Tag: Iraq

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman had an Iraq epiphany after reading a blog by former Air Force intelligence officer John Robb, who is now a security and anti-terror consultant. “The problem,” Robb wrote at Global Guerillas, “has become bigger than our will to fix it.”

Bookman says that, in fact, was always the case.

The truth is, the gap between the problem and our will to fix it has existed from the moment this invasion was conceived. It was the fundamental flaw in the Bush policy, the single thing that doomed it to failure.

If we were going to invade and occupy Iraq, we should have done so with hundreds of thousands of troops, after months of intensive planning. We should have committed ourselves to spending as much money as it took, as much time as it took, as many lives as it took to ensure Iraq’s security.

But that level of national will did not exist, and the Bush administration knew it. Even in the wake of Sept. 11, they knew that the American people would never buy an optional war that large and expensive. They also knew that without a draft, they lacked the manpower that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki and others told them they needed.

Yet they wanted this war so badly — they yearned in their bones to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein and establish American military power in the heart of the Middle East — that they went ahead and did it anyway.

Since the American people wouldn’t buy a big war, we got sold a tidy war, a war in which “mission accomplished” could be declared quickly and Iraq could fund its own reconstruction. It was a fake war, an illusion of war, a war deceptively downsized to fit political will and not reality.

No wise leader does that. No wise leader commits his nation to a war he suspects it is not prepared to win, and we will pay a heavy price for that miscalculation.

Bookman predicts we will be in Iraq for years, defending our military outposts while the rest of the country grinds into increasingly violent decline. It’s not a very optimistic picture but is there anyone who thinks it’s not a possibility?

Bad moon rising: Three months before Marines in Haditha allegedly murdered two dozen Iraqi civilians, Tom Lasseter, longtime Baghdad correspondent for Knight Ridder, filed a report that noted concerns that the marines there might “crack under the pressure.”

Here is Lasseter’s Aug. 28, 2005, story, as it appeared then. According to Editor & Publisher, Lasseter recently won an Overseas Press Club award for his reporting from Iraq.

HIT, Iraq — The inability of U.S. forces to hold ground in Anbar province in western Iraq, and the cat and mouse chase that ensues, has put the Marines and soldiers there under intense physical and psychological pressure.

The sun raises temperatures to 115 degrees most days, insurgents stage ambushes daily then melt into the civilian population and American troops in Anbar find themselves in a house of mirrors in which they don’t speak the language and can’t tell friend from foe.

Most Marines and soldiers in Anbar live behind massive concrete barriers, bales of concertina wire and perimeters guarded by sniper towers and tanks.

‘There’s killing bad guys and there’s murdering civilians. Let’s do the first and not the second. Murderers we’re not, OK?’
— Maj. Nicholas Visconti

Despite their overwhelming military might, they must watch every alleyway for snipers and each patch of road for mines or bombs, which can send balls of flame through their vehicles. That happened earlier this month south of Haditha, when an explosion killed 14 Marines in an amphibious assault vehicle.

Officers worry about the enemy while trying to make sure their men don’t crack under the pressure.

“I tell the guys not to lose their humanity over here, because it’s easy to do,” said Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio. “I tell them not to turn into Col. Kurtz.”

Haunty was referring to a character in Joseph Conrad’s novella, “Heart of Darkness.” It became the basis for the Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now,” in which Kurtz has a mental breakdown and murders suspected Vietnamese double agents.

Asked for an example of the kind of pressure that could cause Marines to crack, Haunty talked about the results of a car bomb: “I’ve picked up pieces of a friend, a Marine. I don’t ever want to see that s— again.”

[…]

Another cover-up too: The BBC has video evidence that U.S. forces may have deliberately killed 11 innocent Iraqi civilians, including five children and four women, on March 15, 2006:

According to the Americans, the building collapsed under heavy fire killing four people – a suspect, two women and a child.

But a report filed by Iraqi police accused US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building.

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

News of this latest incident follows revelations that U.S. forces went on a rampage in Haditha, killing members of a family in their home and pulling young men out of a taxis and shooting them in cold blood.

[Editor’s Note: I did not know about the post that follows by Jon Editor in Chief when I wrote this. I think we’re all waking up this morning and coming to the same conclusions.]

Things are going to hell in a handbasket in Iraq.

More than 4,000 Iraqis — many of them civilians — have been killed in war-related violence this year, including at least 936 in May alone, according to an Associated Press count. That makes May the second deadliest month for Iraqis over the past year…

The figures show that civilians, not Iraqi security forces, are increasingly the casualties of violence. Eighty-two percent of the war-related Iraqi deaths recorded in May were civilians, compared with 61 percent in May 2005, when 746 Iraqis were killed.

Before we go blaming the victim, we should know suicide bombings are down.

During May 2005, about 36 suicide bombings killed at least 331 Iraqis and wounded 962.

This May, by contrast, 11 suicide attacks killed at least 98 Iraqis and wounded 283 — about one-third of the casualties of 12 months earlier.

Meanwhile, amid reports of the Marine massacre at Haditha, Pres. Butthead sounds the same wooden note he always does. And it means no more now than when he said it after Abu Ghraib or the investigation of his staff because someone exposed a CIA agent.

“If in fact laws were broken, there will be punishment.”

Whatever. I can guess the rest. “It’s just an aberration, this is not how Americans are, if we say we didn’t do it then it didn’t happen.” When does this nightmare end?

