08 Withdrawal Language
Shiite on Shiite Violence in Basra

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to have put together a winning bill by both authorizing additional funding for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (something antiwar Democrats oppose) and by specifying a withdrawal date of 2008 (something the antiwar representatives very much want). The danger for her was that the antiwar left would peel away and she might not have the votes to pass the bill, which Republicans will vote against in the main. But most close observers of the Hill on Thursday were convinced that Pelosi would win this one.

The Senate Appropriations Committee seems set, a little unexpectedly, to report out a similar bill with the withdrawal language in it. Because of the Senate's provisions for filibuster and consensual decision-making, however, it seems very unlikely that the language will survive when it goes to the whole Senate.

Bush has promised to veto any bill sent him with the withdrawal language in it.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made a surprise visit to Baghdad Thursday, holding a joint news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. As the PM was speaking, the auditorium was shaken by a katyusha rocket that landed only 50 yards away. Al-Maliki apparently has nerves of steel and did not even flinch, but Ban Ki-moon ducked at the sound of the blast. Al-Maliki had been in the midst of asserting that the security situation in Iraq was improving.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq. Guerrillas killed three US troops on Wednesday, it was announced, and another on Thursday.

44 persons were killed or found dead around Iraq on Thursday, according to the wire services, including 25 bodies that showed up in the streets of Baghdad.

There was a prison riot in Basra, with inmates revolting on the grounds that they had been held 2-4 years without trial.

Clashes broke out in Basra between the Sadr Movement and the Islamic Virtue Party or Fadhila. The violence left 7 persons wounded, and city authorities imposed a curfew. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Mahdi Army militiamen burned down the major HQ of the Islamic Virtue Party after having invaded the offices of the electricity administration and having expelled its employees and imprisoned the manager. The two parties were said to be vying over control of a building that the British authorities had been using but which they had recently abandoned. The attack on the electricity administration offices came about, it was alleged, because the director had disciplined an electricity worker from the Mahdi Army. Some observers say that this conflict presages what is likely to happen in Basra when the British leave.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Mahmud al-Mashhadani, has compared the Mahdi Army to al-Qaeda in Iraq as among the most dangerous threats to Iraqi security. The Sadrist members of parliament vehemently rejected this characterization. MP Qusay Abdul Wahhab said that the Mahdi Army is just the Iraqi Resistance, that it has been dormant for several months, and that the real threat to Iraq comes from radical Sunni Arabs who excommunicate all Muslims who do not think like them (especially Shiites, whom they target for killing).

US troops found caches of chlorine and nitric acid in guerrilla storehouses in the Ghazaliya district of Baghdad on Thursday, raising the specter that the guerrillas are increasingly turning to chemical weapons. They have conducted several attacks using chlorine gas.

The US is attempting to avert a potentially disastrous Turkish military intervention in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turks accuse Kurdistan of harboring 3600 guerrillas of the radical Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), who, it says, are committing acts of terrorism in eastern Anatolia and then slipping back over the border into Iraq. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is threatening hot pursuit by Turkish troops across that border. Such an incursion could set off the tinderbox that is northern Iraq.

Prince Hassan of Jordan supports Turkey in this regard. He warns against an ethno-religious breakup of Iraq, saying it will lead to the Balkanization of the entire Middle East.

Total's CEO has been detained in connection with a bribery charge related to Total's interest in Iranian petroleum.

Iraqi Christians are being forced to flee their country by the violence and because they are sometimes targeted by Sunni Arab guerrillas who wrongly associate them with the West. This article estimates them at 5% of the Iraqi population, which is probably incorrect. There were 800,000 or so of them before the war, but my understanding is that they may be down to 500,000 now, which would make them 2 percent of the population. Likewise, it strikes me as highly unlikely that 40% of Iraqis fleeing the country are Christian. The vast majority of Iraqi expatriates (some 800,000) in Jordan are Sunni Arabs, e.g.

There is so little safe water in Iraq that this summer a major cholera epidemic could break out, the UN is warning.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Truck Bombing of Kurdish HQ in Mosul Kills or Injures 45

A recent report on the readiness of Iraqi troops. says that the Iraqi military won't be ready to 'stand up' any time soon, according to the General Accounting Office. A third of Iraqi troops are on leave at any one time. Many troops on the books who draw a salary don't really exist and are just a scam. And, the Iraqi troops are deeply dependent on the US for the simplest logistics.

Reuters reports political violence for Wednesday. Among the major operations:

' MOSUL - Five people were killed and 40 were wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his truck at the headquarters of a Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in the northern city of Mosul on Wednesday during the celebration of the spring festival of Nawruz, police said. . .'

MOSUL - Police said that they found the bodies of seven people shot dead on Tuesday in different districts of the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. . .

DIWANIYA - A policeman was killed and eight wounded, including four civilians, when clashes erupted between police and gunmen on Tuesday in several districts of Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. . . '

The southern Diwaniya Province is a stronghold the the Sadr Movement, though the police seem to be dominated by the Badr Corps paramilitary of the rival Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The Sadr Movement and its paramilitary, the Mahdi Army, has never been very unified. Both were leant a certain unity by loyalty to the young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. With the latter in hiding, the movement is predictably splintering. It is not at all clear that a splintered Mahdi Army is less dangerous than a disciplined one, as this article makes clear.

The increasing hostility of the Sadr Movement to the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and toward his new security plan, may help explain why al-Maliki went to the mat to secure the release of Sheikh Ahmad al-Shibani, an aide to Muqtada who was arrested in 2004. Al-Shibani was found innocent of the charges against him by a tribunal, but was kept in US custody anyway. Although the press keeps saying that al-Maliki will get street credibility because of the release, I can't actually believe that getting one Sadrist out of jail, who had been held illegally by the US for over a year, would make much impact on attitudes.

Meanwhile, questions have arisen about a raid by US troops on a Husayniya or Shiite mourning center. The Mahdi Army is claiming that US troops broke up a peaceful religious meeting and killed worshippers. The US military is investigating. One has a sinking feeling that whatever the investigation reveals, the Shiites of that Baghdad district aren't going to be dissuaded from the "Americans invade religious building and kill innocent worshippers" sotry.

Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, from the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, said Wednesday that Iraq should be talking to the insurgents and trying to cut a deal with them. Although the Iraqi government sometimes maintains that it is on the verge of getting Sunni tribesmen in Western Iraq to attack foreign fundamentalist Salafi vigilantes in Iraq, that seems to me quite a stretch.

Al-Hashimi also called for electoral reform and for new elections. The Sunni Arabs are frustrated by Shiite dominance of the new government and Shiite refusal to even think about negotiating with the Sunni Baathists and Salafi fundamentalists who are blowing their people up. I can't imagine that anyone in Iraq is really ready to go to the polls for national elections again so soon. It is true that in a genuine parliamentary system, Nuri al-Maliki's government might well fall as a result of a vote of no confidence, and that would lead to new elections. Iraq, however, is only going through the motions when it comes to democracy, and the top politicians cut deals with one another and rule by fiat.

The following item was somehow thrown up at google news from an old data base via the Gulf Daily News and was erroneously marked breaking news for Thursday morning. The item is actually very old, and I apologize to readers for this error-- which, however, was not my own. Early in the morning on Thursday, before dawn, some 200 Sunni Arab guerrillas in Muqdadiya (Diyala Province) stormed a jail and freed 33 prisoners, many of them guerrillas. I can't think of another recent operation that involved a company-sized fighting force. Thirty persons died in the fighting. One wire service reported, "Insurgents battled Iraqi and US reinforcements, set fire to the police station, courthouse and 20 police vehicles before making their escape." If they accomplished all that after US reinforcements arrived, imagine what they could have accomplished if no US and Iraqi troops had come out to confront them.
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Dems in Congress seek Withdrawal
Saudis intrigue against al-Maliki

The Democrats are gearing up to try to pass an appropriations measure for Iraq that also specifies that US troops must come home by fall, 2008. A similar effort in the Senate failed when one Democratic Senator defected to the Republican side over the withdrawal issue. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats have the votes to pass the measure only if almost all Democrats vote for it. Nancy Pelosi has had to attempt to muster votes from left-leading Democrats for whom the language does not go far enough in ending the war quickly.

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed two US soldiers in south Baghdad with a roadside bomb on Tuesday.

Police found 32 bodies in the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday, most of them in Sunni districts. The talk of Shiite death squad activity having been quelled by the US surge seems premature.

Reuters reports other political violence in Iraq on Tuesday, including these incidents:

'BAGHDAD - Four mortar bombs killed at least seven people and wounded 20 in Abu Dsheer, a mostly Shi'ite area in southern Baghdad . . .

BAGHDAD - A car bomb near a police station killed at least five people and wounded 17 in central Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed three people and wounded seven near a bridge in Karrada district in central Baghdad . . .

BAGHDAD - A car bomb near a mosque killed a man and wounded three others in al-Ubaidi district in eastern Baghdad . . .

Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq have turned to new tactics to fight the security plan, including deploying chlorine gas and chemically-laced dirty bombs.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Saudi Arabia and Jordan invited Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, for consultations in hopes of detaching him from his alliance with the fundamentalist Shiite parties. Al-Zaman says that its sources in Riyadh say that the Saudi royal family increasingly sees Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of the Shiite Islamic Call (Da'wa) Party as an obstacle to any movement toward peace and reconciliation. Al-Maliki was prominent in the Debaathification Commission that was punitive toward Sunni Arabs, and has during the past year had a tacit alliance with the Sadr Movement and its Mahdi Army militia, which many Sunnis believe comprises death squads that kill Sunni Arabs in the dark of night.

Many Iraqi police are not only not standing up as the US stands down (what Bush promised) but rather are themselves padded 'ghosts.'

Paul Reynolds of the BBC looks at what is at stake in Iraq for that country's major neighbors.

Chris Lindborg writes in Foreign Policy in Focus on what has happened to the Atlantic alliance because of Iraq.

Strategic Insights has published an important set of papers on the Iraq Crisis. Abbas Kadhim's paper on Shiite responses to the Baker Hamilton Commission report is essential.

The UNHCR is planning a conference on humanitarian relief in Iraq. About 2 million Iraqis have been displaced abroad, and nearly that many have been internally displaced. Inside the country, nearly a quarter of the population is dependent on food aid. Iraq's population is estimated at about 26 million. This report adds:

' Approximately 70 per cent of the population lacks access to adequate water supplies, while 80 per cent does not have effective sanitation. Almost a quarter of children are chronically malnourished, and the unemployment rate hovers at over 50 per cent. '

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Bush's Top Ten Mistakes in Iraq during the Past 4 Years

10. Refusing to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when his incompetence and maliciousness became apparent in the growing guerrilla war and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

9. Declining to intervene in the collapsed economy or help put Iraqi state industries back on a good footing, on the grounds that the "market" would magically produce prosperity effortlessly.

8. Invading and destroying the Sunni Arab city of Fallujah in November, 2004, thus pushing the Sunni Arabs into the arms of the insurgency in protest and ensuring that they would boycott the January, 2005, parliamentary elections, a boycott that excluded them from power and from a significant voice in crafting the new constitution, which they then rejected.

7. Suddenly announcing that the US would "kill or capture" young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in spring, 2004, throwing the country into massive turmoil for months.

6. Replying to Baathist guerrilla provocations with harsh search and destroy missions that humiliated and angered ever more Sunni Arab clans, driving them to support or join the budding guerrilla movement.

5. Putting vengeful Shiites in charge of a Debaathification Commission that fired tens of thousands of mostly Sunni Arab state employees simply for having belonged to the Baath Party, leaving large numbers of Sunnis penniless and without hope of employment.

4. Dissolving the Iraqi Army in May, 2003, and sending 400,000 men home, unemployed, resentful and heavily armed.

3. Allowing widespread looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, on the grounds that "stuff happens," "democracy is messy," and "how many vases can they have?"-- and thus signalling that there would be no serious attempt to provide law and order in American Iraq.

2. Plotting to install corrupt financier, notorious liar, and shady operator Ahmad Chalabi as the soft dictator of Iraq, and refusing to plan for a post-war administration of the country because that might forestall Chalabi's coronation.

1. Invading Iraq.

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Iraqi Public Wants US Troops Out within a Year
Sunni Parliamentarian Accused of Links to Bombers

A poll of Iraqis commission by USA Today and several other news organizations revealed that:

"In all, 83% of Shiites and 97% of Sunni Arabs oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq; 75% of Kurds support them. By more than 3 to 1, Iraqis say the presence of U.S. forces is making the security situation worse."

They want the US out, but only 35% want the troops to leave immediately. The time frame for most of the others is six months to a year. There are hardly any Iraqis who want US troops in their country past August, 2008. I.e., the Iraqis would have voted for the Democrats' plan, which the Republicans shot down in the Senate.

In other results, 40% of Shiites want a theocracy governed by Islamic law and 58% of Sunnis want rule by strongman. Even among Kurds, 34% reject democracy. There may not be a majority for democracy any more.

Nearly half of Shiites and Kurds expect either a soft or a hard partition on ethnic and religious lines.

The USA Today et al. poll results are available here in pdf format.

A poll by the British Opinion Research Business organization gave strikingly different results on some issues.

One difference is that the USA Today et al. poll explicitly includes over-samples from al-Anbar Province, Kirkuk, Sadr City and Basra. Someone expert in polls should explain the divergence and why different methods were chosen and were thought appropriate.

Reuters reports that on Tuesday:

KIRKUK - Two car bombs and four roadside devices killed at least 12 people and wounded 39 in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, police Brigadier Sarhat Qader said.

BAGHDAD - A bomb in a plastic bag inside a Shi'ite mosque killed four people and wounded 25 others in central Baghdad, police said.

SAMARRA - Gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing a policeman and wounding three others in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.'

In addition, the mayor of the southern Shiite city of Wasit was kidnapped and killed.

The Iraqi government alleges that it found explosives residue in the automobile of Dhafir al-Ani, a Sunni member of parliament from the Iraqi Accord Front. He denies links to guerrilla bomb makers and alleges that the Shiite government of Iraq is attempting to frame him.
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March 19, 2003: Bush's Address on Iraq

What struck me in looking again at Bush's address to the American public late on March 19, 2003, is how obviously mendacious it was. That dishonest and propagandistic character is even more apparent with the passage of time. The accusation that Iraq was planning to attack anyone in 2003, that US cities were in danger from it, was monstrous in its mirroring of Bush intentions toward the Iraqi people. Which innocents have had to dig out of rubble? And, at a time when Bush rushed to war, engaging in dirty tricks in hopes of getting a Baath provocation that would serve as casus belli, and not letting the weapons inspectors even finish their jobs, to say he was "reluctant"! It is impossible to reread this text without images from the destruction of Fallujah, from Abu Ghraib, from Najaf, flashing through one's mind. It is America's nadir, the most Goebbels-like Big Lie in modern American history.

Bush said,

My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign. More than 35 countries are giving crucial support, from the use of naval and air bases, to help with intelligence and logistics, to the deployment of combat units. Every nation in this coalition has chosen to bear the duty and share the honor of serving in our common defense. To all of the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you. That trust is well placed. The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military. In this conflict, America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality. Saddam Hussein has placed Iraqi troops and equipment in civilian areas, attempting to use innocent men, women, and children as shields for his own military; a final atrocity against his people. I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm. A campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as California could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable, and free country will require our sustained commitment. We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization, and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people. I know that the families of our military are praying that all those who serve will return safely and soon. Millions of Americans are praying with you for the safety of your loved ones and for the protection of the innocent. For your sacrifice, you have the gratitude and respect of the American people and you can know that our forces will be coming home as soon as their work is done. Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities. Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures and we will accept no outcome but victory. My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail. May God bless our country and all who defend her. PRESIDENT BUSH

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Renewed US Anti-War Protests Sunday;
Gates: Surge is to Buy Time for Reconciliation;
Al-Maliki Cabinet Shuffle Postponed

Thousands of antiwar demonstrators came out again on Sunday. Some cities , such as San Francisco, Seattle, and Minneapolis, had especially vigorous protests.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates revealed on Sunday that the surge of US troops into Iraq and the new security plan are designed to give the Iraqi government time to seek national reconciliation.

That is a worthy goal, but if it is the reason for the escalation in the number of US troops in Iraq, then that lays an especially heavy burden on the al-Maliki government to accelerate efforts at national reconciliation.

I don't see any particular evidence that it is doing so. Nor can I see any signs that the government is able to act at faster than a glacial pace. It had long ago been announced that al-Maliki would reshuffle his cabinet. But now it appears that this step, intended to streamline the government and punish cabinet ministers linked to sectarian violence, will be substantially postponed and implemented gradually. Al-Maliki, having just lost a member of his coalition-- the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila-- 15 seats), appears to have thought better of just firing large numbers of ministers from parties whose support he needs.

But now he has gone back to playing consensual politics negotiated with excruciating slowness. If it takes him months to so much as decide who his minister of health is, when is he going to be up to the challenge of finding a way to make peace with the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement (which he dismisses as Saddamis and 'excommunicators'-- i.e. hard line Sunnis who say Shiites are not Muslims).

General Petraeus, in the meantime, is signalling that his own patience is not infinite, and that if he can't see a genuine improvement in the security situation by June, he would have an obligation to his own troops to say so. It is so refreshing to hear that kind of language from the Pentagon after all those years of Donald Rumsfeld's despicable disregard for the welfare of the troops he was supposed to be leading (asked why he didn't get US forces more armored vehicles, Rumsfeld had said that you go to war with the army you have; the manufacturer of the armor spoke up and said that his factory could provide more such armor quickly, but that Rumsfeld had not requested it do so). One problem: It will be hard to tell which security effects are temporary, as a result of the US surge, and which would survive a US drawdown.

Sawt al-Iraq writes in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will reshuffle his cabinet in three stages, beginning with the ministries in charge of services. Some reports are saying that the changes have been put off until July. Mufid al-Jaza'iri, a member of parliament, said that al-Maliki is having a dispute with parliamentary blocs over whether he should also change the ministers at the ministries concerned with security. Especially contentious is the request of the (Sunni fundamentalist) Iraqi Accord Front that they be allowed to change their minister, who represtents them as head of the ministry of defense. The Iraqi Accord Front also wishes to relinquish the ministry of culture for one of the service ministries.

The Sadr Movement had earlier given al-Maliki carte blanche to replace current cabinet ministers from their bloc with others of his choosing. Their relations with al-Maliki have now turned frosty, however, and they are insisting that they should be the ones to suggest alternative appointments.

Maysun al-Damluji of the Iraqi National List said that her party is urging that women be added to the cabinet in the course of the shuffle.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Iyad Allawi, the ex-Baathist former appointed prime minister of Iraq, conducted talks in Cairo with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on Sunday. He expressed his hope that Arab states would push Iraqi interests at the upcoming Riyadh summit. Allawi said that reconciliation in Iraq would require concessions from all parties and joint action for national interests. Mubarak is said to have emphasized the need for Iraqis to prefer their national interests as citizens to their sectarian interests.

Reuters reports political violence on Sunday, including several bombings, some deadly, in Baghdad.

The conference on the Iraqi reconstruction is upcoming in Istanbul.

Check out the video, Hometown Baghdad at Salon.com.

Anthony Arnove at Tomdispatch.com on the commemoration of the fourth anniversary of "Shock and Awe."
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Iraq Friday Sermons on 'Surge'

The USG Open Source Center translates and paraphrases Iraqi Friday prayers sermons, some of which speak of the ongoing "Surge."

