RhetIraq

Who: Silvio Berlusconi (Prime Minister of Italy)
Source: Guardian UK
Quotes: From article titled, I tried repeatedly to talk the US out of invading Iraq, says Berlusconi - 10/31/2005

Silvio Berlusconi, one of George Bush's closest allies, says he repeatedly tried to talk the US president out of invading Iraq, in comments to be broadcast today.

In the television interview, which goes out on the day the Italian prime minister flies to Washington to meet Mr Bush, Mr Berlusconi says he even enlisted the help of the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadafy, in behind-the-scenes efforts to stop America going to war. [Note: Libya is a former Italian colony]

"I have never been convinced war was the best way to succeed in making a country democratic and extract it from an albeit bloody dictatorship," he says. "I tried on several occasions to convince the American president not to wage war."

His version of events, recounted in an interview with the La7 private TV station, with excerpts reported by the Apcom and Ansa news agencies at the weekend, was backed by his deputy, Gianfranco Fini, leader of the former neo-fascist party, who said: "We tried right up to the end to persuade Bush and Blair not to launch a military attack."

Who: Stuart Bowen (Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction)
Source: Financial Times
Quotes: From article titled, US ‘had no policy’ in place to rebuild Iraq - 10/31/2005

The US government had “no comprehensive policy or regulatory guidelines” in place for staffing the management of postwar Iraq, according to the top government watchdog overseeing the country’s reconstruction.

The lack of planning had plagued reconstruction since the US-led invasion, and been exacerbated by a “general lack of co-ordination” between US government agencies charged with the rebuilding of Iraq, said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction, in a report released on Sunday.

“Nearly two years ago, the US developed a reconstruction plan that specified a target number of projects that would be executed using the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.

“That number was revised downward [last year]. Now it appears that the actual number of projects completed will be even lower,” Mr Bowen says in his report.

Increasing security costs were “the most salient” reason behind the shortfall, he concluded.

While 93 per cent of the nearly $30bn (€25bn, £17bn) the US has appropriated for reconstruction has been committed to programmes and projects, more than 25 per cent of the funds have been spent on security costs related to the insurgency.

The special inspector-general also highlighted a stark increase in non-military deaths in connection to Iraq’s reconstruction. The number of non-Iraqi contractor deaths from all countries rose to 412 for the period of March 2003 to September 2005. That compared to 120 deaths up until Sptember last year.

While the most successful post-conflict reconstruction effort in US history – the reconstruction of Japan and Germany following the second world war – began being planned in the months after the US entered the war, Mr Bowen found that “systematic planning” for the post-hostilities period in Iraq was “insufficient in both scope and implementation”.

Who: Adel Abdul Mahdi (Iraqi Vice President)
Source: Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled 'They Tell Me They've Assassinated My Brother' - 10/31/2005

When a white-haired man in a business suit interrupted an interview that the Iraqi vice president, Adel Abdul Mahdi, was giving to four reporters at his office in Baghdad on Sunday morning, it was clear something was wrong.

"I would like to stay with you, but they tell me they've assassinated my brother," the vice president said. "He was going to work, and he was shot."

The aide [of Mahdi] said Ghalib Abdul Mahdi did not travel with bodyguards. "They targeted him because of who his brother is," he said. "They've killed several siblings of Iraqi government officials."

Who: Brent Scowcroft
Source: The New Yorker (via The Washington Note)
Quotes: From "Breaking Ranks: What Turned Brent Scowcroft Against the Bush Administration?", Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, 31 October 2005;

"This is exactly where we are now," he said of Iraq, with no apparent satisfaction. "We own it. And we can't let go. We're getting sniped at. Now, will we win? I think there's a fairchance we'll win. But look at the cost."

"You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neocons do it."

"How do the neocons bring democracy to Iraq? You invade, you threaten and pressure, you evangelize." And now, Scowcroft said, America is suffering from the consequences of that brand of revolutionary utopianism. "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism," he said.

Scowcroft, the apotheosis of a Washington insider, was by then [Fall of 2002] definitively on the outside, and there was no one in the White House who would listen to him. On the face of it, this is remarkable: Scowcroft's best friend's son is the President; his friend Dick Cheney is the Vice-President; Condoleezza Rice, who was the national-security adviser, and is now the Secretary of State, was once a Scowcroft protege; and the current national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is another protege and a former principal at the Scowcroft Group.

"The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney," Scowcroft said. "I consider Cheney a good friend -- I've known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." He went on, "I don't think Dick Cheney is a neocon, but allied to the core of neocons is that bunch who thought we made a mistake in the first Gulf War, that we should have finished the job. There was another bunch who were traumatized by 9/11, and who thought, 'The world's going to hell and we've got to show we're not going to take this, and we've got to respond, and Afghanistan is O.K., but it's not sufficient.'"

