RhetIraq

Who: Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT)
Source: Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "Shays Urges Iraq Withdrawal"

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), once an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq, said yesterday that the Bush administration should set a time frame for withdrawing U.S. troops. He added that most of the withdrawal could take place next year.

Shays, who faces a tough reelection campaign because of his previous support for President Bush's war policies, made his comments after completing his 14th trip to Iraq this week.

He said he found a "noticeable lack of political will" among Iraqis "to move in what I would call a timely fashion" and concluded that Iraqi officials would act with greater urgency if the United States this fall set a timetable for withdrawal.

"My view is that it may be that the only way we are able to encourage some political will on the part of Iraqis is to have a timeline for troop withdrawal," Shays said from London in a conference call with reporters. "A timeline of when the bulk of heavy lifting is in the hands of the Iraqis."

Shays is one of only a few congressional Republicans supporting a timetable for ending U.S. involvement in the Iraq fighting, which has claimed the lives of more than 2,600 U.S. troops and an estimated 40,000 to 45,000 Iraqi civilians. Bush reaffirmed this week his opposition to the withdrawal of U.S. troops. "Leaving before the job was done would be a disaster," he warned.

Shays said it is essential to signal to the Iraqi government that there is no open checkbook or indefinite time frame.

Shays, chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations, plans to outline a time frame for withdrawal next month, after he holds three hearings titled "Iraq: Democracy or Civil War."

Critics said Shays is significantly modifying his stand because he is facing a tough challenge from an antiwar opponent in a state that has become a center of opposition to the war.

Shays said that while a timetable can and should be set, having one does not necessarily mean the withdrawal would be quick. He said it would be an outrage to leave Iraq before the Iraqis have the security they need. Some forces would have to remain to provide logistical support to the government and its armed forces. "It may be a timeline Americans don't want to hear," he said.

Shays criticized what he called the "huge mistakes" made by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in particular the disbanding of the former Iraqi army, police and border patrols shortly after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. "I haven't had faith in the secretary in a long time," Shays said. He said Bush should let go of those who consistently offer bad advice.

Who: Benjamin Ferencz, Chief Prosecuter of Nazi War Crimes
Source: One World United States
Quotes: From article titled, "Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor"

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferencz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferencz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Ferencz said that after Nuremberg the international community realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first place.

He said the atrocities of the Iraq war--from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of dozens of civilians by U.S. forces in Haditha to the high number of civilian casualties caused by insurgent car bombs--were highly predictable at the start of the war.

"Every war will lead to attacks on civilians," he said. "Crimes against humanity, destruction beyond the needs of military necessity, rape of civilians, plunder--that always happens in wartime. So my answer personally, after working for 60 years on this problem and [as someone] who hates to see all these young people get killed no matter what their nationality, is that you've got to stop using warfare as a means of settling your disputes."

Ferencz believes the most important development toward that end would be the effective implementation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is located in the Hague, Netherlands.

The court was established in 2002 and has been ratified by more than 100 countries. It is currently being used to adjudicate cases stemming from conflict in Darfur, Sudan and civil wars in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But on May 6, 2002--less than a year before the invasion of Iraq--the Bush administration withdrew the United States' signature on the treaty and began pressuring other countries to approve bilateral agreements requiring them not to surrender U.S. nationals to the ICC.

Three months later, George W. Bush signed a new law prohibiting any U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court. The law went so far as to include a provision authorizing the president to "use all means necessary and appropriate," including a military invasion of the Netherlands, to free U.S. personnel detained or imprisoned by the ICC.

That's too bad, according to Ferencz. If the United States showed more of an interest in building an international justice system, they could have put Saddam Hussein on trial for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"The United Nations authorized the first Gulf War and authorized all nations to take whatever steps necessary to keep peace in the area," he said. "They could have stretched that a bit by seizing the person for causing the harm. Of course, they didn't do that and ever since then I've been bemoaning the fact that we didn't have an International Criminal Court at that time."

Source: The New York Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down"

Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Some policy makers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran’s role in Hezbollah’s recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate.

The dissonance is surfacing just as the intelligence agencies are overhauling their procedures to prevent a repeat of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate — the faulty assessment that in part set the United States on the path to war with Iraq.

The new report, from the House Intelligence Committee, led by Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, portrayed Iran as a growing threat and criticized American spy agencies for cautious assessments about Iran’s weapons programs. “Intelligence community managers and analysts must provide their best analytical judgments about Iranian W.M.D. programs and not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments,” the report said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction like nuclear arms.

Some policy makers also said they were displeased that American spy agencies were playing down intelligence reports — including some from the Israeli government — of extensive contacts recently between Hezbollah and members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “The people in the community are unwilling to make judgment calls and don’t know how to link anything together,” one senior United States official said.

“We’re not in a court of law,” he said. “When they say there is ‘no evidence,’ you have to ask them what they mean, what is the meaning of the term ‘evidence’?”

The criticisms do not appear to be focused on any particular agency, like the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency or the State Department’s intelligence bureau, which sometimes differ in their views.

Officials from across the government — including from within the Bush administration, Congress and American intelligence agencies — spoke for this article on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a debate over classified intelligence information. Some officials said that given all that had happened over the last four years, it was only appropriate that the intelligence agencies took care to avoid going down the same path that led the United States to war with Iraq.

“Analysts were burned pretty badly during the run-up to the war in Iraq,” said Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “I’m not surprised that some in the intelligence community are a bit gun-shy about appearing to be war mongering.”

Several intelligence officials said that American spy agencies had made assessments in recent weeks that despite established ties between Iran and Hezbollah and a well-documented history of Iran arming the organization, there was no credible evidence to suggest either that Iran ordered the Hezbollah raid that touched off the recent fighting or that Iran was directly controlling attacks against Israel.

“There are no provable signs of Iranian direction on the ground,” said one intelligence official in Washington. “Nobody should think that Hezbollah is a remote-controlled entity.” American military assessments have broadly echoed this view, say people who maintain close ties to military intelligence officers.

“Does Iran profit from all of this? Yes,” said Gen. Wayne A. Downing Jr., the retired former commander of the Special Operations Command and a White House counterterrorism adviser during President Bush’s first term. “But is Iran pulling the strings? The guys I’m talking to say, ‘no.’ ”

The House Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday was written primarily by Republican staff members on the committee, and privately some Democrats criticized the report for using innuendo and unsubstantiated assertions to inflate the threat that Iran posed to the United States.

