You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Are we winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis? Are we even winning the hearts and minds of our allies?

Here is a quote from a British security contractor in Iraq about his American counterparts: “I hate those bastards more than the scumbag insurgents.” A British colonel recently returned from a tour in the country said that, in our next war, he would sooner fight alongside the Russians than the US.

This is another quote from a British security contractor: “The American way is not my way. I don’t mind a scrap but I draw the line at mooning the enemy and inviting him to shoot at my backside, and that’s virtually what the Yanks are doing. I’m also convinced that many Americans hate the Iraqis, not just the insurgents but all Iraqis… What a mess.”

Those last lines are taken from a rather good new book about the experience of Iraq today, Highway To Hell, written by an ex-SAS man who signs himself John Geddes. My point in all the above, is to show that Ben Griffin, the former SAS soldier who vents his dismay about what is happening to Iraq in today’s Sunday Telegraph, is not a lone voice.

There is a widespread belief in both British special forces and line regiments that American tactics are heavy-handed and counter-productive; that firepower continues to be used as a substitute for a “hearts and minds” policy; that local people will never be persuaded to support Coalition forces unless Americans, in uniform and out, treat ordinary Iraqis vastly better than they do today.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? -Mark 8:36 (KJV)

The old story is that Eskimos had a hundred words for “snow”. Not true. But the current bunch of Republicans seem to have at least that many words for “lie”. Remember Gen. Pace’s statement that Abu Ghraib would be closed in the next few months? “Premature”. Also “inaccurate”.

Here’s a quiz: some of these quotes are from the US State Department’s Report on Human Rights Practices in Iraq in 2000. Some are from the same report in 2005. Which is which?

1. During the year there were a number of deaths either at police hands or at the hands of militia members and criminals wearing police uniforms.
2. On May 15, eyewitnesses said armed men in police uniforms took Sunni Council of Scholars (Ulema) member Sheikh Hassan al-Naimi from his Baghdad home. Several days later his body was found with a gunshot wound to the head and signs of torture with an electric drill.
3. The Government restricts severely freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, religion, and movement.
4. Criminal and politically motivated disappearances and kidnappings…remained a severe problem.
5. The U.N. Special Rapporteur, the
   international media, and other groups all have reported a heightened number of summary executions in Iraq….
6. On three occasions in January and February, prison officials reportedly executed 91 prisoners at Abu Ghurayb….
7. Many persons who were displaced forcibly still live in tent camps under harsh conditions, which also results in many deaths….
8. According to a January Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, police torture and ill treatment of detainees was commonplace. In interviews with 90 prisoners, 72 asserted that they had been tortured or mistreated. The reported abuses included beatings with cables and hosepipes, electric shocks to earlobes and genitals, food and water deprivation, and overcrowding in standing-room-only cells.
9. …abuses included threats, intimidation, beatings, and suspension by the arms or legs, as well as the reported use of electric drills and cords, and the application of electric shocks. Reportedly, police threatened or, in fact, sexually abused detainees.
10. Corruption was widely perceived to be a severe problem within the police. There were many allegations of police abuse involving unlawful arrests, beatings, and theft from the homes of detainees.
11. According to former prisoners, torture techniques included branding, electric shocks administered to the genitals and other areas, beating, pulling out of fingernails, burning with hot irons and blowtorches, suspension from rotating ceiling fans, dripping acid on the skin, rape, breaking of limbs, denial of food and water, extended solitary confinement in dark and extremely small compartments, and threats to rape or otherwise harm family members and relatives.

The Guardian is reporting

The government last night admitted for the first time that aircraft suspected of being used by the CIA to transport detainees to secret interrogation centres had landed at British military airfields.

After months of refusing to answer questions from MPs or the media, it disclosed that two aircraft known to have been chartered by the CIA landed 14 times at RAF Northholt, west London, and RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire between October 2003 and May 2004.

Why doesn’t our media actually do reporting like this any more?

…pretty soon you’re talking about real money. George’s little Iraq adventure is now costing us $5,900,000,000 per month. Afghanistan operations add another $1B/month. Taken together, annual spending for the two wars will reach $117.6 billion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 — 18% above funding for the prior 12 months.

How about some perspective? That’s

• more than the Department of Agriculture.
• more than the Department of Commerce.
• more than the Departments of Education, Energy, and Homeland Security. Combined.
• three times as much as the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
• as much as the Departments of Labor and Transportation. Combined.

Not what I’d consider a very good investment. Perhaps it’s time to fire our “CEO President.”

As the old saying goes, it’s not the things you don’t know that are the problem. It’s the things you know that ain’t so.

Donald Rumsfeld, today:

I will say this about Iran. They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq. And we know it, and it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment.

Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003:

We know where [the WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Foreign Affairs magazine has a piece by Paul Pillar, who was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. It’s a terrific article, but the summary is, well, syntactically challenged:

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community’s former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community’s expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

Impeach George W. Bush.