The Tipping Point

July 9th, 2007

Ahhh — the power of the press! The majority of the articles below are MSM, and they fall on the side of the Angels … end the war now! After all these long bloody years, the New York Times editorial board has decided that it’s time to come home; it isn’t exactly a Cronkite moment, but, combined with the growing GOP defection, it’s powerful. With September looming as the deadline for meeting benchmarks, it appears that none will be met and we no longer have the belly for another round of smoke and mirrors; I trust they’re putting together a plan for withdrawal, but given their competence … I fear for the next leg of this hellish journey.

With some 220+ dead this weekend, the Maliki “government” in shambles, and Democrats, incensed over the Libby affair, smelling blood in the water, Reid and Pelosi are planning more legislation to get us out — and the GOP can no longer afford to follow the Dubby’s muse — an anonymous Big Dog senator is reported to have said that the Bushies do not “recognize the depth of difficulty they’re in.” I’ll second that.

Here are MSM reads that give you all the details — one regarding Colin Powell’s attempt to talk the Dubby out of it [too little, too late, Colin -- the blog response on this article was hostile; I fear Colin will be remembered for his misplaced loyalty in this matter, and not his sterling record prior] and two articles from alternative sources, last … a piece by General Odom and one explaining the chilling new “war” word, ‘Incorporeity’. Sick. You’ll also find an insider report by Bob “Prince of Darkness” Novak, here; meanwhile, the White House is denying most of what the papers printed this weekend [duh.]

We’ve turned the corner — but let’s remember that the power of Commander-in-Chief is just about all Dub’s got going for him; if Iraq is no longer in play, there will have to be another war theatre to support his authority.

So here’s news of the flagging “will” of the American people and the Administration that can no longer ignore them — mostly MSM, and all bad news for Bush. This post is loaded — you don’t have to go anywhere else for your war news, today.

Jude

ps — attempting to solve the problem of inactive links and the wrinkles of working in Google, I just don’t have time to activate them all; here’s my compromise … if they are embedded links, or tinyurl’s, I will active them manually; the rest will be cut ‘n paste, unless you want to wait until I input to the blog [same day you receive the post] where all links will be active.

The Road Home
The New York Times | Editorial
Sunday 08 July 2007

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
•

Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs - after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

The political leaders Washington has backed are incapable of putting national interests ahead of sectarian score settling. The security forces Washington has trained behave more like partisan militias. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.

A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda.

That conversation must be candid and focused. Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

The administration, the Democratic-controlled Congress, the United Nations and America’s allies must try to mitigate those outcomes - and they may fail. But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse. The nation needs a serious discussion, now, about how to accomplish a withdrawal and meet some of the big challenges that will arise.

The Mechanics of Withdrawal

The United States has about 160,000 troops and millions of tons of military gear inside Iraq. Getting that force out safely will be a formidable challenge. The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.

The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest.

Accomplishing all of this in less than six months is probably unrealistic. The political decision should be made, and the target date set, now.

The Fight Against Terrorists

Despite President Bush’s repeated claims, Al Qaeda had no significant foothold in Iraq before the invasion, which gave it new base camps, new recruits and new prestige.

This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda’s leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops.

And it created a new front where the United States will have to continue to battle terrorist forces and enlist local allies who reject the idea of an Iraq hijacked by international terrorists. The military will need resources and bases to stanch this self- inflicted wound for the foreseeable future.

The Question of Bases

The United States could strike an agreement with the Kurds to create those bases in northeastern Iraq. Or, the Pentagon could use its bases in countries like Kuwait and Qatar, and its large naval presence in the Persian Gulf, as staging points.

There are arguments for, and against, both options. Leaving troops in Iraq might make it too easy - and too tempting - to get drawn back into the civil war and confirm suspicions that Washington’s real goal was to secure permanent bases in Iraq. Mounting attacks from other countries could endanger those nations’ governments.

The White House should make this choice after consultation with Congress and the other countries in the region, whose opinions the Bush administration has essentially ignored. The bottom line: the Pentagon needs enough force to stage effective raids and airstrikes against terrorist forces in Iraq, but not enough to resume large-scale combat.

The Civil War

One of Mr. Bush’s arguments against withdrawal is that it would lead to civil war. That war is raging, right now, and it may take years to burn out. Iraq may fragment into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite republics, and American troops are not going to stop that from happening.

It is possible, we suppose, that announcing a firm withdrawal date might finally focus Iraq’s political leaders and neighboring governments on reality. Ideally, it could spur Iraqi politicians to take the steps toward national reconciliation that they have endlessly discussed but refused to act on.

But it is foolish to count on that, as some Democratic proponents of withdrawal have done. The administration should use whatever leverage it gains from withdrawing to press its allies and Iraq’s neighbors to help achieve a negotiated solution.

Iraq’s leaders - knowing that they can no longer rely on the Americans to guarantee their survival - might be more open to compromise, perhaps to a Bosnian-style partition, with economic resources fairly shared but with millions of Iraqis forced to relocate. That would be better than the slow-motion ethnic and religious cleansing that has contributed to driving one in seven Iraqis from their homes.

The United States military cannot solve the problem. Congress and the White House must lead an international attempt at a negotiated outcome. To start, Washington must turn to the United Nations, which Mr. Bush spurned and ridiculed as a preface to war.

The Human Crisis

There are already nearly two million Iraqi refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan, and nearly two million more Iraqis who have been displaced within their country. Without the active cooperation of all six countries bordering Iraq - Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria - and the help of other nations, this disaster could get worse. Beyond the suffering, massive flows of refugees - some with ethnic and political resentments - could spread Iraq’s conflict far beyond Iraq’s borders.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia must share the burden of hosting refugees. Jordan and Syria, now nearly overwhelmed with refugees, need more international help. That, of course, means money. The nations of Europe and Asia have a stake and should contribute. The United States will have to pay a large share of the costs, but should also lead international efforts, perhaps a donors’ conference, to raise money for the refugee crisis.

Washington also has to mend fences with allies. There are new governments in Britain, France and Germany that did not participate in the fight over starting this war and are eager to get beyond it. But that will still require a measure of humility and a commitment to multilateral action that this administration has never shown. And, however angry they were with President Bush for creating this mess, those nations should see that they cannot walk away from the consequences. To put it baldly, terrorism and oil make it impossible to ignore.

