THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

Bush Turns to Fear-Mongering
Creation of "Islamic" Bogeyman
By Juan Cole

The Bush administration obviously wishes it were waging war on Nazi Germany. Even the old Soviet Union would be fine, these nostalgic Cold Warriors seem to think. Something big and menacing that would scare the blue-haired grannies in Peoria into voting Republican because, everyone knows, in addition to being good for business (except for that Depression unpleasantness), Republicans are mean s.o.b.'s and would as soon shoot a potential menace to the US as glare at him.

The Bush administration has the misfortune to have no powerful enemies it is brave enough actually to take on. China and Russia are not exactly enemies any more, and are the only potential state challengers to United States freedom of action as the sole superpower. And they don't go beyond potential. Too busy making money while Washington bleeds itself dry with military adventures. Waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces.

So what enemies does Bush see that he really will confront? Here they are:

1. North Korea.

2. Syria, population 19 million. Poor, militarily weak. Gross Domestic Product of $26 bn. [I.e. nothing.] Minority ruling clique of Alawi Shiites (think New Age California Shiism). State ideology, secular Baath Socialist Arab Nationalism, an ideology founded by Arab Christians and which has nothing much to do with Islam. Would make peace with Israel and the US in exchange for the return of the Golan Heights and an equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians.

2. The 1.3 million Shiites of southern Lebanon and the slums of south Beirut (or what used to be the slums of south Beirut), who largely support the Hizbullah Party-Militia. No one had ever heard of them as a threat back in Eisenhower's era. That is because they only organized a militia after the Israelis kept invading and brutally occupying them.

3. The 6 million Sunni Arabs of north, central and western Iraq. Many are secular Iraqi nationalists. A handful are radical Sunni fundamentalists. They had all been encompassed by the secular Iraqi Baath Party before Bush destroyed it.

4. Iran. Population 69 million. GDP per capital $2,825 (exchange rate method). Only some 15-20 percent support their religious, populist government. Weak air force and navy. Iran has not launched a war on a neighbor since the late 1700s.

5. Pushtun guerrillas in southern Afghanistan who don't like foreign troops in their country

6. Al-Qaeda and similar tiny terrorist organizations around the world, in Saudi Arabia, the UK, France, Algeria, Pakistan, India, etc. Often consist of cells of 4-8 persons not in direct contact with traditional al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is proven dangerous, and should be combatted by good police and counter-terrorism work. But it is small and mostly disrupted or under surveillance. If its ideology were so challenging to Bush, then he should shut up those videotapes by capturing Bin Laden and Zawahiri. He has not done it.

This isn't a coherent enemy, it is a laundry list of places Bush would like to control because they have oil or gas, or are key to its development, or have other strategic benefits for the US and/or its regional allies, especially Israel.

So Bush tried to unify the Bogeyman by condemning radical Sunni Islam and then equally condemning radical Shiite Islam.

It doesn't help with North Korea, and signally does not work for Syria or most Iraqi Sunnis.

Of course, it also raises questions as to why Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the ideology of which is not traditionally so very different from that of the radical Sunni fundamentalists, is in with the good guys. (I'm not saying Wahhabis are dangerous, I'm saying most Salafis are not.) So too is the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which was formed by Ayatollah Khomeini, and the Iraqi Da'wa Party, which conducted terrorist attacks on US facilities and personnel in the 1980s. Shiite Islamism in Iraq is good, the same thing in southern Lebanon is bad.

And then of course the United States has more friends among regimes ruling Muslim-majority populations than virtually any other set of governments in the world. Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain are all non-NATO allies. Turkey is a full NATO ally. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, etc-- all dear friends.

So Bush is basically saying that the US is threatened by a congeries of Middle Eastern movements and governments that have nothing to do with one another, and only one of which has struck directly at the US since Bush came to office. Plus North Korea.

And this is the reason for which he needs to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq, to stop the Muslim fundamentalists from taking it over. But of course, the Da'wa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Sadr movement have *already* taken it over.

