August 27, 2007
The Future of Iraq
by Michael J. Totten
MUSHADAH, IRAQ – “Al Qaeda terrifies locals,” said Major Mike Garcia from Canyon, Texas, before he put me in a convoy of Humvees with 18 American Military Police on their way to the small town of Mushadah just north of Baghdad. “The only people Iraqis may be more afraid of is their mothers. When we arrest or detain people and threaten to call up their mom, they completely freak out. Please, no, don’t tell my mother they say. Women are quiet outside the house, but they severely smack down their bad kids inside the house. When your Iraqi mother tells you to knock something off, you knock it off.”
The American military has slowly figured out how to leverage Iraq’s culture to its advantage, but it only works to an extent. Locating, killing, capturing, and interrogating terrorists and insurgents is the easy part. The hard part is training Iraqis to do it themselves.
Our destination in Mushadah was the local police station where American Military Police train and equip Iraqi Police, and where it’s still too dangerous for either Iraqis or Americans to walk the streets.
“I am not trying to scare you,” said Captain Maryanne Naro, from Fort Drum, New York. “But don’t get out of your vehicle unless something catastrophic has happened to it.”
I walked the streets of Baghdad every day with soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen in Mushadah.
“It’s pretty bad up there,” she added. “AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] is all over the area because they’ve been pushed out of Baghdad, Ramadi, and Fallujah.”
Just driving to Mushadah from the base at Camp Taji was dangerous in a weird sort of way.
“Our convoys are hit with IEDs every day on the road,” she said.
I swallowed hard. “Should I really be going up there?” I said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “It’s fine.”
I laughed. It’s fine? How is that fine? Nothing, except perhaps kidnappers, is scarier in Iraq than IEDs, especially now that Iranian-manufactured armor-piercing EFPs – Explosively Formed Penetrators – are deployed by Shia militias.
“None of us have been hurt,” she said. “They’re just small harassment attacks. Most of the IEDs are mortar rounds, and the Humvees are armored. They usually just pop tires and blow off our mirrors. They do it to piss us off.”
“The route clearance team is out there right now,” said mission leader Sergeant James Babcock, from Adams, New York, as he showed me which of the five Humvees I was to ride in.
Mine was in the middle of the convoy. The Humvee behind mine was recently hit with an IED.
“That shrapnel can’t go through the armor,” Sergeant Babcock said when he saw me taking a photograph of the damage. “The doors are armored and the windows are bulletproof. All that shrapnel did was tear holes in the trunk and rip through cases of Gatorade. It was kind of annoying.”
“No one fires off EFPs in the area?” I said, referring to the unstoppable molten copper penetrators.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s just Al Qaeda here.” Sunni insurgents and terrorists don't have access to the Iranian-made weapons.
“There’s a lot of harassment,” Captain Naro said, “and not a lot of competence.”
We saddled up and left Camp Taji to the north. Everyone locked and loaded their weapons on the way out the gate.
“Hopefully we won’t have any fireworks for you today,” my driver said.
Well, I thought, it certainly would be interesting if there are some fireworks for me today. Not every Humvee in Iraq is up-armored, and not every IED-laced road in Iraq is free of those terrifying EFPs. And so, I figured, if I’m ever going to be hit with an IED, let it be today.
It was a strange feeling, a bit like being in a shark cage – inches away from mortal peril, but kinda sorta okay…as long as an IED didn't explode under the vehicle.
“AQI always puts the IEDs in the same places on this road, in culverts and holes they already dug,” Captain Naro said. “We just swerve around them.”
“Are they stupid?” I said.
She gave me a look, as if the question was a little too cocky, that it was dangerous to dismiss Al Qaeda as stupid. I agree, of course, in general, but I can’t help but think putting IEDs in the same places over and over again isn’t too bright.
Getting into a Humvee with the Army in a war zone all by itself can be a little bit stressful. The ranking officer inside often reminds everyone else of the safety procedures – which are not at all like the safety procedures you’ll hear from a stewardess on United Airlines just before take off.
“Combat lock!” he might yell, which means everyone must lock their door so no one can open it from the outside and shoot people inside.
“Everybody remember what to do if someone throws a grenade in the truck?”
No, I did not remember. It is not something anyone ever taught me.
“Yell grenade grenade grenade and get the hell out as quickly as possible. If you don’t have time to get out, turn your back to the blast and hope for the best.”
The drive from Camp Taji to Mushadah only took 20 minutes, and our Humvee drivers swerved suddenly and dramatically 8 or 9 times to avoid possible IEDs. They also drove the Humvees about as fast as they could. The assumption was that the IEDs on this road were manually detonated by a trigger man. There are many places to hide.
Fast moving targets are harder to hit. And because the IEDs don’t explode on their own, the odds of any Humvee in particular being hit were no greater or less than the odds of any other Humvee being hit. Riding in the front of the convoy was no more dangerous than riding anywhere else. And riding in the middle or in the rear wasn’t safer. Of course that didn’t stop me from trying to convince myself that I rode in the lucky Humvee that wouldn’t be hit for some reason. Everyone does it.
There weren’t any fireworks that day, at least not against my convoy. But we still weren’t quite safe once we reached the police station.
“Get inside,” Sergeant Anthnoy Doucet, from Lake Charles, Louisiana, said to me when we stepped out of the Humvees. “This place is a mortar magnet.”
Every place in Iraq is hot during the summer, but the Mushadah police station was merciless. Only two rooms had air conditioning. The rest were miserable sweat boxes.
Captain Maryanne Naro was supposed to join us, but she had to remain at Camp Taji. That was too bad. I was hoping to see how the Iraqi Police interacted in person with an American woman who outranked almost all of them.
“The police won’t leave the station,” Major Garcia said, “unless Americans are there to protect them. They wouldn’t leave under any circumstances until Captain Naro showed up and was willing to go out on patrol. They were ashamed that a woman had more guts than they did.”
“They will go out alone now for something real basic,” she said. “Otherwise if Americans aren’t with them they’ll hide in the station. They’re hard to work with at times, like they’re kids.”
Incompetence, though, is the least of their problems.
“About half of them are corrupted,” she said, “and it’s hard to get the bad ones out. Some of the higher ups are corrupted too, but it’s hard to prove. They help AQI, they set up illegal checkpoints, and they raid civilian houses so they can steal stuff.”
Not surprisingly then, local civilians are just as afraid of the police as the uncorrupted police are afraid of the neighborhood.
“Locals come in here all the time and talk to Americans,” she told me. “They’re afraid to give intel to the Iraqi Police.”
Mushadah is a bad area with bad police and a bad police station. The building itself is filthy and ramshackle. The stairs to the second floor are murderously uneven, not because they’ve been damaged but because they were built by incompetents. I’ve seen dodgy construction in Iraq – even at Saddam’s palaces, believe it or not – but this station was the worst. I’ll spare you a description of the bathroom.
There was a protective wall in front of the station, but it had recently been destroyed by a mortar round.
Another wall on the south side of the building was blown over during a spring wind storm.
The whole place was almost destroyed not long ago. An Al Qaeda suicide bomber filled a dump truck with explosives and tried to ram it into the building, but he drove too fast around a corner and the whole thing tipped over. Everyone would have been killed had he succeeded.
Sergeant Doucet led me to the front door from the inside so I could photograph some of the Iraqi Police standing at attention.
“How many of these guys do you suppose are Al Qaeda infiltrators?” I said. I just couldn’t look at them without wondering.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We speculate about it. We don’t investigate them or anything like that.”
“You don’t?” I said. “Why not?”
“We aren’t passive about it,” he said. “If we suspect someone has gone over the edge, he’ll raise a red flag and we’ll deal with it.”
“How much support do you get from local civilians?” I said.
“Locals bring in tips against bad guys all the time,” he said. “Several times a week. What they tell us is not very tangible though. Sometimes it’s useless. Someone will come in here and scream There’s bad guys out there! We’ll ask where. To the west! they’ll say. Well, no crap.”
“Residents are still afraid to give intel on bad guys,” he continued. “Insurgents will kill them if they do. The area is totally unsecured. Even if we question people who live right in front of an IED trigger point they won’t say anything. But, look, forget what you see on the news. People in this community are just like people in any other community. This guy is pissed off at that guy, and you have to deal with it.”
I’ve been in parts of Iraq where local civilians cooperate with the army and police and where they do not. Civilians cooperate as much as security on the streets will permit them. The dynamic here isn’t all that hard to understand, or even that foreign. If you want to see how this has played out in America, watch Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, the classic film from 1954 starring Marlon Brando about the mafia’s infiltration of a longshoreman’s union. No one in that story wanted to cooperate with the police in their murder investigations against the mob because they were terrified of being “next” if they did.
“We have a medical facility here,” Sergeant Doucet said. “Local civilians can come here and use it, and they do.”
They did while I was there. A three year old boy was badly burned at his house – how, I don’t know – and he was brought in to be treated by a medic.
I let the medic tend to the boy and stepped into the Tactical Operations Center, one of only two rooms in the station that had air conditioning.
“Hello again, sir,” Sergeant Babcock said and pulled up a chair for me. He then gave me more background and asked me not to take pictures of anything in that room.
“Lots of Iraqi Police here had orders to work in Baghdad,” he said, “but they refused. They are Sunnis. This is a Sunni area. Baghdad, as you know, is mostly Shia. Their names and license plates mark them for death. They work here but are counted as AWOL and are not being paid.”
Some of the Iraqi police are honorable men. (And they are all men.) I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all of them are terrorist infiltrators. They aren’t.
“Because of logistics problems we have to go to Baghdad for fuel,” Sergeant Babcock said, “and we have to go to a Shia area. It’s very dangerous for them and they ask us to go with them. They have problems getting ammo as well. There are always problems with ammo.”
And there are severe problems with other stations.
“The Taramiyah station was hit by insurgents earlier this spring,” he said. “It was completely destroyed. Only six officers from that station are brave enough to come to work here.”
He introduced me to the man in charge of the station, Captain J. Dow Covey from New York City.
“Do you know the Weekly Standard magazine?” Captain Covey asked me.
“Of course,” I said.
“My buddy Tom Cotton was just written up there,” he said. “It was pretty cool seeing him in that magazine.”
“What did he do to get in the magazine?” I said.
“He’s like me,” he said. “He’s a Harvard Law grad who joined the Army after 9/11. I’m an attorney.”
“You’re an attorney?” I said. “What are you doing out here in Iraq?”
“I practiced law for three years,” he said, “then got into investment banking. When 9/11 happened I just had to sign up with the Army. Investment banking is a lot more stressful than this.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I said.
“No,” he said and laughed. “I am totally serious.”
If he was deployed in, say, Kurdistan I could see it. But Mushadah was stressful. Less stressful than investment banking? Investment banking in New York must really be something.
Not much happened the first half of my day at the station, so I lounged with the MPs in their broiling quarters.
None of them had anything positive to say about the Iraqi Police they were training.
“What can you really ask for in a lazy society? You go in their houses and the floors and covered in pillows.”
“You can tell who is corrupt because their convoys never get hit.”
“This place wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so fucking hot. I can deal with being shot at and blown up, but 150 degrees is a bit much.”
“Some Iraqi Police recently left the station, we got hit with a bunch of mortars, then they came right back inside. This sort of thing happens a lot. It makes us suspicious.”
“We’re giving them 50,000 dollar Chevy trucks and it’s like a junkyard out back. It’s like Sanford and Son out there. They drive stuff better than we can afford, and they don’t even take care of it.”
“I miss Baghdad. One day we’d be walking out on the street buying sandwiches and playing soccer with kids. The next day we’d get in a firefight with burning tires and RPGs and shit. The next day we’d be hanging out and chilling like normal again. It’s a weird place, and really keeps you on your toes.”
“It’s not like Germany or Japan where people wanted a change. The Kurds up north wanted a change, so they got one. The Arabs don’t, so they aren’t. They hardly change even with us here.”
The Iraqi Army in the area isn’t faring much better.
“They are severely infiltrated by Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army,” Colonel John Steele, from Dover, New Hampshire, told me back at Camp Taji.
The Iraqi Army soldiers who aren’t double agents are still nowhere near ready to defend their own country.
“We assess, train, and help provide logistical support to prevent catastrophic failure,” he said. “Their logistics are very immature. They are always short on ammo. And we have to hold their hands and make sure they don’t kill themselves and others. We still do some unilateral U.S. actions even though we want to become partnered with the Iraqi Army in all our operations. But we first want to make sure they have all the skills they need to survive in combat.”
Most American soldiers I spoke to about the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police, not just in Mushadah but also in Baghdad, have a dim view of their local counterparts. (The situation is strikingly different in Anbar Province, and I’ll get to that in future articles.) I wanted to know what the colonel thought.
“Do you trust them?” I said.
He paused for a long time and answered very carefully.
“We won’t tell them about sensitive operations until the last second,” he said. “I trust some individuals, though, because I know them. I’d share a foxhole with them as far as ideology goes, but I’m not sure how good their skills are when they are shot.”
Pride is much more important in Arab culture than it is in the West. Humiliation is therefore more painful. I wondered if this created problems when Americans train Iraqi soldiers and police officers. What must it feel like for local men to be yelled at by foreigners who showed up uninvited and knew their job better than they did?
Colonel Steele insists it isn’t a problem.
“They don’t want to be babied,” he said. “They want to be treated as equals and adults. Their shame culture actually helps. Our new recruits recently complained about having sore feet during a march. When they noticed our female soldiers are in better shape than they are, they never complained again. Also, when we first had them try on our body armor, it nearly broke their spines. They want to be physically capable of wearing it, too.”
It’s at least possible that some of the infiltrators may be turned over time. Some former insurgents elsewhere in Iraq are now openly siding with the Americans.
There also is this: “We give them rudimentary skills and a work ethic,” he told me. “They attend the same classes on character and honor and professional conduct becoming a soldier that our own people attend.”
Is he optimistic?
“I am optimistic,” he said. “But only for one single reason. Because I talk to the average Joe in Iraq. I meet the children and parents. Iraqi parents love their children as much as I love mine.”
I knew what he meant. Counterintuitive and contradictory as it may seem, I never felt more optimistic in Iraq than I did when I walked the streets and interacted with average Iraqis. Iraq looks more doomed from inside the base than it does outside on the street, and it looks more doomed from across the Atlantic than it does from inside the base.
Major Mike Garcia said this view of Iraq is typical. “Soldiers who don’t leave the FOB [Forward Operating Base] are more likely to be pessimistic than those who go out on patrol. They’re less aware of what’s actually happening and have fewer reality checks on their gloom.”
Sergeant Babcock invited me to a meeting with Iraqi Police Colonel Hameed, the man who was responsible for the station on the Iraqi side. Sergeant Babcock, Sergeant Doucet, an interpreter, the colonel, and I sat together in the only other room at the station that had air conditioning.
“You are most welcome,” the colonel said to me in a noticeably insincere tone of voice. Some of the MPs think he’s corrupt. I don’t know if that means they think he works with Al Qaeda.
“Thank you,” I said. “May I take your picture?”
“No,” he said, “please don’t.” It didn’t sound like he actually cared though, as if he was just going through the motions of needing protection from terrorists.
He and the American MPs discussed fuel logistics.
“The only reason the Iraqi Police got fuel on the last mission,” he said, “is because you were with us. Otherwise they wouldn’t have given us anything.”
Suddenly Captain Covey, the New York City attorney, nearly broke down the door as he barged into the room.
“Hey!” he screamed at the colonel. “I’m tired of you motherfuckers stealing our fuel cans. I’m going to kick all you motherfuckers out of here. I’m sorry for interrupting your little meeting, but at noon I want every single one of you people off this post.” He stared at the interpreter. “Translate that!” he said.
He slammed the door behind him. Everyone just looked at each other. A quietly horrified expression washed over the face of the colonel when he saw me taking notes.
The meeting was over, obviously. I stepped into the hallway and asked the nearest MP what was going on.
“61 fuel cans have been stolen over the last week by Iraqi police officers here,” he said. “Three more were stolen today. These are fuel cans that Iraqis and Americans risk their lives to go get.”
The tension in the hallway was palpable. None of the Iraqi Police could look me in the eye.
“Can the captain really kick the Iraqis out of here?” I asked Sergeant Babcock.
“Actually, he can,” he said. He sounded mortified at the idea.
Colonel Hameed walked up to Sergeant Babcock. He was furious.
“Your captain offended us by coming in here and yelling like that,” he said. “I need you to find a solution.”
“I’m a staff sergeant,” Sergeant Babcock said. “He’s a captain. I’m also an MP and he’s Infantry. I have to obey him whether I like it or not.”
“This station does not belong to his family,” the colonel said curtly. “This is unacceptable. The building is ours, and he is our guest. A guest cannot fire the owner of the house.”
“We’ll go talk to him and come back,” Sergeant Babcock said.
As it turned out, the whole thing was a screw up. Somebody forgot to update the board and account for three fuel cans that were taken legitimately.
Captain Covey was embarrassed.
“Would you really have kicked them all out of here?” I said.
“In the state of mind I was in then, yes,” he said. “I was ready to do it. But I calmed down and would have gotten in trouble anyway. So no, I wouldn’t have actually done it.”
61 fuel cans really had been stolen that week, however. The Iraqi Police were in serious trouble.
Another Iraqi Police colonel, whose name I did not catch and whom no one thinks is corrupt, arrived on the scene and screamed himself hoarse at his deputies.
“Coalition Forces are screaming at us!” he hollered. “Screaming at us because you keep stealing fuel!”
He kicked an empty metal garbage can and clangingly knocked it over. The Iraqi Police glowered at him as if they wanted to scream back and were trying mightily to restrain themselves.
An American MP walked past me. “That’s the first time I’ve seen those guys yelled at,” he said and grinned with satisfaction.
Shortly after noon an International Police Advisor from Michigan named Paul taught an hour-long class to the Iraqi Police officers about taking weapons from potentially dangerous people who are under arrest. The officers seemed to learn as much sitting through that course as I did. Apparently they had never gone over the procedures before.
I couldn’t help wondering as I watched the Iraqis…which of you work for Al Qaeda?
Maybe no one in the photo works for Al Qaeda. I don’t have a sense of how many infiltrators there actually are, although Captain Naro thinks the number could be as high as 50 percent.
Is it really a good idea to train these men with that in mind?
“Please don’t publish my picture,” Paul said to me after the class. “And use only my first name. Only my wife knows I’m in Iraq.”
I wanted to know what he thought of the trainees. He has trained police officers all over the world, not just in Iraq and the United States. He could, perhaps, see them through more worldly eyes than the American MPs who had a narrower range of experience.
“They’ve made leaps and bounds in the past two months,” he said. “Every day they make progress. Today they made progress.”
“Are you optimistic about them?” I said.
“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “The Iraqi Police are like sponges. It’s all new to them.”
“Lots of American soldiers I’ve talked to about the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police don’t think very highly of them,” I said.
“Look,” he said. “The other contractors I know who train the police are also optimistic. Many file extensions to stay longer because they feel like they’re making a difference. I never hear anything negative from any of them. We watch the Iraqis progress over time because we work with them daily. Most American soldiers don’t see the progress because they observe the Iraqis from more of a distance. You yourself are only seeing a snapshot in time. If you think it looks bad now, you should have been here two months ago.”
It was time to head back to Camp Taji. The MPs and I saddled up in our Humvees while, in front of us, Iraqi Police piled into their trucks. We would escort them out of the station, then they would be on their own. They were going out alone, apparently for something “real basic,” as Captain Naro had told me.
The Iraqi Police truck in front of my Humvee had an office chair crazily bolted into the flatbed. A policeman strapped himself into that and manned a mounted machine gun. .
“Is he really going out all exposed like that?” I said.
“He is,” Sergeant Babcock said. “I can’t quite decide if that’s pathetic or if it’s a testament to the human spirit. Maybe it’s a little of both.”
We drove back down IED Alley to Camp Taji. It was 4:00 in the afternoon, and so unbearably hot. The air conditioner in the Humvee hardly did anything. I desperately wanted a shower so I could wash Iraq off my skin.
Nothing exploded on our way back.
Major Garcia wanted to know what I thought. I didn’t know what to say.
“Whether we like it or not,” he said, “and whether we like them or not, they are the future of this country.”
Postscript: Please support independent journalism. Traveling to and working in Iraq is expensive. I can’t publish dispatches on this Web site for free without substantial reader donations, so I'll appreciate it if you pitch in what you can. Blog Patron allows you to make recurring monthly payments, and even small donations will be extraordinarily helpful so I can continue this project.
