Violence in Iraq Claims at Least 159

Sunday November 12, 2006 9:31 PM
AP Photo BAG116
By STEVEN R. HURST
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Shiite prime minister promised Sunday to reshuffle his Cabinet after calling lawmakers disloyal and blaming Sunni Muslims for raging sectarian violence that claimed at least 159 more lives, including 35 men blown apart while waiting to join Iraq's police force.

Among the unusually high number of dead were 50 bodies found behind a regional electrical company in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, and 25 others found scattered throughout the capital. Three U.S. troops were reported killed, as were four British service members.

Also Sunday, the country's Sunni defense minister challenged Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's contention that the U.S. military should quickly pull back into bases and let the Iraqi army take control of security countrywide.

Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi rejected calls by al-Maliki for the U.S. military to speed transfer of security operations throughout the country to the Iraqi army, saying his men still were too poorly equipped and trained to do the job.

``We are working hard to create a real army and we ask our government not to try to move too quickly because of the political pressure it feels. Our technical needs are real and that is very important, if we are to be a real force against insecurity,'' al-Obaidi said.

Al-Maliki wants the Americans confined to bases for him to call on in emergencies, but he boldly predicted his army could crush violence within six months if left alone to do the work.

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Maliki authorizes 'extreme force' against militias
By Alexandra Zavis, Times Staff Writer
12:09 PM PST, November 12, 2006

LA Times - Prime Minister Nouri Maliki scolded lawmakers today at a closed Parliament session for placing sectarian concerns over the national interest, promising sweeping Cabinet changes following complaints that his unity government has been ineffective at containing ongoing violence that killed more than 50 people today.

Maliki later told journalists he has authorized the use of "extreme force" against private militias blamed for surging bloodshed between Iraq's dominant Muslim sects that has lately claimed more lives than the anti-U.S. insurgency.

It was an unusually tough stance from a leader widely criticized for failing to stand up to key members of his governing Shiite coalition, who are backed by militias believed responsible for nightly killing sprees against the Sunni Arab minority driving the insurgency.

The cuffed and tortured bodies of at least 18 more victims of sectarian killings were found across Baghdad in a 24-hour-period ending today, a morgue official said.

Sunni political leaders have threatened to walk out of Maliki's six-month-old government, formed after months of wrangling between the country's main ethnic and religious blocs. There has also been pressure from U.S. officials, who want Maliki to commit to timelines to take the tough political and security decisions needed to contain the violence.

"There cannot be a government and militias together. One of the two should rule," Maliki said in a session today with Iraqi newspaper editors broadcast on national television. "I personally will not be in a government based on militias."

He said militia activity increased in response to terror attacks but said that needed to stop.

"I issued an order to use extreme force against anyone using arms without government's permission," Maliki told journalists.

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Afghan conflict deaths quadruple

There has been a four-fold rise this year in the number of people killed in the conflict in Afghanistan, according to a report on the insurgency.

It suggests that more than 3,700 people have died so far this year - about 1,000 of them civilians.

The report came as Afghan officials said Nato and Afghan troops had killed about 60 Taleban fighters in a six-day operation near the Pakistan border.

The operation, in the eastern province of Paktika, ended on Sunday.

Meanwhile a visiting UN delegation said Afghan leaders face huge challenges five years after the Taleban fell.

Hampering development

The study on the situation in Afghanistan was compiled by the Joint Co-ordinating and Monitoring Board - made up of the Afghan government, its key foreign backers and the UN.

It says more than 3,700 people had been killed since January this year and that the frequency of insurgent or terrorist-related security incidents had now risen four-fold to 600 a month.

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( New York Times )

Democratic leaders in the Senate vowed on Sunday to use their new Congressional majority to press for troop reductions in Iraq within a matter of months, stepping up pressure on the administration just as President Bush is to be interviewed by a bipartisan panel examining future strategy for the war.

The Democrats — the incoming majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada; the incoming Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan; and the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware — said a phased redeployment of troops would be their top priority when the new Congress convenes in January, even before an investigation of the conduct of the war.

“We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months,” Mr. Levin said in an appearance on the ABC News program “This Week.” In a telephone interview later, Mr. Levin added, “The point of this is to signal to the Iraqis that the open-ended commitment is over and that they are going to have to solve their own problems.”
...

( turkishdailynews.com.tr )

As U.S. President George W. Bush's administration faces mounting political pressure to change its failing Iraq strategy, pro-Kurdish analysts here have stepped up efforts to persuade Washington to redeploy U.S. troops in the violence-stricken country to a Kurdish-controlled region in the north.

"There's nothing the United States can do to stop the civil war in Iraq," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and an adviser to Iraqi Kurdish leaders.

Galbraith said the United States should withdraw its forces from the Shiite-controlled south and central areas, including Baghdad -- scene of a mounting sectarian conflict and a Sunni Arab insurgency -- and redeploy them in the "friendly Kurdistan."

"We should pull out of southern Iraq immediately, out of Baghdad fairly quickly ... and redeploy to Kurdistan," he told a panel at the Cato Institute, a think tank here, on Thursday. "I suggest that we redeploy to Kurdistan, we have allies there. We'll be welcomed in Kurdistan."

Galbraith dismissed concerns that a U.S. pullout from southern Iraq would mean full Iranian domination in the greater region. "A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will not increase Iran's influence because we have already turned much of the country over to the Iranians," he said.

He said Iraq effectively was divided irreversibly and that the Kurds would like to exit formally as soon the international situation allowed.

