Iraq Thread – Moon of Alabama

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January 14, 2005

Iraq Thread

Insurgents step up sectarian violence in Iraq (FT – front page)

Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground – War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report (Washington Post)

Former Secretary of State James Baker (under Bush I) urges phased exit of U.S. troops from Iraq. (ABC News)

US ‘erodes’ global human rights (BBC)

"We will leave when the job is done"

Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground – War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report (Washington Post)

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director’s think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."

Insurgents step up sectarian violence in Iraq

A senior aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s top Shia cleric, was assassinated yesterday as insurgents stepped up their violent campaign to disrupt the January 30 elections by provoking sectarian tensions.

Mahmoud al-Madaeni, Mr Sistani’s representative in the mixed Sunni-Shia region of Salman Pak, was attacked on his way home from evening prayers along with his son and two others.

Serious Sunni-Shia violence has been avoided until now, largely due to the Grand Ayatollah’s insistence that Shias refrain from reprisals that could trigger a civil war.

(snip)

* The Iraq war cost $102bn to the end of September 2004, with monthly spending averaging $4.8bn, according to the latest Pentagon figures released yesterday. Experts say the total will be considerably higher once replacement costs for vehicles are added.

Former Secretary of State James Baker (under Bush I) urges phased exit of U.S. troops from Iraq.

A protracted U.S. military presence in Iraq is probably unavoidable since attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces and on Iraqi security forces are likely to continue, Baker said Tuesday in a speech at Rice University in Houston.

"Even under the best of circumstances, the new Iraqi government will remain extremely vulnerable to internal divisions and external meddling," he said.

Still, former President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state said, "any appearance of a permanent occupation will both undermine domestic support here in the United States and play directly into the hands of those in the Middle East who however wrongly suspect us of imperial design."

US ‘erodes’ global human rights

In its annual report, Human Rights Watch says that when a country as dominant as the US openly defies the law, it invites others to do the same.

It says an independent US commission should look into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s US-run Abu Ghraib jail.

According to the New-York based group, abuses committed by the US have significantly weakened the world’s ability to protect human rights.

"The US government is less and less able to push for justice abroad, because it’s unwilling to see justice done at home," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW.

"They should be grateful"

Posted by on January 14, 2005 at 16:54 UTC | Permalink

Comments

At the risk of vindicating Bush “policies,” I hope elections result in end to violence. I hope.

Posted by: slothrop | Jan 17 2005 19:20 utc | 101

fauxreal
That would be the same ‘Iraq the Model’ that two out of three brothers running it were recent guests of George W. Bush at the White House and which seems to synchronize its postings with press releases from Centcom, often studding its posts with obscure ‘good news’ stories culled from even more obscure American provincial newspapers where they’ve been planted lovingly by the U.S. military. The ‘Al-Sabah’ newspaper is, of course, a child of the U.S. Defense Department, funded by same and under the stewardship of Harris Inc., Florida. Pat sure knows how to spot an untainted source doesn’t she? Very little likelihood that the positive spin emanating from that quarter (a quarter which, as has been pointed out by Juan Cole and a host of others, is ALWAYS hopelessly adrift from the reality of Iraqi public opinion), would be open to charges that it’s a thinly disguised propaganda operation don’t you think? One of last week’s gems from Iraq the Model, one based on a ‘telephone poll’ conducted by another catspaw TV station in Baghdad, provided ‘evidence’ of massive support for the elections, a promise of massive participation and, surprise, surprise, over 80% of respondents calling for even tougher action against ‘terrorists’ than had been seen at Fallujah. Not one mention (or retraction) of the alleged ‘poll’ appeared in Iraq the Model when news items appeared confirming that the carrying out of the poll had to be abandoned as there were so few areas in Baghdad with working telephone lines, a situation that actually led to an on-air interview with Allawi being cancelled. As most of Baghdad was totally without electricity at the time ‘Omar’ was typing his fantasy poll results and most of the city was without land or mobile phone availibility (in the Green Zone, where power and phone lines are never a problem one can become very removed from reality), nobody was watching, phoning in, using the ‘online poll’ or anything of the kind – but that didn’t stop ‘Omar’ publishing the ‘results’ that had obviously been agreed in advance before the poll actually fell apart.
When an ass roars it is usually the case that even in a crowd one of its fellows will take up the call, Q.E.D.

