Military's Quarterly Report on Iraq

You can find the U.S. Military’s Quarterly Report to Congress on Iraq here. The report covers the first two and a half months of the surge through the end of April, 2007. The surge is having an effect. Some highlights:

Sectarian murders peaked in December 06 with over, 1,100 sectarian incidents resulting in 1,600 sectarian murders. In April, the number of sectarian incidents was significantly down to just over 400 incidents with just over 600 sectarian murders.

Weapons caches found in Iraq numbered just 100 in July 2006. In April 2007, they numbered just shy of 700.

One of the most important figures – cooperation by the locals – can be roughly gauged from the number of tips being fed to coalition forces. Tips increased from a low of 4000 in June, 2006 to over 12,000 during April, 2007.

The coalition is having a lot more success as regards car bombs (VBIED). Car bombs found and cleared comprised roughly 69% of all VBIED incidents.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is the single greatest cause of violence in Iraq today.

Overall, violence is the same this quarter as last. The reasons are al Qaeda has moved into belts surrounding Baghdad and into Diyala Province to escape the surge and the Sunni uprising in Anbar. Al Qaeda is using suicide attacks and suicide car bombs against soft targets in these areas to keep the level of violence high.

The final elements of the surge are just now in place and it will be several months before any judgment can be made on the likelihood of success.

This quarterly report makes no mention of any area of Iraq being close to civil war

EXCERPTS From the Report:

Executive Summary

The strategic goal of the United States in Iraq remains a united Iraq that can govern, defend and sustain itself and is an ally in the war on terror. This report measures progress toward— and setbacks from—achieving this goal during this reporting period. Although the objectives have not changed, the strategy and tactics for achieving them have been modified and will continue to adapt to an evolving situation. The United States and its Coalition partners remain committed to help the Iraqi people assume full responsibility for their country.

. . . Sectarian killings have declined, especially in Baghdad; vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) found and cleared comprised roughly 69% of all VBIED incidents; and national confidence in the Government of Iraq’s (GoI) ability to improve the security environment reached its highest level (63%) in twelve months. In another somewhat encouraging development, Sunni tribal resistance to al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) along the Euphrates River Valley has been growing and—combined with a robust Coalition presence in Fallujah and Ramadi and increased effectiveness of Iraqi forces—is hindering AQI operations. However, local Sunni cooperation with and support to Coalition forces in Anbar Province is not uniform. As a result of this tribal resistance, violence in Anbar decreased markedly during the reporting period.

However, terrorist attacks increased in other areas as AQI and other groups attempted to spread sectarian conflict. As for the status of Iraqi security forces, the United States, its Coalition partners and the Iraqi Government continued to expand the size and capability of the Iraqi forces to meet emerging requirements. As of May 14, 2007, approximately 346,500 Iraqi personnel received training and equipment. Given the persistence of the violence by insurgents, terrorists and militias, the Iraqi forces will require continued training, development and equipping to be able to progressively assume missions from Coalition forces. Some of the main areas being addressed to increase the Iraqi forces’ capabilities include reform of the Ministry of Interior (MoI) forces, development of Ministry of Defense (MoD) and MoI logistics and administrative capabilities, development of combat enablers for the military forces and development of junior leaders.

On the political front, the United States and its Coalition partners are working with the GoI to safeguard gains and to develop strong institutions that impartially serve all Iraqis. Key legislative or reconciliation actions—such as the Hydrocarbon Law, de-Ba'athification reform, and Article 140 (Kirkuk)—were not completed during this reporting period, although progress was made. Encouraging efforts include the selection of the High Electoral Commission and the continuation of work on constitutional reform. During this period, Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) were doubled to enhance local and provincial administrative capacity. Reconciliation remains a serious unfulfilled objective.

While significant challenges remain, several positive economic developments emerged. The most significant was the launch in Egypt on May 3, 2007 of the International Compact with Iraq to help Iraq gain assistance and debt relief contingent on political and economic reforms. Additionally, the Central Bank of Iraq made progress in reducing price inflation, and GoI statistics show a slight improvement in employment. The International Monetary Fund found satisfactory Iraqi performance to date under the Standby Arrangement. However, oil production, the principal economic driver in Iraq, is not growing and remained at about the same levels as during this period in 2006 due to poor infrastructure and inadequate security.

Additional efforts will be needed to build the capacity of Iraqi ministries and provinces to execute their capital investment budgets, particularly for the oil sector, which is the key to supporting economic development. The Department of Defense continued to help the GoI revitalize certain state-owned enterprises to increase employment and make them more attractive for privatization.

Overall, it is too early to assess the impact of the new approach. For the period covered by this report, the additional forces to support the new approach were not fully in place, and those that were had only a limited time to conduct operations. In addition, new initiatives such as enhanced PRTs and focused efforts to improve GoI budget execution and rule of law remain in their initial stages. On the political front, reconciliation is a top priority. Economically, further provision of goods and services by the GoI that benefit the Iraqi population is required. Progress will depend on Iraqi follow-through on their commitments made as part of the new approach; the actions of insurgents, militia and terrorists to disrupt reconciliation will be a key challenge to the Iraqi government’s ability to fulfill its commitments. . .


Iranian Influence

Various Shi’a and Kurdish politicians maintain longstanding relationships with Iranian officials and state organizations, and Iran maintains longstanding economic and religious ties to Iraq. The Iranians likely seek a Shi’a dominated Iraqi government that is deferential to and supportive of Iranian interests.

The Iranian regime’s primary tool for exercising clandestine influence in Iraq is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Qods Force (QF), which provides arms, intelligence, funds, training, and propaganda support to Iraqi Shi’a militants targeting and killing Coalition and Iraqi forces, as well as Iraqi civilians. The QF seeks to increase long-term Iranian strategic influence in Iraq and the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Among the weapons it provides to Iraqi militants are improvised explosive devices (IEDs), advanced IED technologies (including explosively formed projectiles (EFPs)), and rockets and mortars used for indirect fire attacks. U.S. forces in Iraq are acting to disrupt any network—regardless of nationality—that provides weapons to Iraqi militants and insurgents. These actions are consistent with the mandate granted to the MNF-I by both the UN Security Council and the GoI to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of Iraq’s security and stability, as well as defense. The USG has urged Iran to play a more constructive role in Iraq.

Syrian Influence

Syria seeks to maintain ties with the New Ba’ath Party in Iraq and to hasten the withdrawal of Coalition forces from the region. Syria has emerged as an important organizational and coordination hub for elements of the former Iraqi regime, allowing these groups to engage in activities hostile to our efforts from within Syrian borders. Although Damascus has made some recent improvements in combating cross-border terrorist movements by arresting insurgents it considers a threat to its own internal security, terrorists and foreign fighters continue to find sanctuary, border transit opportunities, and logistical support in Syria.

Tensions on the Border with Turkey

Turkey’s primary concerns regarding Iraq continue to be terrorism executed by the Kurdistan Peoples Congress (KGK, formerly PKK) and the final status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Public disagreements between Turkish and Kurdish leaders have strained relations between Turkey and Iraq and continued KGK terrorism in Turkey (along with heightened civil-military tensions in Turkey as it approaches national elections in July) are likely to increase those strains. The U.S. Special Envoy for Countering the KGK continues to engage Turkish and Iraqi counterparts to increase cooperation against the terrorist threat from the KGK. Progress has been made toward a tripartite agreement on closing down Makhmour refugee camp, which will eliminate a potential haven for KGK propaganda and influence on young Turkish Kurds.

Tensions in Kirkuk have nevertheless increased in recent months. According to Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, a referendum must be held on the final status of Kirkuk by the end of 2007. Turkoman and Arab communities’ concern over increased Kurdish control of Kirkuk’s governing institutions has led Turkey to speak out on behalf of the Turkoman community in protest of the perceived Kurdish goal of independence. . .



Security Environment

. . . Much of the violence is attributable to sectarian friction, and each faction is driven by its own political and economic power relationships. Illegally armed groups are engaged in a cycle of sectarian and politically motivated violence, using tactics that include indiscriminate bombing, murder, executions, and indirect fire to intimidate and to provoke sectarian conflict. The United States is supporting Iraqi efforts to reduce sectarian violence in Baghdad, regain control over the capital, and defeat al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its supporters, ensuring that they find no safe haven in Iraq.

. . . In support of political efforts, Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (FAQ) was launched on February 14, 2007 as the main security component of the New Way Forward. FAQ is intended to provide population security, primarily in Baghdad, to contain the sectarian violence and give Iraqis an opportunity to pursue political reconciliation and to implement government reforms. FAQ involves an increase of five U.S. Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) and support forces; four of the five BCTs are now in place. The remaining BCT will be in place in June.

. . . Nonetheless, Iraqi units are generally performing up to expectations. Although the initial battalions had mixed results in deploying at desired manning levels, units deployed later had sufficient soldiers and officers to meet operational requirements, and some Iraqi commanders showed an ability to plan, command, and control relatively
sophisticated joint and/or combined operations.


