the state have to become autonomous before the deal come down w/oil.
imperative. we’re going to be seeing masive bloodshed aka, more troops, the whole tamle, if they don’t separate.
this is why we have no press, this is what iraqi know.
imho

Posted by: annie | Oct 24 2006 1:39 utc | 26

So I guess it has now been proven that you can starve an entire people into submission.
spoken like a pro bea
anyone who missed my 19 link is missin out btw

Since Iraq was brutally raped by a horde of pillaging, ravaging murderers aided by the various Iraqi exiles, businessmen and all who looked to make a quick buck as their brethren were slaughtered.
I will celebrate Eid when the occupier is vanquished, when Iraq is whole again, when there is a government that is nationalistic – not sectarian, not religious.
I will celebrate when Al Qaeda in Iraq is destroyed, when Iranian agents are cut down in the streets. When the Saudi Wahabis are burned out of Iraq … when every foreign filth is destroyed.
But there are causes for celebration. Western Iraq is back in the hands of the nationalistic Iraqis. US soldiers do not dare tread one inch of that soil lest they be cut down like the rabid dogs they are

Posted by: annie | Oct 24 2006 1:49 utc | 28

annie – Thanks for your link (#19). I’m just catching up. I followed the link to the list of u.s. casualties. How do they hide this? Really.

Posted by: beq | Oct 24 2006 12:26 utc | 30

Iraq Agrees to New Security Timetable, U.S. Officials Say

America’s top military and civilian officials in Iraq said today that the Baghdad government has agreed to a timetable for a series of milestones to be pursued in the coming year, including cracking down on Shiite militias, completing a “national compact” between competing political groups, persuading Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and settling contentious issues like the division of oil revenues.
…
General Casey raised the possibility of bringing more forces into Baghdad, where a crackdown by American and Iraqi troops has had limited success in quelling sectarian violence.
…
“Iraqi officials have agreed to a timeline for making these difficult decisions,” Ambassador Khalilzad said.
Some steps, like completing plans for transferring more areas to Iraqi control and an international accord for economic development, should be achieved by the end of the year, Mr. Khalilzad said, adding that he expected a national compact to be in place in a year’s time.
…
Both men spoke in unusually conciliatory terms about the Sunni insurgents who have been the main source of attacks on American troops until recently, referring to them as “the resistance.” General Casey called them “the Sunnis who fight us and claim to be the honorable resistance of Iraq,” and said that American officials have begun talking with them, along with the Iraqi government.
By contrast, Iran and Syria were singled out for harsh criticism at the briefing, and accused of working to make matters worse in Iraq. Mr. Khalilzad lumped them together with Al Qaeda as “the enemies of Iraq.”
…
General Casey also defended the performance of Iraqi security forces, saying that 300 of their number had been killed during the recent holy month of Ramadan.

So the NYT report from Sunday the administration tried to deny was right. They did hold the pistol to Maliki’s head and Maliki did sign whatever paper they told him to sign.
…
Why doesn’t Maliki announces this instead of the occupiers?
Where will Casey get additional troops from for Baghdad?
The “international accord on economic development” is of course the real big prize PSAs and all … the resistance will take a look at that “deadline” too.
Now schmoozing the Sunnis, and verbaly beeting on Iran and Syria, who are not involved while physically assaulting Sadr’s folks, the only nationalistic force with some power.
It’s chaos and it will get worse ..

Posted by: b | Oct 24 2006 14:02 utc | 32

John wrote: The UN dragged its feet with the cease fire in Lebanon, allowing Israel to drop two or three MILLION cluster bombs on the south of the country. They’ve given themselves up to an evil age for as long as the US can persist in wasting itself in this mad exercise, burning its patrimony in the Middle Eastern deserts. The UN will recognize whatever the US does. The UN cares no more about the Iraqis than it cares about the Palestinians.
Right. Now, everyone knows that the UN is US controlled, and that the Palestinians have had it. Up until three years ago, I was still arguing against UN bashers : well the UN just reflects the state of the world, at least it is a venue where issues can be discussed, etc. etc.
As John mentions but does not elaborate on – The rest of the world has more or less decided that the US should be left to hoist itself on its own petard, or hang itself on its own rope. If given mouthy, minimal support, it will just slowly self destruct, or more hopefully, re-trench behind its own borders, exhausted by wasteful warfare and economic depression. Cooler minds will be able to act, better cooperative agreements can then be put in place, we will be able to forget the lunatic war on terror, Russia will find its rightful place and will no longer be harassed, etc. I have heard / read ordinary people and high up officials either state this baldly or hint at it. There are also high hopes that once Bush is gone return to the status quo ante will be automatic and painless.
All very reassuring, and false.
EU Gvmts. either explicitly realise or intuitively intuit (Ireland seems particularly clueless; Switzerland, the model of greeness, as well) that their large energy-dependent populations, and the economic clout they presently hold, can only survive in two cases: a) domination and forcible control, of the ME in particular; b) cooperation and agreements – a fair is fair attitude – in some kind of world frame. They vacillate between the two but count on the US to lead the fray and are sneakily keeping back, while encouraging prejudice and belligerent attitudes. Wait and see. Jack of diamonds!

