Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Iraq is being torn apart while George W Bush and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim enable each other. As the Hadley memo points out, Mr. Bush is counting on Mr. Hakim to deliver an Iraq that can "govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself." Mr. Hakim, for his part, is in the enviable position of being able to use the leader of the free world to pursue his goal of bringing about an Islamic revolution in Iraq. The dialectic between Mr. Bush and Mr. Hakim became abundantly clear today.

Today the US military detained Ammar al-Hakim, the eldest son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, as he returned to Iraq from Iran:

U.S. forces detained the son of one of Iraq’s most prominent Shiite politicians for several hours Friday, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said.

The convoy of Amar al-Hakim, one of the sons of party leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, was stopped as Amar was returning from a trip to Iran, Haitham al-Husseini said.

The senior Hakim, whose party controls the largest number of seats in the Iraqi parliament and who met with President Bush during a visit to Washington in December, spent many years in exile in Iran and has close ties to that country. U.S. officials have said Iran has supplied weapons to militias targeting American forces in Iraq.

The younger al-Hakim, however, was released, with an apology from the American ambassador, after some high level intervention:

State-run television said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite who depends on Mr. Hakim’s support, intervened to help release the son, Amar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

…

The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was “sorry” for the detention. The son is himself a senior official in Mr. Hakim’s political movement and has often taken a leading role in building support for his father’s political efforts throughout Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. A Hakim aide suggested that the son was being groomed to take control of the family’s political dynasty.

…

He also said that United States military officers whom he would not identify had contacted aides to Mr. Hakim and apologized for the detention. Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador, was quoted by news agencies as saying that he regretted the episode and that “we do not mean any disrespect” to the Hakim family. [Emphasis added by me.]

It appears that the Bush Administration knows who the real masters are in Iraq. An administration that famously does not say "sorry" for launching wars without justification or killing innocents in Iraq was bending over backwards to not show "disrespect" to the Hakim family.

Ammar al-Hakim is not only the son of Mr. Bush’s man in Iraq, he is also a major political force and power broker in Iraq in his own right. The younger al-Hakim is the second in command, after his father, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and he is the point man for SCIRI’s push to create a separate Shia state in the south of Iraq.

One of the strongest advocates of a federal state in the south is Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI, one of the major Shia partners in the UIA bloc. He says federalism is a “constitutional right” not only for the Kurds but also for the people of central and southern Iraq.

“Federalism does not mean splitting the country. It is a hope for the future of Iraq, and it is a demand by the masses,” he said recently in Najaf.

Hakim has commissioned his son, Ammar al-Hakim, head of the Shahid al-Mihrab Institute, a SCIRI establishment that promotes Islam in southern Iraq, to mobilise popular support for the federalism project.

In addition to his leading role in advocating for a separate Shia homeland in the Iraqi south, Ammar al-Hakim is very well known in Iraq and has often been the spokesman for SCIRI since the beginning of the Iraq invasion. The major force that stands in opposition to the Hakim family’s plan to create an Iranian proxy state in Iraq is Moqtada al-Sadr. In Mr. Bush’s attempt at isolating Mr. al-Sadr he is handing Iraq over to the Iranian-backed and financed SCIRI and the Iranian-groomed Hakim family.

While Mr. Bush complains about Iranian influence in Iraq, he continues to back the Iranian-supported SCIRI in Iraq. One is forced to ask whether Mr. Bush understands that his actions and alliances in Iraq are undermining Iraq’s territorial integrity. One is forced to ask whether Mr. Bush understands that his actions and alliances in Iraq are giving aid and comfort to Mr. Bush’s stated adversary in Iraq, that is, Iran.

There can only be two possible answers to Mr. Bush’s puzzling dalliance with SCIRI and the Hakim clan. One possibility is that Mr. Bush is ignorant of the complexities in the Iraqi political landscape and does not understand how his actions contribute to Iraqi instability. The other possibility is that Mr. Bush understands fully that his actions in Iraq are empowering Iran. If the latter is the case, then one is forced to ask why Mr. Bush would want to empower Iran in Iraq. It may be that by empowering Iran in Iraq, the only Iraq exit strategy left on the table for Mr. Bush is to strike Iran in order to counter Iran’s increased influence. Recent saber-rattling by the Bush Administration against Iran does not bode well for the future.

Meanwhile, the president of the United States hosts a death squad leader (Abdul Aziz al-Hakim) in the White House and calls him "Your Eminence" and the American ambassador to Iraq is forced to apologize to the death squad leader’s son in case any disrespect was caused by American soldiers.

United States officials in Baghdad were reported to be in possession of Iranian made weapons. In a brazen display of "intelligence", the Americans proudly showed off their Iranian-made weapons to reporters:

The BBC’s Jane Peel attended the briefing in Baghdad, at which all cameras and recording devices were banned.

Examples of the allegedly smuggled weapons were put on display, including EFPs, mortar shells and rocket propelled grenades which the US claims can be traced to Iran.

"The weapons had characteristics unique to being manufactured in Iran… Iran is the only country in the region that produces these weapons," an official said.

Someone call Michael Gordon.

At a briefing today in Baghdad, US officials accused Iran of arming al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq:

The defense analyst said Iran was working through "multiple surrogates" — mainly "rogue elements" of the Shiite Mahdi Army — to smuggle the EFPs into Iraq. He said most of the components are entering the country at crossing points near Amarah, the Iranian border city of Meran and the Basra area of southern Iraq.

The US officials also neatly tied Iran into the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Kuwait and the trafficking in arms in Iraq:

Last week, U.S. officials said they were investigating allegations that Shiite lawmaker Jamal Jaafar Mohammed was a main conduit for Iranian weapons entering the country. Mohammed has believed to have fled to Iran.

The "evidence" against Iran and the Mahdi Army continues to pile up. But there is something fishy here.

The Bush Administration claims that Iranians caught in recent raids buttress clams of Iranian involvement. The targets of American ire appear to be Iran and the Mahdi Army. However, the Iranians were captured in Kurdish held Erbil and in Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s compound in Baghdad. In both instances, the Iranians were working with American allies in Iraq - the Kurds and the SCIRI. In the Erbil case, Kurdish leaders protested the American operation and in the curious case of the raid on al-Hakim’s compound, pressure from SCIRI forced the US to release their prize.

Now we come to Mr. Jamal Jaafar Mohammed. Most reports of his involvement in the 1983 bombing gloss over his political affiliation. Mr. Mohammed was at the time of the bombing a member of SCIRI, the same group that is now an ally of Mr. Bush, and is currently a member of the Badr Organization, which is the current incarnation of the military wing of SCIRI:

An engineering graduate from Basra University in southern Iraq, he was active in the Shiite opposition to Saddam and was affiliated with the political and military wing of the Badr Brigade. He served as a top commander in the militia in the 1980s.

The brigade was organized and trained by the Iranians to fight against Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and was led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a key political figure here. Shiite officials say the Badr Brigade gave up its weapons and was transformed into a political movement after Saddam’s regime collapsed in 2003.

Mohammed ran for parliament on the Badr ticket. The organization is part of the Shiite alliance that also includes al-Maliki. Mohammed served as a political adviser to al-Maliki’s predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

I should also note that the attack on the American and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983 were conducted by the Dawa Party and the SCIRI, which are both now our allies in Iraq. The Dawa Party is also conveniently the party that helped set up Hezbollah in Lebanon:

There are at least five such groups here, known as Al Fajr, Jihad, Jundullah, Hizbullah and Harisullah.

According to Shiite political sources, they are linked with the Iraqi Shiite underground organization Ad Dawa, which has been working to set up Iranian-style Islamic republics in Iraq and other Persian Gulf countries.

It is possible, the analysts and diplomats said, that the pro-Iranian groups have abducted Americans to exchange them for the 22 Dawa members who have been tried and convicted in Kuwait for the bombing Dec. 12 of the American and French embassies.

The Bush Administration has indeed made a fine bed with terrorists in Iraq.

There is very little doubt that Iran is supporting the Shia factions and the Kurds in Iraq. However, the factions Iran is supporting are the same factions that the Bush Administration is supporting. The Shia faction that gets the least support from Iran, and that is ideologically the least aligned with Iran is the Mahdi Army. Yet, the Administration’s plan, as laid out in the Hadley memo, appears to be to isolate the Mahdi Army and empower the very factions, Dawa and SCIRI, that Iran has been helping.

The Bush Administration is spinning a story about Iran that is full of contradictions. The Bush Administration cannot claim to target Iran for arming the same groups that the United States itself is arming, without addressing its own behavior and alliances in Iraq. It has been clear from the start that the United States has put in power terrorists and thugs (Dawa and SCIRI) in Iraq. To support its drumbeat to war against Iran, it cannot now cry foul without addressing its own hypocrisy in Iraq. To the extent that they have both sponsored the same actors in Iraq, the Bush Administration and Iran have been allies.

So, when the Bush Administration claims that some Iranian arms have been found in the hands of Shia militia in Iraq, I am unimpressed. The United States has, over the last four years, armed the Shia militias to the teeth by equipping the SCIRI and Badr Brigade controlled Iraqi Interior Ministry. In the contest of arms shipments to Iraqi Shia militias, the United States wins the arms race hands down. Having armed, equipped and trained a party to a civil war, the Bush Administration has been the driving force of instability in Iraq. When the Bush Administration accuses Iran of fomenting sectarian violence in Iraq, it ignores the elephant in the room, that is, the United States.

Michael Gordon of the New York Times announces today that the "Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is made by Iran". The pages of the Gray Lady once again beat the drums of war.

The "intelligence" is damning:

The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.

The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.

The focus of American concern is an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.

This is truly breathtaking "news". Iran is actively supplying weapons to Shia militias who are killing American soldiers. If there was ever a need for a casus belli to launch a strike against Iran, it appears one is in the making.

I am reminded of a similar headline in the New York Times on September 8, 2002. That particular headline read "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest For A-Bomb Parts" and offered up the following:

In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.

The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq’s nuclear program, officials said, and that the latest attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.

It was the aluminum tubes that were a sure sign that Iraq was on the verge of going nuclear. It was better to attack Iraq first before a mushroom cloud appeared above an American city.

To emphasize the Iraqi threat, the article also offered up the chemical weapon scare, brought to us by Mr. Bush’s death squad leader White House guest:

Iraq’s nuclear program is not Washington’s only concern. An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks.

The paper, which is being analyzed by American officials, was provided by Abdalaziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iran-based group, during his recent visit with other Iraqi opposition leaders in Washington. [Emphasis added by me.]

The Bush Administration took the claims in the New York Times article and spun their false case for war with Iraq. The article was written by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon. That was then.

This is now. While Judith Miller has been much maligned, Michael Gordon has kept his credibility intact. Now that Ms. Miller has left the Gray Lady, Michael Gordon is left to carry the water for the Administration as it builds a fresh case for war against Iran.

Recently Michael Gordon let us know how he really feels on the Charlie Rose Show:

On Sunday, Calame dealt with a similar issue after Michael Gordon, the paper’s longtime chief military correspondent, spoke on the Charlie Rose show about the Iraq war. The offending incident occurred when Gordon said on the show that "I think, just as a purely personal view…the gap between the rhetoric of having a so-called strategy for victory, and then the reality of what’s going on in Iraq. And I’ve always felt that people in Washington were talking about a strategy for victory, but we actually never marshaled the resources and didn’t work effectively enough in Iraq to accomplish this.

"So I think, you know, as a purely personal view, I think it’s worth it one last effort for sure to try to get this right, because my personal view is we’ve never really tried to win. We’ve simply been managing our way to defeat. And I think that if it’s done right, I think that there is the chance to accomplish something." [Emphasis added by me.]

Clearly, a little extra effort will get us "victory" in Iraq and maybe a war with Iran.

But what do we make of the claim that Iran is supplying Shia militias with IEDs that are killing our soldiers? An astute reader might point out that up until now the reporting has been that IEDs were the weapon of choice for the Sunni insurgents and not Shia militias - that up until now we have been told that it was the Sunni insurgents that were killing American soldiers. If we are to believe Mr. Gordon, it is now Shia militias that are blowing up American soldiers with IEDs. An astute reader might question such a claim as somewhat incredible. An astute reader would be right.

It should, however, not surprise anyone that when building a case for war, small inconveniences such as facts should not get in the way. So, Michael Gordon, I say to you, carry that water - we know its heavy, but you know you can do it.

The Bush Administration is spiraling down into a major conflagration in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. To some extent, it is traveling on auto pilot. Left to its own momentum of inaction and massive overreaction, this Administration will almost certainly embark on a war with Iran.

It has been on this course for a long time.

Last Spring when Seymour Hersh first stirred up the pot, I wrote the following:

I recall quipping to a friend a few weeks ago that I thought the way out of Iraq for this Administration was through Iran. What I meant at the time was that since this Administration had haplessly shifted the center of gravity of Iraqi politics to Iran, without Iran having to fire a shot, that the only way to exit out of Iraq with "credibility" was to attack Iran. Iran then becomes a continuation of a larger war "on terror" and it can then not be said that Iraq was lost since it will only become an unfinished chapter in a larger war.

