RhetIraq

Who: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
Source: Associated Press via Guardian UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraqi Cleric Demands Cease-Fire in Lebanon"

Iraq's top Shiite cleric demanded an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, warning Sunday that the Muslim world will ``not forgive'' nations that stand in the way of stopping the fighting.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued the call following the Israeli airstrike that killed at least 56 Lebanese, mostly women and children, in the village of Qana. It was the deadliest attack in nearly three weeks of fighting.

``Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire,'' al-Sistani said in a clear reference to the United States.

``It is not possible to stand helpless in front of this Israeli aggression on Lebanon,'' he added. ``If an immediate cease-fire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed, dire consequences will befall the region.''

Who: Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute, Professor of History at University of Michigan
Source: Informed Comment
Quotes: From blog entry titled, "What is Hizbullah?"

Western and Israeli pundits keep comparing Hizbullah to al-Qaeda. It is a huge conceptual error. There is a crucial difference between an international terrorist network like al-Qaeda, which can be disrupted by good old policing techniques (such as inserting an agent in the Western Union office in Karachi), and a sub-nationalist movement.

Al-Qaeda is some 5,000 multinational volunteers organized in tiny cells.

Hizbullah is a mass expression of subnationalism that has the loyalty of some 1.3 million highly connected and politically mobilized peasants and slum dwellers. Over a relatively compact area.

The main factor in causing these peasant sharecroppers to become politically aware and mobilized was the Arab Israeli conflict. The Israelis stole some of their land in 1948 and expelled 100,000 Palestinians north into south Lebanon, where they competed for resources with local Lebanese Shiites. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the Palestinians became politically and militarily organized by the PLO. The Shiites' conflict with the PLO in the southern camps in the 1970s was probably a key beginning, but from 1982 it was primarily their conflict with the Israeli Occupation army that spurred them on.

Where subnationalisms are organized by party-militias willing to use carbombings and other asymmetrical forms of warfare, they are extremely difficult, if not impossible to defeat militarily. It would take a World War II style crushing military defeat of these populations, with the willingness of the conqueror to suffer tens of thousands dead in troop casualties. Israel is not even in a position to risk such a thing, given its small population.

Hizbullah is not like al-Qaeda in any way, sociologically speaking, and making such an analogy is a sure way for a general or politician to trick himself into entering the fires of hell.

What the Israelis set out to do, if they intended to "destroy" or even substantially attrite Hizbullah, was completely impractical. What they have done is to convince even Lebanese formerly on the fence about the issue that Hizbullah's leaders were correct in predicting that Lebanon would again be attacked in the most brutal and horrible way by the Israelis and that an even more powerful deterrent is needed. I.e more silkworms, not fewer. . The days when the Israelis could lord it over disconnected unmobilized Arab peasant villagers with their high tech army are coming to a close. The Arabs are still very weak, but are throwing up powerful asymmetrical challenges (e.g. party-militias with silkworm missiles!). Israeli alarm about the new connectedness of their foe explains the orgy of destruction aimed at bridges, roads, television and radio facilities and internet servers. But it is too late to disconnect the south Lebanese, who can easily and quickly rebuild all those connectors.

One hope the Israeli hawks appear to entertain is that they can permanently depopulate strips Lebanon south of the Litani river. Since most Shiites vote Hizbullah and offer political support and cover to it, fewer people means fewer assets for the party-militia. This project would require the total destruction of large numbers of villages and the permanent displacement of their inhabitants north to Beirut.

That is why the massacre at Qana occurred. The Israelis had bombed Qana 80 times. They were destroying all of its buildings. Therefore, of course, they destroyed the building where dozens of children and families were hiding. This tactic is both collective punishment and ethnic cleansing all at once. It is not only a matter, as the Israelis claim, of hitting Hizbullah rocket launchers. They are destroying all of the buildings.

The Israeli demographic project of thinning out the population of the far south of Lebanon will fail. They do not control that territory, and cannot stop people from coming back and rebuilding. The Israelis have an Orientalist myth that the Arabs are Bedouin and not attached to their ancestral villages. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon still around their camps in accordance with the geography of their former villages. The Lebanese Shiites will mostly come back.

The Israelis cannot win this struggle against a sophisticated, highly organized and well armed subnationalism.

The only practical thing to do when you can't easily beat people into submission is to find a compromise with them that both sides can live with. It will be a hard lesson for both the Lebanese Shiites and the Israelis. But they will learn it or will go on living with a lot of death and destruction.

Who: Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
Source: The Daily Star
Quotes: From opinion article titled, "The real problem is getting to a solution"

The most powerful ideology in the world today is self-determination. Until there is a Palestinian state and an Iraq free of US occupation, Islamic extremists will win recruits. Military reprisals will swell their ranks still further, and, until political grievances are addressed, the spread of democracy will not change that equation, because the extremists will win at the ballot box. In short, specific terrorist threats should be fought through narrowly targeted counter-terrorist operations, while moderates should undercut extremism through the politics of compromise rather than the false and dangerous delusions of military victory.

Who: Muqtedar Khan, visiting scholar at Oxford University, assistant professor at the University of Delaware, nonresident fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington
Source: The Daily Star
Quotes: From opinion article titled, "In Lebanon, Bush is really part of the problem"

This strategy of American foreign policy to arm, encourage and support extended and open-ended Israeli military action, I am convinced, will fail miserably in realizing its goals. By the time the Israelis finish in Lebanon it will be a pile of debris with perhaps 1,000 innocent civilians dead and over 1 million homeless and displaced. All other major US goals in the region - democracy promotion, support for moderates, winning hearts and minds, undermining support for radicalism - will also be buried under the debris.

Hizbullah fighters will be regrouping to fight another day with more men, more support, thanks to the elevated levels of anti-US and anti-Israeli sentiment across the Middle East, and perhaps more deadlier weapons. They will also be more confident and experienced after their current showing. From their performance it is apparent that they are the best fighting force the Arabs have produced in a long time.

I see no light at the end of the tunnel except wishful thinking that Hizbullah will be destroyed and the rest of the world will send their soldiers to defend Israel. It is like the neocon pipe dream of Americans being received as liberators by Iraqis. After seeing the current form of Hizbullah, I will be surprised if any country will volunteer its forces. If Bush decides to send our troops, the party will move from Iraq to Lebanon. For Al-Qaeda and the jihadists, it will be like a "buy one, get one free deal," with the US and Israel together in the same fight.

The US up to now has said it will not talk to Syria or Iran because they are "part of the problem." From the steps taken so far, it is not clear to me that American foreign policy is part of the solution.

Remember that when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Hizbullah was born. It is scary to imagine what the current fighting will yield. American foreign policy is in wrong hands and is heading in the wrong direction. It is not in the interest of global peace, not good for America's many interests in the Middle East and will not make Israel safer.

With great power comes great responsibility. As the sole superpower, the US has responsibility to maintain the global order and nurture the international system, not become a destabilizing force. American foreign policy is a global public good and by acting in a highly partisan and shortsighted fashion in the current Arab-Israeli conflict we are abdicating our status as a global leader.

Who: Muqtedar Khan, visiting scholar at Oxford University, assistant professor at the University of Delaware, nonresident fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington
Source: The Daily Star
Quotes: From opinion article titled, "In Lebanon, Bush is really part of the problem"

This strategy of American foreign policy to arm, encourage and support extended and open-ended Israeli military action, I am convinced, will fail miserably in realizing its goals. By the time the Israelis finish in Lebanon it will be a pile of debris with perhaps 1,000 innocent civilians dead and over 1 million homeless and displaced. All other major US goals in the region - democracy promotion, support for moderates, winning hearts and minds, undermining support for radicalism - will also be buried under the debris.

Hizbullah fighters will be regrouping to fight another day with more men, more support, thanks to the elevated levels of anti-US and anti-Israeli sentiment across the Middle East, and perhaps more deadlier weapons. They will also be more confident and experienced after their current showing. From their performance it is apparent that they are the best fighting force the Arabs have produced in a long time.