If you prefer to use Pay Pal, that is still an option.
If you would like to donate for travel and equipment expenses and you don't want to send money over the Internet, please consider sending a check or money order to:
Michael Totten
P.O. Box 312
Portland, OR 97207-0312
Many thanks in advance.
Posted by Michael J. Totten at August 27, 2007 09:13 PMDon't tell me I'm first?
Like I said in another thread, Shelley is a saint.
Posted by: Yehudit at August 28, 2007 12:09 AMWow. Incredible report, as always.
Posted by: JC at August 28, 2007 12:37 AMDivide Iraq. It will solve more problems than it will create.
These people join the Iraqi army or police because it's a job, not for nationalistic reasons.
Think of how disciplined and effective the Peshmerga are. That's because they're proud of their de facto country in the north and care enough about it to defend it.
There's no way to train Iraqi Sunnis to protect Iraqi Shias, or Kurds for that matter. In Lebanon the various ethnic/religious groups get along fabulously well compared to those in Iraq. Yet their army is still pretty weak and only has lukewarm support from the wider population.
The U.S. should let the Kurds become independent and create more of its own enclaves free of corrupt Iraqi "security" forces. The goal of the war should now be to separate Iraqi civilians from the terrorists, a difficult task that can only be accomplished by exerting exclusive control over certain areas.
Posted by: Edgar at August 28, 2007 06:04 AMfascinating report. great. thanks.
Posted by: reliapundit at August 28, 2007 06:34 AMreliapundit: fascinating report. great. thanks.
Huh? You didn't find it anti-semitic?
Posted by: Edgar at August 28, 2007 07:21 AMGreat report Michael - Much thanks for all the work that you do.
One comment on your website. It would be great if you could add a print-view for your articles. I like to print them out to share them with others and there is no easy way to do that now.
Posted by: jubjub at August 28, 2007 07:52 AMTrackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 08/28/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
Astounding as usual. Will try to remember to link this tonight when I get home if you don't yourself.
If this is the worst we face now in Iraq, compared to what we see as the best, I can't believe people aren't more optimistic.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at August 28, 2007 09:47 AMMr. Totten,
This was again another excellent report. I have two concerns with your report however.
1. You claim EFPs are made in Iran:
Nothing, except perhaps kidnappers, is scarier in Iraq than IEDs, especially now that Iranian-manufactured armor-piercing EFPs – Explosively Formed Penetrators – are deployed by Shia militias.
However, reports show that in Southern Iraq there are EFP producing factories:
Bleichwehl said troops, facing scattered resistance, discovered a factory that produced "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs), a particularly deadly type of explosive that can destroy a main battle tank and several weapons caches.
Of course that doesn't jive with the Conventional Wisdom that Iran is our Great Satan, but facts tend to not fit pre-conceived opinions.
Basically, what I'm saying is that you shouldn't trust what the military is telling you, and also you should report that the evidence does NOT show that these EFPs are produced by Iran, but that in fact, the only hard evidence found to this point points to southern Iraq.
Secondly, whenever pressed for any actual evidence, nobody in the military has been able to prove that any official Iranian organization were at the heart of the production of EFPs. What is more likely is that the black market in Iraq is so huge that anyone with some cash can go ahead and purchase this and that to make an EFP. That seems to be the case with the EFP factory in southern Iraq.
I realize that you are telling the story as the troops around you are describing things to you, but you're not an unbiased journalist, Mr. Totten. In fact, your strength lies in adding in your own views on the matter. But please, when the evidence is either inconclusive in one way, and hard evidence suggests another way completely, then stick with the facts.
2. Al-Qaeda infiltration of the troops. You write about how the military is telling you that up to 50% of the police is possibly infiltrated by "Al-Qaeda." However, that just doesn't add up with actual numbers. For instance in this article on detainees in Iraq, out of 24,000 detainees only 1800 claim allegiance to Al-Qaeda. That's less than 8% of all detainees that are allegedly Al-Qaeda. In fact, most detainees tend to be Sunnis with no allegiance to Al-Qaeda. All other credible reports indicate that Al-Qaeda's presence, while loud and violent, is quite small in Iraq. Again, why does the Army think 50% of policemen in Iraq are infiltrated by Al-Qaeda, and why do you report that without seriously questioning the numbers?
When you don't report doubts about the numbers, you portray the situation as the Army wishes it to be portrayed. But you are not an Army propagandist. Instead you are a reporter. You should be showing things as they are, not as 1) you wish them to be, or 2) as the Army wishes them to be.
Doing otherwise just gets us into more trouble.
Posted by: Dan at August 28, 2007 10:38 AMThanks Michael for another excellent article. Your writing has an uncanny ability to make me feel as if I've experienced the things you describe- as all good writing should.
This line particularly struck me: "What must it feel like for local men to be yelled at by foreigners who showed up uninvited and knew their job better than they did?" I try to picture that scenario here in the United States and can only imagine the staunch resistance that those foreigners might experience from the local men. I can certainly appreciate their point of view. The "we're doing this for your own good" pill can be a bitter one to swallow.
The common theme I've gotten from yours and other blogs I've been reading is that interaction with the local people is the key to understanding the situation as it really is- not by viewing sparring politics on TV or listening to the constant barrage of seemingly-doomed news reports. Thanks again for another side to the story.
Posted by: Jen B at August 28, 2007 11:15 AMDan,
I didn't know about the EFP factory in Southern Iraq. Thanks for pointing that out.
As far as AQI infiltration being 50 percent, two things. First, Captain Naro was speaking about the percentage in that one specific area, not to Iraq as a whole. The percentage couldn't possibly be that high everywhere. There aren't enough Sunnis in the entire Iraqi Police force.
Second, she does not want that number to be anywhere near that high. If she was being a propagandist, or wanted to use me a propaganda tool, she wouldn't have mentioned infiltration at all, or she would have said the percentage is low.
Also, no one contradicted those numbers. Entire Army units can't be filled with propagandists. Grunt level soldiers couldn't give two shits about something like that, and they wouldn't all allow themselves to be used for that purpose anyway. You are aware, I assume, that there are many liberals and Democrats in the Army. Many of the soldiers I quoted who kvetched in that room were liberals. I didn't point that out because I didn't think it made any difference. Most of them are on the same page anyway regardless of ideology because they all deal with the same reality every day.
You're too suspicious, I think. Individuals may lie to me, but the entire Army doesn't lie. It has too many diverse people in it to pull something like that off even if the brass wanted to.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 28, 2007 11:16 AMHey Dan:
Begging your pardon, but why would any detainee claim allegiance to al Qaida, knowing that doing so will help ensure he or she will not be released from custody? Do you imagine that American mafiosi claim affiliation to a particular Mafia family while being interrogated by the FBI?
Your prejudices notwithstanding, Iran's current leadership really is our Great Satan, and has been for over thirty years of war against us. I'm not saying they don't have justification...what with our history of Shah games and such, but you have only to listen to and watch them to understand that they would destroy us to a man if they could, and will when they are able.
Michael's doing just fine. If and when you walk his path and see different things, we'll listen receptively to you, too.
Posted by: Jonathan at August 28, 2007 11:17 AMAlso, most soldiers I met had never met a journalist in Iraq before they met me. They aren't briefed by their superior officers about "how to lie" to journalists. I would know if that were happening because the liberals would tell me.
Some of the officers who briefed me are Democrats. The White House doesn't control them.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 28, 2007 11:18 AMMike, great article. The comments are disturbing, and your continued reference to the politics of the troops even more so. Should we really be concerned about their politics? if so, why? In short, you and your followon commentary tend to make the military sound very political, when it fact, we do a job regardless of the politics. Maybe there is a point about identifying the liberal v. conservative nature of the Soldiers. If so, I missed it.
Thanks for your efforts over there. Great report. r/ Bedrock Guy
Posted by: Bedrock Guy at August 28, 2007 11:30 AMDan, you're right, American military patrols in Iraq have only found buildings in...Iraq. No American patrol of Iraq has found any building in Iran.
Where you go wrong is everywhere else. The propaganda arm of the Administration, the New York Times, ran stories as long ago as February describing evidence for weaponry coming in from Iran. "They said that at least one shipment of E.F.P.’s was captured as it was being smuggled across the border from Iran into southern Iraq in 2005." Of course, the people claiming to have found EFPs coming across the border were those deceitful tools of the military-industrial complex, while the ones who said they found an EFP factory in Iraq were America's brave fighting men, so I can see why you would trust one and not the other.
Posted by: bgates at August 28, 2007 11:30 AMBedrock,
The point is that the soldiers cannot be considered robots or yes-men willing to parrot the party line to journalists. They're individuals from a variety of backgrounds, and when a great number of them agree on something it's probably because that is their honest impression, as opposed to whatever was on a talking points memo.
On a deeper level, it shows that factionalism becomes a good tool for keeping people honest, once a society progresses beyond the point where factionalism is a good tool for having people shot. But I may be reading into things a bit much.
Posted by: Squid at August 28, 2007 11:37 AMYeah, that's right! You're not parroting Dan's line, so obviously, you're some deluded right-wing warmonger.
Because everybody knows that Iran is a peaceful, innocent nation, that has been constantly bullied by the Great Satan throughout history.
Posted by: Big D at August 28, 2007 11:56 AMDan,
I have to defend Mr. Totten on this one. Let me preface my defense by saying that I was a Captain deployed to Baghdad in 2005. Our combat engineer battalion's primary mission was counter-IED clearance for the 3rd Infantry Division (ie those big Buffaloes with the iron claws you might have seen on the news).
Without going into classified information, I can assure you that there is direct, conclusive, and irrefutable evidence that the EFP's we were able to get off the streets unexploded were manufactured from within Iran. We sent these components back to Washington for analysis, and these determinations were made very clearly. This is actually fairly old news. It's just now that the media seems to be reporting on the Iranian links so frequently.
Take my $.02 for what you will.
Posted by: Rob at August 28, 2007 11:57 AMThere is a difference between EFPs built in Iraq and those imported from Iran. The ones built in Iraq are much lower quality crap. They are made from scrap iron and are marginally more effective than an artillery round IED. The ones made in Iran are precision machined weapons. Yes, some enterprising Iraqis now copy the Iranian EFP design. That does not means that there are no Iranian EFPs. Michael, ask an EOD guy to show you some samples.
Posted by: Rey at August 28, 2007 12:11 PMDan mentioned EFPs being manufactured in So. Iraq. I had already heard they were assembled there but the components are extremely sophisticated and no one Iraq has the capacity to manufacture them. Iran does. Half truths and out of context bits of truth are very dangerous.
Posted by: Herb Morgan at August 28, 2007 12:20 PM"Of course that doesn't jive with the Conventional Wisdom that Iran is our Great Satan, but facts tend to not fit pre-conceived opinions."
The word you're looking for is 'jibe', not 'jive', which would have a completely different meaning.
-Angry Old Guy
PS: The speaker implies and the listener infers. The word "and" is a conjunction, not an alternate spelling of the article "an". The opposite of win is lose, not loose. There is no such word as 'alot'. The whole comprises its (not "it's") parts, and is not 'comprised of' them; the parts compose the whole, which in fact is composed of those parts. It's "different from", not "different than", and "on purpose" but "by accident".
And get off my lawn!
Posted by: The Monster at August 28, 2007 12:24 PMThat's a pretty boring, disingenuous attempt at rebuttal.
The presence of EFP factories in southern doesn't prove that fully assembled EFPs or EFP components are coming from Iran. It doesn't even disprove allegations that those two things ARE coming from Iran.
So your point number one is completely invalid and that was a pretty dishonest argument you made, from which you based some probably accurate conjecture but managed to arrive at yet another logically flawed, invalid conclusion.
It's pretty funny how you then give a lecture on journalistic ethics. Funny, though, since journalists are supposed to report the events of the story. The who, what, when, where, why, and how. Not shape a narrative, which is what you want Mr. Totten to do.
Second, more flawed logic. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is part of the Islamic State of Iraq. The ISI is an umbrella group of up to a dozen or more Sunni terrorist/insurgent/tribal groups, including AQIZ. The top leadership of the ISI is dominated by AQIZ. Mr Totten is in a Sunni-dominant, if not Sunni-exclusive area, and it would be appropriate to label any suspected terrorist as being a part of the ISI which is basically at this point interchangeable with Al Qaeda. It's saying the same thing.
You also misrepresented Captain Nero's remarks. Captain Naro did not say that she suspects 50% of Iraqi police are al-Qaeda in the entirety of Iraq. From the context it is clear that she meant in her area of responsibility.
All in all, your talking-down fails. Try again troll.
Posted by: chaos at August 28, 2007 12:39 PMDan,
They may be assembling the EFPs in Iraq, but the materials are coming from Iran. We were catching them coming across the border when I was there two years ago.
Michael,
Great job. You and Michael Yon are doing some of the best reporting coming out of Iraq these days.
Posted by: chris at August 28, 2007 01:04 PMMike,
You sensed that the Iraqi Police Colonel Hameed was being insincere when he welcomed you in. That is a small red flag.
If he did not seem to care about his picture, I would think that this is a pretty good indicator that he is not afraid. If so, then we have to ask ourselves the question, "why?" The most likely reason is that he does not believe himself to be a target. This is very suggestive to me. He would not naturally think of himself a target if he was an infiltrator. Therefore, this is another red flag.
In addition, his words were meant to make one think that he fears death. Whenever the substance of a person's words conflict with the person's emotional state, that is a pretty good indicator that he is trying to deceive you. This is another large red flag. If he wants you to think that he is afraid of terrorist when he is not, then this is a pretty good indicator of why he is lying.
If he is an infiltrator, then he will not want you there. Therefore, all of the red flags point to infiltration.
My friend, I am pretty certain you stood face to face with a infiltrator.
Posted by: JBP at August 28, 2007 01:18 PMThere is some real truth to all of that. I miss that drive from Taji to Mushadah, all the constant IED's. Working with the EOD team in the area to clear them on a daily. You get used to the useless militants firing at you here and there.. But something you never get used to is the coward sitting behind the bushes with a battery or phone in hand attempting to trigger your demise. Many thanks to 172nd Stryker teams for finding that huge mortar cache behind the MOSQUE in Mushaduh. We were getting hit every single day there, and certain commanders refused to believe the MOSQUE had anything to do with it.
As for the Iraqi Army, and Iraqi police, perhaps there is alot to learn there. Absolute Corruption, Absolutely Corrupts.
Posted by: Jared Young at August 28, 2007 01:21 PMMr. Totten,
Thank you for your reply.
You're too suspicious, I think. Individuals may lie to me, but the entire Army doesn't lie. It has too many diverse people in it to pull something like that off even if the brass wanted to.
You bet I am too suspicious. I saw my country be led into an inappropriate war in 2002, even when the evidence did not require us to go to war. I'm seeing the same thing happening again. All of this talk about Iran being some bad guy against us is not quite fully accurate, or at least does not show you the entire picture of the violence brought upon our soldiers in Iraq.
Take for example the assertion that Iranian EFPs are killing Americans. Let's look at a couple of points about this. What purpose would it serve the Iranians, who had assisted the Americans on so many numerous occasions against Al-Qaeda and in Afghanistan to goad the Americans into a wider conflict? What purpose does it serve us to continually blame the Iranians when we don't show the evidence for the accusations? It doesn't matter if this or that evidence is classified. In fact, because they are classified makes them far more suspect. One has to wonder why we're so afraid of actually showing hard evidence. If we're sure, then we shouldn't be concerned. After what has happened these past six years, the most likely reason for the evidence being kept "classified" is because it ISN'T hard evidence, and if it were to come to light, it would actually undermine the pre-conceived notion that Iran is our enemy. We can't have Americans think that Iran really isn't an enemy. Because we have to go to war with them. It's in the script. It's how it should be.
Going back to the larger picture, the continual focus on Iran distorts the fact that most Americans are being killed by Sunnis who end up being funded and supported by our bestest allies in the Middle East, the Saudis. I bet more Americans are killed by Saudis than are killed by Iranians. Yet we don't even dare discuss talking about war with them. Why not? If the impetus for war with Iran is mere accusations that they provide EFPs to Shi'ites then why not use the same standard with Saudis? I bet you if we focused as strongly on Sunnis as we do on Shi'ites and their connections with Iran, we would be quite shocked at how high up the ladder in the Saudi government the support of Sunni insurgents goes. But still we would not war with them. Why not?
All of this is a mere smokescreen. We WANT war with Iran. Whether or not they are helpful to us. Whether or not they are giving Shi'ites EFPs. We're looking for the slightest excuse to attack them.
How easily we have forgotten that the Iranians were quite supportive of our actions in Afghanistan, to the point that the Bush administration went out of its way to DOWNPLAY that support! Why? Don't we want peace? Why do we need to fight Iran? What purpose does it serve us? Do people on the right even ponder these questions? Or are they just playing a live video game where immediately when an "enemy" shows up you point your gun and shoot?
Posted by: Dan at August 28, 2007 01:45 PMDan,
I find your comments disingenuous and tedious.
Posted by: joshlbetts at August 28, 2007 02:18 PMDan, I don't know anybody in their right mind who wants a war with Iran. That said, I don't know any serious person — democrat or republican, or even the French these days — who wants to give the Iranian regime a free pass and ignore all of their trouble making and saber rattling.
Let's pretend you are a decision maker. What do you think should be done about Iran? Why do you find it so hard to believe that the Iranians might have an interest in harming our troops in Iraq?
Posted by: Zak at August 28, 2007 02:29 PMMichael,
You open with a quote from Major Garcia about how fearful the locals are of Al Qaeda, and proceed to write about how their presence in this area has rendered it more dangerous than Baghdad. Then this:
“No one fires off EFPs in the area?” I said, referring to the unstoppable molten copper penetrators.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s just Al Qaeda here.” Sunni insurgents and terrorists don't have access to the Iranian-made weapons.
“There’s a lot of harassment,” Captain Naro said, “and not a lot of competence.”
I'm trying to reconcile these seemingly contradictory portrayals. What am I missing?
Thanks.
Posted by: Andy S. at August 28, 2007 02:37 PMMichael - Great post as usual. I always enjoy your insight.
Now on to Dan, and his obvious agenda. O.K. Dan, I know the drill.....the evil BushCO drug the USA into an illeagle war....blah blah blah. Here are some quotes from your side of the aisle prior to us going over there.....
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear.
We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"Iraq is a long way from USA but, what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.Constitution and Laws, to take necessary actions, (including, if appropriate,
air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction
programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
Where is your outrage and suspicions here?? I'll eagerly await your reply. (Insert sound of crickets.)
Now on to the drivel you wrote about Iran HELPING us in Afghanistan???? HUH??? I must ask for some sources here Danno. (And the KOSkiddies and Huffington are NOT reliable sources.) Linky linky please.
I don't want another war with anyone, but mad man running Iran must be stopped. Hopefully by the very population that he oppresss.
You really need to take off your blinders.
Posted by: CJ at August 28, 2007 02:53 PMNow on to the drivel you wrote about Iran HELPING us in Afghanistan???? HUH??? I must ask for some sources here Danno.
How about the State Department?
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said June 13 there is widespread concern in the administration of a “shift” in the policy of the Iranian government “from either benign, neutral, to somewhat helpful in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 2001, 2002, to something quite different that does not promote stability in Afghanistan.”Posted by: Creamy Goodness at August 28, 2007 03:04 PM
Dan, you seem to be sincerely presenting your position and not just trolling for a fight, so I hope you will indulge me in an equally thoughtful (and respectful) rebuttal.
"I saw my country be led into an inappropriate war in 2002, even when the evidence did not require us to go to war."
Although the invasion of Iraq was in 2003, I will assume this is the "inappropriate war" to which you refer, since that is the topic at hand. Like many others, I do not see out engagement in Iraq as a separate distinct war but more as a campaign in the larger war against Islamic totalitarianism (unfortunately labeled as GWOT). Long term success in this war will require either killing lots and lots of folks in the Middle East or changing the sociopolitical environment that allows the Islamists to breed and grow terrorists. Starting this change in Iraq was one of the clearly stated goals in our removal of Saddam long before the first US boot touched Iraqi soil. In fact, before the "Bush lied" folks latched onto the "no WMDs" mantra, they had previously derided this goal as unrealistic. I have always viewed it as the better alternative to waiting until the choice was to either kill a hell of a lot more Muslims than anybody wants or capitulate.
I will also assume that your implication of insufficient evidence directly relates to the WMD issue. First, contrary to popular concensus, while a key issue and greatly hyped by the administration prior to the invasion, they were never presented as the sole reason to go in. That said, however, the evidence available before March 2003 was sufficient to convince a majority of the global intelligence agencies and governments. So much so that the assumed use of these weapons was actually used as an argument against invasion. While I can give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you never believed they posed a threat, I can not fault the President for taking the best information available to him and concluding that the potential risks involved with onvading Iraq were less than the potential risks involved with allowing an avowed enemy of the US to remain in control of the presumed assets and capabilities of Iraq given both the known terrorist contacts Saddam had and his tendency to act impetuously and irrationally.
"All this talk about Iran being some bad guy against us is not fully accurate"
How old are you? Iran has been chanting "Death to America, the Great Satan" for the past 30 years, long before even Gulf War I in 1991. Since the rise of the IRI they have been a very vocal and proud "bad guy". Who do you think blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut? This is not some new idea invented by the White House over a long weekend.
"What purpose would [killing US forces with EFPs] serve the Iranians"
The Iranians don't want us in Iraq for two big reasons: it impedes their ability to attain control over their government and create an even bigger powerbase for them, and; it allows our forces to be within rapid striking distance of Iran. So, based upon their study of history in South East Asia, their experiance in Beirut in 1983 and witnessing the current immitation of Sir Robin ("run away, run away") being done by many of the most vocal in the US, they know that killing US service members in spectacular explosions is a good way to get Yankee to go home.
"[M]ost Americans are being killed by Sunnis ... funded [by] ... the Saudis."
Actually, if you look at only US casualties, EFPs haev become a significant source. Now, I will agree that more Iraqi civilians are being killed by Saudi-funded Sunnis than Iranian-funded Shiia. This is primarilly, again, designed to create the impression you just stated, helping to drive our retreat.
"I bet more Americans are killed by Saudis then are killed by Iranians. Yet we don't even dare discuss talking about war with them. Why not?"
I will assume part of this question is really "why focus on Iran rather than KSA?" For one, perhaps you should listen to what Iran itself says and is doing. Between speeched against the Great Satan (i.e. US) and the Little Satan (i.e. Israel) and how they will wipe Israel off the map Iran has nearly driven itself to the verge of bankruptcy in developing nuclear weapons. Given your scepticism at Saddam's WMDs (incidentally, there is a lot of material that UNSCOM physically sighted and inventoried that has still not been accounted), I'll not require you to believe the US administration but meerly point out that, once again, global concensus holds that Iran is, indeed, working toward nuclear weapons as evidenced by the ongoing diplomatic efforts by UK, France, Germany and others. KSA, on the other hand, had neither expressed nor demonstrated traditional military intentions. I'll agree all day long that there are a lot of US enemies in KSA that are buying a lot of bullets and explosives for the bad guys, but I'll just repeat what Bush said, that this war is being fought on many different fronts and in many different ways and that addressing these financial issues does not require traditional military action. Additionally, KSA is home to two of Islam's holiest sites. For a crowd that usually derides "the right" and this administration in particular as lackign nuance and being culturally insensitive, I find it ironic in the extreme to hear any discuss KSA and military invasion from them.
"We WANT war with Iran. We're looking for the slightest excuse to attack them."
What we want is irrelevent. Iran declared war on us in 1979, just as Al Queda declared was on us in 1993. We just didn't take them seriously, despite several significant attacks by both, until 9/11. Some still do not take them seriously, operating in denial of all available evidence. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying "we're at war so the bombing will start in five minutes." What I am saying is that not taking Iran's words and actions at face value and doing what is prudent and neccesary to counter them and their threat to US interests only helps put us closer to another 9/11 like event, either here or, more likely in Iran's case, against US ally Israel. Despite your "evil military-industrial" meme, neither I nor anyone else I know in the military wants to fight Iran. We do, however, appreciate the need to be ready and willing to fight, if needed. Remember, a key factor in Saddam's noncompliance with UNSCR1441 was his belief that US would be unwilling to take action without UNSC backing.
"Do people on the right even ponder these questions?"
Do people on the left just automatically assume that "people on the right" are blood thirsty automatons hell bent on hegemony and power with no logical thought applied?
Posted by: submandave at August 28, 2007 03:30 PMCreamy Goodness,
Thank-you for the link. Much appreciated. However, the manner in which Dan states "How easily we have forgotten that the Iranians were quite supportive of our actions in Afghanistan, to the point that the Bush administration went out of its way to DOWNPLAY that support!" is mis-leading.
quite supportive vs. from either benign, neutral, to somewhat helpful is a bit of a leap in my book.
In either case, specifically how was Iran being helpful? I wish the state dept. would have elaborted upon that.
I actually agree with Dan on one point. The house of Saud is as dangerous if not more so than Iran. The major difference is that the Saudi's are trying to destroy us from with in, while Iran makes their intentions well known.
Posted by: CJ at August 28, 2007 03:30 PMDan,
You bet I am too suspicious. I saw my country be led into an inappropriate war in 2002, even when the evidence did not require us to go to war.
Apparently you didn't get the memo that Saddam sent out explaining that he was killing anyone who might possibly be spying on Iraq. Or perhaps your copy got put down the plastic shredder along with an innocent Iraqi. Dozens of people died trying to get us accurate information on what was going on in Iraq before the war, but they mostly failed to provide us anything definitive. Your assertions defile the memory of those who died trying to tell us what was going on in Iraq, and those who died to keep the rest of the country terrified.
Maybe it's because I have friends who were political prisoners under Saddam, abused regularly and tortured often for no crime other than their existence that your assumptions irritate me so much. You appear to have no concept of what it is to live in fear. We had bad intelligence because we were trying to get information out of an intelligence black hole. How many people would you look in the eye and send to their deaths to make sure that the posturings of Saddam Hussein were false?
You are insisting on a level of integrity from others that you do not appear to possess yourself. This is another reason why your endless objections to this war are tiresome in the extreme. Skepticism is a fine attribute in moderation, but when it repeatedly blocks effective action and actively ignores suffering, it resembles cowardice too closely to be distinguished.
If there had been a few thousand anti-war activists dead in Saddam's prisons I would be willing to give them the same credit I do those who worked to overthrow the fascist regime in Iraq.
We had imperfect intelligence. Get over it.
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at August 28, 2007 03:38 PMHey Monster
That was great, awesome and fantastic.
Get Dan off everybodies lawn!!!!!!
Micheal
Once again great job. Different than usual but it sounds like you are in a different situation.
before anyone writes yes i know that it is "everyone's lawn"
Posted by: paul at August 28, 2007 04:26 PMFor the record Dan, there is no doubt for those of us who have been there about EFPs and their origins.
And to Micheal, I hope you realize that my good friend Bob Woodruff was hit by an IED just 500 yards from where you were in this article....
Posted by: John at August 28, 2007 04:55 PMThank you, Michael for your bravery and living to tell Americans with guts, honor, and above all else a rising need for our military to be victorious, about successess and disappointments in Iraq. We have our sectarian violence within U.S. borders so it comes as no surprise that there is sectarian violence in Iraq. Let truth, no, let unwavering human spirit prevail in the coming months both here and abroad.
Dan, socialism is for sheep. Free market economies led by responsible(one could hope) democratic governments is our world's future. If you choose to embrace totalitarian ideals and elitist-oppressive views of everyone around you who doesn't "fit the bill", then thank a soldier next chance you get, for securing your right to be a facist-elitist-oppressor.
Thanks again Michael, I will check back now and again to see new Iraq stories you wrote.
Be safe out there, man. You have bigger balls than I do, flirting with IEDs.
Posted by: Nate at August 28, 2007 05:35 PMZak,
Let's pretend you are a decision maker. What do you think should be done about Iran? Why do you find it so hard to believe that the Iranians might have an interest in harming our troops in Iraq?
First of all, they really don't have a reason to harm our troops. Think about it. By our invasion of Iraq, we've done what they couldn't do in the 1980s, and that was to repel an attack by a Sunni dictator, one Saddam Hussein. By our invasion of Iraq, we have given Iranians the country through the Shi'ites. By our invasion, Iran has more power and influence in Iraq. It doesn't make sense for them to want to escalate the conflict further. They are far more patient than we are.
However, on the other hand, from their point of view, they see the United States acting like quite a bully towards them. It would be foolish of them not to respond in kind to save face. Think about it, if a bully approached you back in your high school days, what would you do? Cower to him? If you did so, he would own you. What if you stood up to that bully? America is acting very bullish right now, a strutting cock that cannot control its temper. This is very immature of us and self-defeating.
What would I do about Iran? I would be far more respectful of them that I have been. I would understand that Iran is not monolithic. I would also understand that Iran's population is very young and the young are generally very much against the old establishment. They are also nationalistic. If my actions threaten their livelihood, I know they will circle their wagons and protect their own before they jump ship. There is no need to make Iran an enemy. They are not our enemy. It's actually pretty ironic, because Americans tend to be quite forgetful about things (for example, I bet if we did a survey about who knows about Operation Ajax, it would be quite a low number) but one thing many Americans do not forget is the hostage standoff 30 years ago. They're stuck in that moment. They can't let it go. For some reason, we must get our revenge. Illogical as that is, that's the rationale behind those who favor war with Iran.
We need not foment a larger regional conflict between Sunnis and Shi'ites. It is self-destructive and benefits no one. The answer to peace in the Middle East is, well, peace! Not War!
submandave
Although the invasion of Iraq was in 2003, I will assume this is the "inappropriate war" to which you refer, since that is the topic at hand.
First off, I thank you for being respectful. I'm not a troll. Yes, I am referring to the war that began in 2003. I purposefully wrote 2002 because that's when the war was sold. I was highlighting that 2007 is becoming eerily like 2002 all over again.
Long term success in this war will require either killing lots and lots of folks in the Middle East or changing the sociopolitical environment that allows the Islamists to breed and grow terrorists.
That's a noble and worthy goal, but how exactly does one create a new environment in which Islamists will NOT breed and grow terrorists? Evidence and testimony points to our actions in Iraq having the very opposite effect you apparently desire. It was Porter Goss who testified to Congress in February 2006 that the war in Iraq was the biggest recruiting tool Islamists were using to get more recruits. The war also is a perfect training ground, to hone those terrorist skills. Exactly how does the creation of an environment of death and violence stop the breeding of those who master in death and violence?
