BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O FINALLY GOT A RECORD . . . AND TURNS OUT, HE'S NOT ALL THAT.
ST. BARACK'S CULT HAS DWINDLED TO THE POINT THAT AN EQUAL NUMBER (WITHIN MARGIN OF ERROR) OF AMERICANS SAY THE COUNTRY WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER WITH JOHN MCCAIN IN THE WHITE HOUSE AS IT IS WITH BARRY O IN THERE.
IN OTHER NEWS, HE CONSISTENTLY POLLS BELOW 50% AND HALF THE COUNTRY THINKS HE'S DOING AN AWFUL JOB.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting in London with the Iraq Inquiry. For any who missed yesterday's hearing and to give credit to an outlet for covering the events, we'll note this from yesterday's Pacifica Evening News (broadcast on KPFA and KPFK -- as well as other stations -- KPFA archives for 14 days, KPFK for 59):'s
John Hamilton: Prime Minister Tony Blair told then-president George W. Bush in 2002 that Britain would back military action if diplomatic efforts to disarm Iraq's Saddam Hussein failed. That's according to testimony today by Blair's former communications chief as he appeared before a public inquiry into the Iraq War in London. Alastair Campbell said there never was a precipitant rush to war despite the close ties between Blair and Bush; however, Campbell said that Blair wrote personally to Bush to offer his support for military action if Saddam did not accede to the United Nations demands on disarmament before the March 2003 invasion. Here he describes the content of secret letters from Blair to the former president pledging British support for an invasion as early as 2002.Alastair Campbell: We share the analysis. We share the concern. We're absolutely with you in making sure that Saddam Hussein is -- face up to his obligations and Iraq is disarmed. If that cannot be done diplomatically, it has to be done mila-militarily. Britain will be there. That will definitely be the tenor of his communications to the president.John Hamilton: Campbell is a former journalist who was one of Blair's closest advisers from 1994 to 2003. He insisted today that Blair tried all along to disarm Saddam by diplomatic means. His testimony conflicted with widespread reports that a British intelligence dossier on Iraq's pre-war capabilities to produce Weapons of Mass Destruction was "sexed up" on Campbell's orders to make Saddam Hussein appear to be more of a threat to national security. Those reports were reinforced this week when the British Guardian newspaper reported that those who drafted the dossier were immediately asked to compare British claims against a 2002 speech to the United Nations by then-president George W. Bush. In that speech, the former president claimed Iraq would be able to produce a nuclear weapon within a year. The next day, the [British] dossier's timeline was halved to claimed Iraq could get the bomb within a year. Campbell today dismissed such reports.Alastair Campbell: But at no point did anybody from the prime minister down say to anybody within intelligence services, 'Look, you've got to sort of tailor it to fit this argument.' I defend every single word of the dossier I defend every single part of the process.John Hamilton: The five-person Iraq Inquiry also known as the Chilcot Inquiry was called by current Prime Minister Gordon Brown to examine the run up to the 2003 invasion. Critics point out that witness are not sworn to testify under oath. And others have criticized the panel's members for their lack of prosecutorial skills.
Jason Beattie (Daily Mirror) observes of Capmbell's testimony, "The Godfather of Spin bobbed and weaved his way through a five-hour long grilling without once displaying a hint of humility or a glimmer of self-doubt." Tom Newton Dunn (The Sun) zooms in on this detail, "Mr Campbell revealed Gordon Brown was in Tony Blair's 'inner circle' when the decision was made to go to war. The revelation is an embarrassment to the then-Chancellor who has long tried to distance himself." Before we get to today's hearing, we're going to stay with Gordon Brown and today's news. Brown came under pressure today regarding the Iraq Inquiry. Andrew Porter (Telegraph of London) reports, "Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, used Prime Minister's Questions to demand that the Prime Minister face questions from Sir John Chilcot's inquiry team in the coming weeks." Porter quotes Clegg stating, "Given everything that has come to light in the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War, will you now do the decent thing and volunteer to give evidence to the inquiry before people decide how to vote? When the decisions were taken to launch this illegal war, you weren't only in the room - you were the one who signed the cheques. People are entitled to know, before they decide how to vote in a general election, what your role was in this Government's most disastrous decision. What have you got to hide?" The Guardian of England has a web poll on the issue currently and, as this is dictated, the non-scientific results are 15% say that Brown shouldn't testify before the election and 85% say, "Yes. Voters hvae a right to know his responsibility." Tim Castle (Reuters) reports that Gordon Brown danced around the issue today declaring, "I have nothing to hide on this matter, I am happy to give eivdence." But that's not saying, "Fine, I'll do it." Helene Mulhooland (Guardian) adds, "Brown was also asked if he had any regrets regarding the war, and said he had already put on the record that he felt that the reconstruction of the country had been mismanaged. But he said he stood by all the decisions he was involved in during the run-up to the invasion in 2003."
The Liberal Democrats issued the following:
Following today's Prime Minister's Questions, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg is writing to Gordon Brown, urging him to indicate to the Chilcot Inquiry that he would prefer to appear before it ahead of the election.
The text of the letter is as follows: Dear Gordon,
I am writing to urge you to indicate immediately to Sir John Chilcot that it is your
strong preference to go before the Iraq Inquiry ahead of the General Election.
Follwoing developments yesterday at Alastair Campbell's hearing, your personal
role in decisions that led to the war in Iraq has now come under the spotlight. The
notion that you hearing should take place after the election in order that the Inquiry
remains outside of party politics therefore no longer holds. On the contrary, the
sense that you have been granted special treatment because of your position as
Prime Minister will only serve to undermine the perceived independence of the
Committee.
As I said to you across the floor of the Commons today, people have a right
to know the truth about the part you played in this war before they cast their
verdict on your Government's record. I urge you to confirm publicly that should Sir
John Chilcot invite you to give evidence to the Inquiry ahead of the election you
will agree to do so.
Nick Clegg
Along with Brown's testimony, there is great interest around Tony Blair's testimony (Blair is scheduled to testify later this month). Catherine Mayer (Time magazine) notes:Blair's star turn is expected to be so heavily subscribed that the inquiry has launched a public ballot for seats. A key question will be at what point the British government gave pledges to Washington about taking part in military action. The inquiry panel's questions to Campbell revealed for the first time the existence of private letters in 2002 from Blair to U.S. President George W. Bush. The "tenor" of these letters, said Campbell, was "We are going to be with you making sure that Saddam Hussein faces up to his obligations and that Iraq is disarmed. If that cannot be done diplomatically and it is to be done militarily, Britain will be there."
The Daily Mirror offers, "A little humility might have been appropriate when considering the dire situation Iraq is now in but perhaps we're expecting too much." Campbell has no humility. Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger notes that Campbell insists he ignored the morning papers in which case he might wish to know that BBC News offers a press roundup of coverage (with links). Meanwhile Andrew Sparrow (Guardian) notes Campbell's taken to blog to toss out the Bible to hide behind. The Guardian's Nicholas Watt also caught Campbell's self-dramatizing posts:
So, once again, we are treated to some "unadulterated, bilious shite" on Alastair Campbell's blog today.
OK, that language is a bit over the top. But those are the exact words Campbell once used in public to dismiss a Guardian piece I had written.
Now Tony Blair's former communications director is denouncing the media in general for its coverage of his appearance before the Iraq inquiry yesterday. He has taken exception to the way the press highlighted a series of notes Blair wrote to George Bush in the run-up to the war in 2003.
Campbell's post is rather amazing for its inability to grasp reality and for little tidbits that say so much. An example of the latter, Campbell spent last night seeing The Misanthrope. But possibly Campbell's really not familiar with Moliere and missed those points. (In his post, he's obssessed with Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis.)
Today the Inquiry heard from Nemat Shafik and Andrew Turnbull (link goes to video and transcript options). Turnbull was Tony Blair's Cabinet Secretary (September 2002 to 2005).
Chair John Chilcot: I think we are coming to the end of this session. We have learned from this session a number of lessons and you may have others to suggest and certainly some last reflections.
Andrew Turnbull: Well, I have got one in particular. That is -- the perception in the British public is, we said he had weapons of mass destruction and we went to war in order to find them and disarm them, and we didn't find them. Thererfore, the 179 people [British troops] who died, many more injured, their sacrfice is in vain. That's a very kind of popular view. What I find extraordinary is that -- how little knowledge there is of what the answer to this story is, and I hope that this Inquiry will devote some time to explaining what we now know about what actually happened, the two main sources being the Iraq Survey Group and the debriefing of Saddam Hussein. If I said to people, "Who is George Piro?", I don't think one in 60 million would know -- do you know who George Piro is? George Piro is the FBI agent who debriefed Saddam Hussein over a perid of five months. So there is a sense that we do know the answer, and --
We stop there. We're not interested in garbage and it's a damn shame the Inquiry let him yammer on. Saddam Hussein was crossed or felt crossed by the George H.W. Bush administration (when H.W. Bush was president). He's captured by US forces after the illegal war has started. You think he's going to tell the truth? He's got a good guess he's going to be dying (he was executed). You think he's not going to taunt his interrogators?
While the Inquiry does not swear anyone in (or make them affirm to tell the truth), witnesses need to offer testimony on what they observed. Turnbull was not present for the interrogation. He's referring to an American FBI agent's observations. Bring that FBI agent forward if you want to hear what the FBI heard from Saddam. But don't let witnesses continue this crap. There was a passage last week, of testimony, that was so tempting to use because it would be perfect for the snapshot and back up several assertions we've long made. It never made it in the snapshot because the witness 'testifying' wasn't present for what he was describing. The committee doesn't need to be composed of attorneys to grasp that you don't rely on hearsay evidence.
They need to put their foot down on this because it's happening more and more as the Inquiry goes on and you better believe those who are coming in know it. Turnbull knew it. He knew he could go on (and on and on -- from where we cut him off he speaks for another page and six more lines before being interrupted). He offered nothing of value. What he didn't witness, he didn't witness. Early in his testimony, he told Chilcot, "I thought Alastair Campbell's description of Clare Short as untrustworthy was very poor. I didn't agree with that." Fine. That's his observation. He's making that call based on what he saw. He did not see Saddam Hussein interrogated and he doesn't need to be pinning his hopes that the illegal war was 'good' onto testimony he can't back up because he didn't witness it.
Andrew Turnbull: I think there were two problems. One was the US. The other is we made -- along with that -- when we allocated, we made some incorrect assumptions. There was a belief that we would succeed in persuading -- since we had persuaded the US to go the UN route on the confrontation of Saddam Hussein, they would buy into the UN route for the post-crisis. I think Bush -- when Bush said the UN will have a vital role (inaudible), he was fobbing us off, and he meant the UN agencies would have a vital role, but he was absolutely resistant. So we took false comfort from that. We took false comfort from the fact that there are papers which say, "This is a well-educated socity" and there were words around in the papers which say "with a functioning, public -- relatively functioning public sector". It turned out that it partly collapsed of its own accord and then Bremer destroyed what was left. We had underestimated the discord that would arise. In a sense, we were preparing, but we didn't -- there were lots of things we didn't forsee and it was getting the -- an arrangment with US apparatus that was the thing that was realy difficult. [. . .] No, what we did not get were large numbers of internal displaced people and we did not get hunger, and I have come to the view that the UN, when they said they were feeding 60 per cent of the population, they were boasting. Valerie Amos went to Basra in June/early Jule and reported that the markets were simply flowing with produce. So I don't think we were looking at a much, much worse scenario on those two fronts. What we did not anticipate was the collapse of civil order, and you could say this comes back to the fact that the one assumption that was absolutely correct in this whol thing was that Saddam Hussein could be toppled very quickly with a surprisingly small number of people, but the number of people required to topple him in three weeks was far les than the number required to occupy what was left. That was a major strategic miscalculation, not principally of our doing.
Turnbull stated that if they'd gone with another war option, the British could have utilized "warships and airships" but far less boots on the ground.
Andrew Turnbull: Whether people really understood that significance, I don't know. Maybe they did, but they understimated just how difficult it was going to be, and one of the reasons we underestimated it was, in my view, that the emigre groups had the ear of the people that mattered in the Pentago who said, once you have decapitated the Saddam regime, it will not be difficult to create a functioning Iraqi society. We were overconfident in that and didn't forsee -- this whole idea -- we didn't forsee that we would be in the midst of an extreme security problem. We didn't foresee that the Iranians would meddle as much as they meddled. It goes back almost to that point, but I think we seriously failed to see what was the real problem. The real problem was security and we probably spent too much time on humanitarian -- the movement of people, refugee camps, safe havens and the food supply issues, and we didn't catch this other issue that, if we didn't establish security, nothing else counted for anything.
This is in contrast to Shafik's earlier testimony and Chilcot pointed that out to Turnbull before noting that Shafik wasn't there (and Turnbull was) so obviously on some level John Chilcott does grasp that people need to be testifying to what they witnessed. I was not impressed with Shafik's testimony and we're not emphasizing it. Iraq Inquiry Blogger weighs in on Turnbull's testimony:
In the event it was a fascinating session. He attacked Alastair Campbell for describing Clare Short as untrustworthy ("very poor"), criticised Blair for allowing the 'culture of challenge' to ebb from Cabinet life and introduced the new (to me) phrase "granny's footsteps" to describe the troubling way the September dossier was pieced together by No 10 and the spooks.
