Informed Comment

Witness flips in troopergate.

A private contractor now admits under oath that she was pressured by Palin’s office over Palin’s attempt vindictively to fire her ex-brother-in-law.

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In an interview with the Associated Press, PM Nuri al-Maliki warned that the future is dark if Iraq and the US do not agree on a security pact. And without a pact, he said, all the security progress made in the last year would be at risk. He points out that the alternative is to go back to the UN security council for an extension of Chapter 7 authorization of foreign troops in Iraq, and that UNSC approval is no longer assured because Russia may be in a bad mood after the Georgia tiff. He says Iraq still insists that US troops who are off base and not on a military mission, who commit crimes in Iraq, must be tried in Iraqi courts.

Al-Maliki, who wants a timetable for US withdrawal by the end of 2010, ended the interview with a clever appeal over Bush’s head to the American public:

‘ “If I had enough funds to assist the American economy, I would do all that I can. But unfortunately Iraq cannot solve America’s economic problems.

“But what Iraq can do is take up more responsibility security-wise here inside Iraq. And I have told the Americans repeatedly that we are ready to take up responsibility here in Iraq so there are less losses, a decreased number of American lives lost, and I am prepared to present this case before the American people. …’

Maybe al-Maliki has been reading John Gray, who writes, “The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over . . .”

Al-Maliki is reminding an economically prostrate America that it cannot afford to buck him on the troop withdrawal timetable. Literally cannot afford! As in, best you go home now and let us take care of security, and save what little money you have left. And, oh, thanks for forking over the $1 trillion while you still had it . . . I guess he is not afraid of McCain’s forlorn hope of keeping a US military base on Iraqi soil (expensive!).

To paraphrase T.S. Elliot, “This is the way the [war] ends/ This is the way the [war] ends/This is the way the [war] ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The Iraqi government will permit physicians to carry firearms. The decree is a bid to tempt back to Iraq 8,000 medical doctors who have fled the country because they were targeted by guerrillas hoping to destabilize the country by crippling its services. The problem I see with this decree is that many of the physicians have been personally threatened by armed militias. So you’d have to believe you were a quick draw, a good shot, and able to mow down several guys with AK-47s before they could get you, before you would go back.

This sort of stunt, and the situation it is meant to address, both prove how terrible is the situation in Iraq still. If it were ‘calm,’ the physicians would come back without firearms. If the police and government amounted to anything, the doctors would not have to pack heat themselves. Another thing that works against the physicians’ return is that they can survive in Jordan and Syria. Even though they cannot get formal work permits,they can hire on to clinics as ‘consultants’. If they have capital, they can also invest locally (in Jordan at least, an investment of $100,000 gets you a residency visa).

Sunday’s bombings in Baghdad, and the killing of nearly 100 civilians in Baghdad during Ramadan, raise questions for Iraqis. Is this increase in violence a secular trend, a sign of deterioration, or is it just that guerrillas have more spare time during the month of fasting (when typically people do not work full work days, and lots of people circulate for dinner (i.e. breaking-the-fast) parties. Although this Ramadan was 40% less deadly than last year, it was also more deadly than July and August.

Iraq is buying 12 reconnaissance planes from the US. This purchase is a step toward the Iraqi government regaining control of Iraq’s skies. Now that it has more of an armored corps in the army, it needs fighter jets and bombers to provide air cover for them. The US is not ready to relinquish Iraqi air space, but PM Nuri al-Maliki probably sees this purchase as a step in that direction.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Monday:

‘ Baghdad

- Mortars hit Hurriyah neighborhood (northwest Baghdad). Five people were injured with one house was damaged.

- Mortars hit Ghazaliyah neighborhood (northwest Baghdad) near Um Al-Qura mosque. Three people were injured with some houses nearby were damaged.

- Mortars hit Abu Ghraib (west of Baghdad). One person was injured with two houses were damaged.

- Police found one dead body in Saidiyah in Karkh bank (south Baghdad) today.

Mosul

- Sunday night, a bomb was put under a taxi car detonated in Abu Tamam intersection in Mosul city. Only the taxi driver was injured in that incident.

- Around 5:30 pm a car bomb detonated in Nabi Yunis neighborhood in Mosul before the Iraqi army experts defuse it. Nine people were injured including 5 Peshmerga members of the PDK.’

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Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai believes that the new civilian government will take more effective steps against the Pakistani Taliban on the Afghan border.

This stance is the opposite of that of John McCain, who supported military dictator Pervez Musharraf (who was forced to resign as president in August under threat of impeachment).

Pakistani forces claim to have killed 15 Taliban north of Khar in the Bajaur tribal agency overnight. The fighting in this northernmost of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is said to have displaced 20,000 individuals to Kunar Province in Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of thousands of local residents to elsewhere in Pakistan.

In a reversal of charges, Pakistan is now saying that Pakistani Taliban in Bajaur are receiving aid and volunteers from Afghanistan. Most often the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments have charged that the Tehrik-i Taliban of Pakistan has aided Afghan Taliban mounting attacks on NATO troops.

Aljazeera English reports on the Bajaur battle:

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Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) on how the Reality Game, “Wall Street Bailout,” is played:

See also Chalmers Johnson at Tomdispatch.com on the Pentagon Bailout Fraud.

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A wave of deadly bombings and other attacks swept Baghdad on Sunday, killing nearly three dozen persons and wounding over 100.

The attacks on Shiite neighborhoods were likely intended to remind the Iraqi public on the eve of Eid al-Fitr (the celebration of the end of the fasting month of Ramadan) that the Sunni guerrilla movement is still active and has not been defeated.

The situation in Iraq is dire, and the discourse about Iraq in the presidential campaign is often disconnected from reality. McCain is asserting that “victory” is at hand and rewriting his own history of support for Bush’s invasion and policies there. Now the McCain people are trying to claim that McCain called for the resignation of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, which he certainly did not.

And, the McCain call for “victory,” meaning an Iraq that can police its own borders, begs the question of what those borders even are. (“Kurdistan” is not a settled place). See below.

The attacks come days after the Iraqi parliament finally approved enabling legislation for provincial elections. The parliamentarians agreed to postpone elections in the disputed oil province of Kirkuk.

I have long been a proponent of early provincial elections. The Sunni Arab provinces have never had proper elections since the January 2005 polls were boycotted because Bush leveled Fallujah. The elections could create a new post-Baath political elite in the Sunni Arab provinces that has legitimacy and actually represents big constituencies. Some of the trouble in Diyala comes from minority Shiite dominance of a majority Sunni province. If the al-Maliki government wants to find a Sunni negotiating partner (which is still unclear), the provincial leaders to be elected next winter could fit the bill. Some of them will go on to national political careers. A lot of Sunnis are still secular, and could begin the process of moving away from religious fundamentalist parties always dominating.

The likely emergence of significant political rivals among the Sunnis would cause the fundamentalist vigilantes to redouble their efforts to destabilize Iraq further.

On the other hand,that parliament had to postpone elections in Kirkuk is a very bad sign, as is the military and paramilitary conflict between Arabs and Kurds.

Kurds are reversing Saddam’s ethnic cleansing drive of earlier decades, returning and expelling Arabs. Not all Kurds going to such regions are returnees, and not all the Arabs being forced out are internal migrants.

Iraqi police and Kurdish paramilitary members seem to have had a shoot-out in Jalaula on Sunday that left a Kurdish politician dead.

In nearby Sa’adiya, a Kurdish mayor was wounded in a bombing.

McClatchy reports details of political violence in Iraq on Sunday:

‘ Baghdad

- Around 8 a.m. a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi army vehicle in Mansour neighborhood, killing one soldier and injuring two soldiers and a civilian.

- Around 1 p.m. American soldiers searched an empty house in Zayuna neighborhood and shot randomly, injuring two civilians in the area, Iraqi police said. U.S. military said they had no information about the incident.

- Around 5:30 p.m. a parked car bomb exploded in a busy market in Shurta Rabaa neighborhood, southwest Baghdad, killing 12 civilians and injuring 35 others.

- Around 5:30 p.m. a bomb planted in a car exploded on a main road near Al Bayaa neighborhood, killing one and injuring one.

- Around 7 p.m. a parked car bomb exploded in the busy market area of Karrada neighborhood in central Baghdad, followed by a roadside bomb that killed 19 civilians and injured 72 others.

