Checking In On Iraq

I don't know if you've been following events in Iraq... oh wait, actually if you're 99.9% of America you haven't. Because there's an election and Britney Spears is all crazy and your favorite shows might come back soon and Amy Winehouse got a Grammy. So you're getting most of your news about Iraq from John McCain speeches and dog-eared National Review copies on your loony uncle's coffee table. It's beyond time for someone other than them to get in the game and weigh in, because events are starting to overtake the United States' ability to control them.

We know that dozens are still dying every day in an increasing series of car bombs and suicide attacks. Even the Secretary of Defense, who has wanted more flexibility with his forces, is acknowledging that there will be 130,000-plus troops in Iraq on the next President's first day in office. The pitfalls of Turkish warplanes bombing northern Iraq, Sunni militants evading American forces and terrorizing towns in the Diyala River Valley, and Shiite extremists murdering women who violate Islamic teachings still exist. Meanwhile, today we saw a new development returning ominously to the region:

Two CBS News journalists have been kidnapped in the southern city of Basra and remain missing, Iraqi officials said Monday.

The journalists, a British citizen and an Iraqi, were taken from their hotel late Sunday night by about 20 armed men wearing the uniforms of Iraq's security services, according to Brig. Gen. Jalil Khahlaf, the provincial police chief. He said authorities did not know the condition of the journalists and had not been contacted by the kidnappers, whose identities were unknown.

"All efforts are underway to find them," CBS News said in a three-sentence statement. A network spokeswoman said she would not comment on the account given by Iraqi police and asked news outlets not to report the missing journalists' names or jobs.

This is starting to look like 2005 again. And the security "gains" made by the concerned local citizens groups in Anbar province (now called the Sons of Iraq) are starting to break down in surprising and frightening ways.

Hundreds of members of an anti-Al-Qaeda front in Iraq's central city of Baquba on Friday donned keffiyeh headdresses and took to the streets demanding the police chief be sacked, witnesses said.

Fighters ran militia-style through two neighbourhoods in the capital of Diyala province, ordering shops to shut and people to stay indoors, prompting police to declare a curfew, an AFP correspondent said.

The action came after demands by the group earlier in the week that police chief Major General Ghanim al-Quraishi be sacked were ignored.

"Despite our efforts and the blood we shed in order to expel Al-Qaeda members from Diyala, we received no help from the government or the police," said Haji Basim al-Karkhi, who is in charge of the "popular committees."

"The police chief committed violations such as abducting Sunnis in front of the Diyala police headquarters," said Karkhi. "He also does not accept Sunni recruits."

What with this and the Anbar Salvation Council threatening to take up arms against the elected council and refusing to fly the new Iraqi flag and dismissing the entire Parliament as illegitimate and Awakenings leaders declaring that no Iraqi police are allowed in their territory and clashing with them when they do and blaming Shi'ite militias (and not al-Qaeda) for the wave of attacks against them and fighting over territory and threatening to quit if they aren't paid, it really is hard to see why anybody would think that there might be anything troublesome about the relationship between the Awakenings and the Iraqi "state". Nothing to see here but great big gobs of victory folks, please move along.

This, by the way, is the biggest victory of the "surge" (even though it had nothing to do with the surge).

Then you have Muqtada al-Sadr's cease-fire nearing its end, and a resumption of violence by his forces, whether he calls for it or not, would lead to a near-total breakdown in civil order. And paradoxically, continuing to arrest Sadrist forces could lead to more violence and not less:

Among Sadrist rank and file, impatience with the ceasefire is high and growing. They equate it with a loss of power and resources, believe the U.S. and ISCI are conspiring to weaken the movement and eagerly await Muqtada’s permission to resume the fight. The Sadrist leadership has resisted the pressure, but this may not last. Critics accuse Muqtada of passivity or worse, and he soon may conclude that the costs of his current strategy outweigh its benefits. In early February 2008, senior Sadrist officials called upon their leader not to prolong the ceasefire, due to expire later in the month.

The U.S. response – to continue attacking and arresting Sadrist militants, including some who are not militia members; arm a Shiite tribal counterforce in the south to roll back Sadrist territorial gains; and throw its lot in with Muqtada’s nemesis, ISCI – is understandable but short-sighted. The Sadrist movement, its present difficulties aside, remains a deeply entrenched, popular mass movement of young, poor and disenfranchised Shiites. It still controls key areas of the capital, as well as several southern cities; even now, its principal strongholds are virtually unassailable. Despite intensified U.S. military operations and stepped up Iraqi involvement, it is fanciful to expect the Mahdi Army’s defeat. Instead, heightened pressure is likely to trigger both fierce Sadrist resistance in Baghdad and an escalating intra-Shiite civil war in the south.

I don't really know if there's a whole lot we can do about this at this point, but clearly stating that the surge has failed, as the Democratic leadership has pretty well done but not nearly loudly enough, is a start. The consequences of us sinking further in the quicksand are too great to simply sit on the sidelines until there's a new President. I don't agree with everything in this Matt Taibbi story, particularly the parts about antiwar movement organizing and dovetailing with a partisan strategy to elect more Democrats (that's the words of a national reporter who never checked in with the local organizing on the ground), but it's completely clear that the Democrats can't wait for 2009 to come so they can stop keeping their heads in the sand on the occupation.

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party's energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn't fit Iraq into his busy schedule. "We have the presidential election," Reid said recently. "Our time is really squeezed."

