Possible Iraq Deployments Would Stretch Reserve Force
Leaders Express Concern Over Troop Rotation Plans

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 5, 2006; A01

The Army's National Guard and Reserve are bracing for possible new and accelerated call-ups, spurred by high demand for U.S. troops in Iraq, that leaders caution could undermine the citizen-soldier force as it struggles to rebuild.

Two Army National Guard combat brigades with about 7,000 troops have been identified recently in classified rotational plans for possible special deployment to Iraq, according to senior Army and Pentagon officials, who asked that the specific units not be named. One brigade could be diverted to Iraq next year from another assignment, and the other could be sent there in 2008, a year ahead of schedule.

Next year, the number of Army Guard soldiers providing security in Iraq will surge to more than 6,000 in about 50 companies, compared with 20 companies two years ago, Guard officials said. "We thought we'd see a downturn in operational tempo, but that hasn't happened," said one official.

A more sweeping policy shift is under consideration that would allow the Pentagon to launch a new wave of involuntary mobilizations of the reserves, as a growing proportion of Guard and Reserve soldiers are nearing a 24-month limit on time deployed, they said. Army officials said no decision had been made on the politically sensitive topic but that serious deliberations will unfold in the coming months.

Senior Army leaders have made clear that without a bigger active-duty force, the only way they can maintain the intense pace of rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan is by relying more heavily on the reserves, which make up 52 percent of the Army's total manpower. The Army as a whole is providing the bulk of the forces in today's wars, with about 105,000 soldiers in Iraq and 16,000 in Afghanistan.

Stress on soldiers and their families is mounting as active-duty combat brigades now spend only a year to 14 months home between rotations, compared with a goal of two years -- a trend that Army leaders worry is not sustainable in the long term. Reserve and Guard units are staying home on average three years, compared with a goal of four or five, Army officials said. "It goes without question that Guard brigade combat teams are going to have to deploy again to theater in less time than the . . . model originally called for," said retired Air National Guard Brig. Gen. Stephen M. Koper, president of the National Guard Association.

Yet ordering more citizen-soldiers out of their communities and into war zones imposes a special burden, as reservists are older and more likely to have families and civilian jobs, and must also shoulder the task of responding to homeland disasters and other emergencies.

Army Reserve and Guard leaders say that stepped-up mobilizations -- depending on their timing and scope -- could undercut recent efforts to rebuild the forces, which have suffered a depletion of manpower and equipment and have seen their units fragmented over five years of record deployments since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"What we're working out of right now is a situation where we have absolutely piecemealed our force to death," said Lt. Gen. Clyde A. Vaughn, chief of the 346,000-strong Army National Guard, in an interview last week. "If we continue to piecemeal these things like Swiss cheese, we will not find ourselves able to build complete forces back."

Both the Army Guard and Reserve began the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with their units short tens of thousands of soldiers, or about 15 to 20 percent, and lacking more than 30 percent of their necessary gear. Those shortages have deepened as people and equipment are borrowed from units staying home to fill out those about to go overseas -- a process known as "cross-leveling."

"We've got a lot of internal turmoil," said Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, head of the Army Reserve. Continued, widespread cross-leveling is "causing chaos" in his force of 190,000, he said in an interview and a speech last month. The process of breaking apart units and cobbling together forces from different states goes against the culture of the Reserve and particularly that of the Guard, which prides itself on building hometown teams that fight together.

MORE at WaPo

Bush Says U.S. Pullout Would Let Iraq Radicals Use Oil as a Weapon

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 5, 2006; A06

GREELEY, Colo., Nov. 4 -- During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.

As he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday's elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq. If the United States pulled its troops out prematurely and surrendered the country to insurgents, he warns audiences, it would effectively hand over Iraq's considerable petroleum reserves to terrorists who would use it as a weapon against other countries.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," he said at a rally here Saturday for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.). "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following. And the following would be along the lines of, well, 'Retreat and let us continue to expand our dark vision.' "

Bush said extremists controlling Iraq "would use energy as economic blackmail" and try to pressure the United States to abandon its alliance with Israel. At a stop in Missouri on Friday, he suggested that such radicals would be "able to pull millions of barrels of oil off the market, driving the price up to $300 or $400 a barrel."

