US threatens to cut funding for Iraq's police -NYT
30 Sep 2006 07:37:52 GMT

More NEW YORK, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The United States may cut off funding for Iraq's police because of its failure to punish people responsible for torture, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said in an interview published on Saturday.

Zalmay Khalilzad told the New York Times that Washington has yet to formally notify Baghdad that funding may be cut, but officials are reviewing programmes because of a U.S. law that forbids funding armies or police that violate human rights.

Khalilzad said he still had faith in Iraq's new Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, who oversees the police, and hoped he would punish those responsible for torture to avoid sanctions under the law, named for Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy.

"There is a Leahy Law that affects support if the terms of the law are not observed and implemented, and he has assured us that he will do so," Khalilzad said. "And we are still in discussions with him."

The United Nations said in a report earlier this month that torture was rampant in Iraqi detention centres and in the widespread sectarian killings seen across the country, based on the signs of abuse on victims' bodies.

The world body has demanded punishment of police responsible for abuse in Iraq after U.S. and Iraqi inspectors uncovered evidence in May of systematic torture at a prison known as Site 4, run by the Interior Ministry's national police.

Some 1,400 inmates were kept at the site. No Iraqi officials have been arrested. Khalilzad said Bolani was waiting for written assurances that indictments had been handed down.

more

Congress Heads Off Permanent Iraq Bases
From Reuters
September 30, 2006

WASHINGTON — Congress on Friday moved to block the Bush administration from building permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq or controlling the country's oil sector, as it approved $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Democrats and many Republicans say the Iraqi insurgency has been fueled by perceptions that the United States has ambitions for a permanent presence in the country.

ADVERTISEMENT
The administration has downplayed prospects for permanent bases in Iraq, but lawmakers have called on President Bush to make a definitive statement that the U.S. has no such plans.

U.S. officials have predicted a lengthy American military presence in Iraq.

The restrictions were included in a record-high $447-billion military funding bill. The Senate unanimously passed the bill, sending it to Bush for his signature. The House passed it earlier in the week, 394-22.

Bush had complained that the bill's funding fell short of his request. But he issued a statement saying he would sign it.

more

October 1 | BAQUBA, Iraq

AFP - Iraqi military forces have defeated what they called an attempt to create a breakaway Sunni religious territory in Iraq's eastern Diyala province, an army spokesman said yesterday.

"We foiled an attempt to establish an emirate in Diyala," said Brigadier General Shakr Al Kaabi of the Iraqi Army's Fifth Division on the second day of a wide-ranging operation sweeping through the provincial seat of Baquba. He added that according to their intelligence, this "emirate" – a term which can mean an independent state under a religious leader – was to have been announced at the end of Ramadan.

"Inside the Al Aqsa mosque we found leaflets calling for the forcible displacement of Shi’ites and promoting sectarian strife," Kaabi said, adding that they also found explosives tucked inside a coffin hidden in the mosque.
more at link

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

by jorndorff

Sat Sep 30, 2006 at 09:18:04 PM PDT

Newly-disclosed e-mails from the Minority Chair of the House Government Reform Committee Henry Waxman provide new areas of insight into Jack Abramoff's closeness to the Bush administration. Most shocking of all (at least of those I've been able to read so far) is that Abramoff off-handedly mentions "the upcoming war in Iraq." The date--March, 2002.

The following is available in doc dump two, page 26:

From: Jack Abramoff
To: 'octagon1'
Monday, March 18, 2002 8:31 AM
Subject: RE: Sunday
I was sitting yesterday with Karl Rove, Bush's top advisor, at the NCAA basketball game, discussing Israel when this email came in. I showed it to him. It seems that the President was very sad to have to come out negatively regarding Israel, but that they needed to mollify the Arabs for the upcoming war on Iraq. That did not seem to work anyway. Bush seems to love Sharon and Israel, and thinks Arabfat, is nothing but a liar. I thought I'd pass that on.

Here's what the president said just days earlier regarding Israel's heavy-handed military response:

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, it is important to create conditions for peace in the Middle East. It's important for both sides to work hard to create the conditions of a potential settlement. Now, our government has provided a security plan that has been agreed to by both the Israelis and the Palestinians called the Tenet plan. And George Mitchell did good work providing a pathway for a political settlement, once conditions warranted.
Frankly, it's not helpful what the Israelis have recently done in order to create conditions for peace. I understand someone trying to defend themselves and to fight terror. But the recent actions aren't helpful. And so Zinni's job is to go over there and work to get conditions such that we can get into Tenet. And he's got a lot of work to do. But I didn't think he could make progress, I wouldn't have asked him to go.

