As Frederick Kagan spins Neo-Con daydreams of “turning a corner,” McClatchy reporters on the ground are telling a different story:

“One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.”

Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, as “Tehran’s point man on Iraq,” is manipulating election of pro-Iranian politicians, meeting often with Iraqi leaders and backing Shiite elements in Iraqi security forces in the torturing and killing of Sunni Muslims.

According to American and Iraqi officials, Suleimani is Iran’s Petraeus who has succeeded, among other things, in slipping into Baghdad’s Green Zone in 2006 to orchestrate the choice of a new Iraqi prime minister and building intelligence networks in Iran’s embassy while providing Shiite Muslim militias with generalship, cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the US Embassy and advanced roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of Americans and Iraqis.

Read the rest of this entry.

How do Iraqis feel about Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the fact that for the past three years, it has been permitted to operate as a de-facto part of the Iraqi state - in the process driving away a good portion of Baghdad’s non-Shiite population? Now that Baghdad seems serious about putting a stop to the Mahdi Army, Fateh Abdusalam asks in Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper:

“One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years … Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” … Why is a person who was above the law three years ago, now wanted by the law? What has changed: the person or the law or the ones in charge of overseeing that law?

By Fateh Abdusalam

Translated By Nicolas Dagher

April 24, 2008

Iraq - Azzaman - Original Article (Arabic)

There’s a king of perverse equality in Iraq, which is that no one has a right to ask questions. Or everyone has a right to ask questions, according to Democratic theory, but not everyone who asks a question has a right to an answer.

The same can be said about questions on political matters. There are those who excuse this situation and exempt the Iraqi government from any responsibility on the grounds that, ‘the eye cannot overcome the will” … or the American administration of Iraq, where the file of outstanding problems remains suspended in the Pentagon.

One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years - and especially the last two years - since the eruption of sectarian strife [since the bombing of the Golden Mosque] and the failure of the notorious government of al-Jaafari, which showed leniency toward all parties involved and failed to control the strife, all of which only served to pour oil on the fire?

Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” The public airwaves reported on these “authorities” as though they comprised part of the new Iraqi state - until three-quarters of Baghdad’s original population comprised of various sects and groups were forced to flee because they weren’t “loyal” to those who prevailed in the street … or to those who prevailed in the secret/or open headquarters of public authorities or armed parties.

Why does the Mahdi Army remain silent about the “renegades and infiltrators” who used its name and address for years, through the consent of alliances and friendships. … until a crisis of “existence” and “authority” broke out with a party that was smarter and better equipped logistically [the Badr Brigades of al-Hakim?] and which caused all parties to expose the dirty laundry of their opponents.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated coverage of the Iraqi side of the war.

Are Iraqis beginning to feel better about the the U.S.-led occupation and the state of their nation? In our continuing effort to help answer that question, WORLDMEETS.US has translated this article from Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper. Fateh Abdusalam writes in part, “In the sixth year of the new dispensation and still looking for excuses to justify its policies, Iraq’s war-mongering government is isolated from Iraqis. … Iraq remains an ever-shifting Read the rest of this entry »

To everything/There is a season/And a time for every purpose, under heaven/A time to be born, a time to die/A time to plant, a time to reap/A time to kill, a time to heal/A time to laugh, a time to weep. — ECCLESIASTES 3: 1-8

The second and final day of Iraq progress report testimony before by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is as easy to sum up as the first, with one conspicuous addition:

We have no long-term strategy.

We have no end-game plan.

We just need more Friedman Units, pretty please.

As well as:

The president would like you to help him kick the can down the road to 2009.

When the authoritative histories of the Iraq war are published in future years, as opposed to the comparatively quick-and-dirty accounts that have been coming out, they with resonate with these overarching themes:

* Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place and hands down is the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history.

* Had President Bush been as remotely competent in the conduct of the war as he was in co-opting the American public, his own party and his political opponents, many if not most U.S. troops may have been home in a comparatively short time span.

* While coward is a dreadfully-loaded word and its definition varies depending upon how it is applied, the president was a coward, wrapping himself in the flag while never asking for real sacrifice, never leveling with the American people and most notably being downright eager to dump the entire tragic mess into the lap of his successor.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s semi-annual Iraq progress report time for David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker. But, alas, there has been no progress beyond a return to 2005 death-toll levels, which merely has given Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki an opportunity to try to exterminate his chief political rivals, so the general and the ambassador desperately need a carrot or a bogeyman to appease the few restive senators and representatives among the fawning congressfolk to whom they will report.

You may recall that the duo dangled a carrot when they last checked in back in September.

While they both equivocated about whether the Al-Maliki government was making progress (of course it wasn’t), Petraeus was able to say that the number of troops in country might return to the 130,000 pre-Surge level by this summer.

