Iraq conflict has killed a million Iraqis: survey
Wed Jan 30, 1:55 PM ET
Reuters

More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain's leading polling groups.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

ORB originally found that 1.2 million people had died, but decided to go back and conduct more research in rural areas to make the survey as comprehensive as possible and then came up with the revised figure.

The research covered 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Those that not covered included two of Iraq's more volatile regions -- Kerbala and Anbar -- and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work.

Estimates of deaths in Iraq have been highly controversial in the past.

Medical journal The Lancet published a peer-reviewed report in 2004 stating that there had been 100,000 more deaths than would normally be expected since the March 2003 invasion, kicking off a storm of protest.

The widely watched Web site Iraq Body Count currently estimates that between 80,699 and 88,126 people have died in the conflict, although its methodology and figures have also been questioned by U.S. authorities and others.

ORB, a non-government-funded group founded in 1994, conducts research for the private, public and voluntary sectors.

The director of the group, Allan Hyde, said it had no objective other than to record as accurately as possible the number of deaths among the Iraqi population as a result of the invasion and ensuing conflict.

(Reporting by Luke Baker; editing by Andrew Roche)

Sadly, I believe this figure to be the most accurate. Both times in Iraq, I never met or knew an Iraqi who hadn't lost a family member to violence (Civil War). This tragic reality is pitiful. Over a million dead and millions in refugee camps suffering miserably.

When are those who are responsible going to be held acountable?~Luis

Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006
World Health Organization
Related Article by Brownstein, C. A.

ABSTRACT

Background Estimates of the death toll in Iraq from the time of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 until June 2006 have ranged from 47,668 (from the Iraq Body Count) to 601,027 (from a national survey). Results from the Iraq Family Health Survey (IFHS), which was conducted in 2006 and 2007, provide new evidence on mortality in Iraq.

Methods The IFHS is a nationally representative survey of 9345 households that collected information on deaths in the household since June 2001. We used multiple methods for estimating the level of underreporting and compared reported rates of death with those from other sources.

Results Interviewers visited 89.4% of 1086 household clusters during the study period; the household response rate was 96.2%. From January 2002 through June 2006, there were 1325 reported deaths. After adjustment for missing clusters, the overall rate of death per 1000 person-years was 5.31 (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.89 to 5.77); the estimated rate of violence-related death was 1.09 (95% CI, 0.81 to 1.50). When underreporting was taken into account, the rate of violence-related death was estimated to be 1.67 (95% uncertainty range, 1.24 to 2.30). This rate translates into an estimated number of violent deaths of 151,000 (95% uncertainty range, 104,000to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006.

Conclusions:

Violence is a leading cause of death for Iraqi adults and was the main cause of death in men between the ages of 15 and 59 years during the first 3years after the 2003 invasion. Although the estimated range is substantially lower than a recent survey-based estimate, it nonetheless points to a massive death toll, only one of the many health and human consequences of an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

And yet during the period from 2003 to 2006 American Generals refused to describe the situation in Iraq as a Civil War. Why? Because they did not want the American people and the world to know that failure was resulting from the invasion and occupation. For this reason (among others), the Generals were derelict in their duties. The deceived the American people and allowed those of us fighting and trying to help the Iraqi people do so without the troop numbers and support we needed.~Luis

Congress unlikely to buy Bush proposals
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
48 minutes ago

A Democratic Congress is poised to heed President Bush's call to help save the economy, but may not give him much else after a State of the Union speech that recycled many of the administration's past initiatives.

A lame duck president called again for immigration reform, an end to lawmakers' pet projects, control of Social Security spending and making tax cuts permanent. Democrats have rejected those Bush initiatives before.

And, in a sign that the dominant political battles will not be in Congress, many in the House chamber kept an eye during the speech on Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton — bitter rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. They sat close to each other, but managed not to shake hands.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who hours earlier had endorsed Obama over Clinton, reached out to shake Sen. Clinton's hand when she came near.

Bush is plunging into politics himself this week, raising money for Republicans from Wednesday through Friday at events in California, Nevada, Colorado and Missouri. Other appearances will promote the themes from his speech.

Delivering the televised Democratic response, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius urged Bush to work with a Congress controlled by her party.

"The last five years have cost us dearly — in lives lost, in thousands of wounded warriors whose futures may never be the same, in challenges not met here at home because our resources were committed elsewhere," she said. "America's foreign policy has left us with fewer allies and more enemies."

The president pushed hard for "a robust growth package" to jump-start the economy, asking Democrats to avoid the temptation "to load up the bill."

As he spoke, Senate Democrats already were planning to expand the package negotiated by Bush and House leaders from both parties, to include tax rebates for senior citizens and an extension of unemployment benefits.

Bush said allowing previous tax cuts to lapse would raise bills for 116 million Americans, but Democrats have cited the rising deficits as the war in Iraq has dragged on.

The president warned, as he has repeatedly, that pulling Americans out of Iraq too soon would aid al-Qaida and undermine Iraq's government.

"Members of Congress: Having come so far and achieved so much, we must not allow this to happen," the president said.

Bush is likely to keep winning that one. Democrats have tried again and again to set a timetable for withdrawal, but lacked the votes.

Congress has ignored Bush's proposals to deal with millions of illegal immigrants and to control Social Security spending.

"I ask members of Congress to offer your proposals and come up with a bipartisan solution to save these vital programs for our children and grandchildren," Bush said.

There's no reason to think that Congress will touch Social Security in an election year, and any immigration agreement would not involve comprehensive reform on an issue that has deeply divided the nation.

Illegal immigration "must be resolved in a way that upholds both our laws and our highest ideals," Bush said. That line, which didn't propose a solution, was applauded on both sides of the aisle.

The president, speaking about one of his signature programs, urged Congress to continue the No Child Left Behind Act, saying, "no one can deny its results."

Republicans enthusiastically applauded. Several Democrats, who disagree, could be heard laughing at Bush's conclusion.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Such audacity! It's simply amazing how arrogant and stupid our President is. Let's hope that Congress gets off their asses and proceeds with censure and/or impeachment proceedings against Cheney and/or Bush.~Luis

Gadhafi son may be linked to Iraq attack
By MUHEIDDIN RASHAD, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 26, 9:22 AM ET

A devastating explosion in northern Iraq was spearheaded by foreign fighters under the sponsorship of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of the Libyan leader, a security chief for Sunni tribesmen who rose up against al-Qaida in Iraq said Saturday.

Col. Jubair Rashid Naief, who also is a police official in Anbar province, said the Anbar Awakening Council had alerted the U.S. military to the possible arrival in the northern city of Mosul of the Seifaddin Regiment, made up of about 150 foreign and Iraqi fighters, as long as three months ago.

The U.S. military did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment about Naief's claim.

"They crossed the Syrian border nearest to Mosul within the last two to three months. Since then, they have taken up positions in the city and begun blowing up cars and launching other terror operations," Naief told The Associated Press.

The so-called Anbar Awakening Council is a grouping of Sunni tribes in the western province that last year turned against al-Qaida and began working with U.S. forces. The council is credited with the sharp drop in violence in the former insurgent redoubt.

The movement has since been spread by Americans through Baghdad and surrounding districts. That and the introduction of 30,000 additional U.S. troops by mid-2007 are seen as the main factors in the recent decline in violence in the country.

