[Mb-civic] Iraq: Commentary and News

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Here (thanks again Ed!) are 3 articles about Iraq.  We (citizens of the Empire that 
instigated this tragedy) *really* need to stay in touch with what is goind on there, 
what are "leaders" are doing about it, and what we want (personally, I want us out 
asap since we continue to do way more harm than good militarily, economically, 
politically).  --mha atma


The New York Times - August 6, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html


What About Iraq?

by Paul Krugman

A funny thing happened after the United States transferred sovereignty
over Iraq. On the ground, things didn't change, except for the worse.

But as Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect puts it, the cosmetic
change in regime had the effect of "Afghanizing" the media coverage of
Iraq.

He's referring to the way news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off
sharply after the initial military defeat of the Taliban. A nation we had
gone to war to liberate and had promised to secure and rebuild - a promise
largely broken - once again became a small, faraway country of which we
knew nothing.

Incredibly, the same thing happened to Iraq after June 28. Iraq stories
moved to the inside pages of newspapers, and largely off TV screens. Many
people got the impression that things had improved. Even journalists were
taken in: a number of newspaper stories asserted that the rate of U.S.
losses there fell after the handoff. (Actual figures: 42 American soldiers
died in June, and 54 in July.)

The trouble with this shift of attention is that if we don't have a
clear picture of what's actually happening in Iraq, we can't have a
serious discussion of the options that remain for making the best of a
very bad situation.

The military reality in Iraq is that there has been no letup in the
insurgency, and large parts of the country seem to be effectively under
the control of groups hostile to the U.S.-supported government.

In the spring, American forces won an impressive military victory
against the Shiite forces of Moktada al-Sadr. But this victory hasn't
curbed the movement; Mr. Sadr's forces, according to many reports, are the
de facto government of Sadr City, a Baghdad slum with 2.5 million people,
and seem to have strengthened their position in Najaf and other cities.

In Sunni areas, Falluja is enemy territory. Elsewhere in western Iraq,
according to reports from Knight Ridder and The Los Angeles Times, U.S.
forces have hunkered down, manning watch posts but not patrolling. In
effect, this cedes control of the population to the insurgents. And
everywhere, of course, the mortar attacks, bombings, kidnappings and
assassinations go on.

Despite a two-month truce between Mr. Sadr and the United States
military, heavy fighting broke out yesterday in Najaf, where a U.S.
helicopter was shot down. There was also sporadic violence in Sadr City -
where, according to reporters, American planes appeared to drop bombs -
and in Basra.

Meanwhile, reconstruction has languished.

This summer, like last summer, there are severe shortages of
electricity. Sewage is tainting the water supply, and typhoid and
hepatitis are on the rise. Unemployment remains sky-high. Needless to say,
all this undermines any chance for the new Iraqi government to gain wide
support.

My point in describing all this bad news is not to be defeatist. It is to
set some realistic context for the political debate.

One thing is clear: calls to "stay the course" are fatuous. The course
we're on leads downhill. American soldiers keep winning battles, but we're
losing the war: our military is under severe strain; we're creating more
terrorists than we're killing; our reputation, including our moral
authority, is damaged each month this goes on.

So am I saying we should cut and run? That's another loaded phrase.
Nobody wants to see helicopters lifting the last Americans off the roofs
of the Green Zone.

But we need to move quickly to end our position as "an occupying power in
a bitterly hostile land," the fate that none other than former President
George H. W. Bush correctly warned could be the result of an invasion of
Iraq. And that means turning real power over to Iraqis.

Again and again since the early months after the fall of Baghdad - when
Paul Bremer III canceled local elections in order to keep the seats warm
for our favorite exiles - U.S. officials have passed up the chance to
promote credible Iraqi leaders. And each time the remaining choices get
worse.

Yet we're still doing it. Ayad Allawi is, probably, something of a thug.
Still, it's in our interests that he succeed.

But when Mr. Allawi proposed an amnesty for insurgents - a move that
was obviously calculated to show that he wasn't an American puppet -
American officials, probably concerned about how it would look at home,
stepped in to insist that insurgents who have killed Americans be
excluded. Inevitably, this suggestion that American lives matter more than
Iraqi lives led to an unraveling of the whole thing, so Mr. Allawi now
looks like a puppet.

Should we cut and run? No. But we should get realistic, and look in
earnest for an exit.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times

------

The Independent - August 10, 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=549831

Iraq on a Knife-edge

by Donald Macintyre in Baghdad

The new Iraq was on a knife-edge last night as violence and political
instability confronted the regime of Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime
Minister.

In Basra, a British soldier was killed and several others were wounded.
Army Land Rovers were set on fire in clashes with militia loyal to the
Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr, leaving the militia in control of the city's
main road junctions.

The world oil price climbed to a new high of $44.98 a barrel - closing
later at $44.80 - as oil facilities were targeted by the same militia and
Iraq stopped pumping oil in its strategic southern oil fields.

In the Shia holy city of Najaf there were fierce clashes for the fifth
consecutive day between US soldiers and Sadr insurgents who have vowed to
fight to the death. The fighting has claimed 360 lives since Thursday,
according to the US military.

In Baghdad a curfew was imposed on the Shia suburb of Sadr City due
to intense fighting between Sadr's militia and US forces. In the Baquba
area, seven people were killed and 17 were wounded, including the
assistant governor of Diyala province, in a suicide car bomb attack.

Meanwhile, moves against Ahmed Chalabi, the man once seen as the
most likely prime minister of a post-Saddam Iraq, were denounced as
politically motivated. Mr Chalabi has been accused of counterfeiting,
while his nephew, Salem Chalabi, the head of the tribunal trying Saddam,
is wanted for murder.

The crisis across the country prompted a determined new stand from
Mr Allawi. His administration approved, in principle, attacks on the
compound containing the Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, which the US
military said was being used as a base for attacks by insurgents. Almost
4,000 US and Iraqi forces confronted about 2,000 militiamen dug in around
the holy sites in the heart of Najaf, which since Thursday has become the
focal point of the new Iraqi state's efforts to defeat a 15-month-old
insurgency.

The day after Mr Allawi warned on a visit to the city that there would be
"no negotiations or truce" with leaders of the armed rebellion, an equally
uncompromising Muqtada Sadr declared: "I will continue fighting. I will
remain in Najaf until the last drop of my blood has been spilt."

Mr Allawi's government ordered a nightly, 14-hour curfew in Sadr City,
scene of repeated clashes between American forces and gunmen loyal to the
cleric since the fighting began in Najaf last week.

As US and Iraqi forces fought to clear sections of Najaf's ancient
cemetery of gunmen and weapons, seven Iraqi policemen were killed when an
early morning roadside bomb exploded close to the home of the assistant
governor of Diyala in the village of Balad Ruz, just east of Baghdad.
Hakil Hamid Barias was wounded. A senior military official yesterday stood
by the so-far uncorroborated and contested death toll for the fighting in
Najaf issued by the US Marines last Friday and said that 360 insurgents
had now been killed since the fighting began. The official said that five
US troops and at least four Iraqi National Guardsmen had also been killed
but gave no estimate of possible civilian casualties.

He said that about 2,000 US Marines, supported by US Calvary units and
1,800 Iraqi National Guards (ING) and police were now massed at the city.
The official said US and Iraqi forces had been moving into the cemetery to
clear an area but "as they pull back the Mehdi militia will come back into
the cemetery and continue to launch attacks. The primary objective right
now is to take additional ground from these insurgents."

The official insisted that by using the holy sites - including the
mosque at its heart - as a base, the insurgents had forfeited the sites'
protection under international law. Nevertheless according to some
military sources here, senior US officers remain highly aware of the
incalculable sensitivities that an all-out assault on the holy sites would
inflame, posing an acute dilemma on how to defeat the insurgents without
provoking a storm of protest throughout the Muslim world.

Salem Chalabi suggested that the charges had been "trumped up by
Baathists" anxious to undermine the trial of Saddam.

 Four lorry drivers, two Jordanians and two Lebanese, who were being
held hostage by Iraqi insurgents were freed yesterday, relatives of the
men said. They were released after the company that employed them agreed
to end its operations in Iraq.

***

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit

Boston Globe - August 5, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/08/0
5/challenging_kerry_on_his_iraq_vote/


Challenging Kerry on his Iraq vote

By Scott Ritter

WITH THE release last month of the report by the Senate Select
Committee on intelligence and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,
John Kerry was handed a gift that rarely occurs in a major political
race: the chance to underscore a major failing on the part of an
opponent. The committee found that there was no intelligence data
to sustain President Bush's oft-cited reason for last year's invasion of
Iraq -- the presence of WMDs and ongoing projects dedicated to their
manufacture. Kerry said that the Bush administration had been "wrong, and
soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong."

But Kerry failed to address that he was also wrong and that it was
his leadership in the Senate that enabled President Bush to oversee
the most flagrant abrogation of congressional constitutional
responsibilities in modern time, the October 2002 vote to give Bush
power to wage war against Iraq without assuring that there was a
clear and present threat to the United States. It is Kerry's yes
vote that calls into question the character of the man who wants
to replace Bush in the White House.

When asked if he would agree with other Democratic senators who
said they would not have voted to give Bush war powers authority
if they had known about the lack of intelligence on WMD, Kerry let
his vice presidential nominee, Senator John Edwards, speak for him:
"I'm not going to go back and answer hypothetical questions about
what I would have done had I known this." Kerry concurred with
Edwards, adding, "The vote is not today, and that's it."

More than 900 American troops in Iraq are dead and more than 5,000
wounded as a result of that vote, numbers that are sure to go higher.
Kerry cannot honestly say he was not aware of the paucity of verifiable
intelligence concerning the existence of WMD in Iraq on the eve of war. I
personally discussed this matter with Kerry in April 2000 and again with
his senior staff in June 2002. I asked Kerry to allow me to testify before
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during its hearing on Iraq in
July-August 2002 but was denied. Kerry knew that there was a viable case
to be made to debunk the president's statements regarding the threat posed
by Iraq's WMD, but he chose not to act on it.

As a lifelong Republican who voted for Bush, I have made it my
personal goal to make sure that he does not survive his first term
because of his decision to go to war with Iraq without any legitimate
justification. However, I believe there are many people, especially
disenchanted Republicans like myself, who even though we reject Bush are
looking for a good reason to vote for Kerry. Bush's elective war with Iraq
provides that reason, if only Kerry could find a way to separate himself
from the Bush record that does not insult the intellect and integrity of
the electorate.

Kerry claims he voted for the war resolution to give Bush the support
needed to win over much-needed international support to confront Saddam.
According to Kerry, Bush failed to do this. "With a new president," Kerry
pronounced during his acceptance speech last week at the Democratic
National Convention, "who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get
NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq's neighbors like Syria
and Iran, don't stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq's
economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and
participate in the reconstruction."

However, a prerequisite for getting such support rests on the
legitimacy of the conflict with Iraq. This legitimacy hinged on
Saddam's possession of WMDs in violation of Security Council
resolutions, a notion that has been totally discredited. Kerry can
quibble about the hypothetical nature of looking back on his decision to
vote for war, but one must question how Kerry plans to enlist support for
a war that not only has been proven to be without justification but
violates the very principles of international law one presumes would serve
as the rallying cry for garnering international support to begin with.

Kerry needs to publicly reexamine the reasoning for his vote for
war and articulate a clear strategy for Iraq that includes not only
a plan for reengagement with the international community but also
disengagement of American soldiers.

These are real issues that must be addressed directly if Kerry plans
on winning the votes of the many Republicans who have been put off
by the disingenuous nature of Bush's war in Iraq. To brush them off
as hypothetical puts Kerry on the same hypocritical plane as President
Bush when it comes to Iraq, something that will not endear him to the
legions of crossover voters he needs to win the presidency.

[Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is author of
"Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking
of America."]

Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.





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