THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

Hirsh: Iraq After 2008
What follows the surge? Will it be ?'Plan B,' ?'Plan B-H' (Baker-Hamilton), or something like South Korea? Bush seems as hazy on this as he was on the initial occupation plan. All that's certain, says a White House official, is that a ?'fairly robust' U.S. force will long be in Iraq.

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 1:45 p.m. PT June 7, 2007

June 7, 2007 - While roaming around Balad Air Base north of Baghdad a year ago, I thought that the most telltale signs of how long George W. Bush intended to stay in Iraq were the cracks. Runway cracks, that is. Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, the base commander and leader of 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, was very worried about them. The Saddam-era concrete was getting pummeled by the constant landings of U.S. F-16s, C-130s and other aircraft that flew in and out so regularly they had turned Balad into the busiest hub in the world outside of Heathrow. So Gorenc was slowly, painstakingly, rebuilding the runways to U.S. specs. No short-term plan, this. When it came to controlling the airspace over Iraq, Gorenc told me, "We will probably be helping the Iraqis with that problem for a very long time."

Just how long is the issue of the day in Iraq-obsessed Washington. And frighteningly, no one seems more confused about the plan than Bush himself. In two separate appearances in the last week, he alternately invoked last fall's Baker-Hamilton report?-which envisioned a substantial pullout by early 2008?-and America's South Korea occupation, which has been a robust front-line presence for more than 50 years. Which is it?

Neither, as it turns out. The Washington commentariat has suggested recently that Bush seems ready to pronounce the imminent end of his "surge," which by several accounts has failed both to secure large parts of Baghdad and, on a more strategic level, to prod the still-paralyzed Iraqi government to govern. "I would like to see us in a different configuration at some point in time in Iraq," the president said at a Rose Garden news conference on May 24. So is he talking about a "Plan B?" he was asked. "Actually, I would call that a plan recommended by Baker-Hamilton, so it would be a Plan B-H," the president joked.

In fact Bush has no intention of going back to Baker-Hamilton, says a senior White House official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the record. Sure, he's paying a lot more lip service to its recommendations, partly in an effort to gain new bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill after the White House's successful effort to thwart a Democrat-led withdrawal plan. But one of the central recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report called for a dramatic consolidation of the U.S. presence onto a handful of large bases like Balad. There, U.S. air units and special ops would mainly focus on killing Al Qaeda and leave the Iraqis more or less to their own devices. A long-term presence at Balad is still part of the plan?-it always was?-but the White House official told NEWSWEEK this week that the Baker-Hamilton panel misunderstood the mission. "What Baker-Hamilton didn't get right is the military feasibility of doing anti-Al Qaeda missions based primarily on special forces operations," he told me. "That isn't feasible because Al Qaeda is so entrenched in the population." When the National Intelligence Estimate "gamed this out," he said, it concluded that sectarian violence was now so out of control that to allow Shiite reprisals to occur while the Americans remained hunkered down on their bases would only fuel support among the Sunnis for Al Qaeda, which would grow even more entrenched. Hence the surge's effort to rein in Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and other chief culprits.

This will continue for many months. So while the president supports Baker-Hamilton's "end state"?-stabilizing Iraq?-he doesn't intend to get there using its recommendations. That means "a fairly robust presence beyond the end of 2008," the official said. "A sustainable presence." How would you define that? I asked him. "Well, sustainable has always been kind of a 10-[combat-]brigade presence. We're at 20 now." A plan for 10 U.S. brigades amounts to about 50,000 combat troops, and another 30,000 troops in support. So about 80,000 U.S. troops will need to stay in Iraq over the long term, about half of the force planned for the height of the surge this summer.

All of which brings us to Bush's recent invocation of South Korea, where tens of thousands of U.S. troops have been stationed along or near the border since the truce that ended the Korean War?-there is no peace treaty?-54 years ago. But here the president apparently hasn't thought things through either. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview last week, told me that there was no Status of Forces Agreement with the Shiite-led government, which is increasingly dominated by the virulently anti-American Sadr, that would legally permit a long-term U.S. presence. <> Nor is there any sign of a truce between Sunnis and Shia. So Iraq really is nothing like South Korea.

Some of Bush's putative Republican successors, like Mitt Romney, don't like the Korean model. "Our objective would not be a Korea-type setting with 25,000 to 50,000 troops on a near-permanent basis remaining in bases in Iraq," the former Massachusetts governor told The Associated Press on Thursday. Romney and most of the other candidates embrace the Baker-Hamilton recommendation of rapidly training up the Iraqi Army to take over security. Under the plans put forward last fall, that meant quadrupling the number of U.S. training teams. Why was such an increase necessary? Last fall, the military brass were moving toward a consensus that to be really effective, U.S. training teams needed to operate down at the company level, not just embedded within a battalion (which is made of three companies). That meant as many as 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. advisers would be required, up from the 5,000 or so then being budgeted.

But to do that effectively, U.S. combat brigades needed to be shifted out of Iraq so their officer corps could be turned into trainers. And under the surge, that's not happening either. To do so, it would mean "a fairly significant change to the [U.S.] force laydown in Iraq," Maj Gen. Carter Ham, the commandant at Fort Riley, the U.S. Army's adviser-training center, told me. The big trade-off of the surge that few people are taking note of?-what it really has cost us?-is that it is taking precious time away from the program to bring the Iraqi Army to readiness. The surge is therefore ensuring that U.S. troops will have to remain longer on the front lines of an intractable sectarian war.

The upshot is there really is no Plan B, or Plan B-H, or indeed anything coherent. The goal is Baker-Hamilton's "end-state," but without the training up of Iraqis that would allow the recommended pullout to happen by March 2008. It's the South Korean occupation without the truce, or a status-of-forces pact. It's just Iraq, in other words?- a quagmire that is as resistant to solutions as ever.

9/11 Commission Report, September 20, 2004

2 THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM

2.1 A DECLARATION OF WAR
In February 1998, the 40-year-old Saudi exile Usama Bin Ladin and a fugitive Egyptian physician, Ayman al Zawahiri, arranged from their Afghan headquarters for an Arabic newspaper in London to publish what they termed a fatwa issued in the name of a "World Islamic Front." A fatwa is normally an interpretation of Islamic law by a respected Islamic authority, but neither Bin Ladin, Zawahiri, nor the three others who signed this statement were scholars of Islamic law. Claiming that America had declared war against God and his messenger, they called for the murder of any American, anywhere on earth, as the "individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."1

Three months later, when interviewed in Afghanistan by ABC-TV, Bin Ladin enlarged on these themes.2 He claimed it was more important for Muslims to kill Americans than to kill other infidels. "It is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to squander his efforts on other activities," he said. Asked whether he approved of terrorism and of attacks on civilians, he replied: "We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop you except perhaps retaliation in kind. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets."

American Soldier, by General Tommy Franks, 7/1/2004
"10" Regan Books, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

page 483:
"The air picture changed once more. Now the icons were streaming toward two ridges an a steep valley in far northeastern Iraq, right on the border with Iran. These were the camps of the Ansar al-Isla terrorists, where al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi had trained disciples in the use of chemical and biological weapons. But this strike was more than just another [Tomahawk Land Attack Missile] bashing. Soon Special Forces and [Special Mission Unit] operators, leading Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, would be storming the camps, collecting evidence, taking prisoners, and killing all those who resisted."

Capture of al-Qaeda mastermind of Golden Mosque explosion
...
Abu Qudama operated under terrorist cell leader Haitham al-Badri.

Al-Badri was "a known terrorist," a member of Ansar al-Sunna before he joined terror group al Qaeda in Iraq, al-Rubaie said.

However, Iraqi authorities "were not aware of his being the mastermind behind the golden mosque explosion" until Abu Qudama's arrest, al-Rubaie said.
"The sole reason behind his action was to drive a wedge between the Shiites and Sunnis and to ignite and trigger a sectarian war in this country," al-Rubaie said, referring to al-Badri.

