History > 2006 > USA > War > Iraq (IV)

Relatives of Army Cpl. Carl W. Johnson II

watch as his coffin is taken for burial at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday.

Burials there took on a grim regularity in October,

when more than 100 Americans were killed in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Doug Mills/The New York Times        30.10.2006

A Most Violent Month, and Many Final Farewells        NYT        30.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30arlingtonblurb.html

U.S. Envoy Arrives in Iraq as Tough Options Loom

October 31, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN F. BURNS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — President Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, arrived in Baghdad on Monday on an unannounced trip to discuss how to pull the country back from the brink.

Though American officials would describe Mr. Hadley’s talks only in the vaguest of terms, one option widely discussed in Washington and Baghdad in the days before his arrival, according to American and Iraqi officials, is a substantial increase in the number of American and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad. It would signal yet another effort to reassert control over the Iraqi capital, which officials in both governments said remains their top priority.

Those officials cautioned that no decision had been made about that option, which would amount to a third effort this year to contain the spreading violence in Baghdad. On Monday evening, J. D. Crouch, the deputy national security adviser, said Mr. Hadley was in Iraq to express support for the Iraqi government and warned, “He is not preconfiguring military options.” Mr. Crouch added that he was “not aware” of anyone proposing an increase in American troops.

Other American officials said that such options have been informally discussed. They said that before any American forces in Baghdad could be increased, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq would have to deliver more Iraqi troops, who would patrol the streets of the capital along with the Americans and take the lead whenever possible.

Other proposals now being discussed inside and outside the two governments range from how to permit greater autonomy for Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish sections of the country without splitting the country apart; how to share oil revenues among Iraq’s population; and an amnesty for those who attacked Iraqi or American troops.

Many of these options may not be dealt with for months, because Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds within the “unity government” in Baghdad are still far apart on issues touching on Iraq’s division of power and wealth.

In an interview Friday evening, Mr. Hadley said that “I wish you could find a silver bullet that could solve this in 30 days,” but that “I doubt it.”

He described a series of American goals, including a new effort to get more financial and other support from neighboring states, saying that “given the risks of chaos in Iraq, and given the threat and aspirations of Iran,” each country in the region has “a huge stake” in a stable Iraq. But such appeals have failed in the past.

Mr. Hadley faces critics — many in his own party — who say that the Bush administration’s effort has devolved to picking the least bad of a dismal set of options, and that the administration must lower its sights for a democratic Iraq and simply regain a semblance of stability there.

“It is folly to think we can win in Iraq the way some of us thought possible in 2003,” Eliot A. Cohen, the director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote this month in The Wall Street Journal.

Speaking in Baghdad on Sunday as Mr. Hadley headed to Iraq to meet him, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, seemed to set out a Shiite vision when he said that while Shiites “have the numbers” in Baghdad, Sunnis who joined in building the new Iraq could look forward to “sharing the wealth” in oil.

But he implied that Sunnis were having difficulty reconciling to the new political realities. “Some of these politicians are not prepared, mentally or psychologically, to make the compromises necessary for us to live cohabitively,” he said.

More Troops

In the interview on Sunday, Mr. Rubaie declined to discuss specifics of recent conversations with Washington over increasing troop levels. But he said, “Baghdad is the core of the issue.” When it comes to turning the tide of the war, he said, “It’s Baghdad, Baghdad, Baghdad.”

American officials in Washington and Baghdad who discussed changes in the Baghdad security plan, including possible troop increases, said it was unlikely that any announcements would be made until after the elections on Nov. 7. Bush administration officials have said that any major changes in American policy will require bipartisan support, and they are clearly waiting to see which party will control the House, and possibly the Senate, before proceeding. A week ago, General George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, said that if he needed more troops, “I will ask for the troops we need, both coalition and Iraqi.”

In Washington, the debate over whether to increase troops comes as the White House seems to be groping for new ideas. The administration has resisted efforts to increase the overall number of American troops in Iraq. At times, tours have been extended for individual brigades, which amount to about 5,000 troops, for 90 days or so. But recent history suggests that any plan to significantly increase the American deployment in Baghdad would require more sweeping changes, by keeping 10,000 to 30,000 troops in Baghdad beyond their scheduled rotations home, even as new troops rotate in.

In the interview on Friday evening, Mr. Hadley declined to discuss internal deliberations. Still, he said: “Everyone says there is no military solution to the problem. That’s true. But you also have this Catch-22 element to the problem. You can’t have security without political and economic progress, but it’s hard to have political and economic progress without security. There is some minimum element of security you need.”

Outside experts who favor an American withdrawal say that almost all the options now being considered would be doomed to failure.

“It’s not going to make any difference,” said Peter W. Galbraith, the author of “The End of Iraq” (Simon & Schuster) and a scholar at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “It’s not a country, and you can’t build an army in the midst of a civil war. And elements of the Iraqi army are partisans in the civil war. You can’t use the combatants as if they were neutral players.”

Regional Governments

In Washington, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for the establishment of three regional governments — one Kurdish, one Sunni, one Shiite — responsible for administering their own regions. The idea is adapted from one first proposed by Leslie H. Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

So far the Bush administration has opposed solutions that would give the regions too much autonomy for fear that could ultimately lead to partition. In Washington on Monday, Reuters reported, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said any partition of Iraq would lead to “ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian killing on a massive scale.”

This month, Iraq’s new Parliament approved a law that empowers the country’s 18 provinces to assemble into regions, but that delays, for 18 months, any practical steps toward forming those regions, in a bid to defuse the explosive political tensions that underlie the debate.

Nearly a year after national elections, the Sunnis, and not just the insurgents, remain unreconciled to the loss of primacy they enjoyed for generations — and to the loss of revenue they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. “The problem is that in 2003 the Sunnis got 70 percent of the oil, and now they are being asked to take 20 percent,” Mr. Galbraith said.

Meanwhile, the Shiites, or at least the leaders of the religious parties that control the government, have become increasingly strident in insisting that after generations of Sunni domination, it is now their turn to rule. While a process of ethnic and religious separation is already under way in cities including Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk — with tens of thousands of people from the three principal communities fleeing to safer havens in those parts of the country where they are in the majority — any policy that explicitly espoused this kind of separation would be likely to ignite an even fiercer struggle.

The subtext for the debate is the struggle for control of the country’s oil and gas revenues. The Iraqi Constitution, narrowly adopted last year, envisages a formula for dividing the revenues among provinces or regions proportional to the populations in each area, with some adjustments. Though the timetable set by the American and Iraqi governments calls for legislation to be passed on the issue by the end of October, there is now little chance it will happen before the end of the year.

Reconciliation and Amnesty

When he took office in May, Mr. Maliki made national reconciliation a centerpiece of his policy. But today it is foundering.

At the dispute’s heart is the issue of a possible amnesty. It would cover both those responsible for the repressive violence during Mr. Hussein’s 24 years in power, and the killing that has ensued, by insurgents and sectarian militias, since his fall.

Shiite politicians, in particular, have adamantly opposed any amnesty that would cover the decades of Shiite suffering under Mr. Hussein, or the widespread killing of Shiites by Sunni insurgents since the American-led invasion in 2003. As Shiite death squads have killed Sunnis over the past year, Sunni politicians, too, have hardened their stand. American officials, eager to promote Iraqi reconciliation, have still balked at any provision to spare insurgents or sectarian militiamen who have killed American soldiers.

Iraqi officials designated by Mr. Maliki to lead the reconciliation effort now seem to be despairing.

“Iraq has only two options, fragmentation or civil war,” Sayed Ayyad Jamaluddin, a secular Shiite who is a member of the Maliki-appointed Higher Council for National Reconciliation, said last month. “And civil war,” he added, “will be a catastrophe, because it will be fought on the basis of religion.”

A Strongman

Some American experts have suggested that the Bush administration should abandon the effort to create a Western-style democracy and throw its weight behind a stronger Iraqi government. Mr. Cohen, in the Wall Street Journal article, which the White House e-mailed to reporters because it concluded that a withdrawal of American troops would be disastrous, wrote that “a junta of military modernizers might be the only hope of a country whose democratic culture is weak, whose politicians are either corrupt or incapable.” But he also highlighted the downsides of returning to a strongman government.

Iraqi newspapers have adopted the theme of a government change, speculating on the possible composition of a “national salvation government,” backed by the United States, that would wrest power from the Shiite alliance that chose Mr. Maliki for prime minister. Iraqi officials have said that Mr. Maliki has been deeply shaken by rumors that he might be forced from office by year’s end. However, President Bush, in two conversations over the past two weeks, has assured him of support.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and John F. Burns from Baghdad. Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    U.S. Envoy Arrives in Iraq as Tough Options Loom, NYT, 31.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31policy.html?hp&ex=1162357200&en=bda16c9f06e7e86b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Sidney Dyer with her mother, Jodi, at Mr. Dyer’s burial. Mr. Dyer, 38, of Cocoa Beach, Fla., was killed in Afghanistan.

Doug Mills/The New York Times        30.10.2006

A Most Violent Month, and Many Final Farewells        NYT        30.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30arlingtonblurb.html?hp&ex=
1162270800&en=5cb212f13c273265&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Spate of Bombs Sweeps Baghdad; Cleric Faults U.S.

October 31, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 — A spasm of violence seized the capital on Monday. Forty-six Iraqis were killed in six bombings across the city and a moderate Sunni Arab figure was gunned down by two men on motorcycles.

The American toll for October rose to 102, the highest since January 2005, with the military’s announcement of three more deaths.

In a single deadly strike, 33 Shiite laborers gathered around food stalls in a Sadr City square were killed when a bomb in a bag exploded at 6 a.m., scattering glasses of tea and remains of breakfasts. The workers had been waiting for offers of $10-a-day jobs.

The attacks continued as the American national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, met in Baghdad with Iraqi officials. He came to discuss the work of a committee set up by the leaders of the two governments on Sunday, whose aim includes giving Iraqis more control over their troops.

The attack in Sadr City came despite the American Army cordon that has been in place for a week in a search for a missing soldier, whom the military believes was taken there. It was the fifth bomb in the area, Al Mudhafar Square, where poor workers line up to seek work, said Haidar Said, a police captain on duty when the bomb exploded.

“Please deliver this message,” said Officer Said. “This city has suffered a lot. These are poor people. We want to reach our voice to the world.”

It is attacks like the one in Sadr City, a Shiite slum, that anger Shiite leaders and put pressure on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, to press for more of a hand in security, which is controlled almost exclusively by the American military.

The security cordon has caused major traffic jams and cut off much of the movement in and out of the area, drawing the ire of Iraqis. The district is the center of support for Moktada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who called on his followers to fight American troops twice in 2004. In a statement on Monday, Mr. Sadr threatened action if the American cordon continued.

“If this siege continues for long, we will resort to actions that I will have no choice but to take, God willing, and when the time is right,” he said, according to The Associated Press.

Less than an hour after the bomb struck, two men on motorcycles shot and killed Issam al-Rawi, a geology professor, on his way to class. Two associates were wounded. Born in 1949, Mr. Rawi was one of the most moderate voices among Sunni Arabs. But the violence here has radicalized many Iraqis, and moderates who refuse to yield to the militants are either being killed or driven out of the country.

“They murdered one of the few burning candles,” said Abdul Mahdi Talib, dean of the Science College at Baghdad University. “We considered him a man for all.”

In the Green Zone, a walled area where the Iraqi government and American Embassy are located, Mr. Hadley met with his opposite number, Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie. In a statement, Mr. Rubaie said the men discussed the work of a committee established by Mr. Maliki and President Bush to speed training for the Iraqi Army.

The talks felt far away to Officer Said, the police captain, who spent most of the morning gathering bodies in the square in Sadr City. He described a horrific tableau of staggering wounded victims and of bodies missing limbs. Some families lost several members. In one Sadr City hospital, four brothers were being treated. Two died and two others were wounded, with one losing his leg, said a visitor at the hospital.

A politician who supports Mr. Sadr, Nasir al-Saidi, was at the hospital and he spoke angrily against the American military and the Iraqi government as victims were rushed in.

Officer Said said the cordon actually hindered the authorities’ ability to move the victims to hospitals outside.

One of the wounded blamed the cordon for blocking the Mahdi Army, the grass-roots fighting force of Mr. Sadr’s supporters, and in turn making the neighborhood less safe.

The cordon “forced Mahdi Army members who were patrolling the streets to vanish,” said Ali Abdul Ridha, who was lying next to his brother in a hospital bed, The A.P. reported.

Others, though, said the militia was the reason why the bomb was planted.

The bombs kept exploding, killing Iraqis in small but steady numbers. Some of the Sadr City victims were taken to Yarmouk Hospital, and there a bomb went off around 2:30 p.m., killing one person and wounding five more. In the Bayaa neighborhood, 4 people were killed and 15 wounded. In Amel, a mixed area, three were killed and six wounded.

In another assassination, Raad Naem al-Jeheshi, a Shiite who led an organization of former Iraqi prisoners, was gunned down in Dora, a Sunni suburb that American troops had swept.

The militants’ use of government uniforms for deception continued in a particularly grim way on Monday, when a suicide bomber dressed as a police officer passed through two checkpoints in the police headquarters in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad. Three people were killed, including a 5-year-old, the child of a woman who works as a cleaner. Thirteen were wounded.

Total Iraqi deaths reported for the day was 81, The A.P. said, including bodies found in rivers near Baghdad.

Violence in Baghdad was also responsible for an American’s death, when a member of the 89th Military Police Brigade was killed Monday in the eastern part of the city. Another soldier died when the vehicle in which he was riding was struck by an explosive device south of Baghdad.

The other American whose death was tallied on Monday was a marine who was killed in fighting in Anbar Province the day before.

Hosham Hussein, Sahar Nageeb and Qais Mizher contributed reporting.

    Spate of Bombs Sweeps Baghdad; Cleric Faults U.S., NYT, 31.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/world/middleeast/31iraq.html?hp&ex=1162357200&en=aa7daf52a1f38900&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Peggy Johnson Crocker wears a T-shirt with a picture of her son during his burial. Corporal Johnson was killed in Iraq.

Doug Mills/The New York Times        30.10.2006

A Most Violent Month, and Many Final Farewells        NYT        30.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30arlingtonblurb.html?hp&ex=
1162270800&en=5cb212f13c273265&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A caisson carrying the remains of Capt. Shane T. Adcock of the Army on Friday at Arlington as his widow, Jennifer, follows.

Doug Mills/The New York Times        30.10.2006

A Most Violent Month, and Many Final Farewells        NYT        30.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30arlingtonblurb.html?hp&ex=
1162270800&en=5cb212f13c273265&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Jennifer Adcock, left, widow of Captain Adcock, of Mechanicsville, Va.

Doug Mills/The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30arlingtonblurb.html?hp&ex=
1162270800&en=5cb212f13c273265&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Terri Walsh, second from left, mother of Sgt. Justin Walsh of the Marine Corps, at her son’s burial at Arlington on Tuesday.

Doug Mills/The New York Times        30.10.2006

A Most Violent Month, and Many Final Farewells        NYT        30.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30arlingtonblurb.html?hp&ex=
1162270800&en=5cb212f13c273265&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Most Violent Month, and Many Final Farewells

October 30, 2006
The New York Times
Photographs by DOUG MILLS

Burials at Arlington National Cemetery took on a grim regularity in October, when at least 103 American troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the toll had reached 99 by Saturday, making October the deadliest month since January 2005.

Military officials attributed the high number of deaths to a spike in violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began in late September and ended last week. They also pointed to a three-month campaign to win control of Baghdad from death squads that led to increased attacks on American troops.

But such explanations were little comfort to a 6-year-old girl weeping at the grave of her father, a mother clutching the flag from her son’s coffin, or a widow walking slowly through the rain behind her husband’s honor guard.

    A Most Violent Month, and Many Final Farewells, NYT, 30.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30arlingtonblurb.html?hp&ex=1162270800&en=5cb212f13c273265&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Saddam verdict may be delayed: prosecutor

Mon Oct 30, 2006 2:18 AM ET
Reuters
By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A court trying Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity could delay its verdict by a few days, the chief prosecutor said on Sunday, in a move that would shift the announcement until after U.S. midterm elections.

The U.S.-backed court had been due to deliver a verdict on November 5, two days before U.S. elections in which President George W. Bush's Republicans fear they could lose control of Congress.

The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi, said the Iraqi High Tribunal was still working on the judgment. "We will know a day or two before the trial if they are ready to announce the verdict," Moussawi told Reuters.

Saddam could go to the gallows if he is found guilty over his role in the killing of 148 Shi'ite Muslims in the village of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt.

A guilty verdict could reflect positively on Bush as a vindication of his policy to overthrow Saddam in 2003. The former Iraqi president is also on trial separately on charges of genocide against the country's ethnic Kurds in the late 1980s.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad denied Washington had any say over the timing of the verdict or the court's decisions, saying the American role was limited to logistics and security.

"The United States had nothing to do with the selection of the date and we don't know whether the judges have come to a judgment or not," Khalilzad told CNN in an interview.

News of the possible delay follows a week of public spats between U.S. officials and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Maliki's aides say he is furious at U.S. pressure on him ahead of the elections as the American public turns increasingly away from Bush's Iraq policy.

Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi warned a death sentence against the former leader would plunge Iraq into a "full scale civil war and allow Iran to take over Iraq and will have dire consequences for the stability" of the region.

NO ABRUPT CHANGE

U.S. Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean said on Sunday there would not be an abrupt change of course on Iraq even if his party won control of Congress.

"The president will still be in charge of foreign policy and the military ... I don't imagine we're going to be able to force the president to reverse his course," he told CBS.

"But we will put some pressure on him to have some benchmarks, some timetables and a real plan other than stay the course," he added.

So far 99 U.S. troops have died in Iraq in October, the bloodiest month since January 2005. Hundreds of Iraqis are killed every week in sectarian and al Qaeda-inspired attacks.

Gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying police translators, trainers and cleaning workers from a police academy to the southern city of Basra on Sunday, killing 17 people, a police source said. It was the latest in a string of attacks that killed more than 50 policemen and soldiers over the past week.

Maliki told Reuters on Thursday he could bring order in six months, half the time U.S. generals estimate, if troops were better trained and armed. He blamed U.S. policy for the turmoil and demanded more power to command his own forces.

A senior Shi'ite cleric accused U.S. forces of deliberately allowing Sunni insurgents from west Baghdad to kidnap Shi'ites.

Mahmoud Sudani told Reuters gunmen from the Furat district had kidnapped and killed two Shi'ites from the adjacent Jihad neighborhood. "We found their bodies today," he said. "Furat is under American control so the government cannot do anything for us. I hold the Americans responsible for the killings."

Interior Ministry sources said Baghdad police found 25 bodies, most victims of torture, in the past day.

The U.S. military said 17 insurgents were killed in an overnight battle near Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital. Aircraft from the U.S.-led Coalition attacked two groups of rebels, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns as they lay in ambush, the military said.

More than 20 other killings were also reported on Sunday.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Alastair Macdonald and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman)

    Saddam verdict may be delayed: prosecutor, R, 30.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-30T071828Z_01_GEO743062_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Bomb at Baghdad Market Kills 31 People

October 30, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:52 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A bomb targeting poor Iraqi Shiites lining up for day jobs in Baghdad's Sadr City slum killed at least 31 people Monday and wounded more than 50 others, police said.

The bomb tore through a collection of food stalls and kiosks at about 6:15 a.m., cutting down men who gather there daily hoping to be hired as laborers. Police Maj. Hashim al-Yasiri put the casualty figure at 31 killed and 51 injured.

There were conflicting reports as to whether the blast was caused by a suicide bomber or a device concealed amid debris by the roadside. The overwhelmingly Shiite area is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia blamed for much of the sectarian violence rocking the city.

Sadr City, a sprawling neighborhood of 2.5 million people, has been the scene of repeated bomb attacks by suspected al-Qaida fighters seeking to incite Shiite revenge attacks and drag the country into full-blown civil war.

The U.S. and Iraqi military have kept a tight cordon around Sadr City since a raid there last week in search of an alleged Shiite death squad leader, who was not found.

    Bomb at Baghdad Market Kills 31 People, NYT, 30.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Violence.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis

October 30, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who recently expressed an assessment far darker than the Bush administration’s on the situation in Iraq.

Mr. Warner sent his request in May to a federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He also asked the inspector general to examine whether Iraqi security forces were developing a logistics operation capable of sustaining the hundreds of thousands of troops and police officers the American military says it has trained.

The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.

Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.

In a written response to the inspector general’s findings, the American military largely conceded the shortcomings. The military said it would assist the Iraqis in determining the spare parts and maintenance requirements for the weapons. The military also said it has now instituted a “process to accurately issue weapons by quantity and serial number listing.”

Because the inspector general is charged only with looking at weaponry financed directly by the American taxpayer, the total of lost weapons could end up being higher. The Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon inspector general are expected to look at weapons financed by all sources, including the Iraqi government.

The inspector general’s office, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., also a Republican, responded to Mr. Warner’s query about the Iraqi Army’s logistical capabilities with another report released at the same time, concluding that Iraqi security forces still depended heavily on the Americans for the operations that sustain a modern army: deliveries of fuel and ammunition, troop transport, health care and maintenance.

Mr. Bowen found that the American military was not able to say how many Iraqi logistics personnel it had trained — in this case because, the military told the inspector general, a computer network crash erased records. Those problems have occurred even though the United States has spent $133 million on the weapons program and $666 million on Iraqi logistics capabilities.

The report said that although the United States planned to scale back its support for logistics and maintenance for Iraqi security forces in 2007, it was unclear whether the Iraqi government had any intention of compensating by allocating sufficient money to the Ministries of Interior and Defense.

Mr. Warner confirmed through his spokesman, John Ullyot, that he was reviewing the reports over the weekend in advance of a scheduled meeting with Mr. Bowen on Tuesday.

Mr. Warner “believes it is essential that Congress and the American people continue to be kept informed by the inspector general on the equipping and logistical capabilities of the Iraqi Army and security forces, since these represent an important component of overall readiness,” Mr. Ullyot said.

Mr. Bowen said in an interview that he was particularly concerned about whether the Iraqi government intended to allocate enough money to support the logistics and maintenance needed for the Iraqi security forces to operate effectively.

“There’s a couple of red flags,” Mr. Bowen said. “Most significantly, is the Iraqi Ministry of Interior properly preparing to take over the mission and sustain it?”

“We don’t know because we don’t have adequate visibility into their budgeting,” he said, “and to a lesser extent the same red flag is up for the Department of Defense.”

Another report unrelated to Mr. Warner’s request was also released by the inspector general on Sunday, on the so-called provincial reconstruction teams that the United States is creating for the next phase of rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure.

While some of the teams, intended to be scattered in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces, are functioning, security problems have severely hampered work in others, the report says. As a result, the inspector general recommended, the United States should consider reassigning its personnel in six provinces — including Basra in the south and Anbar in the west — to other places where effective work can be done.

The western province of Anbar is a central focus of the Sunni insurgency, and power struggles between Shiite militias have made Basra increasingly violent. The other four provinces that the inspector general recommends essentially abandoning are also in the Shiite south.

In its assessment of Iraqi weaponry, the inspector general concluded that of the 505,093 weapons that have been given to the Ministries of Interior and Defense over the last several years, serial numbers for only 12,128 were properly recorded. The weapons include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles.

Of those weapons, 370,000 were purchased with American taxpayer money under what is called the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, or I.R.R.F., and therefore fell within the inspector general’s mandate.

Despite the potential risks from losing track of those weapons — involving 19 different contracts and 142 delivery orders — the United States recorded serial numbers for no more than a few thousand, the inspector general said.

There are standard regulations for registering military weaponry in that way, governed by the Department of Defense small-arms serialization program. The inspector general’s report said that when asked why so many weapons went to Iraq with no record of serial numbers, American military officials in Baghdad replied that they did not believe the regulations applied to them.

Still, in their response to the report, military officials said they would keep track of serial numbers for weapons shipped or issued in the future, but in a database outside the small-arms serialization program. They did not present a plan for identifying or monitoring weapons that had already been issued.

The inspector general’s report also found that money for spare parts was allocated for only 5 of the 12 different kinds of weapons sent to Iraq — and when the inspector general contacted units of the Defense and Interior Ministries, none actually knew how or where to requisition spare parts.

There were also significant discrepancies in the numbers of weapons purchased and those in Iraqi warehouses. While 176,866 semiautomatic pistols were purchased with American money, just 163,386 showed up in warehouses — meaning that more than 13,000 were unaccounted for. All 751 of the M1-F assault rifles sent to Iraq were missing, and nearly 100 MP-5 machine guns.

    U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis, NYT, 30.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30reconstruct.html?hp&ex=1162270800&en=bfe1488484d2e635&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Crossed Paths

Iraq and Americans: One Land, Two Worlds

October 29, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD

ABU HUSSEIN is a 31-year-old Iraqi who works on an American military base. He used to commute. But last year his life collapsed and now he lives at work.

His story is familiar. He quickly moved his family out of Iraq after his children’s doctor and a neighbor, both Shiites, were killed in their Baghdad neighborhood on the same day. His family was denied residency in Jordan, so he moved them back to Iraq, but to a southern city that had no jobs.

Now he sleeps on a cot in the base. He works day and night for two months at a stretch. He counts himself lucky. “The base is the safest place in all of Baghdad,” he said.

Last week, an intense debate was taking place in the United States about how long American troops would have to stay in Iraq to keep security. But in the view of many Iraqis, that is something Americans have never been able to offer. And the longer they stay, the less confidence Iraqis have that the Americans will be able to do so. That distrust has hardened over three and a half years, adding ever more distance between two worlds: That of the American soldiers who are trying to do a job here, and that of the Iraqis and the grim realities that they must live with and the Americans try to navigate.

Part of the problem is that the Americans cannot see for themselves how bad things get when they are not around.

No one knows this better than Iraqi workers on bases. Like stowaways from another world, they adopt a kind of American identity. They take names like Joe and Ozzy. They learn how to swear and talk American slang.

These Iraqis know all too well what life is like outside. Abu Hussein tried for years to get them to protect Iraqis coming in and out of the base by shielding the civilian parking lot to hide the license plates from the eyes of Iraqis who hate those who work for Americans. Blast walls were erected only recently. “Everybody knows I’m going to leave from the gate,” Abu Hussein said, his face tight with worry. “I have no weapon. I am isolated.”

An American soldier, on the other hand, “is in a Humvee with armor and weapons.”

Indeed, the divide is so profound that an American private had to dress in full battle armor this month to walk 20 paces outside the gate to an Iraqi employee parking lot in order to pick up a book.

When Americans move through Iraq, they do so like a giant ship cutting through a thick and treacherous sea. They move slowly, displacing the harsh reality on both sides, carving out a trough of safety around them. But after they pass, reality closes back in, in all its sucking, swirling fury.

That reality is terrifying because much of Iraq is a place without rules or laws, in which armed gangs, sometimes dressed as police officers, can come into any house and do exactly as they please.

This broad challenge for the Americans — making security last past the moment the Humvee on patrol rolls away from the house — could be seen last week in even the smallest ways in Ur, a sliver of residential blocks just north of Sadr City, the impoverished Shiite district where unruly militias are strong.

The Americans began sweeping in late in August, going house to house looking for weapons. It had been more than a year since they had patrolled Ur, and residents were surprised to see them.

The neighborhood was mostly middle class and heavily Shiite, but while the Americans were gone its northeast corner had become the site of brutal executions: Authorities found 90 bodies there in the heat of August, most of them victims of Shiite death squads that had driven into the area from Sadr City.

“They killed openly, they did not hide,” said a worker in eastern Ur who said he witnessed as many as 40 daytime executions, over several months, near a shop where he works. An Iraqi Army checkpoint was less than a mile away.

After the sweeps, fewer bodies were found, but the hard part — keeping the area clear of killings — had only just begun.

A deep fear had settled in the neighborhood’s northeastern edge, the area closest to the militia stronghold.

At dusk on a recent Sunday, Sgt. Andrew Pokora stood in a courtyard with a nervous Shiite woman. Her husband had spoken to American soldiers before and they had found the conversation useful. It was the third time Americans had come to the house in recent weeks.

“What do you need from him?” asked the wife, her voice tense. “Every day Americans are coming here. The neighbors are asking why.”

The neighbors were suspicious because the family had moved only recently from a hard-line Sunni neighborhood, Ameriya, from which Shiites were being driven out. They had not yet proved to their neighbors that they could be trusted, even though a sticker portraying a Shiite cleric was stuck to their battered white door.

Outside that door spread a vast expanse of dirt fields and garbage where gangs of men who like the cleric move. They call themselves the army of the Mahdi, a Shiite saint, and are known as brutal killers.

“Danger for us, for me, for my husband!” the woman told the Americans, standing firm as other family members wandered out into the small darkening courtyard. “They will say we are your client.”

Sergeant Pokora, a bright, young soldier from Connecticut, relented. He wrote down the man’s telephone number, thinking it best to call the husband later.

Even in safer areas, engaging Iraqis on the topic of their lives is difficult. Earlier that afternoon, the sergeant had sunk into a spongy couch in the living room of a housewife in Ur, trying to gain her confidence. “Do you feel safe when you see the police?” he asked, through a teenage interpreter.

She replied in a quiet voice, nodding slightly. Three tiny children with saucer eyes stared.

“She says she feels happy when she sees them,” a translator told him.

“Ask her how she feels when American troops come through her neighborhood.”

Another phrase in Arabic.

“Happy,” the translator said.

The sergeant smiled and squinted in mock skepticism.

“Tell her to be honest,” he said. “It’s Ramadan.”

And he didn’t give up. He urged her to come to an American base if she had a tip. He said they would pay for it.

The Iraqi and American worlds in Iraq were not always quite so separate. In 2003, Iraqis lined up at the gate of the Rustimiya base waiting their turn to ask for jobs. Now the road is empty, with discarded plastic bags swirling in the wind.

American soldiers in northern Baghdad went to a public swimming pool shortly after the invasion in 2003. The former head of the Olympic Committee, Ahmed al-Hijiya, tried to organize a soccer game between an American military unit and a semi-professional Iraqi team earlier this year, but requirements for blast walls torpedoed the suggestion. In July, Mr. Hijiya was kidnapped from his office in central Baghdad. He and 23 other victims, 20 of them guards, are still missing, according to the Olympic Committee’s office manager.

Today, the approach to the base is empty and ominous: A two-story watch tower peers down at anyone seeking entry, the guards shouting barely intelligible words in English. Guns are pointed. Nerves are keyed up.

Earlier this month, four teenagers who had worked as cleaners in Rustamiya were killed by gunmen who followed them to their homes in Nahariya, a suburb near the base, a worker who knew them said. A translator was killed the same week.

On a recent Friday morning, an Iraqi man wearing glasses stood alone near the highway outside the base, staring at approaching cars, as if he was remembering license plates.

    Iraq and Americans: One Land, Two Worlds, NYT, 29.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/weekinreview/29tavernise.html?hp&ex=1162184400&en=da2a5d1f89753655&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Report Says Iraq Contractor Is Hiding Data From U.S.

October 28, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ and FLOYD NORRIS

A Halliburton subsidiary that has been subjected to numerous investigations for billions of dollars in contracts it received for work in Iraq has systematically misused federal rules to withhold basic information on its practices from American officials, a federal oversight agency said yesterday.

The contracts awarded to the company, KBR, formerly named Kellogg Brown & Root, are for housing, food, fuel and other necessities for American troops and government officials in Iraq, and for restoring that country’s crucial oil infrastructure. The contracts total about $20 billion.

The oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said KBR had refused to disclose information as basic as how many people are fed each day in its dining facilities and how many gallons of fuel are delivered to foreign embassies in Iraq, claiming that the data was proprietary, meaning it would unfairly help its business competitors.

Although KBR has been subjected to a growing number of specific investigations and paid substantial penalties, this is the first time the federal government has weighed in and accused it of systematically engaging in a practice aimed at veiling its business practices in Iraq.

The allegations come at a critical time for the company, as Halliburton is trying to spin off the subsidiary. And in July, the Army announced that it would terminate KBR’s largest contract with the government, and the company says that it will compete to regain some of that business when the government calls for new bids.

Proprietary information is protected by the so-called federal acquisition regulations, known as FAR. But the agency said KBR routinely stamped nearly all of the data it collects on its work as proprietary, impeding not only the investigations into the company’s activities but also things as simple as managerial oversight of the work.

“The use of proprietary data markings on reports and information submitted by KBR to the government is an abuse of the FAR and the procurement system,” says a memo released yesterday by the special inspector general.

As a result, the memo said, “KBR is not protecting its own data, but is in many instances inappropriately restricting the government’s use of information that KBR is required to gather for the government.”

The specific examples cited by the inspector general are taken from an $18 billion contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, informally known as Logcap, under which KBR provides food, fuel, housing, recreational facilities and laundry and other services to American troops, government officials and other contractors in Iraq.

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Cathy Mann, did not dispute the company’s extensive use of the proprietary label but said, “KBR has included proprietary markings on the majority of its data and property in support of its government contracts for the U.S. Army for at least the last decade.”

That assertion could not immediately be confirmed with the Army. But in its memo, the inspector general’s office said that during the course of its investigation, both Pentagon auditors and Army contracting officers had shared serious concerns about the practice.

And a statement released late yesterday by the Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Ill., said that it had “implemented corrective actions relative to the concerns raised” in the memo.

Ms. Mann added that KBR believed that the use of proprietary markings in work for the United States government “is not only encouraged, but required” by federal laws restricting the disclosure of American trade secrets abroad.

With the release of the new memo, that argument is unlikely to gain much traction with members of Congress, federal investigators and the numerous critics who have been calling for access to information on KBR’s work in Iraq almost since the invasion ended.

“The arrogance is astounding on the part of KBR,” said William L. Nash, a retired Army major general who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on postconflict zones. “It’s time for Congress to step in, because this has just gone too far.”

Reaction to the memo on Capitol Hill also revealed that the issue of KBR’s performance and investigations of its work are increasingly causing concern on both sides of the political aisle.

Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform and was one of the earliest critics of KBR’s use of the proprietary label, said the new memo showed how the company had tried to conceal “corporate profiteering during wartime.”

Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said, “I am concerned that the special inspector general has not always had full cooperation and access to the corporate documents that his office needs to carry out its critical mission.”

Access to that information, Senator Collins said, “helps to ensure that government contractors fulfill their contractual obligations and that government gets the best value for taxpayer dollars. The improper use of proprietary claims impedes critical transparency and makes it more difficult for the inspector general’s office to complete essential audits.”

The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction is Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican whose investigative zeal has surprised some political analysts who believed that he would be reluctant to expose flaws in the administration’s reconstruction program and companies like Halliburton. Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive until he left to run for vice president.

Halliburton has blamed KBR for holding down the company’s stock performance, and is planning to sell a 20 percent stake in KBR to the public by the end of the year, and then spin off the rest of the shares in the company to Halliburton shareholders in early 2007, thus severing the corporate ties.

Halliburton, though, would retain some responsibility for dealing with continuing federal investigations of KBR’s work in Iraq. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of the public offering have revealed a wide range of investigations into KBR’s work in Iraq, raising the possibilities that investors and the parent company could foot the bill for settlements against KBR.

Those documents, which must reveal potential risks to investors, indicate that continuing Justice Department investigations into KBR’s work in Iraq have produced grand jury subpoenas for current and former employees.

The company could have other liabilities. Outside Iraq, the papers say, there is a Justice Department investigation into possible overcharges in its work in the Balkans from 1996 to 2000. And the securities commission and the Justice Department are investigating payments in Nigeria that may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars the bribing of foreign officials.

There is also an antitrust investigation, and the company says investigations into the Nigerian project found information that “former employees may have engaged in coordinated bidding with one or more competitors on certain foreign construction projects and that such coordination possibly began as early as the mid-1980s.”

The memo by the inspector general said that KBR would sometimes provide data to one part of the United States government, like Pentagon auditors, but with the proprietary label that would prevent its release to the public or even to other parts of the government.

In other cases that clearly irritated the inspector general’s auditors, KBR would hobble their work by releasing data in the form of gigantic but indigestible tables rather than within the kind of software — like Excel spreadsheets — that would let the auditors do their calculations.

Those findings have raised suspicions that if KBR was going to such lengths to keep the data out of the hands of auditors, then the company must have something to hide, said Frederick D. Barton, a director of the Postconflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“There’s been smoke for some time,” Mr. Barton said. “This seems to indicate that there was fire as well.”

Halliburton stock was weak early in the Bush administration, in part because oil prices fell as the world economy weakened in 2001. The stock bottomed out at $4.30 in early 2002 and rose sharply thereafter, eventually peaking at $41.98 this April as the oil services industry benefited from increased oil exploration and as the Iraq war continued.

It dropped as low as $26.33 earlier this month, as oil prices fell. It closed yesterday at $32.15.

    Report Says Iraq Contractor Is Hiding Data From U.S., NYT, 28.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/world/middleeast/28reconstruct.html

Iraqi PM, Bush Agree to Speed Up Security Training

October 28, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister and President Bush agreed to accelerate efforts to build up Iraqi security forces during a teleconference on Saturday that capped a week of public tensions between the two governments.

``There are no strains in the relationship,'' White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base in the United States after the 50-minute teleconference.

``The president is very happy, actually, with the way the prime minister is working.''

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his U.S. backers have been struggling to bring stability to Iraq more than three years after a U.S.-led invasion. Sectarian violence kills around 100 people a day and political wrangling is hampering reforms.

``We have agreed to speed up the training of Iraqi security forces in order to move the security responsibility to the Iraqi government,'' Maliki's office said in a joint statement after the video conference.

Maliki was angered this week when U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad seemed to assure impatient American voters that the Iraqi leader was following a U.S.-backed timetable of performance ``benchmarks.'' He hit back with a declaration that no one could impose timetables on Iraq.

On Friday Maliki and Khalilzad papered over the cracks with a joint statement after a meeting, saying the Iraqi government had ``timelines'' for political developments -- employing the word at the heart of the debate.

Snow said the two leaders talked about Maliki's desire to move forward on political reconciliation in his country, which is plagued by sectarian violence. Some U.S. lawmakers have urged Bush to boost pressure on the Iraqi government to rein in militias and take other steps to counter the violence.

Building an effective Iraqi security force is a key plank in Bush's plans for an eventual withdrawal of 140,000 U.S. troops.

Maliki told Reuters on Thursday he could get violence under control in six months if U.S. forces gave his forces more weapons and responsibility. A top U.S. general said this week it could take 12 or 18 months for Iraqi forces to be ready to take responsibility for the whole country.

Maliki said in Saturday's statement that a committee had been formed to speed up training of Iraqi forces. Iraq's national security adviser, defense minister and interior minister will sit on the committee along with the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General George Casey, and ambassador Khalilzad.

    Iraqi PM, Bush Agree to Speed Up Security Training, NYT, 28.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-iraq-bush.html

Bush Reaffirms Support for Iraqi Leader

October 28, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Saturday reaffirmed his support for Iraq's prime minister, telling Nouri al-Maliki that he is not ''America's man in Iraq'' but a sovereign leader whom the U.S. is aiding.

Playing down tensions over a U.S. plan for benchmarks toward reducing the violence, the leaders said they were ''committed to the partnership'' and would work ''in every way possible for a stable, democratic Iraq and for victory in the war on terror.''

In a statement after a 50-minute video conference, Bush and al-Maliki outlined three goals: speeding up the training of Iraq's security forces; moving ahead with Iraqi control of its forces; and making the Iraqi government responsible for the country's security.

A special group of high-level Iraqi ministers will work with the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, and the U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, to recommend how best to achieve those goals.

''As leaders of two great countries, we are committed to the security and prosperity of a democratic Iraq and the global fight against terrorism which affects all our citizens,'' according to their joint statement.

During the video hookup, al-Maliki told Bush, ''History will record that because of your efforts, Iraq is a free country,'' according to White House press secretary Tony Snow.

''What you've got in Maliki is a guy who is making decisions,'' Snow said after the session.

''He's making tough decisions, and he's showing toughness and he's also showing political skill in dealing with varying factions within his own country. And both leaders understand the political pressures going on,'' Snow said.

Al-Maliki was quoted by a close aide as having told the U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Friday, ''I am a friend of the United States, but I am not America's man in Iraq.''

In response, Snow told reporters, ''He's not America's man in Iraq. The United States is there in a role to assist him. He's the prime minister -- he's the leader of the Iraqi people. He is, in fact, the sovereign leader of Iraq.''

Al-Maliki squabbled with the Bush administration this week over his objections to a timeline proposed by Washington for bringing security to Iraq.

''There are no strains in the relationship,'' Snow said.

''In this prime minister, you have somebody in the Iraqi government who wants to take charge, who wants to take responsibility, is working on all fronts, on the economic side, on the security side, and on the political reconciliation side,'' the spokesman said.

''And he believes it's important to do whatever he can to build greater faith and trust with the Iraqi people in the democracy. So the president's very happy actually with the way the prime minister is working.''

    Bush Reaffirms Support for Iraqi Leader, NYT, 28.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Iraqi Premier Says He Is Not ‘America’s Man in Iraq’

October 28, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the U.S. ambassador that he was Washington's friend but ''not America's man in Iraq,'' ratcheting up his increasingly bitter dispute with the Bush administration, an aide said Saturday.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced the death of a Marine in the restive Anbar province west of Baghdad on Friday, raising to 98 the number of American forces killed in Iraq in October, already the fourth deadliest month since the Iraq war began in March 2003.

The Shiite leader made the declaration in a meeting Friday with Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, after which the men issued a rare joint statement declaring the need to work together to set timelines to clamp off spiraling violence attributed to Shiite militias and death squads.

''I am a friend of the United States, but I am not America's man in Iraq,'' Hassan al-Sneid, a close al-Maliki aide, quoted the Iraqi leader as telling Khalilzad during the meeting.

The insider's account of the session was in sharp contrast to the joint al-Maliki-Khalilzad statement that was issued both by the American Embassy and al-Maliki's office late Friday.

The joint statement said the Iraqi leader reaffirmed his commitment to a ''good and strong'' relationship with the U.S., in what appeared to be an attempt to bring down the curtain down on a week of recriminations.

Al-Sneid said the prime minister demanded that his government be treated as an elected administration with international legitimacy, and that U.S. forces in Iraq must coordinate better with his government.

He added that al-Maliki had repeated to Khalilzad in their Friday meeting his reluctance to implement a timeline for tackling security issues, arguing that Iraq's security forces were not yet up to the task.

The joint statement Friday had appeared to signal that al-Maliki was backing down from his highly publicized squabble with the Bush administration and dropping his objections to a timeline proposed by Washington for bringing security to his war-ravaged nation.

The dispute has further tarnished President Bush's bid to promote policy ''adjustments'' in Iraq with less than two weeks left before U.S. midterm elections.

The vote is expected to be in part a referendum on Bush's policy in Iraq as U.S. deaths have topped 2,800 and the war dragged into its 44th month.

Bush and al-Maliki were to hold a video conference at 2 p.m Saturday, according to a close aide of the Iraqi prime minister.

The relative five-day calm in Baghdad in the five days since the end of the holy month of Ramadan ceded ground Saturday to a fresh outbreak of bloodletting.

Clashes erupted Saturday between U.S. and Iraqi troops and gunmen in the city of Ramadi, an insurgency stronghold where scores of militants staged a military-like parade last week not far from the local U.S. base. The troops used loudspeakers to ask residents to stay indoors.

One person was killed and 35 wounded when a rocket slammed into an outdoor market in Baghdad's turbulent southern neighborhood of Dora, police Lt. Mohammed al-Baghdadi said. A second person was killed and nine were wounded when a bomb went off in a minibus in an eastern Baghdad district, police Lt. Ali Hussein said.

In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said they had found two bodies of apparent sectarian violence in the city's central al-Mu'allimeen district. A third body was pulled from the Diyala river earlier Saturday. Later, police reported the shooting deaths of two men in a Baqouba market.

The Washington-Baghdad dispute has not only undermined Bush's attempt to put a new face on Iraq strategy but was highly embarrassing to Khalilzad, who announced the timeline at a news conference Tuesday and said al-Maliki was on board.

But over the next two days, al-Maliki declared he saw imposition of timelines as an infringement on Iraqi sovereignty and his government's authority. The timeline program, he said, was a product of U.S. electoral politics.

The White House later claimed al-Maliki's comments were taken out of context. But hours later, the Iraqi leader reissued the same complaint, unambiguously in an interview with British journalists.

The language in Friday's statement, issued in both English and Arabic, suggested a clear attempt to dampen further speculation about the growing rift between the two governments.

''The government of Iraq is committed to a good and strong relationship with the U.S. government to work together toward a democratic, stable Iraq, and to confront the terrorist challenges in light of the strategic alliance between the two countries,'' it said. The ''Iraqi government has made clear the issues that must be resolved with timelines.''

Al-Maliki owes his job to backing from 30 lawmakers from the ''Sadrist'' movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-U.S. cleric whose Mahdi Army militia is blamed for much of the sectarian violence sweeping Iraq since a February attack against a major Shiite shrine.

Washington has in recent weeks stepped up pressure on al-Maliki to crack down on the militias and their affiliated death squads, but al-Maliki, who came to office in May, has yet to take concrete action despite repeated assertions that he would disband them.

------

Associated Press correspondents Hamza Hendawi and Steven R. Hurst contributed to this report.

    Iraqi Premier Says He Is Not ‘America’s Man in Iraq’, NYT, 28.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?hp&ex=1162094400&en=32562c0d1c5372d3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Op-Ed Contributor

Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff

October 27, 2006
By GEORGE LAKOFF
The New York Times

Berkeley, Calif.

THE Bush administration has finally been caught in its own language trap.

“That is not a stay-the-course policy,” Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, declared on Monday.

The first rule of using negatives is that negating a frame activates the frame. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, he’ll think of an elephant. When Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook” during Watergate, the nation thought of him as a crook.

“Listen, we’ve never been stay the course, George,” President Bush told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News a day earlier. Saying that just reminds us of all the times he said “stay the course.”

What the president is discovering is that it’s not so easy to rewrite linguistic history. The laws of language are hard to defy.

“The characterization of, you know, ‘it’s stay the course’ is about a quarter right,” the president said at an Oct. 11 news conference. “ ‘Stay the course’ means keep doing what you’re doing. My attitude is, don’t do what you’re doing if it’s not working — change. ‘Stay the course’ also means don’t leave before the job is done.”

A week or so later, he tried another shift: “We have been — we will complete the mission, we will do our job and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting the tactics. Constantly.”

To fully understand why the president’s change in linguistic strategy won’t work, it’s helpful to consider why “stay the course” possesses such power. The answer lies in metaphorical thought.

Metaphors are more than language; they can govern thought and behavior. A recent University of Toronto study, for example, demonstrated the power of metaphors that connect morality and purity: People who washed their hands after contemplating an unethical act were less troubled by their thoughts than those who didn’t, the researchers found.

“Stay the course” is a particularly powerful metaphor because it can activate so many of our emotions. Because physical actions require movement, we commonly understand action as motion. Because achieving goals so often requires going to a particular place — to the refrigerator to get a cold beer, say — we think of goals as reaching destinations.

Another widespread — and powerful — metaphor is that moral action involves staying on a prescribed path, and straying from the path is immoral. In modern conservative discourse, “character” is seen through the metaphor of moral strength, being unbending in the face of immoral forces. “Backbone,” we call it.

In the context of a metaphorical war against evil, “stay the course” evoked all these emotion-laden metaphors. The phrase enabled the president to act the way he’d been acting — and to demonstrate that it was his strong character that enabled him to stay on the moral path.

To not stay the course evokes the same metaphors, but says you are not steadfast, not morally strong. In addition, it means not getting to your destination — that is, not achieving your original purpose. In other words, you are lacking in character and strength; you are unable to “complete the mission” and “achieve the goal.”

“Stay the course” was for years a trap for those who disagreed with the president’s policies in Iraq. To disagree was weak and immoral. It meant abandoning the fight against evil. But now the president himself is caught in that trap. To keep staying the course, given obvious reality, is to get deeper into disaster in Iraq, while not staying the course is to abandon one’s moral authority as a conservative. Either way, the president loses.

And if the president loses, does that mean the Democrats will win? Perhaps. But if they do, it will be because of Republican missteps and not because they’ve acted with strategic brilliance. Their “new direction” slogan offers no values and no positive vision. It is taken from a standard poll question, “Do you like the direction the nation is headed in?”

This is a shame. The Democrats are giving up a golden opportunity to accurately frame their values and deepest principles (even on national security), to forge a public identity that fits those values — and perhaps to win more close races by being positive and having a vision worth voting for.

Right now, though, no language articulating a Democratic vision seems in the offing. If the Democrats don’t find a more assertive strategy, their gains will be short-lived. They, too, will learn the pitfalls of staying the course.

George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute, is the author of “Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision.”

    Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff, NYT, 27.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/opinion/27lakoff.html

Editorial

Money Down the Drain in Iraq

October 26, 2006
The New York Times
 

When the full encyclopedia of Bush administration misfeasance in Iraq is compiled, it will have to include a lengthy section on the contracting fiascos that wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in the name of rebuilding the country. It isn’t only money that was lost. Washington’s disgraceful failure to deliver on its promises to restore electricity, water and oil distribution, and to rebuild education and health facilities, turned millions of once sympathetic Iraqis against the American presence.

Their discovery that the world’s richest, most technologically advanced country could not restore basic services to minimal prewar levels left an impression of American weakness and, worse, of indifference to the well-being of ordinary Iraqis. That further poisoned a situation already soured by White House intelligence breakdowns, military misjudgments and political blunders.

The latest contracting revelations came in a report issued Tuesday by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The office reviewed records covering $1.3 billion out of the $18.4 billion that Congress voted for Iraq reconstruction two years ago. Reported overhead costs ran from a low of 11 percent for several contracts awarded to Lucent to a high of 55 percent for, you guessed it, the Halliburton subsidiary, KBR Inc.

On similar projects in the United States, overhead is typically just a few percent. Given the difficult security environment in Iraq, overhead was expected to run closer to 10 percent. But in many of the contracts examined, it ran much, much higher, in some cases consuming over half the allocated funds. And the report may have actually underestimated total overhead because the government agencies that were supposed to be supervising these reconstruction projects sometimes failed to systematically track overhead expenses.

The main explanation for these excessive overhead rates turned out to be not special security costs but simply the costly down time that resulted from sending workers and equipment to Iraq months before there was any actual work for them to do. That is yet another example of the shoddy contract writing, lax oversight and absent supervision that has consistently characterized Washington’s approach to Iraq reconstruction from the start.

Bush administration incompetence, not corporate greed, is the chief culprit. Still, these charges are one more example of how the favored American companies lucky enough to be awarded reconstruction contracts made large sums of money while the Iraqis failed to get most of the promised benefits.

As Americans now look for explanations of how things went so horribly wrong in Iraq, they should not overlook the shameful breakdowns in reconstruction contracting. They need to insist that Congress impose tough new rules on the Pentagon to ensure more competitive bidding, tighter contract writing and more rigorous supervision. That is the best way to ensure that such a costly and damaging failure never happens again.

    Money Down the Drain in Iraq, NYT, 26.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/opinion/26thu1.html

Op-Ed Contributor

What Osama Wants

October 26, 2006
By PETER BERGEN
The New York Times

Washington

THE French saying, often attributed to Talleyrand, that “this is worse than a crime, it’s a blunder,” could easily describe America’s invasion of Iraq. But for the United States to pull entirely out of that country right now, as is being demanded by a growing chorus of critics, would be to snatch an unqualified disaster from the jaws of an enormous blunder.

To understand why, look to history. Vietnam often looms large in the debate over Iraq, but the better analogy is what happened in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion. During the 1980’s, Washington poured billions of dollars into the Afghan resistance. Around the time of Moscow’s withdrawal in 1989, however, the United States shut its embassy in Kabul and largely ignored the ensuing civil war and the rise of the Taliban and its Qaeda allies. We can’t make the same mistake again in Iraq.

A total withdrawal from Iraq would play into the hands of the jihadist terrorists. As Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, made clear shortly after 9/11 in his book “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” Al Qaeda’s most important short-term strategic goal is to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world. “Confronting the enemies of Islam and launching jihad against them require a Muslim authority, established on a Muslim land,” he wrote. “Without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing.” Such a jihadist state would be the ideal launching pad for future attacks on the West.

And there is no riper spot than the Sunni-majority areas of central and western Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the most feared insurgent commander in Iraq — was issuing an invitation to Mr. bin Laden when he named his group Al Qaeda in Iraq. When Mr. Zarqawi was killed this year, his successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, also swore allegiance to Al Qaeda’s chief.

Another problem with a total American withdrawal is that it would fit all too neatly into Osama bin Laden’s master narrative about American foreign policy. His theme is that America is a paper tiger that cannot tolerate body bags coming home; to back it up, he cites President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 withdrawal of United States troops from Lebanon and President Bill Clinton’s decision nearly a decade later to pull troops from Somalia. A unilateral pullout from Iraq would only confirm this analysis of American weakness among his jihadist allies.

Indeed, in 2005 Mr. Zawahri sent Mr. Zarqawi a letter, which was intercepted by the United States military, exhorting him to start preparing for the impending American withdrawal similar to that of Vietnam 30 years ago. “The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy,” Mr. Zawahri said. “Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations and their plans to fill the void behind them.”

Yes, there is little doubt that the botched American occupation of Iraq was the critical factor that fueled the Iraqi insurgency. But for the United States to wash its hands of the country now would give Al Qaeda’s leaders what they want.

This does not mean simply holding course. America should abandon its pretensions that it can make Iraq a functioning democracy and halt the civil war. Instead, we should focus on a minimalist definition of our interests in Iraq, which is to prevent a militant Sunni jihadist mini-state from emerging and allowing Al Qaeda to regroup.

While withdrawing a substantial number of American troops from Iraq would probably tamp down the insurgency and should be done as soon as is possible, a significant force must remain in Iraq for many years to destroy Al Qaeda in Iraq.

That can be accomplished by making the American presence less visible; withdrawing American troops to bases in central and western Iraq; and relying on contingents of Special Forces to hunt militants. To do otherwise would be to ignore the lessons of history, lessons that Al Qaeda’s leaders certainly haven’t forgotten.

Peter Bergen, a senior fellow of the New America Foundation, is the author of “The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al Qaeda’s Leader.”

    What Osama Wants, NYT, 26.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/opinion/26bergen.html

Iraqi Prime Minister Disavows Timetable

October 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:46 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. and Iraqi forces raided the stronghold of a Shiite militia led by a radical anti-American cleric in search of a death squad leader in an operation disavowed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki, who relies on political support from the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said the strike against a figure in al-Sadr's Mahdi militia in Sadr City ''will not be repeated.''

The defiant al-Maliki also slammed the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Iraq for saying his government needed to set a timetable to curb violence in the country. At a news conference Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said al-Maliki had agreed.

''I affirm that this government represents the will of the people and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it,'' al-Maliki said at a news conference.

The prime minister dismissed U.S. talk of timelines as driven by the upcoming midterm elections in the United States. ''I am positive that this is not the official policy of the American government but rather a result of the ongoing election campaign. And that does not concern us much,'' he said.

In Washington, President Bush sought to delineate a middle ground in terms of pressing the Iraqis to accept more responsibility for their own fate.

''We are making it clear that America's patience is not unlimited,'' he said. ''We will not put more pressure on the Iraqi government than it can bear.''

Tank cannons boomed out over the city five times in rapid succession Wednesday, and U.S. F-16 jet fighters screamed low overhead as the conflict in Sadr City continued into the day.

Four people were killed and 18 wounded in overnight fighting in the overwhelmingly Shiite eastern district, said Col. Khazim Abbas, a local police commander, and Qassim al-Suwaidi, director of the area's Imam Ali Hospital.

Iraqi army special forces, backed by U.S. advisers, carried out a raid to capture a ''top illegal armed group commander directing widespread death squad activity throughout eastern Baghdad,'' the military said.

Al-Maliki, who is commander in chief of Iraq's army, heatedly denied he knew anything about the raid.

''We will ask for clarification about what has happened in Sadr City. We will review this issue with the multinational forces so that it will not be repeated,'' he said. ''The Iraqi government should be aware and part of any military operation. Coordination is needed between Iraqi government and multinational forces.''

Bush acknowledged that al-Maliki may not have been consulted beforehand.

''There's a lot of operations taking place, which means sometimes communications are not as good as they should be. And we'll continue to work very closely with the government to make sure communications are solid,'' Bush said.

As the raid began, Iraqi forces were fired on and asked for U.S. airpower backup. The U.S. said it used ''precision gunfire only to eliminate the enemy threat,'' according to the military's statement.

There was no word on casualties or whether the targeted death squad leader was captured.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have largely avoided the densely populated Sadr City slum, a grid of rutted streets and tumble-down housing that is home to 2.5 million Shiites and under the control of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Reining in the Mahdi Army is one of the thorniest problems facing al-Maliki because his fragile Shiite-dominated government derives much of its power from al-Sadr and a second political power with a powerful militia, the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.

Residents near Sadr City said gunfire and airstrikes began late Tuesday night and continued for hours. The district was sealed to outsiders Wednesday.

Groups of young men in black fatigues favored by the Mahdi Army were seen driving toward the area to join the fight.

Explosions and automatic weapons fire were heard above the noise of U.S. helicopters circling overhead and firing flares. Streets were empty and shops closed.

In his comments, al-Maliki also appealed to neighboring states to stop meddling in Iraq's domestic affairs -- an apparent reference to Iran and Syria, which are accused by the U.S. and Iraqi officials of aiding Sunni and Shiite armed groups.

He blamed foreign fighters in groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq and loyalists of former dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party regime for driving the current violence that takes the lives of around 40 Iraqis every day, and possibly many more.

''I would like to state here that the root of the battle we are fighting in Iraq and the root of the bloody cycle that we are undergoing is the presence of terror organizations that have arrived in the country,'' al-Maliki said.

Al-Maliki has repeatedly pledged to deal with the militias but has resisted issuing firm ultimatums or deadlines.

His comments followed remarks Tuesday by Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, and Khalilzad, who said Iraqi leaders had agreed to a timeline for achieving key political and security goals, including reining in such groups.

Khalilzad revealed neither specific deadlines for achieving those goals nor penalties for their failure to do so, and al-Maliki said no deadlines had been put to his government.

''I would like to assert that everyone knows my government is a government that came to power through the will of the people. And it is no one's business to give it timelines,'' he said.

As violence spiked in Baghdad and elsewhere, Casey said he would not hesitate to ask for more soldiers if he felt it necessary. He said, however, that he had not made a decision.

''Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe. And, as I've said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis,'' Casey said.

The timeline plan outlined by Khalilzad was believed to have grown out of recent Washington meetings at which the Bush administration sought to reshape its Iraq policy amid mounting U.S. deaths and declining domestic support for the 44-month-old war. The plan was made public a day after White House spokesman Tony Snow said the U.S. was adjusting its Iraq strategy but would not issue any ultimatums.

Khalilzad said al-Maliki had agreed to the timeline concept that called for specific deadlines to be set by year's end. U.S. officials revealed neither specific incentives for the Iraqis to implement the plan nor penalties for their failure to do so.

October has been the deadliest month this year for American forces. The military Tuesday announced the deaths of two more Marines, a sailor and a soldier. Since the war began, 2,801 U.S. service members have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.

The military said it was continuing a search for a U.S. Army translator missing after he was believed to have been kidnapped Monday night in Baghdad. Troops had detained some suspects who ''could possibly be involved,'' said a spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington.

Police in the southern city of Kut recovered the bodies of seven men bearing signs of torture typical of victims of sectarian death squads.

Scattered violence continued elsewhere, with six people killed when a roadside bomb destroyed their vehicle in Balad Ruz, about 40 miles northeast of Baghdad. Other mortar and bomb attacks in the area wounded several people.

Associated Press writers Christopher Bodeen and Hamza Hendawi contributed to this report.

    Iraqi Prime Minister Disavows Timetable, NYT, 25.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

Bush Offers Sobering Assessment of Iraq War

October 25, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT and CHRISTINE HAUSER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — President Bush offered a sobering assessment of the war in Iraq today, acknowledging his concerns about the campaign but reaffirming his determination that United States forces stay in the country until “the job is done.”

“There is tough fighting ahead,” Mr. Bush said. “The road to victory will not be easy.”

The president said the increase in bloodshed over the past month has been “a serious concern to me,” and he conceded that not everything has gone as anticipated with the new government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. In particular, Mr. Bush said, the United States had “overestimated the capability” of the Baghdad government to establish basic services for its citizens.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bush said, the United States must persist in Iraq, not just out of idealism but because a stable and free democracy in the Middle East is essential to America’s security. He said the campaign in Iraq is part of “the calling of this generation” of Americans to nurture liberty where it has not existed before.

The president chose his words carefully in describing the new Iraqi leadership, at times alluding to it as a sovereign government that the United States is working closely with, at other time declaring that Washington will not put more pressure on Mr. Maliki’s administration than it can handle.

Perhaps complicating the American mission in his country, Mr. Maliki asserted today that he will not be dictated to or adhere to any schedule set by Washington. While not mentioning Mr. Maliki’s remarks, Mr. Bush said Mr. Maliki is “the right man” in Iraq “so long as he continues to make tough decisions.”

For those who have followed Mr. Bush’s statements about Iraq, several things stood out at today’s White House news conference. Gone, perhaps for good, was his oft-repeated pledge that the United States will “stay the course.” Instead, he alluded repeatedly to persevering until “the job is done.”

But Mr. Bush said again that, while America’s goal remains a free and stable Iraq, American tactics are changing constantly to keep up with clever, ruthless terrorists who fear the very idea of freedom. He said, in response to a question, that he still has faith in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Moreover, Mr. Bush said, Democrats who expect to ride public unhappiness with the Iraq situation to victory 13 days from now may be in for a bitter disappointment. Mr. Bush said the elections will be decided on the basis of which party has better ideas to protect the American people and which party is a better steward of the economy.

“America’s patience is not unlimited,” he said at one point. But he said he trusts that the American people “will support the war as long as they see a path to victory.”

Public dissatisfaction with the war must not slide into disillusionment, he said. If he did not believe that the Iraq campaign was essential to American security, “I’d bring our troops home tomorrow,” Mr. Bush said.

Asked if he envisioned sending more American troops to Iraq, Mr. Bush said he would send more only if Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, said he needed them.

Democrats were quick to pounce on Mr. Bush’s remarks. The administration’s policy “like Iraq itself, is in complete disarray,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader. And Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts said that, despite Mr. Bush’s talk about flexibility, the approach to Iraq remains a failed “stay-the-course strategy.”

Mr. Bush said he was “not satisfied” with the situation in Iraq and that the United States was shifting its tactics by working on a timetable with the Iraqi government that includes political measures to stem some of the violence. But he also emphasized that the plan was different from an “artificial” timetable under which American troops would be withdrawn.

“As the enemy shifts tactics we are shifting our tactics as well,” said Mr. Bush, speaking at a news conference at the White House a day after the American ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, laid out a timetable for political measures he said the Iraqi government had agreed to take.

Though acknowledging there were serious problems in Iraq, Mr. Bush ceded no ground on his handling of the war. In this way, he bridged the gaps between potential criticisms and a defense of his administration’s strategy by saying it was flexible and could be adapted.

“I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq; I’m not satisfied either,” Mr. Bush said. “And that is why we’re taking new steps to help secure Baghdad and constantly adjusting our tactics across the country to meet the changing threat.” Mr. Bush also reconciled his previous remarks on troops withdrawals. “You know, last spring, I thought for a period of time we’d be able to reduce our troop presence early next year. That’s what I felt.”

“But because we didn’t have a fixed timetable and because General Casey and General Abizaid and the other generals there understand that the way we’re running this war is to give them flexibility, have the confidence necessary to come and make the recommendations here in Washington, D.C., they decided that that wasn’t going to happen.”

On Tuesday, General Casey said that with effective government action on the political measures, Iraqi troops should be able to take over the main burden of the war in 12 to 18 months, allowing American troops to move to a support role.

Mr. Bush has often sent a message to the American public that the United States must “stay the course” in Iraq, and he said today that there was no inconsistency in his previous remarks that the United States would not “cut and run” from Iraq and his administration’s current strategy of keeping the goal the same but the tactics flexible.

He said that people wanted to see benchmarks in a “plan” for victory, which he said was different from saying they wanted an artificial timetable to withdraw.

“As a matter of fact, the benchmarks will make it more likely we win,” he said. “Withdrawing on an artificial timetable means we lose.”

Asked whether the American people might conclude that the administration’s new plan of benchmarks and timetables was motivated by pre-election posturing, Mr. Bush said: “You’re asking me why I’m giving this speech today? Because I think I owe an explanation to the American people and will continue to make explanations. The people need to know that we have a plan for victory.”

The election ran as an undercurrent throughout the news conference.

“I like campaigning,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s what guys like me do in order to get here.”

He laid out what he said were encouraging developments since April 2003, like the capture of Saddam Hussein and the assassination this year of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

“Absolutely, we are winning,” said Mr. Bush during a question session.

But he also mentioned the developments that he described as “not encouraging,” like the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and the fact that suspected weapons arsenals were not uncovered, and the loss of American soldiers.

Mr. Bush also defended the recent operations to bring security to Baghdad, and appeared to lay blame on Iraqi forces, saying that after some initial successes they “performed below expectations.”

Mr. Bush noted that so far this month, 93 American soldiers have been killed, the highest number of deaths since the same time last year, He also noted the deaths of more than 300 Iraqi forces and the “unspeakable violence” experienced by Iraqi civilians.

The political and military measures that Mr. Bush said were being put into effect include refinement of training for the Iraqi forces, as well as steps to achieve a political solution to the sectarian violence that has raged in the country.

Referring to Mr. Khalilzad’s announcement of Tuesday, Mr. Bush said that they would be working with political and religious leaders to stop sectarian violence, and reach out to Arab states to support the Iraqi government to persuade Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms.

“These are difficult tasks for any government,” he said. “And they have to do it in the midst of raging conflict.”

David Stout reported from Washington and Christine Hauser from New York. John F. Burns contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    Bush Offers Sobering Assessment of Iraq War, NYT, 25.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/world/middleeast/26prexycnd.html?hp&ex=1161835200&en=e333612d8415dd8e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Offers Gloomy Assessment of Iraq

October 25, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a somber, pre-election review of a long and brutal war, President Bush conceded Wednesday that the United States is taking heavy casualties and said, "I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq."

"I'm not satisfied either," he said at a speech and question and answer session at the White House 13 days before midterm elections.

Despite conceding painful losses, Bush said victory was essential in Iraq as part of the broader war on terror.

"We're winning and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done," he said.

Bush said that as those fighting American and Iraqi forces change their strategies, the United States is also adjusting its military tactics.

"Americans have no intention of taking sides in a sectarian struggle or standing in the crossfire between rival factions," he said.

Several Democratic critics have said that is precisely what the administration is risking with an open-ended commitment of American forces, at a time that a year-old Iraqi government gropes for a compromise that can satisfy Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish political interests.

He also sought to delineate a middle ground in terms of pressing the Iraqis to accept more of the responsibility for their own fate.

"We are making it clear that America's patience is not unlimited," he said. "We will not put more pressure on the Iraqi government than it can bear."

Bush spoke as polls showed the public has become strongly opposed to the war, and increasing numbers of Republican candidates have signaled impatience with the president's policies.

In his opening moments at the podium in the East Room of the White House, Bush departed starkly from a practice of not talking about specific deaths in Iraq.

"There has been heavy fighting, many enemy fighters have been killed or captured and we've suffered casualties of our own," he said. "This month we've lost 93 American service members in Iraq, the most since October of 2005. During roughly the same period, more than 300 Iraqi security personnel have given their lives in battle. Iraqi civilians have suffered unspeakable violence at the hands of the terrorists, insurgents, illegal militias, armed groups and criminals."

He called these events "a serious concern to me, and a serious concern to the American people."

    Bush Offers Gloomy Assessment of Iraq, NYT, 25.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html?hp&ex=1161835200&en=1bdf615a301d4fef&ei=5094&partner=homepage

General Says Troop Increase Not Part of Baghdad Plans

October 25, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Oct. 25 — The top American military commander in Iraq issued a statement today saying that while “all options are on the table” he has made no request “to date” for more American troops to protect Baghdad.

The statement came in the form of a “clarification” issued to news organizations in Baghdad of remarks made by Gen. George W. Casey Jr. at a press conference in Baghdad on Tuesday. The general told reporters then that troop increases in Baghdad were among the options as American commanders make adjustments to an 11-week-old operation in Baghdad that has aimed at recapturing the capital’s streets from insurgents and death squads.

“There is no intent to bring more U.S. troops into Iraq at this time. The general was merely saying, as he has said consistently since taking command of the Multi-National Force Iraq that all options are on the table. He will ask for what is needed. He has made no such request to date,” the statement said.

The statement came after two weeks of increasingly bad news from Iraq, and at a time when the war has become a highly charged issue ahead of the November mid-term elections in the United States. General Casey and the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, used much of the one-hour press conference on Tuesday to offer reassurances to what they acknowledged was an increasingly restive American public that the war is still winnable.

The statement from Gen. Casey’s office on today said that news reports of the Tuesday press conference “inferred General Casey as saying more troops might be needed. Quite frankly, that is the wrong impression”.

The general’s staff appended partial transcripts of recent interviews in which said that American force levels in Iraq, about 141,000 now, were sufficient when added to rising Iraqi force levels. In an interview with ABC radio last month, he said, “I am not going to ask for one more U.S. troop to come over here and do this when I’ve got 300,000 Iraqis that can do the job”.

On Tuesday, Gen. Casey answered a question about possible troop increases in Baghdad by restating the American plan to clear Baghdad of the violence that has made the capital the bloodiest sector of the war in recent months by raising the possibility of troop increases. “Now, do we need more troops to do that?”, he said. “Maybe. And as I’ve said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops we need, both coalition and Iraqi”.

He said his options could include deploying more Iraqi soldiers, bringing in more American troops to Baghdad from those already deployed in Iraq, or getting reinforcements from American troops deployed outside the country.

But he gave no indication at the press conference that any such request had been made.

When the new Baghdad security plan went into effect in August, more than 6,000 additional American soldiers were committed to operations that have involved neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweeps, bringing the total American force deployed in the operation to 15,600. Iraqi forces have taken a secondary role in the operation, supplying 9,600 troops.

Gen. Casey and Mr. Khalilzad, American’s two top men in Iraq, said at the Tuesday press conference that that progress in winning the war depended crucially on the Iraqi government acting decisively to tackle the divisive issues that have been driving the sectarian violence here.

Mr. Khalilzad laid out a timetable for political measures he said the Iraqi government had agreed to take, and Gen. Casey said that with effective government action on those issues Iraqi troops should be able to take over the main burden of the war in 12 to 18 months, allowing American troops to move to a support role.

But the two American officials did not address what would happen if the government failed to meet the timetable, which includes measures meant to deal with some of the most intractable issues plaguing the country, including the sectarian militias that have been responsible for much of the worst violence this year.

Civilian deaths in Baghdad have been at near-record rates, and American casualties are running at their highest level in two years, with 90 troops having lost their lives so far in October. On Tuesday, American troops intensified their search for a soldier the military said had been abducted while visiting relatives in Baghdad on Monday.

In the past 10 days, two Iraqi cities, Balad and Amara, have been briefly taken over by militia gangs after American and British forces withdrew, and the civilian death toll across the country in October has remained at close to the record levels of the summer months, when it reached an average of about 100 a day. Under pressure, President Bush has reaffirmed his commitment to the war, but expressed a readiness to adjust tactics as the situation demands.

Maj. Gen. J.D. Thurman, commander of the Fourth Infantry Division who is the operational commander for Baghdad, said in an interview with The New York Times earlier this week that his first requirement was more Iraqi troops. He said the Iraqis had promised six battalions for the Baghdad operation, and committed only two. The general said he had not yet asked for more American troops.

General Casey and Mr. Khalilzad said that Iraqi leaders must set aside sectarian differences to unite behind “a national compact” within the next 12 months that will help overcome sectarian divisions driving the war. Mr. Khalilzad said the crucial issues to be settled included the demobilization of sectarian militias, a fair division of national oil revenues, amendments to the 2005 Constitution to guarantee all Iraqis equal rights, and a new deal for former Baath party members to balance “accountability and reconciliation.”

Also required, he said, was an increase in the “credibility and capability of Iraqi forces,” whose performance, desertion rates and unwillingness to deploy outside their home areas has continued to disappoint American commanders.

“The recent sectarian bloodshed in Iraq causes many to question whether the United States and the Iraqis can succeed,” Mr. Khalilzad said in his opening statement. “My message today is straightforward: Despite the difficult challenges we face, success in Iraq is possible and can be achieved by a realistic timetable.” But he added a crucial proviso: “Iraqi leaders must step up to achieve key political and security milestones on which they have agreed.”

A copy of the timeline Mr. Khalilzad said had been agreed to by Iraqi leaders was made available to The New York Times by American officials. Entitled “notional political timetable,” it sets a seven-month schedule, running from this September to March 2007, to complete a 16-point agenda on divisive issues.

But the document provides deadlines only for the Iraqis to establish the legislative and executive framework for action on the most decisive issues, not for the implementation of policies that American officials believe is urgent if the tide in the war is to be reversed. A case in point is the sectarian militias, whose involvement in the killings of thousands of Iraqis this year has been identified by American officials as the most pressing issue of all. Without an end to the militia threat, they have said, no military action by American and Iraqi forces can win the war.

The timeline provided by the Americans sets a December deadline for Parliament to pass laws setting terms for an amnesty for those willing to renounce bloodshed, and for other measures governing the demobilization of militias and means of reintegrating their members into civilian life. Iraqi leaders have promised to move against the militias since Iraq resumed sovereignty in June 2004, but three prime ministers, including Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who took office in May, have repeatedly deferred action.

Even as American and Iraqi troops have battled sectarian militias in the Baghdad crackdown, Mr. Maliki has held firm, saying that persuading the powerful political groups that control the militias to disband them requires a political consensus, not the tough military action favored by American commanders.

For the prime minister, the issue is one of political survival, because the political groups whose power is underpinned by the two main Shiite militias, the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization, both identified by American commanders as operating death squads, are key partners in the Shiite alliance that controls the government.

The news of the timetable drew reactions in Washington that ran mostly along party lines.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the Armed Services Committee, called the statements from General Casey and the ambassador “encouraging.”

“They understand the security situation is lacking and working with our Iraqi allies; they understand the need to get it right,” he said.

But Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said, “After three and a half years of training, this timetable is too long.” He said he had been telling the administration to set a timetable for two years and called General Casey’s statements “a sobering assessment from our top military commander of how much farther Iraq’s forces still have to go.”

Like Mr. Khalilzad, General Casey alluded to the growing popular and Congressional restiveness toward the war, saying, “I’m sure for the folks back in the United States trying to look at this, it looks very confusing and hard to understand.”

He said the war had reached “a difficult situation” that was “likely to remain that way over the near term,” but offered a more hopeful projection for 2007 and 2008, a period that would carry American troops here to the fifth anniversary of the invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein.

The American commander said the rebuilding of Iraq’s security forces was about 75 percent complete. He said almost 90 of the 112 American-trained Iraqi Army battalions are “in the lead” across Iraq, meaning they have taken over the primary combat role from Americans.

“Make no mistake about it, we are in a tough fight here in the center of the country and in Anbar Province” to the west of Baghdad, base to much of the Sunni insurgency, the general said. “But I think it’s important to remind people that 90 percent of the sectarian violence in Iraq takes place in about a 30-mile radius from the center of Baghdad, and that, secondly, 90 percent of that violence takes place in five provinces” of the 18 that make up Iraq. “This is not a country that is awash in sectarian violence.”

General Casey said American troop withdrawals can and must be made as Iraqi forces improve. But he refused to set any hard-and-fast deadlines, saying withdrawals would depend on developments in the war. “The Iraqis are getting better,” he said.

“I still very strongly believe that we need to continue to reduce our forces as the Iraqis continue to improve, because we need to get out of their way,” the general said.

In other developments on Tuesday, the American military command said that four more American troops had died in rebel attacks in Iraq. With a week to go, October has already become the deadliest month for American troops in 12 months and is on pace to become the third deadliest month of the conflict. Two marines and a sailor were killed Monday in Anbar Province, the military said, and a soldier died early Tuesday from wounds he sustained when his patrol was struck by a concealed bomb in Baghdad.

In Falluja on Monday, American troops, responding to a report that a fire truck had been hijacked by insurgents, stopped a fire truck matching the description, the command reported. As the truck’s four occupants “exited quickly,” the statement said, the troops opened fire, killing them.

American troops later found that the men were actually firefighters responding to an emergency call and were not riding in the hijacked truck.

In Baghdad, an intensive military search continued Tuesday for an American soldier who was reported missing late Monday. Military officials said that the soldier, who is of Iraqi descent and works as an interpreter, appeared to have left the fortified Green Zone on Monday afternoon to visit with family members in Baghdad. A military statement, citing witnesses, said the soldier was at a relative’s house when men wearing “dark-colored rags over their noses and mouths” pulled up in three cars, handcuffed the soldier and took him away in one of the vehicles.

The kidnappers later called a relative of the soldier using the victim’s cellphone, the statement said.

Hundreds of American and Iraqi security forces, backed by attack helicopters and pilotless aerial surveillance drones, surged into the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karada on Monday night, sealing off roads and bridges, searching vehicles and raiding homes and offices.

The sweep continued all day Monday, snarling traffic throughout the center of the capital. The American military said that among other locations, its troops had raided Al Furat television station, which is owned by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party; and a Shiite mosque, Saeed Adrees.

American officials vowed to continue the search until the missing serviceman was rescued. “We will leverage all available coalition resources to find this soldier,” General Thurman said.

Michael R. Gordon, Kirk Semple and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Kate Zernike from Washington.

    General Says Troop Increase Not Part of Baghdad Plans, NYT, 25.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/world/middleeast/26baghdadcnd.html?hp&ex=1161835200&en=75bbda0a3ac0b3c1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. and Iraqi Forces Raid Stronghold of Shiite Militia

October 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:53 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. and Iraqi forces on Wednesday raided Sadr City, the stronghold of the feared Shiite militia led by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disavowed the operation, saying he had not been consulted and insisting ''that it will not be repeated.''

The defiant al-Maliki also slammed the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Iraq for saying Iraq needed to set a timetable to curb violence ravaging the country.

''I affirm that this government represents the will of the people and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it,'' al-Maliki said at a news conference.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Tuesday that al-Maliki had agreed to the plan, announced at a rare joint appearance with Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who said he would not hesitate to ask for more troops if he felt they were necessary.

At least four people were killed and 18 injured in the overnight fighting in the overwhelmingly Shiite eastern district known as Sadr City, according to Col. Khazim Abbas, a local police commander, and Qassim al-Suwaidi, director of the area's Imam Ali Hospital.

The U.S. military said Iraqi army special forces, backed up by U.S. advisers, carried out a raid to capture a ''top illegal armed group commander directing widespread death squad activity throughout eastern Baghdad,'' the military said in a statement.

Al-Maliki, who is commander in chief of Iraq's army, heatedly denied he knew anything about the raid:

''We will ask for clarification about what has happened in Sadr City. We will review this issue with the multinational forces so that it will not be repeated...The Iraqi government should be aware and part of any military operation. Coordination is needed between Iraqi government and multinational forces.''

As the raid began, Iraqi forces were fired on and asked for American airpower backup. The U.S. said it used ''precision gunfire only to eliminate the enemy threat,'' according to the military's statement.

There was no word on casualties or whether the targeted death squad leader was captured.

Up to now, U.S. and Iraqi forces have largely avoided the densely populated Sadr City slum, a grid of rutted streets and tumble-down housing that is home to 2.5 million Shiites and under the control of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Reining in the Mahdi Army and militias like it is one of the thorniest problems facing al-Maliki because his fragile Shiite-dominated government derives much of its power from al-Sadr's party and a second political power with a powerful militia, the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.

Residents living near Sadr City said gunfire and airstrikes began around late Tuesday and continued for hours. The district on Baghdad's eastern edge was sealed to outsiders Wednesday morning.

Groups of young men in black fatigues favored by the Mahdi Army were seen driving toward the area to join the fight.

Explosions and automatic weapons fire were heard above the noise of U.S. helicopters circling overhead firing flares. Streets were empty and shops closed.

In his comments, Al-Maliki also appealed to neighboring states to cease meddling in Iraq's domestic affairs -- an apparent reference to Iran and Syria, which are accused by the U.S. and Iraqi officials of aiding Sunni and Shiite armed groups.

He blamed foreign fighters in groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq and Saddam Hussein's loyalists for driving violence that takes the lives of around 40 Iraqis every day, and possibly many more.

''I would like to state here that the root of the battle we are fighting in Iraq and the root of the bloody cycle that we are undergoing is the presence of terror organizations that have arrived in the country,'' al-Maliki said.

Al-Maliki has repeatedly pledged to deal with the militias but has resisted issuing firm ultimatums or deadlines.

At Tuesday's news conference, Khalilzad said Iraqi leaders had agreed to set a timeline for achieving key political and security goals, including reining in such groups.

Khalilzad revealed neither specific deadlines for achieving those goals nor penalties for their failure to do so, and Al-Maliki said no deadlines had been put to his government.

Al-Maliki said he believed the U.S. talk of timelines was driven by the upcoming U.S. midterm election.

''We are not much concerned with it,'' al-Maliki said.

As violence spiked in Baghdad and elsewhere, Casey said on Tuesday he would not hesitate to ask for more soldiers if he felt it necessary. He said, however, he had not made a decision.

''Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe. And, as I've said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis,'' Casey said.

The timeline plan outlined by Khalilzad Tuesday was believed to have grown out of recent Washington meetings at which the Bush administration sought to reshape its Iraq policy amid mounting U.S. deaths and declining domestic support for the 44-month-old war. The plan was made public a day after White House press secretary Tony Snow said U.S. was adjusting its Iraq strategy but would not issue any ultimatums.

Khalilzad said al-Maliki had agreed to the timeline concept that called for specific deadlines to be set by year's end. U.S. officials revealed neither specific incentives for the Iraqis to implement the plan nor penalties for their failure to do so.

October has been the deadliest month this year for American forces. The military Tuesday announced the deaths of two more U.S. Marines, a sailor and a soldier. Since the start of the war, 2,801 U.S. service members have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.

Also Wednesday, the military said it was continuing a search for a U.S. Army translator missing after he was believed to have been kidnapped Monday night in Baghdad. Troops had detained some suspects who ''could possibly be involved,'' said a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington.

Associated Press correspondents Christopher Bodeen and Hamza Hendawi contributed to this report.

    U.S. and Iraqi Forces Raid Stronghold of Shiite Militia, NYT, 25.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?hp&ex=1161835200&en=8265d88951c6af2a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Idle Contractors Add Millions to Iraq Rebuilding

October 25, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

Overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget of some reconstruction projects in Iraq, according to a government estimate released yesterday, leaving far less money than expected to provide the oil, water and electricity needed to improve the lives of Iraqis.

The report provided the first official estimate that, in some cases, more money was being spent on housing and feeding employees, completing paperwork and providing security than on actual construction.

Those overhead costs have ranged from under 20 percent to as much as 55 percent of the budgets, according to the report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. On similar projects in the United States, those costs generally run to a few percent.

The highest proportion of overhead was incurred in oil-facility contracts won by KBR Inc., the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, which has frequently been challenged by critics in Congress and elsewhere.

The actual costs for many projects could be even higher than the estimates, the report said, because the United States has not properly tracked how much such expenses have taken from the $18.4 billion of taxpayer-financed reconstruction approved by Congress two years ago.

The report said the prime reason was not the need to provide security, though those costs have clearly risen in the perilous environment, and are a burden that both contractors and American officials routinely blame for such increases.

Instead, the inspector general pointed to a simple bureaucratic flaw: the United States ordered the contractors and their equipment to Iraq and then let them sit idle for months at a time.

The delay between “mobilization,” or assembling the teams in Iraq, and the start of actual construction was as long as nine months.

“The government blew the whistle for these guys to go to Iraq and the meter ran,” said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general’s office. “The government was billed for sometimes nine months before work began.”

The findings are similar to those of a growing list of inspections, audits and investigations that have concluded that the program to rebuild Iraq has often fallen short for the most mundane of reasons: poorly written contracts, ineffective or nonexistent oversight, needless project delays and egregiously poor construction practices.

“This report is the latest chapter in a long, sad and expensive tale about how contracting in Iraq was more about shoveling money out the door than actually getting real results on the ground,” said Stephen Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington.

“These contracts were to design and build important items for oil infrastructure, hospitals and education, but in some cases more than half of the money padded corporate coffers instead,” he said.

Although the federal report places much of the burden for the charges squarely on the shoulders of United States officials in Baghdad, the findings varied widely over a sampling of contracts examined by auditors, from a low of under 20 percent for some companies to a high of over 55 percent.

One oil contract awarded to a joint venture between Parsons, an American company, and Worley, from Australia, had overhead costs of at least 43 percent, the report found. One contract held by Parsons alone to build hospitals and prisons had overhead of at least 35 percent; in another, it was 17 percent.

The lowest figure was found for certain contracts won by Lucent, at 11 percent, but the report indicates that substantial portions of the overhead in those cases could not be determined.

The report did not explain why KBR’s overhead costs on those contracts — the contracts totaled about $296 million — were more than 10 percent higher than those at the other companies audited. Despite past criticism of KBR, the Army, which administers those contracts, has generally agreed to pay most of the costs claimed by the company.

Melissa Norcross, a spokeswoman for KBR, said in a written reply to questions, “It is important to note that the special inspector general is not challenging any of KBR’s costs referenced in this report.”

“All of these costs were incurred at the client’s direction and for the client’s benefit,” she said, referring to the Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the oil contract.

But a frequent Halliburton critic, Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, disputed those assurances. “It’s incomprehensible that over $160 million — more than half the value of the contract — was squandered on overhead,” Mr. Waxman said in a written statement.

The majority leader of the same committee, Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Parsons, Erin Kuhlman, said the United States categorized overhead and construction costs differently from contract to contract in Iraq, making it difficult to make direct comparisons. “Parsons incurred, billed and reported actual costs as directed by the government,” she said.

In Iraq, where construction materials are scarce and contractors must provide security for work sites and housing for Western employees, officials have said they expect the overhead to be at least 10 percent, but the contractors and American officials have grudgingly conceded that the true costs have turned out to be higher.

But even the high of 55 percent could be an underestimate, Mr. Mitchell said, because the government often did not begin tracking overhead costs for months after the companies mobilized. He added that because of the haphazard way in which the government tracked the costs, it was not possible to say how well the figures reflected overhead charges in the entire program.

The report’s conclusions were drawn from $1.3 billion in contracts for which United States government overseers actually made an effort to track overhead costs, of the total of $18.4 billion set aside for reconstruction in specific supplemental funding bills for the 2006 fiscal year.

When all American and Iraqi contributions are added up, various estimates for the cost of the rebuilding program range from $30 billion to $45 billion. Language included in the Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush last week, states that the inspector general’s office will halt its examination of those expenditures by October of next year.

Maj. Gen. William H. McCoy, who until recently commanded the Persian Gulf region division of the Corps of Engineers, disputed some of the inspector general’s findings in a letter appended to the report. Things like “waiting for concrete to cure” could still be taking place during what seem to be periods of inactivity, General McCoy wrote, so a quiet period “does not mean that the project is not moving forward.”

But many of the delays came during 2004 and took place in response to political developments in Iraq, the inspector general’s report says. The American occupation government, the Coalition Provisional Authority, mobilized many of the companies early that year.

After the authority went out of existence in June 2004, handing sovereignty to the Iraqi government, top American officials then kept the companies idle for months as the officials rewrote the rebuilding plan, and ran up costs as little work was done.

    Idle Contractors Add Millions to Iraq Rebuilding, NYT, 25.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/world/middleeast/25reconstruct.html?hp&ex=1161835200&en=525f51308fb9dfe2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Military Analysis

Iraqi Realities Undermine the Pentagon’s Predictions

October 25, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD, Oct. 24 — In trying to build support for the American strategy in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said Tuesday that the Iraqi military could be expected to take over the primary responsibility for securing the country within 12 to 18 months.

But that laudable goal seems far removed from the violence-plagued streets of Iraq’s capital, where American forces have taken the lead in trying to protect the city and American soldiers substantially outnumber Iraqi ones.

Given the rise in sectarian killings, a Sunni-based insurgency that appears to be as potent as ever and an Iraqi security establishment that continues to have difficulties deploying sufficient numbers of motivated and proficient forces in Baghdad, General Casey’s target seems to be an increasingly heroic assumption.

On paper, Iraq has substantial security forces. The Pentagon noted in an August report to Congress that Iraq had more than 277,000 troops and police officers, including some 115,000 army combat soldiers.

But those figures, which have often been cited at Pentagon news conferences as an indicator of progress and a potential exit strategy for American troops, paint a distorted picture. When the deep-seated reluctance of many soldiers to serve outside their home regions, leaves of absence and AWOL rates are taken into account, only a portion of the Iraqi Army is readily available for duty in Baghdad and other hot spots.

The fact that the Ministry of Defense has sent only two of the six additional battalions that American commanders have requested for Baghdad speaks volumes about the difficulty the Iraqi government has encountered in fielding a professional military. The four battalions that American commanders are still waiting for is equivalent to 2,800 soldiers, hardly a large commitment in the abstract but one that the Iraqis are still struggling to meet.

From the start, General Casey’s broader strategy for Iraq has been premised on the optimistic assumption that Iraqi forces could soon substitute for American ones. In February 2005, General Casey noted that in the year ahead the United States would begin to “transfer the counterinsurgency mission to the increasingly capable Iraqi security forces across Iraq.”

In June 2006, General Casey submitted a confidential plan to the White House projecting American troop withdrawals that would begin in September 2006 and which, conditions permitting, would lead to a more than 50 percent reduction in American combat brigades by December 2007. Iraq’s security forces were to fill the gap. In keeping with that strategy, American forces cut back their patrols in Baghdad during the first half of 2006.

It did not take long before the plan had to be shelved and American forces increased to try to tamp down the sectarian killings there. Still, General Casey continued to portray the current surge in fighting as a difficult interlude before the Iraqi security forces could begin to assume the main combat role and some variant of his withdrawal plan for American forces could be put back on track.

As he said Tuesday, “It’s going to take another 12 to 18 months or so till, I believe, the Iraqi security forces are completely capable of taking over responsibility for their own security, still probably with some level of support from us, but that will be directly asked for by the Iraqis.”

Certainly, the Iraqi security forces have made some gains. The Iraqi military is larger and better trained, and has taken control of more territory in the past year. Some Iraqi soldiers have fought well. But in Baghdad, which American commanders have defined as the central front in the war, it is still a junior partner.

To improve the Iraqi forces, the American military is inserting teams of military advisers with Iraqi units. American officials also say their Iraqi counterparts are trying to use the lure of extra pay to persuade reluctant troops to come to the aid of their capital.

But longstanding problems remain. A quarter or so of a typical Iraqi unit is on leave at any one time. Since Iraq lacks an effective banking system for paying its troops, soldiers are generally given a week’s leave each month to bring their pay home.

Desertions and absenteeism are another concern. According to the August Pentagon report, 15 percent of new recruits drop out during initial training. Beyond that, deployment to combat zones, the report adds, sometimes results in additional “absentee spikes of 5 to 8 percent.”

As a result, the actual number of Iraqi boots on the ground on a given day is routinely less than the official number. In areas where the risks and hardship are particularly great, the shortfall is sometimes significant. In fiercely contested Anbar Province in western Iraq, the day-to-day strength of the Seventh Iraqi Army Division in August was only about 35 percent of the soldiers on its rolls, while the day-to-day strength of the First Division was 50 percent of its authorized strength.

Another complication is that the even-numbered divisions in the 10-division army have largely been recruited locally and thus generally reflect the ethnic makeup of the regions where they are based. So, much of the Iraqi Army consists of soldiers who are reluctant to serve outside the areas in which they reside. Several battalions have gone AWOL rather then deploy to Baghdad, an American military officer said.

The Iraqi government is well aware of such problems. Its plan is to increase the overall size of the military by 50,000, calculating that if it assigns extra troops to each unit they can be maintained near full strength when soldiers go on leave or are otherwise absent.

The difficulties with the Iraqi police, who are supposed to play a major role in protecting cleared areas under the Baghdad security plan, are considerable and include corruption and divided loyalties to militias. According to the Pentagon report, the Interior Ministry also lacks an effective management system. The Americans know how many Iraqis have been trained to work as police officers but not how many are still on the job.

The National Police have been a particular worry. One National Police unit has been withdrawn from duty in Baghdad because it was linked to sectarian killings. National Police brigades are now being removed from duty one by one for retraining with an eye to changing, as General Casey put it, the “ethos of these forces.”

In the final analysis, the problem is more one of institution building than numbers. Until Iraq has a genuine unity government that its own forces respect and are willing to fight for, it seems likely that the American military will continue to shoulder most of the burden.

    Iraqi Realities Undermine the Pentagon’s Predictions, NYT, 25.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/world/middleeast/25assess.html?hp&ex=1161835200&en=ae6b1180932b718b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

General May Increase U.S. Troop Levels in Baghdad

October 24, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN O’NEIL

America’s top general in Iraq said he was considering sending more troops to help quell the violence in Baghdad, as he and the United States ambassador laid out a timetable for progress that they said has been agreed to by the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the timetable includes settling political differences between the country’s competing groups through a “national compact” within the next year, and taking quick action on some of the country’s most obdurate issues, including cracking down on Shiite militias, persuading Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and reaching a fair division of oil revenues.

Ambassador Khalilzad said that some of these steps should be taken in the next few weeks, while he expected others to be completed a year from now.

“Iraqi officials have agreed to a timeline for making these difficult decisions,” he said.

Mr. Khalilzad appeared at an usual joint news conference with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top military commander in Iraq, at a time when relations between Mr. Maliki’s government and the Bush administration have become increasingly strained and the conflict has taken center stage in the fall Congressional campaign.

General Casey defended the effort to quell sectarian killings in Baghdad, which has led to a surge in American fatalities, saying that it has had a “decisive” effect in the neighborhoods that have been its focus.

Last week the military’s top spokesman said the strategy was being re-evaluated in light of “disheartening” increases in violence elsewhere in the city, and the need for troops to return areas that had already been cleared.

Today General Casey declined to say what new measures were being contemplated. But he raised the possibility that solidifying any gains in Baghdad may require an increase in forces.

“Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe,” he said. “And as I’ve said all along, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis.”

Military officials have said that American troops have borne the brunt of the Baghdad fighting, in part because the Iraqi army did not deliver as many soldiers as had been called for in the plan devised before the crackdown began in August.

General Casey also said that bringing peace to the capital was ultimately beyond the military’s control. “I think it’s important for all of us to understand that we’re not going to have total security here in Baghdad until the major political issues that are dividing the country are resolved,” he said. “The political leaders understand that. And they’re wrestling with that part of it.”

The surge in sectarian killings has disrupted the American military’s original plan to draw down its forces in Iraq over the course of the year. General Casey said that the reductions, which began last December, were halted in June when it became clear that increased Iraqi forces in Baghdad were not having enough of an impact.

He said that had “a very strong belief” that the American military eventually needed to reduce its presence — “we have to get out of their way,” he said — but declined to say if further reductions were possible.

“I can’t tell you right now,” he said, “till we get through the month of Ramadan and the rest of this, when that will be.”

General Casey said that 300 members of the Iraqi security forces had died during Ramadan; at least 89 American soldiers have been killed this month, making it the year’s deadliest.

The general said that at their current rate of development, in 12 to 18 months the Iraqi security forces “will emerge as the dominant force in Iraq,” but said that even then some level of American support would be needed.

Mr. Khalilzad said that some of the milestones laid out in the plan could be achieved by the end of the year, like laying the groundwork for for the transfer of more areas to Iraqi military control and reaching an international accord that would link aid to economic reform.

Others would take longer, Mr. Khalilzad said, adding that he expected a national compact to be in place in a year’s time.

No time frame was mentioned for the disarming of Shiite militias — perhaps the most politically difficult step for Mr. Maliki, a Shiite politician whose coalition depends on groups with ties to the largest militias.

And Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey did not say what American officials planned to do if the timetable is not met.

Among the other steps that Mr. Khalilzad said must be completed “in the coming weeks” were drafting a law on the division of oil revenues; amending the new Constitution to deal with the concerns that led nearly all Sunnis to oppose it; transforming the current effort to rid the government of members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party into a vehicle for “accountability and reconciliation,” and scheduling long-delayed provincial elections.

Many of these issues lie at the heart of the divisions between the country’s ethnic groups. Some Shiite groups remain vehemently opposed to allowing former supporters of Mr. Hussein to take government positions. The national assembly that drafted the Constitution was unable to reach agreement on the division of oil revenues. Sunnis demanded the right to revise the Constitution because they feared that it left the door open to the creation of autonomous regions that could fracture the country. The Shiite-led government has so far ignored their promise to consider amendments, and Kurds and Shiites in Parliament recently passed a law allowing for the creation of such regions beginning 18 months from now.

Today’s news conference in the heavily defended government Green Zone was briefly interrupted by a power outage. During the session, both men spoke scathingly of Iran and Syria, who they said were working to provoke instability.

Mr. Khalilzad lumped the two countries together with Al Qaeda as “the enemies of Iraq.”

By contrast, they referred to the Sunni insurgents who until recently have been the main source of attacks on American troops in more measured terms, calling them “the resistance,” and drawing a distinction between them and “terrorists and extremists” described by Mr. Khalilzad.

General Casey called them “the Sunnis who fight us and claim to be the honorable resistance of Iraq,” and said that American officials have begun talking with them, along with the Iraqi government.

General Casey described the security situation as “difficult and complex,” adding that “it’s likely to remain that way over the near term.”

“We have seen the nature of the conflict evolving from what was an insurgency against us to a struggle for the division of economic and political power,” he said.

    General May Increase U.S. Troop Levels in Baghdad, NYT, 24.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/middleeast/25iraqcnd.html?hp&ex=1161748800&en=817aa459b9a3ac56&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Transcript

U.S. Officials Hold News Conference in Baghdad

October 24, 2006
The New York Times

Following is a text of the opening statements of Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American military commander in Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States ambassador to Iraq, at a news conference today in Baghdad, as transcribed by the Fed Docs.

Hello, everyone.

George Casey and I called this press conference today to explain our strategy and plans for success in Iraq. Despite the challenging environment in which we operate, our goal is to enable Iraqis to develop a multiethnic, multisectarian representative democracy after decades of tyranny.

The American people know that this is very difficult ... (AUDIO GAP) despite the difficult challenges we face, success in Iraq is possible and can be achieved on a realistic timetable. Iraqi leaders must step up to achieve key political and security milestones on which they have agreed. As they take these steps, we can produce success and bring about Iraqi self-reliance. We must continue to support them.

Iraq is strategically vital due to its location and resources. However, more than Iraq is at stake. The broader Middle East is the source of most of the world's security problems, as was Europe in previous centuries.

This is the defining challenge of our era. The struggle for the future of the region is between moderates and extremist political forces. The outcome in Iraq will profoundly shape this wider struggle and, in turn, the security of the world.

Those forces that constitute the extremist camp, including not only Al Qaida, but Iran and Syria, are at work to keep us and the Iraqis from succeeding. They fear Iraq's success. They want to undermine our resolve by imposing costs on us in terms of prolonging the conflict, imposing casualties, and creating the perception that Iraq cannot be stabilized.

The enemies of the American people believe that their will is stronger than ours and that they can win by outlasting us. The killing that we all see every night on the television news are the work of the extremists.

Since the liberation of Iraq, competition between sects and ethnic political groups for economic and political power has become a dominant feature of the political landscape. It is on this terrain that the battle for stability and progress in Iraq has been waged. Iraq's people are the principle victim of this war. They want it to end.

The United States, as well as other friends of Iraq, has worked relentlessly to bridge these differences and improve the lives of the Iraqi people. Politically, we saw Iraqis turn out in massive numbers for two national elections and a constitutional referendum.

All of Iraq's sects and ethnic groups joined in the historic transition. Iraqi leaders made historic compromises -- April when they formed Iraq's first ever government of national unity. These accomplishments were a beacon for the entire Middle East.

Economically, I see an Iraq every day that I do not think the American people know about -- where cell phones and satellite dishes, once forbidden, are now common, where economic reform takes place on a regular basis, where agricultural production is rising dramatically, and where the overall economy and the consumer sector is growing.

While a few provinces experience great violence, there is stability and progress in many others.

However, the battle over the future of Iraq has not been a one- sided fight. The enemies of Iraq -- Al Qaida, Iraq's historic rivals and the local clients -- concentrate their efforts on tearing the Iraqi people apart along sectarian lines.

Tragically, these efforts have had an effect. Now the primary source of violence is not simply an insurgency but also sectarian killings involving Al Qaida terrorists, insurgents, militias and death squads. Iran and Syria are providing support to the groups involved.

As we look ahead, the question for the United States is whether we will acquiesce to or defeat the efforts of the enemies of Iraq. The answer to that question is that we should not acquiesce, but, instead, should make adjustments in our strategy and redouble our efforts to succeed.

The United States, as well as other supporters of Iraq, is pursuing a strategy to reduce the sources of violence, to defeat the extremists fomenting killing, to increase Iraq's capability to provide for its own security, and to expand the involvement of the international community in supporting Iraq.

This is not easy and cannot proceed without occasional setbacks and necessary adjustments. To reduce the sources of violence, our strategy has three key elements.

First, we are inducing Iraqi political and religious leaders who can control or influence own groups in Baghdad to agree to stop sectarian violence.

Second, we are helping Iraqi leaders to complete a national compact. Key political forces must make difficult decisions in the coming weeks to reach agreements on a number of outstanding issues on which Iraqis differ: enacting an oil law that will share the profits of Iraq's resources in a way that unites the country -- this is of critical importance; amending the constitution in order to make all Iraqis understand that their children will be guaranteed democratic rights and equality; reforming the deBaathification commission to transform it into an accountability and reconciliation program; implementing a plan to address militias and death squads; setting a date for provincial elections; and increasing the credibility and capability of Iraqi forces.

Iraqi leaders have agreed to a timeline for making the hard decisions needed to resolve these issues.

President Talabani has made these commitments public. The United States and its coalition partners will support Prime Minister Maliki and others in their effort to meet these benchmarks.

The third element is persuading Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and accept national reconciliation. We're reaching out to Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, to help by encouraging these groups to end the violence and work for a united and independent Iraq and to work against Al Qaida. These countries have promised to be helpful.

To defeat extremist groups, we will continue military operations against death squads and Al Qaida and adapt our plans for stabilizing Baghdad.

To increase the capability of Iraqi security forces, we continue to train and equip the Iraqi forces needed to achieve success. We are coordinating with Prime Minister Maliki and his team on developing a plan for the transfer of security responsibilities. Reforming the security ministry is one of the benchmarks that the Iraqi leaders have agreed to.

This plan will be ready before the end of the year.

To broaden international support for stabilizing Iraq, Iraqi leaders and the United Nations have been working on a plan, an international compact with Iraq, that will consist of a commitment by Iraq to do what's necessary in terms of continued economic reform and policies to put the country on the path to stability and prosperity, in exchange for the international community's support.

Many countries, including those who opposed the initial intervention in Iraq... (AUDIO GAP) ... together with our Iraqi partners who have identified and are moving on the key element of success. And we want to achieve success in Iraq.

We will continue to assess and alter our tactics as necessary in order to help the Iraqi people achieve their goal of a secure, unified and democratic Iraq.

Those who support Iraq now need to match the Iraq's resolve and the resolve of the Iraqis and their patience during these difficult times to achieve a stable and secure Iraq, which will produce a more secure Middle East and which in turn will mean a more secure America and a more secure world.

I also want to tell the American people, and especially the families of those serving here, how closely our military and civilian components are working together in Iraq. As General Casey -- my friend, George -- likes to say, our approach is one team, one mission.

This means sharing risks. And civilian patriots as well as soldiers have paid the ultimate price for our nation. I can assure that everyone on my team -- myself and the others, police advisers, technical specialists, diplomats -- volunteered to serve here because we know that our nation must succeed in Iraq.

George and I are convinced that this is -- this resolve and this unity of effort is a vital part of our approach that will bring about victory.

To the Iraqis, I would like to say Ramadan mubarak and (inaudible).

Thank you very much.

George?

CASEY: Thanks, Zal.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'd like to give you an update on how I see the mission here. And then Zal and I will take your questions.

The situation -- this will come as no surprise -- the situation here in Iraq remains difficult and complex.

And I'm sure for the folks back in the United States trying to look at this, it looks very confusing and very hard to understand. I'm not sure I can cut through all that, but let me try.

Several factors add to the complexity that we're now seeing.

First, since the elections in December, we've seen the nature of the conflict evolving from what was an insurgency against us to a struggle for the division of political and economic power among the Iraqis. The bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra in February heightened this.

Second, there are several groups here that are working actively to upset and disrupt the political process. The first, Al Qaida and the Iraqis that are supporting them, have an active strategy of fomenting sectarian violence. In the aftermath of Zarqawi's death, they remain wounded but lethal.

Second, the death squads and the more militant illegal armed groups are attacking and murdering civilians in the center of the country and have caused security problems in the central and southern parts of the country.

The third group is the resistance, the insurgents that primarily fight us and who claim to be the honorable resistance to foreign occupation in Iraq.

And lastly, as Zal mentioned, the external actors: Iran and Syria. And both Iran and Syria continue to be decidedly unhelpful by providing support to the different extremists and terrorist groups operating inside Iraq.

Now, if you add to all this the intensities of Ramadan and the fact that the new government is about 150 days old, it makes for a difficult situation and it's likely to remain that way over the near term.

Now, what I just described is a fundamental change from how we saw the threat and the general situation here last year. So people are rightfully asking, How are you changing? What are you doing differently?

I can tell you that we have continuously adapted to stay ahead of the enemy and to ensure that our service men and women have the proper tools and support they need to accomplish their missions.

Think back two years -- and I'm looking at some of the veterans here in the front row -- two years ago, some of you weren't even sure that we were going to have elections in January 2005. To get there, we made a judgment in mid-2004 that for successful elections, we had to eliminate terrorist safe havens in Najaf, Samarra and Fallujah.

Working with the Iraqis, we did that. And on January 30th, 2005, the Iraqi people chose democracy.

Immediately following those elections, we determined that we needed to enhance the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces to develop and to succeed in security operations. We began embedding transition teams with Iraqi units and partnering with Iraqi units in February of 2005. And we completed the whole transition to this new system by June.

In the summer of 2005, we thought we saw the threat changing. And we set out to restore Iraqi control to the Syrian border to disrupt the flow of foreign fighters and suicide bombers coming into Iraq from Syria.

Through tough fights in Tal Afar and out the whole western Euphrates Valley, we succeeded with the Iraqis in restoring their control to that border by November as we had projected.

Following the December elections and the Samarra mosque bombing, we saw the situation evolving, as I mentioned earlier. It's a much more complex environment and it's one that will be resolved primarily by Iraqis, but with our full support.

