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October 22 ~ Fallujah sheiks want to negotiate and help families who have fled Falluja return to their homes

The New York Times reports, "Tribal sheiks and clerics in... Falluja met Thursday to discuss reopening negotiations with the interim Iraqi government to forestall an expected American invasion. The leaders released a statement demanding that the interim government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi arrange a halt to the almost daily American airstrikes in the city and to help families who have fled Falluja return to their homes. If the government met those conditions, the leaders said they would continue talks. But around 4 p.m., witnesses said explosions were heard in the southern districts of Falluja as aircraft flew overhead. The attack lasted about an hour....
..... Mr. Zarqawi was not in the city.
"It's a common saying that if you want your orders to be followed, you must order something that people are capable of," Abdullah al-Janabi, the leader of the mujahedeen council in Falluja, said in an interview broadcast by Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite network. ."

October 22 ~ Whips have headed off a full-scale mutiny by Labour backbenchers furious at Mr Blair for appearing to put British lives at risk to support George Bush in the US election.

Independent - Robin Cook...last night warned Tony Blair that Britain will be associated with the blame if the assault on Fallujah resulted in heavy civilian casualties.

October 22 ~ There are fears that the number of troops in Iraq is being increased under cover of the moves

to replace the 1st Battalion, the Black Watch as the main reserve force, fuelling anxiety among Labour MPs that Britain will be sucked into a Vietnam-style war. Mr Blair denied on Wednesday in the Commons that the number of British troops in Iraq was being increased, but Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, refused to repeat that denial last night when challenged on BBC radio.
Patrick Mercer, the shadow Home Security Minister, accused ministers of "sneaking in the extra troops". He added: "Tony Blair has said he is prepared to pay the blood price. Let us hope that not too many of this battle group have to honour his words."

October 22 ~ anxiety that British troops are being more closely associated than expected with the forthcoming assault on Fallujah.

The Defence Secretary indicated on Monday that they would be relieving an existing US unit, but military sources said last night that was not the case. "The Americans are throwing a ring of steel around Fallujah, and are sending in Iraqi forces to do the close fighting. The British and American forces will be in an outer ring of steel," a military source said. "The Black Watch will protect an approach route to the city. They are not replacing an existing American force."
..... Mr Blair saw a handful of the MPs in one-to-one meetings, including Anne Campbell, the Labour MP for Cambridge, who said he had persuaded her that it was for military, not political purposes. Eric Illsley, a Labour MP who supported the Government in a vote on the war, said: "I still think this is a symbolic gesture to help Bush. It would have been better to delay the whole decision until after the presidential elections." Independent

October 21 2004 ~ Gunmen have fired on a bus carrying Baghdad airport employees to work

, ".....two cars of armed men stopped the bus as it was driving on the highway to the airport, on the western outskirts of the capital, shortly after 7 a.m. (5 a.m. British time). One attacker threw at least two hand grenades into the packed bus and then three gunmen opened fire on the vehicle from outside, strafing it with bullets in a well-planned attack. "The bus was riddled with bullet holes. There was broken glass everywhere," said an airport employee who asked not to be named. She said most of the passengers were office workers. There were thought to be at least 25 people on board.
...... Thursday's assault appeared to target people only very loosely associated with the Americans. Baghdad's airport, formerly a huge military base, now has next to no U.S. presence and is protected by an independent British contractor. Thousands of Iraqis work there, mostly for the relaunched Iraqi Airways or for cargo companies..." Reuters

October 21 2004 ~ " the CIA sometimes directed abuse at the prison, and that orders were received from the military command to toughen interrogations

Reuters "At a U.S. camp near the airport, a military judge was expected to deliver a verdict and possibly pass sentence on Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, who has pleaded guilty to five charges of sexual and physical abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib jail last October and November. On Wednesday, Frederick, 38, the most senior enlisted man so far implicated in the scandal, admitted forcing at least three prisoners to masturbate and at one point hitting a detainee so hard in the chest that he needed to be resuscitated. Witnesses also told the court on Wednesday that the CIA sometimes directed abuse at the prison, and that orders were received from the military command to toughen interrogations. The evidence, from an officer and a chief warrant officer who served at the jail, is among the strongest so far in the Abu Ghraib trials pointing to more senior involvement in the abuse and direct orders from above to "break" detainees..."

October 21 2004 ~ In Baghdad, the husband of Margaret Hassan, a senior British-Iraqi aid worker abducted on her way to work this week, appealed for her release.

"She's not involved in politics or religion," Tahsin Hassan, a retired engineer, told her kidnappers through reporters. "She's Iraqi. She's working for a humanitarian organisation and I ask you to release her." Hassan, director of operations for the Australian branch of CARE in Iraq, was shown on a video broadcast on Tuesday looking shaken and alarmed. Her kidnappers have made no demands.
Her husband said she had been travelling with a driver and an unarmed security guard when she was seized, and that he understood at least one of the four or five gunmen who took her was wearing an Iraqi police uniform.
"I don't know whether it was for hatred or money," he said.

October 21 ~ "the commander of a company whose soldiers refused orders to deliver fuel along a dangerous highway had been relieved of her command.

"The outgoing commander is not suspected of misconduct and the move has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of anyone involved," a statement said. "The outgoing commander will be reassigned commensurate with her rank and experience." Reuters

October 18 ~ " The danger facing British troops is that this already perilous situation becomes explosive when mixed with the repercussions of US behaviour in Baghdad, Najaf and Falluja..."

Guardian "..... But this is only one of the problems facing occupied Iraq - unemployment is very high and the failing infrastructure, including lack of power, oil, water and sewerage, will take years to fix.
Almost 65% of the population of Basra does not have a tap supplying drinking water, sewage runs in thick green channels along the sides of roads, 60% of the fuel is still smuggled out of the country while Iraqis wait in line for overpriced petrol and still the power works on a "three hours on, three hours off" basis - as it did under Saddam. This adds up to a frustrating picture for the average Iraqi, never mind the young militant. The danger facing British troops is that this already perilous situation becomes explosive when mixed with the repercussions of US behaviour in Baghdad, Najaf and Falluja. As many soldiers were keen to point out: "Whatever happens in Baghdad and Najaf trickles down to here." Any redeployment of British troops to the north will intensify this danger - dramatically so, if they are put under US military control - but it will not have created it.

October 18 ~ So now there are hundreds of al-Qaeda members in Iraq where there had been none before.

Juan Cole comments on the news today that the group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has declared its allegiance to Osama bin Laden

October 17 ~ New comment column on warmwell

In view of the seriousness of the situation and readers' deep disquiet, a new page of news and comment mainly concerning Iraq can be seen here

October 17 ~ "....what happens to good, sound barristers who get caught up in politics they aren't trained or designed for and just don't understand."

Independent on Sunday ".. it is the hapless Peter Goldsmith who finds himself left holding the hot potato with nobody to pass it to. Tony Blair, without saying sorry, takes responsibility for invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam, but when asked about the legality of that decision he makes it plain that it was Lord Goldsmith QC who provided the legal advice that enabled troops to be sent in without fear of appearing before a war crimes tribunal....Whatever happens now, and whether or not his advice on the legality of war sees the light of day - as it probably will first in the US through the Freedom of Information Act - a shadow is likely to hang over his future in government. Too much has happened on his watch for his reputation not to suffer. Leaving aside Iraq, he has presided over the detention of British prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and the locking up of foreigners in Britain without charge. These represent miscarriages of justice he has done nothing to overturn...."

October 16 ~"Such proof would need to be incontrovertible and of large-scale activity.....Current intelligence is insufficiently robust to meet this criterion."