I see no light at the end of the tunnel except wishful thinking that Hizbullah will be destroyed and the rest of the world will send their soldiers to defend Israel. It is like the neocon pipe dream of Americans being received as liberators by Iraqis. After seeing the current form of Hizbullah, I will be surprised if any country will volunteer its forces. If Bush decides to send our troops, the party will move from Iraq to Lebanon. For Al-Qaeda and the jihadists, it will be like a "buy one, get one free deal," with the US and Israel together in the same fight.

The US up to now has said it will not talk to Syria or Iran because they are "part of the problem." From the steps taken so far, it is not clear to me that American foreign policy is part of the solution.

Remember that when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Hizbullah was born. It is scary to imagine what the current fighting will yield. American foreign policy is in wrong hands and is heading in the wrong direction. It is not in the interest of global peace, not good for America's many interests in the Middle East and will not make Israel safer.

With great power comes great responsibility. As the sole superpower, the US has responsibility to maintain the global order and nurture the international system, not become a destabilizing force. American foreign policy is a global public good and by acting in a highly partisan and shortsighted fashion in the current Arab-Israeli conflict we are abdicating our status as a global leader.

Source: Azzaman
Quotes: From article titled, "Attacks on electricity personnel, installations increase"

Salah Khazi, head of Baghdad's electricity department, said more than 50 technicians have been killed in the pat few days as they tried to restore power in some of Baghdad's most violent areas.

Power is on for two hours in Baghdad and off for nearly five. The city's six million people only enjoy power for four hours a day.

He said the killing of this huge number of technicians has cast a shadow of sadness over all those involved in the national grid, with many personnel now simply refusing orders to work in certain areas.

"Our technicians are afraid to go out and do the necessary repairs and as a result two major neighborhoods of Baghdad have been without power for nearly two weeks," he said.

Who: Ayatollah Basheer al-Najafi
Source: Azzaman
Quotes: From article titled, "Security worsens in south; top cleric warns of popular uprising"

Security conditions are worsening in several cities in southern Iraq amid reports of clashes between Shiite militias and the British troops in the region.

In at least three big cities – Basra, Amara and Diwaniya – the militias are almost in full control and have clashed with foreign troop or bombed their bases.

Shiite religious leaders in the holy city of Najaf are reported to have warned the government of Nouri al-Maliki that they may no longer be able to contain the masses and prevent a popular uprising in the absence of security.

"Conditions have aggravated a great deal and reaching the climax," warned Basheer al-Najafi, one of the four main ayatollahs in the Shiite religious leadership which includes grand ayatollah Ali Sistani.

Najafi said it was time the security file in Iraq was handed over to the local authorities. Najafi did not explicitly call for the withdrawal of foreign troops but made it clear that the Iraqis were no longer willing to accept their presence.

"We are afraid that the day of a massive popular uprising is approaching that will result in grave and unpredictable consequences," he warned in a statement.

Najafi said neither the government nor the foreign troops were interested in meeting the urgent needs of the Iraqi people.

He said all promises to improve public services were broken along with the pledges to battle rampant unemployment.

Who: John Bolton, US Ambassador the the United Nations
Source: The Washington Note
Quotes: From blog entry titled, "Let's Hear that John Bolton Line Now: The Deaths of Innocent Lebanese Not Equivalent to the Deaths of Innocent Israelis"

An Israeli air strike has killed 54 civilians -- including 37 children. This after the strike against a UN observation facility where UN staff were killed -- and also after hundreds and hundreds of other innocent Lebanese have been killed in the exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli military forces.

At his Thursday Senate confirmation hearings, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee majority staff passed out Ambassador Bolton's "official statement". In that opening statement, there appeared a controversial and provocative sentence that asserted that Israelis and Lebanese who become innocent casualties in this war are not morally equivalent. His argument is that Israeli innoncents are more important than Lebanese innocent casualties because the Israelis were attacked by Hezbollah.

The sentence read:

"But it is a mistake to ascribe a moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct resulte of malicious terrorist acts, the very purpose of which are to kill civilians, and the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths as a result of military action taken in self-defense."

My surprise did not come when John Bolton read a script that was different than the one in hand. What happened was that just as John Bolton was beginning to read his statement, a new statement was distributed -- with only this line of text removed.

That is important as it highlights something that the Department of State was not ready to clear -- and shows something about John Bolton's views and personality that State was not ready to sign off on.

After this huge tragedy today -- 37 innocent children -- in a crude aerial assault, does John Bolton stand by the statement he wanted to give?

Source: United Nations
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq and UN join forces to launch Compact to support peace and reconstruction"

The United Nations and the Iraqi Government announced today the formal launch of the International Compact with Iraq, a new partnership with the international community that aims to consolidate peace and pursue political, economic and social development over the next five years in the violence-torn country.

“The Compact, jointly chaired by the Government of the Republic of Iraq and the United Nations, with the support of the World Bank, will, over the next five years, bring together the international community and multilateral organizations to help Iraq achieve its national vision,” Marie Okabe, spokesperson for Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told reporters in New York.

Ms. Okabe explained that vision as that of “a united, federal and democratic country, at peace with its neighbours and itself, well on its way to sustainable economic self-sufficiency and prosperity and well integrated in its region and the world.”

To achieve this vision, she said, the Iraqi Government has committed itself to making progress on political inclusion and consensus building, the rule of law, and the establishment of professional security forces.

According to a joint statement issued today by the UN and the Iraqi Government, the finalized Compact, including key priorities, benchmarks and commitments, will be presented by Baghdad by the end of the year.

Source: McClatchy
Quotes: From article titled, "Shortage of troops in Iraq a `grim warning'"

The Bush administration's decision to move thousands of U.S. soldiers into Baghdad to quell sectarian warfare before it explodes into outright civil war underscores a problem that's hindered the American effort to rebuild Iraq from the beginning: There aren't enough troops to do the job.

Many U.S. officials in Baghdad and in Washington privately concede the point. They say they've been forced to shuffle American units from one part of the country to another for at least two years because there haven't been enough soldiers and Marines to deal simultaneously with Sunni Muslim insurgents and Shiite militias; train Iraqi forces; and secure roads, power lines, border crossings and ammunition dumps.

"This is exactly what happens when there aren't enough troops: You extend people and you deplete your theater reserve," said an American defense official in Iraq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

During embedded reporting trips beginning in the summer of 2003 - which included time with troops from eight Army divisions, an armored cavalry regiment and several Marine units - a McClatchy reporter was told repeatedly that more manpower was needed.

American officials in Iraq and in the United States said the shortage stemmed from a number of factors, including:

-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's belief that a small but agile, high-tech American force could topple Saddam's regime, in part because Iraqi exiles had assured the administration that American troops would be greeted as liberators. From the beginning, a number of U.S. officers said, senior White House and Pentagon officials said that post-invasion Iraq would require fewer than 200,000 troops.

-The decision early in the American occupation of Iraq, also encouraged by Iraqi exiles, to disband the Iraqi military. This deprived the U.S. of some potential Iraqi allies, and drove some Sunni soldiers and officers into the insurgency.

-Rumsfeld's reluctance to increase U.S. deployments in Iraq or the overall size of the Army despite the escalating violence. "It could be two divisions-plus just to secure Baghdad, and you're talking a 10-division Army," said a senior American military official who served in Iraq and is now in the United States.

-The inability or unwillingness of many newly trained Iraqi forces to take over security from the Americans or even to operate independently, which has dashed the administration's hopes that U.S. troops would stand down as the Iraqis stood up.

"You can't do clear-and-hold with the force structure we have," the senior American military official said. "I'm almost of the view that you've got to bring more troops and they've got to stay longer, but no one wants to hear that."

Almost no high-ranking, active-duty U.S. officers are willing to discuss their concerns about troop levels publicly, for fear of being reprimanded or having their careers cut short. There's an unwritten understanding, they said, that the Bush administration doesn't want to hear about the need for more troops.

The top American military officer in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., has said that such assertions are untrue. When ground commanders ask for more troops, according to Casey, they get them.

Casey "can get any forces anytime he wants to ask for them. General Casey has never been limited by the secretary of defense," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. "To accomplish the missions that we are attempting to achieve, we do have the force structure that we need."

