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January 13, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
In Iraq, Wrongs Made a Right
By L. PAUL BREMER
THE recent debate set off by the publication of my book about my time in Iraq has shed more heat than light. Here are some of the fundamental lessons I took away from the American experience.

First, repairing the damage to Iraq by decades of tyranny was never going to be easy, and I made some mistakes.

For example, consider our efforts to ban senior Baath Party officials from public office. This was the proper decision - the party had been a key instrument of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship - and our policy was intended to affect only the top 1 percent or so of party members.

The error was that I left the implementation of the policy to a political body within the nascent Iraqi government, where it became a tool of politicians who applied it much more broadly than we had intended. De-Baathification should have been administered by an independent judicial body.

We also placed too much emphasis on large-scale reconstruction projects. While the urgent need for modern highways, electrical generating plants and the like was clear, we should have anticipated that building them would take a long time. Our earlier efforts should have been directed more tightly at meeting Iraqis' day-to-day needs.

To speed up those larger projects, I should have also insisted on exemption from the usual bureaucratic and contracting rules. This lesson was brought home to me in a dramatic fashion a few weeks after I arrived. We had learned that six major hospitals in Baghdad urgently needed new generators to run their operating rooms and air-conditioning plants. Our budget director told me I could use American funds, which were subject to United States federal contracting rules, or Iraqi government funds, which were not. Using American money, he told me, would mean waiting four to six months for the generators. We used Iraqi funds and got the equipment in eight days. In the future, Congress must make provisions for legitimate exemptions.

Another clear lesson is that the United States must be better prepared for the post-conflict phase should we find ourselves in similar military situations in the future. The administration has made a good start by setting up offices of reconstruction in the State and Defense Departments. But the effort must be broadened through the government and especially the private sector. The goal should be a quick-reaction, public-private Civilian Reserve Corps consisting of people with expertise on matters like the establishment of telecommunications facilities, rebuilding of electrical power plants, modernizing health care systems and instituting modern budgeting procedures.

Last, much attention has been paid to my concern about the need to retain adequate manpower to defeat the terrorists and insurgents. Our military leaders said they had sufficient forces to ensure law and order, and that additional soldiers might increase Iraqi hostility. Theirs was a respectable argument. But I disagreed with it. And while I had concerns about the quality of Iraqi forces two years ago, their training has since been revamped. Today they are playing an increasingly important role in defending Iraq.

Despite the missteps and setbacks, there is little question that, thanks to efforts by the American-led coalition, enormous political and economic progress is being made in Iraq today.

Two years ago, Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, told his followers there that there would be no place for them in a democratic Iraq. One year later, Iraqis voted in the country's first genuine elections. Then they wrote and approved a new Constitution. And last month 70 percent of voters turned out to elect a new Parliament. Now that body should modify the Constitution to address legitimate concerns of the Sunnis.

As for Iraq's economy, at liberation it was flat on its back: the World Bank estimated that in 2003 the economy contracted by 41 percent. Now Iraq benefits from an independent central bank, and a new currency whose stability is a remarkable indicator of confidence. The economy is open to foreign investment and commercial laws have been modernized. The International Monetary Fund reports that per-capita income has doubled in the last two years and predicts that Iraq's economy will grow 17 percent this year. No wonder registration of new businesses has jumped 67 percent in the last six months.

There is, of course, still much to be done. American troops and Iraqis continue to die battling criminal elements of the Saddam Hussein regime and Qaeda terrorists. President Bush has correctly identified Iraq as the central front in the war on terrorism, as Osama bin Laden himself acknowledged when he told his followers "the third world war has begun in Iraq" and that it would "end there in victory and glory, or misery and humiliation."

Despite these enormous stakes, some Americans have called for setting a timetable for our withdrawal or even pulling out now. This would be a historic mistake: a betrayal of the sacrifices Americans and Iraqis have made; a victory of the terrorists everywhere; and step toward a more dangerous world.

L. Paul Bremer III, the former director of the Coalition Provisional Authority, is the author of "My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope."



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This editorial in the Niagara Falls Reporter pulls no punches, and gets right to the point.

http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/editorial229.html

To the Reality-Based Community: Help is not on the way
From Leon Hadar

The Age Of W Is Not Over

Americans overwhelmingly lack confidence that Iraq will have a stable government in place within the next year, and more than half say that the war has not been worth its cost, according to a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. Fewer than one in five, or about 19 percent, of the 1,003 adults quizzed said they believe Iraqis can assemble a sound, democratic government in the next 12 months that is able to maintain order without the assistance of U.S. troops. Seventy-five percent said they didn't believe that would happen. The poll also suggested that most Americans remain skeptical about the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with 52 percent telling pollsters it wasn't worth going to war. However, this is a marked decrease from a poll taken fewer than two months ago, indicating that 60 percent of Americans didn't think the war was worth the cost.
So...is it over? In fact, Congressman Jack Murtha is predicting that "Vast majority of US troops to leave Iraq by year’s end." Now... let's see isn't that Jack Murtha from last year's Murtha Moment, the famous "tipping point." According to Nation Magazine:


History may well record that the beginning of the end of the American nightmare in Iraq came on November 17, when an old warrior said it was time for the troops to come home.
Didn't happen. And won't happen anytime soon. To be fair to the Nation and other the-Iraq-War-is-Over crowd, the magazine as well as many pundits qualified their prediction by stressing that that rosy scenario would take place only if the Democrats seized the opportunity that Murtha offered them to become the tribune of popular sentiment against the war. But let's be honest with ourseleves -- and I'm referring here to the critics of the war and the entire Empire Project -- there was a lot of expectation, well, wishfull thinking that the tide was turning against the neocons and the other members of the War Party. Pundits were fantasizing about Senator Chuck Hagel emerging as a Republican presidential candidate not to mention all the talk about the Democrats taking control of Capitol Hill in November,followed by Congressional investiations of the war, and who knows? Inpeachment?. Stop dreaming, my friends in the Reality-based Community. It ain't gonna happen anytime soon. The Democrats may gain a small advantage in the House. A few U.S. troops with return home and others will be deployed to Iraq. But America is going to be there for a long time to come.

No domestic opposition and global counter-balancing
The Bushies "did Iraq" because they could do it. On March 2003 there were no constraints operating on the Bush Administration at home (no opposition in Congress) or abroad (no counter-balancing global player). Has anything changes since then? I don't think so. It's not only that the Democrats are still impotent. They are. The fact is that the majority of the members of the Demcratic establishment -- those who supported going to war -- are opposed to withdrawing from Iraq. Period. They actually accept President Bush's rules for the debate on the war: Only "honest criticism." At the same time, no leading global power is ready to challenge the United States. The Europeans are divided and have failed to come up with an alternative and coherent policy options on Iraq (although they still are not going to help us there with troops and money); the Russians are weak; and the Chinese whose central bank (together with those of Japan and South Korea) continues to finance the U.S. current-acount deficit are watching the Americans drowning in the Middle Eastern quagmire -- and they smile. Their hope is that the War on terrorism will end -- and they, the Chinese, will emerge as the winners.

Costs of imperial overstretch
Bush's imperial project in Iraq and elsewhere will face serious challenges only when the global geo-strategic and geo-economic costs of the endeavor will become obvious --The price of oil will reache the stratosphere? The Asian central banks and the oil producing countries will stop buying dollar assets? The U.S. current-account deficit will not be sustainable? The the U.S. dollar will sink? The housing bubble will pop? -- and will start impacting on the economic welfare of the white middle class voter --- Can't pay for the gas for my SUV? Can't borrow against capital gains on my home? Can't pay-off my credit cards? When that happens -- and one of the reasons for opposing the imperial project is to prevent that from happening -- I do hope that a Democrat or a Republican or an Independet will be there to pick up the political pieces and to advance an alternative foreign policy based on a more realistic assessment of U.S. global power.

Paging Jim Webb

I understand that former Navy Secretary James Webb, is considering running as a Democrat for Seantor from Virginia. I like him and I hope that the Democrats select him as candidate and that he wins the Senate race. He has been a strong critic of the Iraq War, but he is also a Vietnam war veteran, a nationalist and a cultural conservative. Relatively young and charismatic, he is exactly the kind of guy the Democrats need to win the presidential race in 2008.
(and check for more on my http://globalparadigms.blogspot.com/)

http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/gallagher247.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...0,7038018.story

Did al-Qaeda's Gambit Work? Have They Baited Bush into Disastrous Missteps in the Middle East?
Real Men Go to Tehran
By M. SHAHID ALAM



"Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran."

Senior Bush Official, May 2003

The United States and Israel have been itching to go to Tehran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. That Revolution was a strategic setback for both powers. It overthrew the Iranian monarchy, a great friend of the US and Israel, and brought to power the Shi'ite Mullahs, who saw themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Prophet's legacy, and, therefore, the true defenders of Islam.

