Healing Iraq

Same old, same new.

A senior Iraqi spy has accused the prime minister, Nour al-Maliki, of handing out thousands of guns to tribal leaders in a bid to win votes. The claim was made by Iraqi National Intelligence Service former spokesman, Saad al-Alusi, a week before Iraq's general election, in which allegations of vote buying and exorbitant handouts have become widespread.

Maliki, who faces a bitterly contested final week of campaigning ahead of the7 March poll, has been photographed handing out guns to supporters in southern Iraq, engraved with a personal message from his office. However he denies that the delivery of weapons, along with cash payments, were improper.

Alusi, who was the INIS spokesman until he was asked to move to another ministry eight days ago, said some 8,000 guns were ordered from a Serbian supplier at the end of 2008 for use by intelligence officers. However he claimed Maliki "denied our contract at the last minute and made his own contract of 10,000 pistols, which he has used as election propaganda for himself and his party.

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Muntadhar al-Zaidi

I have customized, high-detail maps of tribal groups and clans in Iraq and neighboring border areas for sale to researchers. There are several hundred different clans depicted on the map. Some lower quality previews here and here. Contact me for pricing and availability.

Who are these people offering to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi crude oil online at discount prices? Who is behind them? Who is allowing them to continue to do this?

من وراء هذه الجهات التي تبيع ملايين البراميل من النفط العراقي الخام على الانترنت بأسعار تعاونيه جدا؟

Meet the new Mohammed Sa'id al-Sahhaf

There is little to no coverage of this, but these eight young men were the security guards of the Zuwiyya branch of al-Rafidain Bank at the Jadiriya district of Baghdad. The small bank is located just across the river from the Green Zone and a few hundred yards away from the residences of Hakim, Adil Abdul Mahdi and Badr Brigade (now members of the Presidential Brigade) checkpoints.

They were tied up and killed execution-style by a group of officers who were members of Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi's security detail on their own turf in Jadiriya. The incident was carried out on July 28 after midnight. A huge portion of the stolen money ($4.5 million) was then located at the offices of al-'Adala (justice) newspaper (which, as you guessed, is owned by Abdul Mahdi).

In fact it turns out that the two officers who were in charge of the heist were not arrested but have already fled Iraq (who helped them flee?).

PM Maliki has stepped in to cover up for his partners in crime once more, and all public debate of the incident has been stifled. Iraqis seem to have been shocked by the brutal crime and its implications but nothing more than that. The outrage of a few brave journalists ended just two days after the incident, and now everyone is warning against rushing to conclusions or using the incident as an excuse to defame our politicians and "Islamic symbols" (whatever that means).

I don't think the symbolism of the crime was missed by Iraqis: I rule over you and plunder your wealth while you live like animals, and I will tie you up, blindfold you and shoot you in the head at will, because I can get away with it.

Rule of law mal teezi, as we say in Iraq.

However, we, the Iraqis, will bend over, once more, and take it up the behind from our rulers, as we have always done throughout our history.

That's all.

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Sorry for the unannounced absence. Will start posting again regularly once I'm finished with my dental board exams. In the meantime, as an alternative to the depressing developments in Iraq and the Middle East, you may be interested in cleaning out your ears with some classical and traditional Iraqi music from the old days:

Iraqi Maqam المقام العراقي

"I'm not looking at whether they are guilty or innocent," said Air Force Maj. Jeff Ghiglieri, the president of the review board that convened in May. "We're trying to determine as best we can whether they will do bad things if we release them." Minutes later, the panel unanimously voted to detain Farkhan for another six months.

This proceeding is what has amounted to due process for many of the 100,000 prisoners who have passed through the American-run detention system in Iraq. Although the legal controversy over detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has attracted far more attention, 100 times as many prisoners have been held at Camp Bucca and other Iraqi sites with far fewer legal rights and no oversight by the American court system. The Iraqis are not charged with crimes, permitted to see the evidence against them or provided lawyers.

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Let's see whether Mr. Air Force Major's logic will be applied to the Blackwater scum who opened fire on fleeing Iraqi civilians and are being charged with "manslaughter". I would like to see a "review board" of Iraqis giving random sentences to Blackwater guards. I mean, who cares whether they are guilty or innocent.