It is now becoming apparent that the way out of Iraq, for this Administration, is indeed through Iran.

The eternally confused cheerleader of the Iraq invasion, Kenneth Pollack, was quoted in the New York Times stating the obvious:

“The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq,” Kenneth M. Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said Sunday. “There’s a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive — that this is a way to get into a spiral with Iran that leads you into conflict. The likely response from the Iranians is that they are going to want to demonstrate to us that they are not going to be pushed around.”

Mr. Pollack is half right. The Administration does have Iran on the brain, but Iran is not likely to respond so easily to such provocations. I think the latter statement is a little bit of wishful thinking on Mr. Pollock’s part.

Last week, in a confusing and contradictory speech, Mr. Bush went squarely after Iran (and threw Turkey a much overlooked bone regarding the Kurds):

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge.

This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.

We will expand intelligence sharing, and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.

Since then his loyal surrogates - Bob Gates, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley and Dick Cheney - have spread out across the world beating the drums of war.

Mr. Cheney, emerging from his secure undisclosed location, found it easy to replace "q" with "n" in his doomsday messages:

“So the threat that Iran represents is growing,” he said, in words reminiscent of how he once built a case against Mr. Hussein. “It’s multidimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region.”

We can expect the bombs to start flying when the threat from Iran goes from "growing" to "grave and gathering".

This latest bravado is not only a signal by this Administration of defeat in Iraq; it is also a signal of defeat to Iran. The United States has been outmaneuvered by Iran, both in Iraq and on the nuclear issue. Having lost the war on the geo-political battlefield, the Bush Administration’s only option left is to lob missiles and drop bombs. The Bush Administration is out of its depth when it comes to foreign policy. Its only weapon, which it has so far failed to wield effectively, is the military option.

Mr. Bush’s plan to interdict Iranian agents inside Iraq is ill-conceived and naive. Iran’s power in Iraq does not come from supplying IEDs or other weapons to attack American troops. The Sunni Iraqi insurgents, those who make up the bulk of the force attacking American troops, are not supplied or supported by Iran. Most of Iran’s support structure in Iraq has been decades in the making. It is not limited to a few agents supplying arms to Shia militias. Iran has been, for decades, supporting Shia parties in Iraq. The most prominent of these are the SCIRI and the Dawa party - both of which hold the reigns of power in Iraq. They control many of the key ministries, including the Ministry of Interior. SCIRI’s Badr Brigade has become fully integrated into the Ministry of Interior and regularly carries out its death squad activities under official sanction. The SCIRI and the Dawa party were founded and trained by Iran in the 1980s. Most of the leaders of the two parties were exiled in Iran, if not Syria, for much of the last two decades - and a significant number of these leaders speak Persian as well as Arabic. When the SCIRI and Dawa party leaders speak of foreign interference in Iraq’s internal affairs, they are not talking about Iran, they are talking about the United States and the Sunni Arab countries.

Iran’s support does not end with the Shia. Iran has also been supporting elements within Iraqi Kurdistan since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Iran’s roots in Iraq run deep and wide. It is fortified each year with millions of Iranian pilgrims who descend upon the Shia holy sites in Iraq. So, when Stephen Hadley asserts that the United States is resisting Iranian "hegemony" in the region, he is remarkably naive. Iran already has hegemony over much of Iraq, and the odds of the United States countering that hegemony are slim to none.

The irony is that when Mr. Bush talks about going after death squads in Iraq, he is talking about going after Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Iran would like nothing better. Although al-Sadr is Shia, he is also an Arab nationalist. He is against partitioning Iraq to form a southern homeland for the Shia. By going after al-Sadr, once again Mr. Bush would be doing Iran’s bidding. To add further to the mess of Mr. Bush’s policy, Mr. Bush’s latest best friend in Iraq is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI. al-Hakim also happens to be Tehran’s man in Iraq, and for an independent Shia homeland in the south. By eliminating al-Sadr’s influence and positioning SCIRI to take over the leadership in Iraq, Mr. Bush will have ensured Iranian dominance of Iraq.

The political outlook in Iraq does not look good for Mr. Bush. The die was cast on this course when the first American bombs started falling on Iraq in 2003. There is now only one option for Mr. Bush to avoid defeat in Iraq - and that is to attack Iran. Mr. Bush and his coterie of advisors certainly knows their machinations in Iraq will not effectively counter Iranian "hegemony". So, they are going through the motions and getting ready to go for the jugular.

Mr. Cheney warned yesterday about Iran:

They are in a position where site astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20% of the world’s supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day.

There is really one solution to Mr. Cheney’s geographic quandary. That solution is to wipe Iran off the map so they no longer sit "astride the Straits of Hormuz".

As President Bush puts the "final touches" on his "new" Iraq policy this weekend, Washington waits with bated breath for the fight to come. Having called up his Surgin’ General, David Petraeus, Mr. Bush is ready to embark on his Iraq escalation against the will of the American public and its elected Congress.

It is time to consider the consequences of Mr. Bush’s policy of escalation in Iraq.

It has been widely reported that Mr. Bush’s policy is based on the ideological fantasies of the neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute. The neo-conservative of the moment is AEI’s Fred Kagan. In his report, entitled "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq", he lays out the "new way forward".

Throughout history, when small minds have attempted to think big, the results have been catastrophic for the world. This period of history is proving no different.

Mr. Kagan declares in the first lines of his report:

Victory is still an option in Iraq. America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion.

Pride is not a strategy. The strategy in Iraq should not be based on a need to demonstrate the might of the American military-industrial complex. The strategy in Iraq should be based on the long term national interest of the United States of America.

Mr. Kagan continues:

Iraq has reached a critical point. The strategy of relying on a political process to eliminate the insurgency has failed. Rising sectarian violence threatens to break America’s will to fight. This violence will destroy the Iraqi government, armed forces, and people if it is not rapidly controlled.

Victory in Iraq is still possible at an acceptable level of effort. We must adopt a new approach to the war and implement it quickly and decisively. [Emphasis added by me.]

He has reached the opposite conclusion from most sane observers of the fiasco in Iraq. It is precisely our reliance on a military solution, and not a well thought-out political process, that has led us to this point in Iraq. Our failure to plan for "Phase IV" operations after toppling Saddam Hussein has contributed to the chaos in Iraq - and the time for a do-over has long passed.

So, what will be the consequence of the Kagan delusion, if implemented? If the Kagan plan fails, we will have sacrificed Iraqi and American lives for another stab at the ideological pie in the sky. However, the real danger lies in the success of the Kagan plan. Most observers have so far argued that his plan will fail and therefore should not be attempted. I believe the greater danger lies in the plan’s success.

Fred Kagan’s plan is a strategy for ethnic cleansing. If implemented, the Bush Administration will actively participate in a policy of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. They will make the American military and the American people complicit in their policy.

Mr. Kagan’s plan focuses on Baghdad as the center of operations. His plan is to clear, or "ethnically cleanse" if you will, the Sunni parts of Baghdad:

We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.

These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.

The Shia government of Nouri al-Maliki and the Shia militias of Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have been quietly following this policy for well over two years now. Finally, they will get some American help.

As the United States debates what to do in Iraq, this country’s Shiite majority has been moving toward its own solution: making the capital its own.

Large portions of Baghdad have become Shiite in recent months, as militias press their fight against Sunni militants deeper into the heart of the capital, displacing thousands of Sunni residents. At least 10 neighborhoods that a year ago were mixed Sunni and Shiite are now almost entirely Shiite, according to residents, American and Iraqi military commanders and local officials.

To prepare for the American assistance, the Maliki government this weekend unveiled their plan for ethnic cleansing, or "fighting terrorists", as they like to call it:

Maliki’s words appeared intended to counter the perception that the plan would focus on combating Sunni insurgents. An aide to Maliki, Hasan Suneid, a Shiite Muslim lawmaker, told the Associated Press that the Iraqi army would devote 20,000 additional troops to the capital and begin by combating Sunni insurgents in western Baghdad.

…

Maliki’s speech provided few details about the tactical or strategic changes guiding the forthcoming effort. But his aides described an effort that relies on U.S. troops to combat Sunni insurgents on the outskirts of Baghdad. Those areas are where the Sunni insurgents plan and manufacture the deadly explosives that detonate regularly in the city.

"Maliki believes that it is in this ring that the attacks are coming from," one of his aides said.

The Iraqi forces would target the most violent neighborhoods, and commanders would have a greater degree of autonomy in their assigned sections of the city, Askari said.

Maliki believes that if the additional troops can effect a decrease in violence over the next two months, then he can negotiate more effectively with Shiite militia leaders in the city and improve his chances of disarming them, his aides said.

