BAGHDAD, June 29 (Reuters) - Iraq will spend $100 million to rebuild the east Baghdad slum of Sadr City and create jobs for many of its two million residents after years of violence and neglect, a government official said on Sunday.
The Shi'ite slum is a stronghold of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, whose fighters clashed with U.S. and government troops there in March and April until a ceasefire halted hostilities.
Sadr City was largely outside the government's control until the truce allowed Iraqi soldiers to deploy.
"The government has ordered an allocation of $100 million to reconstruct and develop Sadr City," Tahseen al-Sheikhli, civilian spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, told a news conference.
He did not give a timeframe for spending the money.
Let's hope this is for real.
For some sense of life inside Sadr City, here's a video from AlJazeeraEnglish:
(iraqi Gov't spokesman Tahseen) Sheikhly told journalists: “If you look at Baghdad through Google Earth, you can see that there is a black spot in southern Baghdad due to the accumulation of the sewage there.”
Ultimately, a large proportion of the city’s sewage ends up in the Tigris River or, worse, finds it way into the city’s water system. Millions of Baghdadis are forced to treat all their water with purification tablets or buy bottled water if they can afford it.
Don't know how "legal" it is to go ahead and post the entire new BBC documentary Daylight Robbery: fleecing Iraq and the USA which first aired about two weeks ago, but we're going to do it anyway. Considering that the subject of the film is the "estimated 23 billion dollars which may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq", I think that our small act of larceny here comes out pretty mild in comparison, I must say. All apologies to the BBC, but this is a subject of much interest to us here at GHN, and like some desperate pack of greed stricken, politically connected military contractors with saliva dripping from our teeth and dollar signs in our eyes - we just couldn't resist.
Not when you're throwing around terms like "the largest war profiteering in history", and "maybe even one of the biggest crimes in history". We know a good opportunity when see one. So thanks. We really, really, appreciate it. The cheque's in the mail. (wink wink, nudge nudge) And good job mates. God's speed.
And just by way of comparison and out of blatant late nineties nostalgia - does anyone remember the Oil for Food scandal? How it was once trumpeted as one of the justifications for the inevitability of the invasion of Iraq in the first place. How Rex Murphy once stated that because of it the UN should be abolished, and Big Time Republican thumbsucker Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard once called it "the biggest scandal in human history", worth up to possibly 100 billion? Well I do. And I often wonder (often out loud, usually to myself) how tame the Oil for Food scandal now looks in comparison to some of the more recent malfeasance and corruption that has taken place in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. But just in case anyone is interested a good jumping off point for any reminiscence would be: The UN Oil-for-Food Program: Who is Guilty? - Brian Urquhart's Febuary 9, 2006 review of the Volcker Committee's findings in the NYR. Its really good, but you'd have to pay for it.
And below is a commerical for the Iraq Commission on Public Integrity. Its in Arabic and I have no idea what they're saying, but they look sad, like people who've been robbed. And then they disappear:
Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years. ‘The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,’ the analyst Antonia Juhasz wrote in the New York Times in March, after the draft law was leaked. ‘They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country.’ As negotiations over the oil law stalled in September, the provincial government in Kurdistan simply signed a separate deal with the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, headed by a close political ally of President Bush.
If the US had managed to create a strong, democratic government in an Iraq effectively secured by its own army and police force, and had then departed, what would have stopped that government from taking control of its own oil, like every other regime in the Middle East? On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centred, the tactics – dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final ‘surge’ that has hastened internal migration – could scarcely have been more effective. The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.
Still, there is reason to be sceptical of the picture I have drawn: it implies that a secret and highly ambitious plan turned out just the way its devisers foresaw, and that almost never happens.
I have actually had this argument with a couple of people - that the chaos in Iraq was actuallyThe Plan. And I have to admit that I've never been able to fully go there. But one look at the above map and the reasons for our collective obsession with the Middle East can seem pretty obvious.
And where is Canada on this map? I think I labour under the assumption that Canada is a bigger player on the world oil scene than it actually is. I have read a couple of times that Canada is the "second biggest oil-exporter to the United States", and I think I have even read that it is the biggest. But in actuality neither of these statements are apparently true.
Watched a piece on the CBC last night all about the Tar Sands. Hope to try and blog on that in the future.
I don't whose mortars they were, but this picture of an Iraqi girl injured by mortar fire being treated by U.S. medics taken by Maya Alleruzzo from the Associated Press is definitely haunting my day.
It is September, and The War in Iraq, it seems, is reaching a 'critical juncture', and not just in Iraq itself, but in Washington - with General David Petraeus set to deliver his much anticipated status report to the U.S. Senate regarding the situation on the ground in Iraq on, wait for it - amazingly - September 11, (though the report itself is going to be written by The White House) and with President Bush reportedly preparing to ask Congress for another 50 billion dollar supplemental spending bill to fund the war.
As well, there have been many reports indicating a profound division within the upper echelons of the Pentagon as to just how to proceed, with Bush, as they always say, apparently weighing several options.
Things are developing pretty fast and could change at any time, but what are some potential scenarios?:
Could the U.S. actually begin a draw-down of forces for a subsequent withdrawal? And if so what would that consist of?
