Category Archives: Post-War

WMDs still MIA

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Well, the great Iraqi WMD Hunt of 2003 appears to be wind­ing down. The Asso­ci­ated Press reports:

Weapons-hunters are spend­ing more time on base, intel­li­gence experts have been reas­signed to work on the coun­terin­sur­gency, and the man lead­ing a search for chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal and nuclear weapons is think­ing of bow­ing out.

The con­ven­tional wis­dom is that no one in the elec­torate cares any­more. Saddam’s been caught! “The war’s going great!”:http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031219.asp
But they should care, because — and this will come as no sur­prise, but I have to say it — this war was fought using the Amer­i­can people’s tax money and their sons and daugh­ters. Since March 20, 548 troops from Coali­tion coun­tries “have died”:http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx, at the aver­age rate of 1.6 a day.
Cit­i­zens should care because they were lied to. There’s really no polite way to say it, but the White House lied about the threat of Saddam’s WMDs to get the Amer­i­can peo­ple to sup­port the war. And it worked. Now, $87 bil­lion and almost 550 dead sol­diers later, the hunt is almost played out.
“It’s prob­a­bly time to call it quits,” said Hans Blix, the for­mer chief U.N. weapons inspec­tor, whose teams were given one-third the time the United States has spent look­ing for weapons.
“The U.S. and the U.K. are so wed­ded to the idea that the Iraqis were hid­ing things that they are not will­ing to explore the pos­si­bil­ity that they’re wrong,” Blix said.
If there’s any­thing good that came out of the cam­paign of mass decep­tion, I’d like to think that the Amer­i­can peo­ple won’t be fooled twice. Per­haps that real­iza­tion hit Karl Rove, too, and may be another rea­son Wash­ing­ton and Lon­don chose to believe Col. Muam­mar al-Qadhafi when he said he would give up his WMDs and allow UN inspec­tors in. Because the White House couldn’t cry wolf twice, Qad­hafi is now a man the West can do busi­ness with instead of a lyin’, theivin’, treach­er­ous dic­ta­tor, like Sad­dam Hus­sein.
But per­haps my faith in the com­mon sense of the Amer­i­can peo­ple is mis­placed. I mean, accord­ing to a recent Gallup poll, “53 per­cent of Amer­i­cans think Sad­dam Hus­sein was per­son­ally involved in the 9/11 attacks”:http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031219.asp, _up_ 10 points from a sim­i­lar poll take in Sep­tem­ber.
The Amer­i­can peo­ple were lied to — they should be angry. Instead, they’re still will­ingly believ­ing lies.

Boston TV stations nix “C-SPAN Baghdad”

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Most local Boston tele­vi­sion sta­tions are refus­ing to use the Pentagon-sponsored footage out of Bagh­dad, dubbed “C-SPAN Bagh­dad,” which “I wrote”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000489.php#000489 about ear­lier this month.

“I’m kind of appalled by it. I think it’s very trou­bling,” said Charles Kravetz, vice pres­i­dent of news at the regional cable news out­let NECN. “I think the gov­ern­ment has no busi­ness being in the news busi­ness.“
“We have no inter­est in this,” said WBZ-TV (Chan­nel 4) news direc­tor Peter Brown. “The Fourth Estate is inde­pen­dent and should remain so. As news providers, we should go there and see for ourselves.”

Gov­ern­ment offi­cials deny the footage is an effort on the part of the Pen­ta­gon to man­age the news com­ing out of Iraq.

“Basi­cally, this pro­vides us with the abil­ity to feed back brief­ing mate­ri­als and the sub­stance of what is hap­pen­ing in Bagh­dad to the Pen­ta­gon … on a real-time basis,” [said Dor­rence Smith, a for­mer ABC news­man now work­ing for the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sional Author­ity in Iraq and the man in charge of C-SPAN Bagh­dad.] “It’s for one or for all as opposed to the very few media who are here in Baghdad.”

Smith, by the way, is the guy who man­aged Pres­i­dent Bush’s media strat­egy in the Florida recount in 2000. And if that doesn’t make your blood pres­sure go up a bit, a Depart­ment of Defense spokesman Bryan Whit­man stressed that while the project’s func­tion is to pro­vide live brief­ings back to the Pen­ta­gon, he “wouldn’t want to rule out any­thing in the future.“

Atrios over at Escha­ton won’t give the sta­tions any props for not run­ning the feed, but I will — for now. Why don’t you read­ers send the guys at the sta­tions feed­back applaud­ing them for liv­ing up to their Fourth Estate duties (in this case) and encour­age them that their judg­ment in reject­ing the feed is appreciated.

  • “WBZ-TV”:http://wbz4.com/feedback/

  • “WHDH”:http://www.whdh.com/contact/
  • “WCVB”:http://www.thebostonchannel.com/station/

Still, for all my blus­ter regard­ing C-SPAN Bagh­dad, I’m kind of inclined to agree with “Jack Shafer”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2092950/ over at “Slate”:http://www.slate.com, and not just because he links to me in the arti­cle. He’s of the mind that the Pentagon’s obvi­ous efforts at pro­pa­ganda will crash and burn because Amer­i­cans are more likely to watch _Seinfeld_ than they are to watch empty mil­i­tary cer­e­monies and video of sol­diers paint­ing schools. He also makes the inter­est­ing obser­va­tion that C-SPAN Bagh­dad will have the — surely unin­ten­tional — effect of putting the CPA and the admin­is­tra­tion on record regard­ing var­i­ous goings-on in Iraq. “Such a record of their own mak­ing would make this admin­is­tra­tion much more account­able than they already are,” he writes. “If the pro­pa­gan­dists insisted on putting a happy face on Iraq for U.S. news con­sumers while thou­sands of U.S. sol­diers die and Iraqis riot, they would lose all cred­i­bil­ity. But here they’re caught in a double-bind: If they tell the truth, they start con­verg­ing upon the inde­pen­dent press’s mis­sion and begin to negate their own rai­son d’etre.“
So while the Pentagon’s plan is exe­crable and an insult­ing waste of tax­pay­ers’ money, if more local sta­tions like those in Boston reject the feed and news con­sumers turn to a few of the upteen mil­lion media out­lets that can counter the feed — like this one! “Send me back to Iraq!”:https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=chris%40back-to-iraq.com&%0Aitem_name=Reports+from+the+%0AMiddle+East+by+an+independent+journalist — it’s likely the newest series from Bag­dad will be can­celled before the next season.

Revenge Killings in Najaf

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Two for­mer Ba’athists have been killed in the Shi’ite city of Najaf, in what appear to be revenge killings for their role in Sad­dam Hussein’s old regime.

On Fri­day, gun­men killed Ali Qassem al-Tamimi, the dis­trict mayor of Najaf’s al-Furat neigh­bor­hood, as he was shop­ping with a friend in down­town Najaf, accord­ing to Lt. Raed Jawad Abdel Saada.
Early Sat­ur­day, two assailants rid­ing by on a bicy­cle opened fire on for­mer provin­cial party offi­cial Damiyah Abbas and her son as they were leav­ing their home.
The 5-year-old boy was killed instantly, and Abbas was hos­pi­tal­ized in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, accord­ing to another police offi­cer, Lt. Raed Abbas.
Damiyah Abbas was believed to have par­tic­i­pated in putting down a 1991 Shi’ite upris­ing against the gov­ern­ment of Sad­dam.
Al-Tamimi’s posi­tion would have involved him act­ing as an informer, report­ing to Baath Party offi­cials in Bagh­dad on the polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and jobs of residents.

Now, some read­ers con­sider these killings no bad thing. But I say this: Revenge killings, while part of the cul­ture, are a recipe for dis­as­ter.
To those who look on with sat­is­fac­tion at the vig­i­lante jus­tice meted out to these peo­ple, I say this: You are encour­ag­ing the destruc­tion of Iraq as a coun­try. You are encour­ag­ing its col­lapse into war­ring fac­tions that will make the cur­rent chaos appear like a pre-game warmup. There can be no jus­tice at the hands of a mob, for such “jus­tice” breeds fear, sus­pi­cion and hatred. And God knows there’s enough of that in Iraq right now. Many Sun­nis already feel scared and inse­cure about their role in the new Iraq. These mur­ders will drive already fright­ened Sun­nis into the arms of the insur­gents and will lead to civil war.
No, it’s bet­ter to let the courts — what­ever form they may take — deal out jus­tice. A mob is the basest form of human orga­ni­za­tion, and any­one who’s been one knows how ter­ri­fy­ing they can be. Even a happy mob is a fright­en­ing thing. A society’s judi­ciary, how­ever, can rep­re­sent its best angels. A well-functioning bench rep­re­sents the ulti­mate tri­umph of the forces of civ­i­liza­tions over the rule of nature, red in tooth and claw. It rep­re­sents the faith cit­i­zens place in the power of the state to be fair and impar­tial, allow­ing them to forgo the free­lance pur­suit of jus­tice.
If you who cheer the deaths of Ba’athists at the hands of a mob truly want a demo­c­ra­tic Iraq, one that respects the human rights of _all_ the peo­ples of that coun­try, you’ll work for and encour­age an Iraqi jus­tice sys­tem that is fair, trans­par­ent and inde­pen­dent, for such an insti­tu­tion would mean in Iraq the United States will have done its job well. It would mean Amer­ica will have left behind faith in the rule of law, some­thing Iraqis have never had. An inde­pen­dent and fair judi­ciary would lead Iraq’s cit­i­zens to gen­uinely respect the Iraqi state, instead of liv­ing in a repub­lic of fear.
These acts of vio­lence should be con­demned, regard­less of whether they’re per­pe­trated by Shi’ite, Sunni or Kurd. To do oth­er­wise is to dis­honor the birth­place of civilization.

Bomb demolishes Badr Brigade HQ in Baghdad

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In a sign of increas­ing vio­lence against Shi’ites, early Fri­day morn­ing, a bomb destroyed the Bagh­dad HQ of the “Badr Brigade”:http://www.sciri.btinternet.co.uk/English/About_Us/Badr/badr.html, the pri­vate mili­tia of “SCIRI”:http://www.sciri.btinternet.co.uk/English/About_Us/about_us.html, the lead­ing Shi’ite polit­i­cal party in Iraq. A woman was killed and at least seven peo­ple were injured.
Headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI and the Badr Brigade are believed to be in a low-level war with the insur­gents, which is likely made up of Iraqi nation­al­ists and Sun­nis loyal to the old regime. mdf431197.jpg
An elderly Iraqi woman sits out­side her home destroyed in Friday’s explo­sion. Photo by Alexan­der Demianchuk/ReutersThe Brigade is a likely source of man­power for a “pro­posed counter-terrorism unit”:http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=AB5FE03B-E752-4D90-B2D28FC5D2077AE2 that would draw on the pri­vate mili­tias of the var­i­ous polit­i­cal par­ties in Iraq — mostly exile groups, but includ­ing the Kur­dish _peshmergas._ Juan Cole reports that Iyad al-Samarra’i, the sec­re­tary gen­eral of the Iraqi Islamic Party, calls this plan a “recipe for Leban­on­iz­ing Iraq.“
Just two days ago, insur­gents “shot and killed Muhan­nad al-Hakim”:http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1071791286761_67200486/?hub=TopStories, head of secu­rity at the Edu­ca­tion Min­istry and a cousin of Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim.
The big ques­tion now is, will the Shi’ites strike back? That’s the worry, as that would be civil war, with Amer­i­can troops in the mid­dle. That’s what the insur­gents want, as they think that a messy civil war will cause the Amer­i­can troops to bug out — not an unrea­son­able assump­tion given the bomb­ing of the Marines’ bar­racks in Lebanon civil war in 1983 led to just that out­come.
(By the way, my use of of the terms “Sun­nis” and “Shi’ites” in the con­text of this post should not be con­strued as por­tray­ing _all_ Shi’ites and _all_ Sun­nis as lust­ing for each oth­ers’ blood. I’m refer­ring to the mil­i­tants and polit­i­cal activists in each camp. The major­ity of Sun­nis and Shi’ites just wish to live in peace.)
To a degree, the cap­ture of Sad­dam may have made the Shi’ites less inclined to lis­ten to the Amer­i­cans, who no doubt are urg­ing SCIRI to avoid retal­i­a­tion. With­out the the worry of Sad­dam return­ing to power, the Shi’ites are los­ing patience are are less inclined to tol­er­ate the occu­pa­tion and become more assertive. A lit­tle over a week ago, a bomb exploded at the Ahbab Mustafa Mosque in Bagh­dad, killing four Sun­nis. And a friend of mine is in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city and a Shi’ite strong­hold, tells me the graf­fiti is a mix­ture of thanks to Amer­ica and calls for _jihad_. Cou­ple the Shi’ites numer­i­cal supe­ri­or­ity with the hand-over in sov­er­eignty in June, and they will have mostly a free hand to deal with the Sun­nis. It could be a blood­bath. Will they wait until June — and let the Amer­i­cans soften up their Sunni foes in the mean­time — or will they counter-attack now? “The attack on the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf in August”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000451.php#000451, which killed Aya­tol­lah Moham­mad Baqir al-Hakim, did not result in a civil war, but the shadow of Sad­dam still hung over Iraq, and the Shi’ites may have wor­ried that in the chaos of civil war, he might some­how return to power. And so they kept their pow­der dry. Will that be the case now?

Mukhabarat Agent: No WMDs here!

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The _Jerusalem Post_ has an inter­est­ing inter­view with a for­mer colonel in Saddam’s secret police, the _Mukhabarat_, who says Iraq had no WMDs in the run-up to war.

Con­cern that Sad­dam had actively con­cealed deadly weapons of mass destruc­tion served as one of pri­mary rea­sons’ for the Coali­tion forces’ inva­sion of Iraq in March.
“In 1991 we were very close to devel­op­ing a nuclear weapon, but had noth­ing at the time of the [March 2003] war, after so many years of [UNSCOM] inspec­tions,” said the agent, adding, “they destroyed everything.”

It will come as lit­tle sur­prise to peo­ple who read this blog and oth­ers, but this is just one more lit­tle stone added to the moun­tain of evi­dence that the White House lied about/misused/screwed up what­ever intel­li­gence it was get­ting about WMD pro­grams in Iraq.
But, and this fits in with every­thing I encoun­tered in Iraq and from my own research and read­ings, Sad­dam was also fooled — by “mani­a­cally syco­phan­tic com­man­ders and body­guards who deceived him into believ­ing that Iraq” stood a chance again the United States’ mil­i­tary.
I also believe Sad­dam felt he could bluff the West by claim­ing to have no WMDs, which is what every­one thought he would say, while act­ing like he did. By behav­ing like he had a royal flush when all he had was a measly pair of sixes, he could buck up his stand­ing in the Arab world as the only leader to stand up to the United States, main­tain his grip on his sub­jects who well remem­bered the gas attacks on the Kur­dish north from 1984 – 1988 and keep his hold on power. But Amer­ica called his bluff and now the world is what it is. I imag­ine the White House is feel­ing a bit like it won a huge pot of Monop­oly money.
Two lead­ers lying, for their own pur­poses rather than for the good of their peo­ple. And such a mess of it all now. Today, Juan Cole reports, “three U.S. sol­diers have been wounded in Kirkuk and Mosul”:http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html#107173487313180742; pro-Saddam demon­stra­tions con­tinue in Mosul, where police shot four stu­dents and pro­test­ers attacked Turk­men offices in the city; road­side bombs were exploded in Humairah and Bagh­dad; a senior mem­ber of the “Supreme Coun­cil for Islamic Revolution”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000451.php#000451 from the al-Hakim fam­ily has been killed; and a for­mer Ba’ath offi­cial was lit­er­ally torn limb from limb by a mob in Najaf.