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Jan 17 2005 19:59 utc | 102

Sic transit
Thanks for the reading suggestions. Abukhalil’s book was a fine intro. Am reading Emran Qureshi & Michael A. Sells. Any more suggestions welcomed.

Posted by: slothrop | Jan 17 2005 20:20 utc | 103

“One of last week’s gems from Iraq the Model, one based on a ‘telephone poll’ conducted by another catspaw TV station in Baghdad, provided ‘evidence’ of massive support for the elections, a promise of massive participation and, surprise, surprise, over 80% of respondents calling for even tougher action against ‘terrorists’ than had been seen at Fallujah.”
So, gloria, REAL support for the elections is – what? – moderate? Minor? Non-existent? Actual election participation will be – what? – underwhelming? Minimal? And most Iraqis desire – what? – a kinder, gentler, more indulgent hand with ‘terrorists’? Is this the more accurate picture?

Posted by: Pat | Jan 17 2005 20:22 utc | 104

Governments can always buy someone or other to report on how they would like things to be rather than how things are…

Seldes also said that Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, cut a $400,000 a year deal with Hearst, which led him to “completely chang[ed] the editorial policy of his nineteen daily newspapers the same month he got the money.”
Hearst sued over such claims, but Dan Gillmor, publisher of the magazine Friday, told the court that “Promptly after this visit with Adolph Hitler and the making of said arrangements… plaintiff, William Randolph Hearst, instructed all Hearst press correspondents in Germany, including those of INS (Hearst’s International News Service) to report happenings in Germany only in a friendly manner. All of correspondents reporting happenings in Germany accurately and without friendliness, sympathy and bias for the actions of the German government, were transferred elsewhere, discharged, or forced to resign.”
Whether Hearst actually took Nazi money in return for good US press remains in the realm of cloudy biography. The extremely wealthy have ways to turn megalomania into eerie designs. Hearst’s accumulation addiction led him to overextend his own fortune. He had to sell part of his art collection and halt construction on the Castle.

From a sketchy little travel piece by Saul Landau on Hearst Castle as an imperial landmark. Anyway, buying news spin is as old as news itself. Bought-n-paid-for bloggery just the new flavour of same old game imho.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 17 2005 20:35 utc | 105

I think the average Iraqi probably wants the terrorists to go away — the American terrorists as well as the other kinds.

As America’s moral failure becomes ever more blatant, even the term “terrorist” takes on new shades of meaning. Remember Washington’s initial Shock and Awe bombing campaign? Or American GIs breaking down doors and shoving whole families to the floor? Or the president’s authorization of torture from Abu Ghraib to Guantánamo to his gulag of secret detention centers around the globe?
Whether as a primary purpose or only a side effect, these and other American efforts thoroughly terrorized the immediate victims, their friends and relatives, and others who later heard the stories magnified in endless re-telling. Clearly, our military planners understood the terrifying impact they were having, especially on civilian populations.
Witness the devastation of Fallujah in the days following our November election. American forces began with a massive air and artillery barrage that demolished homes, a medical warehouse, and the city’s small Nazzal Emergency Hospital, which was funded by an Islamic charity from Saudi Arabia. Officers described the hospital as a headquarters for insurgents and a center of anti-America propaganda.
Soldiers also stormed the Fallujah General Hospital, closing it and confiscating cell phones from the doctors. An American officer told The New York Times the hospital was another “center of propaganda.”
American forces turned away the Islamic counterpart of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, deprived residents of water and electricity, and forced nearly half the city’s people to flee. Much of what the Americans and their allies did clearly violated the Geneva Conventions, as did the actions of the Sunni insurgents.
Claiming to create greater security for Iraq’s coming elections, the American military now wages what is largely a war of terror against civilian populations. An anonymous Pentagon official quoted by Michael Schwartz in “Fallujah, City without a Future?” made the thinking clear:
“If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences that come with that, or do they want to get rid of the insurgents and have the benefits of not having them there?”
In other words, can we terrorize the civilians more than the insurgents do?

