SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN ARE INEFFECTIVE, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

Juan Cole in his Informed Comment gives cogent arguments why U.S. sanctions against Iran will never work. Furthermore, Cole dismisses, as I do, any positive benefit from a military strike against Iran. Obama, forget sanctions. Don't even think of military bombing. We need to negotiate with Iran and discuss more than just its nuclear program.

Writes Cole:

"The Obama administration is now moving tighten economic sanctions on Iran, as an alternative to a more direct approach. These measures include pressuring countries and firms not to buy Iranian petroleum and gas; pressuring them not to sell gasoline to Iran; and attempting to make it difficult for Iranian banks to interface with the world economic system.

"While these measures could impose costs on Iran, these costs can easily be borne by the country, and more especially by the regime."

Sanctions hardly work. They have not worked in Cuba and not have disturbed Fidel Castro's grip on power. They did not work in Iraq. And they will not work in Iran. Sanctions just raise the hackles on the backs of Iranians who would surely resent an outside nation (i.e., the U.S.) trying to force their government to change its nuclear development policy.

Observes Cole:

"Very few sanctions regimes have actually produced regime change or altered regime behavior. The US could not even accomplish this goal with regard to a small island 90 miles off its shores, Cuba. That an oil giant half way around the world with a population of 70 million that is as big as Spain, France and Germany can be effectively bludgeoned with sanctions is not very likely.

"The US needs to engage in comprehensive security talks with Iran, in hopes of striking a grand bargain. Because as Admiral Mullen rightly says, there are no good military options here."

I agree fully with Juan Cole. Both sanctions and military action are ineffective and counter-productive.

We need to sit down and talk with Iranian leaders. And we cannot continue to insist that we first come to an agreement on Iranian nuclear development before we will talk on other issues. Such pre-conditions are silly, without rational basis, and are insulting to Iranians, as they would be to anyone. By talking with Iranian leaders, we show respect to Iran and the Iranian people that we respect them because they are Iranians, a great people with thousands of years of culture and tradition.

DEATH PENALTY IN IRAQ

Once again we receive reports that Iraq is imposing the death penalty on people convicted of major crimes.

Nada Bakri writes in today's The New York Times:

"A Baghdad court sentenced 11 Iraqis to death on Thursday for planning and carrying out a series of devastating attacks last summer.

"The bombings, on Aug. 19, struck Iraq’s Foreign and Finance Ministries in the heart of the capital and embarrassed the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ahead of important parliamentary elections in March. the attacks also came less than two months after American combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities, raising fears among many Iraqis that their security forces are not capable of maintaining security yet."

I don't care what the crime, governments should not be allowed to punish by taking a criminal's life. No matter if the convict is a mass murderer, the state should not be allowed to respond and take an eye for an eye. One evil does not justify the state to impose the same evil on the convict.

Furthermore, the death penalty is harsh and cruel. It has no place in a modern liberal democratic society.

Besides Iraq, other countries that still allow the death penalty include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Japan, China and the United States.

NATO PLANES KILL 14 AFHGAN CIVILIANS IN RECKLESS BOMBING RAID

Here's another case of NATO (read U.S.) war planes dropping bombs on innocent Afghan civilians. Abdul Waheed Wafa writes in today's The New York Times that 14 Afghan workers were killed on Monday by a NATO air strike.

Waheed Wafa writes:

"The strike occurred late Monday night in the Norgram district of Nuristan when the Afghan workers of Amerifa Road Construction Company were sleeping in tents after a day’s work.

"“Fourteen of our mechanics and laborers were killed as they were asleep in their tents,” said Nurullah Jalali, the executive director of the construction company. “We just collected pieces of flesh from our tired workers and put them in 14 coffins.”

"The governor of Nuristan, Tamim Nuristani, said he could confirm that 13 workers had been “mistakenly” killed when NATO forces bombed the area based on what he said was an intelligence report that insurgents were infiltrating the area.

"“All these victims are civilians, and they were from nearby provinces,” Mr. Nuristani said.
A NATO spokesman said its forces had struck the area in an attack on what it believed were Taliban insurgents but could not confirm that the road workers had been killed."

I have commented many times before on the destruction to innocent life from NATO and U.S. war planes in Afghanistan. When the U.S. drops a bomb, the chances are that there will always be civilian casualties including women and children.

This is sufficient reason to end all air strikes. The airplane should not be used for dropping bombs or inflicting death. The U.S. Air Force and other military services should stop all combat flights over Afghanistan and Iraq. The killing of civilians is a certain result of a U.S. pilot dropping bombs on houses, villages, towns and cities. Because it is a foreseeable effect, the laws of war should be upgraded to ban such flights. No country, including the U.S., should be allowed to intentionally kill civilians even if insurgents or enemy soldiers are present.

