Iraq

[ccp]

Mark Levin's radio show last night (at least the portion that I heard) was all about this.  That Rove and other WH officials in the Bush administration basically kept this from the public which seems absurd since WMD were one of the reasons we went to war.

"The embarrassment of the West's role, including a US role, in their manufacture, would have been VERY bad in the context of our used of WMD as a justification in front of the UN."

This makes sense to me as to why Rove et al would have chosen to keep this quiet from a political point of view.  As far as I heard Levin did not mention this line of reasoning.

Yet we sent our children their many of whom died or were maimed physically and or psychologically.  The country ought to know the truth.

[Crafty_Dog]

I confess myself being surprised that everyone, including POTH is surprised.  I'm not sure how, but I certainly knew of these finds of stuff from the 80s.

Tangentially, I note it is a  bit discouraging to see some on "our side" think this proves "Bush was right" for it does not.  The claim was of an active WMD program and stuff sitting around degrading since the 80s does not do that at all.

[DougMacG]

On the board we had reports, with unknown validity, ranging from trucks carrying WMD to Syria during the dithering process to trace WMD measured in the Euphrates river indicating a dump.

It isn't that this vindicates Bush; they relied on the best intelligence in the world at the time, right or wrong.  To me it is that this story and others proves false the mantra later of the opponents hollering and repeating, "No WMD".  Bush acted on best faith while they spoke with intentional deceit, which worked quite well for them.

There were 23 reasons given in the authorization that Hillary, Biden, et al passed for going to war.  A pretty good description of them below is from Wikipedia. Proof of past WMD use and shooting at inspections planes is an indicator of current intent.

Iraq Study Group later determined that Saddam was 7 years away from having nuclear weapons - 12 years ago.  Good enough reason to depose him for me.


...The U.S. stated that the intent (in Iraq war) was to remove "a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world". ...For the invasion Iraq the rationale was "the United States relied on the authority of UN Security Council Resolutions 678 and 687 to use all necessary means to compel Iraq to comply with its international obligations".[3]

[Crafty_Dog]

URL for the Wiki entry please?

[DougMacG]

URL for the Wiki entry please?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War
They have source links.  I have posted the actual resolution previously.  Here it is again, the 23 reasons:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107hjres114enr/pdf/BILLS-107hjres114enr.pdf
Joint Resolution

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.

Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq’s war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;

Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;

Whereas in Public Law 105-235 (August 14, 1998), Congress concluded that Iraq’s continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in ‘material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations’ and urged the President ‘to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations’;

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolution of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;

Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq’s demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 (1991), and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949 (1994);

Whereas in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1), Congress has authorized the President ‘to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolution 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677’;

Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it ‘supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1),’ that Iraq’s repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and ‘constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region,’ and that Congress, ‘supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688’;

Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the United States to ‘work with the United Nations Security Council to meet our common challenge’ posed by Iraq and to ‘work for the necessary resolutions,’ while also making clear that ‘the Security Council resolutions will be enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable’;

Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq’s ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;

Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and

Whereas it is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

[G M]

http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

[DougMacG]

http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

From the report:

Clinton: Iraq has abused its last chance

President Clinton addressed the nation from the Oval Office
Clinton spells out Iraq's non-compliance
Iraq repeatedly blocked UNSCOM from inspecting suspect sites.

Iraq repeatedly restricted UNSCOM's ability to obtain necessary evidence.

Iraq tried to stop an UNSCOM biological weapons team from videotaping a site and photocopying documents and prevented Iraqi personnel from answering UNSCOM's questions.

Iraq has failed to turn over virtually all documents requested by the inspectors.
US Forces:
There are 15 U.S. warships and 97 U.S. aircraft in the Persian Gulf region, including about 70 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. More than 12,000 sailors and Marines are in the region.

U.S. sources said eight of the warships, equipped with cruise missiles, have been moved into the northern part of the Gulf, within easy striking distance of Baghdad. More troops and jets have been ordered to the region.

Clinton statement from the Oval Office on attack against Iaq

'Without delay, diplomacy or warning'
Strikes necessary to stunt weapons programs

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- From the Oval Office, President Clinton told the nation Wednesday evening why he ordered new military strikes against Iraq.

The president said Iraq's refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors presented a threat to the entire world.

"Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons," Clinton said.

Operation Desert Fox, a strong, sustained series of attacks, will be carried out over several days by U.S. and British forces, Clinton said.

"Earlier today I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces," Clinton said.

"Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors," said Clinton.

Clinton also stated that, while other countries also had weapons of mass destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such weapons against his own people and against his neighbors.


'Without delay, diplomacy or warning'

The Iraqi leader was given a final warning six weeks ago, Clinton said, when Baghdad promised to cooperate with U.N. inspectors at the last minute just as U.S. warplanes were headed its way.

"Along with Prime Minister (Tony) Blair of Great Britain, I made it equally clear that if Saddam failed to cooperate fully we would be prepared to act without delay, diplomacy or warning," Clinton said.

The president said the report handed in Tuesday by Richard Butler, head of the United Nations Special Commission in charge of finding and destroying Iraqi weapons, was stark and sobering.

Iraq failed to cooperate with the inspectors and placed new restrictions on them, Clinton said. He said Iraqi officials also destroyed records and moved everything, even the furniture, out of suspected sites before inspectors were allowed in.

"Instead of inspectors disarming Saddam, Saddam has disarmed the inspectors," Clinton said.

"In halting our airstrikes in November, I gave Saddam a chance -- not a license. If we turn our backs on his defiance, the credibility of U.S. power as a check against Saddam will be destroyed," the president explained.


Strikes necessary to stunt weapons programs

Clinton said he made the decision to strike Wednesday with the unanimous agreement of his security advisors.

Timing was important, said the president, because without a strong inspection system in place, Iraq could rebuild its chemical, biological and nuclear programs in a matter of months, not years.

"If Saddam can cripple the weapons inspections system and get away with it, he would conclude the international community, led by the United States, has simply lost its will," said Clinton. "He would surmise that he has free rein to rebuild his arsenal of destruction."

Clinton also called Hussein a threat to his people and to the security of the world.

"The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people," Clinton said.


CNN had no comment on the double standard of news coverage.

[Crafty_Dog]

Awesome find-- what is the date? Is there a URL?

[G M]

Post 955 from above. 12/16/1998

[DougMacG]

Nice to see scholar Victor Davis Hanson reading and following up on our discussion here on the forum:

Previously in this thread (http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=946.msg84236#msg84236):
"trucks carrying WMD to Syria during the dithering process"
"There were 23 reasons given in the authorization..."
"Proof of past WMD use and shooting at inspections planes is an indicator of current intent."
" this story...proves false the mantra of the opponents, "No WMD"... they spoke with intentional deceit"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390725/biggest-lie-victor-davis-hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390725/biggest-lie-victor-davis-hanson/page/0/1
OCTOBER 21, 2014 4:00 AM
The Biggest Lie
The Left would rather forget its old slogan, “Bush lied, thousands died.”
By Victor Davis Hanson

The very mention of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and Iraq was toxic for Republicans by 2005. They wanted to forget about the supposed absence of recently manufactured WMD in great quantities in Iraq; Democrats saw Republican defensiveness as key to their recovery in 2006. By the time Obama was elected, the issue had been demagogued to death, was no longer of any political utility, and so vanished.

So why all of a sudden is the New York Times strangely focused on old WMD stockpiles showing up in Iraq? Is the subtext perhaps that the rise of ISIS poses an existential threat in such a dangerous landscape (and by extension offers an explanation for the current bombing)? Or are we to be reminded that Bush stirred up a WMD hornets’ nest that Obama was forced to deal with? Or is the sudden interest intended to preempt the story now before we learn that ISIS routinely employs WMD against the Kurds? How strange that Iraq, WMD, bombing, and preemption reappear in the news, but now without the hysteria of the Bush era.

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Indeed, for the last two years, reports of WMD of some sort have popped up weekly in Syria and Iraq. Bashar Assad has used them, apparently with strategic profit, both in deterring his enemies and in embarrassing the red lines of Barack Obama, who had threatened to bomb him if he dared use them.
ISIS is rumored to have attempted to use mustard gas against the Kurds. Iraqi depots are periodically found, even as they are often dismissed as ossified beyond the point of easy use, or as already calibrated and rendered inert by either U.N. inspectors or U.S. occupation forces. But where did all the WMD come from, and why the sudden fright now about these stockpiles’ being deployed?

For much of the Bush administration we heard from the Left the refrain, “Bush lied, thousands died,” as if the president had cooked intelligence reports to conjure up a nonexistent threat from Saddam Hussein’s stockpiles of WMD — stockpiles that Bill Clinton had insisted until his last days in office posed an existential threat to the United States. Apparently if a horde of gas shells of 20th-century vintage was found, it was then deemed irrelevant — as if WMD in Iraq could only be defined as huge Iraqi plants turning out 21st-century stockpiles weeks before the invasion.

The smear of Bush was the bookend of another popular canard, the anti-Bush slogan “No blood for oil.” Once the fact that the U.S. did not want Iraqi oil was indisputable, that slander metamorphosed. Almost immediately the Left pivoted and charged that we were not so much oil sinister as oil stupid. If the Iraqi oil ministry, for the first time in its history, was both acting transparently and selling oil concessions to almost anyone except American companies, it was now cast as typically ungracious in not appreciating the huge American expenditure of blood and treasure that had allowed it such latitude. Was the Iraq War then a stupid war that helped Russia and the Chinese? Poor Bush ended up not so much sinister as a naïf.

Although we don’t hear much any more about “No blood for oil,” the lie about “Bush lied, thousands died” has never been put to rest.

What was odd about the untruth was not just that Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and the anti-war street crowd become popular icons through spreading such lies, but that the Democratic party — whose kingpins (Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Harry Reid, et al.) had all given fiery speeches in favor of invading Iraq — refined the slur into an effective 2006 talking point. That Democrats from Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid had looked at the same intelligence from CIA Director (and Clinton appointee) George “slam-dunk” Tenet (who authored a self-serving memoir ankle-biting George W. Bush while still in office), and had agreed with Tenet’s assessments, at least until the insurgency destroyed public support for the war, was conveniently forgotten.

The Bush administration did not help much. It never replied to its critics that fear of stockpiled WMD had originally been a Clinton-administration fear, a congressional fear, an international fear — and a legitimate fear. I suppose that the Bush people wanted the issue of WMD to just go away, given the insurgency raging in Iraq and the effective Democratic campaign to reinvent fear of WMD as a sinister Bush conspiracy. (Do we remember Colin Powell’s U.N. testimony and the years that followed — cf. the Valerie Plame/Richard Armitage fiasco — in which he licked his wounds while harboring anger at his former associates for his own career-ending presentation?) In sum, the Bush White House certainly did not remind the country that most of the Clinton-era liberal politicians in the 1990s had warned us about Iraqi WMD (do we even remember the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act?).

Nor were we reminded that foreign leaders like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak had predicted mass death for any invaders who challenged Saddam’s WMD arsenal. (“General Franks, you must be very, very careful. We have spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is a madman. He has WMD — biologicals, actually — and he will use them on your troops.”) Was part of the Bush administration’s WMD conspiracy forcing tens of thousands of U.S. troops to lug about chemical suits and masks in the desert? No one, of course, noted that the initial success in Iraq also helped shut down Moammar Qaddafi’s WMD program in Libya and pressured the Pakistanis to arrest (for a while) the father of their bomb, Dr. A. Q. Khan. The latter nations apparently feared that the U.S. was considering removing dictators who that they knew had stockpiled WMD.

The current The Iran-Iraq War by Williamson Murray and Kevin Woods is a frightening reminder of how Saddam massacred the Kurds (perhaps well over 150,000 killed), often with gas, and how habitual was Saddam’s use of WMD against the Iranians in that medieval war.

