‘Iraq is not Korea,’ former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told an audience in DC Wednesday night. Think Progress

‘Iraq is not Korea,’

former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told an audience in DC Wednesday night.

US presence has engendered stability on the Korean peninsula because “the South Koreans welcomed us,” he said. Following the Korean war, the US was viewed as a force for good, protecting the south from the oppression of the north.

But the US presence in Iraq is “much closer to colonialism, imperialism,” Brzezinski explained. A good majority of Iraqis object to the presence of US troops, viewing them as foreign occupiers. Thus, Brzezinski noted, the US could never hope to sustain an enduring presence unless American leaders resigned themselves to facing enduring resistance.

Moqtada al-Sadr: The man America has in its sights

The US wants to talk to Moqtada al-Sadr. He thinks they want to assassinate him. In this rare interview in Kufa, Iraq, the Shia cleric tells Nizar Latif why

Published: 03 June 2007

Moqtada al-Sadr, the man Washington blames for its failure to gain control in Iraq, has rejected a call to open direct talks with the US military and has accused the Americans of plotting to assassinate him.

The Shia cleric told The Independent on Sunday in an exclusive interview: "The Americans have tried to kill me in the past, but have failed... It is certain that the Americans still want me dead and are still trying to assassinate me.

"I am an Iraqi, I am a Muslim, I am free and I reject all forms of occupation. I want to help the Iraqi people. This is everything the Americans hate."

Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Iraqi Shias, spoke after leading Friday prayers in the Grand Mosque at Kufa, just over 100 miles south of Baghdad. It is one of the four Iraqi cities considered holy in Shia Islam. He always wears a black turban, the traditional symbol of a Shia cleric who can trace his ancestry to the Prophet Mohamed. But for the second time in two weeks, he also wore a white shroud - a symbol of his willingness to be martyred, and his belief that death is close at hand.

The young cleric inherited the aura of his father, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Sadr, who was murdered by Saddam Hussein's regime. He has been a thorn in the side of the Americans since the invasion, with his Mahdi Army - the military wing of Iraq's largest Arab grassroots political movement - having clashed with US and British forces. The movement has been accused of kidnapping five Britons in Baghdad last week, possibly in retaliation for the death of a senior Mahdi commander in Basra at the hands of British forces, but the Sadrists deny involvement.

Mr Sadr resurfaced recently after disappearing - possibly over the border to Iran - when the US began its security "surge" in Baghdad early this year. He ordered his fighters in Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold in the capital, not to resist the operation. Last week the US military said it wanted to open direct, peaceful talks with him, but the cleric told the IoS he rejected the idea.

"There is nothing to talk about," he said angrily. "The Americans are occupiers and thieves, and they must set a timetable to leave this country. We must know that they are leaving, and we must know when." He has reason to be wary of US offers to negotiate. As revealed by The Independent last month, respected Iraqi political figures believe the US army tried to kill or capture Mr Sadr after luring him to peace talks in Najaf in 2004.

"We are fighting the enemy that is greater in strength, but we are in the right," he said. "Even if that means our deaths, we will not stand idly by and suffer from this occupation. Islam exhorts us to die with dignity rather than live in shame."

Mr Sadr did not say how he thought the US planned to kill him. But it is clear his decision to stay out of the public eye for months was prompted by safety fears, amid a crackdown on the Mahdi Army that has seen key figures arrested and killed.

With US, British and Iraqi government forces still conducting operations against the Sadr movement and its army, the cleric warned he was prepared to launch another armed uprising. "The occupiers have tried to provoke us, but I ordered unarmed resistance for the sake of the people," he said. "We have been patient, exercising statesmanship, but if the occupation and oppression continues, we will fight." The Mahdi Army has been relatively quiet, but it is becoming more active in Baghdad, responding to a series of devastating suicide bombings by Sunni extremists.

Mr Sadr, whose rise to become one of the most influential figures in Iraq coincided with the US overthrow of Saddam, said his movement sought to follow the example of Hizbollah, the Shia armed resistance movement in Lebanon. "Hizbollah and the Mahdi Army are two sides of the same coin," he said. "We are together in the same trench against the forces of evil."

He also spoke about a spate of recent fighting between his followers and members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the other major Shia party which has its own armed Badr faction. The clashes sparked fears that the power struggle among Shias will explode into full conflict.

"What happened with the Badr organisation and the Mahdi Army in many parts of Iraq is the result of a sad misunderstanding," he said. "We have held discussions to stop this being repeated."

Mr Sadr has always been a fervent nationalist, and has recently held talks with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who have taken up arms against al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists, while still opposing the US-led occupation. Despite his calls for cross-sectarian unity in Iraq, the Mahdi Army is widely accused of operating death squads responsible for the deaths and ethnic cleansing of thousands of Sunnis and Iraqi Christians.

Mr Sadr also insisted he opposed Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs, referring to tentative talks between the US and Iran. "We reject such interference," he said. "Iraq is a matter for the Iraqis."

Additional reporting by Phil Sands in Damascus

Further browsing: For more on Moqtada al-Sadr, go to Patrick Cockburn's profile at http://tinyurl.com/yus4mj

Seven US soldiers killed, Baghdad attack thwarted
03 Jun 2007 14:34:05 GMT
Source: Reuters
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By Paul Tait

BAGHDAD, June 3 (Reuters) - U.S. Apache helicopters thwarted a rocket attack on Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, the U.S. military said on Sunday, but the number of U.S. casualties rose with seven more soldiers reported killed.

June has begun on the same bloody note that May ended, with nine U.S. soldiers killed in the first two days of the month. A total of 127 died in May, the third worst total for U.S. forces since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

North of the capital, a suicide car bomber attacked a police convoy in volatile Diyala province, killing 10 people in a busy market area and wounding 30 others, the local police chief said.

Gunmen at a fake checkpoint near Diyala's provincial capital of Baquba sprayed two minibuses with bullets, killing five people, police said.

Heavy machinegun fire and explosions boomed across central Baghdad late on Saturday from the direction of Sadr City, a sprawling Shi'ite slum and stronghold of radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's feared Mehdi Army militia.

The U.S. military said on Sunday helicopters had strafed militants preparing to fire rockets into the Green Zone, Baghdad's most secure area which houses the Iraqi parliament, many government ministries and the U.S. embassy.

A Reuters journalist saw an air-to-ground missile fired during Saturday's operation.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, said helicopters opened fire after gunmen were spotted trying to launch 12 rockets at the Green Zone.

"Reports indicate four terrorists were killed and one wounded," he said.

More

"June has begun on the same bloody note that May ended, with nine U.S. soldiers killed in the first two days of the month. A total of 127 died in May, the third worst total for U.S. forces since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003."

Evolving Tactics in Iraq
"The overall percentage of U.S. military fatalities caused by roadside bombs had dipped from more than 60 percent late last year to 35 percent in February. It then rose again to 70.9 percent in May, according to research by the independent Web site casualties.org. Gains in defeating the bombs have not resulted in fewer deaths because the number of bombs -- and the lethality of some types -- have increased, military officials said.

Insurgents are also staging carefully planned, complex ambushes and retaliatory attacks as they target U.S. troops, the officials said. While few in number, these include direct assaults on U.S. military outposts, ambushes in which American troops have been captured, and complex attacks that use multiple weapons to strike more than one U.S. target. For example, attackers will bomb a patrol and then target ground forces or aircraft that come to its aid.

"We are starting to see more sophistication and training in their attacks," said a senior military official in Baghdad. While the vast majority of attacks are still relatively simple and involve a single type of weapon, "clearly the trend is going in the wrong direction," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
(more...and in Comments section)

http://tinyurl.com/2b33wf

Insurgency tactics are evolving faster than US countermeasures, and are trending toward higher fatalities at target, which is putting the Petraeus strategy at greater risk...that is, if one really cares about the casualty reports going forward. Senseless carnage to prove what point again?

