A Canadian Soldier at Kandahar, 2009-11-11

If you read this year’s Remembrance Day posts [1,2] you will be familiar with the passage that I read on air for CBC’s On the Coast on November 11th.  My Great Grandfather survived Vimy Ridge largely unscathed, until he went back there in the 1980s and broke his ribs tumbling along old trenchlines, but the experience left a profound impact on him — one that jarred his preconceptions about the “adventure” and “excitement’ of going to war.  What he saw when he arrived there was not pomp and chivalry and pretense; but instead a mechanical, brutal, unfeeling slaughter wrought by men who, when push came to shove, had no particular beef with one another.

Here’s the audio:  IanB-WMP-vimy-remembranceday

His full account of Vimy makes that journey in just a couple thousand words so palpably that I recommend it for anyone whose child announces that he will take arms and join the fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or wherever fate will lead.  This is not to say that one should not go to those places — those arguments are for another time — but this is to say that one should not tread lightly or with eyes wide shut as they approach the maelstrom.

As a society if we cannot define why we are in a place of combat the stories that should emerge, and can emerge, need to be given air.  That is why I applaud the Canadian Forces in particular, for embracing different media such as Suzanne Steel’s warpoet diaries which bring emotional stories and reflections straight from the front in Afghanistan.  These stories are our conscience.  They are the feedback loop through which those who are not directly affected by the war can feel the emotion, the frustration, the horror, and yes… even the humour.  You’ll find all of those things scrawled in the words of soldiers.

Sometimes there are acceptable (to some people) reasons to go to war, but as Hemingway wrote “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”  So let us not embark on these without solemn contemplation and reflection.

After leaving the CBC studios I met up with DaveO and recorded another session reading larger sections of Mark’s writing, which you can check out at his PodCast site, Postcards from Gravelly Beach (listen here).

Gutfeld, who also publishes a ponderous blog called the “Daily Gut” was responding to a report issued by the Canadian Chief of Land Staff Andrew Leslie that the Canadian Military would need a break before redeploying to another hotbed in order to retrain, repair, and rebuild forces after their withdrawal from Aghanistan in 2011.

Not since they demeaned to put Rachel Marsden on the air has Faux News offended Canadians so deeply.  Gutfeld weighs in with his obviously astute knowledge and understanding of international politics and warfighting.  What he fails to observe is that Canada has so drastically overcommitted itself to a deployment in Afghanistan that it is wearing out equipment faster than it can be replaced.  It has made a number of emergency interim equipment purchases and leases including tanks, transport aircraft, tactical transport helicopters, mine-protected vehicles, and blast-resistant transport trucks.  We have spent tens of billions of dollars helping George W. Bush perform his best impersonation of Emperor Nero against increasing resistance at home as young men and women return from what can fairly be perceived as an aimless fight in bodybags.

It fairly sparked the ire of Peter McKay, Canada’s Defense Minister, who appeared on CTV to demand an apology.  Really, though, Fox needs to consider whether a program like RedEye, which as the Tyee points out, is apparently “designed to appeal to the demographic most likely to be found on a beer-soaked dormitory couch at 2 a.m.” and “is chock full of fart gags and homoerotic innuendo” is befitting something that purports to call itself a news network.  Thinning pretense of news at Fox notwithstanding, stirring up this sort of controversy is dangerous for American and global politics, as it further widens the gap and reinforces a fundamentalism of American ignorance.  If you’re going to attempt to distort the truth, at least pay your audience the respect of starting from the truth.

Gutfeld is a clown, not a journalist — without the polarizing politics that are driven by America’s right-wing Taleban who converge around Fox News, he would have neither the audience nor the medium with which to reach them.  He is proof that neither a basis in education, nor in service, nor in intelligence is required to assert the airwaves in what shred remains of American journalism.

Here’s your Top Ten:

1. Rense Program www.rense.com
2. Roads to Iraq www.roadstoiraq.com
3. Vialls Investigations www.vialls.com
4. Al Jazeera aljazeera.com
5. Conspiracy Planet www.conspiracyplanet.com
6. Jihad Unspun jihadunspun.com
7. International Action Center www.iacenter.org
8. Free Arab Voice www.freearabvoice.org
9. George W. Bush – Terrorist in the White House nogw.com
10. Islam Memo (in Arabic) www.islammemo.cc

The State Department further suggests the following criteria to tell if a story is true:

• Does the story fit the pattern of a conspiracy theory?
• Does the story fit the pattern of an “urban legend?”
• Does the story contain a shocking revelation about a highly controversial issue?
• Is the source trustworthy?
• What does further research tell you?

… offering this advice up to Regular Joes and Reporters alike. Has anyone ever heard of Journalism school? High School Civics classes?

In modern politics, it is a consistent rhetorical moan of the conservative right that they have no voice, that they are revolutionary victims of massive and widespread disinformation campaigns by everyone from other religions to a liberal media bias to educators and philosophers. Some of this may be true, however in recent past it’s been difficult to raise a questioning voice against the Roveian wave of disinformation, litigation, and treachery.

I have a handy tool that I use for identifying misinformation: if it’s coming from the Bush Administration, it’s a lie.

“You want to make sure people understand that when they see civilian suffering there, it’s in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States.”

Isaacson later claimed that he was buckling under pressure from CNN’s corporate interests, which exclaimed that the news was “too negative”. Failing to understand his own irony, he also later stated that he didn’t want CNN to be used “as a propaganda platform.” In actual context, the number of deaths occurring on September 11th pales by comparison to those civilians who’ve paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan, to say nothing of Iraq (which now accounts for as many as 70,000 civilian deaths).

Much more disturbing, the mainstream US Media bought and then massively resold the administration’s link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda without any hard evidence and without any further in-depth investigation. While even reporters, editors, and producers themselves were disinclined to believe the US Administration’s line they reported it breathlessly regardless of their concerns. Bushists and their army then descended upon the media to repeat the phrase “but we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” which was an obvious manipulation of the public’s fear of a bigger, badder 9/11 — they were given a virtually infinite quantity of air time as a podium to sell the war, and very little in the way of counterpoint. In the history of mankind, there has rarely been such an abject failure of the Fourth Estate.

But today I’m not writing to indict the Bushists. Of far greater concern to me are the millions of born-again Hawks who channeled the anger, pain, and shock from the 9/11 attack into a seething, raging vengeance. Insodoing they allowed themselves to be manipulated by the dubious aims of an administration bent on war and naively seeking U.S. dominance of the Middle East (as though that is even a feasible goal).

Many of these faux-hawks (I’m attempting to hijack the phrase for comedic effect here) are now, with the benefit of hindsight, claiming that they were “lied to” and “manipulated”, as though that warrants immediate exoneration. This is the problem.

Why was I able to form an opinion, amid the froth of propaganda following 9/11 and leading up to the wars, that there was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam, that there was likely no nuclear program in Iraq, and that there was no real justifiable reason to invade Iraq? Am I smarter than everyone else? Surely not.

The answer is simple. While I watched CNN and occasionally Faux News, I also read other articles, such as this one from Knight-Ridder. I’d also read a few books on Middle-Eastern and specifically Iraqi recent history to understand the longer-term context, and I did a hell of a lot of Googling. I read newspapers from around the world, I read and watched opposing viewpoints, and I discussed the issue with friends. I read the back pages of the NY Times and Washington Post, to where most of the cautionary reporting was relegated. In essence, I sought out perspective, and through no matter of luck I found it, and it turns out to have been the correct one.

This is the job of every citizen of a democracy — I would hazard to say every citizen of the world. I cannot forgive those who merely lapped up that which was spoon-fed to them, who were entirely governed by their emotions, and who abandoned their responsibility as citizens and voters by failing to protest — loudly — the march to war. Through inaction, and this is at times the worst crime in a civilized society, they permitted a culture which has survived for thousands of years in the birthplace of humanity to endure its most trying disparagement.

A hockey coach of mine once said that the hardest-working player on the ice should always the guy who just screwed up. That rule also applies here. If you succumbed to the rhetoric of the Bush sycophants and joined the march (to send other people) to war only to realize your mistake later, you owe more to your fellow man than to simply claim you were lied to. You need to, at last, take action to stop the injustice in which you were complicit.

Paint a sign, write a blog post, march in a parade, or simply raise the quality of your discourse among friend. Do anything to combat this blunder and make up to your fellow patriots and world citizens alike. No President or Congress can instigate a war without the support of the population. So whose fault is the current Iraqi debacle?

Well, maybe it’s yours.

-Ian.

September 10, 2003 A Letter to President Bush By  Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

Dear President Bush:

You probably don’t know Joel Phagoo. He is a 21-year-old college student who decided to go fishing in New York’s Jamaica Bay with his kid brother and a cousin. They ended up washing up just off Runway 4 Right at JFK International Airport, after the weather turned.

They wandered about the tarmac for an hour, then turned themselves in to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police.

These were innocents. But their ability to move freely beneath the underbellies of jumbo jets just goes to show: Two years after the worst terror attacks on United States soil, repeat events are all too easy to envision.

An evildoer can still load explosives into a 20″ rolling travel case and ride into a major train station in any large metropolis—and blow it up. Shoulder-mounted missile launchers can, without much trouble, take down airplanes from the visitor center at the south end of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport or, as Joel Phagoo discovered, Runway 4 Right at JFK. A kayak could do the trick at the Port of Oakland, right beneath Ray Boyle, the man in charge of securing the fourth most-active seaport in the United States.

We’re all thankful that there hasn’t been a repeat of the twin towers tragedy. But is it understating the case to say not enough has been done in the 730 days that have passed to make our people feel safe again?

Creating a permanent solution starts at home.

First, there must be economic security. Unless this country continues to prosper, there won’t be the wealth necessary to finance safety anywhere inside our borders. Or to pick up the tab of occupying foreign nations.

That means applying the greatest fortune of this country, its intellectual assets, to the task at hand. Just like presidents before you, create a clear objective and mission for the smartest minds we call our own. World War II put them to work solving the mystery of atomic fission. The Cold War put them to work transporting humans to the moon. This war on terror should put them to work on not one but two projects that our core competency—the creation, deployment and operation of information systems and advanced technology—can solve.

Energy: There has not been a serious attempt to wean this country from its dependence on petroleum-based fuels since the Carter administration. Just think what could have been accomplished by now, if we had kept up research, testing and development of natural, renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and water power, and if we had made up our minds and stuck with it? Or if a willing citizenry had just been called on to conserve? We would reduce the stress on our deteriorating electricity grid. And, if we could just reduce our dependency on oil by 20%, we wouldn’t need Saudi Arabia. Then you could really prosecute a war on terror.

Physical Security: We’ve made it possible to ride in airplanes at 600 mph and still talk on the fly to someone speeding down a highway at 70 mph—and we curse if the call breaks apart. We’ve made it possible to know exactly when every can of soup moves out of a Wal-Mart SuperCenter, but we can’t tell when a college student like Joel Phagoo docks at one of our busiest airports. Now, we better figure out how to create invisible fences—permeable and impermeable—that guard against unauthorized humans, at our borders, airport grounds and other open, but vital spaces.

Apply technology intelligently. A good first step would be to challenge and properly fund our scientists and information technologists to devise the analytical systems that finally figure out how photovoltaics, fuel cells and the air itself can effectively free us from the addiction to oil that colors all our military and economic policies. A second step would be to challenge software and hardware developers to figure out what combination of low-cost antennae, sensors, transmitters, repeaters and other systems are needed to provide real security at all public and private places, without taking away privacy.

If running Iraq as a 51st state is worth $4 billion a month, just imagine what a similar investment could produce if it brings both true economic and physical security to this remarkable nation, and keeps our greatest resource, our brains, at work, on our shores.

Mr. President, this is what we are fighting for.

Arrogance of empire Paul Foot Wednesday August 20, 2003 The Guardian

In hospital last month for a (literally) nerve-wracking operation on my back, I was lucky enough to have with me an advance copy of Robert Harris’s novel Pompeii. At one level, the book is a thriller that kept me going through the entire sleepless night before the operation. At another, it is a thinly disguised satire on the arrogance of an empire that extended itself by force of arms so far across the world that it ignored elementary social and environmental problems at home. The fact that Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius was home to the richest Roman exploiters adds to the irony.

At the beginning of the book, Harris quotes, quite irrelevantly so it seems, the statistic that ancient Rome provided itself with more water than New York City did in 1995. Whether he chose this city by chance I do not know, but over last weekend, just a week before Pompeii was published, millions of citizens of New York and other US cities were plunged into darkness and chaos. They were obliged to suffer at least a tiny fragment of the agony of the people of Iraq, similarly cut off from electricity.

The Iraqi mess is the direct result of old fashioned US/British imperialism. The misery in New York and surrounding cities was caused not by terrorism – as many people there hastily assumed – but by capitalism, in particular its historic failure sufficiently to invest in unprofitable services that most people need. For a fleeting moment, likely to be repeated in the future, the citizens of Iraq and the US simultaneously became victims of the reckless greed of corporate America.

Thank heaven such horrors could not happen here. More than half a century ago, a Labour government nationalised gas, coal and electricity. Doggedly the Labour ministers responsible, led by a wild-eyed revolutionary called Hugh Gaitskell, staved off the Tory attacks on these measures. It was, those ministers argued, nonsense to talk of competition and “free enterprise” in the field of fuel and power, on whose regular supply the entire nation depended – and which were more efficiently and fairly run by publicly accountable monopolies.

Such arguments were denounced in the US as communist, and the supply of power there stayed in the hands of free enterprise. Some of the results of that were on show at the weekend in New York, Ohio and even in poor old semi-social democratic Ontario.

Is this just a North American problem? Among the harassed electricity company executives who stammered in front of television cameras on the night of the power cuts was Bill Edwards, president of Niagara Mohawk. His company supplies electricity to more than a million people in upstate New York. For six awful hours, many of them were cut off from power. Mr Edwards said he couldn’t comment on the suggestion that Niagara Mohawk had caused the blackout, at least until after a full investigation. In the meantime he warned his customers to turn down the air-conditioning and turn off unnecessary lights.

Now you might think that Niagara Mohawk is an American or a Canadian company. But you’d be wrong. Niagara Mohawk was bought in January last year for £2bn by the National Grid company, a private firm in Britain. National Grid plc merged last October with the Transco/Lattice Group, thus forming a monopoly that provides everyone in England and Wales with all their gas and electricity. More and more of the efforts of the new monopoly have been devoted to buying up power companies abroad – it has spent nearly three times as much on buying companies in the US as on capital investment in power in Britain.

How did the stale old socialist power monopoly created in the late 1940s to provide British people with gas and electricity become a brand new dynamic capitalist monopoly snapping up not altogether successful power companies abroad? Simple. Among the first and, for the City of London anyway, the most profitable of the great Thatcher privatisations were gas (don’t tell Sid) and electricity. At a stroke, parliamentary responsibility for these crucial areas of public concern was transferred to private boardrooms, whose jumped-up executives, revelling in their new power, awarded themselves fantastic salaries and bonuses.

The Labour party was outraged at the proposal, and threw itself into furious opposition. In December 1988, Labour’s young frontbench energy spokesman denounced electricity privatisation. “We are proud that we took the industry into public ownership,” he said. “When we come to power, it will be reinstated as a public service for the people of this country, and will not be run for private profit.” The young man’s name

The UN Security Council vetoed the invasion of Iraq and thus the UN did not support it, yet it realized its mandate and went into Iraq anyway hoping to help restore order…

Actually, the UN already had an envoy and an HQ in Iraq which went surprisingly unscathed for more than a decade, even during Clinton’s bombing of tactical targets and aggressive UN weapons inspections. This unprecedented act of violence further underscores the Bush Administration’s total failure to understand the backscatter effects of their actions.

They are losing the political war and they are losing it FAST.

-Ian.

—– http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cidW8&ncidW8&e=3&u=/nm/ 20030819/ts_nm/iraq_un_death_dc UN in Mourning as Baghdad Bombing Wreaks Heavy Toll 1 hour, 11 minutes ago By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The most devastating attack ever on a U.N. facility killed the chief U.N. envoy to Iraq ( news -web sites ) and at least 15 staff in Baghdad and stunned the global body at its headquarters on Tuesday with dazed staff roaming the corridors, some weeping.

Dazed staff wept as televisions displayed grim pictures of the devastation at the main U.N. office building in Iraq, where some 300 of their colleagues worked. Many were still trapped in the wreckage and the death toll was sure to climb, officials said.

The flags of the United Nations ( news -web sites )’ 191 member-nations, which adorn the front of the U.N. compound on Manhattan’s East Side, were lowered and the blue-and-white U.N. flag was put at half-staff to honor the dead.

U.N. officials said they believed the office of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. Special Representative for Iraq, had been the target of the suicide truck bombing.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( news -web sites ) called his death “a bitter blow for the United Nations and for me personally.”

“The death of any colleague is hard to bear but I could think of no one we could less spare,” Annan, who was on vacation in Helsinki, said in a statement issued in New York, as he canceled his vacation after news of the attack.

In a series of senior posts including U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and special envoy in such hot spots as Kosovo and East Timor ( news -web sites ), “he impressed everyone with his charm, his energy and his ability to get things done, not by force but by diplomacy and persuasion,” Annan said.

The debonair Vieira de Mello, a 55-year-old Brazilian ( news -web sites ), had often been mentioned as a possible future U.N. secretary-general.

BLAST WILL NOT BREAK U.N. WILL

“Nothing can excuse this act of unprovoked and murderous violence against men and women who went to Iraq for one purpose only: to help the Iraqi people recover their independence and sovereignty, and to rebuild their country as fast as possible, under leaders of their own choosing,” Annan said.

“All of us at the United Nations are shocked and dismayed by today’s attack, in which many of our colleagues have been injured and an unknown number have lost their lives,” he said, expressing the hope that those responsible would be swiftly identified and brought to justice.

“Most of all I hope to see Iraq restored as soon as possible to peace, security and full independence. The United Nations will make every effort to bring that about,” he said.

The 15-nation Security Council affirmed the blast would not deter the world body from its work rebuilding Iraq.

“Such terrorist incidents cannot break the will of the international community to further intensify its efforts to help the people of Iraq,” council members said in a statement read by Deputy U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad of Syria, the Security Council president for August.

Treading a diplomatic and political minefield in Iraq, Vieira de Mello had quickly won the respect of Paul Bremer, Iraq’s U.S. administrator, despite tension between Washington and the U.N. Secretariat over the war, officials said.

“The relationship has been businesslike, it has been constructive, and it has been frank,” Vieira de Mello, told reporters in Cairo last week. But he agreed he had landed in “a delicate … and even bizarre situation” in postwar Iraq.

In an address to the U.N. Security Council in July, he made what now appears a prescient remark, saying, “The United Nations presence in Iraq remains vulnerable to any who would seek to target our organization.”

-Ian.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Tom
> Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 9:32:24 AM US/Pacific
> To: fork [at] xent [dot] com
> Subject: Can You Here Me Now
>
>> From http://www.arstechnica.com/
>
> Middle East mobile firm shut out in Iraq
>
> Posted 8/1/2003 – 2:09AM, by Fred “zAmboni” Locklear
> Getting a foot in the door can lead to opportunities, but it can also
> lead
> to some squashed toes. Using the confusion in a Iraq as a cover screen
> the
> Bahriani mobile firm Batelco spent $5 million setting up and beginning
> GSM
> service in Baghdad on July 22. One problem. Batelco had not obtained a
> license to start services and promptly told to cease service. The U.S.
> started seeking bids for three mobile phone licenses on Sunday, so
> Betelco
> could just apply, right? Watch out toes, here comes the crunch.
>
> Batelco was probably trying to get the jump on others since licensing
> rules had not been set up and there have been rumblings the U.S. would
> craft rules to favor other U.S. companies. It was a $5 million gamble
> that
> could have been parlayed into a lucrative mobile license and contract.
> On
> Thursday, rules were set up for Iraqi mobile phone licenses and
> Batelco,
> along with some of Europe’s largest mobile companies will be left out
> of
> the bidding.
>
> ” The rules – issued by the coalition authorities ahead of a
> bidders’
> conference in Jordan on Thursday – ban governments from “directly
> or
> indirectly own(ing) more than 5% of any single bidding company or
> single company in consortia”.
>
> That rules out – among others – Orange and T-Mobile, two of
> Europe’s
> biggest operators, because the French and German governments still
> own
> significant stakes in their parent companies.”
>
> The BBC also suggests the rules have stipulations which will favor U.S.
> companies. The restrictions could be seen as preventing a government
> from
> having influence over services provided to Iraq. On the other hand, one
> could argue companies from coalition nations should be barred,
> especially
> since they are the ones setting up the rules.
>
> [1]http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/
> 6402112.htm
> [2]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3114591.stm
>

Sometimes I can’t believe what I read..

-Ian.

——— http://www.msnbc.com/news/944890.asp?0cl=cR&cp1=1

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 28 —  Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled President Saddam Hussein.

AS IRAQI FIGHTERS launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries, and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week.        Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operation, the military officials said. In the same period, U.S. forces in all of Iraq have suffered 39 combat deaths. The continuing casualties — such as the four soldiers killed Saturday — are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive, the military officials added.        Despite their losses, Army officers and soldiers asserted that they are making solid gains in this region, where most of the fighting has taken place and where about half the 150,000 U.S. troops in the country are posted.        At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000 — and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes.

       At the same time, the frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest of Baghdad dominated by Iraq’s Sunni minority, long a base of support for Hussein. In this triangle-shaped region — delineated by Baghdad, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi to the west — attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by half since mid-June, military officers reported.        That decrease is leading senior commanders here to debate whether the war is nearly over. Some say the resistance by members of Hussein’s Baath Party is nearly broken. But other senior officers are bracing for a new phase in which they fear that Baathist die-hards, with no alternative left, will shift from attacking the U.S. military to bombing American civilians and Iraqis who work with them.        In addition, there is general agreement among Army leaders here that in recent weeks both the quality and quantity of intelligence being offered by Iraqis has greatly improved, leading to such operations as the one last Tuesday in Mosul that killed Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay.        Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

       The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.         THE U.S. OFFENSIVE        In the weeks after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, there were growing signs of resistance in the Sunni triangle, where many former Baath Party operatives, intelligence officers, and Special Republican Guard members were still actively fighting the U.S. military.        Rocket-propelled grenade attacks on U.S. vehicles began in earnest near the end of the month. On May 30, a sophisticated three-point ambush was launched against U.S. troops patrolling in the town of Bayji, just north of Tikrit. As U.S. troops evaded one line of fire, they were attacked by the next. When troops fired back, the Iraqis continued to fight instead of running.        On June 7, a patrol of U.S. military police drove into the town of Thuluya, on a big bend in the Tigris River southeast of Tikrit. Iraqis there told them to leave, and warned that if they came back, they would be killed, said a U.S. commander. It was then that “we started to kick down doors,” recalled a senior Central Command official.        Instead of leaving, at 2 a.m. the next morning, hundreds of U.S. troops cordoned off Thuluya and hundreds more conducted searches throughout the town. F-15 fighters and Apache helicopters whirred overhead, ready to launch missiles on ground commanders’ call. U.S. military speedboats patrolled the Tigris River, cutting off an escape route. The aggressive operation set the tone for the new phase of the war.

       Since then, the Army has sought to keep up an unrelenting pace. “The reality is that in this company, we’ve been doing raids and cordon searches nearly every day” since early June, said Capt. Brian Healey, commander of an infantry company based near Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. Over the past six weeks, he said, sitting on a cot in an old Iraqi military base, his unit alone has detained nearly 100 people.        “I figure you can either sit barricaded in your base camp, or take the fight to the enemy,” said Lt. Col. Larry “Pepper” Jackson, commander of an Army outpost on the outskirts of, which is still described as hostile by U.S. military intelligence analysts. “Our key to success is staying on the offense. But you don’t do it recklessly, because then you’d lose the people.”        He said he has two patrols on the streets of Bayji at any given time. His troops are still attacked, but as a result of the new tactics, “It is a lot quieter — about half as much contact as in May.”        Three major U.S. operations unfolded over the past two months. In the first one in June, Peninsula Strike, U.S. commanders learned that much of the opposition was coming from Baath Party operatives and their allies in the old Iraqi intelligence services. Desert Scorpion, aimed at cutting off escape routes for fugitive Iraqi leaders, came in late June. It began with 56 simultaneous large-scale raids across central Iraq and brought in a hoard of intelligence. Among those netted was Abid Hamid Mahmud, Hussein’s trusted aide. “That was a big event,” recalled a senior Army official. “He has revealed a lot. He knew where all the safe houses and ratlines were.” Ratlines is an Army term for escape routes.        The third major operation, dubbed Soda Mountain, was the first expressly preemptive effort. Concerned about the threat of an offensive tied to July 17, the 35th anniversary of the day Hussein’s Baath Party took power, U.S. troops rounded up 600 party operatives. “We were aggressive and out there, looking to preclude attacks,” the official said. For example, for six days leading up to the holiday, every car leaving Bayji — a town of 30,000 sitting astride Iraq’s major north-south highway — was stopped at a checkpoint, and many were searched.                U.S. officials say they began to see a significant payoff from the series of operations early this month, when the number of attacks began to decline and Iraqis began to provide more information about the resistance. “When you have one operation after another, there is a cumulative effect,” the Army official said. “The effect of all these operations was that walk-in humint” — human intelligence — doubled from early June to mid-July. What’s more, he said, “it was very good quality.”        Tips began paying off so quickly that officials would launch one raid before another was completed, allowing troops to catch some targets off guard because they didn’t know that fellow resistance fighters had been apprehended. Iraqi resistance fighters in the Sunni triangle at first tried to attack U.S. forces directly with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. While some killed U.S. troops, many attempts were ineffective. So in recent weeks, military officers said, Iraqi fighters have turned to other weapons.        “They’ve gone to standoff weapons — mines and mortars, and IEDs” — improvised explosive devices, or bombs — said Capt. John Taylor, the intelligence officer for the base near Bayji.        Last Wednesday, a tank from the base hit an antitank mine for the first time since its unit came to Iraq in April. Lt. Erik Aadland, a former resident of Springfield, Va., was standing in the turret of his tank as it was returning to base after a patrol through Bayji. With the tank just a stone’s throw from the front gate, the mine exploded. “Everything went red,” he recalled. “Then we were covered in black smoke.” Aadland and his crew dismounted and stared at the damage: The right track was blown off, the fender above it twisted upward and three armored panels weighing a total of about 1,100 pounds had been hurled about 90 feet away.

       Iraqi fighters have adjusted their tactics in other ways. Upon learning that their homes were being targeted for raids, Baath Party operatives often moved their weapons, cash and documents into the homes of neighbors, military officials said. In turn, U.S. forces expanded the scope of their raids. “The past six weeks, our patrols have gotten more aggressive, much more frequent,” said Healey, the infantry company commander. “Instead of doing one house, for example, we’ll do a whole street.”        Likewise, Iraqi fighters learned the U.S. military is most comfortable operating at night, when it stands to gain the most from its technical advantages, such as night-vision goggles. Some fighters started going back to their homes in midday, and even holding meetings then, U.S. military officials said.        But in military operations, for every action there is a reaction. Hogg, the 2nd Brigade commander, noted this as he sat in a Humvee on Wednesday afternoon, clenching the butt of a Dominican cigar in his teeth. “The knuckleheads kind of figured out that we like to operate at night, so they started operating during the day, so we starting hitting them during the day,” he said as he waited for one of his battalions to launch a daylight raid. “It’s harder, because of the crowds, but it’s also effective.”        Underscoring the intense nature of the combat, Hogg’s brigade, after weeks of being pestered by enemy mortars, has begun responding with heavy artillery, and so far this month has fired more than 60 high-explosive 155 mm shells.        Some Army units have modified their equipment to help them adjust to urban warfare. At least two battalions in the 4th Infantry Division have mounted .50 caliber heavy machine guns on the back of the pickup-truck version of their Humvees, vehicles sometimes used to carry infantry troops to raids. “Gun-vees,” which resembles the “technicals” used by Somali fighters, are especially useful in battling guerrilla fighters in alleys and other tight urban spaces where tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles cannot maneuver.        The modified vehicle also provides a helpful element of surprise, said Jackson, the U.S. commander near Bayji. “A Humvee can sneak up for a raid,” he said. “A tank you can hear a mile away.”        After the fighting is over, U.S. military officials say, it becomes important to repair the damage — a door smashed, a wall breached, an irrigation culvert flattened by a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank. Every U.S. brigade commander in Iraq has a “Commander’s Emergency Repair Fund” of $200,000 that is replenished as he spends it. Over the past six weeks of the U.S. offensive, commanders across Iraq dispensed $13 million to rebuild schools, clinics, water treatment plans and police stations, said Army Col. David MacEwen, who helps coordinate the civic works.

       “During Peninsula Strike, we worked very hard for every combat action to have a ‘carrot’ that followed,” MacEwen said. “We’d do a cordon and search in one area, and then make sure the next day that LPG [cooking gas] was available, or that a pump at a water plant was working.”        The efforts aren’t just aimed at winning hearts and minds, but also at gaining intelligence. “When you’re out doing the civil affairs operations, you get a lot of people coming up and giving you good information,” said Maj. David Vacchi, the operations officer for a battalion operating just northeast of Baghdad.

       Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. “I think we’re at the hump” now, a senior Central Command official said. “I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly” — possibly within a couple of months, he added.        Hogg, whose troops are still engaged in combat every day, agreed. “I think we’re fixing to turn the corner,” he said Thursday. “I think the operations over the next couple of weeks will get us there.”                 Staff researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.                 © 2003 The Washington Post Company

There is, however, a key difference: Tony Blair is nearing the legislated end to his reign next year, and George W. Bush will be fighting for re-election in 2004. Will the scandal die with Tony Blair in Britain? Will the Democrats seize the opportunity to expose a conspiracy of the highest order in an attempt to dethrone Herr Bush? This will be a mere political gurgle until the campaigning begins in earnest next year.

-Ian.

——- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cidW8&ncidW8&e=7&u=/nm/ 20030711/ts_nm/iraq_usa_weapons_dc

White House Ignored CIA Over Iraq Uranium Claim-CBS

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House ignored a request by the CIA ( news -web sites ) to remove a statement in President Bush ( news -web sites )’s State of the Union address that Iraq ( news -web sites ) was seeking uranium from Africa for its nuclear weapons program, CBS Evening News reported on Thursday.

The White House acknowledged this week it had been a mistake to put the claim about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa in Bush’s January speech and that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged.

Critics have seized on the statement as a prime example of the Bush administration’s campaign to mislead the public by hyping the threat posed by Iraq to gain support for the war.

The CIA checked the parts Bush’s speech dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction for accuracy and CIA officials warned White House National Security Council staff that the intelligence was not strong enough to flatly state that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, CBS News said.

White House officials argued that since a paper issued by the British government contained the assertion, if it was attributed to Britain it would be factually accurate, CBS said. CIA officials dropped their objections, CBS said.

A CIA spokesman declined comment on the CBS report, which was sourced to senior Bush administration officials. A White House spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a related development, the CIA told British intelligence last year that the American intelligence agency did not have high confidence in reports that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Africa, a U.S. official told Reuters.

“We had concerns about the veracity of the story and we shared those concerns with them but in the end they thought that their information was solid and they went with it,” the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

DOCUMENTS FORGED

British intelligence decided the information they had was solid and included it in a report issued in September 2002, the official said.

The CIA shared its concerns shortly before the British report was issued and before the American intelligence agency had seen the Niger documents, which now have been determined to be forgeries.

“We had no idea they were forgeries, we didn’t get the documents until much later,” the U.S. official said. “We weren’t sure it was true, didn’t have high confidence of it being accurate for a variety of reasons,” the official said.

The Washington Post first reported the CIA’s unsuccessful effort to persuade Britain to drop the Iraq uranium claim. The British government rejected the U.S. suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States, the newspaper reported.

Bush delivered the following line in his State of the Union speech in January: “The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein ( news -web sites ) had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

The Italian intelligence service circulated reports about the Niger documents — not the documents themselves — to other Western intelligence services in early 2002, and that was apparently how the British and U.S. intelligence services learned of them, U.S. government sources have said.

Since invading U.S. forces ousted Saddam from power in April, no biological or chemical weapons have been found, nor evidence that Iraq and restarted its nuclear weapons program.