Some context for Petraeus' lies in September

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Below is what the US brass means by the US miltary "breaking" next April.

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Fatigue Cripples US Army in Iraq

By Peter Beaumont

The Observer UK Sunday 12 August 2007
Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis.Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.

When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.

The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan - a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad - hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq.

Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad's international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust.

Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began.

They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it's like we've become no more than numbers now.'

The first soldier starts in again. 'My husband was injured here. He hit an improvised explosive device. He already had a spinal injury. The blast shook out the plates. He's home now and has serious issues adapting. But I'm not allowed to go back home to see him. If I wanted to see him I'd have to take leave time (two weeks). And the army counts it.'

A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. 'We're plodding through this,' he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. 'I don't know how much more plodding we've got left in us.'

When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?'

It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired.

But the exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them.

'I counted it the other day,' says a major whose partner is also a soldier. 'We have been married for five years. We added up the days. Because of Iraq and Afghanistan we have been together for just seven months. Seven months ... We are in a bad place. I don't know whether this marriage can survive it.'

The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'. Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen.

And it is not only the soldiers that are worn out. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the destruction, or wearing out, of 40 per cent of the US army's equipment, totalling at a recent count $212bn (£105bn).

But it is in the soldiers themselves - and in the ordinary stories they tell - that the exhaustion of the US military is most obvious, coming amid warnings that soldiers serving multiple Iraq deployments, now amounting to several years, are 50 per cent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress.

The army's exhaustion is reflected in problems such as the rate of desertion and unauthorised absences - a problem, it was revealed earlier this year, that had increased threefold on the period before the war in Afghanistan and had resulted in thousands of negative discharges.

'They are scraping to get people to go back and people are worn out,' said Thomas Grieger, a senior US navy psychiatrist, told the International Herald Tribune in April.

'Modern war is exhausting,' says Major Stacie Caswell, an occupational therapist with a combat stress unit attached to the military hospital in Mosul. Her unit runs long group sessions to help soldiers with emerging mental health and discipline problems: often they have seen friends killed and injured, or are having problems stemming from issues at home - responsible for 50 to 60 per cent of their cases. One of the most common problems in Iraq is sleep disorders.

'This is a different kind of war,' says Caswell. 'In World War II it was clear who the good guys and the bad guys were. You knew what you would go through on the battlefield.' Now she says the threat is all around. And soldiering has changed. 'Now we have so many things to do...'

'And the soldier in Vietnam,' interjects Sergeant John Valentine from the same unit, 'did not get to see the coverage from home that these soldiers do. We see what is going on at home on the political scene. They think the war is going to end. Then we have the frustration and confusion. That is fatiguing. Mentally tiring.'

( that majority of "sovereign" Americans who what this bullshit war stopped are undermining the troops by giving hope that this very long, under-manned, under-equipped war will end )

'Not only that,' says Caswell, 'but because of the nature of what we do now, the number of tasks in comparison with previous generations - even as you are finishing your 15 months here you are immediately planning and training for your next tour.' Valentine adds: 'There is no decompression.'

The consequence is a deep-seated problem of retention and recruitment that in turn, says Caswell, has led the US army to reduce its standards for joining the military, particularly over the issue of no longer looking too hard at any previous history of mental illness. 'It is a question of honesty, and we are not investigating too deeply or we are issuing waivers. The consequence is that we are seeing people who do not have the same coping skills when they get here, and this can be difficult.

'We are also seeing older soldiers coming in - up to 41 years old - and that is causing its own problems. They have difficulty dealing with the physical impact of the war and also interacting with the younger men.'

Valentine says: 'We are not only watering down the quality of the soldiers but the leadership too. The good leaders get out. I've seen it. And right now we are on the down slope.'

"War Tsar" Calls for Return of the Draft to Take the Strain

America's 'war tsar' has called for the nation's political leaders to consider bringing back the draft to help a military exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a radio interview, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute said the option had always been open to boost America's all-volunteer army by drafting in young men in the same way as happened in Vietnam. 'I think it makes sense to consider it,' he said. Lute was appointed 'war tsar' earlier this year after President Bush decided a single figure was needed to oversee the nation's military efforts abroad.

Rumours of a return to the draft have long circulated in military circles as the pressure from fighting two large conflicts at the same time builds on America's forces. However, politically it would be extremely difficult to achieve, especially for any leader hoping to be elected in 2008. Bush has previously ruled out the suggestion as unnecessary.

Lute, however, said the war was causing stress to military families and, as a result, was having an impact on levels of re-enlistment. 'This kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living- room conversations within these families. Ultimately the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions,' he said.

A draft would revive bad memories of the turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s when tens of thousands of young men were drafted to fight and die in Vietnam. Few other policies proved as divisive in America and the memories of anti-war protesters burning their draft cards and fleeing to Canada are still vivid in the memory.

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U.S. Pays Millions In Cost Overruns For Security in Iraq

By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 12, 2007; A01

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military has paid $548 million over the past three years to two British security firms that protect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction projects, more than $200 million over the original budget, according to previously undisclosed data that show how the cost of private security in Iraq has mushroomed.

The two companies, Aegis Defence Services and Erinys Iraq, signed their original Defense Department contracts in May 2004. By July of this year, the contracts supported a private force that had grown to about 2,000 employees serving the Corps of Engineers. The force is about the size of three military battalions.

U.S. officials and company representatives attributed the overruns to the cost of protecting a largely civilian workforce amid an escalating insurgency, as Corps of Engineers commanders demanded more manpower and increasingly expensive armor to guard their field staff.

"To pay a man or a woman to come over here, put the vest on every day and escort military and civilians around the theater, knowing that people want to blow them up and kill them, you gotta pay to get that level of dedication," said Col. Douglas P. Gorgoni, senior finance officer for the Corps of Engineers in Iraq.

Months ago, the military recognized that the two overlapping contracts were costing millions of dollars in duplicate spending and sought to consolidate them. The result is still the single largest security contract in Iraq. The new contract will save $7 million a month, according to the Corps of Engineers, but will still be worth up to $475 million to the winning bidder.

The Army eliminated Erinys from the competition, but the company has held up the award by filing three separate protests against what it described as a "fundamentally flawed" procurement process. The protests have forced the military to extend Erinys's contract. The company has received $169.4 million since the beginning of that contract, $120 million more than originally budgeted.

"Quite frankly, they are very extensive, very lucrative contracts. Why would they not try to protest them?" Gorgoni said, adding that he could not comment on the merits of the protests. Aegis is a finalist for the new contract, according to sources familiar with the bidding process.

The private security industry has surged in Iraq because of troop shortages and growing violence. After the March 2003 invasion, hundreds of foreign and Iraqi companies, many of them new, signed contracts with the U.S. and British militaries, the State Department, the Iraqi government, media and humanitarian organizations and other private companies.

The size of this force and its cost have never been documented. The Pentagon has said that about 20,000 security contractors operate in Iraq, although some estimates are considerably higher. Private security contractors have been used in previous wars, but not on this scale, according to military experts. Several lawmakers have recently sought to regulate the private security industry and account for billions of dollars spent on outsourcing military and intelligence tasks that once were handled exclusively by the government.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), a member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee who was briefed by Aegis and the Corps of Engineers during a February visit to Iraq, said lawmakers are only now realizing the scope of private security there. "We're in the wake of this speedboat. We can't even catch up to the contracts," said Kaptur, who opposes the use of private forces and initiated an audit of Aegis by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the second the agency has conducted.

The payments to Aegis and Erinys "are immense and probably shocking to a lot of people, but they represent just two companies within one sector," said Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who wrote a book on private security and has advocated greater oversight of the industry. "We're talking tip-of-the-iceberg stuff here. That's pretty disturbing when you begin to extrapolate it out."

Company representatives said the contracts were expanded to confront the escalating insurgent threat. "We're fulfilling the need as directed by the client," said Kristi M. Clemens, Aegis's Washington-based executive vice president. She said costs rose in line with the Corps of Engineers' security demands, including a request for additional armored vehicles that cost roughly $150,000 and are manned by guards who earn $15,000 a month. "It's expensive to operate in a high-risk area," Clemens said.

The chairman of Erinys, Jonathan Garratt, wrote in an e-mail that "the Army has increased the volume of services in response to the security situation in Iraq" since the company was awarded its contract. "Erinys has provided the increased services as requested by the Army in properly-documented change orders," he wrote.

Aegis and Erinys work side-by-side in Baghdad's Green Zone. The Corps of Engineers is made up primarily of civilians and does not have enough resources to provide its own security, officials said. The military has said the use of private security forces ultimately saves money and frees up troops for more urgent tasks, such as fighting the insurgency.

Aegis signed its original contract in May 2004 with the Iraq Project and Contracting Office, a Defense Department agency created to manage reconstruction projects. The initial contract was for $92.3 million, according to Aegis and the Corps of Engineers, and included options for two additional years that raised the total to $293 million. Because of the additional workload and extensions, the military has paid Aegis $378.5 million, or $85.5 million more than originally budgeted.

In October 2006, according to the Corps of Engineers, the project office was folded into the Gulf Region Division of the Corps of Engineers, which had an existing security contract with Erinys also dating to May 2004. That contract was initially worth $15.2 million in the first year and included options for two additional years that raised the total to nearly $49 million, according to Erinys. Through July, the military had paid Erinys $169.4 million, or $120 million more than originally budgeted.

"The disbursements are larger than the base contracts because over time the security mission requirements expanded and the contract has spanned a total of three-plus years," Gorgoni said. "Both contracts were correctly written in such a manner to allow rapid expansion to meet the insurgent threat."

The merger left the Corps of Engineers with two private security firms. Erinys continues to provide personal protection for several Corps officials involved in reconstruction. Aegis runs security details for other Corps personnel and operates more than a dozen reconstruction liaison teams, in which guards armed with assault rifles assess rebuilding projects throughout the country. Aegis also operates the Reconstruction Operations Center, an information hub in the Green Zone that provides intelligence and tracks the movements of security details across Iraq.

Corps of Engineers officials said both companies have been essential to the reconstruction effort. "Without private security, our mission would be much more difficult and would require coalition forces to be diverted from their assigned combat missions," said Col. Robert Walton, who oversees security operations for the Corps in Iraq.

The military has paid more than $150 million to both companies -- $106.8 million to Aegis and $48.3 million to Erinys -- since the merger, according to the Corps of Engineers. Together, the contracts have a monthly "burn rate" of $18 million. By consolidating, military planners have calculated, the cost could be reduced to $11 million a month.

"Right now, you have two human resources offices, one for Aegis and one for Erinys. It's in the government's best interests that we have one," Gorgoni said. "They have two sets of logistics offices. Each has overhead and administration and management. We're economizing that into one."

The companies' mission is as dangerous as it is expensive. According to the Labor Department, which tallies contractor casualties based on insurance claims, at least 181 private security contractors have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war. Aegis has lost 16 employees in Iraq. Erinys has lost at least 10, according to published accounts that were not disputed by the company. No Corps of Engineers employees have been killed while under the protection of either Aegis or Erinys, the companies said.

The Aegis and Erinys contracts were scheduled to expire last spring. Erinys filed its first complaint in June after the Army determined that its bid for the new contract failed to fall within the "competitive range." After a judge filed a temporary restraining order to prevent the military from awarding the contract, the military reappraised the bidding, including Erinys's proposal, then eliminated the company again. Erinys filed another protest, which is under review by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Garratt, the Erinys chairman, wrote that the contract includes provisions allowing the military to continue using Erinys as late as February 2008. "Accordingly, the current bid protests are not in any way impacting the level of security services that the Army is receiving," Garratt wrote.

Gorgoni said that the delays are preventing the military from realizing the projected savings under the new contract. However, he said, the cost is insignificant when it comes to saving lives.

"I can tell you, the last thing I think about when I'm taking indirect fire and a team is protecting me is how much it costs," he said. "If you're on the receiving end, no price is too high."

Staff writer Alec Klein and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

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One of the hidden objectives of PNAC/AEI/neo-cunts/dickhead, along with the hidden grab for oil, was the fantastic enrichment of the MIC (Halliburtion, KBR,etc) and privatization of many military functions once handled by the military itself.

Now extrapolate the above siutation out for the decades, at least many more years, that dubya plans for US military to occupy Iraq (always eyeing Iraqi oil for US/UK oilcos).

