The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Sunday, June 3, 2007

News of the Day for Sunday, June 3, 2007

Iraqi residents walk past a destroyed house in Baghdad June 3, 2007. Dozens of residents became homeless after Tuesday's bomb attack in a market in Baghdad's Amil district which killed 19 people and wounded 71 others. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)












SECURITY INCIDENTS

Note: The military today announced the deaths of 7 U.S. soldiers which occurred on Saturday. Most of the locations were given only generally, so I am listing them separately here, as Whisker has been doing. This was at one time the standard format at Today in Iraq, which Whisker has recently revived for his postings. There is always a certain amount of controversy among our readers about whether we give too much prominence to U.S. and coalition losses in comparison to the suffering of the Iraqi people. It's a difficult question. I won't go into the issue at length here, but we have discussed the rationale for it in the past. I invite continued comments on the issue. -- C

While conducting combat operations in the western section of the Iraqi capital, a Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated Saturday. Two other Soldiers were also wounded in the attack.

A Task Force Marne Soldier was killed by small arms fire while patrolling south of Baghdad Saturday.

A Task Force Marne Soldier was killed while on a dismounted patrol by a suicide bomber Saturday southwest of Baghdad. The patrol attempted to question two suspicious people near a mosque. When Soldiers approached the two men, one person detonated himself, killing one Soldier.

Two Task Force Lightning Soldiers were killed when their patrol was attacked with an IED while conducting operations in Ninewah Province, Saturday. Three Soldiers were also wounded and transported to a Coalition medical facility for treatment.

One Task Force Lightning Soldier was killed by an explosion that occurred near his vehicle while conducting operations in Diyala Province, Saturday. Four Soldiers were also wounded in the attack and transported to a Coalition medical facility for treatment.

One Task Force Lightning Soldier died of wounds sustained from an explosion that occurred near his vehicle while conducting operations in Diyala Province, Saturday. Two Soldiers were also wounded and transported to a Coalition medical facility for treatment.

Update: Six more.

MND-B soldier killed, two wounded, by roadside bomb.

Four MND-B soldiers killed by roadside bomb.

One MND-B soldier killed, 3 wounded, by roadside bomb.

Thanks a lot, Sen. Biden, for supporting the troops.

Baghdad

Car bomb in market in mostly Shiite Balad Ruz kills at least 10, injures 24.

The bodies of 26 people were found shot in different districts of Baghdad on Saturday, police said.

An explosion took place on Sunday morning near a college compound in central Baghdad, an eyewitness said. Police immediately cordoned off the area and no further details are currently available, including information about casualties.

Gunmen killed a police officer and a relative as they were driving in Baiyaa, a neighborhood in western Baghdad.

U.S. Apache helicopters strafed militants preparing to fire rockets into Baghdad's Green Zone, home of Iraq's government and the U.S. embassy, and killed four gunmen, the U.S. military said on Sunday Police said at least two people were killed and four wounded in the airstrikes. Sadr City residents told Reuters that a car had been hit and five people killed.

This AP story may refer to the same incident, but it is unclear: U.S. says helicopter gunships attacked targets in east Baghdad, killed 4 militants. The target is presumably elements of the Mahdi Army. The story is written in a very confusing manner. At first it seems to suggest that the fighting in east Baghdad is connected with efforts to free the 5 abducted British citizens, but it is not explicit. Further down, it refers to Apache gunships killing 4 people who were setting up a rocket attack on the Green Zone, but it is not clear the reference is to the same incident.

Baquba

Nine killed, 25 injured by car bomb attack on police patrol. Numerous civilians, as well as police, said to be among the casualties.

DPA also reports 5 killed and 10 injured when gunmen attack commuter buses at a fake checkpoint on the road from Khales to Baquba. (AFP refers to what appears to the same incident, but it calls the location the highway between Muqdadiyah and Baghdad. These locations not consistent.

Sulaimaniya

Unknown attackers blow up an abandoned customs building. The Kurdish police officer quoted blames "al Qaeda" but this would seem to be intended as a warning to the Kurds concerning the Arab-Kurdish border dispute -- C

Hawija

Hand grenade attack kills two policemen, wounds a civilian.

