By Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times, 30 November 2005
WASHINGTON — As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.
The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.
Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.
The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.
The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.
It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.
Underscoring the importance U.S. officials place on development of a Western-style media, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.
The military's information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to subvert the news media could destroy the U.S. military's credibility in other nations and with the American public.
"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.
The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs — the dissemination of factual information to the media — and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.
The Bush administration has come under criticism for distributing video and news stories in the United States without identifying the federal government as their source and for paying American journalists to promote administration policies, practices the Government Accountability Office has labeled "covert propaganda."
Military officials familiar with the effort in Iraq said much of it was being directed by the "Information Operations Task Force" in Baghdad, part of the multinational corps headquarters commanded by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were critical of the effort and were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
A spokesman for Vines declined to comment for this article. A Lincoln Group spokesman also declined to comment.
One of the military officials said that, as part of a psychological operations campaign that has intensified over the last year, the task force also had purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was using them to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece.
The official would not disclose which newspaper and radio station are under U.S. control, saying that naming them would put their employees at risk of insurgent attacks.
U.S. law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting propaganda through American media outlets. Yet several officials said that given the globalization of media driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, the Pentagon's efforts were carried out with the knowledge that coverage in the foreign press inevitably "bleeds" into the Western media and influences coverage in U.S. news outlets.
"There is no longer any way to separate foreign media from domestic media. Those neat lines don't exist anymore," said one private contractor who does information operations work for the Pentagon.
Daniel Kuehl, an information operations expert at National Defense University at Ft. McNair in Washington, said that he did not believe that planting stories in Iraqi media was wrong. But he questioned whether the practice would help turn the Iraqi public against the insurgency.
"I don't think that there's anything evil or morally wrong with it," he said. "I just question whether it's effective."
One senior military official who spent this year in Iraq said it was the strong pro-U.S. message in some news stories in Baghdad that first made him suspect that the American military was planting articles.
"Stuff would show up in the Iraqi press, and I would ask, 'Where the hell did that come from?' It was clearly not something that indigenous Iraqi press would have conceived of on their own," the official said.
Iraqi newspaper editors reacted with a mixture of shock and shrugs when told they were targets of a U.S. military psychological operation.
Some of the newspapers, such as Al Mutamar, a Baghdad-based daily run by associates of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, ran the articles as news stories, indistinguishable from other news reports. Before the war, Chalabi was the Iraqi exile favored by senior Pentagon officials to lead post-Hussein Iraq.
Others labeled the stories as "advertising," shaded them in gray boxes or used a special typeface to distinguish them from standard editorial content. But none mentioned any connection to the U.S. military.
One Aug. 6 piece, published prominently on Al Mutamar's second page, ran as a news story with the headline "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism." Documents obtained by The Times indicated that Al Mutamar was paid about $50 to run the story, though the editor of the paper said he ran such articles for free.
Nearly $1,500 was paid to the independent Addustour newspaper to run an Aug. 2 article titled "More Money Goes to Iraq's Development," the records indicated. The newspaper's editor, Bassem Sheikh, said he had "no idea" where the piece came from but added the note "media services" on top of the article to distinguish it from other editorial content.
The U.S. military-written articles come in to Al Mutamar, the newspaper run by Chalabi's associates, via the Internet and are often unsigned, said Luay Baldawi, the paper's editor in chief.
"We publish anything," he said. "The paper's policy is to publish everything, especially if it praises causes we believe in. We are pro-American. Everything that supports America we will publish."
Yet other Al Mutamar employees were much less supportive of their paper's connection with the U.S. military. "This is not right," said Faleh Hassan, an editor. "It reflects the tragic condition of journalists in Iraq. Journalism in Iraq is in very bad shape."
Ultimately, Baldawi acknowledged that he, too, was concerned about the origin of the articles and pledged to be "more careful about stuff we get by e-mail."
After he learned of the source of three paid stories that ran in Al Mada in July, that newspaper's managing editor, Abdul Zahra Zaki, was outraged, immediately summoning a manager of the advertising department to his office.
"I'm very sad," he said. "We have to investigate."
The Iraqis who delivered the articles also reaped modest profits from the arrangements, according to sources and records.
Employees at Al Mada said that a low-key man arrived at the newspaper's offices in downtown Baghdad on July 30 with a large wad of U.S. dollars. He told the editors that he wanted to publish an article titled "Terrorists Attack Sunni Volunteers" in the newspaper.
He paid cash and left no calling card, employees said. He did not want a receipt. The name he gave employees was the same as that of a Lincoln Group worker in the records obtained by The Times. Although editors at Al Mada said he paid $900 to place the article, records show that the man told Lincoln Group that he gave more than $1,200 to the paper.
Al Mada is widely considered the most cerebral and professional of Iraqi newspapers, publishing investigative reports as well as poetry.
Zaki said that if his cash-strapped paper had known that these stories were from the U.S. government, he would have "charged much, much more" to publish them.
According to several sources, the process for placing the stories begins when soldiers write "storyboards" of events in Iraq, such as a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid on a suspected insurgent hide-out, or a suicide bomb that killed Iraqi civilians.
The storyboards, several of which were obtained by The Times, read more like press releases than news stories. They often contain anonymous quotes from U.S. military officials; it is unclear whether the quotes are authentic.
"Absolute truth was not an essential element of these stories," said the senior military official who spent this year in Iraq.
One of the storyboards, dated Nov. 12, describes a U.S.-Iraqi offensive in the western Iraqi towns of Karabilah and Husaybah.
"Both cities are stopping points for foreign fighters entering Iraq to wage their unjust war," the storyboard reads.
It continues with a quote from an anonymous U.S. military official: " 'Iraqi army soldiers and U.S. forces have begun clear-and-hold operations in the city of Karabilah near Husaybah town, close to the Syrian border,' said a military official once operations began."
Another storyboard, written on the same date, describes the capture of an insurgent bomb-maker in Baghdad. "As the people and the [Iraqi security forces] work together, Iraq will finally drive terrorism out of Iraq for good," it concludes.
It was unclear whether those two storyboards have made their way into Iraqi newspapers.
A debate over the Pentagon's handling of information has raged since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In 2002, the Pentagon was forced to shut down its Office of Strategic Influence, which had been created the previous year, after reports surfaced that it intended to plant false news stories in the international media.
For much of 2005, a Defense Department working group has been trying to forge a policy about the proper role of information operations in wartime. Pentagon officials say the group has yet to resolve the often-contentious debate in the department about the boundaries between military public affairs and information operations.
Lincoln Group, formerly known as Iraqex, is one of several companies hired by the U.S. military to carry out "strategic communications" in countries where large numbers of U.S. troops are based.
Some of Lincoln Group's work in Iraq is very public, such as an animated public service campaign on Iraqi television that spotlights the Iraqi civilians killed by roadside bombs planted by insurgents.
Besides its contract with the military in Iraq, Lincoln Group this year won a major contract with U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, to develop a strategic communications campaign in concert with special operations troops stationed around the globe. The contract is worth up to $100 million over five years, although U.S. military officials said they doubted the Pentagon would spend the full amount of the contract.
Mazzetti reported from Washington and Daragahi reported from Baghdad.
-------------------------------------------
Citation: Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi. "U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press," Los Angeles Times, 30 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-infowar30nov30,0,5638790.story?coll=la-home-headlines
-------------------------------------------
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30 November 2005
29 November 2005
Shake and Bake
New York Times editorial, 29 November 2005
Let us pause and count the ways the conduct of the war in Iraq has damaged America's image and needlessly endangered the lives of those in the military. First, multilateralism was tossed aside. Then the post-invasion fiasco muddied the reputation of military planners and caused unnecessary casualties. The W.M.D. myth undermined the credibility of United States intelligence and President Bush himself, and the abuse of prisoners stole America's moral high ground.
Now the use of a ghastly weapon called white phosphorus has raised questions about how careful the military has been in avoiding civilian casualties. It has also further tarnished America's credibility on international treaties and the rules of warfare.
White phosphorus, which dates to World War II, should have been banned generations ago. Packed into an artillery shell, it explodes over a battlefield in a white glare that can illuminate an enemy's positions. It also rains balls of flaming chemicals, which cling to anything they touch and burn until their oxygen supply is cut off. They can burn for hours inside a human body.
The United States restricted the use of incendiaries like white phosphorus after Vietnam, and in 1983, an international convention banned its use against civilians. In fact, one of the many crimes ascribed to Saddam Hussein was dropping white phosphorus on Kurdish rebels and civilians in 1991.
But white phosphorus has made an ugly comeback. Italian television reported that American forces used it in Falluja last year against insurgents. At first, the Pentagon said the chemical had been used only to illuminate the battlefield, but had to backpedal when it turned out that one of the Army's own publications talked about using white phosphorus against insurgent positions, a practice well known enough to have one of those unsettling military nicknames: "shake and bake."
The Pentagon says white phosphorus was never aimed at civilians, but there are lingering reports of civilian victims. The military can't say whether the reports are true and does not intend to investigate them, a decision we find difficult to comprehend. Pentagon spokesmen say the Army took "extraordinary measures" to reduce civilian casualties, but they cannot say what those measures were.
They also say that using white phosphorus against military targets is legal. That's true, but the 1983 convention bans its use against "civilians or civilian objects," which would make white phosphorus attacks in urban settings like Falluja highly inappropriate at best. The United States signed that convention, but the portion dealing with incendiary weapons has been awaiting ratification in the Senate.
These are technicalities, in any case. Iraq, where winning over wary civilians is as critical as defeating armed insurgents, is no place to be using a weapon like this. More broadly, American demands for counterproliferation efforts and international arms control ring a bit hollow when the United States refuses to give up white phosphorus, not to mention cluster bombs and land mines.
The United States should be leading the world, not dragging its feet, when it comes to this sort of issue - because it's right and because all of us, including Americans, are safer in a world in which certain forms of conduct are regarded as too inhumane even for war. That is why torture should be banned in American prisons. And it is why the United States should stop using white phosphorus.
------------------------------------
Citation: "Shake and Bake," The New York Times, 29 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/opinion/29tue1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
------------------------------------
Let us pause and count the ways the conduct of the war in Iraq has damaged America's image and needlessly endangered the lives of those in the military. First, multilateralism was tossed aside. Then the post-invasion fiasco muddied the reputation of military planners and caused unnecessary casualties. The W.M.D. myth undermined the credibility of United States intelligence and President Bush himself, and the abuse of prisoners stole America's moral high ground.
Now the use of a ghastly weapon called white phosphorus has raised questions about how careful the military has been in avoiding civilian casualties. It has also further tarnished America's credibility on international treaties and the rules of warfare.
White phosphorus, which dates to World War II, should have been banned generations ago. Packed into an artillery shell, it explodes over a battlefield in a white glare that can illuminate an enemy's positions. It also rains balls of flaming chemicals, which cling to anything they touch and burn until their oxygen supply is cut off. They can burn for hours inside a human body.
The United States restricted the use of incendiaries like white phosphorus after Vietnam, and in 1983, an international convention banned its use against civilians. In fact, one of the many crimes ascribed to Saddam Hussein was dropping white phosphorus on Kurdish rebels and civilians in 1991.
But white phosphorus has made an ugly comeback. Italian television reported that American forces used it in Falluja last year against insurgents. At first, the Pentagon said the chemical had been used only to illuminate the battlefield, but had to backpedal when it turned out that one of the Army's own publications talked about using white phosphorus against insurgent positions, a practice well known enough to have one of those unsettling military nicknames: "shake and bake."
The Pentagon says white phosphorus was never aimed at civilians, but there are lingering reports of civilian victims. The military can't say whether the reports are true and does not intend to investigate them, a decision we find difficult to comprehend. Pentagon spokesmen say the Army took "extraordinary measures" to reduce civilian casualties, but they cannot say what those measures were.
They also say that using white phosphorus against military targets is legal. That's true, but the 1983 convention bans its use against "civilians or civilian objects," which would make white phosphorus attacks in urban settings like Falluja highly inappropriate at best. The United States signed that convention, but the portion dealing with incendiary weapons has been awaiting ratification in the Senate.
These are technicalities, in any case. Iraq, where winning over wary civilians is as critical as defeating armed insurgents, is no place to be using a weapon like this. More broadly, American demands for counterproliferation efforts and international arms control ring a bit hollow when the United States refuses to give up white phosphorus, not to mention cluster bombs and land mines.
The United States should be leading the world, not dragging its feet, when it comes to this sort of issue - because it's right and because all of us, including Americans, are safer in a world in which certain forms of conduct are regarded as too inhumane even for war. That is why torture should be banned in American prisons. And it is why the United States should stop using white phosphorus.
------------------------------------
Citation: "Shake and Bake," The New York Times, 29 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/opinion/29tue1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
------------------------------------
War Crimes Within War Crimes
By George Monbiot
AlterNet, 29 November 2005
The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones.
There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called "Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre". It claimed the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body. The clothes are strangely intact." These assertions were supported by a human rights advocate whom, it said, possessed "a biology degree".
I too possess a biology degree, and I am as well-qualified to determine someone's cause of death as I am to perform open-heart surgery. So I asked Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield, to watch the film. He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt." They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition". We don't yet know how these people died.
But there is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, U.S. infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents. On Tuesday afternoon, a Pentagon spokesman admitted to the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants." He went on to claim that "It is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial was accepted by almost all the mainstream media. U.N. conventions, the Times asserted, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets." But the word "civilian" does not occur in the Chemical Weapons Convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.
The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is therefore covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the U.S. has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC, "If ... the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because ... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."
The U.S. Army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book published by U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence. "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."
Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the U.S. Department of Defense, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorous chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam (Hussein) may have possibly used white phosphorous (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships. ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas". The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is a chemical weapon.
The insurgents would be just as dead today if they were killed by other means. So does it matter if chemical weapons were mixed with other munitions? It does. Anyone who has seen those photos of the lines of blind veterans at the remembrance services for the first world war will surely understand the point of international law, and the dangers of undermining it.
But we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city in November last year, the Marines stopped the men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed as well: the Observer's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left in the city. The Marines then treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent, and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used "hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population".
Over the past week, I have been reading accounts of the assault published in the Marines' journal, the Marine Corps Gazette. The soldiers appear to have believed everything the U.S. government told them. One article claims that "the absence of civilians meant the Marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes." Another maintained that "there were less than 500 civilians remaining in the city." It continued: "the heroics [of the Marines] will be the subject of many articles and books in the years to come. The real key to this tactical victory rested in the spirit of the warriors who courageously fought the battle. They deserve all of the credit for liberating Fallujah."
But buried in this hogwash is a revelation of the utmost gravity. An assault weapon the Marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35 percent thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65 percent standard high explosive." They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms." It was used repeatedly: "the expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous."
The Marines can scarcely deny that they know what these weapons do. An article published in the Gazette in 2000 details the effects of their use by the Russians in Grozny. Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons, it says, form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives.
"This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure. ... Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 meters per second. ... As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation. ... Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal hemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets."
It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians.
This looks to me like a convincing explanation of the damage done to Falluja, a city in which between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians might have been taking refuge. It could also explain the civilian casualties shown in the film. So the question has now widened: is there any crime the coalition forces have not committed in Iraq?
George Monbiot is the author of 'Poisoned Arrows' and 'No Man's Land' (Green Books). Read more of his writings at Monbiot.com. This article originally appeared in the Guardian.
------------------------------
Citation: George Monbiot. "War Crimes Within War Crimes," AlterNet, 29 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.alternet.org/story/28833/
------------------------------
AlterNet, 29 November 2005
The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones.