This is the first scenario - call it the Withdrawal Scenario (or at least I'm calling it that) - which suggests that the U.S will begin a gradual 'draw-down' of its forces in Iraq this year, leading to a larger withdrawal of more significant numbers of troops beginning some time in 2008. I'm sure at this point this is the scenario that would be most consistent with the majority opinion of a war-weary American Public, not to mention probably the majority of the military itself or the Iraqi public, or the Iraqi politicians, and in recent days it seems to have gained some further credence through the statements and opinions of two high profile Washington/military insiders. It has been reported the Chairman of U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff (at least until September) General Peter Pace is "expected to urge President George W. Bush to cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq next year.". And (retiring, so he doesn't have to run again)Republican Senator John Warner, former Secretary of the Navy and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, after a four day trip to the Middle East has called on Bush to begin withdrawing troops by Christmas. This follows the release this week of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) (pdf link here) which concludes that the Iraqi government will become 'even more fragile in the next six to twelve months' and is presently unable to govern effectively. And all these developments come after the earlier break with Bush by Republican Senator Richard Lugar, not to mention the consistent War criticism of "maverick" Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, and the quixotic campaign of anti-war Republican Congressman Ron Paul. The steadfast "Anti-war", anti-imperialist, 'libertarian' website Antiwar.com (much obliged) has always maintained that it is the moment when Bush begins losing the support of the majority of his party and his base, and an effective challenge to his war policies is mounted from the "right" within his country which will signal the real time when his war policies begin their deep political trouble domestically - and thus mark the beginning of any significant policy change and it is in this vein that I even mention these above individuals. Bush certainly pays no heed to more established critics of the war and I wouldn't think he would possibly respond to anyone or anything else. And even then. As if.
But in the possiblity that this was actually to begin happening what would be the political future of Iraq?
One suggestion for a possible American exit strategy is what is being termed 'soft-partition' - i.e. dividing Iraq into three parts while still tying them together into some kind of loose federation, where they could in turn easily evolve into three independent states - i.e. a Kurdish North, a Sunni homeland somewhere in the centre and western part ofthe country and a Shia homeland in the South. This scenario does have the advantage of closely reflecting the present reality, however unacknowledged, and its a way forward advocated by Peter Galbraith, the author of The End of Iraq, a former U.S Ambassador to Croatia (and yes, son of John Kenneth) who has written extensively about Iraq for the New York Review of Books. He has been arguing this position from as far back as 2004, a year after the invasion. In this article - How to Get Out of Iraq (April 26, 2004) - he wrote:
In my view, Iraq is not salvageable as a unitary state. From my experience in the Balkans, I feel strongly that it is impossible to preserve the unity of democratic state where people in a geographically defined region almost unanimously do not want to be part of that state. I have never met an Iraq Kurd who preferred membership in Iraq if independence were a realistic possibility
(Galbraith also wrote this recent article for 'The Review' - Iraq: The Way to Go.)
This is also the foreign policy position of Democratic Senator, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Presidential contender Joe Biden, and thus sometimes referred to as 'The Biden Plan'. It distinguishes him from the other leading, Democratic or otherwise, Presidential candidates in that at least he at least professes to having a plan. Biden has pretty much staked his entire campaign on it and its a distinction which he never fails to point out. It's often suggested that what Biden, who has no real hope of becoming President, is really running for Secretary of State. In this 2006 Washington Post editorial he wrote:
This plan is consistent with Iraq's constitution, which already provides for the country's 18 provinces to join together in regions, with their own security forces and control over most day-to-day issues. This plan is the only idea on the table for dealing with the militias, which are likely to retreat to their respective regions instead of engaging in acts of violence. This plan is consistent with a strong central government that has clearly defined responsibilities. Indeed, it provides an agenda for that government, whose mere existence will not end sectarian violence. This plan is not partition -- in fact, it may be the only way to prevent violent partition and preserve a unified Iraq.
To be sure, this plan presents real challenges, especially with regard to large cities with mixed populations. We would maintain Baghdad as a federal city, belonging to no one region. And we would require international peacekeepers for other mixed cities to support local security forces and further protect minorities. The example of Bosnia is illustrative, if not totally analogous. Ten years ago, Bosnia was being torn apart by ethnic cleansing. The United States stepped in decisively with the Dayton Accords to keep the country whole by, paradoxically, dividing it into ethnic federations. We even allowed Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies. With the help of U.S. troops and others, Bosnians have lived a decade in peace. Now they are strengthening their central government and disbanding their separate armies.
At best, the course we're on has no end in sight. At worst, it leads to a terrible civil war and possibly a regional war. This plan offers a way to bring our troops home, protect our security interests and preserve Iraq as a unified country. Those who reject this plan out of hand must answer one simple question: What is your alternative?
(Whether or not more candidates begin to come around to this position as the campaign progresses remains to be seen.)
