The Benghazi Scandal Worsens - Risk Aversion Results In A Complete Operational Failure (Update 3)

The Benghazi scandal just got much worse. I posted below that it appears that the decision to deny the requests for additional security in Benghazi made in the months prior to 9-11 was a political decision made at the Clinton / Obama level. Now Fox News has broken a story that, during the attack itself, one that lasted, on and off, over a period of seven hours, the consulate's multiple calls for assistance were refused by the 'chain of command' - that even though we had a drone on station providing real time intelligence and more than sufficient assets to provide a rapid and effective response. American lives were lost because of that it.

[Update: Bill Kristol, in a column linked at the bottom of this post, notes that the CIA has, in a denial made in response to the Fox News story below, "thrown Obama under the bus." Kristol makes the case that the decision to deny military support had to come directly from Obama.]

This from Fox News:

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

This part, referencing the "CIA chain of command," is unclear. Maybe the CIA station chief?

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to "stand down."

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. . . .

Although Fox uses the word "again," this is the first mention of a request for outside military support. What was the situation report, who did it go to, who had operational control of responsive assets, were they alerted, and who ultimately denied the request?

Moreover, the people on the ground in Benghazi were not operating in a vacuum. Everyone up the chain of command to Obama, would have been alerted of the attack soon after it began. Sec. of Def. Panetta, CIA Chief Petraeus, and Gen. Ham of the U.S. Africa Commmand (AFRICOM) would not have been just standing around waiting for reports. They would be conducting their own analysis of what the situation required. There would be contingency plans in place that would have been - and clearly were - activated. Special ops units were immediately deployed to Italy awaiting deployment to Libya - orders that never came.

Update 3: There is a rumor that Gen. Ham was in the midst of violating an order from Panetta and deploying his Spec Ops resources to Benghazi when he was stopped by his second in command who, so the story goes, informed Gen. Ham that he was immediately relieved of his command by Panetta. Is this true?

There is at least some evidence that would lend credence to the rumor. The prior commander of AFRICOM, Gen. Ward, served 3 1/2 years in that position. Sec. of Def. Panetta just announced seven days ago that Gen. David Rodriguez had been tapped as the new AFRICOM commander. Gen. Ham had only served in his position as AFRICOM Commander for 1 1/2 years. This would seem a very early exit indeed. The announcement gave no indication of what, if any, would be Gen. Ham's follow on assignment.

Further, per Protein Wisdom:

As I was typing this I heard John Bolton on Greta say that there are conflicting reports of General Ham’s comments on this tragedy and why a rapid response unit was not deployed. Bolton says someone needs to find out what Ham was saying on 9/11/12.

Indeed they do. To continue with the Fox News story:

There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours -- enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.

A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they were never told to deploy. In fact, a Pentagon official says there were never any requests to deploy assets from outside the country.

That a "pentagon official" would mention that as an excuse is utterly ridiculous.  Whether or not a request for additional military support was communicated to the Pentagon is virtually meaningless. These are professionals paid to analyze and respond to a situation, not to wait with their thumbs up their collective asses to be told what to do by the people on the ground - people who may or may not even be aware of what assets are available.

A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Spectre gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support.

According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from.

If you have a target 'painted' with a laser, that means that our laser guided munitions can be fired from the air with pin point accuracy. We had weapons platforms within one to two hours of the target. An AC130 Spectre gunship would have ended that threat faster than the blink of an eye and with mimimal collateral damage. That none of these assets were launched is just utterly inexplicable.

Update 2: From a Special Ops commenter at Blackfive:

One of the former SEALs was actively painting the target. That means that Specter WAS ON STATION! Probably an AC130U. A ground laser designator is not a briefing pointer laser. You do not "paint" a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station.

Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area.

If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed.

If that SEAL was actively "painting" a target; something was on station to engage! And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS.

Continuing with the Fox News story:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.

"There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here," Panetta said Thursday. "But the basic principle here ... is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on."

That is pure, unadulterated, absolute and utter bullshit. Panetta needs to be removed from office immediately. There were two military drones on station providing real time visual intelligence - that in addition to continuous ground reports. The most dangerous enemy asset was laser designated, for God's sake. Bottom line, Panetta had better real time intelligence than 99.99% of all military commanders in history have ever had when deploying troops. There is a pretty clear line between criticizing unconscionable operational failure and "monday morning quarterbacking." This failure to act was the former, it was was pure risk aversion that got our people killed.

U.S. officials argue that there was a period of several hours when the fighting stopped before the mortars were fired at the annex, leading officials to believe the attack was over.

Wow. Again, as an excuse, that one doesn't even begin to cut it. Our people in Benghazi had just suffered an attack from a sizable and organized militia group, our forces had taken casualties, and the Ambassador himself was MIA. So what, the fighting had stopped, so just let the survivors hang out there in their precarious position? You would want to immediately send security to stabilize the situation and protect the survivors just in case THE FIGHTING STARTED AGAIN!!!!!! Unbelievable.

Fox News has learned that there were two military surveillance drones redirected to Benghazi shortly after the attack on the consulate began. They were already in the vicinity. The second surveillance craft was sent to relieve the first drone, perhaps due to fuel issues. Both were capable of sending real time visuals back to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. Any U.S. official or agency with the proper clearance, including the White House Situation Room, State Department, CIA, Pentagon and others, could call up that video in real time on their computers.

Tyrone Woods was later joined at the scene by fellow former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who was sent in from Tripoli as part of a Global Response Staff or GRS that provides security to CIA case officers and provides countersurveillance and surveillance protection. They were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the consulate began -- a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations. Four mortars were fired at the annex. The first one struck outside the annex. Three more hit the annex.

A motorcade of dozens of Libyan vehicles, some mounted with 50 caliber machine guns, belonging to the February 17th Brigades, a Libyan militia which is friendly to the U.S., finally showed up at the CIA annex at approximately 3 a.m. An American Quick Reaction Force sent from Tripoli had arrived at the Benghazi airport at 2 a.m. (four hours after the initial attack on the consulate) and was delayed for 45 minutes at the airport because they could not at first get transportation, allegedly due to confusion among Libyan militias who were supposed to escort them to the annex, according to Benghazi sources.

The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the CIA annex and were protecting CIA operators who were part of a mission to track and repurchase arms in Benghazi that had proliferated in the wake of Muammar Qaddafi's fall. Part of their mission was to find the more than 20,000 missing MANPADS, or shoulder-held missiles capable of bringing down a commercial aircraft. According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces. . . .

Every single aspect of the Benghazi debacle stinks of scandal and failure. Each new revelation just compounds this travesty. The truth needs to be made known and people held accountable. I have no illusions that this will happen before Nov. 6, but this is one that should not and cannot be swept under the rug.

Update: The CIA has responded with a carefully worded statement, not denying that requests for more assistance were made during the firefight, but only that "[n]o one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need." As Bill Kristol, writing at the Weekly Standard, describes this statement, CIA Chief Gen. Petraeus just threw Obama under the bus. As Kristol explains the implications:

So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

It would seem that all roads in this scandal lead to the Oval Office.

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General Petraeus Goes Public With Opposition To Obama's Timelines

McClatchy Newspapers has interviewed General Petraeus on the idea of a timetable for the withdraw of all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq. While General Petraeus has warned against timelines in his repeated appearances before Congress, this is his first public assessment in the papers, during the heat of a political campaign, and with peace taking hold in Iraq. General Petraeus also addressed many of these same themes in an interview with NPR, in which he also added that PM Maliki raised the issue of tying withdraw to conditions in his meeting with Obama. Obama, for his part, continues to "refine" his position on Iraq.

