Over at Tom Dispatch, Tom Engelhardt runs through 12 Answers To Questions No One Is Bothering To Ask About Iraq…

“1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military’s worst Iraq nightmare:

Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a single overriding nightmare — not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into “Fortress Baghdad,” as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would find themselves fighting block by block, especially in the warren of streets that make up the Iraqi capital’s poorest districts.

When American forces actually entered Baghdad in early April 2003, however, even Saddam’s vaunted Republican Guard units had put away their weapons and gone home. It took five years but, as of now, American troops are indeed fighting in the warren of streets in Sadr City, the Shiite slum of two and a half million in eastern Baghdad largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. The U.S. military, in fact, recently experienced its worst week of 2008 in terms of casualties, mainly in and around Baghdad. So, mission accomplished — the worst fear of 2003 has now been realized.

2. No, there was never an exit strategy from Iraq because the Bush administration never intended to leave — and still doesn’t:

Critics of the war have regularly gone after the Bush administration for its lack of planning, including its lack of an “exit strategy.” In this, they miss the point. The Bush administration arrived in Iraq with four mega-bases on the drawing boards. These were meant to undergird a future American garrisoning of that country and were to house at least 30,000 American troops, as well as U.S. air power, for the indefinite future. The term used for such places wasn’t “permanent base,” but the more charming and euphemistic “enduring camp.” (In fact, as we learned recently, the Bush administration refuses to define any American base on foreign soil anywhere on the planet, including ones in Japan for over 60 years, as permanent.) Those four monster bases in Iraq (and many others) were soon being built at the cost of multibillions and are, even today, being significantly upgraded. In October 2007, for instance, National Public Radio’s defense correspondent Guy Raz visited Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, which houses about 40,000 American troops, contractors, and Defense Department civilian employees, and described it as “one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades.”

These mega-bases, like “Camp Cupcake” (al-Asad Air Base), nicknamed for its amenities, are small town-sized with massive facilities, including PXs, fast-food outlets, and the latest in communications. They have largely been ignored by the American media and so have played no part in the debate about Iraq in this country, but they are the most striking on-the-ground evidence of the plans of an administration that simply never expected to leave. To this day, despite the endless talk about drawdowns and withdrawals, that hasn’t changed. In fact, the latest news about secret negotiations for a future Status of Forces Agreement on the American presence in that country indicates that U.S. officials are calling for “an open-ended military presence” and “no limits on numbers of U.S. forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term U.S. security agreements with other countries.”

3. Yes, the United States is still occupying Iraq (just not particularly effectively):

In June 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), then ruling the country, officially turned over “sovereignty” to an Iraqi government largely housed in the American-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad and the occupation officially ended. However, the day before the head of the CPA, L. Paul Bremer III, slipped out of the country without fanfare, he signed, among other degrees, Order 17, which became (and, remarkably enough, remains) the law of the land. It is still a document worth reading as it essentially granted to all occupying forces and allied private companies what, in the era of colonialism, used to be called “extraterritoriality” — the freedom not to be in any way subject to Iraqi law or jurisdiction, ever. And so the occupation ended without ever actually ending. With 160,000 troops still in Iraq, not to speak of an unknown number of hired guns and private security contractors, the U.S. continues to occupy the country, whatever the legalities might be (including a UN mandate and the claim that we are part of a “coalition”). The only catch is this: As of now, the U.S. is simply the most technologically sophisticated and potentially destructive of Iraq’s proliferating militias — and outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, it is capable of controlling only the ground that its troops actually occupy at any moment.

4. Yes, the war was about oil:

Oil was hardly mentioned in the mainstream media or by the administration before the invasion was launched. The President, when he spoke of Iraq’s vast petroleum reserves at all, piously referred to them as the sacred “patrimony of the people of Iraq.” But an administration of former energy execs — with a National Security Advisor who once sat on the board of Chevron and had a double-hulled oil tanker, the Condoleezza Rice, named after her (until she took office), and a Vice President who was especially aware of the globe’s potentially limited energy supplies — certainly had oil reserves and energy flows on the brain. They knew, in Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz’s apt phrase, that Iraq was afloat on “a sea of oil” and that it sat strategically in the midst of the oil heartlands of the planet.

It wasn’t a mistake that, in 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney’s semi-secret Energy Task Force set itself the “task” of opening up the energy sectors of various Middle Eastern countries to “foreign investment”; or that it scrutinized “a detailed map of Iraq’s oil fields, together with the (non-American) oil companies scheduled to develop them”; or that, according to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, the National Security Council directed its staff “to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the ‘melding’ of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: ‘the review of operational policies towards rogue states,’ such as Iraq, and ‘actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields’”; or that the only American troops ordered to guard buildings in Iraq, after Baghdad fell, were sent to the Oil Ministry (and the Interior Ministry, which housed Saddam Hussein’s dreaded secret police); or that the first “reconstruction” contract was issued to Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, for “emergency repairs” to those patrimonial oil fields. Once in charge in Baghdad, as sociologist Michael Schwartz has made clear, the administration immediately began guiding recalcitrant Iraqis toward denationalizing and opening up their oil industry, as well as bringing in the big boys.

Though rampant insecurity has kept the Western oil giants on the sidelines, the American-shaped “Iraqi” oil law quickly became a “benchmark” of “progress” in Washington and remains a constant source of prodding and advice from American officials in Baghdad. Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan put the oil matter simply and straightforwardly in his memoir in 2007: “I am saddened,” he wrote, “that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” In other words, in a variation on the old Bill Clinton campaign mantra: It’s the oil, stupid. Greenspan was, unsurprisingly, roundly assaulted for the obvious naiveté of his statement, from which, when it proved inconvenient, he quickly retreated. But if this administration hadn’t had oil on the brain in 2002-2003, given the importance of Iraq’s reserves, Congress should have impeached the President and Vice President for that.