So this plan could conceivably provide some political cover for an eventual American withdrawal. And it is already very much in place due to the political constructions of the current Iraqi Constitution. But 'soft-partition' is a very benign sounding phrase for something that, for all anyone knows, could make the situation in Iraq even more fractious and violent than it already is. Though Biden's question of - what is the alternative? - I think is a pretty legitimate one at this point. In the negotiations that lead up to the Constitution it was clear that the both the Southern Shiites and the Northern Kurds - i.e. the people who suffered most under Saddam's tyranny - deliberately sought a very decentralized state and the power to retain their own militias. Is this now somehow going to be changed in favour of a stronger central government? Are those militias going to be disarmed? Unlikely.
For what seems to be emerging - certainly in the accounts and reports that I have read -is that while yes, this partition plan would involve the break-up of Iraq, that break-up and dissolution is already under way.
(and leaving aside for the moment the implication inherent in this plan that each of these 'ethncities' thinks and acts as some kind of respective unified bloc(s), and leaving aside the very real troubles of Iraqi inter-ethnic violence)
It seems perfectly obvious that 'The Kurds' do not want to be a part of a future Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan already has its own elected government and flies its own flag. They have their Peshmerga. The actual Iraqi flag is now in fact illegal in Iraqi Kurdistan. The "Kurds" have desired independence for decades - since the end of World War 1 and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire - and this is the closest they have ever been. No one seriously thinks they are going to go back. (Unless they are once again forced in some way, I suppose) If you (dear reader) were a Kurd - would you want to remain in Iraq? Isn't it perfectly reasonable to suggest that the "Kurds" hated being a part of Iraq, suffered horribly under Saddam Hussein, and probably want no part of that country's future, beyond using its present political mechanisms to garner even further independence for themselves? This seems pretty self-evident. So what is going to happen after the referendum on the future of Kirkuk (scheduled for now) on November 15, 2007 - when Iraqi Kurdistan will be independent in everything but name, complete with the city they have always wanted as their Capital, with its bounty of oil resources? Will this actually happen? Or is this potentialflashpoint going to some how expand and enlarge the present civil war(s)? And how will the Turks - already concerned with low level insurgent fighting with PKK rebels attacking inside its territory from camps in Northern Iraq - react to this development? And the Iranians?
But what about Baghdad? Who governs Baghdad, and how? Well apprently Baghdad is already fast becoming a Shia dominated city. From Baghdad's New Owners in the latest edition of Newsweek:
According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually "has increased the IDPs to some extent."
When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias' cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they've essentially won. "If you look at pre-February 2006, there were only a couple of areas in the city that were unambiguously Shia," says a U.S. official in Baghdad who is familiar with the issue but is not authorized to speak on the record. "That's definitely not the case anymore." The official says that "the majority, more than half" of Baghdad's neighborhoods are now Shiite-dominated, a judgment echoed in the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: "And very few are mixed." In places like Amel, pockets of Sunnis live in fear, surrounded by a sea of Shiites. In most of the remaining Sunni neighborhoods, residents are trapped behind great concrete barricades for their own protection.
And what of these 'Sunnis'? Just what is happening? It seems they are being disenfranchised and driven out of areas they used to rule. As Middle East scholar and journalist Nir Rosenexplained in an interview with Tom Foreman of CNN:
FOREMAN: So Nir, we keep hearing reports, though, nonetheless out of Baghdad. People saying that give us time, we are trying to get this government worked out. We are going to make some progress. Do you see any way that can happen?
ROSEN: No. This has been the case for the past would two years at least. There is no hope. There is no government. Neither side is interested in compromise and why should they? The Shias control Baghdad. They have removed the Sunnis from Baghdad, from Iraq's political future.
FOREMAN: What's going to change that if anything?
ROSEN: Nothing is going to change that. The Shias have actually expelled most of the Sunnis from Baghdad. It went from being a majority Sunni city. Now it is a majority Shia city. The last few pockets of Sunnis are slowly being purged by the police and the Mehdi army. It's now irrevocably a Shia city and Sunnis are just out. Unfortunately, Iraq has been completely remade and it is time to be honest. It is time for the American leaders to be honest and American military to be honest with their people.
There can be no reconciliation. This does -- the latest show we had a few days ago where they brought a few leaders together and pretended like they were going to reconcile, the Sunnis are still out of the government and they remain so and why should they be? They have been expelled from Iraq. The majority of the three million refugees that we have from the region, from Iraq are Sunni. The majority being internally displaced are Sunni. Of course, whatever agreement were to be reached, parliament would never ratify it anyway.
However, the one place that Sunnis do appear to be in control is in Anbar province - the area that Bush visited this week and the area that Administration is holding up as an example of the success of the 'surge'. But, as Patrick Coburn explains this piece from The Independent:
In reality, the improvement in the US position in Anbar has nothing to do with the surge and the deployment of 30,000 extra American troops. The change in the military situation in the province is a result of a split in the Sunni guerrilla movement between an al-Qa'ida umbrella organization called the Islamic State of Iraq and the rest of the Sunni guerrillas.
The Islamic State of Iraq created widespread anger among the Sunni community by killing anybody connected with the government, such as garbage collectors or lowly employees of ministries. They were also seeking to draft one young man from each Sunni family into their forces.
