Marc Lynch reads the United Arab Emirates newspapers because I can't. The latest talk is that the Shiite coterie around Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has lost patience with the Sons of Iraq and is urging outright disbanding:
Mullen's Choice: Troops For Afghanistan Or Troops For Iraq
With these words, Adm. Mike Mullen joins the ranks of the reality-based community:
We are exploring a number of options and opportunities to get a better understanding of the scope of the threat and the best means with which to counter it. I've made no secret of my desire to flow more forces, U.S. forces, to Afghanistan just as soon as I can, nor have I been shy about saying that those forces will not be available unless or until the situation in Iraq permits us to do so. It's a very complex problem, and it's tied to the drug trade, a faltering economy and, as I've said many times, the porous border region with Pakistan.
There's no easy solution, and there will be no quick fix. More troops are necessary, and some of our NATO allies have recently committed to sending more of their own, but they won't fully ever be sufficient. We need and are pursuing a broader interagency international approach, one that includes infrastructure improvement, foreign investment and economic incentives, and I'm hopeful these efforts will begin to pay off in the near future. But we all need to be patient. As we have seen in Iraq, counterinsurgency warfare takes time, and it takes a certain level of commitment. It takes flexibility.
The Permanent Base Plan Will. Not. Die.
July 31 is the stated goal for President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to ink a deal for an enduring U.S. occupation that neither the Iraqi people nor the American people desire. The deal has looked dead before, but the avarice of imperialism is a lot like a George Romero character. McClatchy and The Washington Post report that Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari forecasts smooth sailing. The Post:
War Contractors May Actually Have to Follow the Law
The New York Times reports that in the midst of negotiating their continued presence in Iraq, the U.S. has made a potentially huge concession-- U.S. government contractors would no longer have immunity from Iraq law. The Iraqi Foreign Minister said such an agreement was made yesterday, reversing an immunity provision drawn up in 2003 by Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Waxman: White House Knew Of Hunt/Kurdistan Oil Contract
Today the House oversight committee released a reportasserting that the White House knew about an oil deal between the Kurdistan regional government and Texas-based Hunt Oil, though President George W. Bush had claimed he knew nothing about the contract before it was announced. According to the report, Ray Hunt, President of the company, talked to Bush administration advisers months before the deal was made. Also, officials at the Commerce and State departments encouraged the deal and even congratulated Hunt after obtaining the contract.
The deal embarrassed the Bush administration and outraged the Iraqi government when it was announced in September. Bush criticized both parties for making a deal that bypassed the Iraqi national government, especially impolitic as a national oil law was still not established.
Civilian Deaths in Iraq/Afghanistan
The ACLU has just released the results of its latest FOIA into the dark side of the war on terrorism. This installment concerns civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the documents here.
The Waterboarding of Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens agrees to be waterboarded for Vanity Fair. Video (which I can't seem to embed) here. Malcolm Nance, a friend of mine who has been waterboarded as part of his old torture resistance training -- SERE -- and whom instructed Naval special forces how to endure it, described its brutality in gruesome detail to Congress last year.
But it's different to see it. In April, we reported on Amnesty International's waterboarding video. An earlier one appeared on Keith Olbermann's show. It's important to see this, again and again and again, to combat what I believe Hitchens used to call "the sin of euphemism." When John Yoo says the "circumstances" determine if waterboarding is torture if it's done to U.S. troops or when Michael Mukasey says waterboarding is "repugnant" but may not be torture or when Mike McConnell says it's torture to him only because of his bad sinuses, that euphemism embeds itself into the American character. Today we learn from The New York Times that one of the places of origin of what George W. Bush euphemistically calls "enhanced interrogation" is Maoist China. What could be more un-American? What could be more anti-American? And what sort of person would apologize for this?
Spying Powers Face More Tests
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, amendments aim to hold telecom companies to account for cooperating in the White House warrantless wiretapping program.
The Bonanza Begins
So it appears the Iraqi Oil Ministry waited until the final months of the Bush administration to open the store for Western petrogiants. Call it a parting present. Now that we know the U.S. "advised" the ministry on giving no-bid contracts to Exxon, Shell, Total and BP, the Washington Post gives an overview of what Minister Hussain Shahristani -- a former exile who's sympathetic to both the U.S. and Iran -- plans to give Big Oil:
Iran/Iraq & Nukes: Is it All Happening Again?
This is a sick joke. According to a new lawsuit, a CIA official who got it right on Iraq says the agency suppressed his findings when he challenged the consensus that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. Joby Warrick reports for The Washington Post:
Truth & Consequences for CIA on Torture
The CIA's role in President George W. Bush's torture policy is bad news for a troubled agency with important work to do.
John Yoo vs Philippe Sands
In last week's interminable Yoo/Addington hearing, torture memo author John Yoo accused Vanity Fair reporter and Torture Team author Philippe Sands of lying about interviewing him. Brian Beutler -- owner of the best beard in opinion journalism, btw -- tracked Sands down. Tell 'em:
Counterinsurgency in Prison
For a couple months now, people in counterinsurgency circles have been buzzing about the commander of the prison complex at Iraq's Camp Bucca, a Marine two-star named Douglas Stone. Word is that he's applying COIN techniques in the prison -- like, basically, being respectful of inmates -- and has yielded results. I don't know anything about this firsthand, but a guy I've become friendly with, Harvard's Andrew Woods, recently visited Bucca and profiled Stone for the Financial Times:
Iraq Contractor Security Assessment Differs From Bush/McCain
Whenever Bush administration or Sen. John McCain campaign officials open their mouths about Iraq, they portray the country as on a continuous path of Surge-based stabilization. "As security has improved, the environment has changed for the better," Amb. Ryan C. Crocker told Wolf Blitzer on Sunday. "I, of course, am encouraged... The progress has been significant but the progress is also fragile," said a more-intellectually-honest-but-not-by-much Sen. John McCain. And the latest Pentagon Iraq security report (PDF) to Congress reported that improvements in the security environment have been substantial over the past nine months but significant challenges remain."
But rather than security improvements being "substantial over the past nine months," an assessment today from a leading private security and intelligence contractor in Iraq shows that the security picture hasn't changed significantly since October 1, 2007.
New Iraq War Deployments Announced
Hot off the Pentagon presses:
AIPAC vs J Street & Darcy Burner
More in our ongoing coverage of J Street's efforts to build a better American Zionist movement. Earlier this month, J Street endorsed a Washington Democrat running for Congress named Darcy Burner. Burner is the driving force behind something called the Responsible Plan, a manifesto and strategy for withdrawing from Iraq that this year's crop of progressive Democratic candidates are supporting. Natural fit, right? Well, according to OpenLeft's Matt Stoller, AIPAC -- the powerful, right-wing Israel lobby group in Washington -- is none too pleased:
Al Qaeda Goes Viral
BOOK REPORT
Terrorism scholar Brynjar Lia traces the story of Abu Mus'ab al-Suri, author of an important how-to book on radicalism, and translates -- for the first time -- key portions into English.
Oh, Yeah, That Oil...
Following up on the revelation that four western oil-giants are getting massive no-bid contracts from the Iraqi Oil Ministry comes the least surprising story of all time:
GI Bill Survives Partisanship
The bill -- a victory for veterans advocates -- survived attacks from moderate Blue Dogs and conservative Republicans.
Yoo, Addington Handle 'Torture Meddlers'
THE JAUNDICED EYE