Nor do we remember that James Clapper, in one of his earlier careerist contortions as a Bush-era intelligence officer, along with top-ranking officials in both the Iraqi and Syrian air forces, all warned us that WMD were stealthily transferred to Syria on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. The dutifully toadyish Clapper added the intensifier adverb “unquestionably” to emphasize his certainty. Clapper, remember, went on to become Obama’s director of national intelligence and a key adviser on much of the current Obama Middle East decision-making, including the near bombing of Syria.*


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So there were stocks of at least older WMD throughout Iraq when we arrived in 2003, and it was plausible that many of the newer and more deployable versions somehow found their way into Syria. So worried was Barack Obama about the likelihood of Syrian WMD that he almost started a preemptive war against Bashar Assad, but without authorization of Congress and with no attempt to go to the U.N., as Bush had done. (Indeed, we are now preemptively bombing Iraq on the basis of the 2002 authorizations that state legislator and memoirist Barack Obama derided at the time.)
There were all sorts of untold amnesias about Iraq. No one remembers the 23 writs that were part of the 2002 authorizations that apparently Obama believes are still in effect. They included genocide, bounties for suicide bombers, an attempt to kill a former U.S. president, the harboring of terrorists (among them one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers), and a whole litany of charges that transcended WMD and were utterly unaffected by the latter controversy. How surreal is it that Obama is preemptively bombing Iraq on twelve-year-old congressional authorizations that he opposed as trumped up and now may be relevant in relationship to dealing with Syrian and Iraqi stockpiles of WMD?

We forget too how Harry Reid declared the surge a failure and the war lost even as it was being won. Or how Barack Obama predicted that the surge would make things worse, before scrubbing such editorializing from his website when the surge worked. Do we remember those days of General Betray Us (the ad hominem ad that the New York Times, which supposedly will not allow purchased ad hominem ads, granted at a huge discount), and the charges from Hillary Clinton that Petraeus was lying (“suspension of disbelief”)? As Obama megaphones call for national unity in damning Leon Panetta’s critiques during the present bombing, do we remember the glee with which the Left greeted the tell-all revelations of Paul O’Neill, George Tenet, and Scott McClellan during the tenure of George W. Bush, or how they disparaged the surge when Americans were dying to implement it?

It is hard to recall now the fantasy climate that surrounded “Bush lied, thousands died.” Cindy Sheehan is now utterly forgotten. So mostly is the buffoonish propagandist Michael Moore, except for an occasion tidbit about a nasty divorce and cat fights over his man-of-the-people sizable portfolio — and occasional attacks on Barack Obama’s supposed racial tokenism. Hillary’s shrill outbursts about Iraq evolved into “What difference, at this point, does it make?” Barack Obama rode his anti-war distortions to the presidency only to adopt his own anti-terrorism protocols and preemptive wars using the Bush-era justifications, but without the candor and congressional authorizations. The media went from “No blood for oil” and “Bush lied, thousands died” to noting strange discoveries of WMD and trumpeting near energy independence. The U.S. is now nonchalantly referred to as the world’s largest oil producer, but largely because the Bush administration green-lighted fracking and horizontal drilling, which the present administration opposes and yet cites as one of its singular achievements in terms of lowering gas prices — the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal economic record.

So we live in an era of lies about everything from Benghazi and Obamacare to the alphabet soup of scandal and incompetence at the IRS, ICE, VA, USSS (Secret Service), NSA, GSA, and even the CDC.

But before we can correct the present lies, we should first address the greatest untruth in this collection: “Bush lied, thousands died” was an abject lie.

[G M]

[DougMacG]

Who cares more about women, the ones who saw a shot at freedom and self determination of the ones openly said they aren't worth it.

I took my daughter (10 years old then) to see President George Bush on the weekend of the first election ever in Afghanistan, where women were not only voting but candidates and people in a Muslim country were openly supporting women's rights.  I was quite proud of our side and our country on that particular point.  War is ugly but so is silence and tolerance of genocide  fascism, terror, oppression. 
http://archive.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=70311  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_presidential_election,_2004

[DougMacG]

As we re-debate the Iraq war(s) and what to do with "secular" dictators, I have been looking for the speech that Saddam gave in March 1991 accepting the UN resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War at that time with a conditional ceasefire.  Not finding that speech, I post this Saddam speech from a week earlier for the record.  I count at least 60 references in one speech to God, the Almighty, Infidels, Holy War, Muslims, Islam, Islamic Faith, Mujahedeen, etc. plus verses quoted from the Koran.  That is a lot of religion for a man said to be secular.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/27/world/war-gulf-iraqi-leader-saddam-hussein-s-speech-withdrawal-his-army-kuwait.html

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.

O great people; O stalwart men in the forces of holy war and faith, glorious men of the mother of battles; O zealous, faithful and sincere people in our glorious nations, and among all Muslims and all virtuous people in the world; O glorious Iraqi women:

In such circumstances and times, it is difficult to talk about all that which should be talked about, and it is difficult to recall all that which has to be recalled. Despite this, we have to remind of what has to be reminded of, and say part -- a principal part -- of what should be said.

We start by saying that on this day, our valiant armed forces will complete their withdrawal from Kuwait. And on this day our fight against aggression and the ranks of infidelity, joined in an ugly coalition comprising 30 countries, which officially entered war against us under the leadership of the United States of America -- our fight against them would have lasted from the first month of this year, starting with the night of 16-17 [ January ] , until this moment in the current month, February of this year.

It was an epic duel which lasted for two months, which came to clearly confirm a lesson that God has wanted as a prelude of faith, impregnability and capability for the faithful, and a prelude of an [ abyss ] , weakness and humiliation which God Almighty has wanted for the infidels, the criminals, the traitors, the corrupt and the deviators.

To be added to this time is the time of the military and nonmilitary duel, including the military and the economic blockade, which was imposed on Iraq and which lasted throughout 1990 until today, and until the time God Almighty wishes it to last.

Before that, the duel lasted, in other forms, for years before this period of time. It was an epic struggle between right and wrong; we have talked about this in detail on previous occasions. The Age of the Showdown

It gave depth to the age of the showdown for the year 1990, and the already elapsed part of the year 1991.

Hence, we do not forget, because we will not forget this great struggling spirit, by which men of great faith stormed the fortifications and the weapons of deception and the Croesus [ Kuwaiti rulers ] treachery on the honorable day of the call. They did what they did within the context of legitimate deterrence and great principled action.

All that we have gone through or decided within its circumstances, obeying God's will and choosing a position of faith and chivalry, is a record of honor, the significance of which will not be missed by the people and nation and the values of Islam and humanity.

Their days will continue to be glorious and their past and future will continue to relate the story of a faithful, jealous and patient people, who believed in the will of God and in the values and stands accepted by the Almighty for the Arab nation in its leading role and for the Islamic nation in the essentials of its true faith and how they should be.

These values -- which had their effect in all those situations, offered the sacrifices they had offered in the struggle, and symbolized the depth of the faithful character in Iraq -- will continue to leave their effects on the souls.

They will continue to reap their harvest, not only in terms of direct targets represented in the slogans of their age -- whether in the conflict between the oppressed poor and the unjust and opportunist rich, or between faith and blasphemy, or between injustice, deception and treachery on the one hand and fairness, justice, honesty and loyalty on the other -- but also the indirect targets as well. Shake the Ranks of the Infidels

This will shake the opposite ranks and cause them to collapse after everything has become clear. This will also add faith to the faithful now that the minds and eyes have been opened and the hearts are longing for what the principles, values and stances should long for and belong to.

The stage that preceded the great day of the call on 2 August 1990 had its own standards, including dealing with what is familiar and inherited during the bad times, whether on the level of relations between the ruler and the ruled, or between the leader and the people he leads.

The relations between the foreigners among the ranks of infidelity and oppression and among the region's states and the world had their own standards, effects and privileges that were created by the Arab homeland's circumstances, and which were facilitated by propaganda, which no one could expose more than it has now been exposed.

The conflict was exacerbated by the vacuum that was created by the weakness of one of the two poles that used to represent the two opposite lines in the world. However, after the second of August 1990, new concepts and standards were created.

This was preceded by a new outlook in all walks of life, in relations among peoples, relations among states, and the relations between the ruler and the ruled, and by standards of faith and positions; patriotism, pan-Arabism, and humanitarianism; holy war, faith, Islam, fear and non-fear; restlessness and tranquillity; manhood and its opposite; struggle, holy war and sacrifice, and readiness to do good things and their opposite.

When new measures spring forth and the familiar, failed, traitorous, subservient and corrupt [ people ] , and tyrants are rejected, then the opportunity for the cultivation of the pure soil will increase in its scope, and the seeds of this plant will take root deep in the good land, primarily, the land of the Arabs, the land of the revelation and the messages, and the land of prophets. Quotes From the Koran

God says: "Like a goodly tree, whose root is firmly fixed, and its branches reach to the heavens. It brings forth its fruit at all times, by the leave of its Lord." [ Koranic verses ]

Then everything will become possible on the road of goodness and happiness that is not defiled by the feet of the invaders nor by their evil will or the corruption of the corrupt among those who have been corrupted, and who spread corruption in the land of the Arabs.
 
Moreover, the forces of plotting and treachery will be defeated for good. Good people and those who are distinguished by their faith and by their faithful, honorable stands of holy war will become the real leaders of the gathering of the faithful everywhere on earth, and the gathering of corruption, falsehood, hypocrisy and infidelity will be defeated and meet the vilest fate.

The earth will be inherited, at God's order, by His righteous slaves. "For the earth is God's, to give as a heritage to such of his servants as he pleaseth; and the end is best for the righteous." [ Koranic verses ]

When this happens, the near objectives will not only be within reach, available and possible, but also the doors will be open without any hindrance which might prevent the achievement of all the greater, remoter and more comprehensive objectives, to the Arabs, Muslims and humanity at large.

Then, also, it will be clear that the harvest does not precede the seeding, and that the threshing floor and the yield are the outcome of a successful seeding and a successful harvest. Even Greater Harvest to Come

The harvest in the mother of battles has succeeded. After we have harvested what we have harvested, the greater harvest and its yield will be in the time to come, and it will be much greater than what we have at present, in spite of what we have at present in terms of the victory, dignity and glory that was based on the sacrifices of a deep faith which is generous without any hesitation or fear.

It is by virtue of this faith that God has bestowed dignity upon the Iraqi mujahedeen, and upon all the depth of this course of holy war at the level of the Arab homeland and at the level of all those men whom God has chosen to be given the honor of allegiance, guidance and honorable position, until He declares that the conflict has stopped, or amends its directions and course and the positions in a manner which would please the faithful and increase their dignity.

O valiant Iraqi men, O glorious Iraqi women. Kuwait is part of your country and was carved from it in the past.

Circumstances today have willed that it remain in the state in which it will remain after the withdrawal of our struggling forces from it. It hurts you that this should happen.

We rejoiced on the day of the call when it was decided that Kuwait should be one of the main gates for deterring the plot and for defending all Iraq from the plotters. We say that we will remember Kuwait on the great day of the call, on the days that followed it, and in documents and events, some of which date back 70 years.

The Iraqis will remember and will not forget that on 8 August, 1990, Kuwait became part of Iraq legally, constitutionally and actually. They remember and will not forget that it remained throughout this period from 8 August 1990 and until last night, when withdrawal began, and today we will complete withdrawal of our forces, God willing. Circumstances of Withdrawal

Today certain circumstances made the Iraqi Army withdraw as a result of the ramifications which we mentioned, including the combined aggression by 30 countries. Their repugnant siege has been led in evil and aggression by the machine and the criminal entity of America and its major allies.

These malicious ranks took the depth and effectiveness of their aggressiveness not only from their aggressive premeditated intentions against Iraq, the Arab nation and Islam, but also from the position of those who were deceived by the claim of international legitimacy. Everyone will remember that the gates of Constantinople were not opened before the Muslims in the first struggling attempt, and that the international community [ placed ] dear Palestine's freedom and independence in oblivion.

Whatever the suspect parties try, by virtue of the sacrifices and struggle of the Palestinians and Iraqis, Palestine has returned anew to knock at the doors closed on evil.

Palestine returned to knock on those doors to force the tyrants and the traitors to a solution that would place it at the forefront of the issues that have to be resolved; a solution that would bring dignity to its people and provide better chances for better progress.

The issue of poverty and richness, fairness and unfairness, faith and infidelity, treachery and honesty and sincerity, have become titles corresponding to rare events and well-known people and trends that give priority to what is positive over what is negative, to what is sincere over what is treacherous and filthy, and to what is pure and honorable over what is corrupt, base and lowly. The confidence of the nationalists and the faithful mujahedeen and the Muslims has grown bigger than before, and great hope more and more.

Slogans have come out of their stores to strongly occupy the facades of the pan-Arab and human holy war and struggle. Therefore, victory is [ great ] now and in the future, God willing. 'Shout for Your Victory'

Shout for victory, O brothers; shout for your victory and the victory of all honorable people, O Iraqis. You have fought 30 countries, and all the evil and the largest machine of war and destruction in the world that surrounds them. If only one of these countries threatens anyone, this threat will have a swift and direct effect on the dignity, freedom, life, or freedom of this or that country, people and nation.
 
The soldiers of faith have triumphed over the soldiers of wrong, O stalwart men. Your God is the one who granted your victory. You triumphed when you rejected, in the name of faith, the will of evil which the evildoers wanted to impose on you to kill the fire of faith in your hearts.

You have chosen the path which you have chosen, including the acceptance of the Soviet initiative, but those evildoers persisted in their path and methods, thinking that they can impose their will on their Iraq, as they imagined and hoped.

This hope of theirs may remain in their heads, even after we withdraw from Kuwait. Therefore, we must be cautious, and preparedness to fight must remain at the highest level.

O you valiant men; you have fought the armies of 30 states and the capabilities of an even greater number of states which supplied them with the means of aggression and support. Faith, belief, hope and determination continue to fill your chests, souls and hearts.

They have even become deeper, stronger, brighter and more deeply rooted. God is great; God is great; may the lowly be defeated.

Victory is sweet with the help of God.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/world/iraqs-premier-has-narrowed-nations-divide.html?emc=edit_th_20141216&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193

[G M]

http://m.nationalreview.com/corner/398586/watch-spectacular-sight-kurdish-marksman-detonating-isis-car-bomb-distance-patrick

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/16/report-cia-bought-hundreds-of-iraqi-weapons-of-mass-destruction-in-operation-avarice/

[Crafty_Dog]

Iraq Military Begins Campaign to Reclaim Tikrit From Islamic State
Reclaiming Tikrit is seen as critical to defeating Islamic State militants in Mosul
Iraq’s military, backed by some 20,000 volunteer fighters, have begun a campaign to recapture the birthplace of Saddam Hussein from Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. Mark Kelly reports. Image: AFP/Getty
By
Tamer El-Ghobashy and
Ghassan Adnan
March 2, 2015 4:09 a.m. ET
25 COMMENTS

BAGHDAD—Iraq’s military, backed by some 20,000 volunteer fighters, began a campaign to reclaim the city of Tikrit on Monday, state television said, in what is seen an important political and military step in the fight against Islamic State militants.

Monday’s offensive, announced by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, marks the third attempt by Iraqi security forces to rout militants out of the city, best known as the birthplace of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, which fell last summer during a dramatic assault by the Islamic State group.

Previous attempts had failed, mostly due to poor coordination between Iraq’s military and the mostly Shiite volunteer forces, which have proven to be the most effective fighters against the insurgency but carry with them political liabilities.

The Shiite militias are severely distrusted by Sunnis in Iraq, owing to years of abuse under a Shiite-dominated regime that was backed by the U.S.
An Iraqi soldier sits on a military vehicle at Udhaim dam, north of Baghdad, March 1, 2015. Iraq’s military, backed by some 20,000 volunteer fighters, began a campaign on Monday to reclaim the city of Tikrit , hometown of former president Saddam Hussein. ENLARGE
An Iraqi soldier sits on a military vehicle at Udhaim dam, north of Baghdad, March 1, 2015. Iraq’s military, backed by some 20,000 volunteer fighters, began a campaign on Monday to reclaim the city of Tikrit , hometown of former president Saddam Hussein. Photo: Reuters

In the hours before the operation was launched, Mr. Abadi sought to ease the concerns of Tikrit’s overwhelmingly Sunni residents, saying many of the volunteer forces aiding in the fight for the city are Sunni locals supporting the military’s effort.

He also reiterated a pledge to offer clemency to tribal leaders in Tikrit who had previously aided the insurgency.

“We will forget about their bad deeds if they come back to the side of the nation,” he said in a news conference broadcast on state television.

Reclaiming Tikrit, a city about 80 miles north of Baghdad, is seen as a critical point toward a planned offensive to defeat Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq’s second city, which had been the de facto base for the insurgency in Iraq.

It is also considered a goodwill gesture from Iraq’s mostly Shiite leadership toward the nation’s Sunnis, whose disaffection after years of policies that marginalized them is seen as a major contributor to the success of the Islamic State in taking large portions of the country under their control.

Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com
Popular on WSJ

[Crafty_Dog]

WASHINGTON — At a time when President Obama is under political pressure from congressional Republicans over negotiations to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, a startling paradox has emerged: Mr. Obama is becoming increasingly dependent on Iranian fighters as he tries to contain the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria without committing American ground troops.

In the four days since Iranian troops joined 30,000 Iraqi forces to try to wrest Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit back from Islamic State control, American officials have said the United States is not coordinating with Iran, one of its fiercest global foes, in the fight against a common enemy.


That may be technically true. But American war planners have been closely monitoring Iran’s parallel war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, through a range of channels, including conversations on radio frequencies that each side knows the other is monitoring. And the two militaries frequently seek to avoid conflict in their activities by using Iraqi command centers as an intermediary.

As a result, many national security experts say, Iran’s involvement is helping the Iraqis hold the line against Islamic State advances until American military advisers are finished training Iraq’s underperforming armed forces.

“The only way in which the Obama administration can credibly stick with its strategy is by implicitly assuming that the Iranians will carry most of the weight and win the battles on the ground,” said Vali R. Nasr, a former special adviser to Mr. Obama who is now dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too — the U.S. strategy in Iraq has been successful so far largely because of Iran.”

It was Iran that organized Iraq’s Shiite militias last August to break a weeklong Islamic State siege of Amerli, a cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter. American bombs provided support from warplanes.

Administration officials were careful to note at the time that the United States was working in Amerli with its allies — namely Iraqi Army units and Kurdish security forces. A senior administration official said that “any coordinating with the Shiite militias was not done by us; it would have been done by the I.S.F.,” a reference to the Iraqi security forces.

It was also Iran’s Quds Force that backed Iraq’s Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces in November to liberate the central city of Baiji from the Islamic State, breaking the siege of a nearby oil refinery. (A month later, the Islamic State took back a part of the city.)

And last summer, when Islamic State militants first captured Mosul and got within striking distance of the Kurdish capital, Erbil, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, flew to Erbil with two planes full of military supplies, American and regional diplomats said. The Iranian move helped to bolster Kurdish defenses around Erbil, the officials said.


In Tikrit this week, Iranian-backed Shiite militia leaders said that their fighters made up more than two-thirds of the pro-government force of 30,000. They also said that General Suleimani, the Iranian spymaster, was helping to lead from near the front line.

Websites supporting the militias circulated photographs of General Suleimani on Wednesday drinking tea on what was said to be the front line, dressed in black and holding his glass in one hand and a floral patterned saucer in the other.

The presence of General Suleimani — a reviled figure in American security and military circles because he once directed a deadly campaign against American forces in Iraq — makes it difficult for the United States to conduct airstrikes to assist in the Tikrit operation, as it might like, foreign policy experts said.

“There’s just no way that the U.S. military can actively support an offensive led by Suleimani,” said Christopher Harmer, a former aviator in the United States Navy in the Persian Gulf who is now an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War. “He’s a more stately version of Osama bin Laden.”

But the United States strategy in Iraq can benefit from Iran’s effort to take back Tikrit from the Islamic State, even if it is not involved directly. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the involvement of Iranian-backed Shiites in Tikrit could be “a positive thing” provided it did not exacerbate sectarian tension.

“This is the most overt conduct of Iranian support, in the form of artillery and other things,” General Dempsey said. “Frankly, it will only be a problem if it results in sectarianism.”



But that is a big worry. In the past — notably just after the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011 — Shiite militias have been accused of atrocities against Sunnis. And in January, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered an investigation into accusations that Shiite militiamen massacred 70 people in Diyala Province after pro-government forces expelled Islamic State militants.

This week, Republican lawmakers warned that Iran’s influence in Iraq would increase with the Tikrit offensive. “We share the president’s goal to degrade and defeat ISIL,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in a statement Tuesday. “But success in this mission will not be achieved by capitulating to Iran’s ambitions for regional hegemony.”

Landon Shroder, an intelligence analyst for corporations in Iraq who was in Baghdad last summer when Mosul fell, countered that the worry that Iran will gain influence in Iraq ignores the reality that Iran’s Shiite government is already a key Iraqi ally.

“By this stage, everybody who observed what happened in Iraq with the Islamic State should know that the main influencer in Iraq is Iran,” he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “That’s an unpopular perception in the United States, after spending so much money and lives lost in the conflict, but it’s reality.”

Mr. Shroder said that at the moment, the only force with the ability to bring Kurdish troops, the Iraqi Army and the Shiite militias together to fight the Islamic State is Iran.

Rafid Jaboori, the spokesman for Mr. Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, said in an interview Wednesday that Iraq had urged the United States and Iran not to play out their bilateral conflict in Iraq’s battle against the Islamic State.

“So far in general there was no clash within the two,” Mr. Jaboori said.

He drew a comparison to World War II. “Countries with different ideologies, different priorities, different systems of government, cooperated to defeat the Nazis,” he said. “It’s foreseeable that we see countries which might not get along very well in terms of their bilateral relations working to help Iraq to defeat this threat.”

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.prageruniversity.com/Political-Science/Why-America-Invaded-Iraq.html#.VP5U6S5UWAh

[prentice crawford]

The power of a impassioned plea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdIEm1s6yhY

                            P.C.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390725/biggest-lie-victor-davis-hanson

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.latimes.com/world/great-reads/la-fg-c1-iraq-rambo-20150402-story.html#page=1

[Crafty_Dog]

The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths
Officials didn’t lie, and I wasn’t fed a line, writes Judith Miller
Then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller took part in a discussion on the protection of confidential sources on March 15, 2005, at the National Press Club in Washington,
By Judith Miller
April 3, 2015 2:53 p.m. ET
1158 COMMENTS

I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me.

OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.

None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired.

There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war. Before the 2003 invasion, President Bush and other senior officials cited the intelligence community’s incorrect conclusions about Saddam’s WMD capabilities and, on occasion, went beyond them. But relying on the mistakes of others and errors of judgment are not the same as lying.


I have never met George W. Bush. I never discussed the war with Dick Cheney until the winter of 2012, years after he had left office and I had left the Times. I wish I could have interviewed senior officials before the war about the role that WMDs played in the decision to invade Iraq. The White House’s passion for secrecy and aversion to the media made that unlikely. Less senior officials were of help as sources, but they didn’t make the decisions.

No senior official spoon-fed me a line about WMD. That would have been so much easier than uncovering classified information that officials can be jailed for disclosing. My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer.

In 1996, those same sources helped me to write a book about the dangers of militant Islam long before suicide bombers made the topic fashionable. Their expertise informed articles and another book I co-wrote in 2003 with Times colleagues about the danger of biological terrorism, published right before the deadly anthrax letter attacks.

Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it.

The 2005 commission led by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb and conservative Republican Judge Laurence Silberman called the estimates “dead wrong,” blaming what it called a “major” failure on the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good information…serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions.” A year earlier, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence denounced such failures as the product of “group think,” rooted in a fear of underestimating grave threats to national security in the wake of 9/11.

A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted.

Will Tobey, a former deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (which oversees America’s nuclear arsenal), still fumes about the failure to see problems in the CIA’s intelligence supporting Secretary of State Colin Powell’s now largely discredited prewar speech at the U.N. about Iraq’s WMD. Based partly on the CIA’s assurances of strong evidence for each claim, Mr. Tobey told me, Mr. Powell was persuaded that the case against Saddam was “rock solid.”

