Friday, April 04, 2008

Nir Rosen Congress Testimony

But the American ideologues who saw themselves as liberators needed an evil worthy of their lofty self image. To them the Baath party was a Sunni Nazi party that ruled Shiite Jews. They would de-Baathify just as their role models had de-Nazified. Sunnis were suspect of loyalty to the former regime and as a result the American military adopted a more aggressive posture in majority Sunni areas, resulting in clashes in places like Falluja that indeed led to the formation of a powerful popular resistance. Sunnis were weakened by the fact that Saddam, a Sunni himself, from attaining too much popularity or power, to avoid rivals.
That first month of Occupation there was enormous hope, but the looting created an atmosphere of pervasive lawlessness from which Iraq never recovered. The entire state infrastructure was destroyed and there were no security forces, Iraqi or American, to give people a sense of safety. They quickly turned to inchoate militias being formed, often along religious, tribal and ethnic lines.
Those same militias dominate Iraq today. This would have happened anywhere. If you removed the government in New York City, where I am from, and removed the police, and allowed for the state infrastructure to be looted and then you dismissed the state bureaucracy you would see the same thing happen. Soon Jewish gangs would fight Puerto Rican gangs and Haitan gangs would fight Albanian gangs.

The most powerful militias belong to Shiites who rallied around populist symbols such as Muqtada al Sadr. The Americans then fired the entire state bureaucracy, and for some Shiite leaders, this was an opportunity to seize control. While many Sunni clerical and tribal leaders chose to boycott the occupation and its institutions, many of their Shiite counterparts made a devil’s bargain and collaborated. The Americans maintained their sectarian approach, unaware that they were alienating a large part of Iraqi society and pitting one group against the other. Most of the armed resistance to the occupation was dominated by Sunnis, who boycotted the first elections, effectively voting themselves out of Iraqi politics. Radical Sunni militants began to attack Shiites in revenge or to provoke a civil war and disrupt the American project. Sectarian fundamentalist Shiite parties dominated the government and security forces and punished Sunnis en masse. By 2005 the civil war started. Later that year the Americans realized they had to bring Sunnis into the fold, but it was too late, the Shiites in power saw no reason to share it.
Probably a little exaggerated, but the point is that America designed its war as a sectarian war, a war that unwittingly and needlessly entrenched dangerous sectarian modes of thinking in the collective Iraqi consciousness [a good example is me, just trace the development of my sectarian awareness on this blog] while this sectarian divide has a long and turbulent history ; it needn't necessarily come to all this blood : Christians have persecuted Jews too, you know? America could have kept the bureaucracy and started nation-building from there, don't get me wrong, the problems of Iraq are all purely Iraqi problems, but I would never forget the words of the first US soldier I met: "Hey man, are you Sunni or Shi'i?", that was the first time I was asked this question. it is the arrogant American administration's neglect of the complex realities regarding post-Saddam Iraq that is still the first thing that must be blamed for all the bad things happening in Iraq.

Full testimony here.

47 comments:

onix said...

for one thing i think either contribution tends to stress sects in general. Personally i am still kind of conviced the sectarian is not coincedentual, despite it was perhaps also a result of the brute manner and ways wich deposed of the old saddamist structures. That happened to mean in many , and i assume the usians eyes, sunni's.

Meanwhile the sunni opposition shaped between conservative and bush? hype of al quada, that had dripped in through afghanistan being in war for (i don't know what did it for you or me) 30 years or so, however probably over locking up woman and maintaining a primitive standard of justice.

So i think sunni resistance may partly or even largely just represent resentment over the disturbance over their lives and nation.

Likewise do shia sentiments represent a similar thing.
The complication hits in when you just don't want to belief an attack on a mosque that had been announced 3 months ahead is a good proof of no foreign involvment in bomb attacks.

RhusLancia said...

Abbas: "but I would never forget the words of the first US soldier I met: "Hey man, are you Sunni or Shi'i?"

Why do you think he asked you that?

Anonymous said...

devastating report. it is hard to know where to even begin commenting on this report because it completely confirms everything i have read from certain iraqi bloggers the last few years. the nazi vs jew mindset wasn't news to me because it was an idea lyn and rhus tried to fly over at omar's awhile back..comparisons to germany after the war and some sort of acknowledgment of their crimes period.. it went over like a lead brick as you can imagine. sometimes i feel like we are all guinea pigs for the grand experiment. there is a particular smell to this version of infowarfarepsychobabble genocide. maybe it is just par for the course w/wars and this is just the first one i have been following closely in my lifetime, the first one that really has ripped at my guts on a daily basis, but the design has a special sort of zionist stench to me which shouldn't be surprising considering who waged this war, the neocons hosting off while pacifying the sleeping US consumer. is it any surprise we have pockets of palestine in baghdad? the first paragraph is a good place to start (the rest so much more painful), he speaks of the media abandoning the larger image (too gruesome!) and focussing on small pieces, gems/ heros /bad guys etc. reminded me very much of something i read earlier today Military Report: Secretly 'Recruit or Hire Bloggers'

"Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," gee, ya think??

but what stood out for me was Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence... to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities (meaning realists vs complete rabid anti muslim sadist/racist pro war imperialists) and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective;

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, ......there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.


so when i read rosen's piece i thought of the valuable distraction of consuming little minds w/stories (and photos worthy of national geographic!) such as this..

I joined Lieutenant Jasey Alleman on a foot patrol in the city at dawn when the air was still cold and the sun cast long shadows........

Our first official stop of the morning was at a grade school. Children rushed to the windows to smile and wave as we walked up the steps.

A young boy came running out the front door with tears in his eyes and a bruise on his eyebrow. A soft-faced teacher or administrator in his forties stepped outside to make sure the kid didn't run off too far. “He was in a fight,” he said and opened his palms.

Lieutenant Alleman called out to his unit's medic. “See if you can clean this kid up,” he said. Our medic cleaned the boy's wound and gently applied a band-aid.


ah war, beauty in the pain interconeected, the cycle of life..., isn't it getting better all the time.

as if we can replace what is happening with a narrative. as if iraqis were ever offered the truth. everything is well thought out by think tankers. the divisions/diversions/design set in place,. and viola! what do we have? ( One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy .) i'm sure you know who that is by now, famous neocon cheney advisor ledeen. in view of discussion @ the earlier thread, i thought i would link to it here although it is available at NRO and screamed across the web by astounded liberal bloggers...

i thought of riggio of course, champion alpha male of 'how to view the war'! today in his comment section..

I see little rays of light spreading and breaking thru. (was this the same speechwriter as bush 1's 100o pts of light?) So much of this is vetted by and encouraged by our military as advice and by example to the people daily. By example, the Iraqi people are seeing just how good and just people should behave towards them. Giving them this added protection is giving them a chance to see freedom and liberty in action. Something many have never seen in their lives.

MSM is far to impatient and so to are many well informed pundits that know better. Success is happening in many small ways. Admission that there are problems. The adherance to Rule of Law, not matter if some of it is flawed. More and more you see it being institutionalized.

Sadr was defeated fully. Even if missteps took place. Clear message were sent all over Basrah and not just to Sadr. Rule of Law, justice, free flow of market and the beginning to an end of old habits of smuggling and topping off profits to families in charge. Of course there will be compromises. Not everything must be solved militarily.

But overall, this is a good start in many ways. More information has come out in the open regarding Qods as Master of Sadr's house. Iran is being directly confronted now by Iraq. The battlelines have been drawn. Not only did Sadr blink, but so to did Qods in a way. Message was delievered thru them and Sadr stopped.

That may be the most important development of this entire exercise.


ah, a sweet packaged thought of hope to keep the illusion on the right path...meanwhile, iraq is destroyed, do we care? this is the empire folks, neocon style.

bonus feature brought to you by long war journal comment section

Successes can be claimed for either side and the relative importance of factual details weighted in accordance to any viewpoint. Last weeks battles were not one sided with an obvious victor.

yada yada, bedtime....

annie

RhusLancia said...

annie: 'yada yada, bedtime...."

You bored yourself to sleep ?? how cute!

Anonymous said...

rhussie, this one's for you

Changing the long-accepted rules on interrogation required concerted action. From left: Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, then vice-presidential counsel David S. Addington, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, President George W. Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney

We talked about the methods of interrogation. “In terms of their effects,” she said, “I suspect that the individual techniques are less important than the fact that they were used over an extended period of time, and that several appear to be used together: in other words, the cumulative effect.” Detainee 063 was subjected to systematic sleep deprivation. He was shackled and cuffed; at times, head restraints were used. He was compelled to listen to threats to his family. The interrogation leveraged his sensitivities as a Muslim: he was shown pictures of scantily clad models, was touched by a female interrogator, was made to stand naked, and was forcibly shaved. He was denied the right to pray. A psychiatrist who witnessed the interrogation of Detainee 063 reported the use of dogs, intended to intimidate “by getting the dogs close to him and then having the dogs bark or act aggressively on command.” The temperature was changed, and 063 was subjected to extreme cold. Intravenous tubes were forced into his body, to provide nourishment when he would not eat or drink.