Earlier this year, the intelligence agencies put new procedures in place to help avoid the type of analysis that was contained in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq and to prevent another “Curveball” — the code name of the Iraqi source who fed the United States faulty intelligence about Iraq’s biological weapons program. “I think that the intelligence community is being appropriately cautious,” said John E. McLaughlin, a former director of central intelligence.

“I think that what is going on is that people are holding themselves to a higher standard of evidence because of Iraq.”

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, said analysts now had much more information about the sources of raw intelligence coming from the field.

“Analysts have to know more about the sources than was generally the case before the Iraq estimate,” Mr. Fingar said.

Analysts also are required to include in their reports more information about the chain of logic that led them to their conclusions about sensitive topics like Iran, North Korea and global terrorism — “showing your work,” as Mr. Fingar put it.

At the same time, Mr. Fingar dismissed the notion that intelligence analysts should try merely to connect random intelligence findings. “As a 40-year analyst, I’m offended by the notion of ‘connecting dots,’ ’’he said. “If you had enough monkeys you could do that.”

The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. “When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ‘If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.

“The intelligence community is dedicated to predicting the least dangerous world possible,” he said.

Some veterans of the intelligence battles that preceded the Iraq war see the debate as familiar and are critical of efforts to create hard links based on murky intelligence.

“It reflects a certain way of looking at the world — that all evil is traceable to the capitals of certain states,” said Paul R. Pillar, who until last October oversaw American intelligence assessments about the Middle East. “And that, in my view, is a very incorrect way of interpreting the security challenges we face.”

Source: Associated Press via Findlaw
Quotes: From article titled, "U.S. says over 100 known, suspected terrorists captured in Iraq"

Iraq-U.S. and Iraqi forces have captured more than 100 known and suspected terrorists in the past week, including one linked to the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine that triggered a cycle of sectarian violence, a U.S. spokesman said Tuesday.

At the same time, more than 500 Iraqi men have joined the police in restive Anbar province - a focal point of the Sunni Arab insurgency - in the most successful recruiting drive in the region.

The arrests are part of a new push by the United States to wipe out the insurgency, which it blames on the local wing of al-Qaida, and sectarian strife gripping at least four of Iraq's 18 provinces.

"All these captures have severely disrupted and disorganized the capability of al-Qaida in Iraq," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell told reporters.

"They enable Iraqi security forces along with coalition forces ... to gain a greater understanding of the terrorist network in this region and how to best defeat it," he said.

At least 3,500 people were killed in Iraq in July, the deadliest monthly toll since the U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein. The violence appears to have tapered off in the last one week.

In Baghdad, six death squad leaders and 31 death squad cell members were arrested in the past week, Caldwell said.

Most American deaths this month have been in Anbar province west of Baghdad, where support for the Sunni Arab insurgency runs deep. The latest casualties in Anbar were two Marines and a sailor who were killed in combat Sunday. All three belonged to the Regimental Combat Team 7, which conducted the three-day police recruitment.

The recruitment of more than 500 police cadets is a significant achievement in the American goal, but desertion rate remains high among the Iraqi army and police force, often because the foot soldiers don't get paid in time or get fatigued by the ongoing fighting.

If all 500 new applicants stay with the force after the training period, which last from eight to 10 weeks, Anbar will have more than 2,200 police officers in uniform, the statement said.

Who: neurotic_wife
Source: neurotic iraqi wife
Quotes: From blog entry titled, "My Dark Depression..."

I mean to go back to that time of my life, worrying, stressing, freaking out is no fun...I really cant believe it...What is it I have achieved??? NOTHING...A big fat NOTHING...And the darn problem is he aint listening...Granted he still wants to help out, but give me a break...People are leaving... only the insane are going back...Besides what kind of rebuilding is taking place...we were there....we saw the reality of projects...A school that was in shambles, was renovated by painting the walls pink....pink walls WILL NOT enhance the education of the Iraqi kids!!! Where are the kids in the first place???Almost many of the parents have refrained from sending their children to the schools because of the security situation...Most of the teachers have fled...either in hiding or left the country for good....WOW great rebuilding!!!

Take hospitals, whats the point of putting some new medical equipment, or painting the maternity rooms orange when the doctors have become a prime target for kidnappers and terrorists...You go there and theres no one to look after you...Nurses and doctors decided to seek a better life in Jordan, Syria or the UAE....Your only salvation is maybe the newly painted orange wall staring back at you...aha great efforts...

The roads and bridges that were renovated, are prime targets for bombs and highway bandits...I mean cmon...Rebuilding...yes its there...The money has been spent...More money is gonne be spent, but for what....and for who...HUBBY has seen how things work there, and yet he still wants to go...To achieve what??? Says its the principle...What principle HUBBY??? Im really really teed off...I mean really...2 years on and its the same darn conversation...the same darn arguements...

We have received an email from a friend of ours who was working with us in Baghdad...He is an Iraqi with US citizenship...Went back to the States for 2 months and now he is in Baghdad with another organisation...HUBBY immediately said "See, even H went back" Yeah HUBBY H went back but I aint his wife, so I cant say anything except he is crazy...

Source: McClatchy
Quotes: From article titled, "Rosy assessments on Iraq `not related to reality,' some say"

As security conditions continue to deteriorate in Iraq, many Iraqi politicians are challenging the optimistic forecasts of governments in Baghdad and Washington, with some worrying that the rosy views are preventing the creation of effective strategies against the escalating violence.

"As an intelligence officer ... I have had the chance to move around Baghdad on mounted and dismounted patrols and see the city and violence from the ground," wrote one American military officer in Iraq. "I think that the greatest problem that we deal (besides the insurgents and militia) with is that our leadership has no real comprehension of the ground truth. I wish that I could offer a solution, but I can't. When I have briefed General Officers, I have given them my perspective and assessment of the situation. Many have been surprised at what I have to say, but I suspect that in the end nothing will or has changed."

McClatchy is withholding the officer's name to protect him from possible retaliation by his superiors or political appointees in the Pentagon for communicating with the news media without authorization.

When L. Paul Bremer, then the top U.S. representative in Iraq, appointed an Iraqi Governing Council in July 2003, insurgent attacks averaged 16 daily. When Saddam Hussein was captured that December, the average was 19. When Bremer signed the hand-over of sovereignty in June 2004, it was 45 attacks daily. When Iraq held its elections for a transitional government in January 2005, it was 61. When Iraqis voted last December for a permanent government, it was 75. When U.S. forces killed terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi in June, it was up to 90.

Attacks have increased in lethality as well as number: There was one multiple-fatality bombing in July 2003. Last month, there were at least 51.

Top U.S. military officials often point to the Iraqi security forces as the way forward. In June 2004, there was just one Iraqi army battalion. Today, there are 10 divisions.

But recent interviews with American soldiers in and around Baghdad suggest that some Iraqi security forces are contributing to the problem.

Last month, gunmen marauded through a Sunni Muslim neighborhood in western Baghdad, dragging people from their homes and cars and shooting them. Iraqi police said that more than 40 were killed.

To get into the neighborhood, the gunmen had to drive through Iraqi police and army checkpoints, said American 1st Lt. Brian Johnson of the 4th Infantry Division, who leads a platoon on the western edge of Baghdad.

"Those gunmen drove up in five or six trucks full of (Shiite) Mahdi militiamen with AK-47 bandoleers across their chests and they drove through IP (Iraqi police) and IA (Iraqi army) checkpoints," said Johnson, 24, who's from Houston. "The IAs and the IPs are in the Mahdi militia's pocket ... an IP will come off the checkpoint and a Mahdi militia guy will put on his uniform, man the checkpoint and start pulling people from their cars."

Who: Sir Walter Menzies Campbell, Leader of Liberal Democrats and MP (Member of Parliament) for North East Fife
Source: Guardian UK
Quotes: From opinion article titled, "Our foreign policy is just plain wrong"

Foreign affairs is a world of relative values; it is no place for evangelism, which elevates belief over knowledge, conviction over judgment and instinct over understanding. In the Middle East, knowledge, judgment and understanding are more useful allies than belief, conviction and instinct, particularly when all three are wrong.

The real argument over the Iraq adventure is not about its impact on the opinions of the Muslims living in Britain, but that it was wrong in conception and execution. The same evangelical impulse lumps together different situations that present different problems and require different solutions.

'Axis of evil' and 'an arc of extremism' are lazy descriptions of complex problems, as if you can solve them more easily by describing them more simply, as if a soundbite description will allow a soundbite solution.

There is a real threat from Muslim fundamentalism, but it takes many forms and arises for many reasons. If you do not understand or accept its variety, and treat all examples of extremism as if they were the same, you make it harder to deal with and end up playing into the hands of its advocates.

By seeing disparate elements of extremism as a global conspiracy, you grant extremists the status and legitimacy they crave. What better reward for jihadists than to have their criminality and callous disregard for life described in their own apocalyptic language.

The British-American relationship needs to be rebalanced. Such a rebalancing cannot happen until after Bush and Blair have gone. Such a recantation from the Prime Minister would be as significant as that of Thomas Cranmer's. In any event, Bush is about to enter the last quarter of his time at the White House, but that does not mean that nothing can be done.

Those in all parties who believe in a rules-based system of foreign relations, who recognise the unfulfilled possibilities of greater European co-operation in foreign affairs, who reject a Milton-like struggle between good and evil can begin by preparing the ground now.

Over one issue in particular, effort must be made - Israel/Palestine. As the Lebanese government was being chastised for its failure to implement Security Council Resolution 1559, calling for the disarmament of Hizbollah, little was said about Resolution 242, calling for Israel's withdrawal from territories it had occupied in 1967. As long as the Palestinians are subject to daily humiliations and settlements are expanded on the West Bank, all in breach of international law, and denied a viable homeland, Israel's legal and moral right to live in peace behind secure and recognised borders will be undermined. Israel/Palestine should become not a cause but an obsession. If it redefines our relationship with the United States, so be it.

Source: myway
Quotes: From article titled, "Troops Long Out-Of-Uniform Sent to Iraq"

Although troops are allowed to leave active duty after a few years of service, they generally still have time left on their contract with the military that is known as "inactive ready reserve" status, or IRR. During that time, they have to let their service know their current address, but they don't train, draw a paycheck or associate in any other way with the military.

But with active duty units already completing multiple tours in Iraq, the Pentagon has employed the rarely used tactic of calling people back from IRR status, a policy sometimes referred to as a "backdoor draft."

According to the U.S. Army Reserve, approximately 14,000 soldiers on IRR status have been called to active duty since March 2003 and about 7,300 have been deployed to Iraq. The Marine Corps has mobilized 4,717 Marines who were classified as inactive ready reserve since Sept. 11, and 1,094 have been deployed to Iraq, according to the Marine Forces Reserve.

Source: The Independent UK
Quotes: From article titled, "Taliban's terror tactics reconquer Afghanistan"

"If we die, we are martyrs - if we live, we are victors," say the Taliban in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. They have taken control of the area in less than two weeks. For, with ever accelerating speed, the Taliban are reconquering south-west Afghanistan from the government, American and Nato forces sent to fight them.

It took Besmillah, a villager from Panjwai, three hours to get from his home to Kandahar, a journey that usually takes an hour. "There were bodies on the road," he says, "at least 40 bodies - of Afghan soldiers - lying in a place called Yakh Chah [Ice Well], halfway between Shykh Kalandar and the municipality of Panjwai. The Taliban have a madrasa in Shykh Kalandar and they were attacking the municipality from there at first. But now they have taken the whole district. I saw two cars on fire. I had to go through the fields and take side roads to make it to Kandahar."

Panjwai, 30km west of Kandahar, is one of the more prosperous districts in the province. It's been 12 days since the fighting began there. "At first, Canadians were there too," Besmillah says. "But I don't know what happened. They left, and now there is only the Afghan army."

The Taliban have told the district's mayor that he will be left untouched providing he and his men stay where they are and forbid Nato forces permission to enter the area, Besmillah says.

"The Taliban have kept the soldiers' bodies because they have asked for 10 rocket-propelled grenades in return for each corpse," he says. Another account suggests that the Taliban have asked for the release of prisoners in return for the bodies. Temperature this week have been hitting 44C. "The bodies will rot and people will be affected by their smell," he says.

