Category Archives: Washington

U.S. clashes with PKK/Kadek in north?

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Eye­brows should be raised, but the Turk­ish for­eign min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul is claim­ing that Amer­i­can forces have clashed with PKK/KADEK forces in north­ern Iraq. The BBC reports that U.S. forces exchanged fire with “unknown forces” in the area.

A spokesman for the US 101st Air­borne Divi­sion, based in Mosul, said the inci­dent took place near Dahuk, about 10 miles (15 kilo­me­ters) from the Turkey-Iraq bor­der.
One mem­ber of the Iraqi bor­der patrol was killed, he said.
The “unknown forces” were dis­bursed with the assis­tance of Apache attack heli­copters and a quick reac­tion force team, he added.

“It is true that clashes took place yes­ter­day,” Gul has said. “Not only U.S. forces but also Kur­dish ‘pesh­merga’ fight­ers were involved in engag­ing the PKK. Some U.S. heli­copters were also deployed.“
[UPDATE 1:40 PM EST: Agence France Press is report­ing ambi­gu­ity in the par­ties involved, just as BBC did ear­lier, say­ing Iraqi bor­der guards came under attack by “unknown forces.” The “Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party”:http://www.kdp.pp.se/ office in Wash­ing­ton has no com­ment.]
The “PKK/KADEK”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000119.php#000119 fought a bru­tal war with Turkey from 1984 – 1998, in which upwards of 30,000 civil­ians in south­east Turkey were killed and entire vil­lages destroyed. In an effort to per­suade Turkey to con­tribute 10,000 troops to Iraq, Wash­ing­ton promised to help crack­down on the Kur­dish group, which ended its 5-year cease fire against Turkey in Sep­tem­ber.
At the time, Qubad Jalal Tal­a­bani, the deputy rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the “Patri­otic Union of Kurdistan”:http://www.puk.org in Wash­ing­ton — which has had some­times warmer, some­times cooler rela­tions with the PKK — told me via email:

There is much talk about US-Turkey action towards the PKK, but in real­ity, the US are already fight­ing a war on a few fronts (Al-Qaeda, Ansar, Sad­dam loy­al­ists etc). The last thing would want to do is open another front.
Sec­ondly, the US and the Kurds (Iraqi), are on a very new and dif­fer­ent play­ing field, in terms of the respect that each shows the other. The US would never do such actions with first con­sult­ing, and sec­ond receiv­ing per­mis­sion, from us.
Our advice to the US and to Turkey has always been, the PKK are tired, regard­less of what some idiots from within them think, the major­ity of them are ready to lay down their arms and go back to their homes. If the US can pres­sure Turkey into pro­vid­ing them with an amnesty (a real one!) then this prob­lem will be resolved.

Turkey appar­ently with­drew its offer of troops Nov. 7 and said, “The gov­ern­ment has decided not to imple­ment the (par­lia­men­tary) motion to send troops to Iraq,” an unnamed gov­ern­ment offi­cial was quoted as say­ing. The next day, Gul warned the U.S. “not to show bias towards Iraqi Kurds.” Tellingly, Gul also

told NTV that the US had reaf­firmed its deter­mi­na­tion to elim­i­nate the PKK threat, but insisted that that Ankara reserved the right of inter­ven­tion in case of a “threat or attack” com­ing out of its neighbour’s territory.

The next day, Sun­day, we see the U.S. [pos­si­bly] attack­ing PKK/KADEK forces. Gul’s com­ments can only be seen as a maneu­ver to get the U.S. to act, [and thus should be looked at skep­ti­cally.]
But why? Run­ning through all this is the Amer­i­can desire to have some kind of help — any kind — to help with increas­ingly suc­cess­ful insur­gents in Iraq. Strat­for says a Turk­ish force is still not out of the ques­tion, espe­cially if Wash­ing­ton fields a Shia anti-guerilla force with the help of Iran — Turkey’s old neme­sis in Iraq. Is it so out of the ques­tion that the action in the north, which runs the risk of alien­at­ing a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the Kur­dish pop­u­la­tion in Iraq, which is anti-Turk, is a show of good faith by the U.S. in an effort to get Turkey’s civil­ian gov­ern­ment to change its mind? (By all accounts, the Turk­ish mil­i­tary, unlike Ankara’s civil­ian gov­ern­ment, sees send­ing troops as a chance to deal with the “Kur­dish Prob­lem” once and for all and estab­lish con­trol over north­ern Iraq.) If, in the future, fight­ing between PKK/KADEK and U.S. forces is seen, I wouldn’t be sur­prised to see Turk­ish troops close behind.