Arms Shipments Tracked To Iraqi, Afghan Groups

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 3, 2007; Page A14

Iran has increased arms shipments to both Iraq's Shiite extremists and Afghanistan's Taliban in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to pressure American and other Western troops operating in its two strategic neighbors, according to senior U.S. and European officials.

In Iraq, Iranian 240mm rockets, which have a range of up to 30 miles and could significantly change the battlefield, have been used recently by Shiite extremists against U.S. and British targets in Basra and Baghdad, the officials said. Three of the rockets have targeted U.S. facilities in Baghdad's Green Zone, and one came very close to hitting the U.S. Embassy in the Iraqi capital, according to the U.S. officials

The 240mm rocket is the biggest and longest-range weapon in the hands of Shiite extremist groups, U.S. officials said. Remnants of the rockets bear the markings of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and are dated 2007, those sources said. The Tehran government has supplied the same weapon, known as the Fajr-3, to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia.

In Afghanistan, British forces have intercepted at least two arms shipments from Iran to Afghanistan's Helmand province since late April, the officials said. Such shipments reflect an unlikely liaison between two historic rivals, the Shiite theocrats in Iran and the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan, they said.

Both shipments were carried out after Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly put Iran on notice in mid-April that the United States was aware it was sending arms to the Taliban.

more ...

Attacks Kill 17 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
Dozens Sickened by Gaseous Cloud in Bombing Outside American Base

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 4, 2007; 6:56 AM

BAGHDAD, June 4 -- A car bomb attack outside a major U.S. military base in Iraq discharged a gaseous cloud that sickened dozens of people Sunday, punctuating a flurry of violence that left 16 American soldiers dead during the first three days of June.

A 17th U.S. soldier, Staff Sgt. Juan Campos, died Friday in a military hospital in Texas, according to local news reports there. He had been injured by a roadside bomb near Baghdad in May.

The noxious gas cloud emanated from a bomb that exploded Sunday near the main gate of Forward Operating Base Warhorse, the largest U.S. military facility in Diyala province, a restive territory north of Baghdad. An Iraqi employee on the base said the bomb unleashed chlorine gas. The U.S. military cited an "unconfirmed report of off-color smoke" that caused soldiers to complain of "minor respiratory irritations and watery eyes," according to a statement. Soldiers were rushed to the clinic on base for treatment, but there were no deaths..

"Something made them feel ill," said Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. "What it is specifically, we haven't figured that out yet."

The use of chlorine gas has become a regular weapon in the Sunni insurgent arsenal but rarely has been used against large numbers of American soldiers. The attack typified the difficulties soldiers face in Diyala, the scene of some of the most deadly fighting in the country in the past few months.

About 3,000 additional U.S. soldiers were recently deployed to Diyala to battle a complex mix of Sunni and Shiite militant groups, and the American death toll there has risen steadily in recent weeks. Earlier Sunday in Diyala, a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi police patrol transported prisoners to a station in Balad Ruz, killing 15 people, including 11 police officers, and wounding 35, according to Lt. Mohammed Hakman of the provincial police.

On Sunday, the U.S. military announced that a series of other bombings and shootings, most of them in and around Baghdad, took the lives of 15 soldiers and wounded at least 22 since Friday. The independent website icasualties.org, which tracks U.S. military deaths, said another soldier also had been killed during the that time frame.

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I was reading this post at McClatchy:

May 31, 2007
A Look Through Square Windows

Here they come.

A couple of minutes earlier than usual, I haven't got the car out of the garage yet.

I stand outside, and stare.

I used to be too embarrassed to do that at first, but not any more.

The first Hummer vehicle turns the corner and comes towards me. There are usually four.

As soon as they are close enough I look straight into the vehicle's square windows – straight at the china-doll faces inside.

At first they were too embarrassed to stare back. Then they started staring back – and then mostly ignored me.

I became fascinated with them when they first made it a practice to pass by my door every morning as I drive out my garage – so that it became a matter of "who does it first".

Every time I look, I see young men – so young, some younger than my student daughter – with difficulty I see their faces, old disillusioned expressions on their surprisingly young faces; the baby fat still lingering in some. more at link

One of the comments:

Some of them feel like they want to fix the country they broke in 2003. Most of them are there looking out for each other until they can go home. They all want to go home. Then there are the wounded soldiers in places like Walter Reed who only want to go back to Iraq. They worry about those they left behind. One thing is for sure, like those in Iraq, none of these Americans will ever be the same. We are all changed forever.

Posted by: ljm | May 31, 2007 at 04:03 PM

Again Iran occurs more frequently than Afghanistan in the above stories, even in a week where the Afghan story is probably the hottest it's been for awhile.

I don't know what the policy here is... Piss off and potentially lose your readers by making them follow the link or piss off the copyright holders by doing what the www was designed to do and deep linking... Which ever you do you lose...

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2061099070605.gif

Charles J. Hanley | June 5 | Baghdad

AP - Four years into the war that opened with "shock and awe," U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.

The airpower escalation parallels a nearly four-month-old security crackdown that is bringing 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Baghdad and its surroundings, an urban campaign aimed at restoring order to an area riven with sectarian violence.

It also reflects increased availability of planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.

In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to U.S. Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press.

"Air operations over Iraq have ratcheted up significantly, in the number of sorties, the number of hours (in the air)," said Col. Joe Guastella, air force operations chief for the region. "It has a lot to do with increased pressure on the enemy by MNC-I" - the Multinational Corps-Iraq - "combined with more carriers."

"Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality." - Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Associated Press | June 06, 2007
BAGHDAD - Four years into the war that opened with "shock and awe," U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.

The airpower escalation parallels a nearly four-month-old security crackdown that is bringing 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Baghdad and its surroundings - an urban campaign aimed at restoring order to an area riven with sectarian violence.

It also reflects increased availability of planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.

In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to U.S. Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press.

"Air operations over Iraq have ratcheted up significantly, in the number of sorties, the number of hours (in the air)," said Col. Joe Guastella, Air Force operations chief for the region. "It has a lot to do with increased pressure on the enemy by MNC-I" - the Multinational Corps-Iraq - "combined with more carriers."

The Air Force report did not break down the specific locations in Iraq where bombings have been stepped up. But U.S.-led forces also are locked in new and dangerous fronts against insurgents outside Baghdad in such places as Diyala, a province northeast of the capital.

A second U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on station since February in the Persian Gulf has added some 80 warplanes to the U.S. air arsenal in the region.

At the same time, the number of civilian Iraqi casualties from U.S. airstrikes appears to have risen sharply, according to Iraq Body Count, a London-based, anti-war research group that maintains a database compiling news media reports on Iraqi war deaths.

more ...

the use of helicopter gunships, AC-130s, and fighter jets armed with rockets, cannon, etc., when used in airstrikes against "targets" in heavily populated urban areas can be apparently justified because: "...use of those weapons systems and that ordnance in an urban area would be considered a violation of the laws of war, unless the use was disproportionate. Compared to other air delivered munitions, these are significantly more accurate and have much less potential for collateral casualties.".
And we know this because:
"No, I simply have a better idea of how those...systems work and am not given to the hyperbole most folks fall into. They aren't indirect fire systems, the minimum safe distance as employed is measured in tens of metres rather than hundreds and they don't tend to have payloads that would raise concerns (such as WP)".

Right, well, there you have it, a rather spirited defence of the proposition of "surgical" or "precision" strikes...although I am somewhat vexed when the construct No, I simply have a better idea of how those...systems work is used in argumentation absent any accompanying data. And also, I'm assuming that the preferred euphemism "collateral casualties" refers in fact to "civilian deaths or injuries".
So, to be fair, let's look at some findings from the "hyperbole-based" community, as it were, and see what alternative or contradictory data has been put forth on the consequences of using heavily armed gunships in Iraq, using whatever ordnance the operations called for: cannonfire, machine guns, rockets, GBUs, JDAMs, the lot.

