“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” -Allan Greenspan
Oil is the only reason we toppled Saddam, pure and simple. All of our actions clearly point to that as the major factor, from the initial thrust into Baghdad whereby we surrounded the Oil Ministry and secured that to the detriment of all the others. Even the 'Surge' was focused squarely on Oil, as Antonia Juhasz adroitly pointed out...
While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.
Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report
lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.
The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.
It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies."This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.
Interestingly, the NYT reported a week ago that...
Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
Well, here it is June 30th and the announcement is about to be issued, with some caveats...
Baghdad, Jun 30, (VOI) - A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, the New York Times quoted American officials as saying.
“The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism,” the paper said.
In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.
“It is unclear how much influence their work had on the ministry’s decisions,” it added.
“The advisers — who, along with the diplomatic official, spoke on condition of anonymity — say that their involvement was only to help an understaffed Iraqi ministry with technical and legal details of the contracts and that they in no way helped choose which companies got the deals,” the paper noted.
Hmmm... We only meddled, err... assisted them with the paperwork, eh? C'mon, Dana, you can do better than this...
“Iraq is a sovereign country, and it can make decisions based on how it feels that it wants to move forward in its development of its oil resources,” said Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman.
Also from today's NYT blockbuster...
“We pretend it is not a centerpiece of our motivation, yet we keep confirming that it is,” Frederick D. Barton, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “And we undermine our own veracity by citing issues like sovereignty, when we have our hands right in the middle of it.”
Ain't that the truth...! Blood for Oil, Gents, Blood for Oil...
“If you aren’t here to reconcile – I’ll see you again, on the battlefield.”
An article posted yesterday at the MNF-I website describes the Sons of Iraq indoctrination program. The program consists of six phases that lasts for 240 days. As the article pointedly starts off...
“The Government of Iraq is giving you an opportunity to reconcile. Take it,” Lt. Col. Christopher Vanek, 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division said to those attending. “If you aren’t here to reconcile – I’ll see you again, on the battlefield.”[...]
“Your sheik, neighbor and village have spoken,” Vanek said. “They want peace.”[...]
The program locals refer to as ‘Musalaha’, has been instrumental along with the Sons of Iraq program with the over 90 percent decrease in violent attacks against ISF, CF and civilians in the Hawijah District...[...]
Additionally, the successful lethal efforts of 1-87 and other CFs in sync with non-lethal methods are key to the security successes in the region and the motivating factor in persuading more Iraqis in the area to “lay down their arms and join the reconciliation process,” according to Vanek.
Strong words there!
(the petitioners)initial contact by Iraqi Security Forces, Coalition forces and local leadership to the first meeting where the program is laid-out and questions are fielded. Petitioners are also to provide personal information.[...]
In step two, the candidates return to be vetted, biometrically registered and entered into a data base. At this juncture, they are given a “temporary respite from targeting.” The respite is part of the ‘no targeting agreement’, which occurs between the second and third steps, at which point the information obtained during step two is processed and verified.
Step three is the ‘no activity and no negative reporting period’ where the candidate is expected to cooperate with ISF and CF, and assist with the peace process by providing information on criminal activity occurring in their respective communities.
In steps four through six, an accounting board made up of local government, ISF, CF leadership and a designated sponsor; determine the way ahead for the petitioner. If successful, a public declaration of allegiance to the Government of Iraq is made by the participant and further monitoring for a set period of time is undertaken.
It seems the Colonel's optimistic propaganda is disputed by this current LA Times article...
The rise and fall of a Sons of Iraq warrior
A year ago, Sunni Arab fighter Abu Abed led an improbable revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq. As he killed its leaders and burned down hide-outs, he became a symbol of a new group called the Sons of Iraq -- the man who dared to stand up to the extremists in Baghdad when it still ranked as a suicidal act.[...]
Abu Abed's rise and fall encapsulates the complexities of the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq program. Although the Shiite-led Iraqi government has regarded the Sons of Iraq as little more than a front for insurgent groups, the Sunni fighters' war helped end the cycle of car bombings and reprisal killings by Shiite militias that had sent Baghdad headlong into civil war. America's new friends also helped bring down the death rate of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The Defense Department's report to Congress last week emphasized the vital nature of the program, saying, "The emergence of the Sons of Iraq to help secure local communities has been one of the most significant developments in the past 18 months in Iraq."
Abu Abed's flight into exile shines a light on a violent power struggle pitting upstart leaders like him against Iraq's entrenched Sunni political elite and its Shiite-dominated government. The frictions could easily shatter the Sons of Iraq -- and open the door to Al Qaeda in Iraq's resurgence.[...]
Abu Abed's defenders, including some U.S. military officers, suggest that the fighter earned enemies for upsetting Baghdad's status quo as he brought former insurgents into an alliance with the Americans.
In recent months, Abu Abed had been organizing like-minded fighters around Baghdad and northern Iraq for provincial elections in the fall. U.S. officers believe his transition to politics could have proved the last straw for the government.
"Certainly you can draw the conclusion because he was getting involved in the political process to engage Sons of Iraq leaders to form a political party, the Iraqi government actively targeted him," said a U.S. military officer, who declined to give his name because of the subject's sensitivity. "I don't know that I can say it outright, but it certainly does seem that way."
Amid the political skirmishing, the committee set up to integrate U.S.-backed Sunni fighters into the security forces and public works jobs has stalled.
Iraqi officials have been cryptic about the reason. Sheikhly acknowledged that the committee's efforts had slowed to a crawl, but said it was because the committee had shuffled members.
I've posted before on Maliki's little schemes, he truly fails to grasp the need to integrate the various sects, rather than target them as he's demonstrated with the various operations. Maliki needs to go or to be severely reined in. As Dr iRack sums it up...
The "Green Zone parties" are clearly worried that an emerging cadre of leaders at the local level will start to undermine their grip on power in the provincial elections, setting up a potential clash between the "powers that be" and the "powers that aren't" (local and tribal entities) in the months ahead. This is true of the continuing intra-Shia clashes between Dawa/ISCI and the Sadrists, and it will likely become increasingly apparent between the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) and Sunni tribal and SoI groups.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said a U.S. airstrike killed four members of a family north of Baghdad early Wednesday. Iraqi and U.S. officials provided conflicting accounts of the incident.
Capt. Ahmed al-Azwawi, a police official in Samra, a village about seven miles south of Tikrit, said U.S. troops were conducting an operation in the area when a man fired shots in the air with an AK-47.
Azwawi said the man, who sold propane gas for a living, was afraid thieves were in the vicinity.
U.S. soldiers then retreated and called in an airstrike, Azwawi said, killing the man, his wife, and two of their children
Here's another version from the 'official' MNF_I web site...
A U.S. military statement said troops opened fire after an armed man refused to surrender and began "to move quickly with his weapon into a confrontational position."
BAGHDAD: Six members of a family were killed yesterday when a US jet destroyed their house in Iraq.Four children, aged between four and 11, were among the dead in the attack near the northern town of Tikrit, Iraqi police said. However, the US military made no mention of the civilian deaths and said the house was attacked after troops took small arms fire.
It is truly sickening that we can't seem to acknowledge our f*ck-ups...
Anyways, I'd like to extrapolate on yesterday's post on the Sons of Iraq/Awakening councils and their growing disillusionment with Maliki and the US. Today, Badger reported this...
(Dar)AlHayat(Arabic version only!) quotes the Interior Ministry officer Khalaf as
admitting ... the existence of problems in Al-Anbar, and he told AlHayat: "This is manifested in the return of AlQaeda to activity in some of the regions remote from the city (Ramadi), and particularly in Faluja, which he called the center of tensions in Al-Anbar, in addition to penetrations of the security apparatus". And he said: "Restoration of security in Anbar requires the carrying out of a wide-ranging purge operation by the security apparatus here, and the support of the province with additional forces.
The journalist notes that Ramadi already has over 5000 Awakening members, and 3500 police. The journalist also quotes the provincial governor to the effect that even when the Americans turn over the security file to the Iraqi authorities, they will still remain for a period of time, and he mentioned there are 5000 US military people in Camp Mesack (?).
Hmmm... I guess the 'turnover' is largely symbolic after all... Merely another check off box on the farcical List of Provinces turned over to the GZG control! Another province McInsane/Shrub can tout as a success story! Gawd, I'm tired of this shirt...!
US military to hand back Sunni bastion of Anbar to Iraq
4 days ago
BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military is to hand over security control of the former Sunni insurgent bastion of Anbar province to Iraqi forces in the next 10 days, a US military spokesman announced on Monday.
