Arguments over Night of the Living Dead in Iraq

A Government Accounting Office report has found that the Iraqi government has not met 13 of 18 benchmarks set by the US Congress. The report was leaked before it could be doctored by the Bush administration, which promptly denounced it and pledged to . . . doctor it.

Another thing that could be said is that of the 18 congressional benchmarks some are frankly trivial. The trivial ones are the only ones met.

I personally find the controversy about Iraq in Washington to be bizarre. Are they really arguing about whether the situation is improving? I mean, you have the Night of the Living Dead over there. People lack potable water, cholera has broken out even in the good areas, a third of people are hungry, a doubling of the internally displaced to at least 1.1 million, and a million pilgrims dispersed just this week by militia infighting in a supposedly safe all-Shiite area. The government has all but collapsed, with even the formerly cooperative sections of the Sunni Arab political class withdrawing in a snit (much less more Sunni Arabs being brought in from the cold). The parliament hasn't actually passed any legislation to speak of and often cannot get a quorum. Corruption is endemic. The weapons we give the Iraqi army are often sold off to the insurgency. Some of our development aid goes to them, too.

The average number of Iraqis killed in 2007 per day exceeds those killed in 2006. Independent counts by news organizations do not agree with Pentagon estimates about drops in civilian deaths over-all. Nation-wide attacks in June reached a daily all-time high of 177.5. True, violence in Baghdad has been wrestled back down to the levels of summer, 2006 (hint: it wasn't paradise), but violence levels are up in the rest of the country. If you compare each month in 2006 with each month in 2007 with regard to US military deaths, the 2007 picture is dreadful.

I saw on CNN this smarmy Bush administration official come and and say that US troop deaths had fallen because of the surge, which is why we should support it. Just read the following chart bottom to top and compare 2006 month by month to 2007. US troop deaths haven't fallen. They are way up. Besides, they would be zero if the US were not occupying Iraq militarily, so if we should support a policy that leads to fewer troop deaths, that is the better policy.

Here are the US troop death via Icasualties.org.

8-2007 77     8-2006 65
7-2007 79     7-2006 43
6-2007 101    6-2006 61
5-2007 126    5-2006 69
4-2007 104    4-2006 76
3-2007 81     3-2006 31
2-2007 81     2-2006 55
1-2007 83     1-2006 62

I mean, how brain dead do the Bushies think we are, peddling this horse manure that US troop deaths have fallen? (There are always seasonal variations because in the summer it is 120 F. in the shade and guerrillas are too heat-exhausted to fight; but the summer 2007 numbers are much greater than those for summer 2006; that isn't progress.) And why does our corporate media keep repeating this Goebbels-like propaganda? Do we really live in an Orwellian state?

I'm at a conference. I would make a chart to illustrate the above if I had the time. Somebody else please do it. Maybe we bloggers can unite to keep the debate from being conducted on false premises for once.

(Thanks just a million to Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly and all the others who responded to my call for a graph here. It is striking when you see it that way. Look in comments for more such links.)

Repeat: US troop deaths in Iraq have not fallen and that is not a reason to support the troop escalation. And, violence in Iraq has not fallen because of the surge. Violence is way up this year.

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At the Napoleon's Egypt blog: "The Washington of France."

The Nation: Corruption the Norm in Iraqi Gov't USG Reports Al-Maliki has Impeded investigations

The Nation has gotten hold of a secret USG report that says that profound corruption is the norm in the Iraqi government. The intrepid David Corn writes:

' according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.

The draft--over 70 pages long--was obtained by The Nation, and it reviews the work (or attempted work) of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), an independent Iraqi institution, and other anticorruption agencies within the Iraqi government. Labeled "SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED/Not for distribution to personnel outside of the US Embassy in Baghdad," the study details a situation in which there is little, if any, prosecution of government theft and sleaze. Moreover, it concludes that corruption is "the norm in many ministries."

The report depicts the Iraqi government as riddled with corruption and criminals-and beyond the reach of anticorruption investigators. It also maintains that the extensive corruption within the Iraqi government has strategic consequences by decreasing public support for the U.S.-backed government and by providing a source of funding for Iraqi insurgents and militias.'

Read the whole thing.

Cheney & Iran: Here We Go Again?

Barnett Rubin relays a message from a well-connected friend in Washington on the Cheney Administration's plans to roll out a military confrontation with Iran in September. He writes at the Global Affairs blog:

" My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran."

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Cole: there has been some recent similar reporting. For instance, just on Tuesday Raw Story covered a paper by two British academics arguing that the US has the capability and perhaps the intention of launching an aerial assault on Iran's enrichment facilities.

Earlier, McClatchy reported on Aug. 9 that Cheney has been urging bombing of Iranian trails to Iraq. This position struck me as eerily reminiscent of Nixon-Kissinger's treatment of Cambodia (which is what really caused the Khmer Rouge horrors, not, as Bush said the other day, US withdrawal from Vietnam; we dropped enormous amounts of ordnance on that country and severely disrupted it).

Also at Raw Story on Aug. 10.

And Gareth Porter on Aug. 16 responding to the McClatchy article.

So, maybe something is up.

If you want to see what I think of a war with Iran, see this golden oldie.

Read Rubin's whole piece.

Sistani Aides Held by JAM Muqtada freezes Paramilitary for 6 months

Two senior aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani--Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i and Ahmad al-Safi-- were kidnapped on Tuesday by the Mahdi Army and are still being held as captives, according to the Kuwaiti News Organization. This report seems to confirm that the Mahdi Army attempted to take over the shrine of Imam Husayn in Karbala under the cover of the festival of the birth of the 12th Imam, which had brought a million pilgrims into the city. The shrine is worth millions if not hundreds of millions in pilgrimage revenue annually, and is also a source of prestige among Shiites. The two kidnapped clerics had preached there.

PM Nuri al-Maliki confirmed that militiamen had attempted to take over the shrine, but he muddied the waters by calling the attackers "remnants of the Baath" and suggesting that they wanted to blow it up. Far more likely, they wanted to displace the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council from it and to start appropriating the monies from the pilgrimage trade for themselves.

Al-Maliki fired 1500 policemen in Karbala on Wednesday and dismissed the police chief, Major General Saleh Khazal Al-Maliki, on grounds of dereliction of duty. (It may be that the police were in some part recruited from or highly sympathetic to the Mahdi Army, and so they declined to intervene in its push to take the shrine by force).

In the aftermath of the fighting Tuesday in the holy city of Karbala between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, and then attacks on SIIC offices in Baghdad by Mahdi Army fighters, the militia's leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, called Wednesday for it to lay down its arms for 6 months.

My guess is that Muqtada realizes that his men went too far, in trying to take the shrine of Imam Husayn by main force, and in disrupting a major Shiite festival. These actions would be highly unpopular in the Shiite street, and could cost Muqtada some of his otherwise impressive popularity in the South. Aljazeera showed him speaking in Najaf, by the way, putting the lie to Bush administration allegations that he had gone into hiding in Iran (that was just a smear, since he prides himself on his Iraq nationalism).

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Muqtada said: "We considered it beneficial to freeze the Mahdi Army without exception, in order to rebuild its structure in such a way as to preserve its doctrinal heading-- for a period of 6 months from the issuing of this decision." He added, "We also announce three days of mourning, and the closing of the offices of the Martyr Sadr thoughout Iraq, the wearing of black, the holding of mourning sessions." He urged the public to investigate what had occured in Karbala.

Akhavi on Neocolonialism

Khody Akhavi at IPS covers my talk last Friday at the New America Foundation, on my book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East. He writes:

'In Cole's view, the Bush administration's rhetoric of "liberating Iraq" from the clutches of a tyrannical leader with a hankering for weapons of mass destruction can't mask its long-term neo-colonial ambitions. Like Napoleon, Bush has a tendency to believe his own propaganda. Both invasions deployed rhetoric of liberation. Like the French general, Bush had a desire to create a "Greater Middle East", only to face an insurgency that viewed the foreign presence as an occupation, not liberation.'

Read the whole thing.

Video of my talk at NAF is available here.

Shiite Militia Clashes at Karbala Killl 52, Wound 206 Mahdi Army Rampage against SIIC offices in Baghdad

Clashes between rival militias in the Shiite holy city of Karbala left some 52 dead and 206 wounded on Tuesday, according to late reports from Iraqi security officials. About a million Shiite pilgrims had converged on the city to commemorate the birthday of the Twelfth Imam, the 12th in the line of succession from the Prophet Muhammad, who Shiites expect to appear supernaturally at the end of days.

The fighting let the government to declare a curfew and to insist that the pilgrims disperse. The government sent some buses from Baghdad. Reuters says its stringers in Karbala identified the two sides as the Mahdi Army of the Sadr Movement and the Badr Corps of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). Three hotels in downtown Karbala were burned in the disturbances.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic two stories about what happened. The first is a somewhat implausible story that Iraqi police just began firing at the pilgrims indiscriminately when they chanted slogans criticizing the government of Nuri al-Maliki for its repressive policies in the south.

So what's going on here? The Supreme Council controls the shrine and mosque of Imam Husayn in Karbala, among the holiest shrines in the Shiite world. Pilgrims give donations when they visit the shrine, worth millions every year, and being able to preach at its mosque lends prestige to the incumbent. Al-Zaman says that the Sadrists, which in 2003 for a while controlled the shrine, were using the cover of the enormous crowds to steal a march on the Badr Corps, seeking to occupy the shrine. Badr appears to have fought them off. A lot of Karbala police were recruited from Badr, so it is always hard to tell militia on militia violence from police on militia violence.

That the Shiite government of Nuri al-Maliki cannot maintain order in the supremely Shiite city of Karbala during a major holy rite is very worrisome. In a way, Karbala's violence during the past two days reminds me of the Shiite on Shiite violence in Basra. The south seems less and less stable, as the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps square off against one another, each seeking to control as many provinces as possible.

Leaders of the Mahdi Army and the Supreme Council in Karbala were said to be meeting urgently with the Shiite Grand Ayatollahs in an effort to find a way to get the two groups to stop fighting.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Mahdi Army elements attacked offices of the Supreme Council in several places in Iraq in reprisal for SIIC fighting with the Mahdi Army in Karbala. McClatchy reports of these clashes:

'Gunmen broke in the office of Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) in Kadhemiyah neighborhood north Baghdad around 5,00 pm and kidnapped 4 guys and burnt the office. . .

5 people killed and 20 injured in clashes between gunmen and guards of an office of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) in Habibiyah neighborhood east Baghdad. The clashes broke out around 6,00 pm and still ongoing.

Gunmen attacked the office of SIIC in Amil neighborhood southwest Baghdad around 7,30. The clashes stills ongoing and no casualties reported.

Gunmen attacked the office of the SIIC in Husseiniyah town north Baghdad around 7,30 Pm. No casualties reported.'

McClatchy rounds up other political violence in Iraq for Tuesday. Sunni Arab guerrillas were attacking Shiite pilgrims. There are all these underground wars in Iraq.

' Baghdad: 4 pilgrims were wounded when gunmen attacked them in AlBo’etha area south Baghdad around 7,30 am. . .

6 pilgrims were injured when gunmen attacked them in Mahmoudiyah town south Baghdad around 7,45 am. . .

A civilian was killed and 3 others wounded in a parked car bomb explosion in Sheikh Omar neighborhood downtown Baghdad around 10,30 am. . .

Gunmen broke in the mosque of Haj Isma’il in Qahira neighborhood north Baghdad around 5,00 pm killing 3 men and kidnapping another 3 men . . .

Police found 13 unidentified bodies in Baghdad today. . .

Bush, Ahmadinejad Trade Barbs Iranian Delegates Arrested, Released by US

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

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

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

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

Cole in Salon: The War on al-Maliki

My Salon column for Wednesday is now available: "The war against Iraq's prime minister:"

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

Excerpt:

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

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

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

Read the whole thing.

Rubin: Proposal on Narcotics in Afghanistan

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

Gonzales Gone for Wrong Reasons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is a great shame.

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A canny reader writes: "How appropriate that Gonzales's resignation is effective September 17: September 17 is Constitution Day."

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

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Terrorism

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

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

War in a Time of Cholera

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

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

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

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

Iraqi Kurdistan health minister announces five cholera deaths

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

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

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

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

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

Churchill on When to Throw in the Towel on Iraq

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From: This web site, winstonchurchill.org.

Williams Guest Op-ed: W. and Graham Greene

John S. Williams writes:

"One of the most curious comments in Incurious Boy George's recent speech before the Veterans of Foreign War in Kansas City was his totally uninformed reference to Graham Greene's novel about American involvement in Vietnam, The Quiet American. Perhaps the best article on the matter I've read thus far is one by Frank James entitled "Why would Bush cite 'The Quiet American'?" that I quite accidentally stumbled upon.

I have long been interested in the themes of naive idealism, frequently taking the form of innocence (as in ignorance, in the religious sense of ignorance of good and evil, the dreaming innocence of childhood, immaturity), and the evil and havoc that can be the consequence of such innocence or equally important the discovery of the power of evil through the loss of innocence. Think Fitzgerald's Gatsby, or Melville's Billy Budd, or Faulkner's Sutpen for the former; or Twain's Huck Finn, or Salinger's Holden Caulfield or Faulkner's Ike McCaslin for the latter.

Graham Greene, a Brit, understood this aspect of the American character just as well as do American writers. But in the article I've linked above and in the other things I've read, all have missed the crucial sentence in Greene's great novel that stands as an indictment of Alden Pyle, the young naive, idealistic, innocent (Greene's word, not mine) CIA agent. This sentence is equally an indictment of our strutting, smirking President and apparently his current speech writers who put the words in his mouth. Greene's indictment is: "He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance."

Incurious Boy George may have not learned about irony in a literature course in college, but one would have hoped his speech writers had! "

Al-Maliki Threatens Journalists Al-Hashemi Plays Hard to Get

Al-Maliki tells off US pols., threatens journalists with libel lawsuits. A hint to Mr. al-Maliki: This kind of shrillness does not look prime ministerial and just hurts your cause. Muzzling criticism in the press is a contradiction of your claim to legitimacy because of a democratic victory in the polls.

Tariq al-Hashimi was in Ankara for consultations and announced that he would not lightly rejoin the Iraqi government. Al-Hashimi is a vice president of Iraq and leading figure in Iraqi Islamic Party and its current coalition, the Iraqi Accord Front. He has a list of 6 major demands. He and his party are being wooed by the 5 party coalition that is supporting al-Maliki. He got some of what he wanted on Friday, including pledges to release Sunni Arab detainees who were not going to be formally charged, and a change in the Debaathification laws. Turkish politician Abdullah Gul urged al-Hashemi to return to the al-Maliki government.

British troops withdrew from a Joint Operations Command Center in Basra on Sunday. Gradually the remaining 5,500 British troops in the south are being concentrated near the airport, having left most security duties to the Iraqi 10th Army Division and local police. When the British left, a crowd of Sadrists gathered, celebrating and claiming victory. A force of Mahdi Army militiamen attempted to invade the site, but they were fought off by security forces, according to Reuters.

The Sadrists are declining to return to the al-Maliki government, even though their differences with it are minimal.

A high official of the Islamic Call (Da`wa) Party of PM Nuri al-Maliki, Jawad Talibi, give this explanation of American politicians' calls for al-Maliki to step down. It derives, he said, from the way the American political class is divided internally.

The Iraqi Presidential Council announced Sunday that some agreements had been made among its members on Bush's benchmarks (they did not put it that way). But they mentioned the issue of Iraqi detainees in Iraqi prisons, the petroleum law, and so forth.

Reuters rounds up political violence for Sunday. McClatchy has more. Note that during the Shiite holy days commemorating the birth of the 12th Imam, death squad killings in Baghdad have fallen to 10 or 11 a day. Alas, probably won't last.

Who is the US Fighting in Iraq?

Who exactly is the US fighting in Iraq? Graphed by self-confessed identity of captives, it is largely Sunni Arab Iraqis, often motivated primarily by the opportunity to earn some money from the resistance leaders.


Source: New York Times, 2007/08/25.

The second largest group is Salafi Takfiris, i.e. fundamentalists who do not consider Shiites to be Muslims and who believe they may be harmed with impunity. The third group is Shiite militiamen (how many of these are non-ideological paid employees is not specified). Self-identified al-Qaeda are only 1800 of the 24000 in captivity, about 7 percent. (Of course, most of these fighters are not really al-Qaeda in the sense of pledging fealty to Usama Bin Laden or being part of his organization; they are using "al-Qaeda" to mean "bogeyman": i.e., 'be afraid of me'.) Foreign fighters at 280 are about 1.1 percent. While it could be argued that it would take bold captives to declare themselves al-Qaeda, there would be no downside to telling the Americans one was a takfiri. There is no reason to think the over 11,000 unspecified Sunni Arabs is fundamentalists. Opinion polling still shows a majority of Sunnis favoring the separation of religion and state.

The odd tendency of the US military and press to refer to all guerrillas in Iraq as "al-Qaeda" is obviously not justified by their own subsequent interrogations of captured suspects. Readers should write and complain when they see al-Qaeda used indiscriminately to describe Sunni Arab fighters.

And when you hear Cheney say we have to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, you will know that most of the people the US is fighting there are no such thing.

Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East

The video of my appearance at the New America Foundation is now online. Many thanks again to kind host Steve Clemons. The short version, covering some of the same points, can be read at Tomdispatch.com, which is carrying my essay on Bonaparte and Bush.

Rubin on Narcotics in Afghanistan

At the Global Affairs group blog, Barnett Rubin gives us the second in a series of three posts on the effort to confront narcotics production and trafficking coming out of Afghanistan. It is an issue intimately tied up, potentially, with counter-terrorism efforts, but is often neglected by analysts. Rubin is among our foremost Afghanistan experts.

Surge in Deaths 85 percent in US custody Are Sunni Arabs

The Bush administration talking points on the Iraq War are that the troop escalation has reduced violence and made Iraq safer for Iraqis, that the major threat in Iraq is self-avowed al-Qaeda devotees, and that Iran and the Shiites are just as deadly a threat as the Sunni Arab guerrillas.

The facts? The Associated Press points out the following

Deaths per day from political violence in 2007: 62
Deaths per day from political violence in 2006: 33

Yeah, things are obviously much safer. The report does say that violence is down in Baghdad this year, but the 'surge' just displaced it to other provinces. AP adds:

Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. The AP accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006.

•Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.'Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. The AP accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006.

The guerrillas have dealt with the surge by a doubling of violence in Iraq as a whole, and the US has only succeeded in wrestling the problem in Baghdad back down to where it was in summer of 2006.

Al-Hayat comments in Arabic on this NYT story that the number of detainees held by the US military in Iraq has risen from 19,000 to 24,400 in the course of the surge. Of these over 24,000, 85% are Sunni Arabs (20,740 of the current total). These numbers make absurd the comments of some US officers that the Shiite militias are as big a threat as the Sunni Salafi 'insurgents,' or that Iran is the major trouble maker in Iraq.

Indeed, since most Mahdi Army fighters deeply dislike Iran, those 15% in custody from among the Iraqi Shiites probably represent Iraqi nativists.

I read 85 percent of detainees being Sunni as meaning that most attacks were in Sunni Arab neighborhoods and so those arrested were from that community. Iran is not backing Iraqi Sunni Arabs because it could not do so without essentially collaborating in attacks on Iraqi Shiites (it is a different situation than Palestine, where there are no Shiites and there therefore is no downside to supporting Hamas).

The NYT says that of the 24,400, only 1800 openly say that they are "al-Qaeda." That is about 7 percent of the whole. Another 6,000, or about a fourth, say they are takfiris, i.e. Salafis who are willing to excommunicate Shiites from Islam and to declare them non-Muslims.

The conclusion is that the vast majority (certainly 2/3s report themselves as neither al-Qaeda nor takfiri). Even if we exclude the Shiites, a majority may well not even be religious.

Meanwhile, Sunni Arab VP Tariq al-Hashimi wants these thousands of detainees formally charged with some crime or released. He says whether his resignation goes through depends on his party's decree. His coalition, the Iraq Accord Front, has withdrawn from al-Maliki's "national unity cabinet." Al-Hashemi's resignation would significantly weaken al-Maliki.

The withdrawal of 3 more cabinet ministers, of the National Iraqi List.

The trial of Baathis involved in suppressing the spring 1991 revolution is barely underway, but it is creating anger against the US since the Bush senior administration called for the uprising and then stood aside as Saddam massacred the rebels.

Reuters rounds up political violence in Iraq for Saturday,

Cole on Air America with Sam Seder, Sunday

Catch my interview at Air America with Sam Seder on Sunday, August 26 at 6 pm, regarding my new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East.

Troops on Ground tune out "Happy Talk" from Bush

Tina Susman of the LAT finds that the privates and specialists among US troops in Iraq are dismissive of the 'happy talk' they hear from Bush and some of their commanders about the way the war is going. They see the realities on the ground, they lose friends to roadside bombings, they see evidence that the Iraqi Army is not trustworthy. So 'happy talk' doesn't impress them.

