*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

Two UK soldiers killed by IED in Southern Iraq. One more seriously injured.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Just for the record, I e-mailed the BBC with the Washingon Post report (bottom of previous page) and for once they updated their own report to mirror it. Shows sometimes they do take notice if you can be arsed to send them stuff........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4757964.stm

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bush 'approval' ratings slip to 34%

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/02/28/a3.nat.bushpoll.0228.p1.php?section=nation_world

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Bush 'approval' ratings slip to 34%

Phew, it's not all bad news then.

 

[Sirena]

I feel pretty sick when I see the scenes from Al Amarah: kids stoning British troops in tanks. We've got our own West Bank and I hope Tony Blair is proud of it...

 

[Barking_Mad]

Grieving Mother of UK soldiers condemns Blair

THE grieving mother of a soldier killed in Iraq has brought Cherie Blair into the row over British casualties. Pauline Hickey asked Tony Blair why his wife gets a bulletproof car when her son had only an unarmoured 4x4.

Christian Ian Hickey, 30, a sergeant with the Coldstream Guards, was killed by a roadside bomb while on foot patrol last October. Mrs Hickey, from Bradford, West Yorks, wrote to the PM: "We have dedicated soldiers who died in a war based on lies, for nothing and robbed of a future." Families of dead troops will march on Downing Street today to demand the withdrawal of British forces.

One-Third Of Iraq Veterans Have Mental Health Problems

More than one in three soldiers and Marines who have served in Iraq later sought help for mental health problems, according to a comprehensive snapshot by Army experts of the psyches of men and women returning from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
The accounts of more than 300,000 soldiers and Marines returning from several theaters paint an unusually detailed picture of the psychological impact of the various conflicts. Those returning from Iraq consistently reported more psychic distress than those returning from Afghanistan and other conflicts, such as those in Bosnia or Kosovo.

Iraq veterans are far more likely to have witnessed people getting wounded or killed, to have experienced combat, and to have had aggressive or suicidal thoughts, the Army report said. Nearly twice as many of those returning from Iraq reported having a mental health problem - or were hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder - compared with troops returning from Afghanistan.

 

[oi2002]

Healing Iraq nervously wonders about the quality of Iraqi security force:

I went out for a stroll in the neighbourhood, meeting friends and neighbours, exchanging gossip and stories of the continuing carnage. Three Iraqi army armoured vehicles and a pickup truck flying a ragged Iraqi flag were slowly patrolling the main street, followed by a huddled trail of civilian vehicles. Storeowners and pedestrians briefly paused with whatever they were doing and gazed warily at the soldiers aboard. I stood at the door for a moment, peering into their eyes, trying to determine whether I would trust those young men with my family and neighbours' lives. Some looked edgy and alert, and some of them appeared to be simply bored. One dark, skinny soldier returned my inquisitive look with a wan smile on his face. His AK-47 was pointing in my direction.

And their allegences:

He also is a little uneasy with the interior ministry:

Although the Iraqi Army (or National Guard) is often targeted by insurgent attacks, it should be mentioned that most Iraqis tend to have higher trust in them, compared to the notorious Interior Ministry forces (Maghaweer Al-Dakhiliya). The Interior Ministry forces were formed early last year as special forces or commando units to backup regular army units. The earliest unit was the renowned Wolf Brigade, trained by US forces and comprised of elite members of the former Iraqi special forces. It operated in Sunni governorates and helped restore order in Mosul.

Following Baqir Solagh's (SCIRI) appointment as Interior Minister, he started forming his own units, the Scorpion Brigade, the Public Order Brigade, the Al-Karrar Brigade, and the Al-Hussein Brigade. These units were explicitly named after Shi'ite religious symbols, and are thought to be entirely composed of former members of Badr brigade (SCIRI's armed wing). Solagh started a purge in his ministry around July, 2005, disposing of several Sunni officers -whom he labelled as ex-Ba'athists- and replaced them with high ranked officers of unkown origins. General Muntadher Al-Samarra'i, one of the purged officers, defected to Jordan and started disclosing secret documents proving the existence of death and torture squads inside the ministry. He uncovered a campaign of assassinations by the ministry against former Iraqi air force pilots, who took part in the Iraq-Iran war, as well as orders to assassinate several Iraqi academics, political and religious figures. Solagh strongly denied these allegations and pointed out that the assassinations and kidnappings were carried out by insurgents in stolen police uniforms and vehicles. When the Jadriya prison scandal was uncovered, he proposed that Ba'athist elements that had infiltrated his ministry were behind the torture and extrajudicial executions.

