THE US, UN AND IRAQ V

to Bush's 4 flush

For anyone who may not have quite got the message there:


stunning public-relations coup

campaign mode

Cleric joins opposition to new political plan for Iraq, but compromise may be possible

By Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press, 12/3/2003 03:07

KARBALA, Iraq (AP) A prominent cleric joined Iraq's top Shiite Muslim religious leader in demanding that a proposed transitional legislature be elected directly, throwing another obstacle into the path of a U.S.-sponsored political plan for Iraq.

An official with the U.S.-led coalition, however, said a majority of Governing Council members remained committed to a Nov. 15 agreement setting a timetable to hand back sovereignty to Iraqis by July 1 and giving the country a new constitution and a democratically elected government 18 months later.

Only a small minority, led by Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the council's current president, was adamant that Iraqis must chose members of the legislature in a general election, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The majority of the 25-member council, appointed by the U.S.-led occupation authority in July, believed that electing the assembly through regional caucuses was acceptable given the difficulties involved in holding a credible election without a census, electoral rolls or the registration of eligible voters among the estimated 4 million Iraqis living abroad.

Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi al-Modaresi, a respected Shiite cleric based in the holy city of Karbala, said Tuesday that the legislature should be elected and warned that ignoring popular participation in the political process would have grave consequences.

''The agreement was a deficient step on the road to the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis,'' al-Modaresi said of the Nov. 15 pact signed by L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, and the Governing Council.

''I am concerned about increasing frustration among Iraqis and I am telling everyone that they are a peaceful people,'' he said. ''But it will be a different story if they run out of patience. I fear sedition.''

The Bush administration, faced with mounting casualties among troops in Iraq as an election year approaches, sees Shiite participation in any political process as crucial, since Shiites make up at least 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people.

Washington also sees a sovereign Iraqi government as a way to help defuse a growing insurgency based mostly among Iraq's Sunni Muslim community.

A visiting U.S. senator told reporters in Baghdad that the United Nations should broker a compromise in the standoff over the proposed legislature.

''You could make a good argument for either of those,'' said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. ''Either direct caucus or direct election. Choose one, but let's get to it so we can begin to transfer authority sooner rather than later.''

Under the Nov. 15 agreement, the legislature would be elected through caucuses in each of Iraq's 18 provinces and would convene by the end of May. It would elect a transitional government with full sovereign powers a month later, when the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq would formally end.

Elections for a constituent assembly would be held by March 15, 2005, to draft a constitution to be adopted in a referendum before the end of that year. Also before the end of 2005, Iraqis would go back to the polls to elect a government that would take over from the transitional administration.

The process first ran into trouble last week when objections to the plan by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, were made known through al-Hakim, who heads a key Shiite political organization, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Al-Hakim said al-Sistani informed him of his ''deep concern'' about the plan during a meeting last week at the cleric's home in the holy city of Najaf. Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader and council member, also met al-Sistani last week and repeated the cleric's main objection that electing the legislature through caucuses lacks sufficient popular participation.

Al-Sistani has consistently refused to meet Bremer, most likely because such an encounter would likely tempt rival clerics to accuse him of ''collaboration'' with foreign occupiers. He has been communicating with the U.S.-led coalition through intermediaries.

''The timeline and the process will remain,'' said the coalition official, who is closely involved in the political process. ''The details can be worked out, but we are not going to have another shift.''

Al-Modaresi doesn't have al-Sistani's clout among Shiites, but his remarks Tuesday should deepen the worries of the U.S.-led occupation authorities, who already had to ditch an earlier political blueprint for Iraq when al-Sistani insisted that only elected delegates can draft a new constitution.

The first religious obligation of every intelligent boy who comes of age, as marked by years or by the dreams of puberty, is to form the intention of reasoning as soundly as he can to an awareness that the world is originated.
Abū ?'l-Ma'āli al-Juwaynī (1028-1085)1

The Medicare bill is a Washington-style mafia bustout

Last week, Washington provided us with one of those spectacles that are a bit hard to figure by our conventional modes of reasoning.

The United States has massive budget deficits ?- probably almost half a trillion dollars annually ?- as far as the eye can see. Sure, we've spent lots of money on defense and homeland security. But as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said last week, Congress is spending money "like a drunken sailor" on almost every front. The Cato Institute just released a study showing that non-defense discretionary spending has gone up by 12 percent in 2002 and 2003.

This isn't guns 'n' butter ?- we're talking unmanned drones and Beluga caviar for everyone.

Then last week, against this backdrop, the president and the Republican congressional leadership pushed through Congress a Medicare prescription drug bill that almost certainly will cost far more than its nominal $400 billion price tag.

If the White House or the Hill were under Democratic control, such a massive increase in federal spending would have been a source of extended and heated debate. But in this case, the very Republican congressmen and senators who would have made the budgetary case most vociferously were the ones hammering the bill through with the most merciless sort of whipping. Indeed, the bill's passage was secured by the use of techniques that even many conservatives now concede cut away at the procedural soft tissue that makes a free, open and regular legislative process possible.

So why this odd ideological turnabout? Easy. The bill is ?- or seems to be ?- good politics because it allows the president to check off another campaign promise he's made good on and it gives big payoffs to many of his party's favored constituencies, such as HMOs, drug manufacturers and even rural hospitals.

Of course, there's one possible hitch. While the headlines undoubtedly make for good politics, people on both sides of the aisle realize that this bill actually may not make for good politics once people really see how it operates. The solution? Easy. Put off implementation until 2006. Get the headlines now and worry about the rest later.

And that last part of the puzzle helps put all of this into a larger context.

Like the decision to game the Medicare bill around the 2004 election, just about everything the administration has done in the last 30 months has been done with little thought to the medium-term, let alone the long-term, consequences.

Where to start? There's the rapid run-up in the deficit we've noted, repeated instances of breaking political precedents for short-term political gain ?- like the unprecedented decision to re-redistrict congressional maps in Texas and Colorado ?- and then of course there's foreign policy, where decades-old alliances have been wrecked and our military capacities have been vastly diminished all to make way for the invasion of Iraq, which ?- in case you haven't noticed ?- isn't going so well.

Taken together, almost everything we've seen since early 2001 points to a decision to rush through as many political goodies as possible and secure as much political power as possible as soon as possible, with little regard for picking up the pieces.

And that suggests an analogy.

What we're seeing in Washington today has an uncomfortable resemblance to what, in mafia lingo, is called a bust-out.

It goes something like this.

Say you're a gambler and I'm a mobster. I've lent you lots of money. But now you can't cover your debt. I could pursue the matter through your kneecaps or toss you out of an office window, but instead I take a more constructive approach.

You own a shoe store. I take it over your operation, order everything under the sun and fence all the merchandise for as much money as I can get as quickly as I can. I run out every line of credit you have and generally squeeze the place of every dollar I can get out of it. And then when I can't squeeze anymore, I torch the place and collect on the insurance money.

Sure, it's not the most sustainable business model. But I have my money back, and what happens to you is your problem.

No analogy is perfect, of course.

I have no question that President Bush is trying to solidify Republican control over the federal government. And on the face of it, leaving messes that will need to be cleaned up in the not-too-distant future doesn't seem like the best way of accomplishing that end. But perhaps, as Nick Confessore recently suggested in The Washington Monthly, the idea is to hand out so many political goodies and entrench GOP interests so deeply on K Street that GOP dominance will be incontestable when the price for all this recklessness finally has to be paid.

Who knows what the future holds? But let's not kid ourselves. This is all being done for today and tomorrow, and for the fairly narrow interests of one political party.

How we pick up the pieces just ain't part of the equation.

As PR coups go, this was indeed a stunning one, with for once the photo the administration was aiming at appearing on all the frontpages worldwide ... I'd almost say that if he pulls another few stunts like this the Dem candidates are dead in the water.

Was reading the TIME magazine today morning and a tongue in cheek comment...

Americans wanted a regime change in Iraq. They got it ..

Saddam then Jay Garner, then Paul Bremmer, and now rumors are that he is to go as well - all in a space of 6 months !!

By making partisan loyalty their primary criteria, the administration ruled out most of the people with experience in the field and restricted themselves to politically trustworthy Republicans, many of whom, though often well-meaning and admirably willing to serve their country in a very dangerous place, had little to no experience to prepare them for the challenges they'd encounter in Iraq.

