http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8311


December 27, 2005
US-Shi'ite Struggle Could Spin Out of Control

by Gareth Porter
The George W. Bush administration has embarked on a new effort to pressure Iraq's militant Shi'ite party leaders to give up their control over internal security affairs that could lead the Shi'ites to reconsider their reliance on U.S. troops.

The looming confrontation is the result of U.S. concerns about the takeover of the Interior Ministry by Shi'ites with close ties to Iran, as well as the impact of officially sanctioned sectarian violence against Sunnis who support the insurgency. The Shi'ite leaders, however, appear determined to hold onto the state's organs of repression as a guarantee against restoration of a Ba'athist regime.

The new turn in U.S. policy came in mid-November, when the administration decided to confront Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari publicly over the torture houses being run by Shi'ite officials in the Ministry of Interior at various locations in Baghdad.

The decision was not the result of a new revelation, because the U.S military command and U.S. embassy had known about such torture houses for months, from reporting by U.S. military officers.

U.S. Army doctor Maj. R. John Stukey told the Christian Science Monitor that he and U.S. military police had visited Interior Ministry detention facilities and had reported evidence of torture and other mistreatment at those facilities up through the chain of command before he left Baghdad in June. Washington had nevertheless remained silent about the issue.

However, the U.S. military raided an Interior Ministry's detention center in the Baghdad suburb of Jadriya on Nov. 13, whereupon the U.S. embassy and U.S. command issued an unusual joint statement calling the torture center "totally unacceptable."

The embassy then used the torture house revelation to issue a public demand that the militant Shi'ite parties give up their power over the key state security organs. On Nov. 17, the embassy said, "There must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of Iraqi Security Forces, facilities, or ministries."

Shi'ite leaders viewed these U.S. moves as part of an effort to reduce the majority controlled by the Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) in the parliament and to increase the vote for former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite and former Ba'athist who has been a longtime collaborator with the Central Intelligence Agency.

As early as August, Prime Minister Jaafari and other leaders of the main Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), had passed the word to their party members that the United States was trying to paralyze the government in order to bring Allawi back to power in the December elections.

When Allawi was interim prime minister in 2004-2005, he battled with militant Shi'ite party leaders over their push for radical de-Ba'athification and secret Iranian financing of SCIRI and Dawa candidates and the Iranian-trained Badr paramilitary units. Before last January's elections, Allawi's defense minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, publicly referred to the Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance slate as the "Iranian list."

The administration shared Allawi's views on Iranian covert involvement in Iraqi politics but chose not to comment explicitly about it in public, sparing the new Shi'ite government embarrassment. Referring to Iran-Iraq relations last May, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deplored "undue influence in the country through means that are not transparent."

Shortly before the recent parliamentary election, however, a U.S. official raised the issue explicitly on the record for the first time. Gen. George W. Casey complained in an interview with Knight-Ridder that the Iranians were "putting millions of dollars into the South to influence elections … funded primarily through their charity organizations and also Badr and some of these political parties."

Casey also referred to members of the Badr militia, who have entered the Interior Ministry units and the military in large numbers, as "their guys."

As the ballots were being cast on Dec. 15, Khalilzad indicated clearly that the United States wanted much broader power sharing in the next government. "Since no single party will have a majority, there will be a need for a very broad-based coalition," he said.

The embassy apparently hoped that the UIA would get fewer seats and Allawi more seats in the next parliament, increasing the pressure on the Shi'ite parties to negotiate a broad coalition government including both Allawi and Sunni representatives.

On Dec. 19, Khalilzad again signaled the U.S. determination to force the SCIRI leadership to yield control over the security organs of the government. "You can't have someone who is regarded as sectarian as minister of the interior," he said.

The initial returns indicated a stronger showing for the UIA than the embassy had expected, and a weaker showing for Allawi than in the January elections. Allawi now appears to be eliminated from negotiations on high-level jobs in the administration.

Nevertheless, Khalilzad still has the Kurdish card to play. The UIA will need the support of the Kurds to form a new government, and the Kurds, whose military alliance with the United States is central to their political strategy, have now signaled that they will demand the inclusion of Sunni representatives in the government.

At a meeting with Khalilzad on Sunday, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said, "Without the Sunni parties there will be no consensus government … [and] without consensus government there will be no unity, there will be no peace." Kurdish negotiators are also likely to insist that the Shi'ites give up control over the Interior Ministry.

The last time the UIA was in the process of trying to form a government after the first parliamentary election in January, Kurdish demands played a major role in delaying the formation of the new government for three months. That Kurdish negotiating strategy dovetailed with U.S. efforts to exert pressure on Shi'ite leaders to allow former Ba'athist officers to keep leading positions in the military and Ministry of Interior.

When the SCIRI leadership refused to back down on control over the Interior Ministry, the Bush administration relented rather than create a political crisis. This time, however, the stakes are higher. If sectarian violence continues to worsen, the White House risks a collapse of political support at home. And the administration has already warned publicly that it will not accept a continuation of the status quo.

For Shi'ite party leaders, U.S. pressure to share state power with secular or Sunni representatives – especially on internal security – touches a raw nerve. They regard control over the organs of state repression as the key to maintaining a Shi'ite regime in power.

If Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and other SCIRI leaders feel they have to choose between relying on U.S. military protection and the security of their regime, they are likely to choose the latter. They could counter U.S. pressures by warning they will demand a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops if the United States continues to interfere in such politically sensitive matters.

That would not be an entirely idle threat. Last October, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was reported by associates to be considering such a demand. The implication of calling for a relatively rapid U.S. withdrawal would be that the Shi'ite leaders would turn to Iran for overt financial and even military assistance, in line with their fundamental foreign policy orientation.

The Bush administration's strategy of pressure on Shi'ite leaders over the issue of control over state security organs thus has the potential to spin out of control and cause another policy disaster in Iraq and the entire Middle East.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis8.html


Bush Promises Victory in Iraq – But for Whom?
by Eric Margolis


Victory or defeat! So proclaimed President George W. Bush in his TV speech about Iraq last night.

Those who oppose Bush’s continued, $6.5 billion monthly war in Iraq are "defeatists." Withdrawal from Iraq would "damage US credibility around the world," warned the self-proclaimed "war president."

What Bush is really worried about, of course, is his own credibility. He has repeatedly shown he cares nothing about what the rest of the world thinks about the US. Why start now?

It’s too bad George W. Bush evaded regular military service by hiding out in the Texas Air National Guard during war time. If Bush had any real military experience, he and his mentor, Dick Cheney, who was "too busy" to do his military service during Vietnam, might have learned one of the basic laws of military science: only fools and megalomaniacs say "no retreat."

Retreat is as much a part of warfare as advance, and often an even more useful tactic. No general worth his stripes embarks on a battle or campaign without leaving open a secure line of retreat behind him. War is by nature uncertain and filled with nasty surprises.

The hallmark of a good commander is being able to quickly change plans when faced by unexpected adversity and withdraw, trading space for time, when his forces are in peril.

One of history’s greatest modern generals was Erich von Manstein who conducted a brilliant series of fighting withdrawals on the Eastern Front that are a classic of military art.

Two of the most egregious recent examples of the failure to retreat when military/political conditions demand it were Stalingrad and Kuwait. After the German Sixth Army was enveloped by vastly superior Soviet forces at Stalingrad in late 1942, Hitler refused his general’s pleas to break out. He thundered "no retreat" and accused his generals who urged a retreat to the west of "defeatism."

Hitler’s refusal to allow the Sixth Army to break out of encirclement and link up with advancing German forces condemned it to total destruction. Stalingrad marked the beginning of the end of Hitler’s dream of a thousand-year Reich. Hitler, who was wounded three times in World War I, was a good soldier and understood strategy. He refused to allow his Sixth Army to retreat because he feared it would undermine his authority and aura of invincibility. A dictator cannot afford to lose face by retreating.

Saddam Hussein faced the same problem in Kuwait in 1990–1991. Saddam invaded the US protectorate after its rulers had gravely insulted Iraq by demanding its war widows be sent to Kuwait’s harems in lieu of billions in loans for the Iran-Iraq War that bankrupt Baghdad owed the Kuwaitis.

Facing certain destruction from the US-led coalition, Saddam wanted to withdraw but feared doing so would fatally undermine his authority and lead to a coup. So he sat transfixed, hoping the Soviets would somehow rescue him from the jaws of disaster. In the end, Saddam’s armies in Kuwait were destroyed and Iraq submitted to siege.

Fools and megalomaniacs don’t know when to retreat. Just as the distant oil fields of the Caucasus lured Hitler ever east into the wastes of southern Russia and destruction, so Iraq’s oil treasure continues to mesmerize Bush, Cheney & Co. They clearly do not understand, or will not face the fact, that the US cannot afford to keep spending $6.5 billion a month on Iraq and $1 billion monthly in Afghanistan to prop up the little puppet regimes they have created.

The US Army and Marine Corps are being relentlessly ground down in both theaters, and now face not only a crisis of personnel replacements but the massive deterioration of their equipment, from boots to tanks, which is not being replaced.

Democracies are no good at waging long-term guerilla wars. Vietnam showed this to French and Americans, Angola to South Africans, and Lebanon to Israelis.

A majority of Americans no longer believe all the lies about Iraq being pumped out by the Bush White House. They squirm with embarrassment while watching Condoleezza Rice lie through her teeth to Europeans by claiming the US does not kidnap or torture suspects. And they look with concern at their phones, never sure these days of what anonymous federal agency or military group is bugging their calls.

Bush’s latest untruths – that the recent election in Iraq will defeat the Sunni resistance and lead to lasting democracy – are about as believable as Bill Clinton’s prevarications about his sex life.

Perhaps the most galling and persistent of Bush’s lies is the one he repeated last night: that failure to prove Saddam was a threat to world civilization was due to "wrong intelligence." Not wrong. No way. This column maintained for years Iraq had no strategic weapons and no links with al-Qaida. So did many veteran CIA officers. We looked at the available evidence and drew the only logical conclusion.

It was not "wrong intelligence." War against Iraq was the product of a farrago of lies, distortions and disinformation provided by foreign "allies" and a domestic fifth column eager for the US to destroy Iraq, both eagerly abetted by the mainstream US media. Bush’s claims Iraq was behind 9/11 or about to attack the US with germ weapons released by drones were as lurid and outrageous as Dr. Goebbel’s claims in 1939 that Poland was about to invade Germany. The president who made these ludicrous claims now asks us to believe him about Iraq.

Iraq’s US-engineered elections will more firmly entrench the Iranian-influenced Shia majority in power, marginalize the Sunnis and leave the Kurds virtually independent in all but name, and accelerate the dangerous ethnic division of Iraq.

In spite of the current election, Iraq remains a US colony. Washington controls Iraq’s police, inept sepoy army, and assorted death squads – all of whom serve for money, not out of commitment to the government. The US controls Iraq’s total finances. US firms have been given the right to pump and export Iraq’s oil – 90% of its national income.

The US controls Iraq’s secret police and all communications. American money fuels Iraq’s political parties and almost all of Iraq’s so-called media. Behind every Iraqi minister discreetly stands a group of US "advisors." Not since the Soviets occupied Afghanistan have we seen such a reversion to classical colonialism.

