TW3 — and declarations

That Was The Week That Was … mind-mush. Who said what, who meant what, who did what and to whom. In that regard, plaudits to the Church of England and boo/hiss to the Catholics. Moreover, Peace to those who left the planet … and to those of us who stuck around.

As for declarations, last week our beloved and never-wrong General Petraeus declared that he wasn’t prepared to declare victory in Iraq EVER — thus pitting himself against John McDigbat who refuses to leave until he can. So, it’s left to me, citizen-patriot and political blogger to do it FOR THEM!

We did what we [sic] went to do — we gave the Iraqi’s their own country to do with as they wish. And despite the Bushie attempt to keep him gelded, Malaki has evidently “grown a set,” to quote Amy Poehler’s version of Hillary Clinton, and he and his people wish to deal more with Iran than us, so I can only say:

Good luck with that, Iraq … I mean, they share your value system and everything, and they CAN’T be any more duplicitous than we are! I’m sorry you couldn’t have had an Obama to deal with, rather than a Bush … but … spilt milk, and all that. Apologies from the American people.

Yes, I know the Iranian’s are still a big nut to crack for democracy-obsessed, oil-coveting squirrels everywhere, and I’m sure that when we stop paying the rural Iraqi’s to fight, it will all go wonky. But — that’s the way democracy works, isn’t it?

So, given the obvious, I’m declaring Victory in Iraq, cancelling the occupation and ordering all our warriors home — what’s left of them, anyway.

I mean … that’s the only sane option, and I’m speaking for the mentally competent, here. So today I also declare Sanity, given the Palin disenchantment and McGaffe’s current problems — and I’m tapping my foot here, waiting for the world to catch up.

Bonus today is little Dennis of the Big Heart, bottom.

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY
September 16, 2008

Stocks on Wall Street and other exchanges throughout the
world dropped as brokerage Merrill Lynch was bought by
Bank of America, insurance giant AIG sought tens of
billions of dollars in government loans, and investment
bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. John McCain and
Barack Obama suspended political advertising and appeared
together at the World Trade Center site to commemorate the
seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and
former Massachusetts governor Jane Swift, chair of the
Palin Truth Squad, demanded that Obama apologize for
saying that McCain’s promise to change Washington amounted
to putting “lipstick on a pig” and insisted that the pig
was Sarah Palin. “As far as I know,” said Swift, “she’s
the only one of the four… who wears lipstick.” Joe Biden
made public the last ten years of his tax returns, showing
that his average annual income was $244,000, of which less
than half of one percent went to charity, and suggested to
a group in New Hampshire that Hillary Clinton “might have
been a better pick” to run with Obama. Reporters
discovered that the Alaskan governor’s official jet, which
Palin claimed to have sold on eBay, was in fact removed
from the website and sold, at a loss, to one of Palin’s
campaign contributors; McCain announced that “Innovators”
who raised more than $250,000 during the primary season
were eligible to become “Super Innovators” if they raised
an additional $250,000 for the general election; and
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was forced to
apologize after his Conservative party posted a video on
its website showing an animated puffin defecating on
Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

Thousands of people remained trapped without food, water,
or electricity on Texas’s Galveston Island in the
aftermath of Hurricane Ike, and at least 25 people were
killed and another 140 injured when a Metrolink commuter
train crashed head-on into a freight train in the San
Fernando Valley. Ninety-one-year-old Morton Sobell, who
served almost two decades in Alcatraz and other federal
prisons on espionage charges, publicly admitted for the
first time that he had spied for the Soviets. He
implicated his codefendant Julius Rosenberg but insisted
that Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed along with her
husband, was never actively involved in espionage. “She
knew what he was doing,” Sobell said, “but what was she
guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.” An Italian prosecutor
sought to charge actress Sabrina Guzzanti with “offending
the honor of the sacred and inviolable person” of Pope
Benedict XVI; Guzzanti had suggested that “within 20 years
the Pope will be where he ought to be–in Hell, tormented
by great big gay devils, and very active ones, not passive
ones.” Kim Jong-Il’s absence from a ceremony celebrating
the 60th anniversary of North Korean independence
intensified speculation that the leader may have suffered
a serious stroke in recent weeks. Australian authorities
were in search of a boy filmed punching and kicking a
stunned kangaroo.