There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called "Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre". It claimed the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body. The clothes are strangely intact." These assertions were supported by a human rights advocate whom, it said, possessed "a biology degree".
I too possess a biology degree, and I am as well-qualified to determine someone's cause of death as I am to perform open-heart surgery. So I asked Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield, to watch the film. He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt." They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition". We don't yet know how these people died.
But there is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, U.S. infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents. On Tuesday afternoon, a Pentagon spokesman admitted to the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants." He went on to claim that "It is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial was accepted by almost all the mainstream media. U.N. conventions, the Times asserted, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets." But the word "civilian" does not occur in the Chemical Weapons Convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is.
The Pentagon argues that white phosphorus burns people, rather than poisoning them, and is therefore covered only by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the U.S. has not signed. But white phosphorus is both incendiary and toxic. The gas it produces attacks the mucous membranes, the eyes and the lungs. As Peter Kaiser of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the BBC, "If ... the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because ... any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."
The U.S. Army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book published by U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence. "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."
Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the U.S. Department of Defense, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorous chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam (Hussein) may have possibly used white phosphorous (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships. ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas". The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is a chemical weapon.
The insurgents would be just as dead today if they were killed by other means. So does it matter if chemical weapons were mixed with other munitions? It does. Anyone who has seen those photos of the lines of blind veterans at the remembrance services for the first world war will surely understand the point of international law, and the dangers of undermining it.
But we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime. Both the invasion of Iraq and the assault on Falluja were illegal acts of aggression. Before attacking the city in November last year, the Marines stopped the men "of fighting age" from leaving. Many women and children stayed as well: the Observer's correspondent estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were left in the city. The Marines then treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent, and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used "hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population".
Over the past week, I have been reading accounts of the assault published in the Marines' journal, the Marine Corps Gazette. The soldiers appear to have believed everything the U.S. government told them. One article claims that "the absence of civilians meant the Marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes." Another maintained that "there were less than 500 civilians remaining in the city." It continued: "the heroics [of the Marines] will be the subject of many articles and books in the years to come. The real key to this tactical victory rested in the spirit of the warriors who courageously fought the battle. They deserve all of the credit for liberating Fallujah."
But buried in this hogwash is a revelation of the utmost gravity. An assault weapon the Marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35 percent thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65 percent standard high explosive." They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms." It was used repeatedly: "the expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous."
The Marines can scarcely deny that they know what these weapons do. An article published in the Gazette in 2000 details the effects of their use by the Russians in Grozny. Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons, it says, form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives.
"This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure. ... Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 meters per second. ... As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation. ... Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal hemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets."
It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians.
This looks to me like a convincing explanation of the damage done to Falluja, a city in which between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians might have been taking refuge. It could also explain the civilian casualties shown in the film. So the question has now widened: is there any crime the coalition forces have not committed in Iraq?
George Monbiot is the author of 'Poisoned Arrows' and 'No Man's Land' (Green Books). Read more of his writings at Monbiot.com. This article originally appeared in the Guardian.
------------------------------
Citation: George Monbiot. "War Crimes Within War Crimes," AlterNet, 29 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.alternet.org/story/28833/
------------------------------
More Iraqi security forces play lead roles
By Robert Burns
The Associated Press, 28 November 2005
WASHINGTON -- A growing number of Iraqi troop battalions - nearly four dozen as of this week - are playing lead roles in the fight against the insurgency, and American commanders have turned over more than two dozen U.S.-established bases to Iraqi government control, officials said Monday.
Those are among the signs of progress that the Bush administration is citing as evidence that the Iraqis not only want more responsibility on the security front but are capable of handling it with less assistance from U.S. troops.
The steps toward lessening the U.S. military role in Iraq come amid mounting political pressure on the Bush administration to reduce the American presence in the face of rising casualties and an unrelenting insurgency.
President Bush is to give a major speech Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy in which administration officials say he is expected to spotlight recent moves toward increasing Iraqi security responsibilities. One recent step was putting Iraqi forces in full control of sections of Baghdad and other cities.
There are now about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They have trained and equipped about 212,000 Iraqi security forces, including infantry, commandos, special police battalions and a variety of military support units. The figure is supposed to reach 230,000 by mid-December and top out at 325,000 by July 2007.
Pentagon officials acknowledge there are significant gaps in the Iraqis' ability to defend their own country. They are unwilling to commit to any specific drawdown of U.S. forces next year, beyond the announced plan to pull back 28,000 troops who were added this fall for extra security during upcoming elections.
The remaining shortcomings range from the institutional (a lack of administrative and leadership support from the ministries of Defense and Interior) to the personal (a sometimes faint-heartedness among Iraqi troops).
Many in Congress have expressed worry at what they see as sluggish progress in training Iraqi security forces, even as U.S. commanders insist that measures of progress have been widely misunderstood.
In late September, some members of Congress reacted with surprise and dismay when Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, testified that the number of Iraqi battalions rated at the highest level of readiness had dropped from three to one. That number apparently has not changed, but U.S. officials say the Iraqis don't need to reach that top level before they are competent enough to take over for American troops.
Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S. command responsible for the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, said Monday that approximately 130 Iraqi army and special police battalions are fighting the insurgency. Of the 130, about 45 are rated as "in the lead," with varying degrees of reliance on U.S. support. The exact numbers are classified as secret, but the 45 figure is about five higher than the number given Nov. 7 at a briefing by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who previously led the training mission. And it is about 10 higher than the figure Petraeus offered at a Pentagon briefing Oct. 5.
An Iraqi battalion usually numbers between 700 and 800 soldiers.
As another measure of progress, Wellman said about 33 Iraqi security battalions are now in charge of their own "battle space," including parts of Baghdad. That figure was at 24 in late October. Wellman said it stood at three last March.
Also, the Americans have pulled out of 30 "forward operating bases" inside Iraq, of which 16 have been transferred to Iraqi security forces. The most recent and widely publicized was a large base near Tikrit, which U.S. forces had used as a division headquarters since shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
At a Nov. 22 ceremony marking the Tikrit base transfer to Iraqi control, insurgents delivered a reminder of their resilience by firing a mortar nearby; it failed to explode, and U.S. officials declared the handover to be an important step in replacing U.S. forces with Iraqis.
Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said Monday that the transfer of authority at formerly U.S.-controlled bases is an important part of the long-range plan for stabilizing the country.
"As you continue to either close or turn over these bases, it's just self-evident that there would be some reduced need for the American presence in those areas," Di Rita said.
The spokesman said no decisions on future troop levels were likely until after the Dec. 15 election of a new Iraqi government. He suggested, however, that signs point to reductions during the course of 2006, so long as the political process remains on track.
Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is continually assessing the security situation, Di Rita said.
"He's presented a variety of alternative approaches that could occur after the election, but again it's all based on waiting to see how it goes and waiting and watching as we continue to hand over responsibility to the Iraqis," Di Rita said.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., told reporters Monday after his return from a visit to Iraq that he hoped U.S. forces could begin a significant withdrawal by late 2006 or early 2007. That compares with the recent call by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., to begin a withdrawal immediately.
--------------------------------------
Citation: Robert Burns. "More Iraqi security forces play lead roles," The Associated Press, 28 November 2005.
Original URL: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq_US_Military.html
--------------------------------------
The Associated Press, 28 November 2005
WASHINGTON -- A growing number of Iraqi troop battalions - nearly four dozen as of this week - are playing lead roles in the fight against the insurgency, and American commanders have turned over more than two dozen U.S.-established bases to Iraqi government control, officials said Monday.
Those are among the signs of progress that the Bush administration is citing as evidence that the Iraqis not only want more responsibility on the security front but are capable of handling it with less assistance from U.S. troops.
The steps toward lessening the U.S. military role in Iraq come amid mounting political pressure on the Bush administration to reduce the American presence in the face of rising casualties and an unrelenting insurgency.
President Bush is to give a major speech Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy in which administration officials say he is expected to spotlight recent moves toward increasing Iraqi security responsibilities. One recent step was putting Iraqi forces in full control of sections of Baghdad and other cities.
There are now about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They have trained and equipped about 212,000 Iraqi security forces, including infantry, commandos, special police battalions and a variety of military support units. The figure is supposed to reach 230,000 by mid-December and top out at 325,000 by July 2007.
Pentagon officials acknowledge there are significant gaps in the Iraqis' ability to defend their own country. They are unwilling to commit to any specific drawdown of U.S. forces next year, beyond the announced plan to pull back 28,000 troops who were added this fall for extra security during upcoming elections.
The remaining shortcomings range from the institutional (a lack of administrative and leadership support from the ministries of Defense and Interior) to the personal (a sometimes faint-heartedness among Iraqi troops).
Many in Congress have expressed worry at what they see as sluggish progress in training Iraqi security forces, even as U.S. commanders insist that measures of progress have been widely misunderstood.
In late September, some members of Congress reacted with surprise and dismay when Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, testified that the number of Iraqi battalions rated at the highest level of readiness had dropped from three to one. That number apparently has not changed, but U.S. officials say the Iraqis don't need to reach that top level before they are competent enough to take over for American troops.
Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S. command responsible for the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, said Monday that approximately 130 Iraqi army and special police battalions are fighting the insurgency. Of the 130, about 45 are rated as "in the lead," with varying degrees of reliance on U.S. support. The exact numbers are classified as secret, but the 45 figure is about five higher than the number given Nov. 7 at a briefing by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who previously led the training mission. And it is about 10 higher than the figure Petraeus offered at a Pentagon briefing Oct. 5.
An Iraqi battalion usually numbers between 700 and 800 soldiers.
As another measure of progress, Wellman said about 33 Iraqi security battalions are now in charge of their own "battle space," including parts of Baghdad. That figure was at 24 in late October. Wellman said it stood at three last March.
Also, the Americans have pulled out of 30 "forward operating bases" inside Iraq, of which 16 have been transferred to Iraqi security forces. The most recent and widely publicized was a large base near Tikrit, which U.S. forces had used as a division headquarters since shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
At a Nov. 22 ceremony marking the Tikrit base transfer to Iraqi control, insurgents delivered a reminder of their resilience by firing a mortar nearby; it failed to explode, and U.S. officials declared the handover to be an important step in replacing U.S. forces with Iraqis.
Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said Monday that the transfer of authority at formerly U.S.-controlled bases is an important part of the long-range plan for stabilizing the country.
"As you continue to either close or turn over these bases, it's just self-evident that there would be some reduced need for the American presence in those areas," Di Rita said.
The spokesman said no decisions on future troop levels were likely until after the Dec. 15 election of a new Iraqi government. He suggested, however, that signs point to reductions during the course of 2006, so long as the political process remains on track.
Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is continually assessing the security situation, Di Rita said.
"He's presented a variety of alternative approaches that could occur after the election, but again it's all based on waiting to see how it goes and waiting and watching as we continue to hand over responsibility to the Iraqis," Di Rita said.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., told reporters Monday after his return from a visit to Iraq that he hoped U.S. forces could begin a significant withdrawal by late 2006 or early 2007. That compares with the recent call by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., to begin a withdrawal immediately.
--------------------------------------
Citation: Robert Burns. "More Iraqi security forces play lead roles," The Associated Press, 28 November 2005.
Original URL: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq_US_Military.html
--------------------------------------
Sun Tzu would have frowned on Gulf strategy
By Richard Halloran
Taipei Times, 29 November 2005.
The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu (孫子) wrote 2,500 years ago: "Maintaining an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished."
The rising cost in blood and treasure of US President George W. Bush's four year incursion into Iraq has generated among Americans a question rooted in Sun Tzu: Is the cost worth it? Increasing numbers of Americans, including scores of military leaders, seem to think not.
This billowing skepticism suggests a more profound question: Beyond Iraq, have Americans wearied of the burden of worldwide security commitments and deployment of forces that are more extensive than any since the Roman Empire? Are Americans ready to retract them?
In a word, are the Yankees on the verge of going home?
If so, the consequences for Asia alone can hardly be imagined. Would China revive the Middle Kingdom that once dominated East Asia? Would Japan return to the militarism of the 1940s? Would India seek to control South Asia? How would the middle powers -- South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan -- ward off the big boys?
The number of US soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen deployed around the world is imposing.
Fully one-third of the 1.4 million men and women in the armed forces are posted outside the country, either ashore or afloat, in 136 countries.
Their operations range from several sergeants on training missions in Latin America or Africa to 169,000 troops in Iraq and 19,000 in Afghanistan. Some are in Central Asia, which is literally halfway around the world. Moreover, this military empire dates back six decades to the end of World War II.
Today, 69,000 troops are in Germany, 35,000 in Japan, 12,000 in Italy and 11,000 in Britain. In South Korea are 33,000 troops still there 53 years after the Korean War.
The cost in blood has been intense. In South Korea, Vietnam and the smaller skirmishes such as that in Panama since 1945, more than 82,000 US warriors have suffered battle death. More than three times that number have been wounded. The number killed in Iraq has passed 2,050 and continues to climb.
Added to this is the cost in treasure. US taxpayers have been asked for US$450 billion for next year's defense budget, which is more than the combined military spending of China, Japan, France and 10 other nations, according to the CIA.
Against that backdrop, Americans appear to have become impatient with Bush's inability to go beyond platitudes to articulate a visible course with attainable objectives in Iraq.
Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, pointed in a speech to the "growing incantations among Americans that there is no end in sight."
The senator, who lost the Republican presidential nomination to Bush in 2000, asserted: "If we can't retain the support of the American people, we will have lost this war as soundly as if our forces were defeated on the battlefield."
It may be too late to rekindle public support. Not only have political activists such as Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, become more vocal, but defense stalwarts such as Representative John Murtha, a Democrat who was wounded and decorated in Vietnam, have turned against the war.
Murtha, who has been influential on military matters for many years, said in a speech: "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."
Among active and retired military officers runs an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the way the war in Iraq has been fought.
While abiding by the tradition of staying out of politics, they say privately they are displeased with the absence of strategy, the lack of sufficient troops, and the failure to mobilize the American people for an all-out struggle.
A new study by the non-partisan Pew Research Center, which is respected for accuracy and balance, suggests the Iraq war has "led to a revival of isolationist sentiment among the general public."
Pew researchers reported that 42 percent of Americans, the highest percentage in 45 years, say the US should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can."
Among those most critical was a curious combination of religious leaders and scientists.
It's not likely than many US clergymen or scientists have read Sun Tzu. If they did, they might agree with another one of his pithy observations: "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
----------------------------
Citation: Richard Halloran. "Sun Tzu would have frowned on Gulf strategy," Taipei Times, 29 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/11/29/2003282226
---------------------------
Taipei Times, 29 November 2005.
The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu (孫子) wrote 2,500 years ago: "Maintaining an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished."
The rising cost in blood and treasure of US President George W. Bush's four year incursion into Iraq has generated among Americans a question rooted in Sun Tzu: Is the cost worth it? Increasing numbers of Americans, including scores of military leaders, seem to think not.
This billowing skepticism suggests a more profound question: Beyond Iraq, have Americans wearied of the burden of worldwide security commitments and deployment of forces that are more extensive than any since the Roman Empire? Are Americans ready to retract them?
In a word, are the Yankees on the verge of going home?
If so, the consequences for Asia alone can hardly be imagined. Would China revive the Middle Kingdom that once dominated East Asia? Would Japan return to the militarism of the 1940s? Would India seek to control South Asia? How would the middle powers -- South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan -- ward off the big boys?
The number of US soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen deployed around the world is imposing.
Fully one-third of the 1.4 million men and women in the armed forces are posted outside the country, either ashore or afloat, in 136 countries.
Their operations range from several sergeants on training missions in Latin America or Africa to 169,000 troops in Iraq and 19,000 in Afghanistan. Some are in Central Asia, which is literally halfway around the world. Moreover, this military empire dates back six decades to the end of World War II.
