Time For A Gulf Of Tonkin Incident

Don't look now, but things are starting to slip in Iraq. Suicide bombings continue. Al Qaeda in Iraq and remnants of the insurgency are still attacking, particularly targeting the military and top Awakening figures. An Iraqi soldier murdered two US troops last week, showing that infiltration of the security forces is still of great concern. Sunnis are fighting amongst themselves in Anbar Province, where the bolstering of these tribal groups is threatening to end in chaos. The Iraqi middle class is finding it impossible to get legitimate work without using bribes, which imperils any rise of civil society and a push back into a corrupt, tribal society. Political reconciliation is still nonexistent and going backwards. And the surge is about to end.

Of extreme concern is the tenuous situation in northern Iraq:

Subscription-only IraqSlogger translates an Aswat al-Iraq report from Kirkuk, one of the (deep breath) oil-rich, multi-ethnic and fiercely contested northern Iraqi cities controlled by Baghdad and coveted by Erbil. The Kurdish-dominated provincial council of Kirkuk/Tammim (Kirkuk Province if you're a Kurd, Tammim Province if you're an Arab) has declared that unless a referendum on who controls the province goes forward "before the end of the fifth month of 2008," the "original residents" of Kirkuk (read: Kurds):

will have the right to decide the administrative future of their areas according to the mechanisms that they find appropriate.

In other words, by June 1 (my birthday!), one of two things happen. Either the Kurds will control Kirkuk through a referendum they've spent five years ensuring they'll win, or they will declare war, and fight until they get the city back.

Which is why the incident with Iranian gunboats in the Straits of Hormuz is so interesting in its timing. We know that the military overplayed its hand to the extreme when it claimed that Iran was supplying all those EFPs to Iraqi insurgent groups; this is why they've completely backed off that talking point. But a forward action in the Gulf could be just the distraction the Cheney Administration needs as they enter a more troubling period in Iraq.

There's just no reason to trust Fourthbranch when it comes to Iran. Until the radio transmissions are released I'm going to assume that there weren't any.

UPDATE: Just to add one thing, there are credible reports that the reason the Iraqi soldier shot the two Americans was because they were kicking a pregnant woman. Freedom's on the march!

Getting The Stories Straight

Minister mentioned this in the comments, but L. Paul Bremer is refusing to be the fall guy for George Bush's massive incompetence, producing documentary evidence that the President knew all about the disbanding of the Iraqi Army.

"We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished,” Mr. Bremer wrote in a letter that was drafted on May 20, 2003, and sent to the president on May 22 through Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense.

After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would “parallel this step with an even more robust measure” to dismantle the Iraq military.

One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. “Your leadership is apparent,” the president wrote. “You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”

It strained credulity that Bremer, who is no saint, just made that decision on his own. He was in Iraq for just weeks at the time that he made the order, and was getting most of his information from Rummy and the Pentagon.

This is a case of everybody trying to blame everybody else for the purposes of keeping their lagacy intact. Hey, I've got news for you guys: NONE OF YOU are going to come out of this looking good. In fact, the only way it'll go without mobs carrying torches chasing you everywhere you go is by acknowledging your mistakes.

Preznit Gotta Book Cummin Out

I think I have to elaborate on the nutty Bush biography coming out this week and the quotes released to the press over the weekend, although Vernon Lee did a fine job with it in her own right. The whole thing is pretty surreal, from the boasting that his main goal after his term ends is to make a lot of money giving speeches, to the "fantastic Freedom Institute" (you know, the FFI) that he's totally going to build (right around the time that Jonah Goldberg finishes Liberal Fascism, I'm thinking), and on and on. But a couple things leaped out at me. First, the fact that he can't remember why the Iraqi Army disbanded. In the film "No End In Sight" it was revealed even further what a massive error this was. Not only did Paul Bremer toss 100,000 heavily armed men out onto the streets with no job prospects, but behind the scenes top CPA officials were actually making the contacts necessary to reform the Army within a matter of weeks. There could have been a ready-made security force in place that at least would have been an improvement over starting from scratch. And yet ideology trumped reason and Bremer disbanded it. And Bush doesn't know why.

"The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday's New York Times.

Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay.

"Yeah, I can't remember; I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " Bush said, adding: "Again, Hadley's got notes on all this stuff" -- a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

What a strong, resolute leader this guy is, huh? That's the great fiction of the Bush Administration - he's actually clearly the delegate-in-chief, as much of a figurehead as Queen Elizabeth, strutting around in flight suits and cowboy boots and different Village People outfits while ideologues run the country into the ground.

The other part that knocks me over, which Vernon Lee actually summed up well, is the part where Bush admits that his goal is to force his successor to stay in Iraq longer.

Bush says the goal of his Iraq strategy is to play it out until “October-November.” That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: “To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” and, he said later, “stay longer.”

So success in Iraq is now measured by a constant military presence. And furthermore, let's view his upcoming policy decisions with this in mind. It seems that the goal would then be to make Iraq MORE dependent on US military support, so that leaving would set off the tragic chain of events that Bush clearly WANTS set off, so that Republicans can blame the outcome on Democrats. Bush, or rather Bush's team, is setting a mousetrap. The lives of millions of Iraqis are the bait.