Well, events on the ground, notably Al-Maliki’s recalcitrance, and statements from President Bush have effectively swept that wee glimmer of hope off the table, so Petraeus and Crocker need a bogeyman.

Surprise! It’s Iran.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

This weekend finds a dueling pair of highly interesting opinion pieces on the legality of the Iraq war after the ball drops in Time Square this New Years eve. They are found with Bruce Ackerman’s and Oona Hathaway’s column in the Washington post which is then challenged by Adam White at Slate Magazine. The theory put forth in the Post entry seems simple enough at first glance. There are two key bits of paperwork establishing the “legality” of the current occupation and both may have a finite – and already expired – period of viability.

The first is the Congressional joint resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq.

It allowed for the use of force only under two conditions.

The first has long since lapsed. It permitted the president to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” This threat came to an end with the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s government.

Instead, U.S. military intervention is authorized under the second prong of the 2002 resolution. This authorizes the president to “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”

Ackerman and Hathaway point out that the government of Iraq, under the direction of al-Maliki, can certainly not be considered a “threat to the security of the United States.” For the second condition, the current UN resolution expires on Dec. 31 of this year. Absent a new resolution, legal authorization for the war would seem to evaporate.

Adam White takes issue with this argument, going so far as to call it “silly” in the conclusion of his column. His fundamental premise appears to be that the presence of terrorists of various flavors inside the borders of Iraq (or perhaps supported by the government of Iraq) are all the justification the President needs, “so long as the President determines that military force is necessary and appropriate.” To wit, he cites two short passages from the original authorization resolution.

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;

I believe that there is something “silly” going on with the analysis in the Washington Post, but it’s not the portions with which Mr. White takes exception. The two short paragraphs are actually quite clear in both letter and intent. The first states, “Whereas members of al Qaida … are known to be in Iraq.” This proved to be false at the time of the document’s creation as has been recognized by George W. Bush and most of the members of his administration except the Vice President. This speaks to the basis of challenging nearly any legal document. If a child support case begins by saying, “Whereas Mr. Smith fathered a child with Mrs. Smith in March of 1997…” but later DNA testing reveals that Mrs. Smith actually conceived the child with Mr. Jones, the document is dead on arrival.

The second, “Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor…” is also rife with problems. The phrase quite obviously refers to the government of Iraq performing said harboring, not the geographical fact of terrorists residing within the borders. Should the administration attempt to make the claim that al-Maliki is aiding and harboring terrorists, we have bigger fish to fry than legal wrangling over resolutions and contracts.

The real problem with the Ackerman / Hathaway theory is that (legal legerdemain not withstanding) we can not realistically treat a war like a football game. A war which has been deemed – at least in some sentient circles – “legal” can not retroactively have a game clock assigned to it where the whistle blows, we check the final scores, shake hands and head to the showers. As I have noted before, even the most ardent opponents of the war (myself included) must recognize that disengaging from Iraq in any safe, sane fashion is going to take time. Even in the event of a 180 degree change of heart, President Bush couldn’t get us out entirely by the end of the year. Starting in January of next year, a president Obama or Hillary Clinton will be unable to do so by January of 2010 – at least not without terrifying levels of violence, chaos and gore.

If we must wrestle with the legality of the occupation, the clear choice is for a new resolution from the United Nations. This need not be an open ended ticket, but could be granted in one year blocks as the situation continues to ripen. This option is not only possible, but desirable, and I think deserves the support of Iraq war supporters and opponents alike.

T.E. Lawrence and John McCain are bona fide war heroes, but when it comes to Iraq, that’s where any similarity between the two men ends.

Lawrence (top photo), one of the most astute observers of Iraq and the Middle East of any generation, knew impending disaster when he saw it and warned three years after the British occupation of Iraq commenced in 1917 (bottom photo) that it:

“Is a trap which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. The [British people] have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told . . . It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.”

McCain, devoid of Lawrence’s nuanced insight and lacking his first-hand experience, offered a warning of another kind in a major policy speech last week:

“It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our national character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.”

The British occupation of Iraq, which when adjusted for population then and now involved about 10 times the number of troops the U.S. deployed for the Surge, ended with a whimper after four decades.

This is because the Brits didn’t belong there in the first place and never were able to understand the Arab mindset and historic sectarian enmities. The Americans also don’t belong in Iraq, and McCain, acting for all the world like an imperialist poobah, has famously remarked that it would be fine with him if America troops stayed in Iraq for 100 years.

This despite the reality that presence would be a fraction of the troops that Britain deployed and the opposition today is far better organized – and armed — and it is long past time for the Iraqis to pick up the pieces from a disastrous American occupation and cobble together some sort of confederation.