. . . Prime Minister Maliki has verbally committed to a militia demobilization, disarmament, and re-integration (DDR) program. A 12 May amnesty workshop named an executive director of the program. In early April, Prime Minister Maliki approved the DDR committee structure and appointed an Executive Director for the committee. As of
this report, committee members have yet to be appointed and work has not begun on drafting a DDR plan. The 2007 Iraqi budget includes US$150 million to institute this program. Militia will remain a problem as long as the public lacks confidence in the ability of the Iraqi Army and Police to adequately perform the protective role that militia claim in many communities. Establishing an effective DDR program will probably require technical assistance from the international community as well as broad support from within Iraq. In addition, the extent of the Iraqi public’s commitment to such a program is unclear. In Baghdad, a majority of residents report that militias act in the best interest of the Iraqi people. On a positive note, only 20% of respondents held this view nationwide.

Overall Assessment of the Security Environment

The overall level of violence in Iraq this quarter remained similar to the previous reporting period but shifted location. Insurgents and extremists are unable to operate as freely in Baghdad because of FAQ and in Anbar Province because of growing tribal opposition to AQI. Accordingly, many insurgents and extremists have moved operations to Diyala, Ninewa, and the outlying areas of Baghdad Province. Outside Baghdad and Anbar, reductions in Coalition force presence and reliance upon local Iraqi security forces have resulted in a tenuous security situation. Sectarian violence and insurgent attacks still involve a very small portion of the population, but public perceptions of violence have adversely affected reconciliation and contribute to population migration. Early indications are that sectarian killings have declined (albeit possibly temporarily) in Baghdad and that some Sunni tribes in Anbar Province will no longer tolerate AQI operations. Continued operations should build upon these encouraging signs.

The conflict in Iraq remains complex and requires that the GoI and the Coalition continue to undercut the root causes throughout the country. FAQ demonstrates that some positive changes in the dynamics that perpetuate violence may be possible, but more time, and careful analysis will be required before conclusions about the effectiveness of this effort can be reached. Some preliminary results include a significant increase in the number of caches cleared (reaching a 12-month high in April) and a significant reduction in sectarian murders and executions nationwide.


Assessment of the Security Environment—

Baghdad

Baghdad is the center of gravity in the struggle for political and economic influence in Iraq for irreconcilable violent groups. Although it is still too early to assess whether a sustainable trend is emerging, attacks in Baghdad declined as Coalition and Iraqi force presence expanded while Sunni insurgent groups and Shi’a militants departed or refrained from operations. Despite the departure of large numbers of JAM fighters from Baghdad, JAM has continued to act as a de-facto government in Sadr City.

Although sectarian-motivated Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence has declined in Baghdad, violence against Coalition and Iraqi security forces remained consistent with previous levels. Despite heightened security measures and increased ISF proficiency at reducing civilian casualties from sectarian murders and executions, AQI maintained the ability to conduct infrequent, high-profile, mass-casualty attacks in Baghdad.

Assessment of the Security Environment—

Western Iraq

AQI remains the primary threat to the security environment in Anbar Province, where it continues to target local ISF through use of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), suicide attacks, assassinations, and hit-and-run attacks to subvert and undermine governmental institutions. There are some early signs that are encouraging as Sunni tribal resistance to AQI along the Euphrates River Valley has grown, and combined with a robust ISF and Coalition presence in Fallujah and Ramadi, has begun to hinder AQI operations. However, local Sunni cooperation with and support to Coalition forces in Anbar Province is not uniform. Moreover, the Iraqi public in Western Iraq is increasingly willing to provide intelligence and report weapons caches. As part of the increase in force levels, 4,000 additional Marines are currently deploying into Anbar Province.

These additional Marines, in conjunction with an expansion of the ISF, and aided by increasing tribal resistance to AQI, are pushing AQI out of many of the population centers, facilitating stability in large parts of the province. Although tribal resistance to AQI is a positive development in Anbar, insurgent groups continue to attack Coalition and ISF targets in other areas in western Iraq, excluding Anbar. The recent success of tribal engagement in Anbar Province is primarily driven by a concerted campaign of widespread contact with the Anbar tribes ranging from the
Syrian border to Baghdad. The Sahawa al- Iraqi (SAI), formerly known as Sahawa al- Anbar, an anti-AQI tribal movement led by 41-year-old Sheikh Abdul Sattar Bezea Fitikhan al-Rishawi, claims 24 tribes as organizational members. Primarily Ramadicentric, SAI is representative of the capabilities of tribal alliances to assist the Coalition in fighting AQI and other resistance elements. Though notable for its contributions to fighting AQI, the SAI is not alone in tribal efforts to eradicate AQI. Large and influential tribes, such as the Albu Mahal, Albu Nimr, and Albu Issa, have also actively opposed AQI.

Euphrates River Valley has grown, and combined with a robust ISF and Coalition presence in Fallujah and Ramadi, has begun to hinder AQI operations. However, local Sunni cooperation with and support to Coalition forces in Anbar Province is not uniform. Moreover, the Iraqi public in Western Iraq is increasingly willing to provide intelligence and report weapons caches. As part of the increase in force levels, 4,000 additional Marines are currently deploying into Anbar Province. These additional Marines, in conjunction with an expansion of the ISF, and aided by increasing tribal resistance to AQI, are pushing AQI out of many of the population centers, facilitating stability in large parts of the province. Although tribal resistance to AQI is a positive development in Anbar, insurgent groups continue to attack Coalition and ISF targets in other areas in western Iraq, excluding Anbar.

The recent success of tribal engagement in Anbar Province is primarily driven by a concerted campaign of widespread contact with the Anbar tribes ranging from the Syrian border to Baghdad. The Sahawa al- Iraqi (SAI), formerly known as Sahawa al- Anbar, an anti-AQI tribal movement led by 41-year-old Sheikh Abdul Sattar Bezea
Fitikhan al-Rishawi, claims 24 tribes as organizational members. . . .

SAI is representative of the capabilities of tribal alliances to assist the Coalition in fighting AQI and other resistance elements. Though notable for its contributions to fighting AQI, the SAI is not alone in tribal efforts to eradicate AQI.

Large and influential tribes, such as the Albu Mahal, Albu Nimr, and Albu Issa, have also actively opposed AQI.

Assessment of the Security Environment—

Central/Northern Iraq

Outside of Baghdad, this reporting period saw increased inter-sectarian violence in Diyala, increased high-profile attacks in northern Iraq by AQI, and Coalition and Iraqi forces confronting the JAM—the Shi’a militia associated with the radical cleric Muktada-al Sadr—in Diwaniyah. Ongoing ethnic and sectarian violence in central and northern Iraq is a reflection of AQI and JAM elements competing for political control of Diyala Province—particularly as some of the Baghdad militia fighters moved to the province. On a positive note, there are initial signs that some tribes in Diyala are discussing ways of countering AQI. Coalition forces are using lessons learned in tribal engagement in Anbar to help reconciliation efforts in areas such as Abu Ghraib, Samara and Bayji.

In Ninewa Province, Mosul is AQI’s northern strategic base and serves as a way-station for foreign fighters entering from Syria. There, insurgent and terrorist groups have increased the frequency and intensity of attacks on the local police. AQI’s efforts to reignite sectarian violence in Tal’Afar through high-profile attacks against civilians reflects its desire to undermine stability along sectarian fault lines and deepen the conflict in Iraq. Coalition forces deployed to Baqubah in mid-March and local ISF units have been unable to diminish rising sectarian violence contributingto the volatile security situation.

AQI has shifted some of its focus to the north. This is due in part to expanded Coalition and Iraqi operations in Baghdad and the rise of ethnic tensions in Kirkuk. These tensions may mount as property is reallocated to Kurds displaced under the previous regime’s Arabization programs and as the prospect of a census and referendum on Kirkuk’s status looms. Kurdish and Sunni Arab concerns about fair distribution of hydrocarbon revenues also could exacerbate tensions.

Assessment of the Security Environment—

Kurdish Region

The overall security situation is stable in Dahuk, Irbil, and Sulaymaniyah, and several foreign countries are establishing consulates and pursuing oil and energy business interests in the Kurdish region. However, the attack on May 9 against the Kurdish Ministry of Interior in Irbil demonstrates that AQI maintains its ability to strike in the Kurdish region. Violence occurs mostly in outlying areas near the border with Iran.

Traditional conflicts with Ansar al-Sunnah (AS) have ebbed and flowed in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) region since the mid- 1990’s. The newly formed Brigades of Kurdistan announced their intent to attack the Kurdish government but the capabilities of the group is unknown. While AQI’s increased presence in northern Iraq is of growing concern, AQI largely conducts its anti-Kurdish operations in Kirkuk and Mosul, rarely venturing to more remote areas in the region in large part due to the presence of Kurdish security forces.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has provided relatively good governance over the three Kurdish provinces. The existence of the Kongra Gel (KGK) and the potential for border skirmishes with Turkey or Iran, and in the case of the KGK, possible cross-border operations by the Turkish Army, are issues that could increase tensions in the Kurdish region.

