http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2601211_pf.html

Shiite Urges U.S. to Give Iraqis Leeway In Rebel Fight
Americans Have Blocked Tougher Tactics, Cleric Says

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 27, 2005; A01



BAGHDAD -- The leader of Iraq's most powerful political party has called on the United States to let Iraqi fighters take a more aggressive role against insurgents, saying his country will only be able to defeat the insurgency when the United States lets Iraqis get tough.

"The more freedom given to Iraqis, the more chance for further progress there would be, particularly in fighting terror," said Abdul Aziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite Muslim religious party that leads the transitional government and whose armed wing is the most feared of Iraq's many factional forces.

Instead, Hakim asserted in a rare interview late last week, the United States is tying Iraq's hands in the fight against insurgents. One of Iraq's "biggest problems is the mistaken or wrong policies practiced by the Americans," he said.

In more than an hour of conversation at his Baghdad home and office, Hakim denied accusations that the Shiite-led government's security forces -- with alleged involvement by his party's armed wing -- have operated torture centers and death squads targeting Sunni Arabs. He also renewed his call to merge half of Iraq's 18 provinces into a federal region in the oil-rich, heavily Shiite south, and he played down Iran's interests in Iraq, saying that the Shiite theocracy to the east wants only what the United States claims to want: a stable Iraq.

During much of the interview, Hakim was critical of U.S. policies toward Iraq, though he acknowledged that U.S. forces must remain in the country as a "guest" of the Iraqi government while it builds its security forces. The Americans are guilty of "major interference, and preventing the forces of the Interior or Defense ministries from carrying out tasks they are capable of doing, and also in the way they are dealing with the terrorists," Hakim charged.

Hakim gave few details of what getting tough would entail, other than making clear it would require more weapons, with more firepower, than the United States is currently supplying. He also urged the United States to take a tougher stand against countries harboring insurgents and their supporters, and called for faster trials of insurgent suspects.

His repeated assertion that the United States was being too weak against Iraq's insurgency, allowing attacks to mushroom, appeared to suggest that any future Iraqi government that included him would share his view. With Iraqis scheduled to vote Dec. 15 for the country's first full-term government since the U.S. invasion in 2003, some analysts predict that Hakim will come from behind the scenes into direct political contention.

Until now, Hakim has opted not to hold office; the highest-ranking member of the Supreme Council in the current government is Adel Abdel-Mehdi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents. But as head of the Supreme Council, which was founded by exiles in Iran as an armed Shiite opposition group to Saddam Hussein, Hakim commands the largest bloc of seats in Iraq's transitional parliament.

In addition, Hakim oversees the party's armed wing, formerly known as the Badr Brigade. Its fighters are widely feared for what even many Iraqi Shiites say are habits of torture and other ruthless tactics learned from Iranian intelligence and security forces. Now officially converted into a private security detail and political group, the renamed Badr Organization is widely alleged to control many command-level and the rank-and-file officers in the Interior Ministry -- police, commandos, intelligence agencies and other branches.

The United States, at times openly distrustful of the Supreme Council's Iranian links and of its armed wing, took the allegations of Badr involvement in a secret Interior Ministry prison that was discovered last week seriously enough to publicly warn the government against allowing factional militias to control Iraq's security forces or ministries.

In the interview, Hakim, the son of an ayatollah, wore the black turban signifying descent from the prophet Muhammad and the long, close robes of a scholar of Islam. He spoke in a spare, formal marble-floored audience room in his Baghdad home, which until the U.S.-led invasion had been the Baghdad residence of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

Sitting straight and intently in a high-backed chair, Hakim repeatedly invoked the assassination of his brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, who was killed by a car bomb in Najaf in August 2003. He evinced distrust of the Iraqi government's principal ally, the United States, even more often.

In Iraq, "there are plans to confront terrorists, approved by security agencies, but the Americans reject that," Hakim said. "Because of that mistaken policy, we have lost a lot. One of the victims was my brother Mohammad Bakir, because of American policies."

"For instance, the ministries of Interior and Defense want to carry out some operations to clean out some areas" in Baghdad and around the country, including volatile Anbar province, in the west, he said.

"There were plans that should have been implemented months ago, but American officials and forces rejected them," he said. "This has led to the expansion of terrorism.

"We have a capacity to move more quickly than currently," he said.

The issue points to a key difference between U.S. officials and some of Iraq's conservative Shiite leaders about what it will take to end the insurgency. Even the top U.S. generals say the ultimate solution is a political one, bringing minority Sunnis into a democracy that without them stands to be dominated permanently by the Shiite majority. But the leaders of many Shiite religious parties, reflecting their years in exile and their bitterness over the killing of relatives and supporters during Hussein's dictatorship, say the endgame is a military one.

Hakim charged that the United States, evidently fearful of alienating Sunnis, was blocking the arrests of Sunni political leaders who had ties to insurgents. "The mixing of security and political issues" was just another U.S. mistake, he said. "Terrorists should know there would be no dealing with them."

Indeed, some former members of Hussein's Baath Party who initially took up arms against U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government have said they have abandoned the insurgency and sought a political role largely because of the effectiveness of what they alleged to be Shiite death squads rounding up and executing Sunni men since the Shiite-led government took office last spring.

Hakim said "the problem is not with the Sunnis, it is with the terrorists. There are Sunnis who have strong ties with us, who speak frankly and in pain, asking for help in getting rid of the terrorists."

Yet suspicion of the Badr forces runs strong among Iraqis, especially since the discovery by the U.S. military this month of a secret prison in central Baghdad containing what Interior Minister Bayan Jabar, a Shiite, acknowledged were at least five to seven detainees who had been subjected to torture.

Hakim said charges of torture have long been drummed up by Hussein loyalists, and he asserted that the U.S. military is often present in Interior Ministry facilities. American troops, he said, had been in the building where the prison was discovered "four times a week."

"These are all baseless allegations," he said. "We say, bring us one single piece of evidence to prove these allegations."

Hakim also made clear he wanted leaders elected in December to move forward toward creation of a massive federal region in the Shiite south, an idea he first broached in August before thousands of supporters in a ceremony in the Shiite holy city of Najaf marking the second anniversary of his brother's assassination.

Some Americans and Iraqis have charged such a state would put much of Iraq, and its oil, under a Shiite-controlled theocracy heavily influenced by Iran. But Hakim noted that the Kurdish-populated north already has such a region, and he contended that Baghdad, with its mixed population, and the heavily Sunni west should form separate regions as well.

The draft constitution voted in this year "approved that Iraq should become regions," he said. "While we want to form a region in the south, we strive to maintain the unity of Iraq."

Hakim said the United States could find "many areas" of agreement with Iran on Iraq, if it wanted to. For example, he said, "from the Iranian point of view, it is in the Iranian interest that Iraq be stable. That is also supposed to be the American intent."

Hakim made clear his own role would remain at the national level, rather than limited to any new Shiite region. Asked twice if he would seek political office directly, he said both times that he seeks only to be a servant of all Iraqis and showed one of his few, small smiles of the night.

Asked how different Iraq would look five years from now, Hakim said the answer depended on the actions of the United States. "For sure, the policies of America will have great influence on whether security and reconstruction are present," he said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26654863.htm

Iraq abuse as bad now as under Saddam -former PM
26 Nov 2005 23:08:24 GMT

Source: Reuters

LONDON, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published on Sunday.

"People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse. It is an appropriate comparison," Allawi told British newspaper The Observer.

"People are remembering the days of Saddam," said Allawi, a secular Shi'ite and former Baathist who is standing in elections scheduled for Dec. 15. "These are the precise reasons why we fought Saddam Hussein and now we are seeing the same things.

"We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated," said Allawi in an apparent reference to the discovery of a bunker at the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry where 170 men were held prisoner, beaten, half-starved and in some cases tortured.

"A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations."

Allawi said the Interior Ministry, which has tried to brush off the scandal over the bunker, was afflicted by a "disease".

If it is not cured, he said, it "will become contagious and spread to all ministries and structures of Iraq's government".

"The Ministry of the Interior is at the heart of the matter," Allawi said. "I am not blaming the minister himself, but the rank and file are behind the secret dungeons and some of the executions that are taking place."

Allawi was Iraq's first prime minister of the post-Saddam era but failed to win January's election, which brought current Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, an Islamist Shi'ite, to power.

An opinion poll in an Iraqi newspaper a week ago suggested over half of Iraqis want Jaafari to stay on in the job after the December vote.

Allawi, who enjoys some support among both Shi'ites and Sunnis, came third in the poll behind Mithal al-Alusi, a secular Sunni who heads his own election list.


AlertNet news is provided by

November 27, 2005 9:21 a.m. EST

Alleged Assassination Plotters
Arrested by Iraqi Police

U.S. Marine Killed by Roadside Bomb
Associated Press
November 27, 2005 9:21 a.m.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi police arrested eight Sunni Arabs in the northern city of Kirkuk for allegedly plotting to assassinate the investigating judge who prepared the case against Saddam Hussein, a senior police commander said Sunday. The arrests came just two days before the trial was set to resume, after a five-week break.

Separately, a U.S. Marine was killed when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in western Iraq. The soldier, whose name was withheld pending notification of his family, was killed Saturday in a an explosion near Camp Taqaddum, about 45 miles west of Baghdad.

Harris Poll: Americans' Confidence in Iraq Hits New Low2
Plus, see an interactive map3 showing the sites of major insurgent attacks, a tally of U.S. military deaths4 and complete coverage5 of the situation in Iraq.The men arrested for the alleged assassination plot were carrying a document from former top Hussein deputy Izzat al-Douri ordering them to kill Raed Juhi, said Col. Anwar Qadir, a police commander in Kirkuk, where the men were arrested on Saturday.

