Premier says Iraq can look after own security (Roundup)
Middle East News
Jul 22, 2008, 14:08 GMT
Older Talkback
page: 1
al-Maliki is making his sales pitch for Iraq as a stable place to do business (prematurely), which is in line with his desire to see the U.S. (visible) presence gone. The Iraqis are tired of war, and al-Maliki is promising them something approaching 'normalcy'.
Other nations would first need to feel secure in opening embassies, and that has not yet happened. The neighboring Sunni states are still cautious of Iran's influence, even political.
The best thing that could happen to Iraq is economic growth; including jobs for the Sunni, who have not gained from the de-Baathification reversal - right now, it's a piece of paper. Oil revenues need to get sorted out; as that's where Iraq would get the funds to rebuild infrastructure.
If people had jobs, they'd be too occupied for sectarian conflicts. As Petraeus has stated many times, their problem is POLITICAL, not MILITARY. The Sunni, thanks to getting paid by the U.S., have squeezed al Qaeda out from the cities into the countryside, which gives them less overall opportunity for large-scale attacks - but they've simply moved operations to Afghanistan.
The war has produced a place that now has a chance of becoming a real nation-state. Hopefully, they can now start the building process. The real challenge is in the small communities, bringing them some kind of prosperity. This has to be exceedingly difficult. The national governement is far from finished in forming and they need to finish the job. This is a lot of hard work ahead.
Did maliki say to merkel:
'thanks for nothing...'
The war has produced a place that now has a chance of becoming a real nation-state. Hopefully, they can now start the building process.
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'Now' is a word that I would strenuously disagree with. Al-Maliki was supposed to clean up corruption, but has not. The government is all make-work patronage, and payoffs up the chain to get anything done.
Iraq has a severe shortage of technicians - the Sunni were handling that aspect, and those are now the refugees in Jordan. It's essential to get them to come home ... but the places where the Sunni once lived are Shia-occupied, or destroyed.
Aside from the oil as an allure, you can be sure that the contractors were lined up for this war from the get-go; and they expect to make a living off it well into the future; as do makers of spare parts for worn-out weapons and vehicles. We have no means of getting that equipment out of Iraq, which has been flooding there for years. We don't want it to end up in the hands of insurgents. Think about the hundreds of HumVees that a single brigade has, and the need to transport them to a ship to get them back home, and you see the problem. We've probably stripped the Guard armories of gear as well that needs replacement.
This war has been one giant feeding trough for the oil interests and the contractors, and Cheney is neck-deep in collusion with both interests. Bush, who claimed to be against nation-building, got suckered into this, and is now brainwashed to think it's about 'terrorism'; when al Qaeda did not even EXIST in Iraq prior to Saddam's ouster (more Cheney bullcrap), and the problem is now in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The irony is watching McCain photo-op with Bush Sr., who deliverately left Saddam in power in 1991 to avoid the current situation.
Couldn't agree with the last poster more. He hit the nail on the head!
...after 8 years of dems crying about getting rid of Saddam. How many clips do you have to see from dem libs wringing their hands in the 1990's over Saddam? It took another Bush to have the gonads to deal with it.
This is the feed we've gotten from the dem libs and their propaganda arm for the last 7 years:
Dumb ol GW managed to fool them all with WMD talk, and thay all doo-dee-doo'ed into a vote on this. Hard to believe he could fool them so easy, eh?
Cheney and Bush were all oil initerests, neither holding stock like Sandy Berg(l)ar but guilty by association. Granted, they do not show any real wealth from any of this, but that's beside the point, when you are a propagandist
USA went for the oil, as if we were not getting oil already. Honestly, this is the one that really makes me laugh.
No one on the left, least of all the drive-by media, wants to admit they got ol GW to do what they really wanted him to do and then pillory him for it to win the next election.
Bush Sr. did exactly what he should have done, with the facts at his disposal.
Bush Jr. did the same.
No one is buying your assessment anymore.
If there ever was a setup to profit from, Iraq was it.
Oil prices were low; and causing a commotion in the Mideast fixed that.
The Defense Industry was looking for a war, and they got it. Same with the contractors, including Cheney's Halliburton. We never did get the minutes of Cheney's energy meetings - and 10 points for the new President if we can get those made public.
We left Saddam in power SPECIFICALLY to keep Iran from getting to the position they're in now. Bush promised support to the Shia in 1991, and pulled our troops out - creating the misery they've been in from Saddam's trying to starve them out.
SP4 - stop masturbating, and start thinking - assume that grey stuff in your head is not the same crap that you keep spewing. Bush seems to be your idea of a failure making good, and I can understand how you'd idolize that. Some people live through others, and you sure did pick a shitty role model.
A-holes in love. Who's the one in the back?
'This is a wish list, at this point'
I wish you would shut your pie hole.
'The war has produced a place that now has a chance of becoming a real nation-state. Hopefully, they can now start the building process. '
Something that you shrilly swore would never happen.
'now' is a word that I would strenuously disagree with.'
'Oil prices were low; and causing a commotion in the Mideast fixed that.'
Stupidest comment ever. So we went to war in Iraq to INCREASE oil prices? You spent most of last year stating that we went to war to steal their oil.. You moron.
'The Defense Industry was looking for a war, and they got it.'
The defense industry was doing just fine, indeed, outside of a few specific contractors it has been a wash.
'Same with the contractors, including Cheney's Halliburton. '
It always goes back to Halliburton with the paranoid, delusional, undeveloped mind leftists. Cheney wasn't running Halliburton during the gulf war and had divested before it all started you stupid islamist monkey.
'We never did get the minutes of Cheney's energy meetings'
Gassy knoll, grassy knoll, fire doesn't melt steel, I want to believe!!!!
Seriously, you are a joke. A bad joke. You have been doing this long enough now to have been proven WRONG on every last stupid, hysterical, nonsensical prediction you have made here. You are the opposite of correct. Willfully stupid.
Face it you chimp, the terrorists that you were rooting for in Iraq have been defeated by the country that you have been wishing to go down the toilet so you could vent your clinical paranoia about it's president. You bet on bin laden and you lost, you parasite.
Give those of us with a brain a break, and go quietly.
(I see hidden dum-dum has emerged from the bat-cave, and is as full of guano as ever)
www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=345878&apc_state=henh
Al-Qaeda suicide bombings and other reprisals against Sunni tribal leaders and their followers who have aligned themselves with United States and Iraqi government forces could be the last-ditch efforts of an increasingly isolated and diminished organisation, say experts.
But some caution that it is too soon to write off al-Qaeda in Iraq, AQI, given the continued political divisions between opponents and supporters of the foreign troop presence, and between Shia and Sunni Arab forces.
In an April 2007 speech, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, said AQI was “probably public enemy number one” in the country.
That is no longer the case, in large part because the group’s increasingly violent and indiscriminate attacks on tribal chiefs and civilians in Sunni areas, which had hitherto harboured or tolerated it, pushed local leaders to begin working with US troops, according to Evan Kohlmann, an international terrorism consultant.
“In the beginning, it was easy for AQI to blend into the insurgency because at that point everyone had a fairly revolutionary feeling about the American occupation,” said Kohlmann. “But once AQI tried to gain power and dominance it started to enforce its revolutionary agenda on Iraqi citizens.”
The sea-change came in 2006, as Sunni tribes largely rejected the sudden imposition of Islamic fundamentalist edicts, which included a ban on smoking and most kinds of music, and forcing local teenage girls to marry foreign fighters as a way of tying AQI into Iraqi Sunni communities.
Kohlmann explained that tensions reached boiling point when AQI turned the focus of its campaign of violence against Sunni tribal chiefs who rejected the group’s draconian decrees.