"They're not allowed to ask for more troops," the U.S. defense official in Iraq said. "If you say something you're gone, you're relieved, you're not in the Army anymore."

A number of senior military officials in the United States agreed. "There's an overall feeling that if you ask for more you're going to get hammered," one said.

The lack of progress in Ramadi and the surrounding al Anbar region had long been dispiriting to many who served there. "There's no way I can control this area with the men I have," Army Sgt. 1st Class Tom Coffey, 37, of Burlington, Vt., told a McClatchy reporter in Ramadi during August 2005.

Anthony Cordesman, an expert on military affairs, wrote this week that "the announcement that the U.S. is sending more troops into Baghdad is a grim warning of just how serious the situation in Iraq has become. The fact is that U.S. forces are now strained throughout the country in spite of efforts to create Iraqi military, security and police forces."

Cordesman continued: "Reinforcing Baghdad inevitably means weakening both U.S. and Iraqi capabilities somewhere else, and despite all of the talk that the insurgency focuses on Baghdad and four provinces, civil strife is steadily broadening in most of Iraq."

Who: Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General
Source: The Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "Detainee Abuse Charges Feared"

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week.

Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said. A spokeswoman for Gonzales, Tasia Scolinos, declined to comment on Gonzales's remarks.

Language in the administration's draft, which [Justice Department's top legal adviser, Steven G.] Bradbury helped prepare in concert with civilian officials at the Defense Department, seeks to protect U.S. personnel by ruling out detainee lawsuits to enforce Geneva protections and by incorporating language making U.S. enforcement of the War Crimes Act subject to U.S. -- not foreign -- understandings of what the Conventions require.

The Supreme Court, in contrast, has repeatedly said that foreign interpretations of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions should at least be considered by U.S. courts.

Source: Stars and Stripes
Quotes: From article titled, "25,000 stateside troops tapped for Iraq deployment"

Despite hopes for a drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq this year, the number of U.S. troops in country is going up amid rising sectarian violence in Baghdad.

As part of the next rotation to Iraq, 25,000 stateside troops have been tapped to deploy, and 3,500 members of an Army brigade that has been in Iraq for about a year were told their stays have been extended by up to 120 days, according to the Defense Department.

With the extension, the number of brigades in Iraq has increased from 15 to 16, bringing the number of U.S. troops in that country from about 127,000 to about 132,000, officials said.

Ultimately, the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is expected to be between 130,000 and 135,000, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman on Friday.

The announcement on the next rotation comes amid plans to bolster security in Baghdad.

“The facts are that you have a security challenge that has emerged in Baghdad that Gen. [George] Casey along with Iraqi government has said that we need to address, and what you’re seeing is a flexible and adaptable force based on those changing, dynamic conditions that are now being addressed by the application of additional Iraqi and U.S. forces,” Whitman told reporters on Friday.

Who: Ze'ev Maoz, Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University
Source: Haaretz
Quotes: From opinion article titled, "Morality is not on our side"

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.

This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah "started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side.

Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, and occupied its capital in 1982. In the process of this occupation, we dropped several tons of bombs from the air, ground and sea, while wounding and killing thousands of civilians. Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate. The majority of these civilians had nothing to do with the PLO, which provided the official pretext for the war.

In Operations Accountability and Grapes of Wrath, we caused the mass flight of about 500,000 refugees from southern Lebanon on each occasion. There are no exact data on the number of casualties in these operations, but one can recall that in Operation Grapes of Wrath, we bombed a shelter in the village of Kafr Kana which killed 103 civilians. The bombing may have been accidental, but that did not make the operation any more moral.

On July 28, 1989, we kidnapped Sheikh Obeid, and on May 12, 1994, we kidnapped Mustafa Dirani, who had captured Ron Arad. Israel held these two people and another 20-odd Lebanese detainees without trial, as "negotiating chips." That which is permissible to us is, of course, forbidden to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah crossed a border that is recognized by the international community. That is true. What we are forgetting is that ever since our withdrawal from Lebanon, the Israel Air Force has conducted photo-surveillance sorties on a daily basis in Lebanese airspace. While these flights caused no casualties, border violations are border violations. Here too, morality is not on our side.

So much for the history of morality. Now, let's consider current affairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushas into civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Force bombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli. The IDF has fired thousands of shells into south Lebanon villages, alleging that Hezbollah men are concealed among the civilian population. Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as a result of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon, the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, is more than 300.

Worse yet, bombing infrastructure targets such as power stations, bridges and other civil facilities turns the entire Lebanese civilian population into a victim and hostage, even if we are not physically harming civilians. The use of bombings to achieve a diplomatic goal - namely, coercing the Lebanese government into implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559 - is an attempt at political blackmail, and no less than the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hezbollah is the aim of bringing about a prisoner exchange.

There is a propaganda aspect to this war, and it involves a competition as to who is more miserable. Each side tries to persuade the world that it is more miserable. As in every propaganda campaign, the use of information is selective, distorted and self-righteous. If we want to base our information (or shall we call it propaganda?) policy on the assumption that the international environment is going to buy the dubious merchandise that we are selling, be it out of ignorance or hypocrisy, then fine. But in terms of our own national soul searching, we owe ourselves to confront the bitter truth - maybe we will win this conflict on the military field, maybe we will make some diplomatic gains, but on the moral plane, we have no advantage, and we have no special status.

Who: William F. Buckley, Considered the father of Conservatism, Founder of National Review Magazine
Source: CBS News
Quotes: From article titled, "Buckley: Bush Not a True Conservative"

Buckley finds himself parting ways with President Bush, whom he praises as a decisive leader but admonishes for having strayed from true conservative principles in his foreign policy.

In particular, Buckley views the three-and-a-half-year Iraq War as a failure.

"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," Buckley says.

Asked if the Bush administration has been distracted by Iraq, Buckley says "I think it has been engulfed by Iraq, by which I mean no other subject interests anybody other than Iraq... The continued tumult in Iraq has overwhelmed what perspectives one might otherwise have entertained with respect to, well, other parts of the Middle East with respect to Iran in particular."

"If we find there is a warhead there [in Iran] that is poised, the range of it is tested, then we have no alternative. But pending that, we have to ask ourselves, 'What would the Iranian population do?'"

Buckley does support the administration's approach to the North Korea's nuclear weapons threat, believing that working with Russia, China, Japan and South Korea is the best way to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. But that's about where the agreement ends.

"Has Mr. Bush found himself in any different circumstances than any of the other presidents you've known in terms of these crises?" Assuras asks.

"I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress," Buckley says. "And in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge."

Asked what President Bush's foreign policy legacy will be to his successor, Buckley says "There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable"

Who: Patrick J. Buchanan, Political Analyst
Source: World Net Daily
Quotes: From column titled, "No, this is not 'our war'"

My country has been "torn to shreds," said Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, as the death toll among his people passed 300 civilian dead, 1,000 wounded, with half a million homeless.

Israel must pay for the "barbaric destruction," said Siniora.

To the contrary, says columnist Lawrence Kudlow, "Israel is doing the Lord's work."

On American TV, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says the ruination of Lebanon is Hezbollah's doing. But is it Hezbollah that is using U.S.-built F-16s, with precision-guided bombs and 155-mm artillery pieces to wreak death and devastation on Lebanon?

No, Israel is doing this, with the blessing and without a peep of protest from President Bush. And we wonder why they hate us.

"Today, we are all Israelis!" brayed Ken Mehlman of the Republican National Committee to a gathering of Christians United for Israel.

One wonders if these Christians care about what is happening to our Christian brethren in Lebanon and Gaza, who have had all power cut off by Israeli airstrikes, an outlawed form of collective punishment, that has left them with no sanitation, rotting food, impure water and days without light or electricity in the horrible heat of July.

When summer power outrages occur in America, it means a rising rate of death among our sick and elderly, and women and infants. One can only imagine what a hell it must be today in Gaza City and Beirut.

But all this carnage and destruction has only piqued the blood lust of the hairy-chested warriors at the Weekly Standard. In a signed editorial, "It's Our War," William Kristol calls for America to play her rightful role in this war by "countering this act of aggression by Iran with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?"