Mr. Douri is the highest-ranking member of the Hussein regime still at large and is believed to be at least the symbolic leader of Hussein loyalists still fighting U.S. forces and the new government in Iraq.

The first prosecution witnesses are expected to testify before the five-judge panel, offering accounts of the deaths of more than 140 Shiite villagers following an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in the town of Dujail in 1982. If convicted, Mr. Hussein and his seven co-defendants could be sentenced to death by hanging.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark arrived in Baghdad on Sunday, airport officials said, apparently to aid in Mr. Hussein's defense. He has been advising nearly a dozen international lawyers on Mr. Hussein's defense team. He has contended that Mr. Hussein's rights have been violated in the legal process following his capture.

A U.S. government official close to the court said the defense team had not filed the proper paperwork to have a non-Iraqi lawyer in the courtroom.

Judge Considered Moving Trial

Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the chief trial judge in the case, said in remarks released Sunday that he has considered whether the court should move to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq because of poor security in the capital.

"So far, the situation allows regular and fair proceedings of the court, even if the conditions are admittedly difficult," Mr. Amin was quoted as saying in the German news weekly Focus. "I have already thought about whether one shouldn't move the court to the Kurdish areas, where the situation is quieter and more security would be assured," Mr. Amin said in an interview released ahead of its publication Monday.

In a separate interview published Sunday, Iraq's former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said that human-rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Mr. Hussein and could become even worse.

"These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same thing," the newspaper quoted Mr. Allawi as saying. He accused fellow Shiites in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centers and said the brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Mr. Hussein's secret police.

Although Mr. Allawi is a Shiite, he is secular in his politics and is running separately from the Shiite parties in the Dec. 15 election. His comments appear to be an attempt to appeal to Sunni voters, who claim their community has been unfairly targeted by the Shiite-led security forces.

Violence Surges as Election Nears

U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned of an upsurge in insurgent attacks ahead of the election, in which voters will choose the first fully constitutional parliament since Mr. Hussein's rule collapsed in April 2003.

More than 270 people have been killed in the last nine days in car bombings and suicide attacks in Iraq.

On Saturday, six people were killed and 12 were wounded when a suicide car bomber struck in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police Lt. Col. Mahmoud Mohammed said.

Four other people died when a car bomb exploded in western Baghdad as two armored cars passed by, according to police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said. Nobody in the convoy was injured, but one of the armored cars was damaged and removed by U.S. forces, Lt. Mahmoud said.

On Saturday, gunmen opened fire on four people as they plastered campaign posters for the biggest Shiite party on walls in western Baghdad, killing one person and wounding three, police said.

In Mosul, gunmen fired on members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni Arab political movement, while they were putting up campaign posters, wounding one person, police said.

A statement posted on an Islamist Web in the name of al Qaeda in Iraq also claimed responsibility for killing a Kurdish election volunteer in Mosul. The statement said Miqdad Ahmed Sito, 28 years old, was seized in the city's Shifaa neighborhood. A friend of Mr. Sito, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his own safety, said Mr. Sito worked for the Organization for Development and Democratic Dialogue, a non-governmental organization that lectures voters about elections and the country's new constitution.

Copyright © 2005 Associated Press

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113308336234407517.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051127/pl_afp/usiraqtroops

White House claims 'strong consensus' on Iraq pullout Sat Nov 26,11:41 PM ET

The White House has for the first time claimed ownership of an Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own.

It also signaled its acceptance of a recent US Senate amendment designed to pave the way for a phased US military withdrawal from the violence-torn country.

The statement by White House spokesman Scott McClellan came in response to a commentary published in The Washington Post by Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he said US forces will begin leaving Iraq next year "in large numbers."

According to Biden, the United States will move about 50,000 servicemen out of the country by the end of 2006, and "a significant number" of the remaining 100,000 the year after.

The blueprint also calls for leaving only an unspecified "small force" either in Iraq or across the border to strike at concentrations of insurgents, if necessary.

Less than two weeks ago, McClellan blasted Democratic Representative John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), saying that by calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, the congressman was "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore," a stridently anti-war Hollywood filmmaker.

Biden's ideas, relayed first in a November 21 speech in New York, however, got a much friendlier reception.

Even though President George W. Bush has never publicly issued his own withdrawal plan and criticized calls for an early exit, the White House said many of the ideas expressed by the senator were its own.

In the statement, which was released under the headline "Senator Biden Adopts Key Portions Of Administration's Plan For Victory In Iraq," McClellan said the Bush administration welcomed Biden's voice in the debate.

"Today, Senator Biden described a plan remarkably similar to the administration's plan to fight and win the war on terror," the spokesman went on to say.

He added that as Iraqi security forces gain strength and experience, "we can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists."

McClellan said the White House now saw "a strong consensus" building in Washington in favor of Bush's strategy in Iraq.

The Biden plan calls for preparatory work to be done in the first six months of next year, ahead of the envisaged pullout. It includes:

- forging a compromise among Iraqi factions, under which the Sunnis must accept that they no longer rule Iraq and Shiites and Kurds admit them into a power-sharing arrangement;

- building Iraq's governing capacity;

- transferring authority to Iraqi security forces;

- establishing a contact group of the world's major powers to become the Iraqi government's primary international interlocutor.

The White House statement also embraced a Senate amendment to a defense authorization bill overwhelmingly passed by the Senate on November 15 that asked the administration to make next year "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty" thereby creating conditions "for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq."

The measure was largely seen is a reprimand to the Bush administration often accused of lacking a viable strategy in Iraq.

But the White House insisted again the Senate was reading from its own playbook.

"The fact is that the Senate amendment reiterates the president's strategy in Iraq," the statement said.

The Bush administration has been steadily moving towards a drawdown of US troops in Iraq and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week spoke of a reduction in the US presence for the first time.

Her remarks contrasted sharply with her refusal last month to tell a Senate panel whether US troops would be out in a decade, acknowledging that insurgent attacks would continue "for quite a long time."



Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.


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Seven Iraqi soldiers killed in roadside bombings in western Iraq:

Seven Iraqi soldiers were killed Sunday in two separate roadside bomb attacks in Iraq`s restive city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, witnesses said.
http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=394911

Bomb Kills U.S. Marine:

Police said on Sunday they had found the beheaded body of a former Iraqi army cook in Hawija
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27696235.htm

'Trophy' video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi drivers:

The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.
http://tinyurl.com/ag2va

Bush may signal Iraq drawdown:

President Bush plans what is being billed as a major speech on Iraq for Wednesday amid signs that the administration is changing course.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi/20051126-065127-9906r.htm

What To Do About Iraq:

It's not just a matter of "getting out," although that's Number 1 on the Christmas Wish List. There are several other things the U.S. must also do for a humane and conscientious resolution to the horrors of our war against Iraq. My list of the necessary steps for reparation in Iraq and movement toward reconciliation with the Muslim world include the following.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11154.htm

US slows local troops, Shi'ite politician says:

The leader of Iraq's most powerful political party has called on the United States to let Iraqi fighters take an aggressive role, saying they will defeat the insurgency only when the United States lets Iraqis get tough.
http://tinyurl.com/ct34l

Abuses as bad as under dictator, claims Allawi:

Abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published yesterday.
http://tinyurl.com/87uxo

Iraq Sunni clerics urge U.S. boycott:

raqi Sunni scholars Saturday called on Iraqis to boycott U.S. and British goods and demanded the gradual withdrawal of foreign forces from their country.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi/20051126-122448-6417r.htm

Militant looms as Iraq kingmaker :

Wielding violence and political popularity as complementary tools, Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the U.S. authorities since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figure
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/27/news/cleric.php

Bush plot to bomb al-Jazeera is a conspiracy theory, says Blair:

People who have seen the document say the real reason that it is being suppressed by the Government is because it contains a potentially damaging private discussion between the two leaders about the controversial United States attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah last year.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...1/27/njaz27.xml

The leak that revealed Bush's deep obsession with al-Jazeera :

The US president planned to bomb the Qatar-based channel - that was the remarkable claim made in a top-secret memo. Why is the world's most powerful man so worried about a TV station?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/internation...1651765,00.html

Rumsfeld’s Al-Jazeera outburst:

Al-Jazeera was accused by Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, of broadcasting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” reports about the war in Iraq the day before President George W Bush met Tony Blair at the White House and apparently suggested bombing the station’s headquarters.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1892464,00.html

So what have they got to hide?

Official secrets, lies, and the truth about the assault on Fallujah
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article329622.ece

Growing bored of the carnage … as crime of the century unfolds:

We’ve all familiar now with “compassion fatigue”, when we become inured to the plight of disaster victims in uncharismatic parts of the world such as Kashmir. Well, I fear we are now developing a kind of “atrocity fatigue” over Iraq.
http://www.sundayherald.com/53063

The Plastic Turkey President :

The plastic turkey president was the same president who warned Americans of a potential Saddam-sent mushroom cloud over the United States - at a time when U.S. intelligence said Saddam had no nuclear weapons;
http://democracyrising.us/content/view/374/151/

While We Were Sleeping: Where Was the Media Between Invasion and Murtha?

Networks Gave Vietnam War Twice the Minutes Iraq Gets; Baghdad Bureaus Cut Back; Amanpour: ‘Patronizing’
http://www.observer.com/pageone_coverstory1.asp

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=710...id=aya8Tp0nmfMg

Iraqi Official Expects U.S. to Pull 30,000 Troops in Next Year
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- An Iraqi government official said he expects the U.S. will probably withdraw about 30,000 troops early next year, and American forces may number less than 100,000 by 2007.

Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said that while the Iraqi interim government and the U.S.-led coalition have been discussing the circumstances that will allow foreign troops to leave the country they are ``not interested in a timetable'' for withdrawals.

``We want to create the right conditions in the urban areas for the Iraqi security forces to assume the responsibility of security in these cities and towns,'' al-Rubaie said today on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program. ``That's what we are doing.''

Al-Rubaie's remarks come a week after representatives of Iraq's three main factions, meeting in Cairo, demanded a schedule for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq. President George W. Bush yesterday repeated his rejection of a timetable for redeploying U.S. forces.

``We're not discussing the timetable,'' al-Rubaie said. ``We've been discussing condition-based agreements'' between the interim Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition, he said.

Bush has said Iraqi forces must be able to take charge of security before the U.S. will leave. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said previously that the U.S. may be able to scale down troops to 138,000 from 159,000 currently after the parliamentary election in Iraq on Dec. 15.

Pressure in U.S.

More than 2,100 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Insurgents have been targeting U.S. troops as well as Iraqi civilians and government officials, and American military commanders say they expect the violence to intensify before the December vote.

The president is under pressure from lawmakers in the U.S. Congress to set out his strategy for bringing home U.S. military personnel now in Iraq. The debate intensified after Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, called on Nov. 17 for the U.S. to begin pulling its troops out of Iraq.

Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, today urged Bush to give the public a clearer sense of U.S. strategy in Iraq and a status report about the war and efforts to train Iraqi forces.

``It would bring him closer to the people, dispel some of this concern that, understandably, our people have about the loss of life and limb, the enormous cost of this war to the American public,'' Warner said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''

Warner said he opposed setting a schedule for withdrawals.

Address

Bush will give an address on the war on terror, which he links to the conflict Iraq, on Nov. 30 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Warner was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution approved Nov. 15 calling on the president to give lawmakers regular progress reports on Iraq.

``For the moment, it appears that the majority of the Senate is prepared to say that we want to work with the administration,'' Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the panel, characterized the resolution as ``a vote of no confidence'' in Bush.

Lawmakers want Bush to say what his expectations are for a political settlement in Iraq and when the Iraqi army and ministries will be operational, Biden said on NBC.

Biden, who also opposes setting a firm date for pulling out of Iraq, said the U.S. chances for success in Iraq ``are not a lot better than 50-50'' and succeeding will require the administration follow the course laid out in the Senate resolution for steady progress in getting Iraqis ready to handle their own security.

Response

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement issued yesterday in response to an opinion article by Biden published in the Washington Post that there was little difference between Biden's position and the Bush administration's stance.

``We are pleased he shares our view that the way to a democratic and peaceful Iraq is through aggressively training Iraqi police and soldiers, rebuilding the country's infrastructure and forging political compromises between Iraqi factions,'' McClellan said.

Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who voted against the resolution authorizing Bush to take military action in Iraq, said he supported outlining a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. He said such a schedule would undercut the insurgency and to demonstrate that U.S. forces don't plan to permanently occupy the country.

That doesn't mean the U.S. won't have the ability to use ``special operations'' in Iraq or that the U.S. should completely disengage from the area, Feingold said on ABC's ``This Week'' program.

``I want this country to get refocused on the terrorist network that is now in some 60 countries around the world,'' he said. ``Iraq is not the be-all and end-all of our national security.''

Bush's approval rating has fallen as the public has grown increasingly skeptical of his policy regarding Iraq. In a Nov. 11-13 poll by the Gallup Organization for CNN and USA Today, 37 percent of U.S. adults said they approve of the way Bush is handling the presidency, the lowest of his time in office. Thirty-five percent approved of the way he's handling Iraq, down from 42 percent who approved at the beginning of the year.



To contact the reporter for this story:
Joe Richter in Washington at jrichter1@bloomberg.net;
Catherine Larkin in Washington at clarkin4@bloomberg.net

Feingold says Iraq has been a distraction

WASHINGTON Senator Russ Feingold is calling for a public timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

The Wisconsin Democrat says such a move would show the Iraqi people the U-S won't occupy the country permanently. He tells A-B-C's "This Week" that "Iraq has ended up being a real distraction." And he adds "it's actually made us weaker rather than stronger."

Feingold says the U-S needs to refocus on the fight against al-Qaida.

Meantime, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is suggesting that President Bush use an F-D-R-style presentation to update people on progress in the Iraq war.

Virginia Republican John Warner tells N-B-C's "Meet The Press" that "fireside chats" like ones President Franklin Roosevelt used during World War Two would be to Bush's advantage.

Warner says "It would bring him closer to the people" and dispel some of the concern about loss of life and the enormous cost of the war.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.







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Shi'ite Leader Says US Holding Iraqi Forces Back Against Insurgents
By VOA News
27 November 2005



A top Iraqi Shi'ite leader is calling on the United States to let Iraqi forces take a more aggressive role against insurgents.

In an interview published Sunday in the Washington Post, Abdul Aziz Hakim says U.S. troops are hampering efforts by Iraq's fledgling security forces to hunt down insurgents.

He said there were planned Iraqi military moves against insurgents that should have been implemented months ago. And he said the rejection of those by U.S. generals has led to an expansion in terror attacks. He did not provide details.

Mr. Hakim also urged the United States to take stronger action against countries bordering Iraq who harbor insurgents and their supporters.

Mr. Hakim heads the Shi'ite dominated Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, which has the largest representation in parliament.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-11/...ent_3843948.htm

Troop pullout plan unveiled by senator similar to its own: White House

www.chinaview.cn 2005-11-27 23:07:20

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- The White House has said that an Iraq pullout plan unveiled last week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own.

"Today, Senator (Joseph) Biden described a plan remarkably similar to the administration's plan to fight and win the war on terror," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said late Saturday.

"We can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists," since the Iraqi security forces have gained strength and experience, he added.

McClellan made the statement in response to a commentary published in The Washington Post by Joseph Biden, who claimed that US forces will begin pulling out of Iraq next year "in large numbers."

Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in his article that the United States will withdraw about 50,000 servicemen from Iraq by the end of 2006 and "a significant number" of the remaining 100,000 the year after.

The withdrawal blueprint also calls for leaving only a "small force" either in Iraq or across the border to strike the insurgents, if necessary.

Though US President George W. Bush has never publicly issued his own withdrawal plan, the White House said many of the ideas expressed by the senator were its own.

Less than two weeks ago, the White House rebuffed a top Democrat's call for the immediate withdrawal of US troops out of Iraq and said such an act will be equal to surrendering to the terrorists.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News in an interview that "I do not think that American forces need to be there in the numbers that they are now because - for every much longer - because Iraqis are stepping up." Enditem

White House Lays Foundation For US Troop Withdrawal
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzo.html

Washington (AFP) Nov 27, 2005 - The White House for the first time has claimed possession of an Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own.


Outside View: Let Iraqis Decide US pullout
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzm.html


Walker's World: New Crisis For Blair's War
http://www.spacewar.com/news/iraq-05zzzzzzn.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10219753/site/newsweek/

The New Way Out
U.S. leaders finally have a coherent approach—but patience is wearing thin.

Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty Images
By Michael Hirsh, Scott Johnson and Kevin Peraino
Newsweek
Dec. 5, 2005 issue - Only a few months ago, the road from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone was a symbol of American futility in Iraq. When talking heads in Washington wanted to argue that the war was hopeless, they would simply point to "Ambush Alley."

How is it possible, the critics would say, that two long years after U.S. troops took Baghdad, soldiers, contractors and diplomats still had to make a "Mad Max" dash through this five-mile corridor just to get to the heart of the capital? If the U.S. Army couldn't secure such a vital chokepoint, it would never be able to pacify the rest of the country. But since August, without much public notice, the Baghdad highway has been largely secured. In April 2005, when control of the route was primarily American, there were 37 casualties. By October 2005—when Iraqi Special Police checkpoints were in the forefront—there was only one person wounded. The number of attacks plummeted, too, from 27 to eight. November has also been fairly quiet, says Lt. Col. Barry Johnson of the Multinational Forces in Iraq.

What changed? A key difference is the 70 or so Iraqi Special Police who have operated those 24/7 checkpoints along the road since June, Johnson says. The Iraqis play a key role that Americans couldn't, and they're backed by two Iraqi Army platoons that conduct operations along with units of the U.S. Third Infantry Division. There are no more U.S. checkpoints. "It simply would have produced more targets," says Johnson. In a TV interview last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cited the highway as a place where, along with parts of the north and south, Iraqis are "stepping up" and their American mentors are "actually seeing them hold territory."

Piece by painful piece, this is the new American plan for succeeding in Iraq—and, just as important, for getting out of Iraq. Move in, clear the area of insurgents, and then hold it with an increasing proportion of better-quality Iraqi troops. That will allow the benefits of peace and reconstruction to flow in. Military commanders say their old "whack-a-mole" approach—hitting towns to scatter insurgents, then moving on—will continue through the all-important Dec. 15 election for the first permanent Iraqi government. But a dramatic shift will take place in the new year, with U.S. forces trying to give more responsibility to their Iraqi counterparts.

Granted, the Baghdad airport road is one tiny piece of a country still beset by more than 500 attacks, on average, each week—a steady rate of horror and chaos that's been unaffected by elections and other "breakthroughs" U.S. officials have pointed to with hope. Yet it is ironic that just as the debate over what to do about Iraq has reached a shrill climax on Capitol Hill, the Bush administration has, at long last, quietly developed a coordinated, coherent strategy on the ground.

Actually, Washington's main contribution has been to get out of the way. The new approach is the result of long negotiations between Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. George Casey, commander of the Multinational Forces. Their overall strategy: on the military side, "clear, hold and build" while training up Iraqi forces; on the political side, wean Sunni leaders from their support of the insurgency, buying them off with incentives tribe by tribe and village by village; and on the U.S. domestic front, appease rising outcries for withdrawal by reducing the U.S. presence in Iraq to under 100,000 troops—hopefully by midterm Election Day 2006. "There is an idea that there is no plan, and we believe we do have a plan," Khalilzad told NEWSWEEK. "We've worked very hard in the last four months to come up with a plan, and we're talking about how to communicate that more effectively to the Congress."

