Antiwar.com Blog

Raed Jarrar posted a bizarre Kimmitt (the Iraqis have started to call him Kimmitt the Frog)quote.

The shadows of the unpleasant events of Falluja will affect the image of the American Army in Iraq… it will only increasing the anger of Iraqis, and help more extremist right winged leaders dominate the political mood.

For God’s sake, didn’t anyone think of starting a survey to attempt to predict what this war might cause from a socio-cultural perspective? A survey to compare the anger and hatred of both Arabs’ and Americans’ “regular Joes” before and after the war of Iraq??

Don’t you believe that the war on terror must start with fixing the deep roots of the problem?? The real reasons that cause horrible incidents like what happened on the 11th of Sept…. the reasons that rationalize the plans of people full of hate going all the way to kill themselves with other thousands of American civilians?

Well… Kimmitt the frog has an interesting theory…
Today, he asked Iraqis to simply “CHANGE THE TV CHANNEL”…
What the!!!!!! I mean… he was answering a question from an Iraqi journalist, about how to enhance the image of the American Army, after Iraqis saw hundreds of civilians being killed in Falluja on the Arabic TV channels…
He said that twice! I swear to god! “Change the Channel”!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Well, he really did say it. I googled it up.

Coalition spokesmen Sunday were unwilling, however, to admit to widespread civilian casualties and said U.S. forces had acted in self-defense. Kimmitt noted that the bombing of a wall surrounding a mosque last week, killing a reported 45 people, was necessary because insurgents were using the mosque to attack coalition forces.

He blamed Arabic language newscasts for distorting events.

“My solution is change the channel,” Kimmitt said in response to a question from an Iraqi journalist. “Change the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children, are not legitimate news sources, that is propaganda and that is lies, so you want a solution, change the channel.”

So, if the TV tells you something different from what Prince Kermit says, change the channel until you find one that isn’t distorting everything!. And anyone showing you live images of Americans killing children and women is a liar! When you see this live on your TV remember that the TV is lying!

As Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of U.S. military operations in Iraq, was speaking by phone on al-Jazeera and insisting that American forces declared a unilateral ceasefire in Fallujah, the channel was airing live images of continued air raids by F16 fighter jets on residential neighborhoods of the town.

Kimmitt later dismissed the coverage of the channel for the crisis as a “series of lies”. However, asked by al-Jazeera anchor about the live images, the U.S. commander said he was not accusing al-Jazeera of faking the images, but rather “looked at things differently”.

He said the attacks by F16 fighter jets and helicopters were meant to take out “armed insurgents firing at our troops”. The anchor reminded Kimmitt, however, that “live coverage showed children and women killed by the missiles, not armed insurgents”.

Damn those al Jazeera pests! They were making Kermit sound as demented as Bagdad Bob!

What’s a frog to do? And if you say this is anything but a big fat al-Jazeera lie, you’re an unpatriotic terrorist antiamerican commie traitor! You wish Saddam was in power with his people shredder! You hate freedom and you should change the channel!

Go here for an eyewitness account of what it is like in Fallujah today. Rahul Mahajan is blogging it. There are no permalinks, so look for the entry “April 11, 2:00 pm EST.Fallujah, Iraq.”

Juan Cole and Billmon both highlight an article appearing in the Telegraph today.

Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.

One senior officer said that America’s aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of “unease and frustration” among the British high command.

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen – the Nazi expression for “sub-humans”.

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: “My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans’ use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don’t see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are.”

The phrase untermenschen – literally “under-people” – was brought to prominence by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior: Jews, Slavs and gypsies.

Although no formal complaints have as yet been made to their American counterparts, the officer said the British Government was aware of its commanders’ “concerns and fears”.

The officer explained that, under British military rules of war, British troops would never be given clearance to carry out attacks similar to those being conducted by the US military, in which helicopter gunships have been used on targets in urban areas.
[…]
“When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area.

“They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage, but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later.”

Recently, the Australians revealed that their pilots had similar complaints during the invasion.

And, as if further proof of this point were needed, here’s Paul McGeough, writing from Baghdad –

Still refusing to acknowledge a rising consensus among observers that it faces a broad-based nationalist movement, President George Bush insisted in a weekend radio address that “a small faction is attempting to . . . seize power”, and his Baghdad spokesman, Dan Senor, railed against “two-bit thugs . . . despised by a majority of Iraqis”.

But, while the Americans kill Iraqis in the numbers that they have taken to, they will have little or no support from Iraqis – no politician or religious leader can afford such an association. Personally many find it distasteful and if they were to support it publicly, they would go through their lives fearing a fate similar to that of the US security contractors in Falluja.

Unless the US can pull back, it risks having no Iraqi administration for what is largely a ceremonial return of sovereign power to Iraqis on June 30. There is still no agreement on the make-up of the proposed administration, and the events of the last week could leave the US alone at the negotiating table as it attempts to craft one.

The US is close to being as isolated in Iraq as the Firdos Square plinth from which US forces stage-managed the demolition of a statue of Saddam on April 9 last year. Few Iraqis were there to celebrate last year and none were in the square for the first anniversary.

Access was denied as part of a tight US security lockdown. US tanks prowled the square and loud-hailers were used to warn that those who approached the square could be shot on sight.

The only other weekend activity in the square was the arrival, almost to the hour of the anniversary of the statue coming down, of a team of US soldiers.

Despite the chaos across the city, it was deemed important enough for them to be sent to the square with a ladder to remove posters of Moqtada al-Sadr that Iraqis had hung from the obscure sculpture which has replaced Saddam on the plinth.

But just off the square, in a shuttered shop, there was a stunning measure of how the US has squandered Iraqi support.

The 56-year-old shopkeeper was too scared to give his name. Among his bolts of cloth and bottles of detergent, he talked about how this time last year his family’s hopes were so high, but now they feared that things would just get worse.

The son of a Shiite father and a Sunni mother, he spoke of his two brothers who Saddam had executed as political prisoners, and then he gave his verdict on the occupation: “The invasion was a bad idea. Saddam was bad and Bush is bad – but we’d have Saddam back any day.”

Sadeer, my driver in Baghdad, is leaning the same way.

When he arrived at the Palestine Hotel yesterday he was limping; the leg of his jeans was soaked in blood. The cut was small and we were able to bandage it, but George Bush had lost another Iraqi friend.

Sadeer, a 28-year-old Shiite, had been an enthusiastic supporter of the Americans and he takes his life in his hands by working for me. Iraqis are being executed just for being in the company of Westerners.

But his encounter with a bullying US soldier, who roughed him up as he came through the security cordon around the hotel, has pushed him into the nationalist Iraqi camp.

When the GI challenged him, Sadeer tried to explain in his limited English that he entered the hotel routinely. But he was barked at, shoved away and then belted on the foot with a rifle. He used to slow in traffic to greet the US troops. Now he has turned: “Americans bad for Iraq – too many problems.”

Leaving the hotel on foot, we had to go through the same streets to get to his car. I tried to explain our movements to the officer in charge of a US tank unit, but we were greeted with a stream of invective.

As I moved on one of his men fell in beside me, mumbling. Asked to repeat himself, he exploded: “Don’t you f—in’ eyeball me.”

Nodding to his officer and raising his weapon, he shrieked: “He has rank to lose. I don’t. I’ll take you out quick as a flash, motherf—er!”

This is all so disgusting and counterproductive and depressing. I was already depressed from identifying with this Jim Henley post:

And I had spent the morning reading GinMar’s journal from her arrival in Kuwait to the aftermath of the ambush in what was pretty clearly Kut, and over the month and a half’s worth of entries you can really see one of two things happening: relations with the locals sour measurably, OR, GinMar simply gets familiar enough with the culture to perceive the animosities that have been there all along. Either way, the trajectory of her entries provides a bass line to April’s crescendo of violence – it makes the claims that the Sadrist uprising is unconnected to any generalized mass hostility sound distinctly off-key.

And Deeds puts on a brave face about sitting unmolested in the Green Zone with a drink on his terrace despite reports that some group or other vowed to overrun the Green Zone, when the real story is not that he’s safe in the compound but that he dare not leave it. And Salam stops blogging and Zeyad loses faith and Raed, bless his heart, tries to apologize for kidnappings that are in no way his fault and what I am contemplating is the likelihood that these good people, folks of whom we’ve grown internet-fond, are slaughtered – Western-identified secular cosmopolitans in a country where, as of the much-touted February poll, “only” ten percent of Shiites approved of attacks on Americans, which is to say, ten percent of 60 percent of 24 million people, which is to say, 1.4 million people more or less, plus 30 percent of Iraq’s Arab Sunni population, which is to say 30 percent of 20 percent of 24 million people, or, actually, another 1.4 million people. And here and there Captain Chowns lose their battle to hang on to their humanity, and our people go nowhere but in armor and in force and at breakneck speed when they go at all and if they violate any two of these rules they die, and when they obey all three they strike the locals as like “giant lizards from another star.”

And I saw it coming – really, I did – and I begged people not to go through with it and, like I said, here we are.

Easter Greetings from George Bush:

As families and friends gather to enjoy this Easter season, we celebrate God’s gift of freedom and His love that conquers death. For those who observe Easter, our faith brings confidence that good will overcome evil and that joy is everlasting. Today, we give thanks for God’s many blessings and pray for His peace in the affairs of men.

Laura joins me in sending our best wishes for a happy Easter.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Paging George Orwell.

RICE [from Transcript of Rice’s 9/11 commission statement]: The threat reporting to which we could respond was in June and July about threats abroad. What we tried to do for — just because people said you cannot rule out an attack on the United States, was to have the domestic agencies and the FBI together to just pulse them and have them be on alert.

ROEMER: So, Dr. Rice, let’s say that the FBI is the key here. You say that the FBI was tasked with trying to find out what the domestic threat was. We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 Commission. We’ve gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody — nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices. We have talked to the director at the time of the FBI during this threat period, Mr. Pickard. He says he did not tell the field offices to do this. And we have talked to the special agents in charge. They don’t have any recollection of receiving a notice of threat. Nothing went down the chain to the FBI field offices on spiking of information, on knowledge of al Qaeda in the country, and still, the FBI doesn’t do anything. Isn’t that some of the responsibility of the national security advisor?

—–

RICE: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” … The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says bin Laden would like to attack the United States. I don’t think you, frankly, had to have that report to know that bin Laden would like to attack the United States.

de·ter·mi·na·tion
the act of deciding definitely and firmly; also : the result of such an act of decision

like
to wish to have

—–

RICE: It did not warn of attacks inside the United States.

“Bin Laden determined to strike in US“: … Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.” After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington…. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told – – service at the same time that bin Laden was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike. … Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own U.S. attack.

—–

RICE: It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information.

Bin Laden determined to strike in US: Al Qaeda members — including some who are U.S. citizens — have resided in or traveled to the U.S. for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. … A clandestine source said in 1998 that a bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks …FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. … CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or [sic] bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

—–

RICE: It had a number of discussions of — it had a discussion of whether or not they might use hijacking to try and free a prisoner who was being held in the United States — Ressam. It reported that the FBI had full field investigations under way.

“Seattle an al-Qaida target? Local security officials left out of loop,” by PAUL SHUKOVSKY, The Seattle Post Intelligencer: But the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office at the time said yesterday that he never heard of any such investigations. And retired agent Charles Mandigo added that no one ever informed him of threats to the prison or the courthouse.

Mandigo is not alone:

· The chief district judge who presided over Ressam’s case said that his courthouse said no one told him his courthouse was under threat.
· A deputy U.S. marshal charged with courthouse security said no one informed the Marshal’s Service about the danger.
· An assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting Ressam said he never heard a thing about it. A federal anti-terrorism agent said if there was an investigation into threats against the courthouse and the prison, no one told the local joint terrorism task force.

—–

“We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001,” by Eric Boehlert, Salon.com: Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. “Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That’s an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it’s a lie. …[T]here was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should’ve alerted the people to the threat we’re facing. … I’m hoping the commission asks him [FBI Director Robert Mueller] real questions — like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who’d been used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn’t say no.”

RICE: … And I said, “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon” — I’m paraphrasing now — “into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile.”

As I said to you in the private session, I probably should have said, “I could not have imagined,” because within two days, people started to come to me and say, “Oh, but there were these reports in 1998 and 1999. The intelligence community did look at information about this.”

—–

LEHMAN: Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in flight training, had taken flight training, were in flight training?

RICE: I was not. And I’m not sure that that was known at the center.

LEHMAN: Were you told that the U.S. Marshal program had been changed to drop any U.S. marshals on domestic flights?

RICE: I was not told that.

LEHMAN: Were you told that the red team in FAA — the red teams for 10 years had reported their hard data that the U.S. airport security system never got higher than 20 percent effective and was usually down around 10 percent for 10 straight years?

RICE: To the best of my recollection, I was not told that.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that INS had been lobbying for years to get the airlines to drop the transit without visa loophole that enabled terrorists and illegals to simply buy a ticket through the transit-without- visa-waiver and pay the airlines extra money and come in?

RICE: I learned about that after September 11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that the INS had quietly, internally, halved its internal security enforcement budget?

RICE: I was not made aware of that. I don’t remember being made aware of that, no.

LEHMAN: Were you aware that it was the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose the sanctuary policies of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Diego for political reasons, which policy in those cities prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal immigration authorities?

RICE: I do not believe I was aware of that.

LEHMAN: Were you aware — to shift a little bit to Saudi Arabia — were you aware of the program that was well established that allowed Saudi citizens to get visas without interviews?

RICE: I learned of that after 9/11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware of the activities of the Saudi ministry of religious affairs here in the United States during that transition?

RICE: I believe that only after September 11 did the full extent of what was going on with the ministry of religious affairs became evident.

LEHMAN: Were you aware of the extensive activities of the Saudi government in supporting over 300 radical teaching schools and mosques around the country [sic], including right here in the United States?

RICE: I believe we’ve learned a great deal more about this and addressed it with the Saudi government since 9/11.

LEHMAN: Were you aware at the time of the fact that Saudi Arabia had and were you told that they had in their custody the CFO and the closest confidant of al Qaeda — of Osama bin Laden, and refused direct access to the United States?

RICE: I don’t remember anything of that kind.

The Washington Post has a piece up today about a battalion of Iraqis that have refused to fight for the Americans at Fallujah. They are saying, “We did not sign up to fight Iraqis.”

There have been some efforts in the blogosphere to follow this story, mostly by piecing together stray references that manage to find their way into print about American-trained Iraqi police who’ve joined the insurgents and ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Force, also American trained) who’ve either joined the insurgency, sabotaged American operations or simply walked away from their positions. One bit of this story that hasn’t surfaced in any major media is the role of Chalabi and his INC militia in the siege of Fallujah. Chalabi did surface, however, in an interview with his buddies at the Council of Foreign Relations, April 8, 2004.

There’s been a lot of publicity about the fighting in Falluja and in the south, but what is going on in Baghdad and the Iraqi Governing Council? Are you working on, the build-up to the June 30 transition?

No. We’re working now on how to stop the fighting, provide relief to civilians, uphold the rule of law, and also take stock of the security apparatus of the Iraqi government and move forward, learning the lessons from the recent fighting.

Describe the fighting going on.

There are two kinds of fighting going on. There is a sustained effort by the coalition forces in the Falluja area to systematically and rigorously find the criminals who killed and burned the U.S. contractors [on March 31], and also to disarm the terrorists that are found in Falluja. [The interview occurred about 12 hours before a temporary halt in the fighting in Falluja was announced April 9]. That is being conducted systematically and with the cooperation of the Iraqi 36th battalion of the ICDC [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps], which has demonstrated its capability and its courage in the current crisis.

And they’re in Falluja?

They’re in Falluja now.

They’re fighting together with the U.S. Marines?

Yes.

There exist very few references to the “36th battalion of the ICDC.” One is another page on the CFR site dated March 16, 2004 which describes the “36th battalion”:

Are any ICDC units not locally based?

One special battalion—called the 36th battalion—consists of 80 or so fighters from the militia of each of the five main prewar Saddam Hussein opposition groups: the Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi National Accord, the KDP, the PUK, and SCIRI. Trained and overseen by U.S. Special Operations troops, these fighters work together in mixed platoons and have, among their other achievements, foiled two plots involving attacks on the Baghdad headquarters of the CPA, Anderson says. The unit develops its own intelligence information.

And, in an article from the NY Times dated February 6, 2004 republished on the Iraq Foundation website:

The two other political parties that had militias at the time of the American-led invasion, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Accord, supposedly disbanded their armed groups over the summer.

The Congress’s militia, numbering at least 1,000, was trained and equipped by the Pentagon, while the Accord’s force was backed by the Central Intelligence Agency.

But the Iraqi National Accord now runs the Interior Ministry, which controls many of the country’s security forces, including the police. The Congress retains many armed guards. A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, Entifadh Qanbar, said “militias are very important in certain areas” and could serve as emergency forces.

“It will counter the Iraqi army, so it will prevent coups d’état,” Mr. Qanbar said.

The Coalition Provisional Authority lets Iraqis keep properly licensed small arms, a policy that allows militia leaders to say their weapons are legal.

The American military has discovered illegal caches of artillery in the hands of some political parties. Last month, in the northern city of Kirkuk, considered a powder keg of ethnic tensions, the 173rd Airborne Brigade found rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortar rounds in the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Occupation officials are experimenting with absorbing the militias into national defense units. Five major parties with militias contributed about 100 people each to the formation of the 36th Battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps last month. The battalion has mixed the different soldiers at the squad level.

So, here we have two contradictory accounts, one which seems to imply that the “36th battalion” has about 80 troops and one that would say around 500.

