Washington, D.C., December 15, 2006: “ Some of this can be found in the mainline media but only in disconnected bits and pieces.
The overall picture of what is projected to happen in Iraq is just this, based on position papers that are not disconnected. Bush categorically refuses to admit that his, and his neocon friends’ policy in Iraq has utterly and finally collapsed. His shallow and juvenile personality will never permit him to admit he was wrong.
The pressure on him to cease the American participation in the Iraqi civil war is growing but he is now denying the entreaties of his father, his father’s advisors, the senior military, Republican legislators and most important, the American people, to get out of Iraq and leave that country to its own devices.
No, Bush is now going to scrape the manpower reserves to the bottom of the barrel, and ship between 30,000 and 40,000 new troops to Iraq as quickly as possible. His end goal is 70,000 by the first of the year. These new troops will enabled our embattled and badly depleted forces there to regroup and launch a “final and decisive” push against insurgents (but only inside Baghdad and not outside it), kill as many as possible, declare a “great and decisive victory” and then get out, saving the Imperial blotched and twitching face.
However, in order to prolong the victory (the speech writers are working on his “Victory Speech to the American Public” even as I write) Bush has given orders to overthrow the current Iraqi government by force and replace it with one that will “crack down” on dissident elements and prevent further insurgency.
The problem with this typical American solution to foreign problems is that no one here is exactly sure who our new Saddam will be. If he is a Sunni, the Shiites will raise hell and Iran might well invade. If a Shiite, the mostly Sunni Arab neighbors will quickly support the other side.
In all of this horrible mess, the representatives of Israel, like poison dwarves, are constantly on the telephone with Bush and Cheney and their few remaining friends in the Pentagon. What do they want? They want us to help them destroy the nuclear capacity of Iran, probably by bombing Tehran back into the stone age. Typically, they don’t want to do this themselves (they threaten nuclear attacks but in truth, their nuclear weaponry is an overstated, propaganda farce) but want us to do it for them. Not satisfied with their lock on Bush, their Mossad agents, who regularly attend meetings at the CIA at Langley, have taken to bugging various conference rooms where they go to exchange views with their co-religionists who are now in the predominance there. Of course the bugs were detected but the errant chaps from the Mossad were permitted to keep their access if they promised to be good in the future.
This is impossible in fact but that never deterred Israel. Bush kisses their collective asses the way the repulsive Blair kisses Bush’s raddled fundament but he wouldn’t dare nuke Tehran and a U.S. military invention is impossible.
That the new troops (mostly badly trained National Guardsmen) would be slaughtered by the increasingly well-armed and trained Iraqi resistance people is of absolutely no consequence to Bush. He has been warned that mobs of ill-armed, badly trained, overweight pharmacy clerks would be like lambs led to the slaughter but constant warnings to him by everyone connected with this back ward craziness has no effect. Bush wants to save his ugly face and a few thousand more dead means nothing to him. And when it fails terribly, typically, Bush will immediately blame the Pentagon for the disaster.
In the end, why doesn’t Bush put on a nice uniform with lots of gold braid and go there himself to lead the charges against machineguns and rockets? He would end up feeding Baghdad’s wild dogs and the world would heave a collective sigh of relief and resume normal lives once again.
Mark you, this pleasant scenario is not an internet fantasy plot like the legendary and hysterically entertaining “atomic” destruction of Houston a couple of years ago and unless Bush is stopped, and soon, the results will be terrible to behold.”
Bush administration conspires to replace Iraqi government
by James Cogan
December 14, 2006
Having rejected the findings of the Iraq Study Group, the Bush administration is publicly engaged in a series of high-level consultations in preparation for a policy shift. Evidence is emerging, however, that, behind the scenes, the White House is already implementing an alternative strategy, which includes the removal of the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The political realignment would exclude the Shiite movement led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and be accompanied by a build-up of US troops and a crackdown on the Sadrist Mahdi Army militia.
A series of press reports indicate that the mechanism being discussed for Maliki’s removal is the break-up of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which holds the largest number of parliamentary seats and dominates the current cabinet. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim held talks with President Bush last week, is apparently preparing to desert the UIA and form a “national unity” coalition with Kurdish nationalist parties, a major Sunni Arab party and, possibly, the party headed by former interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi. If a two-thirds majority in the parliament can be put together, a new government could be formed without elections.
The Bush administration has denied the reports. However, for anyone who has followed the media leaks of White House discussions over the disaster it has created in Iraq, little of the plan is unexpected. Throughout the year, Washington has been pressing the Shiite-dominated government to engage in “reconciliation” with, or more accurately to make concessions to, the Sunni Arab establishment that formed the ruling stratum of the Baath Party of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
The calculation is that such a settlement would lead to a significant decrease in the entrenched Baathist and Sunni-based insurgency against the US occupation and at least curtail the civil war between rival Sunni and Shiite militias. The true motives of the US invasion—the opening up of Iraq’s lucrative oil reserves to US corporations and the establishment of long-term military bases—are not realisable without some degree of political stability. In order to reach a deal, the Bush administration has insisted that the Shiite and Kurdish parties, who have collaborated with the occupation, cede greater political power and economic privilege to the Sunni elite that the invasion supplanted.
The main obstacle has been the opposition of the Sadrist movement, which is emerging as the most powerful Shiite faction and upon which Maliki has depended for political support. The Sadrists have a mass following among the Shiite working class and urban poor in Baghdad. To consolidate their own authority and appease strong anti-Baathist sentiment among their supporters, the Sadrists have resisted demands for “reconciliation”. Al Sadr continues to demand a timetable for an end to the US occupation and for the Iraqi central government to control the country’s oil resources. The Mahdi Army, which rose up against US troops twice in 2004, has grown into a formidable armed force of as many as 60,000, raising considerable concerns in the US military and calls for a preemptive strike to destroy it.
On November 8, a memo by Bush’s national security advisor Stephen Hadley was leaked in full to the New York Times. It called for the administration to devote its energies to forcing Maliki to break his alliance with Sadr and “form a new political base among moderate politicians from Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and other communities”. Hadley’s specific proposals included talks with SCIRI’s Hakim.
Maliki has repeatedly baulked at US demands to fully break with the Sadrists, who Hadley accused of using the government to pursue a “campaign to consolidate Shia power in Baghdad”. An open rift has now developed between Maliki and Sadr however. Maliki’s agreement to meet with Bush in Jordan, following the leak of the Hadley memo, prompted a walkout of the government by 30 Sadr supporters and five cabinet ministers. They have not yet ended their boycott.
Reports that the Iraqi government has been holding secret talks with Sunni insurgents and former Baathists have added to the divisions. On Sunday, Sadr characterised Maliki’s policy as being “yesterday’s friends are today’s enemies, and yesterday enemies are today’s friends”. Large-scale clashes and ethnic cleansing were reported in Baghdad over the weekend as Mahdi Army militants sought to drive Sunnis out of a northwestern suburb and consolidate control over strategic entry points into their strongholds.
Rift between Sadr and Maliki
There is no reason to doubt that the Bush administration is trying to exploit the rift to end any Sadrist involvement in the government and provoke a confrontation with the Madhi army. Maliki and his own Shiite faction, the Da’awa Party, have reportedly been invited to join the new coalition. Hakim and SCIRI, however, rivals of the Sadrists for influence, are stepping forward to function as the main Shiite component of a “national unity” regime and provide a new prime minister.
A representative of the Kurdish factions, deputy prime minister Barham Salih, declared: “A number of key political parties across the sectarian-ethnic divide recognise the gravity of the situation and have become increasingly aware that their fate, and that of the country, cannot be held hostage to the whims of the extreme fringe within their communities.”
Following Hakim’s visit, the leader of the large Sunni-based Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), Iraqi Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi, also flew for Washington on Sunday for his own talks with Bush. The original date announced for talks between Bush and Hashemi had been January. Explaining the revised schedule, a representative for Hashemi told Associated Press: “The failure of the government has forced us into this in the hope that it can provide a solution. The new alliance will form the new government.”
The man being touted to replace Maliki is SCIRI’s Adel Abdul Medhi, who Washington has previously backed for the post. While in Washington, Hakim reassured the White House that SCIRI’s historical ties with the Iranian Shiite regime would not be an obstacle to its collaboration with the US. He told the Institute of Peace: “We confirmed on more than one occasion that we are seeking to build an independent Iraq away from any affiliation to any power, regional or international.” Under conditions where SCIRI is calling for the ongoing presence of US troops, this was effectively a pledge that Iraq would be an American, not an Iranian, client state.
Underpinning the coalescence of SCIRI, the Kurdish factions and the Sunni IIP is their mutual fear that the recriminations within the American ruling elite over Iraq’s descent into civil war and chaos could see all their interests marginalised.
SCIRI and the Kurdish nationalists have bitterly denounced the findings of the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker for opposing regional autonomy in Iraq. The federalist Iraqi constitution, which was largely drafted by the US embassy before a referendum in October 2005, granted considerable powers to regional governments, including over any new exploitation of oil reserves. A regional authority already exists in the Kurdish north and SCIRI wants to establish another in the Shiite south.
The Hadley memo hinted that efforts should be made to convince a layer of the Sunni establishment to accept the formation of a Sunni Arab region in western and central Iraq. Hadley called for the diplomatic initiatives aimed at “talking up provincial council elections next spring/summer as a mechanism for Sunni empowerment”. Combined with other proposals for greater Sunni representation within the federal government, concessions on de-Baathification and guarantees of a share of oil revenues, Hashemi’s IIP may be prepared to drop their current opposition to regionalism. Hakim pointedly warned recently that the “biggest losers” in any full scale civil war would be the Sunnis.
According to the New York Times last week, a deal to ensure a Sunni region gained a proportional share of oil revenues from Iraq’s oil fields—which are overwhelmingly in the Kurdish north and Shiite south—is in the final stages of negotiation. Under intense pressure from US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the Kurdish parties reportedly agreed in principle to the distribution of oil revenues on the basis of population.
On Monday, Bush held high-level meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, ambassador Khalilzad, the Pentagon military hierarchy and foreign policy advisors. Outgoing Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld spent Monday in Iraq and also spoke with senior commanders. According to media reports, the opposition of the Sadrist movement to any regime change in Baghdad was a key matter for discussion.
The New York Times reported on Monday: “If Mr Sadr thinks he is being ousted or marginalised from the government, he could ignite another rebellion, this time with a militia that has grown exponentially in size since 2004 when the American troops struggled to put down the two earlier uprisings. Senior American commanders, though, say that the attempts to make peace with Mr Sadr through politics have failed and a military assault on Sadr strongholds in Baghdad and across the south may be inevitable.”
The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday: “As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to ‘double down’ in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Moqtada al-Sadr...”
Military officials told the Los Angeles Times the plan was a “gamble” and “would probably require major changes” in the Iraqi government. “US embassy officials”, the officials said, “would have to help usher in a new coalition in Baghdad that was willing to confront the militias”. Defence strategist Bob Killebrow put a timetable of four to six months for the US military to “take on” the Sadrists. Killebrow declared: “Our conventional forces, not advisors, have to team with the Iraqi army and neutralise the Mahdi Army and other militias. If we don’t do that, everything else we are talking about is hot air.”
The closed-doors conspiracies taking place between the Bush administration and various Iraqi factions have vast implications. In Iraq, it means thousands more deaths as the US military seeks to destroy the Mahdi Army and escalates operations against remaining Sunni insurgents. For the American people, it means the war they repudiated in last month’s congressional election is going to be intensified, not brought to an end.
The Green Zone Follies
Baghdad, 14 Dec 06: “Although you will never see a word of it in the U.S. media, there is a very serious, growing and potentially critical loss of morale here in Iraq. A CIC major, working with the CID here inside the Green Zone, met with me yesterday and told me they are working on a growing, but top secret, investigation into what appears to be an organizing mutiny among U.S. combat troops in at least three different locations in occupied Iraq.
Deplorable conditions here, including defective ammunition (and a serious lack of it due to the Falcon disaster) lack of armor, increasingly sophisticated and very deadly attacks on U.S. troops with no countermeasures either in place or at all effective, coupled with Bush’s obvious intentions to quickly and greatly increase the number of troops here and his plans (often discussed by the brass) of a “huge new push” designed to “knock out the resistance and permit a withdrawal with face” ( a direct quote from a classified order.) have done nothing to defuse what my informant believes is a “critical situation.”
My source in the CIC tells me that the team is in a dilemma at this point. If this gets into the foreign media (it would never get into the tame U.S. media unless mass rebellion broke out and then it would be heavily censored) the internet, cursed by the administration, will cover it and given the gross inability of the pencil-necked geeks in DoD’s propaganda division, it would become a major political scandal stateside. If a swoop is made and GI instigators are arrested, there is the very real risk that the one thing the Pentagon is frantic to prevent and keep silent, will get out.
The CIC has an army of snitches running around all over Iraq, and especially here in Baghdad, but the more they find out, the more frightened they are becoming. Now, the rumors are that Russian or Iranian agents are fomenting rebellion but this is very doubtful. It is known that Bush hates Putin and everyone here knows Israel hates Iran so these rumors are obviously planted by these parties.
Arresting ringleaders (some of whom are very obvious) might trigger more serious problems and transferring “infected” units to Germany for some “R&R” can’t be done because they are badly needed here and worse, might terrify cadre in Germany to the point where the rot could easily spread back to the States. This is redolent of the mass mutinies of French troops in 1917/18 in which thousands were shot out of hand.
A pleasant Christmas is expected here with myself planning to get home for a week. Who knows? I might resign my commission and write a book…and then be shot while watering the lawn.”
Army Chief Seeks More Forces, Reserves
December 14, 2006
by Lolita C. Baldor
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - As President Bush weighs new strategies for Iraq, the Army's top general warned Thursday that his force ``will break'' without thousands more active duty troops and greater use of the reserves.
Noting the strain put on the force by operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said he wants to grow his half-million-member Army beyond the 30,000 troops already added in recent years.
Though he didn't give an exact number, he said it would take significant time and commitment by the nation, noting some 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers could be added per year.
Officials also need greater authority to tap into the National Guard and Reserve, a force once set up as a strategic reserve but now needed as an integral part of the nation's deployed forces, Schoomaker told a commission studying possible changes in those two forces.
``Over the last five years, the sustained strategic demand ... is placing a strain on the Army's all-volunteer force,'' Schoomaker told the commission in a Capitol Hill hearing.
``At this pace ... we will break the active component'' unless reserves can be called up more to help, Schoomaker said
Bush's 'New Way Forward' Is into Quicksand
December 14, 2006
by Joseph L. Galloway
McClatchy Newspapers
The power brokers in Washington spent the week carefully arranging fig leaves and tasteful screens to cover the emperor’s nakedness while he was busy pretending to listen hard to everyone with an opinion about Iraq, while hearing nothing.
Sometime early in the New Year, President Bush will go on national television to tell a disgruntled American public what he's decided should be done to salvage "victory" from the jaws of certain defeat in the war he started.
The word on the street, or in the Pentagon rings, is that he'll choose to beef up American forces on the ground in Iraq by 20,000 to 30,000 troops by various sleight-of-hand maneuvers - extending the combat tours of soldiers and Marines who are nearing an end to their second or third year in Hell and accelerating the shipment of others into that Hell - and send them into the bloody streets of Baghdad.
These additional troops are expected to restore order and calm the bombers and murderers when
9,000 Americans already in the sprawling capital couldn’t. They’re expected to do this even when Bush’s favorite (for now) Iraqi politician, Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al Maliki, refuses to allow them to act against his primary benefactor, the anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr and his Shiite Muslim Mahdi Army militiamen who kill both Americans and Sunni Arabs.
This hardly amounts to a "new way forward" unless that definition includes a new path deeper into the quicksand of a tribal and religious civil war where whatever President Bush eventually decides is already inadequate and immaterial.
The military commanders on the ground, from Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, to his generals in Iraq, have said flatly that more American troops aren't the answer and aren't wanted. For them, it's obvious that only a political decision - an Iraqi political decision - has even the possibility of producing an acceptable outcome.
The White House hopes that its much-trumpeted reshuffling of a failed strategy and flawed tactics will buy time for their bad luck to change miraculously. That this time will be bought and paid for with the lives and futures of our soldiers and Marines - and their families - apparently means little to these wise men who've never heard a shot fired in anger.
This president has made it painfully obvious that he has no intention of listening to anyone who doesn’t believe that he's going to win in Iraq. He'll march stubbornly onward without any real change of course until high noon on January 20, 2009, when his successor will inherit both the hard decision to pull out of Iraq and the back bills for his reckless, feckless misadventure.
The midterm election that handed control of Congress to the Democrats can be ignored. His own approval rating in the polls, now at an all-time low of 27 percent - likewise means little or nothing.
Only President Bush’s definition of reality carries any weight with him and therein lies the tragedy- both his and ours.
James Baker was sent to Washington by the original George Bush, No. 41, to salvage something out of the mess that his son, Bush No. 43, has made of his presidency and the world. The Baker Commission labored mightily and produced, if little else, some truth: That the situation in Iraq is dire and rapidly growing worse.
It’s also clear, however, that Bush the son is paying no more than lip service to the Baker report.
He doesn’t want Dad’s help, and the idea that he once again needs to be rescued from the consequences of his mistakes- as he had to be so often back in Texas- can only have hardened his resolve to stay the course.
This is akin to a drowning man who pushes away a life preserver just before he sinks for the last time. Can nothing save this man from himself - from the voices that only he hears telling him that he, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, will have his reputation and his place in American history restored and burnished long after his death?
What will happen to that impossible dream in the coming year if the congressional Democrats begin to do their job, issuing subpoenas and holding oversight hearings into the looting of billions from the national treasury by defense contractors and other fat-cat donors to the Republican Party?
What will happen if everything that George Bush does to string things along in Iraq fails, as has everything else he's done there so far, and the Iraqis ask, order or drive us out of their country?
Did you notice that at every stop on the President’s information-gathering tour this week, there was a very familiar face looming over his shoulder? There was Vice President Dick Cheney, looking as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
Should the president suddenly have an original thought or seem to be going wobbly, Cheney will be right there to squelch it or to set him straight.
It can be argued that George W. Bush understood little about war and peace and diplomacy and honesty in government. Cheney understood all of it, and he bears much of the responsibility for what's gone on in Washington, D.C. and in Iraq for the last six years. Keep a sharp eye on him. Desperate men do desperate things.
Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." |
