Wave of Attacks Kills over a Dozen;
US Soldier Killed, 2 Wounded at Tarmiyah;
Zebari insists on Withdrawal Timeline
A new wave of bombings and attacks in Iraq, especially one at Tarmiya targetting Awakening Council members that may have left nearly a dozen people dead and scores wounded (one US soldier was killed and 2 were wounded)
Georgia is pulling its 2000 troops out of Iraq. They had been interdicting arms shipments from Iran to the Shiite militias in Eastern Iraq, so this puts new pressure on US troops.
AP reports that Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari is confirming that any status of forces agreement between Iraq and the US must include a timeline for US troop withdrawal. It is interesting that Zebari, a Kurd, is on board now with this demand, which the Arab members of PM Nuri al-Maliki's government have been voicing for the past few months. Kurds had earlier typically been eager for the US to stay in Iraq, but it may be that the complicated conflict between them and Turkey, and general US support for Turkey against the PKK guerrillas in Northern Iraq, has soured them on the US.
WaPo says that US officials are less optimistic than Iraqi ones that any final deal is near to being accomplished.
Grand Ayatollah Kazim al-Haeri, the fifth of the top Shiite leaders respected by Iraqis, condemned any status of forces agreement as a surrender of Iraqi sovereignty. Al-Haeri lives in exile in Qom, Iran, refusing to dwell under foreign military occupation. He is generally followed by members of the Sadr Movement.
CSM says that one reason Muqtada al-Sadr is pulling back his Mahdi Army is a shortage of volunteers and of arms, and that the public has been identifying Sadrist guerrillas to the US and the Iraqi Army. I wonder. Has al-Maliki managed to interfere with oil smuggling down at Basra enough to affect Sadr's finances? Would explain the shortage of volunteers bit. You also have to wonder if Iran has pulled back funding for the special group cells inside the Mahdi Army, as a quid pro quo for Bush to negotiate seriously with them . . .
So much for the Neocons' plans to privatize the Iraqi economy. 35% of the labor force is now employed by the government and it is heading toward 40% this year. The latter was typical of economies in the old Soviet bloc. Oil states in the Middle East tend to have huge public sectors this way, including Saudi Arabia. If kick-starting a capitalist revolution in the Middle East really was one of the reasons Bush & the Neocons wanted to overthrow the Baath Government, well that was another pipe dream that has now evaporated in the face of reality.
Reuters reports that "Iraq's oil minister will visit China before the end of August to try and finalize a deal to develop the Ahdab oilfield south of Baghdad and build a power station nearby ..." The deal, while it will be renegotiated, had been concluded in 1997 by the old Baath government.
McClatchy reports political violence on Sunday in Iraq:
' Baghdad
Two Iraqis (two soldiers and two civilians) were injured by a roadside bomb that targeted a patrol of the Iraqi army in Zayuna neighborhood in east Baghdad around 7:30 a.m.
Two civilians were killed and ten others were injured by a roadside bomb near al Kamaliya mosque in Kamaliyah neighborhood in east Baghdad around 8:00 a.m.
Three Iraqi soldiers were injured by a roadside bomb that targeted a joint convoy of Iraqi army and US army near Salahuddin intersection in Kadhemiyah neighborhood in north Baghdad around 9:00 a.m.
Two security members working for an Iraqi private security company and two other civilians were injured by a roadside bomb that targeted one of the cars of the security company in Amil neighborhood in west Baghdad around 10:00 a.m.
An Iraqi soldier was killed and five others were injured by a parked car bomb in Mada’in town in south Baghdad around 11:00 a.m.
Three people (1 Iraqi soldier and 2 civilians) were killed and ten other people (4 Iraqi soldiers and 6 civilians) were injured by a roadside bomb that targeted a patrol of the Iraqi army near al Tahreer intersection in downtown Baghdad around 11:00 a.m.
Ten people (6 civilians, 3 Sahwa members and an American soldier) were killed and twenty other people (13 civilians, 4 Sahwa members and 3 US soldiers)were wounded a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated himself in Tarmiyah north of Baghdad around 2:00 p.m. US military confirmed the incident saying that one US soldier was killed and two others wounded.
Police found three unidentified bodies in Baghdad including a female body. The bodies were found in Ni’ariyah (the female body), Palestine Street and Shoala.
