i talk in circles because i dont refute every point of every one of Motown's think-tank pieces on "86% of Iraqis polled by the Stopkillingthechildren Group agree that America is evil."
But everyone else gets a pass by just putting whatever words bother them into quotations to make them mean whatever they want.
yes, but since there is no way to "win" against terrorism, please justify that $600 billion we are spending in iraq.....and i will allow you to presume that the war in iraq actually has something to do with 9-11.
btw, this was a point made by Colin Powell, the one-time poster boy for the gop.
while one may not be able to totally defeat terrorism, it can certainly be reduced to manageable levels, which is "winning" in a sense.
but doing so requires sacrifice ($, liberties, etc.).
none of which is to say that Iraq is any more than a sideshow in the war on terror.
i talk in circles because i dont refute every point of every one of Motown's think-tank pieces on "86% of Iraqis polled by the Stopkillingthechildren Group agree that America is evil."
But everyone else gets a pass by just putting whatever words bother them into quotations to make them mean whatever they want.
i talk in circles because i dont refute every point of every one of Motown's think-tank pieces on "86% of Iraqis polled by the Stopkillingthechildren Group agree that America is evil."
But everyone else gets a pass by just putting whatever words bother them into quotations to make them mean whatever they want.
The whole debate about whether we are making "progress" in Iraq is basically wagging the dog, if the real issue is the supposed war on terrorism. We will have spent $600 billion in Iraq by the end of fiscal year 2008 and its debatable, at best, whether Bush has done more to enable terrorism since 9-11 then prevent it. Iraq is such a fuck-up that its amazing that Democrats are even engaging in this debate about "progress" in Iraq....while basically ignoring the rest of the region and beyond.
Also, when is a democrat gonna stand up and say, as Colin Powell basically did this month in GQ, what are we all so afraid of??? Lets try and manage the more pressing international issues (like forming diplomatic ties with these so-called "evil countries) and tackling important domestic issues, like the fact that there are millions of people without health insurance, before we dedicate every waking moment to the possibility that another bomb could go off in a building somewhere. Moreover, terrorism is a war we can't win, its not going to ever go away. There will always be radicals.
Congress can't do anything right now because its deadlocked. The Democrats don't have enough votes to get pass a veto and they don't agree with themselves. Neither do the Republicans. The Democratic leadership up until now has been for resolutions that demand an immediate partial drawdown of forces. There are others that want the U.S. to adopt the Iraq Study Group recommendations as U.S. policy. There are others that want a total withdrawal immediately, and of course there are others that want to give the surge more time. There is no consensus and therefore nothing is being done right now.
I'm responding to your points about why aren't the Democrats doing something, why are they putting up with this bullshit, etc. There are have been leading Republicans like Warner and Lugar for example, that have basically said the surge isn't working because the Maliki government hasn't done anything, but they haven't changed the debate at all.
i talk in circles because i dont refute every point of every one of Motown's think-tank pieces on "86% of Iraqis polled by the Stopkillingthechildren Group agree that America is evil."
But everyone else gets a pass by just putting whatever words bother them into quotations to make them mean whatever they want.
So the BBC is some liberal wank group now?
just take off the "now"
Aw those damn liberal media outlets. I guess even the conservative press can't be trusted these days because in back in the fall of '06 you were saying violence was down and the U.S. was making progress in Baghdad, and now we're back trying to do the same thing for the third time in the capitol.
i talk in circles because i dont refute every point of every one of Motown's think-tank pieces on "86% of Iraqis polled by the Stopkillingthechildren Group agree that America is evil."
But everyone else gets a pass by just putting whatever words bother them into quotations to make them mean whatever they want.
P.S. - I thought the only thing you did in this thread was talk shit and make homo-erotic offers to suck your dick?
add another chapter to your book report dick-breath. Don't feel bad, you can still surrender to my big fat American cock and suck it you faggot sonofabitch.
Love
Peter.
So this wasn't aimed at me? Then what other soulstrut poster were you making this homo-erotic offer to??? Is it because no one has taken you up on it yet that you're so mad and angry? Or is because you have a small dick and like to talk big to make up for it? I'm sure someone can fulfill your needs either way saba, you just need to try harder.
Bush???s ???Return on Success??? Speech/Strategy[/b]
On 9/13/07 Bush gave a national TV speech to outline his post-surge policy, called ???Return on Success.??? There were four main elements in his address. 1st by saying that the Iraqi government has made little progress he tacitly admitted that the surge has failed to meet any of its strategic goals. 2nd he wants the U.S. to follow old policies that were dubbed failures but this time with fewer resources. 3rd he???s attempting to buy time by calling required troop draw downs a withdrawal, and 4th he is arguing for staying the course once again in Iraq. Overall, the ???Return on Success??? plan is all about treading water in Iraq until the end of the Bush administration.
President Bush remains committed to Iraq. Despite this being his third or fourth plan, he still believes that the U.S. is winning, although that kind of terminology was markedly absent from his speech. Bush wants to create an environment in the U.S. where the public and Congress will also be committed to long-term troop deployments, since most civil wars have lasted up to 10 years or more.
That???s becoming increasingly difficult as each Bush policy seems to fail. Bush has all but given up on the Iraqi government reaching a political solution to the conflict, which was the ultimate goal of the surge. In January 2007 Bush said that the U.S.???s commitment to Iraq was not open ended and that he would hold the Maliki government accountable if it didn???t meet benchmarks that it set for itself for political reconciliation. In his newest speech he only said that the U.S. would continue to pressure them to make changes because it doesn???t appear that the government will act on any laws anytime soon. As the August 2007 National Intelligence Estimate noted, the Iraqi government needs a fundamental change to have any breakthroughs. That will take years, not months as originally planned for with the surge.
Instead of discussing whether the Maliki government had met any of the benchmarks, Bush talked about other political movement such as the government employing ex-Baathists, sharing oil revenues, etc. The problem is that many of these have been going on for years already. If those are signs of success, than Iraq has been moving forward since before the surge even began. The real new development from the surge, bottom up local reconciliation, has just as much chance to break the country apart as bring it together in the future.
The president???s speech also marked the return of the standing up Iraqi forces as a way for the U.S. to draw down theme of 2004. The surge strategists who saw the Iraqi forces as largely sectarian and part of the problem rather than the solution dubbed this a failure. Under the surge Iraqi forces were given a secondary role, while training was put on the backburner. As a result, the number of Iraqi army units capable of operating independently went down during the surge. Training of Iraqis has always been short changed by the Pentagon anyway as it???s not seen as a way to advancement by officers and has never gotten the best troops. Bush???s 2008 budget also cuts funding for training in half, which means U.S. forces will be expected to develop Iraqi security forces with fewer resources and more problems than before.
In the meantime, Bush said the U.S. will begin drawing down the extra troops that were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. This will start in Anbar where the U.S. had had the most success beginning in December 2007. Bush has dubbed this a withdrawal because that???s what the public and Congress have been calling for. The move was going to happen anyway as troop deployments began to run out and is simply an attempt to buy time for the administration, that will probably only gain marginal support.
Ultimately, the ???Return on Success??? is just a new name for staying the course in Iraq. It will only undermine any future efforts because its continuing policies that have failed, while giving the public and Congress few reasons to increase support for the war. That puts the next president in a disadvantage because he or she will most likely try to maintain troops in Iraq with a new policy, but with a country even more disillusioned than before.
SOURCES[/b]
Government Reports[/b]
Bush, President George, ???Address by the President to the Nation on the Way Forward in Iraq,??? Office of the Press Secretary, White House, 9/13/07
Mathews, Jessica, ???The Situation in Iraq,??? House Armed Services Committee, 7/18/07
National Intelligence Council, ???Prospects for Iraq???s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive,??? National Intelligence Estimate, August 2007
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, ???Quarterly Report and Semiannual Report to the United States Government,??? 7/30/07
Walker, David, ???Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks. Testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate,??? Government Accountability Office, 9/4/07
Think Tank Reports[/b]
Bruno, Greg, ???The Preparedness of Iraq Security Forces,??? Council On Foreign Relations, 9/4/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???The Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 9/6/07 - ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Haas, Richard, ???Hass: Petraeus, Crocker Blunt Congressional Criticisms on Iraq,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/11/07
Mathews, Jessica, ???The Surge in Iraq Has Failed,??? Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, September 2007
Articles[/b]
Abramowitz, Michael, ???No Big Shifts Planned After Report on Iraq,??? Washington Post, 8/25/07
Abramowitz, Michael, and DeYoung, Karen, ???Petraeus Disappointed At Political State of Iraq,??? Washington Post, 9/8/07
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Branigin, William, ???White House ???Satisfactory Progress??? on Iraq Goals,??? Washington Post, 9/14/07
Cave, Damien, ???Iraqi Factions??? Self-Interest Blocks Political Progress,??? New York Times, 8/25/07
DeYoung, Karen, ???An Only-Time-Will-Tell View on Political Gains,??? Washington Post, 9/12/07 - ???The Iraq Report???s Other Voice,??? Washington Post, 9/10/07 - ???Pentagon seeks better grades for Iraq in GAO audit,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 8/31/07
DeYoung, Karen and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Military Officials in Iraq Fault GAO Report,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
Dreazen, Yochi, ???Discarded Troop Plan,??? Wall Street Journal, 8/23/07
Kaplan, Fred, ???Challenging the Generals,??? New York Times, 8/26/07
Kessler, Glenn, ???The President Asserted Progress on Security and Political Issues. Recent Reports Weren???t Often So Upbeat,??? Washington Post, 9/14/07
LaFranchi, Howard, ???Bush recasting the war as not just about Iraq,??? Christian Science Monitor, 9/5/07 - ???Is Iraq making political strides???? Christian Science Monitor, 9/10/07
Myers, Steven Lee and Shanker, Thom, ???White House to Offer Iraq Plan of Gradual Cutes,??? New York Times, 8/18/07
Ottaway, Marina, ???The Testimony of Bush???s Dreams,??? Washington Post.com, 9/11/07
Packer, George, ???Planning For Defeat,??? New Yorker, 9/17/07
PBS??? Frontline, ???Interview Frederick Kagan,??? End Game, 6/19/07 - ???Interview with Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.),??? End Game, 6/19/07
Reid, Robert, ???In Iraq, Little Pressure for Reforms,??? Associated Press, 9/12/07 - ???Surge eases violence, fails on political
front,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 9/9/07
Sanger, David, ???Bush Shifts Terms for Measuring Progress in Iraq,??? New York Times, 9/5/07 - ???Multiple Messages and Audiences,??? New York Times, 9/14/07 - ???Redefining Goals: Less Talk of Victory Now,??? New York Times, 9/10/07
Sennott, Charles, ???Q&A with General David Petraeus,??? Boston Globe, 9/7/07
Strobel, Warren, ???After two days, no answer to ???how this ends,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/11/07
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, ???White House Is Gaining Confidence It Can Win Fight in Congress Over Iraq Policy,??? New York Times, 8/30/07
Troops Cuts: Which Unit Leaves First? Now that President Bush has approved a plan to gradually bring home some U.S. troops from Iraq, some of the families of the first unit to ship out are, surprisingly, not happy. WEB EXCLUSIVE By Jamie Reno Newsweek Updated: 2:39 p.m. PT Sept 14, 2007
Sept. 14, 2007 - In endorsing Gen. David Petraeus's recommendations on Iraq, President George W. Bush said Thursday night that at least 21,500 U.S. combat forces, plus support troops, could leave Iraq and come home by next July. Curiously, the first military unit designated by Petraeus to return is the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit[/b] based at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, Calif., north of San Diego.
But the 13th MEU, a support unit that has been in Iraq on its current tour for about three months, was already scheduled to return home from Iraq on Nov. 17. Their new date of departure under the drawdown plan? Still Nov. 17. Other Marine units have been in Iraq as much as three times longer than the 13th MEU, and some active-duty Army soldiers are serving 15-month tours, the longest of the war. Relatives of the 2,000-member 13th MEU, most of whom have known for more than a month that the unit was coming home, are collectively a bit confused by the inclusion of the 13th MEU in the announcement of troop cuts, and some are even angry.[/b]
???I think General Petraeus is using normal circumstances and turning them into some kind of big deal,??? says Melissa Hurt, 24, wife of a 13th MEU Sgt. Andy Hurt, 24. Originally from Minnesota, the couple has been married for four years and they have a 9-month-old son. ???I don???t understand how this can be called a troop reduction since Andy was already scheduled to come home in November and was not scheduled to return to Iraq. There are guys who???ve been in Iraq for more than a year. They should bring them home first. I know my husband agrees with me.???
Wendy Foulis, whose husband, Gunnery Sgt. Gerald Foulis, is a member of the 13th MEU but was with other units previously and is completing his third tour in Iraq, says she has ???absolutely no idea??? why the general singled out her husband???s unit. ???It???s the general???s decision, I won???t presume anything, but we???ve known our guys were coming home for more than a month,??? she says. ???This wasn???t a surprise. But since they were part of the surge, and since this unit is not designed for the type of work they did in Iraq, I guess it has something to do with that.???
President Bush isn???t quite yet a lame duck president, but his war in Iraq is. The testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker to Congress in mid-September laid out what will be U.S. policy until the next president in 2009, the status quo.
U.S. policy for the rest of the Bush presidency will be to keep as many troops in Iraq as possible, probably the 130,000 level that was before the surge, work with local Sunni forces, and perhaps some Shiites as well, and get the Maliki government to accept Sunni power in Anbar province, while appeasing Congress and the public by withdrawing the surge troops that were coming home anyway. The goal is to simply maintain the slight military gains the surge has achieved, while holding out hope that the local changes in Anbar can lead to some kind of political movement in the future. Because of limited resources, the U.S. will focus just on Western and Central Iraq, leaving the rest of Iraq to its own devices. Missing is any real plan for reconciliation which everyone acknowledges is what will lead to peace in Iraq.
This is not the first time U.S. troops have been left with no real strategy in Iraq. By the summer of 2006 there was widespread consensus even among the military in Iraq that things were not working out. By the fall of 2006 Bush agreed that strategy needed to be changed. However because Congressional elections were coming up he didn???t want to make any public announcements. He waited until January 2007 to announce the surge meaning American troops spent months in Iraq with no real goal because of U.S. domestic political concerns. The difference this time is that the soldiers will be left 16 months fighting and dying with no strategy.
Sources[/b]
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Burns, Robert, ???What happens after ???surge??? over is key,??? Associated Press, 9/7/07
Clift, Eleanor, ???Marketing the War,??? Newsweek, 8/31/07
Dreazen, Yochi and Shishking, Philip and Jaffe, Greg, ???U.S. Shifts Iraq Focus As Local Tactics Gain,??? Wall Street Journal, 9/4/07
End Game, ???Interview Frederick Kagan,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07 - ???Interview Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.),??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07 - ???Interview Michael Gordon,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07 - ???Interview Philip Zelikow,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07 - ???Interview Thomas Ricks,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07
Gwertzman, Bernard, ???Haass: Petraeus, crocker Blunt Congressional Criticisms on Iraq,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/11/07
According to President Bush the U.S. is fighting the same people that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 in Iraq right now. This is patently untrue. While Al Qaeda In Iraq is affiliated with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan, it is largely an independent group that was formed because of the 2003 U.S. invasion. Not only that, but the Shiite militias are now responsible for over 70% of attacks on U.S. forces. Despite this, the U.S. military command in Iraq still proclaims the Sunni insurgency their number one military priority. The insurgency itself is changing to a more Islamic character while factions are splintering, with some now cooperating with the U.S. to fight their one-time compatriots.
Who???s Who In The Sunni Insugency[/b]
The Sunni insurgency is actually a collection of many different groups. Originally, Baathists and soldiers who had been angered by the U.S. disbanding the army made up the majority of the fighters. While there are still plenty of former soldiers carrying out attacks, the insurgency is now dominated by Islamists, both Iraqi and foreign. These are some of the major groups.
Islamic State of Iraq The Islamic State of Iraq is an umbrella organization created by Al Qaeda in Iraq to give itself a more Iraqi character. It is in fact largely Iraqi in membership now. The group was formed in October 2006 and wants to establish an Islamic state in Iraq. They carry out attacks against the U.S., Iraqi security forces, and Shiite militias, who they don???t consider to be true Muslims. They are active in Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Salah Al-Din, Ninawah, and parts of Babil and Wasit provinces. Because of the U.S. success in Anbar, the Islamic State was forced to relocate first to Diyala and then later to Ninevah provinces during the surge. The group is affiliated with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but is largely independent. It sees Iraq as part of a worldwide jihad against the West.
