Plenty of troops for Iraq

So, they’re sending “paperwork units” and weaponless training units to Iraq, as well as calling up thousands of IRR soldiers.

A Sacramento-based Army National Guard unit that usually processes paperwork for other soldiers going overseas was called up to serve for more than a year in Iraq.

The 79th Personnel Services Detachment was briefed Sunday about preparing to leave for Fort Lewis in Washington state where the 50 members will be notified of their duties for an 18-month assignment in Iraq.

The soldiers were told how to apply for life insurance and were told how much their children and spouses would receive if they were killed in action.

Too bad the 101st Keyboard Commando Brigade isn’t going. I guess they have to stay behind to report all the good news coming out of Iraq that the liberal media keeps covering up.

Headless bodies litter northern Iraq

Headless bodies are apparently being found scattered around Iraq, three of them having turned up around Mosul the past couple of days. Mosul is in one of the “peaceful” provinces of Iraq, according to Comical Allawi, where elections could be held anytime because of the excellent security.

A parked car loaded with explosives blew up as a US convoy was driving by in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul today. US troops then opened fire and killed three Iraqis passing by.

A car bomb exploded Monday outside a primary school in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing seven people- including two children- and injuring eleven, police said.

A car bomb exploded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday, killing three people including two bombers and a child, in the third such attack in the country within hours.

The Mosul car bomb exploded as a U.S. military convoy was passing by, wounding six American soldiers, the military said today.

Unidentified gunmen killed Maj. Ghassan Mohammed, director of internal affairs for Abi Taman police station,and his driver in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The above incidents all happened within the last week, but the US was busy bombing Fallujah and Sadr city and declaring victory in Samarra, so the peaceful areas of Iraq like Mosul weren’t in the news all that much.

Another interesting Mosul story surfaced yesterday in Newsday, which claims to have gotten a copy of an Arab intelligence report which says Zarqawi, who is currently being targeted by bombs in Fallujah, is in Mosul. This actually makes sense because northern Iraq was Zarqawi’s stomping ground pre-invasion, as his gang, which has close ties to Ansar al-Islam, was based in the Northern No-Fly zone. Both Ansar al-Islam and Zarqawi flourished in northern Iraq where they were protected from Saddam Hussein’s regime by the US and Britain.

Al-Zarqawi’s own militant group has fewer than 100 members inside Iraq, although al-Zarqawi has close ties to a Kurdish Islamist group with at least several hundred members, according to two reports produced by an Arab intelligence service. The Kurdish group, Ansar al-Islam, has provided dozens of recruits for suicide bombings since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the reports say. And while U.S. forces relentlessly pound the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Samarra, claiming to hit al-Zarqawi safe houses, the elusive militant could be hiding in the northern city of Mosul.
[…]
Mosul has become a haven for Islamic militants, and especially for members of Ansar al-Islam. The city is a center for training and dispatching suicide bombers to other parts of Iraq, and a coordination hub between ex-regime loyalists and Islamic militants. Ansar moved many of its operations to Mosul after it was driven out of a remote, mountainous part of northern Iraq by U.S. bombardment during the war. The Baathist regime had strong support in Mosul, and Hussein’s two sons were killed in a gun battle with U.S. troops after taking refuge there.

Al-Zarqawi has spent considerable time in Mosul, and he might be hiding there rather than in Fallujah, where U.S. forces have launched numerous air strikes since June on what they describe as al-Zarqawi safe houses. Al-Zarqawi is drawn to Mosul because of the concentration of Ansar members there, and because the city of 2 million people is easier to hide in than Fallujah.

The Newsday piece is well worth reading for a more realistic assessment of the likelihood of Zarqawi being behind even a fraction of the violence he claims and the Bushistas blame on him.

As I wrote this post, 2 more decapitated bodies were discovered in Kirkuk, which is also in a peaceful northern province under Kurdish control, just like Mosul.

In Kirkuk, Lieutenant Colonel Awaad Jibouri said the corpse and head of a former Iraqi army officer, identified as Ali Hussein, was found in a town southwest of the city. Hussein had worked at a U.S. military base in Kirkuk.

A second Iraqi, identified as Taha Abdullah, who worked at a U.S. barracks near Baiji was also beheaded and his body was found on Monday night, Jibouri said.

