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

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Enough already with the malignancy crap.

You said it, also enough with the ACFR NewsGroup.

Just leave a link where posters or those looking in this thread can go and read the articles themselves if they are interested. It is spamming up this thread and killing it. I think it is already dead because of it.

washingtonpost.com <http://www.washingtonpost.com/>
Bush's Risky Intervention

By Jim Hoagland
August 28, 2005

PARIS -- While President Bush was telephoning an influential Shiite leader to lobby for changes in the new constitution being written in Baghdad last week, Iraq's terrorist forces were busy targeting electric power lines in the countryside. Their priorities of destruction reveal how the terrorists intend to win the war they wage -- and how they can be countered.

Bush called Abdul Aziz Hakim early Thursday, Iraq time, to express concern about three issues: women's rights, delaying bringing a new federal system into effect and softening rules under which ex-Baathists are excluded from government jobs.

These changes, Bush said, would increase the chances of the constitution being accepted by Iraq's Sunni minority. Shiite and Kurdish leaders agreed late Friday to accommodate Bush by amending the draft they had written earlier last week, according to Iraqi sources in Baghdad.

Most important, the Shiites and Kurds agreed that they would let the parliament that will be elected in December decide on the laws determining the scope of autonomy to be given to Shiite and Kurdish regions under a decentralized federal government, just as Bush asked.

However successful or well-intentioned, Bush's tardy intervention on behalf of the Sunnis risks emboldening the ex-Baathists and foreign jihadists who stoke the rebellion in the Sunni-inhabited areas of Iraq. Until now, they have shown relatively little interest in constitutions of any kind.

But the insurgents have made the sustained targeting of infrastructure a major part of an increasingly sophisticated campaign to destroy public confidence in the Iraqi government. The rebels want to reinstall terrorism as the governing principle of Iraq and prevent free votes on the constitution in mid-October and for a new government in December.

Instead of set battles, the insurgents mount terrorist spectaculars -- coordinated bombings and attacks on civilians -- and have moved from hitting "random targets of opportunity to sophisticated planning with strategic and tactical objectives against specific high-value targets," according to a recent analysis by a private security firm in Iraq.

The attacks are aimed at spreading fear and anger in the population, beginning with the Sunnis. Defeating these tactics will require more U.S. help for Iraqis in protecting critical infrastructure and less U.S. pressure on Hakim and others to grant Sunni leaders aligned with the insurgents an effective veto over the constitution -- which only increases the intimidation effect.

Repeatedly over the past 18 months, big chunks of U.S. aid -- at least $3.4 billion, according to one report -- intended for repairing or building Iraqi infrastructure were shifted into increased spending on Iraqi forces, military equipment and other direct "security" needs. A $70 million fund to clean up polluted rivers around Basra was shifted, for example, to strengthen administration at the then corruption-drenched Ministry of Defense in Baghdad.

"We have been able to increase production of electricity, but we can't get the increases to consumers because of sabotage," Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi told me by telephone from Baghdad last week. "The power grid is now a primary target for the Baathists."

The crippling psychological effect of this reverse "hearts and minds" campaign by the terrorists was illustrated last week by an attack on electric lines that prevented water from being pumped into Baghdad -- just as the politicians reached preliminary agreement on a constitution devoted to high-minded principles of freedom and democracy.

Chalabi -- the target a year ago of accusations of treason and chicanery leveled in the press by anonymous U.S. officials whom he had apparently antagonized -- has survived that smear campaign and emerged as a key policymaker in Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's government. Chalabi today works smoothly with U.S. commanders on his primary portfolio: infrastructure protection.

Changes in security on Iraq's pipelines helped increase oil exports from 1.4 million to 1.6 million barrels a day in July, Chalabi said. With U.S. help, the government was able to deploy regular Iraqi army units to replace or oversee tribal guards, who had a vested interest in making the pipelines leaky and unsafe enough for their U.S.-provided salaries to continue.

