US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

"We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch.

August 17, 2005
WSJ: REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Iraqi Crossroads
August 17, 2005

That free Iraqis are taking another week to write their new constitution is no great cause for alarm. There were a few glitches 200 years ago in Philadelphia too. The reason to worry is that the talks are stymied on the issue of federalism, which is crucial if Iraq's ethnic factions are going to coexist in a single country for the long run.

At least the last-minute brinksmanship doesn't appear to be about religion, despite repeated alarms in the U.S. about the rise of a Shiite "theocracy." Most of the Iraqi framers seem to agree with constitutional language asserting that Islam will be "a" -- not "the" -- principle source of legislation. This is not so different from the vague appeals to divine providence found in some of America's founding documents, and certainly is no reason to fear Iranian-style clerical dominance. On both family law and women's rights, as well, compromises appear to be within reach.

The really tough disputes are over federalism and its corollary of sharing oil revenues. "Get those right and everything else falls into place," one Iraqi insider tells our Robert Pollock, who is reporting from Baghdad. By federalism we mean a political system modeled more or less on the U.S. of America, in which power is shared between a central government and the provinces. The name "United States of Iraq" was actually proposed inside the Iraqi meetings, and no wonder given the terrible experience that Kurdish and Shiite Iraqis had under Saddam Hussein.

The Kurds have enjoyed de facto self rule in the north under the protection of a U.S. no-fly zone since the mid-1990s, and they aren't about to give up their hard-won autonomy now. Many Shiites also find the idea of a weaker government in Baghdad attractive, given how they were victimized by Sunni-dominated Iraqi governments going back to the 1920s.

The dilemma is that most of Iraq's oil wealth is found in areas claimed by Shiites and Kurds. And some leading Iraqi ethnic politicians have been asserting a right to keep all the oil revenue in their regions. Kurdish chieftain Massoud Barzani wants to control the northern city of Kirkuk, while Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is pushing for nearly complete control of the oil fields in the south.

Thus strong regional governments, if allowed too much control over oil, risk leaving an Iraq with a rump Sunni province, and could create the perception of a legitimate grievance where none now exists for the Sunni-dominated insurgency. Sunni delegates have threatened to walk out of the charter talks over the issue.

The best suggestion we've heard for cutting this Gordian knot comes from the much-maligned Ahmed Chalabi, who is now Iraq's deputy prime minister with special responsibilities for oil and infrastructure and has emerged as a major constitutional broker. He has bucked some of his Shiite and Kurdish allies by insisting that ultimate control of Iraq's natural wealth must remain in the hands of the central government, while also suggesting constitutional language that the wealth be owned by all Iraqis in "equal measure." In other words, the oil would be managed by the central government in the interests of all Iraqis wherever they live, but not owned by it.

Mr. Chalabi hopes that the "equal measure" concept will pave the way in practice for the creation of an oil trust, under which Iraqis would from birth have accounts established in their name. Iraqis would receive their full and equal share of oil revenue and the government would have to vote to tax it away. Mr. Chalabi sees this as a way of breaking the "oil curse" that has turned so many oil-rich nations into corrupt tyrannies.

It's entirely possible that this oil-revenue compromise still wouldn't be enough to win over many Sunnis. Some of those negotiating over the charter are ex-Baathists who hope to regain the reins of power in Baghdad. Others may not sign anything that devolves power, lest they make themselves even larger insurgency targets than they already are. More important than which individual Sunnis sign the constitution, however, is whether it can win enough support from Sunni provinces in an October referendum. Many average Sunnis may welcome a federalist charter in the privacy of the voting booth as a way to protect themselves from being dominated by the Shiite majority.

A federalist system of power sharing is the only possible solution if Iraq is going to hold together as a single nation. The job of the U.S. here isn't to choose sides but to promote an Iraqi compromise. The Chalabi oil-sharing proposal has a better chance of doing so than anything we've heard in a long time out of the State Department.

Kara, I'm here to say "hear hear" for your excellent post with the others. Something Busco never understood from the very beginning, and failed miserably at everything they have done in Iraq.

