Basra Blowback

By Cernig

Well, just recently people on the Right were asking why Iraq was off the front pages "now that there's only good news". I bet they wish they'd not tempted fate. They didn't really listen to Petraeus and others who said that the lull in violence could so very easily be a transient one and that the transience was caused by various currents of non-reconciliation upon which the "window" was almost closed.

Now, with Nour al-Maliki playing Napoleon in Basra, alongside his brother-in-law general, stability in Iraq is unravelling with remarkable speed - a shock and awe attack on assumptive victory pronouncements. No-one could have anticipated this - other than those of us who did, frequently, and months ago.

Maliki's assault on the Sadrists, painted as a general assault on "criminal militias", but somehow managing to leave his SIIC/Badr Brigade allies well alone, is failing badly. Everywhere, the Mahdi Army are holding their own territories and even expanding the fight into new towns and neighbourhoods. Given the unreasonably small force with which Maliki launched his assault, and the estimated 60% penetration of the region's police by the Mahdi Army which has led to widespread desertions, Fester and I are convinced that Maliki had a good idea this would happen. His main purpose in mounting the assault was to ensnare US occupation forces into stepping into the lead, battling Sadr's forces for him and for his SIIC allies.

That leaves the US with no good options in the South, even if commanders had little choice but to get Maliki's back from the front.

"The key question now is what the United States is going to do," said Joost Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group think tank. "If it allows (the crackdown) to go forward the ceasefire will unravel and the U.S. will face the Sadr movement in its full power."

"This will be bad for both sides. Sadr will lose men and the United States will lose the gains of the surge".

...Analysts say Maliki's decision to launch the Basra crackdown, instead of carrying through with a promised offensive against Sunni Islamist militants in the northern city of Mosul, lends weight to the Sadrist accusations of a political agenda.

Oh yeah, Mosul. While it's been getting almost no press in the States, there's been a major battle going on there too for months which has seen violence rise to a 2-year high with no end in sight and several reports suggest the fighting is against a wider-based insurgency than one composed just of the rump of AQI's presence. Let's not forget, too, that Turkey is still shelling and bombing Kurdish Iraq, and will be back over the border in force as soon as the Spring Thaw sets in. Between these and other prior commitments, the US will be lucky if it can shake loose three brigades to help Maliki's crackdown. They'll be going in essentially blind.

"This is a precarious situation," a senior official familiar with U.S. intelligence in southern Iraq said, with "a lot to be gained and a lot to lose." This official and others said that even as Maliki takes needed military action in Basra, he appears to be positioning himself and his Shiite political allies for dominance in provincial elections this fall.

Competition for power and resources in the oil-rich south has been ongoing for months among the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest single party in the Iraqi parliament; and the breakaway Sadrist movement known as Fadhila. The Shiite groups are opposed and allied with each other in a tangle of national and local issues, with many divisions reflected in factions of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces.

Although the Bush administration has tried to monitor the growing conflict in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, "our intelligence in that area is far less than we would like. We don't have any forces there," the senior official said, adding that "we are operating with a good dose of opaqueness."

As outlined by several civilian and military officials, none of whom was authorized to speak on the record, a victory in Basra against what Bush described as "those who believe they are outside the law" could prove Maliki's mettle. "Basra's been a mess for a long time," said a U.S. official in Baghdad, "and everybody's said to Maliki, 'What are you doing about it?' "

But this official and others said that if the fighting in Basra leads to a breakdown in the cease-fire observed since August by the bulk of Sadr's forces elsewhere in the country, it could easily shatter the tenuous U.S. security gains of recent months.

Indeed, the Sadrist insurrection which has followed Maliki's assault now controls many towns athwart the main route of supply for US forces, up from Saudi Arabia - and insurgent troops can take potshots at supply trucks all day every day if needed.

Yet, despite all this, there are good reasons to be sceptical of leaks from the White House suggesting the administration had no idea Maliki was going to bring his offensive forwards three months and thus pre-empt any moves by Sadr (and perhaps Petreaus, who has been getting along well with "Seyyed" Muqtada of late) which might have made it unneccesary.

Nor should the US be looking to the UK to provide anything but base security at the Basra Airport, probable home of US forces sent to bail out Maliki's division of Badr Brigade militiamen in Iraqi Army uniforms. While British politicians are under intense pressure from the US to commit their three available battlegroups – each of about 650 men armed with Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles – the British military is implaccably opposed to such intervention.

"It's ridiculous for Britain's position in Iraq that we've got this firepower down there and we're not willing to help the Iraqis out," the British official said. "The army won't even listen to suggestions it might be needed."

Maliki, too, is seeing political blowback froom his hasty move - and his governemnt is busy painting itself into a corner even as contrary voices mobilize. His foreign minister has told the Arab Council that there will be no walking back or negotiated settlement. Maliki himself has today gone as far as to call the Sadrists worse than Al Qaeda and promise no surrender or negotiation. But there are reports that Grand Ayatollah Sistani (or the "cat-herder", as Eric likes to call him) is backing calls for negotiations instead of Maliki's intransigence - a new development in Shiite inter-relations and one that seriously weakens Maliki's postion.

The scale of the outcry has forced Grand Ayattollah Sistani to call for a peaceful solution to the conflict, even though his various spokespeople initially supported the assault. By Friday, government officials were falling over themselves to get to TV stations to declare that the fighting was not against the Sadr movement at all. With an eye on the sentiment and reality on the streets, some officials even heaped praise on Sadr, insisting the conflict was with "ordinary criminals".

