Southwest Asia News Digest
Iraq War Already Lost Say Experts, NIE Report
"The Iraq war is already lost, and the U.S. needs to devise an exit strategy now," is the overwhelming consensus of the faculty of a major U.S. military institution, according to one professor of history there. "90 percent of the people here in the faculty have been convinced since the summer that the Iraq war has been lost, and the U.S. needs to get out before even more damage is done," he told EIR Sept. 16.
The professor said that the same view is shared by top faculty at all of the major U.S. military academies, and is now bolstered by the New York Times leak of an National Intelligence Estimate, assessing that the Iraq situation is a total mess. The professor conceded that a U.S. pullout will trigger a likely civil war among rival factions in Iraq, but that the continuing U.S. military presence is only exacerbating things.
"The U.S. must leave, with firm commitments to the reconstruction of Iraq's economyonce the power struggle has sorted out," he said. "It is like Afghanistan in the 1990s, but on a far grander and far more dangerous scale. The impact will spread from Morocco to Indonesia, impacting the more than 1 billion Muslims, he warned.
Another leading media national security specialist who was briefed on the July 2004 Iraq NIE reported that the document described Iraq as an incubator for terrorist networks around the world. There are Chechens, Algerians, terrorists from the Balkans, others who have been trained in England and Germany, all operating in Iraq. They will go back home at some point, as the kernel of a new insurgent force. It is, he warned, a replay of what happened in Afghanistan in the 1990s, following the U.S. pullout after the Soviet Red Army defeat. The source added that there is already talk at the White House about the need to "cut and run," but nobody will admit it before the November elections.
Will Elections Be Held in Iraq?
The question of whether there will really be elections in Iraq that could end the occupation by the U.S. and the British, was raised on Sept. 8 by UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, who said that unless the security situation improved, he would not be able to deploy more UN personnel there. Annan openly criticized the U.S. for taking a military, rather than political approach, to finding a solution to the ongoing conflict.
On the other side, both U.S. and Iraqi interim political leaders say elections will take place. On Sept. 13, Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was quoted in several press, saying, "If, for any reason, 300,000 people cannot have an election, cannot vote because terrorists decide so, then frankly 300,000 people ... [are] not going to alter 25 million people voting." The figure cited corresponds to the population of Falluja, which U.S. planes have been bombarding for over a week. Allawi said residents of Falluja could vote later.
"Militias have to disband. Criminals have to be surrendered to the government. Foreign fighters have to be surrendered and the Iraqi police and national guard have to be fully deployed in Falluja," he added. It is not only Falluja, however. Other cities affected are Samarra, Ramadi, Tal Afar and, increasingly, Baghdad itself.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sept. 12, that the insurgency was "raging.... There's no question about it." He added, however, that "it will be brought under control.... When that insurgency is put down, what the people of the world will see, are Iraqis in charge of their own destiny."
There are several possibilities: If the U.S. continues its military approach, against Annan's advice, elections will not be possible. If Allawi's plan for "partial" elections is chosen, the elections will be close to meaningless, as were those scheduled in Afghanistan (where the UN had to evacuate its personnel in Herat), and the country could be split.
If elections are not held, then the Shi'ite opposition led by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which has declared elections to be the only political solution to restore sovereignty, will change its posture towards the occupation.
Meanwhile, on Sept. 14, an official of the U.S.-government funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) told EIR that plans are already being discussed to eliminate "trouble areas" from the election. Iraqis in the U.S., Europe, and Iraq itself protest that this is designed to throw the election to Anglo-American puppets.
The NED official said he fears that because of the U.S. military campaign against the "violence" in cities like Falluja, Samarra, and some half-a-dozen other locations, that the general election, which is mandated to occur before January 2005, will not represent the whole country. He expressed his serious opposition to this plan.
All of Iraq is one central election district, he explained, and there is discussion already underway, that it will be necessary to exclude Falluja and other places where violence is occurring. Since the elections are proportional, this method would seriously slant the election results.