From Iraq Body Count (pdf file), on civilian casualties and causes of death and injury according to type or class of ordnance used, in the 2003-2005 period:
http://reports.iraqbodycount.org/a_dossier_of_civilian_casualties_2003-2005.pdf

From the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report:

October 28, 2004

Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion
Civilian deaths have risen dramatically in Iraq since the country was invaded in March 2003, according to a survey conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Columbia University School of Nursing and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The researchers found that the majority of deaths were attributed to violence, which were primarily the result of military actions by Coalition forces. Most of those killed by Coalition forces were women and children. However, the researchers stressed that they found no evidence of improper conduct by the Coalition soldiers.

The survey is the first countrywide attempt to calculate the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since the war began. The United States military does not keep records on civilian deaths and record keeping by the Iraq Ministry of Health is limited. The study is published in the October 29, 2004, online edition of The Lancet.

“Our findings need to be independently verified with a larger sample group. However, I think our survey demonstrates the importance of collecting civilian casualty information during a war and that it can be done,” said lead author Les Roberts, PhD, an associate with the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies.
...
The researchers compared the mortality rate among civilians in Iraq during the 14.6 months prior to the March 2003 invasion with the 17.8 month period following the invasion. The sample group reported 46 deaths prior to the March 2003 and 142 deaths following the invasion. The results were calculated twice, both with and without information from the city of Falluja. The researchers felt the excessive violence from combat in Falluja could skew the overall mortality rates. Excluding information from Falluja, they estimate that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred. Eighty-four percent of the violent deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery.
...
http://tinyurl.com/23vvmp

From BBC News, on the Lancet study:

Iraq death toll 'soared post-war'
Poor planning, air strikes by coalition forces and a "climate of violence" have led to more than 100,000 extra deaths in Iraq, scientists claim.

A study published by the Lancet says the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the US-led invasion.

Unofficial estimates of civilian deaths had varied from 10,000 to over 37,000.

The Lancet admits the research is based on a small sample - under 1,000 homes - but says the findings are "convincing".

Responding to the Lancet article, a Pentagon spokesman defended coalition action in Iraq.

'Precise fashion'

"This conflict has been prosecuted in the most precise fashion of any conflict in the history of modern warfare", he said.

UK foreign secretary Jack Straw said his government would examine the findings "with very great care".

But he told BBC's Today that another independent estimate of civilian deaths was around 15,000.

The Iraq Body Count, a respected database run by a group of academics and peace activists, has put the number of reported civilian deaths at between 14,000-16,000.

The Lancet published research by scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US city of Baltimore.

They gathered data on births and deaths since January 2002 from 33 clusters of 30 households each across Iraq.

They found the relative risk, the risk of deaths from any cause, was two-and-a-half times higher for Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion than in the preceding 15 months.

'Conservative assumptions'

That figure drops to one-and-a-half times higher if data from Falluja - the scene of repeated heavy fighting - is excluded.

Before the invasion, most people died as a result of heart attack, stroke and chronic illness, the report says, whereas after the invasion, "violence was the primary cause of death".

Violent deaths were mainly attributed to coalition forces - and most individuals reportedly killed were women and children.

Dr Les Roberts, who led the study, said: "Making conservative assumptions we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most of the violent deaths."

He said his team's work proved it was possible to compile data on public health "even during periods of extreme violence".

The sample included randomly selected households in Baghdad, Basra, Arbil, Najaf and Karbala, as well as Falluja.

Lancet editor Richard Horton said: "With the admitted benefit of hindsight and from a purely public health perspective, it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3962969.stm

The updated 2006 Johns Hopkins study:

October 11, 2006

Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates

Mortality Trends Comparable to Estimates by Those Using Other Counting Methods
s many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The deaths from all causes—violent and non-violent—are over and above the estimated 143,000 deaths per year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion.

The estimates were derived from a nationwide household survey of 1,849 households throughout Iraq conducted between May and July 2006. The results are consistent with the findings of an October 2004 study of Iraq mortality conducted by the Hopkins researchers. Also, the findings closely reflect the increased mortality trends reported by other organizations that utilized passive methods of counting mortality, such as counting bodies in morgues or deaths reported by the news media. The study is published in the October 14, 2006, edition of the peer-reviewed scientific journal, The Lancet.

“As we found with our previous survey, the majority of deaths in Iraq are due to violence—although we also saw a small increase in deaths from non-violent causes, such as heart disease, cancer and chronic illness. Gunshots were the primary cause of violent deaths. To put these numbers in context, deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003,” said Gilbert Burnham, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and co-director of the Bloomberg School’s Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. “Our total estimate is much higher than other mortality estimates because we used a population-based, active method for collecting mortality information rather than passive methods that depend on counting bodies or tabulated media reports of violent deaths. Though the numbers differ, the trend in increasing numbers of deaths closely follows that measured by the U.S. Defense Department and the Iraq Body Count group.”
...
http://tinyurl.com/y2jx64

From Human Rights Watch:

U.S.: Minimize Civilian Casualties in Iraq
(New York, March 17, 2006) – U.S. military forces in Iraq need to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties in the current air and ground offensive in Samara, north of Baghdad, Human Rights Watch said today. The dangers to civilians from air strikes were again demonstrated on Wednesday, when U.S. bombs killed as many as 11 civilians in the town of Balad during an anti-insurgency operation.

“All too often civilians pay with their lives when American bombs fall in Iraq,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch. “The U.S. military has in the past launched ‘decapitation’ strikes aimed at top leaders but based on bad intelligence, and also used cluster munitions in populated areas of Iraq.”

Heavy reliance on ground-launched cluster munitions and on questionable intelligence to guide air strikes caused hundreds of unnecessary civilian casualties during the 2003 assault on Iraq, Human Rights Watch said. In a comprehensive 147-page report analyzing the 2003 U.S.-led bombing campaign in Iraq, “Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq,” Human Rights Watch found that U.S. forces could have prevented hundreds of civilian casualties by abandoning two faulty military tactics – the use of cluster munitions and heavy reliance on “decapitation” strikes designed to kill Iraqi military and political leaders.

During the 2003 air war in Iraq, U.S. and British forces used as many as 13,000 cluster bombs, containing nearly 2 million sub-munitions, which killed or wounded more than 1,000 civilians. The Human Rights Watch study, published in December 2003, found that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the coalition’s conduct of major military operations at that stage of the conflict.
...
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/03/16/iraq13022.htm

From the writer Nick Hulse:

Bombs over Baghdad
The Pentagon's Secret Air War in Iraq
A secret air war is being waged in Iraq -- often in and around that country's population centers -- about which we can find out little. The U.S. military keeps information on the munitions expended in its air efforts under tight wraps, refusing to offer details on the scale of use and so minimizing the importance of air power in Iraq. But expert opinion holds that the forms of aerial assault being employed in that country, though hardly covered in our media, may account for most of the U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths there since the 2003 invasion.

While some aspects of the air war remain a total mystery, Air Force officials do acknowledge that U.S. military and coalition aircraft dropped at least 111,000 pounds of bombs on targets in Iraq in 2006. This figure, 177 bombs in all, does not include guided missiles and unguided rockets fired, or cannon rounds expended; nor, according to a U.S. Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) spokesman, does it take into account the munitions used by some Marine Corps and other coalition aircraft or any of the Army's helicopter gunships. Moreover, it does not include munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many private security contractors flying their own missions in Iraq.

Air War, Iraq: 2006

In statistics provided to Tomdispatch, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles." These air strikes presumably included numerous highly publicized missions ranging from the January air strike outside the town of Baiji that reportedly "killed a family of 12," including at least three women and three young children, to the December attack on an insurgent safehouse in the Garma area, near Fallujah, that reportedly killed "two women and a child" in addition to five guerillas. Then there were the even less well remembered events, such as those on July 28th when, according to official reports, an Air Force Predator unmanned aerial vehicle destroyed an "anti-Iraqi forces" vehicle with Hellfire missiles, while Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons "expended a GBU-12, destroying an anti-Iraqi forces location," both in the vicinity of the city of Ramadi.

The latter weapon, Guided Bomb Unit-12, a laser-guided bomb with a 500-pound general purpose warhead, was the most frequently used bomb in Iraq in 2006, according CENTAF statistics provided to Tomdispatch. In addition to the ninety-five GBU-12s "expended," sixty-seven satellite-guided, 500-pound GBU-38s and fifteen 2,000-pound GBU-31/32 munitions were also dropped on Iraqi targets last year, according to official Air Force figures.

One weapon conspicuously left out of this total is rockets -- such as the 2.75-inch Hydra-70 rocket which can be outfitted with various warheads and is fired from fixed-wing aircraft and most helicopters. The number of rockets fired is withheld from the press so as, according to a CENTAF spokesman, not to "skew the tally and present an inaccurate picture of the air campaign." The number of rockets fired may be quite significant as, according to a 2005 press release issued by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who helped secure a $900 million Hydra contract from the Army for General Dynamics, "the widely used Hydra-70 rocket… has seen extensive use in Afghanistan and Iraq… [and] has become the world's most widely used helicopter-launched weapon system." Early last year, Sandra I. Erwin of National Defense Magazine noted that the U.S. military was looking to the Hydra to serve as a low-cost weapon for Iraq's urban areas. "The Army already buys and stockpiles thousands of the 2.75-inch Hydra rockets, and is seeking to equip as many as 73,000 with the laser kits, under a program called 'advanced precision kill weapon system,' or APKWS. The Navy would purchase 8,000 for Marine Corps helicopters," she wrote.

The number of cannon rounds fired -- some models of the AC-130 gunship, for instance, have a Gatling gun that can fire up to 1,800 rounds in a single minute-- is also a closely guarded secret. The official reason given is that "special forces often use aircraft such as the AC-130" and since "their missions and operations are classified, so therefore these figures are not released."
...
But the number of cannon rounds and rockets fired by U.S. aircraft is not an insignificant matter, according to Les Roberts, formerly an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Rwanda during that country's civil war and an expert on the human costs of the war in Iraq. According to Roberts, who was last in Iraq in 2004 (where, he says, he personally witnessed "the shredding of entire blocks" in Baghdad's Sadr City by aerial cannon fire), "rocket and cannon fire could account for most coalition-attributed civilian deaths." He adds, "I find it disturbing that they will not release this [figure], but even more disturbing that they have not released such information to Congressmen who have requested it."
...
When asked about the modest air power casualty figures provided by the Iraq Body Count Project and whether CENTAF accepts them, Lt. Col. Kennedy dodged the question, telling Tomdispatch, "We do not track such numbers and so cannot comment on the Project's efforts or validity." He had a similar answer when it came to The Lancet study's findings.

Asked about the assertion that the second half of 2006 was much deadlier for Iraqis due to U.S. air strikes and the possible reasons for this, Kennedy waxed eloquent, "War, by its very nature has ebbs and flows, and we constantly review the application of airpower to best support the forces on the ground in theater. We view this as simply part of our contract to the warfighters. As we do not discuss operational aspects of missions, I'll decline further comment."
...

The Pace Quickens

In 2005, CENTAF reported using 404 bombs and missiles in Iraq. In 2006, an apparent lull (whether in lethal attacks or just in their reporting) in the first half of the year seems to have given way to a rise in deadly attacks during the second half. Only days into 2007, the U.S. military had already conducted air strikes in three nations -- Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. And in Iraq, the air war may be increasing in pace and ferocity. For example, on January 9th, the U.S. unleashed its air power on Baghdad's Haifa Street, a "mostly Sunni Arab enclave of residential buildings and shops." According to the Washington Post, "F-15 fighter jets strafed rooftops with cannons, while the Apache[ helicopter]s fired Hellfire missiles." Elsewhere in Iraq that day, according to Air Force reports, F-16s strafed targets near Bayji with cannon fire, while others dropped GBU-38s on targets near Turki Village; and F-15Es provided "close-air support" to troops near Basrah.
...

The Secret Air War

While reporting on the air war has often been barely evident, except as the odd paragraph in daily round-up battle pieces from Iraq (which rely mainly on military handouts or press briefings), the gaps in our knowledge about the air war have been facilitated by the U.S. military's failure to be honest and forthcoming with both data and doctrine. In this respect, the military has been the media's enabler.
...
Given CENTAF's knowledge that, no matter how "smart" their munitions or how precise their targeting, noncombatants, especially in urban neighborhoods, are sure to die in air strikes, I had a question for Lt. Col. Kennedy: Could he explain how CENTAF decided what was an acceptable level of civilian caualties it was willing to sacrifice for military aims? His answer: "Not in a sufficient manner that you would be happy with."
...
http://tinyurl.com/yr3ezj

Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker, December, 2005:

Up in the Air
Where is the Iraq war headed next?
...
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.
...
The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant—and underreported—aspect of the fight against the insurgency. The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004. “With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way,” a Marine press release said, “Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on the front line.” Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. “This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased. Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war.

The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be “painted,” or illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. “The pilot doesn’t identify the target as seen in the pre-brief”—the instructions provided before takeoff—a former high-level intelligence official told me. “The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a ‘hot-read’ ”—from a military unit on the ground—“and you drop your bombs with no communication with the guys on the ground. You don’t want to break radio silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots can’t verify.” He added, “And we’re going to turn this process over to the Iraqis?”

The second senior military planner told me that there are essentially two types of targeting now being used in Iraq: a deliberate site-selection process that works out of air-operations centers in the region, and “adaptive targeting”—supportive bombing by prepositioned or loitering warplanes that are suddenly alerted to firefights or targets of opportunity by military units on the ground. “The bulk of what we do today is adaptive,” the officer said, “and it’s divorced from any operational air planning. Airpower can be used as a tool of internal political coercion, and my attitude is that I can’t imagine that we will give that power to the Iraqis.”

This military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, “there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets—it’s a reversion to the Stone Age. There’s no operational art. That’s what happens when you give targeting to the Army—they hit what the local commander wants to hit.”

One senior Pentagon consultant I spoke to said he was optimistic that “American air will immediately make the Iraqi Army that much better.” But he acknowledged that he, too, had concerns about Iraqi targeting. “We have the most expensive eyes in the sky right now,” the consultant said. “But a lot of Iraqis want to settle old scores. Who is going to have authority to call in air strikes? There’s got to be a behavior-based rule.”
...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205fa_fact?printable=true

Tom Englehardt, writing in his TomDispatch blog, a detailed review of US airpower in Iraq:

Tomgram: Icarus (Armed with Vipers) Over Iraq

http://tinyurl.com/23eh77

These are but a small handful of articles, studies, etc., that cover the destructive and - yes - indiscriminate use of airpower in America's war in Iraq, and the consequences to the civilian population therein. Yes, you can make the case that an airborne 105mm cannon shell can create a smaller blast footprint than a 500lb JDAM, but the point surely is that multiply one 105mm cannon round by 20 or 50, and a lot of "collateral damage" is going to be created, especially when the tactic is "close air support", and rather than try to engage insurgents one-on-one with small arms, the default position is to call in the (air) cavalry, and have the Apaches and AC-130s "light up the target", regardless of how many non-combatants are within range of the sortie. As the articles cited above show, since the beginning of the invasion, civilians have been killed and injured in enormous quantities due to use of airstrikes without due consideration of the net effects on the Iraqi population, and whether it's now the case that the US is using more guided bombs and building-busting ordnance than in the past, or that this is simply a natural progression and continuation of tactics employed since the kickoff matters little to those who are the victims of such savagery.