Another man from Pashmoul, Panjwai, who left his home three days ago, says the Taliban had taken over his village too. "The Taliban were hiding there for a long time," he says. "Before, when the American convoys were passing, we used to ask them: 'Why don't you attack them?' They'd say they didn't have enough weapons, or that they hadn't yet received orders," he explains. "But now, no foreigners can pass. Not in convoys or on foot."

Besmillah - many Afghans only have one name - says that the Taliban search everyone on the road. "I went through three Taliban checkpoints and one government checkpoint by the time I made it to Kandahar. The Taliban were in control right up to Solahan, about 25 km west of Kandahar. They look for papers and check the mobile phones. If a number stored in the phone seems suspicious, they call it. And if the voice answers in English, they immediately kill the owner of the mobile. They don't let anyone from outside the villages go into the area."

Besmillah complains that local people are trapped between the Taliban and the government. "The Taliban came and asked us for food. Then the army came and demanded to know why we were feeding the Taliban. We fed the army too. It's our tradition; when someone comes and asks for food, we give it to them. Now it's better that only the Taliban control the area."

Hamid, another villager from Panjwai, says that the Taliban in his district have little money but they have mobile phones. "They are all Afghans. I haven't seen a single outsider among them. But they talk to Pakistan two, three times a day on the phone." Hamid says that the goal of the Taliban is to re-establish their government. "They trust us and tell us a lot of things. They say that once they take Kandahar, they will continue onwards to Kabul till they take all of Afghanistan," he says.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have issued a new law which they have posted on the walls. It says: "We have no courtrooms to take people for questioning. Judgment is made on the road - wherever an infidel is captured. The order is carried out immediately. The punishment for spying for the government and working with foreigners is beheading."

In Helmand province, where the Taliban also control most of the area - except for the municipality - despite the presence of 4,000 British troops, a 70-year-old woman and her son were hanged by the Taliban on charges of spying for the government.

Who: Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
Source: Washington Post
Quotes: From article titled, "Premier Calls Iraqi Forces Ready to Extend Control"

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday that Iraqi forces were prepared to take over security in most provinces if the U.S. military withdraws, ...

The U.S.-led military coalition has set no timetable for removing troops from Iraq, but Maliki said in a statement that Iraqis "have become capable of taking over security tasks in the majority of the provinces and that they will be able to fill the vacuum in case the Multi-National Forces withdraw."

Iraqi forces have taken full military control of only one province so far -- Muthanna, in a relatively calm area of southern Iraq -- but Maliki said they would soon take security responsibility of the area around Diwaniyah, in Qadisiyah province.

Source: Associated Press via The Boston Globe
Quotes: From article titled, "Afghan opium cultivation hits a record"

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels -- up by more than 40 percent from 2005 -- despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money, Western officials told The Associated Press.

The increase could have serious repercussions for an already grave security situation, with drug lords joining the Taliban-led fight against Afghan and international forces.

A Western anti-narcotics official in Kabul said about 370,650 acres of opium poppy was cultivated this season -- up from 257,000 acres in 2005 -- citing their preliminary crop projections. The previous record was 323,700 acres in 2004, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

The U.N. reported last year that Afghanistan produced an estimated 4,500 tons of opium -- enough to make 450 tons of heroin -- nearly 90 percent of world supply.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimate that opium accounted for 52 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product in 2005.

Next week, the Afghan government will present a wide-ranging anti-drugs strategy. Officials are moving to amend laws, train judges and prosecutors, build high security prisons and establish special courts for drug barons and senior drug smugglers.

Source: CNN
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq: 3 die as 'worst month' figures revealed"

... the Iraqi Health Ministry released new figures that underscore the spike in warfare plaguing Iraq: July was the deadliest month for civilians since the war started in March 2003, figures show.

During the month, 3,438 Iraqis were killed -- 1,855 because of sectarian or political violence and another 1,583 from bombings and shootings. Nearly 3,600 Iraqis were wounded, the official said.

The release of these figures comes on the heels of a U.N. report that said nearly 6,000 people were killed in Iraq in May and June.

The violence this year has been particularly turbulent because of the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya Mosque, a Shiite shrine in Samarra. That attack led to an upsurge in Sunni-Shiite retribution slayings.

Who: District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor
Source: The New York Times
Quotes: From article titled, "Federal Judge Orders End to Warrantless Wiretapping"

District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor found that President Bush exceeded his proper authority and that the eavesdropping without warrants violated the First and Fourth Amendment protections of free speech and privacy.

“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” she wrote, in a decision that the White House and Justice Department said they would fight to overturn. A hearing will be held before Judge Taylor on Sept. 7, and her decision will not be enforced in the meantime pending the government’s appeal.

In becoming the first federal judge to declare the eavesdropping program unconstitutional, Judge Taylor rejected the administration’s assertion that to defend itself against a lawsuit would force it to divulge information that should be kept secret in the name of national security.

“Predictably, the war on terror of this administration has produced a vast number of cases, in which the states secrets privilege has been invoked,” Judge Taylor wrote. She noted that the Supreme Court has held that because the president’s power to withhold secrets is so powerful, “it is not to be lightly invoked.” She also cited a finding in an earlier case by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that “whenever possible, sensitive information must be disentangled from nonsensitive information to allow for the release of the latter.”

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said this afternoon that he was disappointed with the decision, and that while the stay is in place “we will continue to utilize the program to ensure that America is safer.” Mr. Gonzales said he remained confident that the program was constitutional, and that Congress had given the president all the authority he needed when it authorized the use of military force after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Judge Taylor said “the president has acted, undisputedly, as F.I.S.A. forbids,” thus defying the express will of Congress, and she was unpersuaded by the government’s stance that it could not defend itself in the lawsuit without doing the country harm.

“Consequently, the court finds defendants’ arguments that they cannot defend this case without the use of classified information to be disingenuous and without merit,” she wrote.

The judge, who heard arguments in the case in June, brushed aside several assertions made by lawyers for the National Security Agency. She held that, contrary to the N.S.A.’s assertions, the plaintiffs were suffering real harm, and had standing to sue the government.

“Here, plaintiffs are not asserting speculative allegations,” she said.