The real poll that counts in Iraq is a recent BBC poll that revealed that 65% of all Iraqis – Shia, Sunnis and Kurds – want the US out of Iraq.

Now, we learn in another stinging irony, that the US Army in Iraq has depleted its reserves of M-16 rifle ammo and is currently buying munitions from Israel. One may imagine the reaction in the Muslim World when it is learned that the US is using Israeli bullets to kill Iraqis.

Speaking of the Soviets, this column has been noting for a long time how much the Bush Administration has come to resemble the Soviet Union of Chairman Leonid Brezhnev. The Taoists say, "you become what you hate."

Look at Bush’s foreign wars "to advance the cause of democracy" (Brezhnev called his aggressions "the Soviet Union’s internationalist duty); the gelding of the US media into Soviet-style sycophants; the expansion of political policing in the old USSR and in the new USA; the exhortations to nationalist flag waving and anti-Islamic racism in both empires.

Bush’s speech last night declaring "defeatism" a major new sin was a final ironic touch. What could be more Soviet or Red Chinese-sounding than this piece of opprobrium.

How long will it be before "defeatism" becomes a federal crime under the sinister Patriot Act?

December 26, 2005

Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 28, 2005
Political Memo
Frustration Over Iraq Vote Unlikely to Trouble Clinton
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for the war in Iraq has outraged many liberal activists in the Democratic Party, who are warning of retribution, including a primary challenge to her re-election campaign next year.

But the activists are in the same sort of political bind that liberals found themselves in a decade ago when Bill Clinton defied liberal orthodoxies: struggling to bring meaningful pressure to bear on a politician who is cherished by many traditional Democrats.

The frustration on the left toward Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, has been building for months, particularly as opinion has turned against the war and some Democrats in Congress have begun to pressure President Bush to begin a withdrawal of American troops.

Recently, the anger erupted into public view, with antiwar activists publicly protesting against the senator and, perhaps more significantly, an antiwar candidate emerging to challenge her in the Democratic primary next year.

That challenger, Jonathan Tasini, a longtime labor advocate, has the support of Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar protester who lost her son in the war and who camped for weeks outside Mr. Bush's Texas ranch, demanding to meet with him. Mrs. Sheehan has been critical of Mrs. Clinton.

The senator has defended her vote to authorize military action but has harshly criticized President Bush's handling of the war and has called for a plan to begin withdrawing troops next year if the Iraqi elections earlier this month yield positive results.

The sentiment against Mrs. Clinton recalls the tensions that existed in the 1990's between traditional Democrats and President Clinton, a "New Democrat" who veered right with pragmatic goals in mind.

His championing of free-trade policies outraged many leaders of organized labor. His support of the death penalty was abhorred among civil rights leaders. And his decision to overhaul the nation's welfare system - with strict time limits and other policies meant to nudge people off the rolls and into jobs - stirred protests on the left.

Through it all, however, Mr. Clinton remained popular with core liberal Democrats: voters who are friends of organized labor, heirs of the New Deal, Great Society, civil rights and women's movements, people who feel that government can and must be a force for good.

Now, liberal critics of Mrs. Clinton appear to be running headlong into the same political reality: the immense support she has with the party faithful, despite having taken positions that infuriated the left. That loyalty among the rank and file may help explain why the senator's advisers do not appear to be very troubled by the protests erupting on the left, loud and persistent though they may be.

Polls tell much of the story. A recent poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute found that 88 percent of Democrats who were interviewed said they approved of Mrs. Clinton's job performance. That number would be remarkable under any circumstance. (By contrast, 71 percent of Democrats approved of the job that Charles E. Schumer, New York's senior senator, is doing.) But Mrs. Clinton's approval rating comes at the same time that 83 percent of Democrats in the sample told Quinnipiac pollsters that they regarded the war in Iraq as a mistake.

Political analysts say Mrs. Clinton's standing within the party gives her greater room to maneuver politically.

"She has the left in her back pocket," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac institute. "She doesn't have to worry about catering to them. She has to worry about attracting centrist Democrats, the mainstream of the party."

Mrs. Clinton's stature in the party stems from several factors, political analysts said. Part of it is her long record of support for traditional Democratic principles on issues like education, health care, civil rights and reproductive rights. In part, the relentless attacks that conservatives have leveled at her have threatened to make her something of a political martyr among Democrats.

Perhaps most important, Mrs. Clinton, like her husband, is immensely popular with black and Hispanic voters, who are an essential and large constituency in the Democratic Party's base of support, analysts said.

In the recent Quinnipiac poll, for example, Mrs. Clinton's approval rating was 87 percent among black voters interviewed and 75 percent among Hispanics in the statewide sample of all voters. By contrast, 58 percent of white voters in the poll said they approved of the job she was doing.

Even Mrs. Clinton's critics on the left agreed that it was very difficult to chip away at her immense popularity within traditional Democratic circles, despite her war position.

In a recent interview, Tom Matzzie, the Washington director for MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, suggested that the antiwar movement would potentially undercut its own message by waging what he said would be a hugely unsuccessful primary challenge against Mrs. Clinton.

"The case I would make is that 2006 needs to be a year of reckoning for Republicans on Iraq," he said. "If the antiwar candidate is creamed by Hillary Clinton, it's a distraction."

Mrs. Clinton's position on the war is not the only issue that has aroused ire on the left. Her decision to co-sponsor a bill to make it a crime to burn the American flag was criticized in some quarters as little more than political pandering, as she sought to position herself for a likely presidential run in 2008. Mrs. Clinton's advisors note that most Democrats in the Senate have taken a similar position in the past.

Tellingly, some Democrats who are not directly connected with her campaign have argued that such positions may be necessary to ensure her political viability in the long run. If she does end up capturing the party's nomination for the presidency in 2008, these Democrats said, she cannot afford to be seen as a captive of liberal orthodoxies, since she would need the support of moderate and conservative general-election voters.

That argument was at the heart of the politics of Bill Clinton, who succeeded in defusing issues that Republicans had often used against Democrats.

Mr. Carroll, of Quinnipiac, argues that many of Mrs. Clinton's more moderate positions will help inoculate her against what he says will be a line of attack against her in a Democratic presidential primary: that she cannot win a general election for the White House because she is so politically polarizing.

"When we are talking about the presidency, centrist Democrats will try to make the case that she is not electable," Mr. Carroll said. "I don't know if it's a valid argument. But it will be made."

Indeed, at least one Democrat running for president, Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, is traveling the country making the case that a centrist like himself is in the strongest position to compete in states that lean Republican.

But Mr. Matzzie, of MoveOn.org, said that while Mrs. Clinton had solid support among liberal Democrats, her break with them on a crucial issue like Iraq could lead to questions about her commitment to her own supporters.

That, he said, could ultimately fuel a sense within the larger electorate that she is politically disloyal.

"If she is perceived as disloyal to her base, then who is she loyal to?" he said. "The genius of Bill Clinton is that he was always perceived as loyal to his base. But we didn't have an issue during his presidency that was as divisive as Iraq."



Copyright 2005The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/253469_thomas27.html

Bush turns on Iraq give columnist whiplash

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- President Bush poses a curious contradiction: He admits his decision to attack Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, but he insists that it was the right step to take.

"My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision," he told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center here on Dec. 14.

Well, let's think about that: 2,161 Americans killed in action, thousands maimed for life; 30,000 Iraqis, "more or less," as Bush put it, have been killed and thousands more wounded.

Iraqi cities have been battered by U.S. bombing, car bombings, kidnappings and religious strife. Don't forget the billions in U.S. tax dollars spent every month on the war.

Top U.S. officials can only sneak into Iraq, unannounced or undercover, and heavily protected in armored vehicles, not exactly as conquering heroes.

Was this war worth it and for whom? For the families who will never see their sons and daughters again? For the children who may never climb on their fathers' knees again?

How about the Iraqis who were subjected to a "shock-and-awe" unprovoked attack that has left parts of their country destroyed and a colonial-style takeover by the U.S.?

Was it worth it for the thousands of anonymous detainees -- neither charged, tried nor convicted -- in U.S.-run prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Baghdad and Bagram, Afghanistan, some subjected to torture and some who died in the hands of their captors?

In the same speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Bush tried to justify his attack on Iraq because it was a "threat" that he admits now was based on phony intelligence.

"We removed Saddam Hussein from power because he was a threat to our security, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction," Bush said. "He sponsored terrorists."

But, Bush granted, "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong." The president hesitantly has come to grips with a fundamental truth that has been long established by independent commissions and congressional committees.

The president continued: "Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

In his own world, Bush apparently doesn't see any clash between those statements. I'm suffering whiplash.

The truth is Saddam did many terrible things, but he did not sponsor terrorism, much as Bush tries to link him to al-Qaida. He was secular and kept his distance from Osama bin Laden, a religious fanatic.

The president ignores the fact that U.S. and U.N. weapons inspectors never found those weapons of mass destruction, even though U.S. forces have occupied the country for more than two years.

Bush should stop twisting the facts.

Why at this stage do Americans still have to speculate about the real reasons Bush was so eager to go to war against Iraq? His latest explanation is that his grand plan for spreading democracy throughout the Middle East was behind the attack.

The speculation for his reasons to go to war have centered on the U.S. need to secure Iraq's oil -- the second-largest reserves in the Middle East -- the desire to protect Israel from hostile neighbors and the drive to settle a personal vendetta against Saddam, who tried to assassinate his father.

There also is the episode recounted by writer Mickey Herskowitz, who had interviewed then-Gov. Bush extensively for a campaign autobiography he was ghost-writing for Bush. Herskowitz said Bush was thinking of invading Iraq in 1999 and told him that a successful leader needs to be seen as a commander in chief, indicating that presidents need a war to gain political clout.

That's a scary thought.

Back to his Woodrow Wilson comments:

"I know that some of my decisions have led to terrible loss -- and not one of those decisions has been taken lightly," Bush declared. "I know this war is controversial -- yet being your president requires doing what I believe is right and accepting the consequences."

He added he has "never been more certain that America's actions in Iraq are essential to the security of our citizens."

It is good that he has taken the blame, relieving the historians of making that decision, not that it would have been a tough call for them.

But Bush will never be able to admit that the invasion was a mistake. How could he look into the faces of parents of a killed GI and tell them that their son or daughter died because of his mistake?

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2005 Hearst Newspapers.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...newsopinion-hed

chicagotribune.com >> Editorials

Judging the case for war

Published December 28, 2005


Did President Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit him and his policies? If your responses are reflexive and self-assured, read on.

On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others. We predicted that this exercise would distress the smug and self-assured--those who have unquestioningly supported, or opposed, this war.

The matrix below summarizes findings from the resulting nine editorials. We have tried to bring order to a national debate that has flared for almost three years. Our intent was to help Tribune readers judge the case for war--based not on who shouts loudest, but on what actually was said and what happened.