Iraqi Friday Sermons for 16 Mar Discuss Security Plan, Political Process Iraq-- OSC Summary Sunday, March 18, 2007 Major Iraqi television channels - Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah, Baghdad Baghdad Satellite Channel, Baghdad Al-Sharqiyah, Baghdad Al-Furat, Cairo Al-Baghdadiyah, and Baghdad Al-Diyar. [These stations] are observed on 16 March to carry the following reports on Friday sermons: Al-Iraqiyah: Within its 1700 GMT newscast, Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah Television in Arabic - government-sponsored television station, run by the Iraqi Media Network - cites Shaykh Wasfi al-Hurayshawi, imam and preacher of the two Al-Askari Imams Mosque in Basra, as "recalling the Halabjah crime, which claimed the lives of thousands of the city's sons. The preacher also denounced the crimes Saddam had committed against the Iraqis during his era." The following is a report by Al-Iraqiyah correspondent in Basra Sabah al-Mansuri: "Friday prayers were performed at all mosques and Husayniyat in Basra. At the worship place of the two Al-Askari imams, may God's peace be upon them, Shaykh Wasfi al-Hurayshawi called for the unity of Muslims, especially since the Islamic world is today celebrating the anniversary of the death of the great prophet, may God's peace and prayers be upon him." The correspondent adds that the preacher spoke about the anniversary of the "17 March massacre and the victims of the Halabjah massacre as two important stations in the history of the Iraqi struggle." The correspondent says: "The Friday sermon also called on the Iraqi Government to pay attention to the services, which affect the Iraqi citizen's daily life." Baghdad Satellite Channel: Baghdad Baghdad Satellite Television in Arabic - television channel believed to be sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party, at 0945 GMT is observed to carry a live relay of a Friday sermon delivered by Shaykh Hashim al-Ta'i from an unidentified mosque in Baghdad. After praising God and His prophet, Al-Ta'i says: "The Iraqis and those interested in the Iraqi affairs, and Muslims everywhere, these days speak about force and the use of force, excessive force, whose use is the talk of the people in this world. There are two extremes regarding the use of force. One group views force as being everything. This group says that the United States has occupied Iraq by force and is imposing its agenda by force. Israel also rejects the resolutions of the international legitimacy through force." He adds: "Another group views force in a different way. It says that mankind has got sick of the gun. Is it not the right time to use wisdom and to have mercy on man who got fed up of force and of the scenes of blood and dead bodies here and there? A third group makes connection between political wisdom, shrewdness, and the use of force." Speaking about how Islam views force, Al-Ta'i says that many of God's attributes are related to power. He adds: "If we talk about God's power, we will see that all others are dwarfs." He says: "The powerful and the source of power is Almighty God." He says that the one who thinks that he is strong and powerful should bear in mind that he will one day meet God to punish him for the injustice he inflicted on other people. The preacher continues to speak about the meanings of power and force in all walks of life. Speaking about the current situation in Iraq, Al-Ta'i says: "We should not escalate fighting and rhetoric that worsens our division. This is particularly true since we have been living together for centuries. No party can cancel or annihilate the other party. This will not take place. I should seek my brother's wisdom and merge his power with mine. If he is not convinced today, he will be convinced tomorrow." Al-Sharqiyah: Baghdad Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic - independent, private news and entertainment channel focusing on Iraq, run by Sa'd al-Bazzaz, publisher of the Arabic language daily Al-Zaman - is not observed to carry any reports on today's Friday sermons. Al-Furat: Within its 1700 GMT newscast, Baghdad Al-Furat Television Channel in Arabic - television channel affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) led by Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim, cites Shaykh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, imam and preacher of the Buratha Mosque, as saying: "Shall we abrogate the constitution, bring the entire political process to a halt, and cancel the elections and the parliament so that a certain group will bring one or two of its members to participate in the political process? This is madness. This is the Ba'thist way." Within the same newscast, Sabah al-Sa'idi, imam and preacher of Al-Rahman Mosque, expressed support for the security plan and called on all political blocs to participate in it in order to make it a success. He criticized some officials' abandonment of the government in an attempt to foil it. He says: "The Iraqis who participated in the government are partners in the government. If the government succeeds this will be a success for them, and if the government fails this will be failure for everyone. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should not be the only one responsible for this." At 1820 GMT, the channel carries an episode of its weekly "Friday Sermons" program. The program shows Shaykh Muhammad al-Haydari, imam and preacher of the Al-Khillani Mosque, saying: "There has recently been a move by some regional, international, and Iraqi local circles. This move has now become clearer. It is aimed at internationalizing the Iraqi issue. This means that Iraq will turn into an issue whose future will be decided by the United Nations, the big powers, and the Arab League. There is a move by regional and European states, and the statement of the Arab League's secretary general in this regard was also clear. This also applies to some Iraqi political forces and to Adnan Pachachi's statement two days ago. What do they want? They want to abrogate the constitution, the results of the elections, meaning the parliament, and the Council of Ministers." He adds that this means that the "United Nations and some other states will determine Iraq's future political map." Al-Haydari says that these sides claim that they are concerned over a "sectarian strife" in Iraq. He adds: "We say take your hands off Iraq and Iraq will become stable, especially since support for terrorism mainly comes from abroad." Shaykh Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir, imam and preacher of the Buratha Mosque, speaks about the incidents that took place in the Nadir neighborhood in Al-Hillah. He says: "What took place in the Nadir neighborhood in Al-Hillah was unique in the history of the world, but not in the history of this sect (Shiite)." He says that the people continued their march although they "knew that the human monsters will be lying in wait for them, and that the treacherous ones, the makers of the booby-trapped cars, explosive charges, and explosive belts will seize every opportunity to attack them." Al-Saghir says: "We are aware of what is taking place in Diyala. We are also aware of its causes. Our pains are great in that governorate. However, the measures that have been taken, particularly this time, reassure us that God willing, solutions will be coming to the Diyala Governorate. I call on the Sunni and Shiite tribes in the governorate to cooperate with the coordination council that was formed for the Diyala Governorate. This council includes Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds in order to redress the security and services situation in Diyala. We know that the ration quotas have not reached Diyala. However, I was promised yesterday that the government will send the ration quotas for the past six months to all the Diyala families, but after securing the road, God willing. All sides should cooperate with their brothers in the Iraqi Army's Fifth Division there and with their brothers in the Interior Ministry's security forces in order to crush terrorism in that area." He adds: "I tell all terrorists there, particularly in the Ba'qubah area, to think and leave that area because God willing, security is coming to that area. They either come back to this people so that they and this people enjoy security and stability, or they should be held responsible for their continued presence against the will of the Iraqi people, taking into consideration that the Iraqi people are now united against terrorism and terrorists." He says that the Iraqi people should know that these terrorist groups "do not want a Sunni, Shiite, Iraqi, but they want some people to work as slaves for the leaders of this terrorism so that the aid they receive from abroad will continue." He says: "In addition to this, the evil efforts that are made by the (Mujahedin-e) Khalq Organization in that area will end very soon, especially since the government is determined not to allow anyone from the camp of evil and hypocrisy leave or enter without its knowledge. There will be government forces there to be in charge of the security area. They either go back to their countries or seek refuge with any other country. The US Government and the United Nations should think seriously of deporting them to any other country. Iraq has enough problems that do not tolerate the continued presence of such criminals who had previously shed Iraqi blood during the uprising. They had also served as oppressive services in the hands of the criminal regime of Saddam, and they have returned today to finance, train, and protect the herds of terrorists in those areas." Shaykh Hazim al-A'raji, imam and preacher of the Al-Kazimiyah Mosque, speaks about the anniversary of the death of the prophet. He says that Prophet Muhammad moved mankind from the "worship of the idol" to the "ultimate divine happiness." Shaykh Sabah al-Sa'idi, imam and preacher of Al-Rahman Mosque, says: "Demonstrations, sit-ins, or strikes constitute a civilized way of demanding legislative rights." However, he adds that calling for releasing Ali Hasan al-Majid is not legitimate because this man is a "murderer." He adds: "This also applies to the so-called Tariq Aziz. We have learned from some sources that negotiations are underway to release him. We warn against tampering with the blood of the Iraqi people." Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i, imam and preacher of the Karbala Mosque, reads from a statement on the Iraqi teachers' complaints regarding their salaries. The imam says that this applies to all state employees, and not only the teachers. He expresses hope that the government officials will respond positively to this complaint. Shaykh Sadr-al-Din al-Salihi, imam and preacher of Al-Najaf al-Ashraf Mosque, says: "We should praise the Baghdad conference. It is a step that will be followed by another step, God willing, on 15 April, which will also be a conference for the neighboring countries. This is a success for the Iraqi diplomacy and security services. We also hope that this conference will bring a new Iraqi success. We should also laud the security plan and the successes it has achieved." He adds: "We should also laud the cabinet reshuffle plan. There has been determination for several months in this regard. We hope that this determination will materialize." He says that this should apply to the Council of Representatives, adding: "There are some elements who contribute to acts of terrorism while at the same time they are members of the Council of Representatives." He says that the people are waiting for the process of "purging" the Council of Representatives. He denounces acts of terrorism in all Iraqi areas because "they target innocent people." He adds that "these people care less about confronting the occupation, but their main concern is to fragment the Iraqis. We laud the Iraqis' patience, steadfastness, and endurance." Speaking about acts of violence in Iraq, an unidentified preacher at an unidentified mosque says: "You can see these successive incidents. If you look right, you will see the shedding of a pure and inviolable blood by a booby-trapped car, an explosive belt, a bomb, or a bullet. Regrettably, this killing, shedding of blood, and the taking of human life, which is honored by God, most of the time take place in the name of Islam." Speaking about the security plan, Shaykh Hasan al-Zamili, imam and preacher of the Al-Diwaniyah Mosque, says: "You have heard about the large number of terrorists who were killed or arrested. You have also heard about the weapons, ammunition, and the booby-trapped cars. During the first days of the security plan, they began a fierce campaign with booby-trapped cars, bombs, explosive belts, and rockets. There was support for this by the hostile media with the aim of aborting and foiling this security plan in any way." He adds: "The security plan, however, achieved a great success. Through this success, political successes have been achieved. They coincided with the success of the security plan. A political victory was achieved for Iraq and this government through the international conference. When this conference was announced, the same sides and personalities from inside and outside Iraq moved and wagered on foiling it." Al-Baghdadiyah: Cairo Al-Baghdadiyah Satellite Television in Arabic.

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Kahl: The US Military and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq

Professor Colin Kahl of the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota shared the thoughts below on an email listserv and I thought them clear, concise and cogent and asked for permission to reprint here--which he kindly granted.

There is a lot of confusion about precisely what approach to COIN [counter-insurgency] the U.S. military has pursued since the fall of Saddam's regime. . . Part of the problem in generalizing about U.S. COIN in Iraq is that the approach the U.S. military has taken to COIN has varied by region and commander, and changed over time. That said, at the broadest level of generality, I think U.S. COIN efforts can be usefully divided into 4 phases. Phase 1: Denial. This period lasted from the fall of the regime until April 2004. During this time, DoD civilians and some within the military denied that there was an insurgency or, if there was one, that it was growing in support and lethality. CJTF-7 under Sanchez had no campaign plan to conduct successful COIN ops, and division, brigade, and battalion commanders were left to "wing it" in their areas of responsibility. Some made attempts to engage and provide security for the population, like the 101st under Petraeus in Mosul (and, to a lesser degree, the 1st AD in Baghdad under Dempsey), while others, like the 4th ID under Odierno (and, to a lesser degree, the 82nd Airborne out west under Swannack) used overly aggressive, enemy-centered search-and-destroy tactics that proved counterproductive and alienated the Iraqi population in their areas. Denial began to erode from the late summer of 2003 (after the bombing of the UN and the substantial uptick in insurgent attacks), but it lingered until the simultaneous Fallujah and Sadr uprising happened in April 2004. Phase 2: Learning curve. From the spring of 2004 to the late summer of 2005, the U.S. military woke up to the seriousness of the insurgency. CJTF-7 was replaced by MNF-I/MNC-I, a COIN campaign plan was finally developed, efforts were made to rapidly rebuild the Iraqi Security Forces, and American units employed a mix of direct, harder approaches (e.g., the Marines in Fallujah -- but note: the Marines originally intended to adopt a softer approach, but after the butchering of four contractors in Fallujah in late March 2004, they were overruled and forced by the White House to lay siege to the city), and indirect, softer approaches (e.g., Task Force Baghdad under Chiarelli and the 1st Cav). Overall, however, the U.S. approach to COIN during this period was still overwhelmingly enemy-centric/search-and-destroy/kill-capture. Only in 2005 does the military appear to really start systematically learning from its mistakes (and some successes), gradually figuring out that the Iraqi population is the center of gravity. Phase 3: Getting it. By the late summer and early fall of 2005, the mindset of the U.S. military had changed substantially. Training back home was being altered, education revamped, doctrine reworked, etc. In Iraq, the U.S. military began to move gradually to focus more on the Iraqi population and indirect, less-kinetic approaches to COIN. The poster child for this shift was Tal Afar in September 2005, but similar approaches were taken in Anbar, especially by the joint Marine-Army task force in Ramadi, in 2006. Still, despite some limited efforts to implement this new approach in a handful of areas and the November 2005 announcement by the White House of a new “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” designed around the intent to “clear, hold, and build” Iraqi population centers, the ability to effectively implement these changes in much of the country was complicated by a number of factors. First, beginning in 2004, an effort was made to reduce the American military footprint by removing smaller bases within many Iraqi cities and villages and consolidating into larger Forward Operating Bases in outlying areas. The goal was to lessen the perception of occupation thought to be driving the Sunni insurgency while also improving force protection. The military’s conceptual shift to population security failed to reverse this process. Throughout 2006, most American forces remained hunkered down in large bases rather than nested within communities to provide local security, and plans were made to consolidate forces further. Second, insufficient troop levels devoted to the “hold” portion of the administration’s strategy also thwarted implementation. For political reasons, the Bush administration had long resisted sending more troops to Iraq. At the same time, knowing that a large influx of U.S. forces was politically untenable and that pressure was building for withdrawal, Casey and Abizaid increasingly focused on substituting American forces with Iraqi ones. Iraqi army and police units were thus given the responsibility of providing local security in areas cleared by American forces. Indeed, coterminous with the administration’s announced intent to shift toward population security was a determination to hand ever larger swaths of Iraq over to Iraqi Security Forces, and significant U.S. force reductions in Iraq were expected by 2007-2008. But, due to a mix of incompetence and infiltration by insurgent and militia groups, Iraq’s fledgling security forces were not up to the task. The resulting security vacuum, especially in Baghdad, accelerated the action-reaction spiral between Sunni insurgents and Shia militias that tipped Iraq into all-out sectarian warfare in the spring of 2006. Phase 4: Doing it. None of this changed until January 2007, when Bush announced his intention to “surge” 17,500 additional forces to Baghdad (and 4,000 more to Anbar). More support troops have since been tapped to also go to Iraq. But, it is vital to remember, the surge is not the strategy -- it is a means to implement a strategy. The strategy is to to provide actual population security, tamp down sectarian violence, and create space for national reconciliation and reconstruction. To implement this strategy, Bush replaced Casey with Petraeus, who appears committed to implementing the COIN manual he co-sponsored, spreading American troops out into smaller bases from which they can work with Iraqi forces to provide local security. Moreover, even Odierno, the new MNC-I commander, appears to have learned something from his early mistakes, and he seems to be committed to treating the Iraqi population as the focus of operations. . . . This shift makes sense from the perspective of COIN best practices and the new COIN field manual. There are other successful approaches to COIN, including what the briefing calls "the Roman Strategy" ("make a desert and call it peace"), which was basically the approach Saddam used to prevent sustained insurgency in Iraq. But, as the briefing properly notes, adopting this approach (or even somewhat softer, but still highly coercive COIN practices, such as those used by the Americans effectively in the Philippines between 1899-1902), is incompatible with norms against targeting civilians embraced by the U.S. military and political leadership. So, with the Roman strategy off the table, that leaves the "clear, hold, and build" option. However, as the briefing makes clear, this strategic shift may simply be too little, too late. What the briefing doesn't say is that it is also unclear whether employing COIN best practices will work in the context of not only a raging insurgency (in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala), but also a sectarian civil war (in Baghdad, Diyala, and increasingly Kirkuk), diffuse criminal anarchy and militia rivalry (in the South), and endemic separatist tendencies (in Kurdistan). . . Colin Kahl

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6 US Troops Killed, 8 Injured or Sickened
Chlorine Poison Gas attacks Kill 8, Sicken 350
Thousands Protest War on 4th Anniversary

6 US troops were announced killed on Saturday. Guerrillas killed 4 with a roadside bomb in west Baghdad, wounding one other and then shooting and injuring a sixth.

Another 6 US troops were sickened in chlorine poisonous gas attacks launched by guerrillas in western Iraq late on Friday. The three chlorine truck bombs, detonated near Falluja and Ramadi less than an hour apart, killed 8 Iraqis and sickened an estimated 350 persons, including 27 children.

Baghdad police found 19 bodies in the street on Saturday.

Militiamen blew up a Sunni mosque in Dora, once a mixed district from which most Shiites have been expelled. There were several other bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country. In the southern Shiite city of Hilla, guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb to kill one and wound 5 in an attack on the Scorpion Brigade of the special police commandos of the Ministry of the Interior. (This force is dominated by the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI], trained originally in Iran.) Al-Hayat blamed the Mahdi Army for the attack, suggesting an ongoing rivalry between the Sadrists and local police, most of which are infiltrated by Badr.

Thousands protested the Iraq War in Washington DC and other cities on Saturday, kicking off rallies expected to last through Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war.

Thousands of followers of Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated on Friday against the new security plan, and one of his lieutenants read out a message calling for non-cooperation with the United States. This was not, as some reports suggest, a call to arms. Muqtada knows that his Mahdi Army cannot fight the US military in a conventional, head-on way. He has only called for such almost suicidal missions when he felt that his own life and the survival of his movement were put in danger by US officials determined to kill him, as in April-May, 2004. Muqtada has ordered his militiamen not to violently confront the US, as WaPo pointed out. Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Muqtada said in his statement that the people of Sadr City (Shiite East Baghdad) should decline to cooperate with the US because its forces "are trying to besmirch its reputation by upholding false allegations and rumors that there are negotiations and cooperation between you and them." He added, "I am sure that you consider them your enemies . . . for the enemy of God is inevitably your enemy." It sounds to me as though Muqtada is embarrassed about the degree of cooperation recently between his movement and the US, and he wants at least publicly to distance himself from the US and the security plan, without having to do more than issue a communique.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Thamir Abd al-Amir, a member of parliament representing the Sadr Movement, threatened Saturday to bring down the al-Maliki government [i.e. by withdrawing from his parliamentary coalition] if the pressures continued to implement plans to build a US base in largely Shiite Sadr City.

Al-Maliki's coalition has already witnessed the formal withdrawal of the Islamic Virtue Party (or Fadhila: 15 seats of 275), which also controls Basra. Al-Maliki's government is tottering. AP reported this week that Prime Minister al-Maliki fears he will be unseated this summer via American pressure if the Iraqi parliament does not by then pass the new oil bill into law. Just a hint to US authorities: having a tottering government or the undemocratic installation of a foreign-backed one is unhelpful to any serious security plan.

Al-Hayat also says that Ammar al-Hakim, the son of Shiite clerical leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of SCIRI, called on Saturday for limitations on the prerogatives of American forces in Iraq, to forestall violations of Iraq's sovereignty. He said at a gathering in Najaf, "We have to have a security agreement specifying the powers of every unit . . . foreign forces must not enjoy absolute prerogatives, since that would detract from our sovereignty." He also called for "the speedy release of all detainees against whom there is no evidence of wrongdoing, since leaving thousands imprisoned is unacceptable."