As a result, the Iranian Revolution was certain to clash with both the US and Israel, as well as their client states in the Arab world. Israel was unacceptable because it was an alien intrusion that had displaced a Muslim people: it was a foreign implant in the Islamic heartland. But the US was the greater antagonist. On its own account, through Israel, and on the behalf of Israel, it sought to keep the Middle East firmly bound in the chains of American hegemony.

The US-Israeli hegemony over the Middle East had won a great victory in 1978. At Camp David, the leading Arab country, Egypt, chose to surrender its leadership of the Arab world, and signed a separate 'peace' with Israel. This freed Israel to pursue its plans to annex the West Bank and Gaza, and to project unchecked power over the entire region. The Arab world could now be squeezed between Israel in the West and Iran to the East, the twin pillars of US hegemony over the region's peoples and resources.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 ended this partnership. At that point, real men in Washington would have loved to take back Tehran from the Mullahs but for the inconvenience of Soviet opposition. But great powers are rarely stymied by any single development however adverse. It took little encouragement from Washington to get Iraq to mount an unprovoked invasion of Iran. In the twenti-eth century, few Arab leaders have seen the difference between entrapment and opportunity.

The war between Iran and Iraq served the United States and Israel quite well. It blunted the energies of Iran, diverting it from any serious attempts to export the revolution, or challenging American influence in the region. The Israeli gains were more substantial. With Egypt neutered at Camp David, and Iraq and Iran locked in a bloody war, Israel was free during the 1980s to do what it pleased. It expanded its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak, expelled the Palestinian fighters from Lebanon, and established a long-term occupation over much of Southern Lebanon. Israel was closer to its goal of commanding unchallenged power over the Middle East.

The end of the Cold War in 1990 offered a bigger opening to the United States and Israel. Freed from the Soviet check on their ambitions, and with Iran devastated by the war, the United States began working on plans to establish a military control over the region, in the style of earlier colonial empires. This happened quickly when, with American assurance of non-intervention in intra-Arab conflicts, Iraq invaded Kuwaiti in August 1990.

The US response was massive and swift. In January 1990, after assembling 600,000 allied troops in Saudi Arabia ­ about half of them American ­ it pushed Iraq out of Kuwait, and mounted massive air strikes against Iraq itself, destroying much of its industry, power-generating capacity and infrastructure. The US had now established a massive military beachhead in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. It established permanent military bases in Saudi Arabia, continued its economic sanctions against Iraq, created a Kurdish autonomous zone in the north of Iraq, and, together with Britain, continued to bomb Iraq on a nearly daily basis for the next thirteen years.

With the US beachhead in place, where did the real men in the US and Israel want to go next? There was no secrecy about their plans. At a minimum, the Neoconservatives in the US and their Likud allies in Israel wanted 'regime change' in Iraq, Syria and Iran. This would be delivered by covert action, air strikes, or invasion ­ whatever it took ­ to be mounted by the US military. Israel would stay out of these wars, ready to reap the benefits of their aftermath.

The Likud plans were more ambitious. They wanted to redraw the map of the Middle East, using ethnic, sectarian, and religious differences to carve up the existing states in the region into weak micro-states that could be easily bullied by Israel. This was the Kivunim plan first made public in 1982. It would give Israel a thousand years of dominance over the Middle East.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were the 'catalyzing event' that put these plans into motion. The US wasted no time in seizing the moment. Instantly, President George Bush declared a global war against terrorism. The first target of this war was Afghanistan, but this was only a sideshow. On January 29, 2002, the President announced his initial targets for regime change: the 'axis of evil' that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

The plan was to invade and consolidate control over Iraq as a base for operations against Iran, Syria and perhaps Saudi Arabia. This sequencing was based on two assumptions: that the invasion of Iraq would be a cake-walk and American troops would be greeted as liberators. The US invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003 and Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. It was indeed a cake-walk, and it appeared to television audiences that American troops were also being greeted as liberators. Understandably, the mood in Washington and Tel Aviv was triumphant. The US is unstoppable: it was time for real men now to go to Tehran.

Nearly three years after the Iraqi invasion, the real men are still stuck in Baghdad. Yes, there has been a great deal of talk about attacking Iran: plans in place for air strikes on Iran's revolutionary guards, on its nuclear installations and other WMD sites, and even talk of a ground invasion. There have been reports of spy flights over Iran and operations by special forces inside Iran. Israel too has been goading the US to strike, and if the US shrinks from this duty, threatening to go solo.

What has been holding back the real men in Washington and Tel Aviv? One reason of course is that the cake walk very quickly turned into a quagmire. The apparent Iraqi welcome was replaced by a growing and hardy insurgency, which has exacted a high toll on US plans for Iraq even though it was led mostly by Sunni Arabs. As a result, close to 150,000 US troops remain tied down in Iraq, with little prospect that they can be freed soon for action against Iran. Most Shi'ites aren't resisting the American occupation, but they are ready to take power in Iraq, and want the Americans to leave.

While the US cannot mount a full-scale invasion of Iran without a draft, it does possesses the capability ­ despite the Iraqi quagmire ­ to launch air and missile strikes at Iranian targets, using nuclear weapons to destroy underground weapon sites. On the other hand, despite its saber rattling, most analysts agree that Israel does not possess this capability on its own. Unlike Iraq, Iran has dispersed its nuclear assets to dozens of sites, some unknown. Then, why hasn't the US mounted air attacks against Iran yet? Or will it any time soon?

More and more, as the Americans have taken a more sober reckoning of Iran's political and military capabilities, they realize that Iran is not Iraq. When Osirak was attacked by Israel in June 1981, Iraq did nothing: it could do nothing. One thing is nearly certain: Iran will respond to any attack on its nuclear sites. Iran's nuclear program has the broadest public support: as a result, the Iranian Revolution would suffer a serious loss of prestige if it did nothing to punish the attacks. The question is: what can Iran do in retaliation?

Both the CIA and DIA have conducted war games to determine the consequences of an American air attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. According to Newsweek (September 27, 2004), "No one liked the outcome." According to an Air Force source, "The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating." In December 2004, The Atlantic Monthly reported similar results for its own war game on this question. The architect of these games, Sam Gardner, concluded, "You have no military solution for the issues of Iran."

What is the damage Iran can inflict? Since preparations for any US strike could not be kept secret, Iran may choose to preempt such a strike. According to the participants in the Atlantic Monthly war game, Iran could attack American troops across the border in Iraq. In responding to these attacks, the US troops would become even more vulnerable to the Iraqi insurgency. One participant expressed the view that Iran "may decide that a bloody defeat for the United States, even if it means chaos in Iraq, is something they actually prefer." Iran could also join hands with al-Qaida to mount attacks on civilian targets within the US. If Iranian losses mount, Iran may launch missiles against Israel or decide to block the flow of oil from the Gulf, options not considered in the Atlantic Monthly war game.

What are the realistic options available to the US? It could drag Iran to the UN Security Council and, if Russia and China climb on board, pass a motion for limited economic sanctions. Most likely, the US will not be asking for an Iraq-style oil embargo. Not only would this roil the markets for oil, Iran will respond by ending inspections, and accelerate its uranium enrichment. If Iran is indeed pursuing a nuclear program, then it will, perhaps sooner rather than later, have its bomb. Once that happens, one Israeli official in the Newsweek report said, "Look at ways to make sure it's not the mullahs who have their finger on the trigger." But the US and Israel have been pursuing that option since 1979.

It would appear that US-Israeli power over the Middle East, which had been growing since World War II, may have finally run into an obstacle. And that obstacle is Iran, a country the CIA had returned to a despotic monarch in 1953. Paradoxically, this has happened when American dominance over the region appears to be at its peak; when its troops occupy a key Arab country; when it has Iran sandwiched between US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; and when it has trapped Iran inside a ring of US military bases running from Qatar, through Turkey and Tajikistan, to Pakistan.

Could it be that al-Qaida's gambit is beginning to pay off? It had hoped that the attacks of September 11 would provoke the US into invading the Islamic heartland. That the US did, but the mass upheaval al-Qaida had expected in the Arab streets did not materialize. Instead, it is Iran that has been the chief beneficiary of the US invasion. As a result, it is Iran that now possesses the leverage to oppose US-Israeli aims in the region. Al-Qaida had not planned on a Shi'ite country leading the Islamic world.

It is possible that the US, choosing to ignore the colossal risks, may yet launch air attacks against Iran. President Bush could be pushed into this by pressure from messianic Christians, by Neoconservatives, by Israelis, or by the illusion that he needs to do something bold and desperate to save his presidency. By refusing to wilt under US-Israeli threats, it appears that the Iranians too may be following al-Qaida's logic. We cannot tell if this is what motivates Iran. But that is where matters will go if the US decides to attack or invade Iran.

