success at the local level means more troops and oversight from washington at the national level??

president bush touts "successes" at the local level in iraq. trouble is, they are not successes due to u.s.a. planning

• "When things work — and they often do at the local or project level — they work in spite of a lack of any meaningful planning and management in Washington, or as yet in Iraq," said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, who recently returned from a trip to the country.
• "All have major problems in getting any action out of the central government and face a morass of local, provincial and tribal politics. The good news is that they are now being integrated with the military and are getting military support and protection, but it again is too early to judge what is really happening," Cordesman said. ("Bush stresses local successes in Iraq," By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer, 18 Aug. 2007)

(note Cordesman's full report "The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq: A Trip Report")
and, in any case, i don't understand the successes given the lack of infrastructure:

• In his report to Congress earlier this month, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction said rebuilding is being crippled by power plant problems, mismanagement, corruption and weak spending on capital projects by Iraq's central government ministries and its provinces.
• And in an audit released in July, the inspector general, Stuart Bowen Jr., found the Iraqi government has refused to take control of more than 2,000 U.S.-funded reconstruction projects since June 2006. That left U.S. officials to turn over the projects to local officials or to commit more money to keep them running. ("Bush stresses local successes in Iraq," By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer, 18 Aug. 2007)

infrastructure problems?

• Iraq's power grid is on the brink of collapse because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provinces that are unplugging local power stations from the national grid, officials said Saturday.
• Electricity Ministry spokesman Aziz al-Shimari said power generation nationally is only meeting half the demand, and there had been four nationwide blackouts over the past two days. The shortages across the country are the worst since the summer of 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, he said.
• Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day, if that. The water supply in the capital has also been severely curtailed by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations.
• Karbala province south of Baghdad has been without power for three days, causing water mains to go dry in the provincial capital, the Shiite holy city of Karbala ("Iraqi power grid nearing collapse," By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 4, 6:32 PM ET).
  

national problems; local problems. indeed, local successes are because localities are no longer playing with the national government. clear sailing ahead.

cheney and the logical quagmire of iraq (1994)

moveOn provided footage of dick cheney on iraq (1994). [thanks and a tip of the hat to roger.]

"Who cares how many neighborhoods of Baghdad are secured?" the official said. "Let's talk about the rest of the country: How come they have electricity twice a day, how come there is no running water?"

i haven't posted for a month; is everything looking better on the ground in iraq? are the billions we are giving to private contractor firms helping us rebuild the infrastructure there? no?

(Quote is from "Top general may propose pullbacks: Petraeus is expected to tell Congress that Iraqis can assume duties in some areas, freeing U.S. troops for other uses," by Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers, August 15, 2007)

perhaps if we spent $24 billion?; or, 0 out of 10 is, what, a B-?

• A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reforms....
• The "pivot point" for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush's so-called "surge" plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released....

meanwhile, of course, the white house thought complete lack of progress on any of the targets was just peachy:

• White House Press Secretary Tony Snow on Monday tried to lower expectations on the report....
• "You are not going to expect all the benchmarks to be met at the beginning of something," Snow said. "I'm not sure everyone's going to get an `A' on the first report."

and the cost of all this non-achievement?:

• The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, with the overall tally for Iraq alone nearing a half-trillion dollars, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.
• The figures call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost $5.6 billion through the end of September. ("Official: Iraq Gov't Missed All Targets," by ANNE FLAHERTY and ANNE GEARAN | July 9, 2007 11:34 PM EST | AP)

who's sorry now? (more blackwater blackguards)

remember this?:

• "I need Comms (communications equipment). ... I need ammo. ... I need Glocks and M4s. ... Guys are in the field with borrowed stuff and in harm's way," said the e-mail, released at a House hearing Wednesday.
• Blackwater employee Tom Powell wrote the memo to other company officials on March 30, 2004.
• The next day, a mob in Fallujah ambushed a supply convoy guarded by Blackwater, killing the four employees who all were former members of the military. ("Slain Iraq contractors short on armor, families say," By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press, 8 Feb. 2007)

posted that back in 24 feb. 2007. well, now tom powell looks less like the whistleblower and more the man ordering undermanned groups into harms way:

• When four Blackwater USA security guards were ambushed and massacred in Fallujah in 2004, graphic images showed the world exactly what happened....
• Since then, Congress and the families of the murdered private security contractors have been demanding answers....
• Some answers can be found in memos from a second team for Blackwater operating around Fallujah on March 31, 2004.
• Blackwater, based in North Carolina, sent two squads through Fallujah without maps, according to memos obtained by The News & Observer. Both of the six-man teams, named Bravo 2 and November 1, were sent out two men short, leaving them more vulnerable to ambush.
• The Bravo 2 team members had protested that they were not ready for the mission and had not had time to prepare their weapons, but they were commanded to go, according to memos written by team members.
• The November 1 team went into Fallujah and was massacred.
• The Bravo 2 team memos, in emotional, coarse and damning language, placed the blame squarely on Blackwater's Baghdad site manager, Tom Powell.
• "Why did we all want to kill him?" team member Daniel Browne wrote the following day. "He had sent us on this [expletive] mission and over our protest. We weren't sighted in, we had no maps, we had not enough sleep, he was taking 2 of our guys cutting off [our] field of fire. As we went over these things we new the other team had the same complaints. They too had their people cut." ("Blackwater manager blamed for 2004 massacre in Fallujah: Military contractors write that a site manager sent four Americans on an ill-advised, fatal mission," by Joseph Neff, Staff Writer, The News & Observer, Jul 08, 2007 12:30 AM)

both can be correct, of course. mr. powell knew of the shortcomings and complained of them to his superiors. but he also knew his operations were being judged by their profit/cost ratio and 4 heads per unit cost less than 6. now WHY all this was being done, given that blackwater was hired by Regency Hotel and Hospital Company is another question.