- Police found two dead bodies throughout Baghdad, one near Al Rasheed Camp and one in Hurriyah.

Diyala

- Around 9 a.m. a roadside bomb targeted Ahmed Samir Zargush, the mayor of Al Saidiyah town, about 50 miles east of Baquba. Zargush was injured along with three of his bodyguards and two civilians.

Nineveh

- Gunmen killed one citizen, a Christian, in Al Baladiyat neighborhood and in another incident gunmen killed a man and injured his brother in Mosul.’

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These bombings in Baghdad follow a major such attack in Damascus, Syria, which was probably carried out by radical revivalist Sunnis (“Salafis”) to punish the Syrian regime for cracking down on their movements, both into Iraq and between Lebanon and Syria. The Syrian regime, as Borzou Daragahi points out, is also a strong backer of the Shiite Hizbullah militia and at the same time has been negotiating with Israel via Turkey. The Baath leaders of Syria, as secularists from an Alawi (heterodox Shiite) background, were already seen as infidels worthy of death by the radical Sunnis. But this list of charges against them would drive radical Salafis to violence.

Aljzaeera English reports on the Damascus bombing:

Joshua Landis has more.

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In addition to those two snap polls done just after the debate on Friday by CNN and by CBS, there is now further evidence that Obama won the first debate handily.

A Gallup/ USA Today poll of 701 viewers of the debate done on Saturday found that 46% of viewers said Barack Obama did better; 34% said McCain did. Obviously, there is still a big group of viewers who saw it as a tie or could not decide.

But it is not so important who they thought was the better debater. The big news in this poll is about economic competence, on which over half of viewers gave the nod to Obama while only a little over a third did to McCain

Obama picked up 16 points on the question of how favorably the public views him, whereas for McCain it was a wash. And in this poll viewers were overwhelmingly more enthusiastic about Obama as a steward of the US economy than about McCain

Other scores:

Which candidate offered the best proposals for change to solve America’s problems?

Obama 52%
McCain 35%

Obama made great strides in public acceptance according to this poll. Although a little over half of viewers said their view of him did not change, 30% said they became more favorable toward Obama after seeing the debate. He lost ground with only 14%

The poll did not advance McCain’s campaign. 56% said it did not change their view of him, and 21% said it gave them a more unfavorable view of him, while he improved with another 21%. Since McCain was already behind in the polls going into the debate, this result is very bad for him.

While McCain was dead in the water on favorability, he actually lost ground on perceived economic competence. %37 percent said they had less confidence in his ability to fix the economy after saying the debate, while only 24% said they had more. These figures were almost the reverse in Obama’s case, which is to say, he gained 8 points on this issue while McCain lost 15.

On national security issues it was a tie, which is, again, very bad news for McCain! Not so long ago the Republicans were attempting to portray Sarah Palin as having more executive and foreign policy experience than Obama! It was their hope that McCain would come across as a wise elder statesman and Obama as uninformed and naive. Instead, Americans see Obama as McCain’s peer on foreign policy issues!

The poll has a plus or minus margin of error of 4%. That means that the overwhelming margin of victory for Obama on competence in problem-solving and ability to deal with the economy, and the massive loss of confidence in McCain on the economy, are very solid findings.

It seems to me likely that the stunt McCain pulled, of trying to cancel the debates, raised questions in the public’s mind about his competence. His pick of Palin as running mate (about which he unwisely boasted in the debate) might have shored up the Republican base a little, but that is now only 33% of the electorate, and she will hurt him with everyone else. That 52-35 spread on competence in my view is the big takeaway from this poll.

Gallup is a fine polling agency and I am sure it did its best to weight the respondents by age, income and region. The USA Today article did not provide that information. But the likelihood is that they in fact over-represented the Republicans, because youth and African-Americans are harder to poll, with many of them first-time registrants, and they may well come out for Obama this year, voting in unprecedented numbers because they now finally feel they have a stake in the system, with this candidate.

These results should not make Democrats sanguine. Kerry won his debates with W., but W. went on to destroy Iraq further and then bring down the whole American economy around our ears.

We could still be at war with Iran next year this time, with Captain McCain lobbying nukes at Isfahan from his sub in the Persian Gulf, with all the unpleasant backlash that would entail.

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