"The handover of Anbar is expected to take place in the next 10 days," Lieutenant David Russell told AFP, declining to provide an exact date.
It was scheduled to take place tomorrow. The MNF-I web site still has this cite from the NYT prominently featured in the news section: "Iraqi forces to take over Anbar province." Funny thing though when you click on the link you are directed to this NYT article: "Weather Delays U.S. Handover Of Iraqi Province." Yeah right, as if...! Blame it on the weather!
Of course this would have nothing to do with it...
Two insurgent bomb blasts struck Thursday at pro-American Iraqi targets in Anbar Province just west of Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul. The police said more than 30 Iraqis were killed and 80 wounded.
An American military spokesman and Iraqi police officials said that three American marines were killed in the Anbar attack and that two interpreters were also among the dead. The American military command was preparing to hand control of the province, once considered the hotbed of the insurgency, to Iraqi forces.
The bombings extended a pattern of multiple-casualty attacks in recent days that are clearly intended to kill local Iraqi leaders, in particular those who are believed to have collaborated with American forces against insurgents. Thursday’s attacks were among a string of deadly episodes in the past week that broke the previous several weeks’ lull in violence.
One civilian on Thursday was wounded by a car bomb explosion targeting a U.S. patrol in Mosul, a Ninewa police source said.
This incident was the third in a fresh wave of attacks in the northern city of Mosul, bringing the casualties' toll to 17 killed and 66 wounded.
Who's being blamed for this sudden rash of violence? AQI, but of course! It couldn't possibly be disgruntled Sunni 'Awakening' members or Sons of Iraq. Or could it...?
Fatehoon correspondents in Adhamiya, Taji, Tikrit, Baaquba, Ramadi, and Hilla report that a large number of Awakening members have been in contact in recent days with armed Iraqi factions that are still at war with the Americans and the government forces in those areas where they [the Awakening people] were active, asking them for forgiveness and for the acceptance of their return to the ranks of the fighting factions, including those [factions] that have a strong relationship with the AlQaeda organization. And some of our correspondents have learned that there was a welcome, in more than one location, for their return once again to the fight.
Hmmm... The NYT article elaborates further...
Most of the episodes have occurred in Sunni or mixed Sunni-Shiite areas where there has been mounting frustration over the lack of a political deal giving power to all of Iraq’s factions. Some were in small neighborhoods like Abu Dshir on the southern edge of Baghdad, and Madaen, which lies just to its southeast. There was also an attack on Tuesday on the Sadr City neighborhood council which killed six Iraqis, four Americans and an Iraqi-Italian interpreter.
Both of Thursday’s attacks raised questions about assertions by the United States military that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other Sunni extremist groups had been largely vanquished. . . .
In Baghdad and in Anbar Province, there have been substantial American and Iraqi military campaigns to root out the insurgency. In those areas and in Diyala Province, where there was a suicide bombing a week ago, the Shiite-led government in Baghdad has frustrated the efforts of Sunni leaders to find government security jobs for Sunni tribal figures and former insurgents.
Although many of these people joined the Awakening movement and were paid by the Americans to help fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, few have been put on the government’s payroll.
“The government didn’t support the Awakening Councils enough,” said Omar Abdul Sattar, a member of Parliament from Ramadi who belongs to the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni group.
Interestingly, Gen. Betrayus's mouthpiece Baghdad Bergner had to chime in...
Right on schedule, and almost as if to promote this process of re-confrontation between ex-Awakenings and the US forces, AlHayat reports interview remarks by Bergner of the US forces to the effect that there is no longer a need for some of the Awakenings, and adding that there will now have to be a difficult process of directing them to other spheres of activity.
Apparently, there is escalating anger over the slow pace of ISF integration and Iraqi government outreach (all in the context of increasing intra-Sunni competition in the lead up to provincial elections). Will we see rising attacks by "former" Awakening members who turn back to AQI because they are frustrated at the lack of accommodation by the Iraqi government?
Dr.iRack doesn't know, but it is something to watch in the coming weeks.
"Son, ya gotta know when to hold'em... ...when to fold'em..."
'''If I were a betting man, we'll reach an agreement with the Iraqis,' Mr. Bush said..."(NYT)
Care to up the ante, Shrub? Maybe even double down...?
Several articles in today's papers, one in the WaPo and another in Aswat Aliraq seems to point out the high odds for passage of the SOFA/SFA within the Iraqi Parliament! The first article talks about a meeting between Shrub and Iraqi President Talabani...
Appearing with Talabani in the Oval Office, Bush said the Iraqi president was on the "front lines" of the struggle in Iraq and said he "complimented the president" on the "progress" made there.
"The attitude of the people has improved immeasurably," Bush said.
Talabani said a "big part of Iraq is stable" and "our economy is growing." [...]
Neither Bush nor Talabani gave any indication of progress on a long-term security agreement that has prompted widespread criticism from Iraqi officials. The two countries have been negotiating a new pact to provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31.
Asked after the meeting how close the United States and Iraq are to reaching an agreement, White House press secretary Dana Perino said: "Well, they continue to work on it, and I couldn't put odds on it either way."
Hmmm... Why the change in rhetoric Dana? The GZG vows to continue it...
Iraqi Foreign Minister on Thursday vowed to continue negotiations with the U.S over the pact governing the status of the American troops in Iraq, noting it must abide by Iraq’s full sovereignty.
Iraqi FM Hoshyar Zebari received the U.S Ambassador to Iraq and the American negotiating team.
“The two sides assessed the U.S-Iraq negoations and its stages to address the key issues”, said Iraqi FM statement received by Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq(VOI).
The two sides pledged to “reach an agreement respecting Iraq’s sovereignty, protecting its security and realising the interests of its people”.[...]
The agreement will not valid unless it commands a national consensus and be approved by the Iraqi parliament and the presidency board.
A number of Iraqi political and religious factions voiced their opposition to the agreement, citing inclusion of items infringing Iraq’s sovereignty as reason.
Maybe this is the reason... It appears that the Iraqis are none to thrilled with it... Also from today's Aswat Aliraq...
Karbala governor on Thursday unveiled (that) the Iraqi government rejected two drafts for the pact with the U.S, noting Iraq would reject all items infringing its full sovereignty.
Speaking at demonstrations staged by tribes in Karbala, Akeel al-Khazali, Karbala governor, called on chieftains not to “believe reports circulated by media reports that the Iraqi government would sign the long-term agreement with the U.S”.[...]
The agreement will not valid unless it commands a national consensus and be approved by the Iraqi parliament and the presidency board.
A number of Iraqi political and religious factions voiced their opposition to the agreement, citing inclusion of items infringing Iraq’s sovereignty as reason.
Al-Khazali said “the Iraqi government rejected two drafts for the pact”, noting “it has determined to stand by Iraqi people’s stand”. [...] Karbala governor termed the support of tribes to government as “stance opposing the presence of army inside army and a state inside a state”.
Doesn't sound too hopeful for Shrub... Maybe he should run from the table...!
"I Was Right. He Was Wrong, We Are Winning In Iraq!"
Last night, during a "tele-townhall" meeting between Florida voters and McCain, in which he was introduced by Sen Lieberman, McCain uttered that ridiculous statement. In another exchange between McCain and a participant...
Robin in Parkland, who described herself as a Democrat and former Hillary Clinton supporter, said she was worried about her sons, ages 10 and 12.
''What assurances do I have that my children will not be sent to war?'' she asked.
Responded McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam: ``I think we live in a dangerous world, and I have to give you some straight talk . . . I can't guarantee you I won't send anyone in harm's way, but I can tell you that I know war, I hate war, and it will be the last choice I will make.''
Sure McInsane that's why you're advocating for our continued occupation of Iraq for the next hundred years and singing; "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!"
However, Senator, the GAO seems to disagree with you...
The GAO report discusses progress in meeting key goals in The New Way Forward(the 'Surge'):
(1) Improve security conditions
(2) Develop capable Iraqi security forces
Help the Iraqi government to:
(3) Enact key legislation
(4) Spend capital budgets
(5) Provide essential services.
Now, as to the first, improving the security conditions:
Overall violence, as measured by enemy-initiated attacks, fell about 70 percent in Iraq, from about 180 attacks per day in June 2007 to about 50 attacks per day in February 2008.
Security gains have largely resulted from (1) the increase in U.S. combat forces, (2) the creation of nongovernmental security forces such as Sons of Iraq, and (3) the Mahdi Army's declaration of a cease fire.
