Topic: Iraq

I read this morning that President Bush
had made his third visit to Iraq, and it
imeediately struck me, how much did that
cost the American taxpayer? One has to
think that such a visit runs into millions
of dollars in costs, mostly for security,
to what end? Such a visit gives the
pResident a platform to continue his
fallacious reasoning that the war is
going well? His visit will buoy up troop
morale? Is that worth the costs involved?

Yesterday, bitter fighting broke out in
Karbala, one of the Shiite "holy cities"
presently full of several "hundreds of
thousands" of pilgrims. Apparently,
from fragmentary reports both
yesterday and today, the clashes were
started by a tussle between members of
Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army and
members of the Badr Brigade, a rival
Shiite militia. The fighting reportedly
spread quickly, not only in Karbala with
at least fifty plus killed, but elsewhere in
the country, most notably in Baghdad.
This morning, al Sadr reportedly
"commanded" his militia to "stand down"
for six months, although whether this
will really happen remains in doubt. The
leaders of the Badr Brigade, whoever
they are, made no such call.

The bombing last Tuesday against the
Yazidi minority that killed 400-500 has
been described by some commentators
as Al Qaeda's "last gasp," and an
"act of desperation," and this writer
believes that could be a misreading of
what happened. I do not believe that
either the insurgency, Al Qaeda or
the various militias are"'weaker,"
despite losses that I know have
occurred.

My friends on the American right continue
to insist that the war in Iraq is going well.
However, there are certain signs that
continue to make me wonder how true
that it is in the larger scheme of things.

The New York Times is reporting today
that al-Maliki has lost considerable support
from the "Sunni bloc," his Shiite allies, the
tribal leadership, and the Kurds. He is also
reported to be quite "paranoid." The last
leaders I've heard described in that manner
were the late Shah of Iran, Fidel Castro,
Hugo Chavez, the late Mao Zedong and
the late Joseph Stalin - not exactly sterling
company. It also suggests that very few
actually support the guy.

I have spent the past day or so meditating
on how it is that some of us can see Iraq
as being a better situation while others of
us are fairly pessimistic - and I think I've
arrived at a partial answer. Mr. Smant
and others on POLITICS see the surge as
having lowered the incidence of violence,
reconstruction having partially worked,
and more bad guys killed. I think of this
as "the military outlook." I don't know
about the reconstruction part, but other
reports would indicate *some* progress
militarily. I'm not as optimistic about
that as my friends to the farther right
but would concede a small amount of
military steps forward.

While I can agree that American casualties
are down from the previous three months,
and by *some* accounts sectarian murders
are down, there are still some really critical
things not working very well in Iraq besides
the malfunctioning government. One of these
according to AP is the electrical grid. The grid
is "on the brink of collapse because of
insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel
shortages and provinces that are unplugging
local power stations from the national grid,"
local officials reported Saturday.

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's beleaguered Prime
Minister, announced Saturday that US
troops could leave "at any time" and
Iraq's police and military could maintain
the country's security. I suggest without
attempting to malign the PM that he is
operating under a great delusion, or just
chooses not to recognize that without
those American troops he would
probably be dead within days. I suggest
that al-Maliki's government only has
nominal control of *parts* of Baghdad,
*parts* of some regions of the country,
and that "control" is weak at best.

Yesterday I was watching the network (NBC)
news, something I don't do a lot, but they had
a feature piece about the Iraqi police complete
with an animated reconstruction of how the
incident early yesterday occurred. It buttressed
what I had been saying for months about not
knowing, really, who is on what side in Iraq.

"- Deaths caused by sectarian violence
in Iraq are down 75 percent from January
to June" (quote from post on POLITICS by
K. Smant 7/11/07)

Iraq is not a morass, swamp or quagmire? Now
the leading Senate Republican (Mitch McConnell)
is saying that the Iraqi government will have to
"step up their own military protections" as the
US prepares to scale back troop strengths in
the autumn. He was quoted as saying "I don't
think we'll have the same level of troops, in all
likelihood, that we have now." He stated that
the "US presence will be different in the fall."