A brilliant one, though! I was really impressed by it.

I mean - the first time a US president goes into actual war zone to hearten the troops since Nixon! And that at the most unexpected moment. It will have quashed most of the criticism of Bush-the-cowardly-uncaring that was starting to leak into the mainstream, for quite a while.

As PR coups go, this was indeed a stunning one, with for once the photo the administration was aiming at appearing on all the frontpages worldwide ... I'd almost say that if he pulls another few stunts like this the Dem candidates are dead in the water.

US grilled over Samarra claims

Wednesday 03 December 2003, 21:13 Makka Time, 18:13 GMT

Civilians were caught in the crossfire in Samarra
Related:
Samarra clash toll still a mystery
US soldier dies as doubts grow over Samarra
Dozens killed in Samarra carnage


US officials on Wednesday were badgered by the media about their claim that 54 fighters were killed in clashes in the Iraqi town of Samarra.

"We have no reason to believe that these were inaccurate figures," said the occupation forces' deputy director of operations Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, in response to repeated questions from journalists about the reported death toll.


"We stand by these numbers that were reported by the soldiers involved," he said at a news conference in Baghdad.


Growing doubts have been expressed about the figures in the light of the insistence of the town's hospital that it received just eight bodies, including a child and at least one elderly Iranian woman who were clearly not fighters.


Raised eyebrows


At an earlier briefing on Monday, Kimmitt had suggested that the fighters' corpses must have been carried away by their comrades.


But his theory raised eyebrows as he also reported 22 fighters were wounded and one captured in what he described as "coordinated" attacks on three separate convoys.



Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves, who commands the 166th Armoured Battalion in Samarra, which was involved in Sunday's clashes had only explicitly referred to two groups of 30 ambushers each[/b] and another four attackers in a car.



That raised questions about how such a small number of mainly injured survivors carried off so many bodies.[/b]



The occupation forces' chief civilian spokesman in Baghdad Dan Senor leapt to the defence of the US military.



"Our troops go to very great efforts to give us scrupulous reports," he said. "They have been forthright and honest, and will continue to be."



Pressed further, the US general grew increasingly testy. "I trust the reports of my soldiers ... There is no reason to doubt what the soldiers say."



Challenged about the US-led administration's legal responsibility to inquire into civilian deaths under occupation, Kimmitt replied: "I have spoken to (Major) General (Raymond) Odierno today. We will do a determination of what happened. He is fully committed to finding out the truth."



But he added: "It is important to understand that many of these questions will never be answered."



Asked about the timeframe for the conclusion of the investigation, Kimmitt offered no reply.

I have almost no respect for the guy. But I think what he did was worth doing.

"What we are witnessing," explains Yitzhak Nakash, the Brandeis University professor who is the author of "The Shi'is of Iraq," "is a very healthy bargaining session over what will be the relationship between religion and politics in Iraq and over the process of choosing legitimate national and communal leaders. It is very important that the Americans show respect for the views of Sistani ?- whose tacit support for the U.S. presence in Iraq has been enormously important ?- and let Sistani and the other Iraqi political forces thrash this out on their own."

Despite all the events of the past 12 months, this next phase of the Iraq conflict could yet prove to be its most dangerous. The big picture, to the extent that it can be made out, suggests Iraq's future is still very much in the balance. An orderly transition and the assertion of legitimate, democratic governance is by no means assured. Continuing, escalating civil strife, scattering the seeds of a possible civil war, could yet turn out to be the Bush-Blair legacy in Iraq.

Quote:

"What we are witnessing," explains Yitzhak Nakash, the Brandeis University professor who is the author of "The Shi'is of Iraq," "is a very healthy bargaining session over what will be the relationship between religion and politics in Iraq and over the process of choosing legitimate national and communal leaders. It is very important that the Americans show respect for the views of Sistani ?- whose tacit support for the U.S. presence in Iraq has been enormously important ?- and let Sistani and the other Iraqi political forces thrash this out on their own."

Good piece by Tom Friedman. Do you agree with it, Ge? I think he is spot on. What arises in Iraq may be unusual and not what we might call a democracy, but there are think groups in this country and elsewhere that are brainstorming about the combination of Islam and democracy -- I read a good article on it two weeks ago and will try to find it -- and they think it is doable.