Right Wing Nut House

Captain Ed appears to have a truly original story regarding a new data-mining project that seems to be a follow-up to Able Danger, the pre-9/11 program that was carried out by DoD and which some claim identified some of the hijackers as early as 1999.

CQ has learned that such an effort has already been launched at the Pentagon. Titled “Able Providence”, the effort seeks to use the Able Danger “engine” to generate hot leads for counterterrorism and law enforcement agents to pursue. Located in the Office of National Intelligence, AP will serve all agencies…

The Able Providence project, estimated at an initial cost of around $27 million, will report jointly to the Director of National Intelligence (John Negroponte) and the Joint Chiefs. The datamining component of the project, named KIMBERLITE MAGIC, will follow and update the SOCOM and NOAH efforts of the pre-9/11 period. After an initial burn-in phase, the Able Providence team will then coordinate with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), SOCOM, Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS (Customs/TSA, etc) and partner with Army 1st Info Ops Command (IDC), Army Asymmetric Warfare Group (ASW), Navy DEEP BLUE, Air Force CHECKMATE to produce actionable “Decision Support” Option Packets. AP would then act as a conduit for these efforts to law enforcement agencies for immediate domestic action when required.

Congratulations to Ed on a terrific scoop. Check CQ frequently during the day as Ed plans to update the information.

The Mesopotamian:

The situation in Baghdad is deteriorating from day to day. I have warned about this long ago. The “insurrection” is lead by the Baathists, without any doubt, and they are converging on Baghdad and seriously bent on taking over. They are creating havoc in in the capital. Very soon, if this situation continues like this the city is going to be brought to a complete standstill and paralysis. The confusion and conflict between the Americans, the army and the Ministry of interior is producing a situation where the citizens don’t know anymore whether the security personel in the street are friends, enemies, terrorists or simply criminals and thieves. Everybody is wearing the same uniforms. Whole sections of the city have virtually fallen to gangs and terrorists, and this is sepecially true for the “Sunni” dominated neighborhoods. People and businesses are being robbed and the employees kidnapped en mass in broad daylight and with complete ease as though security forces are non-existent, although we see them everwhere.

I don’t know anymore what can be done to rescue the situation. At least, those who are supposed to be in positions of responsibility should stop lying and painting a false picture. It has to be admitted that the city is under siege and has become the front battle line. Emergency measures have to be put in place immediately, otherwise as everbody in Baghdad knows, the whole city is going to fall soon. I regret sounding so pessimistic, but the alarm must be sounded with the loudest volume possible, since what is happening is Baghdad is something really awful.

The reports I’ve seen from StrategyPage and other Iraqi bloggers suggest a situation that is rapidly spiraling out of control.

This is not a pleasant prospect to contemplate but it is better to face facts and try to decide what we can do about it rather than fall back on the same, tired mantras mouthed by some of our more clueless war boosters like “the press isn’t reporting the good news out of Iraq” or “things aren’t really that bad” or even “there is no civil war.”

At the moment there is no good news coming out Iraq to report, things really are that bad, and there is a de-facto civil war raging as I write this with tit-for-tat revenge killings that now number in the hundreds - perhaps more than a thousand. They’re not fighting in the streets at the moment - but that’s only because the Sunnis are running for their lives. The Washington Post:

Sectarian violence has displaced more than 25,000 Iraqis since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine, a U.N.-affiliated agency said Tuesday, and shelters and tent cities are springing up across central and southern Iraq to house homeless Sunni and Shiite families.

The flight is continuing, according to the International Organization for Migration, which works closely with the United Nations and other groups. The result has been a population exchange as Sunni and Shiite families flee mixed communities for the safety of areas where their own sects predominate.

Two weeks ago, I believed that there was very little the United States military could do in a combat capacity to affect the situation, that it was now up to the Iraqis. What I didn’t count on was the apparent resistance of the Interior Ministry (headed up by former Badr Brigade commander Bayan Jabr) to the attempted purging of radical police elements by the Iraqi government who are under the influence (direction?) of Iran and the lengths to which radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr would go to maintain whatever influence he wields in the councils of state. The Iraqis are under enormous pressure from American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to clean out the nest of intrigue and possible traitors at Interior while at the same time reigning in the Shia militias.

The reports of both Muqtada al-Sadr’s black clad Mehdi Militiamen and uniformed police working together to haul away innocent Sunnis and suspected insurgents who then disappear and are later found brutally murdered have become too numerous to ignore as simply “anecdotal evidence.” Al-Sadr’s militiamen have infiltrated the police and are apparently working together to fan the flames of violence to God knows what end. It could be a power play from al-Sadr whose hand-picked Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari is under pressure by Ambassador Khalilzad to withdraw his name from consideration when the new Parliament meets, a political development that would do much to calm the situation but which is being stalled by the recalcitrance of Shi’ite negotiators who bitterly resent American interference. Or al-Sadr has lost control of his men and the numerous killings are random revenge murders with no overall plan being followed. Either scenario is extremely troubling for the future.

As for Alaa’s claim that there will be an attempt by insurgents to actually seize control of Baghdad that may be an exaggeration. A more likely occurrence is what our military commanders have been expecting for months; an effort by the insurgency to inflict a Tet-like public relations disaster on the American military by infiltrating the fortified Green Zone and slaughtering foreigners.

Just two weeks ago it was revealed that a plot by people in the Defense Ministry to carry out such an attack was foiled when it was uncovered by the authorities just in time. And then yesterday, we had this curious bit of news from the group that was holding journalist Jill Carroll hostage:

Shortly before her release, her captors - who refer to themselves as the Revenge Brigade - also told her they had infiltrated the US diplomatic compound in Baghdad, and she would be killed if she went there or cooperated with the American authorities. It was a threat she took seriously in her first few hours of freedom.

If the insurgents were ever going to try and emulate the Viet Cong’s effort to prove to the American people that victory was impossible, they couldn’t pick a better time to do it.

Bush’s job approval numbers are horrible. Support for the war is fading. Republicans are getting more and more nervous about November. Democrats smell victory. An attack inside the Green Zone that killed hundreds could very well be the tipping point that would cause a public outcry, finally galvanize the anti-war movement, start Republican lawmakers running for cover, and embolden the Democrats even further in calling for immediate withdrawal.

In short, unmitigated disaster.

Is there anything that can be done to retrieve the situation - and retrieve it in a hurry? Greg Djerejian quoting Tom Friedman: “It’s five minutes to midnight.”

Fire Donald Rumsfeld, and replace him with John Warner or Richard Armitage or someone else qualified soonest. Bulk up our troop presence in Baghdad asap, even if it means rotating some troops out of places like Anbar (especially in locations where we are still more in whack-a-mole posture than clear, build, hold). Let’s have a major show of strength, including large amounts of U.S. troops, in the most problematic neighborhoods (US troops are critical, as confidence in the integrity of Iraqi Army units as impartial arbitrers or plausible peacekeepers simply doesn’t exist yet among much of the Iraqi public. This is why under-informed blather about the Iraqi Army being “solid”, or the militias being simply “pesky”, is just crap, and it’s quite sad prominent right wing bloggers link to such hokum as offering soi disant serious perspective).

Order. Order. Order. It’s desperately needed in the capital, the very linchpin of a stable Iraq, if we mean for the country to remain a unitary state. So we need someone at the Pentagon who, at the very least, definitively comprehends said order doesn’t exist today, alas, and that the battle-space in places like Sadr City is most definitively not under control by non-militia infested forces (as Rumsfeld disingenuously claimed a couple weeks back). Nothing is more important at this hour than beating back the cycle of sectarian violence, as Friedman well explains in the context of his Beirut experience (read his whole op-ed, Times Select subscribers), especially given that a situation already fraught with such immense danger is even more so, with formation of a cohesive national government still elusive.

The prospects of chaos are obviously enhanced by such a vacuum, so all efforts to stave off further sectarian mayhem must be pursued with maximum drive. Stabilizing the situation will require, not only a real show of force on the streets, to provide for enhanced ground up security, but also more efforts from the top-down, where Ambassador Khalilzhad’s interventions to form a government need to become even more urgent. (This might include, if necessary, calibrated series of higher-level interventions by the Secretary of State, President (he’s made such calls in the past) and other very senior Administration officials, perhaps even other interested Foreign Ministers from major powers. Unfortunately, the Arab League continues to wallow in irrelevance, more worried about rising Iranian influence than doing anything even remotely helpful, which is painfully pitiable but woefully predictable, of course).

Is Greg overstating the need for American forces to step in and take the lead in securing the streets? How about this announcement from the Ministry of Defense:

“The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or the police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”

This message has been scrolling across the bottom of every TV channel in Iraq for days. In short, even the Iraqi military doesn’t trust its own people.

American casualties have dropped significantly in recent months for two reasons; the military is under orders not to take too many chances and our people have moved out of the cities, away from the ambushes and IED’s that accounted for most of our casualties, and into the countryside in order to ferret out insurgent strongholds in rural areas. It seems pretty clear that this has got to change and that we need to redeploy back to Baghdad.

Bold action in the streets coupled with bold action at the conference table are the only things that can stabilize the situation and give the Iraqi government a chance. And we must lower our sights on what would constitute a victory in Iraq. Instead of staying until a stable, peaceful, democratic government is achieved, it may be time to look at a scenario where violence would be continuing at some reduced level but the situation could be handled by Iraqi security forces. Any stable government that would meet the State Department or The Freedom House definition of “Partly Free” would be a significant improvement over Saddam Hussein’s rule and would still have the potential for reform.

If, as Mr. Friedman says we are at “Five minutes to Midnight” then perhaps it is time for all of us to start assessing what’s going on in Iraq in a realistic manner rather than engaging in wishful thinking. The United States is fast approaching a point in Iraq where the law of diminishing returns makes our commitment ever more problematic. Are we coming to a point where the cost of our staying there outweighs any possible gain to our security or our national interest?

We’re not there yet. But revisit this site in another month or two and that may change.

Iraqi blogger Riverbend who writes at Baghdad Burning has been named a finalist for the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, one of the world’s richest:

LONDON: An anonymous Iraqi woman was nominated Monday as a contender for a major literary award for her Internet blog-based account of the Iraq war and its deadly impact on ordinary Iraqi people.

“Baghdad Burning” by the university graduate, who uses the pen name Riverbend, is longlisted for the 30,000-pound ($52,000) Samuel Johnson prize - the world’s richest for a piece of non-fiction.

She is up against 18 other books out of 168 entries.

Among fellow nominees are established names including Alan Bennett and his offering “Untold Stories.”

In addition to Bennett (who is a writer of unusual perception) John Lewis Gaddis’s The Cold War is up for the same prize. I was going to wait until that book came out in paperback because the reviews I’ve read lead me to believe that Gaddis, who was the lead historian on The Cold War produced by Ted Turner and shown on CNN believes that Gorbechev “is the most deserving recipient ever” of the Nobel Peace Prize. Why? Because he didn’t send in the troops and massacre people. That’s right. Gaddis believes that the man who put 10,000 Soviet citizens in insane asylums for their political beliefs is a great man because he acted like a normal human being rather than a communist thug.

How moronic is that?

As for Riverbend, she is an excellent writer despite her virulent anti-Americanism. Rather than writing about the political or military situation, she writes about the personal travails of living through the war and the more frightening aspects of the occupation. In sometimes searing fashion, she has written about the death of friends and acquaintances as well as the simple daily complaints about lack of electricity and water, checkpoints, and the sense of lawlessness that permeates the streets.

I personally prefer Omar’s blog Iraq The Model whose matter of fact approach is at times even more moving than Riverbend. Omar is not as good a writer but somehow he is able to bring the tragedy home in a more realistic and immediate way. Riverbend’s emotionalism while effective, has a tendency to push the reader away rather allow the reader to share her pain.

Like Omar, Riverbend is a secular Iraqi who wants to see democracy take root. She believes this could best be accomplished by the Americans leaving. Omar thinks that the Americans must stay long enough to give the Iraqi government a chance to stand on its own. The Iraqis themselves are torn on the subject of the American military presence and these two brave souls reflect the feelings of millions of their countrymen who are now dealing with one of the bloodier periods in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam. As the bodies start to pile up and revenge killing begets revenge killing, Iraq begins to spiral into factional war with the politicians still unable to come together on many key issues.

I read Riverbend because she gives a perspective on the War that is important even though I don’t agree with it. I don’t think she has much of a chance of winning the prestigious prize but I wish her well and hope she stays safe.

Why did the Bush Administration drag its heels for nearly 3 years in releasing the millions of document that fell into its hands after the fall of Saddam?

This is why:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Russian government had sources inside the American military command as the U.S. mounted the invasion of Iraq, and the Russians passed information to Saddam Hussein on troop movements and plans, according to Iraqi documents released as part of a Pentagon report.

The Russians relayed information to Saddam during the opening days of the 2003 war, including a crucial moment before the assault on Baghdad, according to the documents in the report Friday.

The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing two captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians collected information from sources “inside the American Central Command” and that battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad

There are two broad hints that answer the question above. One, the investigation (and perhaps similar investigations like it) into possible espionage activity by individuals in the US military and intelligence community has now been compromised. In such investigations, it is always best that the targets don’t know they are under investigation lest they become more cautious and fail to reveal contacts and other members of their network.

The second hint is the great big headache the release of these documents has now given everyone in the national security and foreign policy establishment in the Bush Administration. Something has got to be done about Russia and this betrayal by an ally.

As long as the information was secret, the State Department could pretend that it didn’t exist (even though we can be almost certain they were aware of it) thus allowing us to work with President Putin on a variety of other issues unrelated to Russian perfidy in the lead up to the Iraq War. But Ed Morrissey is right when he writes of the consequences the release of the documents have for our diplomatic offensive against Iran:

After finding out that Putin has a habit of supplying tyrannical enemies of the Western nations with military intelligence to use against us, the last country we should trust with Iran’s nuclear program is Russia. We can also kiss off the UN; as long as Russia has its veto, that route will lead nowhere. Russia has revealed itself to be a major part of the problem in the Middle East, and we should stop pretending that they are part of the solution.

At least now we know why the CIA and John Negroponte wanted these documents to remain sealed.

In fact, these revelations have probably thrown a monkey wrench into our overall policy to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions. Any deal on sanctions with Russia that would have been in the works is now out the window which means the UN route - problematic at best with both China and Russia opposed to our sanctions policy - has been blocked. And with our “allies” in Europe kibitzing on the sidelines and waffling back and forth between talking tough and mouthing platitudes about a peaceful resolution, it appears that once again, the US will have to act unilaterally in order to safeguard the security interests of all concerned.

It is a very nice luxury that the Germans, French and other EU members have that they can benefit from American military actions while playing the anti-American card at home by denouncing US “imperialism” in order to cater to their pacifist and clueless populations.

Expect more revelations of this type, especially regarding the French who sold weapons to Saddam even while American tanks were rolling toward Baghdad.

Although this story comes to us via the far left British rag The Guardian, much of the information about what happened to $12 billion dollars in Iraqi reconstruction funds is a matter of public record gleaned from court cases, pending criminal trials, and other more reliable sources.

The short answer to what happened to $12 billion in Iraq is that it was stolen. And for the most part, the US government knows it and refuses to prosecute the thieves.

At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a “transparent manner”, specified the UN, for “purposes benefiting the people of Iraq”.

For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. What we discovered was that a great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away. For the coalition, it has been a catastrophe of its own making. For the Iraqi people, it has been a tragedy. But it is also a financial and political scandal that runs right to the heart of the nightmare that is engulfing Iraq today.

[...]

Because the Iraqi banking system was in tatters, the funds were placed in an account with the Federal Reserve in New York. From there, most of the money was flown in cash to Baghdad. Over the first 14 months of the occupation, 363 tonnes of new $100 bills were shipped in - $12bn, in cash. And that is where it all began to go wrong.

“Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money,” says Frank Willis, a former senior official with the governing Coalition Provisional Authority. “We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere, the likes of which none of us had ever experienced.”

First of all, a good question to ask would be what nincompoop authorized the shipping of 363 tons of cash to a place where there was absolutely no chance of keeping track of it? With no banking system, it is laughable to think someone actually believed that corruption and thievery wouldn’t be rampant with so much cash lying around.

In fact, they probably knew and didn’t care:

The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. “American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone,” says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption. “In a free fire zone you can shoot at anybody you want. In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did.”

A good example was the the Iraqi currency exchange programme (Ice). An early priority was to devote enormous resources to replacing every single Iraqi dinar showing Saddam’s face with new ones that didn’t. The contract to help distribute the new currency was won by Custer Battles, a small American security company set up by Scott Custer and former Republican Congressional candidate Mike Battles. Under the terms of the contract, they would invoice the coalition for their costs and charge 25% on top as profit. But Custer Battles also set up fake companies to produce inflated invoices, which were then passed on to the Americans. They might have got away with it, had they not left a copy of an internal spreadsheet behind after a meeting with coalition officials.

Not only brazen crooks but stupid ones as well. Sounds like the cat burglar who dropped his wallet inside the house he was robbing.

The spreadsheet showed the company’s actual costs in one column and their invoiced costs in another; it revealed, in one instance, that it had charged $176,000 to build a helipad that actually cost $96,000. In fact, there was no end to Custer Battles’ ingenuity. For example, when the firm found abandoned Iraqi Airways fork-lifts sitting in Baghdad airport, it resprayed them and rented them to the coalition for thousands of dollars. In total, in return for $3m of actual expenditure, Custer Battles invoiced for $10m. Perhaps more remarkable is that the US government, once it knew about the scam, took no legal action to recover the money.

This is just one company. And it’s not the worst of it either:

But this is just one story among many. From one US controlled vault in a former Saddam palace, $750,000 was stolen. In another, a safe was left open. In one case, two American agents left Iraq without accounting for nearly $1.5m.

Perhaps most puzzling of all is what happened as the day approached for the handover of power (and the remaining funds) to the incoming Iraqi interim government. Instead of carefully conserving the Iraqi money for the new government, the Coalition Provisional Authority went on an extraordinary spending spree. Some $5bn was committed or spent in the last month alone, very little of it adequately accounted for.

One CPA official was given nearly $7m and told to spend it in seven days. “He told our auditors that he felt that there was more emphasis on the speed of spending the money than on the accountability for that money,” says Ginger Cruz, the deputy inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction.

Certainly some corruption was bound to occur with all that money being thrown around. But it is depressing to see the hogs and vultures in a feeding frenzy at a time when a small fraction of what was stolen or lost or wasted might have made a difference in the lives of ordinary Iraqis and given them something to hope for following the fall of Saddam.

Instead, they got more of the same kind of corruption and thievery that sapped their confidence in the Coalition Authority and its ability to make their lives better.

Read the entire article. Along with the usual Guardian anti-war blather, there are some other eye-opening examples of malfeasance that should cause your blood to boil.

When it was first announced that the Administration had ended its inexplicable opposition to the release of the Saddam documents, I believed that they would be of more value to historians than contemporary chroniclers of the Iraq War. That’s because even if the nearly 2 million documents and hundreds of hours of tapes confirmed everything the President had said about Saddam prior to the war, it would be too little and too late to counter the numerous myths, falsehoods, and outright lies spread by George Bush’s political foes.

Judging by what has been discovered already, I may have to alter that belief.

Simply put, there is political dynamite contained in these documents. The Iraqi government made no effort to obfuscate or hide their intentions, their connections to al Qaeda, their obsession with WMD, nor their desire to attack America using terrorists trained in Iraq as well as their own intelligence operatives. Saddam was a threat to the peace and security of the United States. And he stands convicted out of his own mouth.

Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard has been in the forefront of the effort to get these documents released:

Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is about to get more interesting.

Indeed. In Hayes’ article on Saddam’s connections with the Philippine offshoot of al Qaeda (started by Osama Bin Laden’s brother in law) we discover that the Iraqis were one of the terrorist group’s sponsors. And while there is no evidence of “operational cooperation” there is plenty of evidence that Saddam was funding a group that targeted Americans for death in the Philippines.

Other documents reveal an Iraqi state immersed in plans for sabotage, assassination, and terror. Several different departments of the Iranian intelligence agency Mukhabarat were concerned with exporting violence outside of Iraq and maintaining ties with terrorist organizations.

And this is from just a few dozen documents. Ray Robison, a former member of the Iraq Survey Group, has some fascinating analysis of other documents including some shocking information about Iraqi anthrax stocks and some tantalizing hints about Saddam’s nuclear program. (Keep scrolling and follow the links).

Will this evidence that retroactively justifies the American toppling of Saddam Hussein matter to the American people in the long run?

Much depends on whether or not Republicans wish to make debunking Democratic myths about the Iraq War a campaign issue. If they do, the press would be forced to cover the unearthing of the documents if only to explain to the American people what all the fuss is about. They may put their own spin on what the documents say (even though many that have been released so far have been very straightforward and unambiguous in laying out Saddam’s connection to terrorists). But just getting the document’s existence before the public will raise questions about the “Bush lied, people died” theme that has been a large part of the myth making Democrats have deliberately used to undermine support for the war.

At bottom, the documents could alter a political dynamic that has been trending against Republicans even before the 2004 Presidential election. There has been great unease in America, a nagging feeling that even if the President didn’t lie about Iraq, the threat from Saddam may have been exaggerated. And the Administration’s efforts to connect the Iraq War to the general War on Terror has suffered as a result. If there is one question these documents may finally answer it is that going after Saddam was indeed the next logical step in fighting and winning the larger conflict with al Qaeda and radical Islam.

If the documents accomplish this, it will not be because of anything the Bush Administration has done to explain and justify its policies in Iraq and elsewhere. The President has had his political head handed to him time and time again because he has allowed the war’s naysayers to have an open field with which to run wild with accusations about why we went to war in Iraq. For a while, it appeared that the President believed that by keeping a low profile on Iraq, the American people wouldn’t think about it as much. The period immediately following the 2004 election until November of 2005, the President spoke of the War infrequently and with no coherent strategy to counter the myth making of his opponents. When he did start to fight back on Veterans Day, support for the war began to climb.

But today, with public disenchantment for his War policies at an all time high, the President once again appears ready to make a campaign style effort to bolster support for our efforts in Iraq. He and the Vice President will be making several high profile speeches throughout the next two weeks talking up the progress made and the work that still needs to be done. It’s not enough. It’s never been enough. What’s needed is an effort much more sustained and risky.

The President must first get over his reluctance to face the press. Yes, they are a pack of jackals. But one thing the President apparently doesn’t realize is that at these press conferences, he has the last word on every question. And if the press misbehaves (as they almost certainly will), the President underestimates the anger it arouses in ordinary people when they see the White House press corps being arrogant and disrespectful. Many people may not agree with Bush. But attacking the President on live television only serves to generate sympathy for him. (For you doubters out there, I suggest you look at Reagan and Clinton press conferences after Iran-Contra and Monicagate came to light when their support shot up after the press pack misbehaved badly).

The second and equally important thing the President can do is not run away from the War when campaigning for Republican candidates during the upcoming mid-term elections. It would be patently ridiculous to ignore an issue the President has staked his Presidency and his legacy on. And Republicans who think that by not mentioning the war or downplaying its significance they will come out ahead will look equally foolish.

In the coming months, the President will have a fresh opportunity to rally public support for the war. With the release of the Saddam documents, he has been given a new lease on life to frame the war on terms that are politically advantageous to him and Republicans. Whether or not that translates into electoral success is an open question. But it’s a better alternative than trying to sweep the war under the rug and not talk about why we overthrew Saddam Hussein and what we hope to accomplish with the liberation of Iraq.

UPDATE

Read Dean Esmay’s fantastic post on the cycle of deception we are in from the press and the Democrats. Dean also has some links about what people were saying prior to the war and what they’re saying now.

So the Abu Ghraib poster boy turns out to be a ringer. And the New York Times in its eagerness to bash the war and the Bush Administration falls for the guy’s carny act hook, line, and sinker and then tries to blame the Administration anyway for not warning them off the story. Of course, that kind of whining brings to mind the efforts of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove in trying to warn the Times and other news organs off the Joe Wilson fantasy. We know how that turned out, don’t we?

But in the end, after giving the New York Times its just helping of crow, what do we have? Is the Abu Ghraib incident and dozens others like it going to disappear into the sort of “non-history” that the left has become famous for? Are we going to pretend they didn’t happen?

The US Army has investigated more than 400 torture allegations. As of today, 24 US military men and women have been convicted of abusing their captives with investigations on going that could up that number considerably. We’re not talking about ACLU fantasies here. These are cases discovered by the military and being investigated by the FBI and military police.

Andrew Sullivan, over the top and hysterical as always, nevertheless makes some salient points:

To recap: we have a president who for the first time decrees that torture and abuse is legal in the U.S. military if “military necessity” allows it; we have White House memos saying that anything short of death and major organ failure cannot be categorized as “torture”; we have “cruel, inhuman and degrading conduct” at Gitmo, conduct that is subsequently declared within military guidelines; we have the head of, in John Podhoretz’s phrase, the “excesses at Gitmo” assigned to Abu Ghraib to “Gitmoize” it; we have an outbreak across every theater of war of brutal torture and abuse practices; and we have what is a clear directive from Washington to get better intelligence on the insurgency - and fast. We now have much clearer evidence of an elite, secret unit setting up what can only be called a torture camp, and no one in authority seems able to put an end to it.

A couple of things about that rant that should be corrected for the record:

* The memos Sullivan refers to were exploratory in nature and most of the recommendations - including the definition what constituted torture - were not adapted.

* The “cruel, inhuman and degrading conduct” at Gitmo occurred after the Commander who set up the successful interrogation program at the camp was transferred to Abu Ghraib. In fact, General Geoffrey Miller set up what many consider the most professional interrogation regime in American military history at Guantanamo. It employed “stress techniques” that are recognized around the world as legitimate means to acquire information from military prisoners.

As for the rest, the fact is that there have been 21 cases classified as “homicides” at American detention centers - most of which are still under investigation - as well as the hundreds of reports of routine beatings and other out of bounds actions by interrogators shows that a culture was created where guards and interrogators believed they had leeway to mistreat prisoners.

Sully hits the nail on the head when he lays the blame for the torture directly at the feet of the civilian leadership. Once the insurgency got rolling in Iraq, pressure was applied by the Pentagon to elicit more and more information from prisoners. And with a limited supply of professional interrogators - men and women highly trained to use the stress techniques of physical discomfort in conjunction with psychological pressures - local commanders were forced to rely on less qualified personnel with predictable results; Abu Ghraib and numerous other examples of brutal treatment.

With word that the same unit in charge of interrogations at Abu Ghraib was simply moved down the road and allowed to set up camp elsewhere where they continued to abuse prisoners, we have at the very least the prospect that high ranking members of the military not only approved interrogation techniques totally at odds with the standards set forth in our own military code but also in violation of the Geneva Convention - a standard that President Bush said we should follow in our treatment of prisoners.

I am not one to believe every allegation of mistreatment spouted by lawyers for detainees nor am I inclined to hold military interrogators to standards that we don’t even hold our own police departments to as the ACLU would have it.

But we have to face up to this mess: Torture is being carried out as a matter of military routine and it must stop. This can only happen when we start prosecuting up the chain of command and hold responsible commanders who either look the other way or actually give orders allowing physical brutality.

It may be satisfying to pile on the New York Times for their cluelessness and partisan stupidity. But pointing out the Times’ foibles will not make the issue of prisoner mistreatment go way nor will it redeem our military. Only the application of sensible guidelines on prisoner interrogation and the swift punishment of transgressors can do that.

Blood and treasure. Sons and daughters. And the truth.

This is the price we pay when making war. And as the third anniversary of our invasion of Iraq approaches, it is perhaps fitting and proper that we remember most of all that the cost is being borne disproportionally by those whose loved ones sacrifice all to serve their country.

It says something wicked about our society that usually, the only chance we get to meet their sons and daughters is by reading about their death in the obituaries. It is here we find out that they were loving brothers or sisters, or parents, or grandkids who loved life and were determined to live each day with a zest that some of us are envious. But if you read enough of these sad devotionals, one is struck by the overwhelming numbers who volunteered for the armed forces because they wished to “serve.”

This gives the lie to criticisms that most soldiers join the military because they can’t do anything else in civilian life, or for the educational benefits, or out of sheer boredom. While I’m sure there are some who join for those reasons, the idea that the United States military is a “mercenary army” is absurd. The all-volunteer force is perhaps the most astonishing success story in American history. Born out of necessity, nurtured through its infancy by a cadre of dedicated professionals who inculcated a sense of esprit de corps and a pride of mission into those who chose to serve, the volunteer military today is the most lethal fighting force in the history of human civilization largely because most of its members recognize a higher calling than the rest of us.

It does little good to place a technologically sophisticated piece of equipment into the hands of someone with no motivation to use it as part of an integrated whole. And that motivation comes from a desire to step outside of oneself, one’s own little corner of the world, and serve a purpose larger than the personal. For so many to do so leaves me grateful and not a little awestruck.

But the toll of this war is paid not just in the blood of the fallen nor in the psychological stress and terror borne by their surviving comrades, but also in the emotional carnage endured by the parents, spouses, and children who are either left behind to grieve their loss or who wait and wonder about their ultimate fate in the war zone. It is here that purgatory on earth can turn to either the heavenly blessings of a safe return or the hellish nightmare of the knock at the door, the chaplain, and the knowledge before a word is said that a world of pain has descended and life will never be the same.

H. Barry Holt and Joe Johnson have never met and do not know each other. What they have in common is that they are the fathers of soldiers. Both served in Iraq. One is dead. One is now home. But the stories of both fathers speak to us through the pain and anguish of separation.

Joe’s son Justin had been in Iraq a month when the dreaded knock on the door shattered their Easter Sunday 2 years ago with the news of sudden death. Joe was not there to comfort his family. He was at Fort Lewis in Washington trying to qualify to serve in a National Guard unit that was headed for Iraq. For you see, Joe too wanted to serve. And he wanted to be close to his son.

With the death of Justin, Joe concentrated on being with his family. But then a year ago, he changed his mind:

But last April 11, a year and a day after his son was killed, Johnson told his Iraq-bound Georgia National Guard unit, the 48th Infantry Brigade, he was ready to join them. They ended up at this dustblown base in Iraq’s far west, pulling escort duty for fuel convoys on the bomb-pocked desert highways from Jordan.

Why did he do it? The wiry lean Georgian, an easy-talking man with a boyish, sunburned face, tried to answer the question that won’t go away.

“It’s a lot of things combined,” he said. “One, a sense of duty. I was pissed off at the terrorists for 9/11 and other atrocities. Second, I’d only trained. I wanted combat.” And then, he said, “there’s some revenge involved. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t.”

Mr. Johnson’s passion for duty and revenge places him in a unique position - that of a participant and victim. One may wish to judge Mr. Johnson harshly for his feelings about Muslims of which he says he “has no love” for. But walk a mile in his shoes before answering whether or not you think him not worthy of your understanding and even admiration:

Somewhere along the way, however, the righteous passion cooled, as the over-aged corporal, like tens of thousands of other American soldiers here, faced the reality of Iraq.

Was it last Christmas morning, when roadside bombs rocked his convoy one after another, and Johnson thought he was next? Or was it when speeding civilian cars passed the Americans’ Humvees and Johnson failed to level his gun and open fire, which “I think anyone else,” fearing car bombs, “would have done.”

“I really don’t want to kill innocent people,” he now says. “I don’t want to live with that the rest of my life.”

For Mr. Holt, there was only feelings of helplessness and anxiety as he saw his boy off the war:

Although his first deployment to Iraq may have been inevitable, my wife and I were terrified when he received his orders, less than a year after he had enlisted as an uncertain and directionless 18-year-old and less than six months after basic training. Uncertain information from the Army meant we couldn’t be there to see him board the plane to war. But we managed to be there the week before, full of parental stoicism and quiet terror demonstrated through hugs and tears.

I generally accepted the reasons we went to war and worried about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Like many Americans, I believed that America had a moral duty to protect the oppressed of Iraq. But with my son in that war, my interest became much more parochial. Policy meant less than facts.

It should not surprise us that Mr. Holt’s focus regarding the war’s justification narrowed considerably once his precious creation shouldered arms and went into harm’s way. What is remarkable to me is the way he approached his pain and anxiety at being separated from his son:

I filled time between infrequent e-mails scouring the Internet for local newspapers showing pictures of his unit’s equipment being shrink-wrapped and loaded on transport ships. Think-tank Web sites gave information about bases in western Iraq, where he was headed. I devoured bits of information he gave me through e-mail and telephone calls, and slowly his story unfolded. I shuddered when he described his terrifying 36-hour convoy race from Kuwait to Anbar province. His girlfriend told us (he tried to protect us from such news) about the attack on his convoy and his using his newly minted “expert” qualification on the SAW light machine gun to kill an attacking Iraqi soldier.

I anguished over his descriptions of random mortar attacks on his base, and I chastised him for volunteering for “shotgun” duty on missions conducted by the combat unit he supported. But hearing nothing for long periods was so much worse. I had persistent nightmares about improvised explosive devices, mortar rounds, snipers and accidents, knowing nothing but fearing the worst. Every report of an attack triggered frantic efforts to unearth the latest news, each time followed by guilty relief that my son was not hurt and by shame that I was relieved that someone else had died. But I cried every time I saw lists of casualties as I scoured the names for soldiers and Marines from his home base or our hometown. Now they were my children, too.

It is perhaps most admirable that Mr. Holt could have room in his anxious, troubled heart to feel for the parents of those not coming back from Iraq. It speaks of a largeness of spirit that seems to be shared by so many parents, and wives, and husbands, and brothers and sisters of those who march to sound of the guns in the name of service. It is something that those of us who do not have a loved one serving seem to forget whether we support the war or oppose it; after all the talk, all the debate about policy and timetables and force structure and “cut and run” and “chickenhawks” there is the father, and the son, and the fear of separation and loss.

For Joe Johnson, his trial is almost complete. And while his service may have fulfilled some atavistic need in his soul, it is clear that he has come to terms with his loss:

“She’s ready for me to come home,” Joe Johnson concludes.

He will. His battalion exits Iraq in early May, when Johnson’s own enlistment term, coincidentally, expires. “That’s it,” he said, no re-enlistment for him.

But what about revenge?

“If I go home and didn’t kill a terrorist, it’s not going to ruin my life,” he said. “Maybe I’d just as soon not. I don’t know what it would do to my head.”

Once back home among the northwest Georgia pines, he has one last ceremonial act in mind, removing the silver-toned bracelet he’s worn on his right wrist throughout his deployment, bearing Justin’s name and date of death. Joe Johnson’s mission will have been accomplished.

For Mr. Holt, anxiety is his constant companion as he awaits word on whether or not his son will be redeployed to the war zone:

My view of the war hasn’t changed. I am concerned about mistakes made and whether it will be worth all the bloodshed. I wonder how long the troops will remain — will my son have to go back? Even though our thoughts are full of visits with son, daughter-in-law and grandson, in the back of my mind the worry persists. Rumors are that his unit will return to Iraq next fall. Will he survive?

Anxiety resurrects itself each time I see casualty lists, and I still cry over each soldier’s death. I am one with all the parents who lie sleepless every night worrying over their soldier children. Their children are still my children, and that feeling will never end. We are U.S Army and Marine parents, proud of all our sons and daughters who protect this country. But they have seen far too much for people so young, and I don’t want any of them to die.

My son is home and alive. He has done his duty and I don’t want him to go back.

Two men. Two fathers. Two sons. One dead, one alive. And yet they seem connected to something larger than the sum of who they are and what they have sacrificed. It is the special love a father has for his son. Beside that, all the issues of the war and the role of the United States in the world pale in comparison.

Love enduring, never faltering, from now till the end of our time here on earth is what makes life worth living. It is a love a father can understand whether his son is alive or dead. It is a love born of service to something higher than life itself.

And that may be something worth fighting for.

THE BODIES OF 11 FAMILY MEMBERS KILLED EXECUTION STYLE IN TIKRIT LIE IN FRONT OF THE TOWN’S MORGUE.

It is sometimes difficult to wade through media reports of the war and try and ascertain what is true and what isn’t. That’s why we should be very careful in evaluating this story that appeared in The Daily Star, one of the more respected news organs in the Middle East:

Eleven members of an Iraqi family, including five children, were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an Al-Qaeda militant from a house. A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies showed each had been shot in the head.

[...]

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at Tikrit General Hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi, the town 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, to capture a “foreign fighter facilitator for the Al-Qaeda in Iraq network.”

“There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building … [was] destroyed,” the military said, adding the Al-Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

Major Ali Ahmad of the Iraqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. “After they left the house they blew it up,” he said.

Another policeman, Colonel Farouk Hussein, said autopsies had been carried out at Tikrit hospital and found that “all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head.”

The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed, Hussein said. Police had found spent American-issue cartridges in the rubble.

Three things to keep in mind:

1. We could be talking about two different incidents here which would explain the discrepancy in stories between the US military and Iraqi police.

2. The story could be a plant. It is not unknown for media outlets like The Daily Star or Al Jazeera to receive propaganda stories planted by al Qaeda that later turn out to be false.

3. Tikrit is the hometown of Saddam Hussein. It would not be beyond imagining for Saddam sympathizers to fabricate this story (or embellish it) in order to put the Americans in the worst possible light.

If this story has any truth to it, look for the left to once again invoke the specter of Viet Nam by comparing the massacre of the family to the My Lai atrocity. My Lai was an unspeakable barbarity carried out by American soldiers who killed 300 men, women, and children after being ordered to by superior officers. And while the death of 11 family members would be an atrocity that would require swift investigation and punishment, the story itself just doesn’t ring true.

In the end, the fact that it happened in Saddam’s birthplace and his clan’s stronghold makes me very wary of believing all the details put out by the town “investigators.” That said, I hope the military looks into the story if only to debunk it.

UPDATE

The Associated Press is reporting the story but with decidedly different details:

Police Capt. Laith Mohammed, in nearby Samarra, said American warplanes and armor flattened the house and killed the 11 people inside.

An AP reporter in the area said the roof collapsed. Eleven bodies, wrapped in blankets, were taken to the Tikrit General Hospital, relatives said.

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures at the hospital accompanied by grieving relatives. The victims were covered in dust and bits of rubble.

Riyadh Majid, who said he was the nephew of the killed head of the family — Faez Khalaf — told AP that U.S. forces landed in helicopters and raided the home. Khalaf’s brother, Ahmed, said nine dead were residents of the house and two were visitors.

“The killed family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children,” Ahmed Khalaf said. “The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death.”

The U.S. military said it was targeting and captured an individual suspected of supporting foreign fighters for the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist network.

“Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building,” said Tech. Sgt. Stacy Simon. “Coalition forces returned fire utilizing both air and ground assets.”

No mention of family members being shot in the back of the head or their hands being bound behind them. There is also no reports of the house being blown up only that the “roof collapsed.”

The incident does sound like a tragic repeat of other actions where insurgents or terrorists take cover in houses either sympathetic to them or where they simply barge in and use for shelter, guns being a fairly persuasive argument that they should be invited to stay. And as we’ve also seen in urban warfare, when someone is shooting at you, it becomes an impossibility to be very selective about targets.

The fact that the military evidently got the terrorist and are questioning him lends a little more credence to the story being told by CENCOM. Let us now see how big a deal this becomes on the left over the next 24 hours.

From Strategypage:

The violence has shifted away from American troops, who are suffering 60 percent fewer casualties this month than in the past year. and more towards Iraqi security forces and civilians. Part of this is because there are simply more Iraqi police and soldiers patrolling the streets and policing the neighborhoods. Where there are about two American advisors for every hundred Iraqi security troops, these Americans are there to advise, not fight. And the Iraqis are doing the fighting, and taking the casualties. American troops are still making raids and patrols, but there has also been a sharp decline in terrorist attacks. Some six months of sweeps and battles in western Iraq has shut down many of the Sunni terrorist sanctuaries. Indeed, many al Qaeda terrorists have fled western Iraq for towns and villages on the Iranian border. Iranians don’t like to advertise the fact, but they do provide support to al Qaeda, despite al Qaeda’s attacks on Shias (for being heretics.) Iran would also like to see a civil war (ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs) in Iraq. If that were to happen, Shia Arabs would be 75 percent of the Iraqi population, and likely to side with Iran on many issues.

A “sharp decline in terrorist attacks” along with a “60% reduction in American casualties” adds up to one thing: The President’s policy is working.

Yes, there is still a level of sectarian violence that threatens to erupt into full scale battles in the streets al la Lebanon of the 1970’s. And foreign interference, especially from Iran, may yet derail the careful, agonizing steps the Iraqis are making toward forming a unity government.

But in reality, the only people who seem to be wringing their hands in despair (or rubbing them together in glee) are the mainstream media and the left who dote lovingly on every reported attack, even if no one knows whether it is related to sectarian strife or not. This fact is not lost on the Sunni insurgents, Shia hot heads, and bloodthirsty jihadists who somehow manage to blow people up in close proximity to western reporters at every opportunity, hoping that their strategy of weakening America’s resolve through the prism of media bias will work. It’s all they’ve got at this point, given how badly the war is going for them elsewhere.

There have been many, many missteps by the Bush Administration in Iraq; political, military, and in the reconstruction effort that still lags to this day. But a more objective observer, looking at the slow, but steady progress being made in all three areas, could only come to the conclusion that after many false starts and serious errors, we are now finally on the right track in Iraq.

More and more over the next few months, the destiny of Iraq will be in the hands of the Iraqis themselves. This includes prospects for a civil war as well as any progress made in addressing the thorny problems involving the numerous militias, Shiite control of the security services, Kurdish desires for more autonomy, and perhaps most importantly, coming to terms with the Saddam era. Part of what is driving this sectarian strife are old hatreds engendered by the minority Sunni control over much of the economic and religious life of the country. Before real peace can be achieved, there must be a full accounting of the cost from that period.

Such a process - whether it is achieved by convening a special commission or some other political device - will go a long way to tamping down the violence that currently roils some parts of the country and threatens to undo any gains made by the progress made by all Iraqis in inching toward a civil, democratic society.

UPDATE

Got linked by a site where a commenter asked if I worked “for the CIA.”

Look, people. And liberals too. Saying something positive about Iraq does not automatically make someone a slavish Bush automaton. The fact is, what is being reported as “sectarian violence” is a crock. Yes, there are some scattered incidents. But most of the death and destruction is being caused by the same cast and crew that have been carrying on the war for the last three years - Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda in Iraq.

Case in point: Car bombs. Most of the 80 people killed over the weekend were murdered by car bombs in Shia neighborhoods designed specifically to foment civil war. Is that sectarian violence? Or is it a case of people trying to incite it?

I put it to you. Iraq may yet slide into civil war with running gun battles in the streets, militias battling building to building, and hundreds dying every day.

And, it may not.

The point is, that with American casualties way down and even terrorist car bombs becoming less frequent coupled with the Iraqi Parliament about ready to meet (and where a coalition of Sunnis, Kurds, and secularists will toss out the Muqtada al-Sadr’s choice for Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jafari) the facts are undeniable; the policy of building up the Iraqi armed forces and guiding the factions toward a “unity government” is working. And it is the policy formulated by the President. Hence, the President’s policy is working.

To not acknowledge this is to practice the same kind of delusion you are accusing me of being held captive by with one glaring difference; my “delusion” is supported by the facts on the ground. Yours is supported by wishful thinking and biased reporting.

Read this piece by Ralph Peters in Real Clear Politics for more of the same “delusions.” (HT: Michelle Malkin)