A common criticism of the Administration of George W. Bush is that it ignores ideas that conflict with its aims. "We always made sure the President was hearing all the possibilities," John Sununu, who served as chief of staff to George H. W. Bush, said. "That's one of the differences between the first Bush Administration and this Bush Administration."

When, in an e-mail, I asked George H.W. Bush about Scowcroft's most useful qualities as a national-security adviser, he replied that Scowcroft "was very good about making sure that we did not simply consider the 'best case,' but instead considered what it would mean if things went our way, and also if they did not."

George Bush, the forty-first President, has tried several times to arrange meetings between his son, "Forty-three," and his former national-security adviser to no avail, according to people with knowledge of these intertwined relationships. "There have been occasions when Forty-one has engineered meetings in which Forty-three and Scowcroft are in the same place at the same time, but they were social settings that weren't conducive to talking about substantive issues," a Scowcroft confidant said.

When I asked Scowcroft if the son was different from the father, he said, "I don't want to go there," but his dissatisfaction with the son's agenda could not have been clearer. When I asked him to name issues on which he agrees with the younger Bush, he said, "Afghanistan." He paused for twelve seconds. Finally, he said, "I think we're doing well on Europe," and left it at that.

The disintegrating relationship between Scowcroft and Condoleezza Rice has not escaped the notice of their colleagues from the first Bush Administration. She was a political-science professor at Stanford when, in 1989, Scowcroft hired her to serve as a Soviet expert on the National Security Council.

Scowcroft found her bright -- "brighter than I was" -- and personable, and he brought her all the way inside, to the Bush family circle. When Scowcroft published his Wall Street Journal article, Rice telephoned him, according to several people with knowledge of the call. "She said, 'How could you do this to us?'" a Scowcroft friend recalled. "What bothered Brent more than Condi yelling at him was the fact that here she is, the national-security adviser, and she's not interested in hearing what a former national-security adviser had to say."

According to friends of Scowcroft, Rice has asked him to call her to set up a dinner, but he has not, apparently, pursued the invitation. The last time the two had dinner, nearly two years ago, it ended unhappily, Scowcroft acknowledged.

"We were having dinner just when Sharon said he was going to pull out of Gaza," at the end of 2003. "She said, 'At least there's some good news,' and I said, 'That's terrible news.' She said, 'What do you mean?' And I said that for Sharon this is not the first move, this is the last move. He's getting out of Gaza because he can't sustain eight thousand settlers with half his Army protecting them. Then, when he's out, he will have an Israel that he can control and a Palestinian state atomized enough that it can’t be a problem." Scowcroft added, "We had a terrible fight on that."

They also argued about Iraq. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. Then a barely perceptible note of satisfaction entered his voice, and he said, "But we've had fifty years of peace."

Scowcroft is unmoved by the stirrings of democracy movements in the Middle East. He does not believe, for instance, that the signs of a democratic awakening in Lebanon are related to the Iraq war. He sees the recent evacuation of the Syrian Army from Lebanon not as a victory for self-government but as a foreshadowing of civil war. "I think it's something we have to worry about -- the sectarian emotions that were there when the Syrians went in aren't gone."

One day, I mentioned to Scowcroft an interview I had had with Paul Wolfowitz, when he was Donald Rumsfeld's deputy. I asked him [Wolfowitz] what he would think if previously autocratic Arab countries held free elections and then proceeded to vote Islamists into power. Wolfowitz answered, "Look, fifty per cent of the Arab world are women. Most of those women do not want to live in a theocratic state. The other fifty per cent are men. I know a lot of them. I don't think they want to live in a theocratic tate."

Scowcroft said of Wolfowitz, "He's got a utopia out there. We're going to transform the Middle East, and then there won't be war anymore. He can make them democratic. He is a tough-minded idealist, but where he is truly an idealist is that he brushes away questions, says, 'It won't happen,' whereas I would say, 'It's likely to happen and therefore you can't take the chance.' Paul's idealism sweeps away doubts."

Wolfowitz, for his part, said to me, "It's absurdly unrealistic, demonstrably unrealistic, to ignore how strong the desire for freedom is." Scowcroft said that he is equally concerned about Wolfowitz's unwillingness to contemplate bad outcomes and Kagan's willingness to embrace them on principle. "What the realist fears is the consequences of idealism," he said. "The reason I part with the neocons is that I don't think in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratizing the Middle East can be successful. If you can do it, fine, but I don't think you can, and in the process of trying to do it you can make the Middle East a lot worse."

He added, "I'm a realist in the sense that I'm a cynic about human nature."

Who: Joseph C. Wilson IV (former US Ambassador to Iraq)
Source: LA Times
Quotes:

AFTER THE two-year smear campaign orchestrated by senior officials in the Bush White House against my wife and me, it is tempting to feel vindicated by Friday's indictment of the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Between us, Valerie and I have served the United States for nearly 43 years. I was President George H.W. Bush's acting ambassador to Iraq in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, and I served as ambassador to two African nations for him and President Clinton. Valerie worked undercover for the CIA in several overseas assignments and in areas related to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

But on July 14, 2003, our lives were irrevocably changed. That was the day columnist Robert Novak identified Valerie as an operative, divulging a secret that had been known only to me, her parents and her brother.

