Able Archer

Lawyer says politics influence tribunal

From the Miami Herald, via No Comment:

The Navy lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a Guantánamo military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign.

The Pentagon declined late Friday to address the defense lawyer's allegations, noting that the matter is under litigation.

The brief filed Thursday by Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer directly challenged the integrity of President Bush's war court.

Notably, it describes a Sept. 29, 2006, meeting at the Pentagon in which Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a veteran White House appointee, asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the campaign.

''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,'' England is quoted as saying.

A senior Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, declined to address the specifics, saying ``the trial process will surface the facts in this case.''

''It has always been everybody's desire to move as swiftly and deliberately as possible to conduct military commissions,'' he added. ``But I can tell you emphatically that leadership has always been extraordinarily careful to guard against any unlawful command influence.'' ...

An expert on military justice, attorney Eugene Fidell, said the Hamdan motion brings into sharp relief the problem of Pentagon appointees' supervisory relationship to the war court.

''It scrambles relationships that ought to be kept clear,'' said Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

The quote attributed to England is ``enough that you'd want to hold an evidentiary hearing about it, with live witnesses. It does strike me as disturbing for there to be even a whiff of political considerations in what should be a quasi-judicial determination.''

Hamdan's military lawyer argues that standard military justice has barriers that separate various functions, which he contends Pentagon appointees have crossed in the war court.

In April the defense team plans to call the former chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who recounted the England remark since submitting his resignation, claiming political interference. [Emphasis mine]

I know most people will say this man should not go free because of such interference, and I'm inclined to agree. But that's not the point.

The choice was never between acting in bad faith and letting these detainees go. If the Bush administration had acted in the interest of the country's security, and had not instead used every opportunity to make a political point about executive prerogative, the country would not be in the position it is in with the Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The Bush administration was never about protecting Americans from terrorism. Categorically, it has focused the most effort on making a show of protecting Americans from terrorism in order to create the appearance that if it were not for the Republican Party, the republic would surely fall. While they were worrying about that, life went on, and now the country, six and a half years after September 11, continues to detain hundreds of prisoners whose guilt or innocence is still unresolved.

Reuters: U.S. soldiers in Basra

U.S. command in Iraq confirms to Reuters that American special forces are fighting in al-Maliki's battle for Basra:

The United States confirmed on Sunday that U.S. special forces units were operating alongside Iraqi government troops in Basra, where the government is battling militants loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A U.S. military statement described a joint raid by Iraqi and U.S. special forces units which killed 22 suspected militants, including "16 criminal fighters" strafed in an air strike on three houses.

The raid showed U.S. forces are being drawn deeper into the Iraqi-led crackdown, launched on Tuesday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Basra, Iraq's second-biggest city.

The Iraqi special forces team killed four suspected militants in a house and two on a roof before calling in the air strike, the statement said.

"While engaged with hostile forces, ISOF and a supporting U.S. Special Forces team identified additional armed criminal elements in the area," it said. "A supporting Coalition forces aircraft identified enemy forces on three rooftops and engaged with precision gunfire after being cleared by ground forces."

The Bush administration and the U.S. military are relying on a glib interpretation of events to sell the American public on the justice of this fight. Anthony Cordesman in the New York Times and Ned Parker in the Los Angeles Times explain the reality.

—Douglas Carlucci

Our Men in Baghdad

From the New York Times:

Mr. Maliki’s forces may also have lost ground in the battle for public opinion when, in a well-publicized event in Sadr City, 40 men who said they were Iraqi police officers surrendered their weapons to Sadr officials, who symbolically gave the officers olive branches and Korans. The weapons were returned after the officers pledged not to use them against Mahdi Army members.

“These weapons are for defending the country but not for fighting your brothers,” said Sheik Salman al-Fraji, head of the Sadr office there.

The assault on Basra does not seem to be going well by any measure:

Witnesses in Basra said members of the most powerful militia in the city, the Mahdi Army, were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 30,000 Iraqi Army and police forces involved in the assault. Fighters were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.

Senior members of several political parties said the operation, ordered by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had been poorly planned. The growing discontent adds a new level of complication to the American-led effort to demonstrate that the Iraqi government had made strides toward being able to operate a functioning country and keep the peace without thousands of American troops.

Mr. Maliki has staked his reputation on the success of the Basra assault, fulfilling a longstanding American desire for him to boldly take on militias. ...

Since the Basra assault began Tuesday, violence has spread to Shiite districts of Baghdad and other places in Iraq where Shiite militiamen hold sway, raising fears that security gains often attributed to a yearlong American troop buildup could be at risk. Any widespread breakdown of a cease-fire called by Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who founded the Mahdi Army, could bring the country back to the sectarian violence that strained it in 2006 and 2007.

“We don’t have to rush to military solutions,” said Nadeem al-Jabiri, a Parliament member from the Fadhila Party, a strong rival of Mr. Sadr’s party that would have been expected to back the operation, at least on political grounds. Instead of solving the problems in Basra, Mr. Jabiri said, Mr. Maliki “escalated the situation.”

CNN reports:

Fighting sparked by a government-led push against "outlaw" militias in the southern city of Basra had left more than 280 people dead by Saturday, according to Iraqi authorities.

The unrest has stretched across southern Iraq's Shiite heartland up to Baghdad, where a ban on pedestrian and vehicle traffic was kept in place just hours before it was due to expire Sunday morning.

U.S. warplanes and British artillery struck targets in Basra on Saturday, a British spokesman said.

Another Basra airstrike killed 16 "criminal fighters," and a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol killed 13 more fighters in southeastern Baghdad's Suwayrah district, U.S. commanders reported.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki compared the "outlaws" to al Qaeda and vowed not to leave Basra, where he is personally leading the operation, "until security is restored."

"We will continue to stand up to these gangs in every inch of Iraq," he said. [Emphasis mine]

Maliki is leading is leading the operation?

This week, President Bush called the current clashes a "defining moment" for Iraq and a key test for the country's government.

But several U.S. officials said Friday that the Iraqi military push is not going as well as American officials had hoped. A U.S. military intelligence analysis found that Iraqi security forces control less than a quarter of Basra, officials in both the United States and Iraq said.

"This is going to go on for a while," one U.S. military official said.

American troops have been supporting Iraqi forces with intelligence, surveillance and occasional airstrikes and raids in Baghdad, according to the U.S. military.

U.S. trainers have also accompanied Iraqi units into combat, as in Saturday's firefight in Suwayrah.

Update

The Washington Post reports from Iraq:

Early Sunday, the U.S. military said American ground troops had joined Iraqi troops in battles in Basra against the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to Sadr. A U.S. airstrike killed at least 16 suspected militiamen after Iraqi forces came under heavy fire, the military said. British forces fired artillery in support of Iraqi forces.

It seems al-Maliki and al-Sadr are both ready to keep fighting:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who launched the offensive Monday against armed groups, vowed "to stand up to these gangs in every inch of Iraq." ...

The U.S. military reported that fighting also continued in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite district of the capital controlled by the Mahdi Army. In overnight battles in Sadr City, U.S. soldiers returning fire killed nine insurgents planting roadside bombs or firing at soldiers with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said.

Iraqi officials indefinitely extended a round-the-clock curfew in Baghdad that had been set to expire Sunday and restricted entry into some neighborhoods.

The Green Zone, the walled compound in the capital where the U.S. Embassy and key Iraqi government offices are housed, was shelled four times early Saturday. An embassy spokesman reported no deaths or injuries from the attacks. Rocket and mortar attacks on the compound killed two Americans in the past week.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. helicopters fired at gunmen in Sadr City, killing 12 and wounding 53.

The U.S. military said it had killed 48 fighters in separate engagements over the past two days in Baghdad.

A source at the Mahdi Army cemetery in Najaf said it had received the bodies of 20 Mahdi Army fighters killed by Americans in Baghdad.

The Los Angeles Times describes the stakes of the battle among Shiite factions.

Many Iraqis have viewed the members of the post-Saddam Hussein administrations as isolated returning exiles, backed by Iran or the U.S. The officials' credibility has been diminished by government failings since the U.S.-led invasion -- notably endemic corruption, the lack of security and abysmal public services.

In contrast, the Sadr movement's foundations are built upon the legacy of Sadr's father, who challenged Hussein's rule in sermons and was killed in 1999. Its voice, fiercely anti-U.S. and staunchly nationalist, has emerged as one of the few alternatives for Iraqis. The movement has even survived a two-year stint in the government and, like other Shiite militias, its involvement in sectarian killings.

Sadr loyalists allege that as the elections approach, their group has been deliberately targeted by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council through the army and police's top commanders, where the party wields influence. The Sadr camp mostly boycotted the last local elections in January 2005, and predicts that it will rout its opponents this time.