1st Cav soldier discusses "the real deal" in Iraq and calls for an end to the occupation

by Sharon Jumper [Subscribe]

Sat Aug 20th, 2005 at 20:15:58 PDT

This was just posted on the website of Veterans against the Iraq War, www.vaiw.org (Please forgive the wholesale cut and paste I'm about to do, but this soldier deserves to have his words disseminated as widely as possible).

My Experience In Baghdad 2004-2005
"A Baghdad MP shares his experiences in Iraq and his thoughts about the Iraq War."
By Bill
August 7, 2005

Hello, my name is Bill. I'm 24 years old and live in NJ. I fought in Sadr City, Baghdad Iraq from Feb. 2004 to Feb. 2005. I served in C. Co 759th MP Bn 89th MP Brigade. I still wholeheartedly support the decision to remove Saddam from power, however I am completely against the continued occupation of Iraq.

When I landed in Baghdad, the US had roughly 350 deaths. When I left the number was close to 1300. I had 4 of my friends killed and another 27 in my company wounded, which gave us a 1 in 3 rate of being a casualty. I saw a good friend of mine have half of his face blown off when a RPG blew up on our windshield. Another friend of my was wounded twice in separate IED attacks and still wasnt allowed home. I killed 4 people during an 18 hour firefight, one of whom was a little girl that got caught by the burst of a 203 round.

I think about Iraq every day even though I've been home 6 months. And I still cannot figure out why I was there or why americans died over there. I'm all for war, but only "right" wars. I was decorated for valor and congratulated by Colonels, and it's all hollow because it is for nothing. That's why I'm against the war in Iraq.

I can definetly say nothing in suburban America ever EVER prepared me for anything I saw over there. Besides the actual combat, the simple fact that instead of just watching one of those UNICEF commercials with the babies with flies all over them, I was actually in one.

I can't tell you how dirty and malnourished the small children were. Begging for food and eating whatever we threw out of our MRE's. I'll never forget this girl probably like 8 years old came up to me with probably a 2 month old asking me to help the baby because it had some sort of nasty looking scabby rash. I told here I didn't have anything. It's not like I was a medic or like we even had one with us, but she was so insistent and so upset, and the baby was just motionless, flies all over her face. It was probably the most heartwrenching thing I ever saw over there. So just to make here feel better I gave her some alchohol pads, just so she thought she had something. When i went back to base I hit the medics for some sort of antibacterial cream which they gave me, but I never ended up going back to that area.

There was also this family of 3 girls that lived next to a police station, which their father happened to work at. All the guys in my unit would give them candy when they stopped by on their way home from school. We knew these kids for like 3 months. Then we left and about 2 weeks later a car bomb blew up their father when he was at a checkpoint. A mother and 3 girls dont have much to look forward to in Iraq when they are alone. That bothered me and the guys alot.

It just amazes me now that I'm home that for the most part (except families affected by the war), people don't even pay attention to it anymore. It's like we come home get a pat on the back and a smile and then poof, that's it. You're just supposed to get on with your life.

I just don't understand America anymore. People spending $100 on shoes, that's what the average Iraqi makes a month. People worrying about stupid stuff like their clothes or cars. They need to see a woman throw out a chamber pot into the street at 6am and then 2 hours later her kids are playing in it naked. Or for example the inordinate amount of birth defects I saw in Sadr City. I have never seen more physical deformities, not even on television in my entire life, than I saw in Iraq. There were people with chicken wing arms, people that were basically just a torso and a head. It amazed me.

I dont know, America just isn't what I wanted to come home to.

=====

I was stationed at Camp Cuervo (was Camp Muleskinner when I first arrived) in Baghdad Iraq. My primary area of patrol was Sadr City, which is North of the green zone. Basically a square shaped set of a couple hundred blocks in which Saddam shoved roughly 2 million Shiites, in a sort of modern ghetto.

We arrived when the invasion was at its ending point, and we were starting to build up the Iraqi police force. (I was an MP) At first my friends and I were all full of &*@!# and vinegar to go out and kill haji's (comparable to charlie in the Vietnam war). It was about 3 weeks before we got in our first firefight.

It was an odd thing because when someone shoots at you for the first time you can't really believe that you just go "Oh Sh*t!!" and return fire. My first firefight consisted of roughly 15 other MP's at a police station in Sadr City under seige by approximately 50 Iraqis of Muqtada Al Sadr Mahdi army milita. It lasted 3 hours and was ended by the arrival of bradleys from the 1st Cav division. During the course of the firefight, I killed a man shooting at me from an apartment window with an AK47, and 3 other of my friends saw that they had hit and killed people, although with all the rounds we expended, between regular 5.56, .50 cal and MK19 grenades, I'm sure the Iraqi toll was much higher.