We went through the marked-up document slowly, pausing at each blue mark. Detainee 063’s reactions were recorded with regularity. I’ll string some of them together to convey the impression:

Detainee began to cry. Visibly shaken. Very emotional. Detainee cried. Disturbed. Detainee began to cry. Detainee bit the IV tube completely in two. Started moaning. Uncomfortable. Moaning. Began crying hard spontaneously. Crying and praying. Very agitated. Yelled. Agitated and violent. Detainee spat. Detainee proclaimed his innocence. Whining. Dizzy. Forgetting things. Angry. Upset. Yelled for Allah.

The blue highlights went on and on.

Urinated on himself. Began to cry. Asked God for forgiveness. Cried. Cried. Became violent. Began to cry. Broke down and cried. Began to pray and openly cried. Cried out to Allah several times. Trembled uncontrollably.


i am wide awake. you want to try to agitate me? i got more neocon/nazi links. this one is fresh, out today.

Bruno said...

Abbas, great post. I agree 100% that the agenda of the Americans was sectarian from the get-go. It's obvious that they had distilled Iraqi society into these radical oversimplifications of Shia and Sunni, together with pre-set ideas of how to deal with both. Maybe we should start by asking Americans whether they are Confederate or Union, before dealing with them ... ?

CMAR II said...

Probably a little exaggerated

Hmm...A *little* exaggerated? It looks like another apology for Saddam: "Saddam the necessary evil"

No one asked you whether you were Sunni or Shi'a before because it was painfully obvious from your status and life prospects.

but the point is that America designed its war as a sectarian war...while this sectarian divide has a long and turbulent history ; it needn't necessarily come to all this blood...America could have kept the bureaucracy and started nation-building from there

*sigh* pipe dream.

To expect a liberated Shi'a majority to have long tolerated a Sunni-dominated bureaucracy...or to expect that Sunni-dominated bureaucracy to allow itself to be reformed to allow disenfranchised Shi'a to take jobs from themselves and their relatives...not gonna happen. You want a return to Saddam and the Ba3thists or a take over by an Iran? That's the best way for America to have accomplished it.

You are making the same mistake the Bush administration made in rhetoric (but not in practice): "Saddam retained his power by the strength of his own will; he did not embody Sunni Iraqis' last hope (after increasing instability since 1932) of retaining their positions as the first among equals in Iraq".

Or maybe you're not making that mistake. Are you saying that the status quo for society in Iraq ("Christians persecuted Jews") is the way things ought to have continued? You know, I don't know of a place where Jews where the clear MAJORITY where Christians persecuted Jews.

As I explained here, the average random Sunni Iraqi has to take in the ass (at least initially). It's just the way it is.

ahmed said...

Well, Cmar, the Shia have certainly been persecuted for many centuries ; and I think this has played in the general Islamic consciousness : even the Shi'i dogma itself has a heavy layer of dissimulation and an understanding of being persecuted that is central to the faith, it's welded in its collective consciousness.

But I referred to the US soldier to underscore the point that the US came with this fixed mentality that strengthens the old rivalry when it wasn't as prevalent really between most Iraqis, I only began to be aware of the fact that most of my friends are Shia only in 2006, in our everyday talk nobody cared or talked about it, there were many mixed marriages and on the whole it just wasn't as big a deal and it needn't come to this if America has learned from history, they just thought it's potato this potato that, who cares, they're all a bunch of Sandniggers.

Sunnis have been the ruling sect for many centuries, and even in Iraq the Shia only become a majority fairly recently on the long run (1850s). it's going to take a while that they tolerate a Shia presence, and more importantly it's going to take a long time for both camps to have even a grasp of coexistence ; because religious sentiment is high and that's a direct factor in the hostility on both sides of the equation.

ahmed said...

oh and "your status and life prospects?" Who the fuck are you to think you know anything to figure out what my "status" was?! I was a simple Iraqi citizen, indiscriminate between many others. Most of my friends were Shia and they all shared those "status and life prospects" as I did, we all feared the son of Abid Humud when he was with us in high school. what a bigot, but no, you have to go out of your way and not admit that America fucked up even slightly?

ahmed said...

As for my comment about prosecution of Jews, I meant that, you don't need to capitalize on persecution in building a nation, Christians have persecuted Jews and now they are living together happily, right? America only further encouraged the sectarian divide in Iraq, they didn't try to marginalize it and make Iraqis feel that they're Iraqis first and foremost, you stupid fucking idiot.

nadia said...

Yeah, I'm glad to see we agree on this.

nadia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CMAR II said...

