Pakistani Consulate bombed; NATO Commander in Afghanistan Calls for More Troops; Strikes same Notes as Obama

Bomb blast outside Pakistani consulate at Herat wounds one.

Aljazeera International interviews Gen. David McKiernan, who sounds to me just like Barack Obama on Afghanistan-- saying that he doesn't have enough troops in Afghanistan, that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are resurgent, and that the big problem is Taliban sanctuaries in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

"General David McKiernan, commander of the Nato led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, says his biggest problem is Taliban infiltration from across the border in Pakistan... "



Compare his comments to Obama's Berlin speech concerning Afghanistan.



Two perspectives on Afghanistan:

Michael Scheuer, the former CIA head of the 'tracking Bin Laden unit', which Bush has now disbanded.

And from the left, , Sonali Kolhatkar of the US-based Afghan Women's Mission.
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Cole in Salon: Why Bush Folded on Iran

My essay why Bush sent a high-level diplomat to meet Iranian negotiators with no preconditions is out in Salon.com.

Excerpt:

'Pundits and diplomats nearly got whiplash from the double take they did when George W. Bush sent the No. 3 man in the State Department to sit at a table on July 19 across from an Iranian negotiator, without any preconditions. When Bush had addressed the Israeli Knesset in May, he made headlines by denouncing any negotiation with "terrorists and radicals" as "the false comfort of appeasement." What drove W. to undermine John McCain by suddenly adopting Barack Obama's foreign policy prescription on Iran?'

Read the whole thing.
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McCain and the Rage Celebrities; Does he Need to go to Rehab?

McCain had pledged to run a clean campaign, but like Mike Tyson when he's in the mood to munch ear, the Republicans just can't control themselves. First they tried to blame Barack Obama for the current price of energy, which is actually so high because Republicans have been in Big Oil's back pocket and in denial about the need for alternative energy programs on a Manhattan Project scale.

Now they are comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, apparently intending to suggest that he is a celebrity with no substance.

I was thinking about the celebrities that might be compared to John McCain, who is notorious for his rage issues. He flies off the handle at people at the slightest provocation and gives them a tongue lashing they can never forget. I personally wouldn't want him anywhere near the Bomb.

So wouldn't he be most like Naomi Campbell and Amy Winehouse?

But this could be a fun game. I challenge all my colleagues in the blogosphere to come up with other McCain celebrity match-ups and good rationales (which the GOP attack ads lack).
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Bhasin:"Situation on the Ground" or Political Convenience? Thoughts on a US Withdrawal from Iraq

Madhavi Bhasin writes in an IC Guest Editorial:

The most consistent answer to the differently phrased generic query, “When will the U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq?” is “Will be determined by the situation on the ground and U.S. military’s assessment of it.”

Is it really so? Is the U.S. presence in Iraq contingent upon the objective assessment of the security situation in the country? Will the U.S. forces leave only when the security situation improves? Will the U.S. forces ever leave the Iraqi territory? Every analyst of international politics is anticipating the timing and modicum of the U.S. withdrawal strategy. But given the record of U.S. involvement in such conflicts, the answer seems barely intriguing; the U.S. will withdraw when it suits them, when it is politically convenient for them, when they desire to change their land of adventures.

The subtle movement of U.S. policy indicates that considerable number of forces will withdraw from Iraq soon, sometime next year. If Senator John McCain is elected the next U.S. President, the troops will withdraw to demonstrate the success of the Republican Party’s ‘surge’ strategy. If Barack Obama happens to the next President, he will withdraw forces to demonstrate the credibility of his election promises. A movement towards that end has already been initiated and will be completely unrelated to the ‘situation on the ground’.

It was assumed (even by me) that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s call for a withdrawal timetable was the assertion of Iraqi sovereignty. But it is difficult to expect that kind of public display of independence by a P.M. whose political existence has been craved out by the U.S. It is more appropriate to consider that the U.S. wanted to withdraw irrespective of the security situation in Iraq and hence the entire public drama was staged. Now the U.S. is equipped with a stronger argument of respecting the demands of the Iraqi P.M. who has demanded a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops. And this will gradually be floated for popular consumption. The reconciliation between the Shia and Sunni political factions in Iraq could possibly have been facilitated by the U.S. behind the scenes to project the image of Iraq moving towards political stability. An image that suits the U.S. withdrawal strategy; a strategy which is gradually unfolding.

The differences over the Status of Force Agreement are another issue being published for justifying the troop withdrawal in the prospective U.S. strategy. The Iraqi Government and U.S. forces are expected to enter into a temporary agreement after the current agreement expires in December 2008. The U.S. is shunning any agreed long term commitments and can very diplomatically refer to the SOF disagreements as a reason for ad hoc involvement. Suddenly there has been a ‘surge’ in reports of the ability of Iraqi forces to conduct challenging operations and manage strategic strongholds. The Associated Press reported in early July that “Iraqi security forces arrested three locally prominent supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as part of a crackdown on Shiite militias in the southern city of Amarah”. In the same news report, the U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Neil Harper is reported to have said that “The government of Iraq and Iraqi security forces are determined to pursue all criminals and provide a secure and stable environment for the people of Iraq,". The US troop “surge” in Iraq is reported to have ended after the last of five additional combat brigades left the country in the last week of May 2008.

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that on his recent trip to Iraq the conditions had improved more than he had expected. This is what a news report states:

“In recent months…two significant improvements: Violence is down and the Iraqi forces are rapidly growing in size and ability.” The handing over of Qadisiyah, the centre of fierce Shiite resistance, to Iraqi forces in mid July was expected to support the assessment of the U.S. military in the region. Most recently the operations in Diyala, though conducted jointly with the U.S. forces are being referred to as the most convincing evidence of the qualitative improvement of the Iraqi forces. There are also reports that the threat from the Al-Qaeda in Iraq was receding.

Thus there is every reason for the U.S. to soon reconsider its degree and kind of involvement in Iraq. Since the liberals across the world were demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the move is expected to be greeted with cheers. But the concern is, has the security situation improved for the U.S. to withdraw? Is the U.S. leaving because the task is accomplished or because their preferences have changed? The U.S. withdrawal due to general disinterest coupled with political opportunism is a not a historical aberration, but follows a general pattern. Remember what happened after the defeat of Communist forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s?


Now consider the following:

Search on ‘violence in Iraq’ at McClatchy's site . The site carries a section on “The daily round-up of violence in Iraq” and would be the simplest way to comprehend how much has changed in terms of Iraq’s security situation. Just two days ago (July 28, 2008) three female suicide bombers killed at least 32 people and wounded 102 when they blew themselves up among Shiites walking through the streets of Baghdad on a religious pilgrimage. The incidents of violence in Iraq are still phenomenal but for the U.S. the ‘situation on the ground is changing.’

The U.S. can project whatever ‘on the ground situation’ that suits its pre-determined policies. Occupation or withdrawal is a matter of political convenience and barely related to real strategic concerns. The invasion proved that and so will the withdrawal of forces from Iraq.

-
Madhavi Bhasin is a Doctoral Researcher at the Jadavpur University, India. Her research areas include conflict resolution, South Asia and Middle East. Currently based in California and working on Indo-U.S. Missile Defense Cooperation and India's Public Diplomacy Strategy.

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Diyala Campaign Begins

The al-Maliki government has just launched another of its military offensives against guerrillas, this time in Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province. I am skeptical about these campaigns. They are announced well in advance, allowing the guerrillas to go underground or relocate. Then in Mosul and now in Baquba the campaigns don't appear to involve any actual battles. The Diyala situation is complicated by the province's Sunni majority, which is unlikely to welcome largely Shiite government troops sent by a Shiite government. Some of the trouble in Diyala came from the dominance in the province of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite fundamentalist party, and its paramilitary, the Badr Corps, which was until 2003 part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Shiites are a minority in Diyala, but the Sunnis boycotted the January 2005 provincial elections.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is taking great interest in the operation, because he believes it will have a direct impact on security in the capital, Baghdad. Al-Zaman said that only a small contingent of US troops supported the Iraqi army, and that they in turn were given cover by US helicopter gunships.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that close observers despaired that parliament would make any breakthroughs on the provincial election law on Wednesday, before it goes into a month-long recess on Thursday. Some Arab MPs have called for troops from the Middle Euphrates and the south (i.e. Shiite troops) to be sent to Kirkuk, to forestall, they say, a "foreign" incursion there (presumably by Turkey, which fears violence against the Turkmen minority, of which Ankara feels protective because of cultural and linguistic ties.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Mahdi Army militiamen clad in black marched in Najaf to commemorate the death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim. They were carrying pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr and chanting against the al-Maliki government. Some called for immediate US withdrawal. Close observers of the Iraqi scene expressed fears that the Mahdi Army may be back.

Worried that parliament might pass another bill similar to the one President Jalal Talibani vetoed, which gave equal representation on the provincial council of Kirkuk to Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds, thousands of protesters rallied in Irbil on Tuesday.

Don't miss Helena Cobban's recent reflections on the situation in Iraq. She concludes that the security situation remains perilous but that power may be shifting toward Baghdad and away from Washington.

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Because You aren't Angry Enough: Found on Reddit

Russia just defeated the US in the race for Central Asian gas. The US bet on a gas pipeline through Taliban territory in Afghanistan and Pakistan to India while trying to sideline Russia and Iran! Putin is rivalling the emir of Kuwait as a fossil fuel master of the universe. The only question is when some big power will get hungry enough for natural gas to defy AIPAC's congressional boycott on developing Iran's oil and gas fields. It is likely that future historians will date the end of America's superpower status from that date.

Neoconservative Iraq War architect Richard Perle is seeking to get into the oil business in Iraq. See also the Iraq Oil Report on this matter.

Then there is this: 55,000 persons called the Veterans Administration suicide hotline in its first year of operation, 22,000 identifying themselves as vets.

Read those two again, together.

"...none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn't yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess." (guardian.co.uk)

ABC admits that without White House accounting tricks, the budget deficit will be $600 billion this year. The official figure does not count the cost of the Iraq War! One Reddit headline suggested that the Bush administration has not only moved our country toward fascism but bequeathed it a Weimar economy.

The Democrats, including Barbara Boxer, are insisting that the Environmental Protection Agency's 'chilling' memo on carbon emissions and public health be released to the public.

Why don't you ever hear about it when Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children and youth?

Aljazeera International has video on Israel's land-grab of Palestinian villagers' land and the demonstrations, in answer to which the killing came.



Torture is widespread in both Hamas and PLO prisons in the Palestine Authority.
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Pakistani Taliban threaten Suicide Bombings;

Mark LeVine is disturbed by the tendency of Barack Obama and other US politicians to lump the Taliban together with al-Qaeda. The latter, he says is an international terrorist organization. The Taliban in contrast is a "territorially rooted" "ethno-nationalist" movement.

Aljazeera International on Mawlana Fazlullah, the number 2 man in the Tehrik-i Taliban or Pakistani Taliban.



The Tehrik set off a bomb Monday at Kohat in an apparent attempt to free prisoners from a convoy.

The Taliban also kidnapped 30 police officers and army troops in the rugged Swat Valley.



A planned Pakistani army operation against the Tehrik has been called off while the Parliament in Islamabad debates policy toward the restive northwest.

Pakistani PM Yousef Raza Gilani is exploring using tribal chieftains against the militants.

Baitullah Mahsud of the Tehrik-i Taliban has threatened the secular nationalist government of the Awami National Party, which represents Pathans or Pushtuns who reject religious radicalism. The ANP won the provincial elections in the North-West Frontier Province that abuts the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

In Afghanistan, fighting between Afghan army troops supported by NATO close air support killed 40 Pushtun guerrillas in Ghazni province.

Barnett Rubin on globalization and corrupt states.


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Women Bombers Open Gates of Hell in Iraq; 61 Dead, Hundreds Wounded; Kurdish Mobs Attack Turkmen Offices in Kirkuk

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that four female suicide bombers killed or wounded 350 persons on Monday. Late reports give 61 as the number of those killed. Al-Hayat says the bombings reminded Iraqis of the bad old days when this level of destruction was a common, almost daily occurrence.

The bombing of an enormous crowd of thousands of Kurds in Kirkuk protesting the recent provincial election bill, which would have evenly divided political representation among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs, was blamed by a prominent Kurdish figure on the Turkmen. Rumors flew that the crowd had been fired on from a Turkmen building, though police denied them. Then angry Kurds attacked Turkmen political party HQs throughout the city.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Mahmud al-Mashhadani, fainted in the middle of the parliamentary debate on the events in Kirkuk. He had fainted the day before, as well, but had insisted on leaving the hospital to come back to work. Sunni fundamentalist MP Khalaf al-Ulyan of the Iraqi Accord Front alleged that someone had poisoned al-Mashhadani after parliament passed the provincial elections bill (he was implying that Kurdish MPs were trying to murder their Sunni Arab colleagues on the floor of parliament. So much for "reconciliation.")

The bombing in Kirkuk killed at least 23 and wounded 150.

Just logically speaking, it appears that these four bombings were planned out by elements of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, which has tighter command and control than is usually realized. Given this modus operandi on this day, it would be odd if the bombing in Kirkuk were done independently by Turkmen.

I discussed the Kirkuk crisis with Ambassador Peter Galbraith on the Lehrer News Hour on Monday evening.

With Turkish Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdogan all but blaming the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) for bombings on Sunday in Istanbul, Turkish-Kurdish tensions are at a boiling point.

McClatchy presents a connected account of the bombings in Karrada, Baghdad and in Kirkuk. Vali Nasr is quoted, "People wrote the requiem for sectarian conflict and AQI too rapidly," said Dr. Vali Nasr, of the Council on Foreign Relations. . ."In the absence of a final settlement, the country is always vulnerable to regression, and we still may end up back where we were."

Antiwar.com gives all casualties of political violence in Iraq on Monday, totalling some 87 dead and 288 wounded.

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Bombings of Shiites during Pilgrimage to Kadhimiya; 11 Thought Dead; Turkey Bombs Iraq Again

Guerrillas in Iraq set off three bombs one after another on Monday morning, targeting Shiite pilgrims on their way to the Shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim in Kadhimiya, north Baghdad, to commemorate his death. They killed at least 11 persons and wounded some 33. The bombings on this Shiite holy day are an unwelcome reminder that Sunni-Shiite sectarian tensions remain high in Baghdad and that Sunni Arab guerrillas are still attempting to provoke sectarian feuding as a way of destabilizing the situation. All this, despiteIraqi police attempts to forestall such attacks.
On Sunday, Sunni Arab guerrillas shot down seven Shiite pilgrims as they passed through a Sunni area on their way to Kadhimiya, according to AP (though the report has been questioned). Imam Musa al-Kadhim is the 7th in the line of close relatives of the Prophet Muhammad who, Shiites, believe, were his rightful vicars.

Meanwhile, Turkey bombed 12 positions inside northern Iraq of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which the US has designated as a terrorist organization, and which has killed dozens of Turkish troops in the past year.

The Kurdish issue has delayed the passage of the law on provincial elections in the Iraqi parliament, which must successfully legislate soon on the issue if the elections are to be held this fall.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that attempts to come to a compromise on the provincial elections in parliament on Sunday failed. Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani warned that the dispute had brought Iraq to "dangerous" straits.

The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and its paramilitary, the Badr Organization, had split on the provisions regarding power sharing in Kirkuk in the bill that was vetoed. ISCI official Ammar al-Hakim said that compromise language in the original draft, on which the Kurds had signed off, had been altered at the last minute.

Al-Hakim also told al-Hayat, "Iraq needs to regulate its relations with the United States, as a state that has a special position regarding the presence of its forces in Iraq." Apparently he means that it is a pressing matter to pass a Status of Forces Agreement.

In a remarkable convergence, two journalists come to similar conclusions today about the situation in Iraq. One, Ned Parker of the LA Times, is on the ground in Baghdad. The other, Bob Dreyfuss, writes from Washington, D.C.

Parker writes in the LAT,

"Despite the gains, the political horizon is clouded: Shiite Muslim parties are locked in dangerous rivalries across central and southern Iraq. Kurds and Arabs in the north compete for land with no resolution in sight. U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters who turned on the group Al Qaeda in Iraq could return to the insurgency if the government does not deliver jobs and a chance to join the political process. Bombings, assassinations and kidnappings still occur almost daily. And those out enjoying Baghdad's night life feel safe only because they are staying inside their own districts in a city transformed into a patchwork of enclaves after years of sectarian violence."

Parker, with the support of colleagues Saif Hameed, Saif Rasheed, Caesar Ahmed and Said Rifai and "a correspondent in Basra" (i.e. Basra is still too dangerous to do journalism in public), provides a tour of the situation in Sadr City, Mosul, Adhamiya and Basra. In each case he finds it improved but precarious.

Legendary difficulties beset journalists attempting to tell a nuanced story ("things are a bit better but not all that better and besides, they could deteriorate easily"), which is much harder than just parroting that "the surge worked." Parker and his colleagues are to be congratulated for making this attempt to get beyond the political talking points.

Dreyfuss points to unresolved and potentially explosive tensions-- Shiite/ Sunni in Baghdad, Sunni on Sunni in al-Anbar Province, and Shiite on Shiite in the south.

Those three bank employees killed by US troops last May, whom the Pentagon initially accused of being criminals? Nope, just bank employees, and ones with high level clearances to be driving where they were, at that.

Chalmers Johnson at Tomdispatch.com on the military industrial complex today.

MacClatchy reports political violence on Sunday:

' Baghdad

Gunmen injured Abdul Hadi al Jaza'iri, an official in the Baghdad Operation Command, while he was driving his car in al Rasheed Street in south Baghdad at 2 p.m. Three civilians were injured when a Katyusha rocket slammed into al Jamia'a neighborhood in west Baghdad. Six stores were damaged by the explosion.

Wire services reported that seven Shiite pilgrims were killed in Mada'in town south of Baghdad while they were coming towards the holy shrine in Kadhemiyah neighborhood on Sunday morning. Officials in the Ministry of Interior and the local council of Mada'in told McClatchy Newspapers that the incident did not occur.

Kirkuk

Two Iraqi soldiers, one of which was a captain, were killed in a roadside bomb which targeted an Iraq army patrol in Kirkuk north of Baghdad on Sunday morning.

Basra

A civilian was injured in a roadside bomb in al Hussein neighborhood in west Basra, south of Baghdad on Sunday morning.

Diyala

Seven Iraqi soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb that targeted a convoy of the Iraqi army in Baladroz, east of Baquba around 11 a.m. Two Government guards protecting oil ministry facilities were killed in a bombing that targeted them as they road their bicycles to work. The explosion occurred in the town of Buhruz, south of Baquba city on Sunday morning.

A policeman and two children were injured when insurgents attacked Abo Khamees police station south of Baquba city around 12:30 p.m. The insurgents also blew up two houses during the attack, police said.

Anbar Two IEDs exploded inside the house of Zaki Obid, a member of the local council of Fallujah in Anbar province. The first IED exploded in the garden of Obid's house in al Thobbat neighborhood in downtown Fallujah city caused no casualties.

The second IED was attached to Obid's car. Two of Obid's guards were killed and two others wounded. Zaki Obid and his son were injured seriously and they were moved to one of Baghdad's hospitals.

Nineveh

Two Iraqi soldiers including an officer were killed and three other soldiers were injured when a joint force of the Iraqi army and the US army clashed with insurgents in the Makhmour district southeast of Mosul city. The joint force raided al Jdaida village in the district after getting information about insurgents in the area. . .'

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100 Pushtun Guerrillas Killed at Spera from Air; ISI under Civilian Control?

One hundred Pushtun guerrillas launched a major offensive in an attempt to take Spera District center. They drew down on themselves the full fury of US and NATO air forces that gave support to Afghan National Police, which killed up to 70 of them.

Jang reports in Urdu that Khost governor Arsala Jamal said that the guerrillas had begun by attacking police checkpoints. In the aftermath, local police asked for help from the Afghan army.

Kabul Pajhwok Afghan News says that Afghan National Police and ISAF (NATO) units surrounded the guerrillas, calling in air strikes and helicopter gunships. When guerrillas ran into a building to take cover, helicopters destroyed it with missiles. The fighting went on into the early hours of Sunday. A "small number" of ANP officers were killed.

There is a discrepancy here with Jang, which said that it was the Afghan army, not ANP, that riposted, and said that Afghan aircraft were flown in the counter-attack.

This incident was a sign of bad guerrilla tactics on the part of the Pushtun guerrillas. You can't launch conventional attacks and try to take and hold territory when your enemy is extremely powerful and controls the air. On the other hand, it is not a good sign that the Afghan police in the area could not fight off 100 guys by themselves.

The attack on Spera comes just a week after guerrillas took Arjistan, 150 mi. south of the capital of Kabul, from which US & NATO & Afghan forces dislodged them on Wednesday.

There was also a suicide bombing at Khost.

This news underlines Barack Obama's comments on Sunday, in AP's words: "In his first public appearance since returning to the United States, Barack Obama says Afghanistan's weak government and rampant drug trafficking are hampering efforts to fight al-Qaida terrorists who often take refuge in neighboring Pakistan."

Barnett Rubin is blogging up a storm on Afghanistan, and the prickly issues of narco-terrorism and how to fight it. He is skeptical of the meme that the tactics used in Colombia were a complete success. I hope everyone in the blogosphere is aware of how extraordinarily fortune we are to have direct access to the thinking of perhaps the foremost Afghanistan expert.





The problems in far southern Afghanistan are related to the increased organizational capacity of Baitullah Mahsud's Tehrik-i Taliban, which is a misnomer because a lot of his fighters appear just to be tribesmen, not seminarians (which is what "Taliban" means).

Some of the restiveness of the Pushtun tribes of the Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) derives from a growing wheat shortage.

On Saturday, Edak tribesmen blocked the Bannu-Miranshah road in FATA, protesting the lack of flour. The American public should be alarmed to hear that like 15 percent of Pakistanis blame the US for their wheat shortage.

Meanwhile, The Pakistani government took back on Sunday an announcement made Saturday that Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistani military intelligence, had been put under the control of the civilian ministry of the interior. A clarification today said that the feared ISI, which is accused of using the neo-Taliban against Afghanistan, remains under the authority of the prime minister. That restatement might imply in turn that it remains under the control of the military, who supposedly report to the PM but actually dictate military policy to him.
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MP Calls for Talabani's Removal; Veto of Provinces Law called Unconstitutional

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that a controversy is raging in the Iraqi parliament about the veto exercised by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani against a bill passed last week enabling elections in the fall. MP and former court judge Wael Abd al-Latif of the State Party charged that the veto was "unconstitutional." He said that when a bill is vetoed, it has to go back to parliament for another vote, and needs a 3/5s majority to overturn the veto. Abd al-Latif also pointed to the constitution's requirement that the presidential council act through consensus. In this case, Talabani and Adel Abdul Mahdi vetoed the bill while their colleague, the other vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, was out of town! He should have been consulted about appointing a proxy to vote for him but was not.

A member of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, Khalaf al-Ulyan, called for Talabani to be removed from the presidency, on the grounds that his veto derived from ethnic solidarity rather than from a concern to act on behalf of the entire Iraqi nation. On Saturday, Talabani consulted with Massoud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Regional Government, on the crisis. The bill had contained a provision apportioning power in Kirkuk province equally among Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds, while Kurds claim to be the majority there.

Al -Zaman reports in Arabic that female member of parliament on the Sadrist list, Maha al-Duri, charged that the Kurdistan Alliance and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq have a secret alliance whereby they outmaneuver other parties in their quest to impose a very loose form of federalism on Iraq. The Sadrists want a strong central government and the end of US military surveillance in Iraq.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Saturday:

' Baghdad

- Around 8 am a roadside detonated in Jihad neighborhood (west Baghdad). One person was injured with some damage to his Shovel.

- Around 10 am a roadside bomb targeted an army patrol in Sleikh intersection(north Baghdad). Two soldiers were injured.

- Around 2 pm a roadside bomb targeted civilians in Kamb Sara in Adhamiyah neighborhood (north Baghdad). Six people were injured (including 1 policeman and two Sahwa members).

- Around 3 p.m. gunmen attacked and injured awakening council official in Daowdi neighborhood, west Baghdad.

- Around 4 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted awakening council member, a U.S. backed militia, in Sleikh neighborhood, injuring two militia members.

- Police found one dead body throughout Baghdad in Baladiyat neighborhood.

Kirkuk

- On Friday night a gunman with silencer opened fire on an American patrol in downtown Kirkuk. A 14 year-old kid was killed in that incident .

- In the morning gunmen opened fire on a combined patrol from Iraqi security forces and Americans. One Iraqi policeman was killed and another was injured.'

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Bush Charged with Murder One in Congressional Hearing

Vincent Bugliosi's opening statements during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the constitutional limits of executive power.



He argues that since Bush took the country to war against Iraq on false pretenses and that therefore he is guilty of tens of thousands of counts of murder.

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Fox News= W. T.V.

Scott McClellan admits on Hardball that the White House fed Fox News hosts talking points. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow point out that in the US, the government is forbidden to propagandize the public.



It has long been known that Fox Cable News head Roger Ailes (a former Republican Party official) and other high executives routinely sent memos to the newsrooms instructing them to spin stories in particular ways. And one always suspected that the talking points actually came over from Bush's and Cheney's offices. Now McClellan confirms it.
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Taliban Resurgence threatens Elections

Obama Obama in Newsweek:

' Our success in Afghanistan is going to be deeply dependent not just on getting more troops there, which we need, but also some sustained high-level engagement with Pakistan—something that I discussed before but I think is significantly more urgent than even I had imagined. Basically there doesn't appear to be any pressure at all being placed on Al Qaeda, on these training camps, these safe havens, in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas].'

Although there have been cease-fires between the Pakistani military and FATA militants at certain points and with regard to some groups (and as part of political negotiations), the Pakistani military took on tribal forces in Khyber recently and it is not fair to say that nothing is being done. Hundreds of Pakistani troops have died fighting the tribes and al-Qaeda in recent years. In his Berlin speech Obama also talked about terror training camps "in Karachi." None existed to my knowledge. Karachi is a stronghold of the secular MQM. There is lots to criticize about the Pakistani government, but this level of animus and misinformation is odd and you have to wonder where it is coming from.

The increasing violence in Afghanistan is threatening the country's ability to hold scheduled presidential elections in 2009, according to Aljazeera International:



NATO forces killed a car full of innocent civilians on Friday, one in a series of such incidents. Even NATO is admitting that its troops' killing of innocent civilians is alienating the Afghan population.

Barnett Rubin weighs in on the issue of whether Afghanistan is a "narco-state.

Pakistani Taliban are attacking Shiites. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has called on Pakistani Shiites to rally to the support of their brethren in Parachinar, who say that they have been interfering with Taliban infiltration of neighboring Afghanistan.

Remember how the US Pentagon kept claiming that Shiite Iran was helping the Taliban? Fairy tales for children courtesy Cheney.

Taliban factions are suspected of informing on each other to British and other NATO troops, thus using them to decapitate their internal rivals.

Taliban propaganda is becoming more effective.

Pakistani Taliban are threatening merchants who conduct cross-border trade with Afghanistan.
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Kurdistan Seeks to Annex Other Iraqi Provinces

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Kurdistan Alliance has responded to the Iraqi parliament's passage of a bill concerning provincial elections. (The bill was vetoed by Kurdish President Jalal Talabani).

The committee in the Kurdistan Parliament in charge of revising the Kurdistan constitution has proposed language that would formally incorporate portions of four provinces into the Kurdistan Regional Government (the four provinces to be dismembered are Diyala, Kirkuk, Mosul and Salahuddin, on the grounds that they have Kurdish populations). The language will be presented to the KRG parliament for consideration during its August recess. The Kurdistan constitution will be voted on by referendum.

The conflict between Kurds and Arabs over Kirkuk is a crisis waiting to happen.

McClatchy rounds up political violence for Thursday:

' "A roadside bomb planted outside the residence of Dawa Party member, Abdulrahman Mohammed Dawood in Zafaraniyah, southeastern Baghdad exploded injuring Dawood and two of his security detail at 11 a.m. Thursday."

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by Awakening Council, a U. S backed militia, in Adhamiyah at 9 a.m. killing two members. The gunmen used silencers on their weapons, said Iraqi Police.

One unidentified body was found by Iraqi Police, Thursday. It was found in Nidhal Street, central Baghdad.

Nineveh

A suicide car bomber targeted a checkpoint manned by Iraqi Army in al-Intisar neighbourhood, eastern Mosul killing two soldiers, injuring two others.

Diyala

A female suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt targeted an Awakening Council Commander in Baquba, Naeem al-Dulaimi at 3 p.m. Thursday. The explosion, which took place in a car dealership while Dulaimi was checking a car killed him, his two security guards and four civilians, injuring at least twenty four others including women and children. '

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Female Suicide Bomber Kills 8 in Diyala; Turks bomb Iraq again

A female suicide bomber killed 8 Iraqis in Diyala province on Thursday, including the head of a local Awakening Council.

Turkey bombed 13 targets in northern Iraq on Thursday, targeting positions of the Kurdish Workers Party or PKK. Turkish PM Tayyip Rejep Erdogan recently visited Baghdad and relations seemed to be improving, but apparently the PKK issue is still hot. Bombing another country is not a trivial act.

8 oil union activists have been forcibly transferred by Basra to Baghdad. It is unclear what law would allow the government to do that. If they were charged with a crime, they should be brought to court in Basra, not transferred elsewhere. The Iraqi oil union is seen by the government as an obstacle to US companies coming in to develop the oil.

Former appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is skeptical about the political success of the surge.

McClatchy says Iraqi troops are just not ready to take over from the US.

McClatchy reports political violence on Thursday in Iraq (beyond the Turkish bombing and the Diyala suicide bombing:

'Baghdad

A roadside bomb planted outside the residence of Dawa Party member, Abdulrahman Mohammed Dawood in Zafaraniyah, southeastern Baghdad exploded injuring Dawood and two of his security detail at 11 a.m. Thursday.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by Awakening Council, a U. S backed militia, in Adhamiyah at 9 a.m. killing two members. The gunmen used silencers on their weapons, said Iraqi Police.

One unidentified body was found by Iraqi Police, Thursday. It was found in Nidhal Street, central Baghdad.

Nineveh

A suicide car bomber targeted a checkpoint manned by Iraqi Army in al-Intisar neighbourhood, eastern Mosul killing two soldiers, injuring two others.'

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Obama ist ein Berliner

Obama addresses a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin. Some were shouting in English, "Yes we can!"



Text transcript here.
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CBS Edits McCain Whopper out of Broadcast

Keith Olbermann and Jedreport clear up the gaffe that John McCain made about the history of the surge and examine the Orwellian editing techniques of CBS News.

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A Social History of the Surge

I want to weigh in as a social historian of Iraq on the controversy over whether the "surge" "worked." The NYT notes:

'Mr. McCain bristled in an interview with the “CBS Evening News” on Tuesday when asked about Mr. Obama’s contention that while the added troops had helped reduce violence in Iraq, other factors had helped, including the Sunni Awakening movement, in which thousands of Sunnis were enlisted to patrol neighborhoods and fight the insurgency, and the Iraqi government’s crackdown on Shiite militias.

“I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened,” Mr. McCain told Katie Couric, noting that the Awakening movement began in Anbar Province when a Sunni sheik teamed up with Sean MacFarland, a colonel who commanded an Army brigade there.

“Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others,” Mr. McCain said. “And it began the Anbar Awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.”

The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge. (No less an authority than Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, testified before Congress this spring that the Awakening “started before the surge, but then was very much enabled by the surge.”)

And Democrats noted that the sheik who helped form the Awakening, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, was assassinated in September 2007, after the troop escalation began.

The National Security Network, a liberal foreign policy group, called Mr. McCain’s explanation of the surge’s history “completely wrong.”

But several foreign policy analysts said that if Mr. McCain got the chronology wrong, his broader point — that the troop escalation was crucial for the Awakening movement to succeed and spread — was right. “I would say McCain is three-quarters right in this debate,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. '

The problem with this debate is that it has few Iraqis in it.

It is also open to charges of logical fallacy. The only evidence presented for the thesis that the "surge" "worked" is that Iraqi deaths from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. (That apocalyptic violence was set off by the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February of 2006, which helped provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war.) What few political achievements are attributed to the troop escalation are too laughable to command real respect.

Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February, 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as John McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra US troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the troop escalation beginning winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop escalation, and was.

Aside from defining what proponents mean by the "surge," all kinds of things are claimed for it that are not in evidence. The assertion depends on a possible logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. If event X comes after event Y, it is natural to suspect that Y caused X. But it would often be a false assumption. Thus, actress Sharon Stone alleged that the recent earthquake in China was caused by China's crackdown on Tibetan protesters. That is just superstition, and callous superstition at that. It is a good illustration, however, of the very logical fallacy to which I am referring.

For the first six months of the troop escalation, high rates of violence continued unabated. That is suspicious. What exactly were US troops doing differently last September than they were doing in May, such that there was such a big change? The answer to that question is simply not clear. Note that the troop escalation only brought US force strength up to what it had been in late 2005. In a country of 27 million, 30,000 extra US troops are highly unlikely to have had a really major impact, when they had not before.

As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65% Shiite to at least 75% Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the US inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods. Newsrack was among the first to make this argument, though I was tracking the ethnic cleansing at my blog throughout 2007. See also Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post on this issue.

This MNF graph courtesy of Think Progress makes the point:


As Think Progress quoted CNN correspondent Michael Ware:

' The sectarian cleansing of Baghdad has been — albeit tragic — one of the key elements to the drop in sectarian violence in the capital. […] It’s a very simple concept: Baghdad has been divided; segregated into Sunni and Shia enclaves. The days of mixed neighborhoods are gone. […] If anyone is telling you that the cleansing of Baghdad has not contributed to the fall in violence, then they either simply do not understand Baghdad or they are lying to you.'

Of course, Gen. Petraeus took courageous and effective steps to try to stop bombings in markets and so forth. But I am skeptical that most of these techniques had macro effects. Big population movements because of militia ethnic cleansing are more likely to account for big changes in social statistics.

The way in which the escalation troops did help establish Awakening Councils is that when they got wise to the Shiite ethnic cleansing program, the US began supporting these Sunni militias, thus forestalling further expulsions.

The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.

In al-Anbar Province, among the more violent in Iraq in earlier years, the bribing of former Sunni guerrillas to join US-sponsored Awakening Councils had a big calming effect. This technique could have been used much earlier than 2006, indeed, could have been deployed from 2003, and might have forestalled large numbers of deaths. Condi Rice forbade US military officers from dealing in this way with the Sunnis for fear of alienating US Shiite allies such as Ahmad Chalabi. The technique was independent of the troop escalation. Indeed, it depended on there not being much of a troop escalation in that province. Had large numbers of US soldiers been committed to simply fight the Sunnis or engage in search and destroy missions, they would have stirred up and reinforced the guerrilla movement. There were typically only 10,000 US troops in al-Anbar before 2007 as I recollect (It has a population of a million and a half or so). If the number of US troops went up to 14,000, that cannot possibly have made the difference.

The Mahdi Army militia of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr concluded a cease-fire with US and Iraqi troops in September of 2007. Since the US had inadvertently enabled the transformation of Baghdad into a largely Shiite city, a prime aim of the Mahdi Army, they could afford to stand down. Moreover, they were being beaten militarily by the Badr Corps militia of the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and by Iraqi security forces, in Karbala, Diwaniya and elsewhere. It was prudent for them to stand down. Their doing so much reduced civilian deaths.

Badr reassertion in Basra was also important, and ultimately received backing this spring from PM Nuri al-Maliki. There were few coalition troops in Basra, mainly British, and most were moved out to the airport, so the troop escalation was obviously irrelevant to improvements in Basra. Now PM Gordon Brown seems to be signalling that most British troops will come home in 2009.

The vast increase in Iraqi oil revenues in recent years, and the cancellation of much foreign debt, has made the central government more powerful vis-a-vis the society. Al-Maliki can afford to pay, train and equip many more police and soldiers. An Iraq with an unencumbered $75 billion in oil income begins to look more like Kuwait, and to be able to afford to buy off various constituencies. It is a different game than an Iraq with $33 bn. in revenues, much of it pre-committed to debt servicing.

Senator McCain was wrong to say that US or Iraqi casualty rates were unprecedentedly low in May.

Most American commentators are so focused on the relative fall in casualties that they do not stop to consider how high the rates of violence remain. Kudos to Steve Chapman for telling it like it is.

I'd suggest some comparisons. The Sri Lankan civil war between Sinhalese and Tamils has killed an average of 233 persons a month since 1983 and is considered one of the world's major ongoing trouble spots. That is half the average monthly casualties in Iraq recently. In 2007, the conflict in Afghanistan killed an average of 550 persons a month. That is about the rate recently according to official statistics for Iraq. The death rate in 2006-2007 in Somalia was probably about 300 a month, or about half this year's average monthsly rate in Iraq. Does anybody think Afghanistan or Somalia is calm? Thirty years of North Ireland troubles left about 3,000 dead, a toll still racked up in Iraq every five months on average.

All the talk of casualty rates, of course, is to some extent beside the point. The announced purpose of the troop escalation was to create secure conditions in which political compromises could be achieved.

In spring of 2007, Iraq had a national unity government. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet had members in it from the Shiite Islamic Virtue Party, the Sadr Movement, the secular Iraqi National list of Iyad Allawi, the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front, the Kurdistan Alliance, and the two Shiite core partners, the Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party and the Islami Supreme Council of Iraq.

Al-Maliki lost his national unity government in summer, 2007, just as casualties began to decline. The Islamic Virtue Party, the Sadrists, and the Iraqi National List are all still in the opposition. The Islamic Mission Party of al-Maliki has split, and he appears to remain in control of the smaller remnant. So although the Sunni IAF has agreed to rejoin the government, al-Maliki's ability to promote national reconciliation is actually much reduced now from 14 months ago.

There has been very little reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite. The new de-Baathification law which ostensibly aimed at improving the condition of Sunnis who had worked in the former regime was loudly denounced by the very ex-Baathists who would be affected by it. In any case, the measure has languished in oblivion and no effort has been made to implement it. Depending on how it is implemented it could easily lead to large numbers of Sunnis being fired from government ministries, and so might make things worse.

An important step was the holding of new provincial elections. Since the Sunni Arabs boycotted the last ones in Jan., 2005, their provinces have not had representative governments and in some, Shiite and Kurdish officials have wielded power over the majority Sunnis Arabs! Attempts to hold the provincial elections this fall have so far run aground on the shoals of ethnic conflict. Thus, the Shiite parties wanted to use ayatollahs' pictures in their campaigns, against the wishes of the other parties. It isn't clear what parliament will decide about that. More important is the question of whether provincial elections will be held in the disputed Kirkuk Province, which the Kurds want to annex. That dispute has caused (Kurdish) President Jalal Talabani to veto the enabling legislation for the provincial elections, which may set them back months or indefinitely.

There is also no oil law, essential to allow foreign investment in developing new fields.

So did the "surge" "work"?

The troop escalation in and of itself was probably not that consequential. That the troops were used in new ways by Gen. Petraeus was more important. But their main effect was ironic. They calmed Baghdad down by accidentally turning it into a Shiite city, as Shiite as Isfahan or Tehran, and thus a terrain on which the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement could not hope to fight effectively.

It is Obama who has the better argument in this debate, not Senator McCain, who knows almost nothing about Iraq and Iraqis, and overestimates what can be expected of 30,000 US troops in an enormous, complex country.

