Today in Iraq

War News for Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Bring ‘em on: As many as 1,000 people dead and hundreds injured in a stampede when Shia religious marchers panicked, thinking there were suicide bombers among them. At least seven people had been killed when mortar rounds were fired into the crowd earlier, and 36 others were injured in a mortar attack on the shrine to which the pilgrims were marching. There were also reports that some of the worshipers had been poisoned.

(Note to readers: Some may question whether this incident belongs in our catalog of mayhem inflicted by combatants in Bush’s war. It does. While it is true that the deaths were not directly the result of an attack, they would not have occurred had the conditions – fear of attacks against Shiite celebrations, the earlier deadly attack on the same gathering, the ubiquity of suicide bombings, and Baghdad’s decayed infrastructure – not existed. Those conditions were and are a direct consequence of George W. Bush’s illegal and immoral war. These are war deaths as surely as were those of the two young Americans who died last week in a fuel truck rollover. And the blood of all is on Bush’s hands.)

Bring ‘em on: An update to the above story states that US helicopters fired on individuals suspected of launching the mortar attacks on the shrine and deployed ground troops in the area. In addition, six people were wounded when gunmen opened fire on Shiite marchers in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah neighborhood and 25 people were killed by poisoning. Three Iraqis, including a policeman, were killed in an attack on a police patrol in Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed in a roadside bombing in Iskandariyah. (Hidden deep in the story.)

Pointing fingers: Iraqi Health Minister Abdul Mutalib Mohammed Ali demanded Wednesday the resignation of the ministers of interior and defence, holding them responsible for the stampede which killed almost 820 Shiite pilgrims.

"I hold my colleagues in the ministries of interior and defence responsible for what happened today," Ali told reporters.

"I call upon my colleagues in the interior and defence to either bear full responsibility or resign."

The Interior Minister Bayan Baker Solagh said a "terrorist" triggered the stampede that caused hundreds of deaths near a Shiite shrine in Baghdad where a million pilgrims had gathered.

"There was a huge crowd on the bridge and what happened was that one terrorist spread a rumour that led to the stampede," Solagh told state-owned Iraqia television.

"The terrorist pointed a finger at another person saying that he was carrying explosives... and that led to the panic," Solagh said.

Shortages: Iraqis are still suffering from power shortages countrywide – receiving less than four hours of electricity daily – despite the government's recent announcement that more money would be spent on this sector.

"The government has forgotten about essential services like water and power," said Farah Mustany, a mother of four in Baghdad. "We are thirsty for power because we are suffering and our children were suffering as we don't have basic facilities."

This summer has been the worse since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003. Shortages in power supplies have resulted in millions of residents being forced to sleep outside because there is not enough power to run air conditioners.

On 26 August, protests took place on the streets of Baghdad, after outspoken Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on followers to demonstrate against the lack of power and water supplies and against the new draft of the constitution, in which they say federalism should not be specified.

Doctors in the Iraqi capital have complained of the increase in cases of dehydration and diarrhoea among children and the elderly, caused by the constant heat inside homes without cooling systems.

"We have at least 10 cases of dehydration caused by the summer season every day in our hospital. During the last regime it was rare, but now it has become a daily occurrence here," Dr Mustafa Rawi, at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital, said.

Constitutional follies: Political leaders warned Tuesday that dozens of thorny issues deferred in an effort to placate ethnic and religious groups during the debate leading to Iraq's draft constitution could come back to haunt lawmakers early next year. Iraq's 39-page draft constitution, which was submitted to the transitional National Assembly on Sunday, skirted many of Iraq's most controversial issues, such as the balance of power between Baghdad and the outlying regions, the rights of women and the sharing of oil revenue.

The latest version of the text includes more than 50 items that were left to next year's National Assembly, which will be charged with filling in the blanks of the constitution with dozens of new laws. "All these problems are still there," said Hassan Bazzaz, a University of Baghdad political science professor. "And as they say, the devil is in the details.

More follies: Iraq took a historic gamble when the ruling Shiite and Kurdish coalition bulldozed over the objections of Sunni Arabs to forge a new constitution.

Frantic efforts to reach consensus collapsed on Sunday when a blueprint for a new democratic state lacking the support of Sunni leaders was submitted to parliament, triggering what promised to be a bitter referendum battle.

Months of talks and weeks of deadlock ended when government officials gave up trying to placate Sunni negotiators, despite warnings of greater violence.

The President, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, declared the document complete. "The constitution is left to our people to approve or reject. I hope our people will accept it despite some flaws."

He said rejection in the October 15 referendum would not derail the political process. "This is part of democracy. If the people do not approve it we will draft another constitution."

Detentions: A Reuters cameraman was freed on Wednesday after being held for three days by U.S. troops following an incident in which his soundman was shot dead, apparently by American soldiers.

Haider Kadhem, 24, was questioned about "inconsistencies" in his statements after he was taken from the car in which soundman Waleed Khaled was killed on Sunday by multiple shots to the head and chest while on a news assignment.

Reuters' cameraman in the city of Ramadi, Ali al-Mashhadani, was arrested by U.S. forces three weeks ago and is being held without charge in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

A military spokesman said on Wednesday that a joint Iraqi- U.S. tribunal, meeting in secret on Monday, had ordered him to be held indefinitely pending a review within six months.

No accusation has been made public and Mashhadani will be allowed no visits, including from an attorney, for two months.

He must be guilty of something: Lawyers plan a lawsuit seeking the release of an Iraqi-born U.S. resident who has been detained in Baghdad since April after a mortar attack on U.S. forces.

The Washington Post reports that Numan Adnan Al Kaby's lawyers say he remains in detention even after a military tribunal found that he had nothing to do with the attack.

Birth Of A New Rationale

Protect them oil fields: President George W. Bush, facing waning support for his Iraq policy, appealed on Tuesday to Americans not to waver because of the rising death toll and again rejected protesters' calls for a troop withdrawal.

With Americans already worried about sharply sharply rising oil prices, Bush said a pull-out would allow al Qaeda to take hold of Iraq's oil fields to fund new attacks, as well as damage America's credibility.

Of course, the only reason there are terrorists in Iraq is because of Bush: President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

The president, standing against a backdrop of the USS Ronald Reagan, the newest aircraft carrier in the Navy's fleet, said terrorists would be denied their goal of making Iraq a base from which to recruit followers, train them, and finance attacks.

Hurricane Katrina

Morale problem: Ever since Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, National Guard troops from Gulf coast states serving in Iraq have followed the disaster unfolding on television sets, worried about families and friends back home.

"It's a significant emotional event. Their families are on the forefront of the disaster," said Lt. Col. Jordan Jones of the 141st Field Artillery of the Louisiana National Guard.

"They're all watching TV and some have seen their neighborhoods completely submerged in water."

War or infrastructure?: New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness. On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Dateline August 1, 2005: When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad, and in the event of a major natural disaster that, could be a problem. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," said Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider with the LA National Guard.

A Summary

by Foreign Policy In Focus

According to current estimates, the cost of the Iraq War could exceed $700 billion. In current dollars, the Vietnam War cost U.S. taxpayers $600 billion.

Operations costs in Iraq are estimated at $5.6 billion per month in 2005. By comparison, the average cost of U.S. operations in Vietnam over the eight-year war was $5.1 billion per month, adjusting for inflation.

Staying in Iraq and Afghanistan at current levels would nearly double the projected federal budget deficit over the next decade.

Since 2001, the U.S. has deployed more than 1 million troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Broken down per person in the United States, the cost so far is $727, making the Iraq War the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years.

The number of journalists killed reporting the Iraq War (66) has exceeded the number of journalists killed reporting on the Vietnam War (63).

More than 210,000 of the National Guard’s 330,000 soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Guard mobilizations average 460 days.

Nearly a third of active-duty troops, 341,000 men and women, have served two or more overseas tours.

The U.S. controls 106 military bases across Iraq. Congress has budgeted $236 million for permanent base construction in FY2005.

At least 23,589 to 26,705 Iraqi civilians have been killed.

On average 155 members of the Iraqi security forces have died every month since the January 2005 elections, up from an average of 65 before they were held.

Suicide attack rates rose to 50 per month in the first five months of 2005, up from 20 per month in 2003 and 48 in 2004.

Iraq’s resistance forces remain at 16,000-40,000 even with the U.S. coalition killing or capturing 1,600 resistance members per month.

The State Department reported that the number of “significant” terrorist attacks reached a record 655 in 2004, up from 175 in 2003.

The Iraq War has weakened the UN’s authority and credibility.

Commentary

Opinion: Cindy Sheehan continues to ask George W. Bush what the "Noble Cause" was for which her son died in Iraq, and why Bush's daughters haven't enlisted in this Cause.

While Bush talked to us about WMDs, an imminent "mushroom cloud," and tried to link Saddam and Iraq to 9/11 (when it was 14 Saudis who hit the World Trade Center), those all fell apart and were exposed (by no less than Paul Wolfowitz) as intentional lies. When Bush shifted his Noble Cause to invading Iraq to bring democracy to the Iraqi people, the Downing Street Memo told another story. And now, also, so does Bush's first biographer.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the way Bush lied us into invading Iraq, particularly the timing of it all (ginning it up just before the 2002 midterm elections), was done largely so Republicans could win take back the Senate in 2002 after losing it because of Jim Jeffords' defection, and so Bush could win the White House in the election of 2004.

It's apparently just that simple, just that banal, and ultimately just that traitorous to the traditional ideals of America.

This is why the greatest political threat that Cindy Sheehan represents to George W. Bush and his Republican Party is in her ability to point this out.

Comment: As his poll numbers sink, Bush is getting desperate. From his address today in San Diego:

“They looked at our response after the hostage crisis in Iran, the bombings of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the first World Trade Center attack, the killing of American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of two U.S. embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole. They concluded that free societies lacked the courage and character to defend themselves against a determined enemy… After September the 11th, 2001, we’ve taught the terrorists a very different lesson: America will not run in defeat and we will not forget our responsibilities.”

(Conveniently, Bush doesn’t mention any terrorist attack that occurred during his father’s administration.)

Once upon a time, the President didn’t believe in playing the blame game:

“Well, the President is not one that focuses on blame or finger pointing. The President focuses on what we need to do to address challenges.”

It appears that statement is inoperative.

Opinion: A few days ago, I was one on of those TV pundit shows, and the host of this gabfest—Derek McGinty—asked all the panelists whether George W. Bush's recent rah-rah speeches about the war in Iraq had done anything to rally popular support for Bush's mess in Mesopotamia. I did not surprise anyone by saying no and arguing that Bush had dished out warmed-over rhetoric that had previously failed to boost public sentiment toward the war. USA Today's Susan Page said much the same. But then the two conservative chatters—columnist Linda Chavez and the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes—also gave Bush an F. They maintained that he had not made a strong case that the war in Iraq is central to the effort against terrorism. (They did not pause to consider this failure might be due to the fact that the connection between Bush's folly in Iraq and the effort against jihadist terrorism is tenuous.) When right, middle and left agree that the White House is flailing, Bush might have a problem. And now—a week later—Bush's pro-war speeches resonate not at all. Bush could have achieved the same results by staying home and clearing brush on his ranch.

Bush is stuck. There is little he can say to affect public opinion. It's been two years since "shock and awe" led to morass and misadventure. The problem these days is not the rhetoric, but the policy. And no matter what Bush says before a hand-picked audience, he cannot escape the original sin.

Hoffmania: So far, the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina is $25 billion.

25 billion dollars to rebuild after this horror. You can see the fear that's gripping the people there. They'll be depending on the government and the insurance companies for that rebuilding money. It's your guess how difficult their ability to get that will be.

25 billion dollars. Think of that. Now think about how Bush's Iraq Nightmare has cost (so far) $300 billion.

That's right. They could have rebuilt the Katrina-affected areas TWELVE TIMES for what we've spent on Iraq.

Oh - and according to what Aaron Brown is asking on CNN, seems the National Guard's presence in New Orleans and Mississippi is negligible. You know why. The troops, the Humvees, the resources - Iraq.

So to our visitors from the right, we ask: NOW do you understand us when we say that we needed to keep AMERICA secure instead of blowing our load on Iraq? Our president doesn't.

And we know you're not as stupid as he is.

Opinion: When President Bush praised the new Iraqi constitution as protecting the rights of minorities and women and forming the basis of a "free society," he was glossing over the document's rejection by Sunnis—divisive language that may well lead to its defeat in a coming referendum—and the worries of women and minority groups in Iraq that, in fact, the document sets up an oppressive Islamic theocracy. Shiite religious parties who helped draft the constitution saw to it that, despite assurances of religious and individual freedom, Islam will be the official religion of Iraq and "a main source of legislation," according to the New York Times. "Clerics would more than likely sit on the Supreme Court, and judges would have broad latitude to strike down legislation that conflicted with the religion." In addition, "Clerics would be given a broad, new role in adjudication of family disputes like marriage, divorce, and inheritance." So much for women's rights.

The failure of American efforts to transform Iraq into a free society comes at a time when we are experiencing a crisis in our own country over the basic concepts of freedom, democracy, and the separation of church and state.

Interview: Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna: Colonel Pheneger, thank you for meeting with me on such short notice. Let me jump right in and ask you about the government's case in attempting to conceal detainee abuse evidence.

The government's argument hinges on two points, as I see it: a). that the release of documents could inflame passions and increase attacks on US troops and b). That the release of documents could be used as a recruiting tool for terrorist groups. The testimony you submitted addresses these two points. Can you elaborate on your argument?

Retired U. S. Army Colonel Michael Pheneger: The release will certainly undermine our moral authority and the legitimacy of our cause, but the problem is the underlying conduct - not the photos. The government's specific argument was that the release would result in loss of life (US military and civilians, allies and Iraqis).

However, Iraqi and al-Qaeda insurgents already conduct over 70 attacks a day and will continue to do so as long as they have the will and the capability. In my declaration, I note that General Myers himself, in a press interview, denied that the Newsweek article resulted in the riots and casualties. According to General Myers, the events resulted from the playing out of events leading to the September election. Opinion polls have always indicated that most Iraqis (80 – 85 percent) want the U.S. out, though under varying conditions.

The groups of insurgents are hard-core opponents; they do not need further provocation beyond our presence. I doubt that they could be more inflamed or that the photos would spur individuals on the margin to join them.

Opinion: The unbridgeable divide between the left and right’s approach to Iraq and the WoT is, among other things, a disagreement over the value of moral and material strength, with the left placing a premium on the former and the right on the latter. The right (broadly speaking) can’t fathom why the left is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left's protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader.

War hawks squeal about America-haters and traitors, heaping scorn on the so-called “blame America first" crowd, but they fail to comprehend that the left reserves the deepest disdain for those who squander our moral authority. The scars of a terrorist attack heal and we are sadder but stronger for having lived through it. When our moral leadership is compromised by people draped in the American flag, America is weakened. The loss of our moral compass leaves us rudderless, open to attacks on our character and our basic decency. And nothing makes our enemies prouder. They can't kill us all, but if they permanently stain our dignity, they've done irreparable harm to America.

The antiwar critique of Iraq is that it is an immoral war and every resulting death is a wrongful one. Opponents of the war view the invasion and occupation as a dangerous and shameful violation of international law. Iraq saps our moral strength and the sooner we leave the better. Opposing the invasion on the grounds that the administration lied its way into it, they see every subsequent death, American or foreign, as an ethical travesty and a stain on America's good name.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Louisburg, MO, soldier killed in Iraq.

Local story: Ada Township, MI, soldier killed by roadside bomb in Iraq.

Local story: Forest Lake, MN, soldier killed in tanker rollover in Iraq.

Local story: Marine born in Honduras receives posthumous US citizenship.

Local story: Proctor, VT, soldier who was killed by a sniper in Ramadi will be laid to rest on Friday.

War News for Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Bring ‘em on: US airstrikes near Qaim kill seven people identified by the US military as terrorists. Police in Baghdad report that 56 civilians were killed in the attacks.

Bring ‘em on: At least 35 people killed and ‘dozens’ wounded in fighting between pro and anti-government tribes in the Qaim area.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed and one wounded when their helicopter was shot down in the area of Tal Afar. Fifteen Iraqis killed by unknown gunmen between Samarra and Ramadi. Iraqi Lt. General in the Interior Ministry killed in Baghdad attack. Brother of Baghdad’s governor killed in Baghdad. Two Iraqi police injured while trying to defuse a bomb. Seventeen persons detained by the US military in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: One Oil Ministry employee wounded in rocket attack on Oil Ministry building. Italian armored vehicle hit by US fire on Baghdad’s airport road.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi police colonels killed in separate attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk. Two police officers killed in a suicide car bombing in Samarra.

Taking it to the streets: After battling over Iraq's draft constitution for months in the halls of government, Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds prepared yesterday to take their fight over the charter to the streets, mosques and airwaves ahead of a nationwide referendum on the document.

As many as 6 million copies of the draft are being printed for distribution to Iraqi citizens before the Oct. 15 vote. Kurdish and Shiite politicians, who finalized the text over the weekend despite the objections of Sunni Arabs, vowed to make a strong push for passage.

"We will use everything," said Jawad Maliki, a Shiite politician who helped draft the charter. "We will use mosque preachers. We will even use Christian churches. We will use everything we need to make a great campaign for this constitution."

But Sunni Arabs, bitterly opposed to a document they view as a recipe for dismembering Iraq into semi-autonomous regions, vowed to oppose the constitution in the courts, through international forums, and in the voting booth, even though some doubt they can beat the powerful Shiites and Kurds at the polls.

But what about the final, final, final draft?: The U.S. ambassador suggested Tuesday there may be further changes to the draft constitution in order to win Sunni Arab approval, saying he believed a "final, final draft" had not yet been presented.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad spoke two days after Shiite and Kurdish negotiators bypassed Sunni Arab negotiators and finished the draft, despite Sunni objections to federalism, references to former president Saddam Hussein's Baath party and the country's identification as an Islamic but not Arab state.

However, influential Shiite legislator Khaled al-Attiyah, a member of the constitution drafting committee, insisted that "no changes are allowed to be made to the constitution" except for "minor edits for the language."

Demonstration: Thousands of Sunni demonstrators rallied in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Monday to denounce Iraq's new constitution a day after negotiators finished the new charter without the endorsement of Sunni Arabs. Sunni leaders have urged their community to defeat the charter in a nationwide referendum on Oct. 15, saying it had been rammed through the drafting committee by the dominant Shiite Arab and Kurdish alliance.

The absence of Sunni endorsement, after more than two months of intensive negotiations, raised fears of more violence and set the stage for a bitter political fight ahead of the referendum. A political battle threatened to sharpen communal divisions at a time when relations among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds appear to be worsening.

Warning: Thousands of Arab Sunnis took to the streets of Iraq yesterday to demonstrate against the country's draft constitution - but a moderate Sunni group hinted it might back the constitution in a referendum due in October.

On Sunday, Shia and Kurdish negotiators gave up trying to win over the Sunnis and endorsed a constitutional text that will be presented to voters on October 15.

The Sunni delegates said it was a recipe for breaking up Iraq into autonomous regions, diminishing its Arab heritage, alienating Sunnis and facilitating Iranian meddling.

Yesterday, however, the Iraqi Islamic party, a moderate group, said that although the draft did not represent its hopes and aspirations, there was still room for negotiation.

"We might say yes to the constitution if the disputed points are resolved," it said.

Some observers interpreted this as a veiled plea for a yes vote. With 5m copies to be printed this week, changes to the draft are unlikely.

A senior western diplomat said some moderates saw the constitution as balanced - albeit flawed - thanks to eleventh-hour changes that deferred contentious details to the next parliament. But they did not dare speak out openly. One politician has received a warning note that included the line: "Regards to your two daughters."

Recipe: Parts of the Iraqi draft constitution are a "recipe for chaos", Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa has said.

He told the BBC the Arab League shared Sunni Muslim concerns over federalism and the fact the charter does not identify Iraq as an Arab country.

The US and UK have played down Sunni leaders' rejection of the text, which will go to a referendum by 15 October.

Meanwhile, In America

The costs spiral up: Despite the relatively small number of American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (140,000), the war effort is rapidly shaping up to be the third-most expensive war in United States history.

This conflict has already cost each American at least $850 in military and reconstruction costs since October 2001.

If the war lasts another five years, it will cost nearly $1.4 trillion, calculates Linda Bilmes, who teaches budgeting at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. That's nearly $4,745 per capita. Her estimate is thorough. She includes not only the military cost but also such things as veterans' benefits and additional interest on the federal debt.

But even in stripped-down terms, looking only at military costs and using current dollars, the war's cost for the US already exceeds that of World War I.

Desperate measures: Twelve 20th Logistics Readiness Squadron vehicle operators here are preparing to leave in early September to support convoy operations in Southwest Asia.

These predominantly first-term airmen will undergo rigorous training at Camp Bullis, Texas, before immediately deploying for six to eight months with an Army truck company in Southwest Asia, said Capt. Whitney Sherrill, 20th LRS vehicle management flight commander.

Since 2003 when the Army chief of staff requested base operating support augmentation, airmen have been supporting convoy operations in the war on terrorism.

The Air Force pulling convoy detail...we're in worse shape than I thought.

Heartbreak high school: On the first day of school, students returned to Forest Park Senior High School yesterday and confronted war. Within two weeks, two members of the Class of 2000, both members of the well-regarded Junior ROTC program, died in combat - Army Spc. Toccara Renee Green in Iraq on Aug. 14 and Army Staff Sgt. Damion G. Campbell in Afghanistan on Friday. "All of this has made me think that I might not want to do it," said Ericka Wilson, 17, a senior and ROTC member. "I'm not so sure anymore." It was a day of reflection and sadness. Campbell, 23, died the same day that Green was interred at Arlington National Cemetery. "We just buried a beautiful young lady," said English teacher Joan Maurice. "These poor children go into the military to get some money for college and they are coming home in coffins."

But the mood is changing...: For Bush, the start of a two-day departure from his Texas vacation allowed him to refocus, however briefly, on domestic issues after peace demonstrations outside his ranch this month drew sustained attention to the Iraq war. But even on this day, he was not able to escape the topic.

Hundreds of protesters lined his motorcade routes in Arizona and California, holding up signs such as "Bush the Lying Turd" and "Chicken George," a reference to his refusal to meet again with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who set up camp near his Texas ranch demanding an audience.

Constitution Commentary

More Bush lies and spin: The Bush administration has consistently portrayed Iraq's draft constitution as an all-important document that will help unite the fragmented nation, draw its disaffected Sunni Muslims into the political process, curb the violent insurgency and allow for the phased withdrawal of American troops beginning as early as next year.

President Bush praised the proposed charter, delivered to the country's National Assembly on Sunday, as "a document of which the Iraqis and the rest of the world can be proud."

But many analysts say the document, which is scheduled to go before a national referendum in less than two months, is anything but a step toward a safer, more stable Iraq.

A distinctly Islamic cast: It was a smart bit of spin by Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, to say that apart from the holy Qur'an, there was no book that could not be amended. Thus, he implied, there was hope that the draft constitution agreed under US pressure, but crucially without the approval of the country's Sunni minority, could yet be improved. Anyone who wants to see a happy end to the tragedy of Iraq must certainly hope for a document that can command the widest possible support. But it is not cynical - more a recognition of bloody reality - to dismiss rhetoric from Washington about the constitution being a "beacon of freedom and democracy". It is terrific that 5m copies of the new text are to be distributed - but that is against a background of vicious and unrelenting violence as well as chronic shortages of water, electricity and jobs.

The draft does contain language guaranteeing freedom of religion, association, speech and conscience, and an independent judiciary. It refers to crimes against the Iraqi people during decades of Ba'athist tyranny. It establishes principles, of accountability and the separation of powers, which are taken for granted in the west but are still rare in the Arab world. But it also turns the Iraqi state moulded by Saddam Hussein from one with secular republican institutions controlled by a powerful central government to one with a weak central government and a distinctly Islamist cast that worries the secular-minded and women.

The American Taliban gets its knickers knotted: In an Aug. 18 statement, Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Family Research Council, wrote on that group's Web site: "I have sent a letter to President Bush encouraging the Administration to redouble its efforts to ensure that the Iraq Constitution provides genuine religious freedom for all Iraqi citizens. An Iraqi Constitution that does not protect religious liberty will seriously undermine U.S. efforts in Iraq and the larger Middle East. The sons and daughters of Americans are not risking their lives to establish a theocratic government that denies its citizens the fundamental right of religious freedom."

Reached by phone on Thursday, Perkins said he wanted to make sure that the end result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq would not be the establishment of an Islamic state. And he questioned whether America's sacrifice would be worth it if it is.

"Let me speak as a veteran of the Marine Corps who has been supportive of the military action taken in Iraq. The idea has been to deliver the people from a [repressive] regime ... I think there are some who would question if we leave in place a structure that is less than sufficient in guaranteeing the freedom of the Iraqi people," Perkins said. "There are those who view that as less than successful."

I don’t know what amuses me more – the sight of the Bush wingnut coalition imploding or the pathetic attempt of whackjob Perkins to portray himself as a supporter of religious freedom.

Logic versus George Bush: The Iraqis are having a hard time pulling together a constitution quickly enough to meet President Bush's public-relations timeline. As I am not an Iraqi, I have no interest in meddling in the affairs of that troubled land. Of course, I would prefer that the Iraqis establish a system of self-governance that, like ours in the United States, seeks to erect a wall of separation between church and state, preserve the rights of small states and political minorities, protect against military and police abuses, and guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of the press and all the other basics of a functioning democracy. If I was really writing a wish list, I might also recommend that the Iraqis do a better job than we do of limiting the power of corporate monopolies, keep special-interest money out of their politics, treating healthcare and education as basic rights and establishing reliable electoral systems. But as an American, I should not be worrying about perfecting the Iraqi constitution before I go about the work of getting things right here at home. This seems like basic logic to me. But that logic escapes our president.

Commentary

Torture: Last month, Americans were given a new and persuasive reason for objecting to the use of torture as a tool in administration policy; namely, its potentially harmful impact on any viable counterterrorism strategy that values information as essential in combating Islamic fundamentalist terror. This strategic concern was raised in a set of memos released by the government in its latest "dump" of documents into the public arena.

Since the spring of 2004, the government has been making public previously classified documents nearly weekly, often in response to Freedom of Information Act law suits (though the numbers of newly classified documents are increasing at a rate that more than nullifies any sense of transparency such releases might suggest). Many of these memos have been about torture—whether to use it; how to use it; and, most of all, how to protect government agents and agencies against prosecution for using it. Among these documents have been memos from the Judge Advocate General's Corps (or JAG), written by military lawyers from the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines, and these constitute a welcome oasis of sanity in a desert of compliance with the government's decision to use torture as a weapon in its "war on terror."

First brought to public attention in Senate debate on July 25, 2005, these JAG memos have seen the light thanks to a request from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. They were written in February 2003 as recommendations to a Pentagon working group on "interrogation policy." Collectively, they express a clear opposition to the use of the sorts of harsh interrogation techniques that White House lawyers had not only recommended but declared legally viable. Indeed, by August of 2002, lawyers for the administration had infamously suggested, as a basis for reducing legal culpability for the mistreatment of detainees, that the definition of torture itself be narrowed to include only ""[p]hysical pain …equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

The JAG memos, on the other hand, warned that abusive interrogation techniques—contrary to the advice administration lawyers were generating—might well be found illegal in courts of law: As one put it, "Our domestic courts may well disagree with [the administration's lawyers'] interpretation of the law." The courts, the JAG memos warned, might find that the use of torture, however redefined by the administration, violated not just international law, but domestic criminal law and the laws of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well.

These memos have earned praise from critics of the Bush administration and its war on terror, who have been pleased to discover strong organizational resistance to administration policy within the military. But the terms of the disagreement have been little explored. It's not just the fact of the dissent that is noteworthy, but its nature; for these documents provide us with something other than the usual notes of protest against torture that critics of the administration are wont to express. The JAG criticism is not so much moral as strategic. What the JAG lawyers suggest—and it is a position no less significant today than when it was shaped in 2003—is that a policy of torture is sure to constitute a fatal flaw in any war against jihadi terror.

Comment: In 1942, at the beginning of World War II, the Sullivan family of Waterloo, Iowa, lost all five of its sons when the ship on which they were serving in the Pacific was torpedoed. While the Sullivan boys became national heroes _ receiving numerous awards posthumously, including the naming of a destroyer after them _ Congress wisely passed a law preventing siblings from serving together on the same ship.

That generally became the practice on the ground as well as at sea, with commanders striving to protect mothers and fathers from the devastating loss of multiple sons or daughters in combat.

One can only wonder why current military leaders would allow the possibility of the same tragedy occurring. Yet not only are four sons of Tammy Pruett of Pocatello, Idaho, serving in Iraq, another son and her husband have just returned. President Bush singled out Mrs. Pruett the other day while stumping in defense of his Iraq policy in the face of falling ratings over his handling of the situation. Certainly, Mrs. Pruett is a courageous woman who deserves the recognition. But why would the president of the United States use this mother's incredible contribution shamelessly to promote his own interests?

Gee, and it’s so out of character for him, too…

Letter:

Dear Mr. Secretary:

We are writing to request that you investigate the Secretary of the Army's decision to remove Bunnatine Greenhouse, a career civil servant in the Senior Executive Service, from her position as principal assistant for contracting for the Army Corps of Engineers. The decision to remove Ms. Greenhouse from her position and demote her appears to be retaliation for her June 27, 2005 testimony before Congress.

In her June 27 testimony, Ms. Greenhouse detailed her objections to improper and potentially illegal conduct in the award of contracts for Iraq reconstruction projects. Specifically, Ms. Greenhouse objected to the contract awarded to a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, to restore Iraqi oil infrastructure. Ms. Greenhouse testified that the contract award process was compromised by improper influence by political appointees, participation by Halliburton officials in meetings where bidding requirements were discussed, and a lack of competition.

On July 14 - less than three weeks after her testimony - the Secretary of the Army approved Ms. Greenhouse's removal. The dismissal is to take effect on August 27, 2005.

Opinion: In September 2003, the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs constructed the Jordan International Police Training Center outside of Amman to train Iraq law enforcement personnel. Sixteen nations provide a total of 352 police trainers for the center. The camp has a capacity to train 3,000 Iraqi police recruits in an eight-week basic police skills course and graduate 1,500 new police every month. New Iraqi police come away with a coveted paycheck ($150) and sufficiently trained and equipped to counter foreign intelligence operations, pandemic lawlessness in an anarchic society, and insurgents who target US troops or collaborators.

In April 2005 I had the chance to visit the center, the world's largest international police training camp. I am a military officer and have been deployed throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, but this was one of the nicest training posts I have ever seen. However, the comprehensive training I witnessed was disheartening. The Iraq coalition constituency deserves to know why this mission is likely to fail.

There are three main reasons why these forces will never be ready to defend their country: The wary, uncommitted recruits are immature and lackadaisical about the mission; the parsimonious training is inadequate; and accountability once recruits return to Iraq is inconsistent at best and lacks the return on investment that one would expect.

Helen Thomas: It's time for the Democratic Party to take a courageous stand and call for the withdrawal of troops from the senseless war in Iraq. Its human cost and the billion-dollar-a-week tab in Iraq should give all Americans pause. Would the Republicans have hesitated to challenge the Democrats if the shoe was on the other foot? Did the opposition party give former President Bill Clinton any slack while he was in office? What is the logic of Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Joseph Biden, D-Del. and other so-called moderate Democrats still backing the unprovoked war in Iraq when they know they were sold a bill of goods? Furthermore, they are urging that more troops be sent to Iraq. And they are doing so at a time when the generals in Iraq are giving mixed signals. Some are talking about a draw down of troops in a year, others in four years. Are the Democratic leaders afraid to admit they were wrong? Does the credibility of the administration -- and therefore the country -- mean anything to them?

Editorial: The news media are failing to acknowledge their own responsibility for the invasion of Iraq, even as they report with glee Cindy Sheehan's antiwar protest outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford.

Americans are told all about Sheehan's son, Casey, a soldier killed in Iraq, and her call for the president to explain his reasons for invading Iraq and to outline his plan to leave.

But the news media ought to explain why they broke their moral covenant with the American people to provide complete, balanced, fair and accurate information about the charge to war.

Some editorial pages — such as those of The New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times — did not take a pro-war stance. They called on the administration to do what Cindy Sheehan wants the administration to do now: tell why an invasion was necessary.

The sound journalism, however, was simply overwhelmed by the bad journalism.

Americans have a right to ask journalists how they intend to ensure that sound journalism prevails in the future for all kinds of news.

They have a right to ask what journalists will do the next time they get caught up in an administration's strategy to market a war or other action that can harm the American people.

Casualty Reports

Local story: East Tennessee soldier killed in Iraq laid to rest.

Local story: Centreville, MN, soldier killed in rollover accident between Mosul and Baghdad to be interred Friday.

Local story: Liberty, PA, soldier killed in Iraq, honored in ceremony at his former college.

Local story: Body of a Filipino worker, killed in a roadside bombing along with two Iraqis, recovered and will be returned to the Philippines.