well it has been over a month; how do things look?

greetings. i was unable to post to this blog for a month or so. the usa government has committed additional troops to secure baghdad and iraq. cause for celebration?

well, the overall picture is not rosy:

• The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. ("Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq Gains: Goals Unmet; Smaller Strides to Be Promoted," By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writers, Sunday, July 8, 2007; Page A01)

the alternative "strides" have to do with deaths down in june, but have little to do with any political advances that were supposed to take place with the breathing room provided by the "surge."

but i don't understand how they can take any comfort with the numbers of dead iraqis:

• Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41 percent higher in June than in January, according to unofficial Health Ministry statistics. ("Body Count In Baghdad Up in June," By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post Foreign Service, Thursday, July 5, 2007; Page A01,)
  

one small piece of good news: the insurgents attack away from the center of the surge, away from the show of force by the usa. but the proof of such a response to american strength is hardly cause for rejoicing:

• A suicide truck bomber blasted a Shiite town north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing more than 100 people, police said, in a sign Sunni insurgents are pulling away from a U.S. offensive around the capital to attack where security is thinner.
• The marketplace devastation underlined a hard reality in Iraq: There are not enough forces to protect everywhere. U.S. troops, already increased by 28,000 this year, are focused on bringing calm to Baghdad, while the Iraqi military and police remain overstretched and undertrained.
• The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told The Associated Press he expected Sunni extremists to try to "pull off a variety of sensational attacks and grab the headlines to create a `mini-Tet.'" ("Suicide Bomb Kills Over 100 in Iraq," by YAHYA BARZANJI, July 7, 2007, AP, from TUZ KHORMATO, Iraq)

note, too, that for some reason the usa military is allowed to make all sorts of unlikely comparisons to vietnam (a "mini-Tet'!?), but any obvious reference to quagmire, no light at the end of the tunnel, etc., is met by stay-the-course politicians.

in one sense, this war is unlike earlier wars, including vietnam: the vast number of mercenaries, contractors fighting the war by proxy:

• The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort....
• More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
  
• Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.
• The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq. ("Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq: New U.S. data show how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of the war-torn nation," By T. Christian Miller, LA Times Staff Writer, July 4, 2007)

so the number of troops is never going to settle the peace. indeed, the iraq situation will never be solved by surges of any sort. it will be solved by political and economic will (more theirs ; than ours). that is not defeatism; that is the logic of all civil wars.

so, the facts, as mr. gradgrind would note, all militate against any positive result from furthering a build up of military force in iraq. thus, it is not surprising (except that it took them this long to do it, that the new york times, has come out today for a usa military withdrawal:

• It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
• Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.
• At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq....
• But...milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost. ("Editorial: The Road Home," New York Times, July 8, 2007)

time for the freda payne option: bring the boys home.

perhaps the extra troops can use the rooms at the new embassy?

the only difference is that the surge in iraq is more precipitous.

dublin castle part deux

as the green zone becomes dangerous, the government knows less and less of what is going on in the country:

• A second problem is that by necessity Iraqi government officials are surrounded by thicker and thicker blankets of security where they operate, within the strange menagerie of the Green Zone. That prevents them from making their own observations of life in the rest of Baghdad, said Laith Kubba, who was the spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari until Mr. Jaafari left office in early 2006.
• “The gap has gone too wide,” Mr. Kubba said. “Many of those people have insulated themselves from what’s out on the streets.” ("In the Heat of Battle and Politics, the Hard Facts Melt," By JAMES GLANZ, May 20, 2007, New York Times)

perhaps the saigon embassy (above
, 1970) is the operative comparison (baghdad embassy in construction above)?

baghdad embassy or dublin castle?

the usa is building the biggest embassy in the world in baghdad. it is increasingly unclear what diplomatic or ambassardorial functions will take place in a country which this week saw (1) signs that the iraqi parliament was becoming irrelevant to any day-to-day activities on the ground; (2) a new high in civilian contractor/mercenary deaths; (3) steady numbers of journalists killed or abducted in iraq; and (4) grim assessments from the us military.

• The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will be the world's largest and most expensive foreign mission, though it may not be large enough or secure enough to cope with the chaos in Iraq....
• The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls. The compound is a symbol both of how much the United States has invested in Iraq and how the circumstances of its involvement are changing....
• The 21-building complex on the Tigris River was envisioned three years ago partly as a headquarters for the democratic expansion in the Middle East that President Bush identified as the organizing principle for foreign policy in his second term.
• The complex quickly could become a white elephant if the U.S. scales back its presence and ambitions in Iraq. Although the U.S. probably will have forces in Iraq for years to come, it is not clear how much of the traditional work of diplomacy can proceed amid the violence and what the future holds for Iraq's government.
• "What you have is a situation in which they are building an embassy without really thinking about what its functions are," said Edward Peck, a former top U.S. diplomat in Iraq.
• "What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it's blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?" ("U.S. Embassy in Iraq to Be Biggest Ever", by ANNE GEARAN | AP | May 19, 2007)

i note in passing that the large, fortified complex that dominated 20th-century dublin was dublin castle, the site of british rule in ireland and the headquarters of the lord lieutenant. a quick view of the movie Michael Collins will show you that all the activity in dublin castle was useless without links to the populace (intelligence, rumors, etc.) which Mr. Collins and the I.R.A. quietly and ruthlessly severed. i am sure that the situation behind the blast-proof walls in baghdad is much different, however, because the policy makers study history. or not?

enemy of victory in iraq?: the U.S. Government

the state department has begun attacking the defense dept. (specifically Paul Brinkley) for opening state businesses and giving jobs to unemployed Iraqis under the all-to-likely assumption that more jobs = less insurgency.

• Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense..., has reopen[ed] dozens of government-owned factories in Iraq....
• Brinkley and his colleagues at the Pentagon believe that rehabilitating shuttered, state-run enterprises could reduce violence by employing tens of thousands of Iraqis. Officials at State counter that the initiative is antithetical to free-market reforms the United States should promote in Iraq.
• The bureaucratic knife fight over the best way to revive Iraq's moribund economy illustrates how the two principal players in the reconstruction of Iraq -- the departments of Defense and State -- remain at odds over basic economic and political measures. The bickering has hamstrung initiatives to promote stability four years after Saddam Hussein's fall....
• The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that nearly half of Iraqis are unemployed or work fewer than 15 hours a week, but those figures do not include hundreds of thousands who once worked for state-owned enterprises and continue to collect about 40 percent of their original salaries. If they are counted, Brinkley believes, the true figure for unemployed and underemployed Iraqis may approach 70 percent. ("Defense Skirts State in Reviving Iraqi Industry," By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, May 14, 2007; Page A01)

a quick check of the blogs finds this idea attacked from the left and the right. bottom line: great idea, but a little late as now it will just be one more target for the insurgents.

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)
  

walk in the park..., uhh, whistling in the dark

• IRAQI insurgents are increasingly hitting Baghdad's fortress-like Green Zone with rockets and mortar shells.
• Insurgents have struck inside the Green Zone, which includes the US embassy, on six of the past seven days, once with deadly consequences.
• A US soldier and a US Government contractor were killed on Tuesday night by a rocket attack that also seriously wounded a civilian, military and embassy officials said....
• "It's clear that there have been increasing targeting attacks against the international zone," Rear Admiral Mark Fox, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said at a news conference....
• The threat to Americans contrasts with an assessment by Republican senator John McCain, a supporter of President Bush's Iraq strategy, who said this week that "there are neighbourhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through". ("Baghdad Green Zone goes red," Karin Brulliard, Baghdad, March 30, 2007, The Age, Australia)

shway-shway

does it mean "softly, softly," "easy," or "so-so"? and do any of these reflect usa policy in iraq?

not hessians exactly

they are paid well, but do they have the armor and tools for the job? contractors' relatives don't think so:

• A day before four of the company's security guards died in Iraq, a Blackwater USA employee wrote company officials that it was time to stop the "smoke and mirror show" and provide crucial equipment for the private army in the field.
• "I need Comms (communications equipment). ... I need ammo. ... I need Glocks and M4s. ... Guys are in the field with borrowed stuff and in harm's way," said the e-mail, released at a House hearing Wednesday.
• Blackwater employee Tom Powell wrote the memo to other company officials on March 30, 2004.
• The next day, a mob in Fallujah ambushed a supply convoy guarded by Blackwater, killing the four employees who all were former members of the military. ("Slain Iraq contractors short on armor, families say," By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press, 8 Feb. 2007

certainly the iraqi army and police don't have the armor and military equipment needed (see comments of their own generals, or picture, BBC, 14 May 2006). do contractors? the real problem continues to be the lack of oversight on contractors' activities, and the massive profits of the owners of contractors far away from the war itself.

• Employees of defense contractors such as Halliburton, Blackwater and Wackenhut cook meals, do laundry, repair infrastructure, translate documents, analyze intelligence, guard prisoners, protect military convoys, deliver water in the heavily fortified Green Zone and stand sentry at buildings--often highly dangerous duties almost identical to those performed by many U.S. troops....
• By the end of 2006, the Labor Department had quietly recorded 769 deaths and 3,367 injuries serious enough to require four or more days off the job. (“Iraq War Exacts Toll on Contractors,” by Michelle Roberts , AP, February 23, 2007 10:42 PM EST)

who you gonna call?

• Paul Bremer told members of Congress today that he was aware that nonexistent "ghost employees" were on America's payroll when he was administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.
• But because the real employees - who provided security for Iraqi ministries - were "74,000 armed men, it seemed a lesser risk to continue paying" everyone while trying to figure out who was actually showing up for work. (“Bremer Paid ‘Ghost Employees’ To Avoid ‘Real Trouble,’” by Melinda Henneberger, The Huffington Post, February 6, 2007)

so the us government pays iraq for private security, some of which is by us semi-private contractors (mercenaries) and some is by semi-private iraqis. and since some of it clearly didn't actually pay for security, that free-floating profit was, presumably, also paying for arms used against the us military.

update: at least someone on the hill sees how odd u.s. behavior was/is:

• "Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?"

  Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, decrying the $4 billion the United States sent to Iraq to pay for goods after the invasion (US News & World Report, Washington Whispers)
  

supporting our troops?; or, supporting semi-private fiefdoms?