Average daily attacks were at higher levels in March and April before declining in May 2008. The security environment remains volatile and dangerous.
Hmmm, the GAO acknowledges Sadr's cease fire as a major factor!
Moving along to the second aspect...
The number of trained Iraqi forces has increased from 323,000 in January 2007 to 478,000 in May 2008; many units are leading counterinsurgency operations. However, the Department of Defense reported in March 2008 that the number of Iraqi units capable of performing operations without U.S. assistance has remained at about 10 percent. Several factors have complicated the development of capable security forces, including the lack of a single unified force, sectarian and militia influences, and continued dependence on U.S. and coalition forces.
Fancy that! The numbers are up but they still need us to hold their hand. I find it interesting that the GAO also notes the Badr influence on the IA's ineffectiveness...
Getting to the GAO's Iraqi GZG performance evaluation, on enacting key legislation...
The Iraqi government has enacted key legislation to return some Ba'athists to government, give amnesty to detained Iraqis, and define provincial powers. However, it has not yet enacted other important legislation for sharing oil resources or holding provincial elections. Efforts to complete the constitutional review have also stalled. A goal of The New Way Forward was to facilitate the Iraqis' efforts to enact all key legislation by the end of 2007.
In other words, they failed... I disagree with the first premise that the GZG did enact key legislation on Re-Ba'athification, Amnesty and defining Provincial powers, they may have passed the legislastion, but, they certainly haven't enacted them... See this article, or this one, and this one!
Moving along to the Iraqi budget...
Between 2005 and 2007, Iraq spent only 24 percent of the $27 billion it budgeted for its own reconstruction efforts. More specifically, Iraq's central ministries, responsible for security and essential services, spent only 11 percent of their capital investment budgets in 2007--down from similarly low rates of 14 and 13 percent in the 2 prior years. Violence and sectarian strife, shortage of skilled labor, and weak procurement and budgeting systems have hampered Iraq's efforts to spend its capital budgets
Sounds like another dismal failure...
Now, last but not least, are they capable of delivering vital services to the Iraqi people...
The daily supply of electricity met only about half of demand in early May 2008. Conversely, State reports that U.S. goals for Iraq's water sector are close to being reached. The unstable security environment, corruption, and lack of technical capacity have contributed to the shortfalls.
Another abysmal failure... By the way, the State Department is dead wrong...
See here too...
What I really enjoyed from the report was the ass chewing they gave Shrub and Rummy...
The New Way Forward responded to failures in prior strategies that prematurely transferred security responsibilities to Iraqi forces or belatedly responded to growing sectarian violence... ...The Departments disagreed with our recommendation, stating that The New Way Forward strategy remains valid but the strategy shall be reviewed and refined as necessary. We reaffirm the need for an updated strategy given the important changes that have occurred in Iraq since January 2007. An updated strategy should build on recent gains, address unmet goals and objectives and articulate the U.S. strategy beyond July 2008.
Where is the 'updated' strategy? Hmmm...? *crickets*
Why are we bound and determined to bomb Iran? What will it accomplish? What will we do next? Invade Iran? With what troops? Why aren't these questions being asked by the FCM and our congress critters? It seems even the EU is being duped. Have we not learned from the Iraqi Fiasco?
Why do we continue to ignore the one individual who has been right from day one in the run-up to Iraq, ElBaradei?
Especially considering it's his job to inspect and monitor all nuclear affairs worldwide? Let's take a look at what he's said in regards to the Iranian nuclear program...
"I don't believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time ... it would make me unable to continue my work."
"A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball," he said, emphasizing that any attack would only make the Islamic Republic more determined to obtain nuclear power.
"If you do a military strike, it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons with the blessing of all Iranians, even those in the West."
Looking at some of the hype behind the nuclear enrichment program, for instance, Jane Harman in a recent op-ed...
The best course would be to persuade Iran to abandon its designs on the bomb and make its nuclear activities completely transparent to international authorities – as three United Nations Resolutions have required.[...]
Iran's unsupervised nuclear program poses an existential threat to Israel and possibly other nations. While we can't take away the knowledge gained through their clandestine program, by "renting" only the amount of fuel necessary for production of peaceful nuclear energy, we may be able to convert these threats posed by Iran and future Irans into a roadmap to nuclear security for the entire world.
Now, what part of the IAEA report that clearly confirms that all of Iran's enrichment-related facilities are under the agency's "containment and monitoring", or that the IAEA inspectors have had nine "unannounced visits" at the enrichment facility in Natanz since March 2007 represents an 'unsupervised' program? Hmmm?
Or, even the fact that enrichment is not illegal under IAEA and NPT auspices, when it's low-grade enrichment. As noted by Graham Allison in a Boston Globe op-ed...
...as last month's International Atomic Energy Agency report documents, Iran is operating 3,492 centrifuges in a cascade that has produced 500 pounds of low-enriched uranium. This is one-third of what is required for Iran's first nuclear bomb.
Let's look at what another key figure in the run-up to Iraq has to say about Iran. The former Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector In Iraq, Scott Ritter. You remember him, right? The one that told us and congress in 2002 that Shrub and Darth were cherry-picking the intel. Well, he's back and basically saying the same thing about Iran...
One of the first questions Ritter says he is asked when he explains why the administration is planning an air assault against Iran is “where’s the smoking gun.”
“People will say ‘how do you know for certain,’” Ritter said. “You know I was in the in the intelligence business for a long time and we don’t make a living off of smoking guns. That’s what politicians do. We evaluate the totality of the available information and we make informed assessments and we do it in a systematic fashion. And that’s what I’ve been doing on the issue of Iran.”
Ritter said the increased rhetoric toward Tehran by various White House officials is a key indicator in understanding the Bush administration’s intent.
“I don’t like the word intent usually because the Bush administration used that with Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “Intent void of a factual basis is speculation. But here we do have documentation. We have a national security strategy. We have repeated statements by the current players themselves that they seek regional transformation in the Middle East inclusive of regime change in Iran. This is the policy objective of the Bush administration.
“So we have the intent. Now with the intent we have the escalation of rhetoric. So we not only have stated intent we now have statements that reinforce those intents and seek to activate this intent,” Ritter added. “And then you have the rhetoric that’s matched with the capabilities. Clearly you have the capabilities deployed in the region to act on this. We’ve seen the nature of the strike be defined down to a limited strike to one or two strikes inside Iran affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard command. So you have all of these facilitators taking place.”[...]
Ritter said the media misrepresented the report and likely did not thoroughly review its findings.
“We have a situation where the IAEA has published several technical reports all of which state there is no evidence Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. None. Zero,” Ritter said.
Ritter explained how the IAEA report was drafted.
“Information has been provided to the IAEA by member nations, intelligence information. Now the IAEA has to be very circumspect when it says this but we all know that it’s basically intelligence provided to the agency by the United States of America, a nation openly hostile to Iran, a nation that has a track record of fabricating, exaggerating, and misrepresenting intelligence data. The data that’s been provided to the IAEA has derived from a laptop computer which even the IAEA claims is of questionable providence,” he said.
Ritter said that because the United States has such a dominating role in the United Nations Security Council and in the Board of Governors the IAEA couldn’t ignore the information it receives from the United States about Iran.
“The IAEA can’t go to Iran with information that isn’t serious. So they say it’s serious and it needs to be investigated. So they go to Iran and the Iranians say, correctly so, ‘this is bullshit.’ You’re basically serving as a front to the CIA. The CIA is asking intelligence based questions about issues that are not relevant to the safeguards agreement, which, by the way, is the legally binding mandate that gives the IAEA the authority to do its work in Iran. You have to read the small print.
“The IAEA acknowledges that what it’s asking Iran to answer has nothing to do with its mandate of the nuclear non proliferation treaty. It is related to Security Council resolutions calling for the suspension of uranium and an investigation into a nuclear weapons program but the bottom line is what the IAEA has said is that Iran has not been forthcoming and Iran is saying it’s not their job to answer the CIA’s questions. So the IAEA reports that Iran is not being forthcoming on these issues and now it’s unnamed diplomats, i.e. American and British diplomats, who say they are very concerned because Iran’s refusal to cooperate only reinforces their concern that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. This is purely CIA instigated tripe. When we get down to the nuts and bolts of the technical question of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and whether or not there’s any infrastructure in Iran that supports a nuclear weapons program and the IAEA technical find says there is none,” Ritter said.
What a sorry state of affairs! Clearly AIPAC and their congressional enablers need to be reined in and Pronto...
