Obviously, We Intend to Kill Sadr

It's not hard to see where this going:

The U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slum on Saturday, leveling a building 55 yards away from a hospital and wounding nearly two dozen people.

AP Television News footage showed several ambulances destroyed and on fire, thick black smoke rising from them as firefighters worked to put out the flames.

The strike, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant "command-control center," the U.S. military said. The center was located in the heart of the eight-square-mile neighborhood that is home to about 2.5 million people. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were wounded, though none of them were patients in the hospital.

The U.S. military blamed the militants for using Iraqi civilians as human shields.

"This is a circumstance where these criminal groups are operating directly out of civilian neighborhoods," military spokeswoman Spc. Megan Burmeister told The Associated Press in an e-mail.

Stop--before we get to the good stuff.

"Specialist" Burmeister is now speaking for the US military in Iraq? What the fuck? Are all of the public affairs officers on leave? Whatever happened to that mouthy Colonel who worked for Petraeus? Colonel Who Gives A Shit? [The name is Boylan, but since he obsessively reads progressive blogs for any citation of his name now that he's pretty much gone from somebody to nobody in the space it takes for someone with more rank to blow their stack, all I can say is--who gives a fuck?] They're sending an E-4 straight out of DINFOS to brief the media on what's going on? Kudos to you, Specialist. You're probably a damned sight better than the officers who have probably been taking your work and have been taking credit for it.

Shiite extremists are known to have operated in a building next to the hospital, local reporters said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have waged street battles with Shiite militias since late March in Sadr City, the power base of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

The fighting is part of a 5-week-old crackdown by the Iraqi government and U.S. forces on Shiite militia factions. The clashes have brought deep rifts among Iraq's Shiite majority and have pulled U.S. troops into difficult urban combat.

Militia members have been blamed for firing hundreds of rockets or mortars from Sadr City into the Green Zone, the U.S.-protected area housing the American embassy and much of the Iraqi government. In the past month, more than a dozen people - including two American civilians and soldiers - have been killed inside the zone during the attacks.

I'm trying to figure out what they mean by "command and control." Typically, that's not the big room you see in Dr. Strangelove, nor is it the special bunker with the insurgents standing around a big sand table as a dude pushes miniature car bombs and US Army vehicles around with a pool cue. It has to be the kind of place where they used their cellular telephones--always the best bet for uncovering any kind of "command and control."

I don't think the intention was to just shoot up a building where someone was traced by the signal emitted from their phone. I think the intention is to kill Sadr, and we'll be seeing that story soon. I don't think they are hiding it anymore--they want to kill him and keep him from gaining power in the next round of elections. Even if he is a martyr, he's a dead martyr who can't oppose al-Maliki anymore.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Two guys you don't hear anything from anymore--General Lute and Colonel Steve Boylan.



Must have run out of imposters...

Iraq appeals to Iran for help defusing the Kurdish crisis

As tensions ratchet up between Turkey and Iraq over PKK terrorists who find safe haven in Iraq from which to stage cross-border raids and kill Turkish soldiers, and the United States stands by helplessly, unable to even comprehend the scope of the clusterfuck created by the hubris of George Bush, Iraq is reaching out to Iran for help.

That's gonna go over like a pregnant pole vaulter.

On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki met with Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and asked him to help present Iraq's positions at a regional summit meeting in Istanbul scheduled for Thursday. “The prime minister asked the Islamic Republic to present their full support to Iraq during the Istanbul meeting and also to participate in solving the border crisis between Turkey and the P.K.K.,” a statement from Mr. Maliki’s office said. The summit will be attended by representatives from countries in the region, including Syria, Iran, Iraq andTurkey. The United States will be represented by Condoleeza Rice, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and a number of other foreign ministers are also expected to attend.

P.K.K. terrorists have killed over 35,000 Turks since launching their most recent separatist terror campaign in the 80's. For perspective, consider that in 2 decades, the P.K.K. has killed ten times the number of Turks that America lost on September 11.

Turkey, tired of the terrorists who attack them finding safe haven in Iraq, hiding beneath the petticoats of Turkey's NATO ally the United States in the Kurdish north of Iraq, has massed troops on the border and announced that they will pursue Peshmerga and P.K.K. fighters across the border, engage them and kill them.