• One of the reports released on Wednesday found that an American company, DynCorp, appeared to act almost independently of its contracting officers at the Department of State at times, billing the United States for millions of dollars of work that was never authorized and starting other jobs before they were requested.
• The findings of misconduct against the company, on a $188 million job order to build living quarters and purchase weapons and equipment for the Iraqi police as part of a training program, were serious enough that the inspector general’s office began a fraud inquiry....
• Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who is in charge of the office...declined to give further details but said that he was also initiating a countrywide review of DynCorp’s work in Iraq. The company has also received major contracts to train police in Afghanistan.
• Gregory Lagana, a DynCorp spokesman, said the company would investigate the report’s findings. “We are looking into the issues raised by the inspector general with the goal of providing as full an accounting as possible,” Mr. Lagana said. “We believe we acted responsibly and with all due concern for the expenditure of public funds.” (”U.S. Agency Finds New Waste and Fraud in Iraqi Rebuilding Projects,” By James Glanz, New York Times, February 1, 2007)

of course the same contracting out is happening at home:

• Under the guise of promoting a conservative agenda, the Bush administration has created a supersized version of the 19th-century spoils system. ("The Green-Zoning of America,"
  By Paul Krugman, New York Times, February 5, 2007)

as a contractor stated on the front page article in the sunday nyt, " "To us contractors..., money is always a good thing." (NYT, Feb. 4, 2007, p. 24) of course, it helps that it is the taxpayers' money. that way, nobody gets hurt.

mercenaries make the man

• The Defense Department plans to continue hiring private contractors to provide security at reconstruction projects in Iraq and to train U.S. and Iraqi military officers in counterinsurgency, despite problems with past contracts for such jobs that traditionally have been done by military personnel.
• The contracting out of these wartime activities comes at a time when the United States is stretching its resources to provide the additional 21,500 troops in Iraq that are needed under President Bush's new strategy, which involves stepped-up counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad and the expansion of economic reconstruction activities.
• During an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new top commander in Iraq, said he counts the "thousands of contract security forces" among the assets available to him to supplement the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi troops to be used for dealing with the insurgency.
• A former senior Defense Intelligence Agency expert on the Middle East, retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, said last week that contracting out intelligence collection and security for Army units and their contractors "results from actual military forces being too small." He added: "I can't remember a subordinate commander considering mercenaries as part of his forces." (“Security Contracts to Continue in Iraq: New Top Commander Counts Hired Guards Among His Assets,” By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Sunday, February 4, 2007; Page A19)

and it is not like we are actually getting good value for money spent on these blackwater types. it is just that they stay off the books, so to speak, and, thus, politically, or more expendable.

blackwater's back

apologies for the longish excerpt:

• Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company's helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad's most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater's $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company's initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq....
• Bush..., during his State of the Union speech, did address the very issue that has made the war's privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy — the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of...active-duty troops.... He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.
• "Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush declared. This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory....
• Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest "force" in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What's more...contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.
• The president's proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces. In early 2005, Prince — a major bankroller of the president and his allies — pitched the idea at a military conference of a "contractor brigade" to supplement the official military. "There's consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army," Prince declared. Officials "want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier." He added: "We could do it certainly cheaper." (“Our mercenaries in Iraq,” By Jeremy Scahill, January 25, 2007, Los Angeles Times)
  

a reminder: the film Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers "tells the story of Erik Prince and Blackwater, and their consistent profiting from the war." (Robert Greenwald, 9, 25, 2006). The story of blackwater became big news in 2005 when the crisis in fallujah began a series of missteps by the u.s. army, in part to clean up the mess of prince and his semi-private business funded by your tax dollars (see “The Bridge, Chapter 4: A business gets a start,” by Joseph Neff and Jay Price, Staff Writers, Nov 28, 2005, News & Observer). if the new congress is going to have hearings on this war, perhaps they can start by supeonaing prince?

a timely reminder about surges

• What is striking about the current debate in Washington - whether to "surge" troops to Iraq and increase the size of the U.S. Army - is that roughly 100,000 bodies are missing from the equation: The number of American forces in Iraq is not 140,000, but more like 240,000.
• What makes up the difference is the huge army of mercenaries - known these days as "private contractors." After the U.S. Army itself, they are easily the second-largest military force in the country. Yet no one seems sure of how many there are since they answer to no single authority. Indeed, the U.S. Central Command has only recently started taking a census of these battlefield civilians in an attempt to get a handle on the issue... (Barry Lando, Alternet - January 9, 2007)
  

cost of doing business in iraq; or, coals to newcastle

lots of intriguing information regarding KBR fuel convoys:

• A Halliburton subsidiary charged the Iraqi government as much as $25,000 per month for each of as many as 1,800 fuel trucks that were to deliver gasoline to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, but the trucks often spent days or weeks sitting idle on the border, says a report released yesterday by an auditing agency sponsored by the United Nations. (Cost of Taking Fuel to Iraq Is Questioned in New Audit, by James Glanz, November 7, 2006)
• A federal judge in Texas yesterday threw out a lawsuit against Halliburton Co. that had been brought by survivors and the families of those killed when a fuel convoy was assaulted by insurgents outside Baghdad in April 2004. The suit had claimed Halliburton bore responsibility because the company knew the proposed route was the scene of a pitched battle but decided to send the drivers anyway. U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller ruled that the Army had played a key role in sending the convoy and that it was not his place to second-guess that decision. "The contracts show that the Army, not the defendants, was responsible for the security of the convoys," he wrote. (Judge Dismisses Halliburton Suit, by Griff Witte, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, September 23, 2006; Page D01)
  

what seems intriguing?: (1) we ship fuel from kuwait to iraq; (2) we pay kbr (nee Halliburton), which has a host of security contractors/mercenaries, and then they note that their security (read profit) is up to the us army, which, of course, has its own security concerns. good times, indeed.

and you might wonder what caci stands for...

