Iraq

Don't let's get too carried away with headlines like these. It may be that codename Curveball's stories about biological weapons in Iraq were drummed up to bolster his case for asylum, and you can be sure no small number of web surfers will glance across their Yahoo front page and shake their head in knowing disapproval of the fascistic, hegemonic Amerikkka. But is that fair when the entire subtext of the story is that living under the regime was so terrible that an Iraqi citizen would fabricate stories about their involvement in WMD production to the dual ends of provoking an overthrow of the regime and getting the hell out?

Curveball has been repeatedly discredited by investigations of the United States' faulty prewar intelligence and became an embarrassment to U.S. spy agencies. A presidential intelligence commission found that Curveball, who mostly told his stories to German intelligence officials who passed them on to the U.S., was a fabricator and an alcoholic.

"60 Minutes" reports that Alwan arrived at a German refugee center in 1999 and began spinning his tales of a facility making mobile biological weapons in an effort to gain asylum. The ploy apparently achieved his goal, and Alwan is assumed to be living in Germany today under an assumed name.

Good for him. I hope he's enjoying a hefty stein of Bräu-Hell somewhere (it's surprising a lifetime under Saddam didn't drive more folks to the bottle, and to lie to intelligence agencies in order to escape). You could almost go so far as to say this strengthens the case for regime change...

The article goes on to discuss the administration's use of his testimony:

Although German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball's claims of mobile bioweapons labs were unreliable, and U.N. inspectors determined before the war began in 2003 that parts of his story were false, the Bush administration continued to promote the existence of such mobile labs for months after the invasion, until it was widely accepted that they could not be found.

But nobody needed to hear horror stories from Curveball. It's now widely known that Hussein convinced even most of his top military officers of the existence of WMD stockpiles. This bluff (which we now know to be a bluff only because we had a look for ourselves) was as integral to maintaining the Iraqi military's confidence in its own capabilities as it was to threatening neighboring states. It's a pity more people aren't thankful we no longer have to speculate on this matter, or take the word of desperate Iraqis who will do anything for a chance to booze it up in peace. It's easy enough to say this while saying that the war itself has failed on many other counts, and while holding our leaders accountable for those failures.

It would be wonderful if military intelligence were a matter of sheer empirical evidence, if it was all testable and falsifiable, tangible and one hundred percent precise. It isn't. Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor's illuminating book Cobra II relates an instance from the hours before the war against the regime when a very difficult bombing mission was carried out in the hopes of decapitating the dictatorship first thing. It was a risky move, one that could have potentially endangered both a complex set of attack plans and the soldiers carrying them out. The mission was unsuccessful because the intelligence turned out to be faulty. Nothing shady, no conspiracy, just bad intel.

The point of this isn't to apologize for the Bush administration, who should have skipped the WMD issue entirely when making their case for regime change and skipped directly to the desperate Iraqis part. The point is that the focus should be on sympathy for why a fellow like Curveball might have done what he did. Once that's sufficiently in place, the headlines have a different ring.

Even the Guardian takes notice:

The death toll for US combat troops in Iraq dropped sharply to 27 last month, the lowest monthly total since March last year.

The figure is part of a downward trend that appears to confirm Pentagon claims that its "surge" strategy is working.

The month's last US fatalities were three soldiers killed on Tuesday when a bomb exploded as they patrolled southeast Baghdad.

The drop in US fatalities, mirrored by an apparent reduction in sectarian killings, is attributed by US commanders to the extra 30,000 US troops sent to Iraq this year to bring the total of US troops to 154,000.

Other factors cited include: the building of walls round Baghdad neighbourhoods that have restricted insurgents' movements; the increasing use of local sheiks and their militias to fight insurgents; and measures such as introducing proper ID checks, including biometric testing.

The Washington Post is more skeptical:

Casualty numbers themselves are inconsistent. The U.S. military said about 800 civilians were killed in October, but an unofficial tally by the Health Ministry showed that 1,448 civilians had died violently, including those whose bodies were dumped without identification. An official provided the data, which showed an increase in deaths compared with September, on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release it publicly.

It is difficult to determine whether the underlying animosity between sectarian groups, which has driven so much violence, has diminished or whether attacks have become more difficult to carry out.

Outside Baghdad, many Iraqis interviewed still perceive grave threats from violence. They live in walled-off neighborhoods or under the relative protection of their ethnic group.

Basim Hamdi, 32, a Shiite merchant from Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, described life in his city as a "sectarian fire."

"The security situation in Balad is so bad compared with last year," he said. "No one from here can go outside the city except for emergencies, and no Sunni can get in."

Andrew Tilghman of the Washington Monthly has a well-argued piece that suggests the role and influence of Al Qaeda in Iraq is a fraction of what official estimates (read: White House and Pentagon stats) claim:

How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."

Tilghman also provides evidence that the Golden Mosque bombing -- which Ayman al-Zawahiri all but castigated his lieutenant, the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for carrying out* -- was actually a sophisticated demolition job of former Baathists:

The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency.

However, this begs a further question: If Saddamists were responsible for the most devastating symbolic attack on Iraqi civil society since the war began, did they not foresee that it would lead to Shia death squads and a possible genocide of Sunnis? How does the old regime presume to retake power (its one true goal) if it ignites a civil war that will likely devour its already minuscule ethnic base? Zarqawi had a much clearer motive in razing the holy shrine: It was only holy to a sect of Muslims he believed were polytheistic and thus no better than atheists, Christians or Jews. His vision was decidedly less realist than regime dead-enders; he salivated for a regional war that would cull fighters from all corners of the Middle East and culminate in a 21st century caliphate. This is why his bosses in Waziristan tried to rein him in.

Tilghman also admits that if any cross-pollination between AQI and the Saddamists has taken place, then it is the former that are joining the larger ranks of the latter. He quotes Nance: "Al-Qaeda can't operate anywhere in Iraq without kissing the ring of the former regime."

AQI recruits often find themselves taking orders from a network of former regime insurgents, who assemble their car bombs and tell them what to blow up. They become, as Nance says, "puppets for the other insurgent groups."

So there is every reason to believe that, even if AQI is as small a force as Tlighman imagines, it is still responsible for executing the violent designs of the Baathist leadership. This makes it something of a vanguard force of the insurgency worth taking seriously, doesn't it?

More telling is what Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reports today: That Al Qaeda is, apart from atrophied, almost non-existent in Iraq -- not because it never was there, but because it has been soundly beaten:

The Brookings Institution's Iraq index, which monitors security indicators in the country, appears to back up Mr. Crocker's assessment. In its latest report, the index found that the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq has dropped from about 85 to about 50 over several recent months. US officials say the number of suicide bombings in Iraq has fallen from more than 60 in January to about 30 a month since July.

Suicide-bombings are the worst kinds of attacks because the perpetrators can't be captured or interrogated, and thus their affiliations are always open to speculation and paranoia. Though AQI has made suicide bombing its heinous specialty, so a 50% reduction in attacks per month is, even for a tiny organization, a stark sign of that organization's attrition. Moreover, if the Mujahadeen Army of Iraq -- another Sunni terrorist outfit but with nationalist rather than imperialist aims -- is responsible for any number of those suicide-bombings, then the above suggests they're being defeated as well.

* See Zawahiri's letter to Zarqawi. He doesn't address the Golden Mosque atrocity directly, but the pedantic rhetorical questions he asks of his man in Mesopotamia seem to hint at it: "If the attacks on Shia leaders were necessary to put a stop to their plans, then why were there attacks on ordinary Shia? Won't this lead to reinforcing false ideas in their minds, even as it is incumbent on us to preach the call of Islam to them and explain and communicate to guide them to the truth? And can the mujahedeen kill all of the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried that? And why kill ordinary Shia considering that they are forgiven because of their ignorance? And what loss will befall us if we did not attack the Shia? And do the brothers forget that we have more than one hundred prisoners - many of whom are from the leadership who are wanted in their countries - in the custody of the Iranians? And even if we attack the Shia out of necessity, then why do you announce this matter and make it public, which compels the Iranians to take counter measures? And do the brothers forget that both we and the Iranians need to refrain from harming each other at this time in which the Americans are targeting us?"

In all the reports and essays being written on the supposed imminence of a U.S. bombing campaign against Iran, has any really addressed the possible Iranian responses? What would the mullahs do if, tomorrow, they awoke to find Bushehr reduced to rubble courtesy of American smart bombs? Would they dispatch the Quds Force into Baghdad; turn the entire nation into a latter-day Basiji martyrdom "wave" and try to drive the MNF-Iraq into the Gulf? Or would they start lobbing missiles of their own into Haifa and Tel Aviv, more or less guaranteeing if not World War III, as President Bush ominously phrased it, then at least the greatest international crisis the Middle East has yet known?

Or, given that a fear of regime change impels each and every policy decision and PR blitz undertaken by the mullahs, would their response be more rhetorical than martial? What would do more damage to long-term American interests in the Middle East: Iran's waging a disastrous war against us that it can by no means win, or expanding its interests in the infrastructure of Iraq?

Bomb us and we'll blackout Sadr City after giving its residents unhindered electricity for the first time in four years. Bomb us and we'll create economic chaos to add to your quixotic "political reconciliation." Bomb us and we'll stoke enough sectarian fire in Iraq to make you nostalgic for the razing of the Golden Mosque.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, said that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. He added that Iran had also agreed to provide cheap electricity from its own grid to southern Iraq, and to build a large power plant essentially free of charge in an area between the two southern Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

Iraqi Contracts With Iran and China Concern U.S. - New York Times

As a Trotskyist, he should be used to fighting losing struggles. As an architect, he demands order, cohesion, discipline. A bundle of contradictions, perhaps, but this profile of Kanan Makiya is the saddest thing I've read in a long time: 

Makiya is a brilliant and fearless thinker; he dissected a brutal dictatorship and, later, exploded the pieties of his own intellectual culture. And so it is the very shakiness of his answers that suggest that they are, in the end, not about his intellect at all. They’re about his heart. In this case, it seems, Makiya’s heart — his passion to destroy Hussein, his passion to bring freedom to Iraq — does not want him to go where his intellect would take him.

And where would it go? What would it say? Possibly something like this: You exposed a terrible dictatorship, and for the noblest of motives you signed on to an invasion that ended in catastrophe. You misjudged your native country, and your adopted one too.

There are a host of multi-dimensional links between Kurds and Jews (to say nothing of the many thousands of Kurdish Jews.) It is sometimes claimed that Abraham was Kurdish. Historically, a good number of Kurds felt positively toward Israel and were none too happy with Palestinian support for Saddam. The Kurdish people, being victims of persecution and genocide, looked to Israel as a sort of hopeful model for their own liberation. Furthermore, DNA research shows that Kurds are Jews’ closest genetic relatives. So, perhaps this Kurdish-Jewish romantic comedy was inevitable. From The Seattle Times review of "David & Layla."

Inspired by the real-life marriage between a Kurdish Muslim refugee and a Jewish New Yorker, the movie hits all the requisite plot points, some hopelessly contrived (like a first kiss disguised as the need for CPR) while others earn big, fat, non-Greek belly laughs.

David (David Moscow) is an agnostic Jew who hosts a Brooklyn public-access TV show called "Sex and Happiness," for which he conducts highly personal man-in-the-street interviews. He's got a Jewish fiancée (Callie Thorne) but is truly smitten with Layla (Shiva Rose), a smart, sexy Kurdish refugee for whom marriage is the best defense against imminent deportation

You can pretty much guess the rest. But while writer-director Jay Jonroy (an Iraqi Kurdish exile with a tragic family history under Saddam Hussein's tyranny) fumbles with occasionally forced humor — including a terribly written infidelity scene that's played for slapstick and left unexplained — he's remarkably adept at exploring complex divisions between well-meaning but prejudiced families united by love.

If there is a Hell, I’d have to guess this movie is running on a continuous loop in Saddam’s sulfurous suite.

Apparently the film doesn’t shy away from politics and gets big points for addressing the U.S.’ previous betrayal of the Kurdish people. The movie is being independently released and seems pretty hard to find, but I’ll make sure to see it one way or another. I should add here that I highly recommend the 2004 Kurdish Iranian film “Turtles Can Fly,” in spite of its horrific title. It’s an achingly beautiful movie about the children of a Kurdish refugee camp on the eve of the U.S. attack on Saddam.

One of the fringe benefits of liberation is enjoying the talents of the liberated. With their emerging proficiency in film the Kurds may find they have yet something else in common with Jews.

I disagree with him about the necessity and legitimacy of mercenaries fighting alongside comparatively underpaid U.S. soldiers. And I'd have less of a problem if Blackwater, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy were deputized in some way that they became the equivalents of MPs and thus fell under martial jurisdiction.

Boot underplays the significance the Blackwater scandal has had on native perceptions of our continuing mission in Iraq. (It hardly matters that the worst-case depiction of the Sept. 16 shootings emanate from the Sadrists in the Ministry of the Interior. There are still 17 corpses and 24 wounded bodies that Blackwater and the U.S. government must answer for.) Also, is it really wise to be rah-rahing a private army that hasn't lost a man under its charge precisely because that army is not beholden to strict ethical standards of warfare?

The surge, let's not forget, had a powerful psychological concomitant of boosting Iraqi morale by securing neighborhoods long enough to allow civilians to build infrastructure, found small businesses and join police squads. It becomes harder to convince Iraqis that the Yanks with guns are buying the country time to allow for these developments when 18,000 of those Yanks can shoot people without consequence.

Boot at least sees the dire situation as it now stands:

It is outrageous that almost no American contractors have been held criminally liable for conduct in Iraq or Afghanistan, but hundreds of soldiers have been court-martialed. You can't blame this shortcoming on the security firms; they don't have the power to send their own employees to jail.

The problem is that there is a gray zone in the law when it comes to contractors on foreign battlefields. Congress has passed legislation to make clear that contractors fall within the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as civilian law (the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act), but neither the Department of Justice nor the Judge Advocate General's Corps has shown much enthusiasm for enforcing these rules. That needs to change.

I'd quite like to see a list of names of State Department personnel who may have left the public sector for jobs at Blackwater USA since 2003. Free enterprise, when it involves life-or-death decisions in war, should be dramatically less free.

Accept the Blackwater mercenaries - Los Angeles Times

Bartle Bull has a remarkable essay in this month's Prospect (the UK cousin to the American liberal magazine). He argues that Iraq is well on its way toward political reconciliation -- indeed, most of the "fighting" now taking place does so in salon bull sessions and cabinet meetings -- and that the military conflict is dwindling to a containable level. 

As difficult as it has been, especially given the follies of the current administration, to take the long view on Iraq, even veteran war critics have grudgingly conceded the unexpected good news of late: from the Anbar Awakening to the precipitous drop in civilian casualties in the last few months, to the almost superhuman stoicism of the Kurds, who at any time could declare their own independent state but choose instead to abide by the federalist model enshrined in Iraq's constitution. A "civil war" is not attended by a stalled but still legitimate national government going about its business.

Bull's most insightful comment, I think, is that the Sunni insurgency has realized it cannot possibly win in battle against 85% of the population (more, if you count those Sunnis completely disillusioned by their IED-wielding co-sectarians.)  Instead, the insurgency has focussed its efforts on winning the headlines in the New York Times, in which it now competes for our despondency against the murder-by-numbers mercenaries of Blackwater USA. 

The world held its breath after Samarra: here, we thought, comes the cataclysm, the civil war that many had feared and that others had sought for three years. But it never happened. The Shia backlash in parts of Baghdad was vicious, and the Sunnis were more or less kicked out of much of the city. But over 18 months later, it is clear that the Shias were too sensible to go all the way. It was never a civil war: no battle lines or uniforms, no secession, no attempt to seize power or impose constitutional change, no parallel governments, not even any public leaders or aims. The Sunnis rolled the dice, launched the battle of Baghdad and lost. Now they are begging for an accommodation with Shia Iraq.

What is the evidence for this? This summer, Maliki's office reached out to Baathist ex-soldiers and officers and received 48,600 requests for jobs in uniform; he made room for 5,000 of them, found civil service jobs for another 7,000, and put the rest of them on a full pension. Meanwhile leading Baathists have told Time magazine they want to be in the government; the 1920 Revolution Brigade—a Sunni insurgent group—is reportedly patrolling the streets of Diyala with the 3rd infantry division, and the Sunni Islamic Army in Iraq is telling al Jazeera it may negotiate with the Americans. The anecdotes coming out of Baghdad confirm the trend. The drawing rooms of the capital's dealmakers are full of Baathists, cap in hand. They are terrified of the Shia death squads and want to share in the pie when the oil starts flowing. Both Izzat al-Douri, the more prestigious of the two main Baathist leaders, and Mohamed Younis al Ahmed, the more lethal, have been reaching out from neighbouring countries to negotiate an accommodation. Since the summer, the news coming out on the Sunni front has consistently been in this one, inevitable direction.

If you think any of this is shocking, by the way, you should check out the reader discussion of the piece in First Drafts, Prospect's blog. Compare the cool-headed sophistication -- even in disagreement with the author -- against the upset tummies that daily disgorge themselves in the Guardian's comment threads. 

Our Sufi neocon baba gives a potted history of the land in which Orwell served as a colonial civil servant and concludes that Chinese intervention isn't the answer:

Some Western pundits have argued that a China now oriented toward capitalist growth has an incentive to dissuade the Burmese army from administering a bloodbath. Such optimism about Beijing, however, is vain.The only hope for the rescue of the tormented peoples of Burma resides in the solidarity expressed by President George W. Bush at the U.N. General Assembly when he said, "Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma. The ruling junta remains unyielding, yet the people's desire for freedom is unmistakable."
 
Cynics may decry the president's stand as a mere effort to renew the vision of democratization that accompanied U.S. intervention in Iraq. But Burma--like Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzia before it--shows that the weak links in the global chain of tyranny are breaking, one by one, and that the worldwide movement for entrepreneurship, accountability, and popular sovereignty can assert itself, with or without the help of outsiders. For Americans and all haters of oppression, the message is clear: The United States should show effective support for the aspirations of Burma's diverse citizens; tougher sanctions against the regime are only the beginning.  

George Packer reports:

The amendment raises the number of Iraqi interpreters and U.S. government employees (with at least one year of service) who can be admitted under a special immigrant visa program from five hundred to five thousand each year for the next five years. It creates a special category (“Priority 2”) of persecuted Iraqis—including U.S. employees, people working for American news and nongovernmental organizations, contractors, and members of religious minorities, and their families—whose refugee applications can be heard directly by the U.S. government without a United Nations referral, which should speed up and streamline an extremely sluggish process. And the bill allows for these applications to be reviewed at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, so that Iraqis don’t need to flee the country and become refugees elsewhere first (though the language on this point is vague, and there will have to be continuous pressure to make it happen).

About time. Those suffering from liberal outrage fatigue should work up a pulsating neck vein or two for George Bush's greatest crime in office: staying silent on the refugee catastrophe his mismanaged war has created.

The Times and WaPo lead with a story about a particularly bloody day for the private security firm Blackwater. Here's what the U.S. embassy in Iraq has uncovered so far:  On September 16, a car bomb exploded about a mile northwest of the Green Zone, the target being one "principal" (unidentified government figure) who was under the protection of Blackwater. He then was evacuated by another Blackwater team that drove in from the Green Zone.

In the middle of the firefight, according to the report, the other tactical support team, TST 22, was ordered back out of the Green Zone to assist TST 23 in Nisoor Square, identified in the document as Gray 87.

TST 23 had managed to flee the scene before TST 22 got there, meaning that the latter, which had already reached the point of safety, came back to face the melee by itself.

Some U.S. officials have questioned why the Blackwater team decided to evacuate the principal and return to the Green Zone, rather than remaining inside the compound. "It doesn't make sense," said one U.S. official. "Why would they go back out there when they were already safe?"

A failure of communications? Concern over damaged property? Who knows. But this episode underscores the need to keep mercenaries out of a war zone, or, at the very minimum, to make sure that their activities are constantly monitored by Multi-National Forces-Iraq. 

"We don't kill people, our low trading price kills people": Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince Here's an Onion headline that found its way into the New York Times: "Blackwater Tops All Firms in Iraq in Shooting Rate." So either DynCorps got assigned all the low-priority targets like Ari Fleischer's cousin, or else Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater USA, is sort of guy who changes the channel at home with an Uzi.

At this point, you can play a kind of failed state Mad Libs:

The State Department [was very forthcoming about / would not comment on] most matters relating to Blackwater, citing the current investigation. But Sean McCormack, the [witless flack who blamed Denmark for its problems with the Mohammed cartoons / department’s spokesman], said that of 1,800 escort missions by Blackwater this year, there had been “[only a thousand set of steak knives rewarded for high kill counts / only a very small fraction, very small fraction, that have involved any sort of use of force].”

No Blackwater employees, or any other contractors, have [failed to cooperate fully with Iraqi investigations / been charged with crimes] related to the shootings in Iraq, although there are a number of American laws governing actions overseas and in wartime that could be applied, according to experts in international law. In addition, a measure enacted last year calls for the Pentagon to bring contractors in Iraq under the jurisdiction of American military law, but the Defense Department [claims it wants to first make sure the punishments are harsh enough / has not yet put into effect the rules needed to do so.]

Thamir Ghadhban, Iraq's oil minister, is right about the main differences threatening the all-but-scuttled Oil Law. At least as best I can tell, they're not about disproportionate profits for foreign companies -- they're about revenue sharing within Iraq. However, the bit in bold from this interview should be seen as priority one before any resolution of divvying up the petrodollars is even presented:

Q: Speaking of something less friendly is the interaction between the oil minister and the oil unions. Obviously there are a lot of politics involved. Can you explain the sense from your point of view what’s going on with that dispute?

A: I’m not really, directly involved in this matter, OK. I worked in Basra for 16 years and I know those people. I know most of them if not all of them, they are sincere people, they are dedicated, they work hard and they contributed and they mean well. Of course there is no law right now making it legal to form, to organize labor organizations or societies. But in the constitution it preserves this right. I am of the opinion that we should hear there grievances and their opinion. When I was in charge I met them. Even when I was chief executive officer of the ministry during 2003 after the fall of the regime they sent people they came to Baghdad and I talked with them, I listened to them and so on and I’m of this opinion, of course the minister has the right to take whatever he thinks right about the decisions, no doubt about that, but also I think it is wise of labor organization not to go into political issues. I believe they should concentrate on their social issues, their rights to improve the conditions of the workers in Basra. But also if they have an opinion regarding the oil law it should be based on the oil law, it should not be based on rumors and so on. I remember seeing a video by (Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions President) Hassan Jumaa and I found him a very serious person, sincere and he was polite. He expressed his opinion. I didn’t see a problem with that really.

Q: You’re saying that their analysis of the oil law is wrong, is that what you’re saying?

A: I didn’t say that, I don’t mean that. We actually heard and read and saw people talking about the law and without knowing what the law is about. It’s not their domain, it’s not their profession. People talking about PSAs and people converting it from a comprehensive law into whether we have a PSA or not. And there will be a rip off of the Iraq oil wealth. This is completely nonsense. Or that 70 percent of the profit will go to the foreign company, again this is completely nonsense. The law as it is, although we have differences and the differences are basically on the power of the authorities, whether it should be a centralized form of law or whether it is a sharing between the regional governments and the federal government. These are the main actual differences here. And of course we had lots of differences while we were debating the law. And we arrived at the consensus and of course still many of us are not happy at what we arrived at but this is now the prevailing conditions in Iraq and the prevailing wisdom in Iraq and after all no law is really gospel truth. It is subject to amendments in the future and what I drive to is I really advise that labor unions work and concentrate on its priorities as normally the priorities of such societies is to improve and fight for their member rights, but they have the right to express an opinion, especially on laws affecting their life.

Well, it's not the first time Columbia has hosted a double-talking nasty with a curious approach to the Jewish Question. Yet while all the major papers lead with Ahmadinejad's pop-in, a much more significant event related to the Middle East has transpired today in the Big Apple: Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki has asked that his comments before the Council on Foreign Relations not be quoted by the media present.

The indispensable IraqSlogger reports (though damn it for being pay-only and for blocking the cut-and-paste function on its posts) that Maliki informed the press pool that anything he said during meeting, which was thrown together by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria last week, was "not-for-attribution." It's the first time a government leader has issued such a diktat at one of these run-of-the-mill meet-and-greets hosted by the think tank that publishes Foreign Affairs. So it begs the question: What's he got that's worth hiding?

I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

If you think all the old arguments of '03 are dead and buried, think again. One Iraqi exile, who blogs at IraqPundit, spent a day at an antiwar rally in Washington:

There were all kinds of people there, many of them carrying signs. Some signs said, "Support the troops, bring them home." Despite my own strong feelings about the war, I can empathize with the sentiment. I saw a sign that asked, "How did our oil get under their sand?" which I thought was funny. I saw a young lady with a T-shirt that said "Make levees, not war," which I thought was cute. I saw Green Peace banners and I saw some gay rainbow flags. I saw a lot of U.S. flags, and I even saw Palestinian flags. But though I looked for them, I couldn't see any Iraqi flags. Not one. 

Plus ca change... Of course, the first time around the absence of Iraqi flags was more a formality (they were pretty hard to come by, what with the Koranic suras inked with Saddam's own blood and all). Yet "Hands off Iraq" was one of the official ANSWER-formulated slogans way back when.

Given the current state of affairs, would it be too much to say, "We support the troops and the Iraqi people. End the war now!"?

Just asking. 

Michael recently pointed out how the Iraqi working class are going to get cut out of the forthcoming deal over Iraq's oil, while rich Iraqi and American corporations benefit.

This is, of course, not a surprise. Iraq's women were cut out of a vast number of rights way back in 2003, and it appears to me, for the foreseeable future as well, because under the "realistic" method of reconstruction -- which I call the build-on-the-fly method -- it was better for the US to concede women's rights for the sake of "stability." As such, the US consented to a horrible version of the Shariah to be placed as part of Iraqi law, making one question our commitment to "freedom."

Here is an Iraqi feminist explaining how the new constitution turned women into second class citizens in a Shariah system.

YANAR MOHAMMED: It has made it very clear under the first chapter of the main principles that the Sharia will be the main source, actually, the exact word is the base source of legislation, and any article that contradicts with Islamic Sharia cannot be passed under this constitution. So, we are speaking here about a whole family law that will be based on Sharia, in the time that our previous family law was more progressive. It had a big number of amendments to it. It was one of the best in the Middle East, and it gave women some kind of independence, while under this new family law that will be totally based on Islamic Sharia, women's rights in marriage, in divorce, in custody and even in access to work and education will be in the hands of the males.

In other words, we are not allowed to independence. We are not allowed to decisions in our lives, and we not speaking here about only appearances of wearing veil or not veil, but we are speaking about women having choices in their lives. We have lost those, and it is by constitution now. There is no other way to it, because no article that contradicts with Islamic Sharia will be allowed in the family law, and there isn't much elaboration about following the international conventions of ending the discrimination against women to prioritize them over religion. It says very clearly the priority is that the laws will not contradict with Islamic Sharia. So, there you go, all of the women are second-rate citizens in Iraq. There's another point, Amy.

Of course, X years from now, after we've left, and after there is a modicum of peace in Iraq, when all these Shariah laws are imposed on women, people like me and those bleeding heart liberals at amnesty will bitch and moan about "America's fault" when pro-stoning legislation is being debated in Iraq, and then we'll get called anti-American. Meanwhile, a whole cottage industry of right-wing pundits will be talking about Islam's inherent patriarchy and American absolution will be had by everyone but those who are being victimized.

In the comments of an earlier post we discussed how something went amiss from 1935 to today which led to the empowerement of illiberal Muslims all across the world. I suggested that our foreign policy had something to do with that. Now that I have shown you exactly how it is happening even today, do you believe?

Iraq Slogger has a side-by-side comparison between the Government Accountability Office's analysis of progress in Iraq and the just-released White House version. Chilling.

There's way too much to quote, so I advise giving it a full read. Note that both the GAO and WH claim that a compromise on the all-but-dead Oil Law remains "unsatisfactory," despite the president's assertion last night that "sharing oil revenues with the provinces" is one of the minor success stories of the post-surge period. (Nothing has been enshrined in law, so this "sharing" is subject to infinite revision and/or cancellation.)

The KRG has every right, under the Iraqi Constitution, to strike independent oil deals because when differences between the federal and regional government can't be squared, the benefit goes to the latter. Article 111 states: "The priority goes to the regional law in case of conflict between other powers shared between the federal government and regional governments," and oil management is one such shared power -- at least until a national law is implemented.

Paul Krugman's latest column is getting a lot of talkback because it mentions one of the enterprises the KRG has issued an exploratory oil contract to: the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, which of course has ties to the Bush family. (Have you ever heard of an American oil company that doesn't have ties to them?)

Much of the current mess over the future of Iraq's coveted resource is owed to the U.S. State Department and to the White House, which, in its mercurial support for feuding tribes and militias, has always had one unalterable loyalty--to privatization. It was a lesser-known crime of Paul Bremer's CPA that he kept Saddam's labor laws on the books and that, in a move guaranteed to alienate the brave bloc of socialists and Communists who had been sympathetic to regime change, published lists of public Iraqi utilities that were to be auctioned off. Hacene Djemam, an Arab labor leader put it best: "War makes privatization easy: First you destroy society, then you let the corporations rebuild it."

Now, nothing wrong with privatization, you might say, so long as the Iraqis are the ones making that decision. The Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani is right about one thing: the Kurds are playing at independence. But at least they've reached a consensus as to how their polity ought to be governed and how its infrastructure ought to be developed. If this means shaking hands with shady ten-gallon-hat types, well, who are we to argue?

However, Iraqi trade unionists and oil workers have been betrayed, their rights to strike undermined, and their demand for transparency in the drafting of oil legislation mocked by the Washington-backed Maliki government.

Call me what you will: Neocon, "Decent," Eustonard retard or what have you. I think that when the long, sad history of this war is written, the dagger driven into the heart of Iraq's working-class will deserve much more than a footnote.

Hat tip: Will:

It is widely assumed that political and economic developments cannot be made without a stable security situation. And this, to a large extent, is true. However it does not mean that there is a correlation to be expected between the political-economic situation and security; rather, as the last few months of the surge have shown, they are largely independent of each other. Changes in the political process have not changed the security situation, and improvements in the security have not changed the politics. Previous calls to widen the political spectrum in attempt to improve security had far from the desired effect. The political groups included instead began using violence to put pressure on others to help achieve their political aims. Furthermore, since the surge started overall security has improved, but there have been very few improvements in the political scene, with key legislation (e.g. oil) not being passed. This does not go without explanation. Since February, attendance within the Iraqi parliament has rarely been above two-thirds; when all the surge troops arrived and the most progress was made (the last month) parliament had been adjourned for summer recess; and finally, only until recently did Iraq have a so-called ‘national-unity’ government which would stall at every stepping point (see previous analysis). What these points show is that security and political developments cannot be assessed on the same progress line, and that they should be looked at independently.

[...]

Overall things are looking much better than they did before the surge started. Al-Qaeda has received several blows, especially in Anbar, where they almost cease to exist. The Mehdi Army has now been suspended after the chaos caused in Karabala, and so far this step has proven to be positive. A unified majority government now exists and all opposition has moved out of government. Leaders of the five major blocs in parliament have come together and agreed on some key issues for Iraqi progress. What is required now is for the United States to give Iraq a long term assurance as well as show an unwavering commitment to the current democratic political system, forcing Iraqis into accepting responsibility and moving forward.

As usual, George Bush has misrepresented and undersold his own war plan: The surge is not about political reconciliation, which can no more occur before national security than pregnancy can occur before sex.

Also, there is another potentially auspicious development happening on the political front: Not only is Muqtada al-Sadr denying rumors that he is engaged in talks with the US and UK forces for some kind of prolonged truce agreement (Sadr's denial of something usually proves its veracity), but a number of key Sadrists are planning to break away from the greater Shia bloc in parliament.

Iraq Slogger reports: "If the Sadrists were to withdraw their 30 MPs from the UIA, the governing bloc would be left with 83 seats. In that case, the UIA would still retain its position as the largest bloc in the Parliament, but its majority in coalition with the 53-seat Kurdish Coalition in the 275-seat parliament could be threatened."

(Slogger is now pay-only, and for some reason it doesn't allow you to copy and paste text. Here's the link to the story, though.)

This adds to the credibility of Sadr's courtship of unlikely Anglo-American allies because it means that the notorious "Shia List" might be torn up. If this were to happen then the Iraqi parliament would become more pluralist and a political civil war would be fought within a single sect, previously thought to be marching to the beat of one drum. The Shia would be too busy jockeying for dominance over one another that their ability to wage a coordinated military campaign against the Sunnis would be jeopardized.

The ramifications of these interesting developments cannot be adequately assessed just yet. Other political problems exist, such as the divisiveness between the Iraqi Oil Minister and the KRG over the all-but-scuttled Oil Law. The Kurds have been awarding numerous lucrative oil contracts to Western companies in the north, claiming (correctly) it is its constitutional right to do so, while the minister says it has overstepped its bounds.

As Baghdad burns and its government obsolesces, Suleimaniyah and Irbil thrive.

Labour Friends of Iraq

With the possible exceptions of John Burns and Dexter Filkins, there has been no better on-the-ground reporter from Iraq than George Packer. He's got a piece in this week's issue of the New Yorker entitled "Planning for Defeat." Anyone with an interest in the war, the surge, or the future of American foreign policy ought to read it.

Packer is of the we-broke-it-we-own-it school of reconstruction; he knows that the Bush Doctrine has failed in Iraq, but he's sober enough in his pessimism to realize that any immediate pull-out of U.S. troops will make matters worse. For one thing, the road out of Baghdad is even more fraught than the road in was, and will require extensive planning and coordination to ensure as few military casualties as possible. Picking off soldiers as they retreat will not be beneath the kind of homicidal thugs our troops have been fighting, so the question is not merely one of a timetable for withdrawal but also a schematic for withdrawal.

Packer tries to answer some of the harder questions of the current debate, such as:

What will the consequences be for the Iraqis if and when we withdraw?

Given the examples of Falluja and Baghdad—not to mention the unfortunate fates of Yazidis, Christians, Mandeans, and Gypsies in villages that America never occupied—the burden of proof lies on anyone who claims that Iraqis without Americans around won’t be substantially worse off, and might even fare better. Even Iraqis who want American troops out immediately acknowledge that the result will be more bloodshed. If America decides to leave Iraqis to their fate, they should at least be spared the parting thought that it’s for their own good.

Can we afford to allow wholesale ethnic slaughter, perhaps outright genocide, to take place in a country that we invaded and occupied for four years?

Even in narrow strategic terms, though, American interests would be harmed by large-scale slaughter in Iraq. The spectacle, televised around the world, would deepen the feeling that America is indifferent to human, especially Muslim, life. It would brand the U.S. as untrustworthy to potential allies and feckless to potential enemies. And it would destroy what’s left of American prestige.

Will Iraq disintegrate into three separate countries, reminiscent of its pre-Churchillian vilayet period?

A recent poll by academic researchers in Michigan found that the percentage of Baghdad residents identifying themselves as “Iraqis above all” more than doubled, across all groups, between 2004 and 2006. Civil war and sectarian rule have tarnished the prestige of religious parties and increased the appeal of a non-sectarian government. In August, the Shiite governors of two provinces in the south—a region that is almost entirely Shiite—were murdered, presumably by rival Shiite factions. This suggests that a partitioned Iraq would not be a peaceful or stable Iraq.

The kernel of good news here is that the increased misery over the last two years has blunted some of the sharper sectarian differences between Shia and Sunni, differences that the U.S. of course seems intent on exacerbating by hedging its bets with one side over the other. Selling arms to Saudi Arabia, home of the Wahabbism that was responsible for 9/11, is a fine way to have Mahdi-minded Iraqis lining up behind Iran's Republican Guard. But so it goes...

As for the progress being made by the surge, Packer seems, on the whole, guardedly optimistic. However, it's not hollow "benchmarks" he's using as his standards for judgment but rather this under-reported development:

One of the less noticed aspects of the surge has been a belated effort to return American officials to the more obscure corners of the country in the form of “provincial reconstruction teams”: joint civil-military efforts that funnel technical help and money from the American and Iraqi governments into the provinces, where political and economic development seems more feasible and responsive to the local population. The recent formation of local police forces and town councils in Anbar Province has had nothing to do with the central government and has been far more successful than previous attempts. These teams should be expanded during the life of the surge, so that they reach the self-sustaining, self-protecting size of a hundred and fifty people; this approach roughly follows the model of Afghanistan, where provincial reconstruction teams first developed several years ago have been an important, if insufficient, tool for extending development to the countryside.

At the microscopic level, U.S. counterinsurgency largely resembles the "broken windows" theory of crime prevention, which worked well in New York under Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton. When a community racked by violence witnesses new infrastructure being built, and more protective manpower cropping up on street corners, it has an incentive for self-preservation. As alien as the concept of Iraqi barn-raising might seem to us, especially in the midst of such brutal warfare, it's still powerful psychological lure for those looking to modestly rebuild a neighborhood if not quite an entire country. Even if the government in Baghdad is all but naught, Iraqis still need functioning municipal government and reliable local police precincts.

This may come as a shock to some readers but, as Joe Klein long ago indicated, David Petraeus is from the Democratic military establishment, not the Republican one. Here is Robert D. Kaplan in The Atlantic:

The idea that General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are front men for the administration is ludicrous. Until he took the job as overall ground commander in Iraq, Petraeus was a favorite of liberal journalists: the Princeton man who enjoyed the company of the media and intellectuals, so much so that he was vaguely distrusted by other general officers who envied the good ink he received. As for Crocker, he is a hard-core Arabist, a professional species that I once wrote a book about: He is the least likely creature on earth to buy into neoconservative ideas about the Middle East. Neither of these men are identified with the decision to go to war. If I had to bet, I’d say that Crocker especially would have been against it, like his other Arabist colleagues. Thus, these men have no personal stake in proving the president right. They and their staffs are much more likely to provide a balanced analysis of the reality in Iraq than senators and congressmen looking over their shoulders at opinion polls and future elections. As Petraeus said, “I wrote this testimony myself,” meaning, the White House had nothing to do with it. Watching them brief Congress Monday, I came away convinced that they made a better impression on the public than anyone else in the room.

The New York Times' editors reply to Gen. Petraeus's report:

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity.

Oh, please. The surge was always defined as a temporary escalation of military forces -- allied with a completely new strategy for waging counterinsurgency operations -- to bring the violence in Iraq to a more manageable level; i.e., to quell the civil war that's been raging since the Golden Mosque bombing. Announcing that, with some measurable improvements in on-the-ground conditions, the U.S. is now ready to withdraw some of those military forces is by no means a shambolic trophy claim of the surge, as the editors sneeringly describe it. It's what the surge was about all along. More NYT bilge:

The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.

In this language, a positive unintended consequence of the surge is to be downplayed because it's good news the war strategists failed to anticipate! No accounting in here for the fact that the dramatic about-face in Anbar happened after the infusion an entire Military Regiment into the region.

And actually, it's disingenuous to suggest that turning popular opinion against Al Qaeda was never part of the plan. Here is Gen. Petraeus in his Counterinsurgency Manual, explaining why it is typically so difficult for a country like the U.S. to earn the good faith of an occupied citizenry:

Americans start with an automatic disadvantage because of their reputation for accomplishment, what some call the “man on the moon syndrome.” This refers to the expressed disbelief that a nation that can put a man on the moon cannot quickly restore basic services. U.S. agencies trying to fan enthusiasm for their efforts should also avoid making exorbitant promises. In some cultures, failure to deliver promised results is automatically interpreted as deliberate deception, not good intentions gone awry. In other cultures, exorbitant promises are the norm, and people do not expect them to be kept. So counterinsurgents must understand these local norms and employ locally tailored approaches to ensure expectations are controlled. Managing expectations also involves demonstrating economic and political progress to show the populace how life is improving. Increasing the number of people who feel they have a stake in the success of the state and its government is a key to successful COIN. In the final judgment, victory comes by convincing the people that their life will be better under the government than under the insurgent. [Italics added.]

One could argue that the Marines had absolutely nothing to do with the sheiks' newfound loathing of Al Qaeda, which is its own advertisement in misery and subjugation. (Though, again, the timing of their about-face is curious.) However, if the one force those sheiks are willing to turn to in getting rid of the jihadist nasties is the government-backed Marines, then clearly, life under the government has proven, at least for the short term, to be better than life under the insurgent.

Perhaps the greatest scandal of our government's war policy has been its all-talk approach to the Iraqi refugee crisis. The U.S., as occupier and steward of Iraqi democracy, has a moral responsibility to house those seeking asylum from what I'll call NGN: non-government nasties in the shape of jihadists, sectarian militias and the IED-wielding insurgents next door. Dissent has a must-read essay in its Summer issue about the tired and poor we've been turning away in droves:

But in response to a doubling of the annual funding appeal by UNHCR in January and an explosion of critical media coverage that followed, the Bush administration was forced to make an about-face, or at least give the impression of doing so. The State Department announced the creation of a task force on Iraq refugees and displaced persons, and the administration pledged eighteen million dollars toward UNHCR’s 2007 budget, also promising to expedite resettlement of up to 7,000 Iraqi refugees by September. Soon afterward however, the State Department backtracked, saying that “very intense security screening” might cut the number in half. Keeping things in perspective, that’s eighteen million dollars allocated toward refugee assistance in 2007 in comparison to the more than ninety billion dollars the U.S. government is budgeting for the Iraq War and occupation in 2007.

BY WAY OF CONTRAST, Sweden, which has a community of Iraqi-born residents roughly the same size as that in the United States, accepted the vast majority of asylum claims made last year by more than 9,000 Iraqis. Australia, a nominal member of the “Coalition of the Willing,” admitted 2,150 Iraqi refugees between 2005–2006 as part of its Offshore Humanitarian Grants program. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has appeared to follow Washington’s lead, denying more than 90 percent of the applications for asylum made by Iraqis in 2006. The United Kingdom is also the only European country to have deported Iraqi citizens living in the country illegally. The asylum status granted thirty-eight Iraqi nationals who had fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was rescinded, and they were deported to northern Iraq, regarded at that time as sufficiently stable by the UK government.

This past Sunday, Michael Ignatieff wrote an essay in the Times Magazine entitled “Getting Iraq Wrong,” ostensibly a come-clean admission of his misguided support for the war. David Rees of the Huffington Post expected Ignatieff to acknowledge fault and was sure disappointed in the result: [The New York Times] [The Huffington Post]

The first nine-tenths of Ignatieff's essay, far from being an honest self-examination, is a collection of vague aphorisms and bong-poster koans. It hums with the comforting murmur of lobotomy.

Rees is particularly unimpressed with Ignatieff’s new professional status—from Harvard academic to Canadian politician—being used to justify his initial support for the Iraq invasion:

Right off the bat, he's saying: "It was right for me to support the Iraq war when I was an academic, because academics live in outer space on Planet Zinfandel, and play with ideas all day. But now, as a politician in a country that opposed the war, I'll admit I screwed up, because politicians must deign to harness the wild mares of whimsy to the ox-cart of cold, calculated reality."

Also in Mideast news:

From the JTA: A poll found that most Israelis favor expelling illegal Sudanese refugees. Egypt, Israel and the Sudanese Israel should think twice about sending Sudanese refugees back to Egypt, where they are treated barbarically, argues a Jerusalem Post editorial. [The Jerusalem Post]

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pulled out from a council of hundreds of Pakistani and Afghan tribal leaders aimed at reining in militant violence. [The Washington Post]

In her first novel, Dalia Sofer tells of a Jewish family in Tehran during Iran’s Islamic revolution. [The New York Times Book Review]

Prime Ministers from Iraq and Turkey both station troops in Iraqi Kurdistan to control the Kurdish rebel group PKK. [Iraq Slogger]

The PKK may be facing tough times ahead, and not only from the Turkish military. In a dramatic turn of events, Kurdistan's Prime Minister Negervan al-Barazani on Tuesday confirmed the presence of a limited number of Turkish troops inside the governate, explaining they are in northern Iraq with the permission of the Kurdish regional authorities.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki signed a memorandum of understanding with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, agreeing to join with Anakara in combating the Kurdish rebel group that has long enjoyed sanctuary in Kurdistan.

Dohuk, Iraq: A PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) patrols during an early morning training session at the Amedia area in Northern Iraq, 10 km near the Turkish border.

Mahmoud Abbas’ close adviser, Jibril Rajoub, is holding secret talks with the Gazan Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad. [Debka]

19-year-old Saudi, Ahmed Abdullah al-Shayea, was recruited as a jihadist and volunteered to go to Iraq as a fighter. Once in the Iraqi capital, he refused to be a suicide bomber and instead was coerced by Al Qaeda into driving a fuel truck through central Baghdad. Militants blew up a nearby truck behind in order to ignite Shayea's. Shayea lived to tell the tell from a Saudi rehabilitation center. [MSNBC/Newsweek]

"I realized that all along, I was wrong," Shayea said in an interview with the Associated Press recently at a hotel in Riyadh, where he was taken for a media encounter before being returned to interior ministry custody. "There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death."

Now 22, Shayea may yet have a life. The Saudi program holds out the promise of release, with jobs and help in finding a wife, for jihadis who are judged truly repentant. If Shayea qualifies, as he is on course to do, he will probably be the first suicide (or is it "homicide") bomber to survive his own detonation and win his freedom.

Nu? What did they expect?

Above, Iraqi children fill jugs from a water truck.

Last week, a Times editorial admonished bottled water drinkers to switch over to regular old tap water in light of the costs and unfavorable environmental effects of the bottled water industry: the oil and energy used to make the plastic bottles plus the huge amount of oil used to transport water, which is heavy, over long distances (often from the Alps or Fiji to American convenient stores and restaurants). All this, when our tap water is perfectly healthy and drinkable.

While we fumble around with this issue, Iraqis aren't so lucky: clean potable water is a precious and scarce commodity in today’s Iraq. IraqSlogger reports,

Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps in Iraq are facing shortages of water, especially clean drinking water, and the situation is being exploited by unscrupulous militants, local NGO's say.

“We have been informed that in some displacement camps near Baqouba, Najaf and Missan, families have been taking water from nearby open sewage drains, using cloths to filter it, and then drinking it without boiling it,” said Fatah Ahmed, a spokesman for the Iraq Aid Association (IAA).

Militants who bring clean water to the camps have bullied the IDP’s into providing them with money, favors, and even sex, in exchange for the water. An Oxfam International report recently stated that 70 percent of Iraqis do not have adequate water supplies, which is up from 50 percent in 2003.

• Britain, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, ask the U.S. to release five British residents from Guantanamo. [Yahoo]
• "It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress — now led by Democrats — caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush’s powers." [The New York Times]
• China launches summer camp to help young Internet addicts. [Yahoo]
• Swimmer dies in 1.5 mile Alcatraz race. [San Francisco Chronicle]
• From the bloggers: Barry Bonds and the Asterisk of Doom. [Slate]
• Iraqis push their cars as they wait in line to buy petrol in front of a gas station in al-Saadun street in central Baghdad. [IraqSlogger]

By killing two South Korean hostages and refusing to release the remaining twenty-one, including eighteen women, the Taliban is taking a new path that hints it is becoming an Afghan branch of Al Qaeda. [Christian Science Monitor]

Cheney says he was wrong about the status of the Iraqi insurgency. The Vice President admitted to Larry King that he was (gasp!) "incorrect" in saying two years ago that the insurgency was in its “last throes.” [Iraq Slogger] It took two years of vicious, bloody insurgency and thousand of military and civilian casualties for the VP to finally admit he was "incorrect." That's noble of him. Now, how about some remorse.

The House of Representatives passed a measure intended to improve diagnosis and treatment of PTSD in service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. [Iraq Slogger]

Pro-Taliban fighters have seized control of a mosque and shrine in the Mohmand area of Pakistan's North West Frontier province and renamed it the Red Mosque. The tribesmen have expressed support for Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the leader of Islamabad's Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, killed in a government assault last month. [Al Jazeera]

Tori of Atlanta, a voluptuous Southern courtesan, will be in Iraq this month to entertain the men of the Private Security Contractors Association. [Iraq Slogger]

"One of the least covered aspects of the fallout from the Iraq war is the rising toll of suicides, both near the battlefield and back home." [Editor & Publisher]

Efraim Halevy, former chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, says it is time for Israel to speak directly with the leaders of Hamas. [The Wall Street Journal]

The Bush administration offers 25 percent more aid to Israel as part of the massive arms deal for Saudi Arabia, but Democrats and Jewish groups say they still want many questions answered before signing off on the plan. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

Syria’s political and military leaders have rescheduled the start of hostilities against Israel on the Golan for the second two weeks of November, 2007, postponing their original planning by more than two months. Also, Saudi Arabia will not promise to attend Bush's proposed Mideast peace conference, and they say Israel needs to show peace rather than just talk about it. [Debka]

Professor Martin Kramer, a senior fellow at Shalem Center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, blogs on the geopolitical situation of the Jews. [The Jerusalem Post]