BAGHDAD, Iraq — An American freelance journalist was found dead in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the U.S. Embassy said Wednesday.

Police said Steven Vincent had been shot multiple times after he and his Iraqi translator were abducted at gunpoint hours earlier.

“I can confirm to you that officials in Basra have recovered the body of journalist Steven Vincent,” said embassy spokesman Pete Mitchell. “The U.S. Embassy is working with British military and local Iraqi officials in Basra to determine who is responsible for the death of this journalist.“

I didn’t know Steve, but his agent, Andrew Stuart, is my former book agent. He was also a blogger and was researching another book, this one on post-war Basra. Already the comments section on the latest post is filling up. I also didn’t agree with much of what he wrote, but he was intrepid enough to spend months living in Basra, which is a hard thing for a westerner to do.

It is unknown if he was killed for his coverage or if it was kidnapping and robbery gone sour. All I know is that my thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Technorati Tags: Current Affairs, Iraq, Journalism, Moqtada al-Sadr, News and Politics

It would last two to three years at most, must provide immediate benefits to the people of Iraq, would hold municipal elections within six months and regional elections within another six months after that and begin immediate criminal prosecutions. The other duties must be to fulfill obligations to the U.N. regarding weapons of mass destruction, he said, and human rights agreements must be adhered to. “It’s critical to me that the transitional period not be seen as a final status,” he said. “I don?t think the transitional government should be the government that signs a peace treaty with Israel. That should be the permanent government.“
And most important, he said, the United Nations should not _lift_ the sanctions. Instead they should be _suspended_ so that the transitional government doesn?t gain control of the country?s treasury and the permanent lifting of sanctions is an incentive to democratize.
“If you want to ensure the transitional figures do not become transitional in the Iraqi sense of the word — by that I mean lasting 40 years — you cannot hand over the purse strings of Iraq,” he said. “Saddam did not immediately rule by fear. He co-opted the elite during the 1960s and ‘70s by drowning them in cash.”

Taking control of the oil industry, while looking really, _really_ bad to the rest of the world, is probably the best that can be made of a bad situation. Istrabadi’s right; if a transitional government took control of Iraq’s oil revenue, there likely result would be wholesale robbing that would make the looters in the closing days of the war look like pikers.
Granted, this will not help the United States’ image in Iraq or in the Arab world. They’re already convinced the U.S. was making an oil grab. The only way to combat this impression is to manage the oil industry in an enlightened and benevolent manner with no favortism given to corrupted Iraqis or American companies.
Handing out crony contracts to Halliburton subsidiaries and other, well-connected American corporations ain’t the way do this. There really don’t seem to be many good solutions to this mess.

“If that is not an unholy partnership, I have not heard of one,” he said. “This is the nightmare that people have warned about, the linking up of Iraq with al Qaeda.“
Officials refuse to see the tape for what it is — an attempt by bin Laden to use war against Iraq to bolster his leadership, just as most Arab leaders have cynically used the Palestinians to bolster themselves against Israel. In other words, the tape is a trap that Washington is about to blunder into. To the White House, the bin Laden tape shows not an attempt by bin Laden to tap into world-wide Muslim anger against the United States, but a bona fide announcement of an active, strategic partnership that has existed for years.
Anyway, back in the real world, other theories have abounded, with the anti-war left and the Arab world invoking the siamese-twin spectors of imperialism and colonialism as the main reasons for war. “No blood for oil!” is the classic retort from the left, simplifying a complex array of domestic politics, international relations and geopolitical goals into a four-word slogan that doesn’t do justice to what I believe are the real reasons. Yes, this war is about oil, but it’s not just about oil. And yes, it’s about imperialism, but not in the way that the leftists believe. The real reasons are to secure a continuous supply of oil for Europe and Japan, pressuring Saudi Arabia into cutting off funding to the conservative clergy and thus fueling the worst of the terror networks, securing a stable environment for regional ally Israel and encircling Iran in the hope of sweeping the ayatollah’s from power.
Backon Nov. 14, I wrote the following:

I’m convinced that the reason given by the left for the U.S.‘s drive to topple Saddam — mainly control of Iraq’s oil fields — is much too simplistic to give the whole picture. And I don’t trust the Bush Administration that Iraq poses a clear and present danger, with Saddam being thisclose to fielding nukes on magic unmanned drones that could take out American cities. And the Butcher of Baghdad isn’t so stupid that he would give weapons of mass destruction to an element that he couldn’t control, such as al Qa’ida. So what gives? Why the push on Iraq when al Qa’ida poses a clear and present threat and Pakistan has been helping North Korea with its nuke program. (The implication is that if Pakistan has elements that would help the North Koreans, there are likely elements in the government that would help al Qa’ida in a similar manner.)
This report from the Institute for National Strategic Studies’ National Defense University might offer some clues. The main thrust of the report is that America has long realized the strategic value of the Persian Gulf, and fully intends to keep a military presence there regardless of any outcome in Iraq. “The United States will need to diversify its dependence on regional basing and forward presence, as well as reduce the visibility and predictability of its forward-deployed forces,” reads the report.
Why is this necessary? Because way back in 1990, the the Bush White House, part first , announced a defense posture that called for “adult supervision” of the world. And the most recent iteration of the National Security Strategy of the United States calls for the globe’s sole superpower to suffer no rivals militarily or economically, imposing a pax americana . So the United States is in the Gulf to guarantee the supply of oil not for itself, but for Europe and Japan, which get most of their oil from the Middle East. (Surprisingly, the United States gets most of its oil from Canada, Venezuela and Mexico; Persian Gulf sources supplied only 11 percent of America’s oil in 2000, according to the Department of Energy.) The United States Marines safeguard the Persian Gulf because Europe and Japan might re-arm and secure the oil sources for themselves if we didn’t. And as I said, the United States does not intend to suffer rivals gladly.
So we are going to be in the Gulf for a long time. As the INSS report says, “There is no escaping the U.S. role as a guarantor of Gulf stability. Thus, the United States needs a viable concept for its future forward presence that can be sustained over the long haul.” Saudi Arabia is not the secure base that we need for such a presence, as the presence of infidel troops so close to the holy sites of Mecca and Medina directly undermines the legitimacy of the House of Saud, which came to power in the 1920s as the family that would protect Islam’s holiest shrines. The presence of the troops inflames the faithful, such as bin Ladin, and leads the Saudi royal family to pay off the radical clerics that wield much influence in the kingdom. In essence this is the reason radical Islamists with possible access to nukes are “funded” by Saudi Arabia — the Saudis are buying them off and pointing a loaded gun away from their own head and toward someone else’s. If the House of Saud falls, which it could do at anytime, a big reason will be resentment over its invitation of American GIs.
The solution is to get the 5,000 or so Americans off the Arabian peninsula. But the United States can’t pull out with Saddam in power; the troops are there to contain Saddam. So the solution to the solution is to remove Saddam from power, in the process diversifying the distribution of American troops in the region and removing a provocation to radicals. (Once they get over being pissed at the subjugation of Iraq, that is.)
Some would argue that this will just preserve Saudi legitimacy. Others may argue that a friendly regime in Iraq would undercut the Saudis and bring oil prices down as the two countries (which control the largest and second-largest known reserves of oil on the planet) compete for markets. There is evidence that the Saudis are hewing to the second view, doing everything in their power to impede the United States’ war planning, including a massive loan to Russia — interest free! — if the Bear had only vetoed UNSCR 1441. Alas for the Saudis, this didn’t happen, and they are caught between Iraq and a hard place.
So the goal of the United States is to maintain a presence in the Persian Gulf so that Europe and Japan don’t re-arm. In order to maintain a presence and decrease dependency on an unreliable ally, Saudi Arabia, Washington has to lighten the military footprint in the region by removing the cause for the heavy footprint — Saddam Hussein. Once that is accomplished, the forward forces can be distributed out of Saudi Arabia and a friendly Iraq can help pressure the Saudis to keep oil prices low. As a bonus, Washington would no longer have to go easy on the Saudis in its war against al Qa’ida since Iraq would be the bulwark in the Gulf.