Abbas,

I admit to being quite flippant and even presumptuous about your "status and life prospects". While I think I'm pretty close to the mark generally, there is no way for me to know you're situation individually.

[abbas] the Shia only become a majority fairly recently on the long run (1850s).

Fine. 160 years. Roughly five generations. How much longer would you like to see Shi'a Arabs accept the role of 'little brother' (at best) in Iraqi society? And do you really think it was American leadership that divided Iraqi society along sectarian lines and not Sunnis tacitly supporting the Sunni Insurgency which invited in Al-Qaeda? Don't you think the bombings at mosques probably had a *little* more influence in this regard?

[abbas] they didn't try to marginalize it and make Iraqis feel that they're Iraqis first and foremost

Horse shit. In every way that they had power to do so, the American leadership sought to foster the sensibility of a unified, secular Iraq. In the run-up of the war Americans were treated to a picture of Iraqis as highly secular and westernized. The Bush Administration was declaring all this when the anti-war pundits were shouting from the rooftops that the new Iraq was hopeless because of all the sectarian and ethnic divides and were referring to the newly empowered Shi'a as "turbans", "Iranians", "exiles", and the foreigners' "puppets". A large percentage of Sunni Iraqis were the worst offenders in this regard.

you have to go out of your way and not admit that America fucked up even slightly?

I don't have to go out of my way to do it. It's right there at my feet. 150,000 Americans in Iraq. 20,000,000 Iraqis. I wonder who probably bears the significant weight of blame for Iraq's problems today?

The Iranians supported the Iraqi Sadr and certain others. The Syrians supported Iraqi former regime insurgents (who in turn supported Al-Qaeda). The US supported a freely elected Iraqi government. What happened in between was all Iraqi.

There WAS a time early on in 2003 when Iraqis (at least in Baghdad) did not have a *sense* of Shi'a/Sunni not being an important divide in Iraqi society: It was before Sunni Arabs lost their jobs due to debaathification and hitched their wagons to the Insurgency. It was before the Insurgency stopped attacking MNF soldiers primarily and started attacking Iraqis and their family members and their perceived sects whom they considered "collaborators".

Anonymous said...

"Don't you think the bombings at mosques probably had a *little* more influence in this regard?"

little more ?????

It might have, if it wasn't the Americans who disbanded the sunni's from the army and the government, either through Paul Bremer or their Shia Allie's at the time ( chalabi ) which led to the insurgency and alqaeda grabbing a foothold in the country.
You can lay blame of individual events on certain groups; but those groups wouldn't have been created were it not for the sectarian policies of the US administration that took over Iraq immediately after the invasion which is what Abbas is trying to get through your thick head and you are denying, even though you know its true .... but since when do white men take responsibility for their messes its always the indigenous peoples fault aint it ?
I'll give you a solution to Iraq's problems for you, why not give them blankets infected with chicken pox ?

Anonymous said...

Abbas, I really don't understand why you bother to respond to the likes of CMAR and RhuslanCIA, who insist on the "Sunni=bad guys, Shia=good guys, but Sunnis who work with Americans=good guys, Shia who work with Iran=bad guys" equation. Let's just wait and use the dogs and their irrational fears to our advantage.

CMAR II said...

[cmar] "Don't you think the bombings at mosques probably had a *little* more influence in this regard?"

[gutless nameless commenter]
It might have, if it wasn't the Americans who disbanded the sunni's from the army and the government


"Disbanded" Saddam's regime. Boo-hoo. "Dis-banded" Saddam's army whose officers were verified Saddam loyalists? These two groups were the ones doing the bombings or supplying the guys doing the bombings. Here's a mistake the US made: Paying the salaries of Saddam's officers until July 2004. That was truly money down a rat hole or worse.

Anonymous said...

they didn't try to marginalize it and make Iraqis feel that they're Iraqis first and foremost, you stupid fucking idiot.

lol, love the emphasis. no of course they didn't because, as i think is made clear by ledeen's caldron statement the whole point was to ruin iraq and getting iraqis to do it themselves is much more cost effective in terms of american blood and treasure. it just so happens somebody thought making the sectarian distinctions would be the easiest way to make that happen, or they wouldn't have done it. da.

Fine. 160 years. Roughly five generations. How much longer would you like to see Shi'a Arabs accept the role of 'little brother' (at best) in Iraqi society?

excellent point!!! by your standards maybe white people in the US should take it in the ass for a while from the native americans and blacks and mexicans! seriously, you astound me cmar!

In the run-up of the war Americans were treated to a picture of Iraqis as highly secular and westernized. The Bush Administration was declaring all this

really! where was i? maybe you could provide us with an example of this highly secular picture you are blathering on????

