Obama, Principles & Iraq

Amir Taheri's NY Post column on Monday accusing Obama of attempting to subvert our negotiations with Iraq was such a serious charge, I opted to wait for additional confirmation before blogging it. Hostilities in Iraq are ongoing, though at a reduced level, and with an expansionist Iran as a next door neighbor, a resumption of major hostilities is clearly possible. For their safety and security, our soldiers must have a clear framework within which to operate in Iraq - and indeed, they need additional authorization even to be there after the UN mandate expires. What Obama has done is insinuate himself into the President's negotiations on that framework, attempting to sabotage them. Obama did so without authority and with an apparent goal of advancing his own ambitions. Now called on it, Obama, true to form, is trying to obfuscate the situation and parse terms rather than take responsibility for his actions.

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The existing framework and authorization for our soldiers in Iraq, the UN Mandate, expires in January, 2009. The U.S. and Iraqi government have been negotiating for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would provide the legal framework for our troops in Iraq. It is an agreement with Iraq that defines the legal and administrative rights of our soldiers while in that country. Operational issues - troop levels, right to take unilateral military actions, etc. - are the subject of a related Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA). The two agreements are two interrelated halves of a whole, both being necessary for our continued presence and activities in Iraq after the expiration of the UN Mandate. And indeed, according to the Congressional Research Service, the Bush administration and Iraq have been negotiating both agreements as part of a single package.

It is now confirmed that when Obama was there in July, he insinuated himself into this process, attempting to undercut the Bush administration and stop Iraq from negotiating these agreements or agreeing to time horizons for withdraw. This from Amir Taheri on Monday:

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.

By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.

Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.

Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.

According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.

Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.

Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.

Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."

Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."

Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.

Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.

Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.

This is a very serious charge in many respects. Obama has no authority to negotiate on behalf of the U.S., and for him to undercut the sitting President in the exercise of his Article 2 powers during hostilities is outrageous, if not criminal. Confirmation from muliple sources has since occurred. This from the American Spectator:

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January.

The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari to confirm the conversation, and there was concern that there were enough aggressive reporters based in Baghdad with the sources to confirm the conversation that to deny the comments would create a bigger problem . . .

Amazing. And even more outrageous is the incredibly deceptive response from the Obama camp that they finally settled upon. The Obama camp responded by calling the Taheri article "a pack of lies," admitting that Obama made the request to Iraq that they stop negotiating with Bush, but claiming that Obama was only referring to the SFA:

But Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri's article bore "as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial."

In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.

In the face of resistance from Bush, the Democrat has long said that any such agreement must be reviewed by the US Congress as it would tie a future administration's hands on Iraq.

"Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations, nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades," Morigi said.

President Bush is operating pursuant to his Article II powers and Congress's Authorization For Use Of Military Force - Iraq passed in 2002. No one can argue with a straight face that he does not have the power to negotiate the above agreements with the sole exception that he cannot make a formal security agreement with Iraq nor commit the U.S. to keep forces in Iraq once hostilities are recognized as concluded - and thus ending Congressional authorization for engaging in military force in Iraq. Thus, Obama's denial here is just incredibly disingenuous. Regardless of how Obama, a professor of Constitutional Law, might wish to parse and obfuscate this, his actions were completely out of bounds and taken not in the best interests of the U.S. or our soldiers deployed in Iraq, but in the best interests of his campaign for President.

That said, Amir Taheri is pushing back today against both the response from the Obama camp and the mountain of death threats he has received for accurately reporting Obama's actions while visiting Iraq:

. . . the claim that Obama only wanted the Strategic Framework Agreement delayed until a new administration takes office, and had no objection to a speedy conclusion of a Status of Forces Agreement, is simply untrue.

Here is how NBC reported Obama's position on June 16, after his conversation in the US with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari: "Obama also told Zebari, he said, that Congress should be involved in any negotiations regarding a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. He suggested it may be better to wait until the next administration to negotiate such an agreement."

In other words, Obama wanted a delay on the Status of Forces Agreement, not on the Strategic Framework Agreement - as his rebuttal now claims.

The NBC report continues: "Asked by NBC's Lee Cowan if a timetable for the Status of Forces Agreement was discussed, Obama said, 'Well he, the foreign minister, had presented a letter requesting an extension of the UN resolution until the end of this year. So that' s a six-month extension.'ñ"

That Obama was aware that the two accords couldn' t be separated is clear in his words to NBC:

"Obviously, we can' t have US forces operating on the ground in Iraq without some sort of agreement, either a further extension of the UN resolution or some sort of Status of Forces agreement, some strategic framework agreement. As I said before, my concern is that the Bush administration -- in a weakened state politically -- ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it was my administration or Sen. McCain' s administration." (Emphasis added.)

Obama also told NBC: "The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that's currently made, but I think the only way to assure that is to make sure that there is strong bipartisan support, that Congress is involved, that the American people know the outlines of this agreement.

"And my concern is that if the Bush administration negotiates, as it currently has, and given that we're entering into the heat of political season, that we're probably better off not trying to complete a hard-and-fast agreement before the next administration takes office, but I think obviously these conversations have to continue.

"As I said, my No. 1 priority is making sure that we don' t have a situation in which US troops on the ground are somehow vulnerable to, are made more vulnerable, because there is a lack of a clear mandate."

This confirms precisely what I suggested in my article: Obama preferred to have no agreement on US troop withdrawals until a new administration took office in Washington.

Obama has changed position on another key issue. In the NBC report, he pretends that US troops in Iraq do not have a "clear mandate." Now, however, he admits that there is a clear mandate from the UN Security Council and that he'd have no objection to extending it pending a bilateral Iraq-US agreement.

The campaign's rebuttal adds other confusions to the mix. It notes that Obama (along with two other senators who accompanied him) also stated in July: "We raised a number of other issues with the Iraqi leadership, including our deep concern about Iranian financial and material assistance to militia engaged in violent acts against American and Iraqi forces; the need to secure public support through our respective legislatures for any long term security agreements our countries negotiate; the importance of doing more to help the more than 4 million Iraqis who are refugees or internally displaced persons; and the need to give our troops immunity from Iraqi prosecution so long as they are in Iraq."

Note that in this part of the statement, the term "security agreements" is used instead of SOFA and SFA - another sign that the two can' t be separated.

In any case, I never said Obama didn't raise other issues with the Iraqis. Yet all those issues have been the subject of US-Iraqi talks between the US and Iraq (and of conferences attended by Iraq's neighbors) for the last five years. Simply repeating them isn' t enough to hide the fact that Obama' s policy on Iraq consists of little more than a few contradictory slogans.

My account of Obama's message to the Iraqis was based on a series of conversations with Iraqi officials, as well as reports and analyses in the Iraqi media (including the official newspaper, Al Sabah) on the senator's trip to Baghdad. It is also confirmed by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

In a long interview with the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Zebari says: "Obama asked me why, in view of the closeness of a change of administration, we were hurrying the signing of this special agreement, and why we did not wait until the coming of the new administation next year and agree on some issues and matters."

Again, note that Zebari mentions a single set of agreements, encompassing both SFA and SOFA.

Zebari continues: "I told Obama that, as an Iraqi, I believe that even if there is a Democratic administration in the White House it had better continue the present policy instead of wasting a lot of time thinking what to do."

