Summary here and here.

Creeping catalysis: The hideous offspring of Tinkerbell and Humpty-Dumpty.

One veteran military expert on Iraq, retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, said Bush’s new policy is a “war against all” in Iraq and called it “a blunder of Hitlerian proportions”.

[snip]

Macgregor is no stranger to military planning in Iraq. He led combat troops in destroying a brigade of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard troops in the most significant tank battle of Desert Storm in February 1991 and prepared a proposal for a limited-duration attack on Baghdad at the request of a personal representative of then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld in autumn 2001.

“It is ideology pushing violence to extremes,” Macgregor said of the latest turn in Bush’s Iraq policy. “They are trying to reverse the damage they have already done to themselves by having built up a Shi’ite state and army. But it is too late, and it is bound to be counterproductive.” Article

Teasing data from the hostilities outside of Najaf:

Many contradictions remained unexplained. A neighbor of the cult compound, Mohan Hameed, said the religious group began moving into the small farming area 5 miles north of Najaf 16 or 17 years ago. On Monday, the provincial governor had said that the group bought the farmland only several months ago.

McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent Qassim Zein entered the compound Tuesday afternoon, more than 24 hours after the battle had ended. It still had the look of a brutal killing ground.

“I have seen something I never imagined I would see in my life,” Zein said in a cell-phone call from the area.

Corpses lay everywhere, contorted in death, he reported. “I cannot count the bodies,” he said. The remains of three children and six women were among the uncollected dead, he added.

[snip]

Zein said a police official told him that a search of the compound uncovered $8 million to $10 million in American currency. U.S. Army officials took the money along with computers and documents, he told Zein. Article

Meet (kinda, sorta) the new chief spook in Iraq.

Given the desperate situation in Iraq, the CIA’s Baghdad station chief needs to be an exceptional manager who can marshal the agency’s forces and work closely with the U.S. armed forces. Unfortunately, several sources have informed me that the CIA has nominated a man who has been widely criticized within the agency and seen as a bad fit for the role. Furthermore, I’m told, the new station chief is closely associated with detainee abuses, especially those involving “extraordinary renditions”—the practice of covertly delivering terrorist suspects to foreign intelligence agencies to be interrogated.

[snip]

The appointment…has the support of top CIA officials, including the current head of the agency’s Near East Division…. But sources have told me 0he] has frequently been divisive and ineffective in previous positions.

One former official who knows [him] well described him as “a capable officer,” but, he said, “I heard he had been selected to go to Baghdad, and was shocked. He is a linear thinker, very cautious and uninspiring. His reputation and relationship with the military, especially the special-ops community, is very bad, based on substantive issues that arose during his time [in Afghanistan and Pakistan] post-9/11. He is the wrong guy to send, especially when General [David] Petraeus is headed out to take our final shot at turning Iraq around.”

Another former official called [him] a “smart guy” who had developed a good relationship with Afghan president Hamid Karzai, but described him as a terrible manager. “He’s the last guy you want running a tense place like the station in Baghdad, because he creates a lot of tension himself,” he said. Article

None — none — of these reports take into account the non-random factor of the out of control, delusional, power-mad, woebegone G. Walker administration and their propensity for bloodlust. (emphasis added)

The US must draw up plans to deal with an all-out Iraqi civil war that would kill hundreds of thousands, create millions of refugees, and could spill over into a regional catastrophe, disrupting oil supplies and setting up a direct confrontation between Washington and Iran.

This is the central recommendation of a study by the Brookings Institution here, based on the assumption that President Bush’s last-ditch troop increase fails to stabilise the country - but also on the reality that Washington cannot simply walk away from the growing disaster unleashed by the 2003 invasion.

[snip]

US troops, says the study, should withdraw from Iraqi cities. This was “the only rational course of action, horrific though it will be”, as America refocused its efforts from preventing civil war to containing its effects.

The unremittingly bleak document, drawing on the experience of civil wars in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Congo and Afghanistan, also offers a remarkably stark assessment of Iraq’s “spill-over” potential across the Persian Gulf region.

[snip]

…the Brookings report urges the creation of a regional group to help contain a civil war. That would see exactly the contacts with Iran and Syria that the Bush administration steadfastly refuses.… Article

More:

The Washington think-tank distils [sic] what it says are the lessons learned from other civil wars, laying out the case histories of Afghanistan, Congo, Lebanon, Somalia and Yugoslavia.

Kenneth Pollack, a former Clinton administration official and CIA analyst who co-authored the report with Daniel Byman, told the Financial Times they were looking for a “Goldilocks solution” - somewhere between “stay the course” and “getting all out”.

“It was arrogance in the face of history that led us to blithely assume we could invade without preparing for an occupation, and we would do well to show greater humility when assimilating its lessons about what we fear will be the next step in Iraq’s tragic history,” the report says.

Brookings identifies six patterns from other civil wars that are already manifesting themselves in Iraq: large refugee flows, the breeding ground of new terrorist groups, radicalisation of neighbouring populations, the spread of secessionism, regional economic losses, and intervention by neighbours. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey are said to be “scrambling to catch up” with rival Iran.

[snip]

Mr Pollack, who previously was an outspoken proponent of the invasion, says the lessons of past full-blown civil wars reveal nearly all efforts by states to minimise or contain spillover have failed. Article

The full report (.pdf file) is here.

Shorter version: Thanks. Now piss off.

Millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing violence and sectarian cleansing after the U.S.-led invasion four years ago are finding it nearly impossible to get safe harbor in America, including those who risked their lives helping President George W. Bush’s war effort.

The new Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress has begun pressuring the Republican Bush administration to open the door to them, especially the Iraqi translators and others who face gang-style execution at home for working with American combat troops.

[snip]

About 3.7 million of Iraq’s 24 million people have either fled the country for Syria, Jordan and other nations or left their homes for safer havens within Iraq, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Around 50,000 Iraqis flee their homes every month.

“This is the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world,” Refugees International President Kenneth Bacon told the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 16.

In 2006, the United States accepted 202 Iraqis out of its 70,000 refugee slots worldwide. In contrast, Australia said it granted about 2,000 such visas to Iraqis last year.

[snip]

Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch, said Iraqis working for American forces go through extensive security checks before being hired: “If you were a smart terrorist, you could find easier ways to get to the United States.”

Frelick said two factors contributed to the Bush administration’s near moratorium on accepting Iraqi refugees.

Bureaucrats, Frelick said, don’t want to take chances on Iraqis. “It generally is easier to say no than to say yes.”

Politics also plays a role, he said.

“The very people the U.S. is relying on for the enterprise of building a stable democracy in Iraq are the very people who are fleeing the country. To admit those people are fleeing would be to recognize the enterprise is not succeeding,” Frelick said. Article

Taking note of the bill mentioned within here but, realistically, don’t expect it to go anywhere.

Four years ago, Bush told us that we were going to Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people from the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. And now the “insurgents” are fighting to liberate the Iraqi people from the repressive regime of George W. Bush.

We’ve done enough damage. Rebuilding is not on the table. The American people want us out of Iraq. The Iraqi people want us out of Iraq. The Iraqi government wants us out of Iraq. And we have no legitimate reason to stay.

Furthermore, we can leave Iraq without leaving a hopeless mess behind, if only we can do it right, and that means diplomacy.

To that end, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) seems to have the solution, in the form of H.R. 508, which will “require United States military disengagement from Iraq, [and] provide United States assistance for reconstruction and reconciliation in Iraq.”

This bill would bring our troops home from Iraq within a six-month timeframe. During that timeframe, the bill would accelerate the training of a permanent Iraqi security force.

It would rescind the Congressional authorization for the war in Iraq.

Upon request from the Iraqi government, the bill would authorize US support for an international stabilization force. Surely an international force, perhaps under the auspices of the United Nations, would do a better job of stabilizing Iraq than we could. The UN has its problems, but they’re not the Bush White House.