Mujahidin Army in Iraq The Mujahidin Army in Iraq claims that it began as a secret Islamist group in Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion. Publicly however, they have only been active since 2004. They include former soldiers and are committed to setting up an Islamic state in Iraq. They have rejected negotiations with the U.S. and the Shiite led government. While it attacks and U.S. and Iraqi forces, it claims not to target civilians, not even Shiites. It is active in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala and Salah Al-Din provinces.
Islamic Army in Iraq The Islamic Army in Iraq claims to have been founded as an underground Islamic group in 2002. It publicly declared its formation in May 2003 and includes former soldiers. It has at least 15,000 fighters and carries out 75% of insurgent attacks against the U.S. It isn???t opposed to Shiites, but thinks Iran is a major threat to Iraq. Their main goals are to force the U.S. out, fight Iran, and to create an Islamic state in Iraq. They have said they would negotiate with the U.S. if it agrees to withdraw and recognizes the insurgency. It has publicly split from Al Qaeda in Iraq. It attacks U.S. and Iraqi forces, Shiite militias and civilians that they consider collaborators. It is active in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala and Salah al-Din provinces. Some of its members have recently switched sides and are now cooperating with U.S. forces.
Ansar Al-Sunna Ansar Al-Sunna was former known as Ansar Al-Islam. The U.S. claimed they were part of Al Qaeda and used them to help justify the invasion. The group includes both Iraqis and foreign fighters and was formed in September 2003. It rejects negotiations and wants to create an Islamic state. It attacks U.S., Iraqi and Kurdish forces along with Shiite militias and people that collaborate with them. It is active in Mosul, Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, and Salah al-Din provinces.
Iraqi Resistance Movement ??? 1920 Revolution Brigades This group was formed in June 2003 and includes former soldiers. It is one of the few largely nationalist organizations, and is actually an umbrella group for many smaller units. Its main goals are to drive the U.S. out and set up an Islamic state. It attacks U.S. and Iraqi forces and collaborators, while prohibiting actions against key infrastructure. It is active in Anbar, Baghdad, and Diyala province. Because of the new Sunni policy the U.S. is carrying out in these areas, the 1920 Revolution Brigades has split in two, with some collaborating with the U.S., while the other remain fighting.
Islamic Front of Iraqi Resistance The Islamic Front of Iraqi Resistance was formed in May 2004 and includes many former officers of the old Iraqi army. It is a nationalist organization that wants to drive the U.S. out. It doesn???t attack Iraqi officials or infrastructure, only Americans. It rejects negotiations with the Iraqi government, but has also said that it believes in national reconciliation. In May 2007 it joined with Hamas-Iraq, a break away faction of the 1920 Revolution Brigades. Hamas-Iraq is also affiliated with the Association of Muslim Scholars and now claims that it is moving towards politics. Some of its fighters are now collaborating with the U.S. in Diyala.
Funding[/b]
Today the insurgency is largely self-sufficient. They get the majority of their funds from smuggling and criminal gangs, but they also receive outside aid from neighboring Sunni states. There are also reports that they have even accepted money from Iran.
Effects of the Surge[/b]
The surge has largely focused on the Sunni population. That is shown by the fact that 85% of the prisoners held by the U.S. are Sunnis. That population has swollen under the surge from 16,000 in February 2007 to around 24,500 by August. Militarily, the surge has had some ringing successes against the insurgency. In Anbar, Al Qaeda in Iraq has been largely dislodged, although it is still active there. It has also split the 1920 Revolution Brigades and Islamic Army in Iraq as many former fighters are now working with the U.S. Many insurgent groups have left Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala provinces for greener pastures where there are fewer Americans.
The change of heart amongst Sunnis actually occurred months before the surge. In September 2002 Sunni tribes that had grown tired of the rigid, ideological stance of the Islamic State of Iraq formed the Anbar Salvation Front. They had been trying to reach out to Americans but were ignored until early 2007 when the surge began. Since then, the U.S. has been attempting to replicate the Anbar model with Sunnis in Diyala and Baghdad.
The U.S. is hoping that these Sunni groups can be formerly incorporated into the Iraqi security forces, while the tribes forge reconciliation with the Shiite-Kurdish run government. The Sunnis are still largely opposed to the Shiites and see Iran as their masters.
An example of this is in Baghdad, where an unintended affect of the surge has been to displace many insurgent groups, giving the upper hand to the Shiite militias. The Sunnis in Baghdad now being organized by the U.S. are in fact protecting the remains of their community, most of which have been forced out. Many Sunnis in the capitol now see the U.S. as their protectors against the militias, giving them another reason to mistrust the Maliki government, which they consider duplicitous, having stood by and done nothing during the ethnic cleansing.
On the other hand, the government may let the Sunnis have control of Anbar province as the country moves towards more regional power bases. In the worst-case scenario, the Sunni policy may be another sign of the break-up of the country and the former insurgents could go back to fighting the government in the future. In the best-case, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds may learn to live together but apart from each other in their own separate areas.
Conclusion[/b]
It???s easiest for the U.S. to blame Al Qaeda in Iraq for the violence in the country. It
serves domestic political purposes by making Americans think of 9/11 and blames outsiders rather than Iraqis for the war. However it is largely misleading as the Islamic Army in Iraq carries out ?? of the insurgent attacks on Americans. More importantly, the Shiite militias are now the largest threat to the U.S. and long-term stability in the country as they have the upper hand against the Sunnis in much of central Iraq, including Baghdad, and carry out the majority of attacks on the U.S. overall. The surge has continued to complicate the picture in Iraq. The military successes of splitting some of the insurgent groups, and driving Al Qaeda in Iraq out of its base in Anbar, is counterbalanced by the threat the Sunni policy holds for the future unity of the country.
Sources[/b]
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Beehner, Lionel, ???Al-Qaeda in Iraq: Resurging or Splintering???? Council on Foreign Relations, 7/16/07
Cave, Damien, and Farrell, Stephen, ???At Street Level, Unmet Goals of Troop Buildup,??? New York Times, 9/9/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Dreazen, Yochi and Shishking, Philip and Jaffe, Greg, ???U.S. Shifts Iraq Focus As Local Tactics Gain,??? Wall Street Journal, 9/4/07
Gordon, Michael, ???The Former-Insurgent-Counterinsurgency,??? New York Times, 9/2/07
Hoyt, Clark, ???When the Issue Is War, Take Nothing for Granted,??? New York Times, 8/19/07
Johnson, Kirk, ???Understanding Violence and Civilian Casualty Rates in Iraq: An Insider???s View,??? Heritage Foundation, 9/10/07
Kimmage, Daniel, and Ridolfo, Kathleen, ???Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images And Ideas,??? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 2007
Langer, Gary, ???What They???re Saying in Anbar Province,??? New York Times, 9/16/07
Office of the Press Secretary, ???President Bush Celebrates Independence Day With West Virginia Air National Guard,??? White House, 7/4/07
Partlow, Joshua, ???Singing Up Sunnis With ???Insurgent??? on Their Resumes,??? Washington Post, 9/4/07
Reid, Robert, ???Progress Slow As Iraqi Politics in Flux,??? Associated Press, 9/16/07
San Francisco Chronicle, ???U.S. military divided on troop withdrawal,??? 8/25/07
Susman, Tina, ???Looking to Anbar for Iraq???s future,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/10/07 - ???Troop buildup fails to reconcile Iraq,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/4/07
Tavernise, Sabrina, ???In Air Attack, U.S. Soldiers Kill 18 Gunmen,??? New York Times, 8/25/07
Zunes, Stephen and Leaver, Erik, ???Annotate This ??? President Bush???s Sept 13 Speech to the Nation on Iraq,??? Foreign Policy In Focus, 9/14/07
When General Petraeus testified to Congress in September claiming that violence was dramatically down in Iraq, it set off a minor controversy. Some challenged his numbers, while others held them up to say that the surge was working. A analysis of military, think tank, and press reports show that the military is playing with the numbers, but that overall violence is down in Iraq since the surge.
Controversy Over The Exact Numbers ???[/b]
No one disagrees that Iraq set a new record for violence by the end of 2006. After the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine, militias such as Sadr???s Mahdi Army steadily increased their attacks upon Sunnis, reaching a crescendo in December. What happened in the country after President Bush announced the surge in January 2007 has been a matter of debate. In September General Petraeus claimed that violence was down 75% in Baghdad and 50% overall in the country. Several think tanks and newspaper articles challenged Petraeus??? numbers.
What they found brought up several important questions about how the U.S. military collects and reports on violence in Iraq. Kirk Johnson who was the deputy director of the office in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 2006-2007 that collected this information and now works for the Heritage Foundation said that U.S. reporting on average misses 35-65% of the violence. That???s because it focuses upon sectarian violence, which is meaningless for homogenous communities like the Sunni west and Shiite south, it undercounts civilians because it doesn???t have the means to collect all the information, and doesn???t collect consistent information from areas under Iraqi control. Under Petraeus the military has been trying to refine their body counts, but intelligence officers in Baghdad who collect this information admit that many times it comes down to a subjective decision on whether a body found should be counted as a sectarian or regular murder. For example, if a body is found in an area that is known as a flashpoint between Sunnis and Shiites it is usually counted as a sectarian death. Likewise if it shows any signs of torture or being tied up it???s counted as sectarian. However if bodies are found in a largely peaceful area, it is usually not included. Likewise an even more complicated occasion is when a body is found and there is no way to tell which sect it belongs to. The soldiers then have to make an educated guess as to the cause of death and whether to count it or not.
Another difference found was between what the Pentagon reported to Congress in September and what Petraeus presented that same month. A Pentagon report had a chart on average daily deaths and wounding of U.S. and Iraqi forces, and civilians, while a Petraeus??? chart covered sectarian deaths per month. While the two had different kinds of information, the general trends should???ve followed the same pattern with the Pentagon report having higher numbers than Petraeus because it was covering more people. However, Petraeus numbers were much higher before the surge, and much lower since the summer.
A more disturbing finding is that the Pentagon has been systematically ignoring the greatest single cause of sectarian deaths in Iraq until September 2007. The Department of Defense is required to deliver quarterly reports to Congress on progress in Iraq. In 2007 there have been three reports in March, June, and September. Each one of these reports has revised its numbers upwards over the same months for violence in Iraq. The military admitted that the reason why violence went up in the September report from the previous two was because it was the first to include car and suicide bombings. These are the major causes of mass casualties yet they were never included before.
From this analysis it???s pretty clear that the U.S. military has been systematically undercounting the violence in Iraq. Part of it is caused by having to collect information during a war with limited manpower. Another major cause has to be political pressure. It???s hard to say that the U.S. is winning and that Iraq is moving towards a functioning democracy with so much death and destruction constantly being reported. There has been a huge drop in public support for the war at home as a result, and therefore it would only be natural to start playing with the numbers to defer criticism.
??? But Trends In Violence Decreasing[/b]
Despite the controversy over the exact numbers and how they???re collected in Iraq, the general trends show that violence is down since the surge. The Council on Foreign Relations released a report comparing reports by General Petreaus, Iraqcasualties.org, Iraq Body Count, the Associated Press, Reuters, the U.N., the Brookings Institutions??? Iraq Index, the Washington Post, and McClatchy Newspapers. All of the reporting follows the same general trends: violence increased during 2006 with a high during the winter, and then decreased during 2007. Violence is still above 2006, but if the numbers continue to decline they will reach that level eventually. The one major difference is that four of the six sources record an increase in violence since June, while the military and Washington Post show a continued decrease. Whether this upward trend proves true will take until 2008 to determine because the numbers are always changing, and two months are a small fraction of an entire year.
What is now up for debate is the cause for this general decrease in violence in Iraq. When Petraeus reported to Congress he was careful to say that the surge has only been one factor for the decline. It???s without argument that an increase in U.S. forces, especially with the new task of protecting the population has decreased violence in the areas where they have control, which is about 50% of the capitol. Another reason that has been brought up is the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad. With the majority of Sunnis having been forced out, there are simply fewer Sunnis to kill. Another probable cause for the decrease was the decision by Moqtada al-Sadr to stand down his Mahdi Army militia in January when the surge was announced. He made the tactical decision to stand out of the way of the new U.S. policy because he hoped it would focus on the Sunnis, and allow him to take over more of the capitol. The largest drop in violence actually happened from December 2006 to February 2007 before large numbers of additional troops were even sent to Iraq, so Sadr???s decision and ethnic cleansing were probably major causes in this change. It???s from a combination of all three of these factors that violence is down in Baghdad.
Conclusion[/b]
There will probably never be an accurate count of the violence in Iraq. Depending upon which source you ask, the numbers vary widely. For example, unofficially, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said that there was 2,318 civilians killed in August, up from 1,980 in July, while General Petraeus??? report to Congress said there were only around 1,500 in August. The causes for these discrepancies are three fold: a lack of personnel, the difficulties of counting dead during a war, and the pressure to keep the numbers down during an unpopular conflict. Despite these problems, violence does appear to be declining for the first half of 2007, however, it???s still above 2006 levels. Whether this trend will continue is an open question, especially because the surge will end by early 2008. While sectarian violence appears to be down in central Iraq, the country is always changing with Sunnis fighting Sunnis in the West and Shiites increasingly fighting Shiites in the South. How the U.S. deals with these will be the major issue in 2008 and beyond.
SOURCES[/b]
Government Reports:[/b]
Department of Defense, ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? September 2007
Fischer, Hannah, ???Iraqi Civilian Deaths Estimates,??? Congressional Research Service, 9/5/07
National I
ntelligence Council, ???Prospects for Iraq???s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive,??? National Intelligence Estimate, August 2007
Think Tank Reports:[/b]
Biddle, Stephen Friedman, Jeffrey, ???The Iraq Data Debate Civilian Casualties from 2006 to 2007,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/25/07
Bruno, Greg, ???Iraq Security Statistics,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/12/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Johnson, Kirk, ???Understanding Violence and Civilian Casualty Rates in Iraq: An Insider???s View,??? Heritage Foundation, 9/10/07
Korb, Lawrence Biddle, Stephen, ???Violence by the Numbers in Iraq: Sound Data or Shaky Statistics???? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/25/07
National Security Network, ???Drop in Violence???? 8/30/07
Articles[/b]
Ambramowitz, Michael and DeYoung, Karen, ???Petraeus Disappointed At Political State of Iraq,??? Washington Post, 9/8/07
DeYoung, Karen, ???Experts Doubt Drop In Violence in Iraq,??? Washington Post, 9/6/07 - ???What Defines a Killing as Sectarian???? Washington Post, 9/25/07
DeYoung, Karen and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Military Officials in Iraq Fault GAO Report,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
Fadel, Leila, ???Despite violence drop, officers see bleak future for Iraq,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 8/15/07 - ???Security in Iraq still elusive,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/7/07
Glanz, James, ???Civilian Death Toll Falls in Baghdad but Rises Across Iraq,??? New York Times, 9/2/07
Gordon, Michael, ???Hints of Progress, and Questions, in Iraq Data,??? New York Times, 9/8/07
Hurst, Steven, ???Violence lessens in Baghdad as it grows elsewhere,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 8/26/07
Lardner, Richard, ???Defense agency chart shows scant progress,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 9/10/07
Michaels, Jim, ???Major attacks decline in Iraq,??? USA Today, 8/13/07
Reid, Robert, ???August particularly deadly for Iraqis,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 9/2/07
Sudarsan, Raghavan, ???No Relief From Fear,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
Susman, Tina, ???Troop buildup fails to reconcile Iraq,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/4/07 - ???U.S. defends sectarian death figures,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/13/07
Youssef, Nancy and Fadel, Leila, ???What Crocker and Petraeus didn???t say,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/10/07
One of the reasons why there has been no political reconciliation in Iraq during the surge is because the government of Prime Minister Maliki simply doesn???t work. Each part of the government only seems to care about itself and enriching its officials and supporters. More evidence of the government???s dysfunctionality was recently given. The State Department, the German based Transparency International, and the former lead anti-corruption officer in Iraq all said that corruption is so endemic that the administration barley functions.
On 10/4/07 Judge Radhi, former head of Iraq???s Commission on Public Integrity, the major anti-corruption office in the Maliki government, testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that corruption costs Iraq $18 billion a year. There was no possibility of stopping it because the Prime Minister and other government officials actively impede investigations. His former office is also under constant threat from other government ministries, gangs and militias that have cost the lives of 31 of his staff and 12 of their family members. The U.S. Inspector General for Reconstruction testified at the same meeting saying that he found corruption to be increasing in Iraq.
Radhi???s testimony comes after a new annual report by Transparency International on corruption around the world. Out of 180 countries, Iraq ranked the third most corrupt behind only Somalia and Myanmar. Iraq received the same ranking in 2006.
The U.S. Embassy in Iraq provided the most in depth study of the problem, but can???t make its findings public. That???s because Secretary of State Rice has officially told all employees that they cannot publicly criticize the Iraqi government. Fortunately, the embassy???s report was put on the internet before it was retroactively classified. The report shows that corruption affects every single ministry and office in the Iraqi government. It also said that there is no chance that the government will be able to solve the problem because Prime Minister Maliki doesn???t want to. Instead, most government officials think their newfound power entitles them to steal from the government. Some ministries were so corrupt they couldn???t provide basic services and were increasing public discontent with the government. Others are run by gangs and reminded the embassy of the mafia rather than a government office. The effect was that the agencies acted like independent fiefdoms, some of which would kill and threaten investigators.
The examples of corruption the embassy found seem to be endless. The Shiite dominated Interior Ministry was considered off limits because investigators felt like they would be assassinated if they tried to look into its activities. The threats were so strong investigators wouldn???t even enter the Ministry???s building. The various crimes the ministry is accused of include, sectarian killings, selling U.S. weapons and vehicles on the black market, and graft. The Commission on Public Integrity also relied on the ministry to serve warrants, arrest suspects, and protect investigators, none of which Interior did with any regularity. Defense Ministry officials were also accused of stealing money from contracts such as the former Minister who stole $850 million. He was never investigated. There are so many cases involving the ministry that investigators are stuck looking into cases dating back to 2005. The Ministry of Trade steals food from the Food for Oil program with different gangs controlling each part of the operation. Sadr runs the Ministry of Health and his militia threatens investigators. It demands bribes from doctors and clinics, and steals drugs. The public blames it for the poor public health system and directly adds to the negative perception of the government. The Oil Ministry is seen as the largest source of corruption in Iraq. The ministry doesn???t accurately record oil production, delivery, etc. so that officials and gangs can smuggle and steal it. In July 2007 the Government Accountability Office estimated that $1.8-$5.5 billion in oil was stolen each year.
Conclusion[/b]
A functioning government seems to be the last thing on the minds of many of Iraq???s officials. Making money and providing patronage seem to be much more important for them. It???s no wonder than that solving pressing political problems have gone nowhere and will likely not be dealt with anytime soon because running the country doesn???t appear to be a priority.
Sources[/b]
BBC News, ???Little progress on halting Iraq???s decay,??? 9/6/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Corn, David, ???Secret Report: Corruption is ???Norm??? Within Iraqi Government,??? The Nation.com, 8/30/07
DeYoung, Karen and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Military Officials in Iraq Fault GAO Report,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, ???Testimony Of Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi,??? 10/4/07
Conventional wisdom today is that the surge failed to achieve its political goals, but did succeed in bringing about a dramatic military reversal for Al Qaeda in Iraq in Anbar province. The change in Western Iraq however, started before the surge even started. The Anbar Salvation Front which was the first Sunni group to work with the U.S. and openly fight Al Qaeda in Iraq, was formed in September 2006, four months before President Bush announced the surge and several months before the additional troops actually arrived. The split between Iraqis and the foreign led Al Qaeda in Iraq had been brewing for years. The decision by tribes to turn against Al Qaeda in Iraq was a purely Iraqi one motivated by a struggle over power, tactics and business.
Divisions in The Insurgency[/b]
Beginning in 2005 the Islamists began dominating the Iraqi insurgency. This trend was divided between the more nationalist oriented indigenous Iraqis who were mostly concerned with expelling the U.S. and then setting up an Islamic state, and the foreign led Islamists that also wanted the U.S. out, but then wanted to export their brand of Islam to neighboring countries. The two sides initially cooperated, but then rivalries grew over who was going to lead the insurgency. Some Iraqis resented the fact that foreigners were trying to take over their revolt. In response, Al Qaeda in Iraq formed at first the Mujahidin Shura Council and then the Islamic State of Iraq to give them a more Iraqi character. While most of the group is now Iraqi, the leadership still remains foreign born, and has not been able to expand its base of support.
Another point of contention was over who was a legitimate target. Al Qaeda in Iraq targeted not only American and Iraqi forces but also Iraqi Shiites in an attempt to foster a civil war to bring down the government. Many Iraqi insurgents did not agree with these sectarian attacks.
The nationalist trend has also been open to negotiations with the U.S. and Iraqi government, which Al Qaeda in Iraq soundly rejected. The first sign of this break was when the nationalist groups agreed to participate in the two Iraqi elections in 2005. This led to fighting between insurgent groups in Anbar and Salah al Din provinces, and the ascendance of the nationalists over Al Qaeda in Iraq since then.
Split With The Tribes[/b]
Tribes in Western and Central Iraq had their own set of feuds with Al Qaeda in Iraq. First, the insurgency was a rival power base to the tribes. Many Sunnis tribes actively supported the insurgency, but the sheikhs were worried that they were losing influence in the process. The tribes in Anbar were also involved in smuggling, extortion and legitimate companies. The insurgents attempted to take some of these over, and the violence disrupted regular businesses. A loss of money thus became another point of contention.
A tactic imported from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or marrying into local tribes to forge alliances also backfired in Iraq. When one sheikh refused to marry off his daughter, Al Qaeda in Iraq massacred the family, setting off intense fighting between the two.
Other attacks on tribal members caused further splits. In January 2006 Al Qaeda in Iraq killed 50 tribesmen organized by a local sheikh who were attempting to volunteer for the police in Ramadi. In Samarra in Salah al Din province, Al Qaeda in Iraq began attacking Shiite members of a mixed Sunni-Shiite tribe. In both cases, the sheikhs responded by going on the offensive against the Islamists. As a result, Al Qaeda in Iraq lost much of its influence in Anbar and was forced to relocate to other parts of Salah al Din, Diyala and Baghdad provinces by late 2006.
The Surge[/b]
By the fall of 2006 some Sunni tribes formed the Anbar Salvation Front to openly challenge Al Qaeda in Iraq. The group asked for U.S. assistance but was ignored until early 2007 when the surge began. It was then that the U.S. saw the potential of the tribes and decided to cooperate with them. For the tribal leaders the U.S. offered millions of dollars, weapons, and a new source of power and legitimacy for sheikhs.
Since then violence has dropped dramatically in Anbar. The U.S. claims this is because Al Qaeda in Iraq has been largely banished from the province, but that was true before the surge began. Much of the remaining Al Qaeda in Iraq elements relocated to first Diyala and then Niniwa province in the north. The cause of the decline in attacks is more likely because the tribes and nationalist insurgents that were attacking the U.S. are now cooperating with them.
Conclusion[/b]
The Iraqi insurgency was splitting before the surge began over leadership, attacks on civilians, sectarian killings, and disputes with tribes. In early 2007 the U.S. simply recognized what was already happening on its own. Now the U.S. is trying to work with tribes throughout central Iraq with mixed results. In homogenous Anbar the tribes and former insurgents have been mostly successful because they can join the police and concentrate on fighting the Islamists. In central Iraq however, sectarian divisions exist and Sunnis have to worry about fighting not only Al Qaeda in Iraq, but Shiite militias and security forces. The Sunni policy has also not forged any kind of reconciliation as the main Shiite political alliance and the Iraq national security advisor have condemned the plan and called on the U.S. to stop. Overall, working with Sunnis is a double-edged sword. It might empower Sunnis and give them a stake in local governments. On the other hand, it might lead to the division of the country and more fighting as the Sunnis could turn their guns back on the government in the future.
SOURCES[/b]
Government Reports[/b]
White House, ???Benchmark Assessment Report,??? 9/14/07
Think Tank Reports[/b]
Beehner, Lionel, ???Al-Qaeda in Iraq: Resurging or Splintering???? Council on Foreign Relations, 7/16/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07 - ???The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/6/07
Fishman, Brian, ???The Imaginary Emir: Al-Qa???ida in Iraq???s Strategic Mistake,??? Combating Terrorism Center, 7/18/07
Rogers, Paul, ???Iraq After The Surge,??? Oxford Research Group, August 2007
Simon, Steven, ???Prepared testimony Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 7/17/07
Steinberg, Guido, ???The Iraqi Insurgency,??? German Institute for International and Security Affairs, December 2007
Zunes, Stephen and Leaver, Erik, ???Annotate This ??? President Bush???s Sept 13 Speech to the Nation on Iraq,??? Foreign Policy In Focus, 9/14/07
Articles[/b]
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Economist, ???I want to kill you, but not today,??? 10/4/07
Fadel, Leila, ???Security in Iraq still elusive,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/7/07
Gordon, Michael, ???The Former-Insurgent-Counterinsurgency,??? New York times, 9/2/07
Kilcullen, Dave, ???Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt,??? Small Wars Journal: SWJ Blog, 8/29/07
Kimmage, Daniel, and Ridolfo, Kathleen, ???Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images And Ideas,??? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 2007
Klein, Joe, ???The Next War in Iraq,??? Time, 9/3/07
Langer, Gary, ???What They???re Saying in Anbar Province,??? New Yo
rk Times, 9/16/07
Lubold, Gordon, ???A quieter Anbar Province rebuilds,??? Christian Science Monitor, 9/5/07 - ???Anbar streets illustrate Petraeus???s testimony,??? Christian Science Monitor, 9/12/07
Oppel, Richard, ???Quieter Fallujah fears U.S. exit,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 8/19/07
Partlow, Joshua, ???Shiites tell U.S. to quit recruiting Sunni tribesmen,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 10/3/07
Reid, Robert, ???Progress Slow As Iraqi Politics in Flux,??? Associated Press, 9/16/07
Susman, Tina, ???Troop buildup fails to reconcile Iraq,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/4/07
Tarabay, Jamie, ???Anbar Alliance May Not Translate to Other Provinces,??? All Things Considered ??? National Public Radio, 9/25/07
Tilghman, Andrew, ???The Myth of AQI,??? Washington Monthly, October 2007
Tyson, Ann Scott, ???A Deadly Clash at Donkey Island,??? Washington Post, 8/19/07 - ???Tribal Members Join in Effort To Assist U.S., Iraqi Forces,??? Washington Post, 9/30/07
Wright, Robin and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Iraqi official: Iran supplying arms to insurgents attacking U.S. forces,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 10/6/07
The first sign of this break was when the nationalist groups agreed to participate in the two Iraqi elections in 2005. This led to fighting between insurgent groups in Anbar and Salah al Din provinces, and the ascendance of the nationalists over Al Qaeda in Iraq since then.
That should actually read when the nationalist insurgents decided to take part in the December 2005 election. The Sunnis largely boycotted the first elections at the beginning of that year.
On 10/4/07 Judge Radhi, former head of Iraq???s Commission on Public Integrity, the major anti-corruption office in the Maliki government, testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that corruption costs Iraq $18 billion a year.
That should read "18 billion over the last three years."
Iraq's leaders agree on key benchmarks By Waleed Ibrahim and Wisam Mohammed Sun Aug 26, 6:27 PM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's top Shi'ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political leaders announced on Sunday they had reached consensus on some key measures seen as vital to fostering national reconciliation.[/b]
i know this must be a big bummer for you motown, especially since this was all going on at the very same time that you were drafting up you 10,000 word essay on how it wasn't. Don't let these things you get you down, and keep the dream (of failure) a live. I'm sure there will be a big suicide bomb to buck up your spirits in a day or two.
P.S. I bet you can find something from Glen Greenwald or one of your "think tank" reports that spins this an acceptable light.
The important question is whether this will actually happen. This is a pledge and not actual legislation and in case you didn't notice, but the Maliki government is on life support right now. Here's some things to consider.
1) The pledge was for a new de-Baathification law, local elections and sharing of government jobs amongst the three main sects.
2) Half of Maliki's cabinet is missing and the only Sunni politican that was in on this pledge was the Vice President. His own party denounced him for taking part and the main Sunni party is still boycotting and said the pledge was window dressing.
3) As of now, the Maliki coalition of Dawa, SIIC and the 2 Kurdish parties do not have a majority in parliament to pass any laws so they need to reach out to others to make this pledge into reality. They especially need to get the Sunni parties on board so that they can show the country they really believe in power sharing.
4) In 2006 the Maliki government pledged to pass these same laws by December 2006. The Iraqi government also promised to pass an oil law Sept. 2006, Dec. 2006, Feb. 2007, and June 2007. It's August 2007 and nothing has happened. Actions speak louder than words.
It's been almost two months since our recently departed Saba made this post. The White House's September report to Congress held up this deal amongst Maliki's remaining cabinet ministers as a sign of political reconciliation. The Iraqi government hasn't come threw with any of these promises however.
1) There is no new debaathification law. This was the fifth time Maliki promised one starting back in June 2006. Only a draft law exists that hasn't even been sent to parliament yet.
2) There are no plans for new local elections. This is the third time Maliki promised them dating back to September 2006.
3) There has been no movement towards sharing government jobs amongst the various sects. Each ministry is controlled by a specific political party that uses them to engrandize themselves, steal from and dole out patronage to their followers. The parties have no plans on hiring people from other sects, let alone other parties because it would mean they would lose $ and power.
4) The fourth part of the deal that I didn't mention originally was the release of Sunni prisoners. The U.S. actually started releasing some Iraqi prisoners during Ramadan that just ended, and the Sunni Vice President said this was due to the political deal announced in August, but the US was planning on releasing them anyway and only 200 were let out. The number of detainees, 80% of which are Sunnis, continue to sky rocket during the surge. There could be 15,000 new ones by the time the surge ends in early 2009. More importantly the Iraqi Interior Ministry refused to release any of its prisoners which would be a sign of political progress for the government.
5) Maliki's government remains as fractured as ever. Only one Sunni cabinet minister has returned, but he got kicked out of his political party as a result. At the same time Maliki's major support. the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance has broken up with Sadr defecting and his Mahdi Army is fighting the other major Shiite party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) for control of Southern Iraq. Some Iraqi politicians now say that political reconciliation is impossible.
IRIN, ???IRAQ: Lawyers accuse government of concealing information about detainees??? UN Office For The Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 9/19/07
Partlow, Joshua, ???Top Iraqis Pull Back From Key U.S. Goal,??? Washington Post, 10/8/07
Pincus, Walter, ???U.S. Working to Reshape Iraqi Detainees,??? Washington Post, 9/19/07
Pincus, Walter and Greenwell, Megan, ???U.S. Releases 260 Iraqi Detainees,??? Washington Post, 9/23/07
Rubin, Alissa, ???Iraqi Cleric???s Forces Say They Will Quit Shiite Bloc,??? New York Times, 9/16/07
Walker, David, ???Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks. Testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate,??? Government Accountability Office, 9/4/07
???The Iraq War and Agenda Setting,??? Michael Mazarr, Foreign Policy Analysis, January 2007[/b]
Here???s a good academic piece by Michael Mazarr, who is national security professor at the U.S. Naval War College in D.C. He uses decision-making theory to analyze why the Bush administration chose to invade Iraq. The article is far too long to post the entire thing, but here are the highlights and some abstracts.
If you want to read the full article it???s available here:
1) Neoconservatives had been advocating for the overthrow of Saddam and a more forceful American foreign policy to maintain America???s position since the 1990s. Many of these advocates were given employment in the Bush administration. This position was also shared by Bush and Cheney before they got elected.
2) Before 9/11 there was discussion about getting tougher with Iraq but because of differences between the State and Defense Departments in the Bush administration, little was done because of bureaucratic deadlock.
