Iraq, the Pull Out

[buglerbilly]

Costly Iraq War May Mark Shift in US Approach

October 24, 2011

Associated Press|by Robert Burns

BALI, Indonesia - In the final days of the U.S. war in Iraq, the outlook for America's military entanglements is markedly different from the confusing, convulsive first days.

Early on Iraq looked, to many, like one in a string of big conflicts in a "war on terror."

That was the view of John Abizaid when the now-retired Army general led U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003-04. At a U.S. base in northern Iraq one day in early 2004, Abizaid told soldiers preparing to return home that he hoped they would remain in uniform and keep building combat experience.

Asked by an Associated Press reporter why he had made that pitch, Abizaid said, "I think the country is going to face more of these (ground wars) in the years ahead."

That was a widely accepted, and often dreaded, view at the time.

Now, with the last American troops set to depart by year's end, Iraq seems more likely to signal an end to such long and enormously costly undertakings in the name of preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil - at least under the administration of President Barack Obama. He opposed the Iraq war and has declared that "the tides of war are receding."

With Obama also pledging to end the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan within three years, the military's focus is turning to places such as Yemen and Somalia.

There, the approach is different. Aerial drones, proxy forces and small teams of U.S. commandos are the preferred formula for containing the Islamic extremists who would plot terrorist attacks against the U.S.

Libya, too, has so far been a case for limited U.S. military intervention. The U.S. cleared the sky ahead of a NATO-led air campaign to protect civilians without putting any troops on the ground.

It took about eight months and cost the U.S. about $1.1 billion to achieve the Libyan rebels' goal of toppling Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

The potential for bigger conflicts persists in places such as Pakistan, whose growing arsenal of nuclear weapons sets it apart from other potential hot spots.

Iran is a major worry, too, in light of its suspected drive to build a nuclear bomb and its proclaimed goal of wiping out Israel. But a U.S. invasion of Iran, on a scale like Iraq, seems highly unlikely for now.

There are other troublesome security challenges facing the U.S., including in Asia where China is expanding its military and asserting its influence.

But the Obama approach - not unique, but distinctive in comparison to that of his predecessor, George W. Bush - is to try to prevent festering security problems from growing into full-blown crises.

The U.S. military can play a role in those cases without being called on to invade and depose a government.

Robert Gates captured this idea in a speech last winter to Army cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in which he said it would be unwise to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan.

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should `have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates said.

Even with the Iraq exit in sight, the U.S. military is unlikely to wash its hands of the problems it will leave behind after nearly nine years of fighting. Wars don't end that neatly, and it is yet to be seen whether U.S. troops take on new missions in Iraq in 2012 to keep the country on track.

Obama is ending the U.S. role in the Iraq war, but that does not necessarily mean the war itself is ending.

Al-Qaida in Iraq remains. Ethnic and sectarian tensions persist. Chaos could again descend upon the country, testing the resilience of Iraqis who suffered enormously under Saddam Hussein and again during the U.S. war.

Even after the U.S. declares an end to its presence in Iraq in December, about 157 U.S. service personnel are expected to remain, working out of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad under Army Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen.

Their job will be to oversee security assistance to the Iraqi government, as similar embassy contingents do in many other Persian Gulf countries and beyond.

About 760 private contractors working for the State Department will help the Iraqis field new military equipment purchased from the U.S. and give them initial training on that equipment. But that is not the depth and scale of training that many U.S. military officers believe the Iraqis need.

On his flight to Indonesia on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that negotiations with Iraq on future training possibilities will begin later.

If such talks are held, they likely would start either when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visits Washington in December or after the end of the year, according to a senior U.S. defense official familiar with the discussions.

The officer spoke Sunday on condition that he not be identified because the issue of possible future U.S. training is highly sensitive.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Review Slams US Training of Iraqi Police

October 24, 2011

Associated Press|by Rebecca Santana

BAGHDAD - A U.S. State Department program to train Iraqi police lacks focus, could become a "bottomless pit" of American money and may not even be wanted by the Iraqi department it's supposed to help, reports released Monday by a U.S. government watchdog show.

The findings by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction paint what is supposed to be the State Department's flagship program in Iraq in a harsh light.

The report comes at a crucial time for the State Department as it assumes sole responsibility for securing U.S.-Iraqi ties as American forces leave by the end of this year.

On Oct. 1, the State Department took over the job of training Iraqi police from the Defense Department. According to the inspector general's report, the training program faces many problems.

Only a small portion - about 12 percent - of the millions of dollars budgeted will actually go to helping the Iraqi police, the report said. The "vast preponderance of money" will pay for security and other items like living quarters for the people doing the training, the review found.

The audit also said that although the State Department has known since 2009 it would be taking over the training program, it failed to develop a comprehensive and detailed plan for the training.

"Without specific goals, objectives and performance measures, the PDP (Police Development Program) could become a 'bottomless pit' for U.S. dollars intended for mentoring, advising and training the Iraqi police forces," the report stated.

Few dispute, however, that Iraqi police are far from ready to fully protect their country - or even themselves.

On Monday, police and health officials said four separate attacks against traffic police in Baghdad killed two policemen and three civilians. Twelve people, including eight police, were injured.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

In the inspector general's report, the oversight agency also found that budget concerns led to the program being significantly downsized.

In 2009, the State Department agency in charge of the training, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, estimated it would cost about $721 million to pay for a program with 350 police advisers. That averaged out to about $2.1 million per adviser, said SIGIR.

But in December 2010, the program was downsized to 190 advisers while costs had increased, the report stated. According to SIGIR calculations, the average cost per adviser jumped to $6.2 million per year.

By July of this year, the number of advisers had dropped to 115 for what the State Department described as Phase 1 of the program. If its budget request is approved for fiscal year 2012, the program could be beefed up again to 190 advisers, State Department officials told the oversight agency.

Despite the considerable outlay in U.S. taxpayer money, the Iraqi government has yet to sign off on the program and doesn't seem to want it. The official in the Iraqi Ministry of Interior (MOI) responsible for the ministry's day-to-day operations, Adnan al-Asadi, suggested to SIGIR that the U.S. should spend the money on something for the American people instead.

"What tangible benefit will Iraqis see from this police training program? With most of the money spent on lodging, security, support, all the MOI gets is a little expertise, and that is if the program materializes. It has yet to start," al-Asadi said.

The inspector general said the State Department did not fully cooperate with their audit.

"There were delays in gaining access to key officials and in obtaining documents. Moreover, the documents provided were incomplete," the audit read. One meeting in May was canceled an hour before it was to start because State Department officials needed additional "Department guidance," SIGIR wrote.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad did not respond to a request for comment.

In a letter to SIGIR, the State Department said it "generally agrees" with the report's recommendations but defended its efforts.

State Department Assistant Secretary William Brownfield wrote that because they were unsure of whether they would get all the money they'd requested, they decided to start with a smaller number of trainers, and they could ramp up to 190 trainers if the funds come through.

Brownfield also said an independent organization was supposed to do a detailed assessment of Iraqi law enforcement capabilities but did not have access to people on the Iraqi side to finish the assessment in time. He said it would be done by November.

The fact that Iraq still does not have a permanent in interior minister has hampered efforts to come up with an agreement on implementing the training program, Brownfield wrote. But he said the MOI was committed to the program. He also wrote that the State Department hoped to reduce costs in the coming years and to hire more Iraqi support employees.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Iraqi province declares autonomy in symbolic move

By Dan Zak, Friday, October 28, 8:07 AM

IRBIL, Iraq — A northern province of Iraq declared its autonomy Thursday in response to a security sweep that has outraged Sunni communities that say they are being unjustly targeted by the Shiite-led central government.

Over the past three days, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s security forces have detained more than 500 people in a campaign billed as an anti-insurgency operation but viewed by some as a gambit to consolidate sectarian power in advance of the U.S. troop withdrawal.

The council of Salahuddin province voted to “send a message” to the central government for its “continuous random arrests without legal cause,” said Niazi Oglu, the council’s general secretary.

The announcement is merely a symbolic vote of no confidence in the central government; autonomy can be obtained only through a public referendum approved by Iraq’s parliament.

The assertion of autonomy is “confused, illegal and unconstitutional,” wrote Iraq historian Reidar Visser on his blog. “Basra and Wasit [provinces] have submitted such requests in the past without any response from the central government. The significant aspect of the Salahhadin bid is that it could put more pressure on Maliki to allow federal referendums.”

Maliki’s nationwide crackdown, which has targeted alleged former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, involved six months of planning and regular surveillance of suspects allegedly plotting a coup, according to the Interior Ministry.

“The investigations have uncovered ties between the Baathists and al-Qaeda,” including financial and logistical support, said Adnan al-Asadi, a deputy interior minister. “The investigations have led us to uncover that the Baath Party is planning to reorganize itself in Iraq.”

One of the detainees is Jimaah Essa, an elderly former staff general under Hussein who was arrested in June but found not guilty of aiding the insurgency. Two days ago, he was arrested again, and his family doesn’t know why.

“We have no idea where they have taken him, and we don’t know when he will be free again,” said his son, who declined to give his name.

The mass arrests followed the controversial dismissal of 140 faculty members from the University of Tikrit by the Ministry of Higher Education, whose spokesman said it was simply following the parliamentary directive on de-Baathification, according to the news Web site Niqash. Others view the events as early indicators of national disintegration.

“Such decisions will ultimately lead to sectarian strife and spark a civil war again,” Ali al-Jibouri, a professor of political science at the University of Baghdad, told Niqash.

Salahuddin province is Hussein’s birthplace and home to the city of Samarra, where the 2006 bombing of one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines accelerated the sectarian warfare that necessitated the U.S. military surge.

Sectarian tensions remain a concern as U.S. troops depart Iraq at an average of 520 service members a day. President Obama confirmed last week that all 39,000 still stationed in Iraq will be withdrawn by Dec. 31, though Washington and Baghdad continue to negotiate a reduced, nonmilitary security training presence for 2012.

Special correspondents Aziz Alwan in Baghdad, Muhanned Saif Aldin in Tikrit, Marwan Alanie in Kirkuk and Asaad Majeed in Irbil contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

32 killed in Baghdad blast

At least 32 people were killed and 71 wounded in twin blasts which rocked Baghdad.


A bomb attack victim is treated at a hospital near Baghdad's Ur district Photo: REUTERS

11:33AM BST 28 Oct 2011

A defence ministry official put the toll from Thursday night's twin roadside bomb attacks in Baghdad's Urr neighbourhood at 32 dead and 71 wounded while an interior ministry official said 36 were killed and 78 wounded.

Officials had given initial tolls of at least 10 dead and 32 wounded.

They said one bomb exploded at around 7:00 pm local time on Thursday followed by a second after security forces and crowds gathered at the scene.

The revised death toll marks the highest since August 15, when twin bombings in the southern city of Kut, blamed on Al-Qaeda, killed 40 people.

The attacks come amid concerns that violence may increase after US forces leave Iraq by the end of the year, and are the deadliest since that decision was announced by US President Barack Obama on October 21.

The US had engaged in protracted and ultimately failed negotiations with Iraq about a post-2011 US military training mission here.

The issue of immunity from prosecution for US trainers was the main sticking point, with Washington insisting its troops be given immunity, while Baghdad said that was not necessary.

The roughly 39,000 US soldiers still in Iraq are now in the process of drawing down, after a nearly nine-year campaign that has left thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi dead, and costs billions of dollars.

[buglerbilly]

Iraqi General Says His Forces Not Ready Until 2020

October 31, 2011

Agence France-Presse

Iraq will not be fully able to defend its borders and airspace until at least 2020, a watchdog quoted Iraq's top general as saying in a report on Sunday, months before U.S. troops are to leave.

The Iraqi military's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari, "estimated that it will take several more years before Iraq can provide for its external defense without assistance from international partners," said the report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR).

"General Zebari suggested that the [Ministry of Defense] will be unable to execute the full spectrum of external-defense missions until sometime between 2020 and 2024, citing funding shortfalls as the main reason for the delay," the report said.

"Iraq will not be able to defend its own airspace until 2020, at the earliest," Zebari told SIGIR, adding that "an army without an air force is exposed."

Iraq has ordered 18 F-16 warplanes from the United States, but it will be years before that force is fully operational.

Zebari has stated before that his forces will require training for another decade before they are fully capable of securing the country.

Iraq's military has been tied down by years of bloody internal conflict here, with U.S. officers saying it needs to transition to a more traditional role of external defense.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Oct. 21 that all U.S. Soldiers will depart the country by the end of 2011, after protracted and ultimately failed negotiations with Iraq about a post-2011 U.S. military training mission here.

The roughly 39,000 U.S. Soldiers still in Iraq are now in the process of drawing down, after a nearly nine-year campaign that has left thousands of American Soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi dead, with costs running into billions of dollars.

[I]© Copyright 2011 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Iraq Declines Military Training From Turkey, Iran

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 1 Nov 2011 11:20

BAGHDAD - Iraq has declined offers from Turkey and Iran to train its forces, after the failure of negotiations with the U.S. on a post-2011 training mission, a high-ranking Iraqi official said on Nov. 1.

"Tehran and Ankara offered to train Iraqi forces, but we did not accept either due to the sensitivity of the situation," the official in the prime minister's office told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"We cannot accept one state without another," said the official. "We prefer that the file of training the forces be outside the framework of neighboring countries."

An Oct. 29 statement from the Iraqi presidency said that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had offered for his country to help train Iraq's forces, during a meeting with Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Oct. 21 that all U.S. troops will leave Iraq by year's end after failed negotiations with Iraq about a post-2011 U.S. military training mission in the country.

The issue of immunity from prosecution for U.S. trainers was the main sticking point, with Washington insisting its troops be given immunity, while Baghdad said that was not necessary.

The roughly 39,000 U.S. soldiers still in Iraq are now in the process of drawing down, after a nearly nine-year campaign that has left thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and cost billions of dollars.

Although both Iraqi and American officials generally say that Iraqi forces are ready to handle internal security after the U.S. leaves, they admit that there is still much work to be done to improve the capabilities of the Iraqi military.

The Iraqi military's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari, for instance, was quoted in an Oct. 30 report from a U.S. watchdog as saying the defense ministry of "will be unable to execute the full spectrum of external defence missions until sometime between 2020 and 2024."

[buglerbilly]

Iraqi Cleric: US Seeks to 'Occupy' Mideast

November 04, 2011

Associated Press|by Lara Jakes



Iran's little Bum-boy speaks...........and we all YAWN! :hifu

BAGHDAD -- U.S. plans to station troops across the Mideast after withdrawing from Iraq amount to occupying other Islamic countries, Iraq's most outspoken anti-American cleric says.

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said in an interview broadcast Thursday that he's not satisfied with President Barack Obama's pledge to pull all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year, calling it a partial withdrawal because of the thousands of diplomats and security guards who will stay behind.

"The American occupation will stay in Iraq under different names," al-Sadr told Al-Arabiya TV in his first interview since Obama announced the troop pullout last month.

Al-Sadr noted the Pentagon's recent reminders that it will keep an estimated 40,000 troops across the region.

"America is not only occupying Iraq but also other Islamic countries," he said. "Occupying Iraq means occupying what is around Iraq, and then to control the Middle East."

The Pentagon is preparing to boost the number of U.S. forces just across the Iraqi border in Kuwait and across the region to prevent a power vacuum when the tens of thousands of U.S. forces who have served in Iraq are gone.

There are currently 33,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, the chief American military spokesman in Iraq, told a news conference Thursday that U.S. troops stationed around the Mideast are there as part of a partnership with their host nations.

Al-Sadr's political followers wield heavy influence in Iraq's parliament. His militia has been bent on driving the U.S. out of Iraq with rocket attacks, backed with Iranian funds and training.

Over the last year, and since returning from exile in Iran, he has sought to present himself as something of a statesman promoting Iraqi nationalism.

In the interview, he said his followers have slowed their attacks on U.S. forces in recent months "in order not to give them a pretext for staying."

"I say to the American Soldier: Get out for good," al-Sadr told the TV channel.

The U.S. still plans to train Iraqi security forces after the withdrawal, although almost entirely with civilian contractors working with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

A spate of bombs targeting security forces that killed at least 10 people and wounded dozens Thursday served as a reminder of how vulnerable the country remains.

In the deadliest attack, a pair of near-simultaneous blasts killed six security guards who were waiting in line to pick up their paychecks outside an Iraqi military base near Baqouba, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad. At least 35 people were wounded in the double bombing, said Diyala Health Directorate spokesman Faris al-Azawi.

All of the dead were members of Sahwa, or Awakening Councils, a Sunni militia that sided with U.S. forces against al-Qaida in a major turning point of the war. The Sahwa have since been targeted by insurgents, who call them traitors.

An Iraqi army intelligence officer said authorities have reliable intelligence that al-Qaida sleeper cells plan to launch attacks as U.S. troops withdraw and afterward. The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the intelligence is confidential, said al-Qaida aims to show Iraqis it is still able to strike.

Officials long have said that al-Qaida's main goal in Iraq is to destabilize the Shiite-led government. Among the terror group's top targets have been government and security officials.

Later Thursday, a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad's upscale and mostly Shiite neighborhood of Karradah, killing two passers-by. Police who rushed to the scene were hit with a second blast, killing two policemen and wounding three others. Also, four passers-by were wounded.

The casualties were confirmed by a medic at Ibn al-Nafis hospital. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

The attacks were examples of the low-scale but deadly violence that persists across Iraq on a near daily basis, although violence has dropped dramatically across the country since 2007, when the country teetered on the brink of civil war. Some officials have warned of an increase in attacks as the U.S. troops leave.

-- Associated Press writers Mazin Yahya and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad, and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Most Troops Out of Iraq by Mid-December, General Says

November 04, 2011

Agence France-Presse

The "vast majority" of remaining U.S. troops in Iraq will be out by mid-December as the American military's withdrawal picks up pace, a U.S. general said Thursday.

Less than 34,000 troops remain in Iraq after reaching a peak of 170,000 in 2007 during a buildup ordered by former President George W. Bush, said Maj. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, deputy commanding general for the U.S. force in Iraq.

"As I look at the plan, I think it's clear to me that by the time we get to about mid-December or so, the vast majority of the U.S. forces in Iraq -- we plan to have them withdrawn from Iraq by that time," he said via video link from Baghdad.

Under a 2008 security pact, the United States has to pull out all troops by the end of the year. Negotiations for a possibly smaller post-2011 force of a few thousand faltered over the question of legal immunity for American troops.

The withdrawal of troops and equipment represented an "immense" logistical effort, with about 1,650 trucks traveling up and down the country on any given day, Spoehr told reporters.

The general compared the undertaking to the famed "Red Ball Express" during World War II, when allied forces rushed supplies by truck to combat troops advancing toward Germany after the D-Day landing.

"I will tell you that right now, as we sit here, we are deep in the midst of this. So there are trucks and planes and people moving very quickly at a high rate of speed throughout Iraq to execute our commitments," Spoehr said.

But he added that the withdrawal would be carried out in a "measured way" to guard against potential insurgent attacks as the troops depart.

U.S. officers have therefore decided not to divulge details of the planned withdrawal as information released previously about base closures appeared to have prompted attacks, according to Spoehr.