Fresh pressure for Mr Blair with the revelation in today's Independent that "papers show that in March 2002 government advisers said Iraq's WMD programmes had apparently not been "stepped up", and that invading Iraq would be "legally very difficult". An "Iraq: Options paper" marked "Secret, UK Eyes Only", prepared by cabinet office, foreign and defence policy experts on 8 March, warns: "A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists." The memo adds that for the Security Council to rule that Saddam Hussein had breached his UN obligations, members would need to be "convinced that Iraq was in breach of its obligations regarding WMD and ballistic missiles". It states: "Such proof would need to be incontrovertible and of large-scale activity." But it concludes: "Current intelligence is insufficiently robust to meet this criterion."
One memo from Mr Straw to Mr Blair in March 2002, marked "secret and personal", casts doubt on the whole US rationale for pursuing Saddam Hussein. "If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the US would now be considering military action against Iraq. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September. What has however changed is the tolerance of the international community (especially that of the US)." Read in full

October 16 ~ "....Residents of Fallujah are packing their bags and leaving town fearing the strikes could be prelude to a full-scale assault.

"They bombed us with their planes and people started running away from home," one resident told Reuters news agency. "The situation now is very difficult and we are leaving now," he added, with clear signs of fury. The Friday air strikes came one day after a call to residents by Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to give up Zarqawi. But the city delegation said the government's demand was "impossible" to fulfill, as he is asking them to chase shadows...." Fallujah Scholars Warn against Massive US Onslaught - Islam on Line

October 15 ~ "Zarqawi" lives. What a legend. He's unstoppable. And he votes Bush....

From part of a long article in the Asia Times ".. This cat has nine lives "Zarqawi" is much like a movie. Fake leg or not, return of the living dead or not, he is everywhere. American corporate media do not even bother to examine all the holes in the story. Who cares? Without Zarqawi, the Bush administration would have to painfully admit that the Iraqi resistance is a national liberation struggle. With Zarqawi, the administration can parrot to oblivion the line that Iraq is in the frontline of the "war on terror".
If multi-purpose "Zarqawi" did not exist, he would have to be invented. .....
.... if Bush is re-elected, he will have two months to launch and complete the all-out subjugation of Fallujah already announced by the US military and Allawi - the logical sequence of the current, devastating precision strikes.
This poses a problem. Zarqawi would have to be smoked out. But what for? The neo-cons would lose a formidable asset: after all they now insist Zarqawi is sponsored by Tehran. Yet another measure of the neo-cons' ignorance of the Muslim world is how they put all cats - Wahhabi al-Qaeda, secular Iraqi Ba'athists and Iranian Shi'ite mullahs - in the same bag. So the world should expect more "Zarqawi" merchandise - emails, threats, communiques, grisly videos...."

October 14 ~Since US attacks typically kill large numbers of civilians, Allawi appears to have been threatening collective punishment, which is a war crime

"Allawi threatened the inhabitants of Fallujah with a massive US military assault if they did not turn over Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other foreign fighters suspected of being holed up in Fallujah." Juan Cole opinion piece The Hidden War ".... The Bush administration has represented itself as fighting a handful of foreign terrorists and local criminals or dead-enders. Arab viewers know that most of the guerrilla opposition to the US is Iraqi, and that many of the victims of U.S. attempts to destroy it are civilians. .."

October 14 ~ "The likelihood that Bush can accomplish his military goals without a renewed draft seems to me close to zero

despite his protestations to the contrary. Thousands of young people will be involuntarily inducted into his crusade, and the US economy and society will be warped in favor of war industries..."Juan Cole

October 14 ~ Kerry is willing to say that he will bring troops home in relatively short order

Juan Cole's Informed Comment "....In contrast, if he is reelected, Bush will almost certainly attempt to retain bases in Iraq, and to ensure a long-term US military presence in that country on the analogy of Japan, Korea and Germany. If elections can be held in Iraq and if the political crisis there subsides, he will be in a position to draw down troops eventually to about a division (say 20,000 men). The Pentagon already speaks of 12 enduring bases in Iraq. Unlike John Kerry, Bush has never even talked about having US forces leave altogether when security returns. The US under Bush will likely be a permanent Persian Gulf Power, succeeding the Portuguese, Safavid, Ottoman, and British Empires in that role. ..In all likelihood, the Bush path of Iraq bases leads inexorably toward further US military conflict in the region. .....If Iraqi democracy starts to look incompatible with Bush's bases, and he has to choose between them, might he not be tempted to send parliament home and put in a strong man?..."

October 14 ~ "Of course, it only works if you have a president who needs radio signals to be told what to say and do.."

Seymour Hersh, staff writer for the New Yorker, in this article from UC Berkeley News Juan Cole answers his question, "Apparently you just need 8 positions to take over the US government: Chief, Near East and South Asia division of the Department of Defense; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Deputy Secretary of Defense; Secretary of Defense; Undersecretary of State for Arms Control; Chairman, Defense Policy Board; Vice President; Chief of Staff to the Vice President; and Deputy National Security Adviser. Of course, it only works if you have a president who needs radio signals to be told what to say and do ..."

October 14 ~ The idea that Saddam was a torturer and a killer, doesn't that lend a patina of morality to going after him?"

The answer to that one, according to an unsmiling Seymour Hersh is: " of course, Saddam tortured and killed his people. And now we're doing it." Read in full

October 12 ~ Tony Blair still thinks his hideous invasion was not a mistake

Robert Fisk in Baghdad. "Our betrayals and broken promises have created a kind of irreversible disease that cannot be forgiven.
...Had we really "fixed" the Middle East, I wouldn't have spent the last 29 years of my life travelling from one bloody war to another amid the lies and deceit of our leaders and the surrogates they appointed to rule over the Arabs. Had we really "fixed" the Middle East, Ken Bigley would not have been murdered in Iraq last week. ...
....Look, for example, how we egged on Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, how we patronised him for eight terrible years with export credits and guns and aircraft and chemicals for gas.
....The Americans have a professional army in Iraq, but it is becoming frighteningly casual about the way it kills women and children in Fallujah, simply denying that its air strikes are killing the innocent, and insists that all 120 dead in their Samarra operation are all insurgents when this cannot possibly be true. What about the latest wedding party carnage, another American "success" against terrorism? Because journalists can scarcely travel in Iraq any more, there is no longer any independent witness to this awful war. What is going on in Ramadi and Hilla and all the other cities where US forces carry out their brutal raids?
Tony Blair still thinks his hideous invasion was not a mistake. .." Read in full

October 11 ~ "Here I am again, Mr. Blair, very, very close to the end of my life," Bigley said in a calm voice. "You do not appear to have done anything at all to help me."

The Guardian says, "one of the captors accused the British government of lying when it said it had no means of communication with the group. "They lied. There was a very clear contact," he said...."
The Observer : "....Jack Straw, conceding that the government had gone back on its 'no negotiation' policy, said that 'messages were exchanged'. He claimed, however, that the kidnappers did not 'abandon their demands relating to the release of women prisoners, even though they were fully aware there are no women prisoners in our custody in Iraq' . No one said Britain was holding them, but Britain's American allies and the Iraqi interim government do. When the Iraqis moved to release one of the women, the US prevented it. An American officer, explaining why two women scientists had not been released with 240 men last week, said they remained 'high value' detainees.
The British could have made it clear that this was an error. ."
As we said on warmwell's Inbox on September 24

October 10 ~ "Downing Street displayed its nervousness over how the ISG report will affect backbench opinion

by sending every Labour MP a briefing note from No 10 putting the best possible gloss on the document...".Independent on Sunday "Hans Blix, the former UN chief weapons inspector, said the report was further evidence "that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun". Writing today in The Independent on Sunday, Mr Blix said the report was all the more damning because its main author, Charles Duelfer, was a pro-war "hawk" appointed by the CIA.
His words were echoed by the former UN inspector Scott Ritter, also writing in the IoS, who claimed that "the last vestiges of perceived legitimacy regarding the decision of US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to invade Iraq have been eliminated". The Prime Minister can expect fierce questions about the report when he addresses a private meeting of Labour MPs and peers in the Commons tomorrow..." (Ritter and Blix new window)

October 7 2004 ~ The Duelfer report.

Can be viewed in full here http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html

The report is in pdf form. We have converted the key findings section of the ISG report into a web page.