Bizarrely, the US is now backing and arming Sunni tribal militias who do not answer to the Iraqi government, while pressing Mr Maliki to clamp down on the Shia militias, notably the anti-American Mehdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr.
Sattar Abu Rishah, the chairman of the Council for the Salvation of al-Anbar, said that Bush promised to release innocent Sunni Arab detainees and to provide compensation for damages caused by military operations. He called Abu Rishah a "hero" and urged him to spread the tribal council model to other provinces (i.e. to fight Sunni radicals with tribal militias).
Al-Hayat says that the US military is arming tribal militias in the 'triangle of death' south of Baghdad, with the cooperation of Sunni guerrilla groups such as the Army of Islam, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, and the Army of Holy Warriors (i.e. the very guerrilla groups that had earlier fought the US and Iraqi troops).
The al-Maliki government takes a dim view of the new US policy of promoting Sunni Arab militias, for fear that eventually they will turn on the Baghdad government. Among Abu Rishah's demands, which Bush said he would study, were complaints about Shiite militias and about Iranian interference in Iraq. Al-Maliki depends on both things.
And what of that democratically elected Central Government? The al-Maliki government?
The Government Accountability Office, in a draft assessment reported yesterday, determined that Iraq has failed to meet 15 out of 18 benchmarks for political and military progress mandated by Congress. Laws on constitutional reform, oil and permitting former Baathists back into the government have not been enacted. Among other failings, there has been unsatisfactory progress toward deploying three Iraqi brigades in Baghdad and reducing the level of sectarian violence.
Or as Rosen stated far more bluntly in the same above interview:
ROSEN: There is no government to begin with. It's a collection of militias. And indeed, there is no alternative. The whole focus on the government in Baghdad is the -- problem is that -- in everybody's approach. In Iraq it used to be you could have a coup replace the government and the whole country followed. But now Iraqi is a collection of city states, Baghdad, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Mosul, Basra, Erbil, each one with its own warlords. They don't answer to Baghdad. Baghdad has no control over them. When we overthrew Saddam, we imposed one dictator after another. We didn't like Prime Minister Jaafari so we got rid of him and we put in his close ally, Maliki. And now the occupier is once again upset that the occupied people are not being sufficiently obedient. But it doesn't matter. We are past that stage. Iraq doesn't exist as a state anymore. The government has never existed. It has never brought in any services. Even the most fundamental service the government can provide, a monopoly over the use of violence, it doesn't provide that because it has never controlled the militias and militias are the ones that control the police and the army.
But in spite of all this of course, it's pretty obvious, despite what he says now, that Bush has no intention of implementing any serious kind of withdrawal and drawdown. In fact recent revelations in transcripts from his soon to be released new Biography reveal his true intentions:
For now, though, Mr. Bush told the author, Robert Draper, in a later session, "I'm playing for October-November.". That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: "To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence", and, he said later,"stay longer.".
Which brings up the next scenario. Call it the - Surge and Remain scenario - (or at least I'm calling it that.).
But if things are going so badly in Iraq- tremendous violence, overall chaos, exhausted military, massive population dislocations, Central Government falling apart - how could and would the Bush Administration be able to maintain and perpetuate its present policy?
By selling it as something else.
We are now in the midst of the Bush Administration media surge which on its own, if it wasn't so cynical and infuriating, would be a pretty fascinating thing to behold. It certainly has echo's of the initial campaign that sold the war in the first place undertaken back in 2002-03. Ands its clear that The Bush Administration is hoping a similar kind of exercise is going to work again this time. So its valuable, I think, at this time to take a bit of a closer look at this present Administration media campaign, and its subsequent blogoshperical dissection, in order to obtain a clearer picture of the state of the public debate in The United States over the future of the War in Iraq.
On July 30, an op-ed appeared in the NYT entitled A War We Just Might Win by Michael O'Hanlan and Kenneth Pollack, two scholars from the Brookings Institute, which seemed to suggest that the 'surge' in Iraq was working, essentially, and that progress was afoot. And for all the publicity it garnered it was as if this op-ed marked the de facto beginning of this new 'media surge'. Among other things, it stated that:
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration for its miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily victory, but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
This op-ed was quickly seized upon by long-time supporters of the war as more evidence that the momentum was beginning to turn in Iraq due to this new strategy under the leadership of General Patraeus.
"Today, morale is high", wrote Pollack and O'Hanlan.
Seven soldiers wrote a follow-up editorial less than three weeks later attempting to give a more realistic assessment of life on the ground in the warzone(s).
Perhaps most contentiously - "(C)ivilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began", O'Hanlan and Pollack wrote," though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.".
This became a constant line: That violence was down in Iraq. And the Pentagon soon began repeating as fact the line that civilian casualties were now down 50 % in Baghdad, though they declined to give specific numbers. But McClatchy newspapers soon produced a report that did have numbers - numbers which suggested an opposite conclusion. The Associated Press also produced a report which stated -
This year the U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.
* A military spokesman differed, saying fatalities are at their lowest level since June 2006, but "offered no statistics to back his claim."
