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Banned
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Originally Posted by powerclown
.....I'm not saying that additional troops alone are going to solve the political problems facing Iraq. I am saying that a lessening of ethnic fighting in Baghdad, a halt in the suicide bombings and sectarian neighborhood murders and cleansings, and the re-establishment of some level of security and basic services to the citizens of Baghdad would increase the chances for political advancements on multiple fronts.
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Quote:
Sendin' kids to the hot sun
I fought Iraq and Iran won.
I fought Iraq and Iran won.
(bridge)
Well I miss Dick Cheney when he's layin' low
But still his will be done,
Halliburton was ready to go, so
I fought Iraq and Iran won.
I fought Iraq and Iran won.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Curtis">With Apology to "I Fought the Law" songwriter, Sonny Curtis</a>
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Before you dismiss the lyrics above as a silly taunt, consider how whacked the results of your own advocacy is. The Bush/Cheney PNAC driven leadership has failed our troops and country into a quagmire that can only be "improved" if Iran is eliminated as a threat. I predict that "the plan" is to try to accomplish that with an almost exclusive reliance on "air power". Let the bombing begin in.....as St. Reagan once put it....
<b>Here is a recent report on the shi'a cleric with the LEAST ties to and sympathies with Iran:</b>
Quote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwash...printstory.jsp
Posted on Thu, Feb. 01, 2007
Mahdi Army gains strength through unwitting aid of U.S.
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.
U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed.
"Half of them are JAM. They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night," said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia's Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. "People (in America) think it's bad, but that we control the city. That's not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It's hostile territory."
The Bush administration's plan to secure Baghdad rests on a "surge" of some 17,000 more U.S. troops to the city, many of whom will operate from small bases throughout Baghdad. Those soldiers will work to improve Iraqi security units so that American forces can hand over control of the area and withdraw to the outskirts of the city.
The problem, many soldiers said, is that the approach has been tried before and resulted only in strengthening al-Sadr and his militia.
Amid recurring reports that al-Sadr is telling his militia leaders to stash their arms and, in some cases, leave their neighborhoods during the American push, U.S. soldiers worry that the latest plan could end up handing over those areas to units that are close to al-Sadr's militant Shiite group.
"All the Shiites have to do is tell everyone to lay low, wait for the Americans to leave, then when they leave you have a target list and within a day they'll kill every Sunni leader in the country. It'll be called the `Day of Death' or something like that," said 1st Lt. Alain Etienne, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y. "They say, `Wait, and we will be victorious.' That's what they preach. And it will be their victory."
Quinn agreed.
"Honestly, within six months of us leaving, the way Iranian clerics run the country behind the scenes, it'll be the same way here with Sadr," said Quinn, 25, of Cleveland. "He already runs our side of the river."
Four senior American military representatives in Baghdad declined requests for comment.
Al-Sadr's success in infiltrating Iraqi security forces says much about the continued inability of American commanders in Iraq to counter the classic insurgent tactic of using popular support to trump superior military firepower. Lacking attack helicopters and other sophisticated weapons, al-Sadr's men have expanded their empire with borrowed trucks and free lunches for militiamen.
After U.S. units pounded al-Sadr's men in August 2004, the cleric apparently decided that instead of facing American tanks, he'd use the Americans' plans to build Iraqi security forces to rebuild his own militia.
So while Iraq's other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, concentrated in 2005 on packing Iraqi intelligence bureaus with high-level officers who could coordinate sectarian assassinations, al-Sadr went after the rank and file.
His recruits began flooding into the Iraqi army and police, receiving training, uniforms and equipment either directly from the U.S. military or from the American-backed Iraqi Defense Ministry. ....
....... Al-Sadr's militia has taken advantage of the chaos.
Iraqi soldiers, for example, often were pushed into the field by Iraqi commanders who didn't give them adequate food, clothing or shelter, said Etienne, a 1st Infantry Division platoon leader.
Etienne was on patrol one day when he saw Iraqi soldiers eating fresh vegetables and meat. The afternoon before, the same soldiers had complained that they had only scraps of food left. Who'd brought them their meal? It had come courtesy of Muqtada al-Sadr.
"Who's feeding the Iraqi army? Nobody. So JAM will come around and give them food and water," Etienne said. "We try to capture hearts and minds, well, JAM has done that. They're further along than us."
There's been ample evidence - despite claims to the contrary by American and Iraqi officials - that the death-squad activity isn't isolated to a few troops loyal to al-Sadr.
In the southeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Zafrainyah, an entire national police brigade was sent to be retrained last year- and much of its leadership was replaced - after its officers kidnapped 24 Sunnis, took them to a meat-processing plant and killed them.
Last month, four members of a neighborhood council in Etienne's sector - a mixed Sunni-Shiite area that abuts an al-Sadr stronghold - were leaving a meeting when national police trucks pulled up and men in Iraqi military uniforms piled out.
They grabbed the four men in broad daylight. One of the council members struggled. He was shot in the head and left to die on the street.
The remaining three were blindfolded and driven to a house. One of the four, a Shiite, listened as his two Sunni colleagues begged for their lives between beatings.
"They were pistol-whipping them and kicking them," Etienne said. "Finally, he heard the sound of a drill."
When the man's blindfold was taken off, he found that he was covered with the blood of his two friends, who were slumped over dead with drill holes in their heads.