Today, 69,000 troops are in Germany, 35,000 in Japan, 12,000 in Italy and 11,000 in Britain. In South Korea are 33,000 troops still there 53 years after the Korean War.
The cost in blood has been intense. In South Korea, Vietnam and the smaller skirmishes such as that in Panama since 1945, more than 82,000 US warriors have suffered battle death. More than three times that number have been wounded. The number killed in Iraq has passed 2,050 and continues to climb.
Added to this is the cost in treasure. US taxpayers have been asked for US$450 billion for next year's defense budget, which is more than the combined military spending of China, Japan, France and 10 other nations, according to the CIA.
Against that backdrop, Americans appear to have become impatient with Bush's inability to go beyond platitudes to articulate a visible course with attainable objectives in Iraq.
Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, pointed in a speech to the "growing incantations among Americans that there is no end in sight."
The senator, who lost the Republican presidential nomination to Bush in 2000, asserted: "If we can't retain the support of the American people, we will have lost this war as soundly as if our forces were defeated on the battlefield."
It may be too late to rekindle public support. Not only have political activists such as Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, become more vocal, but defense stalwarts such as Representative John Murtha, a Democrat who was wounded and decorated in Vietnam, have turned against the war.
Murtha, who has been influential on military matters for many years, said in a speech: "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."
Among active and retired military officers runs an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the way the war in Iraq has been fought.
While abiding by the tradition of staying out of politics, they say privately they are displeased with the absence of strategy, the lack of sufficient troops, and the failure to mobilize the American people for an all-out struggle.
A new study by the non-partisan Pew Research Center, which is respected for accuracy and balance, suggests the Iraq war has "led to a revival of isolationist sentiment among the general public."
Pew researchers reported that 42 percent of Americans, the highest percentage in 45 years, say the US should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can."
Among those most critical was a curious combination of religious leaders and scientists.
It's not likely than many US clergymen or scientists have read Sun Tzu. If they did, they might agree with another one of his pithy observations: "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
----------------------------
Citation: Richard Halloran. "Sun Tzu would have frowned on Gulf strategy," Taipei Times, 29 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/11/29/2003282226
---------------------------
Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War
By Martin van Creveld
Forward, 25 November 2005
The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner.
What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon — and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.
Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the "Vietnamization" of the country. The rest of America's forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a "peace settlement" with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam — which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.
Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight.
Whereas North Vietnam at least had a government with which it was possible to arrange a cease-fire, in Iraq the opponent consists of shadowy groups of terrorists with no central organization or command authority. And whereas in the early 1970s equipment was still relatively plentiful, today's armed forces are the products of a technology-driven revolution in military affairs. Whether that revolution has contributed to anything besides America's national debt is open to debate. What is beyond question, though, is that the new weapons are so few and so expensive that even the world's largest and richest power can afford only to field a relative handful of them.
Therefore, simply abandoning equipment or handing it over to the Iraqis, as was done in Vietnam, is simply not an option. And even if it were, the new Iraqi army is by all accounts much weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than even the South Vietnamese army was. For all intents and purposes, Washington might just as well hand over its weapons directly to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Clearly, then, the thing to do is to forget about face-saving and conduct a classic withdrawal.
Handing over their bases or demolishing them if necessary, American forces will have to fall back on Baghdad. From Baghdad they will have to make their way to the southern port city of Basra, and from there back to Kuwait, where the whole misguided adventure began. When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.
Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not.
Having been thoroughly devastated by two wars with the United States and a decade of economic sanctions, decades will pass before Iraq can endanger its neighbors again. Yet a complete American withdrawal is not an option; the region, with its vast oil reserves, is simply too important for that. A continued military presence, made up of air, sea and a moderate number of ground forces, will be needed.
First and foremost, such a presence will be needed to counter Iran, which for two decades now has seen the United States as "the Great Satan." Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war — a winner that in the not too distant future is likely to add nuclear warheads to the missiles it already has. In the past, Tehran has often threatened the Gulf States. Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf States, and their oil, out of the mullahs' clutches.
A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.
The Gulf States apart, the most vulnerable country is Jordan, as evidenced by the recent attacks in Amman. However, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Israel are also likely to feel the impact. Some of these countries, Jordan in particular, are going to require American assistance.
Maintaining an American security presence in the region, not to mention withdrawing forces from Iraq, will involve many complicated problems, military as well as political. Such an endeavor, one would hope, will be handled by a team different from — and more competent than — the one presently in charge of the White House and Pentagon.
For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.
Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.
--------------------------------------
Citation: Martin van Creveld. "Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War," Forward, 25 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.forward.com/main/printer-friendly.php?id=6936
--------------------------------------
Forward, 25 November 2005
The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner.
What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon — and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.
Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the "Vietnamization" of the country. The rest of America's forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a "peace settlement" with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam — which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.
Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight.
Whereas North Vietnam at least had a government with which it was possible to arrange a cease-fire, in Iraq the opponent consists of shadowy groups of terrorists with no central organization or command authority. And whereas in the early 1970s equipment was still relatively plentiful, today's armed forces are the products of a technology-driven revolution in military affairs. Whether that revolution has contributed to anything besides America's national debt is open to debate. What is beyond question, though, is that the new weapons are so few and so expensive that even the world's largest and richest power can afford only to field a relative handful of them.
Therefore, simply abandoning equipment or handing it over to the Iraqis, as was done in Vietnam, is simply not an option. And even if it were, the new Iraqi army is by all accounts much weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than even the South Vietnamese army was. For all intents and purposes, Washington might just as well hand over its weapons directly to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Clearly, then, the thing to do is to forget about face-saving and conduct a classic withdrawal.
Handing over their bases or demolishing them if necessary, American forces will have to fall back on Baghdad. From Baghdad they will have to make their way to the southern port city of Basra, and from there back to Kuwait, where the whole misguided adventure began. When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.
Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not.
Having been thoroughly devastated by two wars with the United States and a decade of economic sanctions, decades will pass before Iraq can endanger its neighbors again. Yet a complete American withdrawal is not an option; the region, with its vast oil reserves, is simply too important for that. A continued military presence, made up of air, sea and a moderate number of ground forces, will be needed.
First and foremost, such a presence will be needed to counter Iran, which for two decades now has seen the United States as "the Great Satan." Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war — a winner that in the not too distant future is likely to add nuclear warheads to the missiles it already has. In the past, Tehran has often threatened the Gulf States. Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf States, and their oil, out of the mullahs' clutches.
A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.
The Gulf States apart, the most vulnerable country is Jordan, as evidenced by the recent attacks in Amman. However, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Israel are also likely to feel the impact. Some of these countries, Jordan in particular, are going to require American assistance.
Maintaining an American security presence in the region, not to mention withdrawing forces from Iraq, will involve many complicated problems, military as well as political. Such an endeavor, one would hope, will be handled by a team different from — and more competent than — the one presently in charge of the White House and Pentagon.
For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.
Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.
--------------------------------------
Citation: Martin van Creveld. "Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War," Forward, 25 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.forward.com/main/printer-friendly.php?id=6936
--------------------------------------
Use of Chemical in Iraq Ignites Debate
By John Daniszewski and Mark Mazzetti
Los Angeles Times, 28 November 2005.
BAGHDAD — Omar Ibrahim Abdullah went for a walk to get away from the heavy fighting in Fallouja a little over a year ago and, by his account, came across such a grotesque sight that he's been unable to banish it from his memory.
The United States had mounted a full-scale offensive to pacify the rebel-controlled Iraqi city, and Abdullah said he was eager to escape the Askari district, where he lived. He walked south toward the Euphrates River and stumbled on dozens of burned bodies that he said were colored black and red.
"They must have been affected by chemicals," he said, "because I had never seen anything like that before."
The corpses, he said, had suffered burns from the U.S. military's use of an incendiary chemical known as white phosphorus.
The Pentagon and other U.S. officials at first denied, and later admitted, that troops had used white phosphorus as a weapon against insurgents in Fallouja during that fiercely fought campaign. Its use became public because of questions raised by an Italian television documentary Nov. 8, which alleged that civilians had been targeted "indiscriminately" and that hundreds had died.
But even though U.S. officials have admitted using the substance against enemy fighters, they have denied the allegations of Fallouja residents such as Abdullah that its use was widespread and civilians were among those killed.
"We don't use munitions of any kind against innocent civilians," Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said during a news conference. "In accordance with all established conventions, [white phosphorus] can be used against enemy combatants."
Nicknamed "Willie Pete" by troops, white phosphorus is a dangerous chemical that combusts on contact with oxygen. The military employs it mainly to illuminate battlefields and provide smoke screens. But its use is highly controversial because the only way it can be extinguished is by shutting off its air supply. When it comes in contact with humans, the chemical will burn through to the bone.
Incendiaries are considered particularly inhumane weapons under international treaty, and a 1980 United Nations convention limits their use. The U.S. has not signed the part of the convention that deals with incendiary weapons. Nevertheless, it largely has avoided using incendiary weapons since the Vietnam War and destroyed the last of its napalm arsenal four years ago.
In the 1990s, in fact, the U.S. condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for allegedly using "white phosphorus chemical weapons" against Kurdish rebels and residents of Irbil and Dohuk.
In regard to a war the U.S. said it fought partly because of fears that Hussein would employ chemical or other nonconventional weapons, some critics say the use of white phosphorus is contrary to the spirit of American aims.
"An incendiary weapon cannot be thought of just like any conventional weapon," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Assn. in Washington. "There are rules that apply, and we have to make sure that they are being followed for various reasons."
He went on to explain that for the last century and a half, the U.S. has led international efforts to establish humane conduct standards in war, in part because American troops or civilians could be harmed.
"There is an important principle at stake here. The United States should be very interested in making sure that we are following the rules and other people understand we are following the rules," Kimball said.
But Pentagon officials say the use of white phosphorus, even as an incendiary weapon, is not proscribed by any treaty as long as it is directed solely against military targets.
The question is whether its use in November 2004 against insurgents fighting in a city that most, but not all, civilian inhabitants had fled violates the Inhumane Weapons Convention, to which the United States is a party.
Another issue is whether the United States is obliged to follow the convention's rules on incendiary weapons, given that the U.S. Senate has not ratified that protocol.
The rule bans the use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets or military targets not clearly separated from "concentrations" of civilians.
On the streets of Fallouja, the common allegation is that the U.S. used incendiary bombs against civilians. Iraqi doctors and the local human rights organization have pointed to scores of burned corpses as evidence.
But there's been no independent verification. U.S. officials have accused doctors in Fallouja of lying about such issues because, the officials say, the physicians are loyal to or intimidated by insurgents. The blackened corpses seen in the Italian documentary, for instance, may have been burned by conventional explosives or resulted from decomposition, some viewers have argued.
Abdul Qadir Sadi, an Iraqi from Fallouja in his 30s, said doctors had told him that two of his family members were killed by white phosphorus.
"They had a lot of serious skin burns," Sadi said. "The doctor at the hospital told us that they must have been hit by these chemicals. They were being treated by the doctor, but after a while, these burned places started to dissolve."
"We have registered the documents and exhibits of everything that happened," said Mohammed Tariq, a human rights worker in Fallouja. "We informed the Iraqi Red Crescent, the International Red Cross and [other] international organizations, but our efforts were in vain."
Pentagon officials say troops used white phosphorus in the Fallouja offensive for several reasons.
"It was used to mask and obscure U.S. troop movements and to flush out dug-in insurgents from spider holes and trenches," said Maj. Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman. "It was lawfully used against legitimate military targets."
When stories surfaced last year that the U.S. had used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Fallouja, the State Department flatly denied the allegations. Such denials from Pentagon and diplomatic officials continued until only weeks ago.
According to talking points issued by the State Department in December, "U.S. forces have used [white phosphorus rounds] very sparingly in Fallouja, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
Vician said he could not explain the denials.
Elsewhere, soldiers and Marines had publicly praised the weapon's effectiveness against insurgents during the battle. A group of artillery officers who fought in Fallouja wrote in a military journal this year that white phosphorus, typically referred to as WP, "proved to be an effective and versatile weapon."
"We used it for screening missions … and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents … when we could not get effects on them with [high explosives]," the officers wrote in the March-April issue of Field Artillery magazine.
"We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and [high explosives] to take them out."
The U.S. began using white phosphorus extensively during World War II, when soldiers found the chemical useful for smoke screens, marking enemy positions and attacking military targets. For more than half a century, white phosphorus has been a staple of the U.S. arsenal.
John E. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based military affairs think tank, doubts the claims made in the Italian television report that the U.S. military was aiming such munitions at civilians.
"What purpose could possibly be served by targeting civilians in Iraq?" he asked. "It would accomplish nothing, it would be counterproductive, and it would be a waste of ammo."
To journalists who saw white phosphorus used during the campaign, it appeared that it was meant for illuminating, not killing, insurgents.
Los Angeles Times reporter Patrick J. McDonnell, who accompanied Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, as it fought its way into Fallouja, recalls seeing night virtually turn to day as white phosphorus shells burst in the air.
"We only saw 'Willie Pete' being used for illumination purposes," McDonnell said. But he also remembers how the proximity of the fiery blasts concerned the Marines.
"The guys in my company were somewhat annoyed for two reasons: It illuminated our positions at night, not a nice thing, and occasionally the bursts came quite close to us. There didn't seem to be a lot of coordination," he said by e-mail.
At the time, most civilians had fled town, and U.S. troops seemed to be fighting in a city devoid of almost everyone but insurgents, McDonnell noted.
"We had rounds of white phosphorus burst in the air quite close to us, and the Marines were quite concerned, since they knew of its impact — that it burns through flesh and is impossible to extinguish," he said.
"Many Marines on the ground cursed the 'Willie Pete' every time it went off."
Daniszewski reported from Baghdad and Mazzetti from Washington. Special correspondent Asmaa Waguih contributed to this report.
------------------------------------------
Citation: John Daniszewski and Mark Mazzetti. "Use of Chemical in Iraq Ignites Debate," Los Angeles Times, 28 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-phosphorus28nov28,0,6777069.story?coll=la-home-headlines
-------------------------------------------
Los Angeles Times, 28 November 2005.
BAGHDAD — Omar Ibrahim Abdullah went for a walk to get away from the heavy fighting in Fallouja a little over a year ago and, by his account, came across such a grotesque sight that he's been unable to banish it from his memory.
The United States had mounted a full-scale offensive to pacify the rebel-controlled Iraqi city, and Abdullah said he was eager to escape the Askari district, where he lived. He walked south toward the Euphrates River and stumbled on dozens of burned bodies that he said were colored black and red.
"They must have been affected by chemicals," he said, "because I had never seen anything like that before."
The corpses, he said, had suffered burns from the U.S. military's use of an incendiary chemical known as white phosphorus.
The Pentagon and other U.S. officials at first denied, and later admitted, that troops had used white phosphorus as a weapon against insurgents in Fallouja during that fiercely fought campaign. Its use became public because of questions raised by an Italian television documentary Nov. 8, which alleged that civilians had been targeted "indiscriminately" and that hundreds had died.
But even though U.S. officials have admitted using the substance against enemy fighters, they have denied the allegations of Fallouja residents such as Abdullah that its use was widespread and civilians were among those killed.
"We don't use munitions of any kind against innocent civilians," Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said during a news conference. "In accordance with all established conventions, [white phosphorus] can be used against enemy combatants."
Nicknamed "Willie Pete" by troops, white phosphorus is a dangerous chemical that combusts on contact with oxygen. The military employs it mainly to illuminate battlefields and provide smoke screens. But its use is highly controversial because the only way it can be extinguished is by shutting off its air supply. When it comes in contact with humans, the chemical will burn through to the bone.