War News for Monday, August 29, 2005 Bring em on: Three terrorists eradicated by US forces in Mosul. Bring 'em on: Brigadier General in Iraqi police force gunned down in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Bodies of two murdered Iraqis discovered in Mosul. Bring 'em on: Iraqi working for Reuters killed and his cameraman injured by US troops in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two policemen killed and one injured checkpoint attack in Baquba. Bring 'em on: Two policemen killed and one injured after an attack on their patrol in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three policemen found shot dead in Fallujah. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqis killed and four wounded in suicide bomb attack in Mosul. Bring 'em on: Insurgent killed in an attack by US forces in Kirkuk. Risky Business: More journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Sunday. Intriguing: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Sunday he would not sign a death sentence for Saddam Hussein if the former leader was convicted and said he would resign if the sentence was passed. Bush pisses off a select group of ummmmm 850,000,000 people:

Shiites account for less than 15 percent of the 1 billion Muslims around the world. But they make up an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's estimated 27 million people, although Sunnis dominated the country under Saddam and earlier regimes. While Sunnis account for only 20 percent of Iraq's population, they are in a strong position to derail the constitution if they wish. If two-thirds of voters in any three provinces reject the charter in the October referendum, the constitution will be defeated. Sunnis have the majority in at least four provinces.

Bush says "We're making progress and building a new Iraqi army." It's a pity they have no real weapons. Sunni look to UN and Arab League:

Sunni Arab negotiators in a joint statement today rejected the Iraqi draft constitution and asked the United Nations and Arab League to intervene. The declaration was the first joint statement by the 15-member Sunni panel following the announcement by the Shiite-led government that the charter was complete and ready to go to the voters in a referendum October 15. Several individual members of the Sunni panel had said earlier that they rejected the document over issues including federalism, Iraq’s identity and references to Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated Baath party.

Yeah, I can just see John Bolton thumping the desk screaming: "Nyet, Nyet!"

Not just the Sunni who oppose the Constitution:

Sunnis and supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have said they will rally supporters to reject the constitution in October's national referendum. Together the groups might convince two-thirds of voters in three provinces to vote down the document, prompting new elections for a national assembly that will draft another charter. A new vote would give both parties a chance to regain influence they lost when they boycotted last January's elections, leaving former exiled Shiite political parties and Kurds with a stronger hand. While both groups have widely different visions for Iraq, both oppose federalism, which allows semiautonomous regions to spring up across the country.

Just a point, I wish the CSM wouldn't label Sadr as a firebrand; I think the Crawford Coward deserves that title.

Opinion and Commentary

I am so pissed off with the MSM bar some small number of exceptions (see yesterday's post), that I decided to concentrate this section of my post on the blogosphere; it's refreshing; and after reading so depressing.

Helena on Weeniness of the Democrats:

I well recalled the extreme weeniness of the Dems in the lead-up to the 2002 midterm elections, when they were easily stampeded by the Bushies into signing off on a carte-blanche resolution that empowered the Prez to invade Iraq whenever he wanted to. But why should these same Democratic leaders seem so afraid, now, to step forward quite frankly and say "I was misled back in October 2002"? Surely, the fact that they were all, actively and intentionally misled at the time into believeing various things about Iraq that turned out not to be true-- and that were known at the time by many in the administration to be a lot less true than they were being portrayed as being-- should be part of the indictment against this extremely deceptive and hypocritical administration? It need not reflect (too) badly on a person who's only a Senator or a member of the House of Representatives if she or he did not know all the truth at the time about, oh, Saddam Hussein's relationship with Osama Bin Laden, or the state of Iraq'sWMD programs... Especially given that all those people in Congress-- like all the rest of us-- were being actively lied to about those issues by the administration, and had relatively little access to any "independent" sources of information. So someone, please tell me. What's wrong with Senators Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton; Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of them that they can't stand up and say: "We were misled; and you people in the Bush administration were leading the network of people who misled us!" Why can't they say that? ... Anyone?

Billmon on the Philadelphia Experiment:

I don't doubt there were many smoke-filled back rooms in the taverns of Philadelphia that fateful summer, but in Baghdad this summer there was hardly anything else. And if anyone had tried imitating James Madison's copious notetaking at those sessions -- so that at least history would know how Iraq was dismembered -- he probably would have wound up at the bottom of the Tigris. And what would America's founders have made of political negotiations so rigidly divided along sectarian lines? Would there have been a Great Compromise in Philadelphia if every question had split the Episcopalians from the Methodists, or the Anglo-Saxons from the Celts? Their ancestors had already been through that kind of constitutional process -- the English Civil War. It's also hard to picture the delegates in Philadelphia waiting around while the more devout among them ran proposed deals by their church elders to see if they passed religious muster, or fighting a knock-down, drag-out battle over whether the Bible should be cited as "a" primary legal source or "the" primary legal source -- not unless a time machine carried the leaders of the last Justice Sunday rally back 218 years and dropped them off at the corner of Third and Chesnut. Obviously, I could go on and on about the absurdity of Shrub's claim -- even more absurd, in its own way, than when Ronald Reagan called the Nicaraguan contras the "moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers." The contras, at least, weren't fighting to establish an Islamic theocracy. But even taking the analogy at face value, the objectives sought by the dominant parties in Iraq are the opposite -- in almost every way -- of those pursued by the majority of the delegates in Philadelphia. Our framers sought a solution to the seemingly intractable problems of a weak, decentralized confederacy of semi-independent states: precisely the kind of government the ruling coalition of Kurds and Shi'a Islamists now want to create in Iraq, with the apparent blessing of the Cheney administration. What the American founders feared most -- the decomposition of the union into three or four mutually hostile regional confederacies -- is now the official goal of U.S. policy. This is being obscured by the usual Orwellian abuse of the English language. In Iraq, we're told, the draft constitution stands for "federalism" -- the devolution of certain sovereign powers to local jurisdictions. But the essence of American federalism was the creation of a central government with both the legal rights and the revenues to enforce its will in matters deemed of vital national interest: war and peace, commerce and trade, and, most relevant in the present context, the disposition of western lands -- the 18th century American equivalent of Iraq's oil resources. (Even the original Articles of Confederation gave the national government exclusive control over those lands.)

Robert Fisk:

But hold on a moment, I say to myself again. The 7 July bombings would be a comparatively quiet day in Baghdad. Was I not at the site of the an-Nahda bus station bombings after 43 civilians - as innocent, their lives just as precious as those of Londoners - were torn to pieces last week. At the al-Kindi hospital, relatives had a problem identifying the dead. Heads were placed next to the wrong torsos, feet next to the wrong legs. A problem there. But there came not a groan from England. We were still locked into our 7 July trauma. No detectives are snooping around the an-Nahda bomb site looking for clues. They're already four suicide bombs later. An-Nahda is history. And it dawns on me, sitting on my balcony over the Mediterranean at the end of this week, that we take far too much for granted. We like to have little disconnects in our lives. Maybe this is the fault of daily journalism - where we encapsulate the world every 24 hours, then sleep on it and start a new history the next day in which we fail totally to realise that the narrative did not begin before last night's deadline but weeks, months, years ago. For it is a fact, is it not, that if "we" had not invaded Iraq in 2003, those 43 Iraqis would not have been pulverised by those three bombs last week. And it is surely a fact that, had we not invaded Iraq, the 7 July bombs would not have gone off (and I am ignoring Lord Blair's piffle about "evil ideologies"). In which case the Pope would not last week have been lecturing German Muslims on the evils of "terrorism".

Caesarian Section:

So they had the ceremony, and the drafting committee (minus Sunni Arab members) presented the final draft of the permanent Iraqi constitution to parliament on Sunday. But parliament did not vote on it. The Sunni Arabs did not attend. Parliament has abdicated its responsibilities toward the constitution and put it in the lap of the October 15 national referendum. Al-Hayat aptly said that the Iraqi constitution has been delivered by caesarian section. It was plucked from the womb of the drafting committee before the latter could give birth to it naturally. Sunni negotiator Salih Mutlak called it "a minefield." Al-Hayat: Another member of the drafting committee, Sunni politician Abd al-Nasir al-Janabi, called for international intervention to prevent its being passed into law. He particularly asked for the Arab League and the United Nations to intervene. The Sunni Arab delegates noted that they were promised that the constitution drafting process would be based on consensus, and that this pledge had been the precondition for their involvement in it last June. On Sunday the Shiites and the Kurds reneged dramatically on that promise. Husain al-Falluji said that this constitution contains the seeds of Iraq's bloody partition, something, he said, that would "serve American interests."

War News for Sunday, August 28, 2005 Bring 'em on: Pipeline blown up in Dora. Bring 'em on: Three US soldiers killed by IED in Husaybah. Bring 'em on: Lt. Col. in the Iraqi army gunned down in Kirkuk. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi policemen killed in Baquba. Bring 'em on: One Iraqi policeman killed, two wounded by roadside bomb in Baghdad. Blair warned in May 2004: Despite repeated denials by Number 10 that the war made Britain a target for terrorists, a letter from Michael Jay, the Foreign Office permanent under-secretary, to the cabinet secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull - obtained by this newspaper - makes the connection clear. The letter, dated 18 May 2004, says British foreign policy was a 'recurring theme' in the Muslim community, 'especially in the context of the Middle East peace process and Iraq'. 'Colleagues have flagged up some of the potential underlying causes of extremism that can affect the Muslim community, such as discrimination, disadvantage and exclusion,' the letter says. 'But another recurring theme is the issue of British foreign policy, especially in the context of the Middle East peace process and Iraq. Constitution Committee signs Draft Charter: Members of Iraq's constitution drafting committee signed the draft charter Sunday after making some minor amendments, a Shiite on the committee said, and a ceremony was scheduled to mark the completion of the draft. The draft now goes to the Iraqi people in an Oct. 15 referendum. Five million copies will be circulated nationwide in food allotments each Iraqi family receives monthly from the government. Fuck the Sunni: Iraq's parliament will vote on a constitution Sunday regardless of the minority Sunni position on the draft, parliament speaker Hajim al-Hasani said. Iraqi's Sunni Arab former elite presented fresh demands on the wording of the constitution Saturday amid warnings from Shiite and Kurdish negotiators that they would make no further concessions. The text presented by the Kurds and Shiites Friday, after weeks of tortuous negotiation, was "final and parliament will vote on it tomorrow (Sunday)... even if the Sunnis do not accept it," Hasani told AFP. No Captains: As the American military begins its third year in Iraq and President Bush vows to stay the course, an increasing number of captains and other junior officers are leaving the service, leading some current and former officers to fear an exodus of talent not seen since the Vietnam War. Captains are effectively the junior executives of the Army, commanding companies of about 120 soldiers. Most have at least three years of active-duty experience -- some many more. This generation of captains probably has more battlefield seasoning and regional knowledge than any since World War II, Army officers say, and their loss would leave a hole that would be impossible to fill. Opinion and Commentary Where are the Democrats?

History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security. But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong." To stay silent during such a crisis, and particularly to harbor the thought that the administration's misfortune is the Democrats' fortune, is cowardly. In 2008 I want a leader who is willing now to say: "I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me."

Sanitizing War:

But the media is also responsible for sanitizing the Iraq war, at times rendering it almost invisible. Most American publications have been reluctant to run graphic war images. Almost no photographs of the 1,868 U.S. troops who have been killed to date in Iraq have appeared in U.S. publications. In May 2005, the Los Angeles Times surveyed six major newspapers and the nation's two leading newsmagazines, and found that over a six-month period, no images of dead American troops appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Time or Newsweek. A single image of a covered body of a slain American ran in the Seattle Times. There were also comparatively few images of wounded Americans. The publications surveyed tended to run more images of dead or wounded Iraqis, but they have hardly been depicted in large numbers either. There are a number of reasons why the media has shied away from running graphic images from Iraq. Some are simple logistics: There are very few photographers in Iraq. Freelance reporter and photographer Mitchell Prothero, a Salon contributor, estimates there are "maybe a dozen or two Western photographers" in Iraq, in addition to Iraqi and Arab stringers, who do most of the work for newswires. Ten or 20 photographers trying to cover a country the size of Sweden, under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions, are unlikely to be on the scene when violence erupts. Moreover, most photographers are embedded with U.S. troops, a situation that imposes its own limits. Military regulations prevent photographers from publishing photographs of dead or wounded soldiers until their families have been notified, which can diminish the news value of the photographs. And although embed rules allow photographers to take pictures of dead or wounded troops, the reality on the ground can be different. Soldiers do not want photographers -- especially ones they aren't comfortable with -- taking pictures of their dead or wounded buddies. This is understandable, but it can result in de facto censorship. One photographer, who requested anonymity because he didn't want to jeopardize his ongoing relationship with the U.S. military, told Salon, "I've had unit commanders tell me flat out that if anybody gets wounded on patrol, you can't take any pictures of them. Nearly every time I've landed at [a medevac] scene, guys have yelled at me, 'Get the fuck away from me. Don't take my friend's picture. Get back on the helicopter.' Part of me understands that. I am a stranger to them. And they are very emotional. Their friend has been badly hurt or wounded, and they've probably all just been shot at 15 minutes before. I totally understand that, although it is a violation of embed rules."

Billmon on Iraq Reporting:

If you read nothing else about the war in Iraq this weekend -- or this month -- read Lasseter's stories. True, they're just anecdotal pieces of evidence -- although in this kind of war anecdotal evidence is probably more valuable than the reams of statistics and self-serving progress reports spat out by the Pentagon. Lasseter also doesn't paint the troops as the kind of heroic, larger-than-life action figures that make the fighting keyboarders drool with barely suppressed homoerotic envy. But you can't read his stuff and not come away with a profound sense of respect for the men and women who are fighting this war, and a boiling anger over the way they are being sacrificed to a hopelessly lost cause. If that's "liberal bias," then American journalism -- and the American people -- could use a whole lot more of it.

Juan Cole on Iraq Reporting:

Reuters Correspondent Luke Baker draws the curtain back on the horrific circumstances in Iraq. Reporters are clearly demoralized, and Western reporters are depending more and more on local staff, who are losing family members and friends to the bombings and shootings. One reporter recently in Baghdad told me that the local journalists are beginning to talk of fleeing, even ones originally very committed to building a new Iraq. I remember the gleeful email I received in May from Yasser Salihee of Knight Ridder--thanking me for linking to one of his excellent articles--and then he went out to buy gas and a US bullet accidentally killed him. From all accounts he had a great deal of promise (he had begun as an academic). His death stands as symbol for the current debacle. The irony is that the worse things get in Iraq, the less we know about how truly bad they are. With the journalists so devastated and little able to move around, we are reduced to listening to Bush administration propaganda.

Civil War:

It was the elder Hakim whom Bush telephoned last week in the middle of the negotiations: it was a startling example of just how seriously the White House takes the crisis in Iraq. In a conversation on Wednesday night, Bush spoke at length to Hakim from Nampa, Idaho, where he had just delivered a fierce defence of the Iraq war. The call was prompted by news that Shia leaders were poised to end negotiations and put the document to a referendum, in the face of Sunni opposition. Bush held that such a move would be a disaster, isolating even further the Sunni communities who are at the heart of the anti-American insurgency. In the final analysis, however, it appears it was not the Shias, as Bush feared, but the Sunnis who have torpedoed consensus on the constitution, first forcing a number of concessions from the Shias, then deciding to walk out on the whole process. 'The Sunnis made the tactical decision to negotiate for as much as they could get out of the document and then walk out to protect their own positions within their community,' said one diplomat. 'It is a dangerous tactic. It will take a lot of patching up.' His comments reflect the sense of crisis that has been growing in both Washington and London of late. It has not been only Bush who has been forced to pay attention.

War News for Friday, August 26, 2005 Bring 'em on: Thirty-six executed Iraqis discovered near Badrah. Bring 'em on: Oil pipeline ablaze near Kirkuk. Bring 'em on: Forty Iraqis, one American killed in Baghdad fighting. Bring 'em on: Two Talabani bodyguards killed in ambush near Tikrit. Bring 'em on: Two Danish soldiers wounded by roadside bomb near Basra. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi truck drivers killed by roadside bomb near al-Rashad. Constitution crisis. "Talks over the Iraqi constitution reached a breaking point Thursday, with a parliamentary session to present the document being canceled and President Bush personally calling one of the country's most powerful Shiite leaders, Abdul-Aziz Hakim, to broker a last-minute deal. Bush intervened when some senior Shiite leaders said they had decided to bypass their Sunni counterparts, as well as Iraqi lawmakers, and send the document directly to Iraqi voters for their approval. The calls by Shiite leaders to ignore the Sunnis' request for changes to the draft constitution provoked threats from the Sunnis that they would urge their people to reject the document when it goes before voters in a national referendum in October." War report.

Insurgents in Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate. After repeated major combat offensives in Fallujah and Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Anbar during the past two years - including 75 since June 1 - many American officers and enlisted men assigned to Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland. Instead, they're trying to hold on to a handful of population centers and hit smaller towns in a series of quick-strike operations designed to disrupt insurgent activities temporarily. "I don't think of this in terms of winning," said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines in an area of some 24,000 square miles in the western portion of Anbar. Instead, he said, his Marines are fighting a war of attrition. "The frustrating part for the (American) audience, if you will, is they want finality. They want a fight for the town and in the end the guy with the white hat wins." That's unlikely in Anbar, Davis said. He expects the insurgency to last for years, hitting American and Iraqi forces with quick ambushes, bombs and mines. Roadside bombs have hit vehicles Davis was riding in three times this year already.

Wingnuts (heart) Gold Star Mothers.

Young, 65, who lost her Marine son Jeff in 1983 when a truck bomb blew up a military barracks in Beirut, said she's had some "bad times" in the last few months. "I had someone call me at our Washington headquarters, call me a bitch, and hang up. We were slimeballs, low-lifes," she said. "Another caller threatened to kick me in the butt, and someone else was going to slap me in the face. I said, 'I'll take the slap for all the Gold Star mothers.' " Young said the pressure has taken its toll on her health, causing her to lose her appetite and her legs to shake at times. But yesterday, she was visiting Gold Star mothers living at the Gold Star Manor, a retirement home in Long Beach, Calif. "I could be living in the number one town in the country - Moorestown," she said with a laugh, referring to Money magazine's recent designation of the township. "But I'm needed by the Gold Star Mothers. "I guess I'm in the middle - like a mother to the new members who have jobs and children and can't devote the time to the group, and like a daughter to the older members who are in their 80s and can't do as much." Young, formerly president of the group's New Jersey chapter, said the intensity of the national position caught her off guard. She also said she has felt honored to help lead the Gold Star Mothers - a group no one wants to join. Members attend regular chapter meetings in 27 states, comfort one another, and visit veterans hospitals. They wear a gold star, the symbol of a lost child, over their hearts.

Why can't this reporter come out and say the obvious: the people tormenting this woman are rabid conservative nut-jobs who have confused the American Gold Star Mothers organization with Cindy Sheehan's Gold Star Mothers For Peace? And why can't he say they're being whipped into a frenzy by the professional GOP hate-mongers in the US media? That's the real story in this piece. The most bizarre thing I've seen in a long time.

In southern Illinois, the tale began in 2003, when student reporter Michael Brenner said he was handed a letter from a little girl saying she saw an anti-war protest on the Southern Illinois University campus and that it bothered her because her dad was a soldier. Brenner e-mailed the little girl and, as he learned more about her situation, decided to tell her story. The story appeared in the Daily Egyptian on May 6, 2003, detailing an 8-year-old's struggles saying goodbye to her father, who was shipping off to Iraq with the 101st Airborne. According to the story, Kodee had lost her mother years earlier, so Kennings was her only blood relative. "I don't have a mom," Kodee was quoted saying in the newspaper story. "If he died, I don't have anywhere to go." Upon Kennings' departure, Kodee supposedly came under the care of a young woman named Colleen Hastings, the wife of Kennings' adoptive brother. Outgoing and affable, the woman forged a friendship with Brenner, and, he said, she seemed to think the attention was helping keep Kodee's mind off her dad. Brenner, editor of the Daily Egyptian at the time, started publishing unedited notes that Kodee would write about her dad or about things happening in her life. Last week, Hastings contacted the student newspaper and said Kennings had been killed in action in Iraq. A professor in the university's journalism school who was familiar with the Kennings story called the Tribune Aug. 17, and the Tribune had a reporter on the road to Carbondale that night. But no details of Kennings' death could be confirmed. His name did not appear on a Department of Defense Web site that lists U.S. casualties. By the next day, the story was falling apart. Military officials could find no one named Dan Kennings in the Army or any other branch of the military, and no deaths in Iraq fit the time frame Hastings had described.

Commentary Editorial:

Bush continues to float the bogus notion that Iraq and 9/11 are linked. In fact, there is no evidence that the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had any connection with Iraq. He mentioned 9/11 no fewer than five times to the war vets, and seven times when he spoke to the National Guard. Americans are recoiling from this self-serving muddying of the waters. They want to know why Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar are still on the loose, four years after 9/11. They want to know when Bush expects the new regimes in Baghdad and Kabul will be strong enough to survive without help. How many Iraqi and Afghan soldiers must be in the field before U.S. forces can begin to withdraw? What's the plan for securing the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan against infiltration from outside? What are the next steps to neutralize Afghan warlords and to suppress Iraqi insurgents? These are not unreasonable questions. They invite Bush to set out benchmarks by which the public can judge his performance, before the Congressional mid-term elections. Unfortunately, he wants none of it.

Analysis:

With each passing month the difficulties are compounded and the chances for a successful outcome are reduced. Urgent modification of the strategy is required before it is too late to do anything other than simply withdraw our forces. Adding a diplomatic track to the strategy is a must. The United States should form a standing conference of Iraq's neighbors, complete with committees dealing with all the regional economic and political issues, including trade, travel, cross-border infrastructure projects and, of course, cutting off the infiltration of jihadists. The United States should tone down its raw rhetoric and instead listen more carefully to the many voices within the region. In addition, a public U.S. declaration forswearing permanent bases in Iraq would be a helpful step in engaging both regional and Iraqi support as we implement our plans. On the political side, the timeline for the agreements on the Constitution is less important than the substance of the document. It is up to American leadership to help engineer, implement and sustain a compromise that will avoid the "red lines" of the respective factions and leave in place a state that both we and Iraq's neighbors can support. So no Kurdish vote on independence, a restricted role for Islam and limited autonomy in the south. And no private militias. In addition, the United States needs a legal mandate from the government to provide additional civil assistance and advice, along with additional U.S. civilian personnel, to help strengthen the institutions of government. Key ministries must be reinforced, provincial governments made functional, a system of justice established (and its personnel trained) and the rule of law promoted at the local level. There will be a continuing need for assistance in institutional development, leadership training and international monitoring for years to come, and all of this must be made palatable to Iraqis concerned with their nation's sovereignty. Monies promised for reconstruction simply must be committed and projects moved forward, especially in those areas along the border and where the insurgency has the greatest potential. On the military side, the vast effort underway to train an army must be matched by efforts to train police and local justices. Canada, France and Germany should be engaged to assist. Neighboring states should also provide observers and technical assistance. In military terms, striking at insurgents and terrorists is necessary but insufficient. Military and security operations must return primarily to the tried-and-true methods of counterinsurgency: winning the hearts and minds of the populace through civic action, small-scale economic development and positive daily interactions. Ten thousand Arab Americans with full language proficiency should be recruited to assist as interpreters. A better effort must be made to control jihadist infiltration into the country by a combination of outposts, patrols and reaction forces reinforced by high technology. Over time U.S. forces should be pulled back into reserve roles and phased out.

Opinion:

It's a lot of sound and fury, but to find the significance, you have to go back to the question Sheehan wants to put to the president. And to recent polls indicating more and more of us are beginning to ask the same thing. Not just why did her son die, but why have over 1,860 American sons and daughters died? Why have 14,000 more been injured? Why have an untold number of Iraqis also been killed and wounded? To find weapons of mass destruction? To liberate an oppressed people? To fight the war on terror? Some other of the shifting rationales that sound so tinny as the casualty count rises like floodwater? Or, was it not all simply for the stubborn hubris of a man unable to admit when he has erred and the blinkered morality of a frightened nation unwilling to call him on it? I care nothing about Cindy Sheehan's marriage or her previous meeting with George Bush; she's asking the right question. I suspect that's precisely why some people care about those things so much.

Opinion:

For a time it seemed not to matter to the American public that the stated reasons for going to war, the weapons of mass destruction and the links with Al Qaeda, turned out not to be true. After all, there was no draft, the casualties were not reaching Vietnam levels, and the families of soldiers could not bear to think that their sons and daughters were fighting and dying in a dubious cause, or so the administration calculated. There were critics, of course, but the general public seemed to accept all the misleading and disingenuous statements such as ''mission accomplished" or that the Iraqi insurrection is in its ''last throes" or that old holdover from the Vietnam War: We are fighting them there so we won't have to fight them here at home. Now Bush's reason for more dead is to honor those who have already died. But the tide is turning. Most Americans disapprove of how Bush is handling the war, and most now no longer trust his honesty, according to polls, which used to be his trump card. ''Today," according to pollster John Zogby, ''the linkage between Iraq and the war on terrorism that has worked for Bush in the past is taking its toll. Barely a majority give the president positive marks for handling the war on terrorism -- down from 66 percent when he was reelected in 2004." Saddam's war against Iran lasted almost a dozen years. But then he didn't have to put up with mothers of dead soldiers effectively questioning a failing enterprise. And so the president interrupts his vacation to make speeches in support of his war -- speeches in which he now makes references to the number of American dead, which The New York Times called ''rare." Thanks in part to Cindy Sheehan, it is getting harder to sweep the cost of this war under the national rug. In this, her mission has been partially accomplished.

Opinion:

My mother is a lifelong Republican. She got it from her father, a yellow-dog Republican if ever there was one. As unofficial GOP godfather of Fillmore, Calif., he collected absentee ballots every election for his large family and marked them himself. No sense in taking chances that someone might vote for a Democrat. So when my mother called me the other day and told me she was considering registering as a Democrat, I was, well, stunned. Somewhere in a cemetery plot near Fillmore a body is spinning. For the last year or more my mother has been gradually expressing ever greater exasperation with President Bush, the war, and the religious right. “Have you heard about this James Dobson guy?” she asked me on the phone, referring to the head of Focus on the Family. “If they overturn Roe vs. Wade, that’ll be it for me,” she said. Then she mentioned Cindy Sheehan. For all the efforts to discredit Ms. Sheehan, what she accomplished in drawing attention to the human cost of the war, if my mother’s opinion is any indication, crossed party lines. There’s a Mom Faction in American politics, and while it isn’t a monolithic Third Rail, it’s at least and second-and-a-half rail. When their children are dying on a battlefield of choice, you touch it at your peril. My mother has her fingers on the pulse, and scalps, of many such women. She’s a hairdresser with a clientele that has been coming to her regularly for decades. Now grandmothers, these women were moms during Vietnam, in which over 50,000 American sons and daughters died. They worried then about their kids’ safety, now they’re worried about grandkids - theirs or someone else’s. Most are pretty mainstream, most Republican, and most, my mother tells me, pretty much fed up with George Bush.

Opinion:

Can a U.S. empire be created to enforce a new world order starting in the Middle East? No. The United States stands on a cusp of history where false moves can result in devolution. We have no divine assurance of success. We are seriously overstretched militarily. There are no more troops available to invade and topple Iran or North Korea. Bombing is possible but will not depose governments, only fuel enmity. Democracy is not created at the point of a gun. We are in an economically fragile state. The burden of national debt is overwhelming. The U.S. dollar is under attack. Our energy resources are being poorly shepherded and we are not using what technological prowess that we do have to achieve short- or medium-term energy independence. Other economic giants emerge on the global stage and our trade policies seem increasingly disjointed. Under those conditions, are we in a position to impose our will in the Mideast? No. We need to re-evaluate our position: to think of ourselves as a global partner and part of the U.N. family in the truest sense. We need to recognize that the ability to make nuclear weapons cannot be eliminated but that the willingness to use them can be reduced by a rational, fair and compassionate foreign policy. Terrorism cannot be eliminated; it has existed throughout history. But we can reduce it to minimum levels by the same attention to fairness and compassion as a supporter, not a detractor, of the United Nations. Most important, we need to eliminate the underpinning for our greedy attachment to the Middle East, the need for oil. We need a bold new energy project to achieve essential energy independence within 20 years. As for Iraq, we need a new well-defined "course": full withdrawal of our troops within six months with accelerated training of Iraqi troops. We must also accept the reality that civil war has, indeed, come to Iraq, largely caused by ourselves. We can hope that this civil war will be relatively contained through assistance from the Arab border states and the United Nations, and that three relatively autonomous entities will emerge, a southern Shiite state closely associated with Iran, a northern Kurdish entity with de facto independent status, and a Sunni central entity, closely linked to Jordan and perhaps Syria. We need to let the Middle East transform itself, not according to our naïve philosophy, but according to its own pace and logic.

Casualty Report Local story: Pennsylvania soldier wounded in Iraq.

War News for Thursday, August 25, 2005 Bring 'em on: Five Iraqis killed in Najaf after Badr Brigade militia attacks al-Sadr offices. Bring 'em on: Heavy fighting between Mehdi Army and Badr Brigades reported in Sadr City. Bring 'em on: Militias and US troops reported fighting in Baquba. Bring 'em on: Six Iraqi civilians killed by gunmen near Abu Sayda. Bring 'em on: Filipino contractor and two Iraqis killed in ambush near Kirkuk. Bring 'em on: Fifteen killed, 40 wounded in coordinated attacks on police in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Twi Iraqis killed, eight wounded in Mosul mortar attack. Bring 'em on: Four Shi'ite pilgrims killed in bus ambush near Baquba. Bring 'em on: Four Iraqi police wounded by mortar attack in Baquba. Bring ‘em on: Missiles fired at SCIRI offices in Basra. The American Lesion. "Resolution 3 passed unanimously by 4,000 delegates to the annual event states: 'The American Legion fully supports the President of the Untied States, the United States Congress and the men, women, and leadership of our armed forces as they are engaged in the global war on terrorism, and the troops who are engaged in protecting our values and way of life. For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories,' Cadmus said. 'We must never let that happen again. I assure you, The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom loving peoples.'" Commentary Opinion:

Those of us who are old enough to have seen this movie before were reminded of other presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, who were haunted by another war and dogged by war protesters and a nation that lost confidence in their leadership and wound up divided against itself. Will history remember this week as the tipping point for George W. Bush and the Republicans who control Congress? Can they stay the course as they head into mid-term elections next year? One more question: Will our children and grandchildren and their children harvest a bitter crop of budget deficits, higher oil prices, Islamic militancy and a broken Army and Marine Corps that was seeded in Iraq by this president, his vice president and his secretary of defense? Will that bitter harvest, not a cakewalk, a mission accomplished and a Mesopotamian march of democracy, be Bush's legacy?

Opinion:

Without an interpreter, our people are essentially blind to what is happening around them. They cannot tell if the loud argument in the market is over the price of tomatoes or a threat of murder. And because in general we hire local Iraqis to surmount the language hurdle, Americans don't even know if they can trust their own interpreters. Equally important, Iraqis who want to share important information with an American patrol cannot unless there is an interpreter - a message as simple as "look behind the grade school" is impossible to convey in hand signals and pigeon English. How can average Iraqis help us secure the country if they can't speak to us? Yet American forces in Iraq average only one or two interpreters per company (about 150 soldiers or Marines). When I was there on active duty last year, I worked in the department providing all American logistical and maintenance support for the nascent Iraqi armed forces. Our office had two Americans and 22 Iraqis - and not a single translator. At the various military bases we oversaw, conversation between American advisers and their Iraqi counterparts was catch-as-catch-can. And we were banned from hiring Iraqis on our own because we were told that one American contractor had a "sole source contract" with the Pentagon. Why couldn't the contractor provide sufficient translators? While I never received an official explanation, I did get a pretty good hint: the translators we worked with told me they were getting about $400 a month for their services. This is clearly insufficient to encourage many Iraqis to risk their lives to help us. The American businesses in the region, like the oil contractors and even press organizations, paid much more.

Opinion:

I doubt his call to arms is going to reverse Bush's parent problem, and I'm not just talking about the grieving ones protesting and counter-protesting over his conduct of the war. Parents are also increasingly resistant to the hard sell that built the volunteer Army. Kids are still enlisting (although not enough to meet demand), even though before they can train to be a high-tech whiz, they must first spend a couple of low-tech years patrolling Mosul. At 18, they still feel immortal. But parents no longer swallow the pitch that the military offers a better life for their kids, not if it means being blown to bits in an unarmored Humvee by an improvised explosive device. A Pentagon survey last November found that only 25% of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42% shortly after the start of the war.

Opinion:

For reasons that we must try to understand, the mainstream American media mostly offers a deadly combination of two recurring themes - first is the Bush administration's increasingly less credible mantras about needing to stay the course and fight the terrorists "over there" before they attack Kansas City, Omaha and Laredo with atomic bombs; second, is the mishmash of speculation and imagination that masquerades as fact and serious analysis from so-called "terrorism experts." There are several things seriously wrong with most of the "terrorism experts" whom I have seen and heard on American television and radio. Their main weakness is that they operate in the realm of the speculative rather than the factual. The bulk of their analyses are total guesswork, and usually wrong; yet even that is flawed because - and this is weakness number 2 - their guesswork is ideologically defined by the prevalent White House script of the day. Weakness number 3 is that, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of these experts have little direct knowledge of the Arab-Asian societies they are analyzing (one give-away for that problem is that they routinely mispronounce most of the names of people, places and organizations they are supposed to be experts on). Major problem number 4 is that the experts tend to focus their speculation on the symptoms of terror rather than its underlying causes. Most of them seem ignorant of - or at least do not talk about - the full range of issues that propel young men and women into the grizzly business of terror, and that drive political tensions and anger in many Arab-Asian societies. Problem number 5 is that they emphasize military analyses, for a problem that is predominantly political. Most of these "experts" are retired military officers, former FBI agents, ex-special forces toughies, or marketing-savvy journalists or researchers. Their main qualifications seem to be their impressive square jaws, or ability to qualify every sentence they speak with "it seems," "we suspect," or "it is likely that," thereby anchoring their analyses in a ton of speculation and guesswork that sometimes verges on fantasy. Statements of proven fact or verifiable intent seem alien to their universe, which is an insult to the best traditions of American journalism that respect both factuality and one's audience.

