2 US Troops Killed, 21 Wounded; 37 Iraqis Killed in Baghdad Clashes;

According to BBC television, AFP is reporting that Mahdi Army militiamen killed 2 US troops in northern Baghdad on Wednesday morning. US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates admitted on Tuesday that the reduction in US troop casualties in recent months had ended in the past few weeks, because of the fighting in Sadr City in the capital. Over 40 US troops have been killed in April. Gates also brandished a second aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf at Iran, which the US accuses of supplying the Mahdi Army with arms that are used against US troops. Recent US press reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere has raised questions about the allegation. Sadr spokesman Salah al-Obeidi (al-Ubaydi) in Najaf bitterly attacked Iran, accusing it of seeking to share with the US in influence over Iraq. He pointed to the Iranian's regime's failure to condemn the long-term mutual security agreement being crafted by the Bush administration and the al-Maliki government. Al-Obeidi's angry denunciation suggests that Iran is backing PM Nuri al-Maliki and his current chief ally, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim against the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr.

The sandstorm continued in Baghdad on Tuesday, and so did the fierce fighting between the US military and the Shiite Mahdi Army (paramilitary of the Sadr Movement), leaving 37 dead and 6 US soldiers wounded. The dead were said to include 9 civilians, including 3 women and a child. The sandstorm was an essential context for the fighting, since it prevented the US from deploying helicopter gunships and so left a ground patrol vulnerable to militia attack. The Mahdi Army was apparently attempting to prevent further US wall-building in the Shiite slum. Snipers also shot at US troops from rooftops. It is hard to believe that such complex assaults (involving a combination of ambush, small arms, and roadside bombs) are still going on after 5 years of US military occupation of the capital. AFP reports:

'Several rockets or mortar rounds . . . struck the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified government compound, as militants took advantage of the absence of US air cover during the storm, witnesses said. In one of the most intense firefights in weeks, the American soldiers killed 28 militants in Sadr City, stronghold of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the military said. Four US soldiers were also wounded in the fighting that began at around 9:30 am (0630 GMT). The fighting erupted when a US patrol was targeted with small-arms fire that wounded one soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover told AFP. As the soldier was being evacuated, a US vehicle was struck by two roadside bombs, small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The "complex" attack damaged the vehicle and wounded three other soldiers, Stover said, adding that another US vehicle was later damaged by a third roadside bomb. The US military said its soldiers defended themselves and "killed 28 militants in a four-hour" battle. Residents said US forces also launched two air strikes in the area which heavily damaged four houses. Pictures taken by an AFP photographer showed a number of bodies buried under the debris of the four houses. But Stover denied that aircraft had been used. The sandstorm had largely grounded US helicopters. Instead he said US troops used heavy rockets against the militants.'

It is now being revealed that on Monday, "Shi'ite militants hit a U.S. military station in southern Sadr City with explosive canisters, badly damaging a tactical operations center and injuring 15 troops."

Up in the oil city of Kirkuk, the focus of competition between Kurdish Peshmerga on the one hand and Arab and Turkmen guerrillas on the other, "around the oil city of Kirkuk four people were killed and 15 wounded in two bomb attacks."

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Tuesday:

' Baghdad

Gunmen killed the director of the projects in the ministry of labour and social affairs Dheya al Jodi while he was leaving his house in Atifiyah neighborhood in north Baghdad around 7:00 a.m.

Around 1:00 p.m. two mortar shells hit al Jaish club building (the Army Club) in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad. No casualties reported. Another mortar shell slammed into the area near the neurosurgery hospital in Bab al Sharj neighborhood in downtown Baghdad at the same time. No casualties reported.

Two civilians were injured when a mortar shell hit al Muheet Street in Kadhemiyah neighborhood north Baghdad around 2,45 p.m.

Three civilians were injured when a mortar shell slammed into a house in Karrad Maryam neighborhood in downtown Baghdad around 3:00 p.m.

Two civilians were killed and five others were wounded when a Katyosha rocket hit New Baghdad neighborhood in east Baghdad around 3:15 p.m.

Diyala

A female suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated herself among members of Sahwa (awakening council members) in Abo Saida village north of Baquba city around 7:50 a.m. one sahwa member was killed and five others were wounded

Three members of the Iraqi army were injured when a roadside bomb targeted their vehicle in Baladroz district east of Baquba city around 10:30 a.m.

Three civilians were killed in three attacks by insurgents in three different neighborhoods in Jalawla town northeast of Baquba city around 11:15 a.m.

The director of Sadiyah town Samir al Sadi was injured in an IED explosion that targeted his convoy while he was leaving the building of the directorate in downtown Sadiyah town around 12:20 p.m. one of the guards were killed and two other civilians were injured.

The supporting office of Qazanya district tribes east of Baquba found six unidentified bodies in a deserted house in one of the villages of Qazanya.

Nineveh

A suicide truck bomb tried to attack one of the centers of the Iraqi army in Nahrawan neighborhood in west Mosul city around 7:00 a.m. the soldiers launched an RBG7 shell and exploded the truck before it could reach the center. The driver of the truck was killed and an Iraqi soldier was injured.

An Iraqi soldier was killed and five others were injured when a suicide car bomb attacked their check point in al Yarmouk neighborhood in west Mosul on Tuesday afternoon. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Mortar, Rocket attacks in Baghdad; in aftermath of Militia Campaign

Baghdad has been roiled for the past three days with major fighting between Iraqi government/ US forces and the Mahdi Army militia in east and north Baghdad, leaving 45 militiamen dead and an unstated number of Iraqi troops. At one point on Sunday, the a Mahdi Army company nearly took a government checkpoint in the northeast, and the US had to bring in a tank to save the Iraqi army unit.

Guerrillas launched numerous mortar and katyusha rocket attacks on Monday. Reuters reports: "A mortar round landed behind the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone government compound, wounding five people including a child, police said . . . Five people were wounded in a mortar attack in Abu Nawas street in central Baghdad . . . Three mortar bombs landed on a police station in Jazair district, eastern Baghdad, wounding three policemen . . . A mortar blast wounded one person in the Mansour district, western Baghdad . . ."

On Monday,

Two mass graves have been found in Iraq in the past two days, each with about 50 bodies in them. Sunni Arab guerrilla groups made "collaborators" or rivals disappear this way as an object lesson.

The alleged flow of arms from Iran to south Iraq has not in fact increased in recent months (and my own suspicion is that US authorities mistake some black market arms selling for Iranian-government supplied weaponry). So why does the Bush administration and Pentagon stridency about Iran go up an down without reference to any facts on the ground? Seems to me that they deploy charges against Iran in an Orwellian way, as a tool of diplomatic pressure, when it suits them.

McClatchy profiles Brg. Gen. Qassem Suleimani of the Quds Force within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It is a good story, but it reflects the breathlessness of Green Zone conspiracy theories. For instance, some American alleged to the reporters that Suleimani engineered the victory of the Shiite religious parties in January 2005 over Iyad Allawi. Allawi had been appointed by the US, was an ex-Baathist, and a known CIA asset. He was defeated by a coalition list of Shiite parties that had struggled against Saddam Hussein and were endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Attributing their defeat of Allawi to the Quds Force is just silly. Likewise, the allegations of extensive Iranian spying on Iraq or of bringing in "Hizbullah" from Lebanon (for which there is no good evidence) are unproved and the premise is unnecessary. If the Badr Corps was until recently part of the Iranian military, as the authors concede, then you don't need to posit a lot of phantom Iranian agents who are providing intelligence on Iraq to Tehran. Badr, Ahmad Chalabi, and other supposed US assets are double agents, guys. If Iraq were crawling with Iranian agents, the US would have more Iranians in custody than it does (last I knew, it was like 5 diplomats).

AFP draws aside the curtain on the micro-economy of the struggle between the Islamic State of Iraq of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and local clans in Iskandariya south of Baghdad, which centered on the region's fish farms. The article also gives evidence that al-Baghdadi, who the US military maintains is a fictive personality created by foreign fighters to give themselves Iraqi legitimacy, is a real Iraqi person with a history in the Iskandariya area. The US is mostly fighting Iraqis in Iraq, but is reluctant to have this fact become known.

A lot of money was wasted on phantom reconstruction projects in Iraq left incomplete because of poor contractor performance. In other words, US tax payers made an involuntary contribution to Friends of George, which would be a good way of summing up the Iraq occupation in general.

The US Pentagon is suspending a campaign to influence the retired military talking heads who come on television in the US, after the NYT blew the whistle on it. Reuters notes: "Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, also said some of the analysts appeared to be working for defense contractors, raising a potential conflict of interest." You always suspected these things about corporate media coverage of Iraq, but seeing it in cold black and white is bracing. I have more than once been put opposite some sunshine peddler on radio or television and wondered whether the person was on the take.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Monday:

' Baghdad

- Around 11 pm Sunday, 4 mortar shells hit the Green Zone (IZ) in central Baghdad. No casualties reported.

- Around midnight, 3 mortars hit the intelligence headquarters in Baladiyat neighborhood (east Baghdad). No casualties reported.

- Around 3 am, three mortar shells hit Mamil neighborhood. Five people were injured in that incident.

- Around 8 am, a mortar hit the Green Zone (IZ) in central Baghdad. No casualties reported.

- Around 10 am, a mortar hit the area beyond the Sa'aa restaurant at Mansour neighborhood (west Baghdad). Two civilians were injured in that incident.

- Around 1 pm, 3 mortar shells hit Al-Jazaer police station in Sadr city. Three policemen were injured with some damage to the building.

- Around 1:30pm, An American warplane targeted a Hino truck which was carrying Katyusha missiles at Al-Qanat street (east Baghdad). Two people were injured in that incident.

- Around 2 pm, a motor bicycle bomb targeted Sahwa members (also known as Sons of Iraq). One member was killed and three others were injured.

- Around 2 :15 pm, a roadside bomb targeted a civilian car (Toyota Pick up ) which was carrying technicians employees of the power supply service on the high way of Nahdha neighborhood (north Baghdad).Three of the employees were injured in that incident.

- Around 2:30 pm, a roadside bomb targeted the Sahwa members check point at Adhamiyah neighborhood (north Baghdad) near Qasim Abu Al-Ghas restaurant .Three members were injured in that incident.

- Around 4:30 pm, a Katyusha missile hit Al-Sadeer hotel in Karrada neighborhood (central Baghdad).No casualties or damage recorded as it was in the garden of this hotel.

- Around 5 pm, a mortar shell hit an area behind the Rashid hotel in the green zone (IZ) which is a residential compound .Five people were injured in that incident including a child.

- Around 5 :30 pm, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol in Amil neighborhood (west Baghdad) .No casualties reported on the American side .While we have four civilians injured in that incident including a child and woman.

- Police found 6 dead bodies in Baghdad today: 4 were found in Karkh bank of Baghdad ; 1 in Kadhimiyah, 1 in Hurriyah, 1 in Dora and 1 in Yarmouk. While 2 were found in east Baghdad (Risafa bank); 1 in Ur and 1 in Jisr Diyala.

Diyala

- Around 4:30 pm, gunmen of the Qaeda attacked Al-Bayjat village (south of Baquba ). The residents of the village who join the Sahwas (Sons of Iraq) councils resisted them and killed five gunmen including a leader.

Kirkuk

- Sunday night, gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army soldier at Tuz Khurmatu (south of Kirkuk).The soldier was killed at once and the gunmen ran away.

Basra

- Before noon, gunmen killed a Sadrist leader at Timimiyah neighborhood downtown Basra. Also his wife was injured as she was with him walking home. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadr Rejects al-Maliki's Terms; Green Zone hit by Mortar Barrage; Turkish Military Strikes at PKK

Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday rejected Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's terms for ending his campaign against Sadr's Mahdi Army. Al-Maliki wants the militia to give up heavy weaponry and turn over wanted commanders. Salah al-Ubaydi, a Sadr spokesman, called the demands "illogical."


Some 50 Iraqi political leaders from various parties (including Sunnis) protested on Sunday against the US siege of East Baghdad (Sadr City).

The campaign appears to have been launched in part to protect the Green Zone (site of government offices and the US embassy) from incoming mortar fire. Nevertheless, on Sunday as a sandstorm descended on the capital, the Green Zone faced a barrage of mortar fire:

' Thunderous explosions resounded throughout the evening as rockets or mortar shells slammed into the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad. . .

Sirens wailed in the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government on the west side of the Tigris River. The public address system warned people to "duck and cover" and stay away from windows.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed the area was hit by indirect fire, the military's term for rocket or mortar attacks, but said it had no immediate word on casualties.'

There were also clashes between forces loyal to the al-Maliki government and Mahdi Army militiamen in parts of Baghdad.

On Saturday, mortar fire killed 8 and wounded 42 in the area around the Green Zone.

Turkey launched another major operation in eastern Anatolia near Iraq, deploying 8,000 troops against guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). There are fears that the Turkey military will once again invade northern Iraq, where it maintains PKK terrorists hole up.

The USG Open Source Center translates a sermon of Shaykh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i from last Friday. His remarks indicate his discomfort, despite being a supporter of the al-Maliki government, both with the planned Bush-al-Maliki 'agreement' on US-Iraqi relations (which many Iraqis fear will detract from Iraqi sovereignty) and with the al-Maliki- US campaign against Sadr City (which he blames on the lawlessness of the Mahdi Army):

' "Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i, imam and preacher of Friday sermon in Karbala, said that the long-term agreement, which will be signed with the United States, should not conflict with national sovereignty. He urged the officials to take the sensitivity of this issue into consideration."

Al-Karbala'i says: "We hope that the Iraqi officials will be very alert to the sensitivity and seriousness of the unresolved issues in these talks. These issues affect the Iraqi sovereignty in the security, political, and judicial fields. The brothers should pay attention to the sensitivity and seriousness of these unresolved issues, which would perhaps shackle the Iraqi people, the current government, and the coming Iraqi governments in a way that encroaches on the sovereignty of the country and people in these important aspects. Any loss in Iraq's sovereignty should not be accepted, whether in the security, political, or judicial fields."

The report says: "In his Friday sermon, Al-Karbala'i called on the government to take urgent measures to alleviate the suffering of Al-Sadr City's citizens who were harmed by the outlaws' crimes." '

McClatchy reports political violence on Sunday:

' Baghdad

- Two roadside bombs targeted an Iraqi Army foot patrol near Filis restaurant in Mansour, downtown Baghdad killing 1 officer, injuring 4 servicemen and 2 civilians.

- Roadside bomb targeted a US military convoy in al-Amin neighbourhood, east Baghdad. No casualties were reported.

- A car bomb driven by a suicide bomber targeted a National Police patrol in Shaab Stadium intersection killing 3, injuring 14 both civilians and police.

- Clashes broke out between security forces and gunmen in Um al-Maalif, Bayaa district, southwest Baghdad late Saturday, and continued through the night. 1 civilian was killed, 15 were injured, 4 of whom were children.

- A roadside bomb targeted a US military convoy near the Assyrian Party headquarters in Zayuna, east Baghdad. No casualties were reported.

- Around 4 pm, 3 mortars hit the industrial compound in Amil neighborhood(west Baghdad) .One person was killed and 7 others were injured. Later,Clashes took place in the neighborhood which became in a siege till the time of having this report posted .

- Around 4 pm, 3 mortars hit Baladiyat neighborhood (east Baghdad) targeting Wahran intermediate school .Five people were injured in that incident.

- Around 5 pm, a car bomb targeted an Iraqi patrol at Jamaa neighborhood (west Baghdad) near Mulla Hweesh mosque .One soldier was killed and eight others were injured including 5 civilians .

- Around 4:30 till 6 pm, eight mortars shells and rockets hit the green zone (IZ) downtown Baghdad. No casualties reported.

- Around 5 pm, 6 mortars hit Kadhimiyah neighborhood (north Baghdad)at Al-Muheet street .One person was killed and 6 others were injured.

- Police found 6 dead bodies in Baghdad today: 4 were found in east Baghdad(Risafa bank) ; 3 were in Ameen and 1 was in Mashtal . While 2 were found in west Baghdad (Karkh bank); 1 was in Dora and 1 was Bayaa.

Nineveh

- A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest targeted an Iraqi Police patrol in Qassim al-Khayat Square, downtown Mosul at 8 pm Saturday, killing 6, 4 of them civilians and injuring 5, 3 of them civilians.

- Gunmen killed 1 civilian in al-Maash market, central Mosul at 8 am.

- In the morning, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Al-Zihour neighborhood (east Mosul).Two civilians were injured in that incident.

- Before noon, gunmen opened fire one of the houses in Al-Quds neighborhood in downtown Mosul city. Two people were killed in that incident (a woman and a man ).

Diyala

- A roadside bomb targeted one of the headquarters of the Popular Committees at Mualmeen neighborhood in central Baquba. Three people were injured in that incident.

- A mass grave was uncovered in an orchard in al-Gubba area, al-Abbara district, 15 km to the north of Baquba at 2.15 Sunday by Iraqi Army and Sahwa council members. The mass grave contained 50 bodies in an advanced state of decomposition.

Kirkuk

- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in al-Quds Street, al-Tiseen neighbourhood, south Kirkuk city on Saturday. The explosion injured 3 policemen.

Tikrit

- 1 woman killed,2 men and 2 children injured in an explosion of a car bomb in al-Qadisiyah neighbourhood, northeast Samaraa city, 120 km to the north of Baghdad. The car was parked near some concrete blast walls and was detonated by remote control at 1.30pm.

- Around 9:30 pm, gunmen opened fire on two police officers in downtown Tikrit .Police announced a curfew in the city till a further notice.

Anbar

- At dawn , 9 gunmen attacked Al-Khaldiyah police station(25 km east of Ramadi) with light and mid weapons . One gunman was killed and two others were injured who were captured by police with the rest of the group when police opened fire on them. Also two policemen were injured in that incident. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Moyers and Wright at PBS, Parts 3-4

The other two parts of Bill Moyers' interview with Reverend Wright are below.

Journalism should be about explaining things and setting them in context, not about 'gotcha' moments. As the Web becomes better at video, we bloggers will set up our own networks, and people thirsty for the real back story will come to our sites. (Big Corporate Media knows this, which is why they want to kill the internet by getting rid of Net Neutrality). Moyers is one of the few major interviewers who eschews the gotcha for real news. Our country would be much impoverished without him.

Part 3:



and Part 4:



PBS link here.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Karzai Attacked in Kabul

Afghan President Hamid Karzai escaped unharmed from a guerrilla assassination attempt on Sunday.

US politicians who keep saying that Afghanistan is the good war would be well advised to consider whether the mission there is actually clear, whether it can be accomplished, and whether it is worth blood and treasure. Afghanistan is an enormous, rugged country riven with tribal and ethnic rivalries, and standing up a strong central state friendly to US and European interests is not going to be easy.



Fred Barnes, who says the war for Iraqi oil is more important than fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, didn't get the memo. He doesn't seem to know about the Central Asia gas fields that actually explain Bushco's interest in Afghanistan. And, he is admitting that the remnants of al-Qaeda over there are not very important.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More on Syrian Reactor Bombing; From an Informed Reader

An informed reader writes:

What little information provided in the CIA videotape concerning the destruction of the purported Syrian reactor only provokes more questions.

The alleged reactor is described, because of its dimensions and shape, as a duplicate of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon. The reactor at Yongbyon is a rough copy of an old British design. It is graphite-moderated and cooled with gaseous carbon dioxide. Its core is composed of a large number of highly-purified graphite blocks. For example, each of the first two Magnox reactors at Windscale in the UK used 2,000 tons of graphite. Even if this purported Syrian reactor vessel were half the size of one of the original UK reactors, it would require roughly 1,000 tons of graphite. That's 14,400 cubic feet of highly-purified graphite. Would all official entities fail to notice the production and transfer of that amount of highly-refined graphite to Syria?

The voice-over on the CIA videotape asserts that the reactor in Syria was "nearly completed." If the plant were "nearly completed," those graphite blocks would have been substantially in place. Bombing and fire would have spread bits of carbon all over the site, or scattered whole blocks of graphite around the site. The "after" photos didn't seem to indicate that this happened.

If the reactor were substantially complete, neutron-absorbing boron-10 carbide (or possibly cadmium alloy) control rods would have been installed. Had those been burned or exploded in the bombing, those, too, would have left a chemical signature on the hills surrounding the site and in the prevailing winds. As far as I know, this hasn't been discussed.

Then, too, there is the matter of fuel rods. Syria is reported not to have uranium yellowcake stocks in appreciable quantities. (One particularly large phosphorite field, the Charkiet formation, is known to contain uranium, but the phosphate fertilizer plant built to process that ore was done by a Swedish company which would certainly alert the IAEA if there were non-compliant diversion. Moreover, Syria has cooperated with the IAEA in the past to develop its commercial uranium extraction processes, but those have not progressed, according to SIPRI.) There's no evidence presented that Syria has built fuel processing and fuel rod assembly facilities. That would suggest production elsewhere, and such production can be tracked. So, if it was almost complete, where are the fuel rods?

The primary weapons benefit of such a reactor is its ability to be refueled on the fly, so to speak (it's necessary to get the fuel rods out of the reactor before the optimum quantity of plutonium-239 is degraded by neutron capture to less suitable isotopes), so, why does U.S. intelligence say they have "low confidence" that the plutonium that might be produced is for nuclear weapons? It must be that Syria does not have the necessary fuel processing, fuel rod assembly and spent fuel reprocessing plants, and there's no evidence of bomb-manufacturing facilities (all this infrastructure should ideally go forward concurrent with fuel production to produce a bomb in the shortest period of time); does this suggest that the purpose of the facility might not be nuclear in nature, or that it was nuclear, but would have had a non-weapons purpose? If there's no evidence for the existence of the rest of a weapons-making complex, how credible is the claim of "near completion" of a reactor which is well-suited for producing plutonium?

So far, the government's primary evidence seems to be a photo of a North Korean who is reputed to be NK nuclear scientist Chon Chibu, standing next to someone "believed to be his Syrian counterpart" (quote from the London Times). That photo, as well as others, likely was provided by the Mossad, so its provenance is in question. Given that the Israelis bombed the site, one can't evade the reality that they're an interested party in the matter.

What is shocking in this assertion is the lack of physical evidence available for independent inspection, and the apparent complete failure of U.S. authorities to seek international inspection via the IAEA before the Israelis bombed the site in question, despite the fact that the U.S. was apparently aware of Israeli intentions well ahead of time. Syria has been a ratified signatory of the NPT since 1969, making it obligated to accept inspections. If, as the CIA asserts, the Syrian facility has been under construction since 2001, there was more than ample time to inform the IAEA of a signatory's possible failure to abide by the treaty. Repeated unannounced overflights of Syrian territory by Israeli jets in recent years indicates long-term planning of this mission.