Read that proposed bill, it is a spooky read... Please contact your critters and tell them to vote no on this travesty: H. CON. RES. 362
"Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony, and for other purposes."
Following up on yesterday's post, I ran across this article in today's NYT...
"Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner"
Getting a story on the evening news isn't easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network.
"Generally what I say is, 'I'm holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,'" she said last week in an appearance on "The Daily Show," referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade." 'It's aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don't put my story on the air, I'm going to pull the trigger.'"
Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.
"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts," Ms. Logan said.
According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)
See, Mr Rich, it is the Media's fault we're not getting the needed reporting!
Interestingly, the MSM, or rather, the Fawning Corporate Media(FCM) seem bound and determined to continue in their wayward ways, in regards to Iran, that lead us into the current Iraqi fiasco. In an excellent article posted at Raw Story and cross-posted at Anti-War.Com, former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern asks this chilling question...
Bomb Iran? What's to Stop Us?
"...a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer or early fall," when the Bush administration and allies in Israel will launch attacks against Iran.
"This time it will be largely the Air Force's show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy," writes McGovern. "Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details."
McGovern takes a dim view on the media's role...
Controlled Media
The experience of those of us whose job it was to analyze the controlled media of the Soviet Union and China for insights into Russian and Chinese intentions have been able to put that experience to good use in monitoring our own controlled media as they parrot the party line.
Suffice it to say that the FCM is already well embarked, a la Iraq, on its accustomed mission to provide stenographic services for the White House to indoctrinate Americans on the "threat" from Iran and prepare them for the planned air and missile attacks.
At least this time we are spared the "mushroom cloud" bugaboo. Neither Bush nor Cheney wish to call attention, even indirectly, to the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last year.
In a pre-FCM age, it would have been looked on as inopportune, at the least, to manufacture intelligence to justify another war hard on the heels of a congressional report that on Iraq the administration made significant claims not supported by the intelligence.
But (surprise, surprise!) the very damning Senate Intelligence Committee report got meager exposure in the media.
So far it has been a handful of senior military officers that have kept us from war with Iran. It hardly suffices to give them vocal encouragement, or to warn them that the post WW-II Nuremberg Tribunal ruled explicitly that "just-following-orders" is no defense when war crimes are involved.
McGovern points out Cheney's role...
Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney's brainchild, if that is the correct word.
Cheney proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official at the time.
Chastened by the unending debacle in Iraq, this time around Pentagon officials reportedly are insisting on a "policy decision" regarding "what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks," according to Carpenter.
Serious concerns include the vulnerability of the critical U.S. supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad, our inability to reinforce and the eventual possibility that the U.S. might be forced into a choice between ignominious retreat and using, or threatening to use, "mini-nukes."
Pentagon opposition was confirmed in a July 2007 commentary by former Bush adviser Michael Gerson, who noted the "fear of the military leadership" that Iran would have "escalation dominance" in any conflict with the U.S.
Writing in the Washington Post last July, Gerson indicated that "escalation dominance" means, "in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs."
The Joint Chiefs also have opposed the option of attacking Iran's nuclear sites, according to former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.
Mann confirmed that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White House, as well.
The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus – apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney's bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for example).
In sum, a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer or early fall.
Bill Kristol seems to think it'll occur after the general election... If Obama is elected!
“I do wonder with Senator Obama, if President Bush thinks Senator Obama’s going to win, does he somehow think — does he worry that Obama won’t follow through on that policy,” Kristol added. Host Chris Wallace then asked if Kristol was suggesting that Bush might “launch a military strike” before or after the election:
WALLACE: So, you’re suggesting that he might in fact, if Obama’s going to win the election, either before or after the election, launch a military strike?
KRISTOL: I don’t know. I mean, I think he would worry about it. On the other hand, you can’t — it’s hard to make foreign policy based on guesses of election results. I think Israel is worried though. I mean, what is, what signal goes to Ahmadinejad if Obama wins on a platform of unconditional negotiations and with an obvious reluctance to even talk about using military force.
That same meme was echoed by another prominent Neocon, John Bolten...
Bolton suggested that an attack on Iran depends on who Americans elect as the next President:
I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.[...]
Bolton then concluded that Arab states would be excited if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran:
I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.
McGovern has an excellent solution to halting the madness... Impeach the Bastards...
Where Are You, Conyers?
In 2005, before John Conyers became chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, he introduced a bill to explore impeaching the president and was asked by Lewis Lapham of Harpers why he was for impeachment then. He replied:
"To take away the excuse that we didn't know. So that two, or four, or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, 'Where were you, Conyers, and where was the U.S. Congress?' when the Bush administration declared the Constitution inoperative...none of the company here present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity [or] say that 'somehow it escaped our notice.'"
In the three years since then, the train of abuses and usurpations has gotten longer and Conyers has become chair of the committee. Yet he has dawdled and dawdled, and has shown no appetite for impeachment.
On July 23, 2007, Conyers told Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me that he would need 218 votes in the House and they were not there.
A week ago, 251 members of the House voted to refer to Conyers' committee the 35 Articles of Impeachment proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on Judiciary with Conyers when it voted out three articles of impeachment on President Richard Nixon, spoke out immediately: "The House should commence an impeachment inquiry forthwith."
Much of the work has been done. As Holtzman noted, Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses – arguably the most serious charge – go a long way toward jump-starting any additional investigative work Congress needs to do.
And seldom mentioned is the voluminous book published by Conyers himself, "Constitution in Crisis," containing a wealth of relevant detail on the crimes of the current executive.
Conyers' complaint that there is not enough time is a dog that won't hunt, as Lyndon Johnson would say.
How can Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks Iran, well then, the House may move toward impeachment.
That'd be the proverbial 'Day late and a dollar short', Mr. Conyers...! Let's set the fricking table for Miz Pelosi already!!!
I'd like to take issue with an Op-Ed in today's NYT penned by Frank Rich. He makes some good points, but, then he misses the mark on some basic facts!
He starts off...
The Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it. The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn’t good news — it’s no news.
Good points! With only the dubious claim that the bad news doesn't rate...
The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart’s guest on “The Daily Show” to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier,” she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, “Who’s paying attention to that?”
Her question was rhetorical, but there is an answer: Virtually no one. If you follow the nation’s op-ed pages and the presidential campaign, Iraq seems as contentious an issue as Vietnam was in 1968. But in the country itself, Cindy vs. Michelle, not Shiites vs. Sunnis, is the hotter battle. This isn’t the press’s fault, and it isn’t the public’s fault. It’s merely the way things are.
Do you see how he starts off with the right premise then reaches an erroneous conclusion... How can he honestly say that the public is more interested in the Cindy vs. Michelle than the Shi'a vs. Sunni battle? As I've pointed out in this earlier post, the public, according to Zogby polling, wants to know what's happening in Iraq, but, the MSM is not delivering it...
The public wants more stories about the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people
When asked about the news coverage of the Iraq war, most (80%) say the coverage has been fair or poor. When respondents were asked to pick what coverage they would like to see more of, stories about the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people were the two most chosen (68% each), followed by stories about returning soldiers (58%), stories about how war has impacted communities here in the U.S. (57%)...
It is the dismal performance of the MSM that is the root problem, not the lack of attention by the public... They're not being provided the necessary(and needed) coverage.
Juan Cole hammers home the necessity of why we need much better coverage of the plight of the Iraqis'...!
Some glaring facts not being reported...
By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.
In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.
Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago. [...]
Although it is very good news that the number of Iraqis killed in political violence fell in May to 532 according to official sources, the number was twice that in March and April. And,it should be remembered that independent observers have busted the Pentagon for grossly under-reporting attacks and casualties. If someone shows up dead and they aren't sure exactly why, it isn't counted as political violence, just as an ordinary murder. Attacks per day are measured by whether the mortar shell scratches any US equipment when it explodes. If not, it didn't happen. McClatchy estimated a year and a half ago that attacks were being underestimated by a factor of 10.
By the way, isn't is a little odd that the death rate fell in the month of the Great Mosul Campaign? I conclude that either it can't have been much of a campaign or someone is cooking the death statistics.[...]
...typically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.
That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years.
Equivalent to 33 million Americans wounded, that is, the entire state of California crippled or in bandages.
He goes on, check it out! It is a good read, but, you get the point...
Where is our MSM? They're just as complicit as this Maladministration in my opinion! It would be nice if the Fourth Estate would get back to their intended goal of being a check on governmental abuses and crimes. So much for a free and fair press as enumerated by the founding fathers...!
