Sunday Roundup (Mostly Western)
Early Sunday morning round-up of mostly UK coverage of Iraq together with some articles from English language Arabic media as well. British readers might be particularly interested in the articles from The Scotsman which continues it’s tradition of excellent reporting of issues relating to the welfare of British Service Personnel. If you have a friend or relative in the British Army the first place to go to for news is their “British armed forces” section. There’s a long report on the looting of Iraq’s oil wealth. There’s an article by Wesley Clarke on why the “surge” will fail.
It’s only fair to warn you that there’s a lot of material in this posting. But it’s all in a printer friendly format if you want to read it at your leisure :-)
markfromireland
The Observer
The readers’ editor on… images of Saddam’s execution | Comment | The Observer:
We find it difficult to express the depth of our revulsion at the portrayal of Saddam Hussein’s execution on the front page of last week’s Observer’; ‘This comes perilously close to endorsing execution as a form of entertainment’; ‘This was sensationalist journalism of the worst kind. We hold ourselves up as defenders of human rights and yet we degrade its very meaning by indulging in this macabre voyeurism.’
These are typical comments drawn from the 40 letters and emails we have received since last Sunday expressing outrage and disappointment at the decision to devote our front page to a picture of the deposed Iraqi dictator with a noose around his neck, seconds before his death. Read in full::
A last chance for Iraq to save itself from civil war | Leaders | The Observer:
America’s new military strategy for Iraq, which began emerging yesterday, leaves room for a new optimism. Under pressure from Washington to act against the largely Shia death squads that are transforming Baghdad into a charnel house, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that no faction would be able to act with impunity and that the gunmen were facing a massive security clampdown. His comments, coming ahead of the expected announcement by President George W Bush this week that US forces in Iraq will be bolstered by up to 30,000 extra troops, mark an important and decisive moment in Iraq’s recent history. Read in full::
UK Independent
The ‘IoS’ today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years Published: 07 January 2007
So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country’s massive oil reserves.
And Iraq’s oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.
Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as “production-sharing agreements”, or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq’s oil.
PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil producer. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world’s number one and two oil exporters, both tightly control their industries through state-owned companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration, as do most members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Opec.
Critics fear that given Iraq’s weak bargaining position, it could get locked in now to deals on bad terms for decades to come. “Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome,” said Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months.
“Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinise this legislation than most Iraqis,” said Mr Muttitt. “The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had.”
Britain and the US have always hotly denied that the war was fought for oil. On 18 March 2003, with the invasion imminent, Tony Blair proposed the House of Commons motion to back the war. “The oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN,” he said.
[snip]
The Independent on Sunday has obtained a copy of an early draft which was circulated to oil companies in July. It is understood there have been no significant changes made in the final draft. The terms outlined to govern future PSAs are generous: according to the draft, they could be fixed for at least 30 years. The revelation will raise Iraqi fears that oil companies will be able to exploit its weak state by securing favourable terms that cannot be changed in future.
Iraq’s sovereign right to manage its own natural resources could also be threatened by the provision in the draft that any disputes with a foreign company must ultimately be settled by international, rather than Iraqi, arbitration.
In the July draft obtained by The Independent on Sunday, legislators recognise the controversy over this, annotating the relevant paragraph with the note, “Some countries do not accept arbitration between a commercial enterprise and themselves on the basis of sovereignty of the state.”
It is not clear whether this clause has been retained in the final draft.
Under the chapter entitled “Fiscal Regime”, the draft spells out that foreign companies have no restrictions on taking their profits out of the country, and are not subject to any tax when doing this.
“A Foreign Person may repatriate its exports proceeds [in accordance with the foreign exchange regulations in force at the time].” Shares in oil projects can also be sold to other foreign companies: “It may freely transfer shares pertaining to any non-Iraqi partners.” The final draft outlines general terms for production sharing agreements, including a standard 12.5 per cent royalty tax for companies.
[snip]
Iraqi trade union leaders who met recently in Jordan suggested that the legislation would cause uproar once its terms became known among ordinary Iraqis.
“The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors,” their statement said. “The occupier seeks and wishes to secure… energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under conditions of occupation.”
The resentment implied in their words is ominous, and not only for oil company executives in London or Houston. The perception that Iraq’s wealth is being carved up among foreigners can only add further fuel to the flames of the insurgency, defeating the purpose of sending more American troops to a country already described in a US intelligence report as a cause célèbre for terrorism.
America protects its fuel supplies - and contracts
Despite US and British denials that oil was a war aim, American troops were detailed to secure oil facilities as they fought their way to Baghdad in 2003. And while former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld shrugged off the orgy of looting after the fall of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, the Oil Ministry - alone of all the seats of power in the Iraqi capital - was under American guard.
Halliburton, the firm that Dick Cheney used to run, was among US-based multinationals that won most of the reconstruction deals - one of its workers is pictured, tackling an oil fire. British firms won some contracts, mainly in security. But constant violence has crippled rebuilding operations. Bechtel, another US giant, has pulled out, saying it could not make a profit on work in Iraq.
In just 40 pages, Iraq is locked into sharing its oil with foreign investors for the next 30 years
A 40-page document leaked to the ‘IoS’ sets out the legal framework for the Iraqi government to sign production- sharing agreement contracts with foreign companies to develop its vast oil reserves.
The paper lays the groundwork for profit-sharing partnerships between the Iraqi government and international oil companies. It also lays out the basis for co-operation between Iraq’s federal government and its regional authorities to develop oil fields.
The document adds that oil companies will enjoy contracts to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years, and stresses that Iraq needs foreign investment for the “quick and substantial funding of reconstruction and modernisation projects”.
It concludes that the proposed hydrocarbon law is of “great importance to the whole nation as well as to all investors in the sector” and that the proceeds from foreign investment in Iraq’s oilfields would, in the long term, decrease dependence on oil and gas revenues.
The role of oil in Iraq’s fortunes
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves - 10 per cent of the world total. There are 71 discovered oilfields, of which only 24 have been developed. Oil accounts for 70 per cent of Iraq’s GDP and 95 per cent of government revenue. Iraq’s oil would be recovered under a production sharing agreement (PSA) with the private sector. These are used in only 12 per cent of world oil reserves and apply in none of the other major Middle Eastern oil-producing countries. In some countries such as Russia, where they were signed at a time of political upheaval, politicians are now regretting them.
