Iraq 2005

That said, the general picture he painted, while not out and out bleak, had concerns. As always refreshingly free of cant (though I'd be interested in a closer study of his general rhetoric to see *why* this is so), he identified the basics of the current problem as:

1) More than oil, more than human rights, what the US wanted post-9/11 in Iraq at all costs was a major set of bases in the Middle East in order to ensure al-Qaeda could never again establish formal presence in a country, and to act as a rapid response force to further threats, while no longer being beholden to Saudi Arabia -- indeed, to specifically bring force to bear on them as needed

2) At numerous points over the past two years, the US seemed to be fairly well set in terms of having achieved this in concert with working out some sort of government in Iraq that would be amenable to this situation.

3) Due to various events, many either within US control or potentially allowable by them and not acted on, but also due to other factors as well, the US has been unable to establish the full sense of stability necessary to allow for reason 1 to fully kick in

His summary was such:

The United States is therefore facing the worst possible dilemma in warfare. It has achieved critical strategic goals in its campaign, but it does not have the ability to close out that campaign. As the campaign drags on, the strategic gains are jeapordized. If the campaign is lost, not only will the strategic benefits be lost, but substantial additional ground will be lost as well. Therefore, the US cannot retreat and cannot win militarily. Its only option is political - to put together a coalition of forces in Iraq powerful enough to govern the country and willing to collaborate with the US. A war dependent on political arrangements is a war in jeopardy. It is easier to shape the battlefield than an Iraqi political consensus.

His further conclusion in a web-only final chapter to the book, written and published in October of last year, concluded that at that time, seen as a general US-al-Qaeda struggle, al-Qaeda as concept and organization was losing. A core part of that argument:

Strategically, the United States appears to have a well thought-out approach that makes the most of a very
weak hand. The trend lines are satisfactory, particularly considering where they started. We suspect that very
few people on September 12, 2001, would have thought that the situation would be as well contained today as
it is. Apart from a low but tolerable level of violence in Iraq, the broader war has evolved very much in favor
of the United States. This is partly due to the nature of the war and partly due to the strategic and operational
choices made by the administration.

Politically, the administration has acted with massive incompetence. Its failure to give a plausible defense
to a policy that can certainly be defended is amazing. Instead, the administration has stumbled through a
series of untenable and incoherent justifications for its actions until the political foundations of its war plans
have been undermined. From WMD to democratizing Iraq, the administration has constantly undermined its
own credibility.

This has substantial strategic consequences. The best strategy in the world cannot be executed by a nation
that doesn’t believe in it. Believing in a strategy requires that you believe in the leaders. And leaders who
constantly invent indefensible justifications for the strategy are incapable of executing that strategy.

The war is at a strange crossroads, for which we find few precedents. The broader war is certainly
moving in favor of the United States. The Iraq campaign has problems, but none that present a strategic
challenge to the broader war or to even the Iraq campaign itself. The enemy has failed to achieve any of its
goals and seems incapable of mounting a serious attack at this point. The war is not over and it is not won, but
the United States is ahead on points.

Now, his take has probably changed yet again over the last few months -- it was written and published pre-November election, for instance -- but I think it's not unreasonable to take it on board. I'd be interested in hearing what our own strategic George, Mr. Smith, thinks about this take (and/or Stratfor in general, if that has any bearing on the situation).

As it stands, this will be an interesting month but an even more interesting time is what follows, whatever it might be.

Meanwhile, James Wolcott has a depressing summary of an article in The Economist. Call it "Hearts and Minds, Part 47."

Loss in terms of "And now the State of the Union Address by Bin Laden," no, but that was never the intent.

"More than oil, more than human rights, what the US wanted post-9/11 in Iraq at all costs was a major set of bases in the Middle East in order to ensure al-Qaeda could never again establish formal presence in a country, and to act as a rapid response force to further threats, while no longer being beholden to Saudi Arabia -- indeed, to specifically bring force to bear on them as needed"

Failed. There were no insurgents, nor any al-Qaeda factions in Iraq before we invaded. The invasion and occupation has fueled the insurgency - and been a major factor in recruitment for al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda isn't even a group . It's a constantly evolving network. But let's keep yelling al-Qaeda since we can't spell it or pronounce it.

2)At numerous points over the past two years, the US seemed to be fairly well set in terms of having achieved this in concert with working out some sort of government in Iraq that would be amenable to this situation.

3) Due to various events, many either within US control or potentially allowable by them and not acted on, but also due to other factors as well, the US has been unable to establish the full sense of stability necessary to allow for reason 1 to fully kick in.

Don't even tell me you give this any credence. When, exactly, were we on the verge of "working out some government in Iraq". Did I miss that?
of course, #3 I completely agree with. Due to circumstances beyond our control the situation became an occupation that seems like an ongoing war. it's unfortunate that the plan didn't take in the citizens - who are now fucking pissed off.

Friedman is not arguing that al-Qaeda was in Iraq -- rather that in the judgment of the US government there is a need to secure and operate bases in the Middle East for response against al-Qaeda in the area, as it might arise. That I find this analysis interesting and worthy of consideration does not make me a pro-war hawk, thank you very much, and I am not about to quote the entire book to go into the full details of his analysis.

Now this said, let me quote again something from Friedman I noted above:

[The US's] only option is political - to put together a coalition of forces in Iraq powerful enough to govern the country and willing to collaborate with the US. A war dependent on political arrangements is a war in jeopardy. It is easier to shape the battlefield than an Iraqi political consensus.

It seems to me this is *exactly* accurate, whatever else you might think of the buildup to the current time, and no matter your political inclinations.

I should also note this, quoting from Friedman at the end of the book extensively:

The weakness of the US is not our soldiers, nor their numbers, but the vast distance that separates American leaders from those who fight. From government officials to media moguls to finance powerbrokers, few members of the leadership class have children who are at war. To them, the soldiers are alien, people they have never met and don't understand. When the children of the leaders stay home, the leaders think about war in unfortunate ways. As the most powerful nation in the world, we will be fighting many wars. A ruling class that sends the children of others to fight, but not their own, cannot sustain its power for very long.

This has two consequences. The elite, aware of their own timidity, project that trait on the American people and assume it is a national trait. And in a paradox, since the elite do not have to send their children to fight the enemy, they tend to badly underestimate the enemy at the beginning of our wars -- and overestimate them later. To truly appreciate the situation requires that one judge oneself and the enemy as coldly and dispassionately as possible.

Friedman, I should note, observes at the start of the book that he has children serving in the armed forces. His interest in this entire situation is hardly abstract.

When, exactly, were we on the verge of "working out some government in Iraq". Did I miss that?

My exact words were "seemed to be" -- not "is." That the perception of it 'seeming to be' was that of the US gov't where we might have had some doubts here is important, I'd think.

Of course. If anything, I reacted badly to the assumption that I was 'kidding.' I am not interested in kidding about death.

While I fully understand about wanting things to be different, we still have to deal with what is currently happening now. And that meant that those assumptions made by the administration -- those biases, those new conclusions, etc. -- have to be confronted. We may violently disagree with them but we cannot ignore the fact that they were put into place, and we cannot turn back the clock.

FWIW, Friedman is extremely critical about the reactions by the government to what al-Qaeda is and what it means on 9/11 and afterwards -- that they had to get to grips with the idea that this was not a country being conquered -- but that they are learning. His argument is not that the US is fighting or can fight a 'normal' war with al-Qaeda, but that more open and public actions are signifiers as to what might be happening instead. It's an argument well worth keeping in mind, no matter how much it might be hateful to consider.

As of today, the US military does not even know who their enemy is in Iraq. In very fundamental ways they are blind and deaf. That explains the rapid resort to torture in the quest for intelligence. We are losing, not because the enemy is so diabolically clever, but because the BushCo leadership caught its dick in a set of very stupid miscalculations from the very start.

The size of the army needed to succeed could only be provided by a US military draft. The reasons for this war were oversold from the start, then they became an ever-shifting pea in a shell game. BushCo never wanted to spend the time building a case for war that wouldn't fall down at the first whiff of reality. They calculated that once the country was herded into it, they'd stick it out rather than cut our losses and back away when it became obvious we had fucked up.

BushCo's stated war aims are still as bogus as a three dollar bill. The volunteer forces have been hung out to dry. It is totally FUBAR.

I agree about the bases in particular -- the mere fact of building them and maintaining them implies the personnel commitment on a regular basis.

I am reluctant to be Friedman's mouthpiece here if there's going to be misunderstanding -- and again, I'd love to hear/read more commentary from others involved in this whole thing, thus my call to Mr. Smith if he's reading this thread. Still, there is an interesting confluence here in that what Aimless is saying here:

The reasons for this war were oversold from the start, then they became an ever-shifting pea in a shell game. BushCo never wanted to spend the time building a case for war that wouldn't fall down at the first whiff of reality. They calculated that once the country was herded into it, they'd stick it out rather than cut our losses and back away when it became obvious we had fucked up.

...is pretty much what Friedman says in different language, namely that there's no question that the reasons provided were not the reasons intended, and that a foot in the door had to be established by BushCo to carry out its goals. And thus do power politics play havoc with our lives.

Now, a policy to affect a series of relatively peaceful and organic transformations to democracy in the region I would strongly favour.

