Antiwar.com Blog

This comes from Antiwar.com columnist Aaron Glantz:

Dear Friends,

I’m proud to report that my book, How America Lost Iraq, is now available in paperback!

How America Lost Iraq a first person account of an unembedded journalist that shows how the United States went from being seen as liberators when we first got rid of Saddam to brutal occupiers just a year later. The book was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller when it came out in hardback last year. The Seattle Times review called the book “an important first-person document historians will look to in the future as they draw a more complete picture of America’s catastrophic victory in Iraq.”

How America Lost Iraq is the story of how the Bush Administration turned victory into defeat in Iraq. More than that, though, it is a book about what it’s like to be a regular Iraqi person under U.S. occupation. The story isn’t pretty and, unfortunately, it remains as current as ever.

Peace,
Aaron Glantz

Even though it’s really all the State’s fault that they did not go to the FISA court and get permission to search Zacharias Moussaoui’s computer until after the 9/11 attacks, it is true that he was in custody, had knowlege of at least some of the hijackers, and failed to give warning. For this the man should hang, but some stupid lawyer for the TSA had to screw all that up by sending detailed notes on how to testify to all the government witnesses in the sentencing.

She is now getting a paid vacation, at your expense, at the rate of $120,000 a year.

Don’t worry, thanks to the wonderful power of the Commander in Chief to “determine” in a “finding” that someone is an enemy combatant outside the protection of the law, Moussaoui can still be kidnapped by the military and executed in a secret ghost prison in the former Soviet Union.

While President Bush was threatening Iran on Monday, he blamed the Iraqi Shiites and Iran for the insurgency. According to the AFP, Bush said that:

“Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq.”

I know what you’re thinking: President Bush is so stupid that giant mistakes like this should just be taken with a grain of salt. Even if he’s lashing out at Iran for intervening in the affairs of the Iraqi Shia, surely he’s not blaming the “improvised explosive devices” that are killing American soldiers and Marines in Iraq on the Shia. … Wrong. That’s exactly what he was doing.

“Asked about the linkage to Shiite forces, two US officials who declined to be named pointed to previously reported ties between the government of Iran and radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.”

The first problem is that the next day General Pace said he had no evidence whatsoever to back up the president’s false assertions and Secretary Rumsfeld just dissembled. The second is that the last time al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army was in violent conflict with the US was back in August of 2004 and the roadside bomb was not their tactic, those have been the tool of the home-grown Sunni insurgency which is led by the ex-Ba’athists and the recently under fire foreign fighter jihadist types.

Though al-Sadr has openly threatened war if America were to bomb Iran, he had been known as the leader of the least Iran-loyal faction among the Iraqi Shia, denouncing the federalism in the new constitution, and insisting on Iraqi nationalism regardless of religion and ethnicity. Recently, his political fortunes have been said to be on the rise, and though that may be in conflict with some genius’s plan to spread the war, a leader of the Iraqi insurgency he is not.

Is it possible that Iran is supplying bomb material to the Sunnis, seeing advantage in keeping America bogged down in its fight against the insurgency and forced to allow for expanded Iranian influence in Iraq? Sure, as far as I know, but I’ve seen no evidence of that, and it wasn’t the accusation in this case.

So why is Bush trying to pin this three year old war on Iran? – besides the fact that the liar Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress was working for them of course, but Bush was shopping for their bill of goods, so that doesn’t count. It was Bush who sent the US Army into Iraq with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq on their heels and pushed this democracy crap, resulting in the election to power of the SCIRI-Da’wa-Iran dominated United Iraqi Alliance in January of 2004 and December 2005.

Remember the Salvador option? That was the US bringing the sickest killers of the SCIRI’s Badr Brigades into the “interior ministry” of the new Iraqi government, and setting them loose on the Sunni. They have been US allies. Now our government is doing what it does to all its loyal servants, it’s betraying them.

Justin Raimondo nailed it last week in his article “Biddle’s Pivot.” After quoting the article “The Grand Delusion” by Stephen Biddle (Any relation to the Chairman of the second Bank of the United States?) in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, advising a rethinking of the direction of America’s Iraq policy, Raimondo says:

“What this means, in effect, is that it is time to start tilting toward the Sunnis. If the Shi’ites continue to defy U.S. efforts to shape the political landscape of postwar Iraq, then we must play the Sunni card, employing force if necessary”

Now here comes Time magazine explaining the details,

“The ongoing dialogue between the U.S. and the Sunni insurgency is based on a shared wariness about the influence of Iran and its supporters in Iraq. U.S. officials are now saying bluntly that it’s time to bring back the Baath Party, excluding only those that are guilty of specific crimes. That reflects a growing acceptance among U.S. officials that the military and bureaucratic know-how in the Sunni community is badly needed, even to help run the security forces that the U.S. is standing up.”

The real change took place last April when Da’wa leader and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Kurdish Democratic Party leader and Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani offered their militias, the Badr Brigades and the peshmergas in the service of the US Army to annihilate the Sunni insurgency. The American response was a nervous “thanks but no thanks.” At that point, America became the protectors of the very Sunni insurgency our army had been, and has continued, fighting. While Badr/Iraqi Army death squads have flourished, the full scale invasion of the Sunni triangle hasn’t been allowed to happen – so far.

Were full scale war to break out between factions, the administration, based on the flimsy lies they’ve already started to toss out there, could blame it all on the Shi’ites and Iran, turn on a dime and start the war again – the war to reinstall the Sunni minority and the Ba’ath Party.

Who benefits from an Iraq civil war? The Kurds got theirs, and look as though they’ll be able to keep it. Same for the Shia in the South. These two regions hold the oil wealth, and the federalism described in the constitution guarantees they won’t have to share it with the Sunnis. The Iraqi Sunni don’t want civil war either. They would be crushed by the Badr/Kurd Army (if they can hold their alliance together).

That only leave two forces left to benefit: The foreign religious jihadists types whose holy war is threatened by cross-religious/cross-ethnic lines Iraqi nationalism, and the United States of America which needs an excuse to bomb Iran since nobody believes their stupid lies about Iranian nuclear weapons anymore.

It always seemed to me that the empowering of Iran was accidental, as the US completely underestimated the power of Ayatollah Sistani to demand direct elections, and that Bush/Cheney would never let them get away with it. It is just another reason to bomb Iran, though I wondered how our government thought they could get away with bombing Iran while the US army is surrounded by Iran-loyal Shi’ite militias who have tolerated the US presence so far and been the major recipients of American training and weapons.

Getting our attention deficit brains ready for the switch seems to be part of the plan. Soon will come the purge of the Iraqi Army.

Oh, and you’ll like this from Time too:

“One senior Baathist talking about the Americans said to me, recently, ‘In the 1980s we were allies, how did we end up on opposite sides?’ The Baathists are secular nationalists, they never allied with al-Qaeda or hardline Islamists when they were in power, and they’ve always been the sworn enemy of the soon-to-be-nuclear-armed regime in Iran. They share two of America’s main enemies, al-Qaeda and Iran. The Baathists and al-Qaeda elements who have worked together in the insurgency have always been uncomfortable bedfellows. And they’ve left little doubt in each other’s minds that once the Americans leave, they’ll have to fight each other.”

We ended up on opposite sides because the President’s father had the head of the new bipartisan Iraq Study Committee, his secretary of state, James Baker III, “emphasize” instructions to America’s ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, in July of 1990, that she should tell Saddam Hussein that the US government didn’t care one way or another if Iraq invaded Kuwait. (I once met the son of a Kuwaiti muky-muck, who said he didn’t appreciate it very much.) The US then invaded and imposed 12 years of blockade and no-fly zone bombing. Is depleted uranium bad for the memory centers of the brain or what?

As myself, everyone at Antiwar.com and on this side of reason has said all along, contrary to the claims of the administration, Saddam Hussein was a natural enemy of the jihadist radical types that are our enemy.

And of course the foreign terrorist presence in Iraq was only tolerated by the local Sunnis as a temporary measure against the US, I debunked the President’s pathetic scare tactic of a Osama bin Laden dominated Iraq on the radio last November, and on the blog in December.