Naief did not explain why the younger Gadhafi would be sponsoring the group of fighters. Seif Gadhafi, however, was quoted by the Austrian Press Agency last year as warning Europeans against more attacks by radical Islamists.

"The only solution to contain radicalism is the rapid departure of Western troops from Iraq as well as Afghanistan, and a solution to the Palestinian question," Gadhafi was quoted as saying.

Touted as a reformer, 36-year-old Gadhafi has increasingly been sharing his father's spotlight and reaching out to the West to soften Libya's image and return it to the international mainstream. He has no official government post, but many see him as the man most likely to take power in the North African country when his father steps down or dies.

The massive explosion in Mosul on Wednesday and the suicide attack assassination of a top police official the next day have prompted obvious concern among Iraq's leaders.

On Friday, the government said it would dispatch several thousand more security forces to Mosul in a "decisive" bid to drive al-Qaida in Iraq from its last major stronghold.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave no details on troop strength or timing, but his announcement added to growing signs that Mosul could represent a pivotal showdown with insurgents chased north by U.S.-led offensives.

"Today, our troops started moving toward Mosul ... and the fight there will be decisive," al-Maliki said during a speech in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

The challenge, however, is whether the Iraqi forces have the firepower and training to lead an offensive into Iraq's third-largest city. The U.S. military is relatively thin across northern Iraq and has signaled no immediate plans to shift troops from key zones in and around Baghdad.

Mosul is now considered the main logistical hub for al-Qaida in Iraq because of its size and location — sitting at crossroads between Baghdad, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Many extremists fled north as U.S.-led forces began gaining ground in former insurgent strongholds last year, aided by Sunni tribes that rose up against al-Qaida and its backers.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told The Associated Press that 3,000 police were being sent to the Mosul region to augment the understaffed force.

Ninevah province, whose capital is Mosul, has about 18,000 policemen. But only about 3,000 of those operate in the city of nearly 2 million, according to police spokesman Saeed al-Jubouri.

A Defense Ministry official said several thousand Iraqi soldiers would be moved from Baghdad and Anbar province. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is sensitive.

"We have asked the prime minister to send us fresh units because we cannot defeat the terrorists with the weak units we have now in the city," Maj. Gen. Riyad Jalal, a senior Iraqi officer in the Mosul area. "We need new equipment and stronger weapons because most of our security members have only rifles."

Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has become a fulcrum on two fronts.

First the United States is trying to keep Iraqi security forces in the lead as a major test of Washington's long-range plans, which seek to keep a smaller American force in Iraq as backup for local soldiers and police.

Second, U.S. officials say Mosul has become the only remaining major city in Iraq where al-Qaida is able to operate with any freedom. Major centers of al-Qaida activity in the past — including the western Anbar province, Baghdad and Baqouba north of the capital — no longer offer easy refuge.

Al-Maliki announced reinforcements for Mosul two days after an abandoned apartment building, believed to be used as a bomb-making factory, was blown apart as the Iraqi army was investigating tips about a weapons cache.

At least 34 people were killed and 224 wounded when the blast tore through surrounding houses in the Zanjili neighborhood, a poverty-ridden district on the west bank of the Tigris River. No soldiers were reported killed.

A suicide bomber then killed a police chief and two other officers Thursday as they toured the devastation. Residents taunted the chief and pelted him with rocks moments before he was killed.

AP reporters Sameer N. Yacoub and Hamed Ahmed contributed to this report.

The "thinkers" of this Administration and the current crop of Generals haven't a clue what they are doing in the Middle East. They keep making it up as it goes along. Until we extricate ourselves (quickly) from the situation and contain it nearby, we are heading down a perilous road to an international disaster (war, economics, further humanitarian crises, etc.).~Luis

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 24, 2008
Pg. 20

Military 'Charity' Rewards Celebrity Generals First

By Jay Bookman

In the combat tradition of the U.S. military, officers are supposed to eat last, after the enlisted personnel under their command have been served. It's a gesture of respect, a way to communicate the idea that a good officer puts the well-being of his soldiers before his own.

But Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, apparently believes that custom no longer applies once he takes off his uniform.

After his retirement in 2003, Franks followed the career path trod by many generals before him, cashing in on his celebrity by accepting well-paid speaking gigs, writing a book and serving on corporate boards. Franks also agreed to lend his name to fund-raising efforts by an outfit called the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes, a charity created to assist wounded veterans.

"The whole purpose will be to help put our disabled veterans on the road to a productive and rewarding life by assisting them to better develop their own abilities to overcome their disabilities," Franks said in a mass mailing sent out over his signature.

The founder of the group, Roger Chapin, has created other veterans' charities as well, such as Help Hospitalized Veterans. From 2004 to 2006, his groups collected $160 million in contributions from Americans wanting to help those who had been harmed in the line of duty.

Unfortunately, only a small percentage of that money ever trickled down to veterans. According to congressional investigators, Chapin and his group spent $125 million on fund-raising, salaries and expenses such as a membership in a country club, eating up 74 cents of every contributed dollar.

Over that time period, Chapin and his wife paid themselves $1.5 million in salary and more than $340,000 in personal expenses, not including the charity's purchase of a $440,000 condo for their use in the Washington. D.C., area. And it was all legal.

In congressional testimony last week, Chapin was asked whether groups such as his should at least be required to tell potential donors just how much -- or in his case, how little -- of their contribution actually reaches its intended target.

Chapin thought that was a terrible idea. "If we disclose, we'd be out of business," he said.

Chapin and his wife weren't the only ones to profit from the charity. As the Army Times and others reported, Franks also got a piece of the action. In return for use of his name, the general was paid $100,000 from money intended to help wounded veterans. Chapin has also been paying Air Force retired Brig. Gen. Arthur Diehl III $5,000 a month for similar fund-raising help.

"I am proud to contribute my time and financial support to Salute America's Heroes," Diehl wrote in one fund-raising letter.

To his credit, Franks later ended his relationship with the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes. However, he did so not because he thought it inappropriate to take money meant to help wounded veterans, but because so little of the money was actually reaching the vets.

Many of those veterans had been wounded under Franks' command. They paid the price in missing arms and legs, shattered minds and broken psyches, while Franks collected fame and fortune.

To some degree, that's the way it always was and always will be. Grunts fight and die; generals get the glory. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant and even George Washington rode military fame all the way to the presidency.

But a top general profiting from a charity supposedly established to help the wounded ... well, let's just say the general made sure he ate first this time, ahead of all those folks in wheelchairs.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays.

Tommy Franks is an asshole. And, he is a coward and immoral person. He will be held accountable.~Luis

Study: False statements preceded war
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jan 23, 6:43 AM ET

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

It is arrogant to think that adding MRAP vehicles to the force is going to make a significant difference in the Iraq War. The fact of the matter is that those who wish to kill Americans "daisy chain" dozens+ of ordinance underneath the ground which makes any vehicle (tank or otherwise) penetrable.

