Can we create an Iraqi Democracy by June 30?

Sick, no, how about fitting.

He should have to live in the dangererous chaotic, anarchical quasi pseudo state/theocracy that is the result of his misguided politics.

 

What is truly sick is Jr keeping his eye more on November than trying to do what is best for Iraq.

 

Not a chance.

We will pull out and then civil war will erupt, killing roughly 3 times the number of Iraqis that died under Saddam Hussein.

George W. Bush is keeping with a recent Presidential trend of not examining the long-term ramifications of foreign policy decisions.

 

Is this why a large number of CPA employees are GOP operatives and campaign workers? Is this why they removed folks who knew how to deliver food and services and replaced them with anti-abortion zealots?

In answer to the thread question... No.

 

US-trained Iraqi soldiers turn their guns on US troops.


US helicopters fire on Sadr supporters in Baghdad

April 5, 2004 - 11:44PM

US Apache helicopters sprayed fire on the private army of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr during fierce battles today in the western Baghdad district of Al-Showla, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said.

"Two Apaches opened fire on armed members of the Mehdi Army," said Showla resident Abbas Amid.

The fighting erupted when five trucks of US soldiers and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) tried to enter the district and were attacked by Sadr supporters, Amid said.


Coming under fire, the ICDC, a paramilitary force trained by the Americans, turned on the US soldiers and started to shoot at them, according to Amid.

The soldiers fled their vehicles and headed for cover and then began to battle both the Mehdi Army and the ICDC members, he said. Their vehicles were set ablaze.

Heavy gunfire rattled the district and columns of black smoke billowed into the sky.

Burning tyres and tree trunks were used to barricade the neighbourhood, where young men toting clubs and carrying light weapons patrolled the streets.

But 16 US Humvees all-terrain vehicles, backed by two tanks, rolled into Showla, the AFP correspondent said.

Tension was also running high in the Shi'ite-controlled Sadr City slum in northern Baghdad, a day after pitched battles between Sadr partisans and the US military left 22 Iraqis dead and 85 others wounded, and killed seven US troops.

US troops opened fire today wounding a child after a group of children stoned soldiers deployed outside the Karama police station, an AFP correspondent said.

Amer al-Hussein, a spokesman for Sadr in the impoverished neighbourhood, told AFP that the incendiary Shi'ite leader had "called for a return to calm but his partisans want to fight against the American troops".

"We want peace not confrontations but if the Americans enter our neighbourhood, there will be a fight," Hussein said.

He said that US troops had arrested militiamen from Sadr's Mehdi Army but the report could not be immediately confirmed by the US military.

Three US tanks blocked the two entrances to Sadr City and soldiers searched cars while helicopters flew overhead. US troops also reclaimed the main police station which Sadr backers had seized yesterday.

The seven US soldiers died yesterday fighting for control of police and public buildings in the Shi'ite suburb.

Thousands of people, some of them armed, gathered outside Sadr's offices in Sadr City to take part in the funeral of people killed in Sunday's fierce fighting.

"There is only one God. America is the enemy of Allah," the crowd chanted as a coffin was carried through the streets. The uprising by Sadr's supporters also raged on elsewhere as they seized the governor's office in the British-controlled southern port city of Basra, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.

Dozens of armed Mehdi Army militiamen stormed the governor's office at dawn today, raising a green Islamic flag on the roof, he said.

Four hours later British troops were no longer in the area while policemen who had been inside the building when it was overrun were seen deployed alongside the Medhi Army militiamen.

In the deadliest clashes, at least 20 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in fighting yesterday between the Mehdi Army and Spanish-led coalition forces in the Shi'ite shrine city of Najaf. A Salvador soldier also died.

Another four were killed in similar clashes between British-led forces and Sadr's supporters in the southern city of Amara.

Sadr told his followers on Sunday to "terrorise" the enemy because protests had become useless. It was not clear whether Sadr's call was an order to resort to violence.

Tensions had boiled over with the arrest of a top Sadr aide in connection with the murder of a rival cleric last year and after the shutting down of a pro-Sadr newspaper last month.


AFP



This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/05/1081017100527.html

 

Especially pathetic considering his own father knew better:

A Quotation From George Bush [Sr].

"Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

I think a pronounced "DUH" is applicable...