Assessment of the Security Environment—

Southern Iraq

The security situation in southern Iraq is characterized by competition between various Shi’a militia, factions, tribes and organized criminals aligned with various parties positioning themselves for greater influence over local authorities and resources. Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (formerly SCIRI) (SIIC) maintains a strong political presence in the south. Increased political competition between SIIC and the Office of Martyr Sadr (OMS), the political arm of JAM, has resulted in clashes between their respective armed wings, the Badr Organization and JAM. Some JAM members relocated to the south in response to FAQ in Baghdad, further empowering JAM in confrontations with both Badr and provincial authorities. In Basrah Province, the OMS and the governing Fadilah Party vie for dominance over local economic activity, adding to the intra-Shi’a violence. This intra- Shi’a violence has contributed to a significant increase in attacks against Coalition forces in Basrah and an observed greater hostility towards Coalition presence, as well as highlighted the failure of the Iraqi police to challenge Shi’a militants in southern Iraq. In Diwaniyah, however, a reported increase in JAM presence and aggression prompted local officials to request military action to lessen JAM’s influence and local control.

Relatively little AQI activity has been observed in southern Iraq.


Overall Attack Trends and Violence

For this report, the term “attacks” refers to specific incidents reported in the Multi-National Corps-Iraq Significant Activities Database. It includes known attacks on Coalition forces, Iraqi forces, the civilian population and infrastructure. Attacks typically involve improvised explosive devices; small arms, including sniper fire; and indirect fires. Not all civilian casualties are observed by or reported to Coalition forces; as a result, these data only provide a partial picture of the violence experienced by Iraqis.

The aggregate level of violence in Iraq remained relatively unchanged during this reporting period. Violence has decreased in the Baghdad security districts and Anbar, but has increased in most provinces, particularly in the outlying areas of Baghdad Province and Diyala and Ninewa Provinces. Since January 2007, Coalition reported murders in Baghdad proper have decreased by 51% as militia activity was disrupted by security operations. Throughout Iraq, the total number of attacks on Coalition forces, the ISF, and Iraqi civilians increased by 2% in the February through May reporting period compared with the previous quarter.

High-profile attacks, usually conducted by AQI, are now causing more casualties in Baghdad than do murders by militia, criminals, or other armed groups. Spectacular attacks on historical and significant infrastructure (such as Baghdad bridges and the Parliament building) seek to discredit FAQ, the Coalition presence, and the GoI, rather than create casualties. In Anbar province, anti-AQI sentiment is widespread, with growing tribal influence as the primary driver of decreasing violence levels. The total number of attacks in Anbar has dropped 34% since December 2006, with Ramadi—where attacks are at a two-year low—accounting for the largest decline in violence levels.

Attacks in Anbar have dropped from 35 per day in the previous reporting period to just under 26, dipping below average daily attacks in Salah ad Din Province.

Less encouraging, the number of suicide attacks across Iraq increased from 26 in January to 58 in March and remained constant at 58 in April. During the reporting period, the average number of improvised explosive devices found and cleared increased 15% from the previous quarter, and the average number of vehicleborne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) found and cleared rose by 69%. These gains are likely due to increased civilian cooperation and interdiction of the networks conducting these attacks.

The majority of overall attacks continue to occur against Coalition forces, while the ISF and civilians continue to suffer the majority of casualties. Consistent with previous reporting periods, most attacks occurred in Baghdad, Anbar, Salah ad Din, and Diyala provinces. Explosively formed projectile attacks were at an all-time high in April.


Public Perceptions of Security

Public perception of security is shaped by the confidence the people have in the government and its security forces, as well as the perception they have of neighborhood safety. On security, Iraqis continue to feel more positive at the local level than they do at the national level. The perceptions of safety inside and outside neighborhoods correlate with their perception of local and national tensions. Within Baghdad, the Joint Security Stations contribute to this improvement by providing local tip hotlines, and local security force responsiveness to these calls provide tangible, visible proof that the security forces are responsible to and for the people. These actions may contribute to the continued support for the dissolution of militias, not only in Baghdad, but nationwide as well. . . .

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Would Someone Tell al Qaeda's The Islamic State Of Iraq That Its Just a Civil War

Just as Democrat after Democrat is claiming that Iraq is "just a civil war," the Islamic State of Iraq does their part to overreach and throw that carefully guarded Democratic canard into a bit of flux. The release of this jihadi video coming on the heels of the President's speech, the timing could not be worse for the Democrats - at least if it were to get any play in the MSM. The latest from the jihadis currently fighting the "civil war" in Iraq:

Al Qaeda has a new opening graphic for its propaganda tapes: the U.S. Capitol under "attack."

"The Islamic State of Iraq...March Toward Washington" reads the headline in English superimposed over a digitally created scene of the U.S. Capitol under attack in the introductory sequence of one tape released on the Internet this week.

Another from al Qaeda's "as Sahab" production arm announces "Holocaust of the Americans in the Land of Khorasan" and shows an image of the U.S. Capitol to introduce a short clip of al Qaeda fighters.

"This is a disturbing new trend," says Laura Mansfield, an Arabic expert who monitors jihadi videos on the Internet.

"Recall that in January 2006, Osama Bin Laden said that plans for attacks in the U.S. were in progress," Mansfield told the Blotter on ABCNews.com. "It may be that this new imagery is designed to motivate terrorist activity in the U.S., but it is certainly intended as a recruiting tool and perhaps intended to reassure al Qaeda's jihadi followers they haven't forgotten their goal of an al Qaeda attack on Washington, D.C.," she said.

Read the entire story here. Video screen shot by ABC.

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Bush - We Cannot Lose to Al Qaeda In Iraq

President Bush, making a commencement speech before the Coast Guard Academy, made the tie-ins between al Qaeda in Iraq and the al Qaeda of bin Laden and Zawahiri that is the head of transnational terrorism. According to Bush, we cannot afford to lose in Iraq for that will be handing victory to those who seek the downfall of the West and are quite willing to kill us in our homes to achieve it. Here are a portion of the President's remarks:

. . . There is a reason that bin Laden sent one of his most experienced paramilitary leaders to Iraq: He believes that if al Qaeda can drive us out, they can establish Iraq as a new terrorist sanctuary. Our intelligence community believes that, "al Qaeda leaders see victory in Iraq -- the heart of the caliphate and currently the most active front in their war -- as a religious and strategic imperative." If al Qaeda succeeds in Iraq, they would pursue their stated goals of turning that nation into a base from which to overthrow moderate governments in the region, impose their hateful ideology on millions, and launch new attacks on America and other nations. Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden -- and victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America. (Applause.)

I've often warned that if we fail in Iraq, the enemy will follow us home. Many ask: How do you know? Today, I'd like to share some information with you that attests to al Qaeda's intentions. According to our intelligence community, in January 2005, Osama bin Laden tasked the terrorist Zarqawi -- who was then al Qaeda's top leader in Iraq -- with forming a cell to conduct terrorist attacks outside of Iraq. Bin Laden emphasized that America should be Zarqawi's number one priority in terms of foreign attacks. Zarqawi welcomed this direction; he claimed that he had already come up with some good proposals.

To help Zarqawi in these efforts, our intelligence community reports that bin Laden then tasked one of his top terrorist operatives, Hamza Rabia, to send Zarqawi a briefing on al Qaeda's external operations, including information about operations against the American homeland. Our intelligence community reports that a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Faraj al-Libi, went further and suggested that bin Laden actually send Rabia, himself, to Iraq to help plan external operations. Abu Faraj later speculated that if this effort proved successful, al Qaeda might one day prepare the majority of its external operations from Iraq.

In May of 2005, Abu Faraj was captured and taken into CIA custody. Several months later, in December 2005, Rabia was killed in Pakistan. Several months after that, in June of 2006, the terrorist Zarqawi was killed by American forces in Iraq. Successes like these are blows to al Qaeda. They're a testament to steps we have taken to strengthen our intelligence, work closely with partners overseas, and keep the pressure on the enemy by staying on the offense. (Applause.)

Despite our pressure, despite the setbacks that al Qaeda has suffered, it remains extremely dangerous. As we've surged our forces in Iraq, al Qaeda has responded with a surge of its own. The terrorists' goal in Iraq is to reignite sectarian violence and break support for the war here at home. And they believe they're succeeding. A few weeks ago, al Qaeda's number two, second in command, Zawahiri, issued a video in which he gloated that al Qaeda's "movement of violence" has "forced the Americans to accept a pullout -- about which they only differ in regard to its timing." We can expect al Qaeda to continue its campaign of high profile attacks, including deadly suicide bombings and assassinations. And as they do, our troops will face more fighting and increased risks in the weeks and months ahead.

The fight in Iraq is tough, but my point today to you is the fight is essential to our security -- al Qaeda's leaders inside and outside of Iraq have not given up on their objective of attacking America again. Now, many critics compare the battle in Iraq to the situation we faced in Vietnam. There are many differences between the two conflicts, but one stands out above all: The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does. Nine-eleven taught us that to protect the American people, we must fight the terrorists where they live so that we don't have to fight them where we live. (Applause.)

The question for our elected leaders is: Do we comprehend the danger of an al Qaeda victory in Iraq, and will we do what it takes to stop them? However difficult the fight in Iraq has become, we must win it. Al Qaeda is public enemy number one for Iraq's young democracy, and al Qaeda is public enemy number one for America, as well. And that is why we must support our troops, we must support the Iraqi government, and we must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. . . .