Nor is it plausible that "al-Qaeda" could take over Iraq! The United States couldn't take over Iraq. The Shiites and Kurds would never put up with it. Bush doesn't need to stay in Iraq to fight al-Qaeda there. If Bush weren't in Iraq, neither would al-Qaeda be. There less than 1,000 such foreign fighters, anyway.

So there are good Muslim fundamentalist movements and bad ones. What seems to distinguish them is whether they are eager to do business with Houston or whether they badmouth Bush.

5,000 al-Qaeda members, probably no more than a few hundred of them actually dangerous to the United States, just cannot justify all Bush's aggressive policies.

So now, even while denying he has anything against Muslims, Bush is creating this "Islamic Fascist" bogeyman, which mostly is a figment of his fevered imagination, or is woefully imprecise as a way of describing the phenomenon, or lacks any real political power, or could be dealt with by containment and decisiveness (remember the Soviet Union), or turns out to be some goatherds on the side of a hill in southern Lebanon.

If you want to know what is really going on, it is a struggle for control of the Strategic Ellipse, which just happens demographically to be mostly Muslim. Bush has to demonize the Muslim world in order to justify his swooping down on the Strategic Ellipse. If demons occupy it, obviously they have to be cleared out in favor of Christian fundamentalists or at least Texas oilmen. And what is the Strategic Ellipse?

Voila.



Bush didn't do anything about al-Qaeda his first 8 months in office. He left the job half done in Afghanistan and ran off to Iraq, which was always irrelevant to al-Qaeda. There were no good targets in Afghanistan, just Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Iraq, now that is prime Ellipse territory.

Bush is undermining our Republic, gutting our rights, spending us into penury, and smearing a great civilization, in order to get his grubby fingers on the Ellipse. You get to pay for it twice, once at the pump and once on your annual tax return.

So much for your fascist crap ican.
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www.m-w.com

Main Entry: 1 to·tal·i·tar·i·an
Pronunciation: (")tO-"ta-l&-'ter-E-&n
Function: adjective
Etymology: Italian totalitario, from totalità totality
1 a : of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy : AUTHORITARIAN, DICTATORIAL; especially : DESPOTIC b : of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (as censorship and terrorism)
2 a : advocating or characteristic of totalitarianism b : completely regulated by the state especially as an aid to national mobilization in an emergency c : exercising autocratic powers : tending toward monopoly

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament agreed on Thursday to begin looking at a potentially divisive draft law on federalism that minority Sunnis fear could break up the country and leave them with little access to its oil wealth.

Iraqi lawmakers have studiously avoided the subject since their first sitting in March, but they face a looming deadline for determining how regions can win autonomy under a federal constitution that was passed last year despite Sunni opposition.

Tempers frayed and sectarian faultlines were exposed when several Shi'ite lawmakers tried to force debate on a Shi'ite- proposed draft law, an item not on Thursday's agenda.

The Sunni speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, objected, saying he had not received a copy of the draft, and the rowdy chamber adjourned shortly after television coverage was cut.

"This is an insult to me," Mashhadani told lawmakers. "This proposal should have been submitted ... two days ago. I just heard about it today."

Officials in the dominant Shi'ite Alliance bloc said on Wednesday they had completed a draft of their proposal for a mechanism by which provinces could form autonomous regions.

Sunnis, concentrated in Iraq's resource-poor central and western provinces, are opposed to such a move, fearing it would seal their political doom by giving Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north control of much of Iraq's oil.

They want a promised review of the constitution before parliament passes any new laws that could be overturned by constitutional amendments and a census to determine the exact demographic makeup of Iraq's 18 provinces.

"AMEND CONSTITUTION FIRST"

"We think it is wise to amend the constitution before we set out laws on how provinces can form federal regions," said Saleem al-Jibouri, a politician in the main Sunni political bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front.

But Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the powerful Shi'ite leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has been forcing the pace, calling in recent days for Shi'ites to form their own region in the south and for a vote on the issue.

Sunni politicians said they were not opposed to federalism being discussed in parliament but were upset by the Shi'ite lawmakers' attempts to force it on to Thursday's agenda.