In other words, Obama was trying to derail current US policy, while Zebari was urging him not to "waste time."

Zebari then says: "I pointed out to him [Obama] that the agreement being negotiated [with the US] was not to be necessarily binding on the future administration unless it wanted to cooperate with the people of Iraq instead of [causing] crises and problems from its very start."

According to Zebari, Obama said "some media reports that I want all [American] forces withdrawn are wrong. I want to keep American forces [in Iraq] to train [the Iraqi army] and fight terrorism." This is precisely what US troops have been doing in Iraq for the last five years.

Zebari then says that he had the impression that US policy in Iraq wouldn't change: "The US has permanent strategic interests in our region. A change in the administration would not change realities and priorities and would not mean a change of policy as a whole." (Full text of the Zebari interview is available on Asharqalawsat.com)

Contrary to what Obama and his campaign have said, Iraqi officials insist that at no point in his talks in Washington and Baghdad did Obama make a distinction between SOFA and SFA when he advised them to wait for the next American administration.

The real news I see in the Obama statement is that there may be an encouraging evolution in his position on Iraq: The "rebuttal" shows that the senator no longer shares his party leadership's belief that the United States has lost the war in Iraq.

He now talks of "the prospect of lasting success," perhaps hoping that his own administration would inherit the kudos. And he makes no mention of his running mate Joe Biden's pet project for carving Iraq into three separate states. He has even abandoned his earlier claim that toppling Saddam Hussein was "illegal" and admits that the US-led coalition's presence in Iraq has a legal framework in the shape of the UN mandate.

In his statement on my Post article, Obama no longer talks of "withdrawal" but of "redeployment" and "drawdown" - which is exactly what is happening in Iraq now.

While I am encouraged by the senator's evolution, I must also appeal to him to issue a "cease and desist" plea to the battalions of his sympathizers - who have been threatening me with death and worse in the days since my article appeared.

This issue is probably too convuluted for it to have the impact that it should. For that to happen, the MSM would need to explain it to the public. What Obama has done here is a travesty for which he should be held to account. I will not hold my breath waiting for the MSM to do their job.

More on this in links at Memorandum.

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NYT Calls Iraq For Obama

It's official. Obama has the Iraq vote sewn up - at least if the NYT is to be believed today. The article has all the typical NYT biases on full display, and the author even goes so far as to suggest that Obama's highly undefined plan to leave a residual force in Iraq might well be sufficient to meet Iraq's security needs. Once beyond the agenda part of the NYT's agenda journalism, the article gets interesting. Iraqis seem to look favorably on Obama because they see him as having "Muslim roots." They are also quite leary of his plan to quickly drawdown all combat forces.
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This from the NYT:

A tough Iraqi general, a former special operations officer with a baritone voice and a barrel chest, melted into smiles when asked about Senator Barack Obama.

“Everyone in Iraq likes him,” said the general, Nassir al-Hiti. “I like him. He’s young. Very active. We would be very happy if he was elected president.”

But mention Mr. Obama’s plan for withdrawing American soldiers, and the general stiffens.

“Very difficult,” he said, shaking his head. “Any army would love to work without any help, but let me be honest: for now, we don’t have that ability.”

Thus in a few brisk sentences, the general summed up the conflicting emotions about Mr. Obama in Iraq, the place outside America with perhaps the most riding on its relationship with him.

There was, as Mr. Obama prepared to visit here, excitement over a man who is the anti-Bush in almost every way: a Democrat who opposed a war that many Iraqis feel devastated their nation. And many in the political elite recognize that Mr. Obama shares their hope for a more rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

But his support for troop withdrawal cuts both ways, reflecting a deep internal quandary in Iraq: for many middle-class Iraqis, affection for Mr. Obama is tempered by worry that his proposal could lead to chaos in a nation already devastated by war. Many Iraqis also acknowledge that security gains in recent months were achieved partly by the buildup of American troops, which Mr. Obama opposed and his presumptive Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, supported.

“In no way do I favor the occupation of my country,” said Abu Ibrahim, a Western-educated businessman in Baghdad, “but there is a moral obligation on the Americans at this point.”

Like many Iraqis, Mr. Ibrahim sees Mr. Obama favorably, describing him as “much more humane than Bush or McCain.”

“He seems like a nice guy,” Mr. Ibrahim said. But he hoped that Mr. Obama’s statements about a relatively fast pullout were mere campaign talk.

“It’s a very big assumption that just because he wants to pull troops out, he’ll be able to do it,” he said. “The American strategy in the region requires troops to remain in Iraq for a long time.”

. . . Even as some Iraqis disagreed about Mr. Obama’s stance on withdrawal, they expressed broad approval for him personally as an improvement over Mr. Bush, who remains unpopular among broad portions of Iraqi society five years after the war began. No one interviewed expressed a strong dislike for Mr. Obama.

Saad Sultan, an official in an Iraqi government ministry, contended that Mr. Obama could give a fresh start to relations between the Arab world and the United States. Mr. Obama has never practiced Islam; his father, whom he barely knew, was born Muslim, but became a nonbeliever. Mr. Sultan, however, like many Iraqis, feels instinctively close to the senator because he heard that he had Muslim roots.

“Every time I see Obama I say: ‘He’s close to us. Maybe he’ll see us in a different way,’ ” Mr. Sultan said. “I find Obama very close to my heart.”

Race is also a consideration. Muhammad Ahmed Kareem, 49, an engineer from Mosul, said he had high expectations of Mr. Obama because his experience as a black man in America might give him more empathy for others who feel oppressed by a powerful West. “Blacks suffered a lot of discrimination, much like Arabs,” Mr. Kareem said. “That’s why we expect that his tenure will be much better.”

. . . Mr. Obama has advocated a withdrawal that would remove most combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. Despite some fears about such a departure, that stance is not unpopular here. Many Iraqis hate American forces because soldiers have killed their relatives and friends, and they say they want the troops out.

“Of course I want the American forces to leave Iraq,” said May Adnan Yunis, whose sister was killed, along with a female and a male co-worker, when they were gunned down by American soldiers while driving to work at Baghdad International Airport three weeks ago. “I want them to go to hell.”

After the killings, a statement by the American military describing the three employees as “criminals” who shot at the soldiers inflamed Iraqi officials even more. In a rare public rebuke of the American military, the Iraqi armed forces general command described the American soldiers’ actions as crimes “committed in cold blood.”

For General Hiti, who commands a swath of western Baghdad, the American military is a necessary, if vexing, presence. He ticks off the ways it helps: evacuating wounded Iraqi soldiers, bringing in helicopters when things go wrong, defusing bombs, getting detailed pictures of areas from drone planes.

But the issue of withdrawal is immensely complex, and some of the functions mentioned by General Hiti would not be affected under Mr. Obama’s plan. The senator is calling for the withdrawal of combat brigades, but has said a residual force would still pursue extremist militants, protect American troops and train Iraqi security forces.

. . . But for some Iraqis the American presence remains the backbone of security in the neighborhood. Saidiya, a southern Baghdad district, was so brutalized by violence a year ago that a young Iraqi television reporter who fled thought he would never come back. But a telephone call from his father in December persuaded him to return. An American unit had planted itself in the district, helping chase away radicals. The family could go out shopping. They could drive their car to the gas station.