U.S. forces, which once operated out of 505 bases during the height of the "surge" of additional troops in 2007, now have only 12 bases left in the country.

Most troops will be leaving by air with truck convoys carrying equipment to neighboring Kuwait.

President Barack Obama's administration is weighing a possible expansion of the U.S. military's presence in Kuwait and the Gulf region after the troop withdrawal from Iraq, in a move officials say would be designed to counter the threat posed by Tehran.

© Copyright 2011 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

NOVEMBER 7, 2011.

Iraq Factions Spar Over Security Force

By SAM DAGHER

BAGHDAD—A struggle between Iraq's political factions is sowing divisions in the country's security forces just weeks before the last U.S. troops depart, as Iraqis rely on a unified force to hold the country together and suppress extremist violence.


Associated Press
U.S. soldiers boarded a plane to leave Iraq at al-Asad Air Base west of Baghdad last week. All U.S. forces are set to leave the country by Dec. 31.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a member of the majority Shiite sect, has in recent weeks accelerated measures to purge the Iraqi forces of anyone who served in the intelligence and security services of the former Sunni-led regime of Saddam Hussein.

Dozens of Sunni officers were expelled last month and more dismissals are planned, according to interviews with officers and copies of decrees viewed by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by the Interior Ministry.

While some of the Sunni officers were accused of serving in Hussein's "repressive apparatuses," some were simply called on for "early retirement," and others were dismissed under vague accusations of associating with terrorists.

In another move that shook the Iraqi security services, Mr. Maliki—the acting interior minister—ordered the arrests on Oct. 23 of what he said were "many" army and police officers among more than 600 people accused of plotting to overthrow his government.

At the same time, Mr. Maliki is delaying appointments to top posts that oversee the security forces, now almost one-million strong including the army and police. Mr. Maliki continues to run the ministries of defense, interior and national security himself or through party and sectarian allies, contravening an agreement with Sunni-dominated and Kurdish political blocs that formed the current coalition government more than 10 months ago.

With the U.S. departure imminent, any new fissures in the security services will make it harder for Iraq's army and police to keep the peace and defend the country's borders.



Yet the prime minister's moves have triggered countermoves by his Sunni political rivals that are threatening to further fragment the country. The leaders of Salahuddin Province, a predominantly Sunni area north of Baghdad, said last month they would begin the process of becoming a semiautonomous region—complaining that, among other things, they wanted to be better represented in the security services, both in rank and file and executive positions.

Sunni Arab politicians and tribal leaders from several provinces, including Salahuddin, met at parliament in Baghdad on Wednesday to air grievances that included what they see as inadequate representation in senior posts in the security forces.

In a statement issued at the meeting's end, they referred to a "dangerous structural flaw" in relations between the provinces and the central government. Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab, warned about "using the army as a tool in the hands of some politicians."

The ethnic and sectarian polarization of Iraqi politics puts immense pressure on security forces that, in the years after Hussein's fall, endured a civil war that transformed elements of their ranks into sectarian death squads in the service of politicized militias.

The U.S. military presence has served as a buffer against Iraqi politicians who may seek to control elements of the security services to give muscle to their own factions. "We remain split over the country's most fundamental issues," said a general in the country's federal police based in Baghdad. "The Americans are a balancing factor."

Unifying the services' disparate units and ragtag brigades into a coherent security force remains very much a work in progress. The U.S. military has led this process in the aftermath of Washington's decision to disband the Iraqi army in 2003—now widely recognized as an ill-fated move that helped fuel the insurgency.

Yet many of the targets of the effort to purge the army and police of former Hussein loyalists are people who had been reintegrated into the services as part of a U.S.-backed program to foster national reconciliation and weaken the Sunni insurgency, according to Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal.

But the unifying role of the U.S. is fast coming to an end. As of Friday, about 32,000 American forces remained in Iraq—compared to 171,000 at the height of the war in 2007—all of them set to leave by Dec. 31.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, spokesman for U.S. troops in Iraq expressed confidence in the Iraqi forces' ability to maintain security. "They have not stepped away from any challenge or any fight since taking over security throughout the nation, ensuring every incident they're presented with is quickly contained," he said. He deferred questions about the polarization of the forces to the Iraqi government.

Mr. Maliki's aides said the prime minister has delayed doling out top ministry posts because of fears of a coup attempt arising from the security services. "It's impossible for the prime minister to accept anyone he does not trust," said his media adviser Ali al-Mussawi.

In Diyala Province, a highly volatile area near Baghdad, the Interior Ministry issued an order to dismiss 32 Sunni officers from the police force on grounds including allegedly collaborating with terrorists and having a role in one of Hussein's paramilitary forces. The order was implemented last month, around the same time that the last U.S. soldiers in Diyala left the province.

Mr. Kamal, the deputy interior minister, described the order as a routine administrative matter that had nothing to do with the U.S. departure or Iraqi politics. But the timing hasn't been lost on the Sunni officers.

"This order was issued after the U.S. pullout [from the province] to gauge reaction" by Sunnis, said Maj. Abbas Ghaidan Khalaf, one of the dismissed officers. "If there's no reaction, then you'll see more marginalization of [Sunnis] until there are not even street sweepers from this sect."

There has been ample reaction. Adnan al-Karkhi, a member of the Diyala provincial council, warned after the dismissals, "The lack of balance will keep the province in the vicious circle of violence and instability."

The dismissal order says Maj. Khalaf and two others were fired "because their brothers are terrorists," without providing evidence.

Maj. Khalaf said two of his siblings are active duty police officers, one of whom survived several suicide bombings. A third sibling is a local government employee. The fourth, a lieutenant in the Interior ministry's intelligence unit, was assassinated two weeks ago.

Another incident in Diyala in October also offered a reminder of the country's political divisions, this one related to Kurds serving in the security forces. Kurdish recruits report to, and are paid by, the central government, of which Kurds are a part. But their ultimate loyalty is to the political leadership of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in the north, which keeps its own security force.

An order from the central government to remove Kurdish flags from public buildings in the town of Khanaqin, one of several disputed territories in northern Iraq claimed by both Kurds and Arabs, was challenged by the predominantly Kurdish local police. Baghdad backed down, but tensions remain.

U.S. forces have played a critical role in tamping down such tensions in these contested areas and fostering collaboration between Arabs and Kurds. The Kurdistan region's President Masoud Barzani warned in a recent interview with Dubai-based al-Arabiya channel that the U.S. withdrawal at year's end might give way to an "open-ended civil war," with nobody there to stop it.

[I]—Ali A. Nabhan contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Army Leaders Eye Iranian Threat to Iraq After Pullout

November 07, 2011

Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer|by Henry Cuningham



Active and retired Army leaders are warily eyeing the Iranian threat to Iraq in 2012 after U.S. forces are gone.

"The Iranian influence in this country is something that the Iraqis must watch closely if they want to be a stabilizing influence in the region," Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick said in a video teleconference with Fayetteville area reporters Oct. 27. "We see it in a sense with the Iranian-back militias that are in the country." The Iranian groups include Asab al-Haq and Qatab Hezbollah, he said.

Helmick, the commander of Fort Bragg and the 18th Airborne Corps, has been in Iraq this year as deputy commander of U.S. Forces-Iraq. He is responsible for daily operations as the United States moves toward its Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline.

Retired Gen. Jack Keane puts the Iran threat to Iraq and the United States even more strongly.

"Indeed, Republican and Democratic administrations since 1980 have failed to deal effectively with the harsh reality that Iran is our number-one strategic enemy in the world," Keane said.

Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff and 18th Airborne Corps commander, made his remarks at a congressional hearing the day before Helmick spoke with local reporters. "Frankly, the Iranians stated as much in 1980, that the United States was the enemy of the Islamic Revolution and their intent was to drive the United States out of the region," Keane said. "Therefore, they have been systematically killing us for over 30 years."

Gen. Qasim Soliemani, the leader of Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism outside its borders, answers directly to the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Keane said.

There is a "constant flow" from Iran to Iraq of bomb-making materials, mortars, rockets and grenades, which are buried in cache sites, Helmick said.

"The Iraqi security forces, along with us, discover these cache sites," Helmick said. "It's very alarming."

Keane told the congressional committee that Iran funds Shiite militias "who are directly involved in killing U.S. troops in Iraq."

Helmick said the pullout of U.S. forces is going well, but there is concern about attacks.

"I know Prime Minister Malaki is obviously concerned about that," Helmick said. "We are concerned, too, because we believe that these Iranian-backed militia groups and al-Qaida, which still has the ability to conduct attacks inside Iraq, would like nothing more than to have some sort of attack, if you will, against us as we depart. That is something we are guarding against. That is something the Iraqi security forces are guarding against, as well."

Keane said withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq "puts our hard-fought gains in Iraq at risk and plays into the hands of the Iranians," who are also supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan with money and ammunition.

Changes in Middle Eastern countries, known collectively as the Arab spring, have changed the geopolitical landscape.

"The region is not the same region when we came here in January," Helmick said. "Syria is having some severe challenges. Libya. There is turmoil all around. Iraq right now is a stabilizing influence. They have the opportunity to be that stabilizing country in the region."

© Copyright 2011 Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Logistical Drawdown Progressing Smoothly in Iraq

06:59 GMT, November 15, 2011 WASHINGTON | The U.S. logistical drawdown in Iraq is progressing well and on track to meet the Dec. 31 deadline, the commander of the unit that oversaw the mission since January reported as he and his soldiers prepared to return home early this week.

Army Col. Stephen Falcone, commander of the Army Reserve’s 77th Sustainment Brigade, said his troops faced tough demands in Iraq as they supported two seemingly opposite requirements: keeping troops on the ground supplied while orchestrating the United States’ largest logistical drawdown since World War II.

“It’s been a big balancing act,” Falcone told American Forces Press Service from Camp Virginia, Kuwait, as he and his soldiers awaited their flight home to Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. “And it’s something we’ve had to focus on every day to make sure we give [troops on the ground] just enough, but not too much.”

So as convoys arrived at bases throughout Iraq delivering food, water, fuel, ammunition and other staples, Falcone and his soldiers ensured they left filled to the brimming point with equipment destined for Kuwait and ultimately, the United States.

The 77th Sustainment Brigade was among the last units to deploy to Iraq as the United States began the process of handing over operations to Iraqi forces and other U.S. agencies. Its 300 soldiers arrived in January to serve as the headquarters element for an additional 3,500 soldiers and airmen assigned to put the logistical plan into action.

During their deployment, they ran more than 1,700 convoys, traveled more than 4.2 million miles, issued more than 120 million gallons of fuel, moved out 2,700 tons of ammunition and transported 20 million pounds of incoming and outgoing mail, Falcone reported.

As they closed warehouses and scaled back support operations, they transitioned more than $238 million in equipment, repair parts and other supplies to the Defense Department inventory, he said.

Good planning, hard work and favorable weather came together to move the transition of bases to Iraqi government control on or ahead of schedule, Falcone said. He noted that three of the largest bases transitioned earlier than planned, including the most recent, Joint Base Balad, which was transferred to the Iraqis three weeks ahead of schedule.

“We have done an orderly and responsible progression of how we transferred those bases,” Falcone said, giving some welcome breathing room in the schedule to complete the process by the year’s end.

As daunting as the logistical drawdown may be, Falcone said it is complicated by the fact that U.S. forces remaining on the ground for the duration of Operation New Dawn still require beans, bullets and other essentials.

Falcone said he didn’t want them “living in tents and eating [Meals, Ready to Eat] every day,” and took pains to provide them the best quality of life for as long as possible while still adhering to the drawdown schedule.

As bases prepared to close and contractors who had been assigned to them returned home, military members stepped up to conduct missions the contractors had done. They took over the dining facilities, laundry and other services.

In some cases, they cross-trained into other jobs to keep vital services flowing. Falcone’s water purification specialists, for example, served as fuel handlers as well. Other service members volunteered to become crane operators, positions contractors had held.

“The good part is that they stepped up to the plate and did a fantastic job,” Falcone said. “We had absolutely no problems.”

Falcone called the evolution taking place in Iraq a throwback to the earliest days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or “OIF in reverse.”

“When we first went into Iraq in 2003, it was kind of an austere environment,” he said. “And as we transfer those bases over, we go back to that austere environment for the soldiers.”

Falcone acknowledged that in the weeks leading up to Dec. 31, conditions will become increasingly austere as the last U.S. forces in Iraq wind down their operations.

With the 77th Sustainment Brigade now redeploying, the active-component 4th Sustainment Brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, will oversee the completion of the mission.

Many of the 77th Brigade soldiers elected to extend their deployments to join the 4th Brigade in seeing the mission to completion, he said.

Together, “they are going to do it the right way, they are going to do it on time and more than likely, ahead of time, and then they are going to go home,” he said.

Unlike past rotations in Iraq, no replacement unit will be arriving to take their places. “This is the first time when there is no unit following us,” Falcone said. “So when we leave, the job we were asked to do is done. It’s not left to someone else to finish up.”

Falcone said his soldiers are excited about their role in the historic drawdown mission in Iraq. “They’ve gone a yeoman’s job, working very long hours conducting the largest retrograde operation since World War II,” he said.

“I tell them that when they go home, they need to be proud of what they have done here, to stick their chests out farther and to hold their heads high,” he said. “They need to walk down the streets of America knowing they have truly ended this operation the way it should have been ended. They did a great job, and they did everything the country asked them to do.”
----
Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

[Milne Bay]

One of the biggest problems in the draw down and final exit from Iraq - and Afghanistan for that matter - will be replacing the logistical behemoth that has sustained troops for all these years.
It is all very well to write articles about how the gear is going "home" and how the remaining US troops are being fed and provisioned, just what is going to provision those Iraqi and Afghan troops when the foreigners are gone.
You can almost smell the corruption in the system already, and it isn't even in place yet.
I can see an absolute mess down the track.
And who will want to be in either national army then?

[buglerbilly]

The Iraqi's are light years ahead of the Afghans when it comes to Logistics Support, and they also have a growing Civilian network to back that up. Most of the Allied Logistics effort has been aimed at the Allied Forces NOT the Iraqi ones, at least not for a year or three now..........

They are also far less susceptible to outside attack because they are not "Crusaders".............you know, the mentally-retarded definition people like the Iranian lacky Moqtada al-Sadr spout..............

[buglerbilly]

Pentagon Chief Defends U.S. Pullout from Iraq

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 15 Nov 2011 16:14

WASHINGTON - Pentagon chief Leon Panetta on Nov. 15 defended the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq next month despite sharp criticism from some lawmakers, saying Washington had to accept that Iraq was a sovereign state.

In a politically charged hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta told Republican "hawks" that the U.S. tried to negotiate a deal to keep a small contingent of troops in Iraq beyond the end of the year, but the talks stumbled over the question of legal immunity for American soldiers.

In a testy exchange with Senator John McCain, who accuses President Barack Obama of abandoning Iraq, Panetta said it was not the case that the U.S. could simply decide what it wanted in Iraq.

"This was about negotiations with a sovereign country," he said. "This is not about us telling them what we're going to have to do."

Although the Iraqi government was ready to adopt legal protections, US officials wanted the country's parliament to ratify the safeguards but that proved too difficult, he said.

"I was not about to have our troops go there... without those immunities," he said.

The US military's top officer, General Martin Dempsey, told lawmakers he was concerned about the future of Iraq after the pullout but said he agreed with Obama's decision as American forces could not operate without legal protections.

"In anticipation of the question about whether I'm concerned about the future of Iraq, the answer is yes," Dempsey said.

But the general said "this isn't a divorce" and that the United States would maintain a role of training and advising Iraqi security forces.

McCain, the Vietnam war veteran who argued for a "surge" of US forces in 2007, accused the Obama administration of "political expediency" in pulling out troops and said it would leave Iraq vulnerable to the influence of neighboring Iran.

He said he believed that the decision "represents a failure of leadership, both Iraqi and American, that it was a sad case of political expediency supplanting military necessity, both in Baghdad and in Washington, and it will have serious negative consequences for the stability of Iraq and the national security interests of the United States."

Panetta, however, said he was confident that Iraq could manage its security and counter Iran's influence.

"To be sure, Iraq faces a host of remaining challenges, but I believe Iraq is equipped to deal with them," he said.

Iraq's political leaders "basically reject what Iran's trying to do," he added.

Following the US invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, U.S. and Iraqi leaders agreed a security pact in 2008 that called for the departure of all American troops by the end of 2011.

The U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq is in full swing, with convoys and aircraft transporting troops and equipment out of the country before the end of the year.

[buglerbilly]

State Department could buy local food for its workers in Iraq

By Walter Pincus, Wednesday, November 16, 10:55 AM

The State Department, seeking to cut costs in Iraq, is looking to locally purchase some of the food its personnel eat, potentially breaking from the U.S. military’s practice of importing all food and fuel.

American diplomats ate in a cafeteria in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces until 2008, when a new U.S. Embassy compound was completed. The embassy cafeteria has served food imported by the military.

Military commanders required that, for sanitary and security reasons, all food and fuel be trucked in from Kuwait in convoys protected by soldiers or private security contractors.

The State Department’s undersecretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy, said he will continue using the Defense Logistics Agency to bring in food and fuel after January, when U.S. forces are scheduled to be gone, but far fewer guarded convoys will be needed to meet the needs of the government and contracted personnel who will be working under the direction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

While the military did not seek to purchase food or fuel on the Iraqi market, Kennedy said in an interview last week that he had asked the logistics agency to begin looking for reliable local sources for those commodities.

“It will never get down to zero,” Kennedy said about the need for imported goods, but he said that State had already been purchasing some fuel on the Iraqi market. Buying food and fuel locally, Kennedy said, would cut the overall cost and reduce the need for convoy security guards.

The issue arose publicly last month when the Army published a notice that it had quickly increased the number of contracted security teams hired to escort convoys of food and fuel coming from Kuwait. Army units had previously provided security for truckers hired by the Defense Logistics Agency for the convoys, and the truckers’ contracts require that they have security escorts.

In justifying the expanded contract, the Army said that without more contractors, military units scheduled to leave by Oct. 31 “would have to stay in theater longer than planned to provide the escorts and postpone their re-deployment operation.”

The Army said it turned to a private security contractor that already had been supplying security for food and fuel convoys inside Iraq. The firm, Olive Group North America, has had a contract since July to supply 10 convoy-escort teams, according to the Army notice. It will now take over security for shipments coming from Kuwait while gradually building up to 45 convoy-escort teams.

The cost of the contract, as well as the number of armored vehicles and armed security personnel that make up a convoy escort team, were redacted from the notice. However, an earlier version of the contract indicated that each team should consist of three to five lightly armored vehicles and 11 armed guards.

The State Department will pick up the funding of this contract when troops leave and pay out of its fiscal 2012 budget, according to the Army.

Kennedy said Thursday that he had always planned to hire private contractors to guard convoys coming from Kuwait and did not expect any U.S. military units to remain in Iraq to give him security support. If it turned that out some unit remained and could help, that would have been fine. “It is easier to reduce spending than it is to increase,” Kennedy said.

At the same time, State is looking for people to provide expertise in managing the fleet of helicopters and aircraft it will need to operate once U.S. forces leave Iraq.