U.S. forces redeployed in "Kurdistan" could be used to strike insurgents in nearby Sunni areas if al-Qaeda sought to create a safe haven there, he said.

Galbraith said that Bush was very popular in northern Iraq for things he was very much disliked elsewhere, particularly in the United States. "Bush screwed up Iraq, and the Kurds love him for that," he said.
...

Many live on just $28 a month
35 police recruits killed in bombings
Nov. 13, 2006
SOLOMON MOORE AND ZAINAB HUSSEIN, SPECIAL TO THE STAR

BAGHDAD—Chivalry compelled Wafa Abd's husband to cross the cordon line.

Qusai Hussein Saidie was driving home from work and discovered U.S. troops had blocked off his neighbourhood during a search for gunmen. But he was worried about Wafa, then seven months pregnant.

more Toronto Star

LA Times
DEMOCRACY IN THE BALANCE

Afghan army could help unify a nation

Afghanistan hopes its nascent force, made up of all ethnic groups, can be a unifying institution. But can it defend the nation without the U.S.?

By David Zucchino
: TIMES STAFF WRITER

November 13, 2006

THE commander of Afghan troops confronting the Taliban here is a career officer with a clipped gray beard and a formal bearing who once fought for a Soviet-backed puppet government. His deputy is his former enemy.

Many of their soldiers fought for or against the Russians, against the Taliban or for various warlords — except those so young they had never picked up a rifle.

From this unwieldy mix, the U.S. military and the Afghan government are attempting to create something Afghanistan has never had: a national army that is made up of all the country's ethnic groups and represents a unified central government.

Five years after the fall of the Taliban government, thousands of well-armed insurgents have reemerged to seize large swaths of southern Afghanistan.

In many districts, warlords, opium dealers and corrupt police help the religious extremists exert authority. Except for their fortified, American-built bases in the south, Afghan army units control virtually no territory, and they depend totally on the Americans for supplies and support.

The continued presence of foreign troops, who repeatedly have killed Afghan civilians by accident, and the U.S.-backed government's failure to improve the quality of life or rein in local warlords angers Afghans, pushing some of them back into the arms of the Taliban.

"People are very upset and disappointed with the government," said Col. Abdul Raziq, a brigade commander in southern Afghanistan.

Officers of the new Afghan army know that the Taliban hold will not be broken until they can establish enough security for the government to provide essential services. Until they do, U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces won't be able to go home.

But with fighting escalating and the Afghan army entirely dependent on the U.S. military, the day when foreign troops can leave seems a long way off.

The army is important for reasons beyond security. Afghanistan has no unifying institutions. The government of President Hamid Karzai controls Kabul but little else. The national police force is notoriously corrupt and, in the hinterlands, often loyal to warlords or opium merchants.

Instilling loyalty to the national government will require changing the nature of Afghanistan. The army is a place to start.

"To the Afghan people, the words 'Afghan national army' are sweet words," said the Afghan commander here, Maj. Gen. Rahmatullah Roufi, 49, whose 205th Corps is responsible for six volatile southern provinces. "They've never had a real national army before, only tribes and militias. There's a hunger for it."

His deputy, Brig. Gen. Khair Mohammed, 50, said officers were willing to forget the past. Mohammed, a trim, energetic man, gestured toward one of his battalion commanders, who drew to attention and saluted.

"He was a communist, and I fought against him," Mohammed said. "But that was the past, and we Afghans don't look back. Now we're all brothers, all Afghans, and that's the way of the future."

Relying on Americans

THE army has been built from scratch since U.S. trainers arrived at the end of more than 20 years of warfare that swept up Roufi, Mohammed and many men of their generation.

It has grown in the last five years to 36,000 trained soldiers and officers, more than halfway to the goal of 70,000 men. The troops enjoy productive relations with 1,200 U.S. and NATO trainers at 85 bases. A few battalions now take the lead during combat operations. Searches of towns and villages are conducted by Afghan soldiers, not American troops.

But the army is still directed and supplied by U.S. and NATO forces. U.S. officers say they plan operations jointly with Afghan commanders, but some Afghan officers say the Americans dictate the scope of operations by controlling supplies, vehicles and air support.

Uniforms, trucks, fuel, food and ammunition are provided by the U.S. Equally important, the Afghans rely on Americans for air support, attack helicopters, artillery and air medical evacuation. And U.S. officers are clearly in command.

Nor do the Afghans control media coverage. U.S. officers blocked Times journalists from being embedded in an Afghan unit, despite approval by Roufi and the Afghan Defense Ministry.

Roufi complained that his authority had been undermined. "It's frustrating to me, and kind of shameful as well," he said.

Afghan privates and generals alike complain that they are sent into battle in ordinary Ford Ranger pickups with no body armor or helmets, while U.S. soldiers wear flak vests and travel in armored Humvees.

Raziq said his military communications equipment was so bad that he relied on his own cellphone.

The Afghans disparage their weapons, generally old and balky AK-47s collected from the private armies of warlords.

"Our enemy's weapons are much more modern than ours," said Roufi, who commands about 7,000 men.

"We fight on the same ground and under the same threat as the Americans and the coalition, but we don't have what we need to operate independently. This has a poor effect on our soldiers' morale," said Gen. Zahir Azemi, the army's chief spokesman.

U.S. soldiers, except when sent out on combat missions, live in air-conditioned barracks with cable TV and Internet access. They eat in modern dining facilities that are more like shopping-mall food courts than mess halls.