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This from a McClatchey interview with General Petraeus:

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq isn't buying the increasingly popular idea of a publicly stated timetable for American troop withdrawal.

Gen. David Petraeus, the Iraq commander, said in an interview with McClatchy that the situation in Iraq is too volatile to "project out, and to then try to plant a flag on, a particular date."

With violence at its lowest levels of the war, politicians in both the United States and Iraq are getting behind the idea of a departure timetable. . . .

. . . "We occasionally have commanders who have so many good weeks, (they think) it's won. We've got this thing. Well we don't. We've had so many good weeks. Right now, for example we've had two-and-a-half months of levels of violence not since March 2004," he said from his office at Camp Victory.

"Well that's encouraging. It's heartening. It's very welcome. But let's keep our powder dry. . . .Let's not let our guard down."

Petraeus is pushing for a more nuanced debate as both U.S. and Iraqi political leaders are in campaign seasons, with many voters in both countries wanting to hear there is an end. Maliki is trying to sway voters in time for this fall's scheduled provincial elections by winning support from his political rival, firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr, who has called for a U.S. withdrawal date since 2004.

Throughout his tenure, Petraeus has argued for a drawdown based on conditions, saying that the last of the five surge brigades could leave earlier this month because Iraqi forces are increasingly capable of securing Iraq.

Petraeus said that while both Sunni and Shiite extremists groups are weaker, Iraqi security forces still face threats as the groups try to reconstitute themselves throughout Iraq. And because of that, U.S. and Iraqi forces must not assume that the battle here is won, he said.

Maliki's surprise spring offensive in the southern port city of Basra was a turning point in the security situation. It rid Iraq's second-largest city of militia control and bolstered the confidence of both the Iraqi people and military. But the Iraqi security forces turned to U.S. troops to help them win, leading some to call for a more cautious withdrawal plan.

Petraeus has said he believes there will be a "long-term partnership" in which the U.S. acts primarily in an advisory role to Iraqi forces, but with enough combat power to step in and help if major battles erupt. But he said that that like most things in Iraq, plans could change.

"We know where we are trying to go. We know how we think we need to try to get there with our Iraqi partners and increasingly with them in the lead and shouldering more of the burden as they are," Petraeus said.

"But there are a lot of storm clouds out there, there are lots of these possible lightning bolts. You just don't know what it could be. You try to anticipate them and you try to react very quickly. . . .It's all there, but it's not something you want to lay out publicly."

Read the entire article.

General Petraeus also spoke in an NPR interview this morning. He tactfully says that Maliki's seeming call for timelines of withdraw need to be read in respect of the elections also coming up in Iraq. The situation has drastically improved, but there are "many challenges" ahead. (H/T Hot Air)

As I've written before, Iran is still an existential danger to Iraq and will be until Iran's theocracy is driven from power or it succeeds in turning at least southern Iraq into a satellite. With that in mind, it is important to view security gains in Iraq with the thought that there will inevitably be further proxy assaults from Iran. An actual withdraw of all combat forces within sixteen months would, in all likelihood, be an incredible disaster.

Obama has taken the position the mostly contradictory position that he will listen to the advice of his commanders on the ground during the sixteen month drawdown - though not as to the timetable for withdraw. I noted this glaring inconsistency in his speech in Jordan given the day after his 'check the block' visit to Iraq. Hot Air picked it up the same theme in response to another interview:

According to The One, the president sets the strategy: Most troops out in 16 months but some left behind for various missions. The generals supply the tactics: To carry out those missions responsibly, we need X number of troops. What does X equal? Why, it’s … “entirely conditions-based”

It seems Obama is trying to refine his Iraq position as far as he can without bringing down the wrath of his base who want, above all else, to have Iraq declared a defeat for the U.S.

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Doubling Down On Defeat & A Pattern Of Avoidance

Doug Ross has a superb retrospective on how our Dems have embraced defeat at all costs. After detailing their perfidy, he characterizes their actions:

They were wrong. They were unbelievably partisan, putting their interests before those of the United States and the safety of its military.

No party has been more wrong, more often, on serious issues of national import than the Democratic party since 1864.

Read the entire post.

Plus there is not only an embrace of defeat, but a refusal to defend it - at least from our would-be Messiah-in-Chief. Gateway Pundit notes that Obama met with Maliki but DID NOT raise the issue of his sixteen month timetable during the meeting - apparently wanting to avoid any fall out that might require Obama to publicly discuss "refining" his plans. To put this in context, Obama also deliberately avoided raising his sixteen month timetable when he had the opportunity to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker in April. He went AWOL from a town hall meeting before military families where the issue of Iraq and his embrace of defeat was almost sure to be raised - rather pointedly. And he is staying as far away as possible from any debates with McCain that are not both truncated and moderated by MSM synocophants. There is a pattern here.

What does one take from all of this. My take is that Obama is one cowardly SOB without the courage of his convictions to be able to defend his positions in any sort of pointed debate.

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What In The World Is Maliki Saying?

PM Maliki's interview with Der Spiegel has now been translated into three different versions. Did Maliki say in the interview that he wanted to see the complete withdraw of U.S. troops from Iraq within sixteen months? Translation one - no. Translation two - maybe. And now the NYT translation three - yes, and Maliki all but endorsed Obama. What is going on?

Before addressing what Maliki said, let's address the current context. We have won the counterinsurgency war in Iraq. For all of the reasons I posted here, it's over. Having called it several days ago, McCain, apparently read my post and followed suit with his own announcement of victory two days later.

Unfortunately, victory in a counterinsurgency does not mean the end to hostilities - just that the enemy is so fragmented and the government sufficiently strong that, so long as the military continues its current clean up operations aimed at pressuring the remnants of the enemy still milling about in the dark corners, the the enemy cannot conduct any sustained operations. That goes for both Iran through its proxies and al Qaeda. If major hostilities restart, and that is still possible over the next few years, it will be a new war. That said, as I wrote in my post assessing victory in the counterinsurgency war:

We will likely see significant force reductions from Iraq over the next several months and I would not be surprised to see force reductions below those of pre-surge levels by September. There is still a mission to keep the remnants of al Qaeda and the Special Groups under constant pressure. And there is a need to maintain significant combat power to dissuade Iran from any unwise moves for the foreseeable future.

So into all of this we have McCain saying we need to drawdown forces based on conditions. We have Obama who wants to "end" the a war that is already won, pulling out all combat brigades on a firm schedule of surrender over sixteen months. And now we have Maliki saying . . . what?

Hot Air captured the initial translation published by Der Spiegel of their interview with Maliki:

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.

Maliki seems to be saying that most U.S. troops can withdraw, predicated on the security situation. I am less sanguine that the situation will allow a drawdown that fast, and it also depends on how you define "most of the U.S. troops." I would hardly call this an embrace of the hard timeline for which Obama has called as part of his plan to declare the Iraq war illegitimate.

