What About Iraq? By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: August 6, 2004 A funny thing happened after the United States transferred sovereignty over Iraq. On the ground, things didn't change, except for the worse. But as Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect puts it, the cosmetic change in regime had the effect of "Afghanizing" the media coverage of Iraq. He's referring to the way news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off sharply after the initial military defeat of the Taliban. A nation we had gone to war to liberate and had promised to secure and rebuild - a promise largely broken - once again became a small, faraway country of which we knew nothing. Incredibly, the same thing happened to Iraq after June 28. Iraq stories moved to the inside pages of newspapers, and largely off TV screens. Many people got the impression that things had improved. Even journalists were taken in: a number of newspaper stories asserted that the rate of U.S. losses there fell after the handoff. (Actual figures: 42 American soldiers died in June, and 54 in July.) The trouble with this shift of attention is that if we don't have a clear picture of what's actually happening in Iraq, we can't have a serious discussion of the options that remain for making the best of a very bad situation. The military reality in Iraq is that there has been no letup in the insurgency, and large parts of the country seem to be effectively under the control of groups hostile to the U.S.-supported government. In the spring, American forces won an impressive military victory against the Shiite forces of Moktada al-Sadr. But this victory hasn't curbed the movement; Mr. Sadr's forces, according to many reports, are the de facto government of Sadr City, a Baghdad slum with 2.5 million people, and seem to have strengthened their position in Najaf and other cities. In Sunni areas, Falluja is enemy territory. Elsewhere in western Iraq, according to reports from Knight Ridder and The Los Angeles Times, U.S. forces have hunkered down, manning watch posts but not patrolling. In effect, this cedes control of the population to the insurgents. And everywhere, of course, the mortar attacks, bombings, kidnappings and assassinations go on. Despite a two-month truce between Mr. Sadr and the United States military, heavy fighting broke out yesterday in Najaf, where a U.S. helicopter was shot down. There was also sporadic violence in Sadr City - where, according to reporters, American planes appeared to drop bombs - and in Basra. Meanwhile, reconstruction has languished. This summer, like last summer, there are severe shortages of electricity. Sewage is tainting the water supply, and typhoid and hepatitis are on the rise. Unemployment remains sky-high. Needless to say, all this undermines any chance for the new Iraqi government to gain wide support. My point in describing all this bad news is not to be defeatist. It is to set some realistic context for the political debate. One thing is clear: calls to "stay the course" are fatuous. The course we're on leads downhill. American soldiers keep winning battles, but we're losing the war: our military is under severe strain; we're creating more terrorists than we're killing; our reputation, including our moral authority, is damaged each month this goes on. So am I saying we should cut and run? That's another loaded phrase. Nobody wants to see helicopters lifting the last Americans off the roofs of the Green Zone. But we need to move quickly to end our position as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," the fate that none other than former President George H. W. Bush correctly warned could be the result of an invasion of Iraq. And that means turning real power over to Iraqis. Again and again since the early months after the fall of Baghdad - when Paul Bremer III canceled local elections in order to keep the seats warm for our favorite exiles - U.S. officials have passed up the chance to promote credible Iraqi leaders. And each time the remaining choices get worse. Yet we're still doing it. Ayad Allawi is, probably, something of a thug. Still, it's in our interests that he succeed. But when Mr. Allawi proposed an amnesty for insurgents - a move that was obviously calculated to show that he wasn't an American puppet - American officials, probably concerned about how it would look at home, stepped in to insist that insurgents who have killed Americans be excluded. Inevitably, this suggestion that American lives matter more than Iraqi lives led to an unraveling of the whole thing, so Mr. Allawi now looks like a puppet. Should we cut and run? No. But we should get realistic, and look in earnest for an exit. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html
