While public anger is directed at the Pentagon for sending American soldiers ill-prepared to fight in Iraq, an equally troubling problem is rearing its head at home. Military veterans are returning from the war zone just as ill-prepared for civilian life and dozens suffering from post-traumatic stress are committing murder and manslaughter.

A new study has identified more than 120 killings committed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as psychologically troubled soldiers slip through the net of an overextended military mental health system.

The study, which was conducted from examining local news reports, and which may well dramatically understate the scale of the problem, suggested that killings by military veterans have almost doubled since the start of the wars.

Although the Pentagon immediately questioned the accuracy of the figures, the mounting number of incidents across the US add up to a social problem akin to the traumas of returning Vietnam veterans a generation earlier.

The stories are harrowing. About a third involve the killing of a spouse, girlfriend or other relative, among them two-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating from a bombing near Fallujah that blew off his foot and damaged his brain.

Many others implicate drink and drugs, an increasing refuge for veterans traumatised by deaths they have witnessed or caused during the counter-insurgency led by American troops. The US government is being sued by relatives of 25-year-old Marine Lucas Borges, who became addicted to inhaling ether after a tour of Iraq at the beginning of the war, and who was convicted of second degree murder for crashing his car into an vehicle while driving the wrong way down a motorway, killing the other driver and injuring four others.

Collectively, the stories attest to the inadequacies of the US military mental health system, which a Pentagon task force last year described as "woefully understaffed", poorly funded and undermined by the stigma still attached to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The disorder has been a major concern since veterans' associations found that 15 per cent of Vietnam vets still suffered from PTSD a decade after the conflict ended in 1975.

"To truly support our troops, we need to apply our lessons from history and new-found knowledge about PTSD to help the most troubled of our returning veterans," Brockton Hunter, a criminal defence lawyer specialising in these cases, said in a recent lecture.
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MADRID (Reuters) - Turkey's government may seek an extension of its parliamentary mandate to attack Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq when the current authorization expires in October, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.

Turkish armed forces began bombing targets of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) inside northern Iraq after the Ankara parliament approved a resolution on October 17 providing the legal basis for operations over a 12-month period.

"We hope our fight against terrorism ends quickly, but I can't say when it will end," Erdogan told business leaders in Madrid, where he was due to attend the Alliance of Civilisations forum that aims to foster ties between the West and Islam.

"If it doesn't end, we will ask parliament for authorization to be able to continue it," said Erdogan, speaking via a Spanish interpreter.

Turkey claims the right under international law to carry out cross-border operations and has been receiving intelligence from the United States, its NATO ally, to pinpoint the PKK targets.

As well as air and artillery strikes, Turkish commandos have staged limited raids into Iraqi territory. But commentators say a full-scale invasion is unlikely despite the presence of up to 100,000 Turkish troops along the border.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since 1984, when it began its fight for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey. The United States and European Union, like Turkey, classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.
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'The military forces of Canada have a role to play after February, 2009,' Liberal Leader insists while on whirlwind tour with Ignatieff

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and deputy leader Michael Ignatieff made a surprise whirlwind tour of Afghanistan this weekend, hoping to show a united front as they argued that Canada must end its combat operations.

After visiting President Hamid Karzai in Kabul and Canadian soldiers and civilians stationed around Kandahar, the leaders of the Official Opposition insisted they weren't trying to get Canada out of Afghanistan so much as trying to shift the mission's focus by early next year.

"The military forces of Canada have a role to play after February, 2009 - even though it's not combat, it will be for security," Mr. Dion told reporters. He maintained Canada should continue to play a role in reconstruction but "the only difference is you don't proactively be in a situation to engage the enemy."

While training Afghan soldiers and police remains vital, he said, Canada's new jobs could also include everything from working to improve women's rights to bolstering education systems to improving access to fresh water. He also suggested that other NATO countries have to pull their military weight in Afghanistan.

The weekend visit was Mr. Dion's first trip to Afghanistan. Mr. Ignatieff was making his third trip, having previously visited as a journalist before he became a politician.

"No one is walking away from that solidarity with the Afghans that we've shown," Mr. Ignatieff said, upon arriving at the Kandahar air field.

Mr. Ignatieff also recalled his first trip to Afghanistan in 1997, when he wrote an essay for New Yorker magazine. In the essay, Mr. Ignatieff describes seeing the Taliban implement the "strictest version of Islamic law ever encountered in the Muslim world: prohibiting women from employment; forcing them to wear the burka with its hateful lattice grille over the face; stoning adulterers and amputating the hands of thieves."

Reflecting on this, Mr. Ignatieff told reporters that, "I've seen what the Taliban did to the women of Kabul in 1997 with my own eyes, which is why I feel passionate about what we're trying to do here.

"I'm convinced - based on the progress we've seen today - [that] Afghanistan will be defending itself," he added. "I am absolutely convinced the Taliban are not going to win here."
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Signs of political reconciliation are emerging in Iraq, raising US hopes that a logjam has broken.