Valerie told me later that it was like being hit in the stomach. Twenty years of service had gone down the drain. She immediately started jotting down a checklist of things she needed to do to limit the damage to people she knew and to projects she was working on. She wondered how her friends would feel when they learned that what they thought they knew about her was a lie.

It was payback — cheap political payback by the administration for an article I had written contradicting an assertion President Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address. Payback not just to punish me but to intimidate other critics as well.

Why did I write the article? Because I believe that citizens in a democracy are responsible for what government does and says in their name. I knew that the statement in Bush's speech — that Iraq had attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium in Africa — was not true. I knew it was false from my own investigative trip to Africa (at the request of the CIA) and from two other similar intelligence reports. And I knew that the White House knew it.

Going public was what was required to make them come clean. The day after I shared my conclusions in a New York Times opinion piece, the White House finally acknowledged that the now-infamous 16 words "did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address."

That should have been the end. But instead, the president's men — allegedly including Libby and at least one other (known only as "Official A") — were determined to defame and discredit Valerie and me.

They used eager allies in Congress and the conservative media, beginning with Novak. Perhaps the most egregious of the attacks was New York GOP Rep. Peter King's odious suggestion that Valerie "got what she deserved."

Valerie was an innocent in this whole affair. Although there were suggestions that she was behind the decision to send me to Niger, the CIA told Newsday just a week after the Novak article appeared that "she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment." The CIA repeated the same statement to every reporter thereafter.

The grand jury has now concluded that at least one of the president's men committed crimes. We are heartened that our system of justice is working and appreciative of the work done by our fellow citizens who devoted two years of their lives to grand jury duty.

The attacks on Valerie and me were upsetting, disruptive and vicious. They amounted to character assassination. Senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives hell for the last 27 months.

But more important, they did it as part of a clear effort to cover up the lies and disinformation used to justify the invasion of Iraq. That is the ultimate crime.

The war in Iraq has claimed more than 17,000 dead and wounded American soldiers, many times more Iraqi casualties and close to $200 billion.

It has left our international reputation in tatters and our military broken. It has weakened the United States, increased hatred of us and made terrorist attacks against our interests more likely in the future.

It has been, as Gen. William Odom suggested, the greatest strategic blunder in the history of our country.

We anticipate no mea culpa from the president for what his senior aides have done to us. But he owes the nation both an explanation and an apology.

Who: Various US & Iraqi Soldiers
Source: NY Times
Quotes: From news article titled "Lack of Armor Proves Deadly for Iraqi Army" dated 10/30/2005;

At least 209 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been killed this year in the provincial capital, Baquba, and a swath of the surrounding province, compared with the deaths of eight American soldiers in the same area, according to records released to The New York Times by American military officers who are working with the Iraqi troops.

The American officers attribute the higher Iraqi casualties partly to the lack of vehicle armor and say that insurgents are devising their assaults in response.

"Our higher level of armor obviously protects us quite a bit more, as does the way we operate," Maj. Steven Warren, a spokesman for the Third Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, said at the team's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Warhorse near Baquba and in comments sent by e-mail.

"The Iraqis put quite a few more people in their trucks, and those trucks aren't armored," Major Warren said. "No armor plus more people in the truck equals a substantially higher casualty rate."

The Army unit in charge of equipping and training the Iraqis, the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, said it was trying to replace much of the Iraqi fleet with new armored trucks.

But it has largely restricted its shopping to American companies that are still swamped by orders for American troops. The unit's biggest initiative, to give the Iraqis 1,500 armored Humvees, will not begin until December, and most will not be built until next summer, military and company officials said.

The Iraqis lack many other items as well, from more powerful weapons that can subdue insurgent attacks to goggles to protect their eyes from shrapnel. A list prepared in August by the transition unit of gear still needed by Iraqi soldiers contained 126 high-priority items, including grenade launchers, sniper rifles and machine guns.

Body armor is also incomplete. After initial delays, a vast majority of Iraqi soldiers have bulletproof vests similar to those worn by American soldiers, officials say. But Pentagon officials declined to say whether they would provide the Iraqis with new, stronger armor plates they are buying for American troops. And some Iraqis are still wearing ragged and much older models, or none at all.

At a checkpoint near Baquba where seven soldiers had been killed in late August, Bassan Mohamad, 26, stood guard without wearing a bulletproof vest.

He said he shared his vest with the soldier across the road. "My friend has it, there," he said, pointing. "There is not enough gear."

