Richard WarnickConditions on the Ground
The parade of phony Iraq experts appearing on TV lately has treated us to nonstop blather about “conditions on the ground” and “facts on the ground.” Usually the magic words are said with a satisfied smirk, implying that the Average Americans wouldn’t be so keen on getting our troops back home if only they were keeping current on all the good news that only the experts know.
The truth is, very few of the “experts” have much of a handle on Iraqi politics, and nobody can accurately predict what the various insurgencies and militias will do next. Specifics about the “conditions on the ground” are relatively hard to come by, especially if you get your news from TV. This post offers an update.
No, the so-called “surge” wasn’t a “success.”
Yesterday, on “Meet the Press” Tom Brokaw kept pressing Senator Barack Obama to say the “surge” was “successful” and resulted in “political reconciliation.” Obama was polite, but he should have told Brokaw to stop peddling Bush administration propaganda.
Because of the “surge,” 2007 was the bloodiest year of the Iraq occupation and millions of Iraqis were driven from their homes. There was no downturn in violence until Moqtada al-Sadr declared a temporary cease-fire, which only lasted until the Mahdi Army was attacked by U.S. and Iraqi forces last March. Political turmoil continues to mount, not only among the Shiites but involving the Kurds and Sunni Arabs. Elections once scheduled for this October have been postponed to sometime in 2009.
Security has collapsed again in Fallujah.
Local militias supported by US forces claim to have “cleansed” Fallujah of all insurgency, but the remaining residents of the mostly-destroyed city still live in fear. “Assassinations never stopped in Fallujah, but the media seem unwilling to cover the actual situation here,” a human-rights activist in Fallujah, speaking on terms of anonymity given the tense situation, told Inter Press Service (IPS). “The two bomb blasts that killed six policemen earlier this month and another two that killed three on the weekend seem to have terminated the silence.”
The Sahwa (”Awakening”) militias want more money– or else.
We are paying $300 a month to approximately 100,000 Sunni Arab “former” insurgents so that they will refrain from attacking American forces (they are still free to kill and kidnap fellow Iraqis as part of the deal). But now, a hundred days before the U.S. presidential election, the militia leaders are demanding more payoffs. It’s a “protection” racket.
Around $4 billion of the $21 billion spent on Iraq reconstruction is categorized as “waste.”
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, estimates about 20 percent of the U.S. taxpayer money contributed to rebuild Iraq has been lost to corruption and incompetence. Just one example: a badly-needed $40 million prison in Diyala Province that sits idle. Bowen said the prison was part of a $900 million contract awarded to construction and engineering firm Parsons to build border posts, courts, police training centers and fire stations. Of 53 construction projects in the massive Parson contract, only 18 were completed.
Suicide bombers and gunmen killed at least 70 people and wounded almost 300 others today in Baghdad and Kirkuk.
In Baghdad, three suicide bombers detonated their explosives in three locations within 30 minutes of each other. The attacks killed at least 32 people and wounded 102 others, most of them Shiite pilgrims. On Sunday afternoon, seven pilgrims were gunned down in a town south of Baghdad. In Kirkuk, another suicide bomber ran into a crowd of protesters at a Kurdish political rally. After she detonated the explosives she was carrying, gunmen began firing into the crowd from different directions. The terrorist attack triggered riots against the Turkmen minority in Kirkuk, despite denials of responsibility.
Innocent Iraqis still fear trigger-happy U.S. soldiers at checkpoints.
The U.S. military acknowledged Sunday that American soldiers killed three “law abiding” Iraqi civilians last month as the Iraqis traveled to their jobs at the Baghdad airport. The military had initially said the soldiers acted in self-defense after being fired upon by “criminals.”
“Why did they do this to us? My father liked the Americans very much,” said Mohammed Hafeidh Aboud, 21, one of Hafeidh Aboud’s seven children. “The American soldiers are guilty. Why did they do this? Why?”
Combat operations continue in Baghdad, Mosul, Diyala Province, Basra Province and other parts of Iraq.
If you don’t hear about it on CNN, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. U.S. and Iraqi forces loyal to al-Maliki’s government are targeting the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, Basra, and Baghdad suburbs. In Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city with 1.9 million people, the battle for control is still ongoing. Parts of the city are in the hands of American-backed Iraqi forces, and other sections are controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni Arab insurgents. Joint U.S.- Maliki offensives are being planned for Diyala, Babil and Wasit provinces with the objective of punishing political groups opposed to Maliki and the U.S. occupation.
Senator McCain has declared Mission Accomplished 2.0: “I repeat my statement that we have succeeded in Iraq, not we are succeeding, we have succeeded in Iraq. The strategy has worked and we now have the Iraqi government and military in charge in the major cities in Iraq.”
The conditions on the ground don’t back him up.