 

Well, at least we know the decision to go to Iraq was a careful and well reasoned one based solely on the vicissitudes of a weak UN and an evil man. I'm glad we have a leader who weighed everything carefully and did not make such a critical decision until the last possible moment. (And Clarke is just disgruntled.)
___________________

Bush and Blair made secret pact for Iraq war

· Decision came nine days after 9/11
· Ex-ambassador reveals discussion

David Rose
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer

President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001.
According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner when Blair became the first foreign leader to visit America after 11 September, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror's initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Regime change was already US policy.

It was clear, Meyer says, 'that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions'. Elsewhere in his interview, Meyer says Blair always believed it was unlikely that Saddam would be removed from power or give up his weapons of mass destruction without a war.

Faced with this prospect of a further war, he adds, Blair 'said nothing to demur'.

Details of this extraordinary conversation will be published this week in a 25,000-word article on the path to war with Iraq in the May issue of the American magazine Vanity Fair. It provides new corroboration of the claims made last month in a book by Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, that Bush was 'obsessed' with Iraq as his principal target after 9/11.

But the implications for Blair may be still more explosive. The discussion implies that, even before the bombing of Afghanistan, Blair already knew that the US intended to attack Saddam next, although he continued to insist in public that 'no decisions had been taken' until almost the moment that the invasion began in March 2003. His critics are likely to seize on the report of the two leaders' exchange and demand to know when Blair resolved to provide the backing that Bush sought.

The Vanity Fair article will provide further ammunition in the shape of extracts from the private, contemporaneous diary kept by the former International Development Secretary, Clare Short, throughout the months leading up to the war. This reveals how, during the summer of 2002, when Blair and his closest advisers were mounting an intense diplomatic campaign to persuade Bush to agree to seek United Nations support over Iraq, and promising British support for military action in return, Blair apparently concealed his actions from his Cabinet.

For example, on 26 July Short wrote that she had raised her 'simmering worry about Iraq' in a meeting with Blair, asking him for a debate on Iraq in the next Cabinet meeting - the last before the summer recess. However, the diary went on, Blair replied that this was unnecessary because 'it would get hyped ... He said nothing [was] decided, and wouldn't be over summer.'

In fact, that week Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, was in Washington, meeting both Bush and his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, in order to press Blair's terms for military support, and Blair himself had written a personal memorandum to the President in which he set them out. Vanity Fair quotes a senior American official from Vice-President Dick Cheney's office who says he read the transcript of a telephone call between Blair and Bush a few days later.

'The way it read was that, come what may, Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing. Blair did not need any convincing. There was no, "Come on, Tony, we've got to get you on board". I remember reading it and then thinking, "OK, now I know what we're going to be doing for the next year".'

Before the call, this official says, he had the impression that the probability of invasion was high, but still below 100 per cent. Afterwards, he says, 'it was a done deal'.

As late as 9 September, Short's diary records, when Blair went to a summit with Bush and Cheney at Camp David in order to discuss final details, 'T[ony] B[lair] gave me assurances when I asked for Iraq to be discussed at Cabinet that no decision [had been] made and [was] not imminent.' Later that day she learnt from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, that Blair had asked to make 20,000 British troops available in the Gulf. She still believed her Prime Minister's assurances, but wrote that, if had she not done so, she would 'almost certainly' have resigned from the Government. At that juncture her resignation would have dealt Blair a very damaging blow.

But if Blair was misleading his own Government and party, he appears to have done the same thing to Bush and Cheney. At the Camp David meeting, Cheney was still resisting taking the case against Saddam and his alleged weapons of mass destruction to the UN.

According to both Meyer and the senior Cheney official, Blair helped win his argument by saying that he could be toppled from power at the Labour Party conference later that month if Bush did not take his advice. The party constitution makes clear that this would have been impossible and senior party figures agree that, at that juncture, it was not a politically realistic statement.

Short's diary shows in the final run-up to war Blair persuaded her not to resign and repeatedly stated that Bush had promised it would be the UN, not the American-led occupying coalition, which would supervise the reconstruction of Iraq. This, she writes, was the clinching factor in her decision to stay in the Government - with devastating consequences for her own political reputation.

Vanity Fair also discloses that on 13 January, at a lunch around the mahogany table in Rice's White House office, President Chirac's top adviser, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, and his Washington ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, made the US an offer it should have accepted. In the hope of avoiding an open breach between the two countries, they said that, if America was determined to go to war, it should not seek a second resolution, that the previous autumn's Resolution 1441 arguably provided sufficient legal cover, and that France would keep quiet if the administration went ahead.