Judge Taylor, appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, did not deal a total defeat to the administration. She dismissed a separate claim by the A.C.L.U. over data-mining of telephone records, agreeing that further litigation could indeed jeopardize state secrets.

But over all, Judge Taylor’s decision was a rebuke to the administration, as she made clear in closing by quoting Chief Justice Earl Warren’s words in a 1967 ruling: “Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this nation apart.”

Who: See list below
Source: Information Clearing House
Quotes: From article titled, "Former diplomats and retired generals letter to president Bush"

Words not War, A Statement on Iran, August 2006

As former military leaders and foreign policy officials, we call on the Bush administration to engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions to help resolve the current crisis in the Middle East and settle differences over the Iranian nuclear program.

We strongly caution against any consideration of the use of military force against Iran. The current crises must be resolved through diplomacy, not military action. An attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security in the region and U.S. forces in Iraq, and it would inflame hatred and violence in the Middle East and among Muslims elsewhere.

A strategy of diplomatic engagement with Iran will serve the interests of the U.S. and its allies, and would enhance regional and international security.

Signed: -
Ambassador Harry Barnes, Former Ambassador to Chile, India, and Romania

Lieutenant General Julius Becton, U.S. Army (Ret.); Former commander, VII
Corps, and Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency

Parker Borg, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy; Former Ambassador to Iceland and Mali; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotic Matters; Deputy Director of the Office for Combating Terrorism, U. S. State Department

Ambassador Peter Burleigh, Former U.S. Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations; Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives; Ambassador and Coordinator of the Office of Counter-Terrorism; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research; and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia

Ambassador Ralph Earle II, Former chief negotiator of the SALT II Treaty and Director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, U.S. Army (Ret.). Former Deputy Inspector General, U.S. Army

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr., Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia; Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs; Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, African Affairs, Charge/Deputy Chief of Mission, American Embassy (Bangkok; Beijing); and Director, Chinese Affairs, Department of State

Morton Halperin, Senior Fellow of the Center for American Progress; Director of U.S. Advocacy for the Open Society Institute; Former director of Policy Planning, Department of State

Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard, Jr., U.S. Army (Ret.); Former military assistant to the Secretary of Defense; president, National Defense University. Currently Senior Military Fellow, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

General Joseph P. Hoar, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.); Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command

Brigadier General John Johns, U.S. Army (Ret.); Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

Professor Frank N. von Hippel, Former Assistant Director for National Security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Dr. Lawrence Korb, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Installations and Logistics

Major General Frederick H. Lawson, U.S. Army Reserve (Ret.); Former Reserve Division Commander

Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, U.S. Army (Ret.); former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence

Lieutenant General Charles P. Otstott, U.S. Army (Ret.); former Deputy Chairman, NATO Military Committee

Ambassador Edward L. Peck, Former Chief of Mission in Iraq and Mauritania; Deputy Director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism; Deputy Coordinator for Covert Intelligence Programs and Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Department of State; Liaison Officer to the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Brig. Gen. Maurice D. Roush, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Dr. Sarah Sewall, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance; Foreign Policy Adviser to Senator George J. Mitchell

Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, U.S. Navy (Ret.). Former Director of the Center for Defense Information and currently Chairman, Military Advisory Committee, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities

LTG James M. Thompson, U.S. Army (Ret.), Former Chief of Military Mission to Turkey (JUSMMAT); Chief of Staff, Allied Forces, Southern Europe

Vice Admiral Ralph Weymouth, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Former Commanding Officer of Flagship on Commander Middle East Force; Northern NATO Desk Officer in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Internal Security Affairs; and Commander, Iceland Defense Force

Who: Scott Ritter, former Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq
Source: Uruknet
Quotes: From opinion article titled, "The Grave Consequences of Supporting War in Lebanon"

So long as the American media collectively continues to masquerade as journalists, when in fact it serves as little more than the propagandistic arm of the U.S. and Israeli governments, the American people will continue to wallow in their collective ignorance of the world they live in, unable to discern solutions to problems because they are for the most part unable to define the problem itself. This is a very serious matter, one with huge potential consequences.

Take, in closing, the manner in which Israel and the United States have painted Hezbollah's military underwriters in Iran and Syria. If Hezbollah resistance continues (as it seems likely to do), the United States and Israel have stated that Syria and Iran become, by extension, legitimate military targets.

This discussion is offered without any thought or recognition of the "other side of the coin," namely the mindset in much of the Arab and Muslim world that if Iran and Syria are targeted for providing military support for Hezbollah, then the No. 1 underwriter for the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Lebanese, the United States, likewise becomes a legitimate military target.

Every citizen in the United States should take a minute while they sit back and enjoy the relative peace of summer and reflect on what that would mean, and if it is really the direction they want the United States to be drifting at the moment. Just don't ask the mainstream American media to assist with any reflective analysis. It is too busy promoting a larger war.

Source: Associated Press via myway
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraqi Has Worst Fuel Shortage Since '03"

Under a scorching sun, Baghdad taxi driver Sameer Abdul Razzaq wraps a wet towel around his head and waits for gasoline in a line stretching a mile. "I've been here since 6 a.m.," he said Sunday. "If I'm lucky, I'll get to the end of the line by sunset. I actually think I might end up spending the night here."

This is the capital of what should be one of the world's great oil producers, but corruption and insurgent attacks have Iraqis mired in their worst fuel shortage since Saddam Hussein was ousted, with black market gasoline costing as much as $4 a gallon.

The official price is $1 a gallon, but the fuel is often unavailable, forcing most Iraqi drivers to shell out the higher price to streetside vendors or wait in long lines at gas stations.

The shortage affects other petroleum products too. A cylinder of cooking gas costs about $18 on the black market - double the price a few months ago.

The irony is especially bitter in a country that sits atop the world's third-largest proven petroleum reserves. Iraq's estimated 115 billion barrels are exceeded in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries only by Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Iraq has been plagued by periodic fuel shortages since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But the current crisis comes amid higher demand for fuel to power generators and air-condition homes and offices, with summer temperatures topping 115 degrees.

The shortage is so bad that even a gas station inside the Green Zone, home of major Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy, ran out of fuel Sunday afternoon.

The government blames the problem on insurgent attacks on pipelines and other infrastructure, which snarl the distribution system.