Steve Weissman concludes: Jihadis or America’s terror-using hypocrites? If we are truly to stop the terrorists, the world must take sides against both.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 17 2005 20:42 utc | 106

You know I am wondering if this Archbishop kidnapping in Mosul has anything to with article in last week’s news about the Pope saying he wants the United States to stay there long enough to secure the country, according to Jim Nicholson, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 17 2005 22:01 utc | 107

Anxious Iraqis Are Leaving Before Elections – Some Plan to Wait Out Vote Abroad; ‘I Will Not Stay in Baghdad,’ Commissioner Says

He had brought his wife and 12-year-old son to a busy travel agency in downtown Baghdad last week to buy airplane tickets to Egypt. Sudad, the owner of the agency, a petite woman whose desk was stacked with green Iraqi passports, asked Abu Muhanned when he wanted to leave.
“As soon as possible,” he replied.
Sudad, who asked that her last name and the location of her agency not be disclosed, nodded knowingly. She had been hearing similar requests for weeks, as many members of Iraq’s educated upper middle class flee the country in advance of the Jan. 30 elections.
…
“It is getting worse and worse,” she said. “I am afraid now even when I am sitting here that a car bomb will explode in any minute and all of us will die.”
Um Muhanned, who also declined to give her full name, said she wished she could stay home. But even if she did, she said, she would not vote.

Posted by: Fran | Jan 18 2005 13:40 utc | 108

From This is Rumour Control
There are more rumors in Washington than at any point since we started this blog — and we are determined to report them. We are, after all, “rumor control.” The most important, at least this week, are all about Iraq, and what will happen after the January 30 elections. The United States is determined to have those elections because we are “committed to democracy” in Iraq, but also because we have no choice: by law (the TAL — or Temporary Administrative Law) the current interim government will dissolve itself on February 1 whether there has been an election or not. So we’d better have one. But then what? The simple truth is that no one seems to know (including high level administration officials), though there are options. Here are some of them:
— Some Washington policymakers believe that Iraq’s Shiite slates will garner nearly 90 percent of the vote, will convene an assembly, appoint a prime minister, and form a government. It’s first act will be to invite the Americans to leave. And what will happen then? “Damned if I know,” one Middle East expert told This Is Rumor Control, “I guess we’d have to.”
— Other Washington officials strongly disagree, citing an example that they call “a managed civil war.” According to this scenario, the American commitment to Iraq is long-term, and endorsed by the Shi’a: “We wouldn’t even have this election if we thought that we would be invited out. There is already an agreement in the works, with Sistani, that would allow us basing rights. Of course there is a price — we allow them to have their way with the Sunnis.”
— One of the most recent rumors, and one of the most disastrous from a public relations point of view, has Sistani and his followers “who are sure to be victors in the election” declaring “an Islamic State” after they have taken office. The announcement of the founding of a second Islamic state in the region, after Iran, would bring the U.S. and its allies into general disrepute, as having replaced a secular regime (no matter how vicious) with one that is based on Islamic law. “It’s not likely,” a Washington insider says, “but it is possible.”
— There are also dire predictions, including one based on what Washington officials cite as “pretty solid intelligence information” that Sistani has agreed with his more radical followers to spread the Sunni insurgency into the Shi’a heartland of the south. “The revolution begins in mid-February, just after the Shia’s take power,” one former State Department Middle East expert notes. “Al Sadr will be set loose on the Americans and the British.” Such a general uprising would be one way to ensure Iraqi unity after an American departure. “Those who fight together have a tendency to stay together,” this expert notes.
— Some small number of officials issue even more dire predictions, including a full-blown Iraqi Shi’a uprising aided by Iran. Their evidence? A sermon by one of Iran’s leading clerics, calling for a regional uprising against the U.S. and its allies. The speech was given by Iranian Assembly of Experts Chairman Ayatollah ‘Ali Meshkini in Qom on December 4: I recommend that the pilgrims [to Mecca and Al-Medina] pray there, that they be persistent in their prayer. Prayer is a very good way of worshiping God. They should not forget to pray. But for every prayer there should also be a curse. Your prayers should also include curses. Pray for the good and curse the evil. Say: “My Lord, end the lives of three people shortly – Bush, Sharon, and Blair. End their lives and the lives of their followers.”
All of these rumors have one thing in common: none predict a positive outcome for the U.S. and its allies — and all see more difficult days ahead. Of course our readers may have other views, and other options that we have not thought of. We will add them to “the rumor mill.”

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 19 2005 13:54 utc | 109

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