Iraq: oh, what a fuckup was there

1. Lost in the Desert -- by Maureen Dowd/NY Times

Iraq now evokes that old Jimmy Durante song that goes, "Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go and still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?"

It's hard to remember when America has been so stuck. We can't win and we can't leave.

The good news is that the election finished what Katrina started. It dismantled the president's fake reality about Iraq, causing opinions to come gushing forth from all quarters about where to go from here.

The bad news is that no one, and I mean no one, really knows where to go from here. The White House and the Pentagon are ready to shift to Plan B. But Plan B is their empty term for miraculous salvation.

(Dick Cheney and his wormy aides, of course, are still babbling about total victory and completing the mission by raising the stakes and knocking off the mullahs in Tehran. His tombstone will probably say, "Here lies Dick Cheney, still winning.")

Even Henry Kissinger has defected from the Plan A gang. Once he thought the war could work, but now he thinks military victory is out of the question. When he turns against a war, you know the war's in trouble. He also believes leaving quickly would risk a civil war so big it could destabilize the Middle East.

Kofi Annan, who thought the war was crazy, now says that the United States is "trapped in Iraq" and can't leave until the Iraqis can create a "secure environment" - even though the Iraqis evince not the slightest interest in a secure environment. (The death squads even assassinated a popular comedian this week.)

The retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, who thought Mr. Bush's crusade to depose Saddam was foolish and did not want to send in any troops, now thinks we may have to send in more troops so we can eventually get out.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, whose soldiers pulled Saddam out of his spider hole and who is returning to Iraq to take charge of the day-to-day fight, has given up talking about a Jeffersonian democracy and now wishes only for a government in Iraq that's viewed as legitimate. He has gone from "can do" to "don't know." He talked to The Times's Thom Shanker about his curtailed goals of reducing sectarian violence and restoring civil authority, acknowledging: "Will we attain those? I don't know."

At a Senate hearing last week, Gen. John Abizaid sounded like Goldilocks meets Guernica, asserting two propositions about the war that are logically at war with each other. He said we can't have fewer troops because the Iraqis need us, but we can't have more because we don't want the Iraqis to become dependent on us.

He contended that increasing the number of our troops would make the Iraqi government mad, but also asserted that decreasing the number would intensify sectarian violence.

This is a poor menu of options.

As Peter Beinart wrote in The New Republic this week, "In a particularly cruel twist, the events of recent months have demolished the best arguments both for staying and for leaving." Noting in the same magazine that "we are approaching a Saddam-like magnitude for the murder of innocents," Leon Wieseltier worried that the problem may be deeper than the number of our troops; it may be Iraq itself. "After we invaded Iraq, Iraq invaded itself.... We are at the mercy of Iraq, where there is no mercy."

Kirk Semple, The Times's Baghdad correspondent, wrote about Capt. Stephanie Bagley, the daughter and granddaughter of military policemen who was enthusiastic a year ago about her job of building a new Iraqi police force. But that was before the militia so inexorably began to infiltrate the police, presumably with the support of some leaders in Iraq's dysfunctional government. Now, with the police begging the Americans not to make them patrol Baghdad's mean streets and showing her their shrapnel wounds, she just wants to get her unit home safely, without losing another soldier. She said her orders were to train a local force to deal with crimes like theft and murder, not to teach them how to fight a counterinsurgency.

Aside from telling Israel to be nicer to the Palestinians, as if there lies Iraq salvation, James Baker will mostly try to suggest that the US talk to Iran and Syria. Yesterday, after the Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, an opponent of Syria, was assassinated in Beirut, President Bush said he suspected that Iran and Syria were behind the murder.

Maybe Mr. Baker had better find Plan C.

The Pentagon is trying to decide whether we should Go Big, Go Long or Go Home.

Go figure.


2. Iraq's Reality Bandwagon – by David Corn/TomPaine.com

We're screwed .