In a series of interviews at their Baghdad headquarters and in written responses, officials with the Army unit working with the Iraqis acknowledged that most of their vehicles remained without armor. They said they had dedicated more than $100 million to fortify the trucks with steel plates and other shielding, but had left the effort to local military units and could not say how much had been accomplished.

At the Iraqi Army compound in the town of Kanan near Baquba, Maj. Jaafair Khilel Kather told a group of visiting American officers that his men needed more sophisticated radios like American troops used. He said his men were afraid to use their older-model radios because insurgents were able to break into their frequencies to yell, "We will kill you!"

Who: Pentagon Report - Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq
Source: Reuters
Quotes: Based on report issued 10/13/2005;

The Pentagon has estimated that nearly 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded in attacks by insurgents since January 2004, with the daily number increasing fairly steadily.

A Pentagon report to Congress said casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces rose from about 26 a day between January 1 and March 31, 2004, to about 64 a day between August 29 and September 16, 2005, just before the referendum on the Iraqi constitution.

The Pentagon has not previously provided such a comprehensive estimate of the Iraqi casualty toll from insurgent attacks. It also refuses to release data on the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded by U.S. forces.

The counts were based on casualty reports filed by U.S. and allied forces who responded to attacks, but Venable noted that foreign troops did not respond to all attacks.

Who: Falah & Samira Kubba
Source: Knight-Ridder
Quotes: From News Article dated 10/24/2005;

Samira Kubba: "We do not think about how we live our days in Baghdad these days. We wonder whether we will survive them," she said. "No place outside this house is safe."

"I cannot sleep at night," Falah Kubba said, his eyelids sagging and bruised from rubbing. "In bed, my wife rests on one side, and my new second wife - a pump-action shotgun - stays in my arms on the other side. I am up all night, aiming at the doors every time there is a bump. This is no way to live. It is a way to die."

After the fifth child on their block was kidnapped this summer, he cleared out an old office connected to his house as a play area for neighborhood children. The doors and windows are covered by iron gates, chains and padlocks. A family member with a locked and loaded AK-47 automatic kneels in front of the only entrance. While the children play - the youngest with a collection of push toys, the older ones with bicycles or balls, the teenagers sitting and chatting on the steps to the second floor - Falah keeps his second wife at hand.

The Kubbas lives in Mansur, an area of large homes with marble entryways and exterior walls decorated with statues.

[Note: A quote from a Pentagon Report issued 10/13/2005; Three-quarters in Baghdad and eight out of ten Iraqis in Mosul say they do not feel safe in their neighborhood and region.]

Who: Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto (Commander, Task Force Liberty - N. Central Iraq)
Source: U.S. Department of Defense
Quotes: From News Briefing on 10/28/2005

I think we're getting further division between al Qaeda in Iraq and the Iraqi rejectionists or Saddamists. I don't think al Qaeda in Iraq's message is resonating very well, and I think we're seeing, at least in North- Central, we're not seeing as much of their influence in there.

Back in June we had a governors' conference, and in May and June in North-Central were the two biggest months of suicide bombing and the killing and taking of innocent life, way above our normal. Those were the only two months. Everything other than that stayed relatively, you know, straight across. They were not happy, and the governors decided in that June meeting that they were going to come out strong and condemn violence, and they all did, and they all did forcefully -- in Salahuddin, in Kirkuk, in Sulimaniyah and in Diyala province -- the governors personally, and they took this on. And I do believe since that period of time, I have seen the attitudes about killing -- Muslims killing Muslims -- that is not playing well with the Iraqi people.

Who: British Report - Ministry of Defence Poll
Source: Sunday Telegraph UK
Quotes: From News Aricle dated 10/23/2005;

The survey was conducted by an Iraqi university research team that, for security reasons, was not told the data it compiled would be used by coalition forces. It reveals:

• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;

• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.

Under the heading "Justification for Violent Attacks", the new poll shows that 65 per cent of people in Maysan province - one of the four provinces under British control - believe that attacks against coalition forces are justified.

The report states that for Iraq as a whole, 45 per cent of people feel attacks are justified. In Basra, the proportion is reduced to 25 per cent.

Immediately after the war the coalition embarked on a campaign of reconstruction in which it hoped to improve the electricity supply and the quality of drinking water.

That appears to have failed, with the poll showing that 71 per cent of people rarely get safe clean water, 47 per cent never have enough electricity, 70 per cent say their sewerage system rarely works and 40 per cent of southern Iraqis are unemployed.

Who: Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr. (Commander of US forces in Baghdad)
Source: U.S. Department of Defense
Quotes: From News Briefing on 10/21/2005

Whereas we had one battalion of the Iraqi Army defending the polling stations in Baghdad in January, we now have 18 battalions that were not only securing the elections in Baghdad, but are conducting day-to-day fighting operations against the insurgents.

... the attack levels ebb and flow. Generally, since last spring, they have been increasing at the rate of about one to two attacks a day, to the point where in August there were 27 attacks a day in Baghdad by the enemy, 28 attacks a day in September. And just last week it was still about 28 attacks a day until the few days prior to the referendum, when it spiked at about 53 and 54 attacks for the two days prior to the referendum.