_{“les Etats-unis, c’est le seul pays à être passé de la préhistoire à la décadence sans jamais connaitre la civilisation…”...Georges Clemenceau}

The US plans permanent military bases in Iraq, confirming to many that it really was all about oil

The Guardian (comment is free), Patrick Seale, June 9

Almost unnoticed, the war in Iraq entered a new phase last week. Laconic statements from the White House and the Pentagon confirmed what had long been suspected - the US is planning a long-term military presence in Iraq. This is a geopolitical development of the first importance. In spite of current difficulties - May was the most lethal month for American soldiers since 2004, with 119 killed - the United States firmly intends to maintain control of Iraq and its vast oil reserves. Iraq's neighbours, and energy-hungry states and oil companies, will take note.

On a visit to Honolulu on May 31, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, said that the United States was looking for a "long and enduring presence", under an arrangement with the Iraq government. "The Korea model is one, the security relationship we have with Japan is another," he said. US troops have been in South Korea since the end of the Korean war and in Japan since 1945. Last week the White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed that President Bush wanted a lengthy troop presence in Iraq. "The situation in Iraq, and indeed, the larger war on terror, are things that are going to take a long time," he said.

Such statements, and the planning that goes with them, make nonsense of the current debate - in Congress, the press and the public - about a date for withdrawal from Iraq, and whether the surge is producing results. The administration is looking way beyond that.

3 U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq Car Bombing

Monday June 11, 2007 11:31 AM
AP Photo XPG107
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent

MAHMOUDIYA, Iraq (AP) - With a thunderous rumble and cloud of dust and smoke, a suicide car bomb brought down a section of highway bridge south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding six from a checkpoint guarding the crossing and blocking traffic on Iraq's main north-south artery.

The U.S. military said engineers were dispatched with bulldozers and other heavy equipment to clear the highway, which was partially blocked by debris from the overpass. An Iraqi interpreter also was wounded in the attack, according to the statement that gave the casualty toll.

Donald Campbell, a 40-year-old Scot with the private security firm Armor Group International, and his colleagues were in a passing convoy and worked with a U.S. Army quick reaction force for some 45 minutes to pull trapped men from the rubble, scrambling over the fallen concrete.

U.S. armored vehicles provided cover fire from their cannons after the bombing, which occurred in the area dubbed the ``triangle of death'' for its frequent Sunni insurgent attacks.

The blast dropped one of two sections of the ``Checkpoint 20'' bridge crossing over the north-south expressway, six miles east of Mahmoudiya.

It appeared that a northbound suicide driver stopped and detonated his vehicle beside a support pillar, said Lt. Col. Garry Bush, an Army munitions officer who was in the convoy, which also carried an Associated Press reporter and photographer and arrived two minutes after the blast.

A U.S. Army checkpoint and a tent structure, apparently a rest area, fell into the shattered concrete. The crossing was believed to have been closed to all but military traffic at the time.

more

Turkish, Iranian cooperation against PKK irks US and Iraq

Source:Fighting against terror

Turkish, Iranian cooperation against PKK irks Iraq and US

News that Iranian and Turkish forces are shelling the PKK hideouts in northern Iraq from their own territories apparently in a coordinated manner has created deep discomfort in Baghdad, Erbil and Washington prompting the Iraqi government to hand a diplomatic note to Turkey calling "to act together" against the militants.

Turkey's charge d'affair in Baghdad Ahmet Yzal was invited to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Saturday where he was handed the note.
Turkish diplomatic sources stressed that this was not a protest note and that it was aimed to call for cooperation.

Foreign news agencies, however, said Baghdad had protested Turkey for shelling border regions. A statement by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Mahmoud called for an immediate halt to the shelling, saying such actions "undermine confidence between the two nations and negatively affect their friendship."

The statement was the first government confirmation of the shelling.
Mahmoud said the shelling had started large fires and caused serious damage, but gave no other details.

The note said the recent security measures Turkey is taking in the border regions is causing scare among the people of the region on the Iraqi side and requested a concerted effort to prevent any harm to the locals.

Turkey has been building up its forces along the border with Iraq, and its leaders are debating whether to stage a major incursion to pursue separatist Kurdish militants who cross over to attack Turkish targets.

Baghdad ready for talks

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the BBC his government is ready to discuss with Turkey how to deal with the PKK separatists.
He was speaking after Iraq presented its diplomatic note to Turkey.
Zebari told the BBC's Arabic Service that Iraq was ready to talk about the activities of the PKK in northern Iraq, and other matters of concern to Turkey.

"We are open to dealing with these positively," he said, "but not via an intensive and large-scale bombardment of border areas."

"We are against any military interventions or violations of borders or the regional security, and all issues are negotiable and can be resolved through dialogue," Zebari added.

Observers said the Iraqi protest letter is clearly aimed at keeping the rising tension as an affair to be dealt with between the two states and not between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds.

Rice warns

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Turkey risks increasing regional tensions by moving troops into Iraq against Kurdish terrorists. She added it would be "not good for Iraq and not good for Turkey."

The statement by Rice, speaking to a panel of journalists and editors from The Associated Press, suggested that Washington could do little to halt limited Turkish incursions across the rugged frontier against the PKK.

Rice said it's "not good for anybody for a robust move across the border."

Turkey, Iran shelling

The warning came as Turkish and Iranian forces reportedly shelled positions across the border in northern Iraq

Iraqi Kurdish sources have claimed Turkey and Iran have been shelling border areas.

Military observers say Turkish artillery positions are too far away from the Kurdish region where the PKK is holed out and thus the shelling may not be from Turkey but from Iran.

Iran has clashed with Iranian Kurdish militants who have bases in remote, mountainous areas of northern Iraq.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has claimed in its web-site on Friday that artillery shells overnight hit some areas in the Sidikan area in Irbil Province, where the borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq converge, and that nine villages were affected.

"Huge damage was inflicted on the area," the PUK said, citing what it described as an unidentified "source" in the area. "The source said residents have left their houses, fearing for their lives."

Lieutenant Ahmad Karim of the Iraqi border guards force told The Associated Press that seven Turkish shells landed on a forest near Sakta village in the Batous area, but no casualties were reported.
Turkish and Iranian officials have reportedly agreed to fight the Kurdish separatists. The Iranians have promised Turkey to cut the escape routes of the PKK terrorists and prevent them from escaping back to their hideouts in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, in a related development Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Ergin Saygun met in Ankara and discussed recent developments about Iraq.
Ambassador Oguz Celikkol, Turkey's Special Envoy in Iraq, also attended the meeting at the Foreign Ministry.

The meeting focused on Kirkuk and the future of Iraq.

The New Anatolian
11 June 2007

http://www.thenewanatolian.com/tna-27128.html

Copyright © 2005 Journal of Turkish Weekly http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=45857

U.S.-Backed Group Has Fought Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Joshua Partlow and John Ward Anderson | June 11 | Baghdad

WaPo - A tribal coalition formed to oppose the extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, a development that U.S. officials say has reduced violence in Iraq's troubled Anbar province, is beginning to splinter, according to an Anbar tribal leader and a U.S. military official familiar with tribal politics.

In an interview in his Baghdad office, Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, 35, a leader of the Dulaim confederation, the largest tribal organization in Anbar, said that the Anbar Salvation Council would be dissolved because of growing internal dissatisfaction over its cooperation with U.S. soldiers and the behavior of the council's most prominent member, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. Suleiman called Abu Risha a "traitor" who "sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money."