The administration didn't advance its arguments with equal emphasis. Neither, though, did its case rely solely on Iraq's alleged illicit weapons. The other most prominent assertion in administration speeches and presentations was as accurate as the weapons argument was flawed: that Saddam Hussein had rejected 12 years of United Nations demands that he account for his stores of deadly weapons--and also stop exterminating innocents. Evaluating all nine arguments lets each of us decide which ones we now find persuasive or empty, and whether President Bush tried to mislead us.

In measuring risks to this country, the administration relied on the same intelligence agencies, in the U.S. and overseas, that failed to anticipate Sept. 11, 2001. We now know that the White House explained some but not enough of the ambiguities embedded in those agencies' conclusions. By not stressing what wasn't known as much as what was, the White House wound up exaggerating allegations that proved dead wrong.

Those flawed assertions are central to the charge that the president lied. Such accusations, though, can unfairly conflate three issues: the strength of the case Bush argued before the war, his refusal to delay its launch in March 2003 and his administration's failure to better anticipate the chaos that would follow. Those three are important, but not to be confused with one another.

After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege. Example: The accusation that Bush lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs overlooks years of global intelligence warnings that, by February 2003, had convinced even French President Jacques Chirac of "the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq." We also know that, as early as 1997, U.S. intel agencies began repeatedly warning the Clinton White House that Iraq, with fissile material from a foreign source, could have a crude nuclear bomb within a year.

Seventeen days before the war, this page reluctantly urged the president to launch it. We said that every earnest tool of diplomacy with Iraq had failed to improve the world's security, stop the butchery--or rationalize years of UN inaction. We contended that Saddam Hussein, not George W. Bush, had demanded this conflict.

Many people of patriotism and integrity disagreed with us and still do. But the totality of what we know now--what this matrix chronicles-- affirms for us our verdict of March 2, 2003. We hope these editorials help Tribune readers assess theirs.

THE ROAD TO WAR: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S NINE ARGUMENTS

Biological and chemical weapons

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

The Bush administration said Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Officials trumpeted reports from U.S. and foreign spy agencies, including an October 2002 CIA assessment: "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions."

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Many, although not all, of the Bush administration's assertions about weapons of mass destruction have proven flat-out wrong. What illicit weaponry searchers uncovered didn't begin to square with the magnitude of the toxic armory U.S. officials had described before the war.

THE VERDICT

There was no need for the administration to rely on risky intelligence to chronicle many of Iraq's other sins. In putting so much emphasis on illicit weaponry, the White House advanced its most provocative, least verifiable case for war when others would have sufficed.

Iraq rebuffs the world

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

In a speech that left many diplomats visibly squirming in their chairs, President Bush detailed tandem patterns of failure: Saddam Hussein had refused to obey UN Security Council orders that he disclose his weapons programs--and the UN had refused to enforce its demands of Hussein.


WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Reasonable minds disagree on whether Iraq's flouting of UN resolutions justified the war. But there can be no credible assertion that either Iraq or the UN met its responsibility to the world. If anything, the administration gravely understated the chicanery, both in Baghdad and at the UN.

THE VERDICT

Hussein had shunted enough lucre to enough profiteers to keep the UN from challenging him. In a dozen years the organization mass-produced 17 resolutions on Iraq, all of them toothless. That in turn enabled Hussein to continue his brutal reign and cost untold thousands of Iraqis their lives.

The quest for nukes

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

Intelligence agencies warned the Clinton and Bush administrations that Hussein was reconstituting his once-impressive program to create nuclear weapons. In part that intel reflected embarrassment over U.S. failure before the Persian Gulf war to grasp how close Iraq was to building nukes.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Four intel studies from 1997-2000 concurred that "If Iraq acquired a significant quantity of fissile material through foreign assistance, it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year." Claims that Iraq sought uranium and special tubes for processing nuclear material appear discredited.

THE VERDICT

If the White House manipulated or exaggerated the nuclear intelligence before the war in order to paint a more menacing portrait of Hussein, it's difficult to imagine why. For five years, the official and oft-delivered alarms from the U.S. intelligence community had been menacing enough.

Hussein's rope-a-dope

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

The longer Hussein refuses to obey UN directives to disclose his weapons programs, the greater the risk that he will acquire, or share with terrorists, the weaponry he has used in the past or the even deadlier capabilities his scientists have tried to develop. Thus we need to wage a pre-emptive war.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Hussein didn't have illicit weapons stockpiles to wield or hand to terrorists. Subsequent investigations have concluded he had the means and intent to rekindle those programs as soon as he escaped UN sanctions.

THE VERDICT

Had Hussein not been deposed, would he have reconstituted deadly weaponry or shared it with terror groups? Of the White House's nine arguments for war, the implications of this warning about Iraq's intentions are treacherous to imagine--yet also the least possible to declare true or false.

Waging war on terror

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

Iraq was Afghanistan's likely successor as a haven for terror groups. "Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror ... " the president said. "And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network."

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

The White House echoed four years of intel that said Hussein contemplated the use of terror against the U.S. or its allies. But he evidently had not done so on a broad scale. The assertion that Hussein was "harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror" overstated what we know today.

THE VERDICT

The drumbeat of White House warnings before the war made Iraq's terror activities sound more ambitious than subsequent evidence has proven. Based on what we know today, the argument that Hussein was able to foment global terror against this country and its interests was exaggerated.

Reform in the Middle East

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

Supplanting Hussein's reign with self-rule would transform governance in a region dominated by dictators, zealots and kings. The administration wanted to convert populations of subjects into citizens. Mideast democracy would channel energy away from resentments that breed terrorism.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

U.S. pressure has stirred reforms in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and imperiled Syria's regime. "I was cynical about Iraq," said Druze Muslim patriarch Walid Jumblatt. "But when I saw the Iraqi people voting . . . it was the start of a new Arab world... The Berlin Wall has fallen."

THE VERDICT

The notion that invading Iraq would provoke political tremors in a region long ruled by despots is the Bush administration's most successful prewar prediction to date. A more muscular U.S. diplomacy has advanced democracy and assisted freedom movements in the sclerotic Middle East.

Iraq and Al Qaeda

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

President Bush: "... Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy--the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.... Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bombmaking and poisons and deadly gases."

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Two government investigative reports indicate that Al Qaeda and Iraq had long-running if sporadic contacts. Several of the prewar intel conclusions likely are true. But the high-ranking Al Qaeda detainee who said Iraq trained Al Qaeda in bombmaking, poisons and gases later recanted.

THE VERDICT

No compelling evidence ties Iraq to Sept. 11, 2001, as the White House implied. Nor is there proof linking Al Qaeda in a significant way to the final years of Hussein's regime. By stripping its rhetoric of the ambiguity present in the intel data, the White House exaggerated this argument for war.

The Butcher of Baghdad

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell: "For more than 20 years, by word and by deed, Saddam Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the only means he knows--intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all those who might stand in his way."

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Human Rights Watch estimates that Hussein exterminated 300,000 people. Chemical weapons killed Iraqi Kurds and Iranians; Iraqi Shiites also were slaughtered. Tortures included amputation, rape, piercing hands with drills, burning some victims alive and lowering others into acid baths.

THE VERDICT

In detailing how Hussein tormented his people--and thus mocked the UN Security Council order that he stop--the White House assessments were accurate. Few if any war opponents have challenged this argument, or suggested that an unmolested Hussein would have eased his repression.

Iraqis liberated

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

President Bush and his surrogates broached a peculiar notion: that the Arab world was ready to embrace representative government. History said otherwise--and it wasn't as if the Arab street was clamoring for Iraq to show the way.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

The most succinct evaluation comes from Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.): "Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them."

THE VERDICT

The White House was correct in predicting that long subjugated Iraqis would embrace democracy. And while Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites have major differences to reconcile, a year's worth of predictions that Sunni disaffection could doom self-rule have, so far, proven wrong.

Find each installment of the series, links to officials' speeches and links to the investigative reports at chicagotribune.com/iraq

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1227-22.htm


Published on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by the Boston Globe
How Will the Iraq War End?
by H.D.S. Greenway

On one level, of course, there is no comparison between America's lost war in Vietnam and the current enterprise in Iraq. After all, Vietnam is in Southeast Asia and Iraq is the Middle East. That conflict was fought in rain forests, this one in desert towns. One was fought by draftees, this one by a volunteer army. The list goes on.

Yet, although the Bush administration takes pains to deny it, the comparison keeps creeping into the national conversation, and the most obvious link is the word ''quagmire." For the dwindling band of reporters who covered the war in Vietnam, a trip to Baghdad cannot help but bring forth ghosts.

America fought in Vietnam to contain communism. In this war the reasons for fighting keep shifting, but the central idea seems to have been to create a friendly democracy in the heart of the oil-producing Middle East that could transform the region by example.

Forty years ago the ''best and the brightest," as David Halberstam called them, got us into Vietnam to prevent other neighboring countries from falling like dominoes, or so the theory went. The best and the brightest this time around believed in a domino theory in reverse -- the transformative power of democracy. Lots of talk about an ''Arab Spring" by prowar professors is beginning to sound a little hollow, however.

Both Vietnam and Iraq were wars of choice. Neither Saddam Hussein nor Ho Chi Minh threatened the United States directly, but in both cases our leaders in Washington took the road to intervention to further perceived American interests. In Vietnam, however, there really was a communist threat, while in Iraq, Islamic extremism was not a problem before we got there, nor did Saddam Hussein possess the means to harm us.

In Vietnam then and in Iraq now, the administration finds itself engaged in a war it is unable to win and reluctant to lose. The American people are walking away from this war, as they did in Vietnam, and the Bush administration knows that staying the course is not a long-term option. The recently announced troop drawdown is a reflection of this domestic pressure, not conditions in Iraq.

But Bush today, as did Lyndon Johnson before him, vows to fight on until victory, and some of the same ridiculous rhetoric prevails -- such as that we are fighting them there so we won't have to fight them at home. In Iraq, war is actually helping Al Qaeda to recruit terrorists to one day attack us at home.

Both Vietnam and Iraq saw monumental miscalculations on the part of our war leaders. Hubris played a big role in both. It seemed inconceivable to both Johnson's and George W. Bush's defense departments that these weak opponents could stand up to America's modern arms. In both cases it was thought that the Americans could prevail quickly and go home.

As Richard Nixon's defense secretary, Melvin Laird, recently wrote: ''Both the Vietnam War and the Iraq war were launched based on intelligence failures and possibly outright deception." To deception, add willful self-deception as well. For in both wars there was a tendency to ignore those who could tell our government about what Vietnam and Iraq were about. Johnson's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, would confess years later that he didn't know anything about Vietnamese culture and history, but as far as I know he hasn't confessed that he went out of his way to ignore people who could have informed him as to the difficulties ahead.

Likewise, Donald Rumsfeld went out of his way to ignore the advice of those who knew something about Iraq. In both cases any information that would get in the way of doctrine was unsought and unheard.

America's former viceroy, Paul Bremmer, and his young ideologues ran Iraq in blissful ignorance. I am told that making sure that there was no room for abortion in Iraq's Constitution was a goal -- likewise a flat tax for Iraq. John Negroponte's team would later call Bremmer's people ''the illusionists."