The Bush administration is counting on Saturday's passage of a key piece of legislation in Iraq, easing measures against former Baathists, to act as a break in a logjam that has held up national reconciliation.

With violence down, insurgent groups quieted, and many of the forces affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq routed, the United States is hoping passage of the new law means the "surge" of 30,000 additional troops is succeeding. In announcing the surge a year ago, President Bush said its aim was to provide the conditions for Iraq's warring power blocs to find common ground on important political issues.

What the US has done is provide an "opportunity" for Iraqis – led by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – to compromise on unsettled power-sharing issues, including oil-revenue distribution, provincial elections and powers, and constitutional reform, some experts say. But with US troop levels beginning to shrink and with the US commitment to Iraq likely to weaken no matter who is elected president in November, it's now crunch time for Iraq's leaders.

"The US needs the Iraqis to come up with their own surge of political action, and pretty quickly here, if the effort is to be a long-term success," says James Phillips, a Middle East expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "The US military surge did its job in improving conditions on the ground, but now the Maliki government must take the opportunity to transform those gains by reaching out to moderate Sunnis and bringing them into a political-power-sharing arrangement.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's defense minister said on Monday his country would need foreign military help to defend its borders for another 10 years and would not be able to maintain internal security until 2012.

Abdul Qadir's remarks, in an interview with The New York Times posted on the newspaper's Internet site, could become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

"According to our calculations and our timelines, we think that from the first quarter of 2009 until 2012 we will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country," Qadir said.

"In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020," he said.

President George W. Bush has said U.S. troops may have to stay in Iraq for years but most presidential candidates, especially Democrats, would like them to withdraw much faster.

Qadir is currently visiting the United States. On his agenda is weapons acquisitions for the new, U.S.-trained Iraqi army. According to the Times, these included ground vehicles, helicopters, tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers.

The United States disbanded the country's previous armed forces built by Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president who was executed in December 2006.

The United States and Iraq have said they would negotiate a formal agreement governing the legal status of American military forces in Iraq but talks have not yet formally begun.
Source

As the world marked the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the first orange-jumpsuit-clad prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, human rights groups are attempting to focus public and congressional scrutiny on what some are calling "the other Gitmo".

It is a prison located on the U.S. military base at base in the ancient city of Bagram near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan. The detention centre was set up by the U.S. military as a temporary screening site after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban. It currently houses some 630 prisoners -- close to three times as many as are still held at Guantanamo.

In 2005, following well-documented accounts of detainee deaths, torture, and "disappeared" prisoners, the U.S. undertook efforts to turn the facility over to the Afghan government. But thanks to a series of legal, bureaucratic and administrative missteps, the prison is still under U.S. military control. And a recent confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reportedly complained about the continued mistreatment of prisoners.

The ICRC report is said to cite massive overcrowding, "harsh" conditions, lack of clarity about the legal basis for detention, prisoners held "incommunicado", in "a previously undisclosed warren of isolation cells," and "sometimes subjected to cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions." Some prisoners have been held without charges or lawyers for more than five years.

According to Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "Bagram appears to be just as bad, if not worse, than Guantanamo. When a prisoner is in American custody and under American control, our values are at stake and our commitment to the rule of law is tested."
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Baghdad on Tuesday, peeling off a trip to the region by President Bush to give momentum to legislative and political reconciliation, the White House said.

Ms. Rice’s trip, which was not previously announced, came after Iraq’s parliament gave approval on Saturday to a key piece of legislation allowing some former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party to work in public service again and receive pensions. The Bush administration and Congress had made the legislation a benchmark for measuring political progress in Iraq as Democrats and others critics of the war debate the war. Ms. Rice is expected to spend only a few hours there, meeting with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other officials.

“President Bush and Secretary Rice decided this would be a good opportunity for the secretary to go to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi officials to build on political progress made and encourage political reconciliation and legislative action,” a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said.

With Mr. Bush visiting Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and now Saudi Arabia, there was considerable speculation that he would also furtively visit Baghdad. Mr. Bush’s trip to the Middle East has focused on the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the war in Iraq and the diplomatic confrontation over Iran’s nuclear programs.
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Iraq factions join against Kurd oil deals

Published: Jan. 15, 2008 at 9:54 AM

BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- A majority of Iraq's parliamentarians have signed an agreement against Iraqi Kurds' moves to unilaterally develop the oil sector and control oil-rich Kirkuk.

The new agreement between a dozen political factions in Iraq also aligns one-time opponents against a dominant Shiite political party that wants to create a large autonomous region in the oil-rich south.

Dar al Hayat reports leaders of political parties representing 150 of Iraq's 275 parliamentarians signed the pact.

"There must be a formula for maintaining the unity of Iraq and the distribution of its wealth," Osama Najafi, of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular National List party, said at a news conference.

"Oil and gas are a national wealth and we are concerned about those who want to go it alone when it comes to signing deals," he said, Gulf Daily News reports.