A few months ago, when Baghdad was ripe with news of Interior ministry's death squads raiding Sunni neighbourhoods at night, the local National Guard commander in our area started touring mosques to warn them from uniformed security forces operating at night. The commander's own words were "Never, never open your doors to security forces after dark. If they attempt to force their way in, be prepared to defend yourselves." That was the time when people started forming neighbourhood watch teams again.

 

[oi2002]

Gregory at The Belgravia Dispatch links across to an ICG:

2005 will be remembered as the year Iraq’s latent sectarianism took wings, permeating the political discourse and precipitating incidents of appalling violence and sectarian “cleansing”. The elections that bracketed the year, in January and December, underscored the newly acquired prominence of religion, perhaps the most significant development since the regime’s ouster. With mosques turned into party headquarters and clerics outfitting themselves as politicians, Iraqis searching for leadership and stability in profoundly uncertain times essentially turned the elections into confessional exercises. Insurgents have exploited the post-war free-for-all; regrettably, their brutal efforts to jumpstart civil war have been met imprudently with ill-tempered acts of revenge.

In the face of growing sectarian violence and rhetoric, institutional restraints have begun to erode. The cautioning, conciliatory words of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiites’ pre-eminent religious leader, increasingly are falling on deaf ears. The secular centre has largely vanished, sucked into the maelstrom of identity politics. U.S. influence, while still extremely significant, is decreasing as hints of eventual troop withdrawal get louder. And neighbouring states, anxious to protect their strategic interests, may forsake their longstanding commitment to Iraq’s territorial integrity if they conclude that its disintegration is inevitable, intervening directly in whatever rump states emerge from the smoking wreckage.
...
In the battle for Shiite hearts and minds, it seems that the active combat of ruthless insurgents, irrespective of the means used, is playing far better than the moral imperative to abjure revenge or the tactical consideration not to play into the hands of those who seek to ignite civil war.

If you read the report you'll find more on the Interior Ministries settling scores for Tehran:

According to Tareq al-Hashemi, secretary general of the
(Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party, some 55 pilots were killed in the six
months before September 2005: “There is a sense of revenge.
They have a list of former pilots in Saddam’s regime, and they
are looking for them. It is part of a strategic Iranian plan to push
the Sunnis out”. Crisis Group interview, Baghdad, 5 September
2005. The assassinations are attributed specifically to SCIRI, a
group that was established in and financed and armed by Iran,
and that fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq war in an
effort to put an end to the Baathist regime. Some reports suggest
that the victims also include Shiite pilots not sympathetic to
Iran. If true, the killings may be part of an Iranian effort to create
a pro-Iranian Iraqi air force, one unlikely to attack Iran, as
happened in September 1980.

There have also been stories that Badr is systematically wiping out the assets of the old Baathist intelligence networks in the South under the guise of counter-insurgency. We have to remmber here that many Iraqis see Iran like a the post WWI French viewed The Boche.

This statement was not comforting:

The terrorists are targeting the Shiites. This is a
sectarian war against the Shiites. Our government
lied to us when it promised to protect us Shiites.
We were persecuted under Saddam, and we are
still being attacked today. The Americans said they
came to liberate us, but the situation is getting
worse. It is because we are Shiites that we are being
attacked and beheaded. They say we are traitors
and that we are with the Americans. They forget
that they [the Sunnis] had a lot of deals with the
British while we were fighting the British [in the
1920s]. Civil war is already happening; it has
already started. No one will be capable of stopping
this until we get a powerful government, with a
president like Saddam, but a Shiite.

A perceptive Iraqi opinion:

Iran prefers a united Iraq over the uncertainty of a
divided one, also because of the problems this
would cause among its own Kurdish and Arab
populations. It does not want the region to be
destabilised. It can have everything it wants if Iraq
stays one.