The United States has the greatest responsibilities, including the admission of many more refugees for permanent resettlement. The most compelling obligation is to the tens of thousands of Iraqis of courage and good will - translators, embassy employees, reconstruction workers - whose lives will be in danger because they believed the promises and cooperated with the Americans.

The Neighbors

One of the trickiest tasks will be avoiding excessive meddling in Iraq by its neighbors - America’s friends as well as its adversaries.

Just as Iran should come under international pressure to allow Shiites in southern Iraq to develop their own independent future, Washington must help persuade Sunni powers like Syria not to intervene on behalf of Sunni Iraqis. Turkey must be kept from sending troops into Kurdish territories.

For this effort to have any remote chance, Mr. Bush must drop his resistance to talking with both Iran and Syria. Britain, France, Russia, China and other nations with influence have a responsibility to help. Civil war in Iraq is a threat to everyone, especially if it spills across Iraq’s borders.
•

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened - the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage - with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading. ++

Two more GOP senators break from Bush on Iraq
Ron Brynaert, Raw Story, based on LA Times article
Saturday July 7, 2007

Two more Republican senators have gone public with their dissatisfaction with President Bush’s Iraq war strategy, but the White House still doesn’t view the internecine feuding during wartime as a “hemorrhaging of support,” since hardly any GOP lawmakers have aligned with Democrats to call for an immediate troop withdrawal.

“Wearied by the lack of progress in Iraq and by the steady stream of military funerals back home, a growing number of Republican lawmakers who had stood loyally with President Bush are insisting his strategy has failed and are calling on him to bring the war to an end,” Noam N. Levey writes for Saturday’s LA Times. “In the last two weeks, three GOP senators — including one of the party’s leading voices on foreign affairs and one of Bush’s strongest allies — have urged the president to change course now so U.S. troops can start to withdraw.”

On Friday, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee told the paper, “It should be clear to the president that there needs to be a new strategy. Our policy in Iraq is drifting;” and “Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who helped lead the charge earlier this year against Democratic efforts to oppose Bush’s troop buildup, said: ‘We don’t seem to be making a lot of progress.’”

Gregg added that it was important that there be “a clear blueprint for how we were going to draw down.”

“None of these GOP lawmakers has embraced Democratic legislation to compel a troop withdrawal,” the paper notes. “But nearly five years after congressional Republicans overwhelmingly answered Bush’s call for military action against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, some are doing what was once unthinkable: challenging a wartime president from their own party.”

The article continues, “The tide of Republican dissent began to grow two weeks ago when Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, former chairman of the foreign relations committee, delivered an earnest plea for change from the floor of the Senate. Sen. George V. Voinovich of Ohio expressed similar doubts in a letter he sent to the president the next day, and Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, the former chairman of the armed services committee, openly praised Lugar for speaking out.”

New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, a senator for more than three decades, up for reelection in 2008, was the third Republican elder statesman to publicly turn against the president’s troop ’surge’ policy within 10 days.

“I am unwilling to continue our current strategy,” Domenici said at a news conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, blaming the Iraqi government for not making sufficient progress to merit the sacrifices of US troops.

The Times notes that “another House Republican, conservative Rep. John T. Doolittle from Roseville, Calif., labeled the Iraq war ‘a quagmire’ and called for a reduced U.S. military presence, according to the Sacramento Bee.”

During a White House press gaggle on Friday, spokesman Tony Fratto took exception when a reporter asked “what is the President going to do to stop the hemorrhaging of support from his own — his fellow Republicans before the progress report even comes forth.”

“I don’t buy that characterization of what we’re hearing from these leaders in Congress,” Fratto responded. “I think what we are hearing is some thoughtful discussion of how we go forward. And what we’re going to do, and what the President is going to do is going to continue to talk to them and continue to work together on ways forward as we work through this. So I don’t buy that characterization of it.”

Another reporter asked, “Is there no concern that these leading, influential Republicans — Domenici, Voinovich, Lugar — are basically parting with the President on many aspects of his policy? And I think that’s undeniable. They’re calling for timetables; the President doesn’t want that. They’re calling for withdrawal plans; the President doesn’t want to provide that.”

“If a withdrawal plan is tied to — is tied to a specific date, I think that’s not a wise way to go and that’s not something that we would support and that’s a conversation that we would have with them,” Fratto responded. “We think that is — that’s fraught with danger. But that’s part of the conversation that we would have with them.”

Fratto added, “But I hope they do recognize — and I think they do — that we do want to get to the same place, and we share that goal. So that is a huge amount of common ground that we share, and again, distinctly different from where Democrat leaders are talking about — where they are talking about pulling out troops in 120 days, which isn’t even really possible, forgetting that it’s not advisable. So what we’re going to continue to do is work with them on where we go in a post-surge environment.” ++

White House Debate Rises on Iraq Pullback
DAVID E. SANGER, NYT
July 9, 2007

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Mr. Bush and his aides once thought they could wait to begin those discussions until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the effectiveness of the troop increase that the president announced in January. But suddenly, some of Mr. Bush’s aides acknowledge, it appears that forces are combining against him just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war’s future and financing.

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations.

That conclusion was echoed in interviews over the past few days by administration officials in the Pentagon, State Department and White House, as well as by outsiders who have been consulted about what the administration should do next. “Sept. 15 now looks like an end point for the debate, not a starting point,” the official said. “Lots of people are concluding that the president has got to get out ahead of this train.”

In a sign of the concern, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates canceled plans for a four-nation tour of Latin America this week and will stay home to attend meetings on Iraq, the Pentagon announced yesterday.

Last week, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, called in from a brief vacation to join intense discussions in sessions that included Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s longtime strategist, and Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff.

Officials describe the meetings as more of a running discussion than an argument. They say that no one is clinging to a stay-the-course position but that instead aides are trying to game out what might happen if the president becomes more specific about the start and the shape of what the White House is calling a “post-surge redeployment.”

The views of many of the participants in that discussion were unclear, and the officials interviewed could not provide any insight into what Vice President Dick Cheney had been telling President Bush.

