Changes coming?

Yes. Work in progress.

sYSTEM TEST

News from Iraq

Haider Ajina, via email:

Greetings,

Largest Public Works Substation Opens in Baghdad

Saturday, 28 June 2008

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Security Forces, civic leaders, local townspeople and Coalition forces gathered in the Ameriyah community in Baghdad's Mansour district June 25 for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to acknowledge the opening of the biggest public works substation in the Iraqi capital.

Public works substations provide essential services to local communities, such as trash pickup, street cleaning and other services necessary for proper community maintenance.

The opening of the Ameriyah substation marks an important milestone for residents of this area, who have not had these services in more than two years.

"These basic services used to be centralized into only one station located in the eastern Mansour district of Baghdad, creating a deficit in other parts of the city," said Army Col. Louis Fazeka, part of the provincial reconstruction team embedded with the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team in Multi-National Division- Baghdad.

"The focus of this mission has been to 'decentralize' and make substations throughout western Baghdad, making these services more readily available to those neglected parts of the city," Fazeka explained.

The colonel said that he hopes, in time, that these stations will aid in Ameriyah's security and stability by restoring the confidence of the people in their government.

"These people want these basic essential services that you and I take for granted back home," Fazeka said. "It boosts the peoples' confidence in the government."

With the help of contractors, the PRT went to work and cleaned up the area where the substation now stands, leveled the ground, fixed up the run-down house there and put concrete T-wall barriers around the lot to increase security for the workers and the equipment.

The project took 45 days to complete.

"This station has brought life back to 15,000 residents due to the reinstatement of these services," said Salwan Talal Latif, Iraqi public works assistant zone director, and a 30-year resident of Ameriyah.

"Seven months ago, we were hiding in our houses in fear for our lives," he continued. "But thanks be to God, ... all aspects of fear that we had [are] in the past, and our lives are open now, and so are our opportunities."

U.S troops transfer 1000 Humvees to Iraqi security forces

Baghdad - Voices of Iraq

Friday , 27 /06 /2008

Baghdad, June27, (VOI) - Senior Iraqi and U.S force leaders celebrated the handover of 1,000 up-armoured Humvees to the Iraqi security forces, a military statement said on Friday.

Attended by Moufaq al-Rubai Iraqi national Security advisor, and David Petraeus, commander of U.S troops in Iraq, the transfer of Humvees ceremonies took place in the U.S base at Taji, 35 km north Baghdad, on Thursday. “This is just another step to enable Iraq to be self-defending and self-reliant,” the announcement cited Rubai as saying in the ceremonies. The Iraqi official added “we look forward to that day when we stand alone to fight the terrorists and join our forces with the American forces to fight the global war on terrorism”. The announcement noted Gen. Petraeus praised the Iraqi Security Forces for their advancements, highlighting “the transfer of the Humvees will help make the Iraqi soldiers and police safer, more mobile and more capable”.

This ceremony marked the first transfer of up-armoured Humvees to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior under a program that began in March 2008. The goal is to transfer 8,000 vehicles to the Iraqi security forces by the end of 2009. Since 2007, the U.S army has started supplying its troops in Iraq with vehicles resisting roadside bombing, which U.S defence experts termed as the most deadly weapon for military troops in Iraq.

The followng is my translation of a short article in Iraq’s Nahrain of June 28 08:

The Iraqi Government sues U.N. over oil for food program.

Official spokesman for the Iraqi government Dr. Ali Aldabagh announced that the Iraqi government is filling law suites against individuals and companies involved in corruption and bribery in the “oil for food” program. This program has suffered large scandalous corruption and mismanagement. Many have collaborated with the Sadam regime by inflating pieces of goods and selling expired medication etc…., bribery schemes and supplying sub standard material in return for large bribes and pay backs.

Haider's comments:

The surge has provided the needed breathing room for the Iraqis to focus on development and getting their house in order. Going after the wrong doers in the ‘oil for food’ program is a long awaited action. The Iraqis will quickly find out who their real friend are. The scandal will be reopened and much will come out over the improprieties of those countries, individuals, U.N. and others, and companies taking advantage of suffering Iraqis under the Baathist regime.

Anbar province is in the midst of being handed over to the Iraqis. The ceremony will take place as soon as the current large sand storms settle down. Once this is done then ten out of 18 provinces will be under Iraqi control, just five years after the claps of the Baathist regime in Iraq.

Regards
Haider Ajina
McKinleyville CA

Just the FACs

The Misty FACs.

(Inspired by the same theme with a different application.)

The Wood

Once upon a time a long time ago everyone with a guitar knew this one.

Politically incorrect update: In light of this:

Reporter: I'd like to direct this question to messrs. Lennon and McCartney. In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. And they referred to "Day Tripper" as being about a prostitute...
Paul: Oh yeah.
Reporter: ...and "Norwegian Wood" as being about a lesbian.
Paul: Oh yeah.
Reporter: I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today.
Paul: We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all.

...I hearby dedicate this song to all the gals being forced to leave Iraq before their tours are over - just because of who they are.

Previous entry here.

Weekly Reader

Meet Donald Burgett:

America entered World War Two December 07, 1941. Nearly every patriotic American man and woman rushed to join the military. At 16 years of age I was one of that group but was too young and not accepted.

Worked on road construction and as a carpenter for the next two years. I joined the army paratroops on my 18th birthday, April 5th, 1943 in Detroit, Michigan. Through an error in military records I was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas and took my basic training in the last active horse cavalry unit in the US, Troop E, 2nd Rgt., 1st Horse Cavalry. On completing basic training I affected a transfer to the Army Paratroops in Fort Benning, Ga. where I completed my paratrooper training. I joined the 101st Airborne Division in Aldbourne, England the last week of February 1944. I was assigned to A (Able) Company, 506 PIR. 101st Abn. Div. Able Company billeted nearly one year in the High Town Stables in Aldbourne, England prior to and following the Normandy Invasion.

I fought in four major campaigns including Normandy, Holland, Bastogne, and Germany ending in Austria. I was wounded three separate times. World War Two ended after we had occupied Hitler’s home in Berchtesgaden, Germany. Discharged December 31, 1945 in Camp Atterbury, Indiana, at age 20. I returned home January 01, 1946 to Detroit, Michigan. I could not vote, buy a car on contract or buy a beer. At age twenty I was not legally old enough. I became 21 April 05, 1946.

Years later he wrote four books about his experiences in WWII: Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy, The Road to Arnhem: A Screaming Eagle in Holland, Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne, and Beyond the Rhine: A Screaming Eagle in Germany.

And because Greyhawk is always searching for bargains for Citizens of Mudville, if you buy all four at Amazon you get 'em for the price of three.

Warrior-Champions

Via IAVA:

I'd like to introduce you to three incredible Americans.
Melissa Stockwell, Scott Winkler and Carlos Leon served in Iraq and suffered serious injuries. Since then, they have overcome incredible obstacles to earn the right to represent the US at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, China. IAVA will be sponsoring their journey from now until the games begin in September. We are hoping to raise $20,000 to help Melissa, Scott and Carlos pursue their dreams of gold.

Can you make a tax-deductible contribution to help us reach our goal? Take a minute to watch a short video about their incredible journeys.

Melissa Stockwell was the first female amputee from the Iraq war. Less than a year after losing her leg, she ran the New York City Marathon. She had never swum competitively before losing her leg, and recently became the first Iraq war veteran to qualify for the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing.

Carlos Leon managed to survive an entire year in Iraq as a Marine in the Sunni triangle, only to tragically break his neck in a swimming accident just weeks after returning home. After attending a Paralympic Military Sports Camp, Leon discovered a hidden talent and passion for throwing the discus. Carlos is headed to Beijing as the best in the world in the discus.

Scott Winkler was unloading an ammunition truck near Tikrit while under fire when he fell and became paralyzed from the chest down. He was introduced to sports during a Paralympic Sports Clinic. At the clinic, he tried throwing the shot put for the first time, and less than a year later he broke the world record. He is expected to dominate his field in Beijing.

Together these athletes carry the hopes and dreams of 30,000 other injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are role models for turning adversity into opportunity.

Can you donate today to help us reach our goal of $20,000 to help them get to the games? Your contribution will help Melissa, Scott and Carlos cover the expenses they'll incur over the next few months of training.

Along the road, Melissa, Carlos and Scott will be updating us on their progress. You can follow their journeys at www.iava.org/warrior-champions.

We're honored to be helping these three veterans represent our country at the Paralympics. Can you help them get to Beijing?

Thanks for your generous support.

Sincerely,

Paul Rieckhoff
Iraq Veteran
Executive Director
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

New GI Bill Passes Senate (Again)

92-6.

And oh by the way, funds for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, too.

Next: to the White House.

We've been tracking this one for a while now...

UPDATE: Law!

From the Frontlines airs today!

An 8-hour pro-troop web-a-thon. This broadcast is to support the push to send the largest single shipment of care packages to U.S. troops in history. "From the Front Lines" will be co-hosted by MAF's Melanie Morgan and HotAir.com's Michelle Malkin and feature some of the biggest patriotic leaders of our time.

Goes live on Ustream.TV at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific.

Michelle Malkin:

I’ll be in beautiful Mountain View, CA all day today for “From the Frontlines,” our ground-breaking web-a-thon for the troops. Move America Forward’s Melanie Morgan and I will go live on Ustream.TV and right here at MichelleMalkin.com (as well as at HotAir.com) at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific. (Just hit the play button on the embedded video player above when showtime arrives; if you’d like to join the live chatroom, make sure to register at UStream beforehand!) I’ll be updating this post all day as I liveblog the event from UStream’s studios. Thanks to all our fellow bloggers who’ve helped spread the word!

We’ve got a star-studded line-up of troops, military charities, celebs, and talk radio stars — from Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin to Dr. Laura and Laura Ingraham to musician John Ondrasik and “Lone Survivor” author and Navy SEAL hero Marcus Luttrell — who’ll be joining us in our eight-hour marathon fund-raising drive to help send the largest number of care packages in history to our men and women in uniform serving overseas.

<...>

You can sponsor a care package right here, with items ranging from $15.99 to $899.99. Let me know what you picked out (leave it in in comments or e-mail me) so I can keep a running tally.

Video messages can be sent to Danny Gonzalez, Communications Director at Move America Forward. Contact Danny at: danny@moveamericaforward.org
Complete information on "From the Front Lines" can be found at: http://www.MoveAmericaForward.org
And - get those video messages emailed to Danny Gonzalez ASAP!
danny@moveamericaforward.org

Pointing and Shooting (III)

(Previous entry here)

*****

Artifacts and other Facts

Sometimes you find indicators of progress in Iraq in odd places. This story contains a hidden gem - see if you notice it (Hint: I subtly highlighted it in bold) :

Jordan returns stolen antiquities to Iraq

AMMAN (AFP) — Jordan on Sunday returned to Iraq some 2,466 artefacts, including gold coins, jewellery and Islamic and ancient manuscripts, that were stolen after the 2003 US-led invasion of its neighbour.

"Now that stability is restored in Iraq, Jordan decided to return these antiquities to where they belong, to Iraq, the cradle of civilisation," Jordanian Tourism Minister Maha Khatib told a news conference.

(Comprehensive coverage of this and other recoveries - and future hopes - is available via Lebanon's Daily Star)

But did you notice the part where the Jordanian government official declared that stability is restored in Iraq? Crazy, huh? Probably just an artifact of translation, but to be safe someone had better get her a gift subscription to the New York Times - quick.

Of course, that illustrious paper covered the story too - one paragraph, sans the "stability" comment, but with this:

Thousands of pieces were looted after the 2003 invasion, and Iraqi officials have blamed the pilfering on smugglers and occupying troops.

In fact, that "blame" was a major feature of their April 2003 front page banner headline story:

The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters.
<...>
Officials with crumpled spirits fought back tears and anger at American troops, as they ran down an inventory of the most storied items that they said had been carried away by the thousands of looters who poured into the museum after daybreak on Thursday and remained until dusk on Friday, with only one intervention by American forces, lasting about half an hour, at lunchtime on Thursday.
<...>
Mr. Muhammad spoke with deep bitterness toward the Americans, as have many Iraqis who have watched looting that began with attacks on government agencies and the palaces and villas of Mr. Hussein, his family and his inner circle broaden into a tidal wave of looting that struck just about every government institution, even ministries dealing with issues like higher education, trade and agriculture, and hospitals.

Two days later a Times op/ed would clarify:

The looting of Iraq's national museum in Baghdad could have been prevented. The American and British forces are clearly to blame for the destruction and displacement of its cultural treasures.

The story would never have been told if "museum officials" hadn't risked their own lives to bring reporters to the scene:

As fires in a dozen government ministries and agencies began to burn out, and as looters tired of pillaging in the 90-degree heat, museum officials reached the hotels where foreign journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River. They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history.
<...>
What was beyond contest today was that the 28 galleries of the museum and vaults with huge steel doors guarding storage chambers that descend floor after floor into unlighted darkness had been completely ransacked.

It was quite a story - though reality was quite different. You can read early indications of just how wrong it was here and here, and a comprehensive review of subsequent events here:

And on July 3, 2003, the Iraq National Museum was reopened to diplomats and the news media, to show how most of the antiquities, recently feared lost forever, had been recovered or miraculously accounted for.

Tragically, Private First Class Edward J. “Jim” Herrgott was killed by a sniper while guarding the museum that night:

"He was outside the national museum in his Bradley tank and he was doing his watch as guard duty. He had slid up into the gunner's seat -- the gunner's hatch -- and a sniper got him in the neck. From reports that we heard, he was rushed to the hospital but they wren unable to keep him alive," Ken Kewatt said.

*****

Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos (a Marine Reservist whose civilian job was DA in Manhattan) who had witnessed the 9/11 up close and was recalled to active duty for a tour in Afghanistan would take on the task of investigating the museum looting in April, 2003. He published his account in the book Thieves of Baghdad (Personal aside: I read this while deployed to Iraq on my last tour- excellent book.)

Col Bogdanos originally had a different mission in Iraq, but...

On April 15, I was again in Basra when a journalist approached me with rage in her eyes, screaming, "You macho assholes are down here looking for missiles and money, and the finest museum in the world in Baghdad has just been looted."

He checked the headlines, including the one over the New York Times story above, and the AP's "Museum treasures now war booty" ("The Americans knew that the museum was at risk and could have protected it, said Patty Gerstenblith, a professor at DePaul School of Law in Chicago") and the Independent's U.S. blamed for failure to stop sacking of museum ("THE UNITED States was fiercely criticised around the world yesterday for its failure to protect Baghdad's Iraq National Museum where, under the noses of US troops, looters stole or destroyed priceless artefacts up to 7,000 years old.") and realized his efforts would need re-focusing.

Read the book for the full story of Bogdanos' incredible efforts over the subsequent six months, detailing the recovery of all but a few artifacts from the various locations where the museum officials had hidden them for safekeeping.

But consider also that for those crucial first six months in Baghdad Bogdanos and his team were kept from what would have been their primary mission.

"I had been called to the Pentagon on September 10, 2003, to give the Department of Defense's final briefing on the investigation... CENTCOM had given me six months of virtually unlimited authority, resources, and funding. They had allowed me to divert significant assets from our assigned counterterrorism mission to hunt down some pieces of rock with funny writing on them."

But that's all ancient history now. And what difference could counterterror operations have made in those months anyhow?

"Now that stability is restored in Iraq..."

*****

Part one

Part two

More to follow...

2008 MilBlog Conference (More Updates)

Via Andi at Milblogging,com:

Welcome to the official blog site for the 2008 MilBlog Conference. Okay, we're off to a late start this year, but the ball is finally rolling..... All news and information about the conference will be posted here. We'll be sprucing the blog up a bit over the next few days but for now, we're just concentrating on getting information out.

As most of you know by now, the MilBlog Conference joined forces with Blog World Expo this year. The 2008 MilBlog Conference will be held in Las Vegas on September 20.

Panel topics/times are below:

Date: SEPTEMBER 20, 2008

Location: Blog World Expo, Las Vegas

See here for Agenda:

Thanks Andi

UPDATES:

Registration for the MilBlog Community Track June 24, 2008 • Andi

The MilBlog Registration Package includes admittance into the full MilBlog Conference Track (all panels) and the exhibit hall. This package will be free of charge for milblog attendees. The BWE staff is extending the MilBlog Registration Package to milbloggers, milblog supporters, members of the military community or those who work in the troop support, non-profit community, but you must plan to attend the MilBlog Community Track in order to take advantage of this offering. We'd like to thank BWE for putting this package together for our attendees. If you want to register for additional events at Blog World Expo, you'll need to pay the associated costs.

To Register:

BWE will assign individual registration codes for MilBlog Track Attendees. Attendees (excluding panelists, speakers or moderators) will receive a registration code and should send an email with "Request Code" in the subject line. You need to meet the criteria laid out above to receive a code. Once your request has been received and a registration code assigned, you'll receive your registration code via email, and you can proceed with registration. If you're bringing a spouse, significant other, etc. you will need to request two codes. Each code is unique and can only be used once. You cannot share your code with someone else. Please request a code only if you plan to attend the MilBlog Track. All other registrations will need to be submitted through the BWE registration page.

If you're requesting a code, but but plan to attend another event (party, workshop, etc.) in addition to the MilBlog Track, after you receive your registration code, you'll need to send an email to Kathy at BWE, tell her you are attending the milblog track and want to pay to attend another portion of the Expo and she will take care of your request.

It may take a couple of days or so for you receive your code. Please don't send follow-up email or worry about it unless it's been more than seven days and you've received no response.

If you're a panelist, speaker or moderator, you will register as a speaker and will not need a registration code. Information on how to register will be emailed soon to all speakers.

Hilton Manager endorses McCain

Hanoi Hilton that is

Yon Persona Non Grata

Denied entry to Myanmar

On 9 June, I went to the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok to apply for a visa, but when the government worker behind the glass learned I was American, he nearly slammed the window shut.

Pointing and Shooting (II)

(Part one here.)

*****

Here's a snaphot of Iraq today, from Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military will transfer control of security in Iraq's Anbar province to Iraqi forces this week, a remarkable turnaround given the vast western region was considered lost to insurgents less than two years ago.

Anbar will be the 10th of Iraq's 18 provinces returned to Iraqi security control since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but it will be the first Sunni Arab region handed back.

Mamun Sami Rasheed, Anbar's governor, said the handover ceremony would take place on Saturday.

"We have been dreaming of this event since 2003," he said.

(Hat tip to Long War Journal's DJ Elliott for comment here.)

I've been running an ongoing series here detailing how this happened.

For more recent details, here's the DoD's June, 2008 report to congress, Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq:

Assessment of the Security Environment—Western Iraq

Security in Anbar Province continued to improve this reporting period... In Anbar, the average number of security incidents remained at five incidents per day over a 90-day period, accounting for less than 4% of the attacks in all of Iraq. This represents a ten-fold reduction compared to the summer of 2006 and is half of the rate of the last few months of 2007. The combined efforts of SoIs [greyhawk: Sons of Iraq] and Iraqi and Coalition forces continue to hinder AQI’s [gh: al Qaeda in Iraq] ability to obtain resources or operate effectively in population centers, forcing AQI to operate and conduct attacks from remote locations in the province. Despite these setbacks, AQI continues efforts to regain footholds in the Euphrates River Valley.

The Iraqi Army has handed over security responsibilities in most of Anbar’s population centers to the Iraqi Police, allowing the Army to concentrate its efforts on driving AQI from hideouts in remote locations. The Sahawa al-Iraq (SAI) tribal movement has survived AQI attacks against its key leaders, and instead is successfully using the attacks to embolden local tribes and strengthen its own influence. SAI recently registered as a political party and intends to compete in the upcoming fall provincial elections and the subsequent nation elections, although the GoI [gh: government of Iraq] has yet to act on SAIs request to become a national political party. The movement continues to position itself as an alternative to existing provincial political leaders, deriving much of its credibility from its fight against AQI and the resulting security gains. For several months, SAI leaders have reached out to prominent Shi’a figures in other provinces to promote reconciliation and unity under the theme of “One Iraq.”

From the same report, a bit of an explanation of what Provincial Iraqi Control means:

Transferring Security Responsibility

Currently, half of Iraq’s 18 provinces are under Provincial Iraqi Control (PIC). In support of the U.S. Government strategic objective to strengthen the Iraqi forces and transition primary security responsibility to the GoI, Anbar and Qadisiyah Provinces are scheduled to transition to PIC in June and July 2008, respectively. This will bring the total number of provinces for which the GoI has lead security responsibility to 11 of 18 provinces.

In PIC provinces, Iraqi forces demonstrate varying abilities to maintain domestic order and prevent a resurgence of terrorism. Examples of this are the recent ISF-led operations in Basrah. On short notice and with little Coalition planning support, the ISF were able to rapidly deploy forces to the city to engage rogue militias. Once operations were underway, the ISF required Coalition Military and Police Transition Teams and Coalition staff assistance to obtain and move logistics assets to support its forces in the field. The Transition Teams proved particularly helpful in their ability to increase Iraqi and Coalition forces’ situational awareness and facilitate employment of additional Coalition enablers. As operations progressed, many Iraqi forces grew increasingly competent and were able to restore security in much of the Basrah area within one week.