Chalabi landed in hot water with the American overseers of occupation in part because of his abrasive insistence that they did not understand Iraqi culture and priorities well enough to make those kinds of distinctions -- and refused to listen to Iraqis who did.

He declined to discuss the constitution when we spoke on Wednesday, and went out of his way to praise U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for his low-key support for the drafting process. But Chalabi's original point -- that Iraqis are ready to choose their own form of government and leaders -- was unnecessarily put at risk once again by the White House.

[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

Right, that does it- I'm a-callin' down a jee-had on you, for crimes against the thread, and for not using enough colours on your longer, more tedious, most repetitive, drivelling posts.

OK, Ican, I'll bite. Who or what is: TOMNOM? I really wish you would cease talking in abbreviations and labels not to mention the before mentioned newsgroup. Please? Pretty pretty please with sugar on top?

Right, that does it- I'm a-callin' down a jee-had on you, for crimes against the thread, and for not using enough colours on your longer, more tedious, most repetitive, drivelling posts.

Ican, I don't think there is enough sugar in the world to get you to start posting your own thoughts and reasoning rather than labels and that weird newsgroup you keep subjecting us to.

Op-Ed Contributor
NYT
Invasion of the Isolationists
* By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Published: August 31, 2005
Washington

AS we mark four years since Sept. 11, 2001, one way to organize a review of what has happened in American foreign policy since that terrible day is with a question: To what extent has that policy flowed from the wellspring of American politics and culture, and to what extent has it flowed from the particularities of this president and this administration?

It is tempting to see continuity with the American character and foreign policy tradition in the Bush administration's response to 9/11, and many have done so. We have tended toward the forcefully unilateral when we have felt ourselves under duress; and we have spoken in highly idealistic cadences in such times, as well. Nevertheless, neither American political culture nor any underlying domestic pressures or constraints have determined the key decisions in American foreign policy since Sept. 11.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Americans would have allowed President Bush to lead them in any of several directions, and the nation was prepared to accept substantial risks and sacrifices. The Bush administration asked for no sacrifices from the average American, but after the quick fall of the Taliban it rolled the dice in a big way by moving to solve a longstanding problem only tangentially related to the threat from Al Qaeda - Iraq. In the process, it squandered the overwhelming public mandate it had received after Sept. 11. At the same time, it alienated most of its close allies, many of whom have since engaged in "soft balancing" against American influence, and stirred up anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

The Bush administration could instead have chosen to create a true alliance of democracies to fight the illiberal currents coming out of the Middle East. It could also have tightened economic sanctions and secured the return of arms inspectors to Iraq without going to war. It could have made a go at a new international regime to battle proliferation. All of these paths would have been in keeping with American foreign policy traditions. But Mr. Bush and his administration freely chose to do otherwise.

The administration's policy choices have not been restrained by domestic political concerns any more than by American foreign policy culture. Much has been made of the emergence of "red state" America, which supposedly constitutes the political base for President Bush's unilateralist foreign policy, and of the increased number of conservative Christians who supposedly shape the president's international agenda. But the extent and significance of these phenomena have been much exaggerated.

So much attention has been paid to these false determinants of administration policy that a different political dynamic has been underappreciated. Within the Republican Party, the Bush administration got support for the Iraq war from the neoconservatives (who lack a political base of their own but who provide considerable intellectual firepower) and from what Walter Russell Mead calls "Jacksonian America" - American nationalists whose instincts lead them toward a pugnacious isolationism.

Happenstance then magnified this unlikely alliance. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the inability to prove relevant connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda left the president, by the time of his second inaugural address, justifying the war exclusively in neoconservative terms: that is, as part of an idealistic policy of political transformation of the broader Middle East. The president's Jacksonian base, which provides the bulk of the troops serving and dying in Iraq, has no natural affinity for such a policy but would not abandon the commander in chief in the middle of a war, particularly if there is clear hope of success.

This war coalition is fragile, however, and vulnerable to mishap. If Jacksonians begin to perceive the war as unwinnable or a failure, there will be little future support for an expansive foreign policy that focuses on promoting democracy. That in turn could drive the 2008 Republican presidential primaries in ways likely to affect the future of American foreign policy as a whole.

Are we failing in Iraq? That's still unclear. The United States can control the situation militarily as long as it chooses to remain there in force, but our willingness to maintain the personnel levels necessary to stay the course is limited. The all-volunteer Army was never intended to fight a prolonged insurgency, and both the Army and Marine Corps face manpower and morale problems. While public support for staying in Iraq remains stable, powerful operational reasons are likely to drive the administration to lower force levels within the next year.

With the failure to secure Sunni support for the constitution and splits within the Shiite community, it seems increasingly unlikely that a strong and cohesive Iraqi government will be in place anytime soon. Indeed, the problem now will be to prevent Iraq's constituent groups from looking to their own militias rather than to the government for protection. If the United States withdraws prematurely, Iraq will slide into greater chaos. That would set off a chain of unfortunate events that will further damage American credibility around the world and ensure that the United States remains preoccupied with the Middle East to the detriment of other important regions - Asia, for example - for years to come.

We do not know what outcome we will face in Iraq. We do know that four years after 9/11, our whole foreign policy seems destined to rise or fall on the outcome of a war only marginally related to the source of what befell us on that day. There was nothing inevitable about this. There is everything to be regretted about it.

Francis Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is editorial board chairman of a new magazine, The American Interest.

Insurgents Assert Control Over Town Near Syrian Border
Zarqawi's Forces Kill U.S.-Allied Iraqis And Impose Strict Law, Witnesses Say

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page A20

BAGHDAD, Sept. 5 -- Fighters loyal to militant leader Abu Musab Zarqawi asserted control over the key Iraqi border town of Qaim on Monday, killing U.S. collaborators and enforcing strict Islamic law, according to tribal members, officials, residents and others in the town and nearby villages.

Residents said the foreign-led fighters controlled by Zarqawi, a Jordanian, apparently had been exerting authority in the town, within two miles of the Syrian border, since at least the start of the weekend. A sign posted at an entrance to the town declared, "Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Qaim."

In other developments Monday, the U.S. Army warned noncombatants to leave a portion of the northeastern city of Tall Afar ahead of an expected assault on an insurgent stronghold there. Car bombs and other political violence around Iraq killed at least 33 Iraqi civilians and security force members. A U.S. soldier and two British troops also were killed, officials said.

Congratulations Ican .... enjoy your thread! Happy babbling.

The Islamic Movement in Kurdistan is an Iraqi political party.
Some more radical members joined the al-Queda aligned Ansar al-Islam.
Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Movement_in_Kurdistan

Ansar al-Islam is an Islamist group, promoting a radical interpretation of Islam and holy war.
At the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq it controlled about a dozen villages and a range of peaks in northern Iraq on the Iranian border.
It was formed in December 2001 as a merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), led by Abu Abdallah al-Shafi'i, and a splinter group from the Islamic Movement in Kurdistan led by Mullah Krekar.
Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam

If you direct your comments or rebuttal to Ican, he responds.

ican ... It is not useful to post long pieces when a link will do, perhaps with a teaser of a paragraph or two as most posters do here.

The report also criticized Russia and China for refusing to turn over documents to U.N. investigators or to require officials or businessmen to be interviewed.

It also accused U.S. officials of approving "the single largest episode of oil smuggling" out of Iraq, by Jordan, in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The United States and Jordan declined Volcker's requests for interviews and documents, the report said, saying his panel had no authority to investigate oil smuggling outside the oil-for-food program.

Under the heading of "Administration Lays out Policy Fundamentals: Fuk Honesty, Fuk Transparency, Fuk Consistency, Fuk Truth and Definitely Fuk the UN"

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... It also accused U.S. officials of approving "the single largest episode of oil smuggling" out of Iraq, by Jordan, in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. ...