The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Sunday, November 25, 2007

News of the Day for Sunday, November 25, 2007


An Iraqi policeman covers his face during a patrol with U.S. soldiers from 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, I-327th Infantry 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division Air Assault in Baiji, some 250km (180 miles) from Baghdad, November 24, 2007. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini (IRAQ) Now why would a police officer not want to show his face in public?

Reported Security Incidents

Baghdad

Bomb in a parked car explodes near a medical complex in Baghdad, 9 dead, 30 injured. Reuters places this incident near the Health Ministry on Bab al-Muadham Street. McClatchy places it near "Arab Fighter Square," in other words it isn't clear what the target was.

Roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi in northeastern Baghdad kills 1 civilian, injures 6 soldiers and 2 civilians.

A roadside bomb wounded two civilians in the Waziriya district of northern Baghdad, police said. A second roadside bomb exploded when Iraqi security forces arrived on the scene, killing one soldier and wounding six others, police said.

Bomb in Rostomiyah kills 2, injures 6. This cannot be the incident reported by AP as occuring in northeastern Baghdad, Rostomiyah is in the southeast. .

DPA also reports an explosion on Palestine Road, with no information as of yet as to casualties.

Roadside bomb targets U.S. patrol near Beirut square. No reports of casualties.

Police find four bodies dumped in various places.

Baquba

Three members of one family killed, 2 injured in attack on their car. No further explanation given.

Mandali (Diyala Province)

Two brothers killed. Again, no further explanation.

Khalis

One Iraqi soldier killed, 2 injured in an explosion.

Mosul

A member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Hamad Mizlam, is assassinated.

Six civilians injured in bomb attack on U.S. convoy.

Basra

IED attack on a British convoy, no casualties reported.

An employee of the criminal court is shot dead as he leaves the building.

McClatchy also reports:

  • Police found three unidentified dead bodies in three different parts in Basra ( in Ashar , Old Basra and Mufaqiyah ) .All the dead bodies belong to people who were kidnapped last Saturday.
  • Saturday night , gunmen killed a local employee who works for a foreign company in Um Qasr ( 58 km south of Basra ).


Fallujah

Police officer injured in attack, police detain four people in connection with the incident.

Kirkuk area

McClatchy reports various relatively minor incidents, an unsuccesful attack on an Iraqi army patrol and two people injured in armed attacks in different villages.

Other News of the Day

Bush Administration gives up on the "benchmarks," sets new goals for Iraq. (So, if they didn't meet the benchmarks weren't they supposed to withdraw the occupation force? I seem to remember something about that . . . - C) Excerpt:

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ALISSA J. RUBIN, The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government. A senior Bush administration official described that goal as largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already.

snip

On Saturday, Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Baghdad, said that the military had created an opportunity for progress, adding that there were some indications that Iraqis on the local as well as the national level want to move forward. But he cautioned against expecting quick results on the core issues.

“We are seeing encouraging signs of movement,” he said, but added, “This is going to be a long, hard slog.”


(Oh yeah, a long, hard slog. Haven't I heard that somewhere before, like, maybe two or three years ago? -- C)

Australian Prime Minister John Howard's "Liberal" (actually conservative) Party suffers landslide electoral defeat. Howard even loses his own seat. Incoming Labor PM Kevin Rudd vows to withdraw troops from Iraq. Howard's backing of the Iraq invasion and occupation, and his embrace of the Bush administration, were key issues in the election. Don't forget Poland! Oh, wait . . .

Iraqi Parliament to take up legislation desired by the U.S., including request to extend the occupation, and relaxing de-Baathification. Excerpt:

Baghdad, Nov 25, (VOI) – Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari said on Sunday that a request for a Multi-National Force (MNF) troop extension in Iraq will be submitted to the Iraqi parliament for consideration.

"This will be the last request for troop extension…It will not be presented to the UN Security Council prior to its submission to the Iraqi parliament for deliberation," the minister said in statements to the press ahead of today's parliamentary session.
The parliament objected to repeated requests from the Iraqi government for the coalition forces to extend their presence in Iraq, without its prior consent.
Zibari, alongside Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, were invited to attend the parliamentary session on Sunday during which the principles of friendship and cooperation between Iraq and the United States will be declared.

According to Zibari, the declaration does not indicate an approval of the troop extension. "The request for troop extension will be submitted to the parliament later," the minister said, providing no further details of the date set for the deliberation.

Today's parliamentary session witnessed arguments between Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani and Falah Shanshal, a legislator from the Sadrist bloc, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and the chairman of the Debaathification Committee, during a debate on the draft accountability and justice law.