Our only casualty was one of the gunners in a humvee was shot in the arm. We had 11 RPG's shot at us and 3 mortars, none really came to close. The Iraqi police we were protecting (the ones that didn't leave minutes before the firefight, thus obviously knowing something was up) refused to go out and fight. That was my first glimpse of how ruined Iraq was.

For the next 3 months other platoons had firefights. We were mortared almost every night, and had suffered some wounded through IED attacks. That all changed in June when we were at the same police station I had previously been in a firefight at. Roughly 2 hours after we arrived all hell broke loose. I was driving an ASV when a RPG exploded on the passenger side window horribly wounding my friend in the passenger seat. In addition to the vehicle being on fire, he was unconcious with blood pouring from his face from the shrapnel he recieved (I later found out his left lung was deflated from shrapnel going through it, and he had a broken collar bone.) My gunner was hit in the rear by shrapnel. I miraculously wasn't injured at all, even though it exploded only 6 inches to the right of my head.

After what seemed like 15 minutes (I was later told it was nearly instant) I reversed the vehicle back to our perimeter, My gunner jumped out the side hatch and ran to our lines. I popped out the top hatch and yelled for a medic and then dragged my friend out of the still burning vehicle and started administering first aid into what I then realized was a raging firefight. The medics arrived soon after I got my friend out and bandaged him up all around his head and evac'd him.

I then stayed there for another 16 hours getting shot at. During the course of the firefight 20 MP's were attacked by over100 Mahdi army soldiers. More RPGs were fired than I could count. One of my friends who was previously wounded in an IED attack was hit by shrapnel when an RPG exploded on the side of his Hummvee. Another soldier was shot in the foot.

We were basically leveling buildings shooting back. One store exploded when the propane in side caught fire. I killed 3 people during that fire fight. 2 men with an RPG with a M203 grenade and a little girl that was in the area of the blast. Because whenever the Iraqis attacked, they made sure they had plenty of women and children around them in order to discourage us from firing back. I could care less about the men I killed, but I almost daily think about the girl. I received the Army Commendation Medal with Valor device for my actions that day, although I could care less. ( I found out I did not receive the bronze star because I was only an E-4 Specialist)

2 of our men were killed transporting supplies to us by an IED on the 2nd day of the battle and another 2 were killed the 3rd day (by which time I was relieved and back on base). The total of that firefight was 4 dead, 12 wounded from my company. It really struck me during the firefight though was when 2 apaches were circling overhead and left. I later found out that they couldnt receive permission to fire because it would cause too many civilian casualties.

For the most part the Iraqi's are glad america is there, but they are the silent majority. They are too scared that if they speak out for us they would be kidnapped or murdered. One Iraqi asked me why America doesn't build schools or donate cars like the Japanese did. I told him it's because every time we try to build something either the workers get scared and don't show up because they are working for Americans and scared of retribution or because it is constantly attacked by one of the various militias.

I was never once in my entire year in iraq, attacked by Saddam loyalists or Al Qaeda, I was attacked by shiite milita that was sick of the American military bullying its way through traffic, never delivering on any promises it said it would keep, and just generally sick of a foreign military presence. Yes they were also religious extremists, but most were just disillusioned with America's presence.

Just imagine if George W. was a dictator and all of a sudden Canada invaded. We would be happy at first, but after almost 2 years of them still hanging around and nothing getting done, I'm fairly certain we would rise up against them too.

Another thing is that Iraq has been ruled by a dictatorship for basically its entire history, from Hammurabi to King Faisal to Saddam Hussein. All they know is ruling by fear, that is why either someone in the the new government is going to become another Saddam only with US backing, or some Iraqi General will stage a coup. It will take at least 2 generations for any sort of democracy to come to iraq, and it won't help when they direct all their energy into killing Americans.

I'm glad we ousted Saddam, but we should not still be in Iraq. I, to this day, have no clue why I fought over there, have no clue what I fought for, and am upset because my friends were maimed and killed for nothing.

