Summary here and here.
Hearts and minds.
Tribal leaders in Salahiddeen Province have urged the government to replace the use of military force with diplomacy and dialogue.
[snip]
The meeting was attended by a U.S. embassy representative before whom the tribal chiefs put their demands.
But Stephen Butler told the gathering that there was little the U.S. could do to help due to the latest upsurge in violence across the country.
However, he said, the U.S. believed Iraqi tribes had a crucial role to play in reinstating law and order.
Many tribal leaders left the meeting disappointed as most of their demands were turned down.
They wanted the U.S. to transfer prisoners from the province to jails where their relatives could visit them easily. Article
Chaos abides.
Because of the numerous checkpoints and extremist groups lying in wait, Salim Sultan’s journey from his hometown Baquba to Baghdad takes him two days, involving the many detours.
The 60-kilometre trip used to take him an hour.
Many residents of Diyala province, which borders Baghdad to the city’s north, are in the same position, he says. Article
Calamitous candor:
“Basra is lost, they are in control now. It’s a full-scale riot and the Government are just trying to save face,” said Private Paul Barton.
The 27-year-old, who returned from his second tour of Iraq this week along with other members of 1st Battalion, the Staffordshire Regiment, insisted that he remains loyal to the Army despite such public dissent. He said he had already volunteered to go to Afghanistan later this year.
But, he said, he felt strongly that somebody had to speak out: “I want people to see it as it is; not the sugar-coated version.”
[snip]
Reacting to Pte Barton’s comments, many soldiers on websites appeared stunned but in agreement. One said: “When I arrived back last year, I was utterly depressed by what I had seen out there and the lack of any progress … any journo sticking a microphone in my grid would have been given enough soundbites to retire on. And I would probably be in the Tower of London.
[snip]
…He added: “We have overstayed our welcome now. We should speed up the withdrawal. It’s a lost battle. We should pull out and call it quits.” Article
An arabist interpretation:
In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Islamic Army spokesman Ibrahim Al-Shammari said that while at the beginning — at the onset of the US occupation — the Islamic Army maintained field coordination with Al-Qaeda, differences had grown to the point where it was impossible “to tolerate Al-Qaeda actions, which have been very damaging to the resistance”.
[snip]
“People and the resistance are finding themselves targets of the occupation and government forces on the one hand, and Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State in Iraq on the other,” an Iraqi journalist told Al-Ahram Weekly.
According to informed sources close to at least two resistance groups, the Iraqi resistance, though engaging Al-Qaeda when forced to, is still seeking to avoid an all-out confrontation, even if Al-Qaeda seeks it. Nonetheless, the situation seems to be escalating on a daily basis, with many Iraqi nationalist activists who support the resistance fearing that “occupation forces are benefiting the most from Al-Qaeda’s actions.” Article
So how’s that sovereignty going?
U.S. pressure on Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to speed up reconciliation among warring sects could backfire as Iraqi leaders don’t want to be seen as taking orders from an increasingly impatient Washington.
[snip]
“Americans need benchmarks because of their public opinion and Congress, but if you interfere too much and put too much pressure it could be counter-productive and create negative consequences,” Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker said.
“Iraq wants to have its sovereignty back and not see Washington telling them ‘do this and do that’. Maliki needs the support of Washington, but he can’t be seen in front of his people to be taking orders from the Americans so publicly.” Article
Petro-politics: Imposed deadlines from occupiers rankle, signing away an entire country’s main resource rumbles.
Discussions turned contentious among the more than 60 Iraqi oil officials reviewing Iraq’s draft hydrocarbons bill last week in the United Arab Emirates.
But the dispute highlighted the need for further negotiations on the proposed law that was stalled in talks for nearly eight months, then pushed through Iraq’s Cabinet without most key provisions.
Tariq Shafiq, one of three authors of the law, said he attended the Dubai summit ‘reluctantly,’ at the request of Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani.
‘I thought it would help,’ Shafiq said, hoping all Iraqi sides in the debate over its oil law would meet and iron out their differences. ‘Apparently it did not.’
Petroleum Intelligence Weekly reports talks in Dubai led to ‘heated exchanges.’
Instead, the voices of those who disagree with the law or, like Shafiq, oppose what it has become since the initial draft and how it was kept from the public, were not given part of the platform.
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Shahristani told reporters on the sidelines of the Dubai meeting that Parliament would take up the law this week — which didn’t happen — while Ashti Hawrami, the KRG’s oil minister, vowed Kurdish parliamentarians would veto it as written.
[snip]
Shafiq said ‘the majority of the oil technocrats are against’ the law as written. He said the eight months negotiators took after the drafters were finished was too long. And it was kept secret from the public and parliamentarians, which then added to the politicization.
‘The weak thing about their procedure is they never published the draft,’ Shafiq said. ‘They should have had teams to explain this to unions, to intellectuals, to nongovernmental organizations, to the parliamentarians, and then get the gist of their reactions before they start finalizing a draft.’
And then, with the Bush administration needing results, officials leaned on negotiators to pass something. Out came the framework. Khalilzad announced its passage, and the KRG sent out a news release.
‘That was a big mistake,’ Shafiq said. Article
Walking wounded: Shunned, big time.
[Maliki] failed in his efforts to meet with Saudi king Abdullah, who initially excused himself from such a meeting for reasons of protocol and because his schedule was full, but it wasn’t long before a Saudi diplomatic source told the German news agency that one reason for the refusal was “his unhelpful attitude toward certain groups in Iraq, and his favoritism toward other groups, along with his efforts to strengthen the role of Iran in Iraq.” Maliki had relied on the Americans to arrange the visit [to Riyadh] before going on to the Sultanat of Oman for a protocol visit described by observers as without political value, [adding] Maliki was anxious to visit Muskat, on the heels of a visit there by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
[In Cairo, Mubarak] received Maliki at the beginning of his Arab tour, and appeared sullen. A political source told the Azzaman reporter in Cairo that Mubarak insisted the meeting include Maliki himself only, and refused to allow the participation of Iraqi security officials who were accompanying [Maliki on his tour]. Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif said after the meeting: “Egypt urges the government of Iraq to carry out reconciliation [or reforms]”. And the same Egyptian source said the visit of Maliki to Cairo was in trouble from the start, and likely [a Maliki-Mubarak meeting] wouldn’t have happened at all, if not for the fact there is to be a conference soon in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. Source
Memo to Congress: Don’t bend over backwards on this (it snaps the spine you’ve only recently evidenced). Pas i again and send it again. Pass an interim, 60-day funding conditional on the next infusion being tied to specific actions. But do not pass a watered down toothless bil. Passing water is not the job for which you were elected.
Doing what is right and prudent for the country and for the troops is not a political football, it is your mandate — “To raise and support Armies…To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces…” (Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution). It’s not a choice, it’s the damn job.
Bush repeated his promise Friday to veto the war spending bill and any such measure with a pullout date, even as Democrats renewed their calls for the president to sign the $124.2 billion bill.
“If the Congress wants to test my will as to whether or not I’ll accept the timetable for withdrawal, I won’t accept one,” Bush declared. Article
Now G. Walker has all but tatooed on his forehead that he is the war and the war is he. Everything on the planet is not about you.
Thrown a life preserver, such mulishness, blinded by false ego, is akin to a man asea refusing a life preserver because it is a test of his treading ability.
War is hell. Flawed, failed, endless war is a deeper hell. The woebegone G. Walker administration wants (nay, demands) eternal hell.
Exorcise the demon; just say no. Again, and again, and again.
Related:
A retired general who was the Army’s senior intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. William Odom, also called on Bush to sign the bill, saying it would be a “rare act of courage” by the president.
In the Democrats’ weekly radio address, Odom said Bush had been “absent without leave,” ignoring accumulating evidence that his Iraq strategy had failed, but that the legislation offered him the opportunity to change course. Article
Quite the informative look at the ‘other army.’
There are more than 125,000 U.S.-funded contractors in Iraq, doing everything from maintaining supply lines to building hospitals to performing clerical work to guarding U.S. officials; this equates to about two-thirds the number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, and does not include all subcontractors. Some contractors have only a few employees in country, while the largest—kbr, which is being spun off from Halliburton—has 50,000 workers there. The surge reflects the administration’s privatization philosophy, former Halliburton ceo Dick Cheney’s influence—and just how thinly stretched the military now is in Iraq. All those nonmilitary personnel need guarding, and as of November, at least 177 private security companies employed 48,000 people in Iraq. …
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“We’re never going to war without the private security industry again in a non-draft environment,” says former Marine colonel Jack Holly. As director of logistics of the embassy’s Project and Contracting Office, Holly, who’s an Army Corps of Engineers civilian employee, monitors all the private supply convoys bringing goods and equipment to Iraqi ministries. He tracks about 15 convoys a day. In 2003, 1 in 11 were attacked. Now 1 in 4 are, he says. In all, he’s lost 129 men to insurgents.
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The South Africans are popular with U.S. companies, and even the U.S. government, which uses them as bodyguards for high-ranking officials. “If losses are taken, it’s not soldiers killed,” Bertus says, explaining the appeal of using contractors, “and if civilians are killed in the crossfire, then they can’t blame it on the Army”—though he claims that is less likely to happen when the contractors are former cops like himself. “If you are a soldier it’s straightforward: Wipe out everything in front of you. Police must use discretion, and policemen are better drivers.” I met him while he was temporarily posted in comparatively peaceful Kurdistan, and he was getting bored. “I miss the action,” he said. “I miss Baghdad, the sweat on my hands.”
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The new hires are led by a handsome young Kurd named Soran who joined the peshmerga at 13, occasionally fighting alongside U.S. Special Forces. Soran’s American boss only gives his call sign, Buddha. He is the ultimate commander of what he describes as a light battalion of 425 peshmerga and three Western supervisors. Grizzled and cigar smoking, Buddha spent 20 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a captain from the elite counterterror Delta Force. He’d subsequently engaged in private operations on behalf of the U.S. government for two decades, including Oliver North’s Iran-Contra operations; later, he headed the private security detail of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. During the coup that forced Aristide from power, he claims, he was called to the U.S. Embassy and told that if he continued to protect Aristide, his Army pension would be revoked. Buddha still has a home in Haiti, and a Haitian wife. Of the Kurds he trained, he jokes: “They have to understand what the bump on the end of the barrel is for.” The Kurds make an average of $300 to $500 a month. On average, American security contractors make between $9,000 and $12,000 a month. Wade, for example, earns $13,000 a month; his National Guard officer’s pay had been $5,000 a month.
The supply depot typically receives 30 to 40 rounds of mortar fire a week, but that’s recently tapered off, Buddha explains. He adds that the range of the mortars is 1,300 meters, which “happens to be the range of my sniper rifle,” and smiles as he tells me he’d “successfully engaged” insurgents attacking the compound. He’s been known to don the traditional dishdasha that locals wear, and the shemagh, or head scarf, to conduct reconnaissance.
Buddha is not optimistic about the war his Army friends are fighting. “I’ve never seen a war of occupation that worked,” he says. “This is an unconventional war being fought by a conventional army.” And like other contractors, he says the war depends on the likes of him: “Without us, they could crunch numbers and lie to the public all day, but they wouldn’t be able to do it.” Long after the American military withdraws, security contractors will remain: “The Iraqi government will have to come to the private security industry because the Iraqi government will face the same problems the U.S. government faces.” Article
Related:
Four years after the invasion of Iraq, Congress still has been unable to grasp the scope of armed security contractors working in that country.
This week, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Rep. David Price of North Carolina, both Democrats, asked the Government Accountability Office to provide details on the use of private security contractors in Iraq.
Skelton and Price want to know how many such contractors are working there, for what purpose and under what legal authority. There has been little oversight over cost and operations so far, but many questions.
According to earlier GAO reports, contractors often move into battle zones without the military’s knowledge, and the military in turn has done little training for troops on how to deal with private contractors. There are estimated to be as many as 100,000 security contractors working in the country.
[snip]
“The real problem is the U.S. military is not large enough to perform all the tasks the military wants performed,” said Steven Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University. “It’s a huge, huge issue.”
But, Schooner said, Congress should worry more about the command-and-control problem than focus solely on issues of cost.
“Members of Congress have no idea whatsoever what’s going on over there,” Schooner said. “I think oversight is a huge issue. Who’s in charge over there? What’s the quality-control standard? Those are the big issues they haven’t gotten addressed.” Article