But Bush had already promised Blair he would seek a second resolution and Blair feared he might lose Parliament's support without it. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office legal department was telling him that without a second resolution war would be illegal, a view that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, seemed to share at that stage. When the White House sought Blair's opinion on the French overture, he balked.

A Downing Street spokesman said last night: 'Iraq had been a foreign policy priority for a long time and was discussed at most meetings between the two leaders. Our position was always clear: that we would try to work through the UN, and a decision on military action was not taken until other options were exhausted in March last year.'

 

To illuminate my earlier post...
___________________
The Washington Monthly's Who's Who
December 2003


Special Baghdad edition

By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway


Simone Ledeen is serving her country. She is the daughter of Michael Ledeen, the Iran-Contra luminary, AEI scholar, and all-around capo in the neocon mafia. She's 29, a freshly-minted M.B.A., with little to no experience in war-torn countries. But as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy.

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.

It's not that Americans lack such experience. In the last decade particularly, many American officials acquired a great deal of expertise in post-conflict reconstruction in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and in post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe and around the globe--expertise that could have been put to good use at the CPA. Names frequently mentioned are those of General Bill Nash, who commanded troops in the Gulf War and NATO operations in Bosnia; Robert Perito, former senior foreign service officer and deputy director of the Justice Department's international police training program, who helped advise peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and helped organize post-conflict police training in Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia; Bob Gelbard, former U.S. presidential envoy to the Balkans; and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jacques Klein, who served in various capacities in the Balkans under the United States and the United Nations. Yet according to experts in the field, few of those with experience in these various deployments got the call to serve or even had their opinions solicited.

In their place, the architects of the war chose card-carrying Republicans--operatives, flacks, policy-wonks and lobbyists--for almost every key assignment in the country. Some marquee examples include U.S. civil administrator Paul Bremer's senior advisor and liaison to Capitol Hill, Tom Korologos, one of the most powerful GOP lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Then there's the man in charge of privatizing Iraq's 200-odd state owned companies, Tom Foley, a venture capitalist and high-flying GOP fundraiser. Foley was one of the Bob Dole's top-ten career donors, Connecticut finance chair for Bush 2000 and a classmate of the president's from Harvard Business School.

The chief advisor to the Agriculture Ministry is Dan Amstutz, a Reagan administration veteran who until recently served as the president of the North American Export Grain Association. Oxfam's Director of Policy Kevin Watkins recently quipped that with his record of opening up developing economies to cheap American agricultural exports, "putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission." The presence of so many GOP lobbyists and fat-cats on the CPA roster has led many to suspect that the staffing was driven by the desire to award prized contracts to friendly companies and campaign donors. There is more than a little truth in those impressions. But a closer look paints a more complex picture.

In the lead-up to war, the architects of the coming invasion fought endless rearguard battles against their enemies at the State Department and the C.I.A. to keep the major policy decisions firmly in their hands. And the process continued as they began to staff CPA itself, where they wrote off not only State Department employees (considered disloyal because State had resisted the hawks over Iraq strategy) but also anyone who worked at NGO's (ideologically suspect) and those who had worked in Clinton's government (ditto).

By making partisan loyalty their primary criteria, the administration ruled out most of the people with experience in the field and restricted themselves to politically trustworthy Republicans, many of whom, though often well-meaning and admirably willing to serve their country in a very dangerous place, had little to no experience to prepare them for the challenges they'd encounter in Iraq.

A typical example is Dan Senor. Before attending Harvard Business School from 1999 to 2001, Senor was a staffer for then-Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan. After receiving his MBA, he went to the Carlyle Group, where he was a venture capitalist from 2001 to 2003. Senor left Carlyle in 2003 for a brief stint as White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan's deputy before shipping off to Iraq. Though he showed up in Iraq as a junior press handler, Senor is now Bremer's senior advisor and for most of last summer he was in charge of organizing Iraq's post-Saddam media, an effort which most have rated as little short of a disaster. More examples can be found at the Ministry of Education, often cited by the White House as one of the CPA's signal successes. Who runs the Ministry of Education? The chief American advisor to the Minister of Education is Williamson Evers, a school voucher advocate and Libertarian activist from the Hoover Institution who was an education policy advisor on the Bush 2000 campaign. The first of Evers's two deputies is Leslye Arsht, a Republican education policy wonk who served as deputy press secretary under Ronald Reagan and then in the Department of Education under George H.W. Bush. Evers's second deputy was Jim Nelson, President George W. Bush's education commissioner from when he was governor of Texas. (Nelson recently returned stateside.)

