Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

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.

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.

The title of this post is a statement of fact. Before the hate mail starts to pour in, let me explain…No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

When I wrote my previous post, the ghastly cell phone video [CNN’s sanitized version is here] of Saddam Hussein’s execution had not yet surfaced. I had argued then that the execution would make a martyr out of Saddam. Now I am certain of it.

Saddam died reciting the Shahada, which is the first of the Five Pillars of Islam. The Shahada is the Muslim testimony of faith: "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger." Saddam recited the longer form: "I testify that there is no god but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is his messenger." To become a Muslim, one has to recite the Shahada, usually in front of two other Muslims. Muslims will also recite the Shahada, as Saddam did, moments before death.

Every Muslim, including myself, knows the Shahada, in its original Arabic, by heart. The spectacle of Saddam Hussein, while he was being taunted by masked men moments before his death, reciting the Shahada had the effect of humanizing him to the Muslim world. The fact that the execution took place on Eid-ul-Azha did not particularly help his executioners’ cause with the Muslim world. The timing of the execution was an affront to Muslims - protestations that it was the Iraqis, and not Washington, who decided the timing will fall on deaf ears in the Arab and Muslim world.

Before Saddam’s execution, I did not think it was possible to humanize the Butcher of Baghdad - I was wrong. During Saddam’s rule, he sent many people to the gallows and torture chambers. His cruelty was well known throughout the Arab world. Yet, by putting him to death in such mafia fashion, with his executioners in death squad garb, the thugs of Iraq and their benefactors in the Bush Administration have managed a Herculean feat. Through the power of video, they have managed to humanize a tyrant.

Perhaps it is a sign of the times. Already in Iraq many long for the stability of Saddam’s rule. It is not difficult to imagine that the men who executed Saddam, while chanting "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!", are the same men who deposit tortured corpses of Sunni men, with drill holes in their heads, all around Iraq. The grainy execution video made it quite clear to anyone who was not paying attention that George W Bush has handed Iraq over to sectarian militias and death squads.

By some estimates, this new Iraq has already cost over 650,000 lives. Those numbers suggest that the thugs that rule Iraq today are far outpacing the deaths caused by Saddam Hussein’s regime. By comparison, Saddam looks good. This is a fine legacy for George W Bush and his war of choice.

In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, on July 8, 1982, members of the Dawa Party, at the behest of Iran, tried to unsuccessfully assassinate Saddam Hussein in the town of Dujail. On December 30, 2006 the Dawa Party finally got their man.

Saddam Hussein’s hanging after a deeply flawed trial is not likely to increase the violence in Iraq. However, the hanging is likely to make the already remote possibility of political reconciliation that much more distant. The death of Saddam at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia will also rehabilitate Saddam Hussein’s legacy in the Arab world. The erstwhile Butcher of Baghdad will become a martyr of sorts - an Arab nationalist who resisted Western forces and died at the hands of an unholy alliance between Iranian and Western powers. Saddam will be remembered as a bloodier version of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Saddam Hussein will represent to Iraqi nationalists what Mohammed Mossadeqh represents to Iranians - a nationalist leader who was overthrown by Western powers for a few more barrels of oil.

There is simply no way around this fact - the United States of America allowed Saddam Hussein to be killed by the very pro-Iranian Shia party that is responsible for killing hundreds of Americans in terrorist bombings. The United States allowed Saddam to be killed for a crime he committed while he was an agent of America against Iran. These are the ironies of the American involvement in Iraq today. The occupying power has served up the head of Saddam to one of the warring parties engaged in a civil war. If the goal is to push Iraq further into civil war, today’s hanging will help achieve it.

While Mr. Maliki of the Dawa Party and Mr. Jabr, the death squad leader of SCIRI, were cooling their heels in Damascus in the Spring of 2003, they probably could not have imagined that just over 3 years later America would hand over Iraq and the head of Saddam Hussein to them and their Iranian backers. After all, they had fled to Syria and Iran because of their attacks against Saddam Hussein and American interests in Kuwait and Lebanon. After trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein in Dujail, the Dawa Party, on Iranian orders, exploded truck bombs at the American and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983:

The driver of the truck that exploded in an attack on the United States Embassy in Kuwait on Monday has reportedly been identified by Kuwaiti investigators as a pro-Iranian Moslem fundamentalist from Iraq.