And for what advantage to the USA and M/E? NONE whatsoever.

[boutons_]

Tension Grows Between US Soldiers and Mercenaries
By Deborah Hastings
The Associated Press

Saturday 11 August 2007

There are now nearly as many private contractors in Iraq as there are U.S. soldiers - and a large percentage of them are private security guards equipped with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bullet-proof trucks.

They operate with little or no supervision, accountable only to the firms employing them. And as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war, this private army has been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys.

Not one has faced charges or prosecution.

There is great confusion among legal experts and military officials about what laws - if any - apply to Americans in this force of at least 48,000.

They operate in a decidedly gray legal area. Unlike soldiers, they are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there.

The security firms insist their employees are governed by internal conduct rules and by use-of-force protocols established by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation government that ruled Iraq for 14 months following the invasion.

But many soldiers on the ground - who earn in a year what private guards can earn in just one month - say their private counterparts should answer to a higher authority, just as they do. More than 60 U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been court-martialed on murder-related charges involving Iraqi citizens.

Some military analysts and government officials say the contractors could be tried under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which covers crimes committed abroad. But so far, that law has not been applied to them.

Security firms earn more than $4 billion in government contracts, but the government doesn't know how many private soldiers it has hired, or where all of them are, according to the Government Accountability Office. And the companies are not required to report violent incidents involving their employees.

Security guards now constitute nearly 50 percent of all private contractors in Iraq - a number that has skyrocketed since the 2003 invasion, when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said rebuilding Iraq was the top priority. But an unforeseen insurgency, and hundreds of terrorist attacks have pushed the country into chaos. Security is now Iraq's greatest need.

The wartime numbers of private guards are unprecedented - as are their duties, many of which have traditionally been done by soldiers. They protect U.S. military operations and have guarded high-ranking officials including Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Baghdad. They also protect visiting foreign officials and thousands of construction projects.

At times, they are better equipped than military units.

Their presence has also pushed the war's direction. The 2004 battle of Fallujah - an unsuccessful military assault in which an estimated 27 U.S. Marines were killed, along with an unknown number of civilians - was retaliation for the killing, maiming and burning of four Blackwater guards in that city by a mob of insurgents.

"I understand this is war," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., whose efforts for greater contractor accountability led to an amendment in next year's Pentagon spending bill. "But that's absolutely no excuse for letting this very large force of armed private employees, dare I say mercenaries, run around without any accountability to anyone."

Blackwater has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq, and at least $800 million in government contracts. It is one of the most high-profile security firms in Iraq, with its fleet of "Little Bird" helicopters and armed door gunners swarming Baghdad and beyond.

The secretive company, run by a former Navy SEAL, is based at a massive, swampland complex in North Carolina. Until 9-11, it had few security contracts.

Since then, Blackwater profits have soared. And it has become the focus of numerous contractor controversies in Iraq, including the May 30 shooting death of an Iraqi deemed to be driving too close to a Blackwater security detail.

"The shooting of that Iraqi driver has intensified tensions," Schakowsky said. "The Iraqis are very angry."

Company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell, in an e-mail to The Associated Press, said the shooting was justified. "Based on incident reports and witness accounts, the Blackwater professional acted lawfully and appropriately," she wrote. There was no response to AP inquiries seeking further details.

Other alleged shootings involving private contractors include:

- An incident in which a supervisor for a Virginia-based security company said he was "going to kill somebody today" and then shot at Iraqi civilians for amusement, possibly killing one, according to two employees.

The two, former Army Ranger Charles L. Sheppard III and former Marine Corps sniper Shane B. Schmidt, were fired by the company, Triple Canopy, and responded with a wrongful termination lawsuit. Their suit did not identify the shift leader they said deliberately opened fire on civilians in at least two incidents while their team was driving in Baghdad. He was described only as a former serviceman from Oklahoma.

On its Internet site, the company said all three were fired for failing to immediately report incidents involving gunfire. Triple Canopy, after an initial investigation, reported no one had been hurt and handed its information to the U.S. government.

Patricia Smith, a lawyer representing Sheppard and Schmidt, said the U.S. Justice Department declined to investigate. The Justice Department declined comment on the case.

On Aug. 1, a Fairfax County, Va., jury ruled that Triple Canopy did not wrongly fire the two men. But jury forewoman Lea Overby also issued a scathing note on behalf of the panel, saying the company displayed "poor conduct, lack of standard reporting procedures, bad investigation methods and unfair double standards."

The judge's jury instructions, Overby said, left no choice but ruling against the former employees. "But we do not agree with the Triple Canopy's treatment of (them)," she wrote.

- Disgruntled employees of London-based Aegis Defence Services, holder of one of the biggest U.S. security contracts in Iraq - valued at more than $430 million - posted videos on the Internet in 2005 showing company guards firing automatic weapons at civilians from the back of a moving security vehicle.

In one sequence, a civilian car is fired on, causing the driver to lose control and slam into a taxi. Another clip shows a white car being hit by automatic weapons fire and then coming slowly to a stop.

In the videos, the security vehicle doesn't stop. It speeds on, leaving the civilians and their shot-up vehicles behind.

After initially denying involvement, Aegis, run by former Scots Guard Lt. Col. Tim Spicer, issued a statement saying the shootings were legal and within rules-of-force protocols established by the now-defunct CPA. Those guidelines allow security guards to fire on vehicles that approach too close or too quickly. U.S. Army auditors, in their own investigation, agreed with Aegis.

In the chaos of Iraq, where car bombings and suicide attacks occur over and over on any given day, such contractor shootings are commonplace, military officials say. The numbers of Iraqis wounded or killed by private guards is not known.

- Sixteen American security guards were arrested and jailed by U.S. Marines in battle-scarred Fallujah in 2005 following a day of shooting incidents in which they allegedly fired on a Marine observation post, a combat patrol and civilians walking and driving in the city, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.

The guards, employed by Zapata Engineering of North Carolina, were imprisoned for three days. "They were detained because their actions posed a threat to coalition forces. I would say that constitutes a serious event," Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said at the time.

The contractors were released and returned to the U.S., where they claimed the Marines humiliated and taunted them in prison, calling them "mercenaries" and intimidating them with dogs. The private guards denied taking part in the shootings.

Last year, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service closed its criminal investigation of the case "for lack of prosecutive merit," a spokesman said. None of the 16 men where charged.

( ... http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif does he mean like for the Gitmo prisoners? http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif )


But days after the shootings, Marine Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, commander of western Iraq, banned the 16 contractors from every military installation in the area.

In letters to each man, the general wrote: "Your convoy was speeding through the city and firing shots indiscriminately, some of which impacted positions manned by U.S. Marines.

"Your actions endangered the lives of innocent Iraqis and U.S. service members in the area." - -

Since American contractors first swarmed into Iraq, animosity has run high between soldiers and private security guards. Many of the latter are highly trained ex-members of elite military groups including Navy SEALS, Green Berets and Army Rangers.

( call a spade as spade, they're MERCENARIES in Iraq for $15K/month !! )

"Most military guys resent them," said former Marine Lt. Col. Mike Zacchea, who spent two years in Iraq training and building the Iraqi army. "There's an attitude that if these guys really wanted to do the right thing, they would have stayed in the military."

( "right thing" ?? http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif It's about the MONEY thing! They aren't suckers enough to join the military under a dumbfuck like dubya )

Zacchea, now retired in Long Island, N.Y., said that as a senior battalion adviser, he was offered jobs by several security companies, with average salaries of $1,000 a day. He wasn't interested. "I didn't want to go to Iraq as a mercenary. I don't believe in it. I don't think what they're doing is right.

"Really, these guys are free agents on the battlefield. They're not bound by any law. They're non-uniformed combatants. No one keeps track of them."

In late 2004, the Reconstruction Operations Center (ROC) opened in Baghdad. Its purpose was to track movement of contractors and military troops around the country and to keep records of violent incidents.

Participation, however, is voluntary.

Military leaders say the government should demand that contractors report their movements and use of weapons. Last year, officials of the 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad told visiting GAO auditors that lack of coordination continued to endanger the lives soldiers and contractors. Private security details continued to enter battle zones without warning, the military leaders said. In some cases, military officers complained they had no way of communicating with private security details.

Many large contractors say their guards coordinate with the ROC, and file "after-incident reports" of shooting episodes. But government auditors in Iraq reported last year that some contractors said they stopped detailing such shootings because they occurred so often it wasn't possible to file reports for each one.

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Too cheap to pay for sufficient military and equipment for Iraq, but dubya has multiple $Bs, and counting, to enrich mercenaries.


You're doing a heckup a job, dubya.

[PixelPusher]

Tension Grows Between US Soldiers and Mercenaries
^This will have a more profound effect on our military in the future. We are beginning to mirror ancient Rome's practice of relying on mercenary armies.

[boutons_]

How demoralizing, huh?

US soldiers stretched to the limit on US Army pay and get hit with "stop loss" rotations, while mercenaries make $10K+/month, sleep in hotels, and have humane, "employee" rotations.

However, the merceneries that get injured better have saved their lucre because they are pretty much fucked and on their own dime for medical care, much worse than the sub-standard treatment that ex-US miltary gets.

[1369]

So, the report isn't out yet, right?

[boutons_]

No, but you know the WH will have a strong hand in shaping it into the amorphous fantasy that dubya and dickhead inhabit.

The main idea will be that Petraeus surge has made "enormous progress", but much more needs to be done, like 95% more needs to be done.

Petraeus will ask for more time, pretty much open ended, certainly past 20 Jan 2009.

Petraeus may emphasize progress against AQI (which would be insignificant even if he wiped them out, which he won't), if the lie of "the same folks that hit WTC" is the current lie popular with the WH in Sep.

He will probably say the Sunni/Shiite politics remains in stalemate, with NONE of 18 benchmarks achieved, again there will be the lie of "progress" towards the benchmarks.

[PixelPusher]

So, the report isn't out yet, right?
No, but everyone already knows what it's going to say. "The surge is working, so give us more time and money."

[Wild Cobra]

Isn't it ironic that with the extra military cuts made by the Clinton administration, we have to resort to contracted mercs? In the portrayed politics, we saved money. Now when we need professional soldiers, it costs so much more.

Don't blame president Bush for this one. It takes several years to get the command stricture and training in place. Like Rummy said. We use the military and equipment we have. What we have is the left overs from president Clinton stripping the military effectiveness. Hard to do practical training in wartime.

Unless you are prior military with more than one term of service, be careful how you respond please.

[George Gervin's Afro]

blame clinton... :rolleyes

[clambake]

yoni's son is such a douche. you shoulda stayed at that antenna farm, because your reception blows.

why are conservatives so pasty? is it because of their transparency?

[Holt's Cat]

Isn't it ironic that with the extra military cuts made by the Clinton administration, we have to resort to contracted mercs? In the portrayed politics, we saved money. Now when we need professional soldiers, it costs so much more.

Don't blame president Bush for this one. It takes several years to get the command stricture and training in place. Like Runny said. We use the military and equipment we have. What we have is the left overs from president Clinton stripping the military effectiveness. Hard to do practical training in wartime.

Unless you are prior military with more than one term of service, be careful how you respond please.

Bush has had "several years" and billion$ in increasing funding to build that up, not to mention one rather effective recruiting tool early in his administration.

[PixelPusher]

Isn't it ironic that with the extra military cuts made by the Clinton administration, we have to resort to contracted mercs? In the portrayed politics, we saved money. Now when we need professional soldiers, it costs so much more.
Mercs only seem less costly because they get to mooch off of the U.S. military's logistics; they don't have the same support overhead that our military does.

[boutons_]

"extra military cuts made by the Clinton administration"

... which made complete sense after the Soviets collapsed, and were approved by an extremely hostile, witch-hunting, 1050-subpoena-serving Repug-dominated Congress.

Clinton did NOT force dubya to start an unnecessary Iraq war. Clinton did not force dubya to bungle Iraq with horrible, fatal, multiples incompetences.

Did dubya and dickhead, knowing before the 2000 campaign, that they were going to invade Iraq if they won in 2000, start building up the military in the 2 years immediately from taking office until invading in Marc 2003? fuck no.

Why? because Rummy had convinced everybody, in total opposition to the successful Powell doctrine, that a SMALLER military sufficed.

Clinton was NOT involved in the intentional NON-buildup for the 2 years prior to March 2003.