The solution to forcing an Iraq solution to this War is putting the onus on the Iraq tribal and political leaders through a defined timeline for withdrawal. Anything else is pure nonsense and jeopardizes the lives of American service men and our national security interests.~Luis

The Nation
CSI: Iraq
by TOM ENGELHARDT

[posted online on January 18, 2008]

The other day, as we reached the first anniversary of the President's announcement of his "surge" strategy in Iraq, I found myself thinking about the earliest paid book-editing work I ever did. An editor at a San Francisco textbook publisher hired me to "doctor" god-awful texts. Each of these "books" was not only in a woeful state of disrepair, but essentially DOA. I was nonetheless supposed to do a lively rewrite of the mess, after which another technician simplified the language to "grade level," and a designer provided a flashy layout. Zap! Pow! Kebang!

Back then, in the early 1970s, an image of what I was doing formed in my mind--and suddenly came back to me this week. I used to describe it this way:
Our little band of technicians would be ushered into a room at the publisher's in which there would be nothing but a gurney with a corpse on it in a state of advanced decomposition. The publisher's representative would then issue a simple request: Make it look like it can get up and walk away.

And the truth was, that corpse of a book would be almost lifelike when we were done with it, but one thing was guaranteed:

it would never actually get up and walk away.
That was a minor matter of bad books that no one wanted to call by their rightful name. But the image came to mind again more than three decades later because it's hard not to think of America's Iraq in similar terms. Only this week, Abdul Qadir, the Iraqi defense minister, that "his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq's borders from external threat until at least 2018." Pentagon officials, reported Thom Shanker of the New York Times, expressed no surprise at these dismal post-surge projections.

According to this guesstimate, the US military occupation of Iraq won't end for, minimally, another ten years, something President Bush confirmed on his recent Mideast jaunt, saying that the U.S. stay "could easily be" another decade or more.
Folks, our media may be filled with discussions about just how "successful" the President's surge plan has been, but really, Iraq is the corpse in the room.

"Success" as a Mantra

Last January, the President called in his technicians, Gen. David Petraeus, surge commander in Iraq, and new US ambassador to that country Ryan Crocker. Think of them as "the undertakers," since, applying their skills, they've managed to give that Iraqi corpse the faint glow of life. The President asked for an Iraq that would look like it could get up and walk away--and the last year of "success," widely trumpeted in the media, has been the result. But just think about what that defense minister promised: by 2018, the country will--supposedly--be able to control its own borders, one of the more basic acts of a sovereign state. That, by itself, tells you much of what you need to be know.

In order to achieve an image of lifelike quiescence in Iraq, the general and ambassador did have to give up the ghost on a number of previous Bush Administration passions. Rebellious al-Anbar Province was essentially turned over to members of the community (many of whom had, even according to the Department of Defense, been fighting Americans until recently). They were then armed and paid by the US not to make too much trouble. In the Iraqi capital, the surging American military looked the other way as, in the first half of 2007, the Shiite "cleansing" of mixed Baghdad neighborhoods reached new heights transforming it into a largely Shiite city. This may have been the real "surge" and, if you look at new maps of the ethnic makeup of the capital, you can see the startling results--from which a certain quiescence followed. Powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, longtime opponent of the Bush Administration, called a "truce" and went about purging and reorganizing his powerful militia, the Mahdi Army. In exchange, the US gave up, at least temporarily, its goal of wresting control of some of those neighborhoods from the Sadrists.

The Bush Administration has also reportedly given up, in large part, on its highly touted "benchmarks" for the Iraqis, part of political "reconciliation" (once described as the key to the success of the surge strategy). They have been dumped for so-called Iraqi solutions. Add in those almost 30,000 troops in Baghdad and environs and indeed Iraq has a quieter look-- especially in the United States, where Iraqi news has largely disappeared from front pages just as presidential campaign 2008 heats up.

The surge was always a gamble for time, a pacification program directed at the "home front" as well as Iraq. And if this is what you mean by "success," Bush has indeed succeeded admirably.

Another year has now passed in a country that we plunged into an unimaginable charnel-house state. Whether civilian dead between the invasion of 2003 and mid-2006 (before the worst year of civil-war level violence even hit) was in the 600,000 range as a study in the British medical journal, The Lancet reported or 150,000, as a recent World Health Organization study suggests, whether two million or 2.5 million Iraqis have fled the country, whether electricity blackouts and water shortages have marginally increased or decreased, whether fields of opium poppies are spreading across the country's agricultural lands or still relatively localized, Iraq is a continuing disaster zone on a scale hard to match in recent memory.

In his year-plus of free time, Bush has begun negotiations with Iraq's inside-the-Green-Zone government to cement in place an endless American presence. In the process, he may create a sense of permanency that no future president will prove capable of tampering with--not without being known as the man (or woman) who "lost" Iraq. Forget the Republican presidential candidates--Sen. John McCain, for instance, has said that he doesn't care if the US is in Iraq for the next hundred years--and think about the leading Democratic candidates with their elongated "withdrawal" plans. Barack Obama is for guaranteeing a sixteen-month withdrawal schedule just for US "combat troops," only perhaps half of American forces in the country. Hillary Clinton's plan is no more promising.

As of Newsweek put the matter recently, while discussing the President's Middle East trip: "Far away in the Persian Gulf, Bush is creating facts on the ground that the next president may not be able to ignore." (Of course, this assumes that the Iraqis will comply.)

Here, then, would be another piece of Bush "success." Those of us old enough have already lived through this scenario once with "Lyndon Johnson's war" in Vietnam, so how does "Barack Obama's war" sound? Then, former Bush Administration officials, Republicans, neocons and an array of pundits will turn on those uncelebratory Democrats who managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of "success," if not victory.

Wait for it.

Victory Laps and Other Celebrations

But folks, let's face it, despite the cosmetic acts of the President and his undertakers, America's Iraq is still a corpse. And yet, in this "post-surge" moment, everybody is arguing over just how "successful" the surge has been. The Democrats insist that the plan's "success" is limited, because its main goal, "political reconciliation," has not been reached. Republicans, assorted neocons, and some in the Administration are already doing modest victory dances. The newest New York Times columnist, William Kristol, just last week chided the Democrats in his typical way: "It's apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge--let alone celebrate--progress in Iraq."

Let the celebrations begin! In the White House, anyway. After all, Iraq news is now regularly framed by this ongoing dispute about how much surge and post-surge success has happened, about how much to celebrate--another sign of success for the President. No wonder, as Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post put it, Bush's meeting in Kuwait with Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, as well as his comments to a rally of 3,000 hoo-ahing US troops, "had the air of a victory lap for a president whose decision to raise the troop levels in Iraq last year was questioned not only by Democrats but also by many Republicans and even generals at the Pentagon."

But folks, George W. Bush can lap the Middle East, the planet, the solar system and America's Iraq is still never going to get up and walk away. Not even in 2018 or 2028. Don't forget, it's a corpse.

In the meantime, the military in Iraq is preparing for something other than a simple victory lap, just in case the President's surge luck doesn't quite extend to 2009.

In fact, General Petraeus and the rest of the US military are faced with a relatively simple calculus for their exhausted, overstretched, overused forces: present military manpower levels there are unsustainable. Drawdowns are a must and "successful" Iraq, already experiencing signs of another uptick in violence and death, is likely to need a dose of something else soon, if that faint glow of life is to be sustained.

One candidate, as American troop levels drop, is air power. In Iraq, according to a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the use of air power took a striking leap forward in 2007. The number of Close Air Support/Precision Strikes--sorties that used a major munition--in Iraq went up five-fold between 2006 and 2007, from 229 to 1,119 or, on average, from 19 per month to 102 per month. 2008 started with a literal bang, 40,000 pounds of explosives were dropped in ten minutes on thirty-eight targets in a Sunni farming area on "the outskirts" of Baghdad. This was probably the largest display of air power since the 2003 invasion and, as a harbinger of things to come, guaranteed to drive up the number of civilian dead. This is undoubtedly a taste of what "success" means in 2008-2009.

Dancing on a Corpse

The whole discussion of, and argument about, "success" in Iraq is, in fact, obscene. Given what has already happened to that country--and will continue to happen as long as the US remains an occupying power there--the very category of "success" is an obscenity. If violence actually does stay down there, that may be a modest godsend for Iraqis, but it can hardly be considered a sign of American "success."
Every now and then, history comes in handy. When the neocons and their allied pundits were feeling triumphant, they touted Bush's America as the planet's new Rome. That talk evaporated once Iraq went into full-scale insurgency mode, but perhaps Rome does remain a touchstone of a sort.

What comes to mind is the Roman historian Tacitus' description of the Roman way of war which went, in part, like this:

"They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace."

Folks, it's obscene. We're doing victory laps around, and dancing upon, a corpse.

There is nothing left to say about the corpse that has been articulated in this article. God Damn it! ~Luis

The Washington Post
Surge to Nowhere
Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, January 20, 2008; B01

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working.

In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that "we are winning in Iraq." While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain's remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons.

From the hallowed halls of the American Enterprise Institute waft facile assurances that all will come out well. AEI's Reuel Marc Gerecht assures us that the moment to acknowledge "democracy's success in Iraq" has arrived. To his colleague Michael Ledeen, the explanation for the turnaround couldn't be clearer: "We were the stronger horse, and the Iraqis recognized it." In an essay entitled "Mission Accomplished" that is being touted by the AEI crowd, Bartle Bull, the foreign editor of the British magazine Prospect, instructs us that "Iraq's biggest questions have been resolved." Violence there "has ceased being political." As a result, whatever mayhem still lingers is "no longer nearly as important as it was." Meanwhile, Frederick W. Kagan, an AEI resident scholar and the arch-advocate of the surge, announces that the "credibility of the prophets of doom" has reached "a low ebb."

Presumably Kagan and his comrades would have us believe that recent events vindicate the prophets who in 2002-03 were promoting preventive war as a key instrument of U.S. policy. By shifting the conversation to tactics, they seek to divert attention from flagrant failures of basic strategy. Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstanding, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.

Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome. First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

In short, the surge has done nothing to overturn former secretary of state Colin Powell's now-famous "Pottery Barn" rule: Iraq is irretrievably broken, and we own it. To say that any amount of "kicking ass" will make Iraq whole once again is pure fantasy. The U.S. dilemma remains unchanged: continue to pour lives and money into Iraq with no end in sight, or cut our losses and deal with the consequences of failure.

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Such success comes at a cost. U.S. casualties in Iraq have recently declined. Yet since Petraeus famously testified before Congress last September, Iraqi insurgents have still managed to kill more than 100 Americans. Meanwhile, to fund the war, the Pentagon is burning through somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion per week. Given that further changes in U.S. policy are unlikely between now and the time that the next administration can take office and get its bearings, the lavish expenditure of American lives and treasure is almost certain to continue indefinitely.

But how exactly do these sacrifices serve the national interest? What has the loss of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and the commitment of about $1 trillion -- with more to come -- actually gained the United States?

Bush had once counted on the U.S. invasion of Iraq to pay massive dividends. Iraq was central to his administration's game plan for eliminating jihadist terrorism. It would demonstrate how U.S. power and beneficence could transform the Muslim world. Just months after the fall of Baghdad, the president declared, "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Democracy's triumph in Baghdad, he announced, "will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation." In short, the administration saw Baghdad not as a final destination but as a way station en route to even greater successes.

In reality, the war's effects are precisely the inverse of those that Bush and his lieutenants expected. Baghdad has become a strategic cul-de-sac. Only the truly blinkered will imagine at this late date that Iraq has shown the United States to be the "stronger horse." In fact, the war has revealed the very real limits of U.S. power. And for good measure, it has boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor -- no doubt cause for celebration at AEI, although perhaps less so for the families of U.S. troops. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush's successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift. Washington no longer has a coherent approach to dealing with Islamic radicalism. Certainly, the next president will not find in Iraq a useful template to be applied in Iran or Syria or Pakistan.

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, "The Limits of Power," will be published later this year.

A brilliant article by Prof. Bacevich. It's brilliant because it is True. Read it and weep...~Luis

You know what is amazing? When you visit the Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) website, they never acknowledge any failures and euphemize stories that potentially harm American and international perception of the War.

http://www.mnfiraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=1&id=4&Itemid=21

Seriously, surf for yourself. This is of no surprise to me since I have been to MNF-I and MNC-I and have seen their efforts. And, I know quite well how robust their Information Operations (IO) campaign has become since Gen. Petraeus took command of MNF-I this time last year.

It is very disturbing that that the reporters who convey news from over there are mostly confined to the “Green Zone” and are happily spoon fed “information” from the Generals. It is deceitful and disgraceful and will assuredly lead to their undoing. And, that is a terrible tragedy since the lives of our American service members are put at stake not to mention the lives of millions of Iraqis. ~Luis

New York Times
January 16, 2008
Iraqi Spending to Rebuild Has Slowed, Report Says
By JAMES GLANZ

Highly promising figures that the administration cited to demonstrate economic progress in Iraq last fall, when Congress was considering whether to continue financing the war, cannot be substantiated by official Iraqi budget records, the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday.

The Iraqi government had been severely criticized for failing to spend billions of dollars of its oil revenues in 2006 to finance its own reconstruction, but last September the administration said Iraq had greatly accelerated such spending. By July 2007, the administration said, Iraq had spent some 24 percent of $10 billion set aside for reconstruction that year.

As Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, prepared in September to report to Congress on the state of the war, the economic figures were a rare sign of progress within Iraq’s often dysfunctional government.

But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year.

The reason for the difference, said Joseph A. Christoff, the G.A.O.’s director of international affairs and trade, was that few official Iraqi figures for 2007 were available when General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker went to Congress.

So the administration, with the help of the Finance Ministry in Baghdad, appears to have relied on a combination of indicators, including real expenditures, ministries’ suggestions of projects they intended to carry out, and contracts that were still under negotiation, Mr. Christoff said. But actual spending does not seem to have lived up to those estimates for spending on reconstruction, a budget item sometimes called capital or investment expenditures, he added.

“So it looked like an improvement, but it wasn’t an improvement,” he said.

The United States Treasury Department and State Department criticized the conclusions in comments included in the report, saying that the G.A.O. had not accounted for all places in the Iraqi budget where investment or capital expenditures had been made. But the report said those departments had not been able to identify specific places where those other expenditures had taken place.

A spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Baghdad said Tuesday that she could not comment. The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.