Each of the three has education policy credentials. But one searches their résumés in vain for any evidence of the sort of expertise that would suit them to rebuild an educational system in an Arab country in the aftermath of war, a decade of sanctions, and two generations of totalitarian rule.

To date, Evers and his team have resisted the urgings of their colleagues back in Washington to foist on Iraq vouchers and other schemes conservatives have thus far failed to get enacted in the United States. But critics say that even the much-hyped successes getting schools refurbished and reopened may not stand up to scrutiny. The White House routinely trumpets the fact that 1,595 of Iraq's 10,000 schools have already been rehabilitated. But when Newsweek reporters visited five of those schools in October, they found each one trash-strewn, poorly supplied, and mostly a wreck.

More such "help" may be on the way in the person of Rich Galen, veteran GOP-spin meister, former spokesman for Vice President Dan Quayle and onetime head of Newt Gingrich's GOPAC. In late October, Galen received the call to serve his country in Iraq as yet another of Bremer's Senior Advisors. His gig? Adding more artillery to the Iraq War spin operation. "My job," Galen told The New York Post before shipping off, "will be to help reporters on the ground find interesting stories that they can use. If there's a civil-affairs unit out of Manhattan that rebuilt a school, it might be of interest to Channel 5 but not to a network."

CPA officials say that the older GOP functionaries do a reasonable job keeping their partisanship publicly under wraps. But the younger Republicans in Iraq spend much of their time plotting against the Democrats. "Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how they will screw the Democrats," said one CPA official. "It was really pretty shocking to hear them talk."

"They are all on the campaign trail," said another official. "They see this as a stepping stone to a better job in the next Bush administration." "I don't always know if they are Republicans," said yet another senior CPAer. "But what is clear is that they know nothing about development, and nothing about transitional economies." They're trying to do the right thing, this official adds, "but they do what they do without any knowledge of how the post-war world works in reality. They come up with hare-brained schemes that cause so many problems they take more time to fix than to create."

It's also driven journalists on the ground, watching these operatives move in and out of Saddam's marble Republican Palace, which CPA commandeered as its headquarters, to joke: "They don't call it the Republican Palace for nothing."

 

Let's consult the Pres...

From today's PC...
_______________

THE PRESIDENT: I just met with Specialist Chris Hill's family from North Carolina. You know, I told the family how much we appreciated his sacrifice -- he was killed in Iraq -- and assured him that we would stay the course, that a free Iraq was very important for peace in the world, long-term peace, and that we're being challenged in Iraq because there are people there that hate freedom. But the family was pleased to hear that we -- its son would not have died in vain. And that's an important message that I wanted to share with you today.

Let me ask you a couple of questions. Who is the AP person?

Q I am.

THE PRESIDENT: You are?

Q Sir, in regard to --

THE PRESIDENT: Who are you talking to?

Q Mr. President, in regard to the June 30th deadline, is there a chance that that would be moved back?

THE PRESIDENT: No, the intention is to make sure the deadline remains the same. I believe we can transfer authority by June 30th. We're working toward that day. We're, obviously, constantly in touch with Jerry Bremer on the transfer of sovereignty. The United Nations is over there now. The United Nations representative is there now to work on the -- on a -- on to whom we transfer sovereignty. I mean, in other words, it's one thing to decide to transfer. We're now in the process of deciding what the entity will look like to whom we will transfer sovereignty. But, no, the date remains firm.

Stretch.

Q Mr. President, are you concerned at all that events like we've seen over the last week in Iraq are going to make it tougher to meet that deadline, or increase pressure from the U.N. or anyone else?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think there's -- my judgment is, is that the closer we come to the deadline, the more likely it is people will challenge our will. In other words, it provides a convenient excuse to attack. In this particular incident, with Sadr, this is one person who is deciding that rather than allow democracy to flourish, he's going to exercise force. And we just can't let it stand. As I understand, the CPA today announced a warrant for his arrest. This is one person -- this is a person, and followers, who are trying to say, we don't want democracy -- as a matter of fact, we'll decide the course of democracy by the use of force. And that is the opposite of democracy. And it's -- that's why the CPA issued the statement they issued.