These Repugs assholes were convinced that the US military March 2003 was sufficient for Iraq. That's why Gen Shinsheki career was over when he testified before Congress that 400K was needed.

[George Gervin's Afro]

"extra military cuts made by the Clinton administration"

... which made complete sense after the Soviets collapsed, and were approved by an extremely hostile, witch-hunting, 1050-subpoena-serving Repug-dominated Congress.

Clinton did NOT force dubya to start an unnecessary Iraq war. Clinton did not force dubya to bungle Iraq with horrible, fatal, multiples incompetences.

Did dubya and dickhead, knowing before the 2000 campaign, that they were going to invade Iraq if they won in 2000, start building up the military in the 2 years immediately from taking office until invading in Marc 2003? fuck no.

Why? because Rummy had convinced everybody, in total opposition to the successful Powell doctrine, that a SMALLER military sufficed.

Clinton was NOT involved in the intentional NON-buildup for the 2 years prior to March 2003.

These Repugs assholes were convinced that the US military March 2003 was sufficient for Iraq. That's why Gen Shinsheki career was over when he testified before Congress that 400K was needed.


It's ironic that DUmsfeld wanted a sleeker, more mobile military when he came into the Pentegon..

And WC still blames Clinton..

[boutons_]

Escalation by the Numbers: What "Progress" in Iraq Really Means

By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com

Monday 13 August 2007

This is the second in an ongoing series of Tomdispatch "by the numbers" reports. The first, posted at the end of June, was "Iraq by the Numbers."

Someday, we will undoubtedly discover that, in the term "surge" - as in the President's "surge" plan (or "new way forward") announced to the nation in January - was the urge to avoid the language (and experience) of the Vietnam era. As there were to be no "body bags" (or cameras to film them as the dead came home), as there were to be no "body counts" ("We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team" was the way the President put it), as there were to be no "quagmires," nor the need to search for that "light at the end of the tunnel," so, surely, there were to be no "escalations."

The escalations of the Vietnam era, which left more than 500,000 American soldiers and vast bases and massive air and naval power in and around Vietnam (Laos, and Cambodia), had been thoroughly discredited. Each intensification in the delivery of troops, or simply in ever-widening bombing campaigns, led only to more misery and death for the Vietnamese and disaster for the U.S. And yet, not surprisingly, the American experience in Iraq - another attempted occupation of a foreign country and culture - has been like a heat-seeking missile heading for the still-burning American memories of Vietnam.

As historian Marilyn Young noted in early April 2003 with the invasion of Iraq barely underway: "In less then two weeks, a 30 year old vocabulary is back: credibility gap, seek and destroy, hard to tell friend from foe, civilian interference in military affairs, the dominance of domestic politics, winning, or more often, losing hearts and minds." By August 2003, the Bush administration, of course, expected that only perhaps 30,000 American troops would be left in Iraq, garrisoned on vast "enduring" bases in a pacified country. So, in a sense, it's been a surge-a-thon ever since. By now, it's beyond time to call the President's "new way forward" by its Vietnamese equivalent. Admittedly, a "surge" does sound more comforting, less aggressive, less long-lasting, and somehow less harmful than an "escalation," but the fact is that we are six months into the newest escalation of American power in Iraq. It has deposited all-time high numbers of troops there as well, undoubtedly, as more planes and firepower in and around that country than at any moment since the invasion of 2003. Naturally enough, other "all-time highs" of the grimmest sort follow.

This September, General David Petraeus, our escalation commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, our escalation ambassador there, will present their "progress report" to Congress. ("Progress" was another word much favored in American official pronouncements of the Vietnam era.) The very name tells you more or less what to expect. The report has already been downgraded to a "snapshot" of an ongoing set of operations, which shouldn't be truly judged or seriously assessed until at least this November, or perhaps early 2008, or...

With that in mind, here is the second Tomdispatch "by the numbers" report on Iraq. Consider it an attempt to put the Iraqi quagmire-cum-nightmare - two classic Vietnam-era words - in perspective.

Few numbers out of Iraq can be trusted. Counting accurately amid widespread disruption, mayhem, and bloodshed, under a failing occupation, in a land essentially lacking a central government, in a U.S. media landscape still dizzy from the endless spin of the Bush administration and its military commanders is probably next to impossible. But however approximate the figures that follow, they still offer an all-too-vivid picture of what the President's much-desired invasion let loose. No country could suffer such uprooting, destruction, death, loss, and deprivation, yet remain collectively sane.

American civilian and military officials now talk about staying in Iraq through 2008, or 2009, or into the next decade, or for undefined but lengthening periods of time. And yet Iraq (by the numbers) has devolved month by month, year by year, for four-plus years. There was never any reason to believe that the latest escalation - or any future escalation, whatever it might be called, and whether accomplished via the U.S. military or by a growing shadow army of guns-for-hire employed by private-security firms - could be capable of anything but hurrying the pace of that devolution. So imagine what Iraq-by-the-numbers will be like in 2008 or 2009, given the clear determination of the Bush administration's "strategic thinkers" to garrison that country into the distant future.

Here, then, is escalation in Iraq by the numbers - almost all of them continue to "surge" - as of mid-August 2008:

Number of American troops stationed in Iraq: 162,000 (plus at least several thousand government employees), an all-time high.

Estimated number of U.S.-(taxpayer)-paid private contractors in Iraq: More than 180,000, again undoubtedly an all-time high. That figure includes approximately 21,000 Americans, 43,000 non-Iraqi foreign contractors (including Chileans, Nepalese, Colombians, Indians, Fijians, El Salvadorans, and Filipinos among others), and 118,000 Iraqis, but does not include a complete count of "private security contractors who protect government officials and buildings," according to State Department and Pentagon figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Percentage of private contractors in total U.S. forces deployed in World War II and the Korean War: 3-5%, according to the Congressional testimony of human rights lawyer Scott Horton. In Vietnam and the first Gulf War, that figure reached 10%. Now, it is at least near parity.

Number of private companies working in Iraq on contract for the U.S. government: 630, with personnel from more than 100 countries, according to Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestselling Blackwater, The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Typical pay of a former U.S. Special Forces soldier working for a private-security company in Iraq: $650 a day, according to Scahill, "after the company takes its cut." That rate, however, can hit $1,000 a day.

Number of trucks on the road each day as part of the U.S. resupply operation in Iraq: 3,000.

Number of attacks from June 2006 through May 2007 on U.S. supply convoys guarded by private-security contractors: 869, a near tripling from the previous twelve months.

Number of private contractors who have died in Iraq: Over 1,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, based on partial figures because private companies do not have to declare their war dead.

Predicted cost of a surge of 21,500 American troops into Iraq, according to White House calculations in January 2007: $5.6 billion, a figure offered the month the President's surge strategy was announced.

Predicted cost of a one-year surge of 30,000-40,000 troops, according to Robert Sunshine, assistant director for budget analysis of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office: $22 billion (two years for a cut-rate $40 billion). These figures were offered in testimony to Congress five months after the President's surge was officially launched.

Percentage of dollars annually appropriated by the U.S. government and spent on Iraq-related activities: More than 10%, or one dollar out of every 10, according to the CBO's Sunshine.

Estimated monthly cost of the Iraq (and Afghan) Wars: $12 billion - $10 billion for Iraq - a third higher than in 2006, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.

Estimated total cost of the Iraq War, if Robert Sunshine's "optimistic scenario" - 30,000 U.S. troops left in Iraq by 2010 - plays out: Over $1 trillion. (If his less optimistic scenario proves accurate - 75,000 troops in 2010 - closer to $1.5 trillion.)

Number of Iraqis estimated to have fled their country: Between 2 million and 2.5 million. An estimated 750,000 to Jordan; 1.5 million to Syria; 200,000 to Egypt and Lebanon - with another 40,000-50,000 fleeing each month, 2,000 a day, according to UN figures. Officials at the central travel office in Baghdad are deluged by up to 3,000 passport applications a week. In addition, though it's anyone's guess, more than two million Iraqis may now be internal refugees, uprooted from their homes largely by sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing. Approximately 70% of these are women and children, according to UNICEF.

Number of Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States in July: 57; only 133 for the year to date.

Number of Iraqis held in American prisons in Iraq: Approximately 22,500, according to U.S. military officials, a leap to an all-time high from 16,000 in February when the surge began. (American prisons in Iraq also continue to undergo expansion.)

Number of Iraqis released from American incarceration in the last month: 224.

Number of foreign fighters (jihadis) held by the U.S. military in Iraq: 135 (nearly half are Saudis).

Estimated number of bullets fired by U.S. troops for every insurgent killed in Iraq (or Afghanistan): 250,000, according to John Pike, director of the Washington military-research group GlobalSecurity.org. This comes out to 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition yearly. With U.S. munitions factories unable to meet the demand, 313 million rounds of such munitions were purchased from Israel last year for $10 million more than if produced domestically.

Percentage of amputations performed on U.S. war-wounded in Iraq: An estimated 6%. The average in earlier U.S. conflicts, where the equivalents of IEDs and car bombings did not play such a role, was 3%.

Estimated replacement limbs needed yearly for Iraqis in northern Iraq alone: 3,000, according to the Red Crescent Society and the director general for health services in Mosul. (Unlike American soldiers, Iraqis who have lost limbs have access only to limited numbers of outdated prostheses.)

Cost of a coffin in Baghdad: $50-75. Cost of a coffin in Saddam Hussein's time, $5-10.

Number of Iraqi civilians who died in July 2007: 1,652, according to figures compiled by the Iraqi Health, Defense, and Interior Ministries; 2,024, according to the tally of the Associated Press; 1,539 according to the Washington Post. All but the Post claim this as a "spike" in casualties. All such figures are, for a variety of reasons, surely significant undercounts.

Approximate number of American civilians who would have died in July if a similar level of killings were underway in the United States: 18,000, according to Middle East scholar Juan Cole.

Estimated number of Iraqi deaths from the invasion of 2003 through June 2007, if the Lancet study's median figure of 655,000 deaths was accurate and similar death rates held true for the year since it was published: Just over one million, according to Just Foreign Policy. (The Lancet study has been the single, on-the-ground, scientific report on Iraqi casualties in these years.)

Number of Iraqi civilians killed in July in mass-casualty bomb attacks: 378, a sharp rise over June, according to the Washington Post. The five-month U.S. surge has caused "no appreciable change" in vehicle-bomb attacks, according to figures collected by reporters from the McClatchy Newspapers.

Number of unidentified bodies, assumedly murdered by death squads, found on the streets of Baghdad in June 2007: 453, a rise of 41% over January 2007, the month before surge operations began, according to unofficial Iraqi Health Ministry statistics taken from morgue counts.

Number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded in "escalation of force" incidents at American checkpoints or near American patrols and convoys in the past year: 429, according to U.S. military statistics obtained by the McClatchy Newspapers. These statistics, which "spiked" during the recent escalation months, don't include civilian deaths during raids on homes or in the midst of battle (and are considered incomplete in any case, since an unknown number of escalation-of-force deaths go unreported by U.S. units).

Total number of attacks against U.S. and coalition forces, Iraq security forces, Iraqi civilians, and infrastructure targets in June 2007: 5,335. This works out to a daily average of 177.8, an all-time high since May 2003, according to the Pentagon, and 46% more than in June 2006; more than 68% of these attacks - 3,671 to be exact - were launched against U.S. troops, up 7% from May 2007.

Number of attacks in July 2007 using the most powerful type of roadside bomb: 99, an all-time high, according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, U.S. second-in-command in Iraq, accounting for one-third of American casualties that month.

Number of American military deaths in the surge months, February-July 2007: 572, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualties website. This represents 189 more American deaths than in the same set of months in 2004, 215 more than in 2005, 237 more than in 2006.

Average daytime summer temperature in Baghdad: 110-120 degrees, though 130 degrees is not uncommon. It rarely drops below 100 degrees even at night.

Number of megawatts of electricity produced daily in Iraq: Less than 4,000 megawatts, below pre-invasion levels in a country where daily demand is now in the 8,500 to 9,500 range.

Hours of electricity normally delivered to Baghdadis by the national electricity grid: 1-2 hours a day. The only recourse, according to French reporter Anne Nivat, who lived in "red zone" Baghdad for two weeks recently, is electricity produced by small local generators, which consume up to 20 gallons of gasoline a day.