After the United States spent more than $40 billion to rebuild Iraq’s faltering electricity, water, sewage, transportation and petroleum sectors, with mixed results at best, Iraq’s failure to devote its own resources to continue the task brought severe criticism from Western government and technical organizations.

The reasons for that failure, Iraqi and American officials said, included the challenges of carrying out construction projects in a dangerous countryside, a lack of expertise in a nation drained of technical talent, and a fear that new anticorruption measures would be widely used to prosecute Iraqi officials accustomed to operating in a culture of bribes and financial back-scratching.

Still, after Iraq’s failure to spend its own money on reconstruction was first disclosed in late 2006, Iraqi and American officials repeatedly asserted that the problems would be much less severe the next year, as the new government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki found its way.

In addition, the officials said, with the American troop increase and security improvements, security problems would lessen. And American training programs were producing more skilled Iraqi contracting and finance officials. The figures put forth in September appeared to endorse those claims.

But the accountability office figures, which Mr. Christoff said were taken directly from Finance Ministry records, show that through August 2007 the Iraqi government had spent less than half the percentage of its investment budget that it had spent in the same period in 2006.

Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said all measures of economic progress in Iraq were difficult to pin down precisely. But he said the United States, taking those difficulties into account, should have been wary of touting progress before the facts were clear.

“The data in these places is hugely unreliable to begin with, primarily because nobody gets out in the field to see what’s going on,” Mr. Barton said. “But what is probably troubling is that when you know this, you shouldn’t be using this to create wrong impressions or false impressions and pretending that you know what’s going on.”

How surprising is this? The Administration and Generals making false claims about Iraq economic progess? Say it isn't so!

The "leaders" continue to convey a false and tremendously damaging portrait of the situation in Iraq.~Luis

Islamic militants overrun Pakistani fort
By ISHTIAQ MAHSUD and SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writers
Wed Jan 16, 5:21 PM ET

In an embarrassing battlefield defeat for Pakistan's army, Islamic extremists attacked and seized a small fort near the Afghan border, leaving at least 27 soldiers dead or missing.

The militants did not gain significant ground, but they did further erode confidence in the U.S.-allied government's ability to control the frontier area where the Taliban and al-Qaida flourish.

Attacks on security forces are rising in the volatile tribal region, and Pakistan is reeling from a series of suicide attacks that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and hundreds more, chipping away at President Pervez Musharraf's prestige before Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.

"The militants are now challenging the army openly. They have become very bold and are consolidating their positions," Talat Masood, a retired general who is now a political analyst, said after Tuesday night's attack on Sararogha Fort.

The insurgents who seized the post were said to be followers of Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamic hard-liner who since December has been sole leader of an umbrella group of Taliban sympathizers and who is also thought to have links to al-Qaida.

Musharraf has blamed Mehsud's movement, Tehrik-e-Taliban, for 19 suicide attacks that killed more than 450 people over the last three months. Mehsud, labeled enemy No. 1 by the government, also masterminded the brazen capture of 213 Pakistani soldiers last August.

Fighters of the pro-Taliban groups he leads have terrorized Pakistan's northwest, killing hundreds of soldiers, hunting down politicians, beheading women and burning schools that teach girls anything more than religion.

In the latest battle, insurgents launched a surprise attack on Sararogha Fort in South Waziristan and chased off its small garrison from the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force formed of men from the area.

"About 200 militants charged the fort from four sides," the army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said. "They broke through the fort's wall with rockets."

Fifteen of the 42 soldiers manning the fort reached safety in Jandola, an army base about 10 miles south of the British colonial-era fort. Seven others were known dead and 20 were missing, Abbas said.

The military claimed the defenders killed 50 militants before being overwhelmed. A spokesman for Tehrik-i-Taliban said that only two of its fighters died and that 16 soldiers were killed and 24 others captured, half of them wounded.

There was no way to verify casualty numbers. Both sides have long accused each other of exaggerating such figures.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban spokesman, Maulvi Muhammad Umer, warned the government to release Taliban prisoners and stop military operations in the frontier region or face militant attacks across Pakistan.

"Attacks will continue not only in the tribal areas, but we will target the government everywhere in the country," he told The Associated Press by telephone.

He said militants had destroyed the fort with explosives.

Sararogha Fort is one of four such posts in the Mehsud tribal region, where Baitullah Mehsud is based and has thousands of armed supporters.

On Sunday, the military said its troops repelled a similar attack last week on another fort, at Lhada, and killed 40 to 50 insurgents. On Monday, militants ambushed an army convoy in the same area, touching off a firefight that the military said killed 30 insurgents and Tehrik-i-Taliban said resulted only in some of its fighters being wounded.

Musharraf first deployed the army in Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal regions along the frontier in late 2001 to chase down al-Qaida militants fleeing the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Nearly 100,000 soldiers are now in the area, supported by heavy artillery and Cobra helicopter gunships, but they have had little success in stopping militants from infiltrating into Afghanistan or in quelling Pakistan's own worsening Islamic insurgency.

Government tactics have vacillated between use of extreme force and appeasement. Pro-Taliban forces now appear capable of launching the kind of coordinated assaults inside Pakistan's border regions as they do in the volatile south and east of Afghanistan.

A U.S. intelligence estimate last year said a Musharraf peace pact in 2006 with Taliban militants had allowed al-Qaida to regroup in Pakistan's tribal belt, a possible hiding place of Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

In Florida, the head of the U.S. military's Central Command said the rise in violence was pushing Pakistan to be more open to suggestions that American troops train and advise Pakistani forces.

That is a touchy subject in predominantly Muslim Pakistan, where many people are leery of Musharraf's alliance with Washington since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, but Navy Adm. William J. Fallon said he believes Pakistani leaders are beginning to view the militants as a dire threat.

"They see they've got real problems internally," Fallon said.

Masood, the political analyst, said tribesmen along the frontier are increasingly joining up with Taliban forces from across the border in Afghanistan.

"Even if they don't support the Taliban per se, they are now siding with them rather than the government because they think Musharraf and the army are an extension of the Americans," he said.

Washington considers Musharraf a key ally in the fight against extremist groups. President Bush and other U.S. officials have frequently praised Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup but resigned from the army in December and is now ruling as a civilian president.

After the fall of Sararogha Fort, opposition leaders were quick to blame Musharraf for the deteriorating security situation.

"Musharraf is the root cause of all problems," said Nawaz Sharif, a leading opposition politician and the prime minister who was ousted by Musharraf in 1999.

"If he goes, 95 percent of the problems of this country will be solved. There will be no bomb blasts, there will be no missile attacks," Sharif told reporters in his hometown of Lahore.

Associated Press writers Ishtiaq Mahsud reported this story from Dera Ismail Khan and Slobodan Lekic from Islamabad. AP writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.

I would be very surprised if extremist elements (of which there are many) in Iraq didn't begin attacking small U.S. outposts with vigor very soon. They could do so with overwhelming numbers, rockets and mortar fire.

The examples of such attacks in Pakistan will invariably embolden fighters in Iraq.~Luis

Saudi public leery of Bush

By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer, 1 hour, 24 minutes ago

Saudi Arabia's warm official welcome for President Bush, the scion of a family with close ties to the kingdom's ruling family, masks his deep unpopularity among ordinary Saudis.