American officials confirmed that in July President Bush
gave secret permission to American Special Operations
forces to perform ground attacks against the Taliban and
Al Qaeda in Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani
government. “Orders,” said one official, “have been
issued.” The Interior Department’s inspector general
released multiple reports describing a “culture of ethical
failure” at the Department’s Minerals Management Service,
which collects about $10 billion each year in royalties
from offshore drilling in government waters; a program
director at the Department admitted to having sex with and
buying cocaine from subordinates. Author David Foster
Wallace committed suicide, and the Large Hadron Collider
commenced operations, firing a beam of protons through a
17-mile-long tunnel that runs under the Franco-Swiss
border. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow,’” said an engineer. “‘It
actually worked!’” Charles Darwin received a formal
apology from the Church of England for its initial
rejection of his theory of evolution 150 years after the
publication of “On the Origin of Species.” Police in
Fresno apprehended a man for breaking into a house,
rubbing cooking spices on the body of one sleeping
resident, and assaulting another resident with a
sausage. Researchers in England determined that women are
up to 50 percent more likely than men to experience
nightmares, and scientists at the Norwegian Polar
Institute were surprised to find the partial remains of a
polar bear in the stomach of a Greenland shark. “There
is,” said a researcher, “far easier prey to be found.”

– Christopher R. Beha
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/09/WeeklyReview2008-09-16

Iraq’s Nouri Maliki breaking free of U.S.
As the prime minister asserts his independence, Iran gains influence and America loses some.
Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times
September 16, 2008

BAGHDAD — Once dependent on American support to keep his job, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has consolidated power and is asserting his independence, sharply reducing Washington’s influence over the future of Iraq.

Iraq’s police and army now operate virtually on their own, and with Washington’s mandate from the United Nations to provide security here expiring in less than four months, Maliki is insisting on imposing severe limits on the long-term U.S. military role, including the withdrawal of American forces from all cities by June.

America’s eroded leverage has left Iran, with its burgeoning trade and political ties, in a better position to affect Iraqi government policies.

It also means that whichever U.S. presidential candidate is elected — Republican John McCain, who insists on what some see as a vaguely defined American victory in Iraq, or Democrat Barack Obama, who has long called for a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops — will have less ability to sway Baghdad than did the Bush administration.

“If the next president waits too long, our diminishing leverage will likely disappear altogether, leaving us with two strategic options: resign ourselves to ‘ride the tiger’ — that is, accept that we have to simply accept what the Iraqi government does and, at most, mitigate or help buffer the consequences — or jump off the tiger altogether,” said Iraq expert Colin Kahl of the Center for a New American Security.

The Maliki government’s assertion of power has brought an end to the aggressive approach of the U.S. during its troop buildup last year. American forces frequently intervened in warfare between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. They even challenged Maliki’s Shiite-led government by striking alliances with former Sunni insurgents and arresting Shiite police and army commanders implicated in sectarian violence. Since enhancing his strength in a successful spring offensive against a rival Shiite militia, Maliki has insisted that all American troops leave by 2011, unless Iraq requests otherwise. Shiite officials give mixed signals on whether they would ask U.S. military advisors to stay.

During the summer, the prime minister shuttered a joint committee and demanded the U.S. military hand him jurisdiction over dealings with Sunni-dominated paramilitary units.

U.S. officials here acknowledge that their leverage is diminished. Active Iraqi army units came to outnumber U.S. troops in 2007 and started reporting back to Maliki directly through newly established regional command centers.

“They have more capability, so they don’t have to listen to us as much as they used to,” said a U.S. Embassy official who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

“We always knew this time would come,” added the official, saying previous preparations to hand over power had been sabotaged by dysfunction in the Iraqi government.

The shift is largely rooted in Maliki’s military victory against the radical Mahdi Army militia in the southern port city of Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City district. The offensive in Basra, launched against the recommendations of the U.S. military, reinvented the prime minister as a decisive commander in chief.

The turnaround came only months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rescued Maliki from political oblivion. In December, Rice met with leaders from Iraq’s Kurdish bloc, the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, which had sought the tacit blessing of the White House to vote him out of power. Instead, Rice told the leaders that Maliki continued to have Bush’s support, according to several Iraqi officials familiar with the meeting.

