Iraqi's Take Over Security In All Provinces By 2007

[jochhejaam]

As the article states it seems a rather optimistic statement but one that I would think would be welcomed and serve as encouragement by the majority of the Iraqi people, the majority of whom want our forces out.

Iraq President: Local Forces to Take Over Security by End of 2006
Wednesday, August 02, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday that Iraqi forces will take over security of all provinces in the country by the end of the year, which at present is largely in the hand of U.S. forces.

The optimistic statement by Talabani comes at a time when the country is reeling under intense sectarian violence, mainly involving Shiite and Sunni militias. On Tuesday, more than 70 people were killed in one of the worst days of bloodshed.

Talabani, a Kurd from northern Iraq, said the government is confident of vanquishing terrorism, described the recent surge of violence as "the last arrows in their pockets," referring to the extremists.

"We are highly optimistic that we will terminate terrorism in this year... the multinational forces' role is a supportive one and the Iraqi forces will take over security in all Iraqi provinces by the end of this year gradually and God's will, we will take the lead," he said.

Talabani did not elaborate, and it was not clear if he meant whether the U.S. would retain an advisory type of role in security or take a fully hands-off approach.

The terrorists fear the unity of the Iraqi people," he said. "Our armed forces are doing well, but we expect more from them."

Much of the recent sectarian violence has occurred in the capital Baghdad, and many lawmakers have called for replacing the interior minister over the government's inability to stop the almost daily bombings, drive-by shootings and executions after abductions.

The U.S. military is moving at least 3,700 soldiers from Mosul to Baghdad and is gearing up for a new security operation to wrest control of the capital from Shiite militias, Sunni insurgents, kidnap gangs, rogue police and freelance gunmen.

Iraqi leaders have said previously that their goal is to be fully in control of the country's security by the end of 2006, but Talabani's statement is the most direct on the subject.

U.S. forces are currently responsible for the security of 17 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Only Muthana province is totally under Iraqi forces at present.

"Terminating terrorism cannot be achieved through military force ... we need a comprehensive plan and we started by launching the national reconciliation campaign as part of this work," Talabani said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206664,00.html

[ChumpDumper]

Timeline.

[clambake]

This has failure written all over it.

I wonder what the vegas odds are on likely scenerios?

[boutons_]

The US Military can't make a dent in the civil war now, can't provide security just in Bagdad, so of course the much less competent, less loyal, less equipped, thoroughly infiltrated Iraqi army/police will be able to provide security and public order. GMAFB

You dumbshits believe any shit the Repugs spew.

This Repug cut-and-run with the job undone. The Repugs will stand down and the Iraqis will fall over.

[ChumpDumper]

"Terminating terrorism cannot be achieved through military force ... we need a comprehensive plan and we started by launching the national reconciliation campaign as part of this work," Talabani said.Amnesty.

[jochhejaam]

The US Military can't make a dent in the civil war now, can't provide security just in Bagdad, so of course the much less competent, less loyal, less equipped, thoroughly infiltrated Iraqi army/police will be able to provide security and public order. GMAFB

They'll have their freedom, both from Saddam and the U.S. presence, what they choose to do with that freedom is up to them. If they choose to have open civil war, that's on them.
We had our own civil war and we came out better for it. Who knows?



<thanks for taking me off ignore> :lol

[whottt]

The US Military can't make a dent in the civil war now, can't provide security just in Bagdad, so of course the much less competent, less loyal, less equipped, thoroughly infiltrated Iraqi army/police will be able to provide security and public order. GMAFB

You dumbshits believe any shit the Repugs spew.

This Repug cut-and-run with the job undone. The Repugs will stand down and the Iraqis will fall over.


Uh...Cutting and Running was John Kerry's entire political platform...cutting and running is his entire political legacy...

And all of you fucks saying we should get out of Iraq have been advocating cutting and running...for years now.

Just shut the fuck up until you develop coherent and consistent position....

[clambake]

They won't get to choose. It's being chosen for them now, their fate. When the factions are completely divided, only slaughter will follow.

Which countries get to arm which sects? I'm just glad we were able to completely "f" up their life. So long Saigon! Bravo Mr. President!

[jochhejaam]

[QUOTE=clambake]They won't get to choose. It's being chosen for them now, their fate. When the factions are completely divided, only slaughter will follow.

Which countries get to arm which sects? I'm just glad we were able to completely "f" up their life.
It wasn't exactly a bastion of civility before the Allied invasion.
The following is representative of life under the regime of Saddam.


Saddam Hussein seized power in 1979.
The list of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Saddam Hussein and his regime is a long one. It includes:

• The use of poison gas and other war crimes against Iran and the Iranian people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Iraq summarily executed thousands of Iranian prisoners of war as a matter of policy.

• The "Anfal" campaign in the late 1980's against the Iraqi Kurds, including the use of poison gas on cities. In one of the worst single mass killings in recent history, Iraq dropped chemical weapons on Halabja in 1988, in which as many as 5,000 people -- mostly civilians -- were killed.

• Crimes against humanity and war crimes arising out of Iraq's 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq. This includes the destruction of over 3,000 villages. The Iraqi government's campaign of forced deportations of Kurdish and Turkomen families to southern Iraq has created approximately 900,000 internally displaced citizens throughout the country.

• Crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against Marsh Arabs and Shi'a Arabs in southern Iraq. Entire populations of villages have been forcibly expelled. Government forces have burned their houses and fields, demolished houses with bulldozers, and undertaken a deliberate campaign to drain and poison the marshes. Thousands of civilians have been summarily executed.

• Possible crimes against humanity for killings, ostensibly against political opponents, within Iraq.

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/02/iraq99.htm#warcrimes

[clambake]

Now your concerned about the Iranians? If we just pull out, it will create an Iran of twice the size.

[whottt]

Regardless of what is being said IMO we aren't in any hurry to pull out because we aren't done fucking with and destabilizing Iran and Syria yet....especially Iran. And we want a clear line of attack and logistical support to get Iran to stop being dickheads. We also have a battle hardened and experienced military now...unlike Iran and Syria. Thanks Saddam....


The goal is to make Iraq peaceful and productive, so the people living in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria etc....see what shitty governments they have and do something about it, political unrest.....and our military is right there where it needs to be to apply external pressure on these governments to get their shit together as well.

Man it's not hard to see what they are doing...

Look at the fucking map, looking at the strategy used during the cold war to rid Europe of all the shitty goverments(shitter goverments I should say) and collapse the Soviet Union...

You can never go into two of the three countries from which the terrorist threat is truly creapted...Pakistan and Saudi Arabia...

Pakistan because they have nukes and a severe radical problem, Saudi because it is the home of Islam...not to mention that both of these countries are defacto allies...

To beat these two shitheads you have to make them the last of their kind and isolate the governments from everyone, including their own people.

It would work a lot easier if you didn't have dickheads like the French and Russians trying to capitalize on the situation, for no other reason than to reclaim their former status...as world leaders.

[jochhejaam]

Now your concerned about the Iranians? If we just pull out, it will create an Iran of twice the size.
The threat of a Middle East ruled by Iran isn't a by-product of US policy.
What would you suggest we do cb?

[boutons_]

Why bring up John Kerry?
Anything to shift the spotlight off Repug Iraq, as always.
Kerry didn't start Iraq, he's not in power, and it's not his responsibility to get out.
The Iraq fiasco is purely a Repug fiasco and responsibility.

I don't know where the point is, so I haven't been advocating pulling out, but there will be a point where it will be totally pointless to remain in Iraq, just as pointless as it was to invade Iraq.

The Repugs don't have clue how to stabilize their Iraq and to provide public security. They bide their time until they will dump the entire stinking pile of their Iraq shit on the next Presdient's lap on 20 Jan, 2008.

[whottt]

Why bring up John Kerry?
Anything to shift the spotlight off Repug Iraq, as always.
Kerry didn't start Iraq, he's not in power, and it's not his responsibility to get out.
The Iraq fiasco is purely a Repug fiasco and responsibility.


Because...the fucking alternatives to the Republicans was cutting and running....

That's why.

Rather that sitting around bitching come up with some better...not you personally, but the opposition party...

If they again have a platform of, cutting and running, I will again be voting for whoever is running against them.

And it's just that simple...

The status quo can no longer be maintained, and we cannot cut and run.




I don't know where the point is, so I haven't been advocating pulling out, but there will be a point where it will be totally pointless to remain in Iraq, just as pointless as it was to invade Iraq.

I know...what you do is bitch about what is being done, without ever saying what should be done...

It's called alarmism...and I get your point...

What's your solution?


The Repugs don't have clue how to stabilize their Iraq and to provide public security. They bide their time until they will dump the entire stinking pile of their Iraq shit on the next Presdient's lap on 20 Jan, 2008.


Sure they do...you kill off all the radicals(not just Iraqi radicals, but the radicals of the other countries as well) and allow the Iraquis to build their own force, and you don't fucking rush it...and you cede power as they are capable of taking it...what is important is that the elements be put in place for peaceful regime change, frequently, and that their military and police force is strong enough to stand against internal and externam threats.

And it's going to take time....

You finish it when it's finished.

If the Iraqi PM is feeling optismitic, so be it...let him be optimistic, he's not a Republican...he's an elected official of his country.