Abu Risha, who enjoys the support of U.S. military commanders, denied the allegations and said the council is not at risk of breaking apart. "There is no such thing going on," he said in a telephone interview from Jordan.

Lt. Col. Richard D. Welch, a U.S. military official who works closely with the tribal leaders in Iraq, said that relations inside the group were strained and that he expected a complete overhaul of the coalition in coming days.

[Comment: Kinda figured that was going to happen. The notion that the tribals are going to eliminate the al-Qa`edaist elements completely is in my view a vain hope. ~ JPD]

"Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality." - Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

The most serious policy problem confronting Iraq is lack of means by which one Iraqi can kill another. Why, US policy has only succeeded in wiping out 2.5% of the population. And that has taken almost five years. Clearly, leaving that bunker south of Baghdad unguarded in the early days of the invasion - the one with 300 tons of high explosives that has subsequently been used in homemade IEDs - was not enough. Nor have moderate levels of arms smuggling via private contractors sufficed in arming Iraqis broadly enough or lethally enough. We can only hope and pray that the shipment of 200,000 AK 47s that got shipped out of Bosnia on a de-listed air transport a few months ago found its way to Iraq and will do the job.

Really. there is too much talk and not enough real, testosterone-charged military action. Wholesale slaughter of who is standing or can stand or talk or breathe is the only answer to wiping out terrorism and bringing lasting peace to the region. It's time to make the shortage of armes cease as an impediment to real progress.

from clammyc at Booman Tribune:

A story nobody could have made up.

by clammyc
Mon Jun 11th, 2007 at 02:24:37 PM EST
Every time I think I’ve got it, something else happens that makes everything that I have been told completely irrelevant.

lots more with links

June 12 | Kandahar

CP - The scorching heat of day in Afghanistan had just started to fade into night when a roadside bomb claimed the life of a young soldier as Canadians forged ahead on their newest front in the fight against the Taliban.

Trooper Darryl Caswell was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated underneath the massive supply convoy he was riding towards the northern reaches of Kandahar province on Monday, the deputy commander of Canada’s military in Afghanistan said.

Two other soldiers were injured and were evacuated to hospital by helicopter.

Their injuries were described by military officials as non-life threatening and they are expected to return to active duty.

“Every loss of soldiers is a significant one, this is another tough one,” Col. Mike Cessford said as the heat began to creep again over the horizon in Kandahar early Tuesday morning.

“Trooper Caswell, young Canadian, great Canadian, died serving Canada and the people of Afghanistan. We’ll be thinking of him.”

Caswell, 25, was part of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, based at Petawawa, Ont. He was deployed with the Reconnaissance Squadron as part of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment battle group.

"Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality." - Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Jason Straziuso and John Daniszewski | June 12 | Kabul

AP - Iran gives political and material support to President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government, but it also may be aiding the Taliban as a way of hedging its bets in neighboring Afghanistan, NATO's top general here said Monday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill said Taliban fighters are showing signs of better training, using combat techniques comparable to "an advanced Western military" in ambushes of U.S. Special Forces soldiers.

Iran's possible role in aiding insurgents in Iraq has long been hotly debated, and last month some Western and Persian Gulf governments charged that the Islamic government in Tehran is secretly bolstering Taliban fighters.

"In Afghanistan it is clear that the Taliban is receiving support, including arms from ... elements of the Iranian regime," British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the May 31 edition of the Economist.

Iran, which is also in a dispute with the West over its nuclear program, denies the Taliban accusation, calling it part of a broad anti-Iranian campaign. Tehran says it makes no sense that a Shiite-led government like itself would help the fundamentalist Sunni movement of the Taliban.

McNeill, the commander of 36,000 soldiers in NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said indications on the ground cut both ways.

There is "ample evidence" Iran is helping Karzai's administration, particularly with road construction and electricity in western Afghanistan, he told the AP.

But, he added: "I have heard officials in the Afghan government say that the Iranian government has provided some support to political opponents of the Karzai administration. I suspect that's probably true. And I don't doubt that somewhere the Iranians may have helped the Taliban.

"So what does that add up to? It makes me think of a major American corporation that will give political campaign money to three or four different candidates for president of the United States. Somebody is going to come out on top. This corporation wants to be aligned with whoever comes out on top."

"Political Islam is a dream or a nightmare, but not a sociological reality." - Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Time, By Bobby Ghosh, June 13

BAGHDAD - The latest attack on Samarra's Golden Shrine exposes the limitations of the massive security crackdown under way in Iraq. With tens of thousands of U.S. troops devoted to quelling the sectarian violence in and around Baghdad, other cities and regions have become more vulnerable to attack by militant groups like al-Qaeda. The Iraqi forces that are meant to pick up the slack are woefully inadequate, allowing the militants to slip past security cordons and pick their targets almost at will.

The purpose of the new attack is not hard to divine: Shi'ite militias have been lying low since the start of the U.S.-led military “surge” earlier this year, and al-Qaeda has been trying to provoke them back into the fight. There have been several attacks on Shi'ite religious sites, but most have failed.

It's not clear what security lapses allowed the attack IN Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, but they must have been especially egregious. The shrine, one of the holiest in Shi'ite Islam, was said to have been under extraordinary protection after the Feb 22, 2006, explosion that destroyed its golden dome. That attack, blamed on al-Qaeda, set off a wave of retaliatory attacks from outraged Shi'ites and plunged Iraq into sectarian war—the one the current American “surge” is meant to subdue.

The latest attack occurred around 9 am on Wednesday and destroyed the shrine's two minarets. Early reports said the towers were struck by mortars or rockets, but it now seem more likely they were brought down by explosives placed within or close to them.

because here he is, with his Pollyannish take on today's Iraq (via Spencer Acherman):

Petraeus: "Astonishing Signs of Normalcy"?
By Spencer Ackerman - June 14, 2007, 11:24 AM

General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is the man everyone's watching. Petraeus has a deserved reputation for clarity and honesty, something I've observed firsthand on two occasions I've had to interview him. His status assessment on the surge, slated to be delivered to congress in September, will be a political milestone for how Washington views the war, and so there's no shortage of speculation about what message Petraeus will deliver. If it's anything like his interview with USA Today, though, expect his briefing to accentuate the positive.

On a day when the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra threatened to reignite sectarian chaos, Petraeus gave a curious description of Baghdad to the paper:

If you drive around Baghdad, you'll find astonishing signs of normalcy in perhaps half to two-thirds of the city. … In fact, the car bomb numbers have come down fairly steadily as well until just a couple of days ago, and we'll see if we can get those coming down again. …

There's a real vibrancy in certain parts of Iraq, and in others obviously there is continued fighting and a sectarian cycle of violence underway. Obviously, there is damage, a need to … help them stitch back the fabric of society that was torn during the height of the sectarian violence.
...
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003431.php

And just how do you think the so-called "September update" is going to read, hmmm?

The Afghans are sick of our armies killing their people

The scale of civilian casualties at the hands of British and US forces is losing us the war - as I know from experience

Leo Docherty
Wednesday June 13, 2007
The Guardian

Last year in Afghanistan, while serving with the British army, I sat on the rooftop of our patrol base in the middle of Sangin, a small town in Helmand province. Surveying the skyline of flat-roofed mud homes and barren hills, I took stock of the situation. We had seized and occupied Sangin a few days previously, wresting control of the town from the Taliban. During our advance an 11-year-old boy was killed in the crossfire, shot in the head accidentally by our allies, the Afghan national army. Despite this we established our base in a local government building, the district centre, and patrolled the bazaar every day. We bought mangos and chatted to the locals - who seemed ambivalent about our presence.