Read President Bush's full remarks here. It was a bit surprising that President Bush made no mention of Iran's acts of war in Iran, nor raised an equally valid argument that we cannot afford to lose in Iraq to Iran. The President making a speech of this nature is but a first step made well past the eleventh hour. If it is not followed up with similar speeches and op-eds in MSM by all moderates and conservatives between now and September, the far left's meme that Iraq is not but a simple civil war at this point will win out simply by weight of repetition spread ad infinitum by a left wing MSM. Moreover, this was a typical speech by Bush, delivered with workmanlike, coldly communicating numerous factual points, but seeming almost dry. President Bush could do with a speechwriter and a speeking coach. I understand one of the best in the world is about to become available. And the good thing is, Bush and Blair already have a close friendship.

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Former Sen. Bob Kerry On Democrats & The Iraq War

Former Democratic Senator from Nebraska and Medal of Honor recipient Bob Kerry has authored an article in today's Wall St. Journal taking his party to task for their unrealistic position on Iraq:

. . . Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were "over there." It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the "head of the snake." But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.

. . . No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.

. . . The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."

This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.

Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn't have lasted a week.

Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn't exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism.

The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them.

Read the entire article here. I agree with Senator Kerry to a point. Certainly we cannot abandon Iraq. But as to Jim Webb's philosophy, how we deny a safe haven to al Qaeda without boots on the ground in a foreign country offering such safe haven is simply mystifying. What Jim Webb and Senator Kerry promise us in that regard is a mirage with which we can ill afford the time to experiment. With nuclear proliferation in the awning, the penalty for pursuing ineffectual and half hearted policies simply to cater to the far left of this country is potentially suicidal. And it is likely to lead to much greater loss of life when we are left with no choice but to use overwhelming force in self defense. I think the warning of Bernard Lewis, made but a few days ago, is quite appropriate to restate here:

More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment [that the U.S. does not have the will to successfully contest the Islamists] was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

(H/T Steve Halter)

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Iraqi Forces and Al Qaeda In Iraq in Diyala Province

There is an article in today's Wall St. Journal redolent of Michael Yon. It is a report an engagement between Iraqi forces and foreign forces of al Qaeda in Iraq that occurred in Diyala Province, soon to be home to the most bitter fighting seen in Iraq to date. It is also notable for its memorialization that a "civil war" is not a natural or historic state between Iraq's Sunnis and Shias, who have long intermixed, intermingled and intermarried throughout Iraq:

Diyala Province, Iraq--Saturday I witnessed a violent and dramatic illustration of how the Iraqi Army has, in places, begun to work effectively with tribesmen against determined al Qaeda insurgents.

The incident occurred some 50 miles north of Baghdad at a remote dusty village in Diyala province, which is now a kind of frontline between the two sides. We were there in the punishing noonday heat, with a rustic crowd on hand, to witness an emotional meeting between tribal chiefs in long robes and a lone, clean-shaven figure in a suit and tie--Ahmed Chalabi. Mr. Chalabi, the elite Shiite politician and former exile, a controversial figure in the U.S., came to thank the elders for their courage and sacrifice.

Until recently, Sunnis and Shiites had tilled the land together for miles around, intermarried and mutually inhabited a checkerboard of villages. A year ago, al Qaeda had forced its strategy of sectarian hatred on the area, purging the Shiites while executing Sunnis who resisted their authority. It remains one of Iraq's most volatile zones. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the sanguinary leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, had his headquarters in the area and was ultimately killed less than 20 miles away.

Suddenly hefty explosions shook the ground while automatic gunfire rent the air. We were under attack, and al Qaeda had chosen a perfect moment to ignite disaster. All their local opponents were there, plus Mr. Chalabi, a top Iraqi government figure known around the world. . . . Among Iraqis he is highly respected.

At about 10 a.m. on Saturday, we had taken off across Baghdad in a convoy of a dozen white pickups and SUVs, some with mounted machine guns, on our way to Diyala. We passed through notorious neighborhoods: one infamous for kidnapping, another where street battles have been fought between Shiites and Palestinian gangs. Often there were miles of static cars queuing for gasoline.

. . . We passed some miles of mud-brick dwellings and arrived at a village square encircled by earthen ramparts with a T-55 tank, a cannon and a bunker embedded along it. We had arrived at the front line in the village of Dafaa. Nearby stood a long, low reception hall, and, just in front, a large tent with long tables for the tribal buffet lunch.

Mr. Chalabi entered the building followed by Al-Iraqiyya TV crews. An aging sheik, in black-checkered headdress and sheer ochre robe--said to be the richest landowner--came in and sat beside him. Much of his property lay fallow out in no man's land. He'd lost seven sons and grandsons to the conflict there. "We've had no support from the government since the fighting started," he said, "no one has visited us or asked what we need. We've been on our own fighting al Qaeda which gets money and arms from around the world. Only recently, the Iraqi Army has given us some soldiers and weapons, and that has helped very much, but we need more, much more help, money, arms, provisions. We ask that you pass this on to the government." Above his head hung a moonlit poster of the Shiite martyr Imam Ali on a white horse crossing a river. One sheik after another came in and repeated the same concerns.

Dafaa has perforce become an exclusively Shiite village, an international force of militant Sunnis having occupied the villages roundabout. They are led, according to locals, by Afghans who have forced farmers to give them their daughters in marriage and "made everyone look Afghani like them, with long beards." They decapitate doubters and float them down the river to Dafaa village. "No fish anymore," say the locals.

In wider Diyala province, wedged strategically between Iran and Baghdad, many of the Sunnis were in Saddam's security forces, and for a while the al Qaeda leader was a former Saddam army colonel, according to Mr. Chalabi. They consider themselves a last line of resistance to the Shiite continuum between Iran and Iraqi Shiites to the south, so they accommodate foreign Sunni fighters more readily than, say, the Sunni tribes in Anbar province who feel more secure.

In the last year, al Qaeda rolled up the front until Dafaa village lay exposed like an arrowhead surrounded on three sides. It served as the final redoubt protecting the last bridge open to vital goods from the north directly supplying Baghdad. Finally, some months ago, a small contingent of 15 Iraqi Army troops moved in with high-caliber armor and stabilized the front. "That's all it took," said the young lieutenant in charge as he showed us and the 20-foot earthen ramparts, "because we fight alongside the people." Listening to anecdotes and viewing bullet marks from snipers, we stood outlined on the ridge squinting across empty cracked fields. The nearest village shaded by date trees sat a mere 900 meters away. Our self-exposure proved foolhardy in short order.

. . . As we drove away from the village along the raised earth road, I looked back to see perhaps a hundred SUVs, a mile long, belting along behind carrying the elders. An Iraqi Army Humvee with mounted machine gun charged past us to the front. They'd been helping to guard the last bridge to Baghdad. But now, one felt, the villagers could guard it handily. They no longer felt isolated and forgotten by the world, as the television sets showed this night all over the Mideast.

Read the entire story here.

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Lebanon, Syria & The UN Security Council

Of the myriad of issues involving the byantine politics of the Middle East, two of the most immediate are whether political assassinations are to be tolerated as an accepted tool of Middle Eastern politics and whether Syria will be allowed to continue its efforts to dominate Lebanon. Both hinge on how the 2005 assassination of Lebanese politician Rafiq Hariri is addressed by the UN Security Counsel. The matter is now before Counsel. The Counsel should immediately form a tribunal to hear evidence and pass judgment on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri.

Hariri was assasinated in 2005, with all evidence pointing to Syrian intelligence as the culprits. At the time, Hariri was challenging the continued occupation of Lebanon by Syria. As Amir Taheri explains:

[A U.N. investigator] established the motive for the murder as early as the autumn of 2005. He came out with evidence that showed the Syrian leadership, possibly at the highest level, had at one point decided that Hariri was the only Lebanese leader capable of challenging their old ambitions in Lebanon. At the start of 2005, none of the other players in the Lebanese political scene had any particular interest in wishing Hariri out of the way.

But Assad did not count on the ultimate backlash to the assassination of Hariri - a backlash that saw Syria ostensibly driven from Lebanon and a nascent democracy retake power. That did not end Syria's ambition to dominate Lebanon for economic and political reasons. And Assad clearly views preventing any tribunal from passing judgement on the Hariri murder as a mortal threat to that ambition, not to mention the problems such a judgemnt would pose for Syria on almost all levels.

Thus Syria, supported by Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, have done all they can to sidetrack such a tribunal. That has been problematic:

. . . In the general election that followed [Syria's withdraw], the pro-Hariri bloc and its allies won a majority in the parliament and formed a government dedicated to bringing the murderers to justice.

Unable to stop the investigation, Syria (backed by the Islamic Republic in Iran) tried to put Lebanese politics on a trajectory that would marginalize the Hariri case. The Syrians deployed Emile Lahoud - the president they had imposed on the Lebanese for a further three years - to paralyze the Siniora government.