As that Al Jazeera clip points out, Maliki may be making progress in the security arena, but, as noted by several of the interviewees, the average Iraqi is not seeing any tangible results. Everything from electricity, food, water, medical supplies, etc. is woefully lacking. Coupled with the large numbers of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons, Maliki has a rough road ahead.
Reports in today's WaPo and NY Times seem to bear out the notion that although overall security may have improved, not much progress has been made economically, politically, or otherwise, to improve the lot of the average Iraqi.
Some key snippets...
(NYT)Mr. Maliki’s moves against Shiite militias have built some trust with wary Sunnis, offering the potential for political reconciliation. High oil prices are filling Iraqi government coffers. But even these successes contain the seeds of vulnerability. The government victories in Basra, Sadr City and Amara were essentially negotiated, so the militias are lying low but undefeated and seething with resentment. Mr. Maliki may be raising expectations among Sunnis that he cannot fulfill, and the Sunni Awakening forces in many cases are loyal to their American paymasters, not the Shiite government. Restive Iraqis want to see the government spend money to improve services.[...]
Perhaps most worrisome, more than five years after the American invasion, which knocked Mr. Hussein from power but set off great chaos, Iraq still lacks the formal rules to divide the power and spoils of an oil-rich nation among ethnic, religious and tribal groups and unite them under one stable idea of Iraq. The improvements are fragile.[...]
But the improvements in Iraq face an array of destabilizing provincial, national and regional forces. The Sunni insurgency — now in many places operating as pro-American Awakening groups — continues to wait to see whether the government makes good on promises of jobs and a less sectarian administration of security and public services and infrastructure.
The Sadrists remain powerful and may not forgive what many consider a betrayal by Mr. Maliki, who could not have become prime minister two years ago without their blessing. Mohanned al-Gharrawi, a senior Sadrist cleric in Baghdad, said, “We feel like a bridge that they used to reach their aims and goals, and then they left us behind.”[...]
“Maliki’s war was a selective one,” says Falah Muhammad Abdullah, 46, an engineer from Falluja. “Why does Maliki’s government hunt down the Mahdi militia while it neglects Badr?”
From the WaPo...
The Basra offensive, by all descriptions, was a haphazard affair. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki consulted neither his political allies nor Iraq's parliament. American generals knew of the operation a few days before its launch. In the initial days, hundreds of Iraqi army soldiers fled their posts, forcing Maliki to bring in reinforcements. Clashes erupted across southern Iraq and in Baghdad's Sadr City district, the stronghold of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
But outside forces came to Maliki's aid. British and American warplanes bombarded Shiite militia targets, and U.S. military advisers assisted Iraqi commanders. Sadr urged his fighters to stand down and obey a cease-fire he imposed last August. Iran played a major role in brokering a politically expedient deal between Sadr and the government. The deal ended the offensive, allowing Iraqi forces to enter and maintain checkpoints around the city.[...]
The tough tactics underscored the fragile nature of Basra's security. Sadr's followers have accused the Iraqi army of being proxy fighters for the Shiite rivals seeking to weaken Sadr's movement before provincial elections scheduled for October.
Dayni is cautious when he speaks about the Sadrists. He said the Iraqi army fought only those militiamen who no longer obeyed Sadr. "We respect the Sadrist movement. They have a great history in Iraq," Dayni said. "We are not linked to any political party."
But many Iraqi soldiers are seen as partisan. Two Iraqi soldiers seated in a Humvee, near a billboard where Sadr's face had been ripped apart, said they feared returning to Baghdad. Both lived in Sadr City. They said they haven't told their neighbors that they are soldiers. Whenever they go home they wear civilian clothes.
One soldier they knew was killed by Mahdi Army militiamen in Sadr City last month, they said. Both asked that their names not be used, fearing persecution by militiamen.
"I didn't leave my house. I spent the whole time with my family," said one soldier, who had returned 10 days earlier from a break in Sadr City. "I would be killed if they knew."
Dayni himself is on a Mahdi Army death list in his Baghdad neighborhood of Amin. He said he hadn't seen his family in 77 days.
As to Maliki's performance in the Amara ops, Aswat Aliraq reports...
The Sadrist parliamentary bloc on Saturday criticized the security plan conducted by the Iraqi government in Missan province.
The bloc demanded Premier Nouri al-Maliki to make the plot "professional and unbiased," as it began to target Sadrists "politically."
"The security plan in Missan province was shifted from security targets to political targets," lawmaker Amira al-Atabi of the Sadrist bloc said in a press conference at the convention center in Baghdad.
"Anyone who has ties with the Sadr movement was arrested including the chief of the local council, council members, and head of the council's integrity committee," she added.
"Arrests took place without judicial warrants," she noted.
"Security forces arrested 200 of the province's policemen, accusing them of being Sadr movement's members," she said.
Al-Atabi demanded that al-Maliki ensure the military operation be "professional, unbiased, and to not target political sides."
"The security plan has a great deal of violations, such as tearing up Martyr al-Sadr and Sayyid Muqtada's photos, and that state-owned buildings were not evacuated by other parties, despite Sadr's office building in Amara voluntarily having been evacuated, in addition to the degrading cursing and beating that security forces use in dealing with Missan's people," she explained.
In an interesting turn of events that highlights the tenuous position Maliki is in, Erdla of GG left me this note...
This report (Arabic) says that al-Hakim has rejected Nouri al-Maliki's request that Dawa (Maliki's party) and SIIC run together as a list in the elections. The last 3 paragraphs say why:
That Dawa are now very unpopular and unlikely to do well in the elections and that al-Hakim doesn't want SIIC to be dragged down with them.
In honor of World Refugee Day, I'd like to post this Amnesty International report and ask you all if you can contribute a little money to the Red Cross/Red Crescent or to UNHCR to help alleviate the Iraqi's plight and/or others around the World...
Iraq remains one of the most dangerous places in the world. Its refugee crisis is worsening. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, an estimated 4.7 million have been displaced both within and outside Iraq and for many the situation is desperate.
A new report by Amnesty International, Rhetoric and reality: the Iraqi refugee crisis, says that the international community continues to fail to respond to the crisis in a meaningful way. Countries like Jordan and Syria host most of the refugees but are simply not equipped to meet the needs of all those arriving.
Syria alone may be hosting more than a million refugees. As of 2007, only 1 percent of the total Iraqi displaced population was estimated to be in the industrialized world.
To mark World Refugee Day, Amnesty International has called on the international community and, in particular, those states who participated in the US-led invasion of Iraq, to take real steps to alleviate the suffering of those displaced. The organization said these countries must urgently act on their responsibility to assist the host nations and humanitarian organizations operating in the region to support the large numbers of refugees.
"Many refugees are finding it difficult to survive," said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "They are banned from working and unable to pay rents, buy adequate food for themselves and their families, or obtain medical treatment. Those lucky enough to escape Iraq rely on savings which, for many, are rapidly running out."
Many families are destitute and facing impossible choices and new risks, like having to resort to child labour and the prospect of being forced through circumstances to undertake "voluntary" return to Iraq.
Humanitarian agencies cannot cope with growing demands as more refugees need help with the basics to survive. The UNHCR had planned that by the end of the year it would be distributing food to around 300,000 people in Syria alone. However, the agency recently announced that inadequate funding means that, by August 2008, it will not be able to "cover all basic health needs of Iraqis, and many serious and chronically ill Iraqis will not be able to receive their monthly medication."
Current food aid for 150,000 refugees in Syria and Jordan could be reduced, forcing many Iraqis "into further destitution and raise the likelihood of higher malnutrition rates and increased child labor."
Amnesty International believes it is imperative that the international community increase its contributions to humanitarian agencies such as UNHCR, as well as to the countries hosting Iraqi refugees. Furthermore, there must be a real and sustained effort to resettle vulnerable refugees, such as those with serious medical conditions, to countries where they will receive adequate care.
Manal (not her real name), a refugee living in Damascus, told Amnesty International in February 2008 that three of her children, aged between six and 15 years, work so the family can survive.
Her six-year-old boy sells chewing gum in the street, for about one US dollar a day; her 10-year-old daughter sells chewing gum about three days a week; her oldest son polishes shoes, for the equivalent of about US$2 a day. Her daughter is the only one who goes to school. The family fled to Syria in 2006 after their house in Baghdad was damaged by explosions.
Despite claims among the international community that an "improvement" in the security situation in Iraq has led to people "voluntarily" returning, in reality, most return because they have run out of money and can no longer survive. They return despite the real danger to their lives.