Just below the surface, however, tension simmered. The boy's death made us a threat to the local population. Despite promising development we had nothing to show for all our big talk. Crucially we had no real answers to questions about the future of the all-important poppy, the basis of Sangin's economy. To the locals, we were clumsy, interfering foreigners, whose arrival presaged conflict and the destruction of their livelihood. Days later Sangin exploded into violence, seeing some of the fiercest fighting by British troops since the Korean war, and which continues as I write.

Sadly, many more civilians across Afghanistan have met the same end as the 11-year-old. Recently in Sangin an estimated 21 civilians were killed by bombs dropped from Nato planes after US and British soldiers were ambushed. In the eastern city of Jalalabad in March, US soldiers shot dead 19 civilians in the aftermath of a bomb attack. And yesterday seven policemen were killed by "friendly fire" in an air strike in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

The Jalalabad shootings may yet be deemed a war crime, but civilian deaths are normally tragic accidents. Often outnumbered and outgunned by militia men, the immediate response of Nato troops is to call on overwhelming firepower delivered by artillery, helicopter gunships and jets. The troops aren't wicked, they're just keen on staying alive. But these weapons are blunt-edged and indiscriminate. The price of overwhelming firepower is the death of nearby civilians.

But accidental or not, civilian deaths catastrophically undermine the entire Nato effort, as relatives of the dead, bent on vengeance, flock to the Taliban cause. As Pashtuns, the inhabitants of Helmand hold Badal, the pursuit of revenge, as a central concept of their social code, which is devotedly adhered to. "A Pashtun waited a hundred years for revenge," a local saying goes, "and was pleased with such quick work." Indeed, the Taliban are ruthlessly exploiting this mindset by deliberately engaging Nato troops from villages.
...
In Sangin today the district centre is a battle-scarred fortified position where more than a dozen British troops have been killed fighting from trenches. Soldiers no longer sit on the roof to enjoy the view. The town lies in ruins, with little trace left of the once thriving bazaar. A peaceful, developed Helmand cannot be won by the sword, and the longer we try, the greater the tragedy.

· Leo Docherty served with the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of Desert of Death: A Soldier's Journey from Iraq to Afghanistan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2101419,00.html

The wars that oil the Pentagon's engine
By Michael T Klare

Sixteen US gallons - more than 60 liters - of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis - either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes.

Multiply this figure by 162,000 American soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard US warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at about 13.25 million liters of oil: the daily petroleum tab for US

combat operations in the Middle East war zone.

Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 4.9 billion liters: the estimated annual oil expenditure for US combat operations in Southwest Asia. That's greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million - and yet it's a gross underestimate of the Pentagon's wartime consumption.

Such numbers cannot do full justice to the extraordinary gas-guzzling expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, for every soldier stationed "in theater", there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone - soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil, even if less than their compatriots overseas. Moreover, to sustain an "expeditionary" army located halfway around the world, the US Defense Department must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum. Add this to the tally and the Pentagon's war-related oil budget jumps appreciably, though exactly how much we have no real way of knowing.

And foreign wars, sad to say, account for but a small fraction of the Pentagon's total petroleum consumption. Possessing the world's largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles, and support systems - virtually all powered by oil - the Department of Defense (DoD) is the world's leading consumer of petroleum. It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD's daily oil hit, but an April report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (53 million liters) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

Not 'guns vs butter' but 'guns vs oil'

For anyone who drives a motor vehicle these days, this has ominous implications.

With the price of gasoline in the United States now 75 cents to US$1 a gallon (20-26 cents a liter) more than it was just six months ago, it's obvious that the Pentagon is facing a potentially serious budgetary crunch. Just like any ordinary American family, the DoD has to make some hard choices: it can use its normal amount of petroleum and pay more at the Pentagon's equivalent of the pump, while cutting back on other basic expenses; or it can reduce its gasoline use to protect favored weapons systems under development.

Of course, the DoD has a third option: it can go before Congress and plead for yet another supplemental budget hike, but this is sure to provoke renewed calls for a timetable for a US troop withdrawal from Iraq, and so is an unlikely prospect at this time.

Nor is this destined to prove a temporary issue. As recently as two years ago, the US Department of Energy (DoE) was confidently predicting that the price of crude oil would hover in the $30-per-barrel range for another quarter-century or so, leading to US gasoline prices of about $2 per gallon (53 cents a liter). But then came Hurricane Katrina, the crisis in Iran, the insurgency in southern Nigeria, and a host of other problems that tightened the oil market, prompting the DoE to raise its long-range price projection into the $50-per-barrel range. This is the amount that figures in many current governmental budgetary forecasts - including, presumably, those of the DoD.

But just how realistic is this? The price of a barrel of crude oil today is hovering in the $66 range. Many energy analysts now say that a price range of $70-$80 per barrel (or possibly even significantly more) is far more likely to be our fate for the foreseeable future.

A price rise of this magnitude, when translated into the cost of gasoline, aviation fuel, diesel fuel, home-heating oil, and petrochemicals will play havoc with the budgets of families, farms, businesses, and local governments. Sooner or later, it will force people to make profound changes in their daily lives - as benign as purchasing a hybrid car in place of a sport-utility vehicle or as painful as cutting back on home heating or health care simply to make an unavoidable drive to work.

more at link

U.S. Says Iraq Troop Surge Complete

By John Ward Anderson and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 15, 2007; 8:20 AM

BAGHDAD, June 15 -- The full contingent of new U.S. forces being sent to Iraq -- what military leaders call a "surge" of troops to improve security and stability in the capital -- was completed by Friday, with 28,500 additional troops now posted in the country, a U.S. military spokesman said.

"The strategic movement of forces into the theater is complete, and the surge is just starting," said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. "Now that the force is here, we'll see the counterinsurgency start in full swing, and we'll be able to execute the strategy as it was designed."

The full mobilization of the surge comes at the end of another tense week in Iraq, following the bombing Wednesday of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra. A widespread curfew and appeals for calm appears to have muted the cycle of retaliation that followed a 2006 attack on the same mosque. At least 13 Sunni mosques were attacked on Thursday, but the violence did not seem to be escalating into open warfare.

Most of the newly arrived troops have been posted in high-visibility positions in and around Baghdad to raise the sense of security and lower the rate of violence. The strategy, which acknowledges Baghdad as the center of gravity in efforts to restore peace to the country, aims to create enough calm so that Iraqi leaders can reach agreement on key political measures to achieve reconciliation between the country's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Problems between the groups and attacks against U.S. forces have pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

The troop build-up began in mid-February, and shortly thereafter the levels of violence in the capital began dropping dramatically. Some cited the decline as evidence that the surge strategy was working; others said the lower violence probably was the result of a decision by Sunni insurgent groups, Shiite militias and the extremist Sunni organization al-Qaeda to hold back their attacks while studying the new strategy and U.S. resolve.

Whatever the reason, after the initial drop, the rate of violence began steadily rising. By some indicators, attacks and killings now are almost back to January's pre-surge levels, causing some to declare that the strategy is failing.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and other U.S. officials have argued that it was not fair to judge the surge strategy until all 28,500 troops arrived and had time to exert their influence on the ground. The announcement of that milestone came Friday.

The military is expected to do a preliminary assessment of the surge in July, and in September, Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker are to submit a joint assessment of the strategy to Congress.

While calling the 28,500 troop build-up "the surge" seems to have stuck, the name is a misnomer. In fact, the additional troops bring the total U.S. forces here to about 165,000, the most ever. But when put in the context of all U.S. and foreign coalition forces in Iraq, the extra troops bring the number roughly to where is was for most of 2004 and 2005, when the coalition fluctuated between 161,000 and 183,000 troops.

The main difference is that other countries that used to contribute about 25,000 troops now send just over 12,000. Military spokesman Garver said that about 21,000 of the additional U.S. troops are posted inside Baghdad, and the rest are stationed in the suburban belt around the city.