Number of nationwide blackouts in just two days in July 2007: 4. The Shiite Holy city of Karbala was without any power for at least 3 consecutive days in July, during which its water mains "went dry." ("'We no longer need television documentaries about the Stone Age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having,' said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market.")

Cost of a bottle of purified water during the present water shortages: $1.60 for a 10-liter bottle, a rise of 33%. (Many Iraqis can't afford to buy bottled water in a country where, according to a recent Oxfam summary study of the Iraqi humanitarian crisis, 43% of Iraqis live in "absolute poverty," earning less than a dollar a day.)

Percentage of water engineers who have left Iraq: 40%, according to Oxfam's report. Similar percentages of middle-class professionals - doctors, teachers, lawyers - have evidently fled as well. According to Oxfam, some universities and hospitals in Baghdad have lost up to 80% of their staffs.

Number of Iraqis who have access to clean drinking water: 1 in 3, according to UN figures. (In 2007, waterborne diseases, including diarrhea, "the most prolific killer of children under 5," are up in some areas by 70% over the previous year.)

Of the 3.5 million cubic meters of water Baghdad's six million people are estimated to need, amount actually delivered: 2.1 million cubic meters.

Number of high-tension lines running into Baghdad that are in operation: 2 of 17, thanks to insurgent sabotage, according to an Electricity Ministry spokesman. These are contributing to the worst electricity shortages since the invasion summer of 2003. The country's power grid is reportedly nearing collapse.

Number of ministers still in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: 20.

Number of ministers who have walked out: 17.

Number of senior officers who have recently resigned from the Iraqi Army in protest over the Maliki government: 9, including Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Babaker Zebari.

Number of countries for which Iraq's parliamentarians, who adjourned for a month-long August vacation, have departed: At least six, according to the New York Times, including Jordan, Syria, Dubai, Iran, Great Britain, and Egypt as well as "a resort in Iraq's safest region, autonomous Kurdistan."

Estimated cost of that vacation time to the U.S. per minute for ongoing operations in Iraq: $200,000, according to Bob Schieffer of CBS News.

Amount of oil Iraq possesses: 115 billion barrels in proven oil reserves, the third largest reserves in the world (after neighboring Saudi Arabia and Iran). Estimates of possible oil deposits still to be discovered range from 45 billion additional barrels up to 400 billion additional barrels.

(115 billion real, primary reasons why duya and dickhead invaded Iraq )

Price of 40 gallons of gas under Saddam Hussein: 50 cents.

Price of 40 gallons of gas in July 2007: $75 on the black market; $35 if a motorist is willing to spend hours, or even days, in line at a gas station.

Percentage of Iraq's revenues that come from the export of oil: More than 90%, though oil production remains below that of the worst days of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Amount the Iraqi Oil Ministry budgeted for capital expenses to bolster the oil industry last year: $3.5 billion, according to the latest report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Amount the Iraqi Oil Ministry actually spent: $90 million.

Percentage of allocated capital funds spent by the Iraqi government on oil, electricity, and education projects in 2006: 22%.

Amount of money missing due to governmental corruption, as uncovered in investigations by Iraq's top anti-corruption investigator, Judge Rahdi al Rahdi: $11 billion.

Number of U.S. dollars invested in "standing up" (training) the Iraqi military and police: $19.2 billion. This works out to $55,000 per Iraqi recruit, according to a bipartisan U.S. Congressional investigation.

Amount the Pentagon has requested for continued training and equipping of Iraqi security forces: $2 billion.

Percentage of equipment the Pentagon has issued to Iraqi security forces since 2003 that cannot be accounted for: 30%. That includes at least "110,000 AK-47 rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets," according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). According to the Washington Post, "One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces."

Number of U.S. steel-shipping containers in Iraq and Afghanistan now considered "lost": 54,390 or one-third of them, according to the GAO.

Estimated cost of training Iraqi (and Afghan) security forces over the next decade, if present course continues: At least 50 billion dollars, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Number of major U.S. bases in Iraq: More than 75, according to the New York Times.

( with 4 huge, multi-$B Army bases, and a Langley-level AF base under construction to extend the US occuppation indefinitely, and protect that oil)

Cost of U.S. bases in Iraq (which Congress has mandated as not "permanent") and in Afghanistan (which the Pentagon refers to as "enduring"): Unknown. In a prestigious engineering magazine in late 2003, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, was already speaking proudly of "several billion dollars" being sunk into base construction. According to the Washington Post, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) claims $2 billion went into "military construction" in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2004-2006; another $1.7 billion was approved by Congress for 2007. And the Pentagon is still building. For fiscal 2008, $738.8 million was requested "for 33 critical construction projects for Iraq and Afghanistan." (When it comes to base construction, these figures are undoubtedly undercounts.)

Amount that former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root (now known as KBR) has received so far for a prewar contract to supply the American military with food, fuel, housing, and other necessities: At least $20 billion. A Pentagon audit of $16.2 billion worth of KBR's work "found that $3.2 billion in KBR billing was either questionable or unsupported by documentation."

Percentage of Iraqis who cannot afford to buy enough to eat: 15%, according Oxfam.

Percentage of Iraqi children who are malnourished: 28% (compared to 19% before the invasion); Percentage of babies born underweight, 11% (compared to 3% before the invasion).

Percentage of Iraqi children now considered to suffer from learning "impediments": 92%, according to one study cited by Oxfam.

The cost of a single Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), armed with two Hellfire missiles: More than $3 million. (At least 5 Predators have crashed or been shot down in the last year in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Cost of the latest UAV, the "hunter-killer" MQ-9 Reaper, now being deployed to Afghanistan and soon to be deployed to Iraq: $7 million. The Reaper is four times as heavy as the Predator and can be armed with 14 Hellfire missiles, or four Hellfires and two 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions. It is considered equivalent in firepower to the F-16. According to Associated Press reporter Charles Hanley, "Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada."

Number of American planes in Iraqi air space at any moment: 100, according to Hanley.

Increase in bombs dropped in Iraq in the first six months of 2007 compared to the first six months of 2006: Fivefold.

Percentage of Iraqi oil resources around Basra in Shiite southern Iraq, where, in September 2006, the British launched their own unsuccessful version of the present American "clear, hold and reconstruct" escalation operation in Baghdad: 66%.

Number of doctors assassinated by "unidentified gunmen" in "peaceful" Basra since 2003: 12.

Number of times the airport base outside Basra, which houses a well-barricaded regional U.S. Embassy office and the last 5,500 of the 40,000 troops England dispatched to Iraq, has been attacked by mortars or rockets over the past four months: 600.

Effect of Iraq War spending on the profits of major weapons corporations: Northrop Grumman has just announced a 15% second-quarter increase in sales over 2006 for its information and services division, 7% for its electronics division; General Dynamics' combat systems unit just recorded a 19% rise in sales. Lockheed Martin's profits went up 34% to $778 million, according to Eli Clifton of Inter Press Service.

Estimated cost of deploying an American soldier to Iraq for one year: $390,000, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Cost of flying a soldier home from the war zone: $627.80. That's the price the Pentagon pays FedEx and UPS, among other companies, for each soldier brought back to the U.S.

Estimated tonnage of U.S. equipment that might be driven out of Iraq and shipped home from Kuwait in case of a decision to withdraw: One million tons.

Percentage of Americans in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll who had served in Iraq or "had a close friend or relative who served in Iraq," who approve of the President's handling of the Iraq conflict: 38%. In a May New York Times/CBS News poll, fewer than half of military families and military members agreed that "the United States did the right thing in invading Iraq."

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books).

[Note: Where, in the above list, a number is unsourced, check the previously sourced number. I have relied on numerous other websites, as well as my own reading, in compiling this report. Oxfam's recent study of the Iraqi humanitarian crisis has been indispensable. I used several figures directly from that report without sourcing above, because it was a pdf file. The full report can be found by clicking here (pdf file); a succinct summary of some of its numbers can be found in Peter Rothberg's "Worse than You Think" at the Nation magazine website. I'm now hooked on Noah Shachtman's "Danger Zone" blog at Wired magazine, which is invaluable on military and national security matters. Juan Cole's Informed Comment website remains a must-read, early-morning stop in my Web day, as does Antiwar.com and Paul Woodward's The War in Context, all of which I made good use of in compiling this post. Take a look as well at the always useful website Electronic Iraq.]

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

"I'm from the (US) govt, and I'm here to help you" (St Ronnie, sowing hate and ridicule for the govt he presided over)

you're doing a heckuva job, dubya.

[Wild Cobra]

"extra military cuts made by the Clinton administration"

... which made complete sense after the Soviets collapsed, and were approved by an extremely hostile, witch-hunting, 1050-subpoena-serving Repug-dominated Congress.
No, the extra cuts were idiotic. I was part of the 5 year planned cuts after the end of the cold war. The Clinton Administration made even more cuts than were already in progress.


Why? because Rummy had convinced everybody, in total opposition to the successful Powell doctrine, that a SMALLER military sufficed.
I'm a little cloudy on that, but I recall it as thinking the planned numbers were in compliance with the Powell doctrine. Mistakes happen however.


Clinton was NOT involved in the intentional NON-buildup for the 2 years prior to March 2003.
Intentional Non-Buildup? They only had so much money to operate with. The military was in shambles compared to pre-Clinton years. My understanding is our arsenal of cruise missiles and bombs were nearly exhausted by Clinton and not replaced until president Bush's time. More spending and building would have been nice during that 2 years, but till 911, other things had priority. After 9/11, there was only a year and a half. Not enough time to build military operated infrastructure taken over by contractors. Then this too, when were the contracts to expire?

What would the resistance have been to try to authorize all the money needed?


These Repugs assholes were convinced that the US military March 2003 was sufficient for Iraq. That's why Gen Shinsheki career was over when he testified before Congress that 400K was needed.
Yes. Like I said, mistakes happen. We would have been much better off if president Clinton didn't replace military operations that are crucial to tactical missions with civilians. The mess hall operations and transportations were a big mistake. Maybe if he didn't cut the few extra combat divisions he did, we wouldn't need mercs?

At least as a 29V, my job assignments were fixed site. Not tactical. As much as I disliked losing my job field, it was understandable.

[boutons_]

"I'm a little cloudy on that"

convenient cloudiness. Do you have internnet access?

"but I recall it as thinking the planned numbers were in compliance with the Powell doctrine"

No, Powell doctrine was overwhelming force, more like the Shinsheki's 400K rather than Rummy's well under 150K (and to be 30K by Sep 2003)

Mistakes? Fuck no. Repeated major strategic fuckups, ideological fantasies from Rummy about a new, high-tech army that could be smaller, get in, do it, get out. Quagmires need not apply.

[Wild Cobra]

"I'm a little cloudy on that"

convenient cloudiness. Do you have internnet access?
Is that a real question? I know... it's rhetorical.

It's not an important enough point for me to waste search time on. OK?

"but I recall it as thinking the planned numbers were in compliance with the Powell doctrine"

No, Powell doctrine was overwhelming force, more like the Shinsheki's 400K rather than Rummy's well under 150K (and to be 30K by Sep 2003)
We won the war part decisively and fast. It is the level of the insurgency and imported terrorists that wasn't expected to the degree we have. Right now, that 400k would be great to have.


Mistakes? Fuck no. Repeated major strategic fuckups, ideological fantasies from Rummy about a new, high-tech army that could be smaller, get in, do it, get out. Quagmires need not apply.
It doesn't matter how big or little the mistakes are. You are all about placing blame on the republicans. How about trying to see things from a neutral perspective. I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

Have you ever heard of a perfect war?

--and—

Hindsight is 20/20.

[boutons_]

Iraq Set to Disintegrate, New Study Warns

Der Spiegel

Wednesday 15 August 2007

It's no secret that Iraq is a politically, ethnically and religiously fractured country. But a new study released in Berlin on Wednesday argues that federalism remains the country's last, best hope. Otherwise, it may fall apart completely.

"Already today, the main priority is to prevent Iraq from breaking apart completely." That is the sober conclusion of a new study released Wednesday in Berlin on the situation in Iraq. Called "Iraq Between Federalism and Collapse," the study argues that there is little hope of a centralized power in Iraq and that the country's future depends on walking the fine line between decentralizing power and civil war.