According to diplomats in Kuwait and press reports there, the driver, who was killed, was 25-year-old Raad Mouchbil.

An Iraqi Embassy spokesman said in a statement issued in Kuwait that Mr. Mouchbil had already been condemned to death in Baghdad for what the statement said were ‘’criminal activities.'’

The Iraqi spokesman said Mr. Mouchbil was a member of the banned Moslem fundamentalist pro-Iranian Al Dawa group in Baghdad. He described Mr. Mouchbil as having been a strong supporter of Iran’s policies.

The United States stepped up support for Saddam Hussein after the attacks by the Dawa Party. Iran and the Dawa Party terrorists were the enemy. And of course Saddam Hussein had oil and there was money to be made:

Another key element in the growing American involvement here is the planned construction of a $1 billion oil pipeline from Iraq’s Kirkuk refinery through Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba. The project, now under negotiation, would include a $570 million contract for the Bechtel Corporation.

From the American point of view, the pipeline, along with a second planned line through Saudi Arabia, would help tie Iraq to what are regarded as moderate pro-Western countries in the region. The Iraqi perspective is that having an American equity in the project - particularly that of Bechtel, whose former officers are prominent in the Reagan Administration - will guarantee its protection from Israel.

Iraq is now pumping about 700 million barrels of oil a day through its Turkish pipeline. A second pipeline through Syria, which supports Iran, was shut off by Damascus.

The United States has also granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years. Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi President here.

While Donald Rumsfeld, as the representative of the American President,  was negotiating for Bechtel and giving out map coordinates for chemical weapons attacks, there was no mention of the killings in Dujail or the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran.

So, now 14 years after Dujail, Saddam has been hanged for his response to an assassination attempt by the Dawa Party. Saddam’s response at the time was to kill over a hundred Shia of Dujail as retribution - and the United States turned a blind eye. Fourteen years after the fact the Butcher of Baghdad has himself been butchered by terrorists who themselves have American blood on their hands. Today’s killing does not look like justice to me - it looks like an assassination.

The Bush Administration has effectively signed Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s Death Warrant. The memo from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley that undermined the Bush-Maliki summit in Jordan has now made Nouri al-Maliki a marked man in Iraq. Whether that was the intention of the leaked memo is unclear, but it will certainly be its effect, regardless of whether Maliki meets Mr. Bush or not.

Most of the reporting on the memo has focused on the aspects which have called into question Mr. Maliki’s commitment or his competence. Those parts of the memo may have been designed to embarrass Mr. Maliki, however the parts that deal with what the United States wants Mr. Maliki to do are the most explosive. It is these latter parts that most likely contributed to Mr. Maliki’s snub of Mr. Bush.

The memo proposes that Maliki create a new political support base independent of the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr. The memo proposes steps that Maliki should take, as well as support that the United States will provide, to achieve this end:

There is a range of actions that Maliki could take to improve the information he receives, demonstrate his intentions to build an Iraq for all Iraqis and increase his capabilities. … Maliki should:

…

Bring his political strategy with Moktada al-Sadr to closure and bring to justice any JAM actors that do not eschew violence;

…

If Maliki is willing to move decisively on the actions above, we can help him in a variety of ways. We should be willing to:

…

If it is Maliki’s assessment that he does not have the capability — politically or militarily — to take the steps outlined above, we will need to work with him to augment his capabilities. We could do so in two ways. First, we could help him form a new political base among moderate politicians from Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and other communities. Ideally, this base would constitute a new parliamentary bloc that would free Maliki from his current narrow reliance on Shia actors. (This bloc would not require a new election, but would rather involve a realignment of political actors within the Parliament). In its creation, Maliki would need to be willing to risk alienating some of his Shia political base and may need to get the approval of Ayatollah Sistani for actions that could split the Shia politically. Second, we need to provide Maliki with additional forces of some kind.