That would seem to coincide with this from General Petraeus in an interview given before the Der Spiegel interview was published:



But then there was translation two, also captured at the Hot Air link above. Der Spiegel did a bit of covert midnight editing and, voila, the interview now reads:

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

Now it appears that Maliki is closer to endorsing the Obama plan, with some lip service being paid to conditions on the ground. That would be significant. But now today we get a third version where Maliki does everything but endorse Obama for President - according to a NYT translation of the still unreleased audio. This from the NYT:

. . . But in Iraq, controversy continued to reverberate between the United States and Iraqi governments over a weekend news report that Mr. Maliki had expressed support for Mr. Obama’s proposal to withdraw American combat troops within 16 months of January. The reported comments came after Mr. Bush agreed on Friday to a “general time horizon” for pulling out troops from Iraq without a specific timeline.

Diplomats from the United States Embassy in Baghdad spoke to Mr. Maliki’s advisers on Saturday, said an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss what he called diplomatic communications. After that, the government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, issued a statement casting doubt on the magazine’s rendering of the interview.

The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but it failed to cite specifics.

“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”

He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”

Mr. Maliki’s top political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, declined to comment on the remarks, but spoke in general about the Iraqi position on Sunday. Part of that position, he said, comes from domestic political pressure to withdraw.

Read the entire article. Patterico, commenting on this latest translation, notes:

I trust the New York Times implicitly, which is why I see no reason for them to release the actual audio of the tape, to see if anyone disagrees with their translation. We don’t want to double-check things ourselves; we want to be told what the truth is. And yes, I’m entirely serious about that. (Click the links to see just how serious.)

UPDATE: What is the point? A number of people are making a big deal of the fact that the statement from Maliki’s office was issued by CENTCOM, after the U.S. Government contacted Maliki’s office. It is relevant, then, that Der Spiegel’s original translation contained exactly the part that Maliki’s office insists was left out of the final version — namely, an explicit condition that Maliki’s agreement to a rough 16-month timetable “[a]ssum[es] that positive developments continue.” In other words, Maliki’s support for withdrawal depends on conditions on the ground.

(H/T Instapundit) The actual audio of the interview needs to be made public to clarify what was actually said. Beyond that, Maliki may be playing an incredibly dangerous game indeed. Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that the only thing standing between Iraq as a functioning democracy and Iraq as a sattelite of Iran is the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. While Maliki may be playing for the domestic political scene as it exists today, his politicing could well undermine John McCain and do his country incredible harm in the long run if the U.S. elects as President a man whose central promise has been to declare Iraq an illegitimate war and a defeat. If we are asked to go, we of course should do so. But Maliki may have just bought himself a defeat straight from the jaws of victory.

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Iraq & A Needed Change That Will Not Occur

The editors of the Washington Post discuss today the many positive changes in Iraq, concluding that we are winning the war there. On that basis, they suggest that Obama and his fellow Democrats develop a plan to exploit the success, not cling to a vision of defeat and withdraw. It is a call likely to fall upon deaf ears.
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This today from the Washington Post:

There's been a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war.

Lull? The WaPo editors can't be that clueless. MSM coverage is down 92% over 2007 and what little coverage there is tends to be incredibly twisted. This is not a lull, its the left-wing MSM waging their own war of agenda journalism on the Iraq war, highlighting the negative and ignoring success. Given the degree of success over the past year, the "lull" is fully understandable.

. . . [Tlhe Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have "never been closer to defeat than they are now."

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained "special groups" that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is -- of course -- too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. . . .

Iran is the single greatest threat to Iraq, to America and to the world. This is a zero sum game for the mad mullahs. A democratic Iraq that honors the millenia old Shia tradition of quietism poses a mortal threat to Iran's theocracy, built as it is upon Khomeini's bastardization of the Shia tradition with the velyat e faqi. Iran's imperative to export their revolution and the threat posed by Iraq mean that Iranian efforts to move the U.S. out of Iraq - as they are doing now over the SOFA agreement - and their deadly proxy war to subvert the Iraqi government will not end unless ended by force or the threat of force (see Next Moves in an Existential Chess Match). Iran's proxy war will intensify exponentially if the U.S. fully withdraws from Iraq.

. . . [T]he rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the "this-war-is-lost" caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

. . . Gen. Petraeus pointed out that attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and that Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once -- something that was inconceivable a year ago. As a result the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has "unparalleled" public support, as Gen. Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply. Eighteen American soldiers died in May, the lowest total of the war and an 86 percent drop from the 126 who died in May 2007.

If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq's 2009 elections will be crucial. It also should mean providing enough troops and air power to continue backing up Iraqi army operations such as those in Basra and Sadr City. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.

Read the entire post. Perhaps Obama will take the advice of the Washington Post, but I sincerely doubt it. The far left is absolutely wedded to the idea of declaring Iraq a defeat at any cost in order to both take political power and to discredit the right. Further, socialists that now dominate the left are not rational people.

Socialism is founded on the dogma that Western civilization is an oppressing force in the world. Thus, any use of force or continuation of force in order to better the situation of the U.S. - or any nation where socialists hold sway - will rarely, if ever, be tolerated. Interestingly, our modern socialists have no problem arguing that we should weigh in with military force in areas where U.S. strategic interests are not directly implicated, such as Obama's call for the U.S. to intervene in the Sudan. It truly is a logical disconnect that points to a tenuous grasp of reality. Therefore, I expect no one from the "surrender-now" caucus, including Obama, to allow the changing facts of Iraq and Iran to in any way sully their narrative or alter their future plans.

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Pelosi Crosses The Line

The latest from the train wreck that is our House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi:

"The surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is . . . [because of] the goodwill of the Iranians."

So the question is, is she traitorous or simply insane?
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Nancy Pelosi gave an interview with the SF Chronicle yesterday. When asked about what she observed in Iraq during her May 17 visit, she replied:

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

As to reconciliation, Ms. Pelosi's narrative is ridiculous. Even our own perfidious MSM is now acknowledging both the great strides towards reconciliation that Iraq has made and the fact that the Iraqis are rallying around Maliki as a nationalist leader. Maliki is extremely popular across the spectrum of Iraq's citizens. Indeed, the only places where he is unpopular are in Tehran and, apparently, in the offices of Congressional Democrats.

As to Iran, any inference from events surrounding Basra that Iran is acting with goodwill towards the U.S. and the government of Iraq is not merely unsupported by the facts, it is a highly malignant falsehood. Iran's primary contribution to the situation in Iraq is death and mayhem. Their malign and extensive proxy war is at the heart of the need for the continuation of the surge.

Pelosi is a hyperpartisan hack. She is either wholly unable to distinguish reality or quite willing to ignore it in her all encompassing desire for political power.

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Reconciliation:

ABC News, May 28, 2008: Maliki's Midas Touch

. . . The Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites alike all eventually lauded the Basra operation as a huge success and whole-heartedly backed Maliki in his next endeavor — to revisit Mosul, and take on al Qaeda.

. . . Acutely aware of his political momentum, on May 12, Maliki, accompanied by crews from Al Iraqia TV, the official state-run media outlet — went to Mosul — and Maliki personally, and publicly, took charge of the military operations there.

He was the lead story and plastered across almost every local front page.

. . . Sadr is trying to grasp on to a sliver of political leverage, claiming to have struck the deal which brought his people their livelihoods back. While Maliki is lauding the latest in a series of successes to ensure security and a regained national unity to his country.

Certainly, it seems as though there is little Maliki can do wrong these days. With provincial elections around the corner, an Iraqi future without Maliki is almost impossible to imagine.

The Atlantic, May 13, 2008, Maliki's Southern Strategy

. . . At first, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's decision to confront Moqtada al-Sadr's Iranian-backed militas looked like a major strategic misstep. Now it appears to have transformed Iraqi politics, potentially paving the way for real reconciliation between Sunni and Shia.