McCain may have trouble telling Shiites from Sunnis, but he does know one thing that Lawrence didn’t and it is an important but largely unspoken element of why the presumptive Republican nominee has made staying in Iraq indefinitely the centerpiece of his presidential campaign: Oil.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Although it at first may seem like a strange way to look at the latest round of bloodshed in Iraq, it’s all about Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki casting the first vote in that country’s much anticipated provincial elections.

The result is a troubling new chapter in the Forever War: Basra city and parts of Baghdad are under siege, the seven-month ceasefire called by Moqtada al-Sadr is history and Iraq has entered a perilous new phase that no amount of bribing by General Petraeus’s paymasters or speechifying by George Bush can change as U.S. troops get sucked into a maw that the White House and Pentagon were instrumental in creating in giving the prime minister no-strings-attached support.

Al-Maliki’s stalled offensive, which would have collapsed without U.S. air and ground intervention and eventually will, is all about politics, not national reconciliation. For Bush to call it “a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq” on top of the Pentagon’s contention that it is a “byproduct of the success of the Surge” is laughable in an Orwellian sort of way.

Here’s the real deal:

Provincial elections, one of the few Bush administration benchmarks for measuring Iraqi progress that have not been discarded as utterly unrealistic, are to be held on October 1.

The Madhi Army of Al-Sadr, the anti-America Shiite cleric, holds the keys to Basra and has since the British Army ceded its role as American helpmate because the number of casualties it was taking had become a public-relations nightmare for the Labor government back in London.

Al-Maliki desperately needs Basra, the oil-rich province on the porous border with Iraq, but the British are cowering in their barracks and there is no American military presence, hence the botched offensive on Basra city, the second largest in Iraq, where the 30,000-man Iraqi army and security forces find themselves surrounded by the Madhi Army, which has set up checkpoints and is now controlling access to the city.

Al-Sadr’s gunmen are thugs, but so are the gunmen belonging to the Badr Organization, the militia affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which is joined at the hip with the prime minister.

Iran not only has a dog in this race, it has all the dogs in the form of close ties with Al-Maliki, Al-Sadr and ISCI, which makes Washington’s breast beating over the meddlesome Tehran regime so tiresome.

Read the rest of this entry »

The seven-month ceasefire brokered by anti-American radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is, for all an intents and purposes, off. Times Online reports that neighborhood after neighborhood in Baghdad is being taken by militia gunmen, some with heavy fighting and others without a shot being fired.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that U.S. troops have taken the lead in fighting in the capital.

One, two or three years (pick one) after the Iraqi army was ready to stand up so that U.S. troops could stand down, Shiite milita gunmen with comparatively meager weaponry and far fewer logistical resources still have the upper hand after three days of ferocious fighting in the key southeastern city of Basra.

Napoleon, as Daniel reminds us, famously remarked that “If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna!”

Methinks there are three reasons why Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s gamble is backfiring:

* White House and Pentagon claims that the Iraqi army has finally gotten its act together as usual have no basis in reality.

* As Fester notes here, even with tactical air support from the U.S. and U.K., the Iraqi force seems to be a little on the thin side.

* And most importantly, the militamen are fighting for their very existence while Iraqi boots are fighting their own countrymen, in many cases members of their own religious sect, for the political gain of the unpopular Al-Maliki.

Then there is Iran’s machinations in all of this, which range from big and evil to paltry and passive depending upon your view of the Tehran regime.

Mine is that the ayatollahs find themselves in the difficult position of having to both support and rein in Al-Sadr. who is the key player in this drama, not the prime minister and certainly not George Bush, who for all his bloviating has essentially tied his own hands because of years of wrongheaded policy making that determinedly put politics ahead of more practical concerns.

As it was, the president packed an extraordinary number of misstatements into his speech yesterday before yet another “safe” audience, chief among them that it “makes no sense” to divert troops from Iraq for the real War on Terror.

The question of the hour is what happens next. The answer is nobody knows, but here are a few scenarios:

* All hell breaks loose as U.S. ground troops are further drawn into the fighting, which has already taken out one of Iraq’s two major oil pipelines as it has spread from Basra and Baghdad to several other cities. As it is, they are now battling militants in and around the Sadr City slum in Baghdad.

* All hell breaks loose as Al-Sadr, who enjoys far more popularity than the prime minister among Shiites, calls for an end to the seven-month ceasefire against U.S. troops.

* All hell breaks loose as Al-Maliki’s already tenuous political situation is further undermined by the escalating violence and his ineffectual army and security forces.

My guess is that none of the above will happen in the short term because it may be in the best interests of Al-Sadr and Al-Maliki, who has extended by 10 days the deadline for militias to take bribes in return for turning in their weapons, to negotiate some sort of truce.

That, however, would only delay the day of reckoning that was bound to come after the prime minister failed to even make an effort to fulfill his end of the Surge bargain.