"I realize that people are really suffering from the lack of energy and electricity," President Jalal Talabani said Sunday. "But this is not the fault of the government ... terrorists have blown up many power stations as well as the pipeline" that delivers crude oil from the northern fields around Kirkuk to the main refinery in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.

The Beiji facility had a prewar capacity to refine 2 million to 2.25 million gallons of gasoline a day. It is now producing less than 260,000 gallons of gasoline a day, Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said, citing electricity shortages and threats to refinery operators as the main sources of the problem.

Last week, the main oil storage facility in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, had to shut down after workers received death threats.

As of May, production stood at about 1.9 million barrels a day, U.S. officials said.

"The ministers are busy with one thing only, and that is touring the world as we wallow here in the Middle Ages," said lawyer Ahmed Mohammed Ali, 55. "Everyday I take a container to the gas station to get some fuel to run my generator. It takes me up to five hours and sometimes all I get is humiliation by the security personnel in charge of the station."

Last month, Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani predicted that Iraq's oil production would double over the next four years to 4 million barrels a day - a forecast that some petroleum experts thought was overly optimistic.

Who: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani
Source: Associated Press via Findlaw
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq Vows to Handle Security This Year"

Iraq-President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday that Iraqi forces will take over security of all provinces in the country by the end of the year, which now is largely in the hands of U.S. forces.

Iraqi leaders have said previously that their goal is to be fully in control of the country's security by the end of 2006, but Talabani's statement to reporters was the most direct on the subject.

Talabani did not elaborate, and it was not clear if he meant whether the U.S. would retain an advisory type of role in security or take a fully hands-off approach.

U.S. forces are currently responsible for the security of 17 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Only Samawah province is totally under Iraqi forces at present.

Source: Associated Press via Findlaw
Quotes: Iraqi officials: 1,500 died violently in Baghdad last month

Deputy Health Minister Dr. Sabah al-Husseini said Wednesday that about 1,500 violent deaths were reported last month in the Baghdad area - excluding members of the U.S.-led coalition.

The assistant manager of the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Abdul Razzaq al-Obeidi, said 1,815 bodies were brought in last month, and about 85 percent had died violently. The biggest cause of violent deaths was gunshot wounds, mostly in the head, he told The Associated Press.

Head shots are generally associated with death squads that roam the capital seeking victims from the rival Muslim sect. Violence between Shiite and Sunni extremists has been surging since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

Source: Associated Press via Findlaw
Quotes: From article titled, "Proposed War Crimes Act protection for Bush administration would apply retroactively"

The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would protect policymakers retroactively from possible criminal charges for authorizing humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.

At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA, and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials

The White House, without elaboration, said in a statement that the bill "will apply to any conduct by any U.S. personnel, whether committed before or after the law is enacted."

Two attorneys said that the draft is in the revision stage but that the administration seems intent on pushing forward the draft's major points in Congress after the Labor Day holiday in September.

"I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous," said a third attorney, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

Fidell said the initiative is "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations."

Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration," said a fourth attorney, Scott Horton, who has followed detainee issues closely. "The administration is trying to insulate policymakers under the War Crimes Act."

Senator Lindsey Graham, a former military lawyer, said Congress "is aware of the dilemma we face, how to make sure the CIA and others are not unfairly prosecuted."

He said that at the same time, however, that Congress "will not allow political appointees to waive the law."

Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director, said that "President Bush is looking to limit the War Crimes Act through legislation" now that the Supreme Court has embraced Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. In June, the court ruled that Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates Common Article 3.

Who: Riverbend Girl
Source: Baghdad Burning
Quotes: From blog entry titled, "Summer of Goodbyes..."

Residents of Baghdad are systematically being pushed out of the city. Some families are waking up to find a Klashnikov bullet and a letter in an envelope with the words “Leave your area or else.” The culprits behind these attacks and threats are Sadr’s followers- Mahdi Army. It’s general knowledge, although no one dares say it out loud. In the last month we’ve had two different families staying with us in our house, after having to leave their neighborhoods due to death threats and attacks. It’s not just Sunnis- it’s Shia, Arabs, Kurds- most of the middle-class areas are being targeted by militias.

Other areas are being overrun by armed Islamists. The Americans have absolutely no control in these areas. Or maybe they simply don’t want to control the areas because when there’s a clash between Sadr’s militia and another militia in a residential neighborhood, they surround the area and watch things happen.

Since the beginning of July, the men in our area have been patrolling the streets. Some of them patrol the rooftops and others sit quietly by the homemade road blocks we have on the major roads leading into the area. You cannot in any way rely on Americans or the government. You can only hope your family and friends will remain alive- not safe, not secure- just alive. That’s good enough.

For me, June marked the first month I don’t dare leave the house without a hijab, or headscarf. I don’t wear a hijab usually, but it’s no longer possible to drive around Baghdad without one. It’s just not a good idea. (Take note that when I say ‘drive’ I actually mean ‘sit in the back seat of the car’- I haven’t driven for the longest time.) Going around bare-headed in a car or in the street also puts the family members with you in danger. You risk hearing something you don’t want to hear and then the father or the brother or cousin or uncle can’t just sit by and let it happen. I haven’t driven for the longest time. If you’re a female, you risk being attacked.

I have nothing against the hijab, of course, as long as it is being worn by choice. Many of my relatives and friends wear a headscarf. Most of them began wearing it after the war. It started out as a way to avoid trouble and undue attention, and now they just keep it on because it makes no sense to take it off. What is happening to the country?

I realized how common it had become only in mid-July when M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country. She walked into the house, complaining of the heat and the roads, her brother following closely behind. It took me to the end of the visit for the peculiarity of the situation to hit me. She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.

I’ve said goodbye this last month to more people than I can count. Some of the ‘goodbyes’ were hurried and furtive- the sort you say at night to the neighbor who got a death threat and is leaving at the break of dawn, quietly.

Some of the ‘goodbyes’ were emotional and long-drawn, to the relatives and friends who can no longer bear to live in a country coming apart at the seams.

Many of the ‘goodbyes’ were said stoically- almost casually- with a fake smile plastered on the face and the words, “See you soon”… Only to walk out the door and want to collapse with the burden of parting with yet another loved one.