In March, Iran intervened on Maliki’s behalf. Iranian leaders convinced the head of the Mahdi Army, anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, to end his militia’s fighting in Basra after an Iraqi delegation traveled to Iran and met with senior Iranian officials and Sadr, according to a participant, lawmaker Ali Adeeb, a leader in Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party. A second trip to Tehran in May by Adeeb and others had a similar effect on Mahdi Army members fighting in Sadr City.

“Iran’s help is paying off even now,” Adeeb told The Times. “Sadr’s speeches and announcements are more moderate than they used be.”

In June, Maliki made his own visit to Tehran, a trip coinciding with a more hostile stance by the Iraqi government toward the Americans.

During that visit, Maliki’s office ordered government employees not to attend a twice-yearly conference scheduled to take place in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, the same week. Iraqis had been expected to lead the majority of panels, but at least 15 Iraqi speakers skipped the event.

In August, Maliki shut down an Iraqi-American committee on basic services for security in Baghdad. “He terminated the group, saying there were too many Americans,” said a Western advisor to the Iraqi government.

With more than 146,000 troops still on the ground in Iraq, the U.S. retains a sort of military veto power over any efforts to oust them before the White House is ready. America’s ability to provide air power and help build an Iraqi air force also remain an enticing lure.

But Maliki and other Shiite leaders are juggling intense pressures, in part because of their close relationship with Iran. Maliki appears particularly leery of being branded an American puppet. This has been most prevalent in negotiations over the U.N. security agreement, meant to provide a legal mechanism for American troops to stay beyond this year.

“The prime minister has shown everyone he means business,” said lawmaker Sami Askari, a close advisor to Maliki. “Not everything America wants, America can get.”

The Iraqis are prepared to simply ask for an extension of the mandate of one year or less if Washington doesn’t agree to Iraq’s terms, said lawmaker Sheik Humam Hamoodi.

So far, the White House has balked at Iraq’s demands for an unconditional U.S. troop withdrawal date and for Iraqi courts to have some jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers.

Asked about the prime minister’s tilt, the U.S. Embassy official said Maliki was under pressure from Sadr and Iran.

“I don’t think he is anti-American per se,” the diplomat said. “I think he is trying to balance a variety of domestic and external pressures and he judges the American relationship from that context.”

Maliki has pressed demands that the Americans had previously rebuffed, notably over the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq program, made up mainly of former Sunni insurgents. Though the program has received credit for the decrease in violence across Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government has resisted incorporating the force’s members into the police and vowed to prosecute some leaders for past criminal acts.

Last week, U.S. officials announced they would hand the Iraqi government control of the estimated 54,000 fighters in Baghdad at the beginning of October. The Americans had previously shielded prominent Sunni paramilitary leaders from arrest warrants based on doubts about the charges.

Asked whether such fighters could be guaranteed a fair trial, the American diplomat said, “No, but we are in a transition period.”

Some Iraqis are worried about America’s deference toward Maliki.

“Unfortunately, the American government is not an active player in the Iraqi affairs as they were before. They participated previously in successful projects like national reconciliation and establishing the Sons of Iraq, but now they are only acting as spectators,” said Salim Abdullah Jabouri, a spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the main Sunni bloc in parliament.

At the same time, Iraqi officials complain about the United States’ failure to create a lasting foundation beyond its military presence. Iran has created more than $2 billion in trade with its neighbor, including fuel and electricity exports.

“The Iranians will stay in this place forever till the Judgment Day and the Americans will withdraw,” said Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, a senior Shiite politician. “The Americans built their status on their military and their political viewpoints. They didn’t try to find shared lines of interest or common ground. . . . The Iranians dealt with this matter in a more positive way.” ++

The Real Reason Bush Spied on Maliki
Although Bob Woodward doesn’t mention it in his book, the true aim of the U.S. has been to figure out Baghdad’s real relationship with Iran.
Patrick Cockburn, Independent UK
September 8, 2008

The United States has spied extensively on Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi government leaders, the American investigative journalist Bob Woodward has revealed.