Karbala News.net reports from Radio Sawa that the "Islamic State of Iraq" now controls much of Diyala Province, and that families that reject the fundamentalist Sunni movement have been forced to flee.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: the Plame Affair

Valerie Plame Wilson, whose career Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted destroyed in a fit of pique, was finally allowed to testify before Congress on Friday. Some in the blogosphere are arguing that the outing of Plame Wilson was an impeachable offense.

Defenders of Rove and Cheney say that if they did not know that Valerie Plame Wilson was an undercover operative, then they did not break the law by trying to out her. But first of all, as high officials of the US government, they had a responsibility to excercise prudence in this regard. The "reasonably prudent person" is always invoked in tort trials, why not in national security affairs? Can anyone argue that Rove and Cheney were being prudent in their actions? Shouldn't they have to be to stay in office?

Moreover, they did know that Plame Wilson was involved in counter-proliferation efforts, including against Iran. By leaking her name with the intent that journalists such as Judy Miller publish it, they were conveying information about a CIA operation to Iran. That is high treason, even if they did not know she was covert. All they had to know is that she was trying to impede Iran's nuclear program, and that the Iranians did not know that that was what she was doing. You can't make her public without also letting the Iranians know. Here is what the Constitution says:

Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

It aided and comforted Iran to know that Valerie Plame Wilson and her dummy CIA corporation, Brewster Jennings & Associates, had been engaged in counter-proliferation efforts against it. Bush put Iran in the Axis of Evil, thus declaring it an enemy of the US.

Therefore, Rove and Cheney (and maybe Bush himself) gave aid and comfort to an enemy of these United States by a deliberate act of outing a CIA operative who was not known to Iran and whose cover and activities had not been.

That's treason. That warrants impeachment.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

AIPAC Cool to Cheney

Responding to this IC posting, Ron Kampea kindly writes:

I was one of the reporters noting the relatively cool reception for Cheney's remarks, an impression I confirmed later in extensive conversations at the conference. (Similar accounts appeared in Ha'aretz, the Forward and the Jerusalem Post.) There were whole chunks of the Iraq portion of Cheney's Iraq speech that were met with silence - even the clear applause cues. And those portions that were applauded never got even half the hall; I saw most of the hall seated, arms crossed at those times. The boos for Pelosi, by the way, came AFTER she got cheered for her call for a withdrawal. I.e. applause, cheers and then a few scattered boos. The cheers for Pelosi's Iraq withdrawal call, it must be said, were basically polite - not at all overwhelming; but the boos were even weaker . . . Here are the links, if you're still interested in adding them. Here and here. I don't think the CNN correspondent as you say "did not see it that way." She seems, rather, the victim of poor editing: Cheney certainly got unadulterated cheers for his comments supporting Israel; that's what she seems to be saying in her final graf: Cheney's remarks were met with hearty applause from members of the committee, a pro-Israeli lobbying group. The vice president emphasized President Bush's ties to the Jewish nation, saying Israel has never had a stronger supporter in the White House. Ron Kampeas Washington bureau chief JTA The Jewish Telegraphic Agency

For another examination of differences within the Jewish community over issues like military aggression toward Iran, see this piece in the American Conservative. The article looks at the emerging liberal Jewish blogosphere that is unafraid to acknowledge and challenge the influence of the Israel lobby.

37% of American Jews don't feel a strong connection to Israel, and many are uncomfortable with Israeli policies such as Alison Weir reveals on Israeli strip-searches of Palestinian women and children.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

16,000 Detainees in Coalition Hands
Iraqi Shiites attempt to Regroup

11 detainees in a British jail in south Iraq exchanged clothing with their visitors and escaped.

Ed Wong at NYT has an excellent piece on Iranian economic relations with Iraq. Every politician who talks about "limiting Iranian influence" in Iraq should read this article first.

Nothing better exemplifies the slave-like conditions of statelessness faced by Palestinian refugees from Israeli conquests of their land than the plight of Palestinians in Iraq. Reuters calls their situation a catch-22.

Reuters reports that the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite fundamentalist parties, is regrouping after the defection from its ranks of the small Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila), which has 15 seats in parliament. UIA spokesmen seemed confident that the rest of the party would hold together. It groups the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Islamic Call (Da'wa) Party of PM Nuri al-Maliki, the Sadrists, the Islamic Action Council of Ayatollah Mudarrisi, and some Shiite independents. This article's optimistic tone is strange given that al-Maliki has announced that he will purge his cabinet of 5 of the 6 Sadrist ministers, and that the Sadrist bloc in parliament, 32 members strong, have threatened to withdraw from his coalition if he does so. Al-Maliki stays in power, in the case, only because of Kurdish backing. If the UIA breaks up, and if the Kurds change their minds, Iyad Allawi is waiting in the wings to take over Iraq. An ex-Baathist secularist who criticizes Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and has bad relations with Iran, Allawi is alluring to the Bush administration. But cutting the majority Shiites out of power would certainly accelerate their move toward a provincial confederacy in the south and could cause turmoil and break up the country.

Walter Pincus at WaPo says that the US is planning to take a lot of prisoners in Iraq over the next few months.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Iraqi government sources admit that the United States and Britian hold 16,000 prisoners in Iraq, and that the Ministry of the Interior has a further 50,000 detainees, many of them arrested in the past month or so as part of the new security plan. Al-Zaman maintains that most of these arrests are arbitrary, based on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization, and are extra-judicial. The Iraqi judiciary is not consulted because the Iraqi government has declared a state of emergency. The detainees have no right to a lawyer.

Police found 9 bodies in Baghdad on Friday. Mortar fire and militia clashes affected some districts. There was a bombing in Kirkuk.

Someone sent me a link for a Barack Obama wiki.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Senate Republicans Defeat Iraq Withdrawal Timetable;
5 US Troops Killed

5 US GIs were announced killed on Thursday. Militiamen or guerrillas killed 4 with a bomb as they were returning from Sadr City (Shiite East Baghdad). Another had been killed on Wednesday by Sunni Arab guerrillas in al-Anbar Province.

Police found 20 bodies in the streets of Baghdad. Rahim Darraji, the Sadrist mayor of a district of Sadr City, was attacked and wounded. He had been an advocate of Shiite cooperation with the present security plan. Another bombing, in Karrada, killed at least 8 persons; it was apparently targeting Sabir al-Issawi, head of the Baghdad city council, and was probably the work of Sunni Arab guerrillas.

Guerrillas detonated a bomb at a checkpoint in Iskandariya just south of Baghdad, killing 4 and wounding 24. McClatchy reports on killings in Diyala Province, including the killing of 5 policemen in the city of Kanaan.

An Iraqi poll of Baghdad residents done in February shows that only 34 percent approve of the job Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is doing. Only 32 percent say that their neighborhoods are secure. Only 3 percent said security had improved in the previous three months, and only 10 percent had any hope it would in the coming months. 26 percent believe that sectarian militias make them safer, down a bit from September. A US military spokesman admitted that these poll numbers are "bad."

Senate Republicans defeated a bid by Democrats to legislate a withdrawal deadline for US troops in Iraq, of August, 2008. One Republican voted with the Democrats, while two Democrats and Joe Lieberman voted with the Republicans. If the American public really wants US troops out of Iraq, as they keep telling the pollsters, then obviously they will have to turn out some more Republicans from high office, in the Senate and the White House, in 2008.

A Pentagon report finally admits that some aspects of a civil war are present in Iraq. This US News and World Report article goes on to say that inflation is running 50 percent, that Baghdad residents are only getting 6 hours of electricity a day, that unemployment may be as high as 60 percent, that only 16 percent say that their income meets their basic needs, and that 9,000 Iraqis are fleeing the country each month. I wouldn't place too much importance on the decline in the number of "attacks." The Lancet study found that only 13 percent of violent deaths in Iraq are from bombings. Most of those killed are just shot, and I don't think shootings of individuals are counted under the rubric of "attacks."

Anthony Cordesman has concluded that the US is unlikely to achieve its stated goals in Iraq and that as time goes on, Iraqi domestic political actors and considerations will be more important for the outcome than US policy.

Hannah Allam of McClatchy on what a trip to Baghdad tells you about the situation of the country.

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that some residents of Nasiriya staged a demonstration Thursday, demanding that those who fill government jobs, including police, be scrutinized as to whether they hold higher degrees, and if so, the latter should be privileged, they said.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Clinton Would Keep Troops in Iraq

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that she would keep some US troops in Iraq to fight al-Qaeda, curb Iranian influence, protect the Kurds and assist the Iraqi military.

The elements of this plan will not work or are unnecessary.

1. The Kurds don't need protecting. Their Peshmerga military, 60,000 to 100,000 strong and well trained and armed, is the best indigenous fighting force in Iraq. There is almost no violence in the territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government, precisely because the Peshmerga are so good. There are almost no US troops up north because even now they are not needed.

2. There is no al-Qaeda in Iraq in the technical sense of the word, of fighters who have sworn fealty to Usama Bin Laden. There are a small number, probably less than a thousand, of foreign volunteers fighting in the country, mainly from other Arab states but also from Europe. They are mostly Salafi Jihadis (revivalist militants) and act as adjuncts to local Iraqi guerrilla cells, all of which are much bigger and more important. They are there to fight US occupation and would probably just go home if it ended. If peace was made with the Iraqi Sunnis, the Iraqis themselves would expel or slit the throats of the foreigners. If peace isn't made with them, they'll keep giving the foreign volunteers cars rigged up with bombs to go detonate. Either way, the US military cannot fight "al-Qaeda" in Iraq in isolation from the struggle against the Sunni Arabs. And, a small force such as she is proposing would be massacred in al-Anbar Province if there were still hostilities with the Sunni Arabs in general.

3. There are no Iranian units in Iraq. There are no Iranian prisoners to speak of in US custody in Iraq, even though 12,000 prisoners are being detained. The US did arrest a handful of Iranians deputed to the compound of Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and to Irbil, the power base of Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani. These Iranians were there at Iraqi invitation. The US can only interfere here because it has a big force in the country. A small US military force could do nothing whatsoever about Iranian influence in Shiite Iraq, especially in the face of Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish desire for such cooperation. There will be millions of pilgrims coming back and forth, and they all can't be monitored. The major Shiite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is tightly linked with Tehran even while being among the main US allies. Small US units trying to take on Iranians in the Shiite south would risk being massacred by thousands of angry Iraqi Shiites.

4. Leaving small numbers of US troops in Iraq to assist the Iraqi military over the short term might be desirable and might be practicable, though I've been advised that it might not work. Over the medium to long term it would be most unwise because it would set up a strong risk of the US being pulled back into the civil war. What if you put a US company in with an Iraqi battalion, and the whole unit was ambushed by Sunni Arab guerrillas and many US troops killed? Either you let them get away with it, which is an invitation for them strike again at other US troops. Or you retaliate, which means putting more US units in for a retaliatory operation.

5. Small units of US troops are not going to agree to stay in Iraq because they will lack security. Only a big army in the country can provide that security. If US troops are captured, who will rescue them and how, if we have gotten most of the military out?

6. Some day Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is going to get up in the morning and give a fatwa or formal legal ruling that there must be no foreign troops stationed on Iraqi soil. When that happens, the US will not be able to stay in Iraq. It will be over with.

I have great respect for Senator Clinton and say all this only because I think her statements show she is getting bad and unrealistic advice on this matter, possibly from powerful lobbies, and fear that she may become attached to a set of policies that make no sense in the context of the really existing Iraq.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

4 US Troops Killed, 9 Wounded
1993 WTC Attack was al-Qaeda, not Saddam

A lot of commentators will note that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad has admitted that he planned out the 9/11 attacks. What they will miss is that he claimed the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as his idea, as well, and as an al-Qaeda operation. Remember that Paul Wolfowitz, following the frankly kookie Laurie Mylroie, blamed Saddam Hussein for the 1993 bombing. Wolfowitz was then the number 2 man in the Pentagon and enormously influential. His conviction that Bin Laden was "one little man" and that 9/11 had to have had a state sponsor (i.e. Iraq) helped drive us into the current quagmire. Wolfowitz was wrong, dead wrong. Has he ever admitted it? Should someone so wrong on so much really be heading the World Bank?

The senate has brought to the floor a proposal that would gradually bring US troops out of Iraq. Republicans are confident that they can still defeat it.

The deaths of 4 US GIs were announced Wednesday, with 3 killed in Diyala Province and 9 wounded.

In the northern Turkmen and Kurdish city of Tuz Khurmato, guerrillas set off a bomb that killed 10 and wounded 15.

4 decapitated bodies were found in Baquba, the provincial capital of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad. In Iskandariya, guerrillas blew up a mosque. Police found 16 bodies in the streets of Baghdad. There were scattered bombings and shootings around the country.

Rolling Stone does a piece that quotes me and others on the situation in Iraq and the best and worst scenarios.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunni Arab Member of Parliament Criticizes al-Maliki Government

The USG Open Source Center carries a translation of remarks of Khalaf al-Ulayyan, a member of parliament from the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front, made in Amman recently. Al-Ulayyan implies a conspiracy by the al-Maliki government to expel several Sunni Arab members of parliament on the grounds that they are related to the insurgency. He complains that the Shiites of Sadr City in East Baghdad are being treated by the Americans with kid gloves, while the Sunni Arabs are facing a harsh crackdown. Sunni Arabs such as al-Ulayyan are the ones who declared themselves willing to participate in a government under American Occupation, and if even they are this bitter, imagine what the ordinary Sunni Arabs are thinking!