Imagine a War on Satanism

Pat Robertson threatens to start his own 3rd party:

    Influential American evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday that Evangelical Christians feel so deeply about Jerusalem, that if President George W. Bush were to “touch” Jerusalem, Evangelicals would abandon their traditional Republican leanings and form a third party.

    Evangelical Christians – estimated at tens of millions of Americans –
    overwhelmingly support Bush for his pro-Israel policies, Robertson told a Jerusalem news conference Monday.

    But if Bush shifted his position toward support for Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and a Palestinian state, his Evangelical backing would disappear, Robertson indicated.

    “The President has backed away from [the road map], but if he were to touch Jerusalem, he’d lose all Evangelical support,” Robertson said. “Evangelicals would form a third party” because, though people “don’t know about” Gaza, Jerusalem is an entirely different matter.

I think most evangelicals are pro-Israel because they’re pro-Bush/GOP, not the other way around. But a megalomaniacal figure such as Robertson – who ran for president in 1988 and managed to round up 3 million volunteers – could create a full-on Christian Zionist party.

    “I see the rise of Islam to destroy Israel and take the land from the Jews and give East Jerusalem to [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Yasser Arafat. I see that as Satan’s plan to prevent the return of Jesus Christ the Lord,” said Robertson, a Christian broadcaster.

Has Laurie Mylroie heard about this?

Worse than Vietnam

“Vietnam was not easy, but it was certainly far less complex and more straightforward.”

That is a quote from Bruce Hoffman, a RAND counterinsurgency expert who served as an adviser to the U.S.-led occupation administration, comparing the “complex insurgency” in Iraq with Vietnam. Read it all.

Consider Afghanistan Democratized

Sounds like the Afghans understand how American democracy really works:

    MARGAREEN, Afghanistan

    Abdul Razaq stands among the menfolk of this dusty village of Afghan nomads and rejoices that democracy has at last come to his country after more than 20 years of warfare.

    “It means I can finally cast my ballot for Hamid Karzai,” Razaq, a Kuchi tribesman, said yesterday, echoing the words of about 300 other men gathered on a treeless hillside near a clutch of tents and mud-brick homes. They had convened to learn from U.N. education officers how to take part in the Oct. 9 vote. “Karzai is our leader. Karzai is our king,” Razaq and the others repeated.

    Each man in this poor village just outside the capital, Kabul, says he will vote for Karzai, the interim president and a fellow Pashtun, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group. They say their elders have told them that Karzai is the best choice, and they see no reason to question that.

    “In Kuchi society, we listen to our elders. They have said the choice is ours, but that Karzai is the man for the job,” said Mohammed Saeed, a 41-year-old father of seven. “We all know what to do. We will all be voting for Karzai.”

Of course, the Associated Press chap on the scene fails to see any parallels:

    There is certainly no lack of enthusiasm among many Afghans as their nation prepares for its first-ever direct vote for president. The Kuchis, most of them nomadic sheep and goat herders, say they have delayed their annual 100-mile trek by foot to the eastern city of Jalalabad so they will be nearer to home and their voting places.

    But there is still little understanding in this tribal society of either the mechanics of voting, or the concept that each vote is an individual decision.

    That is one reason why the electoral campaign so far has borne such little resemblance to a Western-style vote. There have been only a handful of rallies and debates and few campaign promises. Instead, candidates have spent most of their time meeting behind the high-walled compounds of Kabul’s political elite with tribal elders who can deliver a guarantee of hundreds of votes.

Ah, the comfort of chavinistic delusions! “Such little resemblance to a Western-style vote”?! Has this journalist ever heard of Jesse Jackson or Ralph Reed?

    One man among the crowd under a huge awning said he lost a brother and 14 relatives in an infamous American air raid in July 2002, when 48 civilians at a wedding party were said to have been killed and 117 wounded. He still plans, however, to vote for U.S.-backed Karzai.

    “Karzai is an elder of our tribe. There is no other choice,” Haji Mohammed Anwar said.

I daresay Mr. Anwar’s analysis is no less sophisticated than that of the average voter in the U.S./UK. Instead of marveling at the naivete of Afghans, someone should be asking why a majority of Americans and Britons will likely consider Afghanistan a success story after this bogus vote is over.