*****

Other graphs from the report include this one - the first I've seen that acknowledges the Ramadan spikes I wrote about some time ago. (See also my Ramadan, 2007 report from Baghdad here, or my Ramadan, 2004 report from Baghdad here).

More:

Pointing and Shooting

Some recent photos from markets in Basra, Iraq:

The two above are from the London Times, and are captioned "Now the tide of fundamentalism which swept in when the Shia militias enforced their brand of Islam appears to have been turned back. Citizens report that music stores are reopening, fashionable clothes are being worn again, and people are holding parties."

But this one is from the New York Times:

Its caption reads "A young boy slept on his mother`s shoulder as she shopped in the Jaezeri market in downtown Basra. The government`s success in Basra may not have been so much a victory as heavy fighting followed by a truce that allowed militias to melt away with their weapons."

You can tell by the grim looks and by the photographer's use of black and white that such must be the case.

Its from a park, not a market, but here's another baby photo from Basra

This one came from the Washington Post. "Families picnic on the weekend at a small neighborhood amusement park in Basra." The caption reads. "The park was closed for weeks in April amid violence in Basra."

Someone had best get them a subscription to the New York Times soon - then they could see dark and grainy photos like this one:

"Iraqi soldiers," the caption reads, "inside a warehouse compound, repelled several attacks by the Mahdi Army, the militia of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, on the site."

Is that good news, or bad?

The answer depends on you. Point your camera in another direction, switch to color, and you'll capture images of Iraqi soldiers like this one from the Washington Post:

"An Iraqi Army soldier stands guard next to a poster with Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's photo cut out."

Here's a close up, along with a similar photo from the London Times

There's something for everyone in Basra (and Baghdad, London, Detroit and DC, too). You can get photos that show stark reality, and others that are suitable for viewing by readers of the NY Times. Gloomy grim and black and white or in vibrant living color - unless you're actually there how you see Iraq depends on lenses and filters. Not necessarily those used by photographers - some are selected for you by helpful editors or political leaders - while others might be of your own choosing.

*****

This applies:

"...a doomsayer is a person with a serious point of view, someone who is to be respected. And ...a doomslayer is a crackpot who needs to be taken down a peg.

In the end, it isn't just the optimists who need to be taken down a peg, it is all of humanity.

(More here.)

I attempted to explain that in a different context myself, from Baghdad last year.

I suppose there could be another sub-genre of science fiction: the bleak future that didn't happen. Watch almost any pre-Star Wars sci-fi films of the 70's - Silent Running, Soylent Green, Logan's Run, et al - and you'll see examples what I mean.

Of course, one can't consign such stories into that category ahead of time, right?

And anyhow, perhaps the authors were just off by a few years in timing. We still have a future in which any number of things can happen.

For instance, did you know the Earth was getting hotter?
<...>
No matter how many works of science fiction prove faulty at predicting a disastrous future, people will eagerly consume the next pronouncement of doom. There's a market for such things. There are people who thrive on imagining a future hell.

In the 70's it was nuclear war, overpopulation, pollution, and numerous other threats to all mankind that distracted our attention from that which was truly important. By the early 90's it was the economy, stupid, that was going to bring us down.

I don't know if anyone caught on, but I was actually talking about Iraq there - not any of those other things. I mean, I was in Baghdad, after all - during a month with one of the highest death tolls of the war. Perhaps my optimism amidst all that would earn me scorn from New York Times readers (if they ever sought news from other sources) - but if so, they would at least have understood what I meant.

*****

But surely this is cause for hope: "The New York Times has made a startling discovery: things are much improved in Iraq."

Just ignore the photos above. And Frank Rich's New York Times opinion piece:

THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.

But - paradoxically - Frank knows. He's wrong on many counts, but right as rain on this one:

The G.O.P.’s badgering of Mr. Obama about the war is also backfiring. In sync with Mr. McCain, the Republican National Committee unveiled an online clock — “Track How Long Since Obama Was in Iraq!” — only to have Mr. Obama call the bluff by announcing that he will go to both Afghanistan and Iraq before the election. Unless he takes along his own Lieberman-like Jiminy Cricket to whisper factual corrections into his ear, this trip is likely to enhance his stature as a potential commander in chief.

Demanding Obama go to Iraq was the dumbest political move thus far of the as yet early silly season. Why? Look at the photos above - Obama will most assuredly see Iraq in black and white.

*****

"What I hope we don’t hear from General Petraeus next week is any glorification of what has just happened in Basra..."
Nancy Pelosi fires a warning shot at General David Petraeus, April 3, 2008

She could perhaps be excused if she only gets her news from American sources. Media outlets in countries that aren't having presidential elections this year continued to cover the Basra story long after her declaration of failure.

But then Nancy Pelosi went to Iraq.

BAGHDAD (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a top Democratic critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, expressed confidence during a visit to Iraq Saturday that expected provincial elections will promote national reconciliation.

Pelosi, who led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Baghdad, spoke after the group met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq.

She welcomed Iraq's progress in passing a budget as well as oil legislation and a bill paving the way for provincial elections in the fall that are expected to more equitably redistribute power among local officials.

She said the visit was to "pay our respects to our troops and at the same time learn more about what the situation is on the ground here."

Pelosi also was hopeful about the upcoming elections after meeting with Iraq's Sunni parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani.

"We're assured sure the elections will happen here, they will be transparent, they will be inclusive and they will take Iraq closer to the reconciliation we all want it to have," she said.

Hooray! She saw it in person, and can't deny The Progress! Then, once back in America:

In an interview yesterday with the San Francisco Chronicle, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed the U.S. troop surge failed to accomplish its goal. She then partially credited the success of the troop surge to “the goodwill of the Iranians,” claiming that they were responsible for ending violence in the southern city of Basra.

Asked if she saw any evidence of the surge’s positive impact on her May 17 trip to Iraq she responded:

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

(More here)

Then, last week, as the House passed a bill funding the war in Iraq (268-155, 19 not voting), Pelosi voted against it, and declared:

Mr. Speaker, I’m sorry I cannot fully participate in all of the camaraderie that is accompanying this legislation because of the huge amount of money that is in this bill to fund the war in Iraq without any conditions, without any limitation on time spent there.
<...>
President Bush started a war based on a false premise. He sent our troops into a situation that he didn’t know what he was getting into. The philosopher Hannah Arendt once observed that nations are driven by the endless flywheel of violence believing that one last, one final violent gesture will bring peace. But, each time they sow the seeds for more violence. Five years later we are still engaged in the war in Iraq. Two years longer than we were in World War II. And that has come at a very great cost. The costs are clear, of course, and we all mourn: 4,100 of our troops have lost their lives in battle; tens of thousands of our troops injured, many of them permanently.

Now no one's going to call Speaker Pelosi for that bit of hypocrisy, anymore than they'll point out she's wrong about how long we were in World War II (hint: not just 3 years) or how many Americans have been killed in battle in Iraq (3,340 as of June 20, not 4,100).

Because Nancy went to Iraq, and came back:

“Over Memorial Day, I visited our troops in Iraq with some of our colleagues and it was my sixth trip into the theatre. And what they asked me was what they always asked: ‘What’s going to happen to us when we go home?’ And for a long time on those visits, I didn’t have an answer that I could be pleased to tell them.

...and sees it all in black and white.

And Barack Hussein Obama says he's going to follow in her footsteps.

*****

Part two here.

Making History

Joe Galloway, at Mike Yon's:

Taguba and his investigators sifted and probed and assessed the blame as high as they were permitted to go. Taguba believed — no, he KNEW — that the responsibility for this outrage went much higher. He knew it reached to the office of then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and likely beyond to the lawyers who served President George W. Bush and perhaps even to the president himself.

But the brass, military and civilian, wanted Taguba and those who ran 16 other Army investigations of the Abu Ghraib scandal only to get to the bottom of the situation, not to the top.

A female Army Reserve military police brigadier general was reprimanded but criminal charges and courts martial were limited to five enlisted men and women, none ranking any higher than staff sergeant.

For his honesty in both the investigation and in sworn testimony before congressional committees Tony Taguba became persona non grata in the halls of the Pentagon. The career of one of the Army's more talented and honorable officers ended with an untimely retirement.

And here's what Taguba honestly told congress in his sworn testimony regarding his Abu Ghraib investigation in 2004:

"We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition and I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level," Tugaba said.

And here's the Taguba Report (thoughtfully archived by NPR) which concludes:

Several US Army Soldiers have committed egregious acts and grave breaches of international law at Abu Ghraib/BCCF and Camp Bucca, Iraq. Furthermore, key senior leaders in both the 800th MP Brigade and the 205th MI Brigade failed to comply with established regulations, policies, and command directives in preventing detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and at Camp Bucca during the period August 2003 to February 2004.

Taguba noted that

Had the findings and recommendations contained within their own investigations been analyzed and actually implemented by BG Karpinski, many of the subsequent escapes, accountability lapses, and cases of abuse may have been prevented

and

While clearly the 800th MP Brigade and its commanders were not tasked to set conditions for detainees for subsequent MI interrogations, it is obvious from a review of comprehensive CID interviews of suspects and witnesses that this was done at lower levels.

Taguba wasn't the only one who knew that. For a second opinion, here's former army Sgt Joseph Darby, the soldier from Abu Ghraib who turned Charles Graner's home made porn collection over to the Army investigators:

Everybody thinks there was an order from high up, or that somebody in command must have known. Everybody is wrong. Nobody in command knew about the abuse, because nobody in command cared enough to find out. That was the real problem. The entire command structure was oblivious, living in their own little worlds. So it wasn’t a conspiracy—it was negligence, plain and simple. They were all fucking clueless.

Unlike Taguba, Darby actually did suffer for his actions:

...but not at the hands of the US Army.

There is one group he hasn't forgiven: " I still have a lot of bad feelings toward the press."

*****

Want actual facts on Abu Ghraib?

A combination of blurring and smearing (Part 1)

A combination of blurring and smearing (Part 2)

Porn Squad Commandos

Want to meet the "female Army Reserve military police brigadier general " whose career Taguba rightfully destroyed?

Abu Ghraib: The View from the Top

Death Before Dishonor

Torturing the Truth

Useful Tools

Exodus (V)

Part of a series that began here. Previous installment here.

*****

Our latest email from Haider Ajina:

Greetings,

The following is my translation of an article from Iraq’s Buratha news on 6-19-08

Iraqi Refugee minister declares 400 doctors and 19 thousand Iraqi return.

Iraqi refugee minister Abdul-Samad Rahman Sultan announce that over 19,800 families have returned to their residences through out Iraq and another 6,100 families have returned to Baghdad, out of which 5,200 have been covered under the Prime Minster’s assistance plan. The minister added, ‘the relative calm and improvement of security is becoming very obvious, hence the return of over 400 doctors to Baghdad’s Kargh area alone’. He also denied the existence of any forced repatriation, saying ‘all who return are returning voluntarily. The migration or exodus of families has stopped since late November of last year; however, the numbers being reported since then are due to delays in reporting or registering with the ministry due to the then security situation’. Sultan continues, “When the ministry started dolling out assistance money for the displaced, many families started registering at the different offices of the ministry”. The number of registered displace families in Dialah, Nainawah, and Anbar provinces reached 220,000, with Dialah province having the largest number registered. This is due to the opening of new ministerial offices in Dialah province. This recent increase in registrations is not an indicator of continued violence; in fact it is a result of former violence. Recent security operations in Mousul and Basrah have improved security in Iraq, allowing people to register.’

Sultan talked about the need for more funding to support the repatriation program, implemented by the ministry. The funding will compensate families for damages. The 195 million dollars allocated to the ministry will cover the repatriation but not compensation for damages.

Haider adds the following comments:

The news media reported often on Iraqis leaving Iraq and Iraqis forced to leave their neighborhoods within Iraq. Note that surveys done by the Brooking Institute in March of 2007 asking 5,019 Iraqis: “Do you have members of your family that have moved away from their home over the previous four years as a result of the security situation?” To which only 24% replied YES and 72% replied NO. Now we do not hear much about Iraqis returning to their homes, within Iraq or from outside of Iraq. Iraqis are returning in large numbers and receiving compensation for damages and social services until they get back on their feet.

Regards
Haider Ajina
McKinleyville CA

To catch up on this story begin here.

Genesis (VII)

An ongoing series. Part one is here, previous installment here.

"This place is not a town, it's a cemetery. It is the lowest of the low in Iraq. It needs to be cleaned out."
-- Najim Abdullah Jabouri, in an interview the day before the September, 2005 battle for the town began.

But this is how 2005 would end in Tal Afar: Iraqis in former rebel stronghold now cheer American soldiers.

The story might have surprised any Americans who happened to read it, but it appeared in the London Telegraph, and it's not likely that many did. After a brief mention of the "largest military operation of 2005" and acknowledgement of reconstruction efforts ("new sewers have been dug and the fronts of shops, destroyed in the US assault, were replaced within weeks. Sunni police have been hired and 2,000 goats were even distributed to farmers") the author declares "...there is no doubt that something has been achieved."

"More remarkably, the approach of an American military convoy brings people out to wave and even clap."

The 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment had arrived in northern Iraq in the Spring of 2005. They would be in the Tall Afar area throughout that long hot summer before moving into the town in force in September.

When the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment moved into northwest Iraq last May, it faced a mess. Just as Fallujah had become a major staging point for attacks into Baghdad, Tall Afar was being used as a base to send suicide bombers and other attackers 40 miles east into Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq.
<...>
McMaster had his unit bolster the security operation along the Syrian border, in an effort to cut off support and reinforcements coming into Iraq. He also sought to eliminate havens in the desert, beginning in June with a move against the remote desert town of Biaj, which had become a way station and training and outfitting post for fighters infiltrating from Syria. As he made the move, he brought Iraqi troops with him.

We've already seen the American media coverage of that preparation as it was ongoing - little beyond the death toll, and reports of atrocities inflicted on the citizens of the town by "foreign allies" of certain local insurgents. But...

In late summer, McMaster started receiving greater cooperation from Sunni leaders who had been sympathetic to the insurgency. One reason, according to U.S. military intelligence analysts, was that some insurgents were unhappy with foreign allies who seemed determined to start a civil war.

There were reasons for that "unhappiness". As the Telegraph story had noted, "The insurgents who used to control this city of 170,000 were amongst the most barbaric in Iraq. They beheaded, executed and shot locals who questioned their brand of fundamentalist Islam."

"With the insurgency's support infrastructure weakened in outlying areas" the Washington Post would report after the battle, "McMaster moved on the city."

But even then he didn't attack it. First, following the suggestion of his Iraqi allies, he ringed the city with dirt berm nine feet high and 12 miles long, leaving checkpoints from which all movement could be observed. This was a nod to the counterinsurgency principle of being able to control and follow the movement of the population.

Building on that idea, U.S. military intelligence had traced the kinship lines of different tribes, enabling the unit to track fighters traveling to likely destinations just outside the city. About 120 fighters were then rounded up from among those fleeing the impending attack.

Next, McMaster and his subordinates recalled, civilians were pressured to leave the city for a camp prepared for them just to the south. Some more insurgents were caught trying to sneak out with them.

In September, after four months of preparatory moves, McMaster launched the attack.

The Post's Jonathan Finer accompanied the unit into combat. His outstanding coverage could be found buried in the back pages of the newspaper throughout the battle.

5,000 U.S. And Iraqi Troops Sweep Into City Of Tall Afar

Urban Assault Is Largest Since Last Year

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 2 -- It was a clear and quiet dusk, with only the call to prayer echoing from minarets across this city, when a roadside bomb blasted an M1-A1 Abrams tank, shaking nearby buildings and filling the indigo sky with a plume of black smoke.

Crackling small-arms fire clanged off the damaged vehicle from an adjacent house. U.S. soldiers answered with increasingly violent volleys -- .50-caliber machine gun bursts, tank rounds and a TOW missile -- but the shots from inside the house kept coming. Finally, an ear-splitting succession of five rounds from the tank's big gun reduced the building to flaming rubble and lit the empty streets with white sparks from exploding power transformers.

In the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November, more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops entered this northern city before dawn Friday. But the 45-minute firefight at day's end suggested that the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily.

"We knew they were going to fight," said Pfc. Johnny Lara, a machine gunner from Blue Platoon, Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who watched the clash with a reporter from a rooftop about 100 yards away. "Now it's a fight."
<...>
Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry, said Tall Afar's complex demographics would make it difficult to pacify. As many as 75 percent of residents are Sunni Turkmens, many of whom held prominent political and military positions when Iraq was ruled by Hussein. Increasingly threatened by the rise of the country's Shiite-led government, they have clashed with local Shiite Turkmen tribes and with the mostly Shiite and Kurdish security forces deployed to Tall Afar.
<...>
"The city is basically a microcosm of all the problems, all the divisions that exist in Iraq, in one place," McMaster said.
<...>
In recent meetings, McMaster said, tribal leaders implored the Americans to invade Tall Afar again, but this time not to leave so quickly.
<...>
"I don't want to kill this city, I want to bring it back to life," McMaster said. "We are taking steps to minimize destruction. I want to do it right."

September 3, 2005

After spending the night in abandoned homes, the more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops who had swept into the northern city of Tall Afar awoke Saturday morning to broadcasts from mosques calling residents to fight the invasion.

But the troops met little resistance as they continued raiding houses Saturday to gather information about the insurgents who have controlled large parts of the city for nearly a year.

In one of the few pockets of fighting, insurgents fired seven rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks from adjacent buildings in the western neighborhood of Qadisiyah. A U.S. jet destroyed much of the block with a 500-pound satellite-guided bomb, commanders said. Soldiers also destroyed at least half a dozen roadside bombs and discovered a large cache of artillery rounds hidden in one of the many lush valleys that divide the city.

For the second consecutive day, U.S. forces reported no casualties.

"We expected them to fight back more than they did today, especially given some of the neighborhoods we were moving through," said Capt. Alan Blackburn, 30, of Mooresville, Ind., commander of Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault.

Blackburn said the estimated 300 to 500 insurgents believed to be operating in Tall Afar appeared to be massing in the restive neighborhood of Sarai, east of downtown, where U.S. patrols are frequently attacked.

As with most newspapers without enough reporters in Iraq to cover the story, the Los Angeles Times had to rely on military spokesmen and "special correspondents" for news of the battle:

Meanwhile, in the northern city of Tall Afar, Iraqi and U.S. forces remained locked in an intense battle with insurgents.
<...>
In Tall Afar, U.S. and Iraqi government forces continued to bombard suspected insurgent positions in an intense campaign that has largely shut down the city west of Mosul.

Witnesses said U.S. planes carried out hours of bombing raids over the city Friday night, and Iraqi national guard and U.S. troops blocked streets and shut down access to the city.

"The situation in Tall Afar is moving from bad to worse," said Sheik Salim Ibrahim, a tribal leader who complained that efforts by the Mosul governor to enlist the help of local sheiks to reestablish calm were failing.

The director of the Tall Afar Hospital said it had received the bodies of three people killed by shrapnel. A U.S. military spokeswoman said only that American soldiers were engaged in operations against insurgents in an effort to secure the city for the October elections.

More from Jonathan Finer, in the Washington Post:

U.S. Troops Cordon Part Of Iraqi Town To Trap Insurgents

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 4 -- Under the cover of a moonless night, U.S. soldiers on Sunday strung nearly a mile of razor-sharp concertina wire across the northern edge of a neighborhood dominated by insurgents to prevent them from fleeing without a showdown.
<...>
"The idea is to trap them in Sarai or force them toward our checkpoints to the south," said Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, referring to the neighborhood that U.S. forces believe has served as a launching point for many attacks in the city. "We don't want them to slip out."
<...>
About 500 people attempted to leave the city this weekend through the U.S.-manned checkpoints. At least one man suspected of kidnapping and beheading several residents in recent weeks was apprehended when he tried to leave the city with a group of children, McMaster said. When soldiers interviewed the children, they said they did not know the man but went with him because they had been threatened.

A cacophony of gunfire and explosions filled the air around Tall Afar on Sunday, the heaviest day of fighting since the invasion began. Soldiers continued methodically searching homes and questioning residents, frequently coming under small-arms fire that whistled overhead as they passed from house to house or leapt across gaps between rooftops.
<...>
Elsewhere Sunday in Tall Afar, an Iraqi army unit freed 35 hostages held in a house south of downtown, according to Maj. Gen. Khorsheed Salim, commander of the army's 3rd Division, which is heavily involved in the operation.

Soldiers in the western part of the city found a laboratory rigged with explosives, McMaster said. The lab also contained a chemical that burned the troops' throats and eyes when they entered. The Army is trying to identify the substance.

September 5, 2005

In Tall Afar, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers entered the fourth day of an offensive against insurgents who have controlled large sections of the city for nearly a year. On Monday night, soldiers dropped leaflets from helicopters in the eastern neighborhood of Sarai, where commanders believe insurgents are entrenched, warning noncombatants to evacuate the area.