They'll need to start doing that—and fast. Success or failure in Iraq depends on many factors. But it could well turn into a race between U.S. public opinion, which is increasingly impatient to see the bloody adventure over with, and a grand strategy that's just getting ponderously off the ground. Is the political will going to be there to see the strategy through, especially when it is likely to cost many more U.S. casualties than the 2,108 dead and 15,804 wounded so far? There has been no shortage of Vietnam analogies in recent months. But some U.S. military officers have a new favorite. They now compare this moment to the late stages of the Vietnam War: after years of fumbling by U.S. generals, the military finally adopted a counterinsurgency approach that reduced the Viet Cong to a minor threat—only to watch a fed-up Congress discontinue funds and troops.

Yet it's not only public pressure that's forcing Bush to accept a shorter window for success. Most experts now agree that the U.S. occupation is itself a key generator for the Iraqi insurgency. Staying at current troop levels means condemning Iraq to a permanent "resistance" that is broadly seen as "legitimate," as the leading Iraqi political parties said in a recent statement at an Arab League meeting in Cairo. Another time constraint is the fear that the U.S. Army will start to "break" if current troop levels are maintained.

Why not just leave, as so many Americans want? Khalilzad, in an interview, spoke in the most specific terms yet heard from a senior U.S. official about what a panicky pullout could bring. "People need to be clear what the stakes are here," says Khalilzad. "If we were to do a premature withdrawal, there could be a Shia-Sunni war here that could spread beyond Iraq. And you could have Iran backing the Shias and Sunni Arab states backing the Sunnis. You could have a regional war that could go on for a very long time, and affect the security of oil supplies. Terrorists could take over part of this country and expand from here. And given the resources of Iraq, given the technical expertise of its people, it will make Afghanistan look like child's play." An Army War College study published last month put matters more succinctly: "The long-term dilemma of the U.S. position in Iraq can perhaps best be summarized as, 'We can't stay, we can't leave, and we can't fail'."

In the end, officials say, the only way forward may be a compromise course: cut troops back by almost half without withdrawing completely, move them to rear bases to take the edge off the resistance and reduce the American presence largely to one of Special Ops teams, officer-advisers and reconstruction specialists grafted onto Iraqi units. Khalilzad, who was also the U.S. envoy to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, is basing the "build" piece of the strategy on his Afghan experience. He intends to use "provincial reconstruction teams"—or PRTs—made up of mixed civilian and military personnel, 70 to 100 strong.

Under the Pentagon's plans, U.S. numbers are to be reduced back to about 138,000 by the new year (troop totals are now edging up to 160,000 leading into the December election). Then, under what the Pentagon calls a "moderately optimistic" scenario—but the one it considers most likely—20,000 to 30,000 more troops would come out by mid-2006, with a further goal of phasing down the U.S. presence to 80,000 to 100,000 by "late next year." As additional evidence of its intentions, the Defense Department quietly announced on Nov. 7 the major units scheduled to deploy to Iraq in the next big rotation, starting in late summer next year. Those units add up to 92,000 U.S. troops in 2007.

To secure the country with so few troops, Khalilzad and Casey have had to swallow their pride. They are making compromises with Sunni supporters of the insurgency that would have been unthinkable a year ago. President Bush is also doing what he has been loath to do: asking neighboring countries for help, even the rabid anti-American Islamists in Tehran. Khalilzad revealed to NEWSWEEK that he has received explicit permission from Bush to begin a diplomatic dialogue with Iran, which has meddled politically in Iraq. "I've been authorized by the president to engage the Iranians as I engaged them in Afghanistan directly," says Khalilzad. "There will be meetings, and that's also a departure and an adjustment. "

The new U.S. strategy could still fail in many ways. One, the Iraqi units taking over from U.S. troops are almost wholly dependent upon American logistical and other support functions. So while the training and equipping of the Iraqi frontline units should be completed by January 2007, building a support capability behind them is going to take a lot longer, says Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the former commander in charge of training. That means U.S. convoys won't stop rolling along the highways of Iraq—and they could be even more vulnerable to roadside IEDs because they'll be protected by Iraqis, not American combat troops.

Another major hurdle for the Bush administration is that old Vietnam-era bugaboo, credibility. Why, after two years of positive assessments that turned out wrong, should the American public stick with the president now? For too long Pentagon officials have also recklessly inflated figures on Iraqi readiness. Finally, the insurgents have shown an uncanny ability to read shifts in U.S. tactics—and adapt. One illustration of the insurgent strategy—win by bogging down the Americans—is the nation's electricity problem. Prewar electricity generation was 4,300 megawatts. After the war, it sank to 2,500 megawatts. Since May 2003, America has spent $3.2 billion on electricity projects throughout the country, all to get today's electricity-generation levels up to a meager 4,400 megawatts. Why so little progress? Insurgent attacks are responsible for two thirds of the power cutbacks, U.S. officials say. If U.S. money dries up, or if Iraqi security forces aren't able to secure those electric grids, U.S. officials fear the insurgency will make quick work of the country's power infrastructure. "The terrorists have an agenda and a plan," says a senior U.S. official in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity. "In the past they were just trying to disrupt. Now they believe they can change the political dynamic here."

Khalilzad says his biggest worry, though, is the antiwar ferment back home. "A Pandora's box has been opened," he says. "The future of the world is at stake here because this region, Iraq, is the defining challenge of our time ... We need to close this in a way that does not produce huge problems down the road, that ultimately produces isolationism at home and a world with far more security problems than at present." Good point. Now convince the American people.

With John Barry in Washington

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1652244,00.html

US may use planes as substitute for troops in Iraq

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Monday November 28, 2005
The Guardian


The Bush administration is considering a plan to put America's awesome airpower at the disposal of Iraqi commanders, as a way of reducing the number of US troops on the ground. The plan is causing consternation among commanders in US air force, who say it could lead to increased civilian casualties and lead to airstrikes being used as means of settling old scores.
According to an article in the New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh, the possibility of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused unease in the military, with air force commanders objecting to the possibility that Iraqis will eventually be responsible for target selection.

"Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame it on someone else?" a senior military planner told the magazine. "Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of al-Qaida, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?"

With the White House under increasing pressure over its handling of the war in Iraq, senior administration figures are for the first time signalling the possibility of significant troop reductions. In a departure from previous statements the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said last week that the training of Iraqi soldiers had advanced so far that the current number of US troops in the country probably would not be needed much longer.

However, there remains scepticism about the ability of Iraqi forces to take over from the 160,000 US troops in the country. Under the plans reported in the New Yorker, air power will be used to try to fill the gap left by troop reductions. But with the insurgency operating mostly within urban environments, and planes relying on laser-guided bombs directed from the ground to try to avoid collateral damage, there are fears that turning the process over the Iraqis could lead to increased civilian casualties.

"The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot ... The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots can't verify. And we're going to turn this process over to the Iraqis?" a former high-level intelligence official said.

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

Use of Chemical in Iraq Ignites Debate
Critics say civilians died in incendiary attacks. U.S. asserts white phosphorus was only used on insurgents.

By John Daniszewski and Mark Mazzetti, Times Staff Writers


BAGHDAD — Omar Ibrahim Abdullah went for a walk to get away from the heavy fighting in Fallouja a little over a year ago and, by his account, came across such a grotesque sight that he's been unable to banish it from his memory.

The United States had mounted a full-scale offensive to pacify the rebel-controlled Iraqi city, and Abdullah said he was eager to escape the Askari district, where he lived. He walked south toward the Euphrates River and stumbled on dozens of burned bodies that he said were colored black and red.

"They must have been affected by chemicals," he said, "because I had never seen anything like that before."

The corpses, he said, had suffered burns from the U.S. military's use of an incendiary chemical known as white phosphorus.

The Pentagon and other U.S. officials at first denied, and later admitted, that troops had used white phosphorus as a weapon against insurgents in Fallouja during that fiercely fought campaign. Its use became public because of questions raised by an Italian television documentary Nov. 8, which alleged that civilians had been targeted "indiscriminately" and that hundreds had died.

But even though U.S. officials have admitted using the substance against enemy fighters, they have denied the allegations of Fallouja residents such as Abdullah that its use was widespread and civilians were among those killed.

"We don't use munitions of any kind against innocent civilians," Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said during a news conference. "In accordance with all established conventions, [white phosphorus] can be used against enemy combatants."

Nicknamed "Willie Pete" by troops, white phosphorus is a dangerous chemical that combusts on contact with oxygen. The military employs it mainly to illuminate battlefields and provide smoke screens. But its use is highly controversial because the only way it can be extinguished is by shutting off its air supply. When it comes in contact with humans, the chemical will burn through to the bone.

Incendiaries are considered particularly inhumane weapons under international treaty, and a 1980 United Nations convention limits their use. The U.S. has not signed the part of the convention that deals with incendiary weapons. Nevertheless, it largely has avoided using incendiary weapons since the Vietnam War and destroyed the last of its napalm arsenal four years ago.

In the 1990s, in fact, the U.S. condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for allegedly using "white phosphorus chemical weapons" against Kurdish rebels and residents of Irbil and Dohuk.

In regard to a war the U.S. said it fought partly because of fears that Hussein would employ chemical or other nonconventional weapons, some critics say the use of white phosphorus is contrary to the spirit of American aims.

"An incendiary weapon cannot be thought of just like any conventional weapon," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Assn. in Washington. "There are rules that apply, and we have to make sure that they are being followed for various reasons."

He went on to explain that for the last century and a half, the U.S. has led international efforts to establish humane conduct standards in war, in part because American troops or civilians could be harmed.