Oil is not the only reason Bush offers for staying in Iraq, but his comments on the stump represent another striking evolution of his argument on behalf of the war. The slogan of "no blood for oil" became a rallying cry for antiwar activists prior to the March 2003 invasion and angered administration officials. "There are certain things like that, myths, that are floating around," Rumsfeld told Steve Kroft of CBS Radio in November 2002. "It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil."

more at WaPo

Iraq charges 100 over prison torture
07 Nov 2006 15:19:09 GMT
Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Iraq's Interior Ministry has charged nearly 100 employees, including a police general and other high-ranking officers, with involvement in torturing detainees at a prison in Baghdad known as Site 4.

Police and other forces of Iraq's Shi'ite-led Interior Ministry have long been accused by Sunni Arabs of operating torture centres and dungeons holding Sunni detainees.

The charges, announced by Interior Minister Jawad al Bolani to reporters late on Monday, are believed to be the first of their kind against Interior Ministry employees and come amid mounting U.S. pressure on Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to rein in Shi'ite militias in the police.

Known as Site 4, the eastern Baghdad prison run by the Interior Ministry was found to hold 1,431 detainees, including 37 juveniles, after a joint Iraqi-U.S. inspection in May.

A United Nations report said the prisoners were held in "overcrowded, unsafe and unhealthy conditions" and that detainees suffered "systematic physical and physiological abuse by Ministry of Interior officials".

more

Ron Brynaert
Published: Tuesday November 7, 2006

Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman appeared on at least three networks today to "remind" voters of the "difference" between the two parties when it comes to the war on terror.

Along with references to the Patriot Act, missile defense, and the surveillance program, Mehlman made an unusual remark regarding the current situation in Afghanistan.

"And again, in this war-on-terror issue, I think Americans want their leaders to have learned the lessons of 9/11, which is we need tools like the Patriot Act and the surveillance program, and it will be a big mistake to allow Iraq to become another Afghanistan, which unfortunately, I think, could happen if we followed the approach that Mr. Murtha and others have said," Mehlman said on CBS's Early Show.

NATO forces are currently on the offensive against a revitalized Taliban, and a recent report showed that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's control doesn't extend far beyond Kabul. There have been reports that NATO commanders have been forced to negotiate with Taliban militants, just as neighboring Pakistan has been dealing with pro-Taliban militants in Bajaur.

Many Democrats criticized the Bush Administration for invading Iraq in 2003, while the war in Afghanistan was still ongoing, but the president and his secretary of defense insisted that U.S. troops were more than capable of fighting both wars at once.

(...)

( ... Link ... )

(aka "stop us before we screw the pooch again"? he makes my brain hurt - ES)

Nov 10, 2006

How security guards became killers
By Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

BAGHDAD - The Facilities Protection Service (FPS) created after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has become the principal incubator of death squads in Iraq, senior leaders say.

One of the first decisions that the US occupation authorities and the Iraqi leaders working with them made was that each ministry could establish its own protection force independent of the control

of the ministries of Interior and Defense.

Under Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 27, the FPS was established on April 10, 2003, the day after the fall of Baghdad. This document states: "The FPS may also consist of employees of private security firms who are engaged to perform services for the ministries or governorates through contracts, provided such private security firms and employees are licensed and authorized by the Ministry of Interior."

Globalsecurity.org, a US-based security research group, says: "The Facilities Protection Service works for all ministries and governmental agencies, but its standards are set and enforced by the Ministry of the Interior. It can also be privately hired. The FPS is tasked with the fixed-site protection of ministerial, governmental, or private buildings, facilities and personnel."

The security website adds: "The majority of the FPS staff consists of former service members and former security guards. The FPS will now secure public facilities such as hospitals, banks and power stations within their district. Once trained, the guards work with US military forces protecting critical sites like schools, hospitals and power plants."

General Harith al-Fahad of the former Iraqi army says the FPS turned out to be no such thing. "All the forces formed were actually militias, not organized forces, because they were formed according to rations given to each party in power," he said at a cafe in Baghdad, with explosions echoing in the background.

"Those politicians brought their followers into the so-called security forces. Others took bribes of US$500-$700 from each applicant to be accepted regardless of standard regulations."

When sectarian violence spread across Iraq after the Shi'ite shrine in Samarra was destroyed last February, "The FPS appeared to be the main force that conducted assassinations in Baghdad, and there is evidence that they did it for money."

This seems to continue. US officers training Iraqi police told reporters last week that infiltration of police units by militia members could delay the handover of control of the Iraqi security forces for years.

"How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don't even trust them not to kill our own men?" Captain Alexander Shaw said. Shaw is head of the police transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington, DC-based unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad.

"To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure we're ever going to have police here that are free of the militia influence," he said.

