It’s BACK!

April 8th, 2008

Although more than 2/3rds of the country want out of Iraq now, no questions asked … and much of this presidential nomination has to do with the war and its future … it had gone underground with MSM in the last months. The escalation in American deaths, not to mention Iraqi, has increased sharply in the last few weeks as the civil war and the occupation has gone largely unreported except in Lefty media.

It’s back. It came along with another stump for money and the saintly David of Petraeus, to “report” to the Congress today. We have given up our ’surge’ for a ‘pause’ — ain’t that cute?? While we have more warriors on the ground now than we did when we were asked to increase numbers, everything is ‘fragile,’ saith Dave. Stay indefinitely, because its in our nations ‘best interests.’

It would be refreshing if someone would actually speak to those interests from the floor of Congress, but it won’t happen anytime soon. It would be a hell of a Moment to have someone talk openly about permanent bases, oil, minerals and the military/monetary influence of empire but … don’t hold your breath. Meanwhile, you’ve heard it all before — nothing new here, give us your money and move along.

Here’s the newest “plan,” as snipped from Froomkin:

Michael Abramowitz writes in The Washington Post that Bush administration debate over how quickly to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq came to a quick end at Camp Arifjan, an Army base near the Iraqi border in Kuwait, in January: “During an 80-minute session, the president questioned his top commander in Iraq on whether further troop reductions, beyond those planned through July, would compromise security gains. According to officials familiar with the exchange, Petraeus said he wanted to wait until the summer to evaluate conditions — and Bush made it clear he would support him and take any political heat.

“‘My attitude is, if he didn’t want to continue the drawdown, that’s fine with me,’ Bush said before television cameras later, with Petraeus standing by his side. ‘I said to the general: “If you want to slow her down, fine; it’s up to you.” ‘

“In the waning months of his administration, Bush has hitched his fortunes to those of his bookish four-star general, bypassing several levels of the military chain of command to give Petraeus a privileged voice in White House deliberations over Iraq, according to current and former administration officials and retired officers…

“Bush’s reliance on Petraeus has made other military officials uneasy, has rankled congressional Democrats and has created friction that helped spur the departure last month of Adm. William J. ‘Fox’ Fallon, who, while Petraeus’s boss as chief of U.S. Central Command, found his voice eclipsed on Iraq…

“‘It is part of Bush’s overall management style — to cede responsibility to a lower level and not look carefully at critical issues himself,’ said Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan-era official who has parted company with such longtime friends as Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney over the war. ‘Originally on Iraq, it was whatever Rumsfeld wanted. Then it was whatever Jerry Bremer did,’ he said, referring to the former Coalition Provisional Authority chief. ‘And now it is whatever Petraeus wants.’”

St. Dave the Petraeus, of course, wants to stay.

Here’s yer collection — a few reads and a number of links, if you want more details. Besides the death and loss of needed treasure and continued political inertia ’staying’ represents, it should be noted that Chuck Hagel’s comment that it will take a generation to restore our military is spot on; and the newest numbers on psychological damage resulting from stop loss and repeated deployments is alarming.

Meanwhile, Juan Cole reports that the militia that kicked ass and influenced over 1000 Iraqi soldiers to desert rather than kill their own is one of 28 such — with the Ayatollah’s not inclined to call them off. Air strikes have increased, although rarely reported — and the truth about what’s happening on the ground is not going to be reflected by anything Dave has to report; if you want truth, open Juan’s link and read the entire post.

It should be noted that the Europeans are concerned about the Iran rhetoric — and we shall have to see how much smoke on that issue pours from the machine; I’ve already heard mention on CNN analysis. The last few articles speak to what they see as more American hubris and insanity. If Iran, ever opportunistic, sees a US withdrawal as a way to jump into southern Iraq and spread their influence, that is indeed worrisome — but we already have an exhausted military; we’re struggling to keep a lid on two foolish wars, all these years later, let alone consider another. And, as always, our goals in all this remain suspect.