This week, the department put out a pre-solicitation notice that it will seek a contractor next year to run operations and maintenance for the entire U.S. Embassy compound in central Baghdad. That compound, in what was once known as the Green Zone, “consists of 38 buildings, one service station and 16 guard towers on approximately 104 acres,” according to the notice.

Staff writers Ed O’Keefe and Dan Zak contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

General: Iraq Set for 'Turbulence' as US Departs

November 21, 2011

Agence France-Presse



Iraq's security situation is likely to see "turbulence" as American forces depart and groups including Al-Qaeda seek to take advantage of this, the top US general in the country said on Monday.

General Lloyd Austin, the commander of United States Forces - Iraq, also said that while Iraqi security forces have generally proven competent in internal security, they still have a long way to go on external defence.

"I think as we leave, you can expect to see some turbulence in security initially, and that's because you'll see various elements try to increase their freedom of movement and freedom of action," Austin told reporters in Baghdad.

"Al-Qaeda will be one of those elements," he said.

"We expect that Al-Qaeda will continue to do what it has done in the past," he said, referring specifically to the situation in northern Iraq.

"We expect that it's possible that they could even increase in their capability.

"Of course, that will depend on how effectively the Iraqi security forces and the government of Iraq are able to focus on that network."

Austin also pointed to Iranian-backed militias as a threat to stability.

"When you look at the environment in the south, we've seen activity over the last several months that are from the Iranian-backed militants," he said. "We expect that that type of activity could possibly continue into the future.

"The Iraqi government has to treat them (Shiite militias) based upon what they really are, and again, these are elements that are really focused on creating a Lebanese Hezbollah kind of organisation in this country," he said.

That means "a government within a government, and those elements would have their own militia, that sort of thing. I think as we leave, if these elements are left unchecked, they will then eventually turn on the government."

Austin also said that significant work remains for Iraq's security forces when it comes to external defence.

"They're approaching having the ability to control the internal security environment," Austin said. But "I don't think they have very much of a capability at all to address an external threat.

"They've been focused on internal defence throughout, and quite frankly, to be fair, they've been fighting ever since we stood up the first platoon of troops here, and we've grown significant capability over the last eight and a half years," he said.

"But because of the fact that we've been focused on internal security, we really haven't had the ability to focus in earnest on developing a foundational capability to defend against an external threat, and that's really what they need to begin to focus on in the future.

"We really intend to remain engaged with Iraq," Austin said. "There's likely to be some setbacks, some tough days ahead, but I am very hopeful that we'll stay on course."

US President Barack Obama announced on October 21 that US troops would depart Iraq by year's end.

Austin said on Monday that there are fewer than 20,000 US soldiers left in Iraq, while eight military bases remain to be handed over.

© Copyright 2011 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S.military presence will continue in Iraq

By Walter Pincus, Tuesday, November 22, 11:33 AM

The last 24,000 U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Iraq in the next few weeks so that most can be home before Christmas.

The departure is required by the 2008 Iraq-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement signed by Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then-President George W. Bush and approved by the Iraqi parliament, giving it the status of law.

Meanwhile, don’t believe those agonized voices on Capitol Hill complaining that “having won the war” President Obama is “about to lose the peace” because he didn’t negotiate well enough with Maliki to allow 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops to remain.

There will be a U.S. military presence. The Office of Security Cooperation (OSC), operating under the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, will have several hundred military personnel, and at least an equal number or more U.S. contractors, who will work with Iraqi security forces. Ongoing negotiations with Iraq about OSC activities will determine exact staffing numbers.

Normally, such an office would focus on training for the $8 billion in equipment that Iraq has purchased from U.S. companies. Under current plans, the OSC will do much more.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the other roles Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. He called the OSC in Iraq “a relatively small training and advisory contingent” that “will advise the ISF [Iraq Security Forces] in closing their capability gaps, assist in the expansion of their training programs, and facilitate their procurement of new equipment.”

Once the OSC agreement is completed, Dempsey said, other negotiations will determine “what exactly are additional areas where we can be of assistance, what level of trainers do they need, what can we do with regards to CT [counterterrorism] operations, what will we do on exercises, joint exercises.”

Working out of the embassy and 10 military bases, “We will be embedded with them as trainers not only tactically, but also at the institutional level,” Dempsey said.

Iraq has purchased 140 M1 Abrams tanks, and OSC personnel will stay at the base in Besmaya, east of Baghdad, where there is a tank gunnery range. Iraq will be responsible for the base’s outer perimeter security, Dempsey said, adding, “We’ll have contracted security on the inner perimeter,” where the OSC people will live.

OSC people will partner with 4,500 Iraqi special forces troops, with some working out of their counterterrorism headquarters. Dempsey said current discussions focus on OSC personnel continuing to train these units where they “would stay inside the wire [the base outer perimeter] of places where this counterterror force is located, not go with them on missions . . . [but] continue to train them to go on missions.”

Dempsey said the Iraqi security forces “are extraordinarily good . . . at closing onto a particular [terrorist] target when the target is identified for them . . . generally through human intelligence.” He said they lack “the ability to fuse [signal and human] intelligence . . . and identify a network” and the OSC will have “a cadre of trainers to continue to build that capability and close the gap.”

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, referring to his previous tenure as CIA director, said, “We were helping to provide a lot of intelligence and assistance.” Without providing any details on who or how, he added, “I think some of those efforts will continue to provide intelligence” to the Iraqis.

Another major concern tied to the withdrawal was the role U.S. troops played in northern Iraq, keeping peace between the Kurds’ pesh merga forces and Iraqi government soldiers. U.S. soldiers have been withdrawn from checkpoints but some U.S. officers continued to work at a Combined Coordination Center in Ninewa. OSC personnel will continue to staff that Kurdish-Iraqi facility. “Our presence in the coordination center provides a stabilizing influence to get them to find negotiated answers, not violent answers,” Dempsey told the committee.

Sending U.S. troops back is still a possibility. Maliki is coming to Washington next month and the issue could come up. In January, Gen. James Mattis, head of Central Command, goes to Baghdad for a meeting of the High Coordinating Council set up under the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement. That forum is “to discuss future security cooperation” and is a place to negotiate any new troop arrangements, Dempsey said.

Now, back to those complaints Tuesday from Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) that administration negotiations had failed to keep some American units in Iraq.

Graham implied there was no agreement because leaving thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq after Dec. 31 would hurt President Obama’s reelection chances. He disregarded Panetta’s and Dempsey’s insistence that negotiations broke down primarily because the Iraqis — based on their own domestic political situation — insisted that any remaining U.S. forces would not continue to have immunity from prosecution under Iraq criminal law.

Brett McGurk, a senior Iraq White House adviser under both Bush and Obama, supported the two officials. He testified immediately after Panetta and Dempsey.

“Iraqi and U.S. legal experts had determined legal immunities for U.S. troops could only be granted by the Iraqi parliament [and] the parliament would not do so,” he said.

Iraqi political leaders on Oct. 4 confirmed that parliament would not vote for U.S. troop immunity and that polls showed 90 percent of Iraqis in Baghdad and 80 percent across the country wanted U.S. troops out of the country, McGurk added.

Had the polls indicated a favorable response on the immunity issue “the numbers would surely be higher,” McGurk said.

While listening to the hearing, I recalled a lesson from the late senator J.W. Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for whom I twice worked in the 1960s on 18-month sabbaticals from journalism.

“If you don’t understand the domestic problems of leaders of a country you are dealing with,” Fulbright would say, “you cannot have a realistic foreign policy with them because every country’s foreign policy is driven by its domestic situation.”

[buglerbilly]

NOVEMBER 23, 2011.

U.S. Clashes With Baghdad Over Fate of Last Detainee.

By JULIAN E. BARNES And EVAN PEREZ

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration wants to bring an alleged militant being held in Iraq to the U.S. for likely trial by a military commission, but Baghdad is balking, according to U.S. officials.

Officials say they believe Iran wants custody of the detainee, a former operative for that country—making the case a test of whether Iraq's allegiances will lie with Washington or Tehran after the last U.S. troops pull out next month.


Department of Defense
A U.S. official briefs media in 2007 on Ali Mussa Daqduq.

The case also marks the latest wrinkle in President Barack Obama's efforts to deal with detainees—and could lead to the first military commission proceedings on U.S. soil since World War II. Mr. Obama has collided with political resistance to plans for closing the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and for prosecuting terrorism suspects in civilian courts.

Ali Mussa Daqduq, a Lebanese Hezbollah commander accused by the U.S. of orchestrating the 2007 kidnapping and murder of five U.S. soldiers, is the last remaining detainee in Iraq in American custody.

On Tuesday, the U.S. handed over all of its other remaining detainees, numbering about 35, to the Iraqi government.

The U.S. had told Iraqi officials it planned to end its detention operations in Iraq by Thanksgiving. A defense official said on Tuesday that under the terms of the 2008 security agreement with Iraq, the U.S. can keep custody of Mr. Daqduq until the end of the year.

If last-minute negotiations over Mr. Daqduq fail, he would be transferred to Iraqi custody, which U.S. military officials fear would lead to his eventual release within Iraq or to the Iranian government.

Administration officials say they would like to try Mr. Daqduq by military commission in the U.S., possibly at a military base.

Other U.S. officials said they also are considering a civilian trial for Mr. Daqduq. Justice Department prosecutors have prepared charges against him in case the U.S. takes that route.

Officials had hoped to keep custody of two other detainees, both Iraqis, but negotiations failed and the men were turned over to Iraqi custody Tuesday.


Associated Press
U.S. and Iraqi soldiers on Tuesday.

Some officials say that because Mr. Daqduq isn't an Iraqi citizen, Baghdad may be more willing to allow the Americans to bring him to the U.S. for trial. While talks with the Iraqis often go to the last minute, many officials are skeptical that a deal can be made.

Mr. Daqduq was captured in 2007. Though he is U.S. custody, the Iraqis control the prison where he is held, and the U.S. can't remove him without Iraqi permission.

A senior military official said Mr. Daqduq was a "clear and present danger."

Yet Iraqi officials consistently dismiss the quality of evidence against detainees held by the U.S. in Iraq. Boshu Ibrahim, Iraq's deputy minister of justice, said there isn't any hard evidence against the detainees that were held by the U.S. and predicted that Iraqi courts would set them free.

Iraq has a poor track record of holding Shiite detainees accused of killing Americans. Earlier this year, a forensic analysis of improvised rockets fired at American bases yielded the fingerprints of an Iranian-trained bomb maker who the U.S. had transferred to the Iraqi government and was later released.

"The government of Iraq has been lukewarm at best at extraditing some of these guys," the senior military official said. "Which means they go back to the Iraqis. Which means they go back to fight another day."

U.S. officials said Iranian pressure on Iraq has complicated the negotiations to bring Mr. Daqduq to the U.S. As American forces leave Iraq, U.S. officials are hoping to improve ties with Baghdad and coax the country toward an alignment with other Arab nations.

"I would imagine there are significant elements in Iran who are willing to spend a fair amount of political capital to prevent America from pulling a Hezbollah commander out when we go," said Robert Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas and an expert on national-security law.

Iranian officials have denied U.S. charges they have been intervening in Iraqi affairs. Hakem al-Zameli, a member of the Iraqi parliament loyal to Iranian-backed Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, denied that there is any pressure on Iraq from Tehran to release Mr. Daqduq.Mr. Zameli said Mr. Daqduq must face an Iraqi trial.

Mr. Zameli was imprisoned alongside Mr. Daqduq at for about nine months at Camp Cropper, a U.S.-run holding facility in Baghdad. An Iraqi court found Mr. Zameli not guilty on charges of running Shiite death squads.

If Mr. Daqduq is brought to the U.S., officials are considering using the Charleston Naval Brig in South Carolina or Fort Leavenworth, Kan. to detain him, pending trial.

Allegations against Ali Mussa Daqduq

- 1983: Ali Mussa Daqduq joins Hezbollah in Lebanon
- 2005: In Tehran, Daqduq trains members of the Iranian military's elite Qods force
- 2006: Makes trips to Iraq to monitor training of Iranian-aligned militias attacking U.S. and British forces
- 2007: Militant group trained by Daqduq on Jan. 20 kills five American soldiers. Daduq is captured on March 20. He is held at Camp Cropper, a U.S. detention facility near the Baghdad airport
- 2010: The U.S. hands formal control of Camp Cropper to Iraq, continuing to hold some prisoners, including Daqduq, in joint U.S.-Iraqi custody
- Nov. 22, 2011: The U.S. hands over all of its detainees in Iraq, except Daqduq, to full Iraqi control.

Mr. Obama took office vowing to close Guantanamo Bay, but his plans for transferring detainees to U.S. sites and holding civilian trials were blocked by political opposition, including from Democrats. Still, he hasn't placed a single new detainee at Guantanamo. The case of a Somali militant who was captured in April and held for two months on a U.S. warship, and then transferred to New York for a civilian trial, reinvigorated the debate.

The U.S. has tried a number of terrorism suspects in military commissions at the Guantanamo Bay prison. The Obama administration and Congress developed a revamped system of military tribunals in 2009.

Under international law it is particularly problematic to try someone captured in Iraq in a military commission outside the country, said David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former Naval officer.

"The reality is that federal trials stand on very solid legal grounds, have almost none of the issues that will tie up military commission convictions in direct and collateral legal challenges for years," he said.

A successful military trial within the U.S. could help convince Congress that such proceedings could be safely held on American soil, potentially bolstering the administration's case that the prison at Guantanamo can be closed and the detainees held there tried elsewhere.

Bringing Mr. Daqduq to the U.S. would also help resolve some legal questions about the military commissions system, including whether terrorist detainees have the same constitutional rights as criminal defendants, such as the right to a speedy trial and protections from unreasonable search.

"It might be a test to see if all rights of the constitution apply," said Charles Stimson, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for detainee affairs. "The decks could be cleared and the administration could argue they can move all military commissions out of Guantanamo and to the United States."

—Sam Dagher and Munaf Ammar in Baghdad contributed to this article.
Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Up to 763 Contractors to Train Iraqi Forces: U.S.

By W.G. DUNLOP, Agence France-Presse

Published: 23 Nov 2011 14:36

BAGHDAD - A maximum of 763 civilian contractors and 157 U.S. military personnel will train Iraqi security forces post-2011, if the Iraqi government gives its approval, a U.S. officer said Nov. 23.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced Oct. 21 that U.S. troops would depart Iraq by year's end, after negotiations with Baghdad on a larger-scalepost-2011 U.S. military training mission broke down.

The military personnel and contractors are part of the Office of Security Cooperation - Iraq (OSC-I), which falls under U.S. embassy authority, Lt. Col. Tom Hanson, director of strategic communications for OSC-I, told AFP.

"The 157 (military personnel) are here, and the up to 763 number is based on the number of active foreign military sales cases at any given time," he said.

As not all are active at once - the 763 contractors will probably not be in Iraq at the same time, he added.

The contractors are "involved in some aspect of bringing the equipment to the Iraqis and helping them learn how to operate it, and bringing (them) to a minimum level of proficiency on it, whether it's a tank or an airplane or an air traffic control system or a radar," Hanson said.

Meanwhile, "most of the uniformed personnel are program managers, so they're supervising contractors." The aim "is to help the Iraqi security forces build their capability, build the proficiency, and modernize their equipment," he said.

The contractors are not required to be American citizens, Hanson said, adding that there are OSC-I contractors of various nationalities, including some Iraqis. OSC-I military personnel have immunity from Iraqi prosecution, but the contractors do not.

"The uniformed military personnel are protected the same way that the diplomats in the embassy are. The contractors do not have any immunity, any legal protections right now," Hanson said.

The issue of immunity scuppered the talks on a post-2011 U.S. military training mission.

Washington insisted that the trainers must have immunity, while Baghdad said that was not necessary.

Both Iraq and the U.S. have consistently said that Iraqi forces still require significant improvement.

Iraqi military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari, was quoted in an October report from a U.S. watchdog as saying Iraq "will be unable to execute the full spectrum of external defense missions until sometime between 2020 and 2024."

Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said earlier this week that Iraqi forces were near "having the ability to control the internal security environment".

But "I don't think they have very much of a capability at all to address an external threat," Austin said.

[buglerbilly]

US Military Leaves Mark On Iraqi Youth

November 23, 2011

Associated Press|by Bushra Juhi

BAGHDAD - After more than eight years in Iraq, the departing American military's legacy includes a fledgling democracy, bitter memories of war, and for the nation's youth, rap music, tattoos and slang.

In other words, as the Dec. 31 deadline for completing their withdrawal approaches, U.S. troops are leaving behind the good, the bad and what "Lil Czar" Mohammed calls the "punky."

Sporting baggy soldiers' camouflage pants, high-top sneakers and a back-turned "N.Y." baseball cap, the chubby 22-year-old was showing off his break-dancing moves on a sunny afternoon in a Baghdad park. A $ sign was shaved into his closely cropped hair.

"While others might stop being rappers after the Americans leave, I will go on (rapping) till I reach N.Y.," said Mohammed, who teaches part-time at a primary school.

His forearm bore a tattoo of dice above the words "GANG STAR." That was the tattooist's mistake, he said; it was supposed to say "gangsta."

Eight million Iraqis - a quarter of the population - have been born since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, and nearly half the country is under 19, according to Brett McGurk, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and, until recently, senior adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

So after years of watching U.S. soldiers on patrol, it's inevitable that hip-hop styles, tough-guy mannerisms and slangy English patter would catch on with young Iraqis.

Calling themselves "punky," or "hustlers," many are donning hoodie sweat shirts, listening to 50 Cent or Eminem and watching "Twilight" vampire movies. They eat hamburgers and pizza and do death-defying Rollerblade runs through speeding traffic. Teens spike their hair or shave it Marine-style. The "Iraq Rap" page on Facebook has 1,480 fans.

To many of their fellow Iraqis, the habits appear weird, if not downright offensive. But to the youths, it is a vital part of their pursuit of the American dream as they imagine it to be.

"Lil Czar" Mohammed, a Shiite Muslim, says he was introduced to American culture by a Christian friend, Laith, who subsequently had to flee the anti-Christian violence that broke out in Baghdad. "I had nothing to help my friend, he left," he said. "But when I get the money and become a rich boss, I will tell my friend Laith to come back."

Meanwhile, he said, he is trying to record a rap song in Arabic and English. "It is about our situation. About no jobs for us."

"I love the American soldiers," said Mohammed Adnan, 15, who pastes imitation tattoos on his arm. Adnan lives in the Sadr City, the Baghdad base of followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has threatened violence against U.S. troops if they stay beyond 2011.

But, surprisingly, Adnan says the U.S. gangsta look is accepted in his neighborhood.

"All young men in Sadr City wear the same clothes when we hang around," he said. "Nobody minds. And we're invited to weddings or celebrations where we perform break-dancing."

It all adds up to a taste of the wide world for a society which lived for decades under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship that deprived them of satellite TV, cell phones and the Internet, and then through invasion, terrorism and sectarian killing.