About 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 3rd Armored Reconnaissance Regiment and the Iraqi army's 3rd Division continued advancing toward Sarai from all directions, searching homes, confiscating weapons and interrogating residents.

Early Monday morning, six members of an elite U.S. special operations unit were wounded in what was to have been a raid on the home of a suspected insurgent leader, according to U.S. commanders. Members of the unit, which is charged with searching for high-level insurgents, and the Army in Tall Afar would not provide details.

September 6, 2005:

With Death At Their Door, Few Leave Iraqi City

Civilians Urged to Flee Before U.S. Assault

"Steps are being taken to ensure that this is done with the least possible amount of harm done to civilians," McMaster said.

But several Sarai residents said they had been warned that Shiite residents or policemen, who are concentrated in southern Tall Afar, would attack if they left in that direction.

"I would rather die from American bombs in my home with my family than walk south," a man in a gray dishdasha , or robe, and white head scarf explained to soldiers. "People are saying the Shiites will kill you or kidnap you. That is a disgrace."

The evacuation of Sarai, the oldest section of Tall Afar and a web of narrow streets where fighting is expected to be difficult, was supposed to help prevent civilians from being hurt or killed during the offensive's final phase. The military strung nearly a mile of concertina wire along Bel Air, on the northern edge of the neighborhood, on Sunday to encourage people to migrate south, where it had established checkpoints to prevent insurgents from fleeing undetected. Among 200 people who followed instructions and fled south Tuesday, soldiers discovered a man suspected of being an insurgent who was dressed as a woman, complete with prosthetic breasts.

For the military, problems began at 8 a.m. Tuesday when soldiers who had spent the night in an abandoned house awoke to about 300 Sarai residents who had picked their way across the wire and were sitting in the street outside the house, asking how they could get out of Tall Afar.

The soldiers escorted the crowd back to the other side of the wire but found that at least 500 other people were waiting to come across. To block them, they placed tanks and Bradleys along Bel Air and sent soldiers with rifles to the roofs overlooking the street.

Men who identified themselves as tribal leaders of the people attempting to flee would periodically walk across the street -- which is pockmarked with dozens of craters caused by explosions -- stepping gingerly over the wire to negotiate with soldiers. Some residents said that their relatives were too sick or frail to travel south of the city or that their tribe was located in the north so they needed to go in that direction. Others said they actually lived outside Sarai but had spent the night in the neighborhood and were trapped by the concertina wire. The soldiers refused to let them pass.

"I am sure 99 percent of you are good people who are telling us the truth," Capt. Alan Blackburn, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron, which was policing the area around Bel Air, told one of the men who wanted to go north. "But I am sure that there are a few people in that crowd who are not good people. And we don't have the facilities here to check them. You have to go south."

"I am not going unless you drive me in a tank," the man said. "There are no bad people in Sarai. If you come with me, I will take you to all the houses and you can see. The bad people are the Shiites in the south."

Late in the afternoon, the soldiers relented and offered a compromise. They told the residents they could exit to the north if they agreed to board military trucks bound for a base just outside the city where they could be processed and then released if they proved not to have ties to the insurgency.

"It sounds like a trick to take us south to the Shiites," one man said.

"We will go only if we can drive our own vehicles," another countered.

About 3 p.m., Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, the Squadron commander, arrived to make a final plea. "I am trying to help you to get out of a very dangerous situation. You are going to be in danger if you stay here, I am telling you," he said. "Please, this is your last chance."

As he turned away from the crowd, one family emerged, with nine adults carrying baggage and eight children in tow. "Anyone else?" Hickey asked, beckoning. "Okay, then we will save these people," he said, and walked away.

September 8, 2005:

The U.S. soldiers sensed something wasn't quite right when an ambulance carrying two dead bodies arrived Thursday morning at a checkpoint for people evacuating this city under siege.

Hanging off the sides of the vehicle were three young men who said they were escorting the remains of family members killed in the previous night's bombardment to a local hospital. But when an Iraqi policeman looked them over, he pointed to a man who wore white sweatpants and a white shirt and appeared to be in his early twenties. "I know him. He must be detained," the officer said. "He murdered a policeman."

The interrogation by American soldiers initially went nowhere. The man insisted he spoke Turkish, not Arabic, and therefore could not communicate with the Americans' interpreters. Asked his name, he kept alternating between "Habib" and "Faris." At one point, he rolled on the floor making retching noises as if he were going to throw up. But everything changed when exasperated soldiers said they had no choice but to turn him over to the Iraqis, who were anxious to take him into custody.

"Yes, I am a terrorist, yes," the man said in perfect Arabic, his ailment apparently forgotten. "I would rather you shoot me in the head than give me to them."
<...>
"Please no," he repeated several times. Once soldiers realized they had a lever to extract information, they called for Iraqi policemen to sit in on the questioning. The officers said the man was involved in a gruesome killing of a local policeman who was beheaded, his corpse placed on the street with a bomb lodged inside of it that exploded when a dog began sniffing at the body.

When the policemen first entered the room, the man turned to face the corner, refusing to look at them. After a series of increasingly pointed questions shouted at him, he became defiant.

"No matter what you say, I am a holy warrior. I am going to paradise," he told the interrogators, referring to the belief cited by many insurgent fighters that those who die for their cause have a special place in the afterlife. "The rest of you are infidels who will go to hell."
<...>
Heavy bombing continued Thursday evening, as U.S. jets dropped 500-pound J-DAM precision bombs and other munitions into the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai, while playing messages over loudspeakers that called on residents to evacuate. Nearly 1,000 people left the city through U.S. checkpoints Thursday, and commanders said intelligence showed that insurgent leaders were attempting to vacate the city.

Iraqi policemen and soldiers are fully integrated into nearly every aspect of the Tall Afar operation, often attached to units from the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault, or advised by small groups of U.S. Special Forces soldiers. Among the units here are several battalions of the Iraqi army's 3rd Division, which is based in northwestern Iraq, and a battalion of Kurdish soldiers assigned to Tall Afar for this operation. Hundreds of regular Iraqi policemen and police commandos are also being brought to the city to man stations that U.S. forces have said they will establish once the fighting wanes.
<...>
"When we started with them, whenever they would receive a little fire they would either run or do what we called the 'death blossom' -- basically spraying in all directions, which was dangerous for us and dangerous for the town," said Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, who leads the 3rd Armored Cavalry's Sabre Squadron and works closely with Iraqi commanders. "Through leadership and experience, they have become more disciplined."

September 10, 2005

U.S. Troops Sweep Into Empty Insurgent Haven In Iraq

Rebels Apparently Fled City as Word Of Invasion Spread

The moment the Iraqi troops launched their attack just after 7 a.m. Saturday, the bullets began to fly. Gunfire echoed off centuries-old stone buildings in the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai: machine-gun bursts, booming tank rounds and an incessant crackle of AK-47s that lasted for most of an hour.

But the shooting spree was only going in one direction.

"So far, Iraqi army reporting no enemy contact," came the word over the radio, 45 minutes after the first shots were fired, to U.S. troops waiting to join the assault.

By the time the Americans entered Sarai -- in a rare supporting role to an Iraqi battalion comprising mostly the Kurdish pesh merga militiamen, who led the charge -- the labyrinthine warren of close-packed structures and streets too narrow for armored vehicles was eerily deserted.
<...>
Commanders proclaimed the relative lack of resistance a sign of the success of the operation, in which at least 550 suspected insurgents have been killed or captured, the vast majority of them Iraqi, including six of the 10 top targets the U.S. military had identified here. One U.S. soldier and five Iraqi troops also have been killed.
<...>
In recent days, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers operating throughout the city had converged on Sarai, where fighting was expected to be fiercest. One U.S. squadron of just over 1,000 soldiers had planned for roughly 10 casualties per day during the assault. The night before the attack, commanders pored over aerial photographs of the neighborhood, which is so densely constructed that buildings were all but indistinguishable, making it difficult to plot a route for the attack.

"It's pretty much the worst urban terrain for fighting imaginable," said Capt. Alan Blackburn, commander of the Eagle Troop of the 3rd Armored Cavalry's 2nd Squadron, as he peppered his platoon commanders with questions about how to deal with wounded soldiers or large numbers of dead civilians.
<...>
The soldiers walked quickly along both sides of a wide avenue, into what could have passed for a Hollywood version of a war zone: buildings missing roofs destroyed by explosions; blackened vehicles, some still smoking; shattered glass littering the road. They stepped over shell casings of all shapes and sizes.

It was impossible to determine how much of the destruction was recent and how much had been left unrepaired for months, or years.

The soldiers gathered material they considered suspicious, labeled it with permanent markers and placed it into garbage bags: in one house, military handbooks with diagrams showing how to conduct ambushes and make explosives; in another, three molotov cocktails; in a mosque, which had three large holes in its ceiling and shrapnel from a Hellfire missile among the rubble of its floor, grenades in a side room.

They confiscated computer disks and video controllers with the wiring removed, which can help trigger roadside bombs, and poked long sticks into water drums and baskets of grain to search for weapons.
<...>
McMaster said the reconstruction of Tall Afar would begin soon after offensive operations were complete and insisted the city would not fall under insurgent control again. Already, $2.4 million in U.S. money has been allocated for infrastructure projects, but because of the violence, the military had been unable to persuade contractors to work here.

"They want this city to fail. They want Iraq to fail," McMaster said of the insurgents. "But the No. 1 priority is being met by this operation, which is to defeat the terrorists so they can no longer prevent reconstruction from happening."

September 11, 2005

As Offensive In Iraq Continues, Troops Find Unexpected Quiet

By Jonathan Finer, Washington Post Foreign Service

For the second day, U.S. and Iraqi forces mounting a large-scale offensive in this northwestern city had little contact with insurgents Sunday, as troops conducted house-to-house searches through largely abandoned neighborhoods and detained a handful of young men.
<...>
Hundreds of insurgents have been captured in the offensive. The military reported that 156 insurgents had been killed in the fighting so far, revising downward an earlier estimate of more than 200.

"The shaping operations that we conducted before crossing into Sarai are the reason why we haven't seen the resistance we expected," said Maj. Chris Kennedy, executive officer for the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault.
<...>
For the second consecutive day, U.S. forces followed several hundred Iraqi soldiers, from a unit made up mostly of troops from the Kurdish pesh merga militia, into a section of Sarai, where most residents are Sunni Muslim Turkmens, ethnic relatives of Turks.

With no one to fight and few suspects to detain, the troops treated the neighborhood as a large crime scene, gathering items they found suspicious from the dozens of homes they entered and searched over several hours. The only sounds of battle were occasional sporadic gunfire and resounding booms -- the controlled detonations of roadside bombs that were discovered throughout the day.
<...>
A group linked to the insurgent organization al Qaeda in Iraq published a statement on a Web site used by such groups saying it would retaliate against Iraqi security forces in Baghdad for the operation in Tall Afar, according to the Associated Press.

"The Taifa al-Mansoura Army has decided to . . . strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujaheddin, unless the military operations in Tall Afar stop within 24 hours," the statement said.

*****

They didn't. And if the "insurgents" thought they could move back in right away they can be forgiven for that miscalculation. To this point the story of Tall Afar, 2005 sounded exactly like that of Tall Afar 2004 - right down to the "weaker than expected" resistance. But as with so many other places in Iraq, once the shooting stopped, the battle began.

Here's how it was lost in 2004:

The U.S. military launched a major pre-dawn assault Sunday to wrest the northern city of Tall Afar from insurgents but encountered almost no resistance, leaving uncertain the whereabouts of fighters who have battled U.S.-led forces for months.
<...>
Ham said U.S. commanders concluded that some of the insurgents had probably fled in anticipation of the attack.
<...>
"Having us stay there is exactly the wrong thing," Ham said. "First of all, we don't have enough forces to stay in the city. But it also sends a message to those that oppose us. It lets them say, 'See, we told you, they really are occupiers. They've taken over a city.' "
<...>
On Monday, U.S. troops pulled back to a forward operating base on the outskirts of Tall Afar and were no longer operating continuously inside the city, Army Maj. Thomas Osteen said.
<...>
"As you know, this is a very important time for Tall Afar," responded Lt. Col. Kevin Hyneman, the deputy commanding officer for the 2nd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. "I don't want to rebuild it like an American would. I want to rebuild it based on your own priorities."

"But the most important thing is security," Hyneman said. "We don't want to have to go and do all of this again months from now or a year from now."

But there's where the similarities between the two campaigns end. The 2004 strategy was to turn over control to Iraqis within days of the conclusion of the operation (a microcosm of the broader situation in Iraq since April, 2003) and American commanders were under intense political and media pressure to execute that pre-planned strategy.

In 2005 the goal was the same - but the timelines were more realistic:

McMaster had a clear plan in hand for his next step. He also knew how he wanted to measure his success: Would Iraqis -- especially Sunni Arabs -- be willing to join the local police force? Would they "participate in their own security," as he put it?

The first step in this phase was to establish 29 patrol bases across the city. That, along with steady patrolling, gave the American military and its Iraqi allies a view of every major stretch of road in the compact city, which measures about three square miles. And that amount of observation made it extremely difficult for insurgents to plant bombs.

"It gives us great agility," said Lt. Col. Chris Hickey, a 1982 graduate of Chantilly High School in Virginia, who commands the U.S. troop contingent in the city. Hickey said that he can order an attack to come from two or three of the patrol bases instead of predictably rolling out the front gate of his base.

Hickey also has spent months living in the city, perched in the Ottoman-era ramparts that dominate it. He slept at the base only rarely. From his position downtown, he said, "I hear every gunshot in the city." His conclusion: "Living among the people works, if you treat them with respect." When the electricity goes out for Iraqis, he noted, it does for him too, even though he has a generator for military communications.

Hickey also moved a U.S. firing range out of earshot of the city. "I like quiet," he said.

Ultimately, 1,400 police officers were recruited, about 60 percent of whom were Sunni Arabs, many of them from elsewhere in Iraq. In addition, the city has about 2,000 Iraqi troops, and a working city council and an activist mayor. A few feet from where the city council meets is a new Joint Operations Center, set up to collect intelligence tips and act on them. The Army officer running the center, Lt. Saythala Phonexayphoua, said he has been surprised by the amount of "actionable intelligence" troops receive.

Phonexayphoua noted: "We get cell phone calls -- 'There's an insurgent planting an IED.' "

Last summer, there were about six insurgent attacks in the area each day. Now there is about one, according to U.S. military intelligence.

*****

By December, 2005: Iraqis in former rebel stronghold now cheer American soldiers

As noted previously, the 3d ACR was a vanguard for a "new" strategy whereby "units' readiness for war should be judged not only by traditional standards, such as how well they fire their tanks, but by the number of foreign speakers in their ranks, their awareness of the local culture where they will fight, and their ability to train and equip local security forces."

It worked. But:

The biggest problem U.S. troops in Iraq face is Baghdad, a city about 30 times the size of Tall Afar. With the current number of American troops in Iraq, it would be impossible to copy the approach used here, with outposts every few blocks.

"Baghdad is a much tougher nut to crack than this," said Maj. Jack McLaughlin, Hickey's plans officer, who attended Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va. Standing in the castle overlooking the city, he said, "It's a matter of scale -- you'd need a huge number of troops to replicate what we've done here."

A solid opinion that echoed one already expressed - and explained - in the British press at the close of 2005:

But the success in Tal Afar only highlights the problems of replicating it elsewhere.

The strategy will require more troops, which is politically unacceptable right now in America, given growing public doubts about the war.

A dew days later (on Western calendars) 2006 began.

*****

More to follow...

Melissa

With apologies to the Allman Brothers...

anna one, hanna, two....

The story behind these videos: I had a couple hours to spare one weekend prior to deploying last year, so I sat down in front of the old computer and recorded myself playing some songs I enjoy playing. Cheap camera, cheap mic, one take. All flubs intact. I didn't have a lot of time for the project. Just wanted to quickly capture myself for posterity, you know, just in case.

I rediscoverd those videos a couple weeks ago, and thought I'd share them here. Something different for a weekend at Mudville.

Previously:

The Boxer

Nautical Wheelers

I've always Loved You

And though it's not part of that series, here's the song I wrote in Iraq and recorded when I got back.

The Free and the Brave *****

Bonus: I'd almost forgotten this song, the first I ever uploaded here. It's been on the left sidebar for a while - but here's a (slightly) new version.

Sweet Marie

I wrote that one about 25 years ago, so it's a "classic". ;)

The Weekly Reader

Read how the cold war ended and another began - then spend some time with the warriors. My ongoing search for bargains for you:

Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground - $6.99, hardcover.

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times - $6.49, paperback.

Dead Bill Walking

Update: The bill has now passed the House 412-12 - details below.

*****

A rare statement - perhaps especially in an election year:

"This is an agreement that has been worked out in a bipartisan way that I think is acceptable to both most Democrats and most Republicans and to the White House," Boehner said.

He's talking about the war funding bill - that includes a much needed (and long past due) overhaul of veteran's education benefits.

More amazing quotes:

"This is an agreement that has been worked out in a bipartisan way that I think is acceptable to both most Democrats and most Republicans," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

White House Budget Director Jim Nussle signaled Bush would sign the measure.

"It meets the needs of the troops; it doesn't tie the hands of commanders in the field," Nussle said.

As recently as Tuesday insiders expressed little hope for the bill's future - but that's apparently changed. To say I'm (pleasantly) shocked is an understatement. Read my previous post (or just its title - "GI Bill" Passes Senate, Moves Headlong to it's Death) and you'll see why.

Ditto for my first (at least, first this year) post on the topic - in which I dared to dream:

So let me introduce my dream-scenario GI Bill:

1. No "buy in"

2. Webb's benefits for short term service, growing to Graham's numbers for career service members.

3. Transferability per Graham's bill. ( I really can't find anyone's defense of the lack of this provision in Webb's bill.)
<...>
And now let me tell you what I think is more likely "New GI Bill": NOTHING. ZIP. NADA, NO CHANGE.

But as far as I can tell, the compromise bill includes items 1 and 3, with a little bit of 2: "It also allows those who serve six years or longer to share their GI Bill benefits with spouses or children." That leaves me nothing to complain about - though I can't shake a lingering suspicion that those things that sound too good to be true usually are.

And while I think this validates my concern...:

But some senators, particularly those on the Appropriations Committee, are threatening to add spending for domestic causes. Any Senate amendments would require the House to reconsider the legislation, probably after the week-long congressional recess for the July 4th holiday.

...I also think the phrase "political suicide" might be apllicable - and obvious to said senators.

More details from CQ Politics here, from The Politico here and here, and from the NY Times here.

From which, this:

The bill, which could be voted on as early as Thursday in the House, would effectively bring to a close the two-year battle between President Bush and Congressional Democrats over war financing by allocating about $163 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through early next year without imposing conditions like a withdrawal deadline.

This bill is a compromise - which means there's plenty in it to piss of partisans of any stripe. (Fiscal conservatives will be especially outraged.)

There are a few "face saving" games being played...

Boehner: "It also does not include billions in unrelated wasteful Washington pork that was added by Senate Democrats."

White House Budget Director Jim Nussle:

"It meets the needs of the troops; it doesn't tie the hands of commanders in the field," Nussle said. He also said the spending levels in the bill stayed within Bush's demands. The latter claim was a stretch since the measure will carry new GI Bill benefits, as well as additional unemployment payments that Bush had threatened to veto.

And the entire House "The House bill will be considered today in two parts, allowing most Democrats to oppose the war funding and some Republicans to oppose the domestic spending."

..but overall it's good to see vets winning something besides a war.

Oh, by the way - there are obviously a few hurdles to clear, but folks on some campuses around America might want to get ready for some actual diversity in inbound students. That should be interesting, too.

Update: McCain endorses:

But, with the addition of a clause allowing service members to transfer their benefits to family members, McCain now supports the 21st Century Bill of Rights, the proposal to give substantially more benefits to veterans for college after their service in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

..though I always cringe when I see some moron call it a "Bill of Rights".

Update - 8:16 PM EDT: Just watched the Bill pass the House. Amendment 1 (war funding) 268-155 (19 not voting) and Amendment 2 (GI Bill and domestic spending) 412-12 (11 not voting).

Code Pink protested.

Update: The Bill passsed the Senate, and the President signed it into law. (My thanks to all Mudville readers who helped make that happen!)

*****

Previous entries:

Re: Injustice

Another Re: Injustice

GI Bill for the 21st Century

How Republicans "lost" the Military Vote

Update: The New GI Bill

Good News/Bad News

G.I. wish I could go to college

Obama Goes for Joe

The Latest

"GI Bill" Passes Senate, Moves Headlong to it's Death

Great News

...from the Washington Post:

The White House and leading House Democrats agreed yesterday on a massive emergency spending bill that would provide more than $162 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and create an education benefit for veterans of those battlefields.

Moving toward the end of the last fight of his tenure over Iraq war funding, President Bush yielded to Democratic demands to include the veterans benefit and a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits in exchange for a reduction in other domestic spending and no tax increases.

The House expects to pass the legislation today and send it to the Senate for consideration next week.
<...>
The veterans benefit, drafted by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), won overwhelming support in previous votes in the House and the Senate. Making the benefit transferable to family members raised the 10-year cost of the plan from $52 billion to $62 billion.

Sounds like a winner. Sometimes election years are good years.

Only one remaining problem - according to the Post "some Senators" are now pledging to lather the bill up with a few tons of pork:

But some senators, particularly those on the Appropriations Committee, are threatening to add spending for domestic causes. Any Senate amendments would require the House to reconsider the legislation, probably after the week-long congressional recess for the July 4th holiday.

The Dark Ages

Missed an anniversary yesterday:

On this day in 1918, Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs gave a speech in Canton, Ohio denouncing America's participation in what we now call World War I. For this "crime," Debs would spend nearly three years rotting in prison, convicted of violating Woodrow Wilson's vile Espionage Act, which essentially made it illegal to criticize the government during wartime (Wilson later refused to pardon Debs, leaving that act of basic human decency to the criminally underrated Warren G. Harding).

The LA Times book review cited in that Hit and Run link describes those bad ol' days: "...the first decades of the 20th century sound weirdly like the present" before pardoning Wilson for not pardoning Debs ("Ailing, distracted by foreign affairs...") and cynically dismissing his "unlikely Republican pardoner, President Warren G. Harding" for this: "When it seemed safe, his successor made the call, shrewdly connecting it to his pledge to return the nation to normalcy."

And for good measure offers a round of "name that Party":

A congressman advised: "People should go ahead and obey the law, keep their mouths shut, and let the government run the war."

Genesis (VI)

Part six in a series - part one is here. Previous entry is here.

*****

Deja vu - the Washington Post's story from September 2004:

U.S.-Led Forces Retake Northern Iraqi City

About 2,000 men -- two battalions from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and a battalion from the Iraqi National Guard -- pushed into Tall Afar at 3:15 a.m. to confront what U.S. military officials had expected would be about 200 insurgents who had taken over the local government.

... seemed eerily similar to this one from September 2005: 5,000 U.S. And Iraqi Troops Sweep Into City Of Tall Afar

Jonathan Finer - in the city with the 3d ACR - would produce a fine series of reports on the 2005 battle over the following weeks. But those who discovered and read those stories - consigned to the Post's back pages - could be forgiven if they experienced a sense of deja vu, along with outrage. Barely one year previously the Post had captured a now-ironic quote from an American soldier at the end of the battle: "We don't want to have to go and do all of this again months from now or a year from now."

Still, at the outset of the 2005 battle, the Post noted that the American commander took "...great pains not to criticize commanders who preceded him here, saying they were handicapped by limited resources and manpower."

"We are trying to learn from the mistakes that have been made here in the past."

Many would be tempted to dismiss that sort of comment from an Army Colonel, but few who knew H.R. McMaster personally, professionally, or by reputation would bet against him.

*****

The assignment of a unit to Iraq is rarely noticed beyond local papers from the community near its home base. The 3d ACR was commanded by a former West Point history professor - and one of his former students took note:

At West Point they have a saying- "Much of the history we teach was made by people we taught." While I was there, they could have taken it a step further- "Some of the history we teach was made by people who are teaching right now." One of the most important battles of Desert Storm was the Battle of 73 Easting- we studied it in depth. The Cadets in my class, however, had a unique perspective- our teacher was the key commander during that battle...
<...>
While he was teaching us about Vietnam, he shared some unbelievable insight based on research he did for book he was writing- called Dereliction of Duty. It's since been published and it's an excellent read. So this McMaster guy is pretty impressive, huh?

Why Should You Care?

Obviously, the Military brass knew they had a winner in McMaster, and so he is now a Colonel in charge of the Fort Carson-based Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. In a few short months, he will be leading soldiers onto the Iraqi battlefield once again.

He also pointed out this December, 2004 Wall Street Journal article:

As Chaos Mounts In Iraq, U.S. Army Rethinks Its Future

Before the war began, Middle East experts, along with some Army officials, warned that stabilizing and governing a fractious and ethnically divided Iraq would be much harder than toppling Saddam Hussein.

A recent directive, prepared by Mr. Rumsfeld's office and still in draft form, now yields to that view. It mandates that in the future, units' readiness for war should be judged not only by traditional standards, such as how well they fire their tanks, but by the number of foreign speakers in their ranks, their awareness of the local culture where they will fight, and their ability to train and equip local security forces. It orders the military's four-star regional commanders to "develop and maintain" new plans for battle, hoping to prevent the sort of postwar chaos that engulfed Iraq.

As example - the 3d ACR:

Perhaps the most striking changes are taking place on Army posts such as Fort Carson, Colo., where the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment is getting ready for an Iraq deployment early next year. Since taking command of the 5,000-soldier regiment this summer, Col. H.R. McMaster, an early critic of the Army's vision of fast, high-tech wars, has put his troops through weeks of mock raids. He has staged convoy ambushes and meetings with role players acting as local Iraqi leaders. Such training is becoming common throughout the Army.

In a training exercise last month, Lt. Doug Armstrong sat down with two fellow soldiers -- both Iraq veterans -- who were pretending to be the mayor and police chief of an Iraqi village. Lt. Armstrong, 23 years old, quickly asked where the insurgents in the town were hiding. The mock mayor shrugged and demanded food and water for the people. He chastised the lieutenant for parking his Humvee in the village wheat field.

About five minutes into the meeting, Col. McMaster cut it short. "Be a little more personable," he told the young officer. "Ask about the mayor's family. Build a relationship before you ask him where the bad guys are."

Col. McMaster then asked the lieutenant if he noticed anything unusual in the room where he was meeting with the mayor. The lieutenant shook his head no.

"Who is that dude on the wall?" Col. McMaster asked, pointing to the only poster tacked to the small office's walls. The lieutenant shrugged. A sergeant standing nearby answered that it was Muqtada al Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric.

"You've got to notice those things," Col. McMaster said.

*****

Part 7 is here.

Screaming Eagles

Caught an air show this past weekend. The 101st Airborne's Screaming Eagles demonstration team was there - and here's a profile of one awe-inspiring member of the team:

Amputee Pursues Skydiving Dream

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (Army News Service, March 15, 2007) - When Spc. Max Ramsey boarded a C-130 at Campbell Army Airfield last week, it wasn't the first time he packed a parachute onto an airplane. He's been skydiving more than 350 times since 2001.

This, however, was no ordinary jump. Ramsey was about to be the first amputee on the Screaming Eagles Parachute Demonstration Team.

Ramsey lost much of his left leg in Iraq last March when an improvised explosive device detonated under his Humvee. But that didn't get him down. Ramsey planned to join the parachute team when he returned from Iraq, and he wasn't going to let a prosthetic leg get in his way.

Mission Gone Bad
Ramsey, 37, joined the Army as an infantryman in mid-2004. "I requested a station somewhere in the 18th Airborne Corps because I knew that would send me to Iraq," he said.

His wish was granted. Ramsey deployed with Company C, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, after Thanksgiving 2005. He was prepared to spend a year in Iraq and then get back to his wife, Ayako, and his job with the parachute team at Fort Campbell.

His battalion was sent to Ramadi to link up with the Marines. "Our area of operations ... was particularly nasty," he said.

Ramsey's life plan took an unexpected turn three months into his tour. At about 1 a.m. on March 1, 2006, the unit was setting up an observation point to check the area around a school its Soldiers were inspecting.

Ramsey was the radio man for the mission. When his gunner got out of the Humvee, Ramsey took his place, "which turned out to be a blessing."

While he was manning the turret, an IED exploded beneath the Humvee, lifting the vehicle off the ground and sending Ramsey into the air. "I just remember smoke and flames coming up, getting lifted out of the turret ... and feeling an impact on my knee."

He grabbed his knee and tried to keep himself inside the vehicle. He realized his original seat was completely destroyed in the blast. "I am extremely lucky to be alive," he said.

The blast cut straight through Ramsey's left knee and broke his right ankle. When the medic arrived, the vehicle's driver, Spc. Garry Duckett, immediately directed him to Ramsey. Duckett's elbow was split open and fractured in the blast, but Ramsey "was a priority," he said.

As the medic was putting the tourniquet on his leg, Ramsey caught a glimpse of his injury. "Once I saw the wound, I knew I was going to lose a leg."

This certainly wasn't part of his life plan. "It became the plan regardless, so I immediately got myself into the mode of making sure I could step out of this whole thing and conquer the disability the best I could."

Ramsey and Duckett kept each other's spirits up throughout their trip to Baghdad, Balad and Landstuhl, Germany. "Every stop we made, we were right there by each other making jokes," Duckett said.

Conquering Therapy
Five days after the explosion, Ramsey arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "My wife was very upset, but I said, 'Listen, I am going to walk again; I am going to run again. You and I will return home and I will be on two feet.'"

He overcame his greatest personal challenge in early April when he took his first steps with a prosthetic leg.

"You kind of get momentum," he said. "You get used to walking forward, so you keep walking forward."

Ramsey spent one year at Walter Reed recovering and learning how to physically and mentally face the way ahead. Spending time in the clinic with other amputees was an uplifting aspect of the recovery process, he said. "It changes your perspective on life; that's part of what makes the positive vibe in recovery so strong."

He used the "vibe" to his advantage, pushing himself to the limit so he could return to Fort Campbell and the team waiting for him.

He is a true inspiration to all servicemembers, said 101st Airborne Division Command Sgt. Maj. Frank Grippe. "He is the type of warrior all Americans are proud of and our enemies are terrified of."

Up in the Air
Ramsey's first jump as an amputee came in September in California as part of the "Pieces of Eight" - an all-amputee skydiving group.

For Ramsey, it was like he never left the sky. "I'm back," he said. "The sensation was very natural."

March 7 was his first jump at Fort Campbell. He successfully landed at Corregidor drop zone on post, which, ironically, shares the name of his forward operating base in Ramadi.

"He has great skills," said former parachute team leader Sgt. 1st Class Matt Cline, who corresponded with Ramsey the entire year he was at Walter Reed. "He's just having to adapt to only having one limb on his lower body where he used to have two for power and control."

With 15 jumps under his belt in the past week, he's well on his way to mastering his technique. Ramsey plans to complete 121 more jumps by April 7 to reach his goal of 500, which will move him to the next level in the U.S. Parachute Association rating system before the team's first pro-rated demonstration.

"Max coming here is good for the team," said Staff Sgt. Dewey Vinaya, parachute team leader. "When the newer guys ... start getting aches and pains, they look at Max and he says, 'If I can overcome it, you can overcome it.'"

To his teammates, he's just another one of the guys. "I don't look at him as an amputee," Vinaya said. "He's very open about it, so it doesn't come across as a handicap."

Ramsey is still jumping with the team, it was an honor to see them perform.

Shokka!!!

Bush lied - people died!!! I'm stunned, stunned I tell you - to hear this news.

Oh wait - no I'm not. I meant to say I'm stunned this is in the news. So rather than write something new on this, I'll check the archives and see if anything needs updated...

April, 2003:

Saddam Hussein is a weapon of mass destruction. Okay? But only as the head of a government... Iraq could manufacture WMD. We know this. Suppose they stopped for a while and destroyed all their stores. What stops them from rebuilding their supply? Their fundamental goodness and decency? Their burning desire to be a part of the world community? Their love of all mankind? We've certainly seen all that demonstrated this past week.

April 27, 2005

Perhaps there's a certain percentage of the American population that had to have the fear of their own death via a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack made clear to them before they would give their personal approval to sending someone else's kids off to defend them in a war. I'm almost willing to believe such people exist, and that those same people are outraged because that old tricksy Bush pulled a fast one on them, and they now feel betrayed that their fervent support of the invasion of Iraq was built on a foundation of deception (or "fiction" as the Times would say). If so, let me assure any of those same gullible folks who may read this: Almost was the key word in the above sentence. I don't believe you exist. Fooled you though, didn't I? See, you're too easy.

April 28, 2005:

The Real True History of the War in Iraq

Even though it only happened a few months ago a lot of folks are already forgetting and denying the real true history of the war in Iraq. Thus, as a service to our readers, The Mudville Gazette presents excerpts from my upcoming book, The Real True History of the Iraq War before all that forgetting and denying gets any worse. The book will be academic yet accessible - and the first balanced, non-partisan look at the reality of Bushitler Chimpymonkey's neocon oil war for Cheney's Haliburton cronies ever.

Chapter One: Before the Beginning

February 2003: The tension built to a fever pitch. American opinion was evenly split for and against war in Iraq. But after the president's unforgettable State of the Union Address in which he revealed that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to attack America with "nuculer" missiles and that the Iraqi dictator had actually piloted one of the suicide aircraft on 9/11, previously undecided Americans took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, demanding an immediate invasion of Iraq, a nation previously best known for being the Garden of Eden.

August 27, 2005:

For those who claim they were deceived into supporting the war because "Bush lied": Are you frequently so deceived? Do you consider yourself a generally gullible person? Are you certain? How can you be sure someone's not misleading you now? In short, why should I trust your current position, if you demonstrably lack good judgment?
<...>
If you weren't deceived before the war, can you offer an example of someone who was? Someone specific, not a group or a hypothetical person. And can we ask them the same questions?
<...>
And if you were indeed deceived about the whole WMD/personal threat against you issue, why didn't you join [the military]? Are there any circumstances in which you would join the military?

December 10, 2006

A lot of congressional leaders (and other Americans) are insisting they were completely and totally duped by pre-war claims of WMDs in Iraq. I'm always curious as to why these self-professed "easy marks" are considered worth listening to when they announce their latest epiphanies.

Nope - no change.

Fathers Day Revisited

Proposed "new" conventional wisdom: "In all this, we should be clear on one thing: Even if the optimistic scenarios prevail, this war was a mistake from beginning to end."

Before I went off to Iraq last year as part of the surge I was told that it had failed. While there I learned that few Americans cared what General Petraeus had to report from Iraq. And now that I'm back I discover that it wasn't worth it. It's hard to keep up with all the changes of our fast-paced society today.

*****

I wrote this post in late June 2007 from Baghdad, during the earliest days and heaviest fighting of the surge.

Beyond the headline-making casualty figures, I was with people who'd just missed their kids high school (and college) graduation. Others who'd missed births. Others whose marriages ended, and no one who didn't sacrifice something. If you wonder how people can do such things - I can't answer. But I can ask you to understand that we couldn't if we didn't know we could win.

I'm in America this Fathers Day, but last year I was in Iraq. I actually posted this a couple weeks after that day, I'm not sure anyone got my message (which I thought I made clear in my opening paragraphs) but I think it says more now then it did then.

Most people never knew (unless they inferred it from the death tolls) and some might have since forgotten that at the time I wrote this the early battles of the surge were raging and Americans were dying at the highest level of the war and back home failure had already been declared.

We soldiered on.

*****

Fathers Day Revisited

Proposed "new" conventional wisdom: "In all this, we should be clear on one thing: Even if the optimistic scenarios prevail, this war was a mistake from beginning to end."

Before I went off to Iraq last year as part of the surge I was told that it had failed. While there I learned that few Americans cared what General Petraeus had to report from Iraq. And now that I'm back I discover that it wasn't worth it. It's hard to keep up with all the changes of our fast-paced society today.

*****

I wrote this post in late June 2007 from Baghdad, during the earliest days and heaviest fighting of the surge.

Beyond the headline-making casualty figures, I was with people who'd just missed their kids high school (and college) graduation. Others who'd missed births. Others whose marriages ended, and no one who didn't sacrifice something. If you wonder how people can do such things - I can't answer. But I can ask you to understand that we couldn't if we didn't know we could win.

I'm in America this Fathers Day, but last year I was in Iraq. I actually posted this a couple weeks after that day, I'm not sure anyone got my message (which I thought I made clear in my opening paragraphs) but I think it says more now then it did then.

Most people never knew (unless they inferred it from the death tolls) and some might have since forgotten that at the time I wrote this the early battles of the surge were raging and Americans were dying at the highest level of the war and back home failure had already been declared.

We soldiered on.

*****

Once Again: 'Til You're Back Here In Our Arms

Written expressly from those at home to those who are in harms way on this holiday.

Happy Father's Day!

You may notice the voice is a little prettier and alot higher than Greyhawk's. This song is performed by Kat from the Castle.

Once Again - Kathleen Henry

I love you daddy. I miss you and wish you were home.

Here I am once again
Like so many times before
Dreaming 'bout the last time I saw you
Now we're so far apart

Close my eyes, see your smile
And, I try not to cry
I promised I'd be strong
Now I'm barely hanging on
Once again

(Chorus)
Once again
Like so many times before
Once again
'Til you walk back through that door
I'll be here, through it all
While you're there standing tall
I'll send my love in this song
'Till you're back here in my arms
Once again

Get the kids off to school
Cup of coffee, think of you
How you'd wake before the sunrise
But, you'd always kiss me good-bye

Get to work, park the car
Thoughts of you aren't very far
Away from my mind
You're with me all the time
A thousand times a day
I long to see your face
Once again

(Chorus)

After dinner, we watch tv
Just the kids and me
Read the message you sent last night
Saying every thing's alright

Say their prayers, it's off to bed
And I kiss their sleepy heads
Just like you always do
Then I whisper daddy loves you
They ask, when is he coming home
I say, "Soon it will be like he's never been gone"

I lay down late at night
and I hold your pillow tight
Your scent still lingers there
I whisper a little prayer

It drifts away on a breeze
Across the seven seas
Through the desert by moonlight
Can you feel my love tonight
'Cause no matter where you are
You're resting safe in my arms
Once again

Once again
Like so many times before
Once again
'Til you walk back through that door
I'll be here, through it all
While you're there standing tall
I'll send my love in this song
'Till you're back here in my arms
Once again

Once again...
Oh, once again...
Oh, once again...

Thanks Kat, and thanks to little girl, Stormy, sounds beautiful.

By the way folks this is a free download to share.

Run for the Fallen

ONE MILE FOR EVERY SOLDIER KILLED IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM.

Beginning Flag Day, June 14, 2008, a dedicated team of runners will run across America from Fort Irwin, CA to Arlington National Cemetery, one mile for every soldier killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. For ten weeks, team members will mark each mile with an American flag and signcard in an apolitical reflection of remembrance of each soldier.

Run for the Fallen

233 Years

HOOAH! to the men and women of the Army, Happy Birthday.

Making a difference in the world

Now, as the Iraqi and Afghani children already know;

and the Mayor of Tall 'Afar - NAJIM ABDULLAH ABID - AL-JIBOURI;

To the Courageous Men and Women of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tall' Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life.

To the lion-hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets for many months.

To those who spread smiles on the faces of our children, and gave us restored hope, through their personal sacrifice and brave fighting, and gave new life to the city after hopelessness darkened our days, and stole our confidence in our ability to reestablish our city.

...I have met many soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment; they are not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism.

...God bless this brave Regiment; God bless the families who dedicated these brave men and women. From the bottom of our hearts we thank the families. They have given us something we will never forget. To the families of those who have given their holy blood for our land, we all bow to you in reverence and to the souls of your loved ones. Their sacrifice was not in vain. They are not dead, but alive, and their souls hovering around us every second of every minute. They will never be forgotten for giving their precious lives. They have sacrificed that which is most valuable. We see them in the smile of every child, and inevery flower growing in this land. Let America, their families, and the world be proud of their sacrifice for humanity and life.

and the Afghan Elders;

One event was to provide children in Shajoy District new backpacks and school books Apr. 5. The PRT handed out 94 school bags containing a toy, notebooks, a writing utensil, water bucket, flashlight and coloring book; 60 teacher kits with pencils, pencil sharpener, chalk, notebooks, and teacher lesson books; 30 hygiene kits, 26 bags of flour, 25 bags of rice, 17 containers of cooking oil and 180 student textbooks.

"I’m thankful for you," said Abdul Qayoum, Shajoy district administrator, about the Zabul Provincial Reconstruction Team. "I will make sure these items get to the right people."

During a separate humanitarian assistance drop, Shahr-e-Safa district representatives organized the handout of more than 100 school bags, 180 text books, 40 radios, 35 bags of rice, 25 bags of beans, 25 bags of flour, 60 teacher kits, 18 bottles of oil and 20 hygiene kits,

the mayor of Ad Dwar, Iraq;

"Americans are working hard on service projects. From their visits to Ad Dwar they know things even the mayor doesn’t know, but they bring it to me.

“Together we collaborate. We consider them our friends. We go to them with things we can’t do ourselves concerning electricity, water, health. I feel and I know they want to help us, but with the general situation in Iraq, it’s not clear from the citizens (viewpoint). They (Americans) carry guns, but they have feelings, love. I appreciate it.”

“If you ask me I don’t want the Americans to go.”

and others know...

...The American Soldier's strength and love goes a long way:

So let's teach our children with:

U.S. Army Birthday: Children's Storybook

An Army Birthday Greeting From Afghanistan

A toast to those in harms way and to their families awaiting them, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU FOR ALL YOUR SERVICE AND CONGRATULATIONS ON A JOB WELL DONE.

Army Strong!

June 14th, Flag Day

Happy Birthday Old Glory

A recent proclamation has been made for June 14th.

