Michael Ramirez's genius at work....along with some words by Paul Mirgengoff of Powerline... http://powerlineblog.com/

JULY 24, 2008
THE WASHINGTON POST NAILS IT
I've alluded to the Washington's Post outstanding editorial from yesterday about Barack Obama and Iraq, but it merits more attention than that. I'd like to focus in particular on two points that may not have received sufficient emphasis on this blog and others.

First, Prime Minister Maliki's statements (which are not fully in line with Obama's anyway) do not reflect the views of Sunni leaders in Anbar province. As the Post notes (and Obama has acknowledged) these leaders say that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq's rival sects, and that they are worried about a rapid drawdown.

Incidentally, this view badly undercuts Obama's efforts to minimize the impact of the surge by insisting that the "Sunni awakening" was the key factor. If Sunni leaders still believe that American troops are essential, even after al Qaeda has been routed, then the role of our troops, and of the new strategy associated with the surge, must have played a critical role in sustaining the "awakening" when al Qaeda was running rampant.

Second, the Post brilliantly takes on Obama's claim that Afghanistan is the "central front" in the battle against terrorism:

[T]here are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

The Post calls Obama's position here "eccentric." I would have said "cynical, " and the last sentence in the quotation above hints at this, I think. Either way, Obama's position is misguided and dangerous.

A man's life and the measure of a man.


"The measure of this man's life can be found in his character, in his optimism, in his joy and humor, in his courage, in his passion for what was good and right, and in his love for God and family and neighbor and country. Tony Snow did not need a long life for us to measure. It was, rather, we who needed his life to be longer." Rev. David M. O'Connell

Another must read from a person who should know, Mike Walker, Col. USMC (retired)

All,

My perspective on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is from a professional military standpoint.

To defeat an enemy you have to take the fight to them on their turf and you want pick the battlefield on your terms and on your schedule. The enemy tries to do the same, hence 9/11, etc.

Making Afghanistan the main theater of operations had its problems. Making it the sole theater of operations was and is very problematic.

First, it is taking the war to a place where the enemy intimately knows the ground and has long established areas of support, lines of communication/logistics, etc. That gives them a real edge in a gun fight.

The center of the war is now in the Helmand and adjoining Kandahar as well as Kunar wilayats (provinces). It is also important to note that Kandahar, which fell to the Taliban in 1994, was their first major prize in their drive for power after the Soviet withdrawal. We are really fighting in the heart of their home turf and where they have an excellent sanctuary/safehaven in Pakistan.

We all need to remember that the Afghan Taliban movement originated in the Pakistan border regions across from these provinces during the Afghan-Soviet war, NOT indigenously in Afghanistan.

We are also likely seeing AQ beginning to draw down in Iraq and redirecting resources into Afghanistan. This does not mean they are quitting Iraq in total. It does look like they are no longer making Iraq the priority in the war and are instead making southern and eastern Afghanistan the central front.

This is a good strategic move for them. Unlike Iraq, where they have lost support of the population, in eastern and southern Afghanistan there is still a hard-core base of support for both AQ and the Taliban. Further, as cited above, they have a secure sanctuary in Pakistan, a major advantage on the battlefield that does not exist in Iraq.

Making Afghanistan the main battleground has always been to AQ's advantage. Iraq would never have been a battlefield that they would have chosen (although they did remarkably well there for two years). It would appear that AQ is finally getting the fight they wanted at the place they wanted.

Finally, Afghanistan is also landlocked. That makes our lines of communication very perilous. It always best to have either a secure base or a coast or both. We have neither in Afghanistan. In the end we are relying on an airbridge that requires other countries to give us overflight permissions. Needless to say Iran is not one of those.

That leads us to biggest problem, Pakistan. Iraq was working on Nukes and had some WMD. Pakistan has it all in spades. They have about two dozen nukes as well as the delivery systems. Their army is far larger and better equipped than the Iraqi army was.

Are they our ally? Are they our enemy? They are trying to play both ends which almost always ends in disaster.

So how do we play it?

AQ (w/Usama) and the Taliban are still standing because they use Pakistan as a sanctuary. No sanctuary in Pakistan = strategic defeat of AQ. Thus to finally defeat them means we have to eliminate the sanctuary in Pakistan.

The problem is that most scenarios to accomplish that leads to ground combat by Coalition Forces in Pakistan followed by civil war there. It will be a far worst replay of 2004-2006 in Iraq.

In Iraq we had full support from the Kurdish region and always a strong majority of support in the Shi'a regions. We did this by capitalizing on being the liberators who removed the Saddam killing machine. We had a similar situation in Afghanistan due to the liberation from the Taliban and AQ.

We do not have the constituencies in Pakistan that will form a working majority alliance as in Iraq and Afghanistan. That makes winning there extremely difficult.

We also need to be aware of the long friction between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The presence of a NATO mission that is arming and training a strong and effective Afghan army is an immediate friction point in Pakistan who has desires of suzerainty there.

That makes the Pakistanis resist our goal of eliminating AQ. Some there want to have some Taliban and AQ hanging around to keep Afghanistan weak. Others in Pakistan want the Taliban and AQ eliminated.

And that points out the factionalism within Pakistan that makes civil war highly likely if we enter there to kill Usama and his minions.

If we make Afghanistan our whole basket of eggs we are going to get stuck to the Pakistan tar baby. And also do not forget that Iran has a long border with Afghanistan. If they feel that they helped drive us out of Iraq then they will step up their operations to get us out of Afghanistan as well.

I feel for the next President.

That is why fighting the war in Iraq to WIN is and has been to our advantage. We had Kuwait and the Gulf States as strong partners because they are/were too weak to stand up to revolutionary Iran or to the Saudis or to Saddam's Iraq. They love having us an ally.

Further, AQ had a very small presence in Iraq as compared to Afghanistan. That meant that they had to shift their forces to come to us. They HAD to make Iraq their main battlefield because the "Crusaders" were there in Muslim Arab lands.

We took away their initiative in the war and made them fight us on a ground they would never have chosen at a time they did not want.

That put them at a disadvantage and that is why you are seeing them on the edge of defeat there now. A defeat in a battle that even they declared is their most important fight.

It is ideal for us. It is makes AQ fight the US military in the Middle East and not US civilians in America. It is a battle against soldiers vice innocents. It is US troops over there killing AQ vice in US airports and cities.

The bigger looming problem is the catalyst that started this all, Iran.

Usama and AQ are, at their core, a Sunni counter-revolutionary movement. They are result of the Shi'a revolution in Iran.

The world changed forever in 1979 when the Shah was thrown out and none of us understood. Much of the turmoil and terror that has followed within the Muslim world has stemmed from that revolution.

Before that, violence in the Middle East was defined in a narrower, albeit highly complex, Arab v Israel context.

After 1979, Islam entered its first major civil war in a millennium and it dragged the rest of world into it. The Iran-Iraq war was one campaign. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the first campaign that drew in a Western power into the war. The AQ battle in Beirut last year was another manifestation; as is the rise of Hamas in opposition to the Palestinian Authority and violent revolutionary Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

That is 95% of the global war on terrorism.

It is a tough fight. A lot of the Marines call it the LONG war. Many are now calling it a Generational War.

Not good news. Sorry.

It is going to be tough for us.

We will win.

God bless you and yours.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Murtha, every marine will remember your name... forever!

Michael Ramirez's view is the correct one, the detainees are not US citizens or criminals....they are terrorists.