Iraqi Sunni MP Al-Ulayyan Criticizes Government, US Policy, Denounces Al-Qa'ida "Exclusive Interview" program, featuring an interview with Khalaf al-Ulayyan, an Iraqi Sunni politician, by an unidentified correspondent in Amman, Jordan; date not given -- recorded Iraq -- OSC Summary Wednesday, March 14, 2007 The Iraqi Al-Zawra Television in Arabic at 2315 GMT on 11 March carries a recorded interview with Khalaf al-Ulayyan, member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives on the Al-Tawafuq (Accord) Front list, from its "Exclusive Interview" program, by an unseen correspondent who is heard to make a few, mostly indistinct, remarks during Al-Ulayyan's 40-minute uninterrupted but edited monolog. The interview takes place in Amman, Jordan. The date of the interview is not specified. Al-Ulayyan accuses the Government of trying to gain time by impeding the security plan. "They want to gain time to evict and kill the largest possible number of Sunnis, especially in the Baghdad Governorate," he claims, adding: "They dissolved Al-Mahdi Army before the implementation of the plan and asked the Al-Mahdi Army not to take up arms against US forces." He says the government has absorbed them into the National Guard, the Interior Ministry storm troopers, or law enforcement personnel. He says that "top Al-Mahdi Army commanders" were smuggled outside Iraq to keep them from being arrested or killed, and notes that there was "an order to that effect signed by the prime minister himself and was displayed on space channels and on the Internet." He argues that the US forces go to the Al-Sadr city but they do not encounter any resistance. He says they announce on television that "the US and government forces will be storming the Al-Sadr City to search for concealed arms," noting that this is a warning to them to be on their guard. He says once they hear such warning, they will conceal their arms or bury them and the wanted people will escape. Al-Ulayyan asks: "Why do they not do that in our areas? Why do they not say that they will storm Al-A'zamiah neighborhood? Why do they not say that they plan to storm Al-Khadra or Al-Ghazaliyah neighborhoods?" Al-Ulayyan says: "I do not only speak against the government abroad. When I was at home I addressed numerous news conferences and spoke to the media and in parliament and at the Council of Ministers in front of the prime minister. I speak frankly on these issues and I fear only Almighty God. "I am now outside Iraq because I underwent a surgical operation on my knees three months ago. I am undergoing physiotherapy in Jordan because it would be difficult to do that in Iraq. I was supposed to continue my therapy in Dubai but for private reasons I wanted to stay in Amman. There are doctors and daily physiotherapy sessions and I will complete this soon and return to my country even if they want to arrest or kill me. I was exposed to more than one assassination attempt but Almighty God saved me. I do not fear such things. If I die it will be an honor and if I survive we will work for the truth, for what satisfies God and serves our country." He speaks of rumors about threats, which he says are "either genuine or are aimed at preventing him from returning to Iraq." He adds: "I am a member of parliament and I enjoy immunity. They cannot arrest me unless they have an approval from parliament. However, they have their own methods. A few days ago, they issued an arrest warrant ordering the detention of Dr Adnan al-Dulaymi at the airport. We learned about it before Adnan arrived at the airport. I personally contacted the US embassy and Vice President Dr Tariq al-Hashimi and many other sides in Iraq, and I told them the news. When they learned that we knew about this, they said that they did not mean to arrest Adnan but his son, who they say backs terrorism. This is a lie. They wanted to arrest Dr al-Dulaymi. They wanted to arrest him first and then they would kill him and throw his body in the street and blame the militias, the terrorists, or the Saddamists, as they would say. That is what they would do to me and others. They would arrest members of parliament without the approval of parliament and then they kill them and claim that they did not know the killers. They would denounce the killings and they even might mourn for the victims." Al-Ulayyan says the Iraqi resistance is an honor to every Iraqi. He says that "when the Iraqi state collapsed in such a short time, we were ashamed and I could not appear in public because I was ashamed." He says the Iraqi resistance restored the honor of the Iraqis. He says he is prepared to offer everything to the resistance, adding: "The Iraqi resistance that fights the occupation, that defends the Iraqis, and that does not shed the blood of the Iraqis is the real resistance. We do not recognize terrorism that kills the Iraqis -- Shiites, Sunnis, or others -- and we do not consider it Iraqi resistance. "The ordinary citizen must understand that the acts that are aimed to realize his interests are acts of resistance but acts that are directed at him cannot be considered acts of resistance. They are perpetrated by those are backed by the occupation, regional states, others inside the government, or other hostile sides with the aim of igniting inter-Iraqi trouble or tarnish the image of the resistance." Al-Ulayyan says that many organizations were formed to ignite internal fighting and "the government might not know about them." He adds: "As far as I know, whenever the Americans arrested some of them, they would release them a few hours later. Therefore, there are may sides that want to tarnish the image of the Iraqi resistance. Indeed, an Iraqi is not interested in killing another Iraqi." Al-Ulayyan says: "In Baghdad for instance, we are trying not to let the resistance or the ordinary citizen attack US forces. We feel that the US forces extend some form of security to us. When the Iraqi forces arrive in an areas, they violate the inviolable; they kill, steal, and violate the honor of women, but the Americans do not do that at least. Therefore, the citizen tries not to attack US forces because he seeks protection from them against the government, which is supposed to protect the citizen. Therefore, this is in the interest of the occupation forces." He notes that they want to prolong these conditions. Al-Ulayyan says that a man in the Interior Ministry, Ahmad al-Muhandis, who is an Iranian by origin, used to back the death squads. The Interior Ministry Under Secretary Adnan al-Asadi also supports the death squads and directly supervises them. The Interior Minister also directly supervises the death squads." Al-Ulayyan says: "Therefore the government participates in these attacks, in backing the death squads and the militias. I have evidence to prove that the government forces shed their uniforms, put on black clothes and attack Sunni areas to kill and loot in the name of the Al-Mahdi Army before they take off these clothes and wear their formal uniforms and appear in the streets as deliverers. "At the beginning, we used to welcome the mujahidin from aboard, from the Arab countries, as brothers who came to save us and help us to pass through this ordeal and resist the occupation. Therefore, we respected and loved them. We extended assistance to them." Al-Ulayyan says that three years ago, he and "others, including Mahmud al-Mashhadani" met with a US general. He cites a "mediator," who arranged the meeting, as pointing out in introductory remarks that the meeting would be for introduction and that other meetings would be held in the future. He cites the general as having said that he would meet with politicians but not with terrorists. Al-Ulayyan says that he objected to the general's remarks, pointing out that the resistance cannot be described as terrorism. He says the general immediately stood up and apologized, saying that "I do not mean the Iraqi resistance but the terrorists who arrived from abroad." Al-Ulayyan says that he again told the general that these came to help the Iraqis and they are on the same level as the Iraqi resistance. Al-Ulayyan notes that no other meetings "with the mujahidin" were held. He says: "Apparently their strategy changed after they became a force. Al-Qa'ida Organization in Iraq took another course, contrary to what people understand; namely, that it is a jihad force aimed at establishing an Islamic state and end the occupation. Al-Qa'ida directed their attacks particularly at the Sunnis. They started to kill the noble and honorable tribal chiefs, who were not collaborators. They started to kill the resistance leaders, those who participate in the political process, the former army personnel, and the pilots who participated in the war against Iran. Al-Qa'ida killed Staff Major General Pilot Khalil Abd al-Fuhaydawi in the Hadithah area the same day Iran celebrated the killing of the last Iraqi pilot to participate in the Kharg Island bombing. Who told Iran about that?" Al-Ulayyan questions Al-Qa'ida behavior and says that they killed his brother "who had nothing to do with politics and never occupied any position. He was a 63-years old handicapped man." He also says they also killed two of his cousins, one of whom "was a mujahid who fought the occupation from the first day, memorized the Koran, and was a religious man, a fundamentalist, and with a bread to boot." He says they made ordinary Iraqis displeased with the Iraqi resistance. He tells a story that relates how Al-Qa'ida men entered school and killed a teacher "in the way a sheep is slaughtered," and some students were "dumbfounded, unable to speak for days as a result of horror." He says: "Therefore, we started to view this group with suspicion after we had been proud of it as a mujahid Muslim Arab force." He says that he opposes the federation of Iraq but Al-Qa'ida has divided Iraq by declaring an "Islamic state in the Sunni governorates -- Mosul, Al-Anbar, Salah al-Din, part of Diyala, and part of Baghdad." He argues that this was "what others wanted, what Iran and the occupation wanted." He says this is much worse than the federation. Al-Ulayyan further says the Al-Qa'ida members kill anyone who does not owe allegiance to them and "they killed many Iraqi fighters" most of whom were salafis (fundamentalists), not from the Ba'thists. He says: "There is no home in Al-Anbar that was not harmed by Al-Qa'ida exactly as it was harmed by the Americans." He says they are shelling areas with mortars, killing women and children. He says many from his own tribe were killed by Al-Qa'ida and "I do not believe that there is anyone in Iraq that supports Al-Qa'ida any longer." He says he knows many "despicable Iraqis" who cooperated with the Al-Qa'ida "for many reasons," noting that many Iraqis would like to resist the occupation but because other groups no longer have material resources to fight and recruit fighters, they go to the Al-Qa'ida and join it because of "its huge resources." He says that these people are now grumbling but they cannot abandon Al-Qa'ida for fear that they might be killed by other Al-Qa'ida members. Al-Ulayyan says that his aim is just to solve Iraq's problems, spare people's blood, and rebuild Iraq, and "that is why we participated in the political process," but "if we do not find a solution we will take up arms." He hopes that God will eventually guide Al-Qa'ida, "otherwise the Iraqis will one day take up arms, no matter what the cost, to fight Al-Qa'ida as they are fighting the occupation forces." Al-Ulayyan speaks of a visit to Iraq by President Bush during which he met with representatives of political blocs. He says: "I was told to come to represent the Al-Tawafuq Front. I arrived at the meeting and I found Dr Iyad Allawi, Dr Roz Nuri Shawis from the Kurdish Bloc, and Shaykh Imam Hammudi from the Iraqi National Coalition. All spoke and praised Bush and the US forces, which they said saved Iraq from dictatorship and realized security, stability, construction. I was astounded. I was surprised that Bush should have listened to them because what they said was not true. Where is the security, stability, and reconstruction? When I talked, I denied everything they said. I told President Bush: You made many promises but you failed to fulfill any of these promises." Al-Ulayyan says that he told Bush that when he was an army officer, he had hoped to go to the United States to do some military training but adds that after the occupation, he found that the US soldier "was a savage person who does not know the meaning of humanity, who violates honors, loots, and kills innocent people." He says that he told Bush: "We have discovered that you are only cowboys, and no more." He says he told Bush that the Americans imposed "the worst constitution" on the Iraqis, and that the elections were forged "by US admission because they said that they impounded seven trucks laden with ballot papers during election time and said that there were some other similar trucks but could not apprehend them." He says that such elections should have been canceled. He says he told bush: "You promised to install a nationalist government but you installed a sectarian government with quotas, devoid of patriotism or professionalism, and therefore, we now consider you liars because you did not fulfill any of your promises." He says he told Bush that he handed Iraq to Iran "on a silver platter because there is now an Iranian occupation covered by US occupation, from Baghdad to the Al-Faw Peninsula." He says that Bush thanked him for "his utter frankness." He says that he also told bush that the Iraqis would like to know what the United States wanted from Iraq. He says that Bush told him that the Americans wanted to withdraw from Iraq the moment Iraq was "capable of standing on its own feet," and "we want to leave Iraq as soon as possible." Al-Ulayyan adds that, judging but what we can see, these claims are not true. He argues that the conditions under Al-Maliki are the worst in Iraqi history. He says the government "is exploiting the embarrassment of the United States and President Bush to promote its interests by directing the security plan against Sunni areas and implementing its plans." Al-Ulayyan also talks about a meeting secretary Rice held with Iraqi politicians, noting that he told Rice that the Iraqi people are killing American soldiers because they came "as occupiers" of the country that has "one of the most ancient civilizations" in history. He says he told her: "If the Iraqis do not kill US soldiers, then you must rightly say that the Iraqi people are despicable and they do not deserve respect and appreciation." He says the Iraqis are aware of the atrocities that the "Americans perpetrated in Iraq." He says the Iraqis cannot decide their fate by themselves "because there is no balance among the various Iraqi components." He asks the Arab countries to intervene and threaten to use military force "because Iraq is an Arab country, the crown and the spearhead of the Arab nation." He also speaks of the "Iranian threat to the entire Gulf region." Al-Ulayyan finally greets the Iraqi people and urges them to cooperate to spare their own blood, noting that the Iraqi resistance must change its strategy because there are many enemies apart from the US occupation. He says that "they must cooperate with the other political blocs in drawing up a unified action plan." Al-Ulayyan also greets the Al-Zawra Television channel and hopes it will continue to be a channel of resistance, by word and deed.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

IC Parodic News Edition

Note to the humor impaired: Satire follows.

Item: US petroleum company Halliburton, which received billions of dollars in no-bid contracts from the Bush administration for work in Iraq, is moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai.

In other news, Vice President Dick Cheney announced Wednesday that he would be moving the Vice President's offices to Dubai, as well. "I'm under way too much scrutiny to risk living in the Naval Observatory much longer," he told reporters at a press conference held in the Ski Dubai Indoor Resort. "Besides, most of my marching orders come from Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, and the local oil sheikhs, and think how much I'll save on long distance calls."

Item: Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the Army surgeon general has been forced to resign and take early retirement because of the poor facilities for treating wounded US veterans at Walter Reed Hospital.

In other news, Army chief of staff General Peter Schoomaker announced today that he would resign and take early retirement for going along with President George W. Bush's illegal and disastrous war against Iraq that has killed and wounded 24,000 US troops. Schoomaker told the Washington press corps, "If Kiley had to resign for not making sure the wounded vets got the best health care, it seemed only right that someone resign for getting their legs blown off in the first place. I mean, it is not as if Iraq posed a danger to the United States, and that would really be the only justifiable reason for sending our young people into harm's way. As it is, they're quadraplegics for Big Oil, and that just is not right. I'm out of here."

Item: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales presided over the firing of 8 federal attorneys, apparently for political reasons. His chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, has resigned over the scandal. The attorney general maintained that he presided over 130,000 employees and couldn't know everything that was going on. Senator Charles Schumer is threatening to subpoena Mr. Gonzales for an investigation.

In other news, Congress demanded that Mr. Gonzales resign for having authorized the use of torture in contravention of the US constitution and of the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is a signatory. "His influential memo led to the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib scandals that have forever besmirched the fair name of the United States," Senator Trent Lott lamented.

Item: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace said Wednesday that gay soldiers were immoral, thus insulting some of his own troops and those of British, Canadian and Australian allies (who do not labor under "don't ask, don't tell").

In other news, gay peacenik critics of the Iraq misadventure in San Francisco held a press conference to announce that they considered war immoral.

Item Israel is firing its ambassador to El Salvador, Tzuriel Refael, for having been found "drunk and naked apart from bondage gear. Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth. "

In other news, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted when pressed that Refael's masochism was widespread in the Israeli political class, and that it is the only explanation for which they refuse to stop stealing Palestinian land and decline to make peace with the Arabs. "Everyone was really scared when Abdullah of Saudi Arabia offered a comprehensive peace plan at Beirut in 2002," Olmert explained. "I mean, do you realize what it costs if you have to pay a dominatrix?"

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Hamudi: Iraqi Spies to be Placed in Embassies Abroad
AIPAC Boos Pelosi on Iraq Withdrawal

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi got booed at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee when she called for a US withdrawal from Iraq.

I don't have a link for it, but some journalists maintained that the audience at AIPAC was also cool to Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney's hawkish pronouncements.

Update: The articles noting coolness to Cheney's more hawkish pronouncements on Iraq are here and also here.

The CNN correspondent did not see it that way.

The Iraqi government is trying to expel nearly 4000 Iranian terrorist cultists, members of the People's Mojahedin (MEK). The Bush administration is using them the same way Saddam did, to spy on and make trouble for Iran, and has coddled them even though the State Department lists them as a terrorist organization. The MEK is highly disciplined and fairly wealthy and has corrupted a number of members of the US Congress.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited the Sunni Arab stronghold of Ramadi. Although the US press is describing Ramadi as pacified, I fear they are being overly optimistic. Al-Maliki flew there in a US military helicopter, and US troops stationed near there had imposed a curfew on the city that forbade citizens to circulate in the streets, just the day before. I.e. this photo-op visit is bogus and can only take place because the US military is managing it so as to produce an image of pacification.

There was recently a big demonstration in Ramadi against the US military for holding a local woman as a detainee. On March 4, I reported, "Huge Bomb at Ramadi Kills 12, Wounds 22." On February 27, I wrote: "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.' Etc., etc. The guerrillas who planned these operations out have not turned over a new leaf all of a sudden.

The US press is so busy looking for signs of improvement that they have already forgotten about the slaughter of hundreds of Shiite pilgrims just last week, and are interpreting the relative calm of Sunday and Monday as some sort of turning point. Unlikely.

In fact on Wednesday it was reported that police had found 17 bodies in the streets of Baghdad. A judge was assassinated in broad daylight. Guerrillas fired katyushas at the posh Karrada district. Militiamen shot 4 men at a Sunni mosque in the southern Risala district. In the northern city of Mosul, police found 4 bodies. There were scattered bombings and assassinations elsewhere in the country.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Iraqi parliamentarian Humam Hamudi said yesterday in London that the Iraqi government planned to put intelligence officers into its embassies abroad to gather information on networks that were recruiting volunteers to go fight jihad in Iraq.

Another MP, Sami al-Askari, said that parliamentary immunity would soon be stripped from a number of deputies in the national legislature, so that they could be investigated for ties to death squad activity. He said that this is at the request of PM Nuri al-Maliki.

Earlier this month, Iran had seemed to be willing to extend for another year permission to one million Afghan refugees to remain in that country. Now, al-Zaman is reporting in Arabic that Iran is thinking of expelling them, as a way of putting pressure on the Afghanistan government (and perhaps on the Bush administration?) Hawks in Washington most often forget how helpful Iran was to the US in Afghanistan, and do not realize how much mischief Iran could make there if pressed too hard.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Democrats Blink on Iran Restriction
Khatami Calls on Iran to Allay Western Fears

The Democrats are blinking and taking out of proposed legislation a provision that would have forbidden Bush to take military action against Iran without coming to the Congress first (i.e. without acting in accordance with the Constitution). I'm not sure why you need a statute, anyway, to ensure that the Constitution is followed . . . Except that it has been so long since presidents have paid much attention to the Constitution. The Imperial Presidency has overshadowed it, just as Emperor Augustus overshadowed the Roman Republic.

Those who said that such a provision would take the military option off the table with regard to Iran are simply wrong. It just required that the president make the case for a war to the legislature, which declares war. The option was still there if the legislature wanted it to be.

But after the Iraq fiasco it is amazing to me that Washington is still talking about going to war against Middle Eastern countries that pose no threat to the US mainland. The US got where it is after World War II by mostly avoiding direct military campaigns and occupations. The US does not have the resources to occupy two Middle Eastern oil states, and trying to do so will break it as surely as imperial overstretch broke its predecessors among the great powers. Those who think all this is good for Israel are being short-sighted. If the US spirals down into a non-entity over the next 30 years as a result of over-stretch, Israel will be left without a great power patron and might well not survive. The Europeans are fed up with its militarism and itchy trigger finger, and it hasn't made any friends in its own region.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on the US to keept its troops in Iraq for the time being and only exit "responsibly." He also egged the US on to confront Iran.

Iran hasn't threatened to attack Israel militarily, and in fact has denounced the killing of innocent civilians. The Iranian regime doesn't like what it calls the Zionist occupation regime, and hopes it will dissolve the way the Soviet Union did. But Tehran hasn't threatened an attack. Olmert's insinuations to the contrary are typical of rightwing Zionist propaganda, in which aggressive and expansionist intentions are always dressed up as defensive in nature.

Olmert--that great military genius--isn't someone Americans should be listening to on the subject of war. And, he should be careful in seeming to try to influence the US government to stay in Iraq, since such a stance is extremely unpopular and getting moreso over here. Sooner or later the American public is going to rebel against the hold that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has over the US Congress, especially if they think it is getting their children blown up halfway around the world.

Oh, and of course Olmert offered the US $3 billion a year to help defray the costs of the Iraq War, which he says is benefitting Israel. After all, the Saudis gave the US billions for the Gulf War in 1990-1991. But no, not really. Olmert isn't offering any actual help to the US of any sort. In fact, we're each being taxed personally to help pay for Olmert's creeping colonization of the West Bank and his vast land theft from the poor displaced Palestinians, which in turn provokes hatred of Americans and puts us in danger. So too does the American attempt to occupy militarily an Arab country like Iraq. If we don't get out of there soon, it will bring a horrible retribution on us.

In Iran, former President Mohammad Khatami urged the Iranian government to find a way of allaying North Atlantic fears over Iran's civilian nuclear research program, which Khatami said is not aimed at producing a bomb. He said he recognized legitimate concerns about all this in the West, but believed that they could be allayed if handled properly. Many Iranians are worried about UN Security Council sanctions, since they saw how such measures turned Iraq into a fourth world country in the 1990s. Khatami was president for 8 years and tried to reach out to the US and Europe, but was consistently blown off, including by Cheney in 2003.

One journalist estimates that just health care for the returned wounded US veterans of the Iraq War will come to $2.5 trillion.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Iraqi National List (secular nationalists) and the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fudnamentalists) have rejected the presentation of the draft oil bill to parliament. They insist that first the review and amendment of the constition must be accomplished, and then the oil law can be considered. I presume what is going on here is that these two lists reject the constitutional provisional for provinces to join together into provincial confederacies, and they want it taken out the of the constitution. And, they are holding up the oil law, which would benefit the Shiite government, as a form of blackmail. But if the Shiites and the Kurds together want to pass the oil bill into law, they don't need these two party lists, so the blackmail isn't actually likely to work.

Al-Zaman also reports on Vice Premier (Sunni) Salam al-Zawba'i's negotiations in Damascus over the status and treatment of the estimated 1.2 million Iraqi refugees in that country. Syria has recently been putting its foot down and demanding some international aid (i.e. what the political scientists call "rent") to help take care of them all. Ironically, negotiating the disposition of the Iraqi refugees in Syria has become the main avenue to direct US/Syria talks.

Al-Zaman says that Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani flew to Riyadh in hopes of getting the Saudis to talk to Turkey about improving relations with the Iraqi Kurds. Ankara is unhappy with Kurdistan's moves toward greater autonomy and its determination to annex the oil-rich Kirkuk province. Turkey is also upset that the Iraqi Kurds are harboring the PKK guerrillas that blow things up inside Turkey. I'm not sure why Barzani thinks that Saudi Arabia, a fundamentalist state, would have much sway with the militantly secular Kemalist officers in Ankara.

After the extensive slaughter of the pilgrims during the past week, the Iraqi guerrillas appear to have taken Monday off. Still, 20 bodies showed up in Baghdad's streets on Sunday, and there were scattered assassinations and mortar attacks throughout the country on Monday.

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases Iraqi news items for March 12:

"Dar al-Salam carries on the front page a 150-word on the large demonstration in Al-Ramadi demanding the immediate release of a woman detained by occupation forces. . .

Al-Zaman publishes on the front page a 240-word report entitled "Iraqi National Bloc Calls for Postponement of Discussion on Oil and Gas Bill. . ."

Al-Zaman publishes on page 4 a 200-word report on the statement issued by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani yesterday, 11 March, urging pilgrims not to believe people alleging that they are ambassadors of the Imam Al-Mahdi [the Muslim Promised One] . . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 4 a 130-word report citing Amirah al-Baldawi, parliament member from the [Iraqi Shiite] Unified Iraqi Coalition, criticizing the Egyptian Foreign Minister's declarations calling for the rehabilitation of army and police forces on non-sectarian grounds. . .

Al-Mu'tamar runs on the front page a 120-word report saying that Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr has appeared in Karbala after reports that he fled to Iran. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 230-word report citing Sadr-al-Din al-Qubbanchi [of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq], during the Friday sermon in Al-Najaf, accusing Britain of leading a coup by foiling the political process. . .

Al-Istiqamah carries on the front page a 180-word report saying that Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi met with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and other Shiite clerics to discuss the latest political and security developments. . .

Dar al-Salam publishes on page 2 a 170-word report accusing Shiite terrorist militias of attacking Al-A'zamiyah and other Sunni districts and abducting four Sunnis in Al-Hurriyah District of Baghdad. . .

Al-Zaman publishes on page 5 a 1,000-word report citing academics and political observers attributing their refusal to appear on satellite television channels to the deteriorating security situation. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 270-word report saying that Al-Muqdadiyah's inhabitants are suffering from the shortage of food materials, unemployment, and the unpaid salaries due to the deteriorating security situation. . .

Al-Muwatin carries on page 2 a 1,000-word report citing a source at the religious authority in Al-Najaf informing Al-Nahrain Net saying that most Shiite clerics are concerned with the US measures against Al-Sadr City and some Shiite clerics. . .

Al-Zaman carries on page 3 a 900-word report entitled "Sabaeans Find Safe Shelter in Kurdistan; Barzani Meets With Hilu To Organize Arrival of Sabaean Families." . .