Sistani is ill and has been flown out of the country... he is the only bug shot that looks favorably upon elected governments... __________________ Iraq's Sistani into London for treatment Fri 6 August, 2004 15:09 LONDON (Reuters) - Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has arrived in London for treatment for a heart condition. The influential cleric, who has been a voice of moderation in postwar Iraq, landed at Heathrow airport on Friday aboard a scheduled flight from Beirut. The Middle East Airlines jet taxied to a point away from Heathrow's terminal three and Sistani, dressed in black robes, walked down the steps and into a limousine while armed police stood guard. Airport sources said he was heading for an unnamed hospital in central London. During a brief stopover in Beirut where he changed planes, officials said the 73-year-old cleric was able to walk with some help. There had been fears fighting in the holy city of Najaf, where he lives, could hamper his access to proper medical care. One of Sistani's aides said on Thursday it was the first time the cleric had experienced heart problems. The reclusive Iranian-born Sistani holds huge sway over Iraq's 60 percent Shi'ite majority despite rarely speaking in public and not having left Najaf, south of Baghdad, for years. He played a leading role in striking a ceasefire that halted fighting in April and May between the Mehdi Army militia of firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and American troops across southern and central Iraq. In June, Sistani gave conditional approval to Iraq's interim government, saying it lacked "electoral legitimacy" but was a step in the right direction. His non-confrontational but firm approach to U.S.-occupation forces has appealed to many Shi'ites. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=560715§ion=news _________________ Here's Juan Cole... If Sistani dies it might affect the political development of Iraq. It is not clear that the other three grand ayatollahs have Sistani's high opinion of parliamentary democracy rooted in popular sovereignty. He would probably be succeeded by Muhammad Said al-Hakim, an Iraqi and distant cousin of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI certainly does not have a long-term commitment to democracy, though Muhammad Said al-Hakim has never identified with that party himself. The other two possible successors are Bashir Najafi, a Pakistani, and Muhammad Fayad, an Afghan. Bashir Najafi is more vehemently anti-American than Sistani. Another contender is Sayyid Kadhim al-Haeri, sometimes called the "fifth grand ayatollah", who is still in exile in Qom. He is a follower of Iran's Khomeini and a radical reactionary on social issues. He had been Muqtada al-Sadr's mentor but has broken with him. http://www.juancole.com/
Najaf Sees Worst Fighting Since 2003 By ABDUL HUSSEIN AL-OBEIDI, Associated Press Writer NAJAF, Iraq - U.S. helicopter gunships and fighter jets pounded Iraqi insurgents hiding in a sprawling cemetery Friday in the most intense fighting in this Shiite holy city since the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). The U.S. military said 300 militants were killed in the past two days. The clashes between coalition forces and militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army flared in Shiite communities across the country, killing dozens of other Iraqis, according to Iraqi officials and the militants. The fighting threatened to re-ignite the bloody, two-month Shiite insurrection that broke out in April — and the heavy U.S. response appeared designed to quash militia activity quickly and prevent a repeat. Al-Sadr on Friday blamed all the violence in Iraq (news - web sites) on the United States, which he called "our enemy and the enemy of the people," in a sermon read on his behalf at the Kufa Mosque near Najaf. A renewed uprising among the country's majority Shiites would cause severe problems for Iraq's fledgling interim government as it tries to gain popular support and for coalition forces that are already struggling against Sunni militants. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../ap/20040806/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_040806202608
Why can't you Democrats concentrate on important issues like Bush's supporters. You know, whether Kerry talked about the Buckeyes in Michigan. Whether some rightwing ex-military guys just happen to recall 30 years later what Kerry was doing on his boat 30 years ago, even though they weren't on the boat. You guys are just always negative and concerned about the Americans and Iraqis killing in Iraq. Why should you care? You are educated, have a job and won't have to go. Why not be like the young Republicans on the bbs? They are content since they don't have to go and fight.. Always negative you guys.