Since I wrote that, several other writers have come to the same conclusions. Anthony Lane at the New Yorker, analyzises “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” co-authored by Richard Perle and David Wurmser in 1996. The document, from the Institute for Advanced International Stuidies, instructs the United States to actively work to secure a stable supply of oil and make the Middle East safe for Israel. Wurmser, also the author of “Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein,” (1999) sees the main enemy as the ideology of Pan-Arabism, which for Wurmser is a form of Middle Eastern totalitarianism. He places Saddam and the Assad family of Syria squarely in the Pan-Arab nationalist camp, so bringing down Saddam would undermine the Ba’athist regime in neighboring Syria. And a post-Saddam Iraq with “meaningful participation” of the Shi’ite majority would undermine the claims of Iran’s mullahs that they represent the only legitimate power center for the region’s Shi’ia.
By deligtimizing the Syrian regime and putting pressure on Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and other terror groups, would lose their source of support. As a bonus, as Syrian becomes more pro-American, so, too, would Lebanon, ending the base of operations for Hezbollah. The Palestinian Authority, with no allies remaining in the region, would be forced to renounce terrorism (for real, this time) and sue for peace on Israel’s terms. Perle’s document makes references to the Hashemite monarchy controlling Iraq again, and there have been sinsiter whispers that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is just looking for an opportunity to expel not just Yassir Arafat, but all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza into Jordan. As ambitious as Perle and Wurmser are in their chessboard thinking, it’s not inconceivable that they could be envisioning Jordan as the new Palestine with Iraq given to Jordan’s King Abdullah Hussein in compensation for the loss of his kingdom.
Other theories have been put forward and there’s no simple answer to any of this. The United States’ invasion and occupation of Iraq is not just about oil, colonialism or empire building. But nor is it not about those things either. I’ve tried to map out what I believe is the administration’s thinking based on reports, research and balance-of-power analysis (which I do from a gut level rather than game theory) and others have echoed similar thoughts. Warblogging has a good entry today on John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and the Administration’s plans to “deal with” Iran, Syria and North Korea, apres Iraq. Do these plans include military action or do they echo the thoughts of Perle and Wolfowitz that an occupied Iraq would pressure Iran and Syria to change their ways if not their regimes? We don’t yet know.

Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan: Much has been said about the reluctance of Turkey to allow U.S. forces to open up a northern front in order to tie down Iraqi forces from racing to defend Baghdad. Recent article have mentioned further foot-dragging on the part of the Turkish Parliament. This is likely a ruse. I think it’s probable there is already a modest build-up of American forces larger than previously admitted but smaller than what the United States is publicly asking for. The situation is probably even more stabilized in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Washington Post reported on Jan. 30 that “small numbers” of American military forces are operating in Iraqi Kurdistan. Jalal Talabani, chairman of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan made a laughable distinction between the“personnel“and“troops.” My theory is that the numbers are much greater in Iraqi Kurdistan than anyone is admitting. The northern front, despite its public disarray is probably in pretty good shape.
Jordan and Saudi Arabia: There have been consistent rumors of American troops “training” in Jordan. It’s not unreasonable for the one Arab country with a free-trade agreement with the United States and a peace treaty with Israel to have allowed a modest build-up in the eastern desert ready to launch into Iraq’s vast western provinces to seize SCUD sites and advance on Baghdad. There are already troops in Saudi Arabia and the desert kingdom’s public protests, reluctance to allow the use of its bases and declarations that the Americans will be expelled after the war could very well be a head-fake on Saddam. The government-controlled media could be easily brought to heel, as evidenced by protests that rocked the country months ago and which were never reported in the newspapers.

