THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

It was a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, three years ago. I was interviewing the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in the ballroom of a big hotel in Cairo.

Shrewd, amusing, bulky in his superb white robes, he described to me all the disasters he was certain would follow the invasion.

The US and British troops would be bogged down in Iraq for years. There would be civil war between Sunnis and Shias. The real beneficiary would be the government in Iran.

"And what do the Americans say when you tell them this," I asked? "They don't even listen," he said.

Over the last three years, from a ringside seat here in Baghdad, I have watched his predictions come true, stage by stage.

Falluja fallout

The first stage was the looting.


As Saddam Hussein fled Baghdad, people started attacking every symbol of the old system, no matter how self-destructive that might be.

I saw crowds of people sacking a hospital, running out with bits of equipment which were useless to them, but essential to the running of the hospital.

At the information ministry, I watched them stripping the claddings from the walls and the underlay from the floors. The American soldiers outside did nothing to stop them. Sometimes they would fire in the air, but the looters scarcely even looked round.

Until then, most Iraqis had thought the US was all-powerful, and was there to help them. The perception started to change then and there.

For the next year, if you were careful, you could wander round Baghdad, and even drive to other parts of the country.

When we arrived for a tour of duty we travelled by road to Baghdad from Jordan, through places like Falluja, or else from Kuwait, past Nasiriya and Hilla. It was sometimes nerve-racking, but we always got through. Now there is no alternative to flying in.

The BBC, like most other news organisations, is based in the city centre, not inside the Green Zone. It still is, but now our bureau is protected like a fortress.

Everything in Iraq changed in April 2004, with the American onslaught on Falluja. The town is small, but it took a long time to subdue - and it never has been subdued entirely. The ferocity of the American attack angered a broad swathe of Iraqi opinion.

At the same time, against the advice of many Iraqi politicians, the Americans also took on the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

After that, the towns and cities of central Iraq became markedly more dangerous. We started hearing more of the American acronym IED, or improvised explosive device (it simply means a bomb).

Post-traumatic stress

The Coalition Provisional Authority under the leadership of Paul Bremer handed over to an interim Iraqi administration in July 2004.

It made little difference: the corruption had already started, and people now realised that neither the coalition nor the Iraqi administration could do anything about the failing water, power and fuel supplies.
The next key moment was the election of January 2005. The violence dropped noticeably, as the insurgents saw the size of the turnout and felt the general enthusiasm, and waited to see if they could do a deal with the new government.


But there was no new government for a full three months. The politicians squabbled among themselves, and the moment passed. The violence soon returned to its former level.

By July of last year there was already talk of civil war. A referendum and another election followed, and an effective administration was as far away as ever. Four months after the December election, Iraq still has no government.

'Easier targets'

The insurgency is fading a little now. Fewer American, British and Iraqi troops are dying, and there are less frequent attacks on the Iraqi police.

Instead, easier targets present themselves. There is an all-out effort to provoke a civil war. The bombings of Shia shrines are always followed by the murder of individual Sunnis: sometimes dozens at a time.


There is a quiet movement of population, as people leave mixed areas and head for places where others like them live. Marriages between Sunnis and Shias used to be frequent; now they've dropped away to almost nothing.

A psychiatrist at one of the main hospitals in Baghdad told me that serious mental illness in Iraq in the past had affected fewer than 3% of the population. Now, he said, the figure was 17%.

Another psychiatrist told me that in the days of Saddam Hussein, his patients had shown the effects of living under a ferocious dictatorship: stress levels were very high.

Now, he said, most of his patients suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. It's no longer the fear of violence and injury which troubles them, it's the daily reality of it.

While we were filming, someone fired a gun close by. I won't easily forget the terrified way some of the patients flinched.

Doing and undoing

Just over three years ago, when I interviewed the Saudi foreign minister, I asked him why he thought the US was determined to invade Iraq.

He said he had put the same question to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Mr Cheney had replied: "Because it's do-able."

It was. The trouble is, undoing the kind of damage the Saudi foreign minister foresaw is proving very hard indeed.


Do you agree with John Simpson's views? Where does Iraq go from here? Is Iraq heading for civil war?


On 7 April, 2006, BBC News went behind the headlines in Iraq

Reuters(last night) and NYT (today) picking up on more generals' discontent with Rumsfeld.
When did these generals retire?

Ican:
"The United States cannot lose the war on terror militarily"

We sure can...particularly with the type of fighting going on and a relatively inability to prevent/disrupt/counter it. And particularly with the kind of leadership and behavior allowed to the troops.

If America were to lose the war on the terrorist malignancy, it will more probably lose it domestically by crippling domestic direction of our military.

For example, failure by the Bush administration to order our military to do the following, or a failure by a majority of Americans here in America to support this order, is an invitation to failure in Iraq:

(1) Exterminate the Terrorist Malignancy: that is, exterminate the mass murderers of civilians, their abettors, their advocates, and their silent witnesses.

(2) Cease protecting the government of Iraq after June 30, 2006, if that government has failed to reorganize its newly elected representatives by that date.


Who is this group anyway, American Committees on Foreign Relations? We know about The Daily Standard.
http://www.acfr.org
The American Committees on Foreign Relations

http://www.cfr.org
Council on Foreign Relations

April 10, 2006, 7:27 a.m.
Connections

With conservative congressional majorities at risk in next November's midterm election, President Bush repeatedly should remind everyone that a key reason Coalition troops invaded Iraq was to padlock Saddam Hussein's Wal-Mart for terrorists. Pressured by congressmen and journalists, the administration finally has started releasing intelligence documents captured in Baghdad. These papers confirm what The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, Wall Street Journal editorialists, and I have demonstrated for years: Saddam Hussein indeed was entwined with terrorists in general and al Qaeda in particular. Bush should explain this, in detail, in his speeches on Iraq.


These papers appear on the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office's website (http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm). The administration should create and promote a simple URL (e.g., iraqdocuments.gov) so readers easily can examine Hussein's terror ties.


According to a March 23 ABC News analysis of several records, "an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995, after receiving approval from Saddam Hussein." Bin Laden requested that Baghdad broadcast into Saudi Arabia sermons by radical Saudi mullah Suleiman al Ouda. He also proposed, as one file says, "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia.


The document states that Hussein was briefed on the March 4, 1995 meeting, and that further "development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties to be left according to what's open [in the future] based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation." This memo notes that after Sudan booted bin Laden, and he decamped to Afghanistan, "The relationship with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his current location."


Hussein approved bin Laden's requested broadcasts. As for "joint operations against foreign forces," ABC notes <http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=1734490> that "eight months after the meeting — on November 13, 1995 — terrorists attacked Saudi National Guard Headquarters in Riyadh, killing five U.S. military advisers. The militants later confessed on Saudi TV to having been trained by Osama bin Laden."


In the April 3 Weekly Standard <http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/024eyieu.asp> , Stephen Hayes cites a U.S. government "Summary of Evidence" on an Iraqi at Guantanamo. "From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades," the document states. "A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994," it continues. "The detainee was a member of al Qaeda," it adds. "In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."


In a March 27 cover story, Hayes dissects an eight-page fax from Iraq's then-ambassador to Manila, Salah Samarmad, to Baghdad's foreign ministry. The June 6, 2001, communiqué reveals Baathist financing of Abu Sayyaf, al Qaeda's Philippine branch. That May 27, these terrorists abducted 20 tourists, including three Americans, on the resort island of Palawan. They soon beheaded Californian Guillermo Sobrero. A June 7, 2002, rescue liberated Kansas City missionary Gracia Burnham, though her husband, Martin, died in the crossfire. The Burnhams were seized while celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary.

Samarmad tried to loosen Hussein's embrace of these extremists.

"The kidnappers were formerly (from the previous year) receiving money and purchasing combat weapons," Ambassador Samarmad wrote headquarters <http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/990ieqmb.asp> . "From now on we (IIS) are not giving them this opportunity and are not on speaking terms with them," he added, mentioning the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

As former Clinton foreign-policy adviser Laurie Mylroie wrote <http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008174> April 2 on OpinionJournal.com, an order from Saddam Hussein dated January 18, 1993, reads: "Hunt Americans on Arab territory, particularly in Somalia." On October 3, 1993, Islamic zealots staged the so-called Blackhawk Down attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing 18 U.S. soldiers and wounding 73.

The Iraqi Perspectives Project <http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2006/ipp.pdf> , led by retired Army Lt. Colonel Kevin Woods for the U.S. Joint Forces Command, reviewed some of these papers and discovered an October 7, 2000, document titled "Correspondence from Presidential Office to Secretary General of the Fedayeen Saddam Regarding Foreign Arab Volunteers." The FS, as this document indicates, operated paramilitary training camps that hosted "Arab volunteers from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, 'the Gulf,' and Syria" who were "sacrificing for the cause."

Lebanese-born Joseph Shahda translated <http://70.169.163.24/released/04-04-06/BIAP-2003-000654.pdf> Document BIAP 2003-00654 for FreeRepublic.com. Dated March 11, 2001, this top-secret letter is addressed "To all the Units" from Air Brigadier General Abdel Magid Hammot Ali, Commander of Ali Bin Abi Taleb Air Force Base, and Air Colonel Mohamad Majed Mohamadi. The subject is "Volunteer for Suicide Mission." It reads, "We ask to provide...[Command of Ali Military] Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests."

"This idea that Saddam Hussein was some sort of isolationist dictator holed up in his palace and just happy to have his hands around the throats of his own people was inaccurate," Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R., Calif.), chairman of the House International Relations Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee tells me. "He saw himself as a Saladin and had contacts with people around the world who hated the United States, because he hated the United States."

Rohrbacher, who conducted a hearing Thursday on these documents, wishes Team Bush would move more quickly to release these papers. "This administration is overly protective and, I think, overly restrictive, and a little bit arrogant," he says. "My advice to President Bush is what Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R., Mich.) and I suggested in the first place: Get as much information out to the public as fast as you can, and let people make their own determinations based on what they see in the documents. So much of this has been held up for so long, in part so the government can control distribution of the documents. Forget distribution. Let it all hang out, and let people decide for themselves."

Senator Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) shares Rohrbacher's impatience. "The pace with which these documents are being released is inadequate," Santorum said March 28 in the Senate chamber. Of the "48,000 boxes, containing roughly 2 million documents,...less than 2 percent of the documents have been translated. At this pace, my grandchildren may know what is in these documents."

Still, even at a trickle, what is emerging is unsettling.

The May-June 2006 Foreign Affairs cites a May 25, 1999, text titled "Fedayeen Saddam Instructions" in which Uday Hussein, the tyrant's older son, orders "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas" [Kurdistan]. As authors Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray observe <http://fullaccess.foreignaffairs.org/20060501faessay85301/kevin-woods-james-lacey-williamson-murray/saddam-s-delusions-the-view-from-the-inside.html> , "Preparations for 'Blessed July,' a regime-directed wave of 'martyrdom' operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion."

President Bush repeatedly should remind everyone that Coalition forces liberated Iraq on April 9, 2003, less than three months before "Blessed July."

— Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution <http://www.hoover.org> .

Doctor's court martial: It was a foregone conclusion that the military (Royal Air Force) court would find him guilty, but I believe there is to be an appeal to a higher court. BTW no witnesses for the defence were allowed during this hearing.

The Guardian will be worth reading on this, tomorrow.

McTag wrote:

Doctor's court martial: It was a foregone conclusion that the military (Royal Air Force) court would find him guilty, but I believe there is to be an appeal to a higher court. BTW no witnesses for the defence were allowed during this hearing.

