Tag: Iraq

Post-Withdrawal Iraq Could Resemble Bloody Aftermath of First Bush’s Gulf War

Jon Ponder

In 1991, the first Pres. Bush promised military support to Iraqi rebels after Saddam’s surrender. But Bush broke the promise and Saddam’s forces masssacred 30,000 rebels and buried them in unmarked graves.

This is how Pres. George W. Bush’s failed Iraq war will end. When U.S. forces pull out of Iraq — whether it is next week, next month, or, as Pres. Bush now prosposes, 10 years from now, the civil war for control of the country will escalate.

The warring factions will include various sects within the majority Shia communtiy, the Sunni minority and the Kurds seeking secession and independence. There may also be forces of outside fundamentalists militias, including al Qaeda, who move in to fill the vaccuum left by departed American forces.

The battle for control of Iraq could be bloody and long, perhaps comparable to the war in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, George Bush lit the fuse on this bomb in the heart of the Middle East in 2003, when he foolishly ordered the invasion of Iraq. Those of us who opposed the war from the start, and who now favor moving our troops out of harm’s way, should be prepared for the violence and bloodshed that erupt in the aftermath of our retreat.

To get a sense of what Iraq will suffer when the U.S. pulls out, we need look no further back than 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

Inmediately after the end of the first Gulf War, Pres. George H.W. Bush promised Iraqi Shiites and Kurds American military support if they would rise up and overthrow the newly defeated Saddam Hussein. In a broadcast to Iraqis via Voice of America on Februrary 15, 1991, then-Pres. Bush said:

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.

But when the rebellion got underway, Bush and his war council, which included Defense Sec. Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, changed their minds about helping the rebels.

This decision led to the massacre of at least 30,000 rebels who were buried in mass graves. Mr. Bush himself has said that what happened to the Shiites was one of the deepest regrets of his presidency

Details of the uprising and its horrific aftermath below the fold.

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Hussein’s Hanging — A Little Clarification About Iraqi Customs

Buck Banks

Muffed snuff: Mowaffak al-Rubaie is Iraq’s national security advisor and, apparently, a loose cannon when it comes to TV interviews. Al-Rubaie was a witness at Saddam Hussein’s hanging, and soon after the execution he spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the conduct of witnesses and guards before and after Hussein was hanged. Electronic Iraq has provided al-Rubaie a forum to correct the wrong impression his interview may have given regarding Iraqi customs and behavior when executing a depraved dictator.

From the CNN transcript of the interview:

Cooper: But you are proud of what you did witness? I mean, you — I assume you heard the shouting. You heard — you saw the dancing around his body, because I know you talked about that. Are you proud of that?

Al-Rubaie: This is this a tradition of the Iraqis. When they do something, they … they dance around the body, and they express their feeling. Anderson, what is wrong with that? If that upset the feeling of some of the Arab nations and Arab rulers, I think that is tough luck to them.

Here is al-Rubaie’s clarification of his CNN comments and his answers to critics of the timing and method of Hussein’s execution.

Recently, an interview I had on CNN has been taken out of context and quoted by multiple other sources, unfortunately damaging the image of Iraqis. I mentioned that some of the Iraqis attending Saddam’s execution were happy that Saddam’s era had come to an end, and that all Iraqis can now work together in starting a new chapter. Some of them expressed their happiness through a traditional dance usually preformed at celebrations and weddings.

In no way did I mean that dancing around dead bodies is “an Iraqi tradition”. In fact, it is neither an Iraqi tradition, nor an Arab or Muslim one. Our religion and traditions ban any gloating over someone’s grief, even if we loathed that person and thought he got what he deserved. Our Arabic traditions and Islamic rules pertaining to death prevent cussing, shouting, vengefulness, and wrath towards those about to die; in addition, we are even prohibited from speaking ill of the dead. Our Iraqi traditions in particular are against sectarian or ethnic taunting. All the mistakes that happened during this execution do not reflect our heritage and religion, and they do not reflect our values in building the new Iraq.

So the thugs in the crowd around the gallows were breaking both Arabic and Islamic prohibitions by shouting sectarian taunts at the condemned? He mentions “mistakes,” but does not explain how they happened, which is the key point. How came there to be a whole bunch of rowdy Shiites there for the hanging, anyway?

