Foreign Companies Vie for Profit from Iraq's Oil

Aljazeera English reports on the deals the oil majors are doing in Iraq:



And, Tom Engelhardt reviews the troop escalation or "surge" in Iraq and offers some unconventional wisdom.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iacocca: Where the Hell is our Outrage?

McClatchy says that lack of funds is hobbling the Republican attack machine. It could be that the country is in such a mess that even rich cranky white people are not sure they trust McSame not to give us another Bush term.

Amid rumors of Chrysler's impending bankruptcy, Lee Iacocca has shown back up to a hero's welcome. However badly his relationship had ended with the firm, it is still there in large part because of his leadership back in the 1980s, leadership you don't find every day anymore, as he points out:

Here is what he said in his recent book:

' "Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

"Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

"& someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions.
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That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

"I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

"I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty & I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.

"Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them — or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

"And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

"There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

"On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. & That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq — a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith-based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

"So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership. '

So if Republicans like Iacocca are this upset with the direction of the country, you can understand what McClatchy says about the past funders of the noise machine (I'm not saying Mr. Iacocca was one) just not having their heart in it this time.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Arato: The Turkish Constitutional Crisis and the Road Beyond

Guest editorial

Andrew Arato


We should be deeply worried about Turkey’s unfolding constitutional crisis, that could end in many things: the continuation and even conclusion of the long democratic transition; military coup with entirely uncertain consequences; or, in between them an unproductive stalemate. Obviously only the first can enable Turkey to become a member of the European Union, and remain the much needed bridge it already is between the “West” and the “Islamic World” (if these categories have any meaning). Outsiders can help, but only by trying to understand the roots of the crisis, and the role played by each side in creating it, the Kemalist elite and the AKP, the party of government that has Islamic roots, neither of whom should be caricatured at least by foreign observers. That each played a role can be clearly seen through the terms and causes of the constitutional crisis, to the analysis of which I would like to restrict myself here.

Let me role the political film backwards. Readers will surely know that there is currently a judicial process at the Constitutional Court, initiated by the head prosecutor of the Supreme Court, seeking to close the AKP party and ban from politics over 70 of its politicians including PM Erdogan and President Gül. They may not know that, though under legal constitutional jurisdiction (Articles 68 and 69), the charges involve an incredible mélange of private statements, fully legal political acts including passing laws and constitutional amendments, and imputations of intentions that are entirely unsupported. Thus the attempt to close the AKP is not legally but politically inspired, and would reverse the results of the last two democratic elections in which the party received between 3/5 and 2/3 of parliamentary seats (though, as I would also stress, given a disastrously bad Turkish electoral rule on the bases, of 37, and 44 % of the votes). Readers will also know from Mr. Eissenstat’s article if not before, that on June 4 the same Constitutional Court has invalidated rather innocuous amendments to Articles 10 and 42 to Turkey’s Constitution, intending to permit legislation and/or administrative decisions allowing the wearing of headscarves in the universities, according to him a decision that almost certainly transgressed to sphere of authority of the Court. I think the decision, remarkably enough not yet published in full, was technically very questionable but certainly within the jurisdiction of the Court. The big question now is whether this decision foreshadows the closing of the AKP as the majority of Turks think or, as I maintained in a long interview in the liberal Milliyet on 12 June (Haziran) the Court has now established the option of switching to a more constitutional path of defending the constitution (and enforcing consensual change) than the nuclear and self-contradictory option of party closings. Historical experience against logic are in conflict, and I admit the weight of prior history that has involved 18 party closings, but never of a majority parliamentary party that has such broad international support in Europe and America, may win out. But let me try to justify the logic, or my logic anyway.

The makers of the Constitution of 1982 established a dual, semi authoritarian or semi democratic state, with important reserves of power outside the constitution. Starting with the elections of 1983, and then constitutional changes already in 1987 Turgut Özal managed to expand the democratic dimension, leading to a great reform process from 1995 to 2004, that in several rounds that involved the consensual participation of all parliamentary political parties, managed to significantly but by no means completely constitutionalize political powers in the system. Today people stress several military and indeed judicial interventions in this period, that we can see only managed to slow down the rate of change, exclude parties that would reappear in new forms and under new names, but nevertheless confirming the existence of important political centers that could continue to act outside all democratic accountability and constitutional restraints. From 2000-2001 especially, the Turkish parties and governments were under increasing European pressure to eliminate these authoritarian residues, and it was then that the idea of a gradual amendment of 1982 Constitution was replaced by that of a new “civil” or “civilian” Consitutiton. But though the point was not entirely clear either to the European critics or the Turkish participants, unless Turkey had a revolution against the Constitution of 1982, even an entirely new civilian constitution would have to be introduced as a large scale amendment of the still valid basic law.

That had two major implications. First, if it required the consensus of all parties to introduce partial amendment packages in 1995 and 2001, logically the introduction of a whole new constitution in a divided society through parliamentary amendment would imply the same requirement. Second, as against what Prof. Ergun Özbudun (the head of the AKP’s constitution drafting commission, whom I greatly respect) told me at a conference in New York in March 2008, the ordinary parliament, the Turkish Grand National Assembly is not even in Turkish positive law identical to a constituent assembly. It is not in terms of power, that we all know or should if we glanced at the country’s map of power. In my view at least, it is not in terms of legitimacy, unless it generates the kind of consensus characteristic of earlier amending efforts. Özbudun however was speaking merely of positive legality, and therefore the legal right of a parliamentary majority (under article 175) of 3/5 with both the president’s support and the majority in a referendum, or of 2/3 either with the president’s support or the majority in a referendum, to change the constitution as it will.

In my view such narrow legality, without sufficient power and legitimacy is exactly what would get a governing party in trouble in a divided society, but unfortunately, it does not accurately describe the legal givens in Turkey in the first place, as against a country of sovereign parliaments (there are arguably a few left in the democratic or ethnocratic world). The Constitution of 1982 has unchangeable provisions that the parliament cannot alter even with 100% of the vote having to do with the republican, secular and unitary character of the state. (Articles 1, 2,3 made unchangeable by Art. 4). Moreover the Constitutional Court is given jurisdiction to review amendments (art 148/149). Though this jurisdiction is defined as procedural, logically the Court would be correct to argue that any procedure (i.e. any majority, even 100%) that changes the unchangeable is ultra vires. Thus if Turkish Constitutional Court judged the amendments in question unconstitutional on the bases of the unchangeable articles it would have still not have gone as far stretching its jurisdiction as the great Indian Supreme Courts did, in defense of the unwritten “basic structure”of the Indian Constitution.

Admittedly, the Indian Constitution was democratically made, and there the Court could arguably defend the work of the democratic pouvoir constituant, against mere governmental organs, including the qualified parliamentary majority. In Turkey the Constitution was an authoritarian product, and it may seem paradoxical to defend its unchangeable provisions against democratically elected parliaments. To avoid the untenable originalism latent here let me propose a different, though partially similar criterion. In Central Europe, specifically in Hungary in 1989 the great question of when to erect a Constitutional Court with strong powers of constitutional review depended, in the eyes of democratic oppositions, on having a Constitution worth defending. The origins of Turkish Constitution in 1982 were highly questionable (they were typically Bonapartist!) but since the major consensual reforms Turkey does evidently have a Constitution worth defending. A lot of it is now the work of democratic instances. It is another matter that the Court itself preserves something of the worst heritage, specifically in its powers of party closings. But its powers of constitutional review belong to the other side of the ledger, within this still dualistic institution. It is in the interest of all that it abandon its authoritarian role, and assume the type of jurisdiction common to many constitutional democracies, that may very well as in Germany and India include review of amendments. Furthermore even if the Constitutional Court cannot gain much legitimacy in defending the unchangeable provisions of an originally authoritarian Constitution, the legality of its jurisdiction provides it with a vantage point to bring attention to the equally weak legitimacy of a power seeking to alter this constitution on the bases of mere majority will. Both legitimacies are questionable, but the legal position of the Court will remain stronger unless the amendment rule itself were amended by parliament, an act that the Court could again find unconstitutional…because implicitly challenging the unchangeable articles.

Moreover denial of the jurisdiction to review amendments and thus defend the unchangeable provisions of the Constitutions would only push the Court in the direction of passivity could have terrible if unintended consequences, and it may be fortunate that it did not rise to the formalist bait. If the constitutional review of amendments could not police the unchangeability of three articles, only party closing would remain as a marginally legal but in fact openly political weapon of their enforcement. And that would be the worst possible road to keep the Court on. It is one thing the deny the right of a party to make a constitutional amendment, even if the decision is technically unjustified, and quite another to close a party altogether for having made an amendment perfectly legally.

But what if the Court would from now on start using its expanded jurisdiction of constitutional review as a way to disempower all reform, would this be a still preferable option to open political acts like party closings, that have historically not been able to stop the reform trend? It is one thing to close minority parties, and quite another to close the party that has such majority (in parliament) or near majority (in the country). Thus closing now would be the worst option. But it is in my unrealistic to assume that the Court intends to replace or disempower the constitutional legislator. First, there is little creative capacity here; on the whole the Court is a negative legislator that can create only marginally, when expanding someone’s authority… here its own. Second, to consider the likelihood that the Court would take an obstructionist path, we should examine the AKP’s own responsibility in producing the crisis, that is in my view considerable. Until 2002 when the AKP came to form government, constitutional alteration has been consensual. This could be said to be strategically necessary since no party had the 3/5, not to say 2/3 majority in parliament, and avoiding referenda required the latter figure of support. After 2002 the AKP had nearly 2/3 and with small parties it could swing over that figure. Yet, it was still interested in consensual amendments with the one remaining opposition party, the staunchly Kemalist CHP. Conversely, most of the CHP supported even a constitutional amendment in 2002 with a single person beneficiary to allow Mr. T.R. Erdogan into parliament in the face of an earlier ban, also overriding the secularist Pres. Sezer’s veto in the process. Together the AKP and the CHP still passed an important amendment package in 2004. The story that no agreement between these two forces is possible, now told on both sides with increasing bitterness, is simply false. What changed everything, was the issue of the election of the president of the republic, where both sides acted in ways that destroyed their relationship with the other. The AKP nominated the otherwise excellent Abdullah Gül, whose victory would mean the attainment of important appointment and constitution amending (here the option of 3/5 of parliament comes into view) powers. The CHP responded with an ugly boycott that sought to disempower the country’s rather terrible rule of presidential election (2/3 in first two rounds, but majority in third round, implying an ultimately majoritarian process). The Constitutional Court supported the boycott (indicating only its support for consensus, even if a lose reading of quorum rules not explicitly applied to presidential elections by the Constitution), but though this is now easily forgotten supported the AKP 6-5 when the government offered a package of 4 amendments legislating direct election of the president, shorter parliamentary terms, clearer quorum requirements and lower voting age). The 5 votes however were and should have been seen as a signal: the Court did not like non-consensual amendments, as these 4 indeed were passed over the opposition of the CHP and Pres. Sezer.

This is where the so-called headscarf amendments come in. With a new parliament of different composition, a failed boycott, and Pres. Gül elected still in the old way, the AKP was ready to begin a constitutional project mostly on its own. Instead of an all parliamentary committee, they, quite wrongly and reminiscent of earlier military governments appointed a commission of admittedly first rate, independent experts. When the project ran into strong criticism from all who were excluded, and not just the Kemalists but also civil society groups, the AKP joined an initiative of the right wing MHP (that could have been a trap!) to introduce the two amendments dealing with the head-scarf issue alone. The AKP said that they wanted to take the most contentious issue off the table not to interfere with the broader project. Instead, they put an enormous break in front of constitutional change as a whole, to the evident chagrin of Prof. Özbudun and even more many of their liberal supporters. To their opponents, they used the first opportunity they had, when they controlled both the legislative and executive branches to engage in an entirely majoritarian project of constitution making, and revealed the meaning of such a project by ramming through what would be the most controversial element possible without any trade-offs, quid pro quos or guarantees. While many of these opponents wish to bring the AKP down no matter what, and others do not wish constitutional change at all, there are also some who welcome the internal transformation of a formerly Islamic party, are happy about its apparent commitment to a European type civil constitution, and object only to the method of bringing the latter about thinking that in the process the goals themselves will be compromised.

It is hard to tell how the members of the Constitutional Court divide on this last question. Are they ultimately seeking to destroy the AKP and any party with Islamic roots, something impossible in a Turkish democracy, or are they only trying to keep it on a consensual political path? The possible difference between such different perspectives cannot come to view if the AKP stays on a majoritarian path. Much has been said about the old elite membership of the Court, little of it complementary, some of it probably libelous, some of it undoubtedly accurate. More importantly however, it takes 7 votes on the Constitutional Court out of 11 to invalidate amendments, or to close a party. The vote in 2007 was 6 to 5 in favor of the AKP’s four amendments, against the CHP as well as President Sezer who appointed most of the judges. The vote this June 4 was 9 to 2 against. There has now been a shift against the AKP. At the very least, three judges would again have to switch for the AKP to survive (I leave out the possibility of compromise solutions, possible since the amendments of 2001) and then 3 subsequently would have to vote yes on amendment packages. Renewed consensus in parliament, or the establishment of an extra-parliamentary consensual input by a semi formal convention (as recommended by the business association Tusiad) or a round table would certainly help in context of the latter votes. Strictly speaking, in case of parliamentary consensus noone would even have standing to turn to the Constitutional Court, because Art 148 gives the power only to the President or at least 1/5 of the MPs. So there is every reason to think that if the party is not closed, the road of the democratic transformation could be re-opened if, as is very likely, a chastened AKP decided to follow other than majoritarian methods.

And what if it will be closed, according to historical experience? I think my answer would be rather similar. The AKP would be replaced, as historically, and with or without Erdogan the successor party (like the AKP itself) should be able to learn from the mistakes of its predecessor some of which I tried to detail here. Otherwise, the other two options mentioned in the beginning will become more likely…hopeless stalemate or/and a downward spiral toward a military coup. But neither can be allowed to happen, and the search for consensual solutions must therefore continue.

The Constitutional Court will remain an important actor in any consensual process, and it makes no sense to vilify it whatever anyone may think or imagine about some of the members and their allegiances. Today that body is in the position to make the greatest contribution to the kind of legal and legitimate process of constitution making I have mind by dismissing the charges against the AKP and its leaders.

Andrew Arato

Frankfurt, June 29, 2008
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Paul: Iran and Energy Crisis

Sunday afternoon viewing:

Ron Paul on Iran and the energy crisis. He argues that speculation about a US or Israeli strike on Iran is driving some of the increase in oil prices.

The OPEC president should know a thing or two about what drives oil prices and he agrees.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Salih Speaks of Horizon for US Troops; Chalabi in Tehran, Criticizes US; Sistani rejects Use of His Name in Campaign

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said that the al-Maliki government is beginning to think about the "time horizon" of the US troop presence in Iraq. That terminology is awfully close to a request for a timetable for troop withdrawal. PM al-Maliki has repeatedly said that Iraqi militias and army can handle the security problems themselves within 18 months.

Ahmad Chalabi, meeting in Tehran with Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Ali Larijani, commented on the Status of Forces Agreement being negotiated by the Bush administration with the Iraq government:

' The INC's Chalabi retorted that granting immunity to US military personnel from prosecution under Iraqi law is baldly unacceptable. “The vast majority of Iraqi people and authorities oppose the security treaty and regard it as contradictory to Iraq's sovereignty and security.” Chalabi stated the treaty is counterproductive for Iraq in the long term and what the US is seeking is a binding bilateral agreement for the ongoing presence of its forces in Iraq whose UN mandate expires on December 31.'

Then Chalabi sat there while Larijani warned the US against "adventurism."

I don't think Chalabi likes the US very much. What is he doing discussing a bilateral US-Iraqi agreement with Larijani in Tehran? And let's see, I'm trying to remember whose idea it was for the US public to give Chalabi tens of millions of dollars and to try to put him in power in Baghdad . . .

Oh, yeah, thanks to Amanda Terkel for reminding me . . . it was our very own Mr. Foreign Policy Experience (a.k.a 'one is born every minute' . . .):

' McCain welcomed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to Washington and pressured the administration to give him money. When General Anthony Zinni cast doubt upon the effectiveness of the Iraqi opposition, McCain rebuked him at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In 2003, McCain joined four other Republican senators and asked Bush to “personally clear the bureaucratic roadblocks within the State Department” that blocked increased funding for the Chalabi’s group. Also that year, McCain said of Chalabi, “He’s a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart.” '

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that as the 18 October date for the provincial elections approaches and parties begin campaigning, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has rejected the use of his name or picture in campaign materials for any party.

The controversy stems from the decision of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq to run as a stand-alone list in the provincial elections and its announced intension to use Shiite religious symbols in its campaign. It has been criticized on this score by the Sadr Movement.

Al-Hayat says that tribally based party lists are now campaigning in Diyala Province and hope to do well.

It also reports skepticism in some quarters about whether the provincial elections will really be held before 2009, given that disputes about them still rage in Iraqi politics.



Meanwhile, the dispute between the al-Maliki government and the US military in Karbala province, over the US operation that killed a relative of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has worsened, according to McClatchy. Hannah Allam writes:

' Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman called Friday's operation "unacceptable" and had strained relations between the countries. "This is a big embarrassment for Prime Minister Maliki because he was in that area two days before the incident, telling his people that we are the masters in our country and the decisions were ours to make," Othman said. "This is why we are afraid of agreements and immunity. ... If there are wanted people in any area, why not send an Iraqi force to do the job?" '

Ned Parker on how the troubling story of Awakening Council guerrilla Abu Abed indicates that little progress has been made toward Sunni-Shiite reconciliation in Iraq.
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US Kills Maliki Relative; Fadhila Accuses Grand Ayatollah of conspiracy

Ooops. A US military operation in Karbala province at Janaja resulted in the arrest of one Iraqi and the killing of another. The dead Iraqi is said to be a relative of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The governor of Karbala province, Uqail al-Khazali, complained that the US military had acted unilaterally and had not coordinated with him. (He was probably deeply embarrassed that one of al-Maliki's kinsmen had been killed on his watch, and wants to make sure to fix the blame where it belongs). Al-Khazali is said to be from the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa), to which al-Maliki also belongs.

The US had been negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement with al-Maliki, and arguing for the US military to retain the prerogative of launching operations at will and without coordinating with the Iraqi government. If that provision had not already been dead, I think it is now.

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic on the sermon of Sheikh Ali Safi, a representative in Karbala of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He urged people to cease and desist their wrangling about the terms of next fall's elections. He called for the elections to be upright and transparent, and warned that some elements were attempting to stop them from being held.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the Islamic Virtue (Fadhila) Party is accusing clerical aides and agents of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Basra of acting as agents of its rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (led by cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim). They say that ISCI party events are taking place in the mosques and Husayniyas controlled by the ayatollah's representatives and that the latter or their sons are running for provincial office under the ISCI banner.

Provincial elections have been scheduled for this fall, and Basra is a huge prize. A major oil province and the site of Iraq's only major ports, it affords whoever controls it a potential stranglehold on Iraq. In Juanuary, 2005, of 41 provincial council seats, the Islamic Supreme Council took 20. The Islamic Virtue Party and its allies cobbled together a ruling coalition of 21 and so got to appoint the governor. The Islamic Virtue Party is clearly worried that ISCI will find unfair ways to enhance its position in the province and capture control of it in the fall elections. Deploying the mosque infrastructure and the great prestige of the office of the grand ayatollah would give ISCI a major advantage.

ISCI for its part desperately wants Basra because it is key to the party's plan to establish an 8-province Shiite superprovince that would be able to claim 100% of all new oil finds in the Iraqi south. It is likely that the attack on the slums of Basra by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's security forces in March and April was intended to help ISCI in the upcoming elections by weakening the Sadr Movement.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Addington: They'll be Watching Me

David Addington, Cheney's legal capo, can't say whether he authorized waterboarding because he is afraid that al-Qaeda might be watching C-Span.

Al-Qaeda is this crew's excuse for everything that they always wanted to do before there was any al-Qaeda.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Huge bombing in Mosul Targets Governor; Awakening meeting 50 Miles from Baghdad Hit

Big bombs in Mosul and in Karma, al-Anbar.

Questions are being raised about whether the Iraqi army can hold Mosul.

DPA reports that two major bombings in Sunni Arab areas of Iraq on Thursday killed over 40 persons and left over 70 wounded.

In al-Anbar province at Karma 50 km west of Baghdad, a meeting of the local Awakening Council was blown up by a suicide bomber, killing clan chieftains and wounding some US troops. The bombing caused the handover of security from the US to the Iraqi army in al-Anbar to be delayed.

In Mosul, a major city of 1.7 mn. some 225 miles north of Baghdad, guerrillas attempted to assassinate the governor of Ninevah province, Duraid Kashmula with a car bomb. They killed 17 persons, including bodyguards of the governor, and wounded 62. Kashmula escaped unscathed.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement against the US and the Iraqi government has regrouped and reorganized, and is effectively lashing out again. Al-Hayat calls the guerrillas 'al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,' but we don't in fact know who exactly carried out the massive bombings of Thursday and the days before that. In Mosul, it could be remnants of the Baath Party or Sunni Arab nationalists who are ex-Baathists.

The bombing in Karma was carried out by a man dressed in a police uniform, and it killed more than 20 persons. Among them were the head of the Karma tribal council. Three policemen were killed. About 20 persons were wounded.

More on the goings-on in Iraq on Thursday:

Antiwar.com says that over 70 were killed and over 117 were wounded.

At Informed Comment: Global Affairs, see Howard Eissenstat's essay on the building crisis between secularists and political Islam lite in Turkey.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

McCain Adviser Plans Casino on the Tigris

Update: This appears to be a hoax. See comments below.

Hat tip to Raed Jarrar and to Rick B at Ten Percent.

A 'foreign policy adviser' to the McCain campaign was interviewed last February on television in Baghdad about plans for a Las Vegas-style five star hotel and casino smack dab in the middle of the Green Zone in Baghdad. He promises a trickle down effect of wealthy gamblers' losses helping Iraq's poor. He promises Iraqi women jobs as maids in the hotel rooms. He promises Thai and Russian masseuses. He reduces Iraqis to being like Native Americans on reservations.

Actually, casinos are always socially regressive, hurting the poor disproportionately. The Green Zone is like a stone's throw away from Sadrist-dominated Sadr City. Why does he think the religious Shiites will put up with all this? The Iraqi maids will be viewed as violating norms of gender segregation. The other activities would attract . . . sanctions under the sharia. In fact, that wonderful Iraqi constitution that the US Republican Party was so enthusiastic about forbids parliament to pass any law contrary to Islamic canon law. Since gambling is forbidden in the Qur'an, it is unlikely that the Iraqi parliament can legalize it.

The 'foreign policy adviser's' comments are particularly tasteless in light of the actual conditions under which most Iraqis live.

But, well, if McCain does plan to turn Iraq into sort of a big Las Vegas, at least that would explain his odd desire to be there for a hundred years.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

"Family Wiped out By US; Mosul: Rapid Downward Security Spiral

Headlines you never want to see: "Family wiped out by US." A US air strike on suspected insurgents at Tikrit went terribly wrong Wednesday, when an American missile instead killed a family of 6, including four children aged 4 to 11. Iraqis allege that the man had come out of his house and fired a gun in the air because he was afraid that thieves were in the area. The US military apparently thought he was firing at them and called in a strike on his house.

This sort of thing is why the Iraq public wants any Status of Forces Agreement between the Iraqi government and the US to ensure that US forces can only deploy force with the agreement of the Iraqi government.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the security situation has taken a dramatic turn for the worse in Mosul. Yesterday a bombing killed 2 and wounded 90 persons, and a municipal leader was assassinated; in addition, a roadside bombing killed 3 US troops and their interpreter. An informed source told the Baghdad daily that the security campaign in the northern city of 1.7 mn. led by PM Nuri al-Maliki was deeply flawed. He said that there had been no coordination between the government forces sent into Mosul with the police in their 80 local HQs, nor with the 48 offices of parties that maintain powerful militias.

Peshmerga troops of the Kurdistan Alliance in Mosul began being replaced on Wednesday by units of the Iraqi Army after severe pressure was exerted by the people of the city, tribal elders, and notables. (Mosul is about 80 percent Arab, but there is a Kurdish minority; residents fear that Kurdistan is trying to annex the city). An Iraqi Army source said that in the Waterfall District in the east of the city, a Peshmerga unit had already been switched out with an Iraqi Army one.

