thank you. I was wondering about that. I had a Time magazine article (that I KNEW was written in 2003 or so) come up with today’s date as well. Luckily, I knew what the correct date was – or I would’ve been fooled as well.

Posted by: Mme. LaFarge | Aug 1 2007 20:30 utc | 3

Oops, four years ago.

Posted by: Dick Durata | Aug 1 2007 20:59 utc | 5

Yes, b, not only super HTML sleuthing, but you have, time and again, proven yourself to be a great investigative reporter.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 2 2007 2:02 utc | 7

Malooga,
Often I see Juan Cole as just too ingrained with the establishment. Billmon also sufferred from this at times, although to a far lesser degree. Bernhard’s fresh insight is a blessing.

Posted by: Rick | Aug 2 2007 3:31 utc | 9

Often I see Juan Cole as just too ingrained with the establishment. Billmon also sufferred from this at times, although to a far lesser degree. Bernhard’s fresh insight is a blessing.
Totally agree rick, on both points. Thanks for saying so.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 2 2007 4:13 utc | 11

Cole is still a valued analyst. Billmon was an invaluable analyst and, blessed be to b, is still sorely missed, at least by me.
‘Ingrained with the establishment’ is bullshit criticism. I disagree on both points.

Posted by: Dick Durata | Aug 2 2007 5:15 utc | 13

#14
Sorry, didn’t not mean to spell Durata wrong.
It’s getting late here for me.

Posted by: Rick | Aug 2 2007 5:27 utc | 15

Malooga,
Cole was pro-war? Got links?

Posted by: Beefmother | Aug 2 2007 6:20 utc | 17

…and most importantly for me, I apprecciate his unwavering commitment to treating each human, regardless of who they are or where they come from, equally.
I second that. I’d like to offer a toast to Bernhard in gratitude for all that he does and makes possible for us here.
Bartender, a bottle of chilled, dry chamagne with glasses for all…

Posted by: Bea | Aug 2 2007 6:41 utc | 19

Yeah bea, too bad this isn’t international, cause I’d be the first in line to buy our B a drink online…lol

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 2 2007 7:02 utc | 21

don’t bother checking out eric’s site folks. looks like he is a LGF wannabe.

Posted by: dan of steele | Aug 2 2007 8:05 utc | 23

@Beefmother 17:
You are right to be skeptical. I apparently misremembered. Cole was in favor of the Afghanistan war, and was in favor of removing Saddam, but he had a bad feeling about invading Iraq. He asks:

“What will happen if US bombs damage the Shiite shrines, the holiest places for 100 million Shiite Muslims in Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bahrain? What will happen if there is a riot in a shrine city like Karbala and US marines put it down by killing rioters? Do we want 100 million Shiites angry at us again?

proving that you can managed the lobster’s expectations and reactions by turning up the heat slowly.
This little gem from his first month should engender a rueful laugh:

If the recent rise in prices to around $28 a barrel is in fact mainly a result of speculation in the hedge markets and based upon a strong likelihood that Bush will go to war against Iraq, it may mean that the administration is shooting itself in the foot politically. The rise in prices has badly hurt the stock market and could contribute to a lengthening economic malaise…

28 Bucks a barrel? Oil was cheap enough to burn back then.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 2 2007 9:36 utc | 25

there is no support for your claims malooga in any history of iraq i’m aware of. if any colonialist used divide and rule in iraq, it would be the ottomans who for centuries largely excluded shia arabs, kurds, others from power. as for the british, they inherited the ottoman model and employed sharifian elites to manage the mandate. for the britiosh, iraq was not uganda. the monarchy reproduced the administrative hierarchy. generally, the factionalism of iraq’s tribal politics often precluded viable democratic nationalism, with the exception of the iraq communist party.
the only incidental support for your argument wrt occupation is the decision by bremer to require the interim government to reflect the demographic reality of iraq. this attempt was undermined by debaathification and institutional collapse. there is simply no proof i’ve found that bremer of the pentagon sought, as a principle of occupation, to create civil war. nor is their any support for the view bremer et al. surreptitiously pursued a policy of partition. the strong federalism of the constitution was supported by sciri and the kurds among others, not occupation authorities per se.
i once thought w/ good reason the occupation wanted all along to partition iraq. there is a defacto partition of the country because of civil war, and there was and is support for partition in the foreign policy establishment. but the pentagon ran the show, and they desired otherwise.
but, malooga, you can probably refute all of this by incantatory reference to “chomsky” or some other employment of wishful thinking you believe to be your various truths about everything. it’s clear to me, reading your stuff over the years, your superhuman outrage is rarely submitted to the honor of facts.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2007 15:56 utc | 27

& of course b has been kind enough to link on the fron page to iraq today & i would have thought there were enough facts there for even a savant like sloth to be sated

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 2 2007 16:51 utc | 29

jony
you believe what you want, of course. but you’ll not find knowledgeable accounts–i haven’t found them anyway–supporting your claim.
rgiap
you’ve become an effete slander machine. wtf happened?
there are many very good histories i have linked to before:
Graham E. Fuller and Rend Rahim Francke, The Arab Shia: The Forgotten Muslims, New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1999.
Juan Cole, Sacred Space And Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi’ite Islam
CHARLES TRIPP, A HISTORY OF IRAQ (2nd ed., 2002). London: CUP
NIKKI R. KEDDIE, MODERN IRAN: ROOTS AND RESULTS OF REVOLUTION (2003).
NIR ROSEN, IN THE BELLY OF THE GREEN BIRD: THE TRIUMPH OF THE MARTYRS IN IRAQ (2006).
PATRICK COCKBURN, THE OCCUPATION (2006). Verso: London.
RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN, IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: INSIDE IRAQ’S GREEN ZONE (2006). NY: ALFRED A KNOPF
RON SUSKIND, THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE: DEEP INSIDE AMERICA’S PURSUIT OF ITS ENEMIES SINCE 9/11 (2006) SIMON & SCHUSTER: NEW YORK.
VALI NASR, THE SHIA REVIVAL: HOW CONFLICTS WITHIN ISLAM WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE (2006). NY: W.W. NORTON & COMPANY.
ALI A. ALLAWI, THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ: WINNING THE WAR, LOSING THE PEACE (2007). YALE UP: NEW HAVEN.
ANDREW COCKBURN, RUMSFELD: HIS RISE, FALL, AND CATASTROPHIC LEGACY (2007). NY: SCRIBNER
and scores of peer reviewed journal articles. none of them support your claims, jony.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2007 17:21 utc | 31

the tripp is a joke
as far as i know mr nasr is very close to the seat of power
& the only book there that i have not read & would like to is the imperial life – but i imagine it is very anecdotal & wouldn’t expect a great deal from a scribbler form the washington post but i will attempt to get it
otherwise i suggest you expand either your bibliography or your familiarity with the facts

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 2 2007 17:42 utc | 33

from p. cockburn:

Inside Iraq the regime was eager to co-opt or divide the Shia clergy. From 1998 they were allowed to carry out their religious ceremonies in Shia cities so long as these were kept within bounds. It gave some leeway to Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq alSadr, the nephew of the Ayatollah executed in 1980. The aim was to try to drive a wedge between the Shia leaders in Iraq and those in exile. Saddam also wanted to emphasize the differences between clergy who were Iranian by birth like al-Khoie or Ali al-Sistani, al-Khoie’s former student and effectively his successor, and those that were Iraqi Arabs like the al-Sadds. The regime hoped Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr would be a counterweight to the existing Shia religious establishment. He was free to criticize Iran, sanctions and even aspects of the current regime but not Saddam Hussein himself. From the point of view of the Iraqi leader this strategy was always playing with fire. Thousands of pious and enthusiastic followers attended al-Sadr’s sermons. He wrapped himself in white martyr’s robes as a man expecting death. It was a grim if sensible precaution. In February 1999 I got a telephone call from the al-Khoie Foundation. A voice said that Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr and two of his sons had been killed. On a Friday evening the Ayatollah had left evening prayers in Najaf with his sons but as their car approached a nearby roundabout it was ambushed by gunmen. Caught in crossfire, all the men in the vehicle were killed. Few doubted that the assassins were Saddam’s security forces. As news spread of his murder there were hots across southern Iraq and in Saddam City in Baghdad, all of which were ruthlessly suppressed.
Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein were inclined to underestimate the extent to which their country was divided by deep sectarian or ethnic fault lines. They would point out that Iraqi tribes often included both Shia and Sunni. There was frequent intermarriage between Shia and Sunni. Communities were not monolithic, as in the case of Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or Christians and Muslims in Lebanon. But the secular intelligentsia which had fled abroad in the 1970s did not appreciate the degree to which the Iraq had changed since their departure. The secular middle class which stayed in Iraq, often employed by the government, had been progressively destroyed by the effect of war and sanctions. It was a lesson which Paul Bremer, the CPA and its successors took a long time to learn. The sort of educated middle class, yearning for an American or Western European standard and style of living, which was important in Moscow after the fall of Communism, scarcely existed in post-Saddam Baghdad.
There was a further compelling motive among the opposition in downplaying religious sectarianism in Iraq. The Shia leaders knew that a reason why the US-led coalition had not overthrown Saddam Hussein in 1991 was the fear that he would be replaced by a Shia regime allied to Iran. American soldiers entering Iraq had been appalled to discover numerous posters of Ayatollah Khomeini pasted on to walls by the anti-Saddam rebels. In fact the posters were of Grand Ayatollah a1-Khoie, but to US officers one elderly Shia clergyman with a white beard and a turban looked much like another. After the crushing of the uprising of 1991 opponents of Saddam by and large came to realize that the only certain way to get rid of the regime in Baghdad was for the US to launch a second war against it – and this time go all the way to Baghdad. The Americans were not [93] likely to do so if they knew the main beneficiary of Saddam’s overthrow was going to be the Shia allies of the Iranian regime. A number of arguments, none of them untrue but often overstressed, were made to pacify Washington’s fears. It was emphasized that the Shia clergy were theologically more quietist than in Iran and they opposed direct clerical rule. The Iraqi infantry which fought Iran to a stalemate in the 1980s was mainly Shia, though the officers were predominantly Sunni. This proved the Shia were not stooges of Iran. There was a traditional hostility between Najaf, for a thousand years the centre of Shia learning, and the Iranian holy city of Qom, which only became a theological rival to the Iraqi city in the 1920s. The result of such special pleading was that the US did not understand in 2003 the extent to which Iraq – and this was true of both Shia and Sunni-was a highly religious country. An Iraqi friend said to me: `Iranians are a secular people with a religious leadership while Iraqis are a religious people with a secular leadership.’ He exaggerated a little in order to produce a neat epigram, but he was largely correct. All the while Washington remained curiously under-informed about internal Iraqi politics. In the last years of the Clinton administration some of his senior Middle East advisers attended a meeting in Kuwait, the purpose of which was to ratchet up pressure on Saddam Hussein. `What about taking advantage of the hots and disturbances following the assassination of Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr,’ asked one Kuwaiti. The Iraqi dissidents present were astonished when the Americans at the meeting looked surprised and admitted that they had never heard of al-Sadr or the popular unrest – the most significant in Iraq since the uprising in 1991 – following his death.
Exaggerating the influence of secular Iraqi leaders and underestimating that of the religious leaders was to be a recurrent theme of the US occupation. When it supposedly handed over sovereignty in June 2004 Washington backed Iyad Allawi, the former Baathist and leader of the Iraqi National Accord, as [94] interim prime minister. It was only after Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi did so badly in the election on December 15 2005 (Chalabi did not win a single seat) that the US seems to have appreciated the weakness of the secular anti-Saddam leadership which it had cultivated for so long.

hmmm. no support there.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2007 19:06 utc | 35

nir rosen:

