Irak - bedre og bedre

To pluk i nyhedsstrømmen:

• Al Qaeda i Iraks leder er flygtet gennem Iran til Afghanistan.
• Amerikanske tab i Irak er nu faldet til det laveste niveau siden befrielsen - 12 dræbt i juli måned, deraf 4 af hændelige uheld, sygdom osv.

Sejr til de irakiske styrker

I Irak prøver den radikale Shia-muslimske mullah Moqtada al-Sadr at skjule sit nederlag:

»På grund af det religiøse ansvar, for at standse udgydelsen af irakisk blod, for at opretholde den irakiske enhed og for at stoppe besættelsesmagten og dens støtters tilskyndelse til oprør blandt Iraks folk, stopper vi den væbnede tilstedeværelse i Basra og alle andre provinser« ..

»Hvis nogen bærer våben eller angriber regeringsbygninger, er det ikke en af os«

Hvad han glemmer at sige er, at det irakiske blod, der er blevet udgydt, er fra hans egne bander af militsfolk. Ifølge The Long War Journal har hans bander i løbet af de sidste 5 dage mistet op mod 1300 mand i dræbte, sårede og tilfangetagne. Et bevis på, at de irakiske sikkerhedsstyrker lige så stille er ved at være sig deres opgaver voksne.

al Qaedas leder i Irak står for fald

Amerikanske og irakiske styrker har siden det amerikanske "surge" - indsættelsen af ekstra styrker - blev fuldtallig midt i juni gået målrettet efter al Qaida i Irak´s ledelse. Udryddes de ledende lag i terror-organisationen, reduceres fodsoldaterne til ukoordinerede grupper af desperadoer.

Oktober, den sidste måned der foreligger fuldstændige oplysninger for, var det hidtidige højdepunkt i jagten på højtstående aQ-folk i Irak: fra 19 tilfangetagne eller dræbte aQ-ledere i juli steg antallet til 25 i august, 29 i september og endelig 43 i oktober. Til illustration af mandefaldet blandt aQ´s ledelse bare de sidste to måneder:

Men bemærker især det høje antal af tilfangetagne frem for dræbte. Hver tilfangetagen terror-leder giver adgang til at presse informationer ud af ham, der leder videre til det næste mål i terror-bevægelsen. Tidligere på måneden lader det til, de amerikanske styrker på den måde kom endog meget tæt på at tage aQ i Irak´s leder, Abu Ayyub al-Masri til fange.

Dette skete under razziaer i Tarmiyah, hvor amerikanske styrker konfronterede en horde terrorister fra aQ og slog 25 ihjel og tog 21 til fange. Blandt de dræbte var Yasin Turki Mahmud Slaih og Marwan ‘Abdullah Ahmad ‘Abd, to medlemmer af al-Masri´s personlige bodyguard, hvilket tyder på, han var tæt på. Et andet indicie er de dræbte aQ-folks svære bevæbning med anti-luftskyts, der gerne er et tegn på, at der er vigtige mål i området, de vil beskytte mod luftangreb.

Det lykkedes ikke denne gang, men 21 nye aQ-fanger står klar til at stikke deres flygtende chef.

En historie, der bare ikke holder vand mere

Nogle vil måske huske historien for nylig om en irakisk familie, der havde fået afvist deres ansøgning om asyl som ubegrundet. Familiens 13-årige søn fik humanitær opholdstilladelse i opløbet til valget, mens resten af familiens udvisningsordre stadig stod ved magt. I forsøget på at snige sig til en lignende opholdstilladelse kom moderen blandt andet i Politiken med følgende argumentation:

Drengens mor vil ikke rejse tilbage til Bagdad med sine børn, idet hun
frygter, at familien vil blive slået ihjel.

Hvis det er alt, hun har at bygge ønsket om asyl på, så holder hendes sag ikke - volden er stærkt faldende i Irak, og tusindvis af irakere vender nu tilbage.

In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday.

Saad al-Azawi, his wife and four children are among them. They fled to Syria six months ago, leaving behind what had become one of the capital's more dangerous districts — west Baghdad's largely Sunni Khadra region...

Sattar Nawrous, a spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, said the al-Azawi family was among 3,100 that have returned to their homes in Baghdad in the past 90 days.

"In the past three months, the ministry did not register any forced displacement in the whole of Iraq," said Nawrous, who is a Kurd.

Historien om den stærkt faldende vold i Irak illustreres meget godt af denne grafik over antallet af ugentlige angreb:

Ingen ældrebyrde dér

Fra Centcom:

A 72-year-old man stopped a suspected suicide bomber from detonating himself at a checkpoint in Arab Jabour Oct. 14.

The man approached a checkpoint where Mudhehr Fayadh Baresh was standing guard, but did not make it very far.

Baresh, a tribal commissioner and member of the Arab Jabour Concerned Citizens program, said he ordered the man to lift his shirt - using training received from Coalition Forces - when he did not recognize him as a local villager.

The suspect refused to lift his shirt. Baresh repeated the command again, and the suspect exposed his suicide vest, running toward the checkpoint.

Baresh opened fire which caused the vest to detonate, killing the suspect.

“I did it for the honor of my family and the honor of my country,” said Baresh, when he met with Col. Terry Ferrell, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd
Infantry Division.

Iraks gravere hårdt ramt: forretningen for nedadgående

Fra Yahoo News:

At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn't good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq.

"I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead," said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. "People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don't talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more."

Dhurgham Majed al Malik, 48, whose family has arranged burial services for generations, said that this spring, private cars and taxis with caskets lashed to their roofs arrived at a rate of 6,500 a month. Now it's 4,000 or less, he said.

Endnu en retssag kollapser

Fra CNN:

Two British soldiers were cleared on Tuesday over the death of an Iraqi prisoner at the end of a six-month trial, the third long and costly court martial in a row to collapse.

Hvordan et land lades i stikken

Den amerikanske venstrefløjs forsøg på at trække de amerikanske tropper i Irak ud fortsætter, og USA står måske over for at lade endnu et land i stikken. Sidste gang det lykkedes for dem var da de kvalte Syd-Vietnams forsøg på at standse det kommunistiske diktatur Nord-Vietnam´s invasion i 1975 ved at afskære al hjælp til landet. Efterfølgende mistede et sted mellem to og fem millioner mennesker livet.

Selv om den følgende artikel af James Webb er 10 år gammel giver den et godt billede af situationen dengang, og prikker huller på en del myter, både amerikanere og danskere stadig tror på:

It is difficult to explain to my children that in my teens and early twenties the most frequently heard voices of my peers were trying to destroy the foundations of American society, so that it might be rebuilt according to their own narcissistic notions. In retrospect it’s hard even for some of us who went through those times to understand how highly educated people—most of them spawned from the comforts of the upper-middle class—could have seriously advanced the destructive ideas that were in the air during the late ’60s and early ’70s. Even Congress was influenced by the virus.

After President Nixon resigned in August of 1974, that fall’s congressional elections brought 76 new Democrats to the House, and eight to the Senate. A preponderance of these freshmen had run on McGovernesque platforms. Many had been viewed as weak candidates before Nixon’s resignation, and some were glaringly unqualified, such as then-26-year-old Tom Downey of New York, who had never really held a job in his life and was still living at home with his mother.

This so-called Watergate Congress rode into town with an overriding mission that had become the rallying point of the American Left: to end all American assistance in any form to the besieged government of South Vietnam. Make no mistake—this was not the cry of a few years earlier to stop young Americans from dying. It had been two years since the last American soldiers left Vietnam, and fully four years since the last serious American casualty calls there.

For reasons that escape historical justification, even after America’s military withdrawal the Left continued to try to bring down the incipient South Vietnamese democracy. Future White House aide Harold Ickes and others at "Project Pursestrings"—assisted at one point by an ambitious young Bill Clinton—worked to cut off all congressional funding intended to help the South Vietnamese defend themselves. The Indochina Peace Coalition, run by David Dellinger and headlined by Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, coordinated closely with Hanoi throughout 1973 and 1974, and barnstormed across America’s campuses, rallying students to the supposed evils of the South Vietnamese government. Congressional allies repeatedly added amendments to spending bills to end U.S. support of Vietnamese anti-Communists, precluding even air strikes to help South Vietnamese soldiers under attack by North Vietnamese units that were assisted by Soviet-bloc forces.

Then in early 1975 the Watergate Congress dealt non-Communist Indochina the final blow. The new Congress icily resisted President Gerald Ford’s January request for additional military aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia. This appropriation would have provided the beleaguered Cambodian and South Vietnamese militaries with ammunition, spare parts, and tactical weapons needed to continue their own defense. Despite the fact that the 1973 Paris Peace Accords called specifically for "unlimited military replacement aid" for South Vietnam, by March the House Democratic Caucus voted overwhelmingly, 189-49, against any additional military assistance to Vietnam or Cambodia.

The rhetoric of the antiwar Left during these debates was filled with condemnation of America’s war-torn allies, and promises of a better life for them under the Communism that was sure to follow. Then-Congressman Christopher Dodd typified the hopeless naiveté of his peers when he intoned that "calling the Lon Nol regime an ally is to debase the word.... The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." Tom Downey, having become a foreign policy expert in the two months since being freed from his mother’s apron strings, pooh-poohed the coming Cambodian holocaust that would kill more than one-third of the country’s population, saying, "The administration has warned that if we leave there will be a bloodbath. But to warn of a new bloodbath is no justification for extending the current bloodbath."

On the battlefields of Vietnam the elimination of all U.S. logistical support was stunning and unanticipated news. South Vietnamese commanders had been assured of material support as the American military withdrew—the same sort of aid the U.S. routinely provided allies from South Korea to West Germany—and of renewed U.S. air strikes if the North attacked the South in violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Now they were staring at a terrifyingly uncertain future, even as the Soviets continued to assist the Communist North.

As the shocked and demoralized South Vietnamese military sought to readjust its forces to cope with serious shortages, the newly refurbished North Vietnamese immediately launched a major offensive. Catching many units out of position, the North rolled down the countryside over a 55-day period. In the ensuing years I have interviewed South Vietnamese survivors of these battles, many of whom spent ten years and more in Communist concentration camps after the war. The litany is continuous: "I had no ammunition." "I was down to three artillery rounds per tube per day." "I had nothing to give my soldiers." "I had to turn off my radio because I could no longer bear to hear their calls for help."

The reaction in the United States to this debacle defines two distinct camps that continue to be identifiable in many of the issues we face today. For most of those who fought in Vietnam, and for their families, friends, and political compatriots, this was a dark and deeply depressing month. The faces we saw running in terror from the North Vietnamese assault were real and familiar, not simply video images. The bodies that fell like spinning snowflakes toward cruel deaths after having clung hopelessly to the outer parts of departing helicopters and aircraft may have been people we knew or tried to help. Even for those who had lost their faith in America’s ability to defeat the Communists, this was not the way it was supposed to end.

For those who had evaded the war and come of age believing our country was somehow evil, even as they romanticized the intentions of the Communists, these few weeks brought denials of their own responsibility in the debacle, armchair criticisms of the South Vietnamese military, or open celebrations. At the Georgetown University Law Center where I was a student, the North’s blatant discarding of the promises of peace and elections contained in the 1973 Paris Accords, followed by the rumbling of North Vietnamese tanks through the streets of Saigon, was treated by many as a cause for actual rejoicing.

Denial is rampant in 1997, but the truth is this end result was the very goal of the antiwar movement’s continuing efforts in the years after American withdrawal. George McGovern, more forthcoming than most, bluntly stated as much to this writer during a break in taping a 1995 edition of cnn’s "Crossfire." After I had argued that the war was clearly winnable even toward the end if we had changed our strategy, the 1972 presidential candidate who had offered to go to Hanoi on his knees commented, "What you don’t understand is that I didn’t want us to win that war." Mr. McGovern was not alone. He was part of a small but extremely influential minority who eventually had their way.

There is perhaps no greater testimony to the celebratory atmosphere that surrounded the Communist victory in Vietnam than the 1975 Academy Awards, which took place on April 8, just three weeks before the South’s final surrender. The award for Best Feature Documentary went to the film Hearts and Minds, a vicious piece of propaganda that assailed American cultural values as well as our effort to assist South Vietnam’s struggle for democracy. The producers, Peter Davis and Bert Schneider [who plays a role in David Horowitz’s story—see page 31], jointly accepted the Oscar. Schneider was frank in his support of the Communists. As he stepped to the mike he commented that "It is ironic that we are here at a time just before Vietnam is about to be liberated." Then came one of the most stunning—if intentionally forgotten—moments in Hollywood history. As a struggling country many Americans had paid blood and tears to try to preserve was disappearing beneath a tank onslaught, Schneider pulled out a telegram from our enemy, the Vietnamese Communist delegation in Paris, and read aloud its congratulations to his film. Without hesitating, Hollywood’s most powerful people rewarded Schneider’s reading of the telegram with a standing ovation.

Those of us who either fought in Vietnam or supported our efforts there look at this 1975 "movie moment" with unforgetting and unmitigated amazement. Who were these people who so energetically poisoned the rest of the world’s view of us? How had they turned so virulently against their own countrymen? How could they stand and applaud the victory of a Communist enemy who had taken 58,000 American lives and crushed a struggling, pro-democratic ally? Could they and the rest of us be said to be living in the same country anymore?

Not a peep was heard then, or since, from Hollywood regarding the people who disappeared behind Vietnam’s bamboo curtain. No one has ever mentioned the concentration camps into which a million South Vietnamese soldiers were sent; 56,000 to die, 250,000 to stay for more than six years, and some for as long as 18. No one criticized the forced relocations, the corruption, or the continuing police state. More to the point, with the exception of the well-intentioned but artistically weak Hamburger Hill, one searches in vain for a single major film since that time that has portrayed American soldiers in Vietnam with dignity and in a true context. ...

Among everyday Americans, attitudes during this troubled time were much healthier. Behind the media filtering and distortion on Vietnam, the fact is that our citizenry agreed far more consistently with those of us who fought than with those who undermined our fight. This was especially true, interestingly, among the young Americans now portrayed as having rebelled against the war.

As reported in Public Opinion, Gallup surveys from 1966 to the end of U.S. involvement show that younger Americans actually supported the Vietnam war longer than any other age group. Even by January of 1973, when 68 percent of Americans over the age of 50 believed it had been a mistake to send troops to Vietnam, only 49 percent of those between 25 and 29 agreed. These findings that the youth cohort as a whole was distinctly unradical were buttressed by 1972 election results—where 18- to 29-year-olds preferred Richard Nixon to George McGovern by 52 to 46 percent.

Similarly, despite persistent allegations to the contrary by former protesters who now dominate media and academia, the 1970 invasion of Cambodia—which caused widespread campus demonstrations, including a riot that led to four deaths at Kent State University—was strongly supported by the public. According to Harris surveys, nearly 6 in 10 Americans believed the Cambodian invasion was justified. A majority in that same May 1970 survey supported an immediate resumption of bombings in North Vietnam, a complete repudiation of the antiwar movement. ...

Vietnam veterans, though persistently maligned in film, news reports, and classrooms as unwilling, unsuccessful soldiers, have been well thought of by average Americans. In the most comprehensive study ever done on Vietnam vets (Harris Survey, 1980, commissioned by the Veterans Administration), 73 percent of the general public and 89 percent of Vietnam veterans agreed with the statement that "The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win." Seventy percent of those who fought in Vietnam disagreed with the statement "It is shameful what my country did to the Vietnamese people." Fully 91 percent of those who served in Vietnam combat stated that they were glad they had served their country, and 74 percent said they had enjoyed their time in the military. Moreover, 71 percent of those who expressed an opinion indicated that they would go to Vietnam again, even knowing the end result and the ridicule that would be heaped on them when they returned. ...

Contrary to persistent mythology, two-thirds of those who served during Vietnam were volunteers rather than draftees, and 77 percent of those who died were volunteers. Of those who died, 86 percent were Caucasian, 12.5 percent were African-American, and 1.2 percent were from other races. The common claim that it was minorities and the poor who were left to do the dirty work of military service in Vietnam is false. The main imbalance in the war was simply that the privileged avoided their obligations, and have persisted since that time in demeaning the experience in order to protect themselves from the judgment of history. ...

What an eerie feeling it must have been for those who staked the journey of their youth on the idea that their own country was an evil force, to have watched their naiveté unravel in the years following 1975. How sobering it must have been for those who allowed themselves to move beyond their natural denial, to observe the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese fleeing the "pure flame of the revolution" on rickety boats that gave them a 50 percent chance of death at sea, or to see television pictures of thousands of Cambodian skulls lying in open fields, part of the millions killed by Communist "liberators." How hollow the memories of drug-drenched and sex-enshrined antiwar rallies must be; how false the music that beatified their supposedly noble dissent.

I disse dage lægger den amerikanske venstrefløj igen an til at lade et land i stikken. Sidste gang det lykkedes for dem kostede det millioner af menneskeliv.

Helikopter-tab i Irak

Vi hører jævnligt om helikopter-tab i Irak - senst 7. februar. Her lidt baggrund (og en sammenligning med Vietnam-krigen) fra StrategyPage:

Seven helicopters have crashed in Iraq in the last four weeks. Most appear to have been hit by hostile fire. In some of those cases, the hostile fire was carefully planned. That is, multiple machine-guns, including at least one heavy (12.7mm or larger) machine-gun were placed along a route used by helicopters, and fired in a coordinated matter. This tactic is called "flak trap," and dates back to World War II (or earlier).

The enemy has also been using portable surface-to-air missiles since 2003, including more modern models, like the SA-16 (which is similar to the American Stinger.) American helicopters are equipped with missile detection and defense (flare dispensers) equipment. Thus the most dangerous anti-aircraft weapon is the machine-gun. However, aircraft losses to ground fire have been declining every year, since 2003, mainly because of good defensive tactics. Moreover, the most vulnerable aircraft, helicopters, have been spending more time in the air. In 2005, U.S. Army aircraft (mainly helicopters) flew 240,000 hours over Iraq. That increased to 334,000 hours last year, and is expected to go to 400,000 hours in 2007. The more time helicopters are in the air, the more opportunities someone has to shoot at them.

Since 2003, the United States has lost 57 helicopters in Iraq. Most of them (29) belong to the U.S. Army, the rest are marine and civilian (mainly security contractors.) In the last year, helicopters were fired on about a hundred times a month, and about 17 percent of the time, the helicopters were hit. In Vietnam (1966-71), 2,076 helicopters were lost to enemy fire (and 2,566 to non-combat losses). In Vietnam, helicopters flew 36 million sorties (over 20 million flight hours). In Vietnam, helicopters were about twice as likely to get brought down by enemy fire. As in Iraq, the main weapons doing this were machine-guns. Today's helicopters are more sturdy, partly because of Vietnam experience, and are more likely to stay in the air when hit, and land, rather than crash.

Endnu en Politiken-kampagne baseret på fejlagtige kilder

Politiken kunne for fem dage siden triumferende brøle, at selv det amerikanske forsvarsministerium nu indrømmede, at Pentagon havde "manipuleret med oplysninger forud for irak-krigen". Beskyldningerne kom, da Pentagons generalinspektør Thomas F. Gimble stod for at offentliggøre en rapport om især Douglas Feith og hans Kontor for Særlige Planer, og om dette kontor havde handlet passende under behandlingen af efterretninger om Irak. Feith var dengang (i 2003) særlig rådgiver for den daværende amerikanske præsident Donald Rumsfeld.

Problemet er, at Politikens eneste kilde til beskyldningerne - rapporten var endnu ikke udkommet, så heller ikke Politiken havde læst den selv - var den stærkt venstreorienterede* demokratiske senator Carl Levin. Det var Levin selv, der i 2005 startede korstoget mod Feith og bad generalinspektør Gimble om at undersøge ham.

Politiken gad ikke at give manden, der er mål for anklagen ordet, så det gør jeg så for dem. Fra Washington Post:

Promoters of the "Bush Lied, People Died" line claim that the recent Pentagon inspector general's report concerning my former office's work on Iraq intelligence supports their cause. What the IG actually said is a different story.

The IG, Thomas Gimble, focused on a single Pentagon briefing from 2002 -- a critique of the CIA's work on the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship. His report concluded that the work my office generated was entirely lawful and authorized, and that Sen. Carl Levin was wrong to allege that we misled Congress.

Gimble made Levin happy, however, by calling the Pentagon briefing "inappropriate," a word the senator has whipped into a political lather. At issue is a simple but critical question: whether policy officials should be free to raise questions about CIA work. In Gimble's opinion, apparently, the answer is no. I disagree.

The CIA has a hard job. Some of its work has been good; some has been famously and disastrously bad, as everyone familiar with the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fiasco knows. Intelligence is inherently sketchy and speculative -- and historically often wrong. It is improved when policy officials freely probe and challenge it.

In evaluating our policy toward Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, my office realized that CIA analysts were suppressing some of their information. They excluded reports conflicting with their favored theory: that the secular Iraqi Baathist regime would not cooperate with al-Qaeda jihadists. (We now face a strategic alliance of jihadists and former Baathists in Iraq.) Pentagon officials did not buy that theory, and in 2002 they gave a briefing that reflected their skepticism. Their aim was not to enthrone a different theory, but to urge the CIA not to exclude any relevant information from what it provided to policymakers. Only four top-level government officials received the briefing: Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and (together) Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

A 2004 Senate intelligence committee report praised the quality of the Pentagon's Iraq-al-Qaeda work -- the critical briefing and the related Pentagon-CIA dialogue. The policy officials "played by [intelligence community] rules" and asked questions that "actually improved the Central Intelligence Agency's products," it said. Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller both endorsed that judgment.

The recent inspector general's report argues that policy officials "undercut" the CIA by pointing out " 'fundamental problems' with the way the Intelligence Community was assessing information" on the issue of Iraq-al-Qaeda relations -- even though Gimble last week said at a Senate hearing: "Again, I need to just remind everyone, we didn't make an assessment on the validity of either side of this issue." He labeled the Pentagon briefing "inappropriate" not because of any errors in it but because he viewed it as an "intelligence activity" that "varied" from "the intelligence community consensus." The Pentagon officials told the IG, however, that the briefing was a policy activity -- a critique of an intelligence product.

If this report hadn't become part of a political battle, Gimble's position would be scoffed at across the political spectrum. Sensible people recognize the importance of vigorous questioning of intelligence by the CIA's "customers." In bipartisan, unanimous reports on Iraq intelligence, both the Senate intelligence committee and the Silberman-Robb WMD commission called for more such questioning.

Specifically on the Pentagon's criticism of Iraq-al-Qaeda intelligence, the 2004 Senate report noted that our challenges were helpful: Intelligence analysts "stated that the questions had forced them to go back and review the intelligence reporting, and that during this exercise they came across information they had overlooked in initial readings."

In his Senate testimony, Gimble said his report -- and therefore all related claims that my office "manipulated intelligence" -- concerned only this single briefing. His whole argument rests on the claim that the briefing was "disseminated" as "an intelligence product" rather than a policy product. But he acknowledged that neither Rumsfeld nor Tenet could have mistaken the briefers for intelligence community spokesmen. His objections applied solely to the briefing that Hadley and Libby received in September 2002.

Astonishingly, the IG acknowledged that his office had not interviewed either of these officials to ask whether they thought the briefing was an intelligence product. Knowing well that the briefers worked for me, neither could have believed that Pentagon policy officials were speaking for the intelligence community. One of the briefing slides was "Fundamental Problems With How the Intelligence Community Is Assessing Information." Gimble had no basis to say the briefing was seen as an intelligence activity.

In his report, Gimble wrote that the Pentagon briefing was not the "most accurate analysis of intelligence." This has been taken to suggest it was false or deceptive. But the IG said he meant only that the briefing was at "variance with the consensus of the Intelligence Community." Of course it was at variance! It was a critique. That's why it was prepared in the first place.

Gimble's characterization is absurdly circular. Cheered on by the chairmen of the Senate intelligence and armed services committees, he is giving bad advice based on incomplete fact-finding and poor logic. He is discouraging tough questioning of intelligence. Our government needs more such questioning, not less.

* Mht amerikanske forhold gælder det, at da næsten alle politikere er koncentreret i to store partiet, så hjælper alene parti-tilhørsforhold ikke vælgerne meget når de skal vurdere, hvor politikerne ligger på det politiske spektrum. Derfor er amerikanerne vilde med at graduere politikerne efter, hvordan de reelt stemmer når de er blevet valgt. Ifølge National Journal´s Project Vote Smart lå senator Carl Levin således til venstre for 95% af alle andre senatorer i udenrigspolitiske spørgsmål i 2005.

Med andre ord svarer det altså efter danske forhold til, at Politiken havde bedt Frank Aaen om at udtale sig autoritativt om, om Anders Fogh har løjet for folketinget, som det påstås i DR-Enhedslisten co-produktionen "Den Hemmelige Krig". Ikke at sådan noget kunne ske i Danmark (Sarkasme /off)

Troværdigheden er derefter.

Iran fange med fingrene langt nede i kagedåsen

For nogle dage siden begyndte USA at afsløre de beviser, de har på, at Iran via sine lokale stråmænd myrder koalitions-soldater i Irak, noget der allerede var almindelig kendt blandt de danske soldater i Irak for over et år siden (se feks. Information 28. januar sidste år). Beviserne, der hidtil er fremlagt er hovedsageligt iransk-producerede våben der er blevet fundet under razziaer på terrorist-baser eller under angreb på koalitionsstyrker. En grafik over det fremlagte kan ses hos New York Times her.

Fra New York Times´referat fra briefingen. Alle de nævnte våben er iransk-producerede:


Three senior coalition defence officials including a defence official, an explosives expert and a defence analyst presented the following evidence:

* Fragments of an Iranian-made roadside bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator (EFPs). The US military first detected use of EFPs in 2004, but noted a big increase in 2006. EFPs use shaped charges, which penetrate armour by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed. They are strong enough to penetrate an Abrams tank.

* Fragments of fins from 81-mm and 60-mm mortar bombs. One grenade from a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

* False IDs of Iranians who were detained at an Iranian government office in Arbil in Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan last month.


* Slides showing other weapons, including a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. There was no evidence these weapons had been used to shoot down helicopters, the officials said.

* Slides showing a complete mortar bomb, with serial and manufacturing number. ...

* The officials accused five Iranians arrested by US troops in Arbil in January of being members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods Force, which they said was getting its orders from the "highest levels" of the Iranian Government.


* The Qods Force was accused of training and funding Iraqi militants.

* The five detained in Arbil were not carrying diplomatic passports and included one man who was a Qods Force operational chief. During the arrest raid, they tried to flush documents down a toilet. One of those arrested had traces of explosives on his body, the offiicals said. ...

* The officials said Iran has several surrogate groups in Iraq, including rogue elements of the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. They said these elements "carried out the majority" of the EFP attacks.


* Another group was the network of a former official of the Badr Organisation, which is part of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major Shi'ite political organisation.

* Iraqi smugglers are bringing bomb components and money in vehicles at night across three points along the Iranian-Iraqi border, the officials said



Blandt de 170 koalitions-soldater, der er blevet dræbt af vejsidebomber som de ovenfor nævnte i Irak er tre danskere:

Bjarke Olsen Kirkmand






Jesper Nielsen



Kim Wadim




På baggrund af USA´s præsentation af efterretninger om masseødelæggelsesvåben i Irak, som siden kun blev fundet godt fem hundrede stykker af blev der øjeblikkeligt rejst tvivl om, om iranske våben brugt til at myrde koalitions-soldater automatisk betyder involvering af den iranske regering. Tvivlen herskede endda i det amerikanske militær.

Men hvad hvis man i Irak havde fundet over hundrede snigskytterifler, som man kan bevise allerede efter 45 dage i iranske hænder blev brugt til at myrde den første koalitions-soldat i Irak? (via LFG):

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned.


More than 100 of the .50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids. The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.


The sale was condemned in Washington and London because officials were worried that the weapons would be used by insurgents against British and American troops.


Within 45 days of the first HS50 Steyr Mannlicher rifles arriving in Iran, an American officer in an armoured vehicle was shot dead by an Iraqi insurgent using the weapon.

Mens vi venter på 20.000 amerikanere

Allerede før yderligere 20.000 amerikanske tropper er landet i Irak begynder de at påvirke kampene i landet. De to hoved-lejre, der lejlighedsvist slår koalitions-styrker ihjel er blevet mål for yderligere angreb i opløbet til troppeforstærkningerne:

For de sunni-muslimske jihadier i det al-Qaeda-centrerede Irakiske Mujahedin Shura-Råd er det et simpelt spørgsmål om overlevelse. Fallujah viste jihadierne, at bykamp mod amerikanere ikke fører til andet end tusindvis af døde jihadier. Derfor er de af deres nye leder Abu Ayyub al-Masri blevet beordret til at flygte fra Baghdad til Diyala-provinsen, hvor de imidlertid er blevet mål for en ny irakisk-amerikansk offensiv, der allerede har slået 50 af dem ihjel.

For de shia-muslimske jihadi der er nuværende eller tidligere medlemmer af Moqtada al-Sadr´s Mehdi-hær er det mere et spørgsmål om politisk end fysisk overlevelse, al den tid at moder-organisationen ikke officielt er i kamp med hverken den irakiske regering (den samarbejder ofte med den) eller de amerikanske styrker, men ikke desto mindre kan se sine kadrer af tortur-bødler blive stadig mere udtyndet af en bølge af arrestationer. Hidtil er over 600 Sadrister blevet sat bag tremmer, deraf 16 af høj rang. En syttende er blevet dræbt. Af samme grund er mange af lederne af Baghdads dødspatruljer også flygtet til Iran (via LGF - hold den tidligere fremførte skepsis overfor sunnimuslimske MP´ers beskyldninger for øje, men overvej også om det ikke kan være sandt):

DEATH SQUAD leaders have fled Baghdad to evade capture or killing by American and Iraqi forces before the start of the troop “surge” and security crackdown in the capital.

A former senior Iraqi minister said most of the leaders loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric, had gone into hiding in Iran.

Among those said to have fled is Abu Deraa, the Shi’ite militia leader whose appetite for sectarian savagery has been compared to that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed last year.

The former minister, who did not want to be named for security reasons, backed Sunni MPs’ claims that Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had encouraged their flight. He alleged that weapons belonging to Sadr’s Mahdi Army had been hidden inside the Iraqi interior ministry to prevent confiscation.

Maliki said last week: “I know that senior criminals have left Baghdad, others have left the country. This is good — this shows that our message is being taken seriously.”

En gruppe der stadig står en del mystik om er målet for dagens overskrifter om, at irakiske og amerikanske tropper har dræbt 250 bevæbnede ekstremister i kampe i plantagerne i Najafs nordlige forstad Zarqa. Antallet kan man stille spørgsmålstegn al den tid at det kommer fra det irakiske politi, der har en tendens til at blæse tabstal op før de har haft mulighed for at overhovedet at tælle de dræbte. Najafs guvernør siger da også, at det totale antal af ekstremister er 200, hvoraf altså ikke alle er dræbt.

Også ekstremisternes identitet er der imidlertid tvivl om. Mens guvernøren kalder dem sunnimuslimske oprørere iblandet udenlandske krigere siger shia-muslimske politiske kilder, det er en blanding af sunni-muslimer og shia-muslimer loyale over for en præst ved navn Ahmed Hassani. Reuters nøjes med det neutrale "en muslimsk kult".

Googler mand navnet Ahmed Hassani dukker der kun en enkelt nyhedshistorie op, om at han i juli, da han var tilknyttet Sadr´s Mehdi-hær, blev arresteret sammen med en kendt terrorist. Noget kunne altså tyde på endnu en aflægger af kampagnen mod Sadr´s tropper. For at krydre historien nævnes det, at de 200 ekstremister skulle have som mål at slå højtstående shiitiske præster ihjel under Ashura-højtiden, der begynder i disse dage.

Inkluderer man muligheden af, at Ahmed Hassani oprindeligt kommer fra Baghdad - og at hans tilnavn altså er al-Baghdadi - finder man ham gennem de sidste 3 år som en konstant stemme mod at sunni- og shiamuslimske irakere skal slå hinanden ihjel, og istedet koncentrere sig om at slå alle andre ihjel. Som sådan har han fordømt de demokratiske valg, har været medstifter af Det Politiske Bureau for den Irakiske Modstand, og har opnået den "ære" sammen med Mutada al-Sadr at være undtaget fra al Qaedas officielle politik med at udrydde alle Iraks shia-muslimer.

UPDATE:

Støvet er ved at lægge sig lidt efter elimineringen af nogle hundrede islamister i Najaf. Men også kun lidt. Alt efter hvilket medie, man lytter til er der nu tale om en shiitisk kult eller en blanding af shia- og sunnimuslimer der kun af ydre var shiitisk og om en irakisk gruppe eller en gruppe ledet og delvist udgjort af udlændinge. Antallet af dræbte der rapporteres om varierer mellem 200 og 350, og selv sektens/kultens/gruppens leder kan man ikke blive enige om. Oprindeligt blev som ovenfor nævnt navnet Ahmed Hassani bragt på banen. Han er nu forsvundet fra medierne, og istedet køres to andre personer på banen: Ali bin Ali bin Abi Talab i New York Times og hos BBC, og Ahmed Hassan al-Yamani i Washington Post.

Med andre ord ved vi idag reelt ikke ikke meget mere end i går.

• New York Times: Shiite Cult Aimed to Kill Clerics in Iraq
• Washington Post: Iraqis Raid Insurgents Near Shiite Holy City
• Al Jazeera: US, Iraqi forces kill 350 fighters near Najaf
• BBC: "Hundreds" killed in Iraq battle

Bemærk forøvrigt, at al Jazeera traditionen tro rapporterer de højeste tabstal, og åbenbart mener at de 120 fanger der er taget rapporteres som dræbte.

Mere Irak

Fra The Weekly Standard, om de ikke-voldelige politikker shiaerne bruger mod deres tidligere undertrykkere, sunnierne, og hvorfor der er brug for de 20.000 ekstra amerikanske soldater primært i Baghdad:

To get an idea of the problems facing American commanders in Iraq, consider the case of the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood. The bank, which has been closed since shortly after Saddam's fall, isn't much more than a storefront on a street lined with small retail businesses, but residents desperately want it reopened. General George Casey visited Amiriyah in mid-December, heard those demands, and ordered his top subordinates to make reopening the bank a priority.

Colonel J.B. Burton, who has responsibility for Amiriyah, snapped into action. Money was spent to install surveillance cameras and teller windows. Concrete barriers were put out front as protection from car bombs. The Sunni management of the bank hired local guards. All the work was done quietly through Iraqi intermediaries so it would not look like an American project and become a target for insurgents. By late December, the bank was open again.

And here is where the story takes an all-too-familiar turn. After three weeks of brisk activity, the bank was no longer doing business, a victim not of insurgent bombs, but of the Iraqi government. The finance ministry, which is controlled by the Shia SCIRI party, ordered the bank closed. It's not secure, ministry officials explained, and therefore must be shut down. Military officials with responsibility for Amiriyah say the claim is bogus. "That bank is secure because these people have a vested interest in keeping it secure," says Major Brynt Parmeter. "We could open it tomorrow." The military suspects the bank was shuttered for
another reason: It was injecting economic vibrancy into a Sunni neighborhood that had been slowly dying.

This kind of story is told and retold every day in Baghdad. The Shia-dominated federal and local governments are systematically denying resources to Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods. You see it in lines that go on for blocks at fuel stations. The Sunni areas don't get much gas or kerosene. You see it in the trash strewn everywhere in once upscale Sunni neighborhoods. Sanitation trucks don't come anymore. "They have the trucks," says Major Parmeter. "They have the people to drive them, but the trash isn't picked up." Fuel lines are much shorter in the Shia neighborhoods, but access to those stations is frequently blocked by Shia militia thugs who stand in front of the stations and, mafia-like, decide who gets fuel and who doesn't.

Several U.S. military officers I spoke to in Baghdad are convinced that the squeezing of Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods is a deliberate operation carried out primarily by Baghdad's unelected Shia provincial government. The local government, they say, is trying to "soften" the Sunni neighborhoods, so Shia militias can move in and force out Sunni residents. Whether it is government malfeasance or incompetence, the result is the same.

The first thing that hits you in these neighborhoods is the stench of garbage. Picking up trash was part of the mission when the military launched Operation Together Forward back in August. The plan was to kill the bad guys, clean up the streets, and give Iraqis a chance to take their neighborhoods back. In the Sunni Doura neighborhood, the military scored its first success. The insurgents were either killed or chased away, the trash bulldozed, and sure enough, the markets reopened and a sense of normalcy returned. That was August. In September, as soon as U.S. troops left, the trash began to pile up again. Dead bodies piled up too--many of them with holes drilled in their heads. Over the past three months, this has been perhaps Baghdad's deadliest neighborhood.

Dødspatruljer i Irak

Efter en uges penge brugt i slægtsforskningens tegn er det ved at være på tide at tage blogningen op igen. Næsten vanen tro leverer de danske medier anledningen, denne gang dog på en positiv - eller rettere informativ måde.

Det er Dags Dato Special fra i onsdags, der er tale om, men dokumentaren The Death Squads om de dødspatruljer, der i Irak står for hovedparten af de fund af torterede og henrettede lig, vi hører om i medierne.

Dokumentaren gør et godt job med at samle indikationer på, at det er militsmænd loyale over for de to iransk-støttede militser Badr-brigaderne og Mahdi-hæren, der står bag. Værten Deborah Davies´ teatralske påfund (som at iklæde sig skudsikker vest, en konvoj af biler og 100 livvagter for at afhente billeder og video i en konvolut der lige så godt kunne være overbragt med posten) kunne jeg godt have undværet, men generelt er dokumentaren uhyre seværdig.

En ting man dog skal holde sig in mente: få mennesker med magt i Irak kan siges at være uskyldige. Den irakiske hovedkilde til dokumentaren - det sunnimuslimske parlamentsmedlem Mohammed al-Daini - nævnes som "modstander af den amerikanske besættelse". Oversæt dette som "støtte af de sunnimuslimske terrorister".

Han er heller ikke ked af at vise det. HRINFO kunne i efteråret i sit ugebrev for ugen 29. september til 5. oktober afsløre, at de havde video af at han han truede journalister på tv-stationen al-Iraqiya på livet. Inden der var gået en uge var al-Iraqiya-journalisten Raid Qais Al Shammari blevet skudt i sin bil i Baghdad, og tre dage senere blev hans kollega Ali Halil dræbt på samme måde.

Tilsvarende skal man holde sig in mente, at bare fordi ti af hans fætre blev henrettet efter at have besøgt ham betyder det ikke, at de var rene uskyldigheder. Hvad Hr. al-Daini´s fætre er i stand til kan man se af en elfte fætter, Rasool al-Daini. Han blev arresteret i torsdags for en imponerende række af forbrydelser:

The source said that Rasool Al Daini is accused to being involved in killing 49 civilians in Kanaan city in addition to his responsibility of displacing tens of Shiite and Kurdish families, assassinating tens of people and targeting the Iraqi security members

Med det in mente kan man imidlertid roligt se dokumentaren, hvis man ikke allerede har fået det gjort. Youtube´s version har problemer med synkroniseringen af lyd og billede, så prøv google video´s istedet:

UPDATE:

Fremviseren fra Google Video lader ikke til at virke her på bloggen, så jeg har slettet den. Istedet kan man vælge mellem selv at tage over på Google Video´s site og selv se dokumentaren der, eller se den i fem dele her på bloggen:

"Nu er jihaden mod Shia´erne, ikke mod Amerikanerne"

Man kan ikke åbne en avis uden at få at vide, at det endelig er lykkedes al Qaeda og allierede post-Baath terrorister at fremprovokere en krig mellem de religiøse grupper i Irak. Mellem linierne kan man læse sig til, at sunniernes drøm om, at de kunne dræbe sig vej til magten i Irak selv om de kun udgør 15% af befolkningen nu er blevet til et mareridt for dem. Helt fraværende i den danske presse er den forandring, realisationen af samme har medført i den suni-muslimske terror-bevægelse. Fra 'The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans' i The Guardian:

In Baghdad in late October I called a Sunni insurgent I had known for more than a year. He was the mid-level commander of a small cell, active against the Americans in Sunni villages north of Baghdad. Sectarian frontlines had been hardening in the city for months - it took us 45 minutes of haggling to agree on a meeting place which we could both get to safely. We met in a rundown workers' cafe.

Kidnapped

"Its not a good time to be a Sunni in Baghdad," Abu Omar told me in a low voice. He had been on the Americans' wanted list for three years but I had never seen him so anxious; he had trimmed his beard in the close-cropped Shia style and kept looking towards the door. His brother had been kidnapped a few days before, he told me, and he believed he was next on a Shia militia's list. He had fled his home in the north of the city and was staying with relatives in a Sunni stronghold in west Baghdad.

He was more despondent than angry. "We Sunni are to blame," he said. "In my area some ignorant al-Qaida guys have been kidnapping poor Shia farmers, killing them and throwing their bodies in the river. I told them: 'This is not jihad. You can't kill all the Shia! This is wrong! The Shia militias are like rabid dogs - why provoke them?' "

Then he said: "I am trying to talk to the Americans. I want to give them assurances that no one will attack them in our area if they stop the Shia militias from coming."

This man who had spent the last three years fighting the Americans was now willing to talk to them, not because he wanted to make peace but because he saw the Americans as the lesser of two evils. He was wrestling with the same dilemma as many Sunni insurgent leaders, beginning to doubt the wisdom of their alliance with al-Qaida extremists.

Another insurgent commander told me: "At the beginning al-Qaida had the money and the organisation, and we had nothing." But this alliance soon dragged the insurgents and then the whole Sunni community into confrontation with the Shia militias as al-Qaida and other extremists massacred thousands of Shia civilians. Insurgent commanders such as Abu Omar soon found themselves outnumbered and outgunned, fighting organised militias backed by the Shia-dominated security forces.

A week after our conversation, Abu Omar invited me to a meeting with insurgent commanders. I was asked to wait in the reception room of a certain Sunni political party. A taxi driver took me to a house in a Sunni neighbourhood that had recently been abandoned by a Shia family. The driver came in with me - he was also a commander.

The house had been abandoned in a hurry, cardboard boxes were stacked by the door, some of the furniture was covered with white cloths and a few cheap paintings were piled against a wall. The property had been expropriated by the local Sunni mujahideen and we sat on sofas in a dusty reception room.

Abu Omar had been meeting commanders of groups with names like the Fury Brigade, the Battalions of the 1920 Revolution, the Islamic Army and the Mujahideen Army, to discuss options they had for fighting both an insurgency against the Americans and an escalating civil war with the Shia.

Abu Omar had proposed encouraging young Sunni men to enlist in the army and the police to redress the sectarian balance. He suggested giving the Americans a ceasefire, in an attempt to stop ministry of interior commandos' raids on his area. Al-Qaida had said no to all these measures; now he wanted other Iraqi insurgent commanders to support him.

'Do politics'

A heated discussion was raging. One of the men, with a very thin moustache, a huge belly and a red kuffiya wrapped around his shoulder, held a copy of the Qur'an in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. I asked him what his objectives were. "We are fighting to liberate our country from the occupations of the Americans and their Iranian-Shia stooges."

"My brother, I disagree," said Abu Omar. "Look, the Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia."

He looked nervously at them: suggestions of talking to the Americans could easily have him labelled as traitor. "Where is the jihad and the mujahideen?" he continued. "Baghdad has become a Shia town. Our brothers are being slaughtered every day! Where are these al-Qaida heroes? One neighbourhood after another will be lost if we don't work on a strategy."

The taxi driver commander, who sat cross-legged on a sofa, joined in: "If the Americans leave we will be slaughtered." A big-bellied man waved his hands dismissively: "We will massacre the Shia and show them who are the Sunnis! They couldn't have done anything without the Americans' support."

When the meeting was over the taxi driver went out to check the road, then the rest followed. "Don't look up, we could be monitored, Shia spies are everywhere," said the big man. The next day the taxi driver was arrested.

By December Abu Omar's worst fears were being realised. The Sunnis had become squeezed into a corner fighting two sides at the same time. But by then he had disappeared; his body was never found.

Baghdad was now divided: frontlines partitioned neighbourhoods into Shia and Sunni, thousands of families had been forced out of their homes. After each large-scale bomb attack on Shia civilians, scores of mutilated bodies of Sunnis were found in the streets. Patrolling militias and checkpoints meant that men with Sunni names dared not venture far outside their neighbourhoods, while certain Sunni areas came under the complete control of insurgent groups the Shura Council of the Mujahideen and the Islamic Army. The Sunni vigilante self-defence groups took shape as reserve units under the control of these insurgent groups.

Like Abu Omar before him, Abu Aisha, a mid-level Sunni commander, had come to understand that the threat from the Shia was perhaps greater than his need to fight the occupying Americans. Abu Aisha fought in Baghdad's western Sunni suburbs, he was a former NCO in the Iraqi army and followed an extreme form of Islam known as Salafism.

Jamming

Deep lines criss-crossed his narrow forehead and his eyes half closed when he tried to answer a question He seemed to evaluate every answer before he spoke. He claimed involvement in dozens of attacks on US and Iraqi troops, mostly IEDs (bombs) but also ambushes and execution of alleged Shia spies. "We have stopped using remote controls to detonate IEDs," he volunteered halfway through our conversation. "Only wires work now because the Americans are jamming the signals."

On his mobile phone he proudly showed me grainy images of dead bodies lying in the street, their hands tied behind their backs . He claimed they were Shia agents and that he had killed them. "There is a new jihad now," he said, echoing Abu Omar's warning. "The jihad now is against the Shia, not the Americans."

In Ramadi there was still jihad against the Americans because there were no Shia to fight, but in Baghdad his group only attacked the Americans if they were with Shia army forces or were coming to arrest someone.

"We have been deceived by the jihadi Arabs," he admitted, in reference to al-Qaida and foreign fighters. "They had an international agenda and we implemented it. But now all the leadership of the jihad in Iraq are Iraqis."

Abu Aisha went on to describe how the Sunnis were reorganising. After Sunni families had been expelled from mixed areas throughout Baghdad, his area in the western suburbs was prepared to defend itself against any militia attack.

"Ameriya, Jihad, Ghazaliyah," he listed, "all these areas are becoming part of the new Islamic state of Iraq, each with an emir in charge." Increasingly the Iraqi insurgency is moving away from its cellular structure and becoming organised according to neighbourhood. Local defence committees have intertwined into the insurgent movement.

"Each group is in charge of a specific street," Abu Aisha said. "We have defence lines, trenches and booby traps. When the Americans arrive we let them go through, but if they show up with Iraqi troops, then it's a fight."

A few days later Rami was telling me about the Sunni insurgents in his north Baghdad area. A network of barricades and small berms blocked the streets around the car in which we sat talking. A convoy of two cars with four men inside whizzed past. "Ah, they are brothers on a mission," Rami said.

Like every man of fighting age, Rami was required to take part in his local vigilante group, guarding the neighbourhood at night or conducting raids or mortar attacks on neighbouring Shia areas.

But he paid $30 a week to a local commander and was exempted.

According to Rami and other commanders, funding for the insurgents comes from three sources. Each family in the street pays a levy, around $8, to the local group. "And when they go through lots of ammunition because of clashes," Rami said, "they pay an extra $5." Then there are donations from rich Sunni businessmen, financiers and wealthier insurgent groups. A third source of funding was "ghaniama", loot which is rapidly becoming the main fuel of the sectarian war

'A business'

"Every time they arrest a Shia, we take their car, we sell it and use the money to fund the fighters, and jihad," said Abu Aisha. The mosque sheik or the local commander collects the money and it is distributed among the fighters; some get fixed salaries, others are paid by "operations", and the money left is used for ammunition.

"It has become a business, they give you money to kill Shia, we take their houses and sell their cars," said Rami. "The Shia are doing the same.

"Last week on the main highway in our area, they killed a Shia army officer. He had a brand new Toyota sedan. The idiots burned the car. I offered them $40,000 for it, they said no. Imagine how many jihads they could have done with 40k."

Og sandt nok lader det til, de irakiske "frihedskæmpere" i endnu større grad end normalt har vendt våbnene væk fra "besættelsestropperne" og over mod deres egene medborgere. Det gennemsnitlige antal dræbte koalitions-soldater pr. dag er således faldet drastisk, med godt 70% mellem december og januar. Samtidig er antallet af dræbte medlemmer af de irakiske sikkerhedsstyrker også styrtdykket - med 50%, mens antallet af dræbte civilister kun er svagt dalende.

Med andre ord: de sunni-muslimske terrorister er trykket i bund, og alle parter venter spændt på, hvilken side i de religiøse massakrer, amerikanerne vælger først at slå ned på. Som tidligere nævnt er de allerede i gang med at skrue bissen på over for Iran, der forsyner shia-ilitserne.

Irak: hvorfor medierne træder ved siden af

Fra New York Post, en artikel, der fortjener at være pligtlæsning på de danske udenrigs-redaktioner:

JUST outside Um al-Qasar, a port in south east Iraq, a crowd had gathered around a British armored car with a crew of four. An argument seemed to be heating up through an interpreter.

The interpreter told the Brits that the crowd was angry and wanted U.K. forces out of Iraq. But then a Kuwaiti representative of Amnesty International, accompanied by a journalist friend, approached - and found the crowd to be concerned about something quite different.
The real dispute? The day before, a British armored vehicle had an accident with a local taxi; now the cab's owner, backed by a few friends, was asking the Brits to speed up compensating him. Did these Iraqis want the Brits to leave, as the interpreter pretended? No, they shouted, a thousand times no!

So why did the interpreter inject that idea into the dialogue? Shaken, he tried a number of evasions: Well, had the Brits not been in Iraq, there wouldn't have been an accident in the first place. And, in any case, he knows that most Iraqis don't want foreign troops . . .

*

Since 2003, Iraq has experienced countless similar scenes, with interpreters, guides and "fixers" projecting their views and prejudices into the dialogue between Iraqis and the outside world.

Immediately after liberation, interpreting and "fixing" for the Coalition and for hundreds of foreign media people became a cottage industry, employing thousands. Most of those were former Ba'athist officials, often from the Ministry of Information or media companies owned by Saddam Hussein and his relatives. Some tried to curry favor with the new masters; others decided to wage political guerrilla war against the "invaders" by misleading them. Both ended up offering a twisted view of post-liberation Iraq.

The industry geared itself to meeting demand. In 2004, for example, many journalists coming to Baghdad wanted to interview the "militants" who were attacking U.S. soldiers. The industry obliged by arranging interviews.

One popular interviewee was one "Abu Muhammad," who claimed to be a fisherman by day and "a killer of Americans" by night. One U.K. paper paid $2,000 (a tidy sum in the cash-starved Baghdad of those days) for an exclusive with Abu Muhammad, who later took up a full chapter in a book published in London. The scam ended when someone found out that Abu Muhammad was, in fact, a busboy at a local hotel who'd grown a beard and was "fishing" Western journalists, splitting the proceeds with his cousin, who acted as interpreter and guide.

From 2004 onward, the situation improved. A new generation of Iraqi journalists with no Ba'athist background started to help Western colleagues. And Americans and Brits began hiring interpreters from outside Iraq, notably from ethnic Arab communities back home.

The new interpreters had some handicaps: They did not understand many Iraqi expressions and nuances; and Iraqis recognized them as non-Iraqis and were suspicious. Still, they were an improvement, for few had hidden agendas. ...

From the start, the war was also waged in Western circles, with their pro- and anti-war camps. A newspaper that had opposed the war would not tolerate "positive reporting" from Baghdad. One young British reporter who didn't understand that was surprised to see himself shifted to Paris to become a European correspondent. He had made the mistake of reporting that Iraq looked almost like a success, given where it had come from.

With the bulk of the media having opposed Saddam's ouster, negative reporting from Iraq became the norm. (Afghanistan gets a better press; Western elites are at worst ambivalent about the Taliban's fall.)

*

Another problem is that Iraq has become the focus of anti-American passions. Millions want Iraq to fail so that the United States will be humiliated. And Iraqis watch satellite TV - including channels from Iran, Egypt and Qatar that make a point of presenting post-liberation Iraq as a tragic quagmire. When CNN and the BBC send a similar message, Iraqis can be persuaded that their country is lost.

Imagine a resident of, say, Mandali or Nasseriah, who is told day and night that Iraq is sinking in a sea of fire and blood. He looks around and sees no evidence of that - but one can't blame him if he thinks that what the media say must be true in other parts of Iraq.

The fact that more than 90 percent of the violence that dominates reporting from Iraq takes place in five neighborhoods in Baghdad, plus one of the 18 Iraqi provinces, is neither here nor there. The perception is that all of Iraq is lost.

The old rule in the news business still holds: "If it bleeds, it leads." Stories about suicide attacks and carnage are more attractive than boring stuff about the emergence of a pluralist political consciousness and the mushrooming of thousands of small businesses. ...

Last month, Iraq received the U.N.'s special environmental prize for reviving parts of the marshes drained by Saddam, thus saving one of the world's most precious ecological treasures. Almost no one in the media noticed.

Also last month, the Iraqi soccer squad reached the finals of the Asian Games - beating out Japan, China, South Korea and Iran. Again, few in the West noticed.

In 2006, almost 200 major reconstruction projects were officially completed and 4,000 new private companies registered in Iraq. But few seem interested in the return of private capitalism after nearly 50 years of Soviet-style control.

Iraq's new political life is either ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. The creation of political parties (some emerging from decades of clandestine life), the work of Iraq's parliament, the fact that it is almost the only Arab country where people are free to discuss politics to their hearts' content - these are of no interest to those determined to see Iraq as a disaster, as proof that toppling Saddam was a modern version of the original sin.

Iraq may still become any of those things - but right now it is none of them. When the real history of the Iraq war is written, posterity might marvel at the way modern media were used to manufacture that original sin.

Iran får tommelskruerne på

Mens USA er i færd med at sende 21.000 ekstra soldater til Irak - hovedsageligt til Bagdad, og den irakiske regering overfører yderligere tre brigade til hovedstaden, hæves stemmen også over for Iran. Condoleeza Rice, den amerikanske udenrigsminister, vil ikke afvise militære indfald over den iranske grænse for at stoppe Irans forsyning og træning af shiitiske terrorister.

Samtidig sender USA oven i tropperne endnu en hangarskibs-kampgruppe til golfen, og en battalion Patriot ABM-missiler - der kun kan anvendes mod de iranske ballistiske missiler - bliver også sendt afsted. I selve Irak er handskerne blevet taget af, og 5 medlemmer af den iranske Revolutionsgarde er blevet arresteret i Arbil, hvorfra de forsynede lokale terrorister med våben og penge. Det er typer som disse, der står bag drabene på Kim Wadim, Bjarke Kirkmand, Jesper Nielsen og Martin Hjorth i Irak det sidste halvandet år, så herfra skal der lyde held og lykke til amerikanerne. De fire faldne danskere (kilder til billederne her, her, her og her):

Vi venter stadig på fordømmelsen fra FN

Irak-krigen har ført til nye standarder for, hvad ofre for krig er. For at blæse tallene op er venstredrejede aktivister nu rutinemæssigt begyndt at inkludere folk dræbt i ordinær kriminalitet, ud over at de påstår alle de dræbte er civile. Personligt mener jeg ikke, det er andet end manipulation med tallene - talmagi, om man vil - men lad nu det ligge. Vi prøver istedet at anvende samme metode på en anden yndlings-konflikt blandt venstrefløjsere: den israelsk-arabiske.

Ifølge den venstredrejede Israelske menneskerets-organisation B´Tselem dræbte israelske sikkerhedsstyrker mellem 1. januar 2006 og 27. december samme år sammenlagt 322 arabere, "der ikke deltog i kamphandlinger" på dødstidspunktet. Det nævnes ikke, om det inkluderer terrorister sprængt i småstumper af israelske raketter mens de helt fredeligt er på vej for at foretage nye terror-angreb.

Ifølge den arabisk menneskerettighedsorganisation Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights dræbte araberne samtidig 332 af hinanden alene i årets første 11 måneder.

Med andre ord slår araberne altså flere arabiske civile ihjel end israelerne gør. Det samme er forøvrigt også tilfældet i Irak, når det drejer sig om arabere vs. koalitionen.

Liberating Anah

Pressen bringer masser af pessimistiske historier fra Irak - og at der er grund til det skal der da ikke lægges skjul på. Shiiterne har været undertrykt af de sunnitiske arabere i hundredevis af år, og fandt sig roligt i 3 års kontinuerlige fra al Qaeda og Saddams gamle bødler, så nu er der mange gamle regnskaber, der skal gøres op.

Alligevel er der også gode nyheder, der bare ikke når gennem medierne. Her er en af dem, fra Army Times. Når du har læst den, så spekuler på om det ikke netop er etableringen af fremskudte baser som den danske i Musa Qala i Afghanistan, der gør at kampene der er blusset op:

ANAH, Iraq — insurgents had freely waged a two-year reign of terror on this sleepy, affluent Sunni city of 30,000. They blew up the police station and chased out the nascent police force. They murdered the chairman of the city council and cowed the local populace.

Members of Jama’at Al Tawid Al Jihad, known as the JTJ or Group of Monotheism and Jihad — a branch of al-Qaida in Iraq — settled in. This city in central Anbar province came to serve as a convenient sanctuary and way station for fighters going southeast to the real action in Ramadi, Fallujah and Baghdad.

But about 20 kilometers outside Anah, a Stryker squadron commander determined it was time to end the insurgents’ grip on Anah.

Lt. Col. Mark Freitag, commander of the 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, installed a Stryker infantry company in a combat outpost just outside Anah in late March. The grunts of Apache Company, 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, attached to Task Force 4-14, took aggressive action against the insurgents, whose leaders made a move to regain the initiative: They dispatched a shadowy commander named Abu Hamza to take charge of the insurgency in Anah. …

It soon became clear that if Albertus was to have any chance of reversing trends in Anah, he needed to position forces closer to the action. Freitag ordered the establishment of Combat Outpost Anah beside a major intersection just north of the city. ….

COP Anah had an immediate impact. Roadside bomb attacks in the area went from six in March, which claimed one U.S. life, to none in April. ….

Apache further reduced the insurgents’ freedom of movement April 22 by installing a small force of eight Americans and 20 Iraqis in an old veterinary clinic that became Battle Position Reyanah, which threatened JTJ elements operating out of the village. Meanwhile, Albertus began to receive a new stream of technical intelligence from COP Rawah that enabled closer tracking of insurgent suspects.

Insurgents were plotting frantically. They realized their comfort zone in Anah was vanishing — and they were determined to fight. ….

Six days later, a Saudi would-be JTJ suicide car bomber drove an orange-and-white taxi, a Chevrolet Caprice, out of a compound in Anah’s industrial area. Packed with four propane tanks rigged to explode, the Caprice was probably headed for Battle Position Reyanah. ....

After a brief standoff in the open countryside, Albertus raised his M4 and cracked off three warning shots. The taxi lurched forward and U.S. forces riddled it with a hail of .50-caliber bullets that detonated two propane tanks in an orange fireball.

The destruction of the car bomb with no friendly or civilian casualties marked a turning point in more ways than one. “This was a complete change to the [JTJ] tactics in Anah,” Albertus said. “This was a safe haven for them.”

The fact that al-Qaida in Iraq tried to employ such a high-yield weapon showed “how important and how critical controlling Anah was” to them, said Capt. Tom Hart, 4-14’s fire support officer. But the car bomber’s spectacular failure demonstrated that the JTJ no longer enjoyed freedom of maneuver in Anah. That was a turning point for both sides.

The incident gave locals more confidence to pass information to U.S. troops.This reporting was the first time Apache learned the JTJ had stood up a new cell in Anah. The organization was named for its leader, about whom Apache knew nothing but his name: Abu Hamza. ….

TF 4-14 estimated that 98 percent of the population gave either active or passive support to the insurgents, with much of the passive support resulting from intimidation rather than any feelings of true allegiance with the insurgency.

“It’s not that easy to answer the question about how many are in their heart of hearts sympathetic to us versus the [insurgents],” said Capt. Rob Dapice, Albertus’ fire support officer. “What’s more relevant is who they believe is more capable. That’s what determines how they act.” ….

Previously, JTJ had neither need nor inclination to bring violence to Anah. But Apache’s presence and intelligence-driven ability to get inside JTJ’s decision cycle forced the insurgents to confront coalition forces in the previously uncontested town.

But bringing violence into Anah made the insurgents less popular with the local Iraqis. Meanwhile, Apache’s almost constant presence gave Albertus and his men the opportunity to engage the locals. “You cannot replace getting down and talking to the people,” he said. ….

By early June, the team had entered into a very fruitful relationship with a teenage male Anah resident whose ambition was to join the police.

“He was just sick and tired of what’s going on in the town and he was willing to help us,” Albertus said.

The young man provided information about an Abu Hamza bomb-making cell. A June 2 raid led to the detention of cell leader Ahmed Abdul Jalil, as well as Saddam Shoban, a financier. Human intelligence confirmed this cell was responsible for multiple roadside bomb attacks.

“Tactical questioning” of Ahmed and Shoban at Ahmed’s house led Apache to the homes of other cell members. By the end of the night, they had detained a dozen of Abu Hamza’s men.

“This is where the targeting process at company level really starts to come together,” Albertus said. “We’ve got a source that’s very reliable; a humint team that’s executing on a daily basis, gathering information; we’ve got platoons out there gathering information on a daily basis we’ve got an S-2 shop that we’re now completely tied in with. Now we’ve got actionable targets that we’re able to conduct [close target reconnaissance] on, conduct these precision raids.” ….

Meanwhile, Apache was working on a sophisticated plan to eliminate the rest of Abu Hamza’s roadside bomb cell. The first stage was to uproot the trees that provided cover to insurgents trying to plant bombs along the main thoroughfare in the city. That pushed Abu Hamza to an intersection at the edge of town, which was right where Apache wanted him.

On the night of June 1, Apache teams began monitoring the intersection.

About 6 a.m. on June 3, Staff Sgt. Joshua Lothspiech, leader of 3rd Squad, 1st Platoon,saw a black sedan stop at the intersection. Five men emerged and immediately started to place a roadside bomb.

“They were very, very well rehearsed,” Albertus said. “Everyone knew their job.”
On Lothspiech’s command, Spc. Christopher Schof opened fire with his M240B machine gun. The insurgents tried to get back in the car.

“That’s just a coffin for them,” Albertus said.

Three were killed immediately, but two escaped, one limping from a gunshot wound. An examination of the car revealed that it was wired for use as a suicide car bomb. ….

But Abu Hamza had one big attack left. On June 28, a dump truck packed with explosives, ball bearings and keys drove out of Reyanah and headed toward Apache’s battle position just north of the village.

Apache received an intel report that an attack was imminent. Soldiers at BP Reyanah were ordered into “full battle rattle.” Four climbed onto the roof, immediately drawing small-arms fire from buildings on the northern edge of the village.

The dump truck turned left from the road into the serpentine driveway leading to the battle position. The four Apache soldiers on the roof met it with a hail of bullets, but it kept chugging forward in low gear, plowing through triple-strand concertina wire and Hesco barriers as the troops swapped out magazine after magazine.

The driver slumped over in his blood-spattered cab, but still the truck continued to lurch forward. However, instead of driving through the compound’s metal gate, as the driver intended, the vehicle pushed halfway through the cinder block wall, coming to rest against a Leyland truck before exploding in an enormous fireball that engulfed the battle position and threw the Leyland truck into the building.

Two Iraqi soldiers were had been killed and seven were wounded.

Apache had just enough time to vector an AV-8B Harrier over the battle position for the aircraft to film the explosion. (video her) ….

Apache hit back July 1, raiding a car wash they had identified as an Abu Hamza car bomb factory and meeting place. They detained Abu Qusay, an insurgent facilitator. Intelligence tips told Apache of Abu Hamza’s increasing frustration “at how deep we were able to get into [his] decision cycle,” Albertus said.

Pressure intensifies

In late June, the first batch of Iraqi police returned from Jordan, and things got worse for Abu Hamza. Immediately, two policemen from Anah approached the humint team leader and offered up a treasure trove of intelligence on the insurgent structure in Anah. ….

For the first time, Apache was able to draw up a “wiring diagram” of the insurgent structure in Anah. After talking with the humint team leader, Albertus said he “decided to go after the big guys first.” ….

The stage was set for Apache to drive a stake through the heart of Abu Hamza’s group. In the early hours of July 8, the company conducted four nearly simultaneous cordon and searches, each aimed at securing a different Abu Hamza figure. ….

Each Apache element secured its objective less than two minutes after arrival, taking care to enter each compound silently, so as not to alert neighbors. By daybreak, Apache troops had detained 14 suspects, including four of Abu Hamza’s top aides, without firing a round. The detainees included four of Abu Hamza’s top aides: Marwan Hashim Abdulhadi, deputy commander; Firas Abdullah Mohammed, Abu Hamza’s new number three; Jamil Muhaysan, aka Abu Muthir, the third-ranking JTJ leader in Anbar; and Rafa’a Muhammed Noori, another senior JTJ leader in Anbar.

Marwan Hashim Abdulhadi, had been watching TV and drinking tea with his sister and his brother’s wife when Apache’s 1st Platoon entered the house.

A search of the home turned up a chilling video of small children re-enacting a hostage beheading, as well as videos of anti-coalition sermons being delivered in mosques all over Anah. The humint team went to work immediately, questioning the suspects in their own homes.

In such situations, some suspects don’t realize how much trouble they’re in, and think they can avoid detention by giving up information, the team leader said. For others, the shock of seeing U.S. troops burst into their home breaks down their resistance. The highest-ranking JTJ detainee was the most talkative. “Marwan dimed out the rest of his cell,” the humint team leader said.

The Apache troops went about their business so stealthily that by the time they left the following morning, “no one knew we were there,” Albertus said.

Apache troops later learned that Abu Hamza tried calling his leaders that morning and couldn’t figure out why no one was answering their phones. ….

His organization collapsing around him, Abu Hamza lashed out. A spate of four murders rocked Anah as the insurgent leader assassinated those he wrongly assumed were providing intelligence to Apache.

On July 13, he sent a suicide car bomber against the Iraqi army checkpoint on the road to Rawah. The bomb exploded, wounding 12 but killing none but the driver. It was Abu Hamza’s last throw of the dice. ….

In the three months it took Apache to take down the Abu Hamza group, the company fired live rounds only three times: when engaging the two suicide vehicle bombers, and when ambushing the roadside bomb cell. “It’s been more of a police action than combat,” the humint team leader said.

Abu Hamza himself vanished, withdrawn by the JTJ and replaced with another leader in charge of a new cell. But this group was composed mostly of outsiders, with few of the local ties that enabled Abu Hamza’s men to remain hidden for so long. The JTJ’s grip on the collective psyche of Anah had “absolutely” been broken, the humint team leader said.