MARK BRUNSWICK AND ZAINEB OBEID | Sep 9

McClatchy News Service - U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of Iraqis killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

Johnson declined to provide an actual number for the U.S. tally of August deaths or for July, when the Baghdad city morgue counted a record 1,855 violent deaths.

Violent deaths for August, a morgue official told McClatchy News Service on Friday, totaled 1,526, a 17.7 percent decline from July and about the same as died violently in June.

The dispute is an important one. With Baghdad violence reaching record levels in July, U.S. commanders warned that the country was tipping toward civil war. They then ordered 8,000 U.S. troops and 3,000 Iraqis to conduct house-by-house searches of Baghdad's neighborhoods in an effort to root out insurgent gunmen and militia death squads in Operation Together Forward.

The program, which began in earnest Aug. 7, included bringing in thousands of American troops from other parts of Iraq in what was seen by many as a last-ditch effort to head off a civil war that many Iraqis say has already begun.

Within weeks of the kickoff of the Baghdad security plan, the U.S. military's top spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, boasted that the murder rate in Baghdad had fallen by 46 percent and attributed most of the fall to the new security sweeps.

On Thursday, Caldwell revised the figures, posting a statement on the website of the Multi-National Force-Iraq that the murder rate had dropped even more -- by 52 percent from July.

That claim was immediately contradicted by the morgue figures, which trickled out in accounts by various news organizations citing unnamed officials.

Johnson said he couldn't comment on morgue figures and declined to release the raw numbers on which Caldwell's claim was based. He said the numbers were classified and that releasing them might help ''our enemy'' adjust its tactics.

''We attempt to strike the right balance, being as open and transparent as possible without providing information that places our troops or Iraqi civilians at undo risk by the enemy adjusting their tactics for greater impact,'' he said, in explaining the decision not to release the figures.

Johnson said the numbers more accurately reflect the impact of Operation Together Forward's mission: targeting operations of shadowy sectarian death squads, who often use drive-by shootings, torture and executions as tactics for terror, rather than suicide bombings or rocket or mortar attacks.

He said the figures quoted by Caldwell reflect a ''cautious optimism'' that the situation is improving in Iraq.

But whether the violence is truly improving is far from clear. The morgue numbers made public this week reflect only deaths in Baghdad, and figures compiled by the Ministry of Health for August violent deaths throughout Iraq won't be released until later this month.

Car bombs daily claim tens of victims, and tit-for-tat exchanges of mortar fire are nightly occurrences. Every morning bodies are discovered, many with their hands and feet bound.

The distinction in the way those people die is lost on victims' relatives, some of whom suggest the true numbers are higher.

''If you want the truth, even when we hear or see the scenes of explosions, assassinations, or number of dead on TV, we don't really care anymore, our feelings are dead,'' said Dhiya Ahmed, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed on Aug. 11. The young man was walking with a friend near his house when gunmen approached and shot them both dead.

''The numbers are not quite true,'' said Ahmed. ``I bet the actual number is much more.''

The family's tragedy has been intense. Last year the victim's father was killed in a similar fashion.

Even while touting the successes, Caldwell on Thursday warned on the coalition website about possible increases in violence from insurgent and terrorist attacks that he said would be used to divert attention from the Baghdad security initiative.

''It should not be a surprise if we witness brief up-ticks in violence in the near future,'' he wrote.

Government leaders seem to be bracing for more bodies.

In Baghdad on Friday, three civilians were killed and three others wounded when a bomb targeting the convoy of the Karrada neighborhood police commander exploded. Three police officers also were wounded.

Police also discovered 14 bodies in a western portion of the city.

Brunswick reports for the Minneapolis Star Tribune; Obeid is a McClatchy special correspondent. McClatchy correspondent Drew Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

FORT EUSTIS, Va. - Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan.

Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure postwar Iraq.

Scheid, who is also the commander of Fort Eustis in Newport News, made his comments in an interview with The Daily Press. He retires in about three weeks.