A recent poll found only 12 percent here view Bush positively — lower than Iran's president or even al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden — and more think warmly toward Iran than America.

Among the reasons are the chaos in Iraq that followed the U.S.-led invasion and the widespread Arab feeling that the United States is biased in favor of Israel and not serious in seeking Mideast peace. A recent editorial said everything the president touches "turns to dust and ashes."

That mirrors the deep distrust many Americans hold toward Saudi Arabia — the homeland of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers — even as U.S. leaders praise Saudi Arabia's leadership in the region and its crackdown on Islamic extremism.

Still, Bush, on his first visit to the kingdom, will enjoy a warm embrace from Saudi King Abdullah. He is staying at the monarch's home — a rare show of hospitality for a visiting dignitary that reflects Bush's hosting of Abdullah twice at his own ranch in Texas.

Most of the two leaders' talks will be one-on-one. The king will introduce Bush to Saudi delicacies in a tent at his farm overlooking meadows and lakes, and then take Bush to inspect his horses, according to a Saudi official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the countries' ties.

For the U.S.-Saudi alliance, such deep contradictions are nothing new.

Bush's visit comes at a time of deep Saudi worry over Iran's intentions. Yet Saudi officials have urged all players in the region to exercise restraint, and have warned of the grave consequences for the world economy of incidents such as the recent Persian Gulf standoff between Iran and the U.S.

Foreign Minister Prince Saud has said Iran will be on the agenda.

"We will listen with all ears to what President Bush will raise," Saud said.

A rare cold front has brought clouds and rain to Riyadh for the visit. Tight security is evident: Hundreds of police cars have deployed along major roads and sharpshooters are on some rooftops. In one neighborhood, police using loudspeakers demanded that cars be removed from some streets as two helicopters hovered overhead.

It is Bush's first trip to Saudi Arabia, which has the world's largest oil reserves. His father, the first President Bush, had warm relations with many Saudis.

When the Saudi-American relationship began in the 1940s, it was built on a simple bargain: Saudi Arabia offered oil in return for U.S. protection. It was a relationship of accommodation between a monarchy ruled according to Islamic law and a secular, liberal democracy.

The United States became the kingdom's biggest trading partner. The Saudis became the biggest buyers of U.S. weapons — $39 billion worth in the 1990s. They have also been major U.S. creditors, buying billions in Treasury bonds, and enthusiastic investors in U.S. business. Many Saudis sent their children to American schools.

But over the years, issues arose as the United States became more involved in the region, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Saudis, like all Arabs, feel Washington leans unfairly to Israel's side.

Saudi-U.S. ties were hit hard after the Sept. 11 attacks when Americans questioned the kingdom's loyalty as an ally and its support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Some Americans asked if the kingdom's conservative society and schools bred hatred of the West.

The Saudi official said relations have "improved tremendously" since then, in part because the kingdom's anti-terror campaign has proved its seriousness to Washington.

A senior U.S. administration official said Bush's visit would reaffirm not just traditional ties with Saudi Arabia but also the president's personal relationship with Abdullah.

Despite such warmth, the recent poll conducted for Terror Free Tomorrow, a bipartisan group whose goal is undermining world support for terrorism, found Bush viewed positively by only 12 percent of Saudis.

That was less than half the number with a good impression of Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. About 15 percent had a favorable opinion of bin Laden.

Forty percent have a favorable opinions of the U.S. — a lower rating than they gave China or Iran — though 69 percent want good relations with the United States. The poll of 1,004 Saudis, conducted in December, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Bush's unpopularity goes beyond Saudi Arabia, with many in the Arab world angry over the war in Iraq and over U.S. support for Israel.

Several hundred people protested in Bahrain during his stop there Saturday. And newspapers in Egypt have been running critical editorials. Rose el-Youssef, a paper close to Egypt's ruling party, called Bush "the leader of sabotage, the thief of Arab lands."

Analyst Abdullah al-Fozan said in a recent column in Al-Watan daily that Bush's "black pages" have been piling up.

"You have the opportunity now to decrease that blackness ... by fulfilling the promise you made to help establish a Palestinian state," he wrote.

And an editorial in Saturday's Arab News, a Saudi English-language newspaper, said Bush's record makes it hard for Arabs to believe he can deliver.

"No Palestinian, no Arab believes he will, or can, deliver," the editorial said. "Everything he touches turns to dust and ashes. Iraq, Afghanistan — maybe now even Iran."

The mess that this Administration has gotten us into is endless. When will those responsible be held accountable?~Luis

The New York Times
January 13, 2008
The Way We Live Now
Vanishing Act
By NOAH FELDMAN

What if the United States were at war during a presidential election — and none of the candidates wanted to talk about it? Iraq has become the great disappearing issue of the early primary season, and if nothing fundamental changes on the ground there —a probable result of current policy — the war may disappear even more completely in the new year.

The reasons for Iraq’s political eclipse begin with the unfortunate fact that candidates strive to create feel-good associations, and the war is a certain downer. The film studios could barely get a Middle East movie to break even in the past 12 months (“In the Valley of Elah,” anyone?), and the political image makers have apparently taken note.

Beyond this embarrassing truth, elections demand that candidates differentiate themselves, yet various plausible front-runners’ positions on Iraq are not all that far apart. There are subtle differences regarding the completeness and timing of withdrawal: John Edwards, for instance, says he would remove even the troops who are training the Iraqi Army and police. But basically, the leading doves say they want to leave, but not too fast; while the hawks claim they want to stay, but not too long. One little-noticed consequence of the war’s unpopularity is that, for the first time since the end of the cold war, we are experiencing something that looks very like an unacknowledged consensus between the two parties on the most important question of foreign policy facing the United States.

But the appearance of agreement is built on the absence of disagreement, nothing more. The elites who devised and conducted American policy in the cold war look nonpartisan in retrospect because they were guided by a common realist worldview in pursuing their broadly shared goal of containing the Soviet threat. Today, however, the pseudoconsensus of “leave as soon as we are able, stay as long as we must” rests not on a strategy but on its very opposite: a dodge. At this point, none of the candidates have given detailed, substantive answers to the looming, decisive questions about Iraq that will face the next president the moment he or she takes office.

These questions can be stated with some precision. They begin with the issue of how to interpret the comparative reduction in violence since the surge of United States troops began nearly a year ago. Does the decrease show that more troops on the ground were necessary to impose effective control over territory and persuade insurgents to back down? Or is the reduced violence a sign instead that the prospect of imminent United States withdrawal has made Iraqis more hesitant to foment a civil war from which the United States will not save them? Whatever the answer, the practical consequences are huge: either we keep troop levels relatively stable, drawing down slowly while we consolidate increasing stability, or we accelerate withdrawal to underscore our seriousness about leaving.

There is also the question of what further improvements are possible. Most experts agree that the decline in violence owes a good deal to the efforts of the United States-backed Sunni tribal militias, loosely organized under the name the Sunni Awakening, who have turned against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In theory, it would be nice to know whether these Sunnis are planning to go to war with their Shiite counterparts once we are gone or whether they will use their arms as leverage in efforts to negotiate peacefully. But the answer, in fact, is “both.” The Awakening’s leadership — to the extent that one exists — is prepared for any eventuality.