Analysis:

Finally, realists never fessed up to the fact that their policies in the Arab world, by justifying tolerance for dictatorships whose brutality provoked a violent Islamist backlash, made September 11 possible. This was the neocon critique, and it remains relevant. Realists regard international affairs as a perpetual negotiation over interests; and while they accept the force of ideology, they often err in miscalculating its sway, because they are so mistrustful of ideology in the first place. That's why idealists have an advantage over realists in understanding the clout of militant Islam, and it's why neocons had a response to Sepember 11 when the realists did not. Bush is indeed resorting to more realism in Iraq, and no one should be surprised; even his administration never believed in absolute unilateralism, which is, anyway, a political impossibility. However, democratic idealism and the U.S. ability to shape Iraqi politics are perhaps the only potent arrows the administration has left in a much-depleted quiver. Sadly, it seems to be steadily abandoning both, hence the realists' delight - a delight that confuses success with embrace of the status quo.

Thanks to alert reader carl p for the two items above. Analysis:

More important yet, the politicians involved - many of them exiles, some of them with few roots in Iraq, the Sunnis among them with limited roots in the insurgent Sunni community (and in any case largely cut out of the bargaining process between Kurdish and Shi'ite politicians) - are fighting for a retrograde-sounding constitution (religiously based and without a significant emphasis on women's rights) inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. It is a constitution aimed at creating an almost impossibly starved central government guaranteed to control little. Meanwhile, outside the Green Zone, amid a brewing stewpot of internecine killing and incipient civil war, vast parts of the country have simply passed beyond Baghdad's rule, and significant parts of central Iraq seemingly beyond any rule at all. The Kurdish areas in the north have long been autonomous, with their own armed militia. In the largely Sunni areas of central Iraq, chaos is the rule, but whole towns like Haditha are now "insurgent citadels" run, as Fallujah was less than a year ago, as little retro-Islamic statelets. (Grim as this may be, such statelets can offer - as Taliban-ruled Afghanistan did after two decades of civil war and chaos - order of a harsh kind that ensures personal safety for most inhabitants. This is no small thing when conditions are desperate enough.) The Shi'ite south, on the other hand, has largely fallen under the control of Islamic parties and their armed militias, all allied to one degree or another with the neighboring Iranian fundamentalist regime. In the north and the south, security is increasingly in the hands of local parties, not the central government, or even the occupying forces. Throw in a full-scale insurgency, constant interruptions in oil and electricity production (as well as production levels at or even below those of Saddam Hussein's weakest post-Gulf War days in early 1990), and high unemployment, and most Iraqis may not greatly care about, or even be affected by, whatever "constitution" is produced inside the relative safety of the Green Zone. With that in mind, imagine some of the hawks and neo-conservatives who first started us (and the Iraqis) off on this glorious Middle Eastern adventure of ours as being capable of seeing the situation in a clear-eyed way. If so, they might easily conclude that they were on a bad LSD trip out of the Vietnam era. After all, they have essentially created their own worst nightmare - no small accomplishment when you think about it.

Casualty Reports Local story: Tennessee Guardsman wounded in Iraq. Local story: Oklahoma contractor killed in Iraq.

Patriotism Means Taking Responsibility

An editorial from the Salt Lake Tribune

Anyone who was worried that Monday's Pioneer Park anti-war protest would embarrass either the visiting Veterans of Foreign Wars or their special guest, President Bush, can relax. For all the president was able to see or hear of the contrarian event, the protest may as well have been on Mars.

The only worrisome aspect of the well-attended protest, which doubtless drew both more supporters and more ire once it became known that Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson was among its backers, was the suggestion heard here and there that there is something wrong with protesting a president, a war or a president's policy toward a war. There isn't. And, as long as this is the kind of nation that was worth the sacrifice of VFW members, there won't be. Patriotism does not mean blind loyalty to whoever happens to be in power at the moment. Support for the troops does not mean uncritical support for the mission they have been given. Not in a democracy. Patriotism means people taking their responsibility as citizens seriously, looking at the facts, searching their hearts and deciding what course their nation should follow. Those who thoughtfully support the president and his policies, and say so, are being no more or less patriotic than those who oppose him, and say so. Support for the troops means taking responsibility for what is happening to them by insisting that they receive the best leadership, the best equipment and weaponry, the best medical care and, perhaps, a rapid end to a war that, in many patriotic minds, was ill-conceived and now risks becoming a prolonged and fruitless death trap. The need for this true form of patriotism is not less important in time of war. It is more important. Because the actual bleeding and dying is being done by a small fraction of the population, and because the rest of us are not being asked to sacrifice in any way, too many of us may be lulled into a sense that the war doesn't matter to us. But a war fought in our name, paid for by our taxes (or, more precisely these days, our national debt), endangering the lives of our fellow citizens, if not our near and dear, is the very thing that should move Americans away from apathy and toward some level of involvement. Mayor Anderson was correct to speak out for the right as he sees it. Citizenship in a free society does not just allow it. It demands it.

War News for Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed by homemade bomb near Karmah.

Bring ‘em on: Five bodyguards killed and six others injured in attack on the motorcade of Iraq’s undersecretary of the Justice Ministry near Khadra northwest of Baghdad. The undersecretary was uninjured.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier and one US Marine killed by sniper fire in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Two policemen, three civilians, one insurgent killed, 24 civilians and seven police wounded, two insurgents arrested as heavily armed rebels attacked police checkpoints in western Baghdad with RPGs and automatic weapons.

Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed and two injured in IED explosion Monday southwest of Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Two Iraqi insurgents killed in attack on Iraqi soldiers and US Marines in Hit.

Deployment: The U.S. defense secretary has announced plans to deploy two additional battalions to Iraq amid rising insurgent attacks ahead of referendum on constitution. He rejected concerns that rejection of the charter by Sunnis could leave U.S. forces caught in the middle of a civil war. Rumsfeld’s comments came on a day in which 15 people including four U.S. troops were killed. At least 12 people including one U.S. soldier were killed in a suicide attack in Baqouba. Nine U.S. troops were also injured in the attack. The U.S. military has announced death of three of its troops in separate incidents.

Condemnation: A government minister has openly lambasted U.S. occupation of the country, blaming it for the upsurge in violence and rampant corruption.

Salam al-Maliki, transport minister, said the presence of U.S.-led troops was as detrimental to the country’s well-being as the devastation resulting from terror attacks.

“Corruption, terror … and occupation are taking their daily toll on the life of Iraqi citizens,” Maliki said in an interview.

He said the worsening conditions in Iraq along with the hike in terror, insurgent attacks and violence “are a product of the occupation.”

Maliki is the first government minister who publicly condemns U.S. troops, saying that they shoulder the responsibility of the chaos in the country.

Prisoners: Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the military said it has arrested more than 40,000 people. The population today at the three U.S.-run prisons -- Bucca, Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper near the Baghdad airport, where former President Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants are being held -- is 10,600, double the number of a year ago. The average incarceration at Bucca is a year. The military attributes the surge in detentions to an increase in combat operations and the inability of the nascent Iraqi justice system to handle the crushing caseload.

Many of the freed detainees express bewilderment at why they were held; even the U.S. commander who oversees Bucca, Col. Austin Schmidt, 55, of Fairfax, estimated that one in four prisoners "perhaps were just snagged in a dragnet-type operation" or were victims of personal vendettas.

"This is like Chicago in the '30s: You don't like somebody, you drop a dime on them," Schmidt said. "And by the time the Iraqi court system figures it out, they go home. But it takes a while."

Disappearances: Salima Hasan has been looking for her husband and son since the night two months ago when men wearing Iraqi National Guard uniforms came into her home and arrested them.

Hasan, an Arab, could find no record of the two men at either the police station or the criminal court. She doesn’t know who took away her husband and son, though has her suspicions it was the Kurdish security forces.

“The whole family kept weeping,” said Hasan. “We don’t know where they came from. We are having a hard time.”

Hasan is not alone in her beliefs. Dozens of Arab and Turkoman families here allege that Kurdish peshmerga and security forces under the authority of Kurdish political parties have been arresting and illegally detaining their relatives.

They say it is part of a wider Kurdish plan to wrest control of this ethnically diverse and increasingly tense city and make it part of the Kurdish region, rolling back Saddam Hussein’s policy of emptying Kirkuk of Kurds.

A job for the NRA!: Police in Mosul have given the city’s 1.7 million people until the end of the month to surrender their ‘heavy weapons.’

“We have information that heavy weapons are in the hands of civilians in the city,” Mosul’s police chief Ahmad Khalaf said.

He said security forces in the city have been target of repeated attacks by such weapons.

Khalaf did not specify what falls under the category of ‘heavy weapons.’

However, roadside bombs, rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns are the weapons of choice for insurgents in the city.

1787 Redux

Bad blueprint: Iraq's new constitution, supposedly the blueprint for a democratic future, was threatening to drag the country into civil war last night.

As Shia and Kurdish factions presented the document to the National Assembly, minutes before a midnight deadline, Sunni Muslims strongly opposed to its federal structure made accusations of "betrayal" and warned of a violent sectarian backlash. A vote on the draft was later delayed for three days in the hope that the sides could come to an agreement on its wording.

The draft constitution is the principal plank of President George Bush's exit strategy from the Iraq conflict, which has made his popularity collapse among American voters.

"Intense meetings": Iraqi leaders on Wednesday tried to persuade furious Sunni Arabs to sign the draft constitution, a day before the charter goes to parliament where conservative Shiites and secularist Kurds can ensure its victory.

President Jalal Talabani and other senior Iraqi leaders were locked in intense talks with the Sunni Arab negotiators after they expressed anger over the charter with some even calling it ”illegal”.

“Intense meetings are on with some Sunni leaders and negotiators to convince them to come on board and sign the draft,” a source close to negotiations said.

Approval unlikely: Iraq's leaders conceded yesterday that they were unlikely to win Sunni Arab approval for a new constitution by tomorrow's deadline.

The ruling coalition of Shias and Kurds said the disputed text could be pushed through parliament despite warnings from Sunnis that it was a charter for civil war.

The government ruled out major changes to a draft presented to parliament on Monday and said the restive Sunni minority had to accept that Iraq would become a federal state.

"The draft that was submitted is approximately the draft that will be implemented," said a spokesman for the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

1900 dead Americans for this: Secular Iraqis said on Wednesday a proposed new constitution left no room for doubt about the Islamist path the country was heading down two years after a U.S.-led invasion was supposed to produce greater freedoms.

The document presented to parliament on Monday is suffused with the language of political Islam in defining the state, and assigns a primary role to Islam as a source for legislation.

"The draft aborts the democratic process Iraqis hoped for and is a big victory for political Islam," said writer Adel Abdel-Amir. "Islamic law, not the people, has become the source of authority."

The draft says Islam is the official religion of the state and there can be no law that contradicts the "fixed principles of its rulings." The preamble says the constitution responds to "the call of our religious and national leaders and the insistence of our great religious authorities."

Unsettling: Is Iraq moving, inch by inch, towards becoming an Islamic republic? it is a prospect that is as unsettling for many Iraqis as it is for George Bush in the White House.

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a centralised and largely secular state.

Now, if the Shia religious parties get their way, it will be a decentralised state with a pronounced Islamic identity.

The draft of the new constitution describes Islam as "a main source" of legislation and stipulates that no law may contradict Islamic principles.

Rule by ayatollah: Some secular Iraqi leaders complained Tuesday that the country's nearly finished constitution lays the groundwork for the possible domination of the country by Shiite Islamic clerics, and that it contains specific provisions that could sharply curtail the rights of women.

The secular leaders said the draft, which was presented to the National Assembly on Monday, contains language that not only establishes the primacy of Islam as the country's official religion, but appears to grant judges wide latitude to strike down legislation that may contravene the faith. To interpret such legislation, the constitution calls for the appointment of experts in Shariah, or Islamic law, to preside on the Supreme Federal Court.

The draft constitution, these secular Iraqis say, clears the way for religious authorities to adjudicate personal disputes like divorce and inheritance matters by allowing the establishment of religious courts, raising fears that a popularly elected Islamist-minded government could enact legislation and appoint judges who could turn the country into a theocracy.

Anger and joy: A new draft constitution that would transform Iraq into a loose federal union sparked celebrations Tuesday in the streets of the Shiite south and an angry rally in the Sunni Arab heartland, where some chanted for the return of Saddam Hussein.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, called instrumental by all sides in prodding the constitution toward completion, defended it against complaints that it gave Islamic law too much power, particularly over women. Khalilzad said the draft was "right for Iraq at the present time."

Fragmentation: If the draft constitution becomes reality, the new Iraq would be a vastly different place: a multicultural, democratic oasis where torture victims can sue their oppressors, free speech is protected and women gain a big role in government.

But Iraq also would become a decentralized, even fragmented, land in a volatile region, where neighbors such as Iran could easily exploit such weakness.

Key parts of the draft - on the role of private militias, the control of oil money and even Islam's impact on women's rights - could sow the seeds of conflict or, as a worst case, civil war.

Such fears lie at the heart of complaints by Sunni Arabs, who angrily rejected the draft Monday night, prompting parliament to suspend a vote to give time for passions to cool.

Rejection: Iraq's Sunni Arabs stand staunchly against a new constitution, making it more likely the Shia- and Kurdish-backed document will have to be rammed through parliament over Sunni opposition later this week.

As part of a growing campaign against a charter they argue devolves too much power to the regions, Sunni leaders held strident news conferences in Baghdad while demonstrations went on elsewhere on Wednesday. "We reject federalism in the central and southern regions. We reject it because it has no basis other than sectarianism," Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of an umbrella group called the National Conference for the Sunni People of Iraq, told reporters. "Every Iraqi must stand in the way of all those who want to deepen sectarianism in Iraq."

Bush Administration Framing Techniques

Despicable: For one of the most obvious examples yet of how the White House is trying to frame the debate over the war in Iraq -- casting any opponent of the war as weak, cowardly and unpatriotic -- check out this response from spokesman Trent Duffy to a reporter's question in yesterday's abbreviated press gaggle:

"Q Is the White House concerned about the protests that are planned in Salt Lake City today?

"Mr. Duffy: The President addressed that directly. He can understand that people don't share his view that we must win the war on terror, and we cannot retreat and cut and run from terrorists, but he just has a different view."

Loathsome: Meeting briefly with reporters Monday aboard Air Force One, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman subbing for Scott McClellan, said that President Bush believes that those who want the U.S. to begin to change course in Iraq do not want America to win the overall "war on terror." Duffy spoke on a day when a surprisingly large antiwar protest met the president during his stay in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he addressed a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. Speaking to reporters, Duffy said that Bush "can understand that people don't share his view that we must win the war on terror, and we cannot retreat and cut and run from terrorists, but he just has a different view. He believes it would be a fundamental mistake right now for us to cut and run in the face of terrorism, because if we've learned anything, especially from the 9/11 Commission Report, it is that to continue to retreat after the Cole, after Beirut and Somalia is to only empower terrorists and to give them more recruiting tools as they try to identify ways to harm Americans.”

Irony

Mrs. Orlando’s feelings merit respect: Nearly 600 white wooden crosses in perfectly straight rows stretch down the narrow road leading to President Bush's ranch, a sea of names in the grassy ditch. Lt. Seth Dvorin. Sgt. David W. Johnson. Daniel Torres. Casey Sheehan. Hundreds of anti-war demonstrators have spent time at the memorial the past two weeks, pausing to wipe away tears or place an American flag by a cross as they walk slowly down the road. To some relatives of the fallen U.S. soldiers, however, it isn't a tribute to heroes but a political statement by liberal groups with whom they disagree. Sherry Orlando, a spokeswoman at Fort Campbell, Ky., said she doesn't want her husband, who was killed in Iraq in 2003, to be used "for someone's political agenda."

But I wonder what she thinks about this: Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts. Families of fallen soldiers and Marines are being told they have the option to have the government-furnished headstones engraved with "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom" at no extra charge, whether they are buried in Arlington or elsewhere. A mock-up shown to many families includes the operation names.

Nadia and Robert McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended up on his government-supplied headstone in Oceanside, Calif., without family approval. "I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either. "In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact." The owner of the company that has been making gravestones for Arlington and other national cemeteries for nearly two decades is uncomfortable, too. "It just seems a little brazen that that's put on stones," said Jeff Martell, owner of Granite Industries of Vermont. "It seems like it might be connected to politics."

Heartbreak

Unhealed wounds: Every time the wound begins to heal at Ray and Diane Maida's house, something comes along to rub salt into it.

First came news that their son, Mark Maida, a 22-year-old Army sergeant, was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb on May 26. Then, a week after his death, the Army gave only hours' notice that the body would be arriving at Gen. Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, forcing the grieving family into a frantic scramble to retrieve it for a funeral two days later.

Letters and packages to Mark from home arrived for a time almost daily, marked "Return to sender." Then a slow trickle of possessions arrived from Iraq and his unit's base at Fort Irwin, Calif. To top it off, despite repeated efforts, Army officials failed to provide details of Mark's death. More than two months later, the Maidas finally got the details of his death, not from the Army, but from the Washington Post.

"It's just been one wound after another," Diane said. "And just about the time you think you're on the upswing, then you get shut down again with another incident."

For the Maidas, pain from the loss of their son has been compounded by countless snafus. Ray said an Army official even admitted, unofficially, that the Army lacked a proper protocol for dealing with the families of dead soldiers.

It's part and parcel of what Ray sees as a pervading ineptitude in conducting the war and the military's inability to protect its troops.

"They can take a $1 million missile and put it up some Iraqi's ass and they can't tell me what time my son's coming in?" Ray fumed. "This is why my son's dead, this total incompetence."

A Resource

The Project on Defense Alternatives has just added one thousand full-text links to its public access Internet Library pages. These links lead to online documents, reports, and articles published in 2005 by more than 200 official and NGO sources. Our libraries include:

>> Terrorism, counter-terrorism, homeland security: http://www.comw.org/tct

>> Defense Strategy Review: http://www.comw.org/qdr

>> Chinese Military Power: http://www.comw.org/cmp

>> Revolution in Military Affairs: http://www.comw.org/rma

>> Occupation Distress: http://www.comw.org/od

>> War Report (Iraq & Afghanistan): http://www.comw.org/warreport

The sites also contain more than 4,000 document links from pervious updates. I hope you find them useful for research, reference, and teaching. If so, please share the URLs with others.

>> Also see: PDA publications index: http://www.comw.org/pda/pub-list.html

>> And: PDA Military, War, & Peace Bookmarks: http://www.comw.org/pda/milbkmrk.html

Sincerely, Carl Conetta Project on Defense Alternatives 186 Hampshire Street Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Many thanks to Mr. Conetta for sharing this valuable resource.

Made Me Laugh

The intellectual: So this summer, the President is reading Salt: A World History. That is, when he gets done with Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar. Or maybe he's first reading The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. I'm not sure of the order, but I am surprised. Not even I, a bona fide Ph.D. nerd addicted to books with footnotes, read tomes like this on vacation. My 400-page summer books are by Lisa Scottoline.

So am I impressed? Well, not really. Apparently the media was not either; of major papers, only the L.A. Times covered the booklist as straight news. Makes you wonder if the mainstream outlets are catching on, finally, and that they saw the administration's attempt to portray Bush as an intellectual as what it was: a big lie, the deliberate seeding of misinformation.

It's not the first or only "big lie," of course, to come out of this administration. When you google "big lie" you get 500,000 results, and if you refine your search with "Bush" and "Iraq," you get 110,000 results. Nearly a quarter of recent discourse about the "big lie" concerns Bush's Iraq fiasco, and surely a few tens of thousands more also cover Bush administration lies about global warming, private Social Security accounts, the deficit, James "Jeff Gannon" Guckert, Valerie Plame, Terry Schiavo, Intelligent Design, and just about every other issue that has come before it. (And, yes, some of the discourse accuses liberals of using varieties of the "big lie" to attack Bush -- in particular labeling the truthful accusation that Bush has been deceptive as a "big lie" itself!)

"How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?

"Ten.

"1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed;

"2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed;

"3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb;

"4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the light bulb or for eternal darkness;

"5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb;

"6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner 'Bulb Accomplished';

"7. One administration insider to resign and in detail reveal how Bush was literally 'in the dark' the whole time;

"8. One to viciously smear No. 7;

"9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along;

"10. And finally, one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country."

Fresh analysis from Gallup:

The latest quarterly average for Iraq shows that 50% say it was a mistake to send troops (the most recent single measure on this indicator, from an Aug. 5-7 Gallup Poll, shows 54% saying the war was a mistake).

In the comparable quarter for the Vietnam War (the third quarter of the war’s third year — that is, the third quarter of 1967), Gallup found 41% saying the conflict was a mistake. It was not until the third quarter of the fourth year of the Vietnam War (August-September 1968) that a majority of Americans said the war was a mistake. In short, it took longer for a majority of Americans to view the Vietnam War as a mistake than has been the case for Iraq.

A President less popular than Nixon and a war less popular than Vietnam. That’s quite a combo.

Commentary

Interview with a former soldier: Q: Is there anything you would like to add that you feel is not being covered by the media?

A: First of all, when I was in Iraq, the news they showed, which probably won't come too much as a surprise -- they show FOX news. That's all the coverage the military in Iraq gets.

We hear from the President and we hear from people in the military how we're going to stay the course and we're making headway, and this is so important, and we're there for all these great reasons. But then you don't hear mainstream voices from veterans who have been there, and seen what it's like, who have come back and are against it...

Some policy expert gets a lot more credit just because they're better educated. The mainstream media doesn't seem interested in covering a veteran's perspective or an Iraqi's perspective.

You never hear from an average Iraqi about how they feel about it, and I think that's terrible. They're the ones whose county is being invaded. They're the ones who are having the most casualties. Something like 100,000 Iraqis have died in the war, yet you never hear from them. Like they're not even worthy to being talked to at all!

People in Washington talk about people in the military as if all they live for is the military and this country. And we can't even talk about an exit strategy because it'll make the troops over there feel like we don't support them ... They're normal people, just like anyone else. They have families. They're probably either going to college or have a career that they're working on. And they have just as many questions and doubts about what's going on in Iraq -- and especially if they're there, or their family members are there. They're just not over there to serve the interests of the U.S. They have a whole separate life besides the military.

They talk about us in abstract terms -- we're all these people who are serving our country. Most of the people who are over there, they're not thinking so much about, 'Well, I have to stay here so the Iraqi people can have a democratic society.' They're like, 'I have to do my job so that I stay alive, and the people around me also stay alive, and then we can go back home to our families.' That's why they're there -- to protect the real people they are close to.

Eyewitness account: When the shelling subsided, U.S. commanders ordered their marines to storm the city. They searched Haditha quarter by quarter, house by houses and arrested scores of young men and even women and prevented us from holding the afternoon Friday prayers.

In one bloody incident I saw the marines killing two unarmed inhabitants. One of them was in his bed in the Sheikh Hadid district, where Sumaidi was born. The second was killed as he strolled in his garden.

More residents began falling. In our area only the marines killed five people, all of them unarmed and had nothing to do with the insurgents.

For us, those killed by the U.S. are martyrs. The convoy of Iraqi martyrs is growing and innocent blood keeps flowing from the Iraqi artery the U.S. has torn.

Sumaidi, other senior Iraqi officials and the world have said nothing about the five innocent people U.S. troops killed in our neighborhood. The world knows about the victims and Sumaidi and his government know who the murderer is. But no one utters a world of protest.

Still there are many who would like us to stand behind the government and give the U.S. and its marines a chance.

We would have rallied behind Sumaidi and his government if they had stood up to denounce the U.S. occupation and U.S. military’s random and barbaric killing of innocent people.

What does the world expect from us? What does the government expect from us? Do they want us to thank the U.S. for sending its marines, Apache helicopters and F16s to destroy our houses, kill our children, detain our women and break our bones?

We have set our own standards on how to deal with them.

Opinion: Back in May when ABC News openly justified the media's refusal to cover the Iraq War, I thought it couldn't get worse. Then, a few months later, I saw that it could, as the Washington Post began trying to intimidate Democratic politicians and prevent them from standing up to voice opposition to the war. I figured that was rock bottom, but in recent days, we've seen that yes, the braindead insulated elitists in the Beltway media have found an even lower road to take than even this.

In the last 48 hours, we've seen the "objective" mainstream media now openly attacking people who oppose the Iraq War. Mind you, these aren't the editorialists or the opinion pundits, these are the people who are supposed to be telling the objective truth -- and instead they are literally attacking war critics.

Take MSNBC's Nora O'Donnell. In an interview with former FBI agent Coleen Rowley (now a candidate for Congress), O'Donnell claimed that Rowley "had decided to align [herself] with anti-war extremists" because Rowley visited Cindy Sheehan's supporters in Crawford. Or, take the Washington Post's Mike Allen. He said those who oppose the war are "PETA, hippies, Naderites" -- again, a blatant effort to paint those who oppose the war as fringe, even though polls show a majority of Americans oppose the war. These nauseating examples need to be put into a context. They follow the media's open pushing of the Iraq War before the invasion and refusal to question what they knew were pre-war lies. They also come as polls show Americans oppose the war, want an exit strategy, and believe the entire mess is endangering U.S. national security. And they come even as Iraq War veterans themselves say they understand that criticism of the war is not criticism of U.S. troops.

All of that should lead any honest person to conclude one thing: other than a few truth-telling reporters, the Beltway media -- spurred on by the elitist, bipartisan foreign policy establishment that doesn't want to admit it was wrong -- actually wants the war to continue, no matter how many American casualties mount, no matter what the ramifications for U.S. national security, no matter what the consequencs for our country over the long-term.

Opinion: Who died and left Cindy Sheehan in charge?

Not her son, Casey. When he was killed in Iraq, he left only a bereaved, bereft mother. We put her in charge — the press, the politicians, the people. We put her in charge not just of her own message and her mission, which is all she had asked for, but we cranked up her voice to equal volume with the man she's calling out: POTUS himself, George W. Bush. "We" are the TV bloviators who prefer talking-head chatter to the shoe-leather work of reporting; the only shoe leather some of them use on the job is walking from the limo to the makeup chair. "We" are the craven pols who let some mater dolorosa do their dirty work of challenging the Bush administration's war policy and deliver the message that something is wrong in Baghdad and Crawford and Washington. And "we" are all those Americans who like their information celebritized, who want news to be cast like a movie, with stock characters: the determined leader, the foreign villain, the "mom." We take a Cindy Sheehan, who has an honest argument to make for herself and people who may hear her and agree, and we punish her for speaking out by investing her with the mantle of omniscience. Buck Henry's line from "To Die For," the brilliant film satirizing television, is: "You're not anybody in America if you're not on TV." Sheehan's mauled image shows the nasty truth we also believe, that "if you're on TV, you must be somebody" — the alpha and omega of wisdom. It's why Tom Cruise, movie star, thought it was perfectly fine to show up on TV as Tom Cruise, mental health advisor to the nation. So Sheehan, who just knows that she's against the war because her boy died there and she doesn't want that to happen to anyone else, gets the celeb treatment, iconized into single-name fame a la Madonna. She's attacked when she tries to fit the enormous role we wrote for her and when she doesn't manage to pull it off. We either hang on her words or hang her for them. The grilling she gets — about foreign policy, about regional strategies — from the nattering nabobs of numbskullery on toxic TV turn her into a straw woman.

Comment: The rationale for the Iraq war has changed so many times that the real reason remains murky. The figures on numbers of Iraqis trained to fight (and someday replace U.S. troops) have jumped up and down like a yo-yo. The markers for when U.S. troops can draw down — when Iraqi democracy grows, when Iraqi forces mature, when we run out of reserve units — are vague. In essence, the president is asking the public to have faith and suspend disbelief. But when so many past rationales for the Iraq war have been junked, a faith-based approach to its future won't keep the American public on board. If a majority of Americans lose trust in Bush's handling of this war, the pressure will grow for a speedy U.S. exit. I don't think we can leave Iraq yet, lest Iraq become the terrorist base it wasn't before. Yet the polls indicate that Americans won't support a continued presence in Iraq unless they are given more facts about where we are headed. That is the nerve that Cindy Sheehan hit, this need for — and true believers' fear of — the facts. By the way, many of Sheehan's detractors accused me of hiding the fact that the president had already met Sheehan. That fact is irrelevant to the situation now. Sheehan met Bush a year ago, when she was part of a larger group and still in shock over her son's death. Iraq hadn't sunk to its current state, nor was the public yet so eager for honest answers about the war. "I was in shock after my son died," Bone says. "Now I am angry. "Tell us what it is going to take to win, Mr. Bush." The president has decided not to talk to Cindy Sheehan. But we all need an answer to the question posed by Sherry Bone.

Comment: President Bush's visit to Utah yesterday offered a great example of the White House's version of highly stylized Japanese Kabuki theater.

Although the speech Bush gave was largely an amalgam of previous addresses, White House reporters were urged to note the extraordinary significance of the president -- for the first time anyone can remember -- actually acknowledging the number of soldiers who have died in Iraq.

Yes, after months of painstakingly avoiding specific mention of the extent of American casualties in the war, Bush somewhat startlingly had this to say yesterday:

"We have lost 1,864 members of our Armed Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and 223 in Operation Enduring Freedom. Each of these men and women left grieving families and loved ones back home. Each of these heroes left a legacy that will allow generations of their fellow Americans to enjoy the blessings of liberty. And each of these Americans have brought the hope of freedom to millions who have not known it."

Bush's tone was matter-of-fact. He didn't spend a lot of time expressing his sympathy for the dead or their families. His speech included no new plans to stem the loss. In fact, Bush went on to invoke the dead soldiers as reason to stay the course in Iraq -- a policy that will inevitably create many more of them:

"We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists, and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us win and fight -- fight and win the war on terror."

Bush critics have never suggested that the president was literally not aware of the number of dead -- after all, it's in the paper every morning.

But in this era of meticulous, artful and deliberate crafting of each and every presidential pronouncement, the unprecedented insertion of hard numbers obviously was meant to signify something.

And indeed, after the speech, White House officials spun it as hugely significant evidence that -- in spite of his refusal to meet with grieving mother Cindy Sheehan -- the president is sensitive to the sacrifices imposed by his policies.

Comment: Confronting increasing protests against the war, with an opposition campaign coalescing around the mother of a dead soldier, Cindy Sheehan, the president offered his own, rare personal accounting of the war's casualties before an audience well acquainted with sacrifice. "We have lost 1,864 members of our armed forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and 223 in Operation Enduring Freedom," Bush told the veterans. "Each of these men and women left grieving families and loved ones back home." As he has during critical junctures of the war in Iraq, the president this week and next week will surround himself with members of the military and war veterans most likely to support what Bush has framed as "the war on terror." And once again, a wartime president facing declining public support for the war is invoking "the lessons of Sept. 11."

Opinion: It took President Bush a long time to break his summer vacation and acknowledge the pain that the families of fallen soldiers are feeling as the death toll in Iraq continues to climb. When he did, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Utah this week, he said exactly the wrong thing. In an address that repeatedly invoked Sept. 11 - the day that terrorists who had no discernable connection whatsoever to Iraq attacked targets on American soil - Mr. Bush offered a new reason for staying the course: to keep faith with the men and women who have already died in the war.

"We owe them something," Mr. Bush said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for." It was, as the mother of one fallen National Guardsman said, an argument that "makes no sense." No one wants young men and women to die just because others have already made the ultimate sacrifice. The families of the dead do not want that, any more than they want to see more soldiers die because politicians cannot bear to admit that they sent American forces to war by mistake.

Opinion: For political reasons, the president has a history of silence on America's war dead. But he finally mentioned them on Monday because it became politically useful to use them as a rationale for war - now that all the other rationales have gone up in smoke.

"We owe them something," he told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5 billion). "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for."

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle: the killing keeps justifying itself.

Opinion: History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security.

But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: "I was wrong."

To stay silent during such a crisis, and particularly to harbor the thought that the administration's misfortune is the Democrats' fortune, is cowardly. In 2008 I want a leader who is willing now to say: "I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me."

Comment: The focus on Sheehan's personal loss is indeed problematic. Bereavement, in and of itself, confers neither knowledge nor insight - only a particular sensibility that might lead to both and a compelling personal narrative through which to articulate them. To define her as a mournful mother, while ignoring that she is a politically conscious, media-savvy campaigner, which she has been for quite some time, does neither her nor her cause any favours.

Indeed, those who focus on Sheehan's woes, whether they support or attack her, miss the point entirely. Had she come to Crawford at Easter, she would most likely have gone unnoticed. The reason she has struck a chord is not because of the sorrow that is personal to her but because of the frustration she shares with the rest of the country over Iraq. That is also why the right have attacked her so ferociously and so personally.

But unlike the Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in his swift boat, Sheehan will not be blown off course quite so easily. The public mood in America is shifting consistently and decisively against the war and Bush's handling of it. Gallup has commissioned eight polls asking whether it was worth going to war since the beginning of the year: every time at least half have said no. For the first time, most people believe the invasion of Iraq has made the US more vulnerable to further attacks. The number of those who want all the troops withdrawn remains a minority at 33% - but that is double what it was two years ago, and still growing.