By contrast, most Afghan soldiers live in poorly maintained buildings, where some men segregate themselves by ethnicity. In the barracks behind Roufi's headquarters in Kandahar, his men cooked lamb and rice on the floor, next to a laundry drain. In the bathroom, mud smeared the showers, and sinks were clogged with food scraps and garbage.

With their scruffy beards and slender frames, the Afghans appear to lack the fitness and discipline of their U.S. counterparts. Although their Afghan-made uniforms are paid for by the U.S. and similar to the ones worn by American troops, some Afghans are more comfortable wearing slip-on loafers than combat boots. Afghan soldiers also tend to prefer traditional scarves to helmets.

U.S. trainers, while praising Afghans for their courage, complain of lax discipline, petty thefts and poor maintenance of weapons and equipment. The Afghans will often run up hills or charge into caves wearing virtually no armor and without waiting for backup. And while U.S. troops are stoic and focused during combat missions, many Afghans are freewheeling and talkative.

The trainers constantly urge Afghan commanders to discipline their men. They say at least two bases have been abandoned by Afghan units after American trainers were transferred out.

For American troops, the Afghans' blase attitudes toward supply lines, coordinated planning or maintaining effective communications can be maddening.

"These guys fight magnificently. They run to the fight, not away from it," said Col. Michael "Jeff" Petrucci, who is Roufi's counterpart and mentor. "But they cannot sustain operations over a long period."

Lt. Jason Elphick, a U.S. trainer, said Afghan soldiers tended to operate "hour by hour" rather than planning ahead. They work hard in the mornings, he said, but in the afternoon, when U.S. trainers want them to clean and maintain their weapons, "all they want to do is nap."

much more

Danes on trial over Iraq secrets

Frank Grevil got a prison sentence for his intelligence leak
The editor and two reporters from one of Denmark's main newspapers have gone on trial charged with publishing secret intelligence about Iraqi weapons.

In articles published in 2004 they quoted from analysis by a Danish intelligence agent, Frank Grevil.

His report, written before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, concluded that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.

The Berlingske Tidende journalists could go to jail if found guilty.

It is being viewed as a landmark case in Denmark, which is usually an ardent defender of freedom of expression.

An offence of publishing confidential Danish government documents is punishable by fines or up to two years in prison.

Berlingske Tidende's chief editor Niels Lunde went on trial along with reporters Michael Bjerre and Jesper Larsen on Monday. They pleaded not guilty.

Former intelligence officer Major Frank Soeholm Grevil was sentenced last year to four months in jail for leaking the documents to the reporters.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen supported the US-led invasion of Iraq and told parliament he was convinced former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in possession of WMD.

bit more

But he says he's open to `new ideas' after meeting with the Iraq Study Group.
By Paul Richter, LA Times Staff Writer

November 14, 2006

WASHINGTON — President Bush cautioned Monday against holding talks with Syria and Iran and beginning a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, two key proposals gaining support at home and abroad.

But the president said he was open to "new ideas" on his administration's approach to Iraq after meeting with members of the Iraq Study Group, a panel weighing U.S. options there.

Bush's warnings against talks with Syria and Iran came as British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for a Middle East strategy that could involve a "new partnership" with Iran. The Iraq Study Group is also considering whether greater U.S. involvement with Iraq's neighbors could aid the American effort.

Bush discussed Iran at a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and told reporters afterward that any dealings were contingent on Tehran halting its uranium enrichment program.

"If the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them a way forward, and that is for them to verifiably suspend their enrichment activities," Bush said.

He cautioned against proposals for gradual or phased troop reductions in Iraq, which are gaining steam among Democrats, saying that no military option would work unless it recognized "conditions on the ground."

NYT, By ALI ADEEB and JOHN O’NEIL, November 14, 2006

BAGHDAD, Nov. 14 — Several dozen employees of a government research institute were kidnapped here today in a methodical daylight raid that prompted the minister of higher education to berate Parliament and shut the nation’s universities until security improves.

Estimates of the number of kidnapped varied widely, with a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior putting the number at between 30 and 40 and the department of higher education saying anywhere between 70 and 150 men were missing. An interior ministry spokesman said that he did not think the number of vehicles reportedly involved could have carried off both the gunmen and the higher number of victims described by education officials.

Academics have recently become prime targets in the country’s continuing violence, along with members of other professional groups, like doctors and nurses. In the space of week in October, a geology professor who was a member of a Sunni party was gunned down and the dean of Baghdad University’s economics department, a Shiite, was slain along with his family. Such killings have contributed to the growing exodus of highly educated Iraqis described in a United Nations report last month.

Sunnis have long charged that the Shiite-dominated security forces have been responsible for mass abductions and sectarian killings, and American officials in recent weeks have stepped up pressure on Iraq’s Shiite-led government to weed out militia members or those suspected of links to death squads.

Witnesses said today’s raid was carried out by as many as 80 men wearing the commando uniforms of the Interior Ministry forces. But the identity of kidnappers is often hard to pin down, as insurgents and criminal gangs often don counterfeit versions of official uniforms.

Afghans' growing appetite for porn

Scotsman
TERRY FRIEL | IN KANDAHAR

ON THE TV screen, the two naked young women writhe together to the sounds of Hotel California as the occasional crackle of gunfire punctuates the Afghan night.

Several overseas phone numbers offer an intimate chat with the ladies, or with some of their equally outgoing friends.

The heaviest fighting in five years has slowed reconstruction to a crawl in the deserts and oases of Kandahar, where the strict Taleban movement began in 1994, but pornography, opium and illegal alcohol are flourishing, officials say.

