how is it going (really)?

• the ideal: Work is nearing completion on a project that will allow Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) to achieve 100 percent electrical self-sufficiency. ("Iraqi Infrastructure: Baghdad International Airport to achieve 100 percent electrical self-sufficiency," portaliraq, July 1st 2005)
• the reality: At the airport, crucially important for the functioning of the country, inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning. ("Rebuilt Iraq Projects Found Crumbling," By JAMES GLANZ, New York Times, April 29, 2007)
• the ideal: Iraqi sub-contractors finish plastering the ceiling in a barracks room of the Iraqi Special Forces barracks compound outside of Baghdad, Iraq, on July 12, 2005. Each barracks will house approximately 120 men. (Photo, Jim Gordon, from '"Talking Proud," Service & Sacrifice,' by Ed Marek)
• the reality: A case in point was the $5.2 million project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build the special forces barracks in Baghdad. The project was completed in September 2005, but by the time inspectors visited last month, there were numerous problems caused by faulty plumbing throughout the buildings, and four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer operating. ("Rebuilt Iraq Projects Found Crumbling," By JAMES GLANZ, New York Times, April 29, 2007)

overall?:

• In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle. ("Rebuilt Iraq Projects Found Crumbling," By JAMES GLANZ, New York Times, April 29, 2007)

no surrender date...

...we tend to think of it as a very long engagement.

• The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials. ("The White House Scales Back Talk of Iraq Progress," By DAVID E. SANGER, April 28, 2007, Washington Post)

in other words, don't be looking for victory claims by the u.s. government; but they still claim anyone that doesn't follow them down the rabbit hole is holding up a white flag. the answer continues to be political and diplomatic talks that the eschew. the time for war is quickly drawing to a close. ask the army:

• After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." The ISG noted that "on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals." Population security is the most important measure of effectiveness in counterinsurgency. For more than three years, America's generals continued to insist that the U.S. was making progress in Iraq. However, for Iraqi civilians, each year from 2003 onward was more deadly than the one preceding it. For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq. Moreover, America's generals have not explained clearly the larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the nation's deployable land power to a single theater of operations. ("A failure in generalship,"
  By Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, Armed Forces Journal, May 2007)

first the ISG and now the officers. if the u.s. does not start planning the endgame now, this will be even more a disaster for the iraqi people than it now is (picture, car bomb, karbala, 28 april 2007, AP Photo/Ghassan al-Yasiri).

what if they gave a war on terror and no one came?

british have rejected the terminology of a "war on terror." and, in iraq, where there is definitely a war of some kind, it is becoming increasingly clear that no one wants to be left holding the bag.

• Three retired generals approached about a proposed high-profile post overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned it down, leaving the White House struggling to find anyone of stature willing to take it on.
• One of the four-star generals said he declined because of the chaotic way the Iraq war was being run and because Dick Cheney, the vice-president and leading hawk in the Bush administration, retained more influence than pragmatists looking for a way out.
• The deputy White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, confirmed that George Bush was considering restructuring the administration to create the post, dubbed the war tsar by US media. It would involve co-ordinating the work of the defence, state and other departments and reporting directly to the president at what Ms Perino described as a critical stage in the wars. One retired officer who was approached, Marine General John Sheehan, told the Washington Post: "The very fundamental issue is they don't know where the hell they're going."
• The unwillingness of the generals to take the job undermines attempts by the administration to put a positive spin on the war. Mr Bush says there are signs that his strategy of pouring extra troops into Baghdad and neighbouring Anbar province is working. ("Top US generals reject war tsar role," by Ewen MacAskill in Washington, Guardian Weekly, 22 April 2007)

small bit of good news?

well at least a hopeful suggestion for the future. small ax fave, juan cole (see informed comment) has a piece in the nation, April 9, 2007, April 23, 2007 issue, "How to Get Out of Iraq," by Juan Cole. recommended.

profiteering on this war..., and the next

i suppose to empasize that dick cheney was ceo 1995-2000 of these guns for hire and has defended them doing business in iran is somehow to make unfair aspersions.