But don't rely on that:

However, Tehran’s calculation may change. Should the
nuclear question come to a head and force international
intervention of some kind (including sanctions), the
regime may want to fight the U.S. where it is most
vulnerable, namely in Iraq. In addition, a growing Sunni
Arab-based insurgency against an Iranian-backed regime
might spin out of control, leading to outright civil war and
forcing direct Iranian intervention, which in turn could
break Iraq apart. Should Iran determine that the situation
has reached a tipping point, it may even encourage Iraq’s
break-up to secure its own interests in the country’s oilrich
south, supervising its proxies in running a largely
Shiite entity there.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The PR men take over as Donald Rumsfeld declares war on the media

Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office reported that the Bush administration had dispensed over $1.6 billion in public relations contracts over two and a half years. Of that, $1.1 billion went to the Pentagon, which used $100 million to hire an outside firm to secretly plant over 1,000 news stories in Iraqi newspapers through a secret program of bribes and subterfuge. The same week, we learned that the British taxpayer is financing their own fake news operation – a global satellite news service selling British foreign policy, mainly to the Middle East. This month, U.S. military planners requested 3,700 new psy-ops personnel, presumably for military use.

The exposure of propaganda operations, far from embarrassing the British and American governments, have only made them bolder. Rather than curtailing the controversial operations, the Pentagon, the State Department and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are expanding their information manipulation programs as they seek not to remove, but to normalize propaganda as a weapon of war.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Poll: Troops in Iraq support withdrawal

WASHINGTON — Nearly three out of four American troops serving in Iraq think U.S. forces should withdraw within a year, and more than one in four say the United States should leave immediately, according to a new poll published Tuesday.

The poll, conducted by Zogby International and the Center for Peace and Global Studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., was a rare effort to determine the views of American troops serving in a ground war.

Twenty-nine percent of the troops surveyed said U.S. forces should leave Iraq immediately, another 22 percent said they should leave within the next six months and 21 percent said within six to 12 months. Twenty-three percent agreed with President Bush's call for troops to stay "as long as they are needed" and 5 percent were unsure.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Where are all these Commies coming from?

Fox poll: Bush at 39; 81 percent say Iraq civil war likely

Despite the "death throes" that Vice President Cheney has posited for the insurgency, a full 81 percent of Americans believe it is likely Iraq will devolve into full scale civil war, according to a new Fox News poll. "The poll finds that President Bush’s overall job approval rating has fallen below 40 percent — today 39 percent of Americans say they approve and a 54 percent majority disapproves. Late last year the president’s approval hit a record-low of 36 percent (8-9 November 2005)."

This comes shortly after a CBS News poll pegging Bush at 34 percent, the lowest of his presidency. The Fox poll also shows Bush sliding on homeland security issues, once an issue the Republicans dominated.

"The poll shows Republicans have lost ground on the issue of terrorism, and by a wide margin voters now think it would be better for the country if Democrats win control of Congress in this year’s midterm election.

"At the beginning of the year the Republican Party held a 13-percentage point advantage over Democrats on being the party trusted to do a better job protecting the country from terrorism. Today Republicans still have the edge, but it has dropped to 5 points."

"On the port issue, the new poll finds that 69 percent of Americans oppose allowing the Arab-owned company called Dubai Ports World to manage commercial operations at some U.S. ports — four times as many as support the deal (17 percent)."

Democrats are also favored for the 2006 congressional election, Fox finds.

"Furthermore, by a 14-percentage point margin voters think it would be better for the country if Democrats win control of Congress in this year’s election, up from an 8-point edge in early February and 11 points in January."

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Fox_poll_Bush_at_39_81_0303.html

 

[Azrael23]

Bush impeachment looking more and more likely said Republican senator.

 

[oi2002]

Shrewd article by Stephen Biddle in Foreign Affairs:

But if the debate in Washington is Vietnam redux, the war in Iraq is not. The current struggle is not a Maoist "people's war" of national liberation; it is a communal civil war with very different dynamics. Although it is being fought at low intensity for now, it could easily escalate if Americans and Iraqis make the wrong choices.

He suggests that Standing Up sectairian Iraqi forces may allow Yanks to Stand Down but will also make the conflict worse. That attempting to crush the Sunni Insurgency merely allows the Shi'a and Kurds to avoid making necessary compromises. That DC should consider switching sides and supporting the weaker Sunni if necessary.

It would deny President Bush the chance to offer restless Americans an early troop withdrawal, replace a Manichaean narrative featuring evil insurgents and a noble government with a complicated story of multiparty interethnic intrigue, and require that Washington be willing to shift its loyalties in the conflict according to the parties' readiness to negotiate. Explaining these changes to U.S. voters would be a challenge. Washington would have to recalibrate its dealings with Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds with great precision, making sure to neither unduly frighten nor unduly reassure any of the groups. Even the most adroit diplomacy could fail if the Iraqis do not grasp the strategic logic of their situation or if a strong and sensible Sunni political leadership does not emerge. And the failure to reach a stable ethnic compromise soon could strain the U.S. military beyond its breaking point.

 

[FruitandNut]

If/when a full scale Sunni vs Shiite civil war kicks off it is bound to suck in other nations round and about. I can see it all getting very messy and ending in 'tears' if 'we' are not very careful. It might be a good idea to stick wind turbines in our gardens and convert our cars to running on chicken shit - that is supposing we have chickens once Avian Flu hits our shores. Perhaps the crap that comes out of Parliament and Capitol Hill will suffice.

 

[Barking_Mad]

At least 21 factory workers massacred in Nahrawan

Many Shi'ite laborers were gunned down at a brick factory in a dusk raid on Thursday. Police recovered 21 bodies, mostly of Shi'ite Muslim migrant workers, from the brick factory at Nahrawan

Kurds, Sunnis opposed to Jaafari

Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders issued a letter demanding that the leading Shiite Muslim coalition withdraw its nomination of interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to head the next government.

Bodies of two Sunnis found in Latifiyah

The bodies of two Sunnis, who had been shot to death, were also found in Latifiyah, on the southern outskirts of the capital, police said.

Iraqi soldier, two police killed around Kirkuk

one Iraqi soldier was killed Friday in the northern city of Kirkuk, while two policemen from the same city were found shot to death after being kidnapped Thursday evening while travelling 50 kilometres (30 miles) further south, security officials said.

Five bodies found in Baghdad

Police found the bodies of five men shot in and around Baghdad

Two bodies found in Iskandriyah

Police found two more handcuffed, blindfolded, bullet-riddled bodies in Iskandariyah, said Capt. Muthana

Mortar kills one in Mahmoudiya

South of Baghdad, a mortar shell slammed into a market Friday in Mahmoudiya, killing one person and injuring another, police Capt. Rasheed al-Samaraie said.

Mortar fired in Baghdad--no casualties

At least one mortar shell was fired in the city, but there were no casualties.

 

[Barking_Mad]

AC-130 gunships returning to Iraq

The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes - the lethal "flying gunships" of the Vietnam War - to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, The Associated Press has learned.

Dozens die in Iraq sectarian attack

SUSPECTED Sunni militants stormed a small town near Baghdad and executed at least 25 people, including a six-year-old girl, with a single bullet each to the forehead, police said yesterday as a curfew was re-instated in the Iraqi capital.

 

[oi2002]

The Washington Realist has a nice little piece on DC's post Cold War hubris:

In order to deal effectively with America's predicament in Iraq, it is essential to understand that we had begun to walk down the road to Baghdad long before September 11, indeed, quite before the Bush Administration came
to power. After the end of the Cold War, a new triumphalist mindset, shared by influential groups in both the Republican and Democratic parties, began to develop an unstoppable momentum. It was Madeleine Albright who started
bragging about the United States being an indispensable nation. It was a number of senior officials in the Clinton Administration-and eventually President Clinton himself-who, frequently taking a casual attitude to the facts, brought the United States into the Balkans in a desire to transform the former Yugoslavia-even if it required a military action without UN
blessing and in violation of international law, as in the case of Kosovo.

It was during the Clinton era that the export of democracy andnation-building became major drivers of American foreign policy. It was also during the Clinton Administration, back in 1998, that regime change in Iraq became official U.S. policy, having been enthusiastically supported by a bipartisan congressional majority.

Regime change, of course, goes far beyond containment. It is not based on the preservation of the status quo, and it left Saddam with few inducements to comply with U.S. preferences. Under Clinton, America was unprepared either to successfully intimidate Iraq or to offer a realistic prospect of accommodation. After 9/11, could the United States safely assume that we
could continue with the de facto annexation of the Kurdish north, our aggressive policing of the no-fly zones, our frequent air attacks on Iraqi military targets, and our plots to overthrow Saddam himself, and still believe that the Iraqi dictator would sit idly by and attempt no retaliation against the United States, directly or indirectly, using his terrorist connections? Intellectual honesty requires an acknowledgment that in the post-9/11 world, a change-of-regime policy in Iraq had to lead to an attack against the Saddam Hussein regime.

But if the Bush Administration could be excused for taking military action to remove Saddam, it has never been able to offer an adequate explanationof its other ambitions, most importantly, to use Iraq as a launching pad for a transformation of the so-called "Greater Middle East." How the invasion of an Arab country-in the absence of successful movement on the
Arab-Israeli dispute-could be perceived by the Arabs as a friendly action escapes logic. The administration clearly was tempted to use military victory in Iraq as a shortcut around the difficult, but from the Arab viewpoint, crucial U.S. role in resolving the Palestinian issue. Some in the Bush Administration went so far in their flights of analytic fancy that they were taken for a ride by a clear charlatan like Ahmed Chalabi, who promised not just to normalize relations with Israel, but indeed to build a pipeline to the Jewish State. Pipe dreams are not prescriptions for serious policymaking.

 

[oi2002]

Iason Athanasiadis Asia Times on Iran's interest in Iraqi stability:

Were Iranian elements to blame for the bombing of the Samarra mosque, they would have been working against their country's best interests in Iraq. Tehran has made sure to assert itself through promoting a home-grown Shi'ite political class that went on to sweep both Iraqi elections since 2003. Ibrahim al-Jaafari spent nine years in Tehran before leaving for London and eventually returning to Iraq after the US-led invasion. His reappointment as Iraqi prime minister preceded the bombing of the Samarra mosque by a few days, which was interpreted by some analysts as a protest.

Before arriving in Kuwait, Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that the toppling of Saddam Hussein turned Iraq into a "strong bastion in defense of Iran's Islamic revolution". An Iraqi descent into civil war would be against Iranian interests at a time when Tehran exercises an unprecedented amount of influence over Baghdad. US officials are increasingly desperate to boost Sunni influence in the Iraqi political game even as Tehran's Shi'ite supporters chart a pro-Iranian foreign policy.

"Blaming outsiders has been for decades a typical escapist way of not addressing our maladies that are of our own making," said Khaji. "That explains how and why 'authenticist' ideologies, nationalist and Islamist alike, have risen and found fertile soil in our region. Just like soap operas, they give you the comfortable feeling that the evil lies outside us, the clean and pure people."

 

[oi2002]

Nick Olivari for Rueters:

"If full-scale civil war erupts -- and Iraq appears to be awfully close to that at this point -- even 134,000 troops could be in a highly vulnerable position, especially when you consider how many true combat troops we have there," said Ted Carpenter, defence analyst with the Cato Institute in Washington.

Many U.S. troops in Iraq are supply and logistics personnel. British and Australian combat troops are not expected to make much difference should a bloody free-for-all erupt.

The military could try to stiffen the resolve of Iraqi forces to maintain government authority, by shipping in another U.S. division of about 20,000 troops or by inserting special forces.

But that scenario assumes U.S.-trained Iraqi troops and police would remain loyal in a crisis to the national government, rather than to religious leaders or the sectarian or ethnic militias to which many of them once belonged.

I think that last assumption is deeply flawed and the Pentagon knows it. Rummie has been babbling about the dangers of too many US troops in Iraq and this is probably prompted by The Brass begging the old skinflint for more. The AC-130 deployment mentioned above is probably related.

 

[oi2002]

The Iraqi Insurgency and the Risk of CivilWar

Cordesman at CSIS looks at the players.

 

[oi2002]

Strategic Insights is providing Iraqi Media Watch: Current Translations from the Iraqi Press. The row over al-Ja’fari's Presidency is all over the papers but these caught my eye:

Az-Zaman

The paper published a short, but very disturbing, article. According to the paper, the forces of the Ministry of Interior raided the headquarters of the 16th Brigade (Iraqi Army) and arrested a number of its soldiers, accusing them of collaborating with the terrorists. It is very odd to see the ministries responsible for security in the country fight with one another, instead of working together against terrorism. Sad indeed. The 16th Brigade is responsible for the protection of oil pipes.

Al-Sabah

The paper reports a meeting between Moqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani. Moqtada has been very active recently. He made visits to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. He was also the mastermind of having al-Ja’fari nominated for prime minister, pushing aside the U.S. favorite, Adel Abdulmahdi, by one vote, to the surprise of everyone. He was also making a huge impact on the street. His visit to Maysan province was a huge success. He is learning fast. Fixing the relation with Sistani is very important for Sadr’s legitimacy as a key Shi’i leader.

 

[oi2002]

Parameters considers Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of Population Control: ah yes we know all about that hearts n minds, soft hats, cheery squadies hugging children etc.

Well not quiet, but it does sound so cuddly and Blairite: New Villages. It would involve rather a lot of razor wire, guard dogs and machine gun towers:

The key element of their success was the effective internment of the Chinese “squatter” population, the segment of Malayan society from which the insurgents almost entirely drew their strength.2 By interning the “squatters” in fortified “New Villages,” the British and their Malayan allies were able to deny the communist insurgents access to recruits, food, and military supplies. It also allowed them to narrow the scope of their intelligence efforts, as the insurgents had to maintain contact with their base under the very noses of the Anglo-Malayan government.
...
If this strategy were to be implemented, however, it would be vital that we help provide the resources necessary to prevent the strategy from degenerating into mere repression, as it did in Kenya. It should go without saying that this strategy would have to be very carefully explained to the American public, to the world, and especially to the Iraqis, so that everyone would understand why they are doing it and what they hope to achieve.

All concentrations camps are not equal of course.

 

[laptop]

Urrrk.

"So," I think, "what would they call the camps this time?"

This military blue-sky thinker is ahead of me - as he is paid to be:

As troubling as it might be, the evidence suggests that the main lesson to be drawn from the British practice of counterinsurgency is that physical control of the contested segment of the population is essential.
...
This comparison [with Malaya and Kenya] suggests that the vital element in both counterinsurgency efforts was the effective internment of the subject populations, and not efforts at social amelioration. While we would like to believe that “winning hearts and minds” is both important and effective, these examples suggest that the effort is neither essential nor decisive. Instead, what will determine success in counterinsurgency is how effectively the insurgent may be denied access to his base of support.

...unlike Malaya’s small and easily sequestered villages, Iraq’s population largely resides in relatively large, contiguous urban areas.... Breaking these cities down into manageable and defensible units would present considerable challenges in implementation.

...
If events recommend a change in strategy, however, it might be possible to entice Sunnis into internment voluntarily, as an alternative preferable to being continually fought over.... Rather than being imprisoned in internment camps, the Sunnis would be joining “gated communities” with enhanced security and perhaps better access to reconstruction support.

The required image in the US citizen's mind:

 

[oi2002]

Ivo Daalder at Brookings:

The point of no return will be reached if and when there is a civil war. The United States cannot be a participant in such a civil war. It lacks the capacity to end the violence on its own, and it cannot afford to take sides. America cannot become the praetorian guard of an Iranian-backed, Shiite-controlled government. It cannot afford to take sides with the Sunnis who are most responsible for the 2,200 American military casualties. And so, when the low-level civil war explodes openly, the only option for the United States is to leave Iraq while focusing on deterring foreign military intervention in Iraq's civil war.

 

[oi2002]

Daily Telegraph:

All British and United States troops serving in Iraq will be withdrawn within a year in an effort to bring peace and stability to the country.

 

[oi2002]

Niall Ferguson in the Daily Telegraph thinks its really sad that Dubya can't run for a 3rd term, for the Dems that is:

The Republicans would certainly be foolish to climb on to what is left of Bush's foreign policy. Nearly all its premises are crumbling before our eyes. The theory of a democratic peace is a chimera; give Muslims the vote and they vote for militants. Regime change in Iraq has not enhanced American security; its principal beneficiary has been Iran. As for the unipolar world, the reality is that the occupation of Iraq and its ramifications in the Greater Middle East now so dominate this administration's agenda that the truly world-shaking event of our times has all but vanished from view. The administration is in at least two minds about the resurgence of China, and the result is a dangerous diplomatic schizophrenia, with half the signals indicating a new Cold War strategy of "containment" (why else help the Indians with their nukes?), and the other half continuing the older policy of conciliation.