Ann Coulter adds this in her TownHall piece...

After reading Justice Anthony Kennedy's recent majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, I feel like I need to install a "1984"-style Big Brother camera in my home so Justice Kennedy can keep an eye on everything I do.

Until last week, the law had been that there were some places in the world where American courts had no jurisdiction. For example, U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over non-citizens who have never set foot in the United States.

But now, even aliens get special constitutional privileges merely for being caught on a battlefield trying to kill Americans. I think I prefer Canada's system of giving preference to non-citizens who have skills and assets.

If Justice Kennedy can review the procedures for detaining enemy combatants trying to kill Americans in the middle of a war, no place is safe. It's only a matter of time before the Supreme Court steps in to overrule Randy, Paula and Simon.

In the court's earlier attempts to stick its nose into such military operations as the detainment of enemy combatants at Guantanamo, the court dangled the possibility that it would eventually let go.

In its 2006 ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court disallowed the Bush administration's combatant status review tribunals, but wrote: "Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority (for trial by military commission) he believes necessary."

So Bush returned to Congress and sought authority for the military commissions he deemed necessary -- just as the court had suggested -- and Congress passed the Military Commissions Act. But as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in dissent in the Boumediene case last week: It turns out the justices "were just kidding." This was the legal equivalent of the Supreme Court playing "got your nose!" with the commander in chief.

The majority opinion by Justice Kennedy in Boumediene held that it would be very troubling from the standpoint of "separation of powers" for there to be someplace in the world in which the political branches could operate without oversight from Justice Kennedy, one of the four powers of our government (the other three being the executive, legislative and judicial branches).

So now even procedures written by the legislative branch and signed into law by the executive branch have failed Kennedy's test. He says the law violates "separation of powers," which is true only if "separation of powers" means Justice Kennedy always gets final say.

Of course, before there is a "separation of powers" issue, there must be "power" to separate. As Justice Scalia points out, there is no general principle of separation of powers. There are a number of particular constitutional provisions that when added up are referred to, for short, as "separation of powers." But the general comes from the particular, not the other way around.

And the judiciary simply has no power over enemy combatants in wartime. Such power is committed to the executive as part of the commander in chief's power, and thus implicitly denied to the judiciary, just as is the power to declare war is unilaterally committed to Congress. As one law professor said to me, this is what happens when the swing justice is the dumb justice.

Kennedy's ruling thus effectively overturned the congressional declaration of war -- the use of force resolution voted for by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, 75 other senators as well as 296 congressmen. If there's no war, then there are no enemy combatants. This is the diabolical arrogance of Kennedy's opinion.

We've been through this before: Should the military run the war or should the courts run the war?

I think the evidence is in.

The patriotic party says we are at war, and the Guantanamo detainees are enemy combatants. Approximately 10,000 prisoners were taken on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Of those, only about 800 ended up in Guantanamo, where their cases have been reviewed by military tribunals and hundreds have been released.

The detainees are not held because they are guilty; they're held to prevent them from returning to the battlefield against the U.S. Since being released, at least 30 Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield, despite their promise to try not to kill any more Americans. I guess you can't trust anybody these days.

The treason party says the detainees are mostly charity workers who happened to be distributing cheese to the poor in Afghanistan when the war broke out, and it was their bad luck to be caught near the fighting.

They consider it self-evident that enemy combatants should have access to the same U.S. courts that recently acquitted R. Kelly of statutory rape despite the existence of a videotape. Good plan, liberals.

The New York Times article on the decision in Boumediene notes that some people "have asserted that those held at Guantanamo have fewer rights than people accused of crimes under American civilian and military law."

In the universal language of children: Duh.

The logical result of Boumediene is for the U.S. military to exert itself a little less trying to take enemy combatants alive. The military also might consider not sending the little darlings to the Guantanamo Spa and Resort.

Instead of playing soccer, volleyball, cards and checkers in Guantanamo, before returning to their cells with arrows pointed toward Mecca for their daily prayers, which are announced five times a day over a camp loudspeaker, the enemy combatants can rot in Egyptian prisons.

That may be the only place left that is safe from Justice Kennedy.

(In these perilous times we must resort to team efforts... here is Michael Ramirez and Mike Walker)

All,

Dusted off and updated an old paper I wrote in 2005.

It summarizes the reasons why this veteran of the
Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) and the Iraq Campaign
feel the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified.

I am not proposing that I am right and therefore
others are wrong headed. Nor am I casting aspersions
as to their patriotism or sense of service.

But I am emphatically and respectfully stating that my
support of the war is based upon facts and reasoned
judgment.

Semper Fi,

Mike
(Col. Mike Walker, USMC, retired)


The War against the Terror in Iraq
Unpublished work © 2008 Michael M. Walker



Contents

I. Going to War – Casus Belli

A. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs
B. Liberation
C. The Saddam Regime and Global War on Terrorism
D. Conclusions on Going to War

I. Going to War

The casus belli that led to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was built on three arguments. All three have stood the test of time. The first and primary cause was the perceived threat from Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Second was the liberation of the Iraqi people through the forced removal of Saddam’s regime. The third was to prevent Saddam’s regime from becoming a major opponent in the global war on terrorism.

A. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) did not find large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. The ISG did not find nuclear weapons. What did the ISG find? It found out too much. It proved that on the day Coalition Forces crossed the border into Iraq, the Saddam Regime was still maintaining what probably was one of the “top ten” most advanced WMD programs in the world. It uncovered a comprehensive failure of the international community, acting principally through the United Nations, to rein in the WMD activities of the Saddam Regime. It showed that Iraq’s WMD program did not end until the Saddam Regime was forcefully removed from power and driven to ground.

The failed actions taken to eliminate Saddam’s WMD capabilities before the war revolved around a long and progressive series of UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR’s). The most relevant being 687, 707, 1051, 1284, and 1441 with UNSCR 687 being the centerpiece. UNSCR 687 (3 August 1991) established a United Nations Special Commissioner (UNSCOM) responsible for:

1. Disarming Iraq’s Chemical Weapons (CW), Biological Weapons (BW), and Ballistic Missiles, to include destruction, removal, and rendering harmless the weapons associated programs, stocks, components, research, and facilities.

2. Ensuring that the above operations be conducted under international supervision.

Additionally, UNSCR 687 charged the UN International Atomic Energy Agency with the responsibility for the abolition of Iraq’s nuclear program.

When hostilities began in March 2003, Saddam’s regime had an active WMD program in direct violation of UNSCR 687. The Saddam Regime had not disarmed all its Chemical Weapons, Biological Weapons, or Ballistic Missiles. It had not destroyed, removed or rendered harmless all its associated CW/BW/Ballistic Missile programs, stocks, research, and facilities. In fact, rather than finding that there was no credible WMD program in Iraq, the ISG proved that quite the opposite was true. What follows is information primarily drawn from the ISG Final Report of 30 September 2004.

The Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003

This was the only program that was critically degraded. Virtually all of the research had stopped and the facilities eliminated before the war began. The only meaningful remnant of the program was the people who were not allowed to leave Iraq. Saddam kept these scientists and technicians on the payroll and while they conducted a very limited amount of research, his nuclear weapons program was almost extinct by March 2003.