5. No, our new embassy in Baghdad is not an “embassy”:

When, for more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, you construct a complex — regularly described as “Vatican-sized” — of at least 20 “blast-resistant” buildings on 104 acres of prime Baghdadi real estate, with “fortified working space” and a staff of at least 1,000 (plus several thousand guards, cooks, and general factotums), when you deeply embunker it, equip it with its own electricity and water systems, its own anti-missile defense system, its own PX, and its own indoor and outdoor basketball courts, volleyball court, and indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, among other things, you haven’t built an “embassy” at all. What you’ve constructed in the heart of the heart of another country is more than a citadel, even if it falls short of a city-state. It is, at a minimum, a monument to Bush administration dreams of domination in Iraq and in what its adherents once liked to call “the Greater Middle East.”

Just about ready to open, after the normal construction mishaps in Iraq, it will constitute the living definition of diplomatic overkill. It will, according to a Senate estimate, now cost Americans $1.2 billion a year just to be “represented” in Iraq. The “embassy” is, in fact, the largest headquarters on the planet for the running of an occupation. Functionally, it is also another well-fortified enduring camp with the amenities of home. Tell that to the Shiite militiamen now mortaring the Green Zone as if it were… enemy-occupied territory.

6. No, the Iraqi government is not a government:

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has next to no presence in Iraq beyond the Green Zone; it delivers next to no services; it has next to no ability to spend its own oil money, reconstruct the country, or do much of anything else, and it most certainly does not hold a monopoly on the instruments of violence. It has no control over the provinces of northern Iraq which operate as a near-independent Kurdish state. Non-Kurdish Iraqi troops are not even allowed on its territory. Maliki’s government cannot control the largely Sunni provinces of the country, where its officials are regularly termed “the Iranians” (a reference to the heavily Shiite government’s closeness to neighboring Iran) and are considered the equivalent of representatives of a foreign occupying power; and it does not control the Shiite south, where power is fragmented among the militias of ISCI (the Badr Organization), Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the armed adherents of the Fadila Party, a Sadrist offshoot, among others.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has been derisively nicknamed “the mayor of Kabul” for his government’s lack of control over much territory outside the national capital. It would be a step forward for Maliki if he were nicknamed “the mayor of Baghdad.” Right now, his troops, heavily backed by American forces, are fighting for some modest control over Shiite cities (or parts of cities) from Basra to Baghdad.

7. No, the surge is not over:

Two weeks ago, amid much hoopla, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker spent two days before Congress discussing the President’s surge strategy in Iraq and whether it has been a “success.” But that surge — the ground one in which an extra 30,000-plus American troops were siphoned into Baghdad and, to a lesser extent, adjoining provinces — was by then already so over. In fact, all but about 10,000 of those troops will be home by the end of July, not because the President has had any urge for a drawdown, but, as Fred Kaplan of Slate wrote recently, “because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the 15 months will be up in July… and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them.”

On the other hand, in all those days of yak, neither the general with so much more “martial bling” on his chest than any victorious World War II commander, nor the white-haired ambassador uttered a word about the surge that is ongoing — the air surge that began in mid-2007 and has yet to end. Explain it as you will, but, with rare exceptions, American reporters in Iraq generally don’t look up or more of them would have noticed that the extra air units surged into that country and the region in the last year are now being brought to bear over Iraq’s cities. Today, as fighting goes on in Sadr City, American helicopters and Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones reportedly circle overhead almost constantly and air strikes of various kinds on city neighborhoods are on the rise. Yet the air surge in Iraq remains unacknowledged here and so is not a subject for discussion, debate, or consideration when it comes to our future in Iraq.

8. No, the Iraqi army will never “stand up”:

It can’t. It’s not a national army. It’s not that Iraqis can’t fight — or fight bravely. Ask the Sunni insurgents. Ask the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. It’s not that Iraqis are incapable of functioning in a national army. In the bitter Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, Iraqi Shiite as well as Sunni conscripts, led by a largely Sunni officer corps, fought Iranian troops fiercely in battle after pitched battle. But from Fallujah in 2004 to today, Iraqi army (and police) units, wheeled into battle (often at the behest of the Americans), have regularly broken and run, or abandoned their posts, or gone over to the other side, or, at the very least, fought poorly. In the recent offensive launched by the Maliki government in Basra, military and police units up against a single resistant militia, the Mahdi Army, deserted in sizeable numbers, while other units, when not backed by the Americans, gave poor showings. At least 1,300 troops and police (including 37 senior police officers) were recently “fired” by Maliki for dereliction of duty, while two top commanders were removed as well.

Though American training began in 2004 and, by 2005, the President was regularly talking about us “standing down” as soon as the Iraqi Army “stood up,” as Charles Hanley of the Associated Press points out, “Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, free-standing Iraqi army has seemed to always slip further into the future.” He adds, “In the latest shift, the Pentagon’s new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when local units will take over security responsibility for Iraq. Last year’s reports had forecast a transition in 2008.” According to Hanley, the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now estimates that the military will not be able to guard the country’s borders effectively until 2018.

No wonder. The “Iraqi military” is not in any real sense a national military at all. Its troops generally lack heavy weaponry, and it has neither a real air force nor a real navy. Its command structures are integrated into the command structure of the U.S. military, while the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy are the real Iraqi air force and navy. It is reliant on the U.S. military for much of its logistics and resupply, even after an investment of $22 billion by the American taxpayer. It represents a non-government, is riddled with recruits from Shiite militias (especially the Badr brigades), and is riven about who its enemy is (or enemies are) and why. It cannot be a “national” army because it has, in essence, nothing to stand up for.

You can count on one thing, as long as we are “training” and “advising” the Iraqi military, however many years down the line, you will read comments like this one from an American platoon sergeant, after an Iraqi front-line unit abandoned its positions in the ongoing battle for control of parts of Sadr City: “It bugs the hell out of me. We don’t see any progress being made at all. We hear these guys in firefights. We know if we are not up there helping these guys out we are making very little progress.”

9. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and fragmentation:

The U.S. invasion and the Bush administration’s initial occupation policies decisively smashed Iraq’s fragile “national” sense of self. Since then, the Bush administration, a motor for chaos and fragmentation, has destroyed the national (if dictatorial) government, allowed the capital and much of the country (as well as its true patrimony of ancient historical objects and sites) to be looted, disbanded the Iraqi military, and deconstructed the national economy. Ever since, whatever the administration rhetoric, the U.S. has only presided over the further fragmentation of the country. Its military, in fact, employs a specific policy of urban fragmentation in which it regularly builds enormous concrete walls around neighborhoods, supposedly for “security” and “reconstruction,” that actually cut them off from their social and economic surroundings. And, of course, Iraq has in these years been fragmented in other staggering ways with an estimated four-plus million Iraqis driven into exile abroad or turned into internal refugees.

According to Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times, there are now at least 28 different militias in the country. The longer the U.S. remains even somewhat in control, the greater the possibility of further fragmentation. Initially, the fragmentation was sectarian — into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia regions, but each of those regions has its own potentially hostile parts and so its points of future conflict and further fragmentation. If the U.S. military spent the early years of its occupation fighting a Sunni insurgency in the name of a largely Shiite (and Kurdish) government, it is now fighting a Shiite militia, while paying and arming former Sunni insurgents, relabeled “Sons of Iraq.” Iran is also clearly sending arms into a country that is, in any case, awash in weaponry. Without a real national government, Iraq has descended into a welter of militia-controlled neighborhoods, city states, and provincial or regional semi-governments. Despite all the talk of American-supported “reconciliation,” Juan Cole described the present situation well at his Informed Comment blog: “Maybe the US in Iraq is not the little boy with his finger in the dike. Maybe we are workers with jackhammers instructed to make the hole in the dike much more huge.”

10. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and civil war:

As with fragmentation, the U.S. military’s presence has, in fact, been a motor for civil war in that country. The invasion and subsequent chaos, as well as punitive acts against the Sunni minority, allowed Sunni extremists, some of whom took the name “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” to establish themselves as a force in the country for the first time. Later, U.S. military operations in both Sunni and Shiite areas regularly repressed local militias — almost the only forces capable of bringing some semblance of security to urban neighborhoods — opening the way for the most extreme members of the other community (Sunni suicide or car bombers and Shiite death squads) to attack. It’s worth remembering that it was in the surge months of 2007, when all those extra American troops hit Baghdad neighborhoods, that many of the city’s mixed or Sunni neighborhoods were most definitively “cleansed” by death squads, producing a 75-80% Shiite capital. Iraq is now embroiled in what Juan Cole has termed “three civil wars,” two of which (in the south and the north) are largely beyond the reach of limited American ground forces and all of which could become far worse. The still low-level struggle between Kurds and Arabs (with the Turks hovering nearby) for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the north may be the true explosion point to come. The U.S. military sits precariously atop this mess, at best putting off to the future aspects of the present civil-war landscape, but more likely intensifying it.

11. No, al-Qaeda will not control Iraq if we leave (and neither will Iran):

The latest figures tell the story. Of 658 suicide bombings globally in 2007 (more than double those of any year in the last quarter century), 542, according to the Washington Post’s Robin Wright, took place in occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly Iraq. In other words, the American occupation of that land has been a motor for acts of terrorism (as occupations will be). There was no al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia before the invasion and Iraq was no Afghanistan. The occupation under whatever name will continue to create “terrorists,” no matter how many times the administration claims that “al-Qaeda” is on the run. With the departure of U.S. troops, it’s clear that homegrown Sunni extremists (and the small number of foreign jihadis who work with them), already a minority of a minority, will more than meet their match in facing the Sunni mainstream. The Sunni Awakening Movement came into existence, in part, to deal with such self-destructive extremism (and its fantasies of a Taliban-style society) before the Americans even noticed that it was happening. When the Americans leave, “al-Qaeda” (and whatever other groups the Bush administration subsumes under that catch-all title) will undoubtedly lose much of their raison d’être or simply be crushed.

As for Iran, the moment the Bush administration finally agreed to a popular democratic vote in occupied Iraq, it ensured one thing — that the Shiite majority would take control, which in practice meant religio-political parties that, throughout the Saddam Hussein years, had generally been close to, or in exile in, Iran. Everything the Bush administration has done since has only ensured the growth of Iranian influence among Shiite groups. This is surely meant by the Iranians as, in part, a threat/trump card, should the Bush administration launch an attack on that country. After all, crucial U.S. resupply lines from Kuwait run through areas near Iran and would assumedly be relatively easy to disrupt.

Without the U.S. military in Iraq, there can be no question that the Iranians would have real influence over the Shiite (and probably Kurdish) parts of the country. But that influence would have its distinct limits. If Iran overplayed its hand even in a rump Shiite Iraq, it would soon enough find itself facing some version of the situation that now confronts the Americans. As Robert Dreyfuss wrote in the Nation recently, “[D]espite Iran’s enormous influence in Iraq, most Iraqis — even most Iraqi Shiites — are not pro-Iran. On the contrary, underneath the ruling alliance in Baghdad, there is a fierce undercurrent of Arab nationalism in Iraq that opposes both the U.S. occupation and Iran’s support for religious parties in Iraq.” The al-Qaedan and Iranian “threats” are, at one and the same time, bogeymen used by the Bush administration to scare Americans who might favor withdrawal and, paradoxically, realities that a continued military presence only encourages.

12. Yes, some Americans were right about Iraq from the beginning (and not the pundits either):

One of the strangest aspects of the recent fifth anniversary (as of every other anniversary) of the invasion of Iraq was the newspaper print space reserved for those Bush administration officials and other war supporters who were dead wrong in 2002-2003 on an endless host of Iraq-related topics. Many of them were given ample opportunity to offer their views on past failures, the “success” of the surge, future withdrawals or drawdowns, and the responsibilities of a future U.S. president in Iraq.

Noticeably missing were representatives of the group of Americans who happened to have been right from the get-go. In our country, of course, it often doesn’t pay to be right. (It’s seen as a sign of weakness or plain dumb luck.) I’m speaking, in this case, of the millions of people who poured into the streets to demonstrate against the coming invasion with an efflorescence of placards that said things too simpleminded (as endless pundits assured American news readers at the time) to take seriously — like “No Blood for Oil,” “Don’t Trade Lives for Oil,” or “”How did USA’s oil get under Iraq’s sand?” At the time, it seemed clear to most reporters, commentators, and op-ed writers that these sign-carriers represented a crew of well-meaning know-nothings and the fact that their collective fears proved all too prescient still can’t save them from that conclusion. So, in their very rightness, they were largely forgotten.