During the announcement of the Zinni mission, I said there was -- we had a lot of phone conversations with people in the Middle East which led us to believe that there is a chance to create -- to get into Tenet, or at least create the conditions to get into Tenet. And I've taken that chance, and it's the right course of action at this point, Steve.

To provide some context to the date March 18, 2002: Most importantly, this is seven months before Congress authorized the president to go war. I give you this internal background of what the administation was up to with the unstated immensity that the Bush administration was at the time publically denying any resolved intention of invading Iraq. Indeed, it remained quite vocally non-committed for many months after the Abramoff e-mail and the Downing Street Memos had been written.

(...)

This (somewhat suspect as psych ops)info had been buzzing around for some time but not as specifically as here and at WaPo ...though now it's somewhat beside the point

Bassem Mroue | Cairo | October 2

AP - A top al-Qaida official warned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi six months before he was killed by a U.S. airstrike that he would be removed as the terror group's head in Iraq if he did not consult with the group's leadership on major issues.

An al-Qaida leader named ``Atiyah'' cautioned al-Zarqawi in an 11-page letter against the war he had declared on Shiite Muslims.

The letter also criticized attacks the Iraqi branch had carried out in neighboring countries an apparent reference to last year's triple suicide attacks on hotels in the Jordanian capital of Amman that killed dozens.

``Anyone who commits tyranny and aggression upon the people and causes corruption within the land and drives people away from us and our faith and our jihad and from the religion and the message that we carry, then he must be taken to task,'' Atiyah wrote, saying he was in the northwest Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan.

``We must direct him to what is right, just, and for the best. Otherwise, we would have to push him aside and keep him away from the sphere of influence and replace him and so forth,'' he wrote.

more at link

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

PM admits pleading for intelligence on Iraq war

Phillip Coorey Chief Political Correspondent
October 4, 2006

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has acknowledged he was forced to appeal personally to the US President, George Bush, for access to top-level intelligence on Iraq.

The Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward writes in his new book, State of Denial, that Mr Howard and his British counterpart, Tony Blair, made repeated representations to Mr Bush before the highly classified intelligence was forthcoming as promised.

But access was not granted until last year, two years after the war began and a year after Mr Howard first appealed to his friend and ally.

Mr Howard said yesterday he was not very happy with the delay, "and that's why I intervened".

"I am now advised that the flows are occurring that were meant to occur."

He rationalised the situation by noting how various US agencies, such as the Pentagon, zealously protect their information.

"There is always a degree of inter-agency jealousy about anybody having access to these things, even very close allies, and it did take a lot of pushing. You know what the system is like," he said.

"These agencies in Washington tend to operate as laws unto themselves and even the President doesn't always get what he wants straight away. But it has been, I'm told, now fully resolved."

Mr Howard said he told Mr Bush that his commitment that the intelligence would be passed on "had to be delivered"."And then, when it didn't happen immediately I expressed my concern, and it has now happened."

A spokesman for the Labor leader, Kim Beazley, said even without the US sharing the intelligence, there was enough available from the outset to indicate Mr Howard was committing Australians to the wrong war.

more

alt.muslim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So far there are two plans for Iraq: staying the course and scheduling an early withdrawal. In my opinion, neither plan truly safeguard's America's security.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Muqtedar Khan, October 2, 2006

SNIP....

So far there are two plans for Iraq on the table: the President's plan to stay the course, and the demand by some Democrats such as Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, to schedule an early withdrawal. In my opinion, neither plan truly safeguard's America's security interests.

While invading Iraq was wrong on many levels, withdrawing from Iraq will not solve the problem; on the contrary it will only only compound the dilemma. A precipitous American departure will lead to a full-blown civil war with more bloodshed in Iraq, which will destabilize the Middle East and undermine oil supplies. It will also embolden the radical forces in the region, who will interpret US retreat as a US defeat. It will inspire them to do more and will attract more recruits, garner more support and perhaps launch more ambitious projects in the region and elsewhere.