At least one satellite operator offers foreign channels such as eurotictv, allsex, 247Sex and transex, along with the God Channel and the Church, Miracle and Hope channels. In a country where converting to Christianity from Islam carries the death penalty, the Christian channels are just as offensive to some as the pornography, although not as popular.

"Pornography is a problem," admits new provincial police chief General Asmatullah Alizai. "According to our Islamic rules and beliefs, people cannot accept this kind of thing. I don't want people to see this kind of film."

Gen Alizai believes pornography, drugs and alcohol, especially in a traditionalist city such as Kandahar, underline the need for president Hamid Karzai's plan to re-establish the Taleban's department for the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue, better known as the religious police.

"We should use any means possible," he says.

Under the Taleban's rule from 1996 to 2001, when its hardline Islamist government was ousted by a US-led coalition, music and film were banned. All women in Afghanistan wear a headscarf or an all-covering burqa and they can be shunned by their community for simply appearing on TV, even with their head covered.

Porn arrived in Kandahar as soon as the Taleban left, but was generally confined to the back rooms of teahouses. Now, it is increasingly there for anyone with the right satellite subscription or a couple of dollars for a video compact disc. So far, only limited attempts have been made to block some providers.

Explicit VCDs smuggled mainly from Pakistan but also from India are on sale on the streets for a few dollars each, but the vendors are secretive and wary. Sellers at the crowded VCD and CD market don't like to discuss the trade.

"They come from Pakistan," says Farid Achmad, firmly insisting that almost all his wares go on to neighbouring Iran to the west. "They are banned. The government would not let you sell anything like this," he says uncomfortably.

Porn's growing popularity and availability comes as the Taleban re-exerts its influence across the country, especially in Kandahar and other southern provinces.

More people are turning to the insurgents, partly out of frustration at the lack of jobs and a non-drugs economy, partly for money and partly because in some areas the Taleban imposes a rough order where the government cannot - complete with their own courts. The Islamist hardliners are also trying to reimpose some of their old strictures, burning schools that admit girls and executing their teachers in front of students.

Rona Trena, 34, the head of Kandahar's provincial women's affairs department, says pornography is a problem, but one that is largely confined to a small number of young men.

"It's not a good habit to have," she says.

"But it's in the shops and some of these young men are watching it. Seeing women like this is not normal."

Lots of articles and video reports from Afganistan and Iraq

http://www.channel4.com/news/video/index.html

( AP )

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey warned Tuesday that allowing
Iraq to split apart would force its neighbors to act and would usher in "an unbelievable new era of darkness."

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was responding to predictions that the current violence could lead to Iraq's dissolution into autonomous Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions.

Turkey strongly opposes any division of Iraq and was determined to prevent it, Gul said.

"God forbid, if Iraq breaks apart in some way, an unbelievable new era of darkness will begin," he said.

Turkey is engaged in a long-running war with Kurdish separatist guerrillas based in northern Iraq. Turkish officials fear the division of Iraq along ethnic and religious lines would lead to creation of a Kurdish state just across the border that could inspire a large-scale revolt in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

Gul, who spoke at a parliamentary budget session, called Kurdish separatism "one of the most important problems and threats in front of Turkey."

Several of Iraq's other neighbors also have an interest in the fate of the nation's ethnic and religious groups.

Iran has a Kurdish population of its own, as well as strong ties to the Shiites of central and southern Iraq. British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said Tuesday Iran had aided Shiite militias, which are blamed for much of the current sectarian violence.

Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim nation, fears the rise of an independent Shiite state in Iraq allied with Iran.

Gul made the comments in advance of a visit to Turkey by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, scheduled for later this week.

US general sees Iraq security trained in 12 months
15 Nov 2006 20:40:38 GMT

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The top U.S. general in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, on Wednesday said it may take less than the year previously thought needed to train Iraqi security forces.

Earlier this year, a general in Iraq said it would take 12 to 18 months to train Iraqis -- a task military officials say must be accomplished before U.S. troops should be withdrawn.

"I believe we can accelerate that," Abizaid said in the military's first appearance on Capitol Hill since American voters, angered by Iraq, drove President George W. Bush's Republicans out of power in the next Congress. "I'm not able to give you precisely what I think but I think it's before 12 months."

News services — The top U.S. commander in the Middle East and Central Asia told Congress yesterday that Gen. Eric Shinseki was correct when he predicted more troops were required to secure Iraq after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power.

He also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the policy of "de-Baathification" of Iraq society introduced in 2003 by then-U.S. proconsul L. Paul Bremer was too severe.

A phased withdrawal of American troops now would unleash more sectarian strife, he said. Instead he advocated a "major change" in strategy that would beef up U.S. military teams training Iraqi forces.

Bolstering the training effort, he said, could require a further increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq — already higher than expected at more than 140,000 — and said no troop cuts are planned.

"Round and round, round we go." - Tupac

Iraq govt orders arrest of top Sunni cleric
16 Nov 2006 21:13:42 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite-led government ordered the arrest of the country's most prominent Sunni cleric on Thursday on suspicion of "supporting terrorism", a move that could raise sectarian tensions further amid mounting violence.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Harith al-Dari, the head of the Muslim Clerics Association, a vocal defender of the once dominant Sunni minority's interests, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, a Shi'ite, told Iraqiya state television.

Shi'ite leaders have been up in arms about Dari this month, accusing him of advocating violence in televised comments that they said appeared to justify al Qaeda attacks in Iraq.

"We are applying the existing anti-terrorism law," Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Kareem Khalaf said.

