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Politics : The Iraq War And Beyond -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ed Huang who wrote (148)	6/14/2003 12:51:50 PM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9018

Resistance to occupation is growing guardian.co.uk US and British troops are being sucked into an Iraqi quagmire Richard Norton-Taylor and Rory McCarthy in Baghdad Friday June 13, 2003 The Guardian While attention has focused on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, growing evidence that the war is far from over has been overlooked. Fighting with real weapons is on the increase. A sudden upsurge in violence in the past couple of weeks has killed at least 10 American soldiers and wounded more than 25 in a series of attacks against checkpoints and military convoys. Iraqi fighters yesterday brought down an Apache helicopter in the west of the country. Far more more numerous than these incidents is the unpublicised number of attacks on American positions that do not injure or kill soldiers. Attacks occur daily - more than a dozen every day in the past week, according to some accounts. Troops patrolling even the calmest neighbourhoods in Baghdad still wear bullet-proof jackets and Kevlar helmets and raise their rifles, finger on the trigger, whenever approached. Attack helicopters are flying low over Baghdad day and night without lights. The most experienced combat units from the 3rd Infantry, deployed away from home since September, have now been sent in to deal with Falluja, a town at the centre of a steadily growing resistance in the Sunni Muslim heartland just west of Baghdad. Hostile residents are not shy of threatening more attacks, insisting they are not Saddam loyalists but angry at the US military occupation. Aggressive house searches and the killing by US troops of 18 protesters in a demonstration last month have provoked fury. Soldiers on the ground say the attacks they are facing, mostly from rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, are disciplined and skilled, not the random shootings of angry civilians. American generals admit that though the attacks may be locally organised there is no evidence yet of a reformed Ba'ath party centrally coordinating the assaults. Their response has been to saturate problem areas with large numbers of combat troops. Even senior officers admit now that security in Iraq, more than two months after the fall of the regime, will get worse before it gets better. America's generals, happy to boast about the rapid defeat of Saddam's regime, now admit the war is far from over. In Baghdad yesterday Lieutenant General David McKiernan, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, said his troops would be needed for a long time to come, that Baghdad and a large swathe of northern and western Iraq is only a "semi-permissive" environment, and that "subversive forces" are still active. Should all this be so surprising? The US and Britain said they came to liberate Iraq and protect its people. The failure to understand how Iraqis would respond may be rooted in arrogance. It is also a colossal failure in intelligence which may prove to be at least as important as the inability to find any of Iraq's banned weapons. The commander of British forces in the war, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, admitted as much in remarkably frank evidence to MPs this week. Asked about the problems of "policing" Iraq, and the number of forces needed to do the job, he replied: "I'm not sure we understand yet." Burridge confirmed that British military commanders were expecting - on the basis of intelligence - that the Iraqi army would offer to help US and UK troops maintain law and order after the invasion. This hopelessly naive advice came from the CIA. Judging by what Britain's commanders say, MI6 appeared to have done nothing to disabuse them. Iraqi distrust of the foreign invaders seems to have come as a complete surprise. British forces, charged with securing Basra and the southern oilfields, had an easier task than US forces in the rest of the country. Yet this did not prevent British commanders from contrasting their approach with that of the Americans. The new chief of defence staff, General Sir Michael Walker, reminded the Commons defence committee that British forces have been conducting operations "around the world since world war two". However, such prowess did not encourage British commanders to volunteer to send troops from southern Iraq to help the Americans elsewhere. They are seriously concerned about overstretch and, as important, about getting bogged down deeper in the quagmire. The US admits it had to revise drastically the number of troops it needed within weeks of the fall of Baghdad, as looting, armed robberies, rapes, kidnapping, and carjackings multiplied. The arrival of the US army's 1st Armoured Division was brought forward, the departure of the 3rd Infantry Division, which led the invasion from Kuwait, delayed. US troops are now being sucked into Iraq much deeper than they imagined, or were told.

To: Ed Huang who wrote (148)	6/15/2003 10:56:09 PM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9018

Iraq 'has three weeks to avoid falling into chaos' By Patrick Cockburn 16 June 2003 news.independent.co.uk Iraq needs a transitional administration within three weeks if it is to avoid a descent into chaos, the most prominent Iraqi leader acceptable to all sides told The Independent last night. Adnan Pachachi, a highly regarded former Iraqi foreign minister who is expected to play a big role in a transitional Iraqi administration, criticised the heavy-handed US sweeps that have cost more than 100 Iraqi lives, calling them "an overreaction''. He said the Americans felt "very vulnerable and afraid''. Mr Pachachi, 80, may be the only prominent opponent of Saddam Hussein who all sides are prepared to work with. He said the Americans were coming round to the idea of an Iraqi transitional administration with real authority but with the US and Britain as occupying powers. "The Iraqi people are impatient,'' he said. "They want an Iraqi government as soon as possible. The Americans can shift responsibility to it.'' Given the embarrassing failure of the US authorities in Baghdad to restore living conditions even to the low level enjoyed by Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, the option of giving some power to Iraqis is an one that clearly has its attractions for the US. Mr Pachachi wants an interim administration to be set up within three weeks to prepare the way for elections and to draw up a constitution. The US wants to wait for four or five weeks. He believes that the transitional period would last for about two years before a freely elected government could be in place. He said: "The Americans want to withdraw the bulk of their army within a year.'' Asked about the danger that any Iraqi administration under US occupation would be seen as an American pawn, Mr Pachachi said: "This might happen if it is perceived as a rubber stamp, but if it takes a strong stand then people will say this is as good an administration as we could get under the circumstances.'' He does not think there will be a general uprising against the US. He said: "There are sporadic attacks which are not co-ordinated. It wouldn't be easy to organise a countrywide revolt. I don't think that the people are ready for an uprising because they are dealing with an enemy which does not hesitate to use its massive fire-power.'' Mr Pachachi is probably right about the mood among Iraqis. But given the degree of force being used by the US army after a few small attacks, it might easily overreact to more serious losses, making the stabilisation of Iraq under its control extremely difficult.