No one have yet remarked on some eerie parallels between the US determination to deepen its intervention in the Islamic world and Napoleons' relentless pursuit of the Russian forces, retreating, drawing them into the trap of the Russian winter. It would appear that the United States too is irretrievably committed to pursuing its Islamic foe to the finish, to keep moving forward even if this risks getting caught in a harsh Islamic winter. On the other hand, the Neoconservatives, the messianic Christians, and the Israelis are convinced that with their searing firepower, the US and Israel will succeed and plant a hundred pliant democracies in the Middle East. We will have to wait and see if these real men ever get to add Tehran to their next travel itinerary ­ or they have to give up the comforts of the Green Zone in Baghdad.

M. Shahid Alam teaches economics at a university in Boston. Some of his previous essays are available in a book, Is There An Islamic Problem (IBT Books, 2004). He may be reached at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.

© M. Shahid Alam

http://www.thenewstribune.com/24hour/opini...-11782629c.html

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060118/..._the_troops.php


Hiding Behind The Troops
David Corn
January 18, 2006


David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com.

When the CIA tried to hit Ayman Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No. 2, with a missile fired from a Predator drone and ended up killing more than a dozen civilians as well as four or so people later identified as "foreign terrorists" in a Pakistani village near the border of Afghanistan, that was dumb. When George W. Bush did not quickly apologize, offer compensation to the victims and announce there would be an immediate investigation, that was also dumb. For with this strike, the Bush administration essentially aided the enemy, who now can point to this episode as proof that Bush does not give a damn about innocent Muslim lives (which is what many people in the Arab world already suspect).

And this botched operation has severely undermined the Pakistani government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revealing how Bush treats his friends and allies in the war of terrorism. Moreover, actions like this can lead one to wonder if Bush really means it when he says—as he has frequently—"We believe in the dignity of every human life." If that were indeed the case, then wouldn't he be all broken up over the Pakistani civilians blown to pieces by the CIA missile? Hunting mass-murdering terrorists who live among civilians is indeed hard and nasty work, which most people find morally justifiable. ("We have to do what we think is necessary," John McCain declared on Sunday.) Then let's be frank. Those who are willing to target a neighborhood in a far-away village—hoping to kill a terrorist but knowing that innocent human beings may well also be smashed to bits—do not really believe in the dignity of every human life. They are willing to trade certain lives (of nameless people who happen to be villagers in a remote spot) for the results they seek. The cost-benefit analysis may be defensible; in all wars, non-combatants are killed. But please, let's not kid ourselves. Bush and his commanders in the war on terrorism are willing to waste non-terrorists to kill terrorists. Right or wrong, that is not caring about the dignity of every life.

Now by writing this, I hope I am not violating Bush's standards for acceptable debate. After years of ignoring or deflecting criticism of his actions in Iraq and of his conduct of the so-called war on terrorism, Bush in recent months has taken a different tack. He has admitted mistakes were made—by others, not him—regarding the WMD intelligence. (This can be categorized as a Doh!-like concession.) And he has said that criticism of him is not out of bounds, as long as it's the right sort of criticism and doesn't, for instance, raise questions about his motives.

Last week, speaking at a Veterans of Foreign War convention, Bush made this point once again—and the next day added an electoral twist. Before the supportive crowd, he said:

We must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate—and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas. The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

I recall there were plenty of Bush supporters who never missed the chance to question Bill Clinton's motives whenever he fired a shot overseas. Remember the real-life claims of Wag the Dog ? GOP opportunism notwithstanding, what's wrong with questioning Bush's motives or arguing the case that he misled the public to win support for the invasion of Iraq? It's understandable that Bush himself may not enjoy such criticism. But he's not king—at least not yet, despite all the legal memos written by his Justice Department and counsel's office claiming that he can do anything he wants to and avoid (that is, break) any law while he is pursuing his commander-in-chief duties in the war on terrorism. (See the memo, "The Unitary Executive and Finding Big Brother (Implied) in the U.S. Constitution.") And recent polls have indicated that more than half of Americans believe that Bush deliberately overstated the threat from Iraq prior to the war. His motives are already under suspicion. Perhaps the American people, as Bush suggests, do know the difference between responsible and irresponsible rhetoric.

But apparently he doesn't want them to talk about it. Before the VFWers, he went on:

When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale. In a time of war, we have a responsibility to show that whatever our political differences at home, our nation is united and determined to prevail. And we have a responsibility to our men and women in uniform—who deserve to know that once our politicians vote to send them into harm's way, our support will be with them in good days and in bad days—and we will settle for nothing less than complete victory.

Note the sleight of hand. Accusing Bush of misleading the nation on the reasons for war is, he says, equal to questioning the mission. In a sense, he might be right about that. It certainly is saying that the cause for which Bush has sent American men and women to the death is not what Bush claimed it to be. But here he is trying to hide behind the troops. Attack me, and you're undermining them. It's cowardly. But it sure is in sync with his l'etat-est-moi view. In this case, it's l'armee-est-moi . This is not the only spin option available to Commander Bush. He could have as easily said:

"I know there are folks out there saying mean things about me and my decision to invade Iraq. Well, fire away. I'm fair game. I can take it. But whatever anyone thinks of me and the war, I know we all agree that we should do whatever can for the troops—and that even my critics are with me on that."

That might be how a uniter-not-a-divider would put it. But not Bush. Speaking the next day in Louisville, Ky., he was asked by a seven-year-old, "How can people help on the war on terror?" Bush replied,

One way people can help as we're coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm's way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy.

So if the war in Iraq becomes an issue in this year's congressional elections, the White House is all set to point an accusatory finger and scold, "Partisan lips sink ships." It's their counterattack, and Bush has started test-driving it-in a pre-emptive fashion. Four years ago, as I wrote about recently , Bush campaigned for GOP candidates and claimed that Democrats were "not interested in the security of the American people." Nowadays, the president is suggesting that he would view similarly harsh rhetoric directed toward him (as opposed to the Democrats) as an attack on "the mission" and a threat to the troops. I might consider suggesting that rank hypocrisy is at work and that only not-to-be-trusted scoundrels shield their political backsides with the troops. But I don't want to embolden the enemy.

Official US agency paints dire picture of 'out-of-control' Iraq

· Analysis issued by USAid in reconstruction effort
· Account belies picture painted by White House

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday January 18, 2006
The Guardian


An official assessment drawn up by the US foreign aid agency depicts the security situation in Iraq as dire, amounting to a "social breakdown" in which criminals have "almost free rein".
The "conflict assessment" is an attachment to an invitation to contractors to bid on a project rehabilitating Iraqi cities published earlier this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAid).

The picture it paints is not only darker than the optimistic accounts from the White House and the Pentagon, it also gives a more complex profile of the insurgency than the straightforward "rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists" described by George Bush.

The USAid analysis talks of an "internecine conflict" involving religious, ethnic, criminal and tribal groups. "It is increasingly common for tribesmen to 'turn in' to the authorities enemies as insurgents - this as a form of tribal revenge," the paper says, casting doubt on the efficacy of counter-insurgent sweeps by coalition and Iraqi forces.

Meanwhile, foreign jihadist groups are growing in strength, the report said.

"External fighters and organisations such as al-Qaida and the Iraqi offshoot led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are gaining in number and notoriety as significant actors," USAid's assessment said. "Recruitment into the ranks of these organisations takes place throughout the Sunni Muslim world, with most suicide bombers coming from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region."

The assessment conflicted sharply with recent Pentagon claims that Zarqawi's group was in "disarray".

The USAid document was attached to project documents for the Focused Stabilisation in Strategic Cities Initiative, a $1.3bn (£740m) project to curb violence in cities such as Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Najaf, through job creation and investment in local communities.

The paper, whose existence was first reported by the Washington Post, argues that insurgent attacks "significantly damage the country's infrastructure and cause a tide of adverse economic and social effects that ripple across Iraq".

"In the social breakdown that has accompanied the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime criminal elements within Iraqi society have had almost free rein," the document says. "In the absence of an effective police force capable of ensuring public safety, criminal elements flourish ... Baghdad is reportedly divided into zones controlled by organised criminal groups-clans."

The lawlessness has had an impact on basic freedoms, USAid argues, particularly in the south, where "social liberties have been curtailed dramatically by roving bands of self-appointed religious-moral police". USAid officials did not respond to calls seeking comment yesterday.

Judith Yaphe, a former CIA expert on Iraq now teaching at the National Defence University in Washington, said while the administration's pronouncements on security were rosy, the USAid version was pessimistic. "It's a very difficult environment, but if I read this right, they are saying there is violence everywhere and I don't think it's true," Ms Yaphe said. She said USAid could have published the document to pressure the White House to increase its funding. The administration does not intend to request more reconstruction funds after the end of this year.

January 19, 2006

Cleric Sees No End to Insurgency in Iraq
By ROBERT H. REID
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -

Sunni Arab participation in a new government will not be enough to persuade Islamic extremists and Saddam Hussein loyalists to abandon the insurgency, the country's most powerful Shiite politician said Thursday.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric with close ties to Iran and head of Iraq's largest Shiite party, also said the Americans must address "mistakes" in the battle against Sunni-led insurgents and allow the Iraqis a bigger role in the fight.