"We are going to pursue him wherever he is."

Dari is in the Jordanian capital, Amman, his aides said.

The group's spokesman in Amman, Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi, dismissed the warrant: "This measure ... is a reflection of the bankruptcy of this sectarian government," he told Al Jazeera.

"Decisions by this government are not worth much as this government only controls the Green Zone," he said, referring to the U.S.-defended government compound in central Baghdad.

Dari's organisation, formed after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated secular regime by U.S. forces in 2003, groups many of Iraq's Sunni clerical scholars. Dari is outspoken in his criticism of the U.S. occupation and the influence in government of Shi'ite Islamists with ties to non-Arab Iran.

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I had posted elsewhere that following the US mid-term elections, Junior and his shrinking band of true-believers would sign off on a "balls-to-the-wall" all-out assault on either Anbar province or greater Baghdad - including massive air strikes, ground assaults, the lot, in order to achieve another "turning point" before serious withdrawal talks begin. So, here we have The Age (AUS) - via The Guardian - with this story:

US plans final big push in Iraq
Simon Tisdall, London
November 17, 2006

PRESIDENT George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq.

Instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the Administration's internal deliberations.

Mr Bush's refusal to give ground, coming amid growing calls for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive effect on the policy review conducted by the Iraq Study Group.

Although the panel's work is not complete, its recommendations are expected to be built around a four-point "victory strategy" developed by Pentagon officials advising the group.

Point one of the strategy calls for an increase, rather than a decrease, in overall US force levels inside Iraq, possibly by as many as 20,000 soldiers. This figure is far fewer than that called for by Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. But by raising troop levels, Mr Bush will draw a line in the sand and defy Democratic pressure for a swift withdrawal.

The reinforcements will be used to secure Baghdad and enable redeployments of US, coalition and Iraqi forces elsewhere in the country.
...
"You've got to remember, whatever the Democrats say, it's Bush still calling the shots. He believes it's a matter of political will … and he's going to stick with it," a former Administration official said. "He (Bush) is in a state of denial about Iraq. Nobody else is any more. But he is. But he knows he's got less than a year, maybe six months, to make it work. If it fails, I expect the withdrawal process to begin next fall."
GUARDIAN

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/us-plans-final-big-push-in-iraq/2006/11/16/1163266712847.html?page=2

Junior is simply not going to roll over on this one, despite enormous pressure from Poppy's flying squad. This failed individual is quite prepared to shed boatloads more blood (not his, unfortunately!) on both sides of this barbaric conflict in order to satisfy his "political will". McCain has already been out front on the "more troops" trial ballon, the generals have been trying to "stay the course", but what do they know? It is so not about "victory", but about Junior's amour propre...where's Gen. James Mattoon Scott when we really need him?

Washington Post Foreign Service
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Thursday, November 16, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501490_pf.html

BAGHDAD -- While American commanders have suggested that civil war is possible in Iraq, many leaders, experts and ordinary people in Baghdad and around the Middle East say it is already underway, and that the real worry ahead is that the conflict will destroy the flimsy Iraqi state and draw in surrounding countries.

Whether the U.S. military departs Iraq sooner or later, the United States will be hard-pressed to leave behind a country that does not threaten U.S. interests and regional peace, according to U.S. and Arab analysts and political observers.

"We're not talking about just a full-scale civil war. This would be a failed-state situation with fighting among various groups," growing into regional conflict, Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director for the International Crisis Group, said by telephone from Amman, Jordan.

"The war will be over Iraq, over its dead body," Hiltermann said.

"All indications point to a current state of civil war and the disintegration of the Iraqi state," Nawaf Obaid, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an adviser to the Saudi government, said last week at a conference in Washington on U.S.-Arab relations.

As Iraq's neighbors grapple with the various ideas put forward for solving the country's problems, they uniformly shudder at one proposal: dividing Iraq into separate regions for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and then speeding the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

"To envision that you can divide Iraq into three parts is to envision ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian killing on a massive scale," Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said Oct. 30 at a conference in Washington. "Since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited."

"When the ethnic-religious break occurs in one country, it will not fail to occur elsewhere, too," Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Germany's Der Spiegel newsweekly recently. "It would be as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, only much worse. Large wars, small wars -- no one will be able to get a grip on the consequences."

In an analysis published last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Obaid said sectarian conflicts could make Iraq a battleground for the region.

Obaid described widespread interference by Iranian security forces within Iraq. He urged Saudi Arabia, which is building a 560-mile wall on its border with Iraq, to warn Iran "that if these activities are not checked," Saudi Arabia "will be forced to consider a similar overt and covert program of its own."

In Damascus, a Syrian analyst close to the Assad government warned that other countries would intervene if Iraq descended into full-scale civil war. "Iran will get involved, Turkey will get involved, Saudi Arabia, Syria," said the analyst, who spoke on condition he not be identified further.

"Regional war is very much a possibility," said Hiltermann, the analyst for the International Crisis Group. Iraq's neighbors "are hysterical about Iranian strategic advances in the region," he said.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad last month ranked Syria and Iran with al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the country's principal Sunni Arab insurgent groups, in terms of destabilizing influences in Iraq. Despite that assessment, the United States has not held substantive talks with Syria regarding Iraq since 2004 or with Iran since the war began in 2003.

Diplomats and analysts increasingly are urging the Bush administration to reach out to both countries as part of a regional approach to quelling Iraq's troubles. Former secretary of state James A. Baker III, leader of a panel preparing a set of policy recommendations for the Bush administration, already has endorsed the idea of seeking the help of Iran and Syria.