We have also focused our collective security efforts on the capital in the center of the country, where the sectarian conflict is the greatest, while keeping pressure on Al Qaida and the resistance in the west and the north.

Again, as we have done previously, we shifted forces from around the country to support our main effort. And we have also increased our targeting efforts against death squads to match our efforts against Al Qaida.

On the political side, we have, as Zal mentioned, developed a political program to address the critical issues dividing the country, we've supported the prime minister's reconciliation initiatives and begun with the Iraqi government engagement with the resistance with a view toward decreasing violence and bringing them into the political process.

Working on addressing the key issue of militias is proceeding.

Resolution of the militia issue will require an integrated political-military effort, and we are working with the government of Iraq to do that.

Now, underpinning all this change, all these adaptations have been two constants. The first is the continuing development of the Iraqi security forces, and the second is the continuing development of protective measures for our troops.

During the battle of Fallujah, we had a handful of battalions in the Iraqi army and they operated in support of us. Today, six of the 10 Iraqi divisions are in the lead, 30 of the 36 Iraqi brigades are in the lead, almost 90 of the 112 Iraqi battalions are in the lead, and we operate in support of them.

We continue also to make progress with the Iraqi police forces and are working with the minister of interior on reform of his ministry and to continue to transition Iraqi provinces to provincial control.

The Iraqi security forces are in the fight. And in Ramadan alone they have lost over 300 martyrs in defense of their country.

On the equipping side, the protection of our troops remains a paramount concern for us. And we have made significant strides in improving both the physical and electronic protection of our men and women.

We will continue to adjust our tactics to meet and stay ahead of evolving conditions on the ground.

Baghdad's a good example. The Baghdad security plan continues to have a dampening affect on sectarian violence and we, the government of Iraq and the coalition, are working aggressively to further reduce sectarian violence in the capital.

The additional U.S. brigades that we've kept here have had a decisive effect. And the Iraqi security forces are having a significant impact as well.

I'll remind you that the plan for Baghdad was clear, protect, build: clear any Iraqi forces from the difficult areas and neighborhoods, protect those neighborhoods with Iraqi security forces so that the Iraqi government and the coalition forces could come in, and build the local services that would improve the quality of life within the neighborhoods.

Our ultimate intent is to help the citizens of Baghdad feel safe in their own neighborhoods, and this is not something that's going to happen overnight.

The tearing down that our enemies do is infinitely easier than the building up that Iraq requires after three decades of neglect. But building is what Iraq needs, and we have committed $400 billion already to projects in support of the Baghdad effort, with almost $600 million more in additional projects to kick in here over the next couple of months.

Make no mistake about it: We are in a tough fight here in the center of the country and in Anbar province. But I think it's important to remind people that 90 percent of the sectarian violence in Iraq takes place in about a 30-mile radius from the center of Baghdad and, secondly, that 90 percent of all violence takes place in five provinces.

This is not a country that is awash in sectarian violence. The situation's hard, but it's not a country that's awash in sectarian violence.

The American people already know what a magnificent job the men and women of their armed forces are doing here, and we continue to be grateful for their continuing support.

But they should also know that the men and women of the armed forces here have never lost a battle in over three years of war. That is a fact unprecedented in military history. They and our Iraqi security forces continue to carry the fight to the enemy every day. And I continue to be in awe of their courage, their agility, their resourcefulness and their commitment.

You can be confident that our service men and women are well-trained, well-equipped and well-led.

Finally, in closing, I'd say that our Iraqi partners continue to move forward steadily every day. And together we will defeat the divisive forces that are attempting to rip Iraq apart and deny the Iraqi people the security and the prosperity that they so well deserve after 35 years under Saddam Hussein.

We will succeed in Iraq, but it will take patience, courage and resolve from all of us.

Thank you all very much. Zal and I'll take your questions.

    U.S. Officials Hold News Conference in Baghdad, NYT, 24.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/middleeast/24text-baghdad.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Bush, Facing Dissent on Iraq, Jettisons ‘Stay the Course'

October 24, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — The White House said Monday that President Bush was no longer using the phrase “stay the course” when speaking about the Iraq war, in a new effort to emphasize flexibility in the face of some of the bloodiest violence there since the 2003 invasion.

“He stopped using it,” said Tony Snow, the White House press secretary. “It left the wrong impression about what was going on and it allowed critics to say, ‘Well, here’s an administration that’s just embarked upon a policy and not looking at what the situation is,’ when, in fact, it is the opposite.”

Mr. Bush used the slogan in a stump speech on Aug. 31, but has not repeated it for some time. Still, Mr. Snow’s pronouncement was a stark example of the complicated line the White House is walking this election year in trying to tag Democrats as wanting to “cut and run” from Iraq, without itself appearing wedded to unsuccessful tactics there.

Democrats have increasingly pressed a case this fall contending that Republicans are stubbornly proposing to “stay the course” in a failing effort to stanch violence in Iraq — an approach that strategists in both parties consider to have been fairly successful, especially as violence has continued to mount in Baghdad.

In the last few weeks a number of Republican lawmakers and party elders have also come forward to express doubts about whether the administration’s approach to stabilizing Iraq is succeeding and to suggest new strategies.

Mr. Bush and his aides have met those complaints with a renewed emphasis on adaptability for the United States’ war plan. Mr. Bush has stressed — as he did in an interview with ABC News on Sunday — that he is “not patient forever” and expects the Iraqis to take more responsibility in securing their own country.

In the same vein, administration officials are heightening the emphasis on setting milestones for Iraq to take over responsibility for ensuring security while disbanding sectarian militia groups.

Bush administration officials on Monday provided new details of their efforts to devise benchmarks for measuring the Baghdad government’s progress in the coming months toward assuming a larger role in securing the country.

Mr. Snow said the issue of benchmarks had come up cursorily during recent discussions with Mr. Bush; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East; Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq.

He added that the Bush administration was not presenting any ultimatums to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Malaki’s government or tying goals to United States troop commitments.

Mr. Snow was commenting on a report in The New York Times on Sunday that said the Bush administration was drafting a timetable with Iraqi officials for dealing with the militias and achieving other political, economic and military benchmarks aimed at stabilizing the country.

The Times article quoted several senior officials anonymously as saying the Bush administration would consider changes in military strategy and other steps if Iraq balked at the benchmarks or failed to meet the most critical timetables.

Mr. Rumsfeld said Monday that the benchmarks under discussion included projections on when Iraq might be able to take control of more of the country’s 18 provinces. Only two provinces are under full Iraqi security administration, though officials say they hope the number will rise to six or seven by the end of the year.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the goal of the discussions was to produce a “way ahead” so that “their government can have a set of tasks that they need to do to get prepared to assume the responsibility for governing their country and providing security for their country.”

The goal, he added, was for both sides to agree on what he called “projections” for when Iraq might be able to take on these tasks.

“My guess is that you might find that in no case will you find a specific date” for assuming a particular task, he said. But, he added, “You might find a month, or you might find a spread of two or three months, a period where they think they might be able to do it.”

Mr. Bush, in discussing at a news conference on Oct. 11 the meaning of the phrase “stay the course,” also refused to be pinned down.

“Stay the course means keep doing what you’re doing,” he said. “My attitude is, don’t do what you’re doing if it’s not working; change.”

He added: “Stay the course also means don’t leave before the job is done. And that’s — we’re going to get the job done in Iraq. And it’s important that we do get the job done in Iraq.”

    Bush, Facing Dissent on Iraq, Jettisons ‘Stay the Course, NYT, 24.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/middleeast/24policy.html?hp&ex=1161748800&en=62d161821f8fd701&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. forces caught in crossfire on streets of 'capital of death'

Updated 10/23/2006 9:22 AM ET
USA Today
By Rick Jervis and Jim Michaels

BAGHDAD — Before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, it was one of the nightmare scenarios: a slugfest in Iraq's capital, a sprawl of narrow streets, markets and blind alleys that is home to 6 million people.

More than three years later, the close-quarters fight the United States wanted to avoid is a reality. Rather than fighting Saddam Hussein's army, however, U.S. troops are caught in the crossfire alongside Iraqi forces as both try to take back the city from religion-based militias and death squads, as well as insurgents.

"This is the toughest thing I hope I ever do: fighting a counterinsurgency atop a sectarian conflict," said Col. James Pasquarette, commander of the Army's 1st Brigade Combat Team, positioned northwest of Baghdad.

The raging battle for Baghdad is looking more like a civil war, even if the U.S. and Iraqi governments avoid using the term. And it is prompting tough questions: Is the Iraqi government up to the job of restoring order? Does the U.S. military need to fundamentally change course to prevail?

President Bush held a videoconference over the weekend with key advisers, including Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and Vice President Cheney. The president characterized the meeting as part of an ongoing process.

Bush said the United States is constantly reassessing tactics but won't alter its objective of remaining in Iraq until the country has a stable government capable of maintaining its own security. "Our goal is victory," he said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "What is changing are the tactics we use to achieve that goal."

The administration is being urged to crank up pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has been unable to reach political agreements with warring factions.

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Sunday that the Iraqi government should support its military in defeating militias. "It is their job — not the U.S. coalition forces' — to subdue and get rid of these private militias," he said on Fox News Sunday. Warner had earlier urged a change in course if Iraq's government can't restore order soon.

The joint U.S.-Iraqi security operation in Baghdad, underway since June, has brought a recent spike in U.S. casualties. Sunday, the military announced the deaths of four U.S. soldiers, bringing the October total to 83, on pace to be one of the deadliest months of the war. Last week, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, acknowledged that the Baghdad offensive was not meeting its objectives of a sustained reduction in violence.

The administration calls the battle for Baghdad the key to Iraq's future. The main obstacles to progress in that fight, according to experts and U.S. officers:

•The lack of a political deal to disarm militias has allowed religious violence to grow.

•Urban warfare neutralizes the American military's edge in technology and firepower.

•Iraqi security forces vary in quality and loyalty and may not be ready for a battle of this intensity.

The battle for the capital is a fight the United States cannot afford to lose. "If you don't win in Baghdad, you can't win in the rest of the country," said Thomas X. Hammes, author of The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century.

Coddling militias?

The U.S. government has pushed al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, to strike political agreements to disarm the militias, many of which are Shiite forces with ties to him and others in government. That would reduce the amount of violence American soldiers face and isolate any remaining militants.

"You will never have enough troops to secure a city this big" without reaching a political deal, said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Al-Maliki told USA TODAY in a recent interview that he needs more time to reach agreement with militia groups. Some Iraqi commanders, however, say the government has interfered with security operations to protect its friends.

Maj. Hussein al-Qaisi, a battalion commander with the 1st Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, says he often gets phone calls from government officials when he arrests suspected high-ranking militia leaders, both Sunni and Shiite.

"Sometimes they'll back them up no matter what," said al-Qaisi, whose unit is in northwest Baghdad. "We have to let them go."

Military action has stopped the violence in some pockets but won't bring a sustained peace, said U.S. Army Lt. Col. David Thompson, a commander based near Baghdad. "We have a political situation that needs decisive action."

U.S.-led raids often must be approved in advance by Iraqi leaders. This month, a unit in Baghdad got a tip about a torture chamber for Shiite death squads, but a planned raid needed clearance from the Iraqi side, said Capt. Kevin Salge, a company commander whose unit received the tip.

Several days passed before approval came through. By the time U.S. troops conducted a nighttime raid on the two-story building, it was largely abandoned, he said.

The absence of a political settlement between Shiites and Sunnis forces U.S. officers to negotiate with the warring factions.

Thompson spends much of his time traveling in armored convoys from one tribal sheik to the next, urging them to put a stop to the sectarian killings.

One recent morning, he met with leaders of the Sunni Marawi tribe, whose members he believes are lobbing mortars into Shiite areas. Later that afternoon, he met with a leader of the Tamimi tribe, which he suspects has members in Shiite death squads.

Brig. Gen. David Halverson, deputy commander of U.S. forces in and around Baghdad, said there are signs of progress. In the week ending Oct. 19, there were 519 attacks in the city, down from 624 the previous week.

This month, Iraqi and U.S. forces detained 600 suspects and killed or wounded 100 in fighting with insurgents or militias.

"We're taking these people down," Halverson said.

'Watch their every move'

There are nearly 60,000 U.S. and allied forces in Baghdad. That includes 15,400 American troops, 9,500 Iraqi soldiers and 34,600 national and local police.

The loyalty and skills of the Iraqi forces in Baghdad vary. Some army units are dependable, but police, who often live in the areas they patrol, can be reluctant to take on local militias.

Getting local police to respond aggressively against militias has been a challenge, Pasquarette said. He has ordered that letters, in Arabic, be sent to every police officer and official in his area, warning: If you don't combat militias, you'll be fired. If you're found to be supporting them, you'll be detained.

"To fight these extrajudicial killings effectively, we need to be embedded, almost one to one, with the Iraqi security forces," said Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Nelson, an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army's 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, based in Baghdad. "We need to watch their every move."

In Hurriyah, a neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, sectarian violence has been hard to fight because the area is controlled by the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Members of al-Sadr's militia have targeted prominent families — Sunnis and Shiites — and taken over their businesses and offices, Nelson said. Mahdi Army members have also infiltrated the local police.

"They've infiltrated every branch of public service and every political office they could get their hands on," Nelson said. "As soon as the U.S. leaves, they'll be able to dominate the area with key citizens, key positions, key offices. They'll pretty much have the lay of the land."

Brutal tactics on all sides

The Mahdi Army is brutal in pursuit of its goals, Nelson said. Large red X's are painted on the sides of houses the militia wants vacated, he said. Residents know they have a few days to leave before their houses are firebombed.

The Mahdi Army has used the tactic to clear entire clans from neighborhoods and to empty the neighborhoods of rivals, he said.

Riyad al-Nouri, a member of al-Sadr's political organization, denied involvement by al-Sadr loyalists in such strong-arm tactics and said the cleric has denounced religious killings. "These accusations are false and aimed at ruining this great movement," he said.

Shiite attacks are countered by Sunni groups. The mutilated bodies of their victims are usually discovered in the area's trash-strewn soccer field, Nelson said.

The bodies often show signs of torture, he said. Some bodies are booby-trapped. Few have ID.

Without the ability to identify victims, it's difficult for investigators to piece crimes together. When U.S. forces get intelligence on a death squad or killing, plans for raids are often shared with Iraq's security forces, leading to leaks and blown operations, Nelson said.

Nelson said his battalion investigated 40 sectarian killings and collected 57 bodies in a recent week. None led to an arrest, he said. "Sometimes we have a feeling of complete hopelessness," he said.

Capt. Alan Rena co, a fire support officer for another unit, said troops are often asked to hunt down death squads and insurgents — but avoid being overly aggressive — to gather evidence to later a convict a suspect. "We're not trained in this. We're not cops," he said. "We just want them to settle down long enough to get out of here."

An urban battlefield

City fighting is among the toughest combat. "The urban environment gives (insurgents) an advantage," said Conrad Crane, co-author of the Army's new counterinsurgency manual. "It negates some of our technological advantages."

"You can go out to some of these neighborhoods, and there will be kids out there running around, there will be hundreds of people on the street, there will be shops open," said Col. Michael Beech, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team in Baghdad. "Then you'll turn the corner, and a IED will go off," he said, referring to an improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb.

It's difficult to target an enemy mixed in with civilians. "We are very concerned about collateral damage," said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad. "That could turn the mood of the city against us.... We're in the enemy's backyard."

It's a close-combat fight in which American and Iraqi forces can rarely rely on artillery or air attacks. Over the weekend, coalition forces captured a sniper operating with a high-powered scope. He had a hole in the trunk of his car so he could target U.S. and Iraqi troops without being spotted. He had a video camera mounted in the back window of the vehicle, Halverson said.

Halverson said coalition forces have recently deployed counter-sniper teams. They are trained to search for enemy marksmen who have their pick of hiding places in neighborhoods they know well.

Civilians caught in the middle say violence has been brought closer to them than anytime since the collapse of Saddam's regime.

Farah al-Beady, a 32-year-old government employee, said he and his family go out only when necessary and stay close to home. "I have not seen my 69-year-old mother in months," he said.

"The civil war that everyone was afraid of is getting started," said Hammes, a retired Marine colonel.

Hussein Kari, 36, said he spends much of his free time in front of the computer. "The Internet keeps me connected with the outside world," he said. "Baghdad has become the capital of death."

Michaels reported from McLean, Va. Contributing: Said Sabah in Baghdad and David Jackson in Washington.

    U.S. forces caught in crossfire on streets of 'capital of death' , UT, 23.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-22-baghdad-crossfire_x.htm

Military Analysis

Stand or Fall in Baghdad: Capital Is Key

October 23, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD, Oct. 22 — After three years of trying to thwart a potent insurgency and tamp down the deadly violence in Iraq, the American military is playing its last hand: the Baghdad security plan.

The plan will be tweaked, adjusted and modified in the weeks ahead, as American commanders try to reverse the dismaying increase in murders, drive-by shootings and bombings.

But military commanders here see no plausible alternative to their bedrock strategy to clear violence-ridden neighborhoods of militias, insurgents and arms caches, hold them with Iraqi and American security forces, and then try to win over the population with reconstruction projects, underwritten mainly by the Iraqi government. There is no fall-back plan that the generals are holding in their hip pocket. This is it.

The Iraqi capital, as the generals like to say, is the center of gravity for the larger American mission in Iraq. Their assessment is that if Baghdad is overwhelmed by sectarian strife, the cause of fostering a more stable Iraq will be lost. Conversely, if Baghdad can be improved, the effects will eventually be felt elsewhere in Iraq. In invading Iraq, American forces started from outside the country and fought their way in. The current strategy is essentially to work from the inside out.

“As Baghdad goes, so goes Iraq,” observed Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, who commands American forces throughout Iraq.

Many ideas — new and not so new — are being discussed in Washington, like a sectarian division of Iraq (which the current government and many Iraqis oppose); and starting talks with Iraq’s neighbor, Iran (which the Iraqi government is already doing, but the United States is not). Some of these ideas look appealing simply because they have not been put to the test.

However the broader strategy may be amended, nothing can work if Baghdad becomes a war-torn Beirut. Baghdad security may not be a sufficient condition for a more stable Iraq, but it is a necessary condition for any alternative plan that does not simply abandon the Iraqis to their fate.

It is hard to see how any Iraq plan can work if the capital’s citizens cannot be protected.

The current operation is called Together Forward II, the second phase of an effort begun in July to reduce violence in Baghdad. The name reflects the core assumption that the Iraqi government is to be an equal partner in regaining control of its capital. Necessarily, the security plan requires an integrated political and military approach, since its goal is not to vanquish an enemy on a foreign battlefield but to bring order to a militia-and-insurgent-plagued city.

But the early returns have raised searching questions as to whether the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is truly prepared to tackle the mission.

“It is a decisive period,” said Maj. Gen. J. D. Thurman, the commander of the Fourth Infantry Division and the senior commander of the American forces in Baghdad.

“They either seize the opportunity or they don’t,” he said. “If they don’t, then our government is going to have to readjust what we are going to do, and that is not my call.”

Since it would take several months to secure and begin reconstruction in the dozen or so strife-ridden neighborhoods that are the focus of the plan, American commanders said the viability of the strategy could not be properly assessed before the year’s end. So far, however, the plan has been short on resources as well as results. The Iraqi Defense Ministry has supplied only two of the six Iraqi Army battalions that General Thurman has requested.

That is not just a question of numbers. Some American military officers say they believe the Iraqi Army may be more effective than the Iraq police, and more trusted by local citizens. Yet several Iraqi battalions have deserted rather than follow orders to go to Baghdad, according to American military officials. In the case of these units, summoning them to the Iraqi capital was tantamount to demobilizing them.

Some of the Iraqi police forces the Americans must work with have been infiltrated by militias. One Iraqi National Police unit has already been withdrawn from the streets and a training program has been instituted to improve the others. The Americans are carefully monitoring a number of police stations that they say have made common cause with some of the militias and intend to report them to the Iraqi government.

The original concept behind the plan was that American forces were to hold cleared areas for 60 to 90 days, during which the process of economic reconstruction would begin. Then American forces would turn the sectors over to Iraqi police and army units, freeing up American troops to tackle security challenges elsewhere in the city. Without sufficient Iraqi forces, however, this process has been hampered and it has been more difficult to prevent militias and insurgents from sneaking back into cleared areas.

“What takes the combat power is the holding piece,” said General Thurman. “We can do the clearing. But once you clear if you don’t leave somebody in there and build civil capacity in there then it is the old mud-hole approach. You know the water runs out of the mud hole when you drive through the mud hole and then it runs back in it.”

Delays in Iraqi government programs to improve electrical, sewage, water and health facilities has also hampered the effort. It had been expected that such Iraqi programs would begin before Ramadan, the monthlong holiday that is about to end. But the programs are now projected to start in November. In the absence of large-scale Iraqi programs, the Americans have sponsored some smaller efforts to improve sanitation and repair services, programs that have generated jobs and helped lower the unemployment rate in the city.

While the sectarian violence would be far worse if not for the American efforts, the number of murders in the Baghdad area has not decreased as hoped. Fifty-two bodies were found in General Thurman’s sector, which includes Baghdad and large swaths of territory north and south of the city, during the first week of August, when the security operations began. During the week that ended Oct. 14, the body count was 176. For the week that ended Oct. 21, the body count was 143, a noteworthy decline but still more than at the start of the operation.

There are a number of ideas being discussed in private to fix the plan. Americans still hope to receive additional Iraqi Army forces next month. They also hope to persuade the Iraqi government to purge police stations infiltrated by militias. Iraqi deployment areas may also be realigned.

American forces have already shifted some forces to new high-violence sectors and may make further adjustments. Shrinking the military zone controlled by the American Baghdad-based division, which now extends south to the cities of Najaf and Karbala, has also been discussed as a way to increase the density of American troops in the capital.

Erecting more barricades to section off parts of the city has been proposed by some officers. So has legitimizing some neighborhood watch organizations. That idea cuts against the policy to abolish militias but has been advocated by some military officials as a useful expedient.

Keeping the Army’s Fourth Division in place in Baghdad instead of rotating it home when it is to be replaced by the First Cavalry Division would substantially increase the number of American troops in the city. But there have been no indications that such an idea is under serious consideration.

In the final analysis, American officers say, much is in Iraqi hands. The American military is looking toward the Maliki government to finally disband the militias and reintegrate them into Iraqi society. It is not clear if the Iraqi government will follow through on such a step since some senior Iraqi officials have said the militias cannot be broken up until the Sunni-based insurgency is brought to heel.

American officials also say that the Iraqi government needs to more strictly enforce bans on the possession of illicit weapons and accelerate its reconstruction and job creation programs.

“Part of our problem is that we want this more than they do,” General Thurman said, alluding to the effort to get the Iraqis to put aside sectarian differences and build a unified Iraq. “We need to get people to stop worrying about self and start worrying about Iraq. And that is going to take national unity.”

“Until we get that settled I think we are going to struggle,” he added.

    Stand or Fall in Baghdad: Capital Is Key, NYT, 23.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/world/middleeast/23baghdad.html?hp&ex=1161576000&en=a6e0735c5cbfb247&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Diplomat cites U.S. 'stupidity' in Iraq

Updated 10/22/2006 3:14 AM ET
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any group except al-Qaeda in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment of America's war in Iraq.

"We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," he said.

"We are open to dialogue because we all know that, at the end of the day, the solution to the hell and the killings in Iraq is linked to an effective Iraqi national reconciliation," he said, speaking in Arabic from Washington. "The Iraqi government is convinced of this."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, in Moscow with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, later said that Fernandez disputes the description of his comments.

"What he says is, that is not an accurate reflection of what he said," McCormack said. Asked whether the Bush administration believes that history will show a record of arrogance or stupidity in Iraq, McCormack replied "No."

A senior Bush administration official questioned whether the remarks had been translated correctly. "Those comments obviously don't reflect our position," said the official, who asked not to be identified because a transcript had not been available for review.

The question of negotiations between the United States and insurgency factions has repeatedly surfaced over the past two years, but details have been sketchy. One issue that was often raised in connection with such negotiations was the extent of amnesty the United States and its Iraqi allies were willing to offer to the insurgents if they disarmed and joined the political process.

Fernandez spoke to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera after a man claiming to speak for Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party told the network the United States was seeking a face-saving exodus from Iraq and that insurgents were ready to negotiate but won't lay down arms.

"Abu Mohammed", a pseudonym for the man, appeared to set near impossible conditions for the start of any talks with the Americans, including the return to service of Saddam's armed forces, the annulment of every law adopted since Saddam's ouster, the recognition of insurgent groups as the sole representatives of the Iraqi people and a timetable for a gradual, unconditional withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq.

"The occupier has started to search for a face-saving way out. The resistance, with all its factions, is determined to continue fighting until the enemy is brought down to his knees and sits on the negotiating table or is dealt, with God's help, a humiliating defeat," he said. The man wore a suit and appeared to be in his 40s but his face was concealed.

"There is an element of the farcical in that statement," Fernandez said of Abu Mohammed's comments. "They are very removed from reality."

Still Fernandez warned that failure to pacify the widening sectarian strife in Iraq as well as an enduring insurgency would damage the entire Middle East.

"We are witnessing failure in Iraq and that's not the failure of the United States alone but it is a disaster for the region. Failure in Iraq will be a failure for the United States but a disaster for the region."

Although the actual identity of Abu Mohammed remains unknown, the interview adds to growing indications that Iraq's Sunni insurgents sense the tide may be turning against the United States and the Iraqi government it backs.

Fernandez's comments, on the other hand, join a series of sobering remarks by President Bush and the U.S. military in recent days.

Bush this week conceded that "right now it's tough" for U.S. forces in Iraq and on Saturday met with his top military and security advisers to study new tactics to curb the staggering violence in Iraq. Three U.S. Marines were killed Saturday, making October the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq this year.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said attacks in Baghdad were up 22% in the first three weeks of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan despite a two-month old U.S.-Iraqi drive to crush violence in the Iraqi capital.

On Wednesday, and again on Friday, Sunni insurgents believed to belong to al-Qaeda in Iraq, staged military-like parades in the heart of five towns in the vast and mainly desert province of Anbar, including the provincial capital Ramadi. Some of these parades, in which hooded gunmen paraded with their weapons, took place within striking distance of U.S. forces stationed in nearby bases.

The parades proved to be a propaganda success, with TV footage of Wednesday's parade shown in many parts of the world, a likely embarrassment for the U.S. military as well as the embattled Iraqi government.

    Diplomat cites U.S. 'stupidity' in Iraq, UT, 22.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-21-official-comments_x.htm

Editorial

Blowing in the Wind

October 22, 2006
The New York Times

The generals who told President Bush before the war that Donald Rumsfeld’s shock-and-awe fantasy would not work were not enough to persuade him to change his strategy in Iraq. The rise of the insurgency did not do the trick. Nor did month after month of mounting military and civilian casualties on all sides, the emergence of a near civil war, the collapse of reconstruction efforts or the seeming inability of either Iraqi or American forces to secure contested parts of Iraq, including Baghdad, for any significant period.

So what finally, after all this time, caused Mr. Bush to very publicly consult with his generals to consider a change in tactics in Iraq? The president, who says he never reads political polls, is worried that his party could lose some of its iron grip on power in the Congressional elections next month.

It is not necessarily a bad thing when a politician takes stock of his positions in the teeth of an election. Our elected leaders are expected to heed the will of the American people. And this page has been part of a chorus of pleas for Mr. Bush to come up with a more realistic approach to Iraq.

But the way this sudden change of heart has come about, after months in which Mr. Bush has brushed off all criticism of his policies as either misguided, politically motivated or downright disloyal to America, is maddening. For far too long, the White House has looked upon the war as a tactical puzzle for campaign strategists. The early notion of combining Iraq and the war on terror as an argument for re-electing Republicans robbed the nation of any serious chance for a bipartisan discussion of these life-and-death issues. More recently, the administration seems to have been working under the assumption that its only obligations were to hang on, talk tough and pass the problem on to the next president.

The Iraqi government, which has had a hard time adopting most aspects of American democracy, seems to have eagerly embraced this administration’s lessons on how to deny politically unpleasant realities. Just the other day, The Times reported that the Pentagon had decided there was nothing wrong with a program in which phony “positive news” was planted in Iraqi newspapers. And news reports said that the Iraqi government had decided to stop reporting civilian casualties to the United Nations so there would be no record of the war’s increasing toll on ordinary Iraqis.

The way the Bush team is stage-managing the president’s supposed change of heart about “staying the course” is unfair to the Americans who have taken him at his word that real progress is being made in Iraq — a dwindling but still significant number of people, some of whom have sons and daughters serving in the conflict. It is a disservice to the troops, who were never sent to Iraq in sufficient numbers to protect themselves or the Iraqi people. And it is a disservice to all Americans, who have waited so long for Mr. Bush to act that all that is left are a series of unpleasant choices.

And it is happening in the midst of a particularly ugly, and especially vacuous, election season. There is probably no worse time to begin a serious discussion about Iraq policy than two weeks before a close, bitter election. But now that the discussion has begun, it must continue, as honestly and openly as possible. It is time for the American people to confront all the things that the president never had the guts to tell them about for three and a half years.

    Blowing in the Wind, NYT, 22.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/opinion/22sun1.html

U.S. to Hand Iraq a New Timetable on Security Role

October 22, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — 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.

In a statement issued Saturday night, a White House spokeswoman, Nicole Guillemard, said the Times’s account was “not accurate,” but did not specify what officials found to be inaccurate.

The plan is being formulated by General George W. Casey Jr. and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the top military and civilian officials in Iraq, as well as by Pentagon officials.

General Casey has been in close consultations with the White House as the debate over the way forward in Iraq has intensified in recent weeks. And he and Mr. Khalilzad took part by videoconference on Saturday in a strategy meeting with President Bush and senior administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East, and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We’re trying to come up with ways to get the Iraqis to step up to the plate, to push them along, because the time is coming,” a senior administration official said. “We can’t be there forever.”

Until now, the Bush administration has avoided using threats of deadlines for progress, saying conditions on the ground would determine how quickly Iraq took on greater responsibility for governing the country and how soon American troops could withdraw. CBS News has reported that the Pentagon was studying these questions, but the broad scope of the steps under consideration and the benchmarks that are being contemplated have not been disclosed.

“We’ve been coordinating with the Iraqis for months on a series of measures they can take to assume more control of their country,” the White House statement said, “and to form the basis for a national compact between all communities in Iraq on the way forward.”

The idea of devising specific steps that Mr. Maliki would have to take was described by senior officials who support the plan but would speak only on condition of anonymity. Their willingness to discuss a plan that has not been fully drafted appeared intended at least in part to signal renewed flexibility on the part of the administration, and perhaps also to pre-empt the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, a commission led by James A. Baker III and charged with formulating a new strategy in Iraq. It is expected to issue recommendations late this year or early next year.

The plan also moves the administration closer to an idea advocated by many Democrats, who have called for setting a date for beginning phased withdrawals of American troops from Iraq as a way to compel Iraq’s government to resolve its internal divisions and take on more responsibility.

Frustration is growing among senior American military officers and civilian officials in Iraq and at the Pentagon with Mr. Maliki for his failure to move decisively against Shiite militias and on a wide range of other fronts. Even the implied threat that the administration would reassess its presence in Iraq may not be enough, senior officials said.

In Baghdad, Iraqi leaders have been watching the discussions carefully and expressing uneasiness over the growing political pressure in the United States for a troop pullout.

Tensions between Washington and Baghdad reached a new point on Monday when Mr. Maliki, who took office in May, used a telephone call with Mr. Bush to seek assurances that the United States did not intend to oust him. The White House said after the call that Mr. Bush had pledged full support for the Iraqi.

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.”

But Mr. Rumsfeld was quick to play down expectations: “There’s no doubt in my mind but that some of those projections we won’t make; it will be later, or even earlier in some instances. And in some cases, once we meet the projection, we may have to go back and do it again.”

Mr. Maliki’s government has already announced its own set of benchmarks, including the establishment of a mechanism to disarm private militias. This week, the government removed commanders of the special police commandos and the public order brigade, both widely criticized as being heavily infiltrated by Shiite militias, in the first broad move against the top leadership of Iraq’s unruly special police forces.

But the surge in violence in Baghdad and other places recently has prompted consideration of even more far-reaching steps. An American official said that one proposed plan was to give the Iraqi Army the lead role in domestic security, downgrading the role of police units.

The Bush administration has emphasized building up the police this year so that they can take on the main role in providing security in many cities. The move would be another acknowledgment that the increase in sectarian violence in Baghdad and elsewhere has exposed deep problems with some police units, which have been blamed by Sunnis for carrying out sectarian attacks.

The American strategy in Iraq was thrown into disarray this week by attacks carried out by a Shiite militia in Amara, a town south of Baghdad, and by the acknowledgment from an American military spokesman that the latest plan to secure Baghdad was faltering.

In his radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush emphasized that the administration was staying flexible in its planning and would “make every necessary change to prevail.”

Saying the goal of victory was “unchanging,”” he added: “What is changing are the tactics we use to achieve that goal. Our commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting their approach to stay ahead of the enemy, particularly in Baghdad.”

Officials said they were still debating which benchmarks to include and how long the Iraqis should be given to achieve them. The plan is likely to cover a number of Iraqi ministries, including Finance, Interior and Defense, which have struggled to varying degrees with corruption and with delivering even the most basic services, officials said.

General Casey said this month that he hoped by the end of the year to have six or seven provinces under Iraqi administrative control. Currently, there are only two. But the plan is also likely to include timelines for turning over American-run military bases, an official said.

The decision about how far-reaching to make the blueprint is likely to be influenced by what Mr. Maliki and his ministers say they can reasonably accomplish. But American officials are discussing if they should specify whether Iraqi officials deemed incompetent or corrupt should be replaced, one official said. Officials are also considering a timetable for the Iraqi Defense Ministry to have in place systems for paying, feeding and equipping its units, jobs that are still overseen to a large degree by American advisers and by contractors, some of whom have not performed well, officials said.

    U.S. to Hand Iraq a New Timetable on Security Role, NYT, 22.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/world/middleeast/22policy.html?hp&ex=1161576000&en=9962b4d9a7c93911&ei=5094&partner=homepage

An Old Bush Hand Takes on a New Role on the Iraq War

October 21, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 — For years, James A. Baker III was asked to explain why the first President Bush, whom he served as secretary of state, did not oust Saddam Hussein in 1991 at the end of the Persian Gulf war.

“Guess what?” Mr. Baker says these days. “Nobody asks me that anymore.”

Of course, Mr. Baker is still asked about Iraq. But the questions now focus on what strategies he and the Iraq Study Group, which he helps lead, will propose to deal with the Iraq war that the current President Bush started, taking on a job that his father began but cut short.

In a telephone interview on Friday, Mr. Baker said he was reluctant to take the job as the Republican co-chairman of the bipartisan group when Congressional leaders and members of the Bush administration urged him to do it, suggesting that was what Mr. Bush wanted. “My attitude was that if the president wants me to do this, he’ll look me in the eye and say, ‘Please do it,’ ” Mr. Baker said. “And that’s what he did. The point being, I wasn’t going to get involved in an intramural contest about what the policy on Iraq should or shouldn’t be without his approval.”

Asserting that Mr. Bush has an unwarranted reputation for not listening to dissenting views, Mr. Baker added: “It seems to me that this project demonstrates one heck of a lot of flexibility. He’s very interested in what this panel has to say.”

Mr. Bush has opened himself to the new ideas when the war is presenting some of the problems the elder Mr. Bush and his aides, in their own memoirs, have said they worried about in 1991. They feared that Iraq would be torn by sectarian strife and that the United States would face worldwide resentment and a backlash at home.

Mr. Baker leads the study group with Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic representative from Indiana who is now director of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington. Its work is to be completed in December or January, a timetable set up at the group’s beginning to keep its conclusions out of the current election campaign.