But the problem for McCain is that it does not matter very much for policy who is right in this debate. Security in Iraq is demonstrably improved, for whatever reason, and the Iraqis want the US out. If things are better, what is the rationale for keeping US troops in Iraq?
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Bhasin: John McCain and Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Choices: Different Bottles, Same Wine

Madhavi Bhasin writes in an IC Guest Editorial:

The race to elect the successor to President George W. Bush is attracting more attention from across the globe than any previous Presidential contest in the United States. The next occupant of the White House is expected to manage the consequences of the infamous Bush Doctrine of Pre-emption. Hence the foreign policy choices of the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates are being widely scrutinized. Detailed analysis reveals that the foreign policy principles of John McCain and Barak Obama cut across party lines to represent the American dream to be a world leader. Political realism rather than party ideology appears to be guiding the foreign policy campaigns of the two presidential candidates.

In his Address at the Hoover Institution on American Foreign Policy in May 2007, John McCain repeatedly referred to ‘America as a nation endowed with a purpose’. He emphasized the apparent U.S. mission of fighting the terrorist networks and emerging autocracies around the globe. While cautioning the audience with regard to the policies of China and Russia, Senator McCain strongly criticized Iran and North Korea as countries threatening a peaceful order of democratic nations. In order to meet these challenges McCain has suggested overhauling the nation’s foreign policy, defense and intelligence agencies. The basic tenet of this transformation, enunciated in his speech, is building partnerships among the democratic nations. McCain does not rule out the military option for meeting prospective challenges, but refers to widening the military capabilities to meet these challenges more effectively. In his words, “We must never again launch a military operation with too few troops to complete the mission and build a secure, stable, and democratic peace. When we fight a war, we must fight to win.”

Partnership based on the element of democratic solidarity is McCain’s mechanism of shifting the burden of American foreign policy adventures onto other democratic nations. He seeks to further refine the strategies of George W. Bush by institutionalizing such a partnership so that other member states come to shoulder an automatic obligation for the decisions taken by the U.S. Any challenge to the prospective U.S. policies and operations is countered by disqualifying China and Russia from such a grouping. His expectation that the new alliance would act where the U.N. has failed clearly demonstrates his design to insulate the U.S. policies from the control and scrutiny of the world body.

McCain’s rhetoric reflects the status of the U.S. as ‘first among equals’ when he asserts that “to be a good leader, America must be a good ally”, but qualifies his statement by emphasizing on the fact that America’s partners need to be good allies too and accept an equal responsibility to build peace and freedom in the world. While promising to call a Summit of world democracies during his first year as the U.S. President, McCain proudly refers to his new venture as ‘The League of Democracies’.

The foreign policy advisers of Barack Obama happen to be pioneers and supporters of the concept of ‘Concert of Democracies” fashioned on lines similar to McCain’s League of Democracies. Ivo Daalder and Anthony Lake, Obama’s advisers of foreign policy, have favored the creation of an Anglo-American Democratic Alliance to meet emerging challenges. Ivo Daalder has co-authored an article, “Democracies of World Unite” published in American Interest, where he emphasizes the value of institution based multilateralism instead of the ad hoc problem oriented multilateralism of the Bush Administration.

In his view a Concert that brings established democracies together into a single institution would be best suited for countering the new global challenges. In referring to the obstacles of the U.N., exclusion of Russia and China and espousal of the objectives of the Concert, Ivo Daalder’s vision has a lot in common with McCain’s proposed League of Democracies.

The final report of the Princeton Project on National Security favors the idea of a Concert of Democracies for carrying out military interventions around the world, outside the framework of the UN Security Council. Interestingly Anthony Lake is one of the Co-Chairs of the Project. In an article in the July/August 2007 edition of Foreign Affairs, Barak Obama stated that America cannot meet this century’s challenges alone; and the world cannot meet them without America; an indirect reference to the continuation of global crusade under American leadership.

In his speeches Obama has discreetly support the idea of a Concert of Democracies by calling for need to strengthen institutions and invigorate alliances and partnerships for meeting the global threats. He seeks to build an America that fights immediate evil, promotes an ultimate good and leads the world. Does this sound any different from the promises made by President Bush and reasserted by Senator McCain?

The global implications of this analysis are obvious: No matter who becomes the next President, the U.S. will continue its policies of political, economic and strategic intervention in countries that appear threatening, while courting greater support from its allies. With either a Democratic or Republican President at the helm of affairs, the U.S. may be expected to continue a policy of ‘aggressive internationalism’.

Madhavi Bhasin is a Doctoral Researcher at the Jadavpur University, India. Her research areas include conflict resolution, South Asia and Middle East. Currently based in California and working on Indo-U.S. Missile Defense Cooperation and India's Public Diplomacy Strategy.

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Cole in Salon: Obama is Wrong on Afghanistan

My Salon column, , "Obama is saying the Wrong things about Afghanistan," , is now available online.

Excerpt:

' The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator's remarks had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last February. Ghani warned that a U.S. incursion into the northwestern tribal areas would have "disastrous" consequences for the globe.

The governor underlined that a "war on terrorism" policy depended on popular support for it, and that such support was being leeched away by U.S. strikes on the Pakistan side of the border and by statements such as Obama's. A recent American attack mistakenly killed Pakistani troops who had been sent to fight the Pakistani Taliban at American insistence. The Pakistani public was furious. Ghani complained, "Candidate Obama gave these statements; I come out openly and say such statements undermine support, don't do it." '

Read the whole thing.

See also Barnett Rubin's recent essays on Afghanistan at ICGA.

And at the same site, don't miss Farideh Farhi's analysis of the Iranian negotiations with the US and Europe over its civilian nuclear research program.
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Passage of Electoral Provision Likely will Delay Elections

It is not looking good for the holding of provincial elections in Iraq this year.

First the high electoral commission warned that if enabling legislation was not passed by the end of July, it would push them back from October to Dec. 22.

Now, the contentious issue of the province of Kirkuk may have delayed them further. Kirkuk has Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. The Kurds wish to annex it to their Kurdistan Regional Government, seeing its oil wealth as potentially key to an independent Kurdish state in the future. The annexation is opposed by Arabs and most Turkmen. It is also opposed by Turkey.

Sunni speaker of the house, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, authorized a secret vote on what to do about Kirkuk Province (also called Tamim). S


Courtesy al-Zaman

ome had argued that Kirkuk should vote like any other province. But the parliamentarians voting on Tuesday, according to the LAT's Ned Parker, passed a "provision" that "called for a committee to be set up to review the problems in Kirkuk and take interim steps until local elections are scheduled, including apportioning power in the provincial government equally among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens."

The secret ballot had been opposed by the Kurdish MPs, who staged a walk-out, along with some Shiite allies. When this provision was passed, they warned of blood in the streets in Kirkuk. (Actually, that development would not reflect well on the Kurds, since they would be turning to violence over a measure passed by a majority of the quorum in an elected parliament.)

It is widely expected that President Jalal Talabani with use his power of veto against the bill.

Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that the Kurdistan Alliance with 58 seats in parliament has been a key pillar of support for the al-Maliki government. Were the Kurds to be deeply angered, they could pull out of his de facto coalition, leaving him much weakened. The tiff with the Kurds comes only days after the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front finally rejoined the government.

Kirkuk sees regular political violence. On Tuesday, McClatchy reports, "On Monday night, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Kirkuk city. Two policemen were killed( including the deputy of Irouba police station Colonel Khabat Aziz) and 5 others were injured."
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Troop Agreement Misses Deadline; Provincial Law Misses Deadline; Bombings in Mosul, Diyala, Fallujah

First there was going to be a status of forces agreement between the US and Iraq, which would be ratified by the Iraqi parliament and would grant the US long-term bases. Private security guards and US troops would be immune from Iraqi law. US commanders would launch operations at will, would decide who a terrorist was, and would arrest and imprison Iraqis at will.

Then al-Maliki went to Iran for consultations. And Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani forbade a giveaway of Iraqi sovereignty. And the Sadrists began demonstrating every Friday. Then the US launched a unilateral operation in al-Maliki's home town and killed his cousin.

So the private contractors won't have legal immunity. And the agreement will be just for a year, not long-term. And it won't be ratified by the Iraqi parliament, so it is just a vague agreement between two executives. It won't stipulate long-term arrangements, but its interpretive context will be one in which the Iraqi leadership has expressed a desire for US troops to leave in 2010. It isn't clear if US troops will have legal immunity or whether they will have full freedom of action or whether they will be able to arrest and incarcerate Iraqis at will.

And now, it won't be signed by the deadline of July 31.

You have to wonder whether the Iraqis and the Americans in the end won't have to go back to the UN for a troop mandate again. The Iraqis want out from under the UN but don't want to recognize that the American presence detracts from their sovereignty. D'oh.

No provincial election law again on Monday. Maybe Tuesday. Maybe not.

The Iraqi legislative calendar is more like "Waiting for Godot" than it is like . . . a legislative calendar.

John McCain thinks that Iraq and Pakistan have a common border.




[Hat tip to Think Progress.]

Hey, everybody, ask McCain if he'll pull out US troops by 2010 if that is what the Iraqi government says it wants.

McCain keeps boasting about being "right" about the "surge" and saying Obama was "wrong."

Look, it is more important that McCain was consistently wrong. He was wrong about the desirability of going to war against Iraq. He was wrong about it being a cakewalk. He was wrong about there being WMD there. He was wrong about everything. And he was wrong about the troop escalation making things better. The casualty figures dropped in al-Anbar, where few extra US troops were ever sent. They dropped in Basra, from which the British withdrew. Something happened. Putting it all on 30,000 extra troops seems a stretch. And what about all the ethnic cleansing and displacing of persons that took place under the nose of the "surge?" McCain has been wrong about everything to do with Iraq. And he is boasting about his wisdom on it!

Guerrillas used a tractor bomb to kill 7 persons and wound 8 others in Diyala Province near Iran, where there is a lively contest for power among Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Reuters reports other recent political violence in Iraq:

' * MOSUL - A suicide car bomber killed two private security contractors serving as bodyguards to members of the Kurdish Democratic Party in an attack on their convoy in Mosul . . . The blast also wounded eight civilians nearby.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed two people when they opened fire on their vehicle in southeastern Mosul, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed two brothers and their cousin in a drive-by shooting in northern Mosul on Sunday, police said. . . .

MOSUL - One body was found with gunshot wounds to the head in western Mosul, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - A parked car bomb killed one person and wounded four others on Sunday in Alawi district, central Baghdad, police said.

FALLUJA - Five people were wounded by two roadside bombs exploding within minutes of each other on different streets in central Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

(Compiled by Aws Qusay and Tim Cocks) '

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Obama in Iraq; Der Spiegel Proves al-Maliki Story Correct; Series of Bombings hit Baghdad

Senator Barack Obama is in Iraq for consultations with American military commanders and Iraqi leaders.

Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.

That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq! (See the bombings and shootings listed below for Sunday). The hype around last year's troop escalation obscures a simple fact: that Obama formed his views about the need for the US to leave Iraq at a time when its security situation was very similar to what it is now! Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine.

The troop escalation, which actually allowed the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from the country, has largely been pushed as propaganda by the White House and the AEI. Here's an example of how their propaganda works. As is usual with news it does not like, the Bush administration attempted to muddy the waters this weekend regarding the interview of PM Nuri al-Maliki with Der Spiegel in which he expressed approval of Barack Obama's plan to get US troops out of Iraq within 16 months of next January. Al-Maliki told Der Spiegel in response to a question about how long US troops would be in his country,

'Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business. But it's the business of Iraqis to say what they want. '

Ali al-Dabbagh, who is usually described as al-Maliki's spokesman but actually seems to work for the CENTCOM or Pentagon Middle East command, was trotted out to make vague statements about Der Spiegel's having mistranslated or misinterpreted what al-Maliki said. This denial was issued through CENTCOM! When the original demand came from al-Maliki for a timetable for US withdrawal, it was al-Dabbagh who reinterpreted it as a 'time horizon.' Al-Dabbagh was contradicted by National Security Counsellor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, who seems actually closer in this thinking to al-Maliki. My guess is that al-Dabbagh has been recruited by some agency in Washington, DC, to explain away al-Maliki's statements whenever they contradict Bush's.

Der Spiegel stood by its story. The text of Der Spiegel's statement is here. It turns out that the translator involved works for al-Maliki, not for Der Spiegel, and so presumably knew what the prime minister's words meant in Arabic. And for the piece de resistance, it turns out that Der Spiegel has an audiotape of the Arabic of the interview, which they leaked to The New York Times. Sabrina Tavernise and Jeff Zeleny write:

' But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. . . The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.” He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.” '

But you see, it does not matter that al-Maliki actually said what he said. It does not matter that Der Spiegel can prove it. All that matters is that the Goebbelses around Bush and Cheney have managed to muddy the waters and produce doubt, taking the hard edge off the interview. Even AFP, the usually skeptical French wire service, asserted that al-Maliki had "denied" the accuracy of the Der Spiegel interview! Of course, al-Maliki has done no such thing. CENTCOM ventriloquising al-Dabbagh engaged in the denial, and a very vague one at that.

That is the way propaganda works, to obscure the truth and ensure it can be denied. Some wingnut even tried to pressure me to retract the little sentence I had written on the affair yesterday, on the grounds of "al-Dabbagh's" mendacious and ridiculous assertions. Our information system is so corrupt and easily manipulated that even a clumsy ploy can obscure the truth and bully the journalists.

Aljazeera International reports on the conflict between Obama and McCain on a timetable for US troop withdrawals from Iraq.



Over the weekend, the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front rejoined the al-Maliki government. It had left last summer over accusations that al-Maliki ignored Sunni sensitivities, refused to speak to his vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, coddled Shiite militias that ethnically cleansed Sunnis, and kept tens of thousands of Sunnis in prison without charges or due process. As Xinhua notes, al-Hashimi's Iraqi Islamic Party, one of three components of the Iraqi Accord Front coalition of Sunni parties, will face great competition in the provincial elections from the US-created Awakening Councils, which are paid and armed by the US military.

Speaking of this fall's provincial elections, the country's elections commission announced Sunday that they might have to be postponed, given that Parliament has still not passed the enabling legislation. The election law is mired in debates over the mixed province of Kirkuk in the north, and whether it should hold provincial elections along with the other provinces. The province is claimed by the Kurdistan Regional Government, which wants to annex it, even though the Turkmen and Arab populations do not want to join semi-autonomous Kurdistan (where the state schools are no longer Arabophone).

Al-Zaman writing in Arabic says that the new date has been set as December 22. It is official: The provincial elections in Iraq will not occur in time to affect the US presidential race. E.g., if the Sadrists sweep to power in many Shiite provinces, that could have been a factor in the US polls. Not going to happen.

A new airport, funded in important part by Iran has opened at the Shiite holy city of Najaf. It will likely bring millions of pilgrims from Iran, Pakistan, India and elsewhere to the shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad. American authorities worried about Iranians in Iraq may as well just lay back; with millions going in and out, tracking them is going to be rather difficult.



Catch Tomdispatch.com on professional warfighters and on the Pentagon's fuel consumption.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday:

' Baghdad

An adhesive IED stuck to a civilian car detonated in Kem neighbourhood, Adhamiyah, northern Baghdad early Sunday killing the driver.

A roadside bomb exploded in Karrada, near al-Rahibat Hospital at 7.30 a.m. killing one civilian, injuring three.

A roadside bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy on Qanat Street in the direction of Qahira, northeast Baghdad at around 10.30 a.m. Sunday. No casualties were reported.

A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Qahira, near al-Nidaa Mosque at noon injuring five people including two policemen.

A parked car bomb detonated in Damascus intersection, central Baghdad at 6 p.m. killing one civilian, injuring seven people including one policemen and one baby girl.

Three unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad today by Iraqi Police; one in Amil, one in Baladiyat and one in Hurriyah.

Gunmen threw a hand grenade at a car selling alcoholic beverages, parked on the Jadriyah Bridge at 9 p.m. injuring four civilians.

A roadside bomb exploded in al-Jaara in Madain, to the south east of Baghdad injuring three civilians including a little girl.

Diyala

A roadside bomb targeted a pick up truck in Wajihiyah district, 20 km to the east of Baquba at 6.45 p.m. killing two policemen in plain clothes.

Nineveh

A suicide car bomb targeted a site where trucks carrying construction materials for the U.S military stop at 4 p.m. killing two foreign private security contractors.

Gunmen in a speeding car open fire upon a group of civilians in al-Hadbaa neighbourhood, Mosul city at 6 p.m. killing three.

Gunmen in a speeding car open fire upon a civilian in Aden neighbourhood at 7.30 p.m. killing him on his doorstep.

One policeman killed by sniper fire in al-Masarif neighbourhood, Mosul city at around 7.30 p.m.

Anbar

Iraqi Army servicemen captured a suicide bomber targeting a checkpoint in central Ramadi. The suicide vest was defused and the suicide bomber detained.

Salahuddin

An American Special Force raided the residence of Khalaf Issa Turk in al-Asri neighbourhood, Baiji at dawn, Sunday and opened fire upon Husam Hamed Hmoud al-Qaissi, son of the Governor of Salahuddin Province while he was asleep in the guest room and also opened fire upon Auday Khalaf Issa al-Qaissi, his cousin killing them both, and detained two others without giving any explanation, said a security source in Salahuddin Province. The American military said its forces shot two armed men during a raid because they felt they had "hostile intent". The statement added that the forces also injured and captured an al-Qaida financer during the operation.

Kirkuk

A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Tayaran Square, central Kirkuk Sunday morning, injuring one policeman.

Basra

Basra Police found the body of a 24 year old female in Jazair neighbourhood, central Basra Sunday. She was shot four times.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Obama in Afghanistan

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama held consultations Saturday in Kabul with Afghan government officials. He discussed the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the country. I heard him on television at one point pledging to defeat the Taliban.

Aljazeera is showing footage of him addressing US troops who are going wild for him, and shooting hoops in the base gym. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Iraq, endorsed Obama's plan for a withdrawal US troops from Iraq. Although al-Maliki said he was not choosing up sides in the presidential race, it seems clear that he'd be much more comfortable with Obama.

CBS reports on the trip, which included a stop at the provincial eastern Pushtun city of Jalalabad. I was impressed that Obama got out of the capital.



Violence against NATO troops in Afghanistan is up 40% in 2008 over 2007, and more civilians were killed in the first half of 2008 than in all of 2007. AP has more.

The Observer's editorial on the situation in Afghanistan points out that the poppy crop this year will be a bumper one, that the Afghanistan government is riddled with corruption, that billions in foreign aid have made little difference (and that they may have been embezzled), and that more foreign troops in the country is unlikely to be the solution.

Remnants of the old Taliban met recently. They are making a united front in the Pushtun areas against outsiders.

Foreign radical vigilantes have been flooding into Afghanistan.

Check out Barnett Rubin's recent entries on Afghanistan.
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OSC: Afghan Observers Sceptical of Senator Obama's Plan To Send More Troops

The USG Open Source Center translates a report in Dari Persian on a parliamentarian and two close observers from Afghanistan who entertain the severest doubts about Barack Obama's plan to send more US troops to Afghanistan.

Afghan Observers Sceptical of Senator Obama's Plan To Send More Troops
Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External Service
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

An Afghan parliamentarian has criticized one of the US presidential candidates for his plan to deploy more troops in Afghanistan. Elaborating on his foreign policy this week, Barack Obama said that as president, he would send two more US combat brigades to the Afghan theatre.

According to a report (source indistinct) from Kabul, Afghan MP Kabir Ranjbar asserted on Friday that increasing the number of US and other foreign servicemen would not help Afghanistan at all.
Wahid Mozhda, another Afghan political observer, has also warned that the Obama's plan to deploy up to 10,000 additional troops will worsen the situation in Afghanistan. This Afghan observer states according to this plan, the US is trying to resolve the problem through military measures, which is obviously not an effective strategy.