They described Mr. Hadley as deeply concerned that the loss of Republicans could accelerate this week, a fear shared by Mr. Rove. But they also said that Mr. Rove had warned that if Mr. Bush went too far in announcing a redeployment, the result could include a further cascade of defections — and the passage of legislation that would force a withdrawal by a specific date, a step Mr. Bush has always said he would oppose.

“Everyone’s particularly worried about what happens when McCain gets back from Iraq,” one official said, a reference to the latest trip to Baghdad by Senator John McCain, who has been a stalwart supporter of the “surge” strategy. Mr. McCain’s travels, and his political troubles in the race for the Republican nomination for president, have fueled speculation that he may declare the Iraqi government incapable of the kind of political accommodations that the crackdown on violence was supposed to permit.

Officials say that Mr. Gates has been quietly pressing for a pullback that could roughly halve the number of combat brigades now patrolling the most violent sections of Baghdad and surrounding provinces by early next year. The remaining combat units would then take up a far more limited mission of training, protecting Iraq’s borders and preventing the use of Iraq as a sanctuary by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni Arab extremist group that claims to have an affiliation with Osama bin Laden’s network, though the precise relationship is unknown.

President Bush has repeatedly said that he wants as much time as possible for his 30,000-troop increase to show results. And publicly, administration officials insist that the president has no plans for a precipitous withdrawal — but the key word seems to be “precipitous,” and they appear to be recalibrating their message.

“I think it shouldn’t come as any surprise that we here in the administration, and in our conversations with Congress, and in our conversations with generals on the ground and policy makers in Iraq, are thinking about what happens after a surge,” Tony Fratto, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters on Friday, at a briefing where he was peppered with questions about the defection of Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico.

That defection followed a similar move by Senator Richard G. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.

In the meetings last week, officials say, there was frustration that Mr. Bush’s statements were being drowned out by a presidential race that has created a forum for daily critiques of his policies, past and present.

Moreover, the dynamics inside the administration have changed. The hawks who once surrounded Mr. Bush have been replaced by pragmatists like Mr. Gates, who has made it clear that he wants to lower the political temperature of the Iraq debate at home, and has joined with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to gradually shift White House strategy.

When it came time to pick a new “Iraq czar,” the choice was a general who had been openly skeptical about the prospects of the troop increase strategy. Mr. Bush will get a chance to make his case later this week, when he presents an interim report, required by law by Sunday, on the status of 18 “benchmarks” of progress.

The calendar may be working in Mr. Bush’s favor. If he can get through the next three weeks without more defections, Congress will recess until September, returning just as the report from Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker arrives in Washington.

Also, the Republican defectors have not agreed on what different strategy they would prescribe, giving the president some negotiating room. But Senator Lugar said yesterday on CNN that he would support a significant withdrawal that left “residual forces” in Iraq to ensure that “the whole area does not blow up.”

That approach would mean abandoning the current mission of using those forces to patrol Baghdad and try to reimpose order, which was Mr. Bush’s stated goal in January.

Asked whether he could support an amendment proposed by Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, that would put in legislative language the Iraq Study Group’s call for a withdrawal of combat units by March 31, 2008, Mr. Lugar said it was “worthy of a lot of discussion.”

John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was headed to Baghdad over the weekend to begin preparing another Congressionally mandated report, an independent assessment of the Iraqi military, said, “The political power of Salazar’s amendment is its ambiguity.”

“What does it mean?” Mr. Hamre asked. “That we will immediately implement all 76 provisions? I doubt it. It’s a way to give political cover.”

Senior officials involved in preparing the report Mr. Bush must deliver to Congress this week say he will be able to praise the Iraqi government for delivering the troops it promised — if a little late — and for removing the restrictions on arresting or killing violent members of Shiite militias. But on the critical issue of political compromise, Mr. Bush will be able to report little progress. ++

Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq Gains
Goals Unmet; Smaller Strides to Be Promoted
Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post
Sunday, July 8, 2007; Front Page

The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. As they prepare an interim report due next week, officials are marshaling alternative evidence of progress to persuade Congress to continue supporting the war.

In a preview of the assessment it must deliver to Congress in September, the administration will report that Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province are turning against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in growing numbers; that sectarian killings were down in June; and that Iraqi political leaders managed last month to agree on a unified response to the bombing of a major religious shrine, officials said.

Those achievements are markedly different from the benchmarks Bush set when he announced his decision to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq. More troops, Bush said, would enable the Iraqis to proceed with provincial elections this year and pass a raft of power-sharing legislation. In addition, he said, the government of President Nouri al-Maliki planned to “take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November.”

Congress expanded on Bush’s benchmarks, writing 18 goals into law as part of the war-funding measure it passed in the spring.

In addition to the elections, legislation and security measures Bush outlined in January, Congress added demands that the Iraqi government complete a revision of its constitution and pass a law on de-Baathification and additional laws on militia disarmament, regional boundaries and other issues.

Lawmakers asked for an interim report in July and set a Sept. 15 deadline for a comprehensive assessment by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador. Now, as U.S. combat deaths have escalated, violence has spread far beyond Baghdad, and sectarian political divides have deepened, the administration must persuade lawmakers to use more flexible, less ambitious standards.

But anything short of progress on the original benchmarks is unlikely to appease the growing ranks of disaffected Republican lawmakers who are urging Bush to develop a new strategy. Although Republicans held the line this year against Democratic efforts to set a timeline for withdrawing troops, several influential GOP senators have broken with Bush in recent days, charging that his plan is failing and calling for troop redeployments starting as early as the spring.

According to several senior officials who agreed to discuss the situation in Iraq only on the condition of anonymity, the political goals that seemed achievable earlier this year remain hostage to the security situation. If the extreme violence were to decline, Iraq’s political paralysis might eventually subside. “If they are arguing, accusing, gridlocking,” one official said, “none of that would mean the country is falling apart if it was against the backdrop of a stabilizing security situation.”

From a military perspective, however, the political stalemate is hampering security. “The security progress we’re making is real,” said a senior military intelligence official in Baghdad. “But it’s only in part of the country, and there’s not enough political progress to get us over the line in September.”