Iran has been sympathetic to the Turkish position, because the P.K.K. launches terrorist raids into Iran as well. But the situation is not that simple. Iran and Iraq are both Shi'ite majority countries, and the Iraqi government is Shi'ite majority (al Maliki spent many of his years in exile in Tehran).

From the New York Times:

Iraqi diplomats said they were worried that after the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met with President Bush on Nov. 5, Turkey may take action against the Kurdish guerrillas, a step that could further antagonize Iraq’s Kurds.

“They are under a lot of pressure from the public, so we think they will do something,” said a senior Iraqi official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. “We hope they will not.”

Mr. Erdogan has asked the United States to help the Turks take “concrete steps” to reduce the P.K.K. threat.

In Washington, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that the United States military was giving “lots of intelligence” to Turkey in its effort to halt the rebel attacks.

As if the situation were not complicated enough, the American forces are still holding five Iranians that were taken into custody in January. Iran says they are diplomats, the United States insists they are members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. “The arresting of Iranian consular officials is a very big strategic mistake,” said Mr. Mottaki. Mr. Mottaki also expressed his displeasure at a comment made by General Petraeus that the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad was a member of the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard.

And I would like to point out, again, that Petraeus really hasn't done much, if anything, right. Last summer, he managed to piss Maliki off to the point that Maliki threatened to have the General recalled. Generals have to be politicians, that's how they get past the rank of Captain. But this is 4G warfare. They need to be diplomats. And lets differentiate right now: diplomacy and ass kissing are two completely different things. Petraeus has a handle on the latter, there's no doubt. But the former? Not so much.

It's always a bad day to be Nouri

Five more cabinet ministers have announced that they will boycott meetings of the Iraqi government, headed by the teetering Prime Minister Nouri Kemal al Maliki. If the members, from the secular Iraqiya faction (loyal to former PM Ayad Allawi) hold firm, al-Maliki will be unable to convene a quorum of ministers to approve a lunch menu, let alone crucial legislation, before General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker present their mid-September assessment of the situation in Iraq to the congress.

Phil Reeker, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Iraq had no immediate comment, beyond "Things change here by the hour.” Back in Washington, the best the State Department could muster was a feeble, tepid endorsement. "There's a very healthy political debate that's going on in Iraq, and that's good," McCormack said. "It's going to be for them (the Iraqis) to make the judgments about whether or not that government is performing."

The political paralysis in Iraq means that with just one short month remaining before Petraeus and Crocker give their report, they are unlikely to be able to present the sow’s ear in Iraq to Congress as a silk purse.

"The situation is very fragile," said Hajim al Hassani, an Iraqiya member of parliament.

The Iraqiya ministers' decision to skip government meetings brings to 17 the number of ministers who've left the government or suspended their participation in it.

Hassani called the boycott the "first step toward withdrawal."

"They are not happy with the performance of the government," Hassani said. "The main point is trying to pressure and try to force the government to do some reforms and present some services to the people. Of course, the parliament is not meeting and the prime minister can't do anything unless the parliament comes back."

Less than a week ago, the Sunni al-Tawafuq bloc quit the government, protesting that al-Maliki had ignored a list of demands they had presented to him. Paramount among their complaints was a lack of effort on the part of al-Maliki to curb the infiltration of the Iraqi security forces by Shi’ite militias.

In April, six cabinet members loyal to fundamentalist Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al Sadr bolted the government because al-Maliki has failed to demand a timetable for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

The “Surge™” of troops, ordered by Bush in January, was supposed to provide a security crackdown that would reduce violence and give the politicians a bit of “breathing room” so they could make political progress.

Instead, the violence has simply relocated to where the troops aren’t; while politically, not only have none of the political benchmarks been met, no overtures have even been made. Meanwhile, Shi’ite militias are still ethnically cleansing Sunnis from neighborhoods in Baghdad and moving Shi’ite families in to their vacated homes.

With the Iraqi Parliament on vacation until September, American officials have resigned themselves to the fact that no political progress has been made, and will not be made, because even when parliament returns, the Iraqi Constitution decrees legislation can not be taken up without cabinet approval, sanctioned with a quorum present. With 17 Cabinet Ministers boycotting the proceedings, there is no quorum to be had, and therefore, the requisite political progress is simply not possible.