That's the inescapable conclusion drawn from reading The New Republic's recent special mea culpa issue that combines an apology for its “early support” of the Iraq war with a colloquium on what to do now in Iraq. Sixteen foreign policy thinkers were asked to provide a roadmap out of this debacle. No surprise, the magazine received assorted and contradictory advice. Taken together, it's a mind-bending maze of an obstacle course.

New Yorker writer George Packer calls the war “lost” and counsels helping Iraqis who have worked with Americans to obtain visas so they can flee when US troops inevitably withdraw. Former White House counterterrorism aide Richard Clarke urges initiating a 18-month-long pull-out right away. Author David Rieff bluntly advises, “It is time to put the fucking troops on the fucking planes. Now! Before any more of our children die for their country's hubris.” Neocon stalwart Robert Kagan argues that “clever plans” are not needed in Iraq; more troops are necessary “to provide the stability necessary so that eventual withdrawal will not produce chaos and the implosion of the Iraqi state.” Former US ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith wants to partition Iraq. Reza Aslan, a CBS News analyst, maintains carving up Iraq will be a disaster. Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School advises the U.S. to threaten a precipitous retreat “unless all parties within and outside Iraq come to the table and hammer out an enforceable peace settlement.” Stanford University professor Josef Joffe says the Bush administration should cut a deal with the Sunnis. Swarthmore professor James Kurth argues the U.S. military must crush the Sunni insurgency before leaving Iraq. New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier acknowledges the logic of withdrawal but then suggests doing “anything and everything.” And so on.

I can imagine George W. Bush reading through this issue—I have a good imagination—and declaring, “My head hurts.” Moreover, the magazine's exercise must somewhat parallel what the Iraq Study Group—the bipartisan commission chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton—is going through. That panel has interviewed hundreds and has several working groups composed of dozens of supposed experts. And somehow it's supposed to craft a consensus get-us-out-of-there plan. Good luck. It's not that there are no options in Iraq; there are no good options. And Democrats counseling withdrawal have to recognize the possibility that the removal of U.S. troops—as justified and appropriate as that might be at this stage—could have ugly side-consequences: more intense civil strife and sectarian violence in Iraq. (I explored thismatter here .)

By creating such a vexing dilemma Bush has afforded himself a measure of political protection (yet only a small measure, as the recent election results indicated). No critic of the war can concoct a plan that convincingly promises progress in Iraq. Put in Bushian terms, “Hey, got something better than our plan for victory?” A reader of the assorted New Republic proposals can say of each, “Yeah, maybe. Probably not. Who knows?” It's increasingly possible—especially as the situation in Iraq deteriorates by the week (more bodies, more conflict, more despair)—that the wise men (and one woman) of the Baker Commission will not be able to improve upon The New Republic 's grab-bag.

The Baker Commission is unlikely to promote what might be called the Cry for Help Plan. As I suggested previously , Bush's only chance at preventing Iraq from descending further into hell may depend on his ability to admit he, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest really, really messed up big-time. He ought to acknowledge the errors of his ways and explicitly ask the rest of the world to assist him in finding a path out. It seems clear nothing resembling a resolution in Iraq can be forged without pressure from the outside—and that means pressure from states within the region and from states with ties and interests in the area. It may be impossible to obtain sufficient assistance from other nations—such as Iran and Syria—but trying to do so is necessary. The goal: to bring some degree of stability to Iraq, as the United States disengages.

Yet for Bush to achieve such a breakthrough he will have to break with his past practices of denying the harsh realities of post-invasion Iraq, of claiming progress when the opposite is occurring, and of declaring that he has a strategy for victory and it's called winning. (Or is it a strategy for winning that's called victory?) He can do this by fully acknowledging he has mismanaged a war that might have been unmanageable from the start.

This will be tough for the Texan in the White House. But Tony Blair recently conceded Iraq was a “disaster” (and he has in the past also said that de-Baathification was a mighty blunder). Henry Kissinger has already admitted that full victory in Iraq is a goner. And The New Republic noted it “deeply regrets” its backing for the war: “The past three years have complicated our idealism and reminded us of the limits of American power and our own wisdom.”