But, Stretch, I think throughout this period there's going to be tests. We were tested in Fallujah. And the desire for those who do not want there to be a free and democratic Iraq is to shake our will through acts of violence and terror. It's not only our will, it's the will of other coalition forces and it's the will of the Iraqi people. As you know, that many Iraqis have been targeted. As a matter of fact, the al Qaeda affiliate Zarqawi made it clear that part of the strategy was to turn Shia on Sunni by killing innocent Iraqis.

And we've got to stay the course, and we will stay the course. The message to the Iraqi citizens is, they don't have to fear that America will turn and run. And that's an important message for them to hear. If they think that we're not sincere about staying the course, many people will not continue to take a risk toward -- take the risk toward freedom and democracy.

Yes, Tamara.

Q Mr. President, can you tell us a little bit about your decision-making for the next ambassador to Iraq, and what you're looking for in the person who would represent the administration?

THE PRESIDENT: Good question. I am looking for somebody who can run a big embassy, somebody who understands the relationship between an embassy and the military. Because one of the things that's going to be very important for the next ambassador to Iraq -- this will be the person that takes Jerry Bremer's place -- will be the willingness and capability of working with a very strong -- a country in which there's a very strong U.S. military presence, as well as a coalition presence. This person is going to need to have enough experience to basically start an embassy from the ground up, and also be willing to transfer certain people and authorities from the CPA to the embassy itself. In other words, it's a very complex task that's going to require a skilled soul. And we're in the process of searching it out now.

Q Mr. President, can you just tell me -- the 9/11 Commission, the Chairman yesterday, Governor Kean, said a date had been set, I think, for your testimony and the Vice President's. Is that --

THE PRESIDENT: I would call it a meeting.

Q A meeting, I'm sorry.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

Q Has that date been set, and could you share it with us? And number two, can you tell us the rationale as to why you have chosen to testify or rather meet with them with the Vice President?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, it will be a great opportunity from them to ask both of us our opinions on the subject. And we're meeting with the entire commission. I'm not exactly sure what the status is of putting out the date. I told them I'd meet with them at a time that's convenient for all of us, and hopefully we'll come to that date soon.

I look forward to sharing information with them. Let me just be very clear about this: Had we had the information that was necessary to stop an attack, I'd have stopped the attack. And I'm convinced any other government would have, too. I mean, make no mistake about it; if we'd had known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings, we'd have done everything in our power to stop it. And what is important for them to hear, not only is that, but that when I realized that the stakes had changed, that this country immediately went on war footing, and we went to war against al Qaeda. It took me very little time to make up my mind, once I determined al Qaeda to do it, to say, we're going to go get them. And we have, and we're going to keep after them until they're brought to justice and America is secure.

But I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm looking forward to Condi testifying. I made a decision to allow her to do so because I was assured that it would not jeopardize executive privilege. And she'll be great. She's a very smart, capable person who knows exactly what took place, and will lay out the facts. And that's what the commission's job is meant to do, and that's what the American people want to see. I'm looking forward to people hearing her.

All right, got to go to work. Thanks. Good to see you all.

 

Repub. Sen. Richard Lugar expressed a lot of skepticism about the June 30th handover. For me personally I've always thought it was half baked. The Admin for months had refused to name a timetable for handover and then suddenly when casualties spike and approval ratings drop trot out of nowhere this plan to hand control over on June 30th.

Since war supporters like to compare Iraq to Germany, a comparison that is wrong in my opinion. Keep in mind that elections weren't held in Germany until years after they were defeated and that was even without US casualties in occupied Germany.

 

Just in case anyone missed it...

Can anyone out there offer a good reason to support the June 30 date when we have no idea "what the entity will look like?"

Folks, there's no other way to say it... we are screwed in Iraq. I see nothing Bush or Kerry can do to make it better. I only see degrees of making it worse.

 

Even the Brits are ticked off about how political the CPA is...
_________________
Blair to Visit Bush Next Week for Talks Dominated by Iraq
By PATRICK E. TYLER, NYTimes

LONDON, April 5 — Prime Minister Tony Blair will fly to Washington next week for a meeting with President Bush that will be dominated by concern over mounting instability and the political transition in Iraq, British officials said Monday.