"The thing is, because Iran and Syria both have spoiling power in Iraq, if you could neutralize them," it would ease some of the many pressures within Iraq, Hiltermann said. But he said the two countries may demand a mighty trade-off: for Syria, U.S. help with its biggest stated aim, winning back the Golan Heights from Israel; for Iran, U.S. compromise over its nuclear program.

Hiltermann acknowledged the difficulty. "I'm saying it's required," he said. "I'm not saying it's possible."

In Baghdad's Shiite stronghold of Sadr City late last month, aides to one of the country's leading Shiite clerics held a rally to urge followers to bide their time until the American forces leave the country. The rally was called by followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, a strongly anti-occupation figure whose bloc is a leading partner in the current Shiite-led government and who is one likely claimant to power should the Americans withdraw.

"Will America win?" a speaker in a brown turban demanded before the more than 1,000 protesters, as a brewing storm whirled dirt and trash and pelted ralliers with drops of cold rain. Loudspeakers shot his question back across the square.

The men thrust their fists in the air, shouting their answer out to a grim, gray sky: "No, no! America will not win!"

Between 2 percent and 5 percent of Iraq's 27 million people have been killed, wounded or uprooted since the Americans invaded in 2003, calculates Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

"This is civil war," he said.

Since midsummer, Shiite militias, Sunni insurgent groups, ad-hoc Sunni self-defense groups and tribes have accelerated campaigns of sectarian cleansing that are forcing countless thousands of Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad to seek safety among their own kind.

Whole towns north and south of Baghdad are locked in the same sectarian struggle, among them the central Shiite city of Balad, still under siege by gunmen from surrounding Sunni towns after a bloody spate of sectarian massacres last month.

Even outside the epicenter of sectarian strife in the central region of the country, Shiite factions battle each other in the south, Sunni tribes and factions clash in the west. Across Iraq, the criminal gangs that emerged with the collapse of law and order rule patches of turf as mini-warlords.

Since the war began, 1.6 million Iraqis have sought refuge in neighboring countries; at least 231,530 people have been displaced inside Iraq since February, when Shiite-Sunni violence exploded with the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the northern city of Samarra, according to figures from the United Nations and the U.N.-affiliated International Organization for Migration.

There used to be a time when Sunnis and Shiites "were living like family. We were married to each other, we all had Sunni friends, we all had Shiite friends. It was all like a balloon that exploded," a gaunt, weeping Sunni woman said in her bare apartment.

//SNIP//

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

The handwriting is on the wall: Bush43's insane ego trip invasion of Iraq for God and Oil and Place In History has instead swung the lid of Pandora's Box fully open and all of the deadly fates within have swirled free to destroy. Iraq was at the center of the Middle East and now that center is about to implode and shatter governments and nations in every direction around it.

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

NYT, By David S. Cloud, November 17, 2006

The Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing that reflects the growing demand for American air cover since NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, Air Force officials said.

The intensifying air campaign has focused on southern Afghanistan, where NATO units, primarily from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, as well as American Special Forces have been engaging in the heaviest and most frequent ground combat with Taliban rebels since the invasion five years ago.

The NATO forces are mostly operating without heavy armor or artillery support, and as Taliban resistance has continued, more air support has been used to compensate for the lightness of the units, Air Force officials said. Most of the strikes have come during “close air support” missions, where the bombers patrol the area and respond to calls from ground units in combat rather than performing planned strikes.

On a recent 11-hour mission that included a reporter for The New York Times, a B-1 bomber orbited at 20,000 feet, responding to radio calls from American and Canadian troops who asked the plane to use its radar to watch for insurgent forces and to be prepared to drop bombs.

4:46 AM ET, November 17, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Four American security contractors and their Austrian co-worker were being held hostage Friday after their convoy was hijacked in southern Iraq, their employer said.

Another nine civilians who were traveling with the convoy when it was attacked Thursday near the city of Basra have been released, said an official for Crescent Security Group.

"We have four American security contractors and one Austrian unaccounted for," he said in a telephone interview from Kuwait, where the company is based. "All the civilian truck drivers have been accounted for, a mix of men from countries such as India, Pakistan, the Philippines."

The official refused to say how many vehicles were in the convoy, who hijacked it and how the freed captives were released, saying he didn't want to jeopardize U.S. and British efforts. He declined to be named for personal reasons.

"I'm not sure what the British and U.S. military have put in motion, and I don't want to release too much information in case it compromises whatever they may be doing. But we're working very closely with them to get this resolved," the official said.

U.S. bombing runs increase sharply in Afghanistan

By David S. Cloud
The New York Times
Nov 17

The U.S. Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing that reflects the growing demand for U.S. air cover since NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, air force officials said.

The intensifying air campaign has focused on southern Afghanistan, where NATO units, primarily from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, as well as U.S. Special Forces have been engaging in the heaviest and most frequent ground combat with Taliban rebels since the invasion five years ago.

The NATO forces are mostly operating without heavy armor or artillery support, and as Taliban resistance has continued, more air support has been used to compensate for the lightness of the units, air force officials said. Most of the strikes have come during "close air support" missions, where the bombers patrol the area and respond to calls from ground units in combat rather than performing planned strikes.

On a recent 11-hour mission that included a reporter for The New York Times, a B-1 bomber patrolled at 20,000 feet, or about 6,000 meters, responding to radio calls from U.S. and Canadian troops who asked the plane to use its radar to watch for insurgent forces and to be prepared to drop bombs.