Apart from failing to provide adequate practical and financial support, some states are also rejecting the asylum claims of Iraqis at an alarming rate. More European states are deporting rejected asylum-seekers to Iraq, including countries like Sweden, once a positive example to its European neighbours. Some states are using indirect ways to return people to Iraq, for example cutting off assistance to rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers and therefore forcing them to return "voluntarily".
The failure to respond to the crisis is contributing to the severe deterioration of human rights protection for individuals forced to flee their homes in search of safety. Support is desperately needed so that host countries in the region can meet their own responsibilities in allowing access to all those fleeing violence and human rights abuses.
Please give what you can...!
The Missan Ops Has Started... Operation Bashaer al-Salam (Promise of Peace)
This morning at 0500 Baghdad time Operation Bashaer al-Salam (Promise of Peace) was launched. As Aswat Aliraq reports...
"Security forces conducted raid-and-search operations in different parts of Amara city, capturing key targets including government officials wanted by the authorities in a number of cases," Brig. Gen Abdul-Karim khalaf, the commander of the interior ministry operations, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).
The interior official did unveil the key targets, but security forces arrested Rafea Jabbar, the Missan deputy governor.
Jabbar is also Missan mayor and a key member in the Sadrist movement loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Khalaf noted "forces seized huge stockpiles of weapons and ammunition of different calibers, including 240 mm caliber bombs".
"The offensive has not faced any resistance or impediments", he said adding "the operations would include a drive into Marshes area where important targets are hiding".
The official spokesman for the Iraqi defense ministry said that the security operations in Missan, codenamed Bashaer al-Salam (Promise of Peace), started earlier on Thursday, during which six wanted men were arrested and amounts of weapons and ammunition seized.
A senior security official on Thursday praised the role of Missan tribal chiefs in sustaining a security plan launched by the Iraqi government in a drive to crack down on gunmen and illegal border activities.
"Missan tribal chieftains have a vital role in sustaining Fardh al-Qanoon (law imposing) security plan through agreeing on the key measures of Bashaer al-Salam (Promise of Peace) offensive," Brig. Gen. Hussein al-Awadi, chief of the national police, said.
Speaking at a press conference attended by a number of tribal chiefs and top security officials, Awadi said "the actions of Missan tribal chiefs are complementary to the role played by the tribes of Anbar, Basra and Mosul in supporting security forces, handing over gunmen and imposing law and order".
An official spokesman for the Iraqi defense ministry said that Bashaer al-Salam has started earlier on Thursday.
The national police official noted he "ordered forming four battalions from tribesmen to sustain Bashaer al-Salam plan," adding "applications would be approved by tribal chiefs in association with the Missan police command".
Earlier, Maj. General Ali Ghidan, Iraq's ground forces commander, said he received the thumbs-up to form two fresh battalions in Missan, increasing the number of formed battalion to four.
The army official underlined that "the new stage of reconstruction and development would start by the arrival of a delegation from the service ministries to oversee projects".
He also unveiled plans to provide "job opportunities in the traffic police and national identifications card department to deliver services for the Missan residents"
Iraqi forces maintained that 60 militiamen surrendered ahead of the operation.The offices of the Sadr Movement in Amara were abandoned on Thursday morning and the outside walls pockmarked with bullet holes. That tells me that the push on Maysan Province was an attempt to weaken the Sadrists in the one province they presently control. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq needs Maysan if he is to achieve his goal of melding 8 southern Shiite provinces into a single super-province.
Al-Hayat says that nevertheless, Sadrist leaders hailed al-Maliki for keeping his pledge not to arbitrarily arrest large numbers of Sadrists in the province. Still, Al-Hayat says that provincial council members, clergymen and local notables made a concerted effort to monitor the influx of Iraqi troops to ensure that they did not commit excesses.
Al-Hayat says that Maysan was a refuge for dissidents from Saddam in the old days, and is now again a refuge, this time for those fleeing al-Maliki.
I agree with Juan that it is a determined effort to weaken the Sadrists, as I've mentioned in prior posts. In other news out of Iraq, in a highly unusual, if not outright suspicious move, MNF-I named the individual they think is responsible for the recent car bomb in Baghdad...
The U.S. military says a renegade Shi'ite group ordered Tuesday's deadly car bomb attack on a Shi'ite neighborhood in Baghdad to incite sectarian violence against Sunnis.
Military spokesman Steven Stover Wednesday said the attack, which killed 63 people and wounded 75 others, was the work of a so-called Shi'ite "special group" led by Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi.
Stover said Fawadi ordered the attack to stop Sunni resettlement of the Hurriyah neighborhood.
Tuesday's bombing was the deadliest in the Iraqi capital in more than three months, when U.S. and Iraqi forces began observing a truce with Shi'ite militants.
Let me get this straight a Shi'a sets off a car bomb in a Shi'a neighborhood to prevent Sunnis from moving into the area... Yeppers, makes perfect sense to me...! We need to stop this madness now!
I would like to point out some myths of Iraq's Sectarian 'crisis', that continue to dominate our foreign policy, both from Congress and this Maladministration, as well as further propagated by our media, I would also include myself in the mix. The first myth is that Sunnis, Shi'a, and Kurds are defacto blocs or sects. The second myth, as premised on the first, is the notion of partitioning them will create peace and stability. What has blindsided Maliki and the Maladministration is the strength of the nationalist movement within Iraq and the rejection of sectarianism, or even tribalism, within many of the diverse entities.
One of the most destructive qualities of how events in Iraq are framed in the English-language media is the oversimplification of Iraq's political actors into three groups: Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds.
...Mohammed is my childhood friend whom I have not seen since the end of 2006, when he was driven out of our area by Shia militants.
Mohammed asked to see me, and I suggested that he come to al-Karrada neighborhood in central Baghdad. He refused, instead suggesting we meet in al-Zawra park - not too far from his family’s new home, which is controlled by Sunni militants.
I asked Mohammed during the call whether the park was safe enough for us to meet.
"There is no reason at all to be afraid in this place," he told me.
A few days later, we had an intimate, warm and wonderful meeting. The experience inspired me to write a story about Shia and Sunni friends who meet up in Baghdad. I asked one of the park’s security guards whether there were a lot of get-togethers there. He said there were, and most happened on Fridays.
The next Friday, I went to the park to work on the story. I sat close enough to watch a young man sitting alone. He looked afraid when he glanced at me, and nervously wrung his hands. A few minutes later, his friend walked up and they embraced tightly, their eyes filling with tears.
I decided to talk to them, and it turned out that their situation was similar to that of my friend and me: They were two young men from different sects who had lived together in a mixed Baghdad neighborhood, al-Hurriyah, that has been controlled by Shia militias since late 2006.[...]
When I started talking to a couple of the guys, the rest gathered around us. One, a Shia, told me that his brother and some of his friends were killed by al-Qaeda. The second, a Sunni, said that several of his friends and relatives were killed by Shia militias.
Both seemed hostile to the other sect. After chatting for a while, I asked if either was prepared to kill a member of another sect to exact revenge for the loss of their loved ones.
The two kept silent for a moment, saying they were not murderers. But they said they felt obsessed with feelings of grief and sorrow.
The international media, for its part, simply refuses to recognize the existence of the second party in the ongoing two-way struggle. Instead the media read every single move on the Iraqi political scene as part of a "battle" between Iraq's "main contending factions, the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds" -- as seen, for example, in coverage of the law on the powers of governorates, largely presented to American readers as a "Shiite objective" in a grand compromise where the Kurds got "their" budget and the Sunni Arabs "their" amnesty law. The deep intra-Shi'i divisions on the governorates law and the Sadrist demands for a strong amnesty law were conveniently ignored; only the ethno-federalist players were even acknowledged.
Arguably, though, the greatest problem for the Iraqi centrists is what may be termed “Bush’s Biden policy.” While Washington speaks an admirable language of fidelity to strong central government, in practice it consistently extends material and moral support to the opposite camp, the ethno-federalists that share Biden’s vision for Iraq. In 2003, Bremer acceded to Kurdish demands to maintain peshmerga militias; in 2004, the US let the Kurdish parties introduce the fateful concept of “disputed areas” into the Transitional Administrative Law, whereby the old regime’s displacement of individual Iraqis can be redressed by collective demands on territory framed in an ethnic language. Since 2005, when it launched the divisive project of a single sectarian region south of Baghdad, the Supreme Council’s relationship with Washington has prospered. Whenever there is talk in Washington about an alternative to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the discussion tends to focus on the Supreme Council’s man (and the instigator of the presidential veto of the governorates law), ‘Adil ‘Abd al-Mahdi. ‘Abd al-Mahdi’s accession to power would probably mean the evaporation of the last remnants of centralist thinking in the Iraqi government, currently represented by Maliki personally, as well as figures like Oil Minister Husayn al-Shahristani. Conversely, Washington maintains little or no contact with representatives of the centrist trend whose vision for the future is far more compatible with the long-standing stated objective of US policy: a unified, multi-ethnic Iraq.
