Juan Cole Throws Cold Water on the Wingnuts

I'm just going to take a sizable chunk of what Juan Cole has to say and repost it here--it's a brilliant piece of analysis. It debunks the wingnuts, it throws badly-needed cold water in the face of the neocons, and it encapsulates "why" we will never give up this fight:

...Monday's Pentagon-provoked story saying that Hizbullah of Lebanon is training Shiite radicals at camps in Iran.

I am suspicious of this story not because it is necessarily untrue (how would I know?) but because it shares with typical Bush administration propaganda the 'gotcha' technique in which questions of proportionality, significance and causality do not arise.

Thus, Dick Cheney repeatedly claimed that he had evidence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who he simplistically linked with al-Qaeda, got hospital treatment in Baghdad. Cheney said that would have been impossible unless Saddam was actively hosting him. And if Saddam was giving hospital treatment to al-Zarqawi, then ipso facto the Baath regime was allied with and supporting al-Qaeda.

But Cheney's entire argument is false from beginning to end. First of all, the Iraqi secret police put out an APB on al-Zarqawi when they thought he had entered their country, and were clearly afraid of him. There is no evidence that the regime afforded al-Zarqawi hospital care. Even if he had gotten treated, it was not proof of Saddam's complicity with him or with al-Qaeda. These little tiny details were built up into a narrative that was intended to carry the audience along without their being able to ask any questions about it. How good was the proof for what Cheney alleged? Was al-Zarqawi really al-Qaeda back then? How important was he? How big an impact did his presence in Iraq have?

There were also repeated allegations from Cheney and others that Saddam was training al-Qaeda operatives at Salman Pak. Wrong.

Under torture, Ibn al-Sheikh Libi told the US that Saddam was training al-Qaeda operatives in the use of poison gas. It was a lie. That is the problem with putting people in so much pain that they will tell you anything. Cheney and Rice parroted this falsehood over and over again.

After the war and occupation began, Pentagon spokesmen actually alleged that 90% of the violence in Iraq was committed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his group. But what, was he an Arab version of the Flash, able to run from Mosul to Baghdad in a few minutes? And when he was killed, nothing changed, so he wasn't all that important.

Since Cheney and Rice wanted to go to war with Iraq so as to open its petroleum resources to exploitation by American firms, it really was immaterial to them if the things they were saying were true or not. They have never evinced any shame or regret. They are happy. They accomplished their goal.

We should not allow this sort of thing to happen again. The Pentagon story about Iran is fishy for these reasons:

The main pro-Iran militia in Iraq is the Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Iran is happy with Badr's vast influence. Badr has conflicts with the Mahdi Army. Why should Iran undermine its own client by favoring the latter? And note that the US never condemns Badr, which until recently was actually part of the Iranian military until recently.

The information on the supposed Hizbullah training in Iran seems to have come from two or three captured Lebanese Shiites. That is a very small number. The US has 24,000 accused insurgents in captivity. If it only has a handful of Lebanese Shiites, then they just aren't very important. The Principle of Proportionality holds.

Moreover, the allegations may have been produced by US torture of the captives and so may not be reliable.

Then even if it were true, how important is it? The Mahdi Army is tens of thousands of slum kids. Sadrism goes back to the 1990s in Iraq and is a mass movement. Iran had nothing to do with them historically. Moreover, how important is all this? Have, like, 4 Lebanese guys really trained all that many Mahdi Army militiamen? How many exactly? How much more effective would they be as a result? Wouldn't the political support of millions of Iraqi Shiites in the South really be the source of Muqtada al-Sadr's power and authority?

What is being alleged is too small to produce a really big, nation-wide effect in Iraq. The Mahdi Army fought the US military for two long hard months in spring of 2004, and for another month in August. Iran was not around.

This is why I can't help but continue to question what we're being told. I'm so sick of being lied to. I'm so sick of the lies and the manipulation. If we keep repeating these denunciations and keep supporting the people like Juan Cole, who debunk this nonsense, we'll keep spreading the word and we'll get stronger and stronger.

The deadliest month since September drew to a close yesterday

The United States lost 49 Soldiers and Marines in the quagmire in Iraq during the month of April. Five were lost on the final day alone. Twenty-three fell in Baghdad, where the U.S. military has been engaged in close, and fierce, street-to-street fighting with Shi'ite militiamen, most of whom are allied with the Jaish al Mahdi, the militia that is (ostensibly) affiliated with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has vowed resistance so long as the occupiers remain on Iraqi soil. Two Marines were killed in Anbar - signifying that the "Awakening Concils" might be getting a little sleepy. It was the first loss of life of American service personnel in Anbar since November.

Tehseen Sheikhly, a spokesman for Baghdad security plan, said that at least 925 people were killed in Sadr City firefights since the crackdowns started late March.

But as is the case in any war, civilians bear the brunt in Iraq, too.

According to data collected by Iraq's interior, health and defence ministries and made available to AFP, 966 civilians were killed in April, followed by 69 policemen and 38 soldiers.

The death toll in April is marginally lower than in March which saw 1,082 Iraqis killed.

"The death toll in April is mainly driven by fighting between (Shiite) militants and security forces," a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Combined figures obtained by AFP from the three ministries showed that 1,745 civilians were wounded in the violence that ravaged the country, followed by 159 policemen and 104 soldiers.