The $50bn bonanza for US companies piecing a broken Iraq together
The task of rebuilding a shattered Iraq has gone mainly to US companies.
As well as contractors to restore the infrastructure, such as its water, electricity and gas networks, a huge number of companies have found lucrative work supporting the ongoing coalition military presence in the country. Other companies have won contracts to restore Iraq’s media; its schools and hospitals; its financial services industry; and, of course, its oil industry.
In May 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), part of the US Department of Defence, created the Project Management Office in Baghdad to oversee Iraq’s reconstruction.
In June 2004 the CPA was dissolved and the Iraqi interim government took power. But the US maintained its grip on allocating contracts to private companies. The management of reconstruction projects was transferred to the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office, a division of the US Department of State, and the Project and Contracting Office, in the Department of Defence.
The largest beneficiary of reconstruction work in Iraq has been KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root), a division of US giant Halliburton, which to date has secured contracts in Iraq worth $13bn (£7bn), including an uncontested $7bn contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure. Other companies benefiting from Iraq contracts include Bechtel, the giant US conglomerate, BearingPoint, the consultant group that advised on the drawing up of Iraq’s new oil legislation, and General Electric. According to the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, 150-plus US companies have won contracts in Iraq worth over $50bn.
- 30,000 Number of Kellogg, Brown and Root employees in Iraq.
- 36 The number of interrogators employed by Caci, a US company, that have worked in the Abu Ghraib prison since August 2003.
- $12.1bn UN’s estimate of the cost of rebuilding Iraq’s electricity network.
- $2 trillion Estimated cost of the Iraq war to the US, according to the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
WHAT THEY SAID
- “Oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people”
Tony Blair; Moving motion for war with Iraq, 18 March 2003 - “Oil belongs to the Iraqi people; the government has… to be good stewards of that valuable asset “
George Bush; Press conference, 14 June 2006 - “The oil of the Iraqi people… is their wealth. We did not [invade Iraq] for oil “
Colin Powell; Press briefing, 10 July 2003 - “Oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50bn and $100bn in two or three years… [Iraq] can finance its reconstruction”
Paul Wolfowitz; Deputy Defense Secretary, March 2003 - “By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies”
Dick Cheney; US Vice-President, 1999 Read in full:
Independent Online Edition > Business News > Iraq poised to end drought for thirsting oil giants:
Iraq poised to end drought for thirsting oil giants
After 35 years, the third-largest reserves in the world are to be opened to American and British companies
By Danny Fortson Published: 07 January 2007For more than three decades, foreign oil companies wanting into Iraq have been like children pressed against the sweet shop window - desperately seeking to feast on the goodies but having no way of getting through the door.
That could soon change.
[snip]
But if the new hydrocarbon proposals pass through their fledgling parliament, the Iraqi people will be forced to share their buried treasure with the West’s oil giants. Read in full:
UK Independent Comment
Independent Online Edition > Commentators >Wesley Clark: Bush’s ’surge’ will backfire:
Wesley Clark: Bush’s ’surge’ will backfire
The rise in troop numbers could reduce the urgency for political effort Published: 07 January 2007
The odds are that President George Bush will announce a “surge” of up to 20,000 additional US troops in Iraq. But why? Will this deliver a “win”? The answers: a combination of misunderstanding and desperation; and, probably not.
The recent congressional elections - which turned over control of both houses to the Democrats - were largely a referendum on President Bush, and much of the vote reflected public dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq. Most Americans see the US effort as failing, and believe that some different course of action must be taken. Most favour withdrawing forces soon, if not immediately. The report of the Iraq Study Group is widely seen as a formal confirmation of US failure in Iraq.
The country’s action there has been the very centrepiece of the Bush presidency. With two years left in office, he would, of course, try to salvage the situation. Many Americans remember the 1975 evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon, with desperate, loyal Vietnamese friends clinging to the skids of the American helicopters. No one wants that kind of an ending in Iraq. And our friends and allies in the region are also hoping for the US to pull some kind “rabbit from the hat”, even if it seems improbable, for a US failure would have grave consequences in the region. Iran, especially, is the beneficiary of a failure, and al-Qa’ida will also try to claim credit.
From the administration’s perspective, a troop surge of modest size is virtually the only remaining action inside Iraq that will be a visible signal of determination. More economic assistance is likely to be touted, but in the absence of a change in the pattern of violence, infrastructure enhancement simply isn’t practical. And if the President announces new Iraqi political efforts - well, that’s been tried before, and is there any hope that this time will be different?
As for the US troops, yes, several additional brigades in Baghdad would enable more roadblocks, patrols, neighbourhood clearing operations and overnight presence. But how significant will this be? We’ve never had enough troops in Iraq - in Kosovo, we had 40,000 troops for a population of two million. For Iraq that ratio would call for at least 500,000 troops, so adding 20,000 seems too little, too late, even, for Baghdad. Further, in a “clear and hold” strategy, US troops have been shown to lack the language skills, cultural awareness and political legitimacy to ensure that areas can be “held”, or even that they are fully “cleared”. The key would be more Iraqi troops, but they aren’t available in the numbers required for a city of more than five million with no reliable police - nor have the Iraqi troops been reliable enough for the gritty work of dealing with militias and sectarian loyalties. Achieving enhanced protection for the population is going to be problematic at best. Even then, militia fighters in Baghdad could redeploy to other areas and continue the fight there.
What the surge would do, however, is put more American troops in harm’s way, further undercut US forces’ morale, and risk further alienation of elements of the Iraqi populace. American casualties would probably rise, at least temporarily, as more troops are on the streets; we saw this when the brigade from Alaska was extended and sent into Baghdad last summer. And even if the increased troop presence initially intimidates or frustrates the contending militias, it won’t be long before they find ways to work around the obstacles to movement and neighbourhood searches, if they are still intent on pursuing the conflict. All of this is not much of an endorsement for a troop surge that will impose real pain on the already overstretched US forces.
There could be other uses for troops, for example, accelerating training for the Iraqi military and police. But even here, vetting these forces for their loyalty has proven problematic. Therefore, neither accelerated training nor more troops in the security mission can be viewed mechanistically, as though a 50 per cent increase in effort will yield a 50 per cent increased return, for other factors are at work.
The truth is that, however brutal the fighting in Iraq for our troops, the underlying problems are political. Vicious ethnic cleansing is under way right under the noses of our troops, as various factions fight for power and survival. In this environment security is unlikely to come from smothering the struggle with a blanket of forces - it cannot be smothered easily, for additional US efforts can stir additional resistance - but rather from more effective action to resolve the struggle at the political level. And the real danger of the troop surge is that it undercuts the urgency for the political effort. A new US ambassador might help, but, more fundamentally, the US and its allies need to proceed from a different approach within the region. The neocons’ vision has failed.
Well before the 2003 invasion, the administration was sending signals that its intentions weren’t limited to Iraq; Syria and Iran were mentioned as the next targets. Small wonder then that Syria and Iran have worked continuously to meddle in Iraq. They had reason to believe that if US action succeeded against Iraq, they would soon be targets themselves. Dealing with meddling neighbours is an essential element of resolving the conflict in Iraq. But this requires more than border posts, patrols and threatening statements. Iran has thus far come out the big winner in all of this, dispensing with long-time enemy Saddam, gaining increased influence in Iraq, pursuing nuclear capabilities and striving to enlarge further its reach. The administration needs a new strategy for the region now, urgently, before Iran can gain nuclear capabilities.
America should take the lead with direct diplomacy to resolve the interrelated problems of Iran’s push for regional hegemony, Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Isolating adversaries hasn’t worked. The region must gain a new vision, and that must be led diplomatically by the most powerful force in the region, the United States.
Without such fundamental change in Washington’s approach, there is little hope that the troops surge, Iraqi promises and accompanying rhetoric will amount to anything other than “stay the course more”. That wastes lives and time, perpetuates the appeal of the terrorists, and simply brings us closer to the showdown with Iran. And that will be a tragedy for not just Iraq but our friends in the region as well.
Retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of Nato, is a senior fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations Source:
Several of Mr Gordon Brown’s friends have, so I read, described government policy on Iraq as being “in a rut”. I would not myself have chosen that as being the most appropriate phrase freely available - it is not, I think, the mot juste - even by taking into account the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s traditional requirement to take one year with another. (Does that still go on? I mean, taking one year with another? It has, I fear, gone the same way as other hallowed features of economic speechmaking, such as the balance of payments.)
Ever since the break-up of the Ottoman empire after the First World War, and the manufacture of a new state under United Kingdom auspices in 1920, there has been trouble of one sort or another. British enthusiasm, such as it was, for what was then the kingdom of Iraq lasted for a few years in the 1920s. School atlases in this earlier period had marked the country red on the map, though it was never formally part of the British empire.
Even in the immediate post-1945 period, there was a split among the printers of atlases: some retaining red, others settling for a red-and-white striped mixture representing the old mandated territories, others again accepting the old position, if, indeed, they had chosen to deviate from their original practices in the first place. There is a lot to be learnt from maps, the more out-of-date the better.The odd thing is that, when Britain possessed more power in the Middle and Near East than it does today, it did not claim any very special relationship with Iraq. Revolutions, restorations, cabals, juntas, pronunciamentos, liberations, constitutions, coups d’état, dictatorships, assassinations: the words are from Evelyn Waugh’s Scott-King’s Modern Europe. All these manifestations caused trouble and even a certain amount of alarm. But they were as nothing compared to what has been brought about by the American and British invasion of 2003.
The course of events was both predictable and in fact predicted. The previous 83 years of admittedly bloodthirsty history had given us nothing like so sanguinary a state of affairs as the invasion has provided.
In the circumstances, it is a little rich, not to say fruity, for Mr Brown or his minions to describe us as stuck in a rut. Would that there were a better rut to go to! If there were, we should be following an independent or, at any rate, a different foreign policy.
[snip]
There is accordingly no real sense whatever in which the Labour Party was deceived into taking the country into the Iraq War. If the party was apparently deceived - as it may have been, up to a point - deceived was what it had decided to be. It is a commonplace of romantic fiction that the lover can find no imperfection or infidelities in the loved one, however unfaithful or imperfect he or she may prove to be in practice - until the point duly arrives for the lover’s illusions to disappear. Even the Liberal Democrats are calling for an inquiry into the war, as are many others of an enlightened disposition.
I completely fail to understand why people are complaining about being deceived when they were not deceived at the time but are merely complaining ex post facto that matters have not turned out as they imprudently expected or foolishly hoped. If Mr Brown is in a rut, it is he who got us there, along with his own party. Read in full:
Geoffrey Lean: Oil. The fast-vanishing drug the world can’t yet live without
Production may peak within a decade, causing massive withdrawal symptoms to the world and its economy Published: 07 January 2007
Say what you like about Dick Cheney, but you can’t accuse him of not giving us fair warning. A year, almost to the day, before he was dubiously elected Vice-President of the United States - while still chairman of the energy giant Halliburton - he gave a riveting insight into the thinking that has since guided the administration’s oil policy.
In a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in November 1999 he shed light on our front-page revelation - that in the wake of the occupation of Iraq, Western companies are to be let loose on its vast, and previously state-owned, oil reserves. Perhaps even more importantly he flagged up an impending crisis that the world urgently needs to grasp - that supplies of oil may be about to shrink alarmingly.
The “basic, fundamental building block of the world economy” was, he warned, in danger of becoming extremely scarce.
Estimates suggested that production from existing reserves would soon decline sharply, by 3 per cent a year, even as world demand for oil grew by 2 per cent. That meant that the world would soon need to be producing “an additional 50 million barrels a day”, more than half as much again as the 82 million now being wrested from the ground.“So where is this oil going to come from?” he asked. His answer: the Middle East was “where the prize ultimately lies”. The problem was that “governments and national oil companies” controlled almost all of the “assets”, and “even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow”.
[Snip]
And it may be that Mr Cheney’s prediction of a 3 per cent annual decline, immensely disruptive as it would be, is indeed, as he said, “conservative”. The head of one giant oil services firm has suggested that production might fall by 8 per cent a year, which would mean that supplies fell by half in just nine years. That, after all, is about what is happening in the British North Sea.
Such a slump could hardly be less than catastrophic to the world economy. All we can do is to pray that the peak will be later, and the downward slope less severe - and embark on a crash programme to save energy and develop renewable sources as fast as possible, something we already urgently need to do to try to control global warming.
Dick Cheney has decried both energy efficiency and renewable sources in the past. It seems he has another plan. And indeed some experts believe that, if peace were miraculously to break out in Iraq and oil production can be miraculously increased, the peak-oil tipping point could be pushed back four or five years. But it would then come just as unrelentingly.