Congressional Intelligence Report 09/08/2006
REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
Conclusion 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.

UN CHARTER Article 51
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

George Bush is not the primary problem. Exterminating al-Qaeda wherever it established and establishes itself is the primary problem.

June 8, 2007
Pace to Retire as Joint Chiefs Chairman
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, June 8 ?- Gen. Peter Pace is being replaced as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a move that reflects a feeling among top civilian officials at the Pentagon and in the White House that the American military needs new leadership after years of being strained by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

General Pace is to be succeeded by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, who has been chief of naval operations since the summer of 2005, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced today.

Mr. Gates said that re-nominating General Pace would be an intolerable "divisive ordeal" for the military and the general himself.

General Pace, who has been chairman for just less than two years, is known to have wanted to be nominated for a second term as chairman, and his re-nomination by President Bush had been rumored to be in the works.

Mr. Gates, who took over from Donald H. Rumsfeld last fall, said he had wanted since early in his term to nominate General Pace for another two-year term. But after talking with Republican and Democratic senators over the past several weeks, Mr. Gates said, he concluded that confirmation hearings would have focused "on the past, rather than the future, and further, that there was the very real prospect the process would be quite contentious."

President Bush "reluctantly agreed because he has the highest regard for General Pace," said Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary.

Mr. Gates said he was honored to nominate Admiral Mullen. "He has the vision, strategic insight and integrity to lead America's military," Mr. Gates said.

The secretary said his decision to replace General Pace had "absolutely nothing to do" with the general's performance as chairman. The general "has served our country with great distinction and deserves the deepest thanks of the American people," Mr. Gates said."I am disappointed that the circumstances make this kind of decision necessary," Mr. Gates said. "I wish that were not the case. I wish it were not necessary to make a decision like this."

The secretary said the political figures he had conferred with were unanimous in their respect for General Pace ?- and unanimous in their feeling that a change in Pentagon leadership was needed.

When he was asked whether the necessity of replacing General Pace signaled waning Congressional support for the Iraq war, Mr. Gates replied, "No, I don't think it says that."

In his time as chairman, General Pace rarely showed any sign of disagreement with civilian leaders. In public, at least, he backed Secretary Rumsfeld's preference for holding down trooop levels in Iraq, until that policy was re-examined by the White House late in 2006. In March, he caused a stir when he said he believed homosexual conduct to be immoral; soon afterward, he said he should not have said that.

General Pace was the first officer from the Marine Corps to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Before that, he was the first from the Marines to serve as vice chairman.

Mr. Gates said he valued General Pace's "candor and willingness to speak his mind," that he would work closely with the general until his retirement on Sept. 30 and that he anticipated "a continuing friendship" after that.

But there was nothing cheerful about the brief Pentagon announcement, which was attended by neither General Pace nor his presumed successor. The announcement came while President Bush was in Europe.

Asked what Admiral Mullen would bring to the post, Mr. Gates replied in part that the admiral is "a very smart strategic thinker."

The admiral has been overseeing the Navy's expansion to a fleet of more than 300 ships by 2020. But Mr. Gates said one indicator of the admiral's broad strategic vision is that he is most concerned about upgrading the Army. If confirmed, the admiral will be the first Navy man to be chairman since Adm. William J. Crowe, who served from 1985 to 1989.

Mr. Gates said he would recommend to President Bush that he nominate Gen. James E. Cartwright of the Marines, the commander of the Strategic Command, as the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to succeed Adm. Edmund G. Giambastiani Jr., whose retirement has already been announced. Mr. Gates said a new chief of naval operations had not yet been selected.

Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute


Sunday, June 10, 2007

Paris Hilton & Iraqi Prisoners


American cable news has been fixated on the jailing of socialite Paris Hilton for the past week, on grounds that she twice violated the probation sentence she earlier received for drunk driving. They interrupted coverage of world leaders at the G8. They briefly spliced in Gates's decision not to reappoint Peter Pace as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. A new frenzy broke out with every tiny twist . She was brave, she was weeping, she was mentally fragile. She was released, she was rejailed, she shouted it was unfair and cried, she was undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Just for a little perspective, we could consider the news from Iraq on Saturday. Incoming mortar fire from guerrillas hit Bucca prison, killing 6 inmates and wounding 50.

The US military is holding 19000 Iraqis, 16000 of them at Bucca. Although most are guerrillas or their helpers, a lot of them were picked up because they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once arrested, an inmate often cannot clear himself for months or years. I don't think they have access to attorneys. No one cares if they are depressed. At Abu Ghraib earlier on, some inmates were systematically tortured. It is unlear if all such practices have ceased.

Some Iraqi women have been held in this way. Some were essentially hostages, taken to make them reveal where their husbands or fathers were or to guarantee their good behavior. Their reputations were shot, since Iraqis think Americans are sex fiends and wouldn't trust the virtue of a woman who had been in their custody. The unmarried among them are likely doomed to be spinsters.



American television never mentions that the US has 19000 Iraqis in jail, or that some have been women, or that some are innocent, or how they feel about being in prison.

So is Paris Hilton being given special treatment by our media? We all are, folks.

MAHMOUDIYA, Iraq - An apparent suicide car bomber took aim at a U.S. convoy carrying demolition experts on Sunday, collapsing a major highway overpass south of Baghdad and trapping American soldiers in the rubble.

Quote:

George Bush is not the primary problem. Exterminating al-Qaeda wherever it established and establishes itself is the primary problem.

I/We feel the war in Iraq is exacerbating the problem instead of helping it.

There has been some evidence presented to support this position, especially over the last year, and I wish you'd seriously consider our viewpoint.

Cycloptichorn

exterminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is primary

'Pak tribal areas safe haven for al Qaeda'
Washington, June 9 (PTI): Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have become a "safe haven" for al Qaeda and Taliban militants, and Washington should prod Islamabad to be more aggressive and vigorous in dealing with the lawless areas, a top US security official has said.

Lt.Gen. Douglas Lute, who has been nominated as the Assistant to the President for Iraq and Afghanistan, said "Pakistan is going through a turbulent time here. And the tribal area along their western border have become, unfortunately, a safe haven for al Qaeda."

"You said they're searching for one in Iraq. Well, they've got one now in western Pakistan... (President Pervez) Musharraf's got an election coming up. So he's got to deal with that. But, look, we've got a right to expect them to be more aggressive and vigorous in dealing with those lawless tribal areas," the Deputy National Security Advisor told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

ican wrote :

Quote:

exterminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is primary

how is that to be accomplished when al-qaeda fighters move freely between afghanistan and pakistan ?
the pakistani president seems not to be committed to expell the al-qaeda fighters - they are really occupying a "no-man's-land" not under the control of the pakistani authorities .
hbg

Quote:

'Pak tribal areas safe haven for al Qaeda'
Washington, June 9 (PTI): Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have become a "safe haven" for al Qaeda and Taliban militants, and Washington should prod Islamabad to be more aggressive and vigorous in dealing with the lawless areas, a top US security official has said.

Lt.Gen. Douglas Lute, who has been nominated as the Assistant to the President for Iraq and Afghanistan, said "Pakistan is going through a turbulent time here. And the tribal area along their western border have become, unfortunately, a safe haven for al Qaeda."

"You said they're searching for one in Iraq. Well, they've got one now in western Pakistan... (President Pervez) Musharraf's got an election coming up. So he's got to deal with that. But, look, we've got a right to expect them to be more aggressive and vigorous in dealing with those lawless tribal areas," the Deputy National Security Advisor told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

...
it seems that both taliban and al-qaeda fighters are moving around at their own speed and will ... good luck trying to oust them .
...

...
Should we pull out, the Iraqis would get rid of al-Qaida pretty quickly.