Consider the author of ''The Assassins' Gate," George Packer's account of briefings in Baghdad: Daily press conferences ''about the coalition's intentions toward the rebels that were usually at odds with the facts, on occasion flatly untrue, and often in direct contradiction to statements made a day or a week earlier. . ." Packer might have been describing the ''5 o'clock follies" briefings in Saigon.

Likewise, in Saigon of old, there were bright young people working long and hard hours to have the Vietnamese do things in the American way totally removed from the reality of the country around them.

That being said, however, compared to Iraq there were quite a few Vietnamese speakers among the Americans who got themselves out and about in the countryside in Vietnam. In comparison, Americans in Iraq live in near total isolation with few Arab speakers and very little contact with Iraqis outside their fortified compounds. The civilian theorists and intellectuals that came to power with George W. Bush, and promoted this war, had almost to a man no military experience. They had ''other priorities" than to fight for their country, as Vice President Cheney so famously put it.

Although President Bush is finally admitting to some problems in Iraq, Washington's dreary drip of propaganda has the same Vietnam-era ring. The famous ''light at the end of the tunnel" of the Vietnam War is reflected in all the overly optimistic statements from the Bush White House about the Iraq insurgency's bitter-enders and last gasps.

Today the training of an Iraqi Army is being pushed at a frantic pace so that we can withdraw, much in the same way President Nixon's ''Vietnamization" was supposed to prop up Vietnam so that we could bring our armies home.

It is not that there is no progress being made in Iraq. There is. But the question is, as it was in Vietnam: What does this progress mean for our ultimate goals? In Vietnam it became all to clear that no matter how many wells we dug or schools we built, there would be Vietnamese who might drink from the wells and accept the schools, but remain adamantly opposed to Americans in their country.

The same strikes me as true in Iraq. It is perfectly logical for an Iraqi to have opposed Saddam yesterday and oppose us today. As nationalism became our adversary in Vietnam, more so than communism, so is nationalism in Iraq growing against us.

US troops, with their reliance on fire power, caused great destruction and loss of civilian life in both wars. The Nixon administration also agonized about how atrocities committed by Americans in Vietnam would hurt the war effort, and how the information could be contained. The Bush administration's handling of the Abu Ghraib horrors are hauntingly similar.

Melvin Laird wrote that, in Vietnam, ''elections were choreographed by the United States to empower corrupt, selfish men who were no more than dictators in the garb of statesmen." It may be too early to make that same judgment in Iraq, but it is clear that too many Iraqi politicians are cast in the same mold as were our Saigon politicians.

And that old chimera the ''body count," which the Americans first avoided in Iraq, is creeping back into usage -- as if the number of insurgents we killed today had any bearing on whether we are actually winning the war.

Likewise the search-and-destroy missions that General William Westmoreland employed in Vietnam seem to be in vogue today in Iraq. But then as now, the insurgents melt away before our armies and come back again when we have passed on. And somehow they always seem to know when we are coming.

It was interesting for someone like me who spent years in Vietnam to meet even US generals in Iraq who are too young to have fought in Southeast Asia. But then as now, it is clear that this protracted war is putting tremendous strain on the US Army. It was something that General Creighton Abrams worried about aloud to me in Saigon, and it worries our military commanders today. It took years for the US Army to recover from Vietnam, and it will take years for it to recover from the strains put upon it in Iraq. But the most haunting parallel to me is that it will be possible to win every battle in Iraq and yet lose the war.

US involvement in Iraq will not end with American helicopters flying from the roof of the embassy. But it may end badly with Iraq split among ethnic and sectarian warlords, empowering those who wish America ill -- destabilizing the Middle East rather than transforming it.

Or Iraq could emerge united with some kind of representational government. But ultimately, all that will be up to the Iraqis, not the Americans, who do not, and cannot, control events. Once again, as in Vietnam, we are learning the limits of American power.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.

© 2005 The Boston Globe

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113...ml?mod=rss_free

Some Conservatives Return
To Old Argument

Outside Advocacy Group Aims
To Rally Support by Backing
Bush's Initial Claims on Iraq

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and JOHN D. MCKINNON
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 28, 2005; Page A4

WASHINGTON – The television commercials are attention-grabbing: Newly found Iraqi documents show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax and mustard gas, and had "extensive ties" to al Qaeda. The discoveries are being covered up by those "willing to undermine support for the war on terrorism to selfishly advance their shameless political ambitions."

The hard-hitting spots are part of a recent public-relations barrage aimed at reversing a decline in public support for President Bush's handling of Iraq. But these advertisements aren't paid for by the Republican National Committee or other established White House allies. Instead, they are sponsored by Move America Forward, a media-savvy outside advocacy group that has become one of the loudest -- and most controversial -- voices in the Iraq debate.

While even Mr. Bush now publicly acknowledges the mistakes his administration made in judging the threat posed by Mr. Hussein, the organization is taking to the airwaves to insist that the White House was right all along.

Similar to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- the advocacy group that helped derail John Kerry's presidential campaign -- Move America Forward has magnified its reach by making small television and radio ad buys and then relying on cable- and local-television news outlets to give the commercials heavy coverage. Move America Forward has no discernible formal ties to the White House or the Republican National Committee, and the group says it operates independently from the Republican Party establishment. Still, the organization provides a clear benefit to the administration by spreading a pro-war message that goes beyond what administration officials can say publicly.

The effect of the ads hasn't been measured. Amid a simultaneous flurry of speeches by the president and a ramped-up RNC effort aimed at boosting the war, polls show that Mr. Bush's job-approval ratings, specifically his handling of the Iraq situation, have risen this month from all-time lows.

"The White House has really done a poor job of getting the message out, which is why we've had to step into the breach," says California-based Republican political strategist Sal Russo, one of the group's three founders. "They should do a better job of coordinating with those willing to get out and tell the story. We shouldn't be the only ones out here fighting."

The White House didn't return several calls seeking comment. A Republican National Committee spokesman declined to comment.

Move America Forward has raised more than $1 million, mainly in small donations, over the past two years. The group grew out of the successful 2003 effort to recall Democratic California Gov. Gray Davis. It was officially founded in 2004 by Mr. Russo, whose company provides office space for the organization; Melanie Morgan, a conservative San Francisco radio host; and Howard Kaloogian, a Republican former state assemblyman seeking the congressional seat of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who resigned recently after admitting to taking bribes from defense contractors.

One of their early efforts was a campaign supporting John Bolton's contentious nomination as United Nations ambassador. Another involved backing U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by selling "I [Heart] Gitmo" bumper stickers.

When the White House was caught flat-footed this summer by the emergence of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier turned vocal administration critic, Move America Forward sent pro-war protesters to her camp in Texas and mounted a parallel bus tour of war supporters that culminated in a large rally in Washington. The counter-Sheehan campaign showed how the organization has raised its profile by staging well-publicized rallies and public events that attract substantial media coverage, even if the number of participants is relatively low.

In July, with the administration facing a torrent of negative media coverage of the war in Iraq, Move America Forward sent five conservative radio-talk-show hosts to U.S. military bases in Baghdad for a week of upbeat broadcasts. Ms. Morgan says that, during her time in Iraq, she rode up and down the so-called highway of death leading from Baghdad's airport seven times to prove to her listeners that it wasn't as dangerous as media reports suggested.

In addition to his Iraq political work in the U.S., Mr. Russo has an open-ended political-advertising contract with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq for whom he produces advertisements that run in the U.S. seeking investment in Kurdistan. Some critics accuse him of having a vested financial interest in prolonging the U.S. presence there.


Liberals question how the group has maintained its status as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, which requires strict nonpartisanship, given the anti-Democratic tone of its campaigns. The group's Web site, www.moveamericaforward.org, for example, attacks the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, referring to "Howard Dean types who only see a future of failure for this country."

"When you have people participating in partisan activities with nonprofit dollars, that's really something the IRS needs to look at," says Tom Matzzie, the Washington director of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org, another frequent target for Move America Forward's rhetoric. "An organization with a shady tax status participating in partisan activities and saying things that aren't true is a rogue element in American politics."

An Internal Revenue Service spokeswoman declined to address the issue, saying that it is agency policy not to "comment on individual taxpayers or organizations." MoveOn is a "political action committee," meaning its donations aren't tax-deductible and must be disclosed.

Move America Forward officials acknowledge that the group's leadership is conservative, but insist they are nonpartisan and point out that the organization also has criticized Republicans. They say that the organization has no connections to the Bush administration or the Republican Party and has been unable to get meetings with White House personnel. And they say there is no conflict between the organization's advocacy work and Mr. Russo's financial ties to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq.

"If you consider being pro-America and pro-troop to be Republican, then we'll proudly take that label," Ms. Morgan says. "But we've never been embraced by the White House or made part of a secret-right wing conspiracy."

Indeed, Ms. Morgan says she is baffled that the White House no longer makes the case that Mr. Hussein had WMDs. The White House dropped the claims after a variety of investigators found no evidence to substantiate them. But Ms. Morgan says her ads are justified, based on documents given to her in Iraq by an Iraqi general she identified as Abdul Qader Jassim, and on information from U.S. officials involved in the hunt for weapons there. She believes Mr. Hussein possessed WMDs, and that those weapons remain in Iraq today. It couldn't be ascertained that Mr. Jassim is a general and he couldn't be reached for comment.

The organization has kept up a steady drumbeat of pro-military and pro-war commercials in recent weeks. Its newest radio ads, timed to the holiday season, feature parents of service people killed in Iraq or on their way back to the country. In one spot, a woman described as military parent Deborah Johns observes that the "the terrorists know they can not defeat our military -- they can only win by beating down the morale of the American people."

Several Move America Forward officials hope to participate in the Iraq debate more actively than through mere advocacy. Mr. Kaloogian has an early fund-raising lead in the crowded field of Republicans hoping to succeed Mr. Cunningham, the former U.S. representative who resigned after admitting taking bribes. And Move America Forward Executive Director Robert Dixon, furious over a recent troop withdrawal resolution passed by the Sacramento City Council, is weighing a run for a seat in the hopes of getting the declaration reversed.

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com and John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com

Pace: U.S. to Launch Phased Iraq Pullout
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer

The U.S. will carry out planned withdrawals of American troops in Iraq only from regions where Iraqi forces can maintain security against the insurgents, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said Thursday.

Gen. Peter Pace said the current force of 160,000 would drop to below 138,000 by March, then U.S. commanders on the ground would work with the Iraqi government to determine the pace of future pullbacks in areas that have been secured by local security forces.

"The bottom line will be that the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police will gain in competence, that they will be able to take on more and more of the territory, whether or not there are still insurgents in that area," he said in an interview with a small group of reporters, including The Associated Press, aboard a military plane en route to the United Arab Emirates.

Amid congressional pressure and growing public opposition to the war, the Bush administration last week announced plans to reduce U.S. combat troops in Iraq to below the 138,000 level that prevailed most of this year.

The number of American forces in Iraq was raised to about 160,000 to provide extra security during the October referendum and December parliamentary elections, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said those extra troops would be leaving soon.

The exact size of the additional troops cuts has not been announced, but senior Pentagon officials have said the number of American troops in Iraq could drop to about 100,000 by next fall.

The decision where to cut troops "will be based on the Iraqi units in that area and the threat that exists in that area," Pace said earlier at a news conference in Bahrain.

The key, he stressed, "is the Iraqis' ability to control that area."

Pace has said American units will steadily hand off more security duties in the coming months to Iraqi forces and stressed the U.S. military needs to be flexible, but his comments offered a detailed glimpse of the administration's plans.

Pace's tour of the region came two weeks after Dec. 15 Iraqi parliament elections, which the United States considered a key step toward stability that could allow a drawdown of troops.

But violence has not stopped in Iraq. On Thursday, gunmen killed 12 members of an extended Shiite Family south off Baghdad and a suicide bomber killed a policeman in the capital.

Complaints by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups of widespread fraud and intimidation during the vote also have threatened to spark a serious crisis that could set back hopes for a broad-based government that could have the legitimacy necessary to diminish the insurgency — a key part of any U.S. military exit strategy from Iraq.

Pace said efforts were under way to recruit Sunnis into the Iraqi security forces, "especially on the officers' side."

Pace, who was making his first official visit to the region since becoming the first Marine to be named chairman of the joint chiefs of staff three months ago, said the withdrawals of two brigades in the coming months would provide a test for the decision to pull out troops.

"We are going to have to watch how these drawdowns go to see if we have judged it properly," he said.

Pace, who was traveling with his wife, Lynne, and a group of entertainers to offer holiday cheer to U.S. troops in the region, began his weeklong trip Wednesday in Qatar. He also planned stops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the East African nation of Djibouti.




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


Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=8326

December 31, 2005
Coalitions Reject Election Results

by Dahr Jamail
(With Arkan Hamed)

BAGHDAD - Many Iraqis are demanding a new poll after more than 1,500 cases of election fraud and forgery were reported in the Dec. 15 elections, at least 30 of them "extremely serious."

The results so far indicate a strong win for Shi'ite religious groups. There are widespread complaints that many of the instances of fraud favored Shi'ite religious groups that led the interim government which conducted the poll.

In Baghdad, the most important district in the poll with more than a fifth of the seats in parliament, the Iranian-backed Shi'ite alliance took a surprising 57 percent of the vote, as opposed to 19 percent for the Sunni coalition.

With final election results expected next week, the number of cases of fraud constituting the largest fraud in a new democracy to date led to at least 42 Sunni and secular Shi'ite political parties demanding a review of complaints by an independent international body.

Many complaints relate to false ballot box stuffing and intimidation of voters.

After the United Nations rejected a review, the coalition of Sunni and secular Shi'ite parties, al-Maram, issued a joint statement threatening to boycott the new legislature. Large demonstrations are continuing across Iraq.

Tens of thousands of worshippers who support al-Maram gathered at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad Tuesday this week. The Imam called for a protest demonstration after busloads of people from across the capital city arrived to attend his sermon.

"Please God remove the invaders from Iraq with the hands of the mujahideen," he said. "And honorable prayers, we call for you to deny the elections, which were a fraud."

He appealed against any domination of Iraq that would separate Sunnis from Shi'ites. "Iraqis don't support separation of their citizens," the Imam said. "My tribe (al-Jabouri) is both Sunni and Shi'ite. We are all cousins and are not separated by these elections."

Concern is rising among these groups over Iranian domination. "We ask almighty God to save us from being under the control of the Iranians," 45-year-old Baghdad resident Nadham al-Doury told IPS. Al-Douri who joined thousands of others in a march after the sermon said the election results would be forged, and that the current leaders of Iraq were "fascists."

Some banners at the rally read, "Yes to Real Nomination...No to False Nomination" and "We are Calling for Re-Elections." Demonstrators in the mile-long procession chanted slogans like "Baghdad Will Be Free...Iran Should Stay Out" and "They are Playing with a Flame Which Must Burn Them."

With the main Shi'ite coalition rejecting calls for another poll, tensions across Iraq are rising.

Many parties are asking for the Independent Higher Commission for Elections in Iraq (IHCEI) to be replaced with a new commission whose members have no ties with the parties in power. Some Sunni and secular Shi'ite political parties have renamed the IHCEI the 'Independent Higher Commission for the Islamic Revolution' that is biased towards the dominant Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Demonstrations began Dec. 22, a week after the elections. Countless mosques across Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq called for demonstrations against widespread fraud. Tens of thousands came out to protest in the days following.

"I have won my seat in the parliament, but we don't accept it," Salaeh Al-Mutlak, head of the secular National Dialogue Front told IPS. "The elections should be canceled because they were not legitimate."

Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei, spokesman for the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, told followers, "You have to be ready during these hard times, and combat forgeries and lies for the sake of Islam." The elections, he said, were "a conspiracy built on lies and forgery."

Arabs are disputing the results also in Kirkuk in Kurdistan to the north. They say Kurdish parties brought in voters from other areas to vote for them.

The United States and Britain, who wanted the election to install a secular, pro-Western democracy in Iraq, are now left with what looks more and more like a pro-Iranian, anti-Western Islamic state.

Bush resolves to stay on the offensive in Iraq in 2006

US President George W. Bush has resolved to remain "on the offense" in the new year to install a stable and independent democracy in Iraq.

"The United States has a vital interest in the success of a free Iraq, so in the year ahead, we will continue to pursue the comprehensive strategy for victory," Bush said Saturday in his last weekly radio address of the year, from his Texas ranch.

"Our coalition is staying on the offense, finding and clearing the enemy out of Iraqi cities, towns and villages, transferring more control to Iraqi units, and building up the Iraqi security forces so they can increasingly lead the fight to secure their country," Bush said.

Speaking of Iraq's political and economic reconstruction and elections there and in Afghanistan, Bush stressed: "These are amazing achievements in the history of liberty."

He did not address the issue of reducing US troop levels, nor did he discuss his strategy for Iraq, which has increasingly come under fire.

But the president did mention US economic priorities and deficit reduction.

"During 2005, thanks to our tax relief, spending restraint and the hard work of the American people, our economy remained the envy of the world," Bush said, citing growth and new jobs as well as low inflation.

"To keep our economy moving forward, we must continue to pursue sound policies in Washington and be wise with taxpayers' money," he said. "In the new year, we must also make permanent the tax relief that has kept our economy growing.

"We will work to expand free and fair trade, so America's farmers, workers and businesses can enjoy the opportunities the global economy offers," Bush added.




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.


Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Bush and Blair Plot Their Exit Strategy, as the Nation Falls Apart at the Seams
The Year in Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN

This was the year in which the US admitted it was not going to defeat the insurgency. It was the ebb tide of American and British power in Iraq. By the end of the year both countries were urgently looking to withdraw their troops in circumstances not too humiliating to themselves and without precipitating the complete collapse of the Iraqi state.

The failure of the US and Britain to win the war does not mean that the two-and-a-half year uprising among the Sunni Arabs has achieved all its aims. The beneficiaries from President George W Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 are not the Sunni but the Iraqi Shia and the Kurds. Outside Iraq, the country which has gained most from the fall of Saddam Hussein is Iran.

The year began and ended with elections. The first, on January 30, was critical in demonstrating the electoral power of the Shia community. The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shia parties, triumphed. This was hardly surprising since the Shia make up 60 per cent of the Iraqi population. But it was a political earthquake in Iraq after so many centuries of Sunni dominance. The verdict of the January poll was confirmed by the election on December 15 for the National Assembly, which will sit for four years.

The political landscape of post-Saddam Iraq is becoming clearer but the country still looks as if it will be a very violent place. A striking feature of present-day Iraq is that there are multiple centers of power, which as they conflict create numerous friction points. Authority is fragmented. The US has power, but so do the three main communities: the Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds.

This much is very evident on the ground in Baghdad. In a Sunni district of west Baghdad, the local police pack up and go home at 8pm. "I am leaving now and the resistance will take over," explained one policeman as he got into his car. "If I stayed around here I would be killed." In Ramadi, the capital of rebellious Anbar province, west of Baghdad, insurgents took over the city centre for four hours in December, despite the presence of powerful US and Iraqi military units.

Precisely where real power lies in Iraq is not always obvious. In Basra the British forces are supposedly helping to build up the local police, but a confrontation in October sparked when two British soldiers, working undercover and in disguise, were arrested by the Iraqi police and then rescued by the Army, demonstrated the real state of affairs. Film of a British soldier, his clothes burning as he jumped from a blazing armored vehicle, was shown around the world. It is the Shia political parties and their militias in and out of the police who are the real masters of Basra and southern Iraq.

The growing power of the militias is evident everywhere; so too is the influence of Iran. At some point, a new balance of power between the main communities, the militias, political parties, the foreign powers, the insurgent groups and the secret intelligence services will emerge in Iraq. It has not happened yet. The new rules of the game are not yet agreed. To give one example: the government has declared that the weekend will now fall on Friday and Saturday. But in western Iraq insurgents say it falls on Friday alone, and anything else is un-Islamic. They have threatened to kill headmasters who do not open their schools on Saturdays.

There are also more serious disagreements. In northern Iraq, territory is disputed between Arabs and Kurds. The Kurds captured the oil city of Kirkuk, the so-called jewel of Kurdistan, in the war of 2003. They will not give it up. The future of the city and of the Turkoman and Arab communities living there is still disputed.

But not all divisions in Iraq are getting wider. Sunni and Shia leaders now appreciate, in a way that they did not two years ago, that the Kurds, 20 per cent of the Iraqi population, already have quasi-independence. Most Kurds in the street would prefer outright autonomy. The main reasons their leaders want to stay inside Iraq for now is fear of neighbours like the Turks, the need to keep in with the US - and access to oil revenues.

The US is learning to play communal politics. The US ambassador Zilmay Khalilzad, appointed this summer, is far more adept at this than the preceding envoys. The US has learned in the last two-and-a-half years that it may have been easy to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but it is dangerous to buck the Kurds, the Shia or the Sunni. During the rancorous negotiations on the new Iraqi constitution, President Bush even called Abul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shia religious party, asking for concessions. In 2003 the US viewed SCIRI, not entirely wrongly, as a dangerous stalking horse for Iran, and US soldiers raided its Baghdad offices.

But the US has begun to learn too late. Iraqis know that whatever Bush and Blair say, the political will to stay in Iraq is weakening in the US and Britain. The British role in Iraq is in any case small, however great it may loom in domestic politics. The 8,500-strong force was never going to be enough to confront the Shia militias in southern Iraq.

The US was able to stick to its timetable for elections on January 30 and December 15, as well as the constitutional referendum on October 15. But this was primarily because it met the wishes of the Shia and Kurdish leaders. Even these "successes" had their price. The constitution was passed in the teeth of Sunni resistance, though the US tried to mitigate this with some last-minute cosmetic concessions. Under these the constitution can be amended by the newly elected National Assembly, although the Sunni parties are unlikely to have the votes to do so.

The constitution institutionalizes the fragmentation of Iraq. The Kurds will have autonomy close to independence. They can drill for oil and will own what new reserves are discovered. But the surprise of the year is that the Shia leaders asked for and got the same concessions. There will be a Shia super region established, covering nine provinces in southern Iraq. This represents half of the 18 provinces in the whole country. One Iraqi minister lamented that the central government of Iraq might end up as a few buildings in the Green Zone.

After the war in 2003, Arab Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, would deride comparisons between Iraq and countries divided by sectarianism such as Northern Ireland and Lebanon. They pointed out that Sunni and Shia in Iraq were often married to each other. They did not have a history of massacring each other. These claims for Iraqi Arab solidarity were always a little exaggerated. Sunni friends claim to love the Shia, aside, of course, "from those that are really Iranians or their agents". The Shia, for their part, said they saw all Iraqi Sunni as their brothers "aside from those that are really Baathists". Claims of communal amity are made less often today. The divisions between them are deepening because Iraq was a Sunni state and is becoming a Shia one. The Sunni are fighting the US occupiers and the Shia are, for the moment at least, loosely allied to the US. Iraq's al-Qa'ida suicide bombers have repeatedly targeted Shia civilians such as day laborers waiting for jobs in the Khadamiyah district of Baghdad. Would-be army and police, almost always Shia, have been slaughtered again and again.

So far the Shia response has been restrained. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme religious leader who is vastly influential over the Shia, has forbidden retaliation. But the powerful Ministry of the Interior, once controlled by the Sunni, is now in the hands of the Shia. The minister, Bayan Jabr, was previously a leader of SCIRI's militia, the Badr Brigade.

They dominate the fearsome paramilitary police commandos whom the Sunni see as nothing more than licensed death squads. At the end of the year, US troops raided an Interior Ministry bunker in the Jadriyah district of west Baghdad, where they found 158 tortured and starved prisoners, all allegedly Sunni. Bodies of men shot in the head and their hands in handcuffs are routinely found on dumps and beside the road in Baghdad.

Many ministries have become the domain of a single sect or party. The health ministry under the interim government became famous for being run by the Dawa Shia Muslim group, while the transport ministry portfolio is held by a follower of the nationalist cleric, Muqtada al- Sadr. This has a disastrous impact because the government begins to resemble that of Lebanon. Ministers are representatives of their communities. They cannot be fired, however crooked or incompetent.

The impact of the insurgency is exaggerated because the state in Iraq remains so weak. This remained strikingly true during 2005, when the government did extraordinarily little for its people. The electricity supply remains poor in Baghdad; kidnapping is rife; security is limited and Iraqis spend much of their time surviving from day to day. The police are not seen as protectors. Earlier this month, a student called Muammur Mohsin al-Obeidi said: "The Iraqi people know nobody is going to save them from criminals. They believe nobody will punish them. If gangsters are arrested they have enough money to bribe their way out of prison. There is no real government." It is a lament heard again and again from people in the streets of Baghdad. They believe government scarcely exists - and certainly not for their benefit.

There have been three administrations of Iraq since the US invasion, and all have failed. There was the Coalition Provisional Authority, fairly undiluted US imperial rule, under Paul Bremer, which helped provoke the Sunni rebellion. On 28 June 2004, the US formally turned power over to the interim government of Iyad Allawi, whose administration was notoriously corrupt. On April 7, 2005, Ibrahim al-Jaafari became Prime Minister but his government has proved fractious. These divisions largely mirrored those between the contending groups in Iraq. In all three administrations, corruption was on a scale attributed to states like Nigeria in the past. In 2005 the entire defense procurement budget of $1.3bn disappeared in return for a few unusable helicopters and armored vehicles. This degree of corruption is now more difficult because ministers cannot spend money without authorization.

There is a further reason why the Iraqi state is weak, which is not at first obvious. The US and Britain foresaw an Iraqi state whose armed forces were equipped only to cope with internal dissent. They have been determined not to hand over heavy weapons or modern equipment.

The US has not been as generous in transferring power to Iraqis as might appear from formal announcements. The main intelligence service has no budget, but is paid for and run by the CIA. The US has tried to keep control of the Defense Ministry and the new Iraqi army, which is supposedly being built up to take the place of US forces when they are withdrawn. The US military speaks of the triumphs and failures of training and equipping Iraqi troops (they have given less attention to the police). But there is another problem that the US has not really tackled.

The question is not just about the ability of the new army to fight, but about loyalty. Who, at the end of the day, will the soldiers fight for? Polls by Britain's Ministry of Defence show that the occupation is overwhelmingly unpopular among Shia as well as Sunni Iraqis. In the long run, the US cannot create an officer corps loyal to America. Then there is also the question of how far the army is a national institution. Its 115 battalions are reportedly 60 Shia, 45 Sunni, 9 Kurdish and one mixed. Over the next year we will see if Iraq is going to remain a single state or turn into a confederation. There are forces for unity as well as disintegration. Most Iraqi Arabs want to live in one country. But political observers fear that a Bosnian solution is on the cards, in which Baghdad will play the role of Sarajevo.

January 2, 2006
Beware the New Year
A threat assessment
by Justin Raimondo
With Patrick J. Fitzgerald working full-time to bring the corruption at the heart of the Bush presidency to light, and other investigations into the dark heart of this administration making substantial progress, the prognosis for 2006 may seem unnaturally bright – especially if, like me, you’ve been following every twist and turn of Fitzgerald’s probe. However, it wouldn’t hurt to take a walk on the dark side, if only to tamp our expectations down to a more realistic level. This means conducting a threat assessment: that is, listing and analyzing the major factors threatening the peace of the world, looming darkly just over the horizon….

The McCain Threat – It’s the beginning of a new political season and, even though congressional elections will come before the presidential election season officially begins, already the pundits are placing their bets, naming their favorites, and speculating about the race for the White House. We live, after all, in the Imperial Age, when Congress is merely an echo chamber – at least, when it comes to foreign policy – and the question of who will occupy the throne is all-important.

The one name on everyone’s lips is John McCain: the Washington punditocracy has always been the Arizona Senator’s biggest and most enthusiastic constituency, and they are working overtime to keep his name in the spotlight as the number one contender for the GOP nomination. This is because he is supposed to be a "maverick," at least by Washington standards – which means deviating from the party line on relatively peripheral questions (campaign finance "reform," how much to torture, etc.) while being more royalist than the king on issues of real import (the war, blind support for Israel, and support for foreign intervention in general).

McCain invariably does well in polls, but as the war in Iraq – and, perhaps, elsewhere – begins to dominate the political landscape, and his views on this subject become more widely known, his ratings will plummet. The reason is because there is no more enthusiastic supporter of the effort to "liberate" Iraq and remake the Middle East into the Middle West than Senator McCain – not even in George W. Bush’s White House. He wants more troops, more air power, more intervention in that troubled region of the world – more "boots on the ground," as he likes to put it, is his answer to practically every foreign policy failure of the last decade or so. That was his line during the Clinton era, when another American president attacked a country (without UN approval) that had never attacked the U.S. or threatened our legitimate interests – and he’s reiterating the same old line when it comes to Iraq. As CBS reporter Rita Braverman once gushed:

"This is key. He acknowledged: 'I fully appreciate this means young Americans may die, and I fully appreciate I take some responsibility for that.' McCain's own military service and his time in that POW camp gives him, perhaps, more authority to speak than any of the other power players on this subject. Americans may not agree with him, but at least they will not have to hunt for his meanings in a maze of obfuscation. And when you listen to him, you have no doubt that his words do not come from a committee of advisors but from his own convictions."

The problem for McCain and the McCainiacs in the media is that the American people disagree with his convictions when it comes to Iraq, and are apt to be turned off by his reckless combativeness in the foreign policy arena. As his position on this vital issue becomes more well-known, his popularity will sink – and, in the end, it may be just a few neocons like Andrew Sullivan and Bill Kristol (together at last!) touting his manly virtues.

The Hillary Threat – While the neocons in the GOP are tooting McCain’s horn the loudest, the War Party isn’t neglecting the Other Party, by any means: they always hedge their bets, and have avoided having to endure a debate over the fundamentals of American foreign policy by controlling both parties during the last six or seven presidential elections. Their ace in the hole, this time around, is Hillary Clinton.

Hillary, like McCain, is a boots-on-the-ground enthusiast, calling for the introduction of more troops into Iraq and generally criticizing the Bush White House’s conduct of the war from the right. The Hillary Threat is much more lethal – and of more import to the War Party – than that posed by the "maverick McCain" because it is imperative that any real antiwar sentiment that bubbles up from the grassroots of the Democratic party be quickly stanched, and stopped. The very idea that Americans might have a substantive debate over foreign policy fundamentals—and in the midst of an increasingly unpopular war! – fills the neocons with terror, because they know this is one argument they are bound to lose. What to do?

If they can somehow manage to lock out the antiwar opposition, deny them a hearing beyond the primaries, and control the terms of the foreign policy debate during an election year, they will have succeeded in demonstrating how a highly effective and determined minority can manipulate the levers of power and defy the popular will. By cementing their control over the machinery of both parties, the War Party ensures that anyone who questions the basic assumptions of our interventionist foreign policy is delegitimized and generally disdained by the opinion-makers and the pundits. If that doesn’t work, the offender is subjected to a smear campaign and eventually demonized as a dangerous "extremist."

These twin threats – McCain and the Medusa – have their anti-interventionist counterparts, like white shadows trailing in their wake. On the Republican side, McCain’s antithesis is Senator Chuck Hagel, whose thoughtful (albeit overly cautious) critique of Bushian hubris in the foreign policy realm could form the real basis of opposition to neoconservative Wilsonianism within the GOP. Hagel would do well to listen to voices on the Right such as Jeffrey Hart, who recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

"The Republican Party now presents itself as the party of Hard Wilsonianism, which is no more plausible than the original Soft Wilsonianism, which balkanized Central Europe with dire consequences. No one has ever thought Wilsonianism to be conservative, ignoring as it does the intractability of culture and people's high valuation of a modus vivendi. Wilsonianism derives from Locke and Rousseau in their belief in the fundamental goodness of mankind and hence in a convergence of interests.

"George W. Bush has firmly situated himself in this tradition, as in his 2003 pronouncement, ‘The human heart desires the same good things everywhere on earth.’ Welcome to Iraq. Whereas realism counsels great prudence in complex cultural situations, Wilsonianism rushes optimistically ahead. Not every country is Denmark. The fighting in Iraq has gone on for more than two years, and the ultimate result of ‘democratization’ in that fractured nation remains very much in doubt, as does the long-range influence of the Iraq invasion on conditions in the Middle East as a whole. In general, Wilsonianism is a snare and a delusion as a guide to policy, and far from conservative."

There are many conservatives today who believe, more than ever, that the neoconservative project [.pdf] of imposing democracy at gunpoint in the Middle East is not only a fool’s errand, but quite possibly the biggest strategic disaster in our history, as potentially fatal to the Republic as the sacking of Washington by the British during the War of 1812. Only this time it is a fifth column within our walls that has succeeded in taking the American capital. It will take a revolt against the neoconservatives coming from the Right to dislodge them from their positions of power and prominence.