The Iranians supported the Iraqi Sadr and certain others.

hahahahahahahahah!!!! cat got your tongue? certain others who?

speaking of rosen and 'certain others' check out this interview w/him and michael ware. people are getting a real kick out if it.

I laugh until my head falls off. How many people are dying each day to perpetrate this travesty of a sham? All the cruelty, terror and destruction for this? Marc Lynch provides more gallows humor at the expense off yet another hapless Kagan:

"The U.S. should encourage the Iraqi government to defeat Iran's proxies and agents, and should provide the requisite assistance." - Kimberly Kagan, Wall Street Journal.

Um, yeah. Let's get Nuri al-Maliki, Abd al-Aziz Hakim, and Jalal Talabani on the trail of Iran's proxies and agents immediately! But they'll need some leads...where, oh where, are they going to find Iran's friends in Iraq?


rosen points out that many of the Badr folks are actually considered to be part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (by Iran) and are collecting monetary pensions from IRGC. Thats right, the IRGC, a designated terrorist organization, is financially supporting the same government we are propping up in Baghdad in order to prevent that organization from having too much influence there. And if any U.S. money were to find its way into the Badr Brigade - or the Iraqi Army - that would mean the the U.S. government is funding an official terrorist organization... The same one it's alleged to be fighting.

i think we don't want any of this to really sink in to the american public. but you crack me up cmar...

'CERTAIN OTHERS'

hahahahahahahaha

annie

CMAR II said...

[annie] excellent point!!! by your standards maybe white people in the US should take it in the ass for a while from the native americans and blacks and mexicans!

Actually, I grew up hearing White Americans grouse 24-7 about job slots being set aside for minorities and women. It was called "Affirmative Action". It's really not a major issue anymore except politically; even in the hyper-PC education industry. But, frankly, it was easier in the US because blacks and "mexicans" are minorities there.

seriously, you astound me cmar!

Yes. I'm astounding.

Anonymous said...

thank you for correcting me w/regard to the 'mexican' statement. considering the amount of illegals we have, who are mexican, tho of course this used to be their land/country, i should have said hispanics, or if referring to mexican americans said mexican americans. i was reffering to both.

"Affirmative Action"

is that what you meant by taking it in the ass? gee cmar, isn't there a little difference between setting aside an allotment of places at universities etc (AS IF their taxes don't pay for them like the rest of ours, as IF their neighborhoods have comparable schools etc,), well... how is that the same as firing tons of people and preventing them from even joining the army or not allowing them to even run for public office?

i mean heck, you used to go to the post office, not one black person working there, could that have REALLY been because they weren't qualified? or maybe a little racism thrown into the mix. maybe it was just a coincidence there were nary a black dentist or black doctor or black lawyer in scores of town across the country. did white people have to really take it in the ass for them to get their foot in the door? or are you implying it was the way it was because heck, what's a few centuries of being down and out.

there are numerous ways to encourage diversity in all ranges of professions without banning an entire group of people from participation, which is what happened in iraq. comaring affirmative action to debaathification is a farce.

your position, is defenseless.

and thank you for the correction..

annie

Anonymous said...

one more thing, do you have any idea how many household rely solely on the income of women? including raising the children. women in the workforce is imperative and there is no reason we shouldn't have the same opportunity for we have the same financial needs. last i heard we weren't getting discounts on our milk or gas or health insurance.

by your standards the only way to rise above in the world is to take away from someone else. instead, governements should find ways to create more opportunity.

anyway, it is a moot point, everyone in iraq now is miserable.

CMAR II said...

Annie, have you lost you mind (rhetorical question)? Can anything I wrote be construed as not pro-affirmative action? That's the foundation of my argument. AA set-asides necessarily hurt Whites seeking jobs and promotions in the affected industries. But minorities in the US are...minorities. Therefore there was not the same upheaval as there necessarily is in Iraq. But you would have thought it was a major deal in the 1970s and early 80s.

Yet I never knew one White guy who didn't get a promotion or had to retire early who tried to burn down his country because of it.

preventing them from even joining the army or not allowing them to even run for public office

Oh get real. The US has been trying to recruit Sunni Arabs into the Iraqi military and police since the beginning. That's a problem only significantly resolved by the Awakening. Next you'll be telling me Sunni Iraqis weren't allowed to vote in the first election. As for public office, Sunni Arabs were granted SET-ASIDES in the parliament and at the table for drawing up the constitution.

