Today is the Iraq war’s sixth anniversary.

Today marks the sixth Aniversary of the Iraq war. Whahoo! It's hard to believe that it's been 6 years since Bush lied to this nation and took us to war with Iraq.

This was a preventive war of choice, which is something this nation has rarely done, and it was based on “intelligence fixed around the policy.”

Since the invasion, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, over 4,000 U.S. servicemen and women and hundreds more from coalition countries have died (tens of thousands more physically and mentally wounded), over a 100,000 (or more) Iraqi civilians have parished and nearly 5 million have been displaced.

Yet the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other major American newspapers are ignoring the anniversary today. Only USA Today printed a story noting the anniversary of the invasion.

The Center for America's Progress blog Progress Report has more on the good, the bad, and the ugly of developments surrounding the Iraq war over the last year.

UpdateCheck out ThinkProgress's updated timeline of the Iraq war.

Obama sets out firm deadlines on Iraq

Today President Obama traveled to Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to announce his strategy for Iraq. President Obama said today that "This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant."

President Obama's strategy is to remove all combat troops from Iraq in 18 months, while leaving as many as 50,000 troops there in non-combat roles until the end of 2011. Now I was a lowly non-com in the Marines, so I don't claim to be some great strategy, but I do not get the 50,000 troops being left behind. The missions that get described when people are defending leaving 50,000 soldiers and Marines in Iraq, do not require that many soldiers.

The mission that gets described would only require 10,000 U.S. personnel with air support mostly coming from bases in neigboring countries.

During his speech, President Obama declared that:

"To achieve that goal [to remove combat troops from Iraq], we will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe-haven to terrorists. We will help Iraq build new ties of trade and commerce with the world. And we will forge a partnership with the people and government of Iraq that contributes to the peace and security of the region."

President Obama does seem to understand the quandaries that remain in Iraq. In today's speech he frankly described many of the challenges:

"Iraq is not yet secure, and there will be difficult days ahead. Violence will continue to be a part of life in Iraq. Too many fundamental political questions about Iraq’s future remain unresolved. Too many Iraqis are still displaced or destitute. Declining oil revenues will put an added strain on a government that has had difficulty delivering basic services. Not all of Iraq’s neighbors are contributing to its security. Some are working at times to undermine it. And even as Iraq’s government is on a surer footing, it is not yet a full partner – politically and economically – in the region, or with the international community."

President Obama also emphasized that the problems in Iraq will not be solved through military means. He stated that:

"critical recognition that the long-term solution in Iraq must be political – not military....The long-term success of the Iraqi nation will depend upon decisions made by Iraq’s leaders and the fortitude of the Iraqi people. Iraq is a sovereign country with legitimate institutions; America cannot – and should not – take their place."

Still he set an almost impossible goal when he declared that they will leave Iraq with Iraqi a "government that is just, representative, and accountable."

Watch President Obama speaking at Camp Lejeune:

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David Gregory had an initial take on MSNBC with retired General McCaffrey and retired Colonel Jacobs. The NBC reporter of course is a tool who has no idea what he is talking about when he speaks about the surge. Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks has a really good take on the situation. You can watch it here:

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Here is another take on the plan from NBC:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Wars Continue

While the number of U.S. Soldiers and Marines dying in Iraq have gone down, the deaths still continue, and the war drags on. Yesterdaty two military helicopters crashed in Iraq, killing four U.S. service members.

While in Afghanistan roadside bomb attacks hit a record in 2008, and increased 45% over the year before. The result was 161 fatalities among coalition troops -- double 2007.

Juan Cole's Final Thoughts On George W. Bush

Today in his blog Informed Comment Professor Juan Cole wrote a final obituary on the administration of this nation's most disastorouss President, George Walker Bush. As Professor Cole puts it he is a man of feeble temper. I have copied the entire post here because Professor Cole is so very correct about

W. said goodbye to us last night, in an appearance that was surely notable for most Americans mainly because of the annoyance that he delayed by fifteen minutes their prime time shows like Gray's Anatomy and Eleventh Hour. The Bard reminds us that we cannot attribute the dominance of the unworthy ruler to fate, or the stars. If we diminish ourselves and make ourselves underlings and give up our birthright as free citizens, bowing down to a would-be emperor, then we ourselves must accept the blame.

"Ye gods, it doth amaze me, A man of such a feeble temper should So get the start of the majestic world, And bear the palm alone. (1.2.129)

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.135)"

Bush is my slightly older contemporary. I knew guys like W. in college, the frat boys who painted the local lighthouse windows red in the middle of the night after binging on cheep beer and chasing skirts instead of cracking their books. The guys who were rude and arrogant because they did not know how to wear their inherited wealth gracefully, the loudmouths who parroted Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley without having the integrity of the former or the eloquence of the latter.

When I was at college, I was interested in peace movements and spirituality, in Gandhi and Sufism. Bush was obsessed by demon rum, poontang and carpet-bombing peasants. I and my friends marched against the Vietnam War because draftees from our social class were getting shredded in the jungles fighting an Asian nationalist movement for no good reason.

Bush and his buddies mouthed Domino Theory and International Communist Conspiracy and had their powerful fathers arrange fancy deferments for them. W. was just another spoiled rich kid who refused to grow up and threw up on the shoes of the rest of us while singing the praises of brutal militarism and unrestrained capitalism.

When W. hit rock bottom in his drinking and womanizing he was about 40, and he got the most rigid and simplistic kind of religion, which suddenly all the rest of us had to support. Why is it that wastrels who find faith are so insufferable? And despite all his personal failures and the clear evidence that if you put him anywhere near the leadership of an organization he would run it into the ground faster than a drunk can down a shot, he kept being given chances because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and his father had amounted to something. It has long been recognized by historians that the key problem with dynasties is that being born to a powerful father is no guarantee that the heir apparent won't be a royal screw-up.

So Bush, the impudent, opinionated, stubborn socialite is made president in 2000 by his daddy's rightwing friends on the supreme court. And because of September 11 he gets his chance to avenge the failed Vietnam War, and to kill Saddam Hussein, the unpleasant little brown man who had dared defy W.'s wealthy and powerful daddy. W. wasn't up to dealing with the Middle East. It is a complex, vital, fractious place and is notorious as the graveyard of modern presidencies. Carter was done in by Iranian hostage-takers. Reagan embroiled himself in Iran-Contra. Bush Sr. imprudently took on the Israel lobbies over loan guarantees for Israeli colonies on the West Bank, and that misstep helped cost him reelection.

W. is a frightful combination of ignorant, dull, and pigheaded when to succeed in the Middle East he needed to be well-informed, bright and intellectually agile. Those were my stomping grounds; I knew them the way W. knows Houston. But when I objected to his policies at this little weblog, my mailbox was flooded with hate mail from people who thought W. knew best about the Middle East. As if you could get experience, knowledge and wisdom about the world from 20 years of bar hopping in Texas. Did the man even have a passport?

His war in Afghanistan was little more than an aerial intervention in favor of the Northern Alliance, who, given close air support, easily rolled back the Taliban. But Talibanism was not merely an ephemeral political ideology that could so easily be defeated. It was a cry for order on the part of a brutalized and often exiled population that had suffered Soviet and warlord wars. It was a cry for authenticity on the part of a people warding off foreign domination. It was a vehicle of Pushtun power at a time when the Dari Persian speakers had found new patrons such as Iran and India. Talibanism was not defeated in 2001, it simply went underground for a while.

Bush had a huge country to deal with in Afghanistan, a little larger than France but with a geography more like the American southwest-- and analogues to the Rocky Mountains and the Arizona desert. It was among the poorest countries in the world, seeded with millions of land mines and haunted by widows, orphans, and the maimed. Riven by ethnic, linguistic, religious and tribal divisions, it was a virtual basket case. Bush promised to make the big investments in it that would bring it back from the brink. He lied. From 2001 through 2006, my recollection is that the US spent $80 bn. on war operations in Afghanistan and $10 billion in civilian aid. It was a drop in the bucket.

Bush boasted last night about Afghanistan being some sort of shining democracy. I wish Afghans well, but no countries that poor and desperate are stable democracies. The Karzai government would collapse in short order if the US and NATO troops weren't propping it up. The Taliban and other guerrilla insurgencies operate with impunity in places like Ghazni not far from the capital. And, Bush's harping on the liberation of Afghan women is just annoying. Women are better off than under Taliban rule, which was pathologically misogynist. But rural Afghan tribes haven't suddenly decided to treat their women differently. Some warlords regiment the women under their control only a little less thoroughly than had the Taliban. And, besides,the Taliban themselves are back and dictating such matters in some of the Pushtun areas.

Bush has not bequeathed us a shining city on a hill in Afghanistan, but a basket case in need of billions of dollars of investments that we no longer have because of Bush's kleptomaniac buddies, whom he enabled.Bush essentially left a small garrison in Afghanistan and tried to deal with its monumental problems on the cheap. Instead, he diverted the needed resources to his building war with Iraq already by winter of 2002. All of the lies and propaganda whereby he dragged us into Iraq, all of the fearmongering and falsehoods, are too well known to rehearse.

The US has been involved in unjust wars before. But it had fought few wars of choice, in which it just fell on another country without having been attacked. The US had tried to stay neutral in both the world wars. Bush blustered and grunted, shouted accusations and plotted provocations, postured and told tall tales, and herded us into an illegal war with intimations we faced the threat of a madman with nukes. He had no evidence for these false and outrageous claims.

He praised Iraq as a pro-American democracy last night. Bush confuses elections with democracy. Bush had nothing to say about the price Iraqis played to have this rogue experiment on their lives. Did he kick off conflicts that killed over a million Iraqis? That massive toll is entirely plausible. Then there would be 3 million wounded, and a million widowed, and 5 million orphaned. He had nothing to say about the swathe of destruction he has left across the Middle East, like the slimy trail of a huge calamitous slug. Bush has destabilized the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region. Turkish-Kurdish, Arab-Kurdish and Sunni-Shiite battles loom that could redraw the map of the region. We may muddle through, but it is too early to tell. Bush just can't help flashing that "Mission Accomplished" neon whenever he talks about his achievements in Iraq.

There are weasels among the pundits who say that Bush has been vindicated, insofar as Iraq has regained better security than it had in 2006. This is like saying that the Norwegian brown rat was vindicated when the Black Death ran its course, having killed a third of Europe before it subsided.

Bush has not redeemed the Vietnam War but rather made us live through something very like it all over again, the only difference being that this time we are likely to have the sense to get out before we are thrown out.

Bush even dared address us about how wonderful things are in the Middle East now without bringing up the ongoing massacre of Palestinians in Gaza or the continued expropriation and statelessness of the Palestinian people, who may as well be slaves. Bush was the first US president to call for a Palestinian state, and he had pledged that he would accomplish something to revive the peace process in the final two years of his catastrophic presidency. But he ended his second term with a mediocre rightwing Israeli prime minister openly boasting of ordering him around.

Bush was never more than a screw-up. He admitted when running for president that there were deficiencies in his knowledge and experience, but he said he would make up for that by appointing good people around him. It turns out that if someone doesn't have a lick of common sense, he won't even know which of his advisers is giving him wise counsel, and he sure as hell won't know how to appoint wise people to advise him in the first place. W. thought the trustworthy, competent people were Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. He doesn't seem to have taken Colin Powell seriously, and the way he used and discarded Powell is yet another stain on his disastrous presidency.

W. had the gall to exploit people of color at his stage-managed farewell, even though his party is overwhelmingly White and he has driven people of color into much deeper poverty in contrast to Clinton, who raised the standard of living for the poor and actually enforced civil and voting rights. W. brought a native of New Orleans before the cameras last night, as though this gesture could erase his maddening unconcern toward the damage done one of the country's great cities by his own lackadaisical attitude.

Bush lumbers off into his Houston gated community (until recently whites-only), having dropped the pretense of being a rancher who liked to "clear brush." He has enriched his cronies in the military-industrial complex, and opened Iraq to investment by US petroleum firms. But the US economy was hollowed out by an administration that did not believe in auditing the books or actually regulating businesses as the law requited. Bush was a socialist on military and security issues and an anarchist when it came to curbing the abuses of corporations or the white-tie superwealthy that he called his base.

Bush never escaped the habits of his ne'er-do-well undergraduate days at Yale. In the end, he replaced being drunk on beer with being drunk on power. He replaced wooing the women with wooing the corporations. He replaced frat boy hijinks with ruinous wars that wrought a devastation across the rugged expanse of West Asia unlike anything seen since the pagan Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258.

Our nation renews itself, and makes small revolutions with its political campaigns. We have the opportunity now, to choose truth over propaganda, responsibility over recklessness, compassion over brutality, altruism over self-interest, and ability over incompetence. We have the opportunity to repudiate the past 8 years, and to transcend them once and for all, to redeem ourselves as a nation. The persons we choose to serve us as first among equals in our republic can bring us shame or honor as a nation. But it is our choices as individuals that make us shameful or honorable in ourselves. We must never again allow a crew of crooked bullies to make us underlings, lest we be laid to rest in dishonorable graves.

Iraq Condems Israel

How many times have we heard Bush and his allies rationalize the invasion of Iraq by saying we were creating an "Ally in the War on Terror"?

It has become the standard refrain.

So what does it say that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from Baghdad attacked the international community for its silence in the face of what he called Israeli brutality, and he put pressure on Jordan, Egypt and Turkey (without naming them) to break off diplomatic relations with Israel.

Michael Hirsh of Newsweek on TYT

Every Monday Michael Hirsh of Newsweek comes on the Young Turks to give his take. This week Michael had an interesting take on Bush and his incompetense. He literally states the obvious that the Iraq war was not a rational act.

Watch it here:

President Bush is an Idiot

I know this is not news, but man the jerk is trying to drive the fact home in these final weeks. Case in point yesterday President Bush sat down with ABC’s Martha Raddatz for an exit interview in Iraq.

When Raddatz asked Bush about his legacy, Bush first boasted about 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. Which is not actually accurate, for his claimed job growth did not keep up with the growth of the population and ignores the fact that at the begining and end of his administration the economy shed millions of jobs. In this year alone there have been 1.9 million jobs lost.

With the interview taking place in Iraq, it was inevitable that the interview would turn to the catastrophe that is Iraq. Bush of coures is completely clueless when it comes to Iraq. He justified the war in Iraq by suggesting it had been al Qaeda’s home base. When Raddatz corrected him, Bush dismissively replied, "So what?"

Watch it here:


Bush continues his refusal to take any responsibility for the consequences of his decisions, in fact Bush suggests that al Qaeda came to Iraq by chance, which is simply ridiculous. Bush actually says in the interview that Iraq “turn[ed] out to have been” the place where they “were going to take their stand.”

This is stupid on many levels, first al Qaeda’s existence in Iraq is 100 percent attributable to Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. Al Qaeda never existed there before, and in fact, Saddam Hussein viewed Osama bin Laden as a threat and refused to support him. Second, I wish one person would point out that the reason Osama bin Laden has called Iraq the central front of the war on terror, and why he would wish to keep it there was that it was thousands of miles away from his base of operations.

Also lets not forget that throughout the run-up to war, Bush repeatedly cited supposed links between al Qaeda and Iraq to drum up support for the U.S. invasion. When those links proved to be utterly false — and perhaps even willingly fabricated — Bush began insisting that al Qaeda had chosen Iraq as the “central front in the war on terror,” and so the United States was forced to stay there and respond. In the meantime, more than 4,000 Americans have been killed, 30,000 maimed, and nearly 100,000 Iraqis killed.

Bush also continued to dismiss the incident when Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush and shouted, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Bush said that Zaidi’s actions were “bizarre” but had no larger significance:

Q Well, not to belabor the point too much, on this man, but I have a serious question about it. Obviously he’s expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, and —

BUSH: How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he’s expressing? Who — […] I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I heard he was representing a Baathist TV station. I don’t know the facts, but let’s find out the facts. All I’m telling you, it was a bizarre moment. […] I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate. … That’s exactly what he wanted you to do. Like I answered on your question, what he wanted you to do was to pay attention to him. And sure enough, you did.

In the interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz yesterday, Bush laughed off Zaidi’s actions as “amusing.” “I don’t know what his beef is,” said Bush. “But whatever it is I’m sure somebody will hear it.”

Watch it here:

Attacks in Iraq in November Down

There is continued good news out of Iraq. Despite a number of high-profile bombings in the past few days, the US military reports that the number of attacks per day in Iraq in November was less than at any time since 2003.

In November, 2003, it was an average of 17 attacks a day and the Sunni Arab guerrilla war was in full swing. You're still getting 300-400 civilians killed a month, which is about 4,000 a year. It is not the apocalypse it was in 2006, but this level of violence is still not reassuring. Things are better, but it is not the success that idiots like Bill Kristol would like you to believe.

Iraq is a nation that will be picking up the pieces of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush for a long, long time.

Gates: Obama ‘framed’ withdrawal from Iraq ‘just right.’

