The Sadr Coalition

Maybe this is just me, but I found this somewhat important.

About 50 leaders representing a variety of Iraqi political blocs took to Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday, a stronghold of fiery religious leader Muqtada al Sadr, to protest the U.S.-led siege of that area.

The leaders promised to work together with Sadrists to remove insurgents and weapons in the area. But they also had six other demands of the government, including that it immediately suspend military activity in the city, supply basic services to residents and prioritize peaceful solutions over military conflicts.

"Whatever point the crisis reaches we will keep our efforts to put an end to it," said Ahmed Radhi, a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni Muslim bloc. Radhi said the leaders formed a committee to meet with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to solve problems plaguing Sadr City.

The Accordance Front recently returned to the government, which signaled hope among a few that there actually is a center taking hold in Iraq. This demonstration dampens that outlook. The Maliki government is trying to disband the Sadrists but this shows that Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are opposed to it. And since Sadr himself has called for an end to fighting among Iraqis and a movement toward the "liberation of ourselves and our lands from the occupier," and since the Green Zone, the symbol of the occupiers, is under near-constant attack, I'd say there's a far different consensus taking root.

The Continued Ignominy Of Billy Zabka

Patrick McHenry, Congress' Billy Zabka, continues to feel the sting of his battlefield video segment, where he breached operational security by detailing the force and location of enemy rocket attacks in the Green Zone. Apparently the Pentagon is slapping him on the wrist:

Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican, traveled to Iraq with other lawmakers for the first time on March 22. The video was the second incident stemming from that trip that has drawn unwanted attention to McHenry. Earlier, he was criticized for berating a guard in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone for not allowing him into a gym there because the congressman did not have the proper identification credential.

The new criticism stems from a video that was featured on his Web site last Friday. Shot in the Green Zone, it showed McHenry gesturing to a building behind him and saying that one of 11 rockets “hit just over my head.” Then he named two other places struck by the rockets.

On Monday, a veterans group called VoteVets.org accused McHenry of giving away intelligence information that could have aided terrorist organizations in targeting the Green Zone.

“The bottom line is that whoever launched that strike could take the information McHenry provided and use it to kill Americans in the Green Zone,” wrote Brandon Friedman, vice chairman of VoteVets.org, a veterans advocacy group that has called for troop withdrawal and promoted veterans for political office. “This is why professionals operating in a combat zone are trained not to reveal any battle damage after an attack.” [...]

A Pentagon spokesman said he didn’t know what McHenry was told, “but we routinely brief our operational rules to our visitors in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

This is especially amusing because McHenry is often the attack dog trotted out to demand investigation into Democratic lawmakers or press reports that "threaten our security." The irony is rich.

Brandon Friedman has more:

...frankly, at this point, members of the military are tired of covering for these chickenhawk wannabe-heroes who go around looking for glory the easy way. We're tired of them starting wars they can't finish and we're disgusted with their enthusiasm to use a military which they don't understand in the slightest.

To be quite honest, it's only because McHenry is a Congressman that the Pentagon and MNF-Iraq spokesmen were so lenient with him.

If Patrick McHenry wants to tell war stories so badly, he should resign his Congressional seat and go enlist. He's only 32. That way, he could get some training--so that next time he's in a combat zone trying to be a tough guy, he won't be such a bumbling, self-promotional fool about it.

LOL.

Graceful Republicans Under Pressure

VetVoice is having a lot of fun today with Patrick McHenry (R-NC), the wingnut from North Carolina who I always like to call the Republican version of Billy Zabka, a cartoonish villain who is always defeated and humiliated in the end. This time, Zabka... McHenry got caught saying on video his location in the Green Zone after a rocket attack, violating operational security and putting the lives of Green Zone soldiers at risk. In fact, two soldiers died just a couple days after McHenry posted this really ignorant video. McHenry obviously knows that this was a big no-no, since he took the video down and tried to scrub his website of any trace of it. VetVoice was able to get a screen grab, though:



Sorry, Zabka. And thanks for endangering our troops.

Joining McHenry in the "frightened Republicans who don't know how to get out of their own messes" department is Sen. David Vitter (Diapers - LA), who suffered not only from a tough town hall meeting with constituents, who battered him with questions about his links to the DC Madam story, but whose staffers were so rattled by the affair (pun intended) that he backed into a stop sign on his way out of the area. Crooks and Liars has the video and it's pretty darn good. We may get some more choice moments like this, as Vitter is scheduled to maybe even take the stand in the DC Madam case.