This approach would require that we take steps beyond those laid out above, to include:

Actively support Maliki in helping him develop an alternative political base. We would likely need to use our own political capital to press moderates to align themselves with Maliki’s new political bloc;

Consider monetary support to moderate groups that have been seeking to break with larger, more sectarian parties, as well as to support Maliki himself as he declares himself the leader of his bloc and risks his position within Dawa and the Sadrists;

…

We should waste no time in our efforts to determine Maliki’s intentions and, if necessary, to augment his capabilities. We might take the following steps immediately:

…

Tell Maliki that we understand that he is working his own strategy for dealing with the Sadrists and that:

• you have asked General Casey to support Maliki in this effort

• it is important that we see some tangible results in this strategy soon;

Nouri al-Maliki is being asked to sever his ties with the Dawa party to which he owes his loyalties for most of his life and to undercut his power base by throwing Moqtada al-Sadr under a bus. To add to this fanciful agenda, Hadley suggests this absurd gem at the end of the memo:

If Maliki seeks to build an alternative political base:

• Press Sunni and other Iraqi leaders (especially Hakim) [Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Maliki rival] to support Maliki

• Engage Sistani to reassure and seek his support for a new nonsectarian political movement.

I will just make two brief observations here. First, trading Moqtada al-Sadr for Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI and the Badr Brigade is not exactly moving in the right direction. I should add that al-Hakim was the head of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade and that SCIRI is Iranian backed and believes that Iraq should be ruled as a Shia Islamic state. Second, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani does not exactly believe in a nonsectarian political movement. He believes that Iraq should be rightly ruled by the Shia majority.

The notion that Maliki wants to be Washington’s man in Baghdad is misplaced and it has been misplaced from the start. Maliki is a prominent member of the Dawa party which has a long history of anti-Western activities. When Maliki was first chosen as Prime Minister in April of this year, amid all the euphoria, I wrote the following:

Lost in all the euphoria at seeing progress in Iraq is whether or not this is progress in the right direction for Iraq or the United States. I had written in an earlier article that the likely replacement for al-Jaafari would either come from his own Dawa party or from the SCIRI. I had also suggested that neither outcome would be a positive outcome. We now have our answer. Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been replaced by another Dawa party member albeit one that is more hard-line. In fact while Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been the titular head of the Shiite alliance, al-Maliki has done all the heavy lifting. It is no surprise then that he would ascend to the Premiership.

Jawad al-Maliki has been the spokesman for the Dawa party and the Shiite alliance. He was involved in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution and more significantly was a member of the de-Baathification committee set up by the United States. He has been a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has close ties with the Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army.

…

After pushing hard for al-Jaafari’s ouster, the United States has gotten a more pro-Iranian Dawa party member. We have certainly come full circle in the Middle East. We have put in power in Iraq a person Saddam Hussein had sentenced to death. We have put in power a person who was involved in terrorist activities against not only Iraq but also Western and American targets in the Middle East. We have put in power a party, the Dawa party, that invented the modern suicide car bombing - a party that was involved in bombing the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and in the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut.

We have brought democracy to the Middle East. We have handed over Iraq to an Iranian nurtured and funded Islamist alliance (Dawa and SCIRI). I do not believe this is what the American people bargained for when we embarked on the invasion of Iraq. If we are holding out the hope that these Islamist parties whose stated goal is to bring about an Islamist revolution in Iraq will somehow smell the sweet scent of Democracy and become torchbearers of freedom and liberty, we are likely to be as disappointed as Dick Cheney was when we were not greeted as liberators. This is a far cry from the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction and the defeat of al Qaeda.

There was no reason to suspect, even back then, that Maliki would actively work against al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Unsurprisingly, the Bush Administration ignored reality in pursuit of a fantastical agenda of misplaced hope and ignorant ideology.

Today, having failed to ride Maliki to "victory" in Iraq, the Administration has chosen to undermine him. They have called him out as their patsy. They have designated him as their man to break apart the Shia hold on Iraq. I doubt that those who are the targets of Washington’s plan, the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr, will take too kindly to Mr. Maliki upon his return to Baghdad. With the leaked memo, Washington has ensured Mr. Maliki’s political demise, and perhaps his death as well. Mr. Maliki’s demise will also ensure that future Iraqi leaders will keep their distance from Washington, lest they suffer the same fate.

So, it is unsurprising that Mr. Maliki had no appetite for dinner with Mr. Bush in Amman. When he finally does sit down to breakfast with Mr. Bush, it may very well be his last meal.

What do you do when your incompetence leads to failure? You blame others.