Deepening anti-U.S. rage casts doubt on Iraq leaders' ability to restore order By Tom Lasseter Knight Ridder Newspapers BAGHDAD, Iraq - After the past two days of fighting in southern and central Iraq, the difference between firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi couldn't be any more clear: Al Sadr has an army, and Allawi does not. In Iraq, security is politics. When Allawi took office, the self-styled strongman lost little time before declaring that his government wouldn't tolerate the insurgency that's swept the country. But as in previous battles, when al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia began to overrun Najaf and several neighborhoods from Baghdad to Basra, the Iraqi police force and national guard fought for a little while, then ran. And as in previous battles, Iraq's Achilles' heel was revealed: To defend their country, Allawi and the interim government must go to the American military, an institution that's widely reviled by many Iraqis as an occupational force run amok. Allawi's Cabinet has approved an emergency provision that would allow for something like a state of emergency to be declared, and he's expected to announce at least a partial state of emergency at a news briefing scheduled for Saturday. But even if such a measure were imposed, it's not clear that Iraqi forces have the training or equipment to enforce it outside Baghdad, a capital that's looking increasingly besieged. As Marine Col. Anthony Haslam put it Friday in Najaf: "We are trying to train them and equip them as best we can, but they just have AK-47s and they need some heavy machine guns and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), because that's what's out on the street." Al Sadr's men certainly didn't seem worried about the Iraqi government or its security apparatus Friday. Speaking at the Imam al Khadim shrine and mosque in one of Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhoods, al Sadr cleric Hazim al Arajie took the Iraqi interior minister to task for saying that those who were battling American forces in Najaf and elsewhere were gangsters who would be run out of Iraq. "We're warning you that if you're going to say these words again, we'll take you from your house and send you to hell," al Arajie said in remarks directed toward the minister, Falah Hassan al Naqib. Many in Iraq take al Sadr's popularity as a sign of the U.S. failure to provide an alternative. The militia, it seems, may not be as much a coordinated fighting force as an expression of Iraqi rage at the American presence. "The Iraqis are frustrated by the heat, the lack of water and the lack of electricity," said Sadoun al Dulame, the head of an independent research center in Baghdad. "All that we have gotten is talk and promises, but nothing has actually been done." In Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, there are long gas lines, a near-epidemic of typhoid and hepatitis due to poor-quality water, and an electrical grid that provides only six hours of power daily for many residents. Adel Hamid, a vegetable merchant in Sadr City, which was named for al Sadr's late father, said that over the course of about 15 months of suffering through a lack of basic services, he'd come to see the Americans as the enemy. "The fight will continue and (Allah willing) we will be victorious," Hamid said. "I will sacrifice my three boys for the Sadr movement; they are in the Mahdi Army now to protect the city." link
Iraq on the Verge of Implosion by Charley Reese Robert Fisk is a reporter for the British newspaper The Independent. He has spent decades in the Middle East, and I know of no reporter who is his equal in that area of the world. After five weeks in Iraq, he recently reported a very pessimistic assessment of the situation. Keep in mind that Fisk is not the kind of hotel-bar reporter who occasionally picks up a press release. He risks his life to get out among the Iraqis to find out what's really going on. He recently drove south on the main highway and found that for 70 miles every single Iraqi police post had been abandoned. He said that in the past five weeks, he has not found a single Iraqi, a single American soldier or a single mercenary – American, British or South African – who believes there will be elections in January. He says that the American-appointed government doesn't even control all of Baghdad, much less the rest of the country. He reports that the country is in chaos, so much so that the cheerful assessments being put out in London and Washington are mystifying. What he reports is verified by other non-establishment reporters who take the risk of going outside the heavily fortified "Green Zone." The situation is bad and it is getting worse, and why should that surprise anyone outside of the present administration? Iraq has never been easy to govern, even by a dictator. And one thing all Iraqis share is a hatred of foreign occupiers. And, despite the public-relations sleight of hand in supposedly giving sovereignty to a government with no power to assume it, we are still viewed as occupiers – which, in truth, we are. Unfortunately, we are occupiers who, despite all these months and all these billions of dollars, cannot get the electricity up and running on a consistent basis, cannot repair the sewer and water plants our bombs destroyed, and cannot keep the oil flowing to the world market at a regular pace. Some progress, naturally, has been made. After all, not even Halliburton can spend billions of dollars without stacking some bricks. But most Iraqis live in fear and squalor, and they blame us. After all, we bombed them for a decade and imposed sanctions that were the equivalent of a medieval siege. We stood by while looters destroyed what the bombs had left. We disbanded their army and police force. If we don't get out of Iraq soon – and I'm talking months, not years – we're going to be as intensely hated by the Iraqis as the Israelis are by the Palestinians – for the same reason. Nobody likes an