A message from Leader Dearest
I’m yer president and it’s my job to keep you safe — Saddam Hussein tried to kill my pappy, he’s got all that good oil and he tried to kill us all on 9/11 … and don’t believe that propa … propa … all those lies you hear about his cooperation, either. We’re gonna go in there, find his WMD and put a ‘murikan boot in his ass. And … ummm … oh, yeah … it’ll take us 30 to 40 years to pull it out.
Stay the course. And God bless some of you.
Your little prince, George
Woeful Iraq analysis … Ray McGovern, last.
Jude
In Baghdad, a Force Under the Militias’ Sway
Infiltration of Iraqi Police Could Delay Handover of Control for Years, U.S. Trainers Suggest
Amit R. Paley, WaPo — Page 1
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
BAGHDAD — The signs of the militias are everywhere at the Sholeh police station.
Posters celebrating Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army militia, dot the building’s walls. The police chief sometimes remarks that Shiite militias should wipe out all Sunnis. Visitors to this violent neighborhood in the Iraqi capital whisper that nearly all the police officers have split loyalties.
And then one rainy night this month, the Sholeh police set up an ambush and killed Army Cpl. Kenny F. Stanton Jr., a 20-year-old budding journalist, his unit said. At the time, Stanton and other members of the unit had been trailing a group of Sholeh police escorting known Mahdi Army members.
“How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don’t even trust them not to kill our own men?” asked Capt. Alexander Shaw, head of the police transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington-based unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure we’re ever going to have police here that are free of the militia influence.”
The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., predicted last week that Iraqi security forces would be able to take control of the country in 12 to 18 months. But several days spent with American units training the Iraqi police illustrated why those soldiers on the ground believe it may take decades longer than Casey’s assessment.
Seventy percent of the Iraqi police force has been infiltrated by militias, primarily the Mahdi Army, according to Shaw and other military police trainers. Police officers are too terrified to patrol enormous swaths of the capital. And while there are some good cops, many have been assassinated or are considering quitting the force.
“None of the Iraqi police are working to make their country better,” said Brig. Gen. Salah al-Ani, chief of police for the western half of Baghdad. “They’re working for the militias or to put money in their pocket.”
U.S. military reports on the Iraqi police often read like a who’s who of the two main militias in Iraq: the Mahdi Army, also known as Jaish al-Mahdi or JAM, and the Badr Organization, also known as the Badr Brigade or Badr Corps.
One document on the Karrada district police chief says: “I strongly believe that he is a member of Badr Corps and tends to turn a blind eye to JAM activity.” Another explains that the station commander in the al-Amil neighborhood “is afraid to report suspected militia members in his organization due to fear of reprisals.”
American soldiers said that although they gather evidence of police ties to the militias and present it to Iraqi officials, no one has ever been criminally charged or even lost their jobs.
Among the worst of the suspected Mahdi Army members is Lt. Col. Musa Khadim Lazim Asadi, station commander of the Ghazaliyah patrol police. “He has stated to us that he does not believe the Mahdi Militia is a bad organization,” a military report said. “He had a picture of Sadr in his vehicle until we said something about it.”
“He is a cancer to the station and the people of Ghazaliyah,” the report concluded.
On a recent visit to the blue-and-white facility, located in one of the most violent parts of the city, even other police officers in the building complained that Asadi and his subordinates are corrupt and tied to the militias. “They steal vehicles and kill people,” said 1st Lt. Sarmad Sabar Dawood, assistant commander for the local police, which is independent of the patrol police. “In fact, we are investigating Colonel Musa and the patrol police for criminal behavior.”
But when U.S. military officials visited Asadi on a recent afternoon, he not only denied that his men were involved in the militias or crime but refused to acknowledge that there had been any killings in the area at all. Although scores of tortured bodies are often found in the neighborhood, Asadi said the murders all took place somewhere else.
At his response, 1st Lt. Cadetta Bridges shook her head in disbelief. “This guy is a crook and a liar,” said Bridges, 31, of Upper Marlboro. “They’re all crooks and liars.”
Shaw, 32, of Alexandria, turned the conversation to the confusing division of Iraqi police forces into three autonomous parts: patrol police, regular police who investigate cases, and traffic police. The U.S. military has proposed reorganizing the force so that there is one commander in each neighborhood responsible for all the police. So far, Shaw said, Iraqi officials have not been receptive.
The problems with the tripartite division were evident in Sholeh. Sitting in Asadi’s second-floor office, Shaw asked him if he worked with the regular police on the ground floor.
“Of course not,” Asadi replied brusquely. “Why do we need to coordinate with them?”
Visibly exasperated, Shaw and Bridges quickly left and headed for a police station in Mansour, a relatively safe neighborhood in central Baghdad, to meet with a police major they described as one of the better cops they’d encountered.
When Shaw asked what the police in Mansour were doing to reduce the violence, the major said: “There is nothing the police can do. The only solution is to create a government that will take away the militias. Then everything will be fine.”
The major, who asked to be identified as Abu Ahmed because he feared for his safety if his full name was published, sat in a closet-size room that he hardly ever leaves. Orange-and-brown sheets covered a tiny bed next to his desk.