The reason Sheehan has become such a lightning rod is because that mood has found only inadequate and inconsistent expression in Congress. It has been left to her to articulate an escalating political demand that is in desperate need of political representation. This marks not only a profound dislocation between the political class and political culture but a short circuit in the democratic process. The mainstream has effectively been marginalised.

Editorial: President Bush’s sunny declaration on Monday that Baghdad's leaders were "defying the terrorists and pessimists by completing work on a democratic constitution" was unfortunate not only for its timing but for its willfulness. Just hours after Bush's speech, Iraqi leaders announced (again) that they were unable to agree on a draft constitution. Just as disturbing, however, is the continuing disconnect between the president's perspective and Iraq's reality. In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Bush again conflated Al Qaeda and Iraq, neglecting to note that Al Qaeda put down roots in Iraq only after the invasion or that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 or Osama bin Laden. His description of Iraq's constitutional negotiations — "a difficult process that involves debate and compromise" — understates the depth of animosity in Iraq. On Monday, representatives submitted an incomplete draft to the National Assembly because of continued disagreement on basic issues such as the strength of a central government and the role of Islam.

The United States has 138,000 troops in Iraq; Bush said Monday that they'd come home when Iraqis "can defend their freedom" by taking more of the fight to the enemy. But he was silent on when that might be.

Opinion: Now Feingold has become the first senator to put a specific date next to his call for a road map designed to complete the undefined US mission in Iraq. That is an oversimplification. Feingold is a notoriously precise speaker, and it's worth letting him make his own case.

A great many conflicting signals have been coming out of the military and the Bush administration about the war in recent weeks -- specifically the duration of our involvement and the size of our deployment over time.

In what he acknowledged was an effort to ''jump start" a national discussion, Feingold proposed setting a specific goal for bringing US forces home. His suggested date: the end of next year. Equally important is his call for a detailed road map to that moment. Feingold emphasizes that his suggested date should not be put in concrete, that there could be factors or events that make it sooner or even a bit later.

This is the kind of discussion that Bush has avoided. But it is now going on all around him -- among some of our allies, within the military, and at the catalytic encampment of critics near his Texas ranch that has hit a nerve with a frustrated public.

Opinion: One of the oddest features of our strange, strange war in Iraq is that we're still trying to figure out the mission. Oil? Religious zealotry? Revenge? Glory? What?

Some critics say President Bush has failed to define just what it is we're trying to do there, but he and his handlers have defined it over and over. The trouble is, just about everyone understands by now that they've been lying all along. So media questioners twist themselves into pretzels trying to figure out some polite way of asking them to tell the truth, just once.

Each time Bush and the other members of his political rat pack alter their talking points they immediately spread the word to all those in the administration allowed to speak. And one element of the new instructions is to excise the latest excuse that's been exposed as bogus. Instead of admitting they were mistaken or not telling the truth, they just make the old excuse inoperable. We're supposed to erase it from our memory banks the same way they erase it from their latest explanation. Among reasons no longer operable are the specter of mushroom clouds, smallpox and nerve gas, plus the fact that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people (during the reign of Bush One). The al-Qaida-connections excuse receded for awhile, but it's back on the list because these days some of the people attacking our troops are in fact al-Qaida-connected. What's not mentioned is that they joined the cause only after we invaded Iraq, leaving a long trail of dead, disabled, homeless, unemployed residents who were supposed to thank us.

Casualty Reports

Local story: White Bear Lake, MN, soldier killed in truck rollover in Mosul.

Local story: Martinsville, MD, soldier killed in roadside explosion near Samarra.

Local story: Rosedale, MD, soldier killed in ambush west of Baghdad.

Local story: Long Island, NY, soldier killed in Mosul.

Local story: Two East Tennessee soldiers killed and two wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Sacramento, CA, soldier killed when a roadside bomb hit his military vehicle near Samarra.

Matt hasn't posted yet; but take a look at these powerpoint slides from here from Raw Story.

War News for Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Eleven Iraqi policemen killed and 15 persons, including a child, wounded in mortar attack on police station in Baquba. Two Iraqi policemen killed in clashes with rebels north of Najaf. Businessman shot dead by gunmen in Tikrit. Former general in Saddam’s army killed by his kidnappers in Basra. Kurdish environment minister survived assassination attempt in which three of her bodyguards were injured.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed in rocket attack in southern Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: US forces in Ramadi targeted by three apparently coordinated car bombs in Ramadi. Three Iraqi bystanders known to be injured, no word of other casualties at this time.

Bring ‘em on: US troops and insurgents involved in fierce fighting in Tal Afar, with four days of bombing reported, resulting in several civilians dead, many wounded, and thousands of families fleeing the city. (Note: I am unable to find corroboration of this report and am unsure of the reliability of the source. Readers, are you familiar with this organization?)

Bring ‘em on: Eight policeman killed and 11 wounded in suicide bombing attack on dining facilities in the provincial government offices in Baquba. An undetermined number of US troops were reported wounded in the attack. One policeman gunned down in his home in the Yarmouk district of Baquba. Three bodyguards injured in ambush of a deputy justice minister’s motorcade in southwestern Baghdad. Pipeline from the Beiji refinery to Baghdad blown up at Ishaaqi. One US soldier killed in roadside bombing near Fallujah.

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis, one US soldier, and one US civilian contractor killed and twenty people wounded, including nine US soldiers, a civilian American contractor, six Iraqi civilians and four Iraqi police officers, in suicide bombing of the Diyala Provincial Joint Coordination Center northeast of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Eight Iraqi police killed in bus ambush in the al-Taremeyah area north of Baghdad. Four Iraqi policemen and three others wounded in booby-trapped car explosion in the al-Doura area south of Baghdad. Unemployment office official and his wife killed by gunmen in Kirkuk. Four police wounded in explosion in Kirkuk. Four unidentified bodies found near the Um al-Qurra mosque west of Baghdad and another unidentified body found in Sadr city.

Just Like 1787

Forced constitution: Iraq's tentative efforts at consensus politics were pushed to breaking point when the Shi'ite majority forced a draft constitution into parliament in defiance of Sunni warnings that it could ignite civil war.

With U.S. diplomats forcing the pace on a timetable that President George W. Bush says can help quell a Sunni insurgency, Shi'ite and Kurdish officials indicated they would force the charter through parliament come what may if Sunnis still object.

For their part, representatives of the Sunni community that dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein and long before said they would now fight the constitution in a referendum in October.

"If it passes, there will be an uprising in the streets," Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak said after a 10-minute sitting at which Hassani declared the draft had been delivered on time.

“We will campaign ... to tell both Sunnis and Shi'ites to reject the constitution, which has elements that will lead to the break-up of Iraq and civil war," Soha Allawi, another Sunni Arab on the constitution-drafting committee, told Reuters.

Vote postponed: Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and its Kurdish allies moved Monday toward fundamentally reshaping their nation, submitting a proposed constitution that would create a loose federation with strongly Islamic national laws.

The draft constitution, sent to parliament just five minutes before a midnight deadline, outraged negotiators for Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, and Sunni constitutional delegates warned that civil unrest could erupt if the charter becomes law over their objections.

"The streets will rise up," predicted Salih Mutlak, a Sunni delegate.

But the coalition of Shiites and Kurds, which holds a heavy majority in parliament and could easily approve the constitution on its own, agreed late Monday to postpone a vote for three days in hopes of appeasing Sunni negotiators.

Not enough: The head of the committee drafting Iraq's constitution said Tuesday that three days are not enough to win over the Sunni Arabs, and the document they rejected may ultimately have to be approved by parliament as is and taken to the people in a referendum.

Iraqi leaders completed a draft Monday night and submitted it to parliament, but - just minutes from a midnight deadline - lawmakers delayed a vote to give negotiators time to persuade Sunni Arabs to accept it.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad urged the Iraqis to work ``in spirit of compromise'' and ``take the national interest into account'' when they resume talks Wednesday.

He said ``every effort needs to be made'' to win Sunni Arab support for the draft and that it ``behooves'' Iraq's other communities - Shiites and Kurds - to ``reach out'' to the Sunnis in the interest of national unity.

``This is not the time to achieve all that one can at the expense of others,'' Khalilzad told reporters Tuesday. He said the time had come ``to build the new Iraq on new principles.''

President Bush, asked about the possibility that objections to the draft from Sunnis could trigger a civil war, said: ``The Sunnis have got to make a choice: Do they want to live in a society that's free?''

What an embarassment that man is...

Elsewhere In Iraq

Killing the pacifists: Sufis seek, through dance, music, chanting and other intensely physical rituals, to transcend worldly existence and perceive the face of the divine. Their mysticism has contributed to their pacifist reputation.

But in Iraq, no one is ever far removed from war. In a sign of the widening and increasingly complex rifts in Iraqi society, Sufis have suddenly found themselves the targets of attacks. Many Iraqis believe those responsible are probably fundamentalist Sunnis who view the Sufis as apostates, just one step removed from the Shiites.

Sheik Ali al-Faiz, a senior official at this Sufi shrine, or takia, rattled off a list of recent assaults: the leader of a takia in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi was abducted and killed in mid-August; a bomb exploded in a takia in Kirkuk earlier this year; gunmen beat Sufi worshippers at a mosque in Ramadi in January; a bomb exploded in the kitchen of a takia in Ramadi last September, and a bomb in April 2004 destroyed an entire takia in the same city.

The early attacks were frightening, but until this spring there had been few Sufi deaths. Then, on June 2, a suicide bomber rammed a minivan packed with explosives into a takia outside the town of Balad, 64 kilometers, or 40 miles, north of Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 12.

Shortages: Water and electricity shortages plague all but the richest corners of Iraq—nowhere more so than here. All over the four provinces occupied by British forces, residents complain of shortages, and occupying forces insist they're doing all they can to fix a problem 30 years in the making. Meanwhile, the days get hotter, tempers flare, and everyone points fingers.

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Williams, 43, commander of British forces in nearby Maysan province, population 500,000, says power and water woes have been a factor in attacks on his troops that have killed five since May. "Their frustrations with the lack of infrastructure are exacerbated by the rising temperature," Williams says of Iraqis in the province. "They lack clean drinking water. They lack electricity for their air-conditioning. The flies, the disease, the smell . . . it all gets a lot worse. The violence tends to peak."

Sabotage: Saboteurs triggered a cascade of blackouts that halted Iraq's entire oil export capacity for most of Monday, a move that cost the country almost $60 million in lost exports and rattled already-jittery world markets.

Government officials blamed the outage on insurgent attacks that toppled key power pylons in central Iraq and darkened broad swaths of the country, including its two largest cities, Baghdad and Basra.

By late Monday, oil tankers were being loaded at less than a third of normal capacity with the help of backup generators, Dow Jones News wires reported.

And It’s One, Two, Three – What Are We Fighting For?

An Islamic Republic, apparently: The United States has eased its opposition to an Islamic Iraqi state to help clinch a deal on a draft constitution before tonight's deadline.

American diplomats backed religious conservatives who threatened to torpedo talks over the shape of the new Iraq unless Islam was a primary source of law. Secular and liberal groups were dismayed at the move, branding it a betrayal of Washington's promise to advocate equal rights in a free and tolerant society.

If approved, critics say that the proposals would erode women's rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws. "We understand the Americans have sided with the Shias. It's shocking. It doesn't fit with American values," an unnamed Kurdish negotiator told Reuters. "They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state."

With a constitution even less progressive than Saddam’s: The Iraqi constitution adopted in 1990 under Saddam Hussein was among the most secular in the Arab world. It made no mention of Sharia -- Islamic religious law -- although Islam was named the official state religion. It prohibited all forms of discrimination, gender or other, and guaranteed freedom of expression as part of "the revolutionary, national and progressive trend."

So we can expect this sort of thing to become routine: The executions are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made available on DVD in the market the same afternoon.

One of last week's victims was a young man in a black tracksuit. Like the others he was left on his belly by the blue iron railings at the bridge's southern end. His severed head rested on his back, facing Baghdad. Children cheered when they heard that the next day's spectacle would be a double bill: two decapitations. A man named Watban and his brother had been found guilty of spying.

With so many alleged American agents dying here Haqlania bridge was renamed Agents' bridge. Then a local wag dubbed it Agents' fridge, evoking a mortuary, and that name has stuck.

A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted: Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel.

That Islamist guerrillas were active in the area was no secret but only now has the extent of their control been revealed. They are the sole authority, running the town's security, administration and communications.

Not to say that the new constitution is all bad for everybody: If Iraq's National Assembly meets its deadline, it will release a draft constitution to be voted on by the people in two months. Since February, vital issues have been debated and discussed by the drafting committee: the role of Islamic law, the rights of women, the autonomy of the Kurds and the participation of the minority Sunnis.

But what hasn't been on the table is at least as important to the formation of a new Iraq: the country's economic structure. The Bush administration has succeeded in maintaining a stranglehold on issues such as public versus private ownership of resources, foreign access to Iraqi oil and U.S. control of the reconstruction effort -- all of which are still governed by administration policies put into place immediately after the invasion. The Bush economic agenda favors foreign interests -- American interests -- over Iraqi self-determination.

After all, resourceful people do ok whether there’s a constitution or not: British officials are seriously concerned about the level of corruption in the Iraqi defence ministry, after the embezzlement of vast amounts of money earmarked for the country's security forces.

Officials from the British Ministry of Defence had already warned US and Iraqi authorities against the squandering of money - and have been proved right, on a catastrophic scale.

A report compiled by the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit has concluded that at least half, and probably more, of $1.27bn (£700m) of Iraqi money spent on military procurement has disappeared into a miasma of kickbacks and vanished middlemen - or else has been spent on useless equipment.

The War At Home

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people."-- James Madison

Screw the Geneva Conventions: One of the US soldiers convicted of mistreating prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison says his superiors made it clear those incarcerated were to be abused.

Sergeant Javal Davis was sentenced to six months in jail after admitting to having deliberately stepped on the hands and feet of handcuffed prisoners.

In an interview aired on Channel 7, Sgt Davis said he was instructed to make life as unpleasant as possible for those he was guarding.

"I was left with an open door to pretty much almost do whatever I want, you know like 'hey, make sure this guy has a bad night you know' or 'make sure this guy gets the treatment'," he said.

Screw inhibitions about cruel and unusual punishment: There's a new batch of photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and these are reportedly far worse than the sickening originals. Naturally, the Pentagon is trying to block their release.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in October 2003 to make public 87 photographs and four videos depicting prisoner abuse in Iraq. The Pentagon originally argued that releasing the images would violate the Geneva Convention rights of the detainees; a supreme irony considering that the US originally denied these very prisoners Geneva Convention protections. The ACLU agreed that the Pentagon could black out "identifying characteristics," but a federal judge in New York ruled last week that DoD must explain publicly why it's concealing the images. "By and large, I ruled for public disclosure," said US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. A final ruling is expected on August 30.

In court proceedings, General Richard Myers argued that releasing the pictures and videos would give aid to the enemy: boosting Al Qaeda recruitment, destabilizing governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and inciting riots throughout the Muslim world. But a number of high-ranking officers and civil libertarians countered by noting that much of what Myers predicts is already occurring on the ground, fueled in large measure by past and present US behavior.

Screw due process: The Pentagon said on Monday it has released three Guantanamo prisoners to Iran, Yemen and Tajikistan, leaving about 505 jailed at the U.S. military prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said the two men sent to their home countries of Yemen and Tajikistan were found to no longer be "enemy combatants" by a panel known as the Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

The detainee sent home to Iran was recommended separately for release by an annual administrative review board, Plexico said.

And still do nothing about a real terrorist threat: Ten years after the Oklahoma City bombing left 168 people dead, the guardians of American national security seem to have decided that the domestic radical right does not pose a substantial threat to U.S. citizens.

A draft internal document from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that was obtained this spring by The Congressional Quarterly lists the only serious domestic terrorist threats as radical animal rights and environmental groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. But for all the property damage they have wreaked, eco-radicals have killed no one — something that most definitely cannot be said of the white supremacists and others who people the American radical right.

In the 10 years since the April 19, 1995, bombing in Oklahoma City, in fact, the radical right has produced some 60 terrorist plots. These have included plans to bomb or burn government buildings, banks, refineries, utilities, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians, civil rights figures and others; to rob banks, armored cars and other criminals; and to amass illegal machine guns, missiles, explosives, and biological and chemical weapons.

A Bright Side

At least one sector of the US economy is booming: Special Forces personnel -- key to any eventual success in Iraq -- are now being offered re-enlistment bonuses of up to $150,000 each. And these huge amounts are being spurned.

That's because retention of key combat personnel is being eroded by far better money offers from federally hired "private security companies" -- as their executives insist they be called. Once on board and back in the private sector of dangerous military operations in Iraq, these highly trained fighters and specialists can make up to a quarter of a million dollars or more (most of it tax-free) in a year's worth of salary -- certainly better than Army pay.

These men, of course, are mercenaries -- professional soldiers hired for pay in an outfit other than their country's armed forces. The "private security companies" recoil from that designation, but that is what they are, nonetheless. They are private, well-paid gunmen.

In one of its best articles of the year, The New York Times Magazine of Aug. 14 detailed the quiet expansion of these new hybrid forces in Iraq. Author Daniel Bergner writes there are about 80 private firms, maybe 100, with approximately 25,000 armed men -- about 15 percent of the weapons-carrying allied personnel in Iraq -- guarding big American corporations that are reconstructing Iraq. They, side by side with American troops, shield American compounds from attack, keep safe workers who are rebuilding power stations and sewage plants, guard generals, protect military bases, and hold off insurgents so supplies can be delivered.

Some of the private gunmen -- not all Americans -- are drop-outs from law enforcement and soldiers of fortune who participated in other global conflicts in past decades. Many come from Chile, Ukraine, Fiji, Great Britain, Romania, South Africa, even Iraq itself.

No one seems to be keeping track of how many there really are, or of the totals being paid these firms, or who authorized them, approved them, or signed the contracts. The Pentagon, after promising these details to The New York Times, stiff-armed the newspaper and "detoured fully around the questions," according to Bergner.

The Defense Department would only state that "private security companies" are not being used "to perform inherently military functions." (That word "inherently" carries a lot of freight. The private armed firms, all by themselves, have already held off unexpected full-scale insurgent attacks upon regional Coalition Provisional Authority compounds in the Iraqi towns of Kut and Najaf.)

But one can do the math. One of the biggest private firms -- Triple Canopy (headquartered in the United States), with about 1,000 men in Iraq -- receives about $250 million a year from the Defense Department, and is so highly regarded in Washington that the State Department has designated it one of three such companies that will divide $1 billion a year in new protection work in powder-keg nations around the planet -- formerly a job the Marines usually performed. That's just one firm.

A Novel Idea

Perhaps we could try it here: A group of MPs declared their intention to bring a motion of impeachment against the Prime Minister for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in relation to the invasion of Iraq. The charges are based on evidence presented in a report commissioned by Adam Price MP entitled A Case to Answer .

The report which is co-authored by academics Glen Rangwala and Dan Plesch presents evidence that the Prime Minister deliberately distorted the intelligence assessments available to him in order to deceive the public and Parliament over the case for war, and recommends that impeachment procedures are begun against the Prime Minister for this misconduct. In addition, the report maintains that the Prime Minister's actions have destroyed the British government's reputation for honesty around the world; it has damaged and discredited the intelligence services; it has undermined the constitution by weakening cabinet government and has made a mockery of Parliament as representative of the people.

Another Flytrap - Our Noose Is Closing In

Iraqi exports: Foreign militants with links to al-Qaeda - some believed to have experience in Iraq - are trying to encourage Afghan insurgents to adopt more Iraq-style tactics against US forces, well-placed sources in eastern Afghanistan have told the BBC.

According to these sources, the wider use of suicide bombings and kidnappings are included in the tactics.

These outsiders, some of them Arabs, have been offering large bounties to Afghans in Kunar province to kill US soldiers, two sources said.

They have been showing videos of kidnappings in Iraq as part of recruitment efforts, they said.

A Non-Sarcastic Optimistic Note

Tipping?: Malcolm Gladwell's 2002 best-selling book, 'The Tipping Point,' argued that under a combination of certain factors, "radical change is more than a possibility." Some columnists and politicians from both parties are now wondering if the comments of leading Republican lawmakers like Sen. Chuck Hagel from Nebraska and others, and the actions of protester Cindy Sheehan, signal that the attitudes toward the war in Iraq are slowly, but surely, moving against the Bush administration.

Speaking Sunday on ABC-TV's 'This Week,' Sen. Hagel, who won two purple hearts in Vietnam and is also considered by some as a contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, restated his position that the US needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq.

"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."

Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq … we're not winning," he said.

Commentary

Interview: ASZ: There have been a lot of conflicting reports on the state of Iraq's infrastructure prior to the invasion and subsequent occupation. What did people tell you about public services; something simple like trash collection, or the water supply, during the time of Saddam's regime? Glantz: Before the invasion, Iraq's infrastructure was in a weakend state because of years of UN sanctions following the 1991 Gulf War. However, basic services like trash collection and telephone service still worked and double-decker red London-style busses served as public transportation. It was easy to get a cheap fill-up at any of the country's gas stations. After the invasion, there were two day long lines for gas at the pump, the US bombed the telephone grid, and ongoing services like garbage and bus service have never been adequately restored. Baghdad's electric grid goes on for three hours and then off for three hours on a cycle. It's 125 degrees in Baghdad. Imagine tying to sleep without a fan. You would get grouchy. And if you had a AK-47 in your home to protect your family, you might decide some action was necessary given this situation has now gone on for more than two years.

Opinion: Months ago, the United States was assuring skeptics that the secular Kurds would rein in the Shiite religious parties, while the majority Shiites would limit Kurdish separatism. But instead of being counterweights, these two groups seem mainly to have reinforced each other. Washington, desperate for any draft, encouraged their complicity.

Clinching a deal became easier when the most fundamentalist and most pro-Iranian of the Shiite parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, decided that it, too, favored regional autonomy for the oil-rich Shiite southern provinces around Basra. Fortunately, the constitution is said to provide that oil revenues from already discovered fields be distributed nationwide according to population, rather than directly to the new regional governments. To do otherwise would leave the oil-poor Sunni provinces virtually penniless. Still, the prospect of carving up Iraq into loosely linked federal units is likely to intensify Sunni disenchantment with the new constitution and government, a prospect that can only encourage the insurgency.

Approval by a simple majority of the parliament will be only a first step. The draft constitution will then be subject to a national referendum in October. Excluding the Sunnis from that decision won't be so easy. If at least two-thirds of the voters in three of the four Sunni-majority provinces reject the draft, it will not go into effect. Opposition in other provinces is also possible. Shiites in the central provinces near Baghdad, which also lack oil, are wary of federalism. Large numbers of women may turn out in defense of their threatened rights. Secular Iraqis from all regions could choke on the provisions reportedly declaring Iraq an Islamic state and prohibiting any legislation that conflicts with the fixed principles of Islam.

Americans continue dying in Iraq, but their mission creeps steadily downward. The nonexistent weapons of mass destruction dropped out of the picture long ago. Now the United States seems ready to walk away from its fine words about helping the Iraqis create a beacon of freedom, harmony and democracy for the Middle East. All that remains to be seen is whether the White House has become so desperate for an excuse to declare victory that it will settle for an Iranian-style Shiite theocracy.

Editorial: Serious debate about the war has practically vanished in Washington. It's difficult to find many people outside the administration who are satisfied with either the costs (in American lives) or the benefits (the progress toward establishing a secure, pro-Western Iraqi state) of current policies. It is even more difficult to find any major figure willing to publicly offer a significant alternative. This amounts to a political dereliction of duty. When casualties in Iraq are rising even as stability recedes, political leaders are obligated to ask every possible question about the strategy, tactics and goals that have placed our forces in harm's way. The response might be to withdraw troops, or to temporarily add more, or to change our expectations of what might be achieved in Iraq. Maybe Bush's approach of maintaining a large U.S. presence while training Iraqis and working to sustain as much national unity as possible will prove the best of imperfect alternatives. But most Democrats and Republicans are abandoning their responsibilities by leaving the problem solely to Bush without addressing any of these issues.

Helena Cobban: In a midnight post here last night I noted that Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has now clearly and openly joined the ranks of those calling for a speedy pullout of the troops from Iraq.

But what about our much-vaunted "opposition" party here here in US, you might ask? Where does the Democratic Party now stand on the Iraq War?

Editorial: If there's growing sentiment against the war in Iraq, many area veterans of the fight aren't taking it personally.

Vets see the opposition as a protest against policy, not them or their service.

During the Vietnam War, many returning U.S. troops felt taunted, humiliated and treated with little or no respect. In contrast, today's veterans say they don't encounter animosity from people who don't agree with the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

"I have run into people who don't support the president's views on Iraq or our objectives, but I haven't run into a single person who said (he or she) doesn't support the troops," said Jason Crawford, a Purple Heart recipient who was shot in the face by opposition forces in December 2003 while in Iraq. "I think our society learned from Vietnam that it's not the men and women who sacrifice their lives and signed on the dotted lines who make up the plans and objectives. I think pretty much everyone supports the troops."

That's even if they don't approve of the U.S. involvement in Iraq that began in March 2003.

Opinion: I wish Dick Cheney would stay in his secret hideaway, wherever it is, the one he goes to when the terror alert in Washington is at maximum level. Every time the vice president ventures out to defend the administration's bungled war in Iraq, he only adds insult to injury. Even more so than President Bush, Cheney is the cold embodiment of the delusions, arrogance, stubbornness, incompetence and denial that got us into this messy war. He has no credibility on the subject.

These days, you won't hear Cheney saying, as he did two months ago, that the Iraqi insurgency is in its "last throes." Instead, as he told a friendly audience of combat veterans last week, "there is still tough fighting" to come. The United States "will not relent" in pressing the war. U.S. forces will hunt down Iraqi insurgents "one at a time if necessary." Victory in Iraq is "critical to the future security of the U.S." and the country must not lose its resolve to finish the job.

Easy to say when the war doesn't touch you or your family or wealthy friends, who enjoy tax cuts while our soldiers bleed in Iraq and their families struggle with hardships at home.

Opinion: A lie is a knowing misstatement of fact. "Intentionally misleading" and "intentionally exaggerated" simply are euphemisms for the same thing, and it is clear that a large chunk of the public believes it was lied to by the administration. Just because many people believe something, of course, does not make it so. But neither can it be ignored. Yet the administration seems to be doing exactly that. When it created the Commission on the Intelligence Capability of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, in February 2004, it carefully walled it off from any investigation of possible misuse of intelligence by the administration. Instead, the commission was told to examine only the "intelligence community."

At about the same time the president established the commission by executive order, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a press release that appeared to say the committee would explore the very issue Bush had barred his commission from investigating. The Senate committee said it would examine whether "public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. government officials made between the Gulf War period and the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom were substantiated by intelligence information." To eliminate any ambiguity, the committee's vice-chairman, John Rockefeller, announced, "We will address the question of whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused . . . "

Except it didn't; the committee got cold feet and quietly let it be known recently that it would not look into the misuse of intelligence. So the American people are left to figure out for themselves whether the administration lied. Increasingly, they are deciding that it did.

Joseph Galloway: Years from now when the historians begin analyzing the deadly mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan they will find that the one institution charged with standing guard between the civilian suits and the American troops in uniform that they command and send into harm's way utterly abdicated that vital responsibility.

The mistakes of omission and commission that abound in the record of two military operations - one necessary, the other not - were made by a president, a vice president and a secretary of defense and his civilian aides. But they would never have been allowed to stand uncorrected and swept under a convenient rock without the complicity of Congress, controlled by the same party that controlled the White House.

So when the time comes to point a finger don't forget those who people the marble halls of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives whose first duty seemed to be to protect the Republican Party and their president.

When they should have roared with anger they instead whimpered and whined and rolled over like puppies to have their bellies scratched.

Opinion: On Sunday, Feingold revealed that when he visited Iraq he asked a top general what he thought about setting a timetable for exiting. The general, he said, replied: "Nothing would take the wind out of the sails of the insurgents better." But where do the editorial pages stand on this? Only a few, such as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, have really staked out what could loosely be called an "antiwar" position. A few columnists, besides Neuharth, have turned hyper-critical, including the intrepid Joe Galloway of Knight Ridder. Neuharth and Galloway each have received high military honors; Hagel is a decorated Vietnam vet. Galloway, unlike so many editorialists, has no trouble understanding that withdrawing is hardly dishonoring the thousands of Americans who had died or been badly wounded in Iraq. Perhaps that's because he has covered wars for 35 years, including each of our Iraq adventures. When he wrote the following this month, Galloway was addressing the White House and the Pentagon, but he could have aimed it just as easily at the media: "Don't tell me we are going to stay the course. We are on the wrong course, and it only leads deeper into the quicksand. Tell me how we are going to change course."

Casualty Reports

Local story: Volcano, HI, soldier with California Bay Area ties killed in roadside bombing in Samarra.

Local story: Centreville, MI, soldier killed in truck accident near Tal Afar.

Local story: Arlington, FL, soldier killed in roadside bombing in Samarra.

Local story: Wildomar, CA, soldier killed in roadside bombing in Samarra.

Local story: Indianapolis, IN, soldier killed in roadside bombing in Samarra.

Local story: Elk Grove, CA, soldier killed in Iraq.

Note to readers: Many thanks to Friendly Fire for his yeoman effort in keeping this blog going while YD and I were otherwise occupied. Thanks to all contributors to Comments, too.

War News for Monday, August 22, 2005 Bring 'em on: Three policemen injured in car bomb attack in Kirkuk. Bring 'em on: Two US soldiers killed on combat patrol in Tal Afar. Bring 'em on: Five Iraqi kidnapped in the oil refining town of Baiji. Bring 'em on: British soldier injured in IED attack in Basra. Bring 'em on: US soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Tikrik. Bring 'em on: Two police commandos shot dead in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Policeman shot dead in Samarra. Bring 'em on: Interpreter shot dead in Samarra. Bring 'em on: Two Shia workers gunned down at a Mosque in Baquba. Bring 'em on: Three killed and nine injured by car bomb attack in Baghdad. Hmmmmmm the Lancet Report that was rubbished:

Civilian deaths in Baghdad in July were more than New York City had in all of 2004, and that's excluding car bombings and suicide bombings. Time magazine reports the surge in non-combat related violence is due to the various sects in Iraq who want to start a civil war. Reports that death squads are entering quiet Baghdad neighborhoods and killing innocent civilians are growing. Baghdad central morgue director, Faiq Amin Bakr, said 880 violent deaths occurred in the city in July.

You go to War with the Army you have: "They're coasting on legacy fleets," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group, an aerospace and defense consulting company in Fairfax, Va. "They planned to coast indefinitely ... and it would have worked just fine if it hadn't been for Afghanistan and Iraq." Go to War without experts: The problem is there aren't nearly enough EOD soldiers to go around — especially those with the experience to handle the most dangerous parts of the job. Lair and his comrades in the 744th Ordnance Company typify the personnel shortages hitting the wartime military. The Army is so short of EOD soldiers that it is paying bonuses of up to $20,000 for recruits willing to sign up and awards as high as $50,000 to keep experienced soldiers. It has also taken the unusual step of assigning two full-time recruiters to do nothing but persuade other soldiers to leave their jobs and become EOD specialists. The shortage of specialists has also led the Pentagon to hire outside contractors to dispose of the hundreds of thousands of tons of leftover munitions in Iraq. Opinion and Commentary Model Constitution:

The main thing to realize is that it at this point it's just a matter of time. The first objective -- using democratic elections to entrench Shi'a power -- has been achieved. The next step, now underway, is to consolidate that control and begin maneuvering the Americans out of Iraq entirely (which is why, unlike Juan Cole, I find it entirely believable that Iran is supplying new, more powerful road bombs to the Sunni resistance. Such weapons won't enable the insurgents to overthrow the government in Baghdad, but they have raised the number of U.S. casualties, turning up the heat on the Cheney administration to begin withdrawing. Once we're gone, there will be time enough to deal with the Sunnis.) The third objective -- the declaration of the real Islamic Republic of Iraq, bound by a perpetual treaty of friendship to its fraternal Iranian ally -- can also wait. Because while the Pentagon may be able to figure out a way to keep 100,000+ troops in Iraq through 2009, the political will to do so is likely to expire much sooner than that. It would only delay in the inevitable in any case. America can't keep an army in Iraq until judgement day, which is how long it would take to block the Iranians and their Iraqi colleagues from claiming their hard-won prize.

Attaturk does rant well:

These fools don't support the troops for the troop's life, they support the troops for their policy agenda. The fact that Iraq is in the toilet only makes things worse for them. Like a cultist the day after the world was supposed to end according to their "leader" they hold fast, having so sold themselves to the notion that to abandon it, means abandoning all their words of advocacy, it means accepting they were wrong, that they were fools. You can make an individual do all sorts of things, but unless they are actually faced with brute force, they will never humiliate themselves. Not having to put their life on the line, or being threatened in any real substantive way, the stakes are raised for others but not them. They will hold to their ideology come what may, and when it is shown (as it is being shown) to have been both foolish and craven they will not abandon it, for rationality goes out the window, just like a cult. To preserve their status, their self-worth, they will not accept being wrong. They will look for scapegoats -- and those scapegoats are almost ALWAYS the folks that were correct from the beginning. At the time the Statue of Saddam fell down, Andrew Sullivan was busy questioning our patriotism for doubting the Iraq invasion. Now that "Mission Accomplished" is nearly two and a half-years gone and the war worse than ever, he still clings to the notion that it was a worthy cause. He cannot remove himself from the notion that he staked so much credibility, wrongly, on the lying and manipulative Bush Administration. To do so means that he, Andrew Sullivan, accepts that he applauded as 1,863 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis were killed because of people like him enabling it. He accepts that he enabled more than 15,000 Americans to be permanently wounded physically for his cheerleading...God only knows how many Iraqis. Plus there are the psychological scars of untold thousands. I shouldn't single out Sullivan, except that he suffers from bouts of extreme jingoism that causes him to go over the top and engage in empty finger-pointing. For the enablers he is actually among the most realistic, there are many, many, worse than him -- from Instapundit to Hitchens to Captain's Quarters and kook-coop of Little Green Footballs and FreeRepublic. Sullivan at least is willing to blame the Bush Administration for overselling (without too much of an admission he continued to buy well past the point of rationality). He also is willing to point fingers, like Bill Kristol, at Bush for fucking up his lovely little war (i.e. Policy good, execution of it Bad). But still, no recognition that those who counseled against this war were neither traitors, nor "appeasers", but rather were four-square correct. But we will never be seen as correct by them. To do so means abandoning their notions of "patriotism" being not love of country, but love of parades, cheerleading, marches, empty platitudes -- Policy as being the ultimate game of "Risk", without actual risk to them, indeed it gives the benefit of filthy lucre. We have far too many people leading policy in this country who think they are Bismarck, but whose closest connection to the actual man is their love of pastry. Their era of sarcastic accusations against the left is over, now watch them become increasingly serious in their accusations of treason, we already see it, we will see it some more. But they'd rather betray what they see as tools, cannon-fodder, their fellow citizens, than betray what they actually believe constitutes their nation...THEIR POLICIES.

War News for Sunday, August 21, 2005 Bring 'em on: One US military policeman killed in an IED attack in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two militants killed in gun battle in Mosul. Bring 'em on: Iraqi killed by roadside bomb in Babylon. Bring 'em on: Iraqi general in charge of border security says US forces tried to kill him in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi policemen killed in gunfight in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi troops killed in grenade attack in Fallujah. Bring 'em on: Four Iraqi troops killed in rocket attack on their vehicle in Shorgat. Shame on Utah: A Utah television station has rejected an anti-war advertisement featuring the California mother whose son’s death in Iraq prompted her August vigil outside President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch, deeming it “inappropriate” for the local market. In the ad, Cindy Sheehan pleads with Bush for a meeting and accuses him of lying to the American people about Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction and about that country’s connection to Al Qaeda. Civil War: Here we Come:

Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territoryacross northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials. While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, the militias, and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them, are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the Kurds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents have said they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which instill a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former president Saddam Hussein.

Spinning the Iran Campaign: British soldiers in Iraq are being killed by advanced "infra-red" bombs supplied by Iran that defeat jamming equipment, according to military intelligence officials. The "passive infra-red" devices, whose use in Iraq is revealed for the first time by The Sunday Telegraph, are detonated when the beam is broken, as when an intruder triggers a burglar alarm. They were used by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group against Israel in Lebanon from 1995. Constitution Priorities:

Iraqi leaders battled to wrap up a constitution within 48 hours but consensus on thorny issues remains elusive, with Washington pressuring the Kurds to drop their demands over control of vital oil resources. Sharp differences remain on federalism, the role of Islam and sharing of oil wealth, some of the key planks of the first post- Saddam Hussein charter which is now due to be put to parliament on Monday after an August 15 deadline was missed. "We have a problem here... there is one group who wants a 21st century constitution and there is another group who wants a seventh century constitution," said one source closely involved in the negotiations. "Unfortunately, America is looking at both the groups with the same eye. They just want the draft to be ready on time."

Extension Again:

Iraqi leaders could seek a fresh one-week extension to draft the constitution if they miss a Monday deadline, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's spokesman told reporters. "If the text is not handed to the national assembly by the deadline... one choice is to ask for another one-week extension," Leith Kubba said Sunday. Kubba said the other scenario if leaders fail to reach agreement by midnight Monday was that parliament would be dissolved and fresh elections held. With differences remaining on several key points, the prospect of another missed deadline has raised speculation that it might be better to dissolve Iraq's legislative body and start again from scratch. The role of Islam in lawmaking, a federal structure for Iraq, and sharing national oil wealth are three issues currently holding back an agreement on the country's first post- Saddam Hussein charter.

Opinion and Commentary Who's to Blame?:

Years from now, when the historians begin analyzing the deadly mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will find that the one institution charged with standing guard between the civilian suits and the American troops abdicated that vital responsibility. The mistakes of omission and commission that abound in the record of two military operations - one necessary, the other not - were made by a president, a vice president and a secretary of defense and his civilian aides. But they would never have been allowed to stand uncorrected and swept under a convenient rock without the complicity of Congress, controlled by the same party that controlled the White House. So when the time comes to point a finger don't forget those who people the marble halls of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, whose first duty seemed to be to protect the Republican Party and their president. When they should have roared with anger they instead whimpered and whined and rolled over like puppies to have their bellies scratched. When evidence came that general officers lied to them about their complicity, and that of their civilian overseers, in the torture and degradation of the mixed bag of foreign fighters, terrorists and dumb kids in places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, they did their best to let it slide. When the Pentagon ordered divisions to leave their safest armored vehicles behind, parked in rows on American bases, and go to war in thin-skinned Humvees, Congress said nothing. When soldiers and Marines were sent off to war in old and useless flak jackets instead of the best body armor money could buy, Congress wrung its hands and urged Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to do better. When nearly 2,000 of those troops came home in military coffins to grieving families, the members of the House and Senate issued press releases mourning the mounting losses. When President Eisenhower - a former general and a Republican president - warned the nation in his farewell address in 1961 about a military-industrial complex that was gaining "unwarranted influence," he expected Congress to keep a sharp eye on those who feed at the public trough. With this administration's style of management, and its foreign wars, the opportunity to begin dipping deeply into the Treasury was too tempting for some contractors and defense industry folks. Congress not only sat quiet for the most part but even urged them to feed more deeply in the trough.

Billmon on the Constitution:

Actually, if it staves off civil war long enough for the Pentagon to withdraw the bulk of the troops from Iraq, then I'd say it's precisely what the American people want. Outside the neocon and neoliberal elites (plus the Republican true believers, who support whatever they're told to support) the American public never has shown much enthusiasm for Bush's revolutionary aspirations in the Middle East, and it has even less of an appetite for grand historical transformations now that it has a better idea of how much they cost. Which means the firm of Democracy Unlimited, Inc. ("Shouldering the white man's burden since 2003") is going into liquidation. And, as always, the least valuable assets are being discarded first, meaning women's rights in the Iraq are bound for the bottom of the scrap heap.

Billmon on Gang Warfare:

You would think that after Kosovo -- where the liberated Albanian population promptly unleashed on the Serbian minority the same ethnic cleansing previously directed at them by the Serbs -- our humanitarian interventionists would have learned something about tribal warfare, or human nature, or both. The Kurds are only playing by the same golden rule as everybody else in the Middle East: Do unto others before they do unto you. But it does pose a problem for those who want to divide the world into the children of light and the children of darkness, and place the United States military firmly on the side of the former against the latter. There's always the risk they'll find out they've simply sided with the Crips against the Bloods, or vice versa.

Hitchens the Wanker:

You can tell in five-minutes channel surfing how Cindy Sheehan frightens the pro-war crowd. One bereaved mom from Vacaville, camped outside Bush's home in Crawford, reproaching the vacationing President for sending her son to a pointless death in Iraq has got the hellhounds of the right barking in venomous unison. Christopher Hitchens attacked Cindy Sheehan, of course. Called her a LaRouchie! Why? No reason given. He obviously reckons "LaRouchie" is one of those let-her-deny-it slurs, like "anti-Semite". Let's suppose Hitchens was writing in similarly nasty terms about Hitchens. He'd probably remember that in 1999 Edward Jay Epstein publicly recalled a dinner in the Royalton Hotel in New York where Epstein said Hitchens had doubted the Holocaust was quite what it's cracked up to be. In Epstein's memory Hitchens belittled the idea that six million Jews died, said the number was much less. So, under Hitchens' rules of polemical engagement, was does that make Hitchens? A holocaust denier, a guy who has Faurisson and David Irving's books under his pillow. A Jew hater, or--if you believe his sudden discovery (privately denied by his own brother on at least one occasion) at a mature age that his mother was Jewish--a Jewish self-hater. Of course Hitchens revels in Cindy Sheehan's denial that she said in an email that her son died in a war for Israel. Hitchens writes that this denial makes her "a shifty fantasist". What would Hitchens, who's an on-the-record admirer ("a great historian") of the work of Nazi chronicler David Irving say about Hitchens' shifty denial of Epstein's recollection? What fun he would have with the witnesses the panic-stricken Hitchens, well aware that "holocaust denier" is not part of the resume of a Vanity Fair columnist, hastily mustered for his defense, a woman and a man present at that famous dinner in the Royalton. One his close friend, Anna Wintour, the present editor of Vogue and the other, Brian McNally, a longtime friend and business associate. What a truly disgusting sack of shit Hitchens is. A guy who called Sid Blumenthal one of his best friends and then tried to have him thrown into prison for perjury; a guy who waited till his friend Edward Said was on his death bed before attacking him in the Atlantic Monthly; a guy who knows perfectly well the role Israel plays in US policy but who does not scruple to flail Cindy Sheehan as a LaRouchie and anti-Semite because, maybe, she dared mention the word Israel. She lost a son? Hitchens (who should perhaps be careful on the topic of sending children off to die) says that's of scant account, and no reason why we should take her seriously. Then he brays about the horrors let loose in Iraq if the troops come home, with no mention of how the invasion he worked for has already unleashed them.

Constitution: Discussion Looks like the constitution deal is as follows: Kurds get Kirkuk and federalism; Shia get southern oilfields, Iran as a guardian angel and Islamic law as basis for the constitution; and the Sunni get bugger all except fighting the occupation. But, wait for it, some Shia in Baghdad have concerns that they might be forgotten in a slum known as Sadr City. All the ingredients for a Civil War beckons.

Discussion Thread: August 20, 2005 Thanks guys and gals for all your news links in the previous thread. I am pretty sure that you have already read this article; but we could discuss it here:

The Road to Tehran Is Mined At first, events looked to be moving in quite a different direction. Lost in the obscure pages of the early coverage of the Iraq War was a moment when, it seemed, the clerical regime in Iran flinched. Soon after Saddam fled and Baghdad became an American town, Iran suddenly entered into negotiations with Great Britain, France, and Germany on ending its nuclear program, the most public point of friction with the U.S. After all, it was Saddam's supposed nuclear program that had been the casus belli for the American invasion, and Bush administration neoconservatives had been hammering away at the Iranian program in a similar fashion. Two developments ended this brief moment of seeming triumph for Washington. As a start, American officials, feeling their oats, balked at the tentative terms negotiated by the Europeans because they did not involve regime change in Iran. This hard-line American stance gave the Iranian leadership no room to maneuver and stiffened their negotiating posture. At the time, in the wake of its successful three-week war in Iraq, the Bush Administration seemed ready, even eager, to apply extreme military pressure to Iran. According to Washington Post columnist William Arkin, the official U.S. strategic plan (formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02) completed in November 2003 authorized "a preemptive and offensive strike capability against Iran and North Korea." An administration pre-invasion quip (reported by Newsweek on August 19, 2002) caught perfectly the post-invasion mood ascendant in Washington: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." A second key development neutralized the American ability to turn its military might in an Iranian direction: the rise of the Iraqi resistance. During the several months after the fall of Baghdad, the Saddamist loyalists who had initially resisted the U.S. occupation were augmented by a broader and more resilient insurgency. As the character of the occupation made itself known, small groups of guerrillas began defending their neighborhoods from U.S. military patrols. These patrols were seeking out suspected "regime loyalists" from the Baathist era by knocking down doors, shooting whomever resisted, and arresting all men of "military age" in the household. As the resistance spread, its various factions became more aggressive and resourceful. Over the next year, it blossomed into a formidable and complex enemy that the U.S. Army -- to the surprise of American officials in Washington and Baghdad -- did not have the resources to defeat. It was, then, the swiftly growing Iraqi resistance that, by preventing the consolidation of an American Iraq, forced an Iranian campaign off the table and back into the shadows where it has remained to this day.

Peace Peace 1931 Peace 1946 Peace 1997 Peace 2006 Nominations close February 1, 2006.

Discussion Thread, August 17, 2005 Biking Toward Nowhere

How could President Bush be cavorting around on a long vacation with American troops struggling with a spiraling crisis in Iraq? Wasn't he worried that his vacation activities might send a frivolous signal at a time when he had put so many young Americans in harm's way? "I'm determined that life goes on," Mr. Bush said stubbornly. That wasn't the son, believe it or not. It was the father - 15 years ago. I was in Kennebunkport then to cover the first President Bush's frenetic attempts to relax while reporters were pressing him about how he could be taking a month to play around when he had started sending American troops to the Persian Gulf only three days before. On Saturday, the current President Bush was pressed about how he could be taking five weeks to ride bikes and nap and fish and clear brush even though his occupation of Iraq had become a fiasco. "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life," W. said, "to keep a balanced life." Pressed about how he could ride his bike while refusing to see a grieving mom of a dead soldier who's camped outside his ranch, he added: "So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so." Ah, the insensitivity of reporters who ask the President Bushes how they can expect to deal with Middle East fighting while they're off fishing. The first President Bush told us that he kept a telephone in his golf cart and his cigarette boat so he could easily stay on top of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. But at least he seemed worried that he was sending the wrong signal, as his boating and golfing was juxtaposed on the news with footage of the frightened families of troops leaving for the Middle East. "I just don't like taking questions on serious matters on my vacation," the usually good-natured Bush senior barked at reporters on the golf course. "So I hope you'll understand if I, when I'm recreating, will recreate." His hot-tempered oldest son, who was golfing with his father that day, was even more irritated. "Hey! Hey!" W. snapped at reporters asking questions on the first tee. "Can't you wait until we finish hitting, at least?" Junior always had his priorities straight. As W.'s neighbors get in scraps with the antiwar forces coalescing around the ranch; as the Pentagon tries to rustle up updated armor for our soldiers, who are still sitting ducks in the third year of the war; as the Iraqi police we train keep getting blown up by terrorists, who come right back every time U.S. troops beat them up; as Shiites working on the Iraqi constitution conspire with Iran about turning Iraq into an Islamic state that represses women; and as Iraq hurtles toward a possible civil war, W. seems far more oblivious than his father was with his Persian Gulf crisis. This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can't get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani's. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday. The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his daddy in the history books, by finishing what Bush senior started. He swept aside the warnings of Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell and didn't bother to ask his father's advice. Now he is caught in the very trap his father said he feared: that America would get bogged down as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," facing a possibly "barren" outcome. It turns out that the people of Iraq have ethnic and religious identities, not a national identity. Shiites and Kurds want to suppress the Sunnis who once repressed them and break off into their own states, smashing the Bush model kitchen of democracy. At long last, a senior Bush official admits that administration officials can no longer cling to their own version of reality. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning," the official told The Washington Post. They had better start absorbing and shedding a lot faster, before many more American kids die to create a pawn of Iran. And they had better tell the Boy in the Bubble, who continues to dwell in delusion, hailing the fights and delays on the Iraqi constitution as "a tribute to democracy." The president's pedaling as fast as he can, but he's going nowhere.

War News Update for Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Bring 'em on: Twenty six innocent Iraqis wounded when fired upon by US troops in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three US soldiers die in a vehicle accident during combat operations in Baghdad. Irony of Ironies: Switzerland has blocked the sale of 180 M113 APC's to Iraq (via a UAE donation) because it fears that, wait for it; "they could be used in combat operations". Bugger Basra: British troops were Tuesday facing fresh allegations of abusing Iraqi prisoners. Tribal Warfare:

"We are the Shabak, NOT Kurds and NOT Arabs" and "We ask the national Assembly to recognize the rights of the Shabak." A group of KDP gunmen (of the Kurdistan Democratic Party militia) approached the crowd and opened fire on the demonstrators, injuring several of them. The Shabaks make up a substantial portion of the Nineveh plains population, residing in 35 villages as well as in Mosul. Evidence of Shabaks in the region exist from the 16th century and their religious beliefs contain mostly Sunni, Shiite, and some Christian elements. The Shabak's maintain close ties with the Yazidi community and many make pilgrimages to Yazidi shrines. They also have a sacred book called the "Byruk" which is written in Turkoman. Census figures do not exist for the Shabak as the previous regimes Arabization campaign did not allow it to be recognized officially.

Well as good old Rummy said not that long ago: "There isn't the history of internecine confrontation in Iraq like there was in the former Yugoslavia." Opinion and Commentary The Fat Lady is Singing:

It's over. For the U.S. to win the Iraq war requires three things: defeating the Iraqi resistance; establishing a stable government in Iraq that is friendly to the U.S.; maintaining the support of the American people while the first two are being done. None of these three seem any longer possible. First, the U.S. military itself no longer believes it can defeat the resistance. Secondly, the likelihood that the Iraqi politicians can agree on a constitution is almost nil, and therefore the likelihood of a minimally stable central government is almost nil. Thirdly, the U.S. public is turning against the war because it sees no "light at the end of the tunnel." As a result, the Bush regime is in an impossible position. It would like to withdraw in a dignified manner, asserting some semblance of victory. But, if it tries to do this, it will face ferocious anger and deception on the part of the war party at home. And if it does not, it will face ferocious anger on the part of the withdrawal party. It will end up satisfying neither, lose face precipitously, and be remembered in ignominy. Let us see what is happening. This month, Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, suggested that it may be possible to reduce U.S. troops in Iraq next year by 30,000, given improvements in the ability of the Iraqi government's armed forces to handle the situation. Almost immediately, this position came under attack from the war party, and the Pentagon amended this statement to suggest that maybe this wouldn't happen, since maybe the Iraqi forces were not yet ready to handle the situation, which is surely so. At the same time, stories appeared in the leading newspapers suggesting that the level of military sophistication of the insurgent forces has been growing steadily and remarkably. And the increased rate of killings of U.S. soldiers certainly bears this out. In the debate on the Iraqi constitution, there are two major problems. One is the degree to which the constitution will institutionalize Islamic law. It is conceivable that, given enough time and trust, there could be a compromise on this issue that would more or less satisfy most sides. But the second issue is more intractable. The Kurds, who still really want an independent state, will not settle for less than a federal structure that will guarantee their autonomy, the maintenance of their militia, and control of Kirkuk as their capital and its oil resources as their booty. The Shiites are currently divided between those who feel like the Kurds and want a federal structure, and those who prefer a strong central government provided they can control it and its resources, and provided that it will have an Islamic flavor. And the Sunnis are desperate to maintain a united state, one in which they will minimally get their fair share, and certainly don't want a state governed by Shia interpretations of Islam. The U.S. has been trying to encourage some compromise, but it is hard to see what this might be. So, two possibilities are before us right now. The Iraqis paper over the differences in some way that will not last long. Or there is a more immediate breakdown in negotiations. Neither of these meets the needs of the U.S. Of course, there is one solution that might end the deadlock. The Iraqi politicians could join the resisters in a nationalist anti-American thrust, and thereby unite at least the non-Kurd part of the population. This development is not to be ruled out, and of course is a nightmare from the U.S. point of view. But, for the Bush regime, the worst picture of all is on the home front. Approval rating of Bush for the conduct of the Iraqi war has gone down to 36 percent. The figures have been going steadily down for some time and should continue to do so. For poor George Bush is now faced with the vigil of Cindy Sheehan. She is a 48-year-old mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq a year ago. Incensed by Bush's statement that the U.S. soldiers died in a "noble cause," she decided to go to Crawford, Texas, and ask to see the president so that he could explain to her for what "noble cause" her son died. Of course, George W. Bush hasn't had the courage to see her. He sent out emissaries. She said this wasn't enough, that she wanted to see Bush personally. She has now said that she will maintain a vigil outside Bush's home until either he sees her or she is arrested. At first, the press ignored her. But now, other mothers of soldiers in Iraq have come to join her. She is getting moral support from more and more people who had previously supported the war. And the national press now has turned her into a major celebrity, some comparing her to Rosa Parks, the Black lady whose refusal to move to the back of the bus in Atlanta a half-century ago was the spark that transformed the struggle for Black rights into a mainstream cause. Bush won't see her because he knows there is nothing that he can say to her. Seeing her is a losing proposition. But so is not seeing her. The pressure to withdraw from Iraq is now becoming mainstream. It is not because the U.S. public shares the view that the U.S. is an imperialist power in Iraq. It is because there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Or rather there is a light, the light an acerbic Canadian cartoonist for the Calgary Sun drew recently. He shows a U.S. soldier in a dark tunnel approaching someone to whose body is attached an array of explosives. The light comes from the match he is holding to the wick that will cause them to explode. In the month following the attacks in London and the high level of U.S. deaths in Iraq, this is the light that the U.S. public is beginning to see. They want out. Bush is caught in an insoluble dilemma. The war is lost.

Footnote: Please thank Tony for helping the great nation of the USA to lose their sons and daughters in a fruitless mission of death in Iraq; the cradle of western civilisation. Also remember, with the same sense of shame; the uncounted Iraqis that have been murdered in this war crime.

War News for Tuesday, August 16, 2005 Bring 'em on: Two guards killed and four injured in gun attack in Sadr City. Bring 'em on: Turkish truck driver gunned down in Dujail. Bring 'em on: Detainee dies in mysterious circumstances in Abu Ghraib. Bring 'em on: Canadian businessman kidnapped and murdered in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Twenty Iraqis injured in mortar attack on the Interior Ministry in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two personal guards of Iraqi VP Aadel Abdul-Mahdi killed in ambush attack in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Iraqi contractor working for US forces kidnapped in Tikrit. Bring 'em on: Eighteen Iraqis injured in suicide bomb attack on a popular restaurant in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Innocent Iraqi civilian shot dead by US troops in Latifiyah. Bring 'em on: Lt Colonel in the Iraqi army shot dead on his way to work in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Five gunmen killed in attack on Iraqi army position in Shorgat. Life in Iraq:

Of the three million residents of Sadr City, a poor area of Baghdad, 72% have hepatitis A or E, because of polluted water. In Sadr City we saw trenches dug along the main streets for sewer system repair. According to leaders of Sadr City, this project does not include replacing the cracked and inadequate pipes along the side streets that connect to the people's homes, so raw sewage still leaks out onto the streets and seeps into the nearby cracked water pipes. Even though there are more manufactured goods in the markets of Iraqi's cities, poverty is severe, with an estimated 40% unemployment, and increasing malnutrition. Flooding Iraqi markets with cheaper foreign goods and the take over of many of Iraq's businesses and oil production by US companies, continue to erode the economy. Families in Fallujah are slowly starting to rebuild with little help from the US or Iraqi governments. Since the Nov. 2004 attacks, US forces still wage active warfare in many other cities and villages. US and Iraqi forces currently surround the city of Tellafar, west of Mosul and have used heavy bombs in attacks on the city of Haqlaniyah. Iraqi people live in daily fear of explosions and kidnappings by the violent resistance groups as well as the violent house raids, indiscriminate round-ups, abusive interrogations and imprisonment by US and Iraqi forces. They are also worried about corruption in the new Iraqi government and the brutal violence of the newer Iraqi special police commandos, trained by the US and operating under the Ministry of Interior. Some call this "state terrorism." Iraqis tell us about family members being abducted from their homes, tortured and sometimes found dead by a roadside. Prisoner's families report paying thousands of dollars to prevent the prisoner from being tortured or forced to give confessions on TV of crimes they didn't commit. Many fear Iraq becoming a police state as bad, or worse than under Saddam.

Constitution Deadlock:

Iraq's parliament has agreed to extend the deadline for finalising the country's draft constitution after delegates failed to reach agreement. MPs agreed to give the committee until 22 August to resolve the disputes. Delegates from Iraq's ethnic groups have been split over issues including federalism for Kurds and Shias. The constitution needs to be approved by the National Assembly before it can go to a nationwide referendum in October. Kurdish minister Barhem Saleh told al-Arabiya TV that if no agreement could be reached on the constitution, the National Assembly would have to be dissolved and fresh elections held. The Shia Muslims and Kurds between them have a parliamentary majority which could see the document passed. Before parliament met, Saleh Mutlaq, a Sunni Muslim member of the panel drafting the constitution, said Sunnis would reject the draft if it contained proposals for a federal Iraq.

Sandstorm: US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad blamed the August 8 sandstorm for Iraqi politicians missing the deadline, though the country was saved from a political crisis by just a few minutes. Tribal Boycott: Iraqi tribal leaders have vowed to boycott the forthcoming referendum and elections in case their demands are ignored. Two powerful tribal blocs are holding meetings to coordinate stands and agree on a unified platform as the country gears towards a referendum on the constitution and a general election by the end of the year. The Unified Iraqi Tribes Conference, an umbrella group bringing various tribes together, has called on tribal leaders to sign an “honor pact” that will be binding to all signatories. Iraqi tribes transcend sectarian divisions of the Iraqi society as membership is not confined to a particular religious group. Many Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis are bound by the same tribal roots and allegiance to a unified tribal leadership regardless of sectarian affiliation. Crisis; what Crisis?:

Iraq's newspapers warned of the risk of the total collapse of basic services like electricity and water, saying upgrading them was more important than drafting the constitution. "The petrol crisis stole the spotlight from the constitution crisis," said the editorial in the leading independent daily Azaman. Iraq missed the midnight Monday deadline for presenting a draft constitution to parliament despite marathon talks, but MPs have granted a one-week extension to draw up the charter by August 22. Although the missed deadline was on the front pages of most newspapers, editorials hammered the fledgling administration for ignoring basic amenities in the war-torn country, where power cuts and water shortages are recurring problems. "Why talk about progress in the political process when the quality of life is deteriorating at all levels," said Al-Mashriq, a daily close to the Kurdish community. "Politics was invented to improve life, not to make it worse, but in Iraq this truth has been altered."

Promises and Lies: A witness to revolts, revolutions and invasions, Talib Ashur, an 83-year-old Baghdad fruit seller, considers himself a good judge of historic events. He remembers the drone of British warplanes during the suppression of Rashi Ali's uprising in 1941, the overthrow of Abdel-Karim Qasim in 1963 and Saddam Hussein's takeover in 1979. The attempt to draft a new constitution, however, has not registered on Mr Ashur's scale of momentousness: "It will change nothing. I don't believe in politics anymore. It is all promises and lies." Three American Humvees trundled past his stall on Karrada Dakhil street, followed by two police pick-ups with blaring sirens. Regardless of any new constitution, the insecurity and impoverishment will continue, said Mr Ashur. The former civil servant said his pension has not been paid for a year. He no longer has regular electricity or clean water and two brothers have been killed in the violence. Opinion and Commentary Falling through the Partisan Looking Glass:

Back when President Clinton was committing U.S. troops to Bosnia; these are quotes offered up by Republican leaders: Reading them, you can almost feel like you’ve fallen through the looking glass... "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." -- Governor George W. Bush (R-TX) "You can support the troops but not the president." -- Rep Tom Delay (R-TX) "Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years." -- Joe Scarborough (R-FL) "Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" -- Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99 "[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home." -- Sen. Rick Santorum(R-PA) "I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area." -- Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) "I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today" -- Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

War Veteran:

As the weeks turned to months, however, and we watched active-duty units return to their families, our stoicism was replaced with mounting frustration. Our Vietnam-era flak vests, retooled M-16's more than two decades old and a general absence of supplies added to an irrefutable feeling that we had been abandoned in the lion's den. When the tour ended a year later, our uniforms were in tatters, night vision goggles had been packed away seven months earlier when all our replacement parts ran out, and the ragged men who stepped off the plane in Hinesville, Ga., scarcely resembled the "shock-and-awe" troops seen on television. Nevertheless, we were soldiers returned home ... victorious, at least in a sense. That night, in the same dilapidated World War II barracks that we had deployed from an eternity before, I didn't sleep. I thought it was because of the Christmas-morning-like tremble in the air. In reality, I had become addicted to Valium in Baghdad and was going through withdrawal. Sitting alone on my bunk in the darkness, I felt a wave of nausea approaching. That sick feeling hasn't entirely gone away yet. A week later someone gave a speech, and bags full of coupons for free double cheeseburgers and oil changes were handed out. (Most of the good freebies had already been plundered by 17-year-old trainees who hadn't yet been to basic training.) And with a wave goodbye and a pat on the back, we were civilians again. I heard there was a parade a few months later, but I was too drunk to go and it wasn't on television. Even the best laid plans go awry, and that is what happened with me. While many in my platoon had relatively easy transitions, I found myself within days kept from homelessness only by the hospitality of a friend with a sofa. It was like being at a party and going to the restroom for 15 months and then trying to rejoin the conversation. Everyone and everything had changed without asking me first. I took solace in becoming the kind of self-deprecating drunk who shows up at parties naked and wonders why everyone reacts the way they do. The sequence of events that followed culminated in my waking up on the dingy bathroom floor of an even dingier one-bedroom apartment devoid of furniture, except for a couch pulled from a dumpster early one rainy morning before the garbage man could claim it. In that bathroom, fighting off sickness from the year's excess, I did some soul-searching.

War News for Monday, August 15, 2005 Bring 'em on: Four Iraqi soldiers killed by roadside bomb in Fallujah. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqis killed and two wounded in checkpoint attack in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqis killed and five wounded in suicide bomb attack in Al Mahawil. Bring 'em on: Grave containing thirty mutulated bodies, including two females, discovered in Awerij. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi policemen found shot dead in Samarra. Bring 'em on: One Iraqi border patrol officer killed and three wounded in gun attack in Imam Wes. Bring 'em on: Police officer killed and three wounded in an attack on their patrol in Kirkuk. Hospital Visit: One day a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined. "I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely, but enough that we wouldn't be losing people -- at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths." Constitution No Constitution:

Iraqi lawmakers struggled to avert a political crisis on Monday and meet a midnight deadline for presenting the draft of a new constitution to parliament. Political leaders and the 71 members of the constitutional drafting committee began crucial talks on the charter, still without agreement on at least two fundamental issues -- federal autonomy and the role of Islam in the state. Hussain al-Shahristani, the deputy speaker of parliament, said talks would continue until midday (0800 GMT), at which point a decision would have to be taken on whether to present a draft to parliament or whether to look at more dramatic options. A special evening session of parliament has been scheduled for 6 p.m. to consider the document. Last year's interim charter, known as the TAL, laid down August 15 as the deadline for completing a draft of the new constitution, which must be voted on in an October referendum. According to the TAL, if no draft of the constitution is completed by August 15, the National Assembly should be dissolved and elections for a new assembly must be held before December 15, 2005. But such a dramatic turn of events appears unlikely. If there is a constitution, voting will also be held by that date. "The first option is that everyone agrees on a draft of the constitution and it is presented to the National Assembly for approval on time," Shahristani told Reuters. Another possibility, he said, was for the National Assembly to vote and, if three quarters of the house agree, to amend the TAL to allow more time to draft the new constitution. "That is a very likely possibility," he said, adding that if that route were taken an extension of between two weeks and one month would likely be sought. Yonadem Kanna, a Christian member of the drafting team, also said an extension was looking more likely.

Failure: Iraq's political heavyweights, struggling to overcome deep differences over oil and Islam, failed to agree on a draft constitution Sunday despite the expectations of U.S. and Iraqi officials. The failure surprised legislators of the 275-member transitional National Assembly who had gathered to examine, discuss and vote on a proposed charter, which President Jalal Talabani had announced would be delivered by Sunday. Fuck the Sunni: Shiite negotiators are considering cutting Sunnis out of the drafting process by asking the National Assembly to approve the draft without agreement from Sunnis. Fuck the Sunni again: "We can still prepare the draft without the Sunnis," Kurdish constitution panelist Mahmud Othman said. "All the groups elected in the national assembly can come together and prepare the draft." Opinion and Commentary Robert Fisk:

Behind ramparts of concrete and barbed wire, the framers of Iraq’s new constitution wrestled yesterday to prevent - or bring about - the federalisation of Iraq while their compatriots in the hot and fetid streets outside showed no interest in their efforts. Today is supposed to be "C" day, according to President Bush and all the others who illegally invaded this country in 2003. However, in " real" Baghdad - where the President and Prime Minister and the constitutional committee never set foot - they ask you about security, about electricity, about water, about when the occupation will end, when the murders will end, when the rapes will end. They talk, quite easily, about the "failed" Jaafari government, so blithely elected by Shias and Kurds last January. "Failed" because it cannot protect its own people. "Failed" because it cannot rebuild its own capital city - visible to it between the Crusader-like machine-gun slits in the compound walls - and because it cannot understand, let alone meet, the demands of the "street". In the Alice-in-Wonderland Iraq of Messrs Bush and Blair - inhabited, too, by the elected government of Iraq and its constitutional drafters and quite a few Western journalists - there are no such problems to cope with. The air-conditioners hiss away - there are generators to provide 24-hour power - and almost all senior officials have palatial homes in the heavily protected "Green Zone" which was once Saddam Hussein’s Republican Palace compound. No power cuts for them, no petrol queues, no kidnaps and murders. As an Iraqi academic just returned from Paris and Brussels told me yesterday: "Europeans understand politics through the Green Zone level. They have no idea that the rest of Iraq - save for Kurdistan - is a place of anarchy and death. One asked me: ’Do you think federalism is really a danger to the Sunni?’ I answered him: ’Do you think the fear of constant death is not a danger to Sunnis, Shia and Kurds?’ His eyes glazed over. It was not what he wanted to talk about. But it is what we talk about." Those few Iraqis who bother to read the government press in Baghdad - their low circulation mirrors the same phenomenon of disbelief that existed under Saddam’s regime - are told every nuance of the constitutional debate. The name of the state has been agreed (The Iraqi Republic), the distribution of financial resources according to demographic areas rather than provinces (bad news for the Kurds), and that Islam should be "one" of the sources of legislation (bad news for those who want an Islamic republic). There is a "constitutional committee" and a "constitutional commission" (comprising 55 elected parliamentary deputies) with 15 unelected Sunnis (because the Sunni population largely boycotted last January’s election), each committee divided into five sub-committees, each one studying one chapter in the constitution. The actual writers of this massive document - they allegedly include at least two professors - remain anonymous for "security reasons". And all live in the heavily guarded Green Zone, safe - more or less - from the insurgents and, more importantly, safer from ordinary Iraqis who have to endure the violence of the American occupation, the oppression of the insurgents and the daily threat of mass, organised crime.

War News for Sunday, August 14, 2005 Bring 'em on: Three US soldiers killed and one injured in roadside bomb attack in Tuz. Bring em on: One US soldier killed and another injured in bomb attack in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: US soldier killed in bomb attack in west Baghdad. Bring 'em on: US soldier found shot dead in Baghad. Bring 'em on: Senior central bank official kidnapped in Baghdad. Body Armour: For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect U.S. troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents. The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon's procurement system. Ciao: Italy has begun winding down its military presence in southern Iraq with the withdrawal of a battalion of more than 120 troops, a military spokesman announced on Saturday. "Between 120 and 130 men from San Marco battalion have returned to Italy and will not be replaced," Lieutenant-Colonel Fabio Mattiassi, spokesman for the Italian contingent in Nassiriyah, told news channel Sky 24. Emails: Downing Street is refusing to release e-mails from a senior official relating to the attorney-general’s legal advice in the run-up to the Iraq war, raising suspicions that No 10 intervened at a crucial time. It has admitted that an aide reporting to Tony Blair sent confidential e-mails relating to the advice just days before Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, issued a summary version of his legal advice which stated unequivocally that the war was legal. His original advice, issued 10 days earlier on March 7, 2003 warned that a decision to go to war could be challenged in the international courts. Constitution Crisis:

Iraq's leaders were locked in frantic haggling over a new constitution last night as the deadline for presenting a draft to parliament expired. American diplomats offered their own proposed draft in a dramatic attempt to clinch a deal and avert a political crisis that would embarrass President George Bush. Agreement should have been reached yesterday, but disputes over federalism and the role of Islam pitted the country's ethnic and religious groups in an eleventh-hour showdown. Parliament was supposed to have two days to scrutinise the text before tomorrow's deadline for approval but deputies waited in vain for negotiators to agree. President Jalal Talabani said one would emerge today, giving parliament just enough time to keep a self-imposed deadline and pave the way for a referendum on the constitution in October and elections in December. 'We have gone forward,' said the former Kurdish warlord. 'God willing, we will finish the job tomorrow.' However Sunni Arab representatives said that without 'divine intervention' the talks would fail, derailing Washington's timetable to stabilise the country and start withdrawing US troops next year. In his weekly radio address, Bush kept up pressure on Iraq's politicians to make a deal: 'The establishment of a democratic constitution is a critical step on the path to Iraqi self-reliance.' If parliament does not approve a draft constitution by tomorrow it must change the existing constitution to buy negotiators more time or dissolve and call fresh elections.

Mini rant: It will be interesting to see what the fuck will happen by this time tomorrow regarding the constitution; but I can't but help laugh at the irony in the above article from Roy Carroll in Baghdad. He says that American diplomats offered their own proposed draft in a dramatic attempt to clinch a deal and avert a political crisis that would embarrass President George Bush, WTF!!! What is this all about? Constitution Stumbling Blocks:

The main points of dispute in talks over Iraq's constitution: Federalism: Sunni Arabs, who see themselves as the historical glue for Iraqi unity, have resisted federalism as a ruse for eventual Kurdish independence. Shia religious leaders have blown hot and cold on decentralisation. Some now suggest that the Shia regions of the south should also form a " federated region". Iraq's transitional administrative law (TAL), signed in March 2004, allows any three of the 18 provinces the right to form an autonomous region. There is argument over whether that provision should be changed to make forming regions harder. Islam: Shia clerics originally argued for Iraq to be named an "Islamic republic", like Shia Iran, with Islamic law in force. Secularists fear that if Islam is the sole source of law, parliament or local government could enact laws that would restrict women's rights. Resources: Sunnis are keen for central government in Baghdad to have control over all or the majority of the country's oil revenues. Iraq's huge oil reserves are located around Basra in the south and Kirkuk in the north - another spur for Kurds and Shias to favour federalism.

Do you think all these issues will be ironed out in the next 24 hours? But as Juan Cole points out:

A perceptive reader writes to say that the short deadline for the parliamentary acceptance of the constitution means that most members of parliament probably won't have time to read or study it carefully before the vote, and there will certainly be no proper debate on it. Is it right to expect parliament to approve a constitution it has barely read, which is highly controversial, without time for study and debate? Isn't that making parliament a mere rubber stamp? The deadline is a US political issue, not an imperative of Iraqi politics.

Lowering Expectations:

The Bush administration is lowering its expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, the Washington Post reported. In a report posted on its Web site Saturday night, the newspaper -- citing unnamed U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad -- said administration officials recognize the United States will "have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months." The report said the United States no longer expects a model new democracy or a self-supporting oil industry. U.S. officials told the paper the administration no longer expects most Iraqis to be free from serious security or economic challenges. "What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we`re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning." At the same time, administration officials maintain much has been accomplished in Iraq despite postwar chaos and an intensifying insurgency.

Opinion and Commentary Hollow Threats:

Two things are very expensive in international politics, the game-theorist Thomas Schelling once observed: threats when they fail and promises when they succeed. President Bush appears to be headed on a path that could teach him this lesson. Last week he responded to Iran's decision to resume work on its nuclear program by asserting that "all options are on the table" to stop Iran's nuclear development. He also implied that were Israel to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities, the United States would support it. Unfortunately, these are hollow threats, unlikely to have much effect other than to cheapen America's credibility around the world. (Within hours of Bush's statement, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder made clear that he would not support any such action against Iran.) Airstrikes against Iran would be extremely unwise. They would have minimal military effect: the facilities are scattered, are reasonably well hidden and could be repaired within months. With oil at $66 a barrel, the mullahs are swimming in money. (The high price of oil and Iran's boldness are directly related.) More important, a foreign military attack would strengthen local support for the nuclear program and bolster an unpopular regime. Iran is a country with a strong tradition of nationalism—it is one of the oldest nations in the world. With 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tehran has many ways to retaliate against an American strike. Last week Donald Rumsfeld was listing conditions that would allow U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq. High on his list was the question of whether Iranian officials would be more helpful in creating stability there. My guess is that dropping bombs on them is unlikely to produce a helpful attitude. Economic sanctions are the other weapon of choice. The United States already has them in place against Tehran—with little effect—and the chances of widening them are low. To get comprehensive sanctions against Iran, Russia and China would have to agree. But Moscow is helping build one of Iran's reactors, and China is busy signing deals to buy oil and natural gas from it. Both countries will condemn Iran's actions, but they will not shut down their economic ties with it. Many Iranians believe that they should and will be a nuclear power. I was speaking to an Iranian exile who lives in London who has spent time, money and effort plotting against the regime. For the first time ever, I found he was siding with the mullahs. "I would do exactly what they are doing," he said. "For strategic reasons, Iran needs a nuclear option. Look at where it lies, with neighbors like China, Russia, Israel and Pakistan, all powerful nuclear-weapons states." Last year, Iran's former foreign minister under the shah, Ardeshir Zahedi, argued that Iran should have nuclear weapons, and that under a different regime, Iranian nukes would be no more threatening than those of Britain. In fact, Iran's nuclear program was started by the shah in the early 1970s with American support.

Staying the Course:

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire. But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press. The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News Bill O'Reilly is trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding Mr. O'Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam W.M.D.'s. (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.) As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Mr. Bush's top war strategists, starting with Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism." A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war's über-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost. That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There's historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Mr. Bush gave the fateful address that sped Congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive. He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball." Our own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious." snip What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central. Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.

War News for Saturday, August 13, 2005 Bring 'em on: Four Iraqis killed, 19 wounded by explosion at mosque near Ramadi. Bring 'em on: Fiften Iraqis killed, 17 wounded in attack on US patrol near Nasaf. Bring 'em on: One Iraqi killed, 7 wounded in car bomb attack on US convoy in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two truck drivers missing after ambush near Ramadi. Bring 'em on: Five Iraqi soldiers wounded by roadside bomb in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Four Iraqi civilians killed by roadside bomb, two Iraqi policemen shot in Samarra. Samawa.

Like Al-Basrah, it appears that the governorate has fallen into the hands of extremists in the al-Sadr trend who are bent on imposing their vision of Islamic rule on the population. The impact of this turn of events will likely weigh on the presence of Japanese forces, who are stationed in the governorate to provide humanitarian assistance through December. The Japanese government has already hinted that it would be interested in remaining in the governorate for an additional year, and media reports indicate there is an interest in bringing in private sector assistance. With al-Sadr loyalists essentially in control of the city and governorate, it is likely that the Japanese -- labeled "occupiers" by the group -- would be forced out. The unrest in Samawah culminated last week a massive demonstration by locals outside the governor's office protesting unemployment and poor water and electricity services. Protesters threw rocks at police and police fired into the crowd, killing one and injuring dozens. The ensuing violence left several police cars burned and forced the governor to impose a curfew on the normally calm city. The city has seen little violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, but a number of incidents attributed to Sunni insurgents have occurred. Meanwhile, Shi'ite extremists loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have infiltrated the city and appear to be attempting to impose their vision of Islamic mores on the city's residents.

MSR news. "Army Brigadier-General Yves Fontaine, commander of the 1st Corps Support Command, on Friday said the number of attacks along supply routes had grown to about 30 per week, although the US casualty rate has declined because extra protective armour has been installed on supply trucks and other vehicles in the transportation fleet." Bringing democracy to Iraq. "Baghdad's former mayor, ousted by force this week, said on Friday the new Iraq had degenerated into a militia state ruled by the gun and not the ballot box. 'I was elected. I had dreams. Then I was removed in a coup by gunmen. This is very bad. Acts like these set a dangerous precedent for a country that wants to be democratic,' Alaa al-Tamimi told Reuters in a telephone interview. 'Elected officials are just removed by force. We live in a militia state even with American troops here. Imagine when they leave. It will be worse than Saddam Hussein's time.' Tamimi, chosen from a shortlist by city notables under the supervision of the U.S. military occupiers in 2003, said 120 gunmen took over his office on Monday. They installed Hussein al-Tahhan, a rival local official and a member of one of the main Islamist Shi'ite parties leading the government, as mayor. Tamimi said he was not present when the gunmen occupied his office. Fearful for his life, he said he was living under U.S. protection and declined to say where he was speaking from." Lieutenant AWOL. "President Bush and his motorcade passed the growing camp of war protesters outside his ranch Friday without incident. As Bush passed on his way to and from a political fundraiser, law enforcement blocked two intersecting roads where the demonstrators have camped out all week. Officers required the group to stand behind yellow tape, but no one was asked to leave. The motorcade didn't stop." Back-door draft. Dr. Natalie Griego already did one stint in Iraq, right when the war started in 2003. Her family was hoping she could avoid a return trip. But four weeks ago, Griego, a Lawrence resident and a major in the Colorado National Guard, received word she is being called up for a second tour of duty. 'I don’t know that being in Iraq is the hard part,' said Griego, a physician with St. Francis Health Center’s Topeka Emergency Care. 'It’s leaving my kids and my family and friends that’s hard and knowing there are people concerned about you and praying for you.' Griego will leave behind her husband, Jeff Krall, and two sons, Reece, 4, and Logan, 1, in Lawrence, on Friday." Sniper check. "The thumb-and-pinkie salute, a ubiquitous symbol of pride, heritage and greeting in Hawai'i, was banned at Camp Victory guard stations after a National Guard soldier mistakenly flashed a shaka to a senior officer instead of a salute." Constitution. "Iraq’s political leaders, racing against time to reach consensus on the draft constitution before Monday’s deadline, have settled three out of 18 outstanding issues, said a source close to the process. 'Three points have been settled: the name of Iraq, the question of the peshmerga (or Kurdish militia) and Kirkuk,' the source said on condition of anonymity." Casualty Reports Local story: Two New York Guardsmen killed in Iraq. Local story: Colorado Marine killed in Iraq. Local story: Texas soldier wounded in Iraq. Local story: Two Pennsylvania soldiers wounded in Iraq. Rant of the Day In October 1993, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shugart were killed during the Battle of Mogadishu trying to rescue a helicopter crew. They were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. At the White House presentation ceremony, SFC Shugart's father, Herb, launched an angry, personal attack on President Clinton, blaming him for his son's death. The vulgar diatribe lasted for several minutes, during which President Clinton endured the embittered father's wrath. At the time, I read about this incident in a German newspaper, but today the only on-line references I could find are on right-wing websites - all of which find Herb Shugart's behavior quite praiseworthy. (I won't link to those sites, but you can find a nice example at Powerslime.) However, the German news article I read contained something you won't find on any of the wingnut sites. The Secret Service had warned President Clinton beforehand that Herb Shugart, a Clinton-hater who had been quite vocal since his son's death, was planning to cause an unpleasant scene at the presentation ceremony. Still, President Clinton chose to personally present the posthumous Medal of Honor to Mr. Shugart for his son's valor and sacrifice. It may be helpful to remember that President George H. W. Bush - not President Clinton - ordered US troops into Somalia shortly after he lost the 1992 election. Yesterday, a cowardly George W. Bush sped past Cindy Sheehan - twice - inside his blast-proof Presidential limousine as he went to an invitation-only fundraiser. Bush has spent the past week hiding from this woman, whose son died in a Baghdad firefight. Bush fears Cindy Sheehan. He fears a tongue-lashing from an angry parent. Bush is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. YD

War News for Friday, August 12, 2005 Bring 'em on: One US soldier killed by roadside bomb near Tikrit. Bring 'em on: One US Marine killed by roadside bomb near Ramadi. Bring 'em on: Iraqi translator working for US forces assassinated in Kirkuk. Bring 'em on: Five Iraqi civilians and one soldier killed in ambush and roadside bomb attacks in Samarra. Two US soldiers injured in helicopter crash near Kirkuk. Whack-A-Mole. "U.S. Marines who recently completed an offensive to disrupt insurgent supply lines in western Iraq say there are not enough troops to leave behind in towns to maintain security after U.S. forces leave. 'It's a matter of available forces,' said Maj. Jeff Eichholz, 36, of Columbus, Ohio, executive officer of 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines. 'It's the truth. We don't have the forces here to leave Marines back in every city.'" Missing. "Iraqis in the northern city Mosul have made off with a top secret American spy plane. The U.S. military in Iraq said in a statement on Thursday that one of its 'unmanned aerial vehicles' -- otherwise known as a drone -- had crashed in the town the night before." Abu Ghraib. “Senior Pentagon officials have opposed the release of photographs and videotapes of the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, arguing that they would incite public opinion in the Muslim world and put the lives of American soldiers and officials at risk, according to documents unsealed in federal court in New York. Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement put forth to support the Pentagon's case that he believed that "riots, violence and attacks by insurgents will result" if the images were released. The papers were filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan in an ongoing lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain under the Freedom of Information Act the release of 87 photos and four videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib. The photos were among those turned over to Army investigators last year by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, a reservist who was posted at Abu Ghraib. The documents reveal both the high level and the determination of the Pentagon officials engaged in the effort to block disclosure of the images, and their alarm at the prospect that the photos might become public.” Cindy Sheehan. "Yet there was no sign Mr. Bush intends to meet Ms. Sheehan. In fact, there were reports he is travelling solely by helicopter when he leaves the ranch in an effort to avoid racing past the protester in a limousine. 'The President says he feels compassion for me,' Ms. Sheehan said, 'but the best way to show that compassion is by meeting with me and the other mothers and families who are here. All we're asking is that he sacrifice an hour out of his five-week vacation to talk to us before the next mother loses her son in Iraq.' Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who has studied Mr. Bush's rise, said: 'For him, meeting this woman face to face would be blinking. His whole game is to be confident and to appear never to doubt and never to waiver. It's this idea of determination.' And unlike government leaders in a parliamentary system who are challenged directly by their political opponents, Mr. Bush can easily shelter himself from such confrontations. 'He would not trust himself in a face-to-face meeting and neither would his staff. These guys like control,' said Prof. Jillson, who added that Ms. Sheehan's protest in itself may not be that significant but it comes at a time when many Americans are reconsidering their views of the Iraq war." Support the troops! "Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents. It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt. 'I want you to know we support you,' she gushed. Rivera soon reached the limits of her support. 'Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people,' she told him." Bush Pioneers. "Iraqi investigators have uncovered widespread fraud and waste in more than $1 billion worth of weapons deals arranged by middlemen who reneged or took huge kickbacks on contracts to arm Iraq's fledgling military, according to a confidential report and interviews with U.S. and Iraqi officials. The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit, in a report reviewed by Knight Ridder, describes transactions suggesting that senior U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials in the Defense Ministry used three intermediary companies to hide the kickbacks they received from contracts involving unnecessary, overpriced or outdated equipment. Commentary Editorial:

In a previous meeting a few months after his death, Sheehan says, the president seemed unaware of who her son was, addressed her as "mom" during the encounter and acted almost lighthearted. Now she wants a deadly serious discussion of why America invaded Iraq and how long the bloodshed will continue. Those are questions on the minds of millions of Americans, who see the list of dead and injured American personnel growing along with the expenditure of billions of U.S. tax dollars, with no end in sight. Polls reflect the growing unease of the country with the president's handling of the war. Approval of the Bush war policy has fallen below 40 percent. As Sheehan questions the war, she is voicing the concerns of a majority of Americans. In a way, the White House set the stage for Sheehan's vigil by saying Bush's five-week hiatus at the ranch was really a working vacation to allow him to talk to everyday folks about the issues that concern them. The likes of Cindy Sheehan don't come along every day, but she wants to discuss an issue that concerns millions of Americans who want to hear answers that go beyond the familiar "stay the course." Even Richard Nixon, often described as paranoid about critics, visited antiwar protesters at the Lincoln Memorial in 1970. Yet Bush has not yet found it in himself to meet a grieving mother or invite her to the ranch to discuss his policies. Thursday Bush told reporters he sympathized with Sheehan but that pulling out of Iraq "would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace." Sheehan responded that the best way to show compassion would be to meet with her and other parents of soldiers killed in action.

Editorial:

Bush's advisers seem to be telling him that if he gives in to Sheehan's demands — she's said she won't budge from her spot outside the president's Crawford ranch until he speaks with her — he will show weakness and give strength to the war's opponents. In fact, his not seeing Sheehan has bolstered the anti-war movement. Hundreds have visited her at her hot-as-blazes campsite. She is quickly becoming a symbol of growing national opposition to the war. Bush, in his resistance to a meeting, is becoming a symbol of intransigence and unfeeling arrogance. There is a precedent, actually. At the height of the Vietnam War, President Nixon went to see war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. He didn't give in; he didn't change his views. He just reached out a little. That's all Bush would have to do.

Opinion:

It wouldn’t be a good idea to impeach President George W. Bush, even though he merits impeachment and removal far more than any other American president in history. No other president even comes close. This is the president, after all, who used the tragedy and hot blood stirred up by 9/11 to put into motion a neocon plan to attack Iraq and perform a regime change. This is the president who fed false reasons and cooked intelligence for the illegal, premeditated, unprovoked and immoral attack on a sovereign nation to Congress, the American people, the United Nations and the world. This is the president that has made it clear to the world that America means to change all non-democratic nations into democracies, starting with what he called the axis of evil – Iraq, North Korea and Iran. This is the president that claims he received guidance and the go-ahead for the attack on Iraq from the man upstairs personally. This president is not one of the Blues Brothers but he still believes that he is on a mission from God.

Analysis:

But more ominous, perhaps, than the occupation of Iraq is the occupation of the US. I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over. I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren. More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong. More and more every day the lies are being exposed. And then there is the largest lie, that everything the US does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a "war on terrorism", ignoring the fact that war is itself terrorism, that barging into homes and taking away people and subjecting them to torture is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less. The Bush administration, unable to capture the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, invaded Afghanistan, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. Yet it still does not know where the criminals are. Not knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein was hiding, it invaded and bombed Iraq in March 2003, disregarding the UN, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorising the population; and not knowing who was and was not a terrorist, the US government confined hundreds of people in Guantánamo under such conditions that 18 have tried to commit suicide. The Amnesty International Report 2005 notes: "Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times ... When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity". The "war on terrorism" is not only a war on innocent people in other countries; it is a war on the people of the US: on our liberties, on our standard of living. The country's wealth is being stolen from the people and handed over to the super-rich. The lives of the young are being stolen.

Casualty Reports Local story: Arizona soldier killed in Iraq. Local story: Minnesota soldier dies from wounds received in Iraq. Local story: Pennsylvania Guardsman killed in Iraq. Local story: Pennsylvania Guardsman killed in Iraq. Local story: Pennsylvania Guardsman killed in Iraq. Local story: Pennsylvania Guardsman killed in Iraq. Local story: Pennsylvania Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Pitching a Bitch, August 11, 2005 I don't often criticize my fellow liberal bloggers. But this posted photo by Invictus over at blah3 kinda irritated me. Buddy Ebsen wasn't just the actor who portrayed the goofy patriarch of the Beverly Hillbillies. Before he became an actor, he was a Marine infantryman who fought on Guadalcanal and was decorated for valor after he landed in the first wave at Tarawa. He was also a life-long Democrat, even after he became famous and rich. Just sayin'. YD

War News for Thursday, August 11, 2005 Bring 'em on: Iraqi police lieutenant killed in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Iraqi intelligence official assassinated in Basra. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqis killed, 45 wounded in rioting in Samawa. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi policemen killed by gunfire in Sherkah. Bring 'em on: Five Iraqi soldiers killed, three wounded in attack on Beiji checkpoint. Bring 'em on: Iraqi mother and father killed, daughter wounded in Baghdad attack. Another record month. "July was a record month at Baghdad's main morgue, where the bodies pile up so fast they often have to be buried before they can be identified to make way for the next day's arrivals. A total of 1,100 corpses were received in July, a sharp increase from the previous record of 879 in June, and far exceeding the morgue's 10-a-day capacity, according to its overworked director, Faed Bakr. The figures exclude casualties from bombings, which are not taken for autopsy because the cause of death already is known. While car bombings and suicide attacks have garnered the most attention and have claimed thousands of lives in Iraq, shootings have accounted for thousands more civilian deaths since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. At the morgue last month, more than 60 percent of the deaths--676, or more than 20 a day--came from shootings, in yet another indicator that overall violence in the world's most violent capital keeps getting worse, even as the U.S. military and the Iraqi government insist that the insurgency is being tamed." Calling Condi! We found your fucking mushroom cloud! "Iraq is dangerously close to the threshold - the point of no return at which an ideological-sectarian chain reaction is triggered and a rapidly accelerated disintegration along sectarian lines occurs. The blinding flash of Iraq's disintegration will be followed closely by a powerful shockwave radiating outward in all directions, then by an irresistible reverse force that will pull Iraq's neighbors into the vortex. That is the point at which the US begins to suffer an irreversible forfeiture in Iraq. The political detonation described here, in which Iraq's enriched, fissionable sectarian factions or elements are rammed together forcefully by the current US-driven political process, finally reach critical mass and then detonate to cause Iraq's violent disintegration, is imminent. Consequently, not only has the US finally uncovered Iraq's political WMSD (weapons of mass self-destruction) but it is also, knowingly or unknowingly, racing toward the triggering of a political fission bomb of enormous yield with widespread regional and even global fallout." The break-up begins. "The head of a Shia Muslim militia associated with one of the main parties in the Iraqi government says Shia should have their own federal state in the south. 'Federalism has to be in all of Iraq. They are trying to prevent the Shia from enjoying their own federalism,' Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Brigades, told thousands of Shia gathered in the southern city of Najaf. 'We have to persist in forming one region in the south or else we will regret it. What have we got from the central government except death?' Another Shia leader also called on Thursday for a federal state covering all Shia areas in the south. 'Regarding federalism, we think that it is necessary to form one entire region in the south,' said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of one of the Shia parties leading the government. The calls for a southern Shia state come at a critical time when Iraqi leaders are trying to finish a draft constitution to submit to parliament before a self-imposed 15 August deadline." Democracy in action. "A spokesman for the municipality rejected details of Tamimi's account, estimating that far fewer armed men were involved in the takeover, which occurred during a sandstorm when few people were at work. Some at the building said perhaps only 30 took part. But there was no dispute that Baghdad Gov. Hussein Tahhan had taken over the mayor's job. He insisted Wednesday that he would serve only temporarily. Tahhan is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite political party that is a member of the prime minister's parliamentary bloc. On Wednesday, Jafari weighed in, saying he favored replacing Tamimi. Tamimi, a civil engineer who once worked in Iraq's nuclear program, fled the country in the 1990s and returned after President Saddam Hussein's ouster, promising to clean up Baghdad. He was appointed mayor before the U.S. transferred sovereignty back to Iraqis in June 2004. A new Baghdad provincial council was elected in January, and it asked Tamimi to step down. Some members had questioned his integrity; others expressed frustration that he had not delivered on promises to provide basic services and get rid of corruption. Jafari said Tamimi's removal was justified because he had also failed to satisfy the Iraqis running the local government." I wish they could do this in Spokane. At least another year. "The official stressed that it was 'important to calibrate expectations post-elections. I've been saying to folks: You're still going to have an insurgency, you're still going to have a dilapidated infrastructure, you're still going to have decades of developmental problems both on the economic and the political side.' U.S. military officials in Iraq said last month that it might be possible to withdraw 20,000 to 30,000 of the 138,000 American troops by next spring if Iraqi civilian leaders managed to meet deadlines for drafting a new constitution and holding elections. On Wednesday, the military official said a significant spring withdrawal was 'still possible.' But while primary military responsibility for some parts of Iraq could likely be handed over even before the elections, the official said, U.S. forces would have to play a lead role in fighting the insurgency for at least a year. Even if a new government is elected on time in December, 'the earliest they're going to be capable of running a counterinsurgency campaign is . . . next summer,' the official said." Commentary Editorial:

Despite myriad hearings, investigations and prominent trials of privates and specialists, no commissioned officer has received serious punishment for any of the many confirmed cases of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Two of those involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal have received letters of reprimand. One was demoted. None has been court-martialed. By contrast, Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes, 55, a four-star general who served 36 years in the Army, was abruptly relieved of his command on Tuesday. According to his attorney, Gen. Byrnes, who is now divorced, stands accused of having had an extramarital affair with a civilian who is not his colleague, is not his subordinate and has no connection to the military. An officer familiar with the case told The Post that despite the apparent irrelevance of the affair, the harsh verdict -- apparently the only such demotion of a four-star general in modern times -- was justified: "We all swear to serve by the highest ideals, and no matter what rank, when you violate them, you are dealt with appropriately." From this incident, it is possible to draw only one conclusion: It's okay for officers to oversee units that torture civilians and thereby damage the reputation of the United States around the world, do terrible harm to the ideological war on terrorism and inspire more Iraqis to become insurgents. Having an affair with a civilian, on the other hand, is completely unacceptable and will end your career.

Opinion:

The optimists say that we have trained, armed and equipped a 200,000-strong Iraqi security force that can increasingly take over the job of pursuing the insurgents and terrorists. The pessimists say that, in fact, the new Iraqi force is heavily infiltrated by the very people that are the enemy, and it is so poorly trained and led that perhaps no more than 5,000 of them can be trusted to operate independently without constant American support and in company with American troops. The insurgents, the same ones Vice President Dick Cheney declared to be in the last throes of defeat, stage ever larger suicide bombings and use ever bigger roadside bombs to kill even more American soldiers and Marines. In two days of horror a Marine Reserve unit from Ohio lost 20 men, a few killed in a shoot-out in the open with the insurgents, but most in an IED attack that took out the vehicle the Marines were riding in -an amphibious tractor, essentially an unarmored antiquated relic of the Vietnam war that was never intended to operate more than a few hundred yards off a landing beach. It can be fairly stated that many of America's 1,800 dead and 14,000 wounded were killed because they were riding in unarmored or lightly armored vehicles that are totally inappropriate to the nature of the war and enemy we are fighting. This while the heaviest and deadliest divisions in the world's best Army were being ordered to leave most of their best equipment - the M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles - parked at their home bases in orderly ranks. This while the highly trained crews of those vehicles were ordered to dismount and become infantry to patrol the most dangerous streets and roads in the world in unarmored Humvees.

Opinion:

When Lyndon Johnson sent American troops into the flaming disaster of Vietnam he had no real strategy, no plan for winning the war. The idea, more or less, was that our boys, tougher and much better equipped, would beat their boys. Case closed. Fifty-eight thousand American troops succumbed to this schoolyard fantasy. George W. Bush has no strategy, no real plan, for winning the war in Iraq. So we're stuck in a murderous quagmire without even the suggestion of an end in sight. The administration has never been straight with the public about the war, and there's no reason to believe it will start being honest now. There is a desperate need for a serious national conversation about alternatives to the Bush approach in Iraq, which is tantamount to a permanent American military presence in that country. The president, ensconced in a long vacation, exemplifies the vacuum of leadership on this crucial issue, which demands nothing less than the sustained attention of the wisest men and women the U.S. has to offer. They could be politicians, academics, civic or religious leaders, corporate executives - whoever. The longer they remain on the sidelines, the longer the carnage in Iraq will continue.

Opinion:

Members of Sheehan's tiny Gold Star Families for Peace believe that the president was wrong and is now clueless about what to do. They have stepped into the abyss of regret and senselessness that comes with knowing a child died for a mistake. Sheehan reminds me of Lila Lipscomb, the Flint, Mich., mother who lost a son and got lost amid less compelling material in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Lipscomb was an ardent supporter of the military who was devastated because she had encouraged her son to join up to get the education she couldn't afford to give him. After a "9/11" screening for press and politicians in Washington, Lipscomb said a few words. When the lights came up, the audience spent a long time picking up its things. No one wanted to be seen crying, especially when our privileged positions protect us from ever having to endure what Lipscomb had. On Friday, Bush will have to pass by Sheehan in his climate-controlled car with its tinted windows, or forgo a fundraiser nearby. He lives in a bubble — his prescreened audiences applaud him for platitudes and for his resolve. He goes nowhere alone. He took Dick Cheney to his interview with the 9/11 commission. He isn't refusing to see Sheehan because he's callous but because he's like those of us listening to Lipscomb. Alone with Sheehan, he might find himself crying over something his privileged position means he will never have to endure.

Opinion:

In the period before September 11, neo-con writers often focused on the spread of a failed-state world, a supposed jungle of non-governable instability out there on the peripheries, one on which only the sole global hyperpower would assumedly have the capability to impose some level of order. Some of those neo-cons, in their eagerness to whack various regimes in the Middle East - Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon - probably didn't care greatly if, as a result, they created failed states throughout the region. Chaos didn't perhaps seem the worst fate for many of those lands (as long as Ariel Sharon's Israel was strengthened in the process). Little did they know. Now, they have indeed succeeded in creating a failed-state right in the oil-rich heart of the Middle East and the chaos of Iraq has proceeded to suck the American military as well as Bush administration policies and dreams of every sort down with it, creating maneuvering space for countries as disparate as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In fact, it's unlikely that the Bush administration - possibly any American government - will be able to live comfortably with Iraq as a failed state, its ripples of chaos spreading regionally, even globally. And yet the administration has already demonstrated with definitive thoroughness that it is capable of doing little about the situation - except continually making it worse. Someday, withdrawal will come, "permanent" bases or no. Staying is not conceivable and the longer we remain, the worse the situation is likely to be when we depart. But on such subjects and on the matter of taking any responsibility for its actions, this administration is not only shameless, but quite hopeless. It can only create more chaos, foster yet more mad plans for future operations like - if the latest rumors leaked to former Central Intelligence Agency official Philip Giraldi of American Conservative magazine are to be believed - taking out the Iranian nuclear program using ... duh! ... nuclear weapons. Even Homer Simpson, six beers to the wind, couldn't have come up with that one, but evidently our vice president has.

Analysis:

In all, 18 unresolved points are being discussed by representatives of the country's Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds, who have been debating for three months already. If they succeed in coming up with a constitution, parliament will ratify it, and it will then be submitted for a referendum two months later, in mid-October. If voters approve, new elections will then be held by mid-December. Success would also mean that the US could start to withdraw some of its 140,000 troops by early 2006, and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and US President George W Bush would be able to tell the world that democracy, rather than terrorism, in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, worked after all. If the constitutional assembly fails, according to the interim Iraqi constitution (Transitional Administrative Law - TAL), then Jaafari would resign, something that many parties involved, including the Americans, do not want to happen. Failure of this crucial step in creating a democratic Iraq would only fuel insurgents, giving them more reason to create havoc in Iraq and undermine the new leaders of Baghdad and their sponsors in Washington. A last measure would be getting three-quarters of parliament to amend the TAL, to avoid Jaafari's resignation in the event that the assembly failed to meet the August 15 deadline.

War News for Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Four US soldiers killed and six wounded in Beiji when an armored Humvee hit an antitank mine and insurgents then attacked with small arms fire. Two civilians killed and four wounded in a mortar attack near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Four insurgents killed by US troops while trying to plant a roadside bomb in Ramadi. Iraqi Cabinet employee assassinated by gunmen in Baghdad. Two insurgents killed and 22 arrested by US and Iraq troops in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: Ten Iraqi doctors killed in an ambush by unidentified gunmen while on their way to Ramadi to help at hospitals there.

Bring ‘em on: Fifteen people killed separate incidents in Mosul over the past 24 hours. Six people, including two policemen, killed and 14 wounded in suicide car bombing aimed at a police patrol in the Ghazaliya district of Baghdad. One traffic policeman killed and six civilians wounded in mortar attack in Baghdad’s Aadhamiya district. Two civilians killed and three wounded in attack by gunmen near Iskandariya. Police brigadier kidnapped as he left his house in the Baghdad district of Raghiba Khatoun. Nine car bombs and 28 improvised bombs discovered and 32 suspects detained in Ramadi according to a U.S. military statement.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi brigadier general in charge of the Interior Ministry’s administrative affairs office kidnapped in central Baghdad.

Break’s over: A day after fierce sandstorms brought most of Iraq to a standstill, insurgent attacks and U.S. military operations returned Wednesday in several parts of the country.

Marine Corps units involved in Operation Quick Strike — a 1,000-strong Marine offensive in the Euphrates River Valley — did not provide an update Wednesday, a day after finding a car bomb factory in the desert region between central Iraq and the Syrian border to the west.

The operation, at least the sixth in the region recently, was launched after a spate of attacks killed more than 20 Marines last week. U.S. military commanders have said the vast open areas in western Iraq are a major alley for the smuggling of men, money and weapons feeding the insurgency.

Upgrades: The bomb that killed two Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers Saturday was of a type used with increasing frequency by insurgents to try to penetrate the extra-armor kits that have been recently put on most U.S. vehicles in Iraq.

Lt. Col. Philip J. Logan, commander of Task Force Dragoon, said in an e-mail to The Inquirer from Iraq that the bomb was a remote-control weapon made from 122mm artillery shells wired together for a huge explosion. It was planted on the shoulder of a road just north of the Samarra bypass, 60 miles north of Baghdad, he said.

Guard officials in Pennsylvania said Monday that they did not know whether the blast was from a mine or was set off beside the road.

"The detonation caused the vehicle to swerve down an embankment, which was what caused most of the damage/injury," Logan said.

The Guard soldiers were riding in an M1025 humvee equipped with a factory-made armor kit for extra protection, Logan said.

Blowing smoke: Iraqi army and police forces now have the lead security role in eight to 10 areas of Iraq, but it remains unclear when they'll be prepared to take over security for the entire country, the Pentagon's top military officer said Tuesday.

"It's going to take time; nobody knows," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Pentagon news conference. "It's event-driven. It's going to be driven by a lot of events."

Though a constitutional referendum in October and elections for a permanent government in December will represent significant political milestones for Iraq, the strategy for an eventual drawdown of the 138,000 American troops in the country hinges in large part on when Iraqi troops can take the primary role in battling insurgents. Estimates of when that might happen have varied widely in recent months.

Last March, Gen. John Abizaid, of U.S. Central Command, told Congress that he believed Iraqi forces would be able to take the lead role this year, but Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Congress two months later that only a "small number" of Iraq's 173,000 army and police troops were capable of battling terrorists on their own.

Myers named only two areas where Iraqis police and army had taken the lead in security - a portion of Baghdad and Diyala province in the south, a majority Shiite area where attacks on coalition forces have been rare since an uprising by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was put down last year.

Home-grown: One reason the insurgency has grown so intractable, analysts say, is that Iraq, like Lebanon and the Palestinian territories before it, has developed a home-grown terrorist culture where little if any had existed before the war.

"Two years ago, the Iraqis did not know how to mount insurgent or terrorist operations and were heavily dependent on foreign jihadists to show them how to do things, how to make bombs, how to set up IEDs [improvised explosive devices, better known as roadside bombs], how to set up operational plans and do everything else for themselves," said Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq and military expert with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

"Today they have internalized most of those lessons," Pollack told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month, "and they are increasingly less dependent on foreigners for the know-how."

That's one reason the U.S. military has a hard time getting a handle on the insurgency's strength. It also undercuts, the administration's argument that the insurgents are under the control of foreigners.

Let’s hope they don’t get even more desperate: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned overnight that violence in Iraq could worsen, comparing insurgents to desperate Nazi SS officers and Japanese kamikaze pilots at the end of World War II. Insurgents were desperate to stop political progress in Iraq, Rumsfeld said, following one of the bloodiest weeks for US forces since the US-led invasion in 2003.

"I think it's reasonable to expect that violence could, again, increase for a time, as it did during the last elections," Rumsfeld said, looking ahead to a referendum on a new constitution in October and elections in December.

Senior Bush administration officials have repeatedly argued that the insurgency in Iraq is losing ground as political developments progress.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview released on Sunday that the insurgency in Iraq was "losing steam".

"It's a lot easier to see the violence and suicide bombing than to see the rather quiet political progress that's going on in parallel," she said.

Vice President Dick Cheney sparked controversy in June when he said the insurgency was in its "last throes".

“Reasonable suspicion”: Australian and British military legal advisers frequently had to "red card" more trigger-happy US forces to limit civilian casualties during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to one of the Australian advisers. Colonel Mike Kelly, writing in the Australian Army Journal, says the junior partners in the coalition forces succeeded in reducing civilian casualties and reinforcing the legitimacy of the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

In the most detailed insight yet into the secret rules Australian forces operated under during the conflict in 2003, Colonel Kelly, who went on to become a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said for Australian forces to open fire the enemy was "required to visibly carry weapons while deploying for an attack".

Defence sources said that under more relaxed US rules there only had to be a "reasonable suspicion" that the person was an enemy combatant and a threat.

The New Iraq

Local coup: Armed men entered Baghdad's municipal building during a blinding dust storm on Monday, deposed the city's mayor and installed a member of Iraq's most powerful Shiite militia.

The deposed mayor, Alaa al-Tamimi, who was not in his offices at the time, recounted the events in a telephone interview on Tuesday and called the move a municipal coup d'état. He added that he had gone into hiding for fear of his life.

"This is the new Iraq," said Mr. Tamimi, a secular engineer with no party affiliation. "They use force to achieve their goal."

Turmoil: Political crisis gripped the southern Iraqi town of Samawa on Wednesday as the ousted regional governor refused to resign, the provincial council chief quit and another official said gunmen had threatened him.

The uncertainty came in the wake of protests over public services that erupted on Sunday. Police fired into the crowd of hundreds, killing one person and wounding 40.

A day later, regional council members voted to oust governor Mohammed al-Hassaani, head of Muthanna province, one of 18 Iraqi regions, after the protesters had demanded his resignation in the town where 550 Japanese troops are stationed.

But local government officials said on Wednesday Hassaani, backed by a leading Shi'ite Islamist party in the national government, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has kept showing up for work, insisting there were not enough members of the local legislature present to vote him out.

Murder: Every couple of weeks in the town of Az Zubayr, a Sunni turns up dead.

The pattern is the same. One day, someone in a police uniform drives up and abducts the victim and a few days later their body is found in the river near a bridge on the northeastern side of town, toward Basrah in southern Iraq.

In some cases, the victim`s name shows up on police prison rolls as having been arrested, suggesting some level of police involvement in the killings, said Maj. Freddie Grounds, 35, commander of the Royal Anglian Regiment`s B Company.

Fanatics and extremists: Quietly, in their ones and twos, the professional classes of Baghdad are slipping out of the country to avoid becoming another fatal statistic.

Iraq is losing the educated elite of doctors, lawyers, academics and businessmen who are vital to securing a stable future. There is a fear that their departure will leave a vacuum to be filled by religious extremists.

Outside the shelter of the Green Zone, home to the American and Iraqi political leadership, lawlessness has overtaken the capital.

Professor Abdul Sattar Jawad, the head of English literature at Baghdad University, will leave next month to take up a post in Jordan. Two of his colleagues left recently after being intimidated.

Since the new Government came to power in April there have been up to 3000 civilian deaths, about half attributed to criminal activity.

"I love my country but I am unable to do any service for the people because it is overrun by fanatics and extremists," Professor Jawad said. "The streets are ruled by gangs, looters and goons."

Flight to safety: Each morning before dawn, hundreds of Arabs from southern Iraq gather near a mosque in this northern Kurdish city hoping to find work on one of scores of construction sites dotting the landscape. What began 18 months ago as a trickle of poor, unemployed young men moving north to find work and escape violence in predominantly Arab areas has now turned into a rapid stream. And it's no longer just the poor and jobless fleeing. Professionals -- including doctors, engineers and teachers -- are following them, desperate to escape the chaos tearing cities such as Baghdad, Basra, Baquba and Hilla apart. "I came here for safety, and for my family," says Dr Ali Alwan, 40, an eye specialist who moved from the southern city of Basra to Sulaimaniya in late 2003 and has since encouraged dozens of former colleagues to follow him. "Here it is a wonderful life. The children are in school, my wife is happy and there is good work," he says. "I don't think I will ever return to Basra."

Dead journalists: In its second appeal in three days for the protection of journalists in Iraq, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today condemned the murder of an Iraqi television producer, noting that 80 journalists or support staff have been killed in the strife-torn country since the start of the war in 2003. Adnan Al Bayati, who was killed at home in Baghdad in the presence of his wife and daughter on 23 July, had been working for Italian television stations Rai, Mediaset and TG3, and for the magazine Panorama.

Risky business: Islamic militants threatened to kill him for it, but Abu Mustafa says it was the only way he knew to make a living in the chaos that is Baghdad Wednesday.

The pornographic video salesman is among many traders caught between two faces of the new Iraq, one liberated from the state censorship of Saddam Hussein, the other gripped by religious zeal.

Relentless guerrilla violence has killed thousands of Iraqis, ravaged the economy and pushed up unemployment, forcing people like Abu Mustafa to scramble for a job.

But like the tens of thousands signing up for the new, U.S. -trained police and army, selling pornography has become an especially high-risk profession in Iraq, where a religious Shi'ite-led government swept to power in January, raising fears in some quarters of an Islamic state modeled after Iran.

Shattered

Shattered minds: Pfc. Steven Sherwood was declared mentally fit by the Army only a few days before he killed his wife and then himself at their home in Fort Collins, officials said Monday.

Fort Carson officials said he showed no signs of trouble when he was examined after returning from Iraq, where he had been for nearly a year. But then nine days later, Sherwood shot his wife, Sara, five times before he turned a gun on himself.

The independent National Gulf War Service Center estimates that nearly 90 armed forces personnel have committed suicide while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or after returning home.

Shattered bodies: His real injuries were almost as bad as the ones he hallucinated. He had a broken femur, broken jaw, broken cheekbone. His right calf was blown away. Also, his right ear couldn't hear and his right eye couldn't see.

He spent a month and a half at Walter Reed. The doctors wired his jaw shut, put a metal rod in his leg, did nine hours of surgery on his eye, reconstructed his calf, and did skin grafts.

"I've had way too many surgeries to count," he says.

One day a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined.

"I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely but enough that we wouldn't be losing people -- at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths."

Rodgers says he also declined to meet Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. This wounded soldier has lost faith in his leaders, and he no longer believes their repeated assurances of victory.

"It's gonna go on as long as we're there," he says. "There's always gonna be insurgents trying to blow us up. There's just too many of 'em that are willing to do it. You're never gonna catch all of 'em. And it seems like they have unlimited amounts of ammunition. So I don't think it's ever gonna end."

Shattered trust: American attitudes toward the war in Iraq continue to sour in the wake of last week's surge in U.S. troop deaths, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows.

An unprecedented 57% majority say the war has made the USA more vulnerable to terrorism. A new low, 34%, say it has made the country safer. The question is critical because the Bush administration has long argued that the invasion of Iraq was undertaken to make the USA safer from terrorism.

The poll of 1,004 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, also finds that one in three say the United States should withdraw all troops from Iraq - another new high. The proportion that support maintaining troop levels or sending more troops also rose a bit, to 41%. The survey's margin of error is +/-3 percentage points.

G. Terry Madonna, a pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., says support for the war is eroding in large part because the public sees no end to the U.S. military involvement there.

"You can't go month after month with no sign of progress and little evidence that Iraqi troops are able to defend themselves without public attitudes toward the war deteriorating," Madonna says. "It has been seven months since the Iraqi elections, and most of the news since then has been bad."

Commentary

Editorial: The mindset that justifies classifying "faulty maintenance" as a state secret is what ties these two cases together. Somewhere in between Edmonds and Greenhouse is an alternate history of America for the past four years. Edmonds' information may not have prevented 9/11, but an unbiased investigation might have helped us zero in more completely on the malefactors behind it — which might have made the lies about Iraq's involvement harder to sell. And Greenhouse's case points us to the true governing philosophy of the Bush administration — kleptocracy, except the rulers themselves aren't thieves, they merely condone the practice. Whether Edmonds and Greenhouse are finally and unambiguously vindicated is something we'll have to wait and see. But I'm hopeful, given the fate of another celebrated whistleblower, Colleen Rowley, whose quest to investigate alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui before 9/11 was frustrated at the highest levels of the FBI. She's running for Congress in Minnesota this year. Good for her. These are the kind of people who should be running the government, not running from it.

Opinion: It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.

Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.

Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.

But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.

Editorial: You probably remember the Tennessee National Guardsman who embarrassed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in December. He asked Rumsfeld why he hadn't procured armor to protect his troops.

The real answer: Because you didn't make him.

You allowed the Pentagon and Rumsfeld to pretend armor was no big deal. "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want," Rumsfeld responded. If you had been paying attention, such a flip answer would have sent Rummy packing.

You allowed the president to remain oblivious. You didn't protest when your congressmen, from both parties, snatched money out of the military budget to pay for pork-barrel projects. You let them protect well-connected contractors even after it was obvious that they weren't up to fixing the problem.

Of course, Rummy, when he visited Iraq, didn't run the 10-mile terror gantlet from the airport to Baghdad in a tinny Humvee. Nope. He was snug inside a Rhino Runner, a reinforced steel bus manufactured by Weston, Fla.-based Labock Technologies. The Pentagon VIPs and private contractors in Iraq know the Rhino, as opposed to the Humvee, will ward off bombs. The Pentagon brass may ride Rhinos. But they won't certify them. Not for our soldiers.

The military moves No. 1 prisoner Saddam Hussein around in a Rhino. Our soldiers get something far inferior.

And that's on you.

Truly armored vehicles like the Rhino Runner would cut military casualties in half and eliminate the insurgency's most effective weapon.

But Americans, so very bored with Iraq, have been preoccupied with gay marriage, John Bolton's disposition, the outing of Valerie Plame and Carrie's chances on "American Idol."

Unfortunately, armoring military vehicles doesn't fit on either side of America's political divide. It's not a liberal or conservative issue, not Democrat vs. Republican. Doesn't matter if you were for the war or against the war. Americans, and their advocacy groups, can't seem to get excited about an issue unless it pits them against a known political enemy.

So you didn't raise hell when 14 young Marines perished in an amphibious landing craft in the middle of the damn desert.

Their deaths are on you.

Casualty Reports

Local story: Confluence, PA, soldier killed by a sniper in Mosul on the day after his nineteenth birthday.

Local story: Martinez, CA, Marine killed by sniper near Ramadi.

Local story: South Omaha, NE, Marine killed in Iraq nine months ago honored by neighborhood association.

Local story: Bogalusa, OH, Marine killed in explosion in Iraq to be interred in local cemetery.

Local story: Milford Township, PA, soldier killed in bomb blast north of Baghada.

Local story: Toronto, OH, Marine killed last week in an ambush in western Iraq.

Local story: Tallmadge, OH, Marine killed in Iraq on Aug. 1.

Local story: East Peoria, IL, Marine severely wounded over a month ago died suddenly after an operation.

Local story: Marine with family ties to Fayette County, PA, killed near Haditha last week.

Local story: Lakota, OH, Marine killed last week in Iraq.

Local story: Philadelphia, PA, police officer serving with the National Guard killed in Iraq.

Local story: Phoenix, AZ, soldier killed in bomb blast in Taji.

Local story: Fort Walton Beach, FL, soldier killed in collision with civilian fuel truck in Iraq.

Local story: Ledbetter, KY, soldier killed in collision with civilian fuel truck in Iraq.

Local story: Philadelphia, PA, soldier killed in roadside bombing north of Baghdad.

Local story: Lexington, KY, Marine killed in suicide bombing near Al Amiriyah.

Local story: Columbus, OH, Marine killed in Iraq.

War News for Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Bodies of five policemen who were shot dead and thrown in a river found in Samarra. Translator working at Baghdad's Doura power station shot dead. U.S. patrol attacked by suicide bomber in Fallujah, no word on casualties. Two employees of the Iraqi state-owned North Oil Company shot dead by gunmen in Fatha.

Bring ‘em on: Three policemen killed and 42 people wounded in a suicide car bombing aimed at a police patrol and a US convoy in central Baghdad. The attack was reported to have destroyed a US Humvee and 15 civilian cars. Reports indicate one US soldier was killed and two others wounded in the attack but the US military did not confirm the casualties immediately. (Note: Later reports confirm the US casualties but state that the three Iraqis killed were civilians.)

Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed in action on Monday by small arms fire in Ramadi.

Bring ‘em on: Three pilgrims killed and eight injured when gunmen sprayed their minivan with gunfire near the town of Baquba. Two people burned to death when insurgents stopped their truck and set fire to it in Abu Khamis. Two Iraqi civilians killed and a third critically wounded Monday when gunmen fired on their car near Latifiyah. One police commando killed and another injured by an explosion in Baghdad's Mansour district. One policeman killed and another injured when gunmen fired on their patrol car in Baquba. One civilian killed and another injured when gunmen attacked their mobile phone shop in al-Jamee'a district of south-west Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Four police officers killed and one injured in attacks in al-Jadida. One police officer killed and three wounded in an attack in al-Adil. Two officers killed in an attack on Gadil Street. A police chief killed and his driver wounded in an attack in Dura and another attack in the south of capital left a police officer dead. One police officer killed and one injured in an attack by gunmen in Baquba.

Vehicle accident: Two US soldiers killed and two injured when a civilian fuel truck crashed into their vehicle in Rubiah.

The desert jungle: For the new Iraqi army being trained by American troops in the safe confines of Taji military base, it's a jungle out there.

So much so that they fear setting foot outside.

"We're all afraid. I can't go outside the base wearing these military clothes," says Sergeant Abbas, listing colleagues who have fallen victim to relentless insurgent attacks in the dusty towns and highways north of Baghdad.

"We all know soldiers who notice people photographing them with mobile phones and being followed," says the Shi'ite Muslim from Amara in relatively calm southern Iraq.

He does not give his full name for fear of reprisals.

Training the new Iraqi army is essential for U.S. plans to bring troops home over the next year. But for the moment the 15,000 Iraqis at Taji are glad they rarely have to venture outside in military attire.

"I can feel them following me and I'm scared of that," said Lieutenant Colonel Bassam Ismail, speaking of the guerrillas.

A good question: If the US Army and its Iraqi allies are killing as many insurgents as reports indicate they are per month, why is the insurgency intensifying instead of collapsing? The Bush administration has been extremely reluctant to comply with the requests of a Congress controlled by its own party and issue detailed figures, or "benchmarks" on progress in combating the insurgency. But a study of the best figures and estimates available publicly suggests that the level of attrition reported and widely believed to be inflicted on the insurgents is in reality a lot less than the figures indicate. For if the figures widely quoted are accurate, then the insurgency should be either collapsing already or, at the very least, shrinking dramatically in its resources and capabilities as its combat units and intelligence networks should have been suffering unsustainable attrition.

If the figures for the past three months are accurate, the insurgents have been losing 10 percent of their real strength per month, or almost one third in only three months, but the continued rise in the number of casualties they are inflicting on US and allied Iraqi forces strongly suggests that, on the contrary, they are maintaining their strength or even extending it: That view, incidentally is also held by several US Army analysts who have spoken on condition of anonymity to UPI. Therefore, either the US estimates of casualties inflicted on the insurgents are vastly inflated, or the insurgents are able to recruit within Iraq at a level that at the very least keeps track with their losses, and even if they are losing large numbers of experienced, highly trained cadres, they are able to replace them almost immediately with no discernible strain on their ability to sustain their current level of operations.

Too much with too little: General George Casey was standing next to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he made the statement in Baghdad on 28 July: "If the political process continues to go positively and if the development of the security forces continues to go as it is going, I do believe we will still be able to take some fairly substantial reductions after these elections in the spring and summer next year." Six days later, however, during a speech in Grapevine, Texas, Bush explicitly restated his position that there was no firm timetable. But in Washington, questions remained about whether his administration was beginning to adjust to the idea of a firm deadline. To retired U.S. Army Colonel Kenneth Allard, Casey's statement is little more than wishful thinking by the Pentagon. Allard is a military analyst and is writing a book on how the United States came to invade Iraq. In an interview with RFE/RL, Allard pointed to the conditions in Casey's statement: Iraq's progress in establishing political institutions and a credible security force. Allard said that won't happen anytime next year because there are too few U.S. forces in Iraq to both fight the insurgency and train indigenous soldiers. In short, Allard said, there is too much for the U.S. military to do, and too few soldiers to do it.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice likes to say the Administration is pursuing a two-track policy in Iraq: military plus political. But the two tracks are so entwined that problems on one can easily derail the other. Whenever U.S. casualties spike, as they did last week, the Bush Administration has to remind everyone at home that U.S. forces will not be staying forever. Anxious about slumping domestic approval, the Administration has recently been suggesting that troops may be drawn down as early as next spring. But each time the U.S. signals a likely pullout, the political factions in Iraq jockeying to write a draft constitution, due Aug. 15, immediately signal back that they have less incentive for making concessions on issues as basic as the role of Islam, oil revenues and political power sharing. Said an American involved in the negotiations: "The more it looks like the U.S. is gonna leave, the harder it is to get a deal that will enable them to leave."

“Just give me a pistol”: Nine months after U.S. and Iraqi troops killed an estimated 1,000 insurgents here in a battle that also cost more than 70 American lives, intelligence suggests that rebels are trying to filter back into the former capital of Iraq's guerrilla movement. American commanders in Baghdad and Fallouja say they control the city so completely that the guerrillas cannot regain a foothold. But they acknowledge that Fallouja remains a powerful icon to an insurgency that is keen to stop Sunni Muslim Arabs in western Al Anbar province from participating in an October referendum on Iraq's proposed constitution.

The prospect of insurgents infiltrating the city presents a daunting problem for military officials. For the embryonic Iraqi government as well as the U.S.-led coalition, commanders say, what happens in Fallouja will symbolize the success or failure of the war. If insurgents succeed in returning, it would amount to rolling back the coalition's largest military victory since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. The Marines' allowing former Fallouja residents to return has added to the concern. So far, 140,000 of the city's 250,000 residents have come back to a landscape littered with rubble, its skyline broken by tilting minarets. As the Marines continue to relax restrictions on the city's entry points, intelligence leads suggest that insurgents who have already entered Fallouja and others who may soon return have continued to plan attacks on Americans. Fallouja Mayor Dari Ersan reflected that concern as he prepared to leave the barricaded fortress that serves as City Hall after a recent meeting. As a Marine officer explained the procedure for arming the city's new squadron of personal security guards, Ersan cut him off. He was worried about getting home that night. "Just give me a pistol," he said. "I'm talking about my own security."

The backwards withdrawal: Anticipating a new burst of insurgent violence, the Pentagon plans to expand the U.S. force in Iraq to improve security for a planned October referendum and a December election.

Although much public attention has been focused recently on the prospect of reducing U.S. forces next spring and summer, defense officials foresee the likelihood of first increasing troop levels.

Last January the U.S. troop level rose as high as 160,000. This was accomplished mainly by overlapping some units arriving in Iraq to begin a one-year tour with those who were ending their yearlong tours. In at least one case an Army brigade was kept a little longer than its scheduled 12 months in Iraq, and Di Rita said he could not rule out this happening again this fall, although the intention is to avoid tours longer than 12 months.

"The units that are there have been told to expect that," he said. "It's possible that your planned rotation dates back to the U.S. will be affected by the need to keep a higher level for a longer period of time. They understand that."

Not from day one: The U.S. doesn't have enough military forces in Iraq to quell the insurgency and can rely on only about 3,000 Iraqi troops to go into combat without significant American support, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden said.

Following a week in which 32 U.S. military personnel were killed in fighting, Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the forces deployed in Iraq are insufficient to drive insurgents from their strongholds and stabilize the territory.

``We don't have enough troops,'' Biden, of Delaware, said today on the ``Fox News Sunday'' program. ``We haven't had it from two years ago, a year ago, six months ago.''

Iraqi Politics

“Undemocratic”: Baghdad's mayor has been sacked by the Iraqi government, in circumstances that he has described as "dangerous" and "undemocratic".

A government spokesman said Alaa al-Tamimi was fired on Monday, although he refused to elaborate further.

However, Mr Tamimi himself said 120 gunmen stormed his office and installed the provincial governor in his place.

He said tensions had broken out between him and Shia members of the provincial council in recent weeks.

Different priorities: The posters plastered on the concrete barriers set up to thwart suicide car bombers in this war-torn city feature laughing children and social diversity - Christians, Arabs, Kurds - co-existing peacefully under the motto "Our Constitution is Our Tent."

Reality, in contrast, is a sweaty, naked two-month-old baby squirming in the arms of Layla Hussain, 35, who was trying vainly to cool off in the 100-degree Baghdad heat by stepping out of her apartment, which lacks electricity most of the day and is jammed with 16 people.

"We don't get the ration food, how can we get a copy of the constitution?" Hussain asked. "How can we have a constitution? This government basically operates by order of the Americans."

Six days: With the deadline six days away, Iraqi leaders held talks on Tuesday aimed at breaking a deadlock over a new constitution they hope will ease guerrilla violence, which erupted again, killing at least 22 people.

President Jalal Talabani, a former Kurdish guerrilla commander who fought Saddam Hussein, hosted a gathering of leaders from across Iraq's sectarian and ethnic divide. They are under intense U.S. pressure to meet the deadline.

Talabani's spokesman, Kamran Qaradaghi, told reporters officials discussed issues such as federalism and the control and distribution of oil resources in a "positive atmosphere."

"At this point, the determination is to meet the Aug. 15 deadline," U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters, saying Islam's role in society and law remained a key issue.

Asked if six days would be enough to resolve differences, he said: "I think so. With determination, hard work and flexibility, I believe so."

The Madison Prophecy

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy - James Madison

Toothless shell: A civil liberties board ordered by Congress last year has never met to discuss its job of protecting rights in the fight against terrorism, and critics say it is a toothless, under-funded shell with inadequate support from President Bush.

Lawmakers including some Republicans, civil rights advocates, a member of the Sept. 11 commission and a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have expressed concerns.

The inactivity comes as Congress is about to reauthorize several provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which gave the government new powers to go after suspected terrorists.

Asked why it was taking so long to set the board up, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said, "It's not a priority for the administration."

Gratuitous cruelty: A lawsuit filed today against U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reveals the gratuitous cruelty inflicted on a foreign student held without charges for more than two years as an "enemy combatant" in a South Carolina naval brig, Human Rights Watch said. Although three men have been confined in the United States after being designated "enemy combatants" by President George Bush, the complaint by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri provides the first look into the treatment of any of them in military custody.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who had been studying in Peoria, Illinois, before his arrest, asked the federal district court in South Carolina to declare unconstitutional the severe and unnecessary deprivations and restrictions to which he has been subjected since he was placed in military custody in June 2003. Al-Marri had already initiated habeas proceedings challenging the legality of his detention as an enemy combatant. That case continues.

"It is bad enough that al-Marri has been held indefinitely without charges and incommunicado," said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch's U.S. Program. "Now we learn that his life in the brig has also been one of cruelty and petty vindictiveness. Whatever the Bush administration believes he has done or wanted to do, there's no excuse for how they are treating him."

Al-Marri's complaint describes virtually complete isolation from the world. He has been confined round the clock in a small cell with an opaque window covered with plastic. He has not been allowed to speak to his wife or five children. He is allowed no newspapers, magazines, books (other than the Koran), radio or television. He is allowed no personal property. His cell contains a steel bed, a sink and a toilet. During the day, the mattress on his bed has been removed.

Out-of-cell time has been limited to three showers and three short periods of solitary recreation a week - but al-Marri has frequently been denied that out-of-cell time. Once he went 60 days without being permitted to leave his cell at all. When bad weather prevents him from going outside, he must remain in hand cuffs and leg irons during his indoor recreation. Leg irons and handcuffs are placed on him when he goes to the shower.

Al-Marri alleges that on occasion he has been denied basic hygiene products such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and toilet paper. When not provided with toilet paper, he has had to use his hands to clean himself after he defecates, and it has taken more than an hour before soap was brought to him so that he could wash his hands. The water in his cell has frequently been turned off. He has been denied socks or footwear for months at a time, including during the winter months. Officers at the brig often lower the temperature in his cell until it becomes exceedingly cold, but they do not give him extra clothes or blankets to keep warm.

I feel safer already: The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans.

The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Indeed, defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups.

Not tolerated? Right.: On Thursday, a 24-year-old military intelligence sergeant pleaded guilty to assault and dereliction of duty for abusing one of the prisoners during an interrogation. Another interrogator, accused of tormenting the same detainee, agreed to plead guilty two days before. Military lawyers said that a plea deal was being negotiated with a third interrogator and that two reservist military policemen who received lesser punishments were cooperating with the inquiry.

Military officials said they hoped the prosecutions would send a message that such abuses will not be tolerated, even in the country's fight against terrorism.

But whatever their long-term implications, the cases have so far tended to illustrate how unprepared many soldiers were for their duties at Bagram, how loosely some were supervised and how vaguely the rules under which they operated were often defined.

The Senators are whores but they deserve support for this: In an effort to restore the honor of the armed forces and prevent future abuses, Senators John McCain of Arizona, John Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have proposed amendments to the Defense Authorization Act that would institute standards for the treatment of military detainees. Having loyally muted their criticism during last year’s election season, the three Republican Senators are again voicing demands for candor and reform.

The White House responded with a blatant threat conveyed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather than accept sane restraints on future abuse, the President would veto the annual defense bill. With the administration’s credibility badly diminished, the Senate Republican leadership postponed a vote on the defense bill until September.

Meanwhile, however, the dispute between the Republican rebels and the White House has revealed similar dissension within the military. Those fissures were exposed when Senator Graham released declassified memoranda written by top Judge Advocate General officers. Pried loose from the Pentagon by the Senator, those memos show that in early 2003, ranking J.A.G. officers from every service branch tried to warn against interrogation methods that violate the human and legal rights of prisoners in U.S. military detention facilities.

Every American who cares about our troops, our security and our international prestige should know why the J.A.G.’s were so deeply concerned about the direction taken by the Bush administration.

In essence, the J.A.G. officers worried about the effect on the military of policies that encouraged torture and other interrogation practices prohibited under U.S. and international law. Doing so endangered American troops, who could be prosecuted in U.S. or international courts—and undermined their own protection against enemy abuses. The J.A.G. officers could barely conceal their astonishment that the Bush administration would consider discarding decades of training and tradition for the sake of dubiously effective interrogation methods.

A higher standard: The administration has stonewalled, bobbed and weaved and hidden from the truth with the acquiescence, at least until now, of a Republican-controlled Congress that has failed to follow up even when there is evidence people have been lying right to their faces.

The senators - Warner, McCain and Graham - have taken the first step toward shedding some light in the darker corners of the dungeon. Don't be surprised if that light finds a lot of people who rank much higher than specialist 4 or staff sergeant cowering in the corners.

Please repeat after the good senator who knows about prisons and the torture of helpless human beings:

This is not about who they are. This is about who we are. We are Americans and we hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct. And, no, the end does not justify the means. Not now. Not ever, when the means include torturing prisoners.

Heroes

Cindy Sheehan: After Casey's death, Cindy Sheehan was invited to the White House for a visit with Mr. Bush in June of 2004. Her first memory of Bush's appearance that day was when he walked into the room and said in a loud, bluff voice, "Who we'all honorin' today?"

"His mouth kept moving," Sheehan later recalled of her meeting with Bush, "but there was nothing in his eyes or anything else about him that showed me he really cared or had any real compassion at all. This is a human being totally disconnected from humanity and reality. His eyes were empty, hollow shells." Bush called her "Ma" or "Mom" throughout the whole meeting, and never got around to learning her name.

"The whole meeting was simply bizarre and disgusting," Sheehan said later. "designed to intimidate instead of providing compassion. He didn't even know our names. I just couldn't believe this was happening. It was so surreal and bizarre. Later I met with some of the other fifteen or sixteen families who were at the White House the same day and, sure enough, they all felt the same way I did."

That was it. Cindy Sheehan, who had never been politically active in her life, became an activist. She traveled the country to speak to whomever would listen, she told the story of Casey's life and death, and she threw fire at George W. Bush with the passionate anguish of a mother who was forced to bury her son.

Casey Sheehan was every mother's son. Cindy Sheehan is every son's mother. She loved him with every cell in her body and every breath in her soul, and mourns his absence in every second of every day, and will have some answers for her pain and loss, or will know the reason why. She is down in Crawford, right now, waiting for George W. Bush to stop sending lackeys to placate her. She wants to speak to the man who sent her son to die. She is waiting.