When parliament resumed sitting, 147 of the 188 politicians present agreed to a first reading of the Shi'ite proposal on Sunday. They also agreed that the deadline for passing a law should be October 22, resolving an arcane dispute about which day had constituted the first session of the present parliament.

Sunnis said they had proposed their own draft law that would give parliament a bigger say in the formation of the regions.

Under the constitution, provincial administrations will be given a strong level of autonomy, including the right to form regional governments involving several provinces which will be allowed to set up their own security structures.

It is not clear though whether there are any limits on the size of the new regions. Hakim has proposed a "super-region" of nine provinces in the largely stable and oil-rich Shi'ite south.

Iraq is gripped by communal bloodshed between the once politically dominant minority Sunnis and now ascendant majority Shi'ites that has killed thousands.

There are also tensions between Arabs and Kurds in the north, whose largely autonomous Kurdistan region comprises three of Iraq's provinces.

Some diplomats have said privately the federalism debate might be better shelved while the government seeks to defuse the insurgency and sectarian tensions and resuscitate the war- battered economy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam

Ansar al-Islam ... (Supporters or Partisans of Islam) is a Kurdish Sunni 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 has used terrorist tactics such as suicide bombers in its conflicts with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and other Kurdish groups.

Origins
Ansar al-Islam 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. Krekar became the leader of the merged Ansar al-Islam, which opposed an agreement made between IMK and the dominant Kurdish group in the area, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Ansar al-Islam fortified a number of villages along the Iranian border, with Iranian artillery support. The local villagers were subjected to harsh sharia laws; musical instruments were destroyed and singing forbidden. The only school for girls in the area was destroyed, and all pictures of women removed from merchandise labels. Sufi shrines were desecrated and members of the Kakkai (a non-Moslem Kurdish religious group) were forced to convert to Islam or flee.

Ansar al-Islam quickly initiated a number of attacks on the peshmerga (armed forces) of the PUK, on one occasion massacring 53 prisoners and beheading them. Several assassination attempts on leading PUK-politicians were also made with carbombs and snipers.

Ansar al-Islam comprised about 300 armed men, many of these veterans from the Afghan war, and a proportion being neither Kurd nor Arab. Ansar al-Islam is alleged to be connected to the al-Qaeda, and provided an entry point for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other Afghan veterans to enter Iraq.

According to the United States, they had established facilities for the production of poisons, including ricin. The US also claimed that Ansar al-Islam had links with Saddam Hussein, thus claiming a link between Hussein and al-Qaeda. Mullah Krekar denied this claim, and declared his hostility to Saddam [1]. The Ansar al-Islam did, however, never engage Baathist forces, and local Kurds largely accept the link to Hussein.

Operations after the invasion
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it gave air support to a PUK-attack on the Ansar al-Islam enclave, which did not draw Iranian artillery fire. The Ansar al-Islam fighters escaped into Iran, where they were disarmed but not arrested. Many have since returned to Iraq and joined various armed groups fighting the occupation.

Ansar al-Islam detonated a suicide car bomb on March 22, 2003, killing Australian journalist Paul Moran and several others. The group is also thought to have been responsible for an September 9, 2003 attempted bombing of a United States Department of Defense office in Arbil, which killed three people.

On February 1, 2004 suicide bombings hit parallel ID-celebrations arranged by the two main Kurdish parties, PUK and KDP, in the Kurdish capital of Arbil, killing 109 and wounding more than 200 partygoers. Responsibility for this attack was claimed by the then unknown group Ansar al-Sunnah, and stated to be in support of "our brothers in Ansar al-Islam."

Ansar al-Islam is thought not to be active in Iraq at present, but has an extensive network in Europe organizing finance and support for armed attacks within Iraq. Several members of such groups have been arrested in European countries such as Germany and Sweden.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf
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6. Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq, an area that Baghdad had not controlled since 1991.
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Cycloptichorn

Truth is, Saddam allowed Ansar al-Islam sanctuary, despite our request that he not do that (i.e., despite our request that he extradite their leadership).

Truth is, our invasion of Iraq was a necessary step in removing the al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operating in northeastern Iraq at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Quote:

Truth is, Saddam allowed Ansar al-Islam sanctuary, despite our request that he not do that (i.e., despite our request that he extradite their leadership).

Truth is, our invasion of Iraq was a necessary step in removing the al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operating in northeastern Iraq at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

These things aren't the truth, they are your fevered dreams.

Yes they are the truth. Looks to me like your the one suffering from "fevered dreams."

First, you can't offer sanctuary to a group which exists in an area that is beyond your control. So the first 'truth' I quoted is in fact false.

I didn't write offer I wrote allowed. And, one can certainly allow sanctuary in an area one does not control and does not attempt to control when requested by the USA to do so. It is a fact that the Kurds did not control the area either and were not able to evict al-Qaeda without our help. Why, because the area became controlled again in December 2001 by Ansar al-Islam with the help of al-Qaeda prior to the USA's and Kurd's invasion.

ican's emphasis

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Movement_in_Kurdistan
Armed hostilities, which resulted in deaths were reported between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Islamic Groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Workers Party, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The heaviest fighting began in September 2001, when a newly created Islamist group, the Ansar al-Islam, seized control of some villages near the Iranian border and attempted to institute a strictly Islamic theocratic regime. According to press and opposition reporting, the Ansar al-Islam attacked Patriotic Union of Kurdistan fighters near Halabjah, killing dozens of persons. Intermittent fighting between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Ansar al-Islam, and other Islamic groups continued until late November, when an agreement between those involved and the Iranian Government dissolved the Ansar al-Islam and imposed a cease-fire.

Second, you yourself have stated that targetted strikes by our military special forces can be used instead of full-scale invasion of countries which are not cooperating with us on the WoT. There is no reason that we couldn't have done the same thing in Iraq as you propose doing in other countries. So, your second truth quoted above fails, because it was most definately not neccessary for us to invade Iraq to take our Ansar al-Islam.

Actually, I said that attacks that remove the governments of countries harboring IT without attempting to establish new governents is an alternative. And, yes we could have done the same thing in Iraq had we thought of it at the time. I explained that removal of the government of countries harboring IT was required to discourage the people of that country from instituting a replacement government that would again allow their country to harbor IT.

Cycloptichorn

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein "only expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden."

The report also said exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) tried to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false information on Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including Iran's, a 2002 White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be continued.

The newly declassified intelligence report provided administration critics with fresh ammunition, less than two months before midterm elections and in the middle of President Bush's campaign to refocus the public's attention away from Iraq and toward the threat of terrorism. Senior Senate Democrats immediately seized on the findings, using some of their strongest language yet to say the president continues to willfully and falsely connect Hussein to al-Qaeda.

As recently as Aug. 21, Bush suggested a link between Hussein and Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by U.S. forces this summer. But a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates," according to the report.

"The president is still distorting. He's still making statements which are false," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence committee member.

The partial release of the report came after nearly three years of partisan wrangling over what is to be a five-chapter analysis of the use of prewar intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The heart of the report -- a detailed comparison of administration statements with the intelligence then available -- is far from release. But the committee voted Thursday to release two chapters, one on the role that Iraqi exiles played in shaping prewar intelligence, the other on the accuracy of the prewar analyses of Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities and his suspected links to al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

White House spokesman Tony Snow dismissed the findings as old news. "If we have people who want to re-litigate that, that's fine," he said.

But Republican attempts to paint the findings as a partisan rehash were undercut by intelligence committee members from the GOP. The committee report's conclusions are based on the Democrats' findings because two Republicans -- Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) -- supported those findings.

"After reviewing thousands of pages of evidence, I voted for the conclusions that most closely reflect the facts in the report," Snowe said in a written statement. "Policy-makers seemingly discounted or dismissed warnings about the veracity of critical intelligence reports that may have served as a basis for going to war."