Return On Success

So Bush today scolded the nattering nabobs of negativism on Iraq and claimed that the country is making good progress toward political reconciliation.

As if on cue, news came out that two Americans had been killed in rocket attacks inside the Green Zone, the city of Baghdad is under a weekend curfew, per MSNBC all Green Zone personnel has been told to stay inside fortified areas, and the Iraqi Army may have "faltered" in Basra:

Iraq’s Prime Minister was staring into the abyss today after his operation to crush militia strongholds in Basra stalled, members of his own security forces defected and district after district of his own capital fell to Shia militia gunmen.

With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki’s police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.

Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias — who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade — would not stop at mere insurrection.

Or, as Bush would put it, "good progress".

It's time more than ever for leading Democrats to speak up on the war. The country is in flames.

UPDATE: New York Times:

During a briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday, a British military official said that of the nearly 30,000 Iraqi security forces involved in the assault, almost 16,000 were Basra police forces, which have long been suspected of being infiltrated by the same militias the assault was intended to root out [...]

Though American and Iraqi officials have insisted that the operation was not singling out a particular group, fighting appeared to focus on Mahdi-controlled neighborhoods. In fact, some witnesses said, neighborhoods controlled by rival political groups seemed to be giving government forces safe passage, as if they were helping them to strike at the Mahdi Army.

Even so, the Mahdi fighters seemed to hold their ground. Witnesses said that from the worn, closely packed brick buildings of one Mahdi stronghold, the Hayaniya neighborhood, Mahdi fighters fired mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, automatic weapons and sniper rifles at seemingly helpless Iraqi Army units pinned on a main road outside, their armored vehicles unable to enter the narrow streets [...]

A Basra newspaper editor who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals said most residents despised the Mahdi Army and welcomed the assault. But he said it was obvious that the central government had not consulted with local commanders in planning the assault, citing the inability of the armored vehicles to fit through city streets. But support for the assault already seems to be eroding in several neighborhoods, as militiamen retained control of their strongholds and residents were confined in their homes. “The Mahdi Army is still controlling most of these places,” the editor said. “The result is negative.”

Col. Abbas al-Tamimi, media officer for the 14th Iraqi Army Division operating in the city, said he expected the fighting to escalate. “The gunmen have heavier and more sophisticated weapons than we have,” he said.

Enter Fourthbranch

As we reach the fifth anniversary of the beginning of an unnecessary, pre-emptive, disastrous war with far-reaching consequences for Iraqis, Americans, and the whole globe, Dick Cheney has taken control of the effort to make sure this catastrophe lasts 100 years longer or more.

Vice President Dick Cheney played the part of backroom power broker for two days and came away on Tuesday with pledges from Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to firm up a new blueprint for U.S.-Iraq relations that will stretch beyond the Bush presidency.

Cheney flew in a cargo plane to Iraqi Kurdistan in the north to finish two days of private meetings with powerful politicians in Iraq. On Monday, he had talks with officials in Baghdad — even venturing outside the secured Green Zone to dine and have private discussions.

Topics ranged from security in Iraq to Iran's rising influence in Mideast, but a key item was about crafting a long-term agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, plus a narrower deal to define the legal basis for continued U.S. troop presence.

The deal would take the place of a U.N. Security Council resolution that expires in December, the same time Bush will be packing up to leave office. The administration says the deal will not seek permanent U.S. bases in Iraq or codify troop levels, nor tie the hands of a future commander in chief as some Democrats fear.

Not at all, there doesn't seem any reason to fear that such an agreement "will stretch beyond the Bush presidency," despite that being its essential goal.

Cheney - last seen continuing to push a discredited link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and citing as proof the work of Stephen Hayes, who in turn cites as proof the work of... Cheney - has always been interested in a longer game in Iraq. He's never had much use for the normal rules, and so ignoring Congressional approval of a treaty that will go far beyond a normal status of forces agreement is par for the course.

But the real purpose of this trip is a kind of whistle-stop tour for John McCain and keeping the White House in imperialist hands.

Read today’s comments by Iraq’s foreign minister about the perils of a too-sudden American withdrawal, and take into account that he said these things a day after Vice President Cheney and John McCain visited with him. After reading his comments and their timing, it isn’t far-fetched to assume the following:

1. His message was written and coordinated with McCain and the White House; and
2. The Iraqi government is now an active agent in support of the McCain candidacy.