Most of the infiltration is coming from the two large Shi'ite a militias, the Badr Organization that is the armed wing of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the Mehdi Army, the militia of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Shaw said about 70% of the Iraqi police force had been infiltrated, and police officers were too afraid to patrol many areas of the capital.

more

from the November 09, 2006 edition - CSM

Taliban fighters talk tactics - while safe in Pakistan

By Suzanna Koster | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
BALOCHISTAN PROVINCE, PAKISTAN

The 22-year-old doesn't look like the traditional turbaned Taliban commander. His black hair shoots out at all angles from beneath a red cap. He smiles easily and has a neatly trimmed beard.

But Hilal says he is the co-leader of 200 Taliban fighters who operate across the border in Afghanistan. "Two years ago, we only attacked Afghan officials, but now we have so many Talibs that we can attack Americans," he boasts.

In a rare interview with a Western reporter, Hilal and three other Afghan Taliban fighters describe how they slip into Afghanistan, attack NATO and Afghan forces, and return to Pakistan to rest.

"Everybody in the neighborhood knows we are Talibs," says Noman, a 19-year-old fighter with a blue-white block-printed turban. "Paki-stan is a little bit free for us."

The interview was conducted over two days in a small house made of yellow mud in Pakistan's Balochistan Province. The fighters, who won't give their real names, say they are here for a refresher course in Taliban ideology in a Pakistani religious school.

"We are enormously organized," brags Mustafa, a 20-year-old wearing a black turban usually favored by conservative Muslims.

"Even British defense officials say they face a lot of problems from the Taliban."

A year ago, such confident talk from Taliban fighters could have been chalked up to bravado. But with more than 50 suicide attacks in the past six months, resistance by large Taliban units in the increasingly volatile provinces of Kandahar and Helmand in the south, and a greater willingness of Taliban fighters to come out into the open and speak their minds are all indications that the Taliban resurgence is no longer a matter of conjecture.

This year has been a difficult one for the US, coalition, and Afghan forces. With US commanders handing control of the south over to its British, Canadian, Dutch, and other allies in NATO, the Taliban are making the transfer a bloody one. How NATO forces fare in the south could determine whether the democratically elected government of President Hamid Karzai - and indeed, the experiment in Afghan democracy itself - succeeds or fails.

Commander Hilal says that currently 40 of his troops are in Afghanistan fighting, and 160 are "refreshing their ideology" in Pakistan. Hilal says that he discusses military plans by cellphone and satellite phone with higher Taliban commanders who are all in Afghanistan.

Hilal says his fighters operate in groups of 20 to 25 men in the Afghan provinces Ghazni and Zabul. There are 35 groups active in Zabul's capital, Qalat, and 20 to 25 in the rest of by American forces controlled province.

Mustafa, in the black turban, says that the Talibs cross the border alone or in twos. Depending on the crossing point, he says - listing Pakistan border cities of Chaman, Badini, and Torkham - it takes one or two nights to join up with other Taliban fighters, he says. "The majority have Pakistani identity cards, so crossing the border is no problem," he says.

MORE

Little Green Footballs - Crappy Republican site, but picture was too funny!

Carib

Guardian Unlimited, Laura Smith and agencies, Friday November 10, 2006

Former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind has called the timing of the verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial for crimes against humanity "deeply suspect".

Speaking on BBC One's Question Time programme last night, he accused the US government of telling the Iraqi court to delay the verdict to coincide with the midterm elections.

Asked whether he thought the Iraqi dictator should be executed, Sir Malcolm, a strong critic of the Iraq war, said although he was against the death penalty he would not "lose sleep" over his hanging.

But he added: "There is one thing that does make me concerned, however, and that's the timing of the announcement of the verdict.

"I would like to believe that it was a pure coincidence that it was announced the day before the American congressional election. I don't believe it was.

As George Bush digests his electoral defeat, he is forced to examine fresh options to tackle the disastrous consequences of war
Analysis by Anne Penketh, The Independent, 10 November 2006

[Option 1]: Increase troops

Pour in troops to boost the 152,000 US soldiers struggling to quell the insurgency and halt sectarian bloodshed

Pros: US-backed Iraqi government would be comforted in fight against insurgents. Influential Republicans, including Senator John McCain, have called for 20,000 extra troops, with possible military support. Could be a tactical benefit

Cons: Creates more problems than it solves as the US troops are perceived as an occupying force by Iraqis. Move would be deeply unpopular in the US, where the high cost of war - with almost 3,000 dead - has revived memories of the Vietnam quagmire. After the anti war message of the congressional vote, sending more troops would be a reckless gamble

Where they stand?