"Why wait?" Well, one reason is that the United States has not been attacked. A second is a small thing called the Constitution. Where does George W. Bush get the authority to launch a war on Iran? When did Congress declare war or authorize a war on Iran?

Answer: It never did. But these neoconservatives care no more about the Constitution than they cared about the truth when they lied into war in Iraq.

"Why wait?" How about thinking of the fate of those 25,000 Americans in Lebanon if we launch an unprovoked war on Iran. How many would wind up dead or hostages of Hezbollah if Iran gave the order to retaliate for the slaughter of their citizens by U.S. bombs? What would happen to the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, if Shiites and Iranian "volunteers" joined forces to exact revenge on our soldiers?

What about America? Richard Armitage, who did four tours in Nam and knows a bit about war, says that, in its ability to attack Western targets, al-Qaida is the B Team, Hezbollah the A Team. If Bush bombs Iran, what prevents Hezbollah from launching retaliatory attacks inside the United States?

None of this is written in defense of Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran.

But none of them has attacked our country, nor has Syria, whom Bush I made an ally in the Gulf War and to whom the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, Ehud Barak, offered 99 percent of the Golan Heights. If Nixon, Bush I and Clinton could deal with Hafez al-Assad, a tougher customer than son Bashar, what is the matter with George W. Bush?

The last superpower is impotent in this war because we have allowed Israel to dictate to whom we may and may not talk. Thus, Bush winds up cussing in frustration in St. Petersburg that somebody should tell the Syrians to stop it. Why not pick up the phone, Mr. President?

What is Kristol's moral and legal ground for a war on Iran? It is the "Iranian act of aggression" against Israel and that Iran is on the road to nuclear weapons – and we can't have that.

But there is no evidence Iran has any tighter control over Hezbollah than we have over Israel, whose response to the capture of two soldiers had all the spontaneity of the Schlieffen Plan. And, again, Hezbollah attacked Israel, not us. And there is no solid proof Iran is in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has signed, but Israel refuses to sign.

If Iran's nuclear program justifies war, why cannot the neocons make that case in the constitutional way, instead of prodding Bush to launch a Pearl Harbor attack? Do they fear they have no credibility left after pushing Bush into this bloody quagmire in Iraq that has cost almost 2,600 dead and 18,000 wounded Americans?

No, Kenny boy, we are not "all Israelis." Some of us still think of ourselves as Americans, first, last and always.

And, no, Mr. Kristol, this is not "our war." It's your war.

Source: US News & World Report
Quotes: From article titled, "Bar association task force urges Congress to push for judicial review of Bush signing statements"

Although the president has not issued more statements in total than any other president, he has challenged more than 750 laws in more than 100 signing statements. And he has used them to, in effect, challenge parts of laws, and challenge them more aggressively, than any president before him. Bush's liberal use of those statements first attracted attention in December 2005, when he signed a torture ban—but then added a statement reserving the right not to enforce the ban, alongside his signature.

In a report to be released Monday, the [American Bar Association] task force will recommend that Congress pass legislation providing for some sort of judicial review of the signing statements. Some task force members want to simply give Congress the right to sue over the signing statements; other task force members will not characterize what sort of judicial review might ultimately emerge.

"It's hard to imagine the abandonment of conservative principles in his lawlessness," said Bruce Fein, a member of the task force who voted for Bush twice and served as associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.

At a hearing he called in late in late June to investigate the statements, Sen. Arlen Specter interrogated four testifying law professors about one remedy in particular: legislation that would allow Congress or its members to sue the president for his use of statements. Fein has been drafting such legislation ever since.

Fein's plan would begin with Congress passing legislation giving itself authority to sue the president over a statement. Then it would proceed with a lawsuit, focused on a particular statement. Under the plan, that suit would move eventually to the Supreme Court, which would then set precedent in whatever it decided.

Who: General John P. Abizaid, Commander of US Central Command
Source: The Dallas Morning News
Quotes: From article titled, "More troops to be deployed to Baghdad, general says"

The top U.S. commander for the Middle East said Friday that the escalating sectarian violence in Baghdad had become a greater worry than the insurgency and that plans were being drawn up to move additional forces to the Iraqi capital.

"The situation with sectarian violence in Baghdad is very serious," said U.S. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, speaking in an interview Friday. "The country can deal with the insurgency better than it can with the sectarian violence, and it needs to move decisively against the sectarian violence now."

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, had been meeting with Iraq's defense minister, Abdel Kader Jassem al-Obeidi, to hammer out a plan to improve security. The plan included the deployment in the Baghdad area of additional troops, Iraqi as well as American.

"There is a very serious effort to make sure that it is not just weighted with additional U.S. capability, but also additional Iraqi capability," Abizaid said. "Clearly, it will require that we move whatever combat power that the commanders on the ground there think is appropriate, whether Iraqi or American. And I think it will be a combination of both."

The shifting of additional forces to the Baghdad area is expected to come at the expense of troop levels in other parts of the country. It is not yet clear whether the increased violence will prompt U.S. commanders to modify their longer-term plans for troop reductions.

"Definitely one of the things that is not going well is the national police and police reform, and it needs to be carefully looked at," he [Abizaid] said. "You can't allow sectarian politics to influence the ministries."

Source: Reuters
Quotes: From article titled, "Mosques bombed, tense Baghdad under curfew"

On the eve of a high-profile meeting intended to demonstrate reconciliation among sectarian and ethnic factions ahead of a White House visit by the prime minister, senior leaders admitted to despair about the chances of averting all-out civil war.

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a top government official told Reuters -- anonymously because the coalition of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains committed in public to a U.S.-sponsored constitution preserving Iraq's unity.

"The parties have moved to Plan B," the official said, saying Sunni, ethnic Kurdish and majority Shi'ite blocs were looking at ways to divide power and resources and to solve the conundrum of Baghdad's mixed population of seven million.

"There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into east and west," said the official, who has long been a proponent of the present government's objectives. "We are extremely worried."

U.S. commanders see a looming fight to the finish in Baghdad between the two-month-old unity government and Sunni Arab rebels with links to al Qaeda and ousted president Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. ambassador has warned that a greater threat may be the mounting sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

U.S. data showed attacks on security forces in Baghdad averaged 34 a day over several days, compared to 24 in recent months.

Describing the capital as a "must-win" for both the rebels and the government, U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell conceded on Thursday that a month-old clampdown in Baghdad had achieved only a "slight downtick" in violence.

Source: The Wall Street Journal
Quotes: From July 7, 2006, article titled, "Baghdad: City of Shrinking Dreams"

A daily intelligence brief on Iraq, prepared by a private contractor for the U.S. military and companies working in Iraq, paints a grim picture of life in Baghdad. The daily report for July 7 documents a slew of sectarian attacks and car bombings around the capital and says that “the levels of torture and execution-style killings…illustrate the increasing disregard for human life by the perpetrators for those not of their own grouping.”

But the report, marked “for official use only,” also goes on to describe Baghdad as a city without spirit — in a long passage lifted straight from a popular Iraqi blog called Iraq the Model. “Baghdad looks so exhausted these days and so do her people; the relentless violence, the lack of basic services and the scorching heat abolishes human desire to do anything or to even think of anything,” says the daily report, which is compiled by SOC-SMG Inc., a Nevada-based contractor. The language of this and several other passages mirrors almost exactly a posting for the July 6 edition of Iraq the Model. “Living for many Iraqis was reduced to existence a long time ago; dreams and desires are shrinking under the heavy shadows of the situation.”

The company’s interim CEO, Robert Shields, said he was unaware of the overlap and would look into it. But “we draw information from a variety of sources,” he said.

Who: Samuel W. Bodman, US Energy Secretary
Source: Voice of America
Quotes: From article titled, "US Energy Secretary: Iraq's Oil Production Recovering"

The U.S. Secretary of Energy says it may take about six months to restore Iraq's oil output to pre-war levels of 2.5 million barrels a day.

Samuel Bodman made the comments in Baghdad Tuesday, where he called Iraqi estimates that they could boost production to three million barrels a day "optimistic."