... only about 15 percent of these attacks are successful. And that is, by "successful," we say the enemy is successful if he causes damage or if he injures somebody.

So while the number of attacks has risen steadily, their effectiveness has declined. And we attribute that mostly to the fact that we are killing and capturing a number of Iraqi insurgents, and we are disrupting their ability to conduct these operations.

Q --- how long it will take for the Iraqi army and security forces to have a logistics system that will allow it to sustain itself?

GEN. WEBSTER: First of all, they're making do now with contract support, so there is limited ability now for their logistics system to operate if they stay in place. When you look at how difficult a logistics system can be, if we're talking about an army that can pick up and move and go out to the borders to defend the country and be able to sustain operations out in the open for a long period of time, it's probably going to be a year and a half, two years, before that system is mature enough to operate on its own.

Who: General John Abizaid (Commander of US CentCom)
Source: CBS News' Face the Nation
Quotes: From October 2, 2005 appearance;

Gen. ABIZAID: The real point is, are they [Iraqi Security Forces] fighting for their country? Are they going to be capable of taking over counterinsurgency leads over the next several months? The answer is yes.

Who: General John Abizaid (Commander of US Forces in Iraq)
Source: Meet The Press
Quotes: From October 2, 2005 appearance;

MR. RUSSERT: General Casey said there are about 500 attacks a week. Vice President Cheney said the insurgency was in the final throes. Is the vice president correct?

GEN. ABIZAID: Tim, I knew somehow or other the final throes question would come. I will tell you that the insurgency, as long as politics continues to move in the direction that it appears to moving and the Iraqi security forces continue to move in the direction that they're moving, the insurgency doesn't have a chance for victory.

MR. RUSSERT: Is there a possibility a year from now, if the political process does not improve, we could be sitting here and you would be saying, "We've lost the war in Iraq"?

GEN. ABIZAID: I think as long as we continue on the path that we're on and we insist that people show the courage and determination necessary to stand by the Iraqis, this will come out well, for Iraq, for the Middle East, for the world. And when it does, it will make a huge difference in our broader fight against al-Qaeda. ...

Who: Various Soldiers of 3rd Infantry Division
Source: Knight-Ridder
Quote: From article titled, "Insurgents play cat-and-mouse game with American snipers"

"Some people don't get the gravity of the situation here; people in the Green Zone are always trying to paint a rosy picture," said [Sgt. Antonio] Molina, a 27-year-old sniper from Clearwater, Fla. He was referring to the fortified compound in Baghdad where U.S. officials work. "These politicians are all about sending people to war but they don't know what it's all about, being over here and getting shot at, walking through s--- swamps, having bombs go off, hearing bullets fly by. They have no idea what that's like."

Muqdadiyah is in one of those 14 provinces, Diyala. Yet five days in the field with a 3rd Infantry Division sniper team suggests that, to those on the ground here, the insurgency is anything but defeated.

Many American troops on the ground in Muqdadiyah expect the violence to continue long after they're gone. They worry that Sunni Muslim insurgents - from a Sunni population that makes up 40 percent of Diyala - will simply move from targeting U.S. forces to ratcheting up attacks against Shiite Muslims, who compose 35 percent of the province. Shiites are a majority in Iraq, and they dominate the Baghdad government.

"As soon as we leave this place they're all going to kill each other," Molina said at a meeting in his barracks recently.

His sniper team commander, Staff Sgt. Donnie Hendricks, agreed: "It's going to be a f------ civil war."

Hendricks was quiet for a few moments.

"We go out and kill the bad guys one at a time," said Hendricks, 32, who speaks with the soft accent of his native Claremore, Okla., where his high school graduating class had 55 students. "But we're just whittling down one group so it's easier for the other groups to kill them."

Maj. Dean Wollan, the top U.S. intelligence officer in Diyala, said his men had made tremendous gains against the insurgency, but he worries that the fight will grind on for years.

"I think it's going to be a while," said Wollan, 38, of Missoula, Mont. "I think the shortest insurgency we've seen was the one the Brits fought in Malaysia. That was seven years."

Commanders for the 3rd Infantry Division in Diyala said the number of attacks there had dropped from about a dozen a day last year to seven. Roadside bombs, they said, have decreased by a third. The latter trend, though, hasn't held up this month. In September 2004 there were 72 roadside bombs detonated or found, but 106 this month.

"They say attacks are down. Well, no s---," Hendricks said. "We're not patrolling where the bad guys are."

U.S. patrols on a parallel road, Route Marie, ended in late May.

Pointing to Route Marie on a map on the wall of his barracks, Hendricks traced a 2-mile stretch of the road with his index finger.

"They kicked our a-- off this road," Hendricks said. "They hit us with so many IEDs we had to stop using it." He used the military's term for homemade bombs, "improvised explosive devices."

