Today in Iraq

Thanks for this, Joe, I was hoping someone at Time would acknowledge the situation over there.

Thanks, Joe. It's further complicated because the US supported Shiites come from the same revolutionary faction the Iranian leaders come from,while the Sadrist are Iraqi nationalists.

But the US supported government officials are exiles, with limited local cred, unable to leave the Green Zone.

This is not good.

This is not just about Basra.

With a pall of smoke over the US occupation authority headquarters, I would say it is about the credibility of the surge, Chutzpah Joe. I would say it is about the advisability of praising General Petraeus to the skies, thinking that one man could turn around a game that was being lost so very badly.

Glenzilla unloads a ton of wrath on the establishment idiots, Kagan and O'Hanlon, who recently declared that the "the civil war in Iraq is over"

www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

These clowns make Bush's declaration that the violence proves the surge is working look like Delphic wisdom.

Here is the current advisory to America's embassy staff in the Green Zone:

"Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times," it says. "Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons."

"Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration," the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment "is mandatory for all outside movements."

"We strongly recommend personnel do not sleep in their trailers," it goes on to say, offering space inside the Saddam Hussein-era palace that is the embassy's temporary home as well as room at an as-yet uncompleted new embassy compound and a limited supply of cots.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/27/us-embassy-personnel-in-b_n_93762.html

This is the war that was pushed off the front pages by the MSM. This is what turning the corner to victory in Iraq looks like. Take a good look, Chutzpah Joe, and remember that you helped enable it.

Your Abu Aardvark link cites a Saudi paper making an absurd claim:

****************
Muqtada al Sadr is a mighty but reckless force; he is not as intelligent as Hassan Nasrallah and does not speak the language of politics, however he was an important factor in enforcing the Iranian influence at the moment in which Saddam Hussein's regime fell...
****************

At the time of the fall of Saddam's regime Muqtada al Sadr was Iraq's most intense religious Shia nationalist. Muqtada was highly resentful of the Shia leaders who were returning from aboard. When he seized the Shrine of Ali in 2004 Muqtada was acting in defiance of the senior cleric in Qom whom his own martyred father had most respected.

Isn't it time we learn a few of the basics?

I meant to write "returning from abroad" not aboard. Sheesh.

So our military is participating in an effort by the current ruling Shi'ites (who are close to Iran) to destroy their opposition (which is more nationalistic and not as close to Iran) leading up to the October elections in Iraq? That's the long and short of it, from what you say, Joe.

Great use of our military there. Tell us again what a wise foreign policy sage John McCain is.

Until about a year ago, it was widely accepted that Al Qaeda in Iraq represented a small fraction of the insurgent forces. The Bush propaganda team then started a full-court press to conflate Al Qaeda with the insurgency.

The current civil strife in Iraq has NOTHING TO DO WITH AL QAEDA. It is Iraqi Shias who are pounding the American embassy compound with mortars and rockets.

Even the Pravda-like Time Magazine can no longer stick to the Bush Cheney lies, and is forced to acknowledge the realities of the situation. Bush's credibility is less than zero on Iraq, and McCain's is only slightly better.

The current fighting in Iraq will probably finish off the Al Qaeda bogeyman strategy. It will not be missed.

Without sounding flippant I don't see anything other than how this ends up as a stalemate. The government said it stood up al-Sadr and the Mahdi militia can say it held its own against U.S.-backed government forces.

I think Al-Sadr ultimately gets what he's already asking for. Local notables and clerics broker a ceasefire, the Mahdi Army publically acknowledges a defeat while building their own street credibility, Al Maliki goes back to Baghdad which he as president has to do and Sadr's forces go right back to controlling Basra.

The Sadrists are a populist, nationalist movement, with a great deal of support among poorer, urban Shi'ites, especially in Baghdad;

Not to be TOO cynical but might that help explain why the current administration is willing to provide air support against them and downplay their independence from Iran?

BushCo has never really struck me as being a friend of the urban poor anywhere.

Note that I'm asking because I want to know, not just to be a wiseguy.

Also I read Lynch's piece which, interestingly, is pretty much a direct translation of a Saudi source who is close to the Saudi royal family. Found this interesting:

"Muqtada al Sadr is a mighty but reckless force; he is not as intelligent as Hassan Nasrallah and does not speak the language of politics, however he was an important factor in enforcing the Iranian influence at the moment in which Saddam Hussein's regime fell. Today, it appears that Tehran no longer needs al Sadr – so long as it has control over Iraq within the political framework."

Are they serious? No one is still really underestimating Sadr are they? This notion, reinforced by the Frontline piece the other day, that top Middle Eastern governments view him as some pawn you can manipulate scares me. The guy is dangerous. I don't care how stupid they think he is, they better wake up or one day, probably not too long after we leave, he's going to be running that country.

Remarkably, the Hakims are favored by both Iran and the United States.

Just like the war itself, huh?

Thank you for this post Joe.

It would have made for a wonderful column.

Thanks for the post, Joe.

So few of your mainstream colleagues seem to be even aware of what's going on.

Cole is a good link...

*Any questions?*

For those who are up late an interesting Reuter's piece and headline:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2423186320080328?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi lawmakers will hold an emergency session on Friday in an attempt to end violence in the oil city of Basra after an army crackdown on Shi'ite militia sparked fighting across the south and mass protests in Baghdad."

Sounds to me like there are those in the upper reaches of the Iraqi government who are already looking to put a squash on this thing before it gets more out of hand.

And now there's word that Sadr's forces have wrested control of considerable parts of Kut, Hilla, Nassiriya, Diwaniya, Amara and Kerbala, as well as 13 Shi'ite neighborhoods in Baghdad.

Why do I have the sickening feeling this is somehow not going to end in a bloody ceasefire until U.S. troops have to go in and regain control of considerable portions of what the Iraqi security forces have managed to lose?

stringer

The "Iraqi security forces" never held anything. Al Sadr declared a cease fire.

I haven't seen any good story on what precipitated this, but it seems completely possible that Maliki was pressured into doing something by the US.

So now the "enemy" are the Shi-ite factions that are not allied with Iran. The idea that the way to "win" or "succeed" is to alternately back one faction against another doesn't strike me as a strategy for attaining stability.

I keep coming back to a quote from Feith, shortly after the mission was accomplished on the aircraft carrier. He said that instability isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as there is internal strife, there's a justification for keeping the bases occupied, and the pretext that Iran is some sort of threat is plausible enough, to them anyway, for them to keep repeating the lies about Sadr's forces being trained and supplied by Iran.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187564/

Fred Kaplan's summary is also good.

Glenn Greenwalds astute comparison of McCain and Bush Neo-Con snake oil reveals it to be the same formula packaged in different bottles.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

This is the kind of writing Time Magazine staffers would do if they had half a clue and weren't chained down by Stengel.

Day after day, bloggers like Juan Cole and Glenn Greenwald completely outclass the corrupt corporate press, yet because behemoths like Time-Warner-Moloch still dominate news distribution most Americans are left stumbling in the dark.

Looks like they kill each other whether we're there or not. They kill us if we're there, and they don't if we're not. You can call that "complicated" if you like, I guess.

Look for increasing US casuaties as our forces get pulled into the fighting

Four U.S. Stryker armored vehicles were seen in Sadr City by a Washington Post correspondent, one of them engaging Mahdi Army militiamen with heavy fire. The din of American weapons, along with the Mahdi Army's AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, was heard through much of the day. U.S. helicopters and drones buzzed overhead.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/03/28/ST2008032801171.html

The vast slum of Sadr City neutralizes most of the technology advantages the US enjoys. It is essentially impregnable, short of genocidal air attacks. Petraeus is going to be testifying to Congress on the success of the surge as US casualty figures climb and news reports from Baghdad show street fighting and shelling of the US headquarters.

Thank you, US corporate media, for taking Iraq off the front page. A well-informed citizenry is the foundation of a functioning democracy.

And to think -- if we had had a "precipitous" withdrawal a half a year back, we wouldn't be there to enjoy the fun, today.

Thank goodness we listened to Joe and stayed the course.

And thank goodness no one is making fun of Petraeus' name anymore. That was really bad.