“We know everything he says,” the journalist quotes one source as saying, in his fourth book on George Bush’s presidency. The U.S. administration’s decision to spy continually on Mr. Maliki shows deep distrust of the Iraqi leadership by the U.S. The surveillance took place even while Mr. Maliki was speaking to Mr. Bush by video-phone once a week.

The Iraqi government reacted furiously today and said it would ask the United States for an explanation, although Mr. Maliki and other Iraqi leaders are unlikely to be shocked or surprised that the U.S. has been spying on them. “If it is true … it reflects that there is no trust,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

The prime aim of U.S. espionage targeting Iraqi officials has been to find out the true relations between the Baghdad government and Iran, though this motive is not referred to in Mr Woodward’s book. Washington has been deeply suspicious of Mr. Maliki and his predominantly Shia government for maintaining close relations with Tehran even while the U.S. was threatening to go to war with Iran.

At one moment in 2006-7 U.S. officials in Iraq were complaining privately that they could not get enough information about more sophisticated and lethal roadside bombs killing American troops because so much of the U.S. intelligence effort was focussed on the Iraqi government. “Hundreds of our people were doing nothing but listening to Iraqi officials,” said a source.

The American troop ’surge’ of 2007 when 30,000 additional U.S. troops were sent to Iraq to pursue more aggressive tactics was not the main reason for the fall in violence in Iraq over the last sixteen months says Mr. Woodward in The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008.

Instead he claims that “ground breaking” new covert techniques enabled U.S. military and intelligence officials to find, target and kill insurgent leaders in rebel groups, particularly in al-Qa’ida in Iraq. In its summary of Mr. Woodward’s book, to be published on Monday, the Washington Post, of which he is associate editor, says he does not reveal the code names of this assassination campaign because of national security concerns.

The origin and degree of success of the ’surge’ is politically important in the U.S. presidential election because the Republican candidate John McCain says that he was an early advocate of the strategy and it has brought the U.S. close to military victory.

Denying this, Mr Woodward concludes that there were four factors leading to the reduction in violence in Iraq: covert operations, troop reinforcements, the decision by the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to restrain his Mehdi Army militia, and the rise of the Awakening Movement in the Sunni community opposing al-Qa’ida in Iraq.

There certainly was an increase in assassinations of Sunni rebel leaders in early 2007 timed to coincide with the beginning of the “surge.” But the weakening of al-Qa’ida came primarily because al-Qa’ida alienated the Sunni by trying to take full control of the anti-American resistance and also provoked a sectarian war with the Shia in which the Sunni were largely defeated.

Despite Mr. McCain’s claim that the surge has wholly altered the military picture in Iraq, the Pentagon has recommended that the 146,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq be reduced by only 8,000 men by next March, White House officials said today. The number of American soldiers in Iraq at that time will be slightly greater than before the surge began in January 2007.

Mr Bush and his military commanders regarded each other with mutual distrust prior to the appointment of Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. George Casey’s successor, as U.S. commander in Iraq. “Casey had long concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself,” Mr. Woodward writes. “He later told a colleague in private that he had the impression that Bush reflected ‘the radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, “Kill the bastard! Kill the bastards! And you’ll succeed.”

Mr. Woodward writes very much from a Washington viewpoint even where he is critical of the White House. He assumes that little happens in Iraq that is not initiated by the U.S. In the summary of the book published so far there is little mention of the central role of Iran and the Shia-Sunni conflict inside Iraq in determining the level of violence.

The prime minister spent long years of exile in Syria and his most important ally in Iraq is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq which was founded on Iran’s initiative in Tehran in 1982. They will be used to Syrian and Iranian security monitoring their activities.

Overall, the extent of U.S. surveillance of its Shia and Kurdish allies in Iraq reveals a deep anxiety in Washington that in supporting a government in Baghdad dominated by Shia Islamic parties it has promoted a government that is closer to Iran than the U.S. ++

Iran Now Iraq’s Main Trading Partner
Bilateral trade between Iraq and Iran has boomed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003
Hazem al-Jumaili, Azzaman
September 8, 2008

Iraqis snap up Iranian goods because they are cheaper than imported counterparts, Baghdad traders said.

They said Iran has flooded Iraqi markets with cheap commodities, which, despite their low quality in comparison to imports from western countries, meet basic needs of unsophisticated Iraqi customers.