Also worth mentioning, the bill would prohibit the construction of permanent US military bases in Iraq. This could be the greatest step of all in the “war on terror.” After all, it’s the presence of US military bases on Arab-Islamic land (not that they “hate our freedom”) that was the primary motivator of Osama bin Laden’s jihad against America.

And the bill would ensure that the US has no long-term control over Iraqi oil. Sorry, Halliburton. Sorry, Exxon. Sorry, Chevron. The free lunch is over. Under this plan, Iraq (and its oil) would once again belong to the Iraqis. Article

Oy.

Frantic attempts were made to call off American aircraft as they targeted a convoy of British tanks in Iraq, an inquest was told yesterday.

Smoke identifying the tanks as friendly forces was sent up and tank commanders radioed air controllers, but they were told that the aircraft were being flown by “rogue” pilots who could not be contacted. Instead, they swooped over the convoy once more, setting tanks on fire and killing Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, 25, from Windsor, Berkshire.

Corporal Ashley Bell told Lance Corporal Hull’s inquest, in Oxford, of his shock when the aircraft continued to bomb the tanks as they conducted a reconnaissance mission near Basra in southern Iraq, in March 2003. “We started to realise this was a friendly-on-friendly and I got on to the radio,” said Corporal Bell, a staff corporal at the time of the incident. “I asked for a ‘Stop stop stop, check fire’, at which everyone in our forces is supposed to stop firing.” But he said that he got no response and the aircraft attacked again.

[snip]

The inquest was told that up to 100 villagers, some waving white flags, were 100 metres away. It is thought that several were killed. Lance Corporal Steven Gerrard said he had “never heard anything like” the sound as the aircraft opened fire. Article

One word: Damning.

The Inspector General for the Defense Dept. is concerned that the U.S. military has failed to adequately equip soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially for nontraditional duties such as training Iraqi security forces and handling detainees, according to a summary of a new audit obtained by BusinessWeek.

[snip]

The Inspector General found that the Pentagon hasn’t been able to properly equip the soldiers it already has. Many have gone without enough guns, ammunition, and other necessary supplies to “effectively complete their missions” and have had to cancel or postpone some assignments while waiting for the proper gear, according to the report from auditors with the Defense Dept. Inspector General’s office. Soldiers have also found themselves short on body armor, armored vehicles, and communications equipment, among other things, auditors found.

“As a result, service members performed missions without the proper equipment, used informal procedures to obtain equipment and sustainment support, and canceled or postponed missions while waiting to receive equipment,” reads the executive summary dated Jan. 25. Service members often borrowed or traded with each other to get the needed supplies, according to the summary.

[snip]

In the summary of the Inspector General’s audit, the equipment shortages were attributed to basic management failures among military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Central Command lacked standard policies for requesting and tracking equipment requirements or for equipping units to perform nontraditional duties. Auditors surveyed 1,100 service members stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan from all four military branches, the National Guard, and Reserves. Article

With (literally) billions lost and unaccountable, how many other similar cases will never be uncovered staggers the imagination.

A former Defense Department contractor was sentenced on Monday to nine years in prison and ordered to forfeit $3.6 million for his role in a bribery and fraud scheme involving contracts to reconstruct Iraq, U.S. officials said.

U.S. Justice Department officials said Robert Stein, 52, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, also was sentenced to three years of probation after his release from prison.

[snip]

He admitted he conspired, along with others, including several U.S. Army officers, to rig bids to steer contracts to a certain contractor.

Stein admitted he and others received more than $1 million in cash, sports cars, a motorcycle, jewelry, computers and others items of value, and that they stole more than $2 million that had been designated for the reconstruction of Iraq. Article

Keeping up with the courts-martial:

The Marine Corps said Monday that it has ordered a probe into how a government report on the killings of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha was leaked to the news media.

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the top general at Camp Pendleton, ordered the investigation after several defense attorneys complained that sensitive information about their clients had been leaked, Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Gibson said. Article