http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9332851/

Al-Qaida in Iraq declares all-out war

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/14/afr....0914iraqAA.php

Explosions thunder across Baghdad as 160 killed

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/289...9831FB06ACA.htm

Scores die in multiple Iraq explosions

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/internat...4iraq-wire.html

Attacks Kill More Than 100 Iraqi Capital

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5091400471.html

series of Bahdad Attacks Kill at Least 160

Iraqi insurgents are a moving target
As the attacks in west Iraq ended, insurgents' bombs in Baghdad killed
at least 152. By Jill Carroll and Dan Murphy
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0915/p06s01-woiq.html?s=hns

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI16Ak03.html

Welcome to Civil War
Pepe Escobar


Undeclared civil war in Iraq has been raging for months. Now it's "official": using the customary audio clip on a website, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - who may or may not be a cipher, but is certainly the leader of Monotheism and Holy War, or al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers - has declared "all-out war" on Iraqi Shi'ites.

To prove it, he unleashed Black Wednesday - including a horrendous attack in the Kadhimiyah neighborhood in Baghdad, with at least 112 dead and more than 200 wounded, all of them poor, helpless Shi'ite construction workers, many of them enticed toward the killer with promises of jobs before he detonated his lethal load. Baghdad was paralyzed on Wednesday, trying to cope with more than 150 dead and more than 500 wounded in a string of coordinated attacks marking the bloodiest day in the country since the end of major combat two years ago.

According to the Zarqawi audio, "The al-Qaeda Organization in the
Land of Two Rivers [Iraq] is declaring all-out war on the Rafidha, wherever they are in Iraq". Rafidha is the pejorative Arabic term referring to Shi'ites as apostates. "As for the government, servants of the crusaders headed by [Prime Minister] Ibrahim al-Jaafari, they have declared a war on Sunnis in Tal Afar." So, following Zarqawi's logic, the civil war against Shi'ites is a response to what happened in Tal Afar.

Tal Afar is a poor northern town in the middle of the desert whose majority population of roughly 200,000 is 70% Sunni Turkmen and 30% Shi'ite Turkmen. Just as former prime minister Iyad Allawi was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Fallujah, current prime minister Jaafari ordered what amounts to ethnic cleansing in Tal Afar.

Tal Afar revisited
Yet one more heavily hyped Pentagon/Baghdad production yielded no box office results - for obvious reasons. The Salafi jihadis, reportedly a couple of hundred, who were holed up in Tal Afar easily melted away, like the fish in Mao Zedong's pool of resistance. And the "pool" itself - most of the civilian population - turned into a stream of refugees. The operation was doomed to failure from the beginning because the Iraqi "army" involved consisted basically of Kurdish Peshmerga militias supported by local Shi'ite Turkmen informers. They may be Turkmen, but they are allied with Sunni Arabs.

Once again, the Sunni Arab Salafi jihadis got away by using classic guerrilla tactics: while the Pentagon/Jaafari armory was chasing shadows in empty Tal Afar, they mounted spectacular, deadly, highly visible attacks against Shi'ites in Baghdad, the heart of power.

So the pattern is always the same. The Baghdad/Pentagon axis unleashes massive, highly publicized repression - in Fallujah, in Tal Afar (many times over), in Qaim near the Syrian border, soon in Ramadi (it has been already announced); the Salafi jihadis melt away and later regroup.

The palpable effect is always the same, as University of Michigan professor Juan Cole suggests: de-urbanization of the Sunni Arab heartland. In other words, ethnic cleansing. Yet it's folly to believe that the Pentagon/Jaafari axis will be able to depopulate or destroy every major Sunni city opposed to the new, emerging Shi'ite-Kurd majority in power. Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers has fully capitalized on the matter. The voice on the Zarqawi tape warns Sunni Arabs to "wake up from your slumber ... the war to exterminate Sunnis will never end".

Who profits from all this? Certainly al-Qaeda in Iraq, with its agenda of keeping permanent chaos and anarchy. But also the Pentagon - as undeclared (and now declared) civil war is the perfect excuse for an indefinite American military occupation. In the long run, this ghastly state of affairs will profit "the crusaders" - in Zarqawi lingo - those hawks in the Bush administration who dream of the breakup of once-unified Iraq into a Kurdish north, a southern "Shi'iteistan" (both swimming in oil and allied with the US) and an enfeebled, dried out Sunni center.

What does al-Qaeda want?
"Zarqawi" - cipher or not cipher, performing or not performing miracles with just one leg and a US$25 million bounty on his head - has caused tremendous havoc since pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda in October 2004 , when his network adopted its current denomination, al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers (Tanzim al-Qaeda fi Bilad al-Rafidayn) and Osama bin Laden recognized him as the jihadi-in-chief in Iraq in a December 2004 audiotape.

The long-term strategy of al-Qaeda in Iraq is not Jordanian, like Zarqawi himself: it is dictated by the Saudi branch of al-Qaeda. The strategy has been spelled out in a series of documents supervised by Sheikh Yussef al-Ayeeri. The most strategic of these documents is called Iraq al-jihad, awal wa akhtar (The jihad in Iraq, hopes and dangers).

It's all there: centralized resistance in Sunni Arab cities and villages; close collaboration with Saddam's former Mukhabarat intelligence officers; attacks against other members of the coalition to isolate the Americans and the new Iraqi defense forces; keeping an atmosphere of chaos at all costs; and crucially disrupting by all means the flow of oil. Another point of the document is now becoming clear: the setting up of jihadi networks in the Shi'ite south capable of protecting Sunni minorities in case of civil war - a de facto situation with the escalation of sectarian killings.

Last month in Amman, Jordan, Asia Times Online came across a book by Fouad Hussein, an Amman-based journalist who has shared jail time with Zarqawi. The Arabic-language book, "Al-Zarqawi - al-Qaeda's Second Generation", aims to detail nothing less than al-Qaeda's strategy toward establishing an Islamic caliphate before 2020. The key source that lends credence to the book is Saif al-Adl.

Mohammad Ibrahim al-Mekkawi, aka Saif al-Adl, a colonel in the Egyptian armed forces, was the former number two of the Egyptian al-Jihad and an instructor in al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. He became al-Qaeda's military chief after Palestinian Abu Zubayda al-Filastini was arrested. In late 2001, he managed to flee from Afghanistan and found refuge in Iran. The US offers $5 million for his head. Iranian diplomats refuse to admit on the record that al-Adl is in the country, although they admit they hold a number of al-Qaeda operatives.

In his book, Hussein uses his personal knowledge of Zarqawi as well as privileged information passed to him by al-Adl, including heated debate between bin Laden and Zarqawi, to uncover what would be the master plan of global jihad. The book has received extensive coverage in the Persian-language Iranian media and has been analyzed very seriously in Tehran.

Hussein lists seven crucial stages. The first, dubbed "the awakening" (of the Muslim world), has already happened: from September 11 to the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. The second stage is dubbed "opening eyes": it involves al-Qaeda blossoming into a movement (it is already an idea), with Iraq as its headquarters; it should last until 2006. The third stage, dubbed "Arising and Standing up", should last until 2010, with a focus on jihad inside Syria, and increased attacks on Turkey, Jordan and Israel. All these stages make sense when confronted with the progression of facts on the ground.

Then it gets fuzzy. The fourth stage lasts until 2013 and it involves the total defeat by al-Qaeda of all Western-supported Arab governments, as well as a series of attacks against the global flow of oil and sophisticated cyber-terrorism designed to debilitate the American economy. The fifth stage is the proclamation of an Islamic caliphate between 2013 and 2016 - as Western interference in the Arab world should be by this time reduced to a minimum. The sixth stage, starting in 2016, will be "total confrontation", with an "Islamic army" fighting infidels all over the world. And the seventh stage, to be completed by 2020, should be nothing less than the triumph of the caliphate.

The year 2020, by the way, is the date former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad set for Malaysia - a moderate Muslim nation - to become a fully developed, globally integrated country, ie the total antithesis of the al-Qaeda utopia. It is also the date many economists believe will mark the point when China's economy will become the world's number one - and would have taken decisive steps to free itself from dependence of Arab oil, striking major supply deals with Iran and Kazakhstan.

Hussein in his book lists these seven stages as the field manual for global jihadis. He interprets - correctly - the attacks on Manhattan, Madrid and London as just a means to an end: provoking a paranoia about security in major Western capitals as one of the privileged tools in building up the Islamic caliphate. The problem is Hussein regards "al-Qaeda" as a centralized brain delivering instructions: that's not the case since Tora Bora in late 2001, with "al-Qaeda" becoming a nebula, a virus constantly mutating with lethal speed.

The idea of al-Qaeda reenacting a caliphate in the whole Islamic world, Shi'ite Iran included, may be seen by Westerners, Asians and moderate Muslims alike as an absolute lunacy. But Franco-Lebanese historian Ghassan Tueni considers "bin Laden's utopia, as monstrous as its form reveals", as steeped in history, "a morbid rejection of one century of defeat and impasse, with plenty of frustration and humiliation".

Utopias can become deadly. Up to now, the Bush administration's "war on terror" has done nothing to puncture the myth. Four years after September 11, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri - both apparently alive and well - continue to inspire Salafi jihadis with their iconic status, while "Zarqawi" causes increasing havoc in Iraq.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

US: Spike in Iraq Violence Predictable Guardian Unlimited
Brutal insurgent bombings that killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad over the past two days were a "predictable spike in violence'' tied to the coming referendum on Iraq's new constitution, the U.S. military said Thursday. As suicide bombers kept up their campaign for a second day, at least 31 people were killed - 23 of them Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos, now targets of choice for the Sunni-dominated insurgency. At least seven of 570 people wounded in Wednesday's attacks have died, hospital officials said, raising the toll to at least 167 in the worst day of killing to hit the capital since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. "These spikes of violence are predictable around certain critical events that highlight the progress of democracy,'' said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the chief American military spokesman. "Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency. So there has to be heightened awareness now as we work our way toward the referendum'' on Oct. 15, he said. "That's power, that's movement toward democracy.'' Al-Qaida in Iraq, headed by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the bombing campaign launched after an Iraqi-U.S. force of 8,500 stormed the northern city of Tal Afar, an insurgent bastion, this week. Al-Zarqawi purportedly declared "all-out war'' on Shiite Muslims, Iraqi troops and the government in what the United States has called a desperate propaganda campaign to derail the political process. Leaders of the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq have vowed to defeat the constitution, which they claim favors the Shiite majority and the Kurds. Lynch said the joint force killed 145 insurgents and captured 361 in the second operation in a year to rid Tal Afar of militants, including foreign fighters crossing from Syria. Now, he said, U.S. forces along with the Iraqis were fighting to regain control of the Syrian border, near the western insurgent stronghold of Qaim well to the south of Tal Afar. "The focus is ... to restore control of the border and in this particular case the border with Syria,'' he said. ``We believe that the terrorists and foreign fighters are entering Iraq across the Syrian border, down the Euphrates River Valley into Baghdad.'' Recent violence only served to deepen the misery in Baghdad, where streets were noticeably quieter Thursday - deserted in the southern Dora district where the latest bombings were concentrated. U.S. and Iraqi forces using loudspeakers roamed the district warning residents to stay indoors because five more suicide car bombers were believed to be in the area. Many victims of Wednesday's attacks were killed shortly after dawn when a bomber lured day laborers to his small van with the promise of work, then detonated his explosives in the heavily Shiite Kazimiyah district. Some of the dead were taken for burial Thursday to the huge Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. "We appeal to the government to punish those criminals immediately,'' said Ali Hamza, a victim's father, in tears. As al-Qaida in Iraq intensified its bombing and propaganda campaign, the government hit back with threats. "We will not retreat or be silent. There will be no room for you (insurgents) in all of Iraq. We will chase you wherever you go,'' Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, told reporters. Iraqi authorities have taken pains in recent days to convince the population that the insurgency is overwhelmingly foreign, claiming, for example, that they arrested a Palestinian and a Libyan in the Kazimiyah attack. The bomber was a Syrian, the government said without detailing evidence. The Americans have quietly contradicted that government line, saying the insurgency is only about 20 percent foreign. The massive bombings took place with both Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in the United States. "Today, Iraq is facing one of the most brutal campaigns of terror at the hands of the forces of darkness,'' Talabani said Thursday, addressing the U.N. General Assembly with an appeal for international help. "We are in desperate need of your experience, investment and your moral support for the effort to fight terrorism.'' With bombs continuing to exploded in Baghdad, U.S. forces and insurgents reportedly clashed in Ramadi, a militant stronghold on the road to neighboring Jordan. A Web posting purportedly from Al-Qaida in Iraq said its forces engaged the American military in the predominantly Sunni city. Police Capt. Nasir Alusi said U.S. and Iraqi troops in Ramadi came under mortar attack as militants roamed the streets. Shops were closed and streets empty. Automatic gunfire echoed through the area, he said. The Americans did not confirm the engagement, but Lynch said U.S. operations were continuing in Anbar province, where Ramadi is the capital. Meanwhile, The Associated Press obtained the text of minor, final changes to Iraq's draft constitution. The United Nations is to print the draft in Baghdad and insure its distribution before the referendum, but the world body said it was awaiting final approval. There were conflicting reports on when Iraq's parliament would sign off on the document. Two articles in the draft were changed, one was dropped entirely and one was added. Of those, the main change was a new clause noting that Iraq was a founding member of the Arab League, an addition Sunni Arabs sought to underline the country's links with the Arab world. The dropped passage gave the constitution precedence over international human rights agreements, which the United States asked to be removed.
16 killed in suicide attack in Baghdad Sify
More suicide bombs kill in Iraq CBC News
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US tempers its view of victory in Iraq
The Pentagon hoped to quell unrest before a pullout, but violence is
changing US goals. By Mark Sappenfield
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0916/p01s02-usfp.html?s=hns

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...-home-headlines

More Iraqis Joining Zarqawi's Cause
By Greg Miller and Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda's top operative in Iraq is drawing growing numbers of Iraqi nationals to his organization, increasing the reach and threat of an insurgent group that has been behind many of the most devastating attacks in the country, U.S. officials and Iraqi government leaders say.

The group, headed by Jordanian-born radical Abu Musab Zarqawi, previously was composed almost exclusively of militants from other Arab nations, and has symbolized the foreign dimension of a stubborn insurgency fighting to oust U.S. forces.

But Zarqawi "is bringing more and more Iraqi fighters into his fold," a U.S. official said, adding that Iraqis accounted for "more than half his organization."

Although Zarqawi is believed to command fewer than 1,000 fighters, the daring and lethal nature of their attacks, coupled with Zarqawi's links to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, have made him the most notorious figure in the Iraq insurgency.

The U.S. has set a $25-million bounty on Zarqawi, whose organization has been behind a series of beheadings, suicide bombings and other gruesome attacks.

Zarqawi's faction has claimed responsibility for a bombing campaign this week that has left at least 169 dead in Baghdad, apparently in reprisal for a U.S.-Iraqi campaign against insurgents in the northern city of Tall Afar. One of the car bombers reportedly lured day laborers to his vehicle by posing as an employer. It was unclear whether he was Iraqi.

Details of a growing Iraqi dimension to Zarqawi's group were provided by three U.S. officials with access to classified intelligence data and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Their comments reflect the government's latest attempt to come to grips with a multi-layered insurgency that has often confounded U.S. forces and intelligence agencies.

The U.S. officials indicated that the infusion of Iraqis, including, apparently, former members of the Iraqi intelligence service and military, represented a change in the group's makeup rather than a major expansion.

A significant Iraqi presence in the Zarqawi group carries ominous implications, both for the Bush administration and the fledgling, popularly elected government it supports in Baghdad.

The Iraqis under Zarqawi's wing could provide him with better intelligence, and give legitimacy to a group viewed by many Iraqis as unwanted outsiders. In addition, Iraqi recruits are being exposed to the workings of a highly efficient Islamic extremist group.

The influx of Iraqis also would diminish the effect of any tightening of border controls — a key Bush administration objective — on the insurgency's strength.

U.S. intelligence in Iraq has frequently been wrong. However, two factors add credence to the reports of the shifting composition of Zarqawi's group: Several of his senior lieutenants have been captured by U.S. forces in recent months and some reportedly have talked extensively under interrogation.

Senior Iraqi officials have reported seeing the same development.

Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's national security advisor and a former Shiite activist, said "there's no doubt" that once-nationalistic elements of the insurgency were drifting toward Zarqawi and his extremist Salafi sect of Islam.

"There's a tendency to religion-ize the insurgency," he said. "Religion is a strong motive. You're not going to find someone who's going to die for Baathists. But Salafists have a very strong message. If you use the Koran selectively, it could be a weapon of mass destruction."

Few Iraqis appear to share Zarqawi's goal of establishing a radical Islamic state, but small numbers of Iraqi hard-liners apparently are attracted by the effectiveness of Zarqawi's group.

"They're the best game in town, the most organized organization," said a U.S. official, who added that Zarqawi's network was also a "well-funded organization that is willing to pay people for their work" when many Iraqis, particularly police, have little or no income.

The officials noted that police in three cities, including Mosul, are not being paid. They declined to name the others.

Officials said it was not clear how dedicated these Iraqis were to the broader Al Qaeda cause, or whether they would be willing to travel outside the country to carry out terrorist attacks in Arab or western nations.

Zarqawi escaped capture in February year near the city of Ramadi, authorities say. He fled on foot as coalition forces at a checkpoint intercepted a truck containing a laptop and documents. Coalition forces since have killed or captured several of his lieutenants. The latest such incident was announced Sept. 9, when a U.S. military official said a high-level aide had been killed in western Iraq.

But the U.S. officials who are familiar with intelligence on Zarqawi's group said the organization had proven remarkably resilient and was organized to withstand losses of key leaders, including Zarqawi.

One of the officials noted that coalition forces thought they had delivered a major blow in January with the capture of Zarqawi's principal bomb maker in Baghdad. But since then, the official said, "car bombs are way up in Baghdad."

Overall, the officials said, the insurgency in Iraq is divided into three "clumps": religious extremists such as Zarqawi; former members of the long-ruling Baath Party of Saddam Hussein; and disparate Iraqi groups acting out of local or national interests.

The officials described a steady flow of Saudis, Yemenis and other Arab nationals into — and, in some cases, out of — the country. But officials said foreign fighters accounted for less than 10% of the insurgents in Iraq.

Zarqawi's reported success in recruiting Iraqis to his cause comes as frustration is mounting among the minority Sunni Arabs, who fear they will be marginalized in a democratic Iraq and are prepared to fight its emergence.

The CIA and other agencies have resisted pressure to provide an estimate of the number of insurgents in Iraq, partly out of concern that it would foster the impression that there is a finite population that can be stamped out.

Rather, officials said intelligence analysts had noted that there were an estimated 800,000 to 1 million Iraqi Sunni Arab men of military age who represent the pool of potential insurgents. How many might turn to violence depends on several factors, starting with the extent to which Sunnis are satisfied with their stake in any new government.

Some Sunnis have objected to the draft constitution that is to be presented to Iraqis in a national referendum next month. The community's sense of estrangement could be heightened if the document is passed, as is likely, over their objections.

"They're going to be extremely disappointed when they fail, and they're going to believe this is the result of fraud and being cheated out of what they deserve," one of the U.S. officials said. "There's going to be some real ratcheting up of Sunni disaffection with the process."

The trial of Hussein, scheduled to begin next month, is also likely to add to a sense of victimization among Sunnis, analysts say.

Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad contributed to this report.

http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=7288

The Bloodbath Becomes a Flood

by Dahr Jamail
For the last several days, at least 6,000 US soldiers along with approximately 4,000 Iraqi soldiers (read: members of the Kurdish peshmerga and Shia Badr Army) were laying siege to the city of Tal Afar, near Mosul in northern Iraq. It is estimated that 90 percent of the residents have left their homes because of the violence and destruction of the siege, as well as to avoid home raids and snipers.

The Fallujah model is being applied yet again, albeit on a smaller scale. I haven't received any reports yet of biometrics being used (retina scans, finger printing, bar-coding of human beings) like in Fallujah, but there are other striking similarities to the tactics used in November.

While the U.S. military claims to have killed roughly 200 "terrorists" in the operation, reports from the ground state that most of the fighters inside the city had long since left to avoid direct confrontation with the overwhelming military force (a basic tenet of guerrilla warfare).

Again like Fallujah, most of the families who fled are staying in refugee camps outside the city in tents amid horrible conditions in the inferno-like heat of the Iraqi summer.

The L.A. Times reported that Ezzedin Dowla, a Turkmen leader in the area said, "Families are homeless and the government has not provided any shelter, food, or drink for them." Nor has the U.S. military.

The targets of this military operation are the Sunni Turkmen who are politically on the side of the Sunni Arabs. Most Sunnis will be voting against the constitution during the coming vote of Oct. 15.

The Cheney administration is desperate for something it can spin as "good news" from Iraq; thus it most certainly behooves them to have the referendum on the constitution to boast about. But in order to do so, the voting ability and power of the Sunni (and Sunni Turkmen) must be severely compromised, as well as punishment meted out for rightfully assuming what will be a Sunni no-vote on the constitution.

Both the Cheney administration and its current puppet government in Iraq benefit from destroying the voting (and living) ability of the majority of people in the "Sunni triangle," so we have the operation in Tal Afar, most likely to be followed by similar operations in al-Qa'im, Haditha, Samarra, and possibly more.

In Tal Afar, the propaganda spewed by the U.S. military (and the Iraqi "government") was that the operation was to fight terrorists coming into Iraq via Syria. If that were true, why did the U.S. military remove troops from the border with Syria who were supposed to be preventing infiltration by foreign fighters? Instead of guarding the border, as they should, they engaged in the operation against Iraqi Sunni Turkmen. Working in unison, the U.S. military launched the heavy-handed attack with the "authorization" of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, the leader of the Shia Da'wa Party. Jaafari even went so far as to venture to Tal Afar on Tuesday to visit troops and have his photograph taken.

"Authorization" was given by the Iraqi government for the attack on Tal Afar, just as "authorization" was given by then-interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for the November 2004 massacre in Fallujah. "Authorization," when the U.S. military would never, ever allow any foreign power jurisdiction over American forces, least of all a puppet government.

Correspondents with Azzaman media in Tal Afar miraculously made it into the city and reported that residents are disputing reports that U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have killed scores of "insurgents." Like Fallujah, these residents of Tal Afar are reporting that most of the people killed were civilians who had no place to go so they chose to stay in their homes. People also stayed because they feared persecution at the hands of the peshmerga and Badr Army.

I recently interviewed an Iraqi man from that area at the Peoples' UN Conference in Perugia, Italy. He told me, "Most people in Mosul and Tal Afar would rather be detained by the Americans now, because they know if Iraqi soldiers or Iraqi police detain them they will be tortured severely, and possibly killed. This gives you an idea of how bad it is with these Iraqi soldiers, even in the shadow of what the Americans are still doing in Abu Ghraib."

As for "foreign fighters," one of the Azzaman correspondents quoted a resident of Tal Afar as saying, "We used to hear [from news reports] of the presence of some Arab [foreign] fighters in the city, but we have seen none of them."