“That’s when you start seeing conflict,” he said. “It’s not just a question of people disagreeing with the agenda – if you don’t go along with it then you are an enemy.”
(This all PRECEDED the surge, and in fact worked in favor of the surge policy - check what Col. McMaster and other officers in charge had been doing. McCain, stupidly, said that the surge PRECEDED the Awakening Council. WRONG - the Sunni were working against AQI already)
Although political parties representing Sunni Arabs were present in government, the shift in grassroots allegiances came in 2006 with the emergence of the Sahawat al-Anbar or Anbar Awakening Council, as a coalition of tribal heads and their followers in the western province of Anbar, which was at the heart of the resistance by Islamist and national forces to the US military presence, and which had seen fierce fighting since 2003.
After his father and three brothers were killed by AQI insurgents in September 2006, Sheikh Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, a tribal leader in Anbar, approached US military officials about joining forces. This led to the formation of the Anbar Awakening Council, in which thousands of Sunnis worked with American forces to drive AQI out of the province.
The movement quickly spread beyond Anbar, with councils set up in AQI strongholds in Baghdad and finally north to Mosul. Analysts believe some of its members were formerly with the insurgent forces fighting the Americans.
US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel. Rudolph Burwell said in April 2008 that more than 95,000 people, predominantly Sunnis, had joined the “anti-al-Qaeda movement”.
This significantly weakened AQI’s ability to move around freely and choose its battles.
www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=345878&apc_state=henh
“In the beginning, AQI forces confronted American forces in Baghdad, Anbar and elsewhere, but following the Awakening Councils, they have basically avoided the fight with US troops because they know they will be crushed,” said Joost Hiltermann, deputy programme director of the International Crisis Group’s Middle East Project in Istanbul.
With less scope for action, and angered by what it saw as Sunni Arab treachery, AQI turned instead to attacking Sunnis who cooperated with the US. The group claimed responsibility for a car bomb that killed Abu Risha outside his home in Ramadi in September 2007. Similar attacks followed, but the Awakening Councils have remained aligned with the US and Iraqi forces and sought a larger role in the Baghdad government.
“They can push a motorcycle bomb and take out a Sahwa [Awakening] leader but they aren’t going to kill the Sahwa,” said Farook Ahmed, research analyst at the US-based Institute for the Study of War. “They can’t stop the momentum with one bombing. Even if they are still killing, the Sahwa is still there.”
Once estimated at roughly 12,000 members, US military officials contend that fewer than 1,200 AQI fighters remain, and Ahmed said the resolve shown by its new Sahwa opponents has made it more difficult for the group to draw new recruits.
“In the beginning, AQI was about 90 per cent locally recruited and ten per cent foreign fighters but that figure is now about 50-50 as their members are either fleeing, defecting or being captured or killed,” he said. “Foreign fighters used to provide the financing but there are fewer and fewer recruits who are willing to pay all of the money necessary to come to Iraq when there are so many significant setbacks.”
At this point, said Ahmed, “the AQI network itself is extremely degraded, if not defeated, and I don’t think they’re going to be coming back any time soon unless there’s some sort of horrible mismanagement by the Iraqi government”.
Experts remain divided about the potential impact the much-discussed American troop withdrawal – and especially its timing – would have on the future of AQI.
Some see a danger in the US troops leaving before stability has been achieved, speculating that Sunni forces might exploit any ensuing chaos to battle the Shia-led government.
“If Americans leave too soon, then the Sunni Awakening Councils may well go back to fighting with the government, which they see as an Iranian proxy,” said Hiltermann.
Others, however, suggest that the departure of American troops could help secure the country.
“If the Iraqi government is able to stabilise itself, and if the provincial election this year and the national election next year bring more Sunnis into the [political] fold, it’s possible that a US troop withdrawal would have a beneficial impact,” said Kohlmann. “Even if they don’t like AQI, a lot of people don’t want US troops to stay there, and this would show the government’s ability to achieve what it has promised and be self-sufficient.”
AQI has been weakened, but analysts caution that this progress could be reversible, if a US departure leads to further chaos.
“The Sunni-Shia rift has not been healed. It has been somewhat muted by the troop surge and other events,” said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service in Washington. “AQI could still be potentially useful to the Sunnis when they eventually push for more power.”
But in the event of Sunnis receiving a greater voice in political and security affairs and buying into the political process, analysts note that there is little suicide bombs can do to reverse the progress.
“As soon as you see Shia forces concede to work with the moderate Sunni forces, it doesn’t matter what AQI does because they are finished,” said Kohlmann.
(And there is the REAL story of Iraq. The surge was supposed to provide a time window for political reconciliation, and it has not happened. READ THE LAST PARAGRAPH ABOVE. The presence of U.S. forces, and no timeline, just gives the Iraqi factions more time to press for their own agendas, without working together to defeat their common enemies. Iran already has their hands in everything. We can remain, and the Iraqis will drag out a resolution. On the other hand, with a true future deadline, they can knuckle down and pass oil revenue sharing, and find work for the Sunnis. The wild card is the Kurds, who recently walked out of Parliament. The Kurds are economically self-sufficient thanks to oil on their lands, and would as soon just create their own country, and join with Kurdish minorities now in other countries)
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The original thought was our getting control of Saddam's oil - but their production facilities were in disrepair, and their oil revenue was supposed to help Iraq to rebuild. The commotion in the Mideast, along with increased demand from China, India, and other developing countries ... and supply problems from other places such as Africa, and the political situation with Chavez ... have led to a major rise in oil prices, which benefits the producers such as Exxon, as well as oil services companies such as Halliburton)
(January 2007)
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/blood-and-oil-how-the-west -will-profit-from-iraqs-most-precious-commodity-431119.html
So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.
And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.
Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as 'production-sharing agreements', or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.
(25 July 2008)
www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-25-voa7.cfm
The U.S. State Department's acting inspector general says he is investigating the department's possible role in lucrative oil deals between Iraq and Western oil companies.
U.S. policy has been to discourage any such deals because Iraq does not yet have a national oil law that would fairly distribute the revenue.
Acting Inspector General Harold Geisel writes in a letter to lawmakers that he has started a review of oil contracts, oil field development and U.S. policy in Iraq.
The inquiry comes after four U.S. Democratic senators: Charles Schumer of New York, Carl Levin of Michigan, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, requested an investigation.
Earlier this month, a U.S. congressional committee presented evidence that State Department officials may have encouraged a deal between the U.S.-based Hunt Oil company and Iraq's Kurdish regional government.
The State Department has denied it tried to facilitate any oil deals.
Iraq's parliament has yet to approve the proposed oil law because of disputes among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers.
The Kurdish government has finalized its own energy law and has signed contracts with international oil companies despite the absence of national oil legislation. The Oil Ministry in Baghdad has called those deals illegal.
CEO of Firm That Signed Controversial Iraq Oil Deal Longtime Bush, Cheney Adviser
www.pubrecord.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=184
Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.
Despite those longstanding connections – and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board – the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September.
At that time, administration officials said Hunt Oil’s deal with the Kurds jeopardized delicate negotiations among competing Iraqi sects and regions for sharing oil revenues, talks seen as vital for achieving national reconciliation.
“I know nothing about the deal,” President Bush said. “To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I’m concerned.”
However, on July 2, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing that senior administration officials were aware that Hunt was negotiating with the Kurdistan government and even offered him encouragement.
Hunt also personally alerted Bush’s PFIAB about his oil company’s confidential contacts with Kurdish representatives.
In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, committee chairman, complained that the administration’s comments last year were “misleading.”
“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed,” Waxman wrote.
Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.
Plus, there’s the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world’s second-largest oil reserves.
(Note towards the end where McCain, once again, had to correct himself as to whther the surge preceded the Awakening council. Perhaps, he was still looking for that imaginary Iraq/Afghanistan border???)
(McCain, however, didn't help himself when, during a television interview this week, he made reference to problems along 'the Iraq/Pakistan border.' Those two countries do not share a border, and it appeared McCain had meant to refer to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.)
============================================================
www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/217.html?task=view
President George W. Bush’s Iraq troop “surge,” which is now ending, got a mixed report card from congressional investigators, who found that many of Bush’s stated goals remained unmet.
The Government Accountability Office reported that violence in Iraq has dropped over the past year, but that the training of Iraqi security forces still lags, Sunni insurgents have not been defeated, cease-fires with Shiite militias remain fragile, and political reconciliation has not been achieved.
The supposed success of the “surge” has become a central issue in the presidential campaign, with Republican candidate John McCain and many of his press allies accusing Democrat Barack Obama of refusing to admit that he was wrong to oppose the troop increase in 2007.
Obama has argued that several factors, which pre-dated the “surge,” contributed to the decline in violence, including the decision by Sunni tribal leaders in 2006 to turn against the indiscriminate violence of al-Qaeda extremists and a cease-fire declared by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Obama’s more detailed account provoked an angry retort from McCain, who told CBS News anchor Katie Couric, “I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what happened.”
However, McCain later was forced to amend his comments during a campaign stop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he acknowledged that the so-called Anbar Awakening did begin in 2006, months before Bush announced the “surge” in January 2007.
McCain claimed that he was defining the “surge” more broadly to include counter-insurgency strategies that pre-dated Bush’s announced “surge.”
(Highlight)
'Essentially, the surge was an admission by Bush administration officials that their prewar planning for the occupation of Iraq was a disaster and that it was a mistake to ignore advice by career military officials to deploy more troops before the March 2003 invasion.'
www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/217.html?task=view
The GAO update on evaluating the “surge” noted that, according to the Department of Defense, “in June 2008, less than 10 percent of Iraqi security forces were at the highest readiness level and therefore considered capable of performing operations without coalition support.
The report, entitled “Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq: Progress Report: Some Gains Made, Updated Strategy Needed,” added:
“The security environment remains volatile and dangerous. DOD reports that the United States has not achieved its goal of defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq, local security forces (such as ‘Sons of Iraq’) have not reconciled with the central government, and the cease-fire agreement with [al-Sadr’s] Mahdi Army remains tenuous.”
Creating an independent Iraqi security force was one of the benchmarks established by Congress and it was a commitment made by the Iraqi government prior to the “surge.” But maintaining a loyal security force has been problematic, the GAO found.
Several factors have complicated the development of capable Iraqi security forces, including the lack of a single unified force, sectarian and militia influences, continued dependence on U.S. and coalition forces for logistics and combat support, and training and leadership shortages,” the report said.
The Bush administration “also stated that the Iraqi government would take responsibility for security in all 18 provinces by November 2007. However, as of mid-July 2008, eight provincial governments do not yet have lead responsibility for security in their provinces,” the GAO said.
According to the U.S. commander in Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition “continues to provide planning, logistics, and other assistance even after security responsibilities have transferred to provincial Iraqi control,” the GAO said.
The “surge,” part of the Bush administration’s “New Way Forward” plan, ends this month, as U.S. troop levels drop back to about 130,000, where they were before the “surge” began in the first several months of 2007. As of June, there were 153,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq
The GAO said the administration still does not have a post-surge strategy in place to deal with “uncertainties” on the ground. The State and Defense departments rebuffed the GAO’s recommendations to update the post-surge strategy in Iraq.
“GAO recommended that [the Pentagon] and State, in conjunction with relevant U.S. agencies, develop an updated strategy for Iraq,” the report said. “DOD and State disagreed asserting that the ‘New Way Forward’ remains valid and that the Joint Campaign Plan guides U.S. efforts in Iraq.”