Under Lebanon's Constitution, laws passed by the parliament and senior appointments made by the government must receive presidential assent to take effect. Prompted by the Syrians, Lahoud has been withholding his assent, effectively preventing the government from implementing the program for which it was elected.

Lahoud continues to this day to thwart the democratically elected majority who desire a tribunal. But Syria's meddling has gone far beyond just Lahoud.

There have been several additional murders of anti-Syrian journalists and politicians in the interim. But through it all, Lebanon's nascent democracy has not waivered.

It seems likely that the disastrous war started by Iran's proxy, Hezbollah, was motivated in part by a desire to prevent the Hariri tribunal from being formed. After the Hezbollah-Israel War, Hezbollah tried to bootstrap their claimed "victory" into additional political power. They demanded the Lebanese government grant them a veto power over legislation, clearly aimed at quashing the formation of a Hariri tribunal. When that did not work, they withdrew their ministers from the government and took to the streets, attempting to further intimidate the government with the threat of riots and possibly a renewal of the disastrous civil war that consumed Lebanon for years.

None of this has deterred Lebanon's majority in the government, but with Syrian control of the presidency, there has been deadlock. Lebanon's Prime Minister has written to Ban Ki Moon at the UN, requesting that the Security Council, without formal request of Lebanon, create a formal tribunal to pass judgment on the murder of Hariri. In response, Syria has formulated violence among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The Palestinians have long been problematic for Lebanon, and are now becoming a serious problem with the growth of al Qaeda linked organizations inside Palestinian holding areas. A Syrian backed Palestinian group has chosen the day Lebanon sent its letters to the UN to begin an unprovoked attack on Lebanese army positions near the Syrian border.

The longer the Security Council refrains from moving on the Lebanese government's request for a tribunal, the greater will be the blood spilled among innocents in Lebanon. A complete failure to act will abandon Lebanon to Syrian control and only ensconce political assassination as a reasonable tool of Middle East foreign policy. Syria must be brought to heel and their foreign policy of assassination and intimidation subject to the bright light of international scrutiny and judgment. The time for the U.N. Security Council to act is now.

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Who Is Fighting The Iraq War & Is It A Civil War

Over at the Daily Standard, Daveed Gerstein-Ross takes a look at the forces that are involved in hostiliities in Iraq. It is an important piece for several reasons, not the least of which is it allows us to begin to analyze the validity of the claim that Iraq is in a state of civil war.

Althogh Gerstein-Ross does not define the relevant terms, it is helpful to have some working definitions before reading his article.

Civil War: FM 100-20 (Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict) defines a civil war as: A war between factions of the same country [that meets these five criteria]:

1. the contestants must control territory,

2. have a functioning government,

3. enjoy some foreign recognition,

4. have identifiable regular armed forces,

5. and engage in major military operations.”

An insurgency on the other hand is something of a different magnitude. According to the Joint Publication (JP) 1-02, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, it is when citizens of a country organize to overthrow the country’s constituted government.

Four elements that "typically encompass an insurgency":

1. cell-networks that maintain secrecy

2. terror used to foster insecurity among the population and drive them to the movement for protection

3. multifaceted attempts to cultivate support in the general population, often by undermining the new regime

4. attacks against the government

Mr. Gerstein-Ross covers the various major elements involved in Iraq today. To give a short summary:

Sunni Nationalist Insrugent Groups: These groups have largely broken apart. Of those that are still viable, the violence for which they are responsible is negligible.

Al Qaeda in Iraq; The single largest threat in Iraq, even though it and its related organizations are under tremendous pressure from the ongoing counterinsurgency operation as well as a revolt by its onetime Sunni hosts. It combines foreign leadership directly linked to the main branch of al Qaeda, foreign jihadis who enter the country and often end up as the suicide bombers responsible for the major attacks and loss of life, but the bulk of the fighters are former members of Saddam Hussein's intelligence agencies and Revolutionary Guards.

The Mahdi Army; Once thought the greatest danger to Iraq's nascent government, support for the Mahdi Army seems to have dwindled enormously. What remains of the Mahdi Army today is a core of about 3,000 Iranian trained, equiped and funded militants.

The Badr Brigade: A militia with about 20,000 members, it has played a dual role in Iraq. It has been a stabilizing force on one hand, attacking both the Sadr militia and the Sunni militants. On the other hand, it played a large role in the sectarian violence after the 2006 bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome. It is just unclear at the moment which direction the Badr oranization will eventually follow.

Then there is the foreign element in all of this not otherwise covered above. Private donors in Saudi Arabia finance al Qaeda in Iraq. Syria allows its country to be used a throughway for weapons, cash and people into Iraq, and there is evidence of Syrian intelligence involvment in training insurgents. The largest foreign interference comes from Iran. They have directly involved themselves in sponsoring Shia militias, they are providing the deadly EFP's, and, although not mentioned in this article, we know from other sources of Iran's interference in the political process by bribery and cash donations to favored political organizations.

Do read the whole story here. It would appear from the article that there is no civil war going on in Iraq today, at least by the text book definition. What we are seeing are elements of an insurgency combined with significant foreign involvement on all sides.

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Of Democratic Talking Points, Sunnis, Shias and Faoud Ajami

The common refrain of Democrats is that Iraq is in a civil war that has been ongoing for centuries between Shia and Sunni Muslims. That is patently and objectively false.

The Sunni Shia divide started near the dawn of Islam as a political disagreement over who has the right to be annointed as the leader of the Muslim faithful. This political divide has been made into a religious one in the sect of Wahhabi Islam, exported now the world over with billions of Saudi petrodollars. And of course, it is this Wahhabi sect that is at the heart of al Qaeda and the vast majority of radical Islam threatening the world today. To see it at work, one need look no further then this New York Times piece the other day, describing Jordanians under the influence of Wahhabi clerics going to Iraq to become pawns for al Qaeda to use as their suicide bombers. This foreign al Qaeda influence fueled by the radical Islam preached by the Wahhabists has been incredibly destructive in Iraq.

Outside of the Wahhabi influence of recent vintage, there have been historical battles between governments of Shia and Sunni persuasion. But to claim that what we see in Iraq is the inevitable continuation of that violence is ridiculous. It would be like asserting that Germany and France cannot get along because of the much more recent history of extreme violence between them during the last century.

The facts are that Iraq's Sunnis and Shias coexisted peacefully for centuries prior to the post-war violence that spiked in 2006. Further, there is a significant incidence of intermarriage between Sunni and Shia in Iraq. Neither of these facts auger that Iraq must be destined for civil war.

The post war violence has had three causes, the two most important of which has been al Qaeda and the Baathist's who nominally supported al Qaeda as a means to retake power. It was al Qaeda that managed to bomb the Golden Domed mosque in Sammara early in 2006, an incident that saw Iraq truly begin to devolve towards civil war. But whatever may have been in 2006, the landscape is now vastly different in 2007, as Faoud Ajami explains:

For 35 years the sun did not shine here," said a man on the grounds of the great Shia shrine of al-Kadhimiyyah, on the outskirts of Baghdad. I had come to the shrine at night, in the company of the Shia politician Ahmed Chalabi.

We had driven in an armed convoy, and our presence had drawn a crowd. The place was bathed with light, framed by multiple minarets--a huge rectangular structure, its beauty and dereliction side by side. The tile work was exquisite, there were deep Persian carpets everywhere, the gifts of benefactors, rulers and merchants, drawn from the world of Shi'ism.

It was a cool spring night, and beguilingly tranquil. (There were the echoes of a firefight across the river, from the Sunni neighborhood of al-Adhamiyyah, but it was background noise and oddly easy to ignore.) A keeper of the shrine had been showing us the place, and he was proud of its doors made of teak from Burma--a kind of wood, he said, that resisted rain, wind and sun. It was to that description that the quiet man on the edge of this gathering had offered the thought that the sun had not risen during the long night of Baathist despotism.

A traveler who moves between Baghdad and Washington is struck by the gloomy despair in Washington and the cautious sense of optimism in Baghdad. Baghdad has not been prettified; its streets remain a sore to the eye, its government still hunkered down in the Green Zone, and violence is never far. But the sense of deliverance, and the hopes invested in this new security plan, are palpable. I crisscrossed the city--always with armed protection--making my way to Sunni and Shia politicians and clerics alike. The Sunni and Shia versions of political things--of reality itself--remain at odds. But there can be discerned, through the acrimony, the emergence of a fragile consensus.

Some months back, the Bush administration had called into question both the intentions and capabilities of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. But this modest and earnest man, born in 1950, a child of the Shia mainstream in the Middle Euphrates, has come into his own. He had not been a figure of the American regency in Baghdad. Steeped entirely in the Arabic language and culture, he had a been a stranger to the Americans; fate cast him on the scene when the Americans pushed aside Mr. Maliki's colleague in the Daawa Party, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

There had been rumors that the Americans could strike again in their search for a leader who would give the American presence better cover. There had been steady talk that the old CIA standby, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, could make his way back to power. Mr. Allawi himself had fed these speculations, but this is fantasy. Mr. Allawi circles Arab capitals and is rarely at home in his country. Mr. Maliki meanwhile has settled into his role.

In retrospect, the defining moment for Mr. Maliki had been those early hours of Dec. 30, when Saddam Hussein was sent to the gallows. He had not flinched, the decision was his, and he assumed it. Beyond the sound and fury of the controversy that greeted the execution, Mr. Maliki had taken the execution as a warrant for a new accommodation with the Sunni political class. A lifelong opponent of the Baath, he had come to the judgment that the back of the apparatus of the old regime had been broken, and that the time had come for an olive branch to those ready to accept the new political rules.

When I called on Mr. Maliki at his residence, a law offering pensions to the former officers of the Iraqi army had been readied and was soon put into effect. That decision had been supported by the head of the de-Baathification commission, Ahmed Chalabi. A proposal for a deeper reversal of the de-Baathification process was in the works, and would be announced days later by Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani. This was in truth Zalmay Khalilzad's doing, his attempt to bury the entire de-Baathification effort as his tenure drew to a close.

This was more than the political traffic in the Shia community could bear. Few were ready to accept the return of old Baathists to government service. The victims of the old terror were appalled at a piece of this legislation, giving them a period of only three months to bring charges against their former tormentors. This had not been Mr. Maliki's choice -- for his animus toward the Baath has been the driving force of his political life. It was known that he trusted that the religious hierarchy in Najaf, and the forces within the Shia alliance, would rein in this drive toward rehabilitating the remnants of the old regime.

Power and experience have clearly changed Mr. Maliki as he makes his way between the Shia coalition that sustains him on the one hand, and the American presence on the other. By all accounts, he is increasingly independent of the diehards in his own coalition--another dividend of the high-profile executions of Saddam Hussein and three of the tyrant's principal lieutenants. He is surrounded by old associates drawn from the Daawa Party, but keeps his own counsel.

There is a built-in tension between a prime minister keen to press for his own prerogatives and an American military presence that underpins the security of this new order. Mr. Maliki does not have the access to American military arms he would like; he does not have control over an Iraqi special-forces brigade that the Americans had trained and nurtured. His police forces remain poorly equipped. The levers of power are not fully his, and he knows it. Not a student of American ways--he spent his years of exile mostly in Syria--he is fully aware of the American exhaustion with Iraq as leading American politicians have come his way often.

The nightmare of this government is that of a precipitous American withdrawal. Six months ago, the British quit the southern city of Amarrah, the capital of the Maysan Province. It had been, by Iraqi accounts, a precipitous British decision, and the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr had rushed into the void; they had looted the barracks and overpowered the police. Amarrah haunts the Iraqis in the circle of power--the prospect of Americans leaving this government to fend for itself.

In the long scheme of history, the Shia Arabs had never governed--and Mr. Maliki and the coalition arrayed around him know their isolation in the region. This Iraqi state of which they had become the principal inheritors will have to make its way in a hostile regional landscape. Set aside Turkey's Islamist government, with its avowedly Sunni mindset and its sense of itself as a claimant to an older Ottoman tradition; the Arab order of power is yet to make room for this Iraqi state. Mr. Maliki's first trip beyond Iraq's borders had been to Saudi Arabia. He had meant that visit as a message that Iraq's "Arab identity" will trump all other orientations. It had been a message that the Arab world's Shia stepchildren were ready to come into the fold. But a huge historical contest had erupted in Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid caliphate had fallen to new Shia inheritors, and the custodians of Arab power were not yet ready for this new history.

For one, the "Sunni street"--the Islamists, the pan-Arabists who hid their anti-Shia animus underneath a secular cover, the intellectual class that had been invested in the ideology of the Baath party--remained unalterably opposed to this new Iraq. The Shia could offer the Arab rulers the promise that their new state would refrain from regional adventures, but it would not be easy for these rulers to come to this accommodation.

A worldly Shia cleric, the legislator Humam Hamoudi who had headed the constitutional drafting committee, told me that he had laid out to interlocutors from the House of Saud the case that this new Iraqi state would be a better neighbor than the Sunni-based state of Saddam Hussein had been. "We would not be given to military adventures beyond our borders, what wealth we have at our disposal would have to go to repairing our homeland, for you we would be easier to fend off for we are Shiites and would be cognizant and respectful of the differences between us," Mr. Hamoudi had said. "You had a fellow Sunni in Baghdad for more than three decades, and look what terrible harvest, what wreckage, he left behind." This sort of appeal is yet to be heard, for this change in Baghdad is a break with a long millennium of Sunni Arab primacy.

The blunt truth of this new phase in the fight for Iraq is that the Sunnis have lost the battle for Baghdad. The great flight from Baghdad to Jordan, to Syria, to other Arab destinations, has been the flight of Baghdad's Sunni middle-class. It is they who had the means of escape, and the savings.

Whole mixed districts in the city--Rasafa, Karkh--have been emptied of their Sunni populations. Even the old Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyyah is embattled and besieged. What remains for the Sunnis are the western outskirts. This was the tragic logic of the campaign of terror waged by the Baathists and the jihadists against the Shia; this was what played out in the terrible year that followed the attack on the Askariya shrine of Samarra in February 2006. Possessed of an old notion of their own dominion, and of Shia passivity and quiescence, the Sunni Arabs waged a war they were destined to lose.

No one knows with any precision the sectarian composition of today's Baghdad, but there are estimates that the Sunnis may now account for 15% of the city's population. Behind closed doors, Sunni leaders speak of the great calamity that befell their community. They admit to a great disappointment in the Arab states that fed the flames but could never alter the contest on the ground in Iraq. No Arab cavalry had ridden, or was ever going to ride, to the rescue of the Sunnis of Iraq.

A cultured member of the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars in Baghdad, a younger man of deep moderation, likened the dilemma of his community to that of the Palestinian Arabs since 1948. "They waited for deliverance that never came," he said. "Like them, we placed our hopes in Arab leaders who have their own concerns. We fell for those Arab satellite channels, we believed that Arab brigades would turn up in Anbar and Baghdad. We made room for al Qaeda only to have them turn on us in Anbar." There had once been a Sunni maxim in Iraq, "for us ruling and power, for you self-flagellation," that branded the Shia as a people of sorrow and quietism. Now the ground has shifted, and among the Sunnis there is a widespread sentiment of disinheritance and loss.

The Mahdi Army, more precisely the underclass of Sadr City, had won the fight for Baghdad. This Shia underclass had been hurled into the city from its ancestral lands in the Marshes and the Middle Euphrates. In a cruel twist of irony, Baathist terror had driven these people into the slums of Baghdad. The Baathist tyranny had cut down the palm trees in the south, burned the reed beds of the Marshes. Then the campaign of terror that Sunni society sheltered and abetted in the aftermath of the despot's fall gave the Mahdi Army its cause and its power.

"The Mahdi Army protected us and our lands, our homes, and our honor," said a tribal Shia notable in a meeting in Baghdad, acknowledging that it was perhaps time for the boys of Moqtada al-Sadr to step aside in favor of the government forces. He laid bare, as he spoke, the terrible complications of this country; six of his sisters, he said, were married to Sunnis, countless nephews of his were Sunni. Violence had hacked away at this pluralism; no one could be certain when, and if, the place could mend.

In their grief, the Sunni Arabs have fallen back on the most unexpected of hopes; having warred against the Americans, they now see them as redeemers. "This government is an American creation," a powerful Sunni legislator, Saleh al-Mutlak, said. "It is up to the Americans to replace it, change the constitution that was imposed on us, replace this incompetent, sectarian government with a government of national unity, a cabinet of technocrats." Shrewd and alert to the ways of the world (he has a Ph.D. in soil science from a university in the U.K.) Mr. Mutlak gave voice to a wider Sunni conviction that this order in Baghdad is but an American puppet. America and Iran may be at odds in the region, but the Sunni Arabs see an American-Persian conspiracy that had robbed them of their patrimony.

They had made their own bed, the Sunni Arabs, but old habits of dominion die hard, and save but for a few, there is precious little acknowledgment of the wages of the terror that the Shia had been subjected to in the years that followed the American invasion. As matters stand, the Sunni Arabs are in desperate need of leaders who can call off the violence, cut a favorable deal for their community, and distance that community form the temptations and the ruin of the insurgency. It is late in the hour, but there is still eagerness in the Maliki government to conciliate the Sunnis, if only to give the country a chance at normalcy.

The Shia have come into their own, but there still hovers over them their old history of dispossession; there still trails shadows of doubt about their hold on power, about conspiracies hatched against them in neighboring Arab lands.

The Americans have given birth to this new Shia primacy, but there lingers a fear, in the inner circles of the Shia coalition, that the Americans have in mind a Sunni-based army, of the Pakistani and Turkish mold, that would upend the democratic, majoritarian bases of power on which Shia primacy rests. They are keenly aware, these new Shia men of power in Baghdad, that the Pax Americana in the region is based on an alliance of long standing with the Sunni regimes. They are under no illusions about their own access to Washington when compared with that of Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and the smaller principalities of the Persian Gulf. This suspicion is in the nature of things; it is the way of once marginal men who had come into an unexpected triumph.