I saw a report earlier that even Iraqi President Talibani is saying there must be negotiations, but I've lost the link. A senior Iranian cleric, the leader of that country's Guardian Council, has also said that the opposing groups should negotiate an end to their clashes - which seems to put paid to the notion floated by the Saudi-controlled Arabic press that Iran had cut Muqtada loose and green-lighted SIIC and Dawa as their main allies and proxies in Iraq to take the Sadrists out. The Iraqi parliament tried to have a session calling for negotiation, one backed by Sunnis as well as Sadrists - but Dawa and SIIC representatives walked out en masse, leaving them quorumless. Perhaps calls from Sadrist MP's to try Maliki "like Saddam" had something to do with that, perhaps they simply wanted to forestall any notion that they didn't have a national mandate for their parties' self-serving actions.

Maliki is now in a position whereby he might - might - be able to win or stalemate the battle with American assistance, but there's no way he can win the political war he's started. He will either fall or be forced to painfully backtrack to negotiate a settlement which will favor Sadr more than it does himself. He's toast and Sadr, despite the many op-eds written over the last four years claiming the opposite, very much isn't. It remains to be seen how fast the Bush administration. always slow to see the blindingly obvious, catch on to this fact.

The Knight's Move

By Cernig

Earlier today, Fester wondered why Maliki has gone charging into a city of 2.6 million after a numerous and entrenched Mahdi Army - armed only with a division of troops possessing no heavy firepower and only lightly armored trucks. He wrote:

why was this attacked launched with what looks to be massively insuffucient force levels on the part of the Iraqi Army? Was it pure staff stupidity/buying into your own propaganda that the JAM is a bunch of thugs with no popular support? Was it that the 14th Division was the only reliable division? Was it a hope that the introduction of a large force would destablize the local equilibriums of power and thus prompt local Badr and Fadillah militia attacks?

Fester called me this evening to discuss these questions and we settled on a combination of "the 14th Division was the only reliable division" - it's recruited in Basra, commanded by SIIC loyalists and has been based in Kerbala until now - and an option he hadn't listed earlier - that Maliki planned to draw the US into the fight on his side and move his own troops back into a PR/reserve position at the earliest opportunity.

Maliki christened his offensive the "Charge of the Knights" - and in chess, beloved game of all in the region, knight's move to come at the enemy from unexpected directions. By failing to commit enough forces to fight the Mahdi Army, his operation is certain to need rescuing if his government is not to fall in turn. The US cannot, with the best will in the world, commit more than a brigade or maybe three. That's way not enough to take on a force like the Mahdi Army in a city the size of basra through boots on the ground - and so firepower, bombs and shells will be pressed into service to do the work of the missing boots. Can we say "massive collateral damage?"

What better way not only to wreck the Sadrist's plans to reduce Maliki's SIIC allies to a minority power in the regional elections but also to drive a massive wedge between Sadr and Petreaus? The latter had been careful, of late, to refer to Sadr by the honorific "Seyed" and to credit his ceasefire with a large chunk of reductions in Iraqi violence. Maliki must have felt Mookie breathing down his neck from two directions.

Well, soon no longer. The Washington Post reports that US troops are already involved in combat with the JAM in east Baghdad.

U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting.

Four U.S. Stryker armored vehicles were seen in Sadr City by a Washington Post correspondent, one of them engaging Mahdi Army militiamen with heavy fire. The din of American weapons, along with the Mahdi Army's AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, was heard through much of the day. U.S. helicopters and drones buzzed overhead.

The clashes suggested that American forces were being drawn more deeply into a broad offensive that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, launched in the southern city of Basra on Tuesday.

And, according to the WaPo, the folks in the White House have been trying to figure out what Maliki's been up to as well.

Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that "we can't quite decipher" what is going on. It's a question, he said, of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki decided to act now.

In Basra, three rival Shiite groups have been trying to position themselves, sometimes through force of arms, to dominate recently approved provincial elections.

The U.S. officials, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said that they believe Iran has provided assistance in the past to all three groups -- the Mahdi Army; the Badr Organization of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Iraq's largest Shiite party; and forces loyal to the Fadhila Party, which holds the Basra governor's seat. But the officials see the current conflict as a purely internal Iraqi dispute.

Some officials have concluded that Maliki himself is firing "the first salvo in upcoming elections," the administration official said.

"His dog in that fight is that he is basically allied with the Badr Corps" against forces loyal to Sadr, the official said. "It's not a pretty picture."

As long as Maliki has the US to back him up, and power is more important to him than stability, this is a big gamble he cannot afford not to make. Sure, if he succeeds he gets a Sadrist insurrection. But that just means he can - delay the November elections in Sadrist areas indefinitely, citing the emergency and so prop up his SIIC allies and thus his own rule; count on US troops being around for a while as they won't be able to withdraw if there's more violence, rather than less, in coming months; put paid once and for all to any chance of reproachment between the US military and Sadr. On the minus side, there's a slim chance the Mahdi Army might mount a Hezboullah-style upset and a rather larger chance that the cat-herder, Sistani, might join with Iraqi parliamentarians who are already saying Maliki should heed Sadr's call for a negotiated settlement. If Sistani backs Sadr on this, Maliki is toast and so is his government, with Sadr garnering enough backing to become de-facto Iraqi leader almost overnight. But if he did nothing, that's going to happen anyway come November. Maliki doesn't have a choice if he wants to retain power.

For Sadr, the stakes are the destruction of his carefully built up social and political infrastructure, more than his militia. There's no way SIIC would stop at just defeating the Mahdi Army, they'd want Sadr's whole operation destroyed or disabled to the point where it's no longer a threat. Sadr knows the US military likely has the firepower, if not the troop numbers, to do the first and his Shiite enemies will do it the second as soon as the first step is out of the way. If he can negotiate a settlement, especially if Sistani backs it, he wins in the same way that Maliki, Dawa and SIIC lose above.