3) When 9/11 happened the policy makers and Bush relied on their preconceived priority, getting rid of Saddam, rather than dealing with the immediate issue, terrorism. They fell back on what they knew, Iraq, rather than what they didn???t, Al Qaeda.
4) Relying on preconceived ideas was due to the White House suffering from group think. Group think is when decision makers are all of like mind, removed from others, rely on informal decision making rather than the existing channels, and believe that maintaining their group is of utmost importance. This leads to the shutting out of criticism, self-reinforcement, and belief in the superiority of the group???s ideas over all others. The group therefore, becomes the most important thing to decision makers.
5) Group think led Pres. Bush to never ask any of his advisors whether invading Iraq was right or not, to ignore the fact that Iraq was not connected to 9/11, and to the administration not properly preparing for the aftermath of the war because they relied on a best case scenario where all the U.S. had to do was use military force and then everything else would take care of itself.
This is an important analysis because group think didn???t suddenly end after the U.S. invasion in 2003, but rather persisted up until 2006 when Rumsfeld was fired. Until then Bush and his advisors maintained a linear vision of the war that the U.S. was winning and that Iraq was always improving that was impervious to any contradictory facts. It wasn???t until Bush???s advisors got shuffled that the group think was broken by people that had a different vision of Iraq such as Defense Secretary Gates. In fact, Bush and Cheney might still be suffering from group think to this day.
Abstracts:[/b]
???The groupthink model examines cases when a deep and thorough process of rational decision- making gives way to distorted decisions because of the group processes involved (see Janis 1982). Decision-makers in a group setting that is highly cohesive, insulated, and informal in its decision procedures can come to value the group itself more than the quality of its analysis. When this happens, they will crave belongingness over all else and engage in furious concurrence-seeking. The result will be a tendency for quick and ill-considered agreement, a refusal to voice personal doubts, a quashing of independent opinion, an emerging sense of the moral and intellectual superiority of the group leading to a sense of invulnerability, and the demonization of anyone who criticizes the group???s favored analysis or policies.
All of these ills flow from the same source - the desire for concurrence. Members need the group, and to preserve it they defend the purity and single-mindedness of its deliberations. Groupthink does not refer to a situation in which people simply agree with one another; for groupthink to be in evidence, a need for cohesion must hang over the proceedings as the primary motivation for concurrence. Seen as members of policy or epistemic communities, however, these experts??? views emerge as the product of a combination of shared beliefs and more subtle conformity pressures, rather than a desperate drive for concurrence. The motive force is not membership, but long-incubated similarities in beliefs and worldviews produced by the interactions, research, debate, and mutual conformity pressures of a policy community.???
???The group of anti-Saddam activists who urged stronger measures against Iraq constituted a form of policy community that matches closely the basic idea put forward in the agenda-setting literature. The policy community on this issue was smaller, less technically expert, and more ideologically self-defined than the broader concept at work in the agenda-setting framework. Nonetheless, the essential role of the community in this policy process mirrors that laid out in the agenda-setting literature: the anti-Saddam activists discussed issues, generated and circulated knowledge, and established themselves- at least within the newly elected Bush administration - as the source of competence on a key policy decision. In Kingdon???s terms, this certainly counts as a tightly knit community, one that nurtured common views - especially causal stories about the source of instability and risk in the Middle East.
These particular individuals ended up in key positions of power, it seems, by a combination of intent and happenstance.???
???This policy community then lurked beside the stream of events with ready-made options, waiting for an appropriate problem or issue or crisis to come along to which they could attach their pet project. Such a perspective helps to explain the seemingly odd connection: why, as Iraq plainly had little or nothing to do with 9-11 (and when U.S. officials were told as much, in very unambiguous terms, immediately after the terrorist attacks), did advocates of action persist in making the connection? Some have raised dark conspiracy theories, but the agenda-setting framework offers a somewhat more pedestrian explanation: the anti-Saddam activists adopted this approach because that is what policy communities do. It fits a natural and well-established pattern of policy advocates who are, as Kingdon explains, less interested in solving specific problems than they are in attaching their long-incubated and deeply felt pet project to problems as they arise (Kingdon 1984:129). Some former senior officials confirmed this broad view of events after 9-11: Advocates of confronting Iraq were ??????using the 9-11 situation to promote their Iraq preferences,?????? said one (Interviewee 3). Immediately after September 11, ??????Paul Wolfowitz was interested?????? in going after Iraq, said another; ??????Paul took his shot, because that???s how you do it.?????? Wolfowitz???s advocacy ??????wasn???t surprising to me at all. It represented intelligent people of excellent bureaucratic skills using an opportunity to press their agenda?????? (Interviewee 4).???
???Advocates of war with Iraq intentionally used the post-9-11 atmosphere to promote a policy option in which they fervently believed, but even people sympathetic to their goal must recognize the costs of such a procedural approach. Because the upshot was that the United States decided to go to war in a manner that - as the advocates well recognized - would keep their pet proposal immune from the usual public debate and private, governmental analysis, which is, after all, appropriate for such a momentous decision of statecraft. The result was an ill-considered, ill-planned operation.
The Iraq case also reinforces the suggestion of the agenda-setting literature to reframe our concept of groupthink. Anti-Saddam policy communities - think-tank experts, commission
s, special lobbying projects - had been honing the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from power for years. In the case of Iraq, these communities played a number of critical roles. By creating self-selecting forums for dialogue and by circulating confirming evidence about Saddam Hussein???s continuing aggressiveness and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the communities served to reinforce the view of their participants. A mutual confirmation bias was at work, in which members of these policy communities continually reaffirmed the core tenets of their thinking about Iraq, raising those tenets to the level of accepted faith. In terms of both beliefs and policy options, then, the conservative policy communities on the Iraq issue came to think similarly, reinforce the similarity of their thought, encourage one another in similar views, and suggest implicit social sanctions for those who strayed from the group???s accepted consensus. And indeed, the powerful residual effect of these communities on the beliefs of their members is perhaps the single best explanation for the administration???s approach to intelligence about Iraq. Policy communities (especially tightly bound ones) can thus have the effect of intensifying the cognitive effects already well underway in human decision-making settings - effects such as confirmation bias. The result, in the Iraq case, was a crimped, casual decision process in which vast assumptions were allowed to slide by without notice or debate. When an option is worked out in advance and slipped into policy during a crisis, this case suggests, it will not be subject to sufficiently rigorous debate. Advocates believe they have already thought the problem through.???
???The first part of that script contends that gradually accumulating evidence of a problem will not in itself cause a major policy change without some form of a more pointed focusing event. This was the story of the Iraq issue before 9-11: the same evidence about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties existed on 9-10 as on 9-13, but no one in the U.S. government was talking about invasion. As we saw, the policy entrepreneurs who would later attach their project to the fallout from 9-11 had been making a more limited argument for stronger U.S. support of opposition groups; but this was going nowhere in the interagency process, and there is little reason to believe that the Bush administration would have adopted radically tougher policies toward Saddam Hussein???s Iraq without a focusing event to latch onto. But of course 9-11 did occur, and it then became the focusing event onto which the anti-Saddam activists attached their projects.
This mechanism - of pre existing policy ideas latching onto focusing events, even if the match between them is unclear - helps to explain another element of bad assumptions and poor planning that took place in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the refusal to engage in more detailed long-range planning for post-war contingencies. The model that the anti- Saddam activists had been developing for years was not one of a U.S. invasion - it was based on rebel groups in Iraq, built around Kurds and Shi???ites toppling Saddam with some U.S. help, and then governing the country. How that governance would take place no one really defined, but then the stakes for U.S. planners were smaller when Iraqis would be the ones doing it. While the failure to plan more rigorously once the option shifted to a U.S. invasion seems senseless in retrospect, when seen through an agenda-setting lens, such thinking makes perfect sense: U.S. officials were applying a pre existing policy idea to the opportunity offered by a focusing event - and in that pre existing idea, in which Iraqis would have run the post-war phase, such assumptions made reasonable sense. The problem was not that U.S. officials were ignorant of post-war complications; the problem was that they had spent years incubating a policy option - Iraqi rebellions against Saddam supported, but not led or aided on the ground, by the United States - that had embedded a certain way of looking at the post-war phase deep into their thought process. Part of the problem may have been that anti-Saddam activists could not break out of the mental map that told them the post-war phase would take care of itself.
But the Iraq case also signals the dangers of such analytical outcomes, the problems with an opportunistic model of policy formation. As Polsby (1984:169) explains, a crisis can offer an opportunity for those with ready-made solutions to get them enacted, ??????but it cannot make the policy actually work afterward.?????? Policy advocates thus ??????have to be reasonably confident of the efficacy of the alternatives they pro-pose - or they may get what they ??????want?????? and find it was not worth getting.??????
???When a focusing event or policy window creates an opportunity to change national behavior, the person or persons who then make this happen are the ??????policy entrepreneurs??????- advocates determined, for one reason or another, to fight inertia, the bureaucracy, opposing interests, and anything else in their way to get the idea through the window and into law or policy. Policy entrepreneurs are active all the time, not only when windows of opportunity are open. But they also act as judges of ripeness and work to push the hardest when they perceive such a policy window to be open.???
???Paul Wolfowitz emerges as a key policy entrepreneur. Already pushing, according to many accounts, for strong anti-Saddam policy before 9-11, several sources concur that he began urging President Bush to think about an Iraq???Al-Qaeda connection in the days after September 11. Another strong entrepreneurial figure, according to many reports, appears to have been Vice President Cheney. Below their level, a variety of other officials in the Defense Department, the Vice President???s office, and elsewhere in government endorsed and pushed the recommendation to deal decisively with the problem of Saddam Hussein???s Iraq. Outside government, others, most notably including pundit and Defense Policy Board head Richard Perle and Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, argued for the same course. But it was the role of key government officials - and their ability, in paraphrasing Haas???s conclusion, to ??????institutionalize their influence and insinuate their views into policy??????- that was decisive in this case. These policy entrepreneurs had, as suggested in Kingdon???s model, been engaged in a ??????softening up?????? process for years, in precisely the ways Kingdon would expect - publishing articles, holding conferences, promoting legislation, lobbying officials, and more. In this case, of course, the role of Vice President Cheney as an entrepreneur has been well discussedFas had been the challenge such an energetic vice presidential role poses for an interagency process more commonly built around debates between appointed cabinet officials.
Interestingly, in the Iraq case, the most important policy entrepreneur may well have been the figure that veterans of the U.S. government routinely describe as the ??????only real policy maker in the executive branch??????: the president himself. Evidence in the case study strongly suggests that George W. Bush did not have to be hauled into advocacy for Operation Iraqi Freedom; he harbored such inclinations from the beginning, and quickly began sending signals that removing Saddam Hussein from power was a serious option. Because of the way the U.S. executive branch is such a president-centric system, the way that it responds so powerfully and diligently to the slightest policy hints from the president, Bush???s leanings may have exercised a decisive effect.???
???At one point, he suggests three basic criteria for ideas to survive and prosper in the policy stream: technical feasibility, value acceptability, and anticipation of future constraints (Kingdon 1984:138???146).27 In the Iraq case, there is little question about the second criterion: invading Iraq supported numerous values importan
t to senior decision-makers, from removing Saddam Hussein from power to demon-strating U.S. military strength and resolve. As for the other two criteria, however, while they were at work in the Iraq decision, they were only considered in ways that have proven to be tragically incomplete. The planning process, for example, examined the technical feasibility of the initial military campaign in great detail, and from that extrapolated to the feasibility of the complete operation, through post-conflict stabilization to occupation and the creation of a new government. The technical feasibility of post-conflict reconstruction was never assessed in any rigorous way at the principals??? level; several interviewees told me that the president???s entire formal briefing time on postwar Iraq amounted to a single, one-hour presentation. Meanwhile, close consideration of possible future constraints was side- tracked by the assumption that the invasion would not produce a long, drawn-out, costly occupation.???
???Actual decisions - national behavior - emerge when a policy window opens long enough to let some of that noise through, and the moment feels to the participants like a sudden coalescing of opinion: people in government ??????speak of a ???growing realization,??? an ???increasing feeling??? . . . and ???coming to a conclusion??? ?????? (1984:147). There are no new policy ideas, Kingdon suggests; existing ones merely cluster around policy windows, trying to get through. When a policy window does open, then, the policy it helps usher into being will generally be a recombination of long-proposed ideas rather than something tailored to the situation. This paradigm leads Kingdon to another conclusion: the crucial factor when a policy window opens is not what policy ideas might conceivably meet the needs it creates, but what ??????available alternative?????? is lying around, waiting to be applied. Well-developed available alternatives can elbow aside ??????equally worthy?????? concepts that do not happen to have ??????a viable, worked-out proposal attached?????? (1984:150).???
???Light contends that this policy search will be ??????biased?????? in whatever direction the executive branch thinks the president wants to go.???
???All of this mirrors the Iraq case quite closely. After years of broad worry about Saddam Hussein???s Iraq and some planning, never put into action, to support a military coup or exile-based insurrections, 9-11 led to a ??????growing realization?????? that Saddam would have to be dealt with. More importantly, dealing decisively with Iraq was one of the few ??????available alternatives?????? for responding to a major terrorist attack: there was no global counterterrorism strategy lying on a shelf, waiting to be dusted off. As time has made clear, moreover, fighting terrorism is an enormously complicated, nuanced, self contradictory task that does not lend itself to simple policy solutions of the sort entrepreneurs can shove through a policy window on short notice. Again, one possible interpretation of Bush???s state of mind after his December 28, 2001 CENTCOM briefing on the war plan, for example, is that it furnished precisely the sort of ??????available alternative?????? he was looking for - an available, acceptable option assembled by a general who had just won a surprisingly easy conflict in Afghanistan. The danger, of course, was that such thinking closed out the numerous other factors, from world opinion to nonmilitary aspects of postwar planning, that would play a decisive role in determining the fate of the Iraq mission writ large.???
???It is striking how little outside advice Bush sought, how few tough questions were asked of knowledgeable observers. He admitted to Woodward that he simply never asked Powell whether the Secretary of State thought attacking Iraq was the right thing to do. Rumsfeld himself said, ??????Whether there was ever a formal moment when he asked me, Do I think he should go to war, I can???t recall it?????? (Woodward 2004:416). As Richard Clarke has written, ??????I doubt that anyone ever had the chance to make the case to [President Bush] that attacking Iraq would actually make America less secure . . . Certainly he did not hear that from the small circle of advisers who alone are the people whose views he respects and trusts?????? (Clarke 2004:244). Again, this behavior makes perfect sense from an agenda-setting perspective: when a policy window opens, available alternatives are not likely to be subjected to laborious rethinking. Entrepreneurs are trying to push them through, and policymakers have too little time to be deliberate.???
???Operation Iraqi Freedom thus occurred in part because a policy window opened, and going after Saddam Hussein was one of the few available alternatives ready for policy entrepreneurs to take up and act upon. Again, though, as I stressed in the section on social construction, it is important to think of these processes as being at work on specific groups, communities, or movements, rather than on all players in the policy world. Invading Iraq seemed an available alternative to the anti-Saddam policy community, which counted among its members many senior officials of the Bush administration as well as supportive members of the broader national security community. It is not likely that it would have seemed so attractive, as a ready-made available alternative, to a Gore administration, or a McCain administration, or even a George H. W. Bush administration.???
You forgot to mention the most important recent poitical failure. The revenue sharing agreement, which is the cornerstone of any potential reconciliation, has fallen apart.
When Petraeus testified to Congress in September 2007 he claimed that Iraqi casualties were down 45% from December 2006 to August 2007. What he failed to mention was that these numbers were provisional and likely to increase, cutting into his claim of a reduction in violence.
Pentagon???s Revised Numbers[/b]
The Pentagon is required to provide a quarterly report to Congress entitled ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq.??? The reports include a chart on sectarian deaths in the country. From the first reports to March 2007 these numbers were basically static with no changes for earlier months. Then, suddenly with the June 2007 report, the old numbers started increasing dramatically. The Pentagon gave various reasons, but the main one was that they were backlogged with casualty reports and had just began to catch up. Since older numbers are constantly revised upwards, the result is that the newest monthly death counts are always lower than previous ones. Hence, when Petraeus said that sectarian violence was down 45% that was probably true for that week, but within the following months those casualty numbers would most likely increase as in previous Pentagon reports. The difference has been a 5-70% increase in deaths so the numbers Petraeus used will not exist later on.