Not everyone is jumping on the reality bandwagon. The neoconservatives continue to duck responsibility for the war. Don't blame me, says Richard Perle: I only advocated the war, the fault is with the folks who executed it. Kenneth Adelman, a former Reagan administration official who in 2002 declared a war in Iraq would be a “cakewalk,” points an accusatory finger at his old friends, Rumsfeld and Cheney, for having bungled the war. (He holds Bush accountable, as well.) None of these war advocates are willing to say that the very notion of invading Iraq to create a pro-West, pro-Israel haven of democracy—via the efforts of exile leader Ahmad Chalabi—was flawed at creation.

For many who opposed this elective war at the start, a critical obstacle was the Bush crowd's lack of seriousness regarding what would happen after the initial military campaign. Bush, his aides and their pro-war allies offered no plan. They dismissed or ignored experts who raised the obvious concerns about the post-invasion period. Sectarian violence? Security challenges? Economic dislocation? They prepared for none of that-and eschewed those who wanted to—including General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, who said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure the country after an invasion. It was no secret in Washington in the months before the invasion that the White House reached out to virtually none of the town's Middle East experts to discuss what might occur in Iraq after the invasion. I don't recall any neocons at the time raising red flags about the lack of planning. Perle even told me before the war that Iraq could be taken easily and transformed by a small invasion force of 40,000 troops.

Yet the neocons are not the problem now (unless they succeed in whipping up support for attacking Iran). Bush is the main man. He is increasingly isolated. Congressional Republicans are not rushing to endorse his present course in Iraq. Democrats are ratcheting up pressure for troops withdrawal. Some conservatives, like Sen. John McCain, are calling on him to send in more soldiers. And Washington is generally more concerned with what Baker is cooking up than with anything the president has to say to defend his Iraq policy.

Still, at the end of the day—despite whatever Baker devises, despite whatever any foreign policy experts suggest—it is Bush who has the big decision to make. Does he change his fundamental muddled approach? He might be able to use the Baker report as cover for a course correction. Then again, he and Cheney could chuck its recommendations and continue, as Cheney said before the election, “full speed ahead.” To where? They don't seem to know. (Recent news indicates their they-stand-up/we-stand-down training program is a farce.) But it remains their war. The absence of good options is their fault. Bush, Cheney, the neocons and the other war backers placed the United States—and Iraq—in this awful spot. They created a heckuva problem for which there is no good and pain-free solution. They will bear responsibility for the consequences of whatever comes next.

(David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com .)


3. The Myth of Johnny Maverick – by The Rude Pundit/rudepundit.blogspot.com

Johnny Maverick was a cowboy, they say, one of the last in the Old West, in a land where towns like Tombstone have names that echo off canyons, Grand and small. They say Johnny Maverick didn't have any loyalties to the gangs that roamed and rustled, that he only cared about his ranch, and the people abided and admired Johnny Maverick, who, the story goes, always paid his debts on time, who was a tough but fair bargainer when it came time to sell stock, who was unafraid to stand up to sheriffs or outlaws. Whether it was true or not, didn't matter. The story was enough to make the man a legend. Thing is, though, like every cowboy story, what's left out is the shit, the smell of shit, the piles of shit that are everywhere, the way in which, if you meet a real cowboy, the decadent odor of shit hits you because, no matter how hard you scrub, you can't scrub away all the horse and bullshit that a cowboy lives in every day of his life. It doesn't mean a man ain't a tough motherfuckin' cowpoke. But you gotta accept the heaps of shit if you wanna accept the man instead of the myth.

Let's remember that nearly every one of John McCain's supposed "maverick" stands against other Republicans has ended in capitulation on principle and action. For, truly, it was the allegedly revolutionary and long-fought-for McCain-Feingold Act on campaign finance reform that originally brought him the deep ire of the ultra-nutzoid right because pro-life groups were afeared of the soft money ban. The final bill, though, was a fuckin' sieve with big check-sized holes, a half-assed attempt to say the Congress tried something to remove the influence of cash on elections, when, in essence, it was at best a literal passing of the buck.