U.S. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a military spokesman in Baghdad, pointed to Diyala and the 13 other provinces in September as examples of a weakened insurgency.

"So what I'm trying to show you is ... there is indeed areas of Iraq that are relatively safe and secure, and those people in those provinces are working their way towards a peaceful society as they work their way towards democracy," Lynch said, motioning to a map of Iraq. "Sixty percent of the people of Iraq live in these provinces that are experiencing a much, much, much lower level of violence, to the point where they're averaging less than one attack per day."

The U.S. military in Muqdadiyah has reduced patrols from 24-hour cycles to two daily five-hour rotations. And instead of canvassing the entire area, the patrols now concentrate almost exclusively on Route Vanessa, the main route in and out of the base. The insurgents shifted their attacks and now regularly place bombs along that road.

"The bad guys watch our gates. They know when we're out in sector. They just wait for us to leave and then they plant" the bombs, Hendricks said. "They plant them with impunity."

Sgt. Hunter Sabin has spent a fair amount of time near the Iraqi troops, and said that while they were getting better, they were still far from ready.

"I was up in a guard tower outside the FOB (base) and a group of IP (Iraqi police) came up and offered us hash and whiskey," said Sabin, a 26-year-old sniper from Richmond, Va., who was in a Ranger special operations unit during the 2003 invasion. "That's who's protecting the people."

"I haven't taught them tactics because they're infiltrated," Hendricks said. "It's like going to a party where you don't know anybody, but somebody in the room - you don't know who - wants to kill you."

"Haji will use a position. We go find it, stay there overnight, and we know they're watching us," Hendricks said, using the pejorative slang for Iraqis. "We have them in the palm groves with us ... we hear them talking but we can't find them."

Sitting in the darkness, near the edge of a palm grove, Molina looked at the street in front of him.

"The reason why they're fighting us is not Osama bin Laden. They're fighting us because we're here. ... They don't want us here. They just want us to leave. I guess that would be a victory for them," he said. "As far as I can see there's not going to be any victory for us."

Sabin, sitting next to him, nodded.

"In past situations you've had a good guy and a bad guy and the troops were impassioned, but now troops just want to go home," Sabin said. "I don't feel like there's a cause. I don't personally think there's a reason for this."

Who: Saleh al-Mutlaq (Spokesman for the Iraqi National Dialogue) & Mahmoud Othman (Independent Kurdish member of Iraqi parliament) & Farid Ayar (member of Iraq's Electoral Commission)
Source: Reuters International
Quotes: From article titled, "Sunnis see Shi'ite manipulation ahead of Iraq vote"

In a session on Sunday, Shi'ites and Kurds, who hold more than three quarters of parliament's 275 seats, decided the existing interim constitution should be interpreted in such a way as to create two different thresholds for the referendum.

For it to pass, a majority of those who turn out to vote have to say "Yes," while for it to be defeated, two-thirds of registered voters in three or more provinces have to say "No."

What the interim constitution actually says is: "The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two -thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it."

The interim constitution's wording suggests "voters" means those who turn out to vote in both cases, not registered voters, which is a much higher benchmark. In elections in January, less than 60 percent of Iraqis who registered actually voted.

"It's unfair and I didn't vote for it," Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of parliament, told Reuters. "It's a double standard and it shouldn't have happened."

"But to play by this kind of majoritarian rule is very dangerous, it's playing with fire," he [ Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert with the International Crisis Group] told Reuters from Ammam. "They are excluding one community to make it look as if they have agreement."

Farid Ayar, a member of Iraq's Electoral Commission, which is organising the referendum, told Reuters the interim constitution clearly intended to define voters in the referendum as those who turn out to vote, not registered voters.

"It is an issue and it needs to be resolved," he said.

Mutlaq, the Sunni politician, said he and others may now call on Sunnis to boycott the referendum, a move that could further marginalise the community from the political process.

Who: Various (see below)
Source: Defense News (via Open Source Intelligence)
Quotes:

"The current sectarian and ethnic killings in Iraq are actually the beginning of a civil war," said Georges Sada, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafaari and the executive secretary of the Iraq Institute for Peace. "Sectarian divisions in Iraq have started back in the '90s, which prepared the ground for the civil war spreading today."

"For over a year now, there has not been a day in which Iraq did not
witness sectarian killings where the victims were either Shiite, Sunni
or Kurds," said Ghassan Attiyah, chairman of the Baghdad-based Iraq
Foundation for Development and Democracy. "I'm not talking here about
random shooting. I am talking about targeting people individually on
the roads and killing them for being from one group or another."

"Even if U.S. and Iraqi officials do not want to admit it, the facts
on the ground are overwhelming and they do indicate that Iraq has
plunged into a civil war, and things are getting worse by the day,"
said Qassem Jaafar, a Doha, Qatar-based Middle East security analyst.