The report, written by terror and Middle East expert Guido Steinberg under the auspices of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, says that a far-reaching decentralization is the country's only hope. And if it fails, the result could be devastating, including the possibility of full-scale civil war complete with foreign intervention.

"The basic assumption of this study," Steinberg writes, "is that a federalist solution will be the only possibility to maintain Iraq as a single country. The most important role of German and European policies should therefore be that of supporting steps toward a peaceful federalist solution."

That Iraq is threatening to break apart is, of course, nothing new. The Kurds in northern Iraq have established an autonomous Kurdish region. In the south of the country, the Shiites are interested in doing the same. Meanwhile, in the center of Iraq, violence remains part of everyday life as Shiite and Sunni extremist groups continue campaigns of car and suicide bombings.

Fractures, in other words, are not difficult to find. And the fractures are made all the worse by the fact that the groups involved rarely have the best interests of Iraq foremost in mind. In northern Iraq, the study points out, the two leading Kurdish political parties are demanding that the city and province Kirkuk be joined with the Kurdish dominated region - a demand, Steinberg writes, that is likely to increase violence in the until now largely quiet north.

Indeed, the massive attack in the Kurdish area near the Syrian border on Tuesday seemed like proof that sectarian violence is rapidly spreading north. Four truck bombs exploded in villages killing at least 200 people. The bombs were likely detonated by Sunni groups angered by a Kurdish-speaking sect called the Yazidis. In April, a Yazidi woman was stoned to death for dating a Sunni Arab.

Elsewhere, the Sunnis are wary of attempts by the numerically superior Shiites to consolidate political power in the south and center of Iraq. And a large group of Shiites, Steinberg points out, are likewise against an autonomous Shiite region, meaning that there is a threat of an escalating intra-Shiite conflict as well.

The sectarian wrangling means, the study says, that the best solution - that of a federalism free of ethnic and religious divisions - has largely been rendered impossible. But even a federalism resting on the ethnic divisions that have been established seems challenging given the opposition from within the Shiite and Sunni factions to such a solution.

And that's not to mention the opposition of other countries in the region. "The discussion within Iraq is influenced to a large degree by the interests of neighboring countries," the report states. "Due to their potential to become involved, the Iraq federalists have to take their positions into account. And Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Syria all reject the ethnic-religious federalism model out of hand." Military intervention from Iraq's neighbors to protect their interests, particularly from Turkey in the north, is a very real possibility, the report warns.

The US has been pressuring parties on all sides of the discussions to come up with a compromise agreement and to solve a number of divisive issues, including the explosive discussion over sharing oil revenues among regions and groups. But the current Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is struggling to make any headway at all, with 11 cabinet ministers recently having quit in protest.

All of which makes the immediate future in Iraq look bleak, Steinberg writes. The alternative to a successful federalism solution, he indicates, is chaos, more violence and a Shiite dictatorship. "Iraq is a failed state," the report concludes, "and will remain unstable for the foreseeable future."

[boutons_]

Despite Violence Drop, Officers See Bleak Future for Iraq
By Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers

Wednesday 15 August 2007

Baghdad - Despite U.S. claims that violence is down in the Iraqi capital, U.S. military officers are offering a bleak picture of Iraq's future, saying they've yet to see any signs of reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims despite the drop in violence.

Without reconciliation, the military officers say, any decline in violence will be temporary and bloodshed could return to previous levels as soon as the U.S. military cuts back its campaign against insurgent attacks.

That downbeat assessment comes despite a buildup of U.S. troops that began five months ago Wednesday and has seen U.S. casualties reach the highest sustained levels since the United States invaded Iraq nearly four and a half years ago.

Violence remains endemic, with truck bombs on Tuesday claiming as many as 175 lives in northern Iraq and destroying a key bridge near Baghdad, the first successful bridge attack since June.

And while top U.S. officials insist that 50 percent of the capital is now under effective U.S. or government control, compared with 8 percent in February, statistics indicate that the improvement in violence is at best mixed.

U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim.

The number of car bombings in July actually was 5 percent higher than the number recorded last December, according to the McClatchy statistics, and the number of civilians killed in explosions is about the same.

How long the U.S. will be willing to maintain its military commitment without any sign of progress on the political front will be a key question for Congress and the administration in September, when the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus, is required to provide his assessment of the situation.

"If we can't have political reform that can precede more rapidly than has been the case already," said Col. Toby Green, the operation officer for the U.S. command in Baghdad, "then there is always the possibility that we won't realize what can be."

When President Bush announced plans to increase U.S. troop strength in Iraq to help calm Baghdad, U.S. officials had hoped that any decrease in violence would lead to greater willingness from Shiite and Sunni political leaders to reach an accommodation.

But that hasn't happened. Sunnis have accused the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki of making no effort to stop Shiite militias from forcing Sunnis from their homes. Sunni ministers have withdrawn from the government in protest.

In the meantime, the most touted success of the campaign - an alliance between U.S. forces and some Sunni insurgent groups against al Qaida in Iraq - has angered many in the Maliki government, who accuse the United States of supporting groups that could ultimately turn against the government.

Former Sunni insurgents and tribal leaders will expect some kind of payoff for having turned on al Qaida, said Lt. Col. Richard Welch, who works primarily with Sunni tribal leaders and has negotiated with insurgents. Maliki's government, however, has been hesitant to grant concessions, he said.

"Reconciliation is a goal, it's a process, it's the end result of what we'd like to see, but it could take generations - and that is if people were serious about it," Welch said. Welch said it took him two weeks to persuade the government to agree to incorporate more than 1,700 Sunni fighters into Interior Ministry forces in the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib after they'd turned against al Qaida.

He also said the Shiite government's inability to deliver services to Sunni neighborhoods is a problem.

"Politically there is still corruption and sectarianism in some of the police security forces," Welch said. "Politically, the government doesn't seem to be able effectively to deliver services in a way that dramatically improves their situation."

Welch said he remains concerned about whether the government will be willing to take steps to resolve a number of political issues when parliament returns from its August recess.

"Are they going to be ready to tackle the hard issues?" he said.

Military officers serving in Iraq say much of the difficulties they're encountering are owed to mistakes that U.S. officials made in the early years of the war when the Coalition Provisional Authority dissolved the Iraqi army and banned many members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist party from serving in government.

( you're doing a heckuava job, Bremer! )

The actions drove many of those affected into resistance groups against the new government and U.S. forces.

"I think we tried to build the house before we built the foundation," Welch said, adding that the current U.S. strategy is "four years overdue."

U.S. officials have said that the new security plan needs time to work. But many have expressed disappointment at the continued sectarian violence.

The military has been trying to stanch that violence by building walls between neighborhoods and around potential bombing targets. But bombings and sectarian violence still take place.

The number of Iraqis killed in attacks changed only marginally in July when compared with December - down seven, from 361 to 354, according to McClatchy statistics.

No pattern of improvement is discernible for violence during the five months of the surge. In January, the last full month before the surge began, 438 people were killed in the capital in bombings. In February, that number jumped to 520. It declined in March to 323, but jumped again in April, to 414.

Violence remained virtually unchanged in May, when 404 were killed. The lowest total came in June, the first month U.S. officials said all the new American troops were in place, with just 190 dead, but then swung back up in July, with 354 dead.

One bright spot has been the reduction in the number of bodies found on the streets, considered a sign of sectarian violence. That number was 44 percent lower in July, compared to December. In July, the average body count per day was 18.6, compared with 33.2 in December, two months before the surge.

But the reason for that decline isn't clear. Some military officers believe that it may be an indication that ethnic cleansing has been completed in many neighborhoods and that there aren't as many people to kill.

One officer noted that U.S. officials believe Baghdad once had a population that was 65 percent Sunni. The current U.S. estimate is that Shiites now make up 75 percent to 80 percent of the city.

Whatever the rate of violence, however, military officers believe that military progress will last only if there's political reconciliation.

Lt. Col. Douglas Ollivant, a planner for the U.S. military command in Baghdad, described the current strategy as "emergency medicine."

The military is "putting on tourniquets, things that are going to leave scars and are messy and we know that," he said. But ultimately the healing has to come from the Iraqi government.

"Baghdad is to Iraq what Paris is to France," he said. "You change Baghdad, you change Iraq."

[boutons_]

An Early Clash Over Iraq Report
Specifics at Issue as September Nears

By Jonathan Weisman and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 16, 2007; A01

Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.

White House officials did not deny making the proposal in informal talks with Congress, but they said yesterday that they will not shield the commanding general in Iraq and the senior U.S. diplomat there from public congressional testimony required by the war-funding legislation President Bush signed in May. "The administration plans to follow the requirements of the legislation," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in response to questions yesterday.

The skirmishing is an indication of the rising anxiety on all sides in the remaining few weeks before the presentation of what is widely considered a make-or-break assessment of Bush's war strategy, and one that will come amid rising calls for a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq.

With the report due by Sept. 15, officials at the White House, in Congress and in Baghdad said that no decisions have been made on where, when or how Petraeus and Crocker will appear before Congress. Lawmakers from both parties are growing worried that the report -- far from clarifying the United States' future in Iraq -- will only harden the political battle lines around the war.

White House officials suggested to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week that Petraeus and Crocker would brief lawmakers in a closed session before the release of the report, congressional aides said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would provide the only public testimony.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told the White House that Bush's presentation plan was unacceptable. An aide to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that "we are in talks with the administration and . . . Senator Levin wants an open hearing" with Petraeus.

Those positions only hardened yesterday with reports that the document would not be written by the Army general but instead would come from the White House, with input from Petraeus, Crocker and other administration officials.

( WH's lips will move, it will be lies and spin )

"Americans deserve an even-handed assessment of conditions in Iraq. Sadly, we will only receive a snapshot from the same people who told us the mission was accomplished and the insurgency was in its last throes," warned House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.).

"That's all the more reason why they would need to testify," a senior Foreign Relations Committee aide said of Petraeus and Crocker. "We would want them to say whether they stand by all the information in the report." He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to reporters.

The legislation says that Petraeus and Crocker "will be made available to testify in open and closed sessions before the relevant committees of the Congress" before the delivery of the report. It also clearly states that the president "will prepare the report and submit the report to Congress" after consultation with the secretaries of state and defense and with the top U.S. military commander in Iraq and the U.S. ambassador.

But both the White House and Congress have widely described the assessment as coming from Petraeus. Bush has repeatedly referred to the general as the one who will be delivering the report in September and has implored the public and Republicans in Congress to withhold judgment until then. In an interim assessment last month, the White House said that significant progress has been shown in fewer than half of the 18 political and security benchmarks outlined in the legislation.

Several Republicans have hinted that their support will depend on a credible presentation by Petraeus, not only of tangible military progress but of evidence that the Iraqi government is taking real steps toward ethnic and religious reconciliation. One of them, Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), left for Iraq last night with Levin for his own assessment.

Petraeus and Crocker have said repeatedly that they plan to testify after delivering private assessments to Bush. U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad appeared puzzled yesterday when told that the White House had indicated that the two may not be appearing in public. They said they will continue to prepare for the testimony in the absence of instructions from Washington. "If anything, we just don't know the dates/times/or the committees that the assessment will be presented to," a senior military official in Baghdad said in an e-mail yesterday.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide said that, ideally, both Crocker and Petraeus would testify before that panel. The Senate committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee have also requested that Rice appear at a separate hearing but have received no response. A spokeswoman for Levin said that the senator expects at least Petraeus to testify before the Armed Services Committee but would be happy to have Crocker as well.

Although the reports from Petraeus and Crocker are the most eagerly awaited, several other assessments are also required by the May legislation.

The Government Accountability Office is due to report on Iraqi political reconciliation and reconstruction by Sept. 1.

An independent committee, headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones, has been studying the training and capabilities of the Iraqi security forces and will report to Congress early next month.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said that the chiefs are making their own assessment of the situation in Iraq and will present it to Bush in the next few weeks.

Speaking to reporters traveling with him in Iraq yesterday, Petraeus said he is preparing recommendations on troop levels while getting ready to go to Washington next month. He declined to give specifics.

"We know that the surge has to come to an end," Petraeus said, according to the Associated Press. "I think everyone understands that, by about a year or so from now, we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now. The question is how do you do that . . . so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going."

Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.

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

To be "good bit smaller" 12 months from now, the logistically complex withdrawal would have to start in the next couple months. OK, good news from Petraeus.

[boutons_]

Shiite Militia Infiltrates Iraqi Forces
By Ned Parker
The Los Angeles Times

Thursday 16 August 2007

Radical cleric Muqtada Sadr's sectarian Mahdi Army has deep links with security forces.

Baghdad - Abu Mohammed is a policeman by day, patrolling the Shiite Muslim district of Sadr City. Come sundown, however, Abu Mohammed commands a platoon of Jaish al Mahdi, or the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia associated with radical cleric Muqtada Sadr that is widely accused of sectarian killings.

Abu Mohammed is not alone in this double life. By his account and those of U.S. military and Iraqi sources, Mahdi militia members have infiltrated much of the country's security apparatus, including the army, where they reportedly intimidate and bribe troops and commanders to look the other way as militants execute their brutal sectarian "cleansing" agenda.

"There is a Mahdi Army member in every family and in every home across Iraq and the military is not exempt," said Abu Mohammed, leaning nonchalantly in a Sadr City alley, as children played in the street. "The army wouldn't go after the Mahdi Army because many elements in the army are Mahdi Army. Here in Sadr City for example, there is one company and 35 of them are Mahdi Army."

Abu Mohammed, who insisted on identifying himself only by his battle name, represents one of the challenges U.S. strategists face in Iraq. While U.S. forces search out militia fighters and try to build a nonsectarian police force and army, men such as Abu Mohammed are surreptitiously undoing their work.

In addition to infiltrating Baghdad army units in Shiite neighborhoods, the Mahdi Army has been able to bring political pressure on commanders, and on at least one occasion, to create its own army units packed with its fighters.

The Sadr movement has used Iraqi soldiers and national police officers to push deeper into predominantly Sunni Arab districts in west Baghdad, U.S. Army officers said. It also swayed the leadership of an Iraqi army battalion in the spring to mount strikes in Fadil, a Sunni district in east Baghdad, the U.S. officers said.

The nexus has included soldiers carrying out killings or turning a blind eye as Sadr fighters slip through checkpoints. In late March, in the early phase of the U.S. military buildup, a Mahdi fighter who gave his name as Abu Haidar bragged to The Times that Iraqi army officers had provided vehicles to his group to carry out executions. "We have a deal with the Iraqi army and police," he said.

In one of the more troubling examples of the relationship between the militia and Iraqi government, the Defense Ministry in January authorized lawmaker Baha Araji, a Sadr loyalist, to form a plainclothes army unit to patrol the Shiite district of Kadhimiya, U.S. army officers and a Shiite politician told The Times.

"The Baha Araji company was a 300-man element of plainclothes Jaish al Mahdi operatives . . . that have subsequently been put in Iraqi army uniforms," said Lt. Col. Steven Miska of the 1st Infantry Division. "Nobody in the Iraqi army chain of command wanted those guys in uniform. It was a political decision."

Sadrist member of parliament Falah Hassan defended the company's creation. "This battalion was protecting Kadhimiya," he said. The district houses a key Shiite shrine.

The Defense Ministry disbanded the unit in May. The commander became the head of a new battalion that included many of his former troops. The other Araji soldiers were placed in Kadhimiya's Bravo Company. The U.S. Army arrested three Bravo members last week after finding them meeting with Mahdi fighters. The battalion's intelligence officer was arrested for shooting at U.S. soldiers April 29 outside a Sadrist mosque.

"We've slowed them down, but they are still slowly expanding their reach. Jaish al Mahdi expansion is taking place," a U.S. Army military intelligence officer in west Baghdad said on condition of anonymity. "Like water, they are going to find a crack and move through the weakest area."

Senior U.S. military officers involved in training Iraqis acknowledge that militia influence in the army has been a problem, but said they believed the challenge is small compared with the danger in the police force.

They believe the militia has been able to woo and intimidate soldiers who live in areas under the group's control.

"In some ways, we shouldn't be surprised some of the people involved may have succumbed to these types of militia pressures," said Brig. Stephen Gledhill, deputy head of the U.S.-led army and police training efforts.

U.S. officers said the Defense Ministry was dealing with the challenge.

"They are building more and more capacity to identify the problems . . . and then go after them," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Daniel Williams said.

The use of sympathetic or infiltrated Iraqi army battalions to drive out Sunnis has been most evident in the western neighborhoods of Hurriya and Ghazaliya.

In November 2006, Iraqi soldiers watched as Shiite militiamen forced thousands of Sunni families out of Hurriya after a bombing in Sadr City, U.S. and Iraqi officers said.

A month later, an Iraqi commander and four staff officers responsible for the Hurriya district were arrested on suspicion of murder, extortion and links with the Mahdi Army. The judge released them after seven days when no evidence was presented. The day they were released, an Iraqi lieutenant colonel who had filed a statement against the five was killed at a checkpoint.

In the northern part of Ghazaliya, Iraqi soldiers helped the Mahdi Army take back territory from Al Qaeda in Iraq militants. But the army also allowed the militia to lay claim to three additional streets inhabited by Sunnis, U.S. officers and Sunni residents said.

In June, the Iraqi army warned the area's battalion commander, a Sadr sympathizer, against any further misconduct and moved him to Amiriya to fight insurgents.

An air of suspicion now pervades the northern Ghazaliya battalion. At least two of its commanders are suspected of working with the Mahdi Army.

"The militia is looking for guys who are working in the army and living in the area. They make them sources," said an Iraqi officer, one of the few in the battalion whom the Americans trust. He asked that his name not be used because he was afraid for his life.

The officer said that if he acted aggressively against the Mahdi Army, the group could pull strings in the parliament and government to harass officers. Last week, when the officer insisted that civilians be searched at a Ghazaliya checkpoint, the militia threatened him, saying it would call his division commander and have him removed.

The officer said he was soon brought in for questioning by military intelligence; Sadrists had accused him of helping Al Qaeda.

"If anyone doesn't like me, they can complain" to the Ministry of Defense, he said. "Maybe the division commander will listen to them and not to me."

Seeking to offset the Mahdi Army pressure, the U.S. Army has organized a citizen watch group of Sunni Arabs called the Ghazaliya Guardians. The men stand at Iraqi checkpoints, dressed in khaki work clothes and baseball caps, to monitor Iraqi soldiers with cameras to see whether Mahdi Army members are let through.

In Hurriya, the militia reportedly intimidated an Iraqi army unit that was brought up from southern Iraq. Bombs have targeted U.S. convoys just a few hundred yards from Iraqi army posts in that city, U.S. Army Capt. Andrew Lee said.

The militia also has started to flex its muscles in adjoining neighborhoods, including Mansour's Washash and Iskan areas. A Mahdi leader "frequently makes phone calls to the Iraqi army in that area . . . with offers of money and threats of intimidation, all the standard mob-style tactics of corruption and leverage in order to gain power and control," Miska said.

Recently, the Mahdi Army pulled off a coup: hijacking the leadership of a highly lauded Iraqi battalion in east Baghdad, using it to mount strikes in Fadil, a bastion of Sunni insurgents. The 2-26 battalion, led by Col. Talib Abdul Razzaq, was one of several rated strong enough to operate independently.

In April, the government arrested Col. Abdul Razzaq and 11 of his staff members. They were accused of being involved with executions of Sunnis that led to a car bombing in a Shiite market that killed 141 people.

"Talib was playing both sides of the fence," one officer said.

[Oh, Gee!!]

A poll suggests that the upcoming report will have little effect on public opinion:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/16/poll.iraq.report/index.html

[boutons_]

US-Backed Iraqi Government in Chaos
By Steven R. Hurst
The Associated Press

Thursday 16 August 2007

Iraq's political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.-backed government. But the reshaped power bloc included no Sunnis and immediately raised questions about its legitimacy as a unifying force.

The political gambit came as teams in northern Iraq tallied the grim figures from the deadliest wave of suicide attacks of the war and - in a rare moment of joy since Tuesday's devastation - pulled four children alive from the rubble.

"We didn't hear them calling out for help until moments before a bulldozer would have killed them as it cleared the rubble," said Saad Muhanad, a municipal council member in the Qahtaniya region, where four bomb-laden trucks turned clay and stone homes into tombs for hundreds belonging to a small religious group considered as infidels by hard-line Muslims.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Thursday that at least 400 were dead - apparently all members of the ancient Yazidi sect that mixes elements of Islam, Christianity and other faiths. Some authorities outside the central government had said at least 500 people died and have not revised that figure downward.

The four small survivors were related, Muhanad said, but he did not know if they were siblings. No other details about the children were known. The freed youngsters began running through the streets begging for food and water.

"In a while, some of their families came and took them away," said Muhanad.

The mayor of the region pleaded for help, meanwhile, saying an even larger tragedy loomed if the shattered communities did not get food, water and medicine soon.

"People are in shock. Hospitals here are running out of medicine. The pharmacies are empty. We need food, medicine and water otherwise there will be an even greater catastrophe," said Abdul-Rahim al-Shimari, mayor of the Baaj district, which includes the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi villages hit by the suicide blasts blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq.

The region is in northwest Iraq, near the Syrian border - suggesting the extremist group could be pushing into new areas in northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds by U.S.-led offensives.

Qassim Khalaf, a 40-year-old government worker, was crying while he spoke by telephone from Qahtaniya.

"We call upon the United Nations to protect the Yazidis because the Iraqi government is in hibernation. Right now, I can see some bodies still partially buried under the rubble. Hundreds of local volunteers are still working in the rescue operations," he sobbed. "Eighty percent of the village was destroyed or damaged. Just a while ago, we pulled the body for a 7-year-old girl out of the debris."

Khalaf said five of his cousins were killed.

Barham Saleh, a Kurd and deputy prime minister, toured the area and ordered the Health and Defense ministries to immediately send tents, medicine and other aid. He also allocated $800,000 to provincial officials to distribute to the victims and relatives.

The U.N. Security Council condemned the bombings "in the strongest terms," saying they were aimed at widening the sectarian and ethnic divide in Iraq. Council members called for an end to sectarian violence.

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hailed the political agreement as a first step toward unblocking the paralysis that has gripped his Shiite-dominated government since it first took power in May 2006.

The new Shiite-Kurdish coalition will retain a majority in parliament - 181 of the 275 seats - and apparently have a clear path to pass legislation demanded by the Bush administration, including a law on sharing Iraq's oil wealth among Iraqi groups and returning some Saddam Hussein-era officials purged under earlier White House policies.

A crucial progress report by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and commander Gen. David Petraeus is due in Congress in less that a month. But a senior American Embassy official hesitated to join in al-Maliki's enthusiasm since the new alliance of Shiites and Kurds failed to bring in Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam and are now crucial to efforts for future stability.

The U.S. official said "all three principle communities" in Iraq need to find ways to "make accommodations and compromises and ultimately reconciliation." The official spoke on condition he not be identified by name.

The key disappointment was the absence of Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and his moderate Iraqi Islamic Party. That portends even deeper political divisions, but al-Maliki called the agreement "a first step."

"It is not final and the door is still open for all who agree with us on the need to push the political process forward," he said.

Al-Maliki was joined at a news conference to announce the political grouping by President Jalal Talabani and fellow Kurd Massoud Barzani, the leader of the northern autonomous Kurdish region; and Shiite Vice President Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

They, along with the U.S. ambassador, were said to have wooed al-Hashemi intensely to join the new leadership bloc. But officials in the al-Maliki government said the Sunni vice president wanted too much.

Among his demands was that members of his Iraqi Islamic Party fill all the Cabinet posts vacated by a mass resignation by another party, the Sunni Accordance Front, according to the officials, who spoke anonymously because the information was too sensitive to attach to their names.

The officials said al-Hashemi also wanted one of his loyalists to replace Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie.

In Baghdad, a car bomb struck a parking garage in a central commercial district during the morning rush hour, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, police said. Smoke poured out of the seven-story concrete building, and food and merchandise stalls below were left charred.

The U.S. military also said three soldiers had been killed. Two soldiers died Wednesday and six were wounded in fighting north of Baghdad. The military said one soldier died Thursday in Baghdad of non-combat causes. At least 45 American troops have died this month.

----------

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

[boutons_]

Analysis: Oil Flows in Basra Power Vacuum

By Ben Lando
United Press International

Thursday 16 August 2007

Washington - Political parties and their militias are fighting for power over the Basra government, the oil sector it controls, and the oil and fuels smuggling that bring in extra funds.

The southern area, where much of Iraq's oil wealth is located and nearly all its oil exports are sent to market, has been under the purview of British troops, who have allowed various factions to become the power base and their armed outfits to flourish.

Now the British are leaving, and the intra-Shiite fighting that bloodied the streets and complicated provincial politics will explode. Even if U.S. troops, already stretched thin, are sent to mediate, the situation will likely not be calmed - it will likely be inflamed.

"It's fundamentally related to the battle over oil," said Reidar Visser, editor of the Iraq Web site historiae.org and an Iraq expert at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. "It's understandable, of course, given the size of the Basra reserves."

Nearly 80 percent of Iraq's 115 billion barrels of proven reserves - the third largest in the world - are buried in or around Basra. With the northern pipeline shut by attacks, most of the 1.6 million barrels of oil per day exported last year went through the port in Basra, bringing enough money to Baghdad - more than $31 billion - to fund 93 percent of the federal budget.

That makes control over Basra key. Whoever controls the provincial government - and/or has strong enough militias - has charge over the oil industry there and holds sway in the unknown amounts of oil and fuel sidetracked to the smuggling racket.

"The way things work in Iraq is if you have even a simple majority on the governing council, you get to elect the governor, the police chief, you get to put your militiamen into the police," said University of Michigan Middle East expert Juan Cole, "and the provincial government becomes a source of patronage for your party."

( The Iraqis have adopted how the dubya/dickhead/Rove Repugs have run the federal govt. More accurately, the dubya/dickhead/Rove Repugs have run the federal govt, politicized it as never before, as 3rd world governments are run. http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif )

In Basra, three Shiite parties, powerful in their varied own right, swap allegiances and gunfire and jockey for position: the Fadhila Party, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (formerly the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq), and the Sadr Movement, led by cleric Moqtada Sadr.

The Fadhila Party gained control of the province in the 2005 elections, but only with 21 of 41 seats, and with a coalition of other parties and independents. SCIRI took the rest. Sadr has no official seats but loyalists.

All three began their power play, infiltrating the police and the bureaucracy. The Fadhila Party grabbed control of the oil facilities protection service, which put it "in a position to really control how much is or is not smuggled," said Ken Katzman, Middle East expert at the Congressional Research Service. "You can do whatever you want … it's control over the proceeds of the smuggling."

Exact figures are not known, but various estimates put smuggling of both oil and fuel past the billions of dollars mark, annually.

"That's money that the factions are going to control directly," he said.

When SCIRI and Sadr realized Fadhila was bringing in smuggling money, they wanted in. Smuggling isn't a new phenomenon; it was standard under Saddam Hussein's rule, usually with his approval.

Nor is it relegated to just political parties. Other militias and gangs are in it as well.

But the political parties have the most power. Fadhila cut a deal with its rivals.

"Their militias - the Mahdi Army (Sadr), the Badr Corp (SIIC) and the Fadhila militia - operate as paramilitaries in the city," Cole said. "They patrol neighborhoods, they fight turf wars for control of neighborhoods, they attack each other's party headquarters, and they are in particular competition for gasoline smuggling."

But politics in Baghdad have a direct relationship to the country's oil capital.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, struggling to stay in power, began unraveling when it replaced a Fadhila-supported oil minister with one the Supreme Council backed. Maliki is from the Dawa Party, closely aligned with the Supreme Council, now SIIC. Its United Iraqi Alliance government also included, among others, Sadr and Fadhila. Earlier this year Fadhila quit the UIA, in large part over losing the Oil Ministry, and Sadr left over disputes with Maliki. SIIC became more powerful and looked to Basra as Fadhila and Sadr militias (and the militia-heavy police) fought turf wars. It orchestrated a vote of no confidence in the Fadhila Party governor of Basra. A handover of power hasn't occurred yet. "Apparently, they'd have to actually fight militarily for control of the bureaucracy," Cole said.

The intra-Shiite fighting is something of a quiet storm, even class warfare, as politics in Baghdad tumbles on Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions' demands and U.S. forces focus on violence from, and often between, Sunnis and Shiites.

SIIC has the overt backing of Washington and, ironically, having grown up in Iran for more than two decades before the 2003 war, has the closest ties to Iran. It's the upper class of the Shiite party power structure.

The Fadhila and Sadr parties share a larger local power base, and although they are believed to have some tie to Iran, are very pro-Iraqi nationalist.

Fadhila has a stronger share of the upper working class, giving it a power base that got it elected in 2005.

The Sadr Party strength comes from "some really poor slums in Basra," said Cole.

It's "closest to the masses," said Rochdi Younsi, Middle East analyst at the business risk firm Eurasia Group, and its leader, "the Shiite Che Guevara," is rallying poor Shiites against Shiite, Sunni and U.S. adversaries throughout Iraq.

All three are to be watched as the British move their last troops. "Then we'll really be able to see ... how did the politics play out on the ground, without the presence of a referee," Younsi said.

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

The neo-cunts/AEI/PNAC predicted democracy would happen in Iraq, Iraqis would "welcome the US as liberators", as soon as dubya/dickhead/rummy's bogus invastion enabled it.

you're doing a heckuva job, dubya

[xrayzebra]

Let's see. Mine will be the 27th post on this thread. boutons has
posted 14 of 27 post on this thread. Now either he loves talking
to himself or he has gotten the line from the dimm-o-crap bloggers
on what their story is going to be in September when the General
gives his report.

Oh, well keeps him out of trouble and he isn't bothering anyone
else.

I have a question does anyone except myself not read all the
crap he post. He must spend hours on highlighting all the
junk he post.

[Wild Cobra]

Let's see. Mine will be the 27th post on this thread. boutons has
posted 14 of 27 post on this thread. Now either he loves talking
to himself or he has gotten the line from the dimm-o-crap bloggers
on what their story is going to be in September when the General
gives his report.

Oh, well keeps him out of trouble and he isn't bothering anyone
else.

I have a question does anyone except myself not read all the
crap he post. He must spend hours on highlighting all the
junk he post.
LOL...

I have pretty much avoided this thread because it is little more than a re-run of the liberal news...

Read it? I skim it, for content, and haven't really focused on any of it. I have little patience when it is so much quoted rather than snips of the article. Then the child takes the time to 'bold' some points without clearly defining what he is quoting and what are his words. Links would be appriciated too.

How old is he? He acks like he's in grade school.

Hey Boutons... Something I've been meaning to ask you...

Does the term neo-cunt mean they are virgins?

[clambake]

So, you think it's funny that we all knew that Patreus is nothing more than a puppet, with bush's fist crammed firmly up the generals ass?

[Wild Cobra]

So, you think it's funny that we all knew that Patreus is nothing more than a puppet, with bush's fist crammed firmly up the generals ass?
Under president Bush's chain of command, yes. Puppet, no.

My God... you lefties can be real moore-ons.

[clambake]

How much time do you think Petraeus needs to memorize someone else's report?

Sad what some people will do just to keep their job.

Sad what some superiors demand their employees to do.

[ChumpDumper]

Petraeus is the best man we've had in charge in Iraq by far, and the surge strategy is the best the US has used by far. It could work and work well -- but it is not the most important thing that could happen there and the troop level will have to come down next spring regardless of the military progress.

Pay more attention to the political process and not the micro level of the armed conflict of the streets of Baghdad like Yoni likes to do. Petraeus knows the former is more important than the latter and the surge is supposed to buy time for the politics.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

I'm glad boutons is bringing out an article from a notoriously liberal source more than a month in advance of the report to discredit it from the get go.

May as well tell Patraeus to not even bother with the report, it appears it's already been condemned no matter what he says.

[boutons_]

Iraq's Best and Brightest Have Left or are tryiny to leave.

There is no Iraq there anymore, nobody talented and educated enough to run the country. It's over, dubya and dickhead broke Iraq and are killing time until the can walk away from their failure and defeat 20 Jan 2009.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,500857,00.html


Iraq's Elite Fleeing in Droves

By Amira El Ahl, Volkhard Windfuhr and Bernhard Zand
Der Spiegel

Monday 20 August 2007

One in ten Iraqis has left the country. Baghdad's elite are trying to make ends meet in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Washington wants the United Nations to address the refugee crisis. In the meantime, the country is losing its best minds - the very people needed to rebuild Iraq.

The first stage on the road to safety is a $20 taxi ride. It takes the future refugee past nervous soldiers, through dangerous checkpoints and along streets with nicknames - like "Grenade Alley" and "Sniper Boulevard" - that bespeak the perils of travel in Iraq.

Stage one ends at the curb in front of Samarra Terminal at Baghdad Airport, where travelers are so overcome with relief that they hardly even notice the gruff way guards treat them. Before they are even allowed to enter the terminal, security officers order them to deposit their suitcases and carry-on bags next to a yellow line painted on the asphalt and flanked by two sets of six-foot-tall concrete barriers. While police dogs sniff the luggage for explosives, the travelers - men, women, grandparents and grandchildren - stand to the side in the heat, parents wearing stiff-looking travel clothes and a few children in brightly colored wind-breakers.

"We are flying to Amman," says one mother, smiling as she hands her whining son his stocking cap, "and then to Prague and on to Stockholm. The children think it's snowing there."

The first flight, a charter flight operated by Flying Carpet, isn't scheduled for departure until the afternoon, but the airport is already crowded at 9 a.m. Three doctors - old friends from their university days, who haven't seen each other in years - are reunited in the terminal. One of them, a child psychologist named Khaldun Fahmy, was kidnapped a week earlier when he returned to take one last look at his abandoned villa. After three terrifying days, in which he was tortured, the $50,000 ransom money was paid and Fahmy was released and taken to the hospital. "Am I talking too much?" he asks his friends. "It's all therapy, all self-therapy."

Four flights are departing from Baghdad Airport on this particular afternoon, bound for Amman, Damascus, Beirut and Dubai. Few are shedding tears. Most of the travelers have already said their goodbyes, and their farewells are well considered and long planned. Some expect to return, while others are leaving "for good," says Fahmy.

Mass Flight

Iraq, a country still shaken by daily violence, is currently the scene of what is likely the biggest refugee disaster since the displacement of Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. On the eve of the Iraq war, the United States, the United Nations and neighboring countries had expected refugees to number in the tens of thousands. Four years later, more than 2 million Iraqis have already left the country. Jordan has accepted close to 750,000, the Gulf states 200,000, Egypt 100,000 and Syria at least 1,400,000. Roughly one in 10 Iraqis has fled the country, and about the same number are now internal refugees.

They are not just the country's poor and desperate. Many are the elites of a nation that already lost many of its best and brightest during decades of tyranny and economic embargoes. Ironically, those choosing to leave the country today are precisely the doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers and government bureaucrats the country will desperately need to rebuild itself.

The West - especially the two leading coalition nations, the United States and Great Britain - has opened itself up to severe criticism for its unwillingness to step up to the plate. Since the 2003 invasion, Britain has accepted a mere 115 and the United States only about 500 of a total of more than 14,000 seeking asylum in the West. The Bush administration has promised to process 7,000 applications for political asylum this year and has made a commitment to accept 3,000. Former senior US diplomat Richard Holbrooke calls the Bush administration's efforts "pathetic" and the American public's indifference "shameful."

Meanwhile, Washington has been more than generous in seeking to transfer its Iraq responsibilities to the UN. The organization, says Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US Ambassador to Iraq, should focus more of its attention in the future on the political process in Baghdad, security issues, the country's oil law - and the refugee crisis. But this is a tall order, with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) not even in a position to get the most vulnerable Iraqis - the interpreters and reconstruction workers being hunted down by terrorists, who accuse them of collaborating with the occupiers - out of the country. US authorities in Iraq do not accept asylum applications, and those Iraqis who do manage to make it abroad are better off not mentioning any ransom money they may have paid for kidnapped relatives, especially not in the United States. US immigration authorities define such payments as "material support" for terrorist organizations.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently contributed $5 million to a fellowship fund for Iraqi academics. The purpose of the fund, says a foundation spokeswoman, is to "protect Iraq's intellectual capital." The foundation currently receives about 40 applications a week, but the program's funds are only enough to pay for about 150 academics and will have been used up within a few months.