Life in Iraq remains a living hell. Blood flowed in the streets of Khadamiya yesterday as a horrendous car bomb killed 112 people in the predominantly Shia neighborhood. And once again, calls of solidarity were made from the nearby Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, and residents emerged from their homes to help their brothers and sisters across the river, just as they did after the panic and chaos that recently took the lives of nearly 1,000 Shia.

The horrendous totals from yesterday were 160 dead, 570 wounded Iraqis as the result of the string of attacks and at least a dozen car bombs. The blowback from the Jafaari "authorized" state-sponsored terrorism in Tal Afar took little time to materialize in the capital city.

If Jafaari were more honest with his press appearances, along with his photo-op in Tal Afar he should have had his photo taken amid the charred, smoking body parts strewn about the streets of Khadamiya, which was a result (albeit just as horrific) of his Tal Afar "authorization."

On that note, Jalal Talabani, Iraq's puppet president, was at a press conference in Washington D.C. with Mr. Bush just hours before the blowback began.

Meanwhile, one of my friends in Baghdad writes me, "Dear Dahr, how are you dear pal? I am very sorry for what happened after Hurricane Katrina. It is a real tragedy. I hope none of your friends or family was affected. It is a tragedy which makes one speechless."

This when he goes to work each day hoping to make it home alive to see his wife and newborn daughter.

And another of my friends in Baghdad wrote me recently, "I'm so sorry that I didn't e-mail you the previous days … the situation in Tal Afar has become so much worse for the people. It is terrible what is going on there and nobody can say anything because as usual the military operation is still going on and they are trying to keep all the media out. They have also started another operation in another area of al-Anbar province, and they will soon start one in Samarra."

My interpreter when I'm in Iraq, Abu Talat, has been willing to take the risk of working with me there. To give you an idea of the lengths he's willing to go to, he gave me the green light to come to Iraq last November, just before the massacre in Fallujah began. It is safe to say times were quite tense then, with kidnappings and beheadings having long since become the norm.

"The minister of defense is threatening not only Fallujah but all of the Ramadi governorate, I can tell you very surely about that," he wrote in a recent e-mail to me and a colleague who was hoping to enter Iraq to work as a reporter. (Today, U.S. warplanes began dropping bombs inside the city of Ramadi.)

"No one can support you working here. We are having a very critical situation. For this reason, I think that coming to Iraq in this critical time is not accepted. I was very, very welcoming to any of your friends, Dahr, but not in this time. Sorry, but for your own safety. Take good care of yourself."

Today at least 30 more Iraqis have died in violence across their occupied country, and it will only continue to worsen.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0916/p01s02-usfp.html

US tempers its view of victory in Iraq

The Pentagon hoped to quell unrest before a pullout, but violence is changing US goals.

By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – Since the day in May 2003 when President Bush stood beneath a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," the course of the conflict in Iraq has been one of optimism followed by revision.
From the earliest battle plans, which called for the quick return home of tens of thousands of troops, to the campaign in Fallujah and national elections that followed, the Pentagon had hoped it could largely eliminate lingering unrest before turning security over to Iraqis.

The increasingly bracing tone from the White House and Pentagon, however, points to a new calculus. The persistence of the attacks, as well as their undiminished capacity - witnessed by Wednesday's bombings in Baghdad, which killed more than 150 Iraqis - seems to have confirmed that the insurgency will probably outlast the American occupation.

Indeed, the inability of American forces to defeat the insurgency through strikes such as the current offensive in Tal Afar raises doubts about the possibility of any clear victory for the administration. And it could leave the Iraqis with a years-long task that many planners had not anticipated.

"There has been a clear realization that this war is not winnable in the short term," says Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at RAND Corp. in Arlington, Va.

The change in thinking has come gradually, as pivotal moments in the maturation of the Iraqi state have come and gone - and the insurgency has remained. In the first months after Mr. Bush declared victory, Pentagon officials were loath even to use the word "insurgency" to describe the attacks that killed some two dozen troops in May and June of 2003.

In testimony before Congress that July, Gen. Tommy Franks argued that the attacks did not fit his definition of an insurgency.

A year later, however, the continuing toll of the insurgency was reshaping the Pentagon's expectations. By the spring of 2005, a spike in violence, despite the previous November's successful campaign against the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah and January's relatively peaceful elections, made it clear that political momentum was not enough.

Part of the reason for the failure to plan for uncertainties came from the ideological insistence that almost all Iraqis would see Americans as liberators. Yet it also came from a political calculation that dismissed the lessons of the Clinton years. "There was a sense that there was nothing to learn from Somalia or Haiti or Bosnia," says Dr. Jones.

Some parts of the administration have been slower to reach this point than others. In the midst of the May attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney famously said that the insurgency was in its "last throes." But less than a month later, on June 26, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years. Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."

It is this attitude that has moved from post-invasion rhetoric to Pentagon doctrine. In some ways, it is the same measure of victory that the Pentagon laid out two years ago. "At an absolute minimum, we'll be here for [two years], and probably longer, to make sure that [Iraqi forces] are capable of protecting the sovereignty of Iraq," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in an Aug. 7, 2003, Pentagon briefing.

Administration officials have always insisted that events on the ground - and not artificial timelines - would dictate American actions in Iraq. Yet today, the finish line is no more certain than it was two years ago - and the threat that Iraqi forces will be facing when US troops leave is more dire than many military officials imagined.

The result is that Bush's characteristic steel about Iraq still lacks any specifics or certainty. "As a practical matter, no one in the administration is going to admit this," says Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "Nobody's making military promises that are unrealistic."

There are some positive signs. The offensive to roust insurgents from Tal Afar, which began in May and intensified the past two weeks, has put more responsibility in the hands of the Iraqi military. "It's a very important step in turning over security to the Iraqis," says Rachel Bronson, an analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

But there is a long way to go, she and others say. Significantly, when Iraqi President Jalal Talabani suggested this week that Iraqi forces would be ready to replace 50,000 US troops by the end of the year, he quickly reversed his statement and later added that US soldiers might be needed for another two years, though he set no deadline.

Amid this military uncertainty, administration officials have turned to political events as the primary marks of progress. "The referendum on the constitution and the elections at the end of December are the most important aspects of what we're doing now," Gen. George Casey told Congress in June.

Yet Wednesday's attacks in Baghdad suggest that the practical matter of adequately preparing the Iraqi military - not the grand clash of political ideas - will ultimately determine the success or failure of American hopes, analysts say. In a recent paper, Dr. Cordesman writes: "If political developments do have a positive effect, it will be ... because a substantially larger number of Iraqi Sunnis ... see the military balance shifting decisively in favor of Iraqi government forces

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...15-033551-4317r

Outside view: A losing strategy
By Anthony H. Cordesman
Outside View Commentator
Published September 15, 2005


WASHINGTON -- It now seems unlikely that either the draft Iraqi constitution or the election that may follow will persuade a large number of Sunnis to support the government more actively, or reduce Iraqi Sunni support for the insurgency in the near term.

If political developments do have a positive effect, it will be more out of compulsion than persuasion. It will be because a substantially larger number of Iraqi Sunnis feel they have no real chance of winning, and see the military balance shifting decisively in favor of Iraqi government forces that can largely suppress a civil war and which -- unlike coalition forces -- cannot be driven out of the country.


For this to happen, U.S. and Iraqi forces must win both an urban battle -- centered in Baghdad, Mosul, and their environs -- and a battle for the rural areas and towns and smaller cities in the west of the country. In both cases, military victories will be largely unimportant unless they can be followed up by an enduring Iraqi government presence in terms of both effective governance and effective police forces.

The article by Jonathan Finer in the Sept. 13 issue of Washington Post -- "Informants Decide on Fate of Iraqi Detainees" -- is both excellent reporting and a confirmation of warnings I have heard from both U.S. officers and Iraqi officials.

The usual official claims are being made about tactical victories. For example, Iraqi officials made the following statement about Tal Afar: "Six Iraqi civilians have been killed and eight others were injured. Voting centers have been opened in the town of Tal-Afar. The combat operations are over now and reconstruction missions are due to start throughout the town.

"In the last 24 hours there has been no resistance of any kind in Tal-Afar. Total of terrorists killed is 157 and 440 others were arrested. Search and sweep operations are ongoing at this stage.

"Terrorists attached explosives to the body of an Iraqi child then sent him to his family before blowing him up in the town of Tal-Afar.

"A peacekeeping force will be deployed in the town.

"I agree that the government was late in responding to what was happening in Tal-Afar.

"Eight Iraqi servicemen were martyred and six others were injured in the operations."

The problem with such claims is that they do not necessarily indicate that this kind of fighting does more to end the insurgency that it does to provoke it. In fact, the fighting in western Iraq is again raising some of the key problems exposed in Fallujah:

-- The United States seems to be conducting broad sweeps without adequate intelligence or "targeting," plays a highly intrusive role in urban areas, and cannot really distinguish friend from foe. Enemies and civilians mix as they flee and disperse, most real insurgents get away, and inexperienced U.S. troops create hostility in dealing with already politically hostile Iraqis in the area.

-- The Iraqi combat forces are still clearly in a support role, and could not operate without U.S. airpower, artillery, armor and support.

-- Some of the key Iraqi combat forces have a strong ethnic and sectarian character (Pesh Merga), have no better intelligence than U.S. forces, and if anything, do more to alienate an already largely hostile population.

-- There is no evidence of Iraqi police forces and governance coming in to rapidly provide non-military security, aid, and "legitimacy" on the ground. Talk and token visits, but not the kind of action necessary to actually secure a military victory.

-- The United States is talking a level of aid it cannot really execute, an open-ended series of new detentions, and an extend presence as a substitute for an Iraqi government presence that can breed further hostility.

The United States and Iraq both still seem to have serious problems in following up tactical operations with the kind of stability operations that are the key to any meaningful kind of victory.

A combination of U.S. and Iraqi forces can win virtually any battle or clash, but this is largely irrelevant. What they have not demonstrated is that they can give such victories meaning in terms of governance, political support, security, or even enough lasting damage to the insurgents to compensate for the hostility its actions create.

Moreover, as the bombings in Baghdad and constant threat to the airport road illustrate all too clearly, the government has not secured hostile Sunni urban areas in Iraq's two largest cities, much less their environs. It is also all too possible that the debate over the constitution may make things worse, and not better.

As was the case with pacification in Vietnam, nothing is actually "won" where the government cannot safely operate with officials and police on a day-to-day basis, where citizens are not safe, and where the night makes so-called secure areas into "no go" zones.

Unfortunately, neither the coalition nor the Iraqi government seems to provide any meaningful reporting on this aspect of operations. There are countless press releases on what essentially are tactical trivia, but no convincing report on the measures of progress that actually count.

--

(Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the CSIS.)

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/954...1878BF5D28D.htm

Iraq attacks kill dozens
Friday 16 September 2005, 15:22 Makka Time, 12:22 GMT

Police have been the targets of attacks in recent months

Several Muslim worshippers have been killed and wounded by a car bomb detontated outside a mosque in the central Iraqi city of Tuz Khurmatu, police sources said.

Captain Saed Ahmed said the bomb went off as people were emerging from the Great Prophet shrine in the town north of Baghdad.

He said nine people were killed and another 21 wounded in the Friday afternoon attack.

Earlier, at least two people were killed and 13 others wounded in an attack on a crowd of day labourers gathered at a Baghdad square, medics and security officials said.

Security sources said a group of armed men in a minibus opened fire on the labourers in the south-eastern al-Jadida district.

"The labourers were gathered at their meeting place when two cars drove up at 7.30 am (0330 GMT)," a police source said.

"They opened fire on the crowd."

The two cars then sped away from the scene. As they left they opened fire on a government vehicle travelling on one of eastern Baghdad's main highways, killing one man and wounding two more, police said.

Earlier, police sources said the third man was a transport ministry employee.

The morning attack followed a series of car bombings on Wednesday morning in the northern Baghdad district of Kadhimiyah against another group of day labourers.

Cleric killed

Also in al-Jadida, police said a Shia cleric, Sheikh Fadel Alami, was killed in his car.
An Iraqi-US operation in Tal Afar
has triggered a violent backlash

South of Baghdad, a bomber killed three policemen and wounded six others after ramming his explosives-packed car into a police convoy on a highway near Hasswa, some 60km from the capital, police said.

And a senior regional official, Amer al-Khafaji, was assassinated along with four bodyguards in a night raid on his home in nearby Iskandariyah. Two other guards were wounded.

On Thursday, at least 25 members of an elite police commando unit were killed in three separate car bomb attacks in the southern Baghdad district of Dora.

In Baquba, north of Baghdad, another police commando was killed when a group of armed men attacked his unit, police sources said.

Four Iraqi soldiers were also killed when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in the town of Khalidiya, west of Baghdad, policeman Mohammed Abbass said.

On Friday, the US military announced that a marine was killed near Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad.

The soldier from the 2nd Marine Division was killed "from an indirect fire explosion" on Thursday, it said, using the normal term for a mortar attack.

Rising toll

The death brings to at least 1897 the number of American military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to Pentagon figures.

The Iraqi capital has witnessed a surge in attacks against Iraqi security forces, US military targets, and civilians since al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared all-out war against the Iraqi Shia community.

Al-Zarqawi warned Shia and
Sunnis ahead of the referendum

In an audio tape recording that has not yet been authenticated, al-Zarqawi said all Iraqis working with US forces and/or supporting the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari would now become targets.

He also warned the Sunni community not to participate in an upcoming referendum vote.

On Thursday afternoon, Sheikh Mehdi al-Attar, a senior member of the al-Dawa party, was killed when his car was attacked by unidentified assailants in Hilla, 100km south of Baghdad.

Car bomb attack kills 30 Advertiser Adelaide
A CAR bomb killed at least 30 and wounded 38 overnight on the outskirts of Baghdad in what appeared to be the latest attack on Iraq's majority Shiite population.
Car bomb kills 30 in market east of Baghdad ABC Online
Clerics Call for Restraint as More Violence Hits Iraq Los Angeles Times
WESH.com - OCRegister (subscription) - ABC News - Salon - all 1,045 related »

19 police and 2 civilians killed in fresh attacks :

Iraqi police say a suicide car bomber struck a joint U-S-Iraqi patrol (near Taji) north of Baghdad last night, killing 14 Iraqi soldiers. Another suicide bomber blew himself up today near an Iraqi police commando patrol. Five policemen and two civilians were killed.
http://tinyurl.com/85mg3


Suicide bombers kill 10 as Shia pilgrimage gets underway:

Two suicide car bombers killed 10 when they struck checkpoints south of Baghdad on Monday on a road used by thousands of Iraqi Shia pilgrims making their way by foot to the holy city of Karbala.
http://tinyurl.com/c4weo


Iraqi working for NYT found shot dead in Basra:

An Iraqi working as a reporter for the New York Times was found dead in the southern city of Basra on Monday after being kidnapped by masked men, family members and a doctor said.
http://tinyurl.com/cqskx


Iraqi MP assassinated, 24 bodies found in Tigris:

Insurgents assassinated a Kurdish member of parliament and police found 24 bodies shot to death and dumped in the Tigris River 50 miles north of the capital
http://tinyurl.com/cc95g


15 Iraqi soldiers taken hostage west of Samara.
http://tinyurl.com/7h4k6


Two Britons detained in Iraq for firing at police:

Violence erupted in Basra on Monday after Iraqi authorities said they had detained two British undercover soldiers
http://tinyurl.com/9vchh


British forces attack Iraqi jail, free 2 captured Britons:

British forces using tanks broke down the walls of the central jail in the southern city of Basra late Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos, who had been arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.
http://tinyurl.com/d9c4g


Iraq invasion radicalized Saudi fighters: report:

Hundreds of Saudi fighters who joined the insurgency in Iraq showed few signs of militancy before the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, according to a detailed study based on Saudi intelligence reports.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1136691


Bulgaria Begins Iraq Withdrawal Mid October:

Bulgaria's troops will begin their withdrawal from Iraq in the middle of October, the Chief of General Staff of the Bulgarian Army General Nikola Kolev announced.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=52607


Top Dems Ignore the Public :

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll tells us what we already know: a strong majority of Americans favor bringing troops home from Iraq. Specifically, 55% support a withdrawal, while just 36% back Bush's position that current troop levels should be maintained
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0915-35.htm


Cindy Sheehan: What Noble Cause?

Upon reflection on the events of this past August, I have come up with two reasons why George could not meet with me: He is a coward and there is no Noble Cause.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10330.htm


What has happened to Iraq's missing $1bn? :

One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10329.htm


New twist on aid for Iraq: U.S. seeks donations:

Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons.
http://tinyurl.com/c8w2w

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Group: Moderator
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http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=7324

September 20, 2005
Democratic Hallucinations in Afghanistan and Iraq

by Ivan Eland
Insular and secretive presidential administrations often deny reality to the point of absurdity when they blunder into foreign misadventures. The classic example is the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. The Bush administration’s current quagmires in Iraq and even Afghanistan are taking on that air. For example, the administration is congratulating itself on the Afghan legislative and provincial election day passing without rampant strikes by a resurgent Taliban; recent attacks have spiked to the worst levels since that group was removed from power in 2001. In fact, U.S. military sources have already started floating a proposal to pull out some U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Similar talk of a U.S. troop drawdown from Iraq after the December Iraqi elections also has come from the U.S. military.

All this chatter about U.S. troop withdrawal comes at a time of increased Taliban strikes—which have killed a record number of U.S. troops, seven Afghan electoral candidates, and four campaign workers—and a wave of insurgent carnage in Iraq that has caused the third largest monthly U.S. military death toll and the worst death count in Baghdad since the U.S. invasion. In Afghanistan, the reduced violence on election day probably indicates that the guerrillas were smart enough to lay low to avoid intensified security measures. The Taliban will likely renew the ferocity of their attacks again shortly. Unfortunately, U.S.-led efforts to stand up Afghan security forces have floundered, and the Bush administration would depend on increasing levels of NATO troops to pick up the slack from any U.S. drawdown. But many NATO countries prefer peacekeeping in secure areas and are unenthusiastic about having their forces actively fight against the Taliban. Similarly, in Iraq, the problems of creating Iraqi security forces to replace any reductions in U.S. troops are well known.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the disconnect between talk of troop withdrawal and increased violence can partially be attributed to the U.S. military putting pressure on the Bush administration for relief from its globally overstretched condition. But with next year’s congressional elections in the United States looming, the Republicans would like to show some sort of troop reduction to insulate themselves from Democratic attacks on the issue.

Of course, the short-term goal of reducing U.S. forces exacerbates the administration’s difficulty in achieving its long-term objective in both conflicts: winning. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if existing force levels of the world’s best army cannot stamp out the Taliban and Iraqi insurgencies, then their partial replacement with inferior forces are unlikely to do so either. The administration’s goal in both conflicts—if there is a coherent plan at all—seems to be: buy time until democratic processes dampen the rebellion.

Yet in Afghanistan, the authority of the “democratically-elected” central government of Hamid Karzai is weak in most of the country. The elections are likely to produce a parliament filled with ex-communist commanders, Islamist warlords, and former Taliban leaders—many with non-democratic tendencies and murderous pasts.

In Iraq, the rancor over the proposed constitution has Sunni Arabs registering in droves to defeat it and will probably end up further inflaming the already intensifying insurgency. As a demonstration of how bad things are, the best outcome for the United States in Iraq might be the constitution’s defeat. If rejection occurred, negotiations among the Kurds, Shi’a, and Sunni Arabs would have to begin again. If the constitution passes over Sunni attempts to derail it, the increased sense of Sunni alienation might very well spark increased levels of violence.

In short, regrettably, neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is yet ready for democracy. Experts on the democratization of countries speak of a democratic culture being required before genuinely democratic institutions and processes can take hold. Afghanistan and Iraq, like South Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s, have not developed such a culture.

Other comparisons with the Vietnam War can be made. After first avoiding Vietnam-like body counts of enemy dead, wounded, and captured, the U.S. military is now doing them to demonstrate that it is winning—at the same time that increasing violence indicates that the opposite is happening. Also, U.S. government pronouncements are being made that are ludicrous on their face. For example, after two days of bombing and shooting attacks attributed to the foreign Islamic jihadists under Abu Musab Zarqawi, which killed a record 190 people, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the senior U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, claimed, “Zarqawi is on the ropes.” This whopper resembles U.S. claims before the 1968 communist Tet Offensive that the United States was winning the Vietnam War. Although the U.S. military defeated the offensive by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, the “credibility gap” exposed by the strength of the offensive was the beginning of the end of U.S. popular support for the war.

Similar U.S. credibility gaps are yawning in both Afghanistan and Iraq at a time when the public at home is already restless about such foreign entanglements and when the Bush administration seems to have no coherent long-term plan to extricate the United States with dignity from such quagmires. To those who lived through the 1960s and early 1970s, the situation is unfortunately all too familiar.

Iraq probe into soldier incident BBC News
The Iraqi government has launched an investigation into the events that led the British Army to storm a police station in search of two UK soldiers. Both men were members of the SAS elite special forces, sources told the BBC's Richard Galpin in Baghdad.
Your view: civil war in Iraq? Telegraph.co.uk
Britain defends use of force in freeing soldiers CTV.ca
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Five Soldiers Killed in Three Separate Iraq Incidents

By Jonathan Finer and Fred Barbash

BAGHDAD, Sept. 20 -- The military announced the deaths Tuesday of five U.S. soldiers in three separate roadside bomb explosions, pushing the number of U.S. fatalities since March 2003 past the 1,900 mark.

Four of the soldiers were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. They were "conducting combat operations" and died in two separate incidents, said the military, declining to provide further details.

A fifth soldier belonged to the 18th Military Police Brigade and was killed 75 miles north of Baghdad when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device, according to an official press release.

According to the Associated Press, the number of U.S combat deaths in Iraq stands at 1,904.

Separately, an American diplomat and three private security contractors died Monday in the northern city of Mosul when their armored SUV was attacked by a suicide car bomber, a Western official in Baghdad confirmed Tuesday morning.

Two others riding in the three-vehicle convoy -- which was departing a U.S. embassy satellite office in Mosul -- suffered minor injuries in the attack, which occurred at 9:49 a.m., the official said.

A lone driver pulled alongside the convoy and detonated an explosion next to the second vehicle. U.S. security personnel immediately cordoned the area and administered first aid, but the four appeared to have died instantly.

The diplomat killed in the attack was not named, but was described as a diplomatic security agent.

The incident marked the third U.S. diplomat killed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Diplomatic Security Agent Edward Seitz died in an October 2004 mortar attack on a U.S. base near Baghdad International Airport. And last November, James Mollen, a U.S. special adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, was shot to death near the capital's fortified Green Zone.