In the long run, a failed state in Iraq may very well enable the emergence of territorial pockets under radical control that could become bases for Al Qaeda and its mimics that could threaten US interests across the region and also subvert European security more aggressively. These groups also bring death, destruction, and destabilization to Muslim societies wherever they operate from. Clearly, it is in nobody's interests to see radicalism thrive in the Muslim World.

The US cannot stay the failed course in Iraq, it's a travesty, and it cannot withdraw immediately. Both will lead to catastrophe, only on a different time table. We desperately need a third way.

The key problem in Iraq is really the inability of the US to put more boots on the ground to patrol every street and every nook and corner in Baghdad. Security in Baghdad is the first step to peace and stability in Iraq. Also the visibility of US occupation incites more anger and violence and also to some extent justifies the insurgency. The US can perhaps diffuse problem by "Muslimizing" the occupation of Iraq, by demanding key Arab and Muslim allies to provide the necessary additional troops.

This year alone, we will be paying Egypt $1.8 billion in military and economic aid, Jordan $468 million in economic and security aid, Pakistan $370 million in military assistance, and Indonesia $75 million in military and economic aid. Why can't these countries provide 50,000 troops collectively to patrol Baghdad and save Muslim lives? How can the Muslim world simply stand by and watch a Muslim nation implode without stepping forward to help?

Perhaps US bravado and ascendant unilateralism has kept them away until now. But everyone can now see how desperate things are. The US desperately needs help and its Muslim friends must be made to come forward. It is time for the US to call in some favors; a quick workshop in humility for the White House staff may help kick start the process.

The failure of the Bush administration to acknowledge that it has committed gross errors in its vision as well as in its strategy and execution of the Iraq invasion, is forcing the American public to choose between a losing strategy and defeat. It is time for the President to be more honest, to acknowledge his mistakes and seek fresh ideas to resolve the crisis.

Muqtedar Khan is assistant Professor at the University of Delaware. He is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.

(courtesy of C&L)

…We're trying to build a democracy; these people are going to have to learn to defend it; they can only do that by failing and dusting themselves off. The irony here that Lowry points out is that that is what the Democrats are saying, "Get out of there and let the Iraqis have this," yet they hate him. Their hate is irrational. It's not based on substance and strategy. Looking at the Woodward book, I have a strategery, folks. I think there's two things we can do in Iraq. Let me run them by you and see what you think. The first thing is that we pull back out of Baghdad, and we position along the Syrian, Jordan and Iranian borders, and we say to the Iraqis:

"We're going to stop anybody coming across these borders. No more help from Iran. No more from Syria. No more from Jordan. Nobody's getting into this country. If we have to, we'll go 20 miles inland in each of these countries to make sure nobody gets through, but this is on you. We will make sure nobody else gets in. Now, you go in there (the Iraqis) and you clear out Baghdad. You do it once and for all, and then we're out." The second strategy is, "You don't want to go for that?" We say to the Iraqis, "All right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to take everybody we got and we're going to bring 'em into Baghdad and we're going to do search-and-destroy and we're going to take out anything that looks like an insurgent and we're going to take out anything that looks like a sympathizer, a terrorist or whatever, we're going to clean this place out — and then it's up to you."

Those are two things that are… Well, they're think pieces. I'm just thinking about this. But they both center on the fact that the Iraqis are going to have to at some point take care of all this. We'll either take care of it in Baghdad for them and we'll clear the place out and leave it up to them, or we'll go back to the borders and we'll make sure nobody is getting in there, and: "You clear out who's there. We'll go to Turkey, wherever we have to go to keep people from getting in, but it's up to you guys to wipe them out." Give them those two options. In either example, it is Shock and Awe of one form or another.

True enough. I'm both in shock and in awe.

Rush Limbaugh loves the sin while still hating the sinner.

British Find No Evidence Of Arms Traffic From Iran
Troops in Southeast Iraq Test U.S. Claim of Aid for Militias

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 4, 2006; A21

ON THE IRAQ-IRAN BORDER -- Since late August, British commandos in the deserts of far southeastern Iraq have been testing one of the most serious charges leveled by the United States against Iran: that Iran is secretly supplying weapons, parts, funding and training for attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

A few hundred British troops living out of nothing more than their cut-down Land Rovers and light armored vehicles have taken to the desert in the start of what British officers said would be months of patrols aimed at finding the illicit weapons trafficking from Iran, or any sign of it.