How was Middle East security ever going to be improved, he asked, by taking out Saddam Hussein and leaving Iran with a neighbour newly run by 15 million Shia?
Perhaps most moving were his remarks about the late Robin Cook. A number of commentators have said the former Foreign Secretary wasn't always the easiest of people to get on with; I interviewed him once and was left with the distinct impression that mine were by some considerable degree by far the stupidest questions he'd ever been asked (then again maybe they were).
But Turnbull's description of the "quite remarkable" man was highly affectionate. Alone in a Cabinet that had bought the case for war, Cook was the only person who wasn't convinced about WMD or the failure of containment "and I'm sorry he isn't around to take the credit for that".
Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) focuses on the legal opinion given the Cabinet before the start of the illegal war:
Lord Turnbull, the cabinet secretary at the time, who gave the inquiry unprecedented insights into how the Blair government took the country to war in 2003, said there were significant differences between the final legal opinion Lord Goldsmith presented to the cabinet, and an earlier version he gave privately to Tony Blair.
"It was not, in my view, a summary of what had been produced 10 days earlier. It was materially different in some respects because of the passage of time. Certain things had changed," he said.
Blair has argued that the short statement Goldsmith subsequently gave the cabinet on the eve of the invasion was a "fair summary" of the attorney general's latest legal advice. However, it is now known that the only official legal opinion Goldsmith drew up was the one dated 7 March, which contained serious caveats about the lawfulness of an invasion.
David Brown (Times of London) adds, "Lord Turnbull said that the final legal opinion presented to the Cabinet 'was not, in my view, a summary of what had been produced ten days earlier. It was materially different in some respects because of the passage of time. Certain things had changed'." For Chris Ames (Iraq Inquiry) the most telling moment of the hearing was that Turnbull became yet another who had faith in Blair early on but now didn't know what to make (he told the Inquiry he was confused by Tony Blair's recent claims that he would have invaded Iraq whether or not he thought it had WMD) and, "The trouble for Blair is that if the cabinet secretary didn't know what the true aim of his policy was, the evidence of all of the officials further away from him who have sworn that the objective of the policy was disarmament becomes worthless."
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
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Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The crazy world
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
CRAZY ROD BLAGOJEVICH IS BACK IN THE NEWS MAKING REMARKS SO INSANE THAT CONTEMPLATING WHETHER THEY ARE RACIST OR NOT WOULD BE BESIDES THE POINT. BUT HE INSISTS THAT BARACK'S GROOMER (AND PETTER) DAVID AXLEROD TRIED TO GET HIM TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT.
AXLEROD DENIED THE CHARGE INSISTING, "I HAD HEARD HE WAS HAVING MEETINGS WITHIN A YEAR OF RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR TO DISCUSS A PRESIDENTIAL RACE. I THOUGHT THAT PROSPECT WAS LUDICROUS."
YEAH. HA. WHAT A FOOL. HOW INSANE CAN YOU BE. WHAT'S NEXT? A 1 YEAR SENATOR (ELECTED IN 2005) BEING DRAFTED BY A SENATE MAJORITY LEADER (IN 2006) TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT? YEAH, THAT'S UNBELIEVABLE.
IN OTHER NEWS, ROD BLAGOJEVICH'S IDENTICAL TWIN JEFF JACOBY DEMONSTRATES CRAZY RUNS IN THE FAMILY AS HE RUSHES TO DEFEND HARRY THE RACIST REID.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
"Today, we are moving on to hear from Ministers and the most senior decision-makers over the next four weeks," chair John Chilcot declared in London. "We will then take a break over the period of the general election, before resuming public hearings in the summer." Chilcot is the chair of Iraq Inquiry and Tony Blair's spokesperson Alastair Campbell (link goes to video and transcript options) was today's witnesses and the press -- the world press with the exception of the US -- has turned out. In the US, George W. Bush sold the illegal war on a number of false claims. In England, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair used the lie that Iraq could attack England with WMD within 45 minutes. It was a lie, the Iraq Inquiry (chaired by John Chilcot) has established that. Tony Blair will appear before them in the near future and, at that time presumably, he will explain whether or not he learned before the start of the war that his claim was false. What is known is that his staff was informed, days before the start of the Iraq War, that his claim was false and, if procedure was followed, that fact should have reached Blair. Along with Blair, current Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to testify. Among the commentaries on Campbell's testimony today, the most interesting is probably that of Ibrahim al-Marashi. He wrote the 'intel' for the Iraq War. He wrote it for his PhD and the British government stole it without attribution (as did Collie Powell who used it in his UN 'testimony' before the start of the Iraq War). al-Marashi writes in the Times of London:
What actually happened was this: the British Government took my material, then added pages that argued for military action against Iraq and changed key words to suggest that Iraq had supported al-Qaeda. This formed part of what became known as the "Dodgy Dossier", published in February 2003.
It followed a report released in September 2002, detailing Iraq's WMD programme and including the 45-minute figure four times. The BBC's assertion that Mr Campbell had inserted the 45-minute figure to "sex up" the document led to it being known as the "Sexed-up Dossier".
Sir John Scarlett, the intelligence chief, told the Chilcot inquiry that some of the facts he presented to the Government were "lost in translation". I would say that what got lost in translation is that governments have been spinning wars since the US Government set up the Creel Commission in the First World War.
John Scarlett, in the lead up to the Iraq War, was the chair of Tony Blair's Joint Intelligence Committee. He's already appeared before the committee. We'll note this section from today's hearing.
Committee Lawrence Freedman: On 5 and 9 September you chaired two meetings in the Cabinet Office with senior officials, including John Scarlett, to discuss the dossier. Why were you chairing these meetings?
Alastair Campbell: Because John Scarlett, having done what he considered to be a pretty advanced draft of the dossier, then said to me, I think quite rightly, "It is going to be a document the Prime Minister presents to Parliament. There are massive global expectations around it and I need a bit of presentational support," and that's what I gave him.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: Can I just clairfy something you said there? You said Scarlett had already done a draft. I didn't think a draft had been done.
Alastair Campbell: There came a point where he said, "I have now reached a point where I need presentational advice on this". So we met on the 5th and the 9th. As a result of those meetings, a process was set out by me, in writing, around the system, which made clear what the dossier, in terms of its overall structure and contents, was going to be, but also emphasising to everybody within the system that this was now John Scarlett's work and anything that had gone before was redundant and irrelevant. Then, when he came back to me, it was to say, "I have now reached a position where I need presentational advice". I was chairing those meetings because the Prime Minister was going to be presenting the paper that John Was working on to Parliament, massive media interest right around the world, and I think it was entirely, not just appropriate, it was absolutely necessary that I should have done that.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: But in most organisations chairing a meeting confers authority and accountability. So basically you are saying you are a customer of this process as well as giving help with the presentation.
Alastair Campbell: I mean, look, in terms of the -- just as a point of accuracy by the way, the meetings were in Downing Street, not the Cabinet Office. Look, within the context of that meeting, I was the person who was charged by the Prime Minister to advise him on all the presentational aspects to do with the dossier, and indeed its production, which was going to be enormous. I think on the day that the dossier was published, the website sort of crashed and the interest was absolutely huge. So John's role within that, which was clearly understood by everybody -- and I think also in a way it hopefully was of assistance to John Scarlett and the JIC, that, in a sense, we were so clearly having that relationship, because to the rest of government it was sending very, very clearly the message: this is now the document that the Prime Minister is going to present to Parliament and that guy over there, John Scarlett, is the man in charge of it.
David Brown (Times of London) reports, "He rejected Sir John's evidence to the inquiry that he could not have altered Mr Balir's foreword -- in which he claimed that the intelligence showed 'beyond doubt' that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- as it was a political statement" and quotes Campbell stating, "If John Scarlett or any of his team had had any concerns of real substance about the foreword then they know they could have raised those directly with the Prime Minister."
Campbell was an ass throughout. He whined like a baby about the BBC and claimed it turned on Blair & Company and wouldn't report any good news from Iraq. He was and remains in a bubble, completely untouched by reality.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: You have expressed today your support for the policy that was followed on Iraq with very great conviction. Do you consider now that it has been a success and, looking back on it, what lessons would you draw from it beyond the points that have already been made, for example, just now, about the aftermath, and what regrets, if any, do you have?
Alastair Campbell: Do I support it? Yes. I think that, as I said to you just before the break -- I think that Britain, far from beating ourselves up about this, should be really proud of the role that we played in changing Iraq from what it was to what it is now becoming and the potential impact that that has on the region. I think, for example that Libya and the moves that it made in relation to WMD, I think -- I don't know because I wasn't involved in those discussions, but I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't in part driven by them seeing these guys are serious now about this issue. I think that the -- when -- I saw the Prime Minister as closely and probably as often as anybody else, and I saw somebody of really deep conviction and integrity, who was making, without doubt, the most difficult decision of his premiership, knowing there were going to be consequences, but also understanding there are "what if" questions, had he taken another decision. Again, I thought Chris Meyer was really glib about the pontential impact on the transatlantic relationship in relation to that.
Did he just accuse someone else of being glib? Asked of regrets, he doesn't once note loss of life and he wants to call someone else glib? Really? It gets worse. Watch what happens when he's prompted about loss of life.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Looking at the huge cost in loss of life over, now, six and a half years, at the effects on the stability of the Middle Eastern region, at the development of international terrorism within Iraq, do you consider that, overall, the policy has succeeded?
Alastair Campbell: I do, but not without reflecting often and realising the import of the ccaveats that you have just put into that. I think, in relation to the Middle East peace process -- and bear in mind the road map is still -- the outline -- and the Prime Minister did get the Americans to go down there. I don't think they can solely be blamed for the fact that there has been such little process. I think, in terms of security, yes, the death toll has been high in terms of Iraqis, and obviously any loss of any British soldier's life is not just tragic but it obviously weighs heavily on anybody who was involved in that process, most particularly, obviously, the Prime Minister.
He yammers away but, note, he never mentions American lives. And, no, his being British is not an excuse. Every military officer testifying to the committee -- everyone -- mentioning loss of life has noted the US death toll. Campbell couldn't shut up about America or the United States when it was time to share blame. But here he notes the Iraqi death toll (he should, he's responsible for those deaths) and then pointedly declares "any loss of any British soldier's life is not just tragic but it . . ."
Let's go to the stats. The death toll for the UK forces in Iraq? 179. For the US? 4373. Repeating, every British officer appearing before the committee who has noted the death toll has been sure to include the US death toll. 4373 is not a minor number. (139 is the number of service members killed from foreign countries other than the US or the UK -- "foreign countries" means "not Iraq.")
But only some numbers matter to Campbell. Some numbers including thousands and hundreds of thousands don't matter to Campbell and never did. Wait. Let's let him explain it.
Committee Member Martin Gilbert: My last question on this relates to the extraordinary demonstration, on 15 February 2003, in which vast numbers of people, including two of my three children walked through the streets of London protesting about the Iraq war, and it was said to be one of the largest demonstrations of recent times. What account did you take of this strength of public opinion and how did it inform the Prime Minister's preparation for what was going to be this very important Parliamentary debate?
Alastair Campbell: In one very specific way -- I think the day before the march, I think I'm right that we were in Scotland. I can't remember that precisely. The march was getting huge publicity in the build-up. It was clearly going to be an enormous event, and you have got to remember this is a democracy, the Prime Minister was intending to stand for re-election, he knew that this was a deeply unpopular policy with an awful lot of people and not just unpopular, tuition fees or whatever it might have been; this was deep. I always have a rule of thumb that, if somebody goes on a march, there are probably ten others who thought about it. So there were a lot of people who were opposed. I think, what it definitely -- look, there was the political consideration. That was a big protest and he was -- he thought about it a lot and he was seized of its significance. But ultimately, I think it just made him think more deeply about the issue. The day before -- I will check the chronology on this -- he did a speech. We met some Iraqi exiles in a hotel in Scotland, who had got in touch with me actually and said -- because they sensed the UN thing going wrong, and they just came and said, "Look, he has got to see this through. He has got to see this through. We have got family back there, we know what Iraq is like. You have got all these people on the march, no doubt well-meaning, but they just do not understand the reality of this regime. Please." I took some of them to see the Prime Minister and he then made a speech where I think the line that was taken out of it by the media, he made what he called the moral case for war, becuase people were talking about the moral case, those on the march, the moral case for inaction, and the Prime Minister really just set out that there is a different view to take here and, ultimately, he didn't -- he always uwed this word. He said, "I don't disrespect those who have come to a different conclusion."
After a break, Campbell corrected his timeline, "Can I just say that the moral case speech was the day of the march?" So thousands and thousands of people march -- and Campbell believes each marcher represents ten people -- and Campbell wants to pretend that people are being respected.
Which people?
Not the marchers. They don't get a private audience with Tony Blair. Iraqi exiles -- most of whom are now KNOWN LIARS -- get to meet with Blair. Blair's moving towards war, according to Campbell, and the world sees its largest demonstration and Blair responds by? Meeting with the ones demanding the war. Not with the ones opposed.