• Halliburton is moving to UAE at a time when it is being investigated in the U.S. for bribery, bid rigging, defrauding the military and illegally profiting in Iran. It is currently in the process of divesting all of its ownership interest in the scandal-plagued KBR subsidiary, notorious for overcharging the military and serving contaminated food and water to the troops in Iraq.
• Although Halliburton will still be incorporated inside the United States, moving its corporate headquarters to UAE will make it easier to avoid accountability from federal investigators....
• Halliburton has also used its operational structure for contracts in Iraq and post-Katrina -- especially multiple layers of subcontractors -- to elude oversight and accountability to taxpayers....
• The United States has no extradition treaty with the UAE....
• Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies notes that most Fortune 500 companies have global operations, so that moving an entire headquarters to another country is not necessary. "With today's technologies, there's no real reason to have to physically relocate," she said....
• Martin Sullivan, contributing editor at the nonpartisan Tax Notes magazine, said relocating to the no-tax jurisdiction of Dubai would change Halliburton's tax situation "significantly" even though the company would still be registered in the US. By re-locating its CEO and other top executives to Dubai, Halliburton can argue that a portion of its profits should be attributed to the no-tax jurisdiction, he said.
• Halliburton earned a record $2.3 billion in profit last year. That's almost equal to the $2.7 billion the Pentagon found in the company's overcharges in Iraq. ("Halliburton bails out of Iraq, KBR and now America," 12 March 2007, Halliburton Watch)

just a reminder that we never got to the bottom of hookergate

• President Bush's special guest at Fort Irwin was California congressman Jerry Lewis. While not a veteran himself, Lewis is the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. And, more poignantly, he's the man federal prosecutor Carol Lam announced she wanted a search warrant for, the day before she was fired....
• Lam had already convicted Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Her new investigation might have tied Lewis to the lobbying firms and contributors he and Cunningham shared, and three decades of pork and kickbacks from defense contractors, including one case that may or may not have involved a software contract for a Lewis crony to digitize the original plans of the Panama Canal. And, you know, the rent-free yacht and the Rolls and the prostitutes and all that. (Chris Kelly, 04.06.2007, "George Bush and Jerry Lewis in 'At War with the Army,'" Huffington Post

lewis, for those keeping score at home, has recently been the subject of an investigation stemming from indictments of cunningham and brent wilkes:

• A separate federal criminal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who until January 2006 was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is continuing in Los Angeles. Prosecutors in that case are looking at Mr. Lewis's relationship with Mr. Wilkes, which included campaign contributions from Mr. Wilkes and associates and the hiring by Mr. Wilkes of a lobbying firm founded by one of Mr. Lewis's closest friends, former Rep. Bill Lowery. ("WSJ: GOP Rep Should Be Sweatin' Indictments," By Paul Kiel, February 14, 2007, 11:26 AM, TPMuckraker, quoting The Wall Street Journal)
  

uk-iran-usa-iran-turkey-iran...

all eyes on iran's seizure of uk sailors. is there any link to the following two stories?

• An Iranian general who went missing on a visit to Turkey last month appears to have defected to America, taking with him a treasure trove of his country’s most closely guarded secrets.
• Ali Resa Asgari, 63, a general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and former Deputy Defence Minister, vanished on February 7 after arriving in Istanbul on a flight from Syria. He had reservations at the Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel but never checked in.
• Iran has notified Interpol and raised fears that General Asgari might have been kidnapped. Yesterday, however, several sources confirmed reports in America that General Asgari had fled to the West, becoming the first senior Iran official to defect since the revolution 27 years ago. (The Times, March 9, 2007, "Elite Iranian general defects with Hezbollah’s arms secrets," Richard Beeston and Michael Theodoulou)

and this one (well, it obviously has connection with the following, but i wonder about the february story):

• A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.
• Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
• In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
• Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials. ("The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis," By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, 03 April 20, iran07)