Now, as has been true for some time, a majority of Americans, another obvious bunch of know-nothings, are deluded enough to favor bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq at a reasonable pace and relatively soon. (More than 60% of them also believe “that the conflict is not integral to the success of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.”) If, on the other hand, a poll were taken of pundits and the inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia (not to speak of the officials of the Bush administration), the number of them who would want a total withdrawal from Iraq (or even see that as a reasonable goal) would undoubtedly descend near the vanishing point. When it comes to American imperial interests, most of them know better, just as so many of them did before the war began. Even advisors to candidates who theoretically want out of Iraq are hinting that a full-scale withdrawal is hardly the proper way to go.

So let me ask you a question (and you answer it): Given all of the above, given the record thus far, who is likely to be right?”

As Candace Talmadge recently pointed out, why didn’t the Congressional testimony of General William Odom (Ret.) receive the same sort of coverage as that given by Petraeus and Crocker a week later? If you read what Odom had to say, it becomes abundantly clear…

“The decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves,” Odom explained. “Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.

“This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications.”

Persuading the Sunnis not to shoot at U.S. troops comes at a high financial toll. “ . . . Our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty,” Odom pointed out. “I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost of in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased.”

Odom, who is retired, has no reason to play the game, and can therefore tell it like it is rather than spending his time placating the administration.

He went on to say…

“The Sunnis will soon destroy Al Qaeda if we leave Iraq,” Odom said. “The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest Al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the Al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on Internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.

“As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of Congress are aligned with Al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.”

For even daring to convey that last assertion, Odom should, at the very least, be awarded the Medal of Freedom.

The Bush administration is running out of time. Since President Bush singled out Iran as a member of his auspicious Axis Of Evil, the gears have been turning with regards to how best to confront the Iranians. Obviously, condemnation of Iran’s nuclear program was never going to provide substantial pretext given the precedent set during run up to the invasion of Iraq and the wholly erroneous information provided the Security Council, and others, pertaining to Iraq’s quest for nuclear materials, among other things. The best that the administration could hope for to do with that avenue is its use as an exploitative psychological mechanism with regards to American domestic perceptions.

Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US, besides perceptions to the contrary, has been baiting the Iranians at every conceivable turn. For example, they parked a carrier group just off the Iranian coast (just far enough out to remain in international waters) and then proceeded to conduct exercises, flying sorties obviously geared towards the possibility of striking Iranian targets. The Pentagon categorized the exercises as being a necessary step in containing Iranian powers.

Given that the clock is running out on the Bush administration, and one of the Democratic Presidential frontrunners has claimed that he would attempt to begin a dialogue with Tehran, the need to find a way in which to confront the Iranians openly has been accelerated, and recent events in southern Iraq have provided the pretext that the administration has been seeking.

Ryan Crocker has openly claimed that Iran is engaged in a full-fledged proxy war against the United States in Iraq. Given that, and recent events in southern Iraq, the Bush administration has been provided the pretext that is has been seeking to accelerate plans to target Iranian facilities near the Iraqi border and perhaps beyond. As to when such operations might begin is anyone’s guess.

Stepping back for a moment, it should be said that, given Iran’s position in the region, it is by no means a stretch to think that they have engaged in supporting Shi’ite militias and possess influence within the ranks of the Iraqi Interior Ministry. It should also not be overlooked that, despite the views of many ordinary Iranians, the government of Iran remains co-opted by a hard line element that has only been emboldened by the occupation. In fact, when one views the similarities between Tehran and Washington they are eerily similar in many ways. The occupation of Iraq is viewed by both as an opportunity to strengthen regional influence, both have used highly conservative bases that include zealous religious support to maintain their positions, though it should certainly be said that the Iranian government is structured to ensure that reality on a permanent basis while the overt exploitation of the religious right in the United States was a political phenomenon that was, in truth, a component of a premeditated political strategy.

In the end, what this all boils down to is - is the United States is willing to take that first step into the unknown. The US Military is utterly overextended, meaning that operations against targets inside Iran will most assuredly be undertaken by air forces and off shore missile strikes. That, of course, will lead to the Iranians countering such incursions with force, employing surface to air missiles and other counter measures, such as retaliatory strikes on US vessels in the Gulf from which missile attacks emanate, or locations in Afghanistan used for the same purpose. And that, no matter how you want to look at it, is war.

Were such a scenario to unfold, the United States would find itself militarily engaged from Afghanistan to Iraq. One would like to think that the Pentagon, and the President’s advisors, aren’t that stupid. Unfortunately, their track record to this point doesn’t leave one with any real sense optimism. Given the overly aggressive tenets of the current foreign policy doctrine of the United States, it cannot be discounted that those who support it want to squeeze every last ounce of opportunity from it prior to the exit of the current administration. And that is a scary prospect indeed.

As expected, the testimony of both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker today was predictable.

First, Petraeus recommended that planned US troop withdrawals in July be postponed to ensure that ‘gains’ made are not jeopardized. He also claimed that security in Iraq is currently better than it was when he last testified before Congress in September of 2007. Unfortunately, when one looks at the numbers, that simply isn’t the case. Attacks against US forces and Iraqi security forces this month are higher than they were in February of 2007, and significantly higher than they were in September of last year when Petraeus first appeared before congress. Iraqi civilian deaths increased in March by 43% compared to February. Ironically, such data may very well be used to support Petraeus’ position that troop withdrawals be suspended.

That said; and of considerably more import, as Gareth Porter rightfully points out today…

“A key objective of the congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus this week will be to defend the George W. Bush administration’s strategic political line that it is fighting an Iranian “proxy war” in Iraq.

Based on preliminary indications of his spin on the surprisingly effective armed resistance to the joint U.S.-Iraqi Operation Knights Assault in Basra, Petraeus will testify that it was caused by Iran through a group of rogue militiamen who had split off from Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and came under Iranian control.