The meeting comes at a critical moment for the American-British alliance in Iraq as dual insurgencies by disaffected Sunni Muslims, who backed Saddam Hussein, and militant Shiites flare. Details of the Bush-Blair agenda were being closely held, but officials here said it would focus on how to stabilize the country while seeking to adhere to the June 30 timetable for turning over sovereignty to an Iraqi government.

British officials said Mr. Blair's trip had been scheduled for some time and therefore was not a "crisis" summit meeting on Iraq. But the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified because the meeting has not been officially announced yet, said the sudden spike in violence and instability in the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad and in Shiite neighborhoods and towns would transform the meeting into a strategic review of policies toward Iraq.

Thus the meeting is likely to shape the strategy of the two leaders for managing Iraq through the coming months, which will test the allies' ability to turn over power during a summer that will also be dominated by important dates in the presidential election in the United States.

The Bush-Blair meeting had tentatively been set for June, but Mr. Blair's aides said the British leader did not want a visit during an election year to fall too near the dates of this summer's political conventions.

The high-level policy review on Iraq by Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush also comes at a time of growing frustration among some British and American diplomats over the management style of the American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III.

British officials say that while they are sympathetic with the daunting management task that Americans have undertaken, they also believe that the Coalition Provisional Authority under Mr. Bremer has become too "politicized," meaning that events are orchestrated and information controlled with the American political agenda uppermost in mind.

Diplomats who have served in Iraq say they are concerned that the occupation authority has not done enough to reach out to the Shiite leaders over the last 12 months, or to include Iraqis more broadly in the critical areas of security and national reconstruction strategy.

In a BBC interview today, Hamid al-Bayyati, a senior representative of the largest Shiite party working closely with the allies, said that Mr. Bremer had made a series of mistakes in dealing with the Shiite majority in the country.

Mr. Blair, who has a close relationship with Mr. Bush, publicly avoids any hint of criticism of American policy. Whether the prime minister shares some of the views that are being expressed by these seasoned diplomats was unclear.

The departing British envoy in Baghdad, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, had expressed concerns to his colleagues about Mr. Bremer's style in running postwar Iraq, particularly in closely controlling decision-making with minimal input from Iraqis and other voices, including Sir Jeremy's, said officials who declined to be identified because of the confidential nature of diplomatic communications.

Sir Jeremy served as Britain's ambassador to the United Nations. He has returned to England after a six-month assignment that was very frustrating for him, British officials said. He could not be reached for comment on Monday.

With his departure, Britain effectively downgraded its representation in Baghdad by appointing David Richmond as the senior British representative. Mr. Richmond, a career Foreign Service officer, served in a more junior capacity in Baghdad last year.

On Monday, Lord Hurd, the foreign secretary under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told the BBC that "it is absolutely crucial for the reputation of the prime minister, the reputation of the government and of the country" to send a high-level British envoy to Iraq, preferably a minister, to help guide the country through the process of taking over full sovereignty on June 30.

"We need somebody with equivalent status to the Americans and someone who can really represent us at the political level," Lord Hurd said.

Officials in the prime minister's office said they would not discuss Mr. Blair's travel plans for security reasons, but two government officials confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Bush would be announced by the end of the week.

One said that a newspaper report over the weekend that Mr. Blair would travel to Crawford, Tex., for Easter weekend was incorrect, but added that the trip would closely follow the announcement, probably early next week.

 

Man, are we screwed. This is not hit and run guerilla action, this is not terrorist attacks, this is much more substantial.
__________________

Sources: Al-Sadr supporters take over Najaf
Wanted Iraqi cleric said to be at holy shrine

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Supporters of maverick Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr controlled government, religious and security buildings in the holy city of Najaf early Tuesday evening, according to a coalition source in southern Iraq.

The source said al-Sadr's followers controlled the governor's office, police stations and the Imam Ali mosque, one of Shia Muslim's holiest shrines.

Iraqi police were negotiating to regain their stations, the source said.

The source also said al-Sadr was busing followers into Najaf from Sadr City in Baghdad and that many members of his outlawed militia, Mehdi's Army, were from surrounding provinces.

Business people are closing their shops and either leaving the city or hoarding their wares in their homes, the source said.

