And now, a summary of the situation in Iraq.
U.S. Sends Strykers Into Baghdad
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')at Jul 29, 12:51 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US commander in Iraq confirmed that a 3,700-strong contingent of American combat troops equipped with armoured fighting vehicles is to be brought into Baghdad.
General George Casey said the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, an Alaska-based unit which has just completed a 12-month tour in northern Iraq, would be deployed to stem a wave of violence in the strife-torn capital.
"This will place our most experienced unit with our most mobile and agile systems in support of our main effort in Baghdad at a decisive time," said Casey, the leader of coalition forces in Iraq, in a statement.
"With the rest of the elements of the plan, this gives us a potentially decisive capability to affect security in Baghdad in the near term," he said.
Baghdad is in the grip of a surge in sectarian violence between rival death squads and militias drawn from the city's Shiite majority and its Sunni neighbours, and Iraqi government forces are struggling to cope.
Earlier this week, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the 172nd Brigade's tour of duty would be extended by 120 days, allowing commanders to increase US troop numbers in theatre to around 130,000.
The unit -- nicknamed the "Arctic Wolves" -- is equipped with the "Stryker," a wheeled light armoured car regarded as nimble enough for fighting in cities but with a greater degree of protection than the Humvee utility vehicle.
US officers would not be drawn on when exactly the brigade would arrive in the city, for security reasons.
There are already around 7,000 US troops deployed to maintain security in the capital and support Iraqi forces.
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Baghdad Situation Deteriorates
Baghdad Situation Deteriorates
by Magus » Sat 29 Jul 2006, 17:35:52
Battle for Baghdad Boils Down to Neighborhoods
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')y MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: July 26, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 25 — The Bush administration’s announcement on Tuesday that it will shift more forces to Baghdad is much more than a numbers game. It reflects a new strategy to reclaim control of the Iraqi capital and a new approach for deploying the troops.
The plan is to concentrate on specific neighborhoods rather than distribute the forces throughout the city, control movement in and out of sectors of the capital and try to sweep them of insurgents and violent militias.
In effect, the scheme is a version of the “ink blot” counterinsurgency strategy of grabbing a piece of terrain, stabilizing it and gradually expanding it. Only this time the objective is not a far-flung Iraqi city or town, but the capital, the seat of the fledgling government and home to some seven million Iraqis.
The plan has risks. It will divert American military police from deploying to Anbar Province, where the insurgency continues to rage. And an increased presence of American troops on the ground in Baghdad, where insurgent attacks have soared, carries the potential of more American casualties.
But Baghdad in military parlance is the “center of gravity” for the larger effort to secure the country.
Restoring security in a capital that is tormented by sectarian strife and lawless militias is such an essential task that American commanders are willing to accept a greater degree of risk elsewhere.
Sending in additional troops is an implicit acknowledgment of what every Iraqi in Baghdad already knows: Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s original Baghdad security plan has failed.
In the past two weeks, more Iraqi civilians have been killed than have died in Lebanon and Israel.
The additional American forces sent here will include units equipped with Stryker armored vehicles, military police and, essentially, what is left of the American military’s reserve in Kuwait.
To demonstrate that the burden is being shared equally, half of the additional 8,000 troops that will be sent are to be American and half Iraqi.
By securing the city a sector at a time, American and Iraqi commanders hope to allow the Iraqi government to restore essential services and build support and legitimacy among an anxious public.
Once the areas are stabilized, the Iraqi police are to be brought in to maintain control, freeing the American and Iraqi military to extend their reach elsewhere. The Iraqi police are to be accompanied by American military police, who will act as advisers and trainers.
The Americans and the Iraqis are likely to start with the easiest sectors, calculating that they need to demonstrate a measure of success before taking on the most contested areas. Even as they expand their control the American and Iraqi forces will maintain the ability to conduct raids in less secure areas of the city.
The war is a contest of moves and countermoves, and the insurgents and the militias that the new American and Iraqi forces will confront can be expected to strike back.
Some of the forces that are now to go to Baghdad, like the military police, were earmarked for volatile Anbar Province in the west. Building a new police force in the Sunni-dominated Anbar region has been a critical part of the American counterinsurgency effort there. Diverting military police to Baghdad will make that already difficult mission in Anbar even harder.
But it is a trade-off that American commanders are prepared to accept. There are 117 police stations in the Baghdad area, which is where the American command has made its main effort.
“Baghdad is truly a must-win,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the senior spokesman for the military command here. “The prime minister has stated it. General Casey has stated it. We have to win in Baghdad. We don’t have an option.”
Mr. Maliki’s original Baghdad security plan entailed the deployment of some 51,000 troops and police officers — including 7,200 American soldiers — and the establishment of new checkpoints.
“In the first 30 days of the Baghdad security plan there was a very slight downtick in the amount of violence,” said a senior American officer, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “Everybody had very high expectations. They thought it would bring it down dramatically.”
But the violence continued unabated and is now at a high. There has been a vicious cycle in which terrorist bombings have encouraged the Shiites to expand their armed militias, which have in turn alarmed the Sunnis, some of whom have made common cause with the most fanatical insurgents. The spiral of sectarian attacks has become more worrisome to the American command than the insurgency.