The Chemical Weapons Program in 2003

On the eve of hostilities in March of 2003, the Saddam regime had retained a stockpile of “Sarin” nerve agent and mustard gas munitions dating from the Iran-Iraq war despite a decade of repeated claims that these munitions had been completely destroyed. The Saddam regime still had a cadre of CW researchers, CW producers, and, most importantly, CW “weaponizers.” It maintained the ability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard agent within six (6) months and large quantities of nerve agents within two (2) years. The regime still maintained prototype experimental CW munitions in March 2003. Further, in March 2003, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) was still producing and storing limited quantities of sulfur mustard and nitrogen mustard agents as well as Sarin gas. The IIS had tested the efficacy of their Sarin agent on human subjects. The Saddam regime had no intention of ever abiding by the CW prohibitions of UNSCR 687.

The Biological Weapons Program in 2003

As the ISG reported, the Saddam regime never lost the scientific “know how” to produce Biological Weapons. In March of 2003, the Saddam regime still retained a BW-related “seed” stock that gave them the potential to start up the limited production of Biological Weapons within two months in complete violation of UNSCR 687. The regime actually expanded its BW capability from 1992 through 1994 in spite of UNSCR 687, UNSCR 707, and UNSCR 715. It was only due to the collapse of the state-run sector of the economy, resulting from the sanctions put in place under UNSCR 661, that Saddam’s regime unilaterally abandoned the major components of its BW program as unsupportable in 1995. Still, the Saddam regime maintained its BW potential from 1996 onward by continuing a declared and undeclared dual-use capability, a direct violation of UNSCR 1051.

The Ballistic Missile Program in 2003

Saddam’s ballistic missile program was active and productive right up to the day that the war began. As with the CW and BW programs, Iraqi missile technologies had their roots in the old Soviet Union cold war weapons inventory. Saddam’s regime conducted extensive work in delivery systems through the Al Samid Surface-to-Surface Missile (SSM) as well as the Iskandar SSM, amongst others. The international scope of Saddam’s ballistic missile program was dizzying. They obtained technology from Syria who used false “end user” documents to thwart UN sanctions. They illegally obtained ballistic missile guidance and control systems from North Korea as well as Russian, Serbian, and Belarus companies. Saddam’s regime formed front companies to allow them to produce liquid fuel propellants banned by the UN Resolutions. They illegally conducted advanced research on solid propellants, improperly obtaining Aluminum Powder (AP) from companies in India, China, France and others, and by secretly exploiting carbon fiber technologies for the Al Fatah SSM in violation of UNSCR 687 and 1051.

The record shows that the Saddam Regime blatantly and systematically violated every meaningful UNSC Resolution passed until the bitter end. They violated UNSCR 687 by maintaining BW, CW, and Ballistic Missile programs. They violated UNSCR 707 by, amongst other things, continuously attempting to conceal facilities and move or conceal materials related to their weapons of mass destruction programs. They violated UNSCR 1051 by deliberately failing to report shipments of dual-use items related to weapons of mass destruction to the UN and IAEA. And this extended well beyond violating “dual use reporting.” In order to keep their WMD programs active, they relied on smuggling operations of all manner and type, falsifying “end user” documentation, disguising shipments, and presenting false final destinations. They bribed and set up front companies to make these activities more efficient.
Perhaps the most egregious WMD related violations dealt with UNSCR 1284. This resolution created the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC) to replace UNSCOM. The Saddamists never fully allowed UNMOVIC "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access" to Iraqi officials and facilities. They never fulfilled the commitment to return Gulf War prisoners, because, as we learned after the war began, they had all been executed years earlier. While the resolution had little effect on curbing the bad behavior of the Saddam Regime it had a disastrous outcome for the Iraqi people by creating the Oil-For-Food Program. In the most Machiavellian and heartless tactic of all, they used Oil-For-Food (OFF) vouchers and “kickbacks” worth hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for their illicit WMD program despite the resolution’s requirement for the Saddam Regime to distribute humanitarian goods and medical supplies to its people and address the needs of vulnerable Iraqis without discrimination.

In a chillingly brilliant parallel move, a move that would have drawn the admiration of Hitler and Josef Goebbels, Saddam’s Regime continuously spewed forth a stream of false propaganda stating that the sanctions resulted in an insufficiency of medicines and humanitarian supplies causing the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children. They did this in order to hide the truth that the regime was stealing the hundreds of millions of OFF dollars needed to care for these people in order to maintain their army, prop up the dictatorship, and support their WMD program.

Thus it was inevitable that war would ensue when UNSCR 1441 was passed in November 2002. Eleven long years after UNSCR 687, the UN provided one final opportunity for the Saddam Regime to comply. The Saddam Regime never complied. For Saddam’s apologists, the ISG found out too much indeed.

To understand the importance of this truth recall the 26 January 2008 CBS “60-Minutes” interview of FBI Special Agent George Piro by correspondent Scott Pelley regarding the interrogations of Saddam and Saddam’s WMD goals:

Special Agent Piro: “The folks that he needed to reconstitute the program are still there.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “And that was his intention?”
Special Agent Piro: “Yes.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?”
Special Agent Piro: “He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “Chemical, biological, even nuclear?”
Special Agent Piro: “Yes.”
B. Liberation

The liberation of the Iraqi people was always a clear objective of the war. To state the obvious, Coalition actions were conducted under “Operation Iraqi Freedom” not “Operation Maximum UNSCR Compliance.” To argue that the liberation of the Iraqi people was not a major goal of the war is to beggar the truth. The March 2003 Coalition military operation against Saddam was universally referred to as the liberation by the Iraqis we met; not just by the Kurds, Shi’a, and progressive Sunni’s but even by the Sunni’s who were unrepentant Ba’athists and strongly opposed to the presence of Coalition Forces after the end of the convention battle. To understand this we need to look back at the recent history of Iraq under Saddam.

During the sixteen years prior to the liberation, hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women, and children were murdered by the state. Additionally, by the close of 2002, over three million Iraqis had fled the Saddam Regime (+15% of the population) and close to another million Iraqis were internally displaced. The internally displaced were predominantly the Marsh Arabs. The ecological attack on them, what some have called an ecological genocide, began in 1992 with the destruction of nearly five million acres of marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Although precise numbers are still not available, from 1987 until 2002, roughly 425,000 Iraqis were murdered by the Saddam Regime , the most deadly years being 1987-88 (when genocidal attacks killed approximately 100,000 Kurds) and 1991 (when an estimated 165,000 Shi’a and Kurds were put to death); that averages to over 26,000 victims per year or an average over 2,200 civilian deaths per month during the later half of Saddam’s era of power.

How did life end for the hundreds of thousands of Saddam’s victims? Thousands died through the use of WMD in chemical warfare (CW) attacks. For example, in September 1988 Ali Hassan al-Majid, AKA “Chemical Ali,” began the Anfal Operation. In those Kurdish regions spared the horrors of chemical attacks, he specifically issued orders to execute all civilians between 15-70 years of age after any information of intelligence value was “extracted” from them. Many Iraqis died through the accepted state means of execution, hanging, firing squad, beheading, etc. More died through torture that extended far beyond beatings and electric shocks but branched out into sodomy, eye gouging, acid baths, the drilling holes through hands with power tools and more. Victims were found with blackened genitals, blown into gaping pieces of raw flesh from grenades inserted into shirt pockets after being bound, arms and legs. Other victims had their tongues ripped out during interrogations and bled to death.