Mr. Maliki and Mr. Kagan are in complete agreement. The way to secure peace is to decrease the violence by ethnically cleansing Baghdad of Sunnis. Then, the Shia militias will make nice and peace will reign. Call me biased, but having lived through such a plan of "pacification" in my own life, I can smell ethnic cleansing better than most.

Baghdad is important. It is important because the sectarian fault lines of Iraq run through it. Throughout the American occupation, Baghdad has been coming apart along sectarian lines. Once mixed neighborhoods are being slowly ethnically cleansed into Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Now Mr. Kagan is advocating helping the Shia eliminate the remaining Sunni neighborhoods west of the Tigris River. When Iraqi forces and militias go into Sunni neighborhoods they will go in to settle sectarian scores, not to hunt "terrorists". The United States government should take no part in this.

The path to national reconciliation in Iraq does not go through Baghdad - only the path to Iraq’s disintegration goes through Baghdad. The path to a stable Iraq goes through Iraq’s oil fields in the South and in Kirkuk, appeals to shared Arab nationalism, and access to the Persian Gulf through the Shatt al-Arab. A smarter man than Mr. Kagan would consider how oil revenue sharing, pipelines to the Gulf, and interests of Iraq’s neighbors such as Iran in said access to Gulf can be weaved together into a way forward that does not lead down a path of further violence. Instead, a small mind has come up with a recipe for ethnic cleansing - and Mr. Bush is set to endorse it.

It is up to the newly muscular United States Congress to prevent American complicity in the ethnic cleansing and massacres to come. A massacre of Iraq’s Sunnis will push us toward that regional war that everyone claims they fear. It is time for Congress to step up and prevent any further loss of American and Iraqi lives in the service of ideological midgets.

 [Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

The New York Times just implicated Iraq’s Mr. Fix-it in the Saddam execution video debacle. Get ready for aftershocks.

In its report on Iraq’s alleged investigation into the Saddam execution, there is this startling passage:

As his aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry, one of the officials who attended the hanging, a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments — up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor — was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser. Attempts to reach Mr. Rubaie were unsuccessful. The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, said the other man holding a cellphone above his head was also an official, but he could not recall his name.

In one casual passage, the New York Times drops a bombshell.

Mr. al-Rubaie is not just anyone in Iraq. He is the link between the Americans and the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. He is also the go-between to Moqtada al-Sadr. He has been involved with the Dawa Party since its days as a major terrorist organization. In the 1980s, he was the Dawa Party’s international spokesman.

In 2004, when George W Bush visited Iraq he reached out to Ayatollah al-Sistani through Mr. al-Rubaie:

American officials in Iraq are well aware of al-Rubaie’s ability to navigate in both worlds; when President Bush landed in Baghdad for Thanksgiving dinner, clearly he’d been briefed. As al-Rubaie remembers their encounter, the president pointed at him and said, "Dr. al-Rubaie, I want you to convey this message to Mr. Sistani. Tell him that I pray to the same god he prays to… Tell Sistani I have nothing but praise for your religion. I have many millions of Muslims in my country back home."

Mr. al-Rubaie also was instrumental in getting Moqtada al-Sadr into the current Iraqi government. In 2004, Mr. al-Rubaie fell out with then Prime Minister Allawi over how to confront Moqtada al-Sadr:

The approach appears to be straining the Iraqi government as well. On Monday, the office of Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, had been relieved of his duties and replaced with a close ally of Dr. Allawi, Qassim Daoud.

The precise reasons for Dr. Rubaie’s dismissal were unclear, but he and Dr. Allawi disagreed sharply over how to quell the insurgency and, in particular, how to deal with Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric. While Dr. Rubaie favors coaxing Mr. Sadr into the political mainstream, Dr. Allawi is demanding Mr. Sadr’s surrender first.

Mr. al-Rubaie has since played a crucial role in positioning the Dawa Party in the center of the Iraqi governmental pie. Last summer he wrote a Washington Post op-ed sketching out a "road map" for an American withdrawal from Iraq while leaving the keys with the Dawa Party.

In short, Mr. al-Rubaie is a powerful man in the current Iraqi government with all the right connections. If he is implicated in the Saddam execution fiasco, it will also implicate the Dawa Party and Ayatollah al-Sistani. If al-Rubaie falls, so falls the Dawa Party. With Maliki weakened and al-Sadr targeted by the Americans, this could be the beginning of a coup attempt in Baghdad. The only Shia party that can gain from such a coup is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Suddenly, Mr. Bush’s photo-op with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim comes into focus.