"It was (al-Sadr's militia). They were trying to figure out who's who, and killing Sunnis," Etienne said. "They borrowed the vehicles from their friends in the Iraqi army and police who are Mahdi-affiliated."......
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<b>This is the alternative to al Sadr and his mahdi army, courted by the US government, as the "less extreme" alternative to al Sadr:</b>
Quote:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002484.php
<b>Our Men in Iraq Are Iran's Men, Too</b>
By Spencer Ackerman - February 6, 2007, 10:03 AM
Here's what happened in Iraq while the GOP -- with an assist from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) -- blocked yesterday's debate on the war.
The leader of the dominant Shiite political bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, is an Islamist and sectarian hardliner named Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. al-Hakim's faction, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has been a proxy for Iran since the Iran-Iraq war, and it runs one of the more ruthless Shiite militias in Iraq, known as the Badr Corps -- an organization that in 2005 <a href="http://www.harpers.org/the-minister-of-civil-war-399309.html">ran Sunni torture chambers out of the Interior Ministry.</a> If al-Hakim has any particular virtue, it's that he's also been willing to accept American sponsorship as well: way back in 2002 and 2003, he was an influential member of the Iraqi exile community working with the Bush administration, which rewarded him with <a href="http://www.cpa-iraq.org/government/governing_council.html">a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council.</a>
Yesterday, al-Hakim went to Tehran, where he was warmly received by the head of Iran's security council, Ali Larijani. He had a mission -- <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/world/middleeast/06irancnd.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1170738000&en=6af03c9cd771e38f&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin">to publicly urge U.S.-Iranian diplomatic contact.</a> "Negotiations between Iran and the United States are useful for the whole region," he was quoted as saying.
There are two points to be made here. The first, narrower point, is that even those Iraqis the U.S. is allied with want a reduction in the level of hostility between Washington and Tehran. That hostility is increasing by the day: the Iranians are blaming the U.S. for the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/world/middleeast/06cnd-iraq.html">abduction of an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad yesterday</a>, a charge the U.S. denies. The larger point, however, is that the logic of the war is to deliver Iraqi politics into the hands of men who are closer to Tehran than to Washington. Remember that the surge is designed <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002469.php">to deliver breathing room for the Iraqi government</a> -- a government in the hands of hardline Shiites like al-Hakim. Indeed, Bush welcomed al-Hakim to Washington in December, and according to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/03/AR2007020301441.html">Sunday's Washington Post</a>, a faction within the administration considers him more reliable an ally than PM Nouri al-Maliki:
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As they put the plan together, officials held heated internal debates over whether Maliki was the right man to head such an effort. Some argued in favor of engineering a new Iraqi government under Maliki's Shiite coalition partner, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and Hakim's political stalking horse, Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi.
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The reason the administration stuck with Maliki? According to an official quoted by the Post, sidelining him in favor of al-Hakim would be "too hard."
<b>It's ironic that we'd get a fuller understanding of who really benefits from the surge by a visit to Tehran by an Iraqi ally of the administration</b>, but there it is. Don't expect that to be debated on the Senate floor any time soon, however.
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Quote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4691615.stm
Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2005/07/17 20:47:20 GMT
Iran-Iraq talks heal old wounds
Iran's President Mohammed Khatami has welcomed what he called a "turning point" in relations with Iraq.
He said the current visit by Iraq's transitional PM Ibrahim Jaafari would help patch the wounds inflicted by ex-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Mr Jaafari is leading the highest-level Iraqi delegation to Iran in decades.
Mr Khatami said the security of Iran and Iraq were closely linked and that Tehran would do everything to help restore Iraq's stability.
"The visit of the Iraqi prime minister to Iran is a turning point in the historic relations between the two countries. It will allow us to heal the wounds and repair the damage caused by Saddam Hussein through joint co-operation," Mr Khatami said.
Quote:
Today, we need a double and common effort to confront terrorism that may spread in the region and the world
Ibrahim Jaafari
Iraqi PM
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Mr Jaafari said Iraq knew the evil wrought by Saddam Hussein on the region, but that he did not represent the Iraqi people.
More than one million people died when the two nations fought in the 1980s during an eight-year war.
The political symbolism of restoring relations is huge, says the BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran.
After decades of no diplomatic relations, Iraq now has a prime minister who has spent years in exile in Iran and heads a Shia-dominated government sympathetic to its neighbour, she says.
Security
More than 10 ministers are accompanying Mr Jaafari on his visit - the first top-level visit to Iran since the Iran-Iraq war.
The two countries have already signed an agreement on expanding transport links - Iran has promised to help rebuild Najaf airport and connect the two countries' rail networks to increase trade and the movement of pilgrims.
They are also expected to discuss security and the control of their long border.
A security agreement would involve Iran sharing intelligence with Iraq, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the AFP news agency.
"One of the subcommissions we formed is on security co-operation between two sides. Its aim is really to establish a mechanism for intelligence sharing, to prevent infiltrations and to assist us in stabilising the situation," he said.
The two countries have vowed to fight what they called terrorism and the abuse of Islam to justify violence.
"Today, we need a double and common effort to confront terrorism that may spread in the region and the world," Mr Jaafari said at a joint press conference after the talks.
Mr Jaafari, who is scheduled to leave on Monday, is expected to hold further talks with the president-elect of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi.
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Last edited by host; 02-06-2007 at 08:56 AM..
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