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 Ins ute 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/ head/Rove Repugs have run the federal govt. More accurately, the dubya/ head/Rove Repugs have run the federal govt, politicized it as never before, as 3rd world governments are run.)
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 compe ion 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- s/AEI/PNAC predicted democracy would happen in Iraq, Iraqis would "welcome the US as liberators", as soon as dubya/ head/rummy's bogus invastion enabled it.
you're doing a heckuva job, dubya
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- mean they are virgins?
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 08-18-2007 at 02:41 PM.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 head broke Iraq and are killing time until the can walk away from their failure and defeat 20 Jan 2009.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...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 head have caused for the Iraqi people "lucky" enough still to be alive.
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.
Last edited by boutons_; 08-23-2007 at 09:08 PM.
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