in each region I’ve mentioned, the media are either tightly controlled or can quickly be censored. My speculation mirrors a war plan that was leaked to the New York Times in July 2002 but which was quickly disowned by the Americans and the regional powers. Turkey and Jordan, especially, said quickly that their territories would not be used. I’m skeptical of these claims, especially considering the leverage the United States has on Ankara and Amman.
Again, this is speculation, but considering the history of the United States using massive build-ups to distract enemies only to hit them hard from another direction, it makes sense. There are also signs that Iraq may be wise to this tactic. Along an Iraqi army post about 100 yards from the Kuwaiti border, “there is no sign here that Iraq is doing much to prepare itself militarily against an invasion. A stray tank or two can be seen farther north, off the road from Basra to Baghdad, but otherwise there is little evidence of any real military presence near the zone.“
In two weeks or so, we’ll see how close I was in my predictions. Any takers?
[UPDATE: I swear I didn’t read this article in the Boston Globe before I wrote this entry. But the two pieces seem to jibe pretty closely, eh?]

Mr. Powell withheld some critical details today, like the discovery by the intelligence agencies that a member of the royal family in Qatar, an important ally providing air bases and a command headquarters for the American military, operated a safe house for Mr. Zarqawi when he transited the country going in and out of Afghanistan.
The Qatari royal family member was Abdul Karim al-Thani, the coalition official said. The official added that Mr. al-Thani provided Qatari passports and more than $1 million in a special bank account to finance the network.
Mr. al-Thani, who has no government position, is, according to officials in the gulf, a deeply religious member of the royal family who has provided charitable support for militant causes for years and has denied knowing that his contributions went toward terrorist operations.
Private support from prominent Qataris to Al Qaeda is a sensitive issue that is said to infuriate George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. After the Sept. 11 attacks, another senior Qaeda operative, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who may have been the principal planner of the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was said by Saudi intelligence officials to have spent two weeks in late 2001 hiding in Qatar, with the help of prominent patrons, after he escaped from Kuwait.
But with Qatar providing the United States military with its most significant air operations center for action against Iraq [the al Udeid Air Base — Ed.], the Pentagon has cautioned against a strong diplomatic response from Washington, American and coalition officials say.

Sure makes those coup reports a lot more interesting, now doesn’t it? And it makes a lot more sense that Qatar and the United States would both deny that anything happened. But this is part of Washington’s game. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and now Qatar have known ties to Islamic extremists that have had a direct hand in attacking United States interests and nothing is done because we need these countries to attack Iraq. (Or Afghanistan, in the case of Pakistan. I have less problem with going easy on Gen. Musharraf since he’s in a delicate spot and we don’t want Pakistan’s nukes falling into the hands of Islamo-Fascists.) It’s almost as if the War on Terror is an irritating distraction from the War on Iraq. And that’s exactly backward, as far as the American people are concerned.
(As an aside, the Times article notes that by revealing that Zarqawi is a walking dead man now, as Baghdad has constantly denied links to al Qa’ida. “A half hour after Powell mentioned his name, I’ll wager he disappears or is killed,” said a coalition official, recalling the death in Baghdad in 2001 of the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, after intelligence reports suggested than he might be activating his own terrorist network.” As Hesiod asks, if the United States could have had Zarqawi killed earlier by mentioning him, why didn’t it? As with Ansar al-Islam, it’s convenient for the White House to let threats linger as long as they serve the goal of invading Iraq.)
George over at Warblogging has an excellent entry on why Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time. With the the national threat level about to go to “orange” later today amid fears of a mid-February attack by al Qa’ida that could rival Sept. 11, 2001, why is Washington ignoring real links between supposed allies and terror groups and instead focusing on tenuous ties between our enemies? This is why.