Yesterday, President-elect Obama said that “16 months is the right time frame” for withdrawing all U.S. combat troops from Iraq, noting that he would “listen to the recommendations” his commanders on the ground.

Asked today if he considered himself “at odds” with Obama on the timetable, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that he “would subscribe to what the President-elect said yesterday in Chicago.” Pressed by reporters on the length of the time frame,” Gates said that Obama “framed it just right yesterday.”

Watch it here:

LibertyAir Blog

IRAQI PARLIAMENT APPROVES SOFA

Ten days ago, Iraq's cabinet overwhelmingly approved a security agreement with the Bush administration, that calls for a withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2011.

The measure then went to the Iraqi Parliament for approval, (not the U.S. Congress of coarse) yet success of the measure was not a given.

As it turns out, it passed rather easily.

Iraq's parliament approved Thursday a security pact with the United States that lets American troops stay in the country for three more years.

The vote in favor of the pact was backed by the ruling coalition's Shiite and Kurdish blocs as well as the largest Sunni Arab bloc, which had demanded concessions for supporting the deal.
The breakdown of the vote was not immediately available. But parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani said an "overwhelming majority" of lawmakers who attended the session voted in favor. Parliament's secretariat, which counted lawmakers as they entered the chamber, said 220 out of 275 legislators attended.

An AFP report added:

The vote came after a flurry of last-minute negotiations in which the main Sunni parties secured a package of political reforms from the government and a commitment to hold a referendum on the pact in the middle of next year.

Should the Iraqi government decide to cancel the pact after the referendum it would have to give Washington one year's notice, meaning that troops would be allowed to remain in the country only until the middle of 2010.

It prompted Spencer Ackerman to respond, "That would be ... give or take a few days ... why, sixteen months after Barack Obama takes office! Happy Thanksgiving from Baghdad, Barack

Why Won't Bush Release Wording on Pact?

If news reports are to be believed, the Bush administration has adopted a much looser interpretation than the Iraqi government of several key provisions of the pending U.S.-Iraq security agreement.

The administration has intentionally withheld the official English translation of the agreement from both Congress and the public in an effort to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the Iraqi parliament votes. The White House National Security Council said it had purposedly held up the translation's release until the Iraqi parliament votes. My question is why?

What is the Bush administration hiding? Why should we not know what Bush is signing us up for? What if the Iraqi's are agreeing to something that Barack Obama and the majority of Americans will not agree too?

U.S. officials have told McClatchy Newspapers that the Bush administration was eager to complete the deal before it leaves office in January and acquiesced to many Iraqi demands.
McClatchy's Baghdad bureau last week produced an unofficial English translation of the agreement based on the Arabic text. McClatchy on Tuesday also obtained an official English version.

According to McClatchy Newspapers, that upon studying the agreement, and speaking to the Iraqi government, it becomes pretty clear that the Bush administration has very different interpretations of some very key provisions than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's and his government has. In fact Iraqi lawmakers might actually balk at approving the pact or delay a vote if they were to understand the Bush administration's interpretations. The Iraqi's definitely would post-pone the vote while seeking clarification from the U.S. government.

Among the areas of dispute are:

• Iraqi legal jurisdiction over U.S. troops or military contractors who kill Iraqis on operations. The agreement calls for Iraq to prosecute U.S. troops according to court procedures that have yet to be worked out. Those negotiations, administration officials have argued, could take three years, by which time the U.S. will have withdrawn from Iraq under the terms of the agreement. In the interim, U.S. troops will remain under the jurisdiction of America's Uniform Code of Military Justice.
• A provision that bars the U.S. from launching military operations into neighboring countries from Iraqi territory. Administration officials argue they could circumvent that in some cases, such as pursuing groups that launch strikes on U.S. targets from Syria or Iran, by citing another provision that allows each party to retain the right of self-defense. One official expressed concern that "if Iran gets wind that we think there's a loophole there," Tehran might renew its opposition to the agreement.
• A provision that appears to require the U.S. to notify Iraqi officials in advance of any planned military operations and to seek Iraqi approval for them, which some U.S. military officials find especially troubling, although Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, and Army Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, all have endorsed it.

The administration has sought to assuage such concerns by arguing that the pact doesn't require the U.S. to give the Iraqis detailed information, however Iraqi's seem to be of the opinion they do. The administration has claimed that it interprets the agreement to mean that U.S. commanders would merely need to inform their Iraqi counterparts that they plan to launch counterterrorism operations somewhere in an Iraqi city or province sometime during the month of January. There is no way that this is the interpetation that the Iraqis have. So all this will mean is there are about to be major problems with the Iraqi government, and the Bush administration is kicking the can down the lane for Obama.

That said, it is important that some deal is put in place. The current United Nations mandate governing the U.S. troop presence in Iraq expires on December 31st, and there needs to be something in place to govern how we end this useless war and occupation.

Will Iraq Pass Pact With the US

Shiite's allied with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and the Kurdish bloc in Iraq's ruling body made a key concession Wednesday to the largest Sunni Party in hopes of securing a big majority in a crucial parliamentary vote later in the day on a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

Sunni Arab lawmakers have listed a host of demands, varying from sweeping political reforms to amnesty for prisoners who number about 16,000, and a national referendum on the pact, even if the parliament passed it; in exchange for supporting the proposed deal.

This proposed deal would let American troops stay in Iraq through 2011, meeting a longtime Iraqi demand for a clear timetable for their exit. The 275-member assembly is due to vote by a show of hands on the wide-ranging accord, which would require US troops to completely withdraw within three years and pull out from Iraqi cities by the end of June.

Maliki's Shiite bloc and its Kurdish allies hold enough seats to propel the pact through parliament, but Maliki needs Sunni votes to prevent sharpening the country's sectarian and ethnic divides. In addition, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has said the pact should have national consensus. Passage by such a thin margin would highlight a failure to achieve the consensus that Maliki seeks.

But the intensity of political maneuvering among Iraqi factions contributed to deep uncertainty about the outcome of a vote scheduled for Wednesday that will determine the status of some 150,000 troops in Iraq after years of war. One Shiite lawmaker said that the government could only count on 139 MPs to vote for the measure, which would mean that it would just barely pass if most of the 275 MPs attended the session. If it does pass, it will pass with a simple majority and not consensus.

It has been reported awmakers arrived at the parliament building for the planned vote in a session scheduled for 7 a.m. EST, but the session did not begin at the appointed hour and the legislators waited for a new time to be set. Fearing insurgent attacks, the Iraqi army and police deployed additional forces around the parliament building and the Green Zone entrance leading to it.

If the pact is not passed by the end of next month, it would leave U.S. forces without legal standing to be in Iraq unless the U.N. mandate authorizing their presence was extended. The mandate expires Jan. 1.

Iraq: The War Continues

The media has mostly dropped their coverage of the occupation of Iraq, but the war continues. Three bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least 20 people. One of these attacks was a suicide bombing near an entrance to the U.S.-protected Green Zone.

These attacks come as Iraqi lawmakers prepare for a vote this week on a security pact with the U.S. and are seen by some as “a calculated show of insurgent defiance” towards the agreement.

The Iraqi parliament has postponed its vote on the proposed US-Iraq security pact from Monday to Wednesday. MPs had complained that there were not given enough time to study its provisions. It is still not clear how the Sunni Arab MPs will vote; without their support, the agreement would likely be seen as a joint Shiite-Kurdish conspiracy.

There is also evidence that the situation is tenuous with both the Sunni's and Kurds. Kurdistan continues to act as an independent country. It was revealed on Saturday that the Kurdish authority have been importing arms from Bulgaria without informing the central government in Baghdad.

Sunni Arabs in Iraq have considerable grievances against the Shia dominated government in Baghdad, though they may be willing to cooperate with it if money and works project flow to their regions. There is still some fear that the central government in Baghdad will not maintain payments to the Sons of Iraq, and Awakening Councils, who ended their insurgency and went on to the American payroll. Now that the Iraqi government has taken over these payments, any disruption or cancellation could lead to serious problems. At the same time the presidency council in Iraq is now criticizing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for building up tribal levies of Shiite Arabs into forces supporting the Prime Minister and his party. There are rumors in Iraq that these are militias that are loyal to the Da'wa or Islamic Mission Party. One of Da'wa's weaknesses has been that it does not have a powerful militia like the Sadarists, the Kurdish parties, or the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. This may play a role in strengthening his party against his Shiite rivals. Maliki has defended the Support Councils as a natural outgrowth of the Sahwa Awakening movement that began in the western province of Anbar in 2006, when the US allied with local Sunni militias to drive out Al-Qaeda.

There are some who look at this with hope. I don't, I see armed camps preparing for another war. Iraq still is in great danger of following the same path as Lebenon.

Few Iranian Made Weapons Found In Iraq

A U.S. Task Force tasked with investigating Iranian involvement in Iraq has released a report that states that few Iranian arms have been found in Iraq. Over the last two years, the Bush administration and a certain segment of the US military have accused Iran of pooring weapons into Iran. They have continually promised to provide proof of Iranian meddling in Iraq in the form of Iranian-provided weaponry in the hands of terrorists insurgents special groups criminals, yet have constantly failed.

Their first effort to provide proof of Irainian support for Iraqi insurgents, the infamous Baghdad Briefing, fell flat on its face when even Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and then Joint Chiefs Chairman General Pace had to admit that the "evidence" presented was incredibly weak and it proved nothing. Since that first failed briefing, various promised "smoking gun" briefings have been announced, postponed and then cancelled. Even the previously gullible mainstream press had to notice that there was a lot more smoke than fire.

The data collected by the task force - known as Task Force Troy - shows that relatively few of the weapons found in Shi'a militia caches were manufactured in Iran.

Gareth Porter writes for IPSNews:

According to the data compiled by the task force, and made available to an academic research project last July, only 70 weapons believed to have been manufactured in Iran had been found in post-invasion weapons caches between mid-February and the second week in April. And those weapons represented only 17 percent of the weapons found in caches that had any Iranian weapons in them during that period.

The actual proportion of Iranian-made weapons to total weapons found, however, was significantly lower than that, because the task force was finding many more weapons caches in Shi'a areas that did not have any Iranian weapons in them.

The task force database identified 98 caches over the five-month period with at least one Iranian weapon, excluding caches believed to have been hidden prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion. But according to an e-mail from the MNFI press desk this week, the task force found and analysed a total of roughly 4,600 weapons caches during that same period.

The caches that included Iranian weapons thus represented just 2 percent of all caches found. That means Iranian-made weapons were a fraction of one percent of the total weapons found in Shi'a militia caches during that period. The extremely small proportion of Iranian arms in Shi'a militia weapons caches further suggests that Shi'a militia fighters in Iraq had been getting weapons from local and international arms markets rather than from an official Iranian-sponsored smuggling network.

John Amato of Crooks & Liars points out:

Left out of the list of Iranian-made weaponry were 350 armour-piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) found in Iraqi weapons caches. Despite the lurid claims of US officials, the task group couldn't ascribe an Iranian origin to a single one. Which along with press reports about finding EFP manufactories inside Iraq explains why, since mid-Summer, we've heard nothing about Iranian-made EFPs whereas before official reports and statements were full of them.

Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman of the West Point military academy revealed this data in an academic research paper published last month by West Point's Counter-Terrorism Centre.
In the paper Felter and Fishman criticised official U.S. statements on Iranian weapons in Iraq.

"Some reports erroneously attribute munitions similar to those produced in Iran as Iranian, while other Iranian munitions found in Iraq were likely purchased on the open market."

The co-authors note that Iranian arms can be purchased directly from the website of the Defence Industries of Iran with a credit card. Given how easy it is to purchase weapons, and a long, shared, porous border where there is a vast history of smuggling, the percentage of Iranian made arms is actually very low.

But there are clear reasons Iran isn't doing so well in the Iraqi arms market. Iranian equipment is less reliable and more expensive than Eastern Block materiel that flooded the region after the 2003 invasion -something which a certain imprisoned international arms dealer, ex-CIA and ex-US military contractor and supplier to despots and terrorists, Viktor Bout, may well know a fair bit about.

It's been a buyer's market and the Iranians are seeing market forces exclude their produce, with the exception of simple artillery rockets. They're more expensive than the Pakistani arms bazaar's copies coming down the old Silk Road routes and far less effective than easily available and comparitively-priced black market US weapons too.

It is often forgotten or ignored that over 190,000 US-provided guns found their way onto the black market in Iraq, simply disappearing from inventory after lax US and Iraqi accounting. Some US weapons have even found their way to Turkey, into the hands of PKK terrorists.

And to this day, no-one has held General Petreaus accountable for those 190,000 guns - worth over $50 million or about twice that on the street - that he says were "kicked out of helicopters" or misplaced by clerical errors on his watch, despite one of his closest aides pleading guilty to corruption and bribery charges in relation to procurement contracts by a company involved in illegal arms dealing of US-provided weapons.

In his hero status Petreaus has never been asked what he knew and when he knew it about the loss of arms. He's never been subjected to a formal enquiry on the matter. And a GAO investigation begun back in August last year seems to have gone very silent.

So now we have a deafening silence - both on earlier accusations of Iranian arms running and meddling, which will just be allowed to sit their in the public mind, and on the very real high-level incompetence and corruption which led to so many US-provided weapons being lost without trace. That's just part of the Bush administration's gag order on the largest war profiteering adventure in history.

Add yet another couple of items to the very long list of hard questions the Obama administration should be asking about its predecessor and its doings.

Gareth Porter discussed the false narrative of Iranian weapons in Iraq with AntiWar.Com back in May, watch it here:

LibertyAir Blog

Iraqi Cabinet OKs Security Pact With US

The Iraqi cabinet has approved the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the United States, in a vote that was surprisingly one-sided. 27 of 28 cabinet members voted in favor of the agreement, and the deal will now be sent to parliament for consideration. The vote became much easier after Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani indicated he would not object to the deal so long as parliament supported it.

The current, and evidently final draft of the SOFA came only after the Iraqi government requested over 100 amendments to the previous “final” draft. The US withheld its response until after its own elections, and accepted most, but not all, of the changes.

Vital to stifling opposition to the pact was removing a clause which explicitly allowed the Iraqi government to continue the US presence beyond the December 31, 2011 deadline for a pullout. The clause wasn’t particularly meaningful: the Iraqi government is still free to do this at any rate, but it was a major complaint of the opposition.

Another important addition was a clause which says “Iraqi land, sea and air shall not be used as a launching or transit point for attacks against other countries.” This was seen as particularly important after the US attack on a Syrian border town last month, but again leaves a measure of wiggle room: while the attack was into another country, the US might argue it wasn’t necessarily against them.

Still a potential obstacle is the US unwillingness to change a clause on troop immunity: the drafts both allow Iraqi courts jurisdiction over US troops who commit major crimes only if they are off-base and off-duty. The Iraqi government sought to amend this so Iraq could determine when off-base US soldiers are in fact off-duty. A concern with the present wording is that the US can essentially block Iraqi jurisdiction by simply declaring the soldier on-duty after the fact.

Having passed the cabinet, the SOFA moves on to parliament, and the requirements for passing there are a matter of some dispute. The government maintains only a simple majority is needed, while opponents argue for a two-thirds majority. The issue was contentious enough that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office said he wouldn’t submit the previous draft unless he was certain of a two-thirds majority.

And though the ruling Shi’ite coalition and strong supporters of the SOFA in the Kurdish Alliance would be sufficient for the simple majority, the two-thirds majority is by no means guaranteed, as the deal continues to have its opponents. The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni religious group, has condemned the SOFA as a deal of “submission” to the US and warned it would continue a “despicable occupation.”

A spokesman for the political bloc of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has likewise been an outspoken opponent of the SOFA, called the cabinet vote “meaningless” and predicted the deal would fail in parliament. Sadr has been key in organizing popular opposition to the SOFA.

Iraq Security Pact - A Major Crisis

If the security pact between the United States and Iraq is not agreed upon American soldiers might stop patrolling the streets and head back to their barracks. Help for the Iraqi army from the U.S. Army could suddenly cease — not to mention raids on al-Qaida fighters and Shiite extremists.

U.S. and Iraqi officials would scramble for options to salvage the U.S. mission there. This would of course would be happening in the waning, lame-duck days of a Bush administration that launched and pursued the war, before the next administration had taken power.

It's a vision of what may take place if Iraq's parliament refuses to accept a new security agreement with the U.S. before year's end. That date — Dec. 31 — is when a U.N. mandate expires and with it, the legal basis for American troops to operate inside Iraq.

No one knows for sure what will happen if that day comes and passes with no done deal, but the options would grow more stark amid the growing uncertainty. It is conceivable that U.S. forces could find themselves with no legal authority to operate in Iraq.

Would Iraq's army and police, in the blink of an eye, be left on their own to maintain security in a country still reeling from the savagery of the last five years? Would security gains won by the sacrifice of more than 4,100 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis be at risk, in that same sudden moment?

Without American support could the Iraqi army continue to function? The U.S. Army provides most logistics support for the Iraqi Army, are the Iraqis ready to handle refueling, and supply for all their army divisions? The U.S. military handles all air force duties, how will this affect the Iraqi military?

Security may deteriorate, Sunnis and Shiite extremist groups might resume their activities and the militias might return to the streets.

Iraq may yet decide to approve the deal, especially if the U.S. agrees to the changes they are demanding. Though there are so many differing demands from the Sunnis and the Shiites that it might be impossible for the U.S. to meet them all. Nearly every major decision made in Iraq comes only after protracted haggling and complex bargaining — all done in an atmosphere of deep suspicion among the various clans, and the differing religious and ethnic parties.

The Security pact that was agreed upon by the Bush administration and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would remove American forces from Iraqi cities by June 2009, with all U.S. troops out of the country by the end of 2011, unless both sides agree to an extension.

But the security agreement faces real problems, which have been clearly on dispaly over the last week. These issues are more serious today than anyone imagined just a few weeks ago and representatives of Nouri al-Maliki and Bush hammered out the Security Pact.

Iraqi leaders are really between a rock and a hard place. They are torn between a desire for continued U.S. help and the yearning of many Iraqis for an end the foreign military occupation of their country.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has refused to submit the draft to parliament unless he is certain of strong backing. He fears rivals will use the agreement against him in provincial and national elections next year — a real possibility in a country exhausted by nearly six years of war and eager to end outside domination.

For their part, most of his Shiite rivals also want the deal privately, but are demanding big changes. They clearly see the negotiations as a way to give al-Maliki political problems. Others like anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are against the deal and will always be against the deal.

Sunnis — who may want the deal most of all — don't want to stick their necks out first, to push for its passage in the current form. They fear being branded traitors, a charge that still sticks on Sunni tribes that supported the British in a revolt nearly 90 years ago.

Meanwhile, the United States has indicated the last thing it wants is to reopen any points already negotiated with al-Maliki.

Joint Chief Admiral Mullen expressed warnings this week that time is running out and that Iraqi officials may not fully appreciate the situation's seriousness. Many Iraqi politicians to great umberage to this.

So far, the United States has been mum on how it might manage what is certain to be a chaotic, fast-moving series of events at year's end if the deal isn't done — after a new U.S. president has been elected but almost a month before he takes office.

If the agreement appears doomed, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell says the U.S. plans to ask the U.N. Security Council to extend the mandate authorizing military operations in Iraq.
But that could get complicated if Russia and China, with vetoes in the U.N. Security Council, press for changes in the mandate before approving it. They might want new restrictions on U.S. operations, or a shortened time for the U.S. to remain in Iraq.

Those are touchy issues that a lame-duck Bush administration might find hard to negotiate.

The Russians say they will support an extension if Iraq asks for one, but Iraq is reluctant to do that. Asking for an extension would open al-Maliki to charges he's attempting an end-run around the government's own democratic institutions to maintain a U.S. military presence.
Yet without a new U.N. mandate or a broader bilateral deal, there are few options.

The United States and Iraq could try to negotiate some limited deal, but al-Maliki's foes might try to block even that. One top al-Maliki aide says that if the larger deal falters, "we will sit down and look for an alternative." He spoke on condition of anonymity because the situation is so delicate, and he also gave no timetable.

All that leads rather alarmingly to Jan. 1, 2009.

American commanders have not spelled out in detail what they would do — in terms of day-to-day operations — in the absence of an agreement on that date. Without a legal framework, however, U.S. soldiers would be in violation of international law if they continued military operations. At a minimum, that would probably require commanders to keep soldiers on bases, while diplomats and legal experts figured out what to do.

In the end if things go really crazy, it could be yet another unresolved and complicated crisis, left for a new American president to solve.

US/Iraq Security Pact Crumbling

The Security Agreement between Iraq and the United States has hit numerous rocks, and there is better chance that it does not pass now before the end of the year, than that it does. This news should be getting covered more, but with the election, it is getting lost in the clutter. We really need to hear what the two candidates think on this, and how will they deal with it. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen last Tuesday is reported to have said that the Iraqis really do not have much time to pass this agreement and might not understand the full consequences of failure to do so. I think he is right that they might not have much time, but they know full well what the consequences are. If the Iraqi Parliament fails to approve the draft before the U.N. mandate expires Dec. 31, there would be no legal basis for the U.S.-led military mission to stay on. This in turn could force hard decisions in Baghdad and Washington on the future of the unpopular war.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh reacted sharply to Admiral Mullen on Wednesday. Dabbagh said, "It is not correct to force Iraqis into making a choice and it is not appropriate to talk with the Iraqis in this way."

This against the back drop of tens of thousands of al-Sadr followers who rallied in Baghdad against the proposal on Saturday. The mass public show of opposition came as U.S. and Iraqi leaders face a December 31st deadline to replace the U.N. mandate authorizing the U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

In another blow to the agreement, Grand Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri issued a fatwa denouncing the proposed security pact. Now his stand against the security pact has a lot to do with a struggle within the Shiite hiearchy. Grand Ayatollah Al-Haeri declines to live in Iraq under U.S. occupation and currently resides in Iranian holy city of Qom, and is a rival to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf.

A portion of Grand Ayatollah Al-Haeri's statement:

"We have learned of the pressures exerted by the Occupation forces on the Iraqi government for the purpose of obtaining its assent to a humiliating agreement termed 'a long term security agreement,' which leads to Iraq's loss of its national sovereignty, and its acceptance of humiliation and abasement."

"Whoso aids the Occupiers in achieving what they desire, God shall not forgive his sins, nor will the oppressed Iraqi nation go easy on him, norwill the blessed centers of Islamic learning nor any Muslim with a conscience who believes in the Judgment Day."

Grand Ayatollah Al-Haeri holds great sway with a large number of Shiites, and his words could gum up the works.

One way or another, As of Jan. 1, US troops will not be able to act at will in Iraq but rather will have to get assent from Iraqi authorities for campaigns.

Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Calls Agreement DOA

The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) is the largest voting bloc in the current Iraqi parliment, and they have published a detailed critique of the draft security agreement that has been reached by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and George W. Bush. One unnamed ISCI parliamentarian called the agreement "dead on arrival."

If al-Maliki cannot get the support for it of ISCI, his chief partner in parliament, then the agreement cannot be passed. Too many other political movements, including most Sunnis groups and the Sadrists, oppose the security agreement, for it to succeed in the absence of ISCI support.

ISCI states in their critique that they want to renegotiate key points, but it is unlikely that the the Bush administration has the patience to do this.

This could mean that there is no security agreement by the end of the year, which will place the occupation in legal limbo, as there is a good chance the US could not get an extension from the UN because of the current poor relations with Georgia.

U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq

Reuters is reporting that the U.S. and Iraq have reached a final agreement after months of negotiations on a pact that would require U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq by 2011. Senior U.S. officials in Washington have confirmed that the final draft has been agreed by both sides and would require U.S. troops to leave by the end of 2011, unless Iraq asks them to stay longer.

Iraq is claiming that it has secured the right to prosecute U.S. soldiers for serious crimes under certain circumstances, an issue both sides had long said was holding up the pact. U.S. officials have confirmed a compromise had been reached on the immunity issue but gave no further details.

The agreement was submitted to Iraqi political leaders for approval, a first step toward ratifying it in the Iraqi parliament.

Latest Iraq NIE Warns Of New Wave Of Violence

The best newspaper in the country, McClatchy is reporting that the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is almost complete and the news is not good. It " warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year," directly contradicting John McCain's claims in Tuesday's debate that the Surge has been a success and victory has been attained.

While the mainstream media seem shocked by this finding, this should not be a major surprise to anyone who has actually been following events in Iraq without neocon rose-tinted glasses (obviously not John McCain). Deep conflicts between the central government and Kurdish region, Awakening groups and Sadrists have all been put on a knife-edge by expectations for the upcoming provincial elections, which have been gerrymandered to keep the existing incumbents in the Green Zone in power. The Turks are looking down a gunbarrel at the Kurds and the Awakening is looking at losing its source of income - being paid not to be insurgents - while even the Green Zone elites are falling out among themselves over Maliki's newfound Napoleon complex. The chances of Iraq lasting another year without another significant outbreak of violence are small to none.

All of those sources of conflict are outlined in the draft NIE, according to more than "a half-dozen officials" who spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because NIE's are very restricted circulation documents.

All of those sources of conflict are outlined in the draft NIE, according to more than "a half-dozen officials" who spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because NIE's are very restricted circulation documents.

The NIE findings parallel a Defense Department assessment last month that warned that despite "promising developments, security gains in Iraq remain fragile. A number of issues have the potential to upset progress.",

Trouble spots include whether the former Sunni insurgents, also known as the Sons of Iraq, find permanent employment; provincial elections scheduled for January; Kirkuk's status; the fate of internally displaced people and returning refugees; and "malign Iranian influence," the unclassified Pentagon report said.

The intelligence agencies' estimate also raises worries about what would happen if Sadr, the anti-U.S. cleric, attempts to reassert himself, according to senior intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

General Petraeus, who is the focus of an unholy amount of revered hype by John McCain, says the the situation is "fragile" and "reversible" and says he will never declare victory there. Not that even his Saint's words of caution have stopped Mccain doing so loudly and often, however. But Petraeus, in a talk to the neocon Heritage Foundation today, ruffled feathers by repeatedly seeming to back Obama's foreign policy prescriptions over McCain's.

Unbidden, Petraeus discussed whether his strategy in Iraq — protecting the population while cleaving apart the insurgency through reconciliation efforts to crush the remaining hard-core enemies — could also work in Afghanistan. The question has particular salience as Petraeus takes over U.S. Central Command, which will put him at the helm of all U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, thereby giving him a large role in the Afghanistan war.

“Some of the concepts used in Iraq are transplantable [to Afghanistan] while others perhaps are not,” he said. “Every situation is unique.”

Petraeus pointed to efforts by Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a deal with the Taliban that would potentially bring some Taliban members back to power, saying that if they are “willing to reconcile,” it would be “a positive step.”

In saying that, Petraeus implicitly allied with U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Last week, McKiernan rejected the idea of replicating the blend of counterinsurgency strategy employed in Iraq. “The word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word ’surge,’” McKiernan said, opting against
recruiting Pashtun tribal fighters to supplement Afghan security forces against
Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “There are countless other differences between Iraq
and Afghanistan,” he added.

... Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

And, as McClatchy notes, whether the news is good or bad and no matter what the commanders might have to say about it, Republicans will always find an excuse to stay just a little bit longer.

The findings seem to cast doubts on McCain's frequent assertions that the United States is "on a path to victory" in Iraq by underscoring the deep uncertainties of the situation despite the 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge for which he was the leading congressional advocate.

But McCain could also use the findings to try to strengthen his argument for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq until conditions stabilize.

It's always a reason to stay. We've had countless variations on "the surge is working; we should stay until we've done the job," or "even if we can't maintain the surge, we're making progress, so we should stay" or "the Surge hasn't done what we thought it would but we can't leave - there will be a bloodbath when we leave" already. How about this instead? The Surge didn't do what it was supposed to, it never will because the irreconcilable faction fights behind the violence are beyond U.S. control, but it's the Iraqis country and they get to break it if they want to or fix it if they wish - their choice.

Not that we'll get a chance for that debate based upon this NIE, like the Afghanistan NIE which was comparably "grim" it will be buried, with not even the summary conclusions released to the public.

Crossposted from Crooks & Liars