Possibilities? The Bush administration might prefer to use this event to imply nuclear weapons production on Iran's part, because it is an ally of Syria, or the claims of North Korean assistance might provide cover for eventually abandoning the six-nation talks involving North Korea and provoking them in some way. Suggestions that the Israelis wanted to use the bombing raid to penetrate and compromise Syria's Russian-built air defenses preparatory to a future attack on Iran are not wholly out of the realm of possibility.

It's possible that the Syrians were building a bomb-fuel reactor with North Korean assistance, and imagined, wrongly, that they could escape detection. Certainly, North Korea's economy is so awful that they would be desperate for revenues. But, there's no physical evidence of such activity which has been independently verified, and the Bush administration's record on this sort of thing is, well, dubious, at best. Nor can one discount Syria's previous cooperation with the IAEA, and the necessary evidence would have come from an IAEA inspection. It's also possible that the Syrians were building something military in nature that they wanted kept secret, and which had nothing to do with a nuclear program, but which alarmed the Israelis, anyway, such as an early warning facility, ground-based laser, something along those lines.

The CIA video depends heavily upon computer models, and those models add substantial pieces of equipment not shown in the photos of the "nearly completed" facility. Remember that Colin Powell depended upon artists' renderings of "mobile bioweapons labs" instead of physical evidence, and that Rumsfeld used cartoonish illustrations to show lavish al-Qaeda complexes, replete with living quarters, office space, truck parking and ventilating systems, like the Islamist equivalent of Cheyenne Mountain, buried inside Tora Bora. Those, too, were never found.

One more final consideration: the Yongbyon reactor, from the descriptions by inspectors in 1994, is a real hunk of junk, by contemporary standards. The inspectors could tell from the condition of the spent fuel rods that there were many operating problems and shutdowns because of problems. Nuclear safety at the site was marginal to non-existent. The bomb test using plutonium from it was very likely a fizzle yield. If the Syrians got a duplicate copy of the Yongbyon reactor, as the CIA claims, they were very likely wasting their money.
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Cole here: See also John W. Farley's piece on this subject in CounterPunch.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Reverend Wright on Bill Moyers

Reverend Wright on Bill Moyers:

Part I:



Part II:



Parts III and IV to come.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

A Million Palestinians Threatened with Starvation by Israel

The Israelis already have the Gaza Strip under military siege, carefully controlling what and who goes in and out of it. They have now cut off most fuel, and the United Nations has been forced to stop distributing food aid.

This Israeli government action is an unvarnished war crime. It is known as collective punishment. There was already hunger and malnutrition among Palestinian children, which will now be worsened.

Hamas told Jimmy Carter it was ready to negotiate.

The Olmert government is not interested in negotiating, apparently, even though nothing the Likud and the Kadima "Likud Light" has done since 2001 has diminished the salience of the Gaza Muslim fundamentalist party, including a concerted campaign of murder, kidnapping, assault and collective punishment. Despite the violent groups on its margins, Hamas itself has at various points indicated a willingness to play ordinary politics, but Olmert will be satisfied with nothing less than destroying it. So far it isn't going well for him.

Cutting off fuel to the Gazans and provoking a cut-off of UN food aid is not only criminal but also stupid. It is difficult to imagine such mean-spirited sanctions against civilians having any policy effect whatsoever, so they are just making Israel look bad.

Israeli ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman called Carter a bigot for his diplomacy.

Gillerman called Hizbullah, an Arab party, "animals" in summer of 2006. Would he like to expand the reference to include other races? How many of us exactly are Untermenschen in his view? For Likudniks to call Jimmy Carter a "bigot" is sort of like the Ku Klux Klan denouncing Nelson Mandela for racial insensitivity.
---

PS A reader wrote in that if it is all right to criticize Zionists without being anti-Semitic it should be all right to criticize Hizbullah without being anti-Arab. But I'm not talking about criticizing Hizbullah, which I have done. I'm talking about dehumanizing them and calling them animals. I think that remark demonstrated a racist mindset on Gillerman's part, of which he should be ashamed. And I don't see why the US should let him into the country to smear our brave, humanitarian ex-presidents as "bigots." Jimmy Carter has built homes for the poor, helped nearly wipe out a deadly parasite in Africa, helped negotiate social peace around the world impartially. Not to mention all the good he did Israel in neutralizing Egypt, its most powerful military rival (and Gillerman and his like repaid him with adventurism in Lebanon and thumbing their nose at American entreaties to make peace with the Palestinians). What good has Gillerman ever done anyone? He isn't good enough to shine Jimmy Carter's shoes.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Mullen Rattles Sabres at Iran; Muqtada Reaffirms Truce

Another US soldier was killed on Thursday.

Guerrillas blew up an oil pipeline from a refinery south of Baghdad on Friday. Iraqi oil production has declined somewhat lately, according to this report.

Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sharpened his rhetoric against Iran on Friday. Mullen appeared earlier to want to put the brakes on the Cheney war machine. Is he weakening?

Muqtada al-Sadr explained in his Friday sermon yesterday that the truce of his Mahdi Army militia with the Iraqi military should be maintained. His recent threat of open warfare, he said, concerned only the US military in Iraq. He called the Iraqi troops "brothers."

Muqtada is offering an olive branch to his former ally turned deadly foe, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki seems in no mood to accept it.

First the Pentagon said that the Iraqi Army needed to be 390,000 strong. Now it says Iraq needs 646,000 troops. A new audit suggests that the Pentagon has substantially over-estimated how many trained Iraqi troops the al-Maliki government has.

Iraqis speak to the US Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:



The US military was criticized by Iraqis for killing innocent persons in a bombing raid on Sadr City.

Reuters reports political violence for Friday:

' * BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said on Friday it had killed 10 fighters in helicopter missile strikes and ground battles in eastern Baghdad overnight.

* BAGHDAD - The U.S. army said on Friday that a U.S. soldier was killed by a road side bomb south of Baghdad on Thursday.

* HILLA - Gunmen shot dead a man near his house overnight in Iskandariya town, 40km (25 miles) south of Baghdad and police said they arrested six people in connection with the attack.

* MOSUL - Gunmen shot dead a fisherman and wounded another while they were fishing overnight on the Tigris river where it runs through northwestern Mosul, 390km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, the Iraqi army said.

* MOSUL - A roadside bomb wounded a civilian in Tal Afar, 420 km ( 260 miles) north of Baghdad, the Iraqi army said.

* BASRA - Gunmen shot dead a news broadcaster working for al-Nakheel TV and Radio station run by a Shi'ite faction in the Qurna area, 80km northern Basra, the station's director Adnan al-Yasiri said.

* HILLA - US and Iraqi forces conducted a joint operation and arrested six people on Thursday in the Mahwaeel area, 75km (45 miles) south of Baghdad, arresting two suspects after gunmen shot and wounded an Iraqi policeman, police said.

* FALLUJA - A bomb implanted beneath a Friday prayers preacher's seat exploded in al-Raqeeb mosque in al-Julan area, northwestern Falluja, 50km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, wounding 4 people including two policemen, police said.

* ISKANDARIYA - Gunmen killed two people in al-Qariya al- Asriya in Iskandariya town, 40km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

* YUSUFIYA - A roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded another in Yusufiya town, 15km (9 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said on Friday it killed two gunmen and detained 18 suspects during operations targeting al-Qaeda in central Iraq on Wednesday.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded in Adhamiya neighbourhood, northern Baghdad, on Thursday night, wounding three people, police said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police found three bodies on Thursday overnight in different areas of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - Iraqi police found two bodies in Mosul, one of them was beheaded, on Thursday, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen shot dead a policeman in western Mosul, police said. '

McClatchy has late news from Thursday evening:

' Baghdad

- Thursday night, The American planes bombed the Husseiniya neighborhood (north Baghdad) .Two people were killed and 8 others were injured.

- The American army bombed Sadr city around 11 pm and 1 am .Iraqi army said 11 people were killed and 32 others were injured.

- Around 4pm, five gunmen riding a Kia mini bus opened fire on an Iraqi check point when they tried to stop them. Three Iraqi soldiers were injured .Then, the Iraqi army killed those gunmen when the soldiers in the check point opened fire on them .The gunmen’s car exploded at once as it was carrying roadside bombs and rockets .

- Police found two dead bodies in west Baghdad (Karkh bank): 1 in Saidiyah and 1 in Bayaa.

Diyala

- Around 9:30 pm, gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol at Al-Wajihiyah (20 km east of Baquba).One officer was killed and three soldiers were injured in that incident.

Kirkuk

- Thursday night, Iraqi army soldiers wounded a gunman who was planting a roadside bomb at Safra village of Riadh (west of Kirkuk).Then, the Iraq squad defused the bomb and the gunman ran away .

- Thursday , a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol at Al-Utheim (south Kirkuk).One officer was killed in that incident .Another roadside bomb targeted another patrol in the same area with no casualties recorded.

- Thursday, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Hajaj neighborhood in Kirkuk city. One policeman was injured with a civilian who was at the site of the incident.

Salahuddin

- Around noon, an officer was killed by a bomb planted in his car while he was about to start the car’s engine inside the police Academy in Tikrit.

- In the afternoon, American planes bombed a site at Jalam (25 km north east of Samarra ) killing four gunmen of Qaeda members including a Saudi Arabian leader in that location, police said .

Anbar

- Around 11:30 am, a bomb planted under a chair in Al-Raqeeb mosque at Al-Jewlan neighborhood in downtown Falluja .The target was the orator Khalid Himoud who replaced the former orator who was killed 9 months ago. The orator survived ,but one person was killed with four others injured. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Syria Reactor Story a Diversion; But From What?

The US and Israel accused Syria on Thursday of building a secret nuclear reactor with North Korean help. There was a lot of innuendo in the press that the reactor was intended for nuclear weapons production. But AFP notes:

' They said US intelligence had "high confidence" that the structure bombed by the Israelis was a nuclear reactor, "medium confidence" that the North Koreans were involved in building it, and "low confidence" that plutonium from it was for nuclear weapons.

Because other elements of a weapons program, such as a plutonium reprocessing plant, had not been detected, US intelligence was less certain that the plutonium was for nuclear weapons, they said.'

We would have to know exactly what kind of reactor it was to know if it was suitable to help in a weapons program. As the Bush administration admits, there isn't any evidence of that.

Moreover, I'm not really very impressed that they only have medium confidence that North Korea was involved.

Even the high confidence that the building was a reactor cannot be just accepted without question. They had high confidence that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program in the early zeros, which was not true. We should be skeptical about these sorts of stories until we see the proof.

I have been disappointed that more nuclear engineers in the US do not express themselves publicly on what is likely and unlikely. This story seems to me fishy. Syria is a poor state. Where would it have gotten the money for a reactor? Why exactly are there doubts that North Korea was involved? How much of the intelligence is from US sources and how much from Israeli? The latter are highly politicized. The head of Mossad in 2002 expressed confidence that Saddam was close to getting nukes.

Moreover, while I am against proliferation of nuclear weapons, the idea that the Israelis can just bomb anyone's innocent research or civilian power reactor any time they like for no good reason is scary. The Israelis rejected the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and broke with international consensus to acquire by hook and crook British, French and US nuclear secrets and built dozens, perhaps hundreds of nuclear bombs, provoking the nuclear weapons race in the region.

The real question is the timing of the announcement, since the bombing happened a long time ago. It is suspicious to me that the announcement was made just after a spy for Israel was arrested in the US who had stolen US nuclear secrets. Is it diversionary?

Syria expert Josh Landis discusses a different theory of diversion, having to do with revelations that Syria and Israel are closer to an agreement on the future of the Golan Heights.

I'd add that former president Jimmy Carter's recent trip to meet with Hamas leaders has put pressure on Israel to come back in a serious way to the negotiating table. Also Hamas's own apparent change in stance on diplomacy, as Helena Cobban discusses.

Bush's own remarks Thursday that he is seeking a viable Palestine that does not look like Swiss cheese revealed some of what the administration must have been pressing the Israelis on in recent months in preparation for Bush's trip in May.

So the timing of the Syria reactor announcement does seem suspicious in Middle East terms. If the US doesn't in fact think there is any evidence that the reactor had weapons implications, then it is really a non story, and releasing it can only be for hoopla reasons.

Here is Aljazeera's report on the issue, which contains yet another diversionary theory, that the revelations are aimed at pressuring North Korea:


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

5 US Troops Killed; Turkey Bombs N. Iraq; Iran Backs al-Maliki against Mahdi Army

Five US troops were killed in Iraq on Tuesday.

Turkey bombed northern Iraq again on Wednesday, claiming to hit at guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) "attempting to infiltrate Turkey from the Khakurk region of northern Iraq."

Iran's foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, strongly backed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's attack on the Mahdi Army militia on Wednesday. He said, “Weapons should be only in the hands of the Iraqi army.” The Iraqi army appears increasingly to be dominated by cadres of the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. The Badr Corps was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and it and ISCI are key Iranian clients in Iraq. What Mottaki said therefore makes complete sense. What doesn't make sense is the Bush administration's long-term effort to misrepresent the nativist Sadr Movement and its Mahdi Army, based in Iraq's festering slums, as Iran-backed.

It is precisely the closeness of the al-Maliki government and its primary current pillar, ISCI, to Iran that has made Sunni Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia skittish about allowing it into the Arab League system as a full diplomatic partner. The Sunni Arab states largely do not have embassies in Baghdad, and Iraqi Shiites accuse them or their populations of surreptitiously helping Iraqi Sunni Arab guerrillas.

The LAT says former sympathizers are turning on al-Qaeda because of its emphasis on suicide bombings and nihilistic tactics. Fawaz Gerges has argued that such disillusionment broke out with 9/11.

McClatchy on Gen. Petraeus's promotion to Centcom commander.

Russian t.v. argues that Petraeus has proved his mettle as a diplomat, a key criterion for his new job, and predicts he may be the next Secretary of Defense.



McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq for the midweek:

' Baghdad

- Tuesday night, clashes took place in Husseiniya neighborhood (north Baghdad) between the Mahdi army and the American forces. Four people were killed and eight others were injured.

- Around 8am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Al-Butil at Zafaraniyah neighborhood (east Baghdad).Two civilians were injured with no information on the American’s side.

- Around 2 pm, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol on the high way of Mikanik in Dora (south Baghdad). No casualties reported.

- Around noon, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Nafaq Al-Shurta neighborhood (west Baghdad) .Six people were injured including two policemen.

- Around 2 pm, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Qahtan intersection near Yarmouk neighborhood (west Baghdad).Three civilians were injured in that incident.

- Around 7 pm, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Karrada neighborhood .Five people were injured in that incident.

- Police found 4 dead bodies in Baghdad neighborhoods today: 2 were found in Saidiyah in west south Baghdad (Karkh bank).While 2 were found in east Baghdad(Risafa bank); 1 in Ur and 1 in Ubaidi .

Salahuddin

- Tuesday night, American troops raided Baaja , Jamila and Huriya villages on the western side of Shurqat (300 km north of Baghdad) .The troops killed ( Rabia Abood Mohammad ) and arrested 25 persons with 6300 American dollars and 500 000 Iraqi dinars confiscated from Abdul Razaq Khalaf Hassan’s house.

- In the morning, An American squad raided Albu Marouf village at Al-Jazira area (25 km south west Tikrit) .One person was killed and seven others were arrested by the American squad who are from one family .Also six cars were damaged in that incident. We have no confirmation of that incident from the MNF-I at the time of this report.

- In the morning, gunmen injured the teacher Jalal Khorsheed in Hawija Bahriyah in Dhulwiya (south of Tikrit and 80 km north of Baghdad).

Mosul

- Be fore noon, a suicide bomber detonated himself inside an exchange shop .Minutes late, a car bomb exploded at Dawasa neighborhood (downtown Mosul).Two were killed and nine others were injured (including two policemen).

- Around noon, a car bomb targeted a police patrol in Mosul city .Seven people were injured in that incident including four policemen.

- Around noon, noon, a roadside bomb exploded at Al-Rashidiyah downtown Mosul city . Four people were injured in that incident.

- In the afternoon, mortars shell hit Nahrwan neighborhood (west Mosul ). Four people were injured in that incident.

Diyala

- Police and Sahwa members found four remains of dead bodies at Sansal in Muqdadiyah (north east Baquba).

Kirkuk

- Around 3pm, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Al-Wasiti neighborhood in Kirkuk city. Two policemen were injured including an officer.

- The social committee in Kirkuk council buried 38 unidentified dead bodies found in different areas in Kirkuk during the last four months ago. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Clinton Fails to Pull out Big Win; Brandishes Nukes at Iran; Israeli Spying on US for Nuclear Secrets

Hillary Clinton's win in Pennsylvania just was not big enough to allow her to hope to win the elected delegate count. She is increasingly using dark and exaggerated rhetoric and 2/3s of Democrats complain that she has gone too negative (less than half say that about Obama). Her exaggerations yesterday extended into the realm of international politics in a most unfortunate way. It seems clear to me that she cannot win the nomination via elected delegates and that she is hoping to win by scaring the super delegates about Obama. This strategy is counterproductive for the Democratic Party and for the country. Clinton needed to win by well into the double digits in Pennsylvania (which is how she began in the polling there months ago) in order to remain credible. 10 points doesn't do it. (One reader pointed out that it seems actually to be 9.2%, not double digits at all). Obama actually won Texas, which will be a headline in June when all the counting is done there (don't ask). It is over. She should stop before more damage is done.

The Israeli spy ring that penetrated the US Pentagon to steal high-tech secrets including nuclear ones was bigger than just Jonathan Pollard. It is an open secret in US security circles that no foreign country spies on the US more intensively than Israel. And, apparently, none has been more successful in actually prying loose top secret documents. Sy Hersh's sources alleged to him that secrets that went to Israel were either in turn picked up by Soviet moles in Israel or were sold on the black market and ended up with the Soviet Union.

The damage that Israeli spying has done to US security is immense, not only because of such leaks but also because of Israeli reverse engineering of US technology and the pirating of it. Further, the nuclearization of the Middle East that the Israelis initiated has the potential to drag us all into Armageddon.

The Israeli Right is always going on about threats to Israel's existence, even though it is the most powerful country in the Middle East. But no one ever brings up its strangulation of the Palestinian nation, its siege of Gaza, its dispossession of the West Bankers. The right makes an imagined future threat the basis for actual victimization of others in the present. America's security is deeply threatened by the ongoing Israeli colonization projects in the Middle East, as should have been clear for some time.

How dangerous the phantasms of the Right really are is underscored by Hillary Clinton's remarks yesterday:

' In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, Clinton was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

She replied: "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic." '

Clinton has unfortunately fallen into a typical Washington fear-mongering fantasy. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. As of last fall, US intelligence determined that it was not trying to get a nuclear weapon. There is no realistic likelihood of Iran having a bomb 'in the next ten years.' Israel on the other hand has hundreds of bombs and has threatened to use them.

(
Paul George points out that in an interview with Keith Olbermann, Clinton actually alleged that if Iran developed nukes it would be the only such state in the Middle East. Actually, Israel was the first and if you count Pakistan as both Middle East and South Asia, it would be the second.)

So the statement seemed incommensurate with the known facts. It was counter-productive because Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei has denounced nuclear weapons. Khamenei says that nuking civilians is contrary to the Islamic law of war, which only allows warriors to kill other warriors:

' "Their other issue is [their assertion] that Iran seeks [a] nuclear bomb. It is an irrelevant and wrong statement, it is a sheer lie. We do not need a nuclear bomb. We do not have any objectives or aspirations for which we will need to use a nuclear bomb. We consider using nuclear weapons against Islamic rules. We have announced this openly. We think imposing the costs of building and maintaining nuclear weapons on our nation is unnecessary. Building such weapons and their maintenance are costly. By no means we deem it right to impose these costs on the people. We do not need those weapons. Unlike the Americans who want to rule the world with force, we do not claim to control the world and therefore do not need a nuclear bomb. Our nuclear bomb and our explosive powers are our faith, our youth and our people who have been present on the most difficult scenes with utmost power and faith and will continue to do so.'

Khamenei's quaint chivalry in this age of total war stands in contrast to Clinton's chilling contemplation of genocide against 70 million Iranians in retaliation for something they would and could have had no part in deciding. Mutual Assured Destruction is a security underpinning of the contemporary nuclearized world, but it is a diplomatic weapon that works best by allusion.

If you were an Iranian and you heard Clinton talking like this, would it make you more or less interested in acquiring your own nuclear weapon? That is, Clinton's rather bloodthirsty pandering to what she thinks the Israel lobbies want to hear is likely actually to produce the opposite of the desired reaction in Iran itself and is most unwise.

Clinton also does not mention that Israel is already protected by MAD because it has several hundred nuclear warheads (see the beginning of this essay). Senator Clinton is by now just flailing around fantasizing about incinerating children in playgrounds in Isfahan.

Mark 8:36 is relevant here, and I commend it to the good senator: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Zogby: Clinton 10 Points ahead in Pennsylvania

Zogby is reporting as follows, that there is a late surge for Clinton in Pennsylvania and that her margin is being given to her by white, ethnic, Catholic men. It also seems clear that as undecided voters (which fell recently from 8% to 6%) and those who wanted "someone else" (fell from 4% to 3%) have made up their minds, they have tended to go for Clinton. Otherwise Obama's percentages have been pretty stable though perhaps falling slightly. Clinton's increases are beyond the margin of error.

'Released: April 22, 2008

Newsmax/Zogby Poll: Clinton Up 10 Points; Beats Margin of Error

UTICA, New York – New York's Hillary Clinton continued to pull away from rival Barack Obama of Illinois as the campaigning in Pennsylvania ended and voters prepared to cast ballots today, the latest Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows.

She now leads Obama, 51% to 41%, having gained three points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, pushing her beyond the poll's margin of error to create a statistically significant lead for the first time in the Pennsylvania daily tracking poll.

Meanwhile, 6% remained undecided and another 3% said they preferred someone else in the two-day tracking poll. It was conducted April 20-21, 2008, using live operators working out of Zogby's on-site call center in Upstate New York, included 675 likely Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania. It carries a margin of error of +/- 3.8 percentage points.

Pennsylvania


Clinton 4-20/21: 51% . . . 4-19/20: 48% . . .


Obama 4 20/21: 41% . . . 4 19/20: 42% . . .

Pollster John Zogby: "Sounds like a radio station's call letters, but remember WECM – white, ethnic, Catholic, men. That is what put Clinton into her double digit lead here in Pennsylvania..." '

Juan speaking here:

McClatchy points out that a 10-point win just won't do it for Clinton.

It would keep her in the race, though.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

2 US Troops Killed, Others Wounded; Sadr City Fighting; Bombing, Kidnappings in Baquba

The LAT says that 2 US troops were killed in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad (a largely Sunni Arab area). Also, a roadside bomb struck a US troop transport in Basra, producing unspecified casualties.