California Analysis Center, Incorporated, actually [#921 in the 2006 Fortune 1000 list of the largest companies in America. CACI also ranked 8th among the top 10 information technology providers on the 2006 Fortune 500 list (from Wikipedia); its symbol: "Ever Vigilant"], although, to be near the trough, they are actually situated in arlington, va. you might remember them from the news a couple years back. well here they are again:

• The story they [caci] don't want told is of a federal contractor that, according to the Washington Post, gets 92 percent of its revenues in the "defense" sector. The Washington Business Journal reported that CACI's defense contracts almost doubled in the year after the occupation of Iraq began, and profits shot up 52 percent.

• Yet CACI insists it isn't a war profiteer (a subjective term anyway), but was just answering an urgent call in Iraq. In a letter to Greenwald, Koegel wrote: "the army needed ... civilian contractors to work as interrogators" because the military didn't have the personnel, and CACI responded to the "urgent war-time circumstances" and "has no apologies."

• But while the firm had experience in electronic surveillance and other intelligence functions, it, too, didn't have the interrogators. Barry Lando reported finding an ad on CACI's website for interrogators to send to Iraq, and noted that "experience in conducting tactical and strategic interrogations" was desired, but not necessary. According to a report by the Army inspector general, 11 of the 31 CACI interrogators in Iraq had no training in what most experts agree is one of the most sensitive areas of intelligence gathering. The 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which was in charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib when the abuses took place, didn't have a single trained interrogator.

• "It's insanity," former CIA agent Robert Baer told The Guardian. "These are rank amateurs, and there is no legally binding law on these guys as far as I could tell. Why did they let them in the prison?"("CACI: Torture in Iraq, Intimidation at Home," By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted November 21, 2006)

it should be noted that caci maintains a "truth will out" page noting that

• No CACI employee or former employee has ever been indicted for any misconduct in connection with CACI's work in Iraq. While three former employees have been cited in various reports in connection with disputed incidents in Iraq, no CACI employee took part or appears in any of the horrific photos released from Abu Ghraib.

indeed, in 2004, the caci's own legal team made the following points about the privatizing of military intelligence which has been the one-note samba of balkanization and this blog for some time:

• We believe the following information adds perspective to CACI's work in Iraq.
• The military did not have available interrogators needed to gather and analyze field source intelligence data and information in Iraq. CACI provides IT solutions and technology services to the U.S. Intelligence community. CACI interrogation services business is an extension of CACI's tactical intelligence and field services line of business for information collection, data analysis and decision support. CACI performs these contract services because of its commitment to its U.S. Army clients at war in the mid-East.
• These private sector positions exist because the military downsized as part of a cutback plan in the early 1990's aimed at reducing Pentagon personnel while expanding technology and weapons. ("CACI's Letter to The Signal," Letter to the Editor, Dated Friday, June 11, 2004, Jody Brown, Senior Vice President, Public Relations, CACI International Inc., Arlington, VA)

privatize interrgators, the argument appears to be, so that you can have them on the cheap, experience not necessary, and then, when the war is over (when will the war on "terror" ever be over?) you can downsize quickly. not only does that mean weaker intelligence gathered, the potential for abuse done in the name of the citizens of the usa, and little or no oversight, it clearly is saving the usa taxpayer no money as this group has not been downsized in the least (see caci profits above).

before we leave....

might we have a bit of oversight, a review, an inquiry even, into the role of private companies on the public spiggot?

• As Bechtel Corp. exits Iraq, we still know little about the quality of the company's work there.
  Government reports on Bechtel's Iraq projects often discuss ballooning costs and blown schedules, blaming the costs and delays on security problems. For the most part, you won't see how well the San Francisco engineering company repaired the power and sewage plants under its care or how wisely it spent the $2.3 billion in its contracts.

• The same holds true for many of the other engineering and construction companies that have spent the past three years rebuilding Iraq. Some, including Halliburton and Parsons Corp., have seen their projects scrutinized in depth. Others haven't. (Little scrutiny for firms in Iraq, S.F.'s Bechtel among most prominent ones, David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, Tuesday, November 14, 2006)

i guess one does not need to worry about the privatization of this war

the war is grim (and not a money-maker, unless the u.s. government agrees to keep funding these private security firms--hey, where are their security forces?; do they venture outside the green zone?):

• Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

and what all this carnage buys us is just a little, a very little, time:

• Despite the mounting cost in U.S. wounded and dead -- including 13 American soldiers killed in combat in Baghdad in three days last week -- Pentagon officials say aggressive military operations in the Iraqi capital are at best a short-term and partial solution, buying time for political compromise, which they call the only way to arrest Iraq's disintegration. ("U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply," By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page A01)
  

holding out for a hero

we'll save the middle east by saving iraq. we'll save iraq by saving baghdad. anyone for holding on to the green zone?

• General John Abizaid, the head of US Central Command, became the first top official to openly use the "CW" words last month when he told the Senate: "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."...
• The death toll makes it harder and harder for Bush to ask: do you really think Iraq would have been better off under Saddam Hussein? But as the body count climbs with every month, the question loses its power. If things really fall apart and the Baghdad government cannot hold, the only honest answer will be: yes, Iraqis would have been better off left alone. (Tiptoeing round Iraq's verbal minefield / Washington diary / Julian Borger, Guardian Weekly, 10 Sept. 2006)
  

pop quiz

the president of the u.s.a. recently made the following speech:

• "If America were to pull out before Iraq could defend itself, the consequences would be absolutely predictable, and absolutely disastrous. We would be handing Iraq over to our worst enemies -- Saddam's former henchmen, armed groups with ties to Iran, and al-Qaida terrorists from all over the world who would suddenly have a base of operations far more valuable than Afghanistan under the Taliban."

who are the allies of u.s.a. in iraq? is it: (a) Saddam's former henchmen, (b) armed groups with ties to Iran, or (c) al-Qaida terrorists from all over the world?

answer: (b) those are important to shore up support for prime minister mr. al-maliki, and a bit of (a). indeed, it is not a bad idea to have some connections with and even alliance with these two groups. they represent a good chunk of the iraqi people (not the kurds, of course, but then we have pretty much forgotten them). but here is the rub: if our government doesn't begin to separate out al-qaida leaders from al-qaida sympathizers (a sizable group), and al-qaida from home-grown leaders (try politicians not henchmen), we will never be any closer to "handing over" anything to anybody.