We do understand many people’s point of view who criticized the execution’s timing as well. We did not mean to offend anyone by picking the Holy Muslim days of Eid Al-Adha, and we regret any other offensive technicalities that occurred during the execution, but we urge the international community to remember the bigger picture, and see Saddam’s execution as a milestone representing an end of a dark era. We, at the Iraqi government, wanted the trial and execution of Saddam to be a reason for putting Iraqis together and uniting Iraq, but it was used by many political groups inside and outside Iraq as an excuse to divide Iraqis furthermore and to find reasons for increasing the violence.

Unfortunately, it seems that many people around the world were distracted from the real issues, which are Saddam’s crimes over the last several decades. Our Prime Minister, Mr. Maliki, went as far as threatening to re-think Iraq’s relationships to any countries that mourn Saddam or find excuses to criticize his trial and execution. We want to keep the attention focused on Saddam’s victims and their sacrifices, and also on the great possibilities of the post-Saddam Iraq.

Oh, so by hanging Saddam, the Iraqi gubmint intended to bring Iraqis — Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians — together. Good call, Mr. Maliki, man. I imagine any rethinking going on is being down by civilized nations that would not want a relationship with a bunch of blood-thirsty tribal maniacs.

We hope that the Western media will not end up playing into the hands of those who wanted to increase the sectarian tension between Iraqis, and we assure everyone that all the mistakes that occurred during Saddam’s execution are condemnable, and that our only intention was to follow our traditions in being respectful and professional during the execution. The Iraqi judicial system will prosecute and punish all the people who transgressed the standards of law and decency during Saddam’s execution.

I will conclude with a quote from our prayer for the dead, a great example of the tradition of tolerance in Islam: “All Mighty, don’t bring about divisions after his death, and forgive us for our sins.”

Oh, puh-lease! If al-Rabaie really wants to do something to protect the image of Iraqis, he’ll just shut up.

Poll: Bush Sucks as President, Commander-In-Chief

Buck Banks

Duh: This just in from the Bleeding Obvious File — George W. Buch is the Worst President Ever, as confirmed by Zogby International’s analysis of its own poll results. This is mildly significant because John Zogby, president of ZI, is, well, kind of a Republican, but even he can’t ignore the numbers.

Even those who identify themselves as Born Again or Evangelical Christians, a group once viewed as ardent Bush supporters, have a negative view of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War.

A December Zogby International telephone poll showed Bush’s national job approval rating sank to 30 percent, falling again from the 31 percent approval rating he dropped to in early June. The survey of 982 likely voters nationwide was conducted Dec. 5-8, 2006, and carries a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points. Americans’ satisfaction with Bush’s job performance has continued to fall from the 61 percent he enjoyed in April 2003, shortly after the start of the war in Iraq, our polling shows. Zogby International has been tracking questions from Bush’s job performance rating to how American’s view Bush’s handling of the Iraq war since the war began in 2003.

Bush’s performance on the Iraq War shows similar low levels of satisfaction — a majority of American’s polled in December (74 percent) give Bush negative marks — the greatest level of dissatisfaction our polling has found since we began tracking Bush’s performance on the war in 2003. Overall, the majority (54 percent) say Bush has performed poorly on the war and 20 percent say he has had fair performance — only 19 percent grade his performance as good and 5 percent as excellent.

Even those who identify themselves as Born Again or Evangelical Christians, a group once viewed as ardent Bush supporters, have a negative view of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War — 46 percent say he has handled the war poorly while 17 percent give him only a fair grade. The same poll also shows only one in three (34 percent) Americans say the war in Iraq has been worth the loss of American lives — among the lowest percentage recorded in a long series of Zogby polls on the question. In November 2003, 44 percent of Americans polled said the war in Iraq was worth the loss of American lives.

After Botched Execution, Saddam Becomes a Sunni Martyr

Jon Ponder
Bush’s incompetence has turned Saddam Hussein into the last thing we wanted him to be: a martyr for Iraq’s Sunni minority.

What has Pres. Bush accomplished in Iraq? Until last week he had one notch on his holster: The capture and trial of Saddam Hussein. Now, in the wake of the former dictator’s botched execution, even the capture of Saddam has turned into a fiasco.

After grainy cell-phone video of the dictator’s final moments was released, the world sees his death as a lynching by the Shia-controlled Iraqi government — and it has turned Saddam into the last thing we wanted him to be: a martyr for Iraq’s Sunni minority.

Saddam’s martyrdom will undoubtedly grow over the next weeks and months now that a new video showing the condition of the dicator’s corpse immediately after his death has been released:

The 27-second video was posted on an Iraqi news Web site that is known to support Saddam’s outlawed Baath Party.

“A new film of the late immortal martyr, President Saddam Hussein,” the web site said in a headline over a link to the video.

The footage is gruesome:

The second clandestine video from Saddam Hussein’s execution appeared on the Internet Tuesday, showing the deposed Iraqi leader’s corpse, with a gaping neck wound, after his hanging.

The video appeared to have been taken with a camera phone, like the graphic video of the hanging which showed guards taunting Saddam in the final moments of his life.

The footage pans up the shrouded body of the former leader from the feet. It apparently was taken shortly after Saddam was executed and placed on a gurney. He was hanged shortly before dawn on Dec. 30.

As the panning shot reaches the head region, the white shroud is pulled back and reveals Saddam’s head and neck.

His head is unnaturally twisted at a 90 degree angle to his right. It shows a gaping bloody wound, circular in shape, about an inch below his jaw line on the left side of his neck. His left cheek is marked with red blotches, and there is blood on the shroud where it covered his head.

In the era of George Bush, we ask a lot of what-ifs: What if he’d inspired courage among Americans after 9/11 instead of fear. What if he’d sent the military into New Orleans in the first hours after Katrina. What if he’d kept us out of the Iraq quagmire instead of creating it.

Now we have another one: What if Saddam Hussein had been sent to the Hague for his war crimes trial, as other brutal dictators have been. Or, at the very least, what if Saddam had been executed in private, under tightly controlled circumstances — you know, the way we kill criminals in the United States.

How Bad is This?

Trish

Way bad.

The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.

The Mess in the Middle East: Iraq Insurgent, Iran Emergent, and Two Civil Wars Temporarily On Hold

Buck Banks

Muddled East: Given the limited and slanted reporting on the Middle East we get from in the MSM, and our Western lack of understanding of the political forces at work, not to mention our ignorance of the cultural and religious currents driving events in the region, it’s no wonder we don’t understand what’s happening there. A cogent, clear and unflinching assessment of the situation and its position in global politics is provided by a column in the latest edition of Challenge magazine.

Challenge is a bi-monthly leftist magazine written by Arabs and Israelis and published in Tel Aviv. It looks at the Israeli-Palestinian situation and attempts to contextualize it within the region and globally. It’s a good read:

From Challenge # 101, January – February 2007

Two Civil Wars with Brakes On

By Roni Ben Efrat

THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN conflict was once the mother of all problems in the Middle East. Today it is one among many. For this demotion we may largely thank US President George W. Bush and his war in Iraq. Apart from splitting that unhappy country into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish sectors, Bush’s war has changed the geopolitics of the region. The Iraq of Saddam Hussein used to be the area’s major power, but today it is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. Saddam was a secular dictator who represented Arab nationalism; Ahmadinejad represents Shiite fundamentalism — and his country, of course, isn’t Arab.

In Bush’s new Middle East, then, two axes have emerged. There is the American axis, which includes Fouad Siniora in Lebanon and Abu Mazen in Palestine, along with older members: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Over against them, in the Iranian axis, stand Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria. Does the Iranian axis aim to become America’s global opponent, like the Soviet Union in the Cold War? No. Apart from the central role of Islamic law in Iran, this axis presents no counter-agenda, political, social or ideological. Iran and its allies would prefer to have American and European recognition, but they aren’t willing to change their spots: they aren’t willing, that is, to become American lackeys, eradicating their own identities. They are encouraged in this self-assertion by the weakening of the US as a global power, thanks again to its entanglement in Iraq.

If we want a good example of lackeyism, we may look to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In a recent cabinet meeting, he justified his rejection of Syrian peace overtures, saying that a positive response was forbidden at a time when President Bush, “the most important strategic ally of Israel, opposes any negotiations with Syria.”

The two axes confront each other at three flashpoints: (1) Iran, which opposes the world on the nuclear issue while backing Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Shiites of Iraq.(2) Israel/Palestine, which includes not just the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but now also that between Fatah and Hamas.(3) Lebanon, where the opponents of Syria’s interfering hand are at odds with those who eat from it, namely Hezbollah.
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Dem Leaders to Bush: Escalation of Troops in Iraq Won’t Work

Jon Ponder

Here’s an excerpt from a letter sent to Pres. Bush today by the Democratic leaders of the Congress:

We believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror.

Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.

In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq:

“I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It’s easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future. ”

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.

Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper into Iraq. We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success.

We appreciate you taking these views into consideration.

Sincerely,

Harry Reid, Majority Leader

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker

Biden: Bush Knows Iraq Is Lost, ‘Surge’ Goal Is to Delay Collapse Until ’08

Jon Ponder
Nothing can stop Bush’s war escalation except public outrage at the obscenity of a president sending troops to die for no other purposes than to burnish his epitaph.