But the U.S. military’s contention that “rogue elements” have been carrying out the resistance to coalition forces was refuted by Sadr himself in an interview with al-Jazeera aired March 29 in which he called for the release from U.S. detention of the individual previously identified by Petraeus as the head of the alleged breakaway faction.

The idea of Iranian-backed “rogue” Shi’ite militia groups undermining Sadr’s efforts to pursue a more moderate course was introduced by the U.S. military command in early 2007. These alleged Iranian proxies were called “Special Groups” – a term that came not from Iran or the Shi’ites themselves but from the Bush administration.

In April, after U.S. forces captured a former spokesman for Sadr, Qais al-Khazali, Petraeus himself announced that they had detained “the head of the secret cell network, the extremist secret cells,” he said. Petraeus referred to it as “the Khazali network.”

U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner asserted in early July that Khazali’s network was a “Special Group,” which was financed, armed, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and in some instances was even “directed” by it. He said Iran was using a Hezbollah operative to organize such groups to do its bidding in Iran.

The identification of Khazali as head of a “rogue” faction was highly suspect, however. One of Sadr’s most trusted aides, Khazali had played a key role in recruitment for the Mahdi Army in its formative stage in 2003. He had gone underground in late 2004, just after heavy fighting in which the Mahdi Army had suffered heavy casualties and just as Sadr was entering into a long period of retreat from military operations.

In a March 30, 2007, press briefing, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero of the U.S. Joint Staff said both Khazali and his brother were linked with the “Sadr organization.”

A pro-war military blogger named Bill Roggio, who maintains close relations with the U.S. command in Baghdad, revealed in February 2007 that the real purpose of the line about Iranian-controlled “Special Groups” was to facilitate Petraeus’ strategy of dividing the Mahdi Army. “The ‘rogue element’ narrative provides Mahdi Army fighters and commanders an ‘out,’” wrote Roggio. A Mahdi Army unit commander could either “choose to oppose the government and be targeted,” he observed, “or step aside and join the political process.”

Not surprisingly, that was exactly the position taken by both Crocker and Petraeus today…

“Iran came in for condemnation in both testimonies.

Gen Petraeus accused it of funding and training Shia militias through cells the US terms “special groups”.

On top of all of this is an article that has surfaced in today’s Guardian…

“A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked “secret” and “sensitive”, is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit.

The authorisation is described as “temporary” and the agreement says the US “does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq”. But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces - including the British - in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

Iraqi critics point out that the agreement contains no limits on numbers of US forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term US security agreements with other countries. The agreement is intended to govern the status of the US military and other members of the multinational force.

Following recent clashes between Iraqi troops and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Basra, and threats by the Iraqi government to ban his supporters from regional elections in the autumn, anti-occupation Sadrists and Sunni parties are expected to mount strong opposition in parliament to the agreement, which the US wants to see finalised by the end of July. The UN mandate expires at the end of the year.

One well-placed Iraqi Sunni political source said yesterday: “The feeling in Baghdad is that this agreement is going to be rejected in its current form, particularly after the events of the last couple of weeks. The government is more or less happy with it as it is, but parliament is a different matter.”

Yesterday, the Iranian government conceded the fact that it played a role in mediating the ceasefire between Iraqi forces and Shi’ite militias, that has, given events yesterday, seemingly crumbled. Despite this, US General David Patraeus is expected to include in his upcoming testimony before Congress that Iranian forces were directly involved in the recent unrest in Basra, operating at a tactical command level. The presentation of such information will, without question, be used to argue that US troop levels in Iraq remain at current strength, the concern being that if numbers are reduced the Iranians will be able to exploit the situation and increase their collusion with those in Iraq with which their interests are aligned.

I’ll not argue that US intelligence could be accurate with regards to Iranian involvement. Then again, given the position that the United States has taken with regards to Iran, it also could be a case of convenience, and therein lays the danger. Using this situation to make inroads that might suggest openly confronting the Iranians should not be discounted given the precedents set by the current administration. There is also no questioning the fact that Patraeus has become a highly politicized military commander, one whose objectivity and impartiality must be questioned given his initial testimony to Congress in September of last year. At the time, the Surge was hailed as a resounding success, but one that was little more than a mirage – and that fact has become resoundingly clear over the last few months. Violence in Iraq did indeed decrease for a time; building walls to physically separate communities within the same city will do that for a time. But such measures do not, by any means, provide lasting results, as has been proven. Therefore, some justification is required to maintain current troop levels, and the use of Iranian involvement in Iraq, be it particularly accurate or not, provides pretext.

Given the fact that the majority of Iraq’s population is Shi’ite, and that Iran is a predominantly Shi’ite nation, it only stands to reason that, given its own interests in the region, Iran is not in the position to simply sit on the sidelines and watch a foreign power – one that has labeled it one of the world’s foremost dangers - attempt to ensure the instillation of a lasting pro-Western government through a prolonged military occupation. The truth of the matter is; the United States has a long and sordid history of backing Latin American strongmen and paramilitary groups to ensure that its influence in the region is maintained – which is no different than Iranian collusion with Shi’ite militias in Iraq. With regards to US – Latin American policy history, a tradition of supporting wholly corrupted and undemocratic governments is the norm. Therefore, the argument that Iranian influence in Iraq is undermining the growth of a US supplanted democracy becomes moot. Because the reality is that, in the end, it isn’t about freedom, only the presence of a government that is aligned with the foreign policy objectives of a foreign power. In that sense, both the United States and the Iranians are equally suspect.

In a speech yesterday in the UAE, President Bush called Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Now, to some, that might not sound unseemly, but it shouldn’t be overlooked that Iran is the UAE’s number one trading partner, which Bush completely failed to mention in the speech. Nor did he mention that the UAE is one of the most important conduits for Iranian imports despite US Sanctions, the fact that a significant Iranian ex-pats community that plays a central role in commerce in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, that human rights violations are commonplace in the UAE, or the fact that power is commonly inherited and that democratic development is, at best, a façade.

Instead, he praised the rulers of the UAE for luring foreign investment.