. . . [T]here has also been a more lasting change: The Sadrists have been marginalized. Even the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has been reluctant to make political interventions in recent years, pointedly condemned Sadr for refusing to disarm. Leading Sunni faction have also returned to the fold. The Kurds, who have their own problems with Sadr, are also on board. Maliki, suprisingly enough, increasingly looks like the leader of all Iraqis.

. . . Unfortunately, few Americans understand what Maliki has accomplished, and how much international assistance he needs to beat back foreign elements that aim to undermine Iraq's fragile democracy -- which is, as far as neighboring governments are concerned (particularly those that begin with an "I" and end with an "n"), a profoundly subversive influence.

USA Today, April 22, 2008, Iraq Frees Detainees

Most of those released were Sunnis who had been low-level army officials or former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. . . .

The prisoners are being freed under an amnesty law passed by Iraq's parliament in February. More than 52,400 detainees in government custody have applied for their freedom. Of those, nearly 78%, or more than 40,000, were granted amnesty. . . .

"This is sort of a new life," Othman said. "Terrorism started and now it is ending. A new life is coming, God willing."

NYT, February 12, 2008, Making (Some) Progress In Iraq

Iraq’s Parliament has finally approved a budget, outlined the scope of provincial powers, set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections and voted a general amnesty for detainees. All these steps are essential for national conciliation.

. . . We are, of course, cheered by the news that representatives from Iraq’s three main ethnic groups — Shiite, Sunni and Kurd — finally saw some benefit in compromise. . . .

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Iran

Washington Post, May 29, 2008, U.S. Cites Big Gains Against Al Qaeda

. . . [CIA Chief Michael]Hayden warned, however, that progress in Iraq is being undermined by increasing interference by Iran, which he accused of supplying weapons, training and financial assistance to anti-U.S. insurgents. While declining to endorse any particular strategy for dealing with Iran, he described the threat in stark terms.

"It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved at the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of American and other coalition forces in Iraq. Period," he said.

Fox News, Aug. 9, 2007, Captured Video Shows Iraqi Insurgents Firing Sophisticated Iranian-Made Rockets at U.S. Positions

Dramatic video produced by Iraqi insurgents and captured in a raid earlier this week by U.S. troops clearly shows a battery of sophisticated Iranian-made rocket launchers firing on American positions east of Baghdad, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The video, captured during a raid on Monday by the 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment in northeast Nahrawan, shows insurgents setting up and carrying out an attack on Sunday, as well as an attack on July 11 that killed one soldier and wounded 15 others, officials said. The raid last month appeared to involve 34 launchers firing 107 mm Iranian-made rockets.

AFP, May 5, 2008, Iran Ex-President Under Fire For Comments On Insurgents

Ex-president [of Iran] Mohmamad Khatami was under fire from hardliners on Monday after comments interpreted as accusing Iran's clerical leaders of supporting insurgents in the Middle East.

. . . His speech has been seen by some observers as accusing the Iranian authorities of encouraging militants to destabilize the Middle East, in particular Iraq and Lebanon. . . .

Voices of Iraq, May 3, 2008, Karbala Operations Commander Accuses Iran of Disturbing the City

Karbala operations commander said on Saturday that Iranian intervention is disturbing the city's security.

He noted that huge quantities of Iranian made weapons were seized throughout different locations in the province.

"There is Iranian intervention . . . in Karbala," Major General Ra'id Shaker Jawdat said in a press conference at Karbala operations command's building, after showing a large quantity of Iranian-made weapons.

. . . "Those weapons entered Karbala to destabilize security, . . .

AEI, May 13, 2008, Speech by Col. H.R. McMaster, Advisor to Gen. Petraeus

Col H.R. McMaster: . . . When I traveled through the south on a last couple of visits, what I heard – and this is again on the point of militias being increasingly discredited, and this is from Iraqi Shiite leaders who were saying things like Iran is the true occupier of Iraq. They would say jokingly that the Iranians are now all Iraqi nationalists, which is a thinly-veiled swipe at some of the militias in some of these areas.

And so whereas before about a year ago, you wouldn’t really hear Iraqi leaders, especially in these areas in the south, offering criticism of Iran and the parties and communities within Iraq who were playing host to Iranian influence but you hear that almost all the time now among Shiite Arab leaders. And also a connection to Iran, and this again affects the militias, is becoming a liability much like being connected to Al-Qaeda was a liability for so-called resistance movements in the Sunni Arab community. These are again changes that I’ve seen in the last year.

The contradictions of Iranian policies I’ve mentioned at the beginning have been exposed and Iraqis have to deal with them now. They have to deal with them again partly because of that pressure on the political parties, who are embarrassed by the connections to Iran and what Iran is doing. So the sixth thing is, no big surprise, the exposure of Iranian activity and Iran’s true intentions. . . .

. . . In the case of what Iran is doing in Iraq, it is so damn obvious to anybody who wants to look into it, I think, that is drop the word “alleged” and say what they’re doing, which is, we know for a fact organizing and directing operations against the government of Iraq and against our forces – the government of Iraq forces and our forces – we know they have done that, certainly in the past. We know that they are supplying them with weapons and the most effective weapons that they used to attack the Iraqi people and our forces and these include the long-range high payload rockets that have been coming in from Iraq as well as the explosively formed projectile roadside bombs that come from Iran.

We know that they have trained forces in the employment of these munitions - and in pretty large numbers. We know that they were concerned that their maligned hand being obvious in Iraq would alienate their Arab neighbors so they try Arabize these efforts by using Lebanese Hezbollah for a lot of the training but it’s a pretty cosmetic shift that they’ve made in some portions of the training.

We know for a fact that they have directed assassination operations. They have a reputation of being some of the best assassins in the world. They’ve trained Iraqis to do that. They’ve trained them in skills not only for roadside bombs and in long-range rockets but also in snipers and other skills used to intimidate or kill individuals. And we know that they have been sort of backing all horses to destabilize the situation and we know that their support is continued to key Badr officials who are in influential positions who remain on the payroll of Iran and to advance the interests of Iran and, in some cases, to provide leadership for other militia organizations that are stood up.

We know that they ostensibly have supported this government but have armed, equipped and trained a militia that has been attacking the very government they ostensibly support. And this is not just something in Basra, this is last year. This is in Nasariyah, this is Samwa, this is in Diwaniyahm, this is in Amarah and it was in Karbala in August 26th and 27th of last year. And now again in Basra.

So I think it’s very obvious. Now on this specific question you have - has it increased or has it decreased? I think it’s very clear that what Iran has done over the last year is try to develop a considerable latent capability that it could turn on in short notice. And I think that it may have been that this bold and very quick action by the Prime Minister in Basra foiled what was to be perhaps a much larger and coordinated effort, maybe even coordinated with efforts in other places in the region, like what we’re seen happening right now in Lebanon.

So, anyway, I think it’s very obvious what they’re doing. I think it’s very obvious to Iraqis, it certainly is. The Iraqis I’ve spoken to are incensed about it and I think it’s no longer alleged. Yes?

Demetri Sevastopulo: If it’s been going on for so long, why is it you said earlier that the Iraqis are only recently starting to talk about Iranian involvement? Why did it not bother them before?