Are you really crying about BA3THISTS (Sunni, Shi'a, Kurd, or what-have-you) losing their jobs as if no Ba3thist in Iraq ever took part in a serious atrocity as part of his job? Yeah, Iraqis often HAD to join the Ba3thist party, but Iraq bleeds with stories of Ba3thists who used their positions to intimidate and undermine their co-workers in various petty ways. Give me a break. Riverbend lost her job as a programmer. Unless she emphatically states otherwise, I will continue to believe she lost it for the same reason she got it: her family connections. Debaathification was inevitable and necessary. I for one, will not weep over Ba3thists losing their jobs before I give a good long cry over the victims of the Ba3thist party in Iraq.

As for Ba3thists being fired from limited and quite coveted government jobs: I'm aware there are many who were impressed into the party and behaved admirably at their jobs. Was deba3thification always implemented justly and equitably without regard to sect by the Iraqi decision-makers? From what I hear, no. If enacted in total righteousness would it have prevented many ethnic Sunni Arabs from feeling aced-out? I don't see how.

(I don't consider debaathification even registering as a problem for Iraq and Sunni Arabs compared to JAM and the Fadhila party's purges of the Ministry of Health)

Anonymous said...

Can anything I wrote be construed as not pro-affirmative action?

beside the point. you compared eliminating opportunity for an entire segment of the population as an equivalent to offering opportunity to a fraction of another. and you ask me if i have lost my mind? one is entirely defenable, the other, the opposite.


Oh get real. The US has been trying to recruit Sunni Arabs into the Iraqi military and police since the beginning. That's a problem only significantly resolved by the Awakening.

oh that is a bunch of bull and you know it. the US was perfectly willing to oversee the implementation of debaathification UNLIKE them making sunni recruitment into the IA any kind of a priority. you get real! the puppet regimes are not accepting sunnis. the 'democratic' parliament is not debaathifying. the US were instrumental in imposing the program, but apparently are impotent outside of "trying to recruit'. and how on earth does creating another separate militia (divorced from) and not in compliance or approved of the central government constitute "significantly resolved"?? wtf is significantly resolved about the awakening in terms of them joining the IA?

Are you really crying about BA3THISTS (Sunni, Shi'a, Kurd, or what-have-you) losing their jobs as if no Ba3thist in Iraq ever took part in a serious atrocity as part of his job?

no, i am not. where did you come up w/this? the past atrocities of some baathists in certain positions is not even in the context of my post. it is in yours. what is this AS IF NO?? is this your idea of healing iraqis? moving forward? are you stuck in some retro fitting future? to be clear i am not talking about anything AS IF NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENED, i am talking AS IF MOST BAATHIST WERE REGULAR PEOPLE AND SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN THE NEW IRAQ JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.

so when you take out the 'crying' blather, the AS IF blather, and all your hypotheticals has it occurred to you that you have not said a word except to whine and cry and stomp your revenge fist.

grow up.

annie

madtom said...

"but I would never forget the words of the first US soldier I met: "Hey man, are you Sunni or Shi'i?", "

And if you had only gone about explaining it, instead of pretending you did not know, maybe we would not be here today...See it's all you fault.

onix said...

annie, u can be boring:) cmar : she got you yet:D. btw she's only against affirmative action becus she is a succesfull woman that 's been *not* through the stage to clear things up. It hasn't happened to her and so it shouldn't happen to others kind of way of thinking. he annie? thats a form of racism as well you know that?

nadia said...

This conversation is hilarious. Americans wrote their own affirmative action policies, they didn't completely dismantle the American government institutions. Lots of people in the administration-Jay Garner and others-thought the law cut way too deep as well.

Regardless, the people that were oppressed have the best idea of what their oppression looked like and how it should have been dealt with. They should have been consulted when the law was being written, that's an absolutely minimal precondition to ask for.

CMAR II said...

[nadia_n] Regardless, the people that were oppressed have the best idea of what their oppression looked like and how it should have been dealt with. They should have been consulted when the law was being written...

The Iraqis were consulted. The Iraqis implemented it. It is just that you don't consider the Iraqis who were consulted to be "real Iraqis". They were Kurds or exiles or turbans.

nadia said...

You know nothing about my opinions don't pretend you do.

CMAR II said...

Very well, then you are just wrong. The leadership of every anti-Saddam Iraqi element was consulted in every step of any significance. You are simply wrong.

nadia said...

I wasn't talking about every step but this particular law passing. How much consulting do you think you can do by your second day in the country? By a guy the Bush admin appinted for his lack of experience and knowledge and fired for acting too autocratically?

