Diwaniya – “not hurtling out of control”

August 29, 2006

DIWANIYAH, Iraq — When the Bush administration talks about the progress it is making in Iraq, it points to places like this provincial capital about 100 miles south of Baghdad. The population is overwhelmingly Shiite, and the region is fairly calm by comparison with the capital. But even here in Qadisiyah province, the transition to full Iraqi sovereignty is taking longer than it should.
[…]
The situation in Iraq is difficult, but the sense of panic in the
Washington debate just doesn’t match the situation here. It’s bad, but
it’s not hurtling out of control.
Iraq: Still Worth Some Waiting, David Ignatius, WaPo, August 27, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 29 — At least 27 people were killed today when a leaking pipeline where they were siphoning oil exploded outside Diwaniya, Iraqi officials said.

[…]
One official said that the looters had taken advantage of the turmoil that engulfed the southern city on Monday when Iraqi Army soldiers clashed with members of a militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric. At least 28 people died during the fighting.
[…]
Gasoline has been chronically in short supply in Iraq, and its price
has skyrocketed, from about 4 cents a gallon to about 67 cents a gallon
now at the official price, as part of an agreement with the International Monitary Fund.
Pipeline Blast Follows Clashes at Iraqi City, NYT, August 29, 2006

Posted by b on August 29, 2006 at 15:41 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The second article highlights the way that we are truly bringing one aspect the American Way of Life to Iraq: ever-rising gasoline prices.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Aug 29 2006 16:13 utc | 1

Meanwhile, according to the national news networks, the American south, (New Orleans, La. and Mississippi) everything is all peachy keen one year after Katrina. After State and local agencies failed to respond to the emergency, the Bush organized faith based volunteers are doing a heck of a job restoring and rebuilding. At least (as far as the eye could see) it looked that way in the various photo-props.
The Election campaign has begun in earnest. Unless Ernesto usets the apple cart.
ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and CNN.

Posted by: pb | Aug 29 2006 17:05 utc | 2

Ignatius says:
Americans should be worried about Iraq but not so much that they take rash actions that would end up hurting American interests in the Middle East at a delicate time. We’ll be out of Iraq, one way or another, over the next few years. Rushing the process because of American impatience would make a bad situation even worse.
…………..
And that about sums it up.
American impatience will end up hurting American interests.
Its all about “US” and our impatience, to leave, and how that impacts our “interests”. Funny how they never explain those interests with regards to the policy, they never explain what would constitute success of those “interests”, or how to get there. Instead we are, as always, left with doubletalk and euphemisms that paint our interests as something we are doing for the benifit of the Iraqis. The problems in Iraq are only intractable because they are the creation and results of American policy “interests”, which must remain unmentionable — because they are decidedly colonial, and therefore, un-American, and a contradiction in values.

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 29 2006 17:24 utc | 3

anna,
American “interests” are currently conswidered top-secret classified information – don’t even bother asking about the plans we have to implement them. We don’t want terrorists finding out what our “interests” are now, do we?

Posted by: ralphieboy | Aug 29 2006 19:21 utc | 4

Anna and ralphie —
An ongoing theme throughout — the mythology that the US is in control of events and therefore can assert its “interests” unilaterally and successfully. You can see how true THAT is. We are the stupid giant with his head in a bag being spun round and round by events, unaware of its opportunities as well as its risks — blind, blundering — vulnerable.

Posted by: Elie | Aug 29 2006 19:40 utc | 5

Both of these articles tell a lot about the refusal of the MSM, and the policy makers in Washington, to accept the reality of Iraq. David Ignatius is generally fairly liberal, but he supported the invasion of Iraq for all the normal liberal hawk reasons, and has had an impossible time admitting how totally wrong he was. It’s funny that he would talk about Diwaniyah in particular, and serves as some sort of metaphor for how these people can’t get anything right. Even now, the only thing they can say is “let’s not leave yet,” like Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a stable, secular Iraq that is never going to arrive.
The NYT article is equally revealing. The headline of the article refers to the tragic accident at the pipeline, but buries, as the NYT so often does, the real story — the fact that the so-called Iraqi Army and the Mahdi Army are engaged in a flat-out shooting war. That’s pretty much the definition of a civil war, isn’t it? Even as the NYT edges towards the truth, it can’t quite bring itself to say out loud what we all know.
To quote the immortal Joe Wilson, when asked about the situation in Iraq in January 2004:
“We’re fucked.”

Posted by: Aigin | Aug 29 2006 20:48 utc | 6

I’m guessing Ignatius skedaddled out of Diwaniya before the battle started and is probably safe and sound in the Green Zome — or back here in the Great Big Green Zone.
More’s the pity. If pundits start getting wacked regularly in Iraq along with the troops and the civilians, maybe the survivors would get a slight grip on reality.

Posted by: billmon | Aug 30 2006 0:00 utc | 7

More’s the pity. If pundits start getting wacked regularly in Iraq along with the troops and the civilians, maybe the survivors would get a slight grip on reality.

Oh please, please, pretty, pretty, with sugar and cinnamon on top. Ummm can we get to pick which bloody minded scribbler we get to send to which hotspot? Sheesh billmon that comment makes me feel like the Lord High Executioner in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera …..
On a serious note can I just point out that the representative council in Diwaniya has no less than 18 different political entities represented on it and that the negotiations are going to be more than ordinarily complex.
I blogged about this on Monday – it looks to me very much like (another) failed “operation knockout”

Posted by: markfromireland | Aug 30 2006 6:17 utc | 8

This and this Juan Cole post should put Ignatius’s delusions to rest. The three essential points are that 1) the fight is basically between the militias Badr Corps and local Mahdi Army, witrh the former drawing in nominally federal units and the Americans, 2) there are indications that the local Mahdi Army acted on its own without orders, 3) ceasefire wa not won in battle, but after negotiations with Muqtada in Najaf.

Posted by: DoDo | Aug 30 2006 15:10 utc | 9

Iraq was an easy target. It sits in the middle of the Great Game region. The US and its allies have killed more than a million people there: sanctions, endless bombing, finally, after the ’softening’, invasion, more bombs, destruction, DU scatttered about, and new economic sanctions, now right on the ground, in the shape of destruction of agriculture, industry, the state system (schools, education, health), all of the infrastructure, preventing communication, transport, any kind of business or manufacture, even clean water for children; crippling the oil industry; indirectly, through unofficial embargo for inputs and spare parts, creating a situation where neither the Iraqis themselves or foreignors (oil companies) can do anything to make the whole thing work…
Occupation of the most vicious kind; cleansing of the population on the ground.
Bush says he won’t leave until the job is finished. One should listen.

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 30 2006 18:40 utc | 10

Positive Press on Iraq Is Aim of U.S. Contract

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.
The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide “public relations products” that would improve coverage of the military command’s performance, according to a statement of work attached to the proposal.
…
The proposal suggests a team of 12 to 18 people who would provide support for the coalition military command as well as the Iraqi government leadership.
Prospective contractors are also asked to propose four to eight public relations events per month, such as speeches or news conferences, including “preparation of likely questions and suggested answers, themes and messages as well as background, talking points.”

Posted by: b | Aug 31 2006 8:03 utc | 11

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