It was the first Friday after Ramadan, and Sumaidai had spent most of his sermon urging his flock not to be devout merely on Ramadan, but to continue on the path of piety all year long. It was time to celebrate Eid, the end of Ramadan. I was tired of my friends restricting our excursions out of fear for my safety, and demanded that we return to al-Rubai Street, where eighteen months earlier a police officer had been assassinated in front of me. The street was now closed so that families could congregate in its shops and stroll undisturbed. Hundreds of policemen stood guard and mingled with the crowds. They found a child who had been separated from his parents and had them paged on loudspeakers. Children squealed in an ancient amusement park, Young boys with drums danced and sang. They set off loud firecrackers, and I winced with each burst, uncertain of what would follow.
The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the dominant Shia list known as 555 for its number on the ballot, swept Iraqi elections on December 15, 2005, but still needed to ally with either Sunni or Kurdish parties to form an absolute majority that would allow it to establish a government. SCIRI favored an alliance with the federalist Kurds, opposing any deals with the Sunnis, and offered one of its own for the position of prime minister.
Moqtada supported the incumbent prime minister, Jafaari of Dawa, for the position, and also favored an alliance with the Sunni Islamist parties. He opposed the more secular, former Baathist parties, calling the participation of Ayad Allawi a deal breaker. Moqtada even criticized SCIRI for negotiating with the Kurds, but at least for now the battles were still political. Allawi and his party were hated by Moqtada’s men both for having former Baathists in their ranks and because Allawi had asked the Americans to battle Moqtada in the spring and summer of 2004. Moqtada preferred talking with the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi Accord Front.
Other divisions in the UIAbegan to show when SCIRI’s Abdel Aziz al-Hakim publicly ruled out making changes to the constitution, infuriating the Sunnis and increasing sectarian tensions. Moqtada, a dangerous thug, was now the only bridge between Iraq’s Shias and Sunnis. He may have opposed the Baathists, but he had established an excellent working relationship with radical Sunnis since the fall of Baghdad, and like them he demanded a centralized Iraq, perhaps in part because he had so much support in Baghdad. Once the most divisive figure in Iraqi politics, Moqtada had become the only one capable of halting the civil war. The choice seemed to be between civil war and a government of radical Islamists.
Iraq’s Shias were triumphant, knowing that Iraq was now theirs and could not be taken away from them (except by the Americans). There was no threat of Sunnis retaking the country, because they had never taken it before; they had been given it, first by the Ottomans and then by the British. Iraq’s Sunnis view all Shias as Iranians or Persians and refuse to recognize that Shias are the majority or that Shias had been singled out for persecution under Saddam.
Attacks against Shia civilians have done nothing to weaken their increasing power in Iraq, validated by the January 2005 elections. Throughout the region sectarian tensions have begun to increase. Sunnis in Jordan and Saudi Arabia are threatened by the Shia renaissance in Iraq. In December 2004, Jordan’s King Abdallah warned of a “Shia crescent” from Lebanon to Iraq to Iran that would destabilize the entire region. Iraq’s Shias, in turn, have demonstrated against Jordan, condemning that country for the steady trickle of suicide bombers who cross into Iraq and commit atrocities against Shia civilians.
In September 2005, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned that a civil war in Iraq would destabilize the entire region and complained that the Americans had handed Iraq over to Iran [246] for no reason. In response, Bayan Jabr, Iraq’s Interior Minister, called the Saudi Foreign Minister a “Bedouin riding a camel” and described Saudi Arabia as a one-family dictatorship. Jabr, who had commanded the Badr Corps, also condemned Saudi human rights abuses, particularly the repression of Saudi Arabia’s approximately 2 million Shias and Saudi Arabia’s treatment of its women.
In Saudi Arabia, home of Wahhabi Islam, Shias are known as rafida, or “rejectionists.” A highly pejorative term, it means that Shias are outside Islam. To Shias it is the equivalent of being called “nigger.” Zarqawi uses the word to describe Shias, as do many other Sunni radicals in the region. Saudi Arabia’s Shias have been persecuted, prevented from celebrating their festivals, and occasionally threatened with extermination. Saudi Arabia is also the main exporter of foreign fighters to the Iraqi Jihad to fight both the Americans and the Shia “collaborators.”
As in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, a regional sectarian war is being fought in Iraq, with Jordan and Saudi Arabia providing support for Sunni violence in order to give Iraq’s Sunnis more political leverage. Iran, of course, is supporting its client SCIRI, perhaps even funding it, as SCIRI wages war against Sunnis.

damn. nothing, jony.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2007 19:37 utc | 37

its not clear how Saddams oppression of the Shia, or the Saudi’s disdainful treatment of their Shia or the favoring of the Sunni by the Ottomans/British can be employed to explain todays ongoing bloody sectarian carnage in Iraq, as unleashed by the USA invasion.
We’ll never know what would have happened had the Iraqi’s been left to resolve their internal issues themselves. However, what the USA invasion has brought on Iraq is clearly on the outer fringe of the domain of potential outcomes — we now have close to a million unnecessary deaths, four million fled from their homes, a total breakdown of security …
also, what efforts has USA made to date, to improve the treatment of Saudi Shia by its close buddy – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ?
the Iraqi’s themselves blame the invasion far more than they blame sectarian differences for the devastation they are enduring. The Iraqi’s could possibly be completely wrong about their own country & history but wheres the proof.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Aug 2 2007 20:38 utc | 39

jony
the point is there is no proof afaik, beyond confident announcements from malooga, the US intended civil war.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2007 20:57 utc | 41

there are many crimes of empire, but not one of them is the intention of US to start a civil war. no one has offered evidence supporting maloogas’s claim, least of all malooga.
it seems important for a certain kind of leftist to lie to herself on this score if the belief is generally that no US or western intervention in iraq would have assured equanimous transition to a post-saddam iraq. the history shows otherwise for those who care to know.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2007 23:41 utc | 43