From the President: Note: emphasis mine

...On Flag Day and during National Flag Week, we remember those in uniform whose courage and sacrifice inspire us here at home. We also remember the rich history of one of our oldest national symbols and reflect on our duty to carry our heritage of freedom into the future.

To commemorate the adoption of our flag, the Congress, by joint resolution approved August 3, 1949, as amended (63 Stat. 492), designated June 14 of each year as "Flag Day" and requested that the President issue an annual proclamation calling for its observance and for the display of the flag of the United States on all Federal Government buildings. The Congress also requested, by joint resolution approved June 9, 1966, as amended (80 Stat. 194), that the President issue annually a proclamation designating the week in which June 14 occurs as "National Flag Week" and calling upon all citizens of the United States to display the flag during that week.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim June 14, 2008, as Flag Day and the week beginning June 8, 2008, as National Flag Week. I direct the appropriate officials to display the flag on all Federal Government buildings during that week, and I urge all Americans to observe Flag Day and National Flag Week by flying the Stars and Stripes from their homes and other appropriate places. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe with pride and all due ceremony those days from Flag Day through Independence Day, also set aside by the Congress (89 Stat. 211), as a time to honor America, to celebrate our heritage in public gatherings and activities, and to publicly recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.

These proclamation are often made by Presidents but I had a funny thought, and I know this is old news but if Obama wins the Presidency, do you think he'll follow this or amend it?

We all know how he feels about the flag;

"a substitute for true patriotism."

but he shows no patriotism,

and argues, "'My grandfather taught me when I was 2. During the Pledge, you put your hand over your heart. During the anthem, you sing.”

Guess grandpappy was wrong:

Title 36 or the U.S. Code, which states the following:
During a rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed (A) all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart; (B) men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold the headdress at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart;

but by all means we wouldn't want to infringe on the First Amendment, he can be patriotic or unpatriotic if he wants to.

Which is why Obama seems to flips flop about it so who knows.

BTW I noticed Google didn't honor Flag day with their usual Google doodle. But hey at least they commemorated the Persian New Year - March 20, 2007

(sigh)

Legacies

The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world, and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect us. But it was when they understood that these great-hearted warriors, who so enjoyed killing the enemy, are even happier building a school or making a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention.

Mike Yon, Moment of Truth in Iraq. *****

More before and after photos from the surge:

*****

This week Robert Stokely sent me some more photos he'd just received from Iraq.

"The purpose of what was labeled the Mike Stokely Foundation Yusufiyah Project", Robert writes, "was to establish a humanitarian link with this region and help the local school children have needed school supplies."

Robert described the email that came with the photos:

The words of LT Dreschner in his email to me today are words Mike and his 108th CAV never knew - 'things in Yusufiyah are very good". Just three years ago, when Mike and his fellow 108th CAV were in Yusufiyah things were the extreme opposite - very very bad. The Triangle of Death has now become a peaceful place where our soldiers are able to concentrate more on humanitarian relief and seldom encounter hostile action or IEDs.

"Coincidentally", Robert adds, "at the same time, the Nathan Barnes Foundation (honoring Nathan Barnes, 10th Mountain Division who died in the region) also sent supplies to be distributed by the 101st AB DVN."

The Christian Science Monitor covered the Nathan Barnes Foundation here.

See earlier stories here here and here.

*****

The Mike Stokely Foundation also awards scholarships to American students - as does the Maupin family's Yellow Ribbon Support Center: "It has sent thousands of gift boxes to troops overseas and awarded 180 scholarships in honor of fallen soldiers."

"Saddam's Soldiers"

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
- G.K. Chesterton

Iraq as you'll only see it in milblogs:

“So, they call us Saddam’s Soldiers. Feh. We did not fight for Saddam. American soldiers do not fight for Bush. Soldiers fight for the land, the country, the people! Not for the leader! The leader always changes and the land remains! But they call us ‘Saddam’s Soldiers and look down on us.

"They don’t know.

“They don’t know…
<...>
“Can you imagine what some of us feel, that we fought for our land and then when the leader falls, we are insulted by the ones we thought we were defending?”

“I know that feeling. I flew in Vietnam.”

“Ah. I though you might have done that. You know, then.”

Read the whole thing.

Hooker's Slow Boat to Memphis

No mattter who you are, no matter where you are, whenever you listen to James Hooker's music, at least for the duration of that song you are cool. In most cases the effects linger even long after the final notes fade.

James is a true and long time friend of Mudville - and you can bet this weekend I'll be sitting on the front porch watching the moss from the oaks sway in the breeze while the sun sets over the swamp, drinking a cool one and listening to Slow Boat to Memphis. That's his new album (available here) that includes "Carolina Beach":

Sez James:

The music scene on South Carolina’s Grand Strand, where I grew up, was an important part of my formative years, and, in many ways, every word of this song is the gospel truth. Sorta. I started playing professionally at the age of fourteen and, by the age of sixteen, I was backing up “The Big Boys.” My first big charge was when Solomon Burke came to Columbia, and, lo and behold, his keyboard player got sick. Or too high. I had just joined the Musicians Union and got the call. I couldn’t believe it. That was my first brush with “scared to death”! Black guys in tuxedos were a big part of my life and the experience I gained in the Carolina music scene stood me in good stead in the years to come.

It's already on my mp3 player. You can add it to yours.

Classic Hooker:

"James Hookers half assed, on the cheap, USO Christmas Show":

More Hooker:

By this point in time you are very cool, and you can feel it.

Gitchee some.

Fathers Day Films

Top new release: the HBO Miniseries John Adams(HBO Miniseries). The Hawk doesn't have HBO - but he caught a few minutes of one episode while TDY and has heard nothing but good things about this one. Thirty five bucks - Into my cart it goes.

And here are a few recent films on my top ten list...

And here's a plethora of bargain priced war (and western) classics.

Fathers Day Reads

You'll need speedy delivery to get 'em by Fathers Day, but if Dad's a military history buff, these are must reads:

Top non-fiction: Mike Yon's Moment of Truth in Iraq If you haven't got this yet, get it. What more can I say?

Top fiction: Steven Pressfield's Killing Rommel: A Novel. Haven't finished this special ops/desert warfare novel yet myself, but I will this weekend. The more I read it, the more I like it. Pressfield established his reputation with Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae and his first foray into a modern setting doesn't disappoint.

Top unbelievable deal: David Bellavia's House to House - Hardcover, bargain priced at $6.99 - act fast, it won't last.

And another likely sell out: William "Wild Bill" Guarnere and Edward Babe" Heffron's (of "Band of Brothers" fame) Brothers In Battle, Best of Friends hardcover, 8.49.

A more recent story: Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War paperback, also bargain priced at 5.49. This should be on everyone's shelf already, but if not, now's the time to fill that gap.

I've started this one, too: The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. Maysan Province might be getting some attention in the near future - at least here if nowhere else. Hardcover, $8.49.

And these look interesting - but I haven't added them to my collection yet:

On Call In Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story -hardcover, $5.99. "Blood-and-guts accounts of Fallujah are not in short supply, but Jadick—a career Marine officer and brigade surgeon who took a demotion to battalion surgeon to volunteer for service in Iraq in 2004—tells the story through the eyes of a doctor. Unlike colleagues who remained in battalion aid stations behind the lines, Jadick and his medics accompanied their unit in makeshift ambulances as it battled through the streets. This was not bravado, he writes, but a calculated strategy to reach, stabilize and rush wounded troops to hospitals more quickly. He makes his case many times over, with dramatic accounts of catastrophically injured men from his unit and others who would not have survived a journey to the aid station."

The Few "...spotlights the handful of American pilots who joined the Royal Air Force and its fighter squadrons during the Battle of Britain." Hardcover, $6.99.

The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family "Violent resistance in post-invasion Iraq kicked into high gear on April 4, 2004, when American troops in Sadr City faced a massive assault that claimed eight soldiers' lives and wounded more than 70 others. Raddatz, an Emmy-winning correspondent for ABC News, clearly aims to equal the storytelling in Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down in her account of the battle, and hits the mark with distinction... Heroic moments abound, like Casey Sheehan's volunteering to take another man's place on the rescue team, which resulted in his death. Raddatz touches upon the reaction of his mother, noted antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, but this is just one of many perspectives from families on the home front. The gripping account eschews politics and focuses squarely on the soldiers and their sacrifices."

Footnote: What is it with Publisher's Weekly reviewers? The On Call In Hell review actually includes this line: "...his writer should have discouraged him from frequent pauses for memorial essays on every soldier who died, and to remind readers of the Marines' bravery, of the dedication of the medics, and how much he loves his wife, the Marines and America. Readers who can skim past these segments will find the book a memorable experience."

And the review of The Few states "Crusaders and adventurers, the pilots ignored U.S. neutrality acts to fight from a mixture of principled opposition to Nazism, vaguely defined Anglophilia and sheer love of air combat at a time when it still seemed glamorous."

If anything, I want to buy them even more. Maybe that makes them effective reviews...

Genesis (V)

Part five in a series - part one is here - part two is here part three is here, and part four here.

A few months later Tall Afar would reappear in American news:

TALL AFAR, Iraq, April 5 -- A huge bomb exploded near a bus filled with Iraqi soldiers returning from leave Tuesday, killing at least three and wounding at least 44 in an attack that showed how even a payroll issue in Iraq can turn deadly.
<...>
The bus, carrying nearly 50 soldiers, was surrounded by several trucks mounted with guns to fend off an attack by insurgents. But as the bus neared a checkpoint in the late afternoon on the west side of Tall Afar, a violent city of about 250,000 near the Syrian border, the bomb exploded close to its left side.
<...>
Shortly after the attack on the Iraqis, another roadside bomb exploded in Tall Afar near a convoy of Stryker attack vehicles carrying soldiers from the U.S. Army's 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment (Stryker Brigade Combat Team). Two soldiers were wounded, an officer from the unit said.

Although most mentions of Tall Afar would be found deep in stories of more spectacular al Qaeda atrocities.

Car Bomb Kills Nine At Shiite Mosque

Worshipers gathered the remains of children from pools of blood on the tile floor of a Shiite Muslim mosque Friday after a bombing killed at least nine people...

Meanwhile, a video apparently filmed by insurgents and posted on Web sites Friday showed the last moments in the life of a man injured in the downing of a helicopter Thursday before insurgents shot him dead.

Bombings and other attacks have surged in number, lethality and boldness this month, although the country has yet to see a return of the kind of attacks that each killed scores of people before the elections.

The bombing on Friday was one of many targeting the Shiite majority, which has become politically dominant since President Saddam Hussein and the Sunni Muslims he favored were routed in March 2003.
<...>
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier near the northern city of Tall Afar, the military said.

Other stories made headlines:

Bomb Attacks Persist In Iraq

Six explosions shake the nation, including one at a funeral that kills at least 25. A video is released showing an Australian hostage.

A suicide bomber on Sunday plowed his vehicle into a tent packed with mourners at a Kurdish funeral in the northern city of Tall Afar, killing at least 25 people and wounding 30 others as insurgents continued their campaign of violence.
<...>
The car bombing in Tall Afar struck a large tent where the funeral was being held for Taleb Wahab, an official with the Kurdish Democratic Party who had been killed by insurgents Thursday, said a Kurdish official quoted by Reuters news agency. The vehicle exploded at about 8 p.m.

Tall Afar, west of Mosul near the border with Syria, has seesawed between U.S. and insurgent control for months. American troops laid siege to the city last fall, claiming it was a key way station for militants crossing from Syria.

Which brings us back to May, 2005, the point where we began our discussion of Tall Afar:

In the deadliest of Monday's attacks, two bombings killed 30 people in the volatile northern town of Tall Afar, hospital officials said.

The first bomb exploded late Monday outside the home of a Shiite tribal leader, according to an emergency room director who identified himself only as Haidar and a hospital director who said his name was Saleh. A second bomb exploded as crowds gathered to help the wounded from the first blast, the medical officials said. The second bomb claimed most of the victims.

And...

Two back-to-back bombings Monday in the northern city of Tall Afar unleashed vigilante violence and retaliatory killings. Witness and police accounts said at least 14 people had been killed in retaliatory attacks Tuesday after Monday's bombings killed 30.

An Associated Press special correspondent reported seeing civilians with assault rifles manning checkpoints in Shiite neighborhoods of the city on Tuesday, and residents and authorities spoke of Sunni checkpoints elsewhere in the city.

"Shiites' armed men are walking around looking for Sunnis to kill," police Col. Salih Jameel Sultan said.

...prompting Muqtada Sadr to declare the problem exaggerated, and offer a pledge to send "help":

However, Moqtada Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric based in the southern city of Najaf, said the fighting in Tall Afar involved two tribes and that news media were exaggerating its sectarian nature. Sadr said he would send aides to the city.

Sadr told reporters that he expected "positive results in coming days" from a peace pledge his aides were circulating among prominent Shiites and Sunnis.

A few weeks later:

Insurgent Attacks Kill 36 People In Iraq

Capt. Amjad Hashim of the Tall Afar police said security in that city had deteriorated in the last two months. "Insurgents are trying to create sectarian clashes between Sunnis and Shiites living here and are targeting both sides," he said.

And a few weeks after that, members of one of those "two tribes" were exposed:

Turkey Seeks To Extradite 2 Detained In Iraq

The Abu Ghraib inmates are accused of participating in deadly 2003 attacks in Istanbul.

By Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey — The government of Turkey has asked Iraq to extradite two suspected Turkish Islamic militants held in Abu Ghraib prison so it can try them in connection with the 2003 Istanbul suicide bombings that killed more than 60 people, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Turkey's Justice Ministry asked Iraqi authorities in June to extradite suspects Sadettin Akdas and Burhan Kus, and Iraqi authorities were evaluating documents about the suspects, the Foreign Ministry statement said.

Media reports Wednesday said the two had been captured this year during fighting near the northern Iraqi town of Tall Afar.

Kus, 32, has been indicted by Turkish prosecutors on suspicion that he helped build the Istanbul truck bombs. Akdas, 22, is accused of being a member of the terrorist cell that helped carry out the attacks.

The blasts in November 2003 targeted two synagogues and, five days later, the British Consulate and a London-based bank. Most of the victims were identified as Turkish Muslims.

A few weeks after that, this August, 2005 story...

One U.S. soldier was killed and another was injured when an Army helicopter made a forced landing under fire Monday in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.

The attack happened in the city of Tall Afar, 240 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military said. No further details were released.

Residents of Tall Afar, reached by telephone from Mosul, said the helicopter went down about 6:30 p.m. in the southwestern part of the city.

..included an absurd explanation:

U.S. troops fought insurgents last year in the largely Turkmen city and managed to restore enough control to hand it back to Iraqi authorities. However, the Iraqis lost control, in part because of the city's volatile ethnic mix.

And that completed a year of failure in Tall Afar.

But something different was on the horizon...

*****

Part 6 is here.

Genesis (IV)

Part four in a series - part one is here - part two is here.

From part three:

Border controls are vital because once inside Iraq, foreign fighters are finding sanctuary in cities such as Tall Afar, a diverse city of 227,000 people that has become both a way station and base for attacks on US and Iraqi forces. "It has links to the [border crossing at] Rabiah and rat lines from Syria, so its traditionally a way station between Syria and Baghdad," says Captain Beaty.

Moreover, current Tall Afar leaders have "no real intent of denying their town to criminals, terrorists, or any type of bad guy" says Rounds, indicating that provincial officials are prepared to replace them if they fail to act.

In spite of heroic individual and unit efforts, the American experience in Tall Afar over the next year would stand as an example of how not to conduct counter insurgency operations.

*****

Within weeks of that August, 2004 report, coalition troops had moved in force into Tall Afar:

U.S.-Led Forces Retake Northern Iraqi City

About 2,000 men -- two battalions from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and a battalion from the Iraqi National Guard -- pushed into Tall Afar at 3:15 a.m. to confront what U.S. military officials had expected would be about 200 insurgents who had taken over the local government.

Instead, the U.S. forces, backed by F-16 fighter jets, encountered only brief fire from small arms, U.S. military officials said.
<...>
U.S. officials consider Tall Afar, a predominantly Shiite Muslim city of about 250,000 people between Mosul and the Syrian border, a strategic transit point for foreign insurgents entering Iraq to battle U.S.-led forces.

In recent weeks, according to U.S. military officials, hundreds of Sunni Muslim extremists, Baath Party holdovers and foreign insurgents combined to rout the local police force and render the government ineffective. U.S. officials vowed to put down the insurgency and reinstall a legitimate government.

The American commander acknowledged the weaker than anticipated resistance was not necessarily a hopeful sign:

The U.S. military launched a major pre-dawn assault Sunday to wrest the northern city of Tall Afar from insurgents but encountered almost no resistance, leaving uncertain the whereabouts of fighters who have battled U.S.-led forces for months.
<...>
An expected counterattack at dawn, when U.S.-led troops would no longer have the advantage of night-vision equipment, also did not materialize. "We thought there would be more, the indications were that there would be more, but there wasn't," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of U.S. forces involved in the operation. "There's some good news in there, and there's probably some bad news."

Ham said U.S. commanders concluded that some of the insurgents had probably fled in anticipation of the attack. Others, he said, probably gave up after being pounded by three U.S. airstrikes after the operation began on Thursday. It continued into Friday morning before a pause in the fighting.

"And then, thirdly, there is some indication that perhaps we killed more than we think we did [in] the first couple of operations," Ham said in an interview at Camp Freedom, a U.S. military base set up in a palace that once belonged to Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay.

But later coverage from the Army Times (archived here) indicated the attack wasn't quite the cakewalk described in the Washington Post:

No media were on hand to record the battle in this northern Iraq city of more than 300,000, but Army Times reconstructed the action through interviews with more than a dozen soldiers who were in the fight.
<...>
Reed admitted he was surprised by the intensity of the fight.

“It was the first time in 10 months I had observed men returning to their Strykers for re-supply of ammunition,” he said.

Meanwhile, B Company had run into problems of its own as it struggled to maneuver to the 1,500 meters to the crash site.

Rolling down one stretch of road, it was bracketed by heavy fire. Staff Sgt. Scott Hoover, vehicle commander of a Stryker anti-tank system, was in the lead.

“They were shooting out of the doors and windows,” he said of the insurgents.

“They hit us with over 15 RPGs,” said Mason, who described how the enemy seemed unafraid to mount close attacks.

“A lot of them were on the ground around our Strykers,” Mason said. “There was one guy — he had a PKC machine gun. One of my guys nearly cut him in half. … It was a long, linear, near ambush.”

One RPG round blasted into one of the company’s lead Strykers, damaging the transmission.

“I felt something slam into us,” recalled Sgt. Bryan Dabel, mortar section leader, who was inside the Stryker when it got hit. “We knew we were in the middle of a kill zone.”

The Stryker managed to roll out of the area for a few hundred meters. Hoover’s Stryker backed up to secure the front of the disabled Stryker. “It was very hectic, you really didn’t have time to think,” Hoover said. “There was so many [anti-Iraqi forces] coming from everywhere, there was a lot of quick shooting.”

“We had seven RPGs shot directly at our vehicle. … Everything was happening so fast.”

Sept. 4 was a war-zone reality check for B Company. Until then, the unit had only heard of this kind of fighting in areas such as Fallujah and Najaf, said Staff Sgt. Joe Labrosse, platoon sergeant for 1st Platoon.

“It was our turn now,” he said. “We were out the hatches. Everyone in the vehicle was firing. If we were running out of ammo, everybody was handing magazines to each other.”

Insurgents fired machine guns and RPGs all along the main road that B Company advanced along. “It was a gantlet,” Mason recalled.

The situation looked bad.
<...>
Scout Platoon’s Sgt. 1st Class Michael Keyes, who jumped into Panama with the 75th Ranger Regiment in 1990, said he thought he’d seen it all, until this fight.

“I thought, well, I’ve seen more s--- in Panama in four days until we got up here to Tall Afar,” he said. “Tall Afar has been pretty intense.”

Mason agreed. “It was definitely the biggest fight — on the scale of numbers of RPGs involved, this was the biggest fight,” Mason said.

“I’m amazed at how few casualties we had.

The Washington Post's initial coverage also noted the American failure to establish a legitimate government and get out within one day of taking the city. The American commander explained that they were not planning on occupying Tall Afar and intended to turn over authority to the Iraqis before the upcoming January, 2005 elections:

In recent weeks, according to U.S. military officials, hundreds of Sunni Muslim extremists, Baath Party holdovers and foreign insurgents combined to rout the local police force and render the government ineffective. U.S. officials vowed to put down the insurgency and reinstall a legitimate government.

But U.S. forces were unable to accomplish that Sunday, essentially leaving the U.S. troops as the authority in the city. Ham said he hoped to have a new mayor installed within two days. He attributed the delay to "friction and failures of coordination." The main problem, he said, was the inability of U.S. and Iraqi authorities to replace the dissolved Tall Afar police force with 600 officers from the province.

U.S. officials say they believe it is crucial to reestablish authority over insurgent-controlled areas before nationwide elections scheduled for January.

"Having us stay there is exactly the wrong thing," Ham said. "First of all, we don't have enough forces to stay in the city. But it also sends a message to those that oppose us. It lets them say, 'See, we told you, they really are occupiers. They've taken over a city.' "

The troops in Tall Afar were executing then-current American strategy - built on a theory that turning over control to local governments as soon as possible and pulling back U.S. forces from population centers would demonstrate our intent not to occupy Iraq. Predicated on the (correct) theory that Iraqis - like people everywhere - would embrace the opportunity for self-government, the policy failed to take into account an enemy that was unimpressed with nearby FOBs.

And the next day the Post would again hammer the Americans for their failure to instantly create a strong local government in Tall Afar:

By American accounts, two days of delays in installing a new local administration stemmed from unfinished work in the provincial government to choose a new mayor and put together a 600-man police force for Tall Afar, a city of about 250,000 people located about 60 miles from the Syrian border.

The officers said they hoped the still-unidentified mayor would be installed Tuesday or Wednesday at a castle that serves as Tall Afar's city hall. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia, which is responsible for Tall Afar, and Duraid Kashmoula, governor of Nineveh province, would likely attend the ceremony, the officers said.

"There's basically a power vacuum right now," said Army Capt. Nathan Terra. "That's why we're keeping people out" of the city.

"If we don't," he added, "the bad guys will go right back in and we'll have to do this all over again."

The U.S. actions in Tall Afar are part of a larger strategy to reestablish control over restive areas of Iraq before elections scheduled for January. U.S. officials say that strong local authority and security are crucial for successful elections.

However, eager to prove they weren't occupiers,

On Monday, U.S. troops pulled back to a forward operating base on the outskirts of Tall Afar and were no longer operating continuously inside the city, Army Maj. Thomas Osteen said.

A few days later, the citizens of Tall Afar who had evacuated before the fighting were allowed to return to their town:

Staff Sgt. Patrick Bloomer, who participated in the fighting, said he was frustrated that U.S. forces did not provide food, water or other assistance to people fleeing the city. "It seemed like the military part of the operation was sound, but if we're over here to help the people, we should at least try to do something," he said.

"For the last few days it's been bugging the crap out of me," Bloomer said. "You had pregnant women and children, and we have all this food and water stockpiled. We could have easily gotten it to them.

"I don't mind coming over here and doing my job, but it's not just conflict and combat. You've got to help people out just a little."

Meanwhile, the American commander met the newly appointed mayor:

When Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, traveled into the city Thursday to meet the new local government, many shops remained closed. Scattered pedestrians walked the narrow streets in the blast-furnace heat as people trickled back into the city.

"I think Tall Afar will once again be a great city," Ham told the new mayor, Mohammed Rashid Hamid, as the two walked down the street, surrounded by armed U.S. troops and Iraqi police. "And I don't think it will take very long."

But the fighting has pushed reconstruction in Tall Afar back to square one. In a meeting Wednesday at the Army's Forward Operating Base Sykes, near Tall Afar, Maj. Tom O'Steen told Hamid: "I'd just like to start the meeting by asking the new mayor if we could confirm his name."
<...>
"We are caught in the middle between two fires," Hamid told the Americans. "On the one side, we have the terrorists, and on the other side, we have the coalition forces."

"As you know, this is a very important time for Tall Afar," responded Lt. Col. Kevin Hyneman, the deputy commanding officer for the 2nd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. "I don't want to rebuild it like an American would. I want to rebuild it based on your own priorities."

"But the most important thing is security," Hyneman said. "We don't want to have to go and do all of this again months from now or a year from now."

American elections were imminent, as was a major operation in Fallujah, where months before (in the immediate aftermath of the abu Ghraib scandal) American forces had rapidly halted an operation and turned over control to local authorities, allowing the city to become an al Qaeda haven.

With those stories making headlines, Tall Afar vanished from American news (though even the stories above had not been front-page accounts). And a few months later the city would get only brief mention in coverage of the Iraqi elections of January, 2005:

...in Tall Afar, also north of the city, gunmen and Iraqi soldiers clashed for several hours after polls opened, curbing turnout.

*****

Part five is here.

Three Wishes

Once upon a time a Sheik traveled to a far away land. Once on those distant shores he expressed three wishes.

The first:

The leader of the tribal confederation that has fought to expel Al Qaeda from most of Iraq's Anbar province is offering his men to help gin up a rebellion against Osama bin Laden's organization along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
<...>
When asked if he would send military advisers to Afghanistan to assist American troops fighting there, he said: "I have no problem with this; if they ask me, I will do it."
<...>
"Al Qaeda is an ideology," Sheik Ahmad said. "We can defeat them inside Iraq and we can defeat them in any country."

The second:

In Washington, Sheik Ahmad also met with some members of Congress. He said he told them that American soldiers should stay in Iraq for at least as long as it takes to rebuild Iraq's national army. The Democratic majority in Congress has tried and failed to mandate deadlines for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground.

"We have to rebuild a national Iraqi army, not built on sects, but the same way they built up the Anbar police," he said. "They must be well-armed, so they will be able to protect the country and all the American interests in the area. We also have to make a friendship treaty based on mutual respect between the two parties, and then the United States will be able to withdraw from Iraq, if they wish, and we will succeed in Iraq the same way America succeeded in Japan and Germany."
<...>
"I would love to see both of them, McCain and Obama," the sheik said. "I have not asked though. If there is a possibility or opportunity I would love to see them. I know that both parties are really busy with the election now. That is why I have not asked for this."

(Subtle note to both campaigns: GET THIS MAN ON YOUR SCHEDULES - FAST.)

And the Sheik's third expressed wish:

Sheik Ahmad said he wanted Hollywood to make a movie about the life story of his brother [ed note: see here], who was so revered after his murder that Iraq's interior minister dedicated a statue to him on the road from Baghdad to Anbar.

Did he get any of his wishes? You ask. Actually the story is still ongoing - for now the only answer is "insha'Allah".

*****

Footnote: Some might think Barack Obama would want to avoid a public meeting with this man. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Sheik represents the core of Obama's thinking on Iraq:

THE SURGE IS NOT WORKING... The reduced violence in Anbar Province is the result of cooperation between American forces and Sunni tribes, which started more than 18 months ago, long before the surge.

How often does a candidate for the highest office in America get a chance make a public appearance with someone so crucial to his platform?

Oooops...

Apologies for any confusion, but a rough draft of a work in progress was accidentally published here earlier today. It's since been removed for re-posting when it's completed.

So if you wondered why an unformatted mess of an incoherent story was here - that's why.

If you didn't notice the difference between that and a finished post, meh. What can I say?

Exodus (IV)

Continuing a series begun here.

*****

Michael Totten discusses the Iraq war with an Iraqi, in early 2005:

At one point, apropos of something I can’t remember, Ahman said to me: “I can tell you in one sentence how my country feels about your country.”

“Really?” I said. “Can you really boil it down to one sentence?”

“Yes,” he said. “And it is this: Thank you for coming, now please leave and take us with you.”

I laughed because it seemed totally contradictory and totally right.

I remembered reading that conversation - it struck me as one of the defining statements of the entire war, it did indeed seem totally right. And I mentioned it to Michael when I met him in Baghdad three years later, and both of us laughed again - the sort of laugh that is the only possible alternative to tears.

*****

It also addresses another aspect of the Iraqi refugee issue currently just under the radar of American notice - but likely to rise in visibility during an election year. Of concern is the number of refugees who should be granted asylum in the United States. Democrats in congress are taking the lead in making this a political rather than a humanitarian issue:

Democratic lawmaker Gary Ackerman, who chairs the House subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, recalled that Congress had increased from 500 to 5,000 last year the number of immigrant visas available to Iraqis, such as translators and drivers, who worked for US efforts in Iraq.

The Democratic-controlled Congress also "had to take the lead in providing an additional 150 million" dollars to address the problem, he said.

"So Congress has been very aggressive in dealing with this crisis. I wish I could say the same for the administration" of President George W. Bush, he said.

Ackerman accused the Bush administration of falling short of its goal of resettling 12,000 Iraqi refugees inside the United States in 2008, after having admitted 1,608 in fiscal year 2007 and 1,876 five months into fiscal year 2008.

But in a recent briefing the State Department's James B. Foley, Senior Coordinator for Iraqi Refugee Issues, explained the challenges with meeting that goal.

First - congress screwed up the Bill:

And then in this connection, the other, I think, bit of significant news today is that we understand that the President has signed the technical correction bill to the special immigrant visa part of the Iraq – Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act that passed in January but that needed correction because while granting – authorizing the granting of 5,000 special immigrant visas per year for five years, the bill was deficient in making it applicable immediately in 2008. And this fix, now signed by the President, does that. And so those special immigrant visas become available going forward...

Second: the processing office for refugees in Baghdad just opened in early May.

Third - even so, there's no rush to the door from Iraq:

MR. FOLEY: Oh, a small, smallish number. I think that those who have been approved but not yet traveled out of Iraq probably are in the range of around 70 or so.

Fourth - other countries housing Iraqi refugees are sometimes reluctant to let them depart:

We also had, unfortunately, 114 “no shows.” In other words, these were refugees who had passed successfully every stage of the process: they were approved, they were cleared, they were booked, they had tickets, they were supposed to get on airplanes and they were unable to travel because it turned out that either they did not have the necessary exit permits or it was believed that they did not have the necessary exit permits... So there’s a certain amount of attrition that we have to deal with, and the arrival numbers would have been really in the 1,250 range had we not had those no shows.
<...>
QUESTION: I’m just curious about the no shows. Who’s responsible for issuing these exit permits and are you getting any pushback from the Iraqi Government for some of these people? Are some of these people considered too valuable to leave?

MR. FOLEY: These are not people inside Iraq.

QUESTION: Okay. So they’re in Syria or --

MR. FOLEY: Apart from one couple --

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. FOLEY: -- that I mentioned, the first actually to arrive in the U.S. from inside Iraq, having been processed in Iraq. Everyone else – 1,139 – came from countries in the region.

QUESTION: And so it’s those countries --

QUESTION: The no shows. You’re asking --

QUESTION: I’m asking about the no shows. So the –

MR. FOLEY: The responsibility – it is the host government that grants exit permits.

Fifth - some just don't show up:

We also have some, frankly, as I told you before, refugees who simply don’t – for unknown reasons – appear even though they have been – have their airplane tickets.

Sixth - violence actually occurs in countries that aren't Iraq:

But we did have to postpone a circuit ride into Lebanon in the month of May that certainly would have yielded a fair number of approved refugees who would have traveled to the U.S., been resettled in the U.S. this fiscal year.
<...>
QUESTION: A couple of things. You said -- the circuit ride that was postponed in Lebanon was because of violence?

MR. FOLEY: Yes.

QUESTION: So it wasn’t because the Lebanese –

MR. FOLEY: No. No, no, I should have made that clear. I neglected to do so. But you’re well familiar with the acute violence that flared up about – a matter of days before the circuit ride was supposed to begin.

QUESTION: And has that been rescheduled, so these --

MR. FOLEY: Well, let me put it this way. It was the first half of a two-part circuit ride, so the second part will go forward. And it’s now a matter of rescheduling that postponed part, which was meant to be about a month. And we are looking at rescheduling it at the tail end of this fiscal year. In other words, that won’t yield approvals, or at least arrivals, in the U.S. this fiscal year.

So there you have a half dozen reasons the US might not take in its "quota" of Iraqi refugees this year.

*****

And there's the real concern for State - because if they can't get 12,000 Iraqi refugees to enter America this fiscal year they're in for some heavy criticism - and reasons are also called excuses in an election year.

But they're confident that they can do:

But I have to say at the same time that we are not satisfied with these results because in order to reach the goal of 12,000 arrivals of Iraqi refugees this fiscal year, we have a long way to go, and we recognize that.

In fact, if you do the math, as I’m sure you will, we are going to have to average a little over 1,800 refugee arrivals in the final four months of this fiscal year in order to reach that 12,000 goal. This is a tall order. It’s a tough hurdle. But we are determined to succeed and increasingly confident that we can succeed.

Because even with only 70 coming from Iraq (so far) and Iraq's neighbors preventing departures the search for refugees is widening:

MR. FOLEY: Terry, could you describe some of the far-flung places we will process Iraqi refugees?

MS. RUSCH: New Delhi. I think there was one processed in Beijing recently. Malaysia. Well, far-flung – Greece. But they’re turning up in lots of places.

I laughed because it seemed totally contradictory and totally wrong.

*****

To be continued...

Genesis (III)

Part three in a series - part one is here - part two is here.

For coverage of more recent events in Iraq, see Exodus: part one, part two, part three

And: This was the surge.

*****

A spate of stories of US negotiating with terrorists in Iraq followed the June, 2005 London Times report. That weekend, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made the rounds of network television's weekend news talk shows. While witholding details, during his appearances Rumsfeld obliquely confirmed that meetings were indeed taking place. He also discussed (and dismissed) the need for more troops in Iraq ("...the implication of the question was that we don't have enough to win against the insurgency. We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency... Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency"), and without using the terms, introduced the concept of "reconcilables" and "irreconcilables":

FOX NEWS SUNDAY' HOST CHRIS WALLACE: Good morning again from Fox News in Washington. Let's begin, as always, with a quick check of the latest headlines.

The Sunday Times of London reports that U.S. officials have held two secret meetings with insurgent commanders in Iraq. There were no breakthroughs in efforts to end the violence but more meetings are said to be planned.
<...>
And a congressional delegation spent Saturday at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. One Democrat who has called for the installation to be shut down said conditions have improved, and it was not the prison they had been hearing about for years.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and top Pentagon brass were grilled up on Capitol Hill this week about progress on the war in Iraq and treatment of terror prisoners. Our sole guest today is the secretary of defense.

Mr. Secretary, welcome back to "FOX News Sunday."

DEFENSE SECRETARY DONALD RUMSFELD: Thank you very much. Good to be with you.

WALLACE: Thank you.

Let's start with these reports of these direct meetings between U.S. officials, including allegedly a representative of the Pentagon, and insurgent commanders. Did they happen, and, if so, what did they accomplish?

RUMSFELD: Well, the first thing I would say about the meetings is they go on all the time.

Second, the Iraqis have a sovereign government. They will decide what their relationships with various elements of insurgents will be. We facilitate those from time to time.

And if you think about it, there aren't the good guys and the bad guys over there. There are people all across the spectrum.

There's the government, people who strongly support the government, people that are leaning and not quite sure what to do, people who are leaning the other way and not quite sure what to do, and then insurgents and people who oppose it, which is a mixture: There's the jihadists, there's the Zarqawi group, there are criminals, there's the Sunni Baathists who would like to take back the government.

Meetings take place all the time...

WALLACE: Were there direct meetings with insurgent commanders?

RUMSFELD: Look, my understanding is that some London paper reported this and everyone's chasing it. I would not make a big deal out of it.

Meetings go on frequently with people. The wonderful thing about what's happened since the election is the Shias have said, "Let's reach out to the Sunnis."

The Sunnis made a mistake not participating in the election as fully as they could have. They now know that. They said they've made a mistake. They're leaning in.

The Shia could have said, "Well, you didn't play, you're out." They didn't. They said, "Let's get the Sunnis in. We want to have one country, the Kurds, the Shia, the Sunni."

WALLACE: But let me ask you specifically about these reports. Is there an effort -- you talk about this, sort of, spectrum...

RUMSFELD: I can't comment on that.

WALLACE: But let me just ask you about this one specific idea. Is there an effort -- you talk about the spectrum of groups -- to try split off the homegrown insurgents from the foreign fighters, the Zarqawi group?

RUMSFELD: Well, sure, my goodness, yes. The first thing you want to do is split people off and get some people to be supportive.

The same thing's going on in Afghanistan. President Karzai is reaching out to the Taliban. He doesn't want those that have blood on their hands, but he is reaching out to the lower-level people and saying, "Look, let's have one country."

So I think the attention to this is overblown.

An odd aside - at the time, the argument against Iraq was that while there had been tremendous political progress, violence was ongoing (an anti-war argument that would be reversed in the wake of the surge):

We had Secretary Rice on last week, and she tried to make the same argument I think that you are, sir, that while the political progress -- and there's no question there's been political progress. There's been an election, there's been the forming of a government, the forming of a constitutional committee.

But while all that's going on, the insurgency...

RUMSFELD: There's still violence.

WALLACE: ... seems to actually be on the increase.

RUMSFELD: It goes up and down. I think the level is about -- it's about level actually in terms of the number of incidents. The lethality is up. There's no question but that the enemy is a thinking enemy, that their attacks are more lethal than they had been previously. They're killing a lot more Iraqis.

But if you think about the insurgency, they don't have any vision. There's no Ho Chi Minh, there's no Mao, there's no nationalistic -- this is led by Zarqawi. He's a Jordanian and he's doing it not against a dictatorial government, he's doing it against an elected Iraqi government.

He's the enemy of the Iraqi people. He is going out and beheading people. He's killing dozens of Iraqis and Iraqi security forces.

...the terrorists are killing Iraqis in large numbers. That is not the way to win the support of the Iraqi people. That insurgency doesn't have a vision. They don't have a Mao or a Ho Chi Minh. They are foreigners trying to impose their will against an elected government in Iraq, and they're going to lose it.

One quote from that interview with Secretary Rumsfeld would make headlines - but not for the reason that would prove significant in the long term:

Second, the implication of the question was that we don't have enough to win against the insurgency. We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.

Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency.
<...>
If that country were turned over to the people who do the beheading, and are out killing innocent men, women and children Iraqis, the region would suffer.

The "10 to 12 year" remark would be the news of the week. But a Washington Post follow up to the story that actually mattered would indicate that talks with insurgents had been in the works for months before the Time Magazine story appeared in January:

Other parts of the U.S. government, including the State Department and CIA, have also been holding secret meetings with Iraqi insurgent factions in an effort to stop the violence and coax them into the political process, according to U.S. government officials and others who have participated in the efforts.

The military plan, approved in August 2004, seeks to make a distinction between Iraqi insurgents who are attacking U.S. troops because they are hostile to their presence, and foreign insurgents who are responsible for most of the suicide bombings -- which have killed more than 1,200 people in the past couple of months -- and whose larger political aims are unclear.

Gen. John P. Abizaid, who as commander of the U.S. Central Command is in charge of the war in Iraq, told CNN yesterday that "U.S. officials and Iraqi officials are looking for the right people in the Sunni community to talk to in order to ensure that the Sunni Arab community becomes part of the political process. And clearly we know that the vast majority of the insurgents are from the Sunni Arab community. It makes sense to talk to them."

But, Abizaid added, "we're not going to compromise with Zarqawi."

*****

Excised from the headlines by Rumsfeld's 10-12 year remark, reporters would quickly forget the "US negotiating with terrorists" angle, and the story would vanish from the media for several months. Typical news coverage of Iraq from that period (and all others) offered little more than the running death toll, and bore headlines like the one on this story: Bombings Across Iraq Kill More Than 50 People.

In the deadliest of Monday's attacks, two bombings killed 30 people in the volatile northern town of Tall Afar, hospital officials said.

The first bomb exploded late Monday outside the home of a Shiite tribal leader, according to an emergency room director who identified himself only as Haidar and a hospital director who said his name was Saleh. A second bomb exploded as crowds gathered to help the wounded from the first blast, the medical officials said. The second bomb claimed most of the victims.

A follow up story the next day would add "balance" to a report that al Qaeda in Iraq leader Zarqawi had been shot:

Insurgent Chief Wounded, Aide Says

Zarqawi Reportedly Shot; 9 U.S. Troops Die in Attacks

Two back-to-back bombings Monday in the northern city of Tall Afar unleashed vigilante violence and retaliatory killings. Witness and police accounts said at least 14 people had been killed in retaliatory attacks Tuesday after Monday's bombings killed 30.

An Associated Press special correspondent reported seeing civilians with assault rifles manning checkpoints in Shiite neighborhoods of the city on Tuesday, and residents and authorities spoke of Sunni checkpoints elsewhere in the city.

"Shiites' armed men are walking around looking for Sunnis to kill," police Col. Salih Jameel Sultan said.

As with Rumsfeld's 10 to 12 years remark, the Zarqawi possibly shot angle garnered the vast majority of American media attention. (Only after he was actually killed in a coalition strike would the media reveal that he was actually a pathtic fool whose importance was over-emphasized by Americans and whose death only strengthened al Qaeda in Iraq.)

As for the situation in Tall Afar, Moqtada Sadr announced he was going to send "help":

However, Moqtada Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric based in the southern city of Najaf, said the fighting in Tall Afar involved two tribes and that news media were exaggerating its sectarian nature. Sadr said he would send aides to the city.

Sadr told reporters that he expected "positive results in coming days" from a peace pledge his aides were circulating among prominent Shiites and Sunnis.

*****

Although it rarely appeared in the news as other than a place where someone was killed, the importance of that obscure northern town of Tall Afar had been explained one year previously in a Christian Science Monitor report:

Iraq Battles Its Leaking Borders

Iraq's prime minister called on Syria and Iran Sunday to help check flow of weapons, fighters.