The rise of the militias on all sides means a future president will have to decide whether the Iraqi state can be salvaged. Are we prepared to accept an Iraq in which tribal leaders rule their localities with little mutual coordination and still less responsibility to the central government? According to one view, the United States cannot shape the local players into a cohesive order regardless of Iraq’s level of killing. The best we can do is calm the worst of the violence, leave and let the Iraqis sort things out for themselves.

An alternative view presumes that state-building has failed so far in Iraq because of the violence. Once the bloodletting has decreased and there are credible negotiators on all sides, a stable Iraq is just barely possible, even if it will never be an exemplar of democracy. Therefore, the theory goes, we should stay in Iraq until the Awakening has — with our prodding and encouragement — organized itself into a unified political force that can engage with the Shiite political parties and create some kind of national settlement.

How our next president handles this difficulty will in turn determine how he or she faces the nightmare prospect of all-out civil war. In case of an actual genocide, do we return troops to Iraq to try to stop the bleeding? In interviews with The New York Times, Barack Obama said yes, while Hillary Clinton seemed to say no. Neither answer fully satisfies: if the genocide is triggered by withdrawal of our troops, it may not be realistic to send them back in; yet inaction invites regional conflagration, not to mention moral bankruptcy. It is very likely any president would use air power to try to separate the sides. But whom do we target? If there are no good guys, do we bomb some civilians to save others?

It is often noted that it can be hard for democracies to fight wars because of changing public opinion. The challenge we face now is what to do when the public has not even been asked what its opinion is. The presidential election is our one chance to put these issues to the democratic test. Otherwise we will be getting a war policy born of neglect — and that will be the policy that we deserve.

Noah Feldman, a contributing writer for the magazine, is a law professor at Harvard University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Feldman very rightfully elevates the importance of the serious discussion concerning Iraq by our politicians. Let us hope this matter is addressed. More importantly, let's hope we withdrawal as soon as possible and contain the violence that will endure for many years to come.~Luis

CHALLENGES 2007-2008:
Iraq Progresses To Some Of Its Worst
Inter Press Service
Analysis by Dahr Jamail

WASHINGTON, (IPS) - Despite all the claims of improvements, 2007 has been the worst year yet in Iraq.

One of the first big moves this year was the launch of a troop "surge" by the U.S. government in mid-February. The goal was to improve security in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province, the two most violent areas. By June, an additional 28,000 troops had been deployed to Iraq, bringing the total number up to more than 160,000.

By autumn, there were over 175,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. This is the highest number of U.S. troops deployed yet, and while the U.S. government continues to talk of withdrawing some, the numbers on the ground appear to contradict these promises.

The Bush administration said the "surge" was also aimed at curbing sectarian killings, and to gain time for political reform for the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

During the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. By the end of 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there are over 2.3 million internally displaced persons within Iraq, and over 2.3 million Iraqis who have fled the country.

Iraq has a population around 25 million.

The non-governmental organisation Refugees International describes Iraq's refugee problem as "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis."

In October the Syrian government began requiring visas for Iraqis. Until then it was the only country to allow Iraqis in without visas. The new restrictions have led some Iraqis to return to Baghdad, but that number is well below 50,000.

A recent UNHCR survey of families returning found that less than 18 percent did so by choice. Most came back because they lacked a visa, had run out of money abroad, or were deported.

Sectarian killings have decreased in recent months, but still continue. Bodies continue to be dumped on the streets of Baghdad daily.

One reason for a decrease in the level of violence is that most of Baghdad has essentially been divided along sectarian lines. Entire neighbourhoods are now surrounded by concrete blast walls several metres high, with strict security checkpoints. Normal life has all but vanished.

The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that eight out of ten refugees are from Baghdad.

By the end of 2007, attacks against occupation forces decreased substantially, but still number more than 2,000 monthly. Iraqi infrastructure, like supply of potable water and electricity are improving, but remain below pre-invasion levels. Similarly with jobs and oil exports. Unemployment, according to the Iraqi government, ranges between 60-70 percent.

An Oxfam International report released in July says 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to safe drinking water, and 43 percent live on less than a dollar a day. The report also states that eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance.

"Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, healthcare, education, and employment," the report says. "Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 percent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004."

Nearly 10 million people depend on the fragile rationing system. In December, the Iraqi government announced it would cut the number of items in the food ration from ten to five due to "insufficient funds and spiralling inflation." The inflation rate is officially said to be around 70 percent.

The cuts are to be introduced in the beginning of 2008, and have led to warnings of social unrest if measures are not taken to address rising poverty and unemployment.

Iraq's children continue to suffer most. Child malnutrition rates have increased from 19 percent during the economic sanctions period prior to the invasion, to 28 percent today.

This year has also been one of the bloodiest of the entire occupation. The group Just Foreign Policy, "an independent and non-partisan mass membership organisation dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy," estimates the total number of Iraqis killed so far due to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation to be 1,139,602.

This year 894 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, making 2007 the deadliest year of the entire occupation for the U.S. military, according to ICasualties.org.

To date, at least 3,896 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defence.

A part of the U.S. military's effort to reduce violence has been to pay former resistance fighters. Late in 2007, the U.S. military began paying monthly wages of 300 dollars to former militants, calling them now "concerned local citizens."

While this policy has cut violence in al-Anbar, it has also increased political divisions between the dominant Shia political party and the Sunnis – the majority of these "concerned citizens" being paid are Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Maliki has said these "concerned local citizens" will never be part of the government's security apparatus, which is predominantly composed of members of various Shia militias.
Underscoring another failure of the so-called surge is the fact that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad remains more divided than ever, and hopes of reconciliation have vanished.

According to a recent ABC/BBC poll, 98 percent of Sunnis and 84 percent of Shias in Iraq want all U.S. forces out of the country.

This article speaks for itself. The purported "successes" of the "surge" are based upon huge flawed assumptions and wishful thinking.~Luis

The San Francisco Chronicle

Lessons from 'the coalition of the un-willing'
Jason Blindauer, Luis Carlos Montalván

Friday, January 11, 2008

The war in Iraq hinges on the ability of the United States and its allies to sustain operations and maintain its collective will to fight. To this end, President Bush's "coalition of the willing" was never properly formed, nor does it command the resolve of its constituent nations. It is an alliance created without U.N. sanction, initiated on the deceit of American leaders, comprised of too few allies and existing against the wishes of large segments of each participating country's population. In other words, it never had a proper foundation for the level of effort required.

The results, therefore, are no surprise. Not only has opposition to the war intensified in each country, but is has cost the jobs of the prime ministers or presidents in virtually every country, and is prompting the withdrawal of critically needed troops. This does not bode well for the Iraqi people who do not seem interested in reconciliation anytime soon.

With the tide of the U.S. "'surge" ebbing, and British and Australian forces completing withdrawals in 2008, the sober observer is forced to conclude that Iraq's civil strife will probably outlast us. Regardless of Iraq's future, our failure to correctly build a multinational force for Iraq provides numerous lessons to future, would-be allied commanders.

First, dust off the works of Grotius and St. Augustine because the "just war theory" matters.