Fred Barbash reported from Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/e...er=emailarticle

Military: Troop Deaths Hit 1,903 in Iraq ABC News
In this picture made available by the US Army, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005 Lt. Col. Christopher Gibson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, stands in the shade on a deserted street during a break while patrolling with Company A in Tall Afar, Iraq, Monday Sept. 19, 2005. Residents started returning to town after fleeing the fighting between insurgents and Iraqi army supported by US forces last week.The operation began Sept. 10, when a force of 5,000 Iraqi soldiers backed by 3,500 Americans stormed the city to clean it of insurgents for the second time in a year. Mopping-up operations continued Sunday with the Iraqi military reporting a total of 157 insurgents killed and 440 captured during the 10-day offensive.
US military: Troop deaths hit 1,904 in Iraq China Daily
Four US Soldiers Killed in Action in Ramadi, Western Iraq Bloomberg
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lets us face it the so called AL-Quida is a non existant organization fabricated by the CIA and this administration to mislead the public while the goverment removes our freedoms whithou a shout from us .. Plausible fact .. Iraq did not want The non existant Ben Ladin in its country so why would the Al-Q fight ??? These so called insurgents are the people of Iraq fighithg for their leader and their homeland .. We the USA are the agressors and insurgents .. As out president put it so well this is GOD'S way and fight .. God is on our side .. Have I missed something??? Is our national anthium ONEWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS ///

Sadr militia's new muscle in south
The radical Shiite cleric's loyal followers clashed with British troops
Monday in Basra. By Jill Carroll
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0921/p01s03-woiq.html?s=hns

Five soldiers killed in separate bombings :

Four soldiers attached to the Marines were killed in two separate roadside bombings near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi and a military police soldier died in a bombing north of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday
http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1113938.php


Attack in Mosul kills 4 Americans:

A U-S official says the victims are a Diplomatic Security agent and three private security guards attached to the U-S Consulate in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city.
http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3871433&nav=Bsmh


Iraqi police accused British soldiers of planting bombs. :

Monday's clashes stemmed from the arrest by Iraqi police on Sunday of two Britons, whom Iraqi police accused of planting bombs.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10341.htm


British Undercover Unit Has Weapons Confiscated

Picture shows weapons which Iraqi police said were confiscated from two undercover British soldiers after their arrest in Basra
http://tinyurl.com/cd6e9


The day that Iraqi anger exploded in the face of the British occupiers :

Dressed in plain clothes - according to some they were wearing traditional Arab dress - the two men had been driving in an unmarked car when they arrived at a checkpoint in the city. In the confrontation that followed, shots were fired, and two Iraqi policemen were shot, one of whom later died.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10342.htm


Iraqi police detain two British soldiers in Basra :

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.
http://tinyurl.com/9hm7v


Mike Whitney : Who's Blowing Up Iraq? :

New evidence that bombs are being planted by British Commandos
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10343.htm


Iraq criticises British rescue in Basra:

The operation followed rioting that began, according to police and local officials, when the two men fired on a police patrol. At least two Iraqis were killed in the violence.
http://tinyurl.com/a42pd


Iraq images shock Britain, but Blair is safe:

But the signs are that Britain's Iraq adventure is in its endgame. A leaked memo signed by Defence Secretary John Reid in July envisioned bringing most of them home over the next year.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20701998.htm


Ex-Iraqi defence minister wanted over $1bn fraud :

"What Shaalan and his ministry were responsible for is possibly the largest robbery in the world. Our estimates begin at $1.3bn [£720m] and go up to $2.3bn," Judge Radhi, who is Iraq's senior anti-corruption official, told Reuters.
http://tinyurl.com/bhjbs


Bishops suggest apology for war :

Church of England bishops have suggested Christian leaders apologise to Muslim leaders for the war in Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/7awmf


Extended tours of some US military units eyed in Iraq::

Lawrence DiRita, the defense department's chief spokesman, said it was "entirely possible" commanders would want to boost the force in Iraq beyond its current level of 140,000.
http://tinyurl.com/9y3kl


Liberal Democrats call for Iraq withdrawal:

The Liberal Democrats urged the government to start withdrawing its troops from Iraq to avoid further risk.
http://tinyurl.com/bgzav


Bush Has No Exit Plan for Iraq, Say Americans :

According to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News. 72 per cent of respondents believe their president has not developed a clear plan for getting American troops out of Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/9lj7u

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=...210065428&par=0

IRAQ: WE ONLY STRIKE CERTAIN SHIITES, SAYS AL-ZARQAWI GROUP

Baghdad, 20 Sept. (AKI) - After declaring war on Shiites in Iraq last week, al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has issued a new statement stating that "not all Shiites are our target." The message, titled "The al-Qaeda organisation in the country of the two rivers makes an exception for some Shiites", has appeared on various Islamic Internet forums, and follows a message on Monday denying that al-Zarqawi threatened Sunnis with death if they vote in the upcoming referendum on the Iraqi constitution, due to take place on October 15.

The latest message says, "In a previous audio message issued by Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, he declared total war on Shiites for the massacre perpetrated by the Shiite government of Ibraham al-Jafaari against the Sunnis of Tel Afar. Despite this, it should be stressed that in that speech, al-Zarqawi specified that 'all Shiites who condemn the crimes committed against the Sunnis at Tel Afar and who don't support the occupation will be excluded from attacks by the mujahadeen'. Those groups therefore include three Shiite movements: those of al-Sadr, al-Khalisi and al-Hussani."

Despite announcing that its militants will not strike targets linked to the movement of the Shiite Imam Moqtada al-Sadr and the other two smaller religious groups, the Sunni terror group's declaration of "total war" remains valid for other Shiite groups. The message concludes by saying: "The following groups remain targets for al-Qaeda: Al-Jaafari's Dawa Party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), Ahmad Chalabi's National Congress Party and Iyad Allawi's National Accord Party."

It is the first time that al-Zarqawi's group has made a distinction of this kind. For some time al-Sadr has been carrying out his political activity with the Committee of the Sunni Ulema of Baghdad, which is regularly accused by the Shiites of colluding with terrorists.

Al-Zarqawi declared war on the Shiites after a suicide bombing last week which killed more than a hundred people. The bomber drove a minibus packed with explosives into a square in a Shiite area of Baghdad where labourers seeking employment usually go, and blew himself up after luring the men towards the vehicle with promises of work.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/21%20n/$1....ha'alan.htm


$1.3 Billion to $2.3 Billion Stolen by Members of the Allawi Government, Particularly by former Defense Minister, Hazem Al-Sha'alan

September 20, 2005

Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper reported today that a warrant to arrest the former defense minister Hazem Al-Sha'alan will be issued within a by the Iraqi government for stealing more than a billion dollars, during his work in the Allawi government, in 2004. It is estimated that the theft was between $1.3 billion and $2.3 billion by members of the US-backed Allawi government.

$1billion plundered from Iraq funds

Jordan Times, September 20, 2005

Large-scale corruption in Iraq's ministries, particularly the defence ministry, has led to one of the biggest thefts in history with more than $1 billion going missing, Iraq's finance minister said in an interview. "Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal," Finance Minister Ali Allawi told British newspaper The Independent in a report published on Monday. "It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history." Corruption, both in the bidding for and the awarding of contracts, and in the administration of public offices, is one of the most frequent accusations made by Iraqis against their government and foreign firms operating in the country.

Some of the worst allegations of impropriety concern the purchasing of military equipment by the defence ministry under the previous government, including more than $230 million spent on 28-year-old second-hand Polish helicopters.

"If you compare the amount that was allegedly stolen of about $1 billion compared with the budget of the ministry of defence, it is nearly 100 per cent of the ministry's [procurement] budget that has gone [missing]," Allawi said.

Most of the questionable contracts are said to have been signed under the previous government, headed by Iyad Allawi, which served from June 28, 2004 until late February this year.

The former defence minister, Hazim Shaalan, is now living as a private citizen in Jordan. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Allawi, the finance minister, was also quoted by the newspaper as saying $500-$600 million had vanished from the electricity, transport, interior and other ministries.

The newspaper reported that the total amount missing from all the ministries could be as much as $2 billion.

Iraq's Board of Supreme Audit, set up in 2004 by the US administration then running the country, said in February it would investigate all government contracts signed since the 2003 war after repeated allegations of corruption. It gave a report to the government in May.

Parts of the board's findings were quoted last month by Knight Ridder newspapers as showing that upwards of $1 billion had gone missing or was unaccounted for.

Knight Ridder said that in some cases contracts had been signed on scrap pieces of paper with unnamed intermediaries and that it was not always clear what products were supposed to be supplied for the vast sums of money quoted.

The Independent said that one contract involved purchasing armoured cars that were so poorly made that their armour could be pierced by a single shot from an AK-47 assault rifle.

An Iraqi politician on Sunday accused the ministries of mass corruption and incompetence and quoted from the Board of Supreme Audit's report, which has not been made public.

"Our funds are under the control of ignorant people," Hadi Amiri, the head of parliament's integrity commission, told lawmakers in an angry address.

"There have been many violations of the bidding process that have led to huge losses of public funds. Many bids weren't properly conducted and were awarded by ministers without any input from committees set up to assess the bids," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1574820,00.html

Comment

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To say we must stay in Iraq to save it from chaos is a lie

This is a fiasco without parallel in recent British history. Iraqis must run their country: we've made enough mess of it already

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday September 21, 2005
The Guardian


Don't be fooled a second time. They told you Britain must invade Iraq because of its weapons of mass destruction. They were wrong. Now they say British troops must stay in Iraq because otherwise it will collapse into chaos.
This second lie is infecting everyone. It is spouted by Labour and Tory opponents of the war and even by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell. Its axiom is that western soldiers are so competent that, wherever they go, only good can result. It is their duty not to leave Iraq until order is established, infrastructure rebuilt and democracy entrenched.

Note the word "until". It hides a bloodstained half century of western self-delusion and arrogance. The white man's burden is still alive and well in the skies over Baghdad (the streets are now too dangerous). Soldiers and civilians may die by the hundred. Money may be squandered by the million. But Tony Blair tells us that only western values enforced by the barrel of a gun can save the hapless Mussulman from his own worst enemy, himself.

The first lie at least had tactical logic. The Rumsfeld doctrine was to travel light, hit hard and get out. Neoconservatives might fantasise over Iraq as a democratic Garden of Eden, a land re-engineered to stability and prosperity. Harder noses were content to dump the place in Ahmad Chalabi's lap and let it go to hell. Had that happened, I suspect there would have been a bloody settling of scores but by now a tripartite republic hauling itself back to peace and reconstruction. Iraq is, after all, one of the richest nations on earth.

Instead the invasion came with tanks of glue. Decisions were taken, with British compliance, to make Iraq an experiment in "ground zero" nation-building. All sensible advice was ignored on the assumption that whatever America and Britain did would seem better than Saddam, and better than our doing nothing. Kipling's demons danced through Downing Street. Britain did not want to colonise Iraq. Yet somehow Blair's "fighting not for territory but for values" needed territory after all, as if to prove itself more than a soundbite.

The scenes broadcast yesterday from Basra show how far authority in southern Iraq has collapsed. This is tragic. When I was there two years ago the south was, in its own terms, a success. While the Americans were unleashing mayhem to the north, the British were methodically applying Lugard-style colonialism in Basra. They formed alliances with sheikhs, bribed warlords and won hearts and minds by going unarmoured. There was optimism in the air.

British policy demanded one thing, momentum towards local sovereignty and early withdrawal. There was no such momentum. An ever more confident insurrection was allowed first to impede and then dictate the timetable of withdrawal. Sunni terrorists now hold American and British policy in their grip. The result has been an inevitable civil collapse. We do not even know on which side are the Basra police.

The British government - and opposition - is in total denial. Ministerial boasts can't conceal the gloom of private briefings. Blair has done what no prime minister should do. He has put his soldiers at a foreign power's mercy. First that power was America. Now, according to the defence secretary, John Reid, it is a band of brave but desperate Iraqis entombed in Baghdad's Green Zone. He says he will stay until they request him to go, when local troops are trained and loyal and infrastructure is restored. That means doomsday. Everyone knows it.

Iraqis of my acquaintance are numb at the violence unleashed by the west's failure to impose order on their country. They are baffled at the ineptitude, the counter-productive cruelty of the arrests, bombings and suppressions. They are past caring whether it was better or worse under Saddam. They know only that more people a month are being killed than at any time since the massacres of the early 1990s. If death and destruction are any guide, Britain's pre-invasion policy of containment was far more successful than occupation.

Infrastructure is not being restored. Baghdad's water, electricity and sewers are in worse shape than a decade ago. Huge sums - such as the alleged $1bn for military supplies - are being stolen and stashed in Jordanian banks. The new constitution is a dead letter except the clauses that are blatantly sharia. These are already being enforced de facto in Shia areas.

British soldiers are in a war over whose course, conduct and outcome their leaders have no control. Their government's exit strategy is no longer realistic, indeed is dishonest. Talk of reducing troop levels from 8,000 to 3,000 next year has been abandoned. Everyone seems on the wrong planet. Meanwhile daily groping for good news and the sickening litany of the bad is reminiscent of Vietnam. Nobody reads Barbara Tuchman on folly.

Signalling withdrawal would, it is said, give a green light to the gangs and private militias, to revenge attacks, ethnic cleansing and even partition. That threat is no longer meaningful since these are all happening anyway. The militias have reportedly infiltrated at least half the police and internal security forces in each area. Barely a tenth of the army is considered loyal to the central authority. That a Basra police station should be vulnerable to al-Sadr irregulars is appalling.

The 150,000 foreign troops on Iraqi soil are overwhelmingly committed to self-protection. They do not do law and order any more. Power is finding its new locus, in the mafias, sheikhdoms, militias and warlords that flourish amid anarchy. Where there is no security, the gunman is always king.

The alleged reason for occupying Iraq was to build security and democracy. We have dismantled the first and failed to construct the second. Iraq is a fiasco without parallel in recent British policy. Now we are told that we must "stay the course" or worse will befall. This is code for ministers refusing to admit a mistake and hoping someone else will after they are gone. By then the Kurds will be more detached, the Sunnis more enraged and the Shias more fundamentalist. A hundred British soldiers will have died.

America left Vietnam and Lebanon to their fate. They survived. We left Aden and other colonies. Some, such as Malaya and Cyprus, saw bloodshed and partition. We said rightly that this was their business. So too is Iraq for the Iraqis. We have made enough mess there already.

British soldiers may indeed be the best in the world. But why then is Blair driving them to humiliation?

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectio...articleId=10333

Becoming The Bogeyman
Bin Laden claims that the United States is at war with all Sunnis. We're in danger of making that seem true.
By Matthew Yglesias
Web Exclusive: 09.20.05

Writing in Wednesday's Washington Post, Joe Biden warned that unless we get things right in Iraq, "violence might escalate into a full-blown civil war." It used to be that we had to stay in Iraq in order to avoid a civil war; now it's a full-blown civil war that our presence is preventing. (A recent Daily Telegraph article worries about a "full-scale civil war.") The status quo, then would seem to be a partially inflated civil war, or maybe a miniature-scale one.

A look at the operation in Tal Afar -- in which the United States took the town, absurdly, for the third time -- the weekend before Biden's op-ed suggests that civil war is well on its way to being full-blown. Tal Afar is inhabited mainly by members of Iraq's small Turkmen community, the people of which speak a language similar to Turkish and enjoy good relations with Turkey. Turkey, famously, enjoys poor relations with its own Kurdish minority as well as with the newly empowered Kurdish minority in northern Iraq. Most Iraqi Turkmen live within the sphere of Iraq that local Kurds want to turn into a highly autonomous -- if not outright independent -- Kurdistan. Iraqi Turkmen, sensibly, would rather be one minority group among many in a largely unitary, pluralistic Iraq than a disenfranchised minority inside a largely monolithic Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, most Turkmen -- including those in Tal Afar -- are Sunni Muslims, though a minority follow the Shia faith. Sunni Turkmen largely sympathize with the insurgency, and, as a result, the town has repeatedly become an insurgent stronghold and apparently plays an important role as a way station for foreign fighters infiltrating from across the Syrian border. Thus, American troops, operating under orders from the Shia-dominated central government and backed by Iraqi-army troops who turn out to be relabeled Kurdish militiamen, attacked the city. Working with them to provide intelligence were a group of Shia Turkmen. According to The Washington Post, in the wake of the attack, detentions of Sunni Turkmen have frequently been undertaken "solely on the hearsay" of these Shia informants who may or may not know what they're talking about and may or may not simply be settling old scores.

The forces loyal to insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had largely already left the city. But for now, at least, the Kurdish-Shia coalition retains control over the city.

Following these events, a voice recording thought to be from al-Zarqawi was released, proclaiming, "The al-Qaeda organization in the Land of the Two Rivers [Iraq] is declaring all-out war on the Rafidha [a pejorative term for the Shia], wherever they are in Iraq," and argued that "as for the government, servants of the crusaders headed by Ibrahim al-Jafari, they have declared a war on Sunnis in Tal Afar." In the days that followed, insurgents unleashed a massive wave of violence, including terrorist attacks against Shia civilians and bomb assaults on American forces and security services loyal to the Iraqi government.

This, in other words, is the civil war, an event presaged last fall by fighting in the ethnically mixed city of Mosul. Shia and Kurds, backed by the United States, are fighting Sunnis. Whatever justification may exist for indefinitely prolonging the American presence in Iraq, it must be seen that this is what we're doing -- helping our preferred side to win a civil war, not preventing one from breaking out.

Americans need to ask themselves at least two questions about this state of affairs: Is it wise, and is it moral? On wisdom, it's well-known that the United States has something of an al-Qaeda problem. We're afflicted by a global jihad movement that likes to portray itself as merely defending the interests of Sunni Muslims against a hostile "crusader" coalition directed from Washington. Deploying American troops on the Shia side of a Sunni-Shia civil war is much more likely to enhance, rather than reduce, the appeal of that message. On morality, proponents of an indefinite military commitment have done a good job of seizing the high ground of responsibility and idealism, but must be forced to confront the reality of what's happening. Ethnic and sectarian conflicts are legendarily ugly affairs. The Iraqi political forces with which we've aligned ourselves have no record of commitment to democracy, liberalism, human rights, or any of the other high ideals under whose banner our troops are operating. A desire, no matter how strongly or sincerely held, to make it the case that we are fighting for those things will not make it so.

Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.

Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Matthew Yglesias, "Becoming The Bogeyman", The American Prospect Online, Sep 20, 2005. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7335

September 21, 2005
Iraq: The Battle of Basra
‘Democratic’ Iraq rises up – against the occupiers

by Justin Raimondo
As the Iraqi police checkpoint in Basra loomed up ahead, the two elite British special forces soldiers – dressed in plainclothes, i.e., traditional Arab dress – readied their weapons. For some reason, they weren't too eager to be questioned or examined too closely. As the [UK] Independent reports:

"In the confrontation that followed, shots were fired, and two Iraqi policemen were shot, one of whom later died. The Iraqi authorities blamed the men, reported to be undercover commandos, and arrested them.

"Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate said that the two men had looked suspicious to police. 'A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them,' he said. 'They refused to say what their mission was. They said they were British soldiers and [suggested they] ask their commander about their mission,' he added."

The Brits were hauled off to the hoosegow, where their minor wounds were dressed – and word of the incident spread quickly across the city. A British tank on routine patrol was surrounded and pelted with stones.

The British response: the iron fist. Tanks moved on the Basra police headquarters as a crowd began to gather. Soon hundreds of Basrans were at the scene, as Shi'ite Paul Reveres called out the Iraqi equivalent of "The British are coming!"

Outgunned, the Iraqis stood their ground as frantic negotiations went on behind the scenes, with the Brits demanding the release of their two spies and the police – under pressure from the surly crowd gathered outside – continuing to delay and refuse, even when the Interior Ministry in Baghdad intervened on behalf of the Brits. The standoff quickly escalated into an all-out pitched battle, pitting the Iraqi police and the residents of Basra against the redcoats in what will go down in Iraqi history as their equivalent of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

"In a clear demonstration that the holding of the soldiers would not be tolerated" – as The Independent puts it – the British commander gave the order to attack the police station. His tanks brought down an entire wall before they found out the two captured Brits were being held at a nearby house: the captives were freed, but none of this occurred without resistance and some pretty dramatic television footage, which was broadcast via al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyah all over the Muslim world, as well as the West. By this time, the crowd was serving up Molotov cocktails, and news crews got a dramatic shot of a soldier aflame as he leapt off his tank and ran off in a hail of stones. A citywide riot followed, in which at least two Iraqis were killed and several injured.

The unraveling of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq has been going on for some time: with the recent battle of Basra, however, it seems to have reached the point of no return. The coalition forces are no longer fighting just Sunni insurgents – they are coming up against the elected Shi'ite authorities in the south, where the latest incident bodes ill for the occupiers.

The coalition propaganda campaign has already commenced, with the Brits claiming this is all the work of the evil Iranians, who are just trying to cause trouble because they're being pressed on the nuke issue. That's what the Times of London is peddling, at any rate. Yet this explanation is cut to shreds by Occam's Razor, which suggests a simpler explanation for the outbreak of violence: local discontent with British actions, including the arrest of prominent members of the Sadrist party a few days before.

The Financial Times takes a shot at the local angle and frames the Basra events as stemming from a murky internecine struggle involving the various party militias, such as the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade. Yet this view overlooks an important point. The overwhelming majority of those blue-fingered voters in the south of Iraq, of which Basra is the hub, cast their votes for the parties behind the militias: the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which sponsors the Badr Brigade, the Da'wa Party militia, and the Sadrists – supporters of Shi'ite firebrand Moqtada Sadr – whose armed wing is the Mahdi Army. These parties are not trying to seize power – they're the elected authorities.

There is much talk of how the militias have "infiltrated" the Iraqi police, but this is nonsense. What is really happening is that the politicians who won the much vaunted elections, hailed by Bush and the War Party as a great step forward for "democracy" in Iraq, are not just taking office, they are taking power. They are also hiring their supporters – especially the ones who have military experience – as the local cops on the beat.

When these Iraqi cops ran into two undercover British soldiers who were "acting suspiciously," according to the Iraqis, a battle ensued. The Brits objected so strenuously to being questioned by the legally constituted authorities that they preferred to shoot first and ask questions later.

Hmmmmm… Something tells me they were up to no good.

A series of attacks on coalition troops, as well as the murder of an Iraqi journalist employed by the New York Times, have been attributed to the party militias acting under color of authority, "posing" as police. The Times reporter was arrested at home, and his family was told that he would be taken down to the station only for an hour or so. His beaten body was found with several bullet holes in the head. Steven Vincent, the New York City art critic-turned-journalist, was also murdered by these assassins. Vincent, a war supporter who went to Iraq on behalf of "the cause," was kidnapped and thrown into a white van marked "police." His body was found a few days later, beaten and shot several times. Slain, as he was, by the very forces unleashed by America's "victory" for Iraqi "democracy," I noted at the time:

"In 'liberated' Iraq, the police are the criminals: instead of protecting people from harm by thugs, they are the thugs who inflict harm on others. It's a Bizarro World rendition of law enforcement, albeit one that perfectly fits in to the upside-down logic – not to mention the inverted morality – of those who brought us this war."

Taking the Bizarro World scenario a few steps further, we are now faced with the sight of the "liberators" fighting the "liberated." And this isn't the Sunni Triangle we're talking about, but a Shi'ite rebellion against the Anglo-American usurpation of authority. The governor of Basra denounced the British attack as "barbaric, savage, and irresponsible." We're taking on the elected government, not just in Basra and the solid Shi'ite south, but also the federal authorities in Baghdad. A spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari deplored the attack on police headquarters as "unfortunate," and questioned whether the Interior Ministry was in any way involved. The same Associated Press story that reports al-Jaafari's displeasure also reveals the extent of the duplicity engaged in by those liars in London:

"British officials initially claimed the men were released after negotiations. But Iraqi authorities and witnesses in Basra, about 340 miles southwest of Baghdad, said the British laid siege to the jail Monday afternoon and hours later, with rioting engulfing the area, smashed through its walls using armored vehicles."