It is policy contradictions like these that facilitate the persistence of ethno-federalist dominance in Iraq, despite clear signs that this current is losing influence in the Iraqi parliament and among the Iraqi people south of Kurdistan. The ethno-federalists may not enjoy a parliamentary majority, but they have secured control of two of the three seats on the Iraqi presidency council. They cannot dictate the legislative agenda, but have managed to jostle their way to a blocking majority on the committee charged with revising the Iraqi constitution. Today, in a most ironic manner, Iraqi politics has come almost full circle in a gradual liberation from sectarianism: An institution originally designed in 2005 by the ethno-federalists to protect communal interests -- the presidency council -- is now being used by one of the vice presidents, ‘Abd al-Mahdi, to guard his ruling faction against democratic pressures framed in Iraqi nationalist terms, including from a majority within his “own” Shi‘i community. There are signs that at least some groups inside the government have had enough of the centrifugal forces associated with the ethno-federalists, with the Supreme Council’s complaints about the police in Nasiriyya and Basra suggesting that its supposed monopoly on the security forces south of Baghdad is much exaggerated. But until US policymakers realize the growing importance of the centrist trend in Iraq there can be no real alternative US policy: The major “alternatives” to Biden’s ideas on the Democratic side -- withdrawal or a focus on fighting al-Qaeda -- would only mean a freeze of current power structures and an irreversible head start for the axis of the Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council. These parties, notably, have benefited and continue to benefit from a disproportionate share of US spending on supposedly “national” institutions of government, including the arming and training of branches of the country’s security services. In the meantime, those Iraqis trying to push their country’s politics in a more sensible direction will continue to face a formidable opposition, made up of the combined forces of Republicans and Democrats in the United States, Iran and their ethno-federalist Iraqi partners.
Badger(nice to see him back in action!) nails it down...
Overall, the continuation by Maliki of his "enforcing the law" campaigns in cities that are strongholds of political movements that oppose him, and oppose the American occupation (Basra, Sadr City, Mosul, now Amara) clearly represent what you could call a "sectarian" strategy, based on vilification of political enemies as common criminals, and this is obviously a strategy that the Americans have been quite comfortable with. The expectation would be that the groups in question would fight back as groups. But what I think the Sadrists and others recognize is that this would intensify the pattern of sectarian conflict, and because the sectarian approach is no longer broadly acceptable (if it ever was), those fighting in principle as particular groups against the national government, no matter who they are, would eventually lose popular support. Hence the acceptance, in Amara for example, of a national government role in law-enforcement until such time as the sectarian-American nature of Maliki's intervention is demonstrated; and similarly the acceptance of the idea of a broad-movement type of participation in the local elections, as opposed to specific Sadrist-party lists. In each case, it is a question of not taking the sectarian bait, and instead stepping back and responding to sectarian attacks with a nationalist response.
The problem for America is that the part I have italicized above hasn't been understood. America continues to support Maliki in his sectarian attacks on rival groups, attempting to prolong and eventually "win" a sectarian battle where any group opposed to the Maliki-America alliance is eventually attacked with tanks and warplanes. There has grown up in America a whole industry devoted to the issues of "asymmetric warfare" that result from this strategy. But I think it is possible that what they are facing now--whatever the situation may be with the armed resistance groups--includes something quite different, possibly new. The normal routine has been to pick a tribe and then manage the ensuing civil war and eventual elections and so on. In this case there seems to have been a learning curve, but only on the Iraqi side, not the American. America continues to pick its tribe (in this case Maliki and his circle), but the Iraqis are failing to behave as expected: Instead of taking up arms (or even political activity) in a direct confrontation with the Chosen Tribe (and implicitly on behalf of the "other" tribe), the prevailing Iraqi strategy seems to be to deny the paramountcy of any such "tribal" concept. This means that the Maliki-American campaigns--attacks on their rival groups in Basra, Amara and elsewhere--are accepted insofar as they have any bona fide national-government law-enforcement element, and rejected insofar as they go beyond that into collusion with the occupation and sectarian attacks. It is a bit subtle for the likes of the American media and punditry, where it is assumed that the only alternatives are sustained armed resistance on the one hand, or defeat on the other.
It's a shame we're confined to a Black or White perspective...
Oh yeah, McInsane? The 'surge' was a smashing success and we're definitely winning in Iraq...? Once again, what are we winning, McInsane...? *Aaaarrrghhh*
Okay, I feel better... Today, Aswat Aliraq had two interesting articles, this one talks about the Amara Operation, here's some key snippets...
"Iraqi military forces will conduct the combat missions planned for the coming few days, according to Fardh al-Qanoon (Law Imposing) plan, and without the presence of foreign forces," General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI).
"The Foreign forces' duty will be consultative, due to the amount of Iraqi forces present," he said.
"Concentration will be on the National Police Command under the leadership of Major General Hussein al-Awadi, and the MOI's special forces under the leadership of Brigadier Noaman Ali, with the participation of the scorpion forces, fast response forces, supported by the Iraqi air force," he said.
GG briefed me about the Police Chief firing I mentioned yesterday...
A detail that's helpful about the replaced police chief:
"Staff Brigadier Saad Ali Aati to replace Major General Ali Waham as the police chief in Missan"
Saba says that the replacement is an army man not Interior ministry and that getting rid of the police chief was probably part of the deal that the Sadrist clerics there to make sure things go relatively peacefully made with Maliki.
Also from the article...
"Preparations were completed to implement the law imposing plan, as 15 MOI field commanders arrived in Missan," he added.
"Thursday is the plan's official D-Day," he noted, hoping that the plan will be executed smoothly, with the support of residents in the province.
Khalaf called on gunmen to exploit the opportunity that the government offered them, to surrender and handover their guns.
"Otherwise, security forces will track them down, wherever they go, as everyone is under the law's authority, regardless of position or affiliation."
Sounds like they mean it... 15 Field Commanders and the Iraqi Air Force... I had a good chuckle over that fanciful notion... Anyways, Shrub made the headlines too...
Baghdad, Jun 16, (VOI) - U.S. President George Bush on Monday announced the withdrawal of 30,000 troops next July, highlighting that any further withdrawal of the troops will depend on the security conditions in the country.
Two things struck me as odd... First, that's not a 'withdrawal' of troops, it's merely not replacing the troops that were scheduled to rotate home... And, second of all, and the best part; Shrub Will Not Be In Office...!!!
Ironically, he said this while pleading to Brown...
This came during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London.
The U.S. president linked any further withdrawal of U.S. forces with the improvement of Iraqi forces’ capabilities and their abilities to bear more responsibilities, as well as the economic improvement and more progress regarding political reconciliation.
“This strategy aims at handing Iraqis more responsibilities,” Bush said.
For his part, Brown denied any impact of the political argument on his government’s stance.
“There is a work to do in Iraq and we will continue our work,” Brown added, stressing that he would not outline any time table for British forces withdrawal.He highlighted that his forces realized more progress in Iraq as well as the Iraqi forces. Reports have been circulated over possible British withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2008. Brown also said during a press conference last week that he will deliver a speech on British forces' deployment in Iraq before the parliament's recess.
But, Brownie, didn't the Dec. 07 turnover of Basra turn out just swimmingly...? 20 Jan, 2009, is just not coming quick enough...!
In an unexpected move, Muqtada al-Sadr declared...
The movement of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said Saturday that it would not take part in provincial elections this year, one day after it formed a new paramilitary group to fight U.S. troops.
The back-to-back moves suggested that Sadr is trying to bolster his position as the chief opponent of both the American troops in the country and the Iraqi government, following a year in which he ordered his Mahdi Army militia to observe a cease-fire and moved deeper into the political process.
Sadr's aides said he is recalibrating his strategy as the American military drawdown transforms the U.S. role in Iraq.
"We don't want anybody to blame us or consider us part of this government while it is allowing the country to be under occupation," said Liwa Smeisim, head of the Sadr movement's political committee.
Two competeing theories arise from that astonishing move... 1) Is it because Maliki's current operations has taken a toll on Sadr's core constituents... Or, 2) Sadr is playing a masterful game of outsider politicking...!