"There is an important principle at stake here. The United States should be very interested in making sure that we are following the rules and other people understand we are following the rules," Kimball said.

But Pentagon officials say the use of white phosphorus, even as an incendiary weapon, is not proscribed by any treaty as long as it is directed solely against military targets.

The question is whether its use in November 2004 against insurgents fighting in a city that most, but not all, civilian inhabitants had fled violates the Inhumane Weapons Convention, to which the United States is a party.

Another issue is whether the United States is obliged to follow the convention's rules on incendiary weapons, given that the U.S. Senate has not ratified that protocol.

The rule bans the use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets or military targets not clearly separated from "concentrations" of civilians.

On the streets of Fallouja, the common allegation is that the U.S. used incendiary bombs against civilians. Iraqi doctors and the local human rights organization have pointed to scores of burned corpses as evidence.

But there's been no independent verification. U.S. officials have accused doctors in Fallouja of lying about such issues because, the officials say, the physicians are loyal to or intimidated by insurgents. The blackened corpses seen in the Italian documentary, for instance, may have been burned by conventional explosives or resulted from decomposition, some viewers have argued.

Abdul Qadir Sadi, an Iraqi from Fallouja in his 30s, said doctors had told him that two of his family members were killed by white phosphorus.

"They had a lot of serious skin burns," Sadi said. "The doctor at the hospital told us that they must have been hit by these chemicals. They were being treated by the doctor, but after a while, these burned places started to dissolve."

"We have registered the documents and exhibits of everything that happened," said Mohammed Tariq, a human rights worker in Fallouja. "We informed the Iraqi Red Crescent, the International Red Cross and [other] international organizations, but our efforts were in vain."

Pentagon officials say troops used white phosphorus in the Fallouja offensive for several reasons.

"It was used to mask and obscure U.S. troop movements and to flush out dug-in insurgents from spider holes and trenches," said Maj. Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman. "It was lawfully used against legitimate military targets."

When stories surfaced last year that the U.S. had used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Fallouja, the State Department flatly denied the allegations. Such denials from Pentagon and diplomatic officials continued until only weeks ago.

According to talking points issued by the State Department in December, "U.S. forces have used [white phosphorus rounds] very sparingly in Fallouja, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

Vician said he could not explain the denials.

Elsewhere, soldiers and Marines had publicly praised the weapon's effectiveness against insurgents during the battle. A group of artillery officers who fought in Fallouja wrote in a military journal this year that white phosphorus, typically referred to as WP, "proved to be an effective and versatile weapon."

"We used it for screening missions … and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents … when we could not get effects on them with [high explosives]," the officers wrote in the March-April issue of Field Artillery magazine.

"We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and [high explosives] to take them out."

The U.S. began using white phosphorus extensively during World War II, when soldiers found the chemical useful for smoke screens, marking enemy positions and attacking military targets. For more than half a century, white phosphorus has been a staple of the U.S. arsenal.

John E. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based military affairs think tank, doubts the claims made in the Italian television report that the U.S. military was aiming such munitions at civilians.

"What purpose could possibly be served by targeting civilians in Iraq?" he asked. "It would accomplish nothing, it would be counterproductive, and it would be a waste of ammo."

To journalists who saw white phosphorus used during the campaign, it appeared that it was meant for illuminating, not killing, insurgents.

Los Angeles Times reporter Patrick J. McDonnell, who accompanied Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, as it fought its way into Fallouja, recalls seeing night virtually turn to day as white phosphorus shells burst in the air.

"We only saw 'Willie Pete' being used for illumination purposes," McDonnell said. But he also remembers how the proximity of the fiery blasts concerned the Marines.

"The guys in my company were somewhat annoyed for two reasons: It illuminated our positions at night, not a nice thing, and occasionally the bursts came quite close to us. There didn't seem to be a lot of coordination," he said by e-mail.

At the time, most civilians had fled town, and U.S. troops seemed to be fighting in a city devoid of almost everyone but insurgents, McDonnell noted.

"We had rounds of white phosphorus burst in the air quite close to us, and the Marines were quite concerned, since they knew of its impact — that it burns through flesh and is impossible to extinguish," he said.

"Many Marines on the ground cursed the 'Willie Pete' every time it went off."

Daniszewski reported from Baghdad and Mazzetti from Washington. Special correspondent Asmaa Waguih contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

White heat

White phosphorus, a highly flammable substance that ignites on contact with oxygen, is a longtime staple of the U.S. military arsenal. Some uses:

{bull} Can be loaded into a mortar shell, howitzer round or other projectile and fired at a target.

{bull} When delivered by an exploding shell, white phosphorus in contact with oxygen produces a smoke screen on the ground that can last up to 15 minutes. It can also illuminate battlefield targets.

{bull} Can be used as a weapon. Human contact with white phosphorus results in severe burns. The fire can only be extinguished by eliminating the oxygen supply.

Sources: Integrated Publishing, fas.org

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article329622.ece

from The Independent & The Independent on Sunday
28 November 2005 08:24 Home > News > UK > UK Politics

So what have they got to hide? Official secrets, lies, and the truth about the assault on Fallujah
The trial of two Whitehall workers this week could reveal Britain's role in one of the Iraq war's darkest episodes. By Raymond Whitaker and Marie Woolf
Published: 27 November 2005

Nobody outside the Westminster village would recognise the names of David Keogh and Leo O'Connor. One is a former Cabinet Office official, the other a researcher for an MP who lost his seat at the last election. But the crime of which they are accused concerns two men who are firmly in the public eye: Tony Blair and George Bush.

On Tuesday, Mr Keogh, 49, the civil servant, and Mr O'Connor, 42, who worked for the former Labour MP Tony Clarke, will appear at Bow Street magistrates' court in London. Mr Keogh is charged, under the Official Secrets Act, with sending the researcher a transcript of an April 2004 meeting at the White House between the Prime Minister and the President. When the document was shown to Mr Clarke, then MP for Northampton South, he returned it to Downing Street.

All that occurred well over a year ago. Despite the eminence of those taking part in the discussion, the transcript did not carry the highest classification, and the case might have attracted relatively little attention were it not for subsequent events. On Tuesday, the Daily Mirror reported that Mr Bush had told Mr Blair in April last year that he wanted to bomb the studios of al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language satellite channel which has consistently challenged the White House line on Iraq.

With its Arab cameramen and reporters, al-Jazeera, based in the Gulf state of Qatar, has been able to go where embedded Western reporters dare not. At the time of the White House meeting, it was broadcasting bloody footage from within Fallujah, then under assault by US forces. Added to the channel's role as the outlet for statements by Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and its coverage of on-camera executions of Western hostages by al-Qa'ida followers, it was not surprising that Mr Bush might have been angry with al-Jazeera.

According to the Mirror, Mr Blair dissuaded the President from any attack on the TV station. It reported conflicting views on whether Mr Bush might have been joking or not - even if he had been prepared to disregard the international outrage it would have caused, Qatar is a key Middle East base for the Americans - although it is possible that he was suggesting a clandestine bombing.

Even this trumpeted exclusive might not have resonated for long. But in a move unprecedented since Labour came to office in 1997, the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, warned newspapers that they would be breaching the Official Secrets Act (OSA) if they published the contents of the document at the centre of the prosecution against Keogh and O'Connor. The Mirror's editor, Richard Wallace, complained: "We made No 10 fully aware of the intention to publish and were given 'no comment', officially or unofficially. Suddenly, 24 hours later, we are threatened under section 5 [of the OSA]."

Why did the Government choose this moment to crack down? It had not reacted to many previous leaks, some extremely embarrassing, in particular the revelation that Mr Blair and some of his most senior ministers, aides and military commanders had been discussing detailed plans for war in Iraq in the summer of 2002, while insisting in public that no decisions had been taken. The Mirror's credibility on Iraq also suffered when it published hoax pictures purporting to show British soldiers abusing prisoners, leading to the departure of Piers Morgan as editor.

Al-Jazeera has seized on the report, pointing out that its bureaux in Kabul and Baghdad had been hit by US forces, despite the fact that the channel had sent their co-ordinates to the Pentagon. Another of its employees is in indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay. But the Mirror scoop might not have been taken half as seriously in other quarters if Lord Goldsmith had not intervened.

The Attorney-General insisted yesterday that he was acting independently of Downing Street, mainly on the narrow legal grounds of avoiding prejudice to a "live" trial. He was not using the OSA to prevent political embarrassment. But when BBC Radio 4's Today programme asked if the issue was one of national security, he avoided the question.

"Some people will think this is heavy-handed," said a senior Whitehall source. "What people are bound to say is that we are being inconsistent in dealing with this case. They are bound to ask why we are pursuing this case, and not others."

In other words: what do they have to hide? The answer to that appears to reflect the degree to which Tony Blair is still haunted by the Iraq war. The attack on Fallujah, which was at its height when he met George Bush, epitomises many of the most serious concerns about that war.

In response to the lynching of four American security contractors, US forces were ordered to "clean out" Fallujah, over the protests of the Marine commander on the ground, who argued that months of painstaking efforts to win hearts and minds would be destroyed.

"The decision was political, not military," said Toby Dodge of Queen Mary College, London University, who went to Downing Street with other Iraq experts before the war to warn Mr Blair of the perils of an invasion. "It was taken in the Oval Office."

But after three weeks of heavy fighting, and correspondingly high casualties, the White House lost its nerve. The Marines, who lost 600 men, believed they were on the point of seizing the town when they were ordered to hand over to an "Iraqi brigade" commanded by a general from the Saddam era, which promptly yielded control back to the insurgents.