Al-Zaman also alleges that the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq refused to surrender their HQs in Maysan Province to the government, and that the Interior Ministry apologized for them!

Some 22 Iraqis died and over a hundred were wounded in political violence on Wednesday.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

' Baghdad

Three civilians were killed and ten others wounded in parked car bomb near Saj al Reef restaurant in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad around 1:00 p.m.

Police found five unidentified bodies in Baghdad . . .

Diyala

An Iraqi soldier was killed and three others were wounded in a booby-trapped house in al Naqeeb village 15 miles south of Baquba city around 6:00 a.m.

A member of Sahwa council was killed in clashes between Sahwa members and insurgents in Khan Bani Saad town 15 miles southwest of Baquba city around 7:00 a.m.

Nineveh

Gunmen killed Mosul municipality director Khalid Mahmoud and his driver in al Baladiyat area in downtown Mosul city on Wednesday morning.

Thi Qar

Seven people were wounded in a tribal fight between two sub-tribes south of Nasiriyah city on Wednesday morning. Iraqi army got involved supported by US helicopters to control. The security forces arrested 16 people including seven wounded.

Karbala

two people were killed and 15 others were wounded when a bomb exploded inside a car near Imam Abbas holy shrine in downtown Karbala city south of Baghdad around 7:00 p.m.'

Reuters has more.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are donating $1 mn. for Iraqi refugee children. Now if only the US Congress would step up.

Nick Turse on the Pentagon's stealth corporations.

At Napoleon's Egypt blog, an anecdote about Bonaparte facing down an officers' mutiny in Egypt.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kelly Kennedy, George Carlin, and the Reason for Traumatized Iraq Veterans

The late George Carlin did not like the phrase "post-traumatic stress disorder." He famously said,

' I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that.

There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.

In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.

That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue.

Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, we're up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.

Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.

I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha.'

I have concluded that Carlin was right about that issue. Being traumatized by war is not a disorder. In fact, if you are not traumatized by the sight of body parts flying all around you as you are splattered with the blood of people you know, then you would have a disorder. Why not just say "war-traumatized"? Or better yet, "war-scarred"? The PTSD phrase has the unfortunate effect of making it seem abnormal for people to be negatively affected by wartime violence.

It is like the phrase "Vietnam syndrome," in which the understandable reluctance of the Baby Boom generation to launch big, long-lasting land wars in Asia was medicalized, as though there was something wrong with them that they were not warmongers. Why not say that they had 'learned the lessons of Vietnam,' or were 'Vietnam-scarred'? Why suggest that there is something wrong with them for it?

So below is a report from CBS on how the US networks have sanitized the Iraq War for viewers, and how we cannot understand the long-term trauma suffered by US troops who served in Iraq unless we understand what they've been through. Warning: her description of what she and others saw in Iraq is explicit and disturbing. Carlin would be proud of her:

"Army Times reporter Kelly Kennedy saw first hand the horrors of the war in Iraq. She spoke to CBS News about her experiences and about how post traumatic stress disorder is affecting the troops."

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5 US Troops Killed; 90 Iraqis Wounded in Mosul; District Election for Sadr City Bombed:

Guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb to kill 3 American soldiers and an interpreter in northern Iraq on Tuesday.

McClatchy reports two major bombings in Iraq on Tuesday.

In Mosul, guerrillas set off a massive bomb outside a coffee shop, wounding at least 90 persons. McClatchy is reporting 2 deaths, but said the total would rise.

In Baghdad, a meeting of a local district council was bombed, killing 11 persons and wounding 11. An election was just about to be held for the chairman of the local admisory council in Sadr City. Among the dead were two US soldiers and two USG employees, one of them a PRT officer for Sadr City, Steven L. Farley. Two Defense Department civilians, one an American, were also killed. A US soldier and 10 Iraqis were wounded.

The SF Chronicle has more on Mr. Farley.

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic on the statement about US troop withdrawals of Humam Hamoudi. Hamoudi, a Shiite cleric and member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, heads the Foreign Relations Committee in the Iraqi parliament. He met with a number of American officials on Monday, and expressed his conviction that a studied withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq is the foundation of any security agreement with the USA. He told David Satterfield and Gen. Mark Kimmit of the "necessity to safeguard the sovereignty of Iraq and to arrive at an agreement that would gain the assent of the Iraqi people and the support of the parliamentary blocks. The studied withdrawal of foreign forces would be foundational to such an agreement."

Hamoudi's party, ISCI, has been among the main US allies in Iraq and is the cornerstone of what little power Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has. If he is talking about the need to build a plan for a deliberate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq into any security agreement, imagine how the groups that distrust the US feel.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that families in the destitute al-Ansar quarter of Najaf are complaining about the raw sewage that comes into their district, and saying they believe it is implicated in the recent deaths of 25 persons of cancer in the one square kilometer neighborhood.

On how you won't see most of this on t.v.:



Reuters reports other political violence in Iraq on Tuesday:

' TIKRIT - U.S. forces detained the head of a local journalists' union in Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, police and the Iraqi media watchdog the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory said.

MOSUL - Gunmen kidnapped four university students from their halls of residence in western Mosul, north of Baghdad, police said. They later released two of them.

MOSUL - U.S. forces said they killed a senior al Qaeda leader in Mosul, although they gave no details on what his role had been in the city.

BALAD - Two members of a U.S.-backed Iraqi neighbourhood patrol were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle on the outskirts of Balad town, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

YATHRIB - Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops caught a wanted Iraqi al Qaeda militant along with his Saudi Arabian aide in Yathrib village, north of Baghdad, security forces said.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed one gunman and captured 12 others on Monday in various operations in different parts of northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.

KERBALA - Iraqi police arrested three wanted Shi'ite militiamen accused of killing and kidnapping people in central Kerbala, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad, police said. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Hansen: Try CEOs of Big Oil for Fraud

NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen called for the CEOs of the oil majors to be put on trial for obstructing efforts to stop global warming and for misinforming the public about the issue.

Video of his testimony:



Could we also try the Board and Staff of the American Enterprise Institute, which is the "think tank" weasel that Exxon Mobil used to muddy the waters on the science of climate change.

Note too a very suspicious set of coincidences. Lee Raymond, CEO of Exxon Mobil until 2006, is the vice chairman of the AEI board.

The AEI was the major cheerleader for the war in Iraq.

So it looks like the Oil Majors are multitasking. Their "think tank" is giving out money to bribe scientists to deny global warming. And it gave out a lot of advice about how to go to war in Iraq.

My own suggestion would not be so much trial as exile. I think the American Enterprise Institute should be removed to Fallujah, where their expertise is so needed. And where they can get a taste in the summer of what real heat is.

John McCain, too, is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, saying he wants to go green but actually urging drilling off the US coast so as to put more carbon dioxide into the air.

And then McCain wants to offer a $300,000 mn. prize for breakthroughs in battery technology. He seems to live in an ancient era when lone geniuses could invent things in their guest rooms. The kind of thing he is looking for could only be accomplished by big government or big business, and he is offering chump change in corporate terms.

The problem needs hundreds of billions of dollars, not millions.

Oh, that's right, I forgot. We don't have them. Because the Republican Party spent them in Iraq.

So as to get more oil out of the ground.

Which will cause more global warming.

War, oil, it is all the same.

Only if we get big breakthroughs in solar can we avoid our asses being cooked.

No, I mean really. Cooked.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

McCain Aide Wishes on a Star

You always suspected that they thought it. But who would be so stupid as to say it. On McCain's "political maestro" Mr. Charlie Black and how he thinks thousands of Americans being incinerated would be a "big advantage" to the Republican Party.

"the longtime political pro got a bit too honest. Asked about the political impact of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Black replied: 'Certainly it would be a big advantage to him'."

You worry that people who think like Black would not be above a little wagging the dog, say, a provocation against Iran in October.

I wonder if Cindy McCain still feels safe, on knowing how her husband's associates really think.

We don't need any more of this politics of fear that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Bush gave to us. That McCain has such people around him is yet another indication that he is too close to Bush and Bushism to be allowed anywhere near the White House.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Councilman Kills 2 GIs; Mortar Fire Kills 10 on Awakening C.

A city council member in Mada'in (Salman Pak) abruptly opened fire on Americans who had been in a meeting with him. He killed 2 US troops and wounded 4 other Americans. He had been in India recently because Sunni-Shiite tensions made it too difficult for him in Mada'in. He had only been back one week as councilman. Although there is speculation that he was unstable, my own suspicion is that the continued US military occupation was just too hard for him to take. India has an anti-colonial atmosphere, after all. Here is some of what McClatchy reporters overhead the people of Mada'in say in the aftermath:

' Anti-U.S. sentiment remains widespread, with many locals viewing the American presence as an intrusion. As news of Ajil's killings spread, some residents hailed him as a hero. Several uttered his name and added, "God rest his soul," and a taxi driver at the scene pointed to the bloodstains and said, "the pigs deserved this." '

Guerrillas in Udaim, about an hour north of Baquba, guerrillas bombarded an Awakening Council unit with mortar fire, killing 10 and wounding 24 of them.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in Amara, pledged to send his army in to restore order in Diyala Province next. Since Diyala is 60% Sunni Arab, and al-Maliki's troops are disproportionately drawn from Shiite militias, it is not so clear that they will have an easy time of it.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that yet another party has withdrawn from the United Iraqi Alliance. The Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party - Iraqi Organization of Abdul Karim Anizi has announced the suspension of its participation in the UIA.

I heard US Secretary of State Condi Rice on Sunday on Fareed Zakaria's show call the al-Maliki government a 'national unity' government. Not so much. Not only has he not managed to bring the Sunnis back in, he is losing the Shiites.

An interesting idea: It is getting to the point where al-Maliki's enemies in parliament could organize a vote of no confidence and make the government fall. If it was no longer the biggest party, some other coalition could hope to nominate the prime minister.

McClatchy reports political violence on Monday:

' Baghdad

A roadside bomb targeted a National Police patrol in Waziriyah, near the cotton wool plant intersection at 11.30 a.m. Monday, injuring three policemen.

A roadside bomb targeted a US military convoy in Qahira, near the water reservoir at noon. No casualties were reported.

A roadside bomb targeted a US military convoy in Salahuddin Square, Kathimiyah neighbourhood at around noon. No casualties were reported.

A roadside bomb targeted a US military convoy in Adil neighbourhood at around 1 p.m. No casualties were reported.

Two unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad today; 1 in Hurriyah and one in al-Amin.

Diyala

Mortar rounds fell on a Sahwa headquarters in al-Atheim district, 50 km to the north of Baquba at 8.30 p.m. Sunday, killing 10 members, injuring 24 others.

Nineveh

Gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint manned by Iraqi Police in New Mosul, south Mosul killing one policeman and one civilian female, severely injuring two civilians.'

The USG Open Source Center translates part of a statement form Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah of Lebanon condemning the Status of Forces Agreement being negotiated between the US and Iraq. Fadlallah at least used to be the spiritual guide of the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) that Nuri al-Maliki belongs to:

"Source: Lebanese National News Agency website, Beirut, in Arabic 0737 gmt 22 Jun 08

we call on the Arab and Islamic states not to comply with the security and military demands that the US Administration aims to accomplish through its keenness to influence Arab armies, impose its tutelage, and interfere in their [military] doctrine and special security features, because we know that the United States that has failed through its direct armies is attempting to accomplish its goals by using the Arab and Islamic forces. This not only constitutes betrayal, but also leads to the destruction of all security, and toppling the positions that everyone depends on to protect what can be protected, after the Americans used their chaos to tamper with the reality of our countries, peoples, sects, and denominations from within.

We reject the US tutelage, just as we reject other tutelages. We do not find any legitimacy to any authority that attempts to bestow legitimacy to this or that tutelage."
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Saudis Driven into Poverty by High Oil Prices

Aljazeera International explains how high oil prices are hurting ordinary Saudis, driving up the cost of their food and imports. The petroleum is owned by the government and profits go to it. It is hard for the government to inject the money into the economy without risking high inflation (too much money chasing too few goods), which would create an effect like a dog chasing its tail. High inflation would eat up the value of the extra money. The extra money is therefore invested abroad. Good for us, bad for most Saudis.

So, yes, high oil prices are making ordinary Saudis poorer, just as with the rest of us.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Clark: McCain's Threats of Force Disrespect Presidency

Gen. Wesley Clark on John McCain's lack of policy-making and foreign policy leadership experience.

Clark says McCain has always been for the use of force, and more force, when a president should view force as a last resort. He complains that when McCain talks about throwing Russia out of the G8 or makes up ditties about bombing Iran, he "betrays a disrespect for the office of the presidency."



Hat tip: J. Miller Rampanti.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shenkman: Why the American People Were So Easily Bamboozled by the Bush Administration

Rick Shenkman, is the author of the just-published Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter (Basic Books, 2008). He blogs at Howstupidblog and is editor of George Mason University's History News Network

Shenkman writes:


I do not wish to engage in a debate about the Iraq War. But the thought of planting a largely Christian army in the middle of the Muslim Middle East over the opposition of most countries in the region, when put as I have just put it, sounds daft. Why did it not ring bells of alarm to Americans in 2003 and after, especially as it became clear that our troops would be staying a long time and that no quick victory was possible? It did not because the administration saw to it that the issue was framed differently. We weren’t planting an army. We were spreading God’s miraculous gift of freedom to a benighted people very much in need of America’s missionary help. It was the triumph of myth over logic.


Why were Americans so susceptible to myth? Foreign policy specialists don't usually spend a lot of time reflecting on this question. They should. It's the key to what often goes wrong when foreign policy issues become the subject of public debate.

The answer is, I'm afraid, simple. Myths count more than facts in these debates because Americans don't know many facts and don't care to take the time to learn them. Unlike subjects with which they have first-hand experience--think gas prices--matters related to foreign countries are both exotic and incomprehensible to most Americans. This leaves them sitting ducks for wily pols who want to take advantage of their ignorance by playing on fear and patriotism.

The extent of Americans' ignorance is underestimated. Only two in five know we have three branches of government and can name them. Only one in five know there are 100 US senators. And five years into the war in Iraq only one in seven can find Iraq on a map. Someone once said--the author is in dispute--that war is God's way of teaching Americans geography. It's a great line, but rather optimistic. A majority of Americans still haven't bothered to take a look at the map of the country where we have been bombing and killing people since 1991.

Not all is grim. On the positive side, Americans did not make wholly irrational demands of their leaders after 9/11. American Muslims were not rounded up and sent to concentration camps after 9/11 (as Japanese-Americans were after Pearl Harbor). Mosques were not closed down. Nuclear weapons were not employed against our perceived enemies. And nobody was lynched. Given what has happened in American history any one of these responses or all of them might have been anticipated. That none occurred and that nothing like them occurred is worth noting.

But polls indicate that a significant segment of the American public was susceptible to wild conspiracy theories. A Scripps-Howard poll in 2006 found that 36 percent believe that it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that U.S. officials either allowed the attack to take place or were involved it.

Americans do not have a monopoly on conspiracy thinking. Nineteen percent of Germans said in a 2004 poll that 9/11 was the work of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. The French turned Thierry Meyssan’s book The Appalling Fraud into a best-seller, despite the absence of evidence for its chief and crazy claim: that the Pentagon attacked itself on 9/11 with a cruise missile. Millions of Muslims around the world persist in believing that Jews were given advance warning of the attack on the World Trade Center.

But instead of the thoughtful debate we should by rights have had in this country, we settled for slogans:

We must fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here
The Global War on Terror (GWOT)
Mission Accomplished
You are either with us or with the terrorists
The axis of evil

To be sure the public eventually turned against Mr. Bush's war in Iraq. The one thing the public usually gets is success and failure. And Mr. Bush's war has been a spectacular failure when judged against all of the many measures by which he has asked us to judge it.

As we head into the Fall campaign and listen to the debates about the war we should keep in mind the limits of public opinion. If we don't begin to address the problem of gross public ignorance there will be more Iraqs.

One poll finding we should all keep in mind is this. Even after the 9/11 Commission reported that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attack 50 percent of the country persisted in believing there was. The implications of this are mind boggling.

Rick Shenkman
George Mason University

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

16 Killed, 40 Wounded in Baquba Bombing; Women MPs Protest Speaker; Awakening Councils fear Stab in Back

Readers who don't read blogs on weekends should nevertheless look at my Sunday column on 'The Real State of Iraq'.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Awakening Councils are afraid they will be discarded by their American sponsors. Abi Abd, formerly a guerilla in the "Islamic Army," formed the "Knights of Amiriya" in the Sunni Arab district of Baghdad near Sadr City, which kicked off the Awakening Council movement wherein former guerrillas took salaries from the US to fight Salafi Jihadis. Abi Abd said Sunday that he was afraid of being purged now as the need for the Awakening Councils declined. He has had to go into exile abroad after being accused of organizing murders and kidnappings. He denied the charges and said they were trumped up to force him out.

The Awakening movement that began in al-Anbar Province with Sattar Abu Rishah had had difficulty getting a foothold in Baghdad until Abi Abd announced his defection from the "Islamic Army" and his fashioning of the "Knights of Amiriya." He now says he feels that the US used him and his like to take on armed groups in the Karkh district of the capital, but was now discarding him. He appears to have fled an attempt by Iraqi and US troops to arrest him. He said ruefully that 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' had all along predicted that the US would use the Awakening Councils and then turn on them when it achieved its goals. Abi Abd was wounded in a bombing two months ago for which 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' claimed credit. He had been leading 1,000 men, most of them young men who had helped expel the radicals from Adhamiya and helped bring Sunnis earlier ethnically cleansed back to their neighborhood.

Col. Sa`id `Aziz Salman, leader of the Awakening Council of Taji Shores in North Baghdad expressed the same fear of being tossed aside by the US once he was not needed any more to keep security. Salman said that the minister of the interior was trying to roll up the Awakening Councils, many of whose leaders and members did have a criminal past. He said he thought Abu Abd's positive accomplishments more recently should outweigh any criminal activities of a couple of years ago. But a source in a security ministry told al-Hayat that on the country no one was above the law and if anyone broke it they would be prosecuted no matter who they are.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the speaker of the house in Iraq, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, has issued a formal apology to female parliamentarians for the way they have been treated by his office. Women MPs had held a news conference Sunday to complain that they had been marginalized and subjected to "political violence." MP Aliya Nasif Jasim said that the women parliamentarians had a lot of reservations about how things were handled in parliament, but that when they spoke up they had their views 'embargoed' and were subjected to ridicule. She said that these matters were contrary to the constitution, which guarantees the equality of women with men. She said that often women in parliament kept silent out of fear of how they would be treated if they spoke up. She said that the female MPs had been on the verge of walking out and boycotting parliament sessions if they did not get some satisfaction on this matter.

There are 76 women in the parliament of 275. Not only have they been silenced by the macho behavior of al-Mashhadani and other male colleagues, but they were hand picked by party lists and so far have tended to vote with their list, rendering them relatively toothless.

Al-Mashhadani's apology said that the experiment in democracy was young in Iraq and that there would be many mistakes along the way, of which his behavior had been one.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Kurdistan Alliance has forwarded a proposal to the Iraqi parliament requesting that it vote a resolution to ask that Iraq be admitted to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Robert Reid of AP reports that on Sunday that a female suicide bomber in Baquba attacked a government complex, killing 16 and wounding 40. Eight of the dead were police, says al-Hayat, along with 2 women and a child. Of the wounded, 7 were policemen and several others were women and children. Al-Hayat makes clear what other reports do not, that this attack targeted Iraqi police, which in Baquba are disproportionately Shiite, with many drawn from the Badr Corps paramilitary of the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). It was the largest bombing since last Tuesday, when a Shiite market in Baghdad was attacked, killing over 50 and wounding dozens. Baquba is the capital of the mixed Diyala Province, which has a 60 percent Sunni Arab majority but is ruled by ISCI. The province also has Kurds, and the Kurdistan alliance wants to annex part of it. Sunni Arab guerrilla movements such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades have been fighting the Shiite government as well as one another.

In the major northern city of Mosul (pop. 1.7 million), meanwhile, McClatchy reports that "14 people were injured including four policemen when a suicide car bomb attacked a police checkpoint in al Wihda neighborhood in downtown Mosul city on Sunday afternoon."

Guerrillas in the village of Fashka near the northern oil city of Kirkuk targeting a police patrol missed and hit a civilian car, killing 4.

In Kirkuk itself, a roadside bomb killed three and wounded 2. Two of the dead were women. The police in Kirkuk and surroundings are largely drawn from the Kurdish Peshmerga national guard. The Kurds are tying to annex Kirkuk province to their Kurdistan Regional Authority and meet opposition from Arabs and Turkmens. These bombings are part of a three-way power struggle over Kirkuk and its petroleum wealth.

Speaking of which, Tom Engelhardt meditates on the significance of the return of the US oil majors to Iraq.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Real State of Iraq

American television loves natural disasters. The Burmese cyclones that may have carried off as many as 200,000 people offered the cameras high drama.



The floods in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri along the Mississippi River, which have wiped out thousands of homes, have been carefully detailed hour by hour.



But American television is little interested in the massive disaster blithely visited upon Iraq by Washington. Oh, there is the occasional human interest story. Angelina Jolie's visit sparked a headline or two. Briefly.



By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.

In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.

Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago.

The one million number includes not just war-related deaths but all killings beyond what you would have expected from the 2000-2002 baseline. That is, if tribal feuds got out of hand and killed a lot of people because the Baath police were demobilized or disarmed and so no longer intervened, those deaths go into the mix. All the Sunnis killed in the north of Hilla Province (the 'triangle of death') when Shiite clans displaced from the area by Saddam came back up to reclaim their farms would be included. The kidnap victims killed when the ransom did not arrive in time would be included. And, of course, the sectarian, ethnic and militia violence, even if Iraqi on Iraqi, would count. And it hasn't been just hot spots like Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk. The rate of excess violent death has been pretty standard across Arab Iraq.

As for the Iraqis killed by Americans, like the 24 civilians in Haditha, the survivors are not going to be pro-American any time soon. The US can always find politicians to come out and say nice things on a visit to the Rose Garden. But the people. I don't think the people are saying nice things in Arabic behind our backs.

The wars of Iraq-- the Iran-Iraq War, the repressions of the Kurds and the Shiites, the Gulf War, and the American Calamity, may have left behind as many as 3 million widows. Having lost their family's breadwinner, many are destitute.

Although it is very good news that the number of Iraqis killed in political violence fell in May to 532 according to official sources, the number was twice that in March and April. And,it should be remembered that independent observers have busted the Pentagon for grossly under-reporting attacks and casualties. If someone shows up dead and they aren't sure exactly why, it isn't counted as political violence, just as an ordinary murder. Attacks per day are measured by whether the mortar shell scratches any US equipment when it explodes. If not, it didn't happen. McClatchy estimated a year and a half ago that attacks were being underestimated by a factor of 10.

By the way, isn't is a little odd that the death rate fell in the month of the Great Mosul Campaign? I conclude that either it can't have been much of a campaign or someone is cooking the death statistics.

But over 500 a month dead in political violence is appalling enough. The Srebenica massacre in 1995 killed 8,000. At the average rate of death in Iraq this winter and spring, a similar massacre will have been racked up in 2008. In the Northern Ireland troubles over 30 years, about 3,000 people died, and it was widely considered a bad situation. That death toll is still being achieved every 6 months in Iraq according to the official May statistics.

And, of course, by the rule of 11,that death toll would be like nearly 6,000 Americans dying in political violence every month, or 72,000 a year. (Note that this 72,000 figure would only be political deaths, since it does not include criminal homicides). The annual total murder rate in the US is about 16,000, including political violence, what little there is. The US is one of the most violent societies on earth, and Iraq in May makes it look like a pacifist convention.

In these situations, typically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.

That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years.



Equivalent to 33 million Americans wounded, that is, the entire state of California crippled or in bandages.

As for the displaced (i.e. homeless), they amount to a startling 5 million persons. There were 1.8 million internally displaced in January of 2007, and by December it had risen to 2.4 million. There are 2.3 million externally displaced, 2 million of them in Jordan and Syria.



In fact 5 million displaced persons is almost the entire population of nearby countries such as Jordan or Israel! 5 million is about the number of Jews in Israel, for instance. In absolute numbers, that is how many Iraqis are living in some other country or some other province, having lost their homes.