It was madness then, it’s madness now; as Will Pitt points out below, they lied us into it, and they’re lying now — there’s a civil war waiting to happen being impeded only by the bodies of our citizens and the money we can no longer spare to adventurism. And now those who have given no actual service to their country … war criminals, to be sure … are pointing us in the direction of Iran on the Petraeus bona fides. As to General Dave — when you get stuck in the cogs of a machine, you follow along; I suppose it’s in Dave’s tradition of militarism, but history will likely see him as one in a long list of useful lap dog.

By the way, McNasty confused Al Qaida and the Shiites again today as he questioned Petreaus — if the Shiites are AQ and the Sunnis are Iranian, no wonder he needs 100 years. These little lapses are being referred to as McCain’s “senior moments.” The ones he’ll have at three in the morning? Swell.

Bush’s war, below.

Jude

Remember: They Are Liars
William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Tuesday 08 April 2008

No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding Iraq for many years now.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, “enough to kill several million people,” according to a page on the White House web site titled Disarm Saddam Hussein.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 500 tons, which equals 1,000,000 pounds, of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of nearly 30,000 munitions capable of delivering these agents.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of several mobile biological weapons labs.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was operating an “advanced” nuclear weapons program.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq had been seeking “significant quantities” of uranium from Africa for use in this “advanced” nuclear weapons program.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes “suitable for nuclear weapons.”

They lied.

They claimed America needed to invade, overthrow and occupy Iraq in order to remove this menace from our world. “It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country,” went the White House line, “to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.”

They lied.

“Simply stated,” said Dick Cheney in August of 2002, “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

Liar.

“Right now,” said George W. Bush in September of 2002, “Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of nuclear weapons.”

Liar.

“We know for a fact,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in January of 2003, “that there are weapons there.”

Liar.

“We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction,” said Colin Powell in February of 2003, “is determined to make more.”

Liar.

“We know where they are,” said Donald Rumsfeld in March of 2003. “They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, south, west and north somewhat.”

Liar.

“The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about,” said Paul Wolfowitz in March of 2003. “Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator.”

Liar.

“No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were,” said Condoleezza Rice in June of 2003, “where they were stored.”

Liar.

“I have absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country,” said Gen. Tommy Franks in April of 2003. “Whether we will turn out, at the end of the day, to find them in one of the 2,000 or 3,000 sites we already know about or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will tell us, ‘Oh, well, there’s actually another site,’ and we’ll find it there, I’m not sure.”

Wrong.

“Before the war,” said Gen. Michael Hagee in May of 2003, “there’s no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.”

Wrong.

“Given time,” said Gen. Richard Myers in May of 2003, “given the number of prisoners now that we’re interrogating, I’m confident that we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction.”

Wrong.

“Do I think we’re going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do,” said Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton in May of 2003, “because I think there’s a lot of information out there.”

Wrong.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, is about to give testimony before the Senate regarding the current state of affairs in that battle-savaged country. He is a political general, one of many America has seen and heard over the last five years, one who would leap nude from the Capitol dome before telling the real truth about matters in Iraq … or who would speak using words fed to him by liars, and thus be wrong.

Remember: they lie. They all lie, from the top man down to the bottom. If their lips are moving, a lie is unfolding. If they say water is wet, get into the shower to make sure.

They lie.

Period.

End of file. ++

Don’t Betray Us, General: Admit That Iraq Keeps Getting Worse, And That The Surge Failed
Gen. David Petraeus ought to level with the American public about the dire state of affairs in Iraq in his testimony to Congress this week.
Tom Engelhardt, TheNation
April 8, 2008

They came, they saw, they deserted.

That, in short form, is the story of the recent Iraqi government “offensive” in Basra (and Baghdad). It took a few days, but the headlines on stories out of Iraq (”Can Iraq’s Soldiers Fight?”) now tell a grim tale and the information in them is worse yet. Stephen Farrell and James Glanz of the New York Times estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, or more than 4% of the force sent into Basra, “abandoned their posts” during the fighting, including “dozens of officers” and “at least two senior field commanders.”

Other pieces offer even more devastating numbers. For instance, Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londoo of the Washington Post suggest that 30% of government troops had “abandoned the fight before a cease-fire was reached.”

Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times offers 50% as an estimate for police desertions in the midst of battle in Baghdad’s vast Sadr City slum, a stronghold of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

In other words, after years of intensive training by American advisors and an investment of $22 billion dollars, US military spokesmen are once again left trying to put the best face on a strategic disaster (from which they were rescued thanks to negotiations between Muqtada al-Sadr and advisors to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, brokered in Iran by General Qassem Suleimani, a man on the U.S. Treasury Department’s terrorist watch list). Think irony. “From what we understand,” goes the lame American explanation, “the bulk of these [deserters] were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon.”

This week, with surge commander General David Petraeus back from Baghdad’s ever redder, ever more dangerous “Green Zone,” here are a few realities to keep in mind as he testifies before Congress:

1. The situation in Iraq is getting worse: Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise. The surge-ified, “less violent” Iraq the general has presided over so confidently is, in fact, a chaotic, violent tinderbox of city states, proliferating militias armed to the teeth, competing regions armed to the teeth, and competing religious factions armed to the teeth. Worse yet, under Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the U.S. has been the great proliferator. It has armed and funded close to 100,000 Sunnis organized into militias reportedly intent on someday destroying “the Iranians” (i.e. the Maliki government). It has also supported Shiite militias (aka the Iraqi army). In Basra, it took sides in a churning Shiite civil war. As Nir Rosen summed matters up in a typically brilliant piece in the Nation, Baghdad today is but a set of “fiefdoms run by warlords and militiamen,” a pattern the rest of the country emulates. “The Bush administration,” he adds, “and the U.S. military have stopped talking of Iraq as a grand project of nation-building, and the U.S. media have dutifully done the same.” Meanwhile, in the little noticed north, an Arab/Kurdish civil war over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and possibly Mosul as well, is brewing. This, reports Pepe Escobar of Asia Times, could be explosive. Think nightmare.

2. The Bush administration has no learning curve. Its top officials are unable to absorb the realities of Iraq (or the region) and so, like the generals of World War I, simply send their soldiers surging “over the top” again and again, with minor changes in tactics, to the same dismal end. Time.com’s Tony Karon, at his Rootless Cosmopolitan blog, caught this phenomenon strikingly, writing that Maliki’s failed offensive “shared the fate of pretty much every similar initiative by the Bush Administration and its allies and proxies since the onset of the ‘war on terror.’”

3. The “success” of the surge was always an expensive illusion, essentially a Ponzi scheme, for which payment will someday come due. To buy time for its war at home, the Bush administration put out IOUs in Iraq to be paid in future chaos and violence. It now hopes to slip out of office before these fully come due.

4. A second hidden surge, not likely to be discussed in the hearings this week, is now under way. U.S. air reinforcements, sent into Iraq over the last year, are increasingly being brought to bear. There will be hell to pay for this, too, in the future.

5. A reasonably undertaken but speedy total withdrawal from Iraq is the only way out of this morass (and, at this late date, it won’t be pretty); yet such a proposal isn’t even on the table in Washington. In fact, as McClatchy’s Warren Strobel and Nancy Youssef report, disaster in Basra has “silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon.”

Since April 2003, each administration misstep in Iraq has only led to worse missteps. Unfortunately, little of this will be apparent in this week’s shadowboxing among Washington’s “best and brightest,” who will again plunge into a “debate” filled with coded words, peppered with absurd fantasies, and rife with American symbolism that only an expert like professor of religion Ira Chernus is likely to decipher. “It’s time,” he writes, while considering the upcoming Petraeus testimony, “to insist that war should be seen not through the lens of myth and symbol, but as the brutal, self-defeating reality it is.” ++

Secret US Plan for Military Future in Iraq
Document outlines powers but sets no time limit on troop presence.
Seumas Milne, The Guardian UK
Tuesday 08 April 2008

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked “secret” and “sensitive”, is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit.

The authorisation is described as “temporary” and the agreement says the US “does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq”. But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces - including the British - in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries. The agreement is intended to govern the status of the US military and other members of the multinational force.

Following recent clashes between Iraqi troops and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Basra, and threats by the Iraqi government to ban his supporters from regional elections in the autumn, anti-occupation Sadrists and Sunni parties are expected to mount strong opposition in parliament to the agreement, which the US wants to see finalised by the end of July. The UN mandate expires at the end of the year.

One well-placed Iraqi Sunni political source said yesterday: “The feeling in Baghdad is that this agreement is going to be rejected in its current form, particularly after the events of the last couple of weeks. The government is more or less happy with it as it is, but parliament is a different matter.”

It is also likely to prove controversial in Washington, where it has been criticised by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has accused the administration of seeking to tie the hands of the next president by committing to Iraq’s protection by US forces.

The defence secretary, Robert Gates, argued in February that the planned agreement would be similar to dozens of “status of forces” pacts the US has around the world and would not commit it to defend Iraq. But Democratic Congress members, including Senator Edward Kennedy, a senior member of the armed services committee, have said it goes well beyond other such agreements and amounts to a treaty, which has to be ratified by the Senate under the constitution.

Administration officials have conceded that if the agreement were to include security guarantees to Iraq, it would have to go before Congress. But the leaked draft only states that it is “in the mutual interest of the United States and Iraq that Iraq maintain its sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence and that external threats to Iraq be deterred. Accordingly, the US and Iraq are to consult immediately whenever the territorial integrity or political independence of Iraq is threatened.”

Significantly - given the tension between the US and Iran, and the latter’s close relations with the Iraqi administration’s Shia parties - the draft agreement specifies that the “US does not seek to use Iraq territory as a platform for offensive operations against other states”.

General David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq, is to face questioning from all three presidential candidates on Capitol Hill today when he reports to the Senate on his surge strategy, which increased US forces in Iraq by about 30,000 last year.

Both Clinton and Democratic rival Barack Obama are committed to beginning troop withdrawals from Iraq. Republican senator John McCain has pledged to maintain troop levels until the country is secure. ++

4 US Troops Killed;
Hundreds Flee Baghdad Clashes;
Ayatollahs Decline to Ban Militia
Juan Cole, InformedComment
Tuesday, April 08, 2008

I am always astounded at the combination of unrealistic optimism and foolish gullibility that marks political discourse on the Right in Washington. We were being told by Glen Lowry at the National Review that Sadr was on the ropes and on the verge of disbanding the Mahdi Army because the other political factions had turned on him, and that the others had had their militias join the regular security forces.

So let us get this straight. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army fought off thousands of regular Iraqi army troops in Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps thousands of those troops deserted rather than fight. So the Mahdi Army won big and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lost. Also the US military trainers of the Iraqi troops lost face.

So the next thing we hear is that al-Maliki is talking big and demanding that the Mahdi Army be dissolved. Usually you get to talk big if you win the military battle, not if you lose…

[open link for entire post]

Cost of Occupation in Iraq: $3 Trillion Estimate Was Too Low
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, Comment Is Free
April 8, 2008

Would You Close Your School To Pay For Iraq?
Bill Scher, OurFuture
April 8th, 2008
[find out how much your community is paying for the Iraq war here]

Anxiety Rises Over Vulnerable Housing In Iraqi Green Zone
Paul Converse died after his Green Zone trailer was attacked.
Sholnn Freeman, Washington Post
Tuesday, April 8, 2008

More Time for More of the Same
NYT Editorial
4.8.08

Ten Questions for General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker
Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, HuffPo
April 7, 2008

Surprising Political Endorsements By U.S. Troops
American Soldiers Speak Out About Their Presidential Endorsements
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC News
April 7, 2008

More Army recruits require waivers
Percentage with conduct history doubles since ‘04
Jim Michaels, USA TODAY

Iran joined militias in battle for Basra
Sarah Baxter and Marie Colvin, The Times UK
06/04/04

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.

Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.

Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.

Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”

US defence chiefs are concerned that the troop surge has overstretched the military. Admiral Mike McMullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warned that the army and marines were at risk of crossing an “invisible red line” if the burden on forces remained. He said deployments of 15 months had to be reduced to a year “as fast as possible”.

Petraeus is likely to announce that combat tours will be reduced from 15 months to 12 months.

The number of US troops in Iraq is set to fall from 160,000 to 140,000 by July, but Petraeus is expected to recommend an indefinite pause in further troop cuts.

Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric, has called for 1m people to march on Baghdad on Wednesday – the fifth anniversary of the fall of the capital – when Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, will be briefing Congress.

A senior Iraqi official who met Petraeus last week said, “It will be difficult to show that the situation is improving.” Another Iraqi source described the US general as “furious” that al-Maliki moved against the militias into Basra without consultation and had to rely on US forces to bail him out.

Abu Ahmed, a senior military commander with the Awakening, the Sunni tribal movement cooperating with US forces, said progress was largely the result of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army ceasefire.

“When the Mahdi Army decides to resume its activities, neither the American troops nor the Iraqi government will be able to stop it,” he said. ++

Additional reporting: Hala Jaber

US/IRAQ: Petraeus Testimony to Defend False “Proxy War” Line
Gareth Porter, IPS
4/7/08

WASHINGTON - A key objective of the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus this week will be to defend the George W. Bush administration’s strategic political line that it is fighting an Iranian “proxy war” in Iraq.

Based on preliminary indications of his spin on the surprisingly effective armed resistance to the joint U.S.-Iraqi “Operation Knights Assault” in Basra, Petraeus will testify that it was caused by Iran through a group of rogue militiamen who had split off from Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and came under Iranian control.

But the U.S. military’s contention that “rogue elements” have been carrying out the resistance to coalition forces was refuted by Sadr himself in an interview with al-Jazeera aired Mar. 29 in which he called for the release from U.S. detention of the individual previously identified by Petraeus as the head of the alleged breakaway faction.

The idea of Iranian-backed “rogue” Shiite militia groups undermining Sadr’s efforts to pursue a more moderate course was introduced by the U.S. military command in early 2007. These alleged Iranian proxies were called “Special Groups” — a term that came not from Iran or the Shiites themselves but from the Bush administration.

In April, after U.S. forces captured a former spokesman for Sadr, Qais al-Khazali, Petraeus himself announced that they had detained “the head of the secret cell network, the extremist secret cells,” he said. Petraeus referred to it as “the Khazali network”.

U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner asserted in early July that Khazali’s network was a “Special Group” which was financed, armed and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and in some instances was even “directed” by it. He said Iran was using a Hezbollah operative to organise such groups to do its bidding in Iran.

The identification of Khazali as head of a “rogue” faction was highly suspect, however. One of Sadr’s most trusted aides, Khazali had played a key role in recruitment for the Mahdi Army in its formative stage in 2003. He had gone underground in late 2004, just after heavy fighting in which the Mahdi Army had suffered heavy casualties and just as Sadr was entering into a long period of retreat from military operations.

In a Mar. 30, 2007 press briefing, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero of the U.S. Joint Staff said both Khazali and his brother were linked with the “Sadr organisation”.

A pro-war military blogger named Bill Roggio, who maintains close relations with the U.S. command in Baghdad, revealed in February 2007 that the real purpose of the line about Iranian-controlled “Special Groups” was to facilitate Petraeus’s strategy of dividing the Mahdi Army. “The ‘rogue element’ narrative provides Mahdi Army fighters and commanders an ‘out’,” wrote Roggio. A Mahdi Army unit commander could either “choose to oppose the government and be targeted,” he observed, “or step aside and join the political process.”

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s first comment on the armed resistance in Basra in a Mar. 26 interview emphatically denied that the forces resisting the Iraqi-U.S. operation represented al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

“What you’re seeing there is not a rising by Jaish al-Mahdi [Mahdi Army],” Crocker insisted. It was “a subset of Jaish al-Mahdi, the so called ’special groups’ that really are basically just criminal militias that are the difficulty here,” according to Crocker.

An article by neoconservative military historian Kimberly Kagan in the Wall Street Journal Apr. 3 suggests, however, that Petraeus has slightly reformulated the proxy war line in light of the obvious role played by the Mahdi Army itself in limiting the advance of the U.S.-Iraqi operation.

Kagan is married to Fred Kagan, one of the main author’s of Bush’s surge policy, and is a full member of the administration’s team for conveying its political-military thinking to the elite public. Her article evidently reflects conversations with Petraeus and other officials in Baghdad during the previous week.

Kagan, unlike Crocker on Mar. 26, makes no effort to deny that the Mahdi Army itself was fully involved in the armed resistance in Basra, Baghdad and elsewhere. But she claims that it was “Special Groups” — not the Sadrists — who “coordinated the unrest and attacks of the regular Mahdi Army in the capital and provinces”.

