Geography Lesson

George W. Bush:

Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.

And now we see the New Middle East:Wonkette

Torture In Iraq

Now Worse Than It Was Under Saddam

Manfred Nowak, the UN's chief anti-torture expert, captured the headlines round the world when he suggested that torture could be worse in Iraq now than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Everyone, it seems, from the Iraqi forces to the militias to the anti-US insurgents, now routinely use torture on the people they kill.

Each day, bodies are found with appalling injuries, particularly in Baghdad.

At the Baghdad mortuary, I was told that more bodies now showed signs of torture than of a clean death.

The US Department of Defense has now provided another measure of the problem it faces. Its latest opinion poll carried out in Iraq indicates that, among the five million Sunni Muslims there, about 75% now support the armed insurgency against the coalition.

This compares with 14% in the first opinion poll the Defense Department carried out back in 2003. It is a catastrophic loss of support,

The rise in hostility to the US forces is clearly linked to the onslaught against the town of Falluja in 2004.

This was ordered directly by the White House and the Department of Defense after the bodies of four American defence contractors were hung from a bridge in April 2004.

The Source of Sunni Insurgency Is Internal

According to a major United Arab Emirates (UAE) daily, Sharjah-based Gulf Today:

A sweeping majority of the insurgents in Iraq are waging the guerrilla war against the United States and allied forces to serve their interests on the domestic Iraqi scene. They have no interest in pursuing an anti-US armed offensive outside Iraq.

Most of them are Iraqi Sunnis who fear that their interests would be totally undermined by the Shiite-dominated government. They are seeking to realise concrete, local political goals and are not running a terrorism campaign against the US.

The paper expressed its hope the US would listen closely to the message that came from Monday's meeting in Jeddah attended by nine Middle Eastern countries. The worsening crisis in Iraq, the paper notes, does not bode well for the region because Iraqi sectarian and ethnic tensions could spill over the country's neighbours.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz put the finger on the pulse when he expressed fear that

the wise could fall in the traps of the ignorant, in which case Iraq, its unity and people would be victims.

The dangers of such a situation, God forbid, are not a jeopardy to Iraq alone, but they will have an impact on the security of the international community and (Iraq's) neighbours.

The Saudi fear was echoed by Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi and his Turkish counterpart Abdulkadir Aksu.

According to the paper, the main item in the agenda for the Jeddah meeting was ways of bolstering Iraqi efforts to improve security. Interior ministers from Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq and its neighbours -- Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait -- reaffirmed their resolve to prevent foreign fighters entering Iraq through neighbouring countries.

Gulf Today observed:

Foreign fighters sneaking into Iraq through its porous borders account for only a small segment of the raging insurgency there. The insurgents of Iraq are mostly Iraqis who have a local agenda, only a small percentage of them are the so-called "international jihdists" -- like followers of Al Qaeda and some obscure groups."

A sweeping majority of the insurgents in Iraq are waging the guerrilla war against the US and allied forces to serve their interests on the domestic Iraqi scene.

This is the key fact that Bush and his aides conveniently sidestep when they affirm that insurgents in Iraq will not leave the US alone and therefore the US has to maintain its military presence in Iraq as long as it takes for Washington to satisfy for itself that it has eliminated the "security threat" that it perceives.

It follows that the insurgency would continue to grow in view of the US presence in Iraq and this in turn points to the danger that was highlighted at the Jeddah meeting, said the paper.

It concluded that regional countries and the rest of the international community know well that the US would not be able to successfully fight off the insurgency through military means. Instead of continuing to justify its military presence and aggressive policy in Iraq, Washington should be seriously looking at various options that would contain the crisis to within the borders of Iraq first and set the ground for a compromise among the various Iraqi communities.
As reported by Indian Muslims Info

The Numbers Game

US Military Numbers brought into Question
40 Dead in Saturday Violence

Juan Cole Writes:

The McClatchy News Service has cast doubt on the numbers of killed in Baghdad for August as announced by the US military. The report finds that the "count" of declining "murders" in Baghdad for August had been intended to exclude victims of suicide bombings and mortar attacks!

Some may conclude that since the US miltiary is not making any real progress in stopping the civil war, they have now begun attempting to manipulate the numbers.