Who: United Nations and Samuel W. Bodman, US Energy Secretary
Source: The New York Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraqi Death Toll Rises Above 100 Per Day, U.N. Says"

An average of more than 100 civilians per day were killed in Iraq last month, the United Nations reported Tuesday, registering what appears to be the highest official monthly tally of violent deaths since the fall of Baghdad.

The death toll, drawn from Iraqi government agencies, was the most precise measurement of civilian deaths provided by any government organization since the invasion and represented a substantial increase over the figures in daily news media reports.

United Nations officials said Tuesday that the number of violent deaths had climbed steadily since at least last summer. During the first six months of this year, the civilian death toll jumped more than 77 percent, from 1,778 in January to 3,149 in June, the organization said.

In its report, the United Nations said that 14,338 civilians had died violently in Iraq in the first six months of the year.

United Nations officials said they had based their figures on tallies provided by two Iraqi agencies: the Ministry of Health, which tracks violent deaths recorded at hospitals around the country; and Baghdad’s central morgue, where unidentified bodies are delivered, a vast majority of which met violent deaths.

Each agency issues death warrants for the bodies it receives, government officials say, and there is no overlap between the two populations of victims.

According to the report, 1,778 civilians were killed in January, 2,165 in February, 2,378 in March, 2,284 in April, 2,669 in May and 3,149 in June.

The totals represent an enormous increase over figures published by media organizations and by nongovernmental organizations that track these trends.

The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent Web site that uses news reports to do its tallies, reported that at least 738 died in June, and another 969 the previous month.

The United Nations report said that in recent months, “the overwhelming majority of casualties were reported in Baghdad.”

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab organization, issued a statement urging the country “to be wise and rational instead of drifting into the abyss,” and called upon the country’s political and religious leaders to meet and discuss ways “to lead Iraq out of this dark tunnel.”

“God knows what comes next,” the statement said.

The American energy secretary, Samuel W. Bodman, who met with Iraq’s oil and electricity ministers in Baghdad, had a rosy view of progress here since his last visit in 2003.

“The situation seems far more stable than when I was here two or three years ago,” he said in an interview in the fortified Green Zone. “The security seems better, people are more relaxed. There is an optimism, at least among the people I talked to.”

Source: Los Angeles Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Bush Blocked Internal Justice Probe of Wiretaps"

President Bush personally sidetracked an internal Justice Department probe into the warrantless domestic surveillance program earlier this year, even as other Justice officials were assigned to defend the program in court and investigate who may have leaked information about it to the news media, according to administration officials and documents released Tuesday.

Raising new questions about the administration's accountability for secret anti-terrorism programs, the White House acknowledged Tuesday that Bush withheld security clearances that attorneys within the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said they needed to investigate whether department lawyers had acted properly in approving and overseeing the controversial spy program run by the National Security Agency.

The Justice Department unit was forced to abandon the probe in April because of its inability to obtain the necessary clearances, although until Tuesday it was unclear who made the decision to withhold them. Officials said they could not recall a case where an investigation by the professional-responsibility unit had been blocked since the unit was created after the abuses of the Watergate era.

Bush's involvement — revealed by Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales in testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee and later elaborated upon by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow — added fuel to the debate over one of the administration's most intensely debated anti-terrorism moves.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) suggested at the hearing Tuesday that the administration was employing a double standard. Other Justice Department lawyers were given security clearances to defend the NSA program against legal challenges and to pursue government officials suspected of leaking details of the program to the New York Times, which broke the story in December, Specter said.

"With so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice being granted clearance, it raises the obvious question of whether there was some interest on the part of the administration in not having that opinion given," Specter said.

"The president of the United States makes decisions about who is ultimately given access," Gonzales responded.

"Did the president make the decision not to clear OPR?" Specter asked.

"As with all decisions that are nonoperational, in terms of who has access to the program, the president of the United States makes the decision because this is such an important program," Gonzales said.

Later, speaking to reporters at the White House, Snow said Bush believed that the legality of the program was already being considered by others in the government and that the president was concerned about widening the circle of people who knew about the program for fear that it might be further compromised. The administration has said that the program's operations are regularly reviewed by the general counsel of the NSA, as well as by the agency's inspector general, among others.

"There were proper channels for doing legal review, and in fact, a legal review was done every 45 days, and the attorney general himself was involved in it. The Office of Professional Responsibility was not the proper venue for conducting that," Snow said.

But Democrats who requested the original investigation called on Bush to reverse his stand. They had asked the professional-responsibility unit to investigate reports of internal discord within the Justice Department about the legality of the program and to pursue such questions as whether the administration had enacted the program before the department weighed in with a legal opinion.

Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), a driving force behind the investigation, said he was concerned that the administration was trying to "cover up" problems with the program. Hinchey and other Democrats, including Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles and Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma wrote Bush on Tuesday asking him to reconsider.

"We respectfully ask that you stop impeding the OPR investigation and allow OPR to do its job," the lawmakers told Bush. "If the NSA program is justified and legal, as you yourself have indicated, then there is no reason to prevent this investigation from continuing."

On Tuesday, the Justice Department also released copies of correspondence between OPR chief H. Marshall Jarrett and members of Gonzales' staff detailing Jarrett's frustrations with seeking clearances for his staff.

Jarrett said a large team of attorneys and agents assigned to a criminal investigation aimed at identifying who may have illegally leaked information about the program to the news media had promptly received security clearances. He noted that other administration figures — including members of an administration privacy and civil liberties oversight board — had been told about the NSA program.

"In contrast, our repeated requests for access to classified information about the NSA program have not been granted," Jarrett said in a March 21 letter to Deputy Atty. Gen. Paul J. McNulty. "As a result, this office, which is charged with monitoring the integrity of the department's attorneys and with ensuring that the highest standards of professional ethics are maintained, has been precluded from performing its duties."

Jarrett told McNulty in an April 21 letter that the failure to obtain clearances was unprecedented. "Since its creation 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving executive branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels," Jarrett wrote.

"OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation."

Who: Representative Gil Gutknecht (R-MN)
Source: Mankato Free Press
Quotes: From article titled, "Gutknecht gives grim assessment"

Congressman Gil Gutknecht found the situation in Iraq more bleak than he anticipated during a weekend visit to the war zone, and said a partial withdrawal of some American troops might be wise.

Gutknecht, a strong supporter of the war since it began in March of 2003, told reporters in a telephone conference call Tuesday that American forces appear to have no operational control of much of Baghdad. “The condition there is worse than I expected,” he said. “... I have to be perfectly candid: Baghdad is a serious problem.”

The 1st District Republican said he was deeply impressed by the professionalism of American soldiers and gained hope from the more stabile situation in the Kurdish-dominated northern region of Iraq.

But he said the next six weeks could be critical in determining whether stability can eventually come to the rest of the country, and he believes removing some American troops is necessary to send the Iraqi government a message that it can’t rely so heavily on the American military much longer.

His assessment of the problems facing Iraq and the potential value of removing some American troops comes one month after Gutknecht was widely quoted during a debate in the House about the war. “Members, now is not the time to go wobbly,” Gutknecht said on June 15. “Let’s give victory a chance.”

While Gutknecht is still not in favor of setting deadlines for the withdrawal of all American troops, he said the situation in Iraq’s largest city has clearly deteriorated. “Baghdad is worse today than it was three years ago,” he said.

Sending additional troops to Iraq would be “a terrible mistake,” Gutknecht said.
Gutknecht compared Iraq to a child learning to ride a bicycle and said America needs to be willing to let the country suffer some bruises as it attempts to take charge of its own affairs. “I think it’s time to take off the training wheels of their bicycle,” he said.

Gutknecht was in Iraq from Saturday morning until late Sunday afternoon. His time in the country’s capital city was spent almost exclusively within the Green Zone, an area of central Baghdad that is heavily fortified and where all access is controlled by check-points. “We learned it’s not safe to go anywhere outside of the Green Zone any part of the day,” he said.

Gutknecht’s sobering report contrasts with many of his fellow conservative supporters of the war. The Republican National Committee sends out weekly e-mails to the media called “Iraq Facts” that paint a picture of steady progress toward stability and Iraqi self-governance. And conservative commentators have consistently said that the American people are being provided an overly dire picture of the Iraq war by the mainstream media.