Al-Mada on 12 March runs on the front page a 100-word report citing Oil Minister, Hussein Al-Shahristani, announcing in Karbala that there are new negotiations to build a Karbala refinery, which would be the largest and the most modern refinery in the country. He added that the next months would witness the building of this refinery that will be achieved within four years. Its capacity will be 140,000 barrels per day, which is double the capacity of Al-Dura refinery. He asserted that the outcome of the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund resulted in the cancellation of some of Iraq's debts, depending on an increase in the price of oil products, which will be approximately 50 Iraqi Dinars per litter for kerosene. This price will be fixed until the 1 st of April. . . [Karbala is in a heavily Shiite area, so these projects will benefit Shiites.- JRIC]

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More Shiite Pilgrims Hit;
Iran says it Wants Iraq Stability

Iraqi guerrillas killed two US GIs on Sunday.

Meanwhile, as some Americans were risking their lives, Bush campaign guru Karl Rove had it sweeter than ever. Not only was he betraying the United States of America by outing a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame Wilson-- McClatchy reveals that he was also helping get federal attorneys fired for not being far rightwing Republicans. Why is this man still in the White House?

Iraq's sectarian civil war exploded into violence again on Sunday, leaving at least 75 dead and dozens wounded in a wave of bombings and attacks, many of them aimed at Shiite pilgrims coming back to Baghdad from the holy city of Karbala. Some 40 pilgrims were wounded and in serious condition late Sunday. The major incident was a bombing in Karrada of returning pilgrims, which killed over 30 persons, according to al-Hayat, writing in Arabic.

Another bomber hit a mini-bus near Mustansiriya University. Elsewhere, guerrillas bombed a bus in Baladruz. In the major northern city of Mosul, guerrillas attacked the HQ of the Islamic Accord Front, the Sunni fundamentalist coalition that has been willing to sit in parliament and cooperate (if often sullenly) with the Americans. Three guards were killed and one injured. Reuters gives details of the bombings.

The Sunni Arab guerrillas are targeting Shiite pilgrims in hopes that they will in turn attack Sunnis, and that the ensuing turmoil will force the US out of the country.

Damien Cave of the NYT reports that guerrillas are using house burnings in their quest to ethnically cleanse neighborhoods of members of the opposite branch of Islam.

Kudos to Solomon Moore of the LAT for this excellent piece on the need to hold early provincial elections in Iraq. The last provicial elections, in January, 2005, were boycotted by the Sunni Arabs. The article points to the problems of Shiite dominance in Diyala and Baghdad provinces in the absence of very many powerful Sunni Arab members of the provincial councils. But even in al-Anbar and Salahuddin Provinces, there are the problems of lack of representativeness in the provincial councils. If so many did not vote, the politicians on these bodies don't have much of a constituency.

The LAT reports that some in the military favor an El Salvador option, of getting most US troops out of Iraq and using a small force rapidly to train Iraqi troops.

A major Iranian bank, Bank Melli,, will open an Iraq branch.

The Kurdistan Regional Government stands accused of suppressing the language and customs of the Assyrian Christians.

The Sunni fundamentalist vice president of Iraq, Tariq al-Hashimi, praised Shiite Iran during his recent visit there for its help in getting Iraq back on its feet.

Tom Engelardt discusses 'surge creep' in Bush administration Iraq policy, while Michael Schwartz looks at the risks of alienating the Shiite Iraqis and their Iranian allies implicit in current Bush policy.

Presidential candidate Barak Obama says that if the Iraqi government does not implement key reforms, the US troops will simply have to be taken out the country.

Former British diplomat Jeremy Greenstock, blocked by the Blair government from publishing his critiques of the Iraq occupation authorities' policies, has written them as a history of WW I. He wrote an introduction to the memoir of a British officer who witnessed the disastrous British campaigns in Iraq of the teens of the last century.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

50 Killed in two Major Sadr City Bombings
US & Iran Speak at Baghdad Meet

Guerrillas detonated two major bombs in Shiite Sadr City (East Baghdad) on Saturday, killing nearly 50 persons and wounding many more. They set off the bombs not very far away from where diplomats from neighboring countries and the US were meeting to discuss the future of Iraq.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that some one-on-one discussions took place between the US and Iran and between the US and Syria. US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and high State Department official David Satterfield represented the US at the Baghdad conference, which was attended by 16 nations. The conference created three working committees.

Al-Hayat adds: "Sources told al-Hayat in Baghdad that "a direct dialogue between the US and Iran, and between the US and Syria, will take place far from the bright lights, through the security committee, which will comprise representatives of Iraq, Britain, and Saudi Arabia. Further dialogue will take place in the Refugee Committee, to which Egypt and Jordan will be added."

Al-Hayat says that the time and the place of the follow-up conference have not been set. There will, however, be a conference in Istanbul in April of regional prime ministers, which US Secretary of State Condi Rice will attend. It seems likely to continue the work of Saturday's conference.

At the Baghdad summit, the US delegation spoke directly to the Iranian one about the relationship of the two countries inside Iraq. Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari maintained that they did not broach any wider issues.

Iran and the US traded barbs at the conference, with Iran blaming US for Iraq's turmoil.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraqi TV Reactions to Baghdad Conference


The Open Source Center has summaries of Iraqi television sources.

Iraqi TV Channels Carry Reactions To Baghdad Conference 10 Mar Iraq -- OSC Summary Saturday, March 10, 2007 T22:06:30Z The following is a roundup of reactions to the 10 March Baghdad International Conference by the following Iraqi television channels: -- Baghdad Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic -- Independent, private news and entertainment channel focusing on Iraq, run by Sa'd al-Bazzaz, publisher of the Arabic-language daily Al-Zaman -- Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah Television in Arabic -- government-sponsored television station, run by the Iraqi Media Network -- Baghdad Al-Furat Television Channel in Arabic -- Television channel affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) led by Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim -- Cairo Al-Rafidayn Satellite Channel in Arabic -- Pro-Sunni, anti-US Iraqi channel believed to be affiliated with the Association of Muslim Scholars -- Cairo Al-Baghdadiyah Satellite Television in Arabic -- Private Iraqi television known for its opposition to the US presence in Iraq -- Baghdad Baghdad Satellite Television in Arabic -- television channel believed to be sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party, in addition to selected Iraqi websites. Al-Furat TV Al-Furat Television at 1020 GMT carries live a telephone interview with its correspondent to report on the conference. He says that 16 countries are represented at the conference including the five permanent UN Security Council member countries and Iraq's neighboring countries, in addition to representatives of the Arab League and the OIC. He then cites statements from the speeches of Zebari and Al-Maliki. He also cites a statement by Al-Sadr trend voicing support for the conference. At 1025 GMT, Al-Furat carries live a telephone interview with political analyst Uday Abu-Tubaykh. He highlights the fact that the conference is held at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad. At 1811 GMT on 10 March, Al-Furat Television carries live a telephone interview with Wa'il Abd-al-Latif, member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives, to comment on the Baghdad conference. Abd-al-Latif says that the conference is "an important and positive step," noting the conference has achieved "new and important results" as some of the main political powers met face to face for the first time during this conference. He notes that the Iraqis do not want neighboring countries to interfere in the Iraqi affairs and policies. Al-Sharqiyah TV Baghdad Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic is observed between 0600-1100 GMT on 10 March to carry factual reports on Baghdad regional conference. -- At 1215 GMT, Baghdad television interviews live Political Science Professor at Baghdad University Hazim al-Shammari on the Baghdadi Conference. He says that he has noticed "flexibility" in the vision of the government and the parliament, hoping that this would not be a tactic but a strategy based on the demands of and interests of the Iraqi people. -- Within its 1700 GMT newscast on 10 March, Baghdad Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic carries a live satellite interview with Syrian Expatriates Affairs Minister Buthaynah Sha'ban to elicit her remarks on the Syrian role in the Baghdad international conference. Sha'ban begins by saying: "In fact, from the very beginning of the war on Iraq, Syria has been working with Iraq's neighbors in order to find solutions for this occupation and for the hefty price that the Iraqi people are paying as a result of this illegitimate US occupation. However, the problem lies in the fact that the United States rejected to hold any talks with neighboring countries and wanted to be solely responsible for any solutions." Sha'ban goes on to say: "When the situation has become so horrible in Iraq, the United States decided to meet with Iraq's neighboring countries," noting that Syria welcomes such as a step because it alleviates the suffering of the Iraqi people. She also says that the US's decision to engage Iraq's neighboring countries in dialogue came "late," noting that it is "better late than never." Sha'ban argues that Syria is "very keen on the Iraqi people and Iraq," stressing that "when Iraq is stable, Syria will be stable as well." Asked about the possible outcome of the Baghdad conference, Sha'ban notes that this conference is "a preliminary step" as the situation in Iraq, she adds, "is very difficult and complicated." Within its 1800 GMT newscast, Al-Sharqiyah reports: "Many observers said that not much hope can be pinned on the outcome of the conference because there was no concluding statement at lease to support the political process in Iraq. The participants only held consecutive and quick news conferences that focused on secondary topics and did not focus on finding solutions for the aggravating problems that Iraq is suffering from." Al-Iraqiyah TV At 0903 GMT, Al-Iraqiyah Channel carries a live studio interview with Ali al-Awsi, an Iraqi politician and media personality. Commenting on Al-Maliki's opening speech at the Baghdad international conference, Al-Awsi describes the speech as "highly important." He adds that the speech communicated a message to Iraq's regional community, a second message to the international community, and a third message to the Iraqi people. He further characterizes the speech as "moderate, strong, and comprehensive." He maintains that the speech summed up the overall political process in Iraq. He notes the remarks Al-Maliki made to the effect that the constitution will be reconsidered "based on the mechanisms enshrined in it." Al-Maliki was referring to the controversial provisions enshrined in the constitution, Al-Awsi notes. In conclusion, Al-Awsi says: "The message that Nuri al-Maliki addressed to Iraqis is a message of affirmation and assurance, a message to the effect that the Iraqi Government, the current Iraqi national government, the government of Mr Nuri al-Maliki, remains committed, as it has been since its inception, to the principle of national reconciliation, to the principle of national dialogue -- to the principle of the national reconciliation plan. Hence, it is a call for others to show commitment, cooperation, solidarity, and to renounce violence, disunity, and everything that could hurt Iraq at present and in the future. It is a call for agreeing on common denominators." Al-Iraqiyah at 1028 GMT conducts a live telephone interview with Iraqi MP Wa'il Abd-al-Latif, who says: "This conference was held at the Foreign Ministry premises to give an unequivocally clear message to the effect that the Iraqi Government is not hiding in the Green Zone, but rather enjoys sovereignty at the venue of the two recent bombings involving people wearing explosive belts." -- At 1205 GMT, an unidentified Al-Iraqiyah anchorwoman conducts a live satellite interview with Iraqi Government Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. When asked about the most important topics discussed at the Baghdad conference, Al-Dabbagh says: "All speakers, all those who attended this conference, agreed that the achievement of security and stability in Iraq would serve their interests, and reflects a duty, and that this is a mission conducted by Iraqis with the backing and support of the neighboring countries. This is the general view to which all those who spoke at the morning session subscribed. It goes without saying that the mere convening of the conference in Baghdad provides highly significant support for the political process that is under way in Iraq, offers significant support for the current elected government, and provides support for the Iraqis' efforts to enforce stability, and combat this pervasive violence, which is now threatening all regional countries. " Al-Dabbagh says that this conference will "give an opportunity for those who differ on other issues to seek consensus on the Iraqi question, and on the need to achieve stability." When asked about the expected recommendations of the conference, Al-Dabbagh says: "I think that the attendance of neighboring states in these circumstances which we are experiencing is a highly advanced step toward dealing with the Iraqi question from a new perspective, based on the view that regional countries are duty bound to contribute to achieving stability in Iraq. I think that the arrival of these delegations in Baghdad is a highly positive step. We think that these states are positively inclined to support the political process in Iraq. The recommendations that could be issued, or the statement that might be issued will express clear support for the ongoing political process in Iraq, express support for the government, and also express support for the efforts of all Iraqis." -- Afterward, Al-Iraqiyah carries the following announcer-read report over video: "The heads of the Turkish and Egyptian delegations have affirmed that their participation in the Baghdad conference is meant to support Iraq in all areas. They indicated that the said conference is a beginning, and that similar conferences will be held in the future." Then, Iraqi Foreign Ministry Under Secretary Labid Abbawi is shown saying: "This conference will open the horizons for greater cooperation with Iraq, and consequently for greater international and regional presence in Iraq. This will also give us further motivation to organize meetings regarding both Iraq and the region so that Iraq may restore its regional and international status." -- At 1209 GMT, the channel carries the following announcer-read report over video: "Citizens today expressed optimism over the convening of the Baghdad international conference for supporting Iraq, affirming that this reflects positive indicators of the success of the political process in Iraq. They indicated that the convening of this conference at this point in time is a clear signal confirming the failure of the attempts to obstruct the democratic process of the Iraqi people." He adds: "The message delivered by His Excellency the prime minister is balanced, frank, and strong -- it demonstrates that Iraq holds a strategic location, that it wields great economic leverage, and that its security is an indivisible part of world security, which is affected by security in Iraq." Abd-al-Latif says that the neighboring countries that are influencing the security situation in Iraq, particularly Syria and Iran, are attending the conference. He adds: "I also recall the role of Saudi Arabia, through the group of takfiris who entered Iraq to change its identity and build an Islamic state headed by Usama Bin Ladin and the takfiris." At 1628 GMT, Al-Iraqiyah Television carries a new episode of its "Our Security is Our Hope" talk show presented by Aziz Rahim. The program, which discusses Baghdad international conference, hosts live via satellite from Baghdad Ali al-Adib, member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. Asked about the practical steps that will be taken after the conference, Al-Adib says: "This is a political conference. The Iraqi Government has invited the countries which attended the conference, including the permanent member states of the Security Council, so that the conference will produce positive results and make binding decisions on the parties which are to blame for the current lack of security in Iraq. There should be frankness in the discussions among the parties attending the conference, including the neighboring countries, which have interrelated relations and which are engaged in a race on the Iraqi political arena, and the big countries, like the United States and Britain." Al-Adib says: "Judging from the speeches delivered by the representatives of these countries, the situation was positive. These countries came to Iraq to support the political process in Iraq. Speeches, however, do not reflect real intentions. If conflicts in the Middle East between these countries and other countries are settled, then this will reduce security tension in Iraq and Iraq will move toward political stability." Within its 1700 GMT newscast, Al-Iraqiyah television carries the following report: "The heads of the Turkish and Egyptian delegations assert that their participation in Baghdad conference is aimed at supporting Iraq in all spheres. They noted that the said conference will be followed by similar conferences in the future." In the report, Labid Abawi, under secretary of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, is shown saying: "This conference will lead to bigger horizons for cooperation with Iraq. It will also lead to a bigger regional and international presence in Iraq. This will prompt us to organize meetings on Iraq and the region. This way Iraq will restore its regional and international status." Hani Khilaf, under secretary of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, is shown saying: "The neighboring countries will focus on all that which will benefit Iraq, the Iraqis, and the Iraqi Government. The Arab League Council has recently adopted a resolution asserting this support and asserting that the march of Iraq and the Iraqis hinges on the support of the neighboring countries and the international community." Al-Baghdadiyah TV Al-Baghdadiyah at 1110 GMT carries a live interview with its correspondent in Baghdad at conference. The correspondent offers a factual account about the representation and proceedings of the conference. He then notes that the discussions among the United States, Syria, and Iran as part of this conference might lead to a breakthrough in the situation in Iraq, especially since Iran and Syria have always been accused of "exporting terrorism." At 1644 GMT on 10 March, Al-Baghdadiyah Television carries live a talk show on the significance of the Baghdad conference to Iraq, the reasons for holding the conference, and its outcome and effect on Iraq's future. The talk show hosts in studio Dr Muzhir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi political writer and analyst, and Dr Rif'at Sayyid Ahmad, director of the Yafo Center for Research and Studies. The talk show also hosts via satellite Dr Salim Abdallah al-Juburi, spokesman for the Iraqi Tawafuq Front, from Baghdad. Dr Ahmad says that this conference has been held to save "the US occupation" and to ensure "a strategic withdrawal for the US occupation" as Washington has no other choice in "the Iraqi dilemma" but to withdraw, noting that the United States will keep US bases and agents inside in Iraq in order to control the Iraqi oil. Dr Ahmad adds that the two main participants in the conference, namely Syria and Iran, do not agree on the US agenda, stressing that the Baghdad conference is "a conference without results or a conference for public relations." Dr Ahmad reiterates that the Baghdad conference "will result in nothing," noting that the Arabs should make the Iraqi issue a pure Arab one. He stresses the need for the Arabs to play a key role in solving the Iraqi problem. Dr Al-Juburi says that the Baghdad conference is "a positive step per se," noting that there many "thorny" issues in the Iraqi arena that cannot be tackled and solved in one conference. Al-Juburi voices hope that there will be other conferences to help tackle and solve the Iraqi problem. Al-Khafaji notes that he thinks that the conference has been held "to settle scores" between the United States, Syria, and Iran. Al-Rafidayn Cairo Al-Rafidayn Satellite Channel leads its 1830 GMT newscast with a report on Baghdad conference. The report notes that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on the neighboring countries to "combat what he termed as terrorism and urged them not to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs." The channel then carries a video report on Iraqi citizens' reactions to the conference. An unidentified citizen says: "We hope that the conference will succeed. We believe that it will not succeed except through the cooperation of Iraq's neighboring states to end the current tragedy and bloody war." An unidentified Iraqi cleric is shown saying: "The Iraqi people have suffered. Thus, they feel happy whenever someone extends his hand to help Iraq and salvage it from this dilemma." An unidentified Iraqi citizen says: "It will succeed if the intentions of the neighboring countries, especially Iran and Syria, and the United Nations are sincere." An Iraqi policeman says: "Iraq's neighboring countries are not helping the Iraqis organize the political situation in the country. They send terrorists to Iraq. We hope that the meeting will be conclusive." Baghdad Satellite Channel Within its 1800 GMT newscast, Baghdad's Baghdad Satellite Channel carries a telephone interview with Iraqi political analyst Dr Sa'd al-Hadithi on Baghdad conference. Al-Hadithi says that this was a meeting and not a conference. He adds that "the situation in Iraq in the future -- that is, after the meeting -- will not be very different from what it was before the meeting." Asked about the conference that is scheduled to be held in Turkey in April, Al-Hadithi says that the government sought through this meeting to obtain a "regional political support and an international cover." He adds that the United States sought through the conference to find "a way out of the dilemma it is facing in Iraq." The channel then carries an interview with Iyad al-Samarra'i, member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives for the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq (Accord) Front. Asked about his evaluation of the conference, Al-Samarra'i says: "This conference is different from other conferences due to several reasons. First of all, this conference was held in Iraq. Second, this is the first time proposals have been made to find a formula for dealing with resolutions." Asked whether the conference will bring the political process back to square one, Al-Samarra'i says that he does not think so. He says that the conference will seek to "amend the course of the political process taking into consideration a number of principles, including Iraqi national reconciliation." He adds that the conference stressed the "unity and independence of Iraq, non-interference in Iraq's internal affairs, setting a timeframe for completing the building of Iraqi state institutions, and scheduling the withdrawal of the foreign troops from Iraq." -- Adnan Pachachi, member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives for the National List, expressed "his optimism about the success of the Baghdad international conference in finding a solution to Iraq's crisis." -- "In an exclusive statement to Baghdad Channel, Umar Abd-a-Sattar, member of the Council of Representatives for the Al-Tawafuq Front, said that convening Baghdad conference at this time is a step in the right direction and that the conferees must shoulder their moral and legal responsibilities, because Iraq is an occupied country. He said that the conferees should restore what Iraq has lost as a result of this occupation and regional countries' interference in its internal affairs."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Security Summit begins in Baghdad
Saddam's Judge Flees Iraq

Reuters reports political violence on Friday: Sunni Arab guerrillas killed a Marine in a firefight in al-Anbar Province. Police found 10 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad. Snipers killed another 4 in the capital. In Hibhib, a Sunni Arab town north of the capital, guerrillas attacked a police station. They killed one policeman, wounded three more, and kidnapped 10 others, who are still missing. The policemen are said not to have put up mich of a fight, and are being investigated. Guerrillas detonated a bomb in Kirkuk, killing one and wounding another person. US forces forestalled an attack on an American convoy by guerrillas west of Baghdad's airport, killing 12 and taking out their anti-aircraft battery, mounted on a truck.