Few outside the group know what it will recommend. Speculation has centered on the possibility of a phased military withdrawal from Iraq; a possible separation of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish areas; some kind of international protectorate to secure Baghdad; and greater involvement in Iraq and the region by Iran and other neighbors.

But as a personal drama, the study group has set off fevered talk in Washington, ranging from the political to the psychological, especially now that Mr. Baker has declared that neither Mr. Bush’s “stay the course” message nor what the White House calls the “cut and run” approach of critics offers a way out.

“There are other options other than just those two,” Mr. Baker said recently on National Public Radio while promoting his new book, “Work Hard, Study and Keep Out of Politics.” His group’s proposals, Mr. Baker added, will probably not please the administration or its foes.

Mr. Baker’s long association with the Bush family has often led to his coming to the rescue in bad situations. But the talk in Washington about the panel’s work is filled with rich historical antiphonies.

In late 1992, for example, he resigned as secretary of state to try to save the first President Bush’s faltering re-election campaign; Mr. Baker was openly reluctant to leave the citadel of diplomacy at the end of the cold war to return to the petty world of political handlers.

Family associates have said that George W. Bush was among those who resented Mr. Baker at the time for his mixed feelings about leaving when his father needed help. Running for president eight years later, the younger Mr. Bush, by then governor of Texas, turned to many longtime Republican strategists, including former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, but not Mr. Baker. “That was O.K. with me,” Mr. Baker wrote in his book.

But in the crisis over the vote count in Florida in 2000, the younger Mr. Bush was prevailed on to reach out to Mr. Baker. People close to the family said Mr. Baker’s brilliant managing of the team of lawyers and political experts in that fight banished the younger man’s doubts about his loyalty.

“My perception is that Baker feels that with Florida he recouped his relationship with the family,” said a friend of Mr. Baker’s. “That’s very important to him personally.”

That friend as well as others who spoke for this article did not want to be quoted discussing Mr. Baker’s relationship with the Bush family, a subject that Mr. Baker himself refuses to talk about.

The friendship between Mr. Baker and the elder Mr. Bush is legendary among their friends. The two men had been friends for years when Mr. Baker’s wife died of breast cancer in 1970, leaving him close to despair. Mr. Bush offered Mr. Baker refuge from his grief by asking him to join his Senate campaign in Texas, though Mr. Baker had to change his registration from Democrat to Republican.

The Senate campaign failed, and Mr. Baker went on to more failures and successes: managing Mr. Bush’s first presidential run in 1980, serving as President Reagan’s chief of staff and treasury secretary, then as manager of Mr. Bush’s successful White House campaign in 1988 and later as Mr. Bush’s secretary of state.

For some time, Mr. Baker now acknowledges, he shared the limited regard that many people had of George W. Bush. Like others, he attributes Mr. Bush’s eventual success to the discipline and Christian faith that led him to turn his life around in his 40’s. In his book, Mr. Baker said he has tremendous admiration for the current president.

But reading between the lines, it seems that admiration may not extend to others in the Bush administration.

The Iraq Study Group, for example, may not recommend a change of personnel in the administration along with a change of course, but many doubt that those associated with the current approach could carry out a new one.

It is well known that Mr. Baker is not a great fan of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Baker said in his book that Mr. Rumsfeld “engineered” the elder Mr. Bush out of contention as a vice-presidential candidate under President Ford in 1976.

Mr. Baker wrote of the “costly mistakes” of the war, including the lack of adequate troops and the dismantling of the Iraqi Army. But he attributed those failings to the Defense Department, not the White House.

The one hallmark of Mr. Baker’s efforts, associates said, is that he would not undertake a project destined to sit on a shelf and be ignored. “Jim Baker knows that Iraq is a mess,” said Dennis B. Ross, the longtime Middle East envoy who remains a close adviser to Mr. Baker. “But this is not going to be an academic exercise. He’s going to try to come up with a solution that also allows him to persuade the president that this is the right way to go.”

If there is an analogy to Mr. Baker’s enterprise, it could be the Social Security commission of the early 1980’s under President Reagan. There was an impasse between Mr. Reagan and House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., the Democratic lion and opponent of Mr. Reagan’s desire to overhaul the system.

Alan Greenspan, the retired chairman of the commission, recalled in an interview that he had remained in constant touch with Mr. Baker, then White House chief of staff, while the commission’s top Democrat was in constant touch with Mr. O’Neill.

The eventual compromise preserved the Social Security system, but subjected benefits of the wealthy to taxation.

“Jim is one of the best negotiators I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Greenspan said. “Were he not involved in the Social Security commission, I seriously question whether we could have pulled it off.”

    An Old Bush Hand Takes on a New Role on the Iraq War, NYT, 21.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/world/middleeast/21baker.html


 

 U.S. Says Violence in Baghdad Rises, Foiling Campaign        NYT        20.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

CLAIBORNE PARISH, La., Oct.18: Dawn Bowman received an American flag during graveside services for her husband,
Lance Cpl. Jon Eric Bowman, at Sharon Cemetery. Bowman was killed in Iraq on Oct. 9.

Greg Pearson/Associated Press        NYT

 U.S. Says Violence in Baghdad Rises, Foiling Campaign        NYT        20.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

BAQUBA, Oct. 18: In the restive city of Baquba, north of Baghdad,
a man was shot to death, and his son mourned at the morgue

Helmiy al-Azawi/Reuters

 U.S. Says Violence in Baghdad Rises, Foiling Campaign        NYT        20.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Kirkuk, Oct.15: Neighbors visited 6-year-old Moimen Yasir at a hospital in Kirkuk after his immediate family was killed in a car bombing.

Yahya Ahmed/Associated Press

 U.S. Says Violence in Baghdad Rises, Foiling Campaign        NYT        20.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin








 

U.S. Says Violence in Baghdad Rises, Foiling Campaign

October 20, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 19 — The United States military command in Iraq acknowledged on Thursday that its 12-week-old campaign to win back control of Baghdad from sectarian death squads and insurgents had failed to reduce violence across the city. A spokesman for the command said intensive discussions were under way between American and Iraqi officials on ways to “refocus” the effort, which American officials have placed at the heart of their war strategy.

In one of the most somber assessments of the war by American commanders, a statement read by the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the campaign had been marked by increasing attacks on American troops and a spike in combat deaths. Attacks soared by 22 percent, he said, during the first three weeks of Ramadan, the holy month now nearing its end. With three new combat deaths announced on Thursday, the number of American troops who have lost their lives in October rose to 73, representing one of the sharpest surges in military casualties in the past two years.

General Caldwell said American troops were being forced to return to neighborhoods, like Dora in southwestern Baghdad, that they had sealed off and cleared as part of the security campaign because “extremists” fighting back had sent sectarian violence soaring there. The security plan sent heavy deployments of American troops into troubled neighborhoods, reversing the previous policy, which was to allow Iraqi troops to police the capital.

“The violence is indeed disheartening,” General Caldwell said. While the sweeps have contained violence in some areas, over all, he said, the campaign to gain control of the city “has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence.” As a result, he said, “We are working very closely with the government of Iraq to determine how to best refocus our efforts.”

President Bush, who ordered the rearrangement of troops to begin the campaign, is now left with only a handful of tough and politically unattractive options.

The general’s remarks, unusual for their candor and unvarnished portrayal of bad news, appeared to mark a new setback for the American military effort. Stark new videotape broadcast on Thursday by Al Jazeera from Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 80 miles west of Baghdad, showed heavily armed insurgents taking over a busy city street in broad daylight to celebrate the proclamation by their leaders of an Islamic state in wide areas of Iraq’s Sunni heartland. There was no sign of any attempt to intervene by the heavy concentration of American and Iraqi troops in the city. The Iraqi government said the demonstrators fled after 15 minutes.

The insurgents’ ability to strike across wide areas of the country was demonstrated anew on Thursday in the northern oil city of Mosul, when suicide bombers attacked a police station and an American convoy, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens more, mostly civilians, a hospital official said.

In the city of Diyala, 40 miles north of Baghdad, a bomb near a market killed 10 people and injured 20 others, an Interior Ministry official said. In Baghdad, the police reported the discovery of 27 bodies on Thursday.

The American command’s statement on the faltering campaign signified a new and jarring stage in 18 months of efforts to bring peace to Baghdad, with one military plan succeeding another, and none achieving more than a temporary decline in the violence that has made Baghdad the most bloody theater of the war. Senior officers have spoken of the campaign in “make or break” terms, saying that there would be little hope of prevailing in the wider war if the bid to retake Baghdad’s streets failed.

General Caldwell gave little hint of what changes the American command might make in the Baghdad operation. Other senior American military officials who have discussed the Baghdad operation with reporters in recent days have suggested that they have no fundamental reworking of the plan in mind; rather, they say, they plan to continue with it for many months, adjusting as conditions dictate.

Across Baghdad, as in other troubled areas of Iraq that American forces have tried to “clear and hold,” military officials have struggled to deal with insurgents simply melting away, only to return stronger after the offensives wound down. Commanders say the challenge will be not only to clear and hold, but also to “build,” meaning that the cleared areas, with Iraqi policing after the troops withdraw, will benefit from infrastructure investment as part of a plan to cut the militants’ support.

General Caldwell suggested that the increased American troop presence had acted as a spur to the surge in attacks. The general said the Iraq insurgents were aiming at affecting American public opinion in an election year.

“It’s no coincidence that the surge in attacks against coalition forces and the subsequent increase in U.S. casualties coincide with our increased presence in the streets of Baghdad and the run-up to the American midterm elections,” the general said. “The enemy knows that killing innocent people and Americans will garner headlines and create a sense of frustration.”

A hint that changes in the Baghdad operation were afoot came three weeks ago, when the neighborhood sweeps were halted with large areas of the city untouched, including strongholds of Sunni and Shiite militants like Mansour, in western Baghdad, and Sadr City in the east. Last week, Mr. Bush told reporters he was open to modifying the approach in Iraq “if it’s not working.” Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, made similar comments.

The American military has said that it has committed 15,600 troops to the operation — compared with 9,600 from the Iraqi Army — with 30,000 Iraqi policemen serving in support roles. American troops have led the 95,000 house searches conducted in the campaign, and General Caldwell said that their visibility had been accompanied by a shift in the pattern of insurgent attacks, with a sharp rise in strikes against American troops and attacks on civilian targets staying more or less constant.

“We find the insurgent elements, the extremists, are in fact punching back hard,” he said. “They’re trying to get back into those areas,” the general said. “We’re constantly going back in and doing clearing operations again.”

Perhaps the most striking element in the news conference was General Caldwell’s candor. Although American commanders have struck a generally sober tone in the past year, they have been careful not to hint in public at the increasingly gloomy view that some, at least, have taken in private. In recent weeks, some senior officers have voiced growing exasperation at background briefings for reporters, particularly when discussing the ineffectiveness, dithering and corruption, as they have termed it, in the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the prime minister’s failure to act effectively on his pledge to rein in the Shiite militias that American commanders now see as the main source of instability.

General Caldwell came to the Baghdad spokesman’s job after commanding the 82nd Airborne Division in its relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina last year, and he has struck a generally upbeat tone in his briefings since arriving here this spring. But on Thursday, he appeared unusually subdued. He waved off a question suggesting that the situation in Baghdad had similarities to the period of the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, saying, “We’re getting far beyond my realm to start making analogies to the Vietnam War.”

Then he added: “But I can tell you that we’re obviously very concerned about what we’re seeing in the city. We’re taking a lot of time to go back and look at the whole Baghdad security plan.”

He went on: “Everything stays very dynamic in this type of environment, and it’s clear that the conditions under which we started are probably not the same today. And so it does require some modifications of the plan.”

American commanders who have discussed the Baghdad operation with reporters in recent days have spoken of having limited options as they seek for ways to make the campaign more effective. One is to increase the number of Iraqi troops deployed to the sweeps. Of six Iraqi battalions that were promised when the operation began, these commanders said, only two have been deployed. The commanders also noted that assessments of the operation might improve after November, when a phase of the plan involving economic reconstruction in the “cleared” areas would begin.

The strategy known as “clear, hold and build” is loosely patterned on a similar effort in Vietnam after the Tet offensive, which was credited with helping turn the tide in that war against the Communist insurgents in the early 1970’s, before the withdrawal of American troops and a cutoff in Congressional financing for the war hastened the final Communist victory. American commanders in Iraq say that the Baghdad campaign has so far covered only the “clear” and “hold” phases, and that the rebuilding of infrastructure in cleared Baghdad neighborhoods, especially restoring electricity, sewage and clinics, could help win popular support that would aid in tracking down the death squads and insurgents.

Reporting was contributed by Michael R. Gordon, Michael Luo and Kirk Semple from Baghdad and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Mosul.

    U.S. Says Violence in Baghdad Rises, Foiling Campaign, NYT, 20.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

News Analysis

Bush Faces a Battery of Ugly Choices on War

October 20, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 — The acknowledgment by the United States Army spokesman in Iraq that the latest plan to secure Baghdad has faltered leaves President Bush with some of the ugliest choices he has yet faced in the war.

He can once again order a rearrangement of American forces inside the country, as he did in August, when American commanders declared that newly trained Iraqi forces would “clear and hold” neighborhoods with backup support from redeployed American forces. That strategy collapsed within a month, frequently forcing the Americans to take the lead, making them prime targets.

There is no assurance, though, that another redeployment of those forces will reduce the casualty rate, which has been unusually high in recent weeks, senior military and administration officials say. The toll comes just before midterm elections, in which even many of his own party have given up arguing that progress is being made or that the killing will soon slow.

Or Mr. Bush can reassess the strategy itself, perhaps listening to those advisers — including some members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, the advisory commission charged with coming up with new strategies for Iraq — who say that he needs to redefine the “victory” that he again on Thursday declared was his goal.

One official providing advice to the president noted on Thursday that while Mr. Bush still insists his goal is an Iraq that “can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself,” he has already dropped most references to creating a flourishing democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

Or, he could take the advice of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is expected to run to replace him in two years, who argues in favor of pouring more troops into Iraq, an option one senior administration official said recently might make sense but could “cause the bottom to fall out” of public support.

But whatever choices he makes — probably not until after the Nov. 7 election, and perhaps not until the bipartisan group issues its report — they will be forced by a series of events, in Iraq and at home, that now seems largely out of Mr. Bush’s control, in Iraq and at home.

Every day, administration and Pentagon officials fume — privately, to avoid the ire of the White House — about frustrations with Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, for not confronting the country’s Shiite militias, meaning that there is no end to the daily cycle of attack and reprisals. Mr. Bush finds himself increasingly unable to make a convincing argument that, behind the daily toll in American lives, the Maliki government is making measurable progress, or even that the problems in Iraq are subject to a military solution.

It is a vexing quandary that military experts say they doubt that any study group — even the blue-ribbon group assembled under former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Representative Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana — can cut its way through.

At the Pentagon, several examinations of the current approach in Iraq are under way, including an effort ordered by Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has asked the Army and the other services to identify officers who have recently returned from Iraq and to ask them to offer their views to the joint staff about whether adjustments in tactics or strategy are necessary, two military officials said.

“We are not able to project sufficient coalition and Iraqi forces to properly execute the strategy” of clearing, holding and rebuilding Baghdad and other areas of insurgents and hostile militias, said another veteran, retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff. “General Pace is doing the right thing by reassessing our entire strategy.”

Mr. Bush says his resolve to win is unshaken. But a few of his aides were wondering aloud why Mr. Bush, asked to respond to a column by Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times that compared the Ramadan attacks in Iraq to the 1968 Tet offensive, said the comparison “could be right.”

“There’s certainly a stepped up level of violence, and we’re heading into an election,” he told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Wednesday. “George, my gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict enough damage that we would leave.”

For now there is no talk of leaving. But there is plenty of talk about pulling back.

“The Iraq situation is not winnable in any real sense of the word ‘winnable,’ ” Richard N. Haass, the former chief of the policy planning operations in the State Department during Mr. Bush’s first term, told reporters on Thursday. Privately, Pentagon strategists and some administration officials note that President Bush has talked often in recent months of changing his tactics, but not his strategy.

“Tactics are something you can turn on a dime,” said Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, and an Army veteran with close ties to the military. “Strategy takes time, and that’s the question. Do we have time for a new strategy?”

While members of the Iraq Strategy Group are cagey about the recommendations they are drafting, several say that Mr. Baker — who is in regular contact with Mr. Bush — is seeking to move away from Mr. Bush’s strategy of withdrawing Americans when the Iraqis are ready to replace them and toward one that sets a schedule.

“Jim’s problem is that he wants a way to make clear to Maliki that we’re leaving, but without signaling to the Shia and the Sunni that if they bide their time, they can battle it out for Iraq,” said one longtime national security expert who recently testified in front of the study group. “How do you do that? Got me.”

Then there is the recurring question whether a new strategy requires the exit of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Privately some Republicans say that the combination of a poor showing in next month’s midterm elections and the worsening violence could ultimately force Mr. Rumsfeld’s departure. Pentagon aides say Mr. Rumsfeld is not planning on going anywhere. “He serves at the pleasure of the president and has no intention to step down,” said Eric Ruff, the Pentagon press secretary. And, officially, the White House says it has no intention of changing its strategy, either. Only its tactics.

    Bush Faces a Battery of Ugly Choices on War, NYT, 20.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/world/middleeast/20policy.html?hp&ex=1161403200&en=b6f1cc1a41a64a4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

United States numb to Iraq troop deaths: experts

Fri Oct 20, 2006 9:30 PM ET
Reuters
By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a small box titled "Names of the Dead" on page 10, The New York Times recorded the passing of Cpt. Mark Paine this week, who died after a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in Iraq.

His local California newspaper, the Contra Costa Times, ran more than 700 words on Paine's death, including interviews with his mother, father and even his old Scoutmaster, while the San Francisco Chronicle ran a 500-word obituary.

This local coverage of U.S. military deaths "actually has a bigger affect on public opinion than the overall trends," said Matt Baum, an associate professor of politics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

But with the U.S. military death toll hitting 2,787 on Friday, analysts said even local media coverage struggles to overcome the numbing affect of the steady flow of deaths.

"In Iraq, certainly while we were losing relatively small numbers of soldiers early on, I think that was a huge shock," said Max Boot, a senior fellow of national security studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

"But now that it's kind of accumulated it doesn't have as much of a shock value. This is reminiscent of (Soviet dictator Joseph) Stalin's phrase about how 'one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.' There's some truth to that."

Boot and Baum both said threshold moments -- like the U.S. death toll reaching a key figure -- garner the greatest media coverage, but the spotlight on Iraq was likely to burn a little brighter now because of the impending U.S. congressional elections on November 7.

"You have got a heated election campaign underway and you are going to have lots of candidates highlighting it again and again and again," Baum said. "You are going to have a huge echo chamber effect that you wouldn't have in other months."

U.S. PUBLIC NUMB

An editorial in The Chicago Tribune newspaper on Friday responded to concerns from readers about why the newspaper had stopped writing about every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.

"As fighting in Iraq increased, the competition for space to cover the war news also increased. Soldier obituary/stories were often delayed and then they began to back up until they were weeks and even months behind," the editorial said.

The newspaper said it still records deaths of soldiers from Illinois and the region.

October is shaping up to be one of the deadliest months for U.S. forces in Iraq with 73 troops killed.

"I think it is true that as the numbers rise then it becomes less of a special case, we do become somewhat numb to it," said Paul Levinson, chair of the Fordham University Department of Communication and Media Studies.

Boot said the U.S. deaths in Iraq were not having the same impact on society as the Vietnam War casualties because the U.S. forces in Iraq are all volunteers, unlike many of the troops in Vietnam who were drafted.

"So it had more of an impact across all of society, whereas the impact here is more isolated because so many of the soldiers come from military communities which are clustered in a handful of states," he said.

The number of U.S. forces killed in Vietnam and Korea were also much higher. The Pentagon puts the number killed in from 1964-1973 at over 58,000, and in the Korea War from 1950-1953, at over 36,000.

Yahya Kamalipour, head of the communications department at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said that if the

media showed footage of the actual U.S. military deaths in Iraq then it would reduce some of the public numbness.

"Whether we are talking about the U.S. casualties, Iraqi casualties, or Afghanis. We are not thinking of them, whoever they are, as people -- they are faceless, they are just simply numbers and that is troublesome," he said.

    United States numb to Iraq troop deaths: experts, R, 20.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-21T012951Z_01_N20250328_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-MEDIA-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Bush Accepts Iraq-Vietnam Comparison

George Stephanopoulos Interviews President Bush on Iraq, the Midterms and His Legacy

18.10.2006
By ED O'KEEFE
ABC News

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2006 — - President Bush said in a one-on-one interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that a newspaper column comparing the current fighting in Iraq to the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, which was widely seen as the turning point in that war, might be accurate.

Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times today that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.

"He could be right," the president said, before adding, "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."

"George, my gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict enough damage that we'd leave," Bush said. "And the leaders of al Qaeda have made that very clear. Look, here's how I view it. First of all, al Qaeda is still very active in Iraq. They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment sectarian violence. They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause government to withdraw."

Bush said he could not imagine any circumstances under which all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Iraq before the end of his presidency.

"You mean every single troop out? No," he told Stephanopoulos.

Bush also had some tough words for Democrats, saying that pulling troops from Iraq would be the equivalent of surrender.

"If we were to leave before the job is done, in my judgment, the al Qaeda would find a safe haven from which to attack. This is exactly what they said," Bush said. The president insisted he was not disparaging his opponents.

"It's not questioning their patriotism. I think it's questioning their judgment," he said.

When asked whether the midterm elections are a referendum on Iraq, the President replied, "I think they're a referendum, from my perspective, which is kind of like your perspective, which is the Washington perspective, based upon: who best to secure this country from further attack and who best to help this economy continue to grow. The truth of the matter is, as you well know, most elections are very local elections. Sometimes those issues are salient, but sometimes there's other issues at the local level as well."

"I'm not on the ballot," Bush said. "This set of elections is much different from a presidential election year."

Stephanopoulos pointed out that 72 Democrats running for the House had used Bush in their campaign ads.

"Are they saying good things?" Bush joked. "Look, maybe that strategy will work; maybe it won't work. I've always found that when a person goes in to vote, they're going to want to know what that person's going to do. What is the plan for a candidate on Iraq? What do they believe?"

Bush said he reads "every casualty."

"The hardest part of the presidency is to meet with families who've lost a loved one," he said.

October is shaping up to be one of the bloodiest months in Iraq since the war began, and the president assessed the situation somberly: "I'm patient. I'm not patient forever. But I recognize the degree of difficulty of the task, and therefore, say to the American people, we won't cut and run."

On the issue of North Korea, said bluntly that if the rogue nation sold nuclear missiles to Iran or al Qaeda, "They'd be held to account."

Stephanopoulos noted that after last week's latest nuclear missile test out of North Korea, the president referred to the country as a "grave threat," a phrase Bush has used only once during his six years in office, in reference to Iraq before the U.S. invasion of that country. He asked the president what he means by that phrase now.

"Well, time they find out, George," Bush said. "One of the things that's important for these world leaders to hear is, you know, we will use means necessary to hold them to account.

"If we get intelligence that they're about to transfer a nuclear weapon, we would stop the transfer, and we would deal with the ships that were taking the -- or the airplane that was dealing with taking the material to somebody," he said.

"My point is that I want the leader to understand -- the leader of North Korea to understand that he'll be held to account," Bush said. "Just like he's being held to account now for having run a test."

Bush also suggested that China may be more committed to the recent round of U.N. sanctions than it has let on in public statements.

"I'm getting a little different picture from Condi [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice]," he said. "They don't particularly want to board ships. But, on the other hand, if there's good intelligence, they'll work with us on that intelligence. They're inspecting cargoes coming across their border."

He insisted China was not "half committed" to the sanctions.

Moving away from the controversial issues likely to play a critical role in the 2006 midterms, Stephanopoulos asked the two-term incumbent which personal quality is going to be important for the next president.

"Determination and compassion," Bush said. When asked what advice he might have for his successor, Bush told ABC News, "Stand on principle."

    Bush Accepts Iraq-Vietnam Comparison, ABC News, 18.10.2006, http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2583579&page=1

U.S. toll in Iraq soars as fight for city rages        UT        18.10.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-18-iraq-troops_x.htm

U.S. toll in Iraq soars as fight for city rages

Updated 10/18/2006 11:50 PM ET
USA Today
By Rick Jervis and Tom Vanden Brook

A U.S. and Iraqi offensive to wrest control of Baghdad from insurgents and sectarian death squads is producing some of the most intense fighting of the war and a spike in American deaths.

The U.S. command reported Wednesday that 10 American troops had been killed the day before in Iraq, making it one of the deadliest days for U.S. forces this year. Another soldier was killed Wednesday, bringing the death toll this month to 70.

At least a third of the recent fatalities happened in Baghdad. At the current pace, October would be the deadliest month since November 2004 when 137 troops died.

Much of the violence in the capital is religious warfare, putting U.S. forces in a sensitive position between warring factions.

"It's been a tough month," said Col. James Pasquarette, a brigade commander headquartered at this base about 12 miles north of Baghdad. "We haven't had this sectarian issue in the past. It's more intense than in past years."

Sectarian death squads don't typically target U.S. convoys, said Maj. Brandon Newton, with the 7th Squadron, 10th Calvary Regiment near Baghdad.

But U.S. patrols are dispatched to intervene between warring sects, sometimes parking themselves at night between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods and exposing their patrols to roadside bombs, he said.

"We're fighting some bad people," he said.

After going five months without a death, the squadron lost eight soldiers this month, said Lt. Col. David Thompson, the squadron's commander.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a spokesman for coalition troops in Baghdad, said U.S. and Iraqi forces are aggressively clearing areas of the city.

"We're very successful right now, and the enemy is pushing back," Withington said.

About 15,000 coalition troops and 45,000 Iraqi police and soldiers are engaged in the Baghdad fight.

Some of the increased violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq is related to the holy month of Ramadan, when religious fervor is high.

The U.S. military said attacks this year have increased 20% during the holy month compared with the weeks leading up to Ramadan. Ramadan ends this weekend.

In a continuing effort to find a political solution to the religious warfare, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki consulted Wednesday with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, an influential Shiite spiritual leader, and Muqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite cleric, the Associated Press reported.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the spike in deaths would not make President Bush reconsider his options in Iraq.

"His strategy is to win. The president understands not only the difficulty of it, but he grieves for the people who have served with valor," Snow said.

Soldiers at a forward operating base north of Baghdad said the deaths are a sobering reminder of the dangers that loom for them outside the razor-wire confines of their base.

"It hurts. It hurts deeply," said Staff Sgt. John Calhoun, 41.

"We're the only family we all have out here. And when we lose our brothers, it hurts."

Vanden Brook reported from McLean, Va.

    U.S. toll in Iraq soars as fight for city rages, UT, 18.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-18-iraq-troops_x.htm

Bush Reassures Iraqi That There Is No Timetable for Withdrawal

October 17, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — President Bush reassured Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq on Monday that he would not set a timetable for withdrawal of American troops and would continue to support the prime minister, despite recent reports that military officials and some Republican lawmakers were dissatisfied with the Iraqi government’s performance.

The White House also suggested that it would not necessarily accept the recommendations of an independent commission reviewing Iraq policy. “We’re not going to outsource the business of handling the war in Iraq,” said Mr. Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow.

The president’s remarks to Mr. Maliki came during a 15-minute telephone conversation, Mr. Snow said. During the call, initiated by Mr. Bush, Mr. Maliki expressed concern about news reports that there would be an attempt to replace him if he was unable to assert control over Iraq within two months, Mr. Snow said.

“There was a rumor that there were going to be attempts to replace him if certain things don’t happen in two months,” Mr. Snow said. “And the president said, the rumors are not true; we support you.”

Mr. Maliki, he said, “assured the president that he is and will continue making tough decisions” to get rid of the militias that are responsible for sectarian violence in Iraq.

The exchange reflects the delicate line the White House is walking as it tries to shore up the Maliki government while reassuring an increasingly skittish American public that it remains flexible in its approach to the war.

Senior American military officials have been warning that time is growing short for Iraq to root out militias inside and outside the government. Leading Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, have also been expressing concern.

Mr. Warner said recently that he thought Iraq was “drifting sideways,” and Mr. Hagel said Sunday that he agreed. Mr. Snow, asked Monday if the president was confident that the Maliki government was doing everything in its power to get rid of the militias, was equivocal.

“There is more to be done,” Mr. Snow said. “There has to be more to be done. The violence is absolutely unacceptable.”

A commission led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III is reviewing the president’s Iraq policy, and Mr. Baker has indicated that he will recommend a change in course. The panel’s findings are due after the election, and Mr. Bush has said he looks forward to them, although Mr. Snow seemed to push back against the idea that the White House would adopt the recommendations.

“We’ll have to see what they say,” he said. “We will read it with interest.”

The panel has not yet reached any conclusions, its co-chairman, Lee Hamilton, said in an interview on Monday.

Recent news reports have suggested the panel is weighing two options. One would emphasize stability in Iraq, while abandoning the goal of establishing democracy there; the other emphasizes a phased withdrawal of soldiers.

“We have literally scores of recommendations in front of us, and those are only two,” Mr. Hamilton said. Asked about Mr. Snow’s remarks, he said, “If he said that they’re going to take a close look at it, we’re pleased with that.”

    Bush Reassures Iraqi That There Is No Timetable for Withdrawal, NYT, 17.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/world/middleeast/17prexy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

5 Americans Killed in Iraq, Bringing Month’s Toll to 53

October 16, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Oct. 15 — Two marines were killed by insurgents in Anbar Province on Sunday, the American military command said, and three American soldiers died a day earlier in a bombing in southern Baghdad, bringing the total of American troop deaths in Iraq this month to at least 53, an extraordinarily high midmonth tally.

At the current rate of American troop deaths, almost four a day, October is on track to be the third-deadliest month of the entire conflict for the military, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent Web site that tracks war-related casualties. The two most deadly months coincided with major American offensives against entrenched guerrilla fighters.

The rise now, in spite of improvements in body and vehicle armor, followed a decision by commanders to increase the number of American troops patrolling Baghdad in an effort to quell the sectarian violence that has engulfed the city.

Attacks continued against government and civilian targets as well on Sunday. A series of seven bombings within a few hours struck in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 17 people and wounding at least 73, according to police officials.

Just last year, commanders began cutting back on American patrols in Baghdad in an effort to give Iraqi forces more responsibility. But the escalating violence forced them to reverse the strategy in late July, and thousands of American troops were shifted to Baghdad. Plans for a major troop withdrawal from the country by the end of the year were canceled.

A cornerstone of the new approach has been house-to-house sweeps of the capital’s most troubled areas, intended to ferret out militia networks, fighters and armaments. To date, the Americans, with Iraqi assistance, have swept eight districts.

Simultaneously, the American and Iraqi militaries have more aggressively pursued Shiite death squads, including elements of the Mahdi Army, the militia that loosely answers to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Since the neighborhood sweeps started at the beginning of August, guerrilla attacks — against military and civilian targets alike — have risen about 23 percent across the capital, according to American military statistics.

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a senior military spokesman here, directly attributed the rise in American deaths to the new security strategy.

“We are out more aggressively engaged in the city at this point than we were just a month ago,” he said at a news conference last Thursday. “Coalition forces are being much more active in going out and looking for these folks, these death squads and elements that are associated with the sectarian violence.”

According to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, which collates statistics distributed in Pentagon news releases, the number of American deaths in Baghdad has sharply increased since the American-led crackdown began in early August.

That month, 20 American forces died in or near the capital, up from 12 in July and 15 in June. The number rose again last month, to 29.

The number of troops wounded in action, a figure that usually parallels the number of fatalities, has also increased drastically. From Sept. 28 to Oct. 11, 427 American troops were wounded, one of the worst two-week stretches of the war, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. In all of September, 776 troops were wounded, the fourth-highest monthly total since the American invasion, according to the Web site.

As fighting has risen to new levels in Baghdad, the capital, it has also continued unabated in Anbar Province, the stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency. At least 21 Americans have died there this month, and 60 over the past two months. At the same time, forces in the region have been stretched as more troops have been sent to Baghdad.

The deadliest months for American troops since the beginning of the war have been associated with major offensives.

Some 137 American troops died in November 2004, the same month as the second siege of Falluja, where the Americans battled Sunni Arab rebels. In April 2004, a bloody month with the first siege of Falluja and pitched battles between the Americans and Mr. Sadr’s militia in Najaf, 135 American troops died.

In contrast, the military has not conducted any major operations this month. The military has not initiated a new urban cordon-and-search operation for more than two weeks and has instead focused on patrolling the areas already swept, officials say.

In the multiple car bombings in Kirkuk, a city bitterly contested by several ethnic and religious groups, three suicide car bombers, including one driving a van packed with chickens and explosives, detonated their payloads throughout the city, killing 13 people and wounding at least 34, according to Maj. Gen. Turhan Yusuf, chief of the Kirkuk Police Department. One blew himself up near a girls’ academy, killing two students.

Four other bombs, including two unattended car bombs, killed four civilians and wounded at least 19 others, police officials said. Most of the bombs were apparently directed at Iraqi security forces.

In Baghdad on Sunday, the authorities recovered at least 30 bodies dumped around the city, an Interior Ministry official said.

Two bombs exploded near the convoy of the chief of financial affairs for the Interior Ministry, killing seven people, though the administrator escaped unscathed, the ministry official said. Another bomb exploded in the Amel neighborhood in Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding two others, the official said.

In Tal Afar, near Mosul, a suicide bomber wrapped in explosives walked into a local market and detonated himself near a police checkpoint, killing a child and wounding five other people, including two police officers, hospital and police officials said.

In Mosul, five members of a family were killed when gunmen burst into their home and opened fire, officials said, and gunmen assassinated Raad al-Haiali, a provincial official and a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group.

The tribunal trying Saddam Hussein and his associates said Sunday that it was postponing the date for verdicts from Monday, as originally planned, to Nov. 5, according to a senior court official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Other court officials have said in recent days that a major reason for the delay is that after nine months of hearings, the five judges in the case have failed to reach agreement on a sentence for Mr. Hussein and appeared to be undecided between a death sentence for him or a penalty of life imprisonment.

Mr. Hussein, 68, faces a possible sentence of death by hanging for his role in the execution of 148 men and boys from the mostly Shiite town of Dujail after an assassination attempt against him in 1982.

John F. Burns and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Kirkuk and Mosul.

    5 Americans Killed in Iraq, Bringing Month’s Toll to 53, NYT, 15.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html?hp&ex=1161057600&en=7a79610c3b422966&ei=5094&partner=homepage

American Album

A Soldier Comes Home to Alaska, Too Early and Yet Too Late

October 16, 2006
The New York Times
By CHARLIE LeDUFF

BARROW, Alaska — When the soldiers from the frozen tundra shipped out for the burning sands of Iraq, Staff Sgt. Billy Brown promised the women that he’d bring their men back alive.

But when Sergeant Brown returned just two weeks later, he didn’t bring his men at all. He came with a funeral detail. He came cargo, in a silver coffin with wood handles cloaked in an American flag. He is believed to be the first Eskimo killed because of this war. He was 54.

Sergeant Brown, an Alaska national guardsman, never got to a battlefield. He was killed when a tractor-trailer slammed into the back of his Humvee late in July while he was on training maneuvers at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

His death rattled this town of 4,200, mostly Inupiaq Eskimos, located 500 roadless miles from anywhere and 350 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Finally, tangibly, the war has reached one of the most isolated corners of the country.

“Until now the war was more like a television show,” said Edward S. Itta, mayor of the North Slope Borough, in which Barrow lies, and a friend of Sergeant Brown’s. “You don’t question the war until it touches you. Only then, when a man like Billy, an important man to us, comes home dead, does the question become clear. We fight. But to what end? What’s in it for my grandchildren?”