There's just one thing.

"I suspect there's nothing out there," the commander, Lt. Col. David Labouchere, said last month, speaking at an overnight camp near the border. "And I intend to prove it."

Other senior British military leaders spoke as explicitly in interviews over the previous two months. Britain, whose forces have had responsibility for security in southeastern Iraq since the war began, has found nothing to support the Americans' contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq, several senior military officials said.

"I have not myself seen any evidence -- and I don't think any evidence exists -- of government-supported or instigated" armed support on Iran's part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.

"It's a question of intelligence versus evidence," Labouchere's commander, Brig. James Everard of Britain's 20th Armored Brigade, said last month at his base in the southern region's capital, Basra. "One hears word of mouth, but one has to see it with one's own eyes. These are serious consequences, aren't they?"

They are. Allegations that Iran or its agents are providing military support for Iraqi Shiite Muslim militias and other armed groups is one of the most contentious issues raising tensions between Washington and Tehran. Most gravely, U.S. generals and diplomats accuse Iran of providing infrared triggers for special explosives that are capable of piercing heavy armor.

Evidence of Iranian armed intervention in Iraq is "irrefutable," one U.S. commander in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Michael Barbero, told Pentagon reporters in August. The lead U.S. military spokesman in Iraq renews the allegation almost weekly in Baghdad.

Iraq's remote Maysan province is "a funnel for Iranian munitions," said Wayne White, who led the State Department's Iraq intelligence team during the war and now is an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. White said that in the first year of the occupation a well-placed friend had seen "considerable physical evidence of it, and just about everyone in al-Amarah knew about it." Al-Amarah is the commonly used name of Maysan province.

Here in Maysan, Jasim Alawa Salum, an Iraqi father of 10 whose home is in a warren of thatched farmhouses near the border, agreed. "All troubles come from Iran," he said, bending his head to show a wound from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.

But Maj. Dominic Roberts of the Queen's Dragoons said: "We have found no credible evidence to suggest there is weapons smuggling across the border.

snip
.
.
Ultimately, however, the British can do little more than demonstrate that the borders are closed, Labouchere said. Save for that, he said, they find themselves trying "to prove a negative."

LINK

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iraqi police brigade is being pulled off the streets of Baghdad because of its apparent complicity with death squads, according to a U.S. military spokesman.

The Ministry of Interior announced a recall of the 8th Brigade, 2nd National Police, said U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell.

The brigade was pulled after a brazen kidnapping of 24 people on Sunday. Some Sunnis blamed Shiite death squads and criticized Iraqi security forces.

There is "clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely when, in fact, they were supposed to have been impeding their movement; that perhaps they did not respond as rapidly when reports were made," Caldwell said.

Baghdad bombings reach new high, police suspended
By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Alastair Macdonald
Reuters 04 Oct 2006 20:55:45 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/MAC464273.htm

BAGHDAD, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Bomb attacks in Baghdad have hit an all-time high, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, as one of the capital's frontline police units was pulled off the streets on suspicion of involvement with sectarian death squads.

Thousands of police face criminal vetting and lie detectors as part of a "retraining" process designed to weed out militia killers who have used the cover of their uniforms to kidnap, torture and commit mass murder, U.S. officials have said.

The overnight orders to move the 8th National Police Brigade into barracks and arrest one of its commanders came a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki unveiled a sketchy deal with Sunni leaders and fellow Shi'ites to try to stem violence. But there was still no sign of further talks to provide substance.

U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said the number of car bombs in Baghdad, both detonated and defused, hit their highest level of the year last week and that bombs reported in general were "also at an all-time high".

U.S. and Iraqi forces have mounted a major military operation in the past two months against militants in Baghdad.

For the second time in two days, four U.S. soldiers were killed in a single incident around Baghdad, this time in what appears to have been a substantial skirmish involving mortars or rockets and gunfire to the northwest. It took the death toll in four days of the month to 15 around Baghdad and 22 in total.

Caldwell described it as a "hard week" for U.S. forces, who typically suffer two to three deaths a day on average in Iraq.