In contemplating this almost limitless capacity for deception, one is reminded of what Mary McCarthy, in an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show, said of Lillian Hellman, the Stalinist playwright:

"Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"

In the Bizarro World universe we've been thrust into ever since 9/11/01 – when the force of the explosion that brought down the World Trade Center pushed us into an alternate and cruelly inverted reality – lies are truth, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and the function of government (and much of our media) is to keep everyone in almost total ignorance of what is really going on. Because, you see, ignorance is strength.

Incidents such as what happened in Basra are like lightning at midnight: the landscape, formerly covered in murk, is illuminated with shocking suddenness, its outline starkly visible if only for a brilliant moment. We can see, all to clearly, what this war is really about.

It isn't about oil, although that was part of the long-range objective. Iraq's wells are not flowing due to sabotage. Wolfowitz promised that oil revenues would cover the cost of the occupation, yet now the Iraqis must bring in refined oil from outside. It isn't about "weapons of mass destruction": that was a lie. It isn't about "democracy," either – that was yet another lie, unless the sinister theocracy emerging out of the rubble is the closest the Iraqis can come, which seems a bit harsh.

The rush to detect the long hand of Tehran in Basra shows the direction we are headed. Increased fighting along the border with Syria and charges emanating from Washington that Damascus is actively aiding the insurgency make the future all too clear. The Middle East escalator is going full speed ahead, and the portents of a regional war are all around us. This war is about provoking the next major war – with Iran, or perhaps Syria. Whichever comes first.

– Justin Raimondo

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=7343


September 21, 2005
Uncertain Anniversary for Iraq War Champions

by Jim Lobe
It was four years ago that a little-known group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) published an open letter to President George W. Bush advising him on how precisely he should carry out his brand-new "war on terrorism."

In addition to ousting Afghanistan's Taliban, the letter's mostly neoconservative signatories called for implementing regime change "by all necessary means" in Iraq, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [Sept. 11] attack." It also urged "appropriate measures of retaliation" against Iran and Syria if they refused to comply with U.S. demands to cut off support to Hezbollah, which they considered part of the terror network.

The letter called for cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it immediately halted attacks against Israel and Israeli settlements, and for a "large increase in defense spending" in order to rein in the conflict that some of its signers, notably former CIA director James Woolsey, were soon describing as "World War IV."

Six months later, PNAC published a second letter – again little-noticed by the U.S. mainstream media – calling for Washington to "accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power," "lend full support to Israel" whose "fight against terrorism is our fight," and greatly increase the defense budget to ensure that the impending war could be successfully carried out in all its aspects.

PNAC's prescription and subsequent events fostered the impression, particularly in Europe and the Arab world, that the group had successfully and – given the lack of media coverage – covertly "hijacked" U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.

These included the administration's fulsome embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, followed by the invasion of Iraq, not to mention the effective cutoff of communications with both Damascus and Tehran (albeit not precisely because of their ties to Hezbollah).

Indeed, when the historical record of what the Bush administration has actually done in the region is compared with PNAC's recommendations, the correspondence can only be described as stunning.

But they were hardly the result of some covert conspiracy.

In fact, PNAC, whose staff consists of only about half a dozen people, had been issuing letters, statements, and reports quite openly for several years before. It called in particular for regime change in Iraq as part of a larger foreign policy project inspired mainly by a policy paper drafted by hawks in the Pentagon under former President George H.W. Bush after the first Gulf War, and by a 1996 article by PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan in Foreign Affairs that called for the U.S. to practice "benevolent global hegemony" based on "military supremacy and moral confidence."

The ideas contained in those works attracted – indeed reflected – the thinking of what could best be called a coalition of hawks, including assertive nationalists, neo-conservatives, and the Christian Right, that have worked together since the mid-1970s.

And it was that coalition that seized the initiative after Sept. 11, 2001 within the administration. Guided by Kristol, who doubles as editor of The Weekly Standard, PNAC simply became the public voice of that coalition.

After all, among the signatories of its 1997 charter statement were Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their two top aides, I. Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz (who had authored the 1992 Pentagon paper), respectively, as well as several other top administration officials.

Thus, in its Sept. 20, 2001 letter to Bush, PNAC was not "recommending" anything that these men were not already pushing within the administration's highest councils, as Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward among others has since made clear. It was acting as a combination of transmission belt, echo chamber, and cheerleader on the outside, as it has since.

So, four years later, how is PNAC is doing?

The short answer is not so well.

Because it represents a coalition of different, although like-minded varieties of hawks, its own influence – or at least the perception of that influence – is highly dependent on the coalition's unity.

But that unity began to fray even as U.S. troops were flowing into Iraq. Sensing that Rumsfeld, in particular, was not committed to using the kind of overwhelming force – and keeping it there – necessary for "transforming" Iraq (and the region), Kristol and Kagan, among other neoconservatives, began attacking the defense secretary and have repeatedly called for his resignation.

Moreover, their tactical alliance with "liberal internationalists" – mostly Democrats – in appealing for the resources required for "nation-building" has, by many accounts, deeply offended Rumsfeld and other "assertive nationalists" in and outside the administration.

Some in turn have blamed neoconservatives for deluding themselves and Bush into thinking that U.S. troops would be greeted with "sweets and flowers" in Iraq. The exile of Wolfowitz to the World Bank and the resignation last summer of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith should be seen in this light.

But the breakdown in the coalition's unity and coherence resulted at least as much from external factors, as well, beginning with the tenacity of the Iraq insurgency. In bogging down U.S. land forces, it has put paid to the coalition's original dreams of the armed forces prepared to intervene in any crisis anytime, anywhere.

In addition, the unanticipated and enormous costs associated with the occupation in Iraq – to which might now be added the unanticipated and enormous costs of recovery from Hurricane Katrina – has also demonstrated, both to some right-wing but budget-conscious nationalists, as well as to the rest of the world, that the money for the kind of military PNAC has always lobbied for is simply not available.

Thus, significant hikes in the defense budget, or for the occupation force in Iraq, as called for by PNAC in its most recent letter this January, are simply beyond the political pale.

Indeed, the growing public perception that Iraq has become a "quagmire" has added to the burdens of the PNAC coalition, members of which now must spend an inordinate amount of time defending the original decision to invade. A group that is temperamentally best suited to offense has found itself over the past two years in an increasingly defensive crouch.

Another external event that has clearly divided the PNAC coalition, and even the neoconservatives who have dominated it, was Sharon's determination to disengage from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

The Sept. 20, 2001 letter and its April 3, 2002 follow-up on the Israel-Palestinian conflict both reflected the coalition's commitment to the closest possible alliance between the U.S. and a Likud-led Israel.

But just as the Likud Party in Israel has split over Sharon's disengagement, so PNAC hawks, particularly the neoconservatives and the Christian Right, have split here. And because Israel holds such a central position in the worldview of both groups, internal disagreement on such a key issue is particularly debilitating.

But it would be a mistake to believe that because PNAC and the coalition it represents are down, they must be out, particularly with respect to the other policy initiatives they recommended four years ago.

Confrontation with Iran, particularly under the leadership of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is something that the coalition remains unified about, particularly with respect to the prospect of Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

While PNAC has not explicitly addressed what to do about Iran, there is little question that the coalition – like the hawks within the administration – remains fundamentally united on its own hardline policy and, in any event, an absolute refusal to directly engage the new government.

What to do about Syria is more uncertain, although more hawkish sectors within the coalition clearly favor "regime change," possibly with the help of cross-border attacks in the name of preempting the infiltration of insurgents into Iraq, as has been called for by Kristol, among others.

While realists within the administration argue in favor of engaging President Bashar Assad, if only because the alternative could be so much worse, the hawks, particularly the neoconservatives who often refer to Damascus as "low-lying fruit," appear determined to prevent any weakening of their policy of isolation and economic pressure on the assumption that the regime will soon collapse.

As in Iraq, however, the question of what will take its place has not yet been fully thought through.

(Inter Press Service)

well snuffy .. There are no such thing as insurgents .. They are defending their home land as out forfathers did

The following summarizes an address by the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal to the CFR on September 20 in which he raises Saudi alarm over growing Iranian influence in Iraq. His message is that the US should stay engaged in order to prevent a civil war.

Saudi says U.S. policy handing Iraq over to Iran
By Robert Gibbons

NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) - U.S. policy in Iraq is widening sectarian divisions to the point of effectively handing the country to Iran, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday. "(Iraq's) people have been separated from each other," Faisal told the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. "You talk now about Sunnis as if they were separate entity from the Shi'ite."

He urged the United States, which is battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against occupying U.S. forces and backs the Kurdish- and Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, to work "to bring these people together." Saudi Arabia has voiced fears that an Iraqi constitution, due to be put to a referendum in four weeks, could split the country apart and disenfranchise a Sunni minority that lost power when a U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

"If you allow civil war, Iraq is finished forever," Faisal said.

Such a conflict, he said, would bring in Iran because of its interest in the Shi'ite-dominated southern part of Iraq, the Turks because of their concern about an autonomous Kurdish surfacing in the north, and Arab nations in the region. "We fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait," said Faisal, referring to the first Gulf War in 1991, when Saudi Arabia fought with U.S. and other allied forces to liberate Kuwait after Iraq invaded. "Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason," he said.

IRANIAN INROADS

Iranians, Faisal said, go into areas that American forces have pacified and "pay money ... install their own people (and) even establish police forces and arm the militias that are there." "And they are protected in doing all this by the British and American forces," he added.

Turning to another area of friction, Faisal pointed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as "the main overriding issue that separates" the Islamic and Arabic world and the United States. He said Palestinian security services had been weakened by Israeli military action and it was "too much" to expect they could control militant groups such as Hamas. "Hamas is better armed than them," he said. Israel, which has been battling a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, has said there could be no move towards a Palestinian state until militants are disarmed.

Faisal said he disagreed with U.S. President George W. Bush's thesis that tyrannical governments in the Middle East and other Islamic regions were the source and sustenance of extremists. The foreign minister noted that repression in the Soviet Union had not bred Russian terrorists threatening the United States."The real cause of terrorism (is that) people see injustice being perpetrated in this world and they use that to fire up the young to end their life," Faisal said.

No Exit; Descending into hell with George Bush

By Mike Whitney

The bodies of the mangled and bloated corpses are no where to be found on America's news programs. Like the countless dead in Iraq they're purged from the coverage and stripped from the public record. They've been replaced by the well-scrubbed visage of the Potemkin-president issuing his comforting words for his people.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10357.htm


Nineteen bodies discovered north of Baghdad :

Iraqi police discovered 19 bodies of Iraqi border guards north of Baghdad on Wednesday,police and medical sources said.
http://tinyurl.com/76mb8


12 Americans killed in Iraq:

U.S. officials reported 12 more Americans were killed - eight of them members of the armed forces, raising to more than 1,900 the number of U.S. service members who have died in the country since the invasion.
http://tinyurl.com/8a4vy


Gunbattle in Baghdad kills 8:

At least eight people were killed on Wednesday in a gun battle in Baghdad between troops and insurgents and the U.S. military said a child died in a fire fight in the northern city of Mosul.
http://tinyurl.com/amzme


'Five Iraqi civilians killed' in SAS rescue operation:

Five Iraqi civilians died in clashes surrounding the controversial operation to free two British SAS men captured in Basra, it was claimed today.
http://tinyurl.com/9bqbt


Army tactics shattered by day of chaos :
Police complained the British had behaved like "terrorists".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10352.htm



'People here see the Iraq government has no authority' :
The Iraqi official was visibly flustered and embarrassed when questioned in Baghdad about the storming of the police station in Basra by British troops.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10350.htm



TV shows captured soldiers' and their 'arsenal':
The two men were members of the Special Air Services regiment, the UK's elite special forces commando unit. There was no official confirmation of that. The men were dressed in Arab clothing and driving a civilian car when Iraqi police tried to stop them.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1788849,00.html



What is Covert Action?:

Covert Action operations are often Disinformation Operations, which are conducted in such a way as to discredit the opposition or the enemy. This is done, for example, by doing a violent action, such as a bombing, but making it look like the forces of another country or group did it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10356.htm



Fake Terrorism Is a Coalition's Best Friend:

Iraqi police recently caught two terrorists with a car full of explosives. Would it surprise you to learn they were British Special Forces?
http://tinyurl.com/dlpj8



Security Situation in Baghdad Sinking like the Titanic:

"The situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura.
http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/security-s...ad-sinking.html

http://tinyurl.com/apava



Face it. It’s time we got our army out of Blair’s Vietnam:

British soldiers should not be required to give their lives in order to feed the vanity of an arrogant politician. This is Blair's Vietnam, not theirs.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/47401-print.shtml



Caught in a dilemma of our own making :

Like it or not, the British are being dragged out of cover into the limelight, and with that must come the hard questions of what we are doing there, what it is costing, and when we will get out. Unnerving though the phrase "exit strategy" might be, it is one that can no longer be avoided.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10355.htm



US forces launch air strikes on Sunni town in Iraq :

US forces launched air strikes on the Sunni town of Dhuluiyah, an Iraqi security official said, where four US civilian contractors were killed a day earlier in an ambush on their convoy.
http://tinyurl.com/dopm2


Displaced families return to devastated Talafar:

Since the fighting started, no humanitarian organisations have been authorised to enter the city. The IRCS said it had now been allowed to send its disaster team to Talafar on 23 September to make a detailed study of the situation.
http://tinyurl.com/8mx3l



Buhruz Quiet Without American Patrols :

Insurgents refrain from attacking Iraqi forces so long has US troops keep out.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_142_2_eng.txt


Video: Antiwar statements from U.S. Soldiers who have served in the Iraq War
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=metropole&pl=1

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI22Ak01.html

The failed mission to capture Iraqi oil
By Michael T Klare

It has long been an article of faith among America's senior policymakers - Democrats and Republicans alike - that military force is an effective tool for ensuring control over foreign sources of oil. Franklin D Roosevelt was the first president to embrace this view, in February 1945, when he promised King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia that the United States would establish a military protectorate over his country in return for privileged access to Saudi oil - a promise that continues to govern US policy today. Every president since Roosevelt has endorsed this basic proposition, and has contributed in one way or another to the buildup of American military power in the greater Persian Gulf region.

American presidents have never hesitated to use this power when deemed necessary to protect US oil interests in the Gulf. When, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, President Bush Senior sent



hundreds of thousands of US troops to Saudi Arabia in August 1990, he did so with absolute confidence that the application of American military power would eventually result in the safe delivery of ever-increasing quantities of Middle Eastern oil to the US. This presumption was clearly a critical factor in the younger Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.

Now, more than two years after that invasion, the growing Iraqi quagmire has demonstrated that the application of military force can have the very opposite effect: It can diminish - rather than enhance - America's access to foreign oil.

An occupation floating on a sea of oil
Oil was certainly not the only concern that prompted the American invasion of Iraq, but it weighed in heavily with many senior administration officials. This was especially true of Vice President Dick Cheney who, in an August 2002 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, highlighted the need to retain control over Persian Gulf oil supplies when listing various reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein.

Nor is there any doubt that Cheney's former colleagues in the oil industry viewed Iraq's oilfields with covetous eyes. "For any oil company," one oil executive told the New York Times in February 2003, "being in Iraq is like being a kid in FAO Schwarz." Likewise, oil was a factor in the pre-war thinking of many key neo-conservatives who argued that Iraqi oilfields - once under US control would cripple the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and thereby weaken the Arab states facing Israel.

Still, for some US policymakers, other factors were preeminent, especially the urge to demonstrate the efficacy of the Bush Doctrine, the precept that preventive war is a practical and legitimate response to possible weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions on the part of potential adversaries. Whatever the primacy of their ultimate objectives, these leaders shared one basic assumption: that, when occupied by American forces, Iraq would pump ever increasing amounts of petroleum from its vast and prolific reserves.

This sense of optimism about Iraq's future oil output was palpable in Washington in the months leading up to the invasion. In its periodic reports on Iraqi petroleum, the Department of Energy (DoE), for example, confidently reported in late 2002 that, with sufficient outside investment, Iraq could quickly double its production from the then-daily level of 2.5 million barrels to 5 million barrels or more.

At the State Department, the Future of Iraq Project set up a Working Group on Oil and Energy to plan the privatization of Iraqi oil assets and the rapid introduction of Western capital and expertise into the local industry. Meanwhile, Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi - then the Pentagon's favored candidate to replace Saddam Hussein as suzerain of Iraq (and now Iraq's deputy prime minister in charge of energy infrastructure)- met with top executives of the major US oil companies and promised them a significant role in developing Iraq's vast petroleum reserves. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," he insisted in September 2002.

Aside from the purely pecuniary benefits of seizing Iraqi oil, administration officials of all persuasions saw another key attraction: once Iraqi fields were pumping oil again, the resulting revenues would essentially pay for the war and the costs of occupation. "We can afford it," White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey said of the planned US invasion, because rising Iraqi oil output would invigorate the US economy.

"When there is regime change in Iraq, you could add 3 to 5 million barrels [per day] of production to world supply," he told the Wall Street Journal in September 2002. Hence, "Successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy." In one of the most striking comments of this sort, then deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz told a congressional panel, "The oil revenue of [Iraq] could bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Clearly, gaining control of what Wolfowitz once described as a country that "floats on a sea of oil" was one of the Pentagon's highest priorities in the early days of the invasion. As part of its planning for the assault, the Department of Defense established detailed plans to seize Iraqi oil fields and installations during the first days of the war.

"It's fair to say that our land component commander and his planning staff have crafted strategies that will allow us to secure and protect these fields as rapidly as possible," a top Pentagon official told the media on January 24, 2003. Once US troops entered Iraq, special combat teams spread out into the oil fields and occupied key installations. In fact, the very first operation of the war was a commando raid on an offshore loading platform in the Persian Gulf. "Swooping silently out of the Persian Gulf night," an over-stimulated reporter for the New York Times wrote on March 23, "Navy Seals seized two Iraqi oil terminals in bold raids that ended early this morning, overwhelming lightly armed Iraqi guards and claiming a bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil empire."

This early "victory" was followed by others, as US forces occupied key refineries and, most conspicuously, the Oil Ministry building in downtown Baghdad. So far, so good. But almost instantaneously things began to go seriously wrong.

Lacking sufficient troops to protect the oil facilities and all the other infrastructure in Baghdad and other key cities, the military chose to protect the oil alone - allowing desperate and rapacious Iraqis to go on a rampage of looting that fatally undermined the authority of the military occupation and the US-backed interim government.

To make matters worse, the very visible American emphasis on protecting oil facilities while ignoring other infrastructure gave the distinct - and not completely inaccurate -impression that the US had invaded Iraq less to liberate it from a tyrannical regime than to steal, or at least control, its oil. And from this perception came part of the anger and resentment that constituted the essential raw materials for the outbreak of an armed insurgency against the American occupation and everything associated with it. The Bush administration never recovered from this disastrous chain of events.

An occupation engulfed in a sea of fire
The Iraqi insurgency is not monolithic, and it is not always possible to determine the intentions of its various components. Nevertheless, it is clear that oil - that is, the association between Iraqi oil and the American occupation - plays a central role in the insurgents' hazy ideology. "The insurgents used this," Iraqi-born oil consultant Falah Alijbury said of American plans to privatize the Iraqi oil industry. As he put it, the insurgents are telling fellow Iraqis, "Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable." From Alijbury's perspective, this is one of the insurgency's most powerful appeals.

The disparate Iraqi insurgent groups were also aware of Washington's intent to finance its war and occupation through sales of Iraqi petroleum, and so have made sabotage of Iraq's pipelines, pumping stations, and loading terminals one of their most important strategic objectives. According to one source, insurgents conducted 230 major attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure between January 2004 and September 7, 2005, causing billions of dollars in losses. Here, for instance, is a listing of some of the most recent attacks, as compiled by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security:


August 20: Attack on a major pipeline between Bayji and Baghdad stopped electricity to the capital.

August 26: Insurgents sabotaged an exporting oil well north of Kirkuk.


August 27: Bomb beneath an oil pipeline supplying the Daura oil refinery in Baghdad, causing an hour-long fire.


August 29: Rebels fired a mortar at Iraq's oil ministry building in Baghdad.


August 30: Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Rashad, commander of a unit protecting Iraq's oil pipeline network, was assassinated in front of his home in Kirkuk as he was leaving for work.


September 3: An explosion on oil pipeline 2.5 miles from Fatha, between Kirkuk and Bayji, stopping oil flow from Kirkuk to Ceyhan after insurgents ignited an oil leak.


September 5: Oil pipeline connecting Bayji and Baghdad was set on fine west of Samarra.

As a result of such attacks, which continue to occur on a near-daily basis, Iraqi oil output has actually declined since the US invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam. According to the DoE, total production stood at 1.9 million barrels per day in May this year, compared to 2.6 million barrels in January 2003, just before the American invasion. Quite the opposite of paying for the American occupation, as promised by administration officials, Iraqi production is costing US taxpayers billions of dollars per year. Underwriting the costs of using American soldiers and US-paid private guards to protect Iraq's highly vulnerable pipelines and refineries has proved expensive indeed.

At present, American forces are protecting two main components of Iraq's oil infrastructure: the Kirkuk-to-Ceyhan export pipeline in the north, near Iraq's border with Turkey; and offshore loading terminals in the south, on the edge of the Persian Gulf. Protection of the northern pipeline is the responsibility of Task Force Shield, a mobile combat unit made up of army forces drawn from Fort Wainright, Alaska and Fort Lewis in Washington State. In the Gulf, protection of the loading platforms is the responsibility of the US Navy and the Coast Guard.

These oil-protection operations have proved extremely hazardous. In April 2004, for example, suicide bombers in a small boat approached the Khor al-Amaya offshore loading terminal and detonated their explosives when approached by a US patrol ship, killing two navy sailors and one Coast Guard sailor - the latter being the first Coast Guardsman to be killed in combat since the Vietnam War. Adding further symbolism to this event, the platform involved was one of those occupied by Navy Seals in March 2003 in that "bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil empire".

Despite the deployment of American troops at key oil facilities and the ever-rising amounts of money invested in pipeline security, the Department of Defense has made zero progress in its drive to boost Iraqi oil output. "In the north, Iraq's main export pipeline looks all but impossible to protect from sabotage," the British Financial Times reported in June. "Meanwhile, in the south, local tribal disputes, which often go unreported, hamper efforts to restore oilfields, while security costs and other reconstruction bills all reduce the amount of money available for [the rehabilitation of] the oil industry."

Efforts to boost Iraqi oil production have also been hampered by two other problems: pervasive corruption in the Oil Ministry and severe differences between the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shi'ites over the future allocation of oil revenues.

Just how much Iraqi oil has been lost to corruption or black-market transactions is impossible to determine, but experts believe the amounts are substantial. "Administrative corruption takes on so many forms," Muhammad al-Abudi, the Oil Ministry's director-general of drilling, observed in March 2005.

"The robberies and thefts that are taking place on a daily basis and on all levels ... are committed by low-level government employees and also by high officials in leadership positions in the Iraqi state," he noted. Typically, these losses are blamed on insurgent activity, thereby diverting attention from the government figures actually responsible. "It seems there that there is an implicit alliance between the smuggling and sabotage forces aimed at increasing the rates of exhaustion of the state resources," Diya al-Bakka, another senior Oil Ministry official told Oil & Gas Journal in May.