Jaafar listed the symptoms of a civil war as:

• A weak central government with incompetent security apparatus.
• Spread of sectarian and ethnic killings.
• Existence of armed sectarian and ethnic militias.
• High threat perception among the sectarian and ethnic groups of the
country.
• Insistence of each group on its demands.
• Foreign interference and support to feuding groups.

Jaafar said all these symptoms are present in Iraq now.

"If the constitution is not amended to meet Sunni demands and goes
as-is to the referendum, then moderate Sunni figures would lose ground
to the radical forces and an all-out civil war will spread to each
corner of the country," Attiyah said.

Jaafar agreed. "The U.S. is facing a serious dilemma in Iraq, where
its Shiite and Kurdish allies have gone out on their own pushing for
their own agendas that do not seem to meet with Washington's vision of
a future Iraq," he said.

"The Shiites, for example, have been pushing for an Iranian-style
Islamic republic, which would not suit U.S. interests," while "the
Kurdish secessionist drive is growing stronger every day, which is
getting Turkey and other neighboring states more worried."

Jaafar said that puts Washington on the hot seat.

"The U.S. is stuck in an almost no-win situation. It can neither just
withdraw from Iraq without completing the mission and establishing
peace and order in the country, and at the same time it does not seem
capable of maintaining Iraq's unity and achieving its promise of
establishing a free and democratic Iraq that would be a good model for
neighboring countries," Jaafar said.

"I believe some U.S. officials have started entertaining the idea of
dividing Iraq on ethnic and sectarian lines to ensure stability and
facilitate their exit after establishing some military bases in the
oil-rich Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq," Attiyah said. "In this
case, Washington would blame the Sunnis and other neighboring states
like Iran and Syria for the breakup of the country."

"Any real solution to the Iraqi conflict must involve the cooperation
of all neighboring states and a compromise on the part of all Iraqi
groups, and a U.S. willingness to address the concerns of all parties
inside and around Iraq," Jaafar said. "This formula looks clear and
doable, but in the real world it's almost impossible, which means more
hard times to come in Iraq." •

Who: Condoleezza Rice (Secretary of State)
Source: U.S. Department of State
Quotes: From Princeton University speech;

... if you believe, as I do and as President Bush does, that the root cause of September 11th was the violent expression of a global extremist ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern Middle East, then we must speak to remove the source of this terror by transforming that troubled region. If you believe as we do, then it cannot be denied that we are standing at an extraordinary moment in history.

Some would argue that this broad approach to the problem is making the world less stable by rocking the boat and wrecking the status quo. But this presumes the existence of a stable status quo that does not threaten global security. This is not the case. A regional order that produced an ideology of hatred so savage as the one we now confront is not serving any civilized interest.

For 60 years, we often thought that we could achieve stability without liberty in the Middle East. And ultimately, we got neither. Now, we must recognize, as we do in every other region of the world, that liberty and democracy are the only guarantees of true stability and lasting security.

In a world where evil is still very real, democratic principles must be backed with power in all its forms: political, and economic, and cultural, and moral, and yes, sometimes, military. Any champion of democracy who promotes principle without power can make no real difference in the lives of oppressed people.

There are those who falsely characterize the support of democracy as "exporting" democracy, as if democracy were somehow a product that only America manufactures. These critics say that we are arrogantly imposing our principles on an unwilling people. But it is the very height of arrogance to believe that political liberty and democratic aspirations and freedom of speech and rights for women somehow belong only to us. All people deserve these rights and they choose them freely. It is not liberty and democracy that must be imposed. It is tyranny and silence that are forced upon people at gunpoint.

The choice we face in Iraq is, thus, stark. If we quit now, we will abandon Iraq’s democrats at their time of greatest need. We will embolden every enemy of liberty and democracy across the Middle East. We will destroy any chance that the people of this region have of building a future of hope and opportunity. And we will make America more vulnerable. If we abandon future generations in the Middle East to despair and terror, we also condemn future generations in the United States to insecurity and fear.

Ladies and Gentlemen: We have set out to help the people of the Middle East transform their societies. Now is not the time to falter or fade.

Who: Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom
Source: The Lowell Sun
Quotes: From article titled, "Retired general: Iraq invasion was 'strategic disaster'"

“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” said Odom, now a scholar with the Hudson Institute.

[Note: The Hudson Institute, is a hard-right activist think tank that advocates the abolition of government-backed Social Security and an end to corporate income taxes, while sharing a large number of trustees and staff with the Heritage Foundation.]

Who: Juan Cole (Professor of History at the University of Michigan)
Source: JuanCole.com
Quotes:

I got a lot of flak for calling the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq a sick joke because there had been no campaigning and the names of the candidates were not known until the last minute, and because the Sunni Arabs wouldn't be represented. But now everyone in Iraq is complaining about the sectarian and do-nothing government that resulted from those anonymous elections (however bravely and however imbued with national spirit the Iraqi public went into them), and of course the absence of the Sunni Arabs has pushed them ever further into violent opposition.