Some 1.4 million Iraqis are stuck in Syria, many becoming increasingly penniless. Another 500,000 to 800,000 have been displaced to Jordan, which has now closed its borders to them. Please read this excellent piece of reporting, which points out that the US has done diddly squat for these millions of people upon whom it has visited a world class catastrophe, neither allotting meaningful amounts of aid nor admitting more than a token number as immigrants. Sweden has admitted 40,000 Iraqis, nearly 4 times what the US even plans to. Please write the Senate and the Congress and demand that something be done for these, our victims.

40% of Iraq's middle class is outside the country.

Very few of the refugees abroad have returned, only a few thousand. Only 12% of the returnees say they are going back because they think it is safe now, according to UN border polls.

The refusal of the refugees to return makes me suspicious of the good news stories about security improvements in Iraq. There is an Arabic proverb that "The people of a house know best what is in the house."

2 Shiite brothers who returned home to Baquba an hour northeast of Baghdad were just kidnapped and killed by Sunnis.

5 million displaced Iraqis would be like 55 million displaced Americans, or the equivalent of everybody in California and New York combined

American commentators peculiarly lack a social dimension to their analyses. So if PM Nuri al-Maliki sends some troops up to Mosul and the guerrillas there lie low for a while, that is "progress" and "good news." Well, maybe it is, I don't know.

I do know that the apocalypse that the United States has unleashed upon Iraq is among the greatest catastrophes to befall any country in the past 50 years. It is a much worse disaster over time than the Burmese cyclone or the Mississippi floods.

You won't see it on television very much these days.

Even if it gets better, it won't get better very fast for all those millions wounded, widowed, orphaned, and displaced; as for the 1 million dead, as they say in Arabic, God have mercy on them (Allah yarhamhum). Maybe it will get better sooner for the politicians in the Green Zone. They are the sort of people that the think tanks in Washington seem to care about.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Saturday:

' Baghdad

- Around 1 p.m. a bomb planted in the car of the office manager of the Iraqi minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research exploded in Al Tobchi neighborhood injuring three including the minister's office manager.

- Around 4 p.m. a bomb planted in a civilian car exploded in Al Nidhal Street injuring two Iraqi employees of a local LG Company branch.

- Around 5 p.m. a bomb planted in a police vehicle exploded in Al Andalus square injuring two policemen.

- Police found two dead bodies throughout Baghdad; one in Al Baladiyat, one in Mansour.

Diyala

- Police found the bodies of two brothers, Ali and Mohamed Zaid, in Al Tahrir neighborhood in Baquba . . .

Kirkuk

- Around 8 a.m. a car exploded in central Kirkuk injuring the two passengers in the car. Police said they suspect the two passengers were planning a car bomb attack. The two suspects are under investigation, police said.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Baradei: Attack on Iran Would Create Fireball in ME;

The American interpretation of a recent Israeli air force exercise as a warning to Iran that it could be bombed caused oil futures prices to rise and the US stock market to drop. In other words, if you're an American with a pension fund, this stuff cost you money yesterday.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed Elbaradei said Friday that Iran's nuclear research program was not such as to raise grave concerns at the moment, and that any attack on the research facilities would turn the Middle East into a fireball and force his own resignation. Quotes from the Al-Arabiya interview via Reuters:

"I don't believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time ... it would make me unable to continue my work . . ."

"A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball . . ."

"If you do a military strike, it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons with the blessing of all Iranians, even those in the West."

Meanwhile, acting Friday Prayers leader in Tehran, hard liner Ahmad Khatami threatened a "strong blow" in retaliation if Iran were attacked. The AFP article misquotes him, since he did not say that Iran's mentality is to attack foreigners. He said its mentality is to reject foreign rule.

See also Helena Cobban.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadrist Condemns 'Eternal Slavery' to US; 1 US Troop Killed, 5 Wounded; Bombings in Mosul

An American soldier was killed and five were wounded by roadside bombs on Friday in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad.

Congress passed a $161 bn. budget for the Iraq War, with a bit for Afghanistan in it, but failed to get language about a timetable for troop withdrawal included. If Americans dislike this outcome, they will have to elect more senators (especially senators) and congressional representatives who want out of Iraq, of both parties, this fall. The gesture of November 2006 just was not strong enough, given the consensual rules of the Senate (where you really need 60 to accomplish anything) and the Hawks' continued control of the White House. Oh, that is another thing they could change in November, if they don't like throwing good money after bad.

Iraqi troops undertook a wave of arrests in Amarah on Friday, putting behind bars the mayor of the city, several members of the provincial council of Maysan, and 20 policemen, among dozens of others the government said were implicated in militia-led gangsterism in the city. Sadrists protested that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was attempting to weaken their part ahead of provincial elections. Maysan is the only province in Iraq run by the Sadr Movement, and al-Maliki's main backer, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, would like to take it in the next election.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that a compromise has been reached on the provincial elections law in parliament, which should be voted on shortly. Kirkuk will not be included in the provinces voting, until after a referendum is held there on whether it should accede to the Kurdistan Regional Government. The KRG provinces, which have now been melded into a single confederacy, also will not vote in the fall. The Sadr Movement opposes this plan, insisting that Kirkuk take part. It also opposes a quota whereby 25% of seats on the provincial assemblies go to women. The United Iraqi Alliance and the Iraqi List insist on the quota for women. The Sadrists say they fear that the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq is attempting to delay provincial elections until early 2010 and have them coincide with the next parliamentary elections at the federal level. ISCI controls most of the Shiite provinces and the Sadrists say it is afraid it will lose them because it has not performed well.

Sadrist cleric As'ad al-Nasiri preached the sermon at the Kufa Mosque on Friday, condemning a proposed Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the US as a form of "eternal slavery."

Al3marh.net reports that al-Nasiri criticized what he called secret provisions of the proposed SOFA. He said that it called for American military bases to remain in Iraq. He said that no self-respecting Iraqi would stand for such a notion.



Moreover, immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts was being extended from US troops even to big US corporations. which he condemned as an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.

He also found unacceptable any plan for the US to retain the ability to arrest Iraqis at will.

The same site reports in Arabic on the sermon of Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i on Friday at the Mosque of al-Husayn in Karbala. He is the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

Al-Karbala'i said that the Shiite religious leadership would endorse no party list or individual candidate in the upcoming provincial elections, but rather would remain equidistant from all.

He also said that any Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the US must meet the following conditions:

It must preserve the political, economic, security and cultural interests of the Iraqi people

It must not sacrifice any Iraqi sovereignty in any of those fields

It must not allow Iraq to be used as a springboard for an attack on a third country.

It must be submitted for approval to parliament, which was elected by the people.

McClatchy reports political violence on Friday:

'Nineveh

A roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol in al-Ghabat area Friday afternoon wounding eleven servicemen.

A parked car bomb targeted a police patrol in al-Wahda neighbourhood, downtown Mosul, wounding six policemen. . .

One unidentified body was found in Baghdad by Iraqi Police in Shaab.

A parked car exploded in Kindi Street, Harthiyah, central Baghdad at 9 p.m. Friday killing three civilians, injuring seven.

Diyala

Gunmen blew up two houses in Ashti neighbourhood, al-Saadiyah district , to the northeast of Baquba Thursday evening. Both houses were empty when they were blown up by remote control, but a civilian passer by was in the vicinity and was injured by the blast. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ahmadinejad: 'I was Almost Kidnapped by Bush'

The USG Open Source Center translates an article in Tabnak saying that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is alleging that the US had planned to abduct him when he visited Baghdad in March, but that the plan was foiled. Ahmadinejad is also said to have alleged that Bush sought to attack Iran twice recently, but was forestalled by the opposition of his own officer corps.

Iran's President Discloses US 'Calculated Plan' For His Abduction in Iraq
Tabnak Online
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

A Tabnak correspondent has reported: During a meeting today with members of the Qom Theological Lecturers Association, our country's president has disclosed that a US plan to abduct him in Iraq and transfer him to the US has failed.

According to one of the lecturers present at the meeting, Dr Ahmadinezhad added: Simultaneous with my visit to Iraq, the Americans intended to carry out a calculated plan to abduct me and transfer me to the US so that they could use the issue of terrorism as an excuse to blackmail the Islamic Republic.

The president continued: Despite this, praise be to God, the changes which were made to my travel schedule spoilt their plan. They were taken by surprise and realized what had happened when I was flying back to Iran. This was whilst we didn't even visit the Green Zone, which is Baghdad's safest area. The interesting point is that Bush, the US president, hasn't even stayed overnight in Iraq.

Elsewhere, the president said: Twice, Bush made a serious decision to attack Iran this year and last year. However, this country failed to take such action due to opposition from its military commanders.

The president said that attacking Iran had become Bush's obsession, and added: He even proposed to his advisors that they attack one or two Iranian cities. However, after the advisors disagreed, he called for Iran's sound barrier to be broken. But, every time Bush's advisors and military commanders stressed that any attack on Iran would create a hell which would be against US interests.

He stressed: God willing, US officials will take this wish to the grave with them.

(Description of Source: Tehran Tabnak Online in Persian -- is a conservative Persian website replacing the banned Baztab. It is believed to be associated with the former IRGC commander and the Expediency Discernment Council Secretary Major General Mohsen Reza'i. URL: http://www.tabnak.ir)
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They're Baaack; It is Politically Inconvenient to Acknowledge . . .

The consortium of American and European oil companies that had dominated Iraqi petroleum in the twentieth century is returning to Iraq to carry out service agreements aimed at expanding production in four southern oil fields.

Jonathan Steele reports,

' But the deals, known as service contracts, are unusual, said Greg Mutitt, co-director of Platform, an oil industry research group. "Normally such service contracts are carried out by specialist companies ... The majors are not normally interested in such deals, preferring to invest in projects that give them a stake in ownership of extracted oil and the potential for large profits. The explanation is that they see them as a stepping stone..."

He said the companies' lawyers had been insisting "on extension rights under which each company would get first preference on any future contract for the field on which it has worked".'

Patrick Cockburn has more.


Courtesy BBC

Bush and Cheney clearly went into Iraq primarily in order to put US petroleum firms in precisely this favored position. The US power elite wanted this outcome and connived actively at it. As Alan Greenspan put it, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Poor Iraq has been looted, occupied, and disrupted by the industrialized West for a century because of the curse of its oil wealth. The Iraqi Petroleum Company was until 1929 the Turkish Petroleum Company since it began in 1912 with a concession from the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Iraq before the 1917 British conquest. The victors of World War I used their victory to leverage themselves into Iraqi oil. The Ottomans had thrown in with Germany and Austria in 1914, and were defeated by the victorious allies. Iraq was considered a successor state to the Ottomans in its territory and so shared in the ignominy and disadvantage of defeat. A German company was one of the original concessionaries, but the French usurped its shares as a spoil of war; that was how the Compagnie Francaise des Petroles, now Total, got into Iraq. And, as one of the victors in the war, the US pressed claims to enter the concession, with its oil majors eventually being awarded a quarter of the shares.



The San Remo conference of 1920 deeply disappointed Iraqis by awarding the country to Britain as a League of Nations Mandate, or colony with term limits. The Iraqis had wanted immediate independence, and launched a months-long revolution against the British that summer. San Remo did set aside a 20 percent share in the oil concession for Iraqis, but the Western petroleum companies refused to allow implementation of that provision, locking Iraqis out of any possession of their own petroleum. They did offer to pay the Iraqi government a small royalty based on their profits, but said that would not kick in for 20 years! The Iraqi Petroleum Company was notorious for not training Iraqis to fill management positions, implementing a typical colonial business model.

In 1958 the British-installed monarchy was overthrown in Baghdad by an officers' coup that was accompanied by popular revolt. Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim [Kassim] in 1961 issued Law 80, revoking the Iraqi Petroleum Company's claims on undeveloped fields in the rest of Iraq, beyond the ones they already had developed. He set March, 1963, as the date on which the decree would be implemented.



In February, 1963, he was overthrown by the Baath Party. It is rumored that the US was complicit with that coup, and some Baathists who made it said so. The US also certainly did have foreknowledge of it.

If Washington thought the Baath would revoke Law 80, however, they were disappointed. The Baath did cooperate in destroying the Iraqi Communist Party, but it kept Qasim's oil law. The Iraq Petroleum Company retaliated by keeping Iraq's production relatively low and so starving the government of oil rents, and by not giving Baghdad as favorable terms as some other OPEC countries. After 8 months, the Baath was overthrown by another clique of officers, who ruled until 1968. The nationalist officers in Iraq were outraged by US and Dutch support of Israel in the 1967 war, and joined an oil boycott of the West that began that June. The nationalist Iraqi regime also put pressure on other Gulf oil countries to take control of their resources away from American firms that were essentially allied with Israel via their government in Washington. The later round of oil nationalizations were in some ways Arab revenge for the humiliating defeat in 1967.

In 1968 the Baath returned to power in a second coup, and in 1971 President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr nationalized the IPC. Below is an initial CIA analysis of the 1972 nationalization of Iraqi petroleum. I am omitting the Agency's incorrect prediction that Iraq would find it difficult to market its nationalized petroleum. The CIA could not have foreseen the 1973 Arab oil boycott or the quadrupling of oil prices in the rest of the 1970s.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume E-4, Documents on Iran and Iraq, 1969-1972

"CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Directorate of Intelligence
June 1972

INTELLIGENCE MEMORANDUM

SOME IMPLICATIONS OF IRAQ'S OIL NATIONALIZATION

Introduction

1. In a sudden and dramatic move on 1 June 1972, the Iraqi government nationalized all the assets of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), a consortium of US, British, Dutch, and French oil firms operating in northern Iraq. The nationalization culminates 11 years of smoldering disputes between the members of the oil consortium and the Iraqi government. The same group of oil firms also controls the only two other non-government oil-producing companies in Iraq – the Mosul Petroleum Company (MPC) and the Basrah Petroleum Company (BPC). These companies, which have less production than the IPC, have not been affected by the nationalization decree. In concert with the Iraqi move, the Syrian government seized the Syrian portion of the IPC pipeline through which the oil produced in northern Iraq is transported to ports on the eastern Mediterranean. This memorandum describes the events leading up to the nationalization and analyzes Iraq's ability to maintain output and sales of the newly acquired oil. In addition, the possible repercussions on the Iraqi economy and the world oil market resulting from the action are discussed . . .

Discussion

Background

2. The source of the present conflict between Iraq and IPC is rooted in "Law 80" promulgated in 1961 [by Abd al-Karim Qasim (Kassim)]. From 1925 until 1961, IPC held concessions in Iraq covering virtually the entire country. This law withdrew from IPC all concession acreage not then being worked by IPC companies – an area amounting to more than 99% of the total. The canceled concessions included the potentially prolific North Rumaila oilfield that IPC had discovered and partly developed, but from which production had not yet begun. The companies refused to acknowledge the validity of the law, and for more than a decade the dispute simmered. Intermittent government-company discussions failed to resolve the issue. In retaliation, IPC refused to grant Iraq the same financial benefits that other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)* were able to obtain in the mid-1960s, such as expensing royalties. This action has led to an Iraqi claim for back payments of nearly $400 million. Negotiations on the back payments claims and the North Rumaila issue took place again in January and February 1972 but ended in deadlock primarily because of IPC's adamant stand on compensation for the loss of the North Rumaila oilfield. . .

3. Tensions between IPC and the government were accentuated when oil production from the northern oilfields dropped sharply during March, April, and early May 1972. The Iraqis regarded this cutback as a further attempt to apply retaliatory pressure against the government following the breakdown of negotiations in February. By mid-May as the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) saw the serious downturn in government oil receipts, which are vitally needed for political as well as economic reasons, IPC was threatened with confiscatory legislation if the company did not increase production from the northern oilfields, agree on a long-term production program, and make a "positive offer" on the other outstanding issues. On 31 May, IPC agreed to increase production from the northern oilfields and to set up a long-range production program but continued to demand compensation for the loss of North Rumaila. By then the RCC had already decided on the need for a dramatic political move, and Oil Minister Hamadi rejected the proposal out-of-hand, insisting that Iraq would never pay compensation for the North Rumaila field. The nationalization law was adopted the next day.

4. IPC has six shareholders: British Petroleum (BP), Shell Petroleum, and Compagnie Francaise des Petroles (CFP) [Total], each with 23.75%; the two American oil companies, Mobil and Standard Oil (New Jersey)[now Exxon], are equal partners in the Near East Development Corporation and jointly own another 23.75%; and the C.S. Gulbenkian Estate owns the remaining 5%. The company's production comes mainly from the Kirkuk oilfield in northern Iraq and is exported via pipeline across Syria to the eastern Mediterranean ports of Banias in Syria and Tripoli in Lebanon.

Prospects for Iraq's Producing and Marketing the Oil

5. Although production has apparently now been stopped on orders from Baghdad, output could begin on short notice. Maintaining output from the nationalized facilities and transporting the oil from the Kirkuk field to the Mediterranean ports should pose no insurmountable problems for the Iraqis. The operation of the northern fields is already almost entirely in the hands of Iraqi nationals who are expected to remain under the new ownership. The Syrians similarly should encounter little difficulty operating the IPC pipeline.

6. Production is not the problem, however. The most serious problem facing the Iraqis is finding buyers. The companies comprising IPC control a large share of the world oil market. It is unlikely that they would agree to market the nationalized oil without an Iraqi commitment for prompt and adequate compensation. . . "

Well, the compensation hasn't been prompt. It is now likely to be adequate.
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Doggett Introduces Climate Bill

Climate MATTERS Cap-and-Trade Legislation Introduced

Washington, DC – U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), announced today that he is introducing the Climate MATTERS Act (Climate Market Auction Trust and Trade Emissions Reduction System) to institute a strong cap-and-trade system designed to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. This is the first such bill to receive primary referral to the Ways and Means Committee, which is scheduling a hearing on it within a month. Its cosponsors from that Committee include Congressmen Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

“My bill to combat global warming gives a green light to green technology, which translates into green dollars and green jobs. America can run the new green energy economy or get run over by it. We can wait and pay dearly to import this technology from abroad, or we can lead with what will become major high tech exports of American products. Let’s encourage those high-wage green-collar jobs here at home. Instead of an energy policy, which consists of little more than holding hands with Saudi princes and doing nothing as gas prices soar, jobs go overseas, and our planet overheats, we can combat global warming in a way that is right for the environment, right for our economy, right for our health, and right for our national security.”

“The Climate MATTERS Act will align public policy in a way that propels American innovation, significantly enhances America’s competitiveness in the world, creates millions of new high-skilled, high-wage green collar jobs and dramatically cleans up our environment,” said Congressman Van Hollen.

“Global warming is this generation’s greatest challenge, and we need everyone at the table now to develop a comprehensive solution,” said Congressman Blumenauer. We face a carbon constrained economy, and ignoring this will cost consumers and the environment dearly. A cap and trade system will allow us to create and transfer value. This means that by cutting emissions, we can generate revenue to invest in renewable energy sources, create jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I can think of no better opportunity and no better time to start.”

Joining Reps. Doggett, Blumenauer and Van Hollen were representatives of the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the National Venture Capital Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett

Remarks on Introduction of Climate Matters Bill

June 17, 2008

We gather today in the hearing room for a committee that considers revenue, trade, and health legislation. The proposal, which we are announcing today addresses all three.

Certainly, global warming represents our greatest environmental challenge. With the increased competition for limited resources already underway around the world, with the potential displacement of millions of people from both flooding and desertification, I believe that global warming also represents our greatest long-term national security challenge. But with every challenge comes an opportunity, and I am convinced that this immense challenge can offer a significant economic opportunity for our country to take the global lead in developing renewable energy technology and the more efficient use of all energy.

Our country has been the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluter, and my home state of Texas is the biggest greenhouse gas polluter in America. We have a responsibility to find a solution, and today we offer a new bill, the “Climate Matters Act.” This is the first climate change bill to have been introduced in Congress, which will receive primary referral here to the House Ways and Means Committee. We have been promised a hearing on it here in this room within a month. While perhaps true that climate change legislation cannot be approved this year, the only way to get it approved next year, is to keep pushing forward now on this urgent national priority.

The Climate Market Auction, Trust, and Trade Emissions Reduction System – you can see why we call it the “Climate MATTERS Act,” creates a market-based, cap-and-trade system to put strong yet achievable limits on greenhouse gas pollution. It creates a carbon marketplace in which allowances to emit greenhouse gases will be auctioned, bought, sold and traded. The goal is essentially to charge a fair market price for pollution that is currently being dumped into the atmosphere free of charge.

We applaud similar efforts by Senators Lieberman, Warner, and Boxer. Countless forces have sought to weaken and undermine their proposal. We believe that the science-based solution that we are all seeking is best advanced by strengthening the cap and trade system that they proposed, not by weakening it. Accordingly, we would both place limitations on more pollution and give away fewer allowances to pollute free-of-charge to existing polluters than was provided in their bill.

The first title of our bill concerning trade is also unique. We call for the presidential leadership, which we have lacked for eight years, to engage in immediate international negotiations to encourage all major countries to participate in a comparable cap-and-trade system. We include both “carrots” and “sticks,” consistent with World Trade Organization requirements, to encourage this global participation. US manufacturers should not be disadvantaged by foreign competitors, who continue to pollute. Our bill removes the incentive either to buy goods made from “dirty” manufacturing processes abroad or to move manufacturing offshore.

The auction we propose will raise substantial new revenue: revenue that the bill reinvests in clean energy technology, assistance to workers and consumers affected by the transition to a low-carbon economy, and some repair of the damage already inflicted by global warming. Unlike previous bills, Climate MATTERS would vest all responsibility for this auction and management of the funds that it generates to the Treasury Department and leave the Environmental Protection Agency to focus exclusively on the vital role that it was created to serve -- protecting the environment.

Another unique feature of our legislation is its creation of a “Healthy Families Fund.” Our two most pressing domestic priorities are resolving the health care crisis, which is entangling more and more American families, and the threat of global warming. This legislation offers significant help on both. The carbon auction will raise substantial revenues that can address the plight of 72 million uninsured or underinsured Americans. This fund can assist with financing access to affordable, quality care as part of our commitment to helping families transition to a new clean energy future. I appreciate the letter of support from Families USA for this important provision in our bill.

Another unique provision in our proposal expands on provisions in the Boxer substitute to Lieberman-Warner is the creation of a Transportation Alternatives Account. This is a provision developed by Congressman Blumenauer. I would ask him to expand on that and his experience as a key member of the Select Committee on Global Warming.

By creating a market for the sale of emissions allowances, we will be creating another market - a market for green technologies that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Existing polluters will seek out green technology to improve their bottom line, and reduce the amount of allowances they must purchase. One of our Caucus leaders, who truly understands that a green light to green technology translates into green dollars and green jobs is Chris Van Hollen.

Our other Committee original cosponsors include Reps. Rahm Emanuel, John Larson, Allyson Schwartz, John Lewis, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Mike McNulty, Kendrick Meek, Mike Thompson, Jim McDermott, Pete Stark, Bill Pascrell, Joe Crowley and Shelley Berkley.

I will have a complete list of our other original cosponsors shortly.

America can run the new green energy economy or get run over by it. We can wait and pay dearly to import this technology from abroad, or we can lead with what will become major high tech exports of American products. Already financing some of the most innovative developments in renewable energy technology are members of the National Venture Capital Association, whose Executive Director Mark Heesen has provided encouragement in our endeavors.

Because an effective response to global warming is our most pressing environmental concern, a wide range of environmental groups have offered encouragement and advice on this legislation. You will find letters of support from—environmental groups, the health community, scientists, physicians, and faith leaders. I would particularly like to acknowledge—environmentalists present who are not speaking: Anna Aurilio with Environment America, and Sarah Wilhoite with Earth Justice. In addition, we will hear from representatives from Dave Hamilton, with the Sierra Club’s Global Warming Campaign, Colin Peppard with Friends of the Earth, Lexi Schultz with the Union of Concerned Scientists, Dr. Mike McCally with the Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Jim Marston with Environmental Defense Fund. In addition, Jim will introduce economist Dr. Matthias Ruth, the principal author of a study noting the low cost of an effective cap-and-trade program compared to doing little or nothing about the problem.

Instead of an energy policy, which consists of little more than holding hands with Saudi princes and doing nothing as gas prices rise, jobs go overseas, and our planet overheats, we can combat global warming in a way that is right for the environment, right for our economy, right for our health, and right for our national security.

BILL SUMMARY

The Climate MATTERS Act
(Climate Market, Auction, Trust & Trade Emissions Reduction System)

The Climate MATTERS Act develops an innovative plan for the auction, revenue and trade aspects of a cap and trade system.

