More happy talk on Iraq in the works
Topic: Iraq

Its three months and counting since the much ballyhooed elections in December and the bickering Bickersons have yet to be able to form a government of "national unity." While the pundits are still speculating about whether frick or frack will be the new Prime Minister, the situation keeps going from bad to worse and I say the entire discussion about forming a government is pretty much academic at this point, because it looks like to me that we're already beyond the point of no return. But, that's not important now, according to W. and Condi Iran is the biggest gathering and growing threat confronting us. You know if we could just get the Iranians and the Syrians to stop interfering in Iraq everything would work out great. And I hear there are bases on the Cambodian border that we might need to take out.

W. launches a new series of speeches today on Iraq to try and convince us that this time he really understands what's going on over there. Apparently, all the speechifying he did a few months ago didn't do the trick. I remember David Brooks going on back then about how he was happy that the administration was finally going to stop insulting the intelligence of the American people and come clean on what was really going on over there. Based on the latest polls, as far as I can tell, the effort to convince the American people that they weren't being treated like idiots has fallen flat.

As a preview of what we can expect, W. said this Saturday that there's no civil war. "There are some people trying to, obviously, ferment sectarian violence --- some have called it civil war --- but it didn't work." Right, The Sunnis blew up a Shiite mosque and then the Shiites went on a mosque burning and killing rampage that resulting in an overflow of corpses at the Baghdad morgue. Yesterday, in apparent revenge for the role Muktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army played in the killing over the past few weeks, 6 car bombs went off in Sadr City killing some 50 people and wounding two hundred others. Such an attack on Sdar's home turf is unlikely to go unanswered.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi security forces are doing a great job, according to W. "The Iraqi security forces performed ---in most cases --- really well to provide security," after the Mosque bombing on Feb. 22. Surely, he doesn't mean the police who stood around and watched as Sadr's folks burned and killed. He must mean the Interior Ministry forces, right? Oh, but wait, they're accused of being responsible for the dozens and dozens of bodies popping up all over the place.

Not that there are Interior Ministry death squads roaming around Baghdad or anything, but Bayan Jabr, the Interior Minister, says there might be a few bad apples. [Knight Ridder]He claims he has arrested 22 people suspected of being involved in death squads but 18 were released and the remainder was sent to the Justice Ministry. Jabr says, "Now we have sent them to the court because hasn't been proved that all four were involved." Out of the 22 he suspects of some involvement in death squads there are maybe four who might actually have something to do with it. Hmm...these guys must be real good at what they do to have maxed out the morgue all by themselves. It's good to see Jabr is really taking the bull by the horns on this death squad issue and isn't just rounding up the usual suspects to please his American benefactors.

Meanwhile, more progress in Afghanistan:

In the deadliest attack on U.S. troops since last month, four soldiers were killed by an IED in Kunar province yesterday and a car bomb in Kabul almost killed Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the leader of the Meshrano Jirga. According to the AP, Hamid Karzai said that he had received information two months ago of a plot to "attack important personalities in Afghanistan." As usual, he was being diplomatic, but Mujaddedi wasn't so careful saying, "We have information that the ISI of Pakistan has launched a plan to kill me."

The ISI? Say it ain't so! They couldn't still be working with the Taliban could they? There's something defiantly going on between the Pakistanis and al-Qaeda and the Taliban because they seem to be thriving in North Waziristan and their terrorist railway into Afghanistan is running like clockwork. And it's no secret at this point that the insurgents in Iraq are teaming up with the terrorists in Afghanistan. As I wrote before, the Atimes reported back in July, "That members of the Iraqi resistance, comprising mostly Ba'athists who have melted into various Islamic groups in Iraq, and Taliban and al-Qaeda members of the Afghan resistance met several months ago in Baghdad, where they reconfirmed strategies for their common goals."

The Pakistani military for their part are fighting what the media calls the "remnants" of the Taliban in Miran Shah and doing a damn good job of recruiting new members for them. This week General Shaulat Sultan claimed that his troops killed "about 30 miscreants, who included foreigners" but the locals said innocent woman and children were killed. The Pakistani security forces have been using a lot of artillery and helicopter gun ships, which are, of course, very discriminating in their targets. The claim that there were foreigners involved was disputed by Syed Nek Zaman, a cleric and member of the parliament, who demanded in a session of the National Assembly that the government "Come up with evidence if you killed foreigners." Blaming foreigners for all their problems sure takes the heat of Pervez Musharraf when it comes to his relationship with W.