Meanwhile, among the high generals, there is a dispute about how fast to draw down troops from Iraq. Gen Peter Pace seems to be denying it now but it was rumored that he might suggest going down to less than 100,000 in 2008.

Big database, small arrest yield. Raises fears for civil rights and privacy considerations.

Reuters rounds up civil war violence on Iraq for Friday. Among the incidents:

BAGHDAD - At least 13 people were killed in clashes between U.S. forces and gunmen in the Shula district of northwestern Baghdad overnight, a police source at a hospital said. U.S. force said they killed eight militants in the clash.

Was looking for follow up to Thursday's big attack in Diyala, but no word.

At the group blog, Barnett Rubin posts the first of three installments on the drug problem and Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, remember how some Pentagon spokespeople keep saying that explosively formed projectiles must come from Iran even when used by Sunni Arab Iraqis? Well, what about this report that EFPs with a distinct signature are being used in Afghanistan? There is no evidence for an Iranian provenance over there. And Afghanistan is a fourth world country compared to Iraq.

Ahmed on Sharif Decision, Pakistan

Don't miss Manan Ahmed's important comment at our Global Affairs group blog on Pakistan's Supreme Court decision that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif may return to Pakistan.

See also Sameer Lalwani's comments at the Washington Note on the same issue.

C-Span covers Cole at New America Foundation

This talk will be broadcast on C-Span at some later date, but will be available later on Friday at the web site of the New America Foundation.

New America Foundation

Juan Cole: Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East

Friday, August 24, 2007
12:15 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave, NW, 7th Floor
Washington, DC

Cole will discuss his new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East and the relevance and lessons of Napoleon’s expedition in Egypt to the current American occupation of Iraq. New America Foundation/American Strategy Program Director Steve Clemons will offer comments and moderate the discussion.

Juan is a professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan, the President of the Global Americana Institute, and the publisher of Informed Comment, a blog that specializes in providing translations and commentary on the modern Middle East.

Featured Speakers
Juan Cole
Author, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East
Publisher, Informed Comment

Steven Clemons,
Senior Fellow and Director
American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
Publisher, TheWashingtonNote.com

To RSVP for this event: communications@newamerica.net with name, affiliation, and contact information.

If you have questions, call or email Liz Wu at (202) 986-2700 x315 or wu //a t// newamerica.net

The New America Foundation • www.NewAmerica.net
1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20009

----

At the Napoleon's Egypt blog: "British Navy Sink's Bonaparte's Fleet, Marooning French Army in Egypt."

Iranian Troops Come into Kurdistan

Iranian troops came into the Iraqi territory of Kurdistan, seeking revenge on the PEJAK faction of Kurds that has launched terror attacks on Iranian soil.

Senator John Warner called Thursday for Bush to take out 5,000 US troops from Iraq before Christmas Day. Although Warner protrayed the move as symbolic,, insofar as it would signal to the region that the US was serious about getting out, most analysts felt that his position was so foreign to Bush that it had little chance of acceptance.

McClatchy reports political violence on Thursday:

' Baghdad . . .

- Around 9 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded at Na’iriya area of New Baghdad neighborhood ( east Baghdad) killing 1 person and injuring 5 others.

- Soldiers from Troop C, 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, were targeted by insurgents while patrolling in Jisr Diyala, southeast of Baghdad, Aug. 21. U.S. Soldiers were unhurt, but two local children were caught in a roadside bomb explosion, killing one child and injuring another. . .

Anbar

- On Tuesday ( August 21) , a suicide bomber targeted a police check point at Dam street in Falluja (62 km west of Baghdad) injuring two people and he was killed by police.

Kirkuk

- Wednesday night, a car bomb targeted a convoy for a member of Hawija council board ( west of Kirkuk) injuring one guard who was transferred to hospital.

- Wednesday night, police arrested the media man of 1920th battalions in Kirkuk during a raid in Wahid Huzayran ( June 1st ) neighborhood in Kirkuk city. . .

OSC Press Roundup Maliki visit to Syria

The USG Open Source Center rounds up Iraqi media reaction to the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to Damascus.