PETRAEUS SAYS U.S. HAS KILLED "THOUSANDS" OF AL QAEDA IN IRAQ

Gen. David Petraeus has written a letter to the troops, reprinted in today's The Washington Post. Really, the letter is intended as propaganda intended for the American public, with the message that the surge is working real progress in Iraq. The letter is however replete with exaggerations and simplifications.

Petraeus makes it seem that the number one threat in Iraq is AQI. He mentions Al Qaeda at least five times, such as "thousands of members of Al Qaeda" being killed or captured by U.S. forces.

My question for Gen. Petraeus: how many members of AQI do you think are in Iraq? General, may I suggest you look at Andrew Tilghman's piece for Washington Monthly about this very point. According to the experts, Tilghman finds that there are only about 850 members of AQI, and that number is probably on the high side.

Writes Tilghman

"To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."

"It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics . . . "

"How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization.""

So what then does Petraeus mean when he congratulates his troops and says that they have killed or captured "thousands" of Al Qaeda members?

This is just hype, just spin, just propaganda. Why does Petraeus emphasize Al Qaeda in his letter? For the same reason George Bush does, to conflate 9/11 terrorists with the insurgents fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. We all know there is no connection. The Iraqi insurgents want the Americans gone, want the tanks gone, want foreign occupiers gone. They fight the U.S. troops because they are invaders and occupiers, not because they espouse bin Laden's view of Islam.

Petraeus is playing a dangerous game, the same one Bush is playing. Politicizing the war so that history will have trouble blaming these politicians and these generals for the worst catastrophic mess-up in U.S. history.

QAEDA IN IRAQ BUT A SMALL PART OF SUNNI INSURGENCY

Andrew Tilghman has an article in Washington Monthly about the Bush/Cheney spin claiming that the biggest threat in Iraq today is "Al Qaeda in Iraq." I have blogged several times (here's one example) on how the U.S. military and Bush like to say that all Sunni insurgencies are connected with Al Qaeda. I guess they do this because they want to scare Americans into mindlessly conflating Qaeda with the internecine civil war raging today in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias.

Tilghman writes a thorough description of the spin and snow job that comes out of Bush/Cheney and sad to say the higher ups in the U.S. army.

U.S. FORCES LAUNCH NEW OFFENSIVE AGAINST BOTH SHIA AND SUNNI INSURGENCIES

After writing (see my post just below) about Nathaniel Fick's article in today's Washington Post in which Fick posits four principles to "win" in both Afghanistan and Iraq, I see this article in today's BBC.com on the U.S. military launching a new offensive against both Sunni and Shia insurgencies.

Writes the BBC:

"Operation Phantom Strike was being staged throughout Iraq, specifically targeting al-Qaeda-linked militants and also Iranian-backed groups, it said . . .

"It consists of simultaneous operations throughout Iraq focused on pursuing remaining AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) terrorists and Iranian-supported extremists elements," it said.

"Lt Gen Ray Odierno, the US second-in-command in Iraq, said that his aim was "to continue to pressure AQI and other extremist elements throughout Iraq"."

So The U.S. Army hires Fick to lecture about counter-insurgency, but then disregards all of his principles to launch a new offensive with guns and bombs and war planes against insurgent groups in Iraq. This is too surreal. Who is in charge over there? How does this fit in with Fick's four principles? It would seem that these last-ditch military actions are politically motivated by Bush to try to obtain the faintest signs of "progress," although definitely not progress if you accept Fick's main principles.

Well, at least, Odierno doesn't exactly conflate Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) with Shiite militias, although he seems to be verging on it. It has been done before by Bush and his gang including chief military spokesman General Bergner (former White House aide to Bush) when they try to say that Iran is providing deadly shaped penetrating charges to AQI and other Sunni insurgent groups, as if Shiite Iran would supply arms to rival Sunnis who have been known to kill Shia Iraqis just because they were not Sunni.

Juan Cole has some insightful comments on the whole George Bush spin towards AQI in his post today in Informed Comment.

"Sunni Arab guerrillas deployed an explosively formed projectile (a kind of roadside bomb) against 4 soldiers who had come in a humvee to investigate the sniping death of a fifth soldier. All four were killed. Unfortunately the LA Times calls the guerrillas "al-Qaeda-allied." This terminology is from the Bush administration lexicon. I very much doubt that the LA Times knows whether the group that set the bomb is allied with al-Qaeda or not. Indeed, for all we know, this cell belonged to the Baath Party.