In addition, Mr Fahim Dashti, a journalist and observer, has said that the US government officials have decided to increase troops in Afghanistan, at a time when they have failed to defeat remnants of the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida in this country. Fahim Dashti says sending additional US and other foreign troops to Afghanistan will cause more problems in the long term, because it may antagonize the people's anti-American feelings. The Afghan analyst accentuated that countries like the USA should organize and equip the Afghan native forces, including the national army and police, as soon as possible if they really want to put an end to insecurity in Afghanistan.

(Description of Source: Mashhad Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External Service in Dari -- Iranian government-run radio)
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Bush Accepts Time Horizon for US Troop withdrawal

Bush has agreed in all but name with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on a timetable for US troop withdrawal from that country. As usual Bush's staff made up an implausible euphemism for the timetable, calling it a "time horizon" for "aspirational goals?" Language like that is a sure sign that Bush is too embarrassed to call it like it is.

Al-Maliki has gotten enormous pressure from the grand ayatollahs in Najaf and from the Sadr Movement not to sign away Iraqi sovereignty in making a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the US. Al-Maliki is said to have despaired of getting a SOFA past the Iraqi parliament, since the MPs demand a timetable for US withdrawal. He will instead initial a Memorandum of Understanding with the Bush administration. Al-Maliki and Bush hope this MOU will take on the force of law even though no legislature in either country will have passed it.

So Bush has thrown al-Maliki the lifeline of a few euphemisms. But a time horizon is just a fancy way of saying "timetable."

The Sadrists are already angry about al-Maliki's crackdown on them, and they demonstrate weeklly against the SOFA.

Bush probably wants US troops in Iraq because they help nail down energy contracts between the US and Iraqi concerns. Without 140,000 troops in the country, the Iraqis would not have a good reason to favor US concerns like Hunt over China's Sinopec or Russia's Lukoil (see the next item).

The Pan-Arab daily, al_Hayat, said that the euphemist language was a compromise on Bush's part.

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Gazprom's Businesss with Iran

The USG Open Source Center summarizes Russian press comment on the Gazprom deals with Libya and Iran. The deal with Iran is extremely important because if it goes forward, it would require Russia to tangle with US economic sanctions.

OSC Report: Russian Media View Implcations of Gazprom Deals With Libya, Iran
Russia -- OSC Report . . .
Friday, July 18, 2008

Russian Media View Implications of Gazprom Deals With Libya, Iran The Russian gas monopoly Gazprom held substantive talks with Libya and signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran, adding two more participants to its policy of geographical diversification of gas and oil sources. Many Russian media harked back to the idea of a "gas OPEC" and also pointed out that Gazprom's cooperation with the two countries made Europe's search for alternative energy suppliers much more difficult. While some media saw a chance for Russia to fill the void left by Western oil companies' decisions to pullout of Iran, others commented that the agreements were more political than economic and might not be carried out. . .

On 13 July, Gazprom signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Iranian Oil Company, with some provisions similar to the agreement reached with Libya. The two companies proposed a joint venture for exploration and development of gas and oil fields in Iran, and to build refining and transport facilities in Russia, Iran, and "third countries."

Some media hypothesized that the new cooperation agreement smight resurrect the idea of an international gas cartel similar to OPEC.

. Elite-oriented Gazeta opined that Russian-Iraniancooperation in producing gas "could lead to creation of a gas analog to OPEC" (14 July) . .


Many media opined that Gazprom's control over Libyan and possibly Iranian gas and oil exports would make Europe even more dependent onthe Russian company.

. Independent daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta stated that Gazprom had Europe "in a vise," expanding into areas like Africa, whichE urope had traditionally regarded as an alternative to Russian supplies."Europe risks being completely dependent on Gazprom," the paper predicted (15 July).

. Business Internet publication RBCdaily cited Kapitalcompany analyst Vitaliy Kryukov, who noted that Gazprom's strengthened positioncaused "a negative reaction in the world community" (10 July). . .

Government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta recalled that the EU had viewed Libyan resources as an alternative to Russian supplies, butdue to Gazprom's deal with Libya, EU companies "trading with Libya willstill have to deal with Gazprom as a middleman" (11 July). . .

. Gazeta cited experts' opinions that Gazprom "had every chance to occupy the freed-up spot" formerly held by the French companyTotal (11 July).

. The oil and gas industry Internet site Novosti TEK, commenting on the Western companies leaving Iran, noted that Gazprom was "the only company which doesn't fear political instability in Iran" (16 July).

Some media and commentatorsexpressed doubt that the deal with Iran would be successful.

. Influential daily Kommersant cited Mikhail Korchemkin,director of East European Gas Analysis, who called the Gazprom-Iranian OilCompany memorandum a "political document" that would remain "onpaper" until the situation in Iran "changes profoundly" (15 July).

. biGness.ru quoted Troyka Dialog analyst Valeriy Nesterov,who pointed out that "concrete actions do not always follow memoranda ofcooperation," recalling many such memoranda Gazprom had signed with Westerncompanies that "were not fully carried out or not carried out at all"(15 July).

Vitaliy Portnikov, writing in the independent Internet site Politkom.ru,likened the situation in Iran to that in Iraq, where Russia's Lukoil had signedcontracts with Saadam Husayn only to lose out to Western companies when hisregime toppled. He suggested that if the situation in Iran stabilized, theleadership would again invite Western investors and Gazprom would be the loser (15 July). '
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Helman: Is Bush's Engagement with Iran Hurting McCain, Helping Obama?

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman writes, in a guest op-ed for IC:

The decision by the Administration to send William Burns, the State Department’s third ranking official and a career diplomat, to participate in the five power talks with Iran over its nuclear activities, certainly invites speculation as to how far the Administration has changed its policies regarding Iran.

The White House’s explanation--that Burns will be there to state clearly the Administration’s known position that the US will negotiate with Iran only when it stops its nuclear enrichment activities—is wholly unpersuasive. No one at the table, certainly not the Iranians, needs reminding. Nor is there good evidence that the US has decided to embark on a major new substantive initiative. What at this point it may be fair to say is that the US (and perhaps Iran, as well) has decided to see whether a new process of diplomacy can be established that would permit more detailed substantive exchanges between the US and Iran covering nuclear enrichment matters as well as steps that might over time “normalize” relations between the US and Iran

As a model, consider the ongoing six-power talks with North Korea. It is a model of which the Administration is very well aware, a model that has led to one of this Administration’s few genuinely significant foreign policy achievements.

Several years ago, President Bush defied criticism from both left and right. He rejected direct bilateral negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear weapons activities. Instead, he authorized six power talks that included China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, and put a remarkably skilled career diplomat, Christopher Hill, in charge of the US effort. This new diplomatic process was not undertaken by the participants for the pleasure of sitting around a table to talk to one another. Instead it served to facilitate “multiple bilaterals,” a process and dynamic with which experienced diplomats are well aware and welcome because it provides a cover and process within which otherwise hostile countries can negotiate. Under the skillful management of Hill and his counterparts, what has in fact happened through multiple bilateral talks between the US/ North Korea, US/China and China/North Korea is agreement by North Korea to disable its nuclear infrastructure and by the US to grant significant concessions to North Korea, such as removing it from the US’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. Moreover, the deal having been made within the six-power forum will make it that much more difficult for North Korea to cheat or walk away from it. It has to answer to the other five.

Apply this model now to the Iranian context which involves serious issues not dissimilar to those of North Korea and with an existing forum consisting of Iran and major non-Middle Eastern powers, with the US heretofore sitting in the anteroom. Those issues, beginning with Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and moving on to all of the others that have for decades kept Iran in an international quarantine and the US at sword point, may finally have found a forum and process within which some of these matters can be addressed through multiple bilaterals within a multilateral context.

That is not to say that decisions have been made regarding substantive concessions. It is to say, instead, that all of the participants are experienced diplomats. Burns’ participation certainly was notified and “cleared” in advance at the highest levels, so there would be no surprises. It may all fall apart. Nevertheless, everyone is aware that they may well be embarking on something of real consequence and are prepared to give it a try.

The decision to send Burns certainly was made by President Bush, who certainly is well aware of the controversy it will arouse domestically from his own partisans and is also well aware of the thus-far successful North Korean model. He also would know that his decision undercuts John McCain’s position on Iran and his claim to superior experience, and validates Barack Obama’s judgment favoring the negotiating track. The President must also know that the multilateral process will take time to unfold and any useful results might not be realized until after his term in office. So, for a change, cheers for George Bush.

Gerald B. Helman "was United States Ambassador to the European Office of the United Nations from 1979 through 1981."
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Is it 1992 and the Economy, Stupid? Deja Vu all Over Again; McCain loses Lead among Men, is 7 Points Down

Is Barack Obama in some sense Clinton 2.0 when it comes to the public's perception of what the candidate could do for the economy?

Just as Clinton benefited in 1992 from a feeling of economic malaise in the country, so too is is Obama getting advantages from the public's having announced to pollster's that the economy their number one concern. Of course, the vast majority of Americans is convinced that the Iraq War has worsened the country's economic posture, so the two are not unrelated.

A Reuters/Zogby poll found:

'Dissatisfaction with U.S. economic policy continues to increase, with 89% who now view the nation’s economic policy as fair or poor, up from 84% who said the same last month – 55% now give U.S. economic policy a “poor” rating. The vast majority of Democrats (96%) and political independents (91%) have a negative view of the nation’s economic policy, while 80% of Republicans now share those feelings, an increase from 71% who said the same in June.'

Republicans who think the relative decline in violence in Iraq will save their bacon should remember that the Gulf War was an unambiguous win for Bush Sr., but he still lost to Clinton. A lesser disaster following upon a major catastrophe is a much worse platform on which to campaign than the one Bush Sr. had. Of course, the crisis in the Gulf was politically ambiguous because it had put back up petroleum prices (they rose from $9 a barrel in 1986 to over $40 a barrel in 1991).

In any case, in 1992 the American public was just not that concerned with the victory over Iraq in Kuwait; they were worried about a real estate bust and a recession (which was technically ending, but these things are never known for sure as they are happening.) The Savings and Loan scandal, which cost the public $100 bn. and occurred because the Republican had fired the auditors of these financial institutions and coddled the white collar criminals who funded their campaigns, was fresh in people's minds. McCain, of course, was close to a major figure in that S&L scandal.

The bank scandals (deriving in part from the Republican Party's tendency to weaken or ignore regulations constraining corruption in big business, thus promoting fraud on a vast scale), the spike in oil prices, the anxieties around recession-- all of this must strike any observer who lived through 1992 as eerily familiar.

There is even a third party challenge by Bob Barr that may take votes away from McCain just as Ross Perot took them 2 to 1 away from Bush Sr. rather than Clinton.

Zogby/Reuters report that:

'Democrat Barack Obama continues to maintain his lead over Republican John McCain in the race for U.S. President and is viewed as the candidate who could best manage the U.S. economy – even as nearly half of likely voters list the economy as their top election issue . . . Obama leads McCain, 47% to 40%, with 13% saying they prefer someone else or are not yet sure about their selection in the race—just a slight shift from June’s survey, when Obama led McCain 47% to 42%. While Obama maintains a significant lead among women, among men the candidates are now deadlocked at 44%, erasing the six-point lead among men McCain held in June. Both candidates receive strong support among voters from their own party, but the 22-point lead among political independents Obama held in June has withered and now stands at 44% for Obama, compared with 41% for McCain.'

A 7 point lead is well beyond the margin of error. And so is the erasure of McCain's lead among men. If the men are splitting their vote, Obama will win, since the women favor him by a significant margin. Again, something like that happened with Clinton.

Clinton and Obama are both policy wonks and people it is clear you could trust an economy to (unlike Bush and McCain, who are all about giveaways to the rich, their own social class). But Clinton and Obama are also hunks, whom men admire for their lithe physicality and over whom women swoon.

In a bad economy, Americans seem to want to be saved not so much by a man on a white horse as by a brilliant hunk.
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Bombs Kill 40, Wound Dozens; Al-Duri Calls for Continued Resistance; Gates Slams Militarization of Foreign Policy

Guerrillas launched a series of bombing campaigns in the eastern mixed province of Diyala and in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing at least 40 and wounding dozens. In Diyala, recruiting stations for security forces were hit, as potential recruits lined up. In Mosul, likewise, the targest were Iraqi security forces. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had sent the new Iraqi army up to Mosul, where it is encountering heavy resistance in the form of bombings and sniping from Sunni Arab guerrillas, some of them apparently neo-Baathists. Diyala is violent and the government is saying that it will send troops there, too.

McClatchy reports that local Iraqis interpret the attacks as jockeying for position in the upcoming provincial elections. The election of legitimate Sunni-majority provincial governments could undermine a key propaganda point of the guerrillas, which is that Iraq's government is a Shiite/Kurdish Iranian puppet that also is in Washington's back pocket.

Former vice president of Iraq Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, called on Iraqi guerrillas to drive the US out of the country on Tuesday. Duri's cell and other Baathists in the north have been one important source of Iraq's violence, but the press tends to ignore the neo-Baath in favor of Muslim fundamentalists.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned against a militarization of American foreign policy and stressed the role of the civilian state department. Translation: The Bush Senior Realists think Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith not only screwed up the Pentagon and almost destroyed the US armed forces but also imposed impossible burdens on it that other agencies should have borne.

Aljazeera English on the New Yorker caricature of rightwing US depictions of Obama:




This day in history, 1958: British Embassy burned in Baghdad, pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al Said killed.

Salah Hemeid explains the significance of the 1958 revolution, which Iraqis commemorated on the 15th.

From the USG Open Source Center:

'Saudi Shiite Cleric Al-Nimr Supports Iran's Nuclear Program, Assails US
"A UPI report from Riyadh: "A Saudi Shiite cleric: We stand with Iran; Iran has a right to strike US interests and destroy Israel"
Al-Quds al-Arabi (Internet Version-WWW)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Riyadh, UPI--Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr has defended Iran's nuclear program, emphasizingthat should Iran come under attack, it would have the right to close the Straitof Hormuz, destroy the "Zionist entity," and strike US bases in theMiddle East and Washington's interests everywhere. He said: "We stand withIran, heart and soul, and with all our resources." In his Friday sermon inthe Imam Al-Husayn Mosque in the town of Al-Awwamiyah, in eastern Saudi Arabia,which was posted on websites on Monday, he said: "Assuming, God forbid, that the United States dealt a strike against Iran, what right Iran would have torespond in reaction? Iran would have the right to close the Strait of Hormuz, destroy the Zionist entity, and strike the US bases and interests everywhere."

Headded: "We stand with Iran, heart and soul, and with all our resources, bethey media organs or funds. This would not be in defense of Iran as a state,but in defense of Heaven's values and of what is right. We fear no one, be they regimes, arrogant powers, or mercenary pens." '

I think Nimr is rather more gung ho than the Iranians themselves. When you are a Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia, you need someone to blow off steam about, it seems.
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Obama Caricature Offensive to Muslims; US Government does not Secure Nuclear Material; Afghanistan slams Pakistan for Terrorism

It is typical of the atmosphere in America today that the New Yorker cover caricaturing the Obamas is called offensive by the Obama campaign but virtually no one is talking about how demeaning it is of American Muslims. A little detail like that. Imagine if a US candidate had been depicted as an Orthodox Jewish settler with an Uzi machine gun in the West Bank, the hue and cry that would ensue.

US government tardy in securing radioactive materials. Some people worry too much about the wrong things. For instance, Bush's security people have created a watch list with a million names on it. How could that possibly be useful in counter-terrorism, a million names? Most of them are probably just peace activists. Terrorist groups are small and wily. You can't get at them scattershot this way. But there are some things worth worrying about and doing something about. Dirty bombs, where radioactive material is packed in with a conventional bomb, causing contamination of wide swathes of e.g. a city, now that is a good candidate for action. But while Mr. Bush was fiddling around adding Americans to the watch list on a massive scale, the way celebrities add people to their Facebook friends list, he wasn't bothering to take care of the important stuff. Emblematic of the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Barnett Rubin draws our attention to Afghanistan's charge that Pakistan is the world's most dangerous sponsor of terrorism (i.e. much worse than Iran). He also points to the threat that the Indian Research and Analysis Wing is preparing to extract vengeance on Islamabad for the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which Afghanistan and India blame on Pakistani-backed Taliban.

Very troubling. Wars have started for less cause.
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Basra Security still Fragile; Offensive Planned in Diyala; Will Petrodollars Resolve Iraq Crisis?

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi government is about to send troops into Diyala in an attempt to tamp down violence and combat local militias there, just as was done in Basra, Maysan and Mosul. I have begun to wonder whether the secret of these campaigns is not so much the show of military force as the behind-the-scene bribes given by the government to insurgents to go find another line of work. It still boggles my mind that Mosul could be taken without a shot (though it has suffered from terrorism strikes in the aftermath.

The periodic waves of euphoria that wash over the political class and some of the media in Washington cause serious security risks in Iraq to be forgotten. Al-Maliki sent some troops to Basra? OK, Basra is fine, we can forget about it. In fact, the situation there, while improved, is far from stable or assured. I suspect trying to do more to ensure that this key province does not go south (it is the source of most of Iraq's petroleum wealth and the site of two major ports, without which Iraq would be landlocked) is one reason PM Gordon Brown has decided not to pull out of Iraq, and, indeed, to send a few more troops there to train Iraqi soldiers.

Finance Minister Bayan Jabr Sulagh argues that Iraq's newfound windfall from greatly increased petroleum revenues can help the country grow its way out of crisis. I hope so, but a word of caution is in order. Iran and Algeria are also oil states, and one had a revolution and the other a sanguinary civil war. It isn't that you have petroleum income. It is how exactly you deploy it.

Alexandra Davis points out that Iraq's election law is still incomplete, casting doubt about whether provincial elections will be held this fall. Not only that, but cabinet-level decisions such as whether to allow the display of photos of religious personages in connection with political campaigns will now be review and possibly changed by the parliament.

Zavis also reports that Baghdad is putting in solar-powered street lamps. It is hoped that they will reduce crime and violence. The regular electricity grid is unreliable. By the way, the LAT quotes a general suggesting that solar electricity generation is six or seven times as expensive as with fossil fuels. Isn't that estimate out of date? I thought it was down to only three times. Engineers, please weigh in.

Baghdad joins my own city of Ann Arbor in this project of solarized street lamps.

"At least 16 Iraqis were killed and 20 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. One U.S. soldier died from a non-combat related incident as well," according to antiwar.com. Worth thinking about are these items:

' In Baquba, an IED wounded three members of the local Awakening Council. . .

Peaceful marchers in Hawija demanded that Kirkuk's provincial elections take place on schedule. . . [To interpret this item we have to know if they were Kurds, who are trying to take over the province and incorporate it into the Kurdistan Regional Government.]

Fallujah is under a curfew following yesterday's pair of bomb blasts targeting local officials. . .

Two high-ranking army officers were kidnapped in Kirkuk. . .

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Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan: A Friendly Critique

Barack Obama wants to get out of Iraq by summer 2010 but wants to send 10,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.

Obama's editorial is thoughtful and far more sensible than anything we are hearing from the White House or McCain, and I agree with most of it. But I have one quibble and one major critique. The quibble is that Obama talks about leaving a small American force in Iraq after most of the troops are withdrawn, to continue to fight "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia."

That suggestion is not plausible for several reasons. If there is only a small force in the country, who will rescue them if their helicopter gets shot down or they are ambushed and besieged? Then, how would a small American unit be any good against a terrorist organization operating in remote parts of Sunni Iraq? They don't know Arabic, can't hope for really good intelligence from locals, etc. Wouldn't it be more efficient to let the Special Police Commandos of the Iraqi Interior Ministry take care of this sort of thing? By the way, no one seems to be calling themselves "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" any more on the jihadi bulletin boards. The main fundamentalist vigilante group is the "Islamic State of Iraq."