For the US, it's a bit of a lose-lose. If they use massive firepower instead of boots, they'll incur the wrath of much of the Shiite South well beyond the Sadrists. It will be Anbar at its worst, writ large, and this time lying athwart the main route of supply. If they lose in battle to a Hezboullah-style resistance, same again.

And over the US' shoulder, there are several other problems all looking to come to a head at once. There's the increasingly disaffected Sunni Awakening, threatening a general strike or even a return to their insurgent ways in the face of Maliki's refusal to accommodate them (ironically, Sadr would be far more likely to conduct the outreach that is needed). Then there's the Kurds and the brewing blood-feud over who owns Kirkuk. And finally, when the ground in the Northern mountains thaws in April and May, the Turks are looking to follow up their recent reconnaissance in force with a proper armored incursion on the hunt for PKK terrorists. There's a very real prospect here of chaotically and accidentally converging currents creating a perfect storm for the US occupation and for peace in Iraq.

Fox News Porn

By Cernig

The hypocrisy that is Murdoch's FOX News.

Hat Tip to Cory Doctorow, who writes:

Fox News Porn is a collection of raunchy outtakes from the Fox "News" Network, where hypocritical prigs like Bill O'Reilly revel in prurience while condemning it. This condemnation is largely indistinguishable from a celebration -- as when Sean Hannity visits a brothel and asks snotty, explicit questions of the workers there while his camera lovingly pans across their bare flesh.

The site is the creation of filmmaker Robert Greenwald, whose documentary Outfoxed is a masterful takedown of the Murdoch empire. Fox News Porn created a brief but spectacular net-storm when an overzealous moderator for Digg took the site off the Digg front page and threatened to suspend Greenwald's account for violating Digg's Terms of Service. However, a day later, Digg management reversed the decision. In founder Kevin Rose's words, "Our fault. Digg on."

Bush Death Watch.

By Cernig

Less than a year to go until the next presidential election and Mark Morford suggests it's time to begin your personal countdown.

It is less than one year until the country finally takes a deep breath and flexes its atrophied muscles and opens its bloody, Cheney-punched mouth and lets it be known to the world, to the universe, to its own numb and dejected soul just exactly how unwell it has felt, how much pain has raked its heart, lo, these past seven (eight, by then) years, by ushering in an entirely new political era, as we all exhale a massive sigh of long overdue relief that — praise Jesus, Allah, Buddha and the devil all at once — the long national nightmare of George W. Bush is finally over.

It is now safe to imagine. It is now becoming increasingly easy to actually dare to think that, in less than one year's time, Dubya will begin packing his bags, jamming into his Spongebob duffel his map of the world coloring book, English-to-English translation dictionaries, mangled pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution, Bibleman action figure set and a "Mission Accomplished!" sweatshirt, and heading off to face his destiny as one of the bleakest, most morally repellent chapters in all of American history.

Some will call it BDS, others a snark-filled pean of hope. It's definitely worth a read.

(H/t Raw Story)

Update Noel Shephard over at Newsbusters, predictably, gets his outrage on. He calls the SFGate article "unimaginably deranged" and writes "this Bush Derangement Syndrome has gone far enough, and if heads don't roll at the San Francisco Chronicle for this one, something is really wrong in this nation."

Nice, from a guy from a website with ads for t-shirts proclaiming "Re-Defeat Communism 2008" below a pic of Hillary Clinton.

Because it's different if it's Clagina Derangement Syndrome.

Remember, Remember

The Fifth of November...

Mushraff's "Minus 2" Formula

By Cernig

I'm rather impressed by the prescience of this article from 5th September by senior Pakistani journalist and political editor of Geo television channel, Hamid Mir, for the Indian Rediff news service.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's top advisers have seriously suggested applying Bangladesh's 'minus 2 formula' in Pakistani politics.

Growing political uncertainty and deteriorating law and order situation may force the Musharraf regime to follow in the footsteps of the interim government in Bangladesh.

The army-backed interim government in Bangladesh suspended general elections for one year and imposed emergency in early 2007. The Bangladeshi army also attempted to banish two former prime ministers Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina from politics by force (hence 'minus 2').

...Top government officials claim they are relaxed now because the US can understand the ground reality. Musharraf was serious about sharing power with Bhutto but her demands exposed her real intentions; she actually overestimated her importance and tried to grab everything from Musharraf through negotiations. She got nothing out of them but Musharraf was at least able to break the alliance between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif by engaging one of them. Both of them were thinking of returning to Pakistan by the same plane but now they are coming separately.

General Musharraf has turned down a proposal to meet Benazir Bhutto again in Abu Dhabi to push for a deal. Former British high commissioner in Pakistan Mark Loyal Grant and some influential Arab personalities are still trying their best to bridge the gap between Bhutto and Musharraf but they face many problems.

Highly placed diplomatic sources have revealed that it is not only the uniform of the President, article 58-2B of the constitution and bar on third-time prime ministership which are still unresolved, but there are many other differences yet to be resolved.

Bhutto is demanding that local bodies must be dissolved before the general elections but both the Pakistan Muslim League-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussein and Muttahida Quami Movement's Altaf Hussein refused to accept this demand. Shujaat met an MQM delegation the other day in Karachi and both sides decided to set aside all their differences to save the local bodies. Many observers believe that Bhutto underestimated the 'sick man' and his party; in fact, Shujaat proved that he is more influential than the director general of the ISI and National Security Adviser Tariq Aziz who were trying to negotiate a deal with the Pakistan People's Party.

...General Musharraf also wants to avoid martial law but if the Supreme Court does not allow him to be elect again in army uniform he may take some extreme steps on the Bangladeshi model. Elections could be delayed with the imposition of emergency. The establishment may also arrest Sharif and Bhutto on their arrival in old corruption cases.