Below is an excerpt of a translation of an article in the Saudi newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat by editor Tareq Al-Homayed that offers a fascinating insight into how the U.S.’s closest ally in the Middle East sees the outburst of violence in Iraq as the presidential race goes into overdrive.

Marc Lynch, who says he checked the accuracy of the excerpt compared to the original Arabic before posting it at Abu Aardvark, notes that Al-Homayed is hard wired to the Saudi royal family and his views probably reflect theirs:

“Muqtada al Sadr is a mighty but reckless force; he is not as intelligent as Hassan Nasrallah and does not speak the language of politics, however he was an important factor in enforcing the Iranian influence at the moment in which Saddam Hussein’s regime fell. Today, it appears that Tehran no longer needs al Sadr – so long as it has control over Iraq within the political framework.

“Nouri al Maliki’s regime, with its political prowess as opposed to the Sunni political crudeness, has managed to win over Washington – or neutralize it – as well as bring about American-Iranian rapprochement over the Iraqi issue. This was achieved whilst taking advantage of the political situation in Washington in light of US President George W. Bush’s weakness following the Democratic victory in Congress and at time when the US has entered into a state of political paralysis as a result of the upcoming elections.

“Iran no longer needs Muqtada al Sadr but rather wants a sophisticated model that is even more progressive than Hezbollah’s in order to take over Iraq. A government in control is much better than an opposition whose only possession and demands are the right to disrupt – such as the case in Lebanon.

“The importance of the ‘Knights’ Assault’ operation does not lie in American participation but rather in the outcome of Ahmadinejad’s most recent visit to Baghdad since it is impossible to target the Mehdi army – the same army that Muqtada al Sadr declares cannot be dismantled except at the orders of the Imam himself, and without Iran’s blessing.

” . . . Today at a time when Muqtada al Sadr receives a blow Iran remains tight-lipped, same as the Shiaa clerics and all this is because there is only one control button and it belongs to Tehran. Clearly the opportunity is convenient for Iran to tighten its grip on Iraq and to exploit the US desire for Iraq’s stability at any price before the US elections take place. After the elections a new US president will arrive at the White House to find himself/herself obligated to deal with a reality that enforces itself upon Baghdad. Even if people change in the next Iraqi government, it will still continue to orbit around Iran.”

To those of us who are up to our necks in the Clinton-Obama-McCain slugfest, the observations on American politics and how the outcome of the election may impact on U.S. policy on Iraq seems somewhat naïve. But recall that the American media makes sweeping pronouncements on the Middle East’s ever shifting tectonic plates all the time that probably strike Saudis, Iraqis and Iranis much the same way.

Now that the fog around the battle for Basra and upturn in violence elsewhere in Iraq is lifting a bit, we can conclude that:

* The Pentagon’s spin that the bloodshed is a consequence of the “success” of the Surge would seem to be silly on its face, but it isn’t.

* This is because the violence is the result of a carefully planned Al-Maliki government offensive to destroy the prime minister’s Shiite opponents in the advance of provincial elections in October.

This is especially important in Basra, the major city in oil-rich southeastern Iraq where government-militia clashes (photo) are in their third day, because it has been controlled by loyalists of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr since the British cut and run.

Since Tuesday, clashes in Basra and throughout Iraq’s Shiite heartland have left more than 100 dead and many wounded in Basra, Baghdad, Hilla, Kut, Karbala and Diwaniya.

This state of affairs yet again puts the Bush administration in the position of backing the wrong horse, as Eric Martin puts it, but I don’t think there are any “right” horses because political fault lines, even within sectarian interest groups, run so deep.

And while the militiamen are lightly armed, they are highly motivated. There would be no amount of Pentagon spin to explain away an end to Al-Sadr’s seven-month-old ceasefire against U.S. troops since the Surge was supposed to give Al-Maliki the breathing room to bring warring parties together, not an opportunity to crush his opponents with U.S. troops and air support.

Then there is a biggest reason why there will be a major American presence in Iraq indefinitely: Oil.

Saboteurs blew up one of Iraq’s two main oil pipelines near Basra today, severely reducing exports and pushing the price of crude up by more than a dollar a barrel.

In another by-product of the success of the Surge, the Iraqi government spokesman for the Baghdad security plan has been kidnapped and his three bodyguards killed.

There are an especially pernicious pair of bloggers who delight at bashing The Moderate Voice who shall remain nameless.

One of them accused me of “joyfully claiming vindiction” in my post yesterday on the upsurge in violence.

This is a libel on two counts:

First, there was nothing joyful in my noting I had predicted weeks ago that Iraq was a hiccup away from sliding back into cyclical violence because Al-Maliki has had no interest in using the military success of the Surge as intended.

Second, I am a Vietnam War veteran who bleeds for the men and women fighting their hearts out in this never ending war. Yes, it is possible to support the troops and not the war, something that this blogger is unable to comprehend because he is so determinedly small minded.