H.R. McMaster: Now, that’s a great point. Part of the reason is the intimidation factor. We know that Iran had really been able to establish a pretty high degree of control over some key officials, you know, provided them protection. And then also some assassination cells and elements of militia that would kill anybody who made a statement against Iranian interests. So what I think what has happened is Iran has so blatantly undermined the security situation and it’s so clear now that they want to keep Iraq as a weak, failing state, is what they would like I think, dependent on them for support that many more Iraqis now are disavowing connections to Iran and providing more space, more physical space in terms of intimidation. There’s more sort of a political space to address this issue than there had been previously.

And then also, if you remember Iran was a big supporter of the militias which before and this goes back to the effective operations against Al-Qaeda and the importance of it, those militias were justified in large measure because of the perception that they were protectors against these Takfirists and Salafi jihadistss who play with Al-Qaeda, and the Baathists, the former regime. So all these, what Iran could do was raise the specter of terrorist attacks against Shiite communities as a justification for its support in nefarious activities. Now, the contradiction of what they’ve been doing is much more obvious to many more people than it had been previously. . . .

Nancy Pelosi has slandered the incredible accomplishments of our soldiers. She owes our soldiers and our nation an apology. And she owes a special apology to the family of every soldier killed and maimed by Iran in the conduct of their proxy war. She has denigrated their sacrifice with her falsehoods in her pursuit of partisan power.

The tremendous offensiveness of Pelosi's falsehoods are bad enough. But what makes her remarks truly malignant are that those remarks are upon an issue at the heart of our national security. Indeed, on the largest national security issue we face, Iran, pretending that they are a benign and helpful entity can only serve to place our nation in ever greater danger. It prevents us from acknowledging reality and developing a plan to deal with Iran that will have the support of our nation. That is not merely inexcusable, but for the third most powerful person in our government, it is traitorous and criminal.

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A Week Of Enemy Propaganda & Pusillanimous Interviews

Iraq is the penultimate issue for our national security today. The economy will bounce back, but Iraq will not if the Dems win the presidency or a veto proof majority in the Senate. We are winning in Iraq against both al Qaeda and Iran – a fact that is reverberating throughout the Islamic world. Moreover, the government of Iraq has made tremendous strides politically and militarily since the start of the New Year. If we legislate surrender in Iraq, the ramifications will be dire and permanent. We will have handed a victory beyond reckoning to al Qaeda and to Iran, and we will have done far more to advance the cause of Islamic radicalism than had we never gone into Iraq. Yet we have seen this week:

- Fox’s Bill O’Reilly do, at best, a marginal interview of Hillary Clinton on the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday

- The Washington Post run a front page story Wednesday about American efforts to defeat the Sadrists in Sadr City – written from the Sadrist perspective and complete with photos of dead babies.

- The AP run an incredibly disingenuous story spinning statistics on our war dead and, in addition, ignoring all the positive indicators out of Iraq.

- Fox’s Chris Wallace do a horrendous interview of Obama on the issues of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan on Sunday. It was one puff ball question after the next with no follow-up.

I. Hillary and O'Reilly

This was Hillary Thursday night in her interview with Bill O’Reilly discussing issues of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran:



1. Why does O’reilly, of all people, play this kabuki dance with Hillary of accepting at face value her ostensible reasons for legislating defeat in Iraq? Her opposition to the war in Iraq is pure opportunistic partisanship. Very coldly, very calculatingly, she’s tossing our national security under the bus so that she can gain power. Her base wants to label Iraq a failure at any cost. She heard the clarion call of her base and then tried to get to the left of Edwards and Obama. She is ambition unguided by any principles. Why in God’s name allow this woman to make her utterly ridiculous assertions without calling her on her motives?

2. O’reilly opens the segment of questions on Iraq by saying that "Iraq is a mess." Apparently the incredible progress in Iraq, both in terms of security and politically, since the start of the surge literally through today counts for nothing. What an utterly pretentious pusillanimous pontificating pedant O’Reilly is.

3. Once Hillary starts in, it is just insane. O’Reilly let’s Hillary get away with the tired and intellectually dishonest half quote of Gen. Petraeus, that "there is no military solution" to Iraq, and then a bald and breathless assertion that what we face in Iraq is "unprecedented." What is "unprecedented" Hillary never explains and O’Reilly never asks. She utterly refuses to acknowledge any progress in Iraq, as apparently does O’Reilly. Update: As Gateway Pundit sagely asks, "why is there no 'military solution in Iraq' but there is a military solution in Afghanistan?"

4. Hillary trots out the dishonest argument that to withdraw is the only way to "focus the Iraqi government." This is so transparent as to be mind-numbing. Iraqis are doing a tremendous job of focussing with us there at the moment. Further, we know from the recent hearings that Amb. Crocker thinks that pressuring the Iraqi govt. with withdrawing U.S. forces will have the precisely opposite effect.

5. Can Hillary possibly believe that Iran actually wants the U.S. to remain in Iraq? Every intelligence briefing we have seen and everything Iran is doing is designed to drive out America and create a Lebanon out of Iraq. This is a ridiculous theory made out of whole cloth. I want our spy-chief Mike McConnell to poll our intelligence agencies to see if there is any analyst who has been able to seriously consider Hilary's Iran-wants-us-to-stay-in-Iraq theory without laughing to the point of incontinence.

6. Under what possible alternate reality is Afghanistan more strategically important than Iraq? How much of the world's oil reserves are in Afghanistan? Iraq’s economy is, what, 100 times the size of Afghanistan’s. Iraq is dead in the center of the Middle East, it has both major Islamic sects and two major ethnic groups. Its loss to either al Qaeda or Iran would be exponentially more devastating to the war on terror than would be the loss of Afghanistan. There is a reason al Qaeda’s leaders have been saying publicly and privately since 2004 that Iraq is their main effort and there is a reason Iran is trying to "Lebanize" Iraq but not Afghanistan.

7. How does Hillary square her claim that Iraq is harming our effort in Afghanistan with the recent testimony from our military that Iraq is not detracting from our effort in Afghanistan.

8. O’reilly is at least accurate when he tells Hillary that withdrawing from Iraq will appear as weakness to Iran and al Qaeda. Both Benard Lewis and Arthur Hermann have written excellent essays on how destructive that would be, and I written on the topic here. O’reilly is also accurate that once we are out of Iraq, the Dems claims to go back into Iraq in case of problems is devoid of substance. The only reason we are succeeding in Iraq is because we have the large scale support of the people. That is what counterinsurgency is all about. If we pull out and things fall apart, who in Iraq at the local level will put their trust in U.S. troops - who will be on the ground for only a few days - while the people who will kneecap them with a power drill will show back up again as soon as the U.S. leaves? Where will we get our intelligence? If Clinton or Obama actually believe that we can pull out of Iraq yet remain close with a QRF and that such is sufficient to keep al Qaeda and Iran out of Iraq, they are utterly clueless.

All in all, I would have to rate the O’Reilly interview of Hillary a D. And that is by far the best of this rouge's gallery of agenda journalism for the week.

II. WaPo Does Dead Baby Propaganda For Sadr

On Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a front page story, U.S. Role Deepens In Sadr City, which discusses the U.S. push into Sadr City to put an end to the fiefdom being run by the Iranian backed Sadrists and to end the Iranian proxy attacks on the Green Zone, where, among other things, the Iraqi Parliament meets. Those attacks have been ongoing for months. Our soldiers are dying at the hands of Sadrists.