But the Vice-President can be sure of one consolation. In his speech seven years ago he complained that oil was “the only large industry whose leverage has not been all that effective in the political arena”. If ever that were so, six years of two oilmen running the world’s most powerful nation has certainly sorted that out. But whether the world - or Iraq - has benefited, is entirely another matter. Read in full:
The Scotsman
Scotsman.com News - Politics - UK troops’ vehicles fail every day:
THE lives of British soldiers are being put at risk because of the spiralling failure rate of armoured vehicles used in the effort to keep a lid on violence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
New figures released by the Ministry of Defence reveal that the most crucial vehicles protecting troops from insurgent attacks are failing on a daily basis - and the number of complaints made by crews is higher than in the months immediately after Saddam Hussein was removed from power.
Crews from a range of vehicles, including battle tanks and reconnaissance vehicles, reported almost 450 failings in just six months up to the end of last October. At least eight further incidents were deemed so serious that they could have placed personnel in mortal danger.Since the start of the war, Challenger II main battle tanks and Warrior armoured fighting vehicles, the war horses of the British fleet on the ground in Iraq, have shown steep increases in the number of failure reports, with Warrior crews now issuing official complaints about their vehicles more than once a day.
[snip]
MoD officials last night attempted to play down the significance of the new revelations, claiming that the department maintained the highest standards of equipment for the forces. A spokeswoman said many of the faults listed may have been “relatively minor - like a blown headlight bulb”.
But critics last night vowed to use the findings as new ammunition in the long-running argument about the degree of protection provided by Whitehall bureaucrats for forces expected to risk their lives in war zones.[snip]
A spokesman for the British Armed Forces Federation, which represents servicemen and women, said: “If you are fighting heavy engagements against any enemy you need your kit to be up to the highest standards, and if it isn’t we would expect the maintenance operation to be first-rate.”
SCOTTISH war veterans with psychiatric disorders are having to turn to charities for treatment or wait up to two years for help on the NHS, according to support groups.
Former service personnel are suffering psychological trauma after harrowing tours in combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as figures reveal a 22 per cent rise in referrals.Statistics show that 108 servicemen in Scotland have sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the past year, leaving charities struggling to cope.
Combat Stress, a charity which runs an Ayrshire treatment centre for ex-servicemen, has more than 1,000 veterans receiving counselling - ten of whom served in Iraq.
Last night Larry Cammock, chairman of the Gulf Veterans’ Association, said many servicemen had committed suicide because they had not received the specialist help they needed.“These guys are waiting two years for treatment … that’s too long to wait,” he said.
“Suicide is a real problem. There have been 196 suicides from the first Gulf war alone. You’d also be surprised how many veterans end up in jail for violence. These are men who have killed people or seen some terrible things. The pressure builds up and they just blow.”
[snip]
Colonel Clive Fairweather, a former SAS commander, said soldiers had to rely on charities or an overstretched NHS. He said most GPs did not understand PTSD and many servicemen were left on long waiting lists, which increased the severity of their condition. He said: “All warfare comes with a mental health price. At one stage it was taking 12 years for people to come forward and admit they had a problem. Now the average is under a year for those leaving Iraq. Images of warfare on television and in the media can trigger flashbacks which result in more referrals.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said there were no treatment targets for patients with depression in Scotland. However, ministers had set up a mental health delivery plan, aimed at improving the lot of those suffering from the illness. Within the past month, the Executive set aside £100,000 for Combat Stress.
‘If it wasn’t for tablets I’m not sure I’d cope’
FORMER army nurse Andy Black relies on a cocktail of anti- depressants to get him through the day. The drugs take the edge off the nightmares and the flashbacks that have plagued him for 15 years. While serving with the Green Howards, on a UN posting to Cyprus, he witnessed a friend lose his hand when the man triggered a mine while carrying out a job Mr Black had originally been scheduled to do. “I’ll never forget that day. The guilt was enormous because I knew that it should have been me,” he says.
It was not until 1991 that the first signs of post-traumatic stress disorder emerged after he had volunteered for the Gulf war and experienced nightly missile attacks.
But Mr Black waited almost two years to see a specialist and describes his treatment as “shocking”.” I still have suicidal thoughts … if it wasn’t for the tablets I’m not sure how I’d cope.”
UK Times
Brown attacks Saddam hanging - Sunday Times - Times Online:
GORDON BROWN has added to the pressure on Tony Blair to speak out over the execution of Saddam Hussein, saying that the botched hanging was “deplorable”.
The chancellor’s views echo those of John Prescott and will renew calls for the prime minister to condemn the way in which the execution was handled.
Blair refused to comment after returning from holiday in Miami, simply saying he backed the Iraqi inquiry into a leaked video showing Saddam’s death.
Downing Street said Prescott’s comments - in which he described the manner of the execution as “quite deplorable” - were his personal views.
Even George W Bush said last week that he wished the proceedings had “gone in a more dignified way”.Read in full:
UK TImes Comment
One last push and that’s you finished in Iraq, Mr President - Sunday Times - Times Online:
This is the week, we are told, when George Bush will announce positively the last military assault on insurgency in Iraq before he finally loses patience and quits. The so-called surge will supposedly correct the mistake of last year’s Operation Together Forward. Without law and order in the capital the physical and political reconstruction of Iraq is impossible. But since that order cannot, after all, be assigned to Iraqi forces, the Americans must throw another 20,000-30,000 troops into the conflict instead.
I have not heard one remotely plausible game plan for the “Battle of the Surge”. Leaks have indicated that commanders on the ground are strongly opposed to giving the enemy yet more targets. Pentagon chiefs are equally opposed to the cost in men and money of a transient boost in control on the ground. American public opinion and Congress are overwhelmingly against the plan, which Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator, calls “Alice in Wonderland”.
American puppets in Baghdad’s green zone will do as they are told, but the only real enthusiasts are neocon diehards and Tony Blair. They were represented on this page two weeks ago by Frederick Kagan, in a fantasy revival of the 2003 “clear and hold” strategy, which amounts to telling American soldiers to commit suicide.
Leaders contemplating defeat far from the front are always tempted to order “one last push”. Thus did Hitler order the battle of the bulge, Nixon the bombing of Cambodia and Reagan the blasting of the Shouf to cover his retreat from Lebanon. A general must pretend to victory even in the jaws of defeat, or his soldiers will not fight. America has 1m men under arms. Surely they are not to be beaten by a few hundred guerrillas in the suburbs of Baghdad? So Bush will tell them to make one last heave, however pointless. He does not want to share his father’s legacy of cutting and running from Iraq.