Incendiaries are considered particularly inhumane weapons under international treaty, and a 1980 United Nations convention limits their use. The U.S. has not signed the part of the convention that deals with incendiary weapons. Nevertheless, it largely has avoided using incendiary weapons since the Vietnam War and destroyed the last of its napalm arsenal four years ago.
In the 1990s, in fact, the U.S. condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for allegedly using "white phosphorus chemical weapons" against Kurdish rebels and residents of Irbil and Dohuk.
In regard to a war the U.S. said it fought partly because of fears that Hussein would employ chemical or other nonconventional weapons, some critics say the use of white phosphorus is contrary to the spirit of American aims.
"An incendiary weapon cannot be thought of just like any conventional weapon," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Assn. in Washington. "There are rules that apply, and we have to make sure that they are being followed for various reasons."
He went on to explain that for the last century and a half, the U.S. has led international efforts to establish humane conduct standards in war, in part because American troops or civilians could be harmed.
"There is an important principle at stake here. The United States should be very interested in making sure that we are following the rules and other people understand we are following the rules," Kimball said.
But Pentagon officials say the use of white phosphorus, even as an incendiary weapon, is not proscribed by any treaty as long as it is directed solely against military targets.
The question is whether its use in November 2004 against insurgents fighting in a city that most, but not all, civilian inhabitants had fled violates the Inhumane Weapons Convention, to which the United States is a party.
Another issue is whether the United States is obliged to follow the convention's rules on incendiary weapons, given that the U.S. Senate has not ratified that protocol.
The rule bans the use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets or military targets not clearly separated from "concentrations" of civilians.
On the streets of Fallouja, the common allegation is that the U.S. used incendiary bombs against civilians. Iraqi doctors and the local human rights organization have pointed to scores of burned corpses as evidence.
But there's been no independent verification. U.S. officials have accused doctors in Fallouja of lying about such issues because, the officials say, the physicians are loyal to or intimidated by insurgents. The blackened corpses seen in the Italian documentary, for instance, may have been burned by conventional explosives or resulted from decomposition, some viewers have argued.
Abdul Qadir Sadi, an Iraqi from Fallouja in his 30s, said doctors had told him that two of his family members were killed by white phosphorus.
"They had a lot of serious skin burns," Sadi said. "The doctor at the hospital told us that they must have been hit by these chemicals. They were being treated by the doctor, but after a while, these burned places started to dissolve."
"We have registered the documents and exhibits of everything that happened," said Mohammed Tariq, a human rights worker in Fallouja. "We informed the Iraqi Red Crescent, the International Red Cross and [other] international organizations, but our efforts were in vain."
Pentagon officials say troops used white phosphorus in the Fallouja offensive for several reasons.
"It was used to mask and obscure U.S. troop movements and to flush out dug-in insurgents from spider holes and trenches," said Maj. Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman. "It was lawfully used against legitimate military targets."
When stories surfaced last year that the U.S. had used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Fallouja, the State Department flatly denied the allegations. Such denials from Pentagon and diplomatic officials continued until only weeks ago.
According to talking points issued by the State Department in December, "U.S. forces have used [white phosphorus rounds] very sparingly in Fallouja, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."
Vician said he could not explain the denials.
Elsewhere, soldiers and Marines had publicly praised the weapon's effectiveness against insurgents during the battle. A group of artillery officers who fought in Fallouja wrote in a military journal this year that white phosphorus, typically referred to as WP, "proved to be an effective and versatile weapon."
"We used it for screening missions … and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents … when we could not get effects on them with [high explosives]," the officers wrote in the March-April issue of Field Artillery magazine.
"We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and [high explosives] to take them out."
The U.S. began using white phosphorus extensively during World War II, when soldiers found the chemical useful for smoke screens, marking enemy positions and attacking military targets. For more than half a century, white phosphorus has been a staple of the U.S. arsenal.
John E. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based military affairs think tank, doubts the claims made in the Italian television report that the U.S. military was aiming such munitions at civilians.
"What purpose could possibly be served by targeting civilians in Iraq?" he asked. "It would accomplish nothing, it would be counterproductive, and it would be a waste of ammo."
To journalists who saw white phosphorus used during the campaign, it appeared that it was meant for illuminating, not killing, insurgents.
Los Angeles Times reporter Patrick J. McDonnell, who accompanied Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, as it fought its way into Fallouja, recalls seeing night virtually turn to day as white phosphorus shells burst in the air.
"We only saw 'Willie Pete' being used for illumination purposes," McDonnell said. But he also remembers how the proximity of the fiery blasts concerned the Marines.
"The guys in my company were somewhat annoyed for two reasons: It illuminated our positions at night, not a nice thing, and occasionally the bursts came quite close to us. There didn't seem to be a lot of coordination," he said by e-mail.
At the time, most civilians had fled town, and U.S. troops seemed to be fighting in a city devoid of almost everyone but insurgents, McDonnell noted.
"We had rounds of white phosphorus burst in the air quite close to us, and the Marines were quite concerned, since they knew of its impact — that it burns through flesh and is impossible to extinguish," he said.
"Many Marines on the ground cursed the 'Willie Pete' every time it went off."
Daniszewski reported from Baghdad and Mazzetti from Washington. Special correspondent Asmaa Waguih contributed to this report.
------------------------------------------
Citation: John Daniszewski and Mark Mazzetti. "Use of Chemical in Iraq Ignites Debate," Los Angeles Times, 28 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-phosphorus28nov28,0,6777069.story?coll=la-home-headlines
-------------------------------------------
28 November 2005
What Iraq will look like after the elections
By Roger Owen
The Boston Globe, 27 November 2005
THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections will be largely a contest among parties representing the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds provides a clear demonstration of the way Iraq's politics are going to be dominated by the type of sectarian democracy to be found in Lebanon. This is a far cry from the kind of pluralist, interest-oriented democratic systems to be found in Europe and America and deserves to be understood in its own particular terms.
Lebanese sectarianism as it has developed since the days of the French mandate before World War II has three main features. First, the majority of the population vote for members of their own ethnic group or sect. Second, the fact that the leaders of each sect do not need to solicit the votes of their own members leaves them free to negotiate and to make political bargains with the leaders of the other sects more or less untrammeled by the individual or corporate interests of their own followers. Third, the primary business of politics becomes that of dividing the state's resources, including money and jobs, on a sectarian basis.
Certain key implications follow. Such systems can only exist in the context of a weak central government. All sides fear that one of the other sectarian groups might be able to seize control of a strong army backed by a strong police force with sufficient power to subdue the rest. Meanwhile, the power of each elite is further strengthened by the fact that their constituents look to them, not to the central government, to provide employment opportunities and access to health and education facilities.
It also follows that such systems are unable to generate either a sense of national citizenship or of a shared past --witness the fact that, in spite of tremendous efforts in the post-civil war period, Lebanese educators are still unable to produce an agreed history text for use in the country's schools. This is one of the ways the systems tend to perpetuate themselves by making it impossible for politics to be organized along other, more secular lines.
Recent Lebanese history also provides a number of examples which provide evidence of possible perils ahead. A weak central government finds it difficult to prevent armed groups or, in the case of Lebanon, foreign armies, from entering the country from outside. Furthermore, a system based simply on sectarian allegiance often produces serious gaps between the leadership and its followers due to the former's unwillingness or inability to address issues of corruption, inequality, and outright poverty within its own ranks. So it was in the south of Lebanon, where the Israeli invasion of 1982 provided the opportunity for a new and more radical Shi'ite movement, Hezbollah, to contest the established political leadership and its party, Amal.
Given the differences in geography, resources, and history between the two countries, Lebanon cannot provide an exact template for Iraq's political future. For one thing, the practice of federalism and of the devolution of powers to those in control of the three main centers of sectarian dominance is not only much more advanced in the Iraqi case but also enshrined in the new constitution. Hence, for example, while the present oil fields are supposed to remain under central government management, any new ones are to belong to those who control the province in which they are found. For another, is also likely that markedly different systems of law will be allowed to develop in the Kurdish, Shi'ite, and Sunni areas, a situation which Lebanon has so far just managed to avoid.
Nevertheless, there remain too many similarities not to believe that in large measure the Lebanese example cannot be used to shed significant light on Iraq's own political future. It has worked, in its own fashion, only so far as the sectarian elites see it in their interest to cooperate. It has worked only when the country has managed to insulate itself from regional tensions. And it has worked only so long as each leadership has been able to define the main lines of sectarian identity and to prevent itself from being outflanked by economically and socially discontented followers able to redefine identity in more radical and populist ways.
By the same token, the Lebanese version of sectarian democracy has not worked well at times like the 1970s and early 1990s when, encouraged by the lack of consensus among the sectarian elites, new social forces have pushed themselves on to the political scene. In Iraq, their most obvious equivalent is likely to be the movement led by Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Baghdad-based followers have significantly different interests and concerns from those of their more conservative co-religionists to the south.
It is also possible to imagine a major challenge mounted by Kurds dissatisfied with the shortcomings of a leadership whose monopoly of the local system makes them often able to ignore their followers' economic and political discontents. And this is to say nothing about the opposition mounted by angry Sunnis to a putative leadership which has a long way to go before it can legitimize itself in their eyes.
If the previous analysis is largely correct, there is little that either the United States or Britain can now do to control a process which they themselves had a considerable hand in setting in motion. And even in the case of the British -- who have largely devolved power in the south to the members of the Shi'ite parties which contested the 2004 elections -- this easy exit strategy is looking ever more tenuous now that the local police in Basra and elsewhere are falling more and more into Shi'ite sectarian hands.
Nevertheless, if the situation does not deteriorate into all-out civil war, the occupiers will still be able to comfort themselves that they have left some sort of democracy behind, albeit one in which voters have no real choice and all the major political decisions are made by unaccountable sectarian elites.
Roger Owen is the A.J.Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard University.
--------------------------------
Citation: Roger Owen. "What Iraq will look like after the elections," The Boston Globe, 27 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/27/what_iraq_will_look_like_after_the_elections/
--------------------------------
The Boston Globe, 27 November 2005
THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections will be largely a contest among parties representing the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds provides a clear demonstration of the way Iraq's politics are going to be dominated by the type of sectarian democracy to be found in Lebanon. This is a far cry from the kind of pluralist, interest-oriented democratic systems to be found in Europe and America and deserves to be understood in its own particular terms.
Lebanese sectarianism as it has developed since the days of the French mandate before World War II has three main features. First, the majority of the population vote for members of their own ethnic group or sect. Second, the fact that the leaders of each sect do not need to solicit the votes of their own members leaves them free to negotiate and to make political bargains with the leaders of the other sects more or less untrammeled by the individual or corporate interests of their own followers. Third, the primary business of politics becomes that of dividing the state's resources, including money and jobs, on a sectarian basis.
Certain key implications follow. Such systems can only exist in the context of a weak central government. All sides fear that one of the other sectarian groups might be able to seize control of a strong army backed by a strong police force with sufficient power to subdue the rest. Meanwhile, the power of each elite is further strengthened by the fact that their constituents look to them, not to the central government, to provide employment opportunities and access to health and education facilities.
It also follows that such systems are unable to generate either a sense of national citizenship or of a shared past --witness the fact that, in spite of tremendous efforts in the post-civil war period, Lebanese educators are still unable to produce an agreed history text for use in the country's schools. This is one of the ways the systems tend to perpetuate themselves by making it impossible for politics to be organized along other, more secular lines.
Recent Lebanese history also provides a number of examples which provide evidence of possible perils ahead. A weak central government finds it difficult to prevent armed groups or, in the case of Lebanon, foreign armies, from entering the country from outside. Furthermore, a system based simply on sectarian allegiance often produces serious gaps between the leadership and its followers due to the former's unwillingness or inability to address issues of corruption, inequality, and outright poverty within its own ranks. So it was in the south of Lebanon, where the Israeli invasion of 1982 provided the opportunity for a new and more radical Shi'ite movement, Hezbollah, to contest the established political leadership and its party, Amal.
Given the differences in geography, resources, and history between the two countries, Lebanon cannot provide an exact template for Iraq's political future. For one thing, the practice of federalism and of the devolution of powers to those in control of the three main centers of sectarian dominance is not only much more advanced in the Iraqi case but also enshrined in the new constitution. Hence, for example, while the present oil fields are supposed to remain under central government management, any new ones are to belong to those who control the province in which they are found. For another, is also likely that markedly different systems of law will be allowed to develop in the Kurdish, Shi'ite, and Sunni areas, a situation which Lebanon has so far just managed to avoid.
Nevertheless, there remain too many similarities not to believe that in large measure the Lebanese example cannot be used to shed significant light on Iraq's own political future. It has worked, in its own fashion, only so far as the sectarian elites see it in their interest to cooperate. It has worked only when the country has managed to insulate itself from regional tensions. And it has worked only so long as each leadership has been able to define the main lines of sectarian identity and to prevent itself from being outflanked by economically and socially discontented followers able to redefine identity in more radical and populist ways.
By the same token, the Lebanese version of sectarian democracy has not worked well at times like the 1970s and early 1990s when, encouraged by the lack of consensus among the sectarian elites, new social forces have pushed themselves on to the political scene. In Iraq, their most obvious equivalent is likely to be the movement led by Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Baghdad-based followers have significantly different interests and concerns from those of their more conservative co-religionists to the south.
It is also possible to imagine a major challenge mounted by Kurds dissatisfied with the shortcomings of a leadership whose monopoly of the local system makes them often able to ignore their followers' economic and political discontents. And this is to say nothing about the opposition mounted by angry Sunnis to a putative leadership which has a long way to go before it can legitimize itself in their eyes.
If the previous analysis is largely correct, there is little that either the United States or Britain can now do to control a process which they themselves had a considerable hand in setting in motion. And even in the case of the British -- who have largely devolved power in the south to the members of the Shi'ite parties which contested the 2004 elections -- this easy exit strategy is looking ever more tenuous now that the local police in Basra and elsewhere are falling more and more into Shi'ite sectarian hands.
Nevertheless, if the situation does not deteriorate into all-out civil war, the occupiers will still be able to comfort themselves that they have left some sort of democracy behind, albeit one in which voters have no real choice and all the major political decisions are made by unaccountable sectarian elites.
Roger Owen is the A.J.Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard University.
--------------------------------
Citation: Roger Owen. "What Iraq will look like after the elections," The Boston Globe, 27 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/27/what_iraq_will_look_like_after_the_elections/
--------------------------------
Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble
By Dahr Jamail
Inter Press Service, 24 November 2005.
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 23 (IPS) - A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.
The Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah (SCHRD) estimates the number of people killed in the city during the U.S.-led operation in October and November 2004 at 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians. Mass graves were dug on the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies.
Last week, the Pentagon confirmed that it had used white phosphorus, a chemical that bursts into flame upon contact with air, inside Fallujah as an "incendiary weapon" against insurgents. Washington denies that it is a chemical weapon, as charged by some critics, and that it was used against civilians.
Compensation payments promised by Iyad Allawi, the U.S.-backed interim prime minister at the time of the operation, have failed to materialise for many residents in the city, who lack potable water and suffer electricity cuts on a daily basis.
"People were paid almost 20 percent of what they were promised by Allawi, which was just 100 million dollars," said Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a resident of Fallujah and spokesperson for the city's governing council.
According to Deraji, who is also a biologist and co-director of the SCHRD, Iraq's current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, had agreed to continue with the second and third compensation payments to people inside Fallujah who had suffered the loss of a loved one or damaged property during the fighting, after he was pressured by the U.S. embassy.