* As nearly everyone predicted, many of the insurgents have simply moved out of Baghdad into other areas: "Initial calculations validate fears that the Baghdad crackdown would push militants into districts north of the capital....In July, the AP figures show 35 percent of all war-related killings occurred in northern provinces. The figure one year ago was 22 percent."
* Residents are fleeing: "The number of displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the start of the year, from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31."
And this question of 'the numbers' and how they were being used and reported inspired this video look from TPMtv:
In addition, much was made of the fact that Pollack and O'Hanlan who though they were 'Democratic policy mavens' were still, in their own words, "two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq". They were constantly referred to as liberals, and even lefties - almost as if this conferred upon the authors an even further status and legitimacy - for apparently the 'liberal media' does have some usefulness after all. Even Dick Cheney, in an interview with Larry King cited the op-ed, and called them 'strong critics of the war'.
And it turns out that the very selective itinerary for their eight-day trip to Iraq had all been arranged by the Pentagon. But then again such treatment of visiting scholars, journalists and politicians is pretty par for the course.
Nonetheless, the op-ed soon became representative of the new conservative narrative about the war, used by Republican war supporters everywhere as proven fact that, indeed, there was significant progress being made in Iraq. And that, yes, the surge is working.
And it soon became clear that for the Bush Administration all of this was just the beginning a much larger, more co-ordinated media campaign to influence American public opinion about the war. A campaign of which we are in the midst.
It was revealed that the Pentagon had set up an election-style information war-room" or '24 hour Iraq info desk' as they were calling to help co-ordinate and concentrate their message about the surge and the war in general.
A new 'private citizen's group' called Freedom's Watch fronted by former White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer" soon emerged and began running thirty second TV commercials in twenty states - all in support of 'the surge' and the 'Bush Administration'. Spots that were positively eerie in their propagandizing.
And there have been other elements to this 'hard sell' media strategy - like Bush recently evoking the spectre of the Viet Nam withdrawal and the classic 'stabbed in the back' thesis concerning that war(more on this in a subsequent post) - but the question still persists: if this war is going so badly - and so 'other' from the official claims of its founders and supporters - why would the Bush Administration seek to perpetuate it this way, in such grand, unending manner and style?
And the obvious answer to that question is that Bush and his most loyal supporters really have drank the kool aid and truly believe their rhetoric: That we have to fight them over there so that we don't fight them over here. And as soon as we get Iraq right democracy is going to bloom throughout the Middle East, robbing the 'terrorists of their safe havens. And if not that then perhaps, at least, they truly feel that it is best to push forward on the present course then face whatever will accompany with an American withdrawal. At least not on their watch. Again, his comments to his official Biographer would certainly seem to suggest this to be the case. Bush's most enduring legacy will be The War in Iraq, its consequences and fallout - that with which he will be most historically identified. So it makes sense that he would want to persist with his present policy at least up and until the time he gets to hand the whole bloody mess off to somebody else. And there have have always been persistent suggestions that Bush feels his policies to be divinely inspired. The classic hallmarks of Bush's style are 'faith' and 'thinking and acting from his gut'. Not empirically based engagement with reality nor hard intellectual reasoning, to put it mildly. It is said that he is thinking a lot about Harry Truman these days, another President who made unpopular decisions and left office with low approval numbers, but who, it is said (in the general consensus), has been 'redeemed by history'. Bush I'm sure feels this way about himself. That history will prove him right; a man of vision and clarity, unafraid to make the difficult decisions. Now its just a matter of making it through the ever nasty present. How could he feel otherwise, really?
But is there something else going on here?
Now since I posted this post about Tony Karon's post Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran (which again, I would encourage everyone to read) the blogosphere has certainly been alive with the question of whether or not The United States is going to act militarily against Iran. (Not because, ahem, I posted of course, thats not what I'm saying) Maybe even sometime this month, or in the very near future. And as I said then, I had a hard time believing this to be the case. But then I read this post by former CIA Intelligence officer Ray McGovern Bush puts Iran in Crosshairs, and I have to say that I am beginning to take such assertions a lot more seriously.
First on the subject of Iran's nuclear ambitions, McGovern writes:
It has been like waiting for Godot...the endless wait for the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear plans.
That NIE turns out to be the quintessential dog that didn't bark. The most recent published NIE on the subject was issued two-and-a-half years ago and concluded that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon until "early- to mid-next decade."
That estimate followed a string of NIEs dating back to 1995, which predicted, with embarrassing consistency, that Iran was "within five years" of having a nuclear weapon.
The most recent NIE, published in early 2005, extended the timeline and provided still more margin for error. Basically, the timeline was moved 10 years out to 2015, but a fit of caution yielded the words "early-to-mid next decade."
On Feb. 27, 2007, at his confirmation hearings to be Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell repeated that formulation verbatim.
A "final" draft of the follow-up NIE mentioned above had been completed in February 2007, and McConnell no doubt was briefed on its findings prior to his testimony.
The fact that this draft has been sent back for revision every other month since February speaks volumes. Judging from McConnell's testimony based on the NIE draft of February, its judgments are probably not alarmist enough for Vice President Dick Cheney. (Shades of Iraq.)