UPDATE: Check out the latest news videos from The Real News. Kirkuk, Anbar and southern Iraq are the places to watch. In Kirkuk, the Kurds are pushing for control against opposition from Arabs. The Anbar Awakening is in conflict with Maliki’s government. Southern Iraq is divided between the stridently anti-occupation Sadrists and the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Council allied with Maliki.
UPDATE: Over at Main and Central, CTuttle has more on the complicated political situation in Iraq and how it is causing more violence: “Folks, buckle up! The sh*t is hitting the proverbial fan!!!”
UPDATE: Maliki’s Diyala offensive kicks off today, according to The Long War Journal. More than 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and police are said to have massed for the offensive. An indefinite curfew has been imposed on the province.
UPDATE: Senator McCain is so upbeat they should keep him tethered to the ground so he doesn’t float away on clouds of glory. On “Larry King Live” last night, when asked about the decision to invade Iraq, McCain replied that he predicted America would have “an easy victory” and that “we did.”
July 28th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost
Thank you to all those who have served our country so well.
Iraq is now safer than Venezuela
The US armed forces have performed amazingly.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Darren believes the propaganda. But if the good news is true, why can’t we end the occupation?
If “it’s safer to walk around in Baghdad now than it is in Caracas,” why are no western reporters walking around Baghdad?
Incidentally, I agree the U.S. armed forces do an amazing job– of controlling the places in Iraq where they are located at any given time. But we don’t have enough soldiers to successfully occupy a country of 27 million people. The whack-a-mole strategy does not work.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
…en believes the propaganda. Many people believe it, since it’s being spewed 24 - 7 from every major media outlet. Liberal media my a**. Whatever happened to the story ’bout the hawk propagandists catapolting thier B.S. thru the big media? Down the memory hole, I guess. Nothing sticks to these big operators, since they essentially own it all anyway. Grr.
July 28th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Hey Richard, I appreciate that… It’s nice to have someone tell me what I personally believe in. I appreciate you defining for me what I “believe.”
I mean the AP never ever reported anything negative about the Iraq war in the past did it? I guess now that they have a different story to tell it’s “propaganda.” These dang American propaganda machines.
Here is some more propaganda for your enjoyment and it would seem that this “western reporter” is “walking around Bagdad.”… very strange:
U.S. Winning Iraq War
July 28th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Perhaps, with a couple of million dead, their country blown to smithereens and thier source of any wealth signed off to the ‘mega-corporations’, they decided to relent. Somewhere along the way, surviving Iraqis faced the ‘is it better to live, albeit under occupation, or to die as an ‘insurgent’? A tough choice, and given the unrelenting mayhem illegally foisted on them by the bush admin and thier useful tools, I’m not sure they didn’t make the right choice. Surrender.
Now what other countries shall we discipline to death.
While you chew on that, I’ll take my Bulge-mobile across town for some Chilean bananas. God bless us all.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Bad news for Oneutah.org readers. I know the news must be devastating to you. All of your years of hard work is unraveling. All your hopes and dreams are going down the toilet. I feel your pain. I know what this great loss means to you and I hope one day you can put this behind you, but alas this scar will remain with you for the rest of your lives. If only we had of listened to Nancy Palosi, Harry Reid and Barrack Obama we could have averted this horrible turn of events. Damn that surge!
From the News Agency that shall not be named:
Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost
Hey Cliff that is 9 words lifted from the News Agency that shall not be named. I guess you better pay them their 12 bucks.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
A troll sandwich. ‘Scuse me while I take everything I’ve ever writen about our illustrious Dick-weed in chief and his hench-murders back.
Ken, Darren, I bow to your superior selection of lies. Maybe you can both crawl up each others asses and disappear. Please.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Anyone consider that the Terrorists have simply taken their show to Afghanistan?
Iraq is pacified, Obama moves 10,000 troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, and they get tied up while boiling up Pakistan. How much longer will they be our “ally”?
Then they can shift the game back, blow up a few more bombs and keep the world power jumping from one theater to another. For peanuts. Meanwhile 12 billion a month later…
All this and the biggest deficits ever.
Does anyone remember the civics lesson the ” power of the purse strings”?
It means that Congress approves the appropriations of monies. So then, we are looking at the current make up of Congress, in the control of said party.
bush can’t do this alone, so if you blame him alone, you display your basic ignorance of what used to be a 6th grade discipline 30 years ago.
Congress spends the money, it gives the permission. The president just does the asking. If it is given…whose fault is that? A classic abuser/enabler dynamic. Not sure which is which.
July 29th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Since when did AP become a good source for news. They’ve been just as bad as the New York Times, Washington Post and the rest of the right wing media. What they don’t miss entirely, they report ONCE ONLY and we’re supposed to try and put things together ourselves.
I guess now, when 9 year old Iraqi kids go out and fly their kites, you guys can stop screaming that it’s a scam and they really only live their lives to kill Americans, (which was ridiculous before “shock and Awe”, but probably not anymore.) Let’s all go over there and sing Kumbaya, but this time McCain has to go without his bullet proof vest as a token of friendship.