The corruption and mismanagement has had another serious consequence for Iraq's long-term oil potential: in order to maximize output now, and thereby keep the dollars rolling in, Iraqi oil executives are employing faulty pumping methods, thus risking permanent damage to underground reservoirs. For example, managers are continuing to pump oil from Iraq's main Rumailia oilfield, one of the world's largest, even though water injection systems (used to maintain underground pressure) have failed; in so doing, they are thought by experts to be causing irreversible damage to the field. "The problem is that [underground] pressure problems could lead to a permanent decline in production," observed one European buyer of Iraqi oil quoted in the Financial Times last June. Even if US companies later were to gain access to Iraqi fields, therefore, they might find yields to be disappointing.

Just as significant is the warring between Iraq's three main ethnic and religious communities over the distribution of future oil royalties. Most of Iraq's large oilfields are concentrated in the Kurdish north and the Shi'ite south. The Kurds and Shi'ites want most of the royalties to be distributed to Iraq's provinces on a per capita basis, which would benefit them, but leave funds relatively scarce for the Sunni region and for any future central government in Baghdad.

A failure to reach agreement on this issue was one of the main obstacles to final adoption of the new Iraqi constitution, and helped prompt the Sunni delegates to reject the final text. The Sunnis are also worried by provisions of the proposed constitution that allow groups of provinces (presumably in the Kurdish and Shi'ite areas) to form self-governing regional entities which could lead to the breakup of Iraq into three semi-independent statelets, with the Sunnis occupying the smallest and poorest region in the center.

Not only would such a breakup enhance the Sunnis' sense of alienation from the Iraqi nation-building project - thereby further invigorating an already vigorous insurgency - but it would also disrupt Iraqi oil operations and make investment in Iraq's petroleum industry even less attractive to foreign oil companies. The net result, in all likelihood, will be a further decline in Iraqi petroleum output.

The oil evaporates
From all that can be seen, oil production in Iraq is likely to remain depressed for years, no matter how much more blood is shed in its pursuit. It is already evident that American military action will not lead to democracy in Iraq, merely to the division of the country into separate ethnic enclaves, one possibly ruled by Iranian-like ayatollahs; it can now also be said that we will not gain any additional petroleum supplies as a result of all this sacrifice and tragedy. Not only has the use of force to procure Iraqi oil failed to achieve its intended results, it has actually made the situation worse.

This is an important conclusion to draw from Iraq as the US becomes ever more dependent on imported petroleum. Even before Katrina struck a blow to the US's domestic oil industry, the Department of Energy was already projecting reliance on imports to grow from about 53% of total consumption in 2002 to 66% by 2025.

As a result of the hurricane, that percentage will in all likelihood be pushed much higher because most of the growth in domestic petroleum output was expected to occur in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico - the area most heavily affected by Katrina and its 2004 predecessor Ivan. A number of the drilling platforms in these waters were sunk by the storms, which also played havoc with the pipelines connecting them to shore.

True, many of the platforms that survived will be repaired and put back into operation, but insurance rates have skyrocketed; and investors may prove hesitant, even with oil prices soaring, to put up billions of dollars to install new platforms that will only be washed away in the next major hurricane. As a result, domestic US output may fall well below DoE projections, and so more of our supply will have to be imported.

And there is no question where this additional oil will have to be procured: in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, the Andes and other areas beset by chronic instability and conflict. These are the only areas capable of increasing oil output sufficiently to satisfy rising US demand, and so these are the areas that will attract the greatest American attention and potential Pentagon involvement.

If past experience is any indication, US policymakers will respond to the dilemma of our growing dependence on unstable foreign providers by sending more and more American military forces to these areas in a desperate attempt to ensure uninterrupted access to oil. This is, in fact, the underlying reason for the Pentagon's search for new military bases in Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and Africa.

Despite the debacle of Iraq, most senior policymakers appear to retain their blind faith in the efficacy of military force as a tool for securing access to foreign sources of petroleum. This, as Iraq makes painfully clear, is delusional. Yet they persist in risking the lives of young Americans and others in their continued adherence to a failed and immoral strategy. Any attempt to reconstruct American foreign policy on a more rational and ethical basis must, therefore, begin with the repudiation of the use of force in procuring foreign oil and the adoption of a forward-looking energy strategy based on increased conservation and the rapid development of alternative fuels.

Michael T Klare is the Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict.

(Copyright 2005 Michael T Klare)

(Used by permission Tomdispatch)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI22Ak03.html


COMMENTARY
Blood for no oil
By Tom Engelhardt

The strangest aspect of media coverage of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq involved that country's oil. Everyone, including the Bush administration, was well aware that Iraq sat on a sea of it. It was obvious that Middle Eastern oil was a global lifeline and an ever-more valuable commodity; and yet, unless you were a faithful reader of the business pages, for days, weeks, even months on end, it was impossible to find serious discussion of Iraqi oil in the mainstream media.

Forget the fact that a number of the major players in the Bush administration came out of the energy business; that Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, had had an oil tanker named after her (when she was still on Chevron's board of directors); that the neo-conservatives and their supporters evinced a special interest in the oil heartlands of our planet (aka "the arc



of instability"); or that the Pentagon was staking those heartlands out, base by base.

Nonetheless, when it came to the punditocracy just about the only discussion of Iraqi oil was restricted to the dismissal of claims by the antiwar movement that oil was either the (or a) significant factor in the invasion, a position supposedly too simpleminded to be taken seriously. If Iraq's main export had been video games, the press would have been flooded with pieces of every sort about our children's entertainment future; and yet, until the Iraqi resistance began blowing up pipelines, reports on Iraqi oil were as few and far between as oases in a desert.

Even today, with pump prices through the ceiling and global energy supplies tight, Iraqi oil - or the lack of it - is not exactly headline material. As Jonathan Schell said recently, speaking of media attitudes, "If the Bush administration is not supposed to be interested in oil in Iraq, why are they so interested in it in Alaska?"

In the prewar period, President George W Bush simply swore that the US was religiously ready to respect and preserve what he referred to as Iraq's "patrimony" - and, when it came to serious coverage, that was about that.

On the other hand, you had an antiwar movement, one part of which was focused almost solely on the issue of Iraqi oil. The iconic oil sign of the prewar protest period (sure to be found again at the big demonstration in Washington this Saturday) was: "No blood for oil." But, with two years-plus of Iraqi experience under our belts, it should now be clear that this slogan was misconceived in at least one crucial way. It should have read: "Blood for no oil."

This is perhaps the strangest, most instructive and least written about aspect of the Iraqi invasion, occupation and present chaos. We can be assured that, in the next few years, we're going to be hearing far more about "resource wars", tight energy supplies and the need to nail down raw materials militarily.

It may not be long before administration officials start telling us that we can't withdraw from Iraq exactly because of the world energy situation. Already, two days after Katrina hit, there was the president standing in front of the USS Ronald Reagan - this administration's advance men have never seen an aircraft carrier they didn't want to turn into a photo op - offering a new explanation for the war in Iraq: "If [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions ..."

We're guaranteed to see more Pentagon planning and war-gaming based on the control of world energy supplies, not to speak of more and ever better military bases planted in far-flung, oil-rich areas of the world. So it's important to take stock of what actually happened to Iraqi oil and the dreams of global dominance that went with it.

Energy is a strange thing to control militarily. As Iraq showed and Katrina reminded us recently, its flow is remarkably vulnerable, whether to insurgents, terrorists or hurricanes. It's next to impossible to guard hundreds, not to say thousands, of miles of oil or natural gas pipelines.

It's all very well to occupy a country, set up your "enduring camps" and imagine yourself controlling the key energy spigots of the globe, but doing so is another matter. (As the saying went in a previous military age, you can't mine coal with bayonets.)

In the case of Iraq, one could simply say that the military conquest and occupation of the country essentially drove Iraq's oil deeper underground and beyond anyone's grasp. Hence, the signs should indeed say: "Blood for no oil." It's the perfect sorry slogan for a sad, brainless war; and even the Pentagon's resource-war planners might consider it a lesson worthy of further study as they think about our energy future.

Tom Engelhardt is editor of Tomdispatch and the author of The End of Victory Culture. (Copyright 2005 Tomdispatch. Used by permission.)

Iraqi Forces Show Signs Of Progress In Offensive

By Jonathan Finer

TALL AFAR, Iraq -- The Iraqi soldiers had already searched the house, according to a sticker plastered across its front gate.

But when their commanding general and a U.S. colonel arrived one afternoon last week to praise their performance and observe them in action, the troops wanted to give a demonstration. With theatrical intensity, they charged the two-story structure on the nearly deserted block, rifles at the ready, while other soldiers and two reporters watched from the street.

A fiery explosion -- some soldiers said they saw a man throw a grenade, others said the door was rigged to blow -- erupted from inside, followed by bursts of gunfire. The shouting soldiers stumbled out through a cloud of smoke, covered in blood. The rest of the platoon, which had lost a lieutenant in a grenade attack the day before, appeared dejected, some huddling around the wounded, others sitting with their heads in their hands.

What happened next, commanders here said, suggested significant progress toward the goal of shifting security functions to Iraqi forces so that the United States can begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. When the clashes grew intense, the Iraqi soldiers did not shrink, American officers said.

"Okay, men, it's time to buck up and show our mettle," said a U.S. Special Forces soldier, acting as platoon commander, who allowed reporters to accompany the patrol on the condition that he not be named. "We can't let this stop us. We need payback!"

They went looking for revenge. When they were ambushed again, in a home one block away, they were ready. After a firefight, they came out smiling proudly, with several raising two fingers to indicate the number of insurgents killed.

"A couple of months ago, they might not have been able to pull it together after something like that," said Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who witnessed the abortive raid and helped bandage an Iraqi soldier whose wounded hand was pouring blood onto the sidewalk. "They showed a lot of resolve. Eventually, they will be able to control this city."

The Tall Afar offensive, which began Sept. 2, is the largest urban military operation in Iraq since November's siege of Fallujah. Unlike many previous joint offensives, however, it is the Iraqi army that has the majority of the soldiers on the ground -- 5,000 of the roughly 8,500 troops involved -- that does the most intense fighting and that pays the heaviest price. At least nine Iraqi soldiers have been killed during the operation, compared with one American.

"We were not afraid. We are here to protect our country," said Pvt. Tarek Hazem, 28, of Baghdad, his hands and uniform still red with the blood of men he helped treat when the building exploded. "All we feel is motivated to kill terrorists."

Tall Afar's Sunni Muslim majority and its strategic location on a main insurgent smuggling route, 40 miles from Iraq's border with Syria, make the operation here an important test case for the transition of security duties to Iraqis, commanders said. "If we can get things under control and begin handing off responsibilities here, we can do it anywhere," McMaster said. "It won't happen overnight, but progress is being made."

But while it has provided evidence that the capabilities of Iraq's security forces are improving, the operation in Tall Afar has also laid bare the challenges they face as their role in fighting the insurgency expands.

Because the ranks of the Iraqi police force and army are filled mostly with Shiite Arabs and ethnic Kurds, they are perceived in many of the country's Sunni sections not as national forces but as factional hit squads bent on persecution. The ethnic tensions were evident in Tall Afar, a city of just over 200,000 predominated by Sunni Turkmens.

Most of the forces "are from the Badr Organization and the pesh merga ," said Ibrahim Khalil, 20, one of about 4,000 Tall Afar residents, almost all of them Sunnis, living in a makeshift camp established by the Iraqi Red Crescent outside the city. He was referring to the country's predominant Shiite and Kurdish militias, respectfully.

"They wear the military uniform for disguise," he continued. "Their treatment is very bad. They were taking people to detention prisons just because they are Sunnis since the start of the military campaign."

The Iraqi soldiers from the pesh merga, which for many years was targeted by the Sunni-led army of Saddam Hussein and has long supported Kurdish forces fighting the Turkish government, spoke openly of their zeal to fight Tall Afar's Sunni Turkmen-led insurgency, according to U.S. soldiers who worked closely with them. Meanwhile, U.S. commanders grounded the mostly Shiite police commandos a few days into the operation, alleging overly aggressive tactics.

"The Iraqi army are the real terrorists. Even what they write on our walls is evidence, like 'Long live pesh merga' or 'Long live Badr,' " said Adnan Hussein, 39, who moved with his family to the camp for displaced residents. "They enter our houses and turn everything upside down. They scare our children."

Military commanders stressed that the Iraqi army's 3rd Division is a diverse force that represents all ethnic and sectarian groups, even though it is led by Maj. Gen. Khorsheed Salim, a former deputy commander of the pesh merga. American commanders said they worked hard to encourage more Sunnis to become police officers or soldiers but were thwarted by insurgents threatening to kill anyone who joined. Last month, local Sunni sheiks were asked to submit lists of people willing to join the police force. They provided only three names.

"What we're working toward is a national army, a national security force, not a Shiite or a Kurdish force, and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't know the situation," said Maj. Chris Kennedy, the 3rd Armored Cavalry's executive officer. "We just had a recruiting drive for the army and got 400 recruits to sign up. Almost all of them are Sunnis. They will start basic training soon."

The assault on Tall Afar has also highlighted the fact that American forces still provide their Iraqi counterparts with significant logistical support as well as leadership in the form of advisers operating at the small-unit level.

U.S. vehicles escorted trucks providing food and water from Iraqi bases, and American airstrikes eliminated insurgent positions long before the Iraqi troops attacked. During the assault, each unit of 20 to 30 Iraqi soldiers has been led by U.S. Special Forces, and during the house-to-house raids in one neighborhood, only the Americans, working with interpreters, interviewed residents and used radios to coordinate with other units working close by.

"There is a definite lack of junior-level leadership among the Iraqi forces," said Lt. Col. Gregory Reilly, who commands the 3rd Armored Cavalry's 1st Squadron.

When the 3rd Armored Cavalry arrived in Tall Afar more than four months ago, the city was largely under the control of insurgents, and the Iraqi army's 3rd Division had retreated to a few large bases elsewhere in the region. But in preparation for this month's operation, U.S. and Iraqi commanders began reasserting their forces' presence in the city by stepping up combat patrols.

The units complemented each other, McMaster said. The Americans had a large contingent of armored vehicles and logistics capabilities, but lacked enough infantry to sweep all of Tall Afar's neighborhoods. The Iraqis lacked infrastructure and equipment, but they boasted thousands of men to deploy to the streets.

Still, some early joint missions went badly. In June, a platoon of Iraqis led by an American officer and platoon sergeant was ambushed in the Sarai neighborhood, then an insurgent stronghold. Many of the Iraqis fled, leaving the two Americans to fend off the advancing fighters. An American lieutenant colonel was killed in the engagement.

U.S. and Iraqi commanders acknowledge that it will be many months before the Iraqi units are able to function on their own, a belief echoed by dozens of Tall Afar residents interviewed during the operation. One year ago this month, U.S. and Iraqi forces swept through Tall Afar, but when the Americans largely withdrew from the region, the insurgency returned, stronger than ever.

"If the Americans leave, the chaos will come back. The bad people will come back again, just like before," said Abdullah Wahab Muhammed Younis, one of the city's most prominent Shiite sheiks, who said insurgents have killed 14 members of his family and wounded 33 in the past year.

"The Iraqi army is stronger than it was, but they are not ready. Not yet."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/e...er=emailarticle

Basra Protesters Condemn British

By Bassam Sebti

BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 -- Hundreds of residents and police officers filled the streets in the southern city of Basra on Wednesday, shouting and pumping their fists to condemn British forces for raiding a jail and freeing two of their commandos two days earlier.

Iraqi police had arrested the Britons on Monday for allegedly shooting at police and planting explosive devices. British troops then broke the men out of jail by ramming an armored vehicle through a wall. In response, Basra residents and police revolted, attacking British forces in the area.

Five civilians were killed in the clash, including two who died Wednesday of their injuries, according to hospital authorities.

The angry demonstrators carried banners, shouted "No to occupation!" and demanded that the freed British soldiers be tried in an Iraqi court as terrorists, the Associated Press reported.

Some of the protesters met with the police chief demanding "a British apology," the Associated Press reported, quoting a police spokesman, Col. Karim Zaidi.

Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr did not return three telephone calls requesting comment. He told an Iraqi TV channel that his ministry was investigating.

"We have decided to form a supreme investigative committee in which some members of the Basra provincial council will join," Jabr said. "The results will be presented to the government, council of ministers, the parliament and the people."

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces stormed a house in central Baghdad on Wednesday, freeing a hostage and killing five suspected insurgents. Iraqi security officers said the men had used the house as a haven and a hideout to stock weapons.

"There is a group of terrorists hiding inside the house with explosives, RPGs and hand grenades," an Iraqi army officer told al-Iraqiya, a state-owned TV channel. As he spoke, three Iraqi soldiers fired on the house while five others rushed through the main gate, pushing tree branches away from their faces.

U.S. troops stayed on the sideline of the assault, supporting the Iraqi forces but not participating directly. American military officials have said they are trying to rely more on Iraqi troops to maintain security.

It was not immediately clear with whom the suspected insurgents were connected, but they had a significant amount of weapons, Iraqi officials said. The officials and witnesses in the neighborhood had no information about the hostage or how he had been abducted.

In Yusufiyah, 15 miles southwest of Baghdad, three bodies were found riddled with bullets, a police spokesman said.

And in the northern city of Mosul, gunmen killed Ahlam Youssef, an engineer for al-Iraqiya, and her husband, a manager at the station's Baghdad headquarters told the Associated Press. On Tuesday, Firas Maadidi, an Iraqi journalist working for a Baghdad newspaper, al-Safeer, was shot dead while leaving an Internet cafe. Another correspondent for the paper was killed in Mosul over the weekend. About 70 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion 2 1/2 years ago.

Staff writer Jackie Spinner in Baghdad and special correspondent Dlovan Brwari in Mosul contributed to this report.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/e...er=emailarticle

Two-thirds of Americans now say Bush is spending too much money in Iraq.

http://csmonitor.com/2005/0922/dailyUpdate.html

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050922/badr_vs_sadr.php


Badr vs. Sadr
Robert Dreyfuss
September 22, 2005


Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. His book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, will be published by Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books in the fall.

Just when it didn’t seem like Iraq could get any worse—it gets worse.

This time, it’s the simmering battle between two Shiite paramilitary armies: the forces of the Badr Brigade, the 20,000-strong force controlled by the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and the Mahdi Army, the thousands-strong force that worships the fanatical Muqtada Al Sadr. The battle, which might flare into a Shiite-Shiite civil war in advance of the October 15 referendum on Iraq’s divisive, rigged constitution, could put the final nail in the coffin of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

It shouldn’t be a news flash that neither one of these Shiite forces is led by “good guys.” It’s a mafia-style war between two descendants of Iraq’s leading ayatollah-led families, the Sadrs and the Hakims, who don’t exactly express affection for each other. Beginning in the 1950s, with the overthrow of the king of Iraq in 1958, the Sadr and Hakim clans mobilized Iraq’s Shiites in a struggle against Iraqi nationalists, the Baath Party, and the communists. It was then that the Sadr-Hakim mafia founded Al Dawa, the militant, terrorist-included theocratic party which still exists, out of which Prime Minister Jaafari emerged. In more recent years, the Sadr faction and the Hakim faction became like Hatfields and McCoys, feuding—with guns.

When Ayatollah Khomeini, who long snuggled up to the Sadrs, Hakims, et al . during his 14-year exile in Iraq, took over Iran, the discord got worse. The Hakims fled to Iran, happily accepting Khomeini’s help in building SCIRI and its Badr Brigade. The Badr forces traitorously fought for Iran against Iraq, and its battle-hardened units—armed and financed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards—were brought into Iraq in 2003 with U.S. assistance. Ever since, with the support of the Anglo-American occupation, Badr has emerged as the thuggish enforcer of pro-government discipline among the Shiites and the benighted followers of the crotchety, agoraphobic Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani. It is a vicious force that is fast imposing an Iran-style theocracy on the parts of southern Iraq it controls. During the haggling over the constitution, Abdel-Aziz Hakim, SCIRI’s leader and former Badr commander, announced his intention to establish a Kurdistan-style independent fief in south Iraq. SCIRI, Badr and the Hakims are making a naked play for primacy.

While the Hakims fled to Iran in the ‘80s, Sadr mostly stayed put. Sadr—who is called, puzzlingly, a “Shiite nationalist” in the current issue of The Nation—is a fascist warlord and, if anything, even more fanatically religious than SCIRI. And Sadr isn’t afraid of violence. When a leading member of the Hakim mafia was returned to Iraq by British intelligence right after the war, Sadr’s forces killed him. At least twice since 2003, Sadr’s Mahdi Army launched pitched battles against the U.S. occupation forces, declaring ceasefires at convenient moments while also making common cause with Ahmed Chalabi, the principles-free darling of Richard Perle and Co. Sadr’s militia, strong in Basra—which is also half controlled by SCIRI—has reportedly been involved in attacks against women who appear in Western dress, and both Mahdi and SCIRI forces have been engaging in a power struggle in Basra that includes many thousands of outright assassinations (including two New York Times journalists) and bombings of movie theaters, liquor stores and barber shops.

Sadr is unhappy at the idea of regional federalism in Iraq, since his power is in Baghdad’s eastern Shiite neighborhoods. Since Baghdad is a multi-ethnic city, many of whose citizens are “Sushis” (Sunni-Shiite mixed), it’s impossible to include the capital in a Hakim-style Shiite Republic. So, Sadr opposes both the constitution and its federalism, and he’s hinting that he might support a Sunni-led effort to Vote No on Oct. 15. If he does so, it will kill the constitution, since Baghdad is its own province and would join at least two Sunni-dominated provinces to vote against the constitution. A two-thirds vote against it is needed in at least three provinces.

Sadr’s relationship with Iran is unclear. Starting in 2003, there were reports that Iran’s intelligence service and Revolutionary Guards were funneling at least some help to Sadr, but it seems that most of Iran’s covert energy is going to support the SCIRI-Badr forces. And Iran seems quite content to build up its power and influence among Iraq’s current crop of Shiite rulers. Sadr, meanwhile, appears to be headed in the direction of a tactical alliance with the Sunni-led resistance—which won’t exactly endear him to Iran’s theocracy.

In any case, what it all means is that the relative stability that has been present in Basra and others towns in southern Iraq may be coming to an end. For the first time, there are insurgent attacks reported in Basra. And the British, who had responsibility for Basra, suddenly find themselves sitting atop a powder keg. My guess is that in the general Shiite population there is no great love for SCIRI. On one hand, many Iraqi Shiites are secular and non-religious, and they don’t like SCIRI’s brand of theocracy. On the other hand, many religious Shiites are undoubtedly attracted to Sadr’s flare for anti-U.S. rabble-rousing, which presents a serious threat to SCIRI’s (and Al Dawa’s) ability to hold the allegiance of the Shiites. (In the election in January, the Sadrs and Hakims held their noses and joined together in the Sistani-backed electoral alliance that garnered the most votes at the polls.