Update: The New York Times has removed the reference to Mr. al-Rubaie from the web edition of the article. The changed passage reads:

A prosecutor who attended the execution, Munkith al-Faroun, said he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cellphone, but he could not recall his name.

MSNBC reports that Mr. al-Faroun, who was quoted in the New York Times article, is now retracting his accusation:

On Wednesday, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie of possible responsibility for the leaked video. “I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures,” Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press. “But I saw two of the government officials who were … present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces,” al-Faroon said in a telephone interview. … The New York Times on Wednesday reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper “one of two men he had seen holding a cell phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser.” The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him Wednesday. His secretary said the security adviser, a close aide to al-Maliki, was in Najaf and would not return until later.

The plot thickens.

From today’s White House press briefing [hat tip: BarbinMD]:

Q Tony, I’d like to follow up on the al Hakim meeting, if I can, for just a second.

MR. SNOW: Yes, sure.

Q U.S. intelligence and military sources have him intimately connected to death squads, he is closely tied to Iran —

MR. SNOW: "Intimately connected" with death squads? In what sense?

Q Well, that he was responsible for the —

MR. SNOW: That he was giving orders?

Q Yes, it could be giving of — when death squads began to emerge, there are intelligence sources that say he was if not running the show, very closely connected with the policy of implementing it. So that’s number one. Number two, he’s closely tied to Iran. So what’s a guy like this doing in the Oval Office?

MR. SNOW: Well, there are a couple of things — and we addressed the Iran question in the gaggle this morning. This is a man who spent 20 years in Iran when Saddam Hussein was in power, but he’s also made it clear that he sees himself as an Iraqi leader, not somebody who is beholden to Iran.

As regards the issue of militias, certainly they’re going to be discussed in the meeting with the President. What Mr. al Hakim has also done is he has talked about the importance of reconciliation within Iraq. He leads a parliamentary bloc that includes 128 members of the Iraqi parliament. And what the President is going to talk about — I believe the meeting ought to be starting any moment now, and that’s why we’ll give you a readout on it — is the importance of reconciliation, of finding people who will be moderates — Sunni, Shia, and otherwise — who are going to be able to work constructively toward a government that’s going to be operating in conditions of peace.

What you have is a man who has had a number of discussions with this government and continues to, and the President has had conversations with him, and has met with him once before, who represents the largest single — I believe it’s the largest single Shia bloc within the Iraqi parliament. He is a significant force in Iraqi politics, and he’s somebody who can play a very constructive role, and we hope he will.

Some background on today’s White House guest.

On Monday President Bush is scheduled to meet Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Mr. Hakim is to get the full treatment topped off with a White House meeting with Mr. Bush. On the heels of Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived summit meeting with beleaguered Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki comes another ill-conceived meeting with the head of the Badr Brigade militia in Iraq. Either Mr. Bush is involved in a bit of Machiavellian mischief in Iraq or he is utterly ignorant.

Mr. Hakim’s upcoming White House visit is remarkable and troubling. It marks the point where the President of the United States has become personally and publicly involved in the domestic politics of Iraq. It also marks the first time in this conflict that the President of the United States will host the leader of death squads in Iraq. I think it is safe to say that we have come a long way since Vietnam - a conflict in which the President of the United States was deciding which hill to bomb. In Iraq, the President of the United States is deciding which death squad to back.

Mr. Hakim’s SCIRI was formed by Iran in 1982 as a Shia insurgency group during the Iran-Iraq war. SCIRI was formed with the Hakim family at its center. While most Iraqi Shia fought against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, SCIRI was the only group of Shia that supported Iran. SCIRI has since been funded by Iran while its military wing, the Badr Brigade, has been armed and trained by Tehran. Since the American invasion of Iraq, the Badr Brigade has taken over the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. One of the leaders of the Badr Brigade, Bayan Jabr, was until recently the Minister of Interior, in charge of the police forces. His police, that is the Badr Brigade, are largely responsible for the many tortured corpses that turn up on the streets of Baghdad:

In May 2005, Shiite militia groups in Iraq began depositing corpses into the streets and garbage dumps of Baghdad. The victims, overwhelmingly Sunni, were typically found blindfolded and handcuffed, their corpses showing signs of torture—broken skulls, burn marks, gouged-out eyeballs, electric drill holes; by that October, the death toll attributed to such groups had grown to more than 500. In November, American troops discovered more than 160 beaten, whipped, and starved prisoners—again, mostly Sunni—at a secret detention center run by the country’s Interior Ministry. Since then, Shiite militias have become so integrated into the Iraqi government’s security apparatus and their work so organized, systematic, and targeted that they are commonly referred to in Iraq (and in the American media) by their proper name: death squads. The death squads, which have expanded their area of operations from the capital across much of the country, are now believed to be responsible for more civilian deaths than the Sunni and foreign insurgents who are the United States’ ostensible enemies there. By any reasonable measure, Iraq is in a state of civil war, and some of its most ruthless and lawless combatants are members of the government’s own security units.