And on McCain's much flaunted forcing of a revision of the Military Commissions Act? One that used his scar-reveling prestige as a victim of torture back in 'Nam in order to get the Bush Administration to agree to a bill that purportedly outlawed torture? Well, shit, when it comes to McCain and Bush administration on torture, it's kind of like that twisted film The Night Porter , where a former female concentration camp survivor falls back into a perverse sexual relationship with the Nazi who tortured and assaulted her. To watch McCain proclaim triumph on a bill that pretty much guarantees the CIA can torture with impunity, to see him vote for Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, hell, to see him stand with the President at all, is like watching McCain beg to have his legs broken again and again because it's the only way he can feel.

So it was that McCain appeared on This Week With George Stephanopoulos's Hair yesterday and proclaimed that Roe v. Wade should be overturned and the issue of abortion returned to the states. Heavens to betsy, some declared , that certainly is different than something he said in 1999. See, in an interview then, McCain said he did not wish Roe to be repealed because it would harm women. Sweet merciful flip-flop, no? Except that McCain crawfished on the issue almost immediately after. A McCain spokesman said right after the interview came out that Johnny Maverick "has a 17-year voting record of supporting efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade." And by January 2000, he himself was saying that Roe should be overturned, with exceptions for the usual stuff.

Johnny Maverick got a 0% rating from the ACLU in 2002 and an 83% from the Christian Coalition in 2003. He is, right down the fuckin' line, a hardcore conservative who just seems a little more rational than Sam Brownback or a little less creepily evil (just a little) than Dick Cheney. So, like, seriously, can we all just stop acting surprised when intensely conservative John McCain says something intensely conservative? It's like, say, you're a lesbian who really wants to fuck this female co-worker, but she keeps saying that she's straight. And then, one night, at an office party, she has a little to drink and starts to talk about how she experimented with chicks back in college. Goddamn, how wet and horny it gets you to think that you can bring her back to the clit-licker fold. But, wait, is she leaving with the guy from accounts receivable?

And, as Cokie Roberts said this morning on NPR, his call for a pissant 20,000 extra troops in Iraq is a total political calculation, like virtually everything else McCain is saying these days. It's a way for him to say, when Iraq finally goes up in flames and we get the fuck out of there, that if everyone had listened to his worthless idea, we'd've won.

Yeah, McCain's done some badass stuff in his life. But ask any real maverick cowboy: it's hard to love a man who smells like shit.


4. U.S. Retreat from Iraq? The Secret Story – by Tom Hayden/Huffington Post

According to credible Iraqi sources in London and Amman, a secret story of America's diplomatic exit strategy from Iraq is rapidly unfolding. The key events include:

First, James Baker told one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers that Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister, would be released from detention by the end of this year, in hope that he will negotiate with the US on behalf of the Baath Party leadership. The discussion recently took place in Amman, according to the Iraqi paper al-Quds al-Arabi.

Second, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice personally appealed to the Gulf Cooperation Council in October to serve as intermediaries between the US and armed Sunni resistance groups [not including al Qaeda], communicating a US willingness to negotiate with them at any time or place. Speaking in early October, Rice joked that if then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "heard me now, he would wage a war on me fiercer and hotter than he waged on Iraq," according to an Arab diplomat privy to the closed session.

Third, there was an "unprecedented" secret meeting of high-level Americans and representatives of "a primary component of the Iraqi resistance" two weeks ago, lasting for three days. As a result, the Iraqis agreed to return to the talks in the next two weeks with a response for the American side, according to Jordanian press leaks and al-Quds al-Arabi.

Fourth, detailed email transmissions dated November 16 reveal an active American effort behind the scenes to broker a peace agreement with Iraqi resistance leaders, a plot that could include a political coup against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Fifth, Bush security adviser Stephen Hadley carried a six-point message for Iraqi officials on his recent trip to Baghdad:

include Iraqi resistance and opposition leaders in any initiative towards national reconciliation;general amnesty for the armed resistance fighters;

dissolve the Iraqi commission charged with banning the Baath Party;

start the disbanding of militias and death squads;

cancel any federalism proposal to divide Iraq into three regions, and combine central authority for the central government with greater self-rule for local governors;

distribute oil revenues in a fair manner to all Iraqis, including the Sunnis whose regions lack the resource.


Prime Minister Al-Maliki was unable to accept the American proposals because of his institutional allegiance to Shiite parties who believe their historic moment has arrived after one thousand years of Sunni domination. That Shiite refusal has accelerated secret American efforts to pressure, re-organize, or remove the elected al-Maliki regime from power.

The Backstory

Underlying these developments are three American concerns: first, the deepening quagmire and sectarian strife on the battlefield; second, the mid-year American elections in which voters repudiated the war; and third, the strategic concern that the new Iraq has slipped into the orbit of Iran. It remains to be seen if Iran will exercise influence on its Shiite allies in Iraq (the Grand Ayatollah Sistani was born in Iraq, and the main Shiite bloc was created in Iran by Iraqi exiles). But that is the direction being taken by Baker's Iraq Study Group and former CIA director John Deutch in aNew York Times op-ed . The principal US track, in addition to a declared withdrawal plan, should be to work towards a hands-off policy by Iran, at least for an interval, according to Deutch.

This possible endgame has been in the making for some time. Even two years ago, US officials were probing contacts with Iraqi resistance groups distinct from al-Qaeda. Recent polls indicate sixty percent Iraqi support for armed resistance against the United States, while approximately eighty percent of Iraqis support some timetable for withdrawal, an indispensable indicator for Iraqi insurgents laying down some arms.

Even before the 2003 US invasion, peace groups like Global Exchange and the newly-forming Code Pink sent delegations to create people-to-people relations with Iraqi opponents of the occupation and members of civil society. This writer met with Iraqi exiles in London, who suggested further meetings in Amman. Those contacts were facilitated in 2005 by a former Jordanian diplomat, Munther Haddadin, who supported open-ended discussions with Iraqis in exile, Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan, and with intermediaries from the insurgency who made the dangerous 15-hour drive from Baghdad to Amman on more than one occasion. A reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle , Rob Collier, also interviewed Iraqi insurgents and was helpful in providing contacts. Earlier this year, an American peace delegation, including Cindy Sheehan, found themselves in two days of meetings with Iraqis of every political stripe. US Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) was crucial in making these contracts possible. Dal Lamagna, a self-described "frustrated peacemaker" made both trips to Amman, and provided this writer with videos and transcripts of the interviews on which this article is based.

It must be emphasized that there is no reason to believe that these US gestures are anything more than probes, in the historic spirit of divide-and-conquer, before escalating the Iraq war in a Baghdad offensive. Denial plausibility - aka Machiavellian secrecy - remains American security policy, for understandable if undemocratic reasons.

Yet Americans who voted in the November election because of a deep belief that a change of government in Washington might end the war have a right to know that their votes counted. The US has not abandoned its entire strategy in Iraq, but is offering significant concessions without its own citizens knowing.

(Tom Hayden was a leader of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era. He has enlisted as a chronicler of the government’s plans for Iraq, and a self-appointed internet strategist for the anti-war movement since 2003. He can be contacted at www.tomhayden.com)


5. Iraq considers three-way talks with Iran and Syria
The summit, which is Tehran's idea, would focus on how the neighboring countries could help stop the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq.
By Solomon Moore/LA Times

BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders said Monday that they were seriously considering three-way talks with Iran and Syria, responding to an overture from Iran's president that raised new questions about the level of American influence here.

The talks would focus on how the two neighboring countries could help quell rising sectarian bloodshed in Iraq, according to Iraqi officials familiar with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's offer.

The invitation to a summit is a further assertion of Iran's influence in Iraq, and it comes at a time when the U.S. government is sharply divided over whether to make an appeal of its own to Iran and Syria.

UPDATE:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — After nearly a quarter-century of severed ties, Iraq today resumed diplomatic relations with neighboring Syria -- a move seen as a possible step toward stemming some of the unrelenting violence.


Influential figures in Washington have urged the Bush administration to talk to both countries in hopes of gaining their help to bring the violence in Iraq under control. But many of President Bush's advisors oppose the idea.

White House policy has been to isolate Iran to compel the government to abandon its nuclear enrichment program and to refuse to talk with Syria until it drops its support for what the United States considers terrorist groups.

As the debate continues in Washington, Iran has stepped forward.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani plans to travel to Tehran on Sunday to meet with Ahmadinejad to try to iron out details of a possible three-way meeting, which would include Syrian President Bashar Assad, senior Iraqi officials said Monday. The move came as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem met in Baghdad and announced an agreement to reopen diplomatic relations, which were broken off in 1982.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey sought to play down the significance of a possible three-way summit, contending that previous statements by Iranian and Syrian leaders had not proved productive.

"What we'd like to see the Iranian government do is desist, first and foremost, from negative actions it's taken in Iraq," Casey said. "As we have always said with respect to the Syrians, you know, the problem is not what they say, the problem is what they do."

Syria has served as an entry point and refuge for Sunni Arab Muslim insurgents who have carried out a steady stream of attacks on U.S. forces and the fledgling Iraqi government since the American-led invasion in 2003.

Iran, a Shiite Muslim nation, has significant influence over the Shiite militias that have increasingly attacked Iraq's minority Sunnis.

Along with the debate over Iran and Syria, officials in Washington have been jousting over whether the U.S. should begin withdrawing troops from Iraq.

On Monday, Bush, speaking to reporters in Bogor, Indonesia, said he had made no decision about troop levels in Iraq and that he was waiting to hear from the Pentagon.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a probable 2008 GOP presidential candidate, has called for boosting the force beyond the 140,000 or so troops now in Iraq. Others want to establish a timetable to withdraw troops or to focus on the training of Iraqi security forces.

"I say go Iraqi," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), the outgoing chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "It doesn't make sense to plan American deployments before you utilize all the Iraqi forces."

Senior Iraqi officials say Ahmadinejad's summit proposal was the impetus behind the meetings between Iraqi leaders and Syria's foreign minister, the highest-level talks between the two Arab neighbors since the U.S.-led invasion.

Ahmadinejad first proposed three-way negotiations last year but was refused by then-Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. Jafari and his advisors feared the United States would oppose giving Iran an intermediary role in Iraq and doubted Syria's intentions, sources said Monday.

"We said we had issues with Syria and felt that Iran could not be a mediator," said a high-ranking Iraqi official with knowledge of the discussions. "At the time, we said that the Syrians know what our expectations are and they needed to make the first move, which they have done by sending their foreign minister to listen to our grievances for their involvement in supporting what we consider terrorism."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the Iranian proposal with the media, said Ahmadinejad had contacted Maliki last month to renew his invitation with a suggestion that he visit Iran on Nov. 5 — at the same time the Syrian president had scheduled a visit.

Iraqi leaders decided to delay negotiations until after the U.S. elections two days later in order to not affect the outcome, the official said.

The senior Iraqi official's account was confirmed by another high-ranking politician with knowledge of Iraq's foreign affairs.

Iran extended a third invitation to Iraq's political leadership Nov. 10, said Haider Abaidi, a prominent Iraqi legislator with close ties to Maliki.

"They suggested that the three countries should sit together to discuss the security situation in Iraq because both countries are interfering with Iraq's affairs," Abaidi said. "Both were denying this for a long time, but this time the Iranians went a step further and said: 'Why don't we talk everything over together? All three of us.' "

Ali Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said Talabani's scheduled visit to Iran would capitalize on the momentum gained from the debate in the United States about opening a dialogue with Syria and Iran.

Abaidi said Iraq's main factions, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, had discussed Iran's plan and had agreed, in principle, that it was worthwhile.

Three-way talks could boost Iran's regional sway and could also put the Bush administration in the awkward position of having to acknowledge the influence of a nation it once called a member of the "axis of evil" and a sponsor of terrorism.

"I think Iran wants to make sure that everyone understands that it holds a lot of the cards in Iraq, just as it did in Lebanon and Afghanistan," said Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival" and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Iran is saying that Iran and Syria are two of the most important actors in Iraq, and if you want a solution in Iraq, or anywhere in the Middle East, you have to talk to them. It's a regional game they're playing, and they will not allow themselves to be left out."

David Aaron, director of the Rand Corp.'s Center for Middle East Public Policy, said Iran and Syria could demand a high price for their cooperation.

Syria may ask the Bush administration to drop its support for a United Nations investigation into Syria's alleged involvement in the slaying of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

And Iran may push the United States to abandon its opposition to its nuclear enrichment program.

But Nasr and Aaron contended that the initiative by Iran and Syria might also stem from broader national interests.

"All of the neighbors have a stake in this country not blowing apart or having a major civil war, because they will all get dragged into it," Aaron said.

(moore1@latimes.com)


6. Pentagon cites alternative to Baker report -- by Rowan Scarborough/THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Pentagon is drafting its own new options for winning in Iraq, in part, to give President Bush counterproposals to fall back on in case the Iraq Study Group comes up with ideas he does not like, defense officials say.

Meanwhile, study group co-chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic representative from Indiana, told The Washington Times yesterday that he and co-chairman James A. Baker III, secretary of state in the first Bush administration, have nearly completed a first draft report.

Mr. Hamilton said the two men hope to complete it this weekend, give it to the eight other Iraq Study Group members in time for a meeting next week to review it. The report contains Mr. Hamilton's and Mr. Baker's assessment of the Iraq situation and recommendations to Mr. Bush.

The 10 members will then accept, reject or modify the ideas, and Mr. Hamilton cautioned that the panel has no deadline to produce a final report.

"The whole thing could be changed," Mr. Hamilton said. "We do feel like we should move ahead with due diligence."

Mr. Hamilton declined to discuss the options. Mr. Baker has said publicly he believes in talking to one's enemies, an indication that the study group will recommend opening dialogues with Syria and Iran, two U.S. adversaries that border Iraq and support the insurgents.

Mr. Hamilton said the group has heard from more than 250 people, both in and out of government.

"We are inundated with recommendations at this point," he said. "I literally can't go anywhere without people making recommendations to me. But that's good."

The Baker-Hamilton group will not be the only source of new ideas on Iraq for the president in a war that an increasing number of Americans say lacks progress. The Pentagon is also leading an extensive review.

The defense officials said they do not want the Iraq Study Group's options to go unchallenged in case it proposes items that Mr. Bush does not like, such as a timetable for removing troops.

"I don't think anyone is comfortable with one organization coming up with a list of recommendations," said a senior Pentagon official involved in the war review, adding that the Pentagon review could produce ideas that compete with or are counter to the Iraq Study Group's.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began leading the Pentagon's review in September. The Joint Staff, the Joint Chiefs planning arm, is studying ideas -- from adding troops to reducing them as well as making new efforts to win the support of Sunni Muslims who lead the insurgency.

A likely option will be to find ways to accelerate the deployment of Iraqi brigades, defense officials say. This is a move advocated by House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, California Republican. In theory, some officials see it as the only promising option for reducing the American presence in Iraq and thus reducing casualties.

An adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said, "If we had a silver bullet, we would have fired it a long time ago."

Defense officials say they doubt that Gen. Pace will recommend a major increase in troops. The Army today is hard-pressed to maintain the bulk of 147,000 troops in Iraq. Stateside brigades lack basic equipment on which to train because the Army puts deployed units at the top of the priority list for weapons and other equipment.

Mr. Rumsfeld is leaving the Pentagon next month after the expected Senate confirmation of Robert M. Gates as his successor. The bulk of the review work is falling on Gen. Pace, who under law is the top military adviser to the president.

Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the region, has made a passionate case for keeping American troop levels where they are now, thus requiring Gen. Pace to overrule a combatant commander if he wants a troop increase.

"Our troops' posture needs to stay where it is as we move to enhance the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces," Gen. Abizaid, who heads U.S. Central Command, last week told the Senate Armed Services Committee, "and then we need to assess whether or not we can bring major combat units out of there."


7. In the Shadow of Ho Chi Minh – by Robert Scheer/TruthDig

President Bush has said many dumb things in defense of his Iraq policy. Citing the Vietnam War as a model, however, is perhaps his most ludicrous yet.

This past week found the president sitting before a bust of the victorious Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, seemingly unaware that the United States lost its war with the Communist-led country. Having long and vehemently denied parallels between the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, he nevertheless admitted now to seeing one.

“Yes,” Bush said. “One lesson is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is ... just going to take a long period of time to—for the ideology that is hopeful, and that’s an ideology of freedom, to overcome an ideology of hate.... We’ll succeed, unless we quit.”

Bush seems not to have noticed that we succeeded in Vietnam precisely because we did quit the military occupation of that nation, permitting an ideology of freedom to overcome one of hate. Bush’s rhetoric is frighteningly reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s escalation and expansion of the Vietnam War in an attempt to buy an “honorable” exit with the blood of millions of Southeast Asians and thousands of American soldiers. In the end, a decade of bitter fighting did not prevent an ignominious U.S. departure from Saigon.

Now, however, Vietnam is at peace with its neighbors and poses no security threat to the United States. Many of the “boat people” have returned as investors, and successive American presidents have made visits to the second fastest-growing economy in Asia. While Vietnam is still run by its Communist Party, eventually postwar leaders on both sides have accepted that peace is practical.

The lesson of Vietnam is not to keep pouring lives and treasure down a dark and poisonous well, but to patiently use a pragmatic mix of diplomacy and trade with even our ideological competitors.

The United States dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than it unloaded on all of Europe in World War II, only hardening Vietnamese nationalist resolve. Hundreds of thousands of troops, massive defoliation of the countryside, “free fire zones,” South Vietnamese allies, bombing the harbors ... none of it worked. Yet, never admitting that our blundering military presence fueled the native nationalist militancy we supposedly sought to eradicate, three U.S. presidents—two of them Democratic—lied themselves into believing victory was around some mythical corner.

While difficult for inveterate hawks to admit, the victory for normalcy in Vietnam, celebrated by Bush last week, came about not despite the U.S. withdrawal but because of it.

Iraq and Vietnam are not the same country, yet both have long experience with imperial meddling and fiercely resist it. Bush has said Iraq “is in many ways, religious in nature, and I don’t see the parallels” to Vietnam, but that is just another sign that he probably cut most of his history classes at Yale.

He—and apparently the mass media, as well—seems to have forgotten that the United States tried to stoke a religious war in Vietnam by intervening to install a Roman Catholic exile in power in this primarily Buddhist country. The struggle to overthrow that U.S. puppet dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, began with Buddhist monks immolating themselves on the streets of Saigon.

To be sure, there followed a decade of constant talk about bringing democracy to the country we had occupied and a never-ending series of elections and new power arrangements that followed the U.S.-engineered murder of Diem, who like Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi had been deemed by U.S. officials as “the George Washington” of his country. At least Chalabi is still alive to complain, as he did to The New York Times this month, “that the Americans sold us out.”

But the final collapse of our puppet regime in Vietnam did not produce the domino effect of other nations surrendering to communism any more than a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will inevitably lead to the spread of terrorism. This is why the wiser voices in the Bush dynastic circle—Daddy Bush’s clean-up crew, led by James Baker—are calling for involving Syria and Iran in the effort to stabilize Iraq. Iran is to host a summit with Iraq and other nations in the area, while on Monday Syria and Iraq resumed long-broken diplomatic relations.

The lesson of the Vietnam debacle is that yesterday’s enemy is more likely to become today’s trading partner if we remove the specter of U.S. imperialism and leave the fate of Iraq to the Iraqis.