October 6th ~Mr Edwards accused Mr Cheney of "not being straight" on the war in Iraq.

Telegraph "He said that the Republicans were ignoring the growing chaos in Iraq. He challenged the decision to go to war and the alleged link between Iraq and al-Qa'eda, which was yesterday played down by Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defence.
Mr Edwards said: "Mr Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of Sept 11 and Saddam Hussein."
Mr Cheney hit back saying: "The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror."...."

October 6th ~ "Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, was providing his findings today to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

His team has compiled a 1,500-page report. It is unclear how much will be made public..." See Ireland on Line

October 6th ~ Duelfer's report is in stark contrast to what was said before the invasion

18 Mar 2003 Tony Blair told the House of Commons: Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, 6 1/2 months before the invasion: President Bush Oct. 7, 2002

October 5th ~ "AC-130 howitzers struck repeatedly and tanks rolled in... there are probably half a million potential Sadrist fighters in the slum..."

Juan Cole "... It seems to me that the likelihood that the US can defeat the Sadrists in Sadr City with tanks and AC-130s is extremely low, and that they are almost certainly driving more Shiites into Muqtada's arms. Since the "Mahdi Army" is really just poor Shiite young men with guns and rpg's, and since most poor young men have weapons, there are probably half a million potential Sadrist fighters in the slum. The US cannot kill more than a small fraction of them if it isn't going to commit genocide, and the ones it doesn't kill are probably going to remain angry and take up arms themselves...."

Oct 2 2004 ~ " a raging barbaric guerilla war..."

"...In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health--which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers--has now stopped disclosing them. Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day. ."
See extracts from the letter written by Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi
"..."Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler."
And:
"Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come." Editor and Publisher.com ....." Kidnappings: ".... Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathists to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive."
And what of America's "hope for a quick exit"? Fassihi noted that "cops are being murdered by the dozens every day, over 700 to date, and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly....
"Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?.."

Oct 2 2004 ~ The BBC continues to refer to them as insurgents. Juan Cole says ...they appear just to be angry young men from the city would reject the new American-dominated status quo."

Juan Cole's Informed Comment mut be required reading for anyone who, with Matthew Parris today, asks "Is there no limit to the credulity of the British media? "

Oct 2 2004 ~ "You judge a president in part by the people he chooses for the tasks before him "

Juan Cole writes "....Powell then made a coalition with Tony Blair and that the two of them went to Bush and got him to change his mind. I have it from insiders that in April, 2003, Jay Garner let it slip to some of his staff that his charge was to turn Iraq over to Ahmad Chalabi within six months. The staffers were shocked and some contacted the State Department to see if this was known there. It was not. So they blew the whistle on Bush with Colin Powell. I was told that Powell then made a coalition with Tony Blair and that the two of them went to Bush and got him to change his mind.
The plan to put Chalabi in charge of Iraq was frankly idiotic. Chalabi had no grass roots. He was the one who had the bright idea to throw thousands of ex-Baathists into unemployment (which encouraged them to join the guerrilla resistance). It later came out that some of the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon had let it slip to him that the US had broken the Iranian diplomatic codes. Chalabi is chummy with Tehran and let his friends among the Ayatollahs know this tidbit. As a result, the US can no longer closely track the Iranian nuclear program.
This is the man to whom Bush-- and I underline Bush-- was planning originally just to hand Iraq over. An Iranian asset. This was why, as Kerry noted on Thursday night, Bush had done no real planning for the period after the war. He thought he had everything sewn up because Chalabi would handle it.
You judge a president in part by the people he chooses for the tasks before him. ..."

Oct 1 2004 ~ "The situation on the campuses indicates, on a smaller scale, what national elections in Iraq would look like

if they were to be held in the near future. They would be marked by intense violence, assassination of candidates, and the monopolization of the media and public sphere by agents of the government or the insurgency. The vast majority of Iraqis would remain silent out of fear – and probably at home on the polling day. It’s not a very pretty picture..." From Rebuilding Iraq’s Academic Community: Civil Society in a Time of Civil War by Keith Watenpaugh and quoted on Juan Cole's website