You do this right, you finish the job, and the reward is that unrest in the other dickhead countries rises, and those governments have a harder time staying in power with their current backwards ass style of governance.

And you also have you military in place to remove them if the opportunity arises.

You do that, you get representative government put in place with as much secularism as possible, then they can work on things like education, civil rights and social programs...

And it stops being a breeding ground for fanatics...

These terrorist armies we face are nothing more than the abundant homeless and orphaned of these mideast countries given a diabolical purpose....by a well executed strategy of individuals seeking to gain total control over the middle east using Islam as the fulcrum.


There is one side here that is enlightened, and there is one side here that isn't...they are not equal...one side is clearly the side where more people immigrate to and has a higher quality of life, and the other side isn't...

But this otherside has money, and if they get their hands on nuke tech we are going to see just how unenlightened they really are....

[clambake]

We have to stay. I don't think our soldiers consider themselves to be battle hardened troops. More like ducks at the carnival.

We have 500 tanks that need repair. 44 flag draped coffins are on their way home just from july. To simply cut and run would be a disgrace to the 2500+dead comrades and 50 to 100k civilians.

[cheguevara]

"We are highly optimistic that we will terminate terrorism in this year...

:lmao

[DarkReign]

Does "terminate terrorism" qualify as an oxymoron?

[gtownspur]

Does "terminate terrorism" qualify as an oxymoron?


No, "melancholy happiness" is an oxymoron.

"terminate terrorism" seems utopian at this time.

[exstatic]

Didn't their PM recently stand in front of Congress recently and say there was no civil war in a country where the civilian casualties have topped 16000 in three years? That's more than Lebanon's first three years in the mid 70s in what IS acknowledged to have been a civil war.

They are a puppet government put in power by the Bush Administration and will say what they're told to say to benefit the GOP in this fall's elections.

[Nbadan]

Talabani, a Kurd from northern Iraq, said the government is confident of vanquishing terrorism, described the recent surge of violence as "the last arrows in their pockets," referring to the extremists.

Sounds like another 'last throes' speech to me.

[boutons_]

To counter all the overwhelmingly positive news pouring out of Iraq, here's an NYT attempt to make it all look bad.

Anybody counting on the Iraqi corrupt/infilitrated military/police to assure public security better than the failure of the US mlitary is hallucinating.

=====================

August 3, 2006

Security

In Iraq, It’s Hard to Trust Anyone in Uniform

By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 2 — The camouflaged Iraqi commandos who kidnapped 20 people from a pair of central Baghdad offices this week used Interior Ministry vehicles and left little trace of their true identities.

Were they legitimate officers? Members of a Shiite or Sunni death squad? Or criminals in counterfeit uniforms bought at the market?

Majid Hamid, 41, a Sunni human rights worker whose brother was kidnapped and killed by men in uniform four months ago, said he doubted that the answer would ever be known. Now, he said, the authorities normally trusted to investigate may be responsible for the crime.

“Whenever I see uniforms now, I figure they must be militias,” Mr. Hamid said in a recent interview. “I immediately try to avoid them. If I have my gun, I know I need to be ready to use it.”

Such is the attitude of Iraqis in this capital shellshocked and made fearful by violence that seems to be committed almost daily by men dressed as those who are supposed to protect and serve. The audacious kidnapping on Monday was just the latest case of men using the signals of law and safety — a uniform, a vehicle with blue lights, a patch on the sleeve — to attack and abduct.

Everywhere Iraqis in uniform go, from ice cream shops to checkpoints, people now flee. The mottled mix of green, blue and khaki camouflage, along with the blue shirts of the local police, have all blurred into a flag for alarm. “En eles,” Iraqis in Baghdad now say when a friend has been taken; in traditional Arabic it means chewed up, but in the streets it has come to mean taken by mysterious men without explanation.

American and Iraqi officials have been promising for weeks to address the problem. This week, the interior minister, Jawad Bolani, acknowledged that rogues were among his ranks. He told Parliament that new uniforms and identification cards would soon be supplied to hobble those “who carry out bad activities under the cover of this institution.”

( A makeover! A Queer Eye for an Arab Guy! )

The first 2,000 of 25,000 new uniforms are scheduled to be handed out later this month, officials said. Made with imported camouflage cloth and intricate patches and insignias, they are designed to be difficult to copy. Their source, as well as other details about them, is being kept secret in part to reduce the risk of counterfeiting. But only a small percentage of the 145,000 Interior Ministry officers — from the national police, public order brigades and other forces — will get them.

Even if they all had new uniforms, trust would be hard to resuscitate in Baghdad, where dozens of people are killed or found dead every day. With more forces being added to the streets as part of a security plan begun two months ago, the permutations of officialdom have spiraled.