In addition, LAT reports that fighting continued on Monday in Sadr City between its Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi government forces backed by US troops. Nine are said dead in the clashes. The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is attempting to reduce the power of the Sadrist political movement, backed by the Mahdi Army, in favor of his new ally, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Al-Hakim's movement is more middle and upper class and more tied to Iran, while the Sadrists are working class or poor slum dwellers and Iraqi nationalists. In Baquba, a Sunni female suicide bomber targeted US backed Sunni militiamen of the local Awakening council, killing 3.

Kudos to James Glanz and Alissa Rubin of the NYT for getting the story! They point out that the US and Iran are on the same side in southern Iraq, both fearful of the nativist Sadr movement. This correct narrative is completely the opposite of what Americans have been spoon fed on television and by Bush / Pentagon spokesmen. I had pointed out this Bush- Iran convergence last week and also pointed out that US intelligence analysis admits it. The article is the first one I have seen to say that Iran supports al-Hakim's ISCI in its bid to create a Shiite superprovince in Iraq's south. I've never been able to discover what the Iranians feel about this and had wondered if they weren't at least a little bit worried about a soft partition of Iraq because of its implications for Iranian Kurdistan, which might become restive and seek to join Iraqi Kurdistan. But it is plausible that Tehran might risk this scenario in order to gain a permanent regional ally in the form of the Shiite Regional Government in southern Iraq.

The Badr Corps paramilitary says that it is now the Badr Organization and is no longer a militia. The Badr is modeled on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is a sort of National Guard in Iran, so I suppose Badr is saying that its troops now play a similar role in Iraq, functioning as a slightly less formal state security force. But the Badr reporting line goes to MP Hadi al-Amiri and thence to cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, not to the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. Likewise, the Peshmerga paramilitary of the Kurds has been redefined as a National Guard and accepted as such in the Iraqi Constitution. But the question remains of what these militias would do if their own leadership did come into conflict with the prime minister. They are after all militias. As for Badr's insistence that they haven't run death squads, secret courts, or torture cells, actually they have. They just tend to do these things under the cover of the Ministry of the Interior. As the NYT report said, the US doesn't see Badr as a militia "because they aren't trying to kill us."

What Condi's diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors looks like from Moscow:



Al-Hayat reports that US Secretary of State Condi Rice was been unable to get a prior, unambiguous commitment at a preparatory meeting in Manama from the Arab states to forgive Iraqi loans and other obligations incurred under Saddam Hussein, or to open embassies in Baghdad.

Professors and students in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, are requesting protection after a rash of kidnappings targeting them, al-Hayat writes in Arabic. They also want past such kidnappers now in state custody to sentence them quickly, fearful that local tribal sheikhs will intervene to get the miscreants released, resulting in reprisals against the victims.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Monday:

' Baghdad

- Around 8 am, three IEDs planted in three cars targeted employees of the Cabinet office. The first one was in Dora and the employee was driving his own car the BMW when it exploded and he was injured in that incident .The second one targeted another employee who was injured as he was driving his Hyundai car with another passenger who was sitting by him. The third one targeted a female employee’s car at Alawi neighborhood. She was injured in that incident.

- Around 10 am, two roadside bombs targeted two cars near the red crescent in Mansour neighborhood .No casualties reported.

- Around 11 am, random clashes took place at Rubayee street of Zayuna (east Baghdad). Six people were killed including a woman in that incident.

- Around 3:20 pm, mortars hit the green zone (IZ) in central Baghdad.No casualties reported.

- Around 4 pm, a roadside bomb targeted a KIA mini bus near the oil marketing headquarter at Zayuna neighborhood (east Baghdad). One person was killed and five others were injured in that incident.

- Around 4 pm, a mortar shell hit Mashtal neighborhood (east Baghdad). Two people were injured in that incident.

- Around 4 pm, clashes took place at Mashtal neighborhood (east Baghdad) between the Iraqi army and the Mahdi army . Five people were injured in that clashes.

- Around 6 and 6:30 pm, two Katyusha missiles hit the Supreme council headquarters .No casualties reported.

- Around 6:10 pm, a Katyusha missile hit the Salhiyah compound (central Baghdad).No casualties recorded ,but some cars were damaged in that incident.

- Police found 4 dead bodies in Baghdad today: (3) were found in east Baghdad (Risafa bank); 1 was in Zayuna , 1 was in Husseiniyah and 1 was in Mashtal. While(1) was found in Dora.

Diyala

- Around 1.15 pm, a female suicide bomber detonated herself near one of the popular committees headquarter at Mafraq in Baquba .Three members were killed and 4 others were injured.

Basra

- In the afternoon, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Al-Ghuzaza bridge (north Basra), witnesses in Basra said . While the MNF in Iraq gave us this reply “We can confirm there was an IED attack on US troops today in Basra with casualties. No further information is releasable at this time.” '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush Team Pushed Torture behind Myers' Back

The Guardian, basing itself on a soon-to-be-published book by Philippe Sands (Torture Team) reveals that torture was implemented at Guantanamo Bay in the face of opposition from Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, by White House lawyers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes, as well as Jay Bybee and John Yoo, (two assistant attorney generals). (See also Sands' article in Vanity Fair, which points the finger at the very top of the White House.)

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, is quoted as saying that the perpetrators of torture could well be arrested and tried in other countries as war criminals if they travel abroad. It is an index of the despotism to which the United States has fallen victim that we must hope for other, more civilized countries, to try our war criminals. Why can't public officials be prosecuted for violating the Bill of Rights' guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment? Why can't an International Military Tribunal be set up as at Nuremberg?

So not only did the Bush administration use the Pentagon to snow the American people via retired generals, but one of the things they were concerned to cover up was the major practice of torture at Guantanamo. They took it off the national agenda.

There were lots of innocents swept up by Rumsfeld's vacuum cleaner at Guantanamo. (See this new memoir from Palgrave Macmillan) The Bush administration resists this conclusion and has even said it would not release prisoners found innocent! The Taliban used to sell people to the Americans, and would often finger innocents; it got the Taliban out of trouble and could even be lucrative. A handful of Iraqi Shiites who had escaped to Afghanistan from Saddam, the poor bastards, were then turned over to the Americans as dangerous terrorists by their Sunni enemies. I don't know if they were ever released, even though the US then allied with Iraqi Shiites to overthrow Saddam!

Although there are some terrorists at Guantanamo, torturing them was not only illegal but also a very bad idea. Under torture, Ibn al-Shaykh Libi told the US that Saddam Hussein had training camps in Iraq used to school al-Qaeda in the use of chemical weapons. Dick Cheney and Condi Rice both cited this false confession as a reason to go to war against Iraq.

While UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray discovered the ways in which the US and its satellites were using torture to manufacture stories about al-Qaeda threats that did not exist, as a means of rounding up people and torturing them into admitting they were al-Qaeda, which in turn justified US bases, more billions for the military industrial complex, etc.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rice: Muqtada a Coward; Najaf Tense; Veterans Depressed, Unemployed

Ned Parker, Raheem Salman and Saad Fakhrildeen get the story in Najaf, the Shiite holy city south of Baghdad. The four grand ayatollahs, pillars of middle and upper class Shiite orthodoxy, are fearful of the influence of young Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the millenarian workers and the poor. The authors do not note the irony, but I thought it amusing that both sides were blaming Iran for their troubles, which suggests that the troubles are indigenous. It is an excellent article; I wish it had said more about the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, from which the governor comes, and the Badr Corps, from which the deputy governor comes; both have strong Iran ties and they are the powers that be in Najaf; it is they the Mahdi Army mainly challenges, not just the four grand ayatollahs. Also, they did not say anything about the rumors that the chief grand ayatollah, Ali Sistani, is in bad health.

Rice has her 'bring'em on moment' in Iraq, talking trash to the Mahdi Army and calling Muqtada al-Sadr a 'coward.' Muqtada al-Sadr eluded Saddam Hussein for 4 years after Saddam killed his father and two elder brothers; and in 2004 he twice took on the US military. He may be a lot of things, but he is not a coward. Has Rice ever said anything about Iraq that was true or useful? Even as she was talking up 'improved security' in Baghdad, mortar shells were falling about her in the Green Zone.

Over the weekend there were clashes in Nasiriya between Mahdi Army militiamen and the Iraqi army. Although this official Iraqi government communique suggests that 40 militiamen were killed and 40 captured and does not mention government casualties, I'd take it all with a grain of salt. What is not apparent from the squib is that the Iraqi government is so weak it is having to fight for a toehold in one of its own cities.

Another mass grave found in Iraq. These sites are evidence of militia activity-- the victims were likely either accused of collaboration with the central government or members of the opposite religious sect.

The American Right is always droning on about the need to support our troops (i.e. to support the Right's war). But the rich who send poor young men off to foreign wars of course don't really care about the young men themselves (because they don't care about the poor in general; right wing politicians are elected by the rich, for the rich and of the rich). Cases in point:

Health care eludes Iraq vet.

Veterans having a hard time finding jobs.

A third of a million veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq are depressed, suffering from PTSD (the proportion suffering is about 1 in five).

The way to support our troops is to get them out of a fruitless and unnecessary war, before more thousands are killed and wounded, whether physically or psychologically or socially.

Tom Engelhardt gives 12 reasons to get out of Iraq.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday:

' Baghdad

Around 11:00 pm on Saturday, a mortar shell hit al Qanat Street in east Baghdad. No casualties reported.

Around 1:30 a.m. four mortar shells hit al Husseiniyah area in north Baghdad. No casualties reported.

Seven civilians were wounded when a Katyosha rocket hit a house in Abo Desheer neighborhood ij south Baghdad around 8:00 a.m.

Clashes broke out between Mahdi army militia and the Iraqi national police in New Baghdad area in east Baghdad around 10:00 a.m. No information about the casualties provided on time of publication.

Clashes broke out between Mahdi army militia and the American forces in Kubra al Ghizlan area in the outskirt of Sadr city in east Baghdad around 11:00 am. No casualties reported on time of publication.

2 civilians were killed and 14 others wounded when two mortar shells hit Kadhemiyah neighborhood north Baghdad around 5:00 p.m.

Five people were wounded including two policemen when a road side bomb exploded targeting the police patrol in New Baghdad neighborhood in east Baghdad around 7:00 p.m.

Two policemen were killed and four others wounded by a bombed placed bicycle in Abo Graib area west of Baghdad around 8:30 p.m.

Police found six unidentified bodies throughout Baghdad (2 bodies in Jisr Diyala, 1 body in Zayuna, 1 body in New Baghdad, 1 body in Bayaa and 1 body in Amil)

Diyala

Gunmen set a fake check point kidnapping three vehicles including a bus carries nine students from the University of Diyala while they were in their way to the university. The incident took place in the area between Muqdadiyah town and Kanan area east of Baquba around 9:00 a.m. The gunmen released the nine students and kept the three drivers.

Around 9:00 a.m. gunmen attacked a car carrying a policeman and his pregnant wife while they were in their way to the hospital. The incident took place in Wajihiyah area east of Baquba. The gunmen killed the policeman and the taxi driver and injured the wife.

The commander of the Diyala operations Major General Abdul Kareem al Ubaidi said that the Iraqi security forces and the Sahwa members found 30 bodies in a mass grave yard in Muqdadiyah town northeast of Baquba. Al Rubaie said that another mass grave yard was found in al Botoma village north of Baquba city confirming that 27 bodies were from the yard moved to the morgue of Diyala hospital.

Kirkuk

Gunmen killed two contractors near al Rashad area west Kirkuk on Sunday morning.

Nineveh

Police found the bodies of two members of the local council of Sinjar town west of Mosul city. The two members of the council were kidnapped on Saturday evening.

Salahuddin

Gunmen killed a police officer in front of his house in Soleman Beg town east of Tikrit around 10:00 p.m.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Muqtada threatens Open Warfare; Islamic State in Iraq launches One-Month Campaign; Help! They told me on Television Iraq Was Calm Now

Meanwhile, a lot of open warfare is being threatened in Iraq.

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is said to have threatened open warfare with the al-Maliki government if it does not cleanse "militias" [i.e. the Badr Corps] from its security forces and does not cease attacking Sadrist areas.

The Islamic State in Iraq declared a month-long campaign to kill US troops. April is already a relatively high-casualty month for the US military in Iraq.

Another mass grave found in Iraq, this time near Shiite Diwaniya. But AFP suggests that it was a mafia hit-- they were killed along a smuggling route to Saudi Arabia. Did one smuggling gang horn in on another's territory? Billions of dollars a year of gasoline, kerosene, antiquities, and drugs are being smuggled in Iraq every year, and the money often supports guerrillas. In Colombia they have narco-terrorism. In Iraq, it is hydrocarbon terrorism.

Little Jordan, with 500,000 Iraqi refugees and a population of only 5.2 million, is petrified that Iraq's instability will spill over on it.



Reuters reports political violence in Iraq so far this weekend:

' date item.

* BAGHDAD - Three rockets hit the Sadr hospital in Sadr City late on Saturday, according to Ali Bustan, head of the health directorate in the eastern section of Baghdad. It was unclear if there were any casualties or who fired the rockets. The U.S. military said it was not to blame. Bustan also said the bodies of three women had been brought in along with 40 wounded people following fresh clashes.

* DIWANIYA - 16 decapitated and decomposed bodies were found in the desert near Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, a senior military official in Diwaniya said. The bodies and heads were in separate plastic bags.

* MOSUL - One civilian was killed and 5 others were wounded when an IED exploded in eastern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

* MOSUL - Two bodies were found, one in southeastern Mosul and the other in a town south of the city, a senior military official in Mosul said.

NASSIRIYA - One policeman was killed and three wounded in clashes with gunmen near Nassiriya, 375 km (235 miles) southwest of Baghdad, hospital and police officials said.

MOSUL AND BAJI - U.S. forces detained 22 suspects in the northern cities of Mosul and Baji in security operations targeting al Qaeda militants, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot and seriously wounded an interior ministry official in eastern Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - Iraqi army forces arrested 44 al Qaeda militants and confiscated weapons in different areas of eastern Mosul, a spokesman for Mosul operations command said.

BASRA - Government forces said they captured the district of Hayaniya in Basra, long a stronghold of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, achieving an objective that had eluded them during a crackdown last month. Basra is 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - Twelve people were killed and 71 others wounded on Friday and Saturday in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, police said. Hospitals said the total wounded was more than 130.

MOSUL - A roadside bomb killed two people and wounded 12 others in eastern Mosul, police said.

KIRKUK - A parked car bomb killed one person and wounded three others in southern Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR KIRKUK - A roadside bomb struck a police patrol, killing one policeman and wounding another in the southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. helicopter gunship fired a missile, killing two gunmen in eastern Baghdad on Saturday, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier when it struck his vehicle on Friday just north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in statement.

SALAHUDDIN PROVINCE - A car bomb blast killed one U.S. soldier when he was conducting a patrol on Friday in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded two people on Friday in the Karrada district of central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - One Iraqi soldier was killed and four others wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in Yarmouk district, in western Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Friday, police said.

BAGHDAD - A mortar bomb killed one person on Friday in al-Nidhal street, central Baghdad, police said.

MUSSAYAB - One body was found with gunshot wounds in Mussayab, 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

(compiled by Aws Qusay; editing by Noah Barkin)'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

McCain, the Retired Military "Analysts" and the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq

I am quoted in this NYT piece today on John McCain's allegations that the US is fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq and that there is a danger of "al-Qaeda" taking over the country if the US leaves.

Those allegations don't make any sense. McCain contradicts himself because he sometimes warns that the Shiites or Iran will take over Iraq. He doesn't seem to realize that the US presided over the ascension to power in Iraq of pro-Iranian Shiite parties like Nuri al-Maliki's Islamic Mission Party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. So which is it? There is a danger that pro-Iranian Shiites will take over (which is anyway what we have engineered) or that al-Qaeda will? It is not as if they can coexist. Since the Shiites are 60 percent and by now well armed and trained, and since the Sunni Arabs are only 17 percent of the population and since only about 1 percent of them perhaps supports Salafi radicalism--how can the latter hope to take over?

Even if McCain only means, as his campaign manager tried to suggest, that "al-Qaeda" could take over the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, that doesn't make any sense either (McCain has actually alleged that al-Qaeda would take over the whole country.) The Salafi radicals have lost in al-Anbar Province. Diyala Province, one of the other three predominantly Sunni areas, is ruled by pro-Iranian Shiites. That leaves Salahuddin and Ninevah Provinces. Among the major military forces in Ninevah is the Kurdish Peshmerga, some of them integrated e.g. into the Mosul police force. Hint: The Kurds don't like "al-Qaeda", i.e. Salafi radicalism. Jalal Talabani is a socialist.

So the Shiites and the Kurds among the Iraqis, now more powerful than the Sunni Arabs, would never allow a radical Salafi mini-state in their midst. They would crush them. And substantial segments of the Iraqi Sunni population have already helped crush them.

Moreover, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, Baathist Syria and monarchical Jordan would never put up with a Salafi radical mini-state on their borders. They would crush it. Jordan's secret police already appear to have played a role in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who had his own "Monotheism and Holy War" organization that for PR purposes he at one point rechristened "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (he actually never got along with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri).

McCain's whole discourse on Iraq is just a typical rightwing Washington fantasy made up in order to get you to spend $15 billion a month on his friends in the military industrial complex and to get you to allow him to gut the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The NYT revealed today that the Pentagon and the Bush administration has been propagandizing retired military "analysts" who appear frequently as talking heads on television, to ensure that the Bush point of view has hegemony on the airwaves. Bill Maher has joked that we have heard from two sets of analysts, the generals and the retired generals. It is these secret networks of corrupt agents of influence that have Orwellized our society in recent years. And it will go on unless the public wakes up and demands a change. If you see a network or cable news segment with *only* Establishment commentators (i.e. two retired generals, or one and someone from the American Enterprise Institute), then get up an email campaign to complain to the anchor. Threaten an advertiser boycott. Our country is in danger from this stuff. McCain gets his ridiculous talking points on Iraq from these corrupt "analysts" and people like them inside the Pentagon.

In fact, it is well known that Defense Intelligence Agency analysts face trouble in writing reports on Iraq because they get stung by the Pentagon's own propaganda machine! The Pentagon hired the Lincoln Group which in turn deployed secret agents for someone like Michael Rubin of AEI to manufacture sermons and other material and attribute them to Iraqis. So then the analysts read Rubin in Arabic translation and report him back to their bosses as Iraqi public opinion! Then Rubin defended this sort of thing to the NYT without revealing his links to Lincoln (just as the retired generals did not tell CNN about their secret links).

The kind of political pressures for conformity and 'good news' analysis of Iraq faced by the analysts is illustrated in Alex Rossmiller's book, Still Broken (note: I make a cameo).

At the moment no guerrilla group in Iraq even calls itself al-Qaeda. Zarqawi's organization appears to have collapsed in Ramadi with his death, which is a part of the story of the rise of pro-American 'awakening councils' there that no one mentions.

Here are the Open Source Center headlines about Sunni guerrilla activities in Iraq. These are found and translated by US intelligence:

' Ansar Al-Islam Claims Attack on Oil Tanker in Iraq

Al-Rashidin Army Claims 16 Apr Attack on US Hummer . . . ["The statement was attributed to Abu-al-Abbas Isa Bakr al-Iraqi, the Media Bureau, the Al-Rashidin Army, the Jihad and Change Front."]

Iraqi Armed Revolution Comments on Government Clashes with Al-Mahdi Army . . . [says "both sides want to seize power"]

Shield of Islam Brigade Claims Attack on Iraqi Forces in Baghdad

1920 Revolution Brigades Claims Attack on US Stryker Vehicle

Sa'd Bin-Abu-Waqqas Brigades Claim 3 Attacks on US, 'Enemy' Forces

Naqshabandi Order Claims 23 Operations Against US Forces 1-15 Mar'

Note that the 1920 Revolution Brigades fights against the Islamic State of Iraq and some of its cells have joined US-backed Awakening Councils. The Naqshbandi Order is a Sufi brotherhood and not radical Salafis at all. Some of these groups are probably fronts for Izzat Ibrahim Duri's neo-Baath. None of these communiques mentions anything about "al-Qaeda" or Usama Bin Laden. Aside from the 'Islamic State in Iraq,' which seems to be a front for a small group of foreign fighters who have some local support in Diyala province, they are just Iraqi Sunnis, folks. A lot of them were in the Baath army six years ago. Opinion polling shows that a majority of Iraqi Sunnis says that a separation of religion and state is desirable, which is what you would expect from a population ruled by the secular Arab nationalist Baath Party for 25 years. The US has 24,000 or so Iraqis in custody but less than 150 foreign fighters. Doesn't that tell you something?

McCain can't come out and say we need to crush the Armed Iraqi Revolution, because that would be an admission that the US has been fighting Iraqis for 5 years and still hasn't defeated them. So he and the Republican strategists and the retired generals and their Pentagon handlers make up this "al-Qaeda" business, as though people in Baquba would be gunning for Americans if Americans hadn't invaded their country and turned it upside down.

It is the US military occupation of Iraq that is producing "al-Qaeda" wannabes, and if it is ended the Iraqis and their neighbors will polish those off tout de suite. Keep the military occupation going, as McCain desires, and you are running an incubator for terrorism against the US and its allies that has already produced hits on Madrid and the London Underground.

In other words, elect McCain, my friends, and you are summoning the awful genie of another 9/11. I said it. I mean it. I'm not taking it back. That man's announced policies could well produce a blowback that will lead to the end of democracy in the United States. It is a momentous decision.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Palestinian Children

Call me suspicious. Bound bodies found floating in a lake just don't seem to me very likely to be the victims of suicide. Riad's friend writes:

' A friend of mine, Austin middle-school teacher and pro-Palestinian activist Riad (also spelled Riadh) Hamad, was found gagged & bound in a lake. His death was declared by the local police to be a "suicide".

The story reeks of being either a hate crime or worse, an assassination by an interested party. Hamad's charity was under attack by various parties which volunteered to find links between his organization and terrorist organizations. FWIW, no such link has led to law suits against him, to the best of my knowledge.

Riad is no longer alive, but questions about his death (suicide?) seem very much alive. At the very least, a fair police investigation would be appropriate. Simply stepping up to people and killing them is not an acceptable way to shut down a charity in the U.S., I'm sure you agree. I believe that media pressure may be the only way to get a true investigation. If someone is killing Palestinian activists in the U.S., that must be stopped - somehow. '

Consider sending a gift to Save the Children and earmarking it for Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza. They told me you can't sponsor an individual Palestinian child, but that they do get relief to them. Some 20% of Palestinian children are being kept in a state of malnutrition by the Israeli occupation authorities.