Rightwing Bush-worhipping media types like Laura Ingraham have scolded us for focusing on the negatives about the war in Iraq and not concentrating on the good things being accomplished there.

After an insurgent attack killed two members of a CBS crew and wounded a reporter last week, one blogger wrote: “It’s hard to cover the good news when you’re dead.” I think this was the perfect take on the Republicans talking point about the president’s domestic spying program, “What good are civil liberties if you’re dead.” (Which itself is an Orwellian twisting of Patrick Henry’s quote during the Revolutionary War, “Give me liberty or give me death.”)

The war in Iraq has become what I, for one, feared it would. We have opened a Pandora’s box in the Middle East and unleashed a pandemic of nasties that will plague us for decades to come. Just one example: Our presence there is spawning new young terrorists by the minute.

No more coddling the rightwing. They have fucked up the world big time, as Dear Leader’s puppetmaster might say. And it is getting worse by the hour:

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Whoa. I just watched the Flash short, “NotYourSoldier” produced by The Ruckus Society. You need to stop what you’re doing and watch it too. Then email it to all your friends, especially those of enlistment age. This thing kicks Bush ass and makes a case that will not be denied. Check it out!

You tax dollars at work:

The religious militia are cruising Baghdad and assassinating gays on the spot — you won’t see this on the MSM in this country. Didn’t the Pentagon say that the violence is under control, or are homos an exception?

Balking at peace talks: What if Bushco were secretly preparing the next Big Thing in Iraq? You remember the first Big Thing — Weapons of Mass Destruction — and how well that turned out. Took about two years for that one to be replaced by the next Big Thing — Insurgents Are Terrorists. Well, it looks like the next Big Thing is going to be We Can’t Leave Iraq Until We’ve Ended Sectarian Violence Or We’ve Trained the Iraqi Army To Quash It.

That seems to be one conclusion that can be drawn from an Inter Press News Service report that came out on May 5, citing a London-based Arab newspaper that said secret peace talks between the U.S. and Iraqi insurgents ended in late April when the U.S. representative, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, failed to respond to a peace proposal from the insurgents.

According to IPS, “Asharq Al Awsat” newspaper, reported that “resistance organisations” had just broken off the secret talks:

The Arab-language newspaper reported that the leader of a Sunni insurgent group had revealed in an interview that representatives of more than 10 prominent Iraqi insurgent organisations had met with Khalilzad seven times starting on Jan. 16.

‘The formation of the government based on a sectarian formula will lead to the partition of Iraq and weakening it.’

However, the insurgent leader said that the United States had never responded to a memorandum of understanding presented to Khalilzad around March 1, despite a promise to do so before the formation of a new government. He said the insurgents had decided to end the talks and had delivered a memo to the U.S. Embassy on April 29 informing the United States of the decision.

IPS noted that the story was picked up by the Associated Press, datelined Dubai, but has escaped the notice of major international news media. “Asharq Al Awsat” quoted an anonymous source regarding the meetings and their purpose:

“We took part in a series of meetings with the US ambassador, beginning on 16 January first in Amman and later in Baghdad, outside the Green Zone. In total, seven meetings were held, three before a week of enforced calm [cease fire] on 6 February and four afterwards.”

The source admitted that the meetings were held through an intermediary “an Iraqi leader who we trust and who has good relations with the US administration.”

The insurgents’ goal in participating in the talks was to reach an understanding before the new government was installed. Their proposal sought to ensure that U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq and the country remained united, without foreign countries — or the puppet Iraqi government — dictating its affairs.

That Khalilzad would meet seven times with insurgent representatives, and inside the Green Zone and in the presence, allegedly, of the assistant to Army Commander Gen. George Casey, surely would have demonstrated to the insurgents that the U.S. was negotiating in good faith. But it wasn’t, according to the source quoted by the Arab paper:

“However, we have yet to receive an answer. We were very surprised by the new Iraqi government, which was based on sectarian considerations. The U.S. side was expected to reply to our memorandum prior to the formation of the new Iraqi government and reach an agreement with us. This is why we decided to suspend the talks and we informed the Americans of this in a memorandum on Sunday[April 28].”

“Our agreement with the U.S. ambassador was conditioned on the non-participation of any other individuals or political group. We wanted the talks to be held between us and the U.S. ambassador directly.”

The source cautioned that, “The formation of the government based on a sectarian formula will lead to the partition of Iraq and weakening it. We do not recognize this government and will not deal with it.” He also revealed that efforts were under way to unite the Iraqi resistance and create a council and unified leadership.

And there, folks, you have the birth of the next Big Thing. The insurgents were ready to deal, and all they asked was to deal directly with the U.S. and for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But once they’d tipped their hand and Bushco found what it would take to end the insurgency (and the ongoing occupation of Iraq by the United States, which is the point of the whole exercise), the deal was off. The new puppets were installed in a way that guarantees sectarian sniping and violence, and ensures that the insurgents will continue to insurge.

Thus, the U.S. has no choice but to stay in Iraq to build up the Iraqi army to quell the insurgency, which is being fed by sectarian violence, and enforce cohesion where, according to the Sunni insurgent, we could have peace and stability — if only we’d leave. But the pull out of U.S. troops from Iraq is one Big Thing we are not likely to see anytime soon.