"The squabble began when Shanshal accused Mashhadani of collusion to read and vote over the draft accountability and justice law," a House source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) earlier today. The argument prompted the Sadrist parliamentarians to clap their hands on their seats to create chaos in an attempt to prevent the draft reading," said the source, adding Mashhadani, a Sunni, has "threatened to have them expelled from the session in accordance with the House's statute."

Since it was first announced by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in June 2007, the draft law has been facing fierce opposition and several reservations, mostly by the Sadrists, who occupy 30 out of a total 275 seats in parliament.


A Sadrist parliamentarian offers specific objections to the so-called Accountability and Justice Law. Excerpt:

Baghdad, Nov 25, (VOI) – A legislator of the Sadrist bloc, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, severely criticized the draft law on accountability & justice, adding the draft has many constitutional violations.

"Article 6 of the draft allows the return of members of the former repressive organizations, like Saddam's Fedayeen, to power, which represents violation of the Iraqi constitution," Falah Hassan Shanshal, the head of the parliament's debaathification committee, said during a press conference he held after the end of Sunday's parliamentary session.

He said his committee objected article 11 of the constitution which stipulates that "the Baath Party is to be tried as a regime for committing crimes against the Iraqi people," calling for replacing this with the phrase "the Baath Party is to be tried as a party for committing crimes against the Iraqi people. The committee also objected article 28 of the draft on accountability, which provides for dissolving the higher national organization for debaathification, on the grounds that it runs counter to the constitution," said Shanshal.


WaPo's Karen deYoung reports that an NSC review has a less than optimistic view of the strategic situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Excerpt:

A White House assessment of the war in Afghanistan has concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals that the Bush administration set for 2007 have not been met, even as U.S. and NATO forces have scored significant combat successes against resurgent Taliban fighters, according to U.S. officials.

The evaluation this month by the National Security Council followed an in-depth review in late 2006 that laid out a series of projected improvements for this year, including progress in security, governance and the economy. But the latest assessment concluded that only "the kinetic piece" -- individual battles against Taliban fighters -- has shown substantial progress, while improvements in the other areas continue to lag, a senior administration official said.

This judgment reflects sharp differences between U.S. military and intelligence officials on where the Afghan war is headed. Intelligence analysts acknowledge the battlefield victories, but they highlight the Taliban's unchallenged expansion into new territory, an increase in opium poppy cultivation and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai as signs that the war effort is deteriorating.

The contrasting views echo repeated internal disagreements over the Iraq war: While the military finds success in a virtually unbroken line of tactical achievements, intelligence officials worry about a looming strategic failure.


WTF Department: Wounded British Iraq veterans chased from a public swimming pool because they might "scare children. (And BTW, I don't believe this would ever happen in the U.S. The only people who spit on returning veterans here are the Bush administration and their allies in the U.S. congress, plus Rush Limbaugh and their other backers in hate radio. --- C) Excerpt:

Soldiers who suffered appalling injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan were verbally abused as they swam in a public swimming pool. During a weekly rehabilitation class at a council leisure centre, 15 servicemen – including several who have lost limbs or suffered severe burns – were heckled and jeered by members of the public.

One woman was so incensed that the troops were using the pool at Leatherhead Leisure Centre in Surrey that she told them they did not deserve to be there. She became increasingly abusive, screaming that it was wrong for staff to rope off a lane exclusively for the injured personnel from the nearby Headley Court habilitation centre.

The swimmer, thought to be in her 30s, is understood to have said: "I pay to come here and swim – you lot don't."


Quote of the Day

The US military is blaming what it describes as an Iran-backed "special group" cell inside the Shiite Mahdi Army for bombing a pet market in a Shiite part of Baghdad on Friday, which killed 9 and wounded 60 persons. The US military says it has forensic evidence and confessions by detainees to substantiate its claim.

This story doesn't make any sense to me, and I would need to see some evidence before I would accept it. Confessions under duress prove nothing, and circumstantial evidence has often fallen apart under inquiry by defense counsel. In Iraq, there is no defense counsel for "insurgents" arrested by the US military, and no way to question such allegations. The Mahdi Army is unlikely to bomb Shiites to make them want to join it. Shiites have already joined it in the hundreds of thousands. A crime has means, motive and opportunity. The motive being ascribed here makes no sense.


-- Juan Cole I must say I agree, as I stated in a comment on Susan's post yesterday. But of course this BS just gets reported as unquestioned fact by the U.S. media - C

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