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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
The Americans don't see how unwelcome they are,
or that Iraq is now beyond repair
By Patrick Cockburn:
12/10/06 "The Independent" -- -- During the Opium Wars between Britain
and China in the 19th century, eunuchs at the court of the Chinese
emperor had the problem of informing him of the repeated and humiliating
defeat of his armies. They dealt with their delicate task by simply
telling the emperor that his forces had already won or were about to win
victories on all fronts.
For three and a half years White House officials have dealt with bad
news from Iraq in similar fashion. Journalists were repeatedly accused
by the US administration of not reporting political and military
progress on the ground. Information about the failure of the US venture
was ignored or suppressed.
Manipulation of facts was often very crude. As an example of the
systematic distortion, the Iraq Study Group revealed last week that on
one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts
of violence. In reality, it added, "a careful review of the reports ...
brought to light 1,100 acts of violence".
The 10-fold reduction in the number of acts of violence officially noted
was achieved by not reporting the murder of an Iraqi, or roadside bomb,
rocket or mortar attacks aimed at US troops that failed to inflict
casualties. I remember visiting a unit of US combat engineers camped
outside Fallujah in January 2004 who told me that they had stopped
reporting insurgent attacks on themselves unless they suffered losses as
commanders wanted to hear only that the number of attacks was going
down. As I was drove away, a sergeant begged us not to attribute what he
had said: "If you do I am in real trouble."
Few Chinese emperors can have been as impervious to bad news from the
front as President George W Bush. His officials were as assiduous as
those eunuchs in Beijing 170 years ago in shielding him from bad news.
But even when officials familiar with the real situation in Iraq did
break through the bureaucratic cordon sanitaire around the Oval Office
they got short shrift from Mr Bush. In December 2004 the CIA station
chief in Baghdad said that the insurgency was expanding and was "largely
unchallenged" in Sunni provinces. Mr Bush's response was: "What is he,
some kind of a defeatist?" A week later the station chief was
reassigned.
A few days afterwards, Colonel Derek Harvey, the Defence Intelligence
Agency's senior intelligence officer in Iraq, made much the same point
to Mr Bush. He said of the insurgency: "It's robust, it's well led, it's
diverse." According to the US political commentator Sidney Blumenthal,
the President at this point turned to his aides and asked: "Is this guy
a Democrat?"
The query is perhaps key to Mr Bush's priorities. The overriding
political purpose of the US administration in invading Iraq was to
retain power at home. It would do so by portraying Mr Bush as "the
security president", manipulating and exaggerating the terrorist threat
at home and purporting to combat it abroad. It would win cheap military
victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would hold "khaki" elections in
which Democrats could be portrayed as unpatriotic poltroons.
The strategy worked - until November's mid-term elections. Mr Bush was
victorious by presenting a false picture of Iraq. It is this that has
been exposed as a fraud by the Iraq Study Group.
Long-maintained myths tumble. For instance, the standard stump speech by
Mr Bush or Tony Blair since the start of the insurgency has been to
emphasise the leading role of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and international
terrorism. But the group's report declares "al-Qa'ida is responsible for
a small portion of violence", adding that it is now largely Iraqi-run.
Foreign fighters, their presence so often trumpeted by the White House
and Downing Street, are estimated to number only 1,300 men in Iraq. As
for building up the Iraqi army, the training of which is meant to be the
centrepiece of US and British policy, the report says that half the 10
planned divisions are made up of soldiers who will serve only in areas
dominated by their own community. And as for the army as a whole, it is
uncertain "they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals
instead of a sectarian agenda".
Given this realism it is sad that its authors, chaired by James Baker
and Lee Hamilton, share one great misconception with Mr Bush and Mr
Blair. This is about the acceptability of any foreign troops in Iraq.
Supposedly US combat troops will be withdrawn and redeployed as a
stiffening or reinforcement to Iraqi military units. They will form
quick-reaction forces able to intervene in moments of crisis.
"This simply won't work," one former Iraqi Interior Ministry official
told me. "Iraqis who work with Americans are regarded as tainted by
their families. Often our soldiers have to deny their contact with
Americans to their own wives. Sometimes they balance their American
connections by making contact with the insurgents at the same time."
Mr Bush and Mr Blair have always refused to take on board the simple
unpopularity of the occupation among Iraqis, though US and British
military commanders have explained that it is the main fuel for the
insurgency. The Baker-Hamilton report notes dryly that opinion polls
show that 61 per cent of Iraqis favour armed attacks on US forces. Given
the Kurds overwhelmingly support the US presence, this means three-
quarters of all Arabs want military action against US soldiers.
The other great flaw in the report is to imply that Iraqis can be
brought back together again. The reality is that the country has already
broken apart. In Baghdad, Sunnis no longer dare to visit the main
mortuary to look for murdered relatives because it is under Shia control
and they might be killed themselves. The future of Iraq may well be a
confederation rather than a federation, with Shia, Sunni and Kurd each
enjoying autonomy close to independence.
There are certain points on which the White House and the authors of the
report are dangerously at one. This is that the Iraqi government of
Nouri al-Maliki can be bullied into trying to crush the militias (this
usually means just one anti-American militia, the Mehdi Army), or will
bolt from the Shia alliance. In the eyes of many Iraqis this would
simply confirm its status as a US pawn. As for talking with Iran and
Syria or acting on the Israel-Palestinian crisis it is surely impossible
for Mr Bush to retreat so openly from his policies of the past three
years, however disastrous their outcome.
source:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15868.htm
===
-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
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