I sat down to fisk the article, but have found myself so outraged on each occasion that I have refrained, as what I would have written would have been incoherent profanity. The majority of the article is given over to presenting the Sadrist point of view and dwelling on collateral damage caused by U.S. counterattacks against Sadrist combatants who have taken up positions in inhabited dwellings. The article reports the casualty count according to the Sadrists and clearly gives the impression that the Sadrists are being more honest than the U.S. military – who stand accused of wantonly killing civilians. Here are the money quotes/photos from the article:

. . . An Associated Press photograph showed a boy being pulled from the rubble [after a U.S. counterattack]. The AP reported that Ali Hussein, 2, died at the hospital.

"Sadr City is under the American hammer and nobody is monitoring it," said Leewa Smeisim, the head of the Sadr movement's political bureau. "Eighty percent of the military operations are targeting innocents, . . .

Not to appear cold-hearted, but we are in a war and the people trying to kill our soldiers were in or near where that child was located. But a photo of that does not appear in the WaPo. The only reason to run the photo of this dead child is to create a negative emotional response towards our military. The child's death is a tragedy. The photo of that child's death is utterly despicable agenda journalism on behalf of those who wish to kill our soldiers.

If you would like to express your displeasure with this traitorous propaganda, the author is Amit R. Paley and can be reached by e-mail form here.

III. AP Misleading Reports Of U.S. Casualties

Also spinning beyond the pale was the A.P. with their article, US troop deaths push monthly toll to 7-month high in Iraq. It is a piece that ignores the incredibly positive news from Iraq in April and spins the rest in a manner as to approach the WaPo article as a piece of enemy propoganda. Dafydd at Big Lizards does an exceptional job of addressing this article, and I will simply link to his work here.

IV. Chris Wallace Interview of Obama

And then, lastly on Sunday, Fox’s Chris Wallace did a puff ball interview of Obama, letting him get away with ridiculous answers to easy questions on Iraq with no follow-up of any note. There were at least eight questions that should have been put to Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan, and I posted them here in detail. To summarize them:

1. At the Senate Hearings, you had a chance to ask Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker to evaluate your plan to leave Iraq beginning as soon as you take office – to let the American people know what the costs and benefits would be? You chose not to ask them that. Why not?

2. How much damage will it do to the war on terror, the fight against radical Islam led by al Qaeda and Iran, and our ability to convince any nation facing a threat to ally themselves with us if we leave Iraq before it is stabilized, allowing al Qaeda to reinfiltrate the Sunni portion while Iran creates a Hezbollah to dominate the Shia south?

3. Ambassador Crocker has clearly stated that attempting to pressure Iraq with threats of pulling out our soldiers is counterproductive because it puts Iraq’s political groups in the position of looking at their interests when the U.S. is gone rather than having enough feeling of security to make concessions. Why should we believe your argument to the contrary?

4. Al Qaeda says Iraq is its main effort. Zawahiri and bin Laden hate the Sunni Anbar Awakening movement and have vowed to destroy it because its success poses a mortal danger to the radical Islamic cause al Qaeda champions. We have all but destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq. So why should we leave and endanger all these gains before Iraq can handle its own internal and external security?

5. If Afghanistan is so important in your eyes, why, if you are in charge of the Sen. For. Relations subcommittee, have you not put the interests of the nation ahead of your own for a week and convened hearings to put pressure on our NATO allies to support the Afghan mission?

6. The Protect America Act contains an immunity provision for telecom companies who voluntarily cooperate with our intelligence community. Those companies face massive law suits from a dem special interest group - the tort bar. The Chairman of the House Sen. Intel Comm., a democrat, is on the record as noting that continued voluntary cooperation from these companies is vital to our national security and would be endangered by these lawsuits. You voted to strip out the immunity provision from the act. Why did you place the interests of a special interest group ahead of our nation’s security?

7. Given Iran’s long history of terrorism since 1979 and their clear goals to expand their influence and build a nuclear arsenal, what could you possibly offer Iran in talks that would change the inherent nature of the theocracy and move them from their current course?

8. What makes you think your plans to hold talks with Iran under the current circumstances are, one, justified, and two, would be any less ill advised, counterproductive and disastrous than the attempts to find a middle ground with Hitler in the 30's?
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If you value intellectual honesty, objectivity and reality, this has been a very bad week for you, indeed.

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Talking With Iran (Updated)

General Petraeus had scheduled a briefing for Monday to make public the scale of Iran's proxy war against Iraq's central government and U.S. forces. That briefing was put aside at the request of the Maliki government who, after viewing the facts of the proposed brief, has sent a delegation to Iran in what amounts to a last chance effort to cause Iran to cease and desist without the necessity of force.

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Iran finds itself in a unique position. Its standard playbook for increasing its influence in a region through a combination of terrorism, money, and the building of local militias loyal to Iran, a playbook that worked so well in several places, chief among them Gaza and Lebanon, is running into a roadblock in Iraq. Part of the roadblock is, of course, the presence of a U.S. Army in Iraq, but the largest part at the moment is an Iraqi central government that, though still far from full strength, is rapidly gaining in respect and popularity in Iraq. Iran has spent years now attempting to Lebanize Iraq. But when Maliki attacked Basra and started political and military paths to end militia influence in Iraq, that marked a turning point. Iran will not succeed if events keep to their current path, with the only remaining question being whether force will be used to make Iran end its proxy war.

This from Reuters today:

A delegation from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling bloc has gone to Iran to press Tehran to stop backing Shi'ite militiamen, a senior member of parliament from the bloc said on Thursday.

"The UIA has decided to send a delegation to press the Iranian government to stop financing and supporting the armed groups," said Sami al-Askari, referring to the United Iraqi Alliance, which includes the main Shi'ite parties supporting Maliki. "They left yesterday for Iran."

Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, another senior UIA member of parliament, said the delegation was sent after the "serious deterioration that has recently taken place in security in Iraq".

"The delegation will ask the government of Iran to continue to support the government of Maliki and continue to support stability in Iraq," he said, although he would not confirm that it would raise the issue of Iranian support for militias.

U.S. officials have long accused Iran of supplying rockets, advanced roadside bombs and training to Shi'ite fighters in Iraq. Iran has denied supporting militias, which profess loyalty to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq's Shi'ite-led government has said it wants good ties with Shi'ite Iran. Maliki launched a crackdown against Sadr's militia in late March that met fierce resistance from well-armed fighters, and he says he is determined to disarm them.

Major-General Qassim Moussawi, Iraqi spokesman for security in Baghdad, said at a news conference this week that Iraq had seized Iranian-made missiles and heavy weapons in the last four weeks in the capital.

U.S. officials say they have collected proof of Iranian weapons that have arrived recently in Iraq, but were holding off making a public display of their evidence so that Iraqis could make their case to Iran first.

"The Iraqis wish to first show what they have to the Iranian government before they show the world," an official travelling with U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.

"First and foremost, it's an attempt to say: 'Hey, listen: we know what you are up to. This is not helpful. Cut it out!'"

On Wednesday the Iraqi Defence Ministry said it had put on display weapons, including rocket launchers, seized from Shi'ite militia fighters in the southern city of Basra.

"Some of the weapons were manufactured in 2008, which means they are being smuggled in without difficulty," the statement quoted Lieutenant-General Mohan al-Furaiji, commander of Iraqi forces in southern Iraq, . . .

Read the entire article.

Update: The meeting with the Mullahs occured over the weekend. This from the Washington Post:

. . . Haider al-Adari, a Shiite legislator from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and a member of the delegation, said in an telephone interview from Iran that the trip was "very successful" because Iran agreed to cooperate on putting an end to weapons smuggling and the training of militant groups. But he said Iran did not admit to playing a role in fomenting the violence.