[snip]
The idea that such a hellhole can be policed back to normality with an extra 20,000 US troops is absurd. Such a force (which means barely 7,000 on patrol at any one time) would simply disappear into the dust. The insurgency is anyway now entangled with the conflict between Shi’ite and Sunni, claiming hundreds of lives each week and fought by paramilitaries mostly armed by America in a shambles of unaudited theft and fraud.
The only way in which more foreign troops assert any control at present is by “denying the enemy ground” by laying waste to it. In Basra, Britain’s contribution to order has been to flatten the police station. In Anbar province, US counter-insurgency takes the form of wrecking whole settlements from the air, as in Falluja two years ago. According to a Times correspondent who reached Falluja last week, the city is back in the hands of Sunni militias who intend to rename the hospital after Saddam Hussein. What all Iraqis crave is a local policeman they can trust not to kill them. America and Britain have failed to give them even that assurance.
[snip]
If it comes to either state of affairs, no outsiders, regional or global, should meddle. Iraq’s next chapter must be written by Iraqis alone. Outsiders have made this country a byword for arrogant and incompetent interventionism. The West’s 2003 assault on Iraq was unprovoked and justified by no overriding threat to western interests. It was a ghastly, gigantic whim, one to which the British government fully subscribed.
When Blair was asked at a private lunch before Christmas what he had done to restrain US policy in Iraq, he looked baffled. “It’s worse than you imply,” he said with a smile: restraint was not an issue because he agreed with the policy. I assume he also agrees with the surge strategy, apparently the subject of his conversation with Bush on December 29.
So it is no good the Blairites or Gordon Brown or Labour voters or the British people objecting to the impending bloodbath on the streets of Baghdad. It is being done in their name and with their approval. The only good news is that it surely must be the beginning of the end. Read in full:
The Daily Mail
Daughter denied final call to Saddam | the Daily Mail:
The pictures of his execution by balaclava-clad figures - and the taunts that accompanied it - have provoked revulsion around the world.
And today we can reveal the final indignity suffered by Saddam Hussein as he went to the gallows: he was forbidden to take one last phone call from his daughter.
Raghad, 38, told yesterday how she begged the International Red Cross to intervene and press his captors to allow her to say goodbye. “But they wouldn’t let me talk to him. He was probably never even told of my request,’ she said.“All I wanted was to tell him I miss him and love him as a father. My call was not allowed.”
Last night the Red Cross spokesperson for Iraq, Nada Doumani, told The Mail on Sunday: “Raghad called us late last Friday when she heard from lawyers that her father’s personal possessions had been collected. She knew it was the end. We have helped with the delivery of parcels and letters between them over the past two-and-a-half years but this time we could only pass on her request.”
Raghad’s complaint will fuel the controversy surrounding Saddam’s last moments, when spectators called out the name of his enemy Moqtada al-Sadr and urged Saddam to ‘go to hell’. Despite the promise of an inquiry by the Iraqi authorities, the enduring image of the execution is of a baying lynch mob and a dignified, even heroic, Saddam.
Raghad watched her father’s execution on television at home with only her 29-year-old spokeswoman, Rasha Oudeh, for company. Her five young children were sent outside to play with her woman housekeeper.[snip]
Her support for Saddam has resulted in Raghad being named as No16 on the Iraqi authorities’ most wanted list and she can never return safely to her own country.
She embraces the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Amman, living stylishly in a villa funded by the Jordanian royal family, who have promised to protect her, though she is not allowed to participate in public life.She is constantly monitored by Jordanian intelligence and a unit of royal bodyguards surrounds her home and goes everywhere with her.
Yesterday her confidante said: “Saddam’s execution closes the door on her previous life. His trial kept her occupied, running an office near the university where she could meet regularly with lawyers.[snip]
Raghad has been heard to fantasise that she could be some sort of glamorous leader in exile, longing to lead her people but forbidden by cruel circumstances.
But she has no support among Iraq’s Sunni tribesman, who respect her only as Saddam’s daughter. Raghad tells those around her: “I want us all to live peacefully. I want a normal life.” But because of her father’s legacy, and her unflinching loyalty to him, no one believes that is possible. Read in full
Robert Fisk: The whole bloody thing was obscene
Butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn execution
Published: 06 January 2007
The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003. Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to “go to hell” that the hell was now Iraq.
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,” Malcolm reported of the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth. Or, as a good friend of mine in Ballymena said to me on the phone a few hours later, “The whole bloody thing was obscene.” Quite so. On this occasion, I’ll go along with the voice of Protestant Ulster.
Of course, Saddam gave his victims no trial; his enemies had no opportunity to hear the evidence against them; they were mown down into mass graves, not handed a black scarf to prevent the hangman’s noose from burning their neck as it broke their spine. Justice was “done”, even if a trifle cruelly. But this is not the point. Regime change was done in our name and Saddam’s execution was a direct result of our crusade for a “new” Middle East. To watch a uniformed American general - despite the indiscipline of more and more US troops in Iraq - wheedling and whining at a press conference that his men were very courteous to Saddam until the very moment of handover to Muqtada al-Sadr’s killers could only be appreciated with the blackest of humour.
Note how the best “our” Iraqi government’s officials could do by way of reply was to order an “enquiry” to find out how mobile phones were taken into the execution room - not to identify the creatures who bawled abuse at Saddam Hussein in his last moments. How very Blairite of the al-Maliki government to search for the snitches rather than the criminals who abused their power. And somehow, they got away with it; acres of agency copy from the Green Zone reporters were expended on the Iraqi government’s consternation, as if al- Maliki did not know what had transpired in the execution chamber. His own officials were present - and did nothing.
That’s why the “official” videotape of the hanging was silent - and discreetly faded out - before Saddam was abused. It was cut at this point, not for reasons of good taste but because that democratically elected Iraqi government - whose election was such “great news for the people of Iraq” in the words of Lord Blair - knew all too well what the world would make of the terrible seconds that followed. Like the lies of Bush and Blair - that everything in Iraq was getting better when in fact it was getting worse - butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn judicial execution.
Worst of all, perhaps, is that the hanging of Saddam mimicked, in ghostly, miniature form, the manner of his own regime’s bestial executions. Saddam’s own hangman at Abu Ghraib, a certain Abu Widad, would also taunt his victims before pulling the trap door lever, a last cruelty before extinction. Is this where Saddam’s hangmen learned their job? And just who exactly were those leather-jacketed hangmen last week, by the way? No one, it seemed, bothered to ask this salient question. Who chose them? Al-Maliki’s militia chums? Or the Americans who managed the whole roadshow from the start, who so organised Saddam’s trial that he was never allowed to reveal details of his friendly relations with three US administrations - and thus took the secrets of the murderous, decade-long Baghdad-Washington military alliance to his grave?
I would not ask this question were it not for the sense of profound shock I experienced when touring the Abu Ghraib prison after “Iraq’s liberation” and meeting the US-appointed senior Iraqi medical officer at the jail. When his minders were distracted, he admitted to me he had also been the senior “medical officer” at Abu Ghraib when Saddam’s prisoners were tortured to death there. No wonder our enemies-become-friends are turning into our enemies again.
But this is not just about Iraq. More than 35 years ago, I was being driven home from school by my Dad when his new-fangled car radio broadcast a report of the dawn hanging of a man at - I think - Wormwood Scrubs. I remember the unpleasant look of sanctity that came over my father’s face when I asked him if this was right. “It’s the law, Old Boy,” he said, as if such cruelties were immutable to the human race. Yet this was the same father who, as a young soldier in the First World War, was threatened with court martial because he refused to command the firing party to execute an equally young Australian soldier.
Maybe only older men, sensing their failing powers, enjoy the prerogatives of execution. More than 10 years ago, the now-dead President Hrawi of Lebanon and the since-murdered prime minister Rafiq Hariri signed the death warrants of two young Muslim men. One of them had panicked during a domestic robbery north of Beirut and shot a Christian man and his sister. Hrawi - in the words of one of his top security officers at the time - “wanted to show he could hang Muslims in a Christian area”. He got his way. The two men - one of whom had not even been present in the house during the robbery - were taken to their public execution beside the main Beirut-Jounieh highway, swooning with fear at the sight of their white-hooded executioners, while the Christian glitterati, heading home from night-clubs with their mini-skirted girlfriends, pulled up to watch the fun.
I suggested at the time, much to Hrawi’s disgust, that this should become a permanent feature of Beirut’s nightlife, that regular public hangings on the Mediterranean Corniche would bring in tens of thousands more tourists, especially from Saudi Arabia where you could catch the odd beheading only at Friday prayers.
No, it’s not about the wickedness of the hanged man. Unlike the Thane of Cawdor, Saddam did not “set forth a deep repentance” on the scaffold. We merely shamed ourselves in an utterly predictable way. Either you support the death penalty - whatever the nastiness or innocence of the condemned. Or you don’t. C’est tout.
Source: Independent Online Edition > Robert Fisk
Arab News
Saddam’s Undignified Execution:
Saddam Hussein is more powerful in his grave than he ever was in his palace. Alive, he was a dictator. Dead, he is a martyr. The evil inherent in arbitrary power is in the process of being interred with his bones. Strong men like to be associated with iron. Hence, an Iron Duke, or Iron Chancellor, or Iron Fist, an Iron Will. It is ironic that all it needs is an extra letter to turn iron into irony. If Saddam was full of iron when he ruled Iraq, his legacy is replete with irony.
To take the most obvious instance, in death he has become a symbol of justice denied. The inexplicable haste, and the brutal shoddiness with which he was hanged has become, thanks to a grainy video and millions of television screens, the final testimony in the first example of victor’s prejudice masquerading as law in this century. This is not an arbitrary interpretation. Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani, to stop Saddam’s execution because of doubts about the fairness of the trial.
Alive, Saddam Hussein was helpless against George Bush. Dead, Saddam could leave Bush helpless. His memory will pour fresh fuel on a hundred existing fires. The defeat and death of Saddam is a narrative with one author: George Bush. Saddam was the quarry, Bush was the hunter. The hunter changed the rules of this jungle when every reason was exposed as an excuse. When the quarry was trapped, all rules were abandoned in the pursuit of death.
Spin, passed on to the world’s most famous “embedded” reporters, the White House press corps, now seeks to distance Bush from the crude trial, premeditated judgment and barbaric execution. It is unconvincing. Bush’s formal statement welcomed the death of Saddam as an “important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself”. There is an implicit admission in that sentence, that a “democratic” Iraq needs a dead Saddam. Why was Saddam, in prison and unlikely to get out, considered so dangerous for Iraqi democracy? Is there a semi-hidden fear that the consuming anarchy in Iraq is breeding nostalgia for the stability and order of Saddam’s regime? Nostalgia can so easily turn into votes.
It is inconceivable that the White House was not informed about every step on the way to the noose. State-owned media like the Voice of America had begun preparing obituaries and reactions a day before the execution. Baghdad and Washington did not do themselves any favors by hanging Saddam during Eid Al-Adha, while millions were bowing their heads before the Kaaba during Haj, an event redolent with the spirit of sacrifice for a higher cause. Bush and his one-eyed coterie do not understand either Islam or Muslims, and will not fathom the anger that injustice generates on the street. The bars of Saddam’s cramped jail would not have melted in thirty days.
[snip]
There is a great deal hidden in Saddam’s grave. Was this one reason why he was denied a trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a privilege granted to the Serbian butcher Slobodan Milosevic? Saddam and his lawyers would surely have had the freedom to assert a wider argument at The Hague, in a court devoid of kangaroos.
That kangaroo court in Baghdad is now an indelible America-inflicted scar across the face of the Middle East. A few lines from an editorial in the New York Times are appropriate: “Saddam Hussein deserves no one’s pity. But as anyone who has seen the graphic cell phone video of his hanging can testify, his execution bore little resemblance to dispassionate, state-administered justice… For the Bush administration, which insists it went to war in Iraq to implant democracy and justice, those globally viewed images were a shaming embarrassment. Unfortunately, all Americans will be blamed…”It is not the defeat of Saddam, or his death, that has driven Iraq into chaos. It is a myth that Iraq needs despotism to keep it united. The Hashemite family of King Faisal ruled Iraq with a mild hand from 1921, when the state was formalized, to 1958. There was no talk of disintegration during the soft, albeit compromised, monarchy. Nor was there chaos during the two Baathist decades till 1979. The present havoc is a direct consequence of occupation, an inevitable insurrection against foreign troops on Iraqi soil, and a polity fractured by ethnic interests. The full account of this malfeasance will be written, but only after the occupation is over in a few years. “The enemies forced strangers into our sea/And he who serves them will be made to weep/Here we unveil our chests to the wolves/And will not tremble before the beast.”