Scheid's comments are further confirmation of the version of events reported in "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq," the book by New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon and retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor.

In 2001, Scheid was a colonel with the Central Command, the unit that oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast.

On Sept. 10, 2001, he was selected to be the chief of logistics war plans.

On Sept. 11, he said, "life just went to hell."

That day, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of Central Command, told his planners, including Scheid, to "get ready to go to war."

A day or two later, Rumsfeld was "telling us we were going to war in Afghanistan and to start building the war plan. We were going to go fast.

"Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan, Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq."

Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."

Planning was kept very hush-hush in those early days.

"There was only a handful of people, maybe five or six, that were involved with that plan because it had to be kept very, very quiet."

There was already an offensive plan in place for Iraq, Scheid said. And in the beginning, the planners were just expanding on it.

"Whether we were going to execute it, we had no idea," Scheid said.

Eventually other military agencies like the transportation and Army materiel commands had to get involved.

They couldn't just "keep planning this in the dark," Scheid said.

Planning continued to be a challenge.

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like security, stability and reconstruction.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

Even if the people who laid out the initial war plans had fleshed out post-invasion missions, the fighting and insurgent attacks going on today would have been hard to predict, Scheid said.

"We really thought that after the collapse of the regime we were going to do all these humanitarian type things," he said. "We thought this would go pretty fast and we'd be able to get out of there. We really didn't anticipate them to continue to fight the way they did or come back the way they are.

"Now we're going more toward a Civil War. We didn't see that coming."

While Scheid, a soldier since 1977, spoke candidly about the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq, he remains concerned about the U.S. public's view of the troops. He's bothered by the nationwide divide over the war and fearful that patriotism among citizens will continue to decline.

"We're really hurting right now," he said.

Published Sept. 09, 2006

Army official: Rumsfeld forbade talk of postwar

By Stephanie Heinatz

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)
http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060909/NEWS/609090335

David Bier
CADRE Intel Mgr
http://groups.google.com/group/publicintel

"Snort":

Timing his comments about Rumsfeld near retirement is no accident. To be critical of Rumsfeld is career suicide. Detrimental facts thus have to be withheld until Rumsfeld can no longer impact your departure (retirements are approved months ahead of time) without undue political embarrassment.
If you are expecting senior military types to be paragons of virtue in defense of our nation, the "officer and gentlemen" syndrome, think again. You get to be a general by playing the political game and toadying to the boss, not being straight up honest and stating the unpalatable facts.
All in all, three weeks before retirement is just about when a general with a bit of guilt about going along with the Rumsfeld Iraq debacle would come clean about the boss's failures.

Of course, that "snort" comment sort of hints you think he is a closet Democrat timing his attack on the nasty old Republicans rather than a general coming clean about the facts when it is low risk to his retirement pay. The view that this is merely a political attack would be unfortunate, given the large body of empirical evidence already exposed that Rumsfeld prevented post-war occupation planning, even over the strenuous objections of General Powell at State.

David Bier
CADRE Intel Mgr
http://groups.google.com/group/publicintel

Telegraph The notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the centre of fresh abuse allegations just a week after it was handed over to Iraqi authorities, with claims that inmates are being tortured by their new captors.

US soldier Lynndie England was convicted on six charges of abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib
Staff at the jail say the Iraqi authorities have moved dozens of terrorist suspects into Abu Ghraib from the controversial Interior Ministry detention centre in Jadriyah, where United States troops last year discovered 169 prisoners who had been tortured and starved.

An independent witness who went into Abu Ghraib this week told The Sunday Telegraph that screams were coming from the cell blocks housing the terrorist suspects. Prisoners released from the jail this week spoke of routine torture of terrorism suspects and on Wednesday, 27 prisoners were hanged in the first mass execution since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Conditions in the rest of the jail were grim, with an overwhelming stench of excrement, prisoners crammed into cells for all but 20 minutes a day, food rations cut to just rice and water and no air conditioning.

Some of the small number of prisoners who remained in the jail after the Americans left said they had pleaded to go with their departing captors, rather than be left in the hands of Iraqi guards.