Mr. Powell declined my requests for an interview, but in his 2012 book on leadership, he acknowledges having been annoyed years later when former CIA officials bemoaned his speech’s “unsupported claims.” “Where were they,” he wrote, “when the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] was being prepared months earlier?”

The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress. Over the previous 15 years, noted Stuart Cohen, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, none of the congressional committees routinely briefed on Iraqi WMD assessments expressed concern about bias or error.

Though few legislators apparently read the classified version of the 2002 WMD estimate—which contained more caveats than the sanitized “key findings” disclosed in October of that year—almost none disputed the analysts’ conclusion, with “high confidence,” that Saddam retained both chemical and germ weapons, or their view, with “moderate confidence,” that Iraq did not yet have nuclear weapons. Speeches denouncing Saddam’s cheating were given not just by Republican hawks but by prewar GOP skeptic Sen. Chuck Hagel and by senior Democrats Al Gore,Hillary Clinton and Jay Rockefeller, among others.

Another widespread fallacy is that such neoconservatives as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz strong-armed an inexperienced president into taking the country to war. President Bush, as he himself famously asserted, was the “decider.” One could argue, however, that Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, bears some responsibility. Though he personally opposed an invasion, Mr. Blix told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”

Years would pass before U.S. soldiers found remnants of some 5,000 inoperable chemical munitions made before the first Gulf War that Saddam claimed to have destroyed. Not until 2014 would the U.S. learn that some of Iraq’s degraded sarin nerve agent was purer than Americans had expected and was sickening Iraqi and American soldiers who had stumbled upon it.

By then, however, most Americans had concluded that no such weapons existed. These were not new chemical arms, to be sure, but Saddam Hussein’s refusal to account for their destruction was among the reasons the White House cited as justification for war.

— Ms. Miller’s new book, “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey,” will be published on April 7 by Simon & Schuster. She was a staff writer and editor at the New York Times from 1977 to 2005.
Popular on WSJ

    ‘

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/careers/army/2015/04/08/82nd-airborne-deploy-iraq/25458325/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/videos/bushs-top-cia-briefer-bush-and-cheney-lied-to-the-public-about-iraq-war-video/

[Crafty_Dog]

Hard to think of anyone more responsible for the foul ups than Rumbo.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/08/1391586/-Rumsfeld-Now-Says-George-W-Bush-was-Wrong-About-Iraq?detail=facebook_sf

[DougMacG]

Our attempt to install consensual, self-government in place of bloody, murderous tyranny in Iraq at the cost of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars was heroic.  It almost worked.  It did work for a while.  Others tossed away the gains that were made at such a great cost.  Saddam was hanged.  That sent a message.  We lost patience.  That sent another message.  We didn't even keep intel resources on the ground much less a residual force or 'base on the horizon' as was once contemplated.  A year ago our dear leader was calling ISIS the JV team.  Today he still doesn't have a plan to defeat them.  Commander in Chief in name only.  The commands he has issued in Iraq are stand down.

Saddam would be nuclear by now if left alone in 2002 when this debate occurred, 13 years ago according to the Iraq Study Group. 

[Crafty_Dog]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/01/welcome-to-basrastan-iraq-basra-secession-oil-shiite-south/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks&utm_campaign=2015_EditorsPicks_Promo_Russia_Direct_Jun29%20through%207%2F3%20SO%2071

[Crafty_Dog]

Very interesting stroll down memory line which is then contrasted with now

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/390725/biggest-lie-victor-davis-hanson

[Crafty_Dog]

Iraq's Coming Apocalypse
by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
March 13, 2016
http://www.meforum.org/5908/iraq-coming-apocalypse
 
 

No, it's not ISIS or rampaging Shi'i militias. It's the Mosul Dam, Iraq's largest, and its possible collapse, perhaps leading to millions of deaths. Those in the know worry catastrophe could strike this spring, as snows melt and build an uncontrollable water pressure.

Hastily built in wartime for the dictator Saddam Hussein by a German-Italian consortium, the Mosul Dam was located where it is because one of Hussein's cronies came from the area and used his pull, despite the fact that engineers knew from the start that its porous gypsum base could not sustain such a huge structure.

What was then called the Saddam Dam opened in 1984 and within two years needed constant grouting, that is, day and night infusions of microfine cement, lots of it – 200 million pounds over the decades – to keep it from collapsing. The grouting keeps the foundational problem from worsening but does not solve it.

The years went by; fortunately, there was no disaster on the American watch. Then, during a fateful ten-day period, August 7-17, 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) seized control of the dam. While the group neither sabotaged nor blew up the structure, grouting stopped for six weeks and the whole repair regime – especially the skilled workers and the supply of cement – henceforth became less consistent.
 
As a result, the dam has steadily weakened over the past 19 months, to the point that experts worry that a surge of spring waters will overwhelm it and cause its collapse. That the dam's two emergency floodgates are broken and cannot be opened to relieve intense pressure renders the situation the more fraught.

The consequences of a collapse are terrifying: A wall of water 45-70 feet high would reach Mosul, a city of some one million inhabitants, in about four hours. Then the flood wave would roll down the Tigris River valley to other cities, including the capital Baghdad, before dispersing in a wide flood. A huge number of immediate casualties would be followed by drought, disease, lack of electricity, chaos, and crime, ensuring biblical-level miseries and fatalities.

For years, quiet grouting and blithe assurances kept the precariousness of the Mosul Dam obscure. But heightened alarms coming from the U.S. government since the start of 2016, relying primarily on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates, appear finally to have awakened Iraqis to the dangers they face. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad has even issued a highly unusual "Mosul Dam Preparedness Fact Sheet" with advice (in English, alas) on evacuation steps, educational needs, and relief efforts.

The Iraqi government has issued a stream of dishonest assurances that there's no problem.

In contrast, the Iraqi government issues a stream of dishonest assurances that there's no problem. Mohsen al-Shimari, Iraq's minister for Water Resources and official in charge of the dam, says "The danger is not imminent, it's far off. The danger is 1 in 1,000" (itself, an unacceptable risk). Or he insists that Mosul Dam is in "no greater" danger than other dams. At other times he actually claims "there is no problem in the dam that may lead to its collapse." Note the inconsistency, itself a sign of duplicity.

In keeping with this irresponsible, even criminal nonchalance, Iraqi authorities have done next to nothing to prepare for a possible collapse. Yes, they claim that a contingency plan exists, but no one has seen it, much less learned its details, so what use can it have in time of crisis? Yes, they signed a $300 million deal with Trevi, an Italian company, to repair and maintain the Dam, but this is a Band-Aid fix, not a long-term solution.

To make matters worse, the dam's most vulnerable city, Mosul, labors under the rule of the apocalyptic Islamic State, whose disregard for human life and extreme hostility toward the outside world negates both crisis planning and international assistance. But there is a silver lining here; ISIS' monstrous rule has caused Mosul's population to decline from 2½ million two years ago to about 1 million now, thereby reducing the number of potential casualties there.
Assuming the dam survives this year's snow melt, only one long-term solution exists: to complete the Badush Dam downstream from the Mosul Dam, which would mitigate the consequences of a collapse. Started soon after the grouting began in 1986 but halted in 1990, this ancillary dam will cost US$10 billion that the Iraqi government cannot afford. But it must be the country's highest priority.

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/04/21/obama-important-not-withdraw-iraq/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/02/joe-biden-didnt-lose-iraq-obama-did/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks

[DougMacG]

The Iraq war debate, war, exit, ISIS takeover, and lessons learned issue never seems to get settled unless you are comfortable like our nominee saying falsely that Bush lied and people died.

Larry Elder is now a national show, on evening radio here.  Yesterday he replayed an interview he had with an Iraqi General in 2011.  His version of events match what was posted on the forum at the time only he has much more detail to offer.  Judge the veracity for yourself.  Getting this story right is still relevant.

https://www.larryelder.com/blog?action=viewBlog&blogID=843699310595324643&dest=/pg/jsp/community/printblog.jsp

March 30, 2011
Bush lied, people died?

I recently interviewed General Georges Sada, who served as the second-highest ranked general in the Iraqi Air Force. A two-star general, he wrote a recently published book called "Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein." Here are some sound bites from that interview:
Elder: General, as you know, the president has been accused of lying about the intelligence, fabricating it, cherry-picking it, that he wanted to go to war, he really didn't believe that Saddam had WMD. It was all a big smokescreen. When you hear people accuse the president of lying about WMD, of misleading the country and the world, your reaction, Gen. Georges Sada, is what?

Sada: Let me tell you. I am really surprised how people are speaking like this and their soldiers are still in the battle. You see, a soldier when he is in battle, he wants to feel that all his nation are backing him and they are with him. And now I tell you I feel very sorry when I see some people in this country, their soldiers are in the battle, and they are discussing political things making that soldier to feel that he is there in the wrong place. That's one. Second, if there was something right had been done in this country, it was the best decision taken in the proper time, to go and liberate Iraq from an evil dictatorship who only God knows what he was going to do in the region, and maybe even to America, because that man was possessing the weapons of mass destruction and then he was with very evil intentions towards all the West, especially America.

Elder: Fifteen months before we invaded Iraq, the president began talking about what our intentions would be if Saddam would not comply with the U.N. resolutions. During those 15 months . . . did Saddam have WMD, have stockpiles of WMD, and, if so, what type?

Sada: Iraq possessed WMD and they were there, and they were chemical and biological, and nuclear weapons. He have also deals with China to make it in China this time, not in Iraq, because F-16s of Israelis have destroyed the Iraqi nuclear project, therefore, he designed a new system to have the atom bomb to be done in China, and he would only pay the money, and he did for $100 million, and $5 million were paid for down payment. I know the bank, I know the branch, and I know the accountant who did it.

Elder: What happened to the chemical and biological weapons?

Sada: The chemical and biological weapons were available in Iraq before liberating the country, but Saddam Hussein took the advantage of a natural disaster that happened in Syria when a dam was collapsed and many villages were flooded. So Saddam Hussein took that cover and declared to the world that he is going to use the civilian aircraft for an air bridge to help Syria with blankets, food and fuel oil, and other humanitarian things, but that was not true. The truth is he converted two regular passenger civilian aircraft, 747 Jumbo and 727 . . . all the weapons of mass destruction were put there by the special Republican Guards in a very secret way, and they were transported to Syria, to Damascus, by flying 56 flights to Damascus. . . . In addition . . . also a truck convoy on the ground to take whatever has to do with WMD to Syria.

Elder: I've always thought it incredible, bizarre, unbelievable, that our intelligence could have been wrong, British intelligence could have been wrong, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the U.N., the Egyptians, the Jordanians, all of whom thought he had WMD. I never felt comfortable with the idea that everybody got it wrong. . . .

Sada: Your intelligence said that Saddam Hussein had WMD. . . . I agree with them. They were there in Iraq. But they didn't find them after liberation of Iraq, because they were searching not in the right place. These things were transported by air and by ground.

Elder: General, why would Saddam, knowing we were about ready to invade, transfer WMD out of the country instead of using it on American and coalition troops?

Sada: Because he knew that the power of America to liberate the country is more than what he can do. And maybe not all WMD were ready to use then. And that's why he transported to Syria and he thought that he's going to maintain in the power as he was maintained in 1991 and then he was going to get it back again and then proceed to complete the whole project of WMD.   ...
  
Also:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4KOSlNCPGg

[ccp]

"Elder: General, why would Saddam, knowing we were about ready to invade, transfer WMD out of the country instead of using it on American and coalition troops?

Sada: Because he knew that the power of America to liberate the country is more than what he can do. And maybe not all WMD were ready to use then. And that's why he transported to Syria and he thought that he's going to maintain in the power as he was maintained in 1991 and then he was going to get it back again and then proceed to complete the whole project of WMD.   ..."

This is what I have heard to.  The exponentially increases the damage that Trump did when he said Bush lied.  He hands to the political enemy, the enemy of our sovereignty, the propaganda lies the disillusions our youth, our allies, our military personnel, and all the people in our country who hate America all the ammo they need.