Anonymous said...

btw she's only against affirmative action becus she is a succesfull woman that 's been *not* through the stage to clear things up.

i am absolutely FOR affirmative action. it has no bearing on the argument. for your review...

beside the point. you compared eliminating opportunity for an entire segment of the population as an equivalent to offering opportunity to a fraction of another. and you ask me if i have lost my mind?

"annie, u can be boring:)"

lol, whatever, i try to get the job done. dat in and day out dealing w/this inforn=mation can be trying. but it takes a village! i am in it for the long haul. i will fight the bullshit tooth and nail. call me boring, it's ok by me. i've been called a lot worse. abbas even said i didn't care/listen about what other people thought.

i admit, i am hearing impaired, but i try.

a

Anonymous said...

nadia n, you rock

annie

Anonymous said...

ps, i am just a plain ol average white american middle age woman for god's sake. what could be more fucking boring than that? of COURSE i'm boring!

lol!

a

CMAR II said...

[nadia_n] How much consulting do you think you can do by your second day in the country?

Which is precisely why the anti-Saddam Iraqis implemented the process. There's no denial that a certain amount of debaathification was necessary, right? The Americans chose the anti-Saddam Iraqis to do it. However, having Iraqis do it opened the door for the policy to be implemented according to internal Iraqi demographics and predjudices. On the other hand, denazification in Germany (1944-1949) was implemented by Americans solely. There are good and bad sides to letting the Iraqis take the lead and I'm not sure how you can choose yes or no.

But you can't blame Bremmer for being ignorant and dictatorial AND blame him for relying on Iraqis.

Dancewater said...

"Riverbend lost her job as a programmer. Unless she emphatically states otherwise, I will continue to believe she lost it for the same reason she got it: her family connections."

Boy, you sure make a lot of assumptions, don't you? If you read her blog, Riverbend returned to her old work place, that was mainly destroyed, and was told that she would not be rehired because she was a female.

Your arrogance is showing when you demand that someone "Unless she emphatically states otherwise" like you have some RIGHT to have things explained to you beyond what was posted on her blog. I think that your arrogance comes from being a privileged white guy, probably with a little dick.

"Debaathification was inevitable and necessary. I for one, will not weep over Ba3thists losing their jobs before I give a good long cry over the victims of the Ba3thist party in Iraq."

Most of the Baathist laid off were the backbone of the Iraqi society - like teachers, doctors, engineers, administrators. They had NOTHING to do with victimizing ANYONE. And I believe the reason they were fired from their jobs was because bush & company wanted to RUIN IRAQ - the better to control it,you see.

Go back and read or listen to Rosen's statements about how the same set of conditions (that were imposed on Iraq) would totally ruin life in NYC - except I think Rosen is wrong on one point - I think Americans would be WAY more violent if just the electricity and water were stopped. Americans are quite violent already - tomorrow you can read about a school shooting, mall shooting, highway shooting or family mass murder. I can predict that because it happens nearly every day in the USA.

CMAR II said...

[dancewater] Boy, you sure make a lot of assumptions, don't you? If you read her blog, Riverbend returned to her old work place, that was mainly destroyed, and was told that she would not be rehired because she was a female.

NO! This is not true. See what a clever writer Riverbend is? She never said this but managed to leave this impression. You can't actually accuse her of lying, but....Look at her male coworker. He was packing up his office too and saying that he was leaving the country. Why?

I recommend to you this post: Who is Riverbend?

CMAR II said...

One other thing dancewater,

Nir Rosen is a propagandist and doom merchant who argued on The Lehrer News Hour that the drop in violence in Iraq was proof of the failure of the Surge.

See here for why electricity in Iraq dropped and why it has failed to improve. (Nothing significant to do with Bush's plan to destroy Iraq.)

ahmed said...

Boy, you sure make a lot of assumptions, don't you? If you read her blog, Riverbend returned to her old work place, that was mainly destroyed, and was told that she would not be rehired because she was a female.

Thank you, dancewater, our zmal friend Cmar here thinks all Sunnis were "painfully-obviously" rich.

CMAR II said...

I didn't say that, Abbas. Stupidity ought to be inadvertant. Don't be deliberately stupid.

nadia said...

Wow you're full of good arguments.

CMAR II said...

Thanks nadia n! I made them myself!
:)

Bruno said...

[cmar] "In every way that they had power to do so, the American leadership sought to foster the sensibility of a unified, secular Iraq."

Rubbish. The very first thing the US did was to try and ram down Iraqi throats a system of "caucuses" based on precisely sect and ethnicity. Don't lie to us, when it's so easy to disprove.