The turbaned, soft-spoken cleric made his comments during an interview with The Associated Press in his heavily guarded residence along the Tigris River as the election commission was preparing to announce results of the Dec. 15 national ballot.

An alliance of Shiite religious parties, in which al-Hakim's group plays the leading role, is expected to claim the biggest number of seats in the new parliament but not enough to rule without Sunni and Kurdish partners.

Despite his calm demeanor, al-Hakim has a reputation for toughness honed by years as the commander of the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia which fought Saddam's regime until it collapsed in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

That has given al-Hakim a fearsome reputation among Sunni Arabs, many of whom believe the Badr militia has infiltrated government security forces and are responsible for abuses against Sunnis. The Badr Brigade and al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq deny the allegations.

During the interview, al-Hakim, who speaks only a little above a whisper, acknowledged the need to bring Sunni Arabs into the new government, which will be formed once the new parliament convenes.

U.S. officials hope the new leadership will win the trust of the Sunnis and defuse the insurgency so that American and other international troops can begin to go home.

"We are convinced of the necessity that the Sunnis should participate along with us in the government because they are an important component in Iraq," he said. "As for who is going to join the government with us, this matter is related to who is closer to us regarding the principles we believe in."

But al-Hakim added: "The important thing is that (Sunnis) believe that there is a new reality in Iraq. The important thing that is they believe in the necessity of the participation and shouldering responsibility in the (parliament) and government."

"Every day we are getting closer to accepting this reality. But there are some groups that will not accept this," al-Hakim said, citing religious extremists and Saddam loyalists. "Those people will continue confronting the government. ... Those people should be confronted firmly by the government."

To do that, al-Hakim said the Iraqis and their coalition partners must agree on a greater counterinsurgency role for Iraqi forces and "allow the Interior and Defense ministries to operate and to allow the leaderships in those two ministries to make decisions and move to achieve their goals."

The Interior Ministry, currently controlled by al-Hakim's party, has been particularly criticized by Sunnis for alleged abuses.

Sunni Arabs, believed to account for about 20 percent of Iraq's 27 million people, dominated political life for generations, and many of them resent the rise to power of the Shiite majority, which suffered under Saddam's regime.

Many Sunnis refuse to accept the widespread belief that Shiites now number about 60 percent of the population. The decision by many Sunnis to boycott the January 2005 election enabled Shiites and Kurds to dominate the outgoing parliament, sharpening sectarian tensions and fueling the insurgency.

Sunnis participated in far greater numbers in last month's election and are expected to gain more seats in the new legislature.

One of parliament's first tasks will be to consider amendments to the new constitution, a demand of Sunni politicians who opposed several major provisions of the charter. If the new parliament approves amendments, they will be presented to the voters in a referendum.

However, al-Hakim made clear that the Shiites will oppose major concessions on some key Sunni demands. Many Sunnis oppose provisions transforming Iraq into a federal state and banning key members of Saddam's Baath party from government jobs.

"There is a group of principles, first to maintain the soul of the constitution, second is the federalism issue, third is a clear stand on terrorism, fourth a clear stand on the Baath and Saddamists as it is mentioned in the constitution and fifth the issue of civil liberties," al-Hakim said.

Many Sunnis fear that federalism will lead to the breakup of the country and open the door to Iranian influence in a future, Shiite-dominated region in the south. Sunnis also fear that a widespread purge of former Baath party members would curb the rights of the Sunni community, which dominated Baathist ranks.

---

Associated Press reporter Qassim Abdul-Zahra participated in this interview.

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Rot at the Top
If the Democrats Really Want to Stop Bush, They Need New Leadership
By SAM HUSSEINI

On Monday Al Gore gave a speech on the NSA spying and other issues filled with accurate accusations about the Bush administration. On Tuesday, this was defused by the White House pointing to the "hypocrisy" of someone from the Clinton-Gore administration, which had a very poor record on civil liberties, being a spokesperson on the issue. There was actually some substance to the charge, though the Bush administration hardly has standing on the issue.

The same pattern has been apparent on Iraq. Whenever the Bush administration has been cornered, for example on its lies about non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it has pointed to Clinton administration and present-day Democratic leadership having made similar statements. Therefore the record and prominence of these Democrats is defacto helping the Bush administration continue its policies.

The Democrats are being led by people who voted to authorize the unconstitutional war -- such as Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton; and people who made warrentless claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction such as Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, who have failed to even indicate repentance about their statements when given the opportunity to do so.

Republicans, when targeting a Democratic president have ditched their leadership to achieve their goal. In December 1998, as Clinton was facing the prospect of impeachment, Republican Bob Livingston was about to replace Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House. It was then revealed that Livingston had had affairs. On December 17, 1998, Livingston admitted to having affairs, but said he would not relinquish becoming House Speaker. Two days later, he resigned and the impeachment of Clinton proceeded. Notable, the Clinton administration appealed to Livingston to stay on.

There are Democrats who stood up to Bush before the war in one manner or another and have continued to so. The most obvious are Jim McDermott, who in 2002 said Bush was lying about Iraq, when it was manifestly unfashionable to do; Barbara Lee, who voted against one of the initial 9-11 presidential powers resolutions; Cynthia McKinney, who lost her seat in 2002 for her questioning of the administration and Dennis Kucinich who, among other things, held a series of hearings during the buildup to the Iraq invasion about the Bush administration's disinformation (I was a panelist at one of the hearings). I'm sure there are others.

If the Democratic Party wants to be a serious entity, the people who have been manifestly complicit with the Bush administration plans for war and unconstitutional actions -- or who claim to be so naive that they believed Bush's rhetoric -- need to step aside; and people who scrutinized Bush and have continued to do so need to become the leadership. If it wants enable more of the Bush administration's policies, it will continue on its current track.

Sam Husseini's webpage is www.husseini.org.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2002456,00.html

The results are in: now the real struggle for power begins
From James Hider in Baghdad




IRAQ’S new leaders were squaring off last night for weeks, if not months, of tough political bargaining after final election results revealed that the dominant Shia theocratic alliance had failed to secure an absolute majority and that the marginalised Sunni groups had made substantial political gains.
The Shia United Iraqi Alliance, which dominated the outgoing transitional parliament, won 128 out of 275 seats up for grabs, which will force it to share power, most likely with the Kurdish coalition that secured 55 seats.



Even as the parliamentary blocks of both Shias and Kurds were reduced, the political muscle of the Sunnis received a major boost, a development that Western officials hope will entice disenfranchised Sunnis into the political mainstream and away from the insurgency.

The main Sunni alliance, the National Accord Front, won 44 seats, while another block garnered 11, making them a powerful force in the new political landscape. Sunnis held only 17 seats in the previous assembly.

The biggest loser of the elections was Ahmed Chalabi, the former Pentagon favourite whose faulty intelligence sparked the invasion. Out of favour with the US, the slick former banker ditched his secularist image and ran in the last elections with Shia conservatives to win a deputy prime minister’s post. This time, he ran alone and did not win a seat.

Secularists backed by the US fared badly. Led by Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, they won only 25 seats.

Political leaders acknowledge that with more players in the arena, many with contradictory goals, negotiations to form a viable government against a backdrop of deepening violence will be a major challenge.

“This time it will be difficult,” said Hoshyar Zebari, the Kurdish Foreign Minister, who predicted that bartering for key Cabinet posts could drag on to the end of next month. Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Shia Vice-President tipped as a possible Prime Minister, has said that it could take until April.

The first challenge will be to muster a two-thirds majority in parliament to nominate a presidency council, consisting of president and two deputies. They, in turn, will name a premier to form a Cabinet. The unwieldy process was instituted by the Americans to prevent any single ethnic group from steamrollering its rivals in the early days of Iraqi democracy.

The Shia alliance and the Kurds are widely expected to reunite in their existing coalition, but that will still leave them just short of the two-thirds mark. They could draw on several of the smaller groups to pass the threshold, but the Kurds have insisted that, in common with many Western officials, they want to form a broad national unity government that includes the Sunnis.

One key difficulty lies in the Shias and Kurds having core aims — federalism and the regional distribution of oil wealth — that are sharply at odds with the Sunnis, who believe the loose federalism being proposed will break up Iraq. The Shia alliance wants to emulate in the oil-rich Shia south the northern Kurdish autonomous region. Sunnis, who have no oil in their desert region of western Iraq, strongly oppose the idea.

Despite Sunni accusations of widespread electoral fraud, informal talks have begun between the main Sunni block and the Kurds over the formation of a consensus government. Many observers believe that the Sunnis could be offered the defence portfolio to secure their collaboration.

“Now we are part of the election and we have seats in the National Assembly, so we have the right now to nominate a number of candidates to various posts, but we’ll be a major part in negotiating the agenda of the government,” Tariq al-Hashemi, of the National Accord Front, said.




THE MAIN POWER BLOCS

United Iraqi Alliance 146 seats, down 18. Shia coalition dominated by clerics and religious conservatives, many with close ties to Iran, and backed by powerful militias. Led by Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Also includes Islamist group Dawa, Iraq’s oldest Shia party, which fought Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1980s, and loyalists of Hojestoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, who led uprisings against the US military and the 2004 secular government it installed in 2004

Kurdish Coalition 53 seats, down 20. Comprises Kurdistan’s two dominant parties, the Kurdish Democratic Union (KDP) of Masoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani, the outgoing Iraqi president. Kingmakers in the new parliament, the secular Kurds want a loose federal status

National Accord Front 44 seats, boycotted last election. Main Sunni block comprising three nationalist and religiously conservative parties. Led by Adnan al-Dulaimi. Observers hope Sunni participation will help to stem the Sunni-led insurgency, but opposition to federalism a problem

Iraq groups look for common ground


Saturday 21 January 2006, 8:44 Makka Time, 5:44 GMT


The Shia and Kurds are three seats short of a two-thirds majority

The United States is on a new mission to bring together rival Iraqi groups into a new government after final election results gave no party a decisive majority.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the US wanted Kurds, Shias, Sunnis and others to "work together in cross-sectarian, cross-ethnic efforts to think about forming a government."

The spokesman insisted on Friday that the decisions would be taken by the parties in Baghdad, and not Washington.

But "the eyes of Iraq will be upon them. The Iraqi people will be looking to them to form an effective, responsible government that responds to their needs and a government that is responsive to all Iraqis, regardless of ethnic group or religious group."

According to the final results of the December 15 election, Shia religious parties won 128 out of the 275 seats in the new parliament, but they will need partners to form a government.

Kingmaker's role

Even with the 53 seats from the Kurdish Alliance, the Shia and Kurds are three seats short of a two-thirds majority needed to elect a president and to push through constitutional reforms.

"What particular groupings come together to form a government is entirely up to the Iraqis and to the political parties and to the elected representatives of the Iraqi people"

Sean McCormack,
US State Department spokesman

Lionel Beehner, at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, predicted that the Kurds will play "the kingmaker's role" in forming a new Iraqi government.

"Some experts suggest that Kurds, most of them secular, may partner up with secular Shiite and Sunni parties to prevent Iraq from becoming too Islamist," he told AFP. "But most experts expect the Kurds to align themselves again with the United Iraqi Alliance, Iraqs ruling Shiite bloc."

The State Department refused to comment on the debate between the parties.

"What particular groupings come together to form a government is entirely up to the Iraqis and to the political parties and to the elected representatives of the Iraqi people," said McCormack.

But the spokesman played down deep divisions between Iraq's religious and ethnic communities.

"Over time, you see in democracies that those sorts of things gradually start to fade and more and more you see groups come together around interests and issues," McCormack said. "That's really a vestige of Saddam Hussein's era where he ruled by dividing and conquering."

McCormack said that Iraqis were at an early stage in the development of a "democratic political class" but added that tremendous progress had been made in the past year and a half.


Agencies

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA10Ak01.html

When even the pope has to whisper
By Spengler

Islam is the unexploded bomb of global politics. US foreign policy - the only foreign policy there is, for the United States is the only superpower - proceeds from the hope that a modern and democratic Islam will emerge from the ruins of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Through democratic institutions, Washington believes, the long-marginalized Shi'ites will adapt to religious pluralism. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's Islam, fixed in amber since the High Middle Ages, will metamorphose into something like American mainline Protestantism.

Alas, the available facts suggest that the opposite result will ensue: more freedom equals more fundamentalism. Not the secular Shi'ite parties but the pro-Iranian religious parties dominate the Iraqi polls. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood quadrupled its vote despite heavy-handed measures to intimidate its supporters; Hamas threatens to displace Fatah in the Palestinian elections this month; Hezbollah has become the strongest electoral as well as military force in Lebanon; and, most important of all, Mahmud Ahmadinejad crushed a more pragmatic opponent in last June's Iranian presidential elections.

Islam was founded as a theocracy, such that the Western innovation of church-state separation remains alien to its culture. Is it possible for Islam to reform? A negative answer implies that Ahmadinejad's January 5 call for world domination falls within the Islamic mainstream. He told an audience of religious students, "We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It's a universal ideology that leads the world to justice. We don't shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world. We must prepare ourselves to rule the world." The previous day, the London Guardian leaked a European intelligence report detailing Iran's efforts to acquire technology required to build nuclear weapons. A very few writers, including this one, have rejected the possibility of Islamic reformation, to the stony contempt of universally accepted opinion.

Now Pope Benedict XVI has let it be known that he does not believe Islam can reform. This we learn from the transcript of a January 5 US radio interview with one of Benedict's students and friends, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, posted on the Asia Times Online forum by a sharp-eyed reader. For the pope to refute the fundamental premise of US policy is news of inestimable strategic importance, yet a Google News scan reveals that not a single media outlet has taken notice of what Fessio told interviewer Hugh Hewitt last week. No matter: still and small as Benedict's voice might be, it carries further than earthquake and whirlwind.

Fessio described a private seminar on the subject of Islam last year at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence:
The main presentation by this [start new-window link here] Father [Christian] Troll http://www.sankt-georgen.de/lehrende/troll.html was very interesting. He based it on a Pakistani Muslim scholar [named] Rashan, who was at the University of Chicago for many years, and Rashan's position was Islam can enter into dialogue with modernity, but only if it radically reinterprets the Koran, and takes the specific legislation of the Koran, like cutting off your hand if you're a thief, or being able to have four wives, or whatever, and takes the principles behind those specific pieces of legislation for the 7th century of Arabia, and now applies them, and modifies them, for a new society [in] which women are now respected for their full dignity, where democracy's important, religious freedom's important, and so on. And if Islam does that, then it will be able to enter into real dialogue and live together with other religions and other kinds of cultures.

And immediately the holy father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said, well, there's a fundamental problem with that because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through his creatures [emphasis added]. And so it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He's used his human creatures, and inspired them to speak his word to the world, and therefore by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.
The interviewer then asked Fessio, "And so the pope is a pessimist about that changing, because it would require a radical reinterpretation of what the Koran is?" Fessio replied, "Yeah, which is it's impossible, because it's against the very nature of the Koran, as it's understood by Muslims."

That is precisely what I argued in an essay titled You say you want a reformation? on August 5, 2003:
Hebrew and Christian scripture claim to be the report of human encounters with God. After the Torah is read each Saturday in synagogues, the congregation intones that the text stems from "the mouth of God by the hand of Moses", a leader whose flaws kept him from entering the Promised Land. The Jewish rabbis, moreover, postulated the existence of an unwritten Revelation whose interpretation permits considerable flexibility with the text. Christianity's Gospels, by the same token, are the reports of human evangelists.

The Archangel Gabriel, by contrast, dictated the Koran to Mohammed, according to Islamic doctrine. That sets a dauntingly high threshold for textual critics. How does one criticize the word of God without rejecting its divine character? In that respect the Koran resembles the "Golden Tablets" of the Angel Moroni purported found by the Mormon leader Joseph Smith more than it does the Jewish or Christian bibles.
I claim no originality whatever in this matter, for I simply follow the leading Muslim authorities, who are unanimous that Islam is in no need of reform. The immutable character of Islamic revelation makes the subject of Koranic criticism into a minefield. It is universally known among scholars that alternative texts of the Koran have been discovered in various archeological sites - something of an embarrassment for the Archangel Gabriel - but the subject has disappeared from the media. [1] When Newsweek in 2004 published a brief mention of the work of the pseudonymous German philologist Christoph Luxenberg, the government of Pakistan seized the entire print run. Luxenberg became famous for re-translating the Koran to read that martyrs would receive raisins in Paradise rather than virgins. One finds nearly 12,000 Google references to Luxenberg but not a single hit on Google News. The subject, once so passionately debated in editorial columns, has vanished from the media in their entirety.

It is dangerous to publish anything that Muslims might interpret as blasphemy, as Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, discovered when it published 12 cartoons of Mohammed, some portraying the Prophet in violent acts. Muslim protests and threats caused two of the cartoonists to go into hiding. After Arab foreign ministers condemned Denmark for refusing to act against the newspaper, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen offered a near-apology in his New Year's address.

Strange as it may seem, the pope must whisper when he wants to state agreement with conventional Muslim opinion, namely that the Koranic prophecy is fixed for all time such that Islam cannot reform itself. If Islam cannot change, then a likely outcome will be civilizational war, something too horrific for US leaders to contemplate. What Benedict XVI thinks about the likelihood of civilizational war I do not know. Two elements of context, though, set in relief his reported comments concerning Islam's incapacity to reform.