Let me now risk some more flak and say that given that it is two weeks before the referendum and no ordinary Iraqis have seen the text of the new constitution, and given that the Sunni Arabs reject it to a person even just from the little they know of it, this constitution is another sick joke played by the Bush administration, which keeps forcing Iraq to jump through hoops made in Washington as "milestones" and "tipping points" to which the Republican Party can point as progress. Not to mention that the draft we have all seen of the constitution is riddled with fatal contradictions that will tie up the energies of parliament and the courts for decades trying to resolve them.

Who: Scott Ritter (former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq)
Source: The Independent UK
Quotes: From opinion piece titled, "The last thing Iraq needs now is the passing of its draft constitution"

Regardless of the result of the Iraqi people's vote on the constitution on 15 October, the reality is that it is a failed document, reflective of a failed process. A rejection would, in fact, represent a liberating moment for the decision-makers in Washington and London, enabling them to chart a new course free from the past.

There are forces at play in Iraq that cannot be ignored and which, if the draft constitution passes, will be outside the control of either the US or Britain.

First and foremost is the radical, pro-Iranian elite governing Iraq today. Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, is decidedly pro-Iranian, having fought on the side of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Ibrahim al-Jafaari, the Prime Minister, is the leader of the Dawa Party, which was based in Iran and had a strong tendency to embrace the tactics and tools of terror. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, one of the strongest behind-the-scenes players, heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), as well as its military arm, the Badr Brigade, all organised, equipped, paid for and directed by Iran. This clique, mostly radical Islamic in nature, does not represent the will of the Iraqi people, even of the Shia, but rather the vision of its masters in Tehran. A positive vote for the draft constitution will only empower it, a result that will guarantee civil war.

... the Sunni believe the draft constitution gives them a raw deal, seeing its federal nature as an arrangement that will cut their access to important natural resources. If it is passed, the situation with the Sunni will worsen, creating a festering wound that will feed future generations of terrorists.

There is a viable exit strategy: the gradual withdrawal of US and British troops, with a policy to re-enfranchise the Sunni population, strengthen the hand of the Kurds and Shia outside the sphere of influence exerted by Iran, and disenfranchise the pro-Iran elite. There will, of course, need to be a guiding hand, which cannot be American or British. The European Union, Arab League and United Nations could all play a role in this, an effort each would support if only the US and Britain would let them.

Who: Ms. Nesma Abdul-Razzaq & Mr. Monkath Abdul-Razzaq (Iraqi Middle-Class)
Source: NY Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Middle-Class Family Life in Iraq Withers Amid the Chaos of War"

From her bedroom window, Nesma Abdul-Razzaq, a 43-year-old homemaker, has watched insurgents fire grenades from a patch of grass near her garden. Frequent patrols of American tanks rattle the glass. A bullet has pierced a pane.

"You can't live in safety if you cooperate with either side," she said in the bedroom of her house, deep in insurgent-controlled western Baghdad. So when American troops offered to pay for the use of the roof last month, she politely declined.

"What would I say to the neighbors?" she said.

"The Americans put us in a ridiculous situation," he [Mr. Monkath Abdul-Razzaq] said. "They came to Iraq and all the religious parties came with them. The religious man in Iraq is like a fox."

"I am very worried," he said, sweating after his third trip in two hours to fiddle with a generator on the roof. "No power. No peace. Do you think this is life? It is hell."

Who: Bayan Jabor (Interior Minister of Iraq)
Source: Reuters
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq says Zarqawi sending some militants back home"

Interior Minister Bayan Jabor said documents found with Abu Azzam, said to be a lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, signaled a plan to send foreign Arab Sunni militants back home to widen the battlefield beyond Iraq.

"We got hold of a very important letter from Abu Azzam to Zarqawi asking him to begin to move a number of Arab fighters to the countries they came from to transfer their experience in car bombings in Iraq," Jabor told Reuters in an interview in Amman.

"So you will see insurgencies in other countries," said Jabor, a member of the Shi'ite Islamist SCIRI party, a key component of the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led coalition government.

"They are leaving Iraq to transfer their training skills in car bombings to their original countries," he said.

"Zarqawi is no longer important in my view. His worth or importance has ended with the confusion that is happening where there are now Iraqis and others (in the insurgency)," he said.

Jabor said foreign Arab militants now numbered less than 1,000 compared to between 2,500 and 3,000 six months ago. They were much weaker but readier to inflict more civilian casualties: "There are indications of a sharp weakening of the capabilities of the insurgents," Jabor said.

Citing intelligence reports, Jabor said effectiveness of insurgent operations dropped to a of low 25 percent from 80 percent in terms of killing designated targets, primarily with a sharp drop in attacks on Iraqi security forces although attacks against U.S. forces had not fallen.