Dancing around such issues is not uncommon. Obviously the remarks regarding Iran were made for the sake of the Iranians and the American public, not necessarily those in attendance, some of whom took offense given their connections with Iran. Bush’s remarks regarding “free and just societies” were also not well received given that those he was addressing have absolutely nothing to gain by the implementation of serious democratic reforms.

With regards to the overtones of Mr. Bush’s speech, it should also not be overlooked that the UAE was one of only three nations to acknowledge the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan when it was in power, the very same group that the United States has accused the Iranians of militarily assisting. Of course, when the Taliban was in power, Tehran did not recognize it as the nation’s official government.

Beyond all of this, and the fact that there is always the issue of arms agreements lurking in the shadows during such visits passed off as joint security initiatives, there are also the contradictions that the United States is currently in negotiations with the Iranians with regards to Iraq, and that while the President is promoting “free and just societies” in the region, the United States is militarily occupying two of them.

Probably the most hypocritical, not to mention historically astonishing, statement made during the speech was…

“For decades, the people of this region saw their desire for liberty and justice denied at home and dismissed abroad in the name of stability. Today, your aspirations are threatened by violent extremists who murder the innocent in pursuit of power. They hate your government because it does not share their dark vision. They hate the United States because they know we stand with you in opposition to their brutal ambitions.”

Of course, the United States was, and still is, one of the leading nations with regards to supporting autocratic regimes in the region, something that people in the region have certainly not forgotten, even if people on this side of the world have. While the President talks freely of liberty and justice in the Middle East, the United States remains as committed as ever to their relationships with the ruling factions of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE. It recently penned an agreement promising $20 billion dollars worth of military aid over the next decade that all of them will benefit from, and yet the President, who has full knowledge of that fact still has the audacity to talk about “free and just societies”. Let’s also not overlook the fact that, by entering into such an agreement the United States had to counteract it by offering the Israelis $30 billion dollars in aid over the same period of time.

The goal of the President’s speech was to target the Iranians, and in doing so speak more so to his domestic audience than anyone else. Unlike those in the region in which he gave the address, domestic perceptions regarding the ‘threat’ that Iran posses are primarily formed based on the constant stream of alarming information provided by the administration and others in the government. The same cannot be said for your average person on the street in the UAE.

This leads us to the inevitable question – is Iran truly the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism?

Examining who has been behind most of the international attacks since the mid 1990’s, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Iran has no affiliation with al-Qaeda or groups linked to it. It does not, unlike elements within Saudi Arabia, Libya, the UAE, and Syria, support the efforts of Jihadists in Iraq, it’s primary link being with militant Shi’ite groups, some of which have substantial influence within Iraq’s Interior Ministry itself – which means the armed forces and police. Thus, if anything, it is guilty of supporting factions within Iraq’s most predominant group, the very same group that did not play a significant role in the rise of the Sunni based insurgency, and one that has, since sectarian tensions came to a head, conducted violent campaigns against Sunnis, which constitute the majority of the insurgency and Jihadist groups whose ranks are replete with foreign fighters.

If anything, Iranian interference in Iraq has been solely based on aiding radical aspects of the Shi’ite population who have had links with Tehran since before the US invasion of the country.

Looking abroad, there is no arguing the fact that Iran supports Hezbullah and other such groups. In truth, though still indefensible, their support of such groups has been largely aimed at helping them in their struggles against other regional powers, many of whom are backed by foreign powers, in an attempt to consolidate power and expand their influence, something that, like it or not, the United States helped write the handbook on.

Also rather telling is this passage…

“They hate the United States because they know we stand with you in opposition to their brutal ambitions.”

Like the people of Chile stood with the United States against the ‘brutal ambitions’ of Salvador Allende, their fears erased when the CIA helped engineer the coup that put Pinochet in power who then went about ‘disappearing’ tens of thousand of Chileans?

Next to the covert global foreign policy undertakings of the United States, Iran is a snow white virgin by comparison. And don’t think that the United States hasn’t endeavored to sponsor terrorists either. In 2005, Luis Posada was held in Texas on the charge of Illegal Presence. The charges were later dropped. While the US Justice Department requested that the court keep Posada in jail because he was, of his own admission, the mastermind behind numerous terrorist attacks, Posada was neither charged with crimes relating to those admissions, nor was a Venezuelan extradition request approved because the a US Immigration judge ruled that were he to be extradited he would face torture.

In 1976, Luis Posada, a long-time asset of the CIA with links to the Cuban American National Foundation, a CIA shill, masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner, killing 76 innocent people. He was also involved in the 1997 bombing of numerous Cuban hotels and nigh clubs. While being found guilty in absentia for numerous terrorist attacks and unrealized plots. Ironically, unlike those being held at Guantanamo, Posada was granted his rights under the Constitution with regards to his seizure and the legal proceedings that followed.

The truth is, the United States has another word for ‘terrorist’ when they are the ones producing them. They tend to call them ‘assets’ or ‘paramilitaries’, many of which were trained at the notorious School Of The Americas [1], whose graduates include Manuel Noriega, Cid Diaz, and others used in violent operations by proxy regimes in Latin America.

So is Iran the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism? Have they perhaps been gifted that title because they are a powerful player in a region in which the United States currently finds itself militarily and politically treading water? Is the President’s rhetoric an attempt to whitewash the recent findings of the recent National Intelligence Estimate? Is Iran a nation stupid enough to engage in a clandestine nuclear weapons program with the whole world watching and then provide a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization? Would they be stupid enough to do it were they not being scrutinized? What are the actual logistics involved in employing a nuclear device capable of causing serious damage? Can such a device be contained within a backpack? And if that is a possibility, and something of that nature did occur, is the Iranian government stupid enough to believe that an immediate retaliation of vastly greater proportions wouldn’t be rained down upon them in the event that it happened? And if they aren’t that stupid, would they seriously consider gifting such a device to a terrorist group? Would members of the Revolutionary Guard do it, knowing full well that by doing it they would be forfeiting their lives and the lives of perhaps millions of others, their families included?