In the midst of this disaster, the Prime Minister was at the White House. That Britain was concerned about the conduct of the fighting was revealed in a leaked Foreign Office memo the following month. This said: "Heavy-handed US military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf, some weeks ago, have fuelled both Sunni and Shia opposition to the coalition, and lost us much public support inside Iraq."

Possible options for the deployment of British troops were also discussed in the memo, including the possibility that they might take over the troubled areas of Najaf and Qadisiyah, where Spanish troops had been pulled out by the new Socialist government. That did not materialise, but at this time last year, the Black Watch was sent north to back up US forces being readied for a fresh assault on Fallujah. In 30 days, the 850-strong British force lost five men.

US forces surrounded Fallujah, and the civilian population was ordered out amid warnings that anyone remaining would be treated as an insurgent. Much of the town was flattened, and many of its former inhabitants have never returned. To this day, we have little idea how many people, whether "foreign fighters" or unfortunate civilians, were killed in Fallujah. But disturbing details continue to trickle out.

Only this month, we learned that US troops used white phosphorus, intended to provide smokescreens, as an illegal chemical weapon against fighters in buildings or foxholes. On contact with skin or clothing, it can burn down to the bone. And many of the same tactics are being employed during Operation Steel Curtain, which for the past few weeks has sought to drive insurgents out of towns and villages near Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan.

Some have argued that if the text of the memo at the heart of the present row were published, it would show that Mr Blair, contrary to the claims of Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to Washington, had used his influence to restrain American behaviour in Iraq. But events in Fallujah and beyond do not give much sign that the US ever heeded any British expression of concern about its methods of dealing with the insurgency.

Not only is the Prime Minister's authority in Washington in question, but Iraq has also eroded his ability to push through his policies at home. It is in this context that the Government's crackdown on leaks is being viewed. With open disagreements growing inside the Government on a host of issues - just in the past week, these have included pensions, nuclear power, education policy and flu jabs - a firmer approach is needed to stop the flow of confidential documents, some believe. "Having these documents is a breach of the OSA, and this is a serious offence," said one official. "It's illegal."

But the strategy is seen as risky, even within the Government, and its execution was less than clinical. Days after the news of Lord Goldsmith's warning, some media organisations were still seeking official notification. It remains to be seen whether the Government seeks to prevent the five-page document becoming public during the OSA trial, but it could not have focused more interest on the case unless it published the whole transcript, as Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, and others are demanding in a parliamentary motion.

The Independent on Sunday has not seen the document, nor discussed its contents with anyone who has, and the Prime Minister can argue that his private discussions with other leaders should remain confidential. But it is clear that the two, previously anonymous, men due in court this week are overshadowed by the legacy of the conflict jointly launched by the PM and the President.

Nobody outside the Westminster village would recognise the names of David Keogh and Leo O'Connor. One is a former Cabinet Office official, the other a researcher for an MP who lost his seat at the last election. But the crime of which they are accused concerns two men who are firmly in the public eye: Tony Blair and George Bush.

On Tuesday, Mr Keogh, 49, the civil servant, and Mr O'Connor, 42, who worked for the former Labour MP Tony Clarke, will appear at Bow Street magistrates' court in London. Mr Keogh is charged, under the Official Secrets Act, with sending the researcher a transcript of an April 2004 meeting at the White House between the Prime Minister and the President. When the document was shown to Mr Clarke, then MP for Northampton South, he returned it to Downing Street.

All that occurred well over a year ago. Despite the eminence of those taking part in the discussion, the transcript did not carry the highest classification, and the case might have attracted relatively little attention were it not for subsequent events. On Tuesday, the Daily Mirror reported that Mr Bush had told Mr Blair in April last year that he wanted to bomb the studios of al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language satellite channel which has consistently challenged the White House line on Iraq.

With its Arab cameramen and reporters, al-Jazeera, based in the Gulf state of Qatar, has been able to go where embedded Western reporters dare not. At the time of the White House meeting, it was broadcasting bloody footage from within Fallujah, then under assault by US forces. Added to the channel's role as the outlet for statements by Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and its coverage of on-camera executions of Western hostages by al-Qa'ida followers, it was not surprising that Mr Bush might have been angry with al-Jazeera.

According to the Mirror, Mr Blair dissuaded the President from any attack on the TV station. It reported conflicting views on whether Mr Bush might have been joking or not - even if he had been prepared to disregard the international outrage it would have caused, Qatar is a key Middle East base for the Americans - although it is possible that he was suggesting a clandestine bombing.

Even this trumpeted exclusive might not have resonated for long. But in a move unprecedented since Labour came to office in 1997, the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, warned newspapers that they would be breaching the Official Secrets Act (OSA) if they published the contents of the document at the centre of the prosecution against Keogh and O'Connor. The Mirror's editor, Richard Wallace, complained: "We made No 10 fully aware of the intention to publish and were given 'no comment', officially or unofficially. Suddenly, 24 hours later, we are threatened under section 5 [of the OSA]."

Why did the Government choose this moment to crack down? It had not reacted to many previous leaks, some extremely embarrassing, in particular the revelation that Mr Blair and some of his most senior ministers, aides and military commanders had been discussing detailed plans for war in Iraq in the summer of 2002, while insisting in public that no decisions had been taken. The Mirror's credibility on Iraq also suffered when it published hoax pictures purporting to show British soldiers abusing prisoners, leading to the departure of Piers Morgan as editor.

Al-Jazeera has seized on the report, pointing out that its bureaux in Kabul and Baghdad had been hit by US forces, despite the fact that the channel had sent their co-ordinates to the Pentagon. Another of its employees is in indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay. But the Mirror scoop might not have been taken half as seriously in other quarters if Lord Goldsmith had not intervened.

The Attorney-General insisted yesterday that he was acting independently of Downing Street, mainly on the narrow legal grounds of avoiding prejudice to a "live" trial. He was not using the OSA to prevent political embarrassment. But when BBC Radio 4's Today programme asked if the issue was one of national security, he avoided the question.

"Some people will think this is heavy-handed," said a senior Whitehall source. "What people are bound to say is that we are being inconsistent in dealing with this case. They are bound to ask why we are pursuing this case, and not others."

In other words: what do they have to hide? The answer to that appears to reflect the degree to which Tony Blair is still haunted by the Iraq war. The attack on Fallujah, which was at its height when he met George Bush, epitomises many of the most serious concerns about that war.
In response to the lynching of four American security contractors, US forces were ordered to "clean out" Fallujah, over the protests of the Marine commander on the ground, who argued that months of painstaking efforts to win hearts and minds would be destroyed.

"The decision was political, not military," said Toby Dodge of Queen Mary College, London University, who went to Downing Street with other Iraq experts before the war to warn Mr Blair of the perils of an invasion. "It was taken in the Oval Office."

But after three weeks of heavy fighting, and correspondingly high casualties, the White House lost its nerve. The Marines, who lost 600 men, believed they were on the point of seizing the town when they were ordered to hand over to an "Iraqi brigade" commanded by a general from the Saddam era, which promptly yielded control back to the insurgents.

In the midst of this disaster, the Prime Minister was at the White House. That Britain was concerned about the conduct of the fighting was revealed in a leaked Foreign Office memo the following month. This said: "Heavy-handed US military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf, some weeks ago, have fuelled both Sunni and Shia opposition to the coalition, and lost us much public support inside Iraq."

Possible options for the deployment of British troops were also discussed in the memo, including the possibility that they might take over the troubled areas of Najaf and Qadisiyah, where Spanish troops had been pulled out by the new Socialist government. That did not materialise, but at this time last year, the Black Watch was sent north to back up US forces being readied for a fresh assault on Fallujah. In 30 days, the 850-strong British force lost five men.

US forces surrounded Fallujah, and the civilian population was ordered out amid warnings that anyone remaining would be treated as an insurgent. Much of the town was flattened, and many of its former inhabitants have never returned. To this day, we have little idea how many people, whether "foreign fighters" or unfortunate civilians, were killed in Fallujah. But disturbing details continue to trickle out.

Only this month, we learned that US troops used white phosphorus, intended to provide smokescreens, as an illegal chemical weapon against fighters in buildings or foxholes. On contact with skin or clothing, it can burn down to the bone. And many of the same tactics are being employed during Operation Steel Curtain, which for the past few weeks has sought to drive insurgents out of towns and villages near Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan.

Some have argued that if the text of the memo at the heart of the present row were published, it would show that Mr Blair, contrary to the claims of Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to Washington, had used his influence to restrain American behaviour in Iraq. But events in Fallujah and beyond do not give much sign that the US ever heeded any British expression of concern about its methods of dealing with the insurgency.

Not only is the Prime Minister's authority in Washington in question, but Iraq has also eroded his ability to push through his policies at home. It is in this context that the Government's crackdown on leaks is being viewed. With open disagreements growing inside the Government on a host of issues - just in the past week, these have included pensions, nuclear power, education policy and flu jabs - a firmer approach is needed to stop the flow of confidential documents, some believe. "Having these documents is a breach of the OSA, and this is a serious offence," said one official. "It's illegal."

But the strategy is seen as risky, even within the Government, and its execution was less than clinical. Days after the news of Lord Goldsmith's warning, some media organisations were still seeking official notification. It remains to be seen whether the Government seeks to prevent the five-page document becoming public during the OSA trial, but it could not have focused more interest on the case unless it published the whole transcript, as Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, and others are demanding in a parliamentary motion.