During times like these I remember a speech Bush made in 2003: One of the big achievements he claimed was the return of jubilant ‘exiled’ Iraqis to their country after the fall of Saddam. I’d like to see some numbers about the Iraqis currently outside of the country you are occupying… Not to mention internally displaced Iraqis abandoning their homes and cities.

I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever know just how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left the country this bleak summer. I wonder how many of them will actually return. Where will they go? What will they do with themselves? Is it time to follow? Is it time to wash our hands of the country and try to find a stable life somewhere else?

Who: Alexander Cockburn
Source: Counterpunch
Quotes: From article titled, "Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know"

As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.

The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.

Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.

Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.

Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.

Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.

That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah.

You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.

In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.

Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided [to] chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.

Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.

With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop.

When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.

Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.

The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.

Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure.

So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.

Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 -- don’t like what Israel is up to.

Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice.

Who: W. Patrick Lang, Retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces
Source: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2006
Quotes: From blog entry titled, "The Value of Allies"

... it is necessary to consider, ... whether the alliance with Israel is a net plus or a net minus for the United States from a strategic point of view. Countries live or die by their interests, not by their sentiments.

... Israel is an American political and strategic "investment." This latest expedition into Lebanon is just the latest in a long series of payments made into that investment account by the United States.

Like any investor, the United States expects to see that its "capital" is well employed.

If Israel wishes to be thought a good "investment" rather than simply a beneficiary of sentiment and good will, then the IDF had better win its war against Hizbullah, and "handily" at that.

Without the context of a crushing defeat of Hizbullah, the whole imaginary diplomatic "Potemkin Village" of; Resolution 1559, disarmament of militias, re-training of the Lebanese Army and international forces designed to protect Israel's northern border will come crashing down.

What then will be the estimate of Israel's strategic value as an ally?

Source: McClatchy
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraqi civil war has already begun, U.S. troops say"

While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun.

Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

"There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth," said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston. Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district.

"We've seen some that have been executed on site, with bullet holes in the ground; the rest were tortured and executed somewhere else and dumped," Johnson said.

The recent assertion by U.S. soldiers here that Iraq is in a civil war is a stunning indication that American efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq are failing, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.

Some Iraqi troops, too, share that assessment.

"This is a civil war," said a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad.

"The problem between Sunnis and Shiites is a religious one, and it gets worse every time they attack each other's mosques," said the adviser, who gave only his rank and first name, Col. Ahmed, because of security concerns. "Iraq is now caught in hell."

American soldiers, particularly the rank and file who go out on daily patrols, say they see no end to the bloodshed. Higher ranking officers concede that the developments are threatening to move beyond their grasp.

"There's no plan - we are constantly reacting," said a senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."

Political sensitivity has made some officers here hesitant to use the words "civil war," but they aren't shy about describing the situation that they and their men have found on their patrols.

"I hate to use the word `purify,' because it sounds very bad, but they are trying to force Shiites into Shiite areas and Sunnis into Sunni areas," said Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, who commands a 4th Infantry Division battalion on the western edge of Baghdad, a hotspot of sectarian violence.

Osborne, 39, of Decatur, Ill., compared Iraq to Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in an orgy of inter-tribal violence in 1994. "That was without doubt a civil war - the same thing is happening here.

"But it's not called a civil war - there's such a negative connotation to that word and it suggests failure," he said.

"The sectarian violence flip-flops back and forth," said Lt. Col. Paul Finken, who commands a 101st Airborne Division task force that works with Iraqi soldiers in the area. "We find bodies all the time - bound, tortured, shot."

Lt. Col. Chris Pease, 48, the deputy commander for the 101st Airborne's brigade in eastern Baghdad, was asked whether he thought that Iraq's civil war had begun.

"Civil war," he said, and then paused for several moments.

"You've got to understand," said Pease, of Milton-Freewater, Ore., "you know, the United States Army and most of the people in the United States Army, the Marine Corps and the Air Force and the Navy have never really lost at anything."

Pease paused again.

"Whether it is there or not, I don't know," he said.

Pressed for what term he would use to describe the security situation in Iraq, Pease said: "Right now I would say that it's more of a Kosovo, ethnic-cleansing type thing - not ethnic cleansing, it is a sectarian fight - they are bombing; they are threatening to get them off the land."

Pointing to a map, 1st Lt. Robert Murray, last week highlighted a small Shiite village of 25 homes that was abandoned after a flurry of death threats came to town on small pieces of paper.

"The letters tell them if they don't leave in 48 hours, they'll kill their entire families," said Murray, 29, of Franklin, Mass. "It's happening a lot right now. There have been a lot of murders recently; between that and the kidnappings, they're making good on their threats. ... They need to learn to live together. I'd like to see it happen, but I don't know if it's possible."

Riding in a Humvee later that day, Capt. Jared Rudacille, Murray's commander in the 4th Infantry Division, noted the market of a town he was passing through. The stalls were all vacant. The nearby homes were empty. There wasn't a single civilian car on the road.

"Between 1,500 and 2,000 people have moved out," said Rudacille, 29, of York, Pa. "I now see only 15 or 20 people out during the day."

The following evening, 1st Lt. Corbett Baxter was showing a reporter the area, to the west of where Rudacille was, that he patrols.

"Half of my entire northern sector cleared out in a week, about 2,000 people," said Baxter, 25, of Fort Hood, Texas.

Staff Sgt. Wesley Ramon had a similar assessment while on patrol between the Sunni town of Abu Ghraib and Shula, a Shiite stronghold. The main bridge leading out of Shula was badly damaged recently by four bombs placed underneath it. Military officials think the bombers were Sunnis trying to stanch the flow of Shiite militia gunmen coming out of Shula to kill Sunnis.

"It's to the point of being irreconcilable; you know, we've found a lot of bodies, entire villages have been cleared out, we get reports of entire markets being gunned down - and if that's not a marker of a civil war, I don't know what is," said Ramon, 33, of San Antonio, Texas.

Driving back to his base, Johnson watched a long line of trucks and cars go by, packed with families fleeing their homes with everything they could carry: mattresses, clothes, furniture, and, in the back of some trucks, bricks to build another home.

"Every morning that we head back to the patrol base, this is all we see," Johnson said. "These are probably people who got threatened last night."

In Taji, an area north of Baghdad, where the roads between Sunni and Shiite villages have become killing fields, many soldiers said they saw little chance that things would get better.

"I don't think there's any winning here. Victory for us is withdrawing," said Sgt. James Ellis, 25, of Chicago. "In this part of the world they have been fighting for 3,000 years, and we're not going to fix it in three."

Who: Gen. John Abizaid (Commander of US Central Command) and Gen. Peter Pace (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)
Source: Reuters
Quotes: From article titled, "Top U.S. generals see threat of Iraq civil war"

Iraq is caught in the worst sectarian violence yet seen and faces the threat of civil war, two of the United States' senior generals said on Thursday, three years after the U.S. invasion.

"Sectarian violence probably is as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular," Army Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate hearing. "If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, the most senior U.S. military officer, also said there was a "possibility" of civil war in Iraq, where the violence has claimed about 100 lives a day. Asked whether he would have seen a chance of civil war a year ago, He replied, "No, sir."

Abizaid, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee with Pace and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said the violence in Baghdad hurts prospects for reducing troop levels in Iraq, now at about 133,000.

Sectarian violence in Iraq has intensified despite a security crackdown that has added thousands of troops to the streets.

Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the committee's chairman, suggested the Bush administration might have to come back to Congress for authorization to remain in Iraq if the situation spirals into civil war.

Abizaid said, however, that Iraq's slide into civil war could be halted because the Iraqi Army was holding together and the government remains committed to preventing it.

"I'm optimistic that slide can be prevented," he said.

Who: William Patey, Outgoing British Ambassador to Iraq
Source: BBC
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq civil war warning for Blair"

Civil war is a more likely outcome in Iraq than democracy, Britain's outgoing ambassador in Baghdad has warned Tony Blair in a confidential memo.

William Patey, who left the Iraqi capital last week, also predicted the break-up of Iraq along ethnic lines.

He did also say that "the position is not hopeless" - but said it would be "messy" for five to 10 years.

The Foreign Office said it did not comment on leaked documents but added that Iraqi security forces were getting more capable every day.

BBC correspondent Paul Wood said although the document does not contradict government denials that civil war is imminent, "it is a devastating official assessment of the prospects for a peaceful Iraq, and stands in stark contrast to the public rhetoric".

The bleak assessment of the country's future was contained in Mr Patey's final e-cable, or diplomatic telegram, from Baghdad.

The distribution list included the UK's prime minister, foreign secretary, defence secretary and House of Commons leader, as well as senior military commanders in both Iraq and the UK.

Mr Patey wrote: "The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy.

"Even the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq - a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror - must remain in doubt."

Talking about the Shia militias blamed for many killings, Mr Patey added: "If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy then preventing the Jaish al-Mahdi (the Mahdi Army) from developing into a state within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority."

The cable says that "the next six months are crucial" - an assessment which is shared by the coalition's military commanders.

Senior military sources told the BBC it was "make or break" time in Iraq. The Americans are sending thousands of extra troops to Baghdad, starting next week.

Who: Jalal Talabani, Iraq President
Source: Associated Press via myway
Quotes: From article titled, "Iraq Vows to Handle Security This Year"

President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday that Iraqi forces will take over security of all provinces in the country by the end of the year. Currently U.S. forces handle security in 17 of Iraq's 18 provinces.

Talabani, a Kurd from northern Iraq, said the government is confident of vanquishing terrorism.

"We are highly optimistic that we will terminate terrorism in this year... the multinational forces' role is a supportive one and the Iraqi forces will take over security in all Iraqi provinces by the end of this year gradually and God's will, we will take the lead," he said.

"The terrorists fear the unity of the Iraqi people," he said. "Our armed forces are doing well, but we expect more from them."

Iraqi leaders have said previously that their goal is to be fully in control of the country's security by the end of 2006, but Talabani's statement is the most direct on the subject.

Talabani did not elaborate, and it was not clear if he meant whether the U.S. would retain an advisory type of role in security or take a fully hands-off approach.

U.S. forces are currently responsible for the security of 17 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Only Samawah province is totally under Iraqi forces at present.

"Terminating terrorism cannot be achieved through military force ... we need a comprehensive plan and we started by launching the national reconciliation campaign as part of this work," Talabani said.

Who: Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General
Source: Associated Press via Findlaw
Quotes: From article titled, "U.S. Senate panel revives skepticism of Bush detainee plan outlined by attorney general"

The Bush administration is pressing a hard-line trial system for terror suspects despite objections by senators and military lawyers.

Major controversial demands, outlined to a Senate committee Wednesday by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, would let prosecutors withhold classified evidence from the accused and allow hearsay evidence against them.

"We must not share with captured terrorists the highly sensitive intelligence that may be relevant to military commission proceedings," Gonzales told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Gonzales said detainee legislation also should permit hearsay and coerced testimony if it were deemed reliable by a judge.

These approaches are not permitted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the rules that guide procedures in military courts-martial.

The administration's plans have sounded alarms in the military's legal corps and in Congress, whose critics say the UCMJ is a tried-and-true body of law that is well-regarded around the world.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning, before Gonzales' remarks, the senior legal officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force said they would not support a law that would bar defendants' access to evidence, which is considered a fundamental right in U.S. civilian and military courts.

Republican senators who have been negotiating a final legislative proposal with the administration said they, too, were unconvinced the administration's position was sound.

"We haven't reached a final decision on how we're going to handle it," but it is important to have "this statute be able to survive any subsequent federal court review process," said Sen. John W. Warner, the Senate Armed Services chairman.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former Air Force legal officer, said he opposes withholding evidence because of the dangerous precedent it would set.

"If the only way we can try this terrorist is to disclose classified information, and we can't share it with the accused, I would argue, don't do the trial. Just keep them. Because it could come back to haunt us," Graham said.

Gonzales played down the effect of denying classified evidence to terror suspects, telling lawmakers, "I think it would be an extraordinary case where classified information would be used and would not be provided to the accused."

Warner said he may convene hearings during the August congressional recess so that the legislation could be finished by September. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Wednesday he expects a detainee bill to reach the floor in September.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he would oppose legislation that would authorize the defense secretary, instead of Congress, to determine what crimes might come under the military tribunals' jurisdiction.