Democratic countries should only go to war as a last resort, and if there is a just cause. There is wisdom to this beyond questions of ethics. It's crucial to harnessing the willingness of the people as an engine for victory. As Machiavelli noted, free peoples have a natural reluctance for war. Also, after committing to it, they tire easily of war. Counterinsurgency poses a distinct problem for us. The purported 10-year turn-around for defeating insurgencies and stabilizing nations exceeds our patience. To exhaust this patience further by lies, denied strategic blunders and the mistreatment of detainees causes the very spirit of the endeavor to easily lose its strength. So the next time France and Germany want more time for weapons inspections, perhaps we should listen.

Second, define success up front.

Holding a military coalition together is not easy. Such coalitions exist on the approval of dozens of heads of state and their diverse, opinionated peoples. If you want to keep their support over the long haul, it is best to get their buy-in up-front. That means pushing a clear and consistent mission statement. "It's weapons of mass destruction; no, it's the 9/11 terrorists!; no, it's a new Iraqi democracy!; no, it's to prevent a regional war!" doesn't work. Additionally, it helps if the definition and conditions for success are specific. Then we will all know when it's time to bring the troops home, and it may give pause to heads of state before sending mixed signals such as "mission accomplished" P.R. stunts from aircraft carriers.

Last, in counterinsurgency, numbers matter.

Using French and British military history as a guide, Gen. David Petraeus' implementation of "clear and hold" tactics in Iraq is greatly superior to the de facto "search and destroy" tactics of yesteryear. Clear and hold, though, is manpower-intensive, often requiring a population-to-peacekeeper ratio of 50 to 1. For Iraq's 25 million population, that adds up to a coalition force of no fewer than 500,000 troops on the ground. To offer a comparison, NATO forces possessed a population-to-peacekeeper ratio of 50 to 1.1 for Bosnia (1996), and 50 to 1.2 for Kosovo (1999).

If we wish to sustain such a large force for years, military planners further recommend a deployment rotation where an individual soldier would spend only 1 out of every 3 years deployed. This bumps our requirement for an Allied Force up to 1.5 million troops. Obviously, this number supersedes the current capabilities of any single democratic nation. The conclusion then is that if the free countries of the world insist upon keeping small, volunteer armies, they must band together to have a force large enough to meet the challenges of the "long war."

In a global society, it seems fitting that free nations are more dependent on one another than ever to be decisive in war. In light of this, we should all recommit ourselves to the principles that synergize our countries into successful military partnerships. Among these are honesty in place of self-serving dissembling, objectivity instead of exaggerated results and the persistent refusal of failures, and last, ethical conduct on the battlefield so that our allies may never have reason to question the merits of our cause. These, we believe, will characterize a just war in the modern context and lead to a better world. After all, what is the point of war if it doesn't bring about a better world?

Jason Blindauer and Luis Carlos Montalván are former U.S. Army captains who collectively served five combat deployments in Iraq between 2003 and 2006.

I thought that the OpEd that I co-authored with Jason Blindauer published in today's San Francisco Chronicle was important to post to the blog. Please past it along as the message is very important.~Luis

baltimoresun.com
9 U.S. soldiers killed in new Iraq drive

Offensive is aimed at al-Qaida in Iraq; militants retreating
Associated Press
January 10, 2008
BAGHDAD

Nine American soldiers were killed in the first two days of a new offensive to root out al-Qaida in Iraq fighters holed up in districts north of the capital, the U.S. military reported yesterday.The losses came as many militants fled U.S. and Iraqi forces massing in Diyala, a province of palm and citrus groves that has defied the trend toward lower violence. The campaign's scope is nationwide but is mainly focused on gaining control of Diyala and its most important city, Baqouba, which al-Qaida has declared the capital of its self-styled Islamic caliphate.

Six soldiers were killed and four were wounded yesterday in a booby-trapped house in Diyala, the U.S. command said. It also announced that three U.S. soldiers were killed and two wounded in an attack Tuesday in Salahuddin province, north of Diyala.The toll marked some of the deadliest days for U.S. forces in Iraq since last fall. For all December, 23 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq.

The blows against U.S. troops came as extremists tried to stay ahead of the military advance.

Al-Qaida fighters retreated north from Diyala, presumably to Salahuddin, before the offensive began Tuesday, the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, told reporters in Baghdad."Operational security in Iraq is a problem," he said, noting that the Iraqi army uses unsecured cell phones and radios.

"I'm sure there is active leaking of communication."Hertling said his troops had killed 20 to 30 insurgents in the first two days of the operation.Only Baghdad province has been deadlier than Diyala the past two years, according to an Associated Press count.And while violence has declined over the past six months in Baghdad and many other places in Iraq, much of Diyala has remained a killing field.

At least 273 civilians were slain in Diyala last month, compared with 213 in June. Over the same span, monthly civilian deaths in Baghdad dropped from 838 to 182.The reason for the increase in bloodshed is that insurgents who were pushed out of the western province of Anbar and out of Baghdad shifted their operations into Diyala, U.S. commanders say.The tree-lined farm region is more difficult terrain for fighting insurgents than the desert of Anbar, suggesting Diyala may not have seen the last of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Compounding the difficulty for the military is the checkerboard pattern of Shiite and Sunni communities adjacent to one another.The military will need a period of peace and stability to meet its goal of speeding up work on basic services and other civic projects that commanders believe will win more allies for the American effort.

Hertling said there would be three basic phases to the offensive:First, U.S. and Iraqi forces will try to clear areas of insurgents. Iraqi police will then move in to establish some law and order. Finally, the "Awakening Groups" or "Concerned Local Citizens" - mostly Sunni fighters who have joined the Americans in battling al-Qaida - will be relied upon to maintain stability after troops move on.It is these Awakening Groups that are al-Qaida's bull's-eye of the moment. The terror group, perhaps spurred by Osama bin Laden's audio message late last year, has been carrying out suicide strikes on civilians who have sided with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq.

There have been other types of attacks as well. Hertling showed a video taken by a U.S. drone showing militants in Diyala dragging a man from the trunk of a car, throwing him into a ditch and then shooting him.Asked about the timing of the U.S. operation, Hertling said the answer was simple."Why now? Because we can. Baghdad is more secure. Anbar is more secure," he said. "Why now? Because ... the enemy has moved into these [northern] provinces."

Hertling said that in his area of control - Diyala, Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces - 24,000 American soldiers, 50,000 members of the Iraq army and 80,000 Iraqi police are taking part in the offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq."There are more U.S. and Iraqi security forces in Diyala now than there ever has been," he said. "We're attempting to increase the tempo of operations in that specific province."

Meanwhile, in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a pair of nearly simultaneous car bombings damaged two Christian churches and wounded two people, according to a senior police officer there. Brig. Sarhat Qadir said the bombings at the Chaldean church of the Heart of Jesus and the Assyrian church of Mar Afram took place within 10 minutes of each other.The churches, about 700 yards apart, were empty at the time of the attacks, which followed a series of bombings Sunday targeting three churches in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

No one was hurt in those attacks.

Christians, who make up about 3 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people, have been frequent targets of attacks by militants since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Many have fled to neighboring countries.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

American Generals still don't get it. You cannot invade, occupy and stand up a nation of 25 million people with a paltry 170,000 troops with a few extra "Coalition" forces thrown in. It's such an exercise in futility. Meanwhile, our brother and sister warriors continue to take in on the chin...~Luis