The first is that Benedict's comments regarding the nature of Muslim revelation are deliberate and informed, for his primary focus as a theologian has been the subject of revelation. In his 1953 doctoral thesis, biographer George Weigel reports, Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope,
... following Bonaventure, argued that revelation is "an act in which God shows himself"; revelation cannot be reduced to the propositions that result from God's self-disclosure, as certain forms of neo-scholasticism tended to do. Revelation, in other words, has a subjective or personal dimension, in that there is no "revelation" without someone to receive it. As Ratzinger would later put it, "where there is no one to perceive 'revelation', no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed". [2]
The Judeo-Christian view of revelation, as summarized above by Father Fessio, expresses the mutual love between Revealer and recipient of revelation, a concept alien to Islam. [3]

A second element of context is Benedict's admiration for the US separation of church and state. In an essay published in this month's issue of First Things, Benedict makes the remarkable (for a pope) statement that the US model is what the early church really had in mind. He proceeds from the famous argument of Pope Gelasius I (492-496) that "because of human weakness (pride!), they have separated the two offices" of king and priest. Neither the state church model of Northern Europe nor the secular model of France, Italy and Spain has sufficed, Benedict observes. But he continues:
Situated between the two [failed] models is the model of the United States of America. Formed on the basis of free churches, it adopts a separation between church and state. Above and beyond the single denominations, it is characterized by a Protestant Christian consensus that is not defined in denominational terms but rather in association with its sense of a special religious mission toward the rest of the world. The religious sphere thus acquires a significant weight in public affairs and emerges as a pre-political and supra-political force with the potential to have a decisive impact on political life.
It is useless to bemoan the fact that Americans do not understand what they are until a European comes along and explains it to them; that has been true since Alexis de Tocqueville. It is most promising that a European, indeed one who speaks with the authority of the throne of St Peter, has explained the difference between the Christian foundation of the US political system and theocratic Islam - even if the explanation came in the form of a stage whisper. I expect this to have profound consequences.

Later in the same essay, Benedict takes up a theme I have addressed over the years, namely the moral cause of Europe's demographic implosion (see Why Europe chooses extinction, April 8, 2003), writing:
Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as though they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen - at least by some people - as a liability rather than as a source of hope. Here it is obligatory to compare today's situation with the decline of the Roman Empire.
My investigation of the causes of Europe's present decline was inspired by comments of then-cardinal Ratzinger in a book-length interview with the German journalist Peter Seewald published in 1996 as The Salt of the Earth. Nothing is really new in Benedict's present formulation except, perhaps, his sense of urgency as the hour grows late and the moment of truth approaches. In the cited essay, Benedict excoriates the pessimism of Oswald Spengler, who claimed to have discovered a deterministic pattern of rise and fall of civilizations. Instead, he argues that "the fate of a society always depends upon its creative minorities", and that "Christians should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority".

I agree with the pope, not with my namesake. My choice of nom de guerre is ironic rather than semiotic. The fact that the West still has such a leader as Benedict XVI in itself is cause for optimism. It might be too late for Europe, but it is not too late for the United States, and that is where the pope's mustard seeds may fall on fertile ground.

Notes
1. See Toby Lester, "What is the Koran?", in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1999.
2. God's Choice by George Weigel (HarperCollins: New York, 2005), p 167.
3. For more background see Oil on the flames of civilizational war, December 2, 2003.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and

January 21, 2006 latimes.com
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ

U.S. Goals Adapt to New Iraq
Disappointed with vote results, Washington is now focused on keeping security forces out of the hands of religious or nationalist parties.

By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Disappointed by the election performance of Iraq's moderate parties, U.S. officials have established a more modest goal as Iraqi leaders divide power in a new government: preventing religious or nationalist parties from gaining a strong hold on the army and police.

American officials have made it a priority to persuade the winners in the election not to give top posts in the defense and interior ministries to anyone linked to armed groups such as the Shiite Muslim-controlled Badr and Al Mahdi militias, and the Kurds' peshmerga forces, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

Washington fears that such ties could again alienate Sunni Muslims — many of whom are being drawn into the political process — sparking violence and slowing efforts to withdraw U.S. forces.

"This is the red line," said one senior U.S. official, who asked to remain unidentified because he was talking about ongoing negotiations.

Yet even at an early stage of negotiations, it is clear that leaders in the winning coalition, many with close ties to militias, intend to fight hard for the posts. The party leaders believe they deserve the fruits of their election victory and also hold bitter memories of how former dictator Saddam Hussein treated Shiites and Kurds.

"It's hard to get them to forget what can happen when others control the tanks and guns," the U.S. official said. "They've lived it."

Though the United States was officially neutral in the election, some top officials hoped for a strong showing by moderate secular parties, such as the Iraqi National List of former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Yet Allawi's slate lost ground in the election, falling to 25 seats from 40 in the last transitional legislature. Meanwhile, the faction of Shiite militant leader Muqtada Sadr became a more important part of the United Iraqi Alliance, the large Shiite coalition that came up just shy of 50% in the new parliament.

U.S. officials are uneasy about the influence of Sadr, who controls Al Mahdi army, one of the largest militias. And they are uneasy about the idea that militias with ties to Iran, including the Badr organization, may have power over Iraq's military and police.

After focusing on efforts to train the Iraqi army, U.S. officials say, they will shift their attention this year to the police forces, which they say are at least as important in defeating the insurgency.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad signaled Washington's concern about leadership of the ministries last month after findings that Sunni inmates had been abused at Shiite-controlled prisons.

In the post of interior minister, which oversees the police, "you can't have someone who is regarded as sectarian," he told reporters Dec. 19. "You have to have someone who has the confidence of all communities."

Khalilzad's view is shared by Saadoun Dulaimi, the transitional defense minister, who is a Sunni and a former officer in Hussein's army.

"This ministry … should be the Iraqi Defense Ministry, not the Sunni or Shiite or Badr ministry," he said in an interview. "That's why I always say this ministry should be a bridge … among the Iraqi groups. And that's why I hope to keep this ministry away from politicians."

U.S. officials have offered Iraqi leaders a list of more than a dozen former Iraqi military officers they would like to be considered for the defense and interior posts. Iraqis have said the men had creditable records during their service for Hussein; the U.S. military is now looking over their records to make sure.

The senior U.S. official said it would be acceptable for the posts to go to Shiites if they were with secular parties. He cited as one possibility Kasim Daoud, who was national security advisor under Allawi and is a member of Allawi's coalition.

Iraqi party leaders said the deliberations were at an early stage and pointed out that leaders of the United Iraq Alliance were themselves divided on the issue. Yet several predicted it would be difficult for the Americans to sell their candidates, considering that the party leaders feel strongly about installing their own members and are increasingly unhappy with U.S. efforts to give Sunnis a bigger share of power.

The defense and interior ministers are among the most powerful in the Cabinet, each having authority over tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in contracts.

Some Shiite and Kurdish leaders object to giving either of the posts to Sunnis, saying that most have connections to insurgent groups.

Qubad Talabani, the Washington representative of the Kurdistan regional government and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said that in filling these top posts, "the goal should be to find the best person, not to start out with some restrictive rule."

Strong candidates would have the kind of respect and authority that comes with connections to a major political party, he said. It would be a mistake to give both ministries to one ethnic group, but there is no reason that Kurds shouldn't control one of the ministries, he said.




Talabani said the two ministries had already been stripped of most of their Sunni staff members. He contended that as a practical matter, it would be difficult for any Sunni minister to exert authority over an organization that was exclusively Shiite and Kurdish.

Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan, said it was "pie in the sky" for the U.S. to expect that it could sell a secular candidate when Iraq's religious parties are strengthening their grip.

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"It may be possible for the Americans to leverage their influence to try to get the least objectionable person in the ministry, but when they say they want somebody with zero ties, what world are they living in?" he said.

He said it would be very difficult for Washington to persuade Iraqi officials to accept a minister tied to Allawi's coalition.

Cole thinks the Americans might have more luck promoting another candidate who has surfaced, Jawad Maliki, a member of the Islamic Dawa Party and an advisor to transitional Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. Although Dawa has ties to the Iranians, its militia is relatively small and may not concern Washington, Cole said.

The senior U.S. official acknowledged that there had been Shiite resistance to American efforts to empower Sunnis as part of an effort to defuse the insurgency.

Many Shiites suspect that the bid to draw in the Sunnis is no more than "a campaign to deprive them [Shiites] of the fruits of victory that they fairly won at the ballot box," the U.S. official said.

As Khalilzad has pushed the Shiites to give more ground, there have been more signs of resentment in newspapers and on television, the U.S. official noted. A news program on the TV station operated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the main Shiite coalition partners, recently carried footage of an Iraqi cleric waving a rifle and accusing the Americans of trying to cheat Shiites out of what was justly theirs, he said.

The official acknowledged that in pushing the powerful Shiite parties to give up powerful posts, U.S. officials were trying to carry off a delicate task.

"We want them to end up unhappy, but not so unhappy that they'll go out and start breaking things up," he said. "That makes it a very tough thing to do."

*


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Lessons Learned in Iraq Show Up in Army Classes
Culture Shifts to Counterinsurgency

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006; A01



FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- A fundamental change overtaking the Army is on display in classrooms across this base above the Missouri River. After decades of being told that their job was to close in on and destroy the enemy, officers are being taught that sometimes the best thing might be not to attack but to co-opt the enemy, perhaps by employing him, or encouraging him to desert, or by drawing him into local or national politics.