But a senior Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council leader, Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, said the Sadr loyalists were trying to cover up their criminal activities with the allegations of politically motivated attacks.

"They have an overt plan to control the provinces; this is what is happening. They want to take over certain provinces. There is no hiding this," he said. "They will deal with the devil, they will deal with criminal elements if it helps them reach their goals."

—Douglas Carlucci

British trained Iraqis for Basra assault

U.S. officials claimed Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army to assault Basra without informing the U.S. command in Iraq:

Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that "we can't quite decipher" what is going on. It's a question, he said, of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki decided to act now.

But now AFP reports that British troops had been training the Iraqi army for just such an assault:

Iraqi soldiers dash across a Basra street towards a multi-storey building as masked men fire off volleys of gunshots. No one gets hit, no one gets wounded and nobody dies.

That is because it was just a rehearsal for the real thing now unfolding daily in the southern oil hub where people really are being hit, really are being wounded, really are dying. Soldiers now raiding areas controlled by the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr spent months rehearsing the assault in a simulated environment created by the British army, according to military officials.

"They asked for this sort of thing so we gave it to them," British military spokesman Major Tom Holloway said. Video footage of the rehearsals released to AFP by the British military shows soldiers bursting movie-style into rooms, firing off blank rounds as their comrades give them cover.

Masked "militiamen" engage in firefights-again using blanks "while others make a run for it out of the back door. There is much ducking behind buildings, running through streets and gunfire-all part of what the British military terms MOUT — the acronym for Military Operations in Urban Territory.

The "enemy" are British soldiers wearing keffiyahs.

Before the assault proper, an Iraqi officer in a red beret is shown standing beside a model of the operational area mapped out with yellow lines on a roadside, which also boasts small models of the buildings to be cleared.

British soldiers had built a life-sized version of the model at the Iraqi army's Shaibah training base in Basra, and scores of companies of men went through training programmes there over the past three months.

The training continued right up until the end of last week, just days before Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki on Tuesday gave the green light for soldiers to put what they had learnt into practice and sweep through Basra neighbourhoods controlled by Shia militiamen. In the simulated version, the army officer in the red beret uses a long white pointer to show how a particular building where militiamen are holed up will be approached. [Emphasis mine]

Would the Bush administration like another crack at the question of whether they knew the assault on Basra was going to take place, or should we assume that the U.S. has ceased to communicate with the allied British in the south?

Something about this does not add up, and no one in the American media is doing the math.

—Douglas Carlucci

Ex-Gov. Siegelman freed on appeal

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is out of jail and ready to name names.

Siegelman was railroaded by the Alabama Republican Party, with the assistance of Karl Rove and the Justice Department. Scott Hortons writing on the case is an invaluable guide to political life in Bush's America. From the New York Times, which interviewed Siegelman on his release:

Former Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama, released from prison today on bond in a bribery case, said he was as convinced as ever that politics played a leading role in his prosecution.

In a telephone interview shortly after he walked out of a federal prison in Oakdale, La., Mr. Siegelman said there had been “abuse of power” in his case, and repeatedly cited the influence of Karl Rove, the former White House political director.

“His fingerprints are smeared all over the case,” Mr. Siegelman said, a day after a federal appeals court ordered him released on bond and said there were legitimate questions about his case.

Mr. Rove has strenuously denied any involvement in the conviction of the former governor, who was sentenced to serve seven years last June after being convicted in 2006. He could not immediately be reached for comment today.

Mr. Siegelman served nine months while his lawyers appealed a federal judge’s refusal to release him on bond, pending the ex-governor’s appeal of his conviction. That refusal was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Thursday.

The former governor, a Democrat, said he would “press” to have Mr. Rove answer questions about his possible involvement in the case before Congress, which has already held a hearing on Mr. Siegelman. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee signaled its intention to have Mr. Siegelman testify about the nature of his prosecution.

I can't wait for the Judiciary Committee to hear from Siegelman. Perhaps President Bush, in letting the ex-governor get sent to prison, finally let his hatchetmen go too far.

—Douglas Carlucci

Rove slanders Professor Obama

The other day, I watched Fox News "analyst" Karl Rove (that's really how they introduce him) literally go through the entire list of conservative distortions and lies about Barack Obama. Of course, Rove was not challenged on any of the statements by the host of the show he was on, On the Record with Greta van Susteren.