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 24 2006 15:39 utc | 34

They did hold the pistol to Maliki’s head and Maliki did sign whatever paper they told him to sign.
i’m not so sure he actually ‘signed ‘anything. it appears what he agreed on was a “timetable for progress”.. perhaps this means, he agreed to the timetable of sunni’s in baghdad become fallujah’d if they don’t agree to everything. i do note the sunni focus in the article.
dahr jamail reports Major Amir Jassim from the ministry of defence said

“Now they want to do the same things they did in Fallujah in all Sunni areas so that they ignite a civil war in Iraq,”

in a remarkable piece mentioning negroponte,steele, and the deathsquads partly because i linked to it thru crooks and lairs. i guess the US training the deathsquads is becoming recognized in other mainstream blogs.

A UN human rights report released September last year held interior ministry forces responsible for an organised campaign of detentions, torture and killings. It reported that special police commando units accused of carrying out the killings were recruited from Shia Badr and Mehdi militias, and trained by U.S. forces.
Retired Col. James Steele, who served as advisor on Iraqi security forces to then U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte supervised the training of these forces.
Steele was commander of the U.S. military advisor group in El Salvador 1984-86, while Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to nearby Honduras 1981-85. Negroponte was accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights in 1994. The Commission reported the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political workers.
The violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA, according to a CIA working group set up in 1996 to look into the U.S. role in Honduras.
The CIA records document that his “special intelligence units,” better known as “death squads,” comprised CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of people suspected of supporting leftist guerrillas.

i agree b, getting much worse.

Posted by: annie | Oct 24 2006 16:39 utc | 36

i hadn’t thought of that. this may help w/the timeline, from 5/05

Last summer, with the security situation deteriorating, some Iraqi and American officials began to argue that the time had passed for a ‘‘clean hands’’ policy that rejected most of the experienced people who had fought for Saddam Hussein. The first official to take action was Falah al-Naqib, interior minister under the interim government of Ayad Allawi. In August, Naqib formed his own regiment, the Special Police Commandos, drawn from veterans of Hussein’s special forces and the Republican Guard. As its leader, he chose General Adnan, not only because Adnan had a useful collection of colleagues from Iraq’s military and security networks, but also because Adnan is Naqib’s uncle.
Naqib did not ask for permission or training or even equipment from the United States military; he formed and armed the commandos because the U.S. military would not. ‘‘One of the biggest mistakes made by the coalition forces is that they started from zero,’’ he told me in his office in the Green Zone in Baghdad. ‘‘Our army and police are 80 years old. They have lots of experience. They know more about the country and the people, and about the way the insurgents are fighting, than any foreign forces.’’
Initially, Petraeus wasn’t even told of the commandos; Iraqis and American civilians at the Ministry of Interior had lost faith in the U.S. training program. The American who was most involved in the commandos’ creation was Casteel, Naqib’s senior American adviser. Casteel, who previously worked for Paul Bremer in the Coalition Provisional Authority, realized that the de-Baathification policy had to be altered and that Naqib was the person to do it. ‘‘He was not looking for top Baathists or people with blood on their hands,’’ Casteel said. ‘‘But a tremendous amount of people who worked in the government or army weren’t either of those. So why start from scratch when we can start in the middle? That’s where the commando idea was formed.’’
After the commandos set up their headquarters at a bombed-out army base at the edge of the Green Zone, Petraeus went for a visit. He was pleasantly surprised, he told me, to see a force that was relatively disciplined and well motivated. He knew the commandos were officers and soldiers who had served Saddam Hussein, he knew many of them were Sunni and he certainly knew they were not under American control. But he also sensed that they could fight. He challenged some of them to a push-up contest. He was not just embracing a new military formation; he was embracing a new strategy. The hard men of the past would help shape the country’s future.
Petraeus decided that the commandos would receive whatever arms, ammunition and supplies they required. He also assigned Steele to work with them. In addition to his experience in El Salvador, Steele had been in charge of retraining Panama’s security forces following the ousting of Gen. Manuel Noriega. When I asked him to describe Adnan’s leadership qualities, Steele drew on the vocabulary he learned in Latin America. Adnan, he said approvingly, was a caudillo — a military strongman.

Posted by: annie | Oct 24 2006 18:24 utc | 38

Anyone notice that Maureen Dowd’s been reading our good friend Billmon. Today’s column:

It’s a hilarious spectacle of a whole party re-enacting the classic scene in Mel Brooks’s “Blazing Saddles,” in which the sheriff holds the gun to his own head to take himself hostage.

Compare that to Billmon (10/22):

The appropriate metaphor here is the scene from Blazing Saddles in which the new black sheriff, confronted by an angry mob of racially insensitive townfolk, grabs himself around the neck, points a pistol at his own head and yells: “Don’t make a move or the nigger gets it.” But, unlike the extras in Mel Brooks’s script, I don’t think the Maliki government is stupid enough to fall for it.

Billmon is more vivid any day & wins this battle of wits & words.

Posted by: Richard Silverstein | Oct 25 2006 4:44 utc | 40