Sure would be nice to have a "Plan B" about now...

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[Shameless self promotion alert: This was cross-posted to Watching Those We Chose, and from there it was linked at the Salon Blog Report.]

On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced that construction of the “wall” around the Adhamiya neighborhood would stop, saying it was too reminiscent of “other walls.”

He did not elaborate, but he did not need to. The reference to the fence separating Israelis and Palestinians was obvious. “I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop,” Mr. Maliki told reporters during a joint news conference with the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. “There are other methods to protect neighborhoods.”

Meantime, the messages coming from the American command. were in disarray. Lt. Colonel Christopher Garver declined to verify whether construction would continue or not, stating that the military remained “in dialogue” with the Maliki government. At the same time, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV was backing away from the “concrete caterpillar” as fast as he could, practically denying the idea was ever more than that – an idea. “The military does not have a new strategy of building walls or creating gated communities.”

(Yet last week it was all the rage...)

The fact is, sequestration of neighborhoods was reported in the LA Times in January; but it actually goes back to Vietnam and the idea of “Strategic Hamlets” – a notion that failed miserably then, too, by the way. (The only example I can come up with of it actually working was the British in Malaysia, but talk to a sociologist about the dynamics that made it possible there that do not exist in Iraq).

Opposition to the wall has gathered steam since the American military announced it, and on Sunday both Sunni Arab and Shiite groups sharply criticized the idea. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party and the Shiite group linked to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr both announced that they opposed dividing Baghdad by sect. In sharp statements, they said the wall would increase sectarian hatred and fuel efforts to partition the country.

“Surrounding areas of the capital with barbed wire and concrete blocks would harm these areas economically and socially,” the Islamic Party said in a statement sent by e-mail to news organizations.

“In addition it will enhance sectarian feelings. This will cause great damage to the neighborhood’s residents and have a negative effect on these areas instead of solving problems. It will deepen the gap between the people and encourage sectarianism.”

Abu Firas al-Mutairi, a representative of the Sadr movement in Najaf, said: “The Sadr movement considers building a wall around al-Adhamiya as a way to lay siege to the Iraqi people and to separate them into cantons. It is like the Berlin Wall that divided Germany.”

“This step is the first step toward dividing the regions into cantons and blockading people there,” he added. “Today it happens in Adhamiya. Tomorrow it will happen in Sadr City,” the Shiite slum in Baghdad that is a stronghold of Mr. Sadr.

There is a great deal of disarray amid the chaos these days, it seems. Things appear to be coming to a head. The dynamics are shifting perceptibly. Every new day unleashes fresh horrors. As American men and materiel are wearing out in the desert, the insurgents adapt. They gain strength and strategic skill. I’m sorry, but I can’t see any scenario in which the situation improves and Americans are still in the country.

The congress needs to hold firm and refuse to authorize any more funding without an exit strategy.

For the love of Mike, the way the sands are shifting it makes absolutely no sense to pour more blood and treasure into this mess without binding conditions. I'm frankly offended that they would even dare to ask for such a thing! I mean really, aren't you the least bit offended at the insistence on a blank check when they haven't gotten one thing right so far? What the hell?

Enough is enough. Deal with the fact that we aren’t going to win because that isn’t even an option. Stop with the sacrifice of young men and women on the altar of Bush’s vanity. The refusal of the president to deal with reality is costing a lot of deaths among young Americans. They are constituents of the members of Congress. It is time they serve them and bring an end to this madness. Let the 30% who are never going to come around anyway continue their shouting down the well of delusion. Is trying to placate those people enough reason to continue the escalated death of Americans? I don’t think so. They are unreachable. Write them off and move on. We have to stop the war without them. They are going to yammer on no matter what. They are still yammering about Vietnam, for crying out loud. you think there is any possible way they won't do the same damned thing this time? I don't. Not if their past work is any indication.

For those who have to tell themselves that something was "won," fine. Here’s your chance to declare victory and go home. Please take it.

Thank Mr. Maliki for standing up and telling the military “No.” Then roll up your gear, and get the fuck out.