In their September report, sources said, Petraeus and Crocker intend to emphasize how security and politics are intertwined, and how progress in either will be incremental. In that context, the administration will offer new measures of progress to justify continuing the war effort.

“There are things going on that we never could have foreseen,” said one official, who noted that the original benchmarks set by Bush six months ago — and endorsed by the Maliki government — are not only unachievable in the short term but also irrelevant to changing the conditions in Iraq.

As they work to put together the reports due to Congress next week and in September, these officials and others close to Iraq policy recognize that the administration is boxed in by measurements that were enshrined in U.S. law in May.

“That is a problem,” the official said. “These are congressionally mandated benchmarks now.” They require Bush to certify movement in areas ranging from the passage of specific legislation by the Iraqi parliament to the numbers of Iraqi military units able to operate independently. If he cannot make a convincing case, the legislation requires the president to explain how he will change his strategy.

Top administration officials are aware that the strategy’s stated goal — using U.S. forces to create breathing space for Iraqi political reconciliation — will not be met by September, said one person fresh from a White House meeting. But though some, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have indicated flexibility toward other options, including early troop redeployments, Bush has made no decisions on a possible new course.

“The heart of darkness is the president,” the person said. “Nobody knows what he thinks, even the people who work for him.”

Mixed Security Results

Military commanders say that their offensive is improving security in Baghdad. “Everything takes time, and everything takes longer than you think it’s going to take,” Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which is fighting south of Baghdad, said Friday. He added: “There is indeed room for optimism. I see progress, but there needs to be more.”

Yet the month of May, which came before the Phantom Thunder offensive began, was the most violent in Iraq since November 2004, when U.S. and Iraqi forces fought a fierce battle to retake Fallujah. That intensity promises to continue through the summer. “I see these aggressive offensive operations . . . taking us through July, August and into September,” Lynch said.

Not even the most optimistic commanders contend that the offensive is allowing for political reconciliation. At best, Petraeus is likely to report in September, security will have improved in the capital, perhaps returning to the level of 2005, when the city was violent but not racked by low-level civil war.

More significant is whether that slight improvement in security can be built upon.

Regardless of what decisions are made in Washington and Baghdad, the U.S. military cannot sustain the current force levels beyond March 2008 because of force rotations. Long-term holding of cleared areas will fall to Iraqi soldiers and police officers.

Because of corruption and mixed loyalties, a Pentagon official said about the Iraqi police, “half of them are part of the problem, not the solution.” The portrait officials paint of the Iraqi military is somewhat brighter. “These guys have now been through some pretty hard combat,” said a senior administration official. “They’re in the fight, not running from it.

“But can they do it without us there? Almost certainly not,” the official said.

Even if U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies are able to hold Baghdad and the surrounding provinces, noted the intelligence official, there is a good chance that security will deteriorate elsewhere because there are not enough U.S. troops to spread around. As U.S. troop numbers decrease, he said, it is possible that by sometime next year “we control the middle, the Kurds control the north, and the Iranians control the south.”

A Hurdle to Progress

Last month, Iraq’s largest Sunni political grouping announced that its four cabinet ministers were boycotting the government and that it was withdrawing its 44 members from parliament. The immediate cause was the arrest of a Sunni minister on murder charges and a vote by the Shiite-dominated legislature to fire the Sunni Arab speaker.

The withdrawal poses a serious problem for short-term U.S. goals. A new law to distribute oil revenue among Iraq’s sectarian groups — seen by U.S. officials as the best hope for a legislative achievement before September — reached parliament last week after months of delay. Although the Shiite and Kurdish blocs could pass it, the absence of the Sunnis would make any victory meaningless.

U.S. officials despair of any timely progress on the oil law. “I suppose they’ll pass it when they damn well want to,” one official said.

Plans to hold provincial elections, envisioned to provide more power to Sunnis who boycotted a 2005 vote, have grown more complicated. As Anbar tribal chieftains have emerged to help fight al-Qaeda, they have also demanded more political power from traditional Sunni leaders. In southern Shiite areas, Maliki’s Dawa organization continues to vie with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest bloc in the Shiite alliance that dominates Iraq’s parliament, while both fear the rising power of forces controlled by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

“In mixed areas such as Baghdad,” a U.S. official said, “the Sunnis are worried that the Shiites will just clean up again even if [Sunnis] participate this time, because so many Sunnis” have fled sectarian violence in the capital.

Late last year, amid strong doubts about Maliki’s leadership capabilities, senior White House officials considered trying to engineer the Iraqi president’s replacement. But most have now concluded that there are no viable alternatives and that any attempt to force a change would only worsen matters.

Instead, U.S. officials in Baghdad are engaged in a complicated hand-holding exercise with Iraqi leaders, and are striving for small gains rather than major advancement. The main example of success they cite is agreement reached by the top Shiite, Sunni and Kurd officials in the government to appeal for calm after last month’s bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra.

Officials are encouraged by the growing numbers of local Sunni officials and tribal leaders in Anbar striving to wrest political and security control from al Qaeda in Iraq. Bush has also highlighted the importance of such local efforts. “This is where political reconciliation matters most,” he said in a speech last month, “because it is where ordinary Iraqis are deciding whether to support new Iraq.”

But officials caution that this transformation is no substitute for a national Iraqi identity, with unified leadership in Baghdad. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government must continue to reach out to Anbar “and give these emerging tribal forces status, adopting them,” a U.S. official said.

“Trying to do the local initiative stuff and having that be the whole story does not advance the process,” he said.

Warnings on Withdrawal

Facing increased public disapproval and eroding Republican support, Bush has stepped up his warnings that a sudden U.S. withdrawal would allow al-Qaeda or Iran — or both — to take over Iraq. What is more likely, several officials said, is a deeper split between competing Shiite groups supported in varying degrees by Iran, and greater involvement by neighboring Arab states in Sunni areas battling al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Kurdish region, officials said, would become further estranged from the rest of Iraq, and its tensions with Turkey would increase.

“I can’t say that al-Qaeda is going to take over, or that Iran is going to take over,” an official said. “I don’t think either are true. But I do think that a lot of very, very bad things would happen.” If the administration decided to have troops retreat to bases inside Iraq and not intervene in sectarian warfare, he said, the U.S. military could find itself in a position that “would make the Dutch at Srebrenica look like heroes.”

For its part, the military has calculated that a veto-proof congressional majority is unlikely to demand a full, immediate withdrawal. But however long the troops remain, and in whatever number, the military intelligence official said, they see a clear mission ahead.

“We’re going to get it as stable as we can, with the troops we have, and in the time available. And then, we’ll back out as carefully as we can,” the official said. ++

Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.

‘Scouting’ the Hill on Iraq
Robert D. Novak, WaPo
Monday, July 9, 2007

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley visited Capitol Hill just before Congress adjourned for the Fourth of July. Meetings with a half-dozen senior Republican senators were clearly intended to extinguish fires set by Sen. Richard Lugar’s unexpected break from President Bush’s Iraq policy. They failed.

Hadley called his expedition a “scouting trip,” leading one senator to ask what he was seeking. It was not advice on how to escape from Iraq. Instead, Hadley appeared interested in how previous supporters of Bush’s course had drifted away. In the process, though, he planted seeds of concern. Some senators were left with the impression that the White House still does not recognize the scope of the Iraq dilemma. Worse yet, they see the president running out the clock until April, when a depleted U.S. military can be blamed for the fiasco.

The tone set by Hadley signaled that the White House did not understand that Lugar, in his fateful speech on the Senate floor the night of June 25, was sending a distress signal to Bush that a change in policy can be instituted only by the president and that it is imperative he act now. Hadley was told that it is not too late to go back to the Iraq Study Group’s 79 recommendations, neglected since their release in December. But the White House still seems unaware of the building tide, typified by the defection Thursday of six-term Republican Sen. Pete Domenici (who was not among the graybeards “scouted” by Hadley).

The White House no more expected Domenici to jump overboard than it did Lugar. The shock of Lugar’s speech was the reason Hadley quickly scheduled sessions with senior Republican senators such as Lugar and Chuck Hagel, the top two GOP members on the Foreign Relations Committee, and John Warner, former chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “The president has sent me up here on a scouting mission,” Hadley said to begin the meetings.

Always deferential, Hadley took copious notes. But he did more than listen. Based on what Hadley said, one senator concluded that “they just do not recognize the depth of the difficulty they are in.” That difficulty entails running out of troops in nine months. Hadley increased latent fears of the U.S. military being made the fall guy — a concern shared by many retired and some active senior officers, including a current infantry division commander.

During his expedition, Hadley was asked why Bush named a serving Army officer — Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute — as a deputy national security adviser and “czar” of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Isn’t that Hadley’s job? Freshman Democratic Sen. Jim Webb, a lawmaker who has worn the nation’s uniform in combat, was one of four senators who voted against Lute’s confirmation. He told the Senate that Lute’s return to the Army after serving in the administration would threaten the military’s status as a “non-political organization.”

Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, managed Lute’s confirmation with little enthusiasm. He noted that several retired four-star generals had refused the “czar” job. They included Marine Gen. Jack Sheehan, reported by Levin as having turned down the president because “hawks within the administration, including Vice President Cheney, remain more powerful than the pragmatists looking for an exit strategy in Iraq.”

Though Lugar’s defection brought the national security adviser to the Hill, Bush did not call the respected senator into the White House for a face-to-face talk. That is not this president’s style, as shown by his reaction to an essay by Hagel in the Financial Times last week calling for an international mediator in Iraq under U.N. Security Council auspices.

Hagel had advocated that proposal in a private letter to Bush several weeks earlier. Instead of the president responding to an overture from a longtime critic, Hagel was answered in routine fashion by a third-level bureaucrat (Jeffrey Bergner, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs).

As the first in a succession of Republican senators to be critical of Bush’s Iraq policy, Hagel feared the worst when he returned home to conservative Nebraska for Fourth of July parades. Instead, he was pleasantly surprised by cheers and calls for the troops to be brought home. Perhaps a White House scouting trip into the American heartland might be worthwhile. ++

Powell tried to talk Bush out of war
Sarah Baxter, The Sunday Times UK
July 8, 2007

THE former American secretary of state Colin Powell has revealed that he spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade President George W Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today’s conflict cannot be resolved by US forces.

“I tried to avoid this war,” Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. “I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.”

Powell has become increasingly outspoken about the level of violence in Iraq, which he believes is in a state of civil war. “The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now.”

He added: “It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States.” All the military could do, Powell suggested, was put “a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew”.

The signs are that the views of Powell and other critics of the war are finally being heard in the Pentagon, if not yet in the White House. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is drawing up plans to reduce troop levels in Iraq in anticipation that General David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, will not be able to deliver an upbeat progress report in September on the American troop surge.

“It should come as no secret to anyone that there are discussions about what is a postsurge strategy,” said Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, last week.

The surge’s lack of demonstrable success is creating fissures in the Republican party as well as putting enormous pressure on the Democratic presidential candidates to favour a rapid pull-out, which Gates fears could leave Iraq in chaos.

New Mexico senator Pete Domenici became the third Republican senator in recent weeks to break ranks openly with Bush on the war. “We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress,” he said. “I am calling for a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path home.”

Speculation is growing that Gates will demonstrate his commitment to withdrawing US forces by moving a combat brigade of up to 3,000 troops out of Iraq as early as October and continuing to reduce their numbers month by month from their current strength of 160,000 to presurge levels of around 130,000 by the summer of 2008.

Gates believes American troop withdrawals are essential to building a cross-party consensus for retaining a presence in Iraq after Bush’s term in office expires. As a former director of the CIA who saw out the cold war in the early 1990s, he hopes to win the same bipartisan support for Iraq that President Harry Truman secured against the Soviet Union after the second world war.

The policy is likely to appeal to Gordon Brown, the prime minister, who hopes to begin withdrawing more British troops from southern Iraq by the end of August.

A senior defence source said it would be possible to reduce the number of American forces to roughly 50,000-70,000 by election day in November 2008. “You are going to have to have some people left behind to provide stability and security for the country and take on the terrorists,” the source said.

The figures are similar to those floated by aides to Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, although she has been upping the rhetoric against remaining in Iraq in an effort to capture the support of party activists.