It is also a safe bet that last December the newly confirmed defense secretary, Robert Gates, was taken to the woodshed by the avuncular Cheney, when Gates suggested to Congress that Iran's motivation in seeking a nuclear weapon would be deterrence:
"While they [the Iranians] are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for a nuclear capability, I think they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons – Pakistan to the east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west, and us in the Persian Gulf."
Apparently, the newly minted secretary of defense hadn't gotten Cheney's memo.
And,
There they go again – those bureaucrats at the International Atomic Energy Agency. On Aug. 28, the very day Bush was playing up the dangers from Iran, the IAEA released a note of understanding between the IAEA and Iran on the key issue of inspection. The IAEA declared:
"The agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful use."
The IAEA deputy director announced that the plan just agreed to by the IAEA and Iran will enable closure by December on the nuclear issues that the IAEA began investigating in 2003.
Other IAEA officials now express confidence that they will be able to detect any military diversion or any uranium enrichment above a low grade, as long as the Iran-IAEA safeguard agreement remains intact.
Shades of the preliminary findings of the very intrusive U.N. inspections conducted in Iraq in early 2003 before the U.S. warned the U.N. in mid-March to withdraw its inspectors, lest they be shocked-and-awed.
Vice President Cheney can claim, as he did three days before the attack on Iraq, that the IAEA is simply "wrong." But Cheney's credibility has sunk to prehistoric levels; witness the fact that the president himself was enlisted to address the Iranian nuclear threat this time around. And he did it with new words.
But, as McGovern points out, now
Bush and Cheney have clearly decided to use alleged Iranian interference in Iraq as the preferred casus belli. And the charges, whether they have merit or not, have become much more bellicose. Thus, Bush on Aug. 28:
"Iran's leaders...cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces...The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops. I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities."
How convenient: two birds with one stone. Someone to blame for our losses in Iraq, and "justification" to confront the ostensible source of the problem.
Vice President Cheney has reportedly been pushing for military retaliation against Iran if the U.S. finds hard evidence of Iranian complicity in supporting the "insurgents" in Iraq.
Again, President Bush on Aug. 28:
"Recently, coalition forces seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months..."
And then there is the fact that "The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.".
Which prompted this comment from Robert Baer (another former CIA man):
Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.
In a previous Ray McGovern column - George W Bush: A CIA Analysis - he even repeats the provocative rumours that it is because of the impending action against Iran that Karl Rove - reportedly opposed to this action and the only one within the Administration who could act as a counterweight to Cheney (all for it as you can imagine) with regards to influencing Bush - has now gone and resigned when he has.
Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:
They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."
Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I hesitated before posting this. I don't want to spread alarmist rumors. I don't want to lessen the pressure on the Ahmadinejad government in Tehran. But there are too many signs of another irresponsible military adventure from the Cheney-Bush administration for me just to dismiss these reports. I am putting them into the public sphere in the hope of helping to mobilize opposition to a policy that would further doom the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and burden our country and the people of the Middle East with yet another unstoppable fountain of bloodshed.
A post which he has followed up a couple of times, including today.
It is important to remember that no one is suggesting that the Americans are actually going to invade Iran, they simply don't have the troops for that. But if an attack were to happen it would probably take the form of a three day bombing campaign against all of Iran's nuclear facilities and as well as some of its Revolutionary Guard stations. A campaign that has apparently been in the planning stages for some time.
And if this were to take place would it, in turn, be part of a larger strategic shift in the region by the United States, that the great Seymour Hersh defined some time ago as 'The Redirection'?
i.e. - Allying and aligning with sunni forces throughout the Middle East with the goal of surrounding and encircling Iran and its Shia allies in Iraq as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But if this were true it would seem to suggest, essentially, that not only would the United States be choosing sides in an even larger and growing ethnic conflict that would and could engulf the entire region, but that it would actually be making moves to exacrebate that very situation.
Recent moves like the huge arms package for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf States and Israel, not to mention the arming of Sunni tribes in Anbar province itself would certainly appear to be in keeping with the suggestions of this potential strategy.
But what of the potential consequences of this potential strategy?
(N)ews organizations should ask certain questions, and keep asking them: Does the Administration expect the Iranian regime to fall in the event of an attack? If yes, what will replace it? If no (and it will not), why would the Administration deliberately set about to strengthen the regime’s hold on power? What will the Administration do to protect highly vulnerable American lives and interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world against the Iranian reprisals that will follow? What if Iran strikes against Israel? What will be the strategy when the Iranian nuclear program, damaged but not destroyed, resumes? How will the Administration handle the international alarm and opprobrium that would be an attack’s inevitable fallout?
But then what? We don’t have the troops to invade. And we don’t have anyone minding the helm who knows the slightest thing about Persian culture or the Middle East. There is no one in power in Washington with the empathy to get it. We will lurch blindly into a catastrophe of our own creation.
