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.

When George W Bush was presented the Iraq Study Group report last week, according to Lawrence Eagleburger, Mr. Bush’s reaction was "Where’s my drink?"

Since its release, the report has been much maligned from both sides of the political aisle. In my previous post, I wrote that the report was significant because its assessment of the situation in Iraq has neutered Mr. Bush’s argument about "progress" in Iraq. It has also quite clearly demonstrated Mr. Bush’s foreign policy as an utter failure. While the right is making a valiant attempt to discredit the report, I think the damage has already been done. Mr. Bush will need that drink, he may even huff and puff, but I stand by my assertion that the foreign policy of the United States is no longer in the hands of this president. He has been put in a corner like a petulant preschooler.

My previous post focused on the "Assessment" part of the report. This post will address the 79 recommendations. As I mentioned earlier, I think the report’s central failure is its recommendation that Iraqi forces be trained by the U.S. military into 2008. The recommendations, taken together, really are not recommendations at all. It seems to me the recommendations themselves are simply criticisms of Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy - the recommendations point out specific failures that have led us to the Iraq of today as spelled out in the "Assessment".

The recommendations are in three parts. First, Mr. Bush’s failure to engage in regional diplomacy. Second, Mr. Bush’s failure to pursue national reconciliation. Third, Mr. Bush’s failure to properly train and equip the Iraqi security forces. The failures together have facilitated Iraq’s slide into chaos. The report holds out the hope that if those failures are remedied immediately there is a chance that chaos may be averted in Iraq. I have my doubts.

Mr. Bush’s failure in Iraq is rooted in the same failure that led to the war in the first place. It is a failure to grasp reality. When ideology drives policy, reality is not that important to the ideologues. However, reality has a way of asserting itself. The report explains the basics to Mr. Bush:

Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals. [p.95]

While the rest of the world understood that the insurgency in Iraq was complex, Mr. Bush and his lackeys "knew" that it was al Qaeda and a few "dead-enders". Therefore, no effort was expended finding out about the nature of the enemy:

While the United States has been able to acquire good and sometimes superb tactical intelligence on al Qaeda in Iraq, our government still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias.

…

Congress has appropriated almost $2 billion this year for countermeasures to protect our troops in Iraq against improvised explosive devices, but the administration has not put forward a request to invest comparable resources in trying to understand the people who fabricate, plant and explode those devices. [pp. 93-94]

You see, Mr. Bush knows they are "evil-doers". So, it is not important to know what motivates them and how they operate. A smarter or more curious man might think it was important to know your enemy’s motivations so that you can combat your enemy more effectively. But not this president.

The two recommendations that follow, recommendations 77 and 78, after the ISG points out our lack of knowledge about our enemy are almost cursory.

The report points out the importance of engaging Iraq’s neighbors. The reason is quite simple - all of Iraq’s neighbors have a stake in a stable Iraq, almost certainly more of a stake than the United States:

It is clear to Iraq Study Group members that all of Iraq’s neighbors are anxious about the situation in Iraq. They favor a unified Iraq that is strong enough to maintain its territorial integrity, but not so powerful as to threaten its neighbors. None favors the breakup of the Iraqi state. [p. 47]

Given the importance of engaging Iraq’s neighbors, it is striking how little has been accomplished in this area. To date, Iraq has not yet established a working embassy even in Saudi Arabia [recommendation 2].

The report also states that Iran and Syria should be engaged without preconditions:

Dealing with Iran and Syria is controversial. Nevertheless, it is our view that in diplomacy, a nation can and should engage its adversaries and enemies to try to resolve conflicts and differences consistent with its own interests. Accordingly, the Support Group should actively engage Iran and Syria in its diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions. [p. 50]

Engaging one’s enemy is anathema to the Decider - he has already scoffed at the idea. However, Mr. Bush does not hold many cards and an ostrich is sometimes forced to pull its head out of the sand if it wants to breathe. Recommendations 9 and 16 offer carrots to Iran and Syria to sit down at the bargaining table. Those two recommendations have already set the tone for U.S. foreign policy, sooner or later Mr. Bush will be forced to follow, or remain irrelevant.