=======

The one of the biggest problems I deal with is the fact that even though we fought a three day battle to secure an IP station and we won. We abandoned it the next day and within a week the Mahdi army bullied all the Iraqi police out of it, placed demo charges and blew it up. And our leadership didn't even bat an eye. Can't figure out why we would fight so hard for something that had 4 guys killed and 12 wounded just so we can let it get blown up.

And it happened all the time, we'd go somewhere, hang out long enough for stuff to quiet down, move on and then the place we left would be just the same as before we showed up. I think the only people that had any sort of morale were the officers and higher NCO's (E-8 and up) that didn't have to go out and face the possiblity of getting blown up every day. We had guys breaking down left and right and had to go see psychiatrists because they couldn't deal with being out in the city for 7 days straight in a shot with 12 hours up and 4 hours down. Towards the end of our deployment if we didn't go home in about another month or two there would have been a rebellion.

I tried to explain it to people at work and they pretty much nod and say well that sucked and then when i showed them pictures of what was done over there and then they realize its not just some little 3 minute spot on the nightly news.

That's another thing that I think most americans dont understand, when you hear about a bombing or attack in Iraq on the news, there are about 20 other bombings or firefights that you don't hear about. I would call or email home about a carbombing or shooting to see if they heard anything about it on the news and until our 4 guys were killed the answer was always no. So it astounds me as to how little information really filters down to the american people. There is sometimes days that go by now that I'm home that I wont hear anything about Iraq, and I can promise you something happens every day. My camp was mortared so frequently during one week it was as if we were underseige, like 20 mortars a day for 5 days straight, and when your camp is only about 1square mile those booms sound awfullly close.

And you never hear about how many Iraqi civilians are killed just because they work for Americans and are trying to provide for their families. We had a restaurant on our FOB run by haji's that we used to go to whenever we were either sick of the chow hall food or if we came in too late to get dinner. One night a bunch of us went there to get dinner and we ordered french fries. The guy that took the order, who was also the owner said he didnt have any french fries, so we started ribbing him about how we could give some kid that lives under a bridge $2 to get us fries but yet here he is with a restaurant without a fairly basic item, so after about 2 minutes of busting this guy a little he gets red and says, " I will tell you why we have no fries, man that delivers fries was killed because he works with americans". When he said that it just floored us. We couldnt imagine some one who delivers french fries would be killed just because he delivers food to a guy that works for americans.

We had interpretors' relatives killed, let alone interpretors themselves for working with us. Our interpretor whom i still talk to through email on occasion (badly wants to come to the US) only told his immediate family who he works for, his neighbors all think that he does construction work.

Whatever you do, don't take what you have here for granted.

"I don't see any difference between Saddam and the way the Kurds are running things here," said Nahrain Toma, who heads a human rights organization, Bethnahrain, which has offices in northern Iraq and has faced several death threats.

Toma said the tactics were eroding what remained of U.S. credibility as the militias operate under what many Iraqis view as the blessing of American and British forces. "Nobody wants anything to do with the Americans anymore," she said. "Why? Because they gave the power to the Kurds and to the Shiites. No one else has any rights."

"Here's the problem," said Majid Sari, an adviser in the Iraqi Defense Ministry in Basra, who travels with a security detail of 25 handpicked Iraqi soldiers. Referring to the militias, he said, "They're taking money from the state, they're taking clothes from the state, they're taking vehicles from the state, but their loyalty is to the parties." Whoever disagrees, he said, "the next day you'll find them dead in the street."

It Takes the Right Army
Security in Iraq is not as simple as decreasing our troops and increasing
theirs.

By Frederick W. Kagan

Wednesday, August 17, 2005; Page A13

The Bush administration is making it clearer day by day that it intends to
withdraw American troops from Iraq rapidly and roughly in step with the
increase in the number of Iraqi troops deemed capable of taking over
security responsibilities. Even while denying rumors of a rapid withdrawal
of U.S. forces, President Bush has declared that "as Iraqis stand up, we
will stand down."

This could be a big mistake. It is likely to simply sustain the current
level of security in Iraq -- which is poor -- rather than take advantage of
increasing numbers of Iraqi troops to improve the security situation. And,
more important, relying on increases in the number of combat-capable Iraqi
troops to make U.S. withdrawals possible ignores a serious set of challenges
that have to be dealt with before the United States can depart with
confidence in the prospects for victory.

The United States is engaged in creating a force of light infantry in Iraq
that will ultimately number nearly 250,000 troops. This force will be well
suited to conducting patrols in fixed locations, maintaining a presence in
threatened areas, doing searches and sweeps, and performing high-end police
functions. As more of these troops become available, we can expect improved
intelligence and less friction between U.S. forces and local Iraqis. And
although we can also be sure that these forces will be less effective than
professional American soldiers and will suffer from conflicting tribal and
sectarian loyalties and corruption, it will be generally true that the more
such Iraqi troops there are on the streets the better.

But this light infantry force does not constitute an army. It will not be
able, whatever its numbers, to conduct a counterinsurgency by itself for
many years, and it will not be able to do so at all unless certain critical
deficiencies are remedied. For example, it appears that efforts to establish
Iraqi logistical elements are lagging badly behind the formation and
training of light infantry units. Iraqis thus rely on coalition logistics
when they must move from their home bases -- or, more commonly, they simply
do not move from those bases at all. Their transportation assets are
minimal, and so they lack the ability to project their forces within Iraq.
As a result, they would not be able to concentrate force rapidly in
particularly violent areas or to destroy insurgent concentrations quickly.
For as long as these conditions hold, the U.S. military will remain an
essential part of the struggle against insurgency in Iraq.

It is also important to understand that the current Iraqi forces rely
heavily on the availability of responsive U.S. airpower. They do not have
their own organic fire support (artillery or aviation), and so must wait for
the American soldiers embedded within their formations to call in coalition
air support when they run into any sort of serious opposition. The combined
operations of Iraqi formations with embedded U.S. trainers and coalition
troops have been excellent preparation for the Iraqis and have gone a long
way toward creating a meaningful indigenous light infantry force. But they
are also conditioning the Iraqis to rely on a capability that only a
significant U.S. presence can provide.

Nor will it be easy for the Iraqis to learn the arts of planning and
conducting large-scale raids and sweeps, coordinating the activities of
multiple infantry units, and using artillery and air power. These are among
the most difficult tasks to train for quickly, and they can normally be
learned in combat only at great risk. Even in wartime, it takes years to
produce a brigade or division commander who can actually command his unit
without outside assistance.

The efforts the U.S military has made to train the Iraqi forces should not
be in any way disparaged. They have achieved remarkable results in a much
shorter time than anyone had a right to expect. These efforts will, over the
long term, prove essential to allowing the coalition to transfer
responsibility for Iraqi security to Iraqis. But Americans should not
imagine that this transfer is likely to come quickly. If the insurgency
persists -- and there is every reason to believe it will -- Iraqis will be
dependent on significant levels of U.S. military support for years to come.

A decision to reduce forces based mainly on the number of Iraqi light
infantry available at any moment would be dangerous and unwarranted. It
might well put at risk the success of U.S. efforts, and the millions of
Iraqis working in perilous conditions to establish democracy in their
county.

Your earlier quitter's declaration that the war is over,

THE MESOPOTAMIAN
TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Sunday, August 21, 2005

Hi,

As the dialogue between the different political blocks intensify concerning the Constitution and the noticeable shift in the Sunni mood towards the political process; the real enemy: Hard core Saddamists, Foreign Al-Qaeda type terrorists and the criminal local Mafia; are getting really desperate. There are rumors in the air about an impending massive terrorist campaign – massive number of car bomb attacks, mortar attacks, and sabotage of the basic services, water, electricity etc.

This threat of possible escalation must be taken seriously; because in the present situation on the ground it is not difficult to carry out, if the enemy decides to concentrate all his forces for one massive short campaign. Although we don’t like to compare with Vietnam but it is Tet-Offensive style of thinking.

Therefore, urgent pre-emptive and exceptional defensive measures must be urgently considered. These measures must include some of the ideas that I suggested in earlier posts. For instance, controlling vehicles has proved its efficacy in the past, and still this matter is not given sufficient attention. It will not do just to sit and wait for the enemy to strike; therefore a pre-emptive campaign is called for right now to deny him initiative.

This is a warning to whom it may concern.
# posted by Alaa : 1:44 AM