Antiwar.com Blog

Interesting posts by Stirling Newberry analyzing the campaign in Iraq in military terms.

We have an enemy

Up until now the highest level of discipline that the Iraqi resistence showed was the ability to execute an ambush. Control was localized, and there was little evidence of operational planning, unit discipline, or logistical control.

That has changed in the last week, with two separate operations by two separate groups. This raises the threshold of danger in Iraq, from disgruntled elements, to organizations which have the ability to see, and exploit, weaknesses.

We have an enemy in Iraq now. And we are violating the tactical doctrine that defeats guerilla movements.

Shockwave

The Vigilant Resolve offensive was meant to reassert control over a series of cities – Fallujah, Nasiriya, Basra, the Sadr district of Baghdad being the most important. At each step of the way, the insurgent forces – though out gunned and out fought – showed a higher level of operational and situational awareness than their US counterparts. Thus, while the Coalition Troops were, in almost every encounter, superior to their antagonists, the result was a series of stings to the occupation forces.

The signs are that there are now armies on the ground in Iraq, opposing Coalition forces, capable of operational level discipline. This drastically increases the complexity and difficulty of crushing the resistance. And yet, the US and UK have made defeating them a matter of confidence. The future of Bush and Blair is now on the line, failure to crush Sadr and the uprising will be failure in the eyes of the public.

The failures of the Coalition offensive…

… have been costly.

Both good reading…

A recurring feature in which we keep an eye on the hysteria-inducing madmen of tomorrow, especially our favorite Central Asian megalomaniac.

Turkmen Leader Attacks Tooth Fashion

ANXIOUS to banish all signs of backwardness from his remote desert nation Turkmenistan’s president on Tuesday gave a word of advice to the country’s youth: resist the temptation to replace your teeth with gold ones.

“Don’t be offended,” Saparmurat Niyazov told a female student who caught his eye while she made a speech at the Saparmurat Niyazov Agricultural University. “But whatever some young fellows tell you, white teeth look better.”

“Besides if you keep your original teeth you can manage harder food,” Niyazov said at the ceremony broadcast on state television.

The Turkmen leader, officially known as Saparmurat Turkmenbashi (father-of-all-Turkmen), has been anxious to selectively remodel this former Soviet republic in his own image, throwing up vast tower blocks and banishing farm animals from the streets of the capital Ashgabat.

Recently he has taken to berating young people for their allegedly sloppy appearance and “wayward” behaviour.

Sounds like Hitler to me! When will Christopher Hitchens and co. get on this? Whatever happened to whiskey, democracy, sexy?

Last night, Bill O’Reilly called Sadr “the new Saddam,” which, given what we now know about Saddam’s threat to America, should make us wonder why we need to topple Sadr. But who’s the real new Saddam? This Washington Times headline speaks volumes: “Clashes Raise Tensions Not Seen Since Saddam.” And how about those Kurds up north? How will they fare once the occupation ends? Let’s just hope them crazy Ay-rabs aren’t watching al Jazeera:

Unlike most other parts of Iraq – where people are actively hostile towards, or barely tolerate, the foreign invaders – Kurds do not feel the strains of occupation.

While Shia and Sunni Muslims have been fighting Americans in and around Baghdad in the past few days, Kurds on the streets of Arbil condemn anti-US attacks as “terrorism”.

A recent poll by foreign broadcasters that suggested most Iraqis were happier since the US-led invasion a year ago was heavily influenced by Kurdish respondents.

The survey found only one in three Arabs believed their country was liberated – compared to four out of five Kurds.

I’m sure no hostility will come of this, nor of the attack on that Sunni mosque. Whoa–didn’t we start out talking about Sadr’s “radical Shi’ites,” not the “Sunni savages“? Oh yeah, Amir Taheri says don’t worry about them–but, uh, reopen that freaking newspaper pronto!

But other than all that, everything’s swell.

From Riverbend, the Iraqi blogger in Baghdad:

Our foreign minister Hoshyar Zibari was being interviewed by some British journalist yesterday, making excuses for Tony Blair and commending him on the war. At one point someone asked him about the current situation in Iraq. He mumbled something about how there were ‘problems’ but it wasn’t a big deal because Iraq was ‘stable’… what Iraq is he living in?

And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad…

.. read more: “Teapots & Kettles”

Photomosaic of Americans who have died in Iraq since the war president entered office.

By Joe of American Leftist

I keep running across statements in the media that I hope are disinfo or something because we’re in deep trouble if the Bush regime really believes this.

Al-Sadr is believed to have about 600 hardcore followers and as many as 3,000 militia members at his command.

Many Shiites distrust al-Sadr – because of his youth and radicalism – and US officials are hoping his popularity remains limited.

As for his militia, in a country where most civilians carry guns, the few thousand members of the Al-Mahdi army do not stand out as uniquely dangerous.

The Bush administration said yesterday that the surge in violence that has swept parts of Iraq is the work of a single individual with terrorist connections, not a popular revolt.

“Sadr and his small number of followers – we don’t see them as representative of a religious cause but rather as representative of political gangsterism,” said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.

Here is Riverbend, posting from Baghdad on her blog, Baghdad Burning, Saturday, October 25, 2003

Al-Sadr has been making waves in the south and Baghdad. He is frightening and I don’t think his influence should be underestimated. He easily has over a million followers (some say it’s up to 4 million) and they practically revere him. It’s not him personally that makes him so important with his followers, it’s the fact that he is the son of a famous Shi’a cleric who was assassinated in 1999. While the majority of the middle and upper class Iraqis want a secular government, Al-Sadr seems to resonate with the impoverished, currently jobless men in the south and in some of Baghdad’s slums.

Currently, the CPA believe he was responsible for Al-Kho’i’s assassination back in April. Others suspect that he might have been responsible for Al-Hakim’s death a couple of months ago… detaining him is going to be a major problem because his followers will make sure to wreak havoc… judging from the last few months, they’ll just strike up a deal with him.

Raed Jarrar, writing from Baghdad today, April 7, 2004 in his blog, Raed in the Middle:

The uprising in Iraq is still expanding…

But I still feel that Bush and Bremer are totally out of the picture…

All what we can hear from the coalition governments’ spokesmen, and from the international media news are some fake explanations and explanations…

Let me declare some points:

AsSadr is NOT reflecting a minority of Iraqis, this is a stupid big lie.
Whether we liked him or not, he is the political and religious leader for MILLIONS of Iraqis in the southern region…
There are 15 million Iraqis living in the south, and another 5 million in Baghdad, I can say that 5 to 7 millions of them can be considered as AsSadr followers.

AsSadr is NOT a mere twenty-something year old guy, that is playing games.
Whether we liked him or not, he is a phenomenon. When people in the south of Iraq look at Muqtada AsSadr, they see the history of his father, the deep roots of his religious supporter: AlHaeri.

AsSadr is NOT a small follower of the Iranian Government; he has very bad relations with the official government of Iran, unlike Sistani and Hakim.

Middle East expert Juan Cole, in his blog *Informed Comment*

2. Talking heads both from Iraq and from the ranks of the US retired officers keep attempting to maintain that Muqtada’s movement is small and marginal. One speaker claimed that Muqtada has only 10,000 men.

In fact that is the size of his formal militia. Muqtada’s movement is like the layers of an onion. You have 10,000 militiamen. But then you have tens of thousands of cadres able to mobilize neighborhoods. Then you have hundreds of thousands of Sadrists, followers of Muqtada and other heirs of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. Then you have maybe 5 million Shiite theocrats who sympathize with Muqtada’s goals and rhetoric, about a third of the Shiite community. The Sadrists will now try to shift everything so that the 5 million become followers, the hundreds of thousands become cadres, and the tens of thousands become militiamen.

Judge for yourself who is more credible, the Baghdadis and ME expert Cole or the Bush gang. I know who I believe.

In the run-up to the Iraq invasion as well as in the occupation, the War Party and Americans in general have shown no sign of knowing what they were getting into. That is about to get alot of people, both Iraqi and “coalition” killed.