“While a little bit of progress has been made, there’s an awful lot that needs to be done,” Gutknecht said.

Gutknecht was critical of some of the “spin” from Bush administration officials in the Pentagon and the State Department. He specifically pointed to past statements that a few hundred insurgents were causing the violence in the Iraq. Military officials say they’ve captured 10,000 even as the insurgency continues unabated. “That’s a far cry from what we were told originally,” he said. “... All of the information we receive sometimes from the Pentagon and the State Department isn’t always true.”

The American troops, however, are performing heroically, he said. “They’re doing a terrific job in enormously difficult circumstances.”

“What I think we need to do more is withdraw more Americans,” he said. It’s up to Iraqis to fix Iraq, and they need to do it soon, according to Gutknecht. “I think we’re at a very important tipping point, and the next six weeks is going to be critical,” he said, although he declined to elaborate on the dangers facing Iraq if the situation doesn’t improve by September. “... I don’t want to predict what will happen if things don’t get better.”

“Americans are going to start losing faith in this thing,” he said.

Who: UN Assistance Mission for Iraq
Source: United Nations
Quotes: From article titled, "UN report notes grave rights abuses in Iraq while voicing hope for change"

[Blogger's Note: The following is an excerpt from the report linked within the article:

Insurgent, militia and terrorist attacks continued unabated in many parts of Iraq, especially in Baghdad and in the central and western regions, with an increasing sectarian connotation. A total of 5,818 civilians were reportedly killed and at least 5,762 wounded during May and June 2006. Killings, kidnappings and torture remain widespread.]

In its Human Rights bimonthly report for May – June 2006, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) expressed the hope that there are “unique opportunities with a new Government of national unity announced on 22 May and its firm commitment to address forcefully urgent human rights concerns so as to establish the rule of law in the country.” At the same time, the report notes a grave situation of human rights in Iraq that the new Government must address.

While welcoming recent positive steps by the Government to promote national reconciliation, the report raises alarm at the growing number of casualties among the civilian population killed or wounded during indiscriminate or targeted attacks by terrorists and insurgents, as well as militias and criminal groups. Kidnapping of individuals and groups, for ransom or political purposes also continued to surge. The report commends the release of over 3,000 detainees since PM Al-Maliki announced the release of 2,500 detainees as a goodwill gesture but expressed concern at new evidence of torture in detention centres administered by the Ministry of Interior. The report also reiterated the United Nations’ call for “the immediate release of the report on Al-Jadiryia, a detention centre run by the Ministry of Interior uncovered on 14 November 2005, and for criminal prosecution of those held responsible.”

The document recognizes that the security forces are working under extremely difficult conditions. The reports nonetheless cites that, on occasions, the response of the security forces itself has been a source of human rights violations and further violence.

Sectarian violence continues to fuel displacement at an alarming pace. Mosques and religious leaders have been victims of attacks while teachers, professors and students continue to be severely affected by the violence. The killing and wounding of significant numbers of health workers and professionals is crippling health services at a time when there is an increasing need for health care services as a result of ongoing violence. Women continued to face restrictions in their freedoms while children, minorities, Palestinian refugees and other groups continued to suffer.

The document also describes reports received by the United Nations regarding military operations carried out by the MNF-I which resulted in the loss of civilian life and property.

The report noted a markedly better situation in the Region of Kurdistan. UNAMI is encouraged that while current challenges remain significant, progress is also manifested in the advancement of legislation in favour of women’s rights, the protection and promotion of children’s rights and in some areas of economic, social and cultural rights. Concerns remain regarding freedom of expression, detainee rights and discrimination.

The United Nations, together with other donors, continue to assist the Government of Iraq to establish a strong national human rights protection system which can address both current and past human rights violations. To this end, the report outlines activities conducted to advance the establishment of the rule of law and progress made toward the establishment of a National Commission for Human Rights in the country.

Who: As’ad AbuKhalil, Professor of Political Science at California State University Stanislaus, visiting at UC Berkeley
Source: Democracy Now! via Information Clearing House
Quotes: From interview with Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges (Nation Institute Senior Fellow);

These will have long scars. People are going to exact revenge. I mean, I know that in America we always think that Israel is the only one that is entitled to take revenge. I can guarantee you -- I mean, Chris Hedges at least admitted that Hezbollah was born within the womb, so to speak, of the Israeli invasion of 1982. It didn't exist prior to that. I guarantee you a new organization is going to be born out of the agony of the Lebanese population, and they will certainly exact revenge, against Israel, against America and against all those who supported this aggression, and when that occurs, the American population, as always, and the media will say in innocence and wonder yet again, “Why do they hate us? What have we done to them?”

Source: The Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Baghdad starts to collapse as its people flee a life of death"

As I hung up the phone, I wondered if I would ever see my friend Ali alive again. Ali, The Times translator for the past three years, lives in west Baghdad, an area that is now in meltdown as a bitter civil war rages between Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. It is, quite simply, out of control.

I returned to Baghdad on Monday after a break of several months, during which I too was guilty of glazing over every time I read another story of Iraqi violence. But two nights on the telephone, listening to my lost and frightened Iraqi staff facing death at any moment, persuaded me that Baghdad is now verging on total collapse.

Ali phoned me on Tuesday night, about 10.30pm. There were cars full of gunmen prowling his mixed neighbourhood, he said. He and his neighbours were frantically exchanging information, trying to identify the gunmen.

Were they the Mahdi Army, the Shia militia blamed for drilling holes in their victims’ eyes and limbs before executing them by the dozen? Or were they Sunni insurgents hunting down Shias to avenge last Sunday’s massacre, when Shia gunmen rampaged through an area called Jihad, pulling people from their cars and homes and shooting them in the streets?

Ali has a surname that could easily pass for Shia. His brother-in-law has an unmistakably Sunni name. They agreed that if they could determine that the gunmen were Shia, Ali would answer the door. If they were Sunnis, his brother-in-law would go.

Whoever didn’t answer the door would hide in the dog kennel on the roof.

Their Plan B was simpler: to dash 50 yards to their neighbours’ house — home to a dozen brothers. All Iraqi homes are awash with guns for self-defence in these merciless times. Together they would shoot it out with the gunmen — one of a dozen unsung Alamos now being fought nightly on Iraq’s blacked-out streets.

“We just have to wait and see what our fate is,” Ali told me. It was the first time in three years of bombs, battles and kidnappings that I had heard this stocky, very physical young man sounding scared, but there was nothing I could do to help.

The previous night I had had a similar conversation with my driver, a Shia who lives in another part of west Baghdad. He phoned at 11pm to say that there was a battle raging outside his house and that his family were sheltering in the windowless bathroom.

Marauding Mahdi gunmen, seeking to drive all Sunnis from the area, were fighting Sunni Mujahidin for control of a nearby strategic position. I could hear the gunfire blazing over the phone.

We phoned the US military trainer attached to Iraqi security forces in the area. He said there was nothing to be done: “There’s always shooting at night here. It’s like chasing ghosts.”

In fact the US military generally responds only to request for support from Iraqi security forces. But as many of those forces are at best turning a blind eye to the Shia death squads, and at worst colluding with them, calling the Americans is literally the last thing they do.

West Baghdad is no stranger to bombings and killings, but in the past few days all restraint has vanished in an orgy of ethnic cleansing.

Shia gunmen are seeking to drive out the once-dominant Sunni minority and the Sunnis are forming neighbourhood posses to retaliate. Mosques are being attacked. Scores of innocent civilians have been killed, their bodies left lying in the streets.

Hundreds — Sunni and Shia — are abandoning their homes. My driver said all his neighbours had now fled, their abandoned houses bullet-pocked and locked up. On a nearby mosque, competing Sunni and Shiite graffiti had been scrawled on the walls.

A senior nurse at Yarmouk hospital on the fringes of west Baghdad’s war zone said that he was close to being overwhelmed. “On Tuesday we received 35 bodies in one day, 16 from Al-Furat district alone. All of them were killed execution-style,” he said. “I thought it was the end of the city. I packed my bags at once and got ready to leave because they could storm the hospital at any moment.”