I wrote about this problem 6 years ago. The situation has deteriorated sharply in the intervening period:

' A U.N. World Food Program initiative called Emergency Food Needs Assessment showed that 51 percent of Palestinians are food insecure in the occupied territory as a whole, with 70 percent food insecure in Gaza.

The main factors affecting Palestinians' access to food, exacerbated by the second intifada, are Israeli imposed restrictions on their internal and external movement. Limited Palestinian control over their natural resources -- in particular water and agricultural land -- is another major factor.

Furthermore, chronic malnutrition and dietary-related diseases are slowly increasing, WHO has reported.

Anemia amongst children age nine to 12 months stands at 69 percent in Gaza and 47 percent in the West Bank, with 33 percent of women of childbearing age affected. The number of cases of stunting, low birth weights and premature deaths is also increasing.

Some 70 percent of Palestinians are estimated by the United Nations Children's Fund to be living below the poverty line. According to UNRWA and the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs, the number of chronic poor has risen sharply. '

Please send those poor kids some money via Save the Children, which is very careful about how it reaches them.

Some 15% of Palestinians are Christian, and the Muslims believe Jesus was sent by God. I seem to remember Jesus saying "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." If you aren't supposed to offend the little ones, I don't think you are supposed to half-starve them either.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

132 Wounded in Sadr City; The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

The spring dust storms in Baghdad have given cover to renewed guerrilla fighting there. On Thursday Iraqi guerrillas used the cover of the dust storms to bombard the Green Zone with mortar shells. On Friday clashes broke out between Mahdi Army militiamen in Sadr City and Iraqi and US troops at the edges of the vast Shiite slum. Local hospitals reported 132 wounded were brought in, in the aftermath.

The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree:




Learning to stop worrying and love the bomb.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

60 Killed in Diyala Bombing; NDU Study: Iraq War Debacle; Netanyahu: 9/11 benefitted Israel

A suicide bombing at a funeral for pro-American militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province killed at least 60 persons on Thursday and wounded a similar number. This attack follows a previous bombing in the provincial capital of Baquba that had killed 60. The US-backed 'Awakening Councils' are being fought in Diyala by Sunni guerrillas, some of them calling themselves 'the Islamic State of Iraq.' In Diyala, unlike al-Anbar, one also sees reports that older, less fundamentalist guerrilla groups such as the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the armed wing of the Association of Muslim Scholars, continue to attack US troops. Diyala is a mixed province, and poor Sunni Arab relations with Shiites and Kurds make the Awakening Councils more difficult to implement, especially since the Shiites control many key institutions.

A National Defense University study by a former Pentagon official finds that the Iraq War is a debacle, the outcome of which is in doubt. McClatchy reports of the paper:

' The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report continued. '

The US will free about half of its 23,000 Iraqi prisoners, 2/3s of whom are Sunni Arabs. (By the way, this statistic proves that the US has been fighting ordinary Iraqis in Iraq, not "al-Qaeda." It typically has less than 150 foreign fighters in custody.) This prisoner release was a demand of the Iraqi Accord Front, the Sunni Arab political coalition that withdrew from the al-Maliki government last summer. There are now reports that the IAF will rejoin the al-Maliki government, with six cabinet posts given to its members.

Does this mean that the US has been holding some 12,000 Iraqis who actually aren't dangerous?

Secretary of State Condi Rice wants the Arab states to shield Iraq from Iran's "nefarious influence." Rice seems unaware that she has installed in Baghdad parties like the Islamic Mission Party (al-Da'wa) and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) that are very close to Tehran, and that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia advised her not invade Iraq because this would happen. And Sunnis, Salafis and Wahhabis would dissuade Iraq's Shiite majority from good relations with their Iranian Shiite neighbors . . . how? Whenever I hear Bush administration officials say something about the Middle East, it is as though I am listening to bad fiction read with a drunken slur. Opinion polling does not find that the Arab publics are afraid of or worried about Iran in any numbers, and in fact Israel's attack on largely defenseless little Lebanon in 2006 made Iran and Hizbullah more popular in the region.

Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail do interviews with Fallujans who maintain that the city is still crippled and was largely destroyed by the US.

Far rightwing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud party says that 9/11 was good for Israel. Even if it were true, couldn't Netanyahu have the decency not to say it? Netanyahu also made crazy allegations against Iran of preparing for global domination or something. Hmmm. I should have thought people who are the objects of bizarre conspiracy theories themselves would be sensitive about spreading them around about other people. Iran isn't even very powerful in its own neighborhood and has not aggressively invaded another country in its modern history. It isn't colonizing anyone else's land and hasn't dropped bombs on its neighbors. It doesn't have an atomic bomb and there is no evidence it is seeking one. In all these ways, the contrasts favor Iran over the Israeli Right.

Robin Wright at WaPo writes that "Suicide bombers conducted 658 attacks around the world last year, including 542 in US-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq . . ." 542 out of 658 is about 83%, lending further testimony to Chicago Political Scientist Robert Pape's theory that suicide bombings tend to occur in countries under foreign military occupation by an otherwise democratic government. (That is, they are staged for the public in the occupying country to some extent; people tend not to bother to blow themselves up when occupied by a dictatorship.)

I am looking forward to reading Wright's new book, "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East"

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Thursday:

' Baghdad

A roadside bomb exploded in the industrial street 52, Karrada, downtown Baghdad at 10 am Thursday, injuring 2 civilians.

Gunmen riding a motorbike opened random fire upon the stores in al-Rubaei Street, a shopping centre in east Baghdad at 10.30 am today, injuring 3 civilians.

A roadside bomb targeted a US Military convoy in Abu Disheer, south Baghdad at 11 am Thursday. No comment from the US Military was available at the time of publication.

A roadside bomb targeted a US Military convoy in Bayaa, southwest Baghdad at noon Thursday. No comment from the US Military was available at the time of publication.

A Katyusha rocket fell behind the Mansour Milia Hotel on the river bank in central Baghdad at 4.45 pm today. One civilian was injured.

A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol near the new Diala Bridge in Zafaraniyah, southeast Baghdad at 3 pm Thursday, killing 1 policeman and 1 civilian. The explosion also injured 6 policemen and 4 civilians.

1 Katyusha rocket fell inside the Green Zone at 4 pm today. No casualties were reported.

Doura Local Council Member, Saad al-Nuaimi was assassinated by gunmen at 5 pm today. He was driving his car near the bridge intersection and his son, Saifuddin was with him. Al-Nuaimi was killed outright, but his son, although severely injured, survived.

A roadside bomb targeted a Sahwa checkpoint, the US sponsored militia in Akhtal Street, Adhamiyah, north Baghdad at 5.30 pm Thursday. The explosion killed 5 Sahwa members, 1 civilian and injured 2 children.

4 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad today by Iraqi police. 2 in Shaab, 1 in al-Amin and 1 in Doura.

Diyala

A suicide bomber detonated in the funeral of a tribal sheikh who was a leading member in the local Sahwa Council, a US sponsored militia, in al-Hiwaysat village, al-Athaem area, Thursday. The explosion killed 60 civilians, injured tens.

4 MNFI servicemen and 1 Iraqi Army officer were wounded during a raid conducted by the joint force in Jalowlaa district near the town of Khanaqin, northeast Diyala, said Iraqi Police. A gunman targeted them with a hand grenade from one of the houses in the area being searched, said Iraqi police. No comment from the US Military was available at the time of publication.

Basra

Gunmen driving a modern car opened fire targeting 2 policemen in Jazair neighbourhood, near al-Abayachi Mosque in Basra city centre killing both instantly.

A policeman from the National Police was targeted by gunmen while he was on guard duty on top of a high building in al-Kornish area in the centre of Basra city. He escaped with superficial wounds.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Pope: Iraq War "has no moral justification"; Says Decision Should have been Made by UN

Here is what Pope Benedict really thinks of Bush and his Iraq War:

Is the war that has been announced against Iraq a just war?
“All I can do is invite you to read the Catechism,” [the present Pope when he was still] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger replied with a mischievous grin, “and the conclusion seems obvious to me…”

For the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, the obvious conclusion is that the military intervention that is taking shape “has no moral justification” (September 20, interview on the Italian national news program). The Catechism, Ratzinger [now Benedict] explained, does not embrace a pacifist position a priori; indeed, it admits the possibility of a “just war” for reasons of defense. But it sets a number of very strict and reasonable conditions: there must be a proper proportion between the evil to be rooted out and the means employed. In short, if in order to defend a value (in this case, national security) greater damage is caused (civilian victims, destabilization of the Middle East, with its accompanying risks of increased terrorism), then recourse to force is no longer justified. In light of these criteria, Ratzinger refuses to grant the moral status of just war to the military operation against Saddam Hussein.

[He] . . . added another consideration: “Decisions like this should be made by the community of nations, by the UN, and not by an individual power.” '

Hat tip to Justin Raimondo.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunni-Shiite Divide in Baghdad Worsens

Aljazeera English reports on the increased Sunni-Shiite divide in Baghdad. The video of blast walls and closed bridges is worth the price of admission. My only puzzlement is why they did not say more about the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis from Iraq, such that the city is now overwhelmingly Shiite.



Also, for those of you who like watching video on the web, check out my extended conversation with Dan Drezner on Iraq last week at bloggingheads.tv.

And, don't miss Michael Klare on oil at Tomdispatch.com.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Islamic Radicals Announce Accord with Sunni Tribes

The USG Open Source Center translates a speech by Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the putative leader of the radical Islamic State of Iraq, which has committed many bombings in the center-north of the country.


FYI -- ISI Leader Al-Baghdadi Announces Agreement with Sunni Tribal Leaders
Jihadist Websites -- OSC Summary
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 . . .

On 15 April, a jihadist website posts a statement and numerous links to a 30-minute audio speech [by] Abu-Umar al-Baghdadi, amir of the Al-Qa'ida- affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The statement is entitled "Solid Cemented Structure." . . .

Al-Baghdadi starts by saying that "these days mark a painful anniversary; the occupation of Iraq and the fall of Baghdad Al-Rashid in the hands of Christians and Magus." [Magus or magi refers to Zoroastrians, adherents of the ancient religion of Iran; he is saying that the Iraqi Shiites who have taken Baghdad are actually Iranians and their Shiism is not Islam but a sort of Zoroastrianism.] He adds that after five years, "the enemy" has gained nothing but "disgrace and defeat." He questions figures by that the United States about its deaths, saying they are way above 4,000. He also speaks of the "defeat" of the US Army and the "collapse" of US economy.

He continues to say: "It has been five years since the blessed jihad started. Praise be to God, we adhere to our religion and continue with the course of jihad."

He cites examples from the Koran and hadith, which he says prove that "the infidel foreign enemy cannot defeat the people of Islam, no matter how strong it grows or how large the number of its supporters is."
Al-Baghdadi then speaks of the Basra incidents, which he describes as a Shiite-Shiite conflict over power. He says that Al-Mahdi Army is clearly an affiliate of Iran, which he says is seeking to rule Iraq once again.

Al-Baghdadi criticizes certain Sunni tribes for cooperating with US President George Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki "to kill the people of Sunni tribes."

He expresses joy over remarks, he says, were made by some tribal leaders who are unhappy about the Sunni infighting, and who call for directing weapons against the "occupier only." He adds that these leaders agreed with the ISI on a working plan to stop infighting in Sunni areas among the people of tribes. He later gives examples of the infighting among Sunni tribes.

Al-Baghdadi says that the US Army and its allies pushed the Iraqi tribes into "a dark tunnel; namely, joining the national forces and the awakening councils."

Al-Baghdadi adds that the real problem in the Sunni area is the Iraqi Islamic Party and its aides, including clerics and tribal leaders. He accuses the Islamic Party of lies, adding: "Tariq al-Hashimi, who is the Iraqi vice president, could not even free a single prisoner. He continues to say: "The Islamic Party categorically rejects the withdrawal of the occupier and considers this a crime."

Al-Baghdadi asks the Iraqi tribesmen to compare the number of prisoners and women held by the ISI with the number of prisoners and women held in US and Iraqi jails. He argues: "I think that if you honestly answer these questions, you will know the real criminal who should be fought and against whom weapons should be carried."

He denies receiving a ransom in return for freeing any US, British, Russian, or other hostages, noting that the ultimate goal of taking hostages has always been "to free women and minors from jails."
Al-Baghdadi then accuses the former head of Al-Anbar Awakening Councils, Abd-al-Sattar Abu-Rishah, of "treason," recalling remarks by Abu-Rishah to US President George Bush in which the former stressed that he was an ally of the United States in Iraq and asked Bush not to abandon him.

He wonders why the "agents of the awakening councils, their allies, and the betrayers of the resistance want to establish alliance with the Christians," whom he says "raped our women, shed our blood, jailed our sons, humiliated our elderly, scared our children, and demolished our houses."
Al-Baghdadi adds that the ISI only "killed agents of the Americans, the striking forces that protect the occupation, including the police, the army, and the awakening councils, who are the root cause of the problem," as he put it.

He adds that most of the Sunni tribes are either among the "mujahidin" or supporting them, noting that they are dissatisfied with protecting the US patrols, military bases, and even its presence.
Al-Baghdadi announces that a number of issues have been agreed on with tribal leaders.

The first item of the agreement Al-Baghdadi mentions is: "The formation of a committee of loyal clerics who have never been on the side of the occupier or the state of Al-Rafidah (a derogatory reference to Shiites); who are known for erudite knowledge and good conduct; and who have no links with any apostate neighboring country, in order to resolve any dispute that occurs in the Sunni areas, among tribes, mujahidin, or others."

The second point is: "The honorable clerics and tribal leaders shall undertake to urge the people of Sunni tribes to quit the police and the army in the state of Al-Rafidah, as well as the awakening councils, provided that the weapons of all Sunni people are directed against the Christian occupiers and their supporters."

The third point is: "The ISI, may God protect it, pledges to declare amnesty that will include members of the police, the army, and the awakening councils who abandoned fighting the mujahidin before we get hold of them." He adds: "Each tribe shall undertake to control the behavior of its people and punish whoever tries to push the Sunni people to the brink and allow the Christian occupier to move freely in our land and violate our honor."

The fourth point is: "A committee made up of tribal leaders, clerics, and mujahidin shall be formed in each area to run the affairs of their areas in accordance with Islamic shar'iah."

The fifth point is: "A supreme court shall be formed to resolve all disputes as of the date of this announcement in accordance with Islamic shar'iah."
The sixth point is: "The ISI and other jihadist groups pledge to hand over anyone religiously proven guilty of illegal killing to the aforementioned committee."

Al-Baghdadi notes: "This agreement will remain ink on paper unless the clerics and tribal leaders embark on activating and implementing it, at least in any area where the implementation of the agreement is applicable, and without excluding any item from implementing the agreement."

He criticizes the Iraqi Government's armed operations against Sunnis in favor of Shiites, noting that the military operations in Basra stopped suddenly although Prime Minister Al-Maliki described Shiite militias as "worse than Al-Qa'ida." Then, the weapon of the Iraqi Army was directed against the Sunni people in Mosul. He says that the decision to change the direction of military operations from Basra to Mosul was made in Iran.

Al-Baghdadi then urges Sunnis to remain cautious, saying: "You will be humiliated if you abandon your mujahidin people, who are part of you and the source of you proud, honor, and strength." He also warns Sunnis against joining the Iraqi Islamic Party in engaging the political process because, he says, the party supports "the elimination of Sunnis in Mosul," and is now inciting "massacres against t he secure people in Mosul."

He later urges Sunnis to stop "the crimes committed by Christian occupiers and to prevent the ambitions of Magus," and "fend off attacks by the Jews of Peshmerga." He also urges them to defend their religion, land, and honor, asking them to join the ISI in fighting "the occupation and its supporters."
Al-Baghdadi concludes the audio speech by praying that God would defeat the "occupation" and "enemies" in Iraq.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bombs, Violence Kill 60 in Northern Iraq

The massive violence in Iraq on Tuesday underlines that in the north, the US is mainly fighting Sunni Iraqis, some of them neo-Baathists. It is a misnomer to call the resistance "al-Qaeda," since most of them are not foreign fighters but Iraqis, and none of them has Usamah Bin Laden's telephone number.

The recent propaganda push by Bush and his aides to blame Iran for most of Iraq's ongoing instability is revealed as grounded in false premises. The Sunni guerrillas who hit Baquba, Baghdad, Ramadi and Mosul were completely unconnected to Iran.

At the very end of the Reuters post quoted below, we see an implicit acknowledgment that what Iranian weapons have come into Iraq have often come in via freelance smugglers using donkeys.

There were several big bombings:

Baqubah, a mixed city of a couple hundred thousand northeast of Baghdad, is the capital of Diyala province. Diyala is 60% Sunni Arab, but has strong Shiite and Kurdish minorities. The attempt of the US to establish Sunni militias or 'Awakening Councils' in Diyala has faltered in part because it is a mixed area and fights keep breaking out with Shiites. Diyala Awakening Council fighters have at points gone on strike to demand arrears of pay, and to protest the arbitrary actions of the Shiite police chief.

Some 40 persons were killed and 70 wounded in a suicide bombing on Monday in Baquba. AP writes, "AP Television News footage showed many of the bodies covered in crisp white sheets in the main hospital's courtyard while the emergency room inside was overwhelmed with the wounded."

AP adds, "A suicide attacker on a motorcycle later drove up to a kebab restaurant in Ramadi and detonated his explosives vest around 12:30 p.m., killing at least 13 people including three policemen and wounding 20 other people . ."

Ramadi is in the Sunni al-Anbar Province west of Baghdad.

The city of Mosul was also hit by bombings. Mosul is in the north and is 80 percent Sunni Arab. It is fought over by Sunni militants and the Kurds.

This Reuters report suggests the full extent of the calamity:

'BAQUBA - A car bomb killed 40 people and wounded 80 in the city of Baquba, 65 km (42 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

RAMADI - A suicide car bomb killed 13 people and wounded 14 others near a restaurant in western Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, a hospital source and police said.

* NEAR KERBALA - Gunmen attacked a small town near the southern city of Kerbala, killing five people including two women and wounding six others, police said. The attack forced 150 people to flee. The attackers then blew up 14 houses, police said. Kerbala is 110 km (68 miles) southwest of Baghdad.

* BAGHDAD - U.S. forces detained 18 militants on Monday and Tuesday during operations targeting al Qaeda in the Tigris River Valley and the country's north, the U.S. military said.

* BASRA - Gunmen wounded an aide to the country's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in a drive-by shooting in Basra in southern Iraq, police said. The aide's bodyguard was killed.

* MOSUL - A girl was killed inside her schoolroom by a stray bullet in eastern Mosul, police said.

* MOSUL - A roadside bomb wounded four policemen when it struck their patrol in eastern Mosul, Brigadier-General Khalid Abdul-Sattar said.

* MOSUL - Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb in western Mosul.

BAGHDAD - Three people were killed and eight wounded in car bomb attack in central Baghdad, police said. The target was an Iraqi police convoy.

BAGHDAD - Six people were killed and 26 wounded in fighting in the Sadr City district overnight, police and hospital sources said. The U.S. military said it had killed at least 10 fighters in Sadr City. Three were killed in one gunbattle in the slum, before U.S. troops ordered air strikes that killed another three, the military said in a statement. A spokesman said U.S. forces in a tank killed another four militants who attacked them in a separate engagement.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed a female lawyer and her sister in eastern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BASRA - Iraq's defence minister left the southern city of Basra to return to Baghdad on Monday, transferring all duties and authority to Lieutenant-General Mohan al-Furaiji, commander of Iraqi armed forces in Basra, an officer said. Basra has been the scene of a crackdown on militias overseen by the central government.

MOSUL - Gunmen stormed an apartment and killed three women and a man on Monday in Mosul, police said.

NEAR KHANAQIN - Iraqi border guards clashed with smugglers trying to bring in 170 roadside bombs stacked on mules near Khanaqin in Diyala province, on the border with Iran, a border guard source said. The U.S. military said Iraqi officers discovered a cache of anti-tank mines after taking small arms fire from an unknown number of gunmen on Monday. It gave no location but the incidents appeared to be the same.

(Compiled by Aws Qusay, editing by Dean Yates)'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

28 Killed in Wave of Violence; Sadr Demands Reinstatement of Sacked Troops

AFP reports:

' A surge of violence killed 28 people in the past 24 hours in Iraq, among them 12 members of the Kurdish peshmerga forces who died in a bomb blast near the Syrian border, officials said on Monday.

The country's north bore the brunt of the violence, with the attack on the [Kurdish] peshmerga troops at the town of Rabiyah, three car bombs exploding in separate incidents in the main city of Mosul, and a suicide bomb attack on a funeral in the town of Tal Afar. . .

The US military announced that two American soldiers were killed on Monday by roadside bombs in separate incidents in Iraq, pushing the toll for the first half of April to 24.'

Greg Mitchell considers the implications of the high suicide rates among US soldiers in Iraq.

Muqtada al-Sadr demanded on Monday that Iraqi troops fired this weekend by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki be reinstated. He said that in refusing to fight other Shiites they had only been obeying the strictures of their religious leaders.

Reilly dismantles a WaPo Neocon editorial about Iran, showing it to be the shoddy piece of writing that it is.

Don't miss Barnett Rubin's string of fine entries on Afghanistan.

McClatchy reports political violence for Monday:

' Baghdad

- Around 11:30 pm of Sunday , a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at the New Baghdad neighborhood (east Baghdad) near Samarayee mosque .One Humvee was damaged with about 20 commercial shops were burned , Iraqi police said. No casualties reported. While the MNC in Iraq reply on the incident was “Criminals attacked a Multi-National Division - Baghdad patrol with an improvised-explosive device in eastern Baghdad April 13. The IED attack ignited a major fire at the nearby Al Ummal market. The market blaze began at approximately 11:30 p.m. Iraqi emergency response personnel responded to the fire. MND-B Soldiers recovered the vehicle and sustained no major injuries in the attack.”

- Around 8 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Tahriyat intersection in Karrada neighborhood .No casualties reported.

- Around 8:30 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Fudhailiyah neighborhood (east Baghfdad).No casualties reported.

- Around 11:30 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Shaab intersection. No casualties reported.

- Around 11:45 am, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Tayran square in Bab Al-Sharji (central Baghdad).Five policemen were killed and 13 others were injured (two policemen and 11 civilians).

- Around 3 pm, 7 mortar shells hit the following neighborhoods:

- 4 shells hit Zayuna neighborhood killing one person and injuring 4 others.

- 2 shells hit Ghadeer of the New Baghdad neighborhood injuring three people.

- one shell hit a mini bus (coaster model) at Sinaa street Karrada near Technology University .Two people were killed and 6 others were injured.

- Police found (5) dead bodies in the following neighborhoods in Baghdad: (3) were found in east Baghdad (Risafa bank); 1 in Zafaraniyah , 1 in Qahira and 1 in Khilani. While (2) were found in west Baghdad( Karkh bank); 1 in Amil and 1 in Doura.