“I can’t go home or I’ll be killed,” said Abu Ahmed, who sees his children only when police officers can bring them to the station. He sighed as he looked at photographs of two recently assassinated officers. “And it’s getting worse. So much worse.”
“I think I must quit soon,” he said quietly.
Arabi Araf Ali, a police officer in the southern neighborhood of Dora, said police do little more than pick dead bodies up off the street. In the station’s parking lot nearby, a colleague washed off a police truck that had just been used to retrieve the corpses of five Shiite men slaughtered that morning. Brain matter littered the ground.
“Some parts of Dora are so dangerous,” Ali added, “that we cannot even pick up the bodies there without Americans. We are just too afraid.”
The Iraqi police are not the only ones who feel unsafe. The American soldiers and civilians who train the Iraqis are constantly on guard against the possibility that the police might turn against them. Even in the police headquarters for all of western Baghdad, one of the safest police buildings in the capital, the training team will not remove their body armor or helmets. An armed soldier is assigned to protect each trainer.
“I wouldn’t let half of them feed my dog,” 1st Lt. Floyd D. Estes Jr., a former head of the police transition team, said of the Iraqi police. “I just don’t trust them.”
Jon Moore, the deputy team chief, said: “We don’t know who the hell we’re teaching: Are they police or are they militia?”
The trainers agree that Ani, the new police chief for western Baghdad, is an honest cop who is trying to get the police force in order. But Ani acknowledged in a meeting with U.S. officials that he does not plan to root out and fire militia members.
“I don’t have that power,” he said. “There are people higher than me that control that.”
Among Ani’s bosses are the police chief for all of Baghdad, who has been linked to the Mahdi Army, and the minister of the interior, who is a member of Sadr’s political bloc.
“I think he’s trying to do the right thing,” said Lt. Col Aaron Dean, the battalion commander, as he walked to his Humvee after the meeting with Ani. “But I know they’re all under certain influences. If you take a big stand against the militias, they’re going to come after you.”
The difficulty of eliminating corruption and militias from the Iraqi police forces can be exasperating for the American soldiers who risk their lives day after day to train them. “We can keep getting in our Humvees every day, but nothing is going to work unless the politicians do their job and move against the militias,” Moore said.
Sitting in the battalion’s war room with four other members of his team, Moore estimated it would take 30 to 40 years before the Iraqi police could function properly, perhaps longer if the militia infiltration and corruption continue to increase. His colleagues nodded.
“It’s very, very slow-moving,” Estes said.
“No,” said Sgt. 1st Class William T. King Jr., another member of the team. “It’s moving in reverse.” ++
US Boosts Iraq Troop Levels to 150,000
Cheney forecasts lengthy violence in Iraq
Yahoo News
Mon Oct 30
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Vice President Dick Cheney warned that deadly violence would plague Iraq for “some considerable period of time” and said it was up to Iraqis to decide how to tackle sectarian militias.
Asked about radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, Cheney told CNBC television that US-led forces had dealt with “the chief bad guy,” Saddam Hussein, and that it was now up to Iraqis to handle Sadr.
Sadr “obviously speaks for a significant number of Iraqis, has a strong following. But if anything were to be addressed in that area, it’s got to be addressed by the Iraqis themselves,” Cheney said in the interview.
“The Iraqis are now the sovereign authority inside Iraq. That’s their government. It’s their responsibility. They’ll have to make those judgments and decisions,” he said.
The White House released a transcript of the exchange, which came as opposition Democrats used the unpopular war in Iraq as a political weapon in an effort to win control of the US Congress in November 7 elections.
Cheney, who has retreated from his prediction in 2005 that Iraq’s deadly insurgency was in its “last throes,” said transferring security missions to fledgling Iraqi forces was one of the key “milestones for success.”
“There’s going to be probably a continued level of violence for some considerable period of time in Iraq. But we have made progress” on the political and security front, the vice president said.
“It’s the kind of thing where you have to keep grinding it out day after day after day. It’s tough. It’s difficult, especially for the young men and women who are prosecuting the war on our behalf. But it’s the right thing to do,” he said. ++
Bush the Cheerleader
Ray McGovern, AntiWar.com
October 31, 2006
When President George W. Bush was asked at his news conference last Wednesday whether we are winning in Iraq, he answered, “Absolutely; we’re winning.” The disingenuousness was almost enough to provoke sympathy for the beleaguered president as he lived through another bad week with further diminished credibility.
A letter winner in cheerleading at Andover and Yale, the president knows how tough it is to keep spirits up when it becomes clear that his team is not winning, but the bedlam in Iraq has become the supreme test. Some of his fellow cheerleaders have quit cheering, and even the Fox News Channel is having trouble putting on a brave front.
And small wonder. For example, on Oct. 19 USA Today put the main challenge succinctly:
- “The mistaken war and botched aftermath have created such a mess that the only credible course change must be predicated on this painful question: Is there an achievable goal that makes the further sacrifice of American lives worthwhile? With each passing day, that is looking less and less likely. … What, exactly, is the goal that U.S. forces are fighting and dying for?”