occupier. Sovereignty, of course, is defined by power, not by a piece of paper, and the Iraqis know the true situation. The failure to anticipate and plan for what would happen after our military victory is reason enough to dump the members of the administration in Washington. They had to disregard a huge amount of wise advice and be skull-dense stupid to get us into this bloody, multibillion-dollar cesspool. To this day, they don't know how they are going to get out. It's hard to reconcile elections in January, assuming they even happen, with simultaneous talk about American troops staying for years. In the meantime, the number of Americans killed is pressing steadily toward the 1,000 mark, and the number of permanently maimed is already profoundly sad. For what have these brave young men and women sacrificed their lives? I think Rudyard Kipling has the answer. "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied," he wrote in a bitter poem after the war that had claimed his only son. There were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no cooperation with al-Qaida, there was no threat, gathering or otherwise, to the United States, and, as of Aug. 2, 912 young men and women have died to prove that. Arms inspectors could have proven the same thing without the grief blight on American families. link
And after reading this bit of cheeriness, I'm off to see Kerry. _______________ Failure of Leadership By BOB HERBERT nthony Dixon and Adam Froehlich were best friends who grew up in the suburbs of southern New Jersey, not far from Philadelphia. They went to junior high school together. They wrestled on the same team at Overbrook High School in the town of Pine Hill. They enlisted in the Army together in 2002. And both died in Iraq, in roadside bombings just four months apart. Specialist Dixon was killed on Sunday in Samarra. Specialist Froehlich was killed in March near Baquba. They were 20 years old. No one has a clue how this madness will end. As G.I.'s continue to fight and die in Iraq, the national leaders who put them needlessly in harm's way are now flashing orange alert signals to convey that Al Qaeda - the enemy that should have been in our sights all along - is poised to strike us again. It's as if the government were following a script from the theater of the absurd. Instead of rallying our allies to a coordinated and relentless campaign against Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, we insulted the allies, gave them the back of our hand and arrogantly sent the bulk of our forces into the sand trap of Iraq. Now we're in a fix. The war in Iraq has intensified the hatred of America around the world and powerfully energized Al Qaeda-type insurgencies. At the same time, it has weakened our defenses by diverting the very resources we need - personnel, matériel and boatloads of cash - to meet the real terror threats. President Bush's re-election mantra is that he's the leader who can keep America safe. But that message was stepped on by the urgent, if not frantic, disclosures this week by top administration officials that another Al Qaeda attack on the United States might be imminent. A debate emerged almost immediately about whether the intelligence on which those disclosures were based was old or new, or a combination of both. Nevertheless, because of the growing sense of alarm, there was an expansion of the already ubiquitous armed, concrete-fortified sites in New York City and Washington. The pressure may be getting to Mr. Bush. He came up with a gem of a Freudian slip yesterday. At a signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill, the president said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." The nation seems paralyzed, unsure of what to do about Iraq or terrorism. The failure of leadership that led to the bonehead decision to invade Iraq remains painfully evident today. Nobody seems to know where we go from here. What Americans need more than anything else right now is some honest information about the critical situations we're facing. What's the military mission in Iraq? Can it be clearly defined? Is it achievable? At what cost and over what time frame? How many troops will be needed? How many casualties are we willing to accept? And how much suffering are we willing to endure here at home in terms of the domestic needs that are unmet? Neither Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon was honest with the American people about Vietnam, and the result was a monumental tragedy. George W. Bush has not leveled with the nation about Iraq, and we are again trapped in a long, tragic nightmare. As for the so-called war on terror, there is no evidence yet that the administration has a viable plan for counteracting Al Qaeda and its America-hating allies, offshoots and imitators. Whether this week's clumsy sequence of press conferences, leaks and alerts was politically motivated or not, the threat to the U.S. is both real and grave. And it can't be thwarted with military power alone. Does the administration have any real sense of what motivates the nation's enemies? Does it understand the ways in which American policies are empowering its enemies? Does it grasp the crucial importance of international alliances and coordinated intelligence activity in fighting terror? And is it even beginning to think seriously about lessening our debilitating dependence on Middle Eastern oil? The United States is the greatest military and economic power in the history of the planet. But it lacks a unifying sense of national purpose at the moment, and seems uncertain, even timid, as the national security challenges continue to mount. That is what a failure of leadership can do to a great power. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/06/opinion/06herbert.html?ei=5090&en=b9ef7e21f76bc92c&ex=1249531200&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=print&position=
Here's a little cheer for you! Ahhh....warm fuzzys... I feel so much better knowing that the Wizzard of Oz is in charge of this war.