The 1st Armored Division Artillery accepted authority of the Al Rashid district in southern Baghdad from 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, during a transfer of authority ceremony at Camp Falcon, 23 January 2004. The Division Artillery Combat Team looked forward to working with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, specifically the 504th battalion and Alpha Company, 36th Battalion, which call Camp Falcon home.

So, here are two battalions, the 504th and the 36th. The Washington Post says there are four ICDC battalions – The battlefield refusal of the battalion — one of just four that exist in the Iraqi army — began Monday when it was ordered to travel about 60 miles to support the Marines, then locked in battle with fighters in Fallujah.

From this article, we might expect that the other two were the battalions initially alleged to accompany the US Marines in their siege of Fallujah:

Two battalions of Civil Defense troops —- about 2,100 men in all —- have been organized in the Fallujah region since last summer, one on each side of the Euphrates River.

An Army battalion, which fought Fallujah’s hard core of insurgents for seven months and occupied the U.S. base here until two weeks ago, organized the units, but passed the training mission on to the Marines last week.

Starting a week ago, a hand-picked cadre of 27 enlisted Marines and two officers trained about 60 Civil Defense troops and police officers for three days, and will begin an intensive two-week boot camp and condensed infantry school for 200 soldiers at a time starting in two weeks.

Numerous articles from around April 5th claimed that there were “1,200 Marines and two battalions of Iraqi ICDC” surrounding Fallujah. By April 8th, Chalabi was bragging to the CFR that the 36th was fighting alongside the Marines.

To round all this disparate information up, I think what we’re seeing in Fallujah is two Marine battalions fighting alongside Chalabi’s INC militia, some Iraqi Communist Party militia and some Kurdish peshmergas, in the form of the 36th ICDC batallion. There is no indication that the militia of SCIRI, the Badr Brigades, was ever incorporated into this force. Moqtada Sadr’s Al-Mahdi Army clearly wasn’t invited. There may be some INA, but this “36th battalion” is either a Chalabi show or he wants people to think that it is.

I think it can be safely concluded that Chalabi and the Kurdish faction have put all their Iraqi eggs in the American basket. For Chalabi, the possibility that the Americans might be run out of Iraq would be extremely bad news for his hide, let alone his ambitions. For the Kurds, well…they’ve already prepared for the next phase.

The new issue of Time magazine (April 19) features an article “What Should Bush Do?” featuring three people giving advice on Iraq.

General Barry McCaffrey says “There are no more U.S. troops to send to Iraq. That’s why we need 80,000 or more troops added to the U.S. Army. Congress is allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to dig in his heels and try to maintain a foreign policy based on a grossly undermanned U.S. military.”

Given the plans of the neocon-run foreign policy team at the White House, Gen. McCaffrey’s estimate of 80,000 troops needed is probably very conservative.

Gen. McCaffrey wants Rummy to activate more reserve troops, but after they run out….

Here are General McCaffrey’s comments:

When a grass fire first starts, you can jump right in the middle of it and stomp it out. But if you wait too long, it just becomes uncontrollable. We should immediately jump onto the opposition and end it, and then launch smart diplomatic moves to get NATO and the U.N. and other Arab forces involved in a bigger way.

There are no more U.S. troops to send to Iraq. That’s why we need 80,000 or more troops added to the U.S. Army. Congress is allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to dig in his heels and try to maintain a foreign policy based on a grossly undermanned U.S. military. The key question isn’t whether the 1st Cavalry Division is going to get run out of Baghdad—it’s not. The key question is, if you’ve got 70% of your combat battalions in the U.S. Army deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea and elsewhere, can you maintain this kind of muscular presence in that many places? The answer is no. But if we take action now to increase the size of the Army by 80,000 soldiers, we’ll be able to handle this global reach. The key would be to activate nine National Guard brigades in the next 18 months and convert them into active-duty soldiers, allowing the reservists to go back to their communities.

The transfer of political authority on June 30 is extremely premature. By that date, there will not be a sovereign government with any political legitimacy. And here’s another challenge we face: we need to put the training of Iraqi security services—the police, army, border patrol and others—solely under the control of the U.S. military instead of the Coalition Provisional Authority and give these Iraqi recruits more money. Iraq is costing us $4 billion a month, and only a tiny percent of that has gone directly to support the creation of Iraqi security forces. We should also transfer authority for security policy in Iraq from Rumsfeld to Secretary of State Colin Powell because the most important tasks are now diplomatic.

We need to invest two to 10 years in Iraq, and we’ll have a good outcome. But if we think we’re dumping this responsibility in the coming year, we’re going to end up with a mess on our hands that will severely impair our international role for the coming 20 years.