Antiwar.com Blog

It’s amusing to watch the developing Bremer vs. The Neocons war with Anonymous’ words in mind:

Powell’s early 2005 departure is the subject of intense jockeying among the neocons. A Perle neocon protégé, Michael Rubin, has been given the task of destroying the only competition — L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, the former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority chief, not a neocon insider and the favorite of traditional Republican conservatives. The neocon plan is to make Bremer the scapegoat: It was not bad neocon policy, it was bad Bremer decisions that has led to the fiasco in Iraq. Rubin was sent to Baghdad to be Wolfowitz’s man inside the CPA. Bremer dissed Rubin as a lightweight. Rubin tried to push neocon policy inside the CPA — what he, Perle and Ahmed Chalabi had pushed from the American Enterprise Institute — restoring the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq by placing Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan on the throne. Bremer would have none of it. Rubin is now tasked by Perle and Wolfowitz to trash Bremer — which he is dutifully doing in print and media appearances arranged by neocon handler, lecture agent and media booker Eleana Benador. They intend to close the Foggy Bottom door to any aspirations Bremer, a former Foreign Service officer and Kissinger protégé, might have to take over from Powell.
[…]
But Bush the Crusader is off to a rocky start in Iraq. The ongoing meltdown is awakening Americans to the reality of the neocon agenda. But is it too late? Neocons are not dissuaded by the problems in Iraq; on the contrary, they are arguing that the problem is “Bremerism” — the U.S. has not gone far enough. In their view, we need to take out the Palestinians, Syria and Iran now.

Sure enough, if you go to the Benador site and look at Rubin’s archives, you find titles like BREMER’S LEGACY A RECIPE FOR INSTABILITY. Apparently Bremer is fighting back, with an accusation that there were too few post-invasion troops to control the rampant looting that occurred. Atrios has checked out some of the rotten tomatoes hurled at Bremer by neocons since Bremer’s statement.

I like watching this food fight because I can root for both sides to lose.

UPDATE: Another neocon chimes in, right on cue:

BREMER [Michael Ledeen]
I see where Jerry Bremer is beating up on the Pentagon for the “sin” of not having enough troops for Viceroy Bremer to deploy where and when he wished. No big surprise there; he’s a State Dept guy, after all. But somebody might think to point out that he was a driving force behind the catastrophic decision to call off the Marines just as they were on the verge of smashing the terrorist enclave in Fallujah. And that wasn’t because we lacked troops. It was because we lacked will. He was afraid the Sunnis on the Governing Council were going to resign, and that would make him look bad…so let’s keep proper perspective on who’s responsible for what in Iraq, ok?

Emphasis mine.

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.

Everyone’s favorite Iranian agent (only kidding, Mike; don’t call your barrister) frets about Iraq (it’s keeping us from obliterating other countries) and ends on a particularly frantic note: “Faster, damnit.”

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.

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?

“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.