Earlier Tuesday, fighting erupted on the northern side of Fallujah when a routine patrol came under fire. The Marines sent an Abrams tank and several Humvees to reinforce the patrol, along with helicopters.

One Marine was seriously wounded and evacuated to a combat hospital.

Also on Tuesday, U.S. Marines detained six Iraqis carrying explosives near an operational command post north of Fallujah, a Marine officer said. The officer said the material was intended to make homemade bombs.

In Baghdad, firefights continued Tuesday, particularly in the Shiite area of Sadr City. Reports also indicated that Italian troops were battling al-Sadr supporters in Nasiriyah.

As the fighting flared, al-Sadr, who sparked the violent clashes between his supporters and U.S. troops, was planning to take refuge in Imam Ali mosque, according to a posting on his Web site.

Al-Sadr also called for a general strike, demanding that the coalition pull back its troops from populated areas and release prisoners taken into custody in recent demonstrations.

Twelve coalition soldiers -- 11 Americans and a Salvadoran -- and dozens of Iraqis have been killed in three days of battles in Baghdad and Najaf, while firefights have erupted in other cities and towns as well.

Seven Marines were killed in the same time period in al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, along with two more soldiers in northern Iraq.

Despite the rising death toll, Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said "there is no question we have control over the country."

"I know if you just report on those few places, it does look chaotic," Bremer said on CNN's "American Morning." "But if you travel around the country, what you find is a bustling economy, people opening businesses right and left, unemployment has dropped.

"The story of the house that doesn't burn down is not much of a story in the news," he said. "The story of the house that does burn down is news."

The clashes began over the weekend when demonstrations supporting al-Sadr and his deputy -- who was arrested Saturday in connection with the killing last year of a moderate Shiite cleric by a mob of Sadr followers -- turned violent, first in Najaf against Spanish forces and then in Sadr City, named for al-Sadr's father, Mohammed al-Sadr.

The instability prompted the United Nations to temporarily halt convoys bringing Iraqi refugees back from Iran in the south.

Arrest warrant issued
The coalition announced Monday that an arrest warrant had also been issued for al-Sadr's arrest in connection with Abdul Majeed al-Khoei's death April 10, 2003, outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, where al-Sadr is now reported to have taken refuge.

Twelve people were arrested last fall when an Iraqi judge issued 25 warrants in the case, including the ones for al-Sadr and his deputy, Mustafa al-Yaqoubi, arrested in Najaf on Saturday and turned over to Iraqi police Monday, coalition officials said.

Bremer, who said Monday that al-Sadr and his supporters have "basically placed (themselves) outside the legal authorities," described al-Sadr on Tuesday as "a guy who has a fundamentally inappropriate view of the new Iraq."

"He believes that in the new Iraq, like in the old Iraq, power should be to the guy with guns," Bremer said. "That is an unacceptable vision for Iraq."

A spokesman for al-Sadr, Qais al-Khazaal, said in Najaf that al-Sadr had "received many letters from other religious leaders" supporting him, mentioning Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani -- Iraqi Shia's most senior cleric.

"Sistani said in his letter that he supported us for standing for what we believe ... but that he also thought that we should try to resolve this matter in a more calm and civil way," Khazaal said.

Referring to a letter sent by Bremer shutting down the pro al-Sadr -- and anti-coalition -- Al-Hawza, Khazaal said lawyers have determined the action was "illegitimate and against all laws."

"We will form a case and fight this," he said. Pentagon sources said the military would exercise caution in seeking Sadr in an attempt to avoid giving him more stature among radicalized Iraqis.

Pentagon sources also said that U.S. Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid had asked for options from his staff for bringing additional troops to bear against Sadr's militia if they are needed.

But the fight against al-Sadr and his followers wasn't the only clash facing coalition forces.

U.S. Marines on Monday locked down of the restive city of Fallujah, closing off the city in response to the killing and mutilation of four American civilian contractors last week.

About 1,300 troops from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, along with Iraqi armed forces, set up a cordon around the city Monday, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. The operation has been dubbed "Operation Vigilant Resolve."

Seven Marines have been killed since Saturday in the al Anbar province -- where Fallujah is located -- but the coalition has only confirmed one as a direct result of the Fallujah conflict.