"If America were to pull out...the consequences would be...absolutely disastrous"

the header is from president george bush in an article that focuses on a series of bombings and other killings in baghdad (last gasp of terrorists of course) and the rest of iraq.

• The bloodshed was part of a violent week that has left hundreds of Iraqis dead. (Barrage of attacks kill 47 in Baghdad, by Elena Becatoros, Associated Press Writer, 31 Aug. 2006)
  

i suppose it is too small a point to point out that the consequences of staying in are absolutely disastrous now?

"prepare to take back"!?; "prepare to take"!?: who the hell writes this stuff?

i should be writing about custer battles and roy trumble, but it is too difficult to figure out who is sleasiest, so i will just attack our journalists instead.

• Bombings and shootings killed more than 70 people in Iraq on Tuesday in a surge of bloodshed as U.S. forces prepare to take back Baghdad's streets from gunmen. The dead included 20 Iraqi troops, a U.S. soldier and a British soldier. (Attacks across Iraq kill more than 70, By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer, 1 Aug. 2006, BAGHDAD, Iraq)

how long have usa troops been in iraq? they are just now preparing to take back baghdad's streets? give me a break. why not let rumsfeld just write the ap articles?

victory over drug lords still in distant future

• NATO will embark on the biggest mission in its history on Monday when it takes over security from the U.S.-led coalition in six southern provinces [of southern afghanistan], extending its authority to almost all of the country.
• British Lieutenant-General David Richards said he hoped to see improvements in the south within three to six months, which would allow the 26-nation alliance to proceed with the final phase of its deployment into the east by the end of the year.
• Afghanistan is going through the bloodiest phase of violence since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, with most attacks occurring in the south.
• Richards told a news conference in Kabul that the violence was inextricably linked to drugs.
• "Essentially for the last four years some very brutal people have been developing their little fiefdoms down there and exporting a lot of opium to the rest of the world," he said.
• "That very evil trade is being threatened by the NATO expansion in the south. This is a very noble cause we're engaged in and we have to liberate the people from that scourge of those warlords." (NATO sets sights on Afghan drug barons, By Jeremy Laurence, July 29, 2006, KABUL, Reuters)

good news, indeed, but has anyone doubted the link between taliban in southern afghanistan (or hezbollah and bakaa valley) and drug trafficking? is there any reason we are only now turning to this issue? or that it is not the usa, nor "coalition" troops, but nato that is taking on this issue? couldn't be that we wasted time, money, good will, and troop and civilian casualties in iraq could it? but smuggling, of any sort, works best when it works with the existing government (helps eliminate your competitors, and, without high duties or barriers to trade, the smuggler wouldn't have a profit motive). look to see this latest nato-led move corrupted in, well, 3-to-6 months. there is too much money to be made in an area with too little money.

never, ever again do i want to hear about the inefficiency of the united nations or public, government projects: private business can't get it up

• The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction giant, from a project to build a high-tech children’s hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150 percent.
• Called the Basra Children’s Hospital, the project has been consistently championed by the first lady, Laura Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and was designed to house sophisticated equipment for treating childhood cancer.
• Now it becomes the latest in a series of American taxpayer-financed health projects in Iraq to face overruns, delays and cancellations. Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers canceled more than $300 million in contracts held by Parsons, another American contractor, to build and refurbish hospitals and clinics across Iraq.
• American and Iraqi government officials described the move to drop Bechtel in interviews on Thursday, and Ammar al-Saffar, a deputy health minister in Baghdad, allowed a reporter to take notes on briefing papers on the subject he said he had recently been given by the State Department.
• The United States will “disengage Bechtel and transfer program and project management” to the Army Corps of Engineers, the papers say. Bechtel, the State Department agency in charge of the work and the Health Department in Basra all confirmed that the company would be leaving the project, but the reasons are a matter of deep disagreement.
• The Iraqis assert that management blunders by the company have caused the project to teeter on the verge of collapse; the American government says Bechtel did the best it could as it faced everything from worsening security to difficult soil conditions.
• A senior company official said Thursday that for its part Bechtel recommended that the work be mothballed and in essence volunteered to leave the project because the security problems had become intolerable. He also disputed the American government’s calculation of cost overruns, saying that accounting rules had recently been changed in a way that inflated the figures.
• The official, Cliff Mumm, who is president of the Bechtel infrastructure division, predicted that the project would fail if the government pressed ahead, as the briefing papers indicate that it would. Because of the rise of sectarian militias in southern Iraq, Mr. Mumm said, “it is not a good use of the government’s money” to try to finish the project.
• “And we do not think it can be finished,” he said. (Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model, By JAMES GLANZ, Published: July 28, 2006, BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 2)

i take that back: it was my tax dollars and yours that funded this disaster; i guess we cannot blame private corporations--they just took the profits and ran.

controlling iraq is the key to controlling the middle east; controlling baghdad is the key to controlling iraq; controlling the green zone is the key to controlling the red zone: is this the direction the neo-cons suggested we would be moving?

time for some optimism from operation iraqi freedom, the official website of multinational force--iraq:

• This is a decisive period in the country, Army Gen. John Abizaid told National Public Radio in a recent interview. "First and foremost we have to stabilize the situation in Baghdad before we need to get overly focused on leaving," Abizaid said. (Controlling security in Baghdad key to security throughout Iraq, Thursday, 27 July 2006)

whoo-hooh! woo-hah! how many more decisive periods can iraq take? how many more shifts in policy can we take? fallujah was to control sunni; baghdad is to control shi'ite; and kurds aren't really playing ball with either.

but never mind me; how do american troops feel about being part of a "decisive period" in this area of emergent business services?