(25 August 2003)

"The principle behind the Interim Governing Council’s composition also sets a troubling precedent. Its members were chosen so as to mirror Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic makeup; for the first time in the country’s history, the guiding assumption is that political representation must be apportioned according to such quotas. This decision reflects how the Council’s creators, not the Iraqi people, view Iraqi society and politics, but it will not be without consequence. Ethnic and religious conflict, for the most part absent from Iraq’s modern history, is likely to be exacerbated as its people increasingly organise along these divisive lines."

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=1672

ABBAS was right.

[cmar] "The US has been trying to recruit Sunni Arabs into the Iraqi military and police since the beginning."

That's actually true. The US recruited these guys:

According to the newspaper, “American forces have launched a covert campaign to recruit former officers of the Mukhabarat, Saddam Hussein’s infamous secret police, who were responsible for the deaths and torture of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.” It reports that dozens of these sadistic and brutal murderers are now employed by the US “for help in hunting resistance groups” within Iraq, as well as “identifying and tracking down Iraqis suspected of spying for Iran and Syria, the neighbouring countries most hostile to Washington”.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/iraq-s26.shtml

In other words, America invaded to get rid of the evil Baath torturers ... or to offer them employment, whichever happens to be the most profitable at the moment.

Bruno said...

[cmar] "The leadership of every anti-Saddam Iraqi element was consulted in every step of any significance."

You mean like this:

Suspicious of Iraq's CIA-funded national intelligence agency, members of the Iraqi government have erected a "shadow" secret service that critics say is driven by a Shiite Muslim agenda and has left the country with dueling spy agencies. [...] Shiite officials say the minister is providing information on Al Qaeda and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party that isn't being supplied by the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, or INIS, Iraq's primary spy service. The INIS was established in the spring of 2004 by the U.S.-led provisional authority and has been under the command of Gen. Mohammed Shahwani, a Sunni Arab involved in a CIA-backed coup plot against Hussein a decade ago. For the last three years, the agency has been funded by the CIA, U.S. military and Iraqi officials say."

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/sectarian/2007/0415divideiraq.htm

In other words, CMAR doesn't know what he's talking about, yet again. In other words, the CIA has control of the "official" spy agency that incidentally contains ex-Saddamite torturers and incidentally won't cough up info on the Baath or Al Qaeda. Well, gee, maybe the anti-Saddam elements were consulted, but they sure weren't heeded.

Point being: America has no quibble in working with Badr death squads, Saddamist torturers or even Al Qaedists ... SO LONG AS THEY WORK FOR AMERICA.

That's the basis of American foreign policy.

As can be seen from the facts, CMAR doesn't actually understand anything.

He understands his own version of events, which is a dramatically twisted ball of wire that he tries to untangle by giving a small ineffectual tug to every now and again. Well, I'M sure not going to try and unravel it. I'll just settle for embarrassing the shit out of him by exposing his ignorance to the world.

[cmar] "Nir Rosen is a propagandist and doom merchant who argued on The Lehrer News Hour that the drop in violence in Iraq was proof of the failure of the Surge."

And he's right. Since ethnic cleansing has left Baghdad neighbourhoods homogenous, and since the "Surge" was supposed to prevent ethnic cleansing, the argument stands. Claiming that the "surge" prevented inter-Iraqi violence is like claiming that Hitler's policies reduced violence against Jews in Germany.

No more people, no more problem, eh, CMAR?

CMAR II said...

Point being: America has no quibble in working with Badr death squads, Saddamist torturers or even Al Qaedists ... SO LONG AS THEY WORK FOR AMERICA.

Waitaminute! Didn't you used to tell me the "Saddamist torturers" and "Al-Qaedists" were patriotic nationalists who picked up their weapons because US bombers had killed their grandmothers?
When did they convert to Saddamist torturers and Al-Qaedists?
You mean four years later I actually convinced you about them but only after they chose to reform their ways and work with the Iraqi government?

And are you telling me there are no more ethnically mixed neighborhoods nor ethnically adjacent neighborhoods in Baghdad? I thought the purpose of the Surge was provide security in Baghdad to allow political rapprochement by the Sunni and Shi'a Arabs. Now that both goals have succeeded in Baghdad and almost everywhere else that's just not totally not enough for you. In fact, you're telling me this was never what you wanted at all (at least that much is true).

Bruno said...

[cmar] "Didn't you used to tell me the "Saddamist torturers" and "Al-Qaedists" were patriotic nationalists who picked up their weapons because US bombers had killed their grandmothers?"

No.

[cmar] "And are you telling me there are no more ethnically mixed neighborhoods"

Compared to before the war, the number is massively reduced. But don't ask me. Speak to Abbas and ask HIM the difference of before and after.

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