Basra

- Monday night, gunmen assassinated an officer of Basra intelligence directorate at Al-Jaza’er neighborhood (downtown Basra). Major Rafia Mohammad was killed by gunmen who opened fire on him from a sedan car (Cresta model, Toyota) and ran away.The assassinations attacks had disappeared since the Charge Knights operation in Basra has started due to the army check points in neighborhoods and controlling the entrances of the city.

Salahuddin

-In the morning , gunmen of about 40 members of what is called the Islamic State of Iraq attacked some houses at Ral Al-Dhahab village north of Fatha andwest of Baiji which is 240 km north of Baghdad )injuring 17 Sahwa members .

- In the morning, the Iraqi army found a dead body in Dour (south Tikrit and north of Baghdad).

Diyala

- In the morning, gunmen killed a head of one of the electoral station centers ay Had Mizaid in Wajihiyah (east of Baquba).

- An American squad with Sahwa members found 30 dead bodies at Al-Zour village in Muqdadiyah (45 km north east of Baquba).

Mosul

- In the afternoon, a suicide truck bomber targeted a Peshmerga squad while they were on their way home to Sinjar in vacation .Also after that , gunmen opened fire on the Peshmerga squad .14 soldiers were killed and 15 others were injured , an official of Peshmerga said .

- In the afternoon, a car bomb targeted an American patrol at Muthna neighborhood (east mosul) .Two Iraqi people were killed and two others were wounded having no casualties of the American army reported.

- In the afternoon, a car bomb exploded at Al-Mahata neighborhood (south Mosul).Two civil defense men were wounded in that incident.

- Around 6 pm, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral ceremony in Tal Afer (west of Mosul) .Four people were killed with 22 others injured in that incident.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bhasin Guest Editorial: Bilal Hussein and Freedom in Iraq

Fantasizing Democratic Freedoms in Iraq

Madhavi Bhasin

Associated Press (AP) photographer Bilal Hussein has been held for two year on being suspected of helping Iraqi insurgents, but without being formally charged by the US military. On April 9, 2008 the Iraqi judges dismissed the accusations against him and ordered his release under the Amnesty Law. But he was not released immediately. In Iraq, there reigns a power superior to the country’s legislature, executive and judiciary. It’s the multinational force. Bilal’s release was pending following the final review of the order by the Multinational Force in Iraq. The technical explanation provided for the decision is that judgment referred to only one count of the charges imposed on Bilal and his release is contingent upon being acquitted on all counts. Moreover the Amnesty law cannot compel the release of detainees in US detention facilities and the US is authorized by the UN to detain anyone considered to be a security risk. On April 14, 2008 the US military finally ordered the release of Bilal Hussein.


Courtesy AP

Bilal was detained after he provided shelter to some strangers following a bomb explosion in Falluja. The ubiquitous US intelligence and military capabilities charged Bilal on several counts: possession of bomb making material, conspiring with Iraqi insurgents in photographing attacks against the US military in Iraq, forging identification cards for terrorists, contacts with kidnappers of Italian citizen Salvatore Santoro, who was later killed.

The AP has waged a two year long campaign seeking the release of Bilal. Bilal was a shopkeeper in Falluja hired for his local knowledge and trained in photography by the AP. He was a member of the AP team honored with the Pultizer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2005. The fact that Bilal photographed some astounding incidents of violence in Iraq made him both a suspect and a prized photographer. His prompt presence at sites of violence created an impression that he had prior knowledge of the attacks.

The incident of Bilal Hussein is not an exception, but follows a common trend in Iraq. Iraqi cameraman Abdul Amir Younis Hussein working for the CBS was shot in the thigh and arrested by the US military while recovering in the hospital in 2005. The story of Younis Hussein is much the same. No evidence against him was made public and five months later the Iraqi criminal authorities refused to prosecute him for the lack of evidence.

Three journalists of the Reuters News Agency, Cameraman Salem Ureibi, Freelance TV journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and their driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani were released after being held for three days without charge. The three were also subjected to sexually degrading treatment though the US military refutes the charges of any abuse during detention. Yasser Sahilee, special correspondent for Knight Rider, who had reported on the extra-judicial killings by US-backed Iraqi Wolf Brigade, was shot in the head while approaching a checkpoint. The story has expanded dimensions as well. In 2003 the premises of Al-Mustaqilla (The Independent) was ransacked by the Iraqi and US forces and the newspaper Editor Abdul Sattar Salan was arrested.

Though Bilal Hussein will be allowed to walk free in two days (April, 16, 2008) these incidents raise several questions- What kind of democratic freedoms does the Bush administration aspire to provide to the Iraqi people after removing an autocratic regime? Is the right to be charged and face trail and to be considered innocent until proved guilty reserved for the more fortunate US citizens? Does the US military hold more authority in Iraq than the Iraqi judicial process? According to the US what distinguishes professional journalists from journalists with terrorist links? Who will repay for the psychological agony caused to the individuals involved and their families?

Operation Iraqi Freedom aimed at locating and destroying the weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam Hussein and providing the Iraqi people the opportunity to enjoy democratic freedoms. Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where are the democratic freedoms?

Madhavi Bhasin
Research Fellow
Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Allam: Chalabi in Sadr City

The intrepid Hannah Allam of the McClatchy news service has more on the visit of Ahmad Chalabi to Sadr City to present his condolences to the slain Sadrist aide Nuri al-Riyadh, killed in Najaf last weekend . Highlights:

' Believe what you will about Chalabi being a has-been (or worse); precious few other Iraqi politicians can sail into Sadr City with foreigners in tow and receive ironclad guarantees of safety from the feared Mahdi Army. The militiamen greeted him with embraces, just a day after Sadr issued a statement that discouraged the targeting of Iraqis unless they have helped the occupation.

You might wonder, as I do, how Chalabi, the onetime Pentagon darling who fell out of American graces, the man who ushered U.S. forces into Iraq, the secular intellectual with dubious associates around the globe, is able to preserve such close ties to the Shiite Islamist, anti-American Sadr movement. We might never know the full story.

Critics will say that Chalabi's trip to Sadr City amounted to grandstanding; supporters will counter that it's about time an Iraqi official, any Iraqi official, dropped in to see firsthand the suffering of Sadr City's embattled residents. Whatever the case, I was just grateful to tag along and finally be able to soak up the dizzying sights of Sadr's sprawling Baghdad stronghold without the usual wrangling with local militia commanders or U.S. military embed coordinators. '

Despite the security pledges given Chalabi and his party by the Mahdi Army, the trip was harrowing. Allam writes:

' We asked Ali what Sadr City residents wanted from the Iraqi government.

"Water, electricity, rations," came the quick reply. "Where is the future? From Saddam's time to now, what future do we have?'

We asked Ali what the residents sought from Sadr himself.

"We want him to get rid of the occupation," Ali said. He added that he hasn't yet fought alongside the Mahdi Army, but wouldn't hesitate to take up arms if Sadr issued the call.

"Of course I would go," Ali said. "Who is defending Iraq except him?"

During the drive back to Chalabi's compound I busied myself with taking photos from the tinted windows of our armored SUV. At one point, Sahar nudged me.

"I don't want to frighten you," she said, "but I've counted seven IEDs on this road so far. Look, you can even see the wires coming out." . . . '

Read the whole thing.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraqi Government Fires 1300 Troops; Muqtada Pledges Defiance of US

The Iraqi government has discharged 1300 officers, troops and policemen who declined to fight the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in late March. Most of them had been in Basra and Kut. Although the Iraqi and US governments are trying to spin the dismissals as having to do with laziness or cowardice, it seems obvious from Tina Susman's reporting for the LAT that in fact they sympathized with the Sadr Movement. Hint: These 1300 are not the only ones.

Muqtada al-Sadr slapped away the hand offered him by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had said Mutqtada al-Sadr was not considered an enemy by the US as long as he joined the political process. The Arab Times reports, "Radical cleric Muqtada Sadr says he will not enter any political process that would allow US forces to remain in Iraq. Sadr also denounces US Defense Secretary Robert Gates as a terrorist and says he will never work with Iraq’s occupiers."

The Iraqi cabinet prepared a draft of a law forbidding parties with militias from running in the provincial elections scheduled for October. The measure is actually in an ironic way a victory for the Sadr Movement at which it is aimed, since originally Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had intimated that he could exclude the Sadrists from running by fiat. They pointed out that only parliament could bar parties from running. The question is whether, with summer fast approaching, parliament will be able to achieve a quorum for passing the bill into law, and whether al-Maliki has the votes to put it through. The bill is the height of hypocrisy, since all major parties in parliament have paramilities, especially al-Maliki's current main partner, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (see yesterday's posting on it and its strong relationship to Iran). ISCI denials that Badr any longer exists or has been wholly incorporated into government security forces are a Big Lie.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that US and Iraqi forces making incursions into Sadr City in east Baghdad have taken 12 of 79 neighborhoods in the labyrinthine slum of 3 million persons. These districts are near to the gateways connecting Sadr City to the rest of the capital.

Susman also gets a great story about corrupt financier and notorious liar Ahmad Chalabi in Sadr City:

' Inside a small house off a dirt alley, hundreds of women, many of them sobbing, wailing and beating their chests in sorrow, were mourning the slaying Friday of a high-ranking Sadr aide, Riyadh Noori, who was gunned down in the holy city of Najaf by unknown assailants.

Ahmad Chalabi, the government's point man for restoration of essential services in Baghdad, joined Noori's father, two brothers and hundreds of others in a tent reserved for male mourners.

"They were angry at their loss, they were angry at the situation, and they were angry that five years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, people are still getting killed," Chalabi said later.

After leaving the mourners, Chalabi visited a warehouse in Sadr City that is supposed to hold food rations distributed monthly to residents. There, he faced an enraged man who stood inches from Chalabi's face and accused the government of failing its people.

"We voted for Maliki! How come he's not protecting us?" Hayoun Hamid Amir yelled.

"He's one of you," Chalabi replied calmly.

"No, he's not!" Amir screamed back.

He later accused Iraqi and U.S. forces of firing indiscriminately in residential areas of Sadr City. '

Al-Hayat, writing in Arabic, said that security specialists from Iraq's neighbors met on Sunday. There were said to have been tensions between Iraq and Iran over Iran's alleged role in training and arming militiamen in Iraq. Iran shot back complaints that Iraq was still harboring the Mujahidin-i Khalq terror organization, which has conducted bombings inside Iran. Kuwait requested an end to violations of its border by Iraqis.

McClatchy reports political violence on Sunday:

'Baghdad

Around 10:00 a.m. Iraqi security forces detonated under control two bombs which were planted in Ferdows intersection in downtown Baghdad.

Two policemen were injured in an IED explosion that targeted their patrol near the national theater in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad around 12:00 p.m.

Around 4:00 p.m. two mortar shells hit the green zone.

Police found tow [sic] bodies in Baghdad today. The first body was found in Zayuna neighborhood and the other body was found in Saidiyah neighborhood.

Diyala

A civilian was killed and another was injured in a bomb explosion in Abo Saida area east of Baquba city around 10:00 a.m.

A civilian was killed in al Aswad area north of Baquba city around 11:00 a.m.

Kirkuk

Two members of awakening councils were injured seriously in a bomb explosion that targeted their bus near Wahid Huzairan area in south Kirkuk on Sunday morning.

A member of awakening council was killed in a bomb explosion that targeted his patrol in Dirsh village south of Kirkuk city on Sunday morning.

Three members of awakening council were wounded in a bomb explosion that targeted their patrol in Kharabat Rot village south of Kirkuk on Sunday morning.

A bomb exploded near the gate of an employee in the directorate of health in Kirkuk city causing material damages only.

Anbar

The deputy of the local council in Falluja town Qasim Mashkoor and his 11 years old son were injured seriously when an IED attached to their car exploded. The incident took place in Nowab al Thobat neighborhood in downtown Falluja town around 7:15 p.m.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iran Supported al-Maliki against Militias: OSC; Is the Baker Plan Back? Did Iran Expel Muqtada?

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney initially rejected the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, which advised that Iraq could not be solved militarily and that regional diplomacy and engagement would be necessary.

Bush chose instead to pursue an escalation of the war, which he euphemistically called a 'surge.' This tactic backfired when Bush inadvertently allowed the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad, turning the capital into a playground for the Shiite Mahdi Army. As a result of the Shiitization of Baghdad, violence in the city thereafter declined, since there were fewer Sunnis around to kill (many were cowering in Damascus). The US achieved a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army (and why not, since the US military was disarming its enemies and allowing it to then chase them off to Syria?)

Moreover, Baghdad was only one hot spot in a very complicated country, and security continued to deteriorate in the Kurdish north along the Turkish border and in the southern Shiite oil port of Basra, as I argue in an op-ed today in the Boston Globe.

Even the temporary reduction in violence was more modest than the US press tended to assume. And the death rate may have reached its nadir and begun climbing back up now that the extra troops are being withdrawn. As David Fiderer pointed out, that outcome is precisely what the ISG report predicted.

So now it turns out that recently General David Petraeus has been doing regional diplomacy in an attempt to get local regimes to cooperate in cutting the flow of foreign fighters, money and arms to Iraq.

In other words, the military escalation, which is now getting to be over with, did not do the trick. So the only alternative is to go back to the Baker Hamilton Commission recommendations.

Question: How far ahead of the game would we be if this regional diplomacy had started in December of 2006 instead of being dismissed by Bush and Cheney in favor of a set of purely military tactics?

Another question: Why not also talk to Iran?

Likewise, the ISG pointed out that the Badr Corps paramilitary was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and is close to Tehran. (See below). It fought on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's side in the recent Basra fighting. In other words, the government side was the pro-Iranian side. The Mahdi Army and Sadr neighborhood militia forces they attacked were largely Iraqi nativists who bad-mouth Iran. Fiderer points out that the ISG report had already diagnosed this syndrome. The Bush team did propaganda, pointedly declining to name Badr as an Iranian client and blaming Iran for the Mahdi Army's violence. In fact, the violence came as a response to violations of the cease fire by the US and the Iraqi government, which took advantage of it to arrest Mahdi Army commanders (that's a ceasefire?)

The key role of Iran in backing the Badr Corps (which Ryan Crocker and Gen Petraeus pointedly did not condemn, and Senator Lindsay Graham actually defended!) is demonstrated by the following:

' Al-Sharqiyah, Al-Iraqiyah Roundup: Political Blocs Express Support for Government
Iraq -- OSC Summary
Thursday, April 10, 2008

Dubai Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic . . carries between 1400 GMT and 2000 GMT on 10 April the following . . :

-- "The Badr Corps Command took a series of quick measures to protect itself from any possible military campaign against all militias in Iraq. A high-ranking official at the Interior Ministry, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the Badr Corps withdrew its key commanders to Iran in the past few days after it entered a new batch of fighters, around 1500 it total, into the Interior Ministry services. '

The Ministry of Interior in Iraq is a security ministry, and its special police commanders have long been dominated by the Badr Corps militia, which as you can see is very close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the ayatollahs in Tehran, but which is also allied with Bush.

Iran admitted on Saturday that it had negotiated a ceasefire by the Mahdi Army when approached by Iraqi parliamentarians (who were from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Da'wa Party, al-Maliki's backers). In other words, while Bushco blames Iran for Iraq's instability, in fact the Iranians have tried to and often succeeded in calming the situation down.

Ma`d Fayyad of al-Sharq Al-Awsat even says, writing in Arabic, that the Iranians were annoyed with Muqtada al-Sadr over his militia activities and have more or less expelled him from Iran (though Iranian authorities denied he was ever there). The OSC translation of the money graf from Fayyad's article (Al-Sharq al-Awsat (Internet Version-WWW)Saturday, April 12, 2008) is:

' The Iraqi sources in Qom and Al-Najaf asserted that the Iranian authorities informed Al-Sadr of the need to leave their territories because of the security problems he had caused in Iraq following the armed clashes between the pro-Al-Sadr "Al-Mahdi Army" militia and Iraqi forces in Basra, Baghdad, Al-Diwaniyah, Karbala, and Al-Kut. They added that moderate officials in Iran denounced Al-Sadr's presence in their territories saying that this was causing problems with the Iraqi Government and that "affects the course of relations between Tehran and Baghdad." Iraqi sources in Al-Najaf said Al-Sadr "arrived from Qom the night before yesterday and stayed at the house of one of his aides, where his supporters were banned from reaching him, after being forced to stay for six months in an isolated house on the outskirts of the Iranian city of Qom."'

The transparently false US charges against Iran, of being behind most disturbances in the Shiite south, are apparently propaganda intended to prepare the way by Dick Cheney for a US attack on Iran. Cheney wants to do regime change in Tehran before he kicks the bucket.

Despite incorrect Bushco claims that the Mahdi Army is a tool of Iran (that is like calling the Minutemen vigilantes in Arizona tools of the Mexican government), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says Muqtada is not considered an enemy of the US if he sticks to politics. What? His politics consists of pushing the US out of Iraq!

As for the Bush charges that Iran backed rogue militiamen against the al-Maliki government, it is contradicted by the US intelligence community. The USG Open Source Center did a report on the Iranian stance toward the recent fighting between al-Maliki's forces and those of Mahdi Army and other militias. It found that the Iranian press (hint: it is not independent of the Iranian government) backed al-Maliki! In other words, Bush and Iran are on the same side:

'OSC Report: Tehran Supportive of Iraqi Government Operations Against Militias
Iran -- OSC Report
Thursday, April 10, 2008 . . .

Iran-Iraq -- Tehran Supportive of Maliki Government Operations Against Militias Iran has praised Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Security Force's (ISF) operations against militant groups in Basra and has portrayed them as being necessary to establishing peace and stability in Iraq. As such, the Islamic Republic has dismissed allegations that it is supplying weapons to Shiite militias and has echoed its long-standing call for US forces to withdraw from Iraq.

Tehran has publicly been supportive of Nuri al-Maliki and the ISF's recent performance against militant groups in Basra, and is careful to differentiate such groups from "legitimate" political parties like the Sadr Trend. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki meeting in Baghdad (President.ir, 3 March)

Presenters on Iran's state-run television described Prime Minister Maliki's Basra offensive as being against "illegal armed groups," and Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hoseyni warned Iraqi political parties against falling "into the trap of the lawless militias." He added: "There is a difference between the illegal armed groups that commit crimes and the political parties that are active in politics and present in the Iraqi government and parliament. The move by Mr Maliki should receive all-out support. This way, both the interests of the Iraqi nation and government and the interests of Iraqi neighboring countries will be served" (IRINN, 7 April).

Similarly, on 8 April, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) described al-Maliki's response against "illegal armed groups" as being "rightful," and various Iranian news agencies quoted the prime minister's statements in which he detailed the ISF's "successes" in ridding Basra of "lawbreakers, armed groups, and criminal gangs" (Mehr News Agency; Fars News Agency, 3 April).

On 4 April, Iran's Mehr News Agency published an interview it had conducted with Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council's Mohsen Hakim in which he claimed that Iran had "played a positive role" in ending the violence in Basra. Three days later, Mohammad-Ali Hoseyni acknowledged that Iran had recently hosted an Iraqi "delegation" and that it had "called on the parties involved to exercise self-restraint" (IRNA, 7 April).

As such, the Islamic Republic has predictably dismissed allegations that it is supplying weapons to Iraqi militias and has attempted to distance itself from Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr -- despite Western claims that al-Sadr is currently in Iran.

In an interview with Aftab News, Mohammad-Ali Mohtadi of the Iranian Foreign Ministry's International Relations faculty dismissed claims that Iran was providing weapons to the Mahdi Army, saying: "To Iran, any clash in Iraq will not be to the interest of any clashing party. Therefore, the Islamic Republic of Iran has done its best to stop the clashes. In fact, if anything, Iran played as a mediator in Iraq" (6 April).

On 5 April, Iranian Government spokesman Gholamhoseyn Elham dismissed reports that Muqtada al-Sadr was in Iran as being "released by the occupation forces to blame the current insecurity in Iraq on other sides" (IRNA).

The conservative Tabnak website dismissed Muqtada al-Sadr's claim in a 30 March interview with Al-Jazirah that he told Iran's Supreme Leader last year that he disagreed with Iran's "political and military objectives in Iraq" and that Iran should stop its "intervention." The website, which is affiliated with former IRGC Commander Mohsen Reza'i, described al-Sadr's remarks as "rude," and said that such claims were made at a time when "America's worst accusation against Iran" is that it is arming al-Sadr's group and that he is residing in Iran. Tabnak asserted that Iran, "a serious ally of Iraq's popular government," always has opposed such actions by "hard-line clans" that "only weaken the government and people of Iraq and give a pretext to its occupiers" (31 March).

Instead, Iranian officials and media have directed blame at the United States for the insecurity in Iraq, and have echoed their long-standing call for US forces to withdraw.

During his 10 April meeting with Iraq's former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja'fari, Iran's Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki urged the United States to "stop provoking crisis in the Middle East" and called for the US to "set a fixed timeline to withdraw its troops from Iraq" (Fars News Agency).
An editorial in the prominent conservative daily, Jomhuri-ye Eslami, declared that Iraq's "occupation is the root of all problems" in the country and claimed that "as long as these forces remain in Iraq, bloodshed would continue" (3 April).

On 30 March, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hoseyni called upon Iraqi Government forces and militias to end their fighting in order to remove any "pretext" for US troops to stay in Iraq" (Fars News Agency). '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Najaf under Curfew; As Sadr Brother-in-Law Killed; 13 Killed in Baghdad Clashes

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Shiite holy city of Najaf is under a strict curfew after a drive by shooting that killed Riyad al-Nuri, the head of the Sadr office in that city. Nuri was Muqtada al-Sadr's brother-in-law, married to one of al-Sadr's sisters. One of Nuri's sisters is married to Murtada al-Sadr, the younger brother of Muqtada.

Muqtada called on the Iraqi government to conduct an investigation into the death.

Sadrist spokesperson Salah al-Ubaydi called on Sadrists to show restraint.

Al-Zaman says that some have implicated al-Nuri in the murder of Abdul Majid Khoie on April 10, 2003.

Amit Paley at WaPo has more.

McClatchy positions the story with regard to Muqtada al-Sadr's assertion that the US was behind al-Nuri's death. The US denied the charge. McClatchy observes, "The timing of the killing — not even two weeks after more than 120 people died and at least 300 were wounded in fighting between Sadr's militiamen and government forces in the port city of Basra — raises the specter of a wider rebellion that could spread to Sadr's strongholds in Baghdad."

American forces in Iraq clashed with the Mahdi Army in Baghdad on Friday evening, leaving 13 dead.

McClatchy reports civil war violence on Friday:

' Baghdad

Iraqi Army found a mass grave containing 25 bodies in Mahmoudiyah, to the south of Baghdad late Thursday. The bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition and investigations are ongoing in an effort to identify them.

1 Katyusha rocket hit the Palestine Meridian Hotel on the Abu Nawas side, in central Baghdad at 3.15 pm Friday. It landed on the second floor causing the death of 3 civilians and the injury of 7.

1 Katyusha rocket fell on the Green Zone at around 3.15 pm Friday. No casualties reported.

A roadside bomb exploded targeting a police patrol in Shaab, northeast Baghdad at around 2 pm Friday, killing 1 policeman and injuring 3.

A roadside bomb exploded targeting a joint US/Iraqi patrol in Baladiyat, north east Baghdad at 3 pm today killing 3 civilians. Clashes broke out with the gunmen after the IED went off. No casualties were reported.

A mortar round fell on a bread bakery in Talbiyah, Square 83 killing 2 civilians and injuring 5.

3 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad today by Iraqi Police. 1 in Baladiyat; 1 in Shaab and 1 in Hurriyah.

Anbar

A car bomb driven by a suicide bomber targeted al-Hamudhiyah checkpoint, east Ramadi which is manned by Sahwa (CLC) members. The explosion took place at 5.30 pm Friday and caused the death of 4 Sahwa members and injuring 3 civilians.

Salahuddin

A car bomb driven by a suicide bomber targeted a Sahwa checkpoint, 20 km to the north of Baiji on the main route of Baghdad/Mosul at 5.30 pm Friday. 1 Sahwa member was killed and 8 were wounded.

Diyala

A roadside bomb exploded targeting an Iraqi Army patrol in Abu Khamis, 10 km to the south of Baquba at 12.15 this afternoon injuring 2 army servicemen.

A roadside bomb exploded as a civilian car was passing in al-Muradiyah, 20 km to the east of Baquba at 1 pm Friday. In the car was a family of 7. 1 child was killed; the mother, father and 4 other siblings were severely injured.

Najaf

Seyid Riyadh al-Noori, brother in law to Seyid Muqtada a-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist trend and the Mahdi Army was assassinated by gunmen in Adala neighbourhood, Najaf city at 2.20 pm Thursday as he was returning from Friday prayers. Seyid Riyadh was Head of the Sadr office in Najaf city, and a close friend and associate of al-Sadr.

Kirkuk

A police patrol found the body of a policeman in al-Orouba neighbourhood Friday morning. The policeman was 30 years old; he was shot to death.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush Abdicates to Generals on Iraq; 10 Killed in Sadr City; Al-Maliki Excludes Sadrists

War turns Republics into dictatorships. The logic is actually quite simple. The Constitution says that the Congress is responsible for declaring war. But in 2002 Congress turned that responsibility over to Bush, gutting the constitution and allowing the American Right to start referring to him not as president but as 'commander in chief' (that is a function of the civilian presidency, not a title.)

Now Bush has now turned over the decision-making about the course of the Iraq War to Gen. David Petraeus.

So Congress abdicated to Bush. Bush has abdicated to the generals in the field.

That is not a Republic. That is a military dictatorship achieved not by coup but by moral laziness.

Ironically, what officers like Petraeus need from Bush is not deference but vigorous leadership in the political realm. Bush needs to intervene to work for political reconciliation in Iraq if Petraeus's military achievements are to bear fruit. But Bush seems incapable of actually conducting policy, as opposed to starting wars. Bush happened to Iraq just as he happened to New Orleans. He cannot do the hard work of patiently addressing disasters and ameliorating them. He just wants to set people to fighting. Crush the Sadr Movement, perhaps the most popular political movement in Iraq? He's all for it. Risk provoking a wider conflagration in the Middle East by worsening relations with Iran? Sounds like a great idea to him. Bush campaigned on being a 'uniter not a divider' in 2000. In fact, he is the ultimate Divider, and leaves burning buildings, millions of refugees, and hundreds of thousands of cadavers in his wake. He is not Iraq's Brownie. He is Iraq's Katrina itself.

Just as New Orleans's Ninth Ward will still be a moonscape when Bush goes out of office, so will Iraq.

Eugene Robinson nails it: "It's time to acknowledge that Bush has run out the clock. The nation's only recourse is the ballot box."

65% of Americans either want US troops out of Iraq immediately or sometime in 2009, up from 61% in February of this year. Only 31% want to keep them there 'as long as it takes,' and that percentage declined in the past couple of months from 34%. In other words, whatever the success of the troop escalation and COIN techniques in the past year, they have had no impact on the rapid decline in the popularity with the American public of the US presence in Iraq. Most Americans don't seem to care whether the situation is better or worse in Iraq, they just want out.

In part these statistics show you don't need a degree in economics to figure out that the Iraq War is having a negative impact on the US economy. Americans are being hurt where it hurts.

Fighting and Hellfire missiles killed 10 and wounded 22 in Shiite Sadr City, according to local sources. The US was apparently trying to take out rocket launchers that have been targeting the Green Zone, where many US personnel are. Two US military personnel were killed that way on Sunday.

Stephen Farrell of the NYT reports on the conditions in Sadr City, as Shiite militias seem to be making preparations for resisting an all-out assault.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki snubbed the Sadr Bloc in parliament, declining to invite them to a meeting with other blocs on Thursday. Sadrist parliamentarians, who originally elected al-Maliki, complained that he is attempting to deny them a voice.

Reuters points out that the upcoming provincial elections in Iraq have the potential to turn politics upside down in the Shiite south. They also will be a straw in the wind for the likely results of the 2009 parliamentary elections. It is likely that the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shiite parties, has fallen decisively apart, and that the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Da'wa Party, the Sadrists, the Islamic Virtue Party, and other Shiite parties will run separately this time.

On the other hand, ISCI and Da'wa now are in power and seem to like being in power, and it is not at all clear that there will be any further federal parliamentary elections or that they will be free and fair if they are held. (The Americans may be largely gone by December 2009). Despite what American politicians and generals say, Iran likes the status quo and would back a permanent ISCI-Da'wa semi-dictatorship. And that may be what ultimately matters. Of course, it is possible that if enough Iraqis feel disenfranchised, even more will be drawn to violence.

Reuters reports political violence on late Wednesday through Thursday:

' *Iraqi soldiers discovered 33 bodies in a mass grave at a house in Mahmudiyah south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. It said initial reports indicated the remains had been buried for more than a year. A number of mass graves have been uncovered in Iraq in recent months in the wake of rampant sectarian fighting in 2006-2007.

BAGHDAD - Six people were killed and 10 wounded in air strikes on Thursday in Sadr City, Iraqi police said. The U.S. military confirmed strikes, but said it was unaware of any deaths.

MOSUL - Three mortar rounds landed on a residential area in southern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, wounding 12 people including an Iraqi soldier, police said.

MOSUL - A bomb exploded in western Mosul, wounding 3 people, police said.

NUMANIYA - A joint U.S.-Iraqi force arrested 15 men during a search and raid operation in the town of Numaniya, 120 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, and raided a Sadr office in the town, seizing a number of light weapons, police said. They imposed a curfew in the town until further notice. The U.S. military could not immediately confirm the raid.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol, killing one civilian and wounding four, including two policemen, in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded six people, including three policemen, on patrol near al-Shaab National Stadium in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device in central Baghdad on Wednesday, the U.S. military said on Thursday, taking the U.S. death toll for April to 20.

BAGHDAD - U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint in Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, with Iraqi police killed one person on Wednesday when they were attacked by small-arms fire, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - U.S. soldiers killed four people in northwestern Baghdad late on Wednesday when they responded to an attack with rocket-propelled grenades at a checkpoint, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles, killing four people who had attacked U.S. soldiers late on Wednesday at a security station in Sadr City, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - U.S. soldiers killed four people in two different locations in northwestern Baghdad after they were attacked with small-arms fire late on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

NEAR KIRKUK - In the town of Hawija near Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, gunmen wearing army uniforms attacked a house, killing two boys and wounding the mother and father.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. fighting vehicle took a rocket-propelled grenade round in northwestern Baghdad on Wednesday night, wounding one U.S. soldier, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. vehicle in Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, was struck by an improvised explosive device on Wednesday night and one U.S. soldier was wounded, the U.S. military said. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Curfews, Clashes, Protests and Mortars; Five Years after Fall of Saddam; 5 US Troops Die; 23 Iraqis Wounded in Sadr City

April 9, yesterday, marked the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein. But for many Iraqis, it was more notable for marking the beginning of a long-term American military occupation of their country.

The US military was so little in control after five years that two mortar shells slammed into the Green Zone, the American HQ in Iraq. On Sunday, a similar attack killed two US military personnel while they were jogging.

It was a somber anniversary. In Baghdad, Samarra, Tikrit and some other places, vehicle bans and curfews were in place to stop there being any demonstrations or violence to mark opposition to the occupation.

In Baghdad's Sadr City, clashes took the lives of 23 Iraqis and wounded 83. Presumably these were clashes between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's troops, supported by the US, and Mahdi Army fighters. Some of the deaths were from mortar fire.

5 US troops died in Iraq on Wednesday, 3 of them killed in action and two in what were termed non-combat incidents. Iraqi guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb to kill three US troops in Salahuddin Province and Baghdad. The deaths brought to 17 the number of US troops who perished in Iraq since Sunday.

The Times of London reveals that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki snubbed the British commander in Basra, declining to use any of the 4500 British troops already stationed there in his failed campaign against the Mahdi Army. It is suggested that al-Maliki harbors a grudge against the British for making a deal with the Mahdi Army as they withdrew from downtown Basra last fall out to the airport.

The Times also suggests that the governor of Basra Province, Muhammad Misbah al-Wa'ili, is effectively under house arrest, his own guards from his Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) having been replaced by Iraqi army troops. Al-Wa'ili lost a vote of no confidence in late April of 2007 in a maneuver organized by al-Maliki's ally, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. But al-Wa'ili brandished his Islamic Virtue militia and refused to step down. If the Times's report is true, it may well be that al-Maliki came south to install the Islamic Supreme Council and its Badr Corps paramilitary, along with the Iraqi 14th Division, in power in Basra. That would give ISCI, led by pro-Iranian cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the advantages of incumbency going into October's provincial elections.

I know that al-Maliki earlier had some frictions with ISCI. But my theory of it would be that as various parties (Islamic Virtue, Sadrists, and even Shiite independents) pulled out of his government, he was thrown into an unprecedented dependence on Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and his Badr Corps paramilitary.

Sam Dagher of CSM reports that the Islamic Army of Iraq, which is purely Iraqi and opposes the foreign jihadis of "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," is still committed to killing US troops. (Since Salahuddin province is largely Sunni Arab, IAI would be a suspect in the roadside bombing that killed US troops on Wednesday there.) The Islamic Army of Iraq says it gets behind the scenes help from the Awakening Councils established by Gen. Petraeus, and from similar elements inducted into the Iraqi security forces.

The Association of Muslim Scholars charges that members of the Awakening Councils are assassinating recently released detainees who had been in US custody. Apparently these detainees had been dirty with the Qutbists (what the US calls "al-Qaeda"), and had killed relatives of the tribesmen who are now taking revenge. Six such released inmates have been assassinated in Haditha recently.

Have Iraqi women been sacrificed to the surge?

Despite the curfew, hundreds came out Wednesday to protest in Fallujah, a city that Bush destroyed in a fit of pique. The Fallujans had held a city-wide strike on March 23, 2004, to protest the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, a quadraplegic and spiritual leader of Hamas in Palestine. A few days later, the Brigades of Sheikh Yassin, an Iraqi guerrilla group founded to protest his murder, killed 4 Blackwater security men, one of them a South African, and desecrated their bodies, as "a gift to the Palestinian people," claiming that they were CIA or Mossad (Israeli intelligence). (You would have thought the Israelis could have put off garish assassinations by helicopter gunship of Muslim leaders in wheelchairs for a while, since the US was in a delicate position in Iraq at the time; Ariel Sharon made things infinitely worse than they had to be). Bush is said by Newsweek to have been royally teed off (I gloss the anger as that brown guys did that to white guys), and instructed "Heads must roll!" Bush ultimately made Fallujah his own little Carthage, in November of 2004. The Sunni Arabs were so angered that they boycotted the 2005 election. They had little representation in parliament. The Kurds and the Shiites crafted a constitution the Sunni Arabs rejected. And the country went to civil war, just as I predicted in December of 2004. In many ways it all started with the killing in broad daylight of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza as he was leaving a mosque. Couldn't he have been arrested if he was wanted? It was not as if he could run away. And, you will note, that Hamas is still there in control of Gaza, and Ariel Sharon is now in oblivion.

On Wednesday there were still Fallujans chanting that the US should leave their country. I mean, they were chanting amidst ruins (the US damaged two-thirds of the buildings there), and many of their relatives are refugees living in tents in the desert, displaced from their living rooms by all the firepower a superpower can bring to bear. But there they were rallying. And Westerners engage in glib stereotypes about Arab fatalism. In fact, it is hard to keep some people down.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday and Tuesday:

' BAGHDAD - The U.S. military announced on Wednesday that five U.S. soldiers had been killed, 3 in separate roadside bomb attacks and 2 from non-combat related injuries. Four of the 5 soldiers died on Wednesday and one on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD - 23 people were killed and 83 injured in the eastern Baghdad slum of Sadr City on Wednesday, Iraqi security sources said.

BAGHDAD - Two unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.

MOSUL - Two successive car bombs killed three policemen and a civilian and wounded 20 people including three policemen when they targeted a police patrol in central Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military killed two armed men northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities imposed curfews on Baghdad as well as the cities of Samarra and Tikrit to prevent violence on Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the fall of the capital to U.S. forces. . .

DHULUIYA - A mortar shell landed on a house in Dhuluiya, 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad overnight, killing a woman and wounding her four sons, police said.

DIYALA - The U.S. military said it destroyed a facility used to make explosive devices in Diyala province, north of Baghdad. . .

NEAR KIRKUK - Gunmen killed a civilian in Tal al-Hadeed village near Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR KIRKUK - Gunmen killed a policeman and a civilian in Tuz Khurmato, south of Kirkuk, police said. . .

KIRKUK - Two roadside bombs exploded on Tuesday in the town of Tuz, 70 km (40 miles) south of Kirkuk, wounding 17 Iraqis, the U.S. military said. . .

KIRKUK - Iraqi police found a body hand-cuffed and riddled with bullets east of the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Petraeus, Iraq and the Lebanon Analogy

Gen. Petraeus is clearly convinced that Iraq needs US troops to shore up the government and security. He has done the most responsible job yet seen by an American official in Iraq in trying to end the carnage. He has made bazaars no drive zones to stop the car bombings. He has surrounded city districts with blast walls to keep out insurgents. He has reached out to the Sunnis (though alas the Shiite government has not). He has done what he could, but it hasn't been enough. There really is little sign of political reconciliation. And quite inadvertently, his initial disarming of the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad led to a massive ethnic cleansing and the Shiitization of the capital, setting the stage for a future civil war.

Al-Maliki started out with a national unity government. He had Sunnis in his cabinet. He had Sadrists in his cabinet. Islamic Virtue Party. Iraqi National List. All gone. His government is more fractured and less representative than before the surge began!

What if the US military presence is juvenilizing the Iraqis and prolonging the civil war? Over 900 Iraqis were killed in political violence in March, the highest number since September.

Some of the March death toll was from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's abrupt attack on the Sadr neighborhoods of Basra, which was repulsed. But surely al-Maliki rejected negotiations and attacked frontally because he knew that if he got into trouble he could call down US close air support. If the US were not in Iraq, might al-Maliki not have dickered instead?

Might it not be the same between al-Maliki and the Sunnis? Al-Maliki objected vehemently to the US arming the Sunni Awakening Councils. He declines to incorporate them into the Iraqi security forces in any numbers. But his standoffishness comes from knowledge that if the Sunnis give him too much trouble, he can have his American friends bomb them.

If we make an analogy to Lebanon, we can see that a foreign military occupation never resolved Lebanon's problems. Kissinger greenlighted a Syrian/ Arab League force for Lebanon in 1976. Although the Syrians invaded and kept tens of thousands of troops in Lebanon, they either did not want to or could not end the Lebanese civil war, which sputtered on.

The Israeli attempt in 1982 to install a Phalangist strongman failed. The US Marines tried to come in to do peace-keeping after the Israeli invasion, and they faced a still-sullen population, and got hit by Islamic Amal.

The Syrians could not help but play one Lebanese faction off against another.

Only in 1989, after 14 years of fruitless fighting, did the Lebanese agree to end the war. The big clan and sect leaders negotiated an end to the war. Some had been in or associated with the militias that had fought the civil war.

What if Iraq has been lebanonized, but not in the sense that Ambassador Crocker alleged, of heavy Iranian influence? (And by the way, I was in south Lebanon in December, and the influence of Iran strikes me as over-stated in the US. The UN, the EU and other funding sources are also important).

What if the US is playing the Syrians here, and the Iraqis the Lebanese?

In this analogy, the war is not ended by foreign occupation troops. If anything, the Syrian policies just keep the pot boiling.

It is ended by a conference at the resort town of Taef in Saudi Arabia among the big Lebanese politicians, who make key compromises with one another and begin practically disbanding militias.

Maybe the Iraqis need to be left on their own militarily, and maybe what they need is a big conference at Taef.

Maybe the US in Iraq is not the little boy with his finger in the dike. Maybe we are workers with jackhammers instructed to make the hole in the dike much more huge.

Just something to think about.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadr Calls off Demonstration; Threatens to End Cease-Fire; McCain confuses al-Qaeda with Shiites (Again)

Iraq Hearing follies. John McCain just can't keep the branches of Islam straight. He said to Gen. David Petraeus:

' SEN. MCCAIN: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?
GEN. PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago.

SEN. MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi'ites, all overall, or Sunnis or anybody else. '

What does that even mean? Do we really need another tongue-tied president who says incoherent things about the most important challenges facing the US? McCain keeps thinking that al-Qaeda is a Shiite, Iranian plot, when in fact its leadership is hyper-Sunni Egyptians and Saudis. As for al-Qaeda not being an obscure sect, well I'm not sure about the obscure part. But it is certainly a tiny fringe in the Muslim world, analogous to the far right gun nuts and white supremacists that formed the context for Timothy McVeigh. There is no prospect of the Qutbists or "al-Qaeda" as McCain is pleased to call them, taking over Iraq! They are not even popular in most Sunni Arab areas. As for the Shiites, they are a majority of Iraqis and they hate al-Qaeda (which has massacred Shiites), and they would just crush it if given the opportunity.

McCain keeps making this elementary error.

Muqtada al-Sadr called off his million-man march, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, saying he feared Iraqi government and American violence against the demonstrators.

He also hinted heavily that he might call off the freeze on the activities of his Mahdi Army.

In a statement released by his office, Muqtada complained of the stationing of security forces throughout Baghdad by the al-Maliki government. "It is as though the Iraqi people is in part or whole a wanted criminal." He said that "one of the tyrants" had "made the Iraqi people in its entirety a dependent on the Occupier, unfortunately."

He expressed his admiration for the Iraqi army, offered it an olive leaf, and called on it to help end the siege of the Sadrists. He said neither democracy nor elections could divide "us."

"If this spreading out of the security forces suggests anything, it is that the government remains under severe American pressure and its deceptive, worldly, hateful policies, and remains under its tyrannical authority. For this reason, it attempts to stop the annual million-person demonstration against the Occupation, and forbids believers to participate in the elections, and strives with all its might to implement the American plan to partition Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines."

Tom Engelhardt introduces a piece by Patrick Cockburn to launch his book on Muqtada al-Sadr.

Gary Kamiya quotes me in his Salon article, "The Iran Bogeyman is Back."

Fred Kaplan sees the Petraeus/ Crocker testimony as a plea for more of the status quo and as a signal that nothing much will change before next year this time.

Veteran journalist Richard Reeves comments on the issue of torture and the Bush administration, taking some passages from my Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East as his starting point.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

4 US Troops Killed; Hundreds Flee Baghdad Clashes; Ayatollahs Decline to Ban Militia

I am always astounded at the combination of unrealistic optimism and foolish gullibility that marks political discourse on the Right in Washington. We were being told by Rich Lowry at the National Review that Sadr was on the ropes and on the verge of disbanding the Mahdi Army because the other political factions had turned on him, and that the others had had their militias join the regular security forces.

So let us get this straight. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought off thousands of regular Iraqi army troops in Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps thousands of those troops deserted rather than fight. So the Mahdi Army won big and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lost. Also the US military trainers of the Iraqi troops lost face.

So the next thing we hear is that al-Maliki is talking big and demanding that the Mahdi Army be dissolved. Usually you get to talk big if you win the military battle, not if you lose.

The Sadrists have no intention of dissolving the Mahdi Army, according to this Arabic source, quoting Sadrist spokesman Salah al-Ubaidi. They point out, pace that great Iraq expert Lowry, that there are 28 militias in Iraq. The Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) still exists as a stand alone organization. In fact it ran as a political party in the elections and holds both provincial and federal seats. It hasn't been complete merged into the state security forces as Lowry alleged. And anyway, painting a sign on a militia saying 'this one is legitimate because its party won the last election' is not going to convince any real Iraqis.

As it happens, the parliamentary representatives of Mosul demanded Monday that the Kurdish Peshmerga be dissolved. (Hint: Hell will freeze over first).

Then the US press went wild for this supposed report that Muqtada al-Sadr said he would dissolve his militia if Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani ordered it. Folks, he always says that when there is a controversy. (He said the same thing in spring, 2004). He says it because he knows it makes him look reasonable to the Shiite public. He says it because he knows that the grand ayatollahs are not going to touch the matter with a ten foot pole. They are not so foolish as to take responsibility for dissolving a militia that they had nothing to do with creating. And that is probably the real meaning of this CNN report that they 'refused' when asked. I doubt the grand ayatollahs in Najaf actively commanded Muqtada to keep his militia. They just declined to get drawn in.

So the idea that, having lost militarily, al-Maliki and his political allies (who are a minority in parliament now) could just a couple of days later jawbone Muqtada into giving up his paramilitary was always absurd.

As for the the threat that the Sadrists would not be allowed to run in the provincial elections in the fall unless the Mahdi Army was dissolved, it is either empty or very dangerous. First of all, not only Sadrists but also other observers have pointed out that excluding parties from running in elections is not the prerogative of the prime minister. It is a matter that would have to be passed by parliament. And since the parliamentarians who would be voting to dissolve all militias ahead of elections are all in parties that maintain militias, it would be political suicide for them to vote that way. Of course, they could just play the hypocrite card and declare, as Lowry did, that their militias are not militias, whereas the Mahdi Army is a militia.

But if the Sadrists are really excluded from civil politics, and they are the majority in the South, then you will have just pushed a majority of Iraqis out of the political process and potentially into civil violence. Isn't that the opposite of the goal here?