And then there is the problem that the Iraqis are demanding veto power over US operations in Iraq, a demand that will only grow with time. If they don't concur that a Sunni group is terrorists, the Baghdad government could just keep the US unit cooling its heels. It is precisely over issues such as Iraqi demands that US troops get permission before they act that Karen DeYoung at WaPo says have definitively derailed negotiations between Bush and al-Maliki on a Status of Forces Agreement. Now the two leaders seem likely just initial some quick and dirty executive-to-executive understanding that may not last past Bush's last day in office next January. So the Iraqis are unlikely to want a special forces unit of the sort Senator Obama envisages running around Iraq at will.

It will be over with by then. Iraqis want their sovereignty back.

The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq.

The major critique I have is that Obama keeps talking about intensifying the search and destroy missions being carried out by US troops in the Pushtun areas of southern Afghanistan. As we should have learned from Vietnam, search and destroy missions only alienate the local population and drive it into the arms of the insurgency.

Tom Engelhardt explains how US bombing strikes sometimes hit innocent civilians, including now several wedding parties, which is rather alienating to the clans that are attacked. (The US military says that the insurgents routinely allege that wedding parties were hit when they were not actually. But then there are those pesky photographs of what are obviously civilians . . .)

The cost of such guerrilla struggles is high. On Sunday, Pushtun guerrillas attacked a remote base where US troops were under a NATO command and killed 9 of them, wounding 15. Many more "Taliban" were no doubt killed. But the evidence is that the Afghan insurgents are getting better at fighting the US.

When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn't we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means 'seminary student.') The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These 'neo-Taliban' don't seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan.

There has now been a rise of suicide bombings in Afghanistan, on a scale never before seen. One killed 24 people in a bazaar at Deh Rawood on Sunday. Robert Pape has demonstrated that suicide bombings typically are carried out by people who think their country is under foreign military occupation. If the US keeps sending more troops, will that really calm things down? (See also the recent blogging of Barnett Rubin on the situation of Afghanistan)

I don't know whether Senator Obama really wants to try to militarily occupy Afghanistan even more than is now being attempted. I wish he would talk to some old Russian officers who were there in the 1980s first. Of course, it may be that this announced strategy is political and for the purposes of having something to say when McCain accuses him of surrendering in Iraq.

If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don't think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.

I think Obama has a little bit of a tendency to try to fix his political problems by going overboard. Thus, he faces skepticism from Jewish American voters. So he made a Zionist speech in Boca. In the context of US politics, that is to be expected; he would not be any sort of politician, much less a phenomenon, if he did not try to reassure Jewish Americans about his commmitment to Israeli security, which is after all a worthy goal. But Obama went on to praise Zionist thinker Theodore Herzl, who started this nonsense about a people without a land for a land without a people. And then he gave away Jerusalem, undivided and permanently, to the Israelis in the middle of ongoing negotiations over its status between Israel and the Palestine Authority in the context of the Quartet, which the US government supports. Neither of those two things was necessary. It was overkill. And Obama now has some bridge building to do with the Arab and Muslim worlds if he becomes president, since Jerusalem is also dear to their hearts.

Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard. My advice to his campaign team is to give more thought to how he can take a strong enough position on an issue to win on it, without giving away the whole store.

We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win.

Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.

Beware.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Does John McCain's sick sense of humor matter?

First, he sang 'bomb, bomb, bomb/ bomb, bomb Iran' to the tune of the Beach Boys' 'Barbara Ann.'

Now, on being told that Iran has increased its importation of American cigarettes, he quipped "Maybe that's a way of killing them."

Let us review the things wrong with this statement as a joke.

First of all, it is a standard sentiment that in the United States, we do not wish the people of any country ill, whatever our relations with their government. McCain was hoping Iranians would drop dead from smoking American cigarettes, not the Iranian regime. Coming on top of his ditty about bombing them, I come away with an increasingly sick feeling in my stomach that the man is a sadist who enjoys the idea of killing people.

By the way, for all the propaganda to the contrary, neither Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei nor President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has talked about killing Israelis as opposed to causing the regime in Jerusalem to collapse. Can you imagine the outcry if they joked about doing it?

I think the current crew in the White House has the same sadistic tendencies, so I'd be very sorry to see that sort of thing continue.

Second, McCain has led the charge in the Senate to get anti-tobacco legislation, so he is well aware that tobacco really does kill a lot of people.

Here is what the American Lung Association says:

"Smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 438,000 American lives each year, including those affected indirectly, such as babies born prematurely due to prenatal maternal smoking and victims of "secondhand" exposure to tobacco's carcinogens."

About 16,000 Americans are murdered each year, each of which causes a police investigation to be opened. Nearly 30 times that many are murdered by tobacco, but that doesn't cause any homocide investigations.

So would not a presidential gesture be to include exports in his plans for a tobacco ban? Does he only care if Americans are devastated by this health scourge?

I remember a story about Camel cigarettes in Thailand getting ads on the back of school children's school notebooks. The Thai government noticed and stopped the ads. Then as I remember (I don't have time to look it up) Jesse Helms attacked Thailand for unfair trade practices.

McCain seems also to be all for the US exporting painful and early death to other people.

Finally, another thing that is wrong with the joke.

People being killed is not funny.

Couldn't we have like a constitutional amendment or something to the effect that no one with clear sadistic tendencies may ever be Commander in Chief?
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Troops Injured Outside Combat Ignored in Media; Al-Maliki Gives Away Money

Greg Mitchell points out that the media continue to give little coverage to non-combat-related deaths among American troops in Iraq. Actually, they seldom mention the number of those wounded in combat, much less putting them and their stories on the screen. (It happens. It is rare.)

Even as much press as the electrocuted soldiers got last week would not have been there if there had not been a change in the party that dominates Congress in November of 2006.

McClatchy profiles wounded veteran Victor Domenguez

As Michael Munk periodically reminds us, the numbers of our troops wounded in combat and those injured outside of combat are enormous:

"US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 38 combat
casualties from July 2 to July 8, as the official casualty total
reached at least 65,889. The total includes 33,664 dead and
wounded by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and
many more than the 32,187 last reported March 1 dead and
injured from "non-hostile" causes.*

The actual total is over 85,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count
as "Iraq casualties" the approximately 20,000 casualties discovered only
after they returned from Iraq -mainly brain trauma from explosions.**

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by routinely reporting only the total killed (4,117 as of July 8) and rarely mentioning the 30,349 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 31,325 (as of March 1)*** military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,117 reported deaths include 764 (up one) who died from those same causes, including 145 suicides as of March 1.

* The number of wounded is updated weekly (usually Tuesdays) by the Pentagon [pdf]. The dead are reported by Iraq Coalition Casualties

** see USA Today, Nov. 23, 2007
*** the number of "non combat" injured is reported by Iraq Coalition Casualties. The AP.

visit www.michaelmunk.com"

Al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders are handing out cash in the streets. This known as the Howie Mandell system of government. The problems, of sectarian favoritism and lack of government capacity to spend the money wisely, remain acute, as the Associated Press points out.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq has agreed that his party will not use photographs of non-candidates in its compaign literature. The party has benefitted in the past from its association with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites. ISCI official Hamid al-Mu`alla also said that the open lits system planned for the provincial elections scheduled in October will allow voters to vote for individual candidates rather than only for a list. He predicted that use of the system will almost certainly disadvantage women.

Meanwhile, Salah al-Ubaidi of the Sadr Movement accused the Islamic Supreme Council of attempting unfairly to exclude the Sadrists in the next election.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

2 GIs' Bodies Found; US, Israel Reject Rumors of IAF Flights in Iraq

The bodies of two US troops MIA were recently discovered in Iraq.

Have Israeli planes been flying in Iraq, in and out of US air bases, to case Iran for and attack? The Israelis are denying it. I also think it unlikely, since the US air force would have to give the Israelis its Identify Friend or Foe codes, which is a lot of control to surrender. In any case, the Iraqi parliament, government and street are not going to be happy about this report, and it will also affect the Status of Forces negotiations that have crashed on the shoals of popular rage against a give-away of Iraqi sovereignty.

Holbrooke says McCain is the the right of Bush on Iran, Russia and Iraq. It isn't a matter of McSame, it is McWorse!

There was the weekly Sadrist protest against the proposed Status of Forces Agreement between Baghdad and Washington. Sadrists want US troops out altogether.

The new Iraqi military will be for the most part trained and equipped by summer 2009, according to a US general. If we can stand down as they stand up, that sounds like a good time to get out.

The Turkish prime minister visited Iraq for consultations on bilateral issues, including the problem of the PKK Kurdish guerrillas that have attacked Turkey from Iraqi soil.

Reuters reports political violence on Friday:

'NASSIRIYA - The U.S. military killed one militant and detained another in Nassiriya, 300 km (185 miles) south of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

* MOSUL - A roadside bomb wounded six civilians in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR SAMARRA - Iraqi police foiled a planned chlorine bomb attack when they seized a truck packed with explosives and chlorine bottles outside Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Four militants were killed in the incident.

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

HILLA - Police found a body in a police uniform with gunshot wounds to the head in a street near Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad on Thursday, police said.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces detained nine militants in different operations in central and northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.

(Compiled by Aws Qusay)'

More at antiwar.com.
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Crocker on Aljazeera The Iraq-US Security Agreement

Aljazeera International reports on the current situation in Iraq and the negotiations between Iraq and the US for a Status of Forces Agreement. US Ambassador in Baghdad Ryan Crocker is interviewed at great length. This is the sort of in-depth interview with no-holds-barred questioning that has become rare on US television.

Part One:



And, Part Two:

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OSC: Iran Reaction to Possible US Interest Section

The USG Open Source Center reports on reactions in Iran to the possibility of the opening of a US interest section, i.e. a muted embassy, in Tehran.

OSC Report: Iran -- Reaction to Mottaki's Comments on Possible US Interest Section
Thursday, July 10, 2008 . . .

'Iran -- Muted Reaction to Foreign Minister's Positive Comments on Possible US Interest Section Iranian officials and conservative media outlets have been unusually silent following Foreign Minister Manucher Mottaki's statement that Iran might consider a US interest section in Tehran, suggesting the issue is still undecided by the leadership. Reformist media have characterized Mottaki's remarks as a "green light" for diplomacy with the West.

In contrast to initially unfavorable reactions by officials to a 23 June Washington Post report that Washington was debating having an outpost in Tehran, on 3 July Mottaki said the idea of an interest section would be "considered" if it were officially proposed, and that Iran "welcomes relations" with the US at tourism and cultural levels (Iranian Student News Agency). Although officials including Majles Speaker Ali Larijani had been quick to criticize the initial reports of US consideration for an interest section, thus far officials have remained largely silent about Mottaki's remarks. Media Increasingly Receptive, Suspicions Remain

Reformist media have noted possible benefits of an interest section, but largely absent from the debate are conservative media that originally charged the US aimed to establish an intelligence base and create unrest inside of the country.

The E'temad and Mardom Salari dailies defined Mottaki's remarks as a positive step in US-Iran ties, calling it "another green light" by Tehran to Washington (3 July).
Although E'temad-e Melli questioned how successful a US interest section in Tehran would be given Iran's "complicated" relationship with the US, it admitted that such a move would "increase the level of communications and cooperation." Referring to the delay in the third round of talks between senior US and Iranian diplomats on Iraq, it stated that there is a "need to renew diplomatic channels" (5 July).
Citing instances of Hamas and Syria negotiating with Israel, the moderate Kargozaran daily argued that accepting the offer would not be construed as "political weakness or diplomatic backwardness," particularly at a time the international community is "increasingly falling in line with America." It said it would be "wise to watch for every diplomatic green light from whatever quarter" (3 July).

In a possibly related development, the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Hashemi-Shahrudi, announced the creation of a new Foreign Visits Monitoring Committee, set up to monitor trips made by foreign delegations to Iran, stressing that any invitations or requests for foreign delegations to visit Iran would have to be studied and approved by this committee first (Javan, 29 June).'
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Bhasin: Maliki and the Timetable: It's all about Blackwater

Madhavi Bhasin writes:

On July 7th the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in an Address before the Arab Ambassadors stated that his Government was looking at the necessity of terminating foreign presence on Iraqi land and restoring full sovereignty. The U.S. public diplomacy machinery began operating in full swing after the statement was released and has emerged with a self justifying explanation: the remarks of the Iraqi Prime Minister are reflective of the confidence in the stability and democratic progress of Iraq facilitated through the efforts of the Coalition Forces. The venue and timing of the comments are being considered crucial. The regional concerns over Iraq’s stability were expected to be put at rest, while convincing the local population of the independence of the Iraqi regime ahead of elections in autumn.

The more serious considerations behind the demand to begun negotiations for a withdrawal strategy and date have evaded popular attention.

In September 2007, 17 Iraqis died as a result of unjustified and unprovoked shooting at the Nisour Square. Personnel of Blackwater Worldwide, a private agency contracted by the U.S. to operate in Iraq, were involved in the shooting. A week later the Iraqi Government revoked the license of Blackwater to operate in the country. In the last week of September, Blackwater received a contract worth up to $92 million from the U.S. State Department. In April 2008 the assignment to provide personal protection for diplomats in Iraq by Blackwater has been renewed for the third year. The FBI is still investigating the killings at Nisour Square; more than 30 witnesses have been questioned and three Iraqis have testified before the Federal Grand Jury in May 2008. Neither the lives of the ordinary Iraqis nor the decisions of the Iraqi Government were taken into consideration while renewing the contracts for Blackwater.

“This is bad news,” Sami al-Askari, advisory to Prime Minister Maliki said, “I personally am not happy with this, especially because they have committed acts of aggression, killed Iraqis, and this has not been resolved yet positively for families of victims.” The neglect of such crucial Iraqi concerns by the U.S. has in fact prompted the demand for withdrawing foreign troops from Iraqi soil.

The Nisour Square killing is not an isolated incident. In February 2007 a Blackwater sniper shot three Iraqi guards, without provocation, ironically from the terrace of the Iraqi Justice Ministry. In October 2007 a Blackwater personnel was so heavily drunk that he killed the bodyguard of the Iraqi Vice-President. In the same month an Iraqi civilian was shot for simply driving too close to the State Department convoy.

The Iraqi Government has come to realize that the U.S. is attempting to run the Iraqi state through private contractors who cannot be held accountable for their misdeeds. The Report from the American Congressional Research Service in July 2007 clearly indicated that the Iraqi government has no authority over private security firms contracted by the U.S. Government. A shocking incident in the Green Zone in 2006 has demonstrated that the Blackwater personnel have gained greater impunity than the regular U.S. armed forces. A SUV driven by Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee. The Blackwater guards disarmed the army soldiers and forced them to lie on the ground at gunpoint until the vehicle was recovered.

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater has been a major financial supporter of the Republican Party. Hence Republican Presidential candidate John McCain is an obvious supporter of Blackwater. Even Democratic Presidential candidate Barak Obama has refused to rule out the deployment of private security companies in Iraq. Prime Minister Maliki has realized that the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq is a lucrative business venture for the American private firms like the Blackwater Worldwide. Echoing the popular sentiment the Iraqi Foreign Minister stated that there will not be ‘another colonization of Iraq.’ This is precisely the reason that Iraq has demanded more time for discussions on the Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S.

The mission statement of Blackwater Worldwide reads: “Blackwater efficiently and effectively integrates a wide range of resources and core competencies to provide unique and timely solutions that exceed our customers stated needs and expectations”. The poorly equipped yet struggling indigenous Iraqi forces might be no match for the Blackwater, but it will surely be a national armed force serving and remaing accountable to the Iraqi people.

The demand of Prime Minister Maliki is less reflective of his confidence in the stability of Iraq and more a sign of the growing apprehensions over the privatization of the Iraqi reconstruction efforts.


Madhavi Bhasin is a Doctoral Researcher at the Jadavpur University, India. Her research areas include conflict resolution, South Asia and Middle East. Currently based in California and working on Indo-U.S. Missile Defense Cooperation and India's Public Diplomacy Strategy.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Knight: Out -- without 'Bloodbath' or 'Regional Chaos'

Charles Knight writes

In October of last year a Boston-area activist called me and reported that he'd recently visited an antiwar Massachusetts congressperson in order to urge that more be done to get the US out of Iraq quickly and completely. Representative Jim McGovern (MA-03-D) had replied that he was doing what he could, but was frustrated by how often colleagues retorted with a version of, "Won't there be a bloodbath and regional chaos if we leave?"

McGovern had suggested that maybe a conference of experts could advise him and other leaders on how to respond to this challenge. I told my activist friend that I was sure there were some good pieces of a response around and that McGovern's challenge was an opportunity to collect these pieces and further refine the arguments and policy proscriptions for withdrawal.
`
Over the next weeks we pulled together a four person organizing committee and decided to organize a workshop focused on a scenario of a full withdrawal ordered by the President and a task force charged to come up with policy initiatives that could help mitigate violence and instability that might accompany withdrawal. The task force was not trying to fix things in Iraq or create conditions of 'victory' for the U.S. We limited our task to thinking clearly about how the US can exit Iraq in a relatively short timeline while also being responsible to the very real needs of Iraq and its people.

We decided that the best way to proceed was to organize a small workshop of specialists who supported withdrawal and also had particular expertise in Iraqi politics, the neighboring countries, and pressing issues such as how to help refugees. Meanwhile we were doing a literature review of the relevant ideas and policy proposals. That helped to identify the people we wanted to invite and soon commitments to participate overflowed our budget capacities (which we were gathering on the fly.) Among those we invited was Juan Cole who declined because of other commitments.

In early March an extraordinary group assembled (one participant traveling from as far away as Beirut) for an intensive day-long workshop. While we had never imagined that a consensus program could emerge from our process, the workshop deepened my appreciation of how complicated and difficult the issues are that we had taken on. In the workshop, itself, some participants were sharply pessimistic that much could be done to curb violence while others thought there were promising initiatives if adequately supported.

The organizing committee took the day's discussion and the extensive compilation of ideas we had from the preparation for the workshop and decided to cull the best ideas for mitigating violence and regional repercussions of US withdrawal from Iraq and present them in a short report.

We came up with twenty-five initiatives which we grouped by central purpose: national reconciliation; regional cooperation; Iraqi security; and Iraqi recovery. Wherever possible we made connections between the items and identified logical sequences. For instance, stating a clear intention to fully withdraw its troops and leave its bases is connected to the US backing the internationalizing of support for Iraq and to a stance of non-interference in Iraqi politics. And those changes can only succeed in the context of a very different diplomatic stance toward regional states, in particular Iran and Syria.

I will not summarize the initiatives in the report here, because the report itself is essentially a brief summary of the twenty-five initiatives and, furthermore, includes an even briefer executive summary.

The task force's work was informed by a political analysis that says that any President who decides to bring U.S. troops home (especially quickly and fully) is going to want to take all available steps to minimize the chances that the American right-wing will later be able to accuse him or her of being responsible for creating a new Somalia, Rwanda, or Cambodia. Our report is a briefing on such steps. It is not meant as a definitive policy guidance. However, it should be useful in re-energizing the politics of withdrawal.

Quickly, Carefully, and Generously: The Necessary Steps for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq, Report of the Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq, June 2008. Commonwealth Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA.

Printable Fulltext PDF

Printable Executive Summary PDF

Charles Knight
Co-director
Project on Defense Alternatives
Commonwealth Institute

Juan Cole adds

See also the notice of this proposal at Marc Lynch's site; he was a participant in the conference. He summarizes the main points thusly:

' * seek a short-term renewal of the UN mandate instead of a bilateral US-Iraqi security agreement, followed by the drafting in 2009 of a comprehensive new UN mandate governing international assistance for Iraqi rebuilding and reconciliation

* establish an International Support Group for Iraq, which would go along with engaging with Syria, Iran, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in a much more sustained and systematic way, and strengthen the International Compact

* announce a timetable for withdrawal, and then plan that withdrawal around likely flashpoints, while preparing now for the introduction of UN blue helmets rather than waiting until it's too late

* greater focus on the refugees and internally displaced, and the humanitarian needs of the entire population - inside and outside of the country. '

Of course there are many more points in the full document, which deserves a read.
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Cole in Salon: FBI Plan to Profile Muslims Unconstitutional

My column in Salon.com:

'The FBI's plan to "profile" Muslims': It's unconstitutional, un-American -- and it might hurt, rather than help, the FBI's effort to stop real acts of terror.

Excerpt:

' The U.S. Justice Department is considering a change in the grounds on which the FBI can investigate citizens and legal residents of the United States. Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation. '

Read the whole thing.
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Saghir: Timetable Demand not a Tactic; 53 Dead, 76 Wounded;

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the chances that a Status of Forces Agreement will be concluded between Baghdad and Washington have declined substantially. The intention is now to sign a memorandum of understanding instead of a SOFA, according to Shaikh Jalal al-Din Saghir, an MP, a member of the Policy Council for National Security and a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the main pillar of PM Nuri al-Maliki's government. He said that the Iraqi government sent a secret draft to Washington a few months ago that contained a request for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. Iraqi politicians have told al-Hayat that the request for a timetable came as a result of pressure from Iraqi Shiite clerical leaders who insisted on an affirmation of the principle of national sovereignty in any agreement signed with Washington.

Al-Maliki was the first to make the request public, on a trip to Abu Dhabi on Monday. His comments were followed up on by Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, a national security adviser, from Najaf after he had spoken with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

Saghir said that the recent successes of al-Maliki's military campaigns in Basra, Sadr City, Mosul and Maysan, made it more plausible that Iraqi troops could handle the security problems by themselves. He said that Iraqi negotiators at the table with the Americans had pointed out that a withdrawal of foreign troops was realistic under the new circumstances.

Saghir said that bringing up a timetable for withdrawal was not a negotiating tactic on al-Maliki's part.

AFP points out that the demand for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops is also a campaign pledge for al-Maliki and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq in the upcoming provincial elections. In many provinces, the US troop presence is unpopular.

Salah al-Ubaidi of the Sadr Movement told al-Hayat that the Iraqi government is responding to pressure from the Shiite clerical authorities and from the people. He said he doubted that al-Maliki would actually implement his promise to secure a withdrawal timetable.

53 Iraqis were killed or found dead on Wednesday, and 76 were wounded in bombings and other attacks.

A US soldier was killed and 2 others wounded in a roadside bombing in Samarra.

In Mosul, a suicide bomber attacked an Iraqi military convoy in an attempt to assassinate General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, chief of Mosul security operations. The bomber was stopped before he could get close and detonated his payload, killing 8 Iraqis and wounding 41, including 7 troops. An operation of this sort bespeaks a sophisticated guerrilla organization in Mosul that can identify and track its primary enemy. Mosul is full of ex-Baath officers who view the al-Maliki regime as a puppet of Christian foreign occupiers. While the organization is lying lower for the moment, it should not be thought vanquished. The guerrillas in Mosul also killed a policeman in a drive-by shooting.

Earlier this week, guerrillas targeted a bus full of civilian US contractors employed by Kellog, Brown and Root, killing 4 persons and wounding 13. Again, that operation was no accident.

Robert Burns of AP reports from the ground on Mosul, Iraq's northern metropolis of 1.7 million and capital of Ninevah Province. He finds massive unemployment and farmers hurt by the end of state subsidies for the purchase of seeds and fuel. He does note a recent reduction in violence, and the formation of agricultural cooperatives that encourage better relations among feuding tribes. If the provincial elections are actually held this fall, they could bring to power provincial authorities who actually represent someone and so might have the ability to get something done.

In Fallujah, two bombs killed 6 and wounded 18 at a bank.

In Baghdad, a guerrilla shot up a mosque at Abu Ghraib, killing 6 and wounding 8. There was scattered violence in Diyala and Kirkuk provinces as well.

In Ramadi, workers found 22 bodies estimated to have been dead for about a year.

On another front, see Tom Engelhardt's essay on why Cheney et al. won't attack Iran.

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Attack on US Embassy in Istanbul

Six are dead in a terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Istanbul. The dead were 3 Turkish policemen and the three attackers, who appear to have been angry amateurs. The identity of the group behind the attack is not yet known.

Aljazeera International's Hoda Hamid reports from Istanbul:




As Hamid notes, this attack comes as Turkey enters a political crisis, with the legitimacy of the ruling party to be decided shortly in the courtroom. It stands accused of contravening the secular Turkish constitution by trying to bring Islamic law into governance.
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1 GI Killed, 5 Wounded in Iraq; Rubaie's Comments Roil McCain Campaign

The statements of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and National Security Counsellor Muwaffaq Rubaie about the need for a timetable for US troop withdrawal may have an unexpected and significant impact on the US presidential campaign.

On Tuesday, after consultations with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf, Rubaie held a news conference. His remarks suggested that Sistani read him the riot act, demanding that full Iraqi sovereignty be preserved at all costs.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that he said, that Baghdad would reject any Status of Forces Agreement or Memorandum of Understanding that did not contain a specific timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. He added:

' Today, we are not speaking about a timetable for the foreign presence in Iraq, but rather we are talking about an evacuation of foreign forces from the country . . . But it is very difficult to specify dates that would stick right now for the evacuation of those forces, because the [Iraqi] government talks of its own dates, and the foreigners speak of their dates. So far, no agreement has been reached . . . It is impossible for Iraq to accept any memorandum of agreement that detracts from its sovereignty and independence . . . That is the view both of the government and of the supreme religious authority [Hawzah] . . . The evacuation of American forces has become a clear reality that can be envisioned. . . . We cannot accept the presence of permanent bases in Iraq . . . [but there is] the possibility that there will be camps obedient to Iraqi sovereignty."'

[Note that the US has many Status of Forces Agreements with countries around the world, and none specifies that US troops be under another country's sovereignty or be liable to be tried in that country's courts and what al-Rubaie is asking for will be unacceptable to Washington. Update: Readers with experience in Korea and Japan have written to say that US troops in Korea and Japan can be tried in local courts. I suppose the difference is that the US military in Iraq is actively undertaking military operations, some of which an Iraqi court could suddenly declare criminal.]

On Monday in the United Arab Emirates, al-Maliki himself had said, "The current trend is toward a memorandum of understanding, either for the evacuation of the [foreign] forces or a timetable for their withdrawal."

This is the first time al-Maliki has spoken this way publicly, but it isn't a new idea in his circles. The fundamentalist Shiite United Iraqi Alliance that is al-Maliki's main backer in parliament had originally put a plank in its party platform calling for a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq back in late 2004, but apparently dropped it at American insistence. Al-Maliki himself was elected in 2006 initially with the backing of the Sadr Movement, which has all along demanded a timetable for US troop withdrawal.

A US military operation in al-Maliki's ancestral village in Karbala province recently left one of his cousins dead. Iraqis complained that the US had not coordinated the operation with them, even though it had formally turned security duties over to the Karbala security forces. Al-Maliki was reportedly furious, and the incident may have been a turning point for him. Many forces in Iraqi society are demanding that US troops not have the prerogative of launching military operations in Iraq without obtaining the permission of Baghdad.

The memorandum of understanding that al-Maliki spoke of would presumably be an agreement signed by the Iraqi prime minister and the US president, cutting out both the Iraqi parliament and the US Congress. Perhaps al-Maliki thinks that a timetable for withdrawal would mollify the members of parliament about their being denied the opportunity to ratify or reject the agreement. If so, he is probably misjudging the mood of parliament. The deputy speaker of parliament, Khalid al-Atiyah, said Tuesday that the parliament is insistent that any agreement with Washington be voted on by the Iraqi legislature. He added that parliament would oppose any text that guaranteed US troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for any misconduct in which they might engage while in Iraq.

The Obama campaign welcomed al-Maliki's and al-Rubaie's remarks. It also pointed out that McCain had said in 2004 that if the Iraqi government asked the US to withdraw, "it's obvious we would have to leave." Now, McCain's position seems to be that he would like to keep troops in Iraq regardless of what the elected Iraqi government thinks of that.

McCain always had a difficult case to make to the American people about why they needed to expend blood and treasure to stay in Iraq. McCain maintains that it is for their own safety, but polling shows that most people do not buy that argument. Now McCain has to argue for keeping the troops there even though the Iraqi people and even the pro-American prime minister do not want them there.

That position will sound like colonialism to many Americans-- an expensive, sanguinary colonialism that they have to pay for. Individual Americans, including babies, have spent $2,000 each on the Iraq War so far, money a lot of them wish they had back right now (that is $8000 for a family of four.) Between its lack of legitimacy and its cost, they typically don't want it.

Despite the hype about Iraq being "calm," a typical day such as yesterday still looks like this according to Antiwar.com:

"One American servicemember was killed and five others were wounded in separate incidents around Baghdad. In northern Iraq, four Coalition contractors were also killed, but their nationalities are unknown at press time. At least 36 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 28 more were wounded in other attacks. Also, a UN representative reported that one-sixth of Iraq's population has been displaced due to violence."

In contrast, Obama and al-Maliki sound as though they are on the same page. Obama said Monday of al-Maliki, "I think that his statement is consistent with my view about how withdrawals should proceed . . . I think it's encouraging ... that the prime minister himself now acknowledges that in cooperation with Iraq, it's time for American forces to start sending out a timeframe for the withdrawal."

Iraq was originally expected to be the primary issue in the 2008 presidential election. Instead, opinion polls tend to show that it is the second most important issue, after the economy. That second place showing does not justify the decision of corporate television news to deep-six the Iraq story. It is still the number one issue for 25 percent of Americans, which is 75 million people. Moreover, as of last March 71% of Americans thought that the Iraq debacle was part of the reason for the bad economy, so when they name the latter as the most important issue a lot of them are rolling the two issues into one.

So Iraq is still central to the campaign, and people are fooling themselves if they say otherwise. But it isn't playing out as expected.

The major debate that the Republicans were looking forward to having revolved around the success of the troop escalation of 2007-2008, now mostly over. They want to argue that the escalation showed that Iraq is not an unwinnable war and that counter-insurgency techniques could tamp down violence. Therefore, there was no reason for the next president to withdraw US troops. Moreover, McCain argued, if the US withdrew from Iraq, "al-Qaeda" would take over the country and use it as a base to attack the American mainland. A timetable for withdrawal was both unnecessarily defeatist and also highly unwise, they were saying. They completely ignored the political yields expected of the troop escalation, most of which have not materialized, concentrating only on death statistics.

The idea that a tiny fringe terrorist group not popular with even Sunni Arab Iraqis could take over a largely Shiite country with a large Kurdish minority was always daft and that McCain alleged it is already reason to question whether he has the judgment to be president. But even Gen. Mark Hertling, commander of US forces in northern Iraq, is saying that al-Qaeda has been defeated in his area of operations.

'"Defeat means they're not capable of major offensive operations . . . We don't think al Qaeda has that anymore. All the cities that we have in the northern part of Iraq, I think have been secured . . . We're literally in the post-Gettysburg phase of this . . . . We have defeated them in the city. They have dispersed to the desert, now we are pursuing them out into their safe havens: small villages and towns." '

Hertling specifically gave the credit for this victory to a change in the esprit de corps of the Iraqi Army. I have all along maintained that "al-Qaeda in Iraq" was over-hyped and that it would be defeated because it chose a sectarian rather than a nationalist strategy.

So then how likely is it that "al-Qaeda" is going to take over anything substantial in Iraq in the short to medium term, US troops or no US troops? I mean, it was always a silly idea (even if the Shiites and Kurds would not have massacred them, the Turks, Syrians and Jordanians would have). But Hertling's comments underline how silly that scenario is.

By the way, the American public never bought McCain's terror-mongering. In February more thought al-Qaeda was more likely to attack the US if it kept troops in Iraq than if it withdrew. 16 percent thought it made no difference, and altogether 56 percent thought that it was either more dangerous to stay in Iraq than to leave or thought it was a wash. only 38 percent then thought that a withdrawal from Iraq increased the danger of a terror hit on the US.

Given the way the American Right has crafted the narrative of Iraq, as being all about "al-Qaeda," for that organization to disappear from the front pages would be a cruel blow to the McCain campaign. Without it, there is no justification for the US to remain in Iraq.

Almost as bad is for the Iraqi government now to align its position with that of the Obama campaign. McCain increasingly looks like he is stuck in 2007 with regard to Iraq policy, and Obama looks more and more like the man of the future. That conclusion is the opposite of the Right's spin on Obama, but then they have never understood colonialism or what is wrong with it.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Genetically Modified Seeds not Used in Iraq

A US observer with experience on the ground in Iraq writes with regard my link on Sunday to a piece about Monsanto and hooking Iraqi farmers on genetically modified seeds:

The small report about Bremer dictating that Iraqi farmers cannot use their seed from year to year is utter nonsense. It is not true. Iraqi farmers save seed for planting in the next year as they have done for many millenia and as farmers in other countries do.

This is a stupid rumor that has been circulating for about five years, nearly since the invasion. There are few if any GMOs [Genetically Modified Organisms] in Iraq, and [US officials] deliberately avoided bringing GMOs to Iraq because the GOI does not have a regulatory system to govern their use.

I have written to numerous organizations over the years to rebut this rumor. Defending Bremer, CPA and the US Government about their behavior in Iraq is not something I normally do, in fact I find little that they did right in Iraq. But the conspiracy to botch everything did not extend to the case of seeds. . .

The India story is believable especially in so far as village level agricultural authorities in India, those most likely to give advice to small scale farmers, are at best under-educated about the advantages and disadvantages of GMOs. It is thus easy to imagine that . . . predatory marketing practices could cause some real hardship.

The good news in Iraq is that the ag authorities are much more engaged with farmers and are more likely to tamp down Monsanto's or any other agribusiness' aggressive tactics. There is nothing wrong with using a patented seed provided the user is completely aware of what s/he is getting into. The other good news is that the crops most common in Iraq, wheat, barley, and rice are open pollinated crops and not subject to patent protection. These are saved from year to year, though it is customary to purchase new seed every five years or so. Hybrid maize is common in Iraq. The seed of hybrid maize cannot be grown in the following season, and all farmers are aware of that. And if an Iraqi farmer wants open pollinated maize, no problem, it is easy to find.

Order 81 was a mere rewrite and update of the existing Iraqi seed law. The editor was a guy named Paul Savello, a Food Scientist and lawyer, who worked for CPA and IRMO in "support" of the Ministries of Science and Technology and Agriculture. It provides patent protection, or what is known as "breeder's rights" to the scientists or companies that develop hybrids or GMOs. It is nothing special, and is common throughout the world. Egypt has a similar seed law, as does Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries. . .

The use of GMOs is governed by the Cartgena Protocol, which is separate from a normal seed law. The Cartegena Protocol establishes the regulations to prevent contamination of the food supply and protect the environment and human health. Iraq is not a signatory to this protocol, one of the reasons people are reluctant to introduce GMOs in that country.

On a related matter: All this talk about security improvements in Iraq distracts eveybody from the real and continuing dangers of living there. Friends of mine are still being killed, wounded and kidnapped, and living in fear remains the norm. Before the surge the violence was unimaginable, not it is only horrible. How we (and especially the media) can let McCain and Lieberman obfuscate and declare victory is shameful.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Maliki and Timetable for US Withdrawal

A White House spokesman emphasized that US-Iraqi talks on a Status of Forces Agreement do not include mention of a hard date for US withdrawal.

The disclaimer came after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for the first time spoke of seeking a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops.

Al-Maliki is under pressure from the Sadr Movement, led by cleric Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, to seek such a timetable. Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated Friday against the SOFA negotiations on the grounds that they surrendered too much of Iraq's sovereignty.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Sadrist aide Liwa' Sumaisim praised al-Maliki's statement as a "positive development" and said that the Sadr Movement was ready to support it.

Meanwhile, MP Jalal al-Din Saghir said that the latest proposed draft of the SOFA from the American side left a great deal to be desired.

A highly placed Iraqi source told al-Hayat that a study had been completed a month ago on a US withdrawal from Iraq. He said that the American negotiators had not forbidden it, and that they were themselves aware that Barack Obama might win the presidency. Obama has pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Meanwhile, Sunni Arab guerrillas launched a violent campaign in provincial Iraq. They fired mortars at the mansion of the governor in Mosul. They wounded the mayor of Kirkuk. There were also several attacks on members of the Awakening Councils formed under the auspices of the US.

Al-Hayat reports that the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front has criticized the Iraqi government for its ambivalence on having the IAF rejoin the government, with cabinet members.

McClatchy profiles Col. David Paschal, the US commander in Kirkuk Province, depicting his success at deploying counter-insurgency techniques to reduce violence in the troubled northern area.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Monday.

'Baghdad

An adhesive IED on a civilian car exploded in Adhamiyah, northern Baghdad injuring four civilians.. The car belonged to a university teacher, Mohammmed Sadoun who had just left the car when it blew. He was not amongst the injured.

Diyala

A female suicide bomber detonated inside a wedding dress store in al-Mafraq neighbourhood, central Baquba at 11 a.m. Monday. The explosion killed one woman and one man and wounded fourteen, mostly women and children.

One woman killed by unknown gunmen in al-Aheimir village, 10 km to the east of Baquba at 11.30 a.m.

Gunmen killed a member of the Sahwa Council, a U.S. backed militia, in al-Hashimiyah neighbourhood, western Baquba at around 10.30 a.m. Monday.

A roadside bomb targeted a woman in al-Aheimir village at 11.30 a.m.

A roadside bomb exploded killing two civilians in al-Mualimeen neighbourhood, western Baquba.

A roadside bomb targeted a civilian car on the route between Mendili and Neftekhana, Monday, killing four civilians from one family, injuring three others.

Nineveh

Six mortar rounds targeted the Governorate building in Mosul. Only one hit the building injuring six civilians including two employees.

Salahuddin

Gunmen killed one civilian and wounded another on the main route between Tikrit and Tuz Monday at noon. Victims were sheep traders; both were Shiite.

Kirkuk

A roadside bomb exploded in front of the residence of Mayor of Sulaiman Bek, to the south of Kirkuk Monday morning critically injuring the Mayor and wounding other civilians in the vicinity.

Anbar

A suicide car bomb targeted Sahwa Council offices, a U.S. backed militia, in Smeismiyah area, to the east of the town of Rawa during a meeting Sunday at noon injuring eleven Sahwa members, three of whom are critical.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Walleser: The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies

In the months since my last post “On Mercy and Redress,” The List : Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies has grown in scope as well as in influence, but it still has a long way to go to fulfill its goals. Kirk W. Johnson, the creator of the Project has testified before congressional committees and appeared on television in order to detail the plight of these Iraqi refugees, as well as the hoops that they and his organization must jump through in order to get them here. He continuously seeks to rally for those colleagues of his that were left behind by the United States Government.

In May, The List Project was featured on 60 Minutes. Johnson expressed the staggering toll that has been meted out to these Iraqis. “The people on my list have been tortured, they've been raped, they've lost body limbs. There's one guy on my list who's been thrown out of a moving vehicle. And all of this because they helped us. They came every single day to try to pitch in, in our efforts there.” It is this tragedy that makes it imperative that we aid those who aided us in Iraq, that we bring them to safety where they no longer have to fear for the loss of their livelihood, and in many cases their lives.

The AP recently reported that the United States allowed 1,721 Iraqi refugees into the country in June, which keeps it on track to accomplish the goal that the administration set to receive 12,000 by the end of the fiscal year. The List Project has also seen an uptick in the number of Iraqis that it has worked to bring here, and is now also working hard to find them opportunity and stability in a new country. Yet the allowance of 12,000 Iraqis into these vast United States is a paltry figure at best, and more must be done to help these Iraqis.