Fourteen people were killed and 75 wounded when a car bomb struck a government motorcade in Baghdad. Police said the industry minister, a Kurd, was in the motorcade but aides said no senior officials were in the convoy.

The blast in the Christian Karrada commercial area damaged buildings and left blood and mangled cars in the street.

[...]

more:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/MAC464273.htm

LA Times

The secretary of State says she hopes to help speed Iraqi officials' efforts to craft accords that could damp the raging sectarian strife.

By Paul Richter and Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writers
October 6, 2006

Rice, in Baghdad, Insists That Iraqis Are ‘Making Progress’

.NYT
.
.
.
.
.Ms. Rice met twice with Mr. Maliki on Thursday and praised him for his “excellent leadership of Iraq.”

Yet signs of progress were not much in evidence in the first hours of her visit.

It began inauspiciously when the military transport plane that brought her to Baghdad was forced to circle the city for about 40 minutes because of what a State Department spokesman later said was either mortar fire or rockets at the airport.

On Thursday evening, during her meeting with President Jalal Talabani, the lights went out, forcing Ms. Rice to continue the discussion in the dark. It was a reminder of the city’s erratic — and sometimes nonexistent — electrical service.

She arrived in the midst of an especially bloody few days for American troops. At least 21 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Saturday, most in Baghdad. Two car bombings in the city on Thursday left at least four Iraqi civilians dead.

The extraordinary security precautions for Ms. Rice’s trip here — her first to Iraq in six months, her fifth as secretary of state — were evidence of continuing turmoil in Iraq three years after the American ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Traveling from Israel on Thursday morning, Ms. Rice had to abandon her comfortable official jet at an American air base in Turkey and to board a C-17A cargo plane equipped with antimissile technology for the final, 90-minute leg into Baghdad; that procedure has become routine for all high-ranking Bush administration officials visiting Iraq.

From the airport in Baghdad, Ms. Rice flew by military helicopter to the heavily fortified American-controlled Green Zone, bypassing the dangerous, explosives-strewn airport highway into the city.

Reporters traveling with her were told of the Baghdad trip only hours before departure and were instructed not to share details with anyone, including their editors and families, until she had arrived safely. They were barred from reporting how long she would stay in Iraq until after she had left the country.
.
.
.
.

Kurdistan Region’s autonomy
In the latest of series of high-level visits to the Kurdistan Region, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Erbil yesterday for meetings with the senior leadership of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Rice: Region has special history

Secretary Rice remarked on the improved economic and political situation in the Kurdistan Region. In a later press briefing, she said that the Iraqi constitution gave guarantees to the people of Kurdistan. She said she understood the importance of autonomy in Kurdistan and the Region’s special history, and the need to treat all groups in Iraq fairly. Ms Rice also expressed her appreciation for KRG President Masoud Barzani’s leadership and his participation in the political process. She noted the close historical and cultural ties binding the US with the Kurdistan Region.
//SNIP//

6 Oct 2006
http://web.krg.org/articles/article_detail.asp?LangNr=12&LNNr=28&RNNr=70&ArticleNr=14121

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

New York Times, By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned Thursday that the situation in Iraq was “drifting sideways” and said that the United States should consider a “change of course” if violence did not diminish soon.

The chairman, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, expressed particular concern that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had not moved decisively against sectarian militias.

“In two or three months if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and this level of violence is not under control, I think it’s a responsibility of our government to determine: Is there a change of course we should take?” Senator Warner said.

He did not specify what shift might be necessary in Iraq, but he said that the American military had done what it could to stabilize Iraq and that no policy options should be taken “off the table.” He was speaking at a Capitol Hill news conference after returning from a Middle East trip that included a one-day visit to Baghdad.

U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply
Growing American Role in Staving Off Civil War Leads to Most Wounded Since 2004

By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page A01

The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The sharp increase in American wounded -- with nearly 300 more in the first week of October -- is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S. military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say. Beyond Baghdad, Marines battling Sunni insurgents in Iraq's western province of Anbar last month also suffered their highest number of wounded in action since late 2004.

More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in combat in the Iraq war, and about half have returned to duty. While much media reporting has focused on the more than 2,700 killed, military experts say the number of wounded is a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in armor and medical care today allow many service members to survive who would have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam.

"These days, wounded are a much better measure of the intensity of the operations than killed," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.