As for the real Iraq, Monday was a difficult day.

Guerrillas killed 4 US troops in Iraq on Monday, bringing the 2-day total to 9.


Courtesy al-Zaman

Robert Reid of AP reports that hundreds of Iraqis fled the Shiite districts of Baghdad that are under siege by American and Iraqi government forces. The US and its Iraqi allies engaged in firefights on several fronts in the Shiite neighborhoods. US helicopter gunships and fighter bombers also fired missiles into the civilian neighborhoods. The attacksleft 14 dead in the Baghdad area. The US military denies that its bombing of civilian neighborhoods kills innocent civilians. While I know they try hard to minimize collateral damage, the blanket form of the assertion is not plausible.

The Baghdad fighting is the worst in about a year.


Courtesy Gulfnews.com.

A huge explosion in the southern port city of Basra destroyed a house and killed at least 8 persons. The origin of the blast remains controversial.

The disposition of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk remains a ticking time bomb in Iraq's north. The Kurds intend to annex it to Kurdistan. Most Turkmen and Arabs are violently opposed to this step, as is neighboring Turkey. The referendum scheduled for last December was postponed six months, but seems unlikely to take place in June, either. Some Iraqis, including some Kurds, are talking about a negotiated settlement of the question rather than a referendum (which the Kurds would win since they have flooded Kirkuk province with Kurds).

Not every place in al-Anbar Province is yet "calm," the CSM points out.

With regard to the kidnapping of 42 students from a bus near Mosul, who were later released, I received this from a US military observer in the area:

'Mr. Cole,
You should check your sources closer before you report on the "impunity" of the insugents to operate in the Mosul area. My unit was involved in the location of the college students mentioned in your blog. They were not released by the insurgents at their leisure. They were found by coalition forces, engaged to disable the dump truck that the students were being transported and then freed by combined coalition, Iraqi Army and police forces. The four individuals that were driving the dump truck were all detained by Iraqi Army and police units after firing at U.S. helicopters and then hiding among women and children to avoid being fired upon. I know these items are facts as the operation occured a mere three hours after I completed my mission for the day and was briefed by the aircrews that were responsible for the capture. Please know that everyday we see dispicable acts that are perpetrated upon the Iraqi people in the name of the "insurgency". They dare not engage directly because they have learned of the swift and deadly consequences that will occur to them if they do. Also realize that I see the Iraqi security forces taking a larger role in every operation that we conduct here in Ninevah provence of which Mosul is a part. I know that the axiom "if it bleeds it leads" is more true now than ever, but yesterday was a win in the books for the Iraqis and the coalition. Yesterday yielded 42 students that are home with their families, 4 bad guys that are not on the streets, and not a single bystander hurt by coalition or Iraqi forces alike. That is a good news story, not a bullet to show how impotent we are to what is occurring on the ground. '

It is great to have some background on the way the release was accomplished, information that was to my knowledge not reported in the wire services. And it was certainly good news that the students were released. But I didn't say the US military was impotent; what I said was that if people can be kidnapped like that in broad daylight, security can't be very good. And while it is welcome that security was restored for these victims, it still seems like a high crime area. . .

What I can't understand is why I don't get more letters like this one. I take eyewitness accounts seriously. I'm a classic political liberal and I think the maximization of information is intrinsically good for a republic.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Monday:

' Baghdad

- Around 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. two roadside bombs targeted Iraqi police vehicles in Zayouna injuring 5 policemen and 5 civilians in both attacks.

- Around 9 a.m. a mortar shell hit the Green Zone.

- Around 2 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted a police vehicle in Al Mashtal injuring 5 policemen.

- Two mortar shells hit the air force soccer club in Palestine Street, causing no casualties.

- Clashes between Mahdi army militiamen and the Iraqi army in Sadr city took place today; Iraqi police said and gave no figures for the casualties.

- Around 3 p.m. three mortar shells targeted the Green Zone, one hit Karrada neighborhood injuring two civilians and two hit inside the Green Zone. - Around 4 p.m. two mortar shells hit the Green Zone.

- Around 5 p.m. a mortar shell hit the cars' parking area in the ministry of foreign affairs causing damages to three parking cars with no casualties.

- Around 5:30 p.m. three mortar shells hit Al Rustamiyah military camp. Minutes later the sources of fire were targeted in Al Ameen neighborhood east of Baghdad, killing 9 civilians and injuring 31, Iraqi police said. No military reepsonse was available by the time of publication of this report.

- A fire in Al Eatiman bank building in Saadon started yesterday night.

- Police found four dead bodies throughout Baghdad, one in Baladiyat, one in Jisr Diyala, one in Amil and one in Dora.

Basra

- Seven men were killed in Al Asdiqa neighborhood (5 miles north of Basra) as an explosion took place in their house.

- A roadside bomb targeted the convoy of General Abdul Kareem Khalf, the spokesman of the ministry of interior, in Al Nashwa area (about 37 miles north of Basra) injuring four body guards.

Diyala

- A roadside bomb targeted an army vehicle in Al Bu Khamis area (about 8 miles south of Baquba) killing one soldier and injuring another.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

5 US Troops Die in Iraq; Heavy Fighting in Sadr City Kills 22, Wounds 78; Blockade Threatens Humanitarian Crisis

The US military attacked the Mahdi Army militia in Sadr City on Sunday, alongside Iraqi Army troops. The fighting left 22 dead and 78 wounded, at least. It was not clear what the purpose of the attack was, since the US clearly cannot intensively occupy the labyrinthine Shiite slum and therefore cannot actually disarm the Mahdi Army. Were they attempting to impress on the Sadrists that rocket attacks on the Green Zone (see below) would bring retaliation?

In the course of the fighting, al-Zaman reports in Arabic, a rocket hit Jamila wholesalers' market, where large food depots are located, setting it ablaze in a huge conflagration. It is not as if there was enough food to begin with, according to The Arab Times:

' US and Iraqi forces have imposed a blockade on vehicle traffic in and out of Sadr City for two weeks. Residents of the besieged district describe skyrocketing food prices, rubbish piling up and claustrophobia from being trapped indoors. “We haven’t been able to sleep since this fighting started two weeks ago,” said Wardan Ali, a student from Sadr City forced to walk 10 km (6 miles) on foot each way to university because of the blockade. Sadr’s bloc in parliament denounced the raids. “The intervention of US forces is horrible and unjustified. Some people in Sadr city believe these forces will hunt and kill them,” said Hassan Hashem, a Sadrist member of parliament’s security committee. '

Al-Zaman says that Salah al-Ubaidi of Kadhimiya warned that the three Shiite districts of Baghdad now under American siege faced a humanitarian catastrophe and called for international organizations to intervene.

Rocket attacks on the Green Zone killed 2 US troops on Sunday. Guerrillas killed another with rockets aimed at the Rustamiya base, where Iraqi cadets are trained. Another was killed in a roadside bombing. The fifth died in what the Pentagon characterized as a non-combat accident. But we'd have to know the exact circumstances to decide if combat was really no consideration in the death. If you drive off the road because you hear machine gun fire, it isn't technically combat, but you would not have been spooked if there were no firing in the area.

Shiite guerrillas with at least some relationship to the Mahdi Army have been regularly sending mortar and rocket fire on the so-called Green Zone for some time, but they seldom used to hit anything. One question I hear asked in informed military circles is whether the special groups, which Muqtada al-Sadr considers Iranian puppets and rogues, have been given more accurate rockets by Iran, and maybe some better training in how to use them.

But the Mahdi Army is siphoning off a good $2 bn. a year in embezzled gasoline and kerosene, and it seems to me that with that sort of money you could pretty much buy anything you needed on the international arms black market. If Iran did not exist, would the situation in Iraq really be much different? It is all too convenient for the US to blame continued turmoil in Iraq on Iran, rather than to face up to the real divisions inside Iraq and the Bush administration's role in exacerbating them.

AP reports that Iraq's national security council, including the major Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni parties, on Sunday said that parties maintaining militias would not be allowed to contest the provincial elections in October. This move is a way of putting pressure on the Sadr Movement to disarm the Mahdi Army. But it may well backfire, since most Shiites in the south now appear to support the Sadrists. Excluding that party from the elections will more or less disenfranchise a majority of Iraqis.

Liwa' al-Sumaysim, of the Sadr Movement, told al-Zaman that the Sadrists did not accept the authority of the National Security Council to issue such an ultimatum. He said that although the Sadrists do not believe in deploying militias for political purposes, the Mahdi Army was created because the Iraqi government is not providing security to neighborhoods, and that has not changed. When al-Zaman asked Sumaysim what would happen if the Sadrists were excluded from the elections, he replied that the Sadr Movement reserved the right to take up arms against the Occupier.

Sumaysim said that all the parties making this demand have their own militias, and he is more or less correct. The Kurds are not going to disband their Peshmerga paramilitary, which they have gotten recognized as the national guard of Kurdistan. ISCI is not going to disarm the Badr Corps, which has been infiltrated into the army and provincial police. Etc., etc. The Sadrists are a little unlikely to volunteer to be the only ones to disarm. But apparently they are being threatened with a US military campaign if they decline.

Up in Mosul, over 200 miles to the north of Baghdad, guerrillas kidnapped, then released, a bus load of 42 college students on Sunday. If guerrillas can do such a thing with impunity in broad daylight, there can't be much security in the Mosul area.

The Times of London reports that US Gen. David Petraeus will report to the US Congress that Iranian fighters fought alongside Mahdi Army militiamen in Basra.

This fixation on Iran just doesn't make any sense to me. The poor slum kids and Marsh Arabs in Basra who follow Muqtada al-Sadr don't even like Iranians. The primary Iran-linked force in Basra is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq with its Badr Corps militia, which most Basrans code as Iranian puppets. One of my Iraqi correspondents told me that when the Badr Corps was fighting Marsh Arabs, local Basrans characterized it as 'Iranians fighting Iraqis.' The Badr Corps, according to the Iraqi press, fought alongside al-Maliki's 14th Division against the Mahdi Army. The Badr Corps was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and it is alleged that many Badr Corps fighters are still on the Iranian payroll.

Iranians come through Basra on their way up to Karbala and Najaf on pilgrimage to sacred Shiite shrines, and a handful may have gotten caught up in the fighting. This sort of thing has happened before. [8,000 Iranian pilgrims caught in Iraq because of the fighting have just been recalled home, and a temporary halt on the pilgrimages has been called.) But that Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran deliberately sent Iranian troops or agents into Basra to undermine ISCI, Badr, and al-Maliki's Da'wa (Islamic Missionary) Party on behalf of the Sadr Movement just strikes me as daft. It flies in the face of everything else we know about the relationship of these groups with Iran.

In fact, the Iranian leadership benefits from a united Iraqi Shiite community and the head of the Expediency Council, Akbar Rafsanajani, expressed concern about the faction-fighting among Iraqi Shiites. Iran brokered the cease-fire. If it wanted Shiite on Shiite fighting, why would it do that?

Neither the US nor Britain any longer has good intelligence on what is happening in the slums of Basra. If Petraeus is getting his information from al-Maliki on all this, he should be careful. The Da'wa and ISCI are perfectly capable of doing propaganda to embroil the US in their fights. In fact, their lies helped draw the US in, in the first place.

The US Institute of Peace concluded in a just-released report that there has been little political progress in Iraq, and that the US risks, as a result, being bogged down there for 5 to 10 years. If critics of the US presence are correct, Having so many US troops in Iraq may actually be delaying the compromises that Iraqis desperately need to make with one another. As it is, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki knows that he can just have the US Air Force bomb his enemies; he doesn't need to come to an agreement with them.

Mohammad Bazzi of the CSM comments on the power vacuum in Iraqi Shiism, with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani having played no visible role in resolving the recent fighting in Basra. In fact, it was the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps that mediated a ceasefire. The shift of authority in such matters from Najaf to Qom, from Iraq to Iran, was important if it pointed to the future. Bazzi says that Sistani, 77, appears to be in declining health. He had angioplasty in London in summer of 2004.

Iraq's nearly 1 million widows and vast numbers of orphans are not getting much attention or help.

McClatchy reports more political violence on Sunday here.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

McCain: Iraqi Troops Performed 'Pretty Well' at Basra; Engelhardt: Not so Much

Senator John McCain on the failed Basra campaign:

' Republican presidential hopeful John McCain said Sunday that Iraq's military performed "pretty well" in its recent Basra assault despite the "mixed" results of the battle. . . the presumed Republican nominee for president defended Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government as increasingly effective in managing the war-torn country. "Now, obviously, the results were mixed," McCain said on Fox News of the Basra attack against Shiite militia. "Obviously, there were problems and Maliki in my view should have waited until we had concluded the battle of Mosul," he said in the interview recorded on Friday. But, McCain said, "Overall, the Iraqi military performed pretty well. ... eight or nine months ago, it would have been unthinkable." '

Tom Engelhardt, senator of the Republic of Letters on the failed Basra campaign:

' They came, they saw, they… deserted.

That, in short form, is the story of the Iraqi government "offensive" in Basra (and Baghdad). It took a few days, but the headlines on stories out of Iraq ("Can Iraq's Soldiers Fight?") are now telling a grim tale and the information in them is worse yet. Stephen Farrell and James Glanz of the New York Times estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, or more than 4% of the force sent into Basra, "abandoned their posts" during the fighting, including "dozens of officers" and "at least two senior field commanders."

Other pieces offer even more devastating numbers. For instance, Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post suggest that perhaps 30% of government troops had "abandoned the fight before a cease-fire was reached." Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times offers 50% as an estimate for police desertions in the midst of battle in Baghdad's vast Sadr City slum, a stronghold of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.

In other words, after years of intensive training by American advisors and an investment of $22 billion dollars, U.S. military spokesmen are once again left trying to put the best face on a strategic disaster (from which they were rescued thanks to negotiations between Muqtada al-Sadr and advisors to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, brokered in Iran by General Qassem Suleimani, a man on the U.S. Treasury Department's terrorist watch list). Think irony. "From what we understand," goes the lame American explanation, "the bulk of these [deserters] were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon." '

See also Raw Story on McCain's continued blunders.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rich, McCain, and the Coming Heartbreak Ridge

Frank Rich's "Tet Happened . . . and No One Cared" is an elegantly written and argued examination of the current situation in Iraq that seems to me to pretty much nail it.

Rich demolishes so many of the myths put out by McCain and the American Right generally. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Da'wa Party, which back Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, are closer to Iran than the Sadr Movement. It was al-Maliki's parliamentary coalition that sought the cease fire by asking their Iranian patrons to broker it. The main motivation for the attack on Sadrist neighborhoods in Basra was to ensure that ISCI wins the elections in that key oil province in October.

It is so refreshing to see an American commentator who clearly has the facts at hand and a sense of proportion in interpreting them.

Rich begins and ends provocatively in arguing that the charge that Sen. John McCain has advocated a hundred-years war in Iraq is a canard, and takes the focus off much more substantive errors that McCain does make.

The only thing I would say is that McCain's analogy to South Korea, which comes from rightwing imperialist historian John Gaddis of Yale, has two implications. The first is that Bush is Harry Truman and it is July 23, 1950 (just after the US lost the Battle of Taejon and had to retreat) and there is a danger of the Communists overwhelming the South.

In McCain's mind, 'staying the course' and supporting the surge is akin to Truman committing large numbers of troops to make sure that we fight to a stalemate, containing America's enemies in Iraq.

The second implication is that once a stalemate is achieved and acknowledged, as in Korea from 1953, there can be an enduring US military presence in Iraq.

So while it is not true, as Rich rightly says, that McCain wants to fight for 100 years, it is true that his analogy does imply several more years of hard fighting.

McCain sometimes says we are fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq, and sometimes says we are fighting Iran in Iraq. Neither is in the least like North Korea. The Korea analogy is not really an analogy, since we are not fighting to support one half of a country against the other half, nor are we aiming at a successful partition of Iraq that leaves the enemy in control of half the country!

In fact, McCain warns that not pursuing complete military victory would result in "al-Qaeda" taking over Sunni Arab provinces of Iraq (presumably al-Anbar, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Diyala). But the Shiites now control Diyala even though it has a Sunni majority, and the strongest Iraqi military force in Ninevah/ Mosul is the Kurdish peshmerga. The Dulaim tribe in al-Anbar has turned against the Qutbists (which McCain incorrectly calls 'al-Qaeda'-- they don't take orders from Usama Bin Laden), and much weakened them.

So, there is no actual prospect of the Sunni radicals taking over Sunni Iraq. A majority of Iraqi Sunnis still tell pollsters that they are secular people who want a separation of religion and state, which is what you would expect in an ex-Baath population.

There is therefore no analogy to Korea. Who plays the North Koreans here? Is it our Shiite allies, who are allied to Iran? Is it the Sunni Arab Iraqis, whom the Shiites have ethnically cleansed from Baghdad under the nose of the US military?

Rich is right that the main danger of McCain is that his thinking on Iraq is muddled. But it is also a danger that he thinks he is Harry Truman and it is 1 August, 1950 in Korea. What he is actually offering the American public is a series of Gen. Douglas McArthur's "Home by Christmas" offensives, the ultimate result of which would be an uneasy stalemate in the Middle East with a division or two of US troops hunkered down for decades.

McCain is advocating the equivalents of the Battle of Seoul, Heartbreak Ridge, and Porkchop Hill, followed by spending trillions on a permanent US base. These are all before us in his vision.

McCain is actually promising a potentially long and destructive military campaign to reduce Iraq. McCain as president would likely have to invade Basra and crush the Shiite militias there, and a series of Sunni cities, including Samarra and Mosul, may have to be destroyed.

To paraphrase a notorious comment from Vietnam, what McCain is really offering is this: "We had to destroy the country to save it, sir."

McCain's implicit pledge of a decade-long further war, waged in order to get to the point where the US military can stay in Iraq for 100 years. Such a war would roil the Middle East, and we have already seen Turkey invade Iraq, we have seen money flow to Iraqi Sunnis from wealthy Gulfies, and the US, at least, charges that we have seen Iranian arms flowing in (how would that stop, exactly, when they can even be bought on the world arms black market by militias that siphon billions from the Iraqi petroleum production? McCain's vision of Total Victory is likely to profoundly destabilize the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf for decades to come, endangering US strategic interests and ensuring high fuel costs that endanger the US economy.

So I wouldn't dismiss the danger implied by McCain's remark.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Maliki: Militias must Disarm; 25,000 Tribesmen Join Iraqi Army in Basra; Seek to Fight Sadrist Tribes

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi National Security Council met on Saturday. The heads of the major blocks in parliament attended, including Nassar al-Rubaie, leader of the Sadr bloc.

Ali al-Adib of the Da`wa Party, which is part of the United Iraqi Alliance, said that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki "laid out the technical capabilities of the lawless gangs that have taken on government forces with modern, advanced weaponry, also explaining the origins of these weapons." He complained that the militias dominated some government institutions, such that they are equal to the government, a matter of some concern.

Aljazeera showed al-Maliki and president Jalal Talabani urging all the major parties to pledge to disarm their militias. This plea will fall on deaf ears, in part because it is so hypocritical. Al-Maliki increasingly depends on the Badr Corps militia of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and Talabani's power comes in large part from the Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which he got recognized in the constitution as Kurdistan's national guard. So some militias are more equal than other militias.

The official spokesman of the Sadr bloc, Salih al-`Ukaili, told al-Hayat that al-Maliki's statement was an attempt to throw dust in people's eyes, since he had pledged to stop arresting militia commanders, but he had not in fact stopped. He complained that "American troops are still spreading fear among the people of Sadr City, where they have positioned large forces at the entrances to the district's quarters, engaging in nighttime incursions and arresting hundreds of youth without warrants."

Al-Hayat received a report from Basra on Saturday that the number of volunteers from among young men of tribal background rose to 25,000, most of them from the districts of Qurna, Medina, Huwayr, and al-Haritha.

The idea was apparently to establish tribal levies in Basra on the model of what has been done in al-Anbar province with the Sunni Arab guerrillas. The new additions from among the tribes have a grudge with those tribes in the south who have announced publicly their allegiance to Muqtada al-Sadr. (My impression is that the Marsh Arab tribes, most of them displaced from their traditional areas by Saddam and drought, have largely become Sadrists. So this feud may be between middle class, well-off tribes, and poor squatters.) How tribal feuds playing out within Iraqi government institutions is an advance, I'll never know.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Saturday:

' MOSUL - Three bodies were found with gunshot wounds in different districts of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

* MOSUL - Gunmen killed a man in a drive-by shooting just outside his house in eastern Mosul, police said.

* NEAR HILLA - Police killed one gunman and arrested two others when they tried to assassinate a local police chief in the town of Hamza al-Gharbi, south of the city of Hilla, police said. One policeman was wounded in the incident. Hilla is 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad.

ISKANDARIYA - Two bodies with gunshot wounds were found in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed police Brigadier-General Saadi Ruzuqi, spraying his car with bullets on the Mohammed al-Qasim highway in central Baghdad, police said.

DIYALA PROVINCE - Gunmen killed four off-duty oil pipeline guards in their car near Khanaqin, near the Iranian border, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed Christian priest Adel Yousif in a drive-by shooting near his house in the Karrada district of central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb hit a bus on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 16 others, police said.

MAHMUDIYA - One policeman was killed by a sniper while on patrol on Friday in Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

KIRKUK - A roadside bomb near a police patrol wounded three policemen on Friday in central Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Friday, police said.

NEAR HILLA - A body of an Interior Ministry special forces soldier was found with gunshot wounds on Friday near Hilla, police said.

NEAR SAMARRA - U.S. forces killed two suspected insurgents on Friday west of Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad during an operation targeting al Qaeda, the U.S. military said.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Al-Maliki Freezes anti-Militia Operations; Al-Sadr Calls Million Man March

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki suddenly reversed himself on Friday, pledging a freeze on attacks on militias. Just a day before he had been saying that he would send the Iraqi military in after the Mahdi Army in Baghdad. Given what happened to the army in Basra, where the Sadr Movement isn't all that strong, I wouldn't have advised him to do that. Apparently someone with some sense got al-Maliki's ear.

Meanwhile, Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr is pursuing his plans to hold a million-man march on next Wednesday, the anniversary of the fall of the ancien regime and the beginning of the American military occupation.

Al-Zaman writing in Arabic says that there were Sadrist demonstrations in Basra on Friday against the al-Maliki government. In Baghdad, the Mahdi Army was holed up in Sadr City, Shulah and Kadhimiya districts. The newspaper also alleges that Jalal al-Din Saghir, a prominent Shiite cleric who preaches in northern Baghdad, is suspected of secretly running a militia called the "Vanguard of Islam."