I have written about this in the past, so won’t bother retracing my steps, but consider this. The United States has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Its destructive power is so great that even a portion of it could render this planet completely uninhabitable. They have the ability to launch weapons from domestic and foreign silos, from aircraft, and from naval vessels. In fact, a single Ohio Class nuclear submarine could devastate the Iranian population and launch its compliment from the Gulf providing little to no warning whatsoever. In truth, they could park themselves 20 miles off the Iranian coast and launch submerged and no one would know a thing until it was all over.

This world might be home to moronic fanatics that don’t care about their own lives because of religious zealotry, but they have to get their guns and ammo from somewhere. Those that provide them their wares usually aren’t the sort that are stupid enough to completely overlook what would befall them were they to hand over a nuclear device.

Now, we can claim that by employing preemptive military force we can assure something of that nature won’t occur. Then again, we’re not prepared to deal with Pakistan, which has an arsenal of its own, and whose military establishment has longstanding ties with known militant organizations. Unlike Iran, it’s a nation in chaos, one in which terrorist attacks have been on the rise, and one in which elements of the Taliban, and groups sympathetic to their plight, operate largely unhindered. And while there has been a great deal of talk regarding the uncertainty that the unrest in Pakistan has produced, it is not seen as the sort of threat that Iran is.

Demonizing Iran is, in truth, wholly to the benefit of the United States. It remains the most powerful nation in the region opposed to the US occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. By supplanting a friendly regime in Tehran, the United States would, in essence, created a unified operational area stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. And that reality is something that, in all of this, has remained largely overlooked.

In an article in today’s London Times, Tim Ried begins…

“President Bush imposed the harshest sanctions on Iran for a generation and branded its military a supporter of terrorism yesterday, fuelling claims that he is preparing possible air strikes against Tehran.”

I have to be honest; I’m somewhat confused. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush clearly included Iran in his “Axis of Evil”. Thus, the fact that the United States has taken this step doesn’t really come as a surprise to me, especially given the fact that they’ve been politically and covertly maneuvering against the Iranians for some time now. There’s no question that Washington is looking for a confrontation. The only thing that remains to be seen is if the President will act before he leaves office and if his administration can employ the same tactics that it did with regards to Iraq to sway the House into supporting him. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has made her views on Iran very clear, and they are by no means tame either. Thus, most of the Democratic majority, who are centrists by every definition of the word, may very well support a White House led initiative regarding air strikes. Given that the United States has already begun the process of instituting forward operating bases along the Iranian border speaks to the administration’s motives.

In no small way, the administration’s focus on Iran has developed to detract from the disaster in Iraq. It serves as an adjunct that provides the administration leeway with regards to the lack of real political and military successes in Iraq. By claiming that Iranian influence in Iraq to be of significant import places the onus on the Iranians, who were demonized even when a relative moderate was in power. Since Ahmadinejad’s seizure of the Presidency, matters have only deteriorated, though it shouldn’t be overlooked that his ‘victory’ in the 2005 Iranian ‘elections’ was a direct response to what was occurring on Iran’s borders, both situations being the result of a very reckless American foreign policy doctrine.

Secretary of State Rice claimed in testimony before Congress on Wednesday that Iran is…

“perhaps the greatest challenge for American security interests in the Middle East, and possibly around the world.”

We’ve heard those words before. They were used in 2002 and 2003 regarding the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Interestingly, little mention is ever made of Saudi influencing in Iraq, of its support of Sunni insurgent factions, or the fact that a very considerable portion of foreign fighters come from Saudi Arabia, helping bolster the numbers of Iraq’s Salafi Jihadi groups – better known to Westerners as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

There is also the Russian’s to factor into matters, who have remained one of the members of the Security Council, along with China, to continue to deal with Tehran rather openly. Of course, there are other matters regarding Russian-American relations that factor into it as well, and Rice’s comment can’t be discounted as one that doesn’t implicate the Russians as a factor regarding “American security interests in the Middle East, and possibly around the world”.

Now, I’m certainly not giving the Iranians a free pass. I’m sure that they have been covertly involved in Iraq, just as the United States, or any other power, would be were there a conflict raging on their border that could ultimately affect them. As for the nuclear question, I have been through that and would suggest using the search engine if you’re interested in reading my thoughts on that subject.

While the Bush administration has claimed, even after the implementation of these new sanctions, that a diplomatic solution to the problem is their preferred method, it can’t be discounted that there is a reason why eleventh hour diplomacy is being employed, and it has little to do with diplomacy itself. More to the point, it may have far more to do with due diligence on the part of the Bush administration in the event that they have to justify military action to the American people; that they can then claim that all avenues were exhausted despite the fact that they have been goading the Iranians for some time and that the American media has been diligently casting the Iranians in such a negative light as to basically pre-program the domestic psyche that a confrontation with Iran is not simply possible, but inevitable. True, Iranian covert involvement in Iraqi affairs has most likely resulted in the loss of American lives; and while that is certainly of concern, given the regional implications of the US occupation of Iraq, how can anyone think that those in the region would not ultimately involve themselves in some way? The Turkish military has bolstered its forces along the Iraqi frontier, even going so far as to suggest an invasion of northern Iraq itself to deal with cross-border raids by the PKK. At present they are attempting to have a list of high-ranking PKK members extradited from Iraq to Turkey. Of course, the United States is cooperating because it does not want to see the Turks invade northern Iraq, as they have threatened to do. The Turks have also threatened sanctions against parts of Northern Iraq, who receive electricity and other services from Turkey. But the reality is that the PKK will obviously not capitulate to the demands, nor do I believe that sympathetic Kurds in northern Iraq that believe in the ultimate creation of a free Kurdish state will easily betray them.

This where we come to the rather interesting ambiguity of what the sanctions implemented against Iran imply and the reality that exterior factors are playing a very real role in the situation. But before I delve into that, I want to focus on an overlapping issue – the issue of covert military complicity and how it is condemned by nations that have long standing traditions with regards to its use. In this case, I want to use Iran and the United States as examples.

The Hypocrisy Of ‘Might Makes Right’ Covert Military Complicity

The Iranians have been accused of training Shi’ite militants in Iran that then operate inside of Iraq in both an anti-occupational and sectarian manner.