In truth, it is not only the Arab order of power that remains ill at ease with the rise of the Shia of Iraq. The (Shia) genie that came out of the bottle was not fully to America's liking. Indeed, the U.S. strategy in Iraq had tried to sidestep the history that America itself had given birth to. There had been the disastrous regency of Paul Bremer. It had been followed by the attempt to create a national security state under Ayad Allawi. Then there had come the strategy of the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, that aimed to bring the Sunni leadership into the political process and wean them away from the terror and the insurgency.

Mr. Khalilzad had become, in his own sense of himself, something of a High Commissioner in Iraq, and his strategy had ended in failure; the Sunni leaders never broke with the insurgency. Their sobriety of late has been a function of the defeat their cause has suffered on the ground; all the inducements had not worked.

We are now in a new, and fourth, phase of this American presence. We should not try to "cheat" in the region, conceal what we had done, or apologize for it, by floating an Arab-Israeli peace process to the liking of the "Sunni street."

The Arabs have an unerring feel for the ways of strangers who venture into their lands. Deep down, the Sunni Arabs know what the fight for Baghdad is all about -- oil wealth and power, the balance between the Sunni edifice of material and moral power and the claims of the Shia stepchildren. To this fight, Iran is a newcomer, an outlier. This is an old Arab account, the fight between the order of merchants and rulers and establishment jurists on the one side, and the righteous (Shia) oppositionists on the other. How apt it is that the struggle that had been fought on the plains of Karbala in southern Iraq so long ago has now returned, full circle, to Iraq.

For our part, we can't give full credence to the Sunni representations of things. We can cushion the Sunni defeat but can't reverse it. Our soldiers have not waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against Sunni extremists to fall for the fear of some imagined "Shia crescent" peddled by Sunni rulers and preachers. To that atavistic fight between Sunni and Shia, we ought to remain decent and discerning arbiters. To be sure, in Iraq itself we can't give a blank check to Shia maximalism. On its own, mainstream Shi'ism is eager to rein in its own diehards and self-anointed avengers.

There is a growing Shia unease with the Mahdi Army--and with the venality and incompetence of the Sadrists represented in the cabinet--and an increasing faith that the government and its instruments of order are the surer bet. The crackdown on the Mahdi Army that the new American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has launched has the backing of the ruling Shia coalition. Iraqi police and army units have taken to the field against elements of the Mahdi army. In recent days, in the southern city of Diwaniyya, American and Iraqi forces have together battled the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr. To the extent that the Shia now see Iraq as their own country, their tolerance for mayhem and chaos has receded. Sadr may damn the American occupiers, but ordinary Shia men and women know that the liberty that came their way had been a gift of the Americans.

The young men of little education--earnest displaced villagers with the ways of the countryside showing through their features and dialect and shiny suits--who guarded me through Baghdad, spoke of old terrors, and of the joy and dignity of this new order. Children and nephews and younger brothers of men lost to the terror of the Baath, they are done with the old servitude. They behold the Americans keeping the peace of their troubled land with undisguised gratitude. It hasn't been always brilliant, this campaign waged in Iraq. But its mistakes can never smother its honor, and no apology for it is due the Arab autocrats who had averted their gaze from Iraq's long night of terror under the Baath.

One can never reconcile the beneficiaries of illegitimate, abnormal power to the end of their dominion. But this current re-alignment in Iraq carries with it a gift for the possible redemption of modern Islam among the Arabs. Hitherto Sunni Islam had taken its hegemony for granted and extremist strands within it have shown a refusal to accept "the other." Conversely, Shia history has been distorted by weakness and exclusion and by a concomitant abdication of responsibility.

A Shia-led state in Baghdad--with a strong Kurdish presence in it and a big niche for the Sunnis--can go a long way toward changing the region's terrible habits and expectations of authority and command. The Sunnis would still be hegemonic in the Arab councils of power beyond Iraq, but their monopoly would yield to the pluralism and complexity of that region.

"Watch your adjectives" is the admonition given American officers by Gen. Petraeus. In Baghdad, Americans and Iraqis alike know that this big endeavor has entered its final, decisive phase. Iraq has surprised and disappointed us before, but as they and we watch our adjectives there can be discerned the shape of a new country, a rough balance of forces commensurate with the demography of the place and with the outcome of a war that its erstwhile Sunni rulers had launched and lost. We made this history and should now make our peace with it.

Read the entire article here.

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A Perfect Islamic Storm . . . Part III

Gates of Vienna continues with their very sobering look at the growth of Islam in Europe and what they see as the inevitability of civil war. Their arguments are thoughtful and well reasoned. In Part I, they looked at hard demographic data showing that, between birth rates and immigration, all predict a rapid expansion of the Muslim population. In Part II, they looked at the European governmental responses - or lack thereof - to this growing tide (though, if Sarkozy is elected in France, we may see some political movement to wean at least their Muslim population off the triumphalist and jihadist Wahhabi / Salafi tit of Saudi Arabia). Now in Part III (by my count), Gates of Vienna continues their analysis supporting the proposition that civil war is inevitable, including an analysis of alternative outcomes:

There are five options.

The first is that Islam integrates within Europe’s liberal democracies and we all live happily ever after This scenario takes no account of the moral sewer that Liberal policies have turned Europe into; a Europe which Islam, quite understandably, views with revulsion. Nor does it take into account that Islam today is the same as Islam in the 7th century. Why should they reform now? Given the increasing radicalisation of Muslim youth and the disturbing numbers whoagree with terrorist activity, this scenario is only possible within the mindset of deluded, ignorant liberals, whose naiveté is suicidal in the extreme. Option one can therefore be discounted.

The second option is that Islam quietly takes over demographically through sheer weight of numbers, and Europe is islamised under Sharia law. Bernard Lewis and Mark Steyn think this inevitable, Steyn being of the opinion that any country capable of the type of appeasement prevalent in Europe today, is also a country incapable of rousing a defence. Although this is a possibility, it is unlikely we will not fight back, so option two can also be discounted.

The third option is that Europe wakes up to the danger it is in and expels all its Muslims. This is not going to happen; the European Union positively embraces Islam, as noted in Bat Ye’or book Eurabia (thankfully abridged by Fjordman). Not only does the EU have no intention of such an action, they will not even stop further Islamic immigration. The 2.2 million predominately Muslim immigrants they wish to bring into Europe each and every year up to 2050 is a done deal as far as they are concerned.

Indeed, in an extract from this disturbing report published by the European Policy Centre, the EU seeks immigration not only for economic reasons but also for social reasons:

“However, the arguments against immigration remain dominant in the political debates of many European countries, and must be taken seriously and challenged if immigration is to keep its place on the social and economic agenda.”

Whilst this attitude prevails we can discount option three.

The fourth option is that moderate Muslims reclaim their peaceful religion from the “fundamentalists”, who, as we are told over and over again by our media, are not representative of Islam. But where exactly are these moderate Muslims, what power do they wield within Islam as a whole? When have we seen marches and protests organised by them, waving banners reading “Not in my name” or “Not in the name of Islam?” They are as cowed by the radicals as are our politicians, or perhaps they are in agreement with them, but are squeamish when it comes to spilling blood. The only face of Islam we see or hear in the West is that of the violent Jihadist. As such, option four can be discounted.

The fifth option is that we resist the Islamic take over, and fight back. I disagree with Lewis and Steyn, who both appear to think Europe will roll over and submit. The wholesale and unprecedented racial and cultural transformation of a continent with a history of violent warfare will simply not happen without confrontation.

As options one, two, three and four can therefore be discounted; we are left only with option five: to fight. Whilst it is unfortunate that we should be confronted by an expanding, youthful culture with a set of beliefs they will die for, just at the time we are demographically declining, ageing, and apparently believe only in shopping, celebrity and alcohol, does not mean that we will not fight. We will simply have to. Not for domination, but for survival.

Read rest of the post here.

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A Perfect Islamic Storm . . . Part II

At Gates of Vienna, they have a follow-up to their earlier sobering post forecasting a coming civil war in Europe based on hard numbers of Muslim immigration and other extensive demographic data. See here. Now they have followed with another post that, while not a hard number forecast, is equally as intelligent and sobering. This on the growing seriousness of the situations from Michael Mans, a European author, and on the increasing liklihood of European civil war becasue the current crop of politicians, for the most part, flatly refuse to acknowledge the problem, let alone take remedial action:

And then there are the new politicians, modern thinkers and historians. They emerged after the dreadful Second World War. ‘Remember the war, the holocaust, the colonies and slavery.’ After Adolf, things moved rapidly. We studied our own recent Western history and were appalled by it. And often rightly so. The conclusions were: “never again, and from now on we will love, and must love, everyone and everybody’. Above all, the conclusion was “we are all equal, and since we have been so bad, we are somewhat less equal and have to pay for it.’ The new politicians, thinkers and historians had mainly concentrated on recent Western behaviour and forgotten about what had happened elsewhere or why. They did not see the many similarities or worse.

They also forgot the bigger picture of history over longer periods. Above all, they forgot human nature. All this could be excused if a (re)learning process was visible, but the opposite seems to be true. The more problems become visible, the more the new elite keeps hammering on the old, erroneous conclusions of love by and for all.