What do you do when a recession occurs on your watch? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when your economic policies cause massive job losses? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when a massive surplus leads to a massive deficit? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when you ignore warnings about terrorist attacks on the homeland? You blame the CIA. What do you do when Bin Laden attacks the United States? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when you are caught fiddling while New Orleans drowns? You blame the local government. What do you do when North Korea tests nukes? You blame the Clinton Administration.

What do you do when you fail to provide basic security after destroying a country? You blame the Iraqis.

Faced with chaos in Iraq, Mr. Bush has said that he will not change his strategy in Iraq, although he might change his tactics:

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said that while Bush might change tactics, he would not change his overall strategy.

"He’s not somebody who gets jumpy at polls," Snow said of Bush.

Bush, at a political fundraiser in Washington for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, railed against Democrats who criticize the war. Calling the Democrats the party of "cut and run," Bush said voters need to ask: "Which political party has a strategy for victory in this war on terror?’ "

I am a voter and I am asking myself what exactly Mr. Bush’s strategy is in Iraq. As far as I can tell, his strategy from the start of this fiasco has been, "Blame others."

Blaming the Iraqis is something of a parlor game in Washington. It has been a constant theme in Mr. Bush’s attempts to hide his own incompetence from the rest of us. This week, the "blame the Iraqis" strategy became the backbone of an emerging exit strategy in Iraq. The New York Times is reporting this morning that the administration is drafting a timetable for Iraq and will lay down a set of benchmarks that the Iraqi government will have to meet to quell the violence:

The Bush administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to address sectarian divisions and assume a larger role in securing the country, senior American officials said.

Details of the blueprint, which is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki before the end of the year and would be carried out over the next year and beyond, are still being devised. But the officials said that for the first time Iraq was likely to be asked to agree to a schedule of specific milestones, like disarming sectarian militias, and to a broad set of other political, economic and military benchmarks intended to stabilize the country.

Although the plan would not threaten Mr. Maliki with a withdrawal of American troops, several officials said the Bush administration would consider changes in military strategy and other penalties if Iraq balked at adopting it or failed to meet critical benchmarks within it.

A senior Pentagon official involved in drafting the blueprint said Iraqi officials were being consulted as the plan evolved and would be invited to sign off on the milestones before the end of the year. But he added, “If the Iraqis fail to come back to us on this, we would have to conduct a reassessment” of the American strategy in Iraq.

Let me be the first to make this rather obvious prediction: The Iraqi government will not be able to meet the benchmarks to stabilize the country.

Already administration gophers like Mr. Rumsfeld have been telling us that the Iraqis are the ones responsible for providing their own security:

Mr. Rumsfeld alluded to discussions about benchmarks on Friday at a Pentagon news conference, noting that Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey “are currently working with the Iraqi government to develop a set of projections as to when they think they can pass off various pieces of responsibility.”

He emphasized the urgency of transferring more security and governing responsibilities to the Iraqis. “It’s their country,” he said. “They’re going to have to govern it, they’re going to have to provide security for it, and they’re going to have to do it sooner rather than later.”

Yes, it is their country. However, we are the ones that invaded and occupied their country. It is quite clear under international law who is responsible for the security of Iraq. According to the Law of Occupation it is the duty of the United States, as the occupying power, to provide security in Iraq. The Law of Occupation is codified by the Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Conventions, and the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare.  Article 43 of the Hague Regulations state:

The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.

While it may be politically convenient for the Bush Administration to blame the Iraqis for the worsening situation in Iraq, it is the failure of the Bush Administration to provide any semblance of basic security to the occupied country of Iraq that is the primary culprit. Instead of providing security, we were given lighthearted quips when the whole world saw the chaos in Iraq immediate after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

Declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression and that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein.

He also asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in Baghdad, the capital city, which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was "part of the price" for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.

"Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here."

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said.

Stuff happened because Mr. Bush’s ideology only could envision people throwing flowers at our feet.

The Bush administration was ill-prepared for post-war Iraq. They compounded the problem by handing over Iraq to the Iranian-backed SCIRI and the Iranian nurtured al Dawa party. How dense do you have to be to not understand that the platform of a political party named "The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq" might not exactly be in line with the western liberal democracy the neo-con fantasy envisioned? Is it really a surprise that Shia death squads are roaming the country, wearing police uniforms, and massacring Sunnis, and is it really a surprise that Sunni suicide bombers are targeting the Shia?

