Memex 1.1

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.”

George Tenet, former Director of the CIA, in his forthcoming memoirs, as described by the New York Times

From today’s New York Times

BAGHDAD, April 8 — Nearly two months into the new security push in Baghdad, there has been some success in reducing the number of death squad victims found crumpled in the streets each day.

And while the overall death rates for all of Iraq have not dropped significantly, largely because of devastating suicide bombings, a few parts of the capital have become calmer as some death squads have decided to lie low.

But there is little sign that the Baghdad push is accomplishing its main purpose: to create an island of stability in which Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds can try to figure out how to run the country together. There has been no visible move toward compromise on the main dividing issues, like regional autonomy and more power sharing between Shiites and Sunnis.

For American troops, Baghdad has become a deadlier battleground as they have poured into the capital to confront Sunni and Shiite militias on their home streets. The rate of American deaths in the city over the first seven weeks of the security plan has nearly doubled from the previous period, though it has stayed roughly the same over all, decreasing in other parts of the country as troops have focused on the capital.

American commanders say it will be months before they can draw conclusions about the campaign to secure Baghdad, and just more than half of the so-called surge of nearly 30,000 additional troops into the country have arrived. But at the same time, political pressure in the United States for quick results and a firm troop pullout date has become more intense than ever.

No comment needed.

Image from the Huffington Post.

The headline says it all, really. Full story reads, in part:

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the “new way forward” strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial “surge” of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.

But the team, known as the “Baghdad brains trust” and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations.

“They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about ‘Plan B’ by the autumn - meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it’s getting harder every day,” he said.

From today’s Times Online…

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them…

At least one US reporter (CNN’s Ed Henry) is behaving like a real journalist — by nagging away at the Bush Administration’s claim that the government of Iran is explicitly involved in supplying arms to insurgents in Iraq. Pity the US media didn’t do the same over the assertions that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks…

Lovely observant note by Dave Winer…

I watched yesterday’s Bush press conference. There’s absolutely no doubt that he’s selling war with Iran. And this morning, I saw CNN help him with the pitch.

According to CNN, our sometime enemy in Iraq, radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, may now be in Iran. He may not be there, but it’s possible that he’s there. Right now. That was the news, it was a headline, scoop-level story. We’re not sure he’s there, but he could be. That’s news? Eh.

They also said, but didn’t emphasize, that if he were in Iran this wouldn’t be anything new, he’s often in Iran.

He’s also part of the coalition that forms the government of Iraq, the one that we’re supporting, the one that we’re funding, and arming. But this time, today, they didn’t mention that he’s our friend in Iraq, because today he’s being portrayed as our enemy in Iraq. But given that he’s part of the government of Iraq, him being in Iran is like Ted Kennedy being in Mexico. It’s conceivable that al-Sadr has legitimate business in Iran. But it’s hard for us to conceive of that, supposedly, because the picture that’s being painted is that Iran is the country that’s killing our soldiers. And we’re supposed to conclude, of course, that al-Sadr, being in Iran (if he actually is) is more evidence of that. They don’t say it, but we’re left wondering why this is news. If he isn’t there plotting the deaths of more Americans, exactly why is he in Iran? (Assuming he is.) Clearly he’s up to no good.

In other words, they’re just moving around words to make it sound like something new and dangerous is happening, when in fact nothing new is happening, and if it is dangerous, it is something that in the past, the same people have asked us to overlook the danger in.

One more thing — in the Bush press conference, not only haven’t the reporters asked Bush to explain who the enemy is, they also talk about the enemy themselves, although if pressed, I doubt if any of them could explain exactly who the enemy is. Maybe they should do a Frontline special explaining the complicity of the professional journalists in U.S. propoganda.

Summary: One day al-Sadr is the enemy and another day he is our ally.

What could “winning” in Iraq possibly mean?

Problem: We have no clue who we’re fighting.

This is a PowerPoint slide from a White House briefing by General Tommy Hanks in August 2002 explaining how post-Saddam Iraq would be managed in a series of orderly stages (’Stabilization’, ‘Recovery’, ‘Transition’) which would require only 5,000 US troops in country by 2006. The presentation was obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act. It makes one wonder what these guys were smoking.

The NYT comments:

August 2002 was an important time for developing the strategy. President Bush had yet to go to the United Nations to declare Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons programs a menace to international security, but the war planning was well under way. The tumultuous upheaval that would follow the toppling of the Hussein government was known antiseptically in planning sessions as “Phase IV.” As is clear from the slides, it was the least defined part of the strategy.

General Franks had told his officers that it was his supposition that the State Department would have the primary responsibility for rebuilding Iraq’s political institutions.

“D.O.S. will promote creation of a broad-based, credible provisional government — prior to D-Day,” noted a slide on “key planning assumptions.” That was military jargon for the notion that the Department of State would assemble a viable Iraqi governing coalition before the invasion even began.

Is the Bush regime getting ready to attack Iran? Paul Rogers thinks it might be. In April.

Timothy Garton-Ash has also been brooding on this.

f we don’t bomb Iran, Iran is quite likely to get the bomb. If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others in the Middle East will be tempted to follow. The last barriers to nuclear proliferation, already breached by North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel, could rapidly break - in the most volatile region in the world. The risk of nuclear war will then be greater than it was in the 1980s, when CND, END and other west European peace movements marched against new US and Soviet missile deployments. The likely scale of the nuclear conflict is much smaller than a superpower nuclear apocalypse, but that in itself makes it more not less probable that an unhinged leader would take the risk.

On the available evidence, the Islamic Republic of Iran is trying to edge towards a technological position from which it could, should it choose, rapidly move towards 90% uranium enrichment and the production of nuclear weapons. The best analysis we have suggests that Ayatollah Khameini, the supreme leader of the revolutionary regime, has not made a decision to go for nuclear weapons, and it would take a number of years to get there even if he had. But Iran has been doing a number of things that are not explicable simply by a desire to have the civilian nuclear energy to which it is entitled under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The real question is therefore how, without the use of force, you can stop Iran going down this path…

An open letter from Michael Moore…

Dear Mr. President,

Thanks for your address to the nation. It’s good to know you still want to talk to us after how we behaved in November.

Listen, can I be frank? Sending in 20,000 more troops just ain’t gonna do the job. That will only bring the troop level back up to what it was last year. And we were losing the war last year! We’ve already had over a million troops serve some time in Iraq since 2003. Another few thousand is simply not enough to find those weapons of mass destruction! Er, I mean… bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice! Um, scratch that. Try this — BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST! YES!!!

You’ve got to show some courage, dude! You’ve got to win this one! C’mon, you got Saddam! You hung ‘im high! I loved watching the video of that — just like the old wild west! The bad guy wore black! The hangmen were as crazy as the hangee! Lynch mobs rule!!!

Look, I have to admit I feel very sorry for the predicament you’re in. As Ricky Bobby said, “If you’re not first, you’re last.” And you being humiliated in front of the whole world does NONE of us Americans any good.

Sir, listen to me. You have to send in MILLIONS of troops to Iraq, not thousands! The only way to lick this thing now is to flood Iraq with millions of us! I know that you’re out of combat-ready soldiers — so you have to look elsewhere! The only way you are going to beat a nation of 27 million — Iraq — is to send in at least 28 million! Here’s how it would work:

The first 27 million Americans go in and kill one Iraqi each. That will quickly take care of any insurgency. The other one million of us will stay and rebuild the country. Simple.

Now, I know you’re saying, where will I find 28 million Americans to go to Iraq? Here are some suggestions:

1. More than 62,000,000 Americans voted for you in the last election (the one that took place a year and half into a war we already knew we were losing). I am confident that at least a third of them would want to put their body where their vote was and sign up to volunteer. I know many of these people and, while we may disagree politically, I know that they don’t believe someone else should have to go and fight their fight for them — while they hide here in America.

2. Start a “Kill an Iraqi” Meet-Up group in cities across the country. I know this idea is so early-21st century, but I once went to a Lou Dobbs Meet-Up and, I swear, some of the best ideas happen after the third mojito. I’m sure you’ll get another five million or so enlistees from this effort.

3. Send over all members of the mainstream media. After all, they were your collaborators in bringing us this war — and many of them are already trained from having been “embedded!” If that doesn’t bring the total to 28 million, then draft all viewers of the FOX News channel…