According to Powell, the US cannot “blow a whistle one morning” and have all American forces just leave. The former secretary of state has twice met Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, to advise him on foreign policy. Despite his antiwar stance, Obama supports a phased withdrawal that could leave a “significantly reduced force” in Iraq for “an extended period”.

Defence experts believe it will be impossible to maintain the surge’s high troop levels beyond February at the latest, given the need to rotate and refresh troops. Powell, who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the early 1990s, said in Aspen that America’s volunteer army was already overstretched. He predicted that Bush would be forced to “face the situation on the ground” and alter course by the end of this year.

Supporters of the surge believe this could send a disastrous signal to the Iraqis. “If we pull out, if we stop this operation now, we will hand Al-Qaeda a terrific victory,” said Frederick Kagan, a military historian at the American Enterprise Institute and an early advocate of the policy.

“The Iraqi government, right now, is a terrific ally in the war on terror. There have been more Iraqis killed fighting Al-Qaeda than in any other nation of the world. The question is, are we going to stand by them?”

The same political fault line runs through the White House between Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office and the State Department � now run by Condoleezza Rice, Powell’s successor � as it did at the start of the Iraq war. Bush has not yet thrown his weight definitively behind one side or the other, but the key difference this time is that the defence secretary is one of the “realists”.

According to Powell: “We have to face the reality of the situation that is on the ground and not what we would want it to be.” He believes that, even if the military surge has been a partial success in areas such as Anbar province, where Sunni tribes have turned on Al-Qaeda, it has not been accompanied by the vital political and economic “surge” and reconciliation process promised by the Iraqi government.

Al-Qaeda, Powell asserted, was only 10% of the problem in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, its prime minister, lacked the political will to establish an effective government. After a promising start to the surge at the beginning of the year, 453 unidentified corpses were found on the streets of Baghdad last month, 41% more than the 321 bodies found in January, according to unofficial Iraqi health ministry statistics.

The military gains could prove as fleeting in Anbar as Baghdad. American officers in Iraq believe Al-Qaeda strengthened its hold on the Sunni-dominated region in 2005, when responsibility for security was shifted prematurely to Iraqi forces that were led by Shi’ites and proved incapable of providing protection.

Powell believes that a reduction in US forces will have to be accompanied by talks with Syria and Iran. “You have to talk to the people you dislike most in this dangerous world.”

The general and former joint chiefs of staff added:

“Shi’ites will ultimately prevail because they are 60% of the population and their militias can be pretty violent. They will prevail also because they are determined not to be ruled again by the Sunnis.

“The Sunnis are struggling for power and survival and it’s going to be resolved by a test of arms. It’s going to be very ugly.”

++

Violent weekend in Iraq kills over 220
ROBERT H. REID, AP
Sun Jul 8

BAGHDAD - Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.

The calls reflect growing frustration with the inability of Iraqi security forces to prevent extremist attacks.

The weekend deaths included two American soldiers — one killed Sunday in a suicide bombing on the western outskirts of Baghdad and another who died in combat Saturday in Salahuddin province north of the capital, the U.S. command said. Three soldiers were wounded in the Sunday blast.

Sunday’s deadliest attack occurred when a bomb struck a truckload of newly recruited Iraqi soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing 15 and wounding 20, a police official at the nearest police station said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Also Sunday, two car bombs exploded near simultaneously in Baghdad’s mostly Shiite Karradah district, killing eight people. The first detonated at 10:30 a.m. near a closed restaurant, destroying stalls and soft drink stands. Two passers-by were killed and eight wounded, a police official said.

About five minutes later, the second car exploded about a mile away near shops selling leather jackets and shoes. Six people were killed and seven wounded, said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The Karradah area includes the offices of the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq, the biggest Shiite party in parliament, and is considered among the safest parts of the capital.

Elsewhere, a bomb hidden under a car detonated Sunday at the entrance of Shorja market — a mostly Shiite area of central Baghdad that has been hit repeatedly by insurgents — killing three civilians and wounding five, police said.

Police also reported they found the bodies of 29 men Sunday scattered across Baghdad — presumed victims of sectarian death squads. Four other people were killed Sunday in separate shootings in Baghdad, police said on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release the information.

The string of attacks in the Iraqi capital showed that extremists can still unleash strikes in the city despite a relative lull in violence here in recent weeks amid the U.S. offensives in and around Baghdad.

But the bloodshed in the Baghdad area paled in comparison to the carnage Saturday when a truck bomb devastated the public market in Armili, a town north of the capital whose inhabitants are mostly Shiites from the Turkoman ethnic minority.

There was still confusion over the death toll.

Two police officers — Col. Sherzad Abdullah and Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin — said 150 people were killed. Other officials put the death toll at 115. Abbas al-Bayati, a Shiite Turkoman lawmaker, told reporters in Baghdad that 130 had died.

Regardless of the precise figure, the attack was clearly among the deadliest in Iraq in months. It reinforced suspicions that al-Qaida extremists were moving north to less protected regions beyond the U.S. security crackdown in Baghdad and on the capital’s northern doorstep.

In a joint statement, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said the attack against the Turkoman Shiites was “another sad example of the nature of the enemy and their use of indiscriminate violence to kill innocent citizens.”

Turkish military air ambulances evacuated 21 people wounded in the attack for treatment in Turkish hospitals, the country’s Foreign Ministry said. Turkey feels special responsibility for its ethnic brethren, the Turkoman, who speak a Turkic language.

During a news conference Sunday in Baghdad, al-Bayati criticized the security situation in Armili, saying its police force had only 30 members and that the Interior Ministry had finally responded to requests for reinforcements only two days before the attack.

In the absence of enough security forces, al-Bayati said authorities should help residents “arm themselves” for their own protection.

The call for civilians to take up arms in their own defense was echoed Sunday by the country’s Sunni Arab vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, who said all Iraqis must “pay the price” for terrorism.

“People have a right to expect from the government and security agencies protection for their lives, land, honor and property,” al-Hashemi said in a statement. “But in the case of (their) inability, the people have no choice but to take up their own defense.”

He said the government should provide communities with money, weapons and training and “regulate their use by rules of behavior.”

Another prominent Sunni lawmaker, Adnan al-Dulaimi, said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had failed to provide services and security but he stopped short of saying his followers would seek to topple the Shiite-led government in a no-confidence vote.

The CBS Evening News reported Saturday that a large block of Sunni Iraqi politicians will ask for a parliamentary vote of no-confidence against al-Maliki’s government on July 15.

“The situation has become terribly bad,” al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. “All options are open for us. We are going to study the situation thoroughly, and we are going to look into the possible measures which go with the interests of the Iraqi people. We will also consider whether to keep on with the government or not.”

But Iraq’s national security adviser, a Shiite, insisted that the government still enjoyed broad support and he warned against any effort to replace al-Maliki.

“I can tell you one thing that after Maliki, there is going to be the hurricane in Iraq,” Mouwaffak al-Rubaie told CNN’s “Late Edition.” “This is an extremely important point to make across and to the Western audience and to the Arab audience as well as the larger Muslim audience.”

The idea of organizing local communities for their own defense has caught on here in recent months following the success of Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar province that took up arms to help drive al-Qaida from their towns and villages.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they hope to replicate the “Anbar model” elsewhere in the country, albeit under government supervision and control.

On Sunday, Lt. Gen. Ali Gheidan said the Iraqi army planned to raise volunteer forces in Diyala province, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have driven al-Qaida fighters from part of the capital of Baqouba. He said more than 3,800 volunteers had already been recruited.

“Their mission will be like the police, working under the Iraqi police,” Gheidan told reporters. “They work as a protection for each area, and they will only be from the residents of that area. Their role is to hold onto territory after it has been cleansed by the military.”

U.S. commanders have long believed the key to restoring security was the ability of Iraqi forces to hold on to areas cleared by American troops. Several senior U.S. officers have questioned whether the Iraqi police and army were capable of preventing insurgents from returning once the Americans had left.

Local defense forces would offer a way to compensate for weaknesses in the Iraqi police and army, but without careful controls, the system could backfire by promoting more militias in a country already awash in weapons.

Also Sunday, the British Defense Ministry announced the death of a British soldier who was wounded Saturday in the biggest British offensive against Shiite militias this year. ++

Lessons Unlearned In Iraq
Kiki Munshi, WaPo
Saturday, July 7, 2007

JULIAN, Calif. — Last year at this time, I traveled from Forward Operating Base Warhorse into the Iraqi town of Baqubah several times a week to meet with the governor, the provincial council chairman and other officials. Yes, it was dangerous. But it wasn’t suicidal.

Today, though, such trips would be almost impossible. Baqubah is a battlefield, the site of a major push against al-Qaeda and other insurgents. The houses that haven’t been destroyed are riddled with bullet holes. Many of the Iraqis I worked with are dead, and many others have fled.

The reason for some of this destruction lies, as our newspapers tell us, in the outpouring of al-Qaeda operatives from Baghdad, a result of the latest U.S. troop “surge” into the capital.

Much of the responsibility, however, is ours.

The actions of American troops have prompted much of the resistance in Diyala province. More important, these actions are symptomatic of other factors, including the short attention span of the American people, the regular rotation of our troops, the understandable desire of each commander to distinguish himself, and our very American belief that we can solve problems quickly when others can’t. We have allowed all of these factors to run away with the war in Iraq.

Last year the colonel in charge of a battalion of the 4th Infantry Division, several of his commanders and other officers and I spent a great deal of time trying to convince potential “insurgents” that politics could be a substitute for guns in the ongoing battle to control resources. We were modestly successful. The brigade commander met regularly with Shiites and Sunnis in the security forces and government. Battalion commanders were on excellent terms with Sunni and Shiite tribal chiefs in their areas and received substantial support from them.

Through the offices of Baqubah Mayor Khalid al-Sanjary, I spoke several times with high-ranking former Baathist military officers who wanted desperately to help their country and to defend it against Iranian incursion. Here our two sides had a common interest: The United States had been tracking the infiltration of war materiel into Diyala from Iran, and much of it was used against us; these Baathists (most of the officers were Sunni) had led Iraqi units during the war against Iran and had no desire to see Iranians control their country.

The “peace” of summer 2006 was tenuous and began to erode in August. There was a U.S. troop “surge” into Baghdad — the current “surge” isn’t the first or, some say, even the second — and we felt the results of insurgents fleeing into Diyala long before it became popular to talk about it.

Then came an unfortunate development in the Iraqi forces. The Shiite commanding general was replaced by Maj. Gen. Shaker Hulayel, another Shiite who was said to have been appointed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office.

Hulayel was sectarian to the core. He talked the talk of peace and reconciliation, but his walk was down corridors lined with Sunni detainees, illegally held and tortured. His walk was in front of death squads, sent to take out important Sunnis. His walk was laced with hatred and contempt for the precepts of democracy and order.

His presence was not helpful to the reconciliation process.

There was also an unfortunate development in the U.S. military. In the fall, the battalion from the 4th Infantry Division was replaced by a cavalry battalion. Our new colonel was eager to finish the job his predecessor had not. He chose to fight with weapons, not words, as a first option. He dropped the “speak softly” and resorted to the big stick. Out of necessity, as our directions were to work with and train Iraqi forces with a goal of handing responsibility to them, the sectarian Hulayel became an “ally.”

The results? Hard to prove, but Mayor Sanjary — an able and intelligent politician who worked harder to foster peace than anyone else I knew in the government — was “kidnapped” and his office blown up under strange circumstances. We Americans, after I left Baqubah, issued arrest warrants for him. Word is that he has been detained as an insurgent.

The whole episode is bizarre and, given Sanjary’s influence, damaging to U.S. goals. Of the former Baathist officers I knew, some have fled. Others have perhaps put their experience, intelligence and outstanding craftsmanship at the service of our enemies. Who really knows? If all the authorities are against you, do you have a choice?

Hulayel was, at U.S. insistence, finally dismissed a few weeks ago. The charges against him were corruption and aiding insurgents.

And we Americans? We are trumpeting our “new” initiative of enlisting Sunni tribal chiefs to our side. We are busy “building confidence” among the Iraqi security forces who, we now admit, have had sectarian tendencies. We’re also mounting a massive campaign against . . . our “enemies.”