The Independent on Sunday has not seen the document, nor discussed its contents with anyone who has, and the Prime Minister can argue that his private discussions with other leaders should remain confidential. But it is clear that the two, previously anonymous, men due in court this week are overshadowed by the legacy of the conflict jointly launched by the PM and the President.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20051...15232-9399r.htm

Video prompts probes into security in Iraq
By Sean Rayment
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
November 27, 2005



LONDON -- A video appearing to show private security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the Internet.
The video, which first appeared on a Web site that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defense Services -- one of the biggest security companies operating in Iraq -- contained four separate clips, in which security guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian cars.
All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on "route Irish," a road that links the airport to Baghdad.
The road has acquired the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous in the world because of the number of suicide attacks and ambushes carried out by insurgents against coalition troops. In one four-month period earlier this year, it was the scene of 150 attacks.
In one of the recorded attacks, a Mercedes is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes in to a civilian taxi.
In another clip, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the vehicle before it comes to a slow stop.
There are no clues as to the shooter but either a Scottish or Irish accent can be heard in at least one of the clips above Elvis Presley's, "Mystery Train," the music which accompanies the video.
A spokesman for Aegis confirmed yesterday that the company was carrying out an internal investigation to see if any of their employees were involved.
The Foreign Office has also confirmed that it is investigating the contents of the video in conjunction with Aegis.
Aegis Defense Services was set up in 2002 by Tim Spicer, a former officer in Britain's Scots Guards military unit.
The company was recently awarded a security contract in Iraq by the U.S. government for nearly $400 million.
Aegis conducts a number of security duties and helped with the collection of ballot papers in the country's recent constitutional referendum.

Mr. Spicer, 53, rose to public prominence in 1998 when his private military contractor, Sandlines International, was accused of breaking U.N. sanctions by selling arms to Sierra Leone.
The video appeared on the Web site www.aegisiraq.co.uk.
The Web site states: "This site does not belong to Aegis Defence Ltd, it belongs to the men on the ground who are the heart and soul of the company." The clips have been removed.
The Web site also contains a message from Mr. Spicer, which reads: "I am also concerned about media interest in this site and I remind everyone of their contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the media without clearing it with the project management or Aegis London. ...
"Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody."
Security companies awarded contracts by the U.S. administration in Iraq adopt the same rules for opening fire as the American military.
U.S. military vehicles carry a sign warning drivers to keep their distance from the vehicle. The warning which appears in both Arabic and English reads, "Danger. Keep back. Authorized to use lethal force." A similar warning is also displayed on the rear of vehicles belonging to Aegis.
Capt. Adnan Tawfiq of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which deals with compensation issues, told the Sunday Telegraph that he has received numerous claims from families who say that their relatives have been shot by private security contractors traveling in road convoys.
"When the security companies kill people, they just drive away and nothing is done. Sometimes, we [call] the companies concerned and they deny everything. The families don't get any money or compensation. I would say we have had about 50-60 incidents of this kind," Capt. Tawfiq said.
A spokesman for Aegis said: "There is nothing to indicate that these film clips are in any way connected to Aegis."

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/051205fa_fact

UP IN THE AIR
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Where is the Iraq war headed next?
Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28

In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that President George W. Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq next year. The Administration’s best-case scenario is that the parliamentary election scheduled for December 15th will produce a coalition government that will join the Administration in calling for a withdrawal to begin in the spring. By then, the White House hopes, the new government will be capable of handling the insurgency. In a speech on November 19th, Bush repeated the latest Administration catchphrase: “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” He added, “When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.” One sign of the political pressure on the Administration to prepare for a withdrawal came last week, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News that the current level of American troops would not have to be maintained “for very much longer,” because the Iraqis were getting better at fighting the insurgency.

A high-level Pentagon war planner told me, however, that he has seen scant indication that the President would authorize a significant pullout of American troops if he believed that it would impede the war against the insurgency. There are several proposals currently under review by the White House and the Pentagon; the most ambitious calls for American combat forces to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than eighty thousand by next fall, with all American forces officially designated “combat” to be pulled out of the area by the summer of 2008. In terms of implementation, the planner said, “the drawdown plans that I’m familiar with are condition-based, event-driven, and not in a specific time frame”—that is, they depend on the ability of a new Iraqi government to defeat the insurgency. (A Pentagon spokesman said that the Administration had not made any decisions and had “no plan to leave, only a plan to complete the mission.”)

A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

“We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. Clawson’s views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting—Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of airpower. The rule now is to commit Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield.”

He continued, “We want to draw down our forces, but the President is prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling places in 2004.” The war against the insurgency “may end up being a nasty and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win,” he said. “As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, we’re set to go. There’s no sense that the world is caving in. We’re in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to our message.”

One Pentagon adviser told me, “There are always contingency plans, but why withdraw and take a chance? I don’t think the President will go for it”—until the insurgency is broken. “He’s not going to back off. This is bigger than domestic politics.”



Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.

“I tried to tell him,” the former senior official said. “And he couldn’t hear it.”

There are grave concerns within the military about the capability of the U.S. Army to sustain two or three more years of combat in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon, a specialist on military issues at the Brookings Institution, told me, “The people in the institutional Army feel they don’t have the luxury of deciding troop levels, or even participating in the debate. They’re planning on staying the course until 2009. I can’t believe the Army thinks that it will happen, because there’s no sustained drive to increase the size of the regular Army.” O’Hanlon noted that “if the President decides to stay the present course in Iraq some troops would be compelled to serve fourth and fifth tours of combat by 2007 and 2008, which could have serious consequences for morale and competency levels.”

Many of the military’s most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but they say nothing in public, because they don’t want to jeopardize their careers. The Administration has “so terrified the generals that they know they won’t go public,” a former defense official said. A retired senior C.I.A. officer with knowledge of Iraq told me that one of his colleagues recently participated in a congressional tour there. The legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers, and generals that “things were "expletive deleted"ed up.” But in a subsequent teleconference with Rumsfeld, he said, the generals kept those criticisms to themselves.

One person with whom the Pentagon’s top commanders have shared their private views for decades is Representative John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The President and his key aides were enraged when, on November 17th, Murtha gave a speech in the House calling for a withdrawal of troops within six months. The speech was filled with devastating information. For example, Murtha reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from a hundred and fifty a week to more than seven hundred a week in the past year. He said that an estimated fifty thousand American soldiers will suffer “from what I call battle fatigue” in the war, and he said that the Americans were seen as “the common enemy” in Iraq. He also took issue with one of the White House’s claims—that foreign fighters were playing the major role in the insurgency. Murtha said that American soldiers “haven’t captured any in this latest activity”—the continuing battle in western Anbar province, near the border with Syria. “So this idea that they’re coming in from outside, we still think there’s only seven per cent.”

Murtha’s call for a speedy American pullout only seemed to strengthen the White House’s resolve. Administration officials “are beyond angry at him, because he is a serious threat to their policy—both on substance and politically,” the former defense official said. Speaking at the Osan Air Force base, in South Korea, two days after Murtha’s speech, Bush said, “The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. . . . If they’re not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, and to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation. I’m going to make you this commitment: this is not going to happen on my watch.”

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”



Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused great unease. For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. “Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?” another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. “Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?”

“It’s a serious business,” retired Air Force General Charles Horner, who was in charge of allied bombing during the 1991 Gulf War, said. “The Air Force has always had concerns about people ordering air strikes who are not Air Force forward air controllers. We need people on active duty to think it out, and they will. There has to be training to be sure that somebody is not trying to get even with somebody else.” (Asked for a comment, the Pentagon spokesman said there were plans in place for such training. He also noted that Iraq had no offensive airpower of its own, and thus would have to rely on the United States for some time.)

The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant—and underreported—aspect of the fight against the insurgency. The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004. “With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way,” a Marine press release said, “Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on the front line.” Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. “This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased. Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war.

The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be “painted,” or illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. “The pilot doesn’t identify the target as seen in the pre-brief”—the instructions provided before takeoff—a former high-level intelligence official told me. “The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a ‘hot-read’ ”—from a military unit on the ground—“and you drop your bombs with no communication with the guys on the ground. You don’t want to break radio silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots can’t verify.” He added, “And we’re going to turn this process over to the Iraqis?”

The second senior military planner told me that there are essentially two types of targeting now being used in Iraq: a deliberate site-selection process that works out of air-operations centers in the region, and “adaptive targeting”—supportive bombing by prepositioned or loitering warplanes that are suddenly alerted to firefights or targets of opportunity by military units on the ground. “The bulk of what we do today is adaptive,” the officer said, “and it’s divorced from any operational air planning. Airpower can be used as a tool of internal political coercion, and my attitude is that I can’t imagine that we will give that power to the Iraqis.”

This military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, “there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets—it’s a reversion to the Stone Age. There’s no operational art. That’s what happens when you give targeting to the Army—they hit what the local commander wants to hit.”

One senior Pentagon consultant I spoke to said he was optimistic that “American air will immediately make the Iraqi Army that much better.” But he acknowledged that he, too, had concerns about Iraqi targeting. “We have the most expensive eyes in the sky right now,” the consultant said. “But a lot of Iraqis want to settle old scores. Who is going to have authority to call in air strikes? There’s got to be a behavior-based rule.”

General John Jumper, who retired last month after serving four years as the Air Force chief of staff, was “in favor of certification of those Iraqis who will be allowed to call in strikes,” the Pentagon consultant told me. “I don’t know if it will be approved. The regular Army generals were resisting it to the last breath, despite the fact that they would benefit the most from it.”

A Pentagon consultant with close ties to the officials in the Vice-President’s office and the Pentagon who advocated the war said that the Iraqi penchant for targeting tribal and personal enemies with artillery and mortar fire had created “impatience and resentment” inside the military. He believed that the Air Force’s problems with Iraqi targeting might be addressed by the formation of U.S.-Iraqi transition teams, whose American members would be drawn largely from Special Forces troops. This consultant said that there were plans to integrate between two hundred and three hundred Special Forces members into Iraqi units, which was seen as a compromise aimed at meeting the Air Force’s demand to vet Iraqis who were involved in targeting. But in practice, the consultant added, it meant that “the Special Ops people will soon allow Iraqis to begin calling in the targets.”

