We Cannot "End the War Now"

I still see people here at DU and elsewhere saying "we must end the war now." However, as I'm sure the people making that statement understand, ending the war is no longer something that we here in the United States have the power to do. We can elect Cindy Sheehan President and she can withdraw every single US troop in the entire middle east, and the Iraqi civil war will continue to wage on. It's well past the era when US troops were fighting Sunni insurgents. Now, Sunni insurgents are fighting SHiite militias, and those parties will continue fighting whether US troops stay or leave. The best we can do is end US involvement in the war. But we cannot end the war. It is simply no longer something that's within our control.

:(

The US invasion (aka war) ended 5/1/2003.

the 'war' in Iraq, is not of the Iraqi's doing. The Iraqi's have repeatedly asked for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and it has been repeatedly denied...all the while the U.S. continues to build their permanent structures. The killing can not be neatly categorized as Sunni vs. Shia, because of events recorded, like the following, that muddy that claim. It's still all about the oil.

Iraqi police detain two British soldiers in Basra
www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-19 22:46:55

BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi police detained two British soldiers in civilian clothes in the southern city Basra for firing on a police station on Monday, police said.

"Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.

He added that the two were being interrogated in the police headquarters of Basra.

The British forces informed the Iraqi authorities that the two soldiers were performing an official duty, the source said. British military authorities said they could not confirm the incident but investigations were underway. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/19/content_3514065.htm



http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1814710,00.html

Does al-Zarqawi exist?
11/10/2005 14:46 - (SA)

Baghdad - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's faction has claimed responsibility for attacks that have left hundreds of Iraqis dead, and the United States has called him the most dangerous terrorist in Iraq.

Still, even as al-Zarqawi threatens more chaos - in recordings and internet messages - many Iraqis believe the Jordanian militant does not even exist and is merely a phantom created by the Americans to sow unrest in the country.

Similar disbelief greeted Britain's explanation that its soldiers, arrested in southern Iraq disguised as Arabs, were on an undercover hunt for terrorists. Instead, some Iraqis argue the soldiers were out to kill Shi'ite Muslims and blame the murders on Sunnis in hopes of sparking civil war.

Such conