Antiwar.com Blog

From the Dow Jones Newswire:

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case testified that a captain at the Baghdad prison said the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq was present during some ” interrogations and/or allegations of prisoner abuse,” The Washington Post reported on its Web site Saturday, citing a a recording of a military hearing it said it obtained.

The Post reported that the lawyer said he was told that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib. The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, said a sargeant at the prison as prepared to testify that intelligence officers told him the abuse of detainees on the cellblock was “the right thing to do.”

According to the report, Shuck is assigned to defend Staff Sgt. Ivan L. “Chip” Frederick II of the 372nd Military Police Company. During an April 2 hearing that was open to the public, Shuck said that the company commander, Capt. Donald J. Reese, was prepared to testify in exchange for immunity. The military prosecutor questioned Shuck about what Reese would say under oath.

“Are you saying that Captain Reese is going to testify that General Sanchez was there and saw what was going on?” The Post quoted military prosecutor Capt. John McCabe as saying.

“That’s what he told me,” Shuck was quoted as sayijng. “I am an officer of the court, sir, and I would not lie. I have got two children at home. I’m not going to risk my career.”

The Sunday Times and the Scotsman are both reporting on a memo highly critical of American “heavy handed tactics” in Iraq and accusing the US of responsibility for the uprisings currently engulfing Iraq:

THE FIRST cracks in Britain’s coalition with the United States over the occupation of Iraq were exposed last night by a leaked government memo which revealed deep misgivings about America’s “heavy-handed” tactics in the war-torn country.

The damning document, produced by a team working for Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, disclosed private reservations within Tony Blair’s administration about Washington’s approach to the post-war occupation.

The detailed memo, sent to senior ministers and top officials last week as a “progress report” on the occupation, stressed the need for the UK government to press the Americans to soften their approach and avoid aggressive responses “which would jeopardise our objectives”.

It also talked of “the need to redouble our efforts to ensure a sensitive and sensible US approach to military operations”.

The revelations shatter the government’s long-held insistence that there are no differences between Downing Street and the White House over Iraq.

The six-page memo suggests that the US tactics have particularly damaged support among ordinary Iraqis and stirred up much of the unrest which has exploded into violence in recent months.

And, in a startling admission, it also declares that the “scandal” over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Coalition-run jails has damaged the “moral authority” of Britain and the US as they struggle to justify their decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime.

“We should not underestimate the present difficulties,” the document states, in a section headed ‘Problems’. “Heavy-handed US military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf some weeks ago have fuelled both Sunni and Shi’ite opposition to the Coalition and lost us much public support inside Iraq.”

The memo, reported in the Sunday Times, adds: “The scandal of the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib [prison] has sapped the moral authority of the Coalition, inside Iraq and internationally.”

The memo continues to detail two possibilities for UK troops in Iraq, neither of them having anything to do with British troops mixing with the Americans. The Independent writes, in an article titled “‘Spray and slay’: are American troops out of control in Iraq?“

“The British military tends to have far more open dealings with the local population than the Americans,” said Christopher Bellamy, professor of military science at Cranfield University. “While the British rely more on local intelligence to warn them of trouble in advance, US forces have a ‘stand-off’ posture, which means trouble tends to erupt without warning. As a result they need to deliver enormous amounts of firepower to overcome it.”

Eleanor Goldsworthy, UK forces specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, said the approach taken by British forces in Iraq was: “If we behave, we earn their goodwill.” The American attitude, by contrast, was: “If they behave, they earn our goodwill.” And if they don’t, others might add, US forces will punish them – the policy that appeared to be adopted when the Marines moved on Fallujah last month in the wake of the deaths of four American private security men.

The insistence of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on a “war lite” policy, said Professor Bellamy, meant that “American forces have to make up in firepower what they lack in manpower”. Because US soldiers specialised early in their careers, and received less overall training than their British counterparts, the majority were not effective combat troops, and had to be protected by those with the appropriate training.

“The philosophy is almost that of the wagon train, and tends to lead to the ‘spray and slay’ behaviour we have seen,” said the analyst.”It is hard to over-estimate the lack of awareness of most American soldiers in Iraq,” said a military source. “Many, perhaps most, have never been abroad before. They see their mission as giving democracy to the Iraqis and enforcing stability, and find it very difficult to understand why the Iraqis aren’t grateful. They have no idea that they are seen as arrogant and aggressive.”

In the view of British forces, the source added, such attitudes had led to a succession of “fundamental mistakes”, and had made senior officers extremely hostile to being put under American command. This is one of the options reported to be under consideration by Downing Street this weekend as the deployment of more British forces is weighed.

The US wants Britain to take over from the departed Spanish contingent in the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, where American firepower is being deployed against militias loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric declared an outlaw by Washington.

“Seeking to adopt normal low-profile British tactics in the wake of American aggressiveness would be difficult enough,” said the military source, “but to have to go in under US operational command would be a disaster.”

The situation is clearly becoming untenable and unsustainable, as the Scotsman reports another scoop:

Scotland on Sunday has discovered that a private security company headed by former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind is making millions from a contract to protect Foreign Office staff working in Iraq.

ArmorGroup, the biggest security firm working in Iraq, is one of two companies that have raked in a total of £15m between them for providing round-the-clock cover in the treacherous environment of post-war Iraq during the past year.

Rifkind, the Tory candidate for Kensington and Chelsea, sparked protests from political opponents last month when he took over the chairmanship of ArmorGroup, which has 700 employees in Iraq.

Straw has admitted ArmorGroup and Control Risks are being paid a combined total of £50,000 every day to protect bureaucrats stationed in Iraq, amid mounting concerns about the safety of civilians in the war-torn country.

The fee was described as a “minuscule amount” by one government official last night. But furious MPs condemned the outlay as “appalling value for money”, and claimed the government should not be ploughing money into a controversial industry that is making huge profits as part of the reconstruction effort in Iraq.

More than a dozen firms, many employing former servicemen, have been registered to work in Iraq, protecting politicians, civil servants and staff at several of the companies that have won contracts to rebuild Iraq’s shattered infrastructure.

But the security bill is swallowing up a huge chunk of the $18bn set aside by the Americans for rebuilding the country.

“Some of the firms in Iraq provide very good protection, but I am very concerned that the government is paying so much money for it,” said Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay.

“There are few ground rules for what these companies are allowed to do. I would like to think our government could provide this sort of protection from its own forces, particularly when so many of the people working for these security companies have left the forces.”

Private security companies have an estimated 10,000 guards in Iraq. Their lucrative trade has provoked a series of complaints about the influence of heavily armed personnel who are not under the direct control of official forces.

Clearly, the British military realizes the disaster the American approach in Iraq has been since American-fostered hatred of the occupation is endangering the lives of British troops and bureaucrats. None of the “coalition” countries envisioned being dragged into a quagmire of the dimensions the US has created. Finally, some of them have realized that they must break ranks with the Americans and speak out against the violent American response to virtually every situation in which they find themselves, lest UK troops be overrun by enraged Iraqis, forced to fight in desperation by aggressive American arrogance and ignorance.

---

Tagging this on from one of my favorite Brit bloggers:

Whether Greenstock is dumb enough to believe the situation can still be turned around, which is possible given his previous statements; or whether he is trying to drum up support for the deluded Blair, one can’t say. But you can be sure that Greenstock has about as much credibility these days as Chalabi and should be taken about as seriously.

What Greenstock means of course is that when the US admits defeat in Iraq the whole Western policy towards the Middle East is finished and life will not look so good. So Greenstock is preparing us for the apocolyptic fight he thinks we should have. But of course no matter what happens now America and Britain have lost. Iraq has been turned into Afghanastan, we have enraged Muslim opinion worldwide, and the American military have been shown for the incompetent barbarian army many suspected they were.

“If” we lose indeed. What a fool.

The Independent claims to have proof that the US military bombed a wedding and not a “smuggler safe house on a rat line:”

Fresh allegations of American abuse of prisoners continue to appall the world. But now ‘The Independent on Sunday’ has uncovered proof of US troops deliberately and indiscriminately shooting civilians. Here we examine new evidence that suggests the lawlessness in the American military was never confined to the prison camps and torture rooms but extended to the streets and homes of Iraq.

Amid the welter of ugly pictures from Iraq last week were images worse than those of the humiliation and torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison. These show chunks of flesh and hanks of women’s hair scattered across a scene of devastation. Among the few recognisable objects are musical instruments.

This is the scene of an incident that has divided Iraqis from their occupiers like few others. It has highlighted an issue more significant, yet far less discussed, than mistreatment in prisons: the degree to which indiscriminate use of American firepower has made enemies of the Iraqi population. According to independent estimates – none are available from the coalition – about 11,500 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the war in March last year.

The footage of flesh, hair and musical instruments was filmed by a video crew that reached the location of what local people say was a wedding party attacked without warning by the Americans, killing women and children. The instruments belonged to the band of Hussein Ali, one of Iraq’s most famous wedding singers, whose relatives buried him in Baghdad last week.

Despite this evidence – and earlier pictures filmed by al-Arabiya television, showing two dead babies wrapped side by side in a blanket, and a headless child lying next to the body of his or her mother – American commanders continue to insist that their strike, on a remote village in the desert close to the Syrian border, was against foreign fighters crossing into Iraq..

Read the rest…

As Juan Cole said, “Can’t they just say that they are deeply sorry for the Iraqis’ loss, and that they are not sure what went wrong, and will investigate? If they did kill so many women and children, surely that is a mistake no matter how you parse it, and they may as well admit it. It is this arrogance and instistence that the US is always right that has caused almost 90% of the Iraqis to come to view the Americans as occupiers rather than liberators.