I invite skeptics to read my 18-installment series on the Triangle of Death abductions as well as many other deeply personal and joy-free posts on U.S. troops.

As noted here on February 1, you don’t have to be a bloody genius to know that sooner or later the window of opportunity for Iraqi national reconciliation and a lasting reduction in sectarian violence as a result of the military successes of the Surge would begin to close unless there was progress by the Baghdad government.

Well, there has been no progress of consequence despite the wishful thinking of pro-war pundits who endlessly write that the Iraqis are working on This, That or The Other, while the last 72 hours have brought an explosion of violence reminiscent of the Bad Old Days that coincides with the 4,000th American combat death.

There has been no progress because Prime Minister Al-Maliki has no reason to upset his Shiite-dominated applecart knowing that President Bush is committed to maintaining present U.S. troop levels through Election Day and then dumping the whole mess on his successor.

Does this mean that the window of opportunity has closed? No. Not yet.

Does this mean that an unraveling of the success of the Surge is underway. No. It’s too soon to tell, but the omens don’t look good.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the arrival of the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War, what do Iraqis have to say about it? In addition to pondering what President Bush means when he says that the situation is ‘fragile,’ the continuing activities of Iran are also foremost in peoples’ minds. Fatih Abdulsalam writes for Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper, ‘It seems that although American talks with Iran have been suspended, the two sides persist in pursuing their respective goals … This makes a joke of Iraqi ‘national sovereignty.’ … As far as what Bush means by the his recent comment that the situation in Iraq is ‘fragile,’ Abdulsalam goes on to say, ‘Perhaps we’ll have to wait for Bush to be ‘free’ of the White House before he tells us what he intended. That moment will not be long in coming.’

By Fatih Abdulsalam

Translated By James Jacobson and Nicolas Dagher

March 12, 2008
As we approach the completion of five years of the Iraqi War, a Pentagon report [Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq ] has been released that reinforces the words of President George Bush - that “all that has been achieved in Iraq is fragile and could be lost.” This is a concern that has been addressed in this column repeatedly over the past three years. As the snowballing of strategic mistakes sped our plunge into the abyss of bloodshed, it was inevitable that the “will” of America (and I don’t mean its administration) would be subject to the whims of Iraqi political parties who echo the voice of Iran, which appears and then disappears depending on the maneuvering of the Americans and Iranians on Iraqi land.

[Editor’s Note: The last sentence included a play on words: “iraada” means will and “idaara” means administration. The author is trying to say that the issue is out of the Bush Administration’s hands].

The recognition that all is not well is no innocent one. The sudden appearance of the voice of “truth” came riding in on important changes that the Bush Administration appears determined to make, especially after the resignation of American commander William Fallon was announced. Fallon was responsible for the Iraq and Afghanistan war dossiers - and his departure comes at a moment when talks in Baghdad to conclude an American strategic agreement with the Al-Maliki government are taking place.

Without exaggerating the case, it seems that although American negotiations with Iran have been suspended, the two sides persist in pursuing their respective goals … particularly in Iraq. This makes a joke of Iraqi “national sovereignty,” to whose defense rose Jassem Al-Kharafi - a Deputy of Kuwait’s Parliament, at a recent conference of Arab Parliaments in Arbil [Northern Iraq]. Al-Kharafi was joined in his “extremist” denial of Iraq’s occupation by the Vice President of Iraq’s Parliament.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with much more foreign press coverage from around the world on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War.

As General David Petraeus prepares to testify before Congress about the surge, the question will arise, “How much progress has there been toward Iraqi national conciliation since the surge began.” In order to help answer that question, WORLDMEETS.US has translated this news account from the Al-Iraq News about the status of talks between the Shiite-led government and opposition parties. Adnan al-Dulaimi of the Iraqi Accord Front - the largest Sunni coalition - calls for, ‘The participation of all Sunni sons and not just those of The Accord Front - including supervision in the area of security. Effective control over the nation’s security services by a single sect must end. This would solve many of the country’s existing problems, because having one sect monopolize the area of security has created great harm.’

Izzat Al-Shabandar of the secular Iraqi Accord is quoted as saying, ‘There will be no concessions on our existing demands, in particular because these are the demands of all Iraqis … which include abolishing all sectarian-based quotas and establishing a national project based on performance, good citizenship and integrity - none of which can be waived or conceded.’

Translated By James Jacobson and Nicolas Dagher

March 3, 2008

Iraq - Al-Iraq News - Original Article (Arabic)

Not a single Iraqi opposition party is willing to offer the government concessions on their demands about how to address the tense political situation. Some of these parties attribute their hard line to the government’s failure to pay proper attention to their proposals.

