Prometheus 6

The reasons for the hesitation are complex, based on dangers both real and imagined. In most cases, Iraqis say they feel safe with their neighbors but are not sure about other residents. Some are afraid of the new guards on their blocks. In rarer cases, they cannot face neighbors who they suspect helped in killings.

In the patchwork of today’s Iraq, there are many exceptions. But for now, returning families in many areas are still a trickle, indicating that even though sectarian killings seem to have ended, the distrust they sowed lingers. And while most Iraqis are trying hard to put the ugliness of the past behind them, moving their children back to areas where killings once raged is the ultimate act of trust that many parents — at least so far — seem to be unwilling to risk.

I can relate. And we are still underestimating the impact it will have nigh unto perpetuity.

I am now officially concerned about Pakistan.

If diplomatic responses mean anything at all, imagine Russia's reaction if the United States starts chasing militants in Pakistan independent of the Pakistani government.

It turns out the Bush administration's mishandling of Afghanistan and Pakistan could have greater repercussions than their mishandling of Iraq. In fact, abandoning those nations mid-war in favor of adventures in Iraq set the conditions for their current crisis.

There might be proof of intelligent design in this. It really seems to me that those who want to dominate the world inevitably turn out to be too stupid or impatient...same thing, really...to pull it off. Even a collective effort as coordinated as PNAC is composed of humans that can't wait to be the one that sets it in motion, or makes the decisive step. Above all, we want it to happen while we're able to enjoy our just reward. We may be designed that way, and it may be our final defense

"Leave Iraq? Not on my watch! (but my watch is over soon...)

U.S., Iraqi Negotiators Agree on 2011 Withdrawal
Rice's Baghdad Visit Ends With Accord on Departure Date; Legal Immunity Is Still a Sticking Point
By Karen DeYoung and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 22, 2008; A01

BAGHDAD, Aug. 21 -- U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have agreed to the withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from the country by the end of 2011, and Iraqi officials said they are "very close" to resolving the remaining issues blocking a final accord that governs the future American military presence here.

Iraqi and U.S. officials said several difficult issues remain, including whether U.S. troops will be subject to Iraqi law if accused of committing crimes. But the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the agreement publicly, said key elements of a timetable for troop withdrawal once resisted by President Bush had been reached.

"We have a text," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said after a day-long visit Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Afghanistan on Fire

The news out of Afghanistan is truly alarming. This week, Taliban forces staged two of their most complex and audacious attacks of the war. Nearly 100 insurgents killed 10 French paratroopers in an attack near Kabul. At least 10 suicide bombers mounted a coordinated assault on one of America’s largest military bases, wounding three American and six Afghan soldiers. An earlier attack at the base killed 12 Afghan workers.

The number of United States and NATO casualties is mounting so quickly, that unless something happens soon this could be the deadliest year of the Afghan war. Kabul, the seat of Afghanistan’s pro-Western government, is increasingly besieged. And Taliban and foreign Qaeda fighters are consolidating control over an expanding swath of territory sprawling across both sides of the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

"This is hard to watch," said Zekri Youssef, 33, a pizza maker from Egypt. "People don't know this happens."

"I recognize this, because I was tortured, too," said Paul Rivera, 41, who says he was tied down with restraints while he was serving prison time for selling drugs and guns. "This is sad to see."

"That's messed up," said Joshua Sanchez, 16, a Bronx student. "That's real wrong to torture someone, and I wouldn't have put a dollar in if I knew."

"I don't think there's a need for that. I don't like it," said Denise Kennedy, 49, a Brooklyn homemaker who held up her 9-year-old niece to view the exhibit before realizing what it was. "It's not for kids at all."

In N.Y., Waterboarding as Dark Art
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 17, 2008; A02

NEW YORK -- Slip a dollar into a slot in the "Waterboard Thrill Ride," and watch through bars as a man in a hooded sweatshirt pours water into the nose and mouth of another man in an orange jumpsuit convulsing against his restraints.

It looks like a scene from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But this is Coney Island, and the two men are motorized mannequins whose interaction takes place alongside freak shows and funnel cakes.

The scene is the creation of Steve Powers, who has participated in the Venice Biennale, won a Fulbright grant and published art books, but whose roots are in the graffiti art of the streets.

...unless you get off on stuff like that. Some of you do, I can tell...

Musharraf to Resign in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Under pressure over impending impeachment charges, President Pervez Musharraf announced he would resign Monday, ending nearly nine years as one of the United States’ most important allies in the campaign against terrorism.

Speaking on television from his presidential office here at 1 p.m., Mr. Musharraf, dressed in a gray suit and tie, said that after consulting with his aides, “I have decided to resign today.” He said he was putting national interest above “personal bravado.”

“Whether I win or lose the impeachment, the nation will lose,” he said, adding that he was not prepared to put the office of the presidency through the impeachment process.

Nevertheless, Freedman's conclusion is odd given that the earlier chapters of his book make a compelling case that the United States' missteps in the Middle East have stemmed from ideological obstinacy, a failure to understand history, and often plain obtuseness. If such blunders lie at the root of the United States' policy failures in the region, why does Freedman argue for throwing in the towel rather than repairing the policy process by recruiting experts, pragmatists, and those who have learned the lessons of the past -- and entrusting them with fixing the Middle East?

You remember the Pottery Barn rule, "You break it, you own it"? 

After you pay for it, do you keep the pieces?

Shortsighted Statecraft
Washington's Muddled Middle East Policy
By Daniel C. Kurtzer

From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008

A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East . Lawrence Freedman . PublicAffairs , 2008, 569 pp. 29.95

There is a feature of my seminars on U.S. Middle East policy at Princeton that I call "déjà vu all over again" -- with apologies to Yogi Berra. I ask students to assess the bungled efforts and missed opportunities of generations of U.S. diplomats and seek in them lessons for the future. They examine the hubris that drove the U.S. government to engineer the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddeq's democratically elected government in Iran. This traumatic episode was conveniently forgotten by 1979, when National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski encouraged Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to use force against the opposition, ignoring the warnings of U.S. diplomats on the ground in Iran that the shah's reign was doomed. Similarly, the United States forgot the lesson of the limited and United Nations-approved 1991 war in response to Iraq's aggression in Kuwait when it launched an ideologically inspired invasion of Iraq in 2003. Likewise, in 2006, Washington seemed to have forgotten the fiasco that followed Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Rather than learn from the past, Washington backed Israel's ill-advised attempt to deliver a knockout blow against another Lebanese foe, this time Hezbollah. My students and I conclude -- only half-jokingly -- that U.S. policymakers ought to take the class before taking office.

“For all the talk about the private sector taking off in Iraq, it didn’t materialize,” said Haider al-Abbadi, who is on the parliamentary economic committee, and is disappointed by Iraq’s reversion to its old statist habits. “People would say, ‘Well, these people are poor; we need to help them.’ It’s true, but we didn’t create jobs. I think this is a huge problem.”

Iraq Private Sector Falters; Rolls of Government Soar
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

BAGHDAD — Hampered by years of violence, a decimated infrastructure, a lack of foreign investors and a flood of imports that undercut local businesses, Iraq’s private sector, particularly its small non-oil economy, has so far failed to flourish as its American patrons had hoped.

In its absence, the Iraqi government has been sustaining the economy the way it always has: by putting citizens on its payroll. Since 2005, according to federal budgets, the number of government employees has nearly doubled, to 2.3 million from 1.2 million.

Editor's note: The full document is available here.

Did McCain's foreign-policy advisor profit from the Iraq war?
In a confidential memo, a company tells investors consultant Randy Scheunemann can help it win Iraqi oil contracts -- because he was a "key player" in getting the U.S. to invade.
By Mark Benjamin

Aug. 01, 2008 | As recently as last year, John McCain's senior foreign-policy and national security advisor, a neoconservative who played a leading role in pushing for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, was trying to use his role in promoting the Iraq war to make money off Iraqi oil. In a confidential memo, a company called World Strategic Energy, for which top McCain aide Randy Scheunemann was an executive consultant, told prospective investors that Scheunemann could help World Strategic Energy win oil contracts in Iraq because he was well-connected in the Iraqi exile community and had been a "key player" in getting the U.S. involved in Iraq. The memo was first published by blogger and Salon contributor Lindsay Beyerstein, who wrote that the 44-page brochure-style "placement memorandum" was being circulated to potential investors in late 2007.

He says we have to "shift gears mentally to consider emerging prospects of success," though "[o]f course, we cannot tell now whether these changes are permanent." He then argues as though "these changes" mean what he thinks they do and that they are, indeed, permanent.

Mr. Kissenger assumes the emerging prospects of success are greater than the existing prospects of success, but brings no support for that dream.

The strategy document, which has not been released...

The tactic that may actually be our worst enemy is the practice of acting on unreleased reports. The Bush version of the tactic is to float some absurd idea (like allowing health care workers to ignore your doctor's prescriptions for any reason whatsoever). The result:

1. You fire off your best arguments against what "I would argue" (though I haven't argued it yet).
2. I gather your defenses and craft a story to undermine them or, if that's not possible, to slide up to the point just short of invoking your argument.
3. I present my case as though the first unreleased suggestion never happened (which, in fact, it didn't).
4. In any event,I get to ignore your suggestions, because I know you don't have all the facts (they were in the unreleased report).

Gates Sees Terrorism Remaining Enemy No. 1
New Defense Strategy Shifts Focus From Conventional Warfare
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; A01

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says that even winning the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not end the "Long War" against violent extremism and that the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorists should be the nation's top military priority over coming decades, according to a new National Defense Strategy he approved last month.

The strategy document, which has not been released, calls for the military to master "irregular" warfare rather than focusing on conventional conflicts against other nations, though Gates also recommends partnering with China and Russia in order to blunt their rise as potential adversaries. The strategy is a culmination of Gates's work since he took over the Pentagon in late 2006 and spells out his view that the nation must harness both military assets and "soft power" to defeat a complex, transnational foe.

I didn't make that up. It's like the last thing he says in this video.

In its report, the committee said: "Given the clear differences in definition, the UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future." 

UK 'must check' US torture denial

The British government should not rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, a report by MPs says.

The foreign affairs select committee said the UK and US differ on their definitions of what constitutes torture and it urged the UK to check US claims.

It recommended the government carry out an "exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques."

The MPs also said the government should check claims that Britain is not used by the US for "rendition" flights.

The Army documents cite a number of recent safety threats. One report showed that during a four-day period in late February, soldiers at a Baghdad compound reported being shocked while taking showers in different buildings. The circumstances appear similar to those that led to Sergeant Maseth’s death.

Another entry from early March stated that an entire house used by American troops was electrically charged, making it unlivable.

Since the Pentagon reports were compiled, more episodes linked to electrical problems have occurred. In late June, for example, an electrical fire at a Marine base in Falluja destroyed 10 buildings, forcing marines there to ask for donations from home to replace their personal belongings.

On July 5, Sgt. First Class Anthony Lynn Woodham of the Arkansas National Guard died at his base in Tallil, Iraq. Initial reports blamed electrocution, but his death is being investigated because of conflicting information, according to his wife, Crystal Woodham, and a spokesman for the Arkansas National Guard....

Officials say the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq that companies like KBR were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the operations. Some of the electrical work, for example, was turned over to subcontractors, some of which hired unskilled Iraqis who were paid only a few dollars a day.

Government officials responsible for contract oversight, meanwhile, were also unable to keep up, so that unsafe electrical work was not challenged by government auditors.

Electrical Risks at Bases in Iraq Worse Than Previously Said
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

Policy Shift Seen in U.S. Decision on Iran Talks
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEVEN LEE MYERS

PARIS — The Bush administration’s decision to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country’s nuclear program.

First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it would meet face to face with Iran only after the country suspended its uranium enrichment, as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

Second, an American partner at the table injects new importance to the negotiating track of the six global powers confronting Iran — France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States — even though their official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until uranium enrichment stops.

Only 45 American soldiers and 25 Afghans had occupied the Wanat outpost for a few days before the attack. Far outnumbered by militants, the force was nearly overrun and fought a four-hour battle before the Taliban were repelled. In addition to the nine American deaths, 15 American soldiers were wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were wounded. ...

In Kabul, Capt. Mike Finney, a spokesman for the NATO force, said that “the citizens in Wanat and northern Kunar Province can be assured” that NATO and Afghan troops would continue to patrol the district and maintain “a strong presence in the area.”

U.S. Abandons Site of Afghan Attack
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — American forces have abandoned the outpost in northeastern Afghanistan where nine American soldiers were killed Sunday in a heavy attack by insurgents, NATO officials said Wednesday.

The withdrawal handed a propaganda victory to the Taliban, and insurgents were quick to move into the village of Wanat beside the abandoned outpost, Afghan officials said. Insurgents nearly overran the barely built outpost in a dawn raid on Sunday, the most deadly assault for United States forces in Afghanistan since 2005.

Who Spread False Tales of Heroism?

Widespread — and, we suspect, self-induced — amnesia among high officials of the Bush administration and its Defense Department has made it impossible for House investigators to determine whether top officials helped spread two bogus stories of heroism used to bolster support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It now looks as if we may never know who kept stoking the impression that Cpl. Pat Tillman, an Army Ranger who became an icon of the administration’s war on terror, had been killed by the enemy in Afghanistan (in a battle that won him a questionable Silver Star) long after the military knew he had been killed accidentally by fire from American forces.

Nor are we apt to find out who promoted the false story that Pfc. Jessica Lynch had been captured in Iraq after a Rambo-like performance in which she emptied her weapon and was wounded in battle. In fact, she had been badly hurt in a vehicle accident during an ambush and was being well cared for by the Iraqis.

Suicide Bombers Kill 35 Iraqi Recruits
By RICHARD A. OPPEL JR

BAGHDAD — Two suicide bombers posing as army recruits struck an Iraqi base just east of Baquba on Tuesday morning, killing at least 35 Iraqi recruits and wounding 63, according to the Iraqi police and medical officials in Diyala Province.

The attack came as Iraqi troops prepared for what their commanders predict will be a challenging fight to try to reclaim large areas of Diyala that remain sanctuaries for Salafist jihadist fighters and other antigovernment guerrillas.

The bombers, wearing belts packed with explosives, waded into a crowd of more than 200 recruits just after 8 a.m. and detonated about 30 seconds apart in front of the headquarters of an Iraqi brigade where the recruits had gathered. The attack happened at the Saad military base, which is about four miles east of Baquba, the provincial capital.

Rethinking the National Interest
American Realism for a New World
By Condoleezza Rice

From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008

Summary: The Secretary of State reflects on the lessons of the past eight years.

Condoleezza Rice is U.S. Secretary of State.

What is the national interest? This is a question that I took up in 2000 in these pages. That was a time that we as a nation revealingly called "the post-Cold War era." We knew better where we had been than where we were going. Yet monumental changes were unfolding -- changes that were recognized at the time but whose implications were largely unclear.

And then came the attacks of September 11, 2001. As in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States was swept into a fundamentally different world. We were called to lead with a new urgency and with a new perspective on what constituted threats and what might emerge as opportunities. And as with previous strategic shocks, one can cite elements of both continuity and change in our foreign policy since the attacks of September 11.

The seizure of the quarry is a measure of how in recent months, as the Pakistani military has pulled back under a series of peace deals, the Pakistani Taliban have extended their reach through more of the rugged territory in northern Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.

Today the Taliban not only settle disputes in their consolidated domain but they also levy taxes, smuggle drugs and other contraband, and impose their own brand of rough justice, complete with courts and prisons.

Pakistan Marble Helps Taliban Stay in Business
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and JANE PERLEZ

ZIARAT, Pakistan — The mountain of white marble shines with such brilliance in the sun it looks like snow. For four years, the quarry beneath it lay dormant, its riches captive to tribal squabbles and government ineptitude in this corner of Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Overstating Our Fears
By Glenn L. Carle
Sunday, July 13, 2008; B07

Sen. John McCain has repeatedly characterized the threat of "radical Islamic extremism" as "the absolute gravest threat . . . that we're in against." Before we simply accept this, we need to examine the nature of the terrorist threat facing our country. If we do so, we will see how we have allowed the specter of that threat to distort our lives and take our treasure.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.

Yes, I said Taliban.

In theory, Pakistan's security forces are in opposition to the Taliban, who are now firmly entrenched across the country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas and encroaching on the adjacent region in the North West Frontier Province, known as the "settled" areas. In reality, the government has ceded large swathes of territory to the extremists.

Pakistan Wants 'Partnership' With U.S., Official Says
Foreign Minister, on D.C. Visit, Conveys Interest in Moving Beyond Security-Based Ties
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 12, 2008; A09

The new government of Pakistan is seeking a "partnership" with the United States and wants tangible signs that the Bush administration will increase aid and embrace Pakistani democracy, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said yesterday.

"We want to be positive, we want to cooperate, we want a long-term relationship, we want a partnership. So how serious are you in broadening that relationship -- that is what we want to know," Qureshi said in a wide-ranging interview with Washington Post editors and reporters.