Bush may agree but Democrats and Britain likely to oppose

Likely Outcome 2/10

Other options discussed:
[Option 2]: Cut and Run, Likely Outcome: 2/10
[Option 3]: Phased withdrawal, Likely Outcome: 9/10
[Option 4]: Stay indefinitely, Likely Outcome: 3/10

The headline says 150,000 Iraqi civilians killed by insurgents. The story says the estimate is based on the number of bodies arriving at Iraq's hospitals each day, and does not identify their killers as insurgents, angry spouses, local gangsters, or military "collateral damage." Other stories, in the past, have mentioned that many dead Iraqis are never delivered to hospitals but quietly buried by families, for Iraq's hospitals are reportedly exceedingly dangerous place. Iraq body count places the civilian death count at around 50,000 while The Lancet (11 Oct, 2006), put the Iraqi civilian deaths caused by Bush's invasion as high as 655,000.

Whatever the case, there is no doubt that America's war in Iraq has been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. "Yet this carnage is systematically ignored or downplayed in the United States, where the media and government portray a war in which there are no civilian deaths, because there are no Iraqi civilians, only insurgents."

Another "Downing Street Memo" sort of thing now forcing its way out of Blair's clenched fist, with a promise of loads more to come:

US was warned of Iraq chaos, says ex-diplomat
By Andy McSmith
Published: 09 November 2006

A former diplomat has revealed that the British mission to the United Nations opposed the policy of regime change in Iraq but was ordered by London to change its position in the lead-up to war.

The disclosure was made to MPs yesterday by Carne Ross, a member of the mission who resigned in protest at the Iraq war. He told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the US government was repeatedly warned by British diplomats that Iraq would fall apart if Saddam Hussein was toppled. But from mid-2002 instructions were received to change that view to fall in with the Bush administration.

Speaking in public for the first time since he left the diplomatic service two years ago, Mr Ross also confirmed suspicions that the Prime Minister made up his mind months before the Iraq invasion in March 2003 that the war was going to happen and British troops would take part. Mr Ross said when he was serving in the embassy in Afghanistan, as early as April 2002, British officials there knew troops were being held back in readiness for the Iraq invasion.

He claimed that when official documents from the Foreign Office are made public, they will prove that the view of British officials, repeatedly conveyed to the Americans, was that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would cause chaos.
...
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1962686.ece

Ross also was warned that divulging this business could mean prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, but said, stuff it, it's been on his conscience for two years and he had to go public.
Also, this, via "Today in Iraq" blog:

New Statesman: IRAQ: THE NEW COVER-UP

A secret first full draft of the Iraq WMD dossier, which shows how Tony Blair persuaded parliament of the case for war, is being concealed by the government. This draft was not written by the intelligence services, as Whitehall claims, but by a Foreign Office spin-doctor. Our political editor, Martin Bright reports

The government is withholding a secret draft of the Iraq WMD dossier that was never disclosed to the Hutton inquiry, the New Statesman can reveal. In a development that will stoke demands for a full parliamentary inquiry into the events that led up to the war, we can confirm that the draft was written not by the intelligence services, which had responsibility for the accuracy of the information contained in the dossier, but by a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office press officer, whose name has previously featured only on the fringes of the controversy over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. It raises the possibility that the dossier originated with the government's spin machine rather than the intelligence services. This secret draft may even turn out to be the foundation of the government's ill-fated presentation of the threat from Saddam's WMD, which Tony Blair used to persuade parliament of the case for war.

The existence of the secret draft has been confirmed by the Foreign Office, but it has refused to release it despite repeated freedom of information requests.
...
http://www.newstatesman.com/200611130062

Blair will be unable eventually to block Parliamentary inquiries into all these allegations, which should embolden Congressional Demos to rocket ahead with like-minded pursuits of the bloody truth, so long hidden or obfuscated by the Rove Machine and Cheney and his operatives. Why wait for historians to pick over the carcass of Iraq 10-15 years from now? Let's put the perps under scrutiny NOW, before they decamp for parts unknown, outside the reach of subpoenas or the ICC.

11/09/06 Coalition fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan through October 2006 (14 KB PDF)

BBC 11/11/06

Many Middle East press commentators view what they dub the "fall" of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as symbolic of the perceived failure of US policy in Iraq as a whole.

Several predict that his resignation will be the first of many members of the Bush administration.