We have forgotten or not bothered to remember what we have done over the past months.
But the Iraqis have not forgotten. They have lived this chapter before. Only it was better then, last year. ++

The writer is a retired Foreign Service officer who returned to duty to lead the provincial reconstruction team in Baqubah, Iraq, from April 2006 until January 2007.

‘Supporting the troops’ means withdrawing them
William E. Odom, Nieman Watch Dog
July 05, 2007

Gen. William Odom writes that opponents of the war should focus public attention on the fact that Bush’s obstinate refusal to admit defeat is causing the troops enormous psychological as well as physical harm.
____

Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to “support the troops.”

Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what “supporting the troops” means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.

No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods.

Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds.

Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called “post-traumatic stress disorders.” In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don’t seem to occur during the first half of a unit’s deployment in Iraq.

After the first year, following a few months back home, these same soldiers are sent back for a second year, then a third year, and now, many are facing a fourth deployment! Little wonder more and more soldiers and veterans are psychologically disabled.

And the damage is not just to enlisted soldiers. Many officers are suffering serious post-traumatic stress disorders but are hesitant to report it – with good reason. An officer who needs psychiatric care and lets it appear on his medical records has most probably ended his career. He will be considered not sufficiently stable to lead troops. Thus officers are strongly inclined to avoid treatment and to hide their problems.

There are only two ways to fix this problem, both of which the president stubbornly rejects. Instead, his recent “surge” tactic has compelled the secretary of defense to extend Army tours to 15 months! (The Marines have been allowed to retain their six-month deployment policy and, not surprisingly, have fewer cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.)

The first solution would be to expand the size of the Army to two or three times its present level, allowing shorter combat tours and much longer breaks between deployments. That cannot be done rapidly enough today, even if military conscription were restored and new recruits made abundant. It would take more than a year to organize and train a dozen new brigade combat teams. The Clinton administration cut the Army end strength by about 40 percent – from about 770,000 to 470,000 during the 1990s. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld looked for ways to make the cuts even deeper. Thus this administration and its predecessor aggressively gave up ground forces and tactical air forces while maintaining large maritime forces that cannot be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, the lack of wisdom in that change in force structure is being paid for not by President Bush or President Clinton but by the ordinary soldier and his family. They have no lobby group to seek relief for them.

The second way to alleviate the problem is to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as possible and as securely as possible. The electorate understands this. That is why a majority of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq.

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine “supporting the troops” as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for “not supporting the troops” where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.

Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that “de-authorizes the war in Iraq.” That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.

The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years.

To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what “supporting the troops” really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the “high crime” of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest. ++

Reservist fighting his fifth war call-up
AMY DRISCOLL, Miami Herald
7/8/07

‘Incorporeity’: Increase Your Wartime Vocabulary
Harkavy, The Village Voice
July 6, 2007

[open link to view document]

This morning’s L.A. Times report that the U.S. and its allies are killing more Afghan civilians than the Taliban are could be just the tip of the coffin.

In Iraq, documents that the ACLU pried from the War Department indicate that the U.S. often rejects claims — even defying judges’ rulings — that its troops have killed innocent civilians. And one of those rejected claims shows that a seldom-used word — “incorporeity” — is creeping into the wartime language.

Judges are granting “incorporeity damages” for civilian deaths, as the document below shows, but U.S. officials often rejected such claims. In the case below, an Iraqi claims that his son was killed by troops as he approached a checkpoint on his way to market. A judge valued the son at $7,500 — $5,000 for “killed my son” and $2,500 for “incorporeity damages” — but U.S. officials said his behavior was “threatening” and refused to pay.

Heretofore not used to describe the death of Iraq civilians, “incorporeity” comes from “incorporeal,” according to my OED, which I guess you could say backs up the U.S. position: The first OED definition of “incorporeal”:

Having no bodily or material structure; not composed of matter; immaterial.

The second definition gets right to it:

Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of immaterial beings.

That’s accurate. As I pointed out in October 2004, General Tommy Franks remarked early on, “We don’t do body counts,” but others were, including Iraq Body Count, which has documented 65,000 violent deaths so far. It used to be that we did most of the killing, but now of course it’s the rebels’ bombs and suicide runs that account for most of it.

Nevertheless, IBC noted in a March 2007 rundown:

Coalition-caused deaths.

Coalition forces, principally US as well as some UK, were identified to have killed at least 536 Iraqi civilians in year four (excluding a major incident in Najaf in January which is still under investigation by IBC). This compares with 370 in year three. If 536 seems insignificant in light of the overall total, consider for a moment what it would mean if in your country there were, on average, three incidents a week in which a foreign army killed civilians, including the killing of a 5-yr-old girl and entire families with their children. Would this army be a stabilising influence?

Check out the batch of Iraq death claims yourself at this ACLU page; there’s even a search engine on civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The same kind of destabilizing is happening in Afghanistan, where Hamid Karzai’s government is shakier all the time. This morning’s L.A. Times story notes:

After more than five years of increasingly intense warfare, the conflict in Afghanistan reached a grim milestone in the first half of this year: U.S. troops and their NATO allies killed more civilians than insurgents did, according to several independent tallies. . . .

But the growing toll is causing widespread disillusionment among the Afghan people, eroding support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and exacerbating political rifts among NATO allies about the nature and goals of the mission in Afghanistan.

More than 500 Afghan civilians have been reported killed this year, and the rate has dramatically increased in the last month.

The Times story tries to be fair:

Still, Western military leaders argue that any comparison of casualties caused by Western forces and by the Taliban is fundamentally unfair because there is a clear moral distinction to be made between accidental deaths resulting from combat operations and deliberate killings of innocents by militants.

“No [Western] soldier ever wakes up in the morning with the intention of harming any Afghan citizen,” said Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “If that does inadvertently happen, it is deeply, deeply regretted.”

Well, it’s not true that no Western soldier wakes up in the morning with the intention of harming a civilian. How about the Abu Ghraib tortures, which my colleague Graham Rayman recently revisited?

A better example is soldier Steven Green, leader of a rape crew that prosecutors say got drunk, put on masks, invaded an apartment, raped a 14-year-old girl and killed her and her whole family.

Green’s now facing the death penalty, so maybe at some point he’ll become incorporeal himself. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Entry Filed under: Political Waves