Diyala
Three civilians were killed and twenty other people including members from the Kurdish security forces known as Asayish were injured in a suicide car bomb near the office of the district commissioner of Khanaqeen city northeast of Baquba around 11:00 a.m.'
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/11/2008 12:19:00 AM
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According to a deliberate leak from the US embassy, the Iraqi and American teams are "working on a language that Maliki can sell". One of the new definitions of withdrawal is Rumsfeld's "small footprint" con: the US troops staying in Iraq, but less visible in the cities.
Zibari and Saleh (the Deputy PM also a Kurd who heads the Iraqi team!) desperately want the US to stay, forever. Zibari, who is a compulsive liar, is also saying that a deal is near which even the Americans are contradicting because they know that they can't sell Bush's fantasy.
Am I missing something, or is the US pretty much without leverage with respect to agreeing to a troop withdrawal timetable? The current UN fig leaf expires at the end of the year. If the Iraqis insist on a timetable, we either agree to one and leave in the foreseeable future, or we don't and leave immediately. Or we continue the occupation without even a fig leaf, in flagrante delicto, as it were.
Or perhaps the favored NYT/WaPo meme is correct, that regardless of what they say publicly, "privately" the Iraqi government doesn't really want us to leave, they just have to say they do for political reasons -- which is a strange explanation, because another part of the meme is that regardless of what the polls say, the Iraqi people don't really want us to leave either. (Whatever -- It's the MSM. It doesn't have to make sense.)
But the more I read, the more it seems they really do want us to leave. The Chinese oil deal looks like another "can you take a hint" moment.
"Georgia is pulling its 2000 troops out of Iraq. They had been interdicting arms shipments from Iran to the Shiite militias in Eastern Iraq, so this puts new pressure on US troops."
Not that I've heard any mention of actually finding anything to interdict, but to the point... Weasel words from the Pentagon about our assistance to Georgian troops being moved from Iraq to... Well, the Pentagon is NOT commenting:
AFP reports:"Airlift of Georgian troops from Iraq near complete: Pentagon
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military is expected to complete the airlift of 2,000 Georgian troops from Iraq to their home country Monday, a Pentagon spokesman said as Russian forces pushed deeper into Georgia.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman denied an accusation by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the Georgian troops were flown directly into the combat zone, but would not say where they were taken.
"Largely the entire redeployment should be completed today," Whitman told reporters, adding that military flights carrying the troops began over the weekend.
He said "reports suggesting they are being flown directly into the fight are wrong." In Full
OK, how about the next ridge over?
Is this the way WWIII starts? About one of the main oil/gas pipeline transit routes in Central Asia?
Stay tuned....
Re Iraq-China oil deal:
Semi-neocon policy wonk Tom Barnett was arguing in 2003 that Chinese need for oil should have mandated 40,000 troops to the Iraq occupation. (Paradoxically, Tom's rational included the terrible reputation of Mongol troops during previous trips to Baghdad. He does admit that futurists can be shallow.)
China has been a bigtime underwriter of US war-debt bonds, with major participation from the other Asian powers. (Barnett sees India-Japan-Korea-Taiwan as interconnected consumers of US security [warfighting] exports. He also cautions that our heavy-handed security product is inferior and overpriced for the global economy.)
Could it be that our Chinese note-holders gotthe US nod to buy into the Iraqi market, to diversify them away from active nat. gas and missile deals with the Iranians?
Viewed from the perspective of Iraqi development needs, China's deep/scalable industrial and manpower capacity can be had for less than Haliburger would charge.
American voters don't realize how oil-insecure our petro-poor Euro and Asian economic partners are. This FUBAR war is a bit like the comic scene in Blazing Saddles, where the marshall faces down a lynch mob by putting a gun to his own head and saying "stand back, or he gets it..." We're threatening chaos-suicide, while the world is facing starvation if oil shipments are further disrupted.
A Defense Department spokesman said the us expected to have all Georgian troops out of Iraq by day's end.
see how easily and quickly troops can be removed FROM Iraq ??
that entails, of course, leaving the OIL behind.
Funny thing - we always hear about it, it seems, when "awakening council" members are killed, but we never hear about whom they kill.
Gee, it's amazing how all those former cuthroats have turned into lambs!
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