I will also assume that your implication of insufficient evidence directly relates to the WMD issue. First, contrary to popular concensus, while a key issue and greatly hyped by the administration prior to the invasion, they were never presented as the sole reason to go in
No one believes it was the sole reason we went to war, but it was the ONLY reason that pushed enough people over the edge to support the war.
That said, however, the evidence available before March 2003 was sufficient to convince a majority of the global intelligence agencies and governments. So much so that the assumed use of these weapons was actually used as an argument against invasion.
Do you remember a press conference Colin Powell had in February 2001 with the Egyptian prime minister? This is what Colin Powell had to say about Iraq and their WMD threat:
And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq…
Was he wrong? Condoleezza Rice said a very similar thing in July 2001. Both comments of course come before 9/11. But as Jon Stewart said so clearly recently not everything changed after 9/11. The space time continuum did not change. The sun still rose at the time it was to arise. What changed after 9/11? WE DID. Not Saddam. Not Germany. Not anybody else. We changed. And unfortunately not for the better.
they know that killing US service members in spectacular explosions is a good way to get Yankee to go home.
Hmmm, but wouldn't 9/11 change that perspective? After all the most spectacular terrorist attack in the history of the world has made America strike out at two nations, threaten two others, and who knows how many more are in the wings. It seems that it isn't spectacular explosions that will drive Americans away, but rather the slow trudge in the mud towards no real clear objective. Muddy up Americans' view of the mission works far better to reduce support rather than spectacular attacks.
Americans haven't turned against the war because of the amounts of soldiers dead. Americans have turned against the war because we've so botched the occupation that there is no end in sight. Why should we continue having our soldiers die for a mission that has no end? What's the point in that? And please don't tell me the end is six months away, or even nine years away (General Petraeus' new favorite time). He does not see the end. He can only assume. And it is unfortunate, because we really don't have the soldiers to see a mission through for nine more years.
This is primarilly, again, designed to create the impression you just stated, helping to drive our retreat.
Designed by whom? By Iranians? Iranians are in no way funding Sunni insurgents. So it isn't Iranians who are creating "the impression [I] just stated, helping to drive our retreat." And Al-Qaeda in Iraq is not working in conjunction with the Iranians. Both sides want Americans gone, true, but both sides also want each other gone. So when you state something like this, exactly who is designing things for our retreat?
KSA, on the other hand, had neither expressed nor demonstrated traditional military intentions.
Really? Then why do they have the HIGHEST military spending in the Middle East? Last numbers I saw has the KSA at $27 billion annual military budget. Both Iran and Israel lag far behind at about $9 billion each. There is no doubt who is the real military power in the Middle East. It is Saudi Arabia.
For a crowd that usually derides "the right" and this administration in particular as lackign nuance and being culturally insensitive, I find it ironic in the extreme to hear any discuss KSA and military invasion from them.
I'm actually not advocating war with Saudi Arabia. I'm merely pointing out the ridiculous rationales from the right on war with Iran. The rationale is that since Iran is funding and supporting Shi'ites who fight us, we must attack and destroy Iranians. Well, Saudis fund and support Sunnis on a far grander scale, yet we're bestest of buds with the very people who fund the men who kill our soldiers. That just doesn't make any sense, so I'm curious why we don't hear war talk from the right towards Saudi Arabia. I'm not advocating that position, but I'm showing that the rationale behind warring with Iran is not based on their support of Shi'ites in Iraq. That's merely an excuse. The rationale is deeper, and leads back to the events of 30 years ago. Some people just can't let go of the past.
Iran declared war on us in 1979
No they did not. But if deposing a puppet government we installed is called declaring war, then I can surely claim that we declared war on them back in Operation Ajax when we deposed a democratically elected leader. So really this "war" is sixty years old and begun by us. Surprise surprise.
Now I shouldn't mock like that, but really, in the last century, how many wars was Iran involved in and how many wars was America involved in? We really are a violent people, so it is very disingenuous of us to go around the world and self-righteously claim this nation or that nation is bad because they are violent.
Despite your "evil military-industrial" meme, neither I nor anyone else I know in the military wants to fight Iran. We do, however, appreciate the need to be ready and willing to fight, if needed.
I do know this difference. I have no problem with defending my nation, but aggressive preventive warfare is not defending this nation. It undermines our defense. It weakens us rather than strengthens us. Can you see this?
Do people on the left just automatically assume that "people on the right" are blood thirsty automatons hell bent on hegemony and power with no logical thought applied?
It is hard to answer this question honestly without saying "yes." Because we really think that you guys have not thought this through very carefully.
For example, just what kind of military action do you support against Iran? An airstrike? What happens if innocent Iranian civilians happen to die in that airstrike? You going to claim them as just "collateral damage?" Have you thought through just what the response from the whole rest of the world, not to mention Iran, would be if we were to kill innocent Iranians who had nothing to do with our grievances?
Just how ready would we be if Iran decided that to counter that airstrike they would invade Iraq and take over the country? What would we do? Let the Saudis counter by invading Iraq as well? Just how does that solve the problem of not letting Iraq become a regional war?
I honestly ask if you guys really have thought this through carefully.
Posted by: Dan at August 28, 2007 06:06 PMPatrick,
You appear to have no concept of what it is to live in fear. We had bad intelligence because we were trying to get information out of an intelligence black hole. How many people would you look in the eye and send to their deaths to make sure that the posturings of Saddam Hussein were false?
When you go to war, no excuse is good enough if you are wrong. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. You better be damn well sure you know your stuff before taking the big plunge.
Posted by: Dan at August 28, 2007 06:08 PM I enjoyed this story for its "man on the street" point of view, which is almost completely lacking in American print and TV news. It seems apparent that the U.S. Army brass is out of new ideas on how to speed up progress in Iraq.
One suggestion, which works at corporations and other large organizations, is to have a few Generals essentially do what Mr. Totten did. They should anonymously go out and live with a platoon here and a squad there, to see first hand what is working and what does not work. Gradually, new ideas for improving things faster will become obvious to them. They can then return to headquarters and order the appropriate plans be made to execute the new idea(s).
Nothing beats first hand observation, and talking to the people who work "where the rubber meets the road". I know that Generals are supposed to stay at headquarters, surrounded by lots of security, but that isolation from street-level interaction makes them dependent on agendas that do not have much to do with real progress, and almost completely cuts them off from street level information, other than dry statistics and the like.
Thanks for the excellent article Mike. In this world "sixty second" news cycles, in-depth reporting like yours is a breath of fresh air. Stay safe and keep up the great work.
Posted by: John at August 28, 2007 07:22 PMDan: Regarding military action against Iran:
Read "A Dose of Reality for the Realists" by J.R. Dunn (Real Clear Politics - 11/22/06) which refers to a plan of action by Arthur Herman "Getting Serious About Iran: A Military Option" (commentarymagazine.com - 11/06)
It does not involve invasion or occupation, as in Iraq. Probably could be called Shock/Awe2.
Posted by: Tom at August 28, 2007 07:36 PMDan,
When you go to war, no excuse is good enough if you are wrong. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. You better be damn well sure you know your stuff before taking the big plunge.
When has this ever happened in world history? When has this ever happened in US history? Why are you asking for immaculate understanding before undertaking a war? How many genocides are you willing to excuse to avoid imperfect wars?
Let us look at this differently, assume for a moment that we have marginal knowledge at best of what is going on inside Iraq in 2002. How would you explain the nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks on the US and its allies if we had massively underestimated Saddam's capabilities?
You are asking for a degree of perfection unavailable on this earth before making serious decisions. What benefit is it to our nation and our civilization to become paralytic with fear and indecision?
Do you acknowledge that there are enemies of our nation and our civilization trying to harm us?
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at August 28, 2007 07:40 PMReliapundit, you are banned. Never post here again.
Your comments will continue to be deleted if you refuse to comply.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at August 28, 2007 07:56 PMWhen you go to war, no excuse is good enough if you are wrong. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.
Dan - Under what conditions would you trust the American military and the American government to go to war?
Posted by: mary at August 28, 2007 08:31 PMDan,
The ability of liberals to forget history and relevant facts when it is convenient to their argument, never ceases to amaze me.
Iran, Iraq, and indeed Saudi Arabia, are oil-rich nations whose wealth is being funneled into regimes of oppression, murder, and terror.
I am not going to provide references, because you can easily google all the relevant facts for yourself.
Iran's Islamic fanatics kidnapped 52 Americans from our embassy there and held them captive for 444 days. One of those kidnappers, is now the President of Iran.
Iran routinely arrests political dissidents, and high-level ministers are accused of murdering dissidents in addition to jailing them. (from Human Rights Watch)
Saddam came to power in Iraq through murderous purges inside his own Baath party.
Saddam and Iran went to war over border oil disputes, a war in which over one million people on both sides died, in which Iran sent boys as young as 12 to be slaughtered on the front lines (and liberals accuse the US of "going to war over oil").
Shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam invaded Kuwait, also over oil. (Are you detecting a theme here?) The Iraqi army intentionally murdered, raped, and robbed non-combatants - again in violation of international law, in case you were wondering.
Iran recently kidnapped British naval officers operating in internationally-recognized Iraqi waters and held them without charge for several weeks.
Iran is funding Palestinian and other terrorist groups with hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which money was used to: wage Hamas' 2006 summer war against Israel, kill innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians, create propaganda TV for Hamas which is brainwashing the next generation of strap-on bombers.
You have just heard first-hand from several soldiers who were recently in Iraq that the evidence of Iran manufacturing weapons being used to kill US soldiers is incontrovertible.
Iran is engaged in a nuclear program which could easily be - and likely is - being used to build nuclear weapons. Iran already has regional missile capabilities, and has routinely promised to "wipe Israel from the map". Do you think, maybe, Iran's intentions are not on the up and up?
Saddam put people feet-first into plastic shredders, and videotaped their screaming faces, to send to their families, as examples of what happens to people who opposed him.
Saddam's regime is responsible for what are estimated conservatively to be 400,000 missing Iraqis, who are being dug up from mass graves every day.
Saddam lobbed missles with chemical warheads, in violation of international law, against Saudi Arabia and Israel, non-combatants in the first Gulf War.