"They have denied everything," Adari said Saturday. "But we clearly expressed our concern to them."

Read the enitre article.

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Petraeus, Odierno, Iraq and Iran

Secretary of Defense Gates announced yesterday that General David Petraeus, currently the Commander of all Multi-National Forces in Iraq, has been nominated for the position of Centcom Commander with authority over our military in Iraq, Afghanistan and the larger Middle East. LTG Odierno has been nominated to take over the MNF-I Command Petraeus is vacating. These nominations have important political implications and may signal a willingness to begin to take on Iran and its proxy war.

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This from the Washington Post:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the public face of the war effort there, became President Bush's nominee yesterday to supervise U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia as head of Central Command, putting him in position to oversee American strategy in Iraq for years to come.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who worked closely with Petraeus as the No. 2 commander in Iraq until two months ago, was nominated to receive a fourth star and to take Petraeus's current job as the leader of Multi-National Force-Iraq. . . .

Read the article. Clearly Petraeus and Odierno are both emininently qualified duo for promotion to these positions based on their proven track record of success in Iraq.

This also means that new round of Congressional committee hearings will be scheduled in May or June to approve these nominations. This will put the issues of Iraq, Iran, al Qaeda and Afghanistan back squarely in the public consciousness to compete with the marathon Democratic nomination battle.

Lastly, and most importantly, it may well signal a hardening of our position against Iran. Both Petraeus and Odierno are vocal about Iran's proxy war. I wrote earlier that our next move should be a limited attack against Iran's Qods force and related assets on Iranian soil both as a necessary step for self defense and to put the threat of force clearly back on the table as to Iran's sprint towards a nuclear arsenal.

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The Next Moves In An Existential Chess Match

The situation regarding Iran has changed – and changed again – since December, 2007. Iran continues to increase the stakes with its deadly proxy wars throughout the Middle East, including in Iraq, and with its drive towards a nuclear arsenal. Four months ago, it appeared that our hands were completely tied in dealing with Iran, compliments of a State Department coup wholly undercutting the President. But that is no longer the case today. So what is the next move?

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Iran is the single most destabilizing influence in the world today. Sec of Defense Robert Gates had it right when he said not too long ago

Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.

And, as Stuart Levy, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence recently testified before Congress, Iran is the "the central banker of terrorism." It "uses its global financial ties and its state-owned banks to pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and to fund terrorism."

To tick off the list of Iran’s threats:

- Iran is clearly doing all it can to prevent peace between Palestinians and Israel. And in rearming Hamas, it is doing so with substantially stronger rockets that can reach further into Israel, virtually insuring that Israel will have to take extreme measures to stop the daily attacks.

- Iran’s meddling in Lebanon has created a situation where both the Shia population and the country as a whole are dominated by Hezbollah, an army trained, armed and directed by Iran. Indeed, Hezbollah is now demanding veto power over acts of the Lebanese government. In the wake of the 2006 war with Israel, Iran is arming Hezbollah with much stronger rockets that can reach vitrutally all of Israel, thus insuring that the next war with Hezbollah will also be far more bloody for all of Lebanon.

- Iran has occupied several islands belonging to the UAE. Iran has supported attempted coups in Bahrain and, recently, Azerbaijan. Iran occupied a significant part of Iraqi territory immediately after Saddam's fall – some 1800 square-kilometers of the Zaynalkosh salient - and is making an effort to extend its dominance over the waterway on which sits Iraq's only major port.

- Iran is arming and training the Sudan's military.

- Iran is now the single greatest threat to stability in Iraq. Iran is attempting to "Lebanize" Iraq, using "special groups" culled from Sadr’s Mahdi Army to create a Hezbollah type of militia that will keep Iraq’s central government weak and extend Iranian influence over Iraq’s Shia majority. Indeed, Iran’s campaign to create a satellite state of Iraq was clear from the very start of the U.S. invasion in March, 2003. Their "special groups" are responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 American soldiers and the wounding and maiming of hundreds of others.

- Iran’s drive towards a nuclear weapon is significantly destabilizing the Middle East and has already initiated what promises to be a nightmare of nuclear proliferation. "Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Jordan and Egypt have indicated an interest in developing nuclear programs, with Israeli officials saying that if these countries did not want the programs now for nuclear capabilities, they wanted the technology in place to keep "other options open" if Iran developed a bomb." According to a recent study initiated by Senator Lugar, "the future Middle East landscape may include a number of nuclear-armed or nuclear weapons-capable states vying for influence in a notoriously unstable region."

- And then of course is the threat that a nuclear armed Iran intrinsically poses. According to Bernard Lewis, the West’s premier Orientalist, Iran's theocracy operates outside the constraints of Western logic. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MADD) that worked against the Soviet Union and with other nuclear armed nations is not assured of working with a theocracy whose messianic rulers welcome the carnage that will presage the coming of the hidden Imam. And to add to that is the threat that Iran could well provide nuclear materials to terrorist groups in order to conduct attacks, such as dirty bombs, that could not necessarily be traced back to Iran. Such a scenario would be completely in keeping with the historical activities of Iran's theocracy.

Something must be done to convince the theocracy to end its nuclear ambitions and to stop its acts of war against our soldiers in Iraq. We appeared on a course to do that until, in December, our State Department conducted what amounted to a coup with the publication of an unclassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program. The authors claimed that Iran did not have an ongoing nuclear weapons program and they deliberately crafted the document to deligitimize the use or threat of use of force against Iran. As I wrote at the time:

Our intelligence agencies have done our nation a tremendous disservice. It will, in the long run, likely cost us bitterly since it puts off any reckoning with the single most destabilizing force in this world. Every day that reckoning is put off will increase the cost we will pay and gold and blood. And if Iran achieves a nuclear arsenal, that cost we will pay will rise exponentially.

On Friday, in light of the NIE and all that has transpired, Charles Krauthammer wrote that an Iranian nuclear arsenal was inevitable and called for the U.S. to place Israel under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella – a move we should do in any case. But I think that the decision not to confront Iran with force or the threat of the same over its nuclear program - and its acts of war through proxy forces in Iraq - is far from settled.

Among the many considerations regarding use of force against Iran, one has been how such an act would reverberate in Iraq. Having made the decision to invade Iraq rather than Iran in 2003, we were victims to an extent of our own strategy. Any attack against Iran could have had significant repercussions for our mission in Iraq, further destabilizing the country. We could never be sure whether an attack on Iran would bring significant numbers of Iraqi Shia out against us. And in this regard, Sadr had explicitly promised to attack U.S. forces if we attacked Iran. That problem may now be resolved.

Iran had been, until recently, steadily increasing its malign influence in Iraq. Only a few months ago, some 300,000 Shias in the south of Iraq petitioned their government to do something about the murderous and ever growing Iranian influence. As al Qaeda attacks waned, Iranian proxies increased their violence, including attacks against the Green Zone, where Iraq’s Parliament meets. And in late February, there was a significant increase in the infiltration of Iranian Qods force personnel into Basra and Baghdad that, in light of subsequent events, may well have been related to the Basra offensive and Sadrist uprising in Baghdad and numerous other southern Iraqi cities in addition to Basra.

The Basra offensive and the defeat of Iranian backed, if not Iranian led, Mahdi militia elements in every major city where they staged an uprising has been an incredibly strong blow against Iran. (Update: For any who still might think Basra anything other than an utter defeat for Sadr and his Iranian backers, do see the articles discussing current events in Basra and Sadr City here.) And now, with PM Maliki and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani calling for the disarmament of all militias, including Sadr’s, it appears that the majority of Iraqis and their government are actively taking a stand against Iranian influence in Iraq.

This dovetails with recent analysis by Michael Ledeen:

The issue for Iraqis, at all levels of the society, is not whether the mullahs are killing them. They know that, and they have known it all along. . . .

Iraqi ministers have been talking about Iranian terrorism for years. When I was at a closed meeting of leading Iraqis in Copenhagen two months ago, I heard many stories, complaints and warnings about Iran’s murderous activities. . . .

The issue is not "sensitizing" the Iraqi leaders to Iranian crimes. The issue is—was, rather—getting to the point where the Iraqis feel confident enough to go after the Iranians and their proxies.

That is the big change: Iraq is defeating Iran. Iran’s proxies have been defeated in most of Iraq. The remaining areas—primarily the zones in and around Mosul, and in and around Basra—are under siege from Iraqi and Coalition forces, including, at long last, the Brits (who were supposed to have pacified Basra long since). And the Iranians are losing, bigtime. A couple of weeks ago I wrote here that the Iranians were increasingly desperate, and that it looked like Khamenei was going to try a desperate throw of the dice. He did. And lost, losing to mostly Iraqi forces.

Read the entire article.

Iran’s gambit may have failed for now, but simply defeating the immediate threat is not going to stop Iran’s deadly meddling throughout the Middle East, nor for that matter in Iraq over the long term. Iran is deeply troubled by the spectre of a stable, quietist Shia democracy on its borders. That would be too great of a direct challenge to the legitimacy of Iran’s theocracy. Thus, unless the price becomes too great to pay, Iran will continue training and arming special groups that target U.S. forces and attempting to destabilize the Iraqi government. But with Iraq's government committed now to counter Iran’s deadly meddling, we will have far more flexibility in how we respond to Iran, both as to their acts of war in Iraq and their nuclear program.

As to Iran’s nuclear program, it has picked up steam and is now clearly aimed at producing a nuclear arsenal. You will find no one today, outside of the State Dept. at least, that might support the NIE’s assertion to the contrary. It appears now that Iran is in the process of designing a ballistic missle delivery system. It is tripling its capacity to enrich uranium – for which it has no use other than to create nuclear weapons. Our intelligence chiefs have spent the past two months backtracking on the NIE. Recently, CIA Chief, Michael Hayden, said that he believes Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons while his boss, Mike McConnell, projected that Iran may have a nuclear weapon by 2010. Then there was VP Cheney’s recent tour of the Middle East. Iran was at "the top of the agenda" during his tour, and in Turkey, VP Cheney publicly stated that Iran is seeking to make weapons grade uranium.

With that in mind, it looks as if we may in fact be preparing to make a viable threat to use force to stop this program. Our air and naval assets in the Gulf are quietly being beefed up to the same level as existed in March, 2003, prior to the invasion of Iraq. Additionally, we now have two warships off the coast of Lebanon, likely to target Hezbollah should the need arise. According to a recent report leaked from Russian intelligence, plans and forces are in place to execute a large scale attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as we speak. Clearly, the threat of force is back on the table. However, the threat of force is only viable if the entity threatened believes that it may in fact be used. Iran does not seem to believe any such threat is viable.

Keeping that in mind, there are yet other nuances to consider in the calculus of what to do next. The problem with a large scale attack on Iran’s highly decentralized nuclear sites is that there is a strong possiblity it would leave the current regime in place while giving the appearance, at least, of a widespread assault on the larger population of Iran, resulting in an explosion of nationalist sentiment in support of a regime that is largely reviled within its borders today. Remember that it was less than a decade ago that Iran sat on the edge of a counter revolution – the so called Tehran Spring. But Iraq’s reformist president at the time, Imam Khatami, blinked and refused to support the movement. It was brutally repressed.

What has transpired since is near complete domination by hard liners opposed to any reform and who have rigged the elections to ensure their hold on power. The clerics are shifting ever more power to the 125,000 member Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the clerics’ primary vehicle for maintaining control of their country. The IRGC now control much of the day to day power in the country and are becoming wealthy beyond measure through their economic schemes. While the IRGC and clerics get rich, the economic situation for the 60 million other Iranians, made all the worse by Ahmedinejad, is critical. Inflation is running above 25% and unemployment among a population, the majority of which is under 30, is hitting new double digit highs each month. Food prices are soaring and gas is now being rationed.

Iran is, in short, a tinder box. It is a highly dysfunctional nation that should be low hanging fruit for our intelligence agencies, particularly now that we have access to a huge pool of Iraqis who can freely move across the Iranian border and vica versa. The school solution to all the problems of Iran’s theocracy is to fan the flames of discontent and amplify the promises of true democracy, free of the heavy and repressive hand of the Khomeinists. We can and should fan a counter revolution within Iran. To that end, we should be overtly and covertly giving massive support to Iran's dissidents, including support to the MEK. That has not happened to date, as Michael Ledeen explains here. It is utterly inexplicable and unconscionable that it has not. Unfortunately, even if we start in earnest now, such a course of action takes time to bear fruit - and time is a commodity of which we have precious little in regards to Iran's nuclear program.

While internal regime change may be the school solution and while large scale use of force may hold the potential for unintended consequences, that does not mean that we should not use any force, or that we should not create a scenario where the theocrat's have to worry that we will use such large scale force. To the contrary, we need to be doing precisely that. The history of Iran's theocracy is that it responds to the use of force. In 1980, Iran released its American hostages after more than a year. The did so on the day a belicose Ronald Regan took office. Iran ceased mining the Persian Gulf only after the U.S. destroyed half their navy on a single afternoon in 1988. If our intelligence is correct, Iran stopped its overt nuclear weapons program in 2003 at the same time we invaded Iraq. And just recently, in Basra, we saw Iran quickly back down the Mahdi Army forces when it became clear they were taking significant casualties.

With all of the above in mind, we can and should use force against those elements on Iranian soil that have been involved in training, arming and funding the "special groups." We should target in Iran the Qods force, their training bases, and the assembly plants for rockets and IED's that are ending up in Iraq. One, it would directly challenge the regime without the sort of large scale collateral damage that would likely rally the populace. Two, such action is fully justified under international law and, indeed, long overdue for several hundred of our dead and wounded soldiers, as a measure of self defense. Three, it would give the regime a bloody nose and perhaps destabilize it further in the eyes of the Iranian populace. Lastly, it would set the stage for a very serious threat of significant force on the nuclear issue.

And I believe that is in fact what we will soon be seeing. The recent warnings to Iran by President Bush as to their choices in Iraq as well as General Petraeus’s testimony, that he has a full press briefing on Iranian acts of war in Iraq prepared and is merely awaiting word from his chain of command to execute, indicates that such attacks are very much in the planning stages. The time is ripe for such action, both as a means to stop Iran's destabilization of Iraq and, equally importantly, to send a clear warning of a willingness to use force on the nuclear issue without yet having to pull the big trigger.

Iran does not have the goodwill among the Iraqis now to significantly hurt us there. And to launch a major attack against our naval or air forces in the region would be as suicidal today as it was in 1988. Its our move. After that, Iran may have precious few moves left in this game of existential chess.

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