Civil War In Iraq Inevitable

[Nbadan]

WASHINGTON -- An unchastened insurgency sowed devastation across Iraq Wednesday as experts here said the country is either on the verge of civil war or already in the middle of it.

<snip>

With security experts reporting that no major road in the country was safe to travel, some Iraq specialists speculated that the Sunni insurgency was effectively encircling the capital and trying to cut it off from the north, south and west, where there are entrenched Sunni communities. East of Baghdad is a mostly unpopulated desert bordering on Iran.

"It's just political rhetoric to say we are not in a civil war. We've been in a civil war for a long time," said Pat Lang, the former top Middle East intelligence official at the Pentagon.

Other experts said Iraq is on the verge of a full-scale civil war with civilians on both sides being slaughtered. Incidents in the past two weeks south of Baghdad, with apparently retaliatory killings of Sunni and Shia civilians, point in that direction, they say.

Newsday (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woiraq0512,0,4630319.story?coll=ny-top-headlines)

Of course, those of you who have read my postings already knew this was coming. People have utterly failed to understand the significance of recent decline in attacks on US targets. It meant the insurgent's strategy of keeping us penned into our 'safe zone' bases was working...while they set about strengthening their control of the Iraq countryside.

[Clandestino]

the reason for the decline is it is easier to attack soft targets(innocent, unarmed civilians), than to attack the u.s. military. your terrorists are cowards.

[Nbadan]

Who's terrorists? Lets see what Seymour Hersh says..


Address by Seymour Hersh at the University of Illinois at Urbana
Delivered Tuesday evening, May 10
Broadcast on Democracy Now! Wednesday May 11
Interview conducted by Amy Goodman dated Wednesday May 11

Iraq "Moving Towards Open Civil War"
By Seymour Hersh

(A)fter I did Abu Ghraib, I got a bunch of digital pictures emailed me, and – was a lot of work on it, and I decided, well, we can talk about it later. You never know why you do things. You have some general rules, but in this case, a bunch of kids were going along in three vehicles. One of them got blown up. The other two units -- soldiers ran out, saw some people running, opened up fire. It was a bunch of boys playing soccer. And in the digital videos you see everybody standing around, they pull the bodies together. This is last summer. They pull the bodies together. You see the body parts, the legs and boots of the Americans pulling bodies together. Young kids, I don’t know how old, 13, 15, I guess. And then you see soldiers dropping R.P.G.'s, which are rocket-launched grenades around them. And then they're called in as an insurgent kill. It's a kill of, you know, would-be insurgents or resistance and it goes into the computers, and I'm sure it's briefed. Everybody remembers how My Lai was briefed as a great victory, “128 Vietcong killed.” And so you have that pattern again. You know, ask me why I didn't do this story. Because I didn't think the kids did murder. I think it was another day in the war. And even to write about it in a professional way would name names and all that.

In any case, the paper also says -- this is the last one of these things that I found great interest -- that the Lummi tribe, one of the members – it’s a major tribe in the Sunni heartland of Baghdad, the four provinces that Saddam -- the center post of the resistance, the Lummi tribe probably had something to do with turning in Saddam. He had turned on some of those people. Anyway, the new Defense Minister is a Sunni, from the tribe, and he says he's going to continue the policies of Mr. Allawi, the former Defense Minister, which is what? What's the defense policies of Allawi, the former interim Prime Minister? Well, basically, what we have done since -- in the last year, is we have recreated the Iraqi Mukhabarat. This is the heavy-hitting secret police that Saddam ran. We have gone in and recreated many of the members, put them through a little acid test, made them vow that their allegiance – to what? – I guess, to America, or they're no longer Saddamites. In any case, this is our main force right now. This is the force that Allawi controls. This is a force, the former, you know, whatever the guys, whatever you want to call them, the former roughest guys that Saddam had are now working for us. They're our most prominent security force. And we have had really an amazing spectacle of the Secretary Of Defense, Rumsfeld, making at least two trips in the last five months, I think it’s three, but I know of two, I think it was three, though -- going in and basically -- once before the election was announced, and two more trips -- basically pleading on the inside for the two major factions, the Kurds and the Shia, I'm assuming some knowledge of -- I hope I'm not -- Iraq? -- you know, the country? and there's -- anyway, I don't want to kid you. But we're negotiating -- obviously the whole point of the election was to keep Allawi in play so that he could serve as a bridge, our man, between the Kurds and the Shia. And what he delivers is, of course, is the Mukhabarat.