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) was emphatic this week that Iraqi exiles did not fundamentally shape the critical assessment of the Iraqi threat in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

But, as Snowe emphasized in her statement, the report concluded that information provided by an INC source was cited in that estimate and in Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's February 2003 speech to the United Nations as corroborating evidence about Iraq's mobile biological weapons program. Those citations came despite two April 2002 CIA assessments, a May 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency fabrication notice and a July 2002 National Intelligence Council warning -- all saying the INC source may have been coached by the exile group into fabricating the information.

Democrats and Republicans agree that analysts and politicians of all political stripes were wrong about the prewar assessments of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But the committee report indicates that intelligence analysts were substantially right about Hussein's lack of operational links to al-Qaeda. And Democrats compared the administration's public statements with newly declassified intelligence assessments to build their case that efforts to link Iraq to al-Qaeda were willfully misleading.

In a classified January 2003 report, for instance, the CIA concluded that Hussein "viewed Islamic extremists operating inside Iraq as a threat." But one day after that conclusion was published, Levin noted, Vice President Cheney said the Iraqi government "aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda."

Intelligence reports in June, July and September 2002 all cast doubts on a reported meeting in Prague between Iraqi intelligence agents and Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Yet, in a Sept. 8, 2002, appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press," Cheney said the CIA considered the reports on the meeting credible, Levin said.

In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that "Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical and biological weapons] knowledge or assistance." A year later, Bush said: "Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."

Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), an intelligence committee member, said it was unfair for Democrats to compare the intelligence assessments in the report with the administration's statements. He said such comparisons go beyond the scope of the chapters released.

But Democrats were unequivocal in asserting that the chapters chronicle an indisputable pattern of deception.

"It is such a blatant misleading of the United States, its people, to prepare them, to position them, to, in fact, make them enthusiastic or feel that it's justified to go to war with Iraq," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee's vice chairman. "That kind of public manipulation I don't know has any precedent in American history."

For you ican
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"Turn the other cheek"
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No wonder they wanted to delay as long as possible this part of the phase of pre-war intelligence of Iraq.

Quote:

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

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ican711nm wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf
...
6. Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq, an area that Baghdad had not controlled since 1991.
...
Cycloptichorn

Truth is, al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in northeastern Iraq.

Truth is, the al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in northeastern Iraq at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and controlled about a dozen villages and a range of peaks in northern Iraq on the Iranian border.

Truth is, the al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operating in northeastern Iraq at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, comprised about 300 armed men, many of these veterans from the Afghan war, and provided an entry point for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other Afghan veterans to enter Iraq.

Truth is, when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it gave air support to a PUK-attack on the Ansar al-Islam enclave. The Ansar al-Islam fighters escaped into Iran, where they were disarmed but not arrested. Many have since returned to Iraq and joined various armed groups fighting the occupation.

Truth is, Saddam allowed Ansar al-Islam sanctuary, despite our request that he not do that (i.e., despite our request that he extradite their leadership).

Truth is, our invasion of Iraq was a necessary step in removing the al-Qa'ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operating in northeastern Iraq at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

...

"It is such a blatant misleading of the United States, its people, to prepare them, to position them, to, in fact, make them enthusiastic or feel that it's justified to go to war with Iraq," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee's vice chairman. "That kind of public manipulation I don't know has any precedent in American history."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090800777_pf.html

U.S. count of Baghdad deaths excludes car bombs, mortar attacks
By Mark Brunswick and Zaineb Obeid
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Johnson declined to provide an actual number for the U.S. tally of August deaths or for July, when the Baghdad city morgue counted a record 1,855 violent deaths.

Violent deaths for August, a morgue official told McClatchy Newspapers on Friday, totaled 1,526, a 17.7 percent decline from July and about the same as died violently in June.

The dispute is an important one. With Baghdad violence reaching record levels in July, U.S. commanders warned that the country was tipping toward civil war. They then ordered 8,000 U.S. troops and 3,000 Iraqis to conduct house-by-house searches of Baghdad's neighborhoods in an effort to root out insurgent gunmen and militia death squads in Operation Together Forward.

The program, which began in earnest Aug. 7, included bringing in thousands of American troops from other parts of Iraq in what was seen by many as a last-ditch effort to head off a civil war that many Iraqis say has already begun.