“The Americans paved the way for the Iraqi Army there,” said the young man, who married this year. “If they weren’t there, the Iraqi forces could not have taken control.” Even so, he agreed with Mr. Obama’s plan for a faster withdrawal. American forces “helped the Iraqi Army to get back its dignity,” he said. “They are qualified now.”

But Iraq is now a complex landscape. Some areas are subdued, and others are still racked by violence and calibrating troop presence will be tricky.

Falah al-Alousy is the director of an organization that runs a school in an area south of Baghdad that was controlled by religious extremists two years ago. Former insurgents turned against the militant group, but local authorities still rely heavily on Americans to keep the peace; the Iraqi Army, largely Shiite, is not allowed to patrol in the area, Mr. Alousy said.

“Al Qaeda would rearrange itself and come back, if the Americans withdraw,” he said. As for Mr. Obama’s plan for withdrawal, “It’s just propaganda for an election.”

Most Iraqis dislike the fact that their country is occupied, but a few well-educated Iraqis who have traveled abroad say they would not oppose a permanent American military presence, something that Mr. Obama opposes. Saad Sultan, the Iraqi government official, said his travels in Germany, where there have been American bases since the end of World War II, softened his attitude toward a long-term presence. “I have no problem to have a camp here,” he said. “I find it in Germany and that’s a strong country. Why not in Iraq?”

Read the entire article. Based on what I have read to date, it would appear that the only clique that wants the U.S. out of Iraq quickly are those in league with Iran. The Sunnis want us to stay for at least a decade, the Kurds are ready to apply for statehood (if accepted, it would mark a major step towards Obama's goal of leaving office with 7 new states having been added to our country), and the vast majority of the Shia do not want us leaving for the forseeable future. Indeed, when it comes to "occupiers," many Shia believe it is Iran, not the U.S., that seeks to be the permanent occupation force.

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Offensive In The South; Mahdi Army Demobilized & Sadr Withdraws From Elections

Events are moving with amazing rapidity in Iraq. U.S. and Iraqi forces have begun a major offensive in the southern province of Maysan. Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to target criminal Iranian proxies and have made several major captures.

And in very big news indeed, the Mahdi Army now appears to be no more. Sadr has issued a directive demobizing the Mahdi Army, promising to reconstitute a new force that will only be authorized to target U.S. forces. Additionally, Sadr has announced he will not participate with any candidates in the upcoming provincial elections. Sadr's star has plummeted and his popularity appears to be reaching a nadir.
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Iraqi forces, supported by U.S. forces, are opening up a new front, launching a major offensive in Maysan Province, a hotbed of Iranian and Sadrist activity. Nibras Kazimi, who runs Talisman Gate, posted two weeks ago on this planned offensive, providing a lot of interesting background:

. . . The Iraqi Army and the Marines are preparing for a major campaign against Mahdi Army and Iranian targets in Maysan Province (‘Amara). Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki may even put the entire elected leadership of ‘Amara—many of whom are Sadrists—out of a job, by flexing his authority under emergency powers. There is even talk of air strikes against military targets—weapons depots, transportation vehicles and individuals—on the Iranian side of the fence; these are targets that are arming and otherwise supporting the Special Groups throughout Iraq.

Iran’s logistics trail goes from Maysan through southern Babil/Hillah Province (al-Hamza) and from there into central Iraq, i.e. Baghdad. . . .

. . . Maysan is a weird place: even after draining the marshes in the early 1990s, Saddam could not claim full control of the province. And ever since the late 1980s, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has maintained forward bases deep inside Iraqi territory, such as ones around the town of Al-Mijerr al-Kabir. Iraqi opposition groups were active in these areas right up to the fall of the regime. Furthermore, Iran had a large recruiting pool among Marsh Arab refugees who lived in camps almost right across the border.

. . . [A]rrest warrants for Maysan officials are being prepared, and intelligence is being gathered about other Sadrist leaders who have gone into hiding there.

I expect the battle for Maysan to be difficult: this would be Iran’s last stand in Iraq. The fighting would also be occurring on topographical and human terrain that the Iranians have been studying and cultivating for decades. It could start incrementally, and the ante could be raised as the operation faces increased resistance, eventually leading to bombing runs inside Iran.

. . . It should be noted that the vast majority of Sadrist support in Baghdad and Basra comes from families that trace their roots to Maysan Province. Furthermore, Maysan is home to the largest concentration of Iraqi tribes with unknown Arab ancestry—most likely remnants of pre-Islamic ethnic groups and whatever was left in the wake of rebellions by black slaves and gypsies in ‘Abbasid times.

Read the entire post. That offensive in Maysan began yesterday, according to the Long War Journal, though there have been no reports as of yet of any major engagements or arrests.

Elsewhere, U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to target Iran's proxy forces, with the most recent being an important capture of a "brigade" commander in Sadr City. As LWJ notes, since the Basra offensive that began on March 25:

. . . Hundreds of Mahdi Army commanders have been killed or captured in Baghdad, Sadr City, Basrah, Amarah, Nasiriyah, Diwaniyah, Hillah, Najaf, Al Kut, and other Shia cities.

The most high-profile Mahdi Army leaders killed or captured this year include Arkan Hasnawi and the leadership of the Imam Ali Bin Abi Talib Jihadi Brigades in Karbala. Many weapons smugglers, financiers, cell and battalion leaders, facilitators, counterfeiters, and other senior operatives have been killed or captured.

Read the entire article. Also several days ago, "Iraqi police . . . captured three Iranian-backed Special Groups operatives behind the kidnapping and murder of five US soldiers at the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center in January 2007."

The biggest news comes from Moqtada al Sadr, who has issued a directive demobilizing the Mahdi Army and withdrawing from the upcoming elections. Sadr announced, at the same time, that he will reconstitute a small force that will only be authorized to target U.S. forces. This from Nibras Kazimi:

I read Sadr’s directive yesterday: I have to admit that at first I dismissed it as a forgery, seeing that it appeared on an anti-Sadrist website that had peddled forged statements attributed to Sadr in the past. Not only was the wording weird and disjointed, but Sadr actually demobilizes the Mahdi Army, going far beyond “freezing” its activities as he did twice in the past year. He limits “resistance” to a “group that shall be authorized to do so by us in writing soon” and that they alone were the ones allowed to carry arms. Everyone else must turn pacifist.

. . . WaPo’s story . . . seemingly confirms that Sadr did indeed release this statement, as evidenced by the alleged reactions of his aids “some of whom appeared surprised by the cleric’s announcement”—surprised? Why of course, that would be the natural reaction to a declaration of surrender! . . .

Read the entire post. What appears to be happening is that Sadr, whose star has been falling like lead in Iraq over the past year at least, is trying to salvage at least the appearance of relevance. WaPo, after duly reporting the Sadrist spin in its lead story, states:

. . . [S]ome Iraqis saw both of Sadr's recent decisions as a sign of his movement's frailty following military offensives by the Iraqi and U.S. militaries against his supporters in the southern city of Basra and the Sadr City area of the capital.

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."

Read the entire article.

And Sadr does appear to be incredibly weak. You will recall that Sadr called for weekly demonstrations after Friday prayers to protest the ongoing SOFA negotiations to set the framework for U.S. military presence in Iraq after the U.N. mandate ends in January, 2009. The number of people attending those demonstrations in Sadr City suggest that support for Sadr has crashed:



This from the weekly standard.