On a separate mission last week, a bomber dropped its entire payload of eight 2,000-pound, or about 900-kilogram, bombs and six 500-pound bombs after ground units called for help, air force officials said.

One B-1 pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Schepper, said that when troops called for airstrikes, "There are times when you can hear the gunfire and RPGs over the radio in the background, and that's when you know you have helped keep them alive." An RPG is a rocket-propelled grenade.

To carry out the increased mission load, the air force's entire complement of B-1 bombers was shifted over the summer from the British air base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to a Middle Eastern airfield closer to Afghanistan. The new basing arrangement shortens the flying time to Afghanistan by two hours, allowing bombers to remain overhead for longer periods between refueling by aerial tankers.

Air force officials said they were prohibited from disclosing the location because of sensitivities by the host country about disclosing the extent of its cooperation with the U.S. military.

more

Islamic militancy could yield world war: U.S. general
Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:44 PM ET

By Scott Malone

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - The top U.S. general in the Middle East said on Friday that if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war.

Army Gen. John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving al Qaeda, to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.

"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said in a speech titled "The Long War," at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston.

more

Pentagon lists new rotations for Iraq

The Army deployments planned for early next year would keep troop levels in the country at about 141,000.

By Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writer
November 18, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Friday identified the active-duty Army brigades that would rotate into Iraq early next year, a deployment that would enable the U.S. military to maintain the current troop level there through the first months of 2007.

Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, has said he expects the troop level to remain at about 141,000 through at least spring.

"This is a normal rotation announcement that should maintain troop strength at its current level," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman.

The units to be deployed are the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy; 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Ft. Riley, Kan.; 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Ft. Lewis, Wash.; 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, Ft. Bragg, N.C.; 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Ft. Benning, Ga.; and Division Headquarters, 3rd Infantry, Ft. Stewart, Ga.

The first phase of the latest rotation will involve 57,000 troops, the Pentagon said, including 20,000 soldiers in combat brigades and 10,000 reservists and 27,000 active-duty troops deployed as parts of smaller units.

The Pentagon also announced that the 218th Brigade Combat Team, a 1,500-soldier unit of the South Carolina Army National Guard, will deploy to Afghanistan to help train the Afghan military and police forces. The Defense Department said 6,200 active-duty and 600 reservists also would deploy to Afghanistan early next year.

Military officials cautioned that the latest list of units headed to Iraq could be altered, especially if the Bush administration endorses a new policy that requires a different level of combat power.

MORE

this is what we expect to rise and protect Iraq?

November 19, 2006
A Captain’s Journey From Hope to Just Getting Her Unit Home
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 18 — Capt. Stephanie A. Bagley and the military police company she commands arrived in Iraq in December 2005 brimming with optimism about taking on one of the most urgent tasks in Iraq: building a new police force.

Now, as the 21st Military Police Company approaches the end of a deployment marked by small victories and enormous disappointments, Captain Bagley is focused on a more modest goal.

“I just want to get everyone home,” she said. In the past several weeks, Captain Bagley, 30, barred her troops from foot patrols in the most violent neighborhoods and eliminated all nonessential travel. “I’m just not willing to lose another soldier,” she said.

The local police force in her region, as in much of Iraq, remains undertrained, poorly equipped and unable to stand up to the rigors of this conflict. It offers little resistance to the relentless Sunni Arab-led insurgency and, in parts, has come under the sway of wily Shiite militias. Casualties are high, morale is low and many police officers do not show up for work.

Captain Bagley, a West Point graduate and the daughter and granddaughter of military policemen, said she has come to realize just how little she and her unit knew when they arrived, and just how much was stacked against their success. The company’s challenges crystallized in a moment late last month during a routine assignment.

Some of her soldiers had gone to the Baya Local Police Station, one of 18 local stations in the troubled southern outskirts of Baghdad where her unit has worked this year. They were picking up a contingent of Iraqi policemen for a daily patrol of Dora, one of the most violent neighborhoods here in the capital.

On these patrols, the Americans, swaddled in Kevlar from head to hips, travel in Humvees and other armored vehicles. The Iraqis, wearing only bulletproof vests, ride in soft-skinned pickup trucks and S.U.V.’s, the only vehicles they have.

The Iraqi policemen begged the Americans not to make them go out. They peeled off their clothes to reveal shrapnel scars from past attacks. They tugged the armored plates from their Kevlar vests and told the Americans they were faulty. They said they had no fuel for their vehicles. They disappeared on indefinite errands elsewhere in the compound. They said they would not patrol if it meant passing a trash pile, a common hiding place for bombs.

The Iraqis eventually gave up and climbed into two S.U.V.’s with shattered windshields and missing side windows, and the joint patrol moved out. One Iraqi officer draped his Kevlar vest from the window of his car door for lateral protection. During a lunch break, the officers tried to sneak away in their cars.

Later in the day, back at her command center on a military base in southern Baghdad, Captain Bagley said the pleading and excuses were common. But she did not blame the Iraqis. They are soft targets for the insurgency, and scores of officers have been wounded or killed in her area during the past year. The police stations’ motor pools are so crowded with ravaged vehicles that they could be taken for salvage yards.

“I’d never want to go out in an Iraqi police truck,” the captain said. “But we still have to convince them. We’ve been given a job to train them.” But she also points out that her orders were to help train and equip a local force to deal with common crime, like theft and murder, not teach infantry skills to wage a counterinsurgency campaign.