And Saddam’s henchmen did not differentiate between men and women or even children. During a “retribution campaign” against the Shi’a, Saddam’s operatives killed babies by smashing their bodies against walls. One Saddam loyalist “fighter” had his occupation listed as a violator of women’s honor, a full-time rapist on the government payroll. Nor were the victims limited to traditional anti-government opponents. Hazani Oraha owned an art gallery. He showed art works that were deemed “controversial” by the Saddam Regime. In addition to losing his gallery and having the art confiscated, he was hung from a ceiling fan, with his legs bound. The fan was then tuned on, twisting him until his back was broken. A female doctor who criticized corruption in the Ministry of Health was arrested, charged with prostitution and beheaded. These are a few examples of hundreds of thousands of people who died under the Saddam Regime.

The liberation that resulted from Operation Iraqi Freedom was too late for these victims but thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children are alive today because the Coalition Forces put an end to this madness. The one thing that has remained unchanged since the liberation is the determination of Saddam’s remaining henchmen, in alliance with Al Qaeda, to continue to murder innocent Iraqi civilians. Although they can no longer kill in the large numbers seen before the war and have largely lost the ability to conduct their murderous business outside the harsh glare of humanity, they are still killing as best they can. Putting a final end to that and allowing the Iraqi people to move forward in creating a new and peaceful Iraq is the task at hand.

C. The Saddam Regime and the Global War on Terrorism

While Saddam’s IIS was in frequent contact with various Al Qaeda operatives, there is no evidence that the Saddam Regime had any direct connection to the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States on 9/11. But the regime is linked to other terror attacks on the United States by al Qaeda followers. If the Global War on Terrorism is completely limited to fighting al Qaeda and its supporters, then in March 2003, the Saddam Regime was certainly involved on a limited basis both through its support of Abdul Rahman Yasin and the Ansar al Islam (AaI) terrorist group. The Saddam regime provided a safe haven and funding to Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin after he was listed on the FBI’s most wanted list for alleged participation in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured 1,042 Americans. Yasin is still at large.

Also before the war, Saddam supported AaI by providing bases in northern Iraq along the Iranian border. AaI was used by Saddam as an indirect terrorist weapon against the Iraqi Kurdish region after he could no longer directly attack due to the Coalition’s enforcement of the UN “no-fly zone” established there. He further supported AaI because of its violent opposition to the radical Shi’a regime in Iran. After the 2003 invasion, AaI’s training camps, along with its weapons and munitions caches were destroyed, its operations against the Kurds and Iran terminated, its leaders forced underground, and many of its members killed or captured.

The Saddam Regime also had a long history of working with other terrorists and their organizations. The regime actively aided and abetted the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). Besides carrying out a number of infamous aircraft hijackings and attacks at airports, ANO was responsible for assassinating a Jordanian diplomat, PLO Chairman Arafat’s Second-in-Command, and an attack on a synagogue in Israel where 22 worshipers were killed.

The Regime also backed the terrorist organization Hamas by providing a “Blessing from Saddam” in the form of a $25,000 payout to families of suicide bombers. To be clear, Hamas is not simply an enemy of Israel. It is a potent threat to the Palestinian Authority and evolving into a terrorist threat to the peoples of the Middle East.

Saddam’s Intelligence Services had contacts with terrorist Chechen organizations although these were limited for fear of alienating Saddam’s most important ally, Russia. And the IIS needed to be circumspect in regards to Russia:

In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basayev, along with Osama bin Laden, have been "clear" about wanting to "set Russia on fire," says Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Saddam was the chief supporter of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a paramilitary force made up of Iranians operating in Iraq dedicated to violently seizing power in Iran. This Marxist oriented organization targeted and killed a number of Americans in Iran during the 1970’s and actively supported the seizure of the US Embassy in Iran in 1980. In 1991, it assisted the Saddam Regime in suppressing the Shi’a rebellion in southern Iraq and the Kurdish uprisings in the north. In April 1992, the MEK, headquartered in Iraq, conducted near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian Embassies and installations in 13 countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Coalition Forces seized and destroyed MEK munitions and weapons, and about 4,000 MEK operatives were consolidated, detained, disarmed, and screened for any past terrorist acts.

Although Saddam’s intelligence service had long been in contact with Al Qaeda, there is no credible evidence that Al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime were solid allies in March 2003. It is equally true that the two groups were following a complementary policy in their pursuit of terror as demonstrated by the Saddam Regime’s support for Abdul Rahman Yasin and the Ansar al Islam terrorists. The facts cannot allow one’s eyes to be closed to the reality that in March 2003 Saddam was providing active and bloody support to a number of terrorist organizations that were and are still our enemies in the Global War on Terrorism.

The destruction of the Saddam Regime removed one of the most potent and dangerous forces in world terrorism.

D. Conclusions on Going to War

The evidence would allow a reasonable person to conclude that the war was and is justified. The WMD argument boils down to an old saying, one usually used in a far more positive context; if you give someone a fish they eat for a day, if you teach someone how to fish they can eat for a lifetime. If you allow a tyrant to horde a stockpile of WMD he can only use it once, if you allow him to maintain a WMD program, he can potentially use the weapons forever and that was the exact aim of Saddam.

By going to war we liberated an oppressed people. By destroying the Saddam Regime we ended, once and for all, both its WMD programs and its long established and very active support of world-wide terrorist organizations. For this author, who served two tours in Iraq, those were and are honorable and worthwhile objectives worth pursuing.

Man, Michael Ramirez should get a Pulitzer for his work, oh yeah, he has!

Michael Ramirez

A Gaffe, an Absurdity, and a Policy
By Charles Krauthammer
Townhall.com

WASHINGTON -- When the House of Representatives takes up arms against $4 gas by voting 324-84 to sue OPEC, you know that election-year discourse has gone surreal. Another unmistakable sign is when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy.
Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."
After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.
Should the president ever meet with enemies? Sometimes, but only after minimal American objectives -- i.e. preconditions -- have been met. The Shanghai communique was largely written long before Richard Nixon ever touched down in China. Yet Obama thinks Nixon to China confirms the wisdom of his willingness to undertake a worldwide freshman-year tyrants tour.
Most of the time you don't negotiate with enemy leaders because there is nothing to negotiate. Does Obama imagine that North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela are insufficiently informed about American requirements for improved relations?
There are always contacts through back channels or intermediaries. Iran, for example, has engaged in five years of talks with our closest European allies and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to say nothing of the hundreds of official U.S. statements outlining exactly what we would give them in return for suspending uranium enrichment.
Obama pretends that while he is for such "engagement," the cowboy Republicans oppose it. Another absurdity. No one is debating the need for contacts. The debate is over the stupidity of elevating rogue states and their tyrants, easing their isolation and increasing their leverage by granting them unconditional meetings with the president of the world's superpower.
Obama cited Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents who met with enemies. Does he know no history? Neither Roosevelt nor Truman ever met with any of the leaders of the Axis powers. Obama must be referring to the pictures he's seen of Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, and Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Does he not know that at that time Stalin was a wartime ally?
During the subsequent Cold War, Truman never met with Stalin. Nor Mao. Nor Kim Il Sung. Truman was no fool.
Obama cites John Kennedy meeting Nikita Khrushchev as another example of what he wants to emulate. Really? That Vienna summit of a young, inexperienced, untested American president was disastrous, emboldening Khrushchev to push Kennedy on Berlin -- and then near fatally in Cuba, leading almost directly to the Cuban missile crisis. Is that the precedent Obama aspires to follow?
A meeting with Ahmadinejad would not just strengthen and vindicate him at home, it would instantly and powerfully ease the mullahs' isolation, inviting other world leaders to follow. And with that would come a flood of commercial contracts, oil deals, diplomatic agreements -- undermining precisely the very sanctions and isolation that Obama says he would employ against Iran.
As every seasoned diplomat knows, the danger of a summit is that it creates enormous pressure for results. And results require mutual concessions. That is why conditions and concessions are worked out in advance, not on the scene.
What concessions does Obama imagine Ahmadinejad will make to him on Iran's nuclear program? And what new concessions will Obama offer? To abandon Lebanon? To recognize Hamas? Or perhaps to squeeze Israel?
Having lashed himself to the ridiculous, unprecedented promise of unconditional presidential negotiations -- and then having compounded the problem by elevating it to a principle -- Obama keeps trying to explain. On Sunday, he declared in Pendleton, Ore., that by Soviet standards Iran and others "don't pose a serious threat to us." (On the contrary. Islamic Iran is dangerously apocalyptic. Soviet Russia was not.) The next day in Billings, Mont.: "I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave."
That's the very next day, mind you. Such rhetorical flailing has done more than create an intellectual mess. It has given rise to a new political phenomenon: the metastatic gaffe. The one begets another, begets another, begets ...

May 20, 2008
Appeasement and Its Discontents
Obama & Dubya.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

So spoke President’s Bush to the Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish state last week. Ostensibly the president’s historical references made perfect sense for a variety of reasons. First, the state of Israel is inextricably a result of the Holocaust — a genocide that was in itself the logical consequence of an ascendant Nazi state, whose industry of death might could been circumvented by concerted action earlier in the late 1930s by the then stronger liberal democracies.

Bush was assuring the Israelis that the United States would not, in contrast to liberal democracies of the past, appease states and organizations intent on killing Jews by the millions.

Second, Bush’s warning came in a climate of fear and weariness in the West, in which calls to meet without preconditions with both Iran and Hamas — the former state whose president has forecast the impending destruction of Israel, the latter terrorist organization whose charter hinges on the end of the Jewish state — have been voiced by several public figures, most prominently in recent days by former President Carter.

Third, the warning about appeasement comes not just after, and in implied defense of, military action in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but in the case of the United States, also after the September 11 catastrophe, which itself followed a decade of bipartisan inability to confront and respond to a number of al Qaeda serial provocations.

The speech caused outrage among Democrats who insisted that it was “appalling” and a “smear” on Barack Obama, who has advocated talks, without preconditions, with Iran, and who had been informally endorsed by a Hamas official, and who had recently fired a Middle Eastern adviser, Robert Malley, for meeting with Hamas leaders. Obama fired off the following reply:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack...It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel…George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

Three questions are raised by this controversy. First: What constitutes appeasement in the 21st-century age of globalization? Second: If President Bush had wished to imply a connection with the unnamed Barack Obama, how fair would such a charge have been? Third: Has President Bush himself followed his own advice and shunned the appeasement of “with terrorists and radicals”?

Most define appeasement not by the mere willingness on occasion to negotiate with enemies (i.e., the heads of nation states rather than criminal terrorist cliques). Rather, appeasement is an overriding desire to avoid war or confrontation to such a degree so as to engage in a serial pattern of behavior that results in an accommodation of an enemy’s demands — and ultimately the inadvertent enhancement of its agendas. Key here is the caveat that there must muscular alternatives to appeasement, as was true with a rather weak 1936 Nazi Germany or a non-nuclear theocratic Iran.

Talking with an Iranian theocrat like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad per se might not necessarily constitute appeasement. But continuing such talks without preconditions that made no progress in curbing Iranian nuclear agendas, or support for Hezbollah terrorists and Shiite militias in Iraq would not only be futile, but encourage further Iranian adventurism — by the assurance that negotiations were infinite and there would be few lines in the sand and little chance of military opposition to follow. In our era, the locus classicus of appeasement is the near decade of negotiations, empty threats, and drawnout diplomacy with Slobodan Milosevic, in which with virtual impunity he butchered thousands of Croats, Kosovars, and Bosnians — until a belated bombing war forced him to capitulate.

Bush in his Knesset address may have acknowledged that expansive notion of appeasement when he elaborated on his “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” line, with the proviso of futility — namely that such talking assumed an “ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” In addition, Bush’s example — that when “Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided” — suggests that his reference to appeasement meant not just one-time talking, but delusional and persistent engagement that is oblivious to facts on the ground.

If the president also meant to include Obama among those who would engage in such appeasement, would there be any evidence for such a view? Obama himself has never been in a position of exercising executive judgments, so we have only his campaign statements from which to surmise. In this regard, we certainly know that Obama is willing to meet any and all our enemies without preconditions. During a televised debate he was asked directly whether he would agree “to meet separately, without precondition . . . with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea,” Obama replied: “I would.”

His website amplifies that answer with the boast that “Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.” The problem here would not be in theory talking with an Iran or Syria — Sec. of Defense Gates on numerous occasions has advocated negotiations with Teheran — but in a priori signaling to tyrants such an eagerness to elevate their grievances to head-of-state diplomacy. Under what conditions, how long, and to what degree Obama would be willing to exercise non-diplomatic options when talks proved futile would adjudicate whether his preference for unconditional talks devolved from diplomacy to appeasement.

If a President Obama were to enter into multiple negotiations with Iran, and if Iran were to continue to subvert the Lebanese government and threaten Israel through its surrogate Hezbollah, and continue to develop a nuclear arsenal while promising the destruction of Israel, at what point would he be willing not merely to cease talking, but to accept that his negotiations had done more harm than good and thus required a radical change of course — and would it be in time?

Given President Bush’s admonitions about appeasement, does the president practice what he preaches?

That depends on a variety of factors such as whether enemies are nuclear or not, whom exactly we define as adversaries — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Sudan, Libya? — and to what degree our existing negotiations are proving not only futile, but emboldening our enemies by the assurance that we will neither cease diplomacy nor threaten the use of force.

Both the president and Obama, in arguing abstractly over appeasement, do not factor in such realist concerns of leverage that govern decisions to negotiate, such as exporting ten million barrels a day of scarce oil (Saudi Arabia), the possession of nuclear weapons in the hands of an unstable government (Pakistan and North Korea), or the unwillingness of American public opinion to support an armed intervention (Darfur).

In that regard, Barack Obama shows his own inexperience when he evokes past summits that a John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan conducted with the nuclear Soviets — contemporary rivalries in which escalation to nuclear annihilation was a real worry, and at the time Soviet combatants (as is true in Iraq) were not killing our own soldiers.

In short, nothing in the president’s speech was inaccurate, inflammatory, or hypocritical. Whether Barack Obama believes he was a target of the president’s rhetoric, or whether he would engage in appeasement, hinges on whether his overeagerness to talk without preconditions to the world’s thugs and rogues would persist in the face of unpleasant facts — and so make the likelihood of eventual military action more, rather than less, likely.

©2008 Victor Davis Hanson

Terror Terminology
by Oliver north
Townhall.com

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The term "politically correct" is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary thus: "Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation." Add to that litany of "historical injustices" the title of my New York Times best-seller: "American Heroes in the Fight Against Radical Islam."

In recent weeks, the vocabulary police opened a new front in the war on terror by issuing a list of do's and don'ts for terrorism terminology. In an effort to fight a kinder, gentler war on Islamic radicals, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with unnamed Islamic interest groups, has issued a paper titled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations From American Muslims."

This policy document warns U.S. government officials against "using theological terms, particularly those in Arabic, even if such usage is benign or overtly positive. Islamic law and terms come with a particular context, which may not always be apparent." The paper goes on to counsel: "It is one thing for a Muslim leader to use a particular term; an American official may simply not have the religious authority to be taken seriously, even when using terms appropriately." In other words, we infidels have no street cred in the Islamic world.

We are told that we should no longer use words and phrases such as "jihadist," "Islamic terrorist" or "Islamist." Using the word "Islamic," the experts have advised us, may "concede the terrorists' claim that they are legitimate adherents of Islam."

At best, this advice is seriously flawed. At worst, it is an ominous recipe that invites defeat, for it begs us to ignore the identity of those who have declared war against the West in general -- and the U.S. in particular. The authors urge us to disregard the first axiom of war: If you don't know your enemy, you will lose.

In an interview for Fox News' "War Stories," Bernard Lewis (the dean of Mideast scholars) contrasted the way we fought fascism during World War II with the current conflict: "Then we knew who the enemy was. We knew who we were. Nowadays we have great difficulty in defining the enemy. We have to be careful not to offend anybody. We don't even seem to be able to define our own cause, let alone the enemy's. This kind of uncertainty makes it very difficult to carry on any sort of struggle."

Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security policy paper -- drafted with the help of anonymous "influential Muslim Americans" -- not only makes the current struggle more difficult but also is riddled with outright falsehoods. The document states, "The civilized world is facing a 'global' challenge, which transcends geography, culture, and religion." That statement defies reality. We didn't label al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Jemaah Islamiyah and Mahdi Army murderers (to name just a few of the groups I have seen in action) Muslim holy warriors; they did. We didn't call their savage suicidal bombing campaign an Islamic jihad; they did.

The Department of Homeland Security document insists that "Islam and secular democracy are fully compatible -- in fact, they can make each other stronger. Senior officials should emphasize this positive fact." That "positive fact" simply isn't. Save for Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have become the protectors of Muslim women and nascent representative political institutions, there is no Islamic majority country where "secular democracy" flourishes. We didn't create these realities; Muslim leaders did.

Reality has little to do with this new wave of political correctness, and it goes well beyond this new DHS policy document. Muneer Fareed of the Islamic Society of North America told The Washington Times that he has contacted Sen. John McCain's office to urge him to "rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community." Fareed is upset that McCain consistently refers to "radical Islamic extremism."

In London, the British government's Home Office has advised government officials that they should use words such as "violent extremism" instead of "terrorism." When fanatics carry out horrific attacks on innocent civilians in the name of Islam, the perpetrators should be referred to as "criminals" instead of "terrorists."

Not to be outdone in the political correctness department, the European Union has come up with guidelines on how to talk about terrorists who literally are dying to kill us. It warns, "Unintended stigmatization resulting from an ill-considered choice of words may have serious negative psychological effects and thus contribute to the process of radicalization." In other words, it's all our fault.

If we succumb to this kind of mindless mumbo jumbo and doublespeak to describe the Islamic radicals who are trying to kill us, we're courting uncertainty and defeat. Or as one very politically incorrect soldier put it plainly during a book signing this afternoon, we're screwed.

Investor's Business Daily political cartoonist and Senior Editor Michael Ramirez was yesterday awarded a Pulitzer Prize, his second and the newspaper's first. In awarding Ramirez, the Pulitzer panel lauded his "provocative cartoons that rely on originality, humor and detailed artistry." Michael Ramirez was a 2004 Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute.

An example.....worth a thousand words?



Lincoln Fellow Michael Ramirez Wins Second Pulitzer

Interesting opening shots...Go John!


Senators Obama and Clinton have very different ideas from my own. They are both lawyers themselves, and don't seem to mind at all when fundamental questions of social policy are preemptively decided by judges instead of by the people and their elected representatives. Nor have they raised objections to the unfair treatment of judicial nominees. For both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, it turned out that not even John Roberts was quite good enough for them. Senator Obama in particular likes to talk up his background as a lecturer on law, and also as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done. But when Judge Roberts was nominated, it seemed to bring out more the lecturer in Senator Obama than it did the guy who can get things done. He went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee. And just where did John Roberts fall short, by the Senator's measure? Well, a justice of the court, as Senator Obama explained it -- and I quote -- should share "one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy."

These vague words attempt to justify judicial activism -- come to think of it, they sound like an activist judge wrote them. And whatever they mean exactly, somehow Senator Obama's standards proved too lofty a standard for a nominee who was brilliant, fair-minded, and learned in the law, a nominee of clear rectitude who had proved more than the equal of any lawyer on the Judiciary Committee, and who today is respected by all as the Chief Justice of the United States. Somehow, by Senator Obama's standard, even Judge Roberts didn't measure up. And neither did Justice Samuel Alito. Apparently, nobody quite fits the bill except for an elite group of activist judges, lawyers, and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it -- and they see it only in each other.

Isn't it amazing, but true! Who would benefit from allowing anyone to vote without IDs? If a person cannot get a valid ID then they don't vote... seems minimal.

Michael Ramirez is best known for his polititoons, but now he may very well have eclipsed that with his general donkoid anatomy knowledge.

Letter written by Col. Mike Walker, USMC (retired)
Generals Odom and Petraeus

Let me preface with the remark that I am both
disappointed and, in no small part, ashamed of the
personal partisan attacks on our military
professionals, past and present. Now it is General
Odom turn to be in this dishonorable line of fire and
next it will be General Petraeus.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with what
someone has said or written. It is wrong to attack
their character and integrity because you cannot take
having your edicts challenged. General Odom is a
great American. General Petraeus is a great American.
To pose otherwise is moral wrong.

The party zealots just do not get it. Let me see if I
can help to clearly define this issue. About a
century and half ago, during the bloodiest and most
divisive war in our history, General Winfield Scott
Hancock wrote:

“We are serving no one man; we are serving our
country.”

Too many politicians, living in the safe comfort
dearly bought by our citizens in uniform, seem unable
to accept this reality. Worse yet, some unabashedly
pat themselves on the back for the too frequent
disservice of putting partisan political gain ahead of
service to the nation. We, who are serving or have
served in uniform as Hancock did all those many years
ago, do not and will not. It is worth repeating:

“We are serving no one man; we are serving our
country.”

Now, on to my inadequate opining on General Odom’s
comments of 2 April 2008.

My major difficulty with the General’s comments is the
simplification of the people who live in Iraq into
single-word groupings such as the Sunni, the Shi’a,
the Kurds, etc. This strips away the essential
texture and complexity of the situation in Iraq and
the region making meaningful analysis too difficult.

It is reminiscent of the Cold War excesses about the
communist monolith or indivisible solidarity of the
USSR. Unqualified use of similar overreaching terms
hinders rather than help in our understanding of the
ground truth in Iraq.

The Sunni Arabs are not a single bloc. They share a
common religious and ethnic heritage but are more
diverse than is commonly understood. Part of this is
tribal; part is regional; part is political. Whether
they were raised in an urban or rural setting plays a
role. Their relative position within the Ba’athists
party and the defunct Saddam regime plays a part as
does the role of religion in their life. This is as
true for the insurgents who fought against us as for
those who fought with us. Similar arguments can be
made in regards to the Shi’a and Kurds.