One lie popped out at me. Rove said (I'm roughly quoting) "Obama told us he was a constitutional law professor, that turned out not to be true." This stuck out because it was his academic career that proved to me Obama's intellectual merit. Since I don't know him personally, I took as proof of a high level of intelligence Obama's tenure as editor of the Harvard Law Review and his job teaching at the University of Chicago School of Law. I don't have absolute faith in academics, but I know they don't let just anyone edit the Harvard Law Review.

Since the claim came out of Rove's mouth I did not believe it, but I checked to make sure.

My hunch was correct. It is an entirely bogus claim. The supposed justification for saying Obama is lying about his status as a professor is that he was a Senior Lecturer at the law school, not a full-time, tenure-track faculty member. The implication is Obama didn't do a whole lot of teaching, but wants to take credit as a pedagogue. Here's the University of Chicago Law School's statement on the matter:

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined. [Emphasis mine]

So although to the law school Senior Lecturer is as good as professor, Obama's description of himself as a professor doesn't quite meet Rove's exacting standards for accuracy.

Obama's former colleague at the University of Chicago Law School, Cass R. Sunstein, vouches for the candidate's intellectual diligence and ability to profess law in this essay.

—Douglas Carlucci

Whom is Jeremiah Wright dividing?

I want to make one brief point about Barack Obama and his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. I had a moment of clarity on the subject this afternoon that I’d like to share.

The controversy reveals to us the last acceptable white privilege in the U.S: controlling the very discussion of race.

Allow me to explain. Ignore for a moment Wright’s most incredible statements: that the U.S. government was somehow complicit in developing AIDS and crack cocaine as a means of destroying African-Americans. These statements are demonstrably false, and Wright deserves to be criticized for making them. (I’m not including the nonsense about Wright and September 11 in this discussion, because, having listened to Wright’s sermon, it’s apparent that he wasn’t saying America’s “chickens had come home to roost” on that day, but was merely quoting such a statement made by someone else—on Fox News, by the way—for the rhetorical purpose of holding together his own thoughts on the subject.)

The statements on AIDS and cocaine are not the essence of Wright’s sermons. The essence is Wright’s anger at the long and indisputable history of racism and racial violence in the U.S, and the U.S.’s willingness to use violence to achieve its ends in foreign nations.

Wright is a black man. He understands this personally. You might not like him, but you can’t deny that when he speaks on racism, he speaks as a black man who grew up in the twentieth century U.S., and so he speaks on the subject with the authority of experience.

Yet most media criticism of Wright has been based on the premise that he is somehow irresponsible and demagogic in discussing race. The most basic implication of the criticism—what they mean when they say Wright is inflammatory and divisive—is that Wright should not be making the statements he made.

Distill the sentiment a little more, and it comes down to this: We don’t want to hear what this black man has to say about the way race is lived in the U.S. Simply by stating that racial relations are not “improving” or “progressing” in America—which the media is apparently required to say in any of its discussions of race—Wright is “divisive.”

But what does divisive mean? The media wants the term to be interpreted this way: Wright is emphasizing the differences between black and white in order to better control the black people in his parish, and this is wrong. I disagree. I think they are using the term this way: Wright is expressing ideas that are outside what is acceptable in mainstream media discussions of race; therefore, he is divisive because we disagree with him. This is the division they are citing: between Wright’s statements and the accepted media myth of race relations in the U.S.

And this is my point: the discussion of race is the one place in American life where whites are still allowed to maintain a privilege over black people. Discussions of race must conform to mainstream white sentiments, which basically come down to this: sorry about slavery and segregation, but things are better now and getting better, and we really don’t want to hear otherwise. Opinions to the contrary are “divisive” or the work of “demagogues.” Only a “demagogue” would point out that most young black men in American cities are either unemployed or in prison. Only a man who cared only for his own power would talk about how most black children still have to face the fact that more than any other group in this country, they are likely to die violently or be in prison by their eighteenth birthday.

Never mind that as a black man, Wright is not simply speculating on race relations: as a pastor in South Chicago, he has lived his race. He is challenging the white privilege to discuss race on white people’s terms, and so he is “divisive.”

To discuss race as it is lived by black Americans, in the view of mainstream opinion-makers, is to engage in “divisiveness.” Next time you hear this, don’t let the thought stop there: who is being divided? If someone said I was being divisive, and they meant I was dividing the public from the complacent and obnoxious opinions of professional talking heads, I would thank them for the compliment.

As I have said before, one doesn’t have to agree with Wright. I have heard him say many things with which I deeply disagree. But none of the mainstream criticism of Wright is willing to take his arguments on their own terms. The criticism does not even engage his arguments, it merely reminds the public that simply by making the arguments, Wright is “divisive.”

—Douglas Carlucci

The reality in Iraq

What's that sound? It's the sound of wind blowing around inside President Bush's head:

President Bush on Friday branded the recent eruption of violence across Iraq as a "defining moment in the history of a free Iraq" and insisted it was crucial to quash criminal elements eager to disrupt the new government.

Bush struck his insistent, even defiant, tone as the violence in Iraq escalated. He spoke as U. S. aircraft hit targets in Basra and a Shiite area of Baghdad.

The president patiently explained that the fighting was a defining moment because the Iraqi government had taken the lead.

He recalled asking Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki whether he'd be "willing to confront criminal elements, whether they be Shia or Sunni?"

"Would he, in representing people who want to live in peace, be willing to use force necessary to bring to justice those who, you know, take advantage of a vacuum, or those who murder the innocent?" Bush asked.

"His answer was, 'Yes sir, I will,''' the president recalled. "And I said, 'We'll have our support, if that's the case, if you believe in even-handed justice." ...

"One of those things that's been well-known is that Basra has been a place where criminality has thrived," he said. "It's a port. A lot of goods and services go through there, and ...from the beginning of liberation, there have been criminal elements that have had a pretty firm hand in Basra."

Security analyst Anthony Cordesman explains the reality of the fighting to the Baltimore Sun:

Much of the current coverage of the fighting in the south assumes that Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr militia are the "spoilers," or bad guys, and that the government forces are the legitimate side and bringing order. This can be a dangerous oversimplification. There is no question that many elements of the JAM [Mahdi army, the Sadr militia] have been guilty of sectarian cleansing, and that the Sadr movement in general is hostile to the US and is seeking to enhance Muqtada al-Sadr's political power. There is also no doubt that the extreme rogue elements in the JAM have continued acts of violence in spite of the ceasefire, and that some have ties to Iran. No one should romanticize the Sadr movement, understate the risks it presents, or ignore the actions of the extreme elements of the JAM.

But no one should romanticize Maliki, Al Dawa, or the Hakim faction/ISCI. The current fighting is as much a power struggle for control of the south, and the Shi'ite parts of Baghdad and the rest of the country, as an effort to establish central government authority and legitimate rule.

The nature of this power struggle was all too clear during a recent visit to Iraq. ISCI had de facto control over the Shi'ite governorates in the south, and was steadily expanding its influence and sometimes control over the Iraqi police. It was clearly positioning itself for power struggle with Sadr and for any elections to come. It also was positioning itself to support Hakim's call for a nine governorate Shi'ite federation -- a call that it had clear Iranian support.

The US teams we talked to also made it clear that these appointments by the central government had no real popular base. If local and provincial elections were held with open lists, it was likely that ISCI and Dawa would lose most elections because they are seen as having failed to bring development and government services.

There was no real debate over how bad the overall governance of the south was at the provincial level, how poor the flow of capital was from the central government in Baghdad, and how poor government-related services were even in Shi'ite areas. As recent ABC polls show, incompetence and corruption are not sectarian. The south may be more secure, but Shi'ites only receive marginally better treatment from the central government than Sunnis.

Members of the US team differed over how much the Sadrists had a populist base and broad support among the poor Shi'ite Iraqis in the south, and how well the Sadrists could do in any provincial and local elections, although most felt Sadr still had a broad base of support in Baghdad. One of the key uncertainties that emerged during visits to the south was over how elections would shape up when there were no real political parties operating with local leaders, and in a framework of past national elections that only allowed Iraqis to vote for entire lists (most with many totally unfamiliar names) for the main parties and that made no allowance for the direct election of members of the COR that represented a given area or district. Optimists hope for a populist upswell; realists foresee an uncertain mess.

There were also differences over how much Sadr was waiting out the effort to defeat Al Qa'ida before allowing the JAM to become active again, and how much he was repositioning himself to strengthen his political and religious position for a more normal political life. In practice, he may be doing both, may be as confused by the uncertain nature of Iraqi politics and security as everyone else, and may be dealing with a movement so fractured and diverse that effective control of even its mainstream is difficult to impossible.

It was also clear that Basra was a special case. The British position had essentially eroded to the point of hiding in the airport. There was a fair amount of bluster about joint planning, training, and patrols, but little evidence of substance. Moreover, the power struggle in Basra differed sharply from the struggle in the other Shi'ite provinces. Basra was essentially divided up among Shi'ite party mafias, each of which had its own form of extortion and corruption. They sometimes fought and feuded, but had a crude modus vivendi at the expense of the rest of the nation. Basra also had far more Iranian penetration in both the civil and security sectors than the other Shi'ite governorates. However, it was clear that Iran and the Al Quds force continued to be equal opportunity supporters of all the Shi'ite militias, and that Iran effectively was ensuring that it would support the winner, regardless of who the winner was.

This does not mean that the central government should not reassert control of Basra. It is not peaceful, it is a significant prize as a port and the key to Iraq's oil exports, and gang rule is no substitute for legitimate government. But it is far from clear that what is happening is now directed at serving the nation's interest versus that of ISCI and Al Dawa in the power struggle to come. It is equally far from clear that the transfer of security responsibility to Iraqi forces in the south is not being used by Maliki, Al Dawa, and ISCI to cement control over the Shi'ite regions at Sadr's expense and at the expense of any potential local political leaders and movements. Certainly, the fact that these efforts come after ISCI's removal of its objections to the Provincial Powers Act may not be entirely coincidental.

Is the end result going to be good or bad? It is very difficult to tell. If the JAM and Sadr turn on the US, or if the current ISCI/Dawa power grab fails, then Shi'ite on Shi'ite violence could become far more severe. It is also far from clear that if the two religious-exile parties win, this is going to serve the cause of political accommodation or legitimate local and provincial government. It seems far more likely that even the best case outcome is going be one that favors Iraqracy over democracy.

Fred Kaplan's analysis:

Both sides in this struggle are essentially militias. Both sides have ties to Iran. And as for protecting "the Iraqi people," the side backed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (and by U.S. air power) has, ironically, less support—at least in many Shiite areas, including Basra—than the side that he (and we) are attacking.

In other words, as with most things about Iraq, it's a more complex case than Bush makes it out to be.

The two Shiite parties—the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi army—have been bitter rivals since the early days of post-Saddam Iraq. And Maliki, from the beginning of his rule, has had delicate relations with both.

Sadr, who may be Iraq's most popular Shiite militant and who controls several seats in parliament, gave Maliki the crucial backing he needed to become prime minister. However, largely under U.S. pressure, Maliki has since backed away from Sadr, who has always fiercely opposed the occupation and whose militiamen have killed many American soldiers (until last year, when he declared a cease-fire).

Maliki has since struck a close alliance with ISCI, which has its own militia, the Badr Organization, and whose members also hold much sway within Iraq's official security forces (though more with the police than with the national army). This alliance has the blessing of U.S. officials, even though ISCI—which was originally called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq—has much deeper ties with Iran than Sadr does. (ISCI's leaders went into exile in Iran during the decades of Saddam's reign, while Sadr and his family stayed in Iraq—one reason for his popular support.

I love Bush's imposition of a jus' folks sort of morality onto this pathetic, violent power struggle: "Would he, in representing people who want to live in peace, be willing to use force necessary to bring to justice those who, you know, take advantage of a vacuum, or those who murder the innocent?" Bush asked. "His answer was, 'Yes sir, I will,''' the president recalled. "And I said, 'We'll have our support, if that's the case, if you believe in even-handed justice." Well, I suppose if all this is about justice, then we ought to get behind Bush.

—Douglas Carlucci

Moral and strategic disaster in Basra

Earlier today I discussed the buried lede in this Washington Post article about the fighting in Basra.

The reporters included all the essential facts, but got their order wrong. Here's what happened. Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki decided without informing the U.S. command he would send the Iraqi army to attack Basra to decimate the Sadr militia. When the Iraqi army began to falter, it fell to the U.S. military to back it up in its fight against the Sadr militia. Therefore, one can deduce from the available facts, the U.S. military is stuck fighting a battle started on al-Maliki's whim. I would go a little further: the Bush administration has consented to placing the American military in Iraq under al-Maliki's command. If Basra is a precedent, it means al-Maliki can send the Iraq army to fight anyone in Iraq and can expect, with not even a complaint from the administration, to have his forces backed up by U.S. troops.

Bush administration officials suspected al-Maliki wanted to damage the Sadr militia before provincial elections. Such is the strategic and moral absurdity of the Iraq War. Does anyone imagine this ridiculous gambit by al-Maliki will do anything to bring peace to Iraq? Will al-Maliki, or President Bush, argue that this fighting will accomplish anything but giving the Prime Minister a marginal, temporary political advantage?

Professor Juan Cole's interpretation of the fighting in Basra:

People are asking me the significance of the fighting going on in Basra and elsewhere. My reading is that the US faced a dilemma in Iraq. It needed to have new provincial elections in an attempt to mollify the Sunni Arabs, especially in Sunni-majority provinces like Diyala, which has nevertheless been ruled by the Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. But if they have provincial elections, their chief ally, the Islamic Supreme Council, might well lose southern provinces to the Sadr Movement. In turn, the Sadrists are demanding a timetable for US withdrawal, whereas ISCI wants US troops to remain. So the setting of October, 2008, as the date for provincial elections provoked this crisis. I think Cheney probably told ISCI and Prime Minister al-Maliki that the way to fix this problem and forestall the Sadrists oming to power in Iraq, was to destroy the Mahdi Army, the Sadrists' paramilitary. Without that coercive power, the Sadrists might not remain so important, is probably their thinking. I believe them to be wrong, and suspect that if the elections are fair, the Sadrists will sweep to power and may even get a sympathy vote. It is admittedly a big 'if.'

I'm basing my analysis on press statements which indicate the U.S. was not aware of al-Maliki's intent to attack Basra. Cole, obviously, believes there was collusion between Vice President Dick Cheney and al-Maliki. I don't know if this is true, but I'm inclined to defer to his analysis because he's been right in the past.

The Defense Department has not yet identified any soldiers killed in the Basra fighting. Inevitably, though, Americans will die fighting in Basra for nothing more than the political whim of the Iraq head of state.

These are the pathetic facts of the situation the Bush administration has placed America in Iraq.

—Douglas Carlucci

U.S. soldiers die for al-Maliki

The Washington Post describes unacknowledged U.S. involvement in combat in Basra:

U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in 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.

The clashes suggested that American forces were being drawn more deeply into a broad offensive that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, launched in the southern city of Basra on Tuesday, saying death squads, criminal gangs and rogue militias were the targets. The Mahdi Army of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite rival of Maliki, appeared to have taken the brunt of the attacks; fighting spread to many southern cities and parts of Baghdad. ...

Several Mahdi Army commanders said they had been fighting U.S. forces for the past three days in Sadr City, engaging Humvees as well as the Strykers. By their account, an Iraqi special forces unit had entered Sadr City from another direction, backed by Americans, but otherwise the fighting had not been with Iraqis.

"If there were no Americans, there would be no fighting," said Abu Mustafa al-Thahabi, 38, a senior Mahdi Army member. ...

American commanders said in recent days that their units were taking only a backup role in the offensive and that Iraqi forces were growing strong enough to shoulder the country's security needs.

Maj. Mark Cheadle, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said he could not make an accurate assessment of what the Post reporter saw without knowing the precise location. He underlined that U.S. troops were playing a backup role in the offensive but that on a battlefield that is "360 degrees," it might seem at times that they were out front. If an Iraqi unit was about to be overwhelmed by an enemy, "of course we are going to assist." [Emphasis mine]

About how many Iraqi units have been "overwhelmed" by the enemy? Allies at work.

Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that "we can't quite decipher" what is going on. It's a question, he said, of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki decided to act now.

So although the Iraq prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, ordered his army to attack Basra without informing the U.S. command, when the Iraqi army falters there, the U.S. military is expected—"of course"—to save it. To what end?

Some officials have concluded that Maliki himself is firing "the first salvo in upcoming elections," the administration official said.

"His dog in that fight is that he is basically allied with the Badr Corps" against forces loyal to Sadr, the official said. "It's not a pretty picture."

Today, when you hear about the first young American man or woman to die in Basra, remember that a "senior administration official" admitted to the Washington Post that he died fighting for Nuri al-Maliki's "dog" in the fight for Basra. Of course, it would be unethical for the Washington Post to reveal the name of that official. It would be rude to identify the person who is consenting to send American soldiers to be slaughtered in al-Maliki's political gambit.

How much more absurd, how much more grotesque, can this become? What has this country started and how will it end? Why won't anyone talk about how it's going to end?

—Douglas Carlucci