The Guardian will be worth reading on this, tomorrow.

Article on doctor's court-martial.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article357656.ece

Prisoner of conscience: RAF doctor who refused Iraq service is jailed
Doctor. RAF officer. And now war criminal. Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith was yesterday jailed for refusing to serve in Iraq
By Kim Sengupta
Published: 14 April 2006
An RAF doctor who refused to serve in Iraq because he believed the war to be illegal was jailed for eight months yesterday.

The conviction and imprisonment of Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, the first member of the armed forces to be charged with disobeying orders to deploy in Iraq, has provoked widespread condemnation. Anti-war groups declared that a man who had shown great moral courage and acted according to his conscience was being pilloried for his beliefs.

MPs said that the high-profile case illustrated the "legal quagmire" created by Tony Blair's decision to follow George Bush and take part in the conflict.

Kendall-Smith's lawyers said they had received more than 500 messages of support, many of them from serving and former members of the forces.

Bitter accusations and recriminations dominated the trial, which took place at Aldershot barracks. At an earlier hearing, Assistant Judge Advocate Jack Bayliss had ruled the doctor could not use the defence that in refusing military orders he had acted according to his conscience. The judge maintained that the US and British forces were now in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government.

Judge Advocate Bayliss also refused to allow the defence to call as witnesses, among others, Ben Griffin, a member of the SAS who resigned from the Army because he believed the Iraq war was illegal and who refused to serve alongside US forces because of the excesses they committed. Also barred was an Iraqi doctor who had flown to Britain to describe his experience of what has happened to the country following the invasion.

During the hearing Kendall-Smith repeatedly expressed his view that an order for him to deploy to Basra was illegal. He also described the actions of the Americans in Iraq as being akin to the Nazis.

It took the military jury of five RAF officers just one hour and 28 minutes to find Kendall-Smith guilty on all five charges of disobeying orders.
...

Army investigators found "probable cause" that a civilian interrogator abused a detainee at Abu Ghraib. Why has the Department of Justice failed to prosecute him -- or any of the other 18 civilians suspected of criminal acts?

Apr. 14, 2006 | Salon has obtained a previously unpublished 2003 Abu Ghraib photograph that shows Daniel Johnson, a civilian contractor, interrogating an Iraqi prisoner using what an Army investigation calls "an unauthorized stress position."

The Army investigated the circumstances behind the photograph, found "probable cause" that a crime had been committed, and referred the case to the Justice Department for prosecution. (Salon obtained the photo from someone who spent time at Abu Ghraib as a uniformed member of the military and is familiar with the Army investigation there.) But in early 2005, a Department of Justice attorney told the Army that the evidence in the case did not justify prosecution.

This failure to act by the Justice Department, which has sole jurisdiction over crimes committed by civilian contractors in Iraq, has prompted a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and human-rights organizations to question the seriousness with which the Bush administration is pursuing prisoner-abuse cases. At his January 2005 confirmation hearing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declared, "Abuse will not be tolerated by this administration. If confirmed, I will ensure that the Department of Justice aggressively pursues those responsible for such abhorrent actions."

Wholesale crap.

We are in Iraq by the invitation of the Iraqi government?
The actual quote was:
"The judge maintained that the US and British forces were now in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government."

Do you believe everything that you read in print, ican?
No! Not only do I not believe everything I read in print, I believe very little of what I read in print

Do you also think that making printed text large, in bold, and in color, will make it true?
No! I think it merely emphasizes a particular item that someone might otherwise overlook.

Your last post evidences a desperate attempt at loigic, which fails.
A "desperate attempt at loigic"
Please explain specifically what in my last post you think was a "desperate attempt at loigic" and why you think so.

Then please tell me why you think it "fails."

"An unauthorized stress position"

What was that alleged unauthorized stress position

Why was that alleged unauthorized stress position alleged to constitute prisoner abuse

Is beheading prisoners a form of prisoner abuse when done by terrorist malignancy