As poetry that might not be the most memorable lines in Arabic, but these lines from Saddam Hussein’s last poem, written in jail, will resonate. Saddam’s grave in Tikrit has already become a memorial, where Iraq’s Sunnis are offering a prayer from wounded hearts. “I sacrifice my soul for you and for our nation,” he wrote. “Blood is cheap in hard times.” Blood flows, and each drop becomes a seed of future war.Perhaps such poetry will be forgotten. But a line of prose he uttered at the end will certainly live longer. Palestine, he said on his way to the gallows, is Arab. Read in full:
Editorial: Evils of Unilateralism:
Editorial: Evils of Unilateralism 7 January 2007
So angry were Americans when France refused to support the UN authorization of Washington’s 2003 Iraq invasion that French wines and cheeses were boycotted. Some so-called patriotic burger joints renamed “French Fries” “American Fries” and “Freedom Fries.” Today those same joints should be serving copious helpings of entirely US-made Humble Pie.
As President Bush prepares to announce this week his latest Iraqi policy, his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, has delivered a withering condemnation of US unilateralism. Invading Iraq was an “adventure” that had heightened communal divisions, shaken the country’s integrity and weakened the security of the entire Middle East. Most significantly, as part of Bush’s war on terror, it has been a complete failure since, far from being eliminated or even damaged, international terrorism has been strengthened. Chirac has been as consistently right as the Bush White House has been consistently wrong. The failure of US unilateral action, slavishly supported by British Premier Tony Blair who foolishly imagined his moment of glory had arrived, stemmed from unilateral thinking in Washington. It did not analyze the consequences of Saddam’s ouster. It did not see how its unwavering support for aggressive Zionist policies in Israel would influence the way its Iraq invasion would be interpreted regionally.The unilateral and - now it is clear - very limited nature of the pre-invasion calculations in Washington, involved a catastrophically blinkered approach to alternative points of view. Those who did not agree with White House thinking were treated almost as enemies. It was further strongly implied that those who did not support the way Bush was waging the war on international terror were therefore actually supporting international terror.
Upon analysis of such banality, it should be no surprise that Washington has never recognized the amazing double standard which has done so much to undermine its international support, not least in the Arab world. When Palestinians fight back or Hezbollah defend their country, it is terrorism. When Israel lays waste southern Lebanon, detains elected Palestinian politicians, assassinates Palestinian leaders, bombards civilians, erects the illegal West Bank wall, lays siege to Gaza and reduces its people to penury, that is not terrorism. It is “legitimate use of state power.”
Nor is it terrorism when the United States and Britain attack a sovereign country on the basis of evidence that some knew to be entirely false. Sure, it is Iraqis now killing Iraqis, egged on by Al-Qaeda fanatics who have flooded into the country, but it was the Bush invasion that made this possible. It was the total lack of Bush post-invasion policies that fostered the savage chaos. It is the mule-like stubbornness of the Bush administration that now threatens to plunge the wider region into even greater danger and instability.
Chirac called for a “multipolar” world in which emerging global powers China, India and Brazil would dilute US dominance. His vision is alluring. Never again must the world suffer the unjust and tragic consequences of ignorant unilateral intervention.
‘France Didn’t Call for Pullout’:
‘France Didn’t Call for Pullout’
RIYADH, 7 January 2007 - French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said here yesterday that France was not calling for a withdrawal of US-led troops in Iraq.
“France has never called for a withdrawal of foreign troops in Iraq,” he said. “These troops are there based on a UN resolution,” the French minister said while addressing a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal.’Douste-Blazy said the escalation of violence in the war-torn country, where an estimated 100 to 130 Iraqis die each day and 1.6 million people have been displaced, was “worrisome”. The minister said that France stressed the importance of a return to a “sovereign Iraqi nation” where all sectors representing Iraqi people would participate in the government. This, he added, “would curb terrorist groups.” The comments come a day after French President Jacques Chirac unleashed a torrent of criticism against the US invasion of Iraq, saying the invasion, which France opposed, had boosted the spread of terrorism in the region.
[snip]
Answering a question about Saudi mediation to resolve the Lebanese impasse, Saud said the Lebanese would be better off solving their own differences.
On the issue of Palestine, the French foreign minister said it was “time for action rather than words”, adding that Israel should adhere to international resolutions.
Prince Saud denied an Arab satellite channel report that quoted a British newspaper as saying that an alliance would be formed between Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel to hit Iran.“This is ridiculous,” said the prince. “Saudi Arabia will never take part in attacking another Islamic country and cooperating with Israel.” Saud said that he and Douste-Blazy also discussed the Iranian nuclear program and its possible risks to the region, especially when the region is witnessing several conflicts. “Therefore we have agreed on the importance of ridding the region of all nuclear weapons, including those of Israel, and that doing so should be through diplomacy and dialogue.” He also said that the two ministers discussed the situation in Somalia and agreed that if the Ethiopian troops entered Somalia on an invitation from the government, it was welcome, but if not, then the sovereignty of the country should be respected. Read in full:
Gulf Daily News
Saddam ‘had right to kill enemies of Iraq’
By TARIQ KHONJI
SUPPORTERS of Saddam Hussein in Bahrain yesterday claimed that executions carried out under his rule were legal and justified.
Nationalist Democratic Society vice-secretary general Abdul Jalil Jaffer said Saddam was only exercising his rights as head of state in times of conflict.
“There are some who claim that he did kill people and there are others who say that he did not. We belong to the latter group,” he said.
“He never went on the road and killed people at random like America is doing now.
“He killed people who were plotting to overthrow him and only after they were tried in court. There was a judicial process.”
Mr Jaffer said the people executed under Saddam’s watch included dissidents who were getting aid from Iran.
“It is the right of the leader of any sovereign country who respects himself to remove those who are trying to overthrow his government,” he said.
“He killed the enemies of Iraq.”
Mr Jaffer says he doesn’t think 10 Bahrainis who went missing in Iraq and are now presumed dead were deliberately killed by Saddam’s forces.
“In times of conflict there is much confusion and they may have been mistaken for dissidents,” he argued.
Mr Jaffer’s society organised a condolence meeting at the Al Binali Mosque, in Halat Bou Maher, Muharraq, last night. He said the event was held in response to requests by Muharraq residents for such an event closer to their homes.
It follows a three-day condolence meeting held at the society’s own premises, in Zinj, which was attacked twice by masked men - once with Molotov cocktails.
The first attack, on Thursday, occurred with more than 100 people present signing a condolence book in honour of Saddam, said Mr Jaffer.
“Two Molotov cocktails were thrown into our premises and hit the window, setting it on fire, but thankfully the glass didn’t break,” he recalled.
“There was a very large number of people there at the time who could have been injured.”
The walls, a table outside the building and the glass were damaged a little.
“We put the fire out ourselves with buckets of water and pieces of cloth,” added Mr Jaffer.
He said he personally witnessed six men fleeing the scene of a second attack the following day.
“Police had been guarding the building overnight, but left in the morning,” he said.
“At around 10am I got a call from our Indian security guard who said there were people banging on the door trying to get in.”
Neighbours heard the noise and shouted at the men, who fled the scene.
“I was nearby when I got the call and when I arrived I saw the men running away from the other end of an alley near our premises,” Mr Jaffer said. He said that the neighbours also saw three of the men apparently trying to make a Molotov cocktail before they were scared off.
Bush’s final gamble on victory in Iraq - World - Times Online:
Bush’s final gamble on victory in Iraq
Sarah Baxter, Washington
PRESIDENT George W Bush is expected to announce this week that a “surge” of US troops into Iraq will be accompanied by a handover of many provinces to Iraqi government control.
The move is designed to present a plan for “victory” in Iraq, which also contains the promise of an exit strategy. Bush hopes to confound critics of the surge and reassure a sceptical public that decisive action by the US military could lead to troop withdrawals.
Up to 20,000 extra troops will be deployed to pacify Baghdad, the capital, and Anbar province, home to the Sunni insurgency. As the Pentagon recently noted in a report to Congress, the two regions saw 54% of all attacks in Iraq last year.
“Most Iraqi provinces are pretty calm and where they’re not, our presence is probably causing the trouble,” said a senior defence source.
According to Major-General William Caldwell, a military spokesman, all Iraqi army divisions will be under Iraqi command by this summer and all provinces will be under Iraqi control by the autumn. Three Kurdish provinces are likely to be handed over shortly.
Bush’s long-awaited fresh strategy for Iraq, unofficially called A New Way Forward, is expected on Wednesday. It marks the culmination of discussions over Christmas with White House, Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials.
The strategy is based as much on political as military considerations, according to senior administration officials who believe it is the president’s last chance to stabilise Iraq. The American public is losing patience with the war and Congress is now controlled by the Democrats.
Bush hopes to put on the spot leading Democrats such as Senator Hillary Clinton who have said they would not necessarily oppose a surge if it were part of a “larger plan” to end the war.
“The accelerated timetable for turning over everything to the Iraqis except Baghdad and Anbar will look like the beginning of a withdrawal,” said Dan Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia.
Bush has told his advisers he wants a plan for victory. “What defines victory?” Goure added. “If most of the country is under Iraqi control, people will start thinking we are not in a quagmire. There is an end in sight.”
The newly empowered Democrats in Congress are refusing to back a surge. Senator Joe Biden, the new chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, may put forward a resolution explicitly opposing an increase in troops. His committee is about to begin three weeks of hearings into the conduct of the war and is expected to give Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, a tough grilling on her strategy this week.
Biden said the surge was simply a means of postponing disaster so the next president would be “the guy landing helicopters inside the green zone taking people off the roof” - a reference to America’s panicky exit from Vietnam at the end of that war.
But Bush hopes to wrong-foot the Democrats by presenting a package of political, military and economic initiatives for Iraq, including billions in aid.
It will be implemented by a fresh national security and diplomatic team, including John Negroponte, the new No 2 at the State Department.
American officials have been studying the example of Operation Sinbad, which is being carried out by the British in Basra. In a spectacular Christmas Day raid, the British military demolished a police station that was said to have fallen under the control of death squads.
In addition to mounting some large military operations, the British have been purging the police and spreading reconstruction money around. “The Americans have been watching our way of doing business,” said a senior British official.
Discussions are continuing at the White House about how much public pressure Bush should put on Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, to meet deadlines for cracking down on sectarian militias and standing up Iraq’s own security forces.
Bush told Maliki by telephone on Thursday: “You show us the will; we will help you.” A senior defence source said Maliki would be set “a lot of conditions. If he’s not prepared to fulfil his part of the bargain, all bets are off”.
The extent of the surge is still being debated at the White House. It is likely to involve the deployment of 9,000 to 20,000 extra troops - significantly fewer than the demand for at least 35,000 servicemen made by Frederick Kagan and General Jack Keane in their influential paper, Choosing Victory, published by the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank.
“The worst of all worlds would be a short, small surge,” said Senator John McCain, a leading advocate of the plan. “This surge must be significant and sustained; otherwise, don’t do it.”
The extra troops will be found by extending tours of duty, mobilising reservists and bringing forward planned deployments of new forces. The surge is likely to “roll” forward until April or May, the earliest period when large numbers of fresh troops could be sent to Iraq.
Bush is likely to couple his announcement of new forces with a repeat of his pledge last week to increase the size of the US army - a bargaining chip extracted by generals in exchange for their support for a surge.
In a nod to the recommendations of the much-slighted Iraq Study Group, the number of US troops embedded as trainers and advisers with Iraqi forces is also set to double.
The big leap of faith is whether Bush’s strategy will work before Congress and the American public give up on Iraq. A Pentagon source predicted: “He’s got about six months to get it right.”
Topeka, Kansas: A new military manual has become a surprise bestseller, with an estimated 1.5 million downloaded copies since it was released to the public on December.
The manual outlines Army and Marines philosophy in fighting insurgents in wartorn places such as Iraq and was posted on December 15 in the website of the Combined Arms Centre at Fort Leavenworth. The number of downloads compares with 1.4 million copies of John Grogan’s Marley & Me, the top-selling book of 2006, according Nielsen BookScan, which tracks sales.
The Army typically does not post its doctrines on its website for public consumption, said Col. Steve Boylan, Fort Leavenworth’s spokesperson. “It’s a way to let the public know that we’re taking these issues seriously,” Boylan said.
The department of defence announced on Friday that one of the 242-page manual’s chief architects, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, will be the next commander of US forces in Iraq. (AP)
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