Is Syria Next?

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There’s been a lot of spec­u­la­tion that Iraq was just the first in a line of net­tle­some prob­lems in the Mid­dle East that neo-cons wanted to “solve.” Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Sharon said in an inter­view almost a year ago that Iran should be the next tar­get. How­ever, it seems Wash­ing­ton has decided to step up its cam­paign against Syria.
I44038-2003Oct17L.jpg
U.S.-led coali­tion troops treat wounded sol­diers after an attack on a Humvee on the main road about 50 miles south of Bagh­dad. The extent of the sol­diers’ wounds was unclear. (Greg Baker — AP) Click to enlargeLast week­end, “to cau­tion Israel’s ene­mies at a time of height­ened ten­sions in the region and con­cern over Iran’s alleged ambi­tions,” Wash­ing­ton revealed that Israel now has land-, air– and submarine-based nuclear launch capa­bil­ity. This came just days after Turk­ish law­mak­ers voted to send up to 10,000 troops to Iraq. With the Turks now a dues-paying mem­ber of the “Coali­tion of Will­ing,” this means Syria is effec­tively sur­rounded. Remem­ber that the major fight­ing in Iraq ended with Syr­ian and Amer­i­can forces skir­mish­ing on the bor­der, and now Dam­as­cus is pressed on the north and south by the for­merly neu­tral Turkey and its old enemy Israel. The pres­sure is on Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Asad to cease sup­port for groups such as Hizbal­lah and other groups oper­at­ing out of Dam­as­cus. Asad is fac­ing a dan­ger­ous gam­ble: Is the United States bluff­ing in its deploy­ment of its and its allies’ forces around Syria in an attempt to force behav­ior change? Will a regime change fol­low if Syria’s behav­ior doesn’t alter?
Adding fur­ther to pres­sure is the Syria Account­abil­ity and Lebanese Sov­er­eignty Restora­tion Act of 2003 (HR 1828). It passed the House this week, and par­tic­u­lar note should be paid to Sec­tion 4 — State­ment of Prin­ci­ples:

  1. Syria will be held respon­si­ble for attacks com­mit­ted by Hizbal­lah and other ter­ror­ist groups with offices, train­ing camps, or other facil­i­ties in Syria, or bases in areas of Lebanon occu­pied by Syria;
  2. the United States shall impede Syria’s abil­ity to sup­port acts of inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism and efforts to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction;
  3. the Sec­re­tary of State will con­tinue to list Syria as a state spon­sor of ter­ror­ism until Syria ends its sup­port for ter­ror­ism, includ­ing its sup­port of Hizbal­lah and other ter­ror­ist groups in Lebanon and its host­ing of ter­ror­ist groups in Dam­as­cus, and comes into full com­pli­ance with United States law relat­ing to ter­ror­ism and United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 1373 (Sep­tem­ber 28, 2001);
  4. efforts against Hizbal­lah will be expanded given the recog­ni­tion that Hizbal­lah is equally or more capa­ble than al Qa’ida;
  5. the full restora­tion of Lebanon’s sov­er­eignty, polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence, and ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity is in the national secu­rity inter­est of the United States;
  6. Syria is in vio­la­tion of United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 520 (Sep­tem­ber 17, 1982) through its con­tin­ued occu­pa­tion of Lebanese ter­ri­tory and its encroach­ment upon Lebanon’s polit­i­cal independence;
  7. Syria’s oblig­a­tion to with­draw from Lebanon is not con­di­tioned upon progress in the Israeli-Syrian or Israeli-Lebanese peace process but derives from Syria’s oblig­a­tion under Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion 520;
  8. Syria’s acqui­si­tion of weapons of mass destruc­tion and bal­lis­tic mis­sile pro­grams threaten the secu­rity of the Mid­dle East and the national secu­rity inter­ests of the United States;
  9. Syria will be held account­able for any harm to Coali­tion armed forces or to any United States cit­i­zen in Iraq due to its facil­i­ta­tion of ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties and its ship­ments of mil­i­tary sup­plies to Iraq; and
  10. the United States will not pro­vide any assis­tance to Syria and will oppose mul­ti­lat­eral assis­tance for Syria until Syria ends all sup­port for ter­ror­ism, with­draws its armed forces from Lebanon, and halts the devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of weapons of mass destruc­tion and medium– and long-range surface-to-surface bal­lis­tic missiles.

Note that many of these prin­ci­ples are almost iden­ti­cal to those expressed against Iraq, par­tic­u­larly the vio­la­tion of United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions, the weapons of mass destruc­tion and its ties to ter­ror­ism — in this case Hizbal­lah, which has been pro­moted to Al Qa’ida rank in evil. Even the “axis of evil” rhetoric has been heated up, as this state­ment from the office of House Major­ity Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, illus­trates:

Syria is a gov­ern­ment at war with the val­ues of the civ­i­lized world and a vio­lent threat to free nations and free men every­where. We’ll send a clear mes­sage to Pres­i­dent Asad and his fel­low trav­el­ers along the axis of evil: The United States will not tol­er­ate ter­ror­ism, its per­pe­tra­tors, or its spon­sors. And our warn­ings are not to be ignored. (Empha­sis added — Ed.)

Strat​for​.com notes that the cap­ture of Bagh­dad shocked the Arab world, and the United States seized the psy­cho­log­i­cal ini­tia­tive with the city’s fall. The United States went from being per­ceived as a hated but impo­tent power to a hated but feared one. Since the fall of Bagh­dad, how­ever, the per­cep­tion that the United States is bogged down by gueril­las has taken hold and much of the ini­tia­tive has been lost. The pas­sage of HR 1828 and the coa­lesc­ing of a regional coali­tion against Syria is required if the United States’ is to regain its foot­ing and momen­tum. If pres­sure by Wash­ing­ton works, then Syria will reduce sup­port to ter­ror groups tar­get­ing Israel and halt the flow of fight­ers into Iraq. If it doesn’t, the United States will need to deal with Syria by force.
Related link: Why Iraq?

Heavy Medals

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Rep. Vic Sny­der, D-Ark., Rob Sim­mons, R-Conn., and Rep. Sil­vestre Reyes, D-Texas, today intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to award vet­er­ans of Iraq and Afghanistan spe­cific cam­paign medals for those wars.
“As a Viet­nam vet­eran and for­mer Marine, I know the incred­i­ble pride and sense of accom­plish­ment our mil­i­tary per­son­nel feel about how well they have done in our most recent wars,” said Sny­der in a state­ment. “What­ever one thinks about the Iraq war, our peo­ple in uni­form did what their coun­try asked of them and they did it very well. Con­gress should rec­og­nize their accom­plish­ments, and I am very pleased that Mr. Sim­mons and Mr. Reyes have joined me in intro­duc­ing this leg­is­la­tion rec­og­niz­ing the accom­plish­ments of our men and women in uni­form.“
“The embat­tled sol­diers of the 507th Main­te­nance Com­pany fought in Iraq to rid the world of Sad­dam Hus­sein and search out his weapons of mass destruc­tion,” said Reyes. “Their ambush and impris­on­ment — and the expe­ri­ences of all those serv­ing in Iraq and Afghanistan — should be ade­quately rec­og­nized. In past wars, mil­lions of sol­diers, sailors, air­men, and Marines have received com­bat medals that have held intense mean­ing for them. Sol­diers who fought and are fight­ing in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve a medal of equal sig­nif­i­cance.“
Good for these con­gress­men. There leg­is­la­tion is in response to the Pentagon’s deci­sion to award a sin­gle Global War on Ter­ror­ism (GWOT) medal to mil­i­tary vet­er­ans. Now let’s do some­thing about mil­i­tary pay…

Talk about efficiency…

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OK. In the “Now _That’s_ Effi­cient!” cat­e­gory, this arti­cle from _Army Times_ points out that the Pen­ta­gon “has no plans for campaign-specific medals for the most recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the nation’s most pro­tracted con­flicts since Korea and Viet­nam.“
Mil­i­tary duty in Antarc­tica, Kosovo and the 1991 Gulf War was deemed medal-worthy. _[Antarctica? — Ed.]_ But instead of spe­cific the­ater rib­bons, which is a mil­i­tary tra­di­tion going back over a cen­tury, Afghanistan and Iraq — and pre­sum­ably future con­flicts — will instead be folded into the Global War on Ter­ror­ism Ser­vice Medal and Global War on Ter­ror­ism Expe­di­tionary Medal. The GWOT is expected to go on for many years, accord­ing to Pres­i­dent Bush, mean­ing this may be the last com­bat medal some of America’s armed forces may receive.

In addi­tion, vet­er­ans of these 21st-century wars may receive each medal only once. In the­ory — and in cur­rent prac­tice — troops could spend years fight­ing in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philip­pines and else­where and end up with a sin­gle medal that doesn’t reflect their spe­cific duty his­tory or even the fact that they deployed mul­ti­ple times in the global war on ter­ror­ism.
The Pen­ta­gon isn’t say­ing much about its ratio­nale for the deci­sion. Defense offi­cials feel “these two medals will pro­vide appro­pri­ate recog­ni­tion for our ser­vice mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Global War on Ter­ror­ism, whether that be in Afghanistan, Iraq or else­where,” said Air Force Maj. San­dra Burr, a Pen­ta­gon spokeswoman.

Indeed. Look, I didn’t serve, but my father, grand­fa­ther, great-grandfather, brother and best friend did, and I think a sin­gle GWOT medal is a pretty piss-poor recog­ni­tion of ser­vice to one’s coun­try. Why would they do such a thing? Some twisted sense of effi­ciency?
In a word, pol­i­tics.
By not award­ing a spe­cific medal for Iraq, the Bush White House gets to fold that war into the GWOT and point to it as a cen­tral cam­paign instead of the diver­sion it is. If they get away with this, _any_ con­flict in the future will be part of the GWOT and, thus, jus­ti­fied.
This is part and par­cel for a White House and polit­i­cal party that, let’s face it, talks up the troops on one hand and tries to cut dan­ger pay on the other. That lauds first respon­ders such as fire­fight­ers and cops, but leaves them under­funded. Every­thing is pol­i­tics to these guys, and it’s shame­ful.
The men and women who fought and died in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve bet­ter. Every­one read­ing this knows I oppose(d) the Iraq war, but why is it that a lefty peacenik like myself seems to get more pissed off about the treat­ment of the troops than groups like the Amer­i­can Legion and the Vet­er­ans of For­eign Wars, both of whom gave warm wel­comes to Pres­i­dent Bush and Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney recently?
Instead of get­ting the recog­ni­tion they deserve for fight­ing the biggest wars since Viet­nam (which has the Viet­nam Ser­vice Medal as well as sev­eral rec­og­nized cam­paigns,) Amer­i­can troops — and air­craft car­ri­ers — are props for the cur­rent White House. They deserve better.

There is no spoon…

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Is George Bush going mad? Los­ing his grip on reality?

In a photo op in the Oval Office with U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Kofi Annan yes­ter­day, Bush made a com­ment at the very end of the event that didn’t quite jibe with the col­lec­tively agreed upon reality:

The larger point is, and the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion is, did Sad­dam Hus­sein have a weapons pro­gram? And the answer is, absolutely. *And we gave him a chance to allow the inspec­tors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.* And, there­fore, after a rea­son­able request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the deci­sions we made will make Amer­ica more secure and the world more peace­ful. (Empha­sis added.)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I dis­tinctly remem­ber Hans Blix et al. run­ning around Iraq while Sad­dam was in power, often accom­pa­nied by Iraqi min­ders who were there, one would sus­pect, on the orders of Sad­dam Hussein.

Joe Cona­son over at Salon has a good take on this, includ­ing this nugget: “Another recent pres­i­dent once said some­thing that was bla­tantly untrue, if fairly triv­ial, and the video­tape of his state­ment was replayed again, and again, and again, and again…” He also points to Dana Milbank’s _Washington Post_ cov­er­age of the event, which has this mar­velously under­stated passage:

The president’s asser­tion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspec­tors appeared to con­tra­dict the events lead­ing up to war this spring: Hus­sein had, in fact, admit­ted the inspec­tors and Bush had opposed extend­ing their work because he did not believe them effective.

I can just imag­ine the uncom­fort­able shuf­fling of feet in the room as reporters glanced to each other. “Did he just really say that?” they may have whis­pered to each other once Bush was out of earshot.

Actu­ally, I take that back. Judg­ing from a quick Nexis search, most reporters yes­ter­day com­pletely missed the com­ment. Nexis reveals just 10 hits on the quote, and five of them are the same Knight-Ridder story, one is a story in the Irish Times, which gives Bush’s com­ment head­line treat­ment, and another is a CNN tran­script of the event. The last three are gov­ern­ment tran­scripts. News­day has some­thing on it, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer quotes it, but — aston­ish­ingly — doesn’t address it all. “The best way for the White House to resolve the mat­ter once and for all — of course — is for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion actu­ally to locate weapons of mass destruc­tion,” writes Blitzer. “Short of that, the debate will not only con­tinue but is likely to inten­sify in the weeks and months to come.”

Shame, shame, you guys in the D.C. press corps.

[UPDATE On his first day on the job, new White House press sec­re­tary Scott McClel­lan had to respond to Bush’s “he wouldn’t let them in” state­ment. He said this:

*Q* Two quick ques­tions, one on Iraq. When the Pres­i­dent said of Sad­dam Hus­sein, we gave him a chance to allow the inspec­tors in and he wouldn’t let them in, why didn’t he say that, when the inspec­tors went into Iraq?

*MR. McCLEL­LAN:* What he was refer­ring to was the fact that Sad­dam Hus­sein was not com­ply­ing with 1441, that he con­tin­ued his past pat­tern and refused to com­ply with Res­o­lu­tion 1441 of the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil, which was his final oppor­tu­nity to com­ply. And the fact that he was try­ing to thwart the inspec­tors every step of the way, and keep them from doing their job. So that’s what he’s refer­ring to in that statement.

*Q* But that isn’t what he said.

*Q* Just quickly on a dif­fer­ent sub­ject, on North Korea. …

Argh! Why the hell did some­one not keep up on that line of questioning?]

Any­way, state­ments like Bush’s are truly freaky, and remind me of his Social Secu­rity line in the clos­ing days of the 2000 elec­tion (“They want the fed­eral gov­ern­ment con­trol­ling the Social Secu­rity like it’s some kind of fed­eral pro­gram!”) He often says stu­pid things when he’s under stress, and when he’s com­ing up with whop­pers like this, Ari Fleischer’s asser­tions that the pres­i­dent has “moved on” don’t quite ring true. And it’s play­ing havoc with the Bush White House’s aura of inevitability.

Much of Team Bush’s suc­cess has been because offi­cials are adept at pre­sent­ing a _fait accompli_ to oppo­nents and the pub­lic. They also like to imbue Bush with some kind of Pope-like infal­li­bil­ity, sort of like he’s the Gipper’s vicar. THis tech­nique worked in Florida, when he assumed a pres­i­den­tial stance in the days after the elec­tion, even though every­one knew by that point that it was very much up in the air. It worked for a while after May 1, when Bush landed on the USS Abra­ham Lin­coln and declared the Iraq war as a “mis­sion accomplished.”

As long as the Wash­ing­ton press corps and an apa­thetic pub­lic allowed the White House to do this, it worked like a charm. Unfor­tu­nately — for Bush — it now looks like that era is over. There’s blood in the water and toss­ing DCI George Tenet over the side won’t do much to calm the churn, espe­cially after the White House has made con­tra­dic­tory dec­la­ra­tions regard­ing the CIA.

There’s no doubt the White House is in dis­ar­ray and in full dam­age con­trol mode. The ura­nium story may be the spark to ignite a full-on for­est fire of media scrutiny lick­ing at Bush’s toes as he makes con­vo­luted state­ments regard­ing Iraq. And if that hap­pens, the larger story about the rea­sons for war might get so hot, it will be radioactive.