It is a new focus devoted to one overarching topic: counterinsurgency, putting down an armed and political campaign against a government, the U.S. military's imperative in Iraq.

Officers studying at the Army's Command and General Staff College here are flocking to elective courses on the subject, with three times as many enrolled this year as last. Soon the Army will require a block of instruction in counterinsurgency for all of the 1,000 or so majors who attend the college each year.

In an adjacent institution, the elite School of Advanced Military Studies, where the Army trains what are known colloquially as its "Jedi knight" planners, 31 of 78 student monographs this year were devoted to counterinsurgency or "stability operations," compared with "only a couple" two years ago, said Col. Kevin Benson, the school's director. In the college bookstore, copies of a 1964 book, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice" by David Galula, a French army officer who fought in North Africa, are piled on a cart and selling swiftly.

There is an air of urgency to this redirection.

"It's a survival thing for us," said Maj. Scott Sonsalla, who served in Kosovo and was an aide to the deputy secretary of defense. This year, he said, he is taking courses on counterinsurgency, terrorism, strategy, intelligence and defeating roadside bombs.

"I'm going to go" to Iraq to lead "600 or so soldiers," he said. "If I do something wrong, that affects a lot of soldiers -- and a lot of families."

The new emphasis on studying how to respond to guerrilla-like campaigns underscores how the Army has been tempered, even chastened, by three years of fighting an unexpectedly difficult war in Iraq.

The air of hubris that some Army officers displayed just a few years ago, after victories in Panama, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan (and an outcome in Somalia that they blamed on their civilian overseers in the Clinton administration) has dissipated, replaced by a sense that they have a lot to learn about how to operate effectively in Iraq, and about the cultures and languages there and in other likely hot spots.

"Yes, they had the great run to Baghdad, but since then they've had losses," said Stuart Lyon, who teaches a seminar on counterinsurgency here. "And they know that when they go back, they've got to be smarter about it."

"It's a vastly different Army from 2003," said Lawrence T. Di Rita, an aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who until recently was the chief Pentagon spokesman. "It's impressive."

Di Rita's comments are noteworthy given the history of antagonism between the Army's leadership and Rumsfeld's office. An Army chief of staff and the service's civilian secretary left the Pentagon bitterly critical of how Rumsfeld and his associates handled the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003.

Officers here said they see a strong cultural shift at work for the Army, whose self-image still sometimes seems based on charging across Europe toward Berlin in 1944 and blasting Saddam Hussein's tanks in the Arabian Desert 47 years later.

"What we're trying to do is change the culture, to modify that culture, that solving the problem isn't just a tactical problem of guns and bombs and maneuver," said retired Army Col. Clinton J. Ancker III, director of the "doctrine"-writing office here that defines how the Army does what it does. He is involved in an effort to restructure the Army's "interim" manual on insurgency, which some insiders see as a mediocre stopgap.

Unusually, the Army and the Marines are collaborating on the new manual and also asking for input from the British army, which has had centuries of experience in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Conscious that it largely walked away from counterinsurgency after the Vietnam War -- the subject was not mentioned in the mid-1970s version of the Army's key fighting manual -- the service now is trying to ensure that the mistake is not repeated. Spearheading that effort is Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, whose doctoral dissertation at Princeton was on the Vietnam War and who later commanded the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. "I think the changes are very broad," Petraeus said. He oversees several of the Army's training bases and schools" with his new job here.

"This is about institutional change, and the whole Army is included. It is kind of a generational change," he said. Indeed, in the next few years, officers who joined the Army after the end of the Cold War will begin to take command of battalions.

The new approach can also be seen in the field, where the Army trains soldiers to fight. The biggest change there has been the admission that counterinsurgency is exceedingly difficult, and that the Army has not been preparing its people well for it, officials said.

"We used to say that if you could do the war fighting, the other stuff was a 'lesser included case,' " said Dennis Tighe, deputy director of an office here that manages Army training. "What we've learned the hard way is that the other stuff is much more difficult."

Also, other Army experts add, because Army commanders lacked the expertise to conduct counterinsurgency campaigns, in 2003 and 2004 they often employed inappropriate tactics, such as big "cordon and sweep" operations that detained thousands of neutral Iraqis and proved to be counterproductive.

Now, in addition to teaching how to fight battles, the Army's training centers teach commanders how to deal with crowds, how to negotiate with local political figures, how to speak through an interpreter, how to oversee the emergency distribution of food.

Earlier this month, 19 officers pondered such questions in Lyon's seminar. Most were Iraq veterans.

When the military detains civilians, they agreed, it is important to treat them well. When addressing a problem, try to go with an Iraqi's solution, not yours. "Put an Iraqi face on it," summarized one major.

And because insurgencies are always political, politics can be more important than combat. "We can go in and kill insurgents, but it's the political piece that will bite you on the butt," noted another officer.

Most of all, they said, the key to victory is not defeating the enemy but winning the support of Iraqis and making the insurgents irrelevant. "When the people start ratting out the insurgents, that's a quantifiable way of measuring your support," said a third officer.

Petraeus said he thinks that the younger officers studying here this year are being given the tools to make a difference in the war next year.

"What we hope to have in Iraq is guys going over there with the broad skill sets to do everything from encouraging a sheik to participate in the political process to economic development to elections, to still being able to go out and get the bad guys, but in a way that is precise and exploits intelligence, and is sensitive to the culture," he said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

January 22, 2006
News Analysis
Iraqis Urging Unity, but Rifts May Be Too Deep
By DEXTER FILKINS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 21 - With all the ballots from last month's election finally counted, the leader of Iraq's largest Sunni alliance telephoned his Shiite rival on Friday night to wish him well in the weeks ahead.

"I was hoping we could build a good relationship," said Adnan Dulaimi, the Sunni leader, of his chat with the leader of the Shiite alliance, Abdul Aziz Hakim.

The warm feeling may not last very long.

With the results now in, most Iraqi political leaders say they want to form a "national unity" government, a coalition that would include the three main alliances of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. With none of the major blocs capturing a majority of the 275 parliamentary seats, the talks to form such a government are already under way.

The stakes are high. Anything short of a unity government, Iraqi and American officials here say, would be tantamount to disaster, with the Sunnis the most likely losers. Leaving them out of the government could very well prompt them to turn away from democratic politics again, and give the insurgency a fresh shot of energy.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador here, has made it clear that he intends to involve himself directly in the negotiations - as forcefully as is necessary - to make sure the Sunnis are given a significant role.

But for all the expressions of solidarity, most of the political factors now in play seem weighted against a broad-based government. Many Iraqis suggest that the most likely government will be an alliance between the Shiites and the Kurds, with the Sunnis cut out altogether.

In the vote totals announced Friday, the Shiite coalition and an alliance of the two largest Kurdish parties fell just three seats shy of the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to form a government.

With 181 seats in all, the Shiites and Kurds would need to pick up just three additional seats from the 10 other groups that won seats in the election. If they can do that, they will not need the Sunnis to form a government or to pass laws.

It seems clear that the Shiite leadership is considering going ahead without the Sunnis. Shiite leaders are petitioning the Iraqi election commission for a re-interpretation of the vote counting rules that would, if it were accepted, grant the Shiites 10 additional seats.

The same arithmetic would also come into play in the mechanism to amend Iraq's new Constitution. The Constitution, which would create a weak central government and give the state an Islamic cast, was approved by a majority of Iraqis in October but rejected by most Sunnis. The Sunnis were coaxed into the democratic process by the promise that the new government would consider amending the Constitution.

Under the mechanism set up, any change would require a two-thirds vote of the assembly. Early this month, Mr. Hakim, with a rough outline of the election totals already in hand, declared that the Shiite coalition would oppose any significant changes in the constitution.

American officials, as well as some Iraqi leaders, interpreted Mr. Hakim's remarks as little more than an opening bid in what are expected to be difficult negotiations. But in any talks over the new Constitution - as over the new government - the Shiites and the Kurds already hold most of the cards.

Even a vigorous effort by Mr. Khalilzad, who helped the Iraqis complete the Constitution in October, might not be enough. At times, the old hatreds that divide Sunni, Shiites and Kurds here seemed too daunting even for diplomacy.

For the moment, the leaders of the Shiite and Kurdish blocs are saying that they will make every effort to bring the Sunnis into the government. They say they are aware of the dangers - and the futility - of trying to impose their will on an embattled and often violent minority.

"We are not living in a country where a party with a two-vote majority in Parliament can rule - this is not Iraq," Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president and Kurdish leader, said in an interview. "If the Shiites and Kurds will cooperate, there will be a majority, but this is not right, and not the correct way to rule the country."