Within weeks of the kickoff of the Baghdad security plan, the U.S. military's top spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, boasted that the murder rate in Baghdad had fallen by 46 percent and attributed most of the fall to the new security sweeps.

On Thursday, Caldwell revised the figures, posting a statement on the website of the Multi-National Force-Iraq that the murder rate had dropped even more - by 52 percent from July.

That claim was immediately contradicted by the morgue figures, which trickled out in accounts by various news organizations citing unnamed officials.

Johnson said he couldn't comment on morgue figures and declined to release the raw numbers on which Caldwell's claim was based. He said the numbers were classified and that releasing them might help "our enemy" adjust their tactics.

Bullsh*t; the military is trying to cover their ass.

"We attempt to strike the right balance, being as open and transparent as possible without providing information that places our troops or Iraqi civilians at undo risk by the enemy adjusting their tactics for greater impact," he said, in explaining the decision not to release the figures.

Johnson said the numbers more accurately reflect the impact of Operation Together Forward's mission: targeting operations of shadowy sectarian death squads, who often use drive-by shootings, torture and executions as tactics for terror, rather than suicide bombings or rocket or mortar attacks.

He said the figures quoted by Caldwell reflect a "cautious optimism" that the situation is improving in Iraq.

But whether the violence is truly improving is far from clear. The morgue numbers made public this week reflect only deaths in Baghdad and figures compiled by the Ministry of Health for August violent deaths throughout Iraq won't be released until later this month.

Car bombs daily claim tens of victims, and tit-for-tat exchanges of mortar fire are nightly occurrences. Every morning bodies are discovered, many with their hands and feet bound.

The distinction in the way those people die is lost on victims' relatives, some of whom suggest the true numbers are higher.

"If you want the truth, even when we hear or see the scenes of explosions, assassinations, or number of dead on TV, we don't really care anymore, our feelings are dead," said Dhiya Ahmed, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed on Aug. 11. The young man was walking with a friend near his house when gunmen approached and shot them both dead.

Nice job Bush. Things are a lot better in Iraq now than under Saddam Hussein. They have democracy

"The numbers are not quite true," said Ahmed. "I bet the actual number is much more."

The family's tragedy has been intense. Last year the victim's father was killed in a similar fashion.

Even while touting the successes, Caldwell on Thursday warned on the coalition Web site about possible increases in violence from insurgent and terrorist attacks that he said would be used to divert attention from the Baghdad security initiative.

"It should not be a surprise if we witness brief up ticks in violence in the near future," he wrote.

Government leaders seem to be bracing for more bodies. A meeting was held recently between officials in the Health Ministry to talk about importing refrigerators for the morgue. The idea was to set them up in an empty building nearby.

But the discussion quickly broke down over what kind of freezers they would use: ones with sliding doors or a single large freezing room. More talks are scheduled.

In Baghdad on Friday, three civilians were killed and three others wounded when a bomb targeting the convoy of the Karrada neighborhood police commander exploded. Three police officers also were wounded.

Police also discovered 14 bodies in a western portion of the city.

Drew Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

Whistle-blower slams Iraq contractor
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer
Fri Sep 8, 5:05 PM ET

Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root charged millions to the government for recreational services never provided to U.S. troops in Iraq, including giant tubs of chicken wings and tacos, a widescreen TV, and cheese sticks meant for a military Super Bowl party, according to a federal whistle-blower suit unsealed Friday.

Instead, the suit alleges, KBR used the military's supplies for its own football party.

Filed last year in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by former KBR employee Julie McBride, the lawsuit claims the giant defense contractor billed the government for thousands of meals it never served, inflated the number of soldiers using its fitness and Internet centers, and regularly siphoned off great quantities of supplies destined for American soldiers.

McBride was hired by KBR in 2004 as a "morale, welfare and recreation" coordinator at Camp Fallujah, a Marine installation about 35 miles west of Baghdad. She was fired the next year after making several complaints about KBR's accounting practices, the suit says, and was kept under guard until she was escorted to an airplane and flown out of the country.

Halliburton denied McBride's allegations.

"The claims included in this lawsuit clearly demonstrate a complete misinterpretation of facts as well as a lack of understanding of KBR's contractual agreements with its customer," said company spokeswoman Melissa Norcross in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The Super Bowl incident occurred in January 2005, the suit said. "McBride witnessed a large amount of food that was ordered specifically for a Super Bowl party for the military" taken instead to the company's lodgings. "About 10 large metal tubs full of tacos, chicken wings, (and) cheese sticks were taken from the military party site to a KBR camp for a KBR Super Bowl Party for KBR employees," according to the complaint. A widescreen TV was also removed.

McBride worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, at Camp Fallujah's recreation center, where the government was billed according to the number of soldiers using the contractor's facilities, which included a weight room, video games, Internet cafe, a library and phone bank, the suit says. She alleges that KBR deliberately overstated the number of military personnel using its services by counting the same person several times. For example, a person who used a computer was counted as one. If that person went on the weight room, another count was added to the list of patrons.

"It wasn't double-dipping, but triple dipping or even quadruple billing," the suit claims.

Attorney Alan Grayson, who represents McBride, said "millions of dollars have been submitted by Halliburton for recreational services" not provided.

The "qui tam" suit, filed under the federal False Claims Act, allows citizens to sue on behalf of the government against contractors who make false claims for payment. The plaintiffs are eligible to receive a percentage of awarded damages, which are tripled in this type of suit.

Such suits are usually sealed for 60 days while the Justice Department investigates the claims and decides whether the U.S. Attorney's office will sign on as a co-plaintiff.

The Justice Department declined comment Friday on why it chose not to participate in McBride's suit.

McBride is not the first Halliburton employee to allege fraudulent billing practices. The company has steadfastly denied wrongdoing.

Rory Mayberry, who worked for KBR in 2004, testified from Iraq via videotape to a group of Democratic members of Congress investigating contractor fraud.

As food manager at another military camp in Iraq, Mayberry said he witnessed KBR employees serving spoiled food to American troops, including food from trucks that had been bombed and shot at. Workers were told to pick out the shrapnel, and then serve the food, Mayberry testified.

He also claimed KBR charged the government for meals it never served.

In July 2004, former KBR planner Marie DeYoung testified before the House Committee on Government Reform. She said she witnessed "significant waste and overpricing" while working for the contractor in Kuwait, including paying a subcontractor $100 per 15 pounds of laundry, costs which were passed on to the government.

Halliburton, which holds more than 50 percent of rebuilding contracts in Iraq, was headed by Dick Cheney before he took office as vice president. He has denied any government favoritism toward his former company.

Iraq PM to visit Iran as federalism row fans passions
by Dave Clark
Sat Sep 9, 9:10 AM ET

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced an important visit to Shiite neighbour Iran, as a debate over a plan to divide Iraq into autonomous regions fuelled sectarian tension at home.

Maliki is due in Tehran on Monday for his first official trip, described by his spokesman as a "cordial visit" that will focus on "security and political relations, besides developing and promoting bilateral relations."

To the dismay of Maliki's US allies, Iran has become a major player in Iraqi politics since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the Shiite premier must walk a tightrope if he is to keep friends in both Tehran and Washington.

Iranian refineries recently began refining more Iraqi crude in order to help end a crippling fuel crisis in Baghdad, and Maliki knows that Tehran could act either to restrain or to provoke Iraq's powerful Shiite militias.

He will also hope to negotiate the safe release of six Iraqi soldiers and an interpreter detained on Thursday by Iranian forces after an incident at a border post.

But if Maliki -- who once lived in Iran as a political exile -- is seen as too close to Tehran, it will ring alarm bells not only in Washington, where the Shiite theocracy is seen as a rogue state with secret nuclear ambitions.

Sunni leaders inside Iraq will also be concerned.

The Iraqi government and US-led forces are struggling to quell a surge in sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite factions, fuelled by the debate over whether to split the country into autonomous regions.

Sunni leaders fear that a new bill on federalism to be debated in parliament Sunday could lead to an Iranian-influenced regional administration taking the lion's share of the wealth of Iraq's southern oilfields.

"Setting up regions in the south should not be accepted as this would lead to control by an outer state with historic ambitions in Iraq," said Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the main Sunni parliamentary bloc Saturday.

"We oppose this principle because it would lead to the division of Iraq," he added, in a statement released Saturday by the National Concord Front.

Maliki needs the support of Dulaimi's bloc to preserve a fragile ruling coalition, which observers see as the last best hope of rescuing Iraqi democracy and staving off the threat of all-out civil war.

But tempers are fraying over the issue of regional autonomy, and the Sunni view is directly opposed to that of influential Shiite politician, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

"Federalism will lead to stability and security in Iraq," Hakim told worshippers during the main weekly prayers in Karbala on Friday, a day when the holy city was flooded with tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims.

"Look at the example of federalism in Kurdistan, it is evidence of the success of this system," he said. "We support it strongly because it will keep dictatorship from happening again. All are entitled to enjoy federalism."

Hakim's party and its semi-official militia, the Badr Organisation, were set up with Iranian backing and he is often accused by his opponents of acting as a proxy for Tehran, a charge he firmly denies.

US officials, including ambassador Zalmay Khalizad, have accused Iran of fomenting sectarian unrest in Iraq and coalition commanders say that weapons are smuggled to Shiite militias across the countries' common border.

Tehran denies this, and former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami said in an interview published Thursday that US troops should remain in Iraq for now.

Many observers, including the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, warn Iran could use its power in Iraq to incite attacks on coalition forces if it feels threatened by US diplomatic or military pressure.

"Iran views Iraq as its own backyard and has now superseded the US as the most influential power there. This affords it a key role in Iraq's future," the British think-tank said in a report last month.

Meanwhile, sectarian and militia violence raged on in Iraq. At least 13 people were killed in various bomb and gun attacks on Saturday and the bodies of 11 murder victims were found, apart from a severed head, security officials said.

The US military also announced that three of its soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack in the capital Saturday. Since Sunday, 17 US servicemen have been killed in Iraq.

Now the military is trying to cover up the number of civilian deaths so people like ican can say things in Iraq are not as bad as the liberal press makes it out to be.
...

Published Sept. 09, 2006

Army official: Rumsfeld forbade talk of postwar

By Stephanie Heinatz

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)

FORT EUSTIS, Va. - Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan.

Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure postwar Iraq.

Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made his comments in an interview with The Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks.

Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events reported in "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.

In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.

On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war plans.

On Sept. 11, he said, "life just went to hell."

That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his planners, including Scheid, to "get ready to go to war."

A day or two later, Rumsfeld was "telling us we were going to war in Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast.

"Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan, Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq."

Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."

Planning was kept very hush-hush in those early days.

"There was only a handful of people, maybe five or six, that were involved with that plan because it had to be kept very, very quiet."

There was already an offensive plan in place for Iraq, Scheid said. And in the beginning, the planners were just expanding on it.

"Whether we were going to execute it, we had no idea," Scheid said.

Eventually other military agencies like the transportation and Army materiel commands had to get involved.

They couldn't just "keep planning this in the dark," Scheid said.

Planning continued to be a challenge.

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like security, stability and reconstruction.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today would have been hard to predict, Scheid said.

"We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going to do all these humanitarian type things," he said. "We thought this would go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way they are.

"Now we're going more toward a Civil War. We didn't see that coming."

While Scheid, a soldier since 1977, spoke candidly about the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he remains concerned about the U.S. public's view of the troops. He's bothered by the nationwide divide over the war and fearful that patriotism among citizens will continue to decline.

"We're really hurting right now," he said.

Quote:

Published Sept. 09, 2006

Army official: Rumsfeld forbade talk of postwar

By Stephanie Heinatz

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)

FORT EUSTIS, Va. - Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.[/size]
...
Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today would have been hard to predict, Scheid said.

"We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going to do all these humanitarian type things," he said. "We thought this would go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way they are.

"Now we're going more toward a Civil War. We didn't see that coming."
...

...
Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;
...
The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.