US troops stand accused of firing on the automobile of non-combat civilians.

Al-Zaman writes in Arabic that an international summit on security in Iraq began in Baghdad on Saturday morning. US Secretary of State Condi Rice and US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad will be attending despite the presence of delegates from Iran and Syria, with whom the Bush administration had generally refused to meet.

Al-Zaman says that even as the delegates began meeting, 15 organizations demanded that the political process in Iraq be ceased and that the Iraqi constitution be suspended until it can be rewritten by Iraqis alone. (These demands are typical of Sunni Arab dissident groups).

Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune writes about the rumors in Iraq that Iyad Allawi is being primed to replace Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Allawi is an ex-Baathist and old time CIA asset whose list got 9 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections and who is widely unpopular in the country because of the stupendous corruption of his appointed government in the second half of 2004. Literally billions of dollars appear to have gone missing on his watch.

The Iraqi judge who pronounced the death sentence on Saddam has fled the country and is seeking political asylum in Britain.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari praised Iran's role in Iraq on Friday. IRNA reports that he told the Iranian delegation to the summit on Saturday,

' "Iran has a vital role in resolution of Iraq's problems and it has always played a constructive and positive part in easing our nation's sufferings. . .'

Clearly Iraqi high officialdom lives in a different universe than US high officialdom.

Peter Kiernan on containing Iran.

As the US prepared for war in spring of 2003, the CIA bribed Iraqi oil workers not to allow the destruction of wellheads by Saddam's forces, according to Rep. Joseph Wilson.*

A review of Vali Nasr on the Shia Revival.

-----
Ooops, originally misidentified the source as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Thanks to readers who alerted me-- I've got the best copy editors in the world.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Petraeus: No Purely Military Solution
Guerrillas capture Dhuluyia Police Station

Gen. David Petraeus said in a press conference on Thursday that ultimately there is no military solution to the violence in Iraq, and that talks must be held with groups that feel marginalized in the new political situation.

The groups that feel alienated are Sunni Arab groups. The major organizations among the Sunni Arabs are neo-Baathist and Salafi fundamentalist cells. Gen. Petraeus is wisely pointing out that those willing to compromise among these groups must be engaged and brought into negotiations. I just hope that he can convince the Kurds and the fundamentalist Shiites who now dominate the Iraqi government of this necessity.

The signs are not encouraging. Arab states' urging of a better deal for Iraqi Sunnis absolutely infuriated Iraqi Shiites preparing for Saturday's Baghdad summit.

He also suggested that yet more US troops may be needed. Militarily, that is no doubt so. But I fear that the domestic political winds are blowing heavily in favor of his first observation and with hurricane force against the second. The Democrats are planning to put in the supplemental budget request a provision that US troops begin coming home in March 2008 and be out by August 2008.

Reuters reports scattered bombings and shootings around the Sunni Arab regions of Iraq on Thursday. The boldest guerrilla attack came in Dhuluiya, where they took a local police station and raided it for armaments.

McClatchy explores scenarios for the future of Iraq with experts. The consensus? A failed state.

Omayma Abdel Latif examines the controversies over the "rise of the Shiite Crescent" thesis

Karen Greenberg at Tomdispatch.com on Gitmo.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cole in Salon: "Is the Bush Surge already Failing

My bi-weekly column at Salon.com is out:

'
Is the Bush surge already failing?

The president just gave a rosy assessment of his plan, but insurgents have adapted and Iraqis continue to be slaughtered. . .

Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division and Iraqi National policemen patrol the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, on March 6, 2007.

March 8, 2007 | On Tuesday, President Bush said that "even at this early hour, there are some encouraging signs" that the so-called surge is working in Iraq. In fact, three weeks into what the president refers to as the "surge" and what Iraqis call the "new security plan," it's already clear that Bush's last-gasp bid for victory faces challenges that can't necessarily be surmounted by a few thousand additional troops.

With plenty of warning of the U.S. escalation, the Shiite Mahdi Army is lying low. Meanwhile, the Iraqi army and the much better equipped and trained U.S. military have made no appreciable progress against the real drivers of the country's civil war, Sunni Arab guerrillas, who have so far adapted successfully to the new deployments. And perhaps most important, a new spate of massive and deadly bombings has spread insecurity and further compromised the Iraqi government. '

Read the whole thing.

Guerrillas killed three US troops on Wednesday northwest of Baghdad.

In Iraq on Wednesday, major violence continued against Iraq pilgrims and the police guarding them. Guerrillas detonated a car bomb in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya, which killed a policeman and 7 Shiite pilgrims, and wounded 27. In Iskandariya south of Baghdad, guerrillas lobbed mortar shells at Shiite pilgrims, killing 6 and wounding 13.

In the small city of Baladruz northeast of Baghdad, Sunni Arab guerrillas bombed a cafe, killing 30 and wounding 25.

Altogether, the wire services reported 90 dead in violence for Wednesday.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadila), with 15 seats in parliament, has announced that it is withdrawing from the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shiite fundamentalist parties. Leader Nadim al-Jabiri said the move was intended to underline the need of Iraqi parties to leave behind the sectarian framework that has bedevilled the country's politics. But the Virtue Party first began talking about withdrawing when it was not given the ministry of petroleum.

An Israeli newspaper, Maariv, is reporting that a retired Israeli officer has been exporting high-powered weapons to Iraqi guerrillas. The report is summarized in English here.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Pilgrimage Massacre Kills 138, Wounds 100s
Major Mosul Jailbreak

9 US GIs were announced killed on Tuesday, 6 in a roadside bombing in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad, and 3 more in Diyala to the northeast of the capital.

Sunni Arab guerrillas on Tuesday targeted Shiite pilgrims on their way to the holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad. The most horrific attacks came in the form of two bombings in the largely Shiite city of Hilla, which killed 114 and wounded over 150. Some Shiite observers believe that the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr had done a better job of providing security, and that the US disarming of the group left the Shiites vulnerable.

In Mosul, dozens of guerrillas stormed the Badoush prison and freed 150 prisoners. Some 100 were recaptured, but about a third of them are still at large.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National List (25 seats) and Adnan Dulaimi of the Iraqi Accord Front (44 seats) announced Tuesday the formation of a new coalition in parliament. Salih Mutlak of the Sunni Arab National Dialogue Front is also said to be intending to join the new bloc (his group has 11 seats in parliament) along with the Reconciliation and Reconstruction list of Mishaan Juburi (3 seats) and the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadila, 15 seats in parliament), which had earlier been part of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite fundamentalist coalition. This 98-seat alliance is a new development, but unless it can attract another 40 MPs, it cannot hope to form a government. I also just don't think a coalition with hard line Sunnis and with the Islamic Virtue Party as well as Shiite secularists is likely to be stable or to last long.

Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi (Sunni Arab) has been negotiating with the Syrian government about acting as an intermediary for negotiations with high Baathist former Iraqi officials in Damascus. The Baathists play a much bigger role in the guerrilla movement in Iraq than is generally realized.

Tom Engelhardt on the horrible waste involved in the Iraq War.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Libby's Lies, Cheney's Lies

Irv Lewis Libby is a convicted liar and perjurer, guilty of obstruction of justice.

Unfortunately, he was not convicted of revealing to the public the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert operative at the CIA, who was working against Iranian development of nuclear weapons.

It is time for the Democrats in Congress to step up and impeach Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney. Enough came out in this trial to make it clear that Cheney was deeply involved in the operation to smear Wilson. The vice president of the United States should not be in the business of outing CIA operatives! This was a high crime, and Congress could impeach if it desired. A conviction in the House of Representatives could, I believe, easily be gotten. The Senate would be more difficult, given the strength of the Republicans there. But Republicans would have voted to impeach Nixon. Why not Cheney?

On this great occasion in which justice has at last been done, I thought readers might enjoy a reprint edition from February 10, 2006, of my explanation of the Niger yellowcake uranium story and the way it led to Libby's downfall.

Cheney Authorized Libby to Disclose Classified Documents

Once upon a time, a former agent of Italian military intelligence named
Rocco Martino, who had had some experience in the African country of Niger, came into possession of some forged, fraudulent documents.
These alleged Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium in 1999. In fact, the signatures were of Nigerien officials who had been in power a decade earlier, in the late 1980s.



So they were clumsy forgeries. Martino passed them on to the Italian magazine Panorama, which passed them to the US embassy.

Tantalizingly, President George W. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, has an indirect connection to Italian intelligence.


Rove's chief adviser on Iran policy is Neoconservative wildman and notorious warmonger Michael Ledeen,

who has a longstanding connection to the darker corners of Italian intelligence.

Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney heard of the alleged uranium purchase.



Cheney asked George Tenet to look into the allegation.


The issue went to the Directorate of Operations secret unit on counter-proliferation. Among the field officers there was Valerie Plame Wilson, who had spent her life fighting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction under cover of a dummy corporation.



Valerie Plame Wilson was married to former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, who had served bravely as acting ambassador in Iraq in 1990, and when threatened by Saddam he showed up to a press conference wearing a hanging noose instead of a necktie. President George H. W. Bush highly praised him.




Joe Wilson had not only served in Iraq, he also had been ambassador to the West African countries of Gabon and Sao Tome, and spoke fluent French. When Plame Wilson's superiors brought up the possibility of sending him as a private citizen to look into the plausibility of the report that Saddam had bought Nigerien uranium, she was consulted and agreed (she was not part of the decision loop).

He went, and soon saw that the uranium industry in Niger was actually under the control of French companies and was strictly monitored.


There was no possibility of corrupt Nigerien officials selling it off under the table.

A separate military mission led by Marine General Carlton Fulford, Jr, deputy commander of the United States European Command (EUCOM), went to Niger the same month, February 2002.


Fulford quickly came to the same conclusion as Wilson, that it was implausible that al-Qaeda or anyone else could secretly buy uranium from Niger.

Wilson came back and was orally debriefed by people who wrote a report for Tenet, expecting that Tenet would pass it on to the high officials of the Bush administration.

Wilson was amazed when the Niger uranium story was put into Bush's State of the Union address.

Then Libby


wanted Secretary of State Colin Powell to make allegations about Saddam and al-Qaeda before the United Nations Security Council. Powell was also pressed by someone to bring up the Niger uranium story.

Powell is said to have exclaimed, "I'm not reading this bullshit!"

Libby appears to have been a big influence on the speech Powell gave, almost every detail of which was inaccurate, and at which United Nations officials who heard it openly laughed.



After the war, Wilson wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he revealed his mission and again called into question the Bush administration assertion that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program.

Cheney was extremely upset by Wilson's op-ed. He saw it as an allegation that he had personally sent Wilson and then ignored Wilson's report. Or at least that was the spin. But Wilson had said no such thing in the article. He simply said that Cheney had asked Tenet to look into the story, which Cheney probably did.

Cheney was afraid that if the American public became convinced that there had been no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war effort would collapse, along with all those billions of no-bid uncompetitive contracts for Halliburton.

Cheney, it has now come out, then authorized Libby to leak the classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to the press.


The NIE, which may have been produced under pressure from Cheney himself, had incorrectly suggested that Iraq was only a few years from having a nuclear weapon. In fact, Iraq did not have an active weapons program at all after the early 1990s when it was dismantled by the UN inspectors. The pre-war NIE in any case was just old bad intelligence, which was contradicted by David Kay's team on the ground in post-war Iraq, which just wasn't finding much.



Libby now began telling reporters that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative, itself classified information, since she was an undercover operative.


Karl Rove engaged in the same routine. Apparently Cheney, Rove and Libby (and Bush?) believed that Wilson's credibility would be undermined if the Washington press corps could have it intimated to them that his story was a CIA plant.



Robert Novak used the information given him by the White House staff to out Valerie Plame Wilson as an undercover operative. Her career was ruined. All her contacts in the global South were burned, and their lives put in danger. The CIA's careful project combating weapons of mass destruction collapsed.



The same administration that alleges it should be able to listen to our phone calls at will for national security purposes deliberately undermined US security for petty political purposes, making us all much less safe.

The likelihood is that the crimes of Bush, Cheney, Libby and Rove so far revealed are only the tip of the iceberg.




------
*The iceberg artwork, signed "Monk," is mirrored on several sites on the internet; I can't find any that seems the original but am glad to give credit if it is sought. It easily comes up on a google.images search. See Inflatable Dartboard.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Book Market Bombing Kills 38, Wounds 105;
Shiite Pilgrims Targeted

Guerrillas detonated a huge car bomb at the old book market at al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, killing at least 38 persons and wounding 105. The explosion destroyed 15 automobiles on the street and set many of the bookshops ablaze. The street was strewn with body parts and a thick black smoke made people nauseous and caused them to retch.

The murderousness and determination to destroy Iraqi culture apparent in the al-Mutanabbi bombing provoked one observer, speaking to to compare these days to those of Mongol conqueror Hulagu, who tore down many of Baghdad's monuments.

Police found 15 bodies in the capital on Monday. There were several other bombings or mortar attacks in West and central Baghdad, some targeting Shiite pilgrims on pilgrimage to Karbala to commemorate the 40th day after the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet. At a time when the US military is disarming the Shiites, to have Shiite pilgrims subjected to these attacks will raise tempers.

Parliamentarians from the Sadr Bloc vowed that they would resist Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's plans to dismiss 5 out of 6 cabinet ministers from their party. The Sadrists have 32 seats in the Iraqi legislature, and their support was key to the election of al-Maliki last spring.

KarbalaNews.net reports in Arabic that al-Maliki gave an interview in which he said that high judicial authorities are preparing indictments against members of parliament for involvement in militia and death squad activity. Maybe al-Maliki thinks he does not need the Sadrist MPs because so many of them will soon be in prison.

Indeed, the scale of the indictments against sitting Iraqi representatives and officials hinted at by al-Maliki suggests a judicial coup.

Given that Sunni and Sadrist MPs have been loudest in denouncing the new oil law, if large numbers of them were incarcerated, it would also make it easier for al-Maliki to get the legislation enacted.

There are no mechanisms for by-elections to the Iraqi parliament to my knowledge, so that the parliamentarians that are arrested will likely not be replaced until late 2009. The arrests could dramatically alter the relative proportion of representatives of various communities. No Kurds will be arrested, since their Peshmerga militia has been legalized, so their bloc will be strengthened.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari rejected Arab League calls for the internationalization of the Iraq crisis and the new security plan. The Arab League, most of whose states are Sunni Arab, has been pushing for a better deal for Sunni Arabs and ex-Baathists.

Only 28 percent of Americans in a recent poll think that the US can "win" in Iraq. They should tell the rest of us what "winning" in Iraq would even look like. There is substantial support in the public for withdrawing US troops by 2008, but views are more divided on denying Bush money to send an extra contingent of 21,500 troops. The public does want the troops to have a year off between rotations to Iraq. Since we only have 10 fighting divisions, I'm not sure if they understand that such a 1-year rest in and of itself would require the withdrawal of substantial numbers of troops from Iraq.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Coalition Raids Police Intelligence Center;
Al-Maliki Protests Raid as Illegal;
4.5 Million Malnourished Iraqi Kids

British soldiers accompanied by Iraqi forces raided a National Intelligence Center in the southern city of Basra. They said they discovered evidence of torture and accused the police running it of being terrorists involved in setting roadside bombs targetting British convoys.

So to whom exactly did this facility belong? Even al-Zaman does not seem to know, exactly. At one point its article says that the facility belongs to the federal Ministry of the Interior. At another point it says that it was overseen by a multi-party committee. Many police facilities under the Interior Ministry had been infiltrated by the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But the Basra provincial council is dominated by the Islamic Virtue Party, which has its own paramilitary, which has been infiltrated into the Basra police. The intelligence center was likely either Badr or Virtue. I suspect the latter, since Badr is highly disciplined and to my knowledge has not attacked Coalition troops frontally.

Now here is what is odd. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki denounced the British raid on the facility! He called for an investigation and called the action illegal. His office accused the British of releasing the prisoners held there (themselves presumably involved in political violence), but the British military said that the prisoners had accidentally escaped.

It would be very interesting to know the back story here, but no one is being explicit about whom exactly, among the various parties and militias in Basra, the British were hitting, or why al-Maliki should protest as a result.

Under US, Kurdish and Sunni Arab pressure, the al-Maliki government appointed an independent, Jawad al-Bulani, to head the ministry of the interior, and he is reported to have purged thousands of employees from it who had ties to militias and death squads. These were primarily members of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who had been using the ministry as a vehicle for patronage for party members and Badr Corps militiamen. I am suspicious, however, about the depth of this purge and have the sense that SCIRI and Badr still have a large presence in the ministry.

Baghdad police found 20 bodies in the western district of Karkh on Sunday. There were bombings in Hilla, Baquba and the Dura district of Baghdad. Antiwar.com summarizes the violence on Sunday, which left dozens dead.

US troops accompanied by Iraqi forces moved gingerly into the Jamila section of Sadr City on Sunday, doing weapons searches. Tina Susman of the LA Times captures the care with which the operation is being pursued, and the sense of danger given that this vast Shiite slum is a center for the Mahdi Army militia. But it should also be pointed out that the fighting between US troops and Sadr City militiamen in spring of 2004 had a great deal to do with Paul Bremer's sudden and quixotic decision to "kill or capture" young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, the leader of the militia.

Leila Fadel of McClatchy says the Sadrists are telling her that the Mahdi Army has strict instructions to lie low and not rock the boat during the security sweep. After all, if the US really could root out the Sunni guerrilla movement, the Shiites would be huge winners . . .

Reuters reports that there are 4.5 million undernourished children in Iraq.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Allawi Maneuverings Continue;
Al-Maliki to Shuffle Cabinet, Cut out Sadrists;
Huge Bomb at Ramadi Kills 12, Wounds 22

Al-Hayat reports that Iyad Allawi, a secular ex-Baathist Shiite who leads the Iraqi National List (25 seats in parliament), visited Kurdistan on Saturday. He is attempting to convince the Kurdistan Alliance to join his new coalition in parliament. Allawi has said that his list will leave the 'national unity government' headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Allawi's list is small and he is deeply disliked by most of the religious Shiites that dominate parliament. I can't imagine that he can actually form a government given the present distribution of seats. But al-Hayat reports that Allawi was accompanied on his trip to Kurdistan by none other than US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, which the daily read as a sign of US support for dumping al-Maliki and trying to install Allawi as Prime Minister. (Allawi served as interim prime minister in 2004, having been appointed by the US and UN for this purpose. He is an old CIA asset.)

Under this pressure, Nuri al-Maliki says he is going to restructure the Iraqi cabinet. Rumors are apparently flying in Baghdad that the PM will cut all six representatives of the Sadr Movement loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr from his cabinet, and a number of high government officials may face prosecution for links to death squads. I saw al-Maliki briefly interviewed on the cabinet change on Arab satellite t.v., and he seemed to me subdued, depressed, and under pressure. He was glancing down and did not seem very animated.