LEADERS IN IRAQ DEBATE
"We Can Easily Get Weapons into the Green Zone If We Want"

Baha al-Araji, Baghdad Moqtada-al Sadr nominated me as the Minister of Transportation and I refused this because I had negotiated to establish the government. The problem with security is not a matter of control. We can easily get weapons into the Green Zone if we want. Anyone can. The problem is not one of imposing security. The problem is that the political parties who formed the government imposed their candidates and, as a result, this government is weak and confused and the Iraqi really people hate that. Of course there can be no peace in such circumstances. Before a we can even begin to speak of a government providing service or a government giving security, we must have a government that the people can respect.

I represented the United Iraqi Alliance when the government was established, not only the Sadr trend. There was a committee of seven people who negotiated to establish the new government and I represented the UIA in those negotiations. I asked the committee that he who negotiate to establish the government should not assume any ministerial portfolio because everyone prefers himself for this ministry or that. Unfortunately, 5 of these 7 members assumed power in the ministries despite this request.

Baha al-Araji - received his degree in law from Baghdad University and is currently the Spokesman for the Sadrist Movement. In January 2005, Mr. al-Araji was elected to the Iraqi legislature and served as the Deputy Head of the Constitutional Drafting Committee. In December 2005, he was elected to the Iraqi Council of Representatives as part of the United Iraqi Alliance bloc. He now serves as the Co-Chair of the Legal Committee and as a primary spokesman for the movement led by Moqtada al-Sadr. Members of the Sadrist Movement eschew contact with the Western media. Mr. al-Araji agreed to speak exclusively to OIR.
WaPo

Those of you who live in never-never land won't want to read this Washington Post article (link below). US Marine Intelligence has concluded that the US has lost the war in one-third of Iraq and is helpless to do anything about it.
On September 5 my article was published, "The War Is Lost."
[sig http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09042006.html]
You should have seen the hate mail from Bush worshippers. They wrote that "every decent American" knew we were winning the war and that only a "Bush hater" would "write the opposite of the truth."
Well, I guess US Marine Intelligence is part of the Bush hating crowd.
Delusion still reigns among the Bush regime and its supporters. How many more people are these delusional fools going to get killed for their dirty underhanded reasons to steal Arab oil and exercise hegemony over foreign cultures ?
I bet the Marine intelligence official who sent in the report gets framed and court marshaled for "giving aid and comfort to the enemy," as Cheney accuses war critics of doing. In America today, if you tell the truth you are an "enemy of the state." The neocons have given us an Orwellian state.
Watch the dumbshit Americans vote in November to keep this Orwellian state in power. Or watch the Republicans steal a third election.
Just think about it for a moment. A "cakewalk war" remember? Well, we have squandered a half trillion dollars, our reputation in the world, and taken 25,000 casualties (dead, wounded, and thousands of permanently maimed soldiers every one of whom is worth more than Bush/
Cheney) all for no reason but that our President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and "mainstream press" lied through their teeth. That is the only reason for
this terrible catastrophe, and that does not include the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis who were no threat whatsoever to the US.
This is such terrible shame. It is, indeed, evil. Anyone who votes Republican in November is voting for Satan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001204.html

*****************************************
If this were 1700, they'd be saying: "Since civilization began, slavery has existed. It's human nature." I would have believed it. If 1800: "Women will never vote. They are not born rational". I would have believed it.
2006: Make war irrelevant

September 12, 2006
Grim Outlook Seen in West Iraq Without More Troops and Aid
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 — The political and security situation in western Iraq is grim and will continue to deteriorate unless the region receives a major infusion of aid and a division is sent to reinforce the American troops operating there, according to the senior Marine intelligence officer in Iraq.

The assessment, prepared last month by Col. Peter Devlin at the Marine headquarters in Anbar Province, has been sent to senior military officials in Iraq and at the Pentagon.

While the American military is focused on trying to secure Baghdad and prevent the sectarian strife there from escalating into a civil war, the assessment points to the difficulties in Anbar, a vast Sunni-dominated area of western Iraq where the insurgency is particularly strong. The province includes such restive towns as Ramadi, Haditha and Hit.

Marine commanders have been mounting a campaign to secure the province in the face of a virulent insurgency. But they have had to cope with seriously short-handed Iraqi Army units and a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad that has tended to view the area as a low priority for government spending and programs.

Elements of the assessment were reported Monday in The Washington Post. Military officials familiar with the document disclosed additional material and provided several quotations from the assessment.

One factor that has hampered the American counterinsurgency effort has been the limited number of American troops. As a general rule, a substantial number of troops are required in a counterinsurgency campaign to protect the population from attacks and intimidation by insurgent groups.

There are about 30,000 marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors in Anbar, a region that borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and is roughly the size of Louisiana.

American forces can generally maneuver where they want and are fighting to regain control of Ramadi, the provincial capital, neighborhood by neighborhood. But there are areas of the province where the Americans have not established a persistent presence, the assessment notes.

Without the deployment of an additional division, “there is nothing MNF-W can do to influence the motivation of the Sunni to wage an insurgency,” the report states, according to a military officer familiar with it. MNF-W stands for Multinational Force-West, the formal name of the Marine command. A division numbers about 16,000 troops. The limited number of troops, however, is just one problem in countering the insurgency there, the report notes. The assessment describes Anbar as a region marked by violence and criminality. Except for a few relatively bright spots, such as the towns of Falluja and Qaim, the region generally lacks functional governments and a respect for the rule of law.

Anbar does not have valuable resources like oil. Nor does its Sunni population appear to represent an important constituency for the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Although there is economic growth in relatively secure areas, much of this can be attributed to the American-supported reconstruction effort. The level of economic activity in the province is just a fraction of what it was before 2003, the assessment notes.

Feeling marginalized in the new Iraq, the Sunnis in Anbar have generally lost faith in the new Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. The Sunnis’ “greatest fears have been realized,” the report notes.

The Sunnis’ suspicion of the government makes the task of forging a political reconciliation more difficult, and has also complicated one policy option that some critics of Bush administration’s strategy have proposed as an alternative means of stabilizing Iraq: dividing the country into Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni enclaves. Such a plan would not be welcomed by Sunnis, since they would not trust the central government to share proceeds from oil sales, the assessment notes.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/world/middleeast/12anbar.html?ref=world

Marines Deny Losing Iraq's Biggest Province
Posted: 9/12/2006 7:30:22 AM

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The commander of the U.S. Marine force in Iraq on Tuesday denied his troops had lost control of the vast province they patrol, after newspapers reported his intelligence chief had written a bleak report.

A division led by U.S. Marines has faced some of the highest casualty rates in Iraq patrolling the vast western desert of Anbar, Iraq's biggest province and a center of the Sunni insurgency.

The Washington Post reported that officials who have seen a study by the Marines' top intelligence officer in Iraq say he described the situation in the province as lost. Iraq's Shi'ite-led government holds no sway there and the strongest political movement is the Iraq branch of al Qaeda, it concluded.

The Post said it was the first time a senior U.S. officer had filed such a pessimistic assessment from Iraq, and described it as having had an impact among policymakers in Washington.

But Major General Richard Zilmer, commander of the 2nd Marine Division, said the press reports "fail to accurately capture the entirety and complexity" of the situation in Anbar.

"The classified assessment, which has been referred to in these reports, was intended to focus on the causes of the insurgency. It was not intended to address the positive effects Coalition and Iraqi forces have achieved on the security environment over the past years," he said in a statement.

"In areas where the presence of Iraqi Security Forces is combined with an effective local civil government, we have seen progress made. Not just in the area of security, but in economic development and the establishment of social order and public services," he said.

The statement did not indicate which parts of the province he believed had effective local government. Anbar includes such present and former battlegrounds as Falluja, Ramadi, Haditha and Qaim in the Euphrates valley, sites of some of the heaviest fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

According to the New York Times, the report described Falluja, which the Marines recaptured from insurgents after two major battles in 2004, and Qaim near the Syrian border as comparative bright spots.

The rest of the province "lacks functional governments and a respect for the rule of law," the Times said.

bit more

Pentagon Weighing Report On Anbar
Violence Negated Plan to Pull Troops

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A19

The Pentagon is taking "very seriously" a classified intelligence report concluding that the U.S. military has fought to a stalemate in Iraq's western Anbar province as political conditions also worsen in the "epicenter" of the country's Sunni insurgency, a senior defense official said yesterday.

In congressional testimony on security in Iraq, Pentagon officials also said the rise of "ethno-sectarian violence" has laid the conditions for civil war, aborting plans by U.S. commanders to begin withdrawing U.S. troops. Gaps in the capabilities of Iraqi security forces leave open the prospect that U.S. forces may have to stay in the country for as many as five or more years, they said.

Calling Anbar "a very hot zone on the battlefield," Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric S. Edelman said the secret report on the volatile, strategic province was gaining high-level attention at the Pentagon.

"It is an important report. We've taken it very seriously," Edelman told a panel of the House Government Reform Committee. "This is an operational assessment by one very good intel officer," he said, adding that "a lot of us are looking at it very closely" and are seeking a further assessment on Anbar from top U.S. commanders in Iraq.

The report, first outlined publicly in The Washington Post yesterday, said a shortage of U.S. and Iraqi troops in Anbar and the collapse of local governments have left a vacuum that has been exploited by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. It painted a bleak picture of security prospects in Anbar, a large province bordering Syria and Jordan that includes the troubled cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

"Anbar has been the epicenter of the insurgency," Edelman said, adding that "a purely military solution to any insurgency is not possible." He said the report was a "snapshot" that does not represent the entire country.

Edelman prompted an angry retort from Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) by saying that it would not be "productive" to discuss the classified report on the conflict in Anbar in a public hearing.

"But wouldn't it be of interest to the parents of American soldiers who are being sent to fight, that they would know that a report existed that said that a province was beyond repair and the thing couldn't be won militarily? Wouldn't that be of interest, Mr. Edelman?" Kucinich replied. Edelman explained that he was concerned because "the enemy, you know, is clearly following the discussion."

On overall security in Iraq, lawmakers pressed Edelman and Rear Adm. William D. Sullivan, vice director for strategic plans and policy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on why the growth of Iraq's military and police forces has not yet permitted a reduction in the number of U.S. troops, which increased to 140,000 over the summer.

Iraq expects by December to have completed the training and equipping of 325,000 security forces, including 137,000 military personnel and 188,000 police and other Ministry of Interior forces, Sullivan said. And the U.S. military has turned over 53 of its 100 bases in Iraq to the Iraqi government. But he said the emergence of sectarian violence in addition to the Sunni insurgency has led U.S. commanders to decide "that they cannot afford to draw down our own troop levels while the Iraqis are still building up theirs."

Sullivan conceded that in the longer term, because Iraq's military has been trained and outfitted primarily to fight an insurgency, rather than to defend Iraq against foreign attack, U.S. forces could be required as backup for many years.

more

Top Aide to Sadr Outlines Vision of a U.S.-Free Iraq

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A18

NAJAF, Iraq -- In a shabby but spotless living room in the holy city of Najaf, a top deputy of Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr quietly sketched out his vision of the Iraq to come, after the Americans withdraw.

First, "there will be a civil war," said the aide, Mustafa Yaqoubi, as his three young children wandered in and out of the room. The rising violence and rivalries under the American occupation make a shaking-out all but inevitable once foreign forces go, Yaqoubi said. "I expect it."

"No matter the number of people who would lose their lives, it is better than now," he added. "It would be better than the Americans staying."