Furthermore, Kagan describes the Mahdi Army as “a reserve from which the Special Groups can and will draw in crisis”. And Sadr himself is dismissed as ultimately a figurehead. “For all of his nationalist rhetoric,” writes Kagan, “Mr. Sadr is evidently not in control of his movement…”

The new version of the proxy war narrative still attributes ultimate control over the most powerful Shiite political-military force in the country to the shadowy “Special Groups”.

But in an interview with al-Jazeera taped just before the Basra operation was launched and broadcast on Mar. 29, Sadr demanded the release of Qais al-Khazali, whom Petraeus had identified as the head of the alleged “Special Group” that had broken away from Sadr, from U.S. custody.

That confirms the earlier indications that Khazali was never involved in a breakaway faction, and that what the U.S. command refers to as “Iranian-backed Special Groups” never existed.

The Mar. 30 story by McClatchy’s Leila Fadel on the ending of the Basra crisis shows that Iran’s real strategy in Iraq bears no resemblance to the one portrayed in the U.S. proxy war narrative. Fadel reported that Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of the IRGC, brokered a ceasefire with Sadr after representatives of the Shiite parties now supporting the al-Maliki government traveled secretly to Qom, Iran Mar. 29-30, to ask for his intervention.

Suleimani’s role in reducing the violence in Basra underlines the reality that Iranian power in Shiite Iraq is based on its having worked with and provided assistance to all the Shiite parties and factions. Iran’s determination to stay on good terms with all the Shiite factions has made it the primary arbiter of conflicts among them.

Iran has no reason to look for a small splinter group to advance its interests when it already enjoys a relationship of strategic cooperation with the government itself.

The Madhi Army has received training in both Lebanon and in Iran and has undoubtedly used financial assistance from Iran to procure weapons. But Sadr revealed in his al-Jazeera interview that he had told Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on a trip to Iran that he did not agree with the “political and military interests” that Tehran had pursued in Iraq. That was an apparent reference to Iran’s pronounced tilt toward Sadr’s Shiite rivals who remain in power with joint U.S.-Iranian support.

Ironically, when Iranian President Mahmound Ahmadinejad visited Iraq in early March, both al-Maliki and Supreme Council chief Abdul Aziaz al-Hakim publicly dissociated themselves from the U.S. “proxy war” line, insisting that Iran was restraining Sadr rather than egging him on.

The interest of Bush administration in keeping the proxy war line alive has nothing to do with Iraqi realities, however. As a strategic weapon for justifying the administration’s policies toward both Iraq and Iran, the theme of Iranian interference through “Special Groups” is bound to be a central thread in the testimony by both Petreaus Congressional testimony next week. ++

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes
Damien McElroy, The Telegraph UK
04/04/08

British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government.

A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies.

The outbreak of Iraq’s worst violence in 18 months last week with fighting in Basra and the daily bombardment of the Green Zone diplomatic enclave, demonstrated that although the Sunni Muslim insurgency is dramatically diminished, Shia forces remain in a strong position to destabilise the country.

“Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on the American effort in Iraq,” a British official said. “Iran is waging a war in Iraq. The idea that America can’t fight a war on two fronts is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves,” he said.

“Petraeus has put emphasis on America having to fight the battle on behalf of Iraq. In his report he can frame it in terms of our soldiers killed and diplomats dead in attacks on the Green Zone.”

Tension between Washington and Tehran is already high over Iran’s covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has not ruled out military strikes.

In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran, Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. “The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets,” he said. “All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts.”

The humiliation of the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki by the Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fighting in Basra last week triggered top-level warnings over Iran’s strength in Iraq.

Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, will answer questions from American political leaders at the US Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday before travelling to London to brief Gordon Brown.

The Wall Street Journal said last week that the US war effort in Iraq must have a double goal.

“The US must recognise that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq,” wrote the military analyst Kimberly Kagan.

There are signs that targeting Iran would unite American politicians across the bitter divide on Iraq. “Iran is the bull in the china shop,” said Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.” ++

“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

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves