Agence France-Press spins Iraq

The other day I posted a story about Iraq's energy minister announcing the expectation that Iraq would produce excess power by 2011.

Now I see AFP, the French state news source, announcing that the minister said that the power grid would not be "restored" until 2011.

That's a big difference, and at the bottom line the AFP story is not justified.

Iraq has been through three major wars in the last thirty years. Before that, in the 1970s, the power grid may have been in pretty good shape. During the long years of war against Iran, the power grid suffered because Iraq poured its resources overwhelmingly into its own defense. After a few years respite, Hussein invaded Kuwait and his country suffered extensive bombing aimed at infrastructure during the Gulf War.

Operation Iraqi Freedom also targeted infrastructure to prepare for the ground invasion.

It is ridiculous to imply that the electricity infrastructure in 2002 serves as the aim for 2011. It was a mess. In addition, energy demand has gone way up since 2002.

I note that Eli Lake of The New York Sun reports the story differently, saying that Baghdad in particular will be supplied at levels that approximate pre-war electrical service. That is at least a more realistic way to report the story than did AFP.

The best way to respond to American "occupiers"?

I'm often struck by the stance of writers who blame the United States for deaths due to violence in Iraq. I point out again and again that insurgents are picking civilian targets. How does that supposedly strike a blow against the occupiers?

Perhaps the most plausible answer that makes the connection is that the insurgents strike at those who cooperate with Americans. But as often as not, maintaining that view requires some imagination.

KIRKUK / Aswat al-Iraq: Casualties from the explosion that ripped through northern Kirkuk city earlier today have increased further, reaching 47 dead and 100 wounded persons, according to a local police source. “A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant in northern Kirkuk, killing 47 persons and wounding 100 others,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq.
(Aswat Aliraq)

A later story suggested that the attack targeted Huweija council members.

I haven't found much background on "Huweija council." I would hazard a guess that it has to do with local security, perhaps as part of a local "Awakening" movement.

Just put the civilians caught in the blast down on the Americans' tab? It makes little sense to me.

Michael J. Totten on Iraqi opinion

A recent Iraqi public opinion poll by ABC/BBC contained plenty of good news for "stay the course" conservatives. Ed Morrissey, who jumped ship at his own Captain's Quarters blog to join Michelle Malkin's enterprise at Hot Air, already noted that Sunnis were overrepresented in the poll sample and that may have made the poll seem a bit worse than it was in actuality.

Freelance reporter Michael J. Totten offers an additional caution regarding Middle East opinion polls:

Two days ago ABC News released a new poll of Iraqi public opinion, and John Burns at the New York Times made a very perceptive observation that should be taken into account when looking it over.

Opinion polls, including those commissioned by the American command, have long suggested that a majority of Iraqis would like American troops withdrawn, but another lesson to be drawn from Saddam Hussein’s years is that any attempt to measure opinion in Iraq is fatally skewed by intimidation. More often than not, people tell pollsters and reporters what they think is safe, not necessarily what they believe. My own experience, invariably, was that Iraqis I met who felt secure enough to speak with candor had an overwhelming desire to see American troops remain long enough to restore stability.

This feels right to me, not only thanks to my experience in Iraq, but also in places like totalitarian Libya where no one dared criticize the regime in public, and where everyone I spoke to did so in private where they were safe. Saddam Hussein commanded a murder and intimidation regime in Iraq, and today’s insurgents wage a murder and intimidation campaign in the streets. In Fallujah and Ramadi, Iraqi civilians were murdered just for waving hello to Americans, and for accepting bags of rice as charity. Fear should not be ignored when gauging Iraqi public opinion, and that includes fear of American guns as well as fear of insurgents.

(commentarymagazine.com)

I'll add my own two cents. Poll questions are often worthless because of their ambiguity. I'm not convinced that the problem disappears in Arabic.

32. As you may know, British forces have mainly left Basra province in recent
months. Since the British left, do you think the security in Basra has become
better, become worse, or remained the same?

We don't care if you've never ever been near Basra. We want your opinion anyway.

*****

Sistani on board with National Pact Project in Iraq

It's always nice to hear rumblings that might turn into palpably positive political happenings in Iraq.

Baghdad, Sept 27, (VOI) - Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said on Thursday that he discussed the National Pact Project and a number of political issues during his meeting with top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani at his house in Najaf, noting that Sistani blessed the project.
(Aswat Aliraq)

What is this "National Pact Project," you ask?

The 25-principle-initiative has addressed basic issues that might lead to ending the deterioration in Iraq according to the Islamic Party Secretary-General al-Hashemi.
The National Pact called for "Equality of all Iraqis before the law, condemnation of killing based on identity, shunning extremism, and rejecting foreign interference in Iraqi affairs."
The initiative, which also called to achieve national reconciliation, recognized resistance as "a right of all occupied nations," indicating that "terror is not considered resistance."
The Islamic Party is one of three components that constituted the Sunni Accordance Front, which quit the Iraqi government two months ago after it accused the government of "closing the door to any true reforms."

I'm not so hyped about the recognition of resistance as a "right of all occupied nations." The Iraqi government says it wants the U.S. troops to keep helping out. Is it consistent to call invited troops an occupation force?

That language, I think, implies a reluctance to recognize the legitimacy of the current Iraqi government.

Iraqis, if you want the U.S. troops to leave then stop killing each other and stop attacking U.S. troops. Stabilize your country and there's no need for the U.S. to keep troops there (not counting forward positioning as a check on Iran).


*****

The decline of Iraqi bread

I ran across a story about bread-making in Iraq. It provides a kind of snapshot of Iraqi thinking regarding the state of their nation.

Basra, Sept 19, (VOI) - Iraqi bread, formerly known for its delicious taste and whiteness, is now getting darker day by day, leading some to liken it to the days the Iraqis are passing through. In past decades Iraqis were proud of having their bread baked at home using baking furnaces called "tannours." However, as modernism invaded most Iraqi cities this tradition started to diminish.
(read the rest at Aswat Aliraq)

I wonder what makes the bread darker other than mixing the grains, and I wonder if the whiteness of the bread was linked to bleached flour.


*****

Local view of Iraqi death toll

Baghdad, Sept 2, (VOI) – The number of victims of "terrorist" explosions during the month of August 2007 reached 1,011, said the Iraqi interior ministry's national command center, discrediting as "inaccurate and exaggerated" reports that spoke of 1,773 people.
(Aswat Aliraq)

This report, though sketchy on details, seems to underscore the odd nature of the "civil war." The insurgents primarily target civilians. The technique gains them some local control of the population through fear and helps foment continued unrest, but there is no faction making any serious grab for land or political power.


I've enjoyed getting a better look at Pakistan's politics and view on the world through The News, so I'm auditioning an Iraqi newspaper, now.

Here's the mission statement, in part, for Aswat Aliraq (the Voice of Iraq):

Aswat al-Iraq will strive to be a centre for training young Iraqi journalists and media technicians, as well as instilling professional skills, accuracy and impartiality in its own reporters and editors.

The agency is managed by a Board of Directors, all of them Iraqi, and an Editorial Committee composed of:

Editor in Chief: Zuhair al-Jezairy

Editorial Secretary: Husain Mohammed Ajeel

We open our doors to all the media, dedicating ourselves to the idea that criticism is the best way to develop.

(Aswat Aliraq)

May they pursue their mission safely and successfully.

I thought I was reading the LA Times

I checked on my Pakistani news source The News (International) to see if anything new was happening with the crackdown on Islamic extremists, and I ran across this rather opinionated column, which I presume is an op-ed (though it's well to remember that the American paradigm of supposedly objective journalism doesn't hold sway for most of the globe).

Iraqis protest draft oil law that
will allow US to pillage the country’s wealth
By By Kaleem Omar

Hundreds of Iraqi oil industry workers gathered in Basra on Monday to protest a draft oil law that would allow foreigners to pillage the country’s wealth. For ‘foreigners’ read large US oil companies, also known as Big Oil, with whom senior Bush administration officials have long had close ties.

The officials include President George W. Bush (who began his career in the oil business in Texas) Vice-President Dick Cheney (former CEO of Houston-based oil services giant Halliburton) and others. Chevron, a leading member of Big Oil, has even named one of its oil supertankers after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
(The News)

And he's just getting started! In the space of the first two paragraphs, we find him capitalizing big oil, and referring somewhat carelessly to the Chevron deal.

Yes, a supertanker was named after Condoleezza Rice, but it was renamed in 2001 after she was confirmed as Secretary of State. Prior to that, Dr. Rice served on the board of directors for Chevron, where her expertise in Soviet/Russian relations was a boon to that company.

Chevron frequently names its tankers after board members.

The funniest part of the column is when the author starts quoting anonymous U.S. skeptics regarding their opinions of the proposed oil law.

The long and short of it is that the column serves up a bizarre mix of sources and makes no attempt to apply solid reasoning to the issue.

It's written like propaganda, and I think that's no coincidence.

Saddam's judge seeks asylum in U.K.

No big surprise with this one. It's sad that Iraq is not safe for men like this who are trying to do the right thing.

LONDON: The Iraqi trial judge who sentenced former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to death has asked for asylum in Britain, Arab television reported.

The television said that Raouf Abdel Rahman had asked for asylum after going to Britain with his family in mid-December on a visitor's visa.

"The information we have is that the judge sought asylum for reasons including that he fears for his own life and the lives of family members ... The application is being considered by the Home Office," said London correspondent of the television, citing unnamed official British sources.
(The News)

This, that, and Iraq

After the tragic incident in which over 100 Iraqis were killed by an IED, the initial results of the new surge strategy seem to be going well. Moqtada al-Sadr has fled to Iran, and news reports today indicate that the al-Qaeda top dog in Iraq,Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been captured. An aide to al-Masri was killed in the same action, which was conducted by Iraqi troops.
Let's hope for more of the same.

Captain's Quarters has pointed out a story revealing an interesting flip-flop by Hillary Clinton. She announced that President Bush would have to go through Congress in order to attack Iran. Apart from being factually incorrect, Clinton's stance reverses her defense of President Clinton's Bosnian bombing in 2002.

Twenty-six members of Congress later sued the Clinton administration on the grounds that the bombing campaign constituted a violation of the War Powers Act. Mr. Clinton's Justice Department argued at the time that the War Powers Act not only gave the president the authority to drop the bombs on Belgrade — over two congressional votes rejecting a declaration of war on Yugoslavia — but that he was not required to seek congressional approval because Congress had appropriated the funding to launch the air offensive.

Mrs. Clinton defended the Kosovo campaign in a speech on October 10, 2002, before casting her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. "We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak," she said in the 2002 speech. Milosevic died in prison in the Hague in 2006.
(New York Sun)

I'm picking Clinton to take the Democratic Party's presidential nomination over Barack Obama, by the way. Obama is the better candidate in some ways, but some polls are indicating that a majority of blacks are disinclined to vote for him.
That strikes me as a little bit strange, but if that trend holds up then Clinton's savvy at campaigning will probably outweigh her shrill exterior and lack of experience.
Not that Obama is flowing with experience, either.

Update: NBC has backed off of its report that al-Masri was killed. In making this update I took the liberty of fixing an earlier mistake attributable to me, that being the fate of al-Masri's aide. The aide was killed, not captured.

An indirect commentary on congressional oversight

The left loves to criticize President Bush as an intellectual lightweight.
He's much smarter than they give him credit for, of course.

This post is about congress, on the other hand. The left likes to talk about the need for congressional oversight.

Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein found that Nancy Pelosi's current favorite for the chairman of the Congressional Intelligence Committee didn't know that al Qaeda was predominantly Sunni.

Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week. Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.
(CQ)

Unfortunately, this is not a problem limited to Democrats. Just a few lines prior:

For example, [Reyes] knows that the 1,400- year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

That’s more than two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee knew when I interviewed them last summer. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Terry Everett, R-Ala., both back for another term, were flummoxed by such basic questions, as were several top counterterrorism officials at the FBI.

It's not even limited to congress (see FBI mention at the end).

I'd like to think that Rep. Jane Harman (D, Calif.) knows how the Sunni/Shiite divide stacks up. It speaks to the Democrats' misplaced priorities that Pelosi isn't supporting Harman for the chair.

Hat tip to Captain's Quarters.

"Day By Day" keeper

I'm not posting much about the Iraq Survey Group stuff thus far, but today's "Day By Day" cartoon pretty much sums things up, it seems.

Please let me be wrong, or better yet let the U.S. government follow a better plan from the Pentagon or some other more competent source.

What's in a word? Civil war & such

This media naming of the residual conflict in Iraq is fascinating.

Some mainstream media outlets have taken to calling the sectarian violence in Iraq "civil war," and they're fond of claiming that the term is being used after "careful consideration."

Media outlets feel as though they need to justify the decision because the White House has emphasized that it does not favor using the term. White House justification for the claim seems pretty clear. People will regard the war less favorably with visions of US troops caught between opposing armed factions.

So, what's this "careful consideration"?

But after careful consideration, NBC News has decided a change in terminology is warranted — that the situation in Iraq with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas — can now be characterized as a civil war.
(Washington Monthly, quoting NBC News)

The "careful consideration" appears to amount to a determination that the conflict can be made to fit the proffered definition.

Are armed military factions "fighting," though?
Aren't armed militias simply killing civilians?
What is the supposed political agenda?

Sorry, NBC (and others), but I don't see careful consideration, here.

The truth of the new term is probably explained by logic the reverse of what what the White House used. They are against US involvement in Iraq, and calling the hostilities "civil war" helps advance the cause.
I listened to editors of a major US daily discuss the new terminology--they weren't sure what to do, but they said they wanted to employ "careful consideration" which prompted the question of what the New York Times was doing.
That's one way to carefully consider the issue, I suppose.
One of the editors had the novel idea of finding out what experts said about it (I wonder which experts we're talking about?).

So far, I don't see much "careful consideration," but this story in the Washington Post seems somewhat balanced, at least:

Editors at The Associated Press have discussed the issue and haven't reached a definitive stance, said John Daniszewski, international editor. Most often, the conflict is called "the war in Iraq" or identified with descriptive terms such as sectarian fighting, anti-government attacks or ethnic clashes, he said.

He pointed to the different definitions experts have for civil wars.

"From a historical point of view, not every civil war is called by that name, and wars by their very nature are not always neatly categorized," he said. "For instance, the American Revolutionary War, the Vietnam War and the more recent wars in Bosnia and Kosovo were all civil wars according to the broader definition, yet we do not normally think or speak of them that way."

(Washington Post)

The word choice doesn't make any difference as to the nature of the conflict. The reasons for using the term or avoid it mostly amount to political considerations.
Until armed political factions are fighting each other to attain political ends, the term civil war will not apply to the conflict in its traditional sense.

Maybe political factions will soon be fighting one another to achieve political ends. Maybe they're already engaged against one another--I'm not under the illusion that the news coming out of Iraq is an accurate picture.

When and if that's the case, then there's a good case for using "civil war." Absent that rationale, the use of the term constitutes an editorial judgment in the news pages--supposedly anathema at a major U.S. daily.

What the MSM doesn't want to hear

President Bush's speech in Estonia made a point that has not received enough emphasis from the White House--and the old media have helped to keep the issue quiet.

The battles in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a struggle between moderation and extremism that is unfolding across the broader Middle East. Our enemy follows a hateful ideology that rejects fundamental freedoms like the freedom to speak, to assemble, or to worship God in the way you see fit. It opposes the rights for women. Their goal is to overthrow governments and to impose their totalitarian rule on millions. They have a strategy to achieve these aims. They seek to convince America and our allies that we cannot defeat them, and that our only hope is to withdraw and abandon an entire region to their domination. The war on terror we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. And in this struggle, we can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.
(whitehouse.gov)

Any plan for Iraq that fails to account for that ideological conflict almost certainly creates a monstrous problem for U.S. and Western futures.
The Democrat majorities have not yet come to grips with that reality, and I see little reason at present to suppose that will change.

Naturally, the MSM fail to report that important paragraph in favor of what they deem more important.
See for yourself.