Political violence killed at least 30 persons on Friday. A guerrilla with a bomb belt blew up a funeral in Sadiya in Diyala Province east of Baghdad, killing 20 persons. Another guerrilla attack, this one a roadside bomb, killed 3 policemen and wounded several others in Musayyab south of Baghdad. The US bombed Basra again at the request of the al-Maliki government.

Ned Parker of the LAT looks at the increasing Arab/ Kurdish tensions in and around Mosul. He comes back saying that the situation is a powderkeg with a fuse burning.

Muhsin al-Hakim, son of the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq, `Abdul `Aziz al-Hakim, said Friday what we all know but Bush, Cheney and McCain won't acknowledge: "Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran's efforts. . ."

89% of Americans see Iraq as bad for the US economy, at least to some degree.



Americans who fly on passenger planes know that we now have to limit liquids we bring aboard and take them out of our luggage in a plastic bag. This is because a cell of British Muslim jihadis wanted to blow up trans-Atlantic flights originating in Heathrow by mixing up an explosive brew and sitting next to a window, using the small explosion to blow out the window and start the airplane's external skin to peeling off, causing a catastrophic event. It turns out that they say on martyrdom videos discovered when they were arrested and the plot broken up, that they were motivated to avenge US and British killing of Muslims in Iraq; some also mention Israeli actions against the Palestinians. The opinion polling shows that British Muslims, while they overwhelmingly see themselves as loyal to the UK, are absolutely furious about Britain's military involvement in Iraq, which they view as a form of oppressive neo-colonialism.

A good examination of Tony Snow's black and white narrative about Basra being a victory for the Iraqi government. Say what?

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Clashes Continue in Basra: Badr Militia Strengthened

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that clashes continued to be fought in Basra on Thursday between Iraqi government troops and the Mahdi Army militia.

It also says that US troops in civilian clothing were targeted in the Shiite city of Hillah south of Baghdad. They were attacked by unknown gunmen and had to call in airstrikes on enemy positions. So how come they were wearing civilian cloths?

The same report discussed the arrest of Yusuf Sanawi, leader of Tha'r Allah (the revenge of God), which stands accused of being behind much of the violence in Basra.

The LAT says Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is intent on pursuing his struggle with the Mahdi Army militia, not only in the southern port city of Basra but in other Shiite cities as well. Apparently he thinks big talk will substitute for successful military operations.

In response, Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, called for demonstrations on Friday and then for a million-man march on April 9, the anniversary of the US occupation of Baghdad and the fall of the Baath government. (Sadr is happy about the fall of Saddam; unhappy about the foreign military occupation).

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Iran and Kuwait have closed their borders with Iraq and halted the import-export trade because of the deterioration of security.

The New York Times confirms that "over a thousand" officers and troops of the Iraqi army declined to fight the Mahdi Army in Basra or deserted their posts. It also reports that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki replaced them by inducting 10,000 Shiite "tribal" fighters into the Iraqi army. But the Iraqi press didn't call them "tribal," it called them Badr Corps, the paramilitary of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and now al-Maliki's main political ally. I'm not sure about the source of the discrepancy, but the NYT piece seems to be based on interviews with Iraqi and American government officials. It is possible that the need to strengthen the Iraqi army by turning to a Shiite militia trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (terrorists!) was just too embarrassing to admit. So the officials used the euphemism "tribal forces" with the foreign press.

Fred Kaplan at Slate asks the good question of whether the induction of the Badr fighters into the army means that the Iraqi government is increasingly dependent on that militia. I think the answer is clearly yes. Indeed, the only effective fighters the Iraqi military has appear to be Badr Corps and Kurdish Peshmerga. (Apparently the Kurdish troops declined to go all the way down south to Basra, and the 14th Division that did go down is made up of southern Shiites, many of them with Sadrist sympathies.)

For the Iraqi government to depend on Badr and Peshmerga militias, however, weakens its independence and makes it hostage to allies of Iran (both Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq and a Kurdish leader, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, have close relations with the Iranian ayatollahs.) So not only did Iran gain stature and authority in Iraq by negotiating a (fragile) ceasefire between al-Maliki and Muqtada al-Sadr, but al-Maliki has is now more than ever dependent on Iranian clients.

Wayne White of the Middle East Institute makes the interesting observation that the Mahdi Army became stronger in Basra because of the US troop escalation in Baghdad. Many fighters, seeking to wait out the surge, relocated to Basra, where their strength surprised al-Maliki

Jonathan Steele argues that al-Sadr came out of the episode much strengthened. He suggests that Cheney may have greenlighted the operation when he was there, in hopes that it would produce dramatic good news in time for the upcoming Petraeus / Crocker appearances before Congress. If so, it backfired big time.

IPS reports on the way in which Iraq has again become central to the presidential campaign The silly McCain campaign assertions that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror or that al-Qaeda would take over Iraq if the US pulled out are subjected to some searching criticism.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Army Invades Sadrist District in Basra; Violence Kills more than a Score

The Iraqi military made incursions into Sadrist neighborhoods in Basra on Wednesday, AP says. The show of force provoked fears of an outbreak of fresh fighting.

It turns out that McCain had said that Muqtada al-Sadr's influence was waning in a recent interview. But then when Muqtada reasserted himself, McCain claimed to have all along been concerned with the Mahdi Army.

AFP reports that political violence killed at least 15 in Iraq on Wednesday:

'insurgents killed at least 15 people and wounded several others in spate of bombings and shootings across Iraq on Wednesday, AFP quoted Iraqi officials as saying. Four people were killed and four others were kidnapped at a fake checkpoint near the central town of Al Dhuluiyah, in Salaheddin province, police said.

In the province of Diyala, insurgents killed six people, including three Iraqi security personnel, police said.

The three security guards were killed in a roadside bomb attack in the town of Mandeli, east of the provincial capital of Baquba, police Major Muhammad Al Kharki said.

The others killed were two policemen and a woman in separate roadside bomb attacks in and around Baquba, police added. In Baghdad, several armed men fired at a civilian car and killed two women working for a mobile telephone company, a security official said. Their driver was wounded.

Three people were killed and 13 others wounded, including cameraman Maytham Ibrahim working with Iraq's independent Al Diyar satellite television, in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, officials said.

Ibrahim survived but lost a leg, station’s news editor Imed al-Abadi told AFP.

He was walking down a street on his way to cover clashes between Shia militiamen and Iraqi and US forces that have ravaged parts of eastern Baghdad for more than a week when the attack occurred."

McClatchy reports political violence for Wednesday:

' Baghdad

- At dawn , the American planes bombed some targets in Sadr city, police said .

- Around 7 am, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Qahira neighborhood (north east Baghdad) .Three people were injured in that incident .

- Around 7 a.m. A roadside bomb targeted civilians in Talbiyah killing 3 civilians and injuring 14 others.

- Around 1 p.m. a mortar shell slammed into Dawodi neighborhood injuring 2 civilians.

- Around 2 p.m. gunmen attacked a civilian car killing two women and injuring the driver (a police man) and a third woman survived. The three women are employees of a cell phone company.

- A roadside bomb targeted cleaning workers in Al Mashtal injuring three workers.

- A mortar shell hi Al Mashtal neighborhood injuring 2 residents.

- Police found 2 dead bodies throughout Baghdad, one in Sadr city and one In Mahdiya.

Diyala

- At dawn, 3 IEDs exploded targeted three houses at Sadiyah village of Khanaqeen (east Baquba) .One woman was killed and a man was injured in those explosions .Police arrested 17 suspected in a raid after that incident.

- Around 7 am, a roadside bomb exploded at Mandli near Balad Ruz (75 kmeast Baquba).Three people were killed and 8 were injured.

Salahuddin

- In the morning, gunmen killed two security forces members(a policeman and a soldier ) and kidnapped two civilians at Kubeiba village (10 km east of Dhulwiyah) when they made a false check point in the entrance of Bishkan village of Dhulwiyah).

Kirkuk

- Tuesday night, a suicide bomber tried to make one of the supporting councils’ leaders in Hawija (west of Kirkuk) ,but the leader’s guards opened fire on him who was shot dead with another person who was killed accidentally at the same site.

- A parked car bomb targeted Kirkuk police chief convoy today. The attack caused damages to one police vehicle.

Basra

- In the morning, the Basra commander operation center and the spokesman of the MOD survived from an assassination attempt with the Hurra TV correspondent injured at Hussein (Hayaniyah) neighborhood (west Basra) when gunmen opened fire on them, eyewitnesses said .While the MOD spokesman , Mohammad Al-Askri,said that a roadside bomb targeted their patrol surviving from this attempt.

Nineveh

- A parked car bomb targeted a police vehicle in Al Quds neighborhood in Mosul, killing a passing by woman and injuring four policemen.

Al Anbar

- A quarrel between men from the Awakening council , a U.S. sponsored militia, and policemen in Saqlawiyah, north of Fallujah, injured five men.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Badr Inducted into Army as Thousands fired for Mutiny;

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday honored the militias of the parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, i.e. the Da'wa (Islamic Call) Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. They were singled out for having fought alongside government security forces, and some 10,000 of them were inducted into the latter.

Al-Zaman points to a double standard, insofar as the government has not similarly honored, or accepted into the state apparatus, most members of the Sunni Awakening Council militias that have been fighting the Qutbist Jihadis.

The induction of Badr Corps fighters (the paramilitary of ISCI) and those of the Da'wa Party into security positions came in the wake of the firing of thousands of officers and troops who had refused to obey orders to fire on the Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad and the southern provinces. They were accused of mutiny.

If al-Zaman's reporting is correct, the scale of the mutiny is breathtaking, and helps explain why government troops did so poorly against the Sadrists-- the hearts of the thousands of them were simply not with the fight.

Al-Hayat adds details in Arabic, quoting soldiers who have been fired by al-Maliki. They say they were thrown, in Basra, into a situation where they were taking sniper fire from every direction. They had little training in street combat

Back to al-Zaman: Iraqi Interior and Defense Ministry statistics show that 923 Iraqis were killed during the month of March, a 31% increase over February, making March the deadliest month in Iraq since last August.

Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr sent out a letter to his Mahdi Army fighters, praising "their patience, obedience and defense of their people and land." He asked them to redouble their efforts in confronting "a large number," though he did not say "a large number" of what. Later communiques suggest that he was referring to American troops.

Basra returned to relative calm on Tuesday. In Baghdad, clashes continued, as a curfew continued to be imposed on Sadr City, Kadhimiya and Shu'la districts, which are known strongholds of the Mahdi Army.

Leila Fadel of McClatchy gets the story from Sadr City in Baghdad-- reporting on the human and political cost of last week's assault on the Mahdi Army and US-produced 'collateral damage.' Another US airstrike was called in on the civilian neighborhood of Sadr City on Tuesday morning.

Fadel reports one Sadrist saying,

' "We realized what kind of government we have: They are like foxes," Abu Amir said. "The Americans are our enemies, not our friends. Maliki is an agent of the Americans. '

Warren Strobel and Nancy Youssef report for Mcclatchy that a significant outcome of the poor performance of Iraqi government forces is that Britain and the US will postpone further troop withdrawals. (I predicted this last Wednesday on the Lehrer News Hour.

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Arjomand: Shariah Should be Voluntary; Muslims want Constitutional Rule of Law

Said Arjomand shared with IC this letter to the editor of the New York Times, which was not printed. It concerns Noah Feldman's mid-March NYT piece, "Why Shariah?" In the spirit of open dialogue, IC is carrying the letter here. The Social Science Research Council also also put up a version of it, and there are further comments from Feldman and other scholars at the site as well. [Feldman's reply to Arjomand is here.

New York Times
Letter to the Editor,

Professor Noah Feldman prefaces his plea for the Shariah in “Why Shariah? Millions of Muslims think Shariah means the rule of law. Could they be right?” (The New York Times Magazine, March 16, 2008) with a reference to the proposal recently made by the Archbishop of Canterbury to allow the Shariah and Jewish law to be considered in voluntary family and arbitration courts. The Archbishop and the Professor are addressing very different issues, however. The situation of a Muslim religious minority having the option of voluntary recourse to arbitration or court settlement in Europe, as proposed by the former, cannot be responsibly compared with that of a Muslim majority using the coercive power of the state to stone women accused of adultery in Nigeria, or to perpetuate patriarchal domination in Pakistan by keeping even those women who are eventually acquitted by superior courts in shackles and behind bars for many years.

In this article, presumably as a forerunner of his new book, Feldman extends the paternalism of the failed American empire in What We Owe Iraq to the entire Muslim world by telling the Muslims how good they really are; surely they would not realize this without the American law professor telling them. In telling them, he displays one of the worst examples of Orientalism.

We are given a précis of Islamic law and what Feldman calls its ‘constitutional theory’ without any sense of historical variation-- the kind that can pass as an answer to a quiz in Islamic Civ. 101-- to prove there was the rule of law in Islamic history. Feldman projects his construction into the mind of the contemporary Islamists as the meaning of Shariah, and then asks: Could they be right?!

Do the Muslims who demand “the execution of the Shariah” really mean the rule of law? Of course different Muslims mean different things, and many don’t know exactly what they mean but recognize the sentiment behind it. But Feldman does not offer any evidence that what he thinks Muslims ought to think on the basis of his précis is what they really think. The legal evidence we have from the countries in which it has been tried suggests that the demands for the implementation of the Shariah primarily means that of its penal code (hudud) with severe punishments for adultery, theft and blasphemy which gravely disadvantage the women, the poor and the religiously deviant, and has no constitutional component. The sociological evidence suggests that the ideological demand for the Shariah as the basis of the constitution and source of all laws appeals to the puritanical moralism strengthened by the resurgence of Islam that sees divinely-ordained severe punishment as the most effective way of stopping the moral corruption and libertinism coming from the West. The legal aspect is much better documented than the sociological one, and there is ample evidence where the Islamists have succeeded in establishing the Shariah as the source of law as in Pakistan, the Sudan, Iran and Nigeria. Can a professor of law be excused for not having read about any of this in the press or reports from human rights organizations on the subject of his specialization? Evidently he can, if he has climbed the ladder of media stardom through your pages, as American academe prizes widely broadcast simple untruths as no other in the world.

All this does not mean that Muslims do not call for the rule of law. They have done so for at least a hundred and fifty years; but they have said exactly what they meant. If Professor Feldman had studied modern constitutional history of the Middle East, he would have known that the mottos were ‘the rule of law (qanun),’ ‘limited government (mashrutiyyat)’ and ‘government limited by law (qanun)’. The key term in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was Qanun, public law or state law (the same Greek word ‘Canon’, is used for church law in the West), and not Shariah or divine law. Feldman misses all of this and instead presents the Ottoman constitution as the imitation of the West and the root of the present evil of authoritarianism in the Middle East. This is a pity, especially as he did not even have to go that far back in history. If he had read the newspapers about Iran’s reformist President Khatami (1997-2005), himself a Muslim cleric, he would have known the correct term for the rule of law is still the same.

The two Muslim organizations with over 30 million members each in Indonesia do not think “Shariah means the rule of law.” They mean what you and I mean, and amended the Indonesian Constitution between 1999 and 2002 to uphold the separation of religion and the state. Nor do the leaders of the Justice and Development Party, currently in power in Turkey, mean what Professor Feldman paternalistically tells them they really mean. Last but not least, a current trend in the constitutionalist writings and proposals of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has returned to the pre-ideological constitutionalist advocacy of the rule of law as that of Qanun, with the Shariah as a limitation and a source of reference to state law. In short, there are many Muslims who know what they are doing without being told what they really mean.

Nor does it mean that a powerful argument for making the Shariah a limitation on government and a source of law cannot and has not been made. As a matter of historical fact, it was--and long before the coming of Islamism and Islamic political ideologies. The argument carried the day and the Shariah was drawn upon in the writing of the civil codes of Iran (1928 and 1935) and of Egypt (1948), which served as the model for most other Arab countries of the Middle East. The photos of the orderly Egyptian family court rooms that are incongruously produced to support Feldman’s argument in fact represent institutional results of the previous wave of the movement for the rule of law which did not use the Shariah as a motto. The Islamist urge to reinvent the wheel must therefore have other reasons than the yearning for the rule of law.

Saïd Amir Arjomand
Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology
&
Director of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies
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McCain: 'Surprised'; Fighting Subsides in Baghdad, Basra; Analysts: Sadr Strengthened

My column, "Why al-Maliki Attacked Basra," is now available at Salon.com

John McCain said he was surprised that Nuri al-Maliki would abruptly launch an operation against Basra. It seems to me that there are only two possibilities here.

Either McCain really did not know and did not anticipate the trouble in Basra, in which case he does not know much about Iraq and isn't better qualified to deal with it than anyone else.

Or, he and Cheney helped put al-Maliki up to the whole thing while he was there, and now is petrified that someone will hang the fiasco around his neck.

McClatchy reports that the security situation in Baghdad and Basra improved somewhat on Monday (see the video below) but that things were still unsettled. The Green Zone took mortar fire, and several Shiite neighborhoods in the capital remained surrounded by Iraqi and US troops. There appear also to be strong tensions in Basra, and a wariness on the Mahdi Army's part that the government will take advantage of any truce to arrest its commanders.

Reuters concludes that the crisis strengthened al-Sadr and much weakened Prime Minister al-Maliki. One of the experts it interviews also warns that the fighting this past week is only a prelude to a big struggle among Shiite factions for control of the South.

RFE /RL interviews veteran Iraq-watcher Joost Hiltermann about the clashes of the past week between Shiite factions:

' Hiltermann says the political nature of the power struggle quickly became apparent as the fighting began. The national army units involved were units from southern Iraq, where the recruiting has been heavily from the Supreme Council's Badr Organization.

He says that the other major component of the Iraqi Army, recruits from the Kurdish militias in northern Iraq, "would not go down to the south to fight this kind of fight."

As the clashes intensified, the 28,000 soldiers involved in the operation proved unable to quickly drive al-Sadr's Imam Al-Mahdi Army from the streets, despite U.S. air support. In the interim, Sadrists in other towns in the south, as well as in Baghdad's sprawling Al-Sadr City slum, tactically spread the fighting there. That escalated the stakes for al-Maliki's government to unacceptable levels as it raised fears of a general insurrection by al-Sadr's forces. . .

So, what happens next? One player to watch is al-Maliki. The prime minister, who is from a Shi'ite religious party, Al-Da'wah, t has no strong militia, has had to ally himself at various times with al-Sadr or the Supreme Council. Al-Sadr's party helped him win his post as prime minister, but since then the Sadrists have distanced themselves from him as he has worked closely with the United States, which al-Sadr wants out of Iraq.

Al-Maliki has worked hard to portray himself as a national figure able to restore security and suppress corruption in Iraq. His strong identification with the Supreme Council in leading a fight against al-Sadr, however, now may damage that image, handicapping him as a leader.'

Aljazeera English reports on the end of hot warfare in Baghdad's Sadr City and Basra:



If you haven't been following our joint Global Affairs blog, do take a look at the recent postings of Barnett Rubin (on how Iran is saving Bush's Iraq surge and on the Taliban in Afghanistan and even on Uri Avnery and the Arab-Israeli conflict). Also Cunningham on China, Norton on Lebanon, and Farhi on Iran's elections.

As always, lots of food for thought on matters of war and peace at at Tomdispatch.com

At the Napoleon's Egypt blog, two letters by British foe of Bonaparte Sir Sydney Smith, on how the French were foiled at Acre and also back in Egypt.
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al-A`raji: Arbitrary Arrests Continue (OSC)

The USG Open Source Center translates a discussion by Iraqis about Muqtada al-Sadr's ceasefire with the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki, carried in Arabic on the Iranian al-Alam satellite channel.

'Iran: Al-Alam TV's 'With the Event' Program on Iraq, Al-Sadr Trend
Al-Alam Television
Monday, March 31, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text


Tehran Al-Alam Television in Arabic at 1730 GMT on 31 March broadcast its "With the Event" program which focused on confrontations between the Iraqi government forces and the Mahdi Army in Basra, Baghdad and elsewhere in southern Iraq. It discussed a recent call by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to halt "armed manifestations," the situation on the ground, the government's intent and the Al-Sadr trend's take on the course of events. The program hosted Falih al-Fayyad, United Iraqi Alliance MP, in the studio, Hazim al-A'raji, head of Al-Sadr trend social body, via phone from Al-Najaf and Qays al-Azzawi, Iraqi analyst, via phone from Paris.

The TV presenter started the debate with a review of Al-Sadr's statement regarding the halt of armed manifestations and the government's statement in response.

Views on the fighting and whether it has come to an end following Al-Sadr's call varied. Al-Fayyad said yesterday and today's news signal a "major breakthrough and a recession in violence and clashes" in Basra and other Iraqi provinces. Proof was the lifting of curfew in several areas, he said. Nevertheless, Fayyad urged both parties, the government and the Al-Sadr trend, to honor their agreement so that "we can get out of a crisis that no one is keen on."

Al-A'raji, for his part, stressed that the situation on the ground did not reflect the agreement reached between the government and the Al-Sadr trend. He said arbitrary arrests were still taking place against the Sadrists and houses continued to be burned, noting that that was a "violation of the agreement." Al-A'raji criticized the government's "double-standards" as politicians say one thing and the military commanders say another. A'raji also confirmed that weapons were now in the hands of the government as supporters of Al-Sadr heeded the cleric's call.

Fayyad said he thought Al-Sadr's call was "effective" and that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's response was "candid." He also thought that the ongoing sporadic clashes would take few days to clear up. He urged the Iraqi government to offer the Sadrists "reassurances" and urged the Sadrists to help the government enforce the rule of law. He went on to urge both parties to exercise self-restraint.

Al-Azzawi said he thought the agreement was successful in the sense that there was "less violence" and that the "political rhetoric" was "less violent." He hailed Al-Sadr's call and Al-Maliki's response, urging an end to the bloodshed.

On Al-Sadr trend's refusal to disarm, Al-A'raji said weapons would be handed over to the government when the "occupation" had ceased to exist. He said the government must be pleased with the trend's "resistance" against the "occupation."

Asked if Al-Maliki was pressured to fight the Sadrists, Fayyad said the premier was bound by the constitution. However, the presence of the occupation, amongst other security-related issues, restrained him, he added.

Asked if the occupation had a role in sowing discord, Al-Azzawi said the US had backed sectarianism. He said the political process must be revisited, noting there was no unified plan of action.

Asked if the fighting was linked to the governorate councils elections, Al-A'raji said Muqtada Al-Sadr, in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV well before the fighting, had stressed that the Sadrists were not running in any elections.

On whether Al-Maliki was under pressure to launch an assault on the Sadrists, Al-A'raji said that there were parties that sought to control the south, reminding them that the Sadrists would be there to face them.

Asked if Al-Maliki would come back to Baghdad, Fayyad said he could not answer the question.

(Description of Source: Tehran Al-Alam Television in Arabic -- IRIB's 24-hour Arabic news channel, targetting a pan-Arab audience) '

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