It is in the area of national reconciliation where the report breaks important ground. A number of the ideas have been proposed separately in the past. The report ties them together within a coherent strategy with a nice payoff at the end:

The point is for the United States and Iraq to make clear their shared interest in the orderly departure of U.S. forces as Iraqi forces take on the security mission. A successful national reconciliation dialogue will advance that departure date. [p.67]

To that end, recommendation 34 calls for the issue of U.S. force presence in Iraq to be on the table for any national reconciliation dialogue. This is a far cry from Mr. Bush’s belligerent tone to date.

The report proposes the reversal of the disastrous de-baathification process (recommendation 27) and it calls for oil revenue to be shared based on population (recommendation 28). The oil revenue recommendation specifically addresses the ambiguity that exists in the current draft of the Iraqi constitution. The report calls for the revenue from future oil fields to also be shared based on population. This recommendation is essential to bringing the Sunnis into the national reconciliation process.

The report punts on the most difficult, and perhaps the most intractable, of Iraq’s issues - Kirkuk. Recommendation 30 does suggest wisely that the referendum of the future of Kirkuk be postponed to avoid violence. In many ways, the Kirkuk problem is beginning to resemble the Kashmir issue in the Indian sub-continent - what is popular at the local level may not necessarily be in the national interest. Unsurprisingly, Kurds led by Massoud Barzani (and parroted by Jalal Talabani) have been critical of the report because it favors more central control of Iraq than the Kurds would prefer. The Kurdish claim to Kirkuk and its oil revenues are directly challenged by the report.

Above all, the report stresses the importance of talking to your enemies - the essential ingredient of national reconciliation. It proposes far-reaching amnesty (recommendation 31), engaging all parties, including Moqtada al-Sadr (recommendation 35), and less meddling by the United States:

Recommendation 37: Iraqi amnesty proposals must not be undercut in Washington by either the executive or the legislative branch.

As part of national reconciliation, the report proposes the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of the militias:

The use of force by the government of Iraq is appropriate and necessary to stop militias that act as death squads or use violence against institutions of the state. However, solving the problem of militias requires national reconciliation.

…

Because the United States is a party to the conflict, the U.S. military should not be involved in implementing such a program. [pp.68-69]

The report recommends the presence of neutral international experts, who have significant experience from previous civil wars, to facilitate the DDR of militias [recommendation 38]. It is Mr. Bush’s failure to recognize the conflict for what it is that has prevented this essential step in national reconciliation from taking place.

While the report, in my opinion, errs in the area of training security forces, it nonetheless does offer one very important and necessary recommendation:

Recommendation 50: The entire Iraqi National Police should be transferred to the Ministry of Defense, where the police commando units will become part of the new Iraqi Army.

This recommendation is important for two reasons. First, the Iraqi National Police is geared toward counterinsurgency and not police work. Therefore, it does not belong under the Ministry of Interior. The Iraqi Police Service, which does police work, is the appropriate force to be under the Ministry of Interior. Second and more importantly, by moving the Iraqi National Police out from under the MOI (which is under Shia militia control), Shia militia control of the force is diluted. It should come as no surprise that SCIRI has condemned this recommendation so harshly.

The ISG report is focused on bringing parties into the national reconciliation process. This is something the Bush Administration should have been pursuing from the start. The report makes overtures toward the Shia nationalists (Sadrists) as well as the Iraqi Sunnis, the ethnic minority. It does point to the essential formula of a future stable Iraq, if one is to emerge from this chaos. In any national reconciliation, the stronger group must make accomodations to include the weaker group if peace is to be the outcome. The report thus recognizes the importance of bringing the Iraqi Sunnis into the dialogue. This is in marked contrast to the "80% solution" being contemplated by the Bush Administration. It seems to me, that taken together, the national reconciliation and the regional diplomacy proposed by the report set the groundwork for an American withdrawal from Iraq.

Upon reading the full report, one wonders why the recommendations of the report have not already been tried by the Bush Administration in the last 3 years. One wonders what they have been doing the last 3 years. While the American military have been taking casualties, it appears that the White House has been out to lunch. That is the result of ignoring reality in favor of ideology.

While it is debatable if  "success" was ever in the cards once Mr. Bush made the ill-informed and ill-conceived decision to invade Iraq, the ISG report makes it clear that whatever hope of  "success" might have existed in Iraq was out of reach for this most incompetent of administrations. That will be the legacy of this report - exposing George W Bush for his incompetence in Iraq the way the television pictures from New Orleans exposed George W Bush’s incompetence in protecting the American people at home.

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.

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.

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.