The Lies that put the US in Iraq

Juan Cole has a post on the false statements that paved the path to war. According to the study cited by Cole, there were some 935 false statements made by the Bush administration.

Searching for something intelligent to say

I must confess that I don't know much about Kenya - a bit more than Mel Lastman perhaps, but not much. As a general comment though, I'll observe that in the past few years we've really had a problem with countries thrown together by European imperialists. Iraq contains three groups that don't like each other, Kenya appears to be in a similar situation and in Pakistan the problems with the Afghan border seem to be derived in large part from the fact that an arbitrary British line slices Pashtun lands in half.

Iran Not Going for the Bomb

This story has been floating around the blogosphere quite a bit: it appears that the Iranian government abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. While the American intelligence community has been pretty damaged by the Iraq fiasco, but the pressure was undoubtedly on the CIA et cetera to show that there was a bomb being built.

Here's some speculation: 2003 was the invasion of Iraq, could it be that once the American military did away with Iran's greatest existential threat, Saddam and his alleged weapons programs, there was no good reason to develop a deterrent.

Why don't they report the good news?

Sadly it looks like the festering cholera problem is getting worse in Iraq. I don't recall new epidemics as being one of the promised benefits of an invasion back in 2003. I suppose, just like with every other problem that's happened in Iraq some neocon will now sit down in front of a camera and explain that of course we should have expected outbreaks of disease - it's a sign that democracy marches on! Just like civil war and ethnic cleansing!

Let slip the dogs of war (again)

Turkey (now with the support of Syria!) is authorizing its military to conduct incursions into the Kurdish areas of Iraq. I don't know what to say, but Turkey may be at the vanguard of far more open involvement of other regional powers in pursuing their interests in Iraq.

Iraq Can't Expel Blackwater After All

It turns out that the Maliki government needs them too badly. It appears that Iraqis are stuck with the hated private security firms running around the country above the law. This is one more grudge in a country already full of them.

They Hate Us for our Mercenaries

Blackwater is back in Iraq, wow that's some sovereignty that the Iraqi government has. BAGnewsNotes has some glamour shots of Blackwater personnel posing in Iraq. The post also has this interesting line:

"What I also can't understand, -- given the average Iraqi's distain for this outfit -- is why Blackwater has the aerial presence in the first place. In reference to the offensiveness, the newswires currently also offer a number of file shots of Blackwater helicopter buzzing Baghdad mosques."

I'm sure if a unit from the US military repeatedly and obviously pisses off the locals for no reason there is at least the hope that a competent commander will reprimand them (though I'm sure some of them just hush things up). With Blackwater it doesn't appear that anything can be done. Is it any wonder that they can escalate their behaviour to shooting at random locals?

Whatever you do, don't talk to them!

Juan Cole has linked to an article that states that the Bush administration is pressuring Iraq leaders not to have the Iranian president visit them. Real leaders never talk to their enemies, right Ronald Reagan? Oh... Never mind.

Fall Fashions: Iran is the new Iraq!

It's funny how fashion comes and goes, and so it is with state enemies. Iran was hot in the 1980s, but since then Iraq has been hot. Now, Iraq is in disarray, so this fall we find Iran being the new must-have inside the beltway.

More Proof That Democracy is Passe

Ayad Allawi is floating the idea of having the US back in him in seizing control of Iraq in a coup. This is totally going to muck up any attempt that Bill Kristol might make to sell a war in Iran. I can see it now, "We need to spread more favourable dictatorships to the whole world."

Invading Iraq to Stop Terror Attacks

Is it okay when Iran does it?

After Turkey had pretty much threatened to do the same thing, one wonders what reason the American military could give for declaring such actions unjust.

I'm sure that everyone involved in the invasion and occupation is eager to protect the Kurdish areas as they represent the one real glimmer of success in Iraq for now. If the Kurdish paramilitaries tolerate the more radical Kurdish separatist groups using Iraq as a base to attack Turkey and Iran, surely they will both respond.

The Free Market is Magic!

Apparently that was the thinking going into Iraq on the part of those in the US that were tasked with planning its post-invasion economy:

"Brinkley said early economic planners had made the understandable mistake of assuming that a free market would rapidly emerge to replace what he described as Saddam's "kleptocracy", and create full employment."

One can only imagine that these same people think they can put a watch in a bag, smash it with a hammer, and pull a much better watch out of the bag. This is more of the Underpants Gnomes-type thinking that has characterized this invasion:
Step 1: Invade country, overthrow old order.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Stable, united, prosperous, market-economy, pro-US, pro-Israel, cheap oil-selling Iraq.
For all of their pro-market posturing, I'm wondering if the Bushies have any understanding of how markets are supposed to work.

Iraqis Just Can't Catch a Break

In many nations a favourite sport will bring people together in a way that little else can. Perhaps the most famous recent example has been India and Pakistan playing cricket against each other. In Iraq, like much of the world, soccer is probably the most popular sport. You might think that a win over South Korea (a side that did extremely well as recently as the '02 World Cup) might be a cause for Iraqis to set aside their differences peacefully to celebrate. It was not. Sigh.

Turkey and Iraq

Turkey is shelling PKK positions in Iraq, and what's more, it appears to be massing an invasion force for an incursion into northern Iraq. This is not encouraging for anyone, and yet it's par for the course in that part of the world.

Despite the obvious and frightening scenarios that may be unleashed by a major Turkish incursion, there may be little in the way of pretext to stop it.

What is Al Qaeda? II

Juan Cole explains the difference between the guys in Afghanistan/Pakistan and the guys in Iraq:

"Al-Qaeda in Iraq" is of course just a bogeyman phrase to describe Salafi Jihadis there. But they obviously feel some kinship to the real al-Qaeda (you never want to see that) and they are threatening to get up an attack on the United States. There was no al-Qaeda in Saddam`s Iraq, so it is Bush who has created this current threat, which did not have to be there.

From being a single network of training camps and cells, al Qaeda has turned into a catch-all term. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that "al Qaeda" simply means "the base" in Arabic? It's a wonderfully vague term that must sound vaguely menacing in its native tongue, even absent the baggage it has acquired in the past ten years or so. It's also unique in not being laden with any very specific ideological connotations.

How ready are Iraq's soldiers?

In spite of the Iraqi government's insistence that it can take over responsibility for Iraq's security, Juan Cole analyzes the numbers that General Pace has laid out for the press:

"In fact, the important figure is how many can operate independently. That means that they will go to the front when ordered, will actually fight, won't run away, and might actually accomplish something, even if there are no US troops anywhere nearby. Iraq apparently has about 3,000 troops of that description. My guess is that they are mostly Kurdish Peshmerga on loan from Kurdistan. I.e., Iraq probably has almost no Arab troops who would and could fight independently for the al-Maliki government, as opposed to cannon fodder pushed before US battalions and afraid of being shot as deserters if they turn tail."

So they have 3000 guys who can enforce the rule of the central government in all of Iraq. Great. Al-Maliki, I call bullshit.

Eric Margolis asks a question

This stood out to me:

"Blaming every violent incident on the shadowy al-Qaida is a handy excuse for avoiding reality and responsibility. But it won’t change the fact that a good 20% of the world’s population is increasingly enraged at the US, Britain, Australia and, most lately, Canada. How can we hector the Muslim World to cease its acts of violence when we westerners continue to intensify our own?"

This is though one of those cases where the whole article is worth reading. Actually I've been meaning to pick up Margolis' War at the Top of the World, if it's anything like his columns, it's probably worth reading.

Oh the Irony! Turkey/Kurdistan Edition

Remember how the US invaded Iraq ostensibly to limit terrorist threats - something trumpeted as the Bush Doctrine? Remember how Bush said he would not make a distinction between terrorists and those that harbor them?

Well now the Turkish government is accusing US-occupied Iraq of harboring terrorists! By the Bush Administration's own foreign policy doctrine, Turkey is able - nay ought - to invade and occupy Kurdistan to deal with the PKK.

Of course the reality is much more complex than that. The Turkish government hasn't exactly treated its Kurdish minority with the utmost of fairness and the US does regard the PKK as a terror organization. On the other hand the reality in 2003 was more complex too.

Stabbed in the Back: A Cross-Border Meme

As I'm checking Google Reader today I see that Matthew Yglesias has post on how American conservatism has started attributing military failure to "national will" or rather the supposed lack thereof implied in the "stabbed in the back" meme. Meanwhile Red Tory points out that Andrew Coyne is looking to very same meme to shore up Canadian support for the ongoing mission in Afghanistan. Usually Harper is a couple years behind mimicking the GOP machine, he appears to have caught up.

"The peace candidate always wins"

This is an interesting bit of commentary from Ron Paul. There is lots that I would undoubtedly disagree with if I sat down and studied Ron Paul's politics, but the man has talked more sense than anyone else on Iraq and terror in the '08 campaign. That's why he has this buzz now.