Border controls are vital because once inside Iraq, foreign fighters are finding sanctuary in cities such as Tall Afar, a diverse city of 227,000 people that has become both a way station and base for attacks on US and Iraqi forces. "It has links to the [border crossing at] Rabiah and rat lines from Syria, so its traditionally a way station between Syria and Baghdad," says Captain Beaty.

Moreover, current Tall Afar leaders have "no real intent of denying their town to criminals, terrorists, or any type of bad guy" says Rounds, indicating that provincial officials are prepared to replace them if they fail to act.

In spite of heroic individual and unit efforts, the American experience in Tall Afar over the next year would stand as an example of how not to conduct counter insurgency operations. In fact, by the time of Secretary Rumsfeld's "We're not going to win against the insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency" comment, certain limitations in the American approach to achieving that noble goal should have been clear.

Part four is here.

Book Time

Ready to hit the beach?

David Bellavia's House to House - Hardcover, bargain priced at 6.99.

Since I'm pointing out bargains...

William "Wild Bill" Guarnere and Edward Babe" Heffron's (of "Band of Brothers" fame) Brothers In Battle, Best of Friends hardcover, 8.49.

And

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War paperback, also bargain priced at 5.49.

And a non-bargain priced book (that's still a new release bargain): Steven Pressfield's Killing Rommel: A Novel. I'm about 100 pages into this one and can recommend it without reservation.

Waltz Time

It's Friday, the weekend is upon us. Grab a beer, and join me in a (sorta) salute to those who sail ships at sea...

Still nuthin' fancy, but a bit more playing with the sound this time.

(Previous entry here.)

Daniel's Big Trip

Meet Daniel. He's a retired Army Capt. wounded in Afghanistan (lost his arm from the elbow down). He is driving across the country with his dog Rockstar, to meet the people that supported him while he was deployed (camping or sleeping in his truck when he has to). He's funding his trip w/donations through his blog.

He has some great travel stories had some tales of torment along the way with his truck named The Pinto Bean (ya think it's name means it's a gas producer? Not by the looks of it) For all the misadventures Dan has kept a lighthearted attitude. His post are quite entertaining and an adventure you must follow.

He currently is in Reading, Pennsylvania now working his way to Maine. If Dan is in your area, offer him a place to stay or a hot meal and throw his dog a bone. Or hit his paypal button. He definitely deserves our support.

HT: Chuck Z

Exodus (III)

Continuing a series begun here.

*****

Judith Miller, in City Journal:

There are no campaign rallies or bumper stickers for him in Syria, no “Yes We Can” T-shirts on sale, but Obamamania has definitely infected the “beating heart of Arab nationalism,” as it once called itself. During my recent visit to Damascus, Syrian officials and the political elite seemed captivated by Barack Obama, well before it was clear that the Democrats’ charismatic young superstar would be the party’s presidential nominee.

Partly, it’s Obama’s youth that makes him attractive to Syrians, roughly half of whom are under 18 and whose own president, Bashar Assad, is four years younger than Obama. “But it’s not just Obama’s age that we like,” says Obaida Hamad, a 32-year-old reporter for Syria Today, the country’s only independent, English-language magazine.

True - there are two billion reasons Bashar hearts Barack that weren't mentioned in that story. We'll get to them shortly.

*****

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, following the New York Times lead many American media sources began reporting on the return of exiles to their neighborhoods. The Christian Science Monitor examined how the American military deals with the challenge:

In Saidiyah, a religiously mixed neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad rebuilding after sectarian bloodshed peaked here last year, as many as 400 families have retuned since the Americans arrived and implemented radical new safety measures.

Now, US soldiers are making it their priority to ensure the area's 60,000 people are living in their rightful homes and that when residents return, their transition back to Saidiyah goes as smoothly as possible.

"It's the biggest thing that we're dealing with now," says Capt. Andrew Betson, the commander of Alpha Company of the 4-64 armor battalion, Fourth Brigade, Third Infantry Division, whose soldiers operate in Saidiyah.

When Alpha Company arrived last December, the neighborhood was "a ghost town," Lieutenant Harmon says. The Americans encircled the area with a 12-foot wall and swept through, knocking down gates as they searched dusty compounds for members of Shiite and Sunni militias. Today, they knock politely on doors to inquire about the status of the residents inside.

According to the 4-64 battalion commander, Lt. Col. Johnnie Johnson, between three and five families come back daily.

But the pattern in which they are returning is often based on their religious affiliation, and Saidiyah's streets where Shiites and Sunnis were once neighbors are now either exclusively Sunni, in the south, or entirely Shiite, in the north, many residents here say.

Every day in Saidiyah, American and Iraqi troops set out from their austere combat outpost to go from house to house, asking residents for their deeds and assessing the legitimacy of real estate agencies.

But even if families are squatting in someone's abandoned house, the American policy is not to move any families out, says Captain Betson. And if the rightful owners return, "they basically have to stay displaced, they have to stay wherever they are," he says. The troops pass on the information to the Saidiyah neighborhood council, which is trying to solve scores of property disputes.

"I'll pass on moving out families with a 2-year-old daughter," says Harmon. "That's not our role. That would get ugly."

Not all the returning displaced persons are crossing borders. Many had moved to new homes in safer neighborhoods in Iraq. With the dramatic drop in violence many of them are coming home.

The AP:

BAGHDAD (AP) — The surge has been good for the Murads.

Just over a year after they were driven out of their Baghdad neighborhood by militants who kidnapped their son, the parents and children are back in their home. The Shiite family is living among longtime Sunni neighbors, protected by U.S. forces and armed with safety guarantees from the Sunni tribal sheiks who had joined forces to drive al-Qaida in Iraq from the area.

"I am happy to be back to my house and enjoying the company of my Sunni neighbors and friends," says Ali Jassim Murad, 43, a Culture Ministry employee and head of the household.
<...>
Murad, the Culture Ministry employee, got his kidnapped son back and was able to exchange houses with a Sunni friend, but the new place was much smaller and he repeatedly had to prove to militia interrogators that he was Shiite.

In February the Murads and the Sunni family moved back to their own homes.

But the AP reporter adds that the trend is still early: "families like the Murads are a tiny minority"...

"There are now areas of Baghdad and other cities that have become ethnically homogenized," says Roberta Cohen, a human rights specialist with the Brookings Institution.

Also apparent - many are returning to damaged or destroyed homes. Rebuiling begins:

In Khidr, a Shiite hamlet of date palms 45 miles south of Baghdad, all that remains of the downtown area are the mosque walls and huge piles of rubble. Months of shelling and bombings blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq finally forced all 800 villagers to flee in October 2006.

"Life was completely destroyed. We didn't even see birds in the trees," said Jaafar Hussein, a village sheik.
<...>
Hussein's wife, Mhadiya Kherbat, cooks in the backyard while their house is rebuilt from scratch. Clothes dry on bushes. A cow grazes beside the makeshift kitchen. There is no running water or electricity.

Wearing a black robe over a flowered dress, Kherbat said she cried every day after fleeing with her husband and 10 children to a nearby village.

"Suddenly we left our house, we left our belongings and we left our life," she said in an interview while her husband had tea with visiting U.S. soldiers. "We fled because they were firing mortar shells on us all the time."
<...>
His family also was among the first of about 100 to return in January after U.S. soldiers with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division cleared out the Sunni insurgents and established a patrol base.

Khidr is a Shiite enclave surrounded by mainly Sunni villages in a rural area long known as the triangle of death.

"What al-Qaida did and in some places the Shia extremists have done is they just decimated the area, they destroyed everything, they scared everyone away," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands American forces south of Baghdad.

The devastated center stands as a monument to the destruction. But the leafy surrounding area is slowly being restored as villagers, mostly potato and tomato farmers, salvage bricks from the rubble to rebuild their houses and their lives.

"With the support of the U.S. Army and the Iraqi government, life is returning gradually," Hussein said. "More farmers are working in the fields now."

For their part, the Iraqi government has formed the Commission for Resolution of Real Property Disputes in an attempt to sort out ownership of property - a problem that began long before 2003:

The Commission for Resolution of Real Property Disputes (CRRPD) is an independent agency of the Government of Iraq, established to redress certain wrongful takings of real property, including primary rights in rem (e.g. ownership, usage, residence, long-term lease, etc.), during the period from 17 July 1968 to 9 April 2003. The jurisdiction, structure and procedures of operation of the CRRPD are governed by the new Statute of the Commission for Resolution of Real Property Disputes, which annulled CPA Regulation 12, as of 6 March 2006.

Why Participate In the CRRPD Process?

Through the CRRPD process you can:
1) Claim a real property right you lost wrongfully;
2) Confirm your right to the real property you currently use or own; or
3) Defend your right to own or use real property against someone who claims it.
The CRRPD was established to provide a legal mechanism for resolving property disputes in an organized, fair and consistent manner regardless of the parties’ ethnic background, sect, religion, or gender.
If, instead of using the CRRPD process, you return to your property that is occupied by others, and force its occupants to vacate it, you could be committing a criminal offense.

Clearly the problem will have no simple solution.

But in at least one case, a former exile should have no trouble establishing his property rights. The LA Times reports:

BAGHDAD — Abu Hassan took deep breaths of joy as he crossed the double-decker bridge spanning the Tigris River. The water below may have stunk of sewage. The air may have been choked with traffic fumes. It didn't matter to Abu Hassan.

He was free after nearly a year hidden inside his house, the only place he had felt safe from the gunmen and killers who had taken over his neighborhood in south Baghdad.

"To breathe, to see people, to feel that I am still alive," he said recently, recalling his decision that day last winter to drive across the bridge leading from the Dora neighborhood to central Baghdad.

All he did was buy gas, turn around and go back into his house, but Abu Hassan, a Shiite Muslim living in a mainly Sunni Arab area, had taken his first tentative steps back into the world that had terrified him for so long.
<...>
"Day by day, things got worse," Abu Hassan said. "The highway was witnessing killings, kidnappings and explosions. It was not possible even for the security forces to put checkpoints in some of its parts. The checkpoints there were always attacked."

The insurgents targeted men and usually left women and the elderly alone, so Abu Hassan went into hiding and his mother and wife, both teachers, went to work, did the shopping and updated him on the world outside: the killings, the bombings, the deterioration of the neighborhood and eventually the turnaround. His wife is a Sunni, which helped ensure her safety, as long as nobody knew her Shiite husband was hiding at home.

From November 2006 until December 2007, he remained inside except for the day he drove across the bridge and the rare times he ventured into his walled garden at night.
<...>
To outsiders, it appeared that his house was occupied by only his mother and his wife.

Late last fall, he sensed a change. U.S. forces had been in Baghdad in increased numbers since January 2007. A movement known as the Awakening, which involved Iraqis volunteering to help protect their neighborhoods, was catching on.

"Instead of the news of the killings and violence, we began to hear that this Qaeda leader was killed or that one was detained or had left the area," Abu Hassan said.

The highway became safer, and the sounds of gunfire decreased. Abu Hassan felt the chains loosening.
<...>
One day, he washed the dust off his car and drove over the bridge. But then he hurried back to his house.

A few weeks later, though, after hearing of the deaths of some key insurgent leaders in the area, he quietly came out for good.

Now, he has returned to work. A few days ago, he felt confident enough to stand on the street and chat with neighbors. They welcomed him back, thinking he had been out of the country. He let them believe it.

In his neighborhood, shops have reopened and are full of men and women, holding on to their children's hands and browsing through colorful collections of clothes, fruits and vegetables. Iraqi police stand guard at dozens of checkpoints across Dora.

Some people worry that elements of Al Qaeda in Iraq remain in the area. Abu Hassan isn't one of them. He says they have lost their leaders or turned against the insurgency to earn money as guards working alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces.

His main concerns are losing the weight he gained, earning money to help the family recover the savings used during his year of inactivity, and learning to live again.

The return of exiled Iraqis to their homes - from Syria and from within Iraq - is a clear signal of the vast improvement brought about by coalition forces and the cooperative response of Iraqi citizens. Can the trend continue? Those familiar with the situation would probably agree with the NY Times' Mohamed Hussein, formerly exiled in Syria, now reporting from his Baghdad home:

Now, maybe if we think deeply about it, we will find that each needs the other. People need the soldiers to secure them. At the same time the U.S. troops are now in a safe place, maybe they can have more than one Green Zone.

Will it stay safe or not?

I guess that all depends on the American troops, since we will not have qualified Iraqi forces soon. Although most Iraqi forces are sincere you find some have been infiltrated by groups of gunmen and sectarian people who made the mess all around us.

So we still need the Americans because if they intend to leave, there will be something like a hurricane which will extract everything - people, buildings and even trees. Everything that has happened and all that safety will be past, just like a sweet dream.

As people say in my neighborhood: “The Americans are now Ansar al Sunna.” Protectors of the Sunni.

As the rest of the world debates the "progress" in Iraq, displaced Iraqis are returning home. One might think that would be cause for hope leading to calls for support. If so, one would be wrong. The numbers of people returning to Iraq are numbers that matter, and in our next installment you'll see why those numbers have been (and will be) disputed - the final indicator of success in Iraq is also the last hope for those who bet on failure.

Which brings us back to that two billion mentioned above. After he withdraws American forces from Iraq, Barack Obama has pledged to give at a minimum that number of taxpayer dollars to Iraq's "neighboring countries"...

"President Bush likes to warn of the dire consequences of ending the war….he warns of huge movements of refugees and mass sectarian killing, but that has already taken place. These are not the consequences of afuture withdrawal. They are the reality of Iraq’s present. . . . We have a strategic interest – and a moral obligation – to act."

Iraq is Facing a Humanitarian Crisis Right Now: There are two million Iraqis displaced in their own country. There are another two million Iraqi refugees living beyond Iraq's borders. More than 1,000 Iraqi civilians die every month. Sectarian death squads roam Baghdad. The humanitarian crisis that President Bush says would accompany American troop withdrawals is occurring right now.

Take Care of Refugees: Barack Obama would establish an international working group dedicated to addressing the Iraqi refugee crisis. He would increase American investments in Iraq's refugees and internally displaced people and to the neighboring countries that house them to at least $2 billion. He would work with Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt to dramatically increase access to social services for refugees. He also would work to create safe-havens for Iraqis who remain in Iraq, but are displaced from their homes by violence.

To be continued...

Off They Go

...into the wild blue yonder.

Genesis (II)

Part two in a series - part one is here.

*****

On reasons for success in Iraq - from part one:

In reality both the increase in US troops and the development of "awakening councils" were crucial. For example, recall that with no safe havens in Anbar, al Qaeda fled to Baqubah in Diyala Province. Months would pass before that could be addressed, but as Mike Yon would report, the combination of US surge forces and the 1920's Revolution Brigades (who like the Anbar tribes had turned on al Qaeda) were able to secure the area.

*****

THE SURGE IS NOT WORKING... The reduced violence in Anbar Province is the result of cooperation between American forces and Sunni tribes, which started more than 18 months ago, long before the surge.

He's wrong on all counts of course, including his guess at how long ago the people of Anbar had joined our fight against al Qaeda. Like most Americans, Barack Obama knows very little about Iraq.

In fact embracing (or perhaps outright creating) the "Awakening" movement did prove to be the lynchpin in the success of "the surge" - without which the Awakening Movement would have failed.

Here I must acknowledge what some may perceive as a bias. I was part of the surge. In the Winter of 2007, as I explained the surge and discussed tipping points I was also preparing to go. By Spring I was in Iraq with a unit in Multi National Division-Center, the division formed as part of the surge.

I was glad to see the model of the Awakening Movement embraced from the earliest days:

What I have the opportunity to do now with my soldiers is get out and engage with the population. For example, in MND-Center's battlespace, we have 23 sites where coalition forces are living amongst the population. And we have a chance to engage with the population. They're tired of the violence. They're tired of the attacks. And now they're mounting forces to help us and help the Iraqi security forces evict the extremist networks from their country.

That key point was ignored by a media that instead fixated on this:

Q: General, this is Andrew Gray with Reuters. You mentioned that as you surge, you see the enemy surging as well. Can you give us any examples of that?

You may recall the "Enemy is surging too!" headlines that followed.

But by August, the important trend would be obvious:

And that's what's happening as we work these surge operations. We get to an area, the locals there, the first question they ask is, "Are you staying?" And once they're convinced we're staying, the question then becomes, "How can we help?" What we see as a result of that commitment is Iraqi citizens are coming forward and they're indeed saying, "What can we do to help?"

Over the last four months, we've seen an interesting shift. Iraqi citizens are coming to us to provide information. These citizens are speaking up about what they've seen, they're talking about what they've heard and about any activity that jeopardizes the rebuilding of their country.

From that, we're now having concerned citizens programs operating in both Sunni and Shi'a areas alike, with local Iraqis manning checkpoints and giving us important information on insurgents and weapons caches, and that's led to a dramatic turnaround in the security situation in some areas; not all the areas, but in some areas.

This upswell of almost 10,000 concerned citizens has enabled our soldiers to go in and restore normalcy as much as possible to these communities. With our help, the Iraqis are starting to realize that they can establish order and accountability in their lives.
<...>
As I said before, we assumed this mission about four-and-a-half months ago. My last brigade combat team closed in as part of the surge into Iraq in early June. Since we arrived, we've been implementing the plan, and what's been accomplished so far has been surprising in its implications.

Residents of former al Qaeda safe havens have flipped to the side with the coalition forces against the enemy. And with the security that's resulted, we've seen the Iraqi people benefit from a window for reconstruction and the growth of local leadership. Overall attacks are down by 26 percent in Multinational Division-Center. Civilian casualties have decreased by 36 percent.

Since the 15th of June, we have killed or captured 16 high-value individuals throughout our battlespace. Removing these leaders not only weakens the enemy network but also keeps pressure on the remaining elements and shows them we will continue to hunt them down if they continue their activities. In addition to that, we have either killed or captured now 1,000 of the enemy insurgents.

In the absence of violence, growth has taken place at the local level. And with the nurturing of the concerned citizens groups, the Iraqi people are helping us consolidate our gains in security by stepping up and taking responsibility for securing their own town.

(The end result can be viewed here.)

But it should be no surprise that the 3d ID had successfully embraced the awakening movement in their battlespace. Major General Lynch was also in Iraq the year before, as the ongoing effort to recruit Iraqis against al Qaeda began to see results. From February, 2006:

In Anbar Province, an insurgent hotbed that borders Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, US and Iraqi officials say they have a new ally against the Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists: local tribal leaders like Jadaan and home-grown Iraqi insurgents.

"The local insurgents have become part of the solution and not part of the problem," US Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters at a press conference last week.

Until recently, many of the Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar and local insurgent leaders collaborated with Islamic extremist groups whose funding and manpower is thought to come largely from abroad. They had a common goal: drive out the Americans.

But Mr. Zarqawi's indiscriminate killing of innocent Iraqis has alienated many of his erstwhile Iraqi allies. His shadowy militant group, known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, is believed to have assassinated four prominent Anbar sheikhs. And in January when hundreds of Anbar men turned up at an Iraqi Army recruiting depot in Ramadi, the provincial capital, a suicide bomber killed 70 would-be soldiers.

Even then the project was nothing new. In fact, the American effort to recruit Iraqis (Iraqi insurgents, in fact) to turn against al Qaeda began much earlier, as Time Magazine's Michael Ware reported in February, 2005:

"We are ready," he says before leaving, "to work with you."

In that guarded pledge may lie the first sign that after nearly two years of fighting, parts of the insurgency in Iraq are prepared to talk and move toward putting away their arms—and the U.S. is willing to listen.
<...>
Pentagon officials say the secret contacts with insurgent leaders are being conducted mainly by U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers. A Western observer close to the discussions says that "there is no authorized dialogue with the insurgents" but that the U.S. has joined "back-channel" communications with rebels. Says the observer: "There's a lot bubbling under the surface today."
<...>
Hard-line islamist fighters like Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda group will not compromise in their campaign to create an Islamic state. But in interviews with TIME, senior Iraqi insurgent commanders said several "nationalist" rebel groups—composed predominantly of ex-military officers and what the Pentagon dubs "former regime elements"—have moved toward a strategy of "fight and negotiate."
<...>
Behind the scenes, the U.S. is encouraging Sunni leaders and the insurgents to talk with the government. A tougher job may be to convince the leaders of political parties about to assume power—many of whom were brutalized by Baathists now coordinating the insurgency—that it's in their interests to reach a peaceful settlement with their former tormentors. In the U.S. command, there is increasing skepticism that the insurgency can be defeated through military might alone. Says a senior U.S. officer: "The Iraqis are the solution to the insurgency, and they are the solution to our departure."
<...>
In meetings with Sunni tribal leaders, Lieut. Colonel Rick Welch, the senior special-operations civil-military affairs adviser to the commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad, put word out that the military was willing to talk to hard-liners about their grievances and that, as Welch says, "the door is not closed, except for some very top regime guys." Welch, a reservist and prosecutor from Morgan County, Ohio, told TIME, "I don't meet all the insurgent leaders, but I've met some of them." Although not an authorized negotiator, Welch has become a back channel in the nascent U.S. dialogue with the insurgents. Insurgent negotiators confirm to TIME that they have met with Welch.
<...>
The new U.S. policy of engagement is aimed at driving a wedge between nationalist insurgents and the jihadists. But al-Zarqawi and his allies have silenced nationalists by threatening to kill them if they negotiate. The Western observer close to the discussions says, "Al-Zarqawi keeps pulling the process away from 'fight and negotiate' to 'pure mayhem.'"
<...>
While some in the Bush Administration might find the idea of backing an accord with archenemy Baathists distasteful, the Western observer says, "I think you've got a pretty flexible [U.S.] government." Now it's up to the others to follow.

