Antiwar.com Blog

Between Juan Cole’s entry from yesterday and what Abbas Kadhim writes, it appears conclusive that Najaf has been destroyed.

Antiwar.com contributor Al Lorentz, whose troubles I discussed here, gets a write-up in Salon. I’m looking forward to the enormous support Sgt. Lorentz is sure to receive from the “Support Our Troops” crowd.

The DoD reports:

Sgt. Skipper Soram, 23, of Kolonia Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, died Sept. 22 in Baghdad, Iraq, when a vehicle-based improvised explosive device detonated near his security post. Soram was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

According to the CIA Factbook, Micronesia is under US administration:

In 1979 the Federated States of Micronesia, a UN Trust Territory under US administration, adopted a constitution. In 1986 independence was attained under a Compact of Free Association with the US. […]
FSM is totally dependent on the US for its defense

That must mean that their citizens can fight in the US military. Is this a symptom of poor recruitment results or a long-standing tradition?

From Bob Novak’s column of today:

A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as ”just guessing,” the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.

Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout Islam. This was not from a CIA retiree but an active senior official. (Pillar, no covert operative, is listed openly in the Federal Staff Directory.) . . .

The Bush-CIA tension escalated Sept. 15 when the New York Times reported a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was circulated in August (not July, as the newspaper reported), spelling out ”a dark assessment of Iraq” with civil war as the ”worst case” outcome. The NIE was prepared by Pillar, and well-placed sources believe Pillar leaked it, though he denied that at Tuesday night’s dinner.

The immediate White House reaction to the NIE, from spokesman Scott McClellan, was to associate it with ”pessimists” and ”hand-wringers.” With Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at his side at the United Nations, Bush said of the CIA: ”They were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like.”

A few hours later, Pillar discussed the Iraqi war in a context of increased aversion to the United States — an attitude he said his East Asia section at the CIA was aware of three years ago and feared would be exacerbated by U.S. military intervention. When Pillar was asked why this was not made clear to the president and other higher authorities, his answer was that nobody asked — not even Tenet.

There’s also this provocative bit near the end:

Modern history is filled with intelligence bureaus turning against their own governments, for good or ill. In the final days of World War II, the German Abwehr conspired against Hitler.

Al Lorentz, a Texas reservist serving with the U.S. Army in Iraq, has gotten into hot water for writing this courageous appraisal of the Iraq disaster. Specifically, the military may charge him with “willfully causing or attempting to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty.” Lt. Col. (ret.) Karen Kwiatkowski suggests that another Texan might be a tad uncomfortable with Lorentz for entirely different reasons. Check out this piece Lorentz wrote for Antiwar.com back in June to see why.

Alot of bloggers are decrying this Rumsfeldian comment:

“Let’s say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country in some places you couldn’t because the violence was too great,” Rumsfeld said. “So be it. Nothing’s perfect in life. You have an election that’s not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet.”

Asked later by reporters to elaborate, Rumsfeld said: “Is it dangerous? You bet. Will there be elections? I think so. Might there be some portion of the country where the terrorists decide they’re going to mess things up? Possibly. Does that mean that there won’t be elections? No.“

How does that statement stack up against this?

US officials are looking at ways to postpone the 2 November presidential poll should “terrorists” attack the United States near election time, a US magazine is reporting.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Friday said: “Al-Qaida is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process.” However, he admitted US intelligence had no information about any specific plot.

But unnamed counterterrorism officials told Newsweek on Sunday they were considering a proposal to delay balloting in the event of an attack.

So, it’s OK to have elections in Iraq despite the violence and attacks which would leave out large swaths of the country including the capital(!), but in the US…well, that’s a different story.

I wish I could say that I find it hard to believe that opposition parties in the US aren’t pointing this out, but considering the TweedleDee and TweedleDumb-ness of this election, it isn’t at all surprising. I do think many Iraqis noticed the hypocritical double standard.