• Army Staff Sgt. Jose Sixtos considered the simple question about morale for more than an hour....
• "Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120-degree heat," he said. "Then ask how morale is."
• Frustrated? "You have no idea," he said....
• "It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you," said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. "You lose a couple friends and it gets hard."
• "No one wants to be here, you know, no one is truly enthused about what we do," said Sgt. Christopher Dugger, the squad leader. ('Waiting to Get Blown Up', Some Troops in Baghdad Express Frustration With the War and Their Mission, By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, July 27, 2006)
  

but at least the folks that sent them over there, those that see the big picture, are still optimistic, yes?

• Faced with almost daily reports of sectarian carnage in Iraq, congressional Republicans are shifting their message on the war from speaking optimistically of progress to acknowledging the difficulty of the mission and pointing up mistakes in planning and execution.
• Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.) is using his House Government Reform subcommittee on national security to vent criticism of the White House's war strategy and new estimates of the monetary cost of the war. Rep. Gil Gutknecht (Minn.), once a strong supporter of the war, returned from Iraq this week declaring that conditions in Baghdad were far worse "than we'd been led to believe" and urging that troop withdrawals begin immediately. (GOP Lawmakers Edge Away From Optimism on Iraq By Jonathan Weisman and Anushka Asthana Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, July 20, 2006)

perhaps we ought to begin considering what iraqis think and think of some new options.

and the privatization answer to this balkanization in iraq is...?

i don't think we can do much more than note the reporting at this point.

• Iraqi leaders have all but given up on holding the country together and, just two months after forming a national unity government, talk in private of "black days" of civil war ahead.
• Signalling a dramatic abandonment of the U.S.-backed project for Iraq, there is even talk among them of pre-empting the worst bloodshed by agreeing to an east-west division of Baghdad into Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim zones, senior officials told Reuters.
• Tens of thousands have already fled homes on either side.
• "Iraq as a political project is finished," one senior government official said -- anonymously because the coalition under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains committed in public to the U.S.-sponsored constitution that preserves Iraq's unity....
• "The parties have moved to Plan B," the senior official said, saying Sunni, ethnic Kurdish and majority Shi'ite blocs were looking at ways to divide power and resources and to solve the conundrum of Baghdad's mixed population of seven million.
• "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into east and west," he said. "We are extremely worried."
• On the eve of the first meeting of a National Reconciliation Commission and before Maliki meets President George W. Bush in Washington next week, other senior politicians also said they were close to giving up on hopes of preserving the 80-year-old, multi-ethnic, religiously mixed state in its present form.
• "The situation is terrifying and black," said Rida Jawad al -Takki, a senior member of parliament from Maliki's dominant Shi'ite Alliance bloc, and one of the few officials from all the main factions willing to speak publicly on the issue.
• "We have received information of a plan to divide Baghdad. The government is incapable of solving the situation," he said. (By Mariam Karouny, BAGHDAD, July 21, Reuters)
  

pmcs will save the world (not)

i'd like to know more about which pmcs the general had in mind, but, folks, we have a problem here:

• The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan yesterday described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.
• The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people....
• He described "poorly regulated private security companies" as unethical and "all too ready to discharge firearms"....
• Afghanistan is now one of the poorest countries with an economy and infrastructure in ruins. (Richard Norton-Taylor, Saturday July 22, 2006, The Guardian)

of course, it has long been known that karzai holds sway over just a small area around kabul and the warlords and their armies hold the rest:

• In the absence of effective security forces of the central government, private armies and militias continue to hold sway over most of the countryside (Chairmen’s Report of an Independent Task Force Cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society, June 2003)

but the general's wording suggests that it is not warlord militias but private sector, western-style, pmcs that are proving to be a greater and greater impediment to peace and reconstruction. let's see: we didn't do afghanistan right so we decided to go fix iraq; that policy is now in tatters (time for the pmcs!), so it looks like it is on to iran; but wait, maybe we'll fix lebanon first....

bomb 'em all: and other points made by very small minds

two small quotes that indicate, for all the tentativeness of the leadership of the democratic party of the usa, it is light years ahead of republican thinking on world affairs. The first is from newt gingrich, who, besides giving my name a bad name, is a former everything.

• Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so....
• He lists wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, this week's bomb attacks in India, North Korean nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida, Canada and Britain, and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World War III. He said Bush needs to deliver a speech to Congress and "connect all the dots" for Americans....
• "This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away. (Seattle Times, July 15, 2006, Posted by David Postman)

uhhh..., ok. so it turns out he is right and there are enemies in florida, canada, britain, india, etc. we bomb them? we go out on scrap drives so we can build ships to go, uhhh....where? it turns out we are not at war with another country (though israel appears to be veering closer to that); we cannot just bomb them. terrorist groups exist. but they don't hold territory, etc. if they do, they soon cease to be terrorists. that was/is the problem of hezbollah's leadership: they were settling down to rule southern lebanon, and then hamas stole their thunder, and, most probably, the young turks (small joke there) among hezbollah got bolshie.

but we can't attack sovereign nations just because they have criminals amongst them. and we can't keep operating as if it is a manichean world with no grey area. and we have to stop operating as if all terrorists are connected to some bond-like s.p.e.c.t.r.e. which was my other quote.