"To control Baghdad, you need to control the approach to Baghdad as well," Garver said. He noted, for instance, that "many car bomb factories are not inside the capital but in the belt around it, and they have a significant impact inside Baghdad."

more garbage here

NATO says policy review reducing Afghan casualties

(Adds de Hoop Scheffer, Wardak news conference, details)

By Mark John and Andrew Gray

BRUSSELS, June 15 (Reuters) - NATO said on Friday a review of its policies in Afghanistan had led to a fall in civilian casualties caused by its troops and blamed Taliban insurgents for using ordinary Afghans as human shields.

NATO defence ministers agreed its 40,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would do everything it could to stem casualties the West fears are sapping public support for the international presence in Afghanistan.

But they signalled no major change in military strategy, which has made extensive use of air power to get troops out of tight spots, and said the main change had been an effort to tighten coordination with other international and Afghan forces.

"NATO-ISAF doesn't indiscriminately kill people -- the Taliban does," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said after a meeting of the 37 countries that contribute to the ISAF force.

"Put the blame where it lies -- they are using civilians as shields. We are not in the same moral category," he told a joint news conference with Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak.

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and the extraordinary difficulties presented to US combat units because of the inherent near-impossibility of both withstanding the increasingly destructive effects of IEDs and penetrating and shutting down the highly mobile squads of bombers.

The Enemy's New Tools in Iraq
Saif Abdallah says his inventions have helped kill or maim scores, possibly hundreds, of Americans. For more than four years, he has been developing remote-control devices that Sunni insurgents use to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The only time he ever felt a pang of regret was in the spring of 2006, when he heard that the Pentagon, in a bid to fight the growing IED menace, had roped in a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdallah, an electronics engineer by training, once dreamed of studying for a Ph.D. there. "I thought to myself, If my life had gone differently, who knows? I might have been on that team," he says, his eyes widening as he imagines that now impossible scenario. Then he shrugs. "God decided I should be on the other side."

Thin-voiced and thickly bespectacled, Abdallah, 28, fits every geek stereotype, right down to the acne and the flash drive on his key chain. His laboratory is a workbench in the bedroom of his Baghdad home. He says his tools are primitive — soldering irons, old printed circuit boards, discarded TV remotes and other bits of electronic detritus. But he has a talent for fashioning instruments of death from such dreck, turning an old toy walkie-talkie into a trigger for an explosion 100 yards away or programming a washing-machine timer to set off an IED two hours later. Such capacity for destruction makes him invaluable to the disparate groups that make up the Sunni insurgency, including al-Qaeda. "In our circle, everyone has heard of him," says the commander of one rebel group, al-Nasr Salahdin.
...
It is indicative of the U.S.'s inability to crush the insurgency that commanders are trying to find ways to split it. The military is urging Sunni nationalist groups to take up arms against their former al-Qaeda allies and has begun supplying some of them with weapons. In the immediate future, however, such efforts are unlikely to protect U.S. troops from an increasingly sophisticated and tenacious enemy — and may even put Americans at greater risk. A TIME investigation reveals that militant groups have responded to the U.S. surge with a big push of their own, unleashing a flurry of new or rarely used tactics and innovations designed to maximize the death toll. Their most potent weapons are the roadside bombs being fashioned by men like Abdallah, which now account for roughly 80% of U.S. deaths, up from 50% at the start of the year. "People are calling me all the time, asking for new ways to ..." Abdallah says, pressing down his right thumb on an imaginary remote control, and adds, "... Boom!"
...
Many al-Qaeda fighters moved from Anbar to the capital, and the Islamic Army, the largest Iraqi insurgent group, called on its fighters to rally there for a cataclysmic showdown with U.S. and Iraqi troops. They began to attack new targets, like U.S. helicopters and important bridges that connect Baghdad to the rest of the country. "These were all new kinds of attacks, and there were so many of them, it was hard to keep track," says a Western official in Baghdad, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak with the media. "The message from al-Qaeda was, You do your surge, we'll do ours."
...
The insurgents have upgraded their weaponry. A field commander of the Islamic Army told me his men had produced "hundreds" of huge IEDs more destructive than the armor-piercing bombs that, the U.S. believes, are being smuggled into Iraq from Iran. He said the new bombs are being buried deep in dirt tracks on the outskirts of Baghdad that are likely to be used by American patrols. Some of the bombs are planted in sewers and irrigation culverts; their concrete lining would direct most of the force of an explosion upward — enough to "turn an Abrams tank into an airplane."

Such claims are typically greeted with skepticism by U.S. commanders. There have been no reports of any Abrams tanks being taken out by an IED since the start of the security crackdown. Still, there's anecdotal evidence that deep-buried bombs are having a devastating effect on other heavily armored American vehicles, even those designed to withstand large explosions. The Islamic Army isn't alone in employing this technique. In April a video posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq showed several Cougars and Nyala RG-31s — "mine protected" troop carriers — being blown up by IEDs. The video showed militants using deep-buried explosives to target vehicles meant to find and disable roadside bombs, like the Buffalo counter-IED vehicle and the Meerkat mine detector. The video's ominous title: "Hunting the Minesweepers."
...
Abdallah concurs. "They are not going to defeat me with technology," he says. "If they want to get rid of IEDs, they have to kill me and everyone like me." If they don't, Abdallah is only going to get better at what he does, with deadly consequences for American soldiers. The terrorism geek has come a long way since our previous meeting. To demonstrate his prowess, he produces a black briefcase-size device with Japanese markings and flicks a switch on its side. He claims that the device is similar to those used by U.S. troops to block cellular signals around IEDs and disable bombs wired to detonate with a cell-phone call. Abdallah says he was given the device by a Saudi militant who asked him to find a way around jamming signals. He invites the four people in the room to try to use their cell phones; none of us can get a signal. "I've jammed you all," he says, tapping the black device. But his own phone, a cheap Nokia, shows a full-strength signal. "I made a few small changes inside," he says, holding up the phone and grinning triumphantly. "It took me just one day to figure it out." It is grim evidence of the perils facing the U.S. in Iraq that men like Abdallah can still make killing Americans look easy.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1632805,00.html

"...Boom!"

BBC- The decomposed bodies of 13 members of an Iraqi taekwondo team seized a year ago have been found, officials say.

Fifteen members of the team had been abducted last May in Anbar province, an al-Qaeda stronghold west of Baghdad, on their way to a training camp in Jordan.

The bodies were found in western Iraq, near the town of Ramadi. Two of the team are still missing.

Bomb blast in Kabul kills over 35 - police
17 Jun 2007 12:51:53 GMT

By Peter Graff and Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL, June 17 (Reuters) - A Taliban suicide bomber blew up a police bus in the heart of the Afghan capital on Sunday, killing more than 20 people in the single deadliest bombing to hit Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

The blast tore apart the bus, wounding dozens of bystanders, wrecking several other vehicles and scattering body parts.

Kabul's police criminal branch chief, Ali Shah Paktiawal, said some 35 people were killed, including many police officers.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, calling it an attempt to block the training of Afghanistan's Western-led police force, the palace said. It put the death toll at 22 people.

Kabul's police chief, Esmatullah Dawlatzai, said 24 people had been killed and 52 wounded.

The Interior Ministry said five of the wounded were foreigners, including two Japanese, a Korean and two Pakistanis. Earlier reports that foreigners had been killed proved false.

The attack is the deadliest suicide raid in Kabul since U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban from power, and appears to signal an escalation of such strikes.

At least 14 people were killed in four other suicide bombings over the past three days. Responsibility for all five attacks was claimed by Taliban insurgents who want to overthrow Afghanistan's Western-backed government and drive out foreign troops.

The previous deadliest bombing in Kabul, in 2002, killed 26 people.

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