Strikes a Balance: The Climate MATTERS Act is environmentally strong, but realistic about its goals and methods to accomplish them.

* Domestic Auction
o The Climate MATTERS Act emissions cap will reduce emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

o Beginning by auctioning 85% of all emissions allowances, this bill quickly moves to a 100% auction in 2020.

o While excluding agriculture, forestry and small businesses from the emissions cap, this bill also provides incentives for these sectors to reduce their emissions.

* Green Investment Plan for Auction Revenue
o As the comprehensive auction system raises significant new revenue, this bill recognizes that this revenue is an important aspect of a comprehensive response to global warming. The Climate MATTERS Act devotes this revenue to addressing the social, economic and environmental aspects of adapting to a clean energy economy and offsetting the inevitable impacts of climate change.

o Consumer and Worker Assistance:
* Consumer Assistance: Provides substantial assistance to American families in meeting their household needs and making energy efficient improvements.

* Part of the revenue is used to create the “Healthy Families Fund.” The reserve fund acknowledges that climate change and lack of access to affordable healthcare are two of the largest problems America confronts. This fund will assist households with the costs of obtaining and maintaining healthcare coverage as we transition to a new clean energy future.

* Affected Worker Assistance: Provides funding for adjustment assistance, employment services, income-maintenance, and needs-related payments for workers to ease the transition to a low carbon economy. Funds will also assist communities in attracting new employers, provide local government services.

* Worker Training: Supplements funding for green worker training, and provides funding for the advancement of environmental education to create an environmentally-literate workforce.

o Environmental Protections:
* Provides funding to conserve natural resources, mitigate impacts and help wildlife and ecosystems survive global warming. Provides funding to help the developing countries begin to adapt to a changing climate.

* Provides funding to achieve real, verifiable, additional, permanent, and enforceable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture and forestry sectors, as well as promoting forest restoration and deforestation reduction efforts internationally.

o Transition to a Clean Energy Economy:
* Technological Development: Provides funding for the advancement of basic renewable energy technologies.
* Energy Efficiency: Provides funding for energy efficiency and conservation, advancement in mass transit and provides funding to load serving entities to implement energy efficiency programs for their customers. In addition, the bill provides funding for heating and weatherization assistance programs.

* Early Action: Provides funding to operators of emitting facilities in recognition of early action to reduce greenhouse gases.

* International Technology and Adaptation: Provides funding to qualified developing countries to accelerate low carbon technologies and assist the most vulnerable developing countries cope with climate change impacts.

* International Cooperation
o The Climate MATTERS Act also provides strong encouragement to other countries such as China and India to participate through a combination of carrots and sticks in a manner designed to be WTO compliant.

o The bill provides incentives to encourage early implementation of cap and trade agreements by allowing flexibility in setting emissions levels in a limited number of initial agreements.

o Carbon-intensive goods from countries lacking such emissions caps cannot enter the U.S. market without allowances purchased to cover their carbon footprint.

o In addition, the Climate MATTERS Act acknowledges the substantial benefits of tropical deforestation reductions by providing negotiators the ability to reward countries that significantly reduce deforestation, even if they are unable to implement a comprehensive emissions cap.

Fiscally Responsible: The Climate MATTERS Act devotes a portion of the auction proceeds to ensure the bill does not add to our national debt.
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The Great Torture Scandal

McClatchy and other reporters are abruptly pulling the curtain away from the Bush team's illegal practices in arresting people arbitrarily, declining to offer proof that they were guilty of anything, detaining them indefinitely without trial or charges, and deliberately torturing them to the extent of leaving long-term scars and disabilities. The torture practices originated not with lower-level officers but with Donald Rumsfeld and others in Bush's inner circle, who then later blamed lower-level officials for developing the ideas that Rumsfeld ordered them to develop. Nothing they have done has survived a court challenge where one has been permitted.


Courtesy Salon.com.

Recent reports, taken together, provide a chilling glimpse of a vast torture operation, deliberately planned out by serial torturers in Bush's White House and possibly by the president himself. The program was designed to repeal the Geneva Conventions, which the US and Israel have long found inconvenient, even though they were legislated to prevent futher abuses such as those of the Nazis. AP interviews with former detainees show that they were systematically tortured and sometimes permanently injured.

A Senate report details the evidence that Rumsfeld and other high officials were complicit in ordering torture. That is, they are war criminals.

The Bush administration committed clear war crimes at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, according to Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. The only question, he says, is whether anyone will be held accountable.

The Underscretary of Defense for Planning, Douglas Feith abruptly pulled out of his testimony on Capitol Hill about torture techniques, apparently because he was afraid to testify in the same session as Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of Colin Powell. Wilkerson was high enough to hear the real story on a lot of issues and could have shredded Feith's lies into confetti if they testified together.

Medical examinations of former US detainees shows that they were tortured. The full report is here.

CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredson appears to have argued that virtually anything short of lethal force was permitted. He told the Pentagon that torture "is basically subject to perception." He did admit the principle that "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

Then there is the McClatchy series, based on extensive interviews with dozens of released former detainees from Guantanamo and Bagram:

Tom Lasseter writes:

"The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials."

A lot of Bush's detainees had no connection to international terrorism. Some had even fought the Taliban, been captured, and then were sold to the Americans by the Taliban, who had in the meantime changed turbans and begun pretending to be loyal to Karzai.

At Afghan bases, the US military routinely practiced torture on prisoners.

In fact, the US torture turned some innocent detainees into terrorists, determining them to attack the US on their release.

McClatchy has posted many of the documents on which its series is based.

Aljazeera International interviews McClatchy reporters, who spent a year tracking down and interviewing former detainees.

Part I:



and Part II:



The Public Record wonders why Bush, McCain and the Wall street Journal are rushing to defend torture now.

The tendency of the bureaucracy to experiment on human guinea pigs reached beyond the torture of detainees to mentally distressed Veterans. The Veterans Administration experimented on them with pharmaceuticals, without their knowledge. The VA neglected to tell them the drug they were being fed had serious side effects, including "anxiety, nervousness, tension, depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempted and completed suicide." Oh, yeah, that's what a person who has been through hell in Iraq and has post-traumatic stress really needs.

So all these revelations should be on cable news 24/7, right? Not so much.

As Gen. Taguba says, the fact of the extensive torture is not in doubt. The question is whether the Bushies will get away with it. It is looking as though they will. But there are going to be some European countries where Bush and his cronies would be ill advised to visit.
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Troops Move in To Amara; Awakening Mounts Party;

Iraqi government troops began fanning through Amara and other towns of Maysan Province in the Shiite South on Thursday morning. Shiite militiamen, having been given three days to put away their heavier weapons, appear to have largely melted away for the time being. There were no reported clashes, and the army did not declare a curfew. The governor of Maysan, Adil Mahudar of the Sadr Movement, said that there had been extensive coordination with tribal sheikhs and with civil society organizations.

Iraqi forces maintained that 60 militiamen surrendered ahead of the operation. The offices of the Sadr Movement in Amara were abandoned on Thursday morning and the outside walls pockmarked with bullet holes. That tells me that that push on Maysan Province was an attempt to weaken the Sadrists in the one province they presently control. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq needs Maysan if he is to achieve his goal of melding 8 southern Shiite provinces into a single super-province.

Al-Hayat says that nevertheless, Sadrist leaders hailed al-Maliki for keeping his pledge not to arbitrarily arrest large numbers of Sadrists in the province. Still, Al-Hayat says that provincial council members, clergymen and local notables made a concerted effort to monitor the influx of Iraqi troops to ensure that they did not commit excesses.

Al-Hayat says that Maysan was a refuge for dissidents from Saddam in the old days, and is now again a refuge, this time for those fleeing al-Maliki.

The Awakening Councils in Iraq's Sunni Arab provinces are attempting to become a political force in the upcoming provincial elections, writes Michael Gisick. They seem likely to give the fundamentalist Iraqi Islamic Party a run for its money, but the idea that they will emerge as a national trans-ethnic political party strikes me as fanciful.

Trudy Rubin suggests that, ironically, the reduction of political violence in Iraq in the past seven months has laid the groundwork for Iraqi politicians to play hardball with the US on the Status of Forces Agreement now being negotiated. She argues that the stronger a position the Iraqis can maintain in the negotiations, the more likely it is US troops will start coming home.

Antiwar.com covers political violence on Wednesday, reporting 14 Iraqis killed in bombings and shootings, and 53 wounded.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday. Although the attacks are wounding more persons than they are killing, the pattern of the bombings continues to suggest an active Sunni Arab insurgency that targets specific government and police officials in a quest to forestall the stabilization of the new order in Iraq.

' Baghdad

- The casualties of Tuesday’s car bomb in the northwest Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah increased from 51 people killed to 63 people killed, police and medical sources said.

- A roadside bomb targeted a car in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada. Four people were wounded, including two officers who worked with the Ministry of Interior.

- Two dead bodies were found in Baghdad today: one was found in Al-Qanat Street in east Baghdad and one was found in Saidiyah in southwest Baghdad.

Mosul

- A car bomb targeted a convoy of Iraqi Army vehicles in the Rashidiyah suburb of Mosul. Four people were injured, including three soldiers and a woman.

- A car bomb detonated in Al-Karama neighborhood in Mosul. Eight people were injured in the blast, Iraqi police said. The U.S.-led coalition forces said that 14 people were injured in a statement.

Kirkuk

- On Wednesday morning a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in downtown Kirkuk. Three policemen were injured.

- Around 10 a.m. a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Al-Wasiti neighborhood in downtown Kirkuk city. One policeman was killed and another was injured. '

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John McCain's Oil Scam

McCain is arguing for offshore drilling to lower US petroleum prices in the "short term."



It is all a big lie, and a dangerous one at that. Our marine environment and our fisheries are already at risk. And the devastation in Wisconsin, Iowa and Mississipi from extreme weather events like flooding is where the US, and the world is going if McCain wins this argument. And McCain has the gall to say he is worried about global warming!

The world uses on the order of 86 million barrels a day of petroleum. That figure is expected to veer sharply upward as China and India go in for automobiles and trucking in a big way.

The United States uses nearly 21 million barrels a day of petroleum and liquified hydrocarbon fuel, or nearly 25% of everything the world produces daily. The US has 5% of the world's population.

The US produces about 5 million barrels a day of petroleum and another 3 million barrels a day of liquefied fuel. That 8 million barrels a day is only about a third of what we use, so we import the rest. The lower 48 states produced about 4.4 million barrels of petroleum a day in 2006.

If all the known offshore fields were drilled and panned out, the lower 48's oil production would be increased by 7%. That would be 300,000 barrels a day.


Millions of barrels of oil a day produced by US and by world, with McCain's proposed increase through offshore drilling.

0.3 million barrels a day would make very little difference whatsoever to current oil prices even if it could be brought online right now. It would be a matter of a few pennies. And, in fact, if there were to be any impact of all of offshore drilling on prices, it would not come until 2020 or even 2030.

You will note that the Saudis just offered to increase their production by 0.5 million barrels a day, and the oil futures market just yawned. And that is in the real world, right now, not in some decade or two-decades-out in the future drilling scheme.

Moreover, US consumption of petroleum is increasing over time, so the extra 300,000 barrels a day would quickly be used up and then some.

McCain is cynically wooing Big Oil in Texas in order to get campaign contributions, while lying to the American people about his offshore drilling plan having a quick impact on oil prices and their quality of life. Bringing the 300,000 barrels a day on line would make somebody a lot of money. It will do us no good with regard to energy prices, and in fact will harm our standard of living because drilling for the oil will endanger beaches and the environment more generally, and burning that extra oil will accelerate climate change.

An informed reader writes, "We can save more than 300,000 barrels a day by everyone in the US using just one sixth of a gallon less a day. The US did it in WW2, why not in the War on Oil?"

It isn't even a matter of just voluntarily using less. If the US depended more on trains and increased automobile and truck fuel efficiency, it could reduce its use of petroleum by millions of barrels a day, which would have a stupendous impact on oil prices compared to what could be achieved from offshore drilling. Rail is much more efficient at transporting goods than trucking. Trucking in the US receives very substantial hidden subsidies. Trucks tear up the highways in ways that passenger automobiles do not, so the hundreds of millions of dollars the government spends on road repair every year, which you pay for with your tax dollars, is effectively a vast subsidy to trucking companies. If that subsidy were cancelled, or given to the railroads, and trucking companies had to actually pay the cost in carbon production and road repair generated by their industry, the US would be light years closer to energy independence. It is Congress, which is bribed by campaign contributions from concrete and trucking concerns, that has set up this ridiculous system of hidden subsidies that harms us all. Moreover, Detroit's silly resistance to fuel efficient automobiles will bury the US car industry, as the world turns to vehicles produced by the Japanese or Europeans that are much cheaper to run. And Congress coddles them on all this.

"Redshift" notes below,

'To add to his new energy policy instanity, McCain is a longtime opponent of Amtrak. He's actually worse than Bush in this area. In the "differences" column of the recent NYT chart comparing Bush and McCain on policy, this is noted under "Federal spending":

"Mr. McCain has sought to emphasize his differences with Mr. Bush by portraying himself as a stronger opponent of pork-barrel projects and other wasteful spending. He says he would not sign any earmarked projects into law and would cut financing for ineffective programs, including Amtrak." '

McCain is not against Federal subsidies for commuter airlines, on which Arizonans depend.

It is estimated that Federal subsidies for highways annually amount to $500 an automobile, while subsidies for Amtrak amount to only $40 a passenger.

(Since rail is also more efficient in moving passengers than automobiles, and since automobiles account for a significant proportion of US petroleum use, opposing subsidies for Amtrak while spending billions in public money to build and repair roads for autos is suicidal.)

But I have a sinking feeling that the Democrats will have no effective answer to McCain's cynical offshore drilling ploy. Developing a Green rhetoric that is convincing to the public is the most essential political task of our generation, and of tremendously more import than terrorism or war.
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Massive Bomb Burns Market, Kills, Wounds 126; US Soldier Killed Near Hilla; Debaathification Law Never Implemented

Guerrillas detonated a massive bomb in a Shiite market in north Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 51 and injuring 75. The bomb levelled a two-story building and set ablaze 20 shops.


(Courtesy Farsnews).

McClatchy says that US military sources suspect a rogue Shiite group of being responsible for the bombing, speculating that the blast may have gone off prematurely and that it had been intended for use against US troops. The evidence given-- a secret Shiite claim of responsibility and the type of explosive-- doesn't seem to me conclusive, and I don't actually think one can rule out Sunni Salafi Jihadis as the perpetrators. I fear that the Pentagon has lied so much in the past, attributing everything bad in Iraq to "al-Qaeda", that their current campaign to blame everything on Shiite extremists linked to Iran seems suspect.

In fact, Hurriya where the bomb went off used to be a mixed neighborhood that is now largely Shiite, and a Sunni revenge bombing in reprisal for the ethnic cleansing that drove Sunnis out seems to me a plausible motive.

Guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb to kill a US soldier south of the Shiite city of Hilla.

McClatchy also reports on efforts in the Iraqi parliament to curb the activities of the Mojahedeen-e Khalq (MEK or Holy Warriors for the People), which has 4,000 fighters at Camp Ashraf in Diyala Province. Iran considers the MEK a terrorist organization.

Al-Zaman refers to the Shiite deputies who pressed for the action against the MEK as Iraq's "Iran Lobby."

It is rumored that the US Pentagon deploys the MEK to spy on and conduct covert operations against Iran, despite the State Department's having designated it a terrorist organization. Shiite and Kurdish MPs in Parliament have now banned dealings with it and demand that Iraqi troops be permitted to guard the camp entrances.

Turkey claims to have killed the bulk of 21 members of a guerrilla cell in Iraq of the Kurdish Workers Party that had been moving toward the Turkish border. PKK guerrillas have killed dozens of Turkish troops and civilians in the past year.

The law revising treatment of former Baathists, which Bush and McCain had hailed as meeting a "benchmark" for political progress in Iraq, has never been implemented. The law is so ambiguous that how it is put into effect would determine if it could actually reduce the resentments of Sunni ex-Baathists. It was denounced when it was passed this winter by ex-Baathists such as Iyad Allawi and Salih Mutlak in the Iraqi parliament, which I thought a bad sign.

Although this important Reuters story is itself a refutation of the whole Kagan-Bush-McCain victory narrative of the "surge" or troop escalation, it will not even be mentioned on American television. The troop escalation had been intended to lead to political reconciliation, not just to temporarily tamp down violence in some neighborhoods. In fact, it led to a massive ethnic cleansing of Baghdad's Sunnis. There is no evidence that most of the Sunni Awakening Councils, who take money from the US to fight the Salafi Jihadis, are eager to reconcile with al-Maliki's government, by the way.

Patrick Cockburn reports that the US side has backed down on the issue of extraterritoriality for American security contractors in Iraq. Initially Washington, in its negotiations with the al-Maliki government for a Status of Forces Agreement, had demanded that private security guards such as those of Blackwater be immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts. This demand was unacceptable to the Iraqi side and almost led to a complete breakdown of the negotiations, but Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari (from the Kurdistan Alliance) insists that the talks are ongoing and will succeed. Of all Iraqis, the Kurds most want the SOFA; it is viewed with suspicion by most Arab Iraqis. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has insisted that the text be voted on by parliament, and al-Maliki has acquiesced. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr says that it must be subject to a national referendum, for which there appear in fact to be no plans; the US is said to vehemently reject this idea.

A controversy is raging in the Arabic press over whether the 4 Grand Ayatollahs in Najaf will present their own electoral lists in the provincial elections scheduled for this fall. Three of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's deputies, in Basra, Karbala and Kut, ran on the United Iraqi Alliance list in January, 2005, apparently because the resulting interim parliament was charged with drafting the Iraqi constitution and Sistani wanted his own men there. The three did not run again in December, 2005. One of them, Ali Safi of Basra, is now apparently saying that an "Ayatollahs' list" may run in the provincial elections. This allegation has been denied by Sistani's own office. If such lists were fielded, they would be serious competition for the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which has run as part of the United Iraqi Alliance and used Sistani's picture and endorsement to enhance its appeal to voters. Many Iraqis are disappointed with ISCI's performance in office, especially with regard to the provision of services.

Half the world's growing refugee population is displaced from Afghanistan and Iraq. There are an estimated 2 million displaced Iraqis abroad, primarily in Jordan and Syria, with about 50,000 each in Lebanon and Egypt. There are an additional 2 million internally displaced. The Iraqis abroad for the most part decline to come back and UNHCR polling among them suggests they don't intend to any time soon. This datum suggests that they don't believe Iraq is stable enough to permit their return. If the hundreds of thousands of Sunnis displaced from Baghdad in the past 18 months did come back from Syria en masse, I suspect it would revive the civil war in the capital, because the Mahdi Army now occupies their homes.

The Iraqi Parliament is hoping to move out of the heavily fortified Green Zone in September, on the grounds that violence has dropped so much in the capital that it is safe to do so.

McClatchy reports political violence on Tuesday:

' Baghdad

- Around 9 a.m. a man riding a motorcycle rigged with a bomb targeted a local awakening council, a U.S. backed Sunni militia, in Sleikh neighborhood killing four members of the militia and injuring two civilians.

- Around 10 a.m. a roadside bomb exploded beneath Al Ghadeer bridge. The blast targeted Iraqi national police vehicle injuring one policeman and three civilians.

- Around 4 p.m. A roadside bomb targeted civilians in Zafaraniyah neighborhood injuring one civilian.

- Around 5 p.m. gunmen attacked two employees of the prime minister's office in Al Nisour square killing one and injuring one in their car.

- Around 6 p.m. a parked mini-bus rigged with explosives ripped through a busy market in the northwest Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah, killing 51 and injuring 75.

- Police found three dead bodies throughout Baghdad, one in Palestine Street, one in Haifa Street and one in Atifiyah.

Diyala

- Around noon a parked car bomb targeted a police checkpoint near the Diyala police headquarters in central Baquba injuring 4 policemen and 14 civilians.

Nineveh

- Gunmen killed Muhyee Al Deen Abdul Hameed, a newscaster at a local station called Nineveh Television, in Al Ziraa neighborhood in northern Mosul. The gunmen fled after they shot Abdul Hameed.

Wasit

- Around 12:30 p.m. gunmen attacked two vehicles, a mini-bus and a truck, in the town of Aziziyah. They kidnapped 6 men from the vehicles and then set the vehicles on fire. Police headed to the scene and a roadside bomb detonated in the area of the kidnapping killing police Colonel Ali Mohammed and injuring 6 other policemen.'

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Sadr won't Oppose US Crackdown on Militia; Al-Musawi Denies Mahdi Army Disbanded; Demands National Referendum on SOFA

Two bombings near a university in Baghdad killed 2 and wounded 23 persons on Monday. 3 GIs were announced killed on Monday in separate incidents. Some 15 Iraqis were estimated killed in political violence, with 43 wounded.

The Sadr Movement says it will not oppose the planned military operation in Amara as long as the Iraqi government does not take advantage of it to make arbitrary arrests of its members.

Gulf News reports that on Thursday the al-Maliki government will attack Shiite militias in Amara, the southern capital of Maysan Province. Basil Adas gives several reasons for the military operation, based on his interviews with Iraqi officials:

To stop weapons smuggling into Iraq from Iran. Maysan is near to Iran and its marshes make good hiding places for smugglers.

To stop the high rate of political assassinations in the city.

to stop drug smuggling

To stop petroleum smuggling from Amara's Bazargan, Abu Gharb, Fakah and Amara by militiamen

To further harry the Mahdi Army special forces units that fled to Amara from Basra.

The Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council is moving to revoke the immunity of parliamentarians from prosecution in Iraq. Sunni Arab MPs are afraid that the move is politically motivated and aimed at allowing the government to arrest outspoken Sunni Arab politicians such as Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Iraqi Accord Front. There are fears that the ruling will allow political vendettas within parliament.

Iraqis internally displaced by sectarian violence are demanding that the Iraqi government do something to return them to their homes. They complain that whereas the government rushed to clean out Sadr City and Basra, the West Baghdad strongholds of invading Shiite militiamen have not been addressed.

A recent report by the Pew Charitable Trust found that a lot of people in the Muslim world are angry at the US government, however much they like our bubble gum music.

The USG Open Source Center translates passages from the sermon of Sheikh Jalal al-Din Saghir, preacher at the Shiite Buratha Mosque in north Baghdad, about the Status of Forces agreement now being negotiated between Iraq and the US. Saghir is a prominent member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the main parliamentary backer of PM Nuri al-Maliki:

Roundup of Iraqi Friday Sermons 13 Jun
Iraq -- OSC Summary
Saturday, June 14, 2008 . . .

Within its 1700 GMT newscast, Baghdad Al-Furat Television Channel in Arabic - television channelaffiliated with the Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council (IISC) led by Abd-al-Azizal-Hakim, carries the following report on today's Friday sermons . . .

The channel carries anepisode of its weekly "Friday Sermons" program at 1815 GMT, as follows:

Shaykh Jalal-al-Dinal-Saghir says: "Regarding the security agreement, praise be to God, therewere many positive changes this week. The Americans presented new proposals tothe Iraqi negotiator. These proposals, although I do not want to uncover theirnature, but in general, they show significant progress in meeting the Iraqidemands. Our demands, inasmuch as they are simple, they are very clear. Theyare of the kind toward which we have no ability to retreat from. Without thesedemands we will not be able to go in any direction with any state, be itAmerica or any other state. The first of these demands is sovereignty. Iraqshould restore its sovereignty and have control on its resources and land, andthe only law that should apply to the Iraqi people is the Iraqi law. Thisdemand is simple and very clear. We have not been a cause for putting Iraqunder the mandate of Chapter VII, and, consequently, for violating Iraq'ssovereignty. These issues were caused by the acts of criminal Saddam and hisfollies. Iraq has been under Chapter VII since 1991." Al-Saghir thenspeaks about the meaning of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Al-Saghir adds:"Although we still say that we are not responsible for Saddam's crimes, weare still suffering and paying a dear price as a result of these crimes. Westill pay huge funds to Kuwait from Iraq's budget every year. If Iran sues uson what happened during its wars and obtains an international ruling on thisissue, we will also pay. We still pay or are threatened to pay to scores ofstates that were harmed by criminal Saddam."

He says: "Somepoliticians who practice one-upmanship, very regrettably, talk about theseissues in the language of selling and buying. Over the past two weeks we haveseen two examples of these politicians; a politician who practicesone-upmanship in favor of the Americans and another practices one-upmanshipagainst the Americans." He says that "we should deal with such issuesresponsibly and very cautiously."

He adds: "I say thatregarding our demands on the issue of sovereignty, the Americans now speak witha different language and there is progress in this regard. However, withoutfinding very clearly that we have been liberated from the mandate of ChapterVII and Iraq's funds are fully protected, we will not be able to say that wehave been liberated or that we have restored our sovereignty. Therefore, nopolitician can sign any document in this regard." . .


The USG Open Source Center translates an interview in the Kuwaiti al-Watan newspaper with Dr. Asma al-Musawi of the Sadr Movement, in which she comments on negotiations between the US and Iraqi governments on a Status of Forces Agreement. She confirms that the Sadrists insist that any SOFA be submitted for a national referendum and says that if such a referendum passed the agreement, the Sadrists would accept it. She also confirms that the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki has decided to exclude the Sadrists from the fall provincial elections on the grounds that the Sadr Movement maintains an armed militia, the Mahdi Army. (But the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, al-Maliki's current power base, also maintains a militia, the Badr Corps, but it is not being sanctioned for it. Muqtada al-Sadr's recent decisions to turn the bulk of the Mahdi Army into a social service organization and to field candidates only under other party lists appear to be calculated to get around al-Maliki's decision.

Al-Sadr Trend Agrees on Security Agreement Under Condition of Public Referendum
Report by Mazin Sahib: "Al-Sadri Trend Accepts the Security Agreement Under the Condition of the People's Acceptance; US Army: 'Number of Al-Sadrists Opposing the Agreement is Decreasing'"
Al-Watan (Internet Version-WWW)
Monday, June 16, 2008
OSC Document

Dr Asma al-Musawi, member of the political committee of Al-Sadr Trend, has denied the disbandment of the Imam Al-Mahdi Army. She emphasized that the trend may agree on the security agreement with Washington if it was put to a public referendum, and agreed by the Iraqi people in their absolute majority. The US Army said that the number of Sadrists, who oppose the agreement, is decreasing.

Al-Musawi said to Al-Watan that the statement by Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of this trend, on the reorganization of the Imam Al-Mahdi Army does not mean the disbandment of its organizations, it rather means the Shari'ah side will continue to fight the US forces and mandate small groups, which are personally entitled by him to do so, while the remaining members of the Al-Mahdi Army will carry out their cultural and ideological activity to resist the occupation.

Al-Watan has also learned that this statement responds to the requirements of the agreement which was made between one of Al-Maliki's advisors and the religious authority Ayatollah Kazim al-Ha'iri during the last visit of Al-Maliki to Tehran. This advisor, who is close to Al-Maliki, delivered a specific message that the government will not allow the Al-Sadr Trend to participate in the coming elections for the governorates' councils or the parliamentary elections next year if a clear decision were not issued by Muqtada al-Sadr to dissolve the Al-Mahdi Army organizations and end their armed phenomena after the government has fulfilled its obligations in guaranteeing the inspection of Al-Sadr city without the interference of the US Army.

On the Al-Sadr Trend's position on signing the (US security) agreement, Al-Musawi said: " The agreement must be submitted to a vote in a public referendum, and we will agree on what the people agree. Hence, we would agree to what the people agree on by their absolute rather than partial majority." (passage omitted on statement by the US Army)

(Description of Source: Kuwait Al-Watan (Internet Version-WWW) in Arabic -- Independent daily newspaper; Internet: http://www.alwatan.com.kw)
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McClatchy Guantanamo Guards Abused Known Innocents

John McCain's attack on the Supreme Court for upholding the right of Habeas Corpus even for Guantanamo detainees was self-serving and hypocritical. But it was also ethically wrong, because the Guantanamo system is ethically wrong.

Tom Lasseter of McClatchy reports that the news service has done extensive interviewing with 66 prisoners released from Guantanamo and found that most were either innocent or were lower level Taliban foot soldiers with no ties to international terrorism. McClatchy argues that the prisoners were routinely abused even after it became clear that they had no intelligence value. Some were radicalized by being tortured by the US, so that when they were released as innocent, they turned to attacking US interests. (This finding is the reply to the wingnuts who complain that prisoners released from Guantanamo sometimes thereafter join insurgent groups to hit US targets abroad.)
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Sadr Movement Will Back Independents;

Salah al-Ubaidi, a spokesman for the Sadr Movement, says that it will not boycott the fall provincial elections, exactly. The Movement will not run candidates under its own name, but will rather have some Sadrists run on other party lists, and will through support behind independents. This strategy is similar to that of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which cannot field candidates because it is a religious organization, but which has its candidates run under other party banners. The strategy appears to have been necessary in Sadr's case because he does not intend to dissolve his Mahdi Army militia, and the al-Maliki government is threatening not to allow his party to run because the party workers are tied to the militias.


McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday:

' Baghdad

Unknown gunmen attacked a home in Adil neighbourhood, killed the mother, father and daughter and injured the son at 5 am Sunday. Investigation as to the motives behind this attack is still on going.

A roadside bomb targeted a National Police patrol in Rustamiyah, southeast Baghdad, near the Jabha petrol station injuring 2 policemen and one civilian at 8 am today.

A roadside bomb exploded injuring 2 civilians in Wahda neighbourhood at 7 am Sunday.

3 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad today by Iraqi Police. 1 in Zayuna; 1 in Mansour and 1 in al-Risala.

Nineveh

Mosul University teacher, Weleed Saadalla was assassinated by gunmen on his doorstep at 8 am Sunday. He was about to head for work with his two young sons who were injured in the incident.

A suicide car bomb targeted the Directorate of Police in the town of Tilkeif, 20 km to the north of Mosul, Sunday. The guards in the watch towers suspected the car and shot the driver but still the car detonated killing one policeman, injuring 4 others.

Gunmen broke into the offices of lawyer Adel Hussein al-Wagaa in al-Dargaziyah neighbourhood, northeast Mosul, shot him dead and escaped.

Kirkuk

1 civilian and 1 Iraqi army soldier killed and 2 soldiers injured in explosion of IED targeting the army patrol in central Kirkuk, near the Fourth Bridge. The army vehicle was completely destroyed.

Salahuddin

1 Iraqi soldier killed and 3 injured as a roadside bomb targeted their patrol on the main route between Kirkuk and Tuz Khormatu this morning.'

Tom Engelhardt on hardended US bases in Iraq as invisible ziggurats hidden from the US public.
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Karzai Theatens Pursuit into Pakistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday threatened to send Afghan troops on hot pursuit of Taliban readicals right into Pakistani territory.

That threat doesn't strike me as a good development for the US in Afghanistan.
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2 Killed, 45 Injured in Bombings Saturday; Sadr To Appoint Special Ops Commanders; Sadrists Withdraw from Provincial Elections

A female suicide bomber injured 34 soccer fans and police in the town of Qara Tappah in Diyala Province, 75 miles northeast of Baghdad. The fans had poured into the street after watching Iraq beat China in a sports cafe. Likely this was an attack by a radical Sunni Arab cell on a largely Kurdish and Shiite Turkmen town.

AP adds, "In Baghdad, a bomb hidden on a bus exploded in a Shiite neighborhood, killing two people and wounding eight, police said. Three other civilians were injured Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in the capital's Karradah district, police said."

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that joint American and Iraqi patrols have been set up in the southern city of Amarah, and the al-Maliki government has given the Mahdi Army militia an ultimatum that members must surrender heavy and medium weapons within 3 days (i.e. they can keep their automatic rifles but no rocket propelled grenades). Amarah is largely a Marsh Arab city that politically began supporting the Sadrists strongly from at least 2004. Sadrists won the Maysan Provincial council elections in January, 2005. Sadrist control of Maysan has long been an obstacle to the plans of the leader of the rival Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, to form a Shiite provincial confederacy in the South modeled on Kurdistan in the north. As with al-Maliki's show of force in Basra in late March, the attempt to assert central government control of Amarah is likely motivated in part by a desire to help ISCI and Da'wa (the Islamic Mission Party) do well there in the provincial elections next fall.

In another report, Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that Sadrist sources are explaining that the decision of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr to form a special operations cell of the Mahdi Army to attack US troops even as the Mahdi Army itself becomes a social service organization is intended to out disobedient Mahdi Army leaders.

The new special operations force of the Mahdi Army, they says Sayyid Hasan al-Battat of the Diwaniya Sadrist office, will only attack Occupying forces, not other Iraqis. Muqtada al-Sadr will hand pick the commanders. The bulk of the Mahdi Army will be ordered to stand down and to conduct a cultural struggle against Western influence in Iraq. (This model strikes me as similar to that of Hizbullah, which until recently had pledged that its 5,000 fighters would not take on fellow Lebanese).

Aides of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr announced Saturday that his Sadr Movement would not take part in the provincial elections scheduled for this fall. Movement spokesmen said that they did not want to be part of a government widely seen by the Iraqi people as illegitimate because it labored under US military occupation. At the same time, sources in the movement intimated that the newly formed special groups of the former Mahdi Army militia would begin striking soon. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, government security forces mobilized to protect the shrine of Ali ibn Abi Talib and the offices of the grand ayatollahs.

Although the WaPo article quotes critics of the Sadr Movement suggesting that they decided not to contest elections because they knew they would go down to a crushing defeat, my own information is that the Shiite South has been trending Sadrist and they should have done well in the elections if they had run. It is more likely that they decided that the elections would be fixed or they would be excluded from running, and so they are behaving like any blocked group and turning to rejectionism and even terrorism.

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Massive Guerrilla attack in Afghanistan; 4 Marines Killed

Breaking News: Guerrillas in western Afghanistan deployed a roadside bomb to kill 4 US Marines on Saturday.

Pushtun guerrillas mounting an insurgency against the Karzai government and against NATO troops in the Pushtun areas of Afghanistan staged a daring prison break on Friday. They set off bombs at a prison in Qandahar, killing 15 prison guards and allowing 1100 inmates to escape, including 400 captured guerrillas. Although the US refers to the guerrillas as 'Taliban' it is not clear that they are seminary students are actually linked to the Taliban movement of the 1990s. Many appear to be disgruntled Pushtun villagers.



The jailbreak spoke eloquently of the weakness and incompetence of the Karzai government, which many observers believe is in the process of collapsing under the weight of its own corruption.

The collapse seems to be accelerating even though the number of foreign troops in the country has grown enormously, to some 30,000 US and 30,000 NATO soldiers. Foreign donors recently pledged $20 bn in aid, though $10 bn of that came from the US and European donors seemed distinctly wary of having their money go into the pockets of the Afghan bureaucrats and those of their extended families.

In May, more US and allied troops were killed by guerrillas in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

Aljazeera International interviews Hamid Karzai and reports on Afghanistan:



Scroll down at our Global Affairs blog for Barnett Rubin's excellent postings on Afghanistan in recent weeks.
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Al-Maliki: May ask US Troops to Leave; Al-Sadr Forms Special Groups to Fight Occupation

First, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced that negotiations between Iraq and the Bush administration over a status of forces agreement were at an impasse. He said that the US was asking Iraq to give up too much sovereignty. Earlier this week he had met with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who warned him against giving away Iraq's sovereignty to the US.

Then on Friday al-Maliki went further:

' "Iraq has another option that it may use," Maliki said during a visit to Amman, Jordan. "The Iraqi government, if it wants, has the right to demand that the U.N. terminate the presence of international forces on Iraqi sovereign soil." '

Other senior Iraqi officials speculated that al-Maliki was bluffing, as part of his negotiations with the US. But there is also the possibility that al-Maliki is serious, and is overestimating the capacity of his security forces to control the country. Al-Maliki said that the negotiations with the US would continue.

Meanwhile, Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr announced in his Friday prayers sermon that
"resistance to the Occupation will be limited to a Group that will be announced . . ."

Sadr said that he would fight the Occupation until it ended or the struggle lead to his own martyrdom. He added that 'The fight against US troops will now be waged only by the new group, while other members will "take on a social and religious role," Sadr said in a statement which was read out at mosques in the holy Shi'ite town of Kufa. '

American observers constantly underestimate the Sadr Movement, which is millions strong and has gotten stronger in the south as discontent with lack of services has risen.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Suspects' Right to Court Hearing Affirmed; Obama Advisors Clash on Troop Strength

If you liked the Supreme Court's reinstatement of Habeas Corpus, vote Obama. McCain did not like it and will be in a position to appoint a justice who will vote with the four dissenters.

Bush dismissed the ruling as that of only 5 against 4. (Wasn't that the margin that made him president in 2000?)

The US Constitution says, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

The Constitution diary says,

"The basic premise behind habeas corpus is that you cannot be held against your will without just cause. To put it another way, you cannot be jailed if there are no charges against you. If you are being held, and you demand it, the courts must issue a writ of habeas corpus, which forces those holding you to answer as to why. If there is no good or compelling reason, the court must set you free. It is important to note that of all the civil liberties we take for granted today as a part of the Bill of Rights, the importance of habeas corpus is illustrated by the fact that it was the sole liberty thought important enough to be included in the original text of the Constitution"

Robert Dreyfuss at The Nation on the conflict between Colin Kahl and Brian Katulis on the future of the US in Iraq. Kahl

'proposes a policy called "conditional engagement" for Iraq that would leave a large contingent of American forces in Iraq for several years, and which would make America's presence in Iraq contingent on political progress in Iraq toward reconciliation among the country's ethnic and sectarian groups and parties.'

Katulis

' to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, except for a small force to protect the American embassy. Katulis' CAP plan also suggests a halt in the U.S. training of Iraqi government forces, while Kahl and CNAS want to continue to train the Iraqi security forces long after U.S. combat forces are withdrawn.'

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Thursday:

' Baghdad

- A roadside bomb targeted the major general’s convoy Sameer Al-Waeli , the head of the social attention in the ministry of interior , near Beirut square in Palestine street neighborhood . Six people were injured including three guards.

- Gunmen threw a grenade on an army patrol in Safarat neighborhood (west Baghdad) . 6 soldiers were wounded.

- A roadside bomb targeted the Shaab’s mayor in Shaab neighborhood (east Baghdad). Five people were wounded including three guards.

- A controlled explosion by the Iraqi army took place for a roadside bomb which was found in Ghadeer neighborhood (east Baghdad) . No casualties reported.

- Three roadside bombs targeted a commandos’ patrol in Beirut square (east Baghdad). Nine commandos’ soldiers were injured.

- A bomb which was put inside a car detonated at the main street of the Muthana airport which houses the headquarters of Iraqi army and Dawa party. 3 people were killed and 15 were wounded (including one police commando killed and 12 others wounded) who were passing by when the explosion took place.

- Police found 4 dead bodies in Baghdad today : 3 were found in east Baghdad ( Risafa bank ); 1 in Zafaraniyah ,1 in Ur and 1 in Shaab. While 1 was found in Dora in Karkh bank.'

Antiwar.com has more.

A British MP resigns over the new law allowing suspectes to be held 42 days in the UK without a court hearing.

Michael Klare on the militarization of energy policy at Tomdispatch.com
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Airstrike in Pakistan Angers Public; Afghanistan Aid Plagued by Corruption

A wave of anger has washed over Pakistan because the US hit Pakistani troops along with the Taliban to whom it was giving hot pursuit.



I don't think a lot of the development aid given Afghanistan is reaching its intended objects.



Farideh Farhi at our Global Affairs blog on how Iran's Iraq policy is not being made by one person but is rather a joint production of dozens of officials.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

McCain Confuses Baghdad with Seoul Again; 5 Dead, 10 Wounded in Minibus Bombing; Do Ruling Shiites Want US Out?

John McCain says that it isn't too important when American troops leave Iraq, that the main thing is to ensure there aren't troop deaths. He said that the US has troops in a lot of places, including South Korea.


(Via via Veracifier).

Contrast the Arizona senator's glib comment with reporting about the real Iraq:

' There have been hundreds of unit homecomings across North Carolina in the past six years, as troops returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Few, if any, though, were as emotional as the 1132nd Military Police Company's Tuesday. The 1132nd lost four men in action in three attacks this spring, all in less than a month. More than 20 troops were wounded, some of them badly. The unit's dead accounted for nearly half the state Guard total of nine killed in action in Iraq. The losses weren't just bad luck. The unit was doing a particularly dangerous job in a bad place at a bad time. It was training Iraqi police officers on the edge of the Baghdad slum called Sadr City, a vast stronghold of the Shiite insurgents loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The insurgents waged a campaign of attacks against U.S. forces this spring. '

Then there is that, you know, problem about it costing $12 bn. a month to keep US troops in Iraq. That may be chump change to McCain. But most of us feel like we were sold a lemon on the pretense it was a Lamborghini and we aren't making any more payments on it. There are also problems about that Korea thing he keeps trotting out.

McCain doesn't seem to follow the news too closely. I don't think the South Koreans are very happy with the US these days, so maybe if McCain were more in touch he wouldn't use an old Cold War analogy.


Then there is the problem that after a bombing, Baghdad looks like this:


Whereas Seoul is like, nice:



Do you notice how Iraq and South Korea are not actually very much alike? Do you really think they will become alike in the next 4 years? Could Republicans please stop using John Gaddis's brain-dead "analogy," which never made any sense to begin with?



Bushra Juhi of AP reports,

"Iraqi police say a roadside bomb has killed five people riding minibuses in Baghdad. An officer says the bomb exploded near a bridge in the mostly Shiite Hurriyah neighborhood around 10 a.m. Wednesday. He says a woman and 7-year-old boy are among the dead, and at least 10 other people are wounded. Meanwhile, police say two mortar rounds hit a busy street in the central Baghdad area of Karrada, killing a civilian and wounding five others. The officers spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns."

In any other city in the world, these two attacks (there was at least one more, plus 4 bodies found) would be front page news. And, note that even the report of them came from Iraqi police too afraid to give their names to the press! When police are themselves so insecure and exposed to reprisals that they they have to issue crime reports anonymously, it is not a good scene.

Ned Parker of the LAT reports that some in the al-Maliki government--and senior members of the Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party and the United Iraqi Alliance coalition of which it is a part-- are seriously considering asking US troops to leave the country. They believe they can now handle security on their own, and that the Bush administration's demands that they surrender a great deal of national sovereignty in the proposed Status of Forces agreement are unacceptable.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

'BAGHDAD - Five minibus passengers were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb exploded in the Kadhimiya district of northwestern Baghdad, police said. Earlier reports said it was a bomb inside a minibus.

BAGHDAD - Two people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a fuel station in Binoog district of northern Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - A civilian was killed and seven were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in [Karrada,] southwestern Baghdad, police said. [Some reports say the killed and wounded were police.] . . .

BAGHDAD: 4 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad by Iraqi Police today. 1 in Amin; 1 in al-Obaidi; 1 in Washash and 1 in Hurriyah. . .

KUT - A roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded four others while they were on patrol in Kut, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said. . .

FALLUJA - Police said they found the bodies of five men, shot and tortured, near Falluja, 50 km (35 miles) west of Baghdad. . .

KIRKUK - A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, wounding four policemen and a civilian in central Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .'

KIRKUK McClatchy adds, 'The social and religious committee in Kirkuk city council buried 4 unidentified dead bodies including one for a woman.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Secret UK Dossier "Damning" of Iraqi Army

The narrative of the American Right about Iraq is that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is finally in control, that the Iraqi armed forces are performing well, and that in short things are now going swimmingly. This narrative is a variation on the "Good News" story that the Bush administration has used all along to propagandize the American press and public.

The supine US press even goes along with al-Maliki's assertion that he reestablished control without firing a shot in the big city (1.7 million) of Mosul, a stronghold of Sunni Arab resentment of his government.

McCain, continuing the deliberate falsehoods that Scott McClellan politely called a 'permanent campaign' even managed to praise the Iraqi forces as having done "pretty well" when they failed in a frontal assault on a small rag tag militia in Basra.

Occasionally the facade is accidentally pulled away and we see the hell hole that is Iraq under Bush more clearly. A senior intelligence official accidentally left a Secret dossier on a London train from Waterloo to Surrey. Another passenger found it, was alarmed by the contents, and passed it on to the BBC. The British government is trying to get it back.

One of the documents? A "'top secret and in some cases damning' assessment of Iraq's security forces."

Shh. Don't tell John McCain or Fred Kagan, but they've just been busted.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

BBC: $24 Bn Lost to War Profiteering; Security Agreement Faltering

A BBC investigation concludes that as much as $24 billion has gone missing in Iraq, and much of it may have been embezzled by private companies and corporations brought there by Bush:

' For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources. A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations. . .

Henry Waxman who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said: "The money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, its egregious. "It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history." . . '

If you stacked singles up into the air in the amount of $24 billion, it would rise 1500 miles high. That is roughly the distance between New York City and Dallas, Texas-- one dollar bill at a time.

In fact, all the $2 trillion or more that the US will spend on the Iraq War, including a lifetime of medical and psychiatric care for thousands of damaged veterans, will have been spent for no national purpose, but only so as to line the pockets of Friends of George and Friends of Dick. War is welfare for the right wing of the Republican Party.

My advice to the BBC if they want to follow up is to dig in some back yards in Vienna and McLean, Fairfax County, Virginia.

Someone assassinated the leader of the Al-Bu Nasr tribe on Tuesday, to which Saddam Hussein had belonged and from which many high Baath officials had come.

The Washington post reports at length on the snags the Bush administration has run into in negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq to specify the legal framework in that country for US troops and contractors. WaPo admits that Bush may just not be able to get a SOFA while he is in office.

McClatchy adds further details about how these negotiations are collapsing, and they bring up the possibility raised by some Iraqi parliamentarians that they may just ask the US troops to go home if a SOFA cannot be arrived.

Reuters speculates that the United Arab Emirates' decision to send an ambassador to Baghdad may reflect an increasing conviction on the part of conservative Sunni regimes in the region that only stronger ties with Iraq can reestablish a bulwark against Iranian influence.

Turkish airstrikes on northern Iraq are becoming commonplace.

Nevertheless, al-Zaman reports in Arabic Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is requesting Turkish help in training and drilling Iraqi soldiers.

Aljazeera International on the boom economy in Kurdistan:



Aljazeera International on the crisis
in Pakistan:



And Part 2
:


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kucinich: Impeaching Bush

Kucinich on articles of impeachment of Bush:

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Engelhardt: The World According to Tomdispatch

The following excerpt is mirrored from Tomdispatch.com in celebration of the publication of Engelhardt's latest edited book,

The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire.

The book contains my essay, "Bush's Napoleonic Folly," which compares Bush in Iraq to Bonaparte in Egypt, based on my book on that subject.

Engelhardt notes:

Here's what Howard Zinn says about the newest TomDispatch book (hot off the presses), The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire: "TomDispatch is one of the wonders of the electronic age. A touch of the finger and you get the juiciest, meatiest information and analysis, so rich a feast of intelligence and insight I often felt short of breath. Now, Tom Engelhardt has assembled some of the best of his dispatches, from some of the boldest and most astute commentators in the country. So take a deep breath and read." Naomi Klein adds: "These are the traits of a TomDispatch essay: unapologetically intellectual, relentlessly original, a little bit dangerous. For many of us, these are the key pieces of analysis that made sense of our post-9/11 world. How odd that many of them have never actually been printed. Until now. . ."

Here is the excerpt from his essay:

TomDispatch is -- as I often write inquisitive readers -- the sideline that ate my life. Being in my late fifties and remarkably ignorant of the Internet world when it began, I brought some older print habits online with me. These included a liking for the well-made, well-edited essay, an aversion to the endless yak and insult that seemed to fill whole realms of cyberspace, and a willingness to go against, or beyond, every byte-sized truth of the online world where, it was believed, brevity was all and attention spans virtually nonexistent. TomDispatch pieces invariably ran long. They were, after all, meant to reframe a familiar, if shook-up, world that was being presented in a particularly limited way by the mainstream media.

Finding myself on a mad, unipolar imperial planet, I simply took the plunge into an alphabet soup of mayhem and chaos. Let me try, now, to offer you my shorthand version of the world according to TomDispatch.

An Expeditionary Service in an Expeditionary World

In late October 2007, when top-level volunteers for duty in Iraq from the U.S. State Department had long since thinned out, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened to assign diplomats to posts in Baghdad and the provinces, whether they wanted to go or not. This had not happened since the days of the Vietnam War. At an angry "town hall" meeting of career diplomats, a foreign service officer named Jack Croddy denounced the plan. He called it a "potential death sentence." "It's one thing," he said, "if someone believes in what's going on over there and volunteers, but it's another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment."

David Satterfield, Rice's deputy, responded: "I certainly understand very much that this is extremely difficult for people who have not contemplated this kind of service." Then he reportedly added, "This is an expeditionary world. For better or worse, it requires an expeditionary service."

An expeditionary world. An expeditionary service. How typical of those muscled-up, faintly un-American phrases -- think "homeland," "regime change," "enhanced interrogation techniques," "extraordinary rendition" -- that the Bush administration has made part of our vocabulary. These were years when American men (and a few women) put on the pith helmets they had last seen in imperial adventure films in the movie theaters of their childhoods, imagined themselves as the imperial masters of a global Pax Americana (as well as a domestic Pax Republicana), and managed to sound as if they were surging across the planet with Rudyard Kipling at their side.

In the good old days of 2002-2003, before a ragtag insurgency in Iraq managed to lay low the plans of the leaders of the Earth's "sole superpower," the administration's neoconservative followers and assorted pundits openly touted empire (and, incongruously enough, "freedom"). They spoke glowingly of the United States as a new Rome or a new imperial Britain. The U.S. was to be the last great power on which the sun could never -- in fact, would never dare to -- set. Commentator Max Boot was typical when he wrote of the U.S. military in 2002, that, in its "full-spectrum dominance," it "far surpasses the capabilities of such previous would-be hegemons as Rome, Britain, and Napoleonic France." Of course, back then, a barrel of crude oil was still in the $20 price range.

By that time, the leftover American internationalists, whose weak last hurrah was the Clinton interregnum, had been ousted. Clinton's eight years had, of course, taken place in the midst of a quarter century-long Republican "revolution" that, in the name of "small government," had ramped up the powers of the national security state and the profile of the Pentagon, while slowly strangling services to the populace. From George W. Bush on down, the officials of the new administration would, however, prove extreme, even by the standards of that right-wing revolution. They arrived triumphantly in Washington as armed, aggressive isolationists who couldn't swallow the concept of partnership either in Washington or in the world.

The phrase du jour was "unipolarity." In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, there was, it was said, only one Great Power "pole" left on the planet and it was firmly embedded in Washington D.C. The job of the rest of the world was to accept that reality and bend a knee to it. Anything else would be considered a form of terrorism or, as the administration put it in one of its Ur-documents, the National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: "Our strength as a nation-state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes and terrorism." There was an unholy troika for you, a genuine axis of evil.

When Bush's people sallied forth into the world, they did so without equals, and less as classic imperialists than as imperial looters (in conjunction with crony corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, and Blackwater USA, to whom they slipped their no-bid contracts). Arm-in-arm with a mob of K-street lobbyists, Congressional power brokers, and assorted right-wing think-tanks and media pundits, they were itching to take the world by storm. These were people who imagined no problems that couldn't be overcome by a shock-and-awe-style military strike abroad. They saw their toughest enemies, however, not overseas, but in Washington. As a result, they first seized the Pentagon, then Kiplinged the military and the intelligence services, sent the State Department into purdah, and set up the most secretive, yet leak-ridden, administration in American memory.

Unlike any previous administration, they arrived in office with a full-scale allied right-wing media network already firmly in place -- their own publishing houses, newspapers, talk-radio shows, and "fair and balanced" TV news. They felt no need to jolly up to, or interact with, the rest of the media. As Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, put it in 2007, "We have endured nearly seven years of the most press-phobic government in a couple of generations."

In the phrase of critic Jay Rosen, the intent of the Bush administration was to "roll back" the media, pacifying and sidelining the major papers and TV networks; and, with the help of the assaults of 9/11, they were more than successful in doing so -- for a time. Never, in fact, had an administration released less news to those covering them. (Most newspapers and the TV news, for instance, gave up even assigning a reporter to cover Vice President Dick Cheney, a man so averse to providing information that his daily schedule was regularly unavailable, while reporters couldn't even find out the full roster of people working in his "office.")

The administration's method of ruling revolved around injecting regular doses of fear into the public bloodstream, while dominating an increasingly powerless Congress. If conquering Washington had been the only thing that mattered, the Republicans might have been titans for decades, though it's worth remembering that to do so they still needed a little help from their enemies -- even ones they didn't deign to pay the slightest attention to on occupying the Oval Office. After all, they were only conquerors after September 11, 2001. On September 10th of that year, the media was still describing the administration as "adrift"; its Secretary of Defense was believed to have "cratered"; and the President's polling figures were visibly sagging, thanks to a public which viewed him "not as decisive but as tentative and perhaps overly scripted."

The President, who had just returned from an overlong, much criticized vacation at his "ranch" in Crawford, Texas, was then being charged by figures in his own party and Republicans in Congress with being "out of touch" and out of ideas. Wielding, in Mike Davis's vivid phrase, hijacked "car bombs with wings," al-Qaeda solved that one fast. As the towers fell and that giant cloud of dust and ash rose toward the heavens, the Bush administration found itself swept along by the perfect storm toward its conquest of Washington.

When it came to conquering the world, however, the President's top officials would turn out to have an excess of faith and not a clue . . .

Tom Engelhardt
Tomdispatch.com



The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Seeking 58 Bases; Khamenei Tells al-Maliki not to sign Security Pact

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met Monday with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.



According to Farsnews writing in Persian, Khamenei told al-Maliki that the most important and fundamental problem for Iraq at present is the presence of Occupation forces. He affirmed, "We are certain that the people of Iraq, through their intrinsic unity and effort, will cross over these difficult conditions and arrive at a place befitting them. The dream of the Americans most certainly will never be realized." He emphasized that the Islamic Republic of Iran considers helping the government and people of Iraq a religious duty. He expressed the hope that al-Maliki's visit to Iran and the agreements he signed there would strengthen relations between the two countries.

Al-Maliki expressed his conviction that Iraqis were attaining a consensus and beginning to speak with a single voice. Khamenei expressed his concern that the Americans would interfere illegitimately and "impudently" in Iraqi affairs and disrupt this building consensus. He compared the current role of the US with the one the British used to play in promoting divide and rule policies even in independent Iraq after 1932. He also expressed his worry that the US would worm itself into every aspect of Iraq's affairs.

Al-Hayat writes Tuesday morning in Arabic that Khamenei advised al-Maliki not to sign any such security agreement.

Leila Fadel reports that Shiite lawmakers in Iraq told her that the US has requested 58 bases from the Iraqi government as part of the security agreement now being negotiated. The US also is said to want the authority to decide when Iraq has been attacked, and when and how to respond. The lawmakers are afraid that Washington will use that provision to drag them into the middle of a war between the US and Iran.

On being informed by McClatchy of some of these details, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama demanded that any such stipulation of 58 bases be submitted to the US Congress for approval, and that the Iraqis be told that the US does not seek permanent bases in that country. The McCain campaign had no comment.

Al-Hayat reports that Kurdish MP Mahmud Osman is saying that he has seen a second version of the agreement in which the Americans reduced their demands.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq for Monday:

' Baghdad

- A roadside bomb detonated in Harthiyah neighborhood(central Baghdad)on Karkh bank. Five people were injured with no casualties reported of the American side.

- A car bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol at Rashid Camp street (east Baghdad).Three people were killed (including 1 soldier) and 12 others wounded(included 4 soldiers and one officer).

- Mortars hit the green zone (IZ) where the Iraqi government headquarters and the foreign embassies are .No casualties reported.

- Around 4pm, gunmen attacked a jewelry shop in Mansour neighborhood. They stole the shop’s content, killed 3 people and injured 2 policemen who were in the area.

- Gunmen launched a propelled grenade on a police patrol in Shaab neighborhood. Two policemen were injured.

- Police found three dead bodies in Baghdad: 2 were found in Karkh bank; 1 in Saidiyah and 1 in Shurta .While 1 was found in Talbiyah in Risafa bank.

Mosul

- A roadside bomb detonated near the cultural group petrol station downtown Mosul city. Five people were injured

-A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Al-Sukar neighborhood in Mosul city.Two policemen were injured.

-Gunmen killed two prominent Sheikhs in Mosul city from Ubeid and Abassi tribes who were on their way from Mosul to Tal Afar..

- Gunmen launched a propelled grenade on joint forces from Iraqi police and American armies in Zanjili town .Two Iraqi policemen were injured.

- A roadside bomb detonated in Tawafa neighborhood in Mosul city.One policeman was injured.

Diyala

-Baquba morgue had buried 25 unidentified dead bodies which had been in the morgue for more than 40 days ,Ahmed Foad ,the head of the Baquba morgue.

-Around 7am, a roadside bomb detonated at Al-Muradiyah (9 miles west of Baquba).Four women were wounded where they were doing farming in one of the orchard

- Mortars hit Al-Sineija of Al-Wajihiyah town(north of Baquba).One person was killed and 2 were wounded.

- Gunmen killed a former retired officer at Hibhib (north of Baquba).

-Gunmen killed a woman in Balad Ruz (31 miles east of Baquba).

- A roadside bomb detonated in Dali Abbas (21 miles north Baquba).One person was wounded .

- Gunmen opened fire in Muqdadiyah town (30 miles northeast Baquba).Two people were seriously wounded in that attack.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Moyers, O'Reilly and Fox Gotcha "Journalism"

Fox Producer Porter Barry ambushes Bill Moyers at National Conference for Media Reform 2008, insisting that the NCMR is a partisan organization (it is not) and harassing him with silly questions about coming on Bill O'Reilly's television show. Afterward, reporters at NCMR do to Barry Porter as he had done to Moyers.

Moyers said he would come on O'Reilly's show if O'Reilly came on his first, and if O'Reilly's owner, Rupert Murdoch would explain his remark about Bush's Iraq War that "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in the any country."


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Napoleon's Egypt in Paperback

Some readers asked me to let them know when my recent book, Napoleon's Egypt, was out in paperback. Well it is out and can be ordered at Amazon.com as well as being in fine bookstores everywhere.

Of course, the hardback is still available and makes a more respectable Father's Day gift. :-)

A nice gallery of Orientalist art inspired by the French conquest of Egypt is at About.com
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Moyers on the Crisis of US Media

Bill Moyers addresses the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008:



via Freepress.net

See also 2012: the End of the Internet:


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

2 GIs Killed, 18 Wounded; Al-Maliki Tries to Reassure Tehran; Mudarrisi Denounces Security Accord

The guerrilla movement in Iraq struck with three strategic attacks and several lesser ones on Sunday. A suicide bomber targeted US troops at a patrol base in Rashad near the oil city of Kirkuk on Sunday, killing one US soldier and wounding 19 others. Two Iraqis were also wounded in the blast. On Saturday, guerrillas used a roadside bomb to kill another GI.

AFP says, "At least four civilians were killed and 23 wounded in the deadliest attack at a police centre in the Al Yarmuk district of western Baghdad. . ." The bombing struck at police recruits standing in line to join.

AFP also reports that guerrillas sent mortar or rocket fire on the Green Zone, killing 3 and wounding 7. The Green Zone is supposed to be safe and secure, and it contains foreign embassies as well as Iraqi government officies. The attacks may have been aimed at the Ministry of Defense, but fell short.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki went to Iran this weekend to attempt to assuage that country's concerns about the security agreement he is negotiating with the United States. He met with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who said, "stronger relations between the two nations will help Iraq's development and stability."

Stock earlier photo courtesy Xinhuanet

Just before that consultation with Ahmadinejad, al-Maliki had met with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, al-Maliki assured his host that he would not allow Iraq to be used as a base by a third party for an attack on Iran.

Aljazeera International reports on the visit:



Bush and Cheney are desperately afraid that the next administration will get out of Iraq, thus removing the mercantilist advantages they were trying to throw to US oil companies in developing Iraqi fields. They believe they can commit the US to a long-term military presence in Iraq by becoming the guarantor of Iraqi security at least in the medium term, and by locking in that role through a security agreement between Bush and Maliki. Iran's opposition is threatening to block this deal, and thus al-Maliki's visit.

Al-Maliki will also seek Iranian reconstruction help and provision of electricity.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that its sources say that Iranian FM Mottaki informed al-Maliki of Iran's opposition to the signing of a security agreement between Iraq and the US as long as Tehran does not receive guarantees that it will participate in a regional security order.

Al-Hayat says that the chief points al-Maliki made to Mottaki were:

Iraq wants to build a strategic relationship with Iran on the basis of mutual friendship and respect.

The US is a strategic parter for Iraq, and Iran is a dear friend.

Iraq is not an arena for the settling of scores between Washington and Tehran.

Iraq will not serve as a staging ground for any attack on Iran.

Iraqis want to build a democratic, not a sectarian, state.

Al-Maliki wants an agreement with the US, but wants to confine US troops to their bases unless he authorizes an operation. He also wants private contractors to be subject to Iraqi law. His demands have thrown a wrench into the negotiations, since the Bush administration had assumed that the US military and its contractors could retain their current freedom of movement under a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).

Note the supreme hypocrisy of the Republican Party. Bush and McCain are attacking Barack Obama for saying he would meet with Iranian officials. But they are perfectly o.k. with their man in Baghdad, Nuri al-Maliki, doing exactly the same thing. In fact, it may well come out eventually that Bush and Cheney sent private messages to Ahmadinejad via al-Maliki.

Senior Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mudarrisi of Karbala denounced the provisions of the current draft of the security agreement, saying that they damage Iraq's sovereignty and are therefore harmful even to the US image. Mudarrisi is an old-time Shiite political activist who heads the Islamic Action Council. He was exiled from Iraq during the Baath period, and trained some activist clergy from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday:

' Baghdad

- Around 7am, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in the New Baghdad (east Baghdad).Four people were injured including 2 policemen.

- Around 10 am, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol near the medical department intersection in Waziriyah neighborhood (north Baghdad) .Five were injured including three civilians.

- A roadside bomb targeted recruiters for police commandos at Nisoor square .Four recruiters were killed and 23 injured.

- A mortar shell hit the ministry of planning building near Jamhouriya bridge downtown Baghdad .Three people were killed and seven others injured.

- Around 1:30 pm, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Baladiyat neighborhood. No casualties reported.

- Gunmen threw a grenade on a civilian car whose passengers were two of the ministry of defense employees in Atifiyah neighborhood. The two passengers were injured.

- Police found four dead bodies in the following neighborhoods in Baghdad: 2 were found in Risafa bank; 1 in Atifiyah and 1 in Ameen .While 2 were found in Karkh bank; 1 in Hurriyah and 1 in Shoala.

Kirkuk

- A suicide truck bomber targeted a combined base for Iraqi and American forces in Rashad area (west Kirkuk ).Ten Iraqi and American soldiers were killed, brigadier general Sarhan Qadir of Kirkuk police said. From their side the MNF-I said “ a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device exploded near a patrol base in the Ta'Mim province, June 8, killing one Coalition force Soldier. During the attack, 18 CF Soldiers were wounded as well as two local national contractors.”'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Real Question is, Would a President McCain be good for Women?

A spate of newspaper articles has appeared profiling women activists who are furious that their candidate was defeated and who feel Senator Clinton was disrespected because she is a woman. It is often alleged that they are so angry and disappointed that they will refrain from voting for Barack Obama this fall.

I have been dismayed by the prominence of identity politics in the Democratic primaries. Working class men supported John Edwards, who sprang from their ranks (though I suspect he hasn't had a callus lately). African-Americans swung behind Barack Obama as soon as they were convinced that he had a chance of winning. According to opinion and exit polls, middle-aged and older white women disproportionately favored Clinton.

A successful, progressive Democratic Party has to be based on principles, not on voting for people who look like you. The principles can unify. Everyone needs health care. Everyone needs social justice. Everyone needs peace and prosperity. The general public, including independents and even some Republicans will vote for these principles. In a presidential contest based on principles, Senator John McCain has disadvantages.

But if we admit the principle that people should vote on the basis of their self-ascribed identity, well, people who consider themselves "white" are still a majority in this country. (Whiteness in American history is not a 'natural' given based on skin color; it is a social status constructed over time in people's minds. Irish Catholic working-class immigrants to the US were not considered white by WASPs in the mid-19th century. The Irish had to work hard to get in.)

Republican strategists have long taken advantage of the representational politics of race and gender. Lee Atwater turned Michael Dukakis into an African-American criminal by tying him to a Black parolee who later committed a heinous crime. Message from the Right? Liberal=Black, and not the Bill Cosby kind, either. The American Republican Party is almost completely a party of "whites." Yet Colin Powell and Condi Rice served as Bush's secretary of state. Why? So as to counter by image the sad reality that is so visible on television whenever the Republican convention is held every four years. Bush even explicitly used their presence in his cabinet to sidestep the question of why he had not done anything for African-Americans (in fact his policies deeply harmed them).

A similar but slightly different dynamics of identity politics involves substituting ethnic shibboleths for political reality. Thus, Bush's social policies enraged 85 percent of American Jews, who are mainstays of American progressive politics. Bush attempted to make up for this deficit by supporting the Israeli Right to the hilt in public, substituting photo ops with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and then Ehud Olmert for any engagement with the ideals of real, breathing American Jews. The unfortunate excesses of all the candidates in their recent speeches to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee continued that tradition. If principle were an issue, then the status of Jerusalem would be a matter for international law and the United Nations Security Council. Those speeches were not about principle, but about courting what the candidates think is a single-issue constituency (of course in reality it is not [and it is insulting to think it is].)

But back to candidates. The rule in telepolitics is that a face trumps policy. Does Bush blithely allow the African-American districts of New Orleans to be wiped off the face of the map? It is o.k. because Condi Rice is in his cabinet.

It stinks.

If women who supported Hillary Clinton let themselves fall for this reactionary trap, they will undo most of the achievements of women in the past 40 years.

A President McCain will support Ward Connerly's deceptive campaign against affirmative action, which has been proven to hurt women's businesses and to help the businesses owned by cranky old rich white men.

McCain has an appalling track record on issues of global women's reproductive rights and health. McCain has also steadily moved toward an absolute anti-choice position, as he attempts to appeal to the Religious Right. A President McCain may well appoint the successor to Ruth Bader Ginzburg on the Supreme Court, and his nominee will be anti-choice. The court is nearing a majority of anti-choice judges, and the long dream of the American religious Right, of overturning Roe V. Wade, is in reach for them. A McCain court could overturn reproductive rights perhaps within a year of its formation.

The Right in another country once advocated that women be limited to Kirche, Küche, Kinder" (church, kitchen, children). There isn't anything wrong with any of those, of course. It is the limitation that is objectionable. That limitation is effectively what John McCain's policies lead to. Think about it.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iran Alleges US Bribing Iraq MPs on SOFA

The USG Open Source Center translates an Iranian radio broadcast that alleges the US is trying to bribe members of the Iraqi parliament to pass the proposed security agreement with the US, with the alleged bribes totaling $3 bn. No source is given for the allegation, and the price tag seems high. At 275 MPs, that would be nearly $11 million apiece. Nor is it clear out of which funds such an amount would come. File under: "Well, that is what they said."

'Iran Radio Says US Pledged To 'Bribe' Iraqi MPs For Signing Security Pact
Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Radio 1
Saturday, June 7, 2008
OSC Translated Text

(Presenter) While Iraqi people are increasingly opposing the signing of the security pact between America and Iraq, Al-Maliki's government officials are attempting to assure people and the countries in the region that they would sign no agreement that would violate Iraqis' governance. They are thus attempting to pave the way for the signing of the security pact.

The greatest linchpin for those who are against the signing of the agreement is the view of Ayatollah Sistani, the Iraqi Shiites' source of emulation, who has set transparency, defending national governance, national consensus and approving the agreement by the Iraqi parliament as his four conditions for the signing of the pact.

This is while America is attempting to use carrot and stick policy to impose the security pact on Iraq by pledging to pay $3 billion of bribe to Iraqi parliament members - in case they agree with the security pact - and by threatening Baghdad that it will block the country's assets in American banks - in case Iraq opposes to sign the pact.

The political gap that has widened over the security pact in Iraq today is because the pact will limit Iraq's national governance and will legitimize the continuation of the occupation of this country. This gap may adversely affect the efforts by Al-Maliki's government in creating political and security stability, and may affect the result of the local council elections in Mehr (September-October).
On the other hand, it seems that due to the influence of the American intelligence bodies in Iraq's terrorist groups and Washington's control over security institutions in Iraq, the opposition of Baghdad with the signing of the security pact may lead to a new round of insecurity in Iraq with the objective of reminding the Iraqi government about the cost of such an opposition.

Under such circumstances, the national consensus in Iraq and the political and security cooperation of regional countries with Al-Maliki's government may help Baghdad's government to observe the national interests of Iraq when considering the signing of the security pact with America.

(Description of Source: Tehran Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Radio 1 in Persian -- state-run radio)'

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OSC: Iraqi Government Defends Negotiators in SOFA Talks

The USG Open Source Center reports on the efforts of the ruling United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite fundamentalist parties backing Nuri al-Maliki; OSC calls it United Iraqi Coalition) to shore up the credibility of its negotiators who are dealing with the Bush administration's push for wideranging military prerogatives in Iraq in the new Status of Forces Agreeement. It notes that the Sadr Movement has impugned the patriotism of the Iraqi negotiators. While the UIA has been critical of the US draft, as well, it has expressed confidence in Iraqi diplomats.

'OSC Report: Iraq -- Shiite Bloc Touts Government's Negotiators in US-Iraq Talks
Iraq -- OSC Report
Friday, June 6, 2008

Iraq -- Shiite Bloc Touts Government's Negotiators as US-Iraq Talks Face Skepticism Although the Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC) -- the Shiite bloc serving as the backbone of the current Baghdad government -- joined the other political forces in rejecting the terms of the preliminary draft of the US-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), it has taken steps to prevent the negotiations from breaking down under the pressure of opposition from much of the Iraqi political spectrum. Officials and media from the UIC and its core party, the Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council (IISC), have sought to boost confidence in and support for the Iraqi Government's negotiators, casting them as capable and resolute enough to stand up to US demands that have been portrayed as infringements on national sovereignty. In the face of rumors impugning the patriotism of the Iraqi negotiators -- apparently originating within the Al-Sadr Trend, the chief rival of the IISC and the UIC -- the UIC has boasted that its anti-Saddam background entitles it to be regarded as the most appropriate defender of Iraq's interests.

At a meeting of the IISC political committee, UIC and IISC head Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim attacked the terms proposed by the United States and declared that the talks "would not lead anywhere." Nonetheless, he expressed confidence that Iraq would never compromise on its sovereignty and urged the public not to turn against the Iraqi delegation (Al-Furat TV, 30 May).

Following a 4 June meeting with Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim reported that Al-Sistani shared the public's concerns over the SOFA but had confidence in the Iraqi leadership. "When (Al-Sistani) realized that the leaders who took it upon themselves to face up to this issue took honorable stands . . . the details were left to the government and the relevant agencies to handle" (Al-Furat TV, 4 June).

"While the Americans have their own agenda, we have ours -- the sovereignty of Iraq," declared Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, who heads the UIC contingent in parliament. He shrugged off the requirement that the agreement be concluded by July, observing: "We shall not bow to any timetable that might sacrifice Iraq's fundamental principles" (Buratha News, 4 June).

Describing the Iraqi delegation as "several strategic experts and experts in law" backed by "an important strategic team," Hasan al-Sunayd -- a senior figure in Prime Minister Al-Maliki's Islamic Da'wah Party, the UIC's second most powerful party -- urged Iraqi political and civic groups "not to stab (the Iraqi negotiators) from behind as they face the inflexible US will" (Al-Adalah website, 5 June).

It is possible that some of the UIC's constituent parties are uncomfortable with their leadership's position on the SOFA talks. At least one member party has voiced misgivings over the proposed agreement but stopped short of challenging the UIC leadership.

A statement issued by the Hizballah Movement in Iraq expressed "deep concern and serious reservations" over the agreement "in spite of our faith . . . that nothing counter to the interest of the Iraqi people will get by (Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim and) our political leadership" (Al-Bayyinah website, 3 June).

As part of the effort to boost confidence in the authorities' capacity to handle the problem, party officials and media have sought to raise doubts about those who have been most vocal in their criticism of the draft agreement and of the negotiators. In countering charges by unnamed critics said to be "exaggerating" the danger posed by the agreement -- presumably the Al-Sadr Trend, which has sought to make opposition to the US-Iraq agreement a focal point in its political program -- the IISC has liberally invoked its credentials as a former resistance force and hence as a defender of Iraq's interests.

Baqir al-Zubaydi -- minister of finance and a senior IISC official -- attacked the "fantasies" being promulgated by "exaggerators" casting aspersions on the negotiators. Writing as a featured commentator in the independent Shiite daily Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah, Al-Zubaydi asserted that the Shiite leadership had been well prepared for dealing with the US demands by its years of resistance to the Saddam regime, adding: "It is we who have chosen the path of the homeland and of dialogue" (5 June).
The chief editor of the newspaper of the Badr Organization -- the IISC's putatively disarmed military wing -- bristled at the claims of "those shedding tears over Iraq's sovereignty and independence" to be more patriotic than the Badr Organization. Citing past sacrifices made by his group, Karim al-Nuri objected to the "exploitation of our earnest and frank positions through playing with words and slogans and spreading accusations" (Badr, 3 June).

A report posted on the website of IISC Deputy General Secretary Ammar al-Hakim's "Martyr of the Mihrab Foundation" complained that media rumors designed to "mislead our people and divert their attention from the proper path" were defaming "Iraq's patriotic figures" in spite of their illustrious record in "the battle against the dictatorship" (Belagh, 2 June).'

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Demonstrations, Speeches Against Security Agreement; PM Faces Split in Own Party

Thousands of Shiites demonstrated on Friday after prayers against the security agreement being imposed on Iraq by the Bush administration. In Sadr City, crowds set fire to the American flag.

Even Iraqi government officials close to Washington are rejecting US demands that troops be allowed to undertake military missions without getting a go-ahead from the Iraqi government.

Helena Cobban blogs the appearance of 2 important Iraqi MPs and party leaders in Washington, DC, in which they rejected the terms of the US-Iraq security agreement or Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Interestingly, they say they only learned these details from press reporting. If major Iraqi parliamentarians who lead important parties don't know what is going on, then the negotiations are closely held by the Prime Minister's office.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Da'wa (Islamic Mission) Party has decisively split. It is the party of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The new branch, Da'wa- National Reform, has been formed by former PM Ibrahim Jaafari, and the local leadership of Islamic Mission political offices in many cities, including in Najaf, has defected to it. Al-Maliki's faction vows to regain control of those offices. Al-Hayat estimated that at least 10 members of parliament have also defected to the new party led by Jaafari.

Those 10 members of Da'wa- National Reform in parliament have joined a new political bloc consisting of the Sadrists (30 MPs), the Iraqi List (24), National Dialogue (11), Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) (15). These 90 MPs oppose the soft partition of Iraq and generally have a strong Iraqi nationalist orientation. Several have expressed opposition to the US-Iraqi security agreement now being negotiated.

So, al-Maliki is not only not making a lot of progress in attaining national reconciliation, his own party is collapsing underneath him. It is really quite remarkable that a sitting prime minister should preside over a schism in his own party, despite his control of billions of dollars in patronage.

Apparently, al-Maliki has been maneuvered by the Bush administration into a position where he has virtually no popular or party support, and is left with Washington has his only anchor.

Actually the Islamic Mission Party already had had two main branches in parliament, the Da'wa Islamiya of al-Maliki and the Da'wa- Iraq Organization of Abdul Karim Anizi. The party was originally founded around 1958 and was among the first Muslim fundamentalist parties to strive for an Islamic state, which it finally attained with the Iraqi Constitution of 2005 (it forbids civil legislation that contradicts Islamic canon law.)

Nir Rosen reports from the streets of Baghdad on the realities of the Mahdi Army, the paramilitary of the Sadr Movement.

McClatchy reports political violence on Friday:

' Anbar

- Four gunmen were killed while planting a roadside bomb at Al Nasr Wa Salam area (18 miles west of Baghdad).

- Gunmen opened fire on a policeman at Al Nasr Wa Salam who received a note threatening to kill him from Ansar Al Sunna, a Sunni insurgent group. He was shot twice and his situation is critical.

Kirkuk

- Gunmen kidnapped a colonel of the former Iraqi intelligence during Saddam's regime. He was inside his car at the petrol station in Khadraa neighborhood in downtown Kirkuk city when a BMW car stopped and took him away .

- Gunmen opened fire injured a civilian in Azadi neighborhood in downtown Kirkuk city.

- A roadside bomb targeted an officer's house in Sulaiman Beck town (south of Kirkuk).No casualties reported but small damage with the house.

Diyala

- A roadside bomb targeted a house for the KDP's(Kurdistan Democratic Party) member in Jalwla town (northeast of Baquba).One person was injured .

Salahuddin

- A combined forces from the Iraqi army and police supported by American forces raided Al-Sukariya town(west of Baiji). Abu Abdu Allah Al-Saudi ,a leader of Al-Qaeda organization ,was killed with some weapons confiscated. '

Antiwar.com has more.

Don't miss the recent essays in Tomdispatch.com.
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Bush Blackmailing al-Maliki with $50 Bn. in US Fed

The intrepid Patrick Cockburn reveals that the White House is more or less extorting the Iraqi government into signing a security pact with George W. Bush. At stake is $50 bn. of Iraqi money held in the US Federal Reserve, at least $20 bn. of which could be lost to Iraq if the government of Nuri al-Maliki declines to sign on the dotted line. Cockburn also reveals that the Iraqis wanted to diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros, and that the Americans vetoed the move. Bush wants 50 bases in Iraq and the prerogative of the US military to act unilaterally and with impunity inside the country.

Although the Bush administration is playing hardball to get this wideranging set of commitments from Iraq before July 31, and although Iraqis are eager to escape Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which limits their government's sovereignty, the negotiations may collapse in the face of widespread opposition to the baldly neocolonial terms sought by Washington. Even remaining under the UN Security Council, under Chapter 7, may be preferable to Baghdad. There were large demonstrations against the security agreement, barely covered by the US press, last Friday, and Iraqi religious and political leaders are coalescing against it. Postcolonial states of the Arab world, which only attained real independence from Britain and France with great difficulty and in living memory, are touchy about being seen as kowtowing to imperial demands. The Shah's government was overthrown in 1979 by huge crowds and a wide cross section of the public precisely on these grounds.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a 170-page report accusing Bush and Cheney of exaggerating the intelligence on the threat posed by Iraq, in the build-up to the Iraq War. D'oh.

Meanwhile, Turkey's Chief of Staff has warned that the 'status quo' in Iraq will destabilize the Middle East if it goes on. That is, he is attacking the current constitution and political arrangements, whereby Kurdistan is semi-independent of Baghdad.

Turkey and Iran are coordinating their attacks on Kurdish guerrillas, based in American-held Iraq, that have been conducting strikes against the two countries.

Turkey itself has entered a constitutional crisis over, of all things, whether women in universities may veil on campus.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Huge Explosion Rocks Baghdad, Kills 15 [18], Wounds 75; 3 US Troops Killed; Sistani wants Parliament to Approve Security Pact

A big explosion in north Baghdad killed at least 15 [late reports say 18] persons and wounded 75 on Wednesday. Iraqi police said it was a suicide bombing. The US military said it was an accidental explosion of munitions a Shiite militia was moving up for an attack on US forces. Robert Reid writes, "The force of the blast crumbled several two-story buildings, buried cars under rubble, sheared off a corrugated steel roof and left a large crater on the residential street." There were several other bombings and attacks, making Wednesday a particularly violent day in Iraq (details below).

Sadly, Reid notes, "The three American soldiers died when gunmen opened fire on them near the town of Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, a U.S military statement said. No further details were released.".

Patrick Cockburn has also gotten details of the proposed Bush- al-Maliki security agreement: "Secret Plan to keep Iraq under US Control"

Former Iraqi finance minister Ali Allawi weighs in on the security agreement. He sets the current negotiations in the historical context of the humiliation Iraqis felt over the 1930 treaty imposed on them by the British Empire as it prepared to give Iraq nominal independence but retained bases and continued to intervene in Iraqi politics. Allawi is a voice of reason and wise US officials would pay special attention to what he has to say here.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (the leading bloc in parliament and keystone of the government of Nuri al-Maliki) is saying he spoke to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani about the security agreement with Washington. He says that Sistani laid out four points to which any such agreement must adhere:

National sovereignty

Transparency

National consensus

Parliamentary approval of it

Al-Hakim met with Sistani Wednesday evening, along with some journalists. The journalists reported that the grand ayatollah stressed national Iraqi unity in the face of challenges, expressed his concern about the lack of services for citizens, including electicity and water, and said the water shortage was especially harming farmers. He also urged haste in the rebuilding of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra.

Al-Hakim said that his own party felt the current American draft detracts too much from Iraq's sovereignty and fails to protect Iraqi wealth. He said that Sistani did not go into details but stressed general principles. He maintained that in general Sistani shared the concerns of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Meanwhile,al-Hayat says, Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani, the head of the Assembly of Experts (Iran's clerical senate), said that the Americans are trying to enslave Iraqis through this security agreement and that the "Muslim nation" would not permit it.

Al-Zaman writes in Arabic that Iraqi political parties are already gearing up for this fall's provincial elections, and that the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, wants to use religious symbols and pictures of Grand Ayatollah Sistani in its campaign, even though technically deploying such images would be unconstitutional. Sheikh Hamid Mualla, an ISCI official, rejected criticism of this campaign technique by secularists. He said that the Sadrists would likely use images of the late leader Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) would use pictures of Ayatollah Muhammad Yaqubi, and that if they liked, the Communists could use pictures of Marx and Lenin.

Iraq's independents and secularists reject use of such images by a political party in its campaign. Mahmud Osman [Uthman], an MP in the Kurdistan Alliance, said he objected to the use of Ayatollah Sistani's picture in political advertising because he is not a member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq or of any other party. As for pictures of mosques, he said, these are places of worship, he was less opposed in that case and anyway it was already routine practice in Iraq.

Critics of the Islamic Supreme Council argued that its decision to plaster Sistani's image everywhere in its campaign posters showed that the party was intellectually bankrupt and had no real political platform whereby it might appeal to voters who are disillusioned with the results of past elections (which the United Iraqi Alliance coalition led by the Islamic Supreme Council won at the level of the federal parliament and 9 of 11 provinces where there are substantial Shiite populations).

Mualla argued for a closed list system in the forthcoming elections, whereby the populace votes for party lists without really knowing who exactly will fill the slots. He said the alternative, an open electoral system where candidates campaign for individual slots, would be too hard to organize in Iraq by October. He said disputed provinces such as Kirkuk would have to undertake a time-consuming census first if you were going to have open elections.

Other headlines from Al-Zaman:

Car bombs in Nasiriya, Baghdad and Falluja.

The Iraqi government has failed to bring 70% of displaced Iraqis back to their homes.

The Iranian shelling of Iraqi Kurdistan has caused villagers near Sulaimaniya to have to flee their homes in droves. (The Iranians maintain that the PEJAK Kurdish guerrilla group is basing itself in Iraqi Kurdistan and slipping over to Iran to blow things up. Iran has its own large Kurdish population that PEJAK wants to liberate from Tehran. The issue is similar to that generating tensions with Turkey.

Obama at AIPAC pledges that Jerusalem will always be the capital of Israel.

The provincial council of Basra is backing off a controversial decision it reached last month to ban the importation and sale of alcohol in the southern Iraqi port of 1.5 million (which is largely Shiite). A council spokesman said that the council had never actually meant their decision to be taken in a blanket way. He said they just wanted to stop public drinking and drunkenness in city parks and among drivers in their vehicles. (The provincial council is dominated by religious Shiite parties but Basrans have a reputation for liking the good life, so probably the religious parties just went too far and got so much negative reaction from the public that they have had to find a face saving way to step back.)

The preeminent Sunni seminary or madrasah, Al-Azhar of Cairo, Egypt, is opening a branch in Iraqi Kurdistan to train orthodox Sunni clergymen.

Fred Kaplan argues that Obama's 'talk to your enemies' strategy is not only not naive, it is the height of common sense diplomatically.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

' Baghdad

- Gunmen assassinated Col. Dhafir Al-Ani of the general inspector office in the interior ministry. His brother who was with him was injured in that attack.

-A suicide truck bomber targeted a police officer's parent's house in Shaab neighborhood in northeast Baghdad. Five people were killed and ten others were injured.

- A car bomb targeted commandos police patrol at the Ali Al-Lami restaurant at the main street leads to Jadriyah neighborhood. Three policemen were killed and six others were injured including three civilians. Police who were furious started shooting randomly killing and injuring some other civilians.

- Police found four dead bodies in Baghdad today: 2 in east Baghdad (Risafa bank); 1 in Zayuna and 1 in Palestine street .While 2 were found in northwest Baghdad; 1 in Shoala and 1 in Hurriyah.

Anbar

Around 11:30 am, a roadside bomb targeted an army patrol which was accompanied by the Arabia T.V. crew , who were filming a program called” the death road “ . One vehicle was damaged with no casualties reported , an officer of intelligence in Falluja police station said .

Around 12:30 pm, another roadside bomb targeted a combined patrol for Iraqi army and police who were in 50 patrols in Hamra area which is called the Tigris arm . Three policemen were killed (including an officer ) and four others were injured . During the raids the forces arrested 12 wanted people including 7 Qaeda leaders.

Salhuddin

- On Tuesday night two roadside bombs targeted a police patrol in downtown Tikrit transporting detainees to the police headquarters. One detainee who was arrested by the police was killed and eight policemen were injured.

Basra

- Tuesday night, a cameraman for the government channel Iraqia in Basra was injured when a roadside bomb exploded near a musician shop in Saymar neighborhood in the old city of Basra.

- Gunmen killed a shop owner of jewelry with his son inside their shop in Zubair (21 miles west of Basra) .'

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OSC: Former Sunni Insurgent Turns to Politics

The USG Open Source Center reports on the way a former Sunni guerrilla leader of the Islamic Army, Abu Azzam Tamimi, is now turning to civil politics. He has formed a political party to contest the provincial elections this fall. I view this development as extremely positive and am hoping that the provincial elections in the Sunni areas will be a turning point in the return of Iraq to relative peace. If Tamimi can bring with him other former insurgents into provincial power, they might decide they can get more at the ballot box than via bombings.

OSC Report: Iraq -- Former Sunni Insurgent Turns to Party Politics
Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The Independent High Electoral Commission of Iraq has certified former insurgent Abu-Azzam al-Tamimi's recently created Iraqi Dignity Front (IDF) to run in the upcoming provincial elections, potentially making him the first former Sunni insurgent to lead a recognized political party. Al-Tamimi has not announced the specifics of his party's political platform but has warned against a US withdrawal in light of the Iranian "occupation" of Iraq. He has also called on the government to bring more Awakening Council members into the security services. Identified by several pan-Arab media sources as a former leader in the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), Al-Tamimi led the Awakening Council in the Abu Ghurayb District of Baghdad prior to the establishment of the IDF last April. Abu-Azzam al-Tamimi (Al-Jazirah, 13 January)

On 3 June, the Independent High Electoral Commission updated its official list of registrants for the upcoming provincial elections and included the IDF led by Thamir Kadhim al-Tamimi. Al-Tamimi, who is also referred to as Abu-Azzam, told Al-Hayah -- the influential, Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily -- that the IDF consisted of tribal shaykhs, Baghdad Awakening Council leaders, "technocrats," and former elements of Sunni insurgent groups, specifically the IAI, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, and the Mujahidin Army (19 April).

Al-Tamimi expressed his wish to "create a new political balance" in the current political arena, which has been, as he termed, "paralyzed and controlled by sectarian leaders" (Iraqi National News Agency, 2 June).

Al-Tamimi justified joining the political process by saying: "Through experience, we realized that the rifle might play a certain role, but what is most important is the role played by politics" (Al-Jazirah, 20 April).

He recently alluded to a possible political alliance between the IDF and several already-established political groups, including former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi List, Salih al-Mutlak's Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, and Adnan al-Dulaymi's General Conference of the People of Iraq, a constituent of parliament's largest Sunni bloc (Al-Bayan, 2 June).

Al-Tamimi has not announced his party's specific platform but has consistently echoed the key concerns of the main Sunni political parties: the "Iranian occupation" of the country and the inclusion of greater numbers of Awakening Council members in the security services.

He complained: "Whenever there is a chance for the achievement of security and stability, we discover, unfortunately, that Iranian organizations work directly and indirectly against it" (Al-Sharqiyah, 29 April).

Al-Tamimi also warned that "the departure of US forces from Iraq now will be the biggest gift presented to Iran under the current circumstances" (Al-Jazirah, 24 March).

Criticizing the Iraqi Government's "slow" progress in fulfilling its pledge to incorporate 20 percent of Awakening Council members into the security services, Al-Tamimi said the government security forces "should not be monopolized by anyone" (Al-Jazirah, 24 March).

Several pan-Arab print and broadcast sources have identified Abu-Azzam al-Tamimi as a former leader in the IAI, a label he has implicitly confirmed. Pan-Arab and Iraqi sources began reporting on his role within the Awakening Councils by January.

Muhammad Abu-Rumman, identified in an interview with Al-Arabiyah -- the largely Saudi-financed pan-Arab satellite channel -- as "a specialist in Islamic groups' affairs," characterized Al-Tamimi as one of the "leading figures in the Islamic Army" who "contributed to the establishment of the Awakening Councils" (19 April).

In an interview with Al-Arabiyah, Al-Tamimi said that "Iranian interference, which I consider more dangerous than that of the United States," caused some IAI members to "reconsider their position" and "form a truce agreement with US forces" (18 January).

In an interview with the Qatari Government-financed pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazirah, Al-Tamimi lauded the Awakening Councils' efforts to achieve security, saying "life has now returned" to areas where Awakening Councils are active and that "they are defending their cities, children, and tribes against the renegade enemies" (24 March).

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The First Web 2.0 President?

The NYT leads this morning with "Obama Claims Nomination; First Black Candidate to Lead a Major Party Ticket." You can see from my headline that I put a different emphasis. I'm not one of those politically correct, color-blind people who finds it indelicate to mention race or ethnicity. I think those categories are largely socially constructed, but I don't deny that once they have been constructed, they have social and political significance. US urban politics can't possibly be understood without reference to communities-- WASPs, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans (in Detroit, Arab-Americans), etc.

But all that said, I don't think Obama's being Black is the thing I would put into the headline. Opinion polling at the beginning of his campaign did not show that most self-identified "whites" even saw him as Black. Initially a lot of African-Americans had their doubts, too. His mother's family is white Kansans and his early life experience was Hawaii. He first made a big splash in Iowa among white progressives, independents and younger voters, and African-Americans did not swing away from Clinton toward him until later in the campaign.

I would suggest that Obama is 'metro-racial,' by which I mean Americans of mixed and ambiguous ethnic ancestry. Of course, most Americans fit into that category, but in the older generation they were typically just coded as 'white.' Among the post-1965 generations of Americans, people often conceive of themselves differently. 1965 is significant in two ways, as the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement and as the year when Congress finally showed some shame about the 1924 racist immigration laws that allotted big annual quotas to northern European Protestant countries and limited everyone else. Instead, every country in the world was given an upward limit of 25,000 ordinary immigrants. And then the Africans, Latinos (many of them actually Mayans & etc.), Arabs, and Asians came. And they often intermarried, both with already-constituted ethnic groups in the US, and with each other. That's Obama's family.

In short, Obama is more Tiger Woods, Vin Diesel, the Rock, Kelly Hu (another Hawaiian) and Keanu Reeves than he is a traditional African-American community leader. He is eloquent about how his grandfather's experience of British colonialism in Kenya, where he was called 'boy,' articulates with the African-American experience. But that he has to frame things in this way already tells you something. In fact, Hawaii is a major unacknowledged site of metro-racialism, with large numbers of persons of Filipino, Japanese and other Asian heritage and a high rate of intermarriage. In the 1950s and 1960s I think mixed-race couples sometimes even moved there from the mainland because it was comfortable in that regard. Maybe the NYT should have headline 'the first Hawaiian Candidate'.

Of course, there are enormous anxieties in segments of the US population around the post-1965 wave of immigration, half of which has been Latino, and which is enormous--typically a million persons have come in legally every year since then. I think 'Arab' and 'Islam' as categories are often used to symbolize those anxieties about the advent of Africans, Asians and others as major new ethnicities. I.e. 'Islam' is to the early 21st century what "Nihilism" or socialism was to the early 20th century, when there were all those anxieties about Italians and Jews. It was therefore foreseeable that Obama's opponents would attempt to blunt the appeal of his metro-racialism by attempting to raise anxieties about any Muslim connection. But I think Obama's potential symbology as the candidate of the new, post-1965 American multiculturalism is why the Latinos will very likely swing behind him. If he can get 70% of the Latino vote, I think McCain loses.

In fact, it is obvious that older voters who came of age before the 1965 Immigration Act, before the new multicultural America, often don't get it. They, and rural southern whites who have a binary view of race because of how they produced and reproduced race in their local politics. And then apparently the New York Times is the other segment of society that doesn't get it. That one, I don't quite understand.

I think it is more significant that Obama is the first major party candidate for president who got where he is through the current iteration of the World Wide Web, which includes the blogging world, distributed information networks, social networking, and video sites such as YouTube (i.e. Web 2.0). That is, the Iowa breakthrough was iconic of Obama's success, because youth, progressivism, metro-racialism and independent politics are all tightly interwoven with Web 2.0.

Ironically, Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992 was the first to use email extensively to shape the news cycle and contact supporters, but Hillary Clinton's people did not seem as good (or maybe as interested) in being on the vanguard of communications technology.

Among the more important capabilities bestowed by the Web 2.0 has been a new model of grassroots fundraising. American politics had been dominated by rich old cranky white people, because they had the money and they voted. They gave us all those Republican administrations and they shaped the Clinton administration as essentially neo-Eisenhowerism. Obama really does have an opportunity to accomplish some new things in American politics, and to avoid slavish adherence to Lobby politics, precisely because he has a different economic base. People younger than 65, and people for whom certain racial categories are not the most important thing in the world, might finally have a voice. In the past, the promise of the youth vote has always faltered when it comes to the November elections. If people in their 20s, 30s and 40s really want change (and with Iraq, the economy, etc., why would they not?) they have to go on organizing, canvassing, giving and above all voting. It is in your hands, O Generation of Web 2.0.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US-Iraq Security Talks Hit Snag; Mosul Police HQ Bombed, 55 Killed or Wounded

The US is still hopeful that it can conclude a security agreement with the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on the framework for a US troop presence next year after the UN Security Council authorization runs out. The negotiations have produced a sharp reaction from a broad cross-section of the Iraqi public, Sunni and Shiite, and different factions of the Shiites. The US embassy is trying to blame Iran for all this, but the allegation won't wash. Iran does oppose the pact, but so do lots of Iraqis, including close US allies in Iraq and the nativist urban slum youth of the Sadr Movement, who don't even like Iran.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis have united to reject the draft of a security agreement proposed by the United States. A high-level Iraqi source told the pan-Arab London daily that one point of dispute is that the US wants its troops to have complete freedom of movement in the country, whereas the Iraqis want it to be limited. The Americans are said to be seeking to retain the right to dominate Iraqi air space up to 29,000 feet, and to gain open access to the land, air and water of Iraq. The US wants to retain the right to arrest and detain any Iraqi whom the US believes represents a security threat. Washington desires the right to launch military operations to chase terrorists without seeking Iraqi government permission. The US wants immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for American troops, contractors and corporations in Iraq.

The US also wants to retain the right to define terrorism against Iraq. It does not want to give any undertaking that it will defend Iraq from any outside attack unless it is convinced about the nature of that attack. Likewise it is not offering to safeguard the democratic regime in Iraq.

Iraqis for their part are demanding a recognition of Iraqi sovereignty.


Sunni Arab guerrillas used a car bomb to attack the province police HQ in the northern city of Mosul on Monday, killing 9 and wounding at least 46. Five of those killed were policemen, and 4 civilians. Mosul, a city of about 1.7 million, is Iraq's second largest. About 80 percent Sunni Arab, it is a prize over which Arabs and Kurds are conducting a low-intensity war. Baath and Sunni radical cells have been active there, and recently PM Nuri al-Maliki launched a well publicized drive to use the new Iraqi army to bring the rebellious city under control. Ninevah governor Durayd Kashmula recently admitted that this winter and spring, Mosul was under the control of Salafi Jihadis or "al-Qaeda" as he called them. Al-Maliki's campaign resulted in no major battles and the anti-government forces appear just have been lying low. Until Monday.

A US soldier was announced killed in northeastern Baghdad by a roadside bomb. On Sunday, 2 were killed in a bombing near the Iranian embassy.

McClatchy reports other political violence on Monday in Iraq:

' Baghdad

- Around noon, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol near Sarafiya bridge in Uttafiyah neighborhood (north Baghdad).One person was killed and six others were wounded including three policemen .