Staggering Costs

Meanwhile, the cost to Syria and Jordan, whose governments warned against an invasion and are now being left to deal with the humanitarian consequences, is running into the billions. Jordan has now virtually closed its borders to Iraq, while up to 2,000 Iraqis cross the border into Syria every day. Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdul-Majid says that Damascus will likely follow Jordan's lead before long.

No one knows precisely how many Iraqis there are in Syria today. The demand for subsidized goods like bread and gasoline has increased by one-fifth, at an additional cost to the government of several hundred million dollars. Apartment rents in some neighborhoods have skyrocketed, government-run schools are overflowing with students and unemployment and inflation are on the rise.

The growing crisis has also affected the UN. At the beginning of the year, two employees at the UNHCR office in Damascus were sufficient to register Iraqi refugees. But within weeks, the situation spun out of control. Suddenly UNHCR officials saw thousands of people lining up outside their office every morning.

Today, only half a year later, 30 clerks sit at desks in a warehouse in eastern Damascus, recording personal data and translating it into English. "It's the largest operation of its kind that we're running worldwide," says British UNHCR official Sybella Wilkes.

Before the building opens in the morning, employees walk through the crowd with megaphones, warning the refugees about con artists. No one from the UNHCR will ask for money, they say, adding that while the process will be time-consuming and inconvenient, it is free. Then health experts arrive on the scene to scan the crowd for the sick and fatigued. "We have to fish out the most vulnerable ones first," says Wilkes, "otherwise they won't make it through the waiting period in the heat." The disabled, old men in wheelchairs and chemotherapy patients are taken to the front of the line.

Huda Sibawi, 33, a grief-stricken young woman, is carrying six death certificates: those of her mother, her father, two uncles, her brother and her brother-in-law. The father, a wealthy Sunni from New Baghdad, had donated money to a mosque and, at the end of Ramadan, broke the fast a day earlier than is customary among the Shiites. He paid dearly for his infraction. Fighters from the Shiite Mahdi militia exterminated most of his family in a two-week murdering spree.

The killers seized the Sibawis' assets, which included 11 apartment buildings and a small chain of supermarkets. Neighbors from Baghdad occasionally call Huda to tell her that members of the Mahdi militia are now driving the family's company cars around the city.

Some of the Iraqi refugees are so desperate that mothers have been known to take their daughters to nightclubs, where they offer them to Western and Arab tourists from the Gulf as if they were exotic fruits. "Diana, for example," says a driver who works for the limousine service of a large, Western hotel, "just arrived from Mosul. You can meet her in our disco after 1 a.m."

Careful Preparations

But so far, abject poverty is still the exception among refugees. Many Iraqis made careful financial preparations before leaving the country, selling their houses and cars in Baghdad so that they could buy apartments in Damascus or Amman. Other families are using up their daughters' dowries bit by bit. "Our funds will last us for exactly six months," says Huda Sibawi. "By then we'll need a decision on whether a European country or Canada will accept us."

Other refugees retain a place of residence in Kurdish northern Iraq so as not to lose their pension claims. "Most of these people are very well-educated and self-confident," says a UNHCR employee who once worked in West Africa. "Only a fraction comes to us. Asking for handouts goes against their grain. That's the most tragic thing about this crisis: The ones who have left Iraq are its 2 million best and brightest."

Meanwhile, the Iraqi nose for business is in full evidence in the Jordanian capital of Amman, dominated by the Iraqi-owned Le Royal, a luxury hotel designed as a striking sandstone cylinder, a variation on the renowned spiral minaret on the mosque in Samarra. While Iraqis make full use of Amman's liberal economic environment, the country also benefits from their presence.

The wave of refugees has also led to rising living expenses, rents and real estate prices in Jordan. "We are a country without resources," says Jordanian businessman Abd al-Sattar al-Kuda. "We have no water, no oil and little agriculture," he says. "In other words, there is nothing the refugees could take away from us." On the contrary, the Iraqis are partly responsible for a boom in consumer spending.

Baghdad's wealthy residents, many already with one foot in Amman before the war, have settled in Abdoun and Deir Ghubar, exclusive residential areas in the city's southwest. They include Iraqis tied to the former regime, such as former dictator Saddam Hussein's daughter Raghad, who is often seen driving her blue BMW sports car and is said to have opened a beauty salon recently. Refugees from the Iraqi middle class have settled in western Amman, while the poor live in the east. Although many are in Jordan illegally, Iraqis have already made the Jordanian capital a different place than it was.

Amman's Transformation

Once-sleepy Amman has turned into a vibrant big city with busy restaurants and cafes. After 2003, many Iraqi restaurant owners moved their businesses from Baghdad to Amman, often mimicking the original restaurants and naming them after Iraqi provinces and neighborhoods. At "Anbar" in western Amman, the "samak masgouf," a carp dish, is served just as it's prepared in waterside restaurants along the Tigris River - fresh, rich and moist. The waiters and patrons converse in Iraqi dialects, while Jordanians are in the minority. Big cars with Baghdad license plates are parked bumper-to-bumper on neighborhood streets.

But as harmoniously as Iraqis seem to fit into Amman's street scenes, their status is precarious. The government has gradually ramped up its requirements for residency permits, demanding that Iraqis deposit increasingly large sums of money as collateral. Those who are turned down have no right to appeal the immigration court's decision.

Being pushed around like this in Jordan or Syria is especially humiliating for educated Iraqis. Baghdad's middle class, in particular, has always considered itself the Arab world's urban elite. An old Iraqi Arab saying sums up the way many Iraqis see themselves today: "Books are written in Cairo and published in Beirut, but they are read in Baghdad."

A retired archaeology professor from Baghdad, who prefers not to give his name, found a bullet wrapped in a balled-up piece of paper in his garden one day. "Get out, or we'll come and get your daughter," the note read. He packed his bags and drove to Amman with his wife and daughter. That was a year ago, or the space of two six-month tourist visas. At some point, the 70-year-old professor realized that he would probably not be returning to his native country.

But this time, the Jordanian immigration office is refusing to issue the professor a third visa because he is unable to pay the $75,000 fee. "Not to be granted a residency permit in Jordan is extremely hurtful to me, a person who spent decades at the university and years working for UNESCO," he says.

He stands, watery-eyed, in a friend's basement apartment in Amman, wearing a light blue shirt and gray flannel trousers. "Do you know what I have done now?" he asks. "I have prepared my resume and attached an application to it. Perhaps one of the universities here will take me."

--------

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

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

you're doing a heckuva job, dubya


What incredible pain and hardship these assholes dubya and dickhead have caused for the Iraqi people "lucky" enough still to be alive.

[boutons_]

why the success or failure of the surge is totally irrelevant

August 24, 2007

NIE: U.S. Intelligence Offers Grim View of Iraqi Leaders

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — A stark assessment released Thursday by the nation’s intelligence agencies depicts a paralyzed Iraqi government unable to take advantage of the security gains achieved by the thousands of extra American troops dispatched to the country this year.

The assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, casts strong doubts on the viability of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq. It gives a dim prognosis on the likelihood that Iraqi politicians can heal deep sectarian rifts before next spring, when American military commanders have said that a crunch on available troops will require reducing the United States’ presence in Iraq.

But the report also implicitly criticizes proposals offered by Democrats, including several presidential candidates, who have called for a withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq by next year and for a major shift in the American approach, from manpower-intensive counterinsurgency operations to lower-profile efforts aimed at supporting Iraqi troops and carrying out quick-strike counterterrorism raids.

Such a shift, the report said, would “erode security gains achieved thus far” and could return Iraq to a downward spiral of sectarian violence.

(yep, but that's going to happen later, or sooner, so save our US lives and $$$, and make it sooner. )
After a summer of rancorous debate over the future of America’s mission in Iraq, the intelligence report is the most prominent and authoritative assessment to date of what the administration has called a surge strategy.

The report, which represents the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, suggested that policy makers face a dilemma. While the current strategy in Iraq has produced “measurable but uneven improvements” in security, it said, the approach has done little to bridge sectarian divides in Iraq. The report also said that pulling American troops out of Iraq would most likely make things far worse.

The intelligence estimate comes just weeks ahead of a long-awaited progress report by senior American officials in Baghdad about security and political conditions in the country. Within hours of its release on Thursday, the assessment had already begun to reshape the terms of a political dialogue that could again come to a boil next month.

White House officials said that the assessment was evidence that the American troop increase had begun to dampen violence in Iraq, that progress was possible and that a precipitous troop withdrawal would sow chaos in the country. Democrats said the report showed that the White House had failed in its effort to use the troop increase in Iraq to promote political progress, and that it was time for the United States to change course.

( BS. Which withdrawal advocate as demanded a "precipitous" withdrawal? Everybody knows that a decision today to withdraw totally would take 12 - 18 months, which is not precipitous. )

Still, on Thursday, one leading Republican, Senator John Warner of Virginia, called for President Bush to take the first steps toward a limited drawdown of troops, of perhaps 5,000 soldiers by the end of the year, as a way to send the Iraqi government a message that “we mean business” in saying the American commitment in Iraq is not open-ended.

The intelligence report said that the influx of American troops in Iraq had achieved some successes in lowering sectarian violence there, but concluded that Iraqi leaders “remain unable to govern effectively” and that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months” as rival factions led by Mr. Maliki’s fellow Shiites vie for power.

The assessment concluded that there was little reason to expect that Iraqi politicians would achieve significant gains before the spring, when American commanders said they would have to begin to cut troop levels in Iraq, now at more than 160,000, to ease the burden on military personnel.

The report was optimistic about a number of what it called “bottom up” security initiatives that had helped reduce violence in some parts of the country. Most prominent of these are efforts by Sunni tribal sheiks to band together against Islamic militants from the homegrown Sunni Arab insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led.

But such local initiatives were also described as a Catch-22. On one hand, they provide the “best prospect” for improving Iraqi security over the next year. But the assessment concluded that strong local initiatives could undermine Iraq’s central government, which American officials say is essential to lasting peace.

The intelligence assessment also cited the growing perception inside Iraq that an American troop withdrawal would inevitably be another factor that could destabilize the Maliki government, encouraging factions anticipating a power vacuum “to seek local security solutions that could intensify sectarian violence.”

After being briefed on the report on Monday morning, President Bush made comments this week that were widely interpreted as distancing himself from Mr. Maliki, though White House officials insisted that the Iraqi leader still had Mr. Bush’s support. Mr. Bush also called new attention to what he portrayed as the potentially catastrophic consequences of a hasty withdrawal.

Resuming his vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., Mr. Bush made no public statement about the intelligence estimate. But a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, portrayed the report as a mixed assessment of the situation in Iraq. He said that it showed both that the American troop increase in Iraq had significantly reduced the sectarian violence in Iraq and that the White House strategy was “headed in the right direction.”

Mr. Johndroe said that the current military strategy in Iraq had not become “fully operational” until the middle of the summer, and added that it was frustrating but not surprising that political progress was lagging.

But Democrats seized on the report, issuing a flurry of press releases portraying the administration’s Iraq strategy as having failed.

“Further pursuit of the administration’s flawed escalation strategy is not in our nation’s best interests,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a Democratic presidential candidate, said the report had provided “additional evidence” that Mr. Bush’s approach “has failed,” and added, “We need to stop refereeing this civil war, and start getting out now.”

In their attacks, Democrats ignored the report’s criticism of the approach that has been a common theme of their own Iraq proposals, which have emphasized a withdrawal of American combat troops. Most Democrats have urged that American forces who stay in Iraq limit their operations to training, support and quick-strike counterterrorism missions.

Mr. Warner, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he had not spoken personally to Mr. Bush about his recommendation for a troop drawdown. But in a news conference in the Capitol, as he returned from a visit to Iraq, Mr. Warner urged the president to announce in September that he would send a limited number of troops home, preferably before Christmas.

The intelligence assessment predicted that Iraq’s neighbors, especially Iran and Syria, would step up efforts to exert influence over Iraq’s feuding factions. Intelligence officials on Thursday said that Sunni nations in the Middle East, most prominently Saudi Arabia, were monitoring events in Iraq, possibly with an eye toward intervening on behalf of Sunnis in the country.

But intelligence officials made clear on Thursday that it was Iraqi leaders who had the most power to influence the future of their country. For months, American officials in Baghdad have stressed that any military gains would be ephemeral if Iraqi politicians were unable to find political solutions.

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told members of Congress last month that without political progress in Iraq, “no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference.”

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Crawford, Tex., and Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.