THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

being a bit of a news-junkie , i just watched some TV news .

a captain and a major(?) who had recently returned from iraq were asked for their opinion on the coming "surge" of u.s. troops .
they both agreed that more troops would be needed in iraq .
the captain , who had served near baghdad , felt that the increase was insuffient . he said that in his opinion about 150,000 to 200,000 u.s. troops would be needed in baghdad alone to try and restore order . he also claimed that a recently issued u.s. army counter-insurgengy manual (i may have the name wrong) stated a requirement for 150.000 to 200,000 u.s. troops for baghdad alone .
both were quite outspoken in saying that protecting the iraqi civilians must be the # 1 priority . they said that the u.s. must train , pay and equip enough iraqi police to do an adequate job to help protect the civilians .
they spoke of a "one-on-one" matching of u.s. military and police forces with their iraqi counterparts ; they even spoke of integrated units and police-stations .
the captain finished by saying that if the u.s. takes the right action now , in another 5 to 10 years iraq might indeed be a symbol for democracy in the middle-east .

i certainly enjoyed the frank talk by these two u.s. soldiers .
they didn't use any platitudes or jibberish to describe a serious situation .
hope they will be listened to ...

("Both were slow learners at best. "
the headmasters must have been 'otherwise' occupied not to notice that the students were slow learners - particularly since they were shown off as "best student in school" . doesn't say much about the headmaster either imo) .
hbg

Links at the source

If Maliki doesn't perform as promised, he must be replaced with someone capable of performing as Maliki promised. This can be done by the Iraq Parliament appointing a replacement, or by the Iraq Parliament holding a new election and the Iraqi people electing a replacement, or by the US military appointing a replacement.

One way or another the Iraq government's effectiveness problem must be solved.

Iraqi Constitution:
HERE
B.

1- The President of the Republic may submit a request to the Council of Representatives to withdraw confidence from the Prime Minister.

2- The Council of Representatives may withdraw confidence from the Prime Minister based on the request of one-fifth (1/5) of its members. This request may be submitted only after a question has been put to the Prime Minister and after at least seven days from submitting the request.

3- The Council of Representatives shall decide to withdraw confidence from the Prime Minister by an absolute majority of its members.

C. The Government is considered resigned in case of withdrawal of confidence from the Prime Minister.

D. In case of a vote of withdrawal of confidence in the Cabinet as a whole, the Prime Minister and the Ministers continue in their positions to run everyday business for a period not to exceed thirty days until a new cabinet is formed in accordance with the provisions of article 73 of this constitution.

E. The Council of Representatives may interrogate independent commission heads in accordance with the same procedures as for the ministers and may dismiss them by an absolute majority.

paul koring reports that the u.s. government is not likely to issue an ultimatum to malaki .

the press report i read today says :
"Mr. Levin pressed Defence Secretary Robert Gates to explain what would happen if once again the Iraqi government failed to deliver tens of thousands of police and troops to Baghdad.

Mr. Gates refused to issue an ultimatum that U.S. troops would be ordered home if the Iraqi government failed to make good on its promises.

"Saying, 'If you don't do this, we'll leave, and we'll leave now,' does not strike me as being in the national interests of the United States," he said.

Mr. Levin wasn't impressed.

"The President said that, quote, 'If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people' -- his words. Well, that's an empty threat, given the fact that the Iraqi government has already lost the support of the American people and it hasn't affected their behaviour," he said."



full report :
DEMOCRATS ASSAIL IRAQ PLAN

hbg, The surge of 21,500 troops will accomplish nothing except to expose more of our soldiers to the already too high death and injury. The problem with Bush's "plan" for a temporary surge is simply that it is inadequate and too late. The US doesn't have the 150,000 to 200,000 troops needed, and the troops we do send will be ill equpped and ineffective. The insurgents know that this "surge" is temporary, and all they have to do is wait it out.

Bush should send his own kids to Iraq; they need more volunteers.

Under Bushie's new plan our troops will get to sleep in Police stations in the neighborhoods they patrol. That is a formula for slaughter. Iraqi Police stations are some of the most dangerous places on earth.

Another thought: I remember Bush and his gang repeating the refrain that telling the enemy any time frame would not accomplish anything, because they'll just wait it out until we reduce our troop level.

DUH!

Apparently, we are all agreed for our own reasons that the new Iraq strategy as currently described is going to fail. What do you think will be the consequences of that failure? What should the US do instead to avoid failure in Iraq?

Absent a rational alternative, we cannot adequately evaluate what Bush is doing or adequately evaluate a better way for him to do it.