"Note too that the Sunni Arab neighborhoods have the explosively formed projectiles, just as do the Shiite neighborhoods. Iran is not giving them to Sunnis, and certainly not to 'al-Qaeda-allied' Sunnis. Ipso facto, Iran cannot be the only source of EFPs, and it is not established except by allegation and innuendo that they are a source at all. (If the Sunni Arab guerrillas can make EFPs, so could Iraqi Shiites).

"It is always surprising what you can conclusively deduce just from reading the newspapers without the spin that the administration and the Pentagon manages to implant in the stories."

IRAN & U.S. AGREE TO CONTAIN SUNNI INSURGENTS

Juan Cole at Informed Comment makes an important observation about the generic reports in today's newspapers about the meeting of Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq and his counterpart from Iran. See for example the report of the meeting by Megan Greenwell in The Washington Post today.

Juan Cole observes that Damien McElroy of The Telegraph reports that there were also, and most importantly, discussions about Iran and the United States forming a joint task force to resist the Sunni insurgent groups, including Al Qaeda in Iraq. Writes McElroy:

"Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, saw signs of apparent progress at the session.

"We have reached an agreement, for the first time, to work together on the security sub-committee for the benefit of the people of Iraq," he said.

"The two countries did agree to form a security committee, with Iraq, to focus on containing Sunni insurgents. The committee would concentrate on the threat from groups such as al-Qa'eda in Iraq, officials said, but not those militia groups the US accuses Iran of funding and training."

Comments Juan Cole:

"If the US is allying with Iran against the Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda, this is a very major development and much more important than some carping over Shiite militias. (My guess is that 98% of American troops killed in Iraq have been killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas). If the report is true and has legs, it will send Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal ballistic. The Sunni Arab states do not like "al-Qaeda" in Iraq, but they are much more afraid of Iran than of the Iraqi Sunni Arabs who are fighting against US military occupation."

INTELLIGENCE REPORT TELLS LITTLE UNKNOWN BEFORE

Here is the National Intelligence Estimate released yesterday in its abbreviated non-classified form. In its two brief pages, the NIE says that Al Qaeda will remain a threat, as if this was breaking news.

"We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland
through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups. Of note, we assess that al-Qa’ida
will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), its
most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack
the Homeland. In addition, we assess that its association with AQI helps al-Qa’ida to
energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and
indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks."

However, note what the NIE says about Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) - that it is the "only . . . known [affiliate] to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland." Where has AQI ever expressed a desire to "follow us home," as Bush likes to say?

Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus write in The Washington Post today:

"Although the NIE described al-Qaeda in Iraq as the only al-Qaeda affiliate "known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland," administration and intelligence officials yesterday cited only one such reference to that threat -- an audio statement posted in November on the Web site of a British-based Saudi dissident group. In the statement, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, threatened to "blow up the filthiest house, which is called the White House."


"The Bush administration has long described al-Qaeda in Iraq as an operational subsidiary to the main al-Qaeda group, though intelligence officials have said the main al-Qaeda organization exercises little control over the Iraq group. Yesterday's NIE suggested that al-Qaeda derives stature from al-Qaeda in Iraq's activities, rather than the other way around."

So the NIE is basing its judgment that Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) wants to attack the U.S. based upon one audio statement, not even video, posted on some Saudi dissident group in the U.K.

Furthermore, note DeYoung and Pincus report that intelligence officials have said that Qaeda's bin Laden and Zawahiri exercise little control over AQI. As a matter of fact, it is AQI that is leading bin Laden by organizing and conducting its insurgency in Iraq, an insurgency that would have never been born if Bush had not first foolishly invaded and occupied a Muslim country.

BUSH STICKS TO HIS DELUSIONAL PRINCIPLES, SAYS WE ARE MAKING PROGRESS IN FIGHTING QAEDA IN IRAQ

Bush still persists in his unfounded delusion that he is on the high moral ground, sticking to his "principles" on the war in Iraq. Furthermore, Bush claims that there is measurable progress in Iraq, and what the anti-war public thinks be damned. The report on progress (Initial Benchmark Assessment Report) in Iraq was a joke. See my post from yesterday, indicating that the report was filled with gobbledygook and boiler plate, and showing very little progress.

Among other fictions, Bush still insists we are fighting Al Qaeda. Juan Cole asks who he means, for example, does Bush mean the Salafi Jihadis or Iraqi Sunnis fighting Americans? And how many Al Qaeda members are there in Iraq? Fifty, 100, 500? How about all the other insurgent groups fighting Americans in Iraq? Are they all part of a sinister world conspiracy to attack America "because they hate what we stand for." Michael Gordon and Jim Rutenberg write this morning in The New York Times from Baghdad:

"In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”


"It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.


"But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.