When the tumult ends, the Sadr aide said, Iraq's Shiite majority will finally be able to claim its due, long resisted by the Americans -- freedom to usher in a Shiite religious government that Yaqoubi said would be moderate and perhaps comparable in some ways to Iran's. The bespectacled, bearded cleric's mild tone buffered his talk of the blood that would have to be spilled to achieve this goal. No matter when the Americans withdraw, "the first year of transition, it will be worse," Yaqoubi warned. "After that, it will gradually improve."

Yaqoubi speaks as one of two or three longtime intimates of Sadr, the young heir of a revered Shiite clerical family. Sadr's rough-edged, strongly anti-American street movement of poor, largely uneducated Shiites has burgeoned into one of the strongest political and armed forces in Iraq.

When Sadr's father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, was shot to death with two of his sons in 1999, in an assassination blamed on Saddam Hussein, Yaqoubi helped Moqtada al-Sadr, then only 25, keep the family's mosque-based network alive, despite unrelenting pressure from Hussein's intelligence services.

Yaqoubi's arrest by U.S.-led coalition troops, on charges in the brutal stabbing death of a Sadr rival, ignited full-scale street battles between Sadr followers and U.S. forces in April 2004.

Freed in August 2005 after 16 months in prison, Yaqoubi helped preside over a remarkable political transformation that culminated with elections last year that put Sadr in charge of the largest individual bloc in parliament.

While Sadr and his aides, including Yaqoubi, stayed in Iraq throughout the darkest years of Hussein's rule, others among Iraq's current leaders went into exile in London, Tehran or Detroit, returning here only after Hussein's overthrow. Leaders of the other main Shiite religious parties were quick to make accommodation with the U.S.-led occupying forces. Overnight, many of them adopted a life of secondhand splendor in the former palaces and villas of Hussein's regime.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, for example, who leads the Shiite religious party that most nearly matches Sadr's movement in strength, moved into the marbled villa of former Hussein foreign minister Tariq Aziz, who is now in U.S. military custody. Sadr and his aides, in contrast, make their homes in the Shiite neighborhoods of the capital and the Shiite holy cities of the south. Sadr lives in a gleaming, whitewashed concrete mansion behind high walls in Najaf. His top aides there have more modest houses, less freshly painted.

Yaqoubi is considered an intellectual, in the vanguard of Sadr's Shiite movement. In an interview over the course of an afternoon, he outlined his views of an organization that is scarcely known to Americans. His children occasionally came in to interrupt, putting a hand on his knee to whisper a message from the women out of sight in the back of the house.

Despite their ascendancy now, Yaqoubi said, Iraq's Shiites owe no gratitude to the Americans. "The Americans are not saving us from Saddam for the sake of the Iraqi people," he said. "They gave Saddam clearance in the 1990s to strike at the Shia people. It was in their own interest to get rid of Saddam."

According to Yaqoubi, the Americans brought the armed resistance on themselves by staying after the invasion and by ignoring Iraqi protests. For example, he said, tens of thousands rallied this summer in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City to protest the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but the Americans ignored them. "It was the largest rally in the world. But with them, it's useless," he said, referring to U.S. officials. "No one ever reacts, no one responds to these protests."

Ordinary Americans, on some level, must understand the resistance to the foreign forces, he said.

"We believe the American people are not coming from Mars. They see on their televisions how it is here," Yaqoubi said. "They have the same mentality we have. We believe that if the Americans were occupied by another country they would do the same as we are, or even more."

Yaqoubi said the U.S. failure to meet even the simplest security needs of Iraq was to blame for much of the current instability. As a result, he said, "when the Americans pull out, there will be a civil war. They are using that now, as an excuse for staying."

The Sadr deputy spoke confidently and simply of which faction would emerge the winner. "I don't want to use this expression, but you have an expression," he said. " 'Survival of the fittest; the strongest survive'?"

He added, "If there may be other forces to use their strengths, I don't think they have the capability to match us."

Sadr's armed followers are often accused of enforcing strict Islamic codes; commanders of his militia, known as the Mahdi Army, have acknowledged beating up alcohol vendors.

How would a Sadr government look, should the cleric come to full power? "Our main goal, by our nature, we are Islamists," Yaqoubi said. "Our only desire is to obey God. We want the heavenly laws to be applied, in a normal way."

Yaqoubi described a gentler version of Shiite Islamic government. He insisted that Iraq would not model itself on Shiite Persian Iran next door. But he spoke approvingly of Iran in hinting how Iraq might look, saying, "There is freedom of journalism, women can drive, can go without veils."

Many Western analysts say Iran's religious government and its people have learned to coexist. Newspaper editors now tend to self-censor, and women, while often allowing a generous display of hair to show, still wear head coverings.

Asked if Iraq might adopt the same de facto tolerance as Iran, Yaqoubi replied, "Possibly."

Yaqoubi suggested that statistics support his vision for Iraq. Shiites make up at least 60 percent of Iraq's people, he said, and millions of them follow century-old traditions of fealty to the instructions of their religious leaders.

"The Americans wanted elections and wanted democracy," the Sadr aide said. "This is what they wanted."

Special correspondent Naseer Mehdawi in Najaf and correspondent Karl Vick contributed to this report.

WaPo

By Drew Brown
McClatchy Newspapers
Washington DC, September 11

Iraq's political process has sharpened the country's sectarian divisions, polarized relations between its ethnic and religious groups, and weakened its sense of national identity, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

In spite of a sharp increase in Sunni-Shiite violence, however, attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces are still the primary source of bloodshed in Iraq, the report found. It was the latest in a series of recent grim assessments of conditions in Iraq.

But the report was unusual in its sweep, relying on a series of other government studies, some of them previously unpublicized, to touch on issues from violence and politics to electricity production. Published on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the GAO report was downbeat in its conclusions - underscoring how Iraq's deteriorating security situation threatens the Bush administration's goal of a stable and democratic regime in Baghdad.

"Despite coalition efforts and the efforts of the newly formed Iraqi government, insurgents continue to demonstrate the ability to recruit new fighters, supply themselves, and attack coalition security forces," the report says. "The deteriorating conditions threaten continued progress in U.S. and other international efforts to assist Iraq in the political and economic areas."

The report relied on a number of findings made earlier this year by the United Nations, the U.S. State and Defense departments, U.S. intelligence agencies and other sources to reach its conclusions. Unlike the majority of those agencies, the GAO, which reports to Congress, has no responsibility for forming or executing policy in Iraq.

The GAO said Congress must ask several questions as it considers what to do next. Among them:

-What political, economic and security conditions must be achieved before the United States can draw down and withdraw military forces from Iraq?

-Why have security conditions continued to worsen even as Iraq has met political milestones, increased the number of trained and equipped forces, and increasingly assumed the lead for security?

-If existing U.S. political, economic, and security measures are not reducing violence in Iraq, what additional measures, if any, will the administration propose for stemming the violence?

The report, citing the Pentagon, said that enemy attacks against coalition and Iraqi forces increased by 23 percent from 2004 to 2005 and that the number of attacks from January to July 2006 were 57 percent higher than during the same period in 2005.

A graph showed that the number of attacks rose from around 100 in May 2003 to roughly 4,500 in July 2006. More than half of those were against coalition troops; the rest appear to have been split almost evenly between attacks on Iraqi security forces and attacks on civilians.

The report said that electricity production remains inadequate, with Baghdad residents receiving less than six hours of power a day, on average. Residents outside Baghdad received electricity less than 11 hours a day, on average.

Though the Bush administration has hailed each political milestone in Iraq as another step on the march to freedom, the report cited a Defense Intelligence Agency finding that "the December 2005 elections appeared to heighten sectarian tensions and polarize sectarian divides."

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Zilmer: U.S. 'Stifling' Iraq Insurgency

Wednesday September 13, 2006 1:01 AM
AP Photo BAG105
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that U.S.-led military operations are ``stifling'' the insurgency in western Anbar province but are not strong enough to defeat it.

Marine Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer told reporters in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Fallujah that he has enough U.S. troops - about 30,000 - to accomplish what he called his main mission: training Iraqi security forces.