From Kitabat.com (article by Jalil Ibrahim al-Mandilawi):

Three Iraqi contractors were bidding for a contract for the construction of a wall around a local municipal council. The first contractor proposed a bid of $1000 ($400 for construction materials, $400 for the laborers, and a profit of $200). The second contractor proposed $700 ($300 for materials, $300 for workers, and a profit of $100). The third contractor offered a bid of $2700. The head of the municipal council angrily asked the contractor why he proposed such a high bid. "It's very simple," said the contractor, smiling. "A thousand for me, a thousand for you, and we'll give the $700 to the second contractor to finish the job."

The Raad brothers, and tens of thousands of children like them in this poor walled-in Shiite Muslim district, have been shaped by war, honed by poverty. They are witnesses to sectarian violence, Shiite militias, angry sermons echoing through mosques, Humvees gurgling through streets and pictures of religious leaders and wanted men hovering on billboards. These children may not know grammar and punctuation, but they know what to do when the bullets come, how to take cover, to hide from the kidnappers, the militants and the soldiers.

Bloodshed and years of unrest are harsh teachers, especially in Sadr City, where 30% of children have quit school, according to a Baghdad human resources office. That estimate is probably low. A United Nations report found that 94% of boys in Iraq attend elementary school, but that drops to 44% by high school. For girls, 81% start elementary school; 31% go on to high school.

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Aws is in New York.

I wanted to share a funny email I received this morning (translated from Arabic):

A financial expert was asked to explain in simple layman's terms the reasons behind the recent stock market crash. He thought for a while and said: “A man traveled to a far away village and offered its inhabitants to buy every single donkey they owned for $10. Many villagers rushed to sell him their donkeys. The next day he raised the price to $15, and even more villagers sold their donkeys. Later he raised the price to $30, and the villagers sold until they all ran out of donkeys. Then he said, ‘I will pay $50 for every single donkey,’ and he went to spend the weekend in the city. The man’s assistant visited the village the next day and offered to sell back the villagers’ donkeys for $40 each, provided they sell them back to his master for $50 each on Monday. The villagers went into all their savings in order to buy back their donkeys. Those who did not own anything rushed to borrow from their neighbours, hoping to make a quick profit. They never saw the man or his assistant again. When the next week arrived, there were only two things left in the village: debts and donkeys.”

I'm looking for a copy of Sharafnama by Sharaf-Khan Bitlisi (شرفنامه - تاريخ الدول و الامارات الكرديه - شرف خان البدليسي). If anyone has a scanned copy in Arabic or English or knows where it can be found, please let me know.

AFP: Kurdish forces refuse to quit battlefield Iraq province

I wonder whether Maliki would dare to pull off a Charge of Knights (or a Georgia) against the two separatist Kurdish gangs to restore control over stolen Iraqi territories. Kurdish politicians have long ceased to act as partners and their ugly face has been revealed to Iraqis with their empty threats to use force to annex Kirkuk and large parts of the Ninewah, Salah ad-Din and Diyala governorates, over which they already exercise de facto military, intelligence and administrative control.

As one Iraqi writer recently put it, Kurds have a "state and a half" while Arabs who constitute an 80% majority only have half a state. The two Kurdish gangs hold the positions of President, Deputy Premier, Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Foreign Minister (in addition to control of seven other ministries), Iraqi Army Chief of Staff, and Iraqi Air Force Commander in the Iraqi government, yet the Iraqi government has absolutely no authority in the Kurdish region, not even to appoint a physician to a village's medical center or a traffic policeman.

The Kurdish region receives 17% of the Iraqi budget (which they can spend without central government oversight) in addition to the salaries of about 400 thousand Peshmerga fighters, yet it does not receive back a penny from the region, not even customs revenues from five border crossings with neighbouring Turkey and Iran located within the region. The Kurds have unilaterally granted oil exploration and export contracts to several international companies despite the lack of new oil legislation in Baghdad and against the will of the Iraqi government. The Kurds are free to own property and enter Iraqi-controlled territory as they please, yet non-Kurdish Iraqi citizens, including government officials, cannot enter the Kurdish region without a Kurdish sponsor and are barred from buying property there. Kurdish politicians insisted on changing the Iraqi flag, regarded as a symbol of unity and nationalism by Iraqis, and they managed to get their way thanks to their allies in the now-defunct UIA, yet they still refuse to fly the new Iraqi flag over institutions in Iraqi Kurdistan, instead flying the flag of the Kurdish Mahabad Republic of Iran.