Calling bullshit: Sheehan left the VFP meeting on Saturday morning and is now in Crawford with a couple dozen veterans and local peace activists, waiting for Bush to talk with her. She said in Dallas that if he sent anyone else to see her, (as he didwhen national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin did later that day), she would demand that "You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person." She told the audience of veterans from World War Two to today's war in Iraq, that the two main things she plans to tell the man she holds responsible for son Casey's death are "Quit saying that U.S. troops died for a noble cause in Iraq, unless you say, 'well, except for Casey Sheehan.' Don't you dare spill any more blood in Casey's name. You do not have permission to use my son's name." "And the other thing I want him to tell me is 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for?' Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," she exclaimed. "There, I used the 'I' word -- imperialism," the 48 year-old mother quipped. "And now I'm going to use another 'I' word -- impeachment -- because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."

Real America: Starting today, Gold Star families from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arkansas and other states whose loved ones have died as a result of the war in Iraq will be joining one of their members, Cindy Sheehan, at the protest. Ms. Sheehan, whose son Army Specialist Casey Sheehan was killed in Sadr City, Iraq on April 4, 2004, has been in Crawford since August 5th, demanding a meeting with the President. These families will be joined by military families with loved ones currently serving in Iraq or about to deploy or redeploy to Iraq. All of these families are coming to Crawford, Texas to share their stories about the personal costs of the war in Iraq and add their voices to the call for a meeting with President Bush.

On August 3, 2005 President Bush, speaking about the dreadful loss of life in Iraq in early August, said "We have to honor the sacrifices of the fallen by completing the mission... The families of the fallen can be assured that they died for a noble cause." Gold Star and military families coming to Crawford know that the cause was not noble; that their loved ones died, or are currently in harm's way, serving in a war based on lies.

True America: Thousands of strangers showed their thanks Monday night to the families of Ohio's fallen Marines by attending a hour-long community memorial service at the I-X Center, a convention hall right next to Brook Park, home of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines that lost 16 members recently.

Eileen Nolf, of Elyria, said she didn't know any of the Marines or their families, but felt the need to come show her support.

"Because there were so many and they're just babies," said Nolf, who held an American flag as she watched the service from a standing room-only section.

Feel so helpless: Miranda Neighbarger attended her sixth funeral for a fallen Marine on Monday morning in Columbus, and she wept through most of it. Then she climbed into her car and drove 2 1/2 hours to this Cleveland suburb for a wrenching memorial service for 49 Ohio servicemen killed in Iraq.

By the time she heard the phrase "home of the brave" as a Brook Park schoolgirl sang the national anthem, tears were flowing down her cheeks again.

"It's really starting to get to me," Neighbarger said after a military band had played a slow, mournful version of taps to conclude the one-hour service.

Neighbarger, 24, is a newlywed with a husband in Iraq — a member of what everyone here calls the "Three Twenty Five," the Third Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment of Brook Park.

With the Reserve unit ravaged by combat deaths, Neighbarger has been making the rounds of funerals, trying in vain to comfort widows as young as she is.

"You feel so helpless because, really, there's nothing you can say," she said, a gold dog tag hanging from her neck that read "My Husband Is A Marine."

Finding their voice: As popular opinion increasingly turns against the war, Iraq veterans and military family members are criticizing the Bush administration more frankly than ever before. Their message is impossible to dismiss, because it is obviously not motivated by political bias, but by a patriotic commitment to holding our leaders accountable for illegal and immoral behavior. At a U.S. Tour of Duty event in Venice, California last night, Iraq veteran Jeff Key explained the obligation of U.S. service members to fight "domestic enemies," and why the American masters of war should be categorized as such. Gold Star mom Nadia McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq, flatly stated that President Bush does not represent her, and would turn her back to him if he were in her presence.

Former Air Force veteran Tim Goodrich, who served in the Middle East under Ret. General Tommy Franks, also addressed the crowd. Tim was introduced with a U.S. Tour of Duty news video that captured a dramatic confrontation he had with Franks after the general spoke to elementary school students in Los Angles. Tim was outraged that his former commander in chief was apparently seducing such young children with a sugarcoated image of the military, and that the school assembly had taken place without the knowledge or consent of parents. Tim, who is the co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, was denied access to the event, just as his previous attempts to meet with members of the Bush administration have been rejected or ignored. In a classic example of civil disobedience, Tim waited outside the school (along with Gold Star dad Bill Mitchell) and put his body in front of Franks' vehicle as the general was being driven away. On Saturday night in Anaheim, California, during the premiere event of Nadia's Southern California swing, the audience erupted in anger when it saw the Franks encounter projected on a large screen at a Unitarian church. In response to a complaint about the fact that the press rarely covers the issue of militarism in our schools, Nadia pointed out how U.S. Tour of Duty is doing the job of reporters for them. "We are the media," she said.

Bunnatine! A real Christian speaks truth to power: In the world as Bunnatine Greenhouse sees it, people do the right thing. They stand up for the greater good and they speak up when things go wrong. She believes God has a purpose for each life and she prays every day for that purpose to be made evident. These days she is praying her heart out, because she is in a great deal of trouble.

Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse is the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting ("PARC" in the alphabet soup of military acronyms) in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lest the title fool, she is responsible for awarding billions upon billions in taxpayers' money to private companies hired to resurrect war-torn Iraq and to feed, clothe, shelter and do the laundry of American troops stationed there.

She has rained a mighty storm upon herself for standing up, before members of Congress and live on C-SPAN to proclaim things are just not right in this staggeringly profitable business.

She has asked many questions: Why is Halliburton — a giant Texas firm that holds more than 50 percent of all rebuilding efforts in Iraq — getting billions in contracts without competitive bidding? Do the durations of those contracts make sense? Have there been violations of federal laws regulating how the government can spend its money?

Commentary

Article: Several recent developments —persistently high gasoline prices, unprecedented warnings from the Secretary of Energy and the major oil companies, China's brief pursuit of the American Unocal Corporation—suggest that we are just about to enter the Twilight Era of Petroleum, a time of chronic energy shortages and economic stagnation as well as recurring crisis and conflict. Petroleum will not exactly disappear during this period—it will still be available at the neighborhood gas pump, for those who can afford it—but it will not be cheap and abundant, as it has been for the past 30 years. The culture and lifestyles we associate with the heyday of the Petroleum Age—large, gas-guzzling cars and SUVs, low-density suburban sprawl, strip malls and mega-malls, cross-country driving vacations, and so on—will give way to more constrained patterns of living based on a tight gasoline diet. While Americans will still consume the lion's share of global petroleum stocks on a daily basis, we will have to compete far more vigorously with consumers from other countries, including China and India, for access to an ever-diminishing pool of supply.

The concept of a "twilight" of petroleum derives from what is known about the global supply and demand equation. Energy experts have long acknowledged that the global production of oil will someday reach a moment of maximum (or "peak") daily output, followed by an increasingly sharp drop in supply. But while the basic concept of peak oil has gained substantial worldwide acceptance, there is still much confusion about its actual character. Many people who express familiarity with the concept tend to view peak oil as a sharp pinnacle, with global output rising to the summit one month and dropping sharply the next; and looking back from a hundred years hence, things might actually appear this way. But for those of us embedded in this moment of time, peak oil will be experienced as something more like a rocky plateau—an extended period of time, perhaps several decades in length, during which global oil production will remain at or near current levels but will fail to achieve the elevated output deemed necessary to satisfy future world demand. The result will be perennially high prices, intense international competition for available supplies, and periodic shortages caused by political and social unrest in the producing countries.

Editorial: But in the end, Texas greed trumped New Mexico foresight. The senators caved and allowed the House and the White House to rule. The bill reflects the fossil-fuel interests of Bush, a Texan, and other Texans, including Vice President Dick Cheney - who primed the pump with his secret energy policy meetings four years ago - and House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay, whose hometown energy companies stand to benefit enormously from the bill. They also include Republican Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who was instrumental in sustaining elements that subsidize drilling for hard-to-reach oil, write-offs for refineries and more-aggressive offshore and public-land oil or gas drilling.

Opinion: Although anyone on Rhetoric Watch might have thought lately that the phrase “global war on terror” was giving way to “global struggle against violent extremism,” the bloodshed in Iraq this week (and the tears in Ohio) put an end to such semantic nonsense. As the first week of August wound down, 30 Americans died in this war this month. At this pace, August could turn out to be one of the worst months yet for U.S. military bloodshed. Not a good time, certainly, for anyone to be foisting off such a multisyllabic, clinical, clunker of description as “global struggle against violent extremism.” But this is just what some in the Bush administration have done in recent months, especially Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Marketers would call it a “rebranding” effort. "Global war on terror” (GWOT) is Coke Classic, making the “global struggle against violent extremism” (GSAVE) New Coke. But as too many Ohio families could attest after this sad week, nothing is “new and improved.” And when you put it that way, the crassness of any effort to rename war by calling it something else shines through clearly. If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so too does a war by any other name still stink to high heaven.

Opinion: Specialist Olander was a teenager from Waynesburg, Ohio, population 1,000, when he joined the Army in 2003. "It was very appealing," he said. "The benefits. College. And it was something I'd always wanted to do since I was a small boy - be in the Army."

He had mixed feelings about going to Iraq, but he wasn't particularly upset. He didn't dwell on the possibility of getting killed or wounded. And he gave no thought at all to the spiritual or psychological toll that combat can take. "I was very confident in my training and I was very religious," he said. "I'd always read Bible stories as a child and I believed the Lord would look over me and his will would be done."

He went to Iraq in early 2004 and quickly learned that nothing - not his military training, not the Bible, nothing - had adequately prepared him for the experience. By the time he returned several months later, he said, the trauma he had encountered in Iraq had reached deep inside him. There was both fear and the hint of a plea in his voice as he told me, with surprising candor, that he believed the things he'd had to do in Iraq might jeopardize the salvation of his soul.

Casualty Report

Local story: Toronto, OH, Marine killed in Iraq.

Note to Readers: I just wanted to thank all of you who come to this site and say a more particular thank you to our many regular Comment writers and an even more particular thanks to alert reader zig, who has been putting up a lot of great links lately, including a bunch of today's articles and an equally particular thanks to the honorable Prime Minister Tony Quisling who's been on a roll and really ought to be writing some full blown articles or essays for some web site or other that he visits daily. Hint hint.

War News for Monday, August 8, 2005 Bring 'em on: One Iraqi civilian killed and fourty four wounded after they were fired on when protesting poor public services Samawa. Bring 'em on: The bodies of two executed Iraqi policemen found in Samarra. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqis killed by a roadside bomb in Baquba. Bring 'em on: Three Turkish truck drivers kidnapped in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi soldiers killed in drive-by shooting in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: US Marine killed in suicide bomb attack in Amiriyah. Bring 'em on: Seven Iraqi soldiers killed and seventeen injured in suicide bomb attack in Tikrit. Bring 'em on: Seven Iraqis killed when their minibus hit a roadside bomb in Al-Sharqat. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqis killed and eleven wounded in mortar and bomb attacks on Iraqi police in Tal Afar. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi civilians shot dead in Baghdad. Crackdown Unravelling:

Tony Blair's crackdown on extremism in Britain has already started to unravel amid a storm of protest from moderate Muslim groups and MPs. Less than a day after he unveiled his sweeping 12-point anti-terror proposals, there was evidence of serious internal divisions over key elements. The Prime Minister said he was ready to amend the Human Rights Act in order to enable the deportation of foreign nationals who come to the UK to foment terrorism. He also named two radical groups ­ Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun ­ which are to be banned, and said he would consult on new powers to close mosques, bookshops and websites that are used to promote the terrorist cause. But Muslim parliamentarians warned that the measures risked fuelling extremism. Shahid Malik, the MP for Dewsbury, said he was concerned that Mr Blair's proposal to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir would prove counter-productive. " It's going to be very difficult to ban because you are trying to ban an idea. We need to defeat that idea by argument. People are going to ask: why not ban the BNP?"

Opinion and Commentary Gates of Hell:

The headline of this article is not a title of a science fiction film. It truthfully translates what is currently taking place in Iraq. The gates of hell are now wide open – thanks to U.S. invasion – and their fires have enveloped almost everything in our country. There is no electricity, no water, no fuel, no food rations, no security, no sewage. There is terror everywhere and there is fear of everything – fear of the present and of what lies ahead in the future. All indications tell that our future is bleak as there is nothing left in this country that makes you feel secure about your own future and that of your children. What is happening is not a war, rebellion or insurgency. It is mass killing and annihilation coupled with torture and brutal and barbaric dismembering of innocent people. Bombing and shelling of towns goes ahead and no one gives a damn for the lives lost and property damaged. Politicians have not honored any of the promises they made during elections. There is a dangerous decline in the public services and government performance. The shock we have received since U.S. troops landed in our midst and the new is beyond description. Fear and terror have gripped the nation. Wherever you are at any time of the day you are liable to be killed by a stray bullet. Stray bullets are no longer the prerogative of U.S. troops and their tormentors – the insurgents. Almost everyone in Iraq now use their guns to shoot in order to scare, wound or kill. If the bodyguards of a senior official want to reach a destination on time and are delayed by traffic jam, they fire in the air to scare other drivers to give way. If someone is injured or killed as a result it is his or her problem. Killing by mistake is now perhaps one of the main causes of death in Iraq. Trust between the people and the government has collapsed. And now we are at the mercy of the stars because neither U.S. troops nor the government have the slightest idea of who is blowing up whom and why?

Ghosts:

The U.S. and Iraqi troops trudged through the narrow, dusty alleyways looking for an enemy that disappears like a ghost and hoping a rocket-propelled grenade would not come screaming from the rooftops. They squinted at graffiti calling for their execution, and tore down leaflets bragging about 20 Marines killed nearby last week. With most of the fighting over after a large-scale invasion of the western Iraq town Friday, the troops in Haqlaniyah spent hours Sunday under a fiery sun looking for an adversary that often shoots and vanishes without a trace. Their frustration mirrors that of units in much of western Iraq, where homebred Sunni Muslim insurgents - some angry about the downfall of secular dictator Saddam Hussein, others seeking the dream of a Sunni theocracy - have joined with foreign fighters coming across a porous desert border looking for the glory of international jihad. The guerrilla fighters often leave a rear guard to fight advancing U.S. forces, while moving the majority of their men on to other towns where the Marines have no presence and the police have fled or been disbanded. For the past two years, the U.S. military has staged operations through the vast deserts of western Iraq, chasing insurgents up and down the Euphrates River valley that splits the sands. As troops walked in and out of houses Sunday, they heard phones ringing. An Iraqi interpreter working with the Marines, who gave his name as Sabah, picked up phones when he could reach them in time. When he hung up, Sabah smiled. The callers said to be careful - the Americans are on their way.

It the Bases Stupid!

Incoming head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, informed Congress on June 29 that a recent classified Pentagon report had concluded that only "a small number" of Iraqi troops could fight the insurgency unassisted. And many analysts feel that the administration wants to keep a presence in Iraq irrespective of Iraqi military preparedness in order to safeguard America's larger strategic interests in the region (chiefly oil). Joost Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told Asia Times Online it would be strange if America didn't intend to stay in Iraq. "One of the reasons they invaded, as far as I can tell, is because they needed to shift their military operation from Saudi Arabia," he said, "and Iraq was probably the easiest one in terms of a big country to support their presence in the Gulf." The idea that the US wanted to swap Iraq for Saudi Arabia was acknowledged by then-deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2003. Persistent reports that the US is constructing permanent bases in Iraq lend credence to the view that the Bush administration plans to stay. The Chicago Tribune reported in March 2004 that the US was building 14 "enduring" bases in Iraq, and the Washington Post reported in May that US forces would eventually be consolidated into four large, permanent air bases. Erik Leaver, of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and a long-time proponent of a promise to close US military bases, told Asia Times Online that the kind of construction taking place belies statements from President George W Bush that the US only intends to stay "as long as necessary and not one day more", as Bush said on April 13, 2004. Not only are ammunition dumps and concrete runways and roads being built, he said, but so is long-term housing for US troops. "We can tell by looking at the supplementals and the defense bills that they are building concrete masonry barracks," says Leaver, "And some of the justification is that tents and containers only have a life span of three to five years. The implication is that they need something longer than that." Leaver said the military did have a plausible rationale for using concrete. "If mortars are being lobbed into military bases then you want to put soldiers into concrete masonry barracks for their safety," he said, "but that's the same stuff that my house and office building are constructed from, and those things are pretty permanent." US Senator Gary Hart captured the inconsistencies such construction reveal in the Bush administration's rationale for its Iraq project. "If the goal ... was to overthrow Saddam Hussein, install a friendly government in Baghdad, set up a permanent political and military presence in Iraq, and dominate the behavior of the region (including securing oil supplies) then you build permanent bases for some kind of permanent American military presence," Hart wrote in May. "If the goal was to spread democracy and freedom, then you don't."

Opposing for the Wrong Reasons:

Americans are turning against the war, but for the wrong reason. Americans are starting to feel the pain of war based on U.S. losses and expenses, not for reasons of morality and of principle. Americans are not saying that the war was illegal and immoral and wrong. Americas are saying that the war was unnecessary and painful and hard to endure. This self-serving and insensitive response will likely not produce sympathy from many of the world's populations, who have suffered far more than Americans have or ever will. A lot of people around the world are beginning to think that Americans "can dish it out, but they cannot take it." Americans who did not oppose the war when it seemed to be going well, now oppose it because the war has turned into a "tough slog" as Donald Rumsfeld said many months ago, but hardly believed himself. Imagine what the public mood would be right now if the Iraq resistance had not emerged and gasoline prices in the States had dropped to under $1.00 per gallon! Americans would be delirious with joy and have no regret over the invasion and occupation and destruction of a sovereign nation. Americans are still not concerned over damage to Iraqi lives and Iraqi babies and Iraqi families, but only for their own losses. This lack of empathy by Americans is a terrible motivator for terrorists around the world. It teaches victims of American aggression that there is value in resistance. It teaches terrorists that American tolerance of pain is limited, and that inflicting pain on Americans gets results. Americans need to find some empathy for victims of American injustice and violence, before pleading for relief from our own pain. America has inflicted infinitely more pain that she has received. Like the fiscal balance of payments, America's accounting in pain infliction runs an enormous deficit.

War News for Sunday, August 7, 2005 Bring 'em on: Two American soldiers killed by roadside bomb in Samarra. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi civil servants in the oil ministry shot in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi soldiers gunned down in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Employee of the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq assassinated in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: US soldier killed in attack in Mosul. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqis wounded by suicide bomber attacking US patrol in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two Chalabi supporters assassinated in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Iraqi woman killed, child wounded by bomb in Al Dawr. Bring 'em on: Iraqi soldier killed by suicide bomber near Balad. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi civilians killed, five wounded during fighting near Haditha. Bring 'em on: One British soldier wounded in roadside bomb ambush near Baghdad. Bring 'em on: US and Iraqi troops repel coordinated insurgent attacks in Baghdad. Torture policy. "For much of his Army career David Irvine preached a kinder, gentler interrogation style: Legal under international military law, effective against the most stubborn enemy, and - above all - moral. Satisfied that his instruction to would-be interrogators was consistent with Army-wide tactics, the retired brigadier general was crushed, last year, when he learned his nation's flag had flown over prisons where U.S. troops abused suspected enemy fighters. . . . 'The Army explanation that these acts are being ginned up by a half dozen low-ranking reserve soldiers just doesn't ring true,' he said, noting that the photographs of abuses in Abu Ghraib have been followed by descriptions of abuses in other prisons - implicating many dozens of other soldiers and making the purported ignorance of senior officers implausible. 'It is obvious that there has been a complete breakdown of command discipline and a complete departure for the Army's policy on treating prisoners of war,' he said. Irvine disregards claims of those who say tougher techniques are necessary to extract information from religious zealots, noting that Israel, which "got very good at torture" in its struggle against its Arabic enemies, has banned the practice. The former chief interrogator for Israel's General Security Services, Michael Koubi, has said the most important skill for an interrogator is to know the prisoner's language - something the U.S. military has struggled with." This article also describes Sen. John McCain's proposed legislation to prohibit torture, and the right-wing's furious defense of Little George's right to torture. Operation Quick Strike.

Though the Marines in Haqlaniyah didn't discuss the deaths of their comrades earlier this week, they felt urgency. Talking to a truckload of troops, sitting in pre-dawn darkness Friday morning, Sgt. Marcio Vargas Estrada made the point to the men of his squad from 3-2's Lima Company. ``If somebody shoots at you, you waste'' him, said Estrada, 32, of Kearny, N.J. ``When you go back to Camp Lejeune, these will be the good old days, when you brought . . . death and destruction to -- what . . . is this place called?'' A Marine answered in the darkness: ``Haqlaniyah.'' Estrada continued: ``Haqlaniyah, yeah, that. And then we will take death and destruction to Hadithah. Hopefully, we'll stay until December so we can bring death and destruction to half of . . . Iraq.'' The flatbed truck erupted in a storm of ``Hoo-ahs.'' Lima Company rumbled toward town at 5:30 a.m. At 6:04 a.m., Sgt. Maj. Arthur Mennig, listening to the radio, said, ``We've already had a vehicle hit a mine.'' A few minutes later came an explosion ahead -- a roadside bomb. Still another call came over the radio. Mennig shook his head. ``It's going to be a long day.'' While insurgent shells landed, and heavy U.S. armament replied, Mennig and his men walked through 100-plus-degree heat, searching for traces of their enemy's base. A temporary intravenous station was set up for those suffering from sunstroke.

Police training. Multiple witnesses attest that Vincent and Khal were taken by men who appeared to be driving police vehicles. One witness, who refused to give his name, said he recognized one abductor as a Ministry of Interior employee. 'The man also recognized me, after I saluted him,' the witness said. 'He said to me, 'Do not interfere! It is our duty.'" Racketeers. "California Army National Guard troops charged unauthorized, off-the-books 'rent' to Iraqi-owned businesses inside Baghdad's Green Zone in Iraq to raise money for a "soldier's fund," military officials and sources within the troops' battalion said Friday." Gun show. "A quarrel between two firearms vendors at a Floyd County flea market on Thursday allegedly led both men -- described as "good friends" -- to draw guns. Douglas Moore, 65, of Martin, who supports the war, shot and killed Harold Wayne Smith, 56, of Manchester, who opposed it, investigators said." Constitution:

Iraqi Kurds Saturday rejected suggestions the country should be proclaimed an Islamic state in the new constitution and said there would be no compromise on the incorporation of oil-rich Kirkuk into their autonomous northern region. Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan, assured Kurdish MPs that he would also insist on federalism and retaining the Kurdish peshmerga militia when he meets top Iraqi leaders to discuss the constitution Sunday in Baghdad. “We will not accept that Iraq’s identity is Islamic,” Barzani told an emergency session of the autonomous Kurdistan parliament in Arbil. He also rejected suggestions that Iraq be termed an Arab nation. “Let Arab Iraq be part of the Arab nation – we are not,” the Kurdish leader said. Barzani, one of the leaders of the 4.5 million Kurds in Iraq, arrived in Baghdad late Saturday to participate in a national conference Sunday where Iraq’s leaders will attempt to break the deadlock on a new draft constitution. “This is a golden chance for Kurds and Kurdistan – if we don’t do what is important for Kurdistan, there will be no second chance. We will not make our final decision in Baghdad, the Kurdish parliament will decide,” he said. The Kurds want a constitution that will guarantee federalism and preserve their region’s autonomy, wrested from Saddam Hussein 14 years ago. Barzani also insisted his region would retain its peshmerga militias, despite calls by Baghdad that they be incorporated in the national army. The emergency meeting of the Kurdish parliament had prompted a two-day postponement of the national conference to break the constitutional deadlock. The deadlock revolves around federalism, what the official languages of the new Iraq will be, the relation between religion and state, the rights of women and the future of Kirkuk.

Across the Border: Iran has rejected the Europeans’ proposal for a settlement of its nuclear standoff with the West, saying Saturday the offer failed to recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium. Germany accused Iran of being confrontational and suggested the matter would go to the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions unless Iran backed down. “The European proposals are unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told Iranian state radio. He said the primary reason was the failure to allow Iran to enrich uranium. Uranium enriched to low levels is used in nuclear power reactors, but further enrichment makes it suitable for nuclear bombs. “We had already announced that any plan has to recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium,” Asefi said.

RIP Robin Cook

History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition. The US can afford to go it alone, but Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened: the European Union is divided; the Security Council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of a war in which a shot has yet to be fired. I have heard some parallels between military action in these circumstances and the military action that we took in Kosovo. There was no doubt about the multilateral support that we had for the action that we took in Kosovo. It was supported by NATO; it was supported by the European Union; it was supported by every single one of the seven neighbours in the region. France and Germany were our active allies. It is precisely because we have none of that support in this case that it was all the more important to get agreement in the Security Council as the last hope of demonstrating international agreement.

War News for Friday, August 5, 2005 Bring 'em on: Four al-Sadr supporters killed in car bomb ambush near Daquq. Bring 'em on: One US Marine killed in fighting near Ramadi. Bring 'em on: Iraqi soldier and his family killed by insurgents near Baquba. Bring 'em on: Three US soldiers killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi soldiers killed by car bomb in Samarra. Bring 'em on: Chalabi aide assassinated in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Four Iraqi soldiers killed in patrol ambush near Dujail. Bring 'em on: Pipeline ablaze near Beiji. No more cakewalk talk. "Yet while Bush remains stubbornly committed to the war, sources within the Pentagon say military planners tell the President the war cannot be won and the U.S. may have to look for a Vietnam-style withdrawal that will leave Iraq vulnerable to forces even more dangerous than the previous dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. 'Our present scenarios do not provide a successful outcome,' admits a senior military planner. 'We are not adequately equipped to prevail in this conflict.' . . . Still, there has been few obvious signs of progress in U.S.-led efforts to defeat the insurgency and to improve the Iraqi army and police so they can take over security responsibilities and allow the U.S. forces to leave. And while the military tries to keep an optimistic public face the story told behind the scenes at the Pentagon is far less rosy. 'We're losing and we have no contingency plan in place to turn this conflict around,' the senior military planner said. 'At the present time, we are engaged in a no-win scenario.'" Phelps gang. "The Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, is not specifically targeting Harting, who died in Iraq last week. It pickets at military funerals all over the country, saying God is killing U.S. soldiers as punishment to America for allowing homosexuality. The group also has announced plans to picket at military funerals in Minnesota, Alabama and California this week. It protested in Valparaiso, Chesterton and Gary in 1998 after a gay-awareness poster was allowed in a Chesterton classroom. Army Sgt. Bob Jaso, military liaison to the Harting family, said the group tries to provoke physical confrontation with mourners." Idiot. "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday rejected as 'nonsense' the notion that recent terrorist attacks in London were retaliation for the U.S.-led war in Iraq. 'Some people seem confused about the motivations and intentions of terrorists and about our coalition's defense of the still young democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq,' Rumsfeld said in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. 'They seem to cling to the discredited theory that the recent attacks in London and elsewhere, for example, are really in retaliation for the war in Iraq or for the so-called occupation of Afghanistan,' he added. 'That is nonsense.'" It's always somebody else's fault. "John R. Bolton, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, accused Syria and Iran of not doing enough to stop foreigners from joining the insurgency in Iraq." On FOX News, no less:

So Wednesday night, on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," none other than the host himself was jumping on Rumsfeld for his handling of the war. One O'Reilly guest, retired Army Col. David Hunt , author of a book, "They Just Don't Get It," said: "Baghdad is still a disaster. . . . You still can't drive to the airport" and there is "rampant corruption" by "Iraqi government officials, the Iraqi contractors and some American contractors [who] are stealing money in the billions of dollars" that is "supposed to be helping the Iraqis." Another guest, Fox News military analyst and retired Lt. Col. Bill Cowan , said, "we're having a tough time," and that people in the Pentagon and in Iraq are "expressing a lot of dismay and disappointment at the way things are going." Then Bill O'Reilly weighed in: "But I don't have any confidence in Donald Rumsfeld at this point. Do you, Colonel Cowan? I don't think he's leveling with the American people. I think that he doesn't have enough people over there to clean up the corruption, or fight the insurgency, or provide security for the oil pipeline, which they need [for] the money. I don't have any confidence in the secretary of defense at this point."

Morale indicator. "At least 55 soldiers serving in Iraq with the Louisiana National Guard's 256th Brigade have been tried and convicted of criminal charges, many of them drug-related, their commanding officer said in a news conference Thursday from Baghdad." These are court-martials, not non-judicial punishment. Security plan. "Responding to rising criticism of the government's failure to provide security after a series of deadly suicide bombings and other attacks, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari announced a new security plan Thursday. In a rare, lengthy news conference, Jafari promised to better coordinate the work of the ministries of defense and interior, to improve intelligence and protect infrastructure more effectively. 'We will not hesitate in saying this: We are in a state of war,' Jafari said. 'It is one of the most dangerous types of war, because it is not a conventional war or a war of borders.' The announcement comes as U.S. officials have begun to talk more openly about reducing the number of U.S.-led forces in the country and are pushing Iraqi troops to take over more of the job of providing security. Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who heads the U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces, said national units would probably first control the nine southern provinces and the three Kurdish provinces, but he declined to offer a timetable during a commemoration of the deaths of Iraqi soldiers." Here's a news flash for you, Mr. Jafari: you're dealing with Bush and Rumsfeld. These guys couldn't plan a trip to the shithouse. Vets sound off.

As the blood of US soldiers continues to drain into the hot sands of Iraq over the last several days with at least 27 US soldiers killed and the approval rating for his handling of the debacle in Iraq dropping to an all-time low of 38%, Mr. Bush commented from the comforts of his ranch in Crawford, Texas today, “We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq.” Just a two hour drive away in Dallas, at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in Dallas, I’m sitting with a roomful of veterans from the current quagmire. When asked what he would say to Mr. Bush if he had the chance to speak to him, Abdul Henderson, a corporal in the Marines who served in Iraq from March until May, 2003, took a deep breath and said, “It would be two hits-me hitting him and him hitting the floor. I see this guy in the most prestigious office in the world, and this guy says ‘bring it on.’ A guy who ain’t never been shot at, never seen anyone suffering, saying ‘bring it on?’ He gets to act like a cowboy in a western movie…it’s sickening to me.” The other vets with him nod in agreement as he speaks somberly…his anger seething. One of them, Alex Ryabov, a corporal in an artillery unit which was in Iraq the first three months of the invasion, asked for some time to formulate his response to the same question. “I don’t think Bush will ever realize how many millions of lives he and his lackeys have ruined on their quest for money, greed and power,” he says, “To take the patriotism of the American people for granted…the fact that people (his administration) are willing to lie and make excuses for you while you continue to kill and maim the youth of America and ruin countless families…and still manage to do so with a smile on your face.” Taking a deep breath to steady himself he continues as if addressing Bush first-hand; “You needs to resign, take the billions of dollars you’ve made off the blood and sweat of US service members….all the suffering you’ve caused us, and put those billions of dollars into the VA to take care of the men and women you sent to be slaughtered. Yet all those billions aren’t enough to even try to compensate all the people who have been affected by this.” These new additions to Veterans for Peace are actively living the statement of purpose of the organization, having pledged to work with others towards increasing public awareness of the costs of war, to work to restrain their government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations and to see justice for veterans and victims of war, among other goals.

Thanks to alert reader bob. Commentary Editorial:

It matters not what Bush calls his war, rather that he has executed it so ineptly that thousands of U.S. and Iraqi lives have been sacrificed to no justifiable end. Even if one were to suspend reality and agree that Bush was correct to invade Iraq, it is impossible to see anything but incompetence in how this war is waged. Two-plus years into the war, the administration still deploys Marines into the desert in lightly armored vehicles designed for amphibious assaults. Fourteen Marines on Wednesday died when a huge bomb destroyed their vehicle. Six other members of their Ohio-based Reserve unit were ambushed and killed Monday. One woman in their hometown asked, "How many lives are enough?" President Bush should abandon his vacation and head to Brook Park, Ohio, and attend the military funerals of those Marines. He should see, and allow the public to see, the flag-draped coffins of just a few of the 1,828 service men and women killed in Iraq.

Editorial:

That begs the question. Two and a half years after the United States led the charge into Iraq, why are its soldiers still patrolling the country in vehicles that leave them so vulnerable to attack? Why don’t they have the equipment and support that they obviously need? At the Pentagon and the White House, the only sound was platitudes. "Patriots, they were determined to stop the terrorists from reclaiming Iraq and from launching more attacks on our people," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld."Our nation needed them, called on them in battle, and mourns them now in death." This was the man who, questioned about the poorly equipped troops last December, responded, "You go to war with the army you have." And President George W. Bush, who once taunted insurgents with the catch phrase, "Bring ’em on," noted how the people of Brook Park had "suffered mightily over the last couple of days." "I hope they can take comfort in the fact that millions of their fellow citizens pray for them," he said. Those prayers may or may not help. But it would have been far better to give the troops the chance to survive the attacks they face with the equipment they need. Because now, prayers are about the best defense they have.

Casualty Reports Local story: Virginia Marine killed in Iraq. Local story: ConnecticutMarine killed in Iraq. Local story: Texas Marine killed in Iraq. Local story: Florida Marine killed in Iraq. Local story: Louisiana Marine killed in Iraq. Local story: Two Georgia Guardsmen killed in Iraq.

War News for Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Two people from a force that guards oil installations killed and seven wounded when their convoy was attacked by gunmen while en route from Kirkuk to Baghdad