As early voting begins in Sunday’s national elections, Iraq has been beset by bombings: the toll from three suicide attacks in Baquba on Wednesday is now 33 dead and 42 injured, and a suicide bomber has killed three and injured 15 today at a Baghdad polling station.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that it has gotten hold of an American intelligence document detailing undue Iranian influence in Iraq and in the Iraqi elections. The document says that Ahmad Chalabi and Ali al-Lami, influential members of the ‘Jusice and Accountability Committee’ in charge of purging Baathists from public life, met repeatedly with Iranian officials last fall. Among those they met were Qasim Sulaimani, head of the special forces Jerusalem (Quds) Brigade and the Iranian foreign minister. US Commanding General in Iraq, Ray Odierno, charged that Iran was behind the campaign to disqualify over 500 alleged Baathists from running in Iraq’s March 7 parliamentary, and this document seems to lend some credence to the allegation.
Within days of President Obama’s inauguration last January, I began writing of a military attempt to “bump him” on three fronts: preventing the closure of Guantanamo Bay, getting more troops in Afghanistan, and delaying the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
Well, the commanders, backed by key individuals in the Executive and the complications of Congress, succeeded on the first two matters. And, days before Iraq’s national elections, they are pressing again on the third. General Raymond Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq and a man who (a la General David Petraeus) has learned how to work the press, started telling favoured reporters that Obama’s August date for removal of most combat troops might not be tenable. Prominent columnists like Thomas Friedman and Thomas Ricks soon rolled out the arguments for sticking around.
In contrast to last year, this is not yet a head-on clash with the President; Odierno and his allies, possibly including Petraeus, now head of the US Central Command for the region, are working around him through media channels. But it does set up a challenge for Obama, especially if expected political complications with the elections occur: does he again give way on policy to his military brass?
UPDATE 0915 GMT: Here is what, in today’s power politics, is what the rhetoric of “liberal intervention” props up. Thomas Ricks declares, alongside Friedman’s piece in The New York Times, “Leaders in [the US and Iraq] may come to recognize that the best way to deter a return to civil war is to find a way to keep 30,000 to 50,000 United States service members in Iraq for many years to come.”
Seven years after the 2003 war and the violence and disorder that followed, Iraq has moved on to other political conflicts and issues. Yet, for some, this will always be a case of returning to the scene to construct victory or to build the excuse for absolution. War must become liberation, crime must become justice, tragedy must become redemption.
One of those who persists is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. This morning Friedman, who used his “liberal” drum to bang loudly and incessantly for the 2003 invasion, opens his column:
From the very beginning of the U.S. intervention in Iraq and the effort to build some kind of democracy there, a simple but gnawing question has lurked in the background: Was Iraq the way Iraq was (a dictatorship) because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a collection of warring sects incapable of self-rule and only governable with an iron fist?
2250 GMT: Cyber-Warfare. Looks like someone wants to stop the latest Karroubi surge. The “Sun Army” took down Karroubi’s website Saham News. The Saham staff have control of the site again but a message indicates that it is “under construction”.
2230 GMT:It is reported that Parisa Kakaee of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters Maziar Samei of the One Million Signatures Campaign, Bahar Tarakameh, and Nazanin Hassania have been released from prison. 26 other political prisoners are also reported to have been freed.
1830 GMT: I’m on an evening break which happily involves dinner at Birmingham’s best Iranian restaurant.
Certain people inside Iran are fanning divisions that never existed and do not exist, and foreigners looking for propaganda feed themselves some tasty morsels….Why should we have differences? Even now we sit together every two weeks and discuss every issue in the country. These are meetings where we speak without restrictions because they are not recorded.
1815 GMT: For What It’s Worth. Some outlets are giving lots of play to the Supreme Leader’s use of Hillary Clinton’s “dictatorship” statement to issue his own challenges to the “West”.
You can get notable extracts in that coverage — frankly, I know this script and I can’t be bothered to post any more of it.
At the start of the year we closely tracked the political battle between the White House and military commanders, notably General David Petraeus, over the deployment of additional US troops to Afghanistan. This was nominally resolved at the end of March by a “compromise” agreement (even though the military got almost all of the troop request) in which Obama announced a new strategy of military measures supporting non-military measures to build up the country.
The situation was not resolved, either inside Washington or in Afghanistan, and we are back in another cycle of reports, spin, and power moves over another escalation in the US military commitment. One curious absentee, however, is Petraeus, who has not been far from media-shy in the past. Tom Englehardt digs beneath the surface for the story:
How Top Generals May Trap Obama in a Losing War
Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley “Stan” McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose “classified, pre-decisional” and devastating report — almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster — was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael “Mike” Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a “deteriorating” war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. (“I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan… or sending a message that America is here for the duration.”)