The political parties, which have quit Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government, are also uniting against the Kurdistan Regional Government's move to add oil-rich Kirkuk to its territory.

In doing so, the new allies are taking on two of the key supporters of Maliki's government, the Kurdish Coalition and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, in what could be a bid to rejoin with Maliki.

The deal is only tentative, falling short of officially uniting a new block in Parliament, but the parties' members would make up at least 45 percent of the 275-member legislative body.

Signatories to the agreement include Sunni parties National Dialogue Front and Iraqi Accord Front. A faction of the IAF recently signaled support of the Kurds.

A faction of the Dawa Party, which has opposed Maliki's Dawa Party, also signed on, as did the Sadr Movement, led by Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite Cleric with a large militia force that had, under Allawi's rule, been targeted by coalition forces, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The Iraqi Turkmen Front and the Yazidi Block also agreed to the pact, Azzaman reports.

The Kurds have expressed frustration during negotiations with the central government over the country's proposed oil law. The KRG wants a decentralized governance of the sector; Baghdad and others are pushing for central control over the planning and development of oil.

The Kurds passed their own regional law in August and have signed more than 20 deals with Kurdish and international oil firms since.

Baghdad calls the deals illegal.

Sadr's Sheik Walid Kraimawi said Kurds are demanding too much, the Los Angeles Times reports.

It quoted Kurdish Parliamentarian Mahmoud Othman as saying the groups are against Kurds.

The ISCI Party, which aligns with the Kurds, has wanted to create a region of Iraq's southern oil-rich provinces, similar to the semiautonomy afforded to Kurds in the north. The new agreement is designed to challenge that as well.

Note there are huge discrepancies here in the identification of who, exactly, was killed. Most reports, however, indicate this was not just a "go home infidels" show but a very closely targeted assault. The UN sec gen says the Norwegian Foreign Minister was the specific goal. (Why?) Most reports say 3 (so far nameless) Americans were killed but the US State Dept says it was only 1 (also nameless.) Puzzling.

Following SNIP is from South Asia News

Kabul - Militants in police uniform killed at least five foreigners and two Afghan guards in a brazen suicide bomb and gun attack at the Kabul luxury hotel, Afghan authorities and a victim said on Tuesday.

At least three militants carried out a multi-pronged attack in the city's most fortified area, which is some 300 metres from the presidential palace and is located in the heart of the city.

Taliban militants immediately took responsibility for the attack, which sparked widespread concern that the elements from the former ultra-Islamic regime of Taliban have become able to target the most secured area in the capital despite presence of thousands of Afghan and international forces.

There were conflicting reports on the nationalities of the seven killed on Monday evening's attack at the Serena, the only five-star hotel in Kabul.

Amerullah Saleh, head of National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, told a press conference on Tuesday that three American nationals were among the dead people, but sources from US embassy in Kabul said that only one US citizens were killed.

'Three American nationals and one French woman' were among those killed in the blast on Monday evening, said Saleh.

Selah also said that a French woman was killed during the attack, however, a source from French embassy in Kabul said that the woman was Filipino, who spoke French and was working at the hotel.

Afghan officials said at least four Afghan guards were killed, while Abdullah Fahim, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health said seven Afghan nationals were admitted to four city hospitals.

THE HAGUE, 16/01/08 - The Party for Freedom (PVV) wants Media Minister Ronald Plasterk to take action against Marokko.nl. The party says that the death of two Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan was cheered on this subsidised website.

According to PVV, there was much rejoicing on the website's forum on Saturday after two Dutch soldiers died in friendly fire in Afghanistan. Comments such as "Great news!" and "Two criminals down" were accompanied by the slogan "Allahu Akbar!" according to PVV.

The party points to the fact that Marokko.nl receives subsidy from The Netherlands Press Fund (Stimuleringsfonds voor de Pers). This organisation allocates government money to initiatives which help diversify the media landscape.

Yesterday the comments had been removed from the website's forum, but PVV states they were on the website for hours. The party made copies. Spokesperson Khalid Mahdaoui contested that Marokko.nl receives government subsidy. "We only get subsidy for the news section nieuws.marokko.nl."
Dutch News

Three U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq - military
16 Jan 2008 18:34:07 GMT
Source: Reuters

(Updates with background)

BAGHDAD, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Three U.S. soldiers were killed by small arms fire during operations in Iraq's northern Salahuddin province on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

The military said in a statement that two other soldiers were wounded in the incident.

The deaths took the number of U.S. soldiers killed so far in January to at least 19. A total of 23 soldiers were killed in the whole month of December.

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What an idiot

NASIRIYAH, Iraq (AFP) - Iraqi security forces overran a mosque in southern Iraq where fighters of a shadowy Shiite messianic sect were holed up Saturday, ending two days of clashes in two cities that killed more than 70 people, police said.

The fighting came as millions of Shiites across Iraq marked Saturday's climax of 10-day Ashura rituals, which commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680.

The mosque was the last stronghold of the cultists. Wearing yellow headbands sporting the Star of David, they attacked police simultaneously early Friday afternoon in the southern port city of Basra and in Nasiriyah, about 350 kilometres (220 miles) south of Baghdad.