Operation Save My Legacy: As we have been saying in these pages (here and here, for starters), the “surge” President Bush will announce next week has nothing to do with “winning” in Iraq and everything to do with tamping down the violence sufficiently so that Bush and Rove can create a false reality of “victory” before they leave office. Ever the coward, Bush plans to hand off the inevitable U.S. retreat from Iraq, and the bloodbath that will ensue, to the next president.

While this president’s objectives are nakedly obvious from where I sit, 3,000 miles from Capitol Hill, Beltway media and political insiders have been playing dumb about Bush’s audacious double-down in American blood and treasure. That is, until today, when Sen. Joe Biden spoke up:

[Biden]said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will “be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof,” in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

“I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost,” Biden said. “They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy — literally, not figuratively

Biden’s senatorial hemming and hawing is maddening — he has reached a “tentative conclusion” that the Bushies know they have screwed up the war? “Tentative” conclusions can be withdrawn later. Sounds like wiggle room to me.

Even the Republican were occasionally criticial of Bush’s war when they held power. They never took action, of course — and the question now is, what will Joe Biden and the Democrats do to force the president to end the worst military operation in American history, if not in the history of the world.

The answer is, probably not much — not unless the American middle class finally becomes as outraged as they should be that the same president who started this war for no reason other than aristocratic whim is now planning to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more American troops for no other purpose than to burnish his epitaph.

We Brought Democracy to Iraq, But Apparently Not Freedom of the Press

Buck Banks

Senseless censorship: In the wake of Saddam Hussein’s execution, the Western media have been collectively wringing their hands over how to handle coverage of the ex-tyrant and U.S. political toy’s execution, funeral and burial. “Do broadcast the grainy cell phone video of Hussein’s last living moments?” “Do we show his dead body?” “Do we cover the sparsely attended funeral?”

But the execs at privately owned TV station al-Charkiya in Baghdad don’t have to worry about such questions because the Iraqi puppet government shut them down for inciting sectarian violence by broadcasting scenes of Hussein’s funeral:

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the closure of the Baghdad studios of privately owned satellite TV al-Charkiya, which was accused of “inciting sectarian violence” for showing footage of Iraqis mourning the death of former president Saddam Hussein.

The announcement of his execution and the broadcast of footage of his hanging produced sharply different reactions in the Iraqi media. Some, particularly state-owned publications, celebrated the death of the “tyrant”, while others lamented his death.

“We are very concerned by the attitude of the Nuri al-Maliki government which is imposing more and more restrictions on the press,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “The authorities should show more restraint so that pluralism of news and information remains a reality in Iraq.”

The interior ministry decided on 1st January 2007 to shut down the offices of the al-Charkiya, in the capital’s Yarmuq neighbourhood for “incitement to sectarian violence” and “to hatred”. The same day the channel had showed film of several demonstrations opposed to the execution of Saddam Hussein, in Bagdad, Tikrit (province in which the president was born) and in the Jordanian capital, Amman, where his daughter, Raghad Hussein, lives. Elsewhere, presenters on public al-Iraqiya condemned “Iraqi and Arab TV channels showing sympathy for the tyrant Saddam Hussein”. Al-Charkiya is still broadcasting from its studios in Dubai and Amman.

The Iraqi authorities already ordered the closure, on 5 November 2006, of TV stations al-Zaura and Salah-Eddin for showing footage of demonstrators brandishing pictures of the former president and protesting at his death sentence. Both stations were accused of inciting sectarian violence and have still not been allowed to resume broadcasting.

Seems you can impose democracy on a reluctant Muslim populace, but you can’t teach them a thing about freedom.

Olbermann: Bush’s Escalation in Iraq Will Needlessly Sacrifice American Troops

Jon Ponder

NBC’s Pentagon reporter confirmed that the president’s new strategy, called “surge and accelerate,” entails sending additional troops to Iraq for “political purposes.”

Last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” Keith Olbermann reported that Pres. Bush will announce next week that he is sending 20,000 additional troops to Iraq. According to NBC and the BBC, the president will try to sell the escalation as a “sacrifice” by the American people in order to achieve stability in the Middle East.

The real reason for the escalation, of course, is to try to create sufficient stability in the region so that Bush can declare “victory” in Iraq before he leaves office.

In an editorial later in the show, Olbermann expressed outrage at the president’s intent to require the sacrifice of additional American troops in order to salvage what is left of his own legacy:

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