…

The rise of the death squads corresponds almost precisely to the April 2005 appointment of Bayan Jabr as interior minister in Iraq’s transitional government. The Interior Ministry, which is something like a combined FBI and Department of Homeland Security, controls billions of dollars and more than 100,000 men in police and paramilitary units. Jabr was a former high-ranking member of the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade, the military arm of the fundamentalist Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) that is now the dominant political force in the country. After taking over the Interior Ministry, he quickly purged it of Sunnis, and members of the Badr Brigade were widely incorporated into the ministry’s police and paramilitary units.

Jabr—who in May of this year was named finance minister in a new government headed by Nuri al-Maliki—has disavowed any personal or institutional responsibility for violence committed by the death squads. He has now acknowledged that some groups operated within the Interior Ministry while he headed it, but he insists that they were few in number; he blames much of the sectarian killing on terrorists “using the clothes of the police or the military.” At a press conference last November that followed the discovery of the torture chamber in an Interior Ministry building, Jabr said, “You can be proud of our forces. [They] respect human rights.” (For this article, Jabr did not respond to requests for comment sent to his press office in Iraq.)

Mr. Jabr is just a small taste of the violent nature of the secretive Badr Brigade. While Moqtada al-Sadr’s rag-tag Mahdi Army gets all the press, the well-trained and battle hardened Badr Brigade continue their killing machine with ruthless efficiency.

While SCIRI and the Sadrists are both involved in sectarian violence against Iraqi Sunnis, there are significant and important differences between the two forces. While SCIRI is a pro-Iranian Shia party, the Sadrists are Shia nationalists. The goal of SCIRI, as its name pretty much gives away (Note to Mr. Bush: READ), is to form an Islamic republic in Iraq, and failing that, to form an Islamic state in the south of Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr’s group, on the other hand, opposes any partition of Iraq. The politics of SCIRI and the Sadrists flow from their respective religious ideologies. SCIRI follows the Qom School of Shia thought, while the Sadrists follow the Najaf School (or quietist approach) of Shia thought. Briefly, the Qom School, that is the Iranian approach, believes that the state should be run by the ulema, the Muslim clerics. The Najaf School, followed by most Iraqi Shia, believes in "quietism", which believes that the ulema should not directly govern but have influence on the government. These two schools of thought are incompatible, and therein lies the conflict between the Iranian-backed SCIRI and the nationalist Shia movement of Sadr. If Iraq is to come through the meat grinder, it is the nationalist Sadrists and the nationalist Sunnis who will have to reconcile; the SCIRI will be left to the mercy of their Iranian backers.

Mr. Bush’s desperate grasp at "diplomacy" is once again ill-conceived. If the goal is to reach out to Iran to resolve the crisis in Iraq, giving legitimacy to its proxy in Iraq is not the best approach. Mr. Bush first must decide what the goal of American foreign policy in the region should be. I don’t believe it should be the expansion of Iranian hegemony into Iraq. Throwing American support behind SCIRI, and no doubt a high profile visit by Hakim to the White House signals American support of SCIRI, is a dangerous course of action. Iran certainly has a legitimate interest in a stable Iraq and the removal of American forces. That should be a starting point of dialogue with Tehran. The starting point should not be support for the Iranian clergy’s puppets in Baghdad. That kind of approach makes an already weak George W Bush look weaker.

In his knee-jerk attempt to isolate Moqtada al-Sadr, Mr. Bush apparently is throwing his weight behind the next Shia he sees. But, that has always been the problem with George W Bush. His bubble is very small and populated with only a few actors. It is this kind of narrow and myopic vision that has led him domestically to cronyism, such as his ill-fated nominations of Harriet Miers and Bernard Kerik, and internationally to charlatans and death squad leaders, such as his backing of Ahmad Chalabi and now Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

We should demand some curiosity from the leader of the free world. Tomorrow, when the President of the United States shakes hands with a death squad leader and an Iranian puppet, we should all ponder how far the Decider has fallen from his grand visions of democracy in Iraq.