In just 24 hours before noon yesterday, as parliament convened for another emergency session, 87 bodies were brought to Baghdad city morgue, 63 of them unidentified. Since Sunday’s massacre in Jihad, more than 160 people have been killed, making a total of at least 1,600 since Iraq’s Government of national unity came to power six weeks ago. Another 2,500 have been wounded.

In early June, Nouri al-Maliki, the new Prime Minister, flooded Baghdad’s streets with tens of thousands of soldiers and police in an effort to restore order to the capital.

More recently, he announced a national reconciliation plan, which promised an amnesty to Sunni insurgents and the disbandment of Shia militias. Both initiatives are now in tatters.

“The country is sliding fast towards civil war,” Ali Adib, a Shia MP, told the Iraqi parliament this week. “Security has deteriorated in a serious and unprecedented way,” said Saadi Barzanji, a Kurdish MP.

Mr al-Maliki told parliament: “We all have a last chance to reconcile and agree among each other on avoiding conflict and blood. If we fail, God knows what the fate of Iraq will be.”

Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, described Baghdad after a recent visit as a city in the throes of “nascent civil war”.

Most Iraqis believe that it is already here. “There is a campaign to eradicate all Sunnis from Baghdad,” said Sheikh Omar al-Jebouri, of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni parliamentary group. He said that it was organised by the Shia-dominated Interior Ministry and its police special commandos, with Shia militias, and aimed to destroy Mr al-Maliki’s plans to rebuild Iraq’s security forces along national, rather than sectarian, lines.

Ahmed Abu Mustafa, a resident of the Sunni district of Amariyah in western Baghdad, was stunned to see two police car pick-ups speed up to his local mosque with cars full of gunmen on Tuesday evening and open fire on it with their government-issued machineguns.

Immediately, Sunni gunmen materialised from side streets and a battle started. “I’d heard about this happening but this was the first time I’d seen police shooting at a mosque,” he said. “I was amazed by how quickly the local gunmen deployed. I ran for my life.”

Yesterday, General George Casey, the most senior US commander in Iraq, said that the US might deploy more American troops in Baghdad. He said that al-Qaeda, to show that it was still relevant, had stepped up its attacks in Baghdad following the killing last month of its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. “What we are seeing now as a counter to that is death squads, primarily from Shia extremist groups, that are retaliating against civilians.”

A local journalist told me bitterly this week that Iraqis find it ironic that Saddam Hussein is on trial for killing 148 people 24 years ago, while militias loyal to political parties now in government kill that many people every few days. But it is not an irony that anyone here has time to laugh about. They are too busy packing their bags and wondering how they can get out alive.

My driver and his extended family are now refugees living in The Times offices in central Baghdad.

Ali is also trying to persuade his stubborn family to leave home and move into our hotel.

Those that can are leaving the country. At Baghdad airport, throngs of Iraqis jostle for places on the flights out — testimony to the breakdown in Iraqi society.

One woman said that she and her three children were fleeing Mansour, once the most stylish part of the capital. “Every day there is fighting and killing,” she said as she boarded a plane for Damascus in Syria to sit out the horrors of Baghdad.

A neurologist, who was heading to Jordan with his wife, said that he would seek work abroad and hoped that he would never have to return. “We were so happy on April 9, 2003 when the Americans came. But I’ve given up. Iraq isn’t ready for democracy,” he said, sitting in a chair with a view of the airport runway.

Fares al-Mufti, an official with the Iraqi Airways booking office, told The Times that the national carrier had had to lay on an extra flight a day, all fully booked. Flights to Damascus have gone up from three a week to eight to cope with the panicked exodus.

Muhammad al-Ani, who runs fleets of Suburban cars to Jordan, said that the service to Amman was so oversubscribed that that prices had rocketed from $200 (£108) to $750 per trip in the past two weeks.

Despite the huge risks of driving through the Sunni Triangle, the number of buses to Jordan has mushroomed from 2 a day to as many as 40 or 50.

Abu Ahmed, a Sunni who was leaving Ghazaliya with his family and belongings, said that he was ready to pay the exorbitant prices being charged because his wife had received a death threat at the hospital in a Shia area where she worked.

“We can’t cope, we have to take the children out for a while,” he said.

In one of the few comprehensive surveys of how many Iraqis have fled their country since the US invasion, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said last month that there were 644,500 refugees in Syria and Jordan in 2005 — about 2.5 per cent of Iraq’s population. In total, 889,000 Iraqis had moved abroad, creating “the biggest new flow of refugees in the world”, according to Lavinia Limon, the committee’s president.

And the exodus may only just be starting.

Who: Governement Accountability Office (GAO)
Source: GAO
Quotes: From GAO-06-788 report issued July 11, 2006 titled, "Rebuilding Iraq: More Comprehensive National Strategy Needed to Help Achieve U.S. Goals"

The November 2005 National Strategy for Victory in Iraq and supporting documents incorporate the same desired end-state for U.S. stabilization and reconstruction operations that were first established by the coalition in 2003: a peaceful, united, stable, and secure Iraq, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism. However, it is unclear how the United States will achieve its desired endstate in Iraq given the significant changes in the assumptions underlying the U.S. strategy. The original plan assumed a permissive security environment. However, an increasingly lethal insurgency undermined the development of effective Iraqi government institutions and delayed plans for an early transfer of security responsibilities to the Iraqis. The plan also assumed that U.S. reconstruction funds would help restore Iraq’s essential services to prewar levels, but Iraq’s capacity to maintain, sustain, and manage its rebuilt infrastructure is still being developed. Finally, the plan assumed that the Iraqi government and the international community would help finance Iraq’s development needs, but Iraq has limited resources to contribute to its own reconstruction, and Iraq’s estimated future needs vastly exceed what has been offered by the international community to date.

The NSVI is an improvement over previous planning efforts. However, the NSVI and its supporting documents are incomplete because they do not fully address all the desirable characteristics of an effective national strategy. [...] the strategy falls short in three key areas. First, it only partially identifies the current and future costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq, including the costs of maintaining U.S. military operations, building Iraqi government capacity at the provincial and national level, and rebuilding critical infrastructure. Second, it only partially identifies which U.S. agencies implement key aspects of the strategy or resolve conflicts among the many implementing agencies. Third, it neither fully addresses how U.S. goals and objectives will be integrated with those of the Iraqi government and the international community, nor does it detail the Iraqi government’s anticipated contribution to its future security and reconstruction needs.

With input from DOD and State, we included in our assessment all the classified and unclassified documents that collectively define the U.S. strategy in Iraq. Collectively, these documents still lack all the key characteristics of an effective national strategy. However, we refined our recommendation to focus on the need to improve the U.S. strategy for Iraq.

Prior to the fall of 2005, the U.S. stabilization and reconstruction effort in Iraq lacked a clear, comprehensive, and integrated U.S. strategy. State assessments and other U.S. government reports noted that this hindered the implementation of U.S. stabilization and reconstruction plans.

The November 2005 NSVI represents the results of efforts to improve the strategic planning process for the challenging and costly U.S. mission in Iraq. Although the NSVI is an improvement over earlier efforts, it and the supporting documents are incomplete. The desired end-state of the U.S. strategy has remained unchanged since 2003, but the underlying assumptions have changed in response to changing security and economic conditions, calling into question the likelihood of achieving the desired end-state. Moreover, the collective strategy neither identifies U.S. or other
resources needed to implement the objectives nor does it address its integration with the efforts and funding plans of the Iraqi government or the international community. The formation of the new Iraqi government provides an opportunity to the United States government to reexamine its strategy and more closely align its efforts and objectives with those of the Iraqi people and other donors.

Who: Vice President Dick Cheney
Source: The White House
Quote: From a speech given on June 27,2006;

"We remain on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory. We can expect further acts of violence and destruction by the enemies of freedom. But progress has been steady -– and there should be no discounting the hopeful signs in that part of the world."

Who: Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute
Source: Informed Comment
Quotes: From comment entitled, "The Beginning of a New War? Will it Spill over on Iraq?"

All hell broke loose on Wednesday in the Mideast, with a Hizbullah attack on the Israeli army and Israeli reprisals, and the Israeli dropping of a 500 pound bomb on Gaza. I roundly condemn Hizbullah's criminal and stupid attack on Israel and escalation of a crisis that is already harming ordinary Palestinians on a massive scale.