If al-Maliki loses the 32 Sadrist members of parliament, he would be a decidedly minority prime minister. It is not clear to me that the Fadila Party, popular in Basra and holding 15 seats in the federal parliament, ever rejoined the United Iraqi Alliance after al-Maliki took the petroleum portfolio away from them. The UIA had 130 seats in the 275 seat parliament, but needs 138 for a simple majority. UIA leaders have won votes by getting some Shiite members of Allawi's Iraqi National List to vote with them, and by joining with the Kurdistan Alliance (53 seats, but the Kurdish fundamentalists, who have 5 seats, usually vote with the KA).

With only 82 members left in his United Iraqi Alliance (one member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq had to flee to Iran when it was revealed that he had helped in an attack on the US and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983), al-Maliki would be completely at the mercy of the Kurdistan Alliance. Even this truncated UIA-plus-KA coalition could only guarantee 135 votes, not quite a majority (though as I mentioned above, in fact the Kurdistan Islamic Union usually votes with the other Kurds, so that would make 140). If the Sadrists and Fadila are so alienated as to abstain, and Allawi really could detach the Kurds from the UIA, then it seems to me that the al-Maliki government would fall at some point.

Of course, on any particular issue, Fadila and the Sadrists might still vote with al-Maliki, even if they are annoyed with him.

The Kurds and the Sunni Arabs could theoretically put together 111 seats, and if they were joined by Allawi, that would be 136. With the five delegates from the Kurdistan Islamic Union, they'd have a bare majority of 141. However, the Sunni Arabs are mostly die hard opposed to both loose federalism and to the Kurdish annexation of Kirkuk province, and Sunni Arab guerrillas have chased 70,000 Kurds out of the northern city of Mosul. Moreover, the Kurds despise ex-Baathists, who are prominent among the Sunni Arabs and on Allawi's list. And, the Sunni Arabs mostly want the US out, whereas the Kurds very much want American troops to stay. I think such a Sunni Arab/ ex-Baathist/ Kurdistan coalition in parliament, while it is theoretically possible, is unlikely and if it came to pass would fall apart quickly. Moreover, if you excluded the majority Shiites from power in this way, it would provoke substantial protests and instability in the South.

Still, one could imagine major changes in the Iraqi government in coming months once it becomes clear that the surge has failed and the US has run out of purely military options. One danger of tinkering with the government after you mobilized all those voters is that there could be a violent reaction if the changes were viewed as simple imperialist imposition.


Sunni Arab guerrillas killed 3 US troops on Saturday with a roadside bomb in central Baghdad.

Guerrillas in West Baghdad kidnapped an adviser to the Ministry of Defense, Thamir Sultan al-Tikriti. (When high officials of the Ministry of Defense are kidnapped at will, the security situation is not good.)

In Yusufiya, a mixed city south of Baghdad, guerrillas killed 6 Sunni men of the Al-Mashhada clan execution-style. The motive appears to have been to punish them for attending a reconciliation meeting with Shiites last month.

Guerrillas bombed a police checkpoint at Ramadi, killing 12 and wounding 22.

Al-Hayat reports on the preparations for next weekend's conference in Baghdad that will include the foreign ministers of Iraq's six neighbors and the US, for the first time. It reports that Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said that the US had employed intermediaries to propose the start of negotiations treating the security issue in Iraq. He told Iranian television, "The Americans recently contacted Iran via intermediaries to suggest a discussion of the problems of Iraq, especially security. We are studying these suggestions."

David Satterfield, a high official of the US State Department and adviser to Secretary of State Condi Rice, told al-Hayat that he did not think it unlikely that he would make direct contacts with the representatives of Iran and Syria during his participation in the Baghdad conference on Saturday. The newspaper quotes him as saying, "Washington will participate in the discussion with all the parties represented" and that "the success of the conference will pave the way for regional meetings on the highest levels on Iraq," which Secretary Rice would attend. Satterfield reportedly said of Saturday's meet, "All issues will be on the table," and that the conference "will produce joint committees and working groups to follow such issues as border control and other matters of shared concern." He would not say whether the US would serve on any joint committees or working groups with Iran and Syria. He rejected the notion that any such contacts with Iran and Syria would constitute a change in the policy of President George W. Bush.

The visit to Saudi Arabia Saturday of Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki was presumably in part intended to set up next weekend's meetings. Likely the US passed some messages to the Iranians through the Saudis, as well. Since a future war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has sometimes seemed to loom as a real possibility, might well destabilize the oil Gulf, it is heartening that the two sides are at least talking directly to one another.
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Boles Guest Editorial: the Qaedization of Iraq

Dr. David Boles writes:

I am becoming alarmed that no one is highlighting what appears to be a new and quite bald propaganda push to "Al-Qaida"-ize Iraq. Within the last week we have seen the following claims: WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Tuesday said she believes al-Qaida spends "every hour of every day" plotting against the United States. (UPI, 2/27) KUWAIT CITY, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- Kuwaiti news reports say al-Qaida is preparing to carry out its threat to launch attacks against the country and other Gulf states. (UPI, 2/27) WASHINGTON — The U.S. military faces three wars in Iraq simultaneously according to a report which recommends a strategy of targeted U.S. strikes on Al Qaida death squads. (World Tribune, 2/28) WASHINGTON — The United States has determined that Iraq deployed far fewer troops than promised for the current offensive against Al Qaida in Baghdad. (World Tribune, 3/2) Earlier, the military said coalition forces killed eight militants Thursday in a raid near Baghdad targeting al-Qaida in Iraq. A military statement said the raid took place in the Salman Pak region. (VOA, 3/2) Day by day, Iraq's map is being redrawn along Sunni-Shiite lines. Gangs from both sides — including Shiite death squads and al-Qaida inspired Sunni radicals — have waged a nasty war-within-a-war for territory they can call their own. (AP, 3/2) During his visit to Pakistan, Cheney expressed concern to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf over al-Qaida's regrouping inside Pakistan's tribal regions and an expected Taliban spring offensive in neighboring Afghanistan. "If our coalition withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance. The violence would likely spread throughout the country and be very difficult to contain. Having tasted victory in Iraq, the (militants) would look for new missions. Many would head for Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban," Cheney said. He said others would head for capitals across the Middle East and work to undermine moderate governments. "Still others would find their targets and victims in other countries on other continents. Such chaos and mounting danger does not have to occur. It is, however, the enemy's objective," Cheney said. "In these circumstances, it's worth reminding ourselves that, like it or not, the enemy we face in the war on terror has made Iraq the primary front in that war," he added. Then, to laughter and applause, Cheney said, "To use a popular phrase, this is an inconvenient truth." (AP, 3/2) The bodies of 14 policemen were found Friday northeast of Baghdad after an al-Qaida-affiliated Sunni group said it abducted members of a government security force in retaliation for the rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Shiite-dominated police. (AP, 3/3) In a separate raid in the Taji area on Saturday, nine suspected insurgents were captured, including two believed to be responsible for recruiting and helping foreign militants join the insurgency in Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The suspects were also accused of harboring al- Qaida in Iraq leaders, it said. (AP, 3/3) Fallujah police, meanwhile, reportedly arrested three Al-Qaida members, including one suspected of attacking the Saqlawiyah Police Station, KUNA said. (UPI, 3/3) In other developments, the U.S. military says coalition forces Saturday detained nine suspected terrorists in a raid targeting al-Qaida in Iraq just north of Baghdad near Taji. American officials also say coalition airstrikes Friday near the same area targeted an al-Qaida in Iraq network responsible for threats against coalition aircraft. The military says it believes the airstrikes killed several key insurgent leaders and destroyed anti-aircraft weapons. Insurgents have shot down eight coalition helicopters since January 20. Also Friday, Iraqi security forces found the bodies of 14 policemen in Diyala province. An al-Qaida-linked Sunni group said it abducted the men to avenge the alleged rape of a woman last month. (VOA, 3/3) Regardless of what one thinks of the extent of Al-Qaida involvement in Iraq, it seems transparent that the administration and its allies are attempting to shift justification for continuing war in Iraq onto Al- Qaida. This is a dangerous trend that needs to be publicly highlighted. David Boles

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Bryer on Source of Mines Used in Iraq

Philip Bryer writes:

Yahoo Top Stories today included an article entitled “Iran war weapons fuel Iraq insurgency.” This article stated, “Risking their lives, Iraqi shepherds are increasingly venturing into these deadly fields to dig up mines planted during the Iran-Iraq war two decades ago, according to U.S. soldiers, who say insurgents then use the mines to fashion roadside bombs that kill American troops.” However, a quick search of the Web shows that many (probably most) of these mines were supplied by members of the Coalition of the Willing. Here are two relevant quotes with hotlinks to the sources: (1) The Iraqi army sowed millions of land mines in northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan). . . . the design of the land mines used by the Iraqi army makes clearance particularly difficult and dangerous. The design cynically disregards the spirit of the United Nations Land Mines Protocol and the manufacturers and distributors share a moral responsibility for the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan. The collusion of other governments is a central factor. The devices used in Iraqi Kurdistan were mostly Italian-manufactured or -designed. The devastation that they caused is attributable, in part, to Italy's careless and venal approach to the export of land mines. (2) The U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency have identified antipersonnel mines from the following countries as having been used by Iraq in Iraqi Kurdistan, in Kuwait, on the borders with Kuwait and/or Saudi Arabia, or found in Iraqi stocks: Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Italy, Romania, Singapore, the former Soviet Union, and the United States. The shameful lies and spin continue as Bush (shown on the same Yahoo Top Stories page hugging two victims of the recent tornadoes) manipulates and fixes the intelligence yet again to justify an attack on Iran. Philip Bryer

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Army Secretary Forced to Resign;
Police Hostages Executed over Rape Charges

Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey was forced to resign Friday over the scandal of substandard conditions at a wing of Walter Reed Hospital. Note that all the time Donald Rumsfeld was in office, and despite horrible errors, no one ever had to resign, least of all-- until the Dems won Congress-- Rumsfeld himself. Over the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, Rumsfeld had said that to throw someone overboard in propitiation was not the way we did things in America (i.e. no one would be punished). Robert Gates is to be applauded for restoring the idea of accountability to Washington.

But everyone should pay attention especially to this para. in the WaPo report:

' The committee also released an internal Army memorandum reportedly written in September in which the Walter Reed garrison commander, Col. Peter Garibaldi, warned Weightman that "patient care services are at risk of mission failure" because of staff shortages brought on by privatization of the support work force at the hospital. '

The privatization of patient care services is responsible for a lot of the problem here.

See also this story about Waxman's efforts to get testimony.

And so is the privatization of services for US troops in Iraq punishing them. Indeed, the privatization of guard duties through the hiring of firms like Blackwater caused all that trouble at Falluja in the first place. KRB never delivered services to US troops with the speed and efficiency they deserved. The Bush-Cheney regime rewarded civilian firms with billions while they paid US GIs a pittance to risk their lives for their country. And then when they were wounded they were sent someplace with black mold on the walls. A full investigation into the full meaning of 'privatization' at the Pentagon for our troops would unconver epochal scandals.

Reuters reports that Sunni Arab guerrillas killed 2 US GIs and a translator, and wounded another GI, north of Baghdad.

Guerrillas detonated a bomb in Shiite Sadr City, killing 10 and wounding 17.

Guerrillas killed 12 Iraqi troops they had taken hostage in Diyala province. They had demanded that the police who allegedly raped a Sunni Arab woman be turned over. The "Islamic State in Iraq" claimed responsibility.

6 bodies were found in the small city of Balad. 5 bodies were found in Baghdad.

Check out the recent pieces at Tomdispatch.com, including the just-posted Chernus, An American Identity Crisis in a Losing War
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Iran EFP Story a New "Yellowcake" Scandal?

An informed reader writes:

Your reference to the Drew Brown McClatchy wire service report carried by the Mercury News about possible Sunni involvement in the IEDs and EFPs that have allegedly killed upwards of 170 Americans could be the tendrils of the new "Yellowcake" scandal of the Administration's ramp up to attacking Iran. As we all know, several weeks ago, a military intelligence briefing occurred in Iraq where several officials, including Brigadier General Caldwell, the mouthpiece for the American Occupation Forces, and several intelligence analysts, claimed that not only was Iran responsible for the use and manufacture of EFPs, which they said had killed upwards of 170 Americans -- but that the orders for their use, manufacture, and supply to "insurgents" came from "the highest levels of the Iranian Government." The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, quickly said that while there were aspects to the briefing he agreed with, he could not state, unequivocally, that the orders for the use and manufacture of these EFPs had come down from on high. This was when the American people, indeed, the people of the world, were told that the nefarious "Quds Brigade" were the operatives who had carried out these tasks for high Iranian officials. Checking through various books I've read about the Shia, I learned that the Quds Brigade, besides being a counter intelligence and intelligence unit for the Supreme Leader, ali Khamenai, has considerable expertise and probably HAD supplied training to insurgents in Iraq on how to build these massive and powerful weapons. Once I saw some of the photos of Abrams M1 tanks completely destroyed, or flipped, it became clear that yes, the insurgents had a new, more powerful weapon. Several things hadn't jelled with me, though, about this briefing. First, no one ever, even to this day, said that the briefing was blessed by General Odierno, General Petraeus's second in command. Nor have they ever indicated whether Petraeus had blessed the briefing. Having worked for the U.S. Air Force for 20 years, I would say that that constitutes poor reporting. To NOT have been given the blessing to conduct the briefing, by one or both of those officers, would constitute such gross negligence, that they ought to be recalled immediately. The civilian intelligence analyst who speculated that the highest type officials of the Iranian government had blessed the use of these devices probably is shoveling poop in Alaska now, if he even has a job. But General Caldwell, you can believe, reports to Odinero or Petraeus. If either of them had signed off on the briefing, then why no action for them? The charges, after all, led to a serious reversal by even the White House. The Mercury News article goes over the details in a way that more media reporters should have taken. They sorted out how many EFPs and IED attacks have occurred in 2005 and 2006. There isn't much difference ... about 40 killed from the former year to the latter. But the EFPs have clearly become an almost certain death sentence for our troops. But the details bear out what I thought from having read the casualty reports that come out daily from Globalsecurity.org. The greatest % of fatalities connected with those devices is in Sunni or Mixed areas. So, nix the so called solid intelligence the Administration has once again claimed to warrant severe scrutiny of the Iranians and Iranian leadership. Essentially, they can't prove it, or, if they can, they're not going to compromise their intelligence sources (most likely signals intelligence of some kind derived from NSA monitoring). Additionally, what about the eight choppers shot down or brought down due to the use of SA-7s, 14s, and 17s? All Soviet weapons. And, again, according to Globalsecurity.org's glossary of weapons information, at least two Sunni dominated nations -- Egypt and Pakistan -- had all of these weapons, plus the heavy machine guns that have also been used in downing these 8 choppers. Is it possible that rouge intelligence or military agents from those two nations, among other Sunni nations which might have some reason to see the Americans humiliated, have migrated to Iraq? And taught insurgents -- Sunni insurgents -- how to use those weapons in coordination with RPGs, heavy automatic weapons fire, as well as other diversions, to cause chopper problems for the Americans? That would be serious. It would embarrass perhaps Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Pakistan. And speaking of Pakistan: today we were told by Brian Ross, on ABC Evening News, that the very day Cheney read the riot act to Musharraf, the Pakistanis found the #3 of the Taliban and arrested him. Or is it more likely that Cheney delivered, personally, intelligence that showed Musharraf exactly WHERE this man was. And that Cheney told him: either you get him or we will. Today. And then Cheney leaves, and goes to Baghram Airport. Where, oddly enough, he is forced to stay overnight, due to weather. And oddly enough, the Taliban blow up a suicider at the main gate. Surely, not to get Cheney, American officials proudly proclaim. There's no way to get Cheney! No, but the Taliban said they wanted Cheney to know we knew you were staying there. And perhaps that info came from a Pakistani ISI source? Was all of this a ruse to smoke out, for Musharraf, a very high placed spy for the Taliban and al-Qaeda? Or was the bombing at Bagram, more a signal to Cheney: WE got YOUR message! YOU told Musharraf where our #3 guy was, and YOU were sending US a message. Now, here is OUR message to YOU, Mr. Cheney! WE knew you were there. We KNEW your movements. Think about THAT! Maybe next time you come around our part of the world, we'll get YOU! I suspect Musharraf is walking a razor blade. I suspect that since the squandered opportunities in the War in Afghanistan, and especially since the U.S.- India nuclear deal, elements of the Pakistani Army and ISI have once again begun to assist the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Cheney and Bush are blowing all kinds of intelligence to let the Pakistanis know that we know what they're up to. But will it really do Musharraf much good? Will he suddenly be able to swoop down on rogues in his Army and ISI, and quell yet another possible coup? How long can he last, when he sucks up more and more to the Americans? And, of course, the Brits are very unhappy with Musharraf and Pakistan. The British Pakistanis are the ones causing Great Britain real concern, as they show up in plot after plot to kill British citizens. Finally, why in the world would Ahmadinejad make a trip to Saudi Arabia? What deals could he convey to the Saudis? Is a deal in the works to soft pedal any criticism the Iranians have made against the Saudis, in exchange for the same from the Saudis against the Iranians? Are the Iranians going pull a rabbit out of their hat at the upcoming diplomats conference in Iraq? Or, do the Iranians have intelligence which will seriously implicate Saudi rogues in the transition of EFP training to the insurgents? Are the Iranians about to expose that? And embarrass the Saudis AND, the Americans? Could it be that the rampant Bushista rant against Iran is the new "yellowcake" incident of this potential war? Because why in the world would the Americans NOT cite ANY Sunni nations as transferring not only IED and EFP technology and training to Sunni insurgents, but also, why would they not even mention the implications of Sunni experts from some Sunni nation, assisting insurgents in shooting down choppers? And possibly, the chlorine gas IEDs, as well. For there being 170 Americans killed and nearly 700 wounded by EFPs, it's remarkable that nothing's been said to Sunni nations when it is Sunni insurgents doing the killing. Rather, without naming Sunnis as the killers using these devices, the Bush Administration makes it appear that the deaths are caused by IRANIAN weapons and trainers. There are roughly 15 of the 30 outposts now located in Baghdad. There are only two ways to resupply them: over the road and by chopper. If the Americans suddenly see a chopper shot down every day, that will make chopper supply more tenuous for those isolated outposts. Supplying them by ground will be even more dangerous. Are we about to see a massive chain reaction ambush, using IEDs, snipers, EFPs, counter chopper equipment and techniques (Manpad shoulder fired missiles), heavy machine gun and automatic weapons fire, as well as chlorine gas releases near American outposts? And who will be behind such coordinated attacks? Quds Brigade or Sunnni dominated nations' rogue elements, assisting their brethren, in the fight on the ground. Vali Nasr makes it very clear that the Iraqi Shia will NOT allow themselves to be dominated ever again by Sunnis. Nor will Iran allow Iraqi Shias to be wiped out. Saudi Arabia recently said that they would never allow their Sunni brethren be slaughtered in Iraq. Have the Saudis, through so-called "rogues," already begun to fight the Shias on the ground, in Iraq? Is the Administration willing to ignore that, so that they can once again, build up a phony case for attacking not a Sunni nation, but colluding with the Sunnis, who are killing Americans right and left ... to squash the Shiites? Imagine the implications of THAT kind of secret game. In essence, claiming Shias are responsible for Americans being killed by EFPs, when, in fact, we KNOW it's Sunni inspired insurgents doing the killing. That would shake the very foundations of this country. It would be dejå vu all over again. I hope Brown and McClatchy can push this further, and I hope Informed Comment can scour the news, to see what the Pakistani press says about the arrest of the #3 Taliban leader. And what they say about the bombing in Baghram. And what they say about Ahmadinejad's trip to Saudi Arabia. The Bush Administration is definitely the darkest regime we have EVER seen in America. Frankly, I wouldn't doubt that if they could push American opinion to accept the Iranians are behind all the evil in Iraq, they'd be willing to sacrifice some Americans to perpetuate that myth. It is heinous to think that, but this regime is heinous. There is a golden award of some kind for the first reporter to bring this level of scrutiny to the national media's attention. They are lazy, asleep, and still gullible when it comes to trusting military or intelligence community briefings. Thank God there are a few real reporters left in the American media.