Robert Pape, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago, who has written widely on American airpower, and who taught for three years at the Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies, in Alabama, predicted that the air war “will get very ugly” if targeting is turned over to the Iraqis. This would be especially true, he said, if the Iraqis continued to operate as the U.S. Army and Marines have done—plowing through Sunni strongholds on search-and-destroy missions. “If we encourage the Iraqis to clear and hold their own areas, and use airpower to stop the insurgents from penetrating the cleared areas, it could be useful,” Pape said. “The risk is that we will encourage the Iraqis to do search-and-destroy, and they would be less judicious about using airpower—and the violence would go up. More civilians will be killed, which means more insurgents will be created.”

Even American bombing on behalf of an improved, well-trained Iraqi Army would not necessarily be any more successful against the insurgency. “It’s not going to work,” said Andrew Brookes, the former director of airpower studies at the Royal Air Force’s advanced staff college, who is now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London. “Can you put a lid on the insurgency with bombing?” Brookes said. “No. You can concentrate in one area, but the guys will spring up in another town.” The inevitable reliance on Iraqi ground troops’ targeting would also create conflicts. “I don’t see your guys dancing to the tune of someone else,” Brookes said. He added that he and many other experts “don’t believe that airpower is a solution to the problems inside Iraq at all. Replacing boots on the ground with airpower didn’t work in Vietnam, did it?”



The Air Force’s worries have been subordinated, so far, to the political needs of the White House. The Administration’s immediate political goal after the December elections is to show that the day-to-day conduct of the war can be turned over to the newly trained and equipped Iraqi military. It has already planned heavily scripted change-of-command ceremonies, complete with the lowering of American flags at bases and the raising of Iraqi ones.

Some officials in the State Department, the C.I.A., and British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government have settled on their candidate of choice for the December elections—Iyad Allawi, the secular Shiite who served until this spring as Iraq’s interim Prime Minister. They believe that Allawi can gather enough votes in the election to emerge, after a round of political bargaining, as Prime Minister. A former senior British adviser told me that Blair was convinced that Allawi “is the best hope.” The fear is that a government dominated by religious Shiites, many of whom are close to Iran, would give Iran greater political and military influence inside Iraq. Allawi could counter Iran’s influence; also, he would be far more supportive and coöperative if the Bush Administration began a drawdown of American combat forces in the coming year.

Blair has assigned a small team of operatives to provide political help to Allawi, the former adviser told me. He also said that there was talk late this fall, with American concurrence, of urging Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite, to join forces in a coalition with Allawi during the post-election negotiations to form a government. Chalabi, who is notorious for his role in promoting flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction before the war, is now a deputy Prime Minister. He and Allawi were bitter rivals while in exile.

A senior United Nations diplomat told me that he was puzzled by the high American and British hopes for Allawi. “I know a lot of people want Allawi, but I think he’s been a terrific disappointment,” the diplomat said. “He doesn’t seem to be building a strong alliance, and at the moment it doesn’t look like he will do very well in the election.”

The second Pentagon consultant told me, “If Allawi becomes Prime Minister, we can say, ‘There’s a moderate, urban, educated leader now in power who does not want to deprive women of their rights.’ He would ask us to leave, but he would allow us to keep Special Forces operations inside Iraq—to keep an American presence the right way. Mission accomplished. A coup for Bush.”

A former high-level intelligence official cautioned that it was probably “too late” for any American withdrawal plan to work without further bloodshed. The constitution approved by Iraqi voters in October “will be interpreted by the Kurds and the Shiites to proceed with their plans for autonomy,” he said. “The Sunnis will continue to believe that if they can get rid of the Americans they can still win. And there still is no credible way to establish security for American troops.”

The fear is that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would inevitably trigger a Sunni-Shiite civil war. In many areas, that war has, in a sense, already begun, and the United States military is being drawn into the sectarian violence. An American Army officer who took part in the assault on Tal Afar, in the north of Iraq, earlier this fall, said that an American infantry brigade was placed in the position of providing a cordon of security around the besieged city for Iraqi forces, most of them Shiites, who were “rounding up any Sunnis on the basis of whatever a Shiite said to them.” The officer went on, “They were killing Sunnis on behalf of the Shiites,” with the active participation of a militia unit led by a retired American Special Forces soldier. “People like me have gotten so downhearted,” the officer added.

Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”

The following material is from the Center for Defense Information. It suggests that attitudes toward Iraq remain confused. It seems that the issue we will be debating in the future is whether the Iraq enterprise was doomed from the outset or whether bette execution could have brought it off. It's not an academic question if we are thinking of repeating the exercise anywhere elese.

While a majority of U.S. voters now view the war in Iraq as a mistake, there is no apparent majority opinion among the dissenters on what to do now. Some advocate a prompt and complete exodus from Iraq, bringing the troops home. Others seek a phased “redeployment” out of the country, leaving substantial forces in the region with a potential mission to assist friendly Iraqi forces by conducting further strikes there. The former view perceives the U.S. presence in Iraq as fundamentally, strategically ill-conceived and a route only to further chaos; the struggle in Iraq and worldwide against terror is something the United States only exacerbates with its military interventions. The latter view points to the incompetence of the Bush administration’s war effort and seeks to redirect the employment of U.S. forces and to find a way to win the war the Bush administration started in Iraq, and continues to fight in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf region, and internationally. Both sides to this argument point to further chaos and disaster if the other’s prescription for leaving Iraq is followed; they are really only united in their mutual derision for the tactics and strategy the Bush administration has insisted on for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The former view is most ably articulated by Straus Adviser Charles Pena in a recent commentary, “Getting Out: Our Strategic Interest,” that appeared at the TomPaine.com website. The latter view is also very competently expressed by Straus Adviser Lawrence Korb in “Leaving Iraq, the Right Way,” which appeared in Newsday on Nov. 17. Readers are encouraged to express their opinion about these different rationales for leaving Iraq. Those interested in doing so should address their comments to the Straus Military Reform Project Director, Winslow Wheeler, at winslowwheeler@comcast.net.

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This commentary by Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis first appeared in Newsday, Nov. 17, 2005.

Leaving Iraq, the Right Way

The Senate's strong bipartisan support on Tuesday for a resolution calling for concrete steps toward a drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq shows that Republicans and Democrats alike are unhappy with President George W. Bush's direction and leadership of the war.

The Bush administration's numerous mistakes - sending in too few troops and not providing proper guidance or equipment - as well as its frequent changes in the strategy for Iraq's political transition and reconstruction, have left us with no good options.

The status quo in Iraq is untenable. It is slowly but surely eroding American power and weakening our ability to keep Americans secure. But simply shifting gears into reverse and implementing a hasty withdrawal from Iraq is not the answer.

The only measure of where and when to use our military forces is: Does it make us safer? Nearly 31 months into the continuous deployment of more than 100,000 troops to Iraq, the clear answer is that having such a large number of troops on the ground is actually diminishing our security and not making Iraqis more secure.

The United States must begin redeployment in January, right after Iraq has its next election - whether to elect a permanent government or an assembly to draw up a new constitution. The Bush administration has left us with no better choice.

We believe the United States needs to pursue a plan of strategic redeployment - a threat-based strategy to target U.S. efforts against global terrorist networks and bring greater stability to Iraq and its neighborhood.

Strategic redeployment is a phased plan for drawing down U.S. troops starting in January. U.S. troops would completely withdraw from Iraq's urban areas, finishing the handover of responsibility already begun in Najaf, Karbala, parts of Baghdad and other major cities.

By the end of next year, 80,000 of the 150,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq would be redeployed from the country. All National Guard and Reserve units would be demobilized and returned to the United States next year. The other active duty troops scheduled to be deployed to Iraq in 2006 would be sent to other hot spots around the globe in the fight against terrorists, with nearly two divisions going to Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban insurgency and other troops going to the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia to meet emerging threats there.

In addition, an additional 14,000 troops redeployed in 2006 would remain over the horizon in Kuwait and in a Marine expeditionary force situated off-shore in the Persian Gulf to conduct strikes in coordination with Iraqi forces against any significant threats that might emerge.

Throughout 2006, continued U.S. military presence in Iraq would focus more sharply on its core missions: completing the training of Iraqi forces; improving border security; providing logistical and air support to Iraqi security forces; serving as advisers to Iraqi units; and tracking down insurgents and terrorist leaders with smaller, more nimble Special Forces units operating jointly with Iraqi forces. The continued presence would also reduce the chances for a full-blown civil war, although Iraqi leaders such as Ayatollah Ali Sistani have much more power to prevent civil war than U.S. troops do.

By the end of 2007, the only U.S. military forces in Iraq would be a small Marine contingent to protect the U.S. embassy, military advisers to the Iraqi government and counterterrorist units working with Iraqi forces.

Strategic redeployment differs from other plans for what to do in Iraq by recognizing that Iraq is now connected to a broader battle against global terrorist networks - even though it wasn't before the Bush administration's invasion.

Strategic redeployment rejects calls for an immediate and complete withdrawal, which would only serve to further destabilize the region and embolden our terrorist enemies. But strategic redeployment also rejects the current approach, right out of Osama bin Laden's playbook, for a vague, open-ended commitment that focuses our military power in a battle that cannot be won militarily, as Gen. George Casey, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, recently told Congress.

Our military presence in Iraq continues to feed the notion of occupation and extends the time for Iraqi forces to become self-sufficient. The time has come for strategic redeployment of our forces.

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Lawrence Korb served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Brian Katulis is director of democracy and public policy at the Center for American Progress.

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This commentary by Charles V. Peña first appeared at TomPaine.Com on Nov. 22, 2005.

Getting Out: Our Strategic Interest

Rep. John Murtha is right when he says, “The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home.” Yet the administration persists. At the American Enterpr