But the GAO warned that the “New Way Forward” merely articulates U.S. goals and objectives and the Joint Campaign Plan is not a “strategic plan” but an “operational plan with limitations,” much of which remains classified.
Since 2003, the GAO has issued about 140 reports related to the Iraq War. The GAO based its latest progress report on documents and interviews with officials from the Pentagon, State and the Treasury; the Multinational Force in Iraq; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the National Intelligence Council; and the United Nations. The agency also said it reviewed translated copies of Iraqi documents
The GAO report said “violence — as measured by enemy-initiated attacks —decreased about 80 percent from June 2007 to June 2008.”
Essentially, the surge was an admission by Bush administration officials that their prewar planning for the occupation of Iraq was a disaster and that it was a mistake to ignore advice by career military officials to deploy more troops before the March 2003 invasion.
In February 2003, Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee and said several hundred thousands soldiers would likely be needed to maintain order in post-invasion Iraq.
Shinseki was publicly criticized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and was forced into an early retirement.
Rumsfeld denied, in an Oct. 12, 2002, interview with the New York Times that he overrode requests by military brass to deploy more ground troops in Iraq. But he said the cornerstone of the Iraq War plan was to use fewer ground troops.
That decision angered some in the military who said overwhelming numerical superiority was needed to assure victory, minimize combat casualties, and restore order quickly to Iraq.
As of June 2008, more than 4,100 U.S. troops have died in Iraq, along with estimated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The United Nations also estimates that 2.7 million Iraqis have been displaced in Iraq and two million additional Iraqis have fled the country, primarily to Jordan and Syria.
The 21-page GAO report added that the surge was supposed to lead to accomplishments beyond a drop in violence. In that regard, the plan has not had much success, the GAO concludes.
“In the legislative area, Iraq has enacted key legislation to return some Ba’athists to government, grant amnesty to detained Iraqis, and define provincial powers,” the GAO said.
“However, questions remain about how the laws will be implemented and whether the intended outcomes can be achieved. Additionally, Iraq has not yet passed legislation that will provide the legal framework for sharing oil revenues, disarming militias, and holding provincial elections.
“The Iraqi government also faces logistical and security challenges in holding the scheduled 2008 provincial elections — a key element of reconciliation for Sunnis. Finally, the government has not completed its constitutional review to resolve issues such as the status of disputed territories and the balance of power between federal and regional governments. “
thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/07/23/mccain-forgot-the-words-to-the-surge/
As Major Niel Smith, the operations officer at the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center, and Colonel Sean MacFarland, the commander of U.S. forces in Ramadi during the pivotal period of the Awakening, wrote recently in Military Review, “A growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al-Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made these younger [tribal] leaders [who led the Awakening] open to our overtures.” In short, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the Awakening began before the surge and was driven in part by Democratic pressure to withdraw.
The McFarland link - large pdf:
usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MarApr08/Smith_AnbarEngMarApr08.p df
(Note what's said within about late 2005 and Ramadi)
It’s more than a little bizarre that McCain should demonstrate this sort of incoherence in regard to his marquee item. Kind of like Gary Rossington forgetting the wheedly-wheedly-wheedly high parts to the Free Bird solo.
But McCain has never evidenced much knowledge on the various factors that have contributed to the drop in violence in Iraq — the Awakening, the Sadr freeze, and the completion of sectarian cleansing — or the way that the surge worked to support, encourage, and consolidate these things. For McCain, it’s always been about more force. More troops, more arms, more ass-kicking. This is why his presentation on his website of the “McCain Surge” is so ridiculous: Even though McCain was calling for more troops as early as mid-2003, none of the phenomena which have fortuitously combined to drive down violence existed back then. But don’t bother McCain with such details.
(And McCain stupidly suggests that a surge policy could be transplanted to Afghanistan, where over 150 trives compete for power, and Karzai lets the opium trade continue, and the Taliban run the place.)
www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27rich.html?th&emc=th
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.
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