Similarly, the actions that led to reaching the
“tipping point” in our favor al Anbar cannot be
described in terms of “the Sunnis did this” or “the
Sunnis did that.” The General is right when he states
that al Qaeda in Iraq, our most ruthless opponent,
only became a real threat when it became part of the
Saddamist’s plan to defeat the Coalition. That
decision turned into a strategic miscalculation on
their part.

We were only able to exploit that mistake because the
Coalition worked tirelessly to present a superior
alternative, a vision of a better Iraq, a brighter
future. He is also correct to point out that turning
point when the Saddamist’s broke with al Qaeda and
allied themselves with the Marines was a result of
actions that began years before the surge. The
process followed in al Anbar offers a way forward in
winning the fight in Iraq. The keys are the
development of Iraqi security services, outreach to
all Iraqis (friend and foe alike), strengthening the
government through elections, and economic
empowerment.

A purely tribal engagement model is problematic as the
General states. There are indeed cases of tribal
groups simply being temporarily bought off with no
long-term solution in the offing. But those cases are
exception, not the rule in al Anbar. The complexity
stems from the difficulty many Americans had with the
ease in which Iraqi leaders transitioned between roles
of tribal sheiks and western-style secular businessmen
and professionals. I recall hearing fellow Marines
refer to so-and-so as a Sheik to accentuate the tribal
influence on events. I also recall these same Iraqis
as referring to themselves as Engineer so-and-so,
Doctor So-and-so, etc. There were some who did
primarily use the title of sheik but there were more
cases of Americans misapplying or misunderstanding the
term in their dealings with Iraqi leaders in al Anbar.

The critical point in regards to al Anbar is not that
we risk losing the progress made there by continuing
to buy off local sheiks, however fleeting the gains
from that policy are. What is important is the
scheduling of local elections this October will go a
long way in healing the political divide with the
government in Baghdad.

Where we really risk losing our gains in al Anbar is
in the failure to ignite the private sector economy.
Without economic freedom there can never political
freedom. Without economic security, there can never
be military security in al Anbar. Where are the
returning detainees to go if there is no hope of a job
that provides a chance to build a career or support a
family?

Perhaps most unsettling is General Odem’s view on the
actions taken a few days ago by the Iraqi security
forces to rein in Sadr’s army. He characterized them
as disturbing. In this, I believe he is just plain
wrong. They were essential. Muqtada Sadr is Iran’s
last best hope for establishing suzerainty over Iraq.
The model is a variation of Iran’s efforts in Lebanon.

Sadr’s recent actions during the fighting Basrah are
an attempt at a replay of his past confrontations with
Coalition and Iraqi security forces. He gets a bloody
nose militarily but comes out stronger politically.
His forces are always outmatched but not a complete
rollover for his opponents. When the situation on the
battlefield inevitably turns against him, he calls for
ceasefire to escape an untenable military position in
order to rebuild his militia, the Madhi army.

What is different now is that Sadr’s political
position, rather than being strengthened, as in the
past, is now more perilous after the recent military
setback. This time, as the AP reported, “the major
political parties have closed ranks” against Sadr.
The LA Times quoted a Maliki supporter in Parliament,
Sami Askari as saying that although the action
directed that all parties disarm their militias,
“everyone understands this means mainly the Mahdi
Army.” One of Sadr’s legislators, al Rubaie was
quoted by the AP as saying that “Even the blocs that
in the past had supported us are now against us and we
cannot stop them from taking action in parliament.”

The major difficulty for Muqtada Sadr is that he is
not recognized as leading Shi’a cleric. He is a
strongman. He does have a following. But he is seen
as an illegitimate religious leader by the majority of
the Shi’a in Iraq and this is a fatal shortcoming for
anyone hoping to become their leader. That he has
sought refuge in Iran for the last year makes the
claim that he is a stooge of extremist Iranian mullahs
all the more damaging to his hopes of gaining support
amongst the Iraqi people.
In the past, the Shi’a political parties backed Sadr
because they saw his militia as a counterweight to al
Qaeda and its radical Sunni supporters. Now with al
Qaeda power ebbing, they no longer see the Madhi army
as such a good thing. Sadr has been forced to offer
up the disbandment of his militia.

General Odom points out that the most significant
obstacle to the plans of Muqtada and the Iranians is
the decision of Iraq’s Shi’a to look to their own
clerics rather than Persian surrogates. When the
deep distrust of Iran by many of Sunni is added to the
equation, the possibility of defeating Sadr’s army
becomes a realizable goal.

As Askari added in the LA Times article: “You can’t
put one foot in the political process and with the
other act in an army against the national government.
No one can accept this.” This is a clear declaration
that the “Hezballah/Hamas” model that follows Iran’s
game plan, is not only unacceptable to the Sunni
minority but the Shi’a majority as well.
This also brings into play the role of the Kurds. The
Kurds are the best practitioners of real politik in
Iraq. I sat in on several meetings with some of the
leading Kurdish politicians in Irbil during my first
tour in Iraq and they were the most united (by Iraqi
standards), sensible and calculating of the major
ethnic groups in Iraq. They will protect what is in
their best interests and are more willing than any
other political block in Iraq to compromise to attain
them.

They effectively contained then deescalated the 2008
Turkish-KKP military clashes in northern Iraq by
working within the Iraqi political system. Further,
they are supportive of the role the United States has
played in Iraq but are also willing to work
independently to further their goals to include
working with the Iranians.

This raises General Odom’s point regarding engaging
Iran. If any group could serve the role as an honest
broker between the United States and the Iranians, it
may well be the Iraqi Kurdish leadership.
Nonetheless, I harbor no illusions about the violent
revolutionary role Iran is playing within the region
and the Muslim world in general and cognizant of the
failures of past administrations to find any manner of
viable modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic.
Iranian actions beginning in 1979 and continuing on
through today have been the single greatest cause for
violence and instability in the region.

There is nothing in General Odom’s arguments to lead
me to believe otherwise. For those reason, I am very
pessimistic that anything, other than grief, will come
from any outreach to Iran for the foreseeable future.

The war in Iraq is the Coalition’s to win or lose. We
control our destiny there. It will be a long war as I
have been arguing for a number of years now but long
does not equate with defeat. And quickness, to
include any proposal for rapid withdrawal, does not
equate with victory.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Michael Ramirez cartoon editorials....I just can't stop myself from posting these here... Col. Walker has reminded us repeatedly about Sadr. Maybe someone will cut the tumor out.

A note from Col Mike Walker, USMC (retired)

Marines,

Here is the concluding piece of a three part series of articles published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This is interesting look into how the war is protrayed in the midwest.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=729166

Semper Fi,

Mike

Enmity has evaporated
Marines return to calm in Iraq's Sunni Triangle
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 17, 2008
Third of three parts

Hamimiyah, Iraq - It's midday as the Marines of Fox Company move out on a foot patrol under a sun obscured by swirling dust.

Clad in body armor and carrying M-16 rifles, they fan out to look for bombs and other weapons that insurgents may have buried in the countryside skirting the Euphrates River, which breathes life into the neighboring farm fields and olive groves.
Cpl. Jose Gonzalez, a 24-year-old carpenter from Kenosha, motions for his men to spread out and wait. On this day and this deployment, they're following a contingent of Iraqi police officers. One day very soon, the Americans hope, these men with their blue uniforms and AK-47s will take over security of their war-torn nation.