. . . The U.S. military released imagery of the demonstrations which occurred the past three Fridays. The first week, the military estimated Sadr had 10,000 protesters in attendance on May 30; about 3,000 on June 6; and 1,500 today. These numbers are paltry, as Sadr City contains an estimated 2.5 million Shia, and his protests in 2006 would draw hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

The military also noted that some Iraqis in Sadr city were “coerced” to join the demonstrations. “Clearly the number of participants is decreasing,” said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Stover, the spokesman for Multinational Forces Baghdad. “The steady drop might suggest increasing support for the GoI [government of Iraq] and less support for Muqtada al Sadr.”

Read the entire article. It would seem that the only way the U.S. and Iraq can be defeated will originate out of the halls of Washington.

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Eye On Iran

It pays to always keep one eye on Iran - and this is an update of observations of late. Iran's theocracy is continuing its efforts to bring mayhem and death throughout the Middle East. Recent reports show Iran is behind the civil war in Yemen. In Iraq, Iran's proxies are feeling the heat as Iraqi and U.S. operational tempo has accelerated. Supreme Guide Ali Khameini and his sidekick, Ahmedinejad are waging an almost humorous propaganda offensive to sabotage the SOFA agreement being negotiated between the U.S. and Iraq. Lastly, Michael Ledeen writes a thought-provoking article on the nature of Iran's theocracy and the inexcusability of our failure to squarely meet this existential evil.
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In the post Next Moves In An Existential Chess Match, I listed many of the ongoing acts of mayhem, war and destruction being committed by Iran's theocracy as it seeks to export its revolution throughout the Middle East and the world. To add to that list is Iran's role in Yemen. This from the Washington Post:

The boom of explosions swept across the high-walled compounds and minarets of this ancient Arab capital before dawn one day last week, as Shiite rebels battled for control of a mountain overlooking the city and its airport. . . .

"I believe this war is a proxy war," Yemeni lawmaker Ahmed Saif Hashed said in Sanaa, where civilians of the same Shiite sect as the rebels say they are facing increasing detentions, beatings and surveillance.

The rebellion is being mounted by Yemen's Hashemite Shiites, who ruled the country for more than a 1,000 years until an alliance of Shiite and Sunni military officers deposed them in 1962. Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, belongs to the country's larger Shiite community, known as the Zaidis.

Giving the conflict a sectarian cast, his forces have been joined by Sunni tribesmen and extremists in battling the Hashemite rebels, whom the government says are supported by Iran. The rebels say they want only their share of development, resources and power.

"I think there is kind of a settling of accounts here against Iran," Hashed said.

This week, 22 clerics in Saudi Arabia published a statement equating the Hashemite rebels with the Shiite movement Hezbollah in Lebanon. "If they have a country, they humiliate and exert control in their rule over Sunnis," the clerics said, citing Iran and Iraq. "They sow strife, corruption and destruction among Muslims and destabilize security in Muslim countries . . . such as Yemen."

Last year, Yemen's defense minister published what was widely interpreted as a fatwa, or binding religious decree, sanctioning Sunnis to use force against the northern Shiite rebels. The largely impoverished nation of 23 million is majority Sunni. . . .

Read the entire article. This is wholly in keeping with the pronouncement of Sec. Def. Gates a few months ago, that "[e]verywhere 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. . . ."

Iran's proxy forces are under extreme pressure in Iraq of late. The pace of U.S. and Iraqi attacks against Iran's proxy forces in Iraq have accelerated with the capitulation of Sadr's two main bases in Basra and Sadr City.

As to Iran's increasing agitation over the SOFA agreement, first some background. If you have not read Col. H.R. McMaster's speech on Iraq and his comments on Iranian actions in Iraq, you will find it here. Some of the highlights include:

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.

. . . 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 for a fact that they have directed assassination operations. . . .

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. . . .

Iran is doing all that it can to turn Iraq into Lebanon - both to export its revolution (the raison d'etre of the theocracy) and to end the single biggest threat to Iran's theocracy - a Shia dominated with real democracy on its boder that follows the traditional Shia school of quietism. The granite wall standing in between Iran and its goal to dominate Iraq is the U.S. military. Thus Iran is conducting propaganda offensive aimed at insuring that Iraq does not consumate a SOFA agreement. A SOFA agreement would establish the legal framework for the U.S. to maintain forces in Iraq after the end of the UN mandate in January. This from the WaPo today:

Ahmad Zeidabadi, a journalist for the Tehran-based magazine Shahrvand-e Emrooz (Today's Citizen), said Iran is trying to sabotage the U.S.-Iraqi agreement. "The Iranian authorities want this pact not to be signed and to fail to prevent Iraq from turning into a fortress for anti-Iranian forces."

The propaganda offensive and "carrots" Iran's Supreme Guide Khameini and his sidekick, Ahmedinejad, are dangling are none too subtle. Indeed, it is almost as if they are trying out for open mike night at a comedy club. The Washington Post is reporting that Iran is offering Iraq a military cooperation agreement as an alternative to the American presence. One would be hard pressed to imagine non-Sadrist Iraqis, facing no military threat other than from their east, containing their laughter over that Trojan horse. And there are several other side busters.

Mahmoud the Mouth has stated that the SOFA agreement is meant "to turn the Iraqis into American slaves." That is projection on a scale that our own far left ought to recognize. And from Supreme Guide, a little more honesty, at least - "Occupiers who interfere in Iraq's affairs through their military and security might ... are [Iraq's] main problems. . . . That a foreign element gradually interferes in all Iraqi affairs and expands its domination on all aspects of life is the main obstacle in the way of progress and prosperity of the Iraqi nation." Now that is honesty. I am sure many a non-Sadrist in Iraq was nodding their head at that one also, just not in agreement with Khamenei's identification of whom the "occupier" might be.

Lastly, Michael Ledeen wrote a very thoughtful article, "Iran and the Problem of Evil" in the WSJ several days ago. He believes, as do I, that Iran's theocracy is the true and modern embodiement of evil, no different in threat or determination than the Nazis and other murderous movements of the twentieth century that saw murder, mayhem, war and genocide as acceptable tactics to attain their end. This from Michael Ledeen:

Ever since World War II, we have been driven by a passionate desire to understand how mass genocide, terror states and global war came about – and how we can prevent them in the future.

Above all, we have sought answers to several basic questions: Why did the West fail to see the coming of the catastrophe? Why were there so few efforts to thwart the fascist tide, and why did virtually all Western leaders, and so many Western intellectuals, treat the fascists as if they were normal political leaders, instead of the virulent revolutionaries they really were? Why did the main designated victims – the Jews – similarly fail to recognize the magnitude of their impending doom? Why was resistance so rare?

Most eventually accepted a twofold "explanation": the uniqueness of the evil, and the lack of historical precedent for it. Italy and Germany were two of the most civilized and cultured nations in the world. It was difficult to appreciate that a great evil had become paramount in the countries that had produced Kant, Beethoven, Dante and Rossini.

How could Western leaders, let alone the victims, be blamed for failing to see something that was almost totally new – systematic mass murder on a vast scale, and a threat to civilization itself? Never before had there been such an organized campaign to destroy an entire "race," and it was therefore almost impossible to see it coming, or even to recognize it as it got under way.