Nice peaceful Muslims. Aw shucks. Well I'm sure George Washington and his guys weren't too peaceful either when they were fighting for their freedom from foreign occupiers. These ****es fought for their freedom from Sadam Hussein now they fight the Amerians. My how the descendants of Washington, Adams and the others have changed roles. How sad.
Wouldn't know... on one side, my ancestors came across just before Hitler took power in Germany, on the other they came across in the early 1800's to grow tobacco... And um... this is NOT the same. Washington and his contemporaries did NOT also fight those that helped liberate them from Britian. History. Know it. Don't assume it.
Iroc, polls show a substantial number of Iraqis want us to leave now. At best they view us as people who removed Sadam, but now have switched frorm liberators to occupiers. You can't just keep killing people who view you as occupiers and are fighting to throw you out and claim to do it in the name of their liberation and your procliamed belief in democracy. The recent killing of hundreds of Shiites by US forces will not lead them to change their minds and want us to stay. Claiming that we will just stay till things calm down and they like us and will welcome us leaving our bases behind will just not cut in in terms of Iraqi demoratic opinion.
The Republicans and the occasional Democrat backer of the war, just hope that the Iraq war or this thread will go away. They avoid these threads like the plague. Facts on the ground are to be avoided in the hope that it will just all go away. Occasionally we have an abstract declaration that the war was right, sort of like Bush does. Our appointed Iraqi handlers are trying to keep Al Jazeera from recording our slaughter of Shiites in their sacred cemetery and city. It is sort of like slaughtering protesting veterans in Arlington National Cemetery, Jews at the wailing wall, or Catholics as the Vatican. Another verse in the saga in the way the Bush Admin turned a legitimate war against a few l thousand hard core Al Qaeda members into a war against 1 billion Muslims. ************** ......The US military actions in the holy city of Najaf are deeply offensive to Muslims throughout the world. Although many might also criticize Sadr and his militia for using the holy sites as cover, the strongest condemnation inevitably is reserved for the foreign troops, seen as imperialists. Ironic quote of the Day: "We will not allow them to continue to desecrate this sacred site . . . " said Colonel Anthony Haslam, commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. (This is after the US dropped bombs on the cemetery, which contains the dead relatives of Shiite Muslims from all over the world, but especially Iraq). One of Iraq's vice presidents, Ibrahim Jaafari, called Tuesday for the US Marines to withdraw from the holy city of Najaf, which, he said, is sacred to all the Muslims of the world in general and to Shiites in particular. Jaafari is a leader of the Shiite al-Da'wa Party, Iraq's oldest and largest surviving party, which is likely to do very well when and if there are parliamentary elections. Jaafari speaks for the Shiite majority in Iraq in these sentiments in a way that hardline Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib (a Sunni ex-Baathist) or PM Iyad Allawi (a secular Shiite ex-Baathist) do not. ..... link