Since 2003, the Bush administration’s one hope has been that it can contain the Sunni-led resistance by betting on the Kurdish-Shiite alliance. But if the Shiites shatter, it’s curtains for the Anglo-American occupation. That is the other exit strategy: not the one in which U.S. forces declare victory and withdraw in orderly fashion, but the one in which we get our butts kicked out of Iraq forthwith.

When Time reports like this, a turning point has been reached. But where was such reality-based analysis in 2002 and '03?

TIME MAGAZINE

Sunday, Sep. 18, 2005
Saddam's Revenge
The secret history of U.S. mistakes, misjudgments and intelligence
failures that let the Iraqi dictator and his allies launch an insurgency now
ripping Iraq apart
By JOE KLEIN

Five men met in an automobile in a Baghdad park a few weeks after the
fall of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in April 2003, according to U.S.
intelligence sources. One of the five was Saddam. The other four were among
his closest advisers. The agenda: how to fight back against the U.S.-led
occupation of Iraq. A representative of Saddam's former No. 2, Izzat Ibrahim
al-Duri, was there. But the most intriguing man in the car may have been a
retired general named Muhammad Yunis al-Ahmed, who had been a senior member of
the Military Bureau, a secret Baath Party spy service. The bureau's job had
been to keep an eye on the Iraqi military--and to organize Baathist resistance
in the event of a coup. Now a U.S. coup had taken place, and Saddam turned to
al-Ahmed and the others and told them to start "rebuilding your networks."

The 45-minute meeting was pieced together months later by U.S. military
intelligence. It represents a rare moment of clarity in the dust storm of
violence that swirls through central Iraq. The insurgency has grown well
beyond its initial Baathist core to include religious extremist and Iraqi
nationalist organizations, and plain old civilians who are angry at the
American occupation. But Saddam's message of "rebuilding your networks"
remains the central organizing principle.

More than two years into the war, U.S. intelligence sources concede that
they still don't know enough about the nearly impenetrable web of what Iraqis
call ahl al-thiqa (trust networks), which are at the heart of the insurgency.
It's an inchoate movement without a single inspirational leader like Vietnam's
Ho Chi Minh--a movement whose primary goal is perhaps even more improbable
than the U.S. dream of creating an Iraqi democracy: restoring Sunni control in
a country where Sunnis represent just 20% of the population. Intelligence
experts can't credibly estimate the rebels' numbers but say most are Iraqis.
Foreigners account for perhaps 2% of the suspected guerrillas who have been
captured or killed, although they represent the vast majority of suicide
bombers. ("They are ordnance," a U.S. intelligence official says.) The level
of violence has been growing steadily. There have been roughly 80 attacks a
day in recent weeks. Suicide bombs killed more than 200 people, mostly in
Baghdad, during four days of carnage last week, among the deadliest since
Saddam's fall.

More than a dozen current and former intelligence officers knowledgeable
about Iraq spoke with TIME in recent weeks to share details about the
conflict. They voiced their growing frustration with a war that they feel was
not properly anticipated by the Bush Administration, a war fought with
insufficient resources, a war that almost all of them now believe is not
winnable militarily. "We're good at fighting armies, but we don't know how to
do this," says a recently retired four-star general with Middle East
experience. "We don't have enough intelligence analysts working on this
problem. The Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] puts most of its emphasis and
its assets on Iran, North Korea and China. The Iraqi insurgency is simply not
top priority, and that's a damn shame."

The intelligence officers stressed these points:

??? They believe that Saddam's inner circle--especially those from the
Military Bureau--initially organized the insurgency's support structure and
that networks led by former Saddam associates like al-Ahmed and al-Duri still
provide money and logistical help.

??? The Bush Administration's fixation on finding weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) in 2003 diverted precious intelligence resources that could
have helped thwart the fledgling insurgency.

??? From the beginning of the insurgency, U.S. military officers have
tried to contact and negotiate with rebel leaders, including, as a senior Iraq
expert puts it, "some of the people with blood on their hands."

??? The frequent replacement of U.S. military and administrative teams
in Baghdad has made it difficult to develop a counterinsurgency strategy.

The accumulation of blunders has led a Pentagon guerrilla-warfare expert
to conclude, "We are repeating every mistake we made in Vietnam."

THE WRONG FOCUS

It is no secret that General Tommy Franks didn't want to hang around
Iraq very long. As Franks led the U.S. assault on Baghdad in April 2003, his
goal--and that of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--was to get to the capital
as quickly as possible with a minimal number of troops. Franks succeeded
brilliantly at that task. But military-intelligence officers contend that he
did not seem interested in what would come next. "He never once asked us for a
briefing about what happened once we got to Baghdad," says a former Army
intelligence officer attached to the invasion force. "He said, 'It's not my
job.' We figured all he wanted to do was get in, get out and write his book."
(Franks, through a spokesman, declined to comment for this article.)

The rush to Baghdad, critics say, laid the groundwork for trouble to
come. In one prewar briefing, for example, Lieut. General David McKiernan--who
commanded the land component of the coalition forces--asked Franks what should
be done if his troops found Iraqi arms caches on the way to Baghdad. "Just put
a lock on 'em and go, Dave," Franks replied, according to a former U.S.
Central Command (Centcom) officer. Of course, you couldn't simply put a lock
on ammunition dumps that stretched for several square miles--dumps that would
soon be stripped and provide a steady source of weaponry for the insurgency.

U.S. troops entered Baghdad on April 5. There was euphoria in the
Pentagon. The looting in the streets of Baghdad and the continuing attacks on
coalition troops were considered temporary phenomena that would soon subside.
On May 1, President George W. Bush announced, "Major combat operations in Iraq
have ended," on the deck of an aircraft carrier, near a banner that read
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Shortly thereafter, Franks moved his headquarters from
Qatar back to Florida. He was followed there in June by McKiernan, whose
Baghdad operation included several hundred intelligence officers who had been
keeping track of the situation on the ground. "Allowing McKiernan to leave was
the worst decision of the war," says one of his superiors. (The decision, he
says, was Franks'.) "We replaced an operational force with a tactical force,
which meant generals were replaced by colonels." Major General Ricardo
Sanchez, a relatively junior commander and a recent arrival in Iraq, was put
in charge. "After McKiernan left, we had fewer than 30 intelligence officers
trying to figure who the enemy was," says a top-ranking military official who
was in Iraq at the time. "We were starting from scratch, with practically no
resources."

On May 23, the U.S. made what is generally regarded as a colossal
mistake. L. Paul Bremer--the newly arrived administrator of the U.S.
government presence, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)--disbanded the
Iraqi army and civil service on Rumsfeld's orders. "We made hundreds of
thousands of people very angry at us," says a Western diplomat attached to the
CPA, "and they happened to be the people in the country best acquainted with
the use of arms." Thousands moved directly into the insurgency--not just
soldiers but also civil servants who took with them useful knowledge of Iraq's
electrical grid and water and sewage systems. Bremer says he doesn't regret
that decision, according to his spokesman Dan Senor. "The Kurds and Shi'ites
didn't want Saddam's army in business," says Senor, "and the army had gone
home. We had bombed their barracks. How were we supposed to bring them back
and separate out the bad guys? We didn't even have enough troops to stop the
looting in Baghdad."

A third decision in the spring of 2003--to make the search for WMD the
highest intelligence priority--also hampered the U.S. ability to fight the
insurgents. In June, former weapons inspector David Kay arrived in Baghdad to
lead the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which had 1,200 intelligence officers and
support staff members assigned to search for WMD. They had exclusive access to
literally tons of documents collected from Saddam's office, intelligence
services and ministries after the regime fell. Kay clashed repeatedly with
U.S. military leaders who wanted access not only to the documents but also to
some of the resources--analysts, translators, field agents--at his disposal.
"I was in meetings where [General John] Abizaid was pounding on the table
trying to get some help," says a senior military officer. "But Kay wouldn't
budge."

Indeed, a covert-intelligence officer working for the ISG told TIME
correspondent Brian Bennett that he had been ordered in August 2003 to
"terminate" contact with Iraqi sources not working on WMD. As a result, the
officer says, he stopped meeting with a dozen Iraqis who were providing
information--maps, photographs and addresses of former Baathist militants,
safe houses and stockpiles of explosives--about the insurgency in the Mosul
area. "The President's priority--and my mission--was to focus on WMD," Kay
told TIME. "Abizaid needed help with the counterinsurgency. He said, 'You have
the only organization in this country that's working.' But military guys are
not used to people telling them no, and so, yes, there was friction."

Sanchez learned that autumn that there were 38 boxes of documents
specifically related to the city of Fallujah, a hotbed of Sunni rebellion.
Months later, when military-intelligence officers finally were able to review
some of the documents, many of which had been marked NO INTELLIGENCE VALUE,
the officers found information that they now say could have helped the U.S.
stop the insurgency's spread. Among the papers were detailed civil-defense
plans for cities like Fallujah, Samarra and Ramadi and rosters of leaders and
local Baathist militia who would later prove to be the backbone of the
insurgency in those cities.

U.S. military-intelligence sources say many of the documents still have
not been translated or thoroughly analyzed. "You should see the warehouse in
Qatar where we have this stuff," said a high-ranking former U.S. intelligence
official. "We'll never be able to get through it all. Who knows?" he added,
with a laugh. "We may even find the VX [nerve gas] in one of those boxes."

MISJUDGING THE ENEMY

As early as June? 2003, the CIA told Bush in a briefing that he faced a
"classic insurgency" in Iraq. But the White House didn't fully trust the CIA,
and on June 30, Rumsfeld told reporters, "I guess the reason I don't use the
term guerrilla war is that it isn't ... anything like a guerrilla war or an
organized resistance." The opposition, he claimed, was composed of "looters,
criminals, remnants of the Baathist regime" and a few foreign fighters.
Indeed, Rumsfeld could claim progress in finding and capturing most of the 55
top members of Saddam's regime--the famous Iraqi deck of cards. (To date, 44
of the 55 have been captured or killed.) Two weeks after Rumsfeld's comment,
the Secretary of Defense was publicly contradicted by Centcom commander
Abizaid, who said the U.S. indeed faced "a classical guerrilla-type campaign"
in Iraq.

In a sense, both Rumsfeld and Abizaid were right. The backbone of the
insurgency was thousands of Baathist remnants organizing a guerrilla war
against the Americans. According to documents later seized by the U.S.
military, Saddam--who had been changing locations frequently until his capture
in December 2003--tried to stay in charge of the rebellion. He fired off
frequent letters filled with instructions for his subordinates. Some were
pathetic. In one, he explained guerrilla tradecraft to his inner circle--how
to keep in touch with one another, how to establish new contacts, how to
remain clandestine. Of course, the people doing the actual fighting needed no
such advice, and decisions about whom to attack when and where were made by
the cells. Saddam's minions, including al-Duri and al-Ahmed, were away from
the front lines, providing money, arms and logistical support for the cells.

But Saddam did make one strategic decision that helped alter the course
of the insurgency. In early autumn he sent a letter to associates ordering
them to change the target focus from coalition forces to Iraqi
"collaborators"--that is, to attack Iraqi police stations. The insurgency had
already announced its seriousness and lethal intent with a summer bombing
campaign. On Aug. 7, a bomb went off outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad,
killing 19 people. Far more ominous was the Aug. 19 blast that destroyed the
U.N.'s headquarters in Baghdad, killing U.N. representative Sergio Vieira de
Mello and 22 others. Although al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi claimed
responsibility for the attack, U.S. intelligence officials believe that
remnants of Saddam's Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) carried it out. "It was
a pure Baathist operation," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "The
Iraqis who served as U.N. security guards simply didn't show up for work that
day. It wasn't a suicide bomb. The truck driver left the scene. Our
[explosives] team found that the bomb had the distinctive forensics of
Saddam's IIS."

On Oct. 27, 2003, the assaults on "collaborators" that Saddam had
requested began with attacks on four Iraqi police stations--and on
International Red Cross headquarters--in Baghdad, killing 40 people. The
assaults revealed a deadly new alliance between the Baathists and the jihadi
insurgents. U.S. intelligence agents later concluded, after interviewing one
of the suicide bombers, a Sudanese who failed in his attempt, that the
operation had been a collaboration between former Baathists and al-Zarqawi.
The Baathists had helped move the suicide bombers into the country, according
to the U.S. sources, and then provided shelter, support (including
automobiles) and coordination for the attacks.

MISHANDLING THE TRIBES

By almost every account, Sanchez and? Bremer did? not get along. The
conflict was predictable--the soldiers tended to be realists fighting a nasty
war; the civilians, idealists trying to create a new Iraq--but it was
troubling nonetheless. The soldiers wanted to try diplomacy and began reaching
out to the less extreme elements of the insurgency to bring them into
negotiations over Iraq's political future. The diplomats took a harder line,
refusing to negotiate with the enemy.

Military-intelligence officers presented the CPA with a plan to make a
deal with 19 subtribes of the enormous Dulaimi clan, located in al-Anbar
province, the heart of the Sunni triangle. The tribes "had agreed to disarm
and keep us informed of traffic going through their territories," says a
former Army intelligence officer. "All it would have required from the CPA was
formal recognition that the tribes existed--and $3 million." The money would
go toward establishing tribal security forces. "It was a foot in the door, but
we couldn't get the CPA to move." Bremer's spokesman Senor says a significant
effort was made to reach out to the tribes. But several military officials
dispute that. "The standard answer we got from Bremer's people was that tribes
are a vestige of the past, that they have no place in the new democratic
Iraq," says the former intelligence officer. "Eventually they paid some lip
service and set up a tribal office, but it was grudging."

The Baathists, on the other hand, were more active in courting the
tribes. Starting in November 2003, tribal sheiks and Baathist expatriates held
a series of monthly meetings at the Cham Palace hotel in Damascus. They were
public events, supposedly meetings to express solidarity with the Iraqi
opposition to the U.S. occupation. (The January 2004 gathering was attended by
Syrian President Bashar Assad.) Behind the scenes, however, the meetings
provided a convenient cover for leaders of the insurgency, including Muhammad
Yunis al-Ahmed, the former Military Bureau director, to meet, plan and
distribute money. A senior military officer told TIME that U.S. intelligence
had an informant--a mid-level Baathist official who belonged to the Dulaimi
tribe--attending the meetings and keeping the Americans informed about the
insurgents' growing cohesion. But the increased flow of information did not
produce a coherent strategy for fighting the growing rebellion.

THE DEALMAKING GOES NOWHERE

Saddam was captured on Dec. 13, 2003, in a spider? hole on a farm near
Tikrit. His briefcase was filled with documents identifying many of the former
Baathists running support networks for the insurgency. It was the first major
victory of what the U.S. called the postcombat phase of the war: in early
2004, 188 insurgents were captured, many of whom had been mentioned in the
seized documents. Although Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Saddam's former No. 2,
narrowly evaded capture, much of his Mosul and Kirkuk apparatus was rolled up.
Baathist financial networks were disrupted in several provinces. The CIA, in
fact, believes that Saddam's capture permanently crippled the Baathist wing of
the insurgency. "A guy like al-Duri is more symbol than substance at this
point," a U.S. intelligence official says. "The parade has passed him by."

Military-intelligence officers who were in Iraq at the time, however,
saw evidence that the Baathists regrouped in the spring of 2004, when the U.S.
was preoccupied with battling a rebellion led by Shi'ite extremist Muqtada
al-Sadr in Iraq's south and with the fight for the rebel-held city of Fallujah
in the Sunni triangle. And the U.S. intelligence officials believe that some
former regime loyalists began to be absorbed by other rebel groups, including
those made up of religious extremists and Iraqi nationalists.

Al-Ahmed, say U.S. intelligence officials, is still running the support
network he began building after the meeting with Saddam in the car. In May
2004 al-Ahmed set off on one of his periodic tours of the combat zone, meeting
with local insurgent leaders, distributing money and passing along news--a
trip later pieced together by U.S. intelligence analysts wading through the
mountain of data and intelligence provided by low-level local informants.
Al-Ahmed started in his hometown of Mosul, where he had been supervising--from
a distance--the rebuilding of the local insurgent network disrupted after
Saddam's capture. He moved on to Hawija, where he met a man thought to be a
senior financier of the insurgency in north-central Iraq. After a brief stay
at a farmhouse near Samarra, he met with military leaders of religious and
nationalist rebel groups in Baghdad and with Rashid Taan Kazim, one of the few
faces from the deck of cards (al-Duri is another) still at large, who is
thought to be running a support network for the insurgency in the north and
west of Iraq. Al-Ahmed's final stop was Ramadi, where he distributed $500,000
to local insurgency leaders.

What is remarkable is the extent to which the U.S. is aware of
al-Ahmed's activities. "We know where Muhammad Yunis al-Ahmed lives in
Damascus," says a U.S. intelligence official. "We know his phone number. He
believes he has the protection of the Syrian government, and that certainly
seems to be the case." But he hasn't been aggressively pursued by the U.S.
either--in part because there has been a persistent and forlorn hope that
al-Ahmed might be willing to help negotiate an end to the Baathist part of the
insurgency. A senior U.S. intelligence officer says that al-Ahmed was called
at least twice by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi--an old acquaintance--and
that a representative of an "other government agency," a military euphemism
that usually means the CIA, "knocked on his door in 2004 and asked if he was
willing to talk. He wasn't."

STARTING OVER AGAIN

In the middle of? 2004, the U.S. again changed its? team in Baghdad.
Bremer and Sanchez left, replaced by Ambassador John Negroponte and General
George Casey. At the same time, there was a new transitional Iraqi government,
led by Iyad Allawi. Negroponte set up a joint military-diplomatic team to
review the situation in the country. The consensus was that things were a
mess, that little had been accomplished on either the civilian or the military
side and that there was no effective plan for dealing with the insurgency. The
new team quickly concluded that the insurgency could not be defeated
militarily--but that it might be divided. The attempts to engage potential
allies like al-Ahmed became the unstated policy as U.S. and Iraqi officials
sought ways to isolate foreign terrorists like al-Zarqawi.

But progress in the effort to defuse the insurgency through dealmaking
has been slow--and in some cases has led the U.S. to ease pressure on
individuals tied to rebel groups. Consider the careful handling of Harith
al-Dhari, chairman of the Association of Muslim Scholars and one of Iraq's
most important Sunni leaders. In late 2003, several insurgent groups began to
meet regularly in the Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad, over which al-Dhari
presides. According to U.S. intelligence reports, al-Dhari--who has said he
might encourage his organization to take part in the democratic process--did
not attend the meetings. But his son Muthanna--who is thought to be an
important link between the nationalist and religious strains of the
insurgency--did. In August 2004, the son was arrested after his car scanned
positive for explosives residue. But he was quickly released, a retired DIA
analyst says, under pressure from Iraq's government, to keep channels open to
his father. "It would be difficult to lure Harith into the tent if Muthanna
were in jail," says the former officer.

By April 2004, U.S. military-intelligence officers were also holding
face-to-face talks with Abdullah al-Janabi, a rebel leader from Fallujah. The
meetings ended after al-Zarqawi--who had taken up residence in
Fallujah--threatened to kill al-Janabi if the talks continued, according to
U.S. and Iraqi sources. But attempts to negotiate with other insurgents are
continuing, including with Saddam's former religious adviser. So far, the
effort has been futile. "We keep hoping they'll come up with a Gerry Adams,"
says a U.S. intelligence official, referring to the leader of the Irish
Republican Army's political wing. "But it just hasn't happened."

CIVIL WAR?

The leadership in Baghdad changed yet again this year. Negroponte left
Baghdad in March to become director of national intelligence. He was replaced
by Zalmay Khalilzad. But the turnover in the Iraqi government was far more
important: religious Shi'ites, led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, took
charge, a severe irritant to many Sunnis. "The insurgents see al-Jaafari as a
traitor, a man who spent the Iran-Iraq war in Iran," says a senior military
officer. "And many of the best officers we have trained in the new Iraqi
army--Sunnis and secular Shi'ites who served in Saddam's army--feel the same
way." Al-Jaafari did not help matters by opening diplomatic ties with Iran,
apologizing for Iraq's behavior in the Iran-Iraq war and cutting economic
deals with the Iranians.

In fact, some Iraq experts in the U.S. intelligence community have come
to the conclusion that Iraqis' courageous recent steps toward democracy--the
elections in January and the writing of a constitution that empowers the
religious Shi'ites and the Kurds (though it is resoundingly opposed by the
Sunnis)--have left the country in a more precarious position. "The big
conversation in our shop these days," says a military-intelligence officer,
"is whether it would be a good thing if the new constitution is voted down [in
the public referendum] next month."

Iraq experts in the intelligence community believe that the proposed
constitution, which creates autonomous regions for the Kurds and Shi'ites in
the oil-rich north and south, could heighten the chances of an outright civil
war. "A lot of us who have followed this thing have come to the conclusion
that the Sunnis are the wolves--the real warriors--and the religious Shi'ites
are the sheep," says an intelligence officer. "The Sunnis have the power to
maintain this violence indefinitely."

Another hot debate in the intelligence community is whether to make a
major change in the counterinsurgency strategy--to stop the aggressive sweeps
through insurgent-riddled areas, like the recent offensive in Tall 'Afar, and
try to concentrate troops and resources with the aim of improving security and
living conditions in population centers like Baghdad. "We've taken Samarra
four times, and we've lost it four times," says an intelligence officer. "We
need a new strategy."

But the Pentagon leadership is unlikely to support a strategy that
concedes broad swaths of territory to the enemy. In fact, none of the
intelligence officers who spoke with TIME or their ranking superiors could
provide a plausible road map toward stability in Iraq. It is quite possible
that the occupation of Iraq was an unwise proposition from the start, as many
U.S. allies in the region warned before the invasion. Yet, despite their
gloom, every one of the officers favors continuing--indeed, augmenting--the
war effort. If the U.S. leaves, they say, the chaos in central Iraq could
threaten the stability of the entire Middle East. And al-Qaeda operatives like
al-Zarqawi could have a relatively safe base of operations in the Sunni
triangle. "We have never taken this operation seriously enough," says a
retired senior military official with experience in Iraq. "We have never
provided enough troops. We have never provided enough equipment, or the right
kind of equipment. We have never worked the intelligence part of the war in a
serious, sustained fashion. We have failed the Iraqi people, and we have
failed our troops." --With reporting by Brian Bennett/ Washington and Michael
Ware/Baghdad

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100...jTv_WI&refer=us

Bush Says U.S. Expects New Insurgent Violence in Iraq (Update1)

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush told the U.S. public to expect more insurgent attacks in Iraq before citizens there vote on a new constitution next month and to hold firm in the struggle against terrorism.

``They have a history of escalating their attacks before Iraq's political milestones,'' Bush said today at the Pentagon after getting briefed on the campaign against terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ``We must be prepared for more violence.''

He again rejected calls for the U.S. to begin drawing down its 140,000 military personnel in Iraq. Doing so ``would make the world more dangerous'' by giving in to terrorists, repeating ``the mistakes that led to'' the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said.

``The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission,'' he said. ``That's not going to happen on my watch. We will do our duty.''

After spending the past three weeks focused on the domestic catastrophe caused by Hurricane Katrina, Bush returned to the subjects that have dominated his foreign policy agenda. Public approval of the way Bush is handling the campaign against terrorism, once his strongest issue, has declined along with his overall approval rating. At the same time, public dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq has been increasing.