Not even to say what he did to smear Bush's reputation.

Trump will not care.   
 

[ccp]

So is Iraq better off with or without Saddam?  Either way the people are screwed if you ask me.  If the left thinks that the second Iraq war was a mistake then they have to accept that they think Iraqis were better off with him.  Or they are saying they give a damn about them and that it was just bad to remove Saddam for us.  Trump was right is saying that there would be no ISIS , at least in Iraq if Saddam was still there.  He did not say he loved Saddam.  Just that Saddam would not have put up with ISIS like we do:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/opinions/trump-comments-on-saddam-opinion-bergen/

[DougMacG]

So is Iraq better off with or without Saddam?  Either way the people are screwed if you ask me.  If the left thinks that the second Iraq war was a mistake then they have to accept that they think Iraqis were better off with him.  Or they are saying they give a damn about them and that it was just bad to remove Saddam for us.  Trump was right in saying that there would be no ISIS , at least in Iraq if Saddam was still there.  He did not say he loved Saddam.  Just that Saddam would not have put up with ISIS like we do:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/opinions/trump-comments-on-saddam-opinion-bergen/

Saddam would be nuclear by now.  For me, enough said.  And then Iran next.  And we would be safer?  Or that doesn't affect us?  Saddam crushed rivals but gave plenty of support to terrorists and terrorism.  He paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.  The bombers of the first attack on the World Trade Center traveled on Iraqi passports.  Saddam's state newspaper cryptically warned with glee of the Sept 11 2001 attacks 2 months before they occurred.  Saddam opposed terrorism?  That's bullshit.

Saddam or ISIS is a false choice.  We had both out at great cost before we surrendered and abandoned our hard-fought victories in Iraq.  THAT is the policy decision to question.

Take Trump at his word and he would have left Saddam in power.  Not loved him but would have left him in power, developing weapons, aiding and harboring terrorists, oppressing 33 million of his own, gassing the Kurds and with a history of attacking four of his neighbors, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi and Israel, plus shooting at US planes on UN missions. 

I don't follow his logic.

[Crafty_Dog]

Summary

The fight for Mosul is far from finished, but Iraqi politicians are already well into planning what will come next for their country. Though organizational and funding challenges could push Iraq's scheduled 2017 parliamentary elections off into the next year, the country's political parties have begun to assemble their blocs. The incipient coalition-building efforts have been unusually peaceable, unwittingly keeping with the loose framework that Ammar al-Hakim, head of Iraq's comprehensive Shiite coalition, the National Alliance bloc, laid out in October. Known as the "historic settlement," the plan provides a loose framework to reconcile Iraq's various religious sects and political factions once the country is rid of the Islamic State, emphasizing compromise and renouncing violence. However optimistic the historic settlement may seem, Iraq's competing parties are apparently heeding it, and they have so far limited themselves to verbal battles rather than enlisting the help of militias. Still, recent conflicts among Shiite and Kurdish political parties hint at the rivalries that will come to light as election season approaches.

Analysis

Iraq has much at stake in the next round of legislative elections, regardless of when it takes place. For one thing, the Iraqi people, weary after years of violence and upheaval, have pinned their hopes on the next vote to help usher in a new era for the country. For another, the elections will be a measure of Iraq's progress in restoring order after the bitter battle against the Islamic State. Legislative elections have long functioned as an indicator of the country's stability. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, Shiites and minority communities, including Kurds, were sidelined from the electoral process, which was neither free nor fair. After Saddam's administration fell in 2003, turnout among the Sunni population dropped — to just 2 percent in Anbar province during the 2005 vote — as competing militias and al Qaeda attacked Sunni voters in an effort to discredit the elections. Though conditions improved in the 2010 and 2014 elections, neither vote was free of sectarian violence. Facing the momentous task of rebuilding the war-torn country, Iraq's government knows that the success of the next elections will be essential to prove its stability to the international community. To that end, al-Hakim has taken his pacific plan on a tour of the Middle East to try to convince Iraq's regional allies of the country's future prospects and win financial support for the costly reconstruction process ahead.

The Shifting National Alliance

But already, Iraqi parties' differences are starting to show. Though the National Alliance is still Iraq's main Shiite coalition, its constituent parties are competing for dominance within the bloc. Vice President Nouri al-Maliki recently discovered that his party, State of Law, is losing ground in areas where it used to command the most power. During a recent tour of Maysan, Basra and Dhi Qar provinces in southern Iraq, the former prime minister and founder of State of Law faced angry protesters, evidence of al-Maliki's waning influence in the area. In the 2014 elections, by contrast, State of Law handily won in these provinces, securing between 32 and 40 percent of the vote in each location. Al-Maliki's hostile reception is none too surprising, even in his former electoral strongholds. After all, he is best known today for presiding over Iraq during the Islamic State's incursion into the country; before that, many Iraqis associated him with corruption and empowering Shiites at the expense of the country's minority populations.

Nevertheless, he is still a powerful figure in Iraq's political system, and his influence is far-reaching. Al-Maliki used his clout in the judicial system to regain his position as vice president after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's anti-corruption campaigns swept him from office in 2015. Along with State of Law, which still dominates Iraq's 328-seat parliament with 92 seats, al-Maliki also heads the Reform Front party, albeit unofficially. Earlier in the year, that party spearheaded efforts to unseat prominent ministers from Iraq's government.

For other Shiite parties in the bloc — especially those led by Muqtada al-Sadr — State of Law's loss could be their gain. As al-Maliki's reputation has suffered in recent years, al-Sadr, whose supporters booed the vice president during his trip to southern Iraq, has steadily amassed influence despite his controversial past. Although the Shiite parties stand to benefit from banding together to pass legislation, they will have a hard time uniting their respective constituent pools given the deep mistrust between them.

Deepening Divides in Iraqi Kurdistan

A similar factional rivalry threatens to limit Kurdish parties' gains in the upcoming elections. Iraqi Kurdistan's ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is finding itself increasingly at odds with the autonomous region's other political groups. Its main rival party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, for instance, has taken Baghdad's side in a dispute over the Kurdistan Regional Government's oil profit-sharing agreement with Iraq. In addition, a leader from the Gorran party recently criticized the KDP for its treatment of the peshmerga, provoking a backlash from the ruling party. As the rifts between the Kurdish parties widen, Arbil's internal divisions are becoming more stark than its differences with Baghdad.

In the runup to Iraq's next round of elections, rivalries will continue to emerge between the country's political parties, and alliances will keep shifting. But political infighting is a dramatic departure from sectarian violence — and for the Iraqi people, a welcome one. The coalition-building process, along with the preparations for the legislative vote, will help determine whether Iraq will continue reconciling its differences politically or will fall back into its pattern of sectarian conflicts.

[Crafty_Dog]

With ISIS on the Run, an Unexpected Leader Emerges in Iraq
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who generated few expectations, stitched together a military alliance and damped sectarianism
An Iraqi girl stands in a destroyed street in Mosul on Sunday.
An Iraqi girl stands in a destroyed street in Mosul on Sunday. Photo: Felipe Dana/Associated Press
By Ben Kesling
July 2, 2017 7:16 p.m. ET
88 COMMENTS

MOSUL, Iraq—Three years ago, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the existence of an Islamic State caliphate and proceeded to sweep his forces through northern Iraq and toward Baghdad, threatening the viability of the fragile country.

Today, the leader declaring an end to the caliphate is someone few would have imagined in the position, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. A man seen as the favorite of none but acceptable to all, the 65-year-old former electrical engineer has managed to turn that tepid sentiment into a defining strength.

Over nearly three years in office, Mr. Abadi has narrowed gaps between Iraq’s warring Shiite and Sunni politicians. He balanced competing interests among geopolitical rivals Iran and the U.S., and spearheaded an overhaul of Iraqi security forces, who had fled advancing Islamic State fighters. Iraq is close to retaking Mosul, Islamic State’s psychologically important stronghold.

“Abadi has magnificently shifted between leading and balancing,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “If he led too much then there’d be too many alienated people, and if he balanced too much there would be no forward progress.”

Today, Iraq’s security forces are on the verge of defeating Islamic State, the key requirement if the nation wants to enjoy a stable and cohesive future, despite daunting challenges that remain. Sectarian anger still simmers, and the country’s economy and infrastructure have been devastated by years of fighting.
The ruins on Sunday of the Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, where militant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the Islamic State caliphate three years ago.
The ruins on Sunday of the Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, where militant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the Islamic State caliphate three years ago. Photo: ahmad al-rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“Abadi is riding high,” said one U.S. official in Washington. “But the government needs to show that it can act to make people’s lives better, and probably the window for that is pretty limited. If it doesn’t, all that goodwill Abadi built up will diminish.”

There wasn’t always such a sense of possibility in Iraq. Before Islamic State swept to power in 2014, the country was at its most-fractious since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Abadi’s predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, was a polarizing figure, accused of fueling sectarian conflict and packing ministries with loyalists.

Transparency International ranked the country near the bottom at 171 of 177 countries world-wide for corruption, with such pervasive problems that the country has only moved up a few positions after years of attempted overhauls. Mr. Maliki didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Sunday released a public statement praising the military and militias.
Related

    Iraq’s Dilemma: Who Will Lead the Next Big Fight Against ISIS? (June 30)
    Islamic State Is Near Defeat in Iraq, Prime Minister Says (June 29)
    Torn by War on ISIS, Mosul Risks Lasting Divisions (June 9)
    Iraqi Forces Close In on Militants in Mosul (June 6)
    Splits Within Iraq’s Three Communities Reshape Its Politics (April 13)

When the festering Syrian civil war next door bled across the border, Iraq’s military crumbled. In June of 2014, militants exploited Iraq’s problems to blitz into Mosul—grabbing nearby land, stores of weapons and oil fields. In Islamic State’s advance, millions of civilians came to live under the Sunni extremist group’s rule.

Some Sunnis initially welcomed the militants as an alternative to the predominantly Shiite government of Mr. Maliki. The implementation of Shariah law followed, where people could be jailed for smoking or executed for unauthorized use of a cellphone.

Amid the turmoil, the conciliatory Mr. Abadi was tapped to become prime minister, an antidote to Mr. Maliki’s divisive rule. He faced growing alarm among Iraq’s allies.

Iran, the world’s biggest Shiite-majority country, couldn’t countenance its neighbor falling to a Sunni extremist group. In 2014 Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent Shiite cleric in Iraq, called on fellow countrymen to rise up to help protect the country; Shiite militias formed that Mr. Abadi has both empowered and theoretically kept under central government control. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite Quds Force decided to fund and train many of them.

Ayatollah Sistani, who typically makes public statements via a representative at Friday prayers, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

For Iran, forging such a partnership offered a way to cultivate a new proxy in Iraq and also to nurture others. Iran could revive overland supply routes through Iraq and its other ally, Syria, to Lebanon, where the Shiite political and militant group Hezbollah is based.

For Mr. Abadi, the relationship provided a backstop to a buckling Iraqi military. It also offered a skilled battlefield partner in Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Iran’s heavy involvement in Iraq also exposed Mr. Abadi to accusations that he was turning his country into an Iranian pawn.

An official in the office of Iran’s United Nations representative didn’t return a request for comment on Iran’s relationship with Mr. Abadi.

U.S. State Department officials mostly sidestep the thorny issue of Iran’s involvement in Iraq’s war against Islamic State, saying Baghdad was ultimately in charge of the powerful Shiite militias. As part of this balancing act, Mr. Abadi courted the U.S. military for assistance, too, just years after the Americans pulled troops out of the country.
What Would the Fall of Mosul, Raqqa Mean for ISIS?
As Islamic State's control over its strongholds in Iraq and Syria crumble, the extremist group acknowledges that soon not much may be left of its self-declared caliphate. So what does the loss of its territory mean for ISIS and will it bring its fight closer to the West? WSJ's Niki Blasina reports.

In 2014, the U.S. military started a gradual increase of troops with the launch of Operation Inherent Resolve. By the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, more than 5,000 Americans were deployed to Iraq with hundreds close to the front lines of combat. Support has increased under President Donald Trump.

Iraq has benefited from a more than billion-dollar investment by the U.S. to train and equip conventional army troops and special operations forces, and fund U.S. troops in the country. Mr. Abadi also fired generals from the Maliki era and demanded that top officers eschew sectarianism. Those steps brought increased assistance from the U.S., including advanced weapons and air support.

Comparing the current force to that of just a decade ago, when U.S. forces were still leading many operations, Lt. Col. James Downing, a U.S. Army adviser who is near the front lines in Mosul, said, “they are infinitely more capable.”

As the war with Islamic State heated up, Iraq became a tinderbox of crisscrossing rivalries and sectarian tensions. Christian and Sunni minorities in Iraq grew wary of Iran’s growing influence, with those groups forming some of their own militias.

Some Iran-friendly Shiite forces, meanwhile, became openly hostile to U.S. troops. In late 2015, multiple militias pledged to fight U.S. troops if they deployed to Iraq and established bases in the country, harking back to their efforts against Americans during the Iraq war.

Mr. Abadi sought to keep everyone on the same side, largely by lauding the benefits of a unified Iraq, adding Kurdish and Sunni elements to his cabinet and reaching out to Sunni leaders for dialogue.

From the beginning of his tenure, the Iraqi prime minister reached out to Sunni Arab countries in the region while maintaining his ties with Iran. In 2015, the Saudi government reopened its embassy in Baghdad, which had been shuttered decades before in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

Inside Iraq, Mr. Abadi begin to win over the country’s minority Sunnis.

“This government led by Abadi has not met desired levels of ambitions, but if you compare it with the previous government, you will find a big difference,” said Ahmed al-Masari, head of the Sunni political bloc in federal parliament. “Now there are reforms and progress, while during the previous government several provinces fell to terrorism.”

Renad Mansour, a fellow at Chatham House, a London-based internationally focused think tank, said Sunni leaders came to realize a flexible Shiite leader may be their least bad option, especially if they hoped to exercise some power as a minority group in a democratic Iraq. “The Sunnis are past their denial of reality,” he said. “They realize that they’re going to be a minority.”

Mr. Abadi didn’t neglect the country’s Shiite majority either. By 2015, Ayatollah Sistani, arguably the most revered figure in the country, voiced strong support for Mr. Abadi and worked to ensure the militias remained by law ultimately under Iraqi government control. Mr. Abadi in turn has praised the cleric, even this week saying his call to form militias was a crucial move to save the country from Islamic State dominance.

In marshaling foreign and domestic support, Mr. Abadi’s government began racking up wins. In mid-2015 Iraqi forces took back Tikrit from Islamic State, their first major territorial victory. In November 2015, Kurdish Peshmerga forces pushed into the northern town of Sinjar, and the Iraqi military soon declared the Anbar hub of Ramadi free from militant control. The city of Fallujah fell months later.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, left, with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in June, has built an alliance with Iran to help defeat Islamic State.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, left, with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in June, has built an alliance with Iran to help defeat Islamic State. Photo: Iranian Supreme Leader/European Pressphoto Agency

In Mosul, where an offensive began last fall, Islamic State didn’t retreat but dug in deeper. Even as Iraqi forces surrounded the city and advanced, the militants used hundreds of thousands of civilians as human shields while stockpiling munitions and setting up snipers’ nests in the warrens of the old city.

Today, Iraqi forces are fighting scattered pockets of Islamic State fighters.

In east Mosul, shops selling mobile phones or fashionable jeans have reopened next to restaurants slicing up kebabs. Patrons smoked openly, even during the holy month of Ramadan—a display unthinkable under Islamic State control.

Still, seeds of new conflicts are just below the surface.

Iraqi soldiers are accused of beating and summarily executing unarmed men and boys fleeing fighting in the heart of Mosul. The most recent allegations come from a Human Rights Watch report released Friday. Because the military is seen as a Shiite institution and Mosul is predominantly Sunni, such abuses, real or even rumored, threaten to fan sectarian tensions.

The Iraqi government will investigate any credible cases of abuse, according to Saad al-Hadithi, a spokesman for Mr. Abadi, but he said those allegations must be based on evidence and not hearsay. Mr. Abadi has said he wouldn’t tolerate any human-rights abuses by troops.

In Anbar Province, tribal officials have exiled families of Islamic State members. In the city of Mosul, the city council recently passed a resolution declaring the same. Mr. Abadi has signaled he will use his federal authority to prevent the local government from taking such actions.

Mosul mobile-phone salesman Forat Latif said the environment is ripe for another antigovernment group to lure Sunnis into more fighting.

“We will go back to the same environment that created Daesh,” he said. “It’s the same cloud that brought all this rain.”
Inside the ruins of Mosul’s Al-Nuri Mosque on Sunday.
Inside the ruins of Mosul’s Al-Nuri Mosque on Sunday. Photo: ahmad al-rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Iraqi officials recently released a 10-year $100 billion reconstruction plan. The government doesn’t have the money, and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund haven’t come forward with funds. Last year, the IMF provided a $5.3 billion dollar emergency loan to help stabilize the country—a sizable contribution at the time but a fraction of what is needed now. Large sections of major cities like Ramadi and Mosul have been destroyed, with buildings, bridges and water mains turned to rubble.

During his tenure, Prime Minister Abadi has overseen an increase in oil production, which helped boost the country’s GDP last year by 11%, according to the IMF. Yet low oil prices have complicated Iraq’s efforts to pay government workers, who have sporadically taken to the streets to protest, and the non-oil sector of the economy is still reeling.

One of the biggest challenges for Mr. Abadi is the pressure from different Iraqi minorities for more autonomy. The Kurdish north, led by President Masoud Barzani, has been angling for independence for years, and last month announced it will hold a referendum on the issue in September.

Federal elections are scheduled for April, and Mr. Abadi may face rivals for his position. He has managed to remain on good terms with both Iran and the U.S.—with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson praising the prime minister publicly in March.

But as the relationship between the U.S. and Iran deteriorates, there is a risk that Iran will back a challenger to the prime minister more clearly in Tehran’s camp. Mr. Maliki has remained a constant presence in the political realm.

Mr. Abadi may face his biggest test when Iraq and its foreign allies no longer share a common foe.

On Thursday, as he declared the end of the caliphate, Mr. Abadi stayed focused on defeating Islamic State. “We will continue to fight Daesh until every last one of them is killed or brought to justice.”

On the same day, though, brownouts in Baghdad left millions without power, showing the government’s limited capacity to provide public services to its people. Four improvised bombs, meanwhile, detonated in different areas of Baghdad, killing a handful of people. Such attacks are a reminder that the war against Islamic State is moving beyond the battlefield and into the daily lives of Iraqis, something they had hoped a prime minister would prevent.

—Ghassan Adnan in Baghdad, Asa Fitch and Ali A. Nabhan in Erbil, Iraq, and Dion Nissenbaum in Washington contributed to this article.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.speroforum.com/a/JQXMKQBSPM21/81788-Muslim-hatred-seeks-to-destroy-Christianity-in-Iraq-says-Patriarch-Sako?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LEJYGFVVZY5&utm_content=JQXMKQBSPM21&utm_source=news&utm_term=Muslim+hatred+seeks+to+destroy+Christianity+in+Iraq+says+Patriarch+Sako#.WdNQlXrcCeQ

[Crafty_Dog]

http://havokjournal.com/culture/books/dreaming-ishtar-land-two-rivers/?utm_source=Havok+Journal&utm_campaign=5e0d61755a-Havok_Journal_Weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_566058f87c-5e0d61755a-214571297

[Crafty_Dog]

In its quest to counter Iranian influence, Saudi Arabia is hoping to use its financial clout to turn the tide on a different sort of battlefield. According to Iraqi media sources, behind the scenes talks in the Kurdistan region of Iraq have led Saudi Arabia to offer $10 million to support the Shiite TV station Al Forat. Further reports indicate that media personnel from the station were sent to Saudi media offices in the United Arab Emirates for training. Though the reports haven't been confirmed by Saudi or Emirati sources, Al Forat recently announced that it has upgraded its channel to air in high definition and that its app will soon support IOS and Android devices. It may not be a complete confirmation, but the new upgrades suggest the channel has indeed acquired more funding.

If the reports are true, it would be a clear effort from powerful Sunni Arab Gulf states to support Iraqi media that could counter Iranian influence in Iraq. More than that, it would mark an effort by Saudi Arabia to increase its influence with Iraqis, regardless of sectarian affiliation. A well-known media station in Iraq, Al Forat is owned by Shiite cleric and political leader Ammar al-Hakim. However, Hakim's political party, the National Wisdom party, has denied reports of Saudi funding for the TV station.

Hakim is a logical personality for Saudi Arabia to connect with in Iraq. A member of a prominent family of Shiite clerics, Hakim maintains significant popularity. In addition, he split from the Iran-linked Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq last fall to form his own political movement with greater independence from Iran. Although he is Shiite, Hakim still ticks a lot of boxes for the Sunni Arab Gulf states. It's not guaranteed that he and his network have received their backing, but Hakim and Al Forat are exactly the sort of influential voices that it would make sense for Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies to support.

[Crafty_Dog]

Iraq, Russia: A Russian presidential aide said Russia is delivering a brigade’s worth of armored hardware to Iraq. This comes after Iraq’s prime minister issued a decree formalizing the inclusion of Shiite groups in the Iraqi security forces. This seems like a lot of equipment. Could it be further evidence of Russia and Iran taking over Iraq? How will the U.S. respond?

[Crafty_Dog]

The Role of Militias in Iran’s Strategy for Iraq

Iran’s strategy in Iraq is to gradually exercise greater control over Iraqi state institutions.

    Last updated: March 19
By George Friedman and Xander Snyder

Iran’s activities in Syria get a lot of press, but less attention is paid to what Iran has done in Iraq to make those activities manageable. Iran operates a Shiite foreign legion that over the years has trained 200,000 fighters in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. And one part of that foreign legion is the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. The militias of the PMF all but control northern Iraq, which Iran has transformed into a land bridge to supply its other proxy groups in Syria and Lebanon.

The term “Popular Mobilization Forces” was first used in 2013 by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to refer to the Shiite militias in Iraq, but it wasn’t until the fall of Mosul in 2014 that the PMF really came into existence. As IS flooded into the city, Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling on all able-bodied men—regardless of sect—to mobilize and oppose the invasion. Around the same time, al-Maliki signed a decree mandating the formation of the PMF Commission, which administers Iraqi state funds for PMF groups. Iran also discreetly funds some of these groups, and many pro-Iran militia leaders today occupy important positions within the Iraqi government, giving them substantial control over funding decisions… and even battle plans.

According to a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, an American think tank, there are 67 unique PMF militias, approximately 40 of which are pro-Iran in some form or another. Estimates of the total size of all PMF groups vary from 100,000 to 140,000 fighters. Most of these are Shiite fighters, but not all—approximately 25,000 to 30,000 are Sunnis. Minorities like Yazidis, Kurds, and Turkmen also fight in PMF militias.

In 2014, when IS started to advance on Mosul, the Iraqi security forces fled. American support was practically nonexistent, and the Iraqi government was defenseless. The Popular Mobilization Forces came to Mosul’s aid. During the PMF’s siege to retake Mosul, Hadi al-Amiri, Badr’s current leader and an Iraqi member of parliament, ordered a significant adjustment at the last minute.


(click to enlarge)

The original plan was to enclose the city on three sides, leaving open an escape corridor to the west for civilians to flee. Of course, this would also allow IS fighters to escape in the direction of Syria, whose borders are only some 110 miles (180 kilometers) from Mosul along the road through Tal Afar. But Iran did not want IS fighters flooding into the Syrian theater and making the fight harder for Bashar Assad just as he was beginning to turn the tide of the civil war. Under al-Amiri’s revised plan, PMF forces completely enveloped Mosul, forcing IS to fight to the death. The late move also gave pro-Iran PMF groups control of more territory in northern Iraq, which solidified Iran’s supply lines through Iraq into northern Syria. The intervention of an Iraqi politician was therefore instrumental in securing Iran’s control of a northern land bridge through Iraq and into Syria.

PMF Factions

Broadly speaking, there are three main factions within the PMF: those loyal to Iran and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, those loyal to Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, and those loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, another Iraqi Shiite cleric known for his populism. Notably, all three of these factions are majority Shiite, meaning the Sunni-Shiite fault line that often defines Middle Eastern conflicts hardly applies in this case. The more relevant division is between Iraqi nationalists and Iran loyalists. Groups that side with al-Sistani and al-Sadr are in the Iraqi nationalist camp.

The pro-Iran groups advocate and fight to further Iran’s interests regardless of whether they conflict with the interests of Iraq. In addition to the funding they get from the PMF Commission, they are usually funded by Iran and report either directly or indirectly to the Quds Force, the foreign expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Further, they support Iran’s vision of a pan-Islamic state that is governed by Iran’s Islamic institutions and, importantly, report to Iran’s supreme leader (a religious-political theory known as wilayat al-faqih, or Rule of the Jurisprudent).

Other Shiite groups, such as those loyal to al-Sadr, advocate a system similar to that in Iran but with a strictly Iraqi nationalist flavor and its own leader. (Al-Sadr would be his own choice as Iraq’s version of supreme leader.) Al-Sistani’s focus, meanwhile, was on defeating the Islamic State, and in the past, he has called for the forces loyal to him to demobilize after beating IS. He has since seemed to backtrack, recognizing that PMF factions are perhaps the best way to resist Iranian influence, not to mention the risk of an IS resurgence.

Iran’s Strategy

Iran’s strategy in Iraq, like its strategy with Hezbollah in Lebanon, is to gradually exercise greater control over Iraqi state institutions. It has already succeeded to a degree, although Iran’s influence is not yet as pervasive in Iraq as it is in Lebanon, in part because of the sheer number of competing factions.

Iran wants a weak, but stable, Iraq. The first part is easy to pursue, but not without endangering the second part. Iran does not want Iraq to be strong enough and nationalistic enough to challenge it outright, which would put its supply routes to Syria and Lebanon at risk and could threaten it with another general war. But if Iran pushes too far, Iraqi state institutions could be imperiled, potentially providing the opportunity for a re-emergence of an IS-like group. Iran also risks triggering a concerted pushback by the Sunnis—either in the form of, again, an IS-like group, or simply staunch electoral opposition. And Iran doesn’t want Iraq to become so divided that secession of any group becomes a possibility. Secession would set a worrying precedent for Iran, which is facing its own domestic political challenges and difficulty in spurring more equitable economic growth.

An ideal situation for Iran is one in which, even if the Iraqi government is not fully under its control, it is weak enough to allow for the ongoing presence of pro-Iran militias. Even if Iran’s militia groups do not become as fully incorporated into the Iraqi government as Hezbollah is in Lebanon, Iran could use its groups to launch attacks in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

[Crafty_Dog]

By Karl Zinsmeister
April 8, 2018 4:30 p.m. ET
19 COMMENTS

The debate over the Iraq War’s impact—pitting critics like President Trump against defenders like new national security adviser John Bolton —has been dramatic since the conflict began 15 years ago. Then, supporters described the war in utopian terms, as when President George W. Bush assured Americans it would be “a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.” Critics in America and abroad were as vehement in their pessimism. “Every Iraqi is a potential Saddam,” opined one Middle Eastern academic when asked that same year by the Economist whether democracy had a chance in Iraq.

Today’s reality is somewhere in between. Yet it is startling to note—given the series of coups that made Iraq one of worst-governed places on earth for much of the 20th century—that the country seems to be building a resilient democracy. Iraq now has a reasonable chance of joining a rarefied club: countries escorted by U.S. troops into decent governance and national success.

A few hard measures of social progress demonstrate the significant improvement of Iraqi society. Start with national income, the factor that generally determines whether other good things can happen in a nation. According to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Iraq’s per capita gross domestic product was 51% higher in 2017 than in 2002, the year before U.S. troops arrived. By comparison, eurozone nations grew by 11% in the same income measure during that period.

Or take the annual mortality rate, perhaps the most overarching measure of a society’s health. United Nations data show that Iraq’s mortality rate fell 18% from 2002-17.

Is Iraq a thriving nation? By no means. The fraction of the population in the labor force is low, and unemployment is around 16%. About three million residents fled their homes when ISIS took over a third of the countryside, and though many are returning now that the terror group has been nearly destroyed, homes and neighborhoods need rebuilding. As throughout Iraq’s history, graft continues to be a plague, with the nation’s bureaucracy rated as “highly corrupt” by Transparency International.

Iraq’s government must find a way to solve these problems. Which brings us to the biggest surprise, and a source of cautious hope for the nation’s future. On May 12, Iraq will conduct its fifth consecutive free national election. Only a handful of countries within a 1,000-mile radius have any tradition of competitive balloting. Saddam Hussein had dictated to Iraqis for 24 years until he was removed. Hardly any Arab governments allow fair voting. The Iranians next door hold sham elections.

As summarized in November by The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov, Iraq has “a genuine political life and a relatively free press,” and “the country is bucking the slide toward autocratic rule that has become the norm across the region.” The durability of Iraqi self-rule is especially remarkable in the face of recent shocks like the ISIS invasion, Kurdish attempts at separation, and a 55% drop in the price of oil, which makes up about half of Iraq’s economy.

The latest cheering news has been the backlash against Iranian meddling. When Ali Akbar Velayati, the top foreign-policy adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, visited Iraq in February, he was criticized angrily by many Iraqis for interfering in their nation’s affairs. The top Shiite cleric in Iraq, Ali al-Sistani, refused to meet with Mr. Velayati in protest of Iran’s efforts to influence Iraqi electors.

Even former collaborators with Iran like Shiite radical Moqtada al-Sadr are now harshly critical of the way the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are trying to manipulate Iraq. The Iraqi cleric has modified his style of Islamism to court Sunnis and secular Iraqis into a nationalist alliance focused on addressing corruption and poverty. Shiite leader Ammar al-Hakim is likewise promoting a new nonsectarian effort to unite Iraqis across religious and ethnic lines.

On the opposite side, leaders of some pro-Iranian Shiite militias will soon test the popularity of continued sectarianism as candidates in the May election. But Iraq’s dominant Shiites are no longer acting as a monolithic tribal bloc. They are maturing into voters who define themselves by policy divergences. That is a healthy development.

Similar reshuffling is taking place among Iraqi Kurds, many of whom were so annoyed by Kurdish President Masoud Barzani’s self-aggrandizement and failure to relinquish power at the end of his term that they acquiesced in the Iraqi army’s recent reassertion of control over Kirkuk and other Kurdish areas.

This breakdown of unbending tribal allegiances is allowing a much richer national politics, based on problem-solving and rule of law rather than blood and soil. Iraq’s next ruling party and prime minister will emerge at the head of a broad, complex coalition. The new government will promise many things to many different kinds of Iraqis. The governing process will be messy, and wholly successful efforts will be rare.

But in this mercurial part of the world, that kind of checked-and-balanced rule that protects minorities and different viewpoints represents progress. While tribal preferences and favors will continue, there will be chances for prudent leaders like current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to extend Iraq’s income rise and the decline in mortality. Reformers can press for improvements in education and health care, and rebuilding neighborhoods.

If today’s trends continue for another 15 years, Iraq’s representative government and economic growth will become impossible for neighbors like Iran and Syria—and perhaps also Turkey and Saudi Arabia—to overlook.

Mr. Zinsmeister was an embedded reporter in Iraq from 2003-06 and served as White House chief domestic policy adviser, 2006-09.

[Crafty_Dog]

Iraq: The U.S. deactivated its command center in Iraq overseeing U.S. ground operations against the Islamic State, citing the “changing composition and responsibilities” of the jihadist threat. But the Pentagon said it is not pulling all U.S. troops out of the country. The continued presence of U.S. troops has become a campaign issue ahead of Iraq’s national elections later this month. What is the new disposition of U.S. forces in Iraq? What is the risk of the U.S. getting pushed out of Iraq again – and would the U.S. care?

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/world/middleeast/iraq-iran-election-enemies.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=496

[Crafty_Dog]

second post and not unrelated to the first

What’s at Stake in Iraq’s Elections



The government in Tehran will still have some degree of influence in Iraq regardless of who wins.



Iran’s influence in the Middle East is no secret. The government has made no effort to hide its regional ambitions, and it has barely balked in expanding its influence since the Islamic State was weakened. Its influence has always been kept in check by the fact that it is a Shiite country in a majority Sunni region. One notable exception is Shiite-majority Iraq, and the parliamentary elections on May 12 will be an indicator of just how deep Iran has sunk its roots into the organs of the state – and of just how divided Iraqi society is.
New and notable about the upcoming election is just how many political parties and coalitions there are in a contest that ordinarily sees just a few broad coalitions. These coalitions tend to run the gamut of political interests. In power currently is the State of Law coalition, which won more seats than any other coalition in 2014 but failed to win an outright majority. That year, Nouri al-Maliki, a member of the Islamic Dawa Party, which is part of the ruling coalition, lost his position as prime minister. At the time, he was Iran’s preferred candidate, but fearing his loyalties to Tehran could lead to civil war again, Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds, the United States, Iran and Iraqi Shiites all pressured him to step down from his post. He was replaced by current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is also a member of the Dawa Party but who is considered more moderate and less hostile to Sunni and Kurdish interests.



 

(click to enlarge)



Now, the Dawa Party is fractured. Al-Maliki, who still has close ties to Iran, is running as the candidate from the State of Law coalition, which is attempting to appeal to the conservatives in Dawa, while al-Abadi is as the candidate from the Victory coalition, which seeks to draw support from younger and less conservative Dawa members. Then there is the Marchers Alliance, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, who also leads one of the biggest Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Al-Sadr had Iran’s supported during the U.S. occupation in Iraq, but he has since resisted Iranian influence in favor of his own brand of Iraqi Shiite nationalism.

In all, there are five Shiite coalitions in the running for parliament, including the Conquest Alliance, which is led by the same man who heads an Iranian-backed PMF unit. Also in contention are two Sunni groups and multiple Kurdish factions that are even more divided than usual following the Kurdistan Regional Government’s failed independence referendum held last year.

Though Iran may prefer one group to beat the others, the government in Tehran will still have some degree of influence in Iraq regardless of who wins. After all, it still controls and funds plenty of PMF militias, at least one of whose leaders has publicly claimed that he would topple the Iraqi government if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so ordered. Several important government positions, moreover, are held by people sympathetic to Iran, including the one responsible for determining which PMF groups get funding from the Iraqi government. In this context, whether a pro-Iran militia leader is elected to office is less important than what their mere candidacy reveals about Iran’s efforts to exert influence in Iraq.

Underlying the competition between Iraqi nationalists and pro-Iran factions is a battle for leadership of the Shiite Muslim world itself. Iran’s regime derives its legitimacy from its unique interpretation of a Shiite theological concept called velayat-e faqih, which roughly translates to “rule by jurist.” According to this theory, management of social matters should be entrusted in a jurist who will lead Muslims until the true successor to the Prophet Muhammad re-emerges. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first ruler of Iran, used this theory to argue that the Islamic Republic needed to be ruled by a supreme leader who would guide the nation in both religious and political affairs.



 

(click to enlarge)



Others, however, have interpreted the doctrine differently. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, believes that the jurist’s role should be limited to providing spiritual guidance. Al-Sistani has advocated for a democratic system in Iraq, one that incorporates all segments of society – Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians – into the body politic. Before Khomeini established the Islamic Republic in 1979, al-Sistani’s interpretation was the dominant one in Shiite theological circles, and even some ayatollahs in Iran opposed Khomeini’s doctrine.

This may seem like an arcane and nebulous theological distinction, but it has practical consequences. Al-Sistani’s approach lends itself to nationalism and conflicts with the transnational Shiite identity that Iran is trying to cultivate throughout the region in the hopes that it can ultimately build a Shiite empire. Al-Sistani, who ordered all able-bodied Iraqi – not Shiite – men to form militias to fight the Islamic State, told the PMF units loyal to him to disband after the Islamic State’s defeat and has advocated that religious leaders stay out of politics. But it is through those very PMF groups that Iran has exercised greater influence in Iraq. Nonetheless, Shiites loyal to al-Sistani remain wary of Iran’s role in Iraq and will seek to defeat the pro-Iran candidates in this weekend’s election.

Iran claims to be the true leader of Shiites in the Middle East, and since its clerical rule is based on the premise that religious leaders must also be political leaders, al-Sistani’s approach is a threat not only to Iran’s ability to project power in Iraq, but also to the legitimacy of the theocratic regime in Iran itself. The two interpretations therefore focus on two competing identities: one as a citizen of a Shiite empire, and the other as a citizen of a nation-state where politics and religion are mostly separate (at least by the standards of the region). The upcoming election therefore is about more than just politics; it is the latest battle in a war over leadership of the Shiite world itself.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6528453/Iraq-makes-Christmas-Day-official-nationwide-holiday-mark-birth-Jesus-Christ.html?ito=social-facebook

[Crafty_Dog]

Iraq: What a Kurdish Military Return to Kirkuk Means for the Province

The Big Picture

Iraq's status as one of the world's top oil producers, its persistent problems with jihadist militants, and its geographic location between Middle Eastern powers make it geopolitically important. The Iraqi Kurds, who predominantly reside in their own semi-autonomous region in the country's north, are stakeholders in all of these issues. As Kurdish officials continue to work through their disagreements with Iraq's federal government and each other, the outcomes of their power struggles will directly impact Iraq's stability and security. And thanks to the country's contribution to oil markets, Iraq's internal struggles and the relationship between its different major oil producing regions matter for the global energy sector.
See 2019 Annual Forecast
See The Kurdish Struggle

What Happened

The tension between Iraq's federal government and its semi-autonomous Kurdish region appears to be simmering down. According to Rudaw, a media outlet affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Kurdish and Iraqi officials have reached an agreement to replace the Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that currently patrol Kirkuk city with KDP-affiliated peshmerga forces. The news came from an official within the KDP and was tacitly confirmed by a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) official, but the report still needs to be taken with a grain of salt — particularly because it has not been confirmed by Baghdad or PMF officials. However, the news does indicate that Iraq's federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Arbil are holding discussions over one of their thornier disagreements.

Why It Matters

A return of KDP fighters to Kirkuk would suggest improved relations between Bagdad and Arbil, which could lead to breakthroughs in other ongoing disagreements — including energy production, cooperation against the Islamic State and territorial disputes. Currently, some Kirkuk residents view the presence of PMF personnel as a visible symbol of federal, Shiite or Iranian influence in their community. And Kurdish authorities, particularly those in the KDP, desperately want to reassert their political influence over Kirkuk by deploying peshmerga forces to areas now held by federal forces — including Shiite PMF troops.

Kirkuk province is not only home to lucrative oil reserves and a complex mosaic of Iraqi communities, it also lies in territory claimed by both Arbil and Baghdad. Because of this, it is one of the most contentious locations in Iraq and is struggled over by competing military and political forces. Moreover, the region has caught the attention of Turkey and Iran, which both maintain local interest groups in Kirkuk to pursue the benefits of deeper trade ties with the wealthy province.

Background

Iraq's federal government deployed forces to Kirkuk province in October 2017 as a punitive response to the September 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. The move cost the KDP — which spearheaded the referendum — its political influence in Kirkuk, as well as some of its military presence. Indeed, the KDP has not been present at a meeting of the Kirkuk Provincial Council since federal forces arrived. Because of this, the KDP's military return to the region — provided it happens — would also indicate that the group has managed to resolve disagreements with other Kurdish politicians from the PUK who weren't fully on board with the independence referendum. As Kurdish authorities work to further their own power by increasing cooperation with each other and with Baghdad, they may also succeed in increasing the Kurdistan region's stability and prosperity.

Cheat Sheet

    Kurdistan Region of Iraq: An autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq encapsulating Arbil, Dohuk and Suleimaniyah governorates (provinces).
    Kirkuk: A city 238 kilometers (148 miles) north of Baghdad and the capital of the oil-rich Kirkuk province. Home to both Kurds and Arabs, a contentious independence referendum in 2017 strained relations between the KRG and Baghdad.
    KRG: Kurdistan Regional Government. Based in Arbil, the ruling body of Iraq's Kurdistan region, one of the country's four federal regions.
    PUK: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. One of the main Kurdish political ruling parties in the region, originally a coalition of five separate political entities.
    KDP: The Kurdistan Democratic Party. Along with the PUK, one of the main Kurdish political ruling parties in the region. Led by the Barzani tribe.
    Peshmerga: A catchall term for the armed forces of the various Kurdish factions of Iraqi Kurdistan. The peshmerga are divided in loyalty between the KDP and the PUK.
    PMF: Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces, sponsored by Baghdad, consisting of at least 40 militias. Along with the peshmerga, these units were heavily involved in the fight against the Islamic State.

[Crafty_Dog]

Like It or Not in Iraq, U.S. Ties Are Here to Stay
Iraqis gather in a mosque in Najaf on Feb. 20, 2019, to mourn victims who were reportedly abducted and killed by armed men on motorbikes.


    As the United States begins to withdraw troops from Syria, maintaining a presence in Iraq will become increasingly important to countering terrorism and Iranian influence in the region.

    The economic threat of U.S. sanctions because of Baghdad's ties to Iran will continue to spark debate and fracture Iraq's dominant Shiite political elite.

    Some Iraqi lawmakers have been pushing to legally expel the United States from their country, though such legislation is unlikely to pass.

    Despite mounting anti-U.S. sentiment in the country, Iraq's pervasive security concerns will solidify its need to keep ties with Washington.

 

Editor's Note: This assessment is part of a series of analyses supporting Stratfor's upcoming 2019 Second-Quarter Forecast. These assessments are designed to provide more context and in-depth analysis on key developments over the next quarter.

In December, the United States abruptly announced it would begin withdrawing troops from Syria, leaving neighboring Iraq to consider how its own political and security situation might be affected. However, Washington has assured Baghdad that it does not intend to change its deployment in Iraq, where it currently maintains more than 4,000 troops. This is partially because Iraq's security and stability depend on its relationship with the United States, and partially because leaving Iraq would force Baghdad to align more closely with Iran.

Amid increasingly hostile relations between Washington and Tehran, Iraq is attempting to balance necessary U.S. cooperation alongside its close but complicated economic and security relationship with Iran. And while this dynamic has led to Iraq's increasingly nationalist political environment in recent years, the truth is that in the face of mounting security threats, Iraq remains too weak to completely sever ties with either the United States or Iran.

The Big Picture

Iraq’s internal security and stability depends on the support Baghdad can accrue from its external allies, namely the United States and Iran. But in recent years, rising nationalist movements in the country have begun pressuring Baghdad to cut its ties with foreign powers. However, doing so will prove difficult, as its perpetually poor security situation leaves Iraq little choice but to remain dependent on outside help.

See Rebalancing Power in the Middle East

Why Washington Remains


Maintaining a presence in Iraq is critical for the United States to pursue its own regional goals, including countering Iran's influence and presence in the country, as well as cooperating with its regional allies on counterterror measures. This is why, even after former President Barack Obama's major drawdown of troops in 2011, a sizeable contingent of U.S. forces remains in Iraq to this day — working alongside Iraqi security forces to fight the Islamic State, among other terrorist groups and sources of instability.

Leaving Iraq would also open the door for the United States' regional rival, Iran, to take its place. Iran is intent on retaining control over its political capital in Iraq, especially as widening U.S. sanctions on Iranian commercial ties threatens the vast web of Tehran's economic inroads and business ties in Iraq. U.S. ally Israel has also threatened to strike Iranian proxies within Iraq — including thousands of Iran-backed militia members who are part of the popular mobilization units — should they start to threaten Israel with missiles. In addition, removing U.S forces from Iraq would also alarm Washington's Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, which it has been encouraging to invest in Iraqi reconstruction efforts to help counter Iran from doing so.

Beyond supporting the Iraqi federal government in Baghdad, Washington's relationship with the Kurdish regional government in Arbil will likely become even more valuable as well, as it tries to reassure allied Kurdish forces that it is not wholly abandoning all Kurds in the wake of its withdrawal from the Syrian territories, where U.S. forces have worked closely with Syrian Kurds for years.

However, both the economic threat of U.S. sanctions, as well as the physical threat of a potential strike on Iraqi militia forces, have also fired up pro-Iranian Iraqis (both in Iraqi Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq) who want to defend against foreign interference — contributing to the momentum of anti-U.S. sentiment now building in Baghdad.

The Rise of Anti-U.S. Sentiment

Over the past year, an increasing number of nationalist and Iran-allied politicians have begun calling for the Iraqi government to consider expelling U.S. forces, and to reassess Iraq's relationship with the United States more broadly. This was recently evidenced when President Donald Trump visited U.S. troops in Iraq in December and ruffled political feathers by not meeting with Iraqi leaders while he was there. Qais al-Khazali, who is head of one of the major Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, quickly seized on the upheaval following Trump's visit by publicly calling for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. And while not all Iraqis support politicians such as al-Khazali's close alliance with the Iranian government, many do share their anti-imperialist and anti-Western sentiment.

A graphic showing the party breakdown in Iraq's National Assembly.

The election of a more nationalist parliament in May 2018 laid the political groundwork for some of the increasing backlash against the United States' extended stay in Iraq. Cross-sectarian coalitions, like that of nationalist Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, won the most seats by running campaigns that called for Iraqis to reject imperialist projects in their country. And Iranian-allied political blocs with deep militia ties, such as that of politician Hadi al-Amiri, won the second-highest number of seats.

Washington's hardening resolve to limit Iran's influence and economic activity across the Middle East has also fueled Iraqis' growing discontent. Iraq is one of the biggest foreign markets for Iranian goods and services, meaning its citizens would suffer if Iraqi companies were no longer able to easily transact with Iranian companies.

Political Constraints 

However, pleas from Iraqi lawmakers and the public to reassess their country's ties with the United States — no matter how noisy — won't ultimately succeed in fundamentally changing U.S.-Iraq relations.

Any bill to expel the United States from Iraq would also require amending the Strategic Framework Agreement signed by former President George W. Bush in 2008, which stipulates that U.S. forces are in Iraq only at the invitation of the Iraqi government. Iraqi President Barham Salih, for one, has expressed his support for retaining the agreement and Baghdad's bilateral relationship with Washington. This also means that even if parliament were to pass such a bill amending the agreement (majority support doesn't seem to currently exist), the final decision would go to Iraq's Supreme Court because it involves matters of national security.

As long as Iraq’s security concerns remain acute, the country's ties with Washington are unlikely to break.

Nonetheless, the debate in Baghdad will continue to rage on — deepening divisions between Shiite political leaders who fall on opposing sides. The resulting gridlock will further thwart the Iraqi government's ability to finish basic functions, such as completing the appointment of its Cabinet where the justice, interior and defense minister posts still remain vacant. In the near future, this means that the government will also struggle to address the unrest in Iraq's southern provinces expected this summer when temperatures rise and water and electricity shortages become more acute.

No End in Sight

With that said, this current flare-up of anti-U.S. sentiment is, of course, part of the long-standing fallout from the U.S. invasion in 2003. When Washington forcibly removed Saddam Hussein, it inadvertently gave its rival Iran an opening in the Shiite-majority country — which Tehran has taken advantage of ever since. This complexity has only increased in recent years, with the United States stating that it wants regime change in Tehran.

But above all else, the enduring severity of the counterterror fight is what has kept — and will continue to keep — relations between Iraq and the United States as firm as they are. While the territorial caliphate of the Islamic State is largely defeated, the U.S. Defense Department recently assessed that the group was still a potent force in Iraq, adding that it could also resurge in Syria without appropriate pressure to keep it down. This sobering assessment has solidified Iraq's dependence on both U.S. forces and Iranian-backed militias, which are both integral in helping Baghdad on the front line of its grueling counterterror fight. Therefore, as long as Iraq’s security concerns remain acute, the country's ties with Washington are unlikely to break.