Is it really a surprise that Mr. Maliki, a hard-line al Dawa leader with a dubious past, would not want to crack down on the militias that are his pillar of support? After all, it was Mr. Maliki’s own party that invented the modern car bombing, that has killed Americans in Kuwait and in Lebanon, and that has now been given control of a country by the historically challenged George W Bush.

So, as we watch George W Bush cut and run from Iraq, we must not forget that we are at this unfortunate situation because of Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived and ill-executed invasion and occupation of Iraq. Mr. Bush can point fingers anywhere and everywhere he chooses, but he only need look in the mirror to find the man responsible for this fiasco.

The Iraq debate in Washington is all about "cutting and running" versus "stay the course". The war in Iraq now is being spun by domestic American politics. However, notwithstanding the food fight in Washington, there is still a real war raging in Iraq. The politics in Washington is still overshadowed by events in Baghdad. Such is the predicament of the Bush Administration. It has led the United States into a conflict that it cannot control.

Last week President Bush, fresh from his victory lap in Baghdad, announced his determination to "stay the course" in Iraq:

"One message I will continue to send to the enemy is, ‘Don’t count on us leaving before the mission is complete,’ " Bush said at a White House news conference.

"Don’t bet on American politics forcing my hand, because it’s not going to happen," he said. "I’m going to make decisions not based upon politics but based upon what’s best for the United States of America."

"What you hear from me no matter what these polls and all the business look like, is that it’s worth it, it is necessary and we will succeed," Bush said.

After surprising Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad, Mr. Bush was undoubtedly feeling his oats. He was back to the tough talking Commander-in-Chief that his handlers believe wins votes.

The Republicans in the House last week outmaneuvered the Democrats by passing a resolution connecting Iraq to the War on Terror and supporting Mr. Bush’s policy in Iraq:

The House voted 256 to 153 yesterday to back President Bush’s policies in Iraq after two days of passionate and partisan debate that saw Republicans try to recast an unpopular conflict as part of a broader war on terrorism and totalitarianism.

Forty-two Democrats bucked their leadership to join a virtually united Republican Party and to declare that the United States must complete "the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure and united Iraq" without setting "an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of U.S. troops

The Republicans in the House succeeded in devolving a much-needed debate on the war in Iraq to campaign slogans for the upcoming Congressional elections in November.

Earlier the Republicans in the Senate flexed their political muscle by rejecting any notion of an Iraq withdrawal:

Across Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats alike provided a preview of potential strategies for discussing the three-year-old conflict in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.

As the U.S. death toll in Iraq reached 2,500, the Senate soundly rejected a call to withdraw combat troops by year’s end, and House Republicans laid the groundwork for their own vote.

In a move Democrats criticized as gamesmanship, Senate Republicans brought up the withdrawal measure and quickly dispatched it — for now — on a 93-6 vote.

By week’s end, the Democrats were cowering.

Over the weekend, Senate Democrats regrouped and today presented an Iraq pullout plan to try to regain the political upper hand. The Democratic plan calls for the United States to begin pulling out troops by the end of the year but does not set a deadline for complete withdrawal. With this plan, the Democrats hope to show the voters in November that they are serious thinkers and not wimps who just want to "cut and run".

But, the political debate in Washington ignores the reality in Iraq. The reality in Iraq is that the Bush Administration has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in installing an Islamist regime in Iraq. The Islamists in Iraq have played the Bush Administration masterfully. They have used the American occupation as cover to do a little bit of house cleaning (ethnic cleansing) and have consolidated power within the military and the police forces. Having consolidated power, now it is time to give the Americans the boot.

In a particularly well-timed op-ed in the Washington Post, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s National Security Advisor, shows the United States the door:

With the governors of each province meeting these strict objectives, Iraq’s ambition is to have full control of the country by the end of 2008. In practice this will mean a significant foreign troop reduction. We envisage the U.S. troop presence by year’s end to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007.

So, there’s your timetable: Leave Iraq by the end of 2007. This kind of clarity from the Iraqi government makes the debate in Washington, to borrow our Attorney General’s word, "quaint".

Mr. al-Rubaie also kicks a little bit of sand in Dick Cheney’s eyes by labeling Americans as "occupiers", albeit by indirection:

The eventual removal of coalition troops from Iraqi streets will help the Iraqis, who now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators they were meant to be. It will remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the so-called resistance in the first place. The removal of troops will also allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbors that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance because of what they call the "coalition occupation." If the sectarian issue continues to cause conflict with Iraq’s neighbors, this matter needs to be addressed urgently and openly — not in the guise of aversion to the presence of foreign troops. [Emphasis added by me.]

This turn of events should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following events in Iraq over the past few years. Although it may come as a surprise to the still significant number of Americans who believe we are bringing "freedom" to the Iraqi people. It should also not have been a surprise when the Iraqi government declared last week that they would grant amnesty to insurgents who had killed American troops. Even though the Iraqis backtracked from that declaration, it was nonetheless symptomatic of the environment in Iraq where Americans have long been viewed as occupiers.

We have handed the reigns of power in Iraq to the al-Dawa party and the SCIRI, both Iranian backed and nurtured parties. We have handed power to the very terrorist organization that killed American soldiers in Kuwait and Lebanon in the 1980s. Mr. al-Rubaie himself was the spokesman for this terrorist organization in the 1980s. In his latest incarnation, Mr. al-Rubaie speaks not only for the al-Dawa party but also the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. So much so, the President of the United States, on his Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, had the following exchange with 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." [Emphasis added by me.]

I am sure Mr. Bush’s evangelical friends on the right really appreciate that Mr. Bush prays to the same God as Muslims.

To complete the humiliation in Iraq, the same terrorists who killed Americans in the 1980s are now telling us to get out of Baghdad. I wonder if Mr. Bush will consider such an exit to be in the best interests of the United States. I have long argued that the United States does more harm to Iraq and its own credibility by staying in Iraq. Our credibility is already damaged in Iraq. Withdrawing from Iraq under our own terms would not have damaged our credibility that much more. However, being told to leave by the Iraqi government will round out the humiliation. That is exactly what is now happening.

It appears that Mr. Cheney was partially right about "last throes" in Iraq, only it is our occupation that is in its last throes.

May 25th, 2006 will be remembered as the day America acknowledged defeat in Iraq. In a press conference at the White House President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair signaled a humiliating end of the American and British intervention in Iraq that began on March 20, 2003. The pair were a picture of weariness as they repeated over and over again that, in spite of the setbacks, invading Iraq was the right thing to do and that we must "complete the mission." The phrase "complete the mission" has become code for "orderly withdrawal". The American and British mission is no longer about "winning" in Iraq, it is about not "losing" in Iraq.

This is a tragic day for the United States. American military might has been thwarted by a band of determined insurgents and a cabal of shrewd politicians. America has been used by the Islamists in Iraq to do their bidding and now the time has come to be shown the door. A tired Bush and Blair are quoted in The Washington Post as two defeated men:

"Despite setbacks and missteps, I strongly believe we did and are doing the right thing," Bush said Thursday evening in a White House news conference with Blair. "Not everything has turned out the way we hoped."

For his part, Blair declared that after a meeting earlier this week with Iraq’s new prime minister, "I came away thinking the challenge is still immense, but I also came away thinking more certain than ever that we should rise to it."

Bush and Blair were asked about mistakes they might have made that they regret now. President Bush acknowledged what the rest of the world has known ever since Bush came into office - that you should "walk softly and carry a big stick" and not the other way around:

In unusually introspective comments, Bush said he regrets his cowboy rhetoric the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks such as his "wanted dead or alive" description of Osama bin Laden and his taunting "bring ‘em on" challenge to Iraqi insurgents.

"In certain pa[r]ts of the world, it was misinterpreted."

Mr. Blair for his part acknowledged what was obvious before the invasion:

Blair regretted the way in which Saddam Hussein’s political allies were purged from the Iraqi military and government soon after the fall of Baghdad. Critics have said the sudden purge left a security vacuum in Iraq and encouraged former regime loyalists to take up arms against the newly installed government.

Blair also said allies seriously underestimated the insurgency.

"It should have been very obvious to us" from the beginning, Blair said. [Emphasis added by me.]

Respectfully, Prime Minister, it was obvious from the beginning but the Administration chose to ignore the advice of its own experts in favor of wildly optimistic scenarios painted by Vice President Cheney and his merry band of neo-conservatives. Here is Vice President Cheney speaking 4 days before the Iraq invasion on March 16, 2003:

Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.