``For what we are trying to achieve out here I think our force levels are about right,'' he said. Even so, he said the training of Iraqi soldiers and police had not progressed as quickly as once expected.

``Now, if that mission statement changes - if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight - then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here,'' he added.

Zilmer, who has commanded U.S. forces in western Iraq since February, said increasing the number of U.S. troops there would help in the short term, ``but at the end of the day I don't think it's going to be the significant change that is necessary to achieve long-term security and stability out here in Anbar.''

What is needed, he said, is progress on the economic and political fronts that will undercut support for the insurgency.

The situation in Anbar, with its heavily Sunni population, is a barometer for the entire Sunni Arab minority, which lost its favored position to the majority Shiites and the Kurds when Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed in 2003.

As long as the insurgency rages, it is unlikely that Sunni Arab politicians in Baghdad can win over significant numbers of Sunnis to support the government of national unity, which took office May 20.

Some areas in Anbar have shown significant progress, such as the border city of Qaim, once an al-Qaida stronghold. Trouble has increased in other areas, like the rural stretch between Ramadi and Fallujah. Insurgent killings of Iraqi police in Fallujah have become commonplace, according to officials there.

Zilmer dismissed a reporter's suggestion that the war in Anbar - a province the size of North Carolina that stretches west from Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia - has been lost.

``I think we are winning this war,'' he said.

In the long run, the war will not be won on the battlefield, Zilmer said. The outcome will be determined by the Iraqis' ability to compromise on their political goals, accommodate their sectarian differences and demonstrate to ordinary people that a democratic central government can serve their needs.

``Until those things change, until those long-term effects are realized, then trying to solve the insurgency out here is going to be problematic,'' he said.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said President Bush would be talking to Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, later this week.

``If the president gets a recommendation from the combatant commanders to send more troops to al-Anbar province, they will get them,'' Snow said.

As of Monday there were 147,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the highest number since December 2005. Most of the recent increase was for Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are trying to avert a civil war.

Pentagon officials hastily arranged the interview with Zilmer in response to a series of news reports about a classified report by the chief of intelligence for the Marines in western Anbar province, Col. Pete Devlin. Zilmer said he agreed with the assessment by Devlin, who works for Zilmer, and he did not dispute news reports that characterized it as depicting Anbar as locked in a military stalemate with inadequate political progress.

The classified report was first reported by the Washington Post.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Devlin report concluded that Anbar's political and security situation will continue to deteriorate unless it gets a major infusion of aid and substantially more U.S. troops.

Zilmer would not discuss specifics of the Devlin report, but said he did not want more U.S. troops as long as his mission did not include defeating the insurgency.

The Devlin assessment was made in mid-August.
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Police Discover 65 Bodies Across Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Police found the bodies of 65 men who had been tortured, shot and dumped, most around Baghdad, while car bombs, mortar attacks and shootings killed at least 30 people around Iraq and injured dozens more.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed, one by an attack in restive Anbar province Monday, and the other Tuesday by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the U.S. military command said.

Police said 60 of the bodies were found overnight around Baghdad, with the majority dumped in predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods, police said. Another five were found floating down the Tigris river in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of the capital.

The bodies were bound, bore signs of torture and had been shot, said police 1st Lt. Thayer. Such killings are usually the work of death squads -- both Sunni Arab and Shiite -- who kidnap people and often torture them with power drills or beat them badly before shooting them.

Forty-five of the victims were discovered in predominantly Sunni Arab parts of western Baghdad, and 15 were found in mostly Shiite areas of eastern Baghdad.

In the capital, a car bomb killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 62 after it detonated in a large square used mostly as a parking lot near the main headquarters of Baghdad's traffic police department, police said. At least two of the dead were traffic police officers.

In eastern Baghdad, a bomb in a parked car exploded next to a passing Iraqi police patrol in the Zayona neighborhood, killing 8 people and wounding 17, police said. At least 3 of the dead and 7 of the wounded were police officers.

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