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Violence in Iraqi Provinces
Allawi withdrawal, Coup Rumors

Sunni Arab guerrillas killed a Marine in al-Anbar Province on Thursday. Guerrillas in Falluja blew up a police wedding, killing 7 and wounding 10. Guerrillas in East Baghdad set off a bomb, targetting a minibus full of government employees, killing one person and wounding 4.

Guerrillas in southwest Baghdad targeted the convoy of Shiite cleric Jalal al-Din al-Saghir of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Al-Saghir has been the target of several assassination attempts and his Buratha mosque has also been attacked. Some Sunnis accuse him of involvement with anti-Sunni Shiite militiamen.

Police found fifteen bodies in the streets of Baghdad. A mortar attack in Habbaniya killed 4 and wounded 14. There were clashes between Iraqi police and guerrillas in Iskandariya, which left 8 dead and 11 wounded.

The US military is preparing to make extensive sweeps of Sadr City in Shiite East Baghdad, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army. There is a potential for clashes in such an operation, but most Mahdi Army commanders have left the area and the rank and file have been given strict instructions to lie low and not rock the boat for now.

The Iraqi National Party of Iyad Allawi is threatening to bolt from the 'national unity government.' Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Adnan Pachachi gave a speech in which he complained that the government of Nuri al-Maliki had not followed through on previous pledges to give Sunni Arabs a greater role in decision making. The Iraqi National List, which only has 25 members in the 275 member parliament, is made up of a mixture of Sunni and Shiite secular nationalists, some of them ex-Baathists. The problem with the 'national unity' government is that it was always a pious hope rather than a political reality. In actuality, the Shiite religious parties have nearly a majority, and on most issues they could get the Kurds to vote with them. This condominium of separatist Kurds and fundamentalist Shiites can always win a simple majority in any parliamentary vote, and that is what counts. As long as the Shiites stick together, and as long as they keep the Kurds with them by giving the latter concessions on autonomy, they just don't need Allawi's list or the Sunni Arab blocs.

If the story were only about Allawi's list withdrawing from the government, that would be unimportant. But its context is widespread rumors among expatriate Iraqis in Jordan that if the surge doesn't work and Nuri al-Maliki doesn't prove a reliable partner, the US might engineer a coup and put Allawi in power. As an ex-Baathist, he would be willing to deploy the iron fist, and, if that didn't work, would be a plausible negotiator with the Sunni Arab guerrillas. So if the withdrawal threat is tied to the menace of a coup, it is significant.
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OSC: Regional Press Reaction to US in Baghdad Parley

The US government Open Source Center surveys and paraphrases the Middle Eastern press reaction to the news that the US will attend the conference of foreign ministers to be held in Baghdad, which will include Iran and Syria:

"OSC Analysis 01 Mar: Middle East on US Participation in Baghdad Regional Parley Middle East -- OSC Analysis Friday, March 2, 2007 T02:52:03Z Middle East: Most Early Reaction Welcomes US Participation in Regional Iraq Conference Amidst limited official reaction, a number of Arab journalists from Iraq's key neighbors greeted the US decision to participate in regional meetings on Iraq as a positive step, though a leading Saudi-owned London-based daily, referring to statements by White House Spokesman Tony Snow, claimed that the Bush Administration was sending mixed signals. Initial Egyptian reaction has been terse and reportorial, while Turkish media warmly welcomed the idea, which one source claimed Turkey had initiated. Iran and Syria were more tepid, with Iran focusing on the effect of the meetings on Iraq, not on Iranian-US relations, and Syria stressing a need to consider a broader range of issues than just the situation in Iraq. The limited initial reaction from key neighboring states to Secretary of State Rice's 27 February announcement that the US would participate in the regional conferences was mostly hopeful, despite scattered claims of dubious US motives (for example, Al-Arab al-Yawm, 1 March). An editorial in the independent, pro-government, wide-circulation Saudi daily, Al-Riyad, for example, characterized the US decision as a "radical change in American politics," claiming that it could be a "lifeboat" for a way out of the Iraq crisis "with some success." The influential Saudi-owned London daily Al-Hayah, however, citing assertions by the White House that it "has not changed its policy" towards Iran and Syria, claimed in a front-page report that the US was sending "conflicting signals" about conducting direct talks with the two countries (1 March). The wide circulation, partially government -owned Jordanian daily Al-Dustur similarly said the US decision was "certainly a good step ," calling it "a chance to open the closed gate of hope and revive a semi-dead peace process in the greater Middle East." Likewise, a commentary in the wide circulation, partially government owned Al-Ra'y welcomed the fact that "representatives of the United States and Iran" will "sit at one table," suggesting that Iran's desire to "break the international isolation" and the US search "for a solution that would spare it more losses" may lead to progress on Iraq (1 March). The United Arab Emirates daily Al-Bayan called the decision a "promising turning point." Saying it was unclear what brought about the change, the commentary concluded that "the important thing is that one of the gateways to . . . dialogue has opened." While acknowledging the skepticism of naysayers, it concluded that their doubts "do not cancel out the fact" that the US and Iran and Syria "are being brought together by the conviction that there is enough common ground for them to stand on" (1 March). The independent Qatari daily Al-Sharq also welcomed the US decision, asserting that "hopes are now hanging on the international Iraq conference . . . not only to end the conflict in the country but also to find an honorable way out for US forces" (1 March). Initial Egyptian media reaction to the announcement was terse. In a front-page report, the Egyptian daily of record, Al-Ahram, called the US decision "a sudden change," while noting that the US had agreed to "discussions, not negotiations" with Iran. Neither Al-Ahram nor other Egyptian papers have yet been observed to comment, though Western media cited a "top Egyptian diplomat" as saying that Egypt would send a representative to the meetings (AP, 28 February). Initial Turkish reaction welcomed the meetings and touted Turkey's role in bringing it about. The secular, centrist, mass-appeal daily Milliyet asserted that "international diplomacy is the only way to achieve a solution," while claiming that "it was Turkey . . . that launched the idea of bringing together" neighboring countries "two years ago" (1 March). The English -language secular centrist Turkish Daily News, citing unnamed diplomatic sources "close to the matter," claimed that Turkey itself hopes to host a round of negotiations that includes the UN Security Council permanent members and members of the G-8 such as Japan, Germany, and Italy, noting that the efforts could even lead to a meeting of Iraqi President Talabani with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan (1 March). Iran and Syria both offered a tepid welcome for the meetings. Iran's reaction focused more on what official and media sources claimed were concerns for the well being of Iraq and Iraqis than on the opportunity to engage with the US, while Syrian official and media sources stressed a need to discuss a broader set of regional problems than just the situation in Iraq. Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said that Iran would participate "if it will be of help to Baghdad" while dismissing the need for US participation, explaining that "regional countries can solve the Iraq problem and there is no need for . . . extra-regional countries" (Mehr News Agency, 28 February). A pair of commentaries on Iranian state-run radio similarly cast doubt on US motives, saying that the "real intentions of the American Administration remain suspicious" and argued that the US willingness to talk with Iran "can (only) be considered sincere if it is accompanied by the amendment of Bush's so-called new Iraq plan" (Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Radio-1, 28 February). An unnamed Syrian Foreign Ministry source, meanwhile, confirmed that Syria would attend the Baghdad conference, characterizing discussions with the US on Iraq as "a partial step in the right direction," while urging discussion of all the region's problems "because they are interlinked" (SANA, 28 February). Syrian state-run media echoed these sentiments, with the daily Tishrin calling the talks "a step in the right direction" but adding "there should be more." The ruling party daily Al-Ba'th published AFP reporting about the matter under a headline stressing that "the problems of the region are interconnected" (1 March)."

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US Military Exaggerated Deaths from Shiite Militias;
EFPs used by Sunnis in Sunni Areas;
No significant Drop in Casualties with Security Plan

Sunni Arab guerrillas account for 90 percent of deadly attacks on US troops in Iraq, concludes Drew Brown of the McClatchy wire service. He shows, as well, that explosively formed projectiles were used with deadly effect against US Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks in al-Anbar Province, Taji, Muqdadiya, and West Baghad, all Sunni areas. This datum proves that Sunnis and not just Shiites are deploying EFPs and it shows that Sunni Arabs have workshops where they can mill the components. The US military had seemed to be arguing bass ackwards that all EFPs came from Iran. Iran is not giving them to Sunnis in Ramadi, that is ridiculous. The key components can be fashioned by people who have experience making explosives for use in the petroleum industry, which is a lot of Sunni Arab Iraqis.

The recently discovered cache of weapons in Diyala province should be viewed with great suspicion. The Mojahedin-e Khalq or MEK base is in Camp Ashrafiya in that province, and they have been boasting in Washington of having had a great success in convincing the US military that the Explosively Formed Projectiles came from Iran. Yeah, and they are likely the ones importing them. MEK is a manipulative cult that wants to get up a war between the US and Iran, and is linked in with the Neoconservatives.

AP reports that guerrillas detonated a bomb in the Bayaa market area, killing 10 and wounding 20. In Baghdad, 10 bodies were found on Wednesday, down from 30 on Tuesday. A mortar attack on another Iraqi neighborhood killed 9, and there was scattered violence in other cities. In Basra, a British soldier was killed by Shiite militiamen.

An Iraqi official leaked government figures on Iraqi civilians killed in January and February, and tried to spin the US press by saying that there had been a significant drop in such casualties.

But this official reported deaths for 1-31 January and compared them for the toll 1-27 February. Uh, the per day total isn't that different, it is just that February is a short month and the figures were given through the day before it ended!

1990 divided by 31 is 64 per day.

1646 divided by 27 is 61 per day.

While human life is precious and a drop of 3 a day is welcome, I wouldn't call that drop significant.

Moreover, the Iraqi government health ministry grossly undercounts the true civilian death toll from violence; UN numbers are higher.

The new Iraqi oil bill will have to get past Sunni and Sadrist parliamentarians, as well as get past the oil workers' union. It has been roundly denounced by these political forces who fear it will give away much of the country's wealth for the next 20 years and will reinforce sectarian divisions.

Karen Kwiatkowsky on the Bush administration's aspirations for long-term military bases in Iraq. You can't always get what you want (bases in Iraq), but you can get what you need (bases in Kuwait and Qatar).
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Iran: Will it or Won't It?

AP reports that Iran will attend the meeting of Iraq's neighbors with the US to be held later this month in Baghdad. There had earlier been some question whether Iran would attend if the US was coming.

Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector, has spoken out against Bush administration negotiating tactics with Iran. He points out that Washington's insistence that Iran capitulate to all Bush's demands before negotiations even begin is "humiliating." He also reveals that the Iranian civilian nuclear energy research program is much more primitive today than what Iraq had in 1991! And, in retrospect some analysts think Iraq's program hadn't actually had much success by then.

But the comment is misleading, because we don't even know that Iran has a weapons research program. It hasn't been proved, there isn't any solid evidence, and the Supreme Jurisprudent has given a fatwa against having or using nuclear weapons as illicit in Islamic law. You can't acknowledge that Iran is a dictatorial theocracy and then turn around and say that his fatwa is irrelevant.

The people who assert with such confidence that Iran has a weapons program are the same ones who insisted that North Korea had a uranium enrichment program, which now turns out to be unlikely. And then there was that little mistake about Iraq's "program."

The other issue is that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty permits states to have civilian nuclear research programs, and the current Bush administration/ UN Security Council threats of economic boycott are in essence an ex post facto repeal those provisions of the treaty, and imposes on signatory states new limitations that they never agreed to.

Iran's non-oil exports to Iraq in the past year topped $1 bn. This sort of thing is why it is unrealistic for the US to hope for Iraq and Iran to have no relations with each other.

An Indian blogger's impressions of contemporary Iran, contrasted to the US press image of the place.
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Helman Guest Editorial: Regional Conference with Iran

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman writes:

"In the weeks ahead, the Administration likely will try to play down the importance of its agreement to participate in a regional conference on Iraq. The decision was announced by Secretary Rice at the tag end of her testimony February 27 to the Senate's Appropriations Committee. Administration background briefers seem to suggest that US agreement to now support a proposal sporadically advocated by the Maliki government is, variously, a reward for the Iraqi government's recent good behavior, an opportunity to skewer Iran and Syria for their misdeeds in Iraq, and in any event nothing new since the US has long been willing to consider a regional conference.

In my judgment, however, the decision to participate in such a conference will prove to be a major development, with its own dynamic, and inevitably will involve more issues than just the status of Iraq. But Iraq will come first and foremost.

Soon, much more will be known about the conference, its participants and their views, agenda, and the "shape of its table." But some things can confidently be inferred about its dynamic based on what we know now.

The US decision to support a conference must have been made many weeks ago. To get to the point of Rice's announcement, there would have to have been the usual internal US process leading to Presidential approval. At some point, Iraq would have been given the high sign to move ahead (nothing would have happened without our approval). Iraq (and/or maybe Saudi Arabia) would have sounded out Syria and Iran and gotten their assent. The US certainly would have checked with the UK and maybe Germany as current President of the EU.

If that's the case, it is fair to ask what persuaded the Administration to chart what could well prove to be a new course. After all, it was early last December when the President dismissed the Iraq Study Group's diplomatic offensive recommendation in favor of a troop surge. We can only speculate, but here are some possibilities:

** Domestically, the President could be hearing that if the Republican Party has to contest the 2008 elections while a civil war is going on and Americans are dying, the Party will go down in flames. All its gains beginning in the Reagan years will be lost, maybe for a decade to come. Within the bureaucracy, the modest success achieved thus far with multilateral diplomacy in the case of North Korea and in applying pressure on Iran may have strengthened Rice's hand, presumably against Cheney. Gates must be a pleasure after Rumsfeld.

**Militarily, there may be a number of contributing factors:

*The realization that the troop surge at current levels will not work and that to send more than 20,000 will lead to strong and outspoken resistance from the uniformed services, Congress and growing elements of the GOP. Moreover, the Iraqi military will be incapable or unwilling to operate at the levels the US is looking for.

*It will be very difficult to interdict the kinds and volume of assistance to Iraqi factions now being rendered by Syria and Iran without many more US soldiers and/or effective cooperation by Iraq. In a civil war, that's not going to happen.

*Implied and threatened military action against Iran have lready evoked strong domestic and international opposition. It can't continue much longer without being read as ineffective bluff.

*The UK's decision to begin disengagement will place a heavier burden on the US and essentially does away with the fiction of a Coalition. Now, its all US, all the time.

*Perhaps most importantly, Afghanistan is heating up and we may have to significantly increase our forces there to counter the Taliban's expected Spring offensive. Iran supported US objectives there in 2002; they may be needed again.

**And politically, there also are a number of factors:

*With the UK disengaging, there is not a country in the world that would break a sweat to help us (Australia excepted).

*The countries of the region, the "moderates", may themselves be dismayed at the Administration's political ineptitude and increasingly concerned that unless steps are taken to promote longer term stability, chaos lies ahead that might threaten their own futures. It would not be surprising were it to turn out that Saudi Arabia (and Jordan?) have as a consequence been actively promoting with Iran, Syria and others (including the US) the idea of a diplomatic offensive.

*The Maliki government seems really to want this conference, in part perhaps to establish its legitimacy (and independence?) as an international player. And its foreign policy emphasizes good relation with Iran and Syria.

The conference reportedly will begin in March, probably in the Green Zone, with an organizational meeting and continue in April outside Iraq at the Foreign Minister level. Presumably, discussions of substance will begin there. In looking ahead, keep in mind that in multilateral diplomacy, process (the modalities) can oftentimes shape substance. Who attends, who chairs, the content and order of the agenda, the venue, the working rules (are there to be subcommittees?), who provides the Secretariat, provisions for follow-on conferences, for inter-sessional meetings--all can very much shape the dynamics of a conference as well as its substantive achievments, or lack thereof. For example, the participants reportedly will include the countries of the region (I take that to mean the Arab countries of the Middle East, minus Lebanon and North Africa), Iran of course, the Permanent Members of the Security Council, the EU President, the UN Secretary General and, I would guess, representatives of UN agencies dealing with economic matters.

With such a lineup its hard to imagine that some way won't be found for Iran to meet with the five countries involved in nuclear discussions, with the US in the wings.

But certainly, the business of the conference will focus very much on one issue: how and when will US forces depart Iraq. We can expect very little support for our continuation of the surge, nor for the maintenance of bases nor for any extended and conditioned departure. The US may seek to indict Iran and Syria, but that is easily dealt with. Both will deny wrongdoing and readily join in a conference resolution not to interfere in the internal affairs of Iraq. There certainly will be an appeal for economic help for Iraq, easily met with a paper IOU.

The Conference may also offer the US an opportunity over the longer run to establish and institutionalize a more stable security environment in the region, with the US and its forces a continuing and accepted element. The Administration could make preparation of positions for the conference a truely bipartisan effort and even propose some level of Congressional participation. Regretably, this Administration lacks the imagination, courage and time to bring that about."

Helman "was United States Ambassador to the European Office of the United Nations from 1979 through 1981."
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Very Basic Suggested Reading List on Middle East*

Berkey, Jonathan P. The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Cleveland, William L. A History of the Modern Middle East. 3rd edn. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2004.

Dodge, Toby. Inventing Iraq : the failure of nation-building and a history denied New York : Columbia University Press, 2003.

Gelvin, James. The modern Middle East: a history. New York : Oxford University Press, 2005.

Gerges, Fawaz. The far enemy: why Jihad went global. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Hourani, Albert. A history of the Arab peoples. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.

- General history of the Arab world from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the present.

Keddie, Nikki. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of revolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003.

- History of modern Iran, with some early modern and nineteenth-century background, but good treatment of the twentieth century and the Islamic Republic.

Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. London: Longman, 1989.

Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian identity : the construction of modern national consciousness. New York : Columbia University Press, 1997.

Khalidi, Rashid. Resurrecting Empire : western footprints and America’s perilous path in the Middle East. Boston : Beacon Press, 2004.

Kennedy, Hugh. When Baghdad Ruled the World. New York: Perseus Books, 2006.

- Explores the medieval history of Muslim-ruled Iraq and its civilizational glories. People who doubt its importance should try doing math in Roman numerals with no zero and no algrebra.

Kepel, Gilles. Jihad : the trail of political Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Marr, Phebe. The modern history of Iraq. 2nd ed. Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 2004.

McAlister, Melani. Epic encounters : culture, media, and U.S. interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000 Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001.

Montgomery Watt. Muhammad Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press, rev. 1961. A Galaxy Book.

Mottahedeh, Roy. The mantle of the Prophet : religion and politics in Iran. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1985.

Packer, George. The assassins’ gate: America in Iraq 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambrige University Press, 2005.

Best recent social history of the greatest Middle Eastern empire and its early twentieth-century demise

Rosen, Nir. In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. New York: Free Press, 2006.

Shadid, Anthony. Night draws near : Iraq’s people in the shadow of America’s war. New York : Henry Holt, 2005.

Shlaim, Avi. The iron wall : Israel and the Arab world New York : W.W. Norton, 2000.

Smith, Charles. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.

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*All my friends whose books are not listed here should please forgive me. This list is meant to be very basic and comes in response to requests for suggestions from the public.

qqqq
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