Rushdi Mulla area (south of Baghdad)

U.S. forces detain and interrogate 19 people in ongoing search for soldiers abducted three weeks ago.

Diwaniyah

Mahdi Army militiamen on Sunday battled with Iraqi troops and local police searching for two militia leaders in the southern city of Diwaniyah. At least three people were killed and 24 wounded, official Iraqi sources reported. U.S. aircraft operated in support, but it is not clear that they fired any weapons.

Mosul

Mosul hospital morgue received the bodies of nine people, including four policemen and a woman, in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, on Saturday, a source in the morgue said.

Kirkuk

Two farmers were killed and five wounded in clashes between two Sunni tribes in a rural area near Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad on Saturday, police said.

Kurdish/Turkish border region

Turkish artillery shelled Iraqi Kurdish villages near the borders with Turkey with no reports of casualties, a military source from the Kurdistan region said on Sunday. Villages reporting shelling are Nazdor and Keista, which reported shelling late Saturday night; and Kashan, Spindar and Bitkar, which reported shelling Saturday afternoon.

Other News of the Day

Congratulations to Aswat al-Iraq/Voices of Iraq, for their new, greatly improved web site. By all means check out their home page.

And, let's go straight to VoI for this report: Talabani, Barazani affirm application of article 140 won't be postponed:

By Amang Khalil


Sulaimaniya, June 3, (VOI) – Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barazani affirmed that they would not accept postponement of the application of article 140 of Iraq's constitution, which deals with the issue of Kirkuk.

"We are determined to have article 140, pertaining to the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk, applied," Talabani, Iraq's president, said during a press conference held with Iraqi Kurdistan Region's president, Massoud Barazani, at the resort of Ducan.
The two Kurdish leaders had earlier on Sunday met to discuss ways of unifying their positions on the enforcement of article 140.
The several hours' meeting was attended by Nejervan Barazani, the prime minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, Deputy Premier Burham Saleh, as well as a number of members of Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Barazani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).


This refers to the referendum on the status of Kirkuk, which would be a very dangerous event.

And here's an example of the kind of story you can only read in English on VoI. Excerpt:

By Adel Sobhi


Wassit, June 3, (VOI) – A recent decision made by Wassit's Agricultural Committee preventing the planting of rice during the current summer rice season in southern Iraq, due to a lack of irrigation water, has sparked heated controversy in Iraqi agricultural circles. While some people said the decision has added to the burden of poor Iraqi farmers, others indicated that it will have positive implications for Iraqi agriculture.

Sallam Iskandar Zeid, an agricultural engineer and the head of the Agricultural Department in Wassit province, 180 km southeast of Baghdad, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) that the decision was taken at the request of the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources. "The ministry called on Wassit's Agricultural Committee to prohibit the planting of rice in the province during the current season because of the large amounts of water required for its irrigation," provoking the anger of southern Iraqi farmers, who would benefit from the relatively high price of rice crops compared to other crops, including wheat and barley, Zeid indicated.
According to Zeid, the rice season starts in April and ends in mid-June. "Our plans for this season were to plant 289,000 donums (1 donum = 1,388 square meters) of rice crops, 8,500 donums of cotton and 125,000 donums of maize," Zeid said, noting that the plans for cultivating rice crops "are not likely to take place because of the committee's decision."
Rice planting in Wassit was banned by the former Iraqi regime, but soon after Saddam's fall on April 9, 2003, rice crops became one of the most prized crops in the province.
Explaining the harmful effects of rice crops on the soil, Zeid indicated that rice does not only consume enormous amounts of irrigation water, "it also washes away the fertility of the soil."
"Lands which were used for planting rice crops cannot later be zoned for planting wheat or barley," Zeid explained.


To me, the significance of this story is that there is a functioning provincial government in this southern, Shiite province, and that it is responsive to the central ministry in Baghdad. Unfortunately, whatever legitimacy the Shiite led government has in Wassit is not transferable elsewhere. -C

WaPo's Ann Scott Tyson and John Ward Anderson discuss increasing sophistication and effectiveness of attacks on U.S. troops. Excerpt:

As U.S. troops push more deeply into Baghdad and its volatile outskirts, Iraqi insurgents are using increasingly sophisticated and lethal means of attack, including bigger roadside bombs that are resulting in greater numbers of American fatalities relative to the number of wounded.

Insurgents are deploying huge, deeply buried munitions set up to protect their territory and mounting complex ambushes that demonstrate their ability to respond rapidly to U.S. tactics. A new counterinsurgency strategy has resulted in decreased civilian deaths in Baghdad but has placed thousands of additional American troops at greater risk in small outposts in the capital and other parts of the country.


"It is very clear that the number of attacks against U.S. forces is up" and that they have grown more effective in Baghdad, especially in recent weeks, said Maj. Gen. James E. Simmons, deputy commander for operations in Iraq. At the same time, he said, attacks on Iraqi security forces have declined slightly, citing figures that compare the period of mid-February to mid-May to the preceding three months. "The attacks are being directed at us and not against other people," he said.


And here's a sidebar from the same story:

A declassified U.S. military report describes a complex insurgent attack last December on a convoy in Iraq. "It was one ambush with three separate kill-zones," according to the report, "all of which were in communication with one another." Such ambushes are among the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. Fighters have grown skilled at sophisticated ambushes using multiple weapons — such as roadside bombs, mortars and gunfire — and also target forces aiding the fallen. Special Forces Maj. Jim Gant's nine-man U.S. military advisory team, with the call sign "Spartan," had orders to travel with more than 100 Iraqi police in 26 vehicles south from Balad to Baghdad through an area where insurgents "have complete freedom of maneuver," according to the after-action report. Gant's team had spent two months working with Iraqi police to quell sectarian violence in the Shiite town of Balad, facing resistance from al-Qaeda fighters in Sunni villages. On Dec. 11, 2006, Gant loaded his vehicles with thousands of rounds of ammunition, tried to confuse insurgents by driving north first, and requested cover from F-16 fighters, which never came. Instead, he and his men faced the heaviest ambush of Gant's 17-year-career. They pushed through the kill zones, inspired police to fight back, and used large bursts of machine-gun fire to create a "momentary impression of superior firepower," the report said. Gant, 40, was twice decorated for his actions: After the battle, Iraqi police slaughtered goats and covered his team with crimson handprints to celebrate. On May 3, he received the Silver Star for "selfless courage under fire."


Gates warns Turkey not to invade Iraq. Well, he's certainly got a leg to stand on. Excerpt:

SINGAPORE - Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday cautioned Turkey against sending troops into northern Iraq, as it has threatened, to hunt down Kurdish rebels it accuses of carrying out terrorist raids inside Turkey. "We hope there would not be a unilateral military action across the border into Iraq," Gates told a news conference after meetings here with Asian government officials. Turkey and Iraq were not represented. Gates said he sympathized with the Turks' concern about cross-border raids by Kurdish rebels.

"The Turks have a genuine concern with Kurdish terrorism that takes place on Turkish soil," he said. "So one can understand their frustration and unhappiness over this. Several hundred Turks lose their lives each year, and we have been working with the Turks to try to help them get control of this problem on Turkish soil."

Tensions have heightened in recent weeks in northern Iraq as Turkey has built up its military forces on Iraq's border, a move clearly meant to pressure Iraq to rein in the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, separatists who launch raids into southeast Turkey's Kurdish region from hideouts in Iraq.

Turkey's political and military leaders have been debating whether to try to root out those bases, and perhaps set up a buffer zone across the frontier as the Turkish army has done in the past. Turkey's military chief said Thursday the army was ready and only awaiting orders for a cross-border offensive.


NYT's Damien Cave discusses the bombing of the Sarha bridge and the low intensity Arab-Kurdish border war. Worth a read, Cave is a good reporter -- C

Quote of the Day

There is no way we are going to win the war and (we should) withdraw and accept defeat because we are going to lose on a more important level if we don't.

-- Gen. Sir Michael Rose, Commander of the UK Field Army (ret.), Order of the British Empire, Knight of the Bath, Queens Gallantry Medal

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