On the other hand, here’s someone you haven’t seen front and center for a while: General David Petraeus. Read the rest of this entry »
JOHN KING: Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us.
We learned as the week came to an end about a new underground secret Iranian nuclear bunker, and the president described it this way. “The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program.”
Tell us more about what we know, and do you have any doubt Iran was using this facility or planned to use this facility to develop nuclear weapons?
GATES: We’ve been watching the construction of this facility for quite some time, and one of the reasons that we waited to make it public was to ensure that our conclusions about its purpose were right. Read the rest of this entry »
Days before US forces are supposed to withdraw from Iraqi cities, American commander General Raymond Odierno appeared on CNN’s State of the Union. As we’ve noted many times, Odierno is a veteran in public relations. This was no exception, as he fudged the issue of withdrawal amidst the recent escalation of violence and bombings: “We’ll still be conducting significant operations outside of the cities and the belts around the major cities.” Meanwhile, John King’s hard-hitting interview style was highlighted in the final moments of the interview, as he turned to Odierno’s encounter with TV satirist Stephen Colbert and closed with this assessment: “We close and say thank you to you, sir, we want to make sure you know you’re in our thoughts.”
JOHN KING: Tuesday is the deadline for U.S. troops to pull out of bases in Iraq’s major cities and to turn major security operations over to Iraqi forces. It is without a doubt a major benchmark in the more than six-year war, and to some, a huge achievement. But even some U.S. generals say they would prefer more time in some cities, and there are worries the shift in power could bring a spike in violence. The man managing this delicate shift is the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, who joins us now from Camp Victory in Baghdad. Good morning to you, General, and thank you for your time.
A simple question off the top. Are the Iraqis ready for these awesome new responsibilities?
ODIERNO: I do believe they’re ready, John. They’ve been working towards this for a long time. And security remains good. We’ve seen constant improvement in the security force, we’ve seen constant improvement in governance. And I believe this is the time for us to move out of the cities and for them to take ultimate responsibility. Read the rest of this entry »
In the never-ending fantasy game of Why George Bush Really, Really Got It Right on Iraq, even as the casualty level for US troops reach their highest point since September 2008, former Bush official Peter Feaver takes today’s top prize:
I see [Obama] as having slightly more options now for dealing with North Korea than he otherwise might have precisely because Bush reversed the trajectory in Iraq. To be sure, the progress in Iraq is still fragile and reversible — and there are ominous signs of that reversibility with the uptick in violence in the months since Obama codified a rigid withdrawal timeline. But the success of Bush’s surge strategy (crediting, of course, the courageous efforts of General Petraeus, General Odierno, and Ambassador Crocker, not to mention the brave men and women deployed in Iraq, who actually implemented the strategy) has gone some way to restoring America’s global strategic leverage. At a minimum, it seems to me inarguable that our strategic leverage is greater now than it would have been if we continued on the old trajectory.
As early voting begins in Sunday’s national elections, Iraq has been beset by bombings: the toll from three suicide attacks in Baquba on Wednesday is now 33 dead and 42 injured, and a suicide bomber has killed three and injured 15 today at a Baghdad polling station.
At the start of the year we closely tracked the political battle between the White House and military commanders, notably General David Petraeus, over the deployment of additional US troops to Afghanistan. This was nominally resolved at the end of March by a “compromise” agreement (even though the military got almost all of the troop request) in which Obama announced a new strategy of military measures supporting non-military measures to build up the country.
Robert Gates on CNN’s “State of the Union”
Days before US forces are supposed to withdraw from Iraqi cities, American commander General Raymond Odierno appeared on CNN’s State of the Union. As we’ve noted many times, Odierno is a veteran in public relations. This was no exception, as he fudged the issue of withdrawal amidst the recent escalation of violence and bombings: “We’ll still be conducting significant operations outside of the cities and the belts around the major cities.” Meanwhile, John King’s hard-hitting interview style was highlighted in the final moments of the interview, as he turned to Odierno’s encounter with TV satirist Stephen Colbert and closed with this assessment: “We close and say thank you to you, sir, we want to make sure you know you’re in our thoughts.”
In the never-ending fantasy game of Why George Bush Really, Really Got It Right on Iraq, even as the casualty level for US troops reach their highest point since September 2008, 
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