Iraq In Fragments

In case you've forgotten, we're in a war! Seemingly, with World War III around the bend and so forth, it's easy to forget. But there have been some notable developments.

• This is more notable because you get to look at Lara Logan, but she has also been in Iraq for some time, and she says that things are going extremely badly. But the schools are getting painted!

• A journalist working for the Washington Post, who put himself on the front lines just like every soldier, (even if some would question their patriotism) was killed by gunfire in Iraq. And it's significant as well for who shot him:

The area Saif Aldin was visiting is dominated by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Some residents at the scene said they feared that soldiers from the Iraqi army, believed to be infiltrated by the militia, were responsible for his death.

"They killed him," one man whispered, pointing at members of the Iraqi army brigade on the street.

Iraqi police officers said they believed Saif Aldin was killed by Sunni men belonging to the nascent organization known as the Awakening Council, a tribal organization aligned with the U.S. military that started in the western province of Anbar and has spread to parts of Baghdad. Iraqi government officials have accused these Sunni tribesmen of abusing their partnership with the Americans to kill and kidnap residents.

In other words, the organization we've propped up with funds and support, who we've cited as evidence of our nascent victory in Iraq, is guilty of killing one of our journalists and kidnapping residents after being folded in to the Iraqi Army in areas of Baghdad. It's an incident that shows how foolish it is to practically accelerate the civil war because there needs to be some success to point to.

• Yet idiots like Cliff May still confuse Al Qaeda In Iraq with the larger Al Qaeda organization, instead of the unaligned and tiny insurgent group responsible for 2% of all attacks that it is. Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before the war, and it's not the source of any of the problems in the country now. The problem is sectarian violence, which only bolsters Al Qaeda as we continue to occupy a country in the heart of the Muslim world.

• Speaking of which, the Iraqi government is non-functional.

A principal architect of Iraq’s interim constitution, who resigned in August as one of the country’s top diplomats, has laid out a devastating critique of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the U.S. occupation, telling NBC News that, functionally, “there is no Iraqi government.”

The diplomat, Feisal Amin Istrabadi, said in his first interview since stepping down as Iraq’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations that “this government has got to go.”

Considering that it's taken them a month to get lawless private military contractors out of their own "sovereign" nation, and they're STILL NOT OUT, this should come as no surprise. Which is why I don't take this threat from the Iraqis, that there will be no permanent American bases in the country, too seriously.

• Finally, it's a sad day when the views of the Democratic Presidential candidates on Iraq can make a worm like Michael O'Hanlon happy.

The top three Democratic White House hopefuls have faced withering criticism for refusing to commit to withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq by 2013, the end of the next presidential term. But at least one prominent war proponent is commending Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards for their newfound "flexibility."

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and ubiquitous voice on Iraq war policy, spoke favorably of the Democratic frontrunners' recent statements on Iraq. In an interview with the Huffington Post, he touted the top-tier candidates for waiting to see the complete fallout of the President Bush's troop surge and for not committing to a war policy more than a year in advance.

"There is still fifteen months before [Clinton, Obama or Edwards] will be President. It's just factual that they cannot predict exactly what they are going to do in Iraq," O'Hanlon said. "I think the Democratic position allows all three of the top people to move in the Republican direction if things move around in the next twelve months... Clearly they aren't likely to do that unless things get dramatically better." [...]

"The only thing that would have concerned me would have been a repeat of 2003, where the populist's message of 'get out now' would overtake the Democratic Party... And low and behold we get to the election and Iraq is looking better and low and behold the Democrats lose the election," said O'Hanlon, who has given modestly in the 2008 cycle - two $200 contributions earlier this year to Senator Hillary Clinton.

I think you got that word "populist" wrong, Mikey... you mean "popular."

Your National Security Advisor in a Hillary Clinton White House, ladies and gentlemen.

UPDATE: I should add that there's little to no reconstruction going on in Iraq anymore.