"But now he [Jaafari] has stopped the payments," Deraji told IPS. "So now there is no payment to the people and we all continue to suffer."
This month, U.S. Marine Col. David Berger, who is commander of the 8th Regimental Combat Team and responsible for Fallujah, told reporters, "[Fallujah's residents] don't see any progress, they don't see any action. They hear a lot of words, a lot of promises, but not a lot of product."
Deraji estimates that up to 150,000 of the 350,000 residents of Fallujah continue to live as internally displaced persons due to the lack of compensation, and therefore, lack of reconstruction.
Reports from inside the city indicate that residents are increasingly angry at the situation.
"When I was recently in Fallujah, I didn't see any reconstruction," said Rana Aiouby, a freelance journalist from Baghdad. "Some of the people are rebuilding their own houses, but I'm still finding people outside Fallujah who are refugees from the April attack on the city."
Aiouby, who has been in Fallujah many times, said that she was finally allowed to visit the Shuhada district this past April, after having been previously barred from the area by U.S. forces.
"This is the poorest district of Falluah and where there was some of the worst destruction," she added. "It was at least 95 percent destroyed."
Both Deraji and Aiouby said that the power supply is erratic, and that random bursts of fighting continued on an almost daily basis. As recently as Nov. 16, the U.S. military confirmed that a Marine was killed by a car bomb in Karmah, a small city near Fallujah.
"So many schools are either destroyed or occupied by the Americans even now," Abu Mohammed, a resident of Fallujah, told IPS in a telephone interview. "Our children are either going to school in tents or staying at home because we are too afraid to have them outside."
Abu Mohammed, a carpenter and 30-year-old father of five, said that countless residents were sick from drinking dirty tap water. Others were falling ill from the lack of electricity coupled with cold nighttime temperatures that sink as low as 10 degrees Celsius now that winter has arrived in Iraq.
Deraji agreed, saying there were "many new diseases, especially cancers with children and with people who stayed in Falluah during the assault". He told IPS, "Maybe they took big doses from radiation and pollution inside the city during that time, so we have so many medical problems now."
This is complicated by the fact that hospitals in the city are not at full operating capacity.
"Some reconstruction is going on with our hospitals," added Deraji, "But it is very slow and the government is taking some of the money themselves that we've had for it."
Mohammed Khadem, a 55 year-old engineer in Fallujah, expressed frustration at the tight military checkpoints in the city. "With retina scans and fingerprinting still being carried out by the U.S. military at times in order to issue bar-coded identification badges for certain residents, lines waiting to get into the city are quite long," he said.
During a phone call from inside Fallujah, Khadem told IPS that security remained a large problem and fighting occurred "nearly every day at times".
Deraji, speaking for the SCHRD, complained that the "Americans are not letting our police reestablish themselves. They've only allowed 200 Iraqi police to be established from inside Fallujah and this is not enough."
According to the SCHRD and other NGOs operating in Fallujah, a sore spot for residents in the city are members of the Iraqi Army who are with U.S. soldiers.
With Fallujah being primarily Sunni and members of the Shia Badr Organisation militia and Kurdish Peshmerga militia comprising most of the Iraqi Army in Fallujah, reports of humiliating and brutal treatment of residents are common. "Now there are many Iraqi Army men with the Americans and this is a big problem because they are always shooting and taking people as detainees," said Deraji. "They are acting like cowboys in films."
------------------------------------------------
Citation: Dahr Jamail. "Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble," Inter Press Service, 24 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000322.php#more
------------------------------------------------
Inter Press Service, 24 November 2005.
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 23 (IPS) - A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.
The Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah (SCHRD) estimates the number of people killed in the city during the U.S.-led operation in October and November 2004 at 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians. Mass graves were dug on the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies.
Last week, the Pentagon confirmed that it had used white phosphorus, a chemical that bursts into flame upon contact with air, inside Fallujah as an "incendiary weapon" against insurgents. Washington denies that it is a chemical weapon, as charged by some critics, and that it was used against civilians.
Compensation payments promised by Iyad Allawi, the U.S.-backed interim prime minister at the time of the operation, have failed to materialise for many residents in the city, who lack potable water and suffer electricity cuts on a daily basis.
"People were paid almost 20 percent of what they were promised by Allawi, which was just 100 million dollars," said Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a resident of Fallujah and spokesperson for the city's governing council.
According to Deraji, who is also a biologist and co-director of the SCHRD, Iraq's current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, had agreed to continue with the second and third compensation payments to people inside Fallujah who had suffered the loss of a loved one or damaged property during the fighting, after he was pressured by the U.S. embassy.
"But now he [Jaafari] has stopped the payments," Deraji told IPS. "So now there is no payment to the people and we all continue to suffer."
This month, U.S. Marine Col. David Berger, who is commander of the 8th Regimental Combat Team and responsible for Fallujah, told reporters, "[Fallujah's residents] don't see any progress, they don't see any action. They hear a lot of words, a lot of promises, but not a lot of product."
Deraji estimates that up to 150,000 of the 350,000 residents of Fallujah continue to live as internally displaced persons due to the lack of compensation, and therefore, lack of reconstruction.
Reports from inside the city indicate that residents are increasingly angry at the situation.
"When I was recently in Fallujah, I didn't see any reconstruction," said Rana Aiouby, a freelance journalist from Baghdad. "Some of the people are rebuilding their own houses, but I'm still finding people outside Fallujah who are refugees from the April attack on the city."
Aiouby, who has been in Fallujah many times, said that she was finally allowed to visit the Shuhada district this past April, after having been previously barred from the area by U.S. forces.
"This is the poorest district of Falluah and where there was some of the worst destruction," she added. "It was at least 95 percent destroyed."
Both Deraji and Aiouby said that the power supply is erratic, and that random bursts of fighting continued on an almost daily basis. As recently as Nov. 16, the U.S. military confirmed that a Marine was killed by a car bomb in Karmah, a small city near Fallujah.
"So many schools are either destroyed or occupied by the Americans even now," Abu Mohammed, a resident of Fallujah, told IPS in a telephone interview. "Our children are either going to school in tents or staying at home because we are too afraid to have them outside."
Abu Mohammed, a carpenter and 30-year-old father of five, said that countless residents were sick from drinking dirty tap water. Others were falling ill from the lack of electricity coupled with cold nighttime temperatures that sink as low as 10 degrees Celsius now that winter has arrived in Iraq.
Deraji agreed, saying there were "many new diseases, especially cancers with children and with people who stayed in Falluah during the assault". He told IPS, "Maybe they took big doses from radiation and pollution inside the city during that time, so we have so many medical problems now."
This is complicated by the fact that hospitals in the city are not at full operating capacity.
"Some reconstruction is going on with our hospitals," added Deraji, "But it is very slow and the government is taking some of the money themselves that we've had for it."
Mohammed Khadem, a 55 year-old engineer in Fallujah, expressed frustration at the tight military checkpoints in the city. "With retina scans and fingerprinting still being carried out by the U.S. military at times in order to issue bar-coded identification badges for certain residents, lines waiting to get into the city are quite long," he said.
During a phone call from inside Fallujah, Khadem told IPS that security remained a large problem and fighting occurred "nearly every day at times".
Deraji, speaking for the SCHRD, complained that the "Americans are not letting our police reestablish themselves. They've only allowed 200 Iraqi police to be established from inside Fallujah and this is not enough."
According to the SCHRD and other NGOs operating in Fallujah, a sore spot for residents in the city are members of the Iraqi Army who are with U.S. soldiers.
With Fallujah being primarily Sunni and members of the Shia Badr Organisation militia and Kurdish Peshmerga militia comprising most of the Iraqi Army in Fallujah, reports of humiliating and brutal treatment of residents are common. "Now there are many Iraqi Army men with the Americans and this is a big problem because they are always shooting and taking people as detainees," said Deraji. "They are acting like cowboys in films."
------------------------------------------------
Citation: Dahr Jamail. "Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble," Inter Press Service, 24 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000322.php#more
------------------------------------------------
US to transfer security to Iraqis in several cities
Agence France Presse, 26 November 2005
BAGHDAD - US forces will soon hand over full security responsibility to Iraqi forces in a number of towns and regions, a senior Iraqi official has revealed.
"Very, very soon, we will have an agreement signed by the prime minister to hand over control of some cities," national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told AFP Sunday.
"I very much hope it will happen before the elections" to be held on December 15.
The transfer of some regions to Iraqi forces will help weaken claims by insurgents they are fighting US-led occupation forces, he said. "It will undermine the claim by the terrorists that they are working against foreign troops."
US forces have already started handing over a number of bases to Iraqi forces, most recently a complex of palaces built by ousted dictator Saddam Hussein on the outskirts of his hometown of Tikrit.
A joint US-Iraqi transition committee was set up earlier this year work out how such a transfer would take place and how soon Iraqi forces would be able to assume responsibility for the new "battle space".
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had said said the task force would establish no timeline, adding that transfers of responsibility would be condition-based and dependent on how well the fledgling Iraqi services were able to built up their forces.
The transfer of responsibility will allow the United States to gradually reduce its 158,000 troops in Iraq.
Khalilzad earlier this month indicated that the United States could start to pull out some of its forces "beginning next year".
----------------------------
Citation: "US to transfer security to Iraqis in several cities," Agence France Presse, 26 November 2005.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051126/wl_mideast_afp/iraqussecurity
----------------------------
BAGHDAD - US forces will soon hand over full security responsibility to Iraqi forces in a number of towns and regions, a senior Iraqi official has revealed.
"Very, very soon, we will have an agreement signed by the prime minister to hand over control of some cities," national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told AFP Sunday.
"I very much hope it will happen before the elections" to be held on December 15.
The transfer of some regions to Iraqi forces will help weaken claims by insurgents they are fighting US-led occupation forces, he said. "It will undermine the claim by the terrorists that they are working against foreign troops."
US forces have already started handing over a number of bases to Iraqi forces, most recently a complex of palaces built by ousted dictator Saddam Hussein on the outskirts of his hometown of Tikrit.
A joint US-Iraqi transition committee was set up earlier this year work out how such a transfer would take place and how soon Iraqi forces would be able to assume responsibility for the new "battle space".
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had said said the task force would establish no timeline, adding that transfers of responsibility would be condition-based and dependent on how well the fledgling Iraqi services were able to built up their forces.
The transfer of responsibility will allow the United States to gradually reduce its 158,000 troops in Iraq.
Khalilzad earlier this month indicated that the United States could start to pull out some of its forces "beginning next year".
----------------------------
Citation: "US to transfer security to Iraqis in several cities," Agence France Presse, 26 November 2005.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051126/wl_mideast_afp/iraqussecurity
----------------------------
Shiite Cleric Wields Violence and Popularity to Increase Power in Iraq
By Edward Wong
The New York Times, 27 November 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 - Men loyal to Moktada al-Sadr piled out of their cars at a plantation near Baghdad on a recent morning, bristling with Kalashnikov rifles and eager to exact vengeance on the Sunni Arab fighters who had butchered one of their Shiite militia brothers.
When the smoke cleared after the fight, at least 21 bodies lay scattered among the weeds, making it the deadliest militia battle in months. The black-clad Shiites swaggered away, boasting about the carnage.
Even as that battle raged on Oct. 27, Mr. Sadr's aides in Baghdad were quietly closing a deal that would signal his official debut as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, placing his handpicked candidates on the same slate - and on equal footing - with the Shiite governing parties in the December parliamentary elections. The country's rulers had come courting him, and he had forced them to meet his terms.
Wielding violence and political popularity as tools of his authority, Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the American authorities here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figures.
Just a year after Mr. Sadr led two fierce uprisings, the Americans are hailing his entry into the elections as the best sign yet that the political process can co-opt insurgents.
But his ascent could portend a darker chain of events, for he continues to embrace his image as an unrepentant guerrilla leader even as he takes the reins of political power.
Mr. Sadr has made no move to disband his militia, the thousands-strong Mahdi Army. In recent weeks, factions of the militia have brazenly assaulted and abducted Sunni Arabs, rival Shiite groups, journalists and British-led forces in the south, where Mr. Sadr has a zealous following. At least 19 foreign soldiers and security contractors have been killed there since late summer, mostly by roadside bombs planted by Shiite militiamen who use Iranian technology, British officers say. The latest killing took place Nov. 20 near Basra.
"The fatality rate is quite high, much higher than it was a year ago," Maj. Gen. J. B. Dutton, the British commander in southern Iraq, said in a briefing to reporters.
Members of the Mahdi Army have also joined the police in large numbers, while retaining their loyalty to Mr. Sadr. Squad cars in Baghdad and southern cities cruise openly with pictures of Mr. Sadr taped to the windows. On Nov. 17, the American Embassy demanded that the Iraqi government prohibit private armies from controlling the Iraqi security forces, after American soldiers had found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured, in a Baghdad police prison reportedly under the command of a Shiite militia.
Mr. Sadr's oratory is as anti-American and incendiary as it has ever been. A recent article in Al Hawza, a weekly Sadr publication that the Americans tried unsuccessfully to close last year, carried the headline: "Bush Family: Your Nights Will Be Finished." Another article explained that Mr. Sadr was supporting the December elections to rid Iraq of American-backed politicians who "rip off the heads of the underprivileged and scatter the pieces of their children and elderly."
Partly because of his uncompromising attitude, Mr. Sadr, who is in his early 30's, is immensely popular among impoverished Shiites. That has made him the most coveted ally of the governing Shiite parties as they head into the December elections. Mr. Sadr used this leverage to get 30 of his candidates on the Shiite coalition's slate, as many as the number allotted to each of the two main governing parties, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Mr. Sadr's aides have already negotiated with those parties for executive offices and ministry posts in the next government. Bahaa al-Aaraji, an influential Sadr loyalist who was secretary of the constitutional committee, said in an interview that Mr. Sadr had urged him to take an executive office after the elections.
Early this month, the leader of the Supreme Council, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, went to the holy city of Najaf to visit Mr. Sadr in a gesture of solidarity. Mr. Hakim and Mr. Sadr are sons of deceased ayatollahs whose families have feuded. In August, the Mahdi Army stormed the offices of the Supreme Council across southern Iraq. Mr. Hakim's recent visit showed how much the mainstream Shiite leaders needed the support of Mr. Sadr, no matter how much they abhorred him.
"They are the largest group in the Shiite community," said Hajim al-Hassani, a secular Sunni Turkmen who is speaker of the transitional National Assembly. "They will be a force to deal with in the elections. If they run separately, they would get most of the seats in the south."
Mr. Sadr is also trying to use the elections to elevate his stature as a spiritual leader. Though his political group has joined the Shiite coalition, he has yet to endorse anyone. That is apparently because he wants to emulate the top ayatollahs in Iraq, collectively known as the marjaiyah, who usually stay above day-to-day politics. The most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has said he will not back any single group in the elections.
"Moktada doesn't support any list," said Sheik Abbas al-Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's senior political aide. "He has coordinated his opinion with that of the marjaiyah. They say they support everyone, but not any specific list."
Mr. Sadr's support for the elections, though, is a marked change from last January, when he criticized the political process as a tool of the occupiers. Followers of Mr. Sadr at the time ran for transitional assembly seats, but not as official candidates of the Sadr movement. They won about two dozen seats and later got control of three ministries.
A Western diplomat said the Sadrists exhibited political acumen once in power. They recently sponsored an assembly bill demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The bill did not pass, but its development "showed an evolving political maturity," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid the appearance of foreign interference in Iraqi politics.
But greater Sadrist participation in governance has done little to curb the activities of the Mahdi Army. Iraqi and British officials have suggested that Mr. Sadr's militia is tied to hundreds of policemen in Basra who form a shadowy force called the Jameat, a group involved in killings and torture. General Dutton, the British commander, said Shiite-on-Shiite violence was continuing. In addition, sophisticated material from Iran for making bombs is going to "breakaway" militiamen, he said.