Here???s a breakdown of the difference in death counts from the March, June and September 2007 Pentagon reports showing the inflation in numbers. All the numbers are approximate because no specifics are provided by the Defense Department.
Sectarian Murders June 2006 - January 2007: March 2007 / June 2007/ September 2007
June 2006: 990 / 1000 / 1200 July 2006: 1190 / 1390 / 1600 August 2006: 750 / 900 / 1100 September 2006: 1190 / 1210 / 1250 October 2006: 1010 / 1600 / 1700 November 2006: 1410 / 1950 December 2006: 1610 / 2100 January 2007: 1500 / 1800
Sectarian Murders February - April 2007 June 2007 Report / September 2007 Report February 2007: 700 / 1200 March 2007: 600 / 1050 April 2007: 610 / 1050
Sectarian Murders May ??? August 2007 September 2007 Report May 2007 1050 June 750 July 1060 August 900
Sources[/b]
Defense Department, ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? March 2007 - ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? June 2007 - ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? September 2007
Almost a month without an update. It almost seems as if when things were bad, Motown couldn't wait to get out a new chapter of his report, but when things started to get better he completely lost interest.
Comments
you're a lost cause.
But everyone else gets a pass by just putting whatever words bother them into quotations to make them mean whatever they want.
while one may not be able to totally defeat terrorism, it can certainly be reduced to manageable levels, which is "winning" in a sense.
but doing so requires sacrifice ($, liberties, etc.).
none of which is to say that Iraq is any more than a sideshow in the war on terror.
carry on.
So the BBC is some liberal wank group now?
just take off the "now"
Congress can't do anything right now because its deadlocked. The Democrats don't have enough votes to get pass a veto and they don't agree with themselves. Neither do the Republicans. The Democratic leadership up until now has been for resolutions that demand an immediate partial drawdown of forces. There are others that want the U.S. to adopt the Iraq Study Group recommendations as U.S. policy. There are others that want a total withdrawal immediately, and of course there are others that want to give the surge more time. There is no consensus and therefore nothing is being done right now.
I'm responding to your points about why aren't the Democrats doing something, why are they putting up with this bullshit, etc. There are have been leading Republicans like Warner and Lugar for example, that have basically said the surge isn't working because the Maliki government hasn't done anything, but they haven't changed the debate at all.
Aw those damn liberal media outlets. I guess even the conservative press can't be trusted these days because in back in the fall of '06 you were saying violence was down and the U.S. was making progress in Baghdad, and now we're back trying to do the same thing for the third time in the capitol.
P.S. - I thought the only thing you did in this thread was talk shit and make homo-erotic offers to suck your dick?
but ad homen arguments are always good to fall back on (or in your case, start out with) when you arent capable of doing anything else.
So this wasn't aimed at me? Then what other soulstrut poster were you making this homo-erotic offer to??? Is it because no one has taken you up on it yet that you're so mad and angry? Or is because you have a small dick and like to talk big to make up for it? I'm sure someone can fulfill your needs either way saba, you just need to try harder.
Where have you been, you missed a good thread a minute ago.
I heard talking about my mother. Trying to be bi-sexual now are you?
On 9/13/07 Bush gave a national TV speech to outline his post-surge policy, called ???Return on Success.??? There were four main elements in his address. 1st by saying that the Iraqi government has made little progress he tacitly admitted that the surge has failed to meet any of its strategic goals. 2nd he wants the U.S. to follow old policies that were dubbed failures but this time with fewer resources. 3rd he???s attempting to buy time by calling required troop draw downs a withdrawal, and 4th he is arguing for staying the course once again in Iraq. Overall, the ???Return on Success??? plan is all about treading water in Iraq until the end of the Bush administration.
President Bush remains committed to Iraq. Despite this being his third or fourth plan, he still believes that the U.S. is winning, although that kind of terminology was markedly absent from his speech. Bush wants to create an environment in the U.S. where the public and Congress will also be committed to long-term troop deployments, since most civil wars have lasted up to 10 years or more.
That???s becoming increasingly difficult as each Bush policy seems to fail. Bush has all but given up on the Iraqi government reaching a political solution to the conflict, which was the ultimate goal of the surge. In January 2007 Bush said that the U.S.???s commitment to Iraq was not open ended and that he would hold the Maliki government accountable if it didn???t meet benchmarks that it set for itself for political reconciliation. In his newest speech he only said that the U.S. would continue to pressure them to make changes because it doesn???t appear that the government will act on any laws anytime soon. As the August 2007 National Intelligence Estimate noted, the Iraqi government needs a fundamental change to have any breakthroughs. That will take years, not months as originally planned for with the surge.
Instead of discussing whether the Maliki government had met any of the benchmarks, Bush talked about other political movement such as the government employing ex-Baathists, sharing oil revenues, etc. The problem is that many of these have been going on for years already. If those are signs of success, than Iraq has been moving forward since before the surge even began. The real new development from the surge, bottom up local reconciliation, has just as much chance to break the country apart as bring it together in the future.
The president???s speech also marked the return of the standing up Iraqi forces as a way for the U.S. to draw down theme of 2004. The surge strategists who saw the Iraqi forces as largely sectarian and part of the problem rather than the solution dubbed this a failure. Under the surge Iraqi forces were given a secondary role, while training was put on the backburner. As a result, the number of Iraqi army units capable of operating independently went down during the surge. Training of Iraqis has always been short changed by the Pentagon anyway as it???s not seen as a way to advancement by officers and has never gotten the best troops. Bush???s 2008 budget also cuts funding for training in half, which means U.S. forces will be expected to develop Iraqi security forces with fewer resources and more problems than before.
In the meantime, Bush said the U.S. will begin drawing down the extra troops that were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. This will start in Anbar where the U.S. had had the most success beginning in December 2007. Bush has dubbed this a withdrawal because that???s what the public and Congress have been calling for. The move was going to happen anyway as troop deployments began to run out and is simply an attempt to buy time for the administration, that will probably only gain marginal support.
Ultimately, the ???Return on Success??? is just a new name for staying the course in Iraq. It will only undermine any future efforts because its continuing policies that have failed, while giving the public and Congress few reasons to increase support for the war. That puts the next president in a disadvantage because he or she will most likely try to maintain troops in Iraq with a new policy, but with a country even more disillusioned than before.
SOURCES[/b]
Government Reports[/b]
Bush, President George, ???Address by the President to the Nation on the Way Forward in Iraq,??? Office of the Press Secretary, White House, 9/13/07
Mathews, Jessica, ???The Situation in Iraq,??? House Armed Services Committee, 7/18/07
National Intelligence Council, ???Prospects for Iraq???s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive,??? National Intelligence Estimate, August 2007
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, ???Quarterly Report and Semiannual Report to the United States Government,??? 7/30/07
Walker, David, ???Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks. Testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate,??? Government Accountability Office, 9/4/07
Think Tank Reports[/b]
Bruno, Greg, ???The Preparedness of Iraq Security Forces,??? Council On Foreign Relations, 9/4/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???The Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 9/6/07
- ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Haas, Richard, ???Hass: Petraeus, Crocker Blunt Congressional Criticisms on Iraq,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/11/07
Mathews, Jessica, ???The Surge in Iraq Has Failed,??? Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, September 2007
Articles[/b]
Abramowitz, Michael, ???No Big Shifts Planned After Report on Iraq,??? Washington Post, 8/25/07
Abramowitz, Michael, and DeYoung, Karen, ???Petraeus Disappointed At Political State of Iraq,??? Washington Post, 9/8/07
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Branigin, William, ???White House ???Satisfactory Progress??? on Iraq Goals,??? Washington Post, 9/14/07
Cave, Damien, ???Iraqi Factions??? Self-Interest Blocks Political Progress,??? New York Times, 8/25/07
DeYoung, Karen, ???An Only-Time-Will-Tell View on Political Gains,??? Washington Post, 9/12/07
- ???The Iraq Report???s Other Voice,??? Washington Post, 9/10/07
- ???Pentagon seeks better grades for Iraq in GAO audit,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 8/31/07
DeYoung, Karen and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Military Officials in Iraq Fault GAO Report,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
Dreazen, Yochi, ???Discarded Troop Plan,??? Wall Street Journal, 8/23/07
Kaplan, Fred, ???Challenging the Generals,??? New York Times, 8/26/07
Kessler, Glenn, ???The President Asserted Progress on Security and Political Issues. Recent Reports Weren???t Often So Upbeat,??? Washington Post, 9/14/07
LaFranchi, Howard, ???Bush recasting the war as not just about Iraq,??? Christian Science Monitor, 9/5/07
- ???Is Iraq making political strides???? Christian Science Monitor, 9/10/07
Myers, Steven Lee and Shanker, Thom, ???White House to Offer Iraq Plan of Gradual Cutes,??? New York Times, 8/18/07
Ottaway, Marina, ???The Testimony of Bush???s Dreams,??? Washington Post.com, 9/11/07
Packer, George, ???Planning For Defeat,??? New Yorker, 9/17/07
PBS??? Frontline, ???Interview Frederick Kagan,??? End Game, 6/19/07
- ???Interview with Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.),??? End Game, 6/19/07
Reid, Robert, ???In Iraq, Little Pressure for Reforms,??? Associated Press, 9/12/07
- ???Surge eases violence, fails on political front,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 9/9/07
Sanger, David, ???Bush Shifts Terms for Measuring Progress in Iraq,??? New York Times, 9/5/07
- ???Multiple Messages and Audiences,??? New York Times, 9/14/07
- ???Redefining Goals: Less Talk of Victory Now,??? New York Times, 9/10/07
Sennott, Charles, ???Q&A with General David Petraeus,??? Boston Globe, 9/7/07
Strobel, Warren, ???After two days, no answer to ???how this ends,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/11/07
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, ???White House Is Gaining Confidence It Can Win Fight in Congress Over Iraq Policy,??? New York Times, 8/30/07
Youssef, Nancy, ???New Iraq plan recalls strategies past,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/14/07
Now that President Bush has approved a plan to gradually bring home some U.S. troops from Iraq, some of the families of the first unit to ship out are, surprisingly, not happy.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jamie Reno
Newsweek
Updated: 2:39 p.m. PT Sept 14, 2007
Sept. 14, 2007 - In endorsing Gen. David Petraeus's recommendations on Iraq, President George W. Bush said Thursday night that at least 21,500 U.S. combat forces, plus support troops, could leave Iraq and come home by next July. Curiously, the first military unit designated by Petraeus to return is the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit[/b] based at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, Calif., north of San Diego.
But the 13th MEU, a support unit that has been in Iraq on its current tour for about three months, was already scheduled to return home from Iraq on Nov. 17. Their new date of departure under the drawdown plan? Still Nov. 17. Other Marine units have been in Iraq as much as three times longer than the 13th MEU, and some active-duty Army soldiers are serving 15-month tours, the longest of the war. Relatives of the 2,000-member 13th MEU, most of whom have known for more than a month that the unit was coming home, are collectively a bit confused by the inclusion of the 13th MEU in the announcement of troop cuts, and some are even angry.[/b]
???I think General Petraeus is using normal circumstances and turning them into some kind of big deal,??? says Melissa Hurt, 24, wife of a 13th MEU Sgt. Andy Hurt, 24. Originally from Minnesota, the couple has been married for four years and they have a 9-month-old son. ???I don???t understand how this can be called a troop reduction since Andy was already scheduled to come home in November and was not scheduled to return to Iraq. There are guys who???ve been in Iraq for more than a year. They should bring them home first. I know my husband agrees with me.???
Wendy Foulis, whose husband, Gunnery Sgt. Gerald Foulis, is a member of the 13th MEU but was with other units previously and is completing his third tour in Iraq, says she has ???absolutely no idea??? why the general singled out her husband???s unit. ???It???s the general???s decision, I won???t presume anything, but we???ve known our guys were coming home for more than a month,??? she says. ???This wasn???t a surprise. But since they were part of the surge, and since this unit is not designed for the type of work they did in Iraq, I guess it has something to do with that.???
President Bush isn???t quite yet a lame duck president, but his war in Iraq is. The testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker to Congress in mid-September laid out what will be U.S. policy until the next president in 2009, the status quo.
U.S. policy for the rest of the Bush presidency will be to keep as many troops in Iraq as possible, probably the 130,000 level that was before the surge, work with local Sunni forces, and perhaps some Shiites as well, and get the Maliki government to accept Sunni power in Anbar province, while appeasing Congress and the public by withdrawing the surge troops that were coming home anyway. The goal is to simply maintain the slight military gains the surge has achieved, while holding out hope that the local changes in Anbar can lead to some kind of political movement in the future. Because of limited resources, the U.S. will focus just on Western and Central Iraq, leaving the rest of Iraq to its own devices. Missing is any real plan for reconciliation which everyone acknowledges is what will lead to peace in Iraq.
This is not the first time U.S. troops have been left with no real strategy in Iraq. By the summer of 2006 there was widespread consensus even among the military in Iraq that things were not working out. By the fall of 2006 Bush agreed that strategy needed to be changed. However because Congressional elections were coming up he didn???t want to make any public announcements. He waited until January 2007 to announce the surge meaning American troops spent months in Iraq with no real goal because of U.S. domestic political concerns. The difference this time is that the soldiers will be left 16 months fighting and dying with no strategy.
Sources[/b]
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Burns, Robert, ???What happens after ???surge??? over is key,??? Associated Press, 9/7/07
Clift, Eleanor, ???Marketing the War,??? Newsweek, 8/31/07
Dreazen, Yochi and Shishking, Philip and Jaffe, Greg, ???U.S. Shifts Iraq Focus As Local Tactics Gain,??? Wall Street Journal, 9/4/07
End Game, ???Interview Frederick Kagan,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07
- ???Interview Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.),??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07
- ???Interview Michael Gordon,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07
- ???Interview Philip Zelikow,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07
- ???Interview Thomas Ricks,??? PBS Frontline, 6/19/07
Gwertzman, Bernard, ???Haass: Petraeus, crocker Blunt Congressional Criticisms on Iraq,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/11/07
Oliker, Olga, Crane, Keith, Grant, Audra, Kelly, Terrence, Rathmell, Andrew, Brannan, David, ???U.S. Policy Options for Iraq,??? RAND Project Air Force, 8/8/07
Packer, George, ???Interview with Lee Hamilton,??? New Yorker.com, 9/11/07
Strobel, Warren, ???After two days, no answer to ???how this ends,?????? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/11/07
According to President Bush the U.S. is fighting the same people that attacked the U.S. on 9/11 in Iraq right now. This is patently untrue. While Al Qaeda In Iraq is affiliated with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan, it is largely an independent group that was formed because of the 2003 U.S. invasion. Not only that, but the Shiite militias are now responsible for over 70% of attacks on U.S. forces. Despite this, the U.S. military command in Iraq still proclaims the Sunni insurgency their number one military priority. The insurgency itself is changing to a more Islamic character while factions are splintering, with some now cooperating with the U.S. to fight their one-time compatriots.
Who???s Who In The Sunni Insugency[/b]
The Sunni insurgency is actually a collection of many different groups. Originally, Baathists and soldiers who had been angered by the U.S. disbanding the army made up the majority of the fighters. While there are still plenty of former soldiers carrying out attacks, the insurgency is now dominated by Islamists, both Iraqi and foreign. These are some of the major groups.
Islamic State of Iraq
The Islamic State of Iraq is an umbrella organization created by Al Qaeda in Iraq to give itself a more Iraqi character. It is in fact largely Iraqi in membership now. The group was formed in October 2006 and wants to establish an Islamic state in Iraq. They carry out attacks against the U.S., Iraqi security forces, and Shiite militias, who they don???t consider to be true Muslims. They are active in Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Salah Al-Din, Ninawah, and parts of Babil and Wasit provinces. Because of the U.S. success in Anbar, the Islamic State was forced to relocate first to Diyala and then later to Ninevah provinces during the surge. The group is affiliated with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but is largely independent. It sees Iraq as part of a worldwide jihad against the West.
Mujahidin Army in Iraq
The Mujahidin Army in Iraq claims that it began as a secret Islamist group in Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion. Publicly however, they have only been active since 2004. They include former soldiers and are committed to setting up an Islamic state in Iraq. They have rejected negotiations with the U.S. and the Shiite led government. While it attacks and U.S. and Iraqi forces, it claims not to target civilians, not even Shiites. It is active in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala and Salah Al-Din provinces.
Islamic Army in Iraq
The Islamic Army in Iraq claims to have been founded as an underground Islamic group in 2002. It publicly declared its formation in May 2003 and includes former soldiers. It has at least 15,000 fighters and carries out 75% of insurgent attacks against the U.S. It isn???t opposed to Shiites, but thinks Iran is a major threat to Iraq. Their main goals are to force the U.S. out, fight Iran, and to create an Islamic state in Iraq. They have said they would negotiate with the U.S. if it agrees to withdraw and recognizes the insurgency. It has publicly split from Al Qaeda in Iraq. It attacks U.S. and Iraqi forces, Shiite militias and civilians that they consider collaborators. It is active in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala and Salah al-Din provinces. Some of its members have recently switched sides and are now cooperating with U.S. forces.
Ansar Al-Sunna
Ansar Al-Sunna was former known as Ansar Al-Islam. The U.S. claimed they were part of Al Qaeda and used them to help justify the invasion. The group includes both Iraqis and foreign fighters and was formed in September 2003. It rejects negotiations and wants to create an Islamic state. It attacks U.S., Iraqi and Kurdish forces along with Shiite militias and people that collaborate with them. It is active in Mosul, Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, and Salah al-Din provinces.
Iraqi Resistance Movement ??? 1920 Revolution Brigades
This group was formed in June 2003 and includes former soldiers. It is one of the few largely nationalist organizations, and is actually an umbrella group for many smaller units. Its main goals are to drive the U.S. out and set up an Islamic state. It attacks U.S. and Iraqi forces and collaborators, while prohibiting actions against key infrastructure. It is active in Anbar, Baghdad, and Diyala province. Because of the new Sunni policy the U.S. is carrying out in these areas, the 1920 Revolution Brigades has split in two, with some collaborating with the U.S., while the other remain fighting.
Islamic Front of Iraqi Resistance
The Islamic Front of Iraqi Resistance was formed in May 2004 and includes many former officers of the old Iraqi army. It is a nationalist organization that wants to drive the U.S. out. It doesn???t attack Iraqi officials or infrastructure, only Americans. It rejects negotiations with the Iraqi government, but has also said that it believes in national reconciliation. In May 2007 it joined with Hamas-Iraq, a break away faction of the 1920 Revolution Brigades. Hamas-Iraq is also affiliated with the Association of Muslim Scholars and now claims that it is moving towards politics. Some of its fighters are now collaborating with the U.S. in Diyala.
Funding[/b]
Today the insurgency is largely self-sufficient. They get the majority of their funds from smuggling and criminal gangs, but they also receive outside aid from neighboring Sunni states. There are also reports that they have even accepted money from Iran.
Effects of the Surge[/b]
The surge has largely focused on the Sunni population. That is shown by the fact that 85% of the prisoners held by the U.S. are Sunnis. That population has swollen under the surge from 16,000 in February 2007 to around 24,500 by August. Militarily, the surge has had some ringing successes against the insurgency. In Anbar, Al Qaeda in Iraq has been largely dislodged, although it is still active there. It has also split the 1920 Revolution Brigades and Islamic Army in Iraq as many former fighters are now working with the U.S. Many insurgent groups have left Anbar, Baghdad and Diyala provinces for greener pastures where there are fewer Americans.
The change of heart amongst Sunnis actually occurred months before the surge. In September 2002 Sunni tribes that had grown tired of the rigid, ideological stance of the Islamic State of Iraq formed the Anbar Salvation Front. They had been trying to reach out to Americans but were ignored until early 2007 when the surge began. Since then, the U.S. has been attempting to replicate the Anbar model with Sunnis in Diyala and Baghdad.
The U.S. is hoping that these Sunni groups can be formerly incorporated into the Iraqi security forces, while the tribes forge reconciliation with the Shiite-Kurdish run government. The Sunnis are still largely opposed to the Shiites and see Iran as their masters.
An example of this is in Baghdad, where an unintended affect of the surge has been to displace many insurgent groups, giving the upper hand to the Shiite militias. The Sunnis in Baghdad now being organized by the U.S. are in fact protecting the remains of their community, most of which have been forced out. Many Sunnis in the capitol now see the U.S. as their protectors against the militias, giving them another reason to mistrust the Maliki government, which they consider duplicitous, having stood by and done nothing during the ethnic cleansing.
On the other hand, the government may let the Sunnis have control of Anbar province as the country moves towards more regional power bases. In the worst-case scenario, the Sunni policy may be another sign of the break-up of the country and the former insurgents could go back to fighting the government in the future. In the best-case, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds may learn to live together but apart from each other in their own separate areas.
Conclusion[/b]
It???s easiest for the U.S. to blame Al Qaeda in Iraq for the violence in the country. It serves domestic political purposes by making Americans think of 9/11 and blames outsiders rather than Iraqis for the war. However it is largely misleading as the Islamic Army in Iraq carries out ?? of the insurgent attacks on Americans. More importantly, the Shiite militias are now the largest threat to the U.S. and long-term stability in the country as they have the upper hand against the Sunnis in much of central Iraq, including Baghdad, and carry out the majority of attacks on the U.S. overall. The surge has continued to complicate the picture in Iraq. The military successes of splitting some of the insurgent groups, and driving Al Qaeda in Iraq out of its base in Anbar, is counterbalanced by the threat the Sunni policy holds for the future unity of the country.
Sources[/b]
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Beehner, Lionel, ???Al-Qaeda in Iraq: Resurging or Splintering???? Council on Foreign Relations, 7/16/07
Cave, Damien, and Farrell, Stephen, ???At Street Level, Unmet Goals of Troop Buildup,??? New York Times, 9/9/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Dreazen, Yochi and Shishking, Philip and Jaffe, Greg, ???U.S. Shifts Iraq Focus As Local Tactics Gain,??? Wall Street Journal, 9/4/07
Gordon, Michael, ???The Former-Insurgent-Counterinsurgency,??? New York Times, 9/2/07
Hoyt, Clark, ???When the Issue Is War, Take Nothing for Granted,??? New York Times, 8/19/07
Johnson, Kirk, ???Understanding Violence and Civilian Casualty Rates in Iraq: An Insider???s View,??? Heritage Foundation, 9/10/07
Kimmage, Daniel, and Ridolfo, Kathleen, ???Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images And Ideas,??? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 2007
Langer, Gary, ???What They???re Saying in Anbar Province,??? New York Times, 9/16/07
Lubold, Gordon, ???Anbar streets illustrate Petraeus???s testimony,??? Christian Science Monitor, 9/12/07
Office of the Press Secretary, ???President Bush Celebrates Independence Day With West Virginia Air National Guard,??? White House, 7/4/07
Partlow, Joshua, ???Singing Up Sunnis With ???Insurgent??? on Their Resumes,??? Washington Post, 9/4/07
Reid, Robert, ???Progress Slow As Iraqi Politics in Flux,??? Associated Press, 9/16/07
San Francisco Chronicle, ???U.S. military divided on troop withdrawal,??? 8/25/07
Susman, Tina, ???Looking to Anbar for Iraq???s future,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/10/07
- ???Troop buildup fails to reconcile Iraq,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/4/07
Tavernise, Sabrina, ???In Air Attack, U.S. Soldiers Kill 18 Gunmen,??? New York Times, 8/25/07
Zunes, Stephen and Leaver, Erik, ???Annotate This ??? President Bush???s Sept 13 Speech to the Nation on Iraq,??? Foreign Policy In Focus, 9/14/07
When General Petraeus testified to Congress in September claiming that violence was dramatically down in Iraq, it set off a minor controversy. Some challenged his numbers, while others held them up to say that the surge was working. A analysis of military, think tank, and press reports show that the military is playing with the numbers, but that overall violence is down in Iraq since the surge.
Controversy Over The Exact Numbers ???[/b]
No one disagrees that Iraq set a new record for violence by the end of 2006. After the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine, militias such as Sadr???s Mahdi Army steadily increased their attacks upon Sunnis, reaching a crescendo in December. What happened in the country after President Bush announced the surge in January 2007 has been a matter of debate. In September General Petraeus claimed that violence was down 75% in Baghdad and 50% overall in the country. Several think tanks and newspaper articles challenged Petraeus??? numbers.
What they found brought up several important questions about how the U.S. military collects and reports on violence in Iraq. Kirk Johnson who was the deputy director of the office in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 2006-2007 that collected this information and now works for the Heritage Foundation said that U.S. reporting on average misses 35-65% of the violence. That???s because it focuses upon sectarian violence, which is meaningless for homogenous communities like the Sunni west and Shiite south, it undercounts civilians because it doesn???t have the means to collect all the information, and doesn???t collect consistent information from areas under Iraqi control. Under Petraeus the military has been trying to refine their body counts, but intelligence officers in Baghdad who collect this information admit that many times it comes down to a subjective decision on whether a body found should be counted as a sectarian or regular murder. For example, if a body is found in an area that is known as a flashpoint between Sunnis and Shiites it is usually counted as a sectarian death. Likewise if it shows any signs of torture or being tied up it???s counted as sectarian. However if bodies are found in a largely peaceful area, it is usually not included. Likewise an even more complicated occasion is when a body is found and there is no way to tell which sect it belongs to. The soldiers then have to make an educated guess as to the cause of death and whether to count it or not.
Another difference found was between what the Pentagon reported to Congress in September and what Petraeus presented that same month. A Pentagon report had a chart on average daily deaths and wounding of U.S. and Iraqi forces, and civilians, while a Petraeus??? chart covered sectarian deaths per month. While the two had different kinds of information, the general trends should???ve followed the same pattern with the Pentagon report having higher numbers than Petraeus because it was covering more people. However, Petraeus numbers were much higher before the surge, and much lower since the summer.
A more disturbing finding is that the Pentagon has been systematically ignoring the greatest single cause of sectarian deaths in Iraq until September 2007. The Department of Defense is required to deliver quarterly reports to Congress on progress in Iraq. In 2007 there have been three reports in March, June, and September. Each one of these reports has revised its numbers upwards over the same months for violence in Iraq. The military admitted that the reason why violence went up in the September report from the previous two was because it was the first to include car and suicide bombings. These are the major causes of mass casualties yet they were never included before.
From this analysis it???s pretty clear that the U.S. military has been systematically undercounting the violence in Iraq. Part of it is caused by having to collect information during a war with limited manpower. Another major cause has to be political pressure. It???s hard to say that the U.S. is winning and that Iraq is moving towards a functioning democracy with so much death and destruction constantly being reported. There has been a huge drop in public support for the war at home as a result, and therefore it would only be natural to start playing with the numbers to defer criticism.
??? But Trends In Violence Decreasing[/b]
Despite the controversy over the exact numbers and how they???re collected in Iraq, the general trends show that violence is down since the surge. The Council on Foreign Relations released a report comparing reports by General Petreaus, Iraqcasualties.org, Iraq Body Count, the Associated Press, Reuters, the U.N., the Brookings Institutions??? Iraq Index, the Washington Post, and McClatchy Newspapers. All of the reporting follows the same general trends: violence increased during 2006 with a high during the winter, and then decreased during 2007. Violence is still above 2006, but if the numbers continue to decline they will reach that level eventually. The one major difference is that four of the six sources record an increase in violence since June, while the military and Washington Post show a continued decrease. Whether this upward trend proves true will take until 2008 to determine because the numbers are always changing, and two months are a small fraction of an entire year.
What is now up for debate is the cause for this general decrease in violence in Iraq. When Petraeus reported to Congress he was careful to say that the surge has only been one factor for the decline. It???s without argument that an increase in U.S. forces, especially with the new task of protecting the population has decreased violence in the areas where they have control, which is about 50% of the capitol. Another reason that has been brought up is the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad. With the majority of Sunnis having been forced out, there are simply fewer Sunnis to kill. Another probable cause for the decrease was the decision by Moqtada al-Sadr to stand down his Mahdi Army militia in January when the surge was announced. He made the tactical decision to stand out of the way of the new U.S. policy because he hoped it would focus on the Sunnis, and allow him to take over more of the capitol. The largest drop in violence actually happened from December 2006 to February 2007 before large numbers of additional troops were even sent to Iraq, so Sadr???s decision and ethnic cleansing were probably major causes in this change. It???s from a combination of all three of these factors that violence is down in Baghdad.
Conclusion[/b]
There will probably never be an accurate count of the violence in Iraq. Depending upon which source you ask, the numbers vary widely. For example, unofficially, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said that there was 2,318 civilians killed in August, up from 1,980 in July, while General Petraeus??? report to Congress said there were only around 1,500 in August. The causes for these discrepancies are three fold: a lack of personnel, the difficulties of counting dead during a war, and the pressure to keep the numbers down during an unpopular conflict. Despite these problems, violence does appear to be declining for the first half of 2007, however, it???s still above 2006 levels. Whether this trend will continue is an open question, especially because the surge will end by early 2008. While sectarian violence appears to be down in central Iraq, the country is always changing with Sunnis fighting Sunnis in the West and Shiites increasingly fighting Shiites in the South. How the U.S. deals with these will be the major issue in 2008 and beyond.
SOURCES[/b]
Government Reports:[/b]
Department of Defense, ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? September 2007
Fischer, Hannah, ???Iraqi Civilian Deaths Estimates,??? Congressional Research Service, 9/5/07
National I ntelligence Council, ???Prospects for Iraq???s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive,??? National Intelligence Estimate, August 2007
Think Tank Reports:[/b]
Biddle, Stephen Friedman, Jeffrey, ???The Iraq Data Debate Civilian Casualties from 2006 to 2007,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/25/07
Bruno, Greg, ???Iraq Security Statistics,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/12/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Johnson, Kirk, ???Understanding Violence and Civilian Casualty Rates in Iraq: An Insider???s View,??? Heritage Foundation, 9/10/07
Goldenberg Ilan, ???More Fuzziness,??? DemocracyArsenal.org, 8/30/07
Korb, Lawrence Biddle, Stephen, ???Violence by the Numbers in Iraq: Sound Data or Shaky Statistics???? Council on Foreign Relations, 9/25/07
National Security Network, ???Drop in Violence???? 8/30/07
Articles[/b]
Ambramowitz, Michael and DeYoung, Karen, ???Petraeus Disappointed At Political State of Iraq,??? Washington Post, 9/8/07
DeYoung, Karen, ???Experts Doubt Drop In Violence in Iraq,??? Washington Post, 9/6/07
- ???What Defines a Killing as Sectarian???? Washington Post, 9/25/07
DeYoung, Karen and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Military Officials in Iraq Fault GAO Report,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
Fadel, Leila, ???Despite violence drop, officers see bleak future for Iraq,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 8/15/07
- ???Security in Iraq still elusive,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/7/07
Glanz, James, ???Civilian Death Toll Falls in Baghdad but Rises Across Iraq,??? New York Times, 9/2/07
Gordon, Michael, ???Hints of Progress, and Questions, in Iraq Data,??? New York Times, 9/8/07
Hurst, Steven, ???Violence lessens in Baghdad as it grows elsewhere,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 8/26/07
Lardner, Richard, ???Defense agency chart shows scant progress,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 9/10/07
Michaels, Jim, ???Major attacks decline in Iraq,??? USA Today, 8/13/07
Reid, Robert, ???August particularly deadly for Iraqis,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 9/2/07
Sudarsan, Raghavan, ???No Relief From Fear,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
Susman, Tina, ???Troop buildup fails to reconcile Iraq,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/4/07
- ???U.S. defends sectarian death figures,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/13/07
Youssef, Nancy and Fadel, Leila, ???What Crocker and Petraeus didn???t say,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/10/07
One of the reasons why there has been no political reconciliation in Iraq during the surge is because the government of Prime Minister Maliki simply doesn???t work. Each part of the government only seems to care about itself and enriching its officials and supporters. More evidence of the government???s dysfunctionality was recently given. The State Department, the German based Transparency International, and the former lead anti-corruption officer in Iraq all said that corruption is so endemic that the administration barley functions.
On 10/4/07 Judge Radhi, former head of Iraq???s Commission on Public Integrity, the major anti-corruption office in the Maliki government, testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that corruption costs Iraq $18 billion a year. There was no possibility of stopping it because the Prime Minister and other government officials actively impede investigations. His former office is also under constant threat from other government ministries, gangs and militias that have cost the lives of 31 of his staff and 12 of their family members. The U.S. Inspector General for Reconstruction testified at the same meeting saying that he found corruption to be increasing in Iraq.
Radhi???s testimony comes after a new annual report by Transparency International on corruption around the world. Out of 180 countries, Iraq ranked the third most corrupt behind only Somalia and Myanmar. Iraq received the same ranking in 2006.
The U.S. Embassy in Iraq provided the most in depth study of the problem, but can???t make its findings public. That???s because Secretary of State Rice has officially told all employees that they cannot publicly criticize the Iraqi government. Fortunately, the embassy???s report was put on the internet before it was retroactively classified. The report shows that corruption affects every single ministry and office in the Iraqi government. It also said that there is no chance that the government will be able to solve the problem because Prime Minister Maliki doesn???t want to. Instead, most government officials think their newfound power entitles them to steal from the government. Some ministries were so corrupt they couldn???t provide basic services and were increasing public discontent with the government. Others are run by gangs and reminded the embassy of the mafia rather than a government office. The effect was that the agencies acted like independent fiefdoms, some of which would kill and threaten investigators.
The examples of corruption the embassy found seem to be endless. The Shiite dominated Interior Ministry was considered off limits because investigators felt like they would be assassinated if they tried to look into its activities. The threats were so strong investigators wouldn???t even enter the Ministry???s building. The various crimes the ministry is accused of include, sectarian killings, selling U.S. weapons and vehicles on the black market, and graft. The Commission on Public Integrity also relied on the ministry to serve warrants, arrest suspects, and protect investigators, none of which Interior did with any regularity. Defense Ministry officials were also accused of stealing money from contracts such as the former Minister who stole $850 million. He was never investigated. There are so many cases involving the ministry that investigators are stuck looking into cases dating back to 2005. The Ministry of Trade steals food from the Food for Oil program with different gangs controlling each part of the operation. Sadr runs the Ministry of Health and his militia threatens investigators. It demands bribes from doctors and clinics, and steals drugs. The public blames it for the poor public health system and directly adds to the negative perception of the government. The Oil Ministry is seen as the largest source of corruption in Iraq. The ministry doesn???t accurately record oil production, delivery, etc. so that officials and gangs can smuggle and steal it. In July 2007 the Government Accountability Office estimated that $1.8-$5.5 billion in oil was stolen each year.
Conclusion[/b]
A functioning government seems to be the last thing on the minds of many of Iraq???s officials. Making money and providing patronage seem to be much more important for them. It???s no wonder than that solving pressing political problems have gone nowhere and will likely not be dealt with anytime soon because running the country doesn???t appear to be a priority.
Sources[/b]
BBC News, ???Little progress on halting Iraq???s decay,??? 9/6/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
Corn, David, ???Secret Report: Corruption is ???Norm??? Within Iraqi Government,??? The Nation.com, 8/30/07
DeYoung, Karen and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Military Officials in Iraq Fault GAO Report,??? Washington Post, 9/5/07
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, ???Testimony Of Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi,??? 10/4/07
Schoof, Renee, ???Iraqi judge: Corruption undermines Iraq???s future,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 10/4/07
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, ???Quarterly Report and Semiannual Report to the United States Government,??? 7/30/07
U.S. Embassy, ???Review of Anticorruption Efforts in Iraq Working Draft,??? State Department, 2007
Vennin, Loic, ???Somalia, Myanmar, Iraq top corruption blacklist,??? Agence France Presse, 9/26/07
Conventional wisdom today is that the surge failed to achieve its political goals, but did succeed in bringing about a dramatic military reversal for Al Qaeda in Iraq in Anbar province. The change in Western Iraq however, started before the surge even started. The Anbar Salvation Front which was the first Sunni group to work with the U.S. and openly fight Al Qaeda in Iraq, was formed in September 2006, four months before President Bush announced the surge and several months before the additional troops actually arrived. The split between Iraqis and the foreign led Al Qaeda in Iraq had been brewing for years. The decision by tribes to turn against Al Qaeda in Iraq was a purely Iraqi one motivated by a struggle over power, tactics and business.
Divisions in The Insurgency[/b]
Beginning in 2005 the Islamists began dominating the Iraqi insurgency. This trend was divided between the more nationalist oriented indigenous Iraqis who were mostly concerned with expelling the U.S. and then setting up an Islamic state, and the foreign led Islamists that also wanted the U.S. out, but then wanted to export their brand of Islam to neighboring countries. The two sides initially cooperated, but then rivalries grew over who was going to lead the insurgency. Some Iraqis resented the fact that foreigners were trying to take over their revolt. In response, Al Qaeda in Iraq formed at first the Mujahidin Shura Council and then the Islamic State of Iraq to give them a more Iraqi character. While most of the group is now Iraqi, the leadership still remains foreign born, and has not been able to expand its base of support.
Another point of contention was over who was a legitimate target. Al Qaeda in Iraq targeted not only American and Iraqi forces but also Iraqi Shiites in an attempt to foster a civil war to bring down the government. Many Iraqi insurgents did not agree with these sectarian attacks.
The nationalist trend has also been open to negotiations with the U.S. and Iraqi government, which Al Qaeda in Iraq soundly rejected. The first sign of this break was when the nationalist groups agreed to participate in the two Iraqi elections in 2005. This led to fighting between insurgent groups in Anbar and Salah al Din provinces, and the ascendance of the nationalists over Al Qaeda in Iraq since then.
Split With The Tribes[/b]
Tribes in Western and Central Iraq had their own set of feuds with Al Qaeda in Iraq. First, the insurgency was a rival power base to the tribes. Many Sunnis tribes actively supported the insurgency, but the sheikhs were worried that they were losing influence in the process. The tribes in Anbar were also involved in smuggling, extortion and legitimate companies. The insurgents attempted to take some of these over, and the violence disrupted regular businesses. A loss of money thus became another point of contention.
A tactic imported from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or marrying into local tribes to forge alliances also backfired in Iraq. When one sheikh refused to marry off his daughter, Al Qaeda in Iraq massacred the family, setting off intense fighting between the two.
Other attacks on tribal members caused further splits. In January 2006 Al Qaeda in Iraq killed 50 tribesmen organized by a local sheikh who were attempting to volunteer for the police in Ramadi. In Samarra in Salah al Din province, Al Qaeda in Iraq began attacking Shiite members of a mixed Sunni-Shiite tribe. In both cases, the sheikhs responded by going on the offensive against the Islamists. As a result, Al Qaeda in Iraq lost much of its influence in Anbar and was forced to relocate to other parts of Salah al Din, Diyala and Baghdad provinces by late 2006.
The Surge[/b]
By the fall of 2006 some Sunni tribes formed the Anbar Salvation Front to openly challenge Al Qaeda in Iraq. The group asked for U.S. assistance but was ignored until early 2007 when the surge began. It was then that the U.S. saw the potential of the tribes and decided to cooperate with them. For the tribal leaders the U.S. offered millions of dollars, weapons, and a new source of power and legitimacy for sheikhs.
Since then violence has dropped dramatically in Anbar. The U.S. claims this is because Al Qaeda in Iraq has been largely banished from the province, but that was true before the surge began. Much of the remaining Al Qaeda in Iraq elements relocated to first Diyala and then Niniwa province in the north. The cause of the decline in attacks is more likely because the tribes and nationalist insurgents that were attacking the U.S. are now cooperating with them.
Conclusion[/b]
The Iraqi insurgency was splitting before the surge began over leadership, attacks on civilians, sectarian killings, and disputes with tribes. In early 2007 the U.S. simply recognized what was already happening on its own. Now the U.S. is trying to work with tribes throughout central Iraq with mixed results. In homogenous Anbar the tribes and former insurgents have been mostly successful because they can join the police and concentrate on fighting the Islamists. In central Iraq however, sectarian divisions exist and Sunnis have to worry about fighting not only Al Qaeda in Iraq, but Shiite militias and security forces. The Sunni policy has also not forged any kind of reconciliation as the main Shiite political alliance and the Iraq national security advisor have condemned the plan and called on the U.S. to stop. Overall, working with Sunnis is a double-edged sword. It might empower Sunnis and give them a stake in local governments. On the other hand, it might lead to the division of the country and more fighting as the Sunnis could turn their guns back on the government in the future.
SOURCES[/b]
Government Reports[/b]
White House, ???Benchmark Assessment Report,??? 9/14/07
Think Tank Reports[/b]
Beehner, Lionel, ???Al-Qaeda in Iraq: Resurging or Splintering???? Council on Foreign Relations, 7/16/07
Cordesman, Anthony, ???Iraq???s Insurgency and Civil Violence,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/22/07
- ???The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq,??? Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/6/07
Fishman, Brian, ???The Imaginary Emir: Al-Qa???ida in Iraq???s Strategic Mistake,??? Combating Terrorism Center, 7/18/07
Rogers, Paul, ???Iraq After The Surge,??? Oxford Research Group, August 2007
Simon, Steven, ???Prepared testimony Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,??? Council on Foreign Relations, 7/17/07
Steinberg, Guido, ???The Iraqi Insurgency,??? German Institute for International and Security Affairs, December 2007
Zunes, Stephen and Leaver, Erik, ???Annotate This ??? President Bush???s Sept 13 Speech to the Nation on Iraq,??? Foreign Policy In Focus, 9/14/07
Articles[/b]
Baker, Peter, DeYoung, Karen, Ricks, Thomas, Tyson, Ann Scott, Warrick, Joby, and Wright, Robin, ???Among Top Officials, ???Surge??? Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,??? Washington Post, 9/9/07
Economist, ???I want to kill you, but not today,??? 10/4/07
Fadel, Leila, ???Security in Iraq still elusive,??? McClatchy Newspapers, 9/7/07
Gordon, Michael, ???The Former-Insurgent-Counterinsurgency,??? New York times, 9/2/07
IraqSlogger.com, ???Ghazaliya Protests Pro-US Fighters,??? 8/21/07
Kahl, Colin, Brimley, Shawn, ???The Sorcerer???s Apprentice,??? Foreign Policy, September 2007
Kilcullen, Dave, ???Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt,??? Small Wars Journal: SWJ Blog, 8/29/07
Kimmage, Daniel, and Ridolfo, Kathleen, ???Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images And Ideas,??? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 2007
Klein, Joe, ???The Next War in Iraq,??? Time, 9/3/07
Langer, Gary, ???What They???re Saying in Anbar Province,??? New Yo rk Times, 9/16/07
Lubold, Gordon, ???A quieter Anbar Province rebuilds,??? Christian Science Monitor, 9/5/07
- ???Anbar streets illustrate Petraeus???s testimony,??? Christian Science Monitor, 9/12/07
Oppel, Richard, ???Quieter Fallujah fears U.S. exit,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 8/19/07
Partlow, Joshua, ???Shiites tell U.S. to quit recruiting Sunni tribesmen,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 10/3/07
Reid, Robert, ???Progress Slow As Iraqi Politics in Flux,??? Associated Press, 9/16/07
Susman, Tina, ???Troop buildup fails to reconcile Iraq,??? Los Angeles Times, 9/4/07
Tarabay, Jamie, ???Anbar Alliance May Not Translate to Other Provinces,??? All Things Considered ??? National Public Radio, 9/25/07
Tilghman, Andrew, ???The Myth of AQI,??? Washington Monthly, October 2007
Tyson, Ann Scott, ???A Deadly Clash at Donkey Island,??? Washington Post, 8/19/07
- ???Tribal Members Join in Effort To Assist U.S., Iraqi Forces,??? Washington Post, 9/30/07
Wright, Robin and Tyson, Ann Scott, ???Iraqi official: Iran supplying arms to insurgents attacking U.S. forces,??? San Francisco Chronicle, 10/6/07
That should actually read when the nationalist insurgents decided to take part in the December 2005 election. The Sunnis largely boycotted the first elections at the beginning of that year.
That should read "18 billion over the last three years."
It's been almost two months since our recently departed Saba made this post. The White House's September report to Congress held up this deal amongst Maliki's remaining cabinet ministers as a sign of political reconciliation. The Iraqi government hasn't come threw with any of these promises however.
1) There is no new debaathification law. This was the fifth time Maliki promised one starting back in June 2006. Only a draft law exists that hasn't even been sent to parliament yet.
2) There are no plans for new local elections. This is the third time Maliki promised them dating back to September 2006.
3) There has been no movement towards sharing government jobs amongst the various sects. Each ministry is controlled by a specific political party that uses them to engrandize themselves, steal from and dole out patronage to their followers. The parties have no plans on hiring people from other sects, let alone other parties because it would mean they would lose $ and power.
4) The fourth part of the deal that I didn't mention originally was the release of Sunni prisoners. The U.S. actually started releasing some Iraqi prisoners during Ramadan that just ended, and the Sunni Vice President said this was due to the political deal announced in August, but the US was planning on releasing them anyway and only 200 were let out. The number of detainees, 80% of which are Sunnis, continue to sky rocket during the surge. There could be 15,000 new ones by the time the surge ends in early 2009. More importantly the Iraqi Interior Ministry refused to release any of its prisoners which would be a sign of political progress for the government.
5) Maliki's government remains as fractured as ever. Only one Sunni cabinet minister has returned, but he got kicked out of his political party as a result. At the same time Maliki's major support. the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance has broken up with Sadr defecting and his Mahdi Army is fighting the other major Shiite party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) for control of Southern Iraq. Some Iraqi politicians now say that political reconciliation is impossible.
Sources[/b]
Hendawi, Hamza, ???ANALYSIS: Al-Maliki weathering crisis,??? Associated Press, 9/25/07
IRIN, ???IRAQ: Lawyers accuse government of concealing information about detainees??? UN Office For The Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 9/19/07
Partlow, Joshua, ???Top Iraqis Pull Back From Key U.S. Goal,??? Washington Post, 10/8/07
Pincus, Walter, ???U.S. Working to Reshape Iraqi Detainees,??? Washington Post, 9/19/07
Pincus, Walter and Greenwell, Megan, ???U.S. Releases 260 Iraqi Detainees,??? Washington Post, 9/23/07
Rubin, Alissa, ???Iraqi Cleric???s Forces Say They Will Quit Shiite Bloc,??? New York Times, 9/16/07
Walker, David, ???Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks. Testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate,??? Government Accountability Office, 9/4/07
Here???s a good academic piece by Michael Mazarr, who is national security professor at the U.S. Naval War College in D.C. He uses decision-making theory to analyze why the Bush administration chose to invade Iraq. The article is far too long to post the entire thing, but here are the highlights and some abstracts.
If you want to read the full article it???s available here:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2007.00039.x
Major Findings:[/b]
1) Neoconservatives had been advocating for the overthrow of Saddam and a more forceful American foreign policy to maintain America???s position since the 1990s. Many of these advocates were given employment in the Bush administration. This position was also shared by Bush and Cheney before they got elected.
2) Before 9/11 there was discussion about getting tougher with Iraq but because of differences between the State and Defense Departments in the Bush administration, little was done because of bureaucratic deadlock.
3) When 9/11 happened the policy makers and Bush relied on their preconceived priority, getting rid of Saddam, rather than dealing with the immediate issue, terrorism. They fell back on what they knew, Iraq, rather than what they didn???t, Al Qaeda.
4) Relying on preconceived ideas was due to the White House suffering from group think. Group think is when decision makers are all of like mind, removed from others, rely on informal decision making rather than the existing channels, and believe that maintaining their group is of utmost importance. This leads to the shutting out of criticism, self-reinforcement, and belief in the superiority of the group???s ideas over all others. The group therefore, becomes the most important thing to decision makers.
5) Group think led Pres. Bush to never ask any of his advisors whether invading Iraq was right or not, to ignore the fact that Iraq was not connected to 9/11, and to the administration not properly preparing for the aftermath of the war because they relied on a best case scenario where all the U.S. had to do was use military force and then everything else would take care of itself.
This is an important analysis because group think didn???t suddenly end after the U.S. invasion in 2003, but rather persisted up until 2006 when Rumsfeld was fired. Until then Bush and his advisors maintained a linear vision of the war that the U.S. was winning and that Iraq was always improving that was impervious to any contradictory facts. It wasn???t until Bush???s advisors got shuffled that the group think was broken by people that had a different vision of Iraq such as Defense Secretary Gates. In fact, Bush and Cheney might still be suffering from group think to this day.
Abstracts:[/b]
???The groupthink model examines cases when a deep and thorough process of rational decision- making gives way to distorted decisions because of the group processes involved (see Janis 1982). Decision-makers in a group setting that is highly cohesive, insulated, and informal in its decision procedures can come to value the group itself more than the quality of its analysis. When this happens, they will crave belongingness over all else and engage in furious concurrence-seeking. The result will be a tendency for quick and ill-considered agreement, a refusal to voice personal doubts, a quashing of independent opinion, an emerging sense of the moral and intellectual superiority of the group leading to a sense of invulnerability, and the demonization of anyone who criticizes the group???s favored analysis or policies.
All of these ills flow from the same source - the desire for concurrence. Members need the group, and to preserve it they defend the purity and single-mindedness of its deliberations. Groupthink does not refer to a situation in which people simply agree with one another; for groupthink to be in evidence, a need for cohesion must hang over the proceedings as the primary motivation for concurrence. Seen as members of policy or epistemic communities, however, these experts??? views emerge as the product of a combination of shared beliefs and more subtle conformity pressures, rather than a desperate drive for concurrence. The motive force is not membership, but long-incubated similarities in beliefs and worldviews produced by the interactions, research, debate, and mutual conformity pressures of a policy community.???
???The group of anti-Saddam activists who urged stronger measures against Iraq constituted a form of policy community that matches closely the basic idea put forward in the agenda-setting literature. The policy community on this issue was smaller, less technically expert, and more ideologically self-defined than the broader concept at work in the agenda-setting framework. Nonetheless, the essential role of the community in this policy process mirrors that laid out in the agenda-setting literature: the anti-Saddam activists discussed issues, generated and circulated knowledge, and established themselves- at least within the newly elected Bush administration - as the source of competence on a key policy decision. In Kingdon???s terms, this certainly counts as a tightly knit community, one that nurtured common views - especially causal stories about the source of instability and risk in the Middle East.
These particular individuals ended up in key positions of power, it seems, by a combination of intent and happenstance.???
???This policy community then lurked beside the stream of events with ready-made options, waiting for an appropriate problem or issue or crisis to come along to which they could attach their pet project. Such a perspective helps to explain the seemingly odd connection: why, as Iraq plainly had little or nothing to do with 9-11 (and when U.S. officials were told as much, in very unambiguous terms, immediately after the terrorist attacks), did advocates of action persist in making the connection? Some have raised dark conspiracy theories, but the agenda-setting framework offers a somewhat more pedestrian explanation: the anti-Saddam activists adopted this approach because that is what policy communities do. It fits a natural and well-established pattern of policy advocates who are, as Kingdon explains, less interested in solving specific problems than they are in attaching their long-incubated and deeply felt pet project to problems as they arise (Kingdon 1984:129). Some former senior officials confirmed this broad view of events after 9-11: Advocates of confronting Iraq were ??????using the 9-11 situation to promote their Iraq preferences,?????? said one (Interviewee 3). Immediately after September 11, ??????Paul Wolfowitz was interested?????? in going after Iraq, said another; ??????Paul took his shot, because that???s how you do it.?????? Wolfowitz???s advocacy ??????wasn???t surprising to me at all. It represented intelligent people of excellent bureaucratic skills using an opportunity to press their agenda?????? (Interviewee 4).???
???Advocates of war with Iraq intentionally used the post-9-11 atmosphere to promote a policy option in which they fervently believed, but even people sympathetic to their goal must recognize the costs of such a procedural approach. Because the upshot was that the United States decided to go to war in a manner that - as the advocates well recognized - would keep their pet proposal immune from the usual public debate and private, governmental analysis, which is, after all, appropriate for such a momentous decision of statecraft. The result was an ill-considered, ill-planned operation.
The Iraq case also reinforces the suggestion of the agenda-setting literature to reframe our concept of groupthink. Anti-Saddam policy communities - think-tank experts, commission s, special lobbying projects - had been honing the notion of removing Saddam Hussein from power for years. In the case of Iraq, these communities played a number of critical roles. By creating self-selecting forums for dialogue and by circulating confirming evidence about Saddam Hussein???s continuing aggressiveness and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the communities served to reinforce the view of their participants. A mutual confirmation bias was at work, in which members of these policy communities continually reaffirmed the core tenets of their thinking about Iraq, raising those tenets to the level of accepted faith. In terms of both beliefs and policy options, then, the conservative policy communities on the Iraq issue came to think similarly, reinforce the similarity of their thought, encourage one another in similar views, and suggest implicit social sanctions for those who strayed from the group???s accepted consensus. And indeed, the powerful residual effect of these communities on the beliefs of their members is perhaps the single best explanation for the administration???s approach to intelligence about Iraq. Policy communities (especially tightly bound ones) can thus have the effect of intensifying the cognitive effects already well underway in human decision-making settings - effects such as confirmation bias. The result, in the Iraq case, was a crimped, casual decision process in which vast assumptions were allowed to slide by without notice or debate. When an option is worked out in advance and slipped into policy during a crisis, this case suggests, it will not be subject to sufficiently rigorous debate. Advocates believe they have already thought the problem through.???
???The first part of that script contends that gradually accumulating evidence of a problem will not in itself cause a major policy change without some form of a more pointed focusing event. This was the story of the Iraq issue before 9-11: the same evidence about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties existed on 9-10 as on 9-13, but no one in the U.S. government was talking about invasion. As we saw, the policy entrepreneurs who would later attach their project to the fallout from 9-11 had been making a more limited argument for stronger U.S. support of opposition groups; but this was going nowhere in the interagency process, and there is little reason to believe that the Bush administration would have adopted radically tougher policies toward Saddam Hussein???s Iraq without a focusing event to latch onto. But of course 9-11 did occur, and it then became the focusing event onto which the anti-Saddam activists attached their projects.
This mechanism - of pre existing policy ideas latching onto focusing events, even if the match between them is unclear - helps to explain another element of bad assumptions and poor planning that took place in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the refusal to engage in more detailed long-range planning for post-war contingencies. The model that the anti- Saddam activists had been developing for years was not one of a U.S. invasion - it was based on rebel groups in Iraq, built around Kurds and Shi???ites toppling Saddam with some U.S. help, and then governing the country. How that governance would take place no one really defined, but then the stakes for U.S. planners were smaller when Iraqis would be the ones doing it. While the failure to plan more rigorously once the option shifted to a U.S. invasion seems senseless in retrospect, when seen through an agenda-setting lens, such thinking makes perfect sense: U.S. officials were applying a pre existing policy idea to the opportunity offered by a focusing event - and in that pre existing idea, in which Iraqis would have run the post-war phase, such assumptions made reasonable sense. The problem was not that U.S. officials were ignorant of post-war complications; the problem was that they had spent years incubating a policy option - Iraqi rebellions against Saddam supported, but not led or aided on the ground, by the United States - that had embedded a certain way of looking at the post-war phase deep into their thought process. Part of the problem may have been that anti-Saddam activists could not break out of the mental map that told them the post-war phase would take care of itself.
But the Iraq case also signals the dangers of such analytical outcomes, the problems with an opportunistic model of policy formation. As Polsby (1984:169) explains, a crisis can offer an opportunity for those with ready-made solutions to get them enacted, ??????but it cannot make the policy actually work afterward.?????? Policy advocates thus ??????have to be reasonably confident of the efficacy of the alternatives they pro-pose - or they may get what they ??????want?????? and find it was not worth getting.??????
???When a focusing event or policy window creates an opportunity to change national behavior, the person or persons who then make this happen are the ??????policy entrepreneurs??????- advocates determined, for one reason or another, to fight inertia, the bureaucracy, opposing interests, and anything else in their way to get the idea through the window and into law or policy. Policy entrepreneurs are active all the time, not only when windows of opportunity are open. But they also act as judges of ripeness and work to push the hardest when they perceive such a policy window to be open.???
???Paul Wolfowitz emerges as a key policy entrepreneur. Already pushing, according to many accounts, for strong anti-Saddam policy before 9-11, several sources concur that he began urging President Bush to think about an Iraq???Al-Qaeda connection in the days after September 11. Another strong entrepreneurial figure, according to many reports, appears to have been Vice President Cheney. Below their level, a variety of other officials in the Defense Department, the Vice President???s office, and elsewhere in government endorsed and pushed the recommendation to deal decisively with the problem of Saddam Hussein???s Iraq. Outside government, others, most notably including pundit and Defense Policy Board head Richard Perle and Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, argued for the same course. But it was the role of key government officials - and their ability, in paraphrasing Haas???s conclusion, to ??????institutionalize their influence and insinuate their views into policy??????- that was decisive in this case. These policy entrepreneurs had, as suggested in Kingdon???s model, been engaged in a ??????softening up?????? process for years, in precisely the ways Kingdon would expect - publishing articles, holding conferences, promoting legislation, lobbying officials, and more. In this case, of course, the role of Vice President Cheney as an entrepreneur has been well discussedFas had been the challenge such an energetic vice presidential role poses for an interagency process more commonly built around debates between appointed cabinet officials.
Interestingly, in the Iraq case, the most important policy entrepreneur may well have been the figure that veterans of the U.S. government routinely describe as the ??????only real policy maker in the executive branch??????: the president himself. Evidence in the case study strongly suggests that George W. Bush did not have to be hauled into advocacy for Operation Iraqi Freedom; he harbored such inclinations from the beginning, and quickly began sending signals that removing Saddam Hussein from power was a serious option. Because of the way the U.S. executive branch is such a president-centric system, the way that it responds so powerfully and diligently to the slightest policy hints from the president, Bush???s leanings may have exercised a decisive effect.???
???At one point, he suggests three basic criteria for ideas to survive and prosper in the policy stream: technical feasibility, value acceptability, and anticipation of future constraints (Kingdon 1984:138???146).27 In the Iraq case, there is little question about the second criterion: invading Iraq supported numerous values importan t to senior decision-makers, from removing Saddam Hussein from power to demon-strating U.S. military strength and resolve. As for the other two criteria, however, while they were at work in the Iraq decision, they were only considered in ways that have proven to be tragically incomplete. The planning process, for example, examined the technical feasibility of the initial military campaign in great detail, and from that extrapolated to the feasibility of the complete operation, through post-conflict stabilization to occupation and the creation of a new government. The technical feasibility of post-conflict reconstruction was never assessed in any rigorous way at the principals??? level; several interviewees told me that the president???s entire formal briefing time on postwar Iraq amounted to a single, one-hour presentation. Meanwhile, close consideration of possible future constraints was side-
tracked by the assumption that the invasion would not produce a long, drawn-out, costly occupation.???
???Actual decisions - national behavior - emerge when a policy window opens long enough to let some of that noise through, and the moment feels to the participants like a sudden coalescing of opinion: people in government ??????speak of a ???growing realization,??? an ???increasing feeling??? . . . and ???coming to a conclusion??? ?????? (1984:147). There are no new policy ideas, Kingdon suggests; existing ones merely cluster around policy windows, trying to get through. When a policy window does open, then, the policy it helps usher into being will generally be a recombination of long-proposed ideas rather than something tailored to the situation. This paradigm leads Kingdon to another conclusion: the crucial factor when a policy window opens is not what policy ideas might conceivably meet the needs it creates, but what ??????available alternative?????? is lying around, waiting to be applied. Well-developed available alternatives can elbow aside ??????equally worthy?????? concepts that do not happen to have ??????a viable, worked-out proposal attached?????? (1984:150).???
???Light contends that this policy search will be ??????biased?????? in whatever direction the executive branch thinks the president wants to go.???
???All of this mirrors the Iraq case quite closely. After years of broad worry about Saddam Hussein???s Iraq and some planning, never put into action, to support a military coup or exile-based insurrections, 9-11 led to a ??????growing realization?????? that Saddam would have to be dealt with. More importantly, dealing decisively with Iraq was one of the few ??????available alternatives?????? for responding to a major terrorist attack: there was no global counterterrorism strategy lying on a shelf, waiting to be dusted off. As time has made clear, moreover, fighting terrorism is an enormously complicated, nuanced, self contradictory task that does not lend itself to simple policy solutions of the sort entrepreneurs can shove through a policy window on short notice. Again, one possible interpretation of Bush???s state of mind after his December 28, 2001 CENTCOM briefing on the war plan, for example, is that it furnished precisely the sort of ??????available alternative?????? he was looking for - an available, acceptable option assembled by a general who had just won a surprisingly easy conflict in Afghanistan. The danger, of course, was that such thinking closed out the numerous other factors, from world opinion to nonmilitary aspects of postwar planning, that would play a decisive role in determining the fate of the Iraq mission writ large.???
???It is striking how little outside advice Bush sought, how few tough questions were asked of knowledgeable observers. He admitted to Woodward that he simply never asked Powell whether the Secretary of State thought attacking Iraq was the right thing to do. Rumsfeld himself said, ??????Whether there was ever a formal moment when he asked me, Do I think he should go to war, I can???t recall it?????? (Woodward 2004:416). As Richard Clarke has written, ??????I doubt that anyone ever had the chance to make the case to [President Bush] that attacking Iraq would actually make America less secure . . . Certainly he did not hear that from the small circle of advisers who alone are the people whose views he respects and trusts?????? (Clarke 2004:244). Again, this behavior makes perfect sense from an agenda-setting perspective: when a policy window opens, available alternatives are not likely to be subjected to laborious rethinking. Entrepreneurs are trying to push them through, and policymakers have too little time to be deliberate.???
???Operation Iraqi Freedom thus occurred in part because a policy window opened, and going after Saddam Hussein was one of the few available alternatives ready for policy entrepreneurs to take up and act upon. Again, though, as I stressed in the section on social construction, it is important to think of these processes as being at work on specific groups, communities, or movements, rather than on all players in the policy world. Invading Iraq seemed an available alternative to the anti-Saddam policy community, which counted among its members many senior officials of the Bush administration as well as supportive members of the broader national security community. It is not likely that it would have seemed so attractive, as a ready-made available alternative, to a Gore administration, or a McCain administration, or even a George H. W. Bush administration.???
When Petraeus testified to Congress in September 2007 he claimed that Iraqi casualties were down 45% from December 2006 to August 2007. What he failed to mention was that these numbers were provisional and likely to increase, cutting into his claim of a reduction in violence.
Pentagon???s Revised Numbers[/b]
The Pentagon is required to provide a quarterly report to Congress entitled ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq.??? The reports include a chart on sectarian deaths in the country. From the first reports to March 2007 these numbers were basically static with no changes for earlier months. Then, suddenly with the June 2007 report, the old numbers started increasing dramatically. The Pentagon gave various reasons, but the main one was that they were backlogged with casualty reports and had just began to catch up. Since older numbers are constantly revised upwards, the result is that the newest monthly death counts are always lower than previous ones. Hence, when Petraeus said that sectarian violence was down 45% that was probably true for that week, but within the following months those casualty numbers would most likely increase as in previous Pentagon reports. The difference has been a 5-70% increase in deaths so the numbers Petraeus used will not exist later on.
Here???s a breakdown of the difference in death counts from the March, June and September 2007 Pentagon reports showing the inflation in numbers. All the numbers are approximate because no specifics are provided by the Defense Department.
Sectarian Murders June 2006 - January 2007: March 2007 / June 2007/ September 2007
June 2006: 990 / 1000 / 1200
July 2006: 1190 / 1390 / 1600
August 2006: 750 / 900 / 1100
September 2006: 1190 / 1210 / 1250
October 2006: 1010 / 1600 / 1700
November 2006: 1410 / 1950
December 2006: 1610 / 2100
January 2007: 1500 / 1800
Sectarian Murders February - April 2007 June 2007 Report / September 2007 Report
February 2007: 700 / 1200
March 2007: 600 / 1050
April 2007: 610 / 1050
Sectarian Murders May ??? August 2007 September 2007 Report
May 2007 1050
June 750
July 1060
August 900
Sources[/b]
Defense Department, ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? March 2007
- ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? June 2007
- ???Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,??? September 2007