Not all Iraqis welcome the culture the Americans brought. Dr. Fawzia A. al-Attia, a sociologist at Baghdad University, says one result is that young Iraqis now reject school uniforms, engage in forbidden love affairs and otherwise rebel against their elders.

"There was no strategy to contain this sudden openness," she said. "Teenagers, especially in poor areas where parents are of humble origin and humble education, started to adopt the negative aspects of the American society because they think that by imitating the Americans, they obtain a higher status in society.

"These young Iraqi people need to be instructed," she said. "They need to know about the positive aspects of the American society to imitate."

Like many Iraqis, high school student Maytham Karim wants to learn English. But the English he hears most often from his peers - and mostly those who listen to American music - is laden with profanity.

"The F- and the 'mother' words are used a lot, which is a very negative thing," Karim said.

As U.S. forces began closing their bases Iraqis rummaged through their garbage for discarded uniforms, caps and boots to sell to youngsters who pay top dollar to dress like soldiers. Baghdad's tattoo business is also booming. Hassan Hakim's tattoo parlor in affluent Karradah neighborhood is covered with glossy pictures of half-naked men and women showing off their ink, regardless of Islam's strictures on baring the skin.

The storefront caused a stir when it opened last summer, but complaints soon died down and the business is thriving.

"Iraqi youth are eager in a very unusual way to get tattoo on their bodies, probably because of the American presence here," said Hakim, 32, who is attending graduate school at Baghdad's Fine Arts Academy. "Four years ago, people were concealing their tattoos when in public, but now they use their designs to show off. It is the vogue now."

Most of Hakim's customers are Iraqi security guards imitating their American counterparts. They demand tattoos of coffins, skulls, snakes, dragons, bar codes, Gothic letters and crosses. Female customers prefer flowers and butterflies on their shoulders. Also, many young women now dare to wear tight tops and hip-hugging jeans with their hijabs, or head coverings. Some also sport miniature dogs.

Showbiz and military chic aside, young Iraqis agree that the American troops opened their minds to the outside world. The wait for a place in an English classes, for example, can last months.

"I found that all Iraqis want to learn English," said Nawras Mohammed, and using the Internet or watching satellite TV is fine. But users need to be selective, the 24-year-old college graduate said.

"The positive and the negative aspects of the American presence," she said, "depend on us."

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

NOVEMBER 26, 2011.

Syria Chaos Worries Iraq

By SAM DAGHER

BAGHDAD—Iraq's government is increasingly worried that a prolonged and bloody standoff in neighboring Syria could upset its own fragile security and fractious political order, especially as the U.S. military prepares to withdraw its last troops from the country.


Reuters
Iraqi soldiers patrolled in July along the border with Syria, amid fears of a spillover of violent conflict.

Syria on Friday missed a deadline by the Arab League demanding that Damascus comply with a plan to end its violent crackdown on antigovernment protesters. That set the stage for the 21-nation group—Syria's membership was suspended two weeks ago—to impose economic sanctions intended to cripple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey, once a close ally of Syria, on Friday said it would work with the Arab League and add its own sanctions to any the pan-Arab body decides to impose. Arab League measures could be formally announced or adopted on Sunday.

But Iraq has resisted Arab efforts to further isolate Syria and has tried to cast itself in the role of mediator between the regime and Arab states pushing against Mr. Assad.

Iraq fears the fall of Mr. Assad largely because his regime began last year to collaborate with Baghdad in curbing militant Islamist groups linked to al Qaeda. The regime's collapse could revitalize those militants, said Hussein al-Assadi, a senior security adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Iraq is also in the middle of a high-stakes regional power play that pits neighboring Sunni-dominated states such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia against Shiite Iran, a Syrian ally that wields significant influence over the Shiite-led government in Iraq.

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose anti-American movement is a key partner in Iraq's coalition government, last week called on Syrian protesters to avoid violence and embrace dialogue with the Assad regime.

Glad to see the Iranian Puppet operating at the behest of his Masters in Tehran...........:violent

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says a worsening crisis in Syria coupled with the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, which is to be completed by the end of the year, will only sharpen the regional struggle.

"Nobody knows what the day after will be like, what kind of a regime would be there, how long this will take," he said, referring to Syria. Mr. Zebari signaled that Iraq wouldn't abide by any prospective Arab League sanctions on Syria, which would be nonbinding.

Despite its strained military capabilities, Iraq has stepped up security this month along the 375-mile border with Syria in an attempt to protect itself from the fallout of clashes there.

"I do not know if we are fully ready if a civil war breaks out in Syria," said Mr. Assadi.

Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, warned on Monday that al Qaeda-linked militants could seek to increase their freedom of movement in Iraq after American soldiers leave. Such groups suffered setbacks in Iraq from U.S. and Iraqi military operations and cooperation from Syrian authorities in stemming the flow of extremists into Iraq.

He urged the Iraqi government to maintain pressure on all extremist groups including those allegedly backed by Iran. Gen. Austin said Iraq's concerns about events in Syria were understandable but added that it was "very difficult to speculate on outcomes."

Iraq has long had a complex relationship with Syria. Both societies are similar mosaics of ethnicities, sects and tribes, and the threat of civil war in Syria between the majority Sunnis and President Assad's Alawite minority has rattled a polarized Iraq still reeling from years of sectarian warfare. There are also over 112,000 registered Iraqi refugees living in Syria, and more that have not registered with the United Nations refugee agency.

Antagonism and mistrust between the neighbors reigned during the rule of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, whose Baath Party was rival to the Baathists that have ruled Syria for decades.

When Mr. Hussein's regime was toppled in 2003, Damascus was hostile to the new U.S.-backed order in Iraq. U.S. officials have repeatedly accused Syria of providing refuge to former senior figures in Hussein's regime who were plotting against the government in Baghdad.

Syria was also accused of turning its borders into a gateway for extremists flocking to Iraq.

"In the past hundreds if not thousands of suicide bombers came through that border," says Mr. Zebari. Syria has denied this.

The low point in relations between Iraq and Syria was in August 2009 when Mr. Maliki publicly lashed out at Mr. Assad's regime for sheltering the alleged masterminds and perpetrators of a series of devastating suicide truck bombs against ministries in Baghdad that killed and wounded hundreds.

Diplomatic relations were suspended at the time but the two sides mended fences a year later with pledges of security cooperation by Mr. Assad and inducements by the Iraqi government that included strengthening economic ties and implementing future oil and gas projects.

Mr. Maliki's adviser, Mr. Assadi, said Syria last year stationed more forces on their side of the border, provided Baghdad with intelligence and lists of suspects and restricted the movements and communications ability of Iraqi government opponents still residing in Damascus.

Mr. Assadi says this security cooperation with Syria has almost disappeared with all military and security resources of the Syrian regime channeled toward battling the eight-month uprising. He says this has prompted Iraq to take unilateral steps to try to protect itself against a worst-case scenario in Syria. This has included more soldiers, patrols, outposts and reconnaissance at the border, he says.

Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Iraq’s young prepare to inherit a war-scarred nation after U.S. withdrawal

By Dan Zak, Sunday, November 27, 3:37 AM

baghdad — In a darkened room on the second floor of a government building, 100 young Iraqis conspired to revolutionize their country.

School curricula should employ interactive Internet games to stimulate learning, said a 28-year-old Web developer.

April 1 should be a cultural holiday to promote Iraq’s bygone status as a cradle of intellectualism, said a 23-year-old government employee.

Women should harness social media to bridge the gender gap, said a 22-year-old activist.

And on it went, a parade of young people auditioning for a prestigious conference. Each shared hopeful but vague ideas that envisioned a rosy future beyond Iraq’s turbulent present. The unspoken challenge, though, was turning dreams into plans, and notions into demands.

“We are free, and this could not have happened without the U.S. But now we are fighting to grow,” said civil engineer Abdul Ghany, 27, a volunteer organizer. “Not many young people know what they want, exactly.”

They do know what they feel. Their country was turned upside down by the American-led invasion in 2003, and now Iraq’s young — their worldview indelibly shaped by a U.S. military presence that ends next month — are preparing to inherit a nation that still struggles to right itself.

Some young Iraqis say they are glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein but feel less safe — and therefore less free — than before 2003, a sentiment reflected in dozens of interviews in eight provinces.

They view their government as a pseudo-regime that deprives them of basic rights, and they worry that their peers are being lured into the ethnic, sectarian and partisan traps of their elders. They think the world is fixating on revolutions in other Arab countries while ignoring a rotting democracy in Baghdad and their generation’s struggle to live the freedom that was promised to them 81 / 2 years ago.

“Our generation has seen enough,” said Baghdad resident Mustafa Hamza el-Ebadi, 21, who will graduate this spring with a degree in communication and engineering and wants to move to the United States. “When we were kids, there were economic sanctions. When we were teenagers, there were bodies in the street. And now there is no space to live.”

Growing up at war

About half of Iraq’s 33 million people are 19 or younger, and no Iraqi born since Saddam came to power in 1979 has known the country to be without war or dictatorship.

Iraqis in their late teens and 20s “grew up in a very dangerous climate” that did not foster a “civilian mentality,” according to Abduljabbar Ahmad Abdullah, dean of the political science college at the University of Baghdad.

“The political socialization of that individual is not correct,” Abdullah said over tea in his campus office in October. “Every student belongs to his clan, not his country.”

When Iraqis talk about the fate of the younger generation, they use expressions similar to “crossroads” and “tipping point.”

“We are at a very critical period, with the deterioration of security and the elevation of corruption,” activist Hanaa Edwar said at a September peace festival in Baghdad’s Zawra Park. “Elections are not enough. We need active participation from young people. They are not yet polluted by politicians. They need more than hope. They need to be empowered.”

Over the past year, Rutgers University political science professor Eric Davis has conducted multiple focus groups of hundreds of Iraqis between the ages of 12 and 30. Broadly speaking, they said that they view sectarianism as damaging to their future and that they prefer not to belong to a political party. Most said that their lives have improved “somewhat” or “not much” since the U.S.-led invasion but indicated that they would not leave the country if given the opportunity, according to discussions compiled by Davis, a former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers.

The problem, according to Davis, is that the economic and political structures are rigged to exclude most Iraqis, especially the young. Iraq ranks No. 175 of 178 as one of the world’s most corrupt countries on a list compiled by Transparency International.

Young Iraqis “have strong scores for civic motivation but no institutional outlet for that — that’s very damning,” said Davis, who will publish his findings next year in a special report for the U.S. Institute of Peace.

‘An impossible mission’

Iraq is just beginning to grapple with the repeated traumas it has suffered. Of the 8,000 clients at the Kirkuk Center for Torture Victims — which opened in 2005 to serve victims of Hussein’s regime — one-quarter are now dealing with psychological issues related to trauma since the American-led invasion.

“Some teenagers have a kind of phobia of going out because they’ve been raised in an environment of car explosions and kidnappings,” said Yousif Abdulmuhsin Salih, the center’s project manager. “And if parents are not treated, they can transfer their psychological condition to their children.”

Violence and dysfunction are part of growing up in Iraq and, as a result, people fend for themselves, said a 29-year-old named Mohamed, who insisted his last name be withheld because he has worked for the U.S. military and fears reprisal.

Mohamed, who wants to live anywhere else but Iraq, believes his safety dwindles every day. He put his life on hold as he waits for a special immigrant visa from the U.S. government. Why buy a new car, why make home repairs, why invest in the present when he might be allowed to leave tomorrow?

“There’s no sense of responsibility and accountability,” said Mohamed, sitting on a curb in Baghdad during a break from his work at a non-governmental organization. “Everyone looks after their own interests, even myself. . . . The Americans made mistakes, but we’re the ones who started fighting ourselves. It’s an impossible mission to fix this country.”

Some young Iraqis are trying. The slogan for the first-ever TEDxBaghdad conference, a satellite version of the California-born TED conference, was “Make the impossible possible.” After the auditions last month, hundreds of Iraqis sat this month in red chairs on elaborately patterned carpeting in a ballroom of the al-Rasheed Hotel, ensconced in the heavily fortified International Zone, formerly known as the Green Zone.

The National Youth Orchestra of Iraq performed. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki attended. Environmentalists, musicians, philanthropists and educators touted Iraq’s limitless possibilities. Participants tweeted it as a “landmark day” and “like a dream” — a dream that, for now, needs to be surrounded by concrete blast walls and lies out of reach of most Iraqis.

[buglerbilly]

White House: We’re Really, Really Ending The Iraq War

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author November 30, 2011 | 12:02 pm

Updated 2:23 p.m.



The White House says it’s on track to remove the remaining 15,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by December 31, despite some apparent misreporting from Baghdad – which, um, we breathlessly repeated.

In a joint press appearance on Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki seemed to suggest that U.S. troops might return to Iraq in 2012. Maliki, whose government has balked at a continued presence, said that there’s “no doubt the U.S. forces have a role in providing training of Iraqi forces.” Biden seemed to go farther, talking about a “robust security relationship,” including on subjects like “training, intelligence and counterterrorism.”

But National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor tells Danger Room that the U.S. role in the war really, really will end with the New Year.

“There is no change in administration policy. All troops will be out at the end of the year,” Vietor says. There is “no resumption of negotiations” with the Iraqis about a possible residual force.

Instead, a rump of 150 U.S. servicemen, taking their cues from the State Department, will assist the Iraqis with “the weapons they buy.” Vietor continues, “It’s not combat, and it’s not SOF,” referring to Special Operations Forces. At most, U.S. forces will provide “technical advice on counterterrorism” or hold joint training exercises. Even that is a hypothetical at this point — apparently, what Biden means to discuss with the Iraqis this week.

We’ve been skeptical. Ever since Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Senate that al-Qaida still has a whopping 1,000 loyalists in Iraq, we’ve wondered how the U.S. would walk away from those targets. When Obama made his “we’re outta here” announcement in October, we told you to expect a continued “shadow presence by the CIA, and possibly the Joint Special Operations Command, to hunt persons affiliated with al-Qaida.” (And that’s leaving aside the 5,000-plus mercs who’ll guard U.S. diplomats.)

Here’s the backstory.

All year long, with the pullout looming, the U.S. military has publicly expressed its strong desire to keep a residual force in Iraq. Estimates of the size of that force vary — they hover around 10,000 troops — but the military leaned hard on Iraqi politicians to cement it. Obama even dispatched Brett McGurk, the Bush administration official who negotiated the 2008 accord with Iraq stipulating a 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal, to Baghdad to see if Iraq would give the U.S. some wiggle room. “Dammit, make a decision,” was the way Panetta put it in July.

It turned out their decision was no. In October, the Iraqi parliament declined to grant U.S. troops legal immunity from prosecution after 2011, a key requirement by the U.S. for a residual force. Once they did, Obama conveniently forgot his months’ worth of efforts to extend the lifespan of U.S. troops in Iraq and billed the diplomatic failure as the steadfast fulfillment of a campaign promise. “Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,” he told the cameras on October 21.

But then Obama got battered by Republican politicians for not pushing hard enough with the Iraqis on the residual force. “This administration was committed to the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and they made it happen,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hectored Panetta earlier this month.

If it’s really the case that the U.S. is truly drawing a line under the war, as Obama is promising and the White House is reaffirming, then McCain’s not going to get any happier. “What [Biden and Maliki] are talking about is how the U.S. and Iraq will work together on security issues going forward,” Vietor says. “No U.S. troops [and] no Special Forces will be based in Iraq after this year.”

Photo: Flickr/U.S. Forces-Iraq

[buglerbilly]

Iraqi Officials in Russia to Talk Arms Deal

December 01, 2011

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi delegation was visiting Moscow on Thursday to negotiate an arms deal aimed at boosting the country's security capabilities after a scheduled US military pullout, lawmaker Falah Zidan said.

"The delegation in Russia is holding talks about equipping the Iraqi army with weapons that could be used after US withdrawal to maintain security in Iraq," said Zidan, a member of the parliament's Security and Defence Committee, according to government newspaper Al-Sabah.

The negotiations with Russia are part of efforts by Baghdad to diversify sources of arms supplies, which are mostly provided by the United States, the newspaper reported.

The news of the negotiations with Russia came one day after US Vice President Joe Biden visited Baghdad, announcing a "new stage" of strategic partnership after his country's troops complete their withdrawal by the end of December.

© Copyright 2011 Deutsche Presse-Agentur. All rights reserved

[buglerbilly]

Biden, Iraqi Leaders Praise Troops' Sacrifices

December 01, 2011

Associated Press|by Rebecca Santana

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq - Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday thanked U.S. and Iraqi troops for sacrifices that he said allowed for the end of the nearly nine-year-long war, even as attacks around the country killed 20 people, underscoring the security challenges Iraq still faces.

Biden's comments came during a special ceremony at Camp Victory, one of the last American bases in this country where the U.S. military footprint is swiftly shrinking. The ceremony was hosted by the Iraqi government as a way to commemorate the sacrifices of U.S., Iraqi and coalition forces during the nearly nine-year-long war.

"Because of you and the work that those of you in uniform have done, we are now able to end this war," Biden told the hundreds of American and Iraqi service members assembled at Al Faw palace, which was built by Saddam Hussein.

Joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, Biden said the United States takes "immense" pride in what American troops have done in Iraq. He said they are leaving with their heads held high.

By the symbolism at Al Faw, which has served as the U.S. military's headquarters almost since the first U.S. troops battled their way through here in 2003, it was apparent who was on the way in and who was on the way out.

Iraqi flags and tinsel, a favorite Iraqi decoration for festive occasions, replaced the American flags that used to line the driveway to the palace. Iraqi flags hung from the palace walls. After the ceremony was over, the Iraqi band members took out their packs and started smoking - almost unheard of in U.S. military facilities.

Talabani, referring at times to "our friends, the Americans," praised the troops for their sacrifices and said that based on the "joint efforts" of the coalition and Iraqi forces, stability in the country has been restored.

Biden's eighth visit to Iraq since being elected started on Tuesday and was meant to chart a path for a new U.S. relationship with a country that is home to billions of barrels of oil reserves and more closely aligned with neighboring Iran than the U.S. would like.

But even as the remaining American troops prepare to leave by the end of the year, violence and instability are still a constant in Iraq, albeit dramatically less so than at the height of the conflict.

Two separate attacks on Thursday in Iraq's northeast killed 20 people and wounded 32.

A parked car bomb exploded at an open marketplace in the town of Khalis as morning shoppers were starting to arrive, killing 13 and wounding 28 people, according to the police and Faris al-Azawi, the spokesman of Diyala's health directorate.

Khalis, a Shiite enclave 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Baghdad, lies in the largely Sunni province of Diyala that was a hotbed of al-Qaida in Iraq during the height of the country's violence in 2004-2007.

Earlier at dawn - also in Diyala - gunmen stormed the home of an anti-al-Qaida Sunni fighter in the town of Buhris, killing him and six of his family members, said al-Azawi. Buhriz is located about 35 miles (60 kilometers) north of Baghdad.

Iraqi security officials maintain that they are fully prepared for the American withdrawal, which is required under a 2008 security pact between the U.S. and Iraq. About 13,000 U.S. troops are still in the country, down from a one-time high of about 170,000. All of those troops will be out of the country by the end of December.

But many Iraqis are concerned that insurgents may use the transition period to launch more attacks in a bid to regain their former prominence and destabilize the country.

Thursday's deaths bring to at least 56 the number of Iraqis killed in separate attacks across the country in the past eight days, a warning that even more violence may be in the offing ahead of the American withdrawal.

Biden did not address the day's violence directly, but emphasized that Iraqi security forces would be able to protect the country without their one-time American military backers.

"It doesn't mean that the threats are over. Far from it. Violent extremists continue to launch appalling attacks against innocent civilians, fire deadly rockets at diplomats merely trying to do their jobs and threaten Iraqi troops and police," Biden said.

"But Iraqi security forces have been well-trained, prepared and you are fully capable of meeting the challenges," he said.

The vice president also alluded to the threat of neighboring Iran, which U.S. officials have repeatedly accused of financing Shiite militias who then attack American troops and diplomats. In what appeared to be a warning to Iran - perhaps Iraq as well - Biden described the Iraqi spirit as "independent."

"The Iraqi people will not, have not, and will not again yield to any external domination, and they would never abide another nation violating their sovereignty by funding and directing militias that use Iraqi terrain for proxy battles that kill innocent Iraqi civilians," he said.

---

Associated Press Writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report from Baghdad.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Baghdad bomb was an attempt to kill me, says Iraq's prime minister

But Nouri al-Maliki denies that explosion signals a deterioration in Green Zone security ahead of US forces' planned pullout

David Batty and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 December 2011 15.10 GMT


US vice president Joe Biden talks to Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki (right) in Baghdad two days after the bomb attack. Photograph: EPA

Iraq's prime minister has said a bombing inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone earlier this week was an assassination attempt.

Nouri al-Maliki said that initial intelligence on the bomb that exploded opposite the parliament buildings on Monday suggested he was the target.

But he denied that the explosion signalled a deterioration in security in the area, which is meant to be one of the most secure in Iraq.

"The preliminary intelligence information says that the car was due to enter parliament and stay there and not to explode. It was supposed to explode on the day I entered parliament," he told the Associated Press.

The Baghdad military spokesman, Qassim al-Moussawi, confirmed that Maliki was the target.

He said the driver of the vehicle tried to join a convoy going into the parliament grounds but was turned back by officials at the checkpoint because he lacked proper identification.

The driver then drove to a parking area opposite the parliament entrance, and the vehicle exploded seconds later.

Maliki said the bomb was probably assembled inside the Green Zone and was not very powerful.

Authorities are still trying to identify a body found near the wrecked car to determine whether he was the bomber or a bystander. Two other people were wounded in the blast.

Maliki played down suggestions that the attack, in a compound that also contains other Iraqi government institutions and the US Embassy, was a sign that Iraqi forces would be unable to handle security after US forces withdraw this month.

"I don't think that this says something about the security situation in the country," the prime minister said.

"Such breaches can happen in any country or anywhere. It was a very simple operation. I cannot see in this operation any indication of a security deterioration in Iraq."

He blamed al-Qaida in Iraq and Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party for the violence.

"They are opposing me, the parliament speaker and the parliament and the whole political process, so whomever the victim of their operation will be, it is a victory for them," he said.

Maliki said he had previously told the speaker, Osama al-Nujaifi, that there might be an attempt to kill one of them at the parliament and advised him to exercise caution.

Maliki said Iraqi security forces were still looking for at least four people believed to have played a role in the plot.

[buglerbilly]

Iraq kidnapping threat threatens U.S. civilian effort

By Liz Sly, Tuesday, December 6, 9:33 AM

BAGHDAD — A serious kidnapping threat to Westerners in Baghdad has forced American diplomats to drastically curtail their movements ahead of the complete withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq by the end of the month.

The growing threat illuminates concerns about the capacity of a stepped-up U.S. civilian effort to operate in Iraq once the military has gone, and in particular the risk that neighboring Iran will attempt to undermine American influence by using allied militias to abduct Western civilians.

The first warning of a “possible increased kidnapping threat” was posted on the Web site of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Nov. 22. That was upgraded to a “significant threat of kidnapping” on Nov. 28 and then to a “severe threat of kidnapping” on Saturday.

For the first time, the advisories addressed to U.S. citizens specify that the threat applies to the Green Zone, also known as the International Zone, the heavily fortified enclave in central Baghdad where the U.S. Embassy is located and where most Iraqi government officials live.

Because of the threats, “the U.S. Embassy has greatly enhanced the security posture for U.S. Government employees,” said the latest warning. “This enhanced security posture includes severely restricted movement within the IZ.”

Westerners in the zone are venturing out only for short journeys and with armed escorts, said an American resident who asked not to be identified because he fears for his safety. Most embassy employees are confined to the fortified embassy compound, he said. Rumors that kidnappings have occurred are flying. “Everyone is going hysterical,” he said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Michael McClellan declined to comment further on the nature of the threats or their impact on U.S. diplomats’ ability to function. “We are definitely not going to discuss any security arrangements . . . as a matter of policy,” he said.

But the threat underscored the difficulty the United States will face in wielding influence in Iraq. With only 9,000 troops left in the country, the U.S. military is on track to complete the withdrawal on schedule by Dec. 31, said Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the U.S. military.

Though Sunni extremist groups linked to what is now known as al-Qaeda in Iraq were responsible for most kidnappings of Westerners in the early years of the war, U.S. officials and security experts say the biggest threat in Baghdad now comes from Shiite militant groups affiliated with Iran, which could use kidnappings to promote Iranian influence in Iraq at the expense of the West.

“The increased tensions between the West and Iran are raising concerns that Iran may single out Westerners for kidnapping to pressure Western governments,” said John Drake, a risk consultant in Baghdad with the British security firm AKE. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is still active, however, especially in the mostly Sunni northern and western provinces, he said.

The United States has pledged that it will not abandon Iraq after the troops go home, and Vice President Biden visited Baghdad last week to reinforce the message. The State Department plans an unprecedented diplomatic footprint involving as many as 16,000 people, 80 percent of them private security contractors. They will fulfill many of the functions that were performed by the military, including running a small airport and training Iraqi security forces.

The embassy has not relied on the U.S. military for security for many years, and it uses contractors to protect diplomats as they move around. But if the threat of kidnapping confines diplomats to the embassy, it will be harder for them to meet with Iraqis and carry out projects.

The efficacy of kidnapping as a tool to undermine political influence was demonstrated by the abductions of Americans and other Westerners by Shiite militants backed by Iran in Lebanon in the 1980s. Western journalists, aid workers, teachers and business executives fled the country as the kidnappings surged, leaving in tatters to this day a U.S. effort to turn Lebanon into a U.S. ally.

Hezbollah, the Shiite movement that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States in part because of its links to those who carried out the kidnappings, controls the Lebanese government.

The last abduction of Westerners in Iraq was carried out in 2007 by the Asaib Ahl al-Haq group, which the U.S. military says is trained and funded by Iran. The only hostage who survived said after his release in late 2009 that the five Britons were held in Iran for at least some of their captivity.

The safety of the Green Zone was called into question last week after a suicide bombing outside the Iraqi parliament, the most serious breach of security since a suicide vest bombing there in 2007. Iraqi politicians, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, have competed to assert that they were the target of this latest attack.

The U.S. military handed full control of Green Zone security to the Iraqi army in June 2010.

[buglerbilly]

Civilian killings created insurmountable hurdle to extended U.S. troop presence in Iraq

By Liz Sly, Sunday, December 11, 10:05 AM

HADITHA, IRAQ — In the accounting of what was won and lost in America’s Iraq war, this sleepy farming town deep in the western desert will rank as a place where almost everything was lost.

It was here, on Nov. 19, 2005, that a group of Marines went on a shooting spree in which 24 Iraqi civilians were killed. Their patrol had been hit by a roadside bomb and one of their comrades was dead. They ordered five men out of a taxi and gunned them down. Then they went into three nearby homes and shot 19 people, including 11 women and children.

On those facts, U.S. and Iraqi accounts agree. On just about everything else — why it happened, whether it was justified and how it was resolved — they do not.

And in those dueling perceptions, over the killings in Haditha and others nationwide, lay the undoing of the U.S. military’s hopes of maintaining a long-term presence here. When it came to deciding the future of American troops in Iraq, the irreconcilable difference that stood in the way of an agreement was a demand by Iraqi politicians for an end to the grant of immunity that has protected on-duty U.S. soldiers from Iraqi courts.

“The image of the American soldier is as a killer, not a defender. And how can you give a killer immunity?” said Sami al-Askari, a lawmaker who is also a close aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

So the troops are going home this month, leaving a question mark over what had been one of the chief goals of the war — to nurture a strategic ally in the heart of the Middle East.

They leave behind a legacy that will forever be tainted in the minds of many Iraqis by the casualties inflicted by the American military on civilians. It’s the raw nerve that jangles, a sensitivity that grates on both sides even as the troops stream out of the country.

The Iraqi government’s decision “has saved the lives of many Iraqis,” said Yusuf al-Anizi, 38, the embittered brother of one of the Haditha victims. “Otherwise, we would have more tragedies to pile on the many tragedies we have seen.”

Exactly how many Iraqis were killed by Americans may never be known. An analysis last year by King’s College London of 92,614 civilian deaths reported from 2003 through March 2008 by Iraq Body Count — a Web site that monitors civilian casualties — found that 12 percent were caused by coalition forces. Though there is no reliable figure for total civilian casualties throughout the nearly nine-year-long war, most estimates put the overall number of deaths at more than 100,000. According to the Defense Department, 4,474 American service members have died, 3,518 of whom were killed in action.

The vast majority of civilian deaths were the result of Iraqis killing Iraqis, whether in bombings or the sectarian bloodletting that engulfed the country in 2005-07, said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan.

In most of the incidents of acknowledged violations, such as the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, servicemen and women have been brought to trial, and many are serving prison sentences, Buchanan said.

And in the case of Haditha, there was a thorough investigation, he pointed out. Charges were brought against seven Marines, though they were dropped against six of them and the seventh was acquitted. An eighth Marine will stand trial in January.

“We take all of these things seriously,” Buchanan said. “We do in fact hold trials, and we treat them in accordance with the law. And if they are not found guilty, we’re not going to put people in prison.”

In explaining the breakdown in talks over the immunity issue, the U.S. military blames above all the behavior of private contractors. Buchanan singled out the Nissoor Square incident in 2007, in which Blackwater security guards killed 17 civilians at a busy traffic circle in Baghdad.

‘It’s in the air’

While Haditha and Nissoor Square became potent symbols for many Iraqis, just as vexing were the smaller, often untold incidents of civilians shot dead at checkpoints or near convoys by nervous soldiers fearful that they were about to be attacked, said Peter Van Buren, a State Department official who worked with Baghdad’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in 2009-10. When he arrived, he said, he was struck by the disconnect between Iraqi and U.S. perceptions of the war.

“We tried to convince them we were the good guys and that we’d got rid of Saddam, but given all the killings that had happened, that never hung together,” he said, recalling an occasion when he distributed fruit trees to farmers in a rural area. One refused to accept the seedling and spat on the ground. His son had been killed accidentally by U.S. forces, the farmer said, “and you’re giving me a fruit tree?”

“It’s in the air, it’s in the water, it’s the background music to what we do,” Van Buren said. “The Iraqis remember it even if we don’t. It will be a very dark legacy, and it’s one that will follow us around the Middle East.”

Officers who served acknowledge that such killings soured relations but say there’s little that can be done to avoid civilian casualties in urban warfare. In instances such as the Haditha killings, Iraqis “have every right to be bitter,” said retired Col. Peter Mansoor, who commanded a combat brigade in Baghdad in 2003-04 and then returned as executive officer to the top U.S. commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, during the surge of U.S. troops in 2007-08.

“In most cases, the circumstances are a lot cloudier,” he said. “The enemy does not wear uniforms. U.S. forces are taking fire, and they hit civilians. It’s harder to assign blame.”

On two occasions in 2003, soldiers under his command killed civilians by mistake — once when a family of six drove unwittingly into the middle of a firefight with insurgents, and later at a checkpoint when a family rushing a child to the hospital failed to stop.

Troops learned lessons as the war went on, he said. They learned to construct checkpoints in ways that made boundaries clearer. After the surge, when soldiers went to live in Iraqi neighborhoods, they learned to better distinguish friend from foe.

“I’m sure those families will never forgive the killings,” he said of the six civilians shot dead by his soldiers. “But when you look at it from the soldiers’ point of view, it was justified. It’s very hard, and obviously it led to a lot of ill will.”

No welcome for Americans

There is no limit to the ill will that envelops Haditha, a pretty, palm-fringed, town of 43,000 bordering a lake in the heart of the desert province of Anbar. Outward signs of the violence that raged have been erased. The bridge over the Euphrates River, on which al-Qaeda in Iraq once publicly beheaded suspected collaborators before it was bombed by U.S. warplanes, has been repaired. The spot where the roadside bomb exploded has been paved over.

The house where seven members of the Hamid family died is empty, and the one where eight members of the Yunis family were killed is occupied by distant relatives.

Only the Anizi family still lives in the squat, dun-colored home in which four male relatives were gunned down in a back bedroom by two Marines. A third kept watch in a nearby room over the brothers’ elderly father, their wives and Khaled, then age 14, the son of one of the men.

Khaled tried to read the names on the Marines’ uniforms when they entered the house, “but they were covered with blood,” he said. “Their hands and vests were soaked in blood. They only wanted revenge. When they came, I could see tears in their eyes. When they left, they were laughing.”

“They are barbarians,” added Yusuf, Khaled’s uncle, the only surviving brother of the victims, who was away at the time.

After the killings were exposed by Time magazine in 2006, the attitude of the U.S. military changed, Yusuf said. The FBI came to investigate. The family received condolence payments of $2,000 for each of the four men. They were promised that those responsible would be brought to justice.

But then the attention faded. Yusuf heard through news reports that most of the charges brought against the Marines had been dropped. The U.S. military left its base in Haditha nearly two years ago, and local officials can’t remember the last time Americans visited the town. They wouldn’t be welcome if they did.

“We wish they never had come,” Yusuf, for whom the withdrawal brings no consolation, no sense of closure said. “The injustice is a bigger crime than the crime itself,” he said. “And now we know for sure justice will never be done.”

Correspondents Uthman al-Mokhtar and Asaad Majeed contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

An overly-simplistic reasoning for why the Yanks are not welcome..........the event itself is still worthy of noting and the culprits still need punishing severely BUT the US Forces are NOT welcome for political reasons as in the Iranian puppet, Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, at the behest of his masters in Tehran, doesn't want any substantive US Forces actually based in Iraq, especially as those forces would be independant of any interior Iraqi influences and especially as they'd be backed by over-whelming force.

Whilst al-Sadr holds sway over large sections of the Shiite community, Tehran will be happy to see Iraq riven by ethnic and religious internal terrorism.

[buglerbilly]

DECEMBER 11, 2011, 6:04 P.M. ET.

Iraq Leader Pledges to Keep Iran at Bay

By SAM DAGHER

BAGHDAD—A defiant Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki promised he would firmly confront any meddling by Iran after U.S. forces are gone, in an interview in which he declared Iraqi interests are best served when nations stick to their own business.

"If excuse was that the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil posed a threat to [Iranian] national security, then this danger is over now," Mr. Maliki told The Wall Street Journal ahead of an official visit to Washington that starts Monday. "With it ends all thinking, calculations and possibilities for interference in Iraqi affairs under any other banner."


[I]Associated Press
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 3.

Mr. Maliki is scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House and try to reassure the West over Iraq's independence and stability as the U.S. unwinds a nine-year war in which at least 100,000 Iraqis and 4,474 American military personnel have died, according to the Pentagon and classified military documents leaked last year. The U.S. has so far spent almost $1 trillion on the conflict.

This month's final pullout of U.S. forces opens a new chapter in Iraq, fraught with fresh challenges amid the tumultuous popular uprisings across the Arab world.

Mr. Maliki, who remains a divisive figure both in Iraq and regionally, has been treading a tightrope between American and Iranian influence since he assumed office in 2006 at the height of Iraq's sectarian war. While he says he wants Iraq to have a deep and strong long-term strategic relationship with the U.S., there is a limit to how far he can go without antagonizing some Iranian-backed partners in his coalition government—and their supporters in Tehran.

One senior Iraqi official said Mr. Maliki would not have been able to secure a second term last year without making "one important commitment" to Iran and its Iraqi allies "and that is to get the [U.S.] troops out."

In the interview on Friday, Mr. Maliki said he was far more worried now about the role of an emboldened Turkey in Iraq and the region. But his rare warning to Iran appeared to be aimed at easing concerns, voiced by senior officials in the U.S. as well as by America's Arab allies in the Gulf, that Iraq will fall into Tehran's lap with the exit of the last American soldier this month.

Those concerns have become more evident with the conflict in neighboring Syria, where Iraq has been under mounting pressure to take sides. There, the Iran-allied regime of President Bashar al-Assad has used brute force to attack a popular uprising and faces off with an opposition backed by many Arab states, Turkey and the West.

In Syria, too, Mr. Maliki asserted in the interview that Iraq's interests are best served by avoiding intervention. He has offered Iraq's mediation services, opposed foreign military action there and said Iraq wouldn't uphold the Arab League's economic boycott against Damascus, fearing it would be a repeat of Iraq's experience with greater repercussions for the region.

Responding to criticisms that such a stance suggests he supports the Assad regime, he said he backed the Syrian people's demands for democracy, freedom and elections. "We are with them wholeheartedly," he said.

Mr. Maliki revealed that he sent a personal emissary to Mr. Assad last month urging him to initiate "deep and real reforms," and "true national dialogue on Syrian soil."

Mr. Assad responded that he was ready to do so, said Mr. Maliki, who drew a parallel to the plight of Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

"We were of the opinion that the war that was waged against Iraq and these catastrophes and their consequences should not have occurred if Saddam had taken the course of reforms," added Mr. Maliki.

This may be historical revisionism given the intensity with which the exiled Iraqi opposition, which included Mr. Maliki's party at the time, lobbied the U.S. and other powers to topple the Hussein regime by force.

Now, the war that began in 2003 and pushed Hussein from power is officially ending, and the U.S. military is passing the baton to the State Department, which will lead a foreign mission of almost 16,000 people, including security contractors.

U.S. officials say they will train police and armed forces while working to develop Iraq's financial institutions, its judiciary, its agriculture and more.

U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd Austin, warned last month that Iran is backing Shiite militias in Iraq to gain power in the same way that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed organization, has achieved political dominance in Lebanon. Iran denies supporting Iraqi militia groups or seeking a role in Iraqi political affairs.

Anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who heads one such militia, said last month that it was "a duty" to resist any large State Department presence in Iraq. The U.S. Embassy has had a warning of a "severe threat" of kidnapping of American citizens in place since Dec. 3.

Meanwhile, both Gen. Austin and the U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey have warned that militant groups affiliated with al Qaeda and diehard Hussein regime loyalists will seek to increase their freedom to operate once the Americans are gone—particularly in the north, where Mr. Maliki's central government is contending with the semiautonomous Kurdistan region over land and oil.

Gen. Austin met privately with Mr. Maliki on Friday. When asked about Gen. Austin's past warnings about Iranian influence, Mr. Maliki said such concerns are exaggerated.

Mr. Maliki suggested that he would have more leverage to pressure Iran to end all interference in Iraq once a group of several thousand members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an Iranian dissent group previously nurtured by the ex-regime in its war with Tehran in the 1980s, are moved out of their camp in Iraq with the help of the United Nations by the end of the year.

"There will no longer be an argument for Iran to interfere in Iraqi affairs [directly] or through some [political] blocs and parties," Mr. Maliki said.

He said he was ready to confront Iranian-backed Shiite militias again if necessary, as he did during the U.S.-backed Saulat al-Fursan, or Knights' Charge, campaign in 2008. Iraqi security forces "are capable of breaking any party or militia that carries arms," he said.

But in the world of Iraq's fractious politics—constructed after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 on a combination of elections and fragile ethnic and sectarian quotas—Mr. Maliki is viewed by both rivals and allies as someone who has deftly manipulated the tug-of-war between Iran and the U.S. in Iraq over the years to bolster his position and control levers of power like the security forces.

He was a compromise choice when he took over the premiership in 2006, and won a second term one year ago only after a bruising election and government-formation process that lasted nearly 10 months.

Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, last year had to turn to Mr. Sadr's Shiite political movement to clinch the premiership—and then enter into an uneasy alliance with predominantly Sunni and Kurdish blocs, in a deal shepherded by the U.S.

In a separate interview this month, Ayad Allawi, Mr. Maliki's principal rival in last year's elections and whose bloc later joined the current coalition government with nine ministers, described Iraq's political process as a failure but said pulling out of the government was not the solution.

"The government won't collapse because it's backed by Iran and America," said Mr. Allawi.

And the same senior Iraqi official who spoke about Mr. Maliki's "commitment" to Iran voiced his growing concern over the prime minister's "authoritarian streak" which he says was evident in the arrest of hundreds in October in connection with an alleged coup plot against his government.

Reflecting his complex political obligations, Mr. Maliki took a hard line when asked about whether there was agreement over the ultimate size of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq and the possibility that some U.S. military trainers would be present in Iraq after the troop withdrawal.

He said no more than 700 trainers would be stationed in Iraq and that they wouldn't enjoy immunity from prosecution under Iraqi laws. The immunity issue was the deal-breaker for the U.S. in failed negotiations to keep soldiers in Iraq past the end of this year.

"We are dealing with America diplomatically now, they have what we have and they owe what we owe," Mr. Maliki said. "They keep a thousand, we keep a thousand ; they open ten consulates, we open ten consulates."

[I]Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

NATO Denies Iraq Report of Withdrawal: Official

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 11 Dec 2011 14:14

BRUSSELS - NATO denied an assertion by Iraq's national security advisor on Dec. 11 that it had decided to withdraw its mission there at the end of the year after Baghdad refused to grant it legal immunity.

"There hasn't been a decision yet," an official at NATO headquarters in Brussels said, while acknowledging that the question of the mission's legal standing was an issue.

"When they ask us to extend the mission, we need to see that the same legal framework will extend as well," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"We remain hopeful that a solution will be found and that we'll be able to say yes to the Iraqi request to extend our mission, based on the legal framework that we (have) had since 2009," the official added.

The official was responding to remarks earlier on Dec. 11 by Iraq's National Security Adviser Falah al-Fayadh who said the decision had already been taken, because Baghdad had refused to grant the force legal immunity.

The failure to agree on immunity from prosecution closely mirrors Iraq's refusal to grant U.S. soldiers similar protections earlier this year.

That sank a potential deal between the two countries to keep U.S. soldiers in the country beyond the end of the year.

[buglerbilly]

Well the decision is made now.............

NATO to End Its Training Mission in Iraq

December 12, 2011

Associated Press|by Slobodan Lekic

BRUSSELS - NATO will permanently shut down its military training mission in Iraq and withdraw all of its soldiers from the country by Dec. 31, the alliance said Monday.

Talks on extending the mission had stalled over NATO's request for legal immunity for the foreign trainers - an issue that earlier torpedoed plans to keep a residual U.S. military presence in the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had requested the alliance extend the eight-year training mission until the end of 2013, but insisted that all NATO troops in the country be subject to Iraq's laws and judicial system.

The U.S. and NATO feared that servicemen might not receive fair trials in a county where anti-Western sentiment runs high.

Iraq based its demand on past incidents of violence. Prominent among them are a 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in which 17 Iraqis were killed by private American security guards and an incident in Haditha, when U.S. troops killed 24 Iraqi civilians.

A NATO statement said the North Atlantic Council, the military alliance's governing body, decided Monday to end the training mission because "agreement on the extension of this successful program did not prove possible despite robust negotiations conducted over several weeks."

NATO has about 130 advisers from 13 member nations and Ukraine in Iraq.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Iraqis Unable to Defend Borders as US Exits

December 14, 2011

Associated Press|by Robert H. Reid and Rebecca Santana

BAGHDAD -- After billions of dollars and nearly nine years of training, American troops are leaving behind an Iraqi security force arguably capable of providing internal security but unprepared to defend the nation against foreign threats at a time of rising tensions throughout the Middle East.

Building up an Iraqi military and police able to protect the country became a key goal of the United States and its allies after they defeated and then disbanded the Saddam Hussein-era force in 2003. As America's role in Iraq fades, the results appear at best incomplete.

Iraqi forces -- currently about 700,000 strong -- have been largely responsible for security in Baghdad and other cities since 2009, carrying out their own raids and other combat operations against insurgents.

More than 10,000 Iraqi soldiers and police have been killed since the new force was established -- more than double the number of American military deaths. Few if any military forces in the Arab world have as much combat experience within the ranks.

"They can kick a door in and knock out a network's leadership as good as anybody I've seen," said U.S. Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, commander of the NATO training mission, which will soon be disbanded. "I would say that they have the discipline and the tenacity to fight as well as anybody I've ever seen."

Nevertheless, Iraqi forces have their work cut out for them. They will be operating in a country which, although quieter than a few years ago, saw more people killed, wounded and kidnapped last year than in Afghanistan, according to U.S. figures.

The departure of American forces this month also leaves Iraq vulnerable to threats from its neighbors -- Iran to the east, Turkey to the north and Syria to the west. A major Arab country of about 30 million people with some of the world's largest proven petroleum reserves is incapable of defending its borders in one of the most unstable parts of the world.

The Iraqi military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari, has said it would take until at least 2020 for Iraq to defend its airspace. Without a well-trained and equipped air force, Iraqi ground forces would be hard-pressed to defend against incursions across borders with few natural barriers and little cover from vegetation.

"An army without an air force is exposed," Zebari was quoted as saying in a report last October by the U.S. agency responsible for overseeing Iraqi reconstruction.

Even though a full-scale ground invasion from its neighbors may seem remote, the possibility of incursions from Turkey against Kurdish rebels, or Iranians along disputed border stretches or even from a Syria facing an internal revolt cannot be ruled out, especially at a time when the Arab Spring and the looming showdown between the West and Iran are raising tensions throughout the region.

External defense seemed a low priority in the early years of the Iraq war, when tens of thousands of American troops, tanks, planes and artillery served as a deterrent.

During those years, the main threat was posed by Shiite and Sunni extremists, including al-Qaida in Iraq, who were battling the Americans and their allies in the streets of Baghdad and other major cities. Iraqi forces were organized and trained primarily to augment the U.S.-led force, using the American military as a rough model.

Soon, Iraqi commanders were giving power-point briefings, and their generals were handing out specially made coins emblazoned with their names and units as souvenirs. Iraqi soldiers at street checkpoints were wearing kneepads slouched down around their ankles, again just like their American counterparts.

But there wasn't enough time to develop the full package -- logistics, intelligence, medical services and a fully integrated command structure -- for the Iraqis to operate as effectively without U.S. support. A budget crisis in 2009 and a lengthy political stalemate the following year "crippled both the qualitative development of Iraq's forces and its ability to implement its own development plan," wrote analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The head of Iraqi military intelligence, Hatem al-Magsousi, said it takes the Iraqis a week to plan and carry out a military operation that they could execute in a day with American help.

Such delays could be costly if al-Qaida -- as expected -- takes advantage of a security vacuum to reconstitute itself following major defeats on the battlefield in the final years of the war.

"Unless the Iraqi security forces continue to put pressure on al-Qaida, they could regenerate capability and come back in an even worse way than they have in the past," said a U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan.

Another key concern is keeping the security forces free of any political pressure or sectarian interference. For over a year now, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has effectively controlled the Ministries of Interior and Defense while conflicts between Sunni and Shiite political blocs have delayed the appointments of permanent ministers.

That leaves both key ministries leaderless and without direction at a crucial time.

It also has allowed al-Maliki to pack some units with members of his tribe and appoint political favorites to command positions with no effective checks and balances.

"That means Maliki is making all these senior officer decisions, and that's not a healthy modus operandi for a vibrant democracy," said retired Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who was in charge of training Iraqi forces in 2007 and 2008.

The role of al-Maliki, who spent years abroad as a leader of the Shiite underground resistance to Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, also threatens to worsen sectarian tensions in the ranks. Those tensions nearly tore the country apart in the dark days of intense communal fighting in 2006 and 2007.

Both the Iraqi Army and police are dominated by Shiites, not surprising in a country where Shiites make up 60 to 65 percent of the population. But Shiite domination still alarms the Sunnis: They remember the years when Interior Ministry paramilitary police, whose ranks included veterans of Iran-based Shiite militias, were accused of some of the most vicious sectarian crimes.

Many people in Sunni-dominated provinces such as Salahuddin and Anbar already complain of Shiite-led forces coming in from outside the province to make arrests without informing local officials.

Public trust is further undermined by corruption, including selling fuel for military vehicles on the black market or pocketing the salaries of nonexistent soldiers.

"The widespread practice of buying command appointments is particularly destructive because it places corrupt officers at the head of divisions, brigades and battalions. Such commanders then commit theft and fraud to recoup their 'investment' in the job," wrote Iraq analyst Michael Knights in a report this summer for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Despite the U.S. military withdrawal, Iraq and the United States will still maintain a security relationship. Gen. Caslen is in charge of a $10 billion weapons sales program that will be run out of the U.S. Embassy next year with nearly 160 military personnel. Hundreds of civilian contractors will train Iraqi troops on equipment they've bought from American companies, including 18 F-16 fighter jets which Baghdad ordered this year.

That will give Washington some leverage with the Iraqis -- but hardly to the degree it enjoyed when there were nearly 170,000 U.S. troops on Iraqi soil.

What remains unclear is whether without the Americans, the Iraqi military will continue the transition to a well-oiled professional force, free of political influence and capable of integrating their various weapons systems and units into an effective machine capable of defending the nation.

"Left to their own devices, the transition does not occur," Dubik said.

Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, deputy commander of U.S. Forces-Iraq, told reporters last week that there is a "question mark right now for external security, but for the internal security we've done all we can do."

"We really don't know what's going to happen," Helmick said.

-- Reid, who reported from Cairo, Egypt, covered the Iraq war from 2003 until 2009. Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US Formally Ends Iraq War With Little Fanfare

December 15, 2011

Associated Press|by Lolita C. Baldor and Rebecca Santana



BAGHDAD - There was no "Mission Accomplished" banner. No victory parade down the center of this capital scarred and rearranged by nearly nine years of war. No crowds of cheering Iraqis grateful for liberation from Saddam Hussein.

Instead, the U.S. military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday with a businesslike closing ceremony behind blast walls in a fortified compound at Baghdad airport. The flag used by U.S. forces in Iraq was lowered and boxed up in a 45-minute ceremony. No senior Iraqi political figures attended.

With that, and brief words from top American officials who flew in under tight security still necessary because of the ongoing violence in Iraq, the U.S. drew the curtain on a war that left 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis dead.

The conflict also left another 32,000 Americans and far more Iraqis wounded, drained more than $800 billion from America's treasury and soured a majority of Americans on a war many initially supported as a just extension of the fight against terrorism after the 9/11 attacks.

As the last troops withdraw from Iraq, they leave behind a nation free of Saddam's tyranny but fractured by violence and fearful of the future. Bombings and gun battles are still common. And experts are concerned about the Iraqi security forces' ability to defend the nation against foreign threats.

"You will leave with great pride - lasting pride," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the troops seated in front of a small domed building in the airport complex. "Secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to begin a new chapter in history."

Many Iraqis, however, are uncertain of how that chapter will unfold. Their relief at the end of Saddam, who was hanged on the last day of 2006, was tempered by a long and vicious war that was launched to find non-existent weapons of mass destruction and nearly plunged the nation into full-scale sectarian civil war.

"With this withdrawal, the Americans are leaving behind a destroyed country," said Mariam Khazim, a Shiite whose father was killed when a mortar shell struck his home in Sadr City. "The Americans did not leave modern schools or big factories behind them. Instead, they left thousands of widows and orphans. The Americans did not leave a free people and country behind them, in fact they left a ruined country and a divided nation."

Some Iraqis celebrated the exit of what they called American occupiers, neither invited not welcome in a proud country.

"The American ceremony represents the failure of the U.S. occupation of Iraq due to the great resistance of the Iraqi people," said lawmaker Amir al-Kinani, a member of the political coalition loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Others said that while grateful for U.S. help ousting Saddam, the war went on too long. A majority of Americans would agree, according to opinion polls.

The low-key nature of the ceremony stood in sharp contrast to the high octane start of the war, which began before dawn on March 20, 2003, with an airstrike in southern Baghdad where Saddam was believed to be hiding. U.S. and allied ground forces then stormed across the featureless Kuwaiti desert, accompanied by reporters, photographers and television crews embedded with the troops.

The final few thousand U.S. troops will leave Iraq in orderly caravans and tightly scheduled flights.

The ceremony at Baghdad International Airport also featured remarks from Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Austin led the massive logistical challenge of shuttering hundreds of bases and combat outposts, and methodically moving more than 50,000 U.S. troops and their equipment out of Iraq over the last year - while still conducting training, security assistance and counterterrorism battles.

The war "tested our military's strength and our ability to adapt and evolve," he said, noting the development of the new counterinsurgency doctrine.

As of Thursday, there were two U.S. bases and about 4,000 U.S. troops in Iraq - a dramatic drop from the roughly 500 military installations and as many as 170,000 troops during the surge ordered by President George W. Bush in 2007, when violence and raging sectarianism gripped the country. All U.S. troops are slated to be out of Iraq by the end of the year, but officials are likely to meet that goal a bit before then.

The total U.S. departure is a bit earlier than initially planned, and military leaders worry that it is a bit premature for the still maturing Iraqi security forces, who face continuing struggles to develop the logistics, air operations, surveillance and intelligence-sharing capabilities they will need in what has long been a difficult region.

Despite President Barack Obama's earlier contention that all American troops would be home for Christmas, at least 4,000 forces will remain in Kuwait for some months. The troops will be able to help finalize the move out of Iraq, but could also be used as a quick reaction force if needed.

Despite the war's toll and unpopularity, Panetta said earlier this week, it "has not been in vain."

During a stop in Afghanistan, Panetta described the Iraq mission as "making that country sovereign and independent and able to govern and secure itself."

That, he said, is "a tribute to everybody - everybody who fought in that war, everybody who spilled blood in that war, everybody who was dedicated to making sure we could achieve that mission."

Iraqi citizens offered a more pessimistic assessment. "The Americans are leaving behind them a destroyed country," said Mariam Khazim of Sadr City. "The Americans did not leave modern schools or big factories behind them. Instead, they left thousands of widows and orphans."

The Iraq Body Count website says more than 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion. The vast majority were civilians.

Panetta echoed President Barack Obama's promise that the U.S. plans to keep a robust diplomatic presence in Iraq, foster a deep and lasting relationship with the nation and maintain a strong military force in the region.

U.S. officials were unable to reach an agreement with the Iraqis on legal issues and troop immunity that would have allowed a small training and counterterrorism force to remain. U.S. defense officials said they expect there will be no movement on that issue until sometime next year.

Obama met in Washington with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this week, vowing to remain committed to Iraq as the two countries struggle to define their new relationship. Ending the war was an early goal of the Obama administration, and Thursday's ceremony will allow the president to fulfill a crucial campaign promise during a politically opportune time. The 2012 presidential race is roiling and Republicans are in a ferocious battle to determine who will face off against Obama in the election.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US troop withdrawal sees 3.5m parting gifts left to Iraq

Huge cache of equipment worth more than £228m will be put into service by the Iraqi military, which is the main beneficiary

Martin Chulov in Baghdad

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 December 2011 20.41 GMT


US troops and defence officials attend a flag-lowering ceremony in Baghdad to mark the end of operations in Iraq. Photograph: Ali Al-Saadi/AFP/Getty Images

The US departure has led to one of the biggest movements of troops and equipment of modern times and one of the biggest fire sales.

The military says it has given around 3.5m items to the Iraqi government, worth more than $353m (£228m). Doing so, it estimates, has saved around $605m in transport costs either back to the US or to Afghanistan.

Much of the equipment left behind has been quickly put into service by the main beneficiary, the Iraqi military, which has also bought some equipment, such as Humvees and weapons, as part of a tender process.

From a peak of more than 500 bases in 2007, the US now has only two in southern Iraq, and both will be closed by the end of the month. The giant footprint the US once had here also brought with it an environmental footprint, and Iraqi officials feared the war would have a toxic legacy.

However, those fears have steadily dissipated, with 1,400 sites cleaned up since 2010, along with 10,000 tonnes of waste and 6,000 tonnes of recycling, according to figures supplied by the military last month. Around 70,000 tonnes of metal has been sold to scrap merchants and wrecking yards.

Meanwhile, a social and environmental audit is now also starting to take shape. The United Nations' development programme on Thursday released information it has compiled from Iraq's planning ministry, collected in the first three months of this year.

The data paints a picture of a society still struggling from a lack of basic services. Of the almost 29,000 households that responded, 35% said improving on the 14.6 hours of electricity received on average each day (at least half through privately run generators) should be a top priority for the authorities.

The study showed that 90% of households supplement the meagre city supply with costly neighbourhood generators.

The Dora station, which supplies Baghdad, has been overworked and underpowered since the start of the war. During the height of Iraq's savage summer it can supply city households with little more than three hours of power each day. Extra efficiencies have increased the station's output to around 3,500 megawatts, but it has not come close to matching the extra need generated by widespread access to white goods.

The government has a plan to buy electricity from barges moored off the southern coast this summer and aims to have a new power network in place by 2014, but after eight years, often in the dark, many Iraqis doubt lawmakers will deliver.

Only 30% of households have access to a sanitation network and 59% of homes rated their access to water as "bad or very bad".

And in the health sector, the good access to primary care is not matched by access to specialist services. Up to 60% of GPs and specialists present when Baghdad fell either fled out of fear for their lives or become economic migrants. Many have not returned.

The lack of services is often used as a refrain by Iraqis when US and Iraqi leaders point to progress in the country. Violence has fallen sharply from the savage levels of 2006, but there are still on average 10 incidents each day nationwide.

The notion of a Marshall plan, similar to that which rebuilt western Europe after the second world war, has long looked illusory in Iraq, despite US pledges soon after the invasion. Large and growing oil revenues are not trickling down to the streets and an infrastructure network ravaged throughout three decades of war and neglect is in no shape to help the country face the future.

[buglerbilly]

Last U.S. troops cross Iraqi border into Kuwait

By Greg Jaffe, Sunday, December 18, 1:11 PM

CAMP VIRGINIA, Kuwait — The last U.S. troops crossed the border out of Iraq shortly after 7 a.m. Sunday, officially ending a war that gave rise to a fledgling and still unstable democracy in Iraq but also cost almost $1 trillion and the lives of some 4,500 American service members.

The troops crossed a berm at the Kuwaiti border that was lit with floodlights and ringed with barbed wire, and were met by Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who until Friday was the top U.S. commander in Iraq. The convoy’s arrival in Kuwait, after a week of ceremonies in Baghdad marking the end of the war, was kept shrouded in secrecy to protect the almost 500 troops and more than 110 vehicles that were part of the last convoy.

The quiet exit of the last U.S. forces highlighted the danger and uncertainty that remains in Iraq, even as violence throughout the country has fallen to its lowest level since the 2003 invasion.

The last of the troops left Contingency Operating Base Adder about 2:30 a.m. Kuwait time for the 218-mile trek through the empty, dark desert to the border. In contrast to the U.S. invasion in 2003, the final American convoy, made up of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, drew little notice from Iraqis. The road from the U.S. base to the border was almost entirely deserted, which was the way the U.S. military wanted it.

As the trucks approached the border crossing with Kuwait, excitement built among the four soldiers in Sgt. 1st Class Rodolfo Ruiz’s armored vehicle. Many of the men had not slept for 24 hours, as they prepared for the last convoy out and for the order to go. Ruiz and the other three soldiers were part of the second-to-last contingent to cross into Kuwait, and they preceded the very last U.S. military trucks by about 45 minutes. “I just can’t wait to call my wife and kids and let them know I am safe,” Ruiz said as the border came into sight. “I am really feeling it now.”

About 15 minutes later, Ruiz let his men know that their mission was over. “Hey guys, you made it.”

The soldiers wondered aloud what the Iraqis would think as they moved across the base and noticed that the remaining U.S. troops were gone. The day before the Americans left, they officially turned over ownership of the base to the Iraqi air force, which renamed it Imam Ali Air Base. Because the Iraqi air force is so small, the only plane there was a small passenger jet that was missing its landing gear and had not been flown in years. Most of the Iraqi air force’s small contingent of planes is based in and around Baghdad.

“The Iraqis are going to wake up in the morning and no one will be there,” mused one of the soldiers as they approached the border.

Early Saturday, the brigade’s remaining interpreters, all of them U.S. citizens, made their routine calls to the tribal sheiks and government leaders so that they would assume it was just a normal day. About 11 a.m., leaders of the brigade held a ceremony at the Adder base to mark the end of its deployment. The remainder of the brigade’s 4,000 troops had already passed across the border and were headed home.

For the final ceremony, about 25 soldiers sat on folding chairs in front of two armored vehicles to watch as the brigade’s flags and battle streamers from previous conflicts were rolled up and packed in a camouflage liner.

“Most people don’t understand what they have been a part of here,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Ron Kelley, the senior enlisted soldier in the brigade. “We have done a great thing as a nation. We freed a people and gave their country back to them.”

After Kelley spoke, the brigade’s commander struck a similar chord.

“We’re proud of you. Be proud of yourselves,” Col. Doug Crissman, the brigade commander, told them. The entire ceremony lasted about five minutes, and then the soldiers headed out to load the last of their possessions and line up by their vehicles.

By dusk Saturday, the vehicles had been formed into five columns near the base’s southern exit. A half-dozen television news correspondents moved among the troops gathering footage.

Throughout the week, many of the brigade’s troops had insisted that the deployment’s end felt no different than previous tours they had made to Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of a long decade of war. But as they looked out on the large convoy, several soldiers said they had begun to grasp the importance of the mission.

“At first, I didn’t see the big picture, as far as us leaving a country where we fought,” said Spec. Tyler Meier, 20, of Ottumwa, Iowa. “It’s a big deal, because it has never really been done before. We still have troops in Europe. We still have soldiers in Korea. As we drove by, I realized, ‘Damn, that is a lot of vehicles.’ Now, it is pretty exciting. We are going down in the history books, you might say.”

[buglerbilly]

In Iraq, the last to fall: David Hickman, the 4,474th U.S. service member killed


JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ/GREENSBORO NEWS AND RECORD - Army Specialist David Hickman’s unit, the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry from Fort Bragg, performed honor guard duties for his burial at Lakeview Memorial Park on Nov. 26, 2011, in Greensboro, N.C.

By J. Freedom du Lac, Sunday, December 18, 6:35 AM

GREENSBORO, N.C. — To find Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman on the morning after his unit returned to Fort Bragg from Iraq, you had to drive 100 miles north, to his home town. Up Highway 29, less than two clicks from the northeast Greensboro cul-de-sac where he grew up, Hickman was in Lot 54 in the Garden of Peace at Lakeview Memorial Park Cemetery.

Freshly turned red soil covered his coffin, which went into the ground two weeks and a day before he was due home. There were two shriveled carnations on the damp dirt. There was no marker yet, no indication that this was a soldier’s grave.


(Courtesy of Zack Zornes) - Army Spec. David E. Hickman, pictured here at Al Asad Airbase in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, was killed in Iraq on Nov. 14, 2011.

Hickman, 23, was killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb that ripped through his armored truck Nov. 14 — eight years, seven months and 25 days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq began.

He was the 4,474th member of the U.S. military to die in the war, according to the Pentagon.

And he may have been the last.

With the final U.S. combat troops crossing out of Iraq into Kuwait, those who held Hickman dear are struggling to come to terms with the particular poignancy of his fate. As the unpopular war that claimed his life quietly rumbles to a close, you can hear within his inner circle echoes of John F. Kerry’s famous 1971 congressional testimony on Vietnam:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

“Thank God if David is the last one to die, because that means nobody else will have to go through this,” said Logan Trainum, one of Hickman’s closest friends. “But it’s crazy that he died. No matter your position on this war — if you’re for or against it — I think everybody thinks we shouldn’t have been over there anymore.”

U.S. combat operations in Iraq officially ended months before Hickman’s unit shipped out from Fort Bragg in May. His platoon spent most of its deployment on “presence patrols,” walking through Iraqi neighborhoods to remind insurgents that the U.S. military was still there, said Spec. Zack Zornes, who served in Hickman’s platoon.

Hickman liked the military, Zornes said. “But there were days on end where me and Hickman would be sitting in his room, being like: ‘Why are we even here? What are we doing?’ We were just doing police work. I totally agree with Hickman’s friends and family who are mad. We had no reason to be there anymore.”

Grim news

The last time Hickman called home was Nov. 13, a Sunday. He was at Joint Security Station Muthana, the small operating base in Baghdad that housed his platoon. He told his family he was excited to be coming home before Christmas, according to friends.

The following day, shortly before midnight, Army officials showed up in Greensboro to tell Hickman’s parents that their son had been killed by a makeshift bomb.

Exactly four weeks later, Veronica Hickman sat quietly in her living room, wearing a T-shirt with her son’s military photo printed on its front.

The aftermath of his death had been a drawn-out series of emotionally wrenching events:

The candlelight vigil at the Northeast Guilford High School football stadium, where he had been a team captain and an all-conference linebacker. The solemn Thanksgiving Day arrival of his remains. The open-casket funeral, where friends said they could not get over the swelling in his face. The ceremony at Fort Bragg for Spec. David E. Hickman of the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

And now, another ceremony at Fort Bragg loomed, to mark the end of the war that claimed Hickman’s life. His family had been invited to meet privately with President Obama before his address to the troops.

Inside the home that Hickman’s mother, Veronica, shares with his father, also named David, a withered flower arrangement was on the coffee table, with a candle from the vigil poking out of the shriveled spray. The folded U.S. flag presented to the family at the funeral sat in a triangular wooden box at the end of the sofa; military ribbons were pinned inside, along with expert infantryman and parachutist badges.

Neither Hickman’s father nor his younger brother, DeVon, was home. His wife, Calli, also wasn’t there; in fact, until Hickman died, his family and most of his friends had not heard of Calli, let alone known that she had married him at a courthouse shortly before his deployment.

Olivia Pegram, a high school friend, showed up and parked near Hickman’s white Chevy Impala with the radio that never worked.

“How are you?” she asked.

Veronica shrugged. “I’m just running and gunning, in and out, in and out, keeping busy.”

She was watching “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.” It was the first time since her son’s death that she had turned on the TV. She’d been avoiding the news. Stories about troops coming home and military casualties were emotional triggers she did not want to squeeze.

But the news arrived anyway. Lyndsee Mabe, another of Hickman’s close friends, was at the house and mentioned that a Marine from the nearby town of Ramseur had been killed in Afghanistan.

“Is that where David was?” Veronica asked.

“No,” Mabe said. “Iraq.”

“Oh,” Veronica said, stroking her son’s military ID tags. “I thought that was in Afghanistan.”

After nearly a decade of fighting two wars that sometimes appear indistinct to an increasingly disconnected American public, even those most deeply and directly affected by them can be confused by the far-off battles. But the grief always finds its way home.

‘Seemed like Superman’

The war in Iraq began in March 2003, when Hickman was a freshman at Northeast. By the time he graduated, in 2006, nearly 2,500 members of the U.S. military had died in the war.

Hickman, the son of an Air Force veteran, was a gym rat with the sort of sculpted physique that he only half-jokingly said would make the gods jealous. He also held a black belt in taekwondo. In 2009, he decided to enlist.

“He didn’t sign up to get his life on track,” his friend Trainum said. “He wanted to be a physically and mentally elite soldier.”

“It seemed like the perfect David job,” Pegram said. “It was basically a huge workout.”

He eventually hoped to join the Special Forces, his friends said.

When he was deployed, around Memorial Day of this year, the U.S. death toll was nearly 4,450, but the casualty rate had dropped significantly.

Still, the country remained dangerous. Fifteen Americans were killed there in June, the bloodiest month in two years. But if Hickman feared for his life, he hardly let on, instead projecting an aura of invincibility that was notable even in the macho culture of the military.

“He always seemed like Superman,” said Spec. Morgan Corbett, who became one of Hickman’s best friends during basic training. “Everyone looked up to him.”

Trainum said Hickman had joked about death: “He said, ‘If I die, I want you to invite every girl. I want hot girls crying at my funeral.’ But we never talked seriously about death or dying. We always talked about what would happen later in life. I don’t know that he even thought about dying. I just know it never crossed my mind that he wasn’t coming back.”

One of the first things Hickman planned to do upon returning was to have a blowout party. They would get limos, book a VIP table on the roof at Greene Street Club, drink gallons of beer.

“He said we were going to have a music video night,” Trainum said. “David really wanted to live it up.”

A soldier’s end

On Nov. 14, Hickman spent the afternoon at Camp Taji, a major base north of Baghdad, Zornes said. He ate chicken fingers dipped in barbecue sauce for lunch, bought parmesan Cheez-Its at the post exchange and suffered through “Confessions of a Shopaholic” with most of the rest of the platoon.

“It was a lame chick flick,” Zornes said. “But we all sat there and watched it.”

Just after 6 p.m., the convoy left for JSS Muthana, with Hickman in the lead truck, a heavily armored International MaxxPro. Zornes was right behind him, he said.

About 25 minutes later, Zornes said, a bomb exploded on the side of the road, near Hickman’s truck.

Helicopters swooped in to take the casualties away.

After the smoke and chaos cleared, the convoy returned to Camp Taji. At a briefing, Zornes said, the soldiers learned from an Army officer that Spec. David E. Hickman had suffered broken ribs, a shattered wrist and lacerations on his leg and face.

“And then he said he had internal brain bleeding,” Zornes said, “and that they were able to stabilize him before he left, but that when he landed at Victory Base Camp, they weren’t able to stabilize him.”

And then, for the 4,474th time in America’s Iraq war, a U.S. service member was pronounced dead.

Staff researcher Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Iraq political crisis erupts as last U.S. troops leave

By Liz Sly, Updated: Sunday, December 18, 3:31 PM

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political process was unraveling faster than had been anticipated Saturday, with Sunni politicians walking out of the nation’s parliament and threatening to resign from the government even before the last U.S. troops had left the country.

The crisis was triggered by reports that security forces loyal to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, are planning to arrest the country’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and charge him with terrorism.

Those reports have fueled fears among Sunni politicians that Maliki intends to further consolidate his grip on power by moving against his rivals now that U.S. troops have gone. In recent days, the homes of top Sunni politicians in the fortified Green Zone have been ringed by tanks and armored personnel carriers, and rumors are flying that arrest warrants will be issued for other Sunni leaders.

The mostly Sunni Iraqiya bloc said it had withdrawn from parliament to protest what it called Maliki’s increasingly dictatorial behavior. Sunni ministers in the coalition government will resign unless he gives them a greater say in running the government and, in particular, overseeing the country’s Shiite-dominated security forces, the bloc warned.

Maliki loyalists accused the Sunnis of trying to forestall the detention of Hashimi, who, they say, has been definitively tied to acts of terrorism.

“His office is in charge of the funding and planning of terrorist attacks in Baghdad and other places,” said Hussein al-Asadi, a lawmaker with Maliki’s bloc. “The judicial authority has issued arrest warrants against those who are involved.”

Iraqiya leaders linked their walkout directly to the timing of the American withdrawal, which, they said, had left Maliki’s rivals vulnerable to the predations of an army and police force that the Shiite prime minister has increasingly brought under his personal control over the past year.

The U.S. military formally declared the Iraq war over at a ceremony outside Baghdad on Thursday, and the last few hundred soldiers crossed the border into Kuwait early Sunday morning.

“We think there are new indications of a new attempt to create a dictatorship,” said Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq. “We are really worried that the country is being led into chaos and division and the possibility of civil war is there.”

A brewing confrontation in the province of Diyala underscored the risk that violence could erupt. After the mostly Sunni leadership of the province declared last week that it intends to seek regional autonomy under the terms of Iraq’s constitution, Shiite militiamen surrounded the provincial council headquarters and set fire to the Sunni governor’s home.

The governor and most members of the provincial council have fled to northern Kurdistan, and on Saturday, the main highway linking Baghdad to the northern city of Kirkuk was blocked for a third day by Shiite militiamen who, residents said, belong to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

The crisis marks the most serious breakdown yet of the consensus forged a year ago between the main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political blocs that enabled the creation of the current coalition government. For the first time, the Sunni Iraqiya bloc, which won the largest number of votes in last year’s election, was given meaningful positions in the government.

But tensions have been building for months between the factions over Maliki’s failure to include Sunnis in the decision-making process and his steady consolidation of personal control over the security forces. He has retained the positions of defense and interior ministers for himself, and used the de-Baathification laws drawn up by the American occupation authority in 2003 to replace thousands of Sunni officers as well as independent Shiites with his own loyalists.

The detentions in October of hundreds of suspected sympathizers of Saddam Hussein’s former Baath Party, many of them Sunni, have fueled a push for regional autonomy by the mostly Sunni provinces to the north and west of Baghdad, which Maliki has vowed to resist.

Sunnis in the provinces say they fear persecution both by the Shiite government and Sunni extremists now that U.S. troops are no longer present.

Gen. Khaled al-Dulaimi, who helped U.S. forces establish the Anbar Police Academy in 2007, was stripped of his post last month as U.S. troops were pulling out of the western province. He predicted that many other officers will be sidelined now that U.S. troops have gone. The U.S. military built the Anbar security forces almost from scratch after the Sunni Awakening movement in 2007 succeeded in defeating the al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgency.

And those who collaborated with the Americans are also at risk of being targeted by the remnants of the Sunni al-Qaeda fighters, who have been systematically pursuing those who turned against them. Now that he has been stripped of the security that came with his position, Dulaimi said, “I might be assassinated by terrorists at any time.” He added, “Who is going to protect me?”

Special correspondents Asaad Majeed and Aziz Alwan contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Uploaded by USAFCENT on Dec 18, 2011

http://www.afcent.af.mil - U.S. Air Forces Central Command

A U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator provides over-watch as the last convoys cross the border out of Iraq at 11:30 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time). U.S. Air Forces Central Command provided more than 14 Air Force and U.S. Navy aircraft to ensure safe passage for more than 125 vehicles filled with Soldiers and Airmen as they make the historic trek across the border. This transition is not only an end to the war, but also the beginning of a new phase in the U.S.'s relationship with Iraq.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/USAFCENT
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/usafcent

Video: Drone Watches Last U.S. Convoy Leave Iraq

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author December 18, 2011 | 9:31 am

On March 19, 2003, U.S. ground forces crossed the concertina wire in Kuwait that marks Iraq’s southern border, beginning one of America’s most controversial wars. On December 17, 2011, at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the last military convoys rolled off Iraqi soil, back to Kuwait. This time, a U.S. Air Force Predator drone loitered overhead, bearing witness.

This is what a U.S. withdrawal looks like to a robotic plane in the sky. An orderly, blue-tinged column of trucks — 125 of them, according to the U.S. Air Force — moves along a stretch of road. The Predator doesn’t see any of the accomplishments or the sacrifice that U.S. troops achieved, endured and earned in Iraq for the past nine years. Nor does it see the suffering, the bitterness and the loss.

But it does record a minor success. The Predator video feed does not show chaos at the border. There is no insurgent assault seeking to chase the U.S. military out. Nor is there a panicked helicopter flight from an embassy rooftop. Instead, as the final trucks calmly cross into Kuwait, the Predator watches border guards shut a gate, providing a sense of finality.

It may not be so final. The U.S. leaves behind a massive embassy in Iraq guarded by up to 5,500 armed security contractors. Little is known about that hired army — when, for instance, it can open fire on Iraqis to protect U.S. diplomats — but it amounts to a privatized residual U.S. force. And in addition to Iraq’s lingering political problems, the country is still a battleground for competing U.S. and Iranian interests. Still, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little tweeted on Sunday morning that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has “approved the order officially ending the Iraq war: EXORD 1003 Victor, Mod 9.”

And the Predators? They won’t exactly leave Iraq after the pullout. On Friday, Panetta secured Baghdad’s approval to allow the drones to fly — unarmed — over northern Iraq from Turkey’s Incirlik air base. They’ll be spying for Kurdish terrorists.

Beyond that, after December 31, when the pullout must legally be complete, drones — armed and otherwise — will be in reserve at the U.S.’ constellation of bases near Iraq in Persian Gulf states.

“Any operation of any aircraft of any type into the sovereign airspace over Iraq after that date would need to comply with Iraqi laws and policies,” Capt. Melissa Milner, chief spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force in the Middle East, told Danger Room in October. “We are not aware of any special arrangements or exceptions for any aircraft, and are not aware of any ongoing discussions with [the Iraqi defense ministry] on the matter.”

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Holds On to Biometrics Database of 3 Million Iraqis

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author December 21, 2011 | 6:30 am



The troops have come home, the flag has been been lowered, and the Iraq War is officially in the past for the U.S. military. But the military is holding on to a major souvenir of the war: a massive database packed with retinal scans, thumb prints and other biometric data identifying millions of Iraqis. It will be a tool for counterterrorism long after the Iraq War becomes a fading memory.

U.S. Central Command, the military command responsible for troops in the Mideast and South Asia, confirms to Danger Room that the biometrics database, compiled by U.S. troops over the course of years, will remain U.S. property. “Centcom has the database,” says the command’s chief spokesman, Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, who says it contains files on three million Iraqis. The U.S.-sponsored Iraqi government, in other words, doesn’t control a host of incredibly specific information on its citizens.

For much of the war, U.S. troops carrying viewfinder-like scanning devices kept digital records of the Iraqis they encountered. Some Iraqis got their unique identifiers recorded because they were suspected insurgents on their way to detention centers. Residents of violent cities like Fallujah would only get to return home from travel if they showed U.S. troops an ID card complete with biometric data. Iraqis underwent iris scans when they wanted to join the police. So did Iraqis who worked on U.S. bases.

It was all part of an effort to answer the war’s most vexing challenge: distinguishing insurgents from Iraqi civilians. And that effort isn’t going away, even after the war technically ended. It’ll be part of U.S. counterterrorism missions for a long time to come.

“Certainly, if someone was in another country or another place and showed up somewhere, we’d compare information to see if it’s someone we had info on,” Taylor explains. For instance, “if they show up in Afghanistan, we collect biometric data [on the individual, maybe] we don’t see them there. But we run it through this database and we see them show up.”

The digital database is the property of Central Command’s intelligence shop in Tampa, Florida. It is conspicuously not in the control of the Iraqi government. Taylor says that the Iraqis might be able to access the database’s contents if they go “through the [U.S.] embassy” in Baghdad.

“Common sense-wise, we still have an interest there in helping our Iraqi partners,” Taylor explains, “and that information might be helpful to them should there be any issues.”

Taylor doesn’t say why the U.S. didn’t hand over its biometrics toy to the Iraqis. But there’s an obvious reason: Iraq’s sectarian divides have not healed. And a database filled with uber-specific information about approximately 10 percent of Iraq’s population could represent a wish list for a death squad, militia or insurgent group — some of which are aligned with Iraqi political parties.

It’s not an idle fear. The day after the U.S. departed, a court beholden to Iraq’s (Shiite) prime minister issued an arrest warrant for the (Sunni) vice president on terrorism charges. “Three of my brothers have been killed because of my participation in building a new Iraq, regardless of all I have done,” the incredulous VP, Tarek al-Hashemi, told Eli Lake of Newsweek. Hashemi, who is Iraq’s highest ranking Sunni, blamed the U.S. for leaving Iraq in Maliki’s hands.

Iraqis aren’t the only ones to wind up in huge U.S. biometrics databases. Afghans, too, have been scanned by the millions. As far back as 2005, detainee biometric data from both Iraqis and Afghans turned up in an obscure Pentagon anti-terrorism database called the Department of Defense DNA Registry. Documents released by WikiLeaks suggest that the U.S. even seeks to collect bio-data on foreign leaders.

Now that Central Command is keeping the Iraqi database, it’s clear that the military isn’t going to get rid of its troves of super-specific data once the wars end. Nor will it trust its nominal local allies to maintain them. (Some in the military have complained to Danger Room in the past that the Iraqi soldiers and cops they train aren’t great at taking eye scans and thumb prints from detainees.) It’s an intelligence tool, Taylor says, not a broad targeting list.

“We have this information, and rather than cull through it all and say ‘bad guy, good guy, bad guy, good guy, it’s better to just keep it, because that would be very time consuming,” Taylor says. “Biometric data was collected on people who worked on the bases. You’re a good guy; you worked here. It’s not like we’re collecting [data] on an enemy.”

Photo: U.S. Air Force

[buglerbilly]

Iraq: At Least $6 Billion Gone Missing Due To Overlooked Oversight

By Mark Thompson | @MarkThompson_DC | December 21, 2011


SIGIR photo
Stuart Bowen testifies on Capitol Hill

Now that the U.S. military has left Iraq, it’s time to tally how much the nation wasted putting it back together. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, bluntly calls it a “disorganized American occupation” that frittered away at least $6 billion.

He rattles off the numbers like a machine gun set on automatic fire: his auditors have documented at least $6 to $8 billion of the $61 billion the nation spent reconstructing Iraq was wasted in sloppy contracting and inefficiencies. A total of $170 million in fraud has been found and recovered from 61 convicted contractors. All told, Bowen’s band of green-eyeshaded bean-counters has collected close to $1.7 billion in mal-spent – or maliciously-spent — federal funds inside Iraq.


SIGIR

Fraud's mounting toll in Iraq“It was abnormal and unnecessary,” he tells Battleland, “but certainly unsurprising given the fact that we were not structured in 2003 to carry out an overseas rebuilding operation that cost tens of billions of dollars.” Bowen, who has been on the job for an amazing eight years, recalls that the original U.S. mission in Iraq was “liberate and leave” – something that was supposed to be wrapped up in three months. But the looting and lawlessness that happened following the 2003 invasion – and the lack of U.S. troops to deal with it – turned that modest mission into a far longer and more costly one.

“An ad-hocracy was created to manage this occupation,” Bowen says. It was, he says, plagued by three major shortcomings:

1. There was no “unity of command in post-war reconstruction,” he says. “We do not have a structure in place that has the capacity to carry out inter-agency stabilization operations.” The haphazardness led to waste on a massive scale. “Six to eight billion, minimum,” Bowen says, “was wasted.”

2. The lack of military contracting experts let contractors get away with monetary murder. “We didn’t have enough contracting officers to oversee these huge, $100 million contracts,” Bowen argues. “We were unable to effectively manage cost-plus contracts, which I call an open checkbook for the contractors. They were unmanaged, and were wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money.”

And given the Wild West atmosphere that existed in Iraq following the invasion, Bowen suggests recovering even $170 million was pretty remarkable. “There’s a lot more out there,” he says simply, when asked how much fraud took place. “Trying to catch crooks in a war zone that’s entirely cash-driven has been very difficult,” he says. “We catch most fraud in the United States through electronic means, but in a war zone — where everyone has a weapon — there aren’t many people willing to come forward and say `He stole the cash.’”

3. The churn among U.S. contract-overseers, both military and civilian, and the resulting lack of sustained oversight of contractors, made waste all but inevitable. “How do you do an eight-year rebuilding program when no [U.S. government contracting officer] stays in the country, from top to bottom, virtually longer than a year?” Bowen asks. Even normal, year-long tours boiled down to six months of effective oversight once contract managers figured out what they were supposed to be doing, and how to do it. “There’s this flux of variously qualified individuals moving in and out of Iraq at an extraordinary pace trying to manage one over-arching rebuilding program,” Bowen says. “I’ve just described something that’s impossible to do.”

Iraq is littered with costly American good intentions gone sour, including “spending $40 million on a prison that will never hold an Iraqi prisoner in Diyala province, one of the still most dangerous provinces in the country,” Bowen notes. “The Iraqis call it the `whale in the desert.’”

He repeats a refrain heard before: the nation needs to have a standing force of reconstruction specialists ready to go before the next major war. It’s as vital a part of the war-making toolkit as troops and tanks. “Stabilization operations are part and parcel of protecting our national security interests around the globe – we’ve been in one every year but two since 1980,” Bowen says. Absent a better way of fixing what’s broke, “perhaps that’s the largest lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan – don’t engage in $60 to $70 billion 10-year stabilization operations.”

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/12/21/iraq-at-least-6-billion-gone-missing-due-to-overlooked-oversight/#ixzz1hEvPVGiK

[buglerbilly]

DECEMBER 31, 2011.

Changed by Iraq, Military Asks What Will Stick.

By JULIAN E. BARNES

WASHINGTON—The U.S. military left Iraq in December with new technologies that are likely to change the shape of future wars. But some of the skills developed alongside are in danger of falling away, several people throughout the ranks worry.

Ten years ago, the U.S. military was firmly under the control of the generals. It was steeply hierarchical, slow to evolve and squarely focused on "big wars" between armies of opposing nations.

A decade of painstaking, often painful lessons resulted in a military that is in many ways fleeter and more adaptable. It is also flatter: The generals are still in charge, but Iraq and Afghanistan showed that independent thinking by low-level captains and lieutenants is also critical to success.

In any inventory of changes, the most obvious may be equipment. To protect soldiers from roadside bombs, the Pentagon built $45 billion worth of mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles, the V-hulled trucks known as MRAPs. Military officials say MRAPs have saved hundreds of lives, though the hulking vehicles' utility remains unclear for future arenas.

The Pentagon also built sophisticated jammers to foil radio-detonated roadside bombs, which are likely to become standard issue against improvised explosive devices, a probable the weapon of choice in future land wars. The unmanned drones it acquired to battle insurgents have transformed how the U.S. fights wars and now is also used extensively by the Central Intelligence Agency.



But the two wars have also helped push the military strategy from a playbook of offense and defense, to one that includes a third class of operations—strategies that include so-called counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, aimed at maintaining stability for populations in often-hostile zones and turning potential allies into enemies.

"It is not good enough to be proficient on the traditional military tasks we have tended to focus on in the post-Vietnam era," Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in 2007 and 2008 and now the CIA director, said in an interview earlier this month. "Very likely, conflict in the future will include a requirement for stability tasks."

Stability operations aren't popular in parts of the White House. Some administration officials see them as overly costly missions that threaten to tie down the U.S. military in long-term occupations that do little to improve American security.

Such hostility in some quarters has caused some officers to fear some of the counterinsurgency skills honed in Iraq will be lost—including running detainee operations, conducting interrogations and collecting intelligence with aerial drones, areas of high expertise that support efforts to cripple insurgent networks and head off spectacular attacks.

Others worry that the skills learned through hard years of fighting—how to react quickly to ambushes and spot IEDs before they explode—will fade. The military remade its training centers to teach such skills, but instilling the knowledge into the next generation of soldiers will require retaining senior non-commissioned officers who spent the most time hunting insurgents in Iraq.

"Those wars are going to be lost arts," said Staff Sgt. Maxwell Davis, who spent 62 months in Iraq across five tours. "The people who stay in try to teach it. But guys are getting out. So it is going to be a battle to teach what you need to do in combat to keep yourself safe."

Historians may ultimately conclude the Iraq war—some 4,500 lives lost, upwards of 30,000 wounded, more than $800 billion spent—was unacceptably costly.

With the end of the Iraq war, and beginning of the end in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has entered an era of cost cutting. The Defense Department is currently trimming some $450 billion in planned spending over the next decades with many in the military predicting more cuts to come.

Officers say they understand the need for some cuts, and to reduce the size of the military. But they say spending can be trimmed even as skills are preserved.

These people say the broader question is what sort of war the military's masters in Washington want to prepare for. They point to the years following the unconventional, anti-insurgency-style war in Vietnam. Then, the military began preparing for the kind of war it wanted to fight: a big one, possibly in Europe, with bombers, tanks and artillery.

"We came out of Vietnam and vowed never to do that again," said Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly, who served three tours in Iraq and is now the senior military assistant to the defense secretary. "We re-armed to fight the kind of wars we liked to fight, the kind of wars we were good at—conventional, high tech. And now, here we are, with 10 years of a Vietnam-like war."

Also enticing to Washington is the other skill honed by the military in Iraq: lean, special-operations commands capable of hunting militant networks, such as the hunter-killer operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan earlier this year.

But there is a danger in relying only on commando raids, current and former special-operation officers say. In Iraq, it wasn't until Gen. Petraeus overhauled U.S. strategy that special-operations raids began to have a significant impact.

"We had taken an awful lot of insurgent leaders off the battlefield, but it was not enough," Gen. Petraeus said in the interview. "It was not until we also focused on securing the population by living with them, conducting major clear-hold-and-build operations and then also pursued reconciliation, that security improved."

The Petraeus strategy pushed soldiers like Sgt. Davis off the big bases and in to tiny outposts inside Iraq neighborhoods, which slowly improved security enough that Iraqi citizens began to turn their back on militias and insurgent groups. But it required large numbers of personnel, outlays of cash for development projects, and skilled troops whose first instinct when fired upon was not, necessarily, to shoot back.

It also took lower-ranking officers who were creative and adaptable. In 2003, it hardly seemed like traditional military work when Gen. Petraeus ordered the military to restart industrial sites in the city of Mosul. Maj. Gen. Ben Hodges was a colonel when he approved that plan, sending three lieutenants to restart an asphalt plant, a sulfur works and a concrete plant. He said he figures the three officers won't likely be asked to restart a factory again, but such problem-solving will serve the Army into the future.

"The war showed the need for leaders at all levels who can adapt," Gen. Hodges said.

The latest turn away from counterinsurgency already may have started. The Pentagon is focusing its attention on Asia, where any war is likely to rely on the Air Force and Navy. The Libyan war showed that airpower can be used in combination with ill-trained local forces to topple a dictator.

Current and former officers say it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to think the U.S. could get involved in another conflict requiring a large number of troops to keep the peace and warn that the U.S. can't turn its back on counter-insurgency. To some extent, that may influence the decisions that lie ahead.

"We, as a nation," said Gen. Kelly, "have to be ready to fight every kind of war."

[buglerbilly]

Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki marks end of agreement with U.S. via upbeat messages

By Dan Morse, Published: December 31

BAGHDAD — Although U.S. troops left Iraq two weeks ago, Saturday marked the official end of the security agreement between the two countries, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was quick to take political advantage of the occasion via the podium and a text message to citizens.

“All of us are for Iraq glory and pride in the nation,” the message read. “I congratulate you and our Iraqi people on this historic day. With love, and with my respect to you and your honorable family, your brother, Nouri al-Maliki.”Recipients reported getting their texts over a period of at least 75 minutes.

Hours later, inside a packed basketball arena, the prime minister delivered an upbeat 25-minute speech, praising many aspects of his troubled country. He also spoke of harmony, even as his critics continued to accuse him of moving toward a dictatorship in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal.

“I’m telling you, Iraq is for all those who believe in the democracy,” he told the crowd.

Meanwhile, in a move that appeared to strengthen Maliki’s position, two political leaders in provinces south of Baghdad announced that they were withdrawing their support from the parliamentary bloc al-Iraqiya, a group that is supported by many Sunnis and has been a leading voice in criticism of Maliki, a Shiite.

In Najaf, Muhammad al-Mussawi, chairman of that province’s Iraqi National Accord group, a key element of al-Iraqiya, said at a news conference that he and others in Najaf are pulling away from the bloc because of the “sectarian positions” it has taken.

At the same news conference, Kamil al-Safi, chairman of al-Iraqiya in Dhi Qar province, said that he and his group were withdrawing from the bloc for the same reason and might switch their allegiance to Maliki’s State of Law bloc.

“At this stage, we will be independent, and there is a lot of dialogue among the political blocs, especially the State of Law,” Safi said.

Mussawi and Safi are Shiites.

A close adviser to al-Iraqiya, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding thepolitical situation in Iraq, said announcements like the ones out of Najaf are to be expected because Maliki is moving to consolidate power and form a Shiite-dominated government.

He said Maliki is trying to break apart the bloc, which has Sunni and Shiite members and a stated goal of non-sectarian leadership.

“At the end of the day, he doesn’t want to be stuck with us,” he said.

Special correspondents Aziz Alwan and Asaad Majeed contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

US marine to stand trial over 2005 killings that left 24 Iraqis dead

Military court to assess whether Frank Wuterich acted appropriately after his convoy came under attack in Haditha

Karen McVeigh

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 January 2012 22.23 GMT


The trial will ask whether Frank Wuterich acted appropriately when insurgents detonated a 500lb bomb under a marine covoy. Photograph: AP

In a military courtroom in California on Wednesday one of the most controversial events of the Iraq war will be played out one last time.

In November 2005, a US marine squad killed 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, in the village of Haditha. This week, marine staff sergeant Frank Wuterich, the squadron leader in charge, will face voluntary manslaughter charges at Camp Pendleton near San Diego.

Of the eight marines charged with the killings, six have so far had their charges dismissed, and one has been acquitted.

The central question in the trial is whether marines reacted appropriately on 19 November 2005, when insurgents detonated a 500lb roadside bomb under a marine convoy in the village of Haditha. The bombing killed the driver, lance corporal Miguel Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas, and injured two others.

What happened next is still the subject of debate. A car pulled up soon after the explosion, and the marines ordered the five Iraqis inside it to get out. They were unarmed. All five were shot and killed by Wuterich and another marine.

In an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes in 2007, in which he described the incident in detail, Wuterich said the men were running away when he shot them. His account has been disputed by other witnesses.

Asked why running would have justified his actions, Wuterich replied that they "were military-aged males that were inside that car. The only vehicle, the only thing that was out that was Iraqi, was them. They were 100m away from that IED [improvised explosive device]. Those are the things that went through my mind before I pulled the trigger."

The defence insists that a running military-aged male can be assumed to be hostile.

Wuterich and his squadron maintain they then came under fire. Wuterich said he thought it was coming from a nearby house "because it was the only logical place that the fire could come".

Wuterich's superior, lieutenant William Kallop, gave the OK to carry out an attack on the house, according to 60 Minutes.

In his statement to the investigating officer, which he read during a hearing in September 2007, Wuterich recalled: "The four of us aggressively advanced on the house, and on approach I advised the team something like 'shoot first and ask questions later', or 'don't hesitate to shoot'. I can't remember my exact words, but I wanted them to understand that hesitation to shoot would only result in the four of us being killed."

He told 60 Minutes that "there may have been women in there, may have been children in there."

No weapons were found.

The marines then stormed a neighbouring house, where more Iraqis were killed.

Prosecuters say Wuterich did not respond appropriately to the threat that day, and that he went against rules that rely on a positive identification of a hostile target before shooting.

Gary Solis, a law professor and former marine corp prosecutor, said the case was "very significant."

"It's important because 24 people are dead. It's the greatest number of non-combat victims in a single incident that wasn't a bomb. All armed forces look to their officers to be the adults in the group," he said. "We look to them to make sure that things like Haditha don't happen."

Asked whether he broke the rules of engagement, Solis said: "He doesn't have to explain that he is innocent, but he has to explain 24 dead bodies. In order to adequately defend himself he has to explain to the court that the homicides were justified."

Legal experts agree that that the fact it has taken six years to come to court will work in Wuterich's favour.

"He has a very good defence lawyer, and the marine court prosecution didn't push enough for him to go to trial," said Solis. "In my opinion, the defence council has won in a major way."

Some observers have suggested that the lingering Iraqi anger over the Haditha killings – including a failure to secure a single conviction – has fostered an enduring mistrust of US troops.

That 24 people are dead, 11 of whom were women and children, remains undisputed. At the end of his statement to his investigations officer, Wuterich took responsibility for he deaths.

He said: "As a sergeant and the squad leader of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, I am responsible for the decisions made to employ the tactics we used that day. My marines responded to the threats they faced in the manner that we all had been trained. I will bear the memory of the events of that day forever, and will always mourn the unfortunate deaths of the innocent Iraqis who were killed during our response to the attack."

The trial is expected to last about a month. If convicted, Wuterich could face years behind bars.