On a recent afternoon at the Interior Ministry’s headquarters in Baghdad, three white pickup trucks with generic police lights drove by carrying men in a half-dozen versions of official dress. A handful of Toyota sport utility vehicles carrying men in various uniforms also passed.

“I bet even the Interior Ministry can’t tell who is in the trucks and who belongs to which brigade,” said Mr. Hamid, who has been working with the American military to find his brother’s killers.

Under Saddam Hussein, it was simpler. Into the early 1990’s, both the national police and the Iraqi Army wore olive fatigues; a silver star on the cap and shoulder denoted the police; a golden eagle meant the army. According to several Baghdad tailors, two markets in the capital had licenses to sell the uniforms and no one dared copy them. Later, though, privately made uniforms began to appear when sanctions kept the government from providing all forces with the official ones.

The American invasion in 2003 and the rush to fill Iraqi security forces opened the door to a flood of private production, some of it legitimate, some of it not. Ali Muhammad, 22, a tailor in the poor Shiite district of Sadr City, said that six months after the invasion, requests for camouflage uniforms began pouring in. At first, he refused. But the money was good — nearly twice what he could earn sewing suits — and with sectarian violence scaring away other customers, he said he needed it.

About a year ago, he began buying material at a wholesale market and making uniforms for 50,000 Iraqi dinars, about $33. He emphasized that the 20 to 30 outfits he had sold went only to trusted customers. But he said he still feared the consequences.

“If I discovered that someone used my uniform for all of this,” he said. He waved his hand to refer to the violence. “If this happened, it would be like I participated.”

Asked how long he thought it would take for tailors to copy the ministry’s new uniforms, he said, “A day.”

Brig. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, chief spokesman for the Interior Ministry, has higher hopes. He said the ministry expected to foil the counterfeiters for six months. He declined to say what color the uniforms would be or where they would be imported from.

He said there would also be an advertising campaign to inform people about the new uniforms, new identification cards for officers and fresh hard-to-copy paint jobs for some of the ministry’s white pickup trucks, though he would not provide figures or a timeline for the proposals.

Mr. Bolani, the interior minister, also promised to root out officers accused of corruption and torture and to deliver results this month.

( uh uh, sure, right. )

Sunnis, in particular, now out of power, question whether the ministry is serious. Omar al-Jabouri, who runs the human rights office for the Islamic Party, said the Shiite-led government would never end corruption and killings by officers or impersonators until it broke with Shiite militias.

Like many Sunnis, he contends that these militias now make up the backbone of the Interior Ministry. The new uniforms, ID cards and other plans, he said, “are a false certificate of reform — it’s a way to claim they are innocent.”

For more than a year, he has been collecting stories of atrocities committed by uniformed Iraqis. In a recent interview, he produced a book of case studies with color photographs showing gruesome evidence of torture and killings by men in uniform: a sheik with a power drill driven into his temple; 14 laborers abducted from a checkpoint in Baghdad and killed; dozens of men beaten, burned with acid and shot.

“Nowadays, there are a lot of neighborhoods that won’t allow commandos into their neighborhoods without American escorts,” he said.

( and what happens when dubya's suckers "stand down"? )

Sheik Akrim al-Dulaimi, a Sunni imam at the Holy Mecca mosque in Dawra, one of Baghdad’s most violent areas, said many of his Sunni neighbors had been taken from their homes in the middle of the night.

“They come after the curfew wearing camouflage uniforms with Interior Ministry commando insignias,” he said. “But when we go the next day to the government or to the headquarters of the brigade, they deny it.’’

The need to decide whether to trust or flee has become an ingrained element of life for many Iraqis.

Bashar Hassan, 41, a Sunni merchant in Baghdad, said that after men in police cars took him away last summer, he became aware that it was a kidnapping only when they demanded $30,000 in ransom. His family paid.

“They came into my shop and told me I was supporting the insurgents, then they took me away in police cars,” he said. He said he doubted that he would ever trust Iraqis in uniform again. He said he hoped that the additional American soldiers being sent to secure the capital “would help us honestly this time, and not let us kill each other while they stand by and watch.”

In the meantime, he and other Iraqis said they moved through life with constant dread. If the police enter a shop, customers quickly leave. Drivers reroute around checkpoints. To report a crime, if they are brave enough to do so, many Iraqis are turning to American commanders or neighborhood militias that are sprouting up despite recent prohibitions from the Ministry of Defense.

Even Brigadier Abdul-Rahman, the Interior Ministry spokesman, admits that when he sees men in uniform in Baghdad, he makes sure to keep his distance. “I just know,” he said, “that they are authorized to shoot.”

Edward Wong, Sahar Najeeb and Hosham Hussein contributed reporting for this article.