Rumsfeld: 'Iraq - we have no EXIT policy'

Takes a certain amount of disingenuous to believe ever there was an "In-and-out" policy. No such tning ever was proposed - beyond sayin' we would do what was necessary to oust Sadam and the Ba'athists, provide sufficient security to permit the formation of a popularly selected government through a series of planned stages, assist in trainin' and equippin' in digenous forces to provide their own security, and maintain such military presence in the nation from that point on as was agreeable to the new government. That precisely is what is goin' on, like it or not.

Carrying banners that read "Go Out" and "Leave Our Country," marchers hit the streets early Saturday, blocking roads and causing traffic jams around the capital. Most of the protesters came from the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, but busloads arrived from Kut, Amarah, Baqubah and other cities. Some estimates put the number of protesters at 300,000.

Most of the demonstrators in Baghdad were Shias loyal to the young cleric Moqtada Al Sadr. But coordinated protests seeking an end to the American presence also took place in the Sunni strongholds of Ramadi and Baiji.

Sunni, Shia marchers demand end to occupation.

Rumsfeld seeks to temper desire for revenge in Iraq




By Luke Baker
REUTERS
10:45 a.m. April 13, 2005

BAGHDAD - U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's call for Iraq's new leaders to resist political purges has touched one of the most sensitive issues in Iraq.

While on one level it may be pragmatic advice from an ally keen to prevent score-settling at a sensitive time, on another it reveals just how treacherous post-Saddam Hussein Iraq is and how great the risk of a misstep could be.


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During a visit on Tuesday, Rumsfeld warned against any wholesale dismissal of former members of Saddam's regime from current government jobs, a move many Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders, winners of January's election, want to see.

Persecuted for decades under Saddam's Sunni Arab-led administration, Shi'ites and Kurds, are now keen for redress.

That was initially the approach Washington also took, and Rumsfeld backed, when Paul Bremer was sent to govern Iraq after Saddam's fall. But attitudes have since changed dramatically.

Back then, Bremer's first orders were the outlawing of Saddam's Baath Party, the dismissal of senior government employees and the disbanding of Iraq's 500,000-strong military.

While the army was disbanded, de-Baathification, as the dismantling of the regime was called, never really took off and many officials who served under Saddam are again serving in government. Hundreds of former army officers were rehired.

What's more, many of them are doing a good job.

They have helped lead the battle against the insurgency in recent months, officials say, putting militants on the back foot, and it's that momentum Rumsfeld does not want to lose.

'It's important that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence,' Rumsfeld said, expressing particular concern about any purges of the Interior and Defence ministries, both key to fighting the two-year-old insurgency.

But some of Iraq's new leaders strongly disagree.

'NOT BLACK AND WHITE'

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main party in the coalition that won the election, has said Saddam-era Sunnis must be removed from top ministries and the security forces.

Three members of SCIRI's militia were tortured to death by Iraqi police in Baghdad earlier this year, an incident for which the Interior Ministry has apologised but which Hakim points to as evidence Saddam-style tactics are still in force.

There have also been accusations that Saddam sympathisers who were allowed back into the Defence and Interior ministries are now aiding and abetting the insurgency from the inside.

Rather than allowing hundreds of commanders who served in Saddam's military to take up posts in the new force, some Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians want senior officers in their own militias to take top jobs in the military.

'It's a serious problem and it's very difficult to know where to draw the line,' said Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry official who went into exile during Saddam's regime.

'If there's a full scale clearing out of the ministries then it really could set us back in tackling the insurgency.

'The question is, is now the right time for a redress? Many of these Sunnis who served under Saddam have proved their worth in the new government. It's not black and white.'

Backing Hakim's call for a thorough clearing out of the old regime is Ahmad Chalabi, the former Pentagon ally who made the case for the United States to go to war against Saddam.

Chalabi has pushed to reconstitute Bremer's de-Baathification commission, which was supposed to dismantle the party and ban senior Baathists from future government work.

While he was in power, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who was once a member of the Baath Party, largely managed to block Chalabi's move. But he's now out of office and unlikely to get a position in the next government.

The new prime minister, moderate Islamist Shi'ite Ibrahim Jaafari, is under increasing pressure from his allies to reinstigate de-Baathification, hence Rumsfeld's timely intervention.

Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has said some Shiite and Kurdish politicians may be eyeing plans to ban all the estimated 2 million Baath Party members from high-ranking positions in the new government.

If that were to happen, it would exacerbate the insurgency.

Kadhim expects some senior officials will lose their jobs, but says a wholesale purging of ministries is unlikely.

'The name of the game is pragmatism, compromise, and coalition-building,' Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told the Council on Foreign Relations. 'Debaathification has to be handled carefully, or it could backfire.'

Lebanon;s government is not a popularly selected and supported government, it was installed by Syria. Big difference. Now some folks may say the nascent Iraqi government is a US tool, too. I don't think those folks are right. Neither, apparently, do most Iraqis, or for that matter, The Arab Street in general. I happen to think the region a decade from now will be a very different, and very much better, place than it was before we undertook operations there.

Takes a certain amount of disingenuous to believe ever there was an "In-and-out" policy. No such tning ever was proposed - beyond sayin' we would do what was necessary to oust Sadam and the Ba'athists, provide sufficient security to permit the formation of a popularly selected government through a series of planned stages, assist in trainin' and equippin' in digenous forces to provide their own security, and maintain such military presence in the nation from that point on as was agreeable to the new government. That precisely is what is goin' on, like it or not.

Sh^t! The USA landed less troops in Normandy in 1944 against the Third Reich and they'd end up defeated just over a year later! Two years later and a tiny nation with no army to speak of still holds out? There's more to this than meets the eye, no?

Sh^t! The USA landed less troops in Normandy in 1944 against the Third Reich and they'd end up defeated just over a year later! Two years later and a tiny nation with no army to speak of still holds out? There's more to this than meets the eye, no?

Don't let the facts bother ya none, Stilly.

If the USA is still in Iraq two years after defeating a totally inferior force and capturing the head honcho and the Bush Administration STILL can't say with confidence that they have achieved their 'mission' it is because they never had one.

Mr Stillwater wrote:

If the USA is still in Iraq two years after defeating a totally inferior force and capturing the head honcho and the Bush Administration STILL can't say with confidence that they have achieved their 'mission' it is because they never had one.

Our mission was blindingly simple - make sure that a homicidal madman wouldn't be in charge of doomsday weapons. Oh, my, that's so complex to hold in my little head.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Mr Stillwater wrote:

If the USA is still in Iraq two years after defeating a totally inferior force and capturing the head honcho and the Bush Administration STILL can't say with confidence that they have achieved their 'mission' it is because they never had one.

Our mission was blindingly simple - make sure that a homicidal madman wouldn't be in charge of doomsday weapons. Oh, my, that's so complex to hold in my little head.

Okay then the mission must be over, yes? Time to leave now, yes?

Mr Stillwater wrote:

If the USA is still in Iraq two years after defeating a totally inferior force and capturing the head honcho and the Bush Administration STILL can't say with confidence that they have achieved their 'mission' it is because they never had one.

Our mission was blindingly simple - make sure that a homicidal madman wouldn't be in charge of doomsday weapons. Oh, my, that's so complex to hold in my little head.

And what was in the tiny heads of Reagan, et al when they SOLD him those weapons???

Iraq built her Military Capability primarily with Russian/Former Soviet and French hardware, and the bulk of her Chem/Bio technology is derived from the very "Old Europe" nations that now oppose military redress to The Iraq Problem. 70 percent of the biological and chemical weapons and/or the critical scientific and technical capability to produce its arsenal of sophisticated weapons of mass destruction were sold to Saddam by European Multinational Corporations to the tune of $48.7 billion between 1981-1988 with the approval and protection of their governments who are the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and were members of the 1991 US-led coalition involved with Desert Storm.

According to a Cable News Network (CNN)" Business News" Report by Steve Young on 20 February 1990:

Quote:

... Saddam Hussein bought more than 70 percent of his chemical warfare arsenal or the makings from the so-called G-7 nations (major European industrial nations) Japan, France, United States, Italy, Britain and Germany; only Canada apparently sold nothing; experts say that's because Canada had no chemical weapons to sell. A report commissioned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles details how Germany sold more poison gases (and) chemicals to make them and testing facilities than any other country in the world.

Sales by 134 different German companies have been documented and the number is climbing. So far, German authorities have indicated just three German businesses and are investigating 15 or more others.

According to Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center: "The very same agents invented by German technologies in the 1940s and put at the disposal of a dictator were again recreated in the 1990s and put at the disposal of another dictator." Saddam's chemical warfare connection in the United States include some curiosities; the Center for Disease Control sold West Nile Fever Virus (that can be converted into chemical warfare agents).

Saddam's chemical warfare suppliers include companies from Belgium (8); Switzerland (13); and Australia (27). In all, 24 countries sold chemical warfare materials to Iraq amounting to 366 companies."

To buttress this accusation, military expert Michael Leeden, points out that "German involvement with Iraq chemical weapons program started in 1977" and that "for over a decade German businessmen and scientists had played key roles in Iraq's $50 billion program to produce weapons of mass destruction ..all the while claiming they didn't know Iraq was using their exports for military purposes.

The best American estimates suggest that a majority of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical capacity was provided by Germans. What's more, the German government knew about all this in detail ... "

timber

And since when has being a homocidal madman stopped anyone from being a valued and trusted ally of the US. Could it have something to do with the only thing the Iraqis have to sell to the rest of the world? Hint: it isn't bananas.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Mr Stillwater wrote:

If the USA is still in Iraq two years after defeating a totally inferior force and capturing the head honcho and the Bush Administration STILL can't say with confidence that they have achieved their 'mission' it is because they never had one.

Our mission was blindingly simple - make sure that a homicidal madman wouldn't be in charge of doomsday weapons. Oh, my, that's so complex to hold in my little head.

And what was in the tiny heads of Reagan, et al when they SOLD him those weapons???

And since when has being a homocidal madman stopped anyone from being a valued and trusted ally of the US.

Could it have something to do with the only thing the Iraqis have to sell to the rest of the world? Hint: it isn't bananas.

In similar misapprehension, you then wrote:

And since when has being a homocidal madman stopped anyone from being a valued and trusted ally of the US. Could it have something to do with the only thing the Iraqis have to sell to the rest of the world? Hint: it isn't bananas.

The trend of petroleum pricin' since The US bit the bullet and stood up to the UN's fecklessness renders that proposition absurd on its face.