Antiwar.com Blog

After denying all day today that more American troops (the only kind they can get) were needed in Iraq to deal with the incipient civil war Bremer managed to fire up, it comes to light that the US military has resorted to the old tried and true method of increasing troop numbers….don’t let the ones who are supposed to go home go.

A decision by the Pentagon to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is a reversal of its plan to steadily reduce the U.S. force level there.

Since the war began a year ago, senior military leaders have given frequent assurances to troops and their families that Iraq duty would be no longer than a year.

Now, those assurances have met the reality of Iraq, where military leaders are planning for the possibility that anti-U.S. violence will spread. U.S. troops are stretched thin around the world, and the Pentagon has few options to increase the force in Iraq if necessary.

On Monday, a senior official with U.S. Central Command said that the return home of about 24,000 U.S. troops who were scheduled to leave in the next few weeks would be delayed as their replacements arrive. Central Command’s responsibility includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the 24,000 remaining and others who have arrived as intended replacements, there are 134,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Morale should really skyrocket now.

The senior official spoke to reporters at the Pentagon by phone from Central Command in Tampa. He gave the briefing on the condition that he not be identified.

Another brave American hero.

More from Raed:

So, Bush and Bremer said that all the clashes and attacks are being planed by terrorists, and that’s why the American army is killing and arresting “bad Iraqis” in those “bad cities”… those were just minority, but the CPA is going to give freedom and democracy for the majority of Iraqis.

Ok… here is the majority! AsSadr is the majority, he is THE leader of the majority…AsSadr is the symbol of millions in the south who were waiting for Americans come, where is the problem?
Why did Bremer decide to close AsSadr’s newspaper now? And arrest his assistant?
Because the newspaper said that Bremer is acting like a new Saddam?????????
I say that too :*) arrest me.
I think that Bremer acts like a small Saddam sometimes; today he decided to forbidden demonstrations! One year in jail is what you get if you demonstrate without having an approval, to have the approval u must submit a form at least 24 hours before the demonstration with information about why, when, who, how many, bla bla blah..
:*)

The clashes that didn’t happen last year between the CPA and the “majority” just started, in a bad timing too for Bush and his adminstration.

I think Bremer should write a book under the title “how to create lose/lose situations”, he closed the newspaper, arrested the assistant, shoot people in demonstrations, attacked Shia neighborhoods and cities, and now… the outlaw thing.

The picture of the day, is for some policemen joining a pro-Sadr demonstrations at Basra, where people occupied the governorate building, maybe that would be a message to the CPA that feelings of belonging to the social and cultural structure in the south are much stronger than the $60 salary.

Believe me, Bremer and Bush are totally lost; most of the time they don’t know what they want to do, and when they do, they don’t know how to do it.

Believe me, they are playing with fire.
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 12:27 AM

Thanks to all the Iraqi bloggers who are giving us updates and analysis. They are in position to see it all and identify the real situation.

Go to the link to read the rest – this is an excerpt of a long post well worth reading.

Iraqi blogger zayed is normally fairly pro-American, pro-Occupation. Here’s his report from Baghdad today on Healing Iraq:

A coup d’etat is taking place in Iraq a the moment. Al-Shu’la, Al-Hurria, Thawra (Sadr city), and Kadhimiya (all Shi’ite neighbourhoods in Baghdad) have been declared liberated from occupation. Looting has already started at some places downtown, a friend of mine just returned from Sadun street and he says Al-Mahdi militiamen are breaking stores and clinics open and also at Tahrir square just across the river from the Green Zone. News from other cities in the south indicate that Sadr followers (tens of thousands of them) have taken over IP stations and governorate buildings in Kufa, Nassiriya, Ammara, Kut, and Basrah. Al-Jazeera says that policemen in these cities have sided with the Shia insurgents, which doesn’t come as a surprise to me since a large portion of the police forces in these areas were recruited from Shi’ite militias and we have talked about that ages ago. And it looks like this move has been planned a long time ago.

No one knows what is happening in the capital right now. Power has been cut off in my neighbourhood since the afternoon, and I can only hear helicopters, massive explosions, and continuous shooting nearby. The streets are empty, someone told us half an hour ago that Al-Mahdi are trying to take over our neighbourhood and are being met by resistance from Sunni hardliners. Doors are locked, and AK-47’s are being loaded and put close by in case they are needed. The phone keeps ringing frantically. Baghdadis are horrified and everyone seems to have made up their mind to stay home tomorrow until the situation is clear.

Where is Shitstani? And why is he keeping silent about this?

I have to admit that until now I have never longed for the days of Saddam, but now I’m not so sure. If we need a person like Saddam to keep those rabid dogs at bay then be it. Put Saddam back in power and after he fills a couple hundred more mass graves with those criminals they can start wailing and crying again for liberation. What a laugh we will have then. Then they can shove their filthy Hawza and marji’iya up somewhere else. I am so dissapointed in Iraqis and I hate myself for thinking this way. We are not worth your trouble, take back your billions of dollars and give us Saddam again. We truly ‘deserve’ leaders like Saddam.

Perry de Havilland has a solution to the Iraqi quagmire!

What seems to be developing into an open revolt in Iraq by Shi’a Islamists could be a Godsend to the coalition and secular elements of Iraqi society in the long run… in openly taking up arms against the coalition and its Iraqi supporters, radical leader Muqtadar al-Sadr has changed the equation: what could have been a long term intractable political problem has been turned onto a military problem with a fairly obvious and direct solution.

I can’t wait to hear what it is.

Here’s a discussion of Muqtada al Sadr from Raed Jarrar who posts on his Iraqi blog Raed in the Middle.

Muqtada, is younger than me. He is around 25 years old, spent all of his life in Iraq studying in religious schools, I think he is very introverted, defensive and acting like a rebel. Yet, he is very smart and pragmatic. He started working immediately after the war stopped, inherited the popularity of his father and used it as a starting point. He knows that his age and religious degree doesn’t allow him to represent himself as a leader for Iraq, that’s why he started and maintained strong relations with the Iranian very well respected religious personality: Al-Haeri.

Considering Al-Haeri as his religious reference gave him the chance to go ahead with his Anti-American, Anti-Saddam perspective with a strong religious cover.

AsSadr opened offices and mosques in the cities of the south and in Saddam city (Athawra) in Baghdad, which he managed to change its name to AsSadr city. AsSdr city is a huge gridiron city inside Baghdad that one million Shia people live in, it is the area of the poor, vulnerable and uneducated people, and it is the weapons market of Baghdad, you can get a grenade for $5 or a machine gun for $50.

He created a parallel Iraqi government, as an alternative option beside the CPA, he selected ministers too.

And, maybe the most important thing he could arrange, he controlled a very important part of the religious establishment of Shia Iraqis … (Al-Hawza).

Everyone was underestimating him; Bremer, political leaders, media, most of my friends, my parents. But I didn’t… at all.

From my frequent visits to the south, I could really feel and see the actual strength and authorities AsSadr have, and the real possibility that he will be a key person in the next stage of the Iraqi history.

White revolutions were happening in the southern cities, without anyone noticing that. A strong Shia-Shia competition, which reached to fighting some times, happened between AsSdr and Al-Hakim (assassinated last year in the huge explosion at Najaf). Cities like Amara, Kut, Diwanyya and Simawa were completely controlled by AsSadr party, and Nasryya had dramatic demonstrations that changed the Al-Hakim people in the governorate and replaced them with AsSadr representatives.

One of my dear friends at Najaf told me once that the “Najafians” call Al-Hakim party: the rational stream, and they call AsSadr party: the chaotic one. For sure Al-Hakim had decades of experience and political work, and a strong backup and support from the Iranian government, but AsSadr was just starting.

Then, AsSadr established his own militia: Al-Mahdi Army, with blessings from AyatoAllah Al-Haeri… tens of thousands of Iraqis joined the new army under the eyes of everyone.

The thing that I want to make obvious here is the well designed political and military steps of AsSadr, that I’m sure no one even heard about.
Do you know why you didn’t hear much about him earlier?
Because AsSade wasn’t noisy enough to drag the attention of Bremer and the international media, the undesigned explosions of Falluja did.

When the CPA decides to close the AsSadr newspaper and arrest his assistant, they should expect to have real clashes… I mean REAL ones.

Can’t everyone see how much is the American administration lost? Can’t you feel the lack of vision? Can’t you see the bloody results of the slow and stupid policy that has no orientation?

This is an excerpt; read the rest here.

Why do you run anything by Jonathan Rauch? I know you guys are more interested in promoting Big Macs and drive-thru abortions than you are in advancing libertarian foreign policy, but I have yet to read anything even mildly liberty-oriented by Rauch. The absurd and revolting premise of today’s article is that U.S. and Israeli goals should be inseparable. The hell they should! If Rauch wants to move to Jerusalem and join the IDF, I will buy his one-way ticket and drive him to the airport. But I don’t owe the state of Israel (or Egypt, or the Palestinian Authority) any goddamn thing except nonaggression, and that goes for moral support, too.

Rauch pitches a hissy fit about world reaction to Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Yassin. As I wrote at the time, nary a tear crossed my cheek over the killing. Israeli depredations against regular Palestinians are an outrage, but taking out a murderer doesn’t much bother me–nor will it if Hamas returns the favor directly to Mr. Sharon. But the simpering statist Rauch is distraught that the Bush administration didn’t plant a wet one on Sharon’s backside after the attack:

The United States vetoed the [U.N.] resolution [condemning the attack] but did not directly challenge its premises, which were that Yassin was a civilian, that civilians are subject only to civil punishment, and that extrajudicial violence of any sort is therefore illegitimate. Instead, the Bush administration said it was “deeply troubled” by the Yassin killing but that the resolution should also have mentioned Hamas’s attacks against Israel. See? Everyone is a terrorist, but the resolution should have named all the terrorists. Or something.

If those are the rules, then former President Clinton is a terrorist, for he, too, ordered a hit. Clinton attacked Osama bin Laden with a cruise missile and only narrowly missed. According to The New York Times, President Clinton’s national security advisers have testified to the September 11 commission “that Mr. Clinton wanted Mr. bin Laden dead.”

Newsflash: Clinton is a terrorist, as the Serbs and Sudanese can tell you. Sharon’s terrorism goes back decades, but includes such greatest hits as Sabra and Shatila. No decent person, ideology aside, should stick up for anyone who aggresses against innocent civilians. And let’s be clear about that term. Rauch:

Hamas’s civilian operations, however, hardly made Yassin a civilian in any sense that mattered. To the contrary, he was head of a terrorist organization that is well on its way to operating its own mini-state in Gaza. State sponsors of terrorism and terrorist sponsors of states (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan) are two sides of one coin. None of these entities are or were “civilian” in the sense of being ordinary criminals.

Agreed–so I suppose Reason will hammer the warbots for calling the martyrs of Fallujah “civilians,” too, smearing everyone who disagrees, and promoting the indiscriminate murder of that city’s actual civilians in retaliation?

Of course you won’t. You guys carry Rauch’s column precisely because he’s an establishment sycophant, er, Beltway authority who lends your magazine some mainstream respectability by lacking any libertarian inclinations. But if you’re going to run such soporific, predictable, rah-rah Israel, statist tripe in your mag, I’ll just read The New Republic instead–they do it far better.