That Musharaff has engineered this whole series of events to break the Bhutto/Shariff alliance which could have co-operatively managed serious resistance to his plans for martial law and continued rule, in a way that they cannot seperately, is not beyond the bounds of possibility. No-one said dictators have to be dumb. Look at the way Musharaff has gamed the U.S. for six years. Every time he hands over Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists, they are the rogue ones who are a challenge to his own rule. Islamist terrorists who back Musharaff get safe haven and are even released after token arrests for Western consumption. Meanwhile his ISI is, according to NATO, India and Afghanistan, still the guiding hand behind the Taliban's senior leadership.

Embarassed by their long term misplaced confidence in Pakistan's conman-in-chief, US conservatives are working up a meme claiming that (as Rick Moran put it in comments to Libby's post today) "the US did more than any other country to bring Bhutto back and broker the deal that would have brought democracy back to Pakistan". However, despite a Mark Mazzetti piece for the NY Times that was subsequently cited by other media outlets around the world, there's little other evidence for that claim.

Mazzetti - aka Judy Miller's shadow - has always carried water for the Bush administration. The reports I've seen from the region say, as the article from Rediff does, that Arab states led by the UAE were the real motivators of the Bhutto/Musharaff talks and that the leg work was done by Britain's former High Commissioner to Pakistan. The White House talked back and forth in a very schizophrenic way about backing democracy but seeing democracy as an invitation to Islamists and therefore preferring Musharaff as the status quo - and this was widely reported by the US media other than Mazzetti -before eventually ending up rubber-stamping a fait accomplis and claiming to have pushed the Bhutto/Musharaff deal all along.

Rediff today quoted a former head of Indian intelligence as saying that the Bush administration must have given Musharaff its approval before he went ahead with his plan for martial law.

Condi's Committment

By Cernig

The AP reports that Condoleezza Rice has been working overtime to head off a major Turkish incursion of Iraqi territory.

Faced with the prospect of another front opening in the already difficult Iraq war, the United States struggled Friday to persuade Turkey not to send its Army across the Iraq border to attack guerrillas who use the remote terrain to launch terror attacks inside Turkey.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged calm and cooperation in a string of meetings with top Turkish leaders fed up with rebel attacks and insistent that Turkey will do what it must to stop them.

She was making a similar argument later Friday in a separate meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose government has said it will not stand for any cross-border assault.

Foreign Minister Ali Babacan sounded impatient, and he offered her no public promise of the restraint Washington seeks.

``We have great expectations from the United States,'' Babacan said at a news conference following his meeting with Rice. ``We are at the point where words have been exhausted and where there is need for action.''

Ankara has said Turkey wants to hear specifics about what the United States is prepared to do to counter the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, or Turkey will launch an attack. Rebel attacks against Turkish positions over the last month have left 47 dead, including 35 soldiers, according to government and media reports.

Washington worries that a cross-border attack would bring instability to what has been the calmest part of Iraq, and could set a precedent for other countries, like Iran, that also have conflicts with Kurdish rebels. Babacan just returned from a trip to Iran last week, lobbying for support for the Turkish side and underscoring that Turkey will act as it sees fit, regardless of U.S. pressure.

``We all need to redouble our efforts and the United States is committed to redoubling our efforts,'' Rice said. ``No one should doubt the commitment of the United States in this situation.''

Doubling and redoubling committment - fine words if they didn't sound as if they were delivered from the ragged edge of desperation. Condi has been scurrying around to extra meetings in Turkey trying to soothe Turkish feathers - but it's unlikely the Turks believe her.

After all, Rice was the one who in April last year visited Ankara to tell the Turks that the U.S. was "committed" to helping them against the PKK - and that Turkey should wait until a new Iraqi government was formed to address cross-border terrorism by the PKK. Fat lot of good that did.

Even the neocon AEI's Michael Rubin, usually a staunch Bush cheerleader, is aware of how badly the new Iraqi government sold America's NATO ally down the river. In March this year he wrote:

Just as Arafat transformed the Palestinian Authority into a safe haven for terrorists, so too does Barzani. His administration provides safe haven and supplies to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorists who have been responsible for approximately 30,000 deaths in Turkey since 1984. The Turkish government accuses the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government of furnishing passports to PKK terrorists on Turkey's most wanted list. Turkish officials complain there are six PKK bases operating in territory controlled by Barzani's party. Just as weapons supplied by the Clinton administration to Palestinian security forces ended up in the hands of terrorists, so too have arms supplied by the U.S. government to Kurdish fighters, the peshmerga, found their way into PKK hands.

Barzani places little restriction on PKK travel within northern Iraq. In October 2006, two PKK leaders received treatment in an Erbil hospital; three months later they were photographed in an Erbil restaurant. Meanwhile, the PKK continues to smuggle explosives and carry out attacks in Turkey. Barzani refuses to stop weapons trafficking across the border with his own peshmerga militia, and refuses the Iraqi army permission to do so.

The Bush administration's own level of committment is in doubt too. In February 2005 Rice told the world that the US is "fully committed" to achieving a "unified Iraq". In February 2007, Ruben notes, in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee she referred to the Iraqi-Turkish frontier as "the border between Turkey and Kurdistan." Even the envoy Bush appointed to handle the U.S.' "committment" to Turkey, retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, resigned very quietly a couple of months ago in frustration.

Despite being aware of the consequences of failing in their committments - which include their duty as the occupying power under a UN mandate - the Bush administration have sat on their hands over the PKK issue for four years now. If the Turks continue to believe that their words are worthless noise, who could blame them?

Malkin's megaphone shrinks

By Libby

Breaking news. Geraldo won't be able to do any pea-flinging against Michelle Malkin anymore. She just "quit" the O'Reilly factor. According to an intercepted email.