Ambassador: Bush, Kerry Dodge Issues of War and Peace
Ambassador Chas. Freeman, a former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense and former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, delivered the closing remarks at the Sept. 12-13 annual conference of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations in Washington. He used the occasion to blast both Presidential candidates, George Bush and John Kerry, for failing to talk "about how he would address the very serious problems he will confront at home and abroad, including the Middle East."
"Instead," Freeman said, "the parties are engaged in an embarrassingly trivial debate about whether John Kerry really earned his silver heart in Vietnam and whether George Bush did or did not make himself available to bomb the Vietcong if they turned up in Alabama."
Freeman singled out the Bush-Cheney Administration: "The past four years have established what honesty compels me to describe as without doubt the most erratic foreign policy record in our history." After listing the gruesome hotspots where the Bush Administration stumbled by "flip-flops, ad-hoc'ery, and confusion," Freeman practically shouted, "Come on, guys! There are issues of peace and war that you know and well know you will have to deal with if you are elected.... Is it asking too much for you to reassure us that you are at least thinking about these issues by telling us something about how you expect to manage them?"
Freeman next went through a list of questions, covering every global crisis spot, from China-Taiwan, to the Korean peninsula, to the whole array of crises erupting all of Southwest Asia. He also added, "With some of our most senior economists telling us that there is a 75% chance of a dollar collapse sometime over the next five years, I think it might be helpful for you to tell us what you propose to do about the budget, trade, and balance of payments deficits that threaten both our national prosperity and the global economy."
He concluded with a direct plea to the audience: "Ladies and gentlemen, I was asked to tell you where I thought we might go from here. I apologize for not doing so. But I've given up on the possibility of either the media or the Congress asking the questions that need to be asked of our Presidential candidates and other politicians. As in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, both have defaulted on their responsibility to question those who lead or aspire to lead us. So I have fallen back on asking these questions myself. If I've asked the wrong questions, please step forward and ask the right ones. Maybe, if we all ask with sufficient insistence, one or the other of the candidates will actually address an issue or two. That would be most welcome. I, for one, would like to be reassured that we're going somewhere better than where we've been."
Freeman was one of the signators on the statement of Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, which endorsed John Kerry for President several months ago, and his remarks captured the mood of the entire conference: deep disappointment that Kerry had not done more to differentiate himself from the disastrous policies of Bush-Cheney.
Freeman closed the conference in response to the question, "who's name should we voters write in" for President, by telling a joke about three Texans who were leading surgeons. The first Texas surgeon bragged that he had performed the greatest surgery in history, by taking someone who had lost seven fingers and stitching them back on. "The man just won the Cliburn award for pianists." The second surgeon shot back that he had performed an even more miraculous surgery: A man lost both arms and both legs and he sewed them back on, and the man just won the decathalon at the Olympics. The third surgeon topped them both. He said that a cowboy was riding his horse on the railroad tracks and got hit by a speeding locomotive. "All that was left was the cowboy's head and the horse's ass. And I stitched them together and he's now in the White House."
Egypt, Syria Tell Israel To Negotiate With Palestinians
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, and in a joint statement reported by Ha'aretz Sept. 15, they called on Israel to "start negotiations for the establishment the independent Palestinian state." They also called on the Palestinian factions to work "to achieve their commitments toward the establishment of an independent state." This was a reference to Egypt's attempts to mediate an agreement among the different Palestinian factions, including Hamas.
But it appears the discussion of Palestine was not the principal reason for the hurried meeting. Instead, it has to do with the recent anti-Syria resolution pushed through the UN Security Council by the United States, which called for Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. This issue was raised at the recent meeting of the Arab League, which was split on the issue, with Jordan and six other states calling for Syria to withdraw troops.
And, while the Arab League expressed its "support" for Syria, and its understanding of Syrian-Lebanese relations, it did not formally criticize the UN resolution. Mubarak reportedly made the special trip to Damascus as a demonstration of Egypt's support for Syria in the face of the Bush Administration's attacks.
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