The London Times updated the story in June, 2005:

AT a summer villa near Balad in the hills 40 miles north of Baghdad, a group of Iraqis and their American visitors recently sat down to tea. It looked like a pleasant social encounter far removed from the stresses of war, but the heavy US military presence around the isolated property signalled that an unusual meeting was taking place.

After weeks of delicate negotiation involving a former Iraqi minister and senior tribal leaders, a small group of insurgent commanders apparently came face to face with four American officials seeking to establish a dialogue with the men they regard as their enemies.

The talks on June 3 were followed by a second encounter 10 days later, according to an Iraqi who said that he had attended both meetings. Details provided to The Sunday Times by two Iraqi sources whose groups were involved indicate that further talks are planned in the hope of negotiating an eventual breakthrough that might reduce the violence in Iraq.
<...>
Washington seems to be gingerly probing for ways of defusing home-grown Iraqi opposition and of isolating the foreign Islamic militants who have flooded into Iraq to wage holy war against America under the command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
<...>
Zarqawi’s group, which has been blamed for many suicide bombings and beheadings, has not taken part.
<...>
The Pentagon had no immediate comment to make on the Iraqi claims despite repeated requests for confirmation.
<...>
Coalition military intelligence has identified at least four separate strands of anti-American opposition, including Zarqawi’s jihadists, former members of Saddam’s regime, Sunni Arab nationalists and criminal gangs.
<...>
The Iraqis had agreed beforehand to focus on their main demand, “a guaranteed timetable of American withdrawal from Iraq”, the source said. “We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless.”

The demand did not meet with a favourable response from the American team, perhaps because a timetable is the one thing that President George W Bush has declared he will not agree to.

Both Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, insisted last week that setting a timetable would be an invitation to the insurgents to “wait us out”, as the president put it.

Ibrahim al-Jafaari, the Iraqi prime minister, also rejected a timetable during his first visit to the White House on Friday.

The issue of timetables might have been one reason results did not follow immediately thereafter. And according to the Times, by the next meeting the Americans were making demands of their own:

This meeting did not go well. “The tone of the Americans was different,” the Iraqi insider said. “They were talking with a tone of more superiority, arrogance and provocation.”

After a discussion about Al-Qaeda activities, the Americans bluntly advised the Iraqis to “cease all support, logistics and cover for Zarqawi’s group”. Only if links to Al-Qaeda were severed would the Americans be ready to discuss Iraqi demands.

“Our response was that we will never abandon any Muslim who has come to our country to help us defend it,” the commander said.

“That was a right and prerogative of ours, just as they felt they had the right to ally themselves with other foreign nations in a coalition force to invade Iraq.”

The meeting reached another inconclusive end but the two sides agreed to keep talking, the Iraqi source said.
<...>
Time magazine reported in February that a meeting had taken place between one representative of the insurgents and two US military officials. Earlier this month it was claimed that indirect negotiations had begun through an intermediary.

The meetings described to The Sunday Times appear to have been the first formal talks between the two sides.
<...>
Other experts suggested the mediating role of Iraq’s tribal sheikhs showed that Sunni leaders were tiring of the violence but dared not say so publicly for fear of being seen as American stooges.

“My gut hunch is that the tribal leadership are practical men of affairs,” one specialist said. “Their view is that the insurgency is bad for business, but they can’t come out and say that without risking a bullet in the head.”

*****

Part three is here.

Killing Rommel

I mentioned Stephan Pressfield's new novel Killing Rommel yesterday, today I discovered an online excerpt here.

Enjoy.

Exodus (II)

Continuing a series, previous entry here.

As the rest of the world debates the "progress" in Iraq, displaced Iraqis are returning home. One might think that would be cause for hope leading to calls for support. If so, one would be wrong.

*****

Back in October I attempted to explain what was going on in Iraq in as few words as possible. I was busy - there was a war still going on ("we've won" not being the same as "it's over") so it wasn't until November that I had time to offer further details. But around that time American media sources essentially confirmed what I was saying - they stopped covering Iraq in all but a cursory fashion. (The news coverage we'll be examining below comes from foreign sources.)

I'd actually had the sense that we'd tipped the scales a few weeks earlier, but was waiting for a non-violent end of Ramadan (generally a period of increasingly violent al Qaeda attacks in Iraq - if the group has any capability) to express the thought "out loud". It's likely that Iraqi refugees were awaiting the same signal - because at that point they began to return.

In subsequent months the status of the conflict in Iraq has been a topic of some debate among the (generally uninformed) American public, with an increasing number realizing what was rather obvious six months ago - at least to the refugees who'd fled Iraq in the violent months before.

Another bit of intel that should be obvious from that initial November report is that the United Nations was unprepared for their return. On one hand...

An Iraqi official at Al-Walid border post between Syria and Iraq interviewed by state television Al-Iraqiyah said between 700 and 1,000 Iraqis are returning daily.
<...>
The United Nations, meanwhile, said the number of returning refugees had become a "flow".

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura met Iraq's Immigration and Refugees Minister Abdel Samad Rahman Sultan on Saturday and pledged UN support.

But in the same story, UN representatives outside of Iraq denied the situation altogether:

In Geneva, the agency said Saturday it "does not believe that the time has come to promote, organise or encourage returns" given the volatile and unpredictable security situation in Iraq.

"Presently, there is no sign of any large-scale return to Iraq," said UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis.

But US military spokesman in Iraq, Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, said the reality on the ground was different.

The United Nations response to events would confuse anyone who wasn't aware of the organization's motivation on the issue (which we'll examine shortly). By the end of November, the group was insisting it was assisting Iraq with the return of refugees:

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The United Nations is helping Iraq deal with problems related to the return of refugees, a UN official said on Tuesday, amid confusion over how many Iraqis are returning to their war-torn homeland.

"We are coordinating with the ministry of displacement and migration to see how we can assist," Said Arikat, spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), told AFP.

On Monday, a source close to the UN said the world body had appointed a three-member team to handle the issue of returning Iraqi refugees.
<...>
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it is preparing to provide "up to 5,000 families with material assistance including blankets, kitchen equipment and other material support to help in the returnees' reintegration in their communities."

...even as agencies of the Iraqi government acknowledged they had no way of determining exactly how many were returning:

"We do not have figures of the returning families," Sattar Nowruz, spokesman for the ministry of displacement and migration, told AFP on Tuesday. "We don't have any idea."
<...>
On November 7, Brigadier General Qasim Ata, spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, said 46,030 people returned from abroad in October because of the "improving security situation," but since then there has been no official update.

That story also included statements from returnees that life for them in Syria was far worse than life in Iraq:

Two families who have returned to Baghdad recently explained to AFP why they decided to leave Syria.

"Life was very difficult. We suffered severe shortages," said Abu Zainad, a 37-year-old Shiite who was driven out of his home in Baghdad's mainly Sunni western Al-Jihad neighbourhood five months ago with his wife and three children.

"We suffered far more than the people who stayed behind [in Iraq]," Zainad said, adding that his wife had sold her gold jewellery to help them survive.

By early December, the Iraqi Red Crescent would offer a lower estimate of the number of Iraqis returning to their homeland:

Between 25,000 and 28,000 Iraqi refugees have come home from Syria since mid-September, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organisation said Monday, confirming a growing trend but casting doubts on reports of mass returns.

"In Iraq, the security situation improved as a result of law enforcement, especially in Baghdad and other governates," said the report, obtained on Monday by AFP.
<...>
Its numbers are lower than those given by the Iraqi government, which estimates as many as 60,000 refugees have made the homeward trip across the border in the past few months, mainly from Syria but also from Jordan, and that the numbers are growing by the day.

The government's method of calculating numbers of returnees has been questioned, amid claims by its political opponents -- which it vehemently denies -- that it is inflating the figures.

Any methods the Red Crescent used to derive their estimate were not provided in the story.

But this UN reversal of its statement from the week prior was:

The UN refugee agency has not been assisting in the operation and remains concerned about the situation in Iraq, it added.

But the UN was able to claim contact with 100 refugee families in Syria - and offered a slightly modified version of earlier complaints regarding conditions there:

The UNHCR, meanwhile, said in a statement on its website that a survey in Syria of 100 Iraqi families found that most of those returning do so because they are running out of money or resources or because their visas have expired.

Only 14 percent of Iraqi refugees are returning because of improved security conditions, it said.

"Around 70 percent say they are leaving because of tougher visa regulations and because they are not allowed to work and can no longer afford to stay in Syria," the statement said.

(Again - more on the UN's motivations to follow.)

But by early January, the Red Crescent would increase its estimates dramatically:

Around 20,000 Iraqi refugees returned home from Syria in December, suggesting an improved security situation in the country, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent.

The independent organisation said in the report, obtained by AFP on Friday, that 45,913 people returned to Iraq from Syria between mid-September and December 27, more than double the figure reported a month ago.

Of these, 38,736 had returned to Baghdad and the remainder to other provinces, it said, adding the number of internally displaced in Iraq fell by about 10,000 people in November.

The news comes after US military commanders said on Wednesday that the number of attacks across Iraq had fallen by 62 percent following a US troop "surge" and the formation of scores of anti-Qaeda groups.

"The situation seems to have improved relatively and that has encouraged some Iraqi refugees to come back to their country," the report said.

And (assuming they were actually deployed) the UN's three-man aid crew was having a tough go at trying to get its own head count:

The UNHCR says it is proving difficult to determine exactly how many Iraqi refugees are returning home.

But days later, another look at the situation for Iraqis in Syria was detailed here:

The Syrian government does not allow the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria to work legally and an increasing number of refugees have taken up "harmful practices," from prolonged fasting to prostitution, in order to survive.

"People are finding themselves in extreme situations and at the worst end we're seeing child labor, early marriage, and survival sex," said Sybella Wilkes, spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Syria. "This is something that these families would never have resorted to in Iraq. They're facing drastic measures in order to keep some semblance of quality of life."

According to the latest survey by the UNHCR of 754 Iraqi families in Syria, 33 percent say their financial resources will last for three months or less, while 24 percent are relying on remittances from family abroad to survive.

Some refugees are choosing not to stick it out.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have returned from Syria since mid-August, though the figures are disputed. The UNHCR said staff in Syria had received reports that 128,000 Iraqis were recorded as leaving, though figures from the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization released on Dec. 3 said between 25,000 and 28,000 Iraqi refugees had come home from Syria since mid-September. Initial Iraqi government figures said up to 60,000 had returned.
<...>
Iraqi children have in particular borne a disproportionate burden of the harsh economic reality. The United Nations Children's Agency (UNICEF) estimates that 80 percent of Iraqi children in Syria do not attend school and that at least 10 percent of Iraqi children are being forced to work for an average daily income of $1 or less.
<...>
Precise statistics on Iraqi employment and "harmful practices" are impossible to compile because of the ban on Iraqi employment, as well as the fact that there are no significant social networks running through the Iraqi refugee community through which to gather information.

But note the "UNHCR said staff in Syria had received reports that 128,000 Iraqis were recorded as leaving", though they'd been able to contact only 754 families for a survey - out of an "estimated 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria".

By February, the UN claimed once again it would begin working with the government of Iraq - and might even move (or had moved) some representatives into the country:

The UN refugee agency said Saturday it has boosted its international presence in Iraq and will intensify its efforts to support the war-torn country's two million internally displaced people.

It will also work with the Baghdad government to prepare the return of millions of refugees from abroad, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres said.

He said the number of international staff in Baghdad will be increased from two to five and the country representative moved to the Iraqi capital from Amman.

However, by April the UN was able to locate and interview 1,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria and declare no problem:

29 April 2008 –Only 4 per cent of Iraqi refugees currently plan to return to their own country, while almost all have fled their homeland because of direct threats or general insecurity, according to a report out today from the United Nations refugee agency.
<...>
The survey was carried out with nearly 1,000 Iraqis refugees in the Syrian capital, Damascus, at UNHCR’s registration and food distribution sites, as well as in community centres or during home visits.

Unfortunately, about the only obvious conclusions that can be drawn from the above collection of stories are:

The number of Iraqi refugees can not be reliably determined.

The number of refugees returning can not be reliably determined.

Conditions for refugees in Syria are worse than (or as bad as) what they face in Iraq

The UN has no idea if it is (or even should be) doing anything about the situation or not.

But within days the New York Times had broken the news of an event to the American public - and other news agencies would follow.

Part three is here.

In the Mail:

Killing Rommel: A Novel, by Stephan Pressfield - an exploration of modern warfare from the author of Gates of Fire - a classic on the classic era.

This was the Surge

The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world, and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect us. But it was when they understood that these great-hearted warriors, who so enjoyed killing the enemy, are even happier building a school or making a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention.

Mike Yon, Moment of Truth in Iraq. *****

I couldn't help but recall that quote when I saw these photos of fire stations, markets, municipal buildings, schools, roads, canals, clinics...

This remarkable series of before and after pictures documents the rebuilding efforts of Task Force Marne, aka Multi-National Division Center, aka "the surge" Division in Iraq, 2007-2008. The Division's area of responsibility included some of the most violent areas on the southern edge of Baghdad (the "Baghdad belts") and in addition to peacemaking efforts in the region the Division's mission included halting the flow of "accelerants" into the city. Areas such as Salman Pak, Yousifiyah, Arab Jabour, Jisr Diyala, Mahmudiyah, and Iskandariyah may not be familiar to Americans (they were generally - and erroneously - referred to as "Baghdad" in many press reports) but they were the scenes of some of the most intense combat of the past year - and years before.

The Associated Press (perhaps unknowingly) summed up the surge last month:

ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq (AP) - When the 3rd Infantry Division arrived in Iraq's once infamous "Triangle of Death," violence was so intense that hundreds were dying daily and the country was virtually in a state of civil war.

Now as the Fort Stewart-based division heads home at the end of May, the region stretching south from Baghdad and across central Iraq has become a showcase for what the US military hoped to achieve in Iraq. Violence in the area has plunged by 89 percent since last year.

Task Force Marne's mission in Iraq began in March, 2007 and ended with the transfer of authority from Headquarters, 3d Infantry Division to Headquarters, 10th Mountain at the beginning of this month. The individual Brigade Combat Teams - the folks who walk the line to make this possible - will rotate at other times, and the MND-C mission will continue, but Task Force Marne has come home.

Lynch paused to remember 152 soldiers killed during the deployment and honored the heroes who continued the cause.
<...>
"We held memorial services for each soldier killed and I attended 152 services. Someone who knew them would eulogize the soldier and everyone would be crying including the division commander. After the memorial services, we all donned the battle gear and went back out to fight the insurgents."

This was an MND-C story, too - in more ways than one:

Soldiers of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), distribute school materials donated by the Mike Stokely Foundation at a school in Mullah Fayad March 27. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Tony M. Lindback, 3rd BCT, 101st Abn. Div. (AASLT))

Stokely, from Sharpsburg, Ga., served with the 48th Georgia National Guard. After his death, his father began the Mike Stokely Foundation.

The organization put together a shipment of school supplies for citizens of the communities where Stokely lived and died. It took an Army five-ton truck to deliver the supplies to the school.

Mike Stokely (a member of Georgia's 48th Brigade Combat Team) fell in combat during the 3d ID's previous deployment to Iraq, and is one of over 400 Soldiers now memorialized on Ft Stewart's Warrior's Walk. It was particularly fitting that an MND-C unit was able to distribute these school supplies in his honor this year.

Friends and neighbors, this was the surge.

Exodus (I)

Continuing a series begun here.

Through the duration of the war in Iraq I've identified key indicators of important trends in the conflict on this web site. These indicators take the form of discrete events of variable duration, the trends are larger scale and longer term, and generally identifiable to the observer only as a series of events.

This story from May, 2008 is of an event:

BAGHDAD — I came back to Baghdad last week.

First, it is important to mention the main cause that made me leave everything behind and go to Syria. By the end of 2006 my neighborhood had become an unbearable place. No one could continue there. It was without any simple services, from bakery shops to the hospital and physicians. They all closed their doors and left.

But the real cause is something hidden inside me that affected me more. One day while driving my car to work I saw a corpse thrown alongside the road, and for next three days no one could remove or even touch it. If you moved it you would face the same fate.

So I was gazing at that corpse twice a day for the next three days. That made me think about the whole situation and I said: “It is possible there will be a day when I will be the next corpse laid on that road.”
<...>
After spending more than a year in Syria one day my father called me saying: “You can now return, and do not worry. Everything is fine now.”
<...>
During my travel from Syria to Baghdad I was completely relaxed. There were no worries, no fear of looters and terrorists with Al Qaeda, or Ansar al-Sunna (Protectors of the Sunni), Jaish al-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed) who used to control everything on the expressway between Syria and Baghdad.

Then when we stopped to get some rest near a big restaurant called Bilaad ash-Sham I saw many Iraqi and Syrian buses filled with travelers, and many four-wheel-drive vehicles.

They told me that everything was going fine and that stories that I had heard about the security situation in some Baghdad districts were right.
<...>
At the end of the journey when we reached the main entrance of my neighborhood my mother told me “Just slow down and say ‘Asalaam alaikum,’ (Peace be with you). Do not tell them you were in Syria.” She was afraid they would think I was a wanted man who had run away.

At that moment everything I had heard before seemed not right and I became more anxious with each meter I came closer to the checkpoint. Then I turned my head to the left and I saw the biggest cement wall I have ever seen, which encircles my neighborhood.

There were two Iraqi soldiers standing at the checkpoint. One of them stopped me and told me to open the trunk and engine. The other smiled, saying: “It is the day of bombed cars.”

He inspected my car with an explosive detector device. The other was just looking at us and it seemed that he recognized my mother’s face because he said: “Hi, auntie.”

Now I felt really safe because those people were working properly, not like the security forces in my neighborhood before who were making a secure path during the night for militia members to pass through, targeting everything there.
<...>
This morning I heard the man who sells cooking gas knocking on the cylinders shouting “gaz, gaz, gaz ” which is something that had not happened for two years in my neighborhood.

This meant that all the things I heard about the improvements are true. Even the people are more friendly and I can say that there is now a kind of mutual trust between the people and the soldiers, not like before when there was no trust between each other.

But this report from November, 2007 signaled the start of the trend:

"We are receiving tremendous numbers of displaced families at the borders of Syria and Jordan," Major General Mohsen Abdul Hassan, head of Iraq's department of border enforcement, told a news conference in Baghdad.

Queues of vehicles at the borders transporting the refugees are creating problems for frontier guards trying to prevent the smuggling of arms, Mohsen said.

"We have difficulties dealing with the large numbers. There are long lines of vehicles," Mohsen said, adding his guards were already hard-pressed trying to intercept arms smugglers and insurgents attempting to cross into Iraq using forged passports.

Refugees crossing through the border posts were being subjected to intense searches, he added.

Iraqi government officials say thousands of families are heading back into Iraq, particularly from Syria, as violence levels drop in their homeland and attitudes harden in host countries.

An Iraqi official at Al-Walid border post between Syria and Iraq interviewed by state television Al-Iraqiyah said between 700 and 1,000 Iraqis are returning daily.
<...>
The United Nations, meanwhile, said the number of returning refugees had become a "flow".

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura met Iraq's Immigration and Refugees Minister Abdel Samad Rahman Sultan on Saturday and pledged UN support.

Note that the story - ocurring during the media's self-imposed "news blackout" on Iraq - probably broke through due to the "threat to border security" and "many returned to ruined homes" angles. But the cat was out of the bag, as they say. Meanwhile, outside of Iraq, the UN was struggling with the issue (for reasons we'll discuss later)

In Geneva, the agency said Saturday it "does not believe that the time has come to promote, organise or encourage returns" given the volatile and unpredictable security situation in Iraq.

"Presently, there is no sign of any large-scale return to Iraq," said UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis.

But US military spokesman in Iraq, Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, said the reality on the ground was different.

"The UN has clearly recognised that there are returning refugees and that the numbers are significant -- the numbers of individuals returning to their neighbourhoods in Baghdad has been noticeable," he told the news conference.

If you had never heard it don't feel bad. Iraq had virtually disappeared from American media before it had happened, and the bulk of the stories we're about to examine came from foreign sources.

Part two is here.

Where's Mookie?

A must-see slideshow from Basra at the Washington Post.

Via Major John, who says "Don't waste any anger on the downbeat tone of the writing".

I didn't see any downbeat writing - but the Major's actually over there, so if he says things are better than implied in the captions in this collection I believe him.

Related: News From Basra

Update: Lot's more at MilBlogs.