What is clear is that the Iraqi Refugee crisis is still an emergency of the utmost magnitude. It is only just now beginning to receive the press coverage it deserves. Almost every day there is a new person added to The List, someone in desperate need of assistance from the government it helped in Iraq, and from the government who has now increasingly betrayed them in a pile of dusty legal papers and bureaucratic bungling. Take, for instance a recent episode of Dan Rather Reports [video] [click here for transcript] which details one of the many aspects of the bureaucratic nightmare which many Iraqis have to navigate through in order to be allowed into the U.S. According to the report The Patriot act has such a broad definition of terrorism, that it includes within that definition those people who have paid money to terrorist organizations. That is all well and good yet it does not account for many instances in which families have paid ransoms to terrorist organizations in order to save their loved ones. The Department of Homeland Security and congress have to some extent attempted to blunt this trauma, by presenting waivers to some Iraqis, but the process is slow and grueling.

Now, in order to make the most of the recent press as well as to get out the word of the organization, The List Project has created a Netroots program which seeks to bring people together in a social networking experiment (vis a vis Myspace). Its goal is to develop upon recent successes, and create tangible groups that will eventually meet together and work to sponsor Iraqi Refugees coming to the United States. It will also continue the organizations push to make the U.S. government act more quickly in order to process these Iraqis. By expanding the reach of the organization, It can therefore extend its advocacy programs and make more inroads at solving this continuing crisis.

The Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security should not be allowed to sit casually by as this crisis deepens, as more lives are lost, as more families are separated and torn apart by the war. Although there is some movement in the process, more must be done, and more can be done to help a struggling community of refugees build back up the shattered temple of their dreams.

If you are interested in Joining The List Project Netroots, please go to Netroots/thelistproject.org


Matthew Walleser
Undergraduate in History and International Studies University of Iowa
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

NYT: Napoleon's Egypt in Paper

Napoleon's Egypt
got a notice in the NYT "Paperback Row" by Elsa Dixler.

'NAPOLEON’S EGYPT: Invading the Middle East, by Juan Cole. (Palgrave Macmillan, $16.95.) Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt — the first modern incursion by the West into the Middle East — is often remembered as the beginning of Egyptology or a template for Napoleon’s later campaigns. But Cole, who teaches history at the University of Michigan and blogs about United States policy in the Middle East, presents the invasion and occupation through Egyptian eyes. From this perspective the offensive seems premonitory in its ambitions (Napoleon tried to establish a pro-French representative government and to modernize Cairo) and its results (a brutal insurgency).'

Of course, the hardback is still available and makes a more respectable gift. :-)
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More on Kabul Bombing; String of Bombs Hits Karachi

Barnett Rubin has extensive comments on the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.

The toll has risen to 41 dead, 147 wounded.

Aljazeera International has video:




And, more South Asian bombings: Some group set off 6 bombs in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, in the Pushtun-dominated areas.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bombings in Islamabad, Kabul

Two Iraq-style suicide bombings hit South Asia in the past 24 hours.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber hit a police checkpoint in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, killing 17 and wounding 54. Most of the dead were police. Some speculated that the bombing was meant as a grim commemoration of the storming of the Red Mosque last year this time, when Pakistani troops took on armed militants within the complex. A conference was being held on the attack last year.

AP also noted that Sunday's attack came in the wake of pledges of reprisals issued by the Pakistani Taliban because of Pakistani military operations against them in the Khyber area.


Courtesy Dawn.

CBS has video at Youtube (aren't you glad they split from Viacom?):



The attack comes as the elected civilian government comes to the end of its first 100 days with few of its various crises resolved. This Reuters piece convincingly explains Asaf Ali Zardari's reluctance to reinstate the Supreme Court, which was high-handedly dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf last fall, as deriving from his own fears that the justices might revive corruption cases against him (i.e. against Zardari). Zardari, nicknamed "Mr. 10 percent," has a reputation for demanding kickbacks on contracts with foreign concerns.


Then a suicide bomber struck at the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 28 persons and wounding 141. The Indian ambassador was not there at the time, but Indian embassy guards and possibly other Embassy personnel appear to have been killed.

India has 3,000 nationals doing reconstruction work in Afghanistan. Since the neo-Taliban want to pull down the Karzai government, trying to scare the Indians into leaving would be a way of removing one foreign pillar of support from the edifice of state.

Since the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence is alleged to be secretly backing some Taliban elements, there is a danger that New Delhi will read this assault on its embassy in Kabul as an indirect strike by Pakistan. Pakistan had long considered Afghanistan its sphere of influence (which the military called its 'strategic depth' against India). Pakistan exercised its regional hegemony through the Taliban in the 1990s. The Northern Alliance gradually allied with India, Russia and Iran. The Taliban were mostly Pushtun, while the Northern Alliance was Tajik (Persian-speaking), Hazarah (ditto but Shiite) and Uzbek. So from a Pakistani and Pushtun Taliban point of view, when the US put the Northern Alliance in charge of Kabul in late 2001, it more or less turned Afghanistan into an Indian sphere of influence. Pakistan is unhappy about this change, which helps explain why its military may be backing some Pushtun Taliban again.

But my own guess is that the strike on the Indian embassy was unrelated to Pakistan and was meant to end Indian economic and reconstruction assistance to Karzai, since that aide helps him stay in power and the neo-Taliban want to overthrow him.

The bombing in Kabul came after allegations over the weekend that the US had mistakenly bombed a wedding party and earlier had also killed civilians in another area in an air strike aimed at militants.
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Zogby: Obama Leads in Electoral College 273-158; Barr Badly Hurting McCain

Zogby reports:

July 06, 2008

Zogby Poll: Building Mo-bama! Democrat Leads McCain in Electoral College Tally, 273-158

The Democrat also leads 44% to 38% in the nationwide horserace test as Libertarian Bob Barr wins 6%

UTICA, New York – As the race for President passes the Independence Day holiday and heads toward the dog days of summer, Sen. Barack Obama holds a 44% to 38% lead over Sen. John McCain in the horserace contest, but also leads by a substantial margin in a state-by-state Electoral College tally, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The extensive national poll of of 46,274 likely voters also shows Libertarian candidate and former Congressman Bob Barr wins 6% support, eating into McCain’s needed conservative base of support.

The online survey was conducted from June 11-30, 2008. It carries a margin of error of 0.5 percentage points. After nearly a decade in development, the Zogby Interactive survey on a state level was remarkably accurate in the 2006 midterm elections. In 18 U.S. Senate elections polled two years ago, the Zogby online survey correctly identified the winner of 17 of 18 races, and in the 18th race – in Missouri, it was still within the margin of error, though it had Republican Jim Talent winning (he was defeated narrowly by Democrat Claire McCaskill).

Zogby’s Electoral College Count


7-7-2008

Obama: 273

McCain: 158

Undecided: 105

This latest extensive survey of all 50 states reveals that while Obama holds a narrow lead in the national preference test, he holds a substantial advantage right now in the Electoral College. Using this survey - and an average of other public state polls in certain states to corroborate the Zogby results – Zogby calculates that Obama leads McCain, 273-158. A total of 11 states with 105 electoral votes are within the margin of error and therefore too close to call. A candidate needs 270 to be elected President.

Neither Obama nor McCain breaks a 50% favorable rating. Obama is viewed as very or somewhat favorable by 49.7%. For McCain, that number is 43.2%.

Pollster John Zogby: “Obama is in the driver’s seat right now, especially where it really counts - in the electoral votes. Bob Barr could really hurt McCain’s chances. McCain can’t afford the level of slippage to Barr we found among conservatives in this polling. While there has been plenty of talk about Obama’s recent emphasis on his centrist positions, he can get away with it during these dog days of the campaign as McCain finds himself still trying to shore up the conservative base. McCain will have to move to the center because right now Obama is clobbering him among independents. But there is the rub for McCain: Bob Barr has some juice among conservatives and is hurting him in several states. ”

Bob Barr receives the support of 7% of voters who identify themselves as conservative or very conservative voters. Barr gets 43% of libertarians and 11% of independents. McCain’s support among conservatives is 74%. On the left, Ralph Nader gets less than 2% nationally.

Obama has the support of 83% of Democrats, while McCain gets 75% of Republicans.

Independents break 39% for Obama, compared with 31% who support McCain.

For white voters, race doesn’t appear to be playing a significant factor. McCain leads Obama, 43%-39%, with Barr at 6%. Among black voters, Obama wins the vast majority of support.

For a complete methodological statement on this survey, please visit [this site].
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunday Blog Patrol in Brief

Shorter Swopa: The Iraqi government ban on using photographs of non-candidates (including revered ayatollahs) in campaign literature is not a move to separate religion and state but is rather compliance with direction from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who had already complained about the photos.

Surprise! Friends of George do well with oil contracts in Iraq.

Shorter Susie Madrak: Monsanto connived with Bremer to get Iraqi farmers hooked on their genetically engineered seeds that would have to be bought again every year instead of letting Iraqi farmers harvest gratis seeds for the next year as they had been doing for the 6,000 years since they invented agriculture. A similar program in India has been implicated in a rash of suicides by Indian farmers caught in a cycle of debt. And, genetic contamination?

Speaking of poor farmers demanding access to their own resources, a Palestinian demonstration by farmers wanting access to their own land resulted in a mob of Israeli (probably actually American) colonists beating a school teacher bloody. The Palestinian village of Ni`ilin is being blockaded to stop its inhabitants from protesting. A newly leaked secret memo from the legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry demonstrates that the Israeli government knew all along that its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank was illegal under the 4th Geneva Convention. British Baroness "Jenny Tonge lashed out at the Israelis for their relentless expansion of settlements on Palestinian land in defiance of Geneva Conventions" .

Updates on Iran hysteria at War and Piece.

Cenk urges netroots to pressure Obama on FISA.

Speaking of which, blogger and anti-FISA activist Brian Beutler has been shot in DC and Steve Clemons is suggesting we help him out.

Shorter Oliver Willis: McCain hates the bloggers, loves to invite wire service reporters over for a barbecue. Crooks and Liars has the video.

Shorter Nevada Today: Few states would be better placed to move to solar energy than Nevada: instead it wants more coal-fired plants..

Washblog has a plan for taking our automobile fleet electric & based on wind power. It wouldn't cost more annually than the Iraq War has, and would leave us more energy independent and far less polluting, maybe even saving some of those Florida and California beaches down the road.

Wampum on Viacom as Big Brother. Never mind, ISPs are volunteering to track us for them. Only Legislation is going to stop this monitoring of us, folks. Organize.

Time Line of Loss of Civil Liberties since 9/11
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Maliki Warns US on Iran; Will not allow Iraqi air space or land in any US Attack

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Bush Friday by video conference that the US could not use Iraqi territory or airspace to attack neighboring Iran. He basically told Bush to suck it up and negotiate with Ahmadinejad. It is amazing what $70 billion a year in petroleum revenue will do for a prime minister's self-esteem. Al-Maliki met with top Iranian leaders in Tehran recently and appears to have reassured them that Washington would not be allowed to use Iraq as a springboard for an assault. Although some are wondering if al-Maliki is making a declaration of independence from the US, in fact he is just continuing the policy of Iraq's ruling Shiites since 2005 of seeking good relations with both Washington and Tehran.

Shiites demonstrated in Sadr City, Kufa and other southern Iraqi cities in the thousands on Friday against the Status of Forces Agreement being hammered out between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration, complaining that it sells out Iraq's sovereignty to the US.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that al-Maliki said that Iraq has been able to end the ethnic war that some forces, internal and external, had sought to ignite. Speaking at a commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the killing of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim [on the Muslim lunar calendar] by a huge car bomb on Aug. 29, 2003, al-Maliki said that the siege of Baghdad had been broken.

But it was in 2004-2005 that Sunni Arab guerrillas were besieging Baghdad. In 2006-2008 the Shiite militias pushed them back and ethnically cleansed about half of the Sunnis from the city. So the most recent significant change is not a breaking of the Sunni siege but the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from their homes. And, I'm afraid that you can't declare the war over as long as hundreds of civilians and more dozens or hundreds of "insurgents" are being killed every month. (The figure of Iraqi dead issued by the US per month excludes killed insurgents and also excludes civilians whose cause of death cannot surely be laid at the feet of political violence).

For an alternative interpretation of how the violence in Baghdad was reduced, see Gregg Gordon.

At the same event, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the clerical leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (al-Maliki's main backer in parliament), commended al-Maliki for his military campaigns against the [Mahdi Army] militiamen, saying it was important to establish a monopoly over the use of weaponry in the hands of the government. He also called for the expulsion from Iraq of some 4,000 Iranian activists from the Mujahidin-e Khalq organization, which the US lists as a terrorist group. Al-Hakim is head of the rival Badr Corps paramilitary, trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and so wants to see rivals such as the Mahdi Army and the Mojahidin-e Khalq weakened.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i called for Iraq to sell oil to Turkey at a discount in return for a Turkish pledge to raise the level of the water in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. They have their headwaters in Anatolia, where Turkey is doing some damming for irrigation. The rivers have been low this spring, harming Iraqi agriculture and raising fears that Turkish dams are beginning to harm Iraq. In part also because of the disappointing rainy season in February, the low water level has allegedly driven many Iraqi poor farmers off their lands to seek work as day laborers in the cities.

As usual with Sistani's representatives, al-Karbala'i is talking good sense when he suggests trading cheaper oil for increased water.


McClatchy reports political violence on Saturday:

Baghdad

- On Friday night a roadside bombed detonated near the Salama hospital in Yarmouk neighborhood (west Baghdad). Two people were killed and eight others were injured.

- Around 11 am a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Karrada neighborhood near Andalus intersection downtown Baghdad. Two people were injured including one policeman.

- Police found 3 dead bodies in Baghdad : 2 were found in west Baghdad (Karkh bank); 1 in Saidiyah and 1 in Washash. While 1 was found in Ameen in east Baghdad in Risafa bank.

Kirkuk

- In the morning a roadside bomb targeted an official of the patriotic united of Kurdistan’s convoy. No casualties reported.

Diyala

- On Friday evening gunmen planted a bomb near a house at Shuhdaa neighborhood in Jalwlaa (northeast Baquba). Six people from one family were injured when the bomb exploded (a wife, four daughters and a son).

Anbar

- At 10:55 am a roadside targeted Khalid Abu Mihahid a leader of the Islamic party in Falluja near the Islamic headquarter. He was injured with two of his guards."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

On Killing Afghan Civilians and Nuking Iran: What Reddit says People are Reading

From Reddit.com on Saturday:

Afghan governor says US air strikes killed 22 civilians.

If only we could nuke Iran. Ron Paul says he has heard colleagues in Congress openly talk about using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.

The World Bank estimates that biofuels have caused food prices to rise 75 percent, much more than earlier estimated. Translation: ethanol, which costs almost as much to produce as just buying petroleum would, is evil because it causes hunger among poor populations.

For an idea what this statistic means practically, watch this report on hunger in Haiti at Aljazeera International:



Gary Brecher explains guerrilla war to the pundits, about how they are in it for the long run, and Washington's periodic waves of optimism are doomed to crash on the shore of dug-in, determined men with bombs and AK-47s willing to deploy them for the rest of our lives.

The anthrax used in the terrorist mailings of 2001 almost certainly came from the bioweapons labs at Ft. Detrick. Yeah, and those attacks came after September 11, too, which means it isn't true that there have "been no attacks" since al-Qaeda on Bush's watch.

The US Federal Reserve is not counting the cost of food and fuel in its inflation estimates. Yeah, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't count the unemployed in the unemployment figures either. They just count people who have been in between jobs and are still looking for employment for less than a certain period. After that time, if they don't find a job, they aren't unemployed any more, even if they never ever find another job. They are in a third category, of "not in the labor force." The period after which you are dropped from the "unemployed" category has shrunk over time; the Reagan administration produced sunny statistics by redefining a lot of people as not in the work force. As did the Clinton administration. The BLS calls this phony number U3 and actually provides measures closer to reality as well, but the press usually only reports U3.

[Econoclast explains all this from a professional economist's point of view in the comments. I fear I continue to maintain that the numbers are used ideologically by administrations for political purposes and understate what a layman would mean by things like inflation and unemployment in part to make voters happy with the status quo. I've had colleagues who've worked for the government who have come back with horror stories about how they were ordered to tinker with the statistics, not by falsifying but by framing. But that is a philosophical issue. Thanks to Jim Devine for clarifying.]


Gas station with sense of humor.

Can a freight train really move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel?
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Osman, Qubanji: Attack on Iran a Catastrophe for Iraq, Gulf

Patrick Cockburn reports from Baghdad that Mahmud Osman, a Kurdish MP, maintains that an attack on Iran by Israel or the US would plunge Iraq back into war. Cockburn points to two terrorist groups based in Iraq that the US Pentagon appears to be deploying against Iran. They are the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO) and the PEJAK or Iranian branch of the Kurdish Workers Party. The Iraqi parliament has discussed expelling the MEK.

Gunmen on motorcycles shot down Sheikh Salim al-Darraji of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) in the al-Hayaniya slum of Basra on Friday. The district is a stronghold of the Sadr Movement and had been attacked by the Iraqi Army, helped by the Badr Corps paramilitary of ISCI, in late March. The Mahdi Army militia of the Sadr Movement has gone underground under pressure from conventional forces, but is not so far underground that they will put up with ISCI officials operating openly in their territory.

The Iraqi government has decided one of the contentious issues that was holding up the provincial elections law. It has forbidden political campaigns from using photos of non-candidates in their literature and posters. This move will prevent the Sadr Movement from showing pictures of the father of Muqtada al-Sadr, who founded the movement. But it will also prevent ISCI from using pictures of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is popular and has great moral authority in the Shiite south. Campaigning in mosques will also be forbidden. For the first time in a major election, Iraqis will vote under an open list system, so that they can vote for individual candidates rather than just a party list.

The handshake between Iraqi President Jalal Talibani and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the Socialist International congress recently has angered many Iraqi parliamentarians.

The Syrian military maintains that it is doing its best to keep radical Muslim vigilantes from going off to fight in Iraq through Syrian territory. Syria also charges that the US has been routinely invading its air space.

This NYT article argues that despair (a killed husband or son) often is what drives women to become suicide bombers in Iraq. Oh, I think they think they are fighting the foreign military occupation of their country and its collaborators, just as the men do who undertake this sort of attack.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that in his Friday sermon, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, representative in the holy shrine city of Karbala of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, warned that the Status of Forces Agreement now being negotiated between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government must not detract from Iraq's sovereignty. He also said that parliament must past an elections law enabling provincial elections as soon as possible. He said the Iraqi voting public is eager to go to the polls, having by now gained the experience to put in a non-corrupt and efficient government. [If they have figured this out, they should please let us Americans know the secret.]

He also commented on recent Sunni delegations to Karbala and Shiite delegations to Tikrit, Samarra and Mosul, saying that they were aimed at spreading the spirit of harmony among all the sons of the single country. [Shaikh al-Karbala'i needs to work on his gender inclusiveness.]

Al-Hayat also reports that Sayyid Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji of the shrine city of Najaf [a leader in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq] said in his sermon that Iran and the United States are locked in a Cold War with one another, as evidenced by the continual threats and escalation of tensions between the two. He said that any war in the region would be a global catastrophe. He called on both countries to reexamine their positions, and he called on politicians in the region to intervene to end the struggle. He said that the region is living above an active volcano. He added that Iran's threat to close the Straits of Hormuz if it is attacked will lead to an economic calamity.

He also spoke about the energy shortage and the lack of services in the country. He said that Grand Ayatollah Sistani had recently written him that it was embarrassing for the Shiite exemplar to urge people to vote in the provincial elections when government services were so bad.

McClatchy reports political violence on Friday in Iraq.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July

Your Fourth of July is blood for oil.

My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace.


Yours is the imperial presidency and "so what?" to public opinion.

Mine is "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"


Yours is profiling and discrimination.

Mine is "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."


Yours is "My country right or wrong."

Mine is avoiding "Offences against the Law of Nations"


Yours is the veto of child health care and rejection of Kyoto,

Mine is an America that cares about the wellbeing of our children.


Yours is a monarchical presidency above the law.

Mine is, with Tom Paine, "in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."


Yours is aggressive invasions of countries that did not attack us first.

Mine is "and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends."


Yours is water-boarding and electrocution.

Mine is the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.


Yours is the stench of a million moldering corpses, military rule over 27 million, and the creation of oceans of misery.

Mine is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."


Yours is off-shore drilling, coddling polluters, 'heckuva job Brownie.'

Mine is a stewardship of America the beautiful for succeeding generations.


Yours is the privatization of war and the deployment of whole divisions of "contractors. . ."

Mine is an America where privates do not risk their lives for a tenth of what a mercenary is paid by the Pentagon.


Yours is the erection of protest zones as zoos for citizens.

Mine is, "or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


Yours is the swagger of the flight jacket and the bombs raining down.

Mine is the schooling of the next global generation.


Mine is America, the pure sunbeam of peace.


-----
With apologies to Kahlil Gibran.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Quotations on Patriotism

"I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward."

-George Washington. Letter, April 21, 1778.


"True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them—-the desire to do right—-is precisely the same."

-Robert E. Lee, letter to General P. G. T. Beauregard, October 3, 1865


There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual fairmindedness should be confounded with political trimming,* or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered because not partisan.+

-Herman Melville (1819–1891)
*trimming= opportunism
+i.e. truth should not be hidden away just because it does not support the American cause.


"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

-Mark Twain


"How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be 'American' before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism!"

-Edith Wharton


"My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all-embracing and I should reject that patriotism which sought to mount the distress or exploitation of other nationalities."

-Mohandas K. Gandhi


"I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility which will enable America to remain master of her power—-to walk with it in serenity and wisdom, with self-respect and the respect of all mankind; a patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. These are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."

- Adlai Stevenson


"We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior."

-Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)


"It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they’re not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans." -

-Eric J. Hobsbawm


"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

-Howard Zinn
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Will Afghanistan Violence hurt McCain Campaign?

Afghan guerrillas used small arms fire to down a US helicopter south of Kabul. The crew was unharmed. More US & coalition troops were killed in Afghanistan in May and June than in Iraq.

Meanwhile, guerrillas used a roadside bomb to kill 5 Afghan troops in Logan, central Afghanistan. There was also a major firefight between the Afghan army and a group characterized as "Taliban" in Badghis in the northwest.

David Corn at Mother Jones asks if Afghanistan will explode as a campaign issue in the US, and whether that development will harm the prospects of John McCain, who has instead put his eggs in the Iraq basket. Barack Obama has argued that the US should have focused on al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan instead.

Things are not going well in Pakistan, either, where the new government is quickly squandering its credibility. There are questions about whether it is fighting or dealing with the Pakistani Taliban. The issue of the reinstatement of the Supreme Court remains unresolved, splitting the government.

And then there is the looming crisis in Turkey, where favorability ratings for the US in polls have fallen from nearly three fifths of the population to almost no one.

Aljazeera English on the struggle between secularism and Muslim-tinged politics in Turkey:


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Mullen Warns Against Attack on Iran; Iraq arrests Governor of Maysan

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen appeared to warn Israel on Wednesday against an attack on Iran. He said at news conference, "Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us . . . This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don't need it to be more unstable."

Mullen is afraid of all hell breaking loose in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of an attack on Iran, and of all the Pentagon's efforts in both places coming unraveled.

Mullen was a nominee of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is known to concur with Mullen on this matter. They are boxing up Dick Cheney, who, his former adviser David Wurmser said, was angling for an Israeli attack on Iran if an American one could not be arranged for.

It is not clear what would be attacked, anyway. Civilian enrichment labs permitted by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?

Apparently under Cheney's CIA it was it was not allowed for an analyst to say that Iran and Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction or that Iran had given up any weapons research in early 2003.

Baghdad is facing gasoline shortages after a pipeline coming up from the south was sabotaged. One of the things that puzzled me about PM Nuri al-Maliki's assault on the Sadrists during the past three months is why he thought they would not take revenge on him by perforating some pipelines.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic on the security operation in Maysan Province against the Mahdi Army. It says that the Iraqi military attacked the house of Maysan Governor Adil al-Mahudar and arrested 30 of his private bodyguards. The governor was not at home.

Later on, they Said they became fortunate on arresting the governor

Police imprisoned the head of the local council for the province, Abd al-Jabbar Wahid al-Ukayli. He and other arrested officials were accused by the police of being Special Groups linked to Iran. This accusation is unlikely to be true, since the Sadrist dislike Iran and are Iraqi nationalists.


The Iraq War has soured so many military families on the Republican Party that the Dems may split their vote this year instead of only getting 25% of it. I wonder, though, whether the almost solidly Republican officer corps will also defect in any numbers.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bulldozer Attack in West Jerusalem

A Palestinian bulldozer operator rammed his vehicle into a bus in West Jerusalem, killing 3 and wounding 44.

Aljazeera International reports:



Sometimes the British tabloid press, precisely because it is sensationalistic, gives a vivid sense of the panic and mayhem in this deplorable act of violence.

Acts of violence such as this one are typically reported without context in the US. Aljazeera International notes that the bulldozer operator had been working on a controversial rail line connecting West Jerusalem to Arab East Jerusalem, which many Palestinians feel will further disadvantage them.

The use of a Caterpillar bulldozer in the attack is probably a symbolic reversal, since Israeli authorities have been demolishing Palestinian buildings in East Jerusalem on "administrative grounds" of lack of permits. The chief cause of a lack of permits is Israeli refusal to grant building permits to Palestinians in East Jerusalem. But they have to live somewhere.

Rapid Israeli encroachments on the Palestinians in the West Bank are raising fears of a water crisis for the native inhabitants of this region. This according to B'tselem.

Those encroachments are attended by violence of Israeli colonists (many of them Americans) against native Palestinians, violence that does not make headlines because Israeli military authorities suppress video and other evidence of it.

Although a truce was recently concluded between Israel and the Palestinians, June was a hot month:

" International Soldiery Society for human rights issued its monthly report for June 2008 on Monday. During the reported period the Society stated that the Israeli army has killed 35 civilians and kidnapped at least 320.

The report shows that during the month of June 2008 the Israeli army killed in total 35 Palestinians, 29 in the Gaza Strip and six in the West Bank.

In addition the International Solidarity Society said in its report that the Israeli army continued to use the policy of extra-judicial assassinations, the report shows that out of the 29 killed in Gaza 22 were killed by this policy meanwhile one out of the six killed in the West Bank was killed in the same way.

The human rights group reported that the Israeli army has kidnapped more than 230 Palestinians among them 40 children who are under the age of 19, during the month of June 2008. All were taken to unknown detention camps."

The bulldozer operator appears to have been acting alone and was apparently seized with a fit of rage over accumulated grievances in his own mind, real or imagined. Violence against innocent civilians is always condemnable and deplored by IC.

Some are speculating as to whether the incident will affect the peace process. You can't have a peace process that is hostage to the actions of individuals. If peace is held to benefit two parties in conflict, they will pursue it. If one side or both feel something more might be gained from breaking the truce, they will, whatever the pretext.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Pakistan Claims Capture of 50 Khyber Militants

Aljazeera on Pakistan's military offensive in the Khyber area. Puritanism and women's rights are issues as well as whether government or local warlords are in control. Women's rights are even an economic issue for commerce in the city of Peshawar, since village women are not being allowed to travel into the city to shop.



Radio Australia says Pakistan is claiming to have captured 50 militants. It adds, "
Meanwhile around 100 college students staged a rally in Peshawar condemning the operation and calling for its immediate end. They say the offensive was launched at the behest of the United States and was causing food shortages."

If the militants had come into Peshawar, what do you think they would have done to the college students?
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadrists Plan Attacks on US Troops; Security Guards will Not have Immunity; 24 Dead, 60 Wounded

The Sadr Movement is forging ahead with plans to create an elite special operations corps within the Mahdi Army, with the mission of hitting US troops.

Iraq has convinced the United States to drop the demand that private American security guards operating in Iraq be granted immunity from prosecution for wrongdoing in Iraqi courts. Such immunity is called "extraterritoriality" and it has often been an important issue in anti-colonial movements in the modern Middle East. Khomeini used the extraterritoriality granted US troops in Iran as one of the platforms for his overthrow of the Shah.

Guerrillas near Mosul deployed a truck bomb against a tribal leader who was fighting fundamentalist Sunni vigilantes, killing one person and wounding the sheikh and 24 others. About 7 persons were killed in political violence in Diyala Province on Tuesday, and a big bomb was set off in Baghdad aimed at a US convoy, which, however, missed its target and wounded several bystanders. Overall, at least 24 persons were killed and over 60 were wounded in political violence on Tuesday.

The UN special envoy to Iraq is casting doubt on whether provincial elections can be held in October, since parliament has still not enacted an elections law.

Al-Zaman explains in Arabic what the hold-ups are on the election law. It says that the big parties are now clearly trying to postpone the elections beyond their scheduled date in October. Three big issues remain to be resolved:

Whether Kirkuk Province will be including in the voting, even though it has not yet held the referendum mandated in the constitution on whether it will join the Kurdistan Regional Government, a provincial confederacy that has already absorbed 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces.

The legitimacy of using religious symbols in campaign literature and on banners

How to prevent voter fraud.

Al-Zaman says that Ayatollah Muhammad Yaqubi, the spiritual leader of the Fadhila or Islamic Virtue Party that is powerful in Basra and Nasiriya, accused the political parties of putting obstacles in the path of the provincial elections. He said, "I know that ballot boxes will not alone be decisive, because the powers that be will engage in fraud as much as they can."

Wounded Iraqi veterans feel "abandoned" by the government in Baghdad. They say that they receive only a fraction of their former salary once discharged for a debilitating injury, and are not provided proper health care.

The CEO of Total, the French oil major, says that his company is near to signing a Technical Service Agreement with Iraq to help with production at already-productive fields. But he does not think it is realistic that Total, which is partnering with Chevron in Iraq, will sign a new oil development contract this year or next. Iraq's parliament has still not enacted an oil law that would establish a legal framework within which foreign corporations can operate inside Iraq.

Robert Scheer argues that the Bush administration's quest for an Iraq oil pact debases the US.

Iraqi s who had been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib are suing private firms and individuals who, they allege, tortured them.

Hey, I think the Iraqis may be getting the hang of this rule of law thing!

Aljazeera International interviews Sy Hersh on Bush's covert operations inside Iran, intended to prepare for a war.



Barnett Rubin and Manan Ahmed on recent developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Rick Shenkman on American stupidity at Tomdispatch.com
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Reid: Coal & Oil are Making Us Sick

Senate majority leader points out that solar energy is only considered three times as expensive as coal because no one factors in all the hidden costs of coal & other hydrocarbons.



And imagine, they are fighting major wars and planning more wars in order to get more of the poison out of the ground!

I wouldn't sink a lot of money into that beach front home if I were you.

And news that seems as though it is out of science fiction flashes on our television screens. No ice in the arctic!



"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other." - Benjamin Franklin
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iran: Wars and Rumors of War

A Pentagon official expressed fears that Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities at Natanz near Isfahan before the next president is sworn in. He identified two red lines. One was the delivery and installation from Russia of a new anti-aircraft weapons system in Iran, which will make an Israeli strike more difficult.

The other red line, he said, was the point at which Iran had enriched enough uranium to make a bomb, which he estimated would occur in 2009, but which Israel would want to forestall well before it was achieved.

This second "red line" is pure bullshit. There is no evidence that Iran is enriching uranium to weapons grade at all, much less that it is making enough highly-enriched uranium that it will be able to make a bomb in 2009.

You can't use low-enriched uranium to make a bomb. It has to be highly enriched. Iran--as far as anyone has proved--is only making the low-enriched kind, and from all accounts it isn't doing such a great job of that, either. If it made high-enriched uranium, that could be detected by the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who regularly inspect Iran's facilities. I.e., it just isn't there and the idea that Iran could have enough material to make a bomb by next year is ridiculous. Now if it turned all its centrifuges to this task, then maybe it could achieve that result, though most experts think Iran's ability to enrich is still exaggerated. It could not highly enrich without creating atomic signatures detectable by the inspectors.

The IAEA says that there is no evidence--zilch, zero, nada-- that Iran has facilities for enriching to weapons grade or that it is trying to do so. See Jason Leopold's interview with Scott Ritter

The US National Intelligence Estimate last December came to the conclusion that Iran has done no weapons-related experiments since early 2003.

Moreover, as Ritter points out, Israel likely lacks the capacity to launch an air strike on Iran in which its pilots safely return to Israel.

Even if it had the capacity, according to Beirut's Daily Star, experts think it highly unlikely that Israel would launch such a strike, given the likely reprisals it would attract from Lebanon and in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Sy Hersh reports on US covert operations inside Iran, probably aimed at uncovering more about Iran's nuclear program. I don't know. Maybe that is a good thing. Like the inspectors in Iraq in winter 2003, they probably won't find anything because there is nothing to find. Either way, genuine human intelligence would be preferable to speculation. I just hope their inability to find anything is taken more seriously this time.

A wise, even divine, man once said that there will be wars and rumors of war. To which I say that the rumors are better than the wars.

The rumors, in any case, are war by another means, since they are being used by the US and Israel to put pressure on Iran to stop its enrichment program, a program that is perfectly legal according to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

That Israel, Pakistan and India flouted the NPT and actually did make bombs is never brought up when the US makes these charges against Iran, which allows regular inspections of its facilities, and against which there is no evidence of striving for a bomb.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bombings Target 5 Judges in Bagdad; Crisis between Al-Maliki and US military over killing of his Cousin;

A guerrilla group launched a campaign of assassination against judges in Baghdad on Monday, setting off five bombs, each targeting a judge in a different part of the city; they missed four of the judges but injured the fifth. Details below. A bomb was set off in downtown Mosul to the north, killing 1 and injuring 13.

Oil Minister Husain Shahristani announced on Monday that negotiations had broken down for the moment between his ministry and 4 oil majors over their provision of technical assistance to Iraqi oil fields. He had offered them fees, they wanted a share of the petroleum instead. He refused. The oil majors appear to think the petroleum will increase in value, and so is much better than set cash fees. The negotiations will continue.

Iraq: Was it all about the oil?"

More news on the Iraqi petroleum sector at Iraq Oil Report.

Iraq will spend $100 mn. on reconstruction in Sadr City, the teeming east Baghdad slum of 2 or 3 million inhabitants, and for job creation.

McClatchy reports that the diplomatic crisis between the al-Maliki government and the US military over the killing of his cousin is deepening. The US undertook a raid in Janaja in Karbala, which was supposedly under Iraqi military control, without any coordination with Iraqis and killed a security guard, who turns out to be a cousin of PM al-Maliki and the bodyguard of his sister.

The US says it was conducting the raid against a "special group," their terminology for a Shiite cell they believe to receive aid or training from Iran.

This incident makes little sense on the surface. Why would the US raid the home town of the PM without forewarning him? Why kill this relative? Al-Maliki is a leader of the Da'wa Party. Did the US military suspect that a Da'wa cell in Janaja was targeting US troops in the Shiite south, with Iranian encouragement? If so, it would make sense of why they did not warn al-Maliki their operation was coming. But if this scenario is anywhere close to reality, it raises questions about al-Maliki's control of his branch of the Da'wa, and about the character of the party (which is still run on a cadre basis as a set of covert cells rather than being a proper, popular political party).

In any case, the incident looks set to sour Iraqi-American relations even further.

Iraqi refugees in Jordan only dream of home. Jordan hosts 500,000 - 750,000 Iraqi displaced persons, who come to 11-13 percent of the Jordanian population. High inflation is making it harder for Iraqi refugees to make ends meet in Jordan, but no great number has yet gone back to Iraq. Many of their homes have been occupied by militias of the opposite sect, and the Iraqi government is giving them little help to return. Jordan has finally instituted a visa system in hopes of stemming the inflow. Amman estimates that the refugees have cost it $2 bn. in the last couple of years. I suggest they send the bill to George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas.

USA Today: Military success in Iraq masks failures on other goals . . .

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front (44 seats out of 275 in parliament) will rejoin the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki next week. IAF leader Tariq al-Hashimi, a Vice President of Iraq, will meet with al-Maliki over the next couple of days to finalize candidates for cabinet positions. Sources told al-Hayat that in principle the cabinet additions have been agreed-on, and an earlier dispute over the ministry of planning has been resolved. The Sunnis wanted this ministry, but the incumbent, Ali Baban, declined to step down. Baban, a Sunni Kurd, had originally been elected on the Iraqi Accord Front list but he returned to the government after initially resigning with the rest of the IAF ministers last August, and my recollection is that he was expelled from the party as a result. The compromise will allow Baban to stay on for a while, after which he will step down in favor of a new nominee. Given that Iraq will earn $70 bn. in oil revenues this year at least, the ministry of planning would be a lucrative site of patronage, since the plans it makes for expending that money will make a lot of people rich.

The IAF had withdrawn over several outstanding issues, including the some 50,000 Iraqis held in US and Iraqi custody, the vast majority of them Sunnis, and over continued discrimination against Sunnis by the Shiite-dominated government.

The new airport at the Shiite holy city of Najaf, among the largest in the country, will open July 20 according to Governor Abu Kalal.

McClatchy reports political violence on Monday and Sunday:
Monday:

' Baghdad

Gunmen raided the house of an employee in the ministers council in Palestine Street in east Baghdad around 3:00 a.m. stealing his car, seven cell phones, a pistol, work badge and an amount of money. Police found the car later in Shaab neighborhood.

Around 7:00 a.m. an IED exploded in Waziriyah neighborhood in east Baghdad targeting the house of judge Suliaman Abdallah, the judge of Rusafa appeal court causing material damages only.

Around 7:15 a.m. an IED exploded inside a car in which an unidentified body was left. The explosion took place in Adhemiyah neighborhood in east Baghdad.

Around 7:15 a.m. an IED exploded in Palestine Street targeting judge Ali Hameed al Allaq; the judge of Rusafa appeal court causing material damages only.

Judge Ghanim Abdallah al Shimmari, his wife and his daughter were injured when an IED exploded while they were leaving house in al Bonouk neighborhood in east Baghdad around 8:00 a.m.

An IED exploded inside the car of Judge Hasan Fouad while he was leaving Rusafa appeals court in east Baghdad around 1:00 p.m. Judge Fouad survived.

Judge Alaa al Timimi survived when an IED exploded targeting him in Palestine Street around 8:00 a.m.

Police found five unidentified bodies throughout Baghdad . . .

Nineveh

A civilian was killed and 13 others were injured in a parked car bomb in downtown Mosul city on Monday afternoon.

Two Iraqi soldiers were killed when gunmen attacked a patrol of the Iraqi army in al Islah al Zera’i area west of Mosul city on Monday morning.

Police found a body of an Iraqi soldier from the 2nd division in Egab valley east of Mosul city. . .'

Sunday:

' Baghdad

- Gunmen assassinated the head of Basra operation intelligence centre , the brigadier Abdul Jabbar Mijhid . He was killed on Saturday night in his car in Nu’ayriyah of New Baghdad neighborhood (east Baghdad). He was in a holiday in Baghdad where his family lives.

- Police found 4 dead bodies in Baghdad neighborhoods . . .

Kirkuk

- Around 8:30 am a roadside bomb targeted the convoy of the head of the Kirkuk emergency police in Wasiti neighborhood downtown Kirkuk city. 7 people were injured in the explosion who were inside a mini bus in the area.

Salahuddin

- Around 7:30 am a parked car bomb detonated a police patrol in Dhulwiya town (about 50 miles north of Baghdad). The patrol car ignored the police directorate instructions of being close to the car bomb. 7 policemen were killed including 3 officers and 3 others were injured.

Diyala

- Mortars hit Al-Uthaim town (31 miles north of Baquba). Three family members were killed (a girl, her mother and aunt) as one mortar shell hit their house around 6 am in the morning. . .'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.