Iraq-Syria: Media, Officials Call Al-Maliki Visit 'Success' Despite Differences Iraq, Syria
-- OSC Report Friday, August 24, 2007
Document Type: OSC Report Word Count: 749

Iraq-Syria: Media, Officials Call Al-Maliki's Visit 'Successful' Despite Differences During his 20-22 August visit to Damascus, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pushed to enlist Syria as a partner in Iraq's fight against terrorism, casting the problem as a threat to both sides. While Iraqi government officials and media portrayed the visit as an overall success, media close to the government expressed reservations about Syria's reliability as an ally. Syria for its part reiterated its objections to the presence of the Multinational Forces in Iraq, but nonetheless called the visit a success, drawing attention to agreements to import Iraqi fuel.

During the visit, Prime Minister Al-Maliki sought to enlist Syria's aid in Iraq's fight against terrorism. Iraqi leaders and media have long complained that Syria has served as a staging area for insurgents seeking to enter Iraq.

Al-Maliki said during an interview with Syrian television, for example, that "it must be clear to the world, and it has become clear to the brothers in Syria," that terrorism represents "a dark onslaught without any values or ethics" (Syrian Space Channel TV, 22 August).

Media sources close to the Baghdad government, however, expressed doubts that Syria would prove to be a reliable ally.

A commentator in one of the dailies of Iraqi President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan described the new phase in Syria-Iraq relations as a chance for Syria to "minimize the accusations leveled against it" but noted that any security agreement needed an "appropriate and realistic mechanism" to ensure that Syria lived up to its commitments (Kurdistani Nuwe, 23 August). The government-run channel Al-Iraqiyah reported that "the Syrian side responded favorably to (Iraq's security) demands," but added: "The real results of this visit will materialize in the upcoming stage based on what is implemented on the ground" (22 August).

In addition, Iraqi media critical of the government reported that Damascus rejected Baghdad's demand that it extradite hundreds of persons wanted in Iraq.

While the predominantly Saudi-owned Al-Arabiyah TV reported that Syria handed over 13 persons sought by Iraq (21 August), Dar al-Salam, the paper of Iraq's leading Sunni party, reported that Damascus rejected Baghdad's demand to hand over more than 300 other "politicians, military men, and Iraqi personalities opposing the Al-Maliki government" (23 August). Reporting that Al-Maliki had returned "empty-handed" from Damascus, the independent daily Al-Zaman cited an unidentified Syrian source as remarking: "Al-Maliki has forgotten that he himself, and some of the senior officials accompanying him . . . were political refugees in Syria" during the Saddam era (22 August).

A further point of contention was the presence of the Multinational Forces (MNF), which Al-Maliki insisted were in Iraq with the government's approval while Syria pushed for a timetable for their withdrawal.

Al-Maliki said during his interview with Syrian television that the extension of the presence of the MNF had been "approved by all of the political blocs in the government and the Council of Representatives" (Syrian Space Channel TV, 22 August).

While the privately-owned Syrian daily Al-Watan played down the "contentious" MNF issue, saying that both sides were eager to highlight "points of agreement" (23 August), official Syrian sources continued to put heavy emphasis on a timetable for the MNF withdrawal as a precondition for Iraqi security, stability, and reconciliation (SANA, 20 August; Al-Thawrah, Tishrin, Al-Watan, 21 August). The joint statement issued at the end of the talks was closer to Baghdad's stance, stressing as a precondition for the MNF withdrawal a "political and security atmosphere" enabling Baghdad to assume responsibility for protecting its citizens (SANA, 22 August). Syria Emphasizes Economic Agreements

On the Syrian side, officials and media portrayed the meetings as a success, highlighting several economic agreements, the most prominent of which dealt with the export of Iraqi fuel to Syria.

Syrian Prime Minister Itri said of Al-Maliki's visit that it was "important in its implications and symbolism and successful in its results" (SANA, 22 August). He also highlighted the prevailing "fraternal" spirit and Syria's desire to "move forward to broader horizons" between the two countries. Syrian media widely reported agreements to link Iraq's Akkas gas field with the Syrian Dayr al-Zawr refinery and to "rehabilitate the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Banyas" (SANA, Tishrin, 22 August). This OSC product is based exclusively on the content and behavior of selected media and has not been coordinated with other US Government components.

Napoleon, Bush & the Republic Militant

My piece on "Pitching the Imperial Republic," compar