- The strategy of placing a time-date goal on the Iraqi
government to disarm the sectarian militias and control sectarian violence
is being done solely to shift future blame for failure on the Iraqi government
instead of the Bush administration. No one has the power to disarm the
militias, short of reducing large parts of Baghdad to rubble.
-
-
- In the wake of increasing casualties (96 US dead so far
this month), more and more Americans are convinced this war is not winnable.
It isn't. I believe it will continue to get worse even as Iraq is absorbed
into a larger region-wide conflict precipitated by the coming US attack
on Iran.
-
-
- NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski had an interesting
commentary about the contradictory demands the Bush administration is placing
upon PM al Maliki: "In spite of the administration's talk of a new
tack, nothing seems different. Administration and Pentagon officials tell
us they have set no timetable for withdrawal of American forces in Iraq.
... [T]he decision was made to prod the Iraqi government into drafting
its own timetable to measure progress in Iraq - setting a time-frame and
specific benchmarks for taking over their own security - disarming sectarian
militias and improving government and vital economic services like electricity
and oil production."
-
-
- However, the Iraqis didn't take the bait, so the US started
leaking conflicting reports about handing down time-date ultimatums to
al Maliki and then claiming (through Tony Snow) that "the US would
issue no ultimatums to the Iraqis." Nevertheless, the government did
admit to delivering a "suggested timeline" to Iraq. US Ambassador
Khalilzad announced that PM al Maliki had agreed to it. General George
Casey, who has overall command of US troops in Iraq, told a news conference,
"I believe in 12 to 18 months Iraqi security will be completely capable
of taking over their own security."
-
-
- Neither the acceptance of a time table nor the potential
of Iraqi security readiness were true, and all parties knew it wasn't true.
As the UK Telegraph reported, "Iraq's prime minister yesterday rejected
a 'timeline' announced by America to end the violence over the next year
and allow United States troops to start going home. In a rare show of defiance,
Nouri al-Maliki spoke a day after the top US civilian and military officials
in Iraq said his government had agreed to a series of steps." Al Maliki
was not about to get trapped into a fixed schedule that would have allowed
the US to blame him for failure.
-
-
- Iraqi military and security forces are a disaster of
desertions and no-shows. Typical Iraqi units can only muster a bare 20
percent of their normal requirement of troops. Almost all Iraqi units are
infiltrated with insurgents. With only a few exceptions, there are no Iraqi
units that can work independent of US direction. The two largest Shiite
militias (Mahdi Army and Badr Brigade) are the strongest powers on the
ground outside of the Americans. For al-Maliki to take them on would be
political suicide.
-
-
- To demonstrate the unlikelihood of al-Maliki taken on
the task of disarming the major militias, consider this: When the US staged
a raid this week on Muqtada al-Sadr's militia in central Baghdad's slums,
al Maliki was furious and immediately issued a statement claiming he had
never authorized the attack, nor was associated with its planning in any
way. He made make noises about how the militias must disarm, but he's clearly
not intending to do so. As Michael Gawenda reported this week from Washington,
"There is little doubt that the Bush Administration is losing patience
with the inability or unwillingness of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri
al-Maliki, to challenge the militias and their leaders, many of whom are
MPs, some even in his cabinet."
-
-
- Then to complicate the US-Iraqi relationship, the US
reversed course this week and began negotiating an amnesty with Sunni insurgents
in Iraq. The US had previously vetoed an amnesty policy passed by the Iraqi
Parliament. But now that the US is desperate for some kind of success,
all principles are down the drain.
-
-
- President Bush continues to parrot the never-changing
mantra of his handlers: "Stay the course, Iraq is winnable, and we
must be patient." But, most Americans are losing patience. Jim Lobe
wrote for IPS, "Plan B - that is, anything but 'staying the course'
- has been on the lips of virtually every foreign policy analyst who considers
him or herself worthy of the name this past week when, it seemed, the entire
capital appeared to decide that whatever the U.S. has been doing in Iraq
for the past three months, six months, or three years is failing, and failing
spectacularly."
-
-
- Nothing is more symbolic of the growing debacle in Iraq
than the successful insurgent mortar attack on Camp Falcon (Al-Rashid military
base) - a huge American ammo dump on the outskirts of Baghdad, setting
off dozens of secondary explosions. It lit up the night sky for hours.
The US claimed zero casualties, except 6 Iraqi translators (strange) -
bringing on charges of a cover-up. Some contrarian reports were claiming
that American casualties ran into the hundreds, but these turned out to
be false. The Americans were also claiming that one of the translators,
who didn't show up on the day of the attack, must have leaked the coordinates
of the supply base to insurgent gunners. Baloney!
-
-
- I've seen the after-action photos. This dump is huge
and nearly filled wall-to-wall with metal shipping containers full of rockets,
artillery shells, explosives, and ammunition. It doesn't take a leak to
know how to target this base. Insurgents could have lobbed in random mortar
rounds from almost anywhere and had difficulty NOT hitting anything. The
areas hit were not near any buildings housing personnel, so I can see no
reason for high US casualty figures - though, admittedly, the US is known
to cover-up high casualty counts. I'm also very skeptical of the figures
pointing to dead translators. If there were no personnel near the explosions,
why should translators have been in the area? Was this attribution of Iraqi
deaths a cover for having taken into custody the translators for suspicion
of collaborating with the enemy? Have they disappeared into the no-man's-land
of unlimited detention?
-
-
- Eleanor Hall of ABC news reports that "[a] key US
military strategist who counts the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell,
among his students, is absolutely scathing about the current Bush administration's
strategy in Iraq and says no one except the President is in any doubt that
it should change. [Actually Bush is merely a puppet. He is being told to
hold the line. Whether or not he really believes it is a matter of speculation
- ed.] Harlan Ullman who's now at the Centre for Strategic and International
Studies, says the US lost control of events in Iraq almost immediately
after the invasion and that far from assisting in the development of democracy,
the US-led allies, including Australia, have fomented chaos."
-
-
- Harlan Ullman: "The President and the administration
has refused to recognize reality. Iraq is a disaster. It is a disaster
at every level, and to think that they've got a functioning government
and to think that the situation is better today than it was in 2003 or
2004, or 2005, is unbelievable. We have a catastrophe on our hands and
of course we've got to make course corrections and the only guy in town
who seems not to be able to recognize that, sadly, is the President. ...
But of course we're on a stupid course, but that doesn't mean that we are
going to change it quickly enough to make a difference."
-
-
- Summary: That the US is hustling to put a different face
on this growing debacle on the eve of an important mid-term election is
beyond doubt. Rumors of policy change appear daily, but in reality, the
policy is still the same and only the appearance of change is being orchestrated.
Ron Hutcheson of McClatchy Newspapers points out the hilarious contradictions:
-
-
- "The Bush White House is known for staying on message,
but its message on Iraq has grown a little murky. President Bush acknowledged
as much on Wednesday, when he used a hastily scheduled news conference
to try to clear up some of the confusion [Bush make something more clear?
That's a non-sequitur-ed]
-
-
- "'Stay the course' is no longer operative. 'Timetables'
are bad, but 'benchmarks' are OK - as long as they don't include deadlines.
Our goals are 'unchanging,' but our tactics are 'flexible.' And we're 'winning,'
unless we leave too soon, and there's 'tough fighting ahead. We should
not expect a simple solution.' His semantic tap-dance highlights one of
the president's toughest election-year challenges: how to show war-weary
voters that he's confident and resolute, without giving the impression
that he's unrealistic and inflexible." Who's fooling who?
-
-
- World Affairs Brief October 27, 2006. Copyright Joel
Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as
Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief
- http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com
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