It is not hard to imagine what will happen. Iranian Shabab-3 and Shabab-4 missiles, which cannot reach the United States, will be launched at Israel, as well as American military bases and the Green Zone in Baghdad. Expect massive American casualties, especially in Iraq, where Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies will be able to call in precise coordinates. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, will be shut down. Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines and coastal artillery will target U.S. shipping, along with Saudi oil production and oil export centers. Oil prices will skyrocket to well over $4 a gallon. The dollar will tumble against the euro. Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, interpreting the war as an attack on all Shiites, will fire rockets into northern Israel. Israel, already struck by missiles from Tehran, will begin retaliatory raids on Lebanon and Iran. Pakistan, with a huge Shiite minority, will reach greater levels of instability. The unrest could result in the overthrow of the weakened American ally President Pervez Musharraf and usher into power Islamic radicals. Pakistan could become the first radical Islamic state to possess a nuclear weapon. The neat little war with Iran, which few Democrats oppose, has the potential to ignite a regional inferno.
We have rendered the nation deaf and dumb. We no longer have the capacity for empathy. We prefer to amuse ourselves with trivia and gossip that pass for news rather than understand. We are blinded by our military prowess. We believe that huge explosions and death are an effective form of communication. And the rest of the world is learning to speak our language.
"Film that with your camera. Show it to President Bush."
Bush always appears ridiculous of course, but he comes across as completely ridiculous in recent appearances where I have seen him pronounce that the 'American people are experiencing war fatigue' because they 'don't like what they are seeing on their TV screens'. Its such an absurd statement because just where exactly on their 'TV screens' is the War in Iraq?
Its hardly ever there. Why? Because of media management on the part of The Pentagon, and because Iraq is so dangerous now. But when it does show up, the effect is jarring.
Sean Smith is a photographer and filmmaker for The Guardian. He was in Iraq before the invasion, and remained there throughout out the Allied campaign. Recently he spent two months embedded with U.S. troops both in Anbar province and in Baghdad with the 4th platoon, Apache Company. And from that experience he has produced the stunning film 'Inside the Surge' which is, it seems to me, the most realistic portrayal of what life must actually be like for the soldiers (and some civilians) on the ground in Iraq that I have seen since Gunner Palace. Its an equisite piece of journalism. Stunning for it access, and because though you know this stuff is going on all the time, to actually see such scenes and images seems so rare.
Here is Part 1 in Baghdad:
And here is The Guardian version which contains Part 2, following some Marines in Anbar province and in Baghdad.
For all I know these soldiers and Marines could be the most decent guys around, but whose decency, integrity, or sanity for that matter could survive this? Conducting warrantless searches and what look to me to be essentially home invasions? How is this winning the war? And how long is this supposed to go on? Arguing with and trying to police people whose relatives have been killed and whose language and culture you know nothing about?
A recent op-ed by seven soldiers in the Sunday New York Times has been getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere the last couple of days not only for what its has to say, but again, I think, for its rarity. Its just so rare to hear from and see people involved in the war who are neither officers nor your regular commentators achieving such a high media profile. And saying things like:
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.
The Cunning Realist has been generating a good deal of controversy and attention for this post where he does some cursory exploration around the inevitable mixture of occupation and prostitution in Iraq, and the results aren't pretty.
VoteVets.org is an American Political Action Committee whose mission (as they say) is to "elect veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to public office; hold public officials accountable for their words and actions that impact America's 21st century service members; and fully support men and women in uniform.". Recently Brandon Friedman, one of their members and author of The War I always wanted, went on Keith Olbermann to discuss the recent Pentagon report on the rising suicide rate amongst active and veteran soldiers of the war.
The Iraq War is coming home. And this is going to take a while.
UPDATE:
The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness Chirs Hedges and Laila Al-Arain of The Nation interview fifty combat veterans of the war in Iraq, many of whom have come to oppose the war, about their interactions with Iraqi civilians.
As everyone is aware one of the inevitable (however, unconscious) consequences of seeking a militarist solution to whatever security or conflict situation is that the methods, techniques and machinery applied in this pursuit more often than not end up creating even more insecurity, which has serious long-term consequences of ill health and an amazing, profound and tenacious ability to live on in many forms and manners long after the initial battles are over.
In a perfect world such things should be the first consideration when deciding whether or not to launch a war, but rarely are.
To ponder the innumerable examples of this phenomenon could fill volumes. And does. To say that wars never really end is one of the oldest cliches going.
This seems to me to be the crux of the issue as far the necessity of the Iraq War is concerned - its supposed inevitability. Whether it had to be launched, with all its incumbent harm, in order to stave off something far worse. Most of the commentary pre-war, it seemed to me, was about what would - or even more specifically what might happen - if the invasion wasn't carried out, as opposed to what the 'Coalition' was actually about to do, and how, and what the results of that would be. Call it faith-based, or wishful thinking, but its a rationalization that continues to this day.
And I'm sure, even with all thats already happened, its still too soon to grasp a full picture of all the tragic consequences which have and will continue to flow from the initial decision to invade Iraq, but now that The War has in fact gone on longer than World War 1, with no apparent end in sight, I think we can say with some evidence that the dark, horrible edges are most certainly beginning to fill in a composition of some fatal relief. Be it the astonishing rate of civilian casualties, the enormous, emerging refugee crisis, the staggering financial cost or the full impact upon the health care systems, both American, and Iraqi (as well as others I'm sure). Its a stark future to be sure.
So perhaps in light of all that, revelations earlier this month emerging from U.S Government Accountability Office Report about thousands of weapons meant for the newly constituted Iraqi Army going missing, in the larger bloody scheme may seem relatively benign. Its not like there weren't a plethora of small arms in Iraq - pre-invasion. Indeed, for all I know Iraq could have been one of the most militarized societies around.
But as the universal can usually always be found within a particular, I do think this story speaks to some of the Iraqi War's more perfect qualities: A fatal, deep and profound lack of foresight. Scrambling, making it up as they go along. The constant returning narrative of the lost, 'innocent' Westerner abroad, doesn't speak the language, doesn't know the culture, and now doesn't even know who he's fighting, but figured he was always so well-intentioned. Saw what he wanted to see, perhaps what he needed to see. And now this kind of cyclical, murderous, spinning-of the-wheels. I can only speculate as to feelings and thoughts of many an American soldier who once tasked with the job of training new recruits to the Iraqi army, with their new weapons purchased with American money, now discovers that those same weapons are being used against him. Or her.
The US has lost about 190,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces since the 2003 invasion, according to an official report published in Washington.
The weapons include AK-47 machine guns, pistols, body armour and helmets, some of which will have ended up in the hands of insurgents.
The disclosure adds to the picture of the chaotic and clumsy administration of Iraq that has been emerging over the last four years.
The report, by the Government Accounting Office, which sent its report to Congress last week, found an alarming 30% gap between the number of weapons issued to Iraqi forces and records held by US forces in Iraq. No one in the Bush administration knows what happened to the weapons or where they are now.
The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.
The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has launched its own investigation and indicating it is working to improve tracking. Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers.
"They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."
One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces. He cited the Iraqi brigade created at Fallujah that quickly dissolved in September 2004 and turned its weapons against the Americans.
Stohl said insurgents frequently use small-arms fire to force military convoys to move in a particular direction -- often toward roadside bombs. She noted that the Bush administration frequently complains that Iran and Syria are supplying insurgents but has paid little attention to whether U.S. military errors inadvertently play a role. "We know there is seepage and very little is being done to address the problem," she said. (italics mine)
Stohl noted that U.S. forces, focused on a fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction after Baghdad fell, did not secure massive weapons caches. The failure to track small arms given to Iraqi forces repeats that pattern of neglect, she added.
The GAO is studying the financing and weapons sources of insurgent groups, but that report will not be made public. "All of that information is classified," said Joseph A. Christoff, the GAO's director of international affairs and trade.
In an unusual move, the train-and-equip program for Iraqi forces is being managed by the Pentagon. Normally, the traditional security assistance programs are operated by the State Department, the GAO reported. The Defense Department said this change permitted greater flexibility, but as of last month it was unable to tell the GAO what accountability procedures, if any, apply to arms distributed to Iraqi forces, the report said.
Iraqi security forces were virtually nonexistent in early 2004, and in June of that year Petraeus was brought in to build them up. No central record of distributed equipment was kept for a year and a half, until December 2005, and even now the records are on a spreadsheet that requires three computer screens lined up side by side to view a single row, Christoff said.
The articles also mention that in operations such as the Bosnian operation for instance, where there was little or no 'weapons seepage', the job of distributing weapons to the new Bosnian army was administered by the State Department. This would certainly fit a larger pattern of Defense Department incompetence in managing everything about this war, from the initial intelligence on down. Such is too often the case with their 'greater flexibility' .
If only we could attach some kind of GPS radio-tracking device to one or several of those lost AK-47's, as to a dolphin's flipper on one of those TV nature shows, in order to follow the rest of its journey in the years to come. Maybe even give it its own TV show. Its own reality TV show. Maybe then we could gain a richer appreciation of the full legacy of violence which tracks back from such limited initial decision making. As shit always rolls down hill.
For we do know that the AK-47, essentially, has a unique and special talent in this regard.
The AK-47 has become the world's most prolific and effective combat weapon, a device so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost of a live chicken. Depicted on the flag and currency of several countries, waved by guerrillas and rebels everywhere, the AK is responsible for about a quarter-million deaths every year. It is the firearm of choice for at least 50 legitimate standing armies and countless fighting forces from Africa and the Middle East to Central America and Los Angeles. It has become a cultural icon, its signature form -- that banana-shaped magazine -- defining in our consciousness the contours of a deadly weapon.
When one war ended, arms brokers gathered up the AKs and sold them to fighters in the next hot spot. The weapon's spread helps explain why, since World War II, so many "small wars" have lingered far beyond the months and years one might expect. Indeed, for all of the billions of dollars Washington has spent on space-age weapons and military technology, the AK still remains the most devastating weapon on the planet, transforming conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq. With these assault rifles, well-armed fighters can dominate a country, terrorize citizens, grab the spoils -- and even keep superpowers at bay.
This post marks the beginning of our new 'Iraq' category. I'm sure there will be many more to come.