Strategy

The president said the U.S. was making progress in establishing a secure, democratic government in Iraq and in battling terrorism.

Bush, flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said military leaders have outlined a ``comprehensive strategy for victory in Iraq.''

U.S. forces, he said, would concentrate on tracking down ``high-level targets'' such as terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi while Iraqis take on a greater role in gathering intelligence and securing the country.

Iraqi forces are ``in control of more parts of Iraq than at any time in the past two years,'' the president said.

Bush said that while the U.S. was making progress in training Iraqi police and army units, ``it's going to be a while'' before they can take charge of the country's security.

`Full Control'

``Full control says that the Iraqis are capable of moving around the country and sharing intelligence, and they've got a command-and-control system that works like ours,'' he said.

More than 1,907 U.S. service personnel have died in Iraq and more than 14,641 wounded as of today, according the Pentagon.

``It's too soon to say,'' whether the U.S. strategy of building a representative government in Iraq is working, said Chris Preble, an analyst at the Cato Institute, a policy research organization in Washington that advocates limited government. ``But the public opinion polls here in the United States suggest that a lot of Americans are skeptical.''

Sixty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll taken Sept. 16-18, the three days following Bush's national address on rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults said they approve. The survey had an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Terrorism and democracy in the Middle East will be the subject of a meeting Bush is holding later today with Jordan King Abdullah II. A close U.S. ally in the Middle East, Abdullah ascended the throne in 1999 after the death of his father, the late King Hussein of Jordan.

Lately, Abdullah has been promoting the idea that moderate Arabs must reclaim Islam from extremists and open more contacts with the U.S. and Europe.

Bush also called on residents of the Texas coast to heed the warnings of state authorities to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Rita, a Category 5 storm that is crossing the Gulf of Mexico.

``This is a big storm,'' Bush said. ``It's really important for our citizens on the Texas coast'' to leave the area.



To contact the reporter on this story:
William Roberts in Arlington, Virginia, at wroberts@bloomberg.net;
Last Updated: September 22, 2005 13:17 EDT

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=7361

September 23, 2005
Why Immediate Withdrawal Makes Sense
by Michael Schwartz and Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch
Not long after Baghdad fell to American troops, it was already apparent that the United States was part of the problem, not part of the solution, in Iraq; and that, as long as the American military occupied the country, matters would just get worse. Every passing month has only predictably confirmed that reality. There's no reason to believe that the next year of our military presence will be any less destabilizing than the last.

Of course, as is now notoriously well known, the Bush administration helped such predictions along their un-merry course in a particularly heavy-handed way. At least three crucial aspects of Bush policy created a fatal brew, ensuring that the complex situation in Iraq in 2003 would devolve in quick-time into today's catastrophic tinderbox: First, there was the emphasis the president and his top officials put on the use of force as a primary response to global problems. (On this matter, they were fundamentalists.) Such an approach (when combined with the stripped-down, lean and mean U.S. military-lite Donald Rumsfeld was creating) acted as a recruiting agent for the insurgency that soon followed. Second, there was the deep-seated urge of Bush's nearest and dearest to plunder the world, which meant, in the case of Iraq, those no-bid, cost-plus contracts to crony corporations which led to an Iraqi "reconstruction" that, in its essential corruption, deconstructed the country. Finally, let's not forget their deepest urge of all, which was to occupy a key country smack in the middle of the oil heartlands of our planet and not depart. This guaranteed, as certainly as night follows day, both the insurgency that arose in Sunni areas and the angry feelings of Shi'ites toward their own "liberation."

It is now a commonplace in Washington to point out that the Bush administration had no exit strategy from Iraq, but to this day few bother to say the obvious: It had no exit strategy because its top officials never planned on or expected to leave that country. That this was so is easy enough to chart via one of the least well-covered subjects of the period, the Pentagon's determination to build huge, and hugely impressive, permanent military bases (called for a time "enduring camps") in that country. As we know from a single New York Times front-page piece published just after Baghdad fell, the Pentagon was already planning four such permanent bases then. Among the hundred or so bases, encampments, and outposts of every size constructed since, they have never stopped building and upgrading a small number of them for endless future occupancy, which tells you all you need to know about their present plans to "withdraw" or "draw down" our Iraqi presence.

On all the points above, matters simply continue down their hideous path. The bases are still being built; the looting of Iraq, which never ended, has now extended in an open-armed way to the Iraqis under our tutelage. Just this week, Patrick Cockburn of the British Independent reported that the Iraqi defense ministry is missing more than $1 billion, certainly one of the larger thefts in history, contracted out in a familiarly no-bid way for arms purchases from Poland and Pakistan. These arms were, of course, for the new Iraqi military on which the administration is counting so heavily, and the money is now simply gone. As for a policy of force, the U.S. military, which has just conducted an assault on the largely Turkmen city of Tal Afar, causing, it seems, great damage, is threatening to repeat such operations (modeled in a modest way on the destruction of Fallujah last November) in urban areas elsewhere. ("'You will see the same thing [as at Tal Afar] down along the Euphrates Valley to push back out and restore Iraqi control to the area around Qaim,' Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, said in an interview in Baghdad.") This is, of course, the American version of the infamous Roman Carthaginian solution, meant to bring the Sunni resistance to an intimidated halt. (Don't count on that.) And in the process, of course, more Americans died, 12 of them in recent days, sending the total of American dead over the 1,900 levee.

The results can be observed from Baghdad to Basra in the Shi'ite south where the Brits are now in some trouble. Juan Cole at his Informed Comment Web site (the single must-visit Iraq stop on the Internet) reported recently on the security situation ("sinking like the Titanic" in his phrase) in Baghdad where whole neighborhoods seem to have fallen into the hands of insurgents or Zarqawi followers. We're not talking here about Tal Afar, or Mosul, but about the Iraqi capital itself which "our" government inside the Green Zone simply does not control. What more do we need to know about how desperate the situation is? Should you want a sense of what that situation feels like up close and personal, check out Baghdad Burning by Riverbend, the remarkable young woman blogger who has just come back online after a two-month hiatus, a "vacation" daily lacking in electricity, water, and the other amenities of life in a modern city.

But let's look on the bright side. A year ago, withdrawal was a subject that simply couldn't be brought up in a serious way in the mainstream American world. Now, it's a word everyone is bandying about. In the wake of Katrina, according to a recent New York Times/CBS poll, "52 percent of people interviewed called for an immediate withdrawal, even if that means abandoning President Bush's goal of restoring stability to that country." (A Gallup poll reported that "66 percent of respondents favored the immediate withdrawal of some or all of the U.S. troops in Iraq, a 10 percentage point jump in two weeks.") In this, they are far ahead of the politicians they've elected, whether Democrats or Republicans.

Below, Michael Schwartz makes the case, both simple and sophisticated, for withdrawing quickly from Iraq, but more than that for stopping thinking of ourselves as part of the solution – a bulwark, for instance, against an onrushing civil war – rather than part of the problem. With the antiwar demonstration in Washington DC this weekend, this is a moment to consider just what kinds of pressure for what kinds of solutions we want to bring to bear on this stumbling, if still utterly recalcitrant, administration. Tom

Why Immediate Withdrawal Makes Sense
by Michael Schwartz

That we are in a military quagmire in Iraq has become a fact of life among Americans of all political persuasions. Though administration officials still sometimes speak of troop reductions in early 2006, and some top military men clearly no longer endorse "staying the course," the muted voices of reason within the military and the State Department still talk in terms of a three-to-five year drawdown of forces followed by the "sustained presence of a large American contingent, perhaps 50,000 soldiers," to be housed in the huge permanent bases the U.S. is continuing to construct and upgrade in Iraq. In addition, Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, recently told New York Times reporter Eric Schmitt that U.S. air power would be flying combat missions inside Iraq "more of less indefinitely."

Many in the antiwar movement, despite the high-intensity moments generated by Camp Casey and Cindy Sheehan's demand that President Bush at least meet with her "before another mother's son dies in Iraq," also seem increasingly resigned to a long-term military engagement with Iraq. While most continue to advocate the "immediate withdrawal" of American troops, such calls are uttered with little sense of hope. In fact, there appears to be a growing feeling that any form of "immediate" withdrawal will prove a thoroughly unsatisfactory option, destined only to intensify the present chaos in Iraq, trigger a civil war, and/or unleash a round of ethnic violence that could escalate to levels of near-genocidal mass murder. Instead, ever more critics of Bush's Iraqi adventure are proposing "phased" withdrawal scenarios that could keep American troops at the ready for years to prevent the Iraqi pressure cooker from blowing its top.

Many of these cautious withdrawal scenarios are advocated by staunch opponents of the war. I am thinking, in particular, of Juan Cole, the most widely respected antiwar voice, and Robert Dreyfuss, a thoughtful critic of the war who publishes regularly at the independent Web site Tompaine.com as well as in the Nation and Mother Jones. Both have offered forceful warnings against a hasty American withdrawal, advocating instead that U.S. forces be pulled out in stages and only as the threat of civil war recedes. Dreyfuss expresses the thinking of many antiwar activists thusly:

"They worry that if the United States withdraws from Iraq, the result will be an all-out civil war among three major ethnic and religious blocs. (It's facile to argue that Iraq is already wracked by civil war; yes, there is widespread terrorism, a guerrilla war against the U.S. occupation forces, and periodic clashes between Sunnis and Shi'ites. But it hasn't reached anything like civil war proportions yet, and it might: Things could get far, far worse.) Maybe it's too late for the United States to be able to do anything to prevent the outbreak of such a catastrophic civil conflict. But because there is so much at stake, it's worth a try."

Cole captures the same logic in a phrase: "All it would take would be for Sunni Arab guerrillas to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Sistani. And, boom."

And they are right. Black Wednesday, Sept. 14, with its 12 Baghdad car bombs, killing at least 160 Iraqis, and wounding upward of 600, offered a flash of civil-war-level violence. Ordinarily, Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence accounts, on average, for fewer than 100 civilian deaths a week. This was true even during the car-bomb offensive just after the January elections. If a Black Wednesday occurred every week, the death toll from such violence might reach 15,000 per year, and we could start talking about a real civil war. So things could indeed get much worse.

But where Dreyfuss and Cole are mistaken is in concluding that U.S. forces can be part of an effort "to prevent the outbreak of such a catastrophic civil conflict." Despite the plausible logic of this argument, the U.S. presence doesn't deter, but contributes to, a thickening civil-war-like atmosphere in Iraq. It is always a dicey matter to project the present into the future, though that never stopped anybody from doing so. The future, by definition, is unknown and so open to the unexpected. Nonetheless, it is far more reasonable, based on what we now know, to assume that if the U.S. were to leave Iraq quickly, the level of violence would be reduced, possibly drastically, not heightened. Here are the four key reasons:


The U.S. military is already killing more civilian Iraqis than would likely die in any threatened civil war;
The U.S. presence is actually aggravating terrorist (Iraqi-on-Iraqi) violence, not suppressing it;
Much of the current terrorist violence would be likely to subside if the U.S. left;
The longer the U.S. stays, the more likely that scenarios involving an authentic civil war will prove accurate.
American Violence in Iraq

In listing the problems faced by Iraqis ("widespread terrorism, a guerrilla war against the U.S. occupation forces, and periodic clashes between Sunnis and Shi'ites"), Dreyfuss is succumbing to the reportage of the mainstream press, which rarely mentions the immense toll that American forces are taking every day inside Iraq.

In fact, the best estimate is that the occupation has been killing about 40,000 Iraqi civilians each year. These figures were first published a year ago in a path-breaking, yet largely neglected, study published in the British medical journal the Lancet by a mixed team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Iraqi universities; but careful vetting of war reports indicates that something close to these rates seems to have been maintained ever since. That helps explain why even the distinctly limited numbers collected by U.S. and Iraqi official sources (when released at all) almost always report that American (or other) occupation forces account for at least two-thirds of all civilian deaths in military actions, with an unknown proportion of the remainder due to the actions of the Iraqi government, not the resistance.

There are four main ways American forces in Iraq accomplish such mayhem.

First, there are the hundreds of checkpoints around Baghdad and in other contested cities, sites of numerous violent incidents. Because of the danger created by the threat of suicide bombers, those guarding the checkpoints are ordered to fire at suspicious activity. The following account of the death of Reuters reporter Waleed Khaled, offered by Major-General Rick Lynch based on an official U.S. Army investigation, makes clear why even the most savvy Iraqi is risking his or her life approaching a checkpoint:

"Lynch said soldiers reacted when they saw the car traveling 'forward at a high rate of speed. That particular car looked like cars that we have seen in the past used as suicide bombs. It wasn't a new car, it was an older model car. … And there were two local nationals inside the car. Our soldiers took appropriate measures. We mourn the loss of life of all humans. … But our soldiers are trained to respond in those situations. Put yourself in the place of the soldiers, knowing that the insurgents, who have been known to use suicide bombs, suicide car bombs, suicide vests, to attack innocent civilians, will always have an attack and then respond to that attack when the first responders come forward. So our soldiers took appropriate action on that particular case.'"

With some 600 checkpoints in Baghdad alone, and as many as 100 cars approaching each checkpoint during a non-curfew daylight hour, there are upwards of 250,000 chances each day for an Iraqi driver to fail to slow down soon enough, or, distracted, fail to see the checkpoint in time, or do something to make jumpy soldiers jump. If only one out of 40,000 drivers makes this mistake that still would produce perhaps six lethal incidents a day – in which case about 2,000 Iraqis would meet Waleed Khaled's fate each year, although without the benefit of news coverage and a U.S. Army investigation, however perfunctory. (Note that, at this point, we have just about no way of knowing in any of the death situations discussed here and below how many Iraqis are dying, so these are the crudest of figures.)

Second, American troops are constantly patrolling contested areas in Iraqi cities under instructions to use "overwhelming force" in firefights with actual or suspected resistance fighters. If they encounter sustained resistance, the rules of engagement call for demolishing buildings occupied by snipers, and treating all inhabitants of such buildings as the enemy. Among the several hundred patrols or more each day around Iraq, it appears that about one in 10 result in lethal firefights. Even if fewer than half of these firefights produce a single collateral civilian death, this tiny percentage would yield perhaps 15 deaths on an average day, or close to 5,000 civilian deaths a year.

A third staple of the occupation is entering houses in search of suspected insurgents, either because they have been identified by informants, or as part of house-to-house searches after IED or other guerrilla attacks. U.S. statistics indicate that no fewer than 75 percent of all entered houses do not contain an insurgent, but the Army rules of engagement require that soldiers enter without knocking and by crashing through doors in order to retain the element of surprise, and thus prevent either an ambush or an escape by suspects. Lethal force is used at the first sign of resistance or attempted escape – to preempt attacks with weapons that suspected insurgents might have hidden nearby. (The Army argues that, while more humane treatment might create less anger among the tens of thousands of non-resistant families whose homes are invaded, such restraint would also expose the soldiers to many more casualties from the occasional resistance fighter. Military philosophy in this and other settings is to protect the lives of American soldiers "even if those methods do not always win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi populace.")

With several hundred such missions undertaken each day, and such patrols entering as many as a dozen houses on a patrol, American troops enter something like 2,000 Iraqi homes on an ordinary day. If only one of every one hundred entries results in violence, and far less than half end in a dead civilian, these home invasions can still account for 10 or so deaths per day, or another 3,500 per year.

Fourth and finally, we come to American air power. When American patrols, large or small, encounter violent resistance, their rules of engagement call for the use of overwhelming fire power to eliminate the enemy. Where their immediate response fails to destroy the enemy, an air assault is often ordered, with either gunships or bombers. Air assaults are also ordered against suspected insurgent "safe houses."

Although they are rarely reported, such air assaults are the most terrifying and ferocious forms of American violence. Virtually all of these strikes occur in highly populated areas, sometimes destroying whole houses, or even whole groups of houses, and (where the inhabitants haven't fled) they sometimes kill whole families in the process. The New York Times recently reported such an attack in the border city of Husaybah, which "destroyed three houses in an area that has experienced intense fighting." Unlike most such news items, this one also contained an Iraqi Interior Ministry report of casualties. Based on local hospital reports, the Ministry claimed that the air strikes "had killed more than 40 civilians, mostly members of an extended family who had sought shelter from the bombings." (American officials, as is their general practice, said they "knew of no civilian casualties.")

American officials do concede that they average about "50 close air support and armed reconnaissance missions every day." These occur at all of the familiar urban hotspots: Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul, Tal Afar, Ramadi, Samarra, as well as numerous smaller towns. If only one in five of these missions produces civilian casualties, and if the average death toll is only four instead of 40, then 15,000 Iraqi civilians die every year from U.S. air attacks.

The depressing total of these very rough calculations is over 25,000 civilian deaths each year, more than five times the number caused by car bombs and other Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence. (And remember, we're not even figuring in major American military campaigns against the insurgency.) To add to the levels of mayhem, keep in mind that, at any given moment, the U.S. military keeps perhaps another 12,000-15,000 Iraqis locked in its prisons, holding areas and interrogation centers. Numbers like this, or even lower versions of the same, explain why in a country with a population of only 25 million, so many Iraqis see the Americans as the main source of the daily violence they endure, and why 60 percent regularly tell even American-sponsored pollsters that they want an American withdrawal immediately, if not sooner. This also explains why the primary condition for a cease-fire set by the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS, the political arm of the Sunni resistance) was an American "troop pullout from most urban areas and an end to military checkpoints and raids." AMS leader Isam al-Rawi explained:

"The Americans and British must leave all residential areas. …This is very sensitive for our feelings. When they retreat to military bases outside the major cities, the Iraqis will no longer be meeting military tanks and trucks in the streets and highways, and they will no longer be afraid their homes will be invaded at night."

Iraqi-on-Iraqi Violence

The prospect of a civil war is, of course, horrendous, but the ongoing American violence is massive enough that it would take several Bloody Wednesdays every week to match it. This, of course, is a possibility, but a more reasonable guess would be that, in a trade-off between the end of U.S. violence and an escalation in the civil war, the result would actually be a decline in civilian casualties in Iraq.

But a quick U.S. withdrawal would be less likely to produce a civil war than leaving American troops in place as a barrier against such a development. The killing and imprisonment policies of the occupation itself are the main generating and sustaining force for the rising levels of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence. The sooner the occupation ends, the sooner Iraqi civil violence is likely to begin to subside.

To grasp this point, it is necessary to understand that there are – broadly speaking – two tendencies within the Sunni resistance against the U.S. occupation. While they share the goal of expelling the Americans, their strategies and tactics are fundamentally different. One tendency, which many Iraqis designate the "nationalist resistance," seeks in the short run to expel the Americans from their local communities by attacking American patrols and checkpoints with roadside explosives and hit-and-run attacks. An operation is a success when it ties down American troops and therefore prevents them from manning checkpoints, marching through neighborhoods, or conducting house-to-house searches. While their attacks often kill innocent bystanders, they do not usually purposely target civilians, and often condemn those who do, calling them terrorists and outlaws.

The other tendency, designated the "jihadists" by many Iraqis, fights to weaken the resolve of the Americans and of Iraqis who, by their definition, help the occupation. For the jihadists, an operation is a success when it inflicts either a huge toll in casualties or scores a propaganda victory against the occupation or its supporters. Their tactics are designed to intimidate and demoralize their opposition. They therefore try to mount spectacular attacks on U.S. forces, the Iraqi military and police, Iraqi government officials, and also Iraqi civilians they feel are aiding the Americans, attempting to intimidate them away from voting in elections, participating in local government, or joining the police force or the new Iraqi military.

Beyond this immediate terrorist purpose, the leadership of the jihadists, most notably Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, seeks sooner or later to create a mega-state among all Sunni Arabs in the Middle East. Zarqawi and others of his persuasion believe that Shi'ite Muslims are the main barrier to such a state and that, in the long run, they must be defeated. They therefore focus their terrorist attacks on the Shia, who, they believe, support the American-installed Iraqi government (rather than on the Kurds, who support that government far more avidly than any Shia group). In this way, the jihadist leadership hopes simultaneously to undermine Shia support for the American-sponsored government and to weaken the Shia in what they consider to be a larger, longer-term confrontation.

Numerically, the jihadists represent a tiny minority of resistance fighters in Iraq (certainly no more than 10 percent). The vast majority (probably well over 90 percent) of the 70 or so attacks each day are conducted by the nationalist resistance. But the jihadists are responsible for the high-profile car bombings and the spectacular attacks against Shia mosques and other "soft targets." These account for the vast majority of all the civilian casualties inflicted by the resistance.

Given this situation, how might a speedy American withdrawal affect the levels of Iraqi-generated violence? Most obviously, it would eliminate the presently predominant form of Iraqi violence – the 65 or so guerrilla attacks against American forces every day (though many guerrilla units might redirect their attention to the Iraqi army, insofar as it chose to conduct American-type patrols in disputed neighborhoods). And it would also obviously eliminate the jihadist attacks against American troops and bases.

But those fearful of civil war worry that the American absence would remove the main deterrent to terrorist attacks and simply free-up jihadist resources from anti-American operations to unleash further mayhem. The full jihadist effort could then be concentrated on attacking the Shia.

Violence After an American Departure

What this assumption ignores, however, is a simple (though not obvious) fact: The terrorist offensive against the Shia is largely a consequence of American brutality in Iraq. Despite Abu Musab al Zarqawi's oft repeated desire to launch a holy war against the Shia, his success in doing so is directly linked to a continuing U.S. presence. His primary appeal in Iraq, after all, rests on the claim that the occupation is "being aided by their allies from Shia." Moreover, because, he claims, "the Shia sect has always spearheaded any war against Islam and Muslims throughout history," he insists that they can never be brought into a movement to oppose the occupation and therefore have to be treated like the enemy. It is this appeal that, in Sunni areas, has allowed him to recruit supporters for his anti-Shia campaign.

University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win, the definitive book on suicide terrorism, spoke for virtually all terrorism experts when he made this very point to the American Conservative magazine, asserting that every suicide bombing campaign "is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The [American ] operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life."

Thus, while Zarqawi is seeking a holy war against the Shia, the real question – as Pape puts it – is whether "anybody listens to him." In other words, his success depends on his ability to recruit new martyrs (inside and outside Iraq) to undertake suicide missions. This recruitment, in turn, depends upon two factors: the level of mayhem the occupation creates, which generates the anger that creates his volunteers; and the credibility of his claims that the Shia are allies of the Americans.

On both accounts, the military occupation of the country, by its very presence and its actions, continually pours more gasoline on an already burning fire, and cannot help but continue to do so as long as it attempts to pacify the resistance. After all, the daily mayhem in Baghdad and other cities, and the spectacular American assaults on cities like Fallujah and Tal Afar, are broadcast across Iraq and the entire Muslim world (even if they are often largely ignored in the American media). These increase support for both the nationalist guerrillas and the jihadist terrorists.

In addition, under the strain of an exhausted army and a fractured budget, the Bush administration is seeking to "Iraqify" the occupation by replacing American troops with Iraqis. In 2004, after Sunni police and military units melted under fire or defected to the guerrillas, the U.S. began relying more heavily on Shia recruits (as well as Kurdish militiamen, or peshmerga) in their battles with the Sunni resistance. The brutality of the American military plan for pacifying the country, now being enacted by ever more Shia and Kurdish soldiers, has convinced increasing numbers of Sunnis that Zarqawi's claims about the Shia are all too correct, and so has allowed him to recruit increasing numbers of willing martyrs, both in Iraq and in neighboring countries.