Captain Bagley has spent most of her days this year shuttling from station to station, checking on her soldiers and meeting with the Iraqi commanders to discuss their problems over potent, sugary tea. Fresh-faced and fit, her long hair knotted under her helmet and a pistol strapped to her thigh, she has moved through this loud and overwhelmingly male world with a calm, understated authority that the Iraqi commanders have come to depend on.

....

The captain said, “We’re holding their hands so much now.” If the Americans were not involved, she said, some senior commanders would not have the fortitude to confront the militias. “A lot of times I’m just the motivator,” she said. “I’m motivated because I’m going home soon. But what motivates them?”

Days earlier, she recalled, a death squad had killed the family of another of her station commanders. “Yet,” she continued, a tinge of exasperation in her voice, “you’re given the mission to motivate these guys to protect Iraqi citizens.”

...

She decided to focus on developing the top officers, particularly the station commanders. “We realized that if we didn’t have a strong leader, the station won’t work,” she said.

But the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police force, has frequently changed commanders, often citing reasons of incompetence or death threats, sometimes offering no explanation at all. The Al Rashid station has had eight chiefs since it opened in late April. Absentee rates there have soared as high as 75 percent, though the rate had dropped to 25 percent by late last month, in large part because the latest chief was docking the pay of absent officers.

Over the course of the year, as sectarianism spread in the police force, Captain Bagley saw Shiite policemen balk at orders from Sunni shift commanders and Shiite station chiefs clash with their Sunni deputies.

She has also had to confront the creep of militia influence, as militia loyalists within the force used their leverage to avoid punishment or intimidate senior leadership. She intervened after a deputy station commander told her that his commander was being pressured by the militia of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to free several captured militiamen. The men remained in jail.

The job of inspiring her Iraqi and American charges alike has become increasingly difficult as the violence has escalated in Baghdad in recent months.

....

“People from other units will say, ‘You’ve only lost one?’ ” she said, her face tensing in indignation. “Only? We haven’t had it so bad as others, but I can’t minimize Perry’s death.” She paused. “I’m the one who sends them into the market.”

After the death, Captain Bagley started counting the days to the end of the tour and her company’s return to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. She found herself lying awake at night, thinking about how to keep her company alive amid a worsening war. She started micromanaging her soldiers’ movements. She tried to relax in the evenings by hanging out with her lieutenants or reading paperbacks that she describes as “trashy.” But the relief was always fleeting. “I’m in no-sleep mode,” she said.

As the death toll among American troops has risen in Baghdad, and the security plan has faltered, Captain Bagley’s soldiers say they have tried to resist the urge to question the larger American enterprise here, whether it was right or wrong to come to Iraq in the first place, whether and when American troops should leave. They are here to do a job, they say, and are duty-bound to complete it.

But Captain Bagley has asked herself those questions “all the time,” she said. She ponders whether it has all been worth her soldier’s leg or her soldier’s life. She wonders what the American command will do to turn things around.

Loyalty to the armed services is in her blood. Her father served in Vietnam, her grandfather in World War II. She grew up on military bases in the United States and Germany. Her sister is an Army nurse. She has served three other deployments since 1999, and, partly as a result, has two divorces behind her.

Her phone calls with her father sometimes touch on the faltering course of the war. “He asks, ‘Why the heck doesn’t it calm down?’ ” she said. She is at a loss to explain why.

Her discouragement is plain, but she keeps her deepest thoughts private, in part because she wants to protect her soldiers from doubt at this most critical time in their lives. She knows that their job is difficult enough without the suggestion that their sacrifices may have been in vain. “You can’t pass it along to your soldiers,” she said. “You can’t question it. It would lead to the destruction of the company. You got to keep it together.”

The company has done everything it could to help rebuild Iraq, she said, but now they want to go home. “It’s been a very frustrating year,” she said. “We all want to get out of here.”

By QAIS Al-BASHIR, Associated Press Writer
5:13 AM PST, November 19, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide bomber in a minivan lured day laborers to his vehicle with promises of a job Sunday morning then blew it up, killing 22 people and wounding 44 in the mainly Shiite southern city of Hillah, police said.

Attacks by suspected insurgents in other areas of Iraq killed 30 people and wounded 58, raising the country's death toll to 52 by midday Sunday.

In the capital, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem was expected to arrive Sunday, officials said, making him the highest ranking Syrian official to visit since U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Syria and Iraq broke diplomatic relations in 1982, although trade ties have been restored.

The Bush administration is under growing pressure to ask adversaries such as Iran and Syria for help in trying to avoid the collapse of an increasingly violent Iraq.

[...]

"Innocent people were killed. Where is the government?" one Iraqi woman shouted in response to the bombing. "Women and children were killed. God is great, God is great."

The Observer, Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, Sunday November 19, 2006

The US Secretary of State gives a stark warning as London and Washington hunt for a solution to the Middle East's deepening crisis

Iraqis 'don't have a future' if they give in to the sectarian tensions that are tearing apart their society, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a visit to Vietnam yesterday in one of the starkest warnings on the present violent trajectory of the country.

Her comments emerged amid a tranche of bleak prognoses for the region - including one by America's most senior military officer in the Middle East, General John Abizaid, who warned that if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of violent Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war.

The sense of crisis engulfing US and UK policy over Iraq came amid an increasingly desperate search in Washington and London for a meaningful strategy that would prevent the country fragmenting into a catastrophic civil war that neighbours now fear would destabilise the entire region.

In Iran, which has always opposed the presence of US troops in its neighbour, signs of unease have begun to grow since the Democratic victory in Congress in the midterm elections over the wider consequences of a precipitate American withdrawal.