I think we have to be extremely careful here -- lines like 'the United States appears to have a well thought-out approach that makes the most of a very weak hand' certainly aren't fully condemnatory of what's been done but don't strike me as ringing endorsements either (I note also the use of the word 'appears' instead of 'has'). I would say that the word 'justifiable' is less applicable than 'understandable' -- and NOT in the sense of acceptance, but in the sense that given the forces in play such results and actions could occur.

Keep in mind Friedman's impassioned but controlled description regarding American elites vs. American soldiers above -- he is consciously trying to look at this through a distanced point of view, as if playing a game of Risk. That's both a stylistic and a content decision which is tricky to manage but I think it's easy to see why he's doing that as well.

And thank you for the kind words -- one does try, however conscious one might be failures.

Sorta. That idea really preceded the "war on terror." You can find it implicit if not explicit in the policy papers that the New American Century gang wrote in the '90s. They knew Saudi Arabia wasn't a good longterm solution, because the U.S. presence there was causing problems for the Saudi royals and giving the Islamists a handy rallying point. So getting rid of Saddam and creating in his stead a nice, stable, free-market ally (with a buttload of oil) that would allow us military access -- putting the squeeze on Syria to one side and Iran to the other -- well, it was the best of all possible worlds. So the desire for military bases in Iraq waaaaaaaay predates Sept. 11. That just provided the pretext.

Now if only their ideas about how all this would work had been right, and if only their execution of their plans hadn't been utterly, bogglingly incompetent -- if, in other words, the world we live in happened to be the one they fantasize about -- then we'd all be drinking tamarind martinis in Ramadi.

http://www.1-87vehicles.org/images/Clip_Art/happy_new_year.gif

IRAQ’S rapidly swelling insurgency numbers 200,000 fighters and active supporters and outnumbers the United States-led coalition forces, the head of the country’s intelligence service said yesterday.

The import of it is clear enough, however. Bombings, mostly against Iraq forces but also against Americans, are happening daily, and then there's this little problem:

Baghdad governor Ali al-Haidri has been shot dead in a roadside ambush in the Iraqi capital, the highest-profile assassination there since May.

Attackers shot at his armoured-plated car from different directions as his convoy drove through northern Baghdad.

Violence has been escalating ahead of elections planned for 30 January.

In separate incidents, at least 10 people are killed in a blast in Baghdad while attacks across the country claim the lives of five US soldiers.

The spectacular assasination of civilian figures like Margaret Hassan are obviously not at the center of the insurgency's strategy and most likely have been carried out by al-Qaeda terrorist cells that are completely separate from the main insurgency and numerically insignifigant in comparison. The main insurgency is military in character, well-planned, strategically sophisticated and designed to result in a complete military victory over US and British forces. They seem to be doing a bang-up job so far.

My guess is that by next September the Bush strategy will be strained to the breaking point by the weight of its complete failure to achieve any of its objectives. The key question is troop strength - boots on the ground. The Bush administration will not solve this problem because it has no political solution to it. Instead, it will drastically increase the level of spending in Iraq, hoping for a technical solution. They'll also be hiring a lot more mercenaries. The level of violence will escalate, as will the number of atrocities, but not the chances for success. Hello to Rumsfeld's "long hard slog."

The only other viable outcome I can foresee would be if the Bushies get bright for a change, declare a "victory for democracy" after the elections and pull out as rapidly as possible under the covering fire of a hail of public relations flack. I do not believe there is any way Bush can get a military draft through Congress.

The Pentagon says that more than 10,000 US military personnel have been wounded in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003.

Newly published figures show that more than 5,000 of the wounded have been unable to return to duty.

Many have been left with serious injuries such as lost limbs and sight, mostly as a result of the blast effects of roadside bombs.

And these are just the injuries we can see.

I think this is exactly right & your post generally, although I would have put more emphasis on the fact that the insurgents are in large measure Iraqis who oppose the occupation for patriotic reasons. Have Bush/Blair even read any Shakespeare? Because if they had they would have realised that government by brutal dictatorship does not dilute patriotism in the way they imagine and will not result in a foreign occupation being anything other than hugely and violently resented. (Imagine the Shakespeare play in which, say, an occupying foreign army is welcomed as liberators by the Yeomen of England because Richard III is a usurper and brutal tyrant: just to entertain the idea reveals the idiocy of of the Bush/Blair analysis).

Getting out now would almost certainly be the least bad outcome. The problem is the bizarre paradox that Bush/Blair would now be held much more responsible for bloodshed following their withdrawal than for bloodshed during their continuing occupation. That (and not minimisation of bloodshed) is the political reason why the occupation will continue.

Incidentally I think Friedman's analysis is far from realpolitik. Realpolitik would recognise, as Bush does not ( and Friedman falls into the same trap) that a threat to individual Americans is not the same as a threat to the American state. Only the latter would have justified the war Bush has undertaken. Al Qaeda does *not* represent such a threat, however grandiose its claims. Making all American citizens safe from potential terrorism is not an achievable goal of any government and to pursue it at the cost of 100,000 plus civilian lives in Iraq is mad.

Noooo...but if you do actually want the insurgents to "win," I'd be interested to hear what you mean by that. I mean, of the various groups contending for influence and power in post-invasion Iraq, I'm not sure the ones massacring civilians on a regular basis are the guys to cheer for. In some ways, the current short-term American goals do make sense (and it's worth remembering how drastically different those goals are now from what was originally envisioned, because the new short-term goals have been shaped by reality rather than neo-con nonsense -- or, at least, they represent a compromise between reality and neo-con nonsense). A drawn-out civil war in Iraq is a losing proposition for everyone, most especially the people who live there. So somehow a new balance of power has to emerge that gives the Shiites and ayatollahs enough power to be happy, but also protect the interests and dignity of the Sunni clans (and the demands for self-rule from the Kurds, of course). That may actually be an impossible equation, given the circumstances. In fact, I think it is impossible, and there might not be any way to avoid protracted violence. There are too many people now with an interest in a certain level of permanent instability, plus this has spillover in Syria, Iran and Turkey that is only going to get more pronounced as time goes by. So I'm not saying there's a good answer. But my disgust with the entire American operation there does not translate into any kind of sympathy or support for whatever constitutes the insurgency. Those motherfuckers are killing innocent people every single day. They rank at the bottom of my list of Iraqis who I want to see emerge from all of this in positions of influence.

Meanwhile, some individual dumbassness:

An Iraqi civilian has testified that US soldiers forced him and his cousin to jump into the River Tigris and laughed as his relative was swept to his death.

"He was calling my name, said: 'Help me! Help me!'" Marwan Fadel Hassoun told a military trial in Texas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51687-2005Jan5.html

He also said the Army is relying too much on "volunteers" from the Reserve force rather than requiring individuals or units to serve. This threatens "to distort the very nature of service" and tends to draw those who "enjoy lesser responsible positions in civilian life," he wrote. He sounded especially incensed about the current practice of paying volunteers an extra $1,000 a month, saying this sets a precedent and risks blurring the line between "volunteer" and "mercenary."

This part really caught my eye.

WASHINGTON - Stretched thin by the wars in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), the Army is considering a National Guard and Reserve policy shift that could result in part-timers being called to active duty multiple times for up to two years each time, a senior Army official said Thursday.

[...]

One reason that the National Guard and Reserve have been used so heavily over the past three years is that the active-duty Army is too small to meet the demands of war — particularly in Iraq, where troop levels have far exceeded original predictions — while also maintaining a presence in traditional areas of influence such as Europe and the Korean peninsula.

The Army now has about 660,000 troops on active duty, of which about 160,000 are members of the Guard and Reserve.

The Army wants them to be eligible for an unlimited number of call-ups, so long as no single mobilization lasts more than 24 months, the official said...

Rumsfeld's attitude has already led to a series of mistakes that have made a difficult situation more difficult. It has put the administration on the defensive about its conduct of a policy that is vital to America's national interest. It has distracted attention from the problem of winning the current war--our most important priority today bar none. These problems don't result from the liberal media or the antiwar crowd making a ruckus about nothing. They result from Rumsfeld's stubborn adherence to a wrongheaded policy. Surely, with the election safely over, there is no longer any need to protect the architect of these mistakes.

Called to return to duty

Can someone explain why that's more important than education, health care, and the dollar's decline? Maybe I'm just slow.

"It's hard to look these people in the eye after blowing everything up," said Staff Sgt. Travis McKinney, 31, of Vallejo, Calif. "These people were just victims."

[Bold emphasis, mine. RS.]

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
You're unbelievable!

...y'know...oh, the hell with it...

This is the Weekly Standard we're talking about -- neocon central, or one of said spots. Basically, they've essentially staked a lot of their reputation on this war as being 'the right thing to do' and are now starting to realize, especially as the grand goal of nation-building looks ever more impossible to carry out in the manner that they preferred, what that means, namely that their white knight Bush and his obsession with specific personal loyalty might do harm than good in the end. Thats a split that, frankly, is exactly what I want to see happen. (The exchange however is that this would only be fully accomplished via more death and destruction in Iraq -- which is not something I'm supporting in the slightest. The utter trap of this whole nonsense, as I've muttered before, is that the only thing which might impact the BushCo bunker mentality on this front is an insanely high amount of loss in blood and treasure for little return -- and anyone cheering for even more death is someone I don't want to deal with. Regardless, short of a vast and unexpected improvement in things over there this is going to be a year of fracturing among the right as time goes on, perhaps even a sort of panic as it comes clearer that Bush for four more years, unable to keep blaming things on Clinton anymore, means something that could really rebound nastily on the entire GOP coalition as a result, but that is a poor silver lining to look for as the dead and wounded increase over time.)

But our government is so incompetent! We can't even fix the inner cities here! Doesn't that bother them? I guess the evidence says not.

(I am not cheering for more death either. But I think death-and-destruction incidents like the one below might result in some type of impeachment for these fools. One can only dream.)

The Associated Press

Updated: 4:21 p.m. ET Jan. 8, 2005

AITHA, Iraq - An explosion at a house south of Mosul killed 14 people and wounded five early Saturday, the owner said. The U.S. military confirmed that an air strike hit the building, but said five people died.

During a cordon and search operation to capture an insurgent lead, a U.S. air force F-16 dropped a 500-pound guided bomb in the area south of Mosul on the house intended for search, a military statement said.

"The house was not the intended target for the air strike. The intended target was another location nearby," the statement said. "Responding forces reported that five individuals died in the strike."

The house owner, Ali Yousef, said the strike happened at about 2:30 a.m. in this village 30 miles south of Mousl and American troops immediately came and surrounded the area, blocking access for four hours.

The brick house was reduced to a pile of rubble, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.

The U.S.-led force "deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives," the military statement said.

By evening Saturday, all 14 dead -- including seven children -- had been buried in a nearby cemetery, Yousef said.

American troops have recently sent more troops to Mosul, which has seen heavy clashes in recent weeks between insurgents and American forces. U.S. officials acknowledge the area is still too unsafe for elections planned for Jan. 30 to take place there safely.

Meanwhile, Shiite and Sunni religious leaders voiced sharply divergent views on whether the vote should be held at all.

Continuing attacks

Earlier Saturday, militants abducted three senior Iraqi officials, beheaded a man who worked for the U.S. military, and killed four people in a suicide car bombing south of Baghdad, officials said.

At least three other people were killed in separate attacks across the country, a day after a U.S. general warned that insurgents may be planning “horrific” attacks ahead of Jan. 30 elections.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy chief of staff for strategic communications in Iraq, said Friday the United States has no intelligence indicating specific plots. But he said American leaders expected a rise in attacks.

“I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections,” Lessel said.

“If you look over the last six months, they have steadily escalated the barbaric nature of the attacks they have been committing. A year ago, you didn’t see these kinds of horrific things,” he said.

Possibly.

What if Osama Bin Laden said that about us? How can we be so smug and stupid at the same time? I will stop derailing ranting now.

I know. That's not really much of an excuse, but it's not so much him anyway as the mindset represented there -- and the way it illustrates that whatever lessons should have been learned from Vietnam were not learned at all, at least in some quarters.

The fundamental decision set up one nationwide vote for a new national assembly, rather than elections by districts and provinces. With a violent insurgency spreading through the Sunni Arab areas of the country, it now looks as if fewer Sunnis will vote, distorting the balance of the legislature and casting doubt on whether the election will be seen as legitimate.

According to officials planning the election, the decision was driven by the realities of an unstable Iraq and the unrelenting pressure to speed the country to a vote by the end of January 2005, as demanded by many Iraqis. To make that deadline, it was believed, there was no time to conduct a census or go through the politically divisive chore of drawing district lines.

A national constituency also made it easier to meet the demands of the former exiles installed in power in Baghdad to let millions of Iraqis living outside the country vote, and the demands of others to ensure that 25 percent of the legislators were women. The experts reasoned that it would be much easier to find women for slates running nationwide than for each of many smaller districts.

"We looked at a lot of alternatives and presented them to the Iraqis and everyone else," said an official involved in the decision-making process. "Basically, a nationwide constituency solved a lot of problems and made our lives a lot easier."

But now, with the violent insurgency and more than 7,000 candidates, many in alliances with other candidates, running for 275 seats nationwide, the disadvantages of the current system are becoming all too apparent, according to American, Iraqi and United Nations officials.

For one thing, these officials say, there is no possibility of postponing the election selectively in those districts gripped by the insurgency. For another, the expected low turnout in perhaps a fifth of the country, where the Sunni minority lives, will presumably lessen the chances of candidates who are popular there.

This problem is discouraging Sunnis from running or campaigning, and a failure of these candidates to win proportionate to their share of Iraq's population, could easily reinforce the Sunnis' alienation from the Shiite majority.

Thus an election intended to bring Iraq together and quell the insurgency could produce the opposite outcome, in part because of the way it has been organized.

The issue facing the Bush administration is simple. It can continue to fight the war as it has, hoping that a miracle will bring successes in 2005 that didn't happen in 2004. Alternatively, it can accept the reality that the guerrilla force is now self-sustaining and sufficiently large not to flicker out and face the fact that a U.S. conventional force of less than 150,000 is not likely to suppress the guerrillas. More to the point, it can recognize these facts: 1. The United States cannot re-engineer Iraq because the guerrillas will infiltrate every institution it creates. 2. That the United States by itself lacks the intelligence capabilities to fight an effective counterinsurgency. 3. That exposing U.S. forces to security responsibilities in this environment generates casualties without bringing the United States closer to the goal. 4. That the strain on the U.S. force is undermining its ability to react to opportunities and threats in the rest of the region. And that, therefore, this phase of the Iraq campaign must be halted as soon as possible.

---

Certainly, it would have been nice for the United States if it had been able to dominate Iraq thoroughly. Somewhere between "the U.S. blew it" and "there was never a chance" that possibility is gone. It would have been nice if the United States had never tried to control the situation, because now the United States is going to have to accept a defeat, which will destabilize the region psychologically for a while. But what is is, and the facts speak for themselves. We are not Walter Cronkite, and we are not saying that the war is lost. The war is with the jihadists around the world; Iraq was just one campaign, and the occupation of the Sunnis was just one phase of that campaign. That phase has been lost. The administration has allowed that phase to become the war as a whole in the public mind. That was a very bad move, but the administration is just going to have to bite the bullet and do the hard, painful and embarrassing work of cutting losses and getting on with the war. If Bush has trouble doing this, he should conjure up Lyndon Johnson's ghost, wandering restlessly in the White House, and imagine how Johnson would have been remembered if he had told Robert McNamara to get lost in 1966.

Sullivan adds as a summary point to the first quote: "[Stratfor] recommend withdrawing U.S. forces to the periphery of Iraq and letting the inevitable civil war take place in the center" -- a diagnosis they made around May or so of last year, so a rehash but a pointed one. Sullivan himself hopes something can improve but his pessimism is clear.

(On a slightly related note, Sullivan also links in a quote from another source that's rhetorically interesting, though it's patently a rose-colored glasses view of history:

"Now, if you know the tradition of the United States Army, one thing has been consistent and that is that we are aggressive and tough on the field of battle, but when you take prisoners they are treated humanely and with respect. That's the rule that was set by George Washington in the battle of Trenton on Dec. 25, 1776. The soldiers of the continental army took the Hessians and said these soldiers are mercenaries and we should take retribution on them. They wanted the Hessians to run the gauntlet and they would beat them with sticks. General Washington said we will not do this. He said these people will be treated with respect and dignity and they will suffer no abuse or torture, because to do otherwise would bring dishonor upon our sacred cause. That's one of the first orders given to the continental army and that antedates the United States. It has been military tradition for 240 years, and it was stopped by Donald Rumsfeld." - former lawyer for Andrei Sakharov, Scott Horton.)

Al-Quaeda is everywhere, and nowhere. The success of any terrorist network relies on anonymity.

Then, as now, for Iraqis, our invasion and occupation was a case of liberation from -- from human rights (think: the atrocities committed in Abu Ghraib which are still occurring daily there and elsewhere); liberation from functioning infrastructure (think: the malfunctioning electric system, the many-mile long gas lines, the raw sewage in the streets); liberation from an entire city to live in (think: Fallujah, most of which has by now been flattened by aerial bombardment and other means).

Iraqis were then already bitter, confused, and existing amid a desolation that came from myriads of Bush administration broken promises. Quite literally every liberated Iraqi I've gotten to know from my earliest days in the country has either had a family member or a friend killed by U.S. soldiers or from the effects of the war/occupation. These include such everyday facts of life as not having enough money for food or fuel due to massive unemployment and soaring energy prices, or any of the countless other horrors caused by the aforementioned. The broken promises, broken infrastructure, and broken cities of Iraq were plainly visible in those early months of 2004 -- and the sad thing is that the devastation I saw then has only grown worse since. The life Iraqis were living a year ago, horrendous as it was, was but a prelude to what was to come under the U.S. occupation. The warning signs were clear from a shattered infrastructure, to all the torturing, to a burgeoning, violent resistance.

http://www.mojones.com/news/dailymojo/2005/01/01_504.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6727646/

A week before the Presidential election, the Association of the United States Army held its annual convention in Washington. Membership in the association is open both to Army personnel and the corporations that sell things to the Army, and the gathering transformed the lower level of the Washington Convention Center into an arms bazaar. Attractive women posed fetchingly beside Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Volvo displayed its trucks, Barrett Firearms showed off its new .50-calibre sniper rifles, and the Gallup Organization offered an array of “business improvement services.” Upstairs, professional-development experts gave officers tips on everything from “actionable intelligence” to unit finance. Officers mingled in the hallways in dress-green droves, those who had been in combat distinguished by unit patches on the right arm rather than the left. The talk of the convention was a book published in 1997 that the officer corps has recently rediscovered. Many carried the volume under their arms, and no fewer than six urged me to read it: “Dereliction of Duty,” written by an Army major named H. R. McMaster. Using once classified Vietnam-era documents, McMaster finds fault not just with Robert McNamara, then the Secretary of Defense, who dismissed warnings from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Vietnam War would be hard to win, but with the four Chiefs themselves, who were complicit, because they failed to publicly voice their misgivings. “Each one of those four went to their graves thinking they didn’t do enough to protest,” White told me. “They should have put their stars on the table and said, ‘We won’t be part of this.’”

The officers fighting in Iraq are, most of the time, remarkably enthusiastic. This is their war, the only one they may get in their careers. It follows an attack on the United States, even if the connection between the attack and the war has been questioned. Within the tiny sliver of the war each sees, examples of brilliance and bravery abound. They’re proud to be a part of “the most beautiful Army in the history of the world,” as one recently returned captain put it; he praised his immediate commander for wisdom and compassion, and his company for being so disciplined and professional that it could turn off the violence “like a good hunting dog.” They brag about the Q36, a computerized weapon system that is so sophisticated it can spot an enemy mortar or rocket in midair, trace its trajectory backward, and fire a response before the enemy round lands. But they will also tell you that the war is excruciating. Despite their Buck Rogers technology, they are losing friends to weapons made from RadioShack gizmos, and the people they’ve been sent to help seem to hate them more every day. They can’t imagine when or how they will earn a victory parade.

interesting way of framing it like this, as opposed to adding "...or even proven"

makes you wonder if their arguments fall towards the ILM or IMDB style of discourse.

We have no such allies in Iraq, in that the Shi'a, the natural enemies of the Sunnis, deeply mistrust us and have very little reason to carry our water for us. If they set up death squads, it would be an independent effort to get strong enough to kick the USA forces out and realign with Iran.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

Our new ambassador to Iraq is Negroponte who's done this kind of thing before.

Iraq rebels in video taunt

Wed Jan 12, 2005 03:05 PM GMT
By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Departing from fiery Islamic slogans, Iraqi guerrillas have launched a propaganda campaign with an English-language video urging U.S. troops to lay down their weapons and seek refuge in mosques and homes.

The video, narrated in fluent English by what sounded like an Iraqi educated in the United States or Britain, also mocked the U.S. president's challenge to rebels in the early days of the insurgency to 'bring it on'.

"George W. Bush; you have asked us to 'bring it on'. And so help me, (we will) like you never expected. Do you have another challenge?," asked the narrator before the video showed explosions around a U.S. military Humvee vehicle.

Threats intended to demoralise and frighten in the tense build up to elections at the end of the month were tempered with invitations to desert and escape retribution.

A masked guerrilla from an unknown group called the Islamic Jihad Army, eschewing past impassioned Arabic-language threats of holy war, told U.S. soldiers: "This is not your war, nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq."

"To the American soldiers we say you can also choose to fight tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons and seek refuge in our mosques, churches and homes. We will protect you," he said.

There was no way of verifying the authenticity of the video obtained by Reuters.

Previous insurgent videos have been dominated by grisly beheadings of foreign hostages who kneel beside radical Islamic banners before their deaths.

The Islamic Jihad Army video featured familiar scenes of guerrillas blowing up U.S. convoys but also highlighted some of the key issues of the Iraq war, from weapons of mass destruction to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S. nor are we responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of these lies that these criminals present to cover their true plans," said the narrator, apparently referring to the Bush administration's assertion of a link between Saddam Hussein and those attacks.

A masked speaker with a machine gun beside him delivered his message to triumphant music with the ring of U.S. military propaganda films during World War Two.

He said the enemy was on the run as the video showed guerrillas firing on U.S. convoys, standing beside the corpse of an American soldier, or loading a large shell for an attack.

The U.S. military has said it would stay in Iraq until the country is by its definition secure.

The rebels focused on political issues that divided the United States and its European allies over the war in Iraq while reminding troops of casualties with images of burning trucks.

"We also thank France, Germany and other states for their positions, which we need to say are considered wise and valid until now," said the narrator, who also urged economic warfare against Washington.

"Stop using the U.S. dollar. Use the Euro or a basket of currencies," he said on the video dated December 10, 2004.

At least 1,067 U.S. troops have died in combat since the start of the war that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Ned?!! Has someone replaced your brain?? On what planet is it reasonable to posit a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks? You do realize that not all, but a LOT of public support for this war would evaporate without this totally FALSE connection? Yikes! That a New Yorker reporter wrote that is astonishing, given their reputation for hair-trigger fact-checking whizzes (which these days is probably undeserved).

I'm beginning to think that all my posts over the past three years on this and other related subjects apparently left no impression if people constantly think the worst of my dryer understatements. I humbly apologize for not prefacing every post with a 72 bold Helvetica font assertion about the evils of this world and how boiling BushCo in oily snot would be a great source of amusement to me. You may create a macro if you like that I can use so that there will be no further confusion in this matter; alternately, maybe you could not overreact.

To quote my *entire* statement, thank you very much:

It's a reasonable neutral stance for now if some people still cling to it. And many do, so let them get disabused via other means...

Please note the 'if' rather than the 'because,' for a start. As it happens, I could have said 'because' very easily and then immediately note why. All you have to do is to go to NRO's Corner blog and see that their rhetoric semi-regularly insists on a larger al-Qaeda/Iraq/'fight the bad terrorists that are bad' approach on these matters, and that's just one site aimed at a fairly small slice of the media pie -- and they consider themselves the 'intellectuals' of the bunch over the likes of O'Reilly!

As I was trying to demonstrate, perhaps too quietly, people will believe what they wish to, even as the evidence accumulates otherwise. The statement by the reporter acknowledges this somewhat unsettled situation where, to one extent or another, the tenuous and twisted Iraq/al-Qaeda connection is still bought into among many people (inside the military and out) despite/because of half-hearted retractions or muddled demi-assertions from BushCo. That's the *point.* Honestly I don't see that being fully removed for a long time to come even if Bush himself flat out came clean on national TV -- and he won't, so there you go. The buck having been thoroughly passed to the CIA and having graciously absolved himself of all blame in this matter, he can do his little "Ooop!" thing and get away scot free -- for now.

Finally, if the original quote I referred implies specifically a general state of mind among the military serving there -- that the occupation is seen a justifiable response to an attack, and that therefore morale is still reasonably high on this question. You may read into that what you will. If it will take something else to 'disabuse' them of the goodness of all this, then there we are -- and it sounds like such would be the case.

A Catholic archbishop in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has been kidnapped by insurgents, the Vatican says.

Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, 66, was abducted from outside his church in the city.

Lowry over in NROville claims a 'plugged-in person' told him this:

It's a shame what has happened there, given that the city was something of a model. It had a great governing council and police force and was very stable and safe. But we took our eye off the ball, lightening our presence. We eventually became worried about the chief of police being compromised and about the head of the university there, who was an Islamist involved in anti-US incitement. We pressured the interim government to do something about them, but nothing happened until it was too late. Meanwhile, insurgents had been operating on the outskirts of the city, and engaged in probing manuevers until they determined that its defenses were soft. Then, they moved. Now, it's absolutely critical that we regain firm control of the city, with its large population and Sunni majority.

Sounds like flack to me.

(Please note I am extremely understating my reaction to the above-linked incident.)

Meanwhile.

At least 26 people have been killed in a series of car bombings in Baghdad.

At least four of the blasts happened within 90 minutes of each other, targeting local and foreign security forces during the morning rush hour.

But hey, Rice got confirmed so everything's going to be better, now we don't have that horrible Colin Powell there slowing things down! Yeah! Er.

Give me a Cheney any day of the week. Now there's a guy with some balls. Or Rumsfeld - that Rummy is a regular fire-eater. At least with Condi, you can just make a scary face and she'll go hide in the corner and not bother you, while we big dogs get our work done. An amenable lass - like Laura. [/Bush]

Coalition troops and Iraqi security forces may be responsible for up to 60% of conflict-related civilian deaths in Iraq - far more than are killed by insurgents, confidential records obtained by the BBC's Panorama programme reveal.

Official figures, compiled by Iraq's Ministry of Health, break down deaths according to insurgent and coalition activity. They are usually available only to Iraqi cabinet ministers.

The data covers the period 1 July 2004 to 1 January 2005, and relates to all conflict-related civilian deaths and injuries recorded by Iraqi public hospitals. The figures exclude, where known, the deaths of insurgents.

The figures reveal that 3,274 Iraqi civilians were killed and 12,657 wounded in conflict-related violence during the period.

Of those deaths, 60% - 2,041 civilians - were killed by the coalition and Iraqi security forces. A further 8,542 were wounded by them.

Insurgent attacks claimed 1,233 lives, and wounded 4,115 people, during the same period.

Panorama interviewed US Ambassador John Negroponte shortly before it obtained the figures. He told reporter John Simpson:

"My impression is that the largest amount of civilian casualties definitely is a result of these indiscriminate car bombings.

"You yourself are aware of those as they occur in the Baghdad area and more frequently than not the largest number of victims of these acts of terror are innocent civilian bystanders".

The coalition has yet to respond to the figures.