During the cold war, the battle line was drawn right here on the North Slope, with the Soviets skulking just across the Bering Strait. Most Alaska Guard members stayed in the state, protecting the home front.

But the world has changed. For this war, 670 Guard members have been called up from rural Alaska, its largest foreign deployment ever. The Alaska Guard estimates that one-third of its members are Eskimo, so most likely a third of those deployed are indigenous men, officials say, though the military does not keep official racial records of this type.

Among the most skilled was Staff Sergeant Brown, a 29-year veteran of the Guard and an Arctic survival specialist.

“He could have retired years ago,” said his niece Audrey Saganna. But he volunteered for the mission so other soldiers who had served multiple tours in Iraq could get a rest, she said.

The funeral of William Franklin Brown lasted many hours, Eskimo tradition holding that anyone who wanted to speak could do so. It took 20 men an entire day to dig his grave through the permafrost. Tribal leaders decided he should be buried in the Elders Cemetery, a great honor here. His grave is marked like the others, with a simple wooden cross. He is buried next to his father.

Born in the mining town of Lost River on the Seward Peninsula in western Alaska, Sergeant Brown grew up in Barrow, one of 18 brothers and sisters. Whaling is the centerpiece of the culture and Sergeant Brown worked as an oarsman on one crew and was a walrus and polar bear hunter. He worked for a spell at the post office, was elected to the City Council and eventually settled in as the shipping and receiving manager at the local hospital.

By virtue of his hospital job, Sergeant Brown was in attendance when nearly every Barrow child was born. He did not do this out of obligation, his people said, but because he was proud to be Inupiaq.

He never married and fathered no children of his own, but Sergeant Brown was an uncle and a counselor to dozens of struggling young men, and by native tradition, under which age is respected and revered, he was an uncle to hundreds more.

The call-up has affected Eskimo villages all across the state, some of the most remote and rugged corners of this country. The men come from places like Kongiganak, Emmonak and Scammon Bay, where winter survival depends on the summer harvest of otter, moose, geese, fish and whale. With the men gone, the long, brutal winter is expected to be even more bitter for those they’ve left behind.

Barrow is different from the Eskimo villages. Oil revenues from Prudhoe Bay have made it something of a city. There are flush toilets and smokestacks and a Japanese restaurant. City ways have brought city problems. Methamphetamines and alcohol are afflictions. The native language is spoken less and less. Satellite television is the entertainment of choice, and fewer young people hunt nowadays. Residents increasingly rely on the grocery store freezer rather than the winter larder.

Still, the place is poor. Broken windows are stuffed with newspapers. Houses are weather-beaten affairs of wood on stilts with metal roofs, perpetually heated with natural gas from a field off in the muskeg. Billy Brown’s was spare and unpainted, well kept with few adornments. He lived next to his father.

The sun in Barrow disappears from Nov. 18 until Jan. 24, and the temperature can reach 99 below. The roads are gravel, because concrete disintegrates in the cold. The government, financed by oil revenues, is the main industry and because of plentiful natural gas, heating bills are only $200 a month in the dead of winter. Milk is $10 a gallon. Gasoline is $4. “Never Forget” placards are displayed in house windows and on car bumpers, a reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And now, just as much, a reference to Billy Brown.

Sergeant Brown’s hometown is not a hissing coal-bed of antiwar activism, yet with his death the doubts began to surface.

“Is it going so badly in the Middle East that the military has to scrape up a few hundred Eskimos and send them to the desert?” asked David Leavitt, a friend, who had butchered caribou hanging from his porch balustrade, drying in the Arctic sun. “I mean he wanted to go, but what’s the purpose? We lost Billy for what purpose?”

The soldiers’ wives talk as soldiers’ wives do. They talk of pride. They talk about unflinching support for their men. But now that Billy Brown, the leader of their men, has come home in a box, they talk with a slight edge about fear and doubt.

“He signed up for it and it is his duty to go, but I don’t like this war at all,” said Mia Sanchez, a mother of five whose husband, Jay, enlisted three years ago. “I don’t understand it. I thought he’d be protecting Alaska, not Iraq.”

Melba Nowpakahok, whose husband, Owen, had Billy Brown for his best man, said that as a military wife it would be counterproductive to question any of it.

“We’re just going to go with whatever the higher-ups say,” she said. “Whatever the president says. Whatever Rumsfeld says. We’re just going to have to go with it.”

The eight remaining men from Barrow are to arrive in the Iraqi theater sometime in October, and one company of Arctic soldiers will carry its flag with Billy Brown’s name tag sewn to it.

And when the fall whale hunt begins, a new man will be holding the oar that Billy Brown once held.

    A Soldier Comes Home to Alaska, Too Early and Yet Too Late, NYT, 16.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/us/16album.html

A Soldier Hoped to Do Good, but Was Changed by War

October 13, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Oct. 12 — Sgt. Ricky Clousing went to war in Iraq because, he said, he believed he would simultaneously be serving his nation and serving God.

But after more than four months on the streets of Baghdad and Mosul interrogating Iraqis rounded up by American troops, Sergeant Clousing said, he began to believe that he was serving neither.

He said he saw American soldiers shoot and kill an unarmed Iraqi teenager, and rode in an Army Humvee that sideswiped Iraqi cars and shot an old man’s sheep for fun — both incidents Sergeant Clousing reported to superiors. He said his work as an interrogator led him to conclude that the occupation was creating a cycle of anti-American resentment and violence. After months of soul-searching on his return to Fort Bragg, Sergeant Clousing, 24, failed to report for duty one day.

In a court-martial here on Thursday, an Army judge sentenced Sergeant Clousing to 11 months in confinement for going AWOL, absent without leave. He will serve three months because of a pretrial agreement in which he pleaded guilty.

“My experiences in Iraq forced me to re-evaluate my beliefs and my ethics,” Sergeant Clousing said, sitting stiff-backed in the witness chair. “I ultimately felt I could not serve.”

The case against Sergeant Clousing, a born-again Christian from Washington State, is a small one in a war that has produced sensational courts-martial. The same stark courtroom where Sergeant Clousing testified on Thursday was the site of the courts-martial of Pfc. Lynndie England, who mistreated and posed with naked Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and Sgt. Hasan K. Akbar, who rolled grenades into tents of American troops.

Yet the military prosecutors made it clear on Thursday that the stakes were high. Although they did not challenge his motives, they said if one young soldier disillusioned by the reality of war could give up the uniform without punishment, what of others?

“A message must be sent,” Capt. Jessica Alexander, the Army’s trial lawyer, said in her closing argument. “There are thousands of soldiers who may disagree with this particular war, but who stay and fight.”

Sergeant Clousing’s allegations resulted in criminal and administrative investigations. The soldiers in the Humvee were disciplined, said Maj. Richard Wagen, the investigating officer, who testified at the trial. Major Wagen said that the Iraqi teenager who was shot was close enough to the soldiers to be considered a threat.

Sergeant Clousing’s defense lawyer argued that the sergeant had experienced a “crisis of conscience,” tried to resolve it through official military channels and should not be treated like a criminal.

“Some might say a person of such convictions should never have enlisted,” said the lawyer, David W. Miner, who is based in Seattle, “but the Army needs soldiers with the strength of their convictions and personal courage to speak up when they see abuses.”

The number of soldiers who go AWOL declined from 4,597 in 2001 to 2,479 in 2004, said Maj. Tom Earnhardt, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg. “The vast majority of our soldiers are serving our country admirably,” Major Earnhardt said.

Sergeant Clousing said in an interview that he had been a partyer and snowboarder until a sudden born-again experience in high school. He grew up in Sumner, Wash., south of Seattle. His father was an Army officer in Europe, and he lived with his mother, who was not religious.

“It sounds really cheesy,” he said, “but all of a sudden I knew that God had a different plan for me.”

He attended a Presbyterian church, studied the Bible and spent four consecutive summers on mission trips to Mexico. He joined Youth With a Mission, an evangelical group that sent him to Thailand, where he was on Sept. 11, 2001.

Out of patriotism, idealism and curiosity, he said, he joined the military. He signed up to be a “human intelligence collector,” and trained in Arizona and at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif. He was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division.

Arriving in Iraq in November 2004, he said he was stunned at the number of Iraqis he was assigned to interrogate who were either innocent or disgruntled citizens resentful about the American occupation. He said he told his commander: “Your soldiers and the way they’re behaving are creating the insurgency you’re trying to fight. It’s a cycle. You don’t see it, but I’m talking to the people you’re bringing to me.”

Sergeant Clousing said he looked into the eyes of the Iraqi teenager as he died and saw the unjustifiable loss of a life that unhinged him. He wrote in his journal, “I want to be a boy again, free of this.”

Back in Fort Bragg after five months in Iraq, Sergeant Clousing took his misgivings to his superiors. They sent him to a chaplain, who showed him in the Bible where God sent his people to war, the sergeant said. Then they sent him to a psychologist who said he could get out of the military by claiming he was crazy or gay. Sergeant Clousing said he had not been looking for a way out and found the suggestion offensive.

He called a hotline for members of the military run by a coalition of antiwar groups. The man who took the call was Chuck Fager, who runs Quaker House, a longtime pacifist stronghold in Fayetteville.

“This call was unusual,” Mr. Fager said in an interview. He said hotline receptionists took more than 7,000 calls from or about military members last year.

“I don’t have these kinds of probing discussions about moral and religious issues very often,” he said. “I said to him, you’re not crazy or a heretic for having difficulty reconciling Jesus’ teachings with what’s going on in Iraq.”

Sergeant Clousing said he could not file for conscientious objector status because he could not honestly say he was opposed to all war. After several months of soul-searching, he went AWOL.

He tried to talk with his church friends in Washington. Some understood him, but others said he had to support the government because of a biblical injunction to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

“They felt that God established government and we’re supposed to be submitting to authorities, and by me leaving it’s rebelling again the authority that God established,” Sergeant Clousing said. “Their politics has infiltrated their religion so much, they can’t see past their politics.”

After 14 months, he turned himself in at Fort Lewis in Washington. He was returned to Fort Bragg, where he was assigned to a brigade made up of other soldiers who had gone AWOL. Five sat in the courtroom on Thursday, in uniform, waiting to hear clues about their future in the judge’s sentence.

    A Soldier Hoped to Do Good, but Was Changed by War, NYT, 13.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/us/13awol.html

Army to keep troop levels in Iraq steady through 2010

Posted 10/11/2006 11:28 AM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Army has plans that would keep the current level of troops in Iraq — about 15 brigades — through 2010, the top Army officer said Wednesday.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, cautioned that people not read too much into the planning, because it is easier to pull back forces than to get units prepared and deployed at the last minute.

"This is not a prediction that things are going poorly or better," Schoomaker told reporters. "It's just that I have to have enough ammo in the magazine that I can continue to shoot as long as they want us to shoot."

His comments come less than four weeks before congressional elections, in which the unpopular war in Iraq and the Bush administration's policies there are a major campaign issue.

Last month, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, said the military would likely maintain or possibly even increase the current force levels through next spring. There are 141,000 troops in Iraq, including about 120,000 Army soldiers.

In recent months the Army has shown signs of strain, as Pentagon officials have had to extend the Iraq deployments of two brigades in order to bolster security in Baghdad and allow units heading into the country to have at least one year at home before redeploying.

    Army to keep troop levels in Iraq steady through 2010, UT, 11.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-11-troops-iraq_x.htm

Insurgents hit U.S. ammo dump with mortar round, sparking massive fire

Updated 10/11/2006 5:14 AM ET
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — A U.S. base in southern Baghdad was hit by a mortar round fired by insurgents, which set off a series of explosions from detonating tank and artillery shells that shook buildings miles (kilometers) away, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The 82mm mortar round was fired from a nearby residential area and hit the ammunition holding area of Forward Operating Base Falcon around 10:40 p.m. (1940 GMT) Tuesday night, base spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington said.

"Intelligence indicates that civilians aligned with a militia organization were responsible for last night's mortar attack," Withington said in a statement without elaborating further on what group it may have been.

The Islamic Army in Iraq, a nationalist anti-occupation insurgent group, claimed responsibility earlier in a statement posted on the Internet.

"With the help of God, the mortar and rocket squads of the Islamic Army have shelled a U.S. Army base with two rockets and three mortar shells," said the statement posted on a website known to be used by insurgents. "The rockets and shells fell on ammunition dumps causing them to explode. Sounds of explosions were heard in Baghdad."

The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately verified.

There were no injuries reported, and Withington said the attack had no strategic effect.

"The attack does not affect ongoing Baghdad security operations in the focus areas, and the loss of ammunition will not degrade the operational capability of the" U.S. forces in Baghdad, he said. "The base's essential services were not disrupted."

When the base was hit, personnel were put on full alert and soldiers and base employees were moved to bomb shelters, Withington said.

Explosions from detonating tank and artillery ordnance and small-arms ammunition stored at the site went off for hours after the fire erupted.

Large flames and smoke rose from the region, and flashes from the blasts and showers of sparks were visible on the horizon from several miles (kilometers) away in central Baghdad, where the force of the blasts could be felt. The blasts came at times sporadically, at times in rapid succession, lasting into the night. Helicopters were seen in the night sky flying over the area.

Withington said the military had scrambled aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles in an attempt to locate the mortar position.

The explosions on the base damaged nearby homes, but there were no casualties in the neighborhood, police Capt. Furat Gaiti said.

"The windows of my house plus three neighboring houses were smashed out from the heavy explosions," said neighborhood resident Sabir Hassan, a 50-year-old teacher. "At first we thought the insurgents were shelling us with mortars and we rushed outside our houses."

The mortar round set fire to an ammunition holding area, where material is kept temporarily before distribution to the units at Falcon, Withington said. He said more than three battalions were stationed there at the time of the attack but he would not give a specific number of troops.

Firefighters and hazardous material experts continued Wednesday to put out the blaze, while engineers and explosive ordinance specialists were to begin the clearance of unexploded ordinance, Withington said.

Falcon is located in a former commercial trucking depot in a sprawling industrial area at the southern entrance of Baghdad. It is near the violence-torn district of Dora, where U.S. troops have been focusing in a 2-month-old sweep of the capital neighborhood-by-neighborhood aimed at rooting out militants and weapons.

It lies on the main highway heading south of Baghdad. Much of the area around it is sparsely populated, but on the opposite side of the highway, about 600 yards (550 meters) away, are residential neighborhoods.

Iraqi military officials said no evacuations of residents were ordered from the Dora area.

Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani went on television to reassure residents of the capital.

"The situation is under control," he said. "There is an alert to security forces to provide any help to the residents of the area. We are waiting for information from the Americans" on the cause, he said.

    Insurgents hit U.S. ammo dump with mortar round, sparking massive fire, UT, 1.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-10-iraq-ammo-fire_x.htm

 Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says        NYT        11.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casualties.html

Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says

October 11, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 10 — A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here.

The figure breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month, a number that is quadruple the one for July given by Iraqi government hospitals and the morgue in Baghdad and published last month in a United Nations report in Iraq. That month was the highest for Iraqi civilian deaths since the American invasion.

But it is an estimate and not a precise count, and researchers acknowledged a margin of error that ranged from 426,369 to 793,663 deaths.

It is the second study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It uses samples of casualties from Iraqi households to extrapolate an overall figure of 601,027 Iraqis dead from violence between March 2003 and July 2006.

The findings of the previous study, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, in 2004, had been criticized as high, in part because of its relatively narrow sampling of about 1,000 families, and because it carried a large margin of error.

The new study is more representative, its researchers said, and the sampling is broader: it surveyed 1,849 Iraqi families in 47 different neighborhoods across Iraq. The selection of geographical areas in 18 regions across Iraq was based on population size, not on the level of violence, they said.

The study comes at a sensitive time for the Iraqi government, which is under pressure from American officials to take action against militias driving the sectarian killings.

In the last week of September, the government barred the central morgue in Baghdad and the Health Ministry — the two main sources of information for civilian deaths — from releasing figures to the news media. Now, only the government is allowed to release figures. It has not provided statistics for September, though a spokesman said Tuesday that it would.

The American military has disputed the Iraqi figures, saying that they are far higher than the actual number of deaths from the insurgency and sectarian violence, in part because they include natural deaths and deaths from ordinary crime, like domestic violence.

But the military has not released figures of its own, giving only percentage comparisons. For example, it cited a 46 percent drop in the murder rate in Baghdad in August from July as evidence of the success of its recent sweeps. At a briefing on Monday, the military’s spokesman declined to characterize the change for September.

The military has released rough counts of average numbers of Iraqis killed and wounded in a quarterly accounting report mandated by Congress. In the report, “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” daily averages of dead and wounded Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police officers rose from 26 a day in 2004 to almost 120 a day in August 2006.

The study uses a method similar to that employed in estimates of casualty figures in other conflict areas like Darfur and Congo. It sought to measure the number of deaths that occurred as a result of the war.

It argues that absolute numbers of dead, like morgue figures, could not give a full picture of the “burden of conflict on an entire population,” because they were often incomplete.

The mortality rate before the American invasion was about 5.5 people per 1,000 per year, the study found. That rate rose to 19.8 deaths per 1,000 people in the year ending in June.

Gunshots were the largest cause of death, the study said, at 56 percent of all violent deaths, while car bombs accounted for about 13 percent. Deaths caused by the American military declined as an overall percentage from March 2003 to June 2006.

Violent deaths have soared since the American invasion, but the rise is in part a matter of spotty statistical history. Under Saddam Hussein, the state had a monopoly on killing, and the deaths of thousands of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds that it caused were never counted.

While the near collapse of the Iraqi state makes precise record-keeping difficult, authorities have made considerable progress toward tracking death figures. In 2004, when the Johns Hopkins study was first released, authorities were still compiling deaths on an ad hoc basis. But by this year, they were being provided regularly.

Iraqi authorities say morgue counts are more accurate than is generally thought. Iraqis prefer to bury their dead immediately, and hurry bodies of loved ones to plots near mosques or, in the case of Shiites, in sacred burial sites. Even so, they have strong incentives to register the death with a central morgue or hospital in order to obtain a death certificate, required at highway checkpoints, by cemetery workers, and for government pensions. Death certificates are counted in the statistics kept by morgues around the country.

The most recent United Nations figure, 3,009 Iraqis killed in violence across the country in August, was compiled by statistics from Baghdad’s central morgue, and from hospitals and morgues countrywide. It assumes a daily rate of about 97.

The figure is not exhaustive. A police official at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he had seen nationwide counts provided to the hospital that indicated as many as 200 people a day were dying.

Gilbert Burnham, the principle author of the study, said the figures showed an increase of deaths over time that was similar to that of another civilian casualty project, Iraq Body Count, which collates deaths reported in the news media, and even to that of the military. But even Iraq Body Count puts the maximum number of deaths at just short of 49,000.

As far as skepticism about the death count, he said that counts made by journalists and others focused disproportionately on Baghdad, and that death rates were higher elsewhere.

“We found deaths all over the country,” he said. Baghdad was an area of medium violence in the country, he said. The provinces of Diyala and Salahuddin, north of Baghdad, and Anbar to the west, all had higher death rates than the capital.

Statistics experts in the United States who were able to review the study said the methods used by the interviewers looked legitimate.

Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, said interviewing urban dwellers chosen at random was “the best of what you can expect in a war zone.”

But he said the number of deaths in the families interviewed — 547 in the post-invasion period versus 82 in a similar period before the invasion — was too few to extrapolate up to more than 600,000 deaths across the country.

Donald Berry, chairman of biostatistics at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was even more troubled by the study, which he said had “a tone of accuracy that’s just inappropriate.”

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Baghdad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York.

    Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says, NYT, 11.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casualties.html

At Least 75 Bodies Found in Baghdad Since Monday

October 10, 2006
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

At least 75 corpses have been found in the Baghdad area since Monday morning, authorities said today, most of them bound, riddled with bullets, and showing signs of torture.

The grim discoveries reflected a familiar pattern of death-squad killings and sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital.

A Ministry of Interior spokesman said today that 60 of the bodies were found in Baghdad in the 24-hour period ending this morning, while 15 more were discovered during the day today.

In addition, at least five bombs exploded in the capital area, killing at least 14 civilians and 6 policemen, and injuring 23 people, the ministry and the police sources said.

The discovery of the bodies recalled a day just over a week ago when as many as 60 corpses were found in the capital, many of them apparently shot in the head at close range after being tortured. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a United States military spokesman, said at the time that such killings and other murders continued to claim more people in Baghdad than suicide bombings did.

Recent attempts to quell the unrelenting violence in the capital and other parts of Iraq have achieved little so far, against a backdrop of growing militia dominance and sectarian killings that escalated after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the town of Samarra in February.

Since then, hundreds of bodies bearing marks of torture; assassinations and bomb attacks against government officials, civilians and Iraqi and foreign forces; and increasingly bold abductions have underscored the extent to which many areas of the capital and country are beyond the control of the authorities.

American and Iraqi troops have continued to sweep Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods in a broad effort to control the capital. And last week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced a new security plan that called for committees of neighborhood leaders to try to defuse sectarian crises in their own areas, in hopes of heading off the flare-ups of violence that are pushing the country to the verge of civil war.

“We are doing this to end sectarianism in Iraq forever,” said Mr. Maliki as he announced the plan last week.

Today, officials said Iraqi political parties have agreed that every security checkpoint in Baghdad would have an equal number of Shiite and Sunni troops in an effort to ensure the security forces do not allow sectarian attacks, the first arrangement reached under the new plan, according to The Associated Press.

Sunni legislators have accused Shiite lawmakers of focusing their efforts against Sunni militants while ignoring -- or even assisting -- Shiite militias.

An entire police brigade was recently disbanded by the Iraqi Interior Ministry on the suspicion that some members of the brigade may have permitted, or even participated in, death squad killings.

And for the first time since the war began in 2003, a curfew was imposed last week not only on vehicular traffic but also on pedestrians, banning them from the streets of the capital for one day.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a United States military spokesman, said a number of factors, including an increase in suicide bombings and a rash of violence since the start of Ramadan late last month, had led military officials to ask the Iraqi government to impose the curfew.

Today’s violence included roadside bomb attacks that appeared to be aimed at an American military convoy, a neighborhood bakery, a minibus and an Iraqi police convoy.

The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed today in Baghdad. Mr. Hussein and his co-defendants face genocide charges for the killing of Kurds in 1988. The chief judge in the case ejected Mr. Hussein from the proceedings and a co-defendant punched one of the guards and denounced prosecutors as “pimps” and “traitors,” Reuters reported.

    At Least 75 Bodies Found in Baghdad Since Monday, NYT, 10.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/world/middleeast/11iraqcnd.html?hp&ex=1160539200&en=baaafbb0f7ad895c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Four U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq in 24 hours

Mon Oct 9, 2006 6:45 PM ET
Reuters



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier was killed when guerrillas attacked his patrol in eastern Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military said.

In another statement earlier, the military said three U.S. Marines were killed in action in Anbar province in western Iraq on Sunday.

The largely desert province is the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government and U.S forces. It is the deadliest area in Iraq for U.S. soldiers.

The deaths of the four soldiers brought to 33 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since the beginning of October.

More than 2,740 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

An alliance of Sunni tribal leaders has promised to help Maliki's government root out al Qaeda militants who have set up bases in Anbar province. Maliki has announced reconstruction plans for the region and a more representative local government.

    Four U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq in 24 hours, R, 9.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-09T224424Z_01_COL958119_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-MARINES.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-worldNews-2

U.S. and Iraqi Forces Clash With Shiite Militia

October 9, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

BAGHDAD, Oct. 8 — American and Iraqi troops fought a fierce battle on Sunday with militants in the southern city of Diwaniya, a stronghold of militia members loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, the United States military said.

An Abrams tank was severely damaged by rocket-propelled grenades fired by up to 10 teams of Mahdi Army militiamen, the American military said. No Iraqi or American troop casualties were reported, but 30 militiamen were killed, the military said. An official of the Sadr militia disputed that figure.

The skirmish, which shook the Shiite city overnight with heavy machine-gun fire and explosions, was the third serious clash between American or Iraqi soldiers against members of the Mahdi Army in Diwaniya in less than two months.

In late August, Iraqi Army troops battled militiamen for 14 hours, killing at least 20 of them but losing 23 of their own. Last month, a joint Iraqi and American patrol raided one of Mr. Sadr’s offices, leading to a three-hour exchange of gunfire between militia forces and Iraqi police commandos.

Abdul Razzaq al-Nedawi, the head of Mr. Sadr’s office in Diwaniya, said residents were surprised Sunday when American troops began raiding homes in three residential neighborhoods in the middle of the night.

“There was an agreement with the Iraqi government that U.S. forces would not enter residential areas in this city,” he said. “This agreement was made through a channel linked to the office of the prime minister.”

Mr. Nedawi denied that any Mahdi Army fighters were killed. Three were wounded, he said, one seriously. Hameed al-Shawali, an official from the Diwaniya Health Ministry, said the city’s hospital treated six of the wounded and received no bodies.

The fighting was touched off in the early morning hours when the home of Kefeh al-Greiti, a Mahdi commander, was raided, The Associated Press reported.

“The Americans had a list of wanted people from the Sadr movement,” said Mr. Nedawi, adding that Mr. Greiti eluded capture.

The American military said in a statement, however, that Iraqi Army soldiers had arrested three people as well as a “high-value target” believed to have been involved in the killings of Iraqi Army soldiers on Aug. 28.

In the aftermath of the lengthy battle in August, Iraqi Army officials had accused Mahdi fighters of executing a group of soldiers in a public square in front of residents.

American officials have been increasing the pressure in recent weeks on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, to rein in armed militias like the Mahdi Army, calling them the greatest threat to Iraq’s future.

In Baghdad, American troops, along with their Iraqi counterparts, have been conducting sweeps of troubled areas to secure them. They have raided the homes of many Shiite militiamen and arrested those believed to be behind assassinations in the capital.

American military officials have pledged to tackle every problematic neighborhood in Baghdad, including Sadr City, the Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad that is controlled by the militia.

But a major confrontation with forces loyal to Mr. Sadr, which number about 7,000 militiamen in Baghdad alone, would be delicate for Mr. Maliki, who relies on Mr. Sadr for support against other rival Shiite politicians. Mr. Sadr is popular among impoverished Shiites and has become increasingly powerful politically. His candidate list won about 30 seats in the most recent Parliament, more than most parties.

The military on Sunday announced the deaths of five more American service members. Three marines died Friday from “enemy action” in Anbar Province, in western Iraq. Two soldiers were killed Saturday, one in Mosul by a roadside bomb and the other in Baghdad by small arms fire.

On Sunday, the police found 35 bodies across Baghdad, many of them bearing signs of torture and shot at close range, an Interior Ministry official said.

Several attacks against the Iraqi police also took place on Sunday, the official said. A roadside explosion in central Baghdad at 6:30 a.m. wounded six police officers. An hour later, another roadside bomb went off in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Amel as an Iraqi police patrol passed, wounding one officer. At about the same time, a mortar attack near an Iraqi police checkpoint in the Waziriya neighborhood killed one police officer and wounded another and a civilian, the official said.

The Associated Press reported that several hundred Iraqi police officers fell sick from poisoning during a meal on Sunday. Gen. Adnan Thabit, commander of the National Police, said members of the Fourth Division of the National Police had become ill after the meal. The cause was under investigation.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, insurgent attacks in the southern part of the country have fallen by half in the last month, and have decreased in intensity and ferocity, a NATO spokesman, Mark Laity, said in Kabul on Sunday.

Mr. Laity said the change was because Taliban insurgents had been defeated in combat last month and not because they were winding down their insurgency before winter.

Khalid al-Ansary, Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul, Afghanistan.

    U.S. and Iraqi Forces Clash With Shiite Militia, NYT, 9.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Baker, Presidential Confidant, Hints at Need for New War Plan

October 9, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — James A. Baker III, the Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan panel reassessing Iraq strategy for President Bush, said Sunday that he expected the panel would depart from Mr. Bush’s repeated calls to “stay the course,” and he strongly suggested that the White House enter direct talks with countries it had so far kept at arm’s length, including Iran and Syria.

“I believe in talking to your enemies,” he said in an interview on the ABC News program “This Week,” noting that he made 15 trips to Damascus, the Syrian capital, while serving Mr. Bush’s father as secretary of state.

“It’s got to be hard-nosed, it’s got to be determined,” Mr. Baker said. “You don’t give away anything, but in my view, it’s not appeasement to talk to your enemies.”

Mr. Bush refused to deal with Iran until this spring, when he said the United States would join negotiations with Tehran if it suspended enriching nuclear fuel. Iran has so far refused. Contacts with both Syria and North Korea have also been sharply limited.

But the “Iraq Study Group,” created by Mr. Baker last March with the encouragement of some members of Congress to come up with new ideas on Iraq strategy, has already talked to some representatives of Iran and Syria about Iraq’s future, he said.

His comments Sunday offered the first glimmer of what other members of his study group, in interviews over the past two weeks, have described as an effort to find a politically face-saving way for Mr. Bush slowly to extract the United States from the war. “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run,’ ” Mr. Baker said.

He explicitly rejected a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, saying that would invite Iran, Syria and “even our friends in the gulf” to fill the power vacuum. He also dismissed, as largely unworkable, a proposal by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to decentralize Iraq and give the country’s three major sectarian groups, the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, their own regions, distributing oil revenue to all. Mr. Baker said he had concluded “there’s no way to draw lines” in Iraq’s major cities, where ethnic groups are intermingled.

According to White House officials and commission members, Mr. Baker has been talking to President Bush and his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on a regular basis. Those colleagues say he is unlikely to issue suggestions that the president has not tacitly approved in advance.

“He’s a very loyal Republican, and you won’t see him go against Bush,” said a colleague of Mr. Baker, who asked not to be identified because the study group is keeping a low profile before it formally issues recommendations. “But he feels that the yearning for some responsible way out which would not damage American interests is palpable, and the frustration level is exceedingly high.”

At 76, Mr. Baker still enjoys a reputation as one of Washington’s craftiest bureaucratic operators and as a trusted adviser of the Bush family, which has enlisted his help for some of its deepest crises, including the second President Bush’s effort to win the vote recount in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. Mr. Baker served as White House chief of staff, as well as secretary of state under the first President Bush.

Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush’s former chief of staff, acknowledged recently that he had twice suggested that Mr. Baker would be a good replacement for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Bush rejected that advice, and some associates of Mr. Baker say they do not believe he is interested, at his age, in taking the job, which could put him in the position of having to carry out his group’s advice.

Those proposals — which he has said must be both bipartisan and unanimous — could very well give Mr. Bush some political latitude, should he decide to adopt strategies that he had once rejected, like setting deadlines for a phased withdrawal of American forces.

Given his extraordinary loyalty to the Bush family — Mr. Baker was present on Saturday at the formal christening of a new aircraft carrier named for the first President Bush — it was notable on Sunday that Mr. Baker also joined the growing number of Republicans who are trying to create some space between themselves and the White House.

On Sunday, on “This Week,” Mr. Baker was shown a video of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who said last week that Iraq was “drifting sideways” and urged consideration of a “change of course” if the Iraqi government could not restore order in two or three months. The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has offered a similar warning to the Iraqi government.

Asked if he agreed with that timetable, Mr. Baker said, “Yes, absolutely. And we’re taking a look at other alternatives.”

The Iraq Study Group, created with the reluctant blessing of the White House, includes notable Republicans and Democrats, among them William J. Perry, a former defense secretary under President Clinton; former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York; the former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor; and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a longtime civil rights leader. Mr. Baker’s Democratic co-chairman is Lee H. Hamilton, the former Congressman who once served as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was co-chairman of the 9/11 commission.

In interviews, members of the study group have privately expressed concern that within months, whatever course the group recommended could be overtaken by the chaos in Iraq. “I think the big question is whether we can come up with something before it’s too late,” one member said late last month, after the group had met in Washington to assess its conclusions after a trip to Baghdad. “There’s a real sense that the clock is ticking, that Bush is desperate for a change, but no one in the White House can bring themselves to say so with this election coming.”

Like other members, he declined to speak on the record, saying public comments should come only from Mr. Baker or Mr. Hamilton.

Several members said they were struck during their visit to Baghdad by how many Americans based there — political and intelligence officers as well as members of the military — said they feared that the United States was stuck between two bad alternatives: pulling back and watching sectarian violence soar, or remaining a crucial part of the new effort to secure Baghdad, at the cost of much higher American casualties.

It was a measure of how much the situation had deteriorated that only one member of the group, former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia, ventured beyond the protected walls of the Green Zone, the American and government center of Baghdad. The study group is just now finishing its interviews, and Mr. Baker has not yet begun to draft the report, members said.

Some who have already met with the group, like Mr. Biden, who may seek the Democratic nomination for president, have emerged saying they think their ideas are being heard. On Friday, Mr. Biden said he thought he saw “heads nodding up and down” about his ideas on creating autonomous regions of the country, but Mr. Baker made clear on Sunday that he was not among them.

“Experts on Iraq have suggested that, if we do that, that in itself will trigger a huge civil war because the major cities in Iraq are mixed,” Mr. Baker said.

Mr. Baker has been critical of how the Bush administration conducted post-invasion operations, and he has not backed away from statements he made in his 1995 memoir, in which he described opposing the ouster of Saddam Hussein after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the book, he said he feared that such action might lead to a civil war, “even if Saddam were captured and his regime toppled, American forces would still be confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government.”

On Sunday, the interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, said, “It’s exactly what’s happened now, isn’t it?” Mr. Baker replied, “A lot of it.”

    Baker, Presidential Confidant, Hints at Need for New War Plan, NYT, 9.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/middleeast/09baker.html?hp&ex=1160366400&en=0d5eb41e119da0d2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Olbermann News Commentaries Target Bush

October 8, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:00 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Keith Olbermann's tipping point came on a tarmac in Los Angeles six weeks ago. While waiting for his plane to take off he read an account of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's speech before the American Legion equating Iraq War opponents to pre-World War II appeasers.

The next night, on Aug. 30, Olbermann ended his MSNBC ''Countdown'' show with a blistering retort, questioning both the interpretation of history and Rumsfeld's very understanding of what it means to be an American.

It was the first of now five extraordinarily harsh anti-Bush commentaries that have made Olbermann the latest media point-person in the nation's political divide.

''As a critic of the administration, I will be damned if you can get away with calling me the equivalent of a Nazi appeaser,'' Olbermann told The Associated Press. ''No one has the right to say that about any free-speaking American in this country.''

Since that first commentary, Olbermann's nightly audience has increased 69 percent, according to Nielsen Media Research. This past Monday 834,000 people tuned in, virtually double his season average and more than CNN competitors Paula Zahn and Nancy Grace. Cable kingpin and Olbermann nemesis Bill O'Reilly (two million viewers that night) stands in his way.

Olbermann stood before Ground Zero on Sept. 11 and said Bush's conduct before the Iraq war was an impeachable offense. ''Not once, in now five years, has this president ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space and to this, the current and curdled version of our beloved country,'' he said.

His latest verbal attack, this past Thursday, criticized the president's campaign attacks on Democrats.

''Why have you chosen to go down in history as the president who made things up?'' he asked.

Olbermann has become a hero to Bush opponents, who distribute video files and transcripts of his commentaries. One poster on the Daily Kos who's been trying to spread his own four-year boycott of cable news wondered: ''Is it time to modify the boycott to allow for Keith's show `Countdown' -- and only his show?''

On the right, he's known as Krazy Keith and OlbyLoon, and the Olbermannwatch.com Web site is devoted to picking apart his words.

''Look in the mirror, Keith,'' an Olbermannwatch.com blogger wrote. ''You have become that which you claim to despise -- a demagogue.''

Olbermann has never been a Bush fan. He's gone on crusades before, pounding on alleged voting irregularities in Ohio in 2004 when the story went dry elsewhere. He's also waged war against O'Reilly. None of these match his most recent campaign for ferocity.

Liberal activist Jeff Cohen is thrilled for Olbermann's success, but admits that it's bittersweet.