Would you please help us impeach this fraud? Wouldn’t you rather have a president you could trust add two and two?
July 29th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Well, Ken, if such is the case, you’ll have few qualms about encouraging each of your children to enlist in the military as they become of age, correct?
You right-wingers never cease to amaze me - you are all a bunch of freeping hypocrites!
PS. I guess you overlooked this quote in the article: “Despite the favorable signs, U.S. commanders are leery of proclaiming victory or promising that the calm will last.” Maybe next time you cite an AP article to support a thesis, you should read beyond the title of the article.
July 29th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Though we are few, I seriously doubt there’s a OneUtah reader (Ken being the exception, of course) who could mess things up anywhere as bad as the bush group has. It’s just not in our character.
July 29th, 2008 at 7:48 am
I’ll defend the AP. They have done as much as any news agency, sending Iraqi reporters to risk their lives getting stories no American could get. Several have lost their lives, some have even been unjustly imprisoned by the U.S. military. Of course, the AP also reports the official propaganda because they cover that too, even if not based on the “facts on the ground.”
Note that Darren and Ken can’t refute any of the facts I cited above, they just both point to the exact same article that is based on spin from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. But the article has that inevitable caveat that tips off readers who are paying attention: “Despite the favorable signs, U.S. commanders are leery of proclaiming victory or promising that the calm will last.” Translation: “Don’t buy the bullshit, these guys don’t even believe what they’re telling us.”
In the AP video report Darren linked to, Robert Burns is standing on a hotel rooftop overlooking Firdos Square. He is surrounded by blast walls and armed guards. There are no shots of Burns going rug shopping a la John McCain and Lindsay Graham.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Hey! Great news! We’re (US) winning the war! FanTASTIC!
I, like Cav, must retract everything I’ve said about GWB. He’s a genius! I must admit, I questioned the idea that we could unilaterally invade Iraq and bequeath upon them, democracy in a few short years. But he did it.
I’m buying a vacation home in Anbar. They say its lovely in the Spring.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:12 am
What we would rather have and what we get Larry…
I am reminded of Judge Smeals of Caddyshack, who when confronted with his whining grandsons’ desire for a panoply of fast food at the stand, is told in angry invective by the good(sic) judge…
“You’ll get NOTHING…, and LIKE it”.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:55 am
News organizations are just like anyplace else these days. You never get to talk to the clod that is messing your life up. You only get to complain about the people whose job it is to make the clod lots of money.
I just have to vent somewhere though.
Still no reports about how badly the Republican hypocrites did at the non-impeachment hearings. How is that possible?!
July 29th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Because, by now Larry, you are among the very few that knows or cares. This would have been something 31/2 years ago, but now?
I rather looks like what I think it is, covering up for a lack of balls when the crimes were committed, and some very timely political grandstanding.
Much ado about nothing, if Obama gets elected we can review the way he is covered for his ignoring of the popular will. If your mind is open to that.
If McCain gets the nod, then you can really complain about not impeaching bush as the lost opportunity it now appears to be.
Whoever takes over, gets to face the 500 billion dollar deficit. Congress approves these budgets, and if uh O is Pres, there will be no place to hide from it.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Hey Larry,
Not sure if you read DailyKos or not, but I think you’ll like this: Watch for the Steal
(the rest of you should give it a read as well.)
July 30th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Don:
Marcos Moulitsas is like every congressperson in Washington. He doesn’t want to address the issue of the voting machines. The media won’t touch it either. period. this has given me more angst then any other issue in politics. Moulitsas should know better because he’s supposed to be a computer geek, but then all the congresspeople have no excuse either. Any ten year old knows computers can be made to do anything with any number and there isn’t a machine out there that is safe.
I was happy to see a link to the BradBlog in the post because that is the best place for somebody new to this problem. There is a sea of good information about election fraud there, covering many years.
I met Marcos when he was in Salt Lake a few years ago and felt compelled to put a comment to a post on DFU’s website after leaving one on BradBlog. If you read it, you’ll see why I don’t often go to The Daily KOS for my election fraud info.
This problem has been obvious for years. I can only conclude the incumbents want to stay that way. Kucinich and Howard Dean are the only two people in Washington that seem to care, but the blackout in the media is complete.
July 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Larry,
No worries buddy, OPOL just reminded me of you, so I thought I’d send him your way (or is it the other way around?). :)
I read the comments you linked to. Nicely done!
July 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I’m beginning to think it’s against the law to go against any corporation for any reason. It violates their civil rights and they might not be able to live forever if you hurt their bottom line.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Off topic, but it has come to my attention that Ralph Nader will be on the U campus tomorrow. Does anyone have more info?
July 30th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Nader’s speech is set for 7:30 p.m. July 31 in Libby Gardner Concert Hall on Presidents Circle, according to the Deseret News.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:19 am
rmwarnick, thanks.