As Republicans pay for this war at the polls in the upcoming congressional elections, the time is ripe for some GOP presidential aspirant to say: "Enough!" If Hagel has the moral courage and the conviction to say it, he could transform his status as a dark horse into that of a serious contender, eventually dwarfing McCain as the media’s Republican favorite son while at the same time appealing to a broad spectrum of Republican voters.

In the Democratic party, the War Party is counting on the ability – or, rather, the tendency – of left-liberals to ignore or rationalize the problem of militarism in order to support their domestic policy goals. After all, "don’t you know there’s a war on?" is the perfect rationale for imposing government controls on the home front, and it is one that lefties may find impossible to resist. They no doubt recall FDR using it to great effect before and during World War II– forgetting that the architect of the New Deal was surely the most deceitful warmonger in our history.

The writer John T. Flynn – a trenchant critic of the militarist mindset and former liberal columnist for The New Republic in the 1930s, who later became a leading conservative – pointed out in his book As We Go Marching that conservatives often pave the way for more government spending and centralized controls in the name of "national security" by supporting war and preparations for war. The same principle operates – in reverse gear – in the case of ostensibly antiwar liberals. As history shows, they are all too often persuaded that the domestic "benefits" of operating in a wartime atmosphere – conducive to economic and social planning – outweigh the moral and material costs of war.

The War Party is counting on this kind of opportunism to quash antiwar dissent in the Democratic party and marginalize the candidacy of Russ Feingold. The Senator from Wisconsin voted against the Iraq war and was the only member of that august body to cast his vote against the PATRIOT Act. On domestic policy, he is the quintessential liberal, well to the left of the determinedly "centrist" Hillary. One can easily imagine the Democrats being persuaded that Feingold is too "extreme" to even think about carrying a single "red" state. If the Democratic "Leadership" Council can successfully invoke the specter of "McGovernism" – convincing Democratic delegates to ignore the antiwar grassroots for "pragmatic" reasons – the War Party can sell Hillary as The Only Alternative to four more years of Republican misrule.

I don’t want to get into specific predictions, but there are some general trends to watch for. Aside from the domestic political ramifications of America’s foreign policy of unrelenting aggression, one must remember that the aggression continues and is likely to take on new forms in the coming year. One new development to keep an eye on is the emergence of Vladimir Putin as a major figure in the demonology promulgated by the Western media. Hostility to Russia – a direct consequence of Putin’s efforts to resist encirclement and even defy the American hegemon – is rising in elite circles, including in the top ranks of both parties. Democratic and Republican lawmakers and policy analysts agree that, for dealing with Iran and arming Syria, Putin must be made to pay a price. Hillary supports the efforts of the Bush administration to "democratize" the Russian periphery and encircle Russia, and, along with John McCain, was a major enthusiast of the U.S.-financed "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine – the chosen flashpoint for a fresh outbreak of the old cold war rivalry.

An "Open Letter" decrying Putin’s alleged slide into "dictatorship" signed by over 100 policy analysts, Washington insiders, and assorted neocons signaled the beginning of a new push by the War Party to open up a European front. Yesterday the Slavic bogeyman of the hour was Slobodan Milosevic: tomorrow, there is a good chance Putin will play that role.

The escalation of the war against the Iraqi insurgencies – yes, I mean that to be a plural – into a regional conflict is a possibility that will increasingly present itself in 2006. The New Year had barely dawned when reports of U.S. planning for a military strike on Iran were coming from UPI and the Jerusalem Post. It is Syria, however, that represents a real opportunity for the War Party to effect some "regime change" in the region: the process of setting up Bashar al-Assad as the latest edition of Ba’athist Evil in the Middle East is already well underway. Contrary to most of the evidence, including the most basic considerations of common sense, Syria has been tagged as the murderer of Lebanese entrepreneur-politician Rafik Hariri, who was killed in a Beirut car blast last year, and the UN "investigation" is taking on all the appearances of a propaganda campaign directed at Damascus.

Hillary has already signed on to the campaign to provoke a conflict with Syria, and she won’t hear any argument from McCain on this matter. When the alleged Democratic "dove" Nancy Pelosi touts her support of sanctions against Syria – in spite of the very valuable cooperation proffered by Damascus in tracking down Islamist terrorist cells – the chances of avoiding a military conflict with Damascus appear dim.

Finally, in listing possible threats, we shouldn’t forget the man who, more than any other, has brought us to the point we are at today – without whom the biggest military, diplomatic, and financial blunder in our history might never have happened. Because you can bet he hasn’t forgotten us.

I refer, of course, to Osama bin Laden. We haven’t heard from him in what seems like an awfully long time, and some folks – invariably those who tend to favor the Bush foreign policy – even speculate that he’s no longer among the living. This theory, however, amounts to the same sort of pollyanna-ish wishful thinking that characterizes so much of the "good news from Iraq" crowd.

Bin Laden is not merely alive: he is planning fresh attacks on the object of his unrelenting hatred, the United States of America. Al Qaeda has us squarely in their sights, and it is only a matter of time before they attempt to pull the trigger. This is the greatest danger, but, unlike the alleged threat posed by Saddam’s Iraq, it is all too real.

As resources are diverted to Iraq, instead of to the defense of the continental U.S. against terrorist attacks, our foreign policy of perpetual war on the Arab-Muslim world provides bin Laden with more than enough recruits. Our profoundly mistaken and perverse policies earn him the loyalty of millions of Muslims the world over, who see him as the only successful opponent of American aggression. In their eyes, bin Laden is a living symbol of Muslim defiance – the Islamist Pimpernel whose continued physical existence proves that the hegemon is not all-powerful.

Yes, America is under threat, and it is the responsibility of the peace movement to tirelessly point this out. We are under assault from a worldwide Islamist insurgency whose agents seek to bomb our cities, wreak havoc in the heartland, and visit a punishing blow to America that will make 9/11 look like a minor incident. In the face of this, the slogan of the anti-interventionists must be: Defend America First!

We must reject the Jesuitical mental gymnastics engaged in by apologists for the invasion of Iraq who claim that "we’re fighting them in Iraq before they get to Iowa," and initiate a realistic assessment of just what is required to defend the homeland. We must ask and answer a serious question: how do we guard against a potentially devastating repeat of the incompetence that permitted 19 hijackers to demolish the two biggest symbols of American supremacy and pride in a single blow? Last time, they killed thousands: the next time, it could be millions.

The recent statement [.pdf] of the 9/11 Commission on how unsuccessful we have been in implementing the measures recommended by the commissioners should have set alarm bells ringing, but instead an intended wake-up call put our politicians into a deeper slumber. I guess that’s what we ought to expect in the new, post-9/11 Bizarro World we’re living in, where up is down, wrong is right, and perpetual war signifies the pursuit of peace. And that, when we come right down to it, is just about the only prediction we can unequivocally make, without fear of contradiction: that the inverted "logic" employed by our leaders will continue to operate in its typically perverse fashion, failing to identify and deal with real dangers while noisily inventing new enemies who pose no real threat to our interests. In short, our Bizarro World foreign policy will continue to create new problems, while failing to solve old ones.

I get a lot of letters about my alleged "optimism," most of them expressing some degree of skepticism while hoping that I’m right. Given the tone of the above paragraph, though, I fail to see how I qualify as an optimist. Panglossian is not a word I’d use to describe anyone who believes, as I do, that 9/11 ripped a hole in the space-time continuum, resulting in our current slide into a world where the laws of logic have been repealed. In such a world, the odds of restoring the rule of Reason are not good. If, before 9/11, the effort to arrest the tendency toward pride and even hubris that besets successful republics and sends them on the road to Empire faced long odds, success is even more problematic in the aftermath.

Yet, I am not a pessimist, either. What I’m counting on is the memory of the pre-9/11 political culture, and the remnants of an older American individualist tradition that amounts, some might say, to sheer orneriness: a contempt for the high-and-mighty that always brings down those would-be demagogues and aspiring dictators who, one day, overreach and join the rogues' gallery of American political has-beens. Whether enough of the old culture has been preserved to pull this off is an open question. The process of cultural and political corruption is well-advanced, but the patient is not terminal, at least not yet: recovery is still possible. That’s why I give such weight to the indictment of "Scooter" Libby and the multiple probes of prewar intelligence-gathering methods, the AIPAC spy case, and the numerous investigations into war-profiteering and other war-related scandals. They are a sign of a general reaction against the worst trends in American society – and, as such, they are a sign of genuine hope.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/schwartz.php?articleid=8338

January 3, 2006
The New Iraq War Strategy
More bombings, more civilian deaths, less likelihood of success
by Michael Schwartz
Seymour Hersh's latest article in the New Yorker is over a month old by now, and therefore would seem a little like old news. But like so much of his reporting, Hersh's article contains at least a few nuggets that ripen with time and take on more importance as events play out in Iraq. Two of his key points – one central to the article, the other almost an afterthought – are of particular importance, and worth reviewing as the Iraqis endure yet another chapter in the American effort to crush the resistance.

The first of these key themes is the one that was most prominently commented upon. Hersh broke the story – which is now all over the mainstream press – that the U.S. is going to try a new military strategy in Iraq: more intensive air power and less intensive foot patrols. This will involve fewer U.S. offensive operations (like those in western Anbar that involved evacuating whole cities), increased use of Iraqi armed forces in high-resistance areas, and a massive increase in the use of aerial attacks. In the short time since Hersh wrote the article, this new policy has been aggressively enacted. The Washington Post, quoting U.S. military sources, reported that the number of U.S. air strikes increased from an average of 25 per month during the summer to 62 in September, 122 in October, and 120 in November.

There are several aspects to this new strategy that we need to keep in mind.

First, this is an attempt to lessen the strain on U.S. troops – the U.S. military in Iraq is in grave danger of collapsing, as it did in Vietnam. So the new strategy seeks to reduce the number of patrols (which are the most grueling and dangerous missions American soldiers undertake) and compensate with more air raids. The hope is that this switch in emphasis will make it possible for U.S. troops to endure more tours of duty in Iraq. But this probably won't work. Here is what one military officer told Hersh:

"[I]f 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."

We should not lose track of the importance of this comment. The U.S. military cannot sustain the war at its current level of intensity. As Rep. John Murtha commented in his press conference calling for U.S. withdrawal, "Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course." In a very real sense, then, this change in strategy is an act of desperation.

Second, this change in strategy is an attempt to find a better way to fight the resistance, since the search-and-destroy operations have failed miserably, even as they have inflicted incredible destruction and carnage in the cities under attack. But it also means a more explicit use of state terror. The U.S. cannot occupy a city with air power. As a military officer told Hersh: "Can you put a lid on the insurgency with bombing? No. You can concentrate in one area, but the guys will spring up in another town." The logic of air power (since Guernica in the Spanish Civil War) has always involved a predominant element of "bombing the population into submission." The U.S. military leadership hopes to so injure the population that it cries "uncle," delivers resistance fighters to the occupation, and begins cooperating with the occupation – all in order to stop the punishment. With 500- and 2,000-pound bombs that destroy everything – buildings and people – within a 700-ft. diameter, air power does have a powerful terrorizing effect, and it is altogether plausible that such a strategy could work. Even U.S. military reports of recent air attacks give a sense of the brutality involved, as independent reporter Dahr Jamail recently documented. And Washington Post reporter Ellen Knickmeyer recounted chilling accusations from medical personnel and local civilians as a result of the American offensive in early November, including 97 civilians killed in Husaybah, 40 in Qaimone, 18 children in Ramadi, with uncounted others in numerous other cities and towns in western Anbar province.

Whether or not the targets were insurgents, the disregard for the lives of civilians trapped inside the buildings demolished by air attacks is part of a larger pattern articulated by an American officer to NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins early in the war: "The new strategy must punish not only the guerrillas, but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating."

This is terrorism by definition – attacking the civilian population to get it to withdraw support from the enemy. The change in strategy, therefore, represents the embrace of terrorism as the principle tactic for subduing the Iraqi resistance.

Third, Hersh mentions that American officials and other observers are concerned that this new air strategy will give Iraqi troops responsibility for calling in U.S. bombers, and therefore could result in the use of U.S. air power for revenge against rivals and/or for ruthless and wanton attacks on civilians. However, these fears are misplaced, for two reasons. First, all Iraqi units are under the ultimate command of the U.S. forces (they are integrated into the larger occupation military structure) and are not allowed to act autonomously. The U.S. places American officers with each Iraqi military unit (even platoons), and these officers have ultimate control of any actions taken. No air strikes could be ordered without Americans approving them. Second – and far more important – the American policy is already maximally ruthless, as the quote above makes clear. The rules of engagement are that any resistance at all from any location (house, commercial shop, mosque, school) should be met by overwhelming force, air power if tanks or artillery are not available. Nothing the Iraqis could do would be worse, even if they select different targets. They might, in fact, be less vicious (if they could actually control the air strikes), since they might avoid schools and mosques.

As if this new policy would not add enough mayhem to the already brutal mix in Iraq, Hersh gestures at another negative dynamic that the U.S. presence is animating. Speaking of the accusations that U.S. withdrawal would facilitate or unleash a civil war, Hersh writes:

"In many areas, that[civil] 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 Shi'ites, who were 'rounding up any Sunnis on the basis of whatever a Shi'ite said to them.' The officer went on, 'They [the U.S. troops] were killing Sunnis on behalf of the Shi'ites,' 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."

Hersh is understating American culpability. It is the Americans who recruited, trained, and then stationed the Shi'ites in these Sunni areas, and – as this quote indicates – the Iraqi units are part of an American sweep, and the bulk of the killing was done by Americans "on behalf of the Shi'ites."

This is not an Iraqi policy – it is an American one. This very policy – of using Shi'ites and Kurds against Sunnis – has been the trigger for the long wave of car bombings by Sunnis against Shia targets. Moreover, the U.S. is running the parts of the Ministry of the Interior that command the Wolf Brigade and other special forces that commit terrorist attacks against Sunni clerics who support the resistance, as well as other Sunni leaders. The use of Shia and Kurdish forces in Sunni areas has become a linchpin of U.S. military policy, and it is the key provocation that has redirected Sunni anger toward Shia and Kurds. That sectarian violence is the chief dynamic leading to civil war.

So what do we conclude? As U.S. military strategy in Iraq has begun to unravel, our military has adopted progressively more vicious methods to attempt to maintain its control of the country. In the current iteration, this involves escalated bombing attacks against densely populated urban areas in an attempt to bomb the Sunnis into submission, and the development of anti-Sunni brigades of Shia and Kurdish troops to inflict punishment on resisting cities. The American role in Iraq continues to get uglier.

Business Times - 03 Jan 2006
To help stabilize Iraq, The US looks headed for confrontation with Iran

But it doesn't have the military means and political support for a full-scale attack

By LEON HADAR
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

I'VE been embarrassed a few times in the past with my predictions (for example, that it was going to be US President John Kerry in 2004), but I've also been right on a few occasions (for example, my book, Quagmire: US in the Middle East, was published in 1992). So let me put again my credibility as a political analyst on the line, and make another forecast: The news this year will be dominated by the growing confrontation between Washington and Teheran (if that doesn't happen, well, I promise not to remind you about that early next year...).

Notice that I'm hedging my bets here. I refer to 'confrontation' like in diplomatic and military confrontation, and not to war, like the war with Iraq. I don't think that the United States at this point has the needed military resources and the necessary political support at home and abroad for launching a full-scale attack on Iran, including the possible American occupation of that country (or even parts of it).

In short, don't replace the 'q' with an 'n' and expect a re-run of Iraq in Iran. The military and political realities are quite different than it was three years ago when the Bush administration decided to oust Saddam Hussein from power. One doesn't have to be a veteran military expert or a diplomatic observer to recognise that the US armed forces are overstretched in Mesopotamia (150,000) and around the world, that the Bush administration wouldn't be able to persuade even Tony Blair to invade Iran.

Most important of all, the American public is exhausted with the war in Iraq. Hence, short of a 9/11-like terrorist attack that could be linked (really, that is, and not through deceptive 'intelligence') to the Ayatollahs in Teheran, Congress is not going to provide President Bush with the green light to send US ground troops to Iran, especially since none is really available (there are less than 400,000 combat troops in the US army and only 150,000 of those are on active duty).

A total war with Iran, the world's second oil producer, in 2006 and its consequences could also lead to such a huge hike in petrol prices in the United States that would make it less likely that the American SUV owner would re-elect a Republican Congress in the November mid-elections.

But a US confrontation with Iran is inevitable for several reasons. Much of the public attention had been focused of course on the US-led drive, backed by the European Union (EU), to block what seems to be Iran's drive to speed up its nuclear-development programme. The recent American efforts have been taking place through multilateral channels, suggesting to some observers that the Bush administration has been adopting a 'realist' strategy. The EU-3 groups (Britain, France, Germany) have been negotiating on and off with Iran, and meetings between the Americans and the other 34 members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) governing board have produced resolutions calling on Iran to adopt a more cooperative approach.

But the Bush administration agreed last November to go along with a European recommendation to delay asking the IAEA board members to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for action, after Russia and China indicated that they would have would block UN action to punish Teheran.

And while the EU-3 negotiations with Iran seem to be reaching a dead-end, there have been signs of growing tensions between the Iranians and the Israelis. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly threatened to eliminate Israel and suggested that the Jewish Holocaust didn't take place.

At the same time, Israeli officials have stressed that they would not permit Iran to develop a nuclear military capability, igniting some reports that the they are planning an attack against Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor similar to the Israeli raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear site in 1981.

But it seems very unlikely that under the conditions that exist today in the Middle East - with the United States occupying Iraq, a state that borders Iran - that Israel would take military action against Teheran that could affect US direct interests without receiving go-ahead for its patron in Washington. The Israeli tail won't be allowed to wag the US dog.

More likely, the Israeli threats serve the US strategy of pressing Iran to make concessions over the nuclear issue. In fact, recent reports in the German media that the Bush administration was preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in 2006, which appeared after similar news was published in the Turkish press, should be regarded as part of the US campaign to pressure Teheran to agree to make compromises during the negotiations with the EU-3 and the IAEA.

Most observers are speculating that without any breakthrough in the talks with Iran, Washington would demand that the UN Security Council impose sanctions on Iran, and if the Russian and/or the Chinese decide to veto a resolution along those lines, the Bush administration would urge the Europeans and other governments to join in a ban on export of embargo on technologies that Iran can use in its nuclear programme.

Both the Americans and the Iranians are aware that such moves, assuming the Europeans and others would back them, would have very little effect on Iran. With the continuing rise in oil prices, the Iranians are now awash with oil and money while the Russians, the Chinese and probably the Indians, remain important trade partners of the Iranians and could be expected to reject a US call to isolate Iran and to continue to make major economic deals with Teheran on energy and arms.

Moreover, the Iranians are familiar with the argument made above, that the United States won't be able to 'do an Iraq' in Iran, among other reasons because of the high military and economic costs for the United States involved in maintaining the occupation of Iraq. If anything, if they seek to do that, the Iranians could probably raise those costs for the Americans by encouraging their political and military allies in the majority Shiite community in Iraq, some of whom are now in power in Baghdad, to make life miserable for the occupiers through violence (the use of the Shiite militias) or by sabotaging moves towards political accommodation in Iraq.

As an Iran expert suggested to me: 'All the Iranians need is to push their Shiite button, and Iraq would explode in the face of the Americans.' Indeed, note the irony here. By ousting Saddam Hussein and his Arab-Sunni allies in Baghdad and by destroying Iraq's military power, the Americans have removed the major regional counter-balance to Iran's power in the Persian Gulf on which other Sunni-Arab regimes in the region, including Saudi Arabia, have counted on as a way of containing the Shiite Ayatollahs in Teheran who seem to have adopted an even more radical style and policies.

Compounding this sense of irony is the fact that democracy and free election in Iraq - under US occupation! - is bringing to power a Shiite political coalition with strong ties to anti-American Teheran (where another exercise in democracy led to the election of the Holocaust denier and anti-American Ahmadinejad).

It's not surprising, therefore, that the Saudis and other Arab Gulf states, not unlike the Israelis, have been putting pressure on the Americans to 'do something' about Iran before an regional Shiite bloc led by Iran would emerge in the Gulf and threaten the interests of the Saudis (who also have a large Shiite minority).

All of which means that if the Americans want to make sure that Iraq under the Shiite rule doesn't turn into a satellite of Iran, they need to use their own diplomatic and military power to contain Teheran while continuing to occupy Iraq.

The Iranians, however, assume that they are in a win-win situation. They can drag the negotiations with the EU-3 and the IAEA, create a sense of a diplomatic brinkmanship, and make a few last-moment, minor concessions on the nuclear issue. That option would leave Washington isolated and with no support to take action against Teheran.

Or the Iranians could decide to raise the diplomatic ante and reject any compromise, counting on the Russians and/or the Chinese to block UN action and on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and other anti-American Third World nations to join them in countering US diplomatic moves, which in turn, will put enormous pressure on oil prices.

Doing nothing on Iran would not only demolish what remains of the US-led nuclear arms control regime, it will turn the balance of power in Iraq and the Persian Gulf against the United States and create incentives for the Saudis and others to make deals with Teheran.

Short of trying to open direct diplomatic channels to Iran (very unlikely), the United States will probably try to increase the diplomatic and military pressure on Iran in the coming months, demonstrating that the Pax Americana project in the Middle East is becoming more expensive.

That the central banks of China and other Asian economies are paying for it, is probably the most intriguing element in this evolving story.

Copyright © 2005 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Twin Crises Of 2006
Robert Dreyfuss
January 03, 2006


Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached at his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com.

The two most pressing foreign policy problems for the Bush administration in 2006—indeed, they might be called twin crises—are, first, the unraveling of Iraq and the emergence of a theocracy in Baghdad under the control of the Shiite religious parties, and second, the serious (though somewhat overblown and artificial) showdown that is looming over Iran's alleged nuclear program. Not surprisingly, the crises in Iraq and Iran are closely related, not least because Iran's r