On the otherhand, if failure is your objective like it's George Soros's objective then enjoy.

ican wrote;

I say, welcome to america where the people get to vote, and yes, more than 50% oppose Bush's plan. The sad thing ican but according to Foxfyre, the majority does rule.

I think I'll re-read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Do you have any good ideas about where the competent should go after they go on strike?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1990463,00.html

Iran next, soon?

What do you want to be done?

Bush: Iraqis ?'Owe Us Gratitude'

Posted on Jan 15, 2007

CBS News
President Bush on "60 Minutes" this past Sunday.

In a "60 Minutes" interview, the president dismissed the suggestion that America owes Iraq an apology for not securing the country after the invasion, saying instead that Iraqis owe America "a huge debt of gratitude" for our efforts.


Full streamed interview and transcript

Partial transcript from CBS News:

In his speech, the president mentioned that mistakes had been made. Asked what mistakes he was talking about, Bush tells Pelley, "Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, ?'Bring them on' was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it."

"The troop levels...," Pelley remarks.

"Could have been a mistake. I...," the president replies.

"Were not?-could have been a mistake?" Pelley asks.

"Yeah. And the reason I brought up the mistakes is, one, that's the job of the commander-in-chief; and, two, I don't want people blaming our military. We got a bunch of good military people out there doing what we've asked them to do. And the temptation is gonna be to find scapegoats. Well, if the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me 'cause it's my decisions," Bush says.

"Fair to say there were not enough American troops on the ground to provide security for Iraq?" Pelley asks.

"There's not enough troops on the ground right now to provide security for Iraq. And that's why I made the decision I made," Bush replies.

Asked if he thinks he owes the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job, Bush says, "Well I don't, that we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?"

"Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion?" Pelley clarifies.

"Not at all. I think I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq," Bush replies.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20070115_bush_iraqis_owe_us_gratitude/

Losing Iraq, one truckload at a time
Raging corruption

Luis Carlos Montalvan Published: January 15, 2007


FORT BENNING, Georgia: The level of corruption in the Iraq Security Forces is staggering. The Iraq Study Group found that $5 billion to $7 billion is lost annually to different types of corruption, and yet "there are still no examples of senior officials who have been brought before a court and convicted of corruption charges." The result: "Economic development is hobbled by insecurity, corruption, lack of investment, dilapidated infrastructure and uncertainty."

Yet of the study group's 79 recommendations, only two are much relevant to this problem, and no anticorruption milestones to be achieved were set forth. Having served in Iraq, I find this very disappointing.

While I can't of course speak officially for the Pentagon, I can describe what I saw and give my own thoughts on how to improve things.

The most prominent forms of corruption I saw were Iraqi commanders pocketing the paychecks of nonexistent troops in the Iraqi army and officers in the police forces, and customs officials abetting the smuggling of oil and precious rebuilding supplies across Iraq's porous borders.

The greatest amount of corruption in the Iraq military and police forces occurs when payrolls are handed out at the unit level. Because the country doesn't have a functioning banking system, military and security commanders receive large sums of cash every payroll period based on the number and rank of soldiers on their personnel rosters. The endemic problem is that commanders frequently put nonexistent soldiers and security personnel ?- "ghosts" ?- on their rosters and pocket their salaries.

It is difficult to overstate how deeply these ghosts hurt the war effort. Most obviously, we have no idea how much of this money is being siphoned off to support tribal and ethnic fighting, and even the insurgency itself.
Also, because hundreds and thousands of ghosts exist at all echelons, many military and police units in the field do not have nearly as many men at arms as they seem to have on paper. Thus the units are often assigned tasks for which they do not have necessary manpower.

American officials have long been aware of this problem. "The number of trained and equipped security forces does not provide a complete picture of their capabilities and may overstate the number of forces on duty," was the finding of the Government Accountability Office's "Stabilizing Iraq" report last fall. "For example, Ministry of Interior data include police who are absent without leave."

Those of us on the ground discovered this the hard way. When I was with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Nineveh Province in 2005, we tried for months to get the names of all Iraqi security personnel in our sector on the payrolls of the Ministries of Interior and Defense. We were curious because when we tried to assess the effectiveness of the Iraqi Border Police brigade in Sinjar, on the Syrian border, we were told by Iraqi commanders that at least 300 officers were "performing guard duties in Mosul." Mosul is more than 100 miles inside Iraq, so border troops had no business there, if indeed they existed at all.

