1. “President Outlines Steps to Help Iraq Achieve Democracy and Freedom,” Remarks by the President on Iraq and the War on Terror, May 24, 2004, online (http://www.white-house.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040524–10.htm#l).
2. President Addresses Nation, Discusses Iraq, War on Terror, loc. cit.
1. Scott Ritter, “The Risks of the al-Zarqawi Myth,” Aljazeera.net, January 7, 2005.
2. Patrick McDonnell, “Iraqi Insurgency Proves Tough to Crack,” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2005, p. A8.
3. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
1. Ibid., p. 258.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 259.
4. Hannah Allam, “Saddam's Ba'ath Party Is Back in Business,” KnightRidder, September 6, 2004, online.
1. Hersh, Chain of Command, p. 259.
2. Brian Bender, “Insurgents Infiltrating Coalition, U.S. Says,” Boston Globe, December 25, 2004, online.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
1. Steven R Weisman and John F Burns, “Some Sunnis Hint at Peace Terms in Iraq, U.S. Says,” New York Times, May 15, 2005, online.
2. Peter Beaumont, “Saddam Aide in Exile Heads List of Most Wanted Rebels,” The Observer, October 17, 2004, online.
3. “Saddam in an Exclusive Interview: The Americans Will Leave Iraq by the Small Door,” Babnet Tunisia, December 28, 2004, online (http://www.babnet.net/en_detail.asp?id=467).
4. Tom Lasseter, “Bunkers Reveal Well-Equipped, Sophisticated Insurgency,” Knight Ridder, June 4, 2005.
1. Ibid.
2. Allam, loc. cit.
1. Hiwa Osman, “What Do the Insurgents Want?” Washington Post, May 8, 2005.
2. Mark Mooney, “Two Years and No End of Blood,” New York Daily News, March 13, 2005.
3. Allam, loc. cit.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
1. One example of the more intelligent recent media coverage is the interesting piece by Patrick Graham for the New York Times. The reporter claims to have spent some time with the “insurgents” and notes in his report inconvenient facts that dispel the myth that Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq are always and by definition diametrically opposed. He notes that Sunni Arab clans and subtribes sometimes have both Sunni and Shiite branches, that Baghdad is extremely mixed due to frequent intermarriage between Sunnis and Shiites, and that extreme fundamentalism, which views Shiites as “Muslim apostates” is “not as common among Sunnis I have met as having a grandmother who is Shiite” (Graham, loc. cit.).
2. Samir Haddad, “Capital Punishment for Anti-Occupation Iraqi Imams,” IslamOnline. net, November 21, 2004, online.
3. “Scholars Defend Iraqi Resistance, Prohibit Collaboration,” IslamOnline.net, November 6, 2004, online; Subhi Mejahid, “93 Muslim Figures Call for Democracy, Support Resistance,” IslamOnline,net, August 23, 2004, online.
4. Bryan Bender, “Insurgency Seen Forcing Change in Iraq Strategy,” Boston Globe, June 10, 2005, online.
5. Bender also reported that “[o]nly 15 percent of those polled said they strongly supported the U.S.-led coalition,” support that, one might surmise, comes chiefly from Kurds who have gained most from American intervention. It would also be reasonable to assume that the figures Bender reports understate the reality, since the poll was conducted for the U.S. authorities.
1. An example of the predicament faced by the Iraqi Christians in Mosul was provided by Sabah Guryal, a former executive of the Middle East Council of Churches in Mosul, who spoke to the St. Petersburg Times in May of this year. “Christians in Iraq paid twice after coalition forces entered. First, Iraqi Muslims accused the Christians of supporting the coalition because we are Christians like the American soldiers …. And we pay the second time because the American forces consider us all Arabs, not Christians” (Susan Taylor Martin, “Fleeing Iraqi Christians on Road to Damascus,” St. Petersburg Times, May 23, 2005, online.)
2. James Glanz and Thorn Shanker, “Iraq Study Sees Rebels' Attacks as Widespread,” New York Times, September 29, 2004, online.