I could go on for hours. But you get the point (or do you??)
THESE are the people that liberals like you are content to leave in charge of entire nations, in control of tens of billions of dollars a year of oil wealth, who have proven time and again their willingness to use that wealth to fund war, murder, fear, oppression and brutality, to put their own populations into meat grinders...
And somehow you can sit there and claim that these people are no threat to anyone outside of some arbitrary line on a map? That just because they are inside a line labelled "Iran" or "Iraq" they cannot harm us?
By what fantastic evasion of reality is this belief made possible?
Dan, unlike American liberals, these Islamic fanatics tell us to our face exactly what they are going to do to us - and then they do it. Over and over. How many times do they have to slaughter innocent people before you and your ilk will take them seriously?
Posted by: Jawaid at August 28, 2007 08:51 PMBTW, Michael, FANTASTIC ARTICLE.
Posted by: Jawaid at August 28, 2007 08:55 PMI've often thought that the reason leftists preferentially attack the US and Western states is that there is some prospect that they will care. The autocratic and theocratic ones don't give a flying flatus, so it's not very satisfying to nag them.
But I'm sure I'm being too kind. It's actually ambition to have the same kind of exalted status their buddies in the ME and east of the Urals to the South China Sea enjoy. All those lovely lives to arrange for their own good, like it or lump it!
Not that they'd actually survive Phase II of the Necessary Liquidations stage of the Revolution.
I hear the UN is thinking of offering its good offices to "peacekeep" and help develop "civil society" and "institutions". Great idea, if it weren't for the fact that the nations in charge of the relevant UN agencies are amongst the planet's most degraded borderline failed states. E.g., Zimbabwe.
If the Iraqis can tell shit from shinola they'll say, "No effing way, José!"
Posted by: Brian H at August 29, 2007 01:33 AMWe all know the regime in Iran is evil. much like Saddam's was. But with all due respect to the US military, just what exactly can they do about Iran? An invasion is out of the question while they are still bogged down with 2 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Airstrikes? Commando raids? A blockade or sanctions? All of those only present limited (if any) success. Given the incompetence of the current administration, there is every possibility that taking on Iran will backfire badly and play into the hands of the Iran regime.
Posted by: EmbersFire at August 29, 2007 04:15 AMA blockade would bring down the Iranian government in a matter of weeks. Their economy would disintegrate. Given the incompetence of your posting, there is every possibility that no one will give more than two seconds' thought to it.
Posted by: chaos at August 29, 2007 04:23 AMThat's easier said than done. You can't even secure the borders of Iraq which is 3 times smaller than Iran.
There have been sanctions in place for decades which have only had limited success. The economy of Iraq also disintegrated during the 1990's, but the regime still stood.
A blockade also works both ways. All the Iranians have to do is sink a few ships in the straights of hormuz and it will be them blockading our oil supply.
Try putting more than 2 seconds thought into your reply the next time
Posted by: EmbersFire at August 29, 2007 04:35 AMEmbersfire: We all know the regime in Iran is evil...But with all due respect to the US military, just what exactly can they do...?
Redeploy UNIFIL. They're doing a great job of preventing Iranian weapons from reaching Hizballah. They'd be equally effective at stopping the flow of weapons to Iraqi Shia insurgent groups.
Posted by: Edgar at August 29, 2007 05:12 AMCongradulations, Mike, for apparently going somewhere that hasn't been temporarily pacified by overwhelming force. I guess the army let you go where you wanted to go after all, they must have figured you weren't a large enough audience to tip the media debate. Who knows, perhaps they really do let any media figures who want to go to places like this, and many of them are just too scared and lazy to do it.
I am going to dispute your POV on trusting what you hear from the army, in a minute, though.
On one level, I don't believe in the surge simply because I don't trust the incomplete information I have. Yeah, I know three districts in Baghdad and several large cities in Baghdad are relatively quiet, but the whole tactical critique of the surge before it happened was that it was too small to do more than move the violence around the country. Since the national numbers on violence seem to be the same, combined with the fact that we only get reports from the Happy Places, there's nothing to disprove that theory.
This is the first of your reports that, to me goes beyond the Happy Places. I'm impressed. There's only so much seriousness with which you can give the Happy Place Reports when US deaths/injuries and Iraqi casualties are still off the scale, relative to the rest of the conflict. I'm sure you understand that. This report makes you a little more credible. You're still only one guy, thus the perspective on events is still hopelessly local and random, but at least it seems not to be deliberately slanted. For now, anyway.
For a comparison point, the vast majority of everything readable - public, private, left, right, whatever, is to one level or anotheer, deliberately slanted.
I'm looking at this and mostly I agree:
I knew what he meant. Counterintuitive and contradictory as it may seem, I never felt more optimistic in Iraq than I did when I walked the streets and interacted with average Iraqis.
Most places in the world, people just want to get by. It's the minority with grander plans that shape structural dynamics to screw this up.
There are two other factors at work here:
#1. The Iraqi people have been reduced to a state of dependency. That means that small and easy favors mean a great deal, emotionally to them. This is, counterintuitively, a good time in Iraq to make friends, if you have an army or the equivalent.
#2. To the extent the Americans make themselves the armed force least likely to kill civilians, the more ordinary the person, the friendlier they'll feel, because their goals are the most survivalist. But the nascent power structures will still resent you. Of course, the problem with counterinsurgency is that you never stop killing civilians. I'm not expecting that level of realism, but perhaps that's not your fault.
I'm separating my posts arguing with people on here from my post on your work.
Posted by: glasnost at August 29, 2007 05:55 AM
You're too suspicious, I think. Individuals may lie to me, but the entire Army doesn't lie. It has too many diverse people in it to pull something like that off even if the brass wanted to.
The short counter-response: Pat Tillman. Jessica Lynch.
The second-counter-response: WMD, 2003.
The first short answer: it depends.
Like it or not, the US Army is not a neutral analyst. Petraeus is going to give an optimistic-sounding report because to do anything else is to lose his job, not to mention a personal admission of defeat, which many human beings in this world simply can't do, as this comment section proves every day.
Now, the nice thing about "optimism" is that no lies are involved, only opinions.
Let's leave opinions aside and go to facts for a minute. Mike, 1,000,000 people don't have to lie in unison. They weren't all there. About any given small-unit event, only a few people have to lie, possibly for their own self-interest, and others only have to fail to correct the situation. People who refuse to "slant" are barred from speaking to reporters. PR spokesmen are called in to give vague answers. Things like this are why scandals like Abu Ghirab and Haditha take years to break, and in both cases, they investigations begun only after journalists looked into the situations.
This is a matter of factual record and absolutely can be backed up if someone makes me want to waste the time.
So, how can this be explained in contrast to your perspective?
It doesn't take a million-man-conspiracy to lie. Just a lot of ignorance in a tightly-controlled hierarchy. Nor does it take an organization filled with immoral people - you only need 10%, positioned correctly. And there's always 10%. You can get any organization to lie.
Having said that, I don't think and haven't thought that any Americas you've talked to here are lying to you, whether or not their opinions are correct.
But if you don't think the Army lies, please explain, for starters, Tillman and Lynch.
Mike, there are people associated with the US defense industry that claim that Iran is arming Al-Quieda in Iraq. This contrasts your reporting on the ground, as well as common sense, and a host of other political/military logical factors. It's not impossible, but it's highly unlikely. Of course, if we can feed supplies to Al-Quieda linked groups in Pakistan to go after Iran, then I guess anyone can, but never mind. The point is: there are entire bureaucracies within the military dedicated to manipulating (shaping?) public opinion. Everything needs independent corrobration. I don't know that the people putting this claim in the air are "lying". But I feel it's more likely than not that the assertion isn't true.
The EFP's are a perfect example. I personally believe that Iran is arming Shiite militia groups. Why wouldn't they? They may be ordering attacks against US forces, as well, or they may only be enabling them. But if you ask me, "is the USM capable of making it up?", the answer is, "Yes!".
History, if nothing else, makes this clear! (You know what Tonkin Gulf was, right? Have things fundamentally changed?) Now, they may only present ambiguous evidence, drop strong hints, and leave it to the conservative private machine to jump to the desired conclusions for them. Hey, that's not even a lie, right? It is, however, leading the public to come to incorrect conclusions. That's how we got into this war, and that's quite possibly how we'll get into the next one.
Posted by: glasnost at August 29, 2007 06:20 AMWhy are you asking for immaculate understanding before undertaking a war? How many genocides are you willing to excuse to avoid imperfect wars?
Not immaculate, just not overwhelmingly inaccurate. As for genocides, we started a war in Iraq, where no genocide was occuring, which made it impossible to intervene in a real genocide, in Sudan. How many genocides will you overlook because some punk doesn't like us? Will you invade Venezuela and leave Uzbekistan intact?
The problem with you, Patrick, is that you like to argue in big, sweeping dawn-of-history generalizations that make moral accusations against other people with their every sentence. Surprise, these don't really apply to real life and individual events, like the Iraq War.
Let us look at this differently, assume for a moment that we have marginal knowledge at best of what is going on inside Iraq in 2002. How would you explain the nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks on the US and its allies if we had massively underestimated Saddam's capabilities?
You know, Syria is also not our friend, Patrick, and they have both chem and bio. Is the Bush administration criminally bankrupt for having not invaded them already? Or is Syria.... somehow.. different? Or, perhaps, can we conclude that even bad guys with bad weapons often avoid using them against Americans... out of nothing more complicated than self-interest?
I can't believe you really believe the things you say, which is damning.
What benefit is it to our nation and our civilization to become paralytic with fear and indecision?
How many military actions have we initiated in the past two decades, Patrick? Six or seven? Again, your sweeping generalizations fail to come into contact with reality. Anytime you see attacks on the US homeland going unresponded to, I'll be glad to jump over onto your side of the argument, but until then, you're living in an alternate universe.
Do you acknowledge that there are enemies of our nation and our civilization trying to harm us?
Yes, but they're very weak. How about we quit unintentionally helping them with inaccurate aggression?
Posted by: glasnost at August 29, 2007 06:35 AMSecond, more flawed logic. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is part of the Islamic State of Iraq. The ISI is an umbrella group of up to a dozen or more Sunni terrorist/insurgent/tribal groups, including AQIZ.