The United States has trained countless paramilitary and militant organizations that have acted in those capacities throughout the world. Their support for a variety of military juntas and dictatorial regimes has also been considerable. One such regime was that of the Shah of Iran itself, who the United States and Great Britain put back into power after the democratically elected leader of Iran in the 50’s attempted to nationalize segments of the Iran’s oil industry.

US covert military support and training is, in fact, globally unprecedented. It knows very little limitation or restriction, operating in economic spheres, such as through numerous aid programs and the underwriting of World Bank loans to secure both privatization rights and military contracts. It has, and continues to, help develop, and by way influence, the intelligence capacities of foreign nations, train irregular and regular forces in nations that benefit their current policy platforms or have lucrative arms agreements with US defense contractors or third parties representing US arms interests. They have trained paramilitary groups, foreign domestic forces, and rogue militant groups that have been guilty of mass killings and disappearances, torture, mass imprisonments, industrial espionage, acts of terrorism, and psychological warfare. They possess a significant capability to manipulate information abroad, to control the flow of information, and employ counter-intelligence operations on a multi-national level.

Compared to this, the Iranians are the tiniest of bugs. While they are responsible for aiding numerous organizations, such as Hezbollah, theirs are operations that, by comparison, are utterly minuscule. Thus, placing things into proper context is obviously of importance, especially when anything that is going to come out of Iran about US covert activities is going to automatically be taken as a lie by the general public.

Iran As A Proxy Issue

Given the growing tensions between the United States and Russia, the use of Iran as a proxy issue is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. The sanctions out in place are focused on Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. The Russians, on the other hand, (along with China) sell arms to Iran, and thus equip its military.

Today, Russian President Putin claimed that the implementation of a missile shield in Eastern Europe was akin to the introduction of MRBM’s by the Soviet Union into the Western Hemisphere…

“Similar actions by the Soviet Union, when it deployed missiles in Cuba, provoked the Caribbean crisis. For us, technologically, the situation is very similar.”

Of course, he went on to claim that the United States and Russia are allies and that he and Mr. Bush are good friends, but a statement of that magnitude is not made without purpose behind it. Nor are statements regarding the sale of weapons to Iran by the Russians made by the Assistant Secretary of State without purpose.

The two issues are, of course, conjoined, being that the defense shield is being implemented to guard against attacks from nations such as Iran. In fact, Iran has been specifically sited as one of the foremost reasons for the necessity of the shield.

Thus, you have the Russians and Chinese, two of the five permanent Security Council members, that have arms agreements with Tehran – and in the case of Russia have technologically aided in the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program, and the rest of the Council at odds with the Iranian program, sighting it as a threat. Interestingly, the implementation of the defense shield is in nations with which the US has burgeoning military ties and thus refuses to back down from its implementation.

At the end of the day, the five permanent members of the Security Council represent the five largest arms dealers in the world. So basically, this is all just mathematics. You need enemies to ensure return in the business of war, and when an age as politically and militarily ambiguous as the one in which we now find ourselves is ushered in, all bets are off.

Historical resentment has its drawbacks, especially when you’re militarily occupying a country. In the case of Iraq, its Shia majority has been under the thumb of Sunni minority governments since the British installed Faisal as king in 1923. During the tenure of Saddam Hussein they were persecuted, as were the Kurds, and following the Gulf War were left hung out to dry by the international coalition when they attempted to stand against Hussein’s regime.

When US forces entered Iraq in 2003, the Shia were the least of their concerns. At the time, the Iraqi army was controlled by Ba’athists, who, following the invasion, primarily melted into the countryside where they would help form what would later become the insurgency. What remained of the Iraqi army was, of course, disbanded by Paul Bremmer, easily the biggest mistake made by the United States post-invasion.

The reconstitution of the Iraqi military was thusly something that became a priority, and little consideration was given historic grudges with regards to who would ultimately constitute the majority of its ranks. With the rise of the Sunni insurgency, and the US need to expediently train an Iraqi military and national police force to help bolster security, many that joined the new Iraqi military establishment were not ignorant to the fact that it was a mechanism with which to confront past injustices and seize control of the establishment itself (re: in November of 2005, a secret underground prison was discovered in Baghdad where local police had interned and tortured Sunni captives).

Given the state of civil war that now exists in Iraq, the power wielded by Shia influences within the military establishment has played a significant role in countering US efforts to establish a uniform national security platform. The fact that a great deal of Baghdad has been successfully secured by Shia militias points to this reality. And there is certainly proof that it is becoming an ever increasing problem…

“As the Americans patrol the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Azamiyah, people keep turning to them for help. One man asks them to bring in a fuel truck stopped by Iraqi troops. Another complains that Iraqi soldiers just beat up his brother.

The Americans used to be loathed in Azamiyah, a longtime stronghold of insurgents and the last place where Saddam Hussein appeared in public. Now the animosity has given way to a grudging acceptance, because the people of this northern neighborhood want American protection from a foe they hate and fear even more: the mainly Shiite Iraqi army.

“We feel safe when the Americans are around,” says a computer engineer who gave his name only as Abu Fahd. He stopped going to work because of his fear of militiamen at the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry and now makes a living selling clothes.

“When we see the Iraqi army, we just stay home or close our shops.”

The story of Azamiyah, once a favorite with wealthy Sunnis and nationalists, shows once again how difficult it is to measure the success of the latest surge of American troops amid the shifting allegiances in Baghdad.

The accommodation between Azamiyah and the Americans represents a major breakthrough for the U.S. military, which had long considered the neighborhood among the city’s most dangerous. Yet the success is largely due to a sectarian divide so deep that it has poisoned institutions such as the Iraqi army, jeopardizing the chances of reconciliation and leaving the Americans caught in the middle.”

Be it the military establishment or the government itself, the numbers simply do not lie. It is impossible for a nation that is primarily composed of a group that has been historically misused to simply put the past behind it. The bizarre reality of Iraq’s future is that we may very well see US forces protecting a minority that has, up until this point, constituted their primary military opposition. It should therefore come as a surprise to no one that Sunni militias have agreed these past months to aid US efforts in exchange for arms and money, not to mention the ability to police their own enclaves.