If the allegation is true, it is a further detraction from the credibility of the Pentagon in Iraq. Since it would be much better for the US war effort if what the Department of Defense said about things was generally found to be true and credible, this development is actually quite sinister.

Informed Comment
Cartoon by Josh Brown

Khatami on Iraq

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in the United States!

In an interview to Time magazine, Hindustan Timeshe said removal of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power has been proved to be of benefit to Iran.

I also predicted that getting into Iraq would be very easy (for America), but getting out of it would be extremely difficult. And today, Saddam is gone but Iraq has become the centrestage of extremism and radicalism.

But he rejected the suggestion that Iraq is now witnessing a civil war and also strongly opposed the idea of partitioning Iraq in three parts -- Shia, Sunni and Kurd.

Definitely a bad idea. Iraq should remain unified. The solution is a democratic state. Numerically, the country is majority Shiite, but the government is not yet sectarian.

The President is a Kurd. The head of the government is a Shiite. The Sunnis have great, effective participation. So the breakup of Iraq is very dangerous. A democratic state can prevent this from taking place.

We could have resolved Iraq issue without invasion and occupation without the cost in terms of human life, American lives, Iraqi lives and money... If US had not had such a sense of conceit and pride or maybe arrogance. . . .

The best way is to strengthen and to support the government, its security services, its police forces, and the best way to do that is also to get help from neighbouring countries.

The US should know that it could get the help of Arab and Islamic countries to secure its interests, rather than without them.

Centrifigal Forces

Fighting Over Flags

From Informed Comment:

Massoud Barzani reacted angrily to criticisms of him by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and many other Iraqi politicians for his call that the Iraqi flag not be flown in Iraqi Kurdistan.

He characterized the present Iraqi flag as that of the Baath Party, the Anfal chemical weapons campaign against the Kurds, and mass graves. He added,

If the Iraqis are not enthusiastic about creating a new flag, the Kurds also are not in a hurry on the issue . . . the time of threats has passed, and we will not accept the language of threats from anyone at all. The will of the Kurdish people will not be held hostage to others . . . The Kurdish parliament decided to remain now inside the federal framework, but at any moment the Kurdish parliament and the Kurdish people perceive it in their interest to announce independence, we will announce it without fearing anyone. . . . If we want to separate, we will do it, without hesitation or fears. . . Those who condemn it are chauvinists, escaping from internal problems.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, defended on Monday the decree issued by Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani forbidding the flying of the Iraqi flag in Iraqi Kurdistan.

On Saturday, Sunni Arab lawmaker Saleh Al Mutlaq slammed Barzani's decision.

What will be taken by force today, will be returned by force another day.

We can defend our dignity, our people and our land ... and no one should be under the illusion that he could take a tiny bit of somebody else's land.

Tribal leaders Insist Saddam Be Released

A coalition of 300 Iraqi tribal leaders on Saturday demanded the release of Saddam Hussein so he could reclaim the presidency and also called for armed resistance against U.S.-led coalition forces.

The clan chieftains, who were mostly Sunni Arabs and included the head of the 1.5 million-member al-Obeidi tribe, said they planned to hold rallies in Sunni cities throughout the country to insist that Saddam be freed and that the charges against him and his co-defendants be dropped.

Sistani Bows Out

03-Sept-06
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks:

I no longer have power to save Iraq from civil war... I will not be a political leader any more. I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters.

Al-Sistani's aides say that he has chosen to stay silent rather than suffer the ignominy of being ignored. Moqtada Al Sadr's stock has risen. A spokesman, Sheik Hussein al-Aboudi, says,

He meets his representatives every week or every day. Sistani only meets his representatives every month.

Muqtada al-Sadr asks them what the situation is on the street, are there any fights against the Shia, he is asking all the time. So the people become close to al-Sadr because he is closer to them than Sistani. Sistani is the ayatollah, he is very expert in Islam, but not as a politician.

Sistani's departure from Iraq's political scene and his return to his religious role signals an end to the Maliki regime's attempt to consolidate power and sell his reconciliation plan to the myriad of warring factions who are engaged in armed and deadly struggles against his regime, and against each other as well. It was Sistani who brought the thousands of his followers to the polls, forcing Bush to make good on his promise of early elections.