You're being as disingenuous here as you accuse Dan of being. The ISI is only one ideological faction of anti-American Sunni insurgency. There are plenty of non-ISI-Sunni insurgents blowing us up. At least, there were a year ago, and people like Mark Lynch at Abu Aardvark are reading there Arabic press releases. I have yet to see any reports I trust asserting the contrary firsthand.
So, conflating the Sunni 'bad guys' with Al-Quieda in Iraq universally is, until proven otherwise, a serious mistake. It's also a chunk of the unwarranted optimism of the surge.
Mike, do you have anything to say about this issue?
On your first issue, I believe that Iran is supplying IED's to Shia militants. The US is also , more likely than not, running black ops inside Iran funding the MEQ, Jundullah, and other groups inside Iran that blow things up and kill civilians. It's a bad state of affairs all around, and I don't think escalation is the way to fix it.
Posted by: glasnost at August 29, 2007 06:44 AMIran is not on the U.S's side in Iraq, nor our friend. Whether they're bad for Iraq itself is a more complicated question - compared to what? Whether they're so bad for Iraq that taking them head-on, using Iraqi territory as a battleground, is good for the Iraqi people, is an even more complicated question, and my short answer is, "no.".
Posted by: glasnost at August 29, 2007 06:50 AMWell now alot of things make more sense! If the typical Arab guy suffers from a shoddy work ethic, a lack of discipline, thinks work is 'beneath' him and tends to petty robbery, it makes perfect sense that their prefered military tactic is the ambush, not the frontal assault.
Trouble for them is...you can't win wars by ambushing people and you can't rule that way either.
Posted by: John at August 29, 2007 07:02 AMAs for genocides, we started a war in Iraq, where no genocide was occuring, which made it impossible to intervene in a real genocide, in Sudan.
The Marsh Arabs and the Kurds. Those attempted genocides were not thwarted, by anyone. You can't call Saddam's treatment of the Iraqis "genocide," but his was one of the nastiest police states in the world, and he killed maimed tortured hundreds of thousands of people.
How many genocides will you overlook because some punk doesn't like us? Will you invade Venezuela and leave Uzbekistan intact?
Are there ongoing genocides in those countries?
This is the "if you can't fix everything at once don't do it at all" position. We were able to depose Saddam, he was worth deposing, deposing him was in teh interest of the whole world and suited our national security interests.
Why do we have to do everything? If we do it ourselves, we are contravening international law. If we let the UN do it, all of a sudden the corruption and inefficacy of the UN is recognized and the US is castigated for not doing it.
Meanwhile no other country has to lift a finger.
Posted by: Yehudit at August 29, 2007 07:10 AMReports when US deaths/injuries and Iraqi casualties are still off the scale, relative to the rest of the conflict
What scale? Even with all the injuries (not deaths) this is the safest war for our armed forces, or anyone's, ever.
As for Iraqis, just compare to Iraq's war with Iran, or Saddam's treatment of his own people. Plenty of statistics in these comments. By any measure those are the larger scale against which our actions should be compared.
Posted by: Yehudit at August 29, 2007 07:18 AMMichael,
Excellent story, good photography. It is a pleasure to read an Iraq story written by someone who is actually there, on the ground, with the troops, on the front lines. Too much of what is presented in the name of news back here in the US of A is written by unsympathetic REMF in air conditioned hotel rooms far from the scene of action. Much of their verbiage is pure opinion, uncontaminated by any kind of fact. Your stories have facts, names, places, and times and tell things that I, for one, hadn't heard before. Thanks for the all good work. It reflects great credit upon you, and upon the US armed forces about which you write.
Thanks Michael for another GREAT informative report from the front lines. Again reminding me of why I like to come here.
"It's also a chunk of the unwarranted optimism of the surge." --glasnost
What proof do you have that it is 'unwarranted optimism' ? Is ANY optimism unwarranted ? If not, what precise degree of optimism is warranted ? When does 'warranted optimism' cross the line to 'unwarranted optimism'? Is 'unwarranted optimism' something like 'irrational exuberance'? Can one get some form of inoculation against it and so be protected from its insidious effects ?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Posted by: dougf at August 29, 2007 08:17 AMI might have a higher degree of optimism for the surge if it involved Shinseki-level troop deployments. Much has been made of how we're finally doing counter-insurgency right under Petraeus — except for the fundamental issue of how many boots we put on the ground. Anybody up for reinstating the draft?
The surge bought a little time. When we start drawing down next year, we'll see how the Future of Iraq forces cope.
Posted by: Creamy Goodness at August 29, 2007 08:41 AMMJT,
The dramatic arc of this essay is masterful. I've reread it several times now, and the way it serves its central theme — the title, the setup, the final revelatory quote which wraps everything up.... it's just brilliant. There might be a few rough spots in the details, but this piece has the strongest skeleton of anything I've read by you.
Posted by: Creamy Goodness at August 29, 2007 09:38 AMDan, you have obviously thought this through quite carefully. The problem with your analysis and conclusions though is your information sources are apparently daily KOS and other left leaning sources. Those sources are fundamentally flawed and hardly objective, yet you arrogantly come here and criticize Mr. Trotten, who is actually in Iraq.
Iran has been and continues to be heavily involved in Iraq, providing the EFP’s is a small part of their involvement. Iraq has been a historic enemy of Iran, and they see this as an opportunity to not only eliminate the threat, but to also gain control. If you disagree you are not paying attention to current events, or your information sources are flawed. This might help educate you:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/28/ap4061550.html
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/World/2007/08/28/4452535.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22325956-5005961,00.html
As far as desiring a conflict with Iran goes, no one in their right mind wants a military conflict, except maybe Ahmadinejad. But then I’m not sure he is in his right mind.
Thank you Mr. Trotten for your hard work, real information directly from Iraq is hard to come by.
Posted by: scott at August 29, 2007 10:18 AMglasnost,
How many military actions have we initiated in the past two decades, Patrick? Six or seven?
Panama 1989: Stayed on the ground, as successful as anything south of the Rio Grande.
Kuwait 1991: Stayed on the ground in Kuwait, almost as successful as Dubai. Left Iraq, allowed two genocides to start, provided air cover to stop them. Situation miserable and inconclusive until 2003.
Somalia 1992: Successful until handed off to the UN, which let local warlords cause a genocide. Feeble political will led to insufficient military force intervention. From Wikipedia: The UN withdrew in Operation United Shield by 3 March 1995, having suffered significant casualties, and the rule of government has not yet been restored.
Haiti: UN directed the starvation of the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere. I'm not certain how many children's deaths my personal participation in the blockade caused, but it was more than a few. Eventually we extorted a surrender from the military government and were able to send troops in opposed only by disease and despair. Disease and despair are entrenched and have terrain advantage in Haiti.
Clinton Tomahawk strikes: I'm ignoring these because our enemies did.
Serbia 1999: Airstrikes for 78 led to the discovery that proper deception techniques can lure away 9 out of 10 precision guided munitions. Eventually troops were allowed into Kosovo, but airpower as a deciding tool took a hit. Kosovo is stable...with NATO troops all over it.
Yemen 2000: Oh yes, we allowed Al Qaeda a pass on this... That worked out alright, didn't it? Restraint and lack of immaculate intelligence stayed their hand, which led to:
New York 2001: Maybe we should have done something about AQ starting eleven months previously.
Afghanistan 2001: Troops on the ground hinder enemy operations in the US to this day.
Iraq 2003: Troops on the ground hinder enemy operations in the US to this day.
What matters is not that military operations were conducted, it is that they were conducted to a successful conclusion. Where we stayed, we won.
I do agree that the world is too big for us to be the only policeman. The countries of the EU have to start stepping up if they want to continue maintaining the lifestyles of their bureaucrats. Korea and Poland are doing their part and more. Japan is just starting to step up to the plate.
Another part of this is that since 2001 the calculus of force of our enemies has been thrown off. It used to be that if they could endure a short tantrum of military exuberance, they could continue on their way without significant change. Part of what annoys me about the anti-war, perfect intelligence faction is that they want us to go back to the policy of irresolute action.
Posted by: Patrick S Lasswell at August 29, 2007 10:27 AMWhat scale? Even with all the injuries (not deaths) this is the safest war for our armed forces, or anyone's, ever.
If I wanted to bother, I could find about twenty-five US military engagements in the Twentieth Century that caused less US casualties than this. I could probably find three or four that caused more.
As for Iraqis, just compare to Iraq's war with Iran, or Saddam's treatment of his own people. Plenty of statistics in these comments. By any measure those are the larger scale against which our actions should be compared.
Give me a break, Yehudit. The "we invaded Iraq for the human rights of the Iraqis" case is in ruins. The Kurdish and Marsh Arab campaigns were between 1983 and 1993, which is the last time ordinary Iraqis suffered tens or hundreds of thousands of violent deaths, until... today.
You get it? If we'd invaded Iraq in 1983, or 1988, to stop mass killings of Iraqi Kurds, you'd have a case. You don't stop mass killings by invading countries who committed them decades later. Shall we invade Cambodia next?
The years between 1993 and 2003... no one who's arguing on these boards has much in the way of statistics, but I'd bet money that Saddamn killed, max out, 10K people in that whole decade. There was no large-scale killing in those years, no military forces. There was a brutal police state, but if you knew much about brutal police states, you'd know it's pretty clear when they're engaging in mass killing and when they're not.
At least 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in the past five years. So your "human rights! Invade Iraq!" campaign, if you have even a small slice of the conscience you trumpet around here so self-righteously, has to somehow account for, in conservative estimates, ten or twenty times as many Iraqi civilians dying in that period as would have otherwise.
That doesn't make Saddamn a good person. I'd cry zero tears if he had choked to death on a fishbone , the sooner the better. It just means that by invading his country and annihilating the power structures, we made the situation worse.
We're trying to make it better now, after several years of messing around, but even with our genuine, albeit under-resourced efforts, no one has any idea when things will be as good, in terms of violent deaths per year, as the 1993-2003 Hussein era.
If you think something's wrong with these numbers, then prove them wrong. Until then, you know exactly where I'm coming from, and you know exactly why. Maybe not every military campaign to depose evil dictators is a crock, but this one will go down in history as a crock. It's too late to change the historical record, although we could save some lives by withdrawing (or, in theory, using overwhelming military force to stop the violence, if only it worked without being as violent as the violence it's supposed to stop).