Fighting raged through the afternoon in both cities. It died down in Basra during the night but continuing sporadically in Nasiriyah.

A police official in Nasiriyah said Iraq's security forces raided hideouts of the doomsday cultists at daybreak on Saturday, flushing them out of the mosque and houses they had occupied in Al-Salhiyah suburb.
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I trust no one will be surprised that John Manley will suggest we "stay the course." That's why he was chosen to head that panel in the first place.

Juan Cole roundup

Thomas Walkom for the Toronto Star - January 18

American Defence Secretary Robert Gates may well be right when he says that Canadian and European troops in Afghanistan are not well equipped to fight a counter-insurgency campaign. But what has been lost in the controversy over his impolitic remarks is that we did not sign on to fight insurgents – there or anywhere else.

The International Stabilization and Assistance Force, which NATO now commands and which includes some 2,500 Canadian soldiers, was set up in late 2001 by the United Nations to do just what its name suggests – stabilize a country emerging from years of civil war and assist the fledgling Kabul government in its redevelopment efforts.

Fighting the Taliban (or, as they were called then, the Taliban "remnants") was a job that Washington insisted on reserving to itself through what it called Operation Enduring Freedom.

Canada helped out in that one too, sending troops to serve under U.S. command in 2002. But in those days, America wanted to keep its sometimes squeamish allies well away from a dark war that was aimed primarily at capturing terror suspects and transferring them to interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

It was only after 2003, when the U.S. found itself troop-short and bogged down in Iraq, that Washington changed the rules of engagement for its allies. Gradually, Afghanistan became NATO's war. Washington's plan then was to gradually reduce its 20,000 troop commitment to Afghanistan and switch them over to Iraq.

Which is why, since 2006, Canadian troops have found themselves under fire in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

It's worth remembering that we keep sending soldiers to Afghanistan not because Canada has been attacked by the Taliban, but because our friends, the Americans, feel they are at war with them.

The Dutch are in southern Afghanistan for the same reason. So are the British – who have paid a severe price at home for their decision to support Washington's various anti-Islamist wars.

That's why Gates' comments rub so raw in this and other NATO countries. Since 2001, one Canadian diplomat and 77 soldiers have died in Afghanistan. More than 250 more have been wounded in action. Yet this was never our war. It was always America's.

The U.S. chose to declare Afghanistan the enemy after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Had Washington elected to avenge 9/11 by invading the country from which most of those terrorists came, Canadian troops would now be fighting in Saudi Arabia.

Their call, their war, their show.

Now, Washington has shifted its focus again. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced it will send an additional 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan – bringing the total number of U.S. troops there to more than 30,000.

It is in this context that Gates made his remarks. In effect, the American public is being told that its soldiers have to fix Afghanistan because the pusillanimous Europeans and invisible Canadians aren't up to the job. Or, as the Washington Post noted editorially: "It's becoming clear that the war must be won by U.S. troops, and not by NATO."

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Chickadee? I'm sure you can create a funny skit from the following scenario

Gates was giving vent to pent-up frustrations. Finally, Afghanistan is threatening to be a blemish on his successfully nurtured record in public service.

.....He solicited help from US Congressmen for "pressuring" the NATO capitals "to do the difficult work of persuading their own citizens [in Europe] of the need to step up to this challenge."

NATO hears 'noise before defeat'

SAN DIEGO - Joshua Frey looked through the view finder of his camera in a studio production lot, focusing on a group of helmets atop wooden stakes.

They reminded the former Marine of the memorials to fallen comrades he had seen before he was shot and hit by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq, which left him with partial use of his left arm, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder that still haunts his nights.

Frey, like many disabled veterans, has struggled to find a career, to rebuild a life.

Now, more than two years after being wounded in Fallujah, Frey has enrolled in the Wounded Marine Career Foundation program, which aims to help wounded and disabled Marines and Navy corpsmen land jobs in the film industry.

The photos in the studio lot were part assignment, part therapy for Frey. Perhaps, he says, his attempt to use a camera is a new beginning, a path to a new career.

"There's so much riding on this, it has just got to work," Frey says.

With more than 29,000 troops wounded in combat since Sept. 11, 2001, job training for the disabled is a priority for the military.

But unlike many training centers, the foundation's new film boot camp aims to do more than provide skills that help the disabled find a career in film, video, sound design, graphics and photojournalism.

It also aims to let the wounded tell their own stories, says co-founder Kev Lombard, a documentary filmmaker and two-time Emmy-winning director of photography for the children's television show "Reading Rainbow."
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.....Nobody believes that Mr. Smith’s killing of Ms. Speirs can be justified. But many involved in the case have wondered aloud, at some point, whether Ms. Speirs’s life might have been spared if the marine’s combat trauma had been treated more aggressively.

Ms. Speirs’s parents do not engage in such speculation. They view their daughter as a victim of fatal domestic violence and not as an indirect casualty of the war in Iraq.