Also, ask any Iraqi Kurd about the actions of the Barzani clan, their immense corruption, and brutality in suppressing independent movements and the free Kurdish press, not to mention their role in political assassinations and subterfuge in Iraqi territories under their control. They can boast a human rights record that is comparable to that of any neighbouring Arab dictatorship. The fearsome Asayish, the KDP's intelligence agency, is often compared to the Mukhabarat under the Ba'athists. A few weeks ago, when the head of Mosul's operations, General Abd al-Karim Khalaf revealed the role of the Peshmerga in terrorist attacks and the abductions of members of Iraq's Christian community in Ninevah, several dozen Peshmerga fighters broke into his office, stripped him and his men of their weapons and physically assaulted him. The incident (conveniently ignored in the West) was largely reported in the Iraqi press, yet the central government did not even utter a word of protest.

All evidence shows that the two Kurdish gangs have no interest in committing to a strong, united Iraq, but instead to use their new post-war influence in Baghdad to achieve further gains for their region (or more accurately for their fiefdoms, as the Kurdish people still languish in poverty and neglect, while the majority of Iraqi asylum seekers abroad continue to come from Iraqi Kurdistan). This is not political partnership; it is political opportunism and parasitism at its worst form. It is time for this non-beneficial relationship with the two Kurdish gangs to end.

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Really, no one can deny the great progress that was made in Iraq over the last year. I mean, in 2007 Iraq was ranked as second failed state after Sudan, but in 2008 we are the fifth most failed state in the world, beating Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Chad, though we are still behind countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan:

The height of the U.S. military surge in Iraq was a key factor in this year’s analysis of that country. And though Iraq’s score improved slightly, the gains that one might hope for—those that reflect fundamental, long-term changes—did not occur. The desperate predicament of nearly 4 million people driven from their homes, the abysmal state of public services, and the discord among sectarian factions have shown no real improvement. The incremental security and economic progress that has occurred are dependent on tenuous, short-term factors that could unravel at any time. Eager to cobble together a fragile peace, the U.S. military has armed dozens of new Sunni militia groups that could later turn their guns on the Iraqi government, their Shiite rivals, or the Americans many still regard as occupiers. Similarly, Iraq’s economy has improved only moderately, thanks largely to the spike in global oil prices, not Iraqi production. In short, progress in Iraq last year was negligible at best and deeply susceptible to reversal should the country suffer the kind of shock—a food shortage, a high-level assassination, an attack that unleashes ethnic hatreds—that has exposed so many states’ deep vulnerabilities in recent months.

Five students were wounded when the bodyguards of Education Minister Khudhair al-Khuza'i (Da'wa) randomly opened fire at students inside the campus of the College of Education in the Saba' Abkar district north of Adhamiya last Thursday. The minister, who was visiting the campus to oversee the ministry board examinations, first claimed there was an assassination attempt by one of the students prompting his security detail to open fire, though he later retracted his claim on an interview with Radio Sawa. PM Maliki has promised to investigate the incident. And we all know how these investigations end.

BAGHDAD — Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

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During the five years the United States has occupied Iraq, the Bush administration has created a new state with a number of notable features: A venal, dysfunctional government. A terrorist haven and training ground. A nation so violent and dangerous that 10 percent of the population has fled.

Add to that a new hallmark: Nearly the most corrupt nation on Earth.

Only two states out of 180, Somalia and Burma, outrank Iraq in Transparency International's latest worldwide corruption index. They are tied for last place. But Iraq has plummeted through the rankings since 2004, when it was near the middle of the pack, and is now within a hair's width of crashing to the bottom.

Along the way, U.S. officials say, Iraqi government officers, from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on down, have embezzled not only uncounted billions of dollars from their own treasury -- but also $18 billion in U.S. aid. That's about equal to the annual budget for Colorado.

Radhi al-Radhi, an Iraqi judge who provided that figure, was the state's chief anti-corruption official, until death threats forced him to flee last year. He called the theft among the largest in modern history.