Anyway, the point is that it seems to this armchair analyst that the administration does indeed plan to bomb Iran, and that this recent spout of lies and changing sides by our “servants” is just part of the setup.

More visionary brilliance from the neolibertarians at TechCentralStation:

For the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans should propose an idea so big that it stretches to the stars. Republicans should commit the government to building a space elevator by 2020. …

Space elevators could make going into orbit as cheap as flying across the Pacific. They could make space vacations financially feasible for many Americans.

Bitchin’! Dude, I cannot wait to take a spacecation – probably in my new capacity as a slave, mining helium-3 on the moon to pay off my share of the quadrillion-dollar national debt the project will incur, but still. Space!

But wait, it gets better:

Space elevators would also give the U.S. the high-ground in any future military conflict. With the elevators we could easily launch or destroy spy satellites. They would also help the U.S. set up a “Star Wars” missile defense system. Finally, space elevators would allow the military to deploy inexpensive non-explosive kinetic weapons that could be dropped from orbit on our enemies.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Matt, this is the raddest idea I have ever heard of in my pitiful, Earth-bound life! Thanks for giving me a reason to go on! And I couldn’t agree more: the welfare-warfare state has outgrown this tiny orb. But why wait until 2020? I want this thing up while I’m still young, dammit! That’s why I urge you to please write your congressional representatives and demand a space elevator (hell, make that two space elevators – think of the lines) by the end of President Bush’s second term.

(Via Gene Healy.)

Niall Ferguson reminds us that when a president’s got nothin’, he’s got nothin’ to lose.

That’s it folks. It’s time to stop pretending that this is America anymore. It’s not. After 60 years of the postwar Anglo-American empire, the Declaration of Independence has finally been formally annulled by the crime ring currently cloaking itself in the forms of a long-lost Republic.

According to Stars and Stripes, the American mission in Afghanistan is to be run by the Redcoats.

“STAVANGER, Norway — A NATO headquarters unit is in the midst of training for a deployment to Afghanistan that — as early as this summer — will see the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps assume command of all foreign troops in the country. It will be the first time since World War II that U.S. troops at war would be under the theaterwide command of a foreign officer, in this case, a British three-star general. It will also mark a historic expansion of NATO’s mission outside Europe, possibly providing a blueprint for alliance missions in Africa or elsewhere. [emphasis added]

“’I’ve absolutely no doubt’ NATO is ready to lead the force, the ARRC commander, British army Lt. Gen. David Richards, said in an interview. If attacked, ‘we will respond robustly to whoever wishes to take us on. The NATO [rules of engagement] are more than robust enough to deal with anyone who wishes to tangle with us.’

“Richards also said that member nations such as Germany and Italy have, in almost all cases, released their troops from ‘caveats’ that restrict how they can participate in the mission.”

And why not?

The USA already has its own Star Chamber courts (a game so rigged that some of the prosecutors have resigned rather than have to carry the shame of a victory), wars can be declared by the executive alone, just like in the Old World, and there are (so far) thousands of victims to the president’s claim to “inherent” “plenary“post-constitutional authority to declare any person an “enemy combatant” (a phrase was made up by White House lawyers so that they could keep the victims of their kidnapping outside of the protection of the law) – a power upheld by the new Chief Justice in his last job. The medieval savages that run our Defense Department the now hold the innocent victims of this “Grab whom you must, do what you want” policy at “ghost prisons” all over the world where they are routinely tortured. All of which makes one wonder how this government is any different or better than the empire its founders seceded from.

The truth is that the British tail has been wagging the US dog since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, and the fact that we are now occupying with, and now under, the British, territory which their empire had least been able to hold in their past, just goes to show that not much has changed in a hundred years except who’s paying for it all.

Don’t expect to hear much of anything from all the conservatives who – rightly – complained about Bill Clinton’s placing of US troop under foreign command during all of his so-called peacekeeping missions – this is George W. Bush giving orders to take foreign orders, and that makes it okay. You know, like when he renamed Americorps “The Freedom Corps” and nationalized the government schools?

I know what you’re thinking: despite being born with the last name of Horton, I am obviously just an anti-white racist. For what other possible reason in the world would I criticize this entangling alliance with Great Britain?

You’re right, of course.