It’s a little galling to see the Iraqi regime plead with us to continue the sacrifice of our soldiers, military readiness, and treasury when they are sitting upon billions of their own unspent oil monies, and still fail to move towards the necessary political reconciliation that would make our withdrawal possible. But Democrats need to realize that the al-Maliki government will be actively supporting the White House and McCain message to stay the course, and wants John McCain elected to ensure this and continue their existing free ride and graft.

So, Fourthbranch rides into Iraq for a surprise visit to negotiate a deal that would ensure continued protection and enrichment of the Shiite theocracy that is the Iraqi government. In return they don't have to give up the oil money they're hording or allow Sunnis into the government or the security forces or meet benchmarks or anything - they just have to say quietly and with much solemnity that troop withdrawals will lead to chaos. It's somehow perfectly aligned with McCain's message, oddly enough, as well as keeping in concert with the permanent Middle Eastern presence Fourthbranch has envisioned for over a decade.

One can only imagine the riches he promised the propped-up regional leaders in return for their parroting his message. It's worth noting that the Iraqis most often heard in the US media - in fact, the only Iraqis - have a powerful incentive for the US to stay, if only for their own self-preservation. Here's Marc Lynch in a must-read think piece about withdrawal:

The current government, and more broadly the Green Zone political class, is one of the few Iraqi groupings which genuinely wants or needs a sustained American presence – as the guarantor of its political survival. At the same time, they have been one of the greatest obstacles to national reconciliation, and have proved largely resistant to American pressure. Since surviving a series of attempts to unseat his government, Maliki seems to feel politically secure and has spoken often about his belief that national reconciliation has already been achieved. Support for relatively unconditional American backing is similarly strong among the Green Zone Kurdish leadership. Even the Green Zone Sunnis, who have often been the most critical of the US in public and have long since quit the Maliki government, need the Americans to maintain their political positions.

The Green Zone dominant parties share a common situation, of disproportionate power in the national government and an eroding position within their own constituencies. The Sunni parties feel threatened by the rise of the Anbar Salvation Council and the Awakenings, and by their failure to achieve substantial national reconciliation legislation to strengthen their political hand with their constituency. The united Shia list of the UIA has long-since fragmented, with the Sadrists and Fadhila and other Shia parties now largely on the outside. By most reports, ISCI has lost ground with Shia voters, and would likely lose in elections (provincial or national). ISCI's political leadership therefore depends on US support for its political weight, and despite its strong Iranian ties would likely be loathe to see the US leave. The Supreme Council's response to a withdrawal would be clearly shaped by its terms, and by the role – implicit or explicit – of Iran in the presumed post-US order. At the same time, in the context of an agreement (tacit or overt) with Iran, its role could be guaranteed. Without such a guarantee, however, the incentives would be strong to unleash the Badr Brigades to stir up trouble in hopes of preventing the US from following through on its plans to depart.

No Iraqi actor would scream more loudly or offer more dire warnings of impending doom than the current Green Zone elite – and, not coincidentally, these are the voices most often heard in Washington and by politicians on short visits to Baghdad. But their warnings should be understood at least in part as expressions of their own political self-interest. No Iraqi actor is more likely to quickly readjust its behavior and calculations should such a withdrawal be announced. With the US set to depart, the whole range of national reconciliation initiatives which are currently seen as at best luxuries and at worst mortal threats would suddenly become a much more intense matter of self-interest. The integration of the Sunni Awakenings, for instance, would move from a challenge to Shia hegemony over the security forces into the best possible way to pre-empt their military challenge. The credible commitment to withdrawal would give the US much-needed leverage over the Green Zone leadership.

It's like a parallel Village. And Cheney knows just how to placate them.

No Way Out

Kudos to the New York Times editorial board:

Without a serious effort at national conciliation, American troops are just holding down the lid on a pressure cooker. Iraq’s rival militias, the insurgents, the bitter sectarian resentments and the meddling neighbors haven’t gone anywhere. Consider this all too familiar horror: yesterday, police said they pulled six bodies from the Tigris River about 25 miles south of Baghdad. They were handcuffed and showed signs of having been tortured. And five, including a child, had been beheaded.

Perhaps 160,000 American troops could hold down the overall casualty numbers indefinitely, but they cannot wipe away that sort of hatred. That’s the job of Iraq’s leaders. Either way, the American military doesn’t have enough troops for such an occupation without end, and the American Treasury can’t keep spending $10 billion a month to maintain it.

Read the whole thing. And here's some more facts to add on to that informed opinion. First of all, these numbers being cited as a source of success are increasingly being generated by the unreliable Iraqi government.

And just as Iraqi forces have had a mixed record in fighting insurgents, they have been spotty at providing data from the regions where they have taken command.

Iraqi officials have been reporting far higher civilian death totals than those reported by U.S. forces, and aides to American commanders now acknowledge that the U.S. military probably had been undercounting such casualties.

We're also wearing out our welcome with Iraqi lawmakers, as treatment in the Green Zone and throughout the country becomes more violent and aggressive. At some point, the trade-off between providing security and humiliating the locals will become unsustainable. Plus, eventually there are going to be a lot of refugees flowing back into these ethnically cleansed areas, and there is absolutely no plan to deal with them.

The Iraqi government lacks a mechanism to settle property disputes if former residents return to Baghdad only to find that their homes are occupied, the officials said. Nor is it clear whether Iraqi authorities will be able to provide aid, shelter and other essential services to the thousands of Iraqis who might return. American commanders caution that if the return is not carefully managed, there is a risk of undermining the recent security gains.

“All these guys coming back are probably going to find somebody else living in their house,” said Col. William Rapp, a senior aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, speaking at a two-day military briefing on measuring military trends for a small group of American reporters in Baghdad.

“We have been asking, pleading with the government of Iraq to come up with a policy so it is not put upon our battalion commanders and the I.S.F. battalion commanders to figure it out on the ground,” he added, referring to the American and Iraqi security force commanders.

These conditions presage an eventual crumbling of a very fragile situation, and without political and diplomatic measures, we simply won't be able to keep that lid on.

NPR ran a very good piece this morning basically explaining that all the happy talk from Republican candidates about Iraq is almost completely irrelevant. They keep calling it a war against Islamofascism when it's actually a complex web of countervailing forces vying for power. Some think that Iraq will recede as a campaign issue, but that will only happen if the Democrats allow Republicans to get away with this blurring strategy. Iraq is still very dangerous, and we ignore that at our peril.

Iraq in Fragments

78 dead in Baghdad on the same day that the US undertakes a new offensive.

Muqtada al-Sadr wants to march his troops into Samarra to protest the bombing of the Al Askiriya Mosque, which would touch off major civil strife.

Mortar attacks in the Green Zone nearly hit Prime Minister Maliki's office.

Iraq is named the second most failed state in the world by a UN report.

There is absolutely nothing we can do to stop this inevitable slide toward oblivion in Iraq. Our presence is not leading to political reconciliation, security, or even basic infrastructure. Get out. And leave no damn residual force, because there's nothing 50,000 troops can do somehow BETTER than 150,000. (I've soured on Richardson, but his call for absolutely no residual force in Iraq is commendable, though I suspect it's for political reasons, to differentiate himself from the field.

Human Sacrifice in the Green Zone

I know I'm supposed to remain silent and pray for the floating up to heaven of Jerry Falwell, but McClatchy did a prophetic article today about the concern that even the Green Zone is unsafe in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. Embassy employees in Iraq are growing increasingly angry over what they say are inadequate security precautions in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where recent mortar and rocket attacks have claimed the lives of six people, including two U.S. citizens.

In spite of the attacks, embassy employees complain, most staff members still sleep in trailers that one described as "tin cans" that offer virtually no protection from rocket and mortar fire. The government has refused to harden the roofs because of the cost, one employee said.

A second official called it "criminally negligent" not to reduce the size of the embassy staff, which a year ago was estimated at 1,000, in the face of the increasing attacks and blamed the administration's failure to respond on concerns that doing so might undermine support for President Bush's Iraq policy.

Any other embassy in the world that was in the middle of a war zone would have a significant decrease in staff, if not being outright shuttered. The Bushies refuse to do so, because keeping it open and fully staffed means that the war is going great, somehow. So they'd rather put civilians at risk to terrorist attacks than admit any show of concern. And sure enough, 5 embassy workers were injured today in an attack on the Green Zone.

There's going to be some giant type of Beirut-like attack before these maniacs get it. They're using civilian State Department employees as a human sacrifice.

The Iraqi Out of Iraq Caucus

I remember hearing that we are in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government. Someone ought to tell that to the Iraqis.

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).

Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that's called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear.

Given this, the debate in this country over benchmarks and timelines and withdrawals is almost completely irrelevant. The Iraqis don't want us in Iraq. We are refusing to leave, and that would be an ilegal occupation in a sovereign nation. As much as we'd like to, we don't own the Iraqi government. They're going to pass their own laws and go on their own vacation. If we believe in anything about Iraq, it's that democracy should be allowed to flourish in that country. Well, it's flourishing, all right. The bottom line is that US troops are illegally occupying the nation of Iraq. Congress has an opportunity to end that occupation.

By the way, you have to wear flak jackets in the Green Zone these days, inclluding INDOORS. We're greeted as liberators!

UPDATE: Look at that, Commander Guy wants benchmarks! Of course, his idea is benchmarks is that you tell the Iraqi government concrete steps they need to make, and if they don't reach them we shrug our shoulders and go "What can you do?" Benchmarks as defined by Bush are meaningless.

Spiraling Out Of Control

They hit Parliament today.

A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up in the Iraqi parliament cafeteria Thursday, killing at least eight people in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone.

The blast came hours after a suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.

This happened moments after Joe Lieberman called on Congress to stop the backbiting.

If the biting of backs were the only thing we had to worry about. And not the 47 Americans dead in 11 days in Iraq.

The good news is not just around the corner. There is no corner. Iraq is a circle where everything folds in on itself. Those who continue to push this fiction on the American public because they don't want to admit their own mistakes are as guilty as any criminals would be who lead to so much death.

UPDATE: Shorter Condi Rice: "Forget about it America, it's Chinatown. I mean Iraq."

One Of Those Safe Streets

Maybe Sen. McCain will tell us what street this was on:

Bombers launched two deadly strikes Thursday in crowded Shiite marketplaces in Baghdad and a town north of Iraq's capital -- killing 90 people and wounding dozens. At least 15 others died in other bombings around the country.

The attacks erupted as Iraqi shoppers filled marketplaces Thursday to buy goods at the start of the weekend and the eve of the Muslim holy day of Friday.

In the deadliest attack, at least one suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated in a crowded open-air marketplace in Baghdad's Shiite district of Shaab. At least 60 people were killed, and 41 others were injured.

"It was a very, very crowded market. All those killed are innocent," a man who was wounded in the explosion told Reuters news agency.

"I saw heads separated from the bodies and legs blown off," Wissam Hashim Ali, 27, told Reuters from the hospital.

You can add to this the fact that Green Zone attacks have increased, with rocket attacks occurring 6 out of the past 7 days. The Green Zone is probably the most secure area in the entire country, and yet a US soldier died from one of these rocket attacks this week. Plus you have the gruesome situation in Tal Afar, where tit-for-tat revenge killings were carried out by Iraqi police who we trained in the first place. And in the scariest story I read today, it appears that Muqtada al-Sadr is losing his grip on his militia.

Iraq's most powerful Shiite militia is increasingly splintering as radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- now believed to be in Iran -- faces fresh challenges to his leadership, according to senior Pentagon and administration officials.

In the near term, the deepening divides in Sadr's movement have contributed to a lull in fighting that is benefiting U.S. and Iraqi operations to secure Baghdad, where Shiite militia and death squads fomenting sectarian violence are considered the greatest threat to Iraq's stability, the officials said.

Yet the group's fracturing in the long run could make it harder to defeat militarily and could also complicate political reconciliation, they said.

"It's much more difficult to go after small, violent splinter groups than if you can get one organization to come in from the cold and reconcile," said a senior Pentagon official. "You have to fight with more people and kill more people, and it's much harder to bring them over to our side. The bright side is that, at least for the near term, they are keeping kind of quiet."

That's a dim bright side.

I'm not convinced Sadr's in Iran, but clearly he's been losing control of his militia for some time. And it's far easier to negotiate a political solution with an individual actor than it is a chaotic and diverse group of what amounts to warlords, each with oppositional interests.

It's OK though because we're making great progress and Gen. Petraeus can walk the streets in a thong and umbrella doing his "Singin' in the Rain" impersonation, right Sen. McCain?