Two more U.S. soldiers died Sunday, both in northern Iraq. Since the start of the war, 622 U.S. troops have died, 428 of them in hostile fire. Since President Bush announced the end of major combat in Iraq, 313 U.S. troops have been killed in hostile action.

Other developments

Britain is sending thousands of troops to Iraq to replace those already serving there, a British Ministry of Defense spokeswoman said Tuesday. Maj. Rachel Grimes said the move was part of a "normal" six-month troop rotation and would not result in an increase in the number of British troops in Iraq. About 4,500 members of the 1st Mechanized Brigade will begin deploying to Iraq at the end of the week, Grimes said. The rotation will take about a month to complete, she said.

 

From billmon.org...
___________________
"Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required [to occupy Iraq]. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."

Gen. Eric K. Shinseki
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
February 25, 2003

"Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark."

Paul Wolfowitz
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
February 27, 2003

"Imagine spreading 150,000 soldiers in the state of California and then ask yourself could you secure all of California all the time with 150,000 soldiers? The answer is no."

Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan
Press Interview
May 12, 2003

"We need far more than 150,000 troops to secure a country of that size."

Gen. Chuck Boyd, USAF (Ret.)
Reuters Interview
July 2, 2003

Successful strategies for population security and control have required force ratios either as large as or larger than 20 security personnel (troops and police combined) per thousand inhabitants … The population of Iraq today is nearly 25 million. That population would require 500,000 foreign troops on the ground to meet a standard of 20 troops per thousand residents.

Rand Corporation
The Painful Arithmetic of Stability Operations
Summer, 2003

"The number of troops, boots per square inch, is not the issue."

Gen. John Abizaid
Press Briefing
August 21, 2003

"General Abizaid and his commanders have said repeatedly that they not only don’t need more troops, they don’t want more American troops."

Paul Wolfowitz
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
September 9, 2003

U.S. military commanders have developed a plan to steadily cut back troop levels in Iraq next year, several senior Army officers said in recent interviews ... The plan ... would begin to draw down forces next spring, cutting the number of troops to fewer than 100,000 by next summer and then to 50,000 by mid-2005, officers involved in the planning said.

Washington Post
Reduction in U.S. Troops Eyed for '04
October 19, 2003

"I have not been told of a single military commander in Centcom, in Iraq, who is recommending additional U.S. military forces; not one."

Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing
November 6, 2003

"The increased demand on the force we are experiencing today is likely a “spike,” driven by the deployment of nearly 115,000 troops in Iraq. We hope and anticipate that that spike will be temporary. We do not expect to have 115,000 troops permanently deployed in any one campaign."

Donald Rumsfeld
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
February 5, 2004

The starkest evidence that the U.S. position in Iraq has deteriorated was the Pentagon's decision Monday to suspend the rotation home of about 24,000 U.S. troops. After an emergency conference among military officials Monday, a top military official at U.S. Central Command said the Pentagon was holding the troops in place to help stop the violence in Iraq from spreading out of control. The Pentagon is also looking at options for bringing even more U.S. troops from bases overseas or in the United States.

USA Today
A delicate time for U.S. mission
April 6, 2004

 

OK, I don't get why the guys at the top insist they need less troops instead of more. Apparently we are attempting to take over one city, Fallujah, of 300,000 with 1200 Marines. If we had a crime wave in a city, we would all laugh if the mayor police commisioner said we needed less police and less patrols. Are all the guys at the top in Iraq too beholden to Dumbsfeld to speak out in contradiction? This is starting to remind me of Lincoln and McClellan for some reason.

 

THE PRESIDENT: No, the intention is to make sure the deadline remains the same. I believe we can transfer authority by June 30th. We're working toward that day. We're, obviously, constantly in touch with Jerry Bremer on the transfer of sovereignty. The United Nations is over there now. The United Nations representative is there now to work on the -- on a -- on to whom we transfer sovereignty. I mean, in other words, it's one thing to decide to transfer. We're now in the process of deciding what the entity will look like to whom we will transfer sovereignty. But, no, the date remains firm.

rimrocker: Did you see the Daily Show last night? Jon Stewart showed this clip and then went on for a bit saying we're totally ready to transfer power, everything's in place, we just need to figure out who to give it to. Then said something like, "The baby's in the air folks..."

 

Which means it'll change...



I love this line

which means "we have no ****ing clue!"

 

A quote in today's NYTs