i never supported the invasion, but have honestly tried to question what realistic mechanisms exist or could to intervene in the events of sovereign nations in a world in which sovereignty is increasingly arbitrary and meaningless.
i don’t “demonize” the “resistance” but have made the effort to understand the diversity of opposition w/out clumsily insisting “iraqis” are some monolithic entity struggling against occupation. i work w/ the facts while you embrace a fantasy, a fantasy which i think is borderline racist
your other points are just fucking nonsense.
as for the last point, my marxism i think has been honest enough to unravel the political economy of this war–a complexity and explanation which will never surpass the resilience of your doctrinaire politics finding in all things only the ubiquitous evil of “america,” and maybe a pinch of andreotti when you feel cosmopolitan.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 3 2007 1:14 utc | 45

sloth,
first of all I am a male. My comment at #12 should have made that clear, if all the personal posts over the years mysteriously haven’t.
Second of all, remember the two Brits picked up in Arab dress in Basra at a roadblock several years ago — with the boot of their car filled with bombs. The Brits were so anxious to get these guys back that they bulldozed the whole jail. Of course, they couldn’t have been sowing division with all those bombs, no, they were probably Christmas presents.
slothrop,
I’m glad that r’giap is able to refute your endless pages of tangential words far better than I can.
But I want to make something very clear: After the way you purposely sabotaged the experimental Bookchin thread (which was not on this blog proper) with your irrelevant snipes, a thread which was really important to me, and where I felt some real learning was going on — indeed the only attempt to try something like that off of this blog. After you sabotaged that thread with your stinky little juvenile ad hominems, I decided to never take you seriously, or waste my time engaging you at any level. Why b puts up with such intentional destructiveness is beyond me. But I have no intention on wasting my time with a cyber-creep when there is so much important work to be done in the real world.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 3 2007 5:17 utc | 47

oh, the bookchin thread was fun! go back and look. you’ll notice it was you, malooga, you whiny little prick, who first dug in w/ the personal attacks.
it’s a shame for you, you come here for praise and defense of a goddamned virtual identity. I’m sorry i haven’t offered sufficient respect for your great mind.
btw. apropos: this lie you repeat about US seeking civil war is it seems a lie based doomed by facts. i wasn’t aware we should attend moa to circulate lies in the effort to be respected anonymously.
christ!

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 3 2007 15:08 utc | 49

@sloth 49 this lie you repeat about US seeking civil war is it seems a lie based doomed by facts.
Ioz has the best answer I can think of – FACTS.

So. To keep score. The United States is supporting: the Shia government, which funnels money and arms to Shia militias, death squads, and insurgent/terrorist groups; the Sunni opposition, which funnels money and arms to the Sunni insurgency; the Sunni insurgency directly, so that they will combat the Shia militias as well as al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group of Sunni terrorists supposedly supported by Shia Iran; the Saudis, who fund Sunni insurgents as well–almost surely–as Sunni terrorist groups; the Iraqi Kurds, who have their sights set on an independent nation that includes a de-Arabized Kirkuk; and the Turks, who have their sights set on never, ever seeing an independent Kurdish entity anywhere, anyhow, anyway, ever, amen.

But according to slothrop, the US is not even seeking a civil war in Iraq, certainly not an all out war in the Middle East – no way …

Posted by: b | Aug 3 2007 18:17 utc | 51

malooga, i would be very interested in reading the article

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 3 2007 19:03 utc | 53

the bookchin thread was a good one. i wish there was more of that here.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 3 2007 19:06 utc | 55

sometimes slothrop i do not know what you are looking at – mad maps, bad books – or a malevolant media
that is to say – what you are suggesting is not on offer in the reality of iraq & you know it
it is not on offer because iraq was illegally invaded & is illegally occupied. that is the causal relation behind everything & i mean everything
my position is clear. i want the us out now! today!
their every gesture is harmful. their every strategy an obscenity
& i will say what i sd to you three years ago sloth – if the us does not do that she will be defeated militarily in such a humiliating way that it will make the ridiculous escape from saigon, look like victory

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 3 2007 19:20 utc | 57

i don’t know if you have noticed, but there exists today across the regions spreading from beirut to jakarta – a catastrophe

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 3 2007 20:44 utc | 59

THESE ARTICLES ARE FROM MONTHS BEFORE THE ONE IN QUESTION…AND ONE IS A JEWISH WEBSITE
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/20157/edition_id/411/format/html/displaystory.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0423/p11s01-coop.html

Posted by: rdtyugyi | Jan 5 2008 2:46 utc | 61