But Mr. Talabani made it clear that his tolerance would reach only so far. One thing he would not brook, he said, was any hint that the Sunni parties were acting as a political front for the insurgents. In an interview earlier this month, a prominent Sunni political leader said that he was in contact with guerrilla leaders, and that he had asked them to hold their fire in December to allow the Sunnis to go to the polls.

That raised the possibility that the insurgent violence was being calibrated to help the Sunni parties.

"They must be clear they are with the terrorists, or with the political process," Mr. Talabani said, referring to the Sunni leaders. "We will never accept this dirty game. If they are with the political process, they are welcome. If they are with the terrorists, they will lose everything. That is my advice to them."

"We, the Kurds and the Shiites and the democratic elements among the Sunnis, will never never, never accept this role," Mr. Talabani said. "They will be out of the government, they will be out of the state, we will rule the country in a democratic way. And we will impose peace and freedom on the country."

For now, the Sunnis are hoping that, whatever the arithmetic, they will be granted a role in the new government if only because the consequences of leaving them out are so dire.

"They cannot form a cabinet without us," said Mr. Dulaimi, the Sunni leader. "And if there is no consensus, the new cabinet will not be able to solve the Iraqi problem."

Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 20, 2006
Odom's Attack on Bush's Empire
I attended an interesting event last night, the Empire Salon, a floating seminar in Washington that every few weeks features an author speaking on empire-related issues before an audience of policy wonks and journalists (from the left, right and middle) who all tend to be skeptical of an American empire, particularly as defined (and run!) by the Bush crowd. The speaker this time was retired General William Odom, who was head of the NSA during the Reagan years and who is now a professor at Yale. His most recent book is called America's Inadvertent Empire. And last August, as I've noted previously, Odom wrote a rather straightforward article calling for withdrawal from Iraq that was headlined, "What's wrong with cutting and running?" He meant that literally.

Odom was an engaging speaker. His points where sharp-edged. He did not beat about any bushes. He explained--to the dismay of some libs in the room--that he believes American power (even hegemonic power) tends to be a good thing, but every once in a while, he noted, it really jumps the rail--especially in Vietnam (where he served despite his opposition to the war) and Iraq. He is a realist--or pessimist--when it comes to bringing democracy to other nations. He believes such work is (as Bush might say) really, really hard and (unlike Bush would say) destined to fail more often than not. Too frequently, he noted, people confuse "democracy" with "Liberalism" (in the classic sense)--that is, voting does not necessarily make for a constitutional order. Just because a country has elections--and you can force elections with military power (see Iraq)--that does not mean that nation has the culture, values and traditions that will allow a constitutional order to bloom and thrive. After all, there are elections in Iran. Since WWII, he pointed out, there have been 50 new democracies, yet only eight to ten are stable nations. His bottom-line: "Spreading democracy is a very bad idea. Spreading constitutional order is a very good idea. And we don't have a clue how to do it."

If he had a chance to craft a strategy for Bush in Iraq, this is what Odom would do. First, go to Bush and say, "You're losing. You're committing the greatest strategic disaster in American history." And here's the way out: send the Secretary of State to talk to European leaders about Kyoto and the environment. But that would only be a cover. The real message would be: the president wants to see you next week in the Azores. There Bush would tell them, "I've screwed up, and you're wallowing in Schaudenfreud, and it won't be so much fun for you when I pull out of Iraq." Bush would then point out that a US withdrawal would be bad for the region, bad for Russia (al Qaeda would be freed up to join the Chechen terrorists), bad for Europe, and bad for the Far East. The least harm will be for faraway North America. "I'm going home," Bush would say. "We're in the best position to roll with it. If you want to talk about this, call me."

That, Odom hopes, would concentrate the minds of the Europeans and cause them, and others in the region, to get involved and perhaps take the lead in efforts to stabilize or control the mess in Iraq and the spillover.

After that, Bush would then turn to Iran and...cut a deal. You think you want nukes, he would say to the mullahs (via a private delegation), go ahead. Yeah, I know you're not going to recognize us, and we'll talk about the West Bank but don't expect immediate results. Still, let's find a way to cooperate strategically. (Odom said he would deal with North Korea differently than Bush as well: "I'd go to North Korea and say I don't care about your nukes. You want to exchange nukes? It will be very hot.")

Talk about turning things on the head. I'm not saying I endorse all of the "Odom Plan." But it does show you the need for a wider debate on foreign policy issues than we usually get.

As for the warrantless wiretapping controversy, this former head of the NSA didn't want to talk about it: "It we get enough information in the public domain to talk about it, we won't have an intelligence system." I'd argue this was an overstatement. Odom said we have intelligence committees in Congress to handle matters like this. Unfortunately, the Bush administration refused to brief fully the intelligence committees, claiming that members of the committee (other than the chairmen) were not entitled to receive such classified information--an interpretation the Congressional Research Service says has no basis in law. So if an administration does not follow the law and the rules governing wiretapping and briefing Congress, do the citizens have any choice but to talk about this in public? Odom did not address this.

During the Q&A, a young, ex-Marine, recently back from Iraq, criticized Odom for saying that it was time to pull out. We've only been there less than three years, he said. That's not enough time to get the job done, and if we leave, there will be civil war there. Odom replied that civil war was already under way, citing the rise in sectarian violence in Iraq. He added that within the Arab culture "there is not one sprig of limited government power. We've picked the region where [creating democracy and a classically Liberal constitutional order] may be hardest to do." He later said, "My enthusiasm for using military power to achieve constitutional breakthrough [overseas] is almost zero."

After the Q&A, Odom immediately went up to the ex-Marine to shake his hand and chat further. The former soldier pressed his point: we cannot withdraw, it's too soon, we have to stay and try to fix the problems there. Odom yielded no ground: "We would need 700, 800, 900,000 troops to do that." That many? I asked Odom, thinking he must have been exaggerating for effect. He looked at me straight-on, didn't blink, and said, "Yes."

Some other quotes from Odom:

* "The enemies of free enterprise are businessmen [not labor]. They are out to rig the market. I'm on a corporate board. And we talk about how we can rig the market."

* "Our troops keep peace among our allies, and that's why they can make money." He noted that the leaders of Europe, Japan and South Korea have not asked Washington to withdraw its troops. Obviously, they believe they are getting something out of it."

* "There's a Russian proverb: Paper will put up with anything written on it."

* "Who is the big threat in the world," he remarked. "China?" No, he didn't think so. "Is there a big threat to this empire? Yes, incompetent US leadership."

Any other retired generals out there who want to speak so candidly?

http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10013411.html

Iraq is an alarming issue for the US
http://archive.gulfnews.com/opinion/column...n/10013411.html

01/23/2006 12:59 AM | By Mohammad Akef Jamal, Special to Gulf News



There is a big difference between what is expected and what is really taking place on the ground. This is because someone should not count his chickens before they are hatched. And, this is best exemplified by what is happening with the US in Iraq.

The American occupation of Iraq will complete its third year after two months amidst an atmosphere of pessimism and disappointment at the poor US achievements. Yet, the administration of President George W. Bush is now facing growing public pressure, setting alarm bells in Washington.

Americans have begun stepping up their pressure and expressing their serious concern over the rise in the size of losses and the costly war in Iraq and its impact on the US economy.

The monthly cost of the war in Iraq is approximately $4.5 billion (Dh16.5 billion), according to American sources. The total cost of the war is likely to exceed $2 trillion (Dh7.34 trillion) according to a study conducted by a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study on the real cost of the war, conducted by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard University researcher and budget expert, is likely to add more pressure on the White House.

For more than two years, since the occupation of Iraq, rivers of blood have flown in the streets of all Iraqi cities and more blood will be shed in the upcoming days, as expected by everyone including the American president. In the light of this deteriorating situation in Iraq, Bush invited current and former secretaries of state and defence for a meeting on Iraq.

Exchange of views

On January 5, Bush gathered with over a dozen Republican and Democratic foreign policy leaders from previous administrations to exchange with them views on Iraq and throw more light on the US achievements. The meeting between Bush and former secretaries was gloomy.

Among those secretaries was Robert McNamara who was the secretary of defence during the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

The 89-year-old politician, who later worked with president Lyndon Johnson, came to the meeting with his sad memories of the years of fear the US forces lived with in Vietnam.

In his brief remarks, Bush said: "Not all those attending the meeting supported my decision on the invasion of Iraq, but I understand that. I gave them the opportunity to express their concerns and offer their suggestions, promising to take their advice seriously."

The meeting aimed at updating the situation in Iraq. The update was given by General George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Baghdad. None of them were proud of what has been achieved after almost three years of occupation.

In the military arena, despite the presence of more than 160,000 US troops and more than 250,000 members of the Iraqi police and the National Guard, security has become merely like an unachievable dream.

Regarding the political arena, the latest Iraqi elections, for the second time in a year, have helped some political elite to reach the decision-making centres. These elite are supported by a huge crowd of ordinary Iraqis and are not connected to the US and have no mutual interests with it at all.

None of the speakers during the meeting bothered to address the problems of Iraqis, which resulted from the US occupation.