In recent months, several U.S. government reports have detailed the problem, and Congress has held hearings. The conclusion: Not only has the United States provided much of the money Iraqi officials have purloined, U.S. officials have aided and abetted the theft.

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America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

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George Bush, Dick Cheney and their advisors may want to look up the unpopular Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of the last century between Great Britain and the nominally independent Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq, which gave Great Britain military and political privileges in Iraq that are similar to what the US is seeking today, including the right to build unlimited military bases and complete freedom of movement of British troops in Iraqi territories and airspace.

They may also want to look up how that treaty ended, as well as the fate of the Iraqi prime minister responsible for signing the treaty (and later the Baghdad Pact). The PM, who was incidentally named Nuri al-Sa'id, tried to escape Baghdad in a woman's dress on 14 July, 1958--when the Iraqi army led by Colonel Abdul Karim Qassim staged a coup against the Hashemite monarchy--but he was captured, shot, tied with ropes, dragged on the streets, mutilated beyond recognition by Iraqis who hit the corpse with slippers, and then hung from a building in central Baghdad and later burned.

UPDATE: Former Iraqi Finance Minister Ali Allawi writes:

The Bush administration has set 31 July as the deadline for the signing of the agreement. Under the present plan, the draft of the agreement will have to be brought to Iraq's parliament for approval. Parliament, however, is beholden to the political parties that dominate the present coalition, and there is unlikely to be substantive debate on the matter. The Shia religious leadership in Najaf, especially Grand Ayatollah Sistani, has not clearly come out against the agreement, although his spokesmen have set out markers that must be respected by the negotiators. The Najaf religious hierarchy is probably the only remaining institution that can block the agreement. But it is unclear whether the political or religious leadership are prepared to confront the US. President Bush, with an eye on history, is seeking to salvage his Iraq expedition by claiming that Iraq is now pacified and is a loyal American ally in the Middle East and the War on Terror.

It is only now that Iraqis have woken up to the possibility that Iraq might be a signatory on a long-term security treaty with the US, as a price for regaining its full sovereignty. Iraqis must know its details and implications. How would such an alliance constrain Iraq's freedom in choosing its commercial, military and political partners? Will Iraq be obliged to openly or covertly support all of America's policies in the Middle East? These are issues of a vital nature that cannot be brushed aside with the Iraqi government's platitudes about "protecting Iraqi interests". A treaty of such singular significance to Iraq cannot be rammed through with less than a few weeks of debate. Otherwise, the proposed strategic alliance will most certainly be a divisive element in Iraqi politics. It will have the same disastrous effect as the treaty with Britain nearly eighty years ago.

Only 4 per cent of Iraqi refugees currently plan to return to their own country, while almost all have fled their homeland because of direct threats or general insecurity, according to a report out today from the United Nations refugee agency.

The report found that 65 per cent of refugees who do not wish to return said that they were under direct threat in Iraq. Some 30 per cent do not want to return because of the general insecurity in their home country and 8 per cent said their home in Iraq had been destroyed or was occupied by others.

A total of 4.7 million Iraqis have been uprooted as a result of the crisis in their country. Of these over 2 million are living as refugees in neighbouring countries – mostly Syria and Jordan – while 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq.

BlogIraq

US- and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and thugs in uniform parade the bodies of their opponents on army Humvee vehicles (graphic content).

A humvee military vehicle idles on a broad avenue as an Iraqi army soldier walks nonchalantly past without so much as a glance at the body slung across the bonnet. The dead man's trousers have been pulled down to his ankles, exposing white underwear below a torn T-shirt drenched in blood from wounds to his chest and side.

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A massacre that you will not see on CNN, perpetrated by the US-backed "Iraqi security forces" or, more accurately, Badr/SIIC/ Da'wa gangs in uniform and out of uniform (many of the armed gangs in the video are dressed in civilian clothes). The scene is reminiscent of images from the south during the 1991 uprising against Saddam's regime, proving that not much has really changed except the roles have been switched again, with American blessings. This took place in Suq al-Shiyukh, south east of Nasiriya, where residents said Iraqi special forces detained 58 suspected Sadrists, executed them and set them on fire after raiding the Sadrists' headquarters in town. The soldiers are heard spitting out obscenities at the wounded detainees and even at dead bodies. Others are seen dragging another injured detainee, kicking him violently and cursing him before throwing him on a pile of dead bodies. We hear shooting in the background as other detainees are dragged to join the pile. Those are the "security forces" that our American friends want us to trust and to condemn attacks targeting them. The talk of the town is that the Iraqi division commander's brother, a SIIC member, was killed a few days ago by suspected Mahdi Army militiamen, and that this was his revenge. The force surrounded the town and raided the local Sadr Bureau. Another episode in Iraq's bloody civil war and settling of accounts between warring militias.

I have no way of verifying this story (Arabic link) but the al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper reported that twelve members of the official Iraqi delegation accompanying PM Maliki to Belgium have refused to return to Iraq with the delegation. The missing officials included a close advisor to Maliki, officials from the ministries of oil, finance and trade, and journalists. The Schengen visa allows its carrier full freedom of movement between EU countries, and many Iraqi refugees have paid hefty sums in order to get one and then make their way to Sweden where they apply for asylum.

Justifying the lack of any interference by British troops to stop political parties, militias and gangs from spreading unrest in the city, a former British commander said that his troops did not want to breach the “traditions” of Basra’s society. The government is using similar arguments. An official in the Supreme Security Committee of the province’s council has denied the existence of organized religious and sectarian crime against women, claiming that 85% of murder incidences are “honor crimes”. Declining to reveal the number of “slaughtered” women, a leading source in Basra’s police said that disclosing such information would create turmoil in the city.

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Yesterday's hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations in the U.S. Senate featuring Nir Rosen, Yahia Said and Stephen Biddle.

UPDATE:

TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ

By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.

2 April 2008

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.

I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.

Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant inseveral other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.

More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.

No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.

Also disturbing is Turkey's military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.

Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.

Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.

Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government's troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.

Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.

This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki's military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.

I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of
feudal Europe's transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.

How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.

To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.

The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran's policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.

No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president's policy has reinforced Iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.

Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.

A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don't make
sense.

First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.

Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the "domino theory" in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.

Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies' interest.

I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.

Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.

"This is not a battle against the Jaish al-Mahdi nor is it a proxy war between the United States and Iran," military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said, using the Arabic term for the Mahdi Army. "It is the government of Iraq taking the necessary action to deal with criminals on the streets."

(Link.)

This would be amusing if it were not so tragic. The US military, knowingly or not, is fighting Iran's wars for them in Iraq, not against Iran. SIIC and Da'wa (Iran's strongest allies in Iraq) are determined to retain control of the Shi'ite south, and the crackdown against the Sadrists, which caused them to revolt, is a feeble attempt to prevent them from taking over in the upcoming provincial elections. And to describe this ongoing intra-Shi'ite conflict as "the government of Iraq against criminals" is ludicrous at best, as the so-called "government of Iraq" had no problem in the near past when those hordes of criminals were taking to the streets cleansing Baghdad and the south from Sunnis with the active participation of "Iraqi security forces." But as we say in Arabic: 'If you know then it is a calamity. If you don't know then it is a greater one.'

UPDATE: Duh.

This does not mean that the central government should not reassert control of Basra. It is not peaceful, it is a significant prize as a port and the key to Iraq's oil exports, and gang rule is no substitute for legitimate government. But it is far from clear that what is happening is now directed at serving the nation's interest versus that of ISCI and Al Dawa in the power struggle to come. It is equally far from clear that the transfer of security responsibility to Iraqi forces in the south is not being used by Maliki, Al Dawa, and ISCI to cement control over the Shi'ite regions at Sadr's expense and at the expense of any potential local political leaders and movements. Certainly, the fact that these efforts come after ISCI's removal of its objections to the Provincial Powers Act may not be entirely coincidental.

Is the end result going to be good or bad? It is very difficult to tell. If the JAM and Sadr turn on the US, or if the current ISCI/Dawa power grab fails, then Shi'ite on Shi'ite violence could become far more severe. It is also far from clear that if the two religious-exile parties win, this is going to serve the cause of political accommodation or legitimate local and provincial government. It seems far more likely that even the best case outcome is going be one that favors Iraqracy over democracy.

Caption reads, "President Ahmadinejad makes historic visit to Iraq."

A good firsthand account by Nir Rosen about the Awakening groups in Dora.