It is ironic that this new elite uses exactly the same phrases, displays the same behaviour, as the studied, analysed and consequently despised people and peoples in the past. They force ideas, doctrines and behaviour upon populations which are not liked, often unnatural, and even hated. This inevitably leads to war, or in our case, civil war.

You will find the post from Gates of Vienna here. Do also read the comments. The comments are as intelligent and thought provoking as the post.

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U(K)tter Bull – Answering the Independent’s Claim that the U.S. is to Blame for the UK’s Hostage Crisis

The article “The Botched U.S. Raid That Led to the Hostage Crisis,” appearing in the British newspaper, The Independent, is a just a horrid hit piece. It's rank speculation masquerading as fact with a twist of moral equivalence that turns reality on its head. In the scenario posited by the Independent, hostage taking Iran is simply an innocent victim who has struck back only after unreasonable provocation by a bellicose and reckless U.S. It’s dangerous and utter nonsense.

The Independent claims that Iran’s kidnapping of 15 sailors and marines was a response to an unjustified U.S. provocation - a “botched” raid it claims was aimed at securing two high ranking Iranians, the head of intelligence for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and the deputy head of Iran’s National Security Council. The Independent tells us that these officials were openly in Iraq for meetings with Kurdish leaders on “bilateral security issues.”

As the Independent describes it, the alleged U.S. attempt to secure these two men has “provoked a dangerous escalation.” Moreover, the Independent asserts that the raid was unjustified, describing it as the moral equivalent of “Iran . . . kidnap[ing] the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighboring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.” The raid ultimately netted five people the Independent describes as “junior liaison agents,” but not the two senior Iranian officials supposedly targeted.

The premise that Iran is an innocent victim that the U.S. should be leaving Iran alone is ridiculous. The Independent is either wholly ignoring the larger picture surrounding Iranian actions, or they have they been asleep for a few years and need to catch up on current events. There is precious little of anything innocent about Iranian involvement in Iraq. Nor is there anything innocent about Iran’s surge towards acquiring nuclear weapons. By ignoring these, the Independent distorts reality and engages in a suicidal game of moral equivalence.

As to Iran’s involvement in Iraq, there is no question of the theocracy’s complicity in the death and mayhem going on inside the country. For example, see here and here. And that mayhem is not just aimed at Americans and Sunnis – and Shias for that matter, it’s taking the lives of British soldiers in Basra also. See here.

Such acts are a provocation to the US and UK -- a real one, involving blood and brain matter splattering across streets, limbs lost, and hearts taking their final beat. In various forms, it has been going on since 2003. And the instruments of that bloodshed are the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Quds Force operating inside Iraq. Such provocation demands an adequate response. It justifies not only covert action against Iranian interests, but also overt actions if the U.S. or U.K. were inclined to take it.

Two, there is nothing innocent about Iran and the pending nuclear crisis they are imposing on the world. How dangerous is a nuclear armed Iranian theocracy? No less then the preeminent scholar of Middle Eastern history and culture, Bernard Lewis, spoke to the world on this issue some months ago:

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

See here. Then today there was this assessment from the brilliant scholar, Thomas Sowell:

Once Iran has nuclear weapons, that will be an irreversible change that will mark a defining moment in the history of the United States and of Western civilization, which will forever after live at the mercy of hate-filled suicidal fanatics and sadists.

See here. The threat posed by a nuclear armed Khomeinist theocracy is palpable and existential. George Bush has promised to meet it. He has flatly stated that he will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. I trust he has said what he means. Indeed, even Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have made noises indicating that they would take military action to stop Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.

Everyday, we inch closer to open warfare with Iran as they refuse to give up their quest for a nuclear weapon. Iran has not responded to years of European diplomacy. Nor has the theocracy responded to sanctions. Quite the opposite, they have increased the speed of their nuclear program. If Iran is going to be made to stop, the mullahs must understand the price to be paid to continue on their current path will be be real and it will be severe.

Doing absolutely nothing beyond diplomacy and tepid sanctions leaves Iran’s theocrats with a belief that the West is a eunuch. And indeed, as any student of the Iranian Revolution knows, that is a cherished belief among the mullahs. One of Ayatollah Khomeni’s favored expressions was that the West “can’t do a damned thing.” Unfortunately for the world, Jimmy Carter was President when Khoemeni popularized that phrase. Interestingly, the U.S. hostages were released the day Ronald Regan was inaugurated as President. I have no doubt that there were limits to how far Khomeini was willing to test his thesis – and Regan’s inauguration as President marked one of those clear limits.

The only way we will stop Iran’s nuclear program short of open war is to make Iran’s mullahs understand that we are able and willing to engage Iran. As long as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei feels safe and secure, Iran will not turn from its path of murderous complicity in Iraq and the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Thus, unless we want open war in the very near future, we have to aggressively engage Iran on the margins and make them feel the pain. Put another way, in the larger context that takes into account Iranian direct support for warfare targeting the US and Britain inside Iraq, as well as the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons, the U.S. raids on Iranian high value targets are not only wholly warranted, they are a necessity born of self-defense.

But all of that is mere context, for having now justified covert actions against Iran, such as targeting their senior officials in Iraq, it matters not to the instant case as the Independent provides no reasonable proof that the "botched" raid happened as they allege. The sole proof the Independent offers to establish that U.S. troops were targeting the two senior Iranian official is a bald assertion by the Chief of Staff to the governor of Kurdistan Regional Government. It is more then curious that the Independent should fail to tell us how he acquired his knowledge or give us any other indicia of the reliability of his statement. Certainly the Independent would have included anything that might have buttressed his assertion. Since I seriously doubt the Kurdish staff official was included in the planning of the raid, we can safely assume that he is not stating first hand information. In other words, it is apparent that this “source” is speculating or repeating speculation as to the target of the U.S. raid in question.

Moreover, as a logical matter, I have a lot of trouble believing that the U.S. could have “botched” a raid targeting the two senior Iranian officials given the scenario painted by the Independent. The target location of the raid was in a secure area regularly trafficked by Kurds. The two Iranian officials were operating in the open. In such circumstance, it is more then difficult to believe that the U.S. would pull the trigger on a raid by its Special Forces when the alleged subjects of the assault were not present at the target location. Raids such as this are not spur of the moment operations. With the two officials making no attempt to conceal their presence, they would have been easy to track, and the raid would not have commenced until intelligence confirmed the location of the two men. In short, there is no alternative reason to support the Independent's claim that the raid was actually targeting the two senior Iranian officials.

Further, the Independent takes some cheap shots at the U.S. regarding the five Iranians seized during the raid, surmising that they were cleary inocent diplomatic staff:

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

Neither you, I, nor the author of this piece has any clue what intelligence the U.S. was operating on when it took these five Iranians into custody. But that does not stop the Independent. Let me ask, if you wished to set up a headquarters for a covert network, do you want it at a location crawling with US and British forces, or would you prefer an area that is easily accessible, in reasonable proximity, and with far less security roaming about? The Independent’s speculation based on just geographical location is nonsensical.

Next, the Independent speculates as to Ali Khamenei’s motivation in taking the 15 sailors and marines as hostages. The author gives not one shred of evidence for his assertion that the taking of the 15 hostages was a strike in retaliation for the “botched” raid. The fact that IRNA portrayed the U.S. raid as targeting the two senior officials tells us nothing. There is more then one reason to take the fifteen sailors and marines hostage that make more sense then simple revenge for a “botched” mission by the U.S.

One, the kidnapping fell on the eve of a Security Council vote to impose more sanctions on Iran for their failure to halt their nuclear program. That seems too fortuitous to be coincidental. Thus, it is conceivable that this kidnapping is meant to slow the pace of pressure being brought to bear on Iran over the nuclear program.

Two, given that the UK was targeted and not the US, it is quite possible that Iran is attempting to drive a wedge in the alliance between the US and the UK. If so, then the Independent is doing the work for Ahmedinejad and company by writing articles such as this one today, blaming the US for the kidnapping – not Iran.

Lastly, the Middle Eastern scholar and terrorism expert Walid Phares has written that the kidnapping is most likely a gambit by Khamenei to draw a limited military response, and that the kidnapping is directed squarely at quelling internal dissent in Iran that threatens the theocracy. See here.

I could go on here, but, what it boils down to that nothing in this article by the Independent blaming the US for the Iranian kidnapping withstands even minimal scrutiny. In sum, this is a hit piece that blames the U.S. for the an abominable act by the thuggish Iranian theocracy. And this is certainly not the mullahs first act of kidnapping. Actually, kidnapping is a well established part of Iranian foreign policy. Iran has been involved in kidnapping over 1,000 people since the mullahs came to power in 1979. But I digress.

Is the U.S. targeting Iranians in Iraq and elsewhere? I certainly hope so. Does that make the U.S. morally guilty for any Iranian retaliatory act? The answer is yes only if you are an apologist for Iran, or so steeped in the doctrine of moral equivalence that you cannot see a difference between Iran and the U.S. If so, please see the differences here. At any rate, I am not sure which of the two categories the Independent fits into, but it is at least one of them.

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