Fadel Al-Sharaa, an advisor to Prime Minister al-Maliki, said “the government is serious about finding solutions that will contribute to improving the political process. In order to rebuild a basis for progress, we are negotiating with blocs that have withdrawn their support.” A number of blocks, including the Iraqi Accord Front [the largest Sunni bloc ], Iraqi National Accord [secular bloc lead by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ] and the al-Sadr faction , have withdrawn from the Maliki Government.

Al-Sharaa said, “the government is continuing its dialogue with these political blocs,” adding that the demands and proposals of these blocs would be closely examined, but emphasizing, “these groups must show their seriousness about reforming the political situation.” He added, “the status quo won’t do, in particular because the political situation doesn’t only pertain to political factions, but to the Iraq people, who expect the political blocs to confront the challenge of finding a way out of the impasse and put forward serious proposals that are commensurate with the heavy responsibility they bear for achieving a successful political process in this country.”

For his part, Adnan al-Dulaimi of the Iraqi Accord Front [Sunni], said that the Front was prepared to return to the Government when it is willing to back down from its hard-line demands and agree to compromise. “The demands of the Accord Front are clear and they are popular demands.”

The Front has called for a greater role in government decision-making and the release of detainees [Sunnis]. On the government’s position regarding these demands, Al-Duleimi said: “Unless the government responds positively, we cannot return to the Government.”

On the adoption of the General Amnesty Law [for former Baathists] which was passed by Parliament and was one of the demands of the Accord Front, Al-Duleimi said, “The General Amnesty Law is an important law, but we expect seriousness on the part of the Government in implementing it and speeding up its execution. This is what we hope the government will do.”

He added, “There are other conditions that the Accord has put forward, such as demands for real participation in making decisions and administering the country, as well as finding a balance between the parties in regard to how to create a successful political process. This would require the participation of all Sunni sons and not just those of The Accord Front - including supervision in the area of security. Effective control over the nation’s security services and plans by a single sect must end. This would solve many of the country’s existing problems, because having one sect monopolize the area of security has created great harm.”

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing coverage of how Iraqis themselves view the Iraq War.

In what at first blush would seem to be an unusual acknowledgment that presidential power actually has limits, the Bush administration says that it has dropped a provision from the U.S.’s pending business deal with the Iraqi government under which it would defend Iraq from both internal and external security threats.

It may well be that the president’s handlers have realized that trying to ram through the deal in the form of something other than a treaty, which would not require congressional approval, would provoke too great a backlash, and Defense Secretary Gates tacitly acknowledged as much this week.

But that explanation runs counter to the reality that George Bush has said in word and deed many times over the last long seven years that his power is pretty much limitless, most recently in yet another of his draconian signing statements, this one attached late last month to a defense spending bill that created a law banning the use of taxpayer funds to establish permanent bases in Iraq.

In the signing statement, the president yet again gave Congress the finger in asserting that as commander in chief he has the power to bypass that law.

The business deal, as I insist on calling it, would provide a long-term troop commitment in return for first dibs at Iraq’s vast oil resources. Its technical name is “A Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America. ” (Text here.)

So what’s really going on?

Methinks part reality check and part game playing, both long overdue and most welcome.

Although no presidential loyalist would put it in these terms, the reality check is that the White House has made such a hash of its Iraq “policy” that it has slowly come to realize one carelessly tossed match will reignite a civil war tamped down by the self-imposed exile of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr and the military successes of the Surge. (See “The Same Game” below for a pungent example.)

Military is in italics because that was only half — and in retrospect the easiest part despite the considerable blood shed by U.S. troops — of the Surge strategy, the other part being a good-faith effort by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki to use the window of opportunity that those military successes afforded him to rev up national reconciliation efforts.

What has happened, of course, is that Al-Maliki and his Shiite henchmen have continued to act in bad faith knowing that Washington would not lean on them.

There has been no progress toward reconciliation. Zip, zero, nada, while the Sunni minority is busily consolidating its modest gains in the expectation that it won’t be invited to share power any time soon.

The game playing is the White House’s belated recognition of this sad state of affairs, if not that it is mostly to blame, hence the removal of the crucial internal and external security threat clause from the business deal. This is because the clause not only couldn’t pass congressional muster, but represented long-term coup insurance for Al-Maliki and without it his sorry ass is no longer covered.

Is this to say that the White House would approve a coup, however tacitly? Not exactly, but with the clause in place the U.S. had a whole lot less leverage.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

You don’t have to be a bloody genius to know that sooner or later the window of opportunity for Iraqi national reconciliation and a lasting reduction in sectarian violence as a result of the successes of the Surge would begin to close unless there was progress on the part of the Baghdad government.

Well, boys and girls, it would appear that the window is indeed beginning to close since there has been no progress whatsoever except for a totally bogus un-de-Baathification law passed earlier this month.

As a consequence, insurgents have predictably adapted their tactics amidst this power vacuum, there has been an up-tick in high-profile bombings and U.S. and civilian casualties, and the level of violence in Mosul is at a two-year high despite intense U.S. pacification efforts. The twin suicide bombings that apparently involved two mentally retarded women and took over 50 lives in mainly Shiite areas of Baghdad today were the worst since additional U.S. troops began flooding into the capital last spring.

Spencer Ackerman, writing in The Washington Independent, has it exactly right when he says:

“It used to be that surge enthusiasts would at least hint at the unachieved strategic objective of the surge. As Bush himself put it, the surge was meant to provide the Iraqi government ‘the breathing space it needs to make progress’ on sectarian reconciliation. But reconciliation hasn’t happened, and, in important respects, sectarianism has deepened over the past year. So surgeniks are now simply declaring victory by the sheer fact of reduced violence itself, unmoored to any strategic goal.”

Now you would expect William Kristol and other willfully blind Bush sycophants to ignore the elephant in the room (yes, the one with really big and really sharp tusks) while declaring victory.

But this myopia has reached epidemic proportions on Capitol Hill and out on the campaign trail where only Barack Obama is asking hard questions about the war while John McCain is telling everyone who will listen that he’d be happy if the U.S. stays in Iraq for 100 years. And didn’t you just love it when Hillary Clinton Read the rest of this entry »

In light of the Bush Administration’s hard line on Iran and the White House’s perceived lack of credibility, the question is often asked how much influence Tehran really has in Iraq. According to this op-ed article by Khadir Taahar, an admittedly pro-Western columnist for Iraq’s Kitabat newspaper, ‘All posts given to Shiites, starting with the position of Minister to that of Deputy Minister, ambassador, director-general, governor, chief of police, mayor and others … were awarded based on lists provided by Tehran and cross-referenced with lists of people working with the coalition [the U.S. and its partners]. All names were checked in terms of history and absolute loyalty to Iran, and in light of these results, these individuals were given these posts.’

By Khadir Taahar

Translated By James Jacobson

January 30, 2007

Iraq - Kitabat - Original Article (Arabic)

It seems that Iraqi culture has become a prisoner of Islamic political terrorist groups. After former Minister of Culture Asad Al-Hashemi fled [a Sunni ], Jaber Al-Jabri, who formerly bore the name Mudin al-Musawi, assumed the post of Culture Minister. He’s a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council , which was established by Iranian intelligence during the war against Iraq [1980-1988], and which was tasked with missions of spying, torture, the execution of the captured Iraqi soldiers and participating in the war against Iraq as a state - and not against the regime of Saddam Hussein!

It is known that all the posts given to Shiite elements, starting with the position of Minister to that of Deputy Minister, ambassador, director-general, governor, chief of police, mayor and others … all of these were awarded based on lists provided by Tehran and cross-referenced with lists of people working with the coalition [the U.S. and its partners]. All names were checked in terms of history and absolute loyalty to Iran and in light of these results, these individuals were given these positions.

And when Jaber Al-Jabri was appointed Deputy Minister of Culture … it was not a random appointment … Iranian planners are working quietly behind the scenes to “Persianize” Iraqi culture, seeking to undermine the Arabic national identity of Iraq. Al-Jabri was put into this position to implement that plan and under the pretext of nationalism and opposing Baathism [opposing support for Saddam’s political party], has begun his activities of attacking everything that has anything to do with Iraqi and Arabic culture.

In the name of “Islamic culture,” Iran is seeking to penetrate and poison Iraq’s national culture by suggesting that those who produced Arab culture were Persians, rather than “camel-riding Arabic Bedouins.” Such were the comments of Finance Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh , when he attacked the Saudi Foreign Minister. Solagh, who as Finance Minister is a colleague of Culture Minister Al-Jabri, is also on the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council!

READ THE REST ON WORLDMEETS.US, and log-in for continuing coverage of the Iraq press.

As it has turned out, George Bush’s Forever War has been more about oil than WMD, spreading democracy or punishing those bad Iraqis who flew hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

This was further confirmed when Bush and Prime Minister Al-Maliki announced that they had cut a sweetheart deal under which the abjectly corrupt Baghdad government gets a long-term nanny in the form of U.S. troops stationed at permanent bases and the gluttonous U.S. gets first dibs at Iraq’s vast oil riches.

But like so many other things in Iraq – heck, like everything in Iraq – all is not going according to plan.

There still isn’t an oil law (although the Kurds are cutting deals on the side with non-U.S. companies), the Kurds are fighting with the rest of Iraq over oil production in Kirkuk, which accounted for most of the increase in oil production last year, and the oil-rich Basra region remains hugely unstable.

And now comes news that Iraqi oil production may actually be going down. But worry not, Mr. and Mrs. America, opium production is going up.

More here and here.

General David Petraeus is the conservatives’ Viagra when it comes to the war in Iraq.

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq has succeeded where his predecessors failed in fashioning a counterinsurgency-based Surge strategy that dramatically lowered American and civilian casualties in the latter months of 2007 while giving the Baghdad government breathing room to work through the difficult process of reconciling various ethnic factions and becoming what would truly be a national government.

Trouble is, the often heroic efforts of the men and women under Petraeus have been betrayed by the commander in chief in Washington, something that those conservative fail to grasp when they crow about dramatically reduced death tolls and smile at the bulge between their legs.

The latest round of conservative high fives is the result of an interview with Petraeus in Foreign Affairs in which he enunciates, in his own circumspect way, why the military component of the Surge has largely succeeded while stopping well short of stating the obvious:

The other component – that reconciliation thing – is pretty much dead in the water because President Bush no longer even makes a pretense of the Iraqi government attaining the benchmarks that it has consistently failed to meet and has given Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government coup insurance by promising a long-term U.S. troop presence in return for first dibs at Iraq’s vast untapped oil wealth.

The best Petraeus can manage in the interview regarding the Iraqis is that:

“They will be the first to tell you they want to make more progress and make it more rapidly than they have done to this point. There have been accomplishments, especially in recent weeks. They approved a pension law that extends pension rights to tens of thousands Iraqis who were left out, cast off. They agreed to the Security Council resolution extension, which gives us our mandate. They have debated accountability and justice, which is the de-Baathification reform legislation. The budget for 2008 should come up for a vote very soon after they return from Eid and the hajj. So, the progress has been halting, but there are a number of encouraging signs on the horizon.”

How about that pension law! A real watershed event, eh?

This is what the Brits call “small beer.” Because the reality is that while conservatives are getting their rocks off, the White House has sold Petraeus and his troops down the river.

A year ago today, back when a surge was something that you didn’t want to fry your computer, extraordinary rendition was a stirring playing of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, people thought FISA was the federal agency that protected their bank deposits and a Huckabee was a . . . something or other, I posed a couple of questions:

Can we survive two more years of a Bush presidency?

Have we become a nation of sheep?

Looking back over the previous 12 months and ahead to a watershed 2008 election, the answer to both questions is an equivocal “yes.”

The ability of the most amoral presidency since forever to shock but not surprise ripened like cow pie in a pasture on a hot summer day during 2007:

* George Bush’s Forever War morphed into a business deal that merely forestalls the eventual collapse of Iraq: Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki gets coup insurance in the form of a long-term U.S. troop presence and the U.S. gets first dibs at Iraq’s vast untapped oil riches.

* In a fairy tale ending, the president commuted the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff. Libby, of course, had been thrown overboard by his bosses as they lost control of the Wilson-Plame affair, which grew out of one of the administration’s bigger whoppers justifying the war.

* U.S. attorneys were sacked because they resisted becoming handmaidens for a Justice Department that had become a branch of the Republican Party with subpoena power.

* The shroud of secrecy was torn off the administration’s enthusiastic embrace of Nazi-like torture techniques, which so troubled the head of the CIA’s clandestine service — although not for the right reasons — that he ordered the destruction of terrorist interrogation videotapes despite being explicitly told not to do so.

* The administration’s bellicose Iran policy crashed upon the shoals of a report by the nation’s spymasters that Tehran apparently had shuttered its nuclear weapons program four years earlier, an inconvenient disclosure that did not dissuade the president and vice president from continuing to rattle their sabers.

* Two key administration players – presidential mentor Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – resigned after working tirelessly to suborn the rule of law while stonewalling a feckless Democratic congressional majority in its feeble attempts to call them out. Both men, and most especially Gonzales, face a perilous New Year because of their probable criminal culpability.

* Meanwhile, the U.S. economy increasingly looked like a house of cards as the gap between Wall Street and Main Street grew, the war became a half-trillion dollar albatross and the dollar tanked against major foreign currencies. A home mortgage meltdown long in the making was exacerbated by an administration that shamelessly continued to reward the rich and give the finger to a middle class in crisis through, among other acts, vetoing an expansion of the life-saving S-CHIP program.

Can we expect more of the same in 2008? Absolutely. But that does not diminish the importance of digging deeper into the rotten core of the Bush presidency.

This means bringing Gonzales and other perps to justice, demanding increased transparency in what the administration and Congress does, working to restore civil liberties lost in the unprecedented Bush-Cheney power grab, and insisting that the Republican presidential field either climb out of Bush’s bed or explain why voters can expect more of the same any of them become president.

Will the republic survive another year? Yes, just as the hundreds of terrorism suspects have survived another year without due process in Guantánamo Bay and other way stations in the Rumsfeld Gulag, but there remains the specter of a citizenry even more disenchanted with its president and other so-called leaders and the institutions they profess to represent then at the end of the Clinton presidency.

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