Iranian goods even rival those from China, a country known for its considerably cheap exports.

“Almost all Iraqi traders have now shifted their attention to Iran,” said Mohammed Abbas, a Baghdad trader.

He said Iran, rather than China, has become the source of household utensils sold in Iraq.

Iran has several border points with Iraq. There are good paved roads linking the countries and traders, businessmen and industrialists from both sides can travel without restrictions.

Iranian air conditioners and coolers are sold at prices within reach of Iraqi civil servants, the country’s middle class.

For example, an Iranian-made small power generator could be fetched at about $100 while those from South East Asia may hit more than $300.

It is not clear whether Iran subsidies goods destined for Iraq. But what is clear is that bilateral trade has mushroomed to billions of dollars from almost a trickle before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Alaa Hussain said it was wrong to say Iranian goods were all of a low quality. “When comparing the price with the service you get, they are worth buying,” he said.

He said Iran has recently been exporting low-voltage household utensils bearing in mind the scarcity of electricity in the country.

Taleb Mohammed said Iranian industrialists seem to have properly analyzed the Iraqi market. “The electrical goods they ship now can be operated by small power generators which are also Iranian and have almost invaded the market,” he said.

Iran is now Iraq’s top trading partner. Iranian firms execute multi-million dollar projects mainly in the northern and southern parts of Iraq.

Iranian contractors are involved in infrastructure projects like power, health and housing. ++

Iraq Takes Aim at U.S.-Tied Sunni Groups’ Leaders
Ashley Gilbertson, New York Times
8/22/08
[Thanks, Airean]

BAGHDAD — The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is driving out many leaders of Sunni citizen patrols, the groups of former insurgents who joined the American payroll and have been a major pillar in the decline in violence around the nation.

In restive Diyala Province, United States and Iraqi military officials say there were orders to arrest hundreds of members of what is known as the Awakening movement as part of large security operations by the Iraqi military. At least five senior members have been arrested there in recent weeks, leaders of the groups say.

West of Baghdad, former insurgent leaders contend that the Iraqi military is going after 650 Awakening members, many of whom have fled the once-violent area they had kept safe. While the crackdown appears to be focused on a relatively small number of leaders whom the Iraqi government considers the most dangerous, there are influential voices to dismantle the American backed movement entirely.

“The state cannot accept the Awakening,” said Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheer, a leading Shiite member of Parliament. “Their days are numbered.”

The government’s rising hostility toward the Awakening Councils amounts to a bet that its military, feeling increasingly strong, can provide security in former guerrilla strongholds without the support of these former Sunni fighters who once waged devastating attacks on United States and Iraqi targets. It also is occurring as Awakening members are eager to translate their influence and organization on the ground into political power.

But it is causing a rift with the American military, which contends that any significant diminution of the Awakening could result in renewed violence, jeopardizing the substantial security gains in the past year. United States commanders say that the practice, however unconventional, of paying the guerrillas has saved the lives of hundreds of American soldiers.

“If it is not handled properly, we could have a security issue,” said Brig. Gen. David Perkins, the senior military spokesman in Iraq. “You don’t want to give anybody a reason to turn back to Al Qaeda.” Many Sunni insurgents had previously been allied with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other extremist groups.

Even before the new pressure from the government, many Awakening members were growing frustrated — and at an especially delicate time. United States and Iraqi negotiators have just completed a draft security agreement that next year, Iraqi officials say, would substantially pull American forces back from cities and towns to be replaced by Iraqi security forces.

Awakening members complain, with rising bitterness, that the government has been slow to make good on its promises to recruit tens of thousands of its members into those security forces. General Perkins said only 5,200 members had been recruited in a force of about 100,000.

“Some people from the government encouraged us to fight against Al Qaeda, but it seems that now that Al Qaeda is finished they don’t want us anymore,” said Abu Marouf, who, according to American officials, was a powerful guerrilla leader in the 1920s Revolutionary Brigade west of Baghdad. “So how can you say I am not betrayed?”

After he said he discovered his name on lists of 650 names that an Iraqi Army brigade was using to arrest Awakening members west of Baghdad, Abu Marouf fled south of Falluja. His men, he said, “sacrificed and fought against Al Qaeda, and now the government wants to catch them and arrest them.”

The Shiite-dominated government has never been pleased with the continuing American plan to finance and organize Sunni insurgents into militia guards, charging that they will stop fighting only as long as it serves their interests.

“These people are like cancer, and we must remove them,” said Brig. Gen. Nassir al-Hiti, commander of the Iraqi Army’s 5,000-strong Muthanna Brigade, which patrols west of Baghdad, said of the Awakening leaders on his list for arrest.

The Awakening began in western Anbar Province in 2006 as the violence in Iraq peaked and Sunni tribal leaders began feeling pressure from all sides, and then spread around the country as a means of Sunni self-preservation.

The United States military focused its operations on Sunni insurgent groups, cooperating meantime with the Shiite-led government. The bodies of dozens of Sunnis surfaced on streets every morning, the victims of Shiite death squads. And many Sunnis themselves grew disgusted with the large number of civilian casualties in near-daily suicide bombings.

The American military began paying many members of the Awakening movement as the program expanded, even including Shiite members who make up about one-fifth of the program. Now they are paid roughly $300 a month by the United States to guard checkpoints and buildings and — for those who used to be insurgents — to no longer blow up American convoys and shoot American troops.

Although the “surge” is often described as the turning point that led to lower violence, a number of American officers contend the Awakening that began well before the surge in 2006 in Anbar Province and continued in Baghdad last year was the most significant reason for the decline. In some places, American casualties plunged within weeks of the Sunnis joining with American forces.

Col. Kurt Pinkerton, the former American battalion commander who oversaw the Awakening program established west of Abu Ghraib last year, said it was critical to quelling violence.

“I don’t think that area would have been calmed without those guys,” he said, giving credit to three of the most important members, including Abu Marouf, who are now being tracked down by General Nassir.

General Nassir says he has orders to arrest Abu Marouf, whose older brother, Col. Faisal Ismail Hussein, was also a guerrilla leader before he became the Falluja police chief. General Nassir also says he has orders to arrest Abu Azzam and Abu Zachariyah, brothers who were leaders of the Islamic Army of Iraq but who were publicly hailed by Colonel Pinkerton and other American commanders last year for bringing relative peace to an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

The general says his orders come from the military’s Baghdad Operations Center, which he said is taking orders from Iraqi judicial authorities. He acknowledged some disenchanted fighters may take up arms again “like a drug addict who quits only to take drugs again.”

But he says that reconciliation is impossible and that he would quit before he ever worked with former insurgents with blood on their hands. “They committed crimes and attacked the Iraqi Army and the American Army, and there is no way to rehabilitate them,” he said. Despite the government’s new aggressiveness against the Awakening, the program is far from finished. While going after hundreds of leaders and people the government considers dangerous, relations remain largely good with Sunni tribal sheiks in Anbar, where the Awakening was born.

General Perkins also noted that American and Iraqi officials had tentatively agreed to a plan to hopefully transfer 58,000 American-paid militia guards this year onto Iraqi government payrolls under the command of the Baghdad Operation Center, which reports to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But he said the transfer will not happen until crucial issues are resolved, such as how militiamen are vetted and what sort of jobs or training programs they will eventually go into.

And while American officials are insistent that the program to pay militia guards continue to operate, General Perkins said it was not yet clear what recourse the military would have to prevent the Iraqi government from ending the program once it took control. “We don’t want this to be a dead-end, kick them to the curb kind of thing,” he said.

Despite the threat of arrest by General Nassir’s troops if he returns to his home village west Baghdad, Abu Azzam, who had been an Awakening leader between Abu Ghraib and Falluja, said he has been able to travel to Baghdad to meet with aides to Mr. Maliki to discuss how the Shiite-dominated government and former Sunni guerrillas might be able to reconcile.

“Our men worked hard and deserve appreciation and not punishment from the government,” he said.

He described the discussions as “not going well,” though he said some Maliki aides preferred a more conciliatory tack.

“For now, everything is stopped,” he said. He also said he feared the pullout of American troops, whom he saw as restraining the Shiite government from taken even harsher action against the Awakening. “America is the only one asking us not to fight the Maliki government.”