I made the decision to quit appearing on the O’Reilly show in response to the poor handling of the Geraldo Rivera matter (the staged “apology” on The Factor was a complete farce).

Our malicious Ms. M declines to discuss the details but one can make an educated assumption that she made the "choice" to quit rather than suffer the embarrassment of being fired. It's not exactly like her dust-up with Rivera was an isolated or particularly unusual interaction and an attention addict like herself would seem an unlikely candidate to give up a national television slot on principle. It would require that she had some principles to begin with.

You don't suppose this had anything to do with her vicious crusade against the Frosts, do you?

Turkey Seeks Parliamentary Approval For Iraq Move

By Cernig

According to the London Times, the Turkish government are definitely getting ready to rumble.

The Turkish Prime Minister said today that he had ordered preparations for a possible military strike in northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels launching attacks on Turkey from cross-border bases, despite strong opposition from Washington.

“Preparations for parliamentary authorisation have begun,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Parliament, just days after the killing of 13 government troops in an ambush that outraged the country and marked the latest in a spate of intensified attacks by the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

At a high-level terror summit earlier this week, chaired by Mr Erdogan, Turkey’s senior civilian and military authorities decided to consider “every kind of legal, political and economic measure, including an incursion across the border”. Parliament would still have to officially authorise any military action and the final decision rests with the Government, but the current sabre-rattling is the most purposeful it has been for some time.

This was always the danger with the recently-signed accord between Iraq and Turkey - that the Iraqis would talk big and act small, followed by more attacks. Now, it looks like the large-scale military incursions Turkey has been threatening since at least last December are definitely on again.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration have been unusually dismissive of Turkey's complaints - ones which in many respects mirror U.S. allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq. It would seem perfectly accpetable in such a situation to have the Turks repeat back to the Bush administration and U.S. Congress their own words about states that harbor terrorism.

What the U.S. is doing is head-in-the-sand denial of a clusterf**k of the Bush administration's own making, which could have been prevented if it had played diplomatic hardball with the Kurds these past years instead of giving them a free pass in return for one part of Iraq that wasn't utterly FUBAR. The Iraqi president has already said that his government will see any cross-border action as an invasion of Iraq as a whole and will meet it accordingly with a state of war between the two nations. The Kurds have threatened civil war if Maliki doesn't live up to his word. Either would put paid to any notion of US success in Iraq if the US wasn't wholeheartedly on the side of the Iraqis/Kurds. If U.S. forces defend Iraqi Kurds against Turkish troops, we're looking at war between two NATO nations. It looks like it may become a question of which is more important to The Decider Guy - would he rather be the guy who blew his big foreign adventure or the guy who lost the NATO alliance? Trying to stand in the middle won't work.

'American Conservative' Magazine Calls Petraeus A "Sycophant"

By Cernig

Ron at Middle Earth Journal has noticed that there's a pressing need for another pointless Senate resolution aimed at a group criticizing General Petraeus' honor.

American Conservative's Andrew J. Bacevich , though, thinks Petraeus is a sycophant because he didn't use his clout as the perceived savior of Bush's Iraq policy to demand more troops, money and time to exploit his Surge to the utmost.

Critics have questioned the data that Petraeus offered to substantiate his case. They charge him with relying on dubious statistics, with ignoring facts that he finds inconvenient, and with discovering trends where none exist. They question whether to credit the much-touted progress in Anbar province to American shrewdness or to the vagaries of Iraqi sectarian and tribal politics. They cite the pathetic performance of the corrupt and dysfunctional Iraqi government. They note the disparity between the Petraeus assessment and those offered by the intelligence community, by the Government Accountability Office, and by congressionally appointed blue-ribbon commissions. They point out that other highly qualified and well-informed senior military officers—notably, Gen. George Casey, the army chief of staff, and Adm. William Fallon, commander of United States Central Command—have publicly expressed views notably at odds with those of General Petraeus.

The critics make a good case. Yet let us ignore them. Let us assume instead that Petraeus genuinely believes that he has broken the code in Iraq and that things are improving. Let’s assume further that he is correct in that assessment.

What then should he have recommended to the Congress and the president? That is, if the commitment of a modest increment of additional forces —the 30,000 troops comprising the surge, now employed in accordance with sound counterinsurgency doctrine —has begun to turn things around, then what should the senior field commander be asking for next?

A single word suffices to answer that question: more. More time. More money. And above all, more troops.

It is one of the oldest principles of generalship: when you find an opportunity, exploit it. Where you gain success, reinforce it. When you have your opponent at a disadvantage, pile on. In a letter to the soldiers serving under his command, released just prior to the congressional hearings, Petraeus asserted that coalition forces had “achieved tactical momentum and wrestled the initiative from our enemies.” Does that reflect his actual view of the situation? If so, then surely the imperative of the moment is to redouble the current level of effort so as to preserve that initiative and to deny the enemy the slightest chance to adjust, adapt, or reconstitute.

Bacevich has a point - one that's being ignored by those so-called conservatives who are more interested in supporting the war because it is a Republican issue than in supporting Republicans because they support the war. Either you believe Petraeus' tales of success or you don't. I'm not one of the latter group but if you do belong to that group, then the old military maxim has to hold - "LAudace, toujours l'audace!"

Bacevich ends:

A great political general doesn’t tell his masters what they want to hear. He tells them what they need to hear, thereby nudging them to make decisions that must be made if the nation’s interests are to be served. In this instance, Petraeus provided cover for them to evade their responsibilities.

Politically, it qualifies as a brilliant maneuver. The general’s relationships with official Washington remain intact. Yet he has broken faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly.

Poor General Petraeus - damned no matter what he does because he has got to know that his career depends on toeing the administration's line - but I'm afraid that unless he breaks the perception that he is in thrall to his political masters in the White House then his historical legacy will suffer.

Blog Post Of The Day

Comes from Army Of Dude. Go read.

Regards, C

Iran Can Play "Rush To War" Too

By Cernig

Doubtless egged on by their own equally-crazed versions of Kyl and Lieberman, Iran's parliament has passed a non-binding resolution of its own:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army ``terrorist organizations,'' in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

``The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror,'' said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that - if ratified by the country's hardline constitutional watchdog - would become law. The government is expected to wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision.

They could have added in the Iran/Contra debacle, death squads in South America, repeated fomenting of coups in foreign nations, warrantless surveillance on their own countrymen, detention and rendition in contravention of the Geneva Conventions and even arming terror groups such as the MeK and PKK. On the evidence alone, there's as much justification for the Iranian resolution as the American one.

However, the arguments against passing such resolutions - that designating a branch of a foreign government or armed service in such a way is unsupported by international law and is simply flagrant posturing at best but dangerous warmongering at worst - still hold. I'm as opposed to this move as I was to the U.S. one. Yet it is indicative that Iran's hardliners are as certain that they will come out top from any conflict as America's hardliners are sure of their own victory. Indeed, independent experts have assessed that the Iranians are quite possibly correct. Which should give the rest of us pause to think before enabling any more of the same kind of tit-for-tat rhetoric.

Give The Experts A Chance

By Cernig

When the Bush administration were exorting everyone to listen to the experts on the ground and give them just another Friedman Unit of time in Iraq as part of their "surge for the surge", I wonder if it occured to them what the most obvious blowback would be?

The U.N. Security Council probably will delay a move to impose new sanctions against Iran until December, when U.N. weapons inspectors conclude a review of Iran's past nuclear activities, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Thursday.

Kouchner, speaking at a breakfast with reporters, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear in talks last week in Moscow that he would not consider Security Council sanctions over the next three months.

Kouchner's remarks came a day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to discuss a diplomatic reaction to Iran's nuclear activity with the council's four other permanent members -- Britain, China, France and Russia -- plus Germany. The United States hopes to use the meeting to build support for tougher action against Iran, which has repeatedly ignored demands from the council to halt its enrichment of uranium.

The administration and the Senate seem willing to ignore their own logic. It's a hell of a thing when Russia, of all nations, must remind America that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Update The Bush administration and its allies have agreed to delay their push for further sanctions against Iran.

Six key nations agreed Friday to delay until November a new U.N. resolution that would toughen sanctions against Iran, waiting to see if Tehran answers questions about its disputed nuclear program.

A joint statement from the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany said they would finalize the new resolution and bring it to a vote unless reports in November from the chief U.N. nuclear official and the European Union's foreign policy chief ``show a positive outcome of their efforts.''

The United States, Britain and France had been pushing for new sanctions now to pressure Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, but Russia and China wanted to give Tehran more time to comply with U.N. inspectors.

Asked whether the agreement was tantamount to a cave-in by the United States, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's No. 3 diplomat, said ``the alchemy of this group is such that anything is going to be a compromise.''

He said the statement sent ``a very tough and strict message to Iran.''

....nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei and Iranian officials agreed in July that Tehran would answer questions from agency experts by December on more than two decades of nuclear activity - most of it secret until revealed more than four years ago. Technical officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency returned to Tehran this week to start probing outstanding questions, some with possible weapons applications.

In the statement, the six countries welcomed the IAEA agreement with Iran.

``We call upon Iran, however, to produce tangible results rapidly and effectively by clarifying all outstanding issues and concerns on Iran's nuclear program including topics which could have the military nuclear dimension,'' the statement said.

``Full transparency and cooperation by Iran with the IAEA is essential in order to address outstanding concerns,'' it said.

I say let the experts do their jobs. If the full measure of time was good enough for Petreaus then it is good enough for the IAEA. If Iran doesn't co-operate fully, then the IAEA will say so.

And if the Agency comes back and says Iran answered all its questions in a satisfactory manner, then the U.S. should drop its demand that Iran stop uranium enrichment before face-to-face negotiations can take place. Enrichment when it is not aimed at weapons production is allowable under the NPT and demanding that Iran give up that right as a starting point on negotiations on whether it should permanently halt such enrichment is simply a deliberate attempt to back it into a diplomatic corner in pursuit of a pretext for war.

Gen. Abizaid - "There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran,''

By Cernig

General John Abizaid, who headed Central Command for nearly four years, has today told a conference that he believes a nuclear armed Iran isn't inevitable but even so the U.S. could effectively deter Iran and live with it as a nuclear power if needed - without launching any war or even a blitz attack.

``Iran is not a suicide nation,'' he said. ``I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon.''

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

``I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear,'' he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

``There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran,'' Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. ``Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well.''

...Abizaid stressed the dangers of allowing more and more nations to build a nuclear arsenal. And while he said it is likely that Iran will make a technological breakthrough to obtain a nuclear bomb, ``it's not inevitable.''

...He suggested that many in Iran - perhaps even some in the Tehran government - are open to cooperating with the West. The thrust of his remarks was a call for patience in dealing with Iran, which President Bush early in his first term labeled one of the ``axis of evil'' nations, along with North Korea and Iraq.

He said there is a basis for hope that Iran, over time, will move away from its current anti-Western stance.

Abizaid's comments appeared to represent a more accommodating and hopeful stance toward Iran than prevails in the White House, which speaks frequently of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions. The administration says it seeks a diplomatic solution to complaints about Iran's alleged support for terrorism and its nuclear program, amid persistent rumors of preparations for a U.S. military strike.

Abizaid expressed confidence that the United States and the world community can manage the Iran problem.

``I believe the United States, with our great military power, can contain Iran - that the United States can deliver clear messages to the Iranians that makes it clear to them that while they may develop one or two nuclear weapons they'll never be able to compete with us in our true military might and power,'' he said.

All of which seems self-evident to me - but you can bet the wingnuts and the Cheney faction at the White House won't be pleased. Expect another round of Abizaid-smearing shortly, probably based upon how much more of a shining messiah Petreaus is.

But...cue the speculation that Abizaid is willingly being used by senior still-serving military types to send a not-so-subtle message to the White House. It would certainly make sense, given past reports of disquiet in non-Petreaic military circles.

Attack Iran, Lose Afghanistan

By Cernig

Barnett Rubin has a compelling analysis posted today, in which he argues that "the U.S. can have a confrontation with Iran or a chance for some success in Afghanistan. It cannot have both."

His reasoning is as follows:

The Iranian government has been preparing for the possible collapse of the much weakened Karzai government. They have been doing so mainly by providing extensive military and political assistance to the former Northern Alliance, the grouping of commanders supported by Iran, Russian, and India that was funded by the U.S. to occupy the territory vacated by Taliban and al-Qaida fleeing U.S. air strikes in the fall of 2001. Iran denies the charges by the U.S. that it is aiding the Taliban, but it may well be doing so despite longstanding enmity because it now gives a higher priority to creating problems for a U.S. that it sees as bent on forcible regime change.

U.S. officials may be deceived by the illusion of stability in northern and western Afghanistan. If those areas are quiet, it is because Northern Alliance leaders, under pressure from both the U.S. and Iran, have placed a premium on keeping the anti-Taliban coalition together and have only intermittently openly opposed the government. A U.S. attack on Iran may change this calculus. While some northern leaders will try to maintain an agenda independent of Iran, which is not popular in Afghanistan, the region could quickly move out of government control, as it did when these same commanders' calculus changed in January 1992.

...where are the Democrats and sensible Republicans? It's time to amend the Authorization for the Use of Military Force to make clear that it does not authorize a pre-emptive war on Iran. Congress should also stop the policy of crop eradication that is driving Afghans into the arms of the Taliban while actually increasing the size of the opium economy, Congress should shift the funding allocated for eradication to alternative development. At the moment, according to Bergen and Lalwani, in the new U.S. Strategy for Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan:

The increased funds set aside in the new plan to help farmers find alternative livelihoods -- $50 million to $60 million -- are woefully inadequate and constitute a paltry 6% of American counter-narcotics spending in Afghanistan for 2007. Eradication continues to receive the largest share of the budget.

It is difficult to see how the effort in Afghanistan can survive the Cheney-Bush administration's policies on Iran and narcotics. All who believe, as all Democratic presidential candidates and many Republicans claim, that the effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the core of our strategy against those who attacked us on 9/11, should be doing all they can to halt this course.

In other words, yet again the Bush administration are looking like they will throw away any chance of winning the original war to pursue a war of choice in the Middle East, just as they did in Iraq.

US Spying Law Troubles Europe

By Cernig

Amongst all the talk of the new FISA amendment infringing citizen's human rights in the U.S., the fact that the bill made it easier to infringe the rights of citizens of allied nations has gone mostly un-noticed by American commentators.

But the Europeans have noticed. The UK's Observer newspaper today recounts their worries:

As much of the world's telecoms networks and internet infrastructure runs through the US, the new act will give the security services huge scope for monitoring and intercepting Britons' private communications, as well as those of other foreign citizens. The new act has led to fears it will see a huge increase in the number of British citizens being extradited to the US.

'Just because it happens to pass through the US they claim they can do whatever they want,' said Tony Bunyan, director of Statewatch, the civil rights group that campaigns against state surveillance. 'Where is the EU saying, "What's going on here, we've got to protect the rights of our citizens?"'

The Dutch Liberal Democrat MEP Sophie in 't Veld has tabled a series of questions demanding answers from the EU parliament. In a statement to European politicians, In 't Veld warns the US law will 'directly apply to EU citizens and constitutes a major violation of privacy and civil liberties'.

The law has prompted a furore in the US, where it was opposed by Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But other countries seem ignorant of its consequences. 'There's been a lot of upheaval in Congress about this new act over fears Bush will use it to eavesdrop on US citizens,' In 't Veld said. 'But it can and will be used for the communications of Europeans.'

She pointed out many companies and organisations are based in the US and that the new law will give the US powers to monitor their communications. 'For example, I would like to know what sort of communications go via the UN,' In 't Veld said.

Concern over US powers to monitor foreign citizens is growing. European privacy watchdogs have expressed fears that the US authorities are to be handed powers to check the personal details of travellers entering America and store them on databases alongside details such as their sexuality and religious beliefs for up to 15 years. The watchdogs, including the Information Commissioner of England and Wales, Richard Thomas, have been scathing in their criticism of the European Commission for granting the US its demand for the new powers.

Hand in hand, the Bush administration and the folks on the Hill have managed to make distrust of the U.S. even greater in the wider globe. Next stop, rogue state?

The Hanging AG

By Cernig

So yet another little-known provision in the Patriot Act has reared its very ugly head - the most incompetent Attorney general in American history gets to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.

Politically, it's another nail in the once-was-conservative coffin of the GOP. Steven Taylor writes:

We should recall that that the entire US Attorney’s mess was brought to us primarily as a result of the same reauthorization of the Patriot Act, as there was a provision that ceded special powers to the AG–in that case the power to appoint interim USAs was taken away from the judiciary and given to the AG.

Setting aside the thorny issue of the death penalty itself, it is unclear as to why the AG of the United States should be involved in the process at all. It certainly is yet another example of the recent trend in the Republican Party, i.e., an interest more in power than in supposedly long-held principles (in this case, federalism).

Taylor is correct, but let's not set aside the thorny issue of the death penalty - or rather, the thorny issue of whether such a casual zealot for executions should be given extra powers over individual capital cases.

My good pal Kyle Moore is sure the answer should be "under no circumstances". Not just because of the zeal which which Gonzales prepared "clemency memos" designed to usher then-Governor Bush along the path to execution of 152 people in Texas with minimal consideration, but because Gonzales has nothing but contempt for laws which get in his way:

With the same disdain that Gonzo has held the Geneva convention, he has also in his time serving George W. Bush, back in the Texas State government also held little regard for the lesser talked about Vienna convention.

According to this accord, in the instance of a foreign national accused of a capital crime on our soil, we have a responsibility to notify the accused’s home nation, and give them the opportunity to represent the accused in our courts.

This was not the case, however, when it came to Ireno Tristan Montoya, a fisherman who was convicted of murder in Texas. In regards to the Vienna convention, Gonzales would provide a precursor to his actions in the White House by legally ninjaing Texas’ way out of having to follow the Vienna convention in the first place.

The logic? Texas never signed on, so it doesn’t have to play. Though, one might wonder that in regards to international affairs, it might rightly be assumed that Texas stands with the rest of the United States, unless of course it would like to leave the union and become its own nation.

...When it comes to state sponsored execution, Alberto Gonzales has no scruples, and he has no interest in fairness.

Today he is widely under fire for his incompetence. When he doesn’t know what he is doing, which seems like a great deal of the time, things fall apart. But he knows about sending people to the gas chamber, he did it often and did it well, and we must under no circumstances give him the power to do it some more.

Agreed. Congress needs to repeal this additional power to the hanging AG as soon as possible. And next time read the damn thing before passing it, you morons!

Denmark Joins Arctic Land Grab race

By Cernig

Tiny Denmark is following in the footsteps of Canada and Russia, staking out its claim to Arctic territory in advance of global warming making the region's resources more exploitable.

The monthlong Danish expedition will seek evidence that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range, is attached to the Danish territory of Greenland, making it a geological extension of the Arctic island.

That might allow the Nordic nation to stake a claim under a U.N. treaty that could stretch all the way the North Pole, although Canada and Russia also claim the ridge.

``The preliminary investigations done so far are very promising,'' Helge Sander, Denmark's minister of science, technology and innovation told Denmark's TV2 on Thursday. ``There are things suggesting that Denmark could be given the North Pole.''

The Danes plan to set off from Norway's remote Arctic islands of Svalbard aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which will be assisted by a powerful Russian nuclear icebreaker to plow through ice as thick as 16 feet in the area north of Greenland.

``No one has ever sailed in that area. Ships have sailed on the edges of the ice but no one has been in there,'' the expedition leader, Christian Marcussen, said in Copenhagen. ``The challenge for us will be the ice.''

The team includes 40 scientists, 10 of them Danish, and the crews of the icebreakers, which will use sophisticated equipment, including sonar, to map the seabed under the ice.

``We will be collecting data for a possible (sovereignty) demand,'' said Marcussen, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. ``It is not our duty to formulate a demand of ownership.''

At what point, do you think, will US commentators realize these nations are serious about stealing a geopolitical advantage from climate change and this isn't a silly make-fun-of-Russian-subs story? Or that Bush and the conservative movement's dumb denial of global warming for so long has left the US with a massive hole in its future foreign policy planning?

But It's OK When Republicans Leak

By Cernig

From Michael Roston over at Raw Story:

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has been calling for the intelligence community to strongly prosecute leakers in recent weeks. But in a Thursday op-ed in the New York Post, the Michigan Republican revealed a budget cut from the classified portion of an intelligence authorization bill for the coming year.

"The 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill cut [emphasis original] human-intelligence programs but directed U.S. intelligence agencies to study global climate change," Hoekstra wrote in his Thursday critique of Congressional Democrats' intelligence policy.

The Congressman's revelation of the budget cut on a newspaper op-ed page drew sharp criticism from advocates of greater openness and transparency in the budgeting for the intelligence community.

"It looks like Rep. Hoekstra is playing games with classification rules by making his claim publicly," said Dr. Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. "I suggest that he go investigate himself."

...Earlier this month, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington accused House Minority Leader John Boehner of publicly disclosing a classified court decision that found the Bush administration's Terrorist Surveillence Program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

But...but...but...we're only interested in Dem-supporting leakers, aren't we?

Stepping Up As Others Step Down

By Cernig

What happens when you conspire to arm any side in a civil war? The other side gets pissed.

The US military in Iraq is reporting that Shiite militia are stepping up to attack US troops as Sunni insurgents step down.

Attacks against U.S. forces were down sharply last month nationwide, and military officials have expressed cautious optimism that a security crackdown is working. At the same time, the number of attacks launched by breakaway factions of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia has increased, said Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. second-in-command.

He did not provide a total number of militia attacks. But he said 73 percent of the attacks that wounded or killed U.S. troops last month in Baghdad were launched by Shiite militiamen, nearly double the figure six months earlier.

But will the military admit that this pattern is part of the inevitable blowback from the Anbar Awakening (of Sunni opportunism)? Hell no. They'd rather blame Iran, despite the utter lack of evidence.

Odierno said Iran has sharply increased its support for the fighters ahead of a September report to Congress on progress in Iraq, leading to the surge in rogue militia action.

I suspect Iraqi insurgents are probably very insulted that the US military pretends to think they can't get the job done without Iranian hand-holding - despite the thousands of disbanded military personnel to provide experience, the years of practise, the thousands of tons of munitions and thousands of guns the US has allowed to go unchecked. But back here in the US, that pretense is being swallowed whole as it is preferable in PR terms to a narrative that says the US is incompetent at its main export, armed intervention.