Just before Bloody Wednesday, at Tal Afar, Shia (as well as peshmerga) soldiers were given frontline responsibility for lethal house-to-house searches, spearheading the wholesale destruction of individual homes, many with residents still inside, and whole neighborhoods. It was no surprise, therefore, when, a few days later, Zarqawi declared that Bloody Wednesday was the beginning of the "battle to avenge the Sunni people of Tal Afar," and also the beginning of a "full-scale war on Shiites around Iraq, without mercy." Here again, American action exacerbated rather than suppressed internal Iraqi friction.

This constant and escalating provocation only swells the reservoir of willing martyrs and increases the plausibility of Zarqawi's claim that the sole route to "liberation" involves direct attacks on Shia citizens.

On the other hand, history indicates that once the provocation of foreign troops is removed, the reservoir tends to quickly drain. Terrorism expert Robert Pape reports that, in recent history, it is almost unknown for suicide bombings to continue after the withdrawal of the occupying power:

"Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop – and often on a dime."

American withdrawal is therefore the cornerstone of any strategy that wants to maximize the hope of avoiding civil war. It would, at one and the same moment, remove the major source of Iraqi civilian deaths – and remove the primary flash point that leads to the car bombings. It would certainly mean as well the withdrawal of Shia and Kurdish troops from Sunni cities – the key to Zarqawi's ability to convince (some) Sunnis that the Shia are willing pawns of the occupation and so their eternal enemies.

The clock is ticking, however. With each new American attack, more Sunnis are convinced that their hope for liberation lies with Zarqawi's strategy. And with each new terrorist attack, Shia anger – already at a high level, given the degrading nature of the American occupation and two years of American-style "reconstruction" – is likely to become ever more focused on the Sunni community that appears to be harboring the terrorists. Recently there have been growing signs of violent Shia retaliation. If the terrorist attacks continue unabated, then increasing numbers of Shia may adopt an attitude complementary to Zarqawi's – blaming the entire Sunni community for the terrorist attacks. If this occurs, Zarqawi will have succeeded in his personal goal of "dragging them into the arena of sectarian war," and a raging civil war may truly develop.

Zarqawi's plan will be in danger of collapsing, however, if the U.S. withdraws.

American withdrawal would undoubtedly leave a riven, impoverished Iraq, awash in a sea of weaponry, with problems galore, and numerous possibilities for future violence. The either/or of this situation may not be pretty, but on a grim landscape, a single reality stands out clearly: Not only is the American presence the main source of civilian casualties, it is also the primary contributor to the threat of civil war in Iraq. The longer we wait to withdraw, the worse the situation is likely to get – for the U.S. and for the Iraqis.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on the internet at numerous sites, including TomDispatch, Asia Times, MotherJones.com, and ZNet; and in print at Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His e-mail address is Ms42@optonline.net@optonline.net.

Copyright 2005 Michael Schwartz

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N23652957.htmU.S. rejects Saudi view Iraq near disintegration
23 Sep 2005 19:46:09 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday strongly rejected Saudi fears Iraq is heading toward disintegration and urged Baghdad's neighbors to be more supportive of Iraq's government.

On Thursday, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Iraq was heading toward disintegration and he feared other countries in the region would be drawn into the conflict.

Asked to comment on the minister's remarks, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a regular briefing, "All I would say is that we see a situation in Iraq in which the Iraqi people at every opportunity have chosen to pull together in the political process."

Saud met U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at her office in the U.S. capital on Thursday, and McCormack said Washington was trying to persuade Baghdad's neighbors to be supportive of Iraq.

Pressed on whether this was a message to Riyadh to send an ambassador to Iraq, he replied, "We have encouraged, I think, all of Iraq's neighbors to support Iraq politically and diplomatically and in whatever way that they can."

The United States has publicly criticized Syria for not doing enough to stop insurgents from entering Iraq, and privately it has also pointed a finger at nations such as Saudi Arabia for not publicly supporting Iraq's government.

Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim country, is concerned that the Iraqi constitution due to be put to a referendum next month could split the country apart and disenfranchise a Sunni minority that lost power after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

McCormack said Washington fully supported a unified Iraq. While "not wanting to undersell the difficulties" there, he said, more and more Sunnis were entering politics.

"What we have seen over time is more and more, including in the Sunni community, decide that their future lay in resolving any disagreements they may have through a peaceful political process," he said.

The Iraq war and U.S.-led occupation have cost nearly 2,000 American lives and thousands of Iraqis have been killed, heightening fears of a sectarian civil war -- a view the Bush administration strongly rejects.

In his comments to journalists on Thursday, the Saudi foreign minister said he did not believe Iraq was engulfed in full-scale civil war, but he said the trend was moving in that direction.

Iraq, Afghan Commitments Fuel US Air Base Construction :

The US military has more than $1.2 billion in projects either underway or planned in the Central Command region - an expansion plan that US commanders say is necessary both to sustain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and to provide for a long-term presence in the area.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092105F.shtml

===

Soldier's chilling testimony fuels demonstrations against Iraq war :

A former American soldier who served in Iraq and filed for conscientious objector status has given an extraordinary insight into the war's dehumanising effects ­ an insight that helps explain why the British and American public has turned sharply against the occupation.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10373.htm

The 'myth' of Iraq's foreign fighters:

Report by US think tank says only '4 to 10' percent of insurgents are foreigners.
http://csmonitor.com/2005/0923/dailyUpdate.html


Michael T Klare : The failed mission to capture Iraqi oil:

Most senior policymakers appear to retain their blind faith in the efficacy of military force as a tool for securing access to foreign sources of petroleum. This, as Iraq makes painfully clear, is delusional. Yet they persist in risking the lives of young Americans and others in their continued adherence to a failed and immoral strategy.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10371.htm


New Reports Surface About Detainee Abuse:

Two soldiers and an officer with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have told a human rights organization of systemic detainee abuse and human rights violations at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, recounting beatings, forced physical exertion and psychological torture of prisoners, the group said.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10379.htm


N.C.-based troops tortured detainees at Iraqi base:

Soldiers in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division vented their frustration by systematically torturing Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals, a U.S. rights group alleges in a new report.
http://tinyurl.com/ey3jh

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&...ategory=Kingdom


Saud Warns of Regional Conflict If Iraq Situation Persists
Arab News


Prince Saud Al-Faisal

JEDDAH, 24 September 2005 — Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said he has been warning top US government officials that Iraq is rapidly heading toward disintegration and there is the risk of a regional war.

Speaking to reporters at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Prince Saud said he was so worried he is warning “everyone who will listen” in the Bush administration. “There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together,” the prince said.

Iraq’s potential division into a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center and a Shiite state in the south would “bring other countries in the region into the conflict,” he explained.

Turkey has long threatened to forcefully prevent Iraq’s Kurds from declaring independence. Shiite Iran could increase its influence in Iraq, where it already enjoys strong sympathy in the Shiite-majority government. “This is a very dangerous situation,” he said.

Prince Saud blamed much of Iraq’s ills on US decisions such as designating “every Sunni as a Baathist criminal.”

While the prince did not refer to the Bush administration directly, he was referring to an order issued by US proconsul Paul Bremer soon after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. Bremer banned all members of Saddam’s largely Sunni Arab Baath Party from holding government jobs.

Prince Saud said he did not believe Iraq was engulfed in full-scale civil war but the trend was moving in that direction.

Asked what Saudi Arabia feared most about the trend, Saud said, “It will draw the countries of the region into the conflict and that is the main worry of all the neighbors of Iraq.”

The Iraq war and occupation have cost nearly 2,000 American lives, countless Iraqi lives and over $200 billion but there has been little progress in stopping a bloody Sunni Arab insurgency that began soon after the 2003 invasion.

Saudi Arabia has voiced fears that the draft constitution, due to be put to a referendum in four weeks, could split apart the country and disenfranchise a Sunni minority that was thrown out from power by the US-led invasion.

Prince Saud said the Sunni-Shiite division was not pronounced under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, but was inflamed when the postwar US occupation authority disbanded the Iraqi army and banned members of the Baath Party from jobs and leadership positions.

He urged the Shiite majority who now hold much of the political power in Iraq to reach out to the Sunnis and reassure them that they will be treated as “equal citizens.”

He, however, did not see a purposeful US policy to divide Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish states but “this is what is going to happen if things continue as they are.”

He did not urge Iraqis to reject the constitution but said the key would be how the document was implemented.

Prince Saud said the Bush administration and his government agreed Iraq should be free, prosperous and united. But he said when he raised concerns about growing political divisions in Iraq, the Americans noted that many doubted the wisdom of holding elections, which turned out well, and they expressed confidence the constitution would also be effective.

Prince Saud repeated apprehensions he made about Iran in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday. He said Tehran was increasingly interfering in Iraq by providing money and weapons to Shiites in the country. He also voiced his concern that Iran might renege on its pledge to support a nuclear-free Middle East. However, he indicated his preference for dialogue to solve the nuclear issue with Tehran, rather than taking it to the UN Security Council.

He said Saudi Arabia enjoys frank and candid relations with Iran. “Iran has great potentials to become a stabilizing power in the region,” he said. He said Riyadh would continue its dialogue with Tehran on the issue of weapons of mass destruction.

“We are confident that we can reach an understanding, taking into account the interests of all countries in the region.”

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9FC...BF61EC3E177.htm


Iraq Sunnis confident of halting charter

Saturday 24 September 2005, 21:19 Makka Time, 18:19 GMT

The Sunni delegates called on Shia and Kurds to also vote no

Clerics and tribal leaders from Iraq's Sunni Arab minority have expressed optimism that they can mobilise their communities to reject the draft constitution in next month's referendum.


The three-day meeting organised to scuttle the charter concluded with a communique on Saturday urging a no vote "if the constitution's main points on Iraq's unity and Arab identity are not rectified, as well as articles related to political and racial segregation".

Meeting organiser and prominent cleric Shaikh Abdul-Latif Himayem said he expected at least 51% of Iraq's electorate to vote against the charter in the 15 October referendum.

"We are calling on all leaders, clergymen, tribal chiefs and university professors to mobilise their constituents to go to the polls and to vote no to the constitution," Himayem said.

"We have also prepared a petition and we expect to gather support from about 5 million people from all over Iraq to say no to the constitution."

The conference was held in the Jordanian capital, Amman, for security reasons.

Iraq's Sunni Arabs have strongly opposed the draft constitution, largely because they say it would give Shia in the south the right to form a mini-state that Sunnis fear will deprive them of the area's oil wealth and lead to Iraq's fragmentation.

Shia backing

But the constitution got a major boost this week when it won support from Iraq's most revered Shia leader, Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, as well as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Iraq's largest Shia party and the senior partner in the ruling coalition.

"We are calling on all leaders, clergymen, tribal chiefs and university professors to mobilise their constituents to go to the polls and to vote no to the constitution"

Shaikh Abdul-Latif Himayem, meeting organiser and cleric

Al-Hakim also accused groups he called "terrorists and remnants of the former regime" of seeking to disrupt the referendum process to prevent the Iraqi people from casting a yes vote.

Iraq's Shia, whose solidarity is essential if the constitution is to pass, make up 60% of the population. Sunni Arabs and Kurds account for 30%-40%.

If two-thirds of the voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject the document, parliament must be dissolved and a general election held for a new chamber that would undertake the drafting of a new constitution.

The Sunnis are the majority in three Iraqi provinces. However, all three are among the hardest hit by violence and getting out the vote on 15 October could prove difficult.

Unity threatened

The 150 leaders from Iraq's violence-torn Sunni heartland who gathered in Amman are concerned that the proposed constitution threatens Iraq's unity.


Sunnis say they fear the charter
will lead to the breakup of Iraq

The charter "has articles which could lead to Iraq's division and eradicate Iraq's Islamic and Arab identity", said Hamid Rashid al-Mhanna, head of the Albu Alwan tribe, one of the largest tribes in Anbar province.

Delegate Faris Taha al-Faris called the constitution "a plot against Iraq" and complained that it was largely written by Americans.

"We call on the Shia in the south, the Kurds in the north to also reject it because there are many people who do not agree with this charter," he said.

Communique contents

The communique issued at the end of the conference urged the Iraqi National Assembly and the interim government to preserve Iraq's territorial integrity.

It asked that the referendum be carried out under the supervision of the United Nations, the Arab League, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the European Parliament.

"Many of the moderates will turn to the resistance because it is a legitimate right to fight this constitution"

Shaikh Abdul-Latif Himayem

It also urged for "polling centres to be protected and the appropriate atmosphere provided for voters by stopping all military operations".

Sunnis have increasingly complained of being hard hit in the crackdown by US and Iraqi forces against fighters - most of whom are believed to come from the Sunni Arab population.

US and Iraqi troops have launched full-scale assaults on a number of Sunni cities to root out fighters.

The Sunni delegates threatened to declare "civil disobedience" if the military operations against Sunni cities continued.

Himayem, the cleric, emphasised that violence would increase if the constitution passes.

"Many of the moderates will turn to the resistance because it is a legitimate right to fight this constitution," he warned.


AP + Aljazeera

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...5300085,00.html


Shiites Seek Yes 'Vote' on Iraq Charter

Saturday September 24, 2005 8:01 PM

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The leader of Iraq's largest Shiite political organization joined the country's most revered and powerful Shiite cleric Saturday in a strong public push for voter support of a new constitution, three weeks ahead of a national referendum.

Also, suicide car bombers killed five Iraqis in and near the capital, and the U.S. military said a soldier died in a roadside bombing Friday night in southeast Baghdad. The death raised to 1,913 the number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In Basra, the country's southern oil hub and headquarters for Britain's 8,500-strong force, an Iraqi judge said he renewed homicide arrest warrants for two undercover British soldiers who allegedly killed an Iraqi policeman trying to detain them.

The Britons were rescued from jail early this week by British troops using armor to crash through the prison walls. In a sign of continuing tensions and Iraqi fury over the British operation, Katyusha rockets were fired at U.S. and British facilities in the city Saturday, causing no casualties.

The major political development surrounded Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. His appeal to voters added a key voice of support two days after Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also directed followers to back the charter.

``It is our religious duty to say 'yes' to the constitution and to go to the ballot boxes,'' al-Hakim told more than 2,000 supporters gathered in Baghdad to mark a 1991 Shiite uprising brutally crushed by Saddam Hussein.

Al-Hakim said militants and former regime supporters were trying to undermine Iraqis' hopes for security - but they would fail. His SCIRI organization has strong ties to Shiite Iran and controls a powerful bloc in parliament. Al-Hakim took refuge in Iran during Saddam's rule.

Al-Sistani, meeting with aides Thursday in the holy city of Najaf, was the first major Shiite religious figure to urge voters to back the new basic law, according to two top officials in his entourage. The reclusive cleric issues statements only through his office and makes no public appearances.

In January, millions of Shiites heeded al-Sistani's call to vote in Iraq's first democratic elections in nearly half a century. The ballot gave the Muslim sect a majority in the new parliament and government.

Shiite solidarity is essential if the constitution is to pass in the Oct. 15 vote. If two-thirds of voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject the document, a new government must be formed and the process of writing the constitution started over.

Minority Sunni Arabs are dominant in four provinces and could defeat the new charter should they vote ``no'' as a bloc in three of them. On Saturday, Sunni clerics and tribal leaders expressed optimism they could do just that while gathered at a meeting organized to scuttle the charter.

The three-day meeting, held in Amman, Jordan, for security reasons, ended with a communique urging a 'no' vote ``if the constitution's main points on Iraq's unity and Arab identity are not rectified, as well as articles related to political and racial segregation.''

Meeting organizer and prominent cleric Sheik Abdul-Latif Himayem told The Associated Press he expected at least 51 percent of Iraq's electorate to vote ``no'' in the referendum.

Sunnis have sharply opposed the draft constitution, largely because it would give Shiites in the south the right to form a mini-state that Sunnis fear will deprive them of oil wealth and ultimately lead to Iraq's fragmentation.

Meanwhile, seething anger resurfaced in Basra when Katyusha rockets were fired at the U.S. and British consulates but fell harmlessly in a nearby field, police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said.

Three more rockets were fired at the Shat al-Arab Hotel, headquarters of the British army, he said. One rocket hit the building without causing casualties. The two others hit nearby homes, wounding a resident, Khazim said.

Also, Judge Raghib al-Mudhafar, chief of the Basra Anti-Terrorism Court, said Saturday he reissued homicide arrest warrants for the two soldiers, rekindling hard feelings despite attempts by Iraqi and British officials to cool tempers.

The British government said the warrants had not been delivered and, regardless, were not legal.

``Iraqi law is very clear: British personnel are immune from the Iraqi legal process. They remain subject to British law. Even if such a warrant was issued, it would therefore be of no legal effect,'' Defense Secretary John Reid said.

West of Baghdad, U.S. forces kept up pressure on insurgents near their Ramadi stronghold. Al-Sharqiyah television said the Americans operating in Hit detained more than 40 men who served in Saddam's armed forces in ranks ranging from major to brigadier general. The U.S. military did not report the arrests. Ramadi is 70 miles west of Baghdad, and Hit is another 15 miles west.

Ramadi police Lt. Yarub al-Duleimi said American forces blew up three houses in the region, claiming they contained weapons caches. Police Lt. Mohammed Al-Obaidi said a roadside bomb destroyed a U.S. patrol vehicle in the city center at dawn. There was no report of casualties from either the Iraqis or the Americans.

In Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, police Capt. Arkan Ali said U.S. troops killed eight Iraqis and wounded six when they opened fire after a roadside bomb hit their patrol, damaging a tank. The U.S. military was checking the report.

---

Associated Press reporters Abbas Fayadh in Basra and Sue Leeman in London contributed to this report.

--------------------
Bombings, Clashes Kill 18 People in Iraq
--------------------

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
Associated Press Writer

September 25 2005, 7:20 AM PDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide car bomber struck an Interior Ministry convoy in Baghdad on Sunday, killing seven police commandos and two civilians. Earlier, a bomb mounted on a bicycle blew apart a music store in Hillah, south of the capital, killing one, officials said.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wi...,0,902894.story

Iraq war protesters march in DC World Peace Herald
Thousands of protesters yesterday marched against the war in Iraq, aiming their anger at George W. Bush as they wound through downtown and past the White House. Speakers at a rally on the Ellipse repeatedly called the president a criminal, a liar and a killer. "We'll be the checks and balances on this out-of-control, criminal government," anti-war mother Cindy Sheehan told the crowd. Hundreds of counterdemonstrators lined sections of the march route in support of Mr. Bush and U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Hey, Cindy, leave our troops alone," supporters of the war sang, borrowing the melody of a Pink Floyd hit to scold Mrs. Sheehan. The Metropolitan Police Department made several arrests for destruction of property but reported few other problems despite some angry exchanges. Marchers scrawled graffiti along Connecticut Avenue Northwest and spray-painted an emergency vehicle. "We're busy, but nothing we can't handle," said Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who walked among protesters using a baton as a walking stick. "Most people who come to protest are peaceful. They don't want any trouble." Police declined to estimate the size of the crowd, but Chief Ramsey, noting organizers had hoped to draw 100,000, said, "I think they probably hit that." The demonstrations began just after 10 a.m. with a rally on the Ellipse and scheduled speeches by actress Jessica Lange, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Ralph Nader as well as Mrs. Sheehan, who seized media attention this summer. Some of the loudest applause greeted Mrs. Sheehan, who last month kept a 26-day vigil outside the president's Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas. Her son, Casey, an enlisted Army specialist, was killed in Iraq in April 2004. "We need a people's movement to end this war," Mrs. Sheehan said. "Members of Congress are not doing their jobs, and George Bush is certainly not doing his job, so we have to do our jobs." The Rev. Jesse Jackson stood behind Mrs. Sheehan after calling for better leadership in his remarks. "When you march, things happen," Mr. Jackson said. "We'll change the Congress in 2006 and take back the White House in 2008." The crowd was a cross section of ages, races and occupations, and many were eager to share stories about long journeys from as far as California. "We're just trying to show our support for the anti-war movement and trying to get a message across," said Robert Fox, 40, a computer engineer from Miami. "Whether [Mr. Bush] listens or not, it doesn't really matter. We just need to show all of America that there's a very large group of people that don't agree with his policies." Mr. Fox and his wife, Vilma, were here for an anti-war rally in 2003. "The mood of the country has definitely started to swing the other way," he said. Sara Carroll, 36, a bank teller from Petoskey, Mich., said this was her first protest. "I just felt like I really had to," she said. "This war has gone on too long, and I think they just need to see that there are this many people who don't agree with it." The main march, organized by Act Now To Stop War and End Racism, or ANSWER, and United for Peace and Justice, was scheduled to start at 11:30 a.m., but did not get under way until almost 1 p.m. -- in part because of the number of speeches. Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, Georgia Democrat, accused the Bush administration of election fraud and of starting the war on false evidence. "A cruel wind blows across America, starting in Texas and Montana and sweeping across America's heartland," she said. "It settled here in Washington, D.C., and despite our presence today, it continues to buffet and batter the American people." Marchers left the Ellipse and headed north on 15th Street Northwest. They were met by a group of anti-globalization protesters who started at Dupont Circle, then paraded past the World Bank and International Monetary Fund headquarters before connecting with the big march. Some shouted into megaphones, while others chanted, danced and banged drums. Uniformed police officers on foot, on bicycles and on horseback guarded the route. Although some officers wore helmets, none was outfitted in riot gear. In front of the White House, police formed a line and used bicycle racks to make barriers along Pennsylvania Avenue. At about 1:50 p.m., a group of black-clad protesters briefly set a small Israeli flag on fire in Lafayette Square. Mr. Bush was not in the White House, having spent much of the day in Colorado and then in Texas to monitor the federal response to Hurricane Rita. Demonstrators supportive of the president staged a rally at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. They later lined the march route between Ninth and 10th streets Northwest. "I fought for your right to hate your country," one shouted at the marchers. War protesters shouted back: "Bush lied, thousands died" and "Hey, Bush, we know you, your daddy was a killer, too." The exchange was punctuated occasionally with vulgar gestures and shouted obscenities, but police kept the groups separate. The war protesters shared the streets with other groups visiting the District for other pursuits. Hundreds gathered downtown for a convention of enthusiasts of Segways, the two-wheeled human transporters. The National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress, turned out crowds, too. The juxtaposition of events created some odd scenes. A small group of demonstrators on their way to the Ellipse carried about a half-dozen cardboard boxes decorated as flag-draped caskets through the book festival and past a line of mothers with children waiting to ride the carousel at the Smithsonian Castle. Also yesterday, anti-war demonstrators marched in central London to demand that Prime Minister Tony Blair withdraw British troops from Iraq. Similar rallies were held in Copenhagen, Helsinki, Madrid, Oslo, Paris and Rome. The ranks of the protesters here thinned as the march wound down after 4 p.m. Several thousand remained at the Washington Monument for a concert that was expected to last well into the night. More protests are scheduled for today, including attempts to keep employees of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund from attending semiannual meetings. Supporters of the troops in Iraq were to rally at noon today on the Mall at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Protesters of Iraq war flock to US capital International Herald Tribune
More than 100,000 protest over Iraq war Sunday Herald
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