As part of the Awakening’s efforts to transform itself into a political movement, Abu Azzam has organized a political slate for the coming provincial elections and says he has renounced violence for good. He is optimistic that some former fighters will not return to armed conflict if the government refuses them jobs, he said.

But he acknowledged, “Part of them will fight the government if they are not recruited into the security forces.” ++

Reporting was contributed by Mohammed Husain from Baghdad and Ibrahim Bin Ali, Iraq; Riyadh Mohammed from Baghdad; Campbell Robertson from Diyala Province; Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan; and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Falluja, Ramadi and Diyala.

bonus

9/11: The Day America Embraced a Metaphor of War
We should not only remember 9/11. We should remember how the politicization of 9/11 locked us into a “war on terror” that has wrought more terror.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, The Nation
September 11, 2008

Before the Congress adjourns, I will bring forth a new proposal for the establishment of a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, which will have the power to compel testimony and gather official documents to reveal to the American people not only the underlying deception which has divided us, but in that process of truth seeking set our nation on a path of reconciliation.

We suffer in our remembrance of 9/11, because of the terrible loss of innocent lives on that grim day. We also suffer because 9/11 was seized as an opportunity to run a political agenda, which has set America on a course of the destruction of another nation and the destruction of our own Constitution. And we have become less secure as a result of the warped practice of pursing peace through the exercise of pre-emptive military strength.

It is not simply 9/11 that needs to be remembered. We also need to remember the politicization of 9/11 and the polarizing narrative which followed, locking us into endless conflict, a war on terror which has wrought further terror worldwide and which has severely damaged our standing worldwide as an honorable, compassionate nation. As we were all victims of 9/11, so we have become victims of the interpretation of 9/11.

Our government’s external response to 9/11 was to attack a nation which did not attack us. Indeed on the first anniversary of 9/11, the Bush Administration issued a well-publicized stern warning to Iraq, which was part of a campaign to induce people to believe Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

The deliberate, systematic connection of Iraq with 9/11 has led America into a philosophical and moral cul-de-sac as over one million Iraqis and over 4,155 U.S. soldiers have died in a war that will cost over $3 trillion. Additionally, soldiers from twenty-three other countries have died in the Iraq war.

We attempt to unite Iraq by further dividing it. We talk about restoring Iraq while taking steps to place control of its vast oil wealth in the hands of U.S. oil giants. And we intend to impose upon the Iraqi people the cost of rebuilding a country our government ruined, keeping a once-prosperous nation lashed to debt and poverty for a long, long time. Iraq has paid for 9/11. We all continue to pay for 9/11.

The heartbreaking loss of the lives and injuries to America troops further binds us to the Administration’s illogic of the Iraq War: We remember our troops’ sacrifice by demanding more sacrifice; we support our troops by continuing the war.

The dominant color of our new national security since 9/11 is neither red, white nor blue. Every day is orange. Every day, reminders of fear of 9/11 become banal. Yet we no longer hear the airport announcements nor see the orange-colored warnings because they have commonplace standards in our new national security state, as is the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and a host of invasions of privacy and diminution of civil liberties. The Constitution has been roundly attacked by the very people who took an oath to defend it.

There is a powerful desire across America for change, not necessarily from control by one political party to another, but a change from living with lies to living with truth.

Over two dozen nations, facing peril within and without, deeply divided by politics and war have travelled down a path of restoring civil society through a formal process of reconciliation. At some point within each of those countries it was understood that the way forward is shown through the light of truth. This process is not without pain because it requires a willingness to study evidence from which eyes had been averted and ears had been closed. But in the process of truth and reconciliation, nations found new strength, new resolve, and new commitment.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation enabled that nation to come to grips with its past through a public confessional, bringing forward those who committed crimes and having the power to grant amnesty for full disclosure of crimes against the people. Of course, our path may necessarily be different: High U.S. government officials stand accused in impeachment petitions of violating national and international law. Our continued existence as a democracy may depend upon how thoroughly we seek the truth. I will call upon the America people to join me in supporting this effort.

The truth can move us forward, as a unified whole, so that we can one day become a re-United States. 9/11 is the day the world changed. It is the day America embraced a metaphor of war. If we are open to truth and reconciliation, we may one day be able, once again, to embrace peace. ++

“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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