There is now a realization that the prime minister’s first plan relied too much on untested Iraqi troops and the Iraqi police. Hence, the increase in American troops and the American military police.
The Stryker units that are being sent will provide the military with a wheeled armored vehicle that can maneuver more easily through the city than a tracked vehicle like an M-1 tank or a Bradley fighting vehicle.
For all the talk of new military deployments, however, the plan will depend mightily on parallel moves by Mr. Maliki’s government to improve the lot of ordinary Iraqis. This is, in the final analysis, an approach that will require the careful synchronization of military, political and economic moves — no small challenge for an Iraqi administration that is still struggling to develop its capacity to govern.
The American and Iraqi forces may temporarily stabilize a neighborhood, but the ultimate loyalty of its residents, many of whom have been sitting on the fence even while they have been desperate for security, will reflect the government’s ability to demonstrate that there are tangible benefits for cooperating.
Who Grieves for Dead Iraqis?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')July 28, 2006
BY ANDREW GREELEY
The New York Times reported that during recent months a hundred Iraqis die violently every day, 3,000 every month. In terms of size of population, that is the equivalent of 300,000 Americans a month, 10,000 every day. Yet the typical television clip on the evening news -- an explosion, automatic weapon fire, dead bodies on the streets -- has become as much a cliche as the weather report or another loss by the Cubs. The dead Iraqis are of no more value to us than artificial humans in video games. The Iraqis seem less than human, pajama-wearing people with dark skin, hate in their eyes, and a weird religion, screaming in pain over their losses. Weep with them, weep for them?
Why bother?
Rarely do Americans tell themselves that the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is responsible for this slaughter. In a spasm of arrogance and power, we destroyed their political and social structure and are now unable to protect them from one another. Their blood is on the hands of our leaders who launched a war on false premises, without adequate forces, without plans for the time after the war and then sent in inept administrators who could not provide even a hint of adequate public services.
As Colin Powell, who knows something about war, unlike the president and his top thinkers, told President Bush, "If you break it, you own it." If you shatter a society, it is yours, and you're responsible for it. The United States shattered Iraq and we are responsible for the ensuing chaos that we are unable to control. So a hundred human beings are killed every day, and the most powerful military in the world (as Messrs. Rumsfeld and Cheney insist) is unable to stop the killing.
On most of the standards for a just war, the invasion of Iraq was criminally unjust. Messrs. Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq the day after the World Trade Center attack. They tried to persuade the people that Iraq was somehow involved in the attack. They insisted that the Iraqis possessed weapons of mass destruction. Their arguments for the war, we all know now, were not true.
There was, therefore, no just cause, no attempt to exhaust all possible alternatives short of war, no real hope for victory, no postwar plan, and no ability to prevent the postwar butchery that was easily predictable to those who understood Iraq. The war leaped from slogan to slogan -- weapons of mass destruction, the critical front in the global war on terror, stay the course, freedom and democracy in Iraq. All these slogans are false.
Were America's leaders deliberately lying? Did they really believe that the Shiites and the Sunnis would not murder one another, or did they know better? One must leave the state of their consciences to God. However, they should have known, and in the objective order, they are criminally responsible for the hundred deaths every day. They should be tried for their crimes, not that such trials are possible in our country.
The hundred who die every day are not merely numbers, they are real human beings. Their deaths are personal disasters for the dead person and also for all those who love them: parents, children, wives, husbands. Most Americans are not outraged. Iraqis are a little less than human. If a hundred people were dying every day in our neighborhoods, we would scream in outrage and horror. Not many of us are lamenting these daily tragedies. Quite the contrary, we wish the newscast would go on to the weather for the next weekend.
Is blood on the hands of those Americans who support the war? Again, one must leave them to heaven. But in the objective order it is difficult to see why they are not responsible for the mass murders. They permitted their leaders to deceive them about the war, often enthusiastically. How can they watch the continuing murders in Iraq and not feel guilty?
How would you feel if the street were drenched with the blood of your son or daughter, if your father was in the hospital with his legs blown off?
We cannot permit ourselves to grieve for Iraqi pain because then we would weep bitter and guilty tears every day.
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Magus - Lignite
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Re: Baghdad Situation Deteriorates
by Zardoz » Sat 29 Jul 2006, 17:50:57
And yet, there are those who refuse to call this a "civil war".
Arch-conservative Pat Buchanan said before we invaded that it would be the biggest foreign policy mistake in the history of the nation. Every day, the evidence mounts that he was correct.
Arch-conservative Pat Buchanan said before we invaded that it would be the biggest foreign policy mistake in the history of the nation. Every day, the evidence mounts that he was correct.
"Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
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Zardoz - Expert
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Re: Baghdad Situation Deteriorates
by Magus » Sat 29 Jul 2006, 18:00:07
I found this one line in particular interesting:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he additional American forces sent here will include units equipped with Stryker armored vehicles, military police and, essentially, what is left of the American military’s reserve in Kuwait.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he additional American forces sent here will include units equipped with Stryker armored vehicles, military police and, essentially, what is left of the American military’s reserve in Kuwait.
This means that ALL the American forces in the region are comitted in Iraq, with no backup. Consider the implications of this. Suppose if something should go terribly wrong somewhere...
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Magus - Lignite
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