1. Sadr is weakened (maybe even defeated). His recent decisions provide the final evidence of his capitulation in the face of overwhelming pressure from the ISF and U.S. military. This seems to be the dominant interpretation in some quarters.[...]
Critics of Sadr say he is pulling out of the elections to avoid embarrassing losses and keeping most of the Mahdi Army from fighting so that it will not face defeat by U.S. and Iraqi troops.
"These statements and allegations of special companies are nothing but attempts to cover up their weakness," said Kassim Ali, 24, a student at the Kufa Technical Institute. "The Mahdi Army cannot face up to the well-trained and well-equipped Iraqi army."
OR
2. Sadr is playing an outside-inside game. The goal is to solidify his brand as the true "outsider" nationalist opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq, avoid any association with the Maliki government, and seek to gain power over the long-term (in the national elections in 2009?) as U.S. forces draw down. According to the WaPo, Liwa Smeisim, head of the Sadr movement's political committee, justified the decision to boycott the elections this way: "We don't want anybody to blame us or consider us part of this government while it is allowing the country to be under occupation." And, in the meantime, Sadr will probably still put up supporters in the provincial elections, although they just won't be labelled "Sadrists" and his movement will undoubtedly deny any direct affiliation with these politicians (i.e., the "inside" part of an outside-inside game). Again, the WaPo notes:
Speaking about provincial elections, which are scheduled for this fall, aides to Sadr said the movement would support "technocrats and independent politicians" to prevent rival political parties from dominating local governments. But they said the movement would not put forward its own candidates.
Similarly, the AFP reported:
"The Sadr group will not take part in the (provincial) elections as we did in the parliamentary election," said Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for Sadr in the holy city of Najaf. . . .
[But] Obeidi said the group . . . will support "independent" candidates.
Dr. iRack's bet is on interpretation #2. In other words, it is not a genuine effort to boycott the elections, it is an end-around Maliki's threat to ban the Sadrists from the elections unless JAM is disbanded.
I agree with the second scenario... In regards to the new Operation 'Law-Abiding', which is still in the prepatory stages, contrary to what I'd said in my prior post, Mahalo to GG for correcting me... Aswat Aliraq reports that the Police Chief has been replaced...
Missan, Jun 15, (VOI) – A new police chief was appointed in Missan province as part of the measures taken by the Iraqi Interior Ministry in preparation for an upcoming security operation, the media and public relations director in Missan's police command said on Sunday.
"A ministerial decree has been issued to appoint Staff Brigadier Saad Ali Aati to replace Major General Ali Waham as the police chief in Missan," Colonel Mahdi Hussein told Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq- (VOI).
Ali Waham has been moved to another position in the ministry, Hussein noted, providing no further details.
Sounds like they're getting all set, as the NYTimes reports today...
The Iraqi Army continued to mass troops outside the southern city of Amara on Sunday and Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, offered a three-day amnesty and weapons buyback program to militants willing to surrender.
Similar offers in the past few months have presaged other military operations, in Basra, the Sadr City slum of Baghdad and in Mosul in northern Iraq.
This time, Mr. Maliki is preparing for an operation against the capital of a rural marsh region in southern Iraq, on the Iranian border, where Iraqi officials say a poisonous blend of militia lawlessness and weapons smuggling from Iran has created a chaotic situation.
The city is also the capital of the only province in Iraq dominated politically by followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, a political rival for Mr. Maliki.
In the city Sunday, traffic thinned on the streets. Those who did venture out in cars said they feared American air strikes.
Some residents said the militiamen Mr. Maliki’s government is focusing on, and who Iraqi commanders say include leaders who fled from earlier fighting in nearby Basra, had again fled.
I guess only time will tell what the outcome shall be! The less violence the better...!
As I had mentioned in this post, Maliki was ramping up to launch another Operation against Sadr and the Sadrists, this time in Amara. Well, it's official and well underway now...
Baghdad, Jun 14, (VOI) – Iraq's Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Nouri al-Maliki, announced on Saturday that Missan is a disarmed province as of Sunday, giving gunmen four days to hand over their weapons, according to al-Iraqiya TV.
The semi-official station cut their transmission to read out a statement by the Iraqi army's supreme commander Maliki, the prime minister, announcing Missan as a disarmed province as of June 15, 2008.
A high-ranking source in the interior ministry had earlier told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI) that a wide-scale military operation would begin in the southern Iraq province during the next 48 hours to track down armed groups in the fashion of operations in Basra, Mosul and Sadr City.
The source did not give further details for "security" reasons.
An official security source in Missan told VOI that joint security forces were deployed on Saturday at the city's main and border outlets in preparation for carrying out Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (law imposing), planned to be launched during the next few days.
What was left out of that brief 'official' statement, is some of the actions that are occuring already...
The operation is the latest stage in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's drive to stamp his government's authority on areas of the country previously controlled by Shi'ite militias or Sunni Arab insurgents.
"The decision to undertake the operation has been taken, but the zero hour has not been set yet," Adel al-Muhoudir, governor of Maysan province, told Reuters.
Iraqi tanks were seen on major streets in Amara. Iraqi security forces patrolled and many checkpoints had been set up in the city.
The city is a stronghold of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who agreed to a ceasefire after U.S.-backed Iraqi forces launched a major crackdown on his Mehdi Army militia in Basra in March.
The security official, who asked not to be named, said the aim of the operation was to arrest wanted people and collect "heavy" weapons. It would also target armed groups and some members of the Mehdi Army, he said.[...]
Helicopters dropped leaflets on Amara, a city of about 250,000 people 300 km (185 miles) southeast of Baghdad, urging residents to stay at home and not to interfere with the operations.
"Iraqi security forces are currently implementing an operation to arrest all outlaws," one leaflet said.
Iraqi armoured vehicles had arrived from the southern city of Basra and police units had come from Baghdad and elsewhere, the security official said.
"Army and police have fanned out all over the city in a way we didn't witness before, on the main streets, roads and bridges," said local resident Muhsin Abdul-Hassan.
Amara is capital of Maysan Province, which borders Iran and is one of Iraq's poorest regions despite its oil reserves.
Sadr ordered a delegation of clerics to go to Amara for talks with regional officials on how the operation would be carried out, said Sayyid Kareem al-Battat, a delegation member.
Battat said the delegation carried instructions from Sadr for Mehdi Army members to respect the ceasefire ordered by the cleric.
He said the provincial governor had promised security forces would respect human rights and that a committee of tribal leaders would supervise the operation.
We'll see how 'successful' they are, So far it's a pretty peaceful operation... I'm not holding my breath...!
Chalk one up for the good guys and the Rule of Law! Today, Scotus rendered a ruling...
Repudiating a key tenet of the Bush administration's war-on-terrorism policy, the court's 5-4 majority concluded that foreigners held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, retain the same rights as U.S. residents to seek writs of habeas corpus. The landmark ruling will permit several hundred accused enemy combatants to see the evidence that justifies their captivity.
"The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the Nation's Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
"The nation will live to regret what the court has done today," Scalia warned.
That only points to the necessity to elect Obama to ensure we stop appointing any more Repugnant Justices to Scotus... Anyways, more on the Ruling, in a stinging rebuke to the ham-fisted attempts by both Shrub and a compliant Congress, they ruled...
The Government’s sovereignty-based test raises troubling separation-of-powers concerns, which are illustrated by Guantanamo’s political history. Although the United States has maintained complete and uninterrupted control of Guantanamo for over 100 years, the Government’s view is that the Constitution has no effect there, at least as to noncitizens, because the United States disclaimed formal sovereignty in its 1903 lease with Cuba. The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say “what the law is.”
Finally, the third branch is exerting their checks and balances! A little history on it...
In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Guantanamo Bay detainees had a right to challenge their detentions under a statute passed by Congress. Congress responded by stripping federal courts of their jurisdiction, thereby blocking further habeas corpus petitions. The Supreme Court next ruled that the 2005 law didn't apply retroactively to Guantanamo Bay petitions that already had been filed.
Congress returned with the Military Commissions Act of 2006, blocking all Guantanamo habeas corpus cases.
In Latin, habeas corpus means "produce the body." A legal principle dating perhaps as far back as the 13th century, it enables prisoners to demand in court the legal justification and factual basis for their detentions.
"The (Constitution's) framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty," Kennedy wrote, amid a lengthy historical recitation in his 70-page opinion, "and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom."
After all, we don't live in a 'Banana Republic' Dictatorship...! Right...?
"I could have used a different tone” and "That's not too important"