Cohen was a producer for Phil Donahue's failed talk show. Less than four years ago Donahue's show imploded primarily because MSNBC and its corporate owners were afraid to have a show seen as liberal or anti-Bush at a time those opinions were less popular, he said.

In his new book ''Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media,'' Cohen alleges that NBC News forced Donahue to book more conservatives than liberals and eventually wanted one of the nation's best-known liberal media figures to imitate O'Reilly.

Same time as Olbermann, same channel.

That Olbermann has been permitted to do what he's doing is evidence that ''the political zeitgeist has changed dramatically in four years, and especially (at) MSNBC,'' Cohen said.

While it's true a different political atmosphere has helped Olbermann, NBC News senior vice president Phil Griffin disputed Cohen's interpretation that politics doomed Donahue. While MSNBC could be faulted for giving up on Donahue too fast, the show never caught its rhythm and was extremely expensive, he said.

''People try to ascribe motives to us, that somehow we're trying to keep liberals off the air and it's all about ideology,'' Griffin said. ''If you get ratings, there's no issue.''

Even before this fall, Olbermann's ratings had been on a slow rise as viewers connected with his entertaining way of delivering the news, Griffin said.

Early in his second tenure at MSNBC, Olbermann said he wanted to do a segment on whether some of the more heroic elements of former POW Jessica Lynch's rescue were exaggerated. He was told by NBC News executives that he had to balance it with a commentary by conservative radio host Michael Savage, and he refused. He was prepared to walk, he said, but it never came to that.

Olbermann said he hasn't spoken to NBC Chairman Bob Wright or anyone at corporate owner General Electric Co. about his commentaries. No one's asked him to tone things down; in fact, ''I've had to calm them down a little bit,'' he said.

Such is the almighty power of the Nielsen meter.

''As dangerous as it can sometimes be for news, it is also our great protector,'' Olbermann said. ''Because as long as you make them money, they don't care. This is not Rupert Murdoch. And even Rupert Murdoch puts `Family Guy' on the air and `The Simpsons,' that regularly criticize Fox News. There is some safety in the corporate structure that we probably could never have anticipated.''

What he's doing now is little different from what he did in sports, he said. ''You see the events happening before you and you describe them to the audience.''

As for his hero worship on the left, Olbermann said, ''I'd love to say it's totally irrelevant. I'd say it's 99 percent irrelevant.''

More important to him was when he was approached by a Republican media operative on Sept. 11, who complimented him on the commentaries despite utterly disagreeing with them.

''The purpose of this is to get people to think and supply the marketplace of ideas with something at every fruit stand, something of every variety,'' he said. ''As an industry, only half the fruit stand has been open the last four years.''

------

On the Net:

http://www.bloggermann.com/

http://www.olbermannwatch.com/

http://www.keitholbermann.org/

------

EDITOR'S NOTE -- David Bauder can be reached at dbauder''at''ap.org

    Olbermann News Commentaries Target Bush, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-TV-Keith-Olbermann.html

U.S. and Iraqi Troops Kill 30 Insurgents

October 8, 2006
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

American and Iraqi army forces attempting to capture a “high-value target” in an Iraqi town today came under attack during the operation, and in the ensuing battle they killed about 30 fighters, according to a military statement.

The American military said they had detained the unidentified person whom they were seeking in the town of Diwaniya.

Iraqi soldiers and American forces were on the joint combat mission when they were attacked by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades before the Iraqi forces seized the target. Rounds of grenades pounded an American M1A2 Abrams tank and severely damaged it, the statement said.

Residents quoted by Reuters said that the tank was ablaze and that a curfew was imposed for several hours. "There is an American tank on every corner of Diwaniya," said one resident, who declined to be identified. "Nobody slept in Diwaniya last night. The fighting was very fierce," he told Reuters.

There were no reports of Iraqi or American casualties.

Diwaniya is located about 150 miles south of the capital and has been the scene of previous battles between joint Iraqi and American patrols and elements of a Shiite militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric who controls a militia, the Mahdi Army.

Last month in Diwaniya, a joint Iraqi and American patrol raided a Sadr office, leading to a three-hour exchange of gunfire between militia forces and Iraqi police commandos, said Brig. Abdul Khaliq Badir Lafta, commander of the Diwaniya police. And the previous month, government troops clashed in a battle that lasted for about 14 hours with Shiite militias.

Iraq has been ridden with an escalation of sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and recently an Iraqi police brigade was disbanded after some of its officers were suspected of taking part in the kidnapping and killing of Sunni Arab workers from a food-processing plant.

The Iraqi government moved to tighten security in Baghdad in June, and in August the American military began the most systematic series of sweeps of Baghdad since the war began, trying to make the worst neighborhoods safe for a return to normal life. It appears to be bearing some fruit, with deaths in the city down about 17 percent in August from July, according to a United Nations report based on morgue statistics.

Today, on the CNN program “Late Edition,” the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said the Iraqi government needed to rise to the challenge of imposing security. “This has been slow but we have been moving steadily forward,” he said.

Mr. Zebari said that the dissolving of the police brigade was an “encouraging” sign that showed the seriousness of the government to address the security issues.

“This is a major challenge now in front of the government and the government is committed to bring this level of violence down,” he said.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.

    U.S. and Iraqi Troops Kill 30 Insurgents, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/world/middleeast/08cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1160366400&en=b06f128cd6a278f2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Sectarian Havoc Freezes the Lives of Young Iraqis

October 8, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Oct. 7 — In a dimly lighted living room in central Baghdad, Noor is a lonely teenage prisoner. Many of his friends have left the country, and some who have stayed have strange new habits: a Shiite acts holier-than-thou; a Sunni joins an armed gang.

At 19, Noor is neither working nor in college. He is not even allowed outdoors.

Three and a half years after the American invasion, the relentless violence that has disfigured much of Iraqi society is hitting young Iraqis in new ways. Young people from five Baghdad neighborhoods say that their lives have shrunk to the size of their bedrooms and that their dreams have been packed away and largely forgotten. Life is lived in moments. It is no longer possible to make plans.

“I can’t go outside, I can’t go to college,” said Noor, sitting in the kitchen waiting for tea to boil. “If I’m killed, it doesn’t even matter because I’m dead right now.”

The American military is trying to address the problem. In August, it began the most systematic series of sweeps of Baghdad since the war began, trying to make the worst neighborhoods safe for a return to normal life. It appears to be bearing some fruit, with deaths in the city down about 17 percent in August from July, according to a United Nations report based on morgue statistics.

But violence between the sects here continues at a frantic pace, wiping out ever more of what middle ground remains. And it has left young Iraqis trying to resist its pull frozen in an impossible present with no good future in sight.

The speed of the descent has been breathtaking. A few short months ago, Noor was taking final exams, squabbling with his little brother and hanging out at home with his friends. But violence touched the family’s outer edge — his father’s business partner was killed on a desert road far from Baghdad because he was a Shiite — and things began to unravel.

Fearing that the man may have divulged details about them, Noor’s parents accelerated their plans for Noor and his younger brother to leave Iraq. His brother was moved to the safety of northern Iraq, but Noor was forced to return after British authorities rejected his application for a student visa.

Since coming back, he spends most days in his living room on the computer, listening to the sounds of life outside his gate. He wants to enroll in college here and even had one of his friends sneak him an application, but his parents will not let him go. Campuses are volatile mixes of sects and ethnicities, and sectarian killings of students are no longer rare.

Before the epidemic of neighborhood assassinations began last year, it was a rare middle-class Iraqi who had a peer involved in sectarian killing. But as the killing spread, increasingly larger portions of the population have been radicalized.

For Noor, a secular Sunni who is solidly middle class, the sectarian killing has broken squarely into his circle of friends. A friend from Adhamiya, Baghdad’s Sunni Arab center, joined a neighborhood militia after his father was shot to death in front of their home. Noor heard through friends that he had set up a roadside bomb to kill Iraqi troops.

“He hates the Shia because they killed his father,” said Noor, speaking in fluent English and gesturing with his hands. “He became a different person. He became a monster.”

It is that radicalization that most frightens Noor’s mother. Most of the casualties and the perpetrators in the sectarian killing are young men, and with few jobs and no hope for justice through the government, armed gangs and militias are extremely alluring.

“I’m afraid he’ll be drawn to certain currents,” she said. “There is a lot of anger inside.”

Subtler is the changing nature of his friendships. A few of his Shiite friends feel a new passion for their identity, and he now finds it difficult to relate to them. “They changed,” he said. “They talk a lot about identity.”

“I can’t tell them my true feelings,” he added. “I started to expect something bad from them.”

As little as a year ago, most Iraqis dismissed fears of sectarian war. Iraqis of different sects had always mixed, they argued, and no amount of bombing would change that. But as the texture of the violence changed from spectacular car bombs set by Sunnis to quiet killings in neighborhoods of both sects, few still cling to that belief.

Three days a week, Safe, 21, walks around sleepy. He stands guard with a machine gun three nights a week to protect his block in the ravaged neighborhood of Dora. As a Sunni Arab, he fears Shiite death squads and policemen. Seven of his friends have been detained and beaten. He has attended more than a dozen funerals in recent months for Sunnis who have been killed.

“Sectarian stuff has come into our life from all doors,” he said, speaking in quick bursts. “I am afraid of these checkpoints. They tell you five minutes, and keep you for a month.”

The constant battle has left a bad taste in his mouth for Shiites who strongly assert their identity. He got into a fistfight with a Shiite student at the medical school where he studies over the meaning of a Muslim holiday. His campus is in heavily Shiite eastern Baghdad, and a professor referred to the healing powers of a sacred Shiite imam during a physiology lecture this year, to the fury of the Sunni students. Even the typical Shiite jewelry, silver rings with smooth round stones, he finds irritating.

“When you see them, you want to throw up,” he said, referring to chauvinist Shiites.

Dora, once a mixed middle-class neighborhood, has been among the most lethal for Shiites over the past two years. Shiite residents report brutal killings for offenses as minor as pinning up posters of Shiite saints in shops. Now few Shiites remain.

Safe acknowledged that Shiites were singled out, but said insurgents only went after those working with Americans. Other Shiites received threats for spying on mosques, he said.

(He worked at an American base for two months shortly after the American invasion but was not threatened because those who were issuing them knew him, he said.)

For Safe, whose father died when he was young and whose mother died of cancer last year, his neighborhood watch group helps him to have a sense of purpose, to feel connected, at a time when young Iraqis are more isolated than they have ever been.

“If something happens, we are all just one hand,” he said.

While they serve as useful new social networks, the groups are largely based on sectarian identity, helping to reinforce increasingly homogeneous districts. Safe has no Shiite relatives and no plans to marry. Even if he did, he would never accept a Shiite, he said.

As Baghdad grows increasingly divided into a Shiite east and a Sunni west along the Tigris River, neighborhood life offers few opportunities for young Shiites and Sunnis to mix.

Every morning, Ali Wahid, 27, rides his motorbike past a dusty soccer park in the capital’s largest Shiite district, Sadr City, to work in southeastern Baghdad. He holds tightly to his job, a water project that is part of the American effort here, but would never agree to go west of the Tigris, where vast swaths of Sunni neighborhoods are deadly for Shiites like him. A friend, Hamza Daraji, who does odd jobs in Sadr City, said he had not left the district in two years.

Mr. Wahid, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his modest two-story house, says his life has improved since the American invasion. His job has allowed him to pay off debts, buy a house with his brothers and even afford to marry.

Fewer Sunnis are in his life now than there were when Saddam Hussein ruled. In some ways, relations then were easier, he said, because as the ruling class, the Sunnis, were less likely to lash out.

“Before I could joke with Sunnis about Saddam,” he said. “Now if I talk against him, I’m afraid they might hurt me later in a secret way.”

The Sharqiya Secondary School in central Baghdad began the day with a prayer on Thursday. The new headmaster, a religious Shiite, took the unusual step of telling the entire student body, several hundred girls, that “the first way we hail the Iraqi flag is by giving prayers to Muhammad and his family,” referring to the Prophet Muhammad and his family members, whom Shiites consider to be holy. Three Armenian Christians raised the flag.

“We feel desperate, desperate, desperate,” said Sena Hussein, an assistant principal whose daughter is a high school senior. The school, once known citywide for its basketball team, no longer has after-school sports, because parents consider the security situation to be too risky. Trophies in a dusty glass cabinet stand a short way from the entrance to the principal’s office. Even enrollment is down. The school used to get 150 new students a year. This year it has about 60.

Prospects for higher education for women coming of age in the capital have also dimmed.

Sara, a graceful 10th grader with perfect English and straight A’s, will not be allowed to go to college in Iraq by her parents, who fear sectarian killings en route and on campuses themselves. The caution will cut out the mixing of young Iraqi men and women, because college is the first chance they get to be together. High schools in Iraq are single-sex institutions.

“The future is totally unclear for me now,” she said, standing in the courtyard of the school as girls buzzed behind her, busily cleaning classrooms. “I don’t know what would happen to me in college. Maybe I would get killed.”

In a conversation later on her cellphone after a Ramadan dinner, Sara confided that her family was trying to leave the country, but that if they could not get out, she would seriously think about marrying after high school. Her mother married at 24, after she had earned a degree in civil engineering.

“Their time was different in a thousand ways,” she said, her young voice suddenly serious. “It’s hard for me to accept. There is no dream for me. I can’t really think clearly.”

She paused and then spoke a familiar refrain: “I really, really want to leave Iraq.”

Hosham Hussein, Omar al-Neami and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting.

    Sectarian Havoc Freezes the Lives of Young Iraqis, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/world/middleeast/08iraqyouth.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Warner’s Iraq Remarks Surprise White House

October 7, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — The White House, caught off guard by a leading Republican senator who said the situation in Iraq was “drifting sideways,” responded cautiously on Friday, with a spokeswoman for President Bush stopping short of saying outright that Mr. Bush disagreed with the assessment.

“I don’t believe that the president thinks that way,” Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, said when asked whether the president agreed with the senator, John Warner of Virginia. “I think that he believes that while it is tough going in Iraq, that slow progress is being made.”

Ms. Perino’s carefully worded response underscores the delicate situation that Mr. Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has created for the White House just one month before an election in which Mr. Bush has been trying to shift the national debate from the war in Iraq to the broader war on terror.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday after returning from a trip that included a one-day stop in Baghdad, Mr. Warner said the United States should consider “a change of course” if the violence there did not diminish soon. He did not specify what shift might be necessary, but said that the American military had done what it could to stabilize Iraq and that no policy options should be taken “off the table.”

With the blessing of the White House, a high-level commission led by James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, is already reviewing American policy in Iraq. But the commission is not scheduled to report to Mr. Bush and Congress until after the November elections, a timeline that the White House had hoped would enable Mr. Bush to avoid public discussion of any change of course until after voters determine which party will control Congress next year.

Now, Mr. Warner’s comments are pushing up that timeline, forcing Republicans to confront the issue before some are ready. In an interview on Friday, Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who has been critical of the administration’s approach in the past, said there was a “growing sense of unease” among other Republicans, which she said could deepen because of Senator Warner’s comments.

Ms. Collins, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, echoed Mr. Warner’s calls for a shift in strategy in Iraq. “When Chairman Warner, who has been a steadfast ally of this administration, calls for a new strategy,” she said, “that is clearly significant.”

She said the current approach, which she attributed to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, had not led to an overall reduction in violence or any prospect that American troop levels would come down soon.

“We’ve heard over and over that as Iraqis stand up, our troops will stand down,” Ms. Collins said. “Well, there are now hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops and security forces, and yet we have not seen any reduction in violence.”

Democrats, who have been using their fall election campaigns to tap into intense voter dissatisfaction with the way that Mr. Bush has handled Iraq, quickly seized on the Warner remarks, circulating them in e-mail messages to reporters. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, convened a conference call on Friday afternoon to hammer home the theme that even Republicans believed that the administration must change course. “Warner’s statement is an important, important statement and, I hope, a turning point,” Mr. Biden told reporters.

He that at least two Republican colleagues other than Mr. Warner had told him that once the election was over, they would join with Democrats in working on a bipartisan plan for bringing stability to Iraq. Echoing Mr. Warner’s language, he said, “I wouldn’t take any option off the table at this time. We are at the point of no return.”

The White House said Friday that Mr. Bush had not spoken to Mr. Warner about his comments, and otherwise insisted that it had not glossed over the problems in Iraq. During her afternoon briefing, Ms. Perino harked back to a speech in late August in which, she said, the president said Iraq was at a “crucial moment.” She said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had put forth the same message during her unannounced visit to Baghdad this week.

Later in the day, the White House circulated an e-mail message titled “Iraq Update: Political Progress,” citing comments of other lawmakers, including Democrats, who had returned from the Middle East with more hopeful assessments than the one offered by Mr. Warner.

David S. Cloud contributed reporting.

    Warner’s Iraq Remarks Surprise White House, NYT, 7.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/world/middleeast/07capital.html?hp&ex=1160280000&en=d127e25ac8d82c04&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Faith and War

For Recruiter, Saying ‘Go Army’ Is a Hard Job

October 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

EL CAJON, Calif. — Sgt. Cameron Murad wanders the strip malls and parking lots of this Iraqi immigrant enclave in the arid foothills beyond San Diego. Wherever he goes, a hush seems to follow.

He stands by the entrance of a Middle Eastern grocery in khakis and a baseball cap, trying to blend in. He smiles gently. He offers the occasional Arabic greeting.

Quietly, he searches the aisles for a version of himself: an Iraqi expatriate with greater ambition than prospects, a Muslim immigrant willing to fight an American war.

There are countless hard jobs for American soldiers supporting the occupation of Iraq. Few seem more impossible than the one assigned to Sergeant Murad. As the conflict grows increasingly violent and unpopular, the sergeant must persuade native Arabic speakers to enlist and serve with front-line troops.

“I feel like a nomad in the middle of the desert, looking for green pastures,” said Sergeant Murad, 34, who is from the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Linguists have emerged as critical figures in the occupation. They interpret for commanders in meetings with mayors and sheiks. They translate during the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. They shadow troops on risky missions.

In the pressing search for Arabic speakers, the military has turned to Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States. Sergeant Murad is a rising star in this effort. He has recruited 10 men to the program in little more than a year, a record unrivaled in the Army National Guard.

Still, he is an unlikely foot soldier in the campaign. His own evolution — from a teenage immigrant who landed in North Dakota after the first gulf war to a spit-and-polish sergeant — has been marked with private suffering.

In boot camp, he was called a “raghead.” Comrades have questioned his patriotism. Last year a staff sergeant greeted him by calling out, “Here comes the Taliban!”

He remembers a day in 2002 when the comedian Drew Carey visited a base in Saudi Arabia where he was working. During a skit, Sergeant Murad recalled, Mr. Carey dropped to the ground to mimic the Muslim prayer. As the troops roared with laughter, Sergeant Murad walked out.

“I thought about my mom when she prays, how humble she is,” he said.

Yet, day after day, Sergeant Murad sets out to sell other immigrants on the life he has lived. He believes that Muslims need the military more than ever, he said: At a time when many feel alienated, it offers them a path to assimilation, a way to become undeniably American.

It has proved, for him and others, the ultimate rite of passage.

“It’s almost like Superman wearing his cape,” said Gunnery Sgt. Jamal Baadani, 42, an Egyptian immigrant with the United States Marine Corps. “I’ve got my uniform on, and you can’t take that away from me because I’ve earned it.”

Sergeant Murad has earned it, but with a price. He has changed his name. He has drifted from Islam. He often finds himself at odds with the immigrants he is trying to enlist.

To many of them, he is a mystery. He sees himself as a man of unavoidable contradictions: an American patriot and a loyal Kurd; a champion of the military to outsiders, a survivor within its ranks.

Feeling Like an Outcast

The sergeant is six feet tall, but often stands shrunken, his hands politely clasped. He has a long, distinguished nose and wears glasses that darken in the sun but never fully fade, lending him a distant aura.

He plies the streets of El Cajon in a rumbling, black Toyota Tacoma pickup. In the back, he carries stacks of fliers advertising what the Army calls the “09-Lima” program.

Through the program, speakers of Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Pashto and Kurdish are sent to boot camp like other soldiers. They later receive specialized training as linguists, and a majority are deployed to Iraq.

Of the thousands of interpreters working for the military in Iraq, most are civilians under contract, some of whom earn as much as $170,000 a year. But military commanders prefer uniformed linguists because they cannot refuse combat missions and are subjected to more thorough security checks.

They are offered a fraction of what many civilian linguists earn, with salaries starting at roughly $28,000, including allowances. The program’s perks, such as expedited citizenship, a starting bonus and medical coverage, are a major draw, military officials said.

Since the Army created the program in 2003, more than 800 people have signed up. But nearly 40 percent of them have either dropped out or failed language tests or boot camp. Enlistment in the program has improved with the help of civilian Arabic speakers contracted by the Army to recruit.

In California, the Army National Guard is trying the same approach, but with troops. Capt. Hatem Abdine assembled a team of soldiers of mostly Middle Eastern descent to help recruit full time, and brought Sergeant Murad on board last year.

In April, the sergeant arrived in El Cajon. Before his first week was up, he felt like an outcast.

Stacks of fliers and business cards that he had left in grocery stores had vanished. Cashiers who welcomed him on his first visits were suddenly too busy to talk. One manager fled the store. The owner of another shop turned his back and flipped kebobs over a high-licking flame.

“They’re so agitated when I approach them,” Sergeant Murad said. “Is it because I’m ugly? I don’t think I’m that ugly.”

Nestled in a parched valley, El Cajon drew its first Iraqi settlers half a century ago because of the resemblance it bore to their homeland. The population boomed in the 1990’s when thousands of refugees — primarily Kurds and Shiites — joined what had long been the domain of whites and Hispanics.

Sergeant Murad makes his rounds with a truck full of Army promotional items, including a box of T-shirts that state, in Arabic, “If you can read this” — and then in English — “the National Guard needs you.” He cannot bring himself to wear one.

“To put on that shirt and keep a face free of blush — it’s just an impossible thing for me to do,” he said

He favors a more subdued approach. He strolls into restaurants and barber shops, as though he were just passing through. He offers a smooth, “Assalamu alaikum,” or peace be upon you.

A conversation begins. Soon, Sergeant Murad is reminiscing about his hometown, Kirkuk. Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentions his job. “Call if you know anyone,” he says, offering a card.

But the calls rarely come. When they do, recruitment is hard won. In the fall of 2005, Sergeant Murad signed up his first two recruits. Over the next 12 months, he found about 20 other men. Half of them changed their minds.

Most often, recruits do not follow through because of objections from a parent or spouse. Others learn of more lucrative opportunities. Store windows in El Cajon are plastered with fliers advertising the six-figure salaries offered to civilian interpreters.

Some of the sergeant’s candidates are overcome by fear. A 33-year-old Egyptian man from Hemet, Calif., withdrew from the program in June after watching news from the region on Arabic television channels.

“I know what’s happening over there,” said the man, who would not give his name. “My kids need me more than the money.”

From late 2002 to May 2006, 172 civilian contract linguists were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, representing 2.6 percent of the roughly 6,500 linguists who worked for United States coalition forces, a Department of Defense official said.

None of the 152 interpreters who have served in Iraq for the 09-Lima program have been killed. But that fact carries little weight in El Cajon, where memories of violence linger.

“They came here to live in peace and now you’re asking them to go to war,” said the owner of a bakery on Main Street who had fought against Iran with Saddam Hussein’s army. “We are full up of the war.”

In the pursuit of trust, it does not help that Sergeant Murad is Kurdish. The Kurds, like the Shiites, are often seen to have an interest in promoting the American occupation of Iraq because of the repression they suffered under Mr. Hussein.

The sergeant, who refers to the occupation as “the liberation,” does not hide his impassioned support of the war, or the fact that he is Kurdish.

Sometimes, this backfires. When he told an Iraqi woman at a Laundromat that he was Kurdish, she snapped, “Saddam was a wonderful president.”

One afternoon last April, Sergeant Murad dropped by the Main Street bakery, bought a box of chocolates and left another stack of pamphlets behind. He was sure they would be tossed, but seemed not to care. He was feeling giddy.

For the first time in weeks, he had a candidate.

The Sting of 9/11

Sergeant Murad’s path to the United States military began 15 years ago, on a lush meadow in Kurdistan.

American helicopters hovered overhead, dropping packets of dehydrated food to thousands of refugees, including Sergeant Murad, his three brothers and their parents.

The next day, they reached a refugee camp run by the United States military in Zakho. There, a group of marines was standing guard, hefty, tattooed and smiling. Sergeant Murad, then 18 and rail-thin, thought the men looked like warriors.

Soon after, in September 1991, the family arrived in Minot, N.D., as political refugees. A year later, Sergeant Murad got his green card and enlisted in the Army.

“If a person like me isn’t obligated to serve this country, who is?” he said. “I had to make a decision that this is my country, that this side is my side.”

He entered the military as Kamaran Taha Muhammad. When he got to boot camp at Fort Jackson, S.C., he spoke choppy English.

He was, and remains, a shy man. “If a fly looks at me, I turn red,” Sergeant Murad said.

But the first time a fellow soldier insulted him, he threw a punch. He fought often enough that he was relegated to kitchen patrol.

In time, Sergeant Murad made friends. When he graduated as a light-wheel mechanic, his fellow soldiers cheered.

The first few years of his military life went smoothly. He was stationed at a base in Germany. After his tour of duty ended, he found work as the head civilian linguist at an Air Force base in Riyadh.

But on Sept. 11, 2001, as Sergeant Murad watched the attacks on television in Riyadh, he felt a searing angst. The next day, he walked into the dining hall holding a tray, and stopped at a table of officers he knew.

He told them he was sorry. No one responded.

“He didn’t know where he fit in,” said Fernando Muzquiz, 42, now a retired master sergeant with the Air Force.

Sergeant Murad experienced a shift after Sept. 11, both in his relationship to Islam and to America. It was as if a fault line crept through him.

As a Muslim, he felt ashamed.

“I was crushed theologically,” he said. He pored through the Koran, looking for proof that it condemned terrorism. But from the loud speakers of mosques in Riyadh, he heard sheiks praying for the mujahedeen.

From Americans, he felt the sting of suspicion.

On trips home to Minnesota, where his parents had moved, Sergeant Murad noticed the new attention he got at airports. In Atlanta, a security officer saw his last name, which was still Muhammad, and called out, “We got one.”

Sergeant Murad wanted to prove his loyalty. He got his chance when the United States invaded Iraq.

By then, he was working in Bahrain as a civilian linguist with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. (He had lost his job in Riyadh after taking an unauthorized trip off base, which he attributed to a lapse of judgment.)

In Bahrain, he was elated to learn that he would be sent to southern Iraq on a top-secret mission with the Navy Seals. But several days into the voyage, he heard a sailor on his ship whisper, “Cam is one of them.”

Sergeant Murad stopped working for the Navy in March, with his mission in Iraq successfully completed.

That month, he changed his name.

“In a way, it was my reaction to say, ‘No, I am not the same as this criminal, this coward,’ ” said Sergeant Murad, referring to Osama bin Laden. “I am an American, I am Cam, I am a naturalized citizen.”

Kamaran became Cameron. Muhammad was dropped for another, less conspicuous family name, Murad.

The middle name he chose was perhaps most surprising: Fargo.

“I always wanted a connection to North Dakota,” he said.

Even with a new name, Sergeant Murad felt ill at ease back in the United States. He has stopped going to mosques. He no longer considers himself a practicing Muslim. He has few Middle Eastern friends.

“If somebody’s name is on a list, and that person has my name or contact number, I will get harassed,” he said.

The Army, he decided, was the most comfortable place to be. In 2005, he joined the National Guard full time.

He is careful to tell potential recruits about the military’s zero tolerance policy on discrimination, and urges them to file complaints should harassment occur.

Still, Sergeant Murad has never filed a complaint of his own. During several interviews, he was reluctant to talk about his negative experiences, saying that he did not want to “whine” and that all immigrants endure hardship before they are accepted.

Last year, when an instructor at an Army base referred to Sergeant Murad as “the Taliban,” he laughed along.

“I laughed not to cause trouble,” he said. “I laughed because I am really getting tired of this. I laughed because I know it’s a hopeless situation. What do you do? You just have to laugh.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think of me,” he said. “Like it or not, I’m your brother in arms.”

Closing the Deal

The new candidate’s name was Khaled. Sergeant Murad jotted down his number, passed on by the captain. The Iraqi immigrant had called after spotting a brochure about the program, the captain explained. And there was one more thing: the man was on the fence.

Sergeant Murad’s job is often one of delicate persuasion. He began by talking to Khaled, who lived near El Cajon, on the phone. (To protect his identity, the military requested that his last name not be published.)

By the time they agreed to meet, Sergeant Murad felt uneasy. Not only was Khaled a Sunni; he was from Mr. Hussein’s home province.

A stout man with a mustache answered the door. He seemed overweight for the rigors of boot camp, thought the sergeant, and his age — 39 — was just short of the cutoff.

They stiffly shook hands, and then sat and sipped tea in a tidy, candle-scented apartment. A framed picture showed Khaled, his wife and three children waving from Disney World. Since arriving in the United States in 1999, Khaled had hopped from one low-wage job to another, pumping gas, stocking groceries.

Now, he told Sergeant Murad, he had made up his mind. He needed the educational loans the military offered.

Still, he was nervous.

“I’m expecting a shock,” said Khaled. “I’ve been hearing good things, bad things.”

As he does with all recruits, Sergeant Murad warned Khaled that he might be hazed at boot camp, and distrusted by other soldiers. But over time, the sergeant promised, he would make friends.

The two men sat talking until the afternoon turned to dusk. The sergeant gave Khaled tips on how to lose weight, and promised to help prepare him for the English tests. Before parting, they embraced.

As Sergeant Murad drove off, he smiled and shook his head. “This is an Arab from the Sunni Triangle trusting a Kurd with his life,” he said.

Khaled entered boot camp in July and is now in advanced training.

Often, finding recruits is only the beginning of Sergeant Murad’s job. He spends time with their families after they have joined up, reassuring mothers that their sons will eat properly, and helping wives fill out insurance forms.

Last April, Sergeant Murad drove to a boxy stucco house to visit the pregnant wife of a 22-year-old Shiite recruit. The woman was worried about her husband’s safety in Iraq.

“The fact that he’s an Iraqi — it’s unfathomable to these nationals that he would be with the United States military,” she said in Arabic, perched on a couch next to her mother-in-law.

“He is Muslim and in the military — it doesn’t look right.”

The older woman frowned.

“If it were up to me, I would make you join the military because they freed you from Saddam,” she told her daughter-in-law.

Boot camp had been effective, the mother said. Her son seemed newly disciplined, more mature. There was only one thing she disliked: his limited vacation.

“Just two weeks!” she said. “Even in the army of Saddam Hussein, this wasn’t the case.”

On a sunny afternoon in August, Sergeant Murad was back in his truck, cruising El Cajon with a fresh stack of business cards.

He was learning to avoid certain shops. He waved mockingly at the kebab store as his truck rolled by, no longer concerned about who might be watching.

He had come to the conclusion that first impressions counted little.

Plenty of Iraqis had misjudged him. Eventually, though, they grew to like him.

It was the same with soldiers, Sergeant Murad said. He looked back on his time in boot camp as the ultimate proof that hardship can be overcome, and wary comrades, won over.

“In the end, when somebody gets to know Cam the soldier, Cam the citizen, they always take my side,” he said. “That’s where my triumph is. The hurt goes away.”

    For Recruiter, Saying ‘Go Army’ Is a Hard Job, NYT, 7.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/us/07recruit.html?hp&ex=1160280000&en=d70ac8fda571df6d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Puts Toll of Iraqi Police at 4,000

October 6, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN O’NEIL

About 4,000 Iraqi policemen have been killed and more than 8,000 others wounded in the last two years, the American general in charge of training the country’s troubled police forces said today.

“They have paid a great price,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson. “Yet Iraqis are signing up as recruits every day.”

General Peterson said the figures covered casualties from September 2004 to the present. Earlier this year, a spokesman for the general told Congressional researchers that 1,497 Iraqi police officers were killed and 3,256 wounded in 2005.

For much of this year, police forces have replaced American troops as the prime focus of insurgent attacks, perhaps accounting for what appears to be an increasing rate of casualties.

In a televised briefing and interview from Baghdad, General Peterson acknowledged that the police forces and the Interior Ministry, which supervises them, are still plagued by corruption and sectarianism and that good unit commanders are in short supply.

But he pointed to a number of recent developments as reason for optimism, including the decision last week by Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani to suspend the Eighth Brigade, a 700-member police unit in Baghdad, after some of its officers were suspected of taking part in the kidnapping and killing of Sunni workers from a meat plant.

General Peterson said that a battalion commander had been arrested in the incident, in which his unit was operating outside of its authorized area, and that two of the brigade’s three battalions had previously failed inspection.

Murders and executions carried out by death squads linked to sectarian militias are the main cause of Iraqi deaths now, according to the American military, and Sunni leaders have complained bitterly about Shiite killers operating under the cover of the forces led by the Shiite-dominated government.

Mr. Bolani is seen as a more independent figure than his predecessor, a leader of one of the main Shiite parties. General Peterson called the suspension of the Eighth Brigade the result of an “isolated incident,” but said that Mr. Bolani “realizes that within his ministry he has individuals who joined the legitimate security forces of Iraq but maintained loyalty to militias.”

Asked about the Sunni perception that the police are dominated by Shiites, General Peterson said that local police units are meant to reflect the makeup of the area they are assigned to patrol. He said the national police force was 75 percent Shia and 25 percent Sunni, which reflects the ethnic breakdown of the country outside of Kurdistan, where security is handled by the provincial government.

The national police will be the focus of a new round of training meant to improve the quality of the security forces, now that a goal of recruiting 188,000 officers has been all but met, General Peterson said.

The force had been created to carry out paramilitary duties, and its members now need to learn more basic policing skills. “It needs to be re-blued, so to speak,” he said.

Overall, General Peterson emphasized the “tremendous progress” made since American forces designated 2006 as the “year of the police.”

He cited Anbar province, the restive western region long dominated by Sunni insurgents. “A year ago, there was basically anarchy out there,” General Peterson said. “We’ve cleared out the Euphrates River valley and starting to see police forces grow and take hold and perform their responsibilities admirably.”

But he stressed that solving the problems of the police and restoring order around Baghdad or the country as a whole would take time.

“This is like trying to build an airplane in flight,” he said.

“Sometimes I think we set unrealistic goals for our Iraqi colleagues,” the general went on. “They’re just rookies and we put them all throughout Iraq. We give them some capable leaders, but this is not simple.”

    U.S. Puts Toll of Iraqi Police at 4,000, NYT, 6.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/world/middleeast/07iraqcnd.html?hp&ex=1160193600&en=72af8906915a1413&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senator Says U.S. Should Rethink Iraq Strategy

October 6, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned Thursday that the situation in Iraq was “drifting sideways” and said that the United States should consider a “change of course” if violence did not diminish soon.

The chairman, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, expressed particular concern that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had not moved decisively against sectarian militias.

“In two or three months if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and this level of violence is not under control, I think it’s a responsibility of our government to determine: Is there a change of course we should take?” Senator Warner said.

He did not specify what shift might be necessary in Iraq, but he said that the American military had done what it could to stabilize Iraq and that no policy options should be taken “off the table.” He was speaking at a Capitol Hill news conference after returning from a Middle East trip that included a one-day visit to Baghdad.

His comments underscored the growing misgivings of even senior Republicans about the situation in Iraq. They also appeared to be a warning to the Bush administration that it might have to consider different approaches after the November midterm elections.

Mr. Warner, whose term as chairman expires at the end of the year, said he hoped his committee would be able to hold hearings in November on policy options recommended by an independent panel, led by former Representative Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Mr. Warner said the idea of partitioning Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines would have “very serious consequences,” and he refused to endorse the idea of setting a timetable for a phased withdrawal of American troops.