The April toll maintains the trend of high violence that reversed, mainly since March, a gradually declining trend of violence seen from June last year and follows 721 killed in February, 541 in January, 568 in December, 606 in November, 887 in October, 917 in September and 1,856 in August.

It is obvious that either Sadr has suspended his cease fire order, or he has lost control of his militia. The U.S. military said that the militia fighters fire at American and Iraqi soldiers from rooftops, alleyways, and dwellings, and that firefights erupt as a result, and when that happens, civilians get killed in the crossfire.

Maliki held a press conference on Wednesday, and he did not disappoint in the hyperbole department. He accused the Sadrist militia fighters of using civilians as human shields, as Saddam Hussein infamously did with westerners caught in Iraq before the first gulf war. "Criminals and lawless gangs are using human shields in Sadr City ... They are following the steps of the Baathist regime," Maliki told a press conference. "They are trying to gain sympathy but they are using the lies and the values of the former regime," he said, referring to executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Maliki went on to vow that the Mahdi Army would be disbanded, along wioth Sunni militant groups, especially al Qaeda. "We will not allow scavengers in Iraq. The suffering will not be long in Sadr City. We will save our brothers," he said. He also accused the militias of in effect forcing a quarantine of fear on Sadr city. "I do not know how those people use the (Shiite religious) names we respect like Mahdi and Sadr," he said.

Maliki was referring to Muqtada al-Sadr's father, Grand Ayatollah Mohamed Sadeq al-Sadr, murdered - and martyred - in February 1999 by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, along with two of his sons and their driver in a machine gun ambush as they entered a traffic roundabout. At the time his father and brothers were martyred, Muqtada was a teenager with little religious training and an addiction to video games.

The next day, he was a religious leader, and now he is trying to carve a place for himself - and his father's legacy in the new Iraq. And that legacy is steeped in Iraqi nationalism and populism. He blamed both the Baathist regime and American-led sanctions for the suffering of Iraqi civilians.

The increased violence led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to admit on Tuesday that a seven-month lull in the deaths of U.S. troops has come to an end. He blamed the increased violence and loss of life on militias who bombarded the Green Zone with ordnance.

The rise in troop deaths, coinciding as it does with the withdrawal of the Surge™ troops has many officials hand-wringing over the ability of Iraqi and American forces to sustain the security gains that the supporters and apologists for the Surge™ insist were made.

And even though we called this immediately when they first started peddling the troop buildup, and we have been right at every step along the way, we do not gloat "I told you so" when what we are right about involved the demise of men and women we consider to be our brothers and sisters. Instead, we offer the fallen our most crisp salute, and the people who started this unholy clusterfuck a salute of the one-finger variety.

Hemming in

On Tuesday night, the U.S. military began to erect barriers, walling off Sadr City in an effort to halt the movement of Jaish al Mahdi fighters in and out of the sprawling Shi'ite slum. The intent is to turn the area of Sadr City closest to the Green Zone into a protected enclave, secured by American and Iraqi military forces, ostensibly this will allow for the Iraqi government to begin reconstruction, but there is no indication so far that the Iraqi government actually has any plans to rebuild the area.

“You can’t really repair anything that is broken until you establish security,” said Lt. Col. Dan Barnett, commander of the First Squadron, Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment. “A wall that isolates those who would continue to attack the Iraqi Army and coalition forces can create security conditions that they can go in and rebuild.”

On Wednesday night, huge cranes slowly lifted heavy concrete blocks into place under a moonless sky. The barriers were implanted on Al Quds Street, a major thoroughfare that separates the Tharwa and Jamilla districts to the south from the heart of Sadr City to the north.

The avenue was quiet except for the whirring sound of the cranes and thud of the barriers as they touched the ground. Contractors operated the cranes, but American soldiers transported the barriers on trucks and directed their placement.

The team building the barrier was protected by M-1 tanks, Stryker vehicles and Apache attack helicopters. As the workers labored in silence, there was a burst of fire as an M-1 tank blasted its main gun at a small group of fighters to the west. An Apache helicopter fired a Hellfire missile at a militia team equipped with rocket-propelled grenades, again interrupting the night with a thunderous boom. A cloud of dark smoke was visible in the distance through the Stryker’s night-vision system.

This is not the first time that concrete barriers have been used in Baghdad to segregate and sequester. Last summer, you might recall, it was the Sunni enclave of Adhamiya that was walled off. Residents tend to not like being ghettoized, but the military loves them and finds them effective in blunting the effectiveness of insurgents who, lacking helicopters and teleportation technology, are severely hampered in their ability to move freely.

The pre-fab concrete barriers are dropped into place by helicopters as American military forces in armored vehicles act as sentries and Iraqi forces hold positions about a hundred yards ahead, and the US forces are extremely eager to avoid a reprise of Tuesday when Iraqi forces refused to hold the line and instead walked away, leaving the territory to be reclaimed the following day by a different unit.

The wall started going up on Tuesday, and the Iraqi unit abandoned their position on Tuesday - think maybe the two events might be connected in some way? I can't say one way or another - but when I asked the Magic Eight Ball, the answer I got was "Without a Doubt."