How can we bust the ghosts? Every soldier, police officer and government official is assigned a national identification number for bookkeeping, but so far it has been far too easy for corrupt officials to get numbers for nonexistent people. A better idea would be a universal national identification card for all government and military employees that includes the holder's photograph and fingerprints.

It would also help if American advisers embedded with security forces were charged with ensuring that all Iraqis are actually on duty with their assigned units.

The second major source of corruption I witnessed is the smuggling of Iraqi oil and other resources out of the country. A U.S. interagency panel reported in November that oil smuggling abetted by corrupt Iraqi customs officials is netting the insurgents $100 million a year.

Because most of Iraq is landlocked, almost all goods going in and out pass through 14 land "ports of entry." Smuggling has always been a part of Iraqi life, and was even more so during the last years of Saddam Hussein's rule, because he encouraged it to counteract the embargo on Iraqi oil. Yet, almost immediately after the 2003 invasion, former customs officials from the regime resumed their duties at the ports of entry.

Later that year, we in the 3rd Armored Cavalry were given responsibility for the Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian borders along Anbar Province. In addition to helping create the new Iraqi Border Police force, we set about reforming the customs checkpoints.

At first, this was successful: For example, the border police battalion we trained at Walid, near the conjunction of the Syrian and Jordanian borders, uncovered many attempts to smuggle out large quantities of food, fuel, industrial parts and other goods. Hundreds of smugglers were arrested.

Unfortunately, we left Anbar in early 2004, and corrupt officials in Baghdad soon took away the border police's oversight authority on the grounds that it wasn't their "jurisdictional role to conduct operations that were assigned exclusively to customs officials." American advisers at the national level failed to do anything about this, and things quickly reverted to the corrupt status quo.

The situation at Walid was hardly unique. In 2005, when I was with the 3rd Armored Cavalry in Nineveh Province, covering the northern section of the border between Iraq and Syria, it soon became clear that the region's port of entry, at Rabiya, was a hotbed of corruption. Not only were customs officials apparently turning a blind eye to smuggling, but they seemed to be directly engaged in it.

Little has changed: last month the American special inspector general for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, reported that the pipelines in the area have been blown up, so the only way to export oil is by road. He noted, "That leaves it vulnerable to smuggling as truckers sell their cargoes on the black market."

How can we shut down this black market? First, we must insist that the Iraqi government replace the customs workers with a new set of at least 1,400 elite officials jointly selected and vetted by the Iraqi ministries and the coalition forces.

We should supplement this new force with teams of American advisers to ensure that the Iraqis are prepared to do their jobs. And we should create an anticorruption task force of coalition officers with the power to periodically review systemic issues like the Iraqis' recruitment methods, policies governing potential ethical problems and records of internal discipline.

The Iraq Study Group concluded that "the ability of the United States to shape the outcomes is diminishing" and that "time is running out." Those of us who have been on the ground know how true this is.

Irrespective of the number and mission of U.S. forces sent to Iraq, winning or losing will depend in large part on our ability to give these people an example of good government.

We keep seeing this over and over and over where the USA or the Brits or whoever works their freaking tails off to get things right and then they turn it over to the Iraqis and leave and the next thing you know it all falls to crap. Screw that. If this is going to work at all then there has to be complete control by the colilition, bringing the Iraqis on board slowly and only when you are good and damn sure turning the operation over to them. Yeah, it will take a hell of a long time, and yeah, it means a hell of a lot more troops and yeah, it means more of those troops are going to die. But if that price is too high, then stop dicking around and get the hell out.

VZ, That's not in Bush's playbook. He thinks he's smart enough to ignore all the avaiable expert advisors he has access to. That alone tells us alot, but conservatives see Bush as a "leader."

Hey cicerone imposter, I do not think that either of the choices are in his "playbook" as you say. I don't think they are going to be in the playbook of the next guy, either, no matter whether he is a conservative or a liberal or whatever because they will continue to think that maybe they can get this to work if only they make some adjustments.

VZ, There are only two choices in the "adjustment" concerning Iraq; increase or decrease our troops. Stay the course is what got us to this point; a huge mess with no solutions. Actually, the increase in troops is also out of the mix, because we just don't have them. Bush's surge of 21,500 troops will only get more of our soldiers killed and maimed for a goal that's not being shared with the American People.

Hi CI, hope everything is going great for you.

Vinny,

I'm afraid that Bush will start getting desperate as the inquisitions start dropping his approval ratings even farther this year. Cornered people do dangerous things and Bush has his finger on a lot of buttons.

Cycloptichorn