In a separate news conference, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, said he told Iraqi officials during the trip that he favored setting a date for a drawdown of troops.

Mr. Levin described a plan that Mr. Maliki announced Monday to increase security in Baghdad as “very tenuous.” The plan has no provisions for disarming sectarian militias, he said.

Mr. Levin added that the American ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, had told him during the trip that such warnings were a “useful message” to send to Mr. Maliki, though the administration had not endorsed the idea.

“I think the time is coming when the administration is going to deliver that message,” he said, “because it’s the only way, I believe, to change the dynamic in Iraq.”

    Senator Says U.S. Should Rethink Iraq Strategy, NYT, 6.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/world/middleeast/06capital.html

Anti-U.S. Attack Videos Spread on the Internet

October 6, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5 — Videos showing insurgent attacks against American troops in Iraq, long available in Baghdad shops and on Jihadist Web sites, have steadily migrated in recent months to popular Internet video-sharing sites, including YouTube and Google Video.

Many of the videos, showing sniper attacks against Americans and roadside bombs exploding under American military vehicles, have been posted not by insurgents or their official supporters but apparently by Internet users in the United States and other countries, who have passed along videos found elsewhere.

Among the scenes being viewed daily by thousands of users of the sites are sniper attacks in which Americans are felled by snipers as a camera records the action and of armored Humvees or other military vehicles being hit by roadside bombs.

In some videos, the troops do not appear to have been seriously injured; in one, titled “Sniper Hit” and posted on YouTube by a user named 69souljah, a serviceman is knocked down by a shot but then gets up to seek cover. Other videos, however, show soldiers bleeding on the ground, vehicles exploding and troops being loaded onto medical evacuation helicopters.

At a time when the Bush administration has restricted photographs of the coffins of military personnel returning to the United States and the Pentagon keeps close tabs on videotapes of combat operations taken by the news media, the videos give average Americans a level of access to combat scenes rarely available before, if ever.

Their availability has also produced some backlash. In recent weeks, YouTube has removed dozens of the videos from its archives and suspended the accounts of some users who have posted them, a reaction, it said, to complaints from other users.

More than four dozen videos of combat in Iraq viewed by The New York Times have been removed in recent days, many after The Times began inquiries.

But many others remain, some labeled in Arabic, making them difficult for American users to search for. In addition, new videos, often with the same material that had been deleted elsewhere, are added daily.

Russell K. Terry, a Vietnam veteran who founded the Iraq War Veterans Organization, said he had mixed feelings about the videos.

“It’s unfortunate there’s no way to stop it,” Mr. Terry said, even though “this is what these guys are over there fighting for: freedom of speech.”

One YouTube user, who would not identify himself other than by his account name, facez0fdeath, and his location, in Britain, said by e-mail that he posted a video of a sniper attack “because I felt it was information the U.K. news was unwilling to tell.”

“I was physically sickened upon seeing it,” he said, adding, “I am wholly opposed to any form of censorship.”

The video he posted, which had been viewed more than 33,000 times, was removed earlier this week.

Another YouTube user, who said he was a 19-year-old in Istanbul and who posted more than 40 videos of Iraq violence, said via e-mail that “anti-war feelings and Muslim beliefs (the religion of peace) motivates me.”

Neal O. Newbill, a freshman at the University of Memphis who viewed some of the YouTube videos and posted comments on them, said in an interview that he was enraged by the recorded chants of “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” that follow some of the sniper attacks.

But Mr. Newbill added that he was awed by the size of the blasts from the improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, used against American vehicles. A son, nephew and grandson of American veterans, Mr. Newbill said he had sought out the videos, searching on YouTube for “I.E.D.,” “because I like watching stuff blow up.”

The Web sites also contain a growing number of video clips taken by American soldiers. One shows the view from the back of a truck containing several members of a platoon, whose vehicle then hits an I.E.D. and is turned on its side. A few videos also show American servicemen or private security guards firing at attackers, and one shows an American rocket-propelled grenade hitting a building from which insurgents are firing.

A spokesman for United States Central Command, which oversees troops in Iraq, said the military was aware of the use of common Internet sites by both insurgent groups and American military personnel.

“Centcom is aware we are facing an adaptive enemy that uses the Internet as a force multiplier and as a means of connectivity,” Maj. Matt McLaughlin, the spokesman, said by e-mail.

While posting of Web logs, pictures and videos by American troops is subject to military regulations, Major McLauglin said, “Al Qaeda uses the Internet and media to foster the perception that they are more capable than they are.”

Some of the videos are obvious propaganda, with Arabic subtitles and accompanying music, while others simply have scenes without sound or graphics. They appear to be real, though the results of attacks are not always clear.

One frequently posted video shows individual photographs of several hundred American soldiers allegedly killed by a Baghdad sniper referred to as Juba. But a television news report from the German weekly Der Spiegel that also has been posted on the video sites shows an interview with one American soldier whom the insurgent group claimed to have killed but whose protective vest stopped the sniper’s bullet.

Geoffrey D. W. Wawro, director of the Center for the Study of Military History at the University of North Texas and a former instructor at the United States Naval War College, said the erosion of the command structure of terrorist and insurgent groups had led them to increase their reliance on the Internet and videos to gain recruits.

American troops, too, have always sent snapshots home from the front, Mr. Wawro said, and digital pictures and video are simply a new incarnation of that.

“This is how the new generation does things,” he said.

“It results in a continued trivialization of combat and its effects,” Mr. Wawro added, “but no one feels completely comfortable saying, Don’t do it.”

YouTube does feel comfortable saying so, however, as does Google Video. Both have user guidelines that prohibit the posting of videos with graphic violence, a measure that spokeswomen for each service said was violated by many of the Iraq videos.

Julie Supan, senior director of marketing for YouTube, said the company removed videos after they were flagged by users as having inappropriate content and were reviewed by the video service.

In an e-mail message, Ms. Supan said that among the videos removed were those that “display graphic depictions of violence in addition to any war footage (U.S. or other) displayed with intent to shock or disgust, or graphic war footage with implied death (of U.S. troops or otherwise).”

David Gelles and Omar Fekeiki contributed reporting from Berkeley, Calif.

    Anti-U.S. Attack Videos Spread on the Internet, NYT, 6.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/technology/06tube.html?hp&ex=1160193600&en=af7b9bbf7bba6c0d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Violence intolerable, Rice tells Iraqi leaders

Updated 10/5/2006 9:29 PM ET
USA Today
By Rick Jervis

BAGHDAD — Paying an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Iraq's leaders to work harder to find a way to stop the ethnic and religious violence that has engulfed the country.
"This is of course a difficult time for the Iraqis, but they are strong," she said.

"Our role is to support all the parties and indeed to press all the parties to work toward that resolution promptly," Rice said. "Obviously the security situation is not one that can be tolerated, and it isn't one that has been helped by political inaction."

Rice's visit came amid a spike in U.S. combat casualties. Iraqi and U.S. forces have been waging an offensive against sectarian militias and insurgents in the capital for months. Violence has continued despite that effort.

Ethnic and religious tensions have increased further in recent months, according to a Pentagon report to Congress. That has led to assassinations, kidnappings and an increase in civilian casualties, the report said.

At least 14 American servicemembers have been killed around Baghdad since Sunday, according to Pentagon data. Seven others have died in combat elsewhere in Iraq during that time. There was one non-combat death on Sunday.

Rice's plane, a military transport, circled the Baghdad airport for 35 minutes before landing because of a threat from "indirect fire" — mortar rounds or rockets — from around the airport, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Once in Baghdad, Rice met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, as well as Sunni Arab lawmakers.

Rice's last visit to Iraq was on April 26, when, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, she congratulated al-Maliki on being chosen to form a coalition government. Since then, Iraq has slipped deeper into sectarian violence that has killed as many as 100 people a day, according to a recent United Nations report. The U.S. force in the country has grown from 132,000 troops to 142,000 in that time.

Some observers say the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government has been reluctant to confront militias that have ties to political leaders. For example, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia has fought U.S. forces in the past, has supported al-Maliki's government. His organization has representatives in parliament and the Cabinet.

"Al-Maliki is in a real corner," said Matt Sherman, a former adviser to the Iraqi Interior Ministry who is now a political and security consultant in Washington.

Aggressive action against al-Sadr's supporters could undermine some of al-Maliki's political support, Sherman said. "He's in a no-win situation."

Al-Maliki told the Associated Press he was "optimistic" that a political solution will be found to persuade militias to dissolve.

Mithal al-Alusi, an independent Sunni lawmaker, said U.S. officials can help by intervening among Iraq's leaders the way they have in the past with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and other conflicts.

"We need a Camp David," al-Alusi said, referring to the peace accords between Egypt and Israel brokered by President Carter at Camp David in the 1970s. "We need a democratic solution, and we need U.S. help reaching it."

    Violence intolerable, Rice tells Iraqi leaders, UT, 6.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-10-05-rice-iraq_x.htm

Military Hones a New Strategy on Insurgency

October 5, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 — The United States Army and Marines are finishing work on a new counterinsurgency doctrine that draws on the hard-learned lessons from Iraq and makes the welfare and protection of civilians a bedrock element of military strategy.

The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces.

The current military leadership in Iraq has already embraced many of the ideas in the doctrine. But some military experts question whether the Army and the Marines have sufficient troops to carry out the doctrine effectively while also preparing for other threats.

The subtleties of the battle were highlighted Wednesday when the Iraqi Interior Ministry suspended a police brigade on suspicion that some members had been involved in death squads. The move was the most serious step Iraqi officials had taken to tackle the festering problem of militias operating within ministry forces. [Page A14.]

The new doctrine is part of a broader effort to change the culture of a military that has long promoted the virtues of using firepower and battlefield maneuvers in swift, decisive operations against a conventional enemy.

“The Army will use this manual to change its entire culture as it transitions to irregular warfare,” said Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who served in 2003 as the acting chief of staff of the Army. “But the Army does not have nearly enough resources, particularly in terms of people, to meet its global responsibilities while making such a significant commitment to irregular warfare.”

The doctrine is outlined in a new field manual on counterinsurgency that is to be published next month. But recent drafts of the unclassified documents have been made available to The New York Times, and military officials said that the major elements of final version would not change.

The spirit of the document is captured in nine paradoxes that reflect the nimbleness required to win the support of the people and isolate insurgents from their potential base of support — a task so complex that military officers refer to it as the graduate level of war.

Instead of massing firepower to destroy Republican Guard troops and other enemy forces, as was required in the opening weeks of the invasion of Iraq, the draft manual emphasizes the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. “The more force used, the less effective it is,” it notes.

Stressing the need to build up local institutions and encourage economic development, the manual cautions against putting too much weight on purely military solutions. “Tactical success guarantees nothing,” it says.

Noting the need to interact with the people to gather intelligence and understand the civilians’ needs, the doctrine cautions against hunkering down at large bases. “The more you protect your force, the less secure you are,” it asserts.

The military generally turned its back on counterinsurgency operations after the Vietnam War. The Army concentrated on defending Europe against a Soviet attack. The Marines were focused on expeditionary operations in the third world.

“Basically, after Vietnam, the general attitude of the American military was that we don’t want to fight that kind of war again,” said Conrad C. Crane, the director of the military history institute at the Army War College, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and one of the principal drafters of the new doctrine. “The Army’s idea was to fight the big war against the Russians and ignore these other things.”

A common assumption was that if the military trained for major combat operations, it would be able to easily handle less violent operations like peacekeeping and counterinsurgency. But that assumption proved to be wrong in Iraq; in effect, the military without an up-to-date doctrine. Different units improvised different approaches. The failure by civilian policy makers to prepare for the reconstruction of Iraq compounded the problem.

The limited number of forces was also a constraint. To mass enough troops to storm Falluja, an insurgent stronghold, in 2004, American commanders drew troops from Haditha, another town in western Iraq. Insurgents took advantage of the Americans’ limited numbers to attack the police there. Iraqi policemen were executed, dealing a severe setback to efforts to build a local force.

Frank G. Hoffman, a retired Marine infantry officer who works as a research fellow at an agency at the Marine base at Quantico, Va., said that in 2005, the Marines sometimes lacked sufficient forces to safeguard civilians. As a result, while these forces were often effective “in neutralizing an identifiable foe, they could not stay and work with the population the way the classical counterinsurgency would suggest.”

The effort to develop the new program began a year ago under Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, former commander of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command and the current chief of the First Marine Expeditionary Force. Colonel Crane, Lt. Col. John A. Nagl and Col. Douglas King of the Marines were among the major drafters.

Academics and experts from private groups were asked for input. A draft was completed in June and was circulated for comment. Almost 800 responses were received, but military officials said they would not alter the substance of the new doctrine.

“We are codifying the best practices of previous counterinsurgency campaigns and the lessons we have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan to help our forces succeed in the current fight and prepare for the future,” Colonel Nagl said.

In drafting the doctrine, the military drew upon some of the classic texts on counterinsurgency by the likes of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, and David Galula, whose ideas were partly informed by his experience in Algeria.

Colonel Crane said that many of the ideas adopted for the manual had been percolating throughout the military. “In many ways, this is a bottom-up change, “ he said. “The young soldiers who had been through Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and now Iraq and Afghanistan, understood why we need to do this.”

As the manual is being drafted, the military has also revised the curriculum at its war colleges and training ranges to emphasize counterinsurgency. At the National Training Center in California, the old tank-on-tank war games against a Soviet-style enemy have been supplanted by combat rehearsals in which troops on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan engage in mock operations with role players who simulate insurgents, militias and civilians.

Dennis Tighe, a training program manager for the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, said the rehearsals were vital for preparing troops for their new counterinsurgency mission. But the Army is stretched so thin and so many units are focused on rehearsing for Iraq and Afghanistan at the training center that concerns have grown that the Army may be raising a new group of young officers with little experience in high-intensity warfare against heavily equipped armies like North Korea.

“That is one of the things folks are a little concerned about,” Mr. Tighe said.

While the counterinsurgency doctrine attempts to look beyond Iraq, it cites as a positive example the experience in 2005 of the Army’s Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which worked with Iraqi security forces to clear Tal Afar of insurgents, to hold the town with Iraqi and American troops, then to encourage reconstruction there, an approach known as “clear, hold, build.”

One military officer who served in Iraq said American units there generally carried out the tenets of the emerging doctrine when they had sufficient forces. But protecting civilians is a troop-intensive task. He noted that there were areas in which there were not enough American and Iraqi troops to protect Iraqis adequately against intimidation, a central element of the counterinsurgency strategy.

“The units that have sufficient forces are applying the doctrine with good effect,” said the officer, who is not authorized to speak on military policy. “Those units without sufficient forces can only conduct raids to disrupt the enemy while protecting themselves. They can’t do enough to protect the population effectively and partner with Iraqi forces.”

    Military Hones a New Strategy on Insurgency, NYT, 5.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/washington/05doctrine.html?hp&ex=1160107200&en=48759026e3dc8460&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Fight to clear Baghdad of insurgents gets fiercer
UT        4.10.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-04-iraq-deaths_x.htm

Fight to clear Baghdad of insurgents gets fiercer

Updated 10/4/2006 11:23 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Rick Jervis

BAGHDAD — American casualties in Iraq are mounting as U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up a block-by-block battle to loosen the grip of militia violence on Baghdad. At least 19 American soldiers have been killed in combat since Saturday, many of them in the capital, according to the Defense Department.

"This has been a hard week for U.S. forces," said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. "We are all looking at that and are very much aware of it."

Four U.S. soldiers were killed by small-arms and indirect fire northwest of Baghdad on Wednesday. Indirect fire can refer to mortars or rockets. Eight American troops were killed in firefights and bombings Monday in Baghdad. It was the deadliest single day in the capital since July 2005.

U.S. and Iraqi forces are engaged in a high-stakes fight in Baghdad to clear out militias and insurgents.

"Certainly with this operation, we're hitting close to home and infringing on their freedom of movement and their ability to conduct these types of activities," said Lt. Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Iraq. "What we're seeing now is some push-back."

The increased presence of U.S. troops in the capital and the recent start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, may also account for the increase in American casualties, said Lt. Col. Avanulas Smiley, a U.S. battalion commander operating in northwest Baghdad.

Most of the violence in Baghdad, a city of 6 million, is the result of civil unrest. "Violence in Baghdad is the most prominent feature of the conflict in Iraq in this period, as Sunni and Shiite extremist death squads pursue their sectarian agendas," according to a Pentagon report to Congress.

Civilians also pay a heavy price. The report said the Baghdad coroner took in more than 1,800 bodies in July, 90% of whom appeared to have been assassinated.

A series of bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday killed 12 people.

Some of the death squads may be linked to Iraqi government security forces.

Wednesday, the U.S. command said Iraq's government suspended a brigade of up to 700 police officers for suspected involvement with death squads.

"There was some possible complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely when (the police brigade) should have been impeding them," Caldwell said. "The forces in the unit have not put their full allegiance to the government of Iraq and gave their allegiance to others."

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said that the commander of the unit, a lieutenant colonel, had been detained for investigation and that a major general had been suspended and ordered transferred.

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the chief ministry spokesman, said a random selection of troops in the suspended unit was being investigated for ties to militias.

Contributing: The Associated Press

    Fight to clear Baghdad of insurgents gets fiercer, UT, 4.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-04-iraq-deaths_x.htm

Baghdad bomb kills 14 as blasts reach peak

Wed Oct 4, 2006 12:13 PM ET
Reuters
By Mussab Al-Khairalla

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 14 people were killed and 75 wounded in a car bomb attack on the convoy of Iraq's industry minister on Wednesday, Interior Ministry sources said.

Minister Fawzi al-Hariri, a Kurd, was not in the convoy when it was attacked in central Baghdad, but two of his bodyguards were among those killed, said Industry Ministry spokeswoman Dhuha Mohammed.

The attack came as the U.S. military reported that roadside bombings in Baghdad were "at an all-time high" and that more car bombs had been defused or detonated in the capital in the past week than at any other time this year. They gave no firm figures.

The military has been trying to build up Iraq's army and police force to combat the violence, but their efforts have been bedeviled by allegations that the police have been infiltrated by sectarian militia and often turn a blind eye to atrocities committed by members of their own religious group.

U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said the police brigade responsible for Baghdad's southern districts had been "pulled off-line" for retraining after Sunday's mass kidnapping of mainly Sunni Muslim factory workers in the Amil district.

The car bomb hit the industry minister's convoy in the capital's Karrada district in the Christian neighborhood of Camp Sara, police said. Mangled wreckage lay on the road and the fronts of shops were blown out, witnesses said.

Insurgents fighting the Shi'ite-led national unity government have frequently targeted government ministers.

Another car bomb killed one person in Baghdad's restive Dora district.

Caldwell said the number of attacks had increased in Baghdad in past weeks "as expected", but that while the number of casualties was up in September, it "did not increase in proportion to the number of attacks".

"The overall effectiveness of the attacks and the enemy's ability to inflict casualties has decreased and has been decreasing since the June period," he said in Baghdad.

U.S. SOLDIERS KILLED

Insurgents shot dead two U.S. soldiers on Tuesday, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. One was killed in Baghdad and the other near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The deaths brought to 17 the number of U.S. soldiers killed since Saturday.

Caldwell said it had been a "hard week" for the U.S. military, which hopes to turn over more and more control of Iraqi territory to Iraq's security forces to enable it to begin withdrawing its more than 140,000 troops.

But Sunnis accuse the Iraqi police of giving cover to some of the sectarian hit squads blamed for the surge in Sunni-Shi'ite bloodshed that has raised fears of civil war.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said a regimental commander of the 8th Iraqi Police Brigade, 2nd Division, was arrested on Tuesday for negligence and failing to report the mass kidnapping of mainly Sunni factory workers on Sunday.

Caldwell said the brigade, responsible for policing the capital's southern districts, had been recalled immediately for "anti-militia, anti-sectarian and national unity training".

"This brigade's past performance has not demonstrated the level of professionalism sought by the Interior Ministry."

In another sign of an apparent crackdown on sectarian killings, U.S. troops arrested 10 Iraqi soldiers in Diyala Province suspected of death squad killings, an Iraqi army colonel said.

The colonel, who asked not to be named, said the 10 had guarded Brigadier Shakir al-Kaabi, head of the 5th Iraqi Army Division. The U.S. military could not be reached for comment.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has launched a four-point plan to try to end sectarian violence in Iraq. The plan, agreed by top Shi'ite and Sunni politicians late on Monday, hopes to halt communal fighting by allowing mixed "security committees" to patrol Baghdad.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami and Ross Colvin)

    Baghdad bomb kills 14 as blasts reach peak, R, 4.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-10-04T161246Z_01_GEO743062_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&src=100406_1238_TOPSTORY_baghdad_blasts_peak

8 G.I.’s Die in Baghdad, Most in a Day Since ’05

October 4, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

BAGHDAD, Oct. 3 — Eight United States soldiers were killed Monday in Baghdad, the United States military said, the most in the capital in a day since July 2005.

Four of the soldiers died in a roadside bomb attack; the four others were killed by small-arms fire in separate incidents.

Monday’s loss also represented one of the highest nationwide death tolls for American troops in the past year. In late August, nine soldiers and a marine were killed in a day. But before that, the last time eight or more soldiers were killed in hostile action was last November.

“Obviously this was a tragic day, with eight killed in 24 hours,” said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman.

The deadly day set back efforts by American and Iraqi troops to tame the sectarian violence that continues to besiege the capital. Since August, the military has made securing Baghdad a priority, pouring in additional troops and conducting neighborhood sweeps.

But the violence has continued, spiking over the last week with the start of the holy month of Ramadan. Military officials said last week that suicide bombings in Baghdad were at a record. At least 17 soldiers and marines have been killed since Saturday, most in Baghdad or Anbar Province, where fierce fighting continues between marines and Sunni insurgents.

According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent group that compiles figures based on information from the American military, 74 soldiers and marines were killed in Iraq in September, the highest number since April, when 76 died.

The violence also claimed 51 civilians across the country on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.

In the capital, an explosion at a fish market in Saidiya, in the southwest, just before 7 a.m. killed two people and wounded 10, an Interior Ministry official said. Just 15 minutes later, a mortar attack in Dora, a neighborhood in southern Baghdad that American and Iraqi troops have been trying to secure, killed two civilians and wounded five others, the official said.

Later in the day, four Iraqis were kidnapped as they left the Green Zone, which is home to the Iraqi government and American officials and workers. They were seized by gunmen who then sped off in three Toyota Land Cruisers, the official said.

On orders from Jawad Bolani, the interior minister, a high-ranking police commander was suspended Tuesday and taken into custody pending an investigation into a brazen kidnapping of 26 food-processing workers on Sunday in Amel, in western Baghdad. The bodies of at least 10 of them were found shortly afterward.

The commander, who was not identified, is being investigated because of what Brig. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a ministry spokesman, described as the colonel’s slow response to the kidnapping.

“The regiment’s commander had enough force to interfere, but the ministry is investigating why he didn’t do it,” he said.

A spokesman for the Iraqi High Tribunal said Tuesday that it would reconvene on Oct. 16 for Saddam Hussein’s trial but that it would not issue a verdict, as had been expected. Mr. Hussein and seven other former officials are accused of crimes against humanity for their roles in the killing of Shiites in Dujail in 1982, after an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein, a Sunni.

A radical Sunni group, Ansar al-Sunnah, claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the shooting death of a cousin of the radical Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr. The cousin, Dr. Namat al-Yassin, was shot to death last week near her home in Al Jamiah, in western Baghdad, said Fuad al-Turfi, an aide to Mr. Sadr. The claim of responsibility, posted on a militant Islamic Web site, could not be immediately verified.

A government organization responsible for overseeing Shiite mosques issued a report on Tuesday that offered another window into the sectarian violence that has plagued Iraq since the destruction of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February.

In the two and a half years before then, going back to August 2003, there were only 80 attacks on Shiite mosques, the report said. In the eight months since the Samarra bombing, there have been 69. More than 1,700 people have been killed in such attacks since 2003.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Ali Adeeb and Qais Mizher from Baghdad, and Margot Williams from New York.

    8 G.I.’s Die in Baghdad, Most in a Day Since ’05, NYT, 4.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html?hp&ex=1160020800&en=7b0086d7e52c6078&ei=5094&partner=homepage

White House backs Rumsfeld as it denies charges on Iraq

Sun Oct 1, 2006 2:35 PM ET
Reuters
By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has confidence in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, despite accusations that he botched the Iraq war and earlier efforts by top Bush aides to replace him, the White House said on Sunday.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett also said Condoleezza Rice, who served as Bush's national security adviser before becoming secretary of state, had proposed a complete change of Bush's national security team after his 2004 re-election.

This was in addition to efforts by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to replace Rumsfeld, as reported in a new book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward on Bush's handling of the war.

"The president has full confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld," Bartlett told ABC's "This Week." Rumsfeld was doing an "enormously difficult job," he added.

Bartlett also denied Bush was misleading the America public about violence against U.S. troops in Iraq, a central charge in a Woodward's book "State of Denial."

Rumsfeld, who critics say failed to adequately plan for the Iraq war or send enough troops, remains the right person to lead it, Bartlett said. "We recognize that he has his critics, we recognize that he's made some very difficult decisions. Some people don't like his bedside manner," Bartlett said.

Bush wants Rumsfeld "to bring him the type of information he needs to make the right decisions in this war," Bartlett said.

Disputing Woodward's assertion that Card tried to fire Rumsfeld with the support of First Lady Laura Bush, Bartlett said Card merely presented Cabinet options to Bush. Speaking on CNN's "Late Edition," he also said Rice "suggested to the president maybe he ought to bring in a whole new national-security team starting the second term."

"The president decided that's not the approach he wanted to take," Bartlett said.

Card acknowledged to MSNBC that he discussed replacing Rumsfeld with Bush on at least two occasions as part of other potential cabinet changes.

"There was never an orchestrated campaign to remove the secretary of defense that I was party to and I never had any indication that the first lady believed there should be a campaign to remove him," Card said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, considered a voice of caution on the war, was replaced by Bush for the second term.

SECRET ASSESSMENT

Woodward also wrote that while Bush spoke publicly of progress in Iraq, a secret intelligence assessment in May 2006 showed the insurgency was growing.

Bartlett said Bush has been "blunt" with the American public about the violence and the difficulties the U.S. faces in Iraq, and added that the book fails to note examples.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives intelligence committee, said Bush was not being open about the war.

"I think that there's an evidence-free zone in the White House and the top levels of the Pentagon. Regardless of what intelligence says, regardless of what some of their key inside advisers say, they say something different in public," Harman told "Fox News Sunday."

Bartlett said Bush declined to cooperate with Woodward, who helped to break open the Watergate scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon. Administration officials spent hours with Woodward but believed "their points weren't getting across," he said.

    White House backs Rumsfeld as it denies charges on Iraq, R, 1.10.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-10-01T183450Z_01_N30272373_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-4

NYT        September 30, 2006
NINA KAMP, MICHAEL O'HANLON and AMY UNIKEWICZ

The State of Iraq: An Update        NYT        1.10.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/opinion/01ohanlon.html

Op-Chart

The State of Iraq: An Update

October 1, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA KAMP, MICHAEL O'HANLON and AMY UNIKEWICZ

FACTS have a way of shrinking under the weight of politics. The fierce partisan debate last week set off by the new National Intelligence Estimate on the struggle against terrorism was a case in point. Similarly, our own tracking statistics from the last four years in Iraq will provide ammunition for both supporters and critics of the war. But one fact seems clear: this year’s violence was the worst since liberation, and probably the worst over all since 1991.

American troop fatalities, thankfully, declined somewhat this summer, but it is hard to view that as a positive development since much of the modest improvement was due to the reduced rate of American patrols (down from a daily average of 400 to, in the last year, 100 a year). When American forces do venture out of their base, they are in as much peril as ever. Similarly, the drastic falloff in kidnappings of foreigners primarily reflects the fact that foreigners now rarely leave the Green Zone in Baghdad. Iraqis continue to be kidnapped in large numbers.

While the economy is far from healthy, it has shown some improvement. Oil production has returned, at least for the moment, to levels seen at the end of Saddam Hussein’s rule, and electricity production is at higher levels, especially outside of Baghdad. School enrollment continues to increase; childhood vaccination rates are now respectable; Iraq’s media continue to flourish.

However, unemployment remains at 30 percent or more, as coalition and Iraqi authorities continue to resist the notion of adopting a Roosevelt-style public works program to mitigate joblessness. Inflation is up; private sector investment remains weak because of the security environment; gross domestic product growth has been modest and will probably slow because of the decline in global oil prices. Fuel supplies are stagnant in the face of rising demand.

Public optimism has rebounded a bit since spring, especially among Shiites and Kurds. But Iraqi optimism about the future is still not where it once was. Nor is it clear on what that optimism is based. The Iraqi government continues to flounder in attempts to rein in militias, ensure fair distribution of the nation’s future oil revenue, rehabilitate former low-level Baathists into public life and rebuild the economy. On balance, the data suggest that while Iraq is not lost, the United States and its allies there are hardly winning either.

Nina Kamp is a senior research assistant at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at Brookings and the co-author of “Hard Power.” Amy Unikewicz is a graphic designer in South Norwalk, Conn. Andrew Kamons of Brookings assisted in researching the chart.

    The State of Iraq: An Update, NYT, 1.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/opinion/01ohanlon.html

Editorial

America’s Army on the Edge

October 1, 2006
The New York Times

Even if there were a case for staying the current course in Iraq, America’s badly overstretched Army cannot sustain present force levels much longer without long-term damage. And that could undermine the credibility of American foreign policy for years to come.

The Army has been kept on short rations of troops and equipment for years by a Pentagon more intent on stockpiling futuristic weapons than fighting today’s wars. Now it is pushing up against the limits of hard arithmetic. Senior generals are warning that the Bush administration may have to break its word and again use National Guard units to plug the gap, but no one in Washington is paying serious attention. That was clear last week when Congress recklessly decided to funnel extra money to the Air Force’s irrelevant F-22 stealth fighter.

As early as the fall of 2003, the Congressional Budget Office warned that maintaining substantial force levels in Iraq for more than another six months would be difficult without resorting to damaging short-term expedients. The Pentagon then had about 150,000 troops in Iraq. Three years later, those numbers have not fallen appreciably. For much of that time, the Pentagon has plugged the gap by extending tours of duty, recycling soldiers back more quickly into combat, diverting National Guard units from homeland security and misusing the Marine Corps as a long-term occupation force.

These emergency measures have taken a heavy toll on combat readiness and training, on the quality of new recruits, and on the career decisions of some of the Army’s most promising young officers. They cannot be continued indefinitely.

Now, with the security situation worsening in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon concedes that no large withdrawals from either country are likely for the foreseeable future. As a result, even more drastic and expensive steps could soon be needed. The most straightforward would be to greatly increase the overall number of Army combat brigades. That would require recruiting, training and equipping the tens of thousands of additional soldiers needed to fill them.

Yet the Pentagon and Congress remain in an advanced state of denial. While the overall Defense Department budget keeps rising, pushed along by unneeded gadgetry, next year’s spending plan fails to adequately address the Army’s pressing personnel needs. Things have gotten so badly out of line that in August the Army chief of staff held up a required 2008 budget document, protesting that the Army simply could not keep doing its job without a sizable increase in spending.

A bigger army does not fit into Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s version of a technologically transformed military. And Congress prefers lavishing billions on Lockheed Martin to build stealth fighters, which are great for fighting Russian MIG’s and Chinese F-8’s but not for securing Baghdad. Army grunts are not as glamorous as fighter pilots and are a lot less profitable to equip. Yet we live in an age in which fighting on the ground to rescue failed states and isolate terrorists has become the Pentagon’s most urgent and vital military mission.

America’s credibility in that fight depends on the quality, quantity and readiness of our ground forces. If we go on demanding more and more from them while denying the resources they so desperately need, we could end up paying a terrible price.

    America’s Army on the Edge, NYT, 1.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/opinion/01sun1.html

Powell Tried to Warn Bush on Iraq, Book Says

October 1, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 — Colin L. Powell, in his last face-to-face meeting with President Bush before stepping down as secretary of state in January 2005, tried to impress upon him one last time the dangers he saw the United States facing in Iraq, according to a new Powell biography.

The insurgency was growing and the country was spiraling into sectarian bloodshed, Mr. Powell warned. Elections in Iraq would not solve the problems, and the president’s ability to act decisively was being crippled by divisions within his own administration, according to the account in “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell” (Knopf, 2006) by Karen DeYoung, an associate editor at The Washington Post. Mr. Bush appeared disengaged, the book says, and brushed off Mr. Powell’s complaints about dysfunction in his government.

The book is among the latest accounts of the divisions in the administration as it hurtled toward war and stumbled through its aftermath. The Powell biography provides further detail on his early misgivings about the war and the size of the force assembled to fight it, doubts that have been reported in several other books, including those by Ms. DeYoung’s colleague at The Post, Bob Woodward.

Despite his doubts, however, Mr. Powell never threatened to resign or go public with his complaints, according to these accounts, because such acts would betray the ethic of the loyal soldier he felt he was.

A 7,600-word excerpt from the Powell biography appears in Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine. The book’s publication date is Oct. 10.

Mr. Powell, who gave Ms. DeYoung several interviews for her book and encouraged others to cooperate, said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he had not read the book or the excerpts. He did not take issue with portions read to him, except to question the context of one anecdote involving an exchange with Vice President Dick Cheney.

“The real issue right now is not the various books that are out but how things are going in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Mr. Powell said. He would not share his views on the current state of affairs there, however.

A White House spokesman said officials there had not read the book and would not comment.

Since leaving office last year, Mr. Powell has kept his views to himself, with a few notable exceptions. He was openly critical of the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina last year and weighed in vigorously in the debate over treatment of detainees in the war on terror.

He has quietly cooperated with Ms. DeYoung, Mr. Woodward and other authors, while keeping his counsel in public on Iraq, the broader war on terrorism and the diplomatic struggles of his successor at the State Department, Condoleezza Rice. He does not want to undermine the president, but he also wants to make sure that his point of view is accurately reflected in histories, associates said.

“It’s a matter of behaving with dignity when you’re out of office,” said Richard L. Armitage, Mr. Powell’s former deputy and his closest confidant. “You don’t want to be seen as criticizing those who took your place. On differences of principle, like the Geneva Conventions, he will speak out. On differences of approach, he probably will not.”

In answer to those who ask why he has not been more outspoken, Mr. Powell generally replies, “There’s a war on.”

The common thread of many of the recent accounts is of warnings ignored about flaws in the prewar intelligence, in the war-fighting doctrine and in plans for occupying the shattered country. Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, dismissed some of these accounts as the grumblings of people on the losing side of internal arguments.

The Powell biography fleshes out a tale already widely known in Washington of infighting among Mr. Powell, Mr. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense. Mr. Powell, who served as secretary of state through Mr. Bush’s first term, came out on the losing end of the majority of their arguments.

The book provides an inside account of the preparation for Mr. Powell’s pivotal presentation before the United Nations six weeks before the start of the Iraq war in March 2003. Mr. Powell told Ms. DeYoung that he spent much of the five days he had to prepare for the presentation “trimming the garbage” that Mr. Cheney’s staff had provided by way of evidence of Iraq’s weapons programs and ties to Al Qaeda.

Mr. Powell later conceded that the United Nations speech was full of falsehoods and distorted intelligence and was a “blot” on his record.

Running throughout this book and other recent accounts are the defeats and humiliations Mr. Powell suffered in service to Mr. Bush. Though Mr. Powell remained an admired figure in America, it was not enough to protect him against attacks.

“There are people who would like to take me down,” he is quoted as saying while motioning toward the White House during his last year in office. “It’s been the case since I was appointed. By take down, I mean, ‘keep him in his place.’ ”

    Powell Tried to Warn Bush on Iraq, Book Says, NYT, 1.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/washington/01powell.html