Is it to referee a civil war in Iraq? At the press conference Bush said:
- “Our job is to prevent the full – full-scale civil war from happening in the first place. It is one of the missions, is to work with the Maliki government to make sure that there is a political way forward that says to the people of Iraq, It’s not worth it. Civil war is not worth the effort – by them. … And so we will work to prevent that from happening.”
Is that it? Or is it, as the president let slip, to prevent “terrorists or extremists in Iraq [from gaining] access to vast oil reserves” in Iraq and denying them to the U.S.? How often were we told that oil had “nothing to do with it!”?
The president did say that too many children “won’t ever see their mom and dad again,” and that he owes it “to them and to the families who still have loved ones in harm’s way to ensure that their sacrifices are not in vain.”
He owes to people like the family of Jeremy Shank. In a small town in Missouri last month, Rev. Carter Frey eulogized young Shank, who was killed while on patrol in Iraq. Frey stressed that Shank was one of those who “put themselves in harm’s way and paid the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can have freedom to live in this country.”
Really? Many patrols like the one Shank was on appear to be aimed at stopping Shia and Sunni from killing each other – stopping what the president calls “full-scale civil war.” Two months ago, Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told the press, “It’s no longer about insurgency, but sectarian warfare.” Is that what Jeremy Shank and other young men and women are paying the ultimate sacrifice – or the penultimate one of living the rest of their lives without arms or legs?
What else could be their purpose? To continue the pursuit of evidence of weapons of mass destruction or ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda? Or is it really, as the Bush administration suggests, to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq and the wider Middle East? Really? How long will we let our young soldiers be mocked and used? How long will we allow President Bush to treat them as disposable soldiers – like toys a rich kid gets for Christmas?
Time to Bring Them Home
There are basically two choices: (1) “stay the course” (or the same concept with a more felicitous label); or (2) withdraw. Let’s look at them both:
(1) Those of us who have “been there, done that” know what is meant by “stay the course” – or whatever updated formulation the Bush administration uses that implies action short of withdrawal. Its name is Vietnam. It means more violence month by month – as we have witnessed recently – until there are 50,000 more of our young troops, and a million more Iraqis, dead. From the president’s own words, we know his intention is to keep our troops in Iraq until the end of his term. A year or two later, our helicopters will be lifting the remainder of the American presence in Iraq off the rooftops of the billion-dollar embassy we are now building in the Green Zone. The name is Vietnam. It is a no-brainer for anyone who knows the first thing about “insurgency” – or, more properly, resistance to foreign occupation. More and more violence – guaranteed.
(2) Withdrawal: It is more difficult to predict what will happen if we withdraw our troops from Iraq over the next year or so. A lot depends on how we go about it. The steps outlined below, the result of brainstorming with my colleagues with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and others, would in my view hold the promise of much less violence and killing:
Show a modicum of respect for the opinions of the Iraqi people, two-thirds of whom want U.S. forces out of Iraq immediately, according to a recent poll commissioned by our Department of State. It seems the height of hubris and incongruity for U.S. officials to pretend, as they do, that they know far better what would be best for the Iraqis. Another poll had 60 percent of the Iraqi people saying they would shoot an American on sight, if they had the opportunity.
Publicly disavow any intention of having permanent – or as the Pentagon now prefers to say “enduring” – military bases in Iraq.
Publicly disavow any intention of having special rights over the oil under the sands of Iraq. (These last two steps will be difficult for the Bush administration, since those aims formed the bulk of the motivation for attacking and occupying Iraq.)
TALK. Yes, talk. It is bizarre that the Bush administration does not let the State Department talk with “evil” forces – like North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and (perish the thought) “insurgents” in Iraq. If Ronald Reagan could talk with the Evil Empire, and conclude very important arms control and other agreements, surely the George W. Bush administration can engage resistance forces in Iraq. The Arab League states have shown themselves eager to facilitate such discussions. Indeed, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak did precisely that in October 2005, when he invited all interested states and factions to a meeting in Cairo. The U.S. boycotted those talks, and made it difficult for its clients in Baghdad to attend.
Following these four steps would attenuate the violence and damage that can be expected, however well-planned our withdrawal. Most importantly, then – and only then – we can expect the Arab League countries, the United Nations, the Western Europeans, Indians, Pakistanis and others to do what they can to facilitate our withdrawal with as much grace as can be mustered at that point. Why? Because they like us? No; we have frittered away the strong support rendered us in the wake of 9/11. They will help because most of them have even more interest than we in a more stable Iraq – and just as much interest as we in the oil there.
Bottom line: It seems virtually certain that there will be more violence in “staying the course.” That being the case, it can no longer be a moral decision to say, in effect: Let’s let those kids from the inner cities and the farms stay the course for us; who knows, maybe they’ll be lucky!
I cannot resist the temptation to recall that all of this was entirely predictable – and predicted. Almost exactly three years ago, we took strong issue with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence that the war in Iraq was “winnable.” We noted at the time that “most of those with a modicum of experience in guerrilla warfare and the Middle East are persuaded that the war is NOT winnable and that the only thing in doubt is the timing of the U.S. departure.”
When will they ever learn; when will they ever learn? ++
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
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