 

[oi2002]

LA Times:

Many Sunnis hold a substantial grudge against the United States for launching the invasion and remain distrustful of its designs on Iraq. But the alternative — abandonment in a Shiite-dominated country — is even less appealing. And so even an irritating foreign presence is looking to many Sunnis like a layer, however thin, of protection.

"When the Americans entered Iraq, the Shia helped them a lot, and the Sunnis stood against them," said Alaa Makki, a senior leader in the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni party. But "the Sunnis are now accepting the American political direction. It's not suitable for the Americans to leave. Everything they have arranged during the past three years would be destroyed."
...
Many Sunnis believe that if a civil war erupts, Iraqi police brigades would devolve into Shiite militias and government weapons would turn against Sunnis.

Brig. Gen. Mudhir Moula, a secular Shiite who is a senior official in the Defense Ministry, expresses a similar fear.

A career soldier, Moula is leery of an American pullback. Government ministries have become too mired in sectarian tensions to function, he said.

"If [the Americans] don't do their best to control and coordinate, maybe there will be civil war," he said.

The Interior Ministry has arranged its security forces to ensure that their sect would dominate in case of civil war, he said.

"They're a lot stronger than the Ministry of Defense. This is the reality, let's be honest."

Recently, Defense Ministry soldiers and police commandos from the Interior Ministry each staged raids on the same neighborhood at the same time. The soldiers ended up surrounding a group of commandos and detaining them. Negotiations for their freedom went on for days.

 

[oi2002]

Al Jaz:

Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson said of the reports in the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Mirror: "This news report on a withdrawal of forces within a set time frame is completely false.

"As we've said over and over again, any withdrawal will be linked to the ability of the Iraqi security forces to maintain domestic order on behalf of a representative Iraqi government that respects the rights of all its citizens. This is an ongoing assessment and not linked to any time frame."

Bit of information warfare going on here I suspect, keeping the Iraqis guessing by leaking opposing stories.

 

[oi2002]

The Poor man reckons the question becomes: what to do with our Harkis?

In Iraq there isn't an equivalent to the Africans who decided they were French only to be largely abandoned by De Gaulle nor is there any signifigant Jewish population left to be expelled. Few Iraqis burnt their boats and put their trust entirely in the invader, those that did are rapidly returning to exile. But I see very little talk of dealing with refugees from a situation we've created.

That some of these people could be the bloggers I'd read regulary had not struck me before. Riverbend , who lives in a mixed neighborhood in Baghdad, meanwhile is handing out her own Oscars:

Best motion picture:

“OIF: The War on Terror” starring George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condi Rice and others. A riveting drama set in Iraq. Rated “G” for ‘Gullibility’ and “R” for ‘Republican”.

“Disappearing Act” starring Ahmed Al Chalabi, Adnan Al Pachachi, and Ghazi Al Yawir.

“Free Iraqi Elections”- A black comedy based on the farfetched theory of free elections under foreign occupation starring Abdul Aziz Al Hakeem, Ibraheim Al-Jaffari and Muqtada Al Sadr.

“Kangaroo Court” - starring Saddam Hussein, Barazan Hassen, and various judges, prosecutors and lawyers.

 

[oi2002]

LA Times on a gloomy Zal Khalilzad:

In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.

For now, Iraq has pulled back from that prospect after the wave of sectarian reprisals that followed the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra, he said. But "if another incident [occurs], Iraq is really vulnerable to it at this time, in my judgment," Khalilzad said in an interview with The Times.

Abandoning Iraq in the way the U.S. disengaged from civil wars in Lebanon, Afghanistan and Somalia could have dramatic global repercussions, he said.

"We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?" Khalilzad said. "The way forward, in my view, is an effort to build bridges across [Iraq's] communities."

Khalilzad's central message that the United States cannot immediately pull out of Iraq jibed with Bush administration policy. But he offered a far gloomier picture than assessments made in recent days by U.S. military spokesmen.