There was much public shedding of tears among the Democratic leadership, as Reid, Pelosi and other congressional heavyweights expressed deep sadness that their valiant charge up the hill of change had been thwarted by circumstances beyond their control — that, as much as they would love to continue trying to end the catastrophic Iraq deal, they would now have to wait until, oh, 2009 to try again. "We'll have a new president," said Pelosi. "And I do think at that time we'll take a fresh look at it." [...]

An honest attempt to end the war, say Democrats like Woolsey and Lee, would have involved forcing Bush to execute his veto and allowing the Republicans to filibuster all they wanted. Force a showdown, in other words, and use any means necessary to get the bloodshed ended.

"Can you imagine Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert taking no for an answer the way Reid and Pelosi did on Iraq?" asks the House aide in the expletive-filled office. "They'd find a way to get the votes. They'd get it done somehow."

It's especially craven when you consider that just token pressure from Democrats, particularly the Presidentials, got the White House to back down on at least part of this "long-term security guarantee" with the Iraqi government. While Clinton and Obama failing on Iraq in the eyes of Michael O'Hanlon is a step forward, the real failure would be spending the next 11 months digging an even bigger hole over there, with no political or social progress, with the factions at each other's throats, while both chambers of Congress go silent on the issue. Now is the time for honest men to pick a fight, not cower from one.

Things Are Not Good

Al Qaeda killed as many as 62 people yesterday in a double car bombing at the offices of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Algiers.

This morning in Lebanon an Army general in line to be the main commander was killed in a car bombing, as the country moves even closer to civil war.

And dozens are dead, maybe up to 60, and that's a preliminary report, in a spate of car bombs in southern Iraq, in a Shiite stronghold called Amarra. And it's unclear whether the Shiite factions battling for power in this region are to blame, or a Sunni insurgent.

Sometimes you get the feeling that the world is going up in flames. This is one of those mornings.

Joe Isuzu Petraeus

He's lying.

Contrary to claims made by Gen. David Petraeus that sectarian violence has decreased dramatically, the GAO report is unable to report any progress on this front. Moreover, it notes that “average daily attacks against civilians” has remained unchanged:

It is unclear whether sectarian violence in Iraq has decreased–a key security benchmark–since it is difficult to measure perpetrators’ intents, and various other measures of population security from different sources show differing trends. As displayed in figure 4, average daily attacks against civilians have remained unchanged from February to July 2007.

They are not counting car bombs as deaths, that's how they're getting to these numbers. Because they're only focusing on "sectarian violence," I guess.

The GAO Comptroller all but charged Gen. Petraeus and the Bush Administration with lying.

While Walker wasn’t privy to the Pentagon’s information, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) said he recently met with Gen. Petraeus and was shown “the data in August.” Coleman said the data is “very clear about a reduction in violence. General Petraeus has those charts,” Coleman explained. Walker responded by hinting that an unclassified version of the GAO report contains more explanation of the administration’s claims about reductions in sectarian violence. He said:

"Without getting into detail, let’s just say there are several different sources within the administration on violence. And those sources do not agree. So I don’t know what Gen. Petraeus is giving you. I don’t know which source he’s using. But part of the problem we had in reaching a conclusion about sectarian violence is there are multiple sources showing different levels of violence with different trends."

This is nothing more than political spin from a military commander. It's patently obvious, and not even a master of PR like David Petraeus can hold off the truth.

UPDATE: You have an Iraqi national security adviser who would rather watch cartoons than talk to American legislators. Do you really think there's any semblance of progress?

UPDATE II: Hilzoy takes apart the GOP talking points.

No I'm Not In This Line

The scarcity of my posting today has nothing to do with this line of people outside a Cingular store in the San Fernando Valley waiting for a certain "best technology product in the history of man." Actually, I won't get an iPhone on principle because they're not allowing it beyond one cell service carrier, which happens to be the worst carrier for connectivity. Screw that noise.

Actually, I've just been on deadline.

What little I have heard today is that British police stopped a car bomb from exploding in London today. Once again, local law enforcement proves itself to be the best defense against crime, and that most of these free-lance would-be assassins have no basic understanding of science necessary to carry off a bombing attack that would do any kind of damage.

You know what you call a vehicle with 50 gallons of gas? A Cadillac Escalade. The media meltdown over this incident is simply shameful.

For starters, gasoline is not a high explosive. If we were talking 50 pounds of Semtex or the Al Qaeda standby, TATP, I would be impressed. Those are real high explosives with a detonation rate in excess of 20,000 feet per second. Gasoline can explode (just ask former owners of a Ford Pinto) but it is first and foremost an incendiary. If the initial reports are true, the clown driving the Mercedes was a rank amateur when it comes to constructing an Improvised Explosive Device aka IED. Unlike a Hollywood flick the 50 gallons of gas would not have shredded the Mercedes into lethal chunks of flying shrapenal.

As for the use of closed-circuit television, ubiquitous in Britain, to try and find the failed bomber (who could be IRA or a right-wing nut, for all we know), let's go ahead and try such a nanny-state scenario in the US, I'm sure those libertarians on the right will love being snooped upon at every waking moment. Heck, the Glenn Reynoldses of the world can't even stand traffic cameras. So watch the hypocrisy dance if the government decides to install a Big Brother-type system in the name of fighting terra terra terra.

Anyway, car bombs don't kill people, people kill people, right?