Last fall, sitting in their living room, across from framed samplers that said “Home Sweet Home” and “Welcome Friends,” John and Pauline Speirs remembered their daughter as a shy tomboy, a graphic designer and a proud young mother. In their estimation, Ms. Speirs herself has been ignored in all the attention given in Utah to Mr. Smith as a combat veteran.

“When they mention Nicole, it’s like an aside,” Mr. Speirs said, his voice quiet, his emotion muted. “I feel like a lot of people are using her death as something against the war. They practically are like saying that President Bush killed Nicole. Well, Walter killed Nicole. The war can be a factor. It’s not a reason or an excuse for it.”
From A Veteran’s Descent, and a Prosecutor’s Choice

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus for the top NATO command later this year, a move that would give the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level post during the next administration but that has raised concerns about the practice of rotating war commanders.

A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious position,” the official said. “So he is a candidate for that job, but there have been no final decisions and nothing on the timing.”
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Muhammad Ayn-al-Nas, a 26-year-old Moroccan, started his journey in Casablanca. After flying to Turkey and then to Damascus, he reached his destination in a small Iraqi border town on Jan. 31, 2007. He was an economics student back home, he told the al-Qaeda clerk who interviewed him on arrival. Asked what sort of work he hoped to do in Iraq, Nas replied: "Martyr."

Algerian Watsef Mussab, 29, who arrived in Iraq via Saudi Arabia and Syria, said he had come for combat. He complained that the Syrian smugglers who brought him to the border took his money, but he contributed what he had left to the insurgent cause -- a watch, a ring and an MP3 player.

Hanni al-Sagheer, a computer technician from Yemen and aspiring suicide volunteer, gave the clerk his home telephone number and also that of his brother.

Their stories are among the individual records of 606 foreign fighters who entered Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007. The cache of documents was discovered last fall by U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar.

Some include pictures -- bearded men in a turban or kaffiyeh, some smiling and some scowling -- in addition to names and aliases, home countries, birthdays and dates of entry into Iraq. Many list their occupations at home, whether plumber, laborer, policeman, lawyer, soldier or teacher. There is a "massage specialist," a "weapons merchant," a few "unemployed" and many students.

The youngest was 16 when he crossed into Iraq; the oldest was 54. Most expressed interest in a suicide mission.

The records are "one of the deepest reservoirs of information we've ever obtained of the network going into Iraq," according to a U.S. official closely familiar with intelligence on the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Analyzed and made public last month by the Army's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, the documents have led the U.S. military in Iraq to reassess some of its earlier assumptions about the insurgent group and those who carry out most of the suicide missions that are its signature method of attack.
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at Newshoggers

WaPo - A suicide bomber infiltrated a funeral Monday evening and blew himself up among the mourners, killing 17 people in the latest attack in a volatile region of northern Iraq.

The funeral for a local man was being held in a mainly Sunni village south of Baiji, the oil refinery town that was the scene of a major bombing last month. Police there speculated that the bomber might have been targeting Interior Ministry officials attending the funeral.

After the bomber entered the funeral hall, he shook hands with the guests and detonated his explosives, injuring 12 people in addition to those killed, said Capt. Mohammed al-Kaissi of the Baiji police.

Kaissi said the bombing slightly wounded Col. Ahmed Abdullah al-Juburi, a senior Interior Ministry official in the province.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

By Mark Perry, Asia Times

For military officers in the Pentagon's E-Ring (where the most important defense issues are decided), the shift in the public mood has been nearly miraculous: last September, on the eve of General David Petraeus' Congressional testimony on the George W Bush administration's 'surge' strategy, the American electorate was consumed by the war in Iraq.

Now, just four months later, that same electorate has shifted its attention to the 2008 elections. Public polls reflect the shift. Iraq no longer tops the list of issues of concern to Americans - its place having been usurped over worries about the economy - and is competing for attention with healthcare and immigration. (The "war on terror" is a poor seventh - a stunning turnabout from the two years following September 11, 2001.) But the perceptible fall-off in public attention from foreign policy to domestic issues is hardly a palliative for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or America's highest-ranking combatant commanders, all of whom continue to deal with the continuing uncertain military situation Iraq.

The fact that the Iraq war has been pushed off the front pages of America's newspapers has given the US military a seeming respite from the almost endless spate of disastrous stories coming out of the Middle East, as well as the almost endless round of embarrassing questions from the press about what they intend to do about it.

But military officers say that the American public should not be fooled: the relative quiet in Iraq - and it is, after all, only a "relative quiet" - does not mean the "surge" has worked, or that the problems facing the US military have somehow magically gone away. Quite the opposite. For while the American public is consumed by the campaign for the presidency, the American military is not. Instead, they are as obsessed now, in January of 2008, with the war in Iraq as they were then, in 2003 - except that now, many military officers admit, the host of problems they face may, in fact, be much more intractable.