And here you have Rumsfeld. We went to war to get rid of Saddam and all of that. Here you have Rumsfeld going at least twice in the last four months or so to beg, to beg for Allawi to stay in, and beg basically for the former Mukhabarat security forces to continue doing what they do, terrorizing. It was an amazing piece in The New York Times Magazine. I mean, amazing in its inability to go beyond the immediacy of what they were reporting about one of these militias that are former Mukhabarat, former Saddam people, that are now working for us, killing, (quote, unquote), “insurgents,” which means they're basically -- I don't know, when do you describe what's going on as a civil war? I don't know. When is somebody going to say that? But if it's not a civil war, it's very close. And I don't know -- I can’t see an end game. I'll give you a ticket out.

From the interview:

AMY GOODMAN: The news of this Operation Matador that is taking place right now, US forces carrying it out, one of the largest post-Saddam military operations in Iraq, the US admitting it’s facing fierce resistance. What is the significance of this? When do casualties count, when don't they?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, they're not counting now. American casualties are discounted in the newspapers. We have had an awful lot of people, more than a dozen die in the last few days alone in Iraq. American casualties are back up. And it's not a major story. Once in a while it gets to be a story. And so, they put out -- they do their own sort of accounting. The one way they balance the bad news is they have raids. And we suddenly show us on the offensive. And part of it is what the information -- it's an operation, it's a public relations. It's a strategic deception in a way. I’m not suggesting the raids are not there. I’m not suggesting they may even be finding people. God knows who they find. But clearly, one reason they're being emphasized is to detract from what's going on, which is a steady increase in the insurgency and the resistance.

And what happened is after the election of January 30, the elections so widely hailed by this President and the government, which as we now know has had very little consequence on the reality of what's going on on the ground, as we move towards an open civil war there, but after the election, there were orders put out to change the reporting requirements on incidents. In other words, you had to have a serious American fatality or casualty, not necessarily death, but a serious incident, to get reported. So just a mine going off and somebody being lightly wounded wouldn't get reported. So the numbers went down right away, suggesting that somehow the election had worked.

Read more.Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/11/142250)

[Clandestino]

so, you think they united states military kills innocents and plants weapons on them? you really should move out of the united states...agents could be tracking you now...

[Nbadan]

so, you think they united states military kills innocents and plants weapons on them? you really should move out of the united states...agents could be tracking you now...

We justify the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq by calling them collateral damage. Why should I move out of the U.S., your the one who is obviously not happy with the constitutional guarantee of free political speech.

[Clandestino]

that is what they are... collateral damage.

do you think we stage scenes like the one the reporter wrote about?

[exstatic]

Civil war inevitable? I'd say it's already on.

[The Ressurrected One]

I really am beginning to hope there are black helicopters hovering over Nbadan's house.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

The Shi'ites and Kurds know that's what the Sunni thugs want, which is exactly why there won't be a civil war.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

I really am beginning to hope there are black helicopters hovering over Nbadan's house.


Translation

Don't force feed me your liberal biased unamerican news reports, I personally know exactly what is going on in Iraq.

[exstatic]

FOX news announced today that of the 55 Iraqis selected to help write their constitution, two of them are Sunni. I don't think that bodes well. The newscaster didn't seem to think so, either.

[The Ressurrected One]

Translation

Don't force feed me your liberal biased unamerican news reports,...
Nah, I refuse to be force fed by anyone.

I personally know exactly what is going on in Iraq.
Insightful.

[The Ressurrected One]

FOX news announced today that of the 55 Iraqis selected to help write their constitution, two of them are Sunni. I don't think that bodes well. The newscaster didn't seem to think so, either.
Well, if they hadn't been so busy trying to thwart progress maybe they would have seen the job announcement.

[Nbadan]

Well, if they hadn't been so busy trying to thwart progress maybe they would have seen the job announcement.

Wouldn't be so bad if the Sunni Baathists didn't own everything in Iraq. By simply dismissing the lack of Sunni involvement in the election what we have effectively done is equal to forming a new government in the U.S. that ignored rich republicans concerns. Now we couldn't have that, could we?