For the Marines of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, the Iraq of their first deployment four years ago is not the Iraq they know today.

Here in the Sunni Triangle, Fox Company was attacked several times a day pretty much every day of its first deployment - by mortars, rockets, improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, car bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, small-weapons fire and random potshots.

Four civilian American contractors were pulled from their vehicle not far from here and beaten to death by a mob, their burned corpses hung from a bridge. Not far from here, Fox Company lost five of its own to bombs and firefights.

Today the men of the Milwaukee-based Marine Reserve unit are surprised by the relative peace. They haven't been mortared. They haven't been shot at. Except to sight in on a firing range, they haven't fired their rifles. They've been hit by a few improvised explosive devices, but no one has been injured.

They're surprised by an Iraqi security force - one they knew in 2004 as mostly ineffective, lazy, clueless and corrupt - that appears to have its act together. Instead of leading the fight, the Marines are following and mentoring the Iraqis.
About one-third of the couple hundred Marines in Fox Company served a seven-month deployment in 2004-'05. Gonzalez was one of them.

"It's uplifting that our work is showing. Violence is down and the IPs (Iraqi police) are doing what they're supposed to be doing," said Gonzalez, who has been in the Marine Reserve five years and has two sons, 4 months and 2 1/2 years old, back home with his fiancée, Janette.

As Gonzalez keeps an eye on his Marines, the Iraqi police officers walk ahead of the Americans through farm fields and along the tops of irrigation ditches. They dig their toes into freshly turned dirt as they walk through the blackened remains of weeds and bulrushes burned by farmers. They check buildings and slowly pass metal detectors over the soil.

Every few minutes the metal detectors ring like circa mid-'90s cell phones, and the Iraqi officers use sharp knives to dig into the earth. The rusted, bent hulk of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher is found on a slope leading down to the Euphrates.
A Texas National Guard soldier points out to Gonzalez a house where three weapons caches have been found recently. Among the discoveries: grenades, rockets, 155mm mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and large, lethal Molotov cocktails made from 5-gallon fuel cans primed with blasting caps.

Relatively few bombs are exploding and hurting people in Anbar Province, where violence has dropped significantly in the last year. Though suicide bombers and the deaths of innocents such as those in Karbala last month continue to make news, overall Iraq is a safer place, a fact borne out by the monthly drop in the number of terrorist attacks.

U.S. commanders say the surge of American troops and efforts to persuade former insurgents to fight with and not against coalition forces are working, and that years of training Iraqi police and soldiers are paying off.

Weary of terrorism

Most importantly, they say, the Iraqi people appear to have had enough of terrorism. Insurgents are losing the anonymity and safe havens they need to carry out attacks and build car bombs because residents, for the most part, no longer worry about men in black masks showing up at their homes at night and aren't afraid to report terrorist activity, said Lt. Col. Frank Charlonis, commander of 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines.

"I think al-Qaida overplayed its hand," Charlonis said. "There were a lot of nationalists and patriots who didn't want an occupying army, but al-Qaida hurt the people it was seeking for support. I think that's when many realized al-Qaida was a much worse option than us."

An Iraqi police supervisor identified only as Capt. Jamal, speaking through an interpreter at a police station in the Jazeera region, said that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein but that many Iraqis don't trust the government.
"The United States is helping us," he said of the training effort. "Without the U.S. Army, we would have nothing here."
Though the Fox Company Marines realize a quiet Anbar Province is good for Iraq, it has been a bit of a letdown since they arrived in late January, particularly for the guys on their first deployment who heard the war stories of the veterans and were expecting the worst.

"I was ready for it to be what it was like four years ago. Last time, we didn't have time to think, we just did," said Lance Cpl. Alan Breger, 22, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh business student. "In five weeks I've seen less than I saw in two days the last time."

Breger knew two of the Fox Company Marines who were killed in the first deployment, and a third was from his hometown of Oshkosh. He knows their killers were never caught.

"I try not to think of them while out here, because it just pisses me off," Breger said.
He wears a dark green braided bracelet in honor of the five fallen Fox Marines and has a tattoo on his leg of the rifle and helmet that's common at military funerals.

"It's a different ball game than it was the last time," Breger said. "We haven't done much of what people think Marines do out here - the hard-charging thing. We've almost become beat cops."
Added Cpl. Ryan Lackey, 22, of Milwaukee: "We got them all pumped up by our stories, and now it's slow."

Hot showers, better armor

Living conditions have improved. The Marines have hot showers, good chow, regular mail delivery, Internet access. Last time they ate prepackaged MREs and drank warm bottled water, and the wait for a shower could be 50 days or more.
Some of their gear has improved as well. Fox Company platoons roll out in the new MRAP armored vehicles, which are designed to better withstand bomb blasts. They wear flame-retardant jumpsuits and shirts. Their new body armor is more cumbersome but includes side plates to prevent shrapnel from piercing rib cages.

Memories of the five Fox Company Marines killed on the last deployment haven't faded. The Marines know that some of the former insurgents they're now working with could be responsible for their buddies' deaths.

"That's where professionalism has to come in. It's something that burns our asses. But there's nothing you can do," said Lackey, a UW-Milwaukee student.

Back on the weapons sweep patrol, Gonzalez stops and tells Lance Cpl. Terry Medema, 24, of Waupun to radio in a position report to other Fox Company members back at an Iraqi police station. As Gonzalez waits, he hears a cow mooing.
"Kind of makes me think of home," Gonzalez says.

Soon the patrol comes upon a two-room mud brick building that had once been a terrorist stronghold. On the filthy floor lie glass shards, crushed soda bottles and other debris. Sunlight shines through holes in the thatched roof. On one wall, about head-high, dangle knotted ropes.

Gonzalez is told the rope was used to tie the hands of hostages as they were tortured. Spray-painted in black on an outside wall is the name in Arabic of a well-known terrorist who formerly used this area, an interpreter says. A building nearby has a ceiling fan spattered with blood from hostages who were tied to it.

Gonzalez silently looks at the frayed ropes for a few moments, shakes his head.
"Crazy," he says quietly as he walks out.

Lance Cpl. Matthew Rittner, 25, a Milwaukee police officer, kneels in the dust close by, cradling his M-16 and scanning the countryside. The last time he was in Iraq, Rittner was in vehicles hit by improvised explosive devices three times. He also was involved in the 4 1/2 -hour firefight on Nov. 12, 2004, that killed Brian Prening, 24, a Plymouth High School graduate who had been in Iraq for two months.

'Everyone was against us'

"Last time it was more like we were fighting the enemy. It felt like everyone was against us," says Rittner, a 2001 Greenfield High School graduate.

On this deployment "I expected there to be more to do, more enemies. I don't want to say we're not doing anything, but sometimes it feels we aren't at war anymore," Rittner said.

An Iraqi police officer shouts, and Gonzalez and a few others slide down an embankment into mud and high weeds next to the river. The Iraqis dig up two 67mm rockets and carry them to a car. An Iraqi demolition team will dispose of them later.
"Something like that would probably be used for an IED," Gonzalez says.

The group starts walking again through the fields, passing sheep, chickens and cows, on the three-hour patrol. Families with small children smile and wave to the Iraqi police officers in front and the Marines bringing up the rear.

Michael Ramirez, this guy is a genius... I love the tone his cartoons take!