First contact
"Don't let the quiet fool you," a senior defense official says. "There's still a huge chasm between how the White House views Iraq and how we [in the Pentagon] view Iraq. The White House would like to have you believe the 'surge' has worked, that we somehow defeated the insurgency. That's just ludicrous. There's increasing quiet in Iraq, but that's happened because of our shift in strategy - the 'surge' had nothing to do with it."

In part, the roots of the disagreement between the Pentagon and White House over what is really happening in Iraq is historical. Senior military officers contend that the seeming fall-off in in-country violence not only has nothing to do with the increase in US force levels, but that the dampening of the insurgency that took hold last summer could have and would have taken place much earlier, within months of America's April 2003 occupation of Baghdad.
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A strong-minded woman with charm and character, Maysoun al-Damluji was born into a middle-class Baghdad family in 1962. Growing up under the influence of doctors and old-school politicians, her great uncle Abdullah Bey al-Damluji was the first foreign minister of Saudi Arabia under the kingdom's founder, King Abdul-Aziz. He returned to Iraq to take up the same post under King Faysal I. English-speaking, tuxedo-wearing, refined and seasoned politicians, they injected the family with strong moral values, urging them to become active, law-abiding citizens, respectful of women, opinions of others, and democracy.
===
Last week, Maysoun held a grand conference in Baghdad, objecting to the rising death toll of Iraqi women. She filed a request to the Ministry of Interior, demanding the right to stage a demonstration upholding the rights granted to women by the Iraqi constitution. In recent months, the number of women killed in Basra, for example, has reached 100. The number is lower (50) in Diyali but at a high 520 in Kirkuk. More often than not, she explained, these crimes are left unpunished.

Maysoun has been trying to tell the world: wake up. You have been over-concentrating on federalism, disarming militias and arming the Awakening Councils. You have debated Article 140 of the constitution (regarding Kirkuk becoming a part of the Kurdish autonomous zone) but have completely ignored Articles 14, 19, 39. Democracy and justice starts with these "forgotten articles". Article 14 prohibits segregation of women while Article 19 guarantees personal privacy and Article 39 says, "People are free to choose their personal status according to their own religion, sect, belief and choice, and that this will be organized by law."

When asked why these articles were not being implemented, she replied: "Because of the weakness in government", noting that the reasons behind all these crimes are "unveiling, refusing to adhere to the Islamic dress code, short skirts, and driving cars". Maysoun added, "Nobody in Iraq feels safe today. But [the situation] has not scared women off."
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Jan 24, 2008
Asia Times Online

Page 1 of 2
US MILITARY BREAKS RANKS, Part 2
Troops felled by a 'trust gap'
By Mark Perry

(See also Part 1: A salvo at the White House)

How the "surge" succeeded - or even whether it has succeeded - is a source of constant commentary in military circles. In an "after-action report" written for the head of the Department of Social Sciences at West Point by retired four-star General Barry McCaffrey, who traveled to Iraq in mid-December, some of the problems that continue to plague US forces in Iraq were detailed.

McCaffrey, who has often been outspoken in his criticism of the

George W Bush administration's counter-terrorism strategy, admitted that "an active counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq could probably succeed in the coming decade with 25 US Brigade Combat Teams". But that would be more than one-half of the total available in the entire army - a level of commitment that simply cannot be sustained.

With US requirements in Afghanistan - estimated by McCaffrey at four brigades permanently engaged in a campaign that would last 15 years, a continued war on terrorism in Southwest Asia has become nearly impossible. Additionally, McCaffrey says, "The US Army is starting to unravel. Our recruiting campaign is bringing into the army thousands of new soldiers who should not be in uniform" - those with criminal records, who have used drugs, who have been given moral waivers, or who have not graduated from high school. A senior Pentagon official agrees. "We have increased our recruiting totals and tripled the number of our police battalions," he says, bitterly. "We will soon have to build new stockades to handle the influx."

McCaffrey recently summarized his views during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. Alongside him was General Jack Keane, a celebrated army paratrooper and former vice chief of staff of the army, and the man most responsible for pushing the "surge" strategy with Bush, in December of 2006.

Keane's intervention with Bush to shift American policy was so far outside of military tradition as to be virtually unprecedented. In only one other case - when Maxwell Taylor was named to replace Lyman Lemnitzer by John F Kennedy as Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) chairman in 1962 - has a retired officer intervened so publicly to shift American policy. "Jack Keane was way out of line," a retired four-star army officer who served as a North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander says. "He's a first-class self-promoter, one of the army's real kiss-ups."

In essence, the case against Keane, repeated now by the coterie of retired senior officers, is that "Keane pulled a Taylor" - that, in the words of a retired four-star officer "it looks as if he wanted to get back into the JCS - that he wanted to get his boy [General David] Petraeus a good job".

Keane's pride in his role and in Petraeus' success was on full view during his armed services testimony. But his reading of what went right in Iraq and why is at odds with narrative accounts of on-the-ground American combat officers, and tilted to give himself, Petraeus and the "surge" strategy full credit for what Keane called "a remarkably successful military campaign that will be studied for years".

According to Keane, the violence in Iraq only began to go down "after all the troops were in place" - the implication being that a flood of US soldiers intimidated and scattered insurgent forces, an argument he emphasized by saying that, until he and Petraeus arrived on the scene, and given the Pentagon a dose of backbone, the war was lost. "We had never taken on defeating the insurgency," he said, "we had always left that up to the Iraqis" - a statement that will, no doubt, come as a shock to those marines of the First Marine Expeditionary Force who fought house-to-house in Fallujah in April of 2004, as well as to the families of those soldiers who lost their lives serving under Petraeus' predecessors.

It is such statements that make Keane one of the most reviled figures in the military community, and that does no favors for his protege, Petraeus, who must remain in uniform - and deal with the senior commanders whom Keane regularly insults.

The differences between Keane and McCaffrey are stark: where Keane is proud and ready to declare victory, McCaffrey is analytical, careful and intent to tell anyone who will listen of the obstacles that remain. While "AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] has been defeated," McCaffrey says, "there are still 3,000 attacks per month against US, coalition and Iraq forces. There is still a civil war going on."

Additionally, McCaffrey's reading of why Anbar is now quiet diverges significantly from that given by Keane: "The bottom line is the Sunnis got scared and started to engage, the spin-off of that is these concerned local citizens who are primarily Sunnis, but it's now being extended into the Shi'ite areas, and the areas south of Baghdad" - a reading confirmed by interviews with US commanders in Anbar and Babib provinces, and reflected in information about the inception of the "Awakening of the Tribes" that first began with John Coleman's dispatch of help to a tribal Sheikh in Fallujah.

That is to say, as McCaffrey put it: "The Iraqi people have turned on AQI because it overreached, trying to impose an alien and harsh practice of Islam inconsistent with the more moderate practices of the Sunni minority. The foreign jihadi elements in AQI (with their enormous hatred of what they view as the apostate Shi'ite) have alienated the nationalism of the broader Iraqi population." Or, as a Pentagon official now puts it: "The so-called success of the 'surge' had nothing to do with military victory, this was politics."

much more

me thinks Rodriguez has dipped into the poppy supply ;)

Taliban offensive unlikely in east Afghanistan-US
23 Jan 2008 18:11:17 GMT
Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. military commander said on Wednesday he did not expect the Taliban to mount a major offensive in eastern Afghanistan this spring.

Afghan security forces and other civilian authorities had established a stronger presence in the east, said Army Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, the top commander of NATO troops in that part of the country.

"I don't think there will be a big spring offensive this year," said Rodriguez, on a visit back to the United States.

"The people of Afghanistan don't want the Taliban back and the strength of their institutions has grown significantly in the last year," he said at the Pentagon.

Fighting has traditionally surged in Afghanistan in the spring after winter snows melt, allowing fighters to move around more easily.

U.S. officials say eastern Afghanistan has become substantially more stable in the past year, thanks to the work of U.S. troops and Afghan officials in countering the influence of Taliban Islamist militants.

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Petraeus: I Need Another Six Months To Determine Whether ‘We’ve Reached A Turning Point’

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7204341.stm

So much for promoting truth and democracy:

An Afghan journalist has been sentenced to death by a provincial court for distributing "blasphemous" material.
Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, was arrested in 2007 after downloading material from the internet relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

A primary court in Balkh province said that Kambakhsh had confessed to blasphemy and had to be punished.

The court also threatened to arrest any reporters who protested against Kambakhsh's sentence.

Kambakhsh, a student at Balkh University and a journalist for Jahan-e Naw (New World), was arrested in October 2007 after material he downloaded was deemed to be offensive to Islam.

Shamsur Rahman, the head of the court, told Reuters news agency: "According to... the Islamic law, Sayed Perwiz is sentenced to death at the first court.

"However, he will go through three more courts to declare his last punishment," he said.

anuary 25, 2008
U.S. to Insist Iraq Grant It Wide Mandate in Operations
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON — With its international mandate in Iraq set to expire in 11 months, the Bush administration will insist that the government in Baghdad give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations and guarantee civilian contractors immunity from Iraqi law, according to administration and military officials.

This emerging American negotiating position faces a potential buzz saw of opposition from Iraq, with its fragmented Parliament, weak central government and deep sensitivities about being seen as a dependent state, according to these officials.

At the same time, the administration faces opposition from Democrats at home, who warn that the agreements the White House seeks would bind the next president by locking in Mr. Bush’s policies and a long-term military presence.

The American negotiating position for a formal military-to-military relationship, one that would replace the current United Nations mandate, is laid out in a draft proposal that was described by a range of White House, Pentagon, State Department and military officials on ground rules of anonymity. It also includes less-controversial demands that American troops be immune from Iraqi prosecution, and that they maintain the power to detain Iraqi prisoners.

However, the American quest for immunity for civilian contractors is expected to be particularly vexing, because in no other country are contractors working with the American military granted protection from local laws.

These officials said the negotiations with the Iraqis, expected to begin next month, also would determine whether the American authority to conduct combat operations in the future would be unilateral, as it is now, or whether it would require consultation with the Iraqis or even Iraqi approval.

“These are going to be tough negotiations,” said one senior Bush administration official preparing for negotiations with the Iraqis. “They’re not supplicants.”

Democrats in Congress, as well as the party’s two leading presidential contenders, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, have accused the White House of sponsoring negotiations that will set into law a long-term security relationship with Iraq.

But administration officials said that the American proposal specifically does not set future troop levels in Iraq or ask for permanent American bases there. Nor, they said, does it offer a mutual security guarantee defining Washington’s specific responsibilities should Iraq come under attack.

Including such long-term commitments in the agreement would turn the accord into a bilateral treaty, one that would require Senate approval. The Bush administration faces the political reality that it cannot count on the two-thirds vote that would be required to approve a treaty with Iraq setting out such a military commitment.

Administration officials are describing their draft proposal in terms of a traditional status-of-forces agreement, an accord that has historically been negotiated by the executive branch and signed by the executive branch without a Senate vote.

“I think it’s pretty clear that such an agreement would not talk about force levels,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday. “We have no interest in permanent bases. I think the way to think about the framework agreement is an approach to normalizing the relationship between the United States and Iraq.”

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10 Die in Mistaken Afghan Firefight

By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
Published: January 25, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least nine Afghan police officers and a civilian were killed early Thursday in a firefight between American forces and the officers in the province of Ghazni just south of the capital, according to local officials.

The American forces were searching houses in a village on the outskirts of the town of Ghazni and blew open the gates of a house, according to local Afghan officials. District police officers heard the explosion and rushed the scene, suspecting the Taliban were in the area, but were themselves mistaken for Taliban and shot by the American soldiers, the officials said. Aircraft supporting the operation fired on one of the police cars.

The killings set off angry protests in the town of Ghazni on Thursday afternoon, and demonstrators blocked the main highway and prevented a government delegation sent to look into the clash from reaching the town from a nearby airfield, local officials said.

“Another big cruelty was made by American forces this morning,” said Khial Muhammad Hussaini, a member of Parliament from the province, who was among the elders and legislators who had traveled to the town to try to calm the the people and persuade them to reopen the highway.

Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior in Kabul, confirmed the shooting and called it a “misunderstanding,” but said he had information on only eight deaths.

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Why would we be sending 3000 soldiers to Afghanistan for the Taliban spring offensive if they don't believe there will be a spring offensive?

Reuters - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein kept up the illusion that he had weapons of mass destruction before 2003 because he did not think the United States would invade, an FBI agent who questioned him said.

In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" to be broadcast Sunday, FBI agent George Piro describes conversations with Saddam in the months after his capture in December 2003.

Piro said Saddam, who was hanged from crimes against humanity in December 2006, wanted to maintain the image of a strong Iraq to deter Iran, its historic enemy, from hostile action.more at link

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

Bush plan for Iraq would be a first
No OK from Congress seen; Constitutional issues raised

By Charlie Savage
Globe Staff / January 25, 2008

WASHINGTON - President Bush's plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq's security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists.

After World War II, for example - when the United States gave security commitments to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and NATO members - Presidents Truman and Eisenhower designated the agreements as treaties requiring Senate ratification. In 1985, when President Ronald Reagan guaranteed that the US military would defend the Marshall Islands and Micronesia if they were attacked, the compacts were put to a vote by both chambers of Congress.

By contrast, Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki have already agreed that a coming compact will include the United States providing "security assurances and commitments" to Iraq to deter any foreign invasion or internal terrorism by "outlaw groups." But a top White House official has also said that Bush does not intend to submit the deal to Congress.

"We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress," General Douglas Lute, Bush's deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, said in November when the White House announced the plan.

Lute's disclosure initially attracted little scrutiny. Most of the attention has instead focused on whether the pact could make it more difficult for the United States to withdraw from Iraq after Bush leaves office. Although the next president could scrap the agreement, reneging on the compact would create diplomatic problems by showing that the nation does not live up to its obligations, specialists say.

But there is now also growing alarm about the constitutional issues raised by Bush's plan. Legal specialists and lawmakers of both parties are raising questions about whether it would be unconstitutional for Bush to complete such a sweeping deal on behalf of the United States without the consent of the legislative branch.

"There is literally no question that this is unprecedented," said Oona Hathaway, a Yale Law School professor who has written a forthcoming law journal article about the proposed Iraq agreement. "The country has never entered into this kind of commitment without Congress being involved, period."

At a House hearing on the pact on Wednesday, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California and a former Reagan administration official, accused the Bush administration of "arrogance" for not consulting with Congress about the pact. If it includes any guarantees to Iraq, he said, Congress must sign off.

"We are here to fulfill the constitutional role established by the founding fathers," Rohrabacher said, adding, "It is not all in the hands of the president and his appointees. We play a major role."

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