1. Ibid.
2. Carol J. Williams, “Radical Cleric Reaches Out,” Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2005, p. 1.
3. Lin Noueihed, “Iraqi Shiite Cleric Urges Election Boycott,” Reuters, January 29, 2005, online. Polling data from Zogby International from the same timeframe supports the view that majorities of both Shiites (69%) and Sunnis (82%) favor a withdrawal of American forces, and percentages slightly less than that indicated that the U.S. presence would “hurt” Iraq. See Zogby International Poll, “Survey Finds Deep Divisions in Iraq,” Zogby International, January 28, 2005, online. The news release providing the results of the poll also noted that “[o]nly the Kurds seem to favor a continued U.S. presence, and are likely to outright reject violent resistance.” [Dr. al-Obaidi expressed similar sentiments in personal correspondence to Jude Wanniski, as noted in the interview with Wanniski included in the companion to the present volume, Neo-CONNED!, pp. 3–79. The postscript to the Wanniski interview also contains compelling testimony from Muhammad al-Baghdadi that there were numerous Shiites who were members of the Ba'ath Party.—Ed.]
1. Dahr Jamail, “Spiraling Into Occupied Iraq,” Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches, November 5, 2004, online (http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000105.php).
2. Michael Ware, “The Enemy With Many Faces,” TIME Magazine, September 27, 2004, online.
1. Patrick Seale, “Can the United States Win in Iraq?” Al-Hayat, May 12, 2005.
2. Borzou Daragahi, “Destruction of U.S. Bradley Vehicle Raises Fears,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 2005, online.
3. Patrick J. McDonnell, “U.S. Apparently Underestimated Size of Insurgency, Top Commander Says,” Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2005, online.
4. “Iraq Battling More Than 200,000 Insurgents,” Agence France-Presse, January 3, 2005, online.
5. Agence France-Presse, “Iraq Battling More Than 200,000 Insurgents: Intelligence Chief,” TurkishPress.com, January 3, 2005, online.
6. Ibid.
1. McDonnell, loc. cit.
2. Adding to the somewhat ironic nature of the attempt to quantify the Iraqi resistance, retired Army Gen. McCaffrey said, after his return from Iraq in June 2005, that there are still “about 20,000 … adamant fighters” that need to be “dealt with” before the insurgency is finished off (Sharon Behn, “Retired General Estimates 20,000 Militants Are In Iraq,” Washington Times, June 22, 2005, p. 14.). These batches of “20,000 fighters” continue to turn up, it seems, no matter how many the U.S. eliminates. As one career Marine officer told the Christian Science Monitor recently, “We've won every fight they've given us, but there always seem to be just as many people fighting us as when we got here” (Dan Murphy, “U.S. Strategy In Iraq: Is It Working?” Christian Science Monitor, June 21, 2005, p. 1).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Scott Johnson and Melinda Liu, “The Enemy Spies,” Newsweek, June 27, 2005, online.
1. Tom Lasseter and Jon Landay, “Iraqi Insurgency Growing Larger, More Effective,” Knight Ridder, January 16, 2005, online. Another interesting statistic was confirmed by American military spokesman: “since April, insurgents have fired [as of September 2004] nearly 3,000 mortar rounds” in the city alone; that is 125 rounds per week (Glanz and Shanker, loc. cit.).
2. “Iraq Insurgency in 'Last Throes,' Cheney Says,” CNN, June 20, 2005, online.
3. Joe Galloway, “Administration Stubbornly Stays the Course in Iraq,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 3, 2005, online.
4. Juan Cole, “The Revenge of Baghdad Bob,” Salon.com, June 9, 2005.
1. Tom Lasseter, “Military Action Won't End Insurgency, Growing Number of U.S. Officers Believe,” Knight Ridder, June 12, 2005, online.
2. Bryan Bender has written that “[d]espite U.S. estimates that it kills or captures between 1,000 and 3,000 insurgents a month, the number of daily attacks is going back up. Down to about 30 to 40 a day in February, attacks are now up to at lea
st 70 per day, according to statistics of U.S. Central Command.” See Bender, “Insurgency Seen Forcing Change in Iraq Strategy,” loc. cit.
3. Paul Reynolds, “Iraq Two Years On: Endgame or Unending War?” BBC News (online), April 6, 2005.
4. Patrick Cockburn, “150 Hostages and 19 Deaths Leave U.S. Claims of Iraqi 'Peace' in Tatters,” The Independent on Sunday, April 17, 2005, online.
1. More recently Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender tells us that “on average two U.S. soldiers continue to die each day [and] many more are wounded” (“Insurgency Seen Forcing Change in Iraq Strategy,” June 10, 2005, online).
2. Cockburn, loc. cit.
3. Closely linked to the question of the number of attacks is the question of how many American troops are actually being killed and wounded. The Internet is awash with material claiming that the numbers of dead and wounded are far higher than the figures cited by the Pentagon. Much of the Internet is, of course, little more than a rumor mill. Controversial claims on sensitive subjects need to be approached with a healthy skepticism. That said, it is also obvious that there is a great deal of verifiably true material on the Internet which does not find its way onto the pages of the Wall Street Journal or into FOX News.
One Internet source that posts information beyond that available in mainstream news is FreeArabVoice.org. Of particular relevance is the Iraq Resistance Report, translated and compiled by an Arab named Muhammad abu Nasr. Recently, the State Department's official website took aim at Nasr and (along with a third) the site from which much of his report is developed, IslamMemo. The State Department's notice warned of “a trio of obscure websites and individuals has combined to spread deliberate disinformation, particularly about U.S. actions in Iraq,” claiming furthermore that “the contents of his website make it clear that abu Nasr is a communist” who “champions Arab nationalist, anti-American, and anti-Israeli sentiments.” His main source is also labeled “pro-al Qaeda,” which would seem to be an overstatement indeed if Nasr's translation of the material he culls from IslamMemo is accurate. It appears to report the claims of al-Qaeda, much as Aljazeera and the Washington Post do. As for Nasr, no reasonable person could say, based upon FreeArabVoice.org, that his stance is pro-communist. In fact, the frequent media reports of complaints from Iraqi communists regarding elements of the Iraqi resistance make it unlikely that someone who sympathizes with the resistance – as Nasr obviously does – would be overly warm toward communism. As for his “anti-Israeli” position, one might ask why that is of concern to the U.S. government.
Why the rather absurd accusations? The issue seems to be Nasr's claims regarding U.S. dead and wounded, which the State Department says are far, far too high. Ultimately there is no way of knowing who is telling the truth. Nasr cannot prove what he says; neither can the State Department. What we can reflect upon is the motivations of those who make casualty claims. Supporters of the Iraqi resistance will want to believe that U.S. casualties are very high, but Nasr's figures at least must be limited by the reality on the ground, or he risks being seriously discredited. The Bush administration on its side clearly has a positive interest in denying Nasr's claims, for if they are even remotely accurate its legitimacy and survival would be jeopardized. It is impossible for an outside observer to take a position on who's telling the truth or what it is. It is simply worth noting that there is controversy on the issue, just as there is controversy over the secrecy pertaining to the return of U.S. wounded to Army hospitals and U.S. dead to Dover. There is little coverage of the dead and wounded coming out of Iraq. Is it really as result of the government's concern for “family and patient privacy,” or is it something else altogether?
1. Cockburn, loc. cit.
2. John Burns and Eric Schmitt, “Generals Offer Sober Outlook on Iraqi War,” New York Times, May 19, 2005, online.
3. Carol Williams, “Suicide Attacks Soaring in Iraq,” L. A. Times, June 2, 2005, online.
4. Ibid.
5. As of August 4, 2005, David Cloud was reporting on the resistance's “increasingly deadly trend” (“Insurgents Using Bigger, More Lethal Bombs …,” New York Times, online).
1. Ibid.
2. Ibid.
3. Patrick Quinn and Katherine Shrader, “Iraq's Suicide Attacks Blamed on Foreigners,” Associated Press, July 1, 2005, online.
4. Common sense alone dictates that a car bomb and a suicide attack are two different things, the former potentially but not at all necessarily implying the presence of a token “fanatic” willing to blow himself up to accomplish the mission. While suicide attacks themselves may involve Islamists seeking martyrdom, they do not imply a “freedom-hating” fanaticism that would link them irreversibly to the “war on terror.” Neither car bombs nor suicide attacks necessarily imply “terrorism,” since both may be used against solely military targets. Indeed, as an Italian judge, Clementina Forleo, recently (and inconveniently) pointed out, “militants who attack military or state targets, even with suicide bombers, cannot be considered terrorists in times of war or occupation.” Even more inconveniently she noted that defining “every violent act” by irregular forces as “terrorist” risked “comprising people's right to self-determination and independence.” See Reuters, “Terrorism Depends on Target: Judge,” The Australian, April 22, 2005, online.
5. Dana Priest, “U.S. Talks With Iraqi Insurgents Confirmed,” Washington Post, June 27, 2005, p. A1.
1. Quinn and Shrader, loc. cit.
2. Ibid.
3. His is, of course, an unwelcome point of view for those interested in portraying the fighting as “an international struggle with militant Islam” (ibid).
4. Ibid.
5. Sharon Behn, “Attacks Hit Vital Security in Iraq,” Washington Times, May 23, 2005, online.
6. Timothy Phelps, “Experts: Iraq Verges on Civil War,” Newsday, May 12, 2005.
1. Ibid.
2. Ibid.
3. Tod Robberson, “Insurgents Regrouped and Refocused, Analysts Say,” Dallas Morning News, May 26, 2005.
4. John Yaukey, “Iraq's Politically Savvy Insurgency Proves Its Staying Power,” ArmyTimes. com, June 6, 2005.
1. Patrick Seale, loc. cit.
2. Juan Cole, “The Revenge of Baghdad Bob,” Salon.com, June 9, 2005.
3. Phil Sands, “Good and Honest Iraqis Fighting U.S. Forces,” Gulfnews.com, June 9, 2005.
4. Waleed Ibrahim and Mussab Khairallah, “Elite Iraqi Police Leader Survives Suicide Attack,” Scotland on Sunday (Scotsman.com), June 12, 2005.
5. Ibrahim and Khairallah, ibid. The reference to “some Shiites” is probably a reference to the Shiite Badr Brigade of SCIRI which was created, trained, and financed for years by the Iranian government. It is thus not unreasonable in the slightest to maintain that the Wolf Brigade is a sectarian outfit. Events in Basra relating to local security forces illustrate the problem posed by sectarian militias. As the U.K. Guardian reported, “[t]he chief of police in Basra admitted … that he had effectively lost control of three-quarters of his officers and that sectarian militias had infiltrated the force and were using their posts to assassinate opponents …. General Hassan al-Sade said half of his 13,750-strong force was secretly working for the political parties. 'I trust 25 percent of my force, no more. The militias are the real power in Basra and they are made up of criminals and bad people'” (Rory Carroll, “Basra Out of Control, Says Chief of Police,” The Guardian, May 31, 2005, online). Carroll noted that in Basra “tranquility had been bought by ceding authority to conservative Islamic parties and turning a blind eye to their militias' corruption scams and hit squads.” One can credibly conceive of the same pattern playing out at the national level in the case of the Wolf Brigade, especially in view of the fact that with the January 2005 “election” in Iraq, the U.S. practically ceded control of the country to the partisan Shiite groups SCIRI and al-Dawa, who dominate the coalition that received a majority of votes from the part of the population that did participate. [See the detailed discussion of this a
nd other aspects of the January 2005 election in Iraq by Mark Gery on pp. 761–795 of the present volume.—Ed.]
1. Ibrahim and Khairallah, ibid.
2. Neil MacDonald, “Iraqi Reality-TV Hit Takes Fear Factor to Another Level,” Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 2005, online. Peter Maass (loc. cit., also at www.petermaass.com) reports that the program is also sponsored by Gen. Adnan Thabit, the Special Police Commandos Commander and former Ba'athist who spent 9 years in jail for participating in a 1996 attempted coup against Saddam, run by CIA-asset Iyad Allawi.
3. Ibrahim and Khairallah, ibid.
4. Provided, that is, that the brigade is still around and functioning. One example of why the proposition is doubtful is provided in a piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, indicating that recently “members of Iraq's elite police commando units, heralded by U.S. and Iraqi officials as a key to stemming the insurgency, staged a protest outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, saying that they hadn't been paid for four months” (Borzou Daragahi, “Iraqis Look At Cuts in Payroll,” June 6, 2005, online). So much for “winning hearts and minds.”
Neo-Conned! Again Page 102