The failure to understand what was happening took a well-known form: a systematic refusal to view our enemies plain. Hitler's rants, whether in "Mein Kampf" or at Nazi Party rallies, were often downplayed as "politics," a way of maintaining popular support. They were rarely taken seriously as solemn promises he fully intended to fulfill. Mussolini's call for the creation of a new Italian Empire, and his later alliance with Hitler, were often downplayed as mere bluster, or even excused on the grounds that, since other European countries had overseas territories, why not Italy?

Some scholars broadened the analysis to include other evil regimes, such as Stalin's Russia, which also systematically murdered millions of people and whose ambitions similarly threatened the West. Just as with fascism, most contemporaries found it nearly impossible to believe that the Gulag Archipelago was what it was. And just as with fascism, we studied it so that the next time we would see evil early enough to prevent it from threatening us again.

By now, there is very little we do not know about such regimes, and such movements. . . .

Yet they are with us again, and we are acting as we did in the last century. The world is simmering in the familiar rhetoric and actions of movements and regimes – from Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the Iranian Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahhabis – who swear to destroy us and others like us. Like their 20th-century predecessors, they openly proclaim their intentions, and carry them out whenever and wherever they can. Like our own 20th-century predecessors, we rarely take them seriously or act accordingly. More often than not, we downplay the consequences of their words, as if they were some Islamic or Arab version of "politics," intended for internal consumption, and designed to accomplish domestic objectives.

Clearly, the explanations we gave for our failure to act in the last century were wrong. The rise of messianic mass movements is not new, and there is very little we do not know about them. Nor is there any excuse for us to be surprised at the success of evil leaders, even in countries with long histories and great cultural and political accomplishments. We know all about that. So we need to ask the old questions again. Why are we failing to see the mounting power of evil enemies? Why do we treat them as if they were normal political phenomena, as Western leaders do when they embrace negotiations as the best course of action?

No doubt there are many reasons. One is the deep-seated belief that all people are basically the same, and all are basically good. Most human history, above all the history of the last century, points in the opposite direction. But it is unpleasant to accept the fact that many people are evil, and entire cultures, even the finest, can fall prey to evil leaders and march in lockstep to their commands. Much of contemporary Western culture is deeply committed to a belief in the goodness of all mankind; we are reluctant to abandon that reassuring article of faith. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we prefer to pursue the path of reasonableness, even with enemies whose thoroughly unreasonable fanaticism is manifest.

. . . None of the democracies adequately prepared for war before it was unleashed on them in the 1940s. None was prepared for the terror assault of the 21st century. The nature of Western politics makes it very difficult for national leaders – even those rare men and women who see what is happening and want to act – to take timely, prudent measures before war is upon them. Leaders like Winston Churchill are relegated to the opposition until the battle is unavoidable. . . .

Then, as now, the initiative lies with the enemies of the West. Even today, when we are engaged on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little apparent recognition that we are under attack by a familiar sort of enemy, and great reluctance to act accordingly. This time, ignorance cannot be claimed as an excuse. If we are defeated, it will be because of failure of will, not lack of understanding. As, indeed, was almost the case with our near-defeat in the 1940s.

Read the entire article. We have to deal with Iran's theocracy. It is a true force for evil in the world. Doing so today will likely cost us. Doing so tomorrow will only cost us more, and more dearly Time is our enemy while Iran is the enemy of civilization.

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Sadr the Marginalized

Is Moqtada al Sadr the ominpotent leader of the dominant popular movement among Iraqi Shia? That certainly has been and still is the MSM narrative. Facts tell a different tale.
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For the several years, the MSM has relentlessly pursued a narrative that Moqtada Sadr is an immensely powerful and populist leader who commands the support of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shia. The MSM regularly reports the news from the Sadrist perspective. A perfect example was provided by the Washington Post, the day after Labor Day, when they ran a very long and fawning article reinforcing the narrative and rewriting history from the Sadrist persepctive.

Based on all of the evidence coming out of Iraq, the MSM narrative appears false. The MSM vastly overstates Sadr's popularity and his Mahdi Army, itself a creation of Iran, is more a 1930's criminal mafia than an organized militia. You can find these and related arguments laid out here.

Today there is more evidence. Sadr has called for weekly protests of the ongoing Iraq-U.S. negotiation of a SOFA agreement that would provide the legal authority and framework for U.S. troops who remain in Iraq after the end of the U.N. mandate in January. Iran and its proxy, Sadr, are mortally opposed to the continuing presence of U.S. troops, as they are the one thing standing between them and the Lebanization of Iraq, with Sadr's Mahdi Army playing the role of Hezbollah.

So with Sadr supposedly commanding 60,000 plus men under arms and support from hundreds of thousands, if not millions of non-combatants, one would expect Sadr's calls for massive protests against the SOFA agreement to generate a huge turnout - if the MSM narrative were accurate, at least. But that is not the case.

This from the Weekly Standard:

The Associated Press put the best face on the turnout, saying “tens of thousands of Shiites” joined in. But the AP does not provide a breakdown on the protests.

AFP, Multinational Forces Iraq, and Voices of Iraq, an Iraqi news service, put the number in the thousands. Multinational Forces Iraq said more than 5,000 protesters were in Sadr Cit, and another 200-300 attended the protest in the Kadhamiyah district of Baghdad. AFP said “hundreds of Sadrists staged similar demonstrations” and said demonstrations were held in Basra, but no numbers were given.

There was a time when Sadr’s calls for protests put hundreds of thousands of Shia into the streets. Yet Sadr couldn’t get more than 6,000 to 7,000 join in on a protest on the day when most people attend mosque.

To put the current numbers into perspective, and estimated 2,000,000 Shia are estimated to live in Sadr City alone, and the Baghdad district is considered the bulwark of Sadr’s support. Yet Sadr couldn’t muster more than one quarter of one percent of the district's residents.

Read the entire article. Sadr is, in Iraqi a politics, a dangerous but increasingly marginalized figure. Its only in our MSM that he is powerful.

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Opposition To A SOFA Agreement Growing In Iraq Or Being Pushed By Iran?

Iraq's government is in the midst of negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would provide the legal framework for any U.S. forces that operate inside Iraq after the end of the UN mandate in January. The elements that stand most opposed to such an agreement are Iran and its proxies.
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The SOFA agreement currently under negotiation with Iraq is, in most respects, mundane. We have them with every country in which the U.S. has maintained forces. They are more coordinating documents than anything else, and, other than the unique SOFA agreement with NATO, they do not specify that any particular troop level will or must be maintained. Though important, SOFA agreements are themselves innocuous.

The NYT writes to claim that opposition to a SOFA agreement is "growing" inside Iraq, but the NYT does a very poor job of explaining the genesis of the opposition to such an agreement. Indeed, their assertion at one point that it is because the presence of U.S. troops is "demeaning and humiliating" is pure Sadrist / Iranian propaganda. And it is with Iran that the opposition to the SOFA agreement begins. Iran sees an American presence in Iraq as both dangerous and an impediment to its goal to dominate Iraq through militias beholden to Iran. As I wrote here, the mad mullah's worst nightmare in the long run would be an Iraq that would both respect the millenium old Shia tradition of quietism and offer the example to Iran's terrorized populace of a people living in a real democracy and with real freedoms.

Twice now, the senior levels of Iran's government have expressed opposition to any SOFA agreement or any U.S. forces remaining in Iraq. The latest came just yesterday from the new Speaker of the Majis, Ali Larinjani, as reported in FARS:

Iran's newly elected Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani urged Iraqis to resist a pact under discussion to extend the US troop presence there beyond 2008.

"The Iraqi nation should courageously resist the US security pact just as they have so far resisted the occupiers," Larijani said in a speech in the religious city of Qom on Thursday.

"The occupiers' withdrawal is the only way to implementing security in Iraq," he said, describing the military agreement as a "challenge threatening the Iraqi people and government."

Washington and Baghdad are negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement aimed at giving a legal basis to American troops in Iraq after December 31, when a UN mandate defining the current status of foreign forces expires.

. . . Iran strongly opposes the US military presence in its neighbor to the west, and has repeatedly stressed the need for a pullout of the US troops from its war-ravaged Muslim neighbor.

Tehran has always backed the Baghdad government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Read the entire article. If that last line doesn't make you laugh, you haven't been paying attention. Read the speech on the scale of Iranian involvement and Iraqi attitudes towards it by Col. H.R. McMaster here.

The NYT also ignores history that would be well remembered by all of our leadership. In the leadup to the 1979 revolution in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini regularly and grossly mischaracterized a SOFA agreement with the Shah to build anti-American sentiment and popular hatred of the Iranian regime. What appears to be coallescing is a page right out of Khomeini's playbook - only aimed this time at Iraq. And the NYT seems somewhat inclined to assist.

This today from the NYT:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is facing growing opposition to a proposed security agreement that would set out how long American forces and military bases stayed in Iraq.

Some senior Iraqi political leaders said they had serious concerns over the central issues under negotiation, including what sort of military operations and arrests of Iraqis the American troops could carry out without Iraq’s permission, legal immunities sought for American troops and security contractors and what the Iraqi officials characterized as demands for a long-term American military presence.

. . . A United States official familiar with the talks described as “completely false” the assertion that negotiators had sought any provisions for long-term American military garrisons in Iraq.

Nor have Iraqi negotiators signaled any desire to delay, the official said. “What we are hearing is that they want to move full steam ahead.”

The raw feelings that the negotiations engender among many Iraqis — who view the prospects of a long-term American troop presence as demeaning and humiliating — underscore the political risks the negotiations hold for Mr. Maliki’s government.

Tens of thousands of Shiites in Baghdad and southern Iraq who are loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr denounced the negotiations in rallies after noon prayers on Friday, criticizing any pact that would allow American troops to establish a long-term presence in Iraq. “No America! No Israel!” demonstrators shouted in Sadr City, the Baghdad district that is Mr. Sadr’s base of power.

“This isn’t an Iraqi government, it’s an American government,” said Muhammad Mohsin, a 25-year-old laborer who attended prayers in Sadr City, where clerics delivered sermons condemning the negotiations and demonstrators later burned American flags. “The Americans keep pressuring Maliki to carry out what they want. The agreement will only serve the Americans’ interests.”

. . . But there are many Iraqi politicians who support the negotiations, including Sunni leaders who view an American military presence as a bulwark against what they fear could be an attempt by Shiite leaders backed by Iran to renew a sectarian grab for Baghdad and the mixed areas around the capital.

“We think that this agreement will guarantee the rights of Iraq and the United States,” said Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni political bloc. “If the American forces withdraw from Iraq before the right time, a state of chaos and civil war will ensue.”

. . . A second American official in Baghdad said that the Iraqis appeared to be unwilling to make any concessions before the provincial elections scheduled for later this year that would seem to voters to be too accommodating to the occupying forces. “They are playing hardball right now,” the official said.

American and Iraqi negotiators are far apart on a number of issues, said Mr. Adeeb and another senior lawmaker close to Mr. Maliki, Haider al-Abadi, in interviews on Friday.

The Americans want to continue to have “a free hand” to arrest Iraqis and carry out military operations, and they want authority for more than 50 long-term military bases, Mr. Adeeb said. He said that he doubted that a security pact along the lines sought by the Americans would pass in the Iraqi Parliament.

Mr. Abadi, another senior member of Dawa, said Americans were insisting on keeping control of Iraqi airspace and retaining legal immunity for American troops, contractors and private security guards.

The United States official familiar with the negotiations accused Iran of orchestrating a disinformation campaign to undermine the negotiations, saying, “This is Iran’s playbook.”

The official, who like others interviewed for this article requested anonymity because of the fluid nature of the negotiations, said the debate over what kinds of operations American troops could carry out without Iraqi permission “will be subject to constant revisions and review.” Troops right now are cooperating extensively with Iraqi security forces, and the “new mandate should reflect that fact,” the official said. . . .

Read the entire article.

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Iran Unhappy With Maliki

How does one know when Maliki is doing the right thing? Well, for me at least, one of the prime indicators is when the major newspapers in Iran condemn Maliki as having "sold out" to the U.S.


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Apparently, Iran's mad mullahs are quite unhappy with Iraqi PM Nouri al Maliki. They see the invitation to the U.S. to remain in Iraq beyond the end of the U.N. mandate as inimical to their interests - which, of course, it very much is. Indeed, other than our Democrats, the only one's that want to see the U.S. abandon Iraq are Iran and Sadr. This from the Arabic news outlet Asharq Alawsat:

Iran has condemned the strategic agreement between Iraq and the United States describing it as turning Iraq into an American colony and also attacked in a rare public criticism Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki saying he has give in to the Americans.

Hussein Shariatmadari, Adviser to the Supreme Guide of Iran and editor of state-owned Kayhan Newspaper . . . said the strategic agreement between Iraq and the United States "is a return to the cold war between Iraq and Iran and the latter's isolation", adding that it turns Iraq into "an American satellite."

In an editorial entitled "Grand Deception" in Keyhan, which reflects the Iranian ruling establishment's view, Shariatmadari said the agreement denies the Iraqis self-determination and allows the United States to use the Iraqi territories, airspace, and territorial waters to attack countries in the region and also allows the Americans to remain in Iraq indefinitely.

Read the entire article. Unfortunately, to my understanding, all that is being negotiated between Iraq and the U.S. is a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which does none of the things the Iranian editor and advisor enumerates. That said, the mere presence of U.S. troops on the Iranian border has got to be a major concern to the mad mullahs.

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Iraq Fact Check

There is a new resource out that perhaps our Dem duo ought to be checking. Think military expenditures for Iraq are what's breaking our bank? To the contrary, "today’s U.S. defense budget accounts for just over four percent of the economy, less than the U.S. commitment at any point during the four decades of the Cold War. During the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, the U.S. defense budget rose as high as 13 percent of the total economy. Even during the Reagan Administration, when the economy expanded significantly, the defense budget accounted for approximately six percent of GDP." And that just one of the topics "fact checked" in a recent document put out by the White House Office of Public Liason and posted at Iraq Status Report.

This from the White House Office of Public Liason:

1. MYTH: The American people are footing the bill for Iraq’s security and reconstruction while Iraqis sit on large windfall oil profits.

FACT: The Iraqi government is taking over the funding of reconstruction. In 2008, Iraq’s budget for large-scale reconstruction projects exceeds that proposed by the U.S. by more than 10 to 1, and the U.S. military expects that Iraq will soon cover 100 percent of such expenses.

FACT: Iraq's security ministries are now spending more on their security forces than the U.S., and Iraq’s 2008 budget provides for more than 75% of the total annual cost for Iraq’s military and police.

FACT: The government of Iraq has committed to footing approximately half the bill for the “Sons of Iraq” community watch program—which was originally 100% U.S.-funded.

FACT: Iraq’s Ambassador to the U.S. Samir Sumaida'ie says that Iraq still has to import gasoline, and argues that “some people are going a little bit too far looking at the Iraqi surplus and the gigantic American deficit and putting two and two together … The windfall from the oil will not cover a fraction of what we need to provide clean water, electricity and the most rudimentary services for our people.” . . .


3. MYTH: The Iraqi government has not taken advantage of reduced violence by making political progress.

FACT: Since September 2007, Iraq's parliament has passed significant legislation dealing with reconciliation and nation building, including:

o A pension law

o De-Ba’athification reform

o An amnesty law

o A provincial powers law . . .

o A 2008 budget that includes record amounts for capital and security expenditures

FACT: Recently passed legislation is already having an effect. For example, the amnesty law passed in February has already led to the release of Iraqis who were under detention for non-serious crimes.

FACT: The national government is sharing oil revenues with provinces despite the lack of a framework hydrocarbons and revenue-sharing law.


4. MYTH: The U.S. is negotiating a back-door treaty with Iraq’s government that will tie the hands of future Presidents.

FACT: The United Nations authorization under which U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq are legally serving will expire on December 31, 2008. U.S. and Iraqi officials are therefore seeking a “strategic framework” that would provide legal protections and establish a long-term relationship between the two countries after that date.

FACT: In 2007, Iraq’s leaders asked the U.S. to move to a more normalized bilateral relationship, instead of the special case managed by the U.N.

FACT: The framework U.S. and Iraqi officials are now discussing would in no way limit or affect the military and diplomatic options the next President will have under the U.S. Constitution.

FACT: Any strategic framework would be similar to the agreement the U.S. now has with Afghanistan and much like the conventional peacetime agreements the U.S. has with dozens of other countries.

FACT: It is unclear what would happen to more than 20,000 detainees now under U.S. custody if the U.N. authorization expired on December 31 with no strategic framework in place.

FACT: The United States does not seek and will not seek permanent bases in Iraq, and any framework would affirm this principle.


5. MYTH: Iraqis are not defending their country.

FACT: As General David Petraeus testified in April, Iraqis are increasingly in the fight, recently incurring losses three times the level of Coalition losses.

FACT: Iraqi soldiers, police, and volunteers are securing their nation in increasing numbers. According to General Petraeus, more than 540,000 individuals serve in Iraq’s Security Forces, with more than 133,000 soldiers and police added over the past 16 months.

FACT: The military reports that there are now more than 91,000 Sons of Iraq—Shia as well as Sunni—under contract to help Coalition and Iraqi Forces protect neighborhoods and secure infrastructure.

FACT: More than 21,000 Sons of Iraq have already been accepted into Police, Army, or government jobs. . . .

Read the entire document.

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Good Foreign Policy Or The Hundred Years War?

Watching the far left in action is like watching a Piccasso painting brought to life. It is surreal and with only a tenuous relationship to reality. Such is their latest device to attack John McCain on the issue of Iraq. Krauthammer responds.



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Today's Krauthammer article is doubly depressing - one, because the left is clearly being untruthfull and playing America for fools, and two, because Krauthammer felt sufficiently concerned that it might works that it justified a response. The topic is McCain's remark to the effect that he would not have a problem maintaining long term bases in Iraq. The left is playing this up as the return of the Hundred Years war and that McCain is willing to commit us to endless warfare. It is incredibly sophomoric on several levels.

One, that is clearly not what McCain meant within the context of what he said - as you will see in the full quote in the Krauthammer article below. Two, McCain has long been about committing sufficient force in Iraq to completely quell the violence and bring hostilities to an end as soon as possible - in other words, end the war by actually winning it as soon as possible. There is light at the end of the tunnel on that - assuming it is not tossed away by the partisan democrats for votes. Three, everywhere we have put long term bases after a war - Germany, Japan, Italy, Korea - there has been no further warfare by or against that nation. So whether to maintain a long term base or two in a strategically important region with predatory neighbors who threaten our interests would seem a complete no-brainer. So how the far left can think they can somehow play this to their advantage is beyond me - but they do. And today, Krauthammer responds:

Asked at a New Hampshire campaign stop about possibly staying in Iraq 50 years, John McCain interrupted -- "Make it a hundred" -- then offered a precise analogy to what he envisioned: "We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so." Lest anyone think he was talking about prolonged war-fighting rather than maintaining a presence in postwar Iraq, he explained: "That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

And lest anyone persist in thinking he was talking about war-fighting, he told his questioner: "It's fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world."

. . . The desirability of a similar presence in Iraq was obvious as long as five years ago to retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, one of Barack Obama's leading military advisers and his campaign co-chairman. During the first week of the Iraq war, McPeak (an Iraq war critic) suggested in an interview that "we'll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right." (Meaning, if we win.)

Why is that a hopeful outcome? Because maintaining a U.S. military presence in Iraq would provide regional stability, as well as cement a long-term allied relationship with the most important Arab country in the region.

As McPeak himself said about our long stay in Europe, Japan and Korea, "This is the way great powers operate." One can argue that such a presence in Iraq might not be worth the financial expense. A legitimate point -- it might require working out the kind of relations we have with Japan, which picks up about 75 percent of the cost of U.S. forces stationed there.

Alternatively, one might advocate simply bolstering our presence in Kuwait, a choice that would minimize risk, albeit at the sacrifice of some power projection. Such a debate would be fruitful and help inform our current negotiations with Baghdad over the future status of American forces.

But a serious argument is not what Democrats are seeking. They want the killer sound bite, the silver bullet to take down McCain. According to Politico, they have found it: "Dems to hammer McCain for '100 years.' "

The device? Charge that McCain is calling for a hundred years of war. Hence:

- "He says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq" (Barack Obama, Feb. 19).

- "We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years" (Obama, Feb. 26).

- "He's willing to keep this war going for 100 years" (Hillary Clinton, March 17).

- "What date between now and the election in November will he drop this promise of a 100-year war in Iraq?" (Chris Matthews, March 4).

. . . As Lenin is said to have said, "A lie told often enough becomes truth." And as this lie passes into truth, the Democrats are ready to deploy it "as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain's national security credentials against him," reports David Paul Kuhn of Politico.

Hence: A Howard Dean fundraising letter charging McCain with seeking "an endless war in Iraq." And a Democratic National Committee news release in which Dean asserts: "McCain's strategy is a war without end. . . . Elect John McCain and get 100 years in Iraq."

The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a nonprofit and nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, says: "It's a rank falsehood for the DNC to accuse McCain of wanting to wage 'endless war' based on his support for a presence in Iraq something like the U.S. role in South Korea."

The Democrats are undeterred. "It's seldom you get such a clean shot," a senior Obama adviser told Politico. It's seldom that you see such a dirty lie.

Read the entire article. It shows just how divorced from reality the far left is that they think they have stuck political gold in McCain's remarks.

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Interesting News & Posts - 19 February 2008

A round-up of the interesting news and posts of the day, all below the fold.










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Art: The Birth of Venus, Francois Boucher, 1740

Fausta’s Blog is one stop shopping for the best in Castro coverage.

The Ace of Spades responds to five questions George Will poses for John McCain regarding the constitutional powers of the Presidency. As to the last one, I do not know of one SOFA Agreement that has ever gone through Congress, and I would be surprised if McCain believed that he was required to commit such an agreement to Congress for approval.

Googlemaps.ranger.patrol.com . . .well, not quite, but that's what it sounds like. There are reasons we have the most professional military in the world. Technology is an important part of it, even for grunts.

Gateway Pundit blogs on the Pakistani elections and Senators Kerry, Biden and Hagel spending time with radical Islamist leader and former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. A win for Sharif’s party would be a disaster for the U.S. So why am I not surprised that the three stooges should show up with Sharif?

According to Protein Wisdom, the Obama Scrutiny Cometh. Perhaps they can start with his incredibly punitive and far-reaching gun control proposals. I doubt if the scrutiny can come fast enough for Hillary though. Indeed, this picture says it all. I will take scrutiny whenever it may come, however, so long as I do not have to do compulsory prayer at the Church of the Latter Day Obama come November. Though I for one would never need the smelling salts during the service.

Brits are finding themselves between a Northern Rock and a hard place. One wonders just what each will get for their £3,500 . . . besides screwed. The one thing I doubt that they will get is good policing under Labour’s policies. Indeed, as one straight forward police inspector has written about the policies: "Things are considerably worse, considerably more stupid and much more confused." At least the police are responsive to the Muslims in Britain. Is this insane or what?

EU Press Freedom is taking an ominous turn. This is not surprising when one understands the concept of seditious libel and the ruling of the EU Court of Justice in the 2001 case of Connolly vs. Commission. The modern left has no respect for freedom of speech. There is no relationship between classical liberalism and those who call themselves "liberals" today.

From Islam in Europe: Twenty-one suspected members of a self-styled "gang of barbarians" will be tried in France for the kidnapping, torture and murder of a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, in 2006.

If you are going to make a living as a bimbo, don’t be an air-head like Sharon Stone and decry America to Arab newspapers, . . . be a minimalist like Lindsey Lohan.

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Democrats & The Future of Iraq

The Democrats are going apoplectic. Not only does it appear that we will succeed in Iraq, but we will maintain a long term presence to provide internal and external stability. This would be fatal to all the non-principles (America is Bad, Bush is Incompetent, Partisan Political Gain, Iraq was a Mistake, Peace Through Superior Surrender-Power) that our Democrats hold dear. Poor Joe Klein at Time Magazine is even demanding we toss out the Constitution to prevent this one. And Harold Myerson, the legal scholar at the Washington Post, sees this as a nefarious plot by President Bush. Indeed, he warns "Bush's efforts to make the U.S. presence permanent would drape the necks of the Republican presidential and congressional candidates with one large, squawking albatross. " It sounds as if Republicans could be tagged with the eternal shame of success.

With the pax Americana taking hold in Iraq, with Iraqi forces increasing daily in size and effectiveness, and with the drawdown of U.S. forces having begun, it was reported yesterday that President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki had agreed to begin negotiations on the future of U.S. forces in Iraq. Basing troops long term in Iraq would be done, at the invitation of Iraq and for precisely the same reasons as justified statitoning troops in post-war Germany, Japan and Korea: to provide for the internal stability of a nascent Democracy and to protect against external threats. As to external threats to Iraq, Amir Taheri has pointed out that the countries surrounding Iraq have long been planning how to carve it up after the inevitable Democrat-led U.S. withdrawal. And as to internal stability, this from the NY Sun, quoting General Lute:

"From the Iraqi side, the interest that they tend to talk about is that a long-term relationship with us, where we are a reliable, enduring partner with Iraq, will cause different sects inside the Iraqi political structure not to have to hedge their bet in a go-it-alone-like setting, but rather they'll be able to bet on the reliable partnership of the United States," he said.

"To the extent it doesn't cause sectarian groups to have to hedge their bet independently, we're confident that this will actually contribute to reconciliation in the long run," he said.

The agreement in principle "signals that we will protect our interests in Iraq, alongside our Iraqi partners, and that we consider Iraq a key strategic partner, able to increasingly contribute to regional security," the general said.

Read the entire article. (H/T Don Surber)

A stable Iraq is the last thing radical Islamists, Middle East despots, or our Democrats want. According to Time Magazine’s Joe Klein:

The Democrats are lining up. . . . to block any Bush attempt to pass a Status of Forces Agreement treaty with Iraq. The question is, Will Bush try to bypass the Senate by making the SOFA an executive agreement with the Iraqi government? The answer is, of course he will.

. . . But any agreement that opens the door to permanent bases should require Senate approval. . . .

What an ass Joe Klein is. One, a SOFA agreement does not, itself, directly obligate us to station any troops on foreign soil. It merely sets the terms of how such soldiers will be treated in a foreign country. Moreover, SOFA agreements – which we have with virtually every country where our troops are stationed - are not and never have been treaties requiring Senate approval. The President negotiates and signs those agreements as Commander in Chief. As to the whether the Congress can dictate troop deployment once hostilities are ended, that implicates the Constitutional separation of powers between the President as Commander in Chief with day to day control of the military and the Congress whose authority is limited to budgeting and declaration of war. Apparently those nuances of Constitutional law are beyond the grasp of Mr. Klein. Just like the Second Amendment, it would seem that the Constitution need not be consulted when it conflicts with an end that the left is emotionally invested in achieving.

As to the Democrats “lining up,” well, I guess its not as if we have any vital national security interests at stake in Iraq and the Middle East:

Obama has definitively stated that he will "not maintain permanent bases in Iraq." Is it just me, or does that phrasing seem carefully worded?

You can read Hillary’s letter to the White House on the issue here. I love Hillary’s take on this. “To be clear, attempts to establish permanent bases in Iraq would damage U.S. interests in Iraq and the broader region . . .” She does not elaborate on this point, but I would love to hear her explain this in a debate. This is the logic of the far left. America can only succeed by losing. We can only achieve a lasting peace through defeat. It is nihilistic insanity.

John Edwards, though, takes the cake. In demanding a complete withdrawal from Iraq, John Edwards states that “Bush is planning to pursue a 'Korea-style' American occupation of Iraq for 10 years or more.”

How is our stationing of forces in Korea an occupation? An occupation denotes imposing military control over a region. Stationing troops in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government would be no more of an occupation than was the stationing of our troops in Germany or Japan after their own democratic governments been formed. They are there only at the host country invitation and to provide internal and external stability. And in every foreign country that our soldiers have been so stationed, that is precisely what has occurred. If Mr. Edwards is claiming that Korea does not want our troops there, the man has no touch with reality. The last politician who planned to remove our forces from the Korean peninsula was President Carter. And it was the Koreans who went nuts.

It would seem that our Copperheads are walking ever ever further down the road of defeat in Iraq and the world at large. It is a dangerous road for them indeed.

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