He meets with the CHICKEN HAWKS who are TOO DAMN CHICKEN to FIGHT THEIR OWN BATTLES. The trashy exiles who sought refuge in another country and then used those countries as an operating base to drag the world into war. These trashy disgusting people, too scared to fight Saddam so they ran from their own country, demanding now that the US, the UK, Australia and other countries send in soldiers to do the job that the CHICKEN HAWKS were too scared to do themselves.
Many of the exiles were on the CIA payroll throughout their period of exile. These weren't refugees. These were thugs like the ones in Florida who plot to overthrow Cuba. No country should grant asylum to any person who doesn't agree that the host country will not be used as a staging platform for war with the country they hail from.
The exiles lived it up. And got special access. The people protesting? They got nothing. Oh, some of them were 'lucky' enough to see their sons or daughters, husbands or wives, fathers or mothers, friends sent off to fight in this illegal war. And of course the exiles returned to Iraq. Whisked back in. For photo ops. And installed into the puppet government.
Tony Blair's apology to the British should include putting them second to please a bunch of spoiled, cowardly exiles.
Iain Martin (Wall St. Journal) observes, "But there is something strange about the unyielding nature of their responses and their lack of willingness to reflect meaningfully. Almost seven years since the invasion, it is disappointing that those who drove such an important decision are not more insightful about what went wrong and right." Today was probably the most media covered day of the hearing thus far (January 29th will be the big media day if Tony Blair appears then as scheduled). Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger live blogged the hearing at Twitter and noted of the media, "Several satellite trucks praked outside QE2 centre. Two protestors, one billboard saying Campbell, Blair, Scarlett should be tried at Hague." Tom Baldwin (Times of London) makes this call: "Indeed, the blanket news coverage his appearance generated, showed that the passions that burned so hot over the invasion have not been cooled by either global recession or regime change in Washington and a new leader in London, as well as Baghdad." Iraq Inquiry Blogger was not the only live blogger -- Emma Griffiths live blogged for BBC News.Glen Oglaza continued live blogging for Sky News and the Guardian's Andrew Sparrow live blogged. In addition, Andrew Gilligan (Telegraph of London) -- long on this story -- live blogged and his strongest post was probably the fact checking one:
Mr Campbell's claims:
1. In evidence (Q1092) to the Commons' foreign affairs committee (FAC), he claimed: "The entire document was the product of the pen of the Joint Intelligence Committee chairman [John Scarlett]."
2. Campbell also claimed: "The allegation… that I, or anyone in Downing Street, exaggerated and distorted intelligence…is totally untrue." (para 9 of his memo to the FAC.)
3. Campbell or his deputy, Godric Smith, repeatedly claimed that there had been no political interference whatever in the dossier. For instance, at the Downing Street press briefing of 4 June 2003 (on page 6 of this PDF): "The dossier was entirely the work of the intelligence agencies… Suggestions that any pressure was put on the intelligence services by No 10 or anyone else to change the document were entirely false."
The reality:
1. The foreword of the dossier was written by Campbell, as this memo of 17 September 2002, a week before publication, makes clear. In his own evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry a few weeks ago, Scarlett himself belatedly admitted this too. The foreword was where the dossier's most incendiary statements appeared, such as the claim that the intelligence on Saddam's WMD was "beyond doubt."
2. The 17 September memo also shows that Campbell suggested 15 changes to the executive summary and main body of the document to Scarlett. Most were accepted and their effect was to harden up the document's language from possibility to probability, or probability to certainty.
3. Among the most serious: following Campbell's suggestion in the memo, a false statement, unsupported by intelligence reporting, was inserted in the dossier that Saddam had continued to "make progress" with his illicit weapons programmes.
Note that the above is an excerpt, Gilligan's fact check continues at the link. David Brown (Times of London) zooms in on the testimony regarding communications between Blair and Bully Boy Bush, "Tony Blair promised George Bush that Britain would support military action by the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein in a series of secret notes written a year before the invasion of Iraq." Philippe Naughton (Times of London) also zooms in on the notes, "Tony Blair's chief spin doctor revealed today that the former Prime Minister sent a series of notes to President Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in which he made clear that Britain would 'be there' if it came to military action against Saddam Hussein." Campbell actually stated a bit more than that. He declared that, before 9-11, Blair -- who made his desire for regime change clear in the 90s -- told Bush the Middle East would be the big focus. Richard Norton-Taylor and Afua Hirsh (Guardian) go for the notes as well, "Blair was determined to disarm Saddam, Campbell said. Blair's message to the US in April 2002 was he would try to do it through UN resolutions. However, 'if the only way is regime change through military action then the British government will support the American government', Campbell said, describing Blair's view."
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"Tony Blair sang "I'll Be There" to Bush"
"Dutch finds the Iraq War to be illegal"
"Harry's done with it all, thank you"
"The Morning Show and Harry Reid"
"Depressing"
"london?"
"Women's Media Center"
"Brief from the sick bed"
"Poor Harry Reid?"
"Sit down, Barack"
"Jeremy Scahill needs to grow up"
"Chuck sucks"
"THIS JUST IN! BELIEVE IT OR NOT!"
"The jokes"
CRAZY ROD BLAGOJEVICH IS BACK IN THE NEWS MAKING REMARKS SO INSANE THAT CONTEMPLATING WHETHER THEY ARE RACIST OR NOT WOULD BE BESIDES THE POINT. BUT HE INSISTS THAT BARACK'S GROOMER (AND PETTER) DAVID AXLEROD TRIED TO GET HIM TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT.
AXLEROD DENIED THE CHARGE INSISTING, "I HAD HEARD HE WAS HAVING MEETINGS WITHIN A YEAR OF RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR TO DISCUSS A PRESIDENTIAL RACE. I THOUGHT THAT PROSPECT WAS LUDICROUS."
YEAH. HA. WHAT A FOOL. HOW INSANE CAN YOU BE. WHAT'S NEXT? A 1 YEAR SENATOR (ELECTED IN 2005) BEING DRAFTED BY A SENATE MAJORITY LEADER (IN 2006) TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT? YEAH, THAT'S UNBELIEVABLE.
IN OTHER NEWS, ROD BLAGOJEVICH'S IDENTICAL TWIN JEFF JACOBY DEMONSTRATES CRAZY RUNS IN THE FAMILY AS HE RUSHES TO DEFEND HARRY THE RACIST REID.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
"Today, we are moving on to hear from Ministers and the most senior decision-makers over the next four weeks," chair John Chilcot declared in London. "We will then take a break over the period of the general election, before resuming public hearings in the summer." Chilcot is the chair of Iraq Inquiry and Tony Blair's spokesperson Alastair Campbell (link goes to video and transcript options) was today's witnesses and the press -- the world press with the exception of the US -- has turned out. In the US, George W. Bush sold the illegal war on a number of false claims. In England, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair used the lie that Iraq could attack England with WMD within 45 minutes. It was a lie, the Iraq Inquiry (chaired by John Chilcot) has established that. Tony Blair will appear before them in the near future and, at that time presumably, he will explain whether or not he learned before the start of the war that his claim was false. What is known is that his staff was informed, days before the start of the Iraq War, that his claim was false and, if procedure was followed, that fact should have reached Blair. Along with Blair, current Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to testify. Among the commentaries on Campbell's testimony today, the most interesting is probably that of Ibrahim al-Marashi. He wrote the 'intel' for the Iraq War. He wrote it for his PhD and the British government stole it without attribution (as did Collie Powell who used it in his UN 'testimony' before the start of the Iraq War). al-Marashi writes in the Times of London:
What actually happened was this: the British Government took my material, then added pages that argued for military action against Iraq and changed key words to suggest that Iraq had supported al-Qaeda. This formed part of what became known as the "Dodgy Dossier", published in February 2003.
It followed a report released in September 2002, detailing Iraq's WMD programme and including the 45-minute figure four times. The BBC's assertion that Mr Campbell had inserted the 45-minute figure to "sex up" the document led to it being known as the "Sexed-up Dossier".
Sir John Scarlett, the intelligence chief, told the Chilcot inquiry that some of the facts he presented to the Government were "lost in translation". I would say that what got lost in translation is that governments have been spinning wars since the US Government set up the Creel Commission in the First World War.
John Scarlett, in the lead up to the Iraq War, was the chair of Tony Blair's Joint Intelligence Committee. He's already appeared before the committee. We'll note this section from today's hearing.
Committee Lawrence Freedman: On 5 and 9 September you chaired two meetings in the Cabinet Office with senior officials, including John Scarlett, to discuss the dossier. Why were you chairing these meetings?
Alastair Campbell: Because John Scarlett, having done what he considered to be a pretty advanced draft of the dossier, then said to me, I think quite rightly, "It is going to be a document the Prime Minister presents to Parliament. There are massive global expectations around it and I need a bit of presentational support," and that's what I gave him.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: Can I just clairfy something you said there? You said Scarlett had already done a draft. I didn't think a draft had been done.
Alastair Campbell: There came a point where he said, "I have now reached a point where I need presentational advice on this". So we met on the 5th and the 9th. As a result of those meetings, a process was set out by me, in writing, around the system, which made clear what the dossier, in terms of its overall structure and contents, was going to be, but also emphasising to everybody within the system that this was now John Scarlett's work and anything that had gone before was redundant and irrelevant. Then, when he came back to me, it was to say, "I have now reached a position where I need presentational advice". I was chairing those meetings because the Prime Minister was going to be presenting the paper that John Was working on to Parliament, massive media interest right around the world, and I think it was entirely, not just appropriate, it was absolutely necessary that I should have done that.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: But in most organisations chairing a meeting confers authority and accountability. So basically you are saying you are a customer of this process as well as giving help with the presentation.
Alastair Campbell: I mean, look, in terms of the -- just as a point of accuracy by the way, the meetings were in Downing Street, not the Cabinet Office. Look, within the context of that meeting, I was the person who was charged by the Prime Minister to advise him on all the presentational aspects to do with the dossier, and indeed its production, which was going to be enormous. I think on the day that the dossier was published, the website sort of crashed and the interest was absolutely huge. So John's role within that, which was clearly understood by everybody -- and I think also in a way it hopefully was of assistance to John Scarlett and the JIC, that, in a sense, we were so clearly having that relationship, because to the rest of government it was sending very, very clearly the message: this is now the document that the Prime Minister is going to present to Parliament and that guy over there, John Scarlett, is the man in charge of it.
David Brown (Times of London) reports, "He rejected Sir John's evidence to the inquiry that he could not have altered Mr Balir's foreword -- in which he claimed that the intelligence showed 'beyond doubt' that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- as it was a political statement" and quotes Campbell stating, "If John Scarlett or any of his team had had any concerns of real substance about the foreword then they know they could have raised those directly with the Prime Minister."
Campbell was an ass throughout. He whined like a baby about the BBC and claimed it turned on Blair & Company and wouldn't report any good news from Iraq. He was and remains in a bubble, completely untouched by reality.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: You have expressed today your support for the policy that was followed on Iraq with very great conviction. Do you consider now that it has been a success and, looking back on it, what lessons would you draw from it beyond the points that have already been made, for example, just now, about the aftermath, and what regrets, if any, do you have?
Alastair Campbell: Do I support it? Yes. I think that, as I said to you just before the break -- I think that Britain, far from beating ourselves up about this, should be really proud of the role that we played in changing Iraq from what it was to what it is now becoming and the potential impact that that has on the region. I think, for example that Libya and the moves that it made in relation to WMD, I think -- I don't know because I wasn't involved in those discussions, but I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't in part driven by them seeing these guys are serious now about this issue. I think that the -- when -- I saw the Prime Minister as closely and probably as often as anybody else, and I saw somebody of really deep conviction and integrity, who was making, without doubt, the most difficult decision of his premiership, knowing there were going to be consequences, but also understanding there are "what if" questions, had he taken another decision. Again, I thought Chris Meyer was really glib about the pontential impact on the transatlantic relationship in relation to that.
Did he just accuse someone else of being glib? Asked of regrets, he doesn't once note loss of life and he wants to call someone else glib? Really? It gets worse. Watch what happens when he's prompted about loss of life.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Looking at the huge cost in loss of life over, now, six and a half years, at the effects on the stability of the Middle Eastern region, at the development of international terrorism within Iraq, do you consider that, overall, the policy has succeeded?
Alastair Campbell: I do, but not without reflecting often and realising the import of the ccaveats that you have just put into that. I think, in relation to the Middle East peace process -- and bear in mind the road map is still -- the outline -- and the Prime Minister did get the Americans to go down there. I don't think they can solely be blamed for the fact that there has been such little process. I think, in terms of security, yes, the death toll has been high in terms of Iraqis, and obviously any loss of any British soldier's life is not just tragic but it obviously weighs heavily on anybody who was involved in that process, most particularly, obviously, the Prime Minister.
He yammers away but, note, he never mentions American lives. And, no, his being British is not an excuse. Every military officer testifying to the committee -- everyone -- mentioning loss of life has noted the US death toll. Campbell couldn't shut up about America or the United States when it was time to share blame. But here he notes the Iraqi death toll (he should, he's responsible for those deaths) and then pointedly declares "any loss of any British soldier's life is not just tragic but it . . ."
Let's go to the stats. The death toll for the UK forces in Iraq? 179. For the US? 4373. Repeating, every British officer appearing before the committee who has noted the death toll has been sure to include the US death toll. 4373 is not a minor number. (139 is the number of service members killed from foreign countries other than the US or the UK -- "foreign countries" means "not Iraq.")
But only some numbers matter to Campbell. Some numbers including thousands and hundreds of thousands don't matter to Campbell and never did. Wait. Let's let him explain it.
Committee Member Martin Gilbert: My last question on this relates to the extraordinary demonstration, on 15 February 2003, in which vast numbers of people, including two of my three children walked through the streets of London protesting about the Iraq war, and it was said to be one of the largest demonstrations of recent times. What account did you take of this strength of public opinion and how did it inform the Prime Minister's preparation for what was going to be this very important Parliamentary debate?
Alastair Campbell: In one very specific way -- I think the day before the march, I think I'm right that we were in Scotland. I can't remember that precisely. The march was getting huge publicity in the build-up. It was clearly going to be an enormous event, and you have got to remember this is a democracy, the Prime Minister was intending to stand for re-election, he knew that this was a deeply unpopular policy with an awful lot of people and not just unpopular, tuition fees or whatever it might have been; this was deep. I always have a rule of thumb that, if somebody goes on a march, there are probably ten others who thought about it. So there were a lot of people who were opposed. I think, what it definitely -- look, there was the political consideration. That was a big protest and he was -- he thought about it a lot and he was seized of its significance. But ultimately, I think it just made him think more deeply about the issue. The day before -- I will check the chronology on this -- he did a speech. We met some Iraqi exiles in a hotel in Scotland, who had got in touch with me actually and said -- because they sensed the UN thing going wrong, and they just came and said, "Look, he has got to see this through. He has got to see this through. We have got family back there, we know what Iraq is like. You have got all these people on the march, no doubt well-meaning, but they just do not understand the reality of this regime. Please." I took some of them to see the Prime Minister and he then made a speech where I think the line that was taken out of it by the media, he made what he called the moral case for war, becuase people were talking about the moral case, those on the march, the moral case for inaction, and the Prime Minister really just set out that there is a different view to take here and, ultimately, he didn't -- he always uwed this word. He said, "I don't disrespect those who have come to a different conclusion."
After a break, Campbell corrected his timeline, "Can I just say that the moral case speech was the day of the march?" So thousands and thousands of people march -- and Campbell believes each marcher represents ten people -- and Campbell wants to pretend that people are being respected.
Which people?
Not the marchers. They don't get a private audience with Tony Blair. Iraqi exiles -- most of whom are now KNOWN LIARS -- get to meet with Blair. Blair's moving towards war, according to Campbell, and the world sees its largest demonstration and Blair responds by? Meeting with the ones demanding the war. Not with the ones opposed.
He meets with the CHICKEN HAWKS who are TOO DAMN CHICKEN to FIGHT THEIR OWN BATTLES. The trashy exiles who sought refuge in another country and then used those countries as an operating base to drag the world into war. These trashy disgusting people, too scared to fight Saddam so they ran from their own country, demanding now that the US, the UK, Australia and other countries send in soldiers to do the job that the CHICKEN HAWKS were too scared to do themselves.
Many of the exiles were on the CIA payroll throughout their period of exile. These weren't refugees. These were thugs like the ones in Florida who plot to overthrow Cuba. No country should grant asylum to any person who doesn't agree that the host country will not be used as a staging platform for war with the country they hail from.
The exiles lived it up. And got special access. The people protesting? They got nothing. Oh, some of them were 'lucky' enough to see their sons or daughters, husbands or wives, fathers or mothers, friends sent off to fight in this illegal war. And of course the exiles returned to Iraq. Whisked back in. For photo ops. And installed into the puppet government.
Tony Blair's apology to the British should include putting them second to please a bunch of spoiled, cowardly exiles.
Iain Martin (Wall St. Journal) observes, "But there is something strange about the unyielding nature of their responses and their lack of willingness to reflect meaningfully. Almost seven years since the invasion, it is disappointing that those who drove such an important decision are not more insightful about what went wrong and right." Today was probably the most media covered day of the hearing thus far (January 29th will be the big media day if Tony Blair appears then as scheduled). Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger live blogged the hearing at Twitter and noted of the media, "Several satellite trucks praked outside QE2 centre. Two protestors, one billboard saying Campbell, Blair, Scarlett should be tried at Hague." Tom Baldwin (Times of London) makes this call: "Indeed, the blanket news coverage his appearance generated, showed that the passions that burned so hot over the invasion have not been cooled by either global recession or regime change in Washington and a new leader in London, as well as Baghdad." Iraq Inquiry Blogger was not the only live blogger -- Emma Griffiths live blogged for BBC News.Glen Oglaza continued live blogging for Sky News and the Guardian's Andrew Sparrow live blogged. In addition, Andrew Gilligan (Telegraph of London) -- long on this story -- live blogged and his strongest post was probably the fact checking one:
Mr Campbell's claims:
1. In evidence (Q1092) to the Commons' foreign affairs committee (FAC), he claimed: "The entire document was the product of the pen of the Joint Intelligence Committee chairman [John Scarlett]."
2. Campbell also claimed: "The allegation… that I, or anyone in Downing Street, exaggerated and distorted intelligence…is totally untrue." (para 9 of his memo to the FAC.)
3. Campbell or his deputy, Godric Smith, repeatedly claimed that there had been no political interference whatever in the dossier. For instance, at the Downing Street press briefing of 4 June 2003 (on page 6 of this PDF): "The dossier was entirely the work of the intelligence agencies… Suggestions that any pressure was put on the intelligence services by No 10 or anyone else to change the document were entirely false."
The reality:
1. The foreword of the dossier was written by Campbell, as this memo of 17 September 2002, a week before publication, makes clear. In his own evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry a few weeks ago, Scarlett himself belatedly admitted this too. The foreword was where the dossier's most incendiary statements appeared, such as the claim that the intelligence on Saddam's WMD was "beyond doubt."
2. The 17 September memo also shows that Campbell suggested 15 changes to the executive summary and main body of the document to Scarlett. Most were accepted and their effect was to harden up the document's language from possibility to probability, or probability to certainty.
3. Among the most serious: following Campbell's suggestion in the memo, a false statement, unsupported by intelligence reporting, was inserted in the dossier that Saddam had continued to "make progress" with his illicit weapons programmes.
Note that the above is an excerpt, Gilligan's fact check continues at the link. David Brown (Times of London) zooms in on the testimony regarding communications between Blair and Bully Boy Bush, "Tony Blair promised George Bush that Britain would support military action by the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein in a series of secret notes written a year before the invasion of Iraq." Philippe Naughton (Times of London) also zooms in on the notes, "Tony Blair's chief spin doctor revealed today that the former Prime Minister sent a series of notes to President Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in which he made clear that Britain would 'be there' if it came to military action against Saddam Hussein." Campbell actually stated a bit more than that. He declared that, before 9-11, Blair -- who made his desire for regime change clear in the 90s -- told Bush the Middle East would be the big focus. Richard Norton-Taylor and Afua Hirsh (Guardian) go for the notes as well, "Blair was determined to disarm Saddam, Campbell said. Blair's message to the US in April 2002 was he would try to do it through UN resolutions. However, 'if the only way is regime change through military action then the British government will support the American government', Campbell said, describing Blair's view."
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"Tony Blair sang "I'll Be There" to Bush"
"Dutch finds the Iraq War to be illegal"
"Harry's done with it all, thank you"
"The Morning Show and Harry Reid"
"Depressing"
"london?"
"Women's Media Center"
"Brief from the sick bed"
"Poor Harry Reid?"
"Sit down, Barack"
"Jeremy Scahill needs to grow up"
"Chuck sucks"
"THIS JUST IN! BELIEVE IT OR NOT!"
"The jokes"
Monday, January 11, 2010
The jokes
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
PROFESSIONAL JOKE AL SHARPTON IS DESPERATELY TRYING TO GET BACK IN THE NEWS.
CLOSE ASSOCIATES SAY AL IS SO DESPERATE HE'S CONSIDERING A REUNION TOUR WITH THE WOMAN HE CO-STARRED IN MANY HEADLINES WITH: TAWANA BRAWLEY.
IN OTHER NEWS, GERALDINE FERRARO? BARACK LOVE SLAVE JEFF ZELENY LETS HER TWIST IN THE WIND. WHEN IT'S HARRY REID, HE RUSHES TO THE RESCUE . . . AND OMITS HARRY REID'S APPALLING "NEGRO" REMARK.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting in London where the Iraq Inquiry resumed their public hearings for the week. The Inquiry is chaired by John Chilcot. Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger blogs and tweets the public hearing and notes:
Two weekend nuggets that you may have missed, especially if you're not a Twitter follower. By a strange twist of synchronicity, exactly one hour before the Campbell session starts at 10h00, the Dutch equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry will release its own report on that country's involvement in Iraq.
I won't pretend to follow the minutiae of Netherlands politics but at least one media report suggests that "Tuesday could be the blackest day" of the Dutch PM's career: it sounds as though he resisted the creation of the "Davids Commission" as long as he possibly could. No parallels there then.
The second thing Iraq Inquiry Blogger notes is this BBC profile of committee member Roderic Lyne. Glen Oglaza (Sky News) is also providing live Twittering of the Iraq Inquiry. On the Dutch issue, Radio Netherlands states the country's prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende's future "could [be] deterime[d]" by the findings: "Unless the commission resolves all doubts about the level of Dutch support, the lower house will in all likelihood demand a full parliamentary enquiry. One of the main questions that many people hope the Davids Commission will answer is whether the cabinet fully informed the lower house about the Netherlands' involvement in Iraq. Rumours about the involvement of Dutch special forces and intelligence operatives have been circulating since the invasion and if they prove to be true, it could lead to the prime minister's resignation."
Today the Iraq Inquiry heard from Lt Gen Richard Shirref and Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw (link goes to video and transcript options). Shaw commander the British M-NF forces from January 2007 to August of 2007 while Shirref was in charge from July 2006 until Shaw took over. British forces were primarily in and around Basra and the now forgotten Maysan.
Lt Gen Richard Shirref: The two provinces which were principally the concern of the British, Maysan and Basra, were a different story though. Maysan had always been a very difficult province. There were effectively no security at all where MNF were concerned. The cities of Amarah and Majarr-al-Kabir were effectively no-go areas, and in particular Amarah; any operations into Amarah resulted in significant fighting, at times up to battle group level. The principal British base in Maysan, Camp Abu Naji, was being subjected to continuous attack, as was any movment up and down the route to and from that camp.
For an overview of what the British faced in 2006, this is from the November 22, 2006 snapshot:
In England, This Is London reports: "Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett this afternoon surprised MPs by signalling the countdown to a withdrawal from Iraq. She told the Commons that Basra, where the bulk of the UK's 7,200 personnel are stationed, could be handed over from British military control to Iraqi forces as early as next spring." Basra has been a violent area for British soldiers (and for Iraqis). Earlier this month, on England's Rememberance Sunday, four British troops were killed while on a boat patrol in Basra and three more were wounded. The four killed included Sharron Elliott who was "the second British female servicewoman to die in action." The other three were Jason Hylton, Ben Nowak, and Lee Hopkins. Mortar attacks have been common in Basra and, in August, a British soldier died as a result of wounds received from mortar rounds. In October, a British soldier died in Basra from road traffic. The end of October was also when the British consulate in Basra was evacuated after it was decided it was no longer safe after two months of mortar attacks. (In August, British troops 'evacuated' from their base in Amara due to repeated mortar attacks.)
Amara would have been a topic to explore. The British fled with no notice. The base was then ripped apart by 'insurgents' in less than 12 hours of the British fleeing. The committee largely ignored the issue. Committee member Lawrence Freedman did observe, "Effectively, our forces were spending a lot of their time protecting themselves and were therefore not available for other tasks." Shirref didn't want to go into as anything other than a fleeting mention and he quickly asserted Basra was all that mattered.
Lt Gen Richard Shirreff: Basra itself seemed to me to be the key issue, the second city of Iraq, and it was in Basra that the British reputation was going to stand or fall. What I found when I arrived was effectively no security at all. Any movement required deliberate operation to conduct -- to get around the city. There was a significant lack of troops on the ground. I think when I went out on my recce in May 2006, the single battalion commander responsible for a city of 1.3 million people told me that he could put no more than 13 half platoons or multiples on the ground, less than 200 soldiers on the ground, in a city of 1.3 million. You compare that, for example, with what I recall, as a young platoon commander in West Belfast in the late 1970s when there was a brigade on the ground. The result of all that was what I call a cycle of insecurity. No security meant no reconstruction and development, it meant a loss of consent, the militia filled the gap and, effectively, the militia controlled the city. So my objective was to re-establish security in Basra.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: You say "re-establish," what you have described is a pretty gloomy prospect. How do you think, after all this time, this situation had been allowed to develop?
Lt Gen Richard Shirreff: I can't answer that. All I can tell you is the situation as I found it.
Of the day's other witness, Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian of England) observes, "Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw, British commander based in Basra in 2007, told the inquiry that Basra was 17th on the department's list of priorities. That British forces there had to rely on US money was 'pretty shaming', Shaw said." Where did American money go -- identified by Shirreff as "US tax payer money," which it is, but let's note he was aware of it and credited it as such repeatedly in his own testimony -- on propaganda films according to Shirreff (he didn't use the word "propaganda") which aired on local televsion. Back to Shaw. He used the term "the dark state" and was asked of it, told it sounded like something out of Harry Potter leading him to reply it wasn't JK Rowling:
What it meant, therefore, was that you had a direct link between the people in power advising Maliki sat in his Cabinet down through the shadow state and down to their militias, the sort of violent militias, the criminals, the murderers and the terrorists at the bottom, there was a strict linkage between those three, and so what you ended up with was a system where the dark state was protected by the official state.
Tomorrow Alastair Campbell appears before the Iraq Inquiry and his appearance comes after a revelation over the weekend. Chris Ames (Guardian) explains:Once again it is the media -- rather than the Iraq inquiry – who are putting new information about Iraq into the public domain. In today's Guardian, Richard Norton-Taylor and I reveal the extent to which the notorious September 2002 dossier on Iraq's WMD was sexed-up on Alastair Campbell's instructions to fit in with bogus American claims. The idea that Campbell and intelligence chief John Scarlett were unwitting participants in accidental sexing-up has taken another blow. There is a prologue and an epilogue to today's story. The prologue shows that Campbell and Scarlett knew exactly what they were doing. The epilogue shows that Campbell was still not happy, even after the dossier's worst-case estimate of how quickly Saddam Hussein could get a bomb was effectively halved to fit in with what George W Bush had told the UN. According to his published diaries, on 2 April 2002 Campbell and Scarlett were at a meeting at Chequers where Tony Blair had made clear that the aim of UK government policy was "regime change". Three weeks later Campbell met officials including Scarlett "to go through what we needed to do communications wise to set the scene for Iraq, eg a WMD paper and other papers about Saddam. Scarlett a very good bloke." In July 2002, Blair, Campbell and Scarlett were all present at the now famous Downing Street meeting where Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of MI6, reported that in the US "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq.
Tim Shipman (Daily Mail) adds, "The first draft of the British dossier was completed, using intelligence from MI6, on Septemofber 10, 2002. It concluded that it would take 'at least two years' for Iraq to get a nuclear bomb. But two days later President Bush used a keynote address to the United Nations to declare: 'Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year'." And "11 days later," Tony Blair began stating publicly "a year or two."
Turning to political issues in Iraq. Last week, many of Nouri's political rivals were informed they were being banned from the expected March elections. Today Michael Jansen (Irish Times) reported, "IRAQ'S NATIONAL security council, the country's highest political body, yesterday discussed a call to ban 15 political parties and candidates from standing in the March 7th parliamentary election on the grounds that they are tied to the outlawed Baath Party. If accepted by the election commission, the proposal, put forward by a body charged with purging Baathists, would deny representation to both Sunni and secular Iraqis and torpedo any chance of national unity." Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) adds:
The commission is heir to the old De-Baathification Commission, set up in 2003 by Paul Bremer, the US czar of Iraq, and led by Ahmed Chalabi and his cronies. Among those banned was one of Iraq's most significant players, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni leader and an important member of parliament, whose National Dialogue Front is a popular vote-getter among Iraq's disenfranchised Sunni populace. Mutlaq, a well-known politician, has drawn support from current and former Baathists, secular Sunnis opposed to the Shiite-sectarian rulers in Baghdad, and Iraqis concerned about the intrusive influence of Iran in Iraqi affairs.
Over the past several months, Mutlaq had helped to build a powerful opposition bloc set to challenge both Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who controls a faction of the secretive, sectarian Shiite Dawa party, and the broader Shiite alliance comprised of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr's forces, and Chalabi, the neoconservatives' favorite wheeler-dealer. That alliance was formed with the strong support of Iran, whose authoritarian leaders and radical clerics helped assemble it. ISCI, which has a paramilitary arm, the Badr Brigade, was formed in 1982 as an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and for many years it was actually under the command of Iranian military officers. Sadr, a mercurial Shiite nationalist, has fallen under Iran's umbrella, too, and he has spent most of the past two years living in Qom, Iran's religious capital. Chalabi, despite his neocon connections, has long been suspected of having covert ties to Iran's intelligence service.
Bremer was responsible for de-Ba'athification. But who was responsible for de-de-Ba'athifcation. The White House (under Bush) made that one of the Iraq benchmarks -- benchmarks Nouri signed off on. To bring the Ba'athists back in was one of the benchmarks and a weak law was tossed around Parliament but not implemented and when is anything going to be done about that? And why is the US propping up the government it created? Have we all forgotten the Pentagon Papers and the shocking revelation that the government was admitting the US was in Vietnam to prop up the government they'd created? Nouri al-Maliki signed off on those benchmarks and was never forced to follow them. James Cogan (WSWS) notes some troubling signs:
Tensions in Sunni communities were already rising before this latest provocation. The attempt to proscribe Mutlaq and other Sunni parties follows the rewriting of the electoral law by the Shiite and Kurdish parties to reduce the proportion of seats elected in Sunni areas. There have also been reports of widespread arrests and killings of Sunnis by government troops and police.
According to the newspaper Azzaman, "hundreds of young people have been taken away from Tikrit, Anbar and Mosul". In Baghdad, there have allegedly been numerous arrests in the Sunni majority district of Abu Ghraib, in the west of the city. At least 10 militiamen of the Sunni "Awakening" militias in the capital have reportedly been assassinated.
The Obama administration has made no public comment on the actions of the Justice and Accountability Board. However, it can hardly welcome a development that threatens to inflame communal tensions and undermine arrangements that underpin its plans to reduce troop numbers down to 50,000 by August and redirect US forces to Afghanistan.
It is barely two years since the US military struck a deal with the bulk of the Sunni-based insurgency to abandon armed resistance in exchange for an end to sectarian persecution by Shiite forces, regular payment and implicit guarantees of greater political influence for the Sunni elite.
This as NPR's Quil Lawrence (Morning Edition, text and audio link) reports on the one-time 'model' Anbar Province which is now seeing increased violence and disenchanted citiznes who protest with chants of "Save us" and "We've been sold out." The "model" depended upon cash. In April 2008, Gen David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker explained to Congressional committees how the 'model' worked: The US military paid Sunni 'insurgents' cash to stop attacking US military equipment and US service members. The US appears to have stopped payments around the month of June of this year and Nouri -- who was supposed to take over payments long ago -- sometimes pays, sometimes pays a portion and sometimes tells these 'insurgents' (who became Sawha -- "Awakenings," "Sons Of Iraq") the check's in the mail. With payments questionable (and Arab media reports rumors that payments end this month) and with the bulk of Sahwa still not brought into Iraqi security forces, many Sahwa no longer feel the need to do what they were once paid for.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
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Naomi: The continual embarrassment (Ava and C.I.)
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"He needs the attention"
"THIS JUST IN! HE WON'T SHARE LIMELIGHT!"
PROFESSIONAL JOKE AL SHARPTON IS DESPERATELY TRYING TO GET BACK IN THE NEWS.
CLOSE ASSOCIATES SAY AL IS SO DESPERATE HE'S CONSIDERING A REUNION TOUR WITH THE WOMAN HE CO-STARRED IN MANY HEADLINES WITH: TAWANA BRAWLEY.
IN OTHER NEWS, GERALDINE FERRARO? BARACK LOVE SLAVE JEFF ZELENY LETS HER TWIST IN THE WIND. WHEN IT'S HARRY REID, HE RUSHES TO THE RESCUE . . . AND OMITS HARRY REID'S APPALLING "NEGRO" REMARK.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting in London where the Iraq Inquiry resumed their public hearings for the week. The Inquiry is chaired by John Chilcot. Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger blogs and tweets the public hearing and notes:
Two weekend nuggets that you may have missed, especially if you're not a Twitter follower. By a strange twist of synchronicity, exactly one hour before the Campbell session starts at 10h00, the Dutch equivalent of the Chilcot inquiry will release its own report on that country's involvement in Iraq.
I won't pretend to follow the minutiae of Netherlands politics but at least one media report suggests that "Tuesday could be the blackest day" of the Dutch PM's career: it sounds as though he resisted the creation of the "Davids Commission" as long as he possibly could. No parallels there then.
The second thing Iraq Inquiry Blogger notes is this BBC profile of committee member Roderic Lyne. Glen Oglaza (Sky News) is also providing live Twittering of the Iraq Inquiry. On the Dutch issue, Radio Netherlands states the country's prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende's future "could [be] deterime[d]" by the findings: "Unless the commission resolves all doubts about the level of Dutch support, the lower house will in all likelihood demand a full parliamentary enquiry. One of the main questions that many people hope the Davids Commission will answer is whether the cabinet fully informed the lower house about the Netherlands' involvement in Iraq. Rumours about the involvement of Dutch special forces and intelligence operatives have been circulating since the invasion and if they prove to be true, it could lead to the prime minister's resignation."
Today the Iraq Inquiry heard from Lt Gen Richard Shirref and Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw (link goes to video and transcript options). Shaw commander the British M-NF forces from January 2007 to August of 2007 while Shirref was in charge from July 2006 until Shaw took over. British forces were primarily in and around Basra and the now forgotten Maysan.
Lt Gen Richard Shirref: The two provinces which were principally the concern of the British, Maysan and Basra, were a different story though. Maysan had always been a very difficult province. There were effectively no security at all where MNF were concerned. The cities of Amarah and Majarr-al-Kabir were effectively no-go areas, and in particular Amarah; any operations into Amarah resulted in significant fighting, at times up to battle group level. The principal British base in Maysan, Camp Abu Naji, was being subjected to continuous attack, as was any movment up and down the route to and from that camp.
For an overview of what the British faced in 2006, this is from the November 22, 2006 snapshot:
In England, This Is London reports: "Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett this afternoon surprised MPs by signalling the countdown to a withdrawal from Iraq. She told the Commons that Basra, where the bulk of the UK's 7,200 personnel are stationed, could be handed over from British military control to Iraqi forces as early as next spring." Basra has been a violent area for British soldiers (and for Iraqis). Earlier this month, on England's Rememberance Sunday, four British troops were killed while on a boat patrol in Basra and three more were wounded. The four killed included Sharron Elliott who was "the second British female servicewoman to die in action." The other three were Jason Hylton, Ben Nowak, and Lee Hopkins. Mortar attacks have been common in Basra and, in August, a British soldier died as a result of wounds received from mortar rounds. In October, a British soldier died in Basra from road traffic. The end of October was also when the British consulate in Basra was evacuated after it was decided it was no longer safe after two months of mortar attacks. (In August, British troops 'evacuated' from their base in Amara due to repeated mortar attacks.)
Amara would have been a topic to explore. The British fled with no notice. The base was then ripped apart by 'insurgents' in less than 12 hours of the British fleeing. The committee largely ignored the issue. Committee member Lawrence Freedman did observe, "Effectively, our forces were spending a lot of their time protecting themselves and were therefore not available for other tasks." Shirref didn't want to go into as anything other than a fleeting mention and he quickly asserted Basra was all that mattered.
Lt Gen Richard Shirreff: Basra itself seemed to me to be the key issue, the second city of Iraq, and it was in Basra that the British reputation was going to stand or fall. What I found when I arrived was effectively no security at all. Any movement required deliberate operation to conduct -- to get around the city. There was a significant lack of troops on the ground. I think when I went out on my recce in May 2006, the single battalion commander responsible for a city of 1.3 million people told me that he could put no more than 13 half platoons or multiples on the ground, less than 200 soldiers on the ground, in a city of 1.3 million. You compare that, for example, with what I recall, as a young platoon commander in West Belfast in the late 1970s when there was a brigade on the ground. The result of all that was what I call a cycle of insecurity. No security meant no reconstruction and development, it meant a loss of consent, the militia filled the gap and, effectively, the militia controlled the city. So my objective was to re-establish security in Basra.
Committee Member Lawrence Freedman: You say "re-establish," what you have described is a pretty gloomy prospect. How do you think, after all this time, this situation had been allowed to develop?
Lt Gen Richard Shirreff: I can't answer that. All I can tell you is the situation as I found it.
Of the day's other witness, Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian of England) observes, "Maj Gen Jonathan Shaw, British commander based in Basra in 2007, told the inquiry that Basra was 17th on the department's list of priorities. That British forces there had to rely on US money was 'pretty shaming', Shaw said." Where did American money go -- identified by Shirreff as "US tax payer money," which it is, but let's note he was aware of it and credited it as such repeatedly in his own testimony -- on propaganda films according to Shirreff (he didn't use the word "propaganda") which aired on local televsion. Back to Shaw. He used the term "the dark state" and was asked of it, told it sounded like something out of Harry Potter leading him to reply it wasn't JK Rowling:
What it meant, therefore, was that you had a direct link between the people in power advising Maliki sat in his Cabinet down through the shadow state and down to their militias, the sort of violent militias, the criminals, the murderers and the terrorists at the bottom, there was a strict linkage between those three, and so what you ended up with was a system where the dark state was protected by the official state.
Tomorrow Alastair Campbell appears before the Iraq Inquiry and his appearance comes after a revelation over the weekend. Chris Ames (Guardian) explains:Once again it is the media -- rather than the Iraq inquiry – who are putting new information about Iraq into the public domain. In today's Guardian, Richard Norton-Taylor and I reveal the extent to which the notorious September 2002 dossier on Iraq's WMD was sexed-up on Alastair Campbell's instructions to fit in with bogus American claims. The idea that Campbell and intelligence chief John Scarlett were unwitting participants in accidental sexing-up has taken another blow. There is a prologue and an epilogue to today's story. The prologue shows that Campbell and Scarlett knew exactly what they were doing. The epilogue shows that Campbell was still not happy, even after the dossier's worst-case estimate of how quickly Saddam Hussein could get a bomb was effectively halved to fit in with what George W Bush had told the UN. According to his published diaries, on 2 April 2002 Campbell and Scarlett were at a meeting at Chequers where Tony Blair had made clear that the aim of UK government policy was "regime change". Three weeks later Campbell met officials including Scarlett "to go through what we needed to do communications wise to set the scene for Iraq, eg a WMD paper and other papers about Saddam. Scarlett a very good bloke." In July 2002, Blair, Campbell and Scarlett were all present at the now famous Downing Street meeting where Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of MI6, reported that in the US "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq.
Tim Shipman (Daily Mail) adds, "The first draft of the British dossier was completed, using intelligence from MI6, on Septemofber 10, 2002. It concluded that it would take 'at least two years' for Iraq to get a nuclear bomb. But two days later President Bush used a keynote address to the United Nations to declare: 'Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year'." And "11 days later," Tony Blair began stating publicly "a year or two."
Turning to political issues in Iraq. Last week, many of Nouri's political rivals were informed they were being banned from the expected March elections. Today Michael Jansen (Irish Times) reported, "IRAQ'S NATIONAL security council, the country's highest political body, yesterday discussed a call to ban 15 political parties and candidates from standing in the March 7th parliamentary election on the grounds that they are tied to the outlawed Baath Party. If accepted by the election commission, the proposal, put forward by a body charged with purging Baathists, would deny representation to both Sunni and secular Iraqis and torpedo any chance of national unity." Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) adds:
The commission is heir to the old De-Baathification Commission, set up in 2003 by Paul Bremer, the US czar of Iraq, and led by Ahmed Chalabi and his cronies. Among those banned was one of Iraq's most significant players, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni leader and an important member of parliament, whose National Dialogue Front is a popular vote-getter among Iraq's disenfranchised Sunni populace. Mutlaq, a well-known politician, has drawn support from current and former Baathists, secular Sunnis opposed to the Shiite-sectarian rulers in Baghdad, and Iraqis concerned about the intrusive influence of Iran in Iraqi affairs.
Over the past several months, Mutlaq had helped to build a powerful opposition bloc set to challenge both Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who controls a faction of the secretive, sectarian Shiite Dawa party, and the broader Shiite alliance comprised of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr's forces, and Chalabi, the neoconservatives' favorite wheeler-dealer. That alliance was formed with the strong support of Iran, whose authoritarian leaders and radical clerics helped assemble it. ISCI, which has a paramilitary arm, the Badr Brigade, was formed in 1982 as an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and for many years it was actually under the command of Iranian military officers. Sadr, a mercurial Shiite nationalist, has fallen under Iran's umbrella, too, and he has spent most of the past two years living in Qom, Iran's religious capital. Chalabi, despite his neocon connections, has long been suspected of having covert ties to Iran's intelligence service.
Bremer was responsible for de-Ba'athification. But who was responsible for de-de-Ba'athifcation. The White House (under Bush) made that one of the Iraq benchmarks -- benchmarks Nouri signed off on. To bring the Ba'athists back in was one of the benchmarks and a weak law was tossed around Parliament but not implemented and when is anything going to be done about that? And why is the US propping up the government it created? Have we all forgotten the Pentagon Papers and the shocking revelation that the government was admitting the US was in Vietnam to prop up the government they'd created? Nouri al-Maliki signed off on those benchmarks and was never forced to follow them. James Cogan (WSWS) notes some troubling signs:
Tensions in Sunni communities were already rising before this latest provocation. The attempt to proscribe Mutlaq and other Sunni parties follows the rewriting of the electoral law by the Shiite and Kurdish parties to reduce the proportion of seats elected in Sunni areas. There have also been reports of widespread arrests and killings of Sunnis by government troops and police.
According to the newspaper Azzaman, "hundreds of young people have been taken away from Tikrit, Anbar and Mosul". In Baghdad, there have allegedly been numerous arrests in the Sunni majority district of Abu Ghraib, in the west of the city. At least 10 militiamen of the Sunni "Awakening" militias in the capital have reportedly been assassinated.
The Obama administration has made no public comment on the actions of the Justice and Accountability Board. However, it can hardly welcome a development that threatens to inflame communal tensions and undermine arrangements that underpin its plans to reduce troop numbers down to 50,000 by August and redirect US forces to Afghanistan.
It is barely two years since the US military struck a deal with the bulk of the Sunni-based insurgency to abandon armed resistance in exchange for an end to sectarian persecution by Shiite forces, regular payment and implicit guarantees of greater political influence for the Sunni elite.
This as NPR's Quil Lawrence (Morning Edition, text and audio link) reports on the one-time 'model' Anbar Province which is now seeing increased violence and disenchanted citiznes who protest with chants of "Save us" and "We've been sold out." The "model" depended upon cash. In April 2008, Gen David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker explained to Congressional committees how the 'model' worked: The US military paid Sunni 'insurgents' cash to stop attacking US military equipment and US service members. The US appears to have stopped payments around the month of June of this year and Nouri -- who was supposed to take over payments long ago -- sometimes pays, sometimes pays a portion and sometimes tells these 'insurgents' (who became Sawha -- "Awakenings," "Sons Of Iraq") the check's in the mail. With payments questionable (and Arab media reports rumors that payments end this month) and with the bulk of Sahwa still not brought into Iraqi security forces, many Sahwa no longer feel the need to do what they were once paid for.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"In London, questions swirl around the death of an Iraqi grandmother"
"Gates and the no Iraq withdrawl discussions"
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "What Harry Worry?"
"And the war drags on . . ."
"Cheating spouse okay to run, real rivals not so lucky"
"Losers in the poker game"
Truest statement of the week
Truest statement of the week II
A note to our readers
Editorial: Piss off, Aimee Allison
TV: Gary Unwatchable
Roundtable
No, Harry, we don't forgive you
Iraq
Who's in charge? (Ava and C.I.)
Why was Barack still asleep?
Thanks, we'll keep our money
Naomi: The continual embarrassment (Ava and C.I.)
Targeting Flashpoints
Highlights
"He needs the attention"
"THIS JUST IN! HE WON'T SHARE LIMELIGHT!"
Saturday, January 09, 2010
He needs the attention
BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
THE CRY IS RISING FOR BARACK TO KEEP HIS CAMPAIGN PROMISE OF OPEN, TELEVISED NEGOTIATIONS; HOWEVER, CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O IS REFUSING AND STALLING.
THESE REPORTERS WERE NOT ABLE TO REACH BARRY O BUT WE DID SPEAK TO HIS SPOUSE, SHE HULK, ON THE PHONE AND SHE EXPLAINED, "CAMERAS ON SENATORS? CAMERAS ON ANYONE OTHER THAN BARRY? AND YOU DON'T SEE WHY MR. I'M-SO-VAIN IS AGAINST IT?"
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
John Jenkins: So on that basis, I would say that actually the professionalism of the armed forces is going up, and, to a certain extent, this must partly be because they have retained enough professional expertise and experience within their ranks to make that possible. You will also hear from people who say that this is a risk. It remains a risk by having people who have a Ba'athi background within the armed forces at senior levels, and I think one of the things we have seen since the -- the most recent spike in bombings in Baghdad, which started in August, have been renewed accusations that elements -- unreconciled elements of the Ba'ath Party, based externally, are deeply involved in these attacks and retain the will and the aspiration to re-emerge as a political force, as a sort of politically irredentist, a political force within Iraq. I find it very difficult to judge the force of those claims, but the conclusion I draw is that there is clearly a balance to be drawn between using professional competence and experience of former army officers under Saddam, to provide the backbone of the modern Iraqi security forces and dealing with the suspicions and fears of others, that this is the reintroduction of an element of the Ba'ath Party, unreconiclable elements of the Ba'ath Party, back into the security forces. I don't know how that balance is going to be struck. I don't know exactly what the balance at the moment is, what the reality of this is, but it is clearly a political issue inside Iraq and will remain a political issue beyond the national elections in March, I suspect.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Going beyond the military, we heard from earlier witnesses how a lot of teachers, doctors, civil servants, competent professionals, who had to be in the Ba'ath Party in order to do what they did, were excluded. Do you feel that that has now been corrected?
John Jenkins: I do not have a real sense of that.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Do you want to comment on that?
Frank Baker: If I could. I would comment more about government employees in Ministries across Baghdad where I think it is certainly the case that a large number of Sunnis, and, therefore, by definition, former Ba'ath Party members, are now being employed -- have been employed, in fact, for the last two or three years. If you look at, for example, the Ministry of Water, where a lot of them are technocrats, but the Minister for Water had made an effort to bring back a lot of the previous Ba'athist experience in order to try to get the Ministry up and running properly back in about 2007/2008. So I think the indications there are, yes, they have done so. I think, if I may, just to revert to your previous question about the democratisation, I think these two are related because on of the big changes we have seen since 2005 has actually been the re-emergence of the Sunnis as a political force in Iraq, with the Sunnis having essentially taken their toys out the pram and walked away. Back in 2004, not actually partaking in the 2005 provincial elections, not really being a part of the 2005 national elections, and, in fact, what we saw in 2009 was that they played a full part in that and they are going to play a full part in the national elections scheduled for March this year. In that sense, we are seeing the Sunnis now coming back and trying to play a full role -- a large part of the Sunni movement.
Witnesses offer their take. They may be lying. They may be honest. On the latter, even when honest, it is their view and may be limited or grossly uninformed. Grossly uninformed would probably best describe Frank Baker who apparently doesn't pick up a newspaper. (As noted in yesterday's snapshot, Iraq is currently banning various political groups from participating in elections intended to take place in March). John Jenkins is England's current Ambassaodr to Iraq and Baker is their ambassador to Kuwait. Jenkins and Baker appeared before the Iraq Inquiry in London today offering joint-testimony and also appearing today was Peter Watkins (British Director of Operational Policy) (link goes to video and transcript options). We're done with Baker, obviously. Can't even read the morning paper, not much use in you. We'll instead note the following lengthy exchange:
John Jenkins: I think there was a risk with the national elections in March that the turnout will be lower. Because I think it is still fragile, because I think -- having the habit of mind which sees democracy as something you actually have to work at is difficult and is not common at all in the Middle East. But I think this -- the way that politics has emerged as an alternative to the violent settling of disputes seems to be something that most Iraqis actually want. I think one of the turning points, one of the key -- if you can pinpoint what changed when was when Ayatollah Al-Sistani essentially said to people, "Vote. It is important that you vote". I think one of the lessons that the Shia in particular drew from what happened in the 1920s in Iraq is that they didn't actually participate in the process of conducting a modern state with the British mandated authority at the time. They were determined not to repeat this mistake and they concluded that, as the majority community in Iraq, it was, and is, in their interests to have a system that reflects their weight of numbers in the allocation of power at the centre. They also know that they need to bring along the other communities with them, the Sunnis and the Kurds. They know, I think -- or at least a substantial portion of them know -- that they can't do this by violence. You cannot impose this on the Sunnis. I think that in itself is a guarantee of the sustainability of some sort of democratic system in Iraq. How exactly over the next ten years this system will evolve and what sort of democratic system or accountable responsive system we will be looking at in ten year's time, I still find it quite difficult to predict, but they do have the institutions. They have the Council of Representatives, which is actually functioning pretty well, it passes laws, it has debates, but it doesn't have endless debates without passing anything which happens elsewhere in the Middle East where you have similar assemblies. It is not a done deal. It is not a done deal. If you look at the history of Iraq and the history of military coups in Iraq, you have to think that is always a possibility, a real possibility in the future, but I think where we are at the moment is -- it is much better than we thought it was going to be back in 2004/2005.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Yes. I mean, obviously, if one goes back to early 2003, one of the stated objective of the leaders of the coalition was that, after Saddam Hussein, there should be democracy in Iraq, and there were people who argued, for precisely the reasons you have given, that this is a singular experience, unique experience in the Middle East and in Iraq's history, that this was simply not realistic. But what you call the democratisation agenda which is now being pursued, but with, as you say, some way to go and no certainty as to success, this is now a realistic agenda?
John Jenkins: Yes, I believe it is.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: In the circumstances of today?
John Jenkins: I believe it is.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Can I ask you about de-Ba'athification? Yesterday, General White-Spunner was telling us how some of the Iraqi generals and commanders he was working with were people who had, as it were, been de-Ba'athified and then had come back into service. To what extent over the last two years/three years, since 2009, has there been a corrective to perhaps excessive de-Ba'athification under the CPA in 2003? Are people being rehabilitated on the basis of their abilities and merits now?
John Jenkins: I'm told -- to be quite honest, I don't know how far this is true, but I am told that many of the senior officers, the generals in particular, in the Iraqi armed forces had -- have some sort of Ba'athi background or background in the Saddam armed forces. Now, of course, it is true that under Saddam, if you want to get on in the armed forces, you need to be a member of Ba'ath Party.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Not just in the armed forces?
John Jenkins: Not just in the armed forces. How far that is being done on the basis of merit, I don't know, is the answer to that. The people who deal most closely with the Iraqi security forces, which are the Americans, say that the standard -- the competence of the Iraqi armed forces is going up. They are getting better and there are elements within the security forces who are very good; elements who aren't so good, but elements who are good. [C.I. note: Next section is where we came in for this snapshot.] So on that basis, I would say that actually the professionalism of the armed forces is going up, and, to a certain extent, this must partly be because they have retained enough professional expertise and experince within their ranks to make that possible. You will also hear from people who say that this is a risk. It remains a risk by having people who have a Ba'athi background within the armed forces at senior leavels, and I think one of the things we have seen since the -- the most recent spike in bombings in Baghdad, which started in August, have been renewed accusations that elements -- unreconciled elements of the Ba'ath Party, based externally, are deeply involved in these attacks and retain the will and the aspiration to re-emerge as a poltical force, as a sort of politically irredentist, a political force within Iraq. I find it very difficult to judge the force of those claims, but the conclusion I draw is that there is clearly a balance to be drawn between using professional competence and experience of former army officers under Saddam, to provide the backbone of the modern Iraqi security forces and dealing with the suspicions and fears of others, that this is the reintroduction of an element of the Ba'ath Party, unreconcilable elements of the Ba'ath Party, back into the security forces. I don't know how that balance is going to be struck. I don't know exactly what the balance at the moment is, what the reality of this is, but it is clearly a political issue inside Iraq and will remain a political issue beyond the national elections in March, I suspect.
From the above section, Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) emphasizes that a military coup is still "a real possibility". Alex Barker (Financial Times of London) also stresses that aspect. Surprisingly since this is what stood out to the press (those are just two examples), none latched upon Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's statements Wednesday. Huang Peizhao and Li Xiao (People's Daily Online) reported of Wednesday's remarks:
On Wednesday, a military parade was held in Baghdad "Green Zone" of the unknown soldier monument to mark the 89th anniversary of the Iraqi Army Day. President Jalal Talabani and top military officers attended a ceremony and parade. In his speech delivered on the occasion, President Talabani stressed the need "to build a new Iraqi army with a defensive ideology", and the task of the military is "to protect the population and enforce security within its borders", "to defend the territorial integrity and state sovereignty" and to "fight terrorism". So it is the precondition to reshape Iraqi military for national security, social stability and peaceful environment in its post-war reconstruction, some analysts noted.
According to regulations, a parliamentary election is planned for early March 2010, which represents a major part of the post-war reconstruction and a great event in the Iraq's political life. Whether this incoming national general election proceeds smoothly will determine whether or not Iraqi's future would be heading for stability. To this end, Talabani asked the armed forces to prepare for "escorting" the election at the same time appealing for general public to unite together to greet the election.
Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger live blogs the hearings on Twitter and we'll note this Tweet on today's hearing:
Good heavens - stenographer butts in and says she's been at it formore than two hours and she's had quite enough, thank you very much! about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
Iraq Inquiry Blogger also explains, "Almost all the witnesses to date -- be they diplomatic, military or civilian -- were people charged with carrying out policies and intructions that had been decided upon by their political masters. From next week we'll also begin to start hearing from the politicians (and members of their innermost circles, eg Alastair Campbell next Tuesday) who took those decisions and created those policies."
The issue of Iraqi women was raised by the committee. We'll note the following exchange:
Committee Member Usha Prashar: My second question is about progress on issues to do with women because it was part of the constitution in 2005. Has there been any progress on that area or not?
John Jenkins: In terms of representation of women nationally, I think there is quite a good story to tell actually. In terms of violence against women, I think this is a national issue in Iraq. We have seen, particularly in the north, in the KRG, a government which is prepared to do what it says it wants to do, which is to take action against honour killings, for example. I think you are dealing with -- and I think in Basra as well the intimidation of women by militias has stopped, and I think other people have said, you know, that actually one of the things the Charge of the Knights [Basra assault in 2008] did was reveal what we all thought, which was that most Basrawis didn't want this to happen, didn't want their lives disrupted, didn't want to be intimidated, didn't want their wives and daughters to be intimidated by the militias. I think -- and there were some very feisty Iraqi female members of Parliament, many of whom I have met. All have very distinctive ideas about how this should be pursued. Sustaining this, of course, is going to be -- like most things in Iraq is going to be a challenge, particularly when there are such strong counter-cultural currents.
Committee Member Usha Prashar: So are you saying there has been a steady progress of women in the political process, in representation?
John Jenkins: There has been progress. Whether this is -- steady? There has been progress. There has been progress, but I think now it will be -- the trick will be to make sure this continues. I think it is patchy, the way this has happened around the country. I think it is certainly easier to achieve -- to achieve progress in urban areas than it is in rural areas on this.
On the subject of Iraqi women and Parliament, NPR's Quil Lawrence examined their participation as candidates in the expected elections on last Sunday's Weekened Edition (link has text and audio).
Peter Watkins testimony focused primarily on the 2007 and beyond role for England in Iraq which includes the British military "providing naval assets alongside the Americans to help protect the oil platforms fromterrorist or whatever threats" and "which is providing officer training at the Iraqi military academy in Al Rustmiyah". Asked by Committee Member Martin Gilbert about Iraqi opinion of the continuing British role, Watkins responded, "My impression was the Iraqis were very keen for us to continue with both the naval training and the oil platform protection and, indeed, the officer training. I imagine the Iraqi military was keener on it than other, but there was not a strong divergence of views across the Iraqi system. They wanted us to continue with those roles." Defining the "Iraqi system" wasn't touched on (except by Committee Member Roderic Lyne much later), nor the populace's long expressed desire to have all foreign occupiers out of Iraq. The UN mandate -- authorizing the occupation, not the invasion (no UN mandate authorized the invasion) -- was touched on. It's still not understood clearly by a number of people (Raed Jarrar for example) which is why the US Status Of Forces Agreement is not understood. The chief player that didn't want the UN mandate (again) extended was Nouri al-Maliki.
Peter Watkins: Basically, this was the part of the pattern of Iraq recovering its sovereignty. The Iraqis did not want UNSCR -- the UNSCR mandates to be extended beyond the end of December 2008. I think Prime Minister Maliki made that clear in his letter, which is attached to UNSCR 1790. They wanted to move to the position of a normal state.
Watkins revealed that the government (Nouri in his counsel by the context of Watkins statement) wanted to do a blanket agreement for other countries continuing their role in Iraq after the SOFA passed the Iraqi Parliament November 27, 2008 and this was proposed; however, this lacked the support of "a number of Iraqi Parliamentarians, members of the Council of Representatives, that they should have been presented with an agreement which they would have seen as binding on both sides. [. . .] There was an increasing feeling that they wanted to have distinct agreements with each country, reflecting the specific roles of those countries." The British went with a Memo Of Understanding and, in Watkins discussions of that, he details how, without a new agreement (the ventual MOU), when the mandate ended, the British would have had to depart. That's basic but since the issue's been confused by the likes of Raed Jarrar, let's point out again that the US SOFA is a contract and can be terminated, can be extended or can be replaced with a new agreement. The same was true of the UN mandate. It could be extended (and was repeatedly), terminated (it was at the end of 2008) and replaced with something else (it was replaced, for the US, with the SOFA at the end of 2008).
Iraqi objection to a foreign presence has long been documented. Roderic Lyne was the only committee member to raise the issue.
Committee Membmer Roderic Lyne: So we wanted to do it, they want us to do it -- I suppose when you say "Iraqis", you mean particularly the leadership of the Iraqi Government, because clearly there are different points of view on the Iraqi side?
Peter Watkins: The Iraqi Government wanted us to do it. It was clear, when Simon MacDonald and I went to Baghdad on 1 June to finalize the text, that they wanted to reach agreement.
Turning to Nouri's attempts to ban political rivals, Nada Barki and Anthony Shadid (New York Times) note, "An Iraqi parliamentary committee moved Thursday to bar a Sunni Muslim lawmaker from national elections in March, outraging his supporters and threatening to worsen sectarian tension here. The lawmaker, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, and his group, the National Dialogue Front, were among those disqualified on the grounds of promoting the banned Baath Party of former President Saddam Hussein." Leila Fadel and Qais Mizher (Washington Post) observe, "The decision by the Justice and Accountability Commission, in charge of cleansing high-level Baathists from the ranks of the government and security forces, seemed to be an attempt to purge candidates with links to the old political order, many of whom are popular among secular nationalist voters. The move is a blow to hopes of bringing opposition figures -- who turned to violent resistance over the past seven years -- into the political fold, part of the U.S. strategy to bolster the government."But that's not really true. It's true for Sunnis -- "a blow to hopes of bringing opposition figures . . . into the political fold" -- but not of Shi'ites. Moqtada al-Sadr's militias were the focus of Nouri's ire in 2008, leading to the assault on Basra. They've been brought in. Nouri's worked overtime to bring the League of Righteous into the system. It appears that only the Sunnis are unwelcome. The League of Righteous, for example, not only attacked a US base and killed 5 US soldiers, they also kidnapped 5 British citizens and one remains missing. But that's not apparently a reason to keep them out of the political process. They still get face time with Nouri and his staff. Afif Sarhan (Islam Online) quotes Saleh al-Mutlak stating, "The government move just show how democracy is far from Iraq and clearly demonstrates a persecution from some other parties. The government will be surprised with the reaction they will get from Iraqis at the country's streets who are our supporters and conscious voters." Nada Barkri (New York Times) reports attempts to protest in the streets of Baghdad today were prevented by Iraqi security forces and quotes Diyala Province's Najim al-Harbi stating, "There is a great popular resentment toward this decision, which lacks any legal justification. The Iraqi street is now boiling."
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THE CRY IS RISING FOR BARACK TO KEEP HIS CAMPAIGN PROMISE OF OPEN, TELEVISED NEGOTIATIONS; HOWEVER, CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O IS REFUSING AND STALLING.
THESE REPORTERS WERE NOT ABLE TO REACH BARRY O BUT WE DID SPEAK TO HIS SPOUSE, SHE HULK, ON THE PHONE AND SHE EXPLAINED, "CAMERAS ON SENATORS? CAMERAS ON ANYONE OTHER THAN BARRY? AND YOU DON'T SEE WHY MR. I'M-SO-VAIN IS AGAINST IT?"
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
John Jenkins: So on that basis, I would say that actually the professionalism of the armed forces is going up, and, to a certain extent, this must partly be because they have retained enough professional expertise and experience within their ranks to make that possible. You will also hear from people who say that this is a risk. It remains a risk by having people who have a Ba'athi background within the armed forces at senior levels, and I think one of the things we have seen since the -- the most recent spike in bombings in Baghdad, which started in August, have been renewed accusations that elements -- unreconciled elements of the Ba'ath Party, based externally, are deeply involved in these attacks and retain the will and the aspiration to re-emerge as a political force, as a sort of politically irredentist, a political force within Iraq. I find it very difficult to judge the force of those claims, but the conclusion I draw is that there is clearly a balance to be drawn between using professional competence and experience of former army officers under Saddam, to provide the backbone of the modern Iraqi security forces and dealing with the suspicions and fears of others, that this is the reintroduction of an element of the Ba'ath Party, unreconiclable elements of the Ba'ath Party, back into the security forces. I don't know how that balance is going to be struck. I don't know exactly what the balance at the moment is, what the reality of this is, but it is clearly a political issue inside Iraq and will remain a political issue beyond the national elections in March, I suspect.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Going beyond the military, we heard from earlier witnesses how a lot of teachers, doctors, civil servants, competent professionals, who had to be in the Ba'ath Party in order to do what they did, were excluded. Do you feel that that has now been corrected?
John Jenkins: I do not have a real sense of that.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Do you want to comment on that?
Frank Baker: If I could. I would comment more about government employees in Ministries across Baghdad where I think it is certainly the case that a large number of Sunnis, and, therefore, by definition, former Ba'ath Party members, are now being employed -- have been employed, in fact, for the last two or three years. If you look at, for example, the Ministry of Water, where a lot of them are technocrats, but the Minister for Water had made an effort to bring back a lot of the previous Ba'athist experience in order to try to get the Ministry up and running properly back in about 2007/2008. So I think the indications there are, yes, they have done so. I think, if I may, just to revert to your previous question about the democratisation, I think these two are related because on of the big changes we have seen since 2005 has actually been the re-emergence of the Sunnis as a political force in Iraq, with the Sunnis having essentially taken their toys out the pram and walked away. Back in 2004, not actually partaking in the 2005 provincial elections, not really being a part of the 2005 national elections, and, in fact, what we saw in 2009 was that they played a full part in that and they are going to play a full part in the national elections scheduled for March this year. In that sense, we are seeing the Sunnis now coming back and trying to play a full role -- a large part of the Sunni movement.
Witnesses offer their take. They may be lying. They may be honest. On the latter, even when honest, it is their view and may be limited or grossly uninformed. Grossly uninformed would probably best describe Frank Baker who apparently doesn't pick up a newspaper. (As noted in yesterday's snapshot, Iraq is currently banning various political groups from participating in elections intended to take place in March). John Jenkins is England's current Ambassaodr to Iraq and Baker is their ambassador to Kuwait. Jenkins and Baker appeared before the Iraq Inquiry in London today offering joint-testimony and also appearing today was Peter Watkins (British Director of Operational Policy) (link goes to video and transcript options). We're done with Baker, obviously. Can't even read the morning paper, not much use in you. We'll instead note the following lengthy exchange:
John Jenkins: I think there was a risk with the national elections in March that the turnout will be lower. Because I think it is still fragile, because I think -- having the habit of mind which sees democracy as something you actually have to work at is difficult and is not common at all in the Middle East. But I think this -- the way that politics has emerged as an alternative to the violent settling of disputes seems to be something that most Iraqis actually want. I think one of the turning points, one of the key -- if you can pinpoint what changed when was when Ayatollah Al-Sistani essentially said to people, "Vote. It is important that you vote". I think one of the lessons that the Shia in particular drew from what happened in the 1920s in Iraq is that they didn't actually participate in the process of conducting a modern state with the British mandated authority at the time. They were determined not to repeat this mistake and they concluded that, as the majority community in Iraq, it was, and is, in their interests to have a system that reflects their weight of numbers in the allocation of power at the centre. They also know that they need to bring along the other communities with them, the Sunnis and the Kurds. They know, I think -- or at least a substantial portion of them know -- that they can't do this by violence. You cannot impose this on the Sunnis. I think that in itself is a guarantee of the sustainability of some sort of democratic system in Iraq. How exactly over the next ten years this system will evolve and what sort of democratic system or accountable responsive system we will be looking at in ten year's time, I still find it quite difficult to predict, but they do have the institutions. They have the Council of Representatives, which is actually functioning pretty well, it passes laws, it has debates, but it doesn't have endless debates without passing anything which happens elsewhere in the Middle East where you have similar assemblies. It is not a done deal. It is not a done deal. If you look at the history of Iraq and the history of military coups in Iraq, you have to think that is always a possibility, a real possibility in the future, but I think where we are at the moment is -- it is much better than we thought it was going to be back in 2004/2005.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Yes. I mean, obviously, if one goes back to early 2003, one of the stated objective of the leaders of the coalition was that, after Saddam Hussein, there should be democracy in Iraq, and there were people who argued, for precisely the reasons you have given, that this is a singular experience, unique experience in the Middle East and in Iraq's history, that this was simply not realistic. But what you call the democratisation agenda which is now being pursued, but with, as you say, some way to go and no certainty as to success, this is now a realistic agenda?
John Jenkins: Yes, I believe it is.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: In the circumstances of today?
John Jenkins: I believe it is.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Can I ask you about de-Ba'athification? Yesterday, General White-Spunner was telling us how some of the Iraqi generals and commanders he was working with were people who had, as it were, been de-Ba'athified and then had come back into service. To what extent over the last two years/three years, since 2009, has there been a corrective to perhaps excessive de-Ba'athification under the CPA in 2003? Are people being rehabilitated on the basis of their abilities and merits now?
John Jenkins: I'm told -- to be quite honest, I don't know how far this is true, but I am told that many of the senior officers, the generals in particular, in the Iraqi armed forces had -- have some sort of Ba'athi background or background in the Saddam armed forces. Now, of course, it is true that under Saddam, if you want to get on in the armed forces, you need to be a member of Ba'ath Party.
Committee Member Roderic Lyne: Not just in the armed forces?
John Jenkins: Not just in the armed forces. How far that is being done on the basis of merit, I don't know, is the answer to that. The people who deal most closely with the Iraqi security forces, which are the Americans, say that the standard -- the competence of the Iraqi armed forces is going up. They are getting better and there are elements within the security forces who are very good; elements who aren't so good, but elements who are good. [C.I. note: Next section is where we came in for this snapshot.] So on that basis, I would say that actually the professionalism of the armed forces is going up, and, to a certain extent, this must partly be because they have retained enough professional expertise and experince within their ranks to make that possible. You will also hear from people who say that this is a risk. It remains a risk by having people who have a Ba'athi background within the armed forces at senior leavels, and I think one of the things we have seen since the -- the most recent spike in bombings in Baghdad, which started in August, have been renewed accusations that elements -- unreconciled elements of the Ba'ath Party, based externally, are deeply involved in these attacks and retain the will and the aspiration to re-emerge as a poltical force, as a sort of politically irredentist, a political force within Iraq. I find it very difficult to judge the force of those claims, but the conclusion I draw is that there is clearly a balance to be drawn between using professional competence and experience of former army officers under Saddam, to provide the backbone of the modern Iraqi security forces and dealing with the suspicions and fears of others, that this is the reintroduction of an element of the Ba'ath Party, unreconcilable elements of the Ba'ath Party, back into the security forces. I don't know how that balance is going to be struck. I don't know exactly what the balance at the moment is, what the reality of this is, but it is clearly a political issue inside Iraq and will remain a political issue beyond the national elections in March, I suspect.
From the above section, Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) emphasizes that a military coup is still "a real possibility". Alex Barker (Financial Times of London) also stresses that aspect. Surprisingly since this is what stood out to the press (those are just two examples), none latched upon Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's statements Wednesday. Huang Peizhao and Li Xiao (People's Daily Online) reported of Wednesday's remarks:
On Wednesday, a military parade was held in Baghdad "Green Zone" of the unknown soldier monument to mark the 89th anniversary of the Iraqi Army Day. President Jalal Talabani and top military officers attended a ceremony and parade. In his speech delivered on the occasion, President Talabani stressed the need "to build a new Iraqi army with a defensive ideology", and the task of the military is "to protect the population and enforce security within its borders", "to defend the territorial integrity and state sovereignty" and to "fight terrorism". So it is the precondition to reshape Iraqi military for national security, social stability and peaceful environment in its post-war reconstruction, some analysts noted.
According to regulations, a parliamentary election is planned for early March 2010, which represents a major part of the post-war reconstruction and a great event in the Iraq's political life. Whether this incoming national general election proceeds smoothly will determine whether or not Iraqi's future would be heading for stability. To this end, Talabani asked the armed forces to prepare for "escorting" the election at the same time appealing for general public to unite together to greet the election.
Channel 4 News' Iraq Inquiry Blogger live blogs the hearings on Twitter and we'll note this Tweet on today's hearing:
Good heavens - stenographer butts in and says she's been at it formore than two hours and she's had quite enough, thank you very much! about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
Iraq Inquiry Blogger also explains, "Almost all the witnesses to date -- be they diplomatic, military or civilian -- were people charged with carrying out policies and intructions that had been decided upon by their political masters. From next week we'll also begin to start hearing from the politicians (and members of their innermost circles, eg Alastair Campbell next Tuesday) who took those decisions and created those policies."
The issue of Iraqi women was raised by the committee. We'll note the following exchange:
Committee Member Usha Prashar: My second question is about progress on issues to do with women because it was part of the constitution in 2005. Has there been any progress on that area or not?
John Jenkins: In terms of representation of women nationally, I think there is quite a good story to tell actually. In terms of violence against women, I think this is a national issue in Iraq. We have seen, particularly in the north, in the KRG, a government which is prepared to do what it says it wants to do, which is to take action against honour killings, for example. I think you are dealing with -- and I think in Basra as well the intimidation of women by militias has stopped, and I think other people have said, you know, that actually one of the things the Charge of the Knights [Basra assault in 2008] did was reveal what we all thought, which was that most Basrawis didn't want this to happen, didn't want their lives disrupted, didn't want to be intimidated, didn't want their wives and daughters to be intimidated by the militias. I think -- and there were some very feisty Iraqi female members of Parliament, many of whom I have met. All have very distinctive ideas about how this should be pursued. Sustaining this, of course, is going to be -- like most things in Iraq is going to be a challenge, particularly when there are such strong counter-cultural currents.
Committee Member Usha Prashar: So are you saying there has been a steady progress of women in the political process, in representation?
John Jenkins: There has been progress. Whether this is -- steady? There has been progress. There has been progress, but I think now it will be -- the trick will be to make sure this continues. I think it is patchy, the way this has happened around the country. I think it is certainly easier to achieve -- to achieve progress in urban areas than it is in rural areas on this.
On the subject of Iraqi women and Parliament, NPR's Quil Lawrence examined their participation as candidates in the expected elections on last Sunday's Weekened Edition (link has text and audio).
Peter Watkins testimony focused primarily on the 2007 and beyond role for England in Iraq which includes the British military "providing naval assets alongside the Americans to help protect the oil platforms fromterrorist or whatever threats" and "which is providing officer training at the Iraqi military academy in Al Rustmiyah". Asked by Committee Member Martin Gilbert about Iraqi opinion of the continuing British role, Watkins responded, "My impression was the Iraqis were very keen for us to continue with both the naval training and the oil platform protection and, indeed, the officer training. I imagine the Iraqi military was keener on it than other, but there was not a strong divergence of views across the Iraqi system. They wanted us to continue with those roles." Defining the "Iraqi system" wasn't touched on (except by Committee Member Roderic Lyne much later), nor the populace's long expressed desire to have all foreign occupiers out of Iraq. The UN mandate -- authorizing the occupation, not the invasion (no UN mandate authorized the invasion) -- was touched on. It's still not understood clearly by a number of people (Raed Jarrar for example) which is why the US Status Of Forces Agreement is not understood. The chief player that didn't want the UN mandate (again) extended was Nouri al-Maliki.
Peter Watkins: Basically, this was the part of the pattern of Iraq recovering its sovereignty. The Iraqis did not want UNSCR -- the UNSCR mandates to be extended beyond the end of December 2008. I think Prime Minister Maliki made that clear in his letter, which is attached to UNSCR 1790. They wanted to move to the position of a normal state.
Watkins revealed that the government (Nouri in his counsel by the context of Watkins statement) wanted to do a blanket agreement for other countries continuing their role in Iraq after the SOFA passed the Iraqi Parliament November 27, 2008 and this was proposed; however, this lacked the support of "a number of Iraqi Parliamentarians, members of the Council of Representatives, that they should have been presented with an agreement which they would have seen as binding on both sides. [. . .] There was an increasing feeling that they wanted to have distinct agreements with each country, reflecting the specific roles of those countries." The British went with a Memo Of Understanding and, in Watkins discussions of that, he details how, without a new agreement (the ventual MOU), when the mandate ended, the British would have had to depart. That's basic but since the issue's been confused by the likes of Raed Jarrar, let's point out again that the US SOFA is a contract and can be terminated, can be extended or can be replaced with a new agreement. The same was true of the UN mandate. It could be extended (and was repeatedly), terminated (it was at the end of 2008) and replaced with something else (it was replaced, for the US, with the SOFA at the end of 2008).
Iraqi objection to a foreign presence has long been documented. Roderic Lyne was the only committee member to raise the issue.
Committee Membmer Roderic Lyne: So we wanted to do it, they want us to do it -- I suppose when you say "Iraqis", you mean particularly the leadership of the Iraqi Government, because clearly there are different points of view on the Iraqi side?
Peter Watkins: The Iraqi Government wanted us to do it. It was clear, when Simon MacDonald and I went to Baghdad on 1 June to finalize the text, that they wanted to reach agreement.
Turning to Nouri's attempts to ban political rivals, Nada Barki and Anthony Shadid (New York Times) note, "An Iraqi parliamentary committee moved Thursday to bar a Sunni Muslim lawmaker from national elections in March, outraging his supporters and threatening to worsen sectarian tension here. The lawmaker, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, and his group, the National Dialogue Front, were among those disqualified on the grounds of promoting the banned Baath Party of former President Saddam Hussein." Leila Fadel and Qais Mizher (Washington Post) observe, "The decision by the Justice and Accountability Commission, in charge of cleansing high-level Baathists from the ranks of the government and security forces, seemed to be an attempt to purge candidates with links to the old political order, many of whom are popular among secular nationalist voters. The move is a blow to hopes of bringing opposition figures -- who turned to violent resistance over the past seven years -- into the political fold, part of the U.S. strategy to bolster the government."But that's not really true. It's true for Sunnis -- "a blow to hopes of bringing opposition figures . . . into the political fold" -- but not of Shi'ites. Moqtada al-Sadr's militias were the focus of Nouri's ire in 2008, leading to the assault on Basra. They've been brought in. Nouri's worked overtime to bring the League of Righteous into the system. It appears that only the Sunnis are unwelcome. The League of Righteous, for example, not only attacked a US base and killed 5 US soldiers, they also kidnapped 5 British citizens and one remains missing. But that's not apparently a reason to keep them out of the political process. They still get face time with Nouri and his staff. Afif Sarhan (Islam Online) quotes Saleh al-Mutlak stating, "The government move just show how democracy is far from Iraq and clearly demonstrates a persecution from some other parties. The government will be surprised with the reaction they will get from Iraqis at the country's streets who are our supporters and conscious voters." Nada Barkri (New York Times) reports attempts to protest in the streets of Baghdad today were prevented by Iraqi security forces and quotes Diyala Province's Najim al-Harbi stating, "There is a great popular resentment toward this decision, which lacks any legal justification. The Iraqi street is now boiling."
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