Commentary by Sana' al-Sa'id in Egypt's AL-USBU

Yes, the Bush administration is beginning to fall... The first sign of this fall is the removal of Rumsfeld, the wolf who brought defeat to America. The fall of Rumsfeld heralds the fall of the agenda of the Bush administration in Iraq. Rumsfeld is gone and will not come back. Everybody will remember that he is the man who managed to push his country to the verge of catastrophe.

Commentary by Muhammad Isa al-Sharqawi in Egypt's AL-AHRAM

Rumsfeld's is not the only head that will roll, as the objective of Bush's Roman Empire is crumbling. An emperor, who used democracy as a slogan to seize oilfields, should not be allowed any consolation because of the chaos and violence he created everywhere.

...and much more

A once enviable system lacks doctors, medicine and key equipment. Despite U.S. funding, no cure seems imminent.
By Louise Roug
November 11, 2006

BAGHDAD — Thousands of Iraqis are believed to have died from shortages of medicine, vital equipment and qualified doctors, despite an infusion of nearly half a billion dollars from U.S. coffers into this country's healthcare system, Iraqi officials and American observers say.

Raging sectarian violence as well as theft, corruption and mismanagement have drained health resources and made deliveries of supplies difficult. Exacerbating the crisis, hundreds of doctors have been killed, and thousands have fled Iraq. The child mortality rate, a key indicator of a nation's health, has worsened since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to Iraqi government figures.

In the most sinister reported development, provincial Sunni Muslim doctors charge that Shiite Muslims who control the Health Ministry deliberately withhold medicines and other vital supplies. Privately, some U.S. officials say that hard-line Shiites use the ministry for political and sectarian ends.

This fall, U.S. troops raided the ministry, arresting employees suspected of kidnapping and killing patients at the Medical City Hospital in Baghdad. Afterward, ministry officials severed ties with the Americans and refused to open an $800,000 clinic built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a deprived Sunni neighborhood in the capital.

The clinic has since been opened, but relations are still strained between U.S. military officials and the ministry, which is staffed by Shiites loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr.

Across Iraq, a country whose healthcare was once the envy of the region, many hospitals have neither computers nor meaningful patient files. Functioning X-ray machines and MRI scanners are few and far between.

At one of the busiest hospitals in Baghdad, five people die on average every day because the staff does not have the equipment to treat heart attacks and other commonplace illnesses and injuries, said Husam Abud, a doctor at Yarmouk Hospital. That translates to more than 1,800 preventable deaths a year at that hospital alone.

"Frankly speaking, if we get cases of cancer, we can't treat them," he said. "They'll probably end their days here. We don't have the adequate medication or the adequate equipment, and specialized doctors are not available."

A pharmacist in the town of Taji, north of Baghdad, described a looming "humanitarian catastrophe" as medicine, blood bags, oxygen, anesthetics, vaccines and IV fluid run out. Taji has a hospital, but the surgical room contains little medicine and fewer instruments. In September, doctors there were forced to turn away a pregnant woman who was experiencing labor complications. She died on her way to another hospital.

Already overburdened by large numbers of civilian victims of the civil war, hospitals also are stretched by Iraqi military and police casualties. Because the security forces have no emergency facilities, soldiers take wounded comrades to hospitals for care, often forcing doctors at gunpoint to treat them first, U.S. military officials say.

Healthcare in Iraq once was first rate. Medicine and hospital care were free, doctors well-educated and respected. But neglect by former President Saddam Hussein and years of United Nations sanctions laid waste to the system.

Since 2003, U.S. agencies have spent at least $493 million of Iraqi reconstruction funds on healthcare, but no new hospitals and only a few clinics have been built. With reconstruction funds running out, officials can point to few success stories beyond a child vaccination campaign. Hospitals looted in the first days after the invasion remain decrepit, without vital equipment and supplies. The hospital rehabilitation program has been plagued by cost overruns and complaints of shoddy but expensive work.

more

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: November 12, 2006

BAQUBA, Iraq — It did not take long for Col. Brian D. Jones to begin to have doubts about the new Iraqi commander.

The commander, Brig. Gen. Shakir Hulail Hussein al-Kaabi, was chosen this summer by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to lead the Iraqi Army’s Fifth Division in Diyala Province. Within weeks, General Shakir went to Colonel Jones with a roster of people he wanted to arrest.

On the list were the names of nearly every Sunni Arab sheik and political leader whom American officers had identified as crucial allies in their quest to persuade Sunnis to embrace the political process and turn against the powerful Sunni insurgent groups here.

more
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert