Source: CBS
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney discusses the end of the Iraq War and the possibilities of a new war with Iran, and critiques the Obama administration.

The National Journal has a disturbing report about the abuses of power and human rights violations occurring on the streets of Iraq. What’s most disturbing is that these abused appear to be ordered from the top. Is Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, just another Saddam?

The attack came without warning. In late May, Moaid al-Taeb, a 30-year-old human-rights activist here, was on his way to protest Iraq’s corruption and inefficiency when a large man in civilian clothes grabbed him from behind and started punching him in the face. Taeb was tied to a stretcher and shoved into a waiting ambulance. A few minutes later, men in tracksuits approached another activist, Jihad Jalil, and jabbed him with an electric cattle prod until he couldn’t move. They stuffed him into the ambulance, too. He remembers seeing Taeb, a close friend, lying still. “I thought he was dead and I was next,” Jalil says.

The two men say they were driven to the Muthana Air Base just outside of town, the headquarters for many of Iraq’s intelligence and counterterrorism agencies. They were ordered to stand on a runway in the sweltering midday heat for an hour; soldiers threatened that if they moved at all, they would have to stand there for an entire week. Over the next 12 days, Taeb and Jalil lived in a cell without air conditioning or running water. They were taken out only for daily interrogations about why they were challenging the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Agents accused them of being Baathists or terrorist sympathizers and suggested that they leave the country.

One comment in particular, however, stuck vividly with both of them, interviewed separately four months later. “An officer told us, ‘Are you crazy? Abu Esraa [a nickname for Maliki] isn’t going anywhere,’ ” Taeb recalled. “Then he said—and I will never forget it—‘This is Maliki’s country now.’ ”

I sure would hate to think we spent all that blood and treasure liberating the Iraqi people only to have them come under control of another strong man. If monuments start going up around the country to Maliki we’re really gonna be in trouble.

This article titled “Qassem Suleimani: the Iranian general ‘secretly running’ Iraq” was written by Martin Chulov in Baghdad, for The Guardian on Thursday 28th July 2011 22.58 UTC

There’s a story that the new CIA director, David Petraeus, likes to tell which harks back to his days as a four-star general in Iraq.

Early in 2008, during a series of battles between the US and Iraqi army on one side and the Shia militias on the other, Petraeus was handed a phone with a text message from the Iranian general who had by then become his nemesis.

The message came from the head of Iran’s elite al-Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani, and was conveyed by a senior Iraqi leader. It read: “General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.”

Petraeus hardly needed to be told. Much of the US military’s work with Iraq’s Shia Muslims had been undermined by Suleimani and the client militias of the Iranian general’s al-Quds force. So too had US government diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon.

Petraeus last year told a thinktank, the Institute for the Study of War, about the problem Suleimani created for him: “Now, that makes diplomacy difficult if you think that you’re going to do the traditional means of diplomacy by dealing with another country’s ministry of foreign affairs because in this case, it is not the ministry. It is a security apparatus.”

As he prepared for the job of the US’s most senior spy, Petraeus would surely have been preparing for further shadow boxing. Suleimani’s reputation as the most formidable operator in the region has not diminished in the past three years. By some measures it has actually increased: Syria now also comes within Suleimani’s sphere of influence.

The strength of the ties between Suleimani and Iraqi legislators has been revealed during weeks of interviews with key officials, including those who admire him and those who fear the man like no other.

Iraq’s former state security minister, Sharwan al-Waeli is one who knows Suleimani well. A formal conversation between the Guardian and al-Waeli last year took on a very different tone as soon as Suleimani’s name was mentioned.

The Shia legislator was a known ally of Iran, so much so that he was seen by secularists and Sunnis in parliament as someone prepared to do Iran’s bidding. He denied Iran played a pervasive role in Iraq until he was interrupted with a question that Iraqi officials have long prefered to ignore: when was the last time Qassem Suleimani came to the Green Zone, the fortified government district in the heart of Baghdad?

Al-Waeli’s left hand trembled slightly and his brow furrowed. “You mean Sayed Qassem Suleimani,” he said, giving Suleimani an Arabic honorific reserved for the most esteemed of men. He refused to elaborate.

In Baghdad, no other name invokes the same sort of reaction among the nation’s power base – discomfort, uncertainty and fear.

“He is the most powerful man in Iraq without question,” Iraq’s former national security minister, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said recently. “Nothing gets done without him.”

Until now, however, few Iraqis have dared to talk openly about the enigmatic Iranian general, what role he plays in Iraq and how he shapes key agendas like no one else.

“They are too busy dealing with the aftermath,” said a senior US official. “He dictates terms then makes things happen and the Iraqis are left managing a situation that they had no input into.”

Suleimani’s journey to supremacy in Iraq is rooted in the Islamic revolution of 1979, which ousted the Shah and recast Iran as a fundamentalist Shia Islamic state. He rose steadily through the ranks of the Iranian military until 2002 when, months before the US invasion of Iraq, he was appointed to command the most elite unit of the Iranian military – the al-Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards Corp.

The al-Quds force has no equal in Iran. Its stated primary task is to protect the revolution. However, its mandate has also been interpreted as exporting the revolution’s goals to other parts of the Islamic world.

Shia communities throughout the region have proved fertile grounds for revolutionary messages and have formed deep and abiding partnerships with the al-Quds force. So too have several Sunni groups opposed to Israel – first among them Hamas in Gaza.

But Iraq has been Suleimani’s key arena. The last eight years have witnessed a proxy war between Suleimani’s Quds force and the US military, the full effects of which are still being played out, as the US prepares for a full departure from Iraq and Iraq’s leaders ponder over whether to ask them to stay.

Arabian heartland

At stake is no less than who gets to shape the destiny of the heartland of Arabia. “His power comes straight from (the country’s lead cleric Ayatollah) Khamenei,” said one of Iraq’s three deputy prime ministers, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni. “It bypasses everyone else, including Ahmadinejad.

“There is a saying in Islam that you should never get angry with your father or mother. The [Shia] interpret that as meaning what (Khamanei, via Suleimani) says has to be respected by every [Shia] inside, or outside Iran.

“All of the important people in Iraq go to see him,” said Mutlaq. “People are mesmerised by him – they see him like an angel.”

A second MP – a senior member of Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki’s inner circle who regularly meets Suleimani in Iran – said the general has only travelled once to Iraq in the past eight years. He described him as “softly spoken and reasonable, very polite”. “He is simple when you talk to him. You would not know how powerful he is without knowing his background. His power is absolute and no one can challenge this.”

Silver-haired, slight and with a perennial serene smile, Suleimani comes across as the most unlikely of warlords. Those who met him during the one time he traveled to Baghdad at the height of the 2006 sectarian conflict say he walked around the compounds of his two key hosts without bodyguards. The Americans did not know he had been in the capital until he was back in Iran and were deeply unhappy to learn that their arch enemy had been among them.

“He is indeed like Keyser Söze,” said a senior US official this week – in reference to the legendary villain in the The Usual Suspects, whose ruthlessness and influence terrified everyone. “Nobody knew who he was and this guy’s the same. He is everywhere, but nowhere.”

The senior Shia MP added: “He has managed to form links with every single Shia group, on every level. Last year, in the meeting in Damascus that formed the current Iraqi government, he was present at the meeting along with leaders from Syria, Turkey, Iran and Hezbollah. “He forced them all to change their mind and anoint Maliki as leader for a second term.”

Over the five years that Maliki has been in power in Iraq, all his key advisers have been granted court in Iran by Suleimani. Iraq’s president, a Kurd – Jalal Talabani, has also regularly met the general, sometimes along the border separating both countries.

The Syrian uprising has added a new dimension. The al-Quds Force has been involved in suppressing the Syrian uprising, according to multiple sources inside and outside the country.

The US has slapped personal sanctions on Suleimani and two other generals in the Iranian security forces who it accuses of helping orchestrate the crackdown that is believed to have killed more than 1,600 civilians.”

Tehran has heavily invested in the survival of embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whose ruling Allawite clan has links to Shia Islam. Assad’s fall would be a serious strategic setback for Iran and Suleimani. It is perhaps the only part of the region where the general’s preferred mix of strategic diplomacy with aggressive operations is being strongly tested.

In the meantime, the work of the al-Quds force continues in Iraq. All but two of the US troops killed in June – the highest number in more than two years, were killed by client militias directly under Suleimani’s control, the Keta’ib Hezbollah and the Promised Day Brigades.

“It is clear that the al-Quds force is responsible,” said the director general of the intelligence division in Iraq’s interior ministry, Hussein Kamal. “There has been a systematic flow of weapons into Iraq for the past eight years. Of course they try to say it is not state-sponsored. But when weapons are flowing from the borders of a sovereign state, it is very clear where the blame lies.

“They are destructive weapons and they cannot deny the responsibility for them.”

Another Shia MP said he had personally asked Suleimani why his al-Quds force continued to smuggle weapons, many of which are fired into the Green Zone, where he and most of Maliki’s inner circle live. “He just smiled and said it is nothing to do with me,” the MP said. “He said he had no idea where the weapons were coming from.”

Suleimani has been variously described by those who dislike him – Iraq’s Sunnis, and those who have spent years trying to get his measure – as a “talented extortionist” and a highly skilled wheeler-dealer.

US officials who have spent years trying to disrupt the work of his loyalists say they would like to meet him, while at the same time being puzzled as to his objectives.

“I would simply ask him what he wants from us,” said a senior US military official. In addition to the soldiers killed this year, the US ambassador in Baghdad, James Jeffrey, said last summer that Iranian proxies accounted for roughly a quarter of US combat casualties in Iraq – around 1,100 deaths and many thousands more injuries.

Despite this, the US has landed few public blows on Suleimani’s close circle.

In March 2007, the British SAS captured a senior Hezbollah official, Ali Moussa Daqduq, who had allegedly planned an operation that killed seven soldiers in Karbala. The same year, US troops also captured two men in the Kurdish north who they believed were al-Quds leaders. Apart from that, the trophy cabinet remains bare – at least publicly. More troubling than the apparent dearth of tactical victories is how the rest of the year will play out.

The US – and some key neighbouring Sunni states – believe Iran’s strategy in Iraq as the conflict winds down is to keep the country in a permanent but manageable state of chaos.

“They keep it on simmer and turn it up and down when they want to,” said one Lebanese official in Beirut.

The senior US military spokesman in Iraq, Major General Jeffrey Buchanan agreed. “Their overall strategy has been to keep [Iraq] isolated from the rest of its neighbours and from the US, because that makes it likely that it will depend on Iran. They want Iraq to play a subordinate, weak role.”

Only Iraq’s lawmakers can stop the master-client relationship from becoming entrenched here. It’s a task that Kurdish legislator in the national parliament, Mahmoud Othman, fears may prove to be beyond his colleagues.

“Qassem Suleimani is the key man to every decision taken in Iraq,” he said.

“It is a shame to have such a man playing such a role in this country. There should be a relationship between equals like normal relations with normal states.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Iraqi government compound stormed” was written by Haroon Siddique and agencies in Baghdad, for The Guardian on Tuesday 14th June 2011 18.54 UTC

At least eight people have been killed after gunmen set off a car bomb outside a government compound in Baquba and then stormed the provincial council building, Iraqi police said.

Officials at the police command centre in Diyala province told Reuters a suicide bomber blew himself up after the car bomb exploded on Tuesday morning, allowing the gunmen into the compound.

A second suicide bomber blew himself up as the attackers clashed with police, witnesses and local officials said. At least one man made it into the building and killed three civilians inside the reception area before he was wounded by security forces.

The number of attackers was put at between three and five by different officials. The death toll was similarly said to include between three and five assailants. About 25 people were wounded, according to local government and hospital officials.

Several council employees who were trapped inside part of the compound said they managed to escape through a side entrance with the help of Iraqi and US forces.

“I heard four to five big explosions,” said Salim al-Zaidy, a local human rights worker who was inside the building. “The Iraqi army special forces and US forces released us, using a back gate.”

The US military said its forces had provided only “observation support” from helicopters.

The attack in the Diyala provincial capital, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, is the latest assault on a government building to test Iraqi forces as they prepare for the planned withdrawal of US troops at the end of the year.

“The aim of such an attack is to create more chaos and to hinder any attempts to push the country forward,” said Abdullah Hassan, a member of the provincial council that had been scheduled to meet at the site on Tuesday morning.

General Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesman for Iraq’s defence ministry, blamed al-Qaida for the attack and compared it to an assault carried out in March against a government compound in Tikrit.

In March, gunmen wearing military uniforms over explosives belts charged into a government building in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit in an attack that left 56 people dead. Among those who died were 15 hostages, killed before their captors blew themselves up.

Violence in Iraq has eased since the peak of bloody sectarian fighting in 2006-07, but Sunni and Shia militias still carry out daily bombings and killings. Al-Qaida affiliates and other militia are still active in Diyala.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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This article titled “Curveball’s admission ‘raises questions about CIA’” was written by Ed Pilkington in New York, for The Guardian on Wednesday 16th February 2011 01.05 UTC

A senior aide to Colin Powell at the time of his pivotal speech to the United Nations said on Tuesday that Curveball’s admission raised questions about the CIA’s role.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to the then US secretary of state Powell in the build-up to the invasion, said the lies of Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, also known by the codename Curveball, raised questions about how the CIA had briefed Powell ahead of his crucial speech to the UN security council presenting the case for war.

In particular, why did the CIA’s then director George Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin believe the claim by Curveball, “and convey that to Powell even though the CIA’s own European chief Tyler Drumheller had already raised serious doubts.

“And why did Tenet and McLaughlin portray the presence of mobile biological labs in Iraq to the secretary of state with a degree of conviction bordering on passionate, soul-felt certainty?”

Richard Perle, a prominent neocon who chaired the Pentagon’s advisory board under the Bush administration at the time of the invasion, said the Janabi admission pointed to a clear failure in intelligence vetting. “It’s the job of intelligence agencies to distinguish between defectors who claim to have something to say and defectors who are lying and they obviously didn’t do their job. The Germans didn’t, and we didn’t.”

Perle said that Janabi wrote to him directly shortly before the invasion, setting out his claims about weapons of mass destruction and bemoaning that he wasn’t being taken seriously by the US.

Groups of US veterans involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq expressed their dismay at the revelation that key information had been fabricated. “This is very damning testimony and an indictment of the work the US put into the pre-war intelligence. The decision to go to war, to spend billions on sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the region, was in large part taken on the basis of an admitted liar,” said Ashwin Madia, head of an organisation of progressive US military veterans, VoteVets.

Stephen Biddle, an Iraq expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Janabi’s admission undermined those critics who accused the Bush administration itself of having lied. “The source did actually tell them those things. But it does support the idea that they didn’t do due diligence on checking out the information in part because they were being told what they wanted to hear.”

Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst on Iraq now at the National Defence University in Washington, said there were “bitter lessons” from the handling of Janabi. “It was an intelligence failure and very poor tradecraft”.

She said that the syndrome of “false confirmation” – where just one source was shared by many different intelligence outlets none of whom realised they were talking to the same person – had come heavily into play. And the Bush administration had been far too willing to believe incredible witnesses.

“There were people at the time who doubted what Curveball was saying, but if the administration doesn’t want to believe it, it doesn’t make much difference.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Source: ABC
Revelations leaked from former Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir.

This article titled “Al-Sadr makes low-key return to Iraq” was written by Martin Chulov, for The Guardian on Wednesday 5th January 2011 19.01 UTC

The cleric once described by the US military as the most dangerous man in Iraq, Muqtadr al-Sadr, slipped back into his homeland today after three years in Iran to lay claim to a lead role in Iraqi affairs.

Al-Sadr’s low-key return to the Shia Islamic holy city of Najaf came after his self-imposed exile under the tutelage of Shia clerics and senior Iranian regime figures, which have cast him as a power-player in the second term Government of Iraq’s prime minister, Nour al-Maliki.

Key leaders within Al-Sadr’s Sadrist movement last night confirmed the volatile cleric had returned to stay. “We are all happy because he’s back,” said Nassir al-Rubaie, the Minister for Works in Iraq’s new government. “This is not a short visit. He has returned to where he came from and he will play an important role in the political process.”

Al-Sadr’s return to centre stage in the brittle state’s affairs had been anticipated ever since Iranian leaders persuaded him to support Maliki in his ultimately successful bid to be returned as leader, following nine months of talks. However, the appearance of Al-Sadr in Najaf, so soon after a Government was finally formed appeared to have caught his followers off-guard.

The firebrand cleric’s unexpected homecoming was, however, enthusiastically welcomed in the streets of Sadr City, the giant north Baghdad Shia slum, which is the heartland of his fiercely devoted support base. Some among Sadr City’s 1.5 million mostly loyalists took to the streets in their cars playing anthems supporting Al-Sadr’s militia, the Mehdi Army.

However, the Shiite holy month of Ashura ensured most celebrations low key.

“We cannot celebrate in public because it is a holy month,” said coffee shop owner, Mohammed Muttasher, 44. “We have kept things to cakes and juice. But we are very happy and our families are very happy.”

Some supporters set off for Najaf late in the evening, where Al-Sadr was due to meet with officials, among them the Supreme leader of Iraq’s Shia Muslims, Ayatollah Ali al-Shistani. Key figures in the Baghdad power base believe that Al-Sadr is being groomed by Iran as a potential successor to the aging Ayatollah.

But his short term ambitions will attract keener interest from both Maliki and the US Government. The former views the 37-year scion of slain cleric, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, as an unpredictable and potentially subversive figure.

The US, meanwhile sees him as a mortal foe, largely from his role as commander of the staunchly anti-western Mehdi Army, which accounted for thousands of US dead and wounded throughout the war and was a key driver of the sectarian bloodshed. It also views him as a key proxy of Iran with whom it is tussling for influence in Iraq as its eight year mission steadily winds down.

Al-Sadr’s homecoming came on the same day that Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, visited Baghdad and repeated Iran’s demand that Maliki’s Government not strike a new deal which allows some US troops to stay beyond a scheduled pull out late of December 31 this year.

The US Embassy in Baghdad has downplayed the influence of the Sadrists in the new Government. “So far I think they received roughly seven percent of the popular vote and I think their role will be commensurate with that,” said US Ambassador Jim Jeffrey.

Al-Sadr’s anti-western worldview has been a key theme throughout the seven volatile years that he has ridden the Iraqi landscape. He has tapped into the impoverished and resentful Shia neighbourhoods like no other figure and previously used his large and zealous militia to undermine the American presence in Iraq and the Iraqi government itself.

In early 2008, Al-Sadr stood down the Mehdi Army after it was routed in Baghdad and Basra by the Iraqi Army under Maliki’s orders. The aftermath fueled already bitter enmity between the two men, which was partially quelled by an Iranian-brokered deal in September to give Maliki a second term as leader.

The four months since have seen a surge in Sadrist demands and influence in Iraq’s border regions.

“We will all be watching things closely now,” said a senior western official yesterday. We will soon see his asking price for staying in the Government.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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This was a great moment. The troops had no idea President Bush was coming. You can tell how touched he was by their warm welcome.

(hat tip Breitbart TV)

Saddam Hussein’s former foreign minister Tariq Aziz has been sentenced to die for his role in the former Baathist government. Aziz was probably the best known figure inside Iraq outside of Saddam. He speaks perfect English and was used as the public face of the regime for Saddam’s entire tenure.

Aziz’s real name is Michael Yuhanna and he’s a Catholic not a Muslim. Yuhanna changed his name to Aziz so as not to offend the rest of Saddam’s inner circle who were all Muslims.

I used to think Aziz would probably be let go eventually since he doesn’t have any blood on his hands directly. But then I considered how I would feel about a mouthpiece for the Nazis and I changed my mind. Aziz has never once expressed an ounce of remorse for giving full throated support to Saddam’s barbaric regime. Even now facing no reprisals he remains defiant. Even with Saddam dead he continues to deny the dictator’s guilt in well known atrocities.

So Tariq Aziz will be hanged in the coming weeks just like the majority of his former colleagues were. Excuse me if I don’t shed a tear.

Hell hasn’t frozen over (actually it has been pretty cold lately) and I don’t think we’re in The Twilight Zone, but nevertheless I recommend you gird your loins for this one!

Here’s the latest cover of Newsweek:

Yes, that is the much ballyhooed “Mission Accomplished” sign in the background and the devil himself George W. Bush. No, you’re not misreading anything — it says VICTORY AT LAST — bitches!

[click to read the Newsweek article]

Here’s Newsweek honcho Jon Meacham saying the unthinkable on MSNBC of all places. That what General Petraeus and President Bush did in Iraq “seems to have worked.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Let’s see if Meacham has the balls to go on “Countdown To No Ratings” and tell Keith that.

I believe in 20 years there will be a statue of President Bush in the middle of Baghdad. He’ll be considered a national hero who rescued Iraq from a brutal tyrant and gave millions of people a chance to have a good life.

It should also be noted that Iraq is the success it is today in spite of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They deserve no credit, only scorn.

I’m trying to remember what “Dingy” Harry Reid once said about Iraq…what was it??? Oh yeah, I remember now:

Damn that YouTube!

-Chris Jones