- Gunmen threw a grenade on a civilian car near Qahtan square in Yarmouk (west Baghdad).Three people were injured .

- Police found three dead bodies in the following neighborhoods in Baghdad: 2 in Karkh bank;1 in Amil and 1 in Iskan. While 1 was found in Fudhailiyah in Risafa bank

Mosul

- A car bomb targeted an army patrol at 17th July neighborhood. One soldier was killed and another was injured.

- A bomb which was planted inside the car of the deputy dean of Mosul agricultural college.Faris Yunis was killed in that incident. . .

Kirkuk

- Gunmen killed a policeman in downtown Kirkuk city and then they kidnapped a civilian from the same spot taking him to unknown location. '

Reuters adds: "MOSUL - A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. patrol killed one woman in western Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said."

Tomdispatch.com on presidential bloodlust.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Aljazeera: Iraqi Reactions to Security Agreement

The USG Open Source Center translates an Aljazeera segment on the proposed security agreement with the US. Via BBC Monitoring

'June 1, 2008 Sunday

AL-JAZEERA TV DEBATES IRAQI REACTIONS TO PROPOSED SECURITY DEAL WITH USA

Al-Jazeera Satellite Television at 1830 gmt on 30 May carries live a new 25-minute episode of its daily "Behind the News" programme. Today's episode discusses "the reactions of Iraqi political parties and blocs to an agreement that is under discussion by Baghdad and Washington to extend the US military presence in Iraq beyond the end of this year."

The programme is moderated by Ali al-Zufayri with the participation of political writer and analyst Dr Hasan Salman, via satellite from Beirut; and Nizar al-Samara'i, researcher at the Iraqi Centre for Strategic Studies, via satellite from Damascus.

Al-Zufayri poses two questions: "Will Iraqi political and religious sides succeed in aborting the controversial draft agreement? What would be the ramifications on Iraq and its neighbouring regional countries if the agreement were signed?"

The programme carries a two-minute video report by Al-Jazeera correspondent Nabil al-Rihani showing scenes of the Al-Sadr Trend demonstrations against the agreement. The correspondent says: "Although the Pentagon earlier denied its intention to set up permanent US military bases in Iraq, this denial did not stop the eruption of wide campaigns of criticism, even before the signing of the agreement. Al-Sadrists say the agreement legalizes the occupation of Iraq, describing it as shameful." He says that other parties rejected the agreement and described it as "encroaching on Iraq's sovereignty," adding that the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq described it as "reflecting the US occupation's political, economic, military, and social hegemony over Iraq." The correspondent says that the Al-Tawafuq Front and the Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council [IISC] expressed reservations over the agreement.

Asked to explain the reason behind Iraqi political parties' reactions to the agreement, Al-Samara'i says that the agreement on extending US military presence in Iraq was signed in principle by President Bush and Al-Maliki on 26 November 2007, explaining that those who reject the agreement, do so out of support for Iran, and those who accept it, do so on the pretext that Iran might attack Iraq. He emphasizes that "from an Iraqi perspective, this agreement is by all means dangerous to Iraq's future and, if it is concluded in the form to which some leaks pointed, it will constitute a dangerous encroachment on Iraqi sovereignty." He adds that the acceptance or rejection of this agreement should stem from a genuine Iraqi viewpoint.

Asked whether he concurs with Al-Samara'i's explanation, Salman says that the Iraqis are currently engaged in negotiations aimed "at organizing the US presence, which is active far away from the Iraqi Government's sponsorship and appears under different titles, such as security companies and other firms. Thus, it is wrong to say that the Iraqis have authorized the US forces to stay in Iraq for an unlimited period of time or have accepted to be robbed of their sovereignty, and the like." He adds that "Iraqi popular, partisan, religious, and regional concern over these negotiations will provide more strength to the Iraqi Government and negotiators in their mission."

Al-Zufayri notes that the Iraqis have rejected the agreement, although it is still under discussion and its clauses have not yet been announced, and he asks Al-Samara'i to comment. Al-Samara'i says that the details of the agreement are not known by either the world or Iraqi public, but are known to the Iraqi negotiators. He quotes IISC leader Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim as saying that "there are clauses in the agreement that encroach on Iraq's sovereignty," wondering how Al-Hakim could have said so had he not been aware of its details. He also wonders what prompted the Al-Sadr Trend supporters to go out to the streets to object to the agreement. Asked whether these Iraqi entities are capable of aborting or obstructing the agreement, Al-Samara'i says that "the political parties that are participating in the political process are the side that brought the United States to Iraq and, accordingly, I do not believe that they are really serious in their rejection of the US presence and authorization of the United States to set up permanent bases there," emphasizing that the side that can abort the agreement are those who are resisting the occupation.

Answering the same question, Salman says that regardless of the rhetoric of the other guest on the programme, "the Iraqi Council of Ministers is the executive council that is negotiating on behalf of Iraq, which is an elected and legitimate council and does not need anybody to testify to this fact." He adds that there is an executive council also comprising the Iraqi president, vice president, and the prime minister to supervise the negotiating team, and that in addition to the above, there is also the National Security Political Council, which comprises all political parties and blocs as well as all components of the Iraqi people. He expresses hope that the Al-Sadr Trend and other parties that are not participating in the government would share the others their opinion in this matter. Continuing, Salman says that the fourth mechanism in the negotiations process is the Iraqi people who will support the Iraqi negotiators, because this issue touches on Iraq's present and future, adding that: "All the above will then be topped by the opinions of the religious terms of reference and leaderships that are respected by all sects." He emphasizes that "we do not take the interests of Iran or Syria into consideration, because this issue was tackled by the Constitution. What we take into consideration are the interests of the Iraqi people, their sovereignty, and what safeguards their rights and fulfils their hopes and aspirations."

Asked what makes Iran concerned over the agreement, although it benefited from the US invasion of Iraq, Al-Samara'i says that after the downfall of the former Iraqi regime and the destruction of the Iraqi Army, Iran now finds that the Iraqi military threat has been eliminated and the US forces should leave the region. He adds that "Iran has a special project in the Gulf area and the Middle East region and feels that the US presence might obstruct this project, if this presence remains." He adds that "accordingly, Iran instructed its allies in Baghdad in one way or another to apply brakes on the US project concerning this agreement," explaining that this is why Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi visited Tehran and met with the Iranian president and other Iranian officials. He also explains that when Iran rejected the agreement, Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim stated that the agreement encroaches on Iraq's sovereignty, wondering "where this sovereignty was when Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim brought the US forces to Iraq or blessed their presence or occupation."

Al-Zufayri notes that Iraq always asks its neighbouring countries to help it maintain security and stability, and he asks Salman to explain whether these countries have the right to be concerned about this agreement. Salman comments on the observation made by Al-Samara'i concerning the benefits Iran gained as a result of the US invasion of Iraq by saying that "the US forces did not enter Iraq through Qom or Mashhad, but through the Arab countries that claim to be genuine Arabs and concerned about Arabism and Arab patriotism, and want to antagonize Iran." He explains that "Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim did not listen to what Iran told him; rather, he put forward the issue of organizing foreign presence in Iraq, particularly the US presence, more than one and a half years ago," emphasizing that the IISC did not invite the US forces to invade Iraq, but rather it was the neighbouring Arab countries.

Concerning Al-Zufayri's question, Salman says: "The Iraqi Constitution prohibits two essential matters, as do the Iraqi people, which is that Iraq should not be a passage for any aggression on any brotherly Arab country or friendly neighbouring country, whether it is Iran or Turkey. This is a red line. We will not permit the United States or any other country to create a rift between us and Iraq's neighbouring countries, or even those which are far away from it." Concerning the US military bases, he says that "we consider this issue another red line. We reject any presence, and the problem that we are trying to solve is how to free ourselves of the provisions of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, into which Saddam Husayn plunged us in 1991 when he invaded the sisterly State of Kuwait, and also how to settle the debts and fines, from which many foreign countries exempted us from payment, while the Arab countries are continuing to ask us to settle debts of tens and hundreds of billions of US dollars."

Asked what should be the ideal relationship between Iraq and the United States, Al-Samara'i says that "after the withdrawal of the United States, our interest will be in establishing relations based on equivalence, friendship, and common interests, provided that it apologizes to the Iraqi people and compensates them for the losses they sustained to their institutions and individuals." Asked whether Iraq can hold fast if the United States withdraws abruptly, Al-Samara'i explains that the withdrawal should be scheduled and not abrupt.

Answering the same question, Salman says that "through their representatives, the Iraqi Government, the authority, and honourable national parties that are seeking to organize this presence, the Iraqi people will try to find the solution, either through scheduling the US withdrawal, extending US presence, or through this agreement which preserves Iraq's sovereignty, independence, interests, and economy. Otherwise, we will be delaying matters until objective and new circumstances that would rescue us from this presence are made available. We have many alternatives and we also have full confidence in our government and people to free us from this impasse."

Source: Al-Jazeera TV, Doha, in Arabic 1830 gmt 30 May 08 '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Obama, the Dukakis Trap, and Meeting Sistani

Barack Obama is considering a trip to Iraq this summer. I fear he has been forced into this visit by John McCain, who keeps taunting him on his limited foreign policy experience, saying he has not been to Iraq since 2006 and so does not understand how the "surge" was "victorious."


McCain's taunts are ridiculous. His foreign policy-making experience is also limited, since he was not in the executive. To the extent he has been involved in others' foreign policy initiatives, he has been wrong most of the time. He demanded more money in the 1980s for the mujahideen in Afghanistan, some of whom later morphed into al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He coddled Pakistani military dictators such as Gen. Zia ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf. Gen. Zia promoted the fundamentalist Jama'at-i Islami and the 'Islamization' of Pakistani law. Musharraf declined to follow through on former PM Nawaz Sharif's pledge to send in a SWAT team to get Usama Bin Laden, in fall of 1999. McCain also was tight with Ahmad Chalabi and helped get up the Iraq War in the first place.

So much for the Arizona Senator's 'experience' and good foreign policy sense.

Moreover, as CNN war correspondent Michael Ware observed from Baghdad recently, any VIP visit to Iraq, cocooned inside the US military and the Green Zone, would be more dog-and-pony show than fact-finding mission. Guerrilla wars are not apparent on the surface. People shop, cars circulate, things look all right. But then in this neighborhood or that there is a bomb, there are killings. Neighborhoods slowly change their ethnic complexion. Outsiders wouldn't even notice it. Over time, the horror of guerrilla war, like a determined serial killer, imprints itself on the society. The fear stays in the back of peoples' minds. But you couldn't see it on a VIP visit.

Moreover, the McCain camp is hoping for a 'Dukakis moment.' They hope they can get Obama looking awkward or nerdy, trying to play soldier in Iraq. Then they can do a remake of Bush Sr.'s notorious hit job on then presidential candidate Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts.



So here is some advice for Senator Obama if he goes to Iraq.

See if a meeting can be set up with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani has enormous moral authority in Iraq and is known for his support for national unity. No one could slam Obama for meeting with the Grand Ayatollah. Paul Bremer corresponded with him. He is not a radical and is well respected by the US military. And, when Obama comes to debate McCain, the Grand Ayatollah would give him a trump card. "Senator McCain speaks of having US bases in Iraq for a hundred years. Grand Ayatollah Sistani and other key Iraqi leaders told me to my face that any such plans are completely unacceptable to them. How likely is it that the McCain fatwa can be more popular or legitimate in Iraq than the Sistani fatwa?"

Sistani doesn't meet many foreigners. But he has met UN special envoys and a wide range of politicians. It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that he would meet Obama. Providing security in Najaf could be done. US Ambassador Ryan Crocker was in Najaf recently. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim could set it up and help guarantee it.

As a reader noted below, he should go to Amman, Jordan, and meet with community leaders of the over 500,000 Iraqi expatriates there to highlight the plight of Iraqi displaced persons.

Senator Obama is not to try to drive any military equipment while there.

If at all possible he is not to be photographed wearing a combat helmet.

He should meet with the Iraqi government leaders, but should also seek meetings beyond that circle. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, as well as the leaders of the major parties--Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Jalal Talabani, Massoud Barzani and even Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi (Iraqi Islamic Party which is Sunni fundamentalist), will tend to feed him the Green Zone party line. He should also meet with the leaders of the Fadhila Party (powerful in the key port of Basra) and with secular nationalists. If an unobjectionable Sadrist MP could be found, and no photographs were allowed, that would be a good meeting.

McCain will try to focus on the US military in Iraq, which is a diversion. The question is Iraq and Iraqis. What do they want? Where are their politics going? What relationship do they want with the US.

By going to Iraqi political and civil society, Obama can elude the Dukakis trap that McCain is trying to set for him.

He can moreover shift the discourse from whether the US military can be "victorious" in Iraq to what Iraqis want. Since the Republican talking points have for so long focused on bestowing democracy on Iraq, that would be an effective counter to McCain's 'victory' narrative.

---

An informed and experienced observer writes:

' to your . . . posting today, I would add that Obama should be accompanied by someone like Jim Webb or Chuck Hagel for their military smarts and /or Joe Biden on the political side. Obama should also ask for meetings with one or two of Iraq’s top military leaders. Finally, he should bring along his own interpreters and should not necessarily feel impelled to include US officials/military in all of his meetings. His interlocutors might be much more candid in such a setting. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shiite Cleric, MP, from al-Maliki's Coalition Denounces Security Accord

Robert Reid of AP reports that the Iraqi government is acknowledging differences with the US over the proposed security agreement intended to regulate the role of US troops in Iraq.

The USG Open Source Center translates remarks last Friday of Jalal al-Din al-Saghir of the Buratha Mosque in north Baghdad. Saghir is a leading member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the most influential party in the government of Prime Minister Nur al-Maliki and leader of the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance.

Saghir's views are likely close to party leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the power behind the al-Maliki throne. That is, Saghir is no Muqtada al-Sadr but rather a pillar of the Shiite-American alliance in Iraq. I view Saghir's criticisms of the proposed security agreement between Bush and al-Maliki as a sign that the negotiations are in real trouble.

'Roundup of Iraqi Friday Sermons 30 May
Iraq -- OSC Summary
Saturday, May 31, 2008 . . .

Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah Television in Arabic - government-sponsored television station, run by the Iraqi Media Network - at 0914 GMT is observed to carry live the following Friday sermon from the Buratha Mosque in Baghdad. Shaykh Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir delivers the sermon . . .

In his second sermon, Shaykh Al-Saghir discusses the security agreement between Iraq and the United States. He says: "There has been much talk in the newspapers and space channels about the so-called security agreement as if we have already signed this agreement or about to sign it. I can say that we, who are concerned about this agreement, felt as if we do not know what is taking place in this regard."

He adds: "Negotiations took place and the nature of negotiations is that they take place in accordance with timetables or at stages. In the first days of the negotiations, this and that side present what they have. The Americans presented what they want and the Iraqis then presented what they want. They discussed these issues and agreed or disagreed on some issues. However, they are not the side that accepts or decides on these issues. They have presented their ideas at the beginning and an agreement was reached to the effect that the negotiating delegation will be led by the prime minister, the term of reference is the Political Council of National Security, and the side that accepts or does not accept this agreement is the parliament."

He says that "we wanted all things to be transparent and clear and we will accept what the people accept and we will reject what the people reject." He adds that "we do not have any person who can sign an agreement without consulting the people and the main terms of reference in political decision-making."

Al-Saghir says: "The Americans presented their ideas and although the prime minister has his own opinion and has expressed his opinion, but because he is trusted by the Political Council of National Security, he has brought these ideas and presented them to the Political Council of National Security."

He adds: "Frankly speaking, we found out that most of what the Americans presented conflicts with the principles on which we wanted the agreement to be based on. We said that the first principle is Iraq's sovereignty. We will not accept anything that might undermine Iraq's sovereignty. You have heard this from us before and we will reiterate it and will continue to be committed to it. This is because Iraq's sovereignty is the main principle here."

He says: "So, we do not accept anyone to practice one-upmanship with us over our patriotism and concern about the Iraqi people or Iraq's unity. We do not accept that such talk be addressed to us in a form of advice or in a way to draw our attention. We are not children in politics so that we will not pay attention to the bases of the political process. We have organized the Declaration of Principles between us and the Americans based on rules. The first rule, which was read at the Council of Representatives, calls for liberating Iraq from the mandate of Chapter VII. We said hundreds of times that liberating Iraq from the mandate of Chapter VII guarantees Iraq's sovereignty. Now, some sides put obstacles in front of us and say that the Iraqi funds will be squandered. For the sake of safeguarding Iraq's sovereignty, we are ready to give all our money. We want to sacrifice our souls in order to safeguard Iraq's sovereignty. So, what is the significance of money here? We have suffered throughout this period in order to protect this homeland and to keep it standing on its feet with pride and dignity." He adds that "the other clause is that the agreement should protect the Iraqi democratic establishment." He says that the protection of Iraq "is one of the constants."

He adds: "We do not this patriotism to be in the way of the patriotism of so-and-so that filled the world with slogans, but when Israel asked them to come and sign, they went and signed. We are not like this. We could have done this from the very beginning. I do not divulge a secret here when I say that the Americans came before the occupation and before the fall of the regime to Shahid al-Mihrab (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim), may God be pleased with him, through the ambassadors that were here, and told him that we want the Badr forces to enter Iraq under the American flag or the flag of the multinational forces, and we will give you what you want, and you will have the same powers of the multinational forces. We simply said, provided that the issue needs no smartness or contemplation, that, Shahid al-Mihrab, may God be pleased with him, said that we will not enter except under the one Iraqi flag. After this, threats and intimidations were made and we were prevented from entering Iraq under our name, the Badr Organization, or the Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council (IISC). You may recall how many times our offices were attacked and how many of our people were arrested. After that the Americans realized that they were mistaken, taking into consideration that it is not us who make concessions on basic and principled issues."

Al-Saghir says: "Through the resistance we have pursued from the beginning, which is the political and peaceful resistance, we said that instead of inflicting losses on our people, we might succeed in political resistance. We realized that we have made many and major steps forward. Therefore, I reassure the Iraqi people and my dear brothers and sisters that we will not proceed with any agreement without allowing the entire people to see its entire letters. This is the first issue in this agreement, which, if it was signed, we would not relinquish main principles: The first is Iraq's sovereignty; the second is Iraq's Constitution and democratic institutions; and the third is the unity of the Iraqi people and Iraq's territorial integrity, from its north to its south and from its east to its west. These are main principles for us."

He adds: "When we talk about the Iraqi Constitution, we say that this Constitution will not allow any attack on any people or any state from Iraqi territory."

He says: "I hope that our brothers will not listen to the news media and their exaggerations. I also hope that the politicians, particularly those outside Iraq, will not fall in the traps of the news media." He says that these counter news media "want to topple us in any way."

Speaking about the "increasing daily suffering" of the Iraqi people, Al-Saghir says that although the security situation has improved and that Iraq has a lot of money, there is a "shortage of electrical power and we have daily problems with electricity."

Al-Saghir then calls on the electricity minister to "put and end to this suffering, or, otherwise, the Council of Representatives will say its word, especially since all political blocs are very pained from the electricity minister." He adds: "What is offending more grievously is that when he came to the Council of Representatives and left, they asked him during an official session at the Electricity Ministry how did you manage to escape from the Council of Representatives, he said that these are ignorant ones and do not understand and I fooled them and left."

Al-Saghir says: "I advise the electricity minister to resign before the Council of Representatives says its word and also before the Council of Ministers says its word, taking into consideration that all sides are pained and dissatisfied." '
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cobban: Re-engage

Helena Cobban, proprietor of the JustWorldNews web site, has been covering global issues as a professional journalist for 35 years, most recently for the Christian Science Monitor. She writes:

'Five years into the still unfolding tragedy of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, it is clearer than ever that this intervention has inflicted significant harm not only on Iraq’s 30 million citizens but also on the citizenry of the United States. Five years into this venture, its documented costs to Americans have already risen past 4,080 of our loved ones killed, scores of thousands maimed for life, the return of scores or hundreds of thousands of traumatized Americans to their home communities, hundreds of resulting suicides, and the tossing-away of $523 billion (and counting) of our children’s and grandchildren’s patrimony.

President George W. Bush financed his willfully misguided decision to invade and occupy Iraq in an unprecedented way. He notably did not ask Americans to tighten our belts or scrimp to buy war bonds. He sold T-bills to all comers. The amount of T-bills held by the governments of China and Japan now far out-tops the costs of the war. They constitute a sizable portion of the federal deficit and have changed the balance of world economic power in ways that no-one can yet completely predict. (I note that in 1956, when Eisenhower wanted to persuade the British government to end its unjustified occupation of Suez, he had only to start selling Washington’s holdings of the pound sterling and London jumped immediately into line. Sic Transit Gloria Imperii. Most likely neither Japan nor China is about to do that. But the world economic balance has still shifted massively against our country’s interests.)

Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and the way it was implemented reduced not just the economic power our country wields in today’s now globalized community; it also, by an even greater margin, slashed and burned our country’s reputational or “soft” power. Back in the mid-1990s, the United States towered above the rest of the world in all the major dimensions of national power. In 2008 it remains “Number One” only in terms of raw military power—and this at a time when, because of the hyperlinked nature of the global communications environment, military power on its own has become less capable than ever before of realizing, and holding on to, tangible strategic goals outside a nation’s own borders. Remember Israel in Lebanon, in 2006: stunning military superiority, but a total incapacity to translate that into any meaningful political/strategic gains.

Indeed, in today’s global environment, military power that is not backed by that key soft-power quality of “legitimacy” can usually be seen as actively counter-productive to the power that wields it, rather than productive of anything of lasting value in the world.

The invasion of Iraq has been harmful to the American people’s interests. But the imminent transition away from Bush provides an opportunity for Americans to discuss how to build of an entirely new kind of relationship with “the other six billion”—that is, those six billion of our fellow-humans who happen not to be U.S. citizens, and whose future is more deeply and inextricably intertwined with ours than ever before. It is important that this discussion be conducted in a way broadly accessible to the public, rather than in the sometimes arcane jargon of the policy wonks.

Among the pressing issues confronting us at this juncture are security affairs, the international economy, human rights, climate change, and the shifting global balance. The U.S. should pursue an approach to foreign affairs that I call “Global Inclusion”, rather than a quite counter-productive attempt to maintain near-unilateral global control. All Americans should feel motivated and empowered to increase their engagement in the national debate over foreign policy issues, a debate that for too long now—-okay, most especially since 9/11—has been dominated by a small coterie of jingoistic (and generally male) talking, or rather “screeching”, heads.

I have striven to contribute to that very discussion in my latest book: Re-engage! America and the World After Bush
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Helena Cobban

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Afghanistan: Civilians Caught in the Middle of US & Taliban

Afghanistan has become the Forgotten War on the screens of corporate media. Yet the US has 33,000 troops fighting there and NATO forces amount to 60,000 there altogether. {Sorry for the wrong numbers in the first draft.)

Barnett Rubin is live-blogging the renewed violence in Afghanistan from the ground in that country. Also don't miss his other recent postings at our joint Global Affairs blog.

Here is some more recent news:

AP reports that "As of Friday, May 30, 2008, at least 436 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department." This total includes those killed by non-hostile causes.

This spring has been the deadliest in Afghanistan since the insurgency began, according to NATO and the Pentagon. The surge in violence is threatening the government of President Hamid Karzai.

America's NATO allies in Afghanistan are war-weary, and even Hamid Karzai is thinking about making a deal with the Taliban in a bid for social peace, according to Eureasianet.org.

British soldiers are leaving the service at an alarming rate, many citing the interminable struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are unpopular with the British public and apparently also with the officer corps (especially Iraq).

Bush still thinks he is refighting World War II.

AP says, "Afghanistan will ask

international donors next month for $4 billion to revive its agricultural sector, but it could be a hard sell with another massive crop of opium expected this year. Despite the sharply rising price of grain, foreign-funded efforts to promote legal alternatives to the narcotic have largely failed. Farmers still make much more from growing poppy, the raw material for heroin, which flourishes amid Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency and rampant lawlessness. Half of the country's production comes from Helmand province, a stronghold of insurgents. Roughly one out of every seven farmers in this predominantly rural nation of 32 million people grow opium. Giving them alternatives is part of Afghanistan's plan to invest $4 billion over the next five years in its outdated agricultural sector."

Der Spiegel on why NATO troops cannot bring peace to Afghanistan.


Aljazeera International reports on Afghan civilians caught in the middle between US troops and the neo-Taliban i