IRAQ OUT OF CONTROL
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IRAQ OUT OF CONTROL
| Tue, 09-14-2004 - 12:33pm |
The mission in Iraq is far, far from accomplished. A surge in deadly violence this weekend brought the bloodiest day in Iraq in recent months; suicide bombings, mortar fire and fierce battles between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi security forces, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15899-2004Sep12.html including a firefight between an Iraqi crowd and a U.S. helicopter crew, killed dozens, leaving even more injured. Attacks against U.S. forces now average 87 per day, the worst monthly average, reports Newsweek, "since Bush's flight-suited visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003." Casualty figures keep escalating: the U.S. death toll passed 1,000 last week and over 7,000 have been wounded. Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted this weekend, "We did miscalculate the difficulty" of winning the peace in Iraq.
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/lookup.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480
As a sidebar, if US forces do go into Falujah and other Iraqi cities to quell the insurgency, most likely this will take place in December or thereabouts, assuming Bush wins the election. Which for the past 4 to 6 months American servicemen and women who have been killed in Iraq have given their lives for the reelection of George Bush.

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Gee, I thought this was an election not a revolution. If you think an election is overthrowing the government, then you missed civics class. Sad, really sad.
~Kierkegaard >>
Great response!
I agree with you about N. Korea, but I'm not so sure about Iran - of course, I mean if this administration is re-elected.
C
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.
"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.
The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. Such estimates can be requested by the White House or Congress, but this one was initiated by the intelligence council under George J. Tenet, who stepped down as director of central intelligence on July 9, the government officials said.
As described by the officials, the pessimistic tone of the new estimate stands in contrast to recent statements by Bush administration officials, including comments on Wednesday by Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, who asserted that progress was being made.
"You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can't be done," Mr. McClellan said at a news briefing. "And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future."
President Bush, who was briefed on the new intelligence estimate, has not significantly changed the tenor of his public remarks on the war's course over the summer, consistently emphasizing progress while acknowledging the difficulties.
Mr. Bush's opponent, Senator John Kerry , criticized the administration's optimistic public position on Iraq on Wednesday and questioned whether it would be possible to hold elections there in January.
"I think it is very difficult to see today how you're going to distribute ballots in places like Falluja, and Ramadi and Najaf and other parts of the country, without having established the security,'' Mr. Kerry said in a call call to Don Imus, the radio talk show host. "I know that the people who are supposed to run that election believe that they need a longer period of time and greater security before they can even begin to do it, and they just can't do it at this point in time. So I'm not sure the president is being honest with the American people about that situation either at this point.''
The situation in Iraq prompted harsh comments from Republicans and Democrats at a hearing into the shift of spending from reconstruction to security. Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called it "exasperating for anybody to look at this from any vantage point," and Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said of the overall lack of spending: "It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous."
A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on any new intelligence estimate.
All the officials who described the assessment said they had read the document or had been briefed on its findings. The officials included both critics and supporters of the administration's policies in Iraq. But they insisted they not be identified by name, agency or branch of government because the document remained highly classified.
The new estimate revisits issues raised by the intelligence council in less formal assessments in January 2003, the officials said. Those documents remain classified, but one of them warned that the building of democracy in Iraq would be a long, difficult and turbulent prospect that could include internal conflict, a government official said.
The new estimate by the National Intelligence Council was approved at a meeting in July by Mr. McLaughlin and the heads of the other intelligence agencies, the officials said.
Its pessimistic conclusions were reached even before the recent worsening of the security situation in Iraq, which has included a sharp increase in attacks on American troops and in deaths of Iraqi civilians as well as resistance fighters. Like the new National Intelligence Estimate, the assessments completed in January 2003 were prepared by the National Intelligence Council, which is led by Robert Hutchings and reports to the director of central intelligence. The council is charged with reflecting the consensus of the intelligence agencies. The January 2003 assessments were not formal National Intelligence Estimates, however, which means they were probably not formally approved by the intelligence chiefs.
The new estimate is the first on Iraq since the one completed in October 2002 on Iraq's illicit weapons program. A review by the Senate Intelligence Committee that was completed in July has found that document to have been deeply flawed.
The criticism over the document has left the C.I.A. and other agencies wary of being wrong again in judgments about Iraq.
Declassified versions of the October 2002 document included dissents from some intelligence agencies on some crucial questions, including the issue of whether Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. The government officials who described the new estimate on the prospects for Iraq would not say if it had included significant dissents.
On Wednesday night, Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council, confirmed the existence of the intelligence estimate, but he declined to discuss its contents in detail because they were classified. But he said the document "makes clear why it is so important to stand with the Iraqi people as they face these challenges.''
Mr. McCormack said that in describing "different possible scenarios for Iraq's political and economic future over the course of 18 months,'' the document had made clear that "Iraq's future will be determined by a number of different factors, include the nation's economic progress, the effectiveness of Iraq's political structure, and security and stability.''
He added: "In the past, including before the war to liberate Iraq, there were many different scenarios that were possible, including the outbreak of civil war. It hasn't happened. The Iraqi people continue to defy the predictions of pundits and others.''
Separate from the new estimate, Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued other warnings on Wednesday about the American campaign in Iraq, saying the administration's request to divert more than $3 billion to security from the $18.4 billion aid package of last November was a sign of trouble.
"Although we recognize these funds must not be spent unwisely," the committee chairman, Mr. Lugar said, "the slow pace of reconstruction spending means that we are failing to fully take advantage of one of our most potent tools to influence the direction of Iraq."
Less than $1 billion has been spent so far.
The committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, one of the harshest critics of the Iraq policies, was far more outspoken. "The president has frequently described Iraq as, quote, 'the central front of the war on terror,' " Mr. Biden went on. "Well by that definition, success in Iraq is a key standard by which to measure the war on terror. And by that measure, I think the war on terror is in trouble."
http://nytimes.com/2004/09/16/politics/16intel.html?hp
EXCELLENT post!
Very well thought out and very well said.
Patriotism means to stand by the Country. It does not mean to stand by the President. -- Theodore Roosevelt.
They've got to be kidding, this is the largest amount of gas to come out of rightwing lala land so far. Do they have ANY idea of what is going on over there and how many people have been killed since we invaded? Do they think they can wish it away by claiming it's not happening?
"I think it is very difficult to see today how you're going to distribute ballots in places like Falluja, and Ramadi and Najaf and other parts of the country, without having established the security,'' Mr. Kerry said in a call call to Don Imus, the radio talk show host. "I know that the people who are supposed to run that election believe that they need a longer period of time and greater security before they can even begin to do it, and they just can't do it at this point in time. So I'm not sure the president is being honest with the American people about that situation either at this point.''
There hasn't been a census in the country in years, they have no idea how many people live there, much less how they're going to vote.
And what if the Shiites, 65% of the population, vote for a theocracy?
He added: "In the past, including before the war to liberate Iraq, there were many different scenarios that were possible, including the outbreak of civil war. It hasn't happened. The Iraqi people continue to defy the predictions of pundits and others.''
The only reason it hasn't happened is because they are too busy fighting us. The country is going to fracture into 3 parts. Since there are no clean lines of demarcation it could be the India/Pakistan partition all over again, with the millions that were killed during that. Once the country fractures the south will come under the domination of Iran.
The right wing will blame it all on Clinton and the press.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
Whatever happened to accepting responsibility for your own mistakes? Kerry is right about this administration's inability to accept responsibility for its own mistakes and they have made so many.
C
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/16/iraq.main/index.html
C
UNITED NATIONS, New York (AP) -- The U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq without the approval of the U.N. Security Council was "illegal," Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the BBC on Wednesday.
"I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time -- without U.N. approval and much broader support from the international community," he said in an interview with the BBC World Service.
The U.N. Charter allows nations to take military action with Security Council approval as an explicit enforcement action, such as during the Korean War and the 1991 Gulf War.
But in 2003, in the build-up to the Iraq war, the United States dropped an attempt to get a Security Council resolution approving the invasion when it became apparent it would not pass.
At the time, Annan had underlined the lack of legitimacy for a war without U.N. approval, saying: "If the United States and others were to go outside the Security Council and take unilateral action they would not be in conformity with the Charter."
On Wednesday, after being asked three times whether the lack of council approval for the war meant it was illegal, he said: "From our point of view and the U.N. Charter point of view it was illegal."
He also said that the wave of violence engulfing Iraq puts in doubt the national elections scheduled for January.
There could not be "credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now," he told the BBC.
On Tuesday, Annan's top envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, said the security situation will be the overriding factor in determining how many U.N. international staffers can return to Iraq. There is now a ceiling of 35 U.N. staff in the country.
Qazi spoke Tuesday at a Security Council meeting called to discuss Annan's latest report on Iraq, which warned that violence could make it more difficult to create the conditions for successful elections. Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has said he is determined to hold the election by Jan. 31.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, all but ruled out any delay beyond the January 31 deadline for elections in Iraq's interim constitution.
"Let there be no doubt: we are committed to this timetable," he told council members Tuesday.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/16/iraq.annan.ap/index.html
I was so angry about that and could not fail to make the muslim connection in my mind (at the expense of the very complicated and unique political one). This administration has often made statements about getting rid of governments that support terrorism (and let's be frank....they meant mostly muslim terrorism). Iraq was obviously an experiment into pre-emptive regime change. After the School disaster I emotionally thought "YEAH! let's get rid of all these muslim fundamentalists!" Bush is right....let's have a huge world war and overthrow ALL of these governments! This is too simplistic however becuase other than the muslim connection, many of these conflicts are totally unrelated (though the tactics are undeniably the same). I'm not sure how one can stop terrorism until all of these differing issues are also resolved in some way.
This is where the Bush plan (or more fairly, my speculated theory of the plan) took shape in my mind. I thought "Why Iraq first?" being the secular country that it was, and the fact that a lot of Saddam's brutality can be attributed to attempting to keep a lid on the very real possibility of muslim fundamentalism taking hold/power in that country (something the Bush administration failed to take into account). Also, Iraq didn't make sense to me becuase when you look at the Middle East, Iraq did not have as stong a connection to Al Quaida and muslim fundamentalists than other countries in the area. If WW3 was indeed the plan, Bush could not have very well come out and said so (though I think many who did not support the war suspected was the real reason) hence the bogus attempts to tie Iraq in with 9/11. At least he successfully sold a majority of the American people on this weak connection.
Iraq, if you are to make the assumption that Bush fully intended to broaden the war to the entire Middle East (and he oviously thought it would be a cake walk) does make a lot of sense after all. Unfortunately we get back to the same argument that Bush supporters vehemently deny. It WAS totally about the oil. Perhaps they did intend to move onto Iran and Saudi Arabia but did not want to be caught high and dry with no oil to drive the US economy. If Iraq turned out to be the cakewalk the administration imagined (but many others did not) then they would have a number of advantages in the next world war:
1. With Saddam in power, he would denfinately sided against the US in any conflict in that region so they had to get him out of there
2. Along with the oil, a base of operations in the middle east
3. A handpicked government friendly to the US
4. The ability to tell other Middle East nations that they have to rely on for oil, to take a hike.
Think about it. The potential for all that oil (the Bush family and cronies being heavily connected with the oil industry)....and the ability to overthrow all muslim theocracies to boot (which should appeal to Bush's fundamentalist Christian outlook).
Obviously, things aren't going according to what I am theorizing to be their plan and the sad part is that Iran is becomming a REAL threat (and the situation in Iraq is serving to embolden them) and it may be necessary to go to war with them regardless of the stability of the Iraq situation or the readiness of the American troops already stretched thin by their continued presence in Iraq.
Am I totally out to lunch with this theory?
Edited 9/16/2004 4:29 pm ET ET by suemox
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