Fifth Column?

This is stunning. In response to the poll question: "Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?"

Twenty-two percent (22%) said "No."

A full third of Democrats (34%), one-fifth of Independents (19%) and one-tenth of Republicans (11%), respectively) said that no, they actually want the "surge" to fail (PDF). Not whether they think it is likely to fail or succeed, but that they personally want it to fail.

Let that sink in for a second.

Re: More Promising News

Shiite Fighters Are Arrested, Iraq Says

BAGHDAD, Jan. 17 — Facing intense pressure from the Bush administration to show progress in securing Iraq, senior Iraqi officials announced Wednesday that they had moved against the country’s most powerful Shiite militia, arresting several dozen senior members in the past few weeks.

It was the first time the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had claimed significant action against the militia, the Mahdi Army, one of the most intractable problems facing his administration. The militia’s leader, the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, helped put Mr. Maliki in power, but pressure to crack down on the group has mounted as its killings in the capital have driven a wedge into efforts to keep the country together.

Although the announcement seemed timed to deflect growing scrutiny by an American administration that has grown increasingly frustrated with Mr. Maliki, American officers here offered some support for the government’s claims, saying that at least half a dozen senior militia leaders had been taken into custody in recent weeks.

In perhaps the most surprising development, the Americans said, none of the members had been prematurely released, a chronic problem as this government has frequently shielded Shiite fighters.

“There was definitely a change in attitudes,” in the past three to four weeks, a senior American military officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Though the story notes the Iraqi government engaged in a bit of..."puffing" with respect to how many total militiamen had been arrested.

Iraqi Fact(orie)s

Non-military progress reported in Iraq, from Reuters:

U.S. aims to restart 10 Iraqi factories in weeks

BAGHDAD, Jan 18 (Reuters) - U.S. officials have drawn up a list of 10 former state-run Iraqi factories they hope to restart within weeks to employ 11,000 people, kicking off a plan aimed at giving potential insurgents an economic reason not to fight.

Paul Brinkley, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for business transformation, said the factories on the "top 10 list" are among 200 major factories around Iraq that used to employ more than 300,000 people before the March 2003 U.S. invasion.

U.S. policy immediately after the invasion was to promote privatisation so most state-run factories closed.

That left their employees surviving on stipends of about 30 to 40 percent of their former salaries and had a ripple effect on the economy, for example on farmers whose produce was no longer bought by food-processing plants, Brinkley said.

"The core effort right now is to restore employment to as many of the Iraqi people as we can," Brinkley told a news conference in Baghdad. "We think that will improve stability. It will undermine insurgent sympathy."
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Conceding that U.S. policy had been based on the false assumption that Iraq's industry was "Soviet-style" and inefficient, Brinkley said a gradual transformation to the private sector was now favored over rapid privatisation.

Digging Strategic Holes

(aka Re: The plan comes together)

Here's what President Bush didn't mention about "the surge": It's nothing more than an adjustment in rotation dates. Some troops are going a couple months early, others will stay late. Stop the "surge" and the same troops will go to Iraq - just on their normal schedule and in time to hive-five the folks they will replace instead of reinforce. Those newly arrived troops will be completely up shit creek, of course, as no one in Iraq is going to take them at all seriously.

But simply naming this action without explaining it completely - perhaps in an effort to avoid the "nothing new here" response that would predictably follow - provides something "tangible" to oppose: more troops in Iraq who wouldn't otherwise be there.

Promising News

Or at least, news of promises:

Khalilzad also said the United States was "committed to going after" Iranian operatives in Iraq, who he said were responsible for supplying sophisticated bombs used against U.S. forces.
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Khalilzad said Iraqi leaders have agreed to allow U.S. forces unfettered access to Baghdad neighborhoods. Such access is key to disarming militias. "We'll have the freedom of action to go anywhere in the city in pursuing these objectives," he said. "We have to wait and see whether what has been agreed to, which is quite satisfactory, is actually implemented."

Petraeus Hearings: "A Blow"

The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing next week on Lt. Gen. Petraeus' appointment as the next military commander in Iraq.

According to the LA Times, this will be a "blow to the White House" (and a "setback", too).

White House officials are concerned that Congress may try to "scapegoat" Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who has overseen the Iraq war since 2004 and has been nominated as Army chief of staff, the service's highest post. Army and administration officials had planned for Casey to be considered first, in the belief that the urgency of appointing Petraeus as his successor would dissuade lawmakers from engaging in a long and divisive fight over his handling of the war.
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Although Defense officials had indicated Casey's nomination would go to the Senate first, White House officials sent over three nominations simultaneously Tuesday — those of Petraeus, Casey and Navy Adm. William J. Fallon, who has been nominated to head the U.S. Central Command, which oversees all U.S. military activity in the Mideast.

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats, at McCain's urging, moved to put Petraeus' confirmation hearing on the committee's calendar. Casey's has not yet been scheduled.
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But the swift consideration of Petraeus could mean a rougher time for Casey, who has been criticized by McCain and others for failing to seek additional troops or commit existing forces to Al Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.

The obligatory Vietnam comparison follows:

The nomination of Casey as chief of staff has drawn comparisons of him and Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the controversial commander who oversaw the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. When Westmoreland was replaced in Vietnam, he too was nominated as Army chief of staff and served in that post for four years.

Searching for Answers

A question on Ehren Watada, from comments here:

Wonder when someone will inform him that the legality of the war has no bearing on his obligation to deploy when ordered.

On Tuesday, however, Lt. Col. John M. Head, the military judge in the case, rejected Watada's request to debate the legality of the war at his court-martial next month. Although Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, had sought to open the question so the soldier could explain why he defied his deployment orders, Head ruled that the war's legality was a political question irrelevant to the charges at hand.

Quote Of The Day

Bill Roggio interviews the milblogger who writes Acute Politics, one of the more literary milblogs I've seen and a good blog besides despite his short time on line. This should give one pause:

Do you fear your experiences in Iraq will cause your idealism to fade?

No, I don't think they will. I'm here in part because of my idealism - because I believe everyone should be given the chance to choose their own path in life, and because I felt I needed to back that belief with action. I don't see my time here changing that.