Update 5/20: I just saw Gen. Kimmit on television denying that US forces saw any children at the site that was hit. But video and Arab television and press reports clearly show women and children casualties! This way lies a further erosion of the credibility of the US military in Iraq.“

Christopher Albritton is Back to Iraq and describes his return trip in “Greetings from Baghdad,” along with comments about the raids on Ahmed Chalabi’s house and INC offices, as well as the wedding deaths in “Chalabi to CPA.”

And Riverbend, the Iraqi girl blogger, also comments on Chalabi and the attack on the wedding party in her posting En Kint Tedri…

In the end, America had to know that Chalabi was virtually useless…. Could the decision-makers currently mulling over the Iraq situation be so ridiculously optimistic? Or could they have really been so wrong in the past? We have a saying in Arabic, “En kint tedri, fe tilk musseeba… in kint la tedri, fa il musseebatu a’adham” which means, “If you knew, then that was a catastrophe… and if you didn’t know, then the catastrophe is greater.”

Nikolai at Lenin’s Tomb points out another American Cultural Ignorance faux pas committed in renaming their infamous Iraqi torture center:

At the behest of the IGC, Abu Graibh prison has been renamed , Camp Redemption. I shit you not. Hmmm. Where can they have got that idea from?

Could it be a reference to the old regime, which was, after all the Ba’ath (Redemption) Socialist Party of Iraq?

Remember Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)?

Abu Aardvark posts a development I had missed and points out an interesting aspect of al-Jazeera.

Following the American lead in attacking al Jazeera and cracking down on press freedom, “Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority issued a “fatwa” or religious edict Thursday banning Muslims from watching Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV.” Now, the Bush administration might object to al Jazeera because it sees it as an anti-American force in the region, while the Saudis see it as “”Zionist television,” but really… you say tomayto, I say tomahto.

Anyway, the real point of the Saudi edict – and the crippling blind spot of the Bush administration – comes here: the fatwa bitterly attacks al Jazeera because it “hosts “so-called reformists who have a podium for airing their poisonous ideas.”” This is the side of al Jazeera which the Bush administration always misses: as much as it challenges American foreign policy in the region, it challenges the repressive status quo in the Arab world far more. If the Bush administration were serious about promoting Arab reform – which I don’t believe that they are in the slightest – then they would recognize al Jazeera’s power in mobilizing pressures for change from within.

Emphasis mine. So, the Bush administration and the most repressive country on the planet’s highest religious hardliner both hate al Jazeera, think it interferes with their agendas, and want to ban it.

Stuart Hughes on Ahmed Chalabi passing American intel to Iran:

CBS is reporting tonight that Ahmed Chalabi is accused of passing highly-classified US intelligence to Iran. Newsweek has already reported as much. If the information Chalabi gave Tehran is on a par with the “intelligence” he fed to the Pentagon, the US has nothing to worry about.

Oh, and for anyone in the market for Right-Wing Stuff, Stuart has a link, in case your “Peace Through Superior Firepower” bumper sticker is getting tatty. I hear they’re having a Discontinued Items sale on this one.

Eli at Left I highlights the hypocrisy of the New York Times reporting on Chalabi’s disinfo while never mentioning Judith “Kneepads” Miller, NYT’s very own Chalabi Receptacle.

Alan at Southerly Buster also weighs in on the Times’ hypocrisy and the Iran-Chalabi connection, “Perhaps these genius intellectuals should go back to the boring art of fact-checking. Perhaps, if one member of the axis of evil could use the Cabal’s intellectual prejudices to get them to attack another member of the axis of evil then the whole axis was not all that, well, axial.”

A new entry in the Iraq: I’m Lovin It series: (Part IX: Muppet Government) at The Decadent West.

The posters at Rafah Kid Rambles have been working hard to keep us apprised of events in Gaza. There are too many excellent posts and unique photos to list them all, just read the entire thing. Don’t miss the bit about the Rabbi Dov Lior ruling which Lawrence of Cyberia slices and dices here.

Christopher Albritton of Back to Iraq is back in Iraq, reporting from Baghdad.

Jim Henley reminds me that none of us AntiWar.com bloggers (Not even Matt!) have blogged congratulations for Matt Barganier’s selection as the new editor at AntiWar.com. Congratulations also to the AntiWar staff for acquiring such talent!

Micah Holmquist figures the US troops in Iraq are ahead of the Afghanistan troops in the Wedding Bombing competition.

Readers of prominent political blogs may have noticed a survey going on the past week or so by blogads. The results are interesting and include some surprises, such as the fact that according to blogads’ survey of 17,159 blog readers, 79% of all blog readers are men. Thanks to Tim Dunlop at the road to surfdom for posting the link to the survey results.

Patriotboy is looking for a second wife at Single Republican.com. Also, Republican Jesus weighs in on the Iraq torture photos.

No matter what horrors come of the neoconservative dream, they will blame us. They’re already busy.