From those carefree comments from Mr. Cheney to the confessions at today’s press conference, we have descended step by each humiliating step into defeat.

Today in Iraq sectarian violence claims the lives of about 30 innocent civilians every day. Bodies with drill holes in their heads are left on street corners like garbage to be picked up by the grim reaper. The islamist Dawa party slowly but steadily tightens its grip on the reigns of power in Iraq while their masters in Tehran rejoice in their good fortune. Ordinary Iraqis live in fear where the most mundane tasks of everyday life have become acts of fear and courage. Militias roam the streets and don the uniform of the Iraqi Police. Insurgents strike with impunity as their IEDs and suicide attacks continue to end lives and replenish the morgues. American soldiers retreat further into their barracks as it becomes increasingly more difficult to discern friend from foe.

There is nothing good in today’s news. The President of the most powerful nation in the world stood in front of the cameras today and looked for all the world to see to be a muddled schoolboy. Perhaps we have reached the bottom of the bucket of humiliation that is the American engagement in Iraq. Tomorrow promises to be the beginning of the American disengagement from Iraq. Tomorrow promises to also be the beginning of American abandonment of Iraq. American self-preservation will mean that Iraq will be left to suffer on its own for years to come.

Today is a milestone in an American and Global tragedy brought about by a President who fancied himself a cowboy. May the world see better days than this.

Iraqi Shiites have chosen a new candidate to replace embattled Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The new face of Iraq will now be the Islamist hardliner Jawad al-Maliki. The world has breathed a collective sigh of relief at this news.

The impasse over the Premiership is now finally broken and both the Sunnis and the Kurds appear ready to accept this new choice for Prime Minister. The American Ambassador to Iraq sounds downright giddy at the prospect of al-Maliki becoming the Prime Minister. The Washington Post reports:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the choice of Maliki was "a good step in the right direction. He’s an Iraqi patriot. He’s a strong leader."

Lost in all the euphoria at seeing progress in Iraq is whether or not this is progress in the right direction for Iraq or the United States. I had written in an earlier article that the likely replacement for al-Jaafari would either come from his own Dawa party or from the SCIRI. I had also suggested that neither outcome would be a positive outcome. We now have our answer. Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been replaced by another Dawa party member albeit one that is more hard-line. In fact while Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been the titular head of the Shiite alliance, al-Maliki has done all the heavy lifting. It is no surprise then that he would ascend to the Premiership.

Jawad al-Maliki has been the spokesman for the Dawa party and the Shiite alliance. He was involved in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution and more significantly was a member of the de-Baathification committee set up by the United States. He has been a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has close ties with the Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army.

After the recent raid by the U.S. military on a mosque in Sadr City, al-Maliki referred to the American Military operation as a "criminal" act. Responding to the raid, al-Maliki urged the United States to hand over security operations to Iraqis:

Jawad al-Maliki, a senior spokesman of the Shia Islamist Alliance and ally of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the prime minister, said: "The alliance calls for a rapid restoration of security matters to the Iraqi government."

al-Maliki apparently wants the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by Shiite militias, to be in charge of security in Iraq. This would allow the militias to continue their brutal ethnic cleansing operations with impunity.

After pushing hard for al-Jaafari’s ouster, the United States has gotten a more pro-Iranian Dawa party member. We have certainly come full circle in the Middle East. We have put in power in Iraq a person Saddam Hussein had sentenced to death. We have put in power a person who was involved in terrorist activities against not only Iraq but also Western and American targets in the Middle East. We have put in power a party, the Dawa party, that invented the modern suicide car bombing - a party that was involved in bombing the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and in the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut.

We have brought democracy to the Middle East. We have handed over Iraq to an Iranian nurtured and funded Islamist alliance (Dawa and SCIRI). I do not believe this is what the American people bargained for when we embarked on the invasion of Iraq. If we are holding out the hope that these Islamist parties whose stated goal is to bring about an Islamist revolution in Iraq will somehow smell the sweet scent of Democracy and become torchbearers of freedom and liberty, we are likely to be as disappointed as Dick Cheney was when we were not greeted as liberators. This is a far cry from the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction and the defeat of al Qaeda.