Likewise, the Beirut airport is not in south Lebanon and for the Israelis to bomb it and neighborhoods in south Beirut is a disproportionate use of force. The Israelis are actually talking about causing "pain to the Lebanese." That is despicable.

One thing is clear. This crisis will not leave the fabric of Lebanese politics untouched, and the danger of an unraveling is acute. And, it is clear that the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon has given an opening to Israeli hawks to invade Lebanese territory again. It will not be good for Israelis if Lebanon collapses into a failed state again.

Rejectionists on both sides are to blame. The Oslo Peace Process could have forestalled all this violence, as Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin understood. But on the Israeli side, the then Likud Party of Bibi Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert derailed it. On the Palestinian side, Hamas rejected it. Had there been a peace process, prisoners would have been released in return for a cessation of hostilities, and there would have been no motivation to capture Israeli soldiers.

The lesson is that if you refuse to negotiate a peace, then you are likely to have to go on fighting a war.

I continue to worry that this outbreak of war in the Levant will exacerbate tensions in Iraq and get more US troops killed. Iraqi Sunnis generally sympathize with the Palestinians. And hard line Shiites like the Sadr Movement and the Mahdi Army are close to Hizbullah. Israel's wars could tip Iraq over into an unstoppable downward spiral.

Who: Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority
Source: Washington Post
Quotes: From opinion article titled, "Aggression Under False Pretenses"

As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution.

The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year. It is the explosive follow-up to a five-month campaign of economic and diplomatic warfare directed by the United States and Israel. The stated intention of that strategy was to force the average Palestinian to "reconsider" her vote when faced with deepening hardship; its failure was predictable, and the new overt military aggression and collective punishment are its logical fulfillment. The "kidnapped" Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is only a pretext for a job scheduled months ago.

In addition to removing our democratically elected government, Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively. The Palestinian leadership is firmly embedded in the concept of Islamic shura , or mutual consultation; suffice it to say that while we may have differing opinions, we are united in mutual respect and focused on the goal of serving our people. Furthermore, the invasion of Gaza and the kidnapping of our leaders and government officials are meant to undermine the recent accords reached between the government party and our brothers and sisters in Fatah and other factions, on achieving consensus for resolving the conflict. Yet Israeli collective punishment only strengthens our collective resolve to work together.

As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure -- the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles -- my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?

They think, doubtless, of the hostage soldier, taken in battle -- yet thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, remain in Israeli jails for resisting the illegal, ongoing occupation that is condemned by international law. They think of the pluck and "toughness" of Israel, "standing up" to "terrorists." Yet a nuclear Israel possesses the 13th-largest military force on the planet, one that is used to rule an area about the size of New Jersey and whose adversaries there have no conventional armed forces. Who is the underdog, supposedly America's traditional favorite, in this case?

I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly "legitimate" state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals.

Israel's unilateral movements of the past year will not lead to peace. These acts -- the temporary withdrawal of forces from Gaza, the walling off of the West Bank -- are not strides toward resolution but empty, symbolic acts that fail to address the underlying conflict. Israel's nearly complete control over the lives of Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by the humanitarian and economic suffering of the Palestinians since the January elections. Israel's ongoing policies of expansion, military control and assassination mock any notion of sovereignty or bilateralism. Its "separation barrier," running across our land, is hardly a good-faith gesture toward future coexistence.

But there is a remedy, and while it is not easy it is consistent with our long-held beliefs. Palestinian priorities include recognition of the core dispute over the land of historical Palestine and the rights of all its people; resolution of the refugee issue from 1948; reclaiming all lands occupied in 1967; and stopping Israeli attacks, assassinations and military expansion. Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner. This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun.

Surely the American people grow weary of this folly, after 50 years and $160 billion in taxpayer support for Israel's war-making capacity -- its "defense." Some Americans, I believe, must be asking themselves if all this blood and treasure could not have bought more tangible results for Palestine if only U.S. policies had been predicated from the start on historical truth, equity and justice.

However, we do not want to live on international welfare and American handouts. We want what Americans enjoy -- democratic rights, economic sovereignty and justice. We thought our pride in conducting the fairest elections in the Arab world might resonate with the United States and its citizens. Instead, our new government was met from the very beginning by acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White House. Now this aggression continues against 3.9 million civilians living in the world's largest prison camps. America's complacency in the face of these war crimes is, as usual, embedded in the coded rhetorical green light: "Israel has a right to defend itself." Was Israel defending itself when it killed eight family members on a Gaza beach last month or three members of the Hajjaj family on Saturday, among them 6-year-old Rawan? I refuse to believe that such inhumanity sits well with the American public.

We present this clear message: If Israel will not allow Palestinians to live in peace, dignity and national integrity, Israelis themselves will not be able to enjoy those same rights. Meanwhile, our right to defend ourselves from occupying soldiers and aggression is a matter of law, as settled in the Fourth Geneva Convention. If Israel is prepared to negotiate seriously and fairly, and resolve the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967, a fair and permanent peace is possible. Based on a hudna (comprehensive cessation of hostilities for an agreed time), the Holy Land still has an opportunity to be a peaceful and stable economic powerhouse for all the Semitic people of the region. If Americans only knew the truth, possibility might become reality.

Who: Raed Jarrar
Source: In the Middle
Quotes: From blog entry titled, "Iraq: Raped"

A few months ago, Abir was just another 14 year old Iraqi girl in a small town called Al-Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. Both of her parents are from the Al-Janabi tribe, one of the biggest tribes with Sunni and Shia branches.

But even if Abir is the only Iraqi girl raped, murdered and burned, this is not just another abuse scandal. Issues relating to honor are even more sensitive for the Iraqi public and government than the ongoing daily civilian murders. The first Iraqi governmental reaction came when an Iraqi female member of parliament asked for an urgent session for which Mr. Al-Maliki was called back home to attend. The Iraqi parliament described the rape as a crime against "the honor of all Iraqis". As a result, Al-Maliki asked to review laws of foreign troops' immunity from prosecution in Iraq, which seems to be an Iraqi public demand. Iraqi tribal leaders had a number of meetings across the country last week on the anniversary of "Thawrat Al-Eshrin", the 1920 revolution against the British occupation. The largest meeting was that of the mostly Shia Middle Euphrates Tribes. During this meeting, they threatened to initiate a full scale revolution against the occupation, similar to what had happened in 1920, unless the U.S. army hands all soldiers accused of raping the "Al-Mahmudiyah Virgin" to them.

Iraq is reaching one of the last crossroads before the collapsing in complete chaos. The Iraqi Prime Minister has proposed his comprehensive 28 point package for Iraqi reconciliation and end to violence. The plan was warmly received by different Iraqi political, religious, and even insurgent leaders after it was published in The Times and in one local Iraqi newspaper called Az-Zaman. But the U.S. embassy turned that 28 point package into a weak 24 point plan that was rejected by everyone. The four dropped demands were: putting a timetable for pulling out the occupation troops, amnesty for anyone who has not killed civilians, compensation for civilian victims, and an immediate halt of all raids on homes and cities without Iraqi court orders.

The Bush administration does not seem to understand the size of frustration and anger in Iraq, and does not seem to care that giving Iraqis their four demands provides an historic opportunity for ending the cycle of violence in Iraq. The Brookings institute recently published a poll conducted by Global Public Opinion earlier this year that showed 87 percent of Iraqis supporting their government's demand for a timetable for pulling out the occupation troops from Iraq. The Iraqi President, Vice-President, and National security advisor have asked publicly for a time table for withdrawing the occupation troops, and so have most of Iraq's elected and religious leaders. At the same time, a Washington Post / ABC poll in May showed that only 32 percent of U.S. tax payers approve of the way President George Bush is handling Iraq.

Putting a timetable for withdrawing the U.S. troops, as have most of the other countries in the U.S.-led coalition, will be the first step in the right direction to follow the demands of both the Iraqi and U.S. people to stop the war and deal with its consequences.

What is happening in Iraq is a rape of a nation, not just a rape of a 14 year old girl, and it has to be stopped as soon as possible.