• Bush: You see, the ... thing is what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over.

i doubt that syria controls hezbollah at this point. i doubt that hezbollah (old leaders) controls hezbollah (young turks) at this point. syria needs to be involved (wouldn't the usa rather have syria than a fundamentalist islamic state there?); iran needs to be involved. but to ignore that there is no united "arc of evil" is to be self-deceived. and, given the reports from iraq and afghanistan these days, is whistling past the graveyard.

whoops: pmcs seeking a bottom line better start diversifying

what is it like in iraq? according to Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the U.S. Army chief of staff:

• "I think I would answer that by telling you I don't think we're losing....
• "The challenge … is becoming more complex, and it's going to continue to be.... That's why I'll tell you I think we're closer to the beginning than we are to the end of all this." (Is U.S. Winning? Army Chief Is at a Loss, By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer, July 15, 2006)

not to put too fine a point on it: "Violence in Iraq spinning out of control" (By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press Writer, July 18, 2006)

so it is not too surprising to see those private military contractors (mercenaries) who work so hard to defend our freedoms running for cover:

• Specialist security company ArmorGroup has seen particularly strong growth from its activities in Afghanistan and the oil and gas industry in Nigeria, which is good news for those hoping it would diversify away from reliance on Iraq....
• ArmorGroup provides protective security services such as guarding embassies and oil rigs and training police and security personnel. Naturally its services have been much in demand in Iraq, which led the percentage of business from the region last year to rise as high as 60% of turnover. This also led ArmorGroup to issue a profits warning a year ago when increased insurgent activity in Iraq meant delays to new contracts being signed and also led to increased costs for ArmorGroup. (ArmorGroup firm as Afghanistan helps decrease dependence on Iraq, July 13, 2006)

indeed, fewer of the footsoldiers of the pmcs supposedly fulfilling usa policy are actually usa citizens, as two recent articles on outsourcing by filipinos in iraq make clear:

• July 18, 2006, US outsources war to Filipinos, By Cher S Jimenez
• July 3, 2006, Life in a private army in Iraq, Posted in Malaya, By Ellen Tordesillas

bottom line: it appears that pan-muslim terrorists are not succeeding in iraq. but they have been replaced by shia, sunni, and kurd nationalists and violence is increasing not decreasing there. what is definitely not succeeding is usa policy and the billions thrown at pmcs.

good news (if you have stock in halliburton)

small ax entered good news about halliburton having to re-bid a little too quickly. as one blogger has pointed out, halliburton has all the infrastructure in place; it is unlikely that another company will be able to underbid them, even if they wanted to enter into the war zone which is iraq in the red zone (there are, of course, various websites devoted to investigating halliburton, such as halliburtonwatch).

i have a little trouble understanding amounts over a million dollars (not that i understand a million dollars), but, in any case, can someone tell me how the u.s. taxpayers can afford the iraqi war now or in the future?

• The Iraq war could cost U.S. taxpayers between $202 billion and $406 billion more over the next 10 years, depending on how quickly U.S. force levels can be reduced, congressional budget experts said on Thursday.
• The Congressional Budget Office offered two cost scenarios for the war, which it said so far has cost almost $300 billion. (US Iraq war costs may rise by $406 billion by 2016, Thu Jul 13, 7:59 PM ET, WASHINGTON, Reuters)
  

it is not all bad news

greetings. small ax is back after a two-month-long break. this blog began as an attempt to make sense of:

1. the case for the balkanization of iraq. british and usa policy towards the area for 3 years has cost billions of pounds, dollars, and dinars, and expended or damaged tens of thousands of lives in part on the untenable attempt to keep shias, sunnis, and kurds in a country which, as works like Christopher Catherwood, Churchill's Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq (2004) suggest, was a rather mistaken 20th-century european creation. the policy was a mistake, it appears to be changing, but it is worth considering why policy makers didn't see this problem at the outset, and what might happen now.
2. the dangers of outsourcing military and military intelligence. this is directly related to iraq and afghanistan as that is where the bulk of the outsourcing in the us government now occurs. is it always bad to outsource what the government should be controlling? is there a way to make outsourcing of state-power a good thing? how?
3. the fallacy of thinking the world outside the government--the world of business--is the free market. the military-industrial complex noted by eisenhower continues and thrives. the no-bid contracts threaten to dwarf both the free-market economy (if such a thing exists outside mom-and-pop stores) and "big" government. is there a way for such a thing to be good? what exactly is bad about it.

so, small ax continues in part as a way for its author to make sense of the world. it is less concerned to promote a conspiracy-theory-driven view of the world (though i am sure conspiracies abound; they just rarely work), than to understand what, in a clearly imperfect world, might be a "good" policy.

the following appears to be a "good thing":

• The Army will rebid the multibillion-dollar contract under which a Halliburton Co. subsidiary has been providing services to troops around the world after years of complaints over how the deal has worked in Iraq.
• Critics of the contract said the move was overdue and that hundreds of millions of dollars had probably been wasted. (Army won't extend Halliburton contract, by Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 13, 7:56 AM ET, WASHINGTON)

day late and a dollar short (well make that 2.5 years and several billion), but is there any other good news coming out of mesopotamia?