It is unclear how much command Mr. Sadr and his top aides have over some factions of the militia.
"I think the Sadrists are a social movement, not really so much an organization," said Juan Cole, a specialist on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. "So you have these neighborhood-based youth gangs masquerading as an 'army.' Then you have the mosque preachers loyal to Moktada who try to swing their congregations, and who interface with the youth gangs."
On Nov. 12, after a car bomb killed 8 people and wounded at least 40 others in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, dozens of gun-wielding Sadr loyalists sealed off the area, only occasionally admitting Iraqi policemen. A militiaman pulled up in a bulldozer to clear the debris. Others detained a man whom they accused of helping in the attack. They told a reporter they had gotten a confession out of him, and then they shoved him into a sedan and drove away.
Last month, militiamen near the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad abducted Rory Carroll, an Irish reporter for The Guardian. Senior Shiite officials said in interviews that the militiamen, acting without Mr. Sadr's approval, wanted to trade Mr. Carroll for a Mahdi Army commander imprisoned by the British in Basra. The kidnappers eventually released Mr. Carroll because of political pressure. Sheik Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's political aide, later said the Mahdi Army had nothing to do with the abduction.
Sadr officials are quite open, though, about the Mahdi Army's role in the deadly battle on Oct. 27, when the militiamen assaulted a Sunni Arab kidnapping ring in the farming area called Nahrawan, east of Baghdad. The Sunnis had abducted and mutilated a Sadrist and left his body parts strewn atop a car in a thicket of trees. When the Mahdi Army went to retrieve the body, the Sunnis opened fire with mortars, said Sheik Ghazi Naji Gannas, a local Shiite leader.
The militia retreated, then returned the next day with policemen for a final showdown. Sadr officials say the incident shows that the Mahdi Army can play a positive role in helping to secure Iraq. "We coordinated with the government, and we acted with their acknowledgment," Sheik Rubaie said.
But Sheik Gannas said the Mahdi Army was also carrying out abductions in the area. The militia was as unruly and dangerous as the Sunni extremists, he added, and nothing but trouble lay ahead if the Iraqi government failed to rein it in.
"Thank God," he said, "for this battle between the two sides."
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Joao Silva contributed reporting for this article.
--------------------------------------
Citation: Edward Wong. "Shiite Cleric Wields Violence and Popularity to Increase Power in Iraq," The New York Times, 27 November 2005
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/international/middleeast/27sadr.html?pagewanted=all
--------------------------------------
The New York Times, 27 November 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 - Men loyal to Moktada al-Sadr piled out of their cars at a plantation near Baghdad on a recent morning, bristling with Kalashnikov rifles and eager to exact vengeance on the Sunni Arab fighters who had butchered one of their Shiite militia brothers.
When the smoke cleared after the fight, at least 21 bodies lay scattered among the weeds, making it the deadliest militia battle in months. The black-clad Shiites swaggered away, boasting about the carnage.
Even as that battle raged on Oct. 27, Mr. Sadr's aides in Baghdad were quietly closing a deal that would signal his official debut as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, placing his handpicked candidates on the same slate - and on equal footing - with the Shiite governing parties in the December parliamentary elections. The country's rulers had come courting him, and he had forced them to meet his terms.
Wielding violence and political popularity as tools of his authority, Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the American authorities here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figures.
Just a year after Mr. Sadr led two fierce uprisings, the Americans are hailing his entry into the elections as the best sign yet that the political process can co-opt insurgents.
But his ascent could portend a darker chain of events, for he continues to embrace his image as an unrepentant guerrilla leader even as he takes the reins of political power.
Mr. Sadr has made no move to disband his militia, the thousands-strong Mahdi Army. In recent weeks, factions of the militia have brazenly assaulted and abducted Sunni Arabs, rival Shiite groups, journalists and British-led forces in the south, where Mr. Sadr has a zealous following. At least 19 foreign soldiers and security contractors have been killed there since late summer, mostly by roadside bombs planted by Shiite militiamen who use Iranian technology, British officers say. The latest killing took place Nov. 20 near Basra.
"The fatality rate is quite high, much higher than it was a year ago," Maj. Gen. J. B. Dutton, the British commander in southern Iraq, said in a briefing to reporters.
Members of the Mahdi Army have also joined the police in large numbers, while retaining their loyalty to Mr. Sadr. Squad cars in Baghdad and southern cities cruise openly with pictures of Mr. Sadr taped to the windows. On Nov. 17, the American Embassy demanded that the Iraqi government prohibit private armies from controlling the Iraqi security forces, after American soldiers had found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured, in a Baghdad police prison reportedly under the command of a Shiite militia.
Mr. Sadr's oratory is as anti-American and incendiary as it has ever been. A recent article in Al Hawza, a weekly Sadr publication that the Americans tried unsuccessfully to close last year, carried the headline: "Bush Family: Your Nights Will Be Finished." Another article explained that Mr. Sadr was supporting the December elections to rid Iraq of American-backed politicians who "rip off the heads of the underprivileged and scatter the pieces of their children and elderly."
Partly because of his uncompromising attitude, Mr. Sadr, who is in his early 30's, is immensely popular among impoverished Shiites. That has made him the most coveted ally of the governing Shiite parties as they head into the December elections. Mr. Sadr used this leverage to get 30 of his candidates on the Shiite coalition's slate, as many as the number allotted to each of the two main governing parties, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Mr. Sadr's aides have already negotiated with those parties for executive offices and ministry posts in the next government. Bahaa al-Aaraji, an influential Sadr loyalist who was secretary of the constitutional committee, said in an interview that Mr. Sadr had urged him to take an executive office after the elections.
Early this month, the leader of the Supreme Council, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, went to the holy city of Najaf to visit Mr. Sadr in a gesture of solidarity. Mr. Hakim and Mr. Sadr are sons of deceased ayatollahs whose families have feuded. In August, the Mahdi Army stormed the offices of the Supreme Council across southern Iraq. Mr. Hakim's recent visit showed how much the mainstream Shiite leaders needed the support of Mr. Sadr, no matter how much they abhorred him.
"They are the largest group in the Shiite community," said Hajim al-Hassani, a secular Sunni Turkmen who is speaker of the transitional National Assembly. "They will be a force to deal with in the elections. If they run separately, they would get most of the seats in the south."
Mr. Sadr is also trying to use the elections to elevate his stature as a spiritual leader. Though his political group has joined the Shiite coalition, he has yet to endorse anyone. That is apparently because he wants to emulate the top ayatollahs in Iraq, collectively known as the marjaiyah, who usually stay above day-to-day politics. The most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has said he will not back any single group in the elections.
"Moktada doesn't support any list," said Sheik Abbas al-Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's senior political aide. "He has coordinated his opinion with that of the marjaiyah. They say they support everyone, but not any specific list."
Mr. Sadr's support for the elections, though, is a marked change from last January, when he criticized the political process as a tool of the occupiers. Followers of Mr. Sadr at the time ran for transitional assembly seats, but not as official candidates of the Sadr movement. They won about two dozen seats and later got control of three ministries.
A Western diplomat said the Sadrists exhibited political acumen once in power. They recently sponsored an assembly bill demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The bill did not pass, but its development "showed an evolving political maturity," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid the appearance of foreign interference in Iraqi politics.
But greater Sadrist participation in governance has done little to curb the activities of the Mahdi Army. Iraqi and British officials have suggested that Mr. Sadr's militia is tied to hundreds of policemen in Basra who form a shadowy force called the Jameat, a group involved in killings and torture. General Dutton, the British commander, said Shiite-on-Shiite violence was continuing. In addition, sophisticated material from Iran for making bombs is going to "breakaway" militiamen, he said.
It is unclear how much command Mr. Sadr and his top aides have over some factions of the militia.
"I think the Sadrists are a social movement, not really so much an organization," said Juan Cole, a specialist on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. "So you have these neighborhood-based youth gangs masquerading as an 'army.' Then you have the mosque preachers loyal to Moktada who try to swing their congregations, and who interface with the youth gangs."
On Nov. 12, after a car bomb killed 8 people and wounded at least 40 others in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, dozens of gun-wielding Sadr loyalists sealed off the area, only occasionally admitting Iraqi policemen. A militiaman pulled up in a bulldozer to clear the debris. Others detained a man whom they accused of helping in the attack. They told a reporter they had gotten a confession out of him, and then they shoved him into a sedan and drove away.
Last month, militiamen near the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad abducted Rory Carroll, an Irish reporter for The Guardian. Senior Shiite officials said in interviews that the militiamen, acting without Mr. Sadr's approval, wanted to trade Mr. Carroll for a Mahdi Army commander imprisoned by the British in Basra. The kidnappers eventually released Mr. Carroll because of political pressure. Sheik Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's political aide, later said the Mahdi Army had nothing to do with the abduction.
Sadr officials are quite open, though, about the Mahdi Army's role in the deadly battle on Oct. 27, when the militiamen assaulted a Sunni Arab kidnapping ring in the farming area called Nahrawan, east of Baghdad. The Sunnis had abducted and mutilated a Sadrist and left his body parts strewn atop a car in a thicket of trees. When the Mahdi Army went to retrieve the body, the Sunnis opened fire with mortars, said Sheik Ghazi Naji Gannas, a local Shiite leader.
The militia retreated, then returned the next day with policemen for a final showdown. Sadr officials say the incident shows that the Mahdi Army can play a positive role in helping to secure Iraq. "We coordinated with the government, and we acted with their acknowledgment," Sheik Rubaie said.
But Sheik Gannas said the Mahdi Army was also carrying out abductions in the area. The militia was as unruly and dangerous as the Sunni extremists, he added, and nothing but trouble lay ahead if the Iraqi government failed to rein it in.
"Thank God," he said, "for this battle between the two sides."
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Joao Silva contributed reporting for this article.
--------------------------------------
Citation: Edward Wong. "Shiite Cleric Wields Violence and Popularity to Increase Power in Iraq," The New York Times, 27 November 2005
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/international/middleeast/27sadr.html?pagewanted=all
--------------------------------------
23 November 2005
Return of Former Palace to Sovereignty of Iraqis Offers Glimmer of Hope
By John F. Burns
The New York Times, 23 November 2005
TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov. 22 - For the two most powerful Americans in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, as for the Iraqi dignitaries who had gathered here, it was a symbolic moment: a ceremony on a bluff high above the Tigris River at which the Americans formally returned the largest of Saddam Hussein's palace complexes to Iraqi sovereign control, 31 months after invading troops had seized it for use as an American base.
There was an Iraqi military brass band, red piping on the members' blue dress uniforms, whose rendering of the national anthem rang with a quirky dissonance, but with an engaging air of bravery, too. American Apache helicopters circled off in the distance, vigilant for any sign of insurgent attack. Iraqi dignitaries lined up with the Americans on white plastic chairs in the weak winter sunshine, some resplendent in gold-trimmed Bedouin robes and headdresses.
The American officer chosen to eulogize the occasion, Col. Mark McKnight of the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Infantry Division, in combat fatigues and a camouflage helmet with raised goggles, had reached the point at the lectern when he was vaunting "the many victories this country has achieved" during the period of American tutelage. "The Iraqi people will continue to move forward toward a sovereign Iraq, an Iraq where an elite few can no longer erect expensive and ornate palaces like these while the majority of the people suffer in fear and poverty," he said.
And then came the terrifying whistling in the air overhead, the morbid sound of an incoming rocket or mortar shell that is dreaded by all who have lived through the war. In an instant, American bodyguards protecting General Casey and Mr. Khalilzad dived on them, and they were lost from view in the melee of Americans and Iraqis ducking, pushing and diving, upending chairs and tables, as they fled for cover in a palace behind. The shot that was surely intended to kill them appeared to strike about 500 yards beyond the gathering, General Casey said afterward, and as with much of the old Hussein-era ordnance used by the insurgents, it failed to explode.
After about 15 minutes, the ceremony reassembled, the Iraqi governor of Salahuddin Province, which includes Tikrit, accepted a symbolic brass key to the palace complex, and all concerned affected to be untroubled. Partly, this seemed like a matter of dignity, a determination that the insurgents not be allowed to make a shambles of the occasion. But partly, too, it seemed like a recognition that the insurgent attack was part of Iraqi normality, and that it made the event still better allegory for a country and a time when nothing seems certain, everything is still in play.
General Casey, a 57-year-old four-star general who has the disarming manner of a genial college professor coupled with a steeliness in running the war that has made him popular with his troops, seemed unshaken. He stood where the bodyguards had flattened him, telling reporters that he thought the projectile was a rocket, and that the probable firing point lay miles away to the northeast, across the river, where a cluster of Sunni Arab villages is an established insurgent stronghold. He said he had seen the Apache helicopters flying surveillance for the ceremony wheeling east, as if in pursuit of the attackers.
Mr. Khalilzad, a 54-year-old former scholar who came to Baghdad last summer after two years as ambassador to Afghanistan, where he was born, made light of the affair and used it to underscore the close relationship that he and the general say is central to calibrating America's policies here. "I ended up with General Casey on top of me," he said, laughing, "so I guess that's a pretty good sign for civil-military relations." He stuck to his schedule after the ceremony, meeting with local leaders in the palace to accept petitions on everything from property disputes to a reopening of the Tikrit airport.
"This is a phenomenon existing in this country," he said of the attack. "We are used to it."
The ceremony at the palace complex appeared to have been staged partly to bolster the Bush administration's war policy here in the face of the rising urgency among Congressional leaders for a timetable to bring American troops home. As commanders here have explained the policy to newly arrived American units in the past week, the aim is to push forward as fast as the Iraqi military's abilities can bear toward the goal, by the end of 2006, of putting Iraq's new American-trained, 270,000-soldier army in the lead in the war. If the plan succeeds, these commanders have said, they could have American troop levels down to 100,000, from the current 153,000, within 12 months.
Part of the plan is to pull American troops back from the cities to more remote bases where they will be less visible to Iraqis but poised to assist when needed. The plan, the commanders say, matches Congressional demands for a drawdown with the need for Iraqi Army units to gain strength; and, they say, it is in accord with Iraqi public opinion, as measured in recent surveys taken for the American command. The commanders, at briefings in the past week that were held on the condition that they not be identified, said the surveys showed 90 percent of Iraqis want American troops to leave, but nearly 70 percent say they oppose withdrawal now, before Iraqi forces can stand on their own.
By staging a public ceremony to dramatize the pullout from the palace complex in Tikrit, and by flying Iraqi and American reporters from Baghdad for the occasion on a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters, the Americans appeared intent on showing that the pullback from the cities is more than a paper plan. Since April 2003, the 1,000-acre palace complex here, with 136 buildings and a dozen huge sandstone palaces, has served as the American military and civil headquarters for a wide swath of the Sunni Arab heartland that is the main battlefield in Iraq.
In October, the 42nd Infantry Division, a New York National Guard unit, began pulling up stakes for its return home after nine months with its headquarters at the complex. The 101st Airborne Division took over, and now has transferred its headquarters about 12 miles north of Tikrit, to a former Iraqi air base that housed Mr. Hussein's air force college. From there, the American division will team up with the Iraqi Army's new Fourth Division to create a combined force of more than 30,000 soldiers to fight the insurgents.
The United States command has similar plans to pull American troops back from all major cities, including Baghdad, and it has already handed over 27 other military bases. For its part, the Iraqi Army appears intent on not replicating what many Iraqis have said was an American mistake - moving into palaces that were symbols of Mr. Hussein's repression and making themselves, at least symbolically, the former dictator's heirs. For now, at least, according to Iraqi officials at the Tuesday ceremony, the Tikrit complex will be used for some of Saladin Province's government offices, but mainly as a tourist center - a museum, the officials said, of Mr. Hussein's contempt for the people.
Lt. Gen. Abdul Abdul Aziz al-Mufti, the commander of the Fourth Division, told reporters that even as a general in Mr. Hussein's army he had never dared look at the palaces as he drove through Tikrit, for fear of arrest. "Thanks be to God," he said, "the ordinary people can now come and see the palaces for themselves."
As for himself, he said, he will be too busy to tour the palaces as he works to bring his troops to the point where they can supplant the 101st Airborne Division as the main force in the war. "We're not at 100 percent right now, more like 70 percent," he said. "But if we are given the equipment we need, and the logistical support, we can get there in four to six months."
---------------------------------------
Citation: John F. Burns. "Return of Former Palace to Sovereignty of Iraqis Offers Glimmer of Hope," The New York Times, 23 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/international/middleeast/23tikrit.html
---------------------------------------
The New York Times, 23 November 2005
TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov. 22 - For the two most powerful Americans in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, as for the Iraqi dignitaries who had gathered here, it was a symbolic moment: a ceremony on a bluff high above the Tigris River at which the Americans formally returned the largest of Saddam Hussein's palace complexes to Iraqi sovereign control, 31 months after invading troops had seized it for use as an American base.
There was an Iraqi military brass band, red piping on the members' blue dress uniforms, whose rendering of the national anthem rang with a quirky dissonance, but with an engaging air of bravery, too. American Apache helicopters circled off in the distance, vigilant for any sign of insurgent attack. Iraqi dignitaries lined up with the Americans on white plastic chairs in the weak winter sunshine, some resplendent in gold-trimmed Bedouin robes and headdresses.
The American officer chosen to eulogize the occasion, Col. Mark McKnight of the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Infantry Division, in combat fatigues and a camouflage helmet with raised goggles, had reached the point at the lectern when he was vaunting "the many victories this country has achieved" during the period of American tutelage. "The Iraqi people will continue to move forward toward a sovereign Iraq, an Iraq where an elite few can no longer erect expensive and ornate palaces like these while the majority of the people suffer in fear and poverty," he said.
And then came the terrifying whistling in the air overhead, the morbid sound of an incoming rocket or mortar shell that is dreaded by all who have lived through the war. In an instant, American bodyguards protecting General Casey and Mr. Khalilzad dived on them, and they were lost from view in the melee of Americans and Iraqis ducking, pushing and diving, upending chairs and tables, as they fled for cover in a palace behind. The shot that was surely intended to kill them appeared to strike about 500 yards beyond the gathering, General Casey said afterward, and as with much of the old Hussein-era ordnance used by the insurgents, it failed to explode.
After about 15 minutes, the ceremony reassembled, the Iraqi governor of Salahuddin Province, which includes Tikrit, accepted a symbolic brass key to the palace complex, and all concerned affected to be untroubled. Partly, this seemed like a matter of dignity, a determination that the insurgents not be allowed to make a shambles of the occasion. But partly, too, it seemed like a recognition that the insurgent attack was part of Iraqi normality, and that it made the event still better allegory for a country and a time when nothing seems certain, everything is still in play.
General Casey, a 57-year-old four-star general who has the disarming manner of a genial college professor coupled with a steeliness in running the war that has made him popular with his troops, seemed unshaken. He stood where the bodyguards had flattened him, telling reporters that he thought the projectile was a rocket, and that the probable firing point lay miles away to the northeast, across the river, where a cluster of Sunni Arab villages is an established insurgent stronghold. He said he had seen the Apache helicopters flying surveillance for the ceremony wheeling east, as if in pursuit of the attackers.
Mr. Khalilzad, a 54-year-old former scholar who came to Baghdad last summer after two years as ambassador to Afghanistan, where he was born, made light of the affair and used it to underscore the close relationship that he and the general say is central to calibrating America's policies here. "I ended up with General Casey on top of me," he said, laughing, "so I guess that's a pretty good sign for civil-military relations." He stuck to his schedule after the ceremony, meeting with local leaders in the palace to accept petitions on everything from property disputes to a reopening of the Tikrit airport.
"This is a phenomenon existing in this country," he said of the attack. "We are used to it."
The ceremony at the palace complex appeared to have been staged partly to bolster the Bush administration's war policy here in the face of the rising urgency among Congressional leaders for a timetable to bring American troops home. As commanders here have explained the policy to newly arrived American units in the past week, the aim is to push forward as fast as the Iraqi military's abilities can bear toward the goal, by the end of 2006, of putting Iraq's new American-trained, 270,000-soldier army in the lead in the war. If the plan succeeds, these commanders have said, they could have American troop levels down to 100,000, from the current 153,000, within 12 months.
Part of the plan is to pull American troops back from the cities to more remote bases where they will be less visible to Iraqis but poised to assist when needed. The plan, the commanders say, matches Congressional demands for a drawdown with the need for Iraqi Army units to gain strength; and, they say, it is in accord with Iraqi public opinion, as measured in recent surveys taken for the American command. The commanders, at briefings in the past week that were held on the condition that they not be identified, said the surveys showed 90 percent of Iraqis want American troops to leave, but nearly 70 percent say they oppose withdrawal now, before Iraqi forces can stand on their own.
By staging a public ceremony to dramatize the pullout from the palace complex in Tikrit, and by flying Iraqi and American reporters from Baghdad for the occasion on a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters, the Americans appeared intent on showing that the pullback from the cities is more than a paper plan. Since April 2003, the 1,000-acre palace complex here, with 136 buildings and a dozen huge sandstone palaces, has served as the American military and civil headquarters for a wide swath of the Sunni Arab heartland that is the main battlefield in Iraq.
In October, the 42nd Infantry Division, a New York National Guard unit, began pulling up stakes for its return home after nine months with its headquarters at the complex. The 101st Airborne Division took over, and now has transferred its headquarters about 12 miles north of Tikrit, to a former Iraqi air base that housed Mr. Hussein's air force college. From there, the American division will team up with the Iraqi Army's new Fourth Division to create a combined force of more than 30,000 soldiers to fight the insurgents.
The United States command has similar plans to pull American troops back from all major cities, including Baghdad, and it has already handed over 27 other military bases. For its part, the Iraqi Army appears intent on not replicating what many Iraqis have said was an American mistake - moving into palaces that were symbols of Mr. Hussein's repression and making themselves, at least symbolically, the former dictator's heirs. For now, at least, according to Iraqi officials at the Tuesday ceremony, the Tikrit complex will be used for some of Saladin Province's government offices, but mainly as a tourist center - a museum, the officials said, of Mr. Hussein's contempt for the people.
Lt. Gen. Abdul Abdul Aziz al-Mufti, the commander of the Fourth Division, told reporters that even as a general in Mr. Hussein's army he had never dared look at the palaces as he drove through Tikrit, for fear of arrest. "Thanks be to God," he said, "the ordinary people can now come and see the palaces for themselves."
As for himself, he said, he will be too busy to tour the palaces as he works to bring his troops to the point where they can supplant the 101st Airborne Division as the main force in the war. "We're not at 100 percent right now, more like 70 percent," he said. "But if we are given the equipment we need, and the logistical support, we can get there in four to six months."
---------------------------------------
Citation: John F. Burns. "Return of Former Palace to Sovereignty of Iraqis Offers Glimmer of Hope," The New York Times, 23 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/international/middleeast/23tikrit.html
---------------------------------------
US intelligence classified white phosphorus as 'chemical weapon'
By Peter Popham and Anne Penketh
The Independent, 23 November 2005
The Italian journalist who launched the controversy over the American use of white phosphorus (WP) as a weapon of war in the Fallujah siege has accused the Americans of hypocrisy.
Sigfrido Ranucci, who made the documentary for the RAI television channel aired two weeks ago, said that a US intelligence assessment had characterised WP after the first Gulf War as a "chemical weapon".
The assessment was published in a declassified report on the American Department of Defence website. The file was headed: "Possible use of phosphorous chemical weapons by Iraq in Kurdish areas along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders."
In late February 1991, an intelligence source reported, during the Iraqi crackdown on the Kurdish uprising that followed the coalition victory against Iraq, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorous chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships."
According to the intelligence report, the "reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly among the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas" across the border into Turkey.
"When Saddam used WP it was a chemical weapon," said Mr Ranucci, "but when the Americans use it, it's a conventional weapon. The injuries it inflicts, however, are just as terrible however you describe it."
In the television documentary, eyewitnesses inside Fallujah during the bombardment in November last year described the terror and agony suffered by victims of the shells . Two former American soldiers who fought at Fallujah told how they had been ordered to prepare for the use of the weapons. The film and still photographs posted on the website of the channel that made the film - rainews24.it - show the strange corpses found after the city's destruction, many with their skin apparently melted or caramelised so their features were indistinguishable. Mr Ranucci said he had seen photographs of "more than 100" of what he described as "anomalous corpses" in the city.
The US State Department and the Pentagon have shifted their position repeatedly in the aftermath of the film's showing. After initially saying that US forces do not use white phosphorus as a weapon, the Pentagon now says that WP had been used against insurgents in Fallujah. The use of WP against civilians as a weapon is prohibited.
Military analysts said that there remain questions about the official US position regarding its observance of the 1980 conventional weapons treaty which governs the use of WP as an incendiary weapon and sets out clear guidelines about the protection of civilians.
Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, called for an independent investigation of the use of WP during the Fallujah siege. "If it was used as an incendiary weapon, clear restrictions apply," he said.
"Given that the US and UK went into Iraq on the ground that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people, we need to make sure that we are not violating the laws that we have subscribed to," he added.
Yesterday Adam Mynott, a BBC correspondent in Nassiriya in April 2003, told Rai News 24 that he had seen WP apparently used as a weapon against insurgents in that city.
-------------------------------
Citation: Peter Popham and Anne Penketh. "US intelligence classified white phosphorus as 'chemical weapon'," The Independent, 23 November 2005.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article328703.ece
-------------------------------
The Independent, 23 November 2005
The Italian journalist who launched the controversy over the American use of white phosphorus (WP) as a weapon of war in the Fallujah siege has accused the Americans of hypocrisy.
Sigfrido Ranucci, who made the documentary for the RAI television channel aired two weeks ago, said that a US intelligence assessment had characterised WP after the first Gulf War as a "chemical weapon".
The assessment was published in a declassified report on the American Department of Defence website. The file was headed: "Possible use of phosphorous chemical weapons by Iraq in Kurdish areas along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders."
In late February 1991, an intelligence source reported, during the Iraqi crackdown on the Kurdish uprising that followed the coalition victory against Iraq, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorous chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships."
According to the intelligence report, the "reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly among the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas" across the border into Turkey.
"When Saddam used WP it was a chemical weapon," said Mr Ranucci, "but when the Americans use it, it's a conventional weapon. The injuries it inflicts, however, are just as terrible however you describe it."
In the television documentary, eyewitnesses inside Fallujah during the bombardment in November last year described the terror and agony suffered by victims of the shells . Two former American soldiers who fought at Fallujah told how they had been ordered to prepare for the use of the weapons. The film and still photographs posted on the website of the channel that made the film - rainews24.it - show the strange corpses found after the city's destruction, many with their skin apparently melted or caramelised so their features were indistinguishable. Mr Ranucci said he had seen photographs of "more than 100" of what he described as "anomalous corpses" in the city.
The US State Department and the Pentagon have shifted their position repeatedly in the aftermath of the film's showing. After initially saying that US forces do not use white phosphorus as a weapon, the Pentagon now says that WP had been used against insurgents in Fallujah. The use of WP against civilians as a weapon is prohibited.
Military analysts said that there remain questions about the official US position regarding its observance of the 1980 conventional weapons treaty which governs the use of WP as an incendiary weapon and sets out clear guidelines about the protection of civilians.
Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, called for an independent investigation of the use of WP during the Fallujah siege. "If it was used as an incendiary weapon, clear restrictions apply," he said.
"Given that the US and UK went into Iraq on the ground that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people, we need to make sure that we are not violating the laws that we have subscribed to," he added.
Yesterday Adam Mynott, a BBC correspondent in Nassiriya in April 2003, told Rai News 24 that he had seen WP apparently used as a weapon against insurgents in that city.
-------------------------------
Citation: Peter Popham and Anne Penketh. "US intelligence classified white phosphorus as 'chemical weapon'," The Independent, 23 November 2005.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article328703.ece
-------------------------------
22 November 2005
Pentagon to Raise Importance of 'Stability' Efforts in War
By Thom Shanker and David S. Cloud
The New York Times, 20 November 2005.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - The Pentagon's leadership, recognizing that it was caught off guard by difficulties in pacifying Iraq after the invasion, is poised to approve a sweeping directive that will elevate what it calls "stability operations" to a core military mission comparable to full-scale combat.
The new order could significantly influence how the military is structured, as well as the specialties it emphasizes and the equipment it buys.
The directive has been the subject of intense negotiations in the Pentagon policy office and throughout the military; the deliberations included the State Department and other civilian agencies, as the order aims to push the entire government to work in greater unison to plan and carry out postcombat operations.
The directive also envisions sending abroad more civilian officials, including State Department personnel, to help the military establish the peace and rebuild after combat.
The newest draft of the document, delivered in recent days to the acting deputy secretary of defense, Gordon R. England, for final approval, states, "Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support."
The stability operations carried out by the Department of Defense "shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all D.O.D. activities," the draft says.
Although the American military is now virtually in a class of its own when it comes to conventional combat, the wars in Afghanistan and in particular Iraq prove that winning the peace is just as important - and sometimes more difficult.
Congress has criticized the Bush administration, and the Pentagon, for not devising effective plans to stabilize and rebuild Iraq after the swift capture of Baghdad. Many lawmakers have accused the administration of utterly failing to coordinate its postcombat efforts across the executive branch.
Even in Afghanistan, where reconstruction and democratization is progressing more successfully, the effort is stymied by the lack of government personnel from departments other than the Pentagon to work in developing the economy, building public service infrastructure, battling the narcotics trade and developing democratic political institutions. Although the military is stretched by its current missions, the number of Americans in uniform is vastly larger than the civilian force in the State Department and other agencies assigned to reconstruction tasks.
Beyond that, military personnel can be ordered to yearlong tours in war zones, unlike civil and foreign service personnel, who have greater choice over the location and length of their assignments.
"Many stability operations tasks are best performed by indigenous, foreign, or U.S. civilian professionals," the order says in arguing that the military alone cannot shoulder the mission, and should not. "Nonetheless, U.S. military forces shall be prepared to perform all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so."
More than six civilian and military officials were granted anonymity so they would speak freely of the document's contents before its approval; two officials provided draft copies. Although the directive may change in the final review by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mr. England, officials said its major elements were now in place.
In recent days, a significant change in the order was made by the military's Joint Staff just before it was sent to Mr. England. Earlier drafts were limited to "stability operations," but the current draft was specifically rewritten to require a much broader range of "military support for stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations."
That shift, three civilian and military officials said, was advocated by Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pushed for an integrated response to the stability operations challenge in his previous assignment as commander of the military's Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.
The previous military term for stability operations - Phase IV, because it follows combat, known as Phase III - is not in the directive, an acknowledgment that in Iraq and Afghanistan combat is occurring simultaneously with reconstruction and aid work and that stabilization requires much more than security.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote last month to the senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in favor of granting the Defense Department authority to transfer millions of dollars to the State Department in part "to enable civilian professionals to deploy alongside military forces in stabilization and reconstruction operations."
An amendment establishing the transfer authority, sponsored by Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican on the Armed Services Committee, has been approved by the Senate, but needs the backing of House members in a conference committee.
-------------------------------
Citation: Thom Shanker and David S. Cloud. "Pentagon to Raise Importance of 'Stability' Efforts in War," The New York Times, 20 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/international/middleeast/20military.html?pagewanted=print
-------------------------------
The New York Times, 20 November 2005.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - The Pentagon's leadership, recognizing that it was caught off guard by difficulties in pacifying Iraq after the invasion, is poised to approve a sweeping directive that will elevate what it calls "stability operations" to a core military mission comparable to full-scale combat.
The new order could significantly influence how the military is structured, as well as the specialties it emphasizes and the equipment it buys.
The directive has been the subject of intense negotiations in the Pentagon policy office and throughout the military; the deliberations included the State Department and other civilian agencies, as the order aims to push the entire government to work in greater unison to plan and carry out postcombat operations.
The directive also envisions sending abroad more civilian officials, including State Department personnel, to help the military establish the peace and rebuild after combat.
The newest draft of the document, delivered in recent days to the acting deputy secretary of defense, Gordon R. England, for final approval, states, "Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support."
The stability operations carried out by the Department of Defense "shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all D.O.D. activities," the draft says.
Although the American military is now virtually in a class of its own when it comes to conventional combat, the wars in Afghanistan and in particular Iraq prove that winning the peace is just as important - and sometimes more difficult.
Congress has criticized the Bush administration, and the Pentagon, for not devising effective plans to stabilize and rebuild Iraq after the swift capture of Baghdad. Many lawmakers have accused the administration of utterly failing to coordinate its postcombat efforts across the executive branch.
Even in Afghanistan, where reconstruction and democratization is progressing more successfully, the effort is stymied by the lack of government personnel from departments other than the Pentagon to work in developing the economy, building public service infrastructure, battling the narcotics trade and developing democratic political institutions. Although the military is stretched by its current missions, the number of Americans in uniform is vastly larger than the civilian force in the State Department and other agencies assigned to reconstruction tasks.
Beyond that, military personnel can be ordered to yearlong tours in war zones, unlike civil and foreign service personnel, who have greater choice over the location and length of their assignments.
"Many stability operations tasks are best performed by indigenous, foreign, or U.S. civilian professionals," the order says in arguing that the military alone cannot shoulder the mission, and should not. "Nonetheless, U.S. military forces shall be prepared to perform all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so."
More than six civilian and military officials were granted anonymity so they would speak freely of the document's contents before its approval; two officials provided draft copies. Although the directive may change in the final review by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mr. England, officials said its major elements were now in place.
In recent days, a significant change in the order was made by the military's Joint Staff just before it was sent to Mr. England. Earlier drafts were limited to "stability operations," but the current draft was specifically rewritten to require a much broader range of "military support for stability, security, transition and reconstruction operations."
That shift, three civilian and military officials said, was advocated by Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pushed for an integrated response to the stability operations challenge in his previous assignment as commander of the military's Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.
The previous military term for stability operations - Phase IV, because it follows combat, known as Phase III - is not in the directive, an acknowledgment that in Iraq and Afghanistan combat is occurring simultaneously with reconstruction and aid work and that stabilization requires much more than security.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote last month to the senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in favor of granting the Defense Department authority to transfer millions of dollars to the State Department in part "to enable civilian professionals to deploy alongside military forces in stabilization and reconstruction operations."
An amendment establishing the transfer authority, sponsored by Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican on the Armed Services Committee, has been approved by the Senate, but needs the backing of House members in a conference committee.
-------------------------------
Citation: Thom Shanker and David S. Cloud. "Pentagon to Raise Importance of 'Stability' Efforts in War," The New York Times, 20 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/international/middleeast/20military.html?pagewanted=print
-------------------------------
Talabani looks to Iran, not to Arabs
By Martin Sieff
United Press International, 20 November 2005.
WASHINGTON -- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is taking two trips within a single week. In the first, this weekend, he flew west to Cairo, and said a lot less than he appeared to; in the second, starting Monday, he is flying east to Tehran and will almost certainly say a lot less than he will do.
Over the weekend, Talabani was in Cairo attending the heavily-advertised Arab League conference on national reconciliation in Iraq. Moderate Sunni Muslim nations traditionally close to the United States like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco are alarmed by both the extreme Sunni Islamist insurgency and the relentless rise of Iranian influence among Iraqi's Shiite majority. They want to see the civil war there ended or defused as quickly as possible.
But while the Kurdish Talabani paid lip service Sunday to opening a new political dialogue with the Sunni insurgents, in practice he continued to rule it out.
"I am committed to listen to them, even those who are criminals and on trial," Talabani told a news conference. But then he added, "But of course that does not mean I will accept what they say."
Talabani tried to strike a note of national reconciliation and inclusiveness at the conference, telling it he was "responsible for all Iraqis" and wanted to "listen... even to criminals"
But on the other hand, he seemed to make this offer a dead letter by ruling out any political participation or real power for either former loyalists of ousted president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party or for the Islamist extremists spearheaded by al-Qaida and its Iraqi operational commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He ruled out explicitly any role for them in Iraq's still nascent political democracy.
In following this course of action, Talabani was being consistent to his own Kurdish nationalist background and to the distrust that Iraq's 60 percent majority Shiite Muslims as well as its 15 percent of Kurds in the north have towards the long dominant Sunni minority in central Iraq that has dominated the country's politics and army for the past 85 years since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the region in 1918.
And sure enough, Talabani is following his visit to Cairo by flying east to the Iranian capital Tehran to start a three day visit Monday, the Iranian Fars news agency reported Sunday.
His visit follows remarkably warm and cordial mutual visits by senior Iranian and Iraqi Shiite national leaders to their respective capitals since July.
For while U.S. influence and prestige in Iraq has remorselessly declined, given the continued inability of the woefully under-strength U.S. forces to contain the Sunni insurgency and protect Iraq's Shiites from its wrath, Iran's influence in the neighboring country has quietly and steadily risen at the same time.
British military intelligence assessments now rate Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand, fiercely anti-American charismatic young leader of the Mahdi Army, as the most influential political figure in all of oil rich southern Iraq. The British assessments are that paramilitary gangs and organizations whose only allegiance, if any is to Iran now weld far more power in the south of the county where the Shiite majority lives than the Iraqi government in Baghdad does.
For that reason as well, Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari are paying ever more respectful attention to every signal that comes out of Tehran, even though new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been making statements at least as extreme, and even more unpredictable than any ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did in his prime. And Ahmadinejad has vastly more military manpower and resources -- including even the real possibility of several nuclear warheads in the future -- than Saddam ever able to grab.
By contrast, Talabani leads an Iraqi government in crisis. With the December elections -- the first under the recently ratified constitution looming -- the Sunni 20 percent minority in the country is more alienated than ever and the Baathist loyalist-Islamist extremist insurgency within that community is running riot, apparently slaughtering Shiites at will.
The disastrously undermanned U.S. troops in Iraq, at around 150,000 in number, would need between three times to as much as four times the manpower they currently have there to break the back of the Sunni insurgency, U.S., Middle Eastern and many European military analysts privately say. These numbers are not plucked from the air: They are based on analyses of the trained military manpower that were needed to defeat or even stalemate major guerrilla insurgencies through the 20th century.
Also, the continued lack of military effectiveness of the much touted new Iraqi armed forces is now taking center stage in the U.S. political debate. A new article by James Fallows in the November issue of "The Atlantic" magazine paints a devastating picture of an Iraqi army and police force that remains ineffectual and in essentially defenseless against continued Sunni insurgent attacks. Far from taking the pressure off U.S. forces in Iraq and taking over the main burden of counter-insurgency operations from them, the Iraqi armed forces remain almost totally unable to carry out serious combat operations against serious opposition without U.S. protection and support.
Official military testimony given to the Senate Armed Services Committee at the end of September revealed that only a single battalions out of the 119 organized so far in the Iraqi army and security forces is capable of operating fully on their own.
It was not meant to be this way. When U.S. and Iraqi forces launched "Operation Lightning" in Baghdad in May, it was meant to break the back of insurgent operations in the Iraqi capital of five million people. More than 40,000 troops from the new Iraqi army were involved. President George W. Bush at the time publicly expressed confidence it would hammer the insurgency.
Instead, the operation did not even marginally dent insurgent capabilities. As documented in UPI's weekly Iraq Benchmarks column, apart from a few all too short lulls -- usually measured in days, none lasting longer than two weeks -- the number, frequency and casualties inflicted by multiple fatality bomb attacks -- as the large suicide car bombs are known -- in the capital has remorselessly risen since.
The worst month yet was September with 46 such attacks throughout Iraq, a nation only the size of California with half its population. October was almost as bad, 39 such bomb attacks. And November looks set to outstrip both.
Fallows' article in "The Atlantic" brings all these failures and weaknesses of the rapidly raised Iraqi armed forces to the fore in the political debate in Washington. He wrote that currently the insurgents are killing an average of around 10 Iraqi police and soldiers per day. In fact, according to official U.S. and Iraqi figures collated by the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, a centrist Washington think tank, the rate at which they were being killed in the first 16 days of this month was 5.5 per day. That is not nearly as bad as 10 per day: But it is still bad enough.
Also, not all serious American analysts share Fallows' pessimism about the Iraqi army. Respected military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies believes that in fact much of the training and deploying of the new Iraqi forces is now going much better and there is still real possibility they could become an effective force on a significant scale next year.
However, even the major issue of how effective or ineffective the Iraqi army is going to be may pale compared to the importance of what Talabani did not say publicly in Cairo this weekend and what he might say privately in Tehran this week.
-------------------------
Citation: Martin Sieff. "Talabani looks to Iran, not to Arabs," United Press International, 20 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051120-060938-7734r
-------------------------
United Press International, 20 November 2005.
WASHINGTON -- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is taking two trips within a single week. In the first, this weekend, he flew west to Cairo, and said a lot less than he appeared to; in the second, starting Monday, he is flying east to Tehran and will almost certainly say a lot less than he will do.
Over the weekend, Talabani was in Cairo attending the heavily-advertised Arab League conference on national reconciliation in Iraq. Moderate Sunni Muslim nations traditionally close to the United States like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco are alarmed by both the extreme Sunni Islamist insurgency and the relentless rise of Iranian influence among Iraqi's Shiite majority. They want to see the civil war there ended or defused as quickly as possible.
But while the Kurdish Talabani paid lip service Sunday to opening a new political dialogue with the Sunni insurgents, in practice he continued to rule it out.
"I am committed to listen to them, even those who are criminals and on trial," Talabani told a news conference. But then he added, "But of course that does not mean I will accept what they say."
Talabani tried to strike a note of national reconciliation and inclusiveness at the conference, telling it he was "responsible for all Iraqis" and wanted to "listen... even to criminals"
But on the other hand, he seemed to make this offer a dead letter by ruling out any political participation or real power for either former loyalists of ousted president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party or for the Islamist extremists spearheaded by al-Qaida and its Iraqi operational commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He ruled out explicitly any role for them in Iraq's still nascent political democracy.
In following this course of action, Talabani was being consistent to his own Kurdish nationalist background and to the distrust that Iraq's 60 percent majority Shiite Muslims as well as its 15 percent of Kurds in the north have towards the long dominant Sunni minority in central Iraq that has dominated the country's politics and army for the past 85 years since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the region in 1918.
And sure enough, Talabani is following his visit to Cairo by flying east to the Iranian capital Tehran to start a three day visit Monday, the Iranian Fars news agency reported Sunday.
His visit follows remarkably warm and cordial mutual visits by senior Iranian and Iraqi Shiite national leaders to their respective capitals since July.
For while U.S. influence and prestige in Iraq has remorselessly declined, given the continued inability of the woefully under-strength U.S. forces to contain the Sunni insurgency and protect Iraq's Shiites from its wrath, Iran's influence in the neighboring country has quietly and steadily risen at the same time.
British military intelligence assessments now rate Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand, fiercely anti-American charismatic young leader of the Mahdi Army, as the most influential political figure in all of oil rich southern Iraq. The British assessments are that paramilitary gangs and organizations whose only allegiance, if any is to Iran now weld far more power in the south of the county where the Shiite majority lives than the Iraqi government in Baghdad does.
For that reason as well, Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari are paying ever more respectful attention to every signal that comes out of Tehran, even though new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been making statements at least as extreme, and even more unpredictable than any ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did in his prime. And Ahmadinejad has vastly more military manpower and resources -- including even the real possibility of several nuclear warheads in the future -- than Saddam ever able to grab.
By contrast, Talabani leads an Iraqi government in crisis. With the December elections -- the first under the recently ratified constitution looming -- the Sunni 20 percent minority in the country is more alienated than ever and the Baathist loyalist-Islamist extremist insurgency within that community is running riot, apparently slaughtering Shiites at will.
The disastrously undermanned U.S. troops in Iraq, at around 150,000 in number, would need between three times to as much as four times the manpower they currently have there to break the back of the Sunni insurgency, U.S., Middle Eastern and many European military analysts privately say. These numbers are not plucked from the air: They are based on analyses of the trained military manpower that were needed to defeat or even stalemate major guerrilla insurgencies through the 20th century.
Also, the continued lack of military effectiveness of the much touted new Iraqi armed forces is now taking center stage in the U.S. political debate. A new article by James Fallows in the November issue of "The Atlantic" magazine paints a devastating picture of an Iraqi army and police force that remains ineffectual and in essentially defenseless against continued Sunni insurgent attacks. Far from taking the pressure off U.S. forces in Iraq and taking over the main burden of counter-insurgency operations from them, the Iraqi armed forces remain almost totally unable to carry out serious combat operations against serious opposition without U.S. protection and support.
Official military testimony given to the Senate Armed Services Committee at the end of September revealed that only a single battalions out of the 119 organized so far in the Iraqi army and security forces is capable of operating fully on their own.
It was not meant to be this way. When U.S. and Iraqi forces launched "Operation Lightning" in Baghdad in May, it was meant to break the back of insurgent operations in the Iraqi capital of five million people. More than 40,000 troops from the new Iraqi army were involved. President George W. Bush at the time publicly expressed confidence it would hammer the insurgency.
Instead, the operation did not even marginally dent insurgent capabilities. As documented in UPI's weekly Iraq Benchmarks column, apart from a few all too short lulls -- usually measured in days, none lasting longer than two weeks -- the number, frequency and casualties inflicted by multiple fatality bomb attacks -- as the large suicide car bombs are known -- in the capital has remorselessly risen since.
The worst month yet was September with 46 such attacks throughout Iraq, a nation only the size of California with half its population. October was almost as bad, 39 such bomb attacks. And November looks set to outstrip both.
Fallows' article in "The Atlantic" brings all these failures and weaknesses of the rapidly raised Iraqi armed forces to the fore in the political debate in Washington. He wrote that currently the insurgents are killing an average of around 10 Iraqi police and soldiers per day. In fact, according to official U.S. and Iraqi figures collated by the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, a centrist Washington think tank, the rate at which they were being killed in the first 16 days of this month was 5.5 per day. That is not nearly as bad as 10 per day: But it is still bad enough.
Also, not all serious American analysts share Fallows' pessimism about the Iraqi army. Respected military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies believes that in fact much of the training and deploying of the new Iraqi forces is now going much better and there is still real possibility they could become an effective force on a significant scale next year.
However, even the major issue of how effective or ineffective the Iraqi army is going to be may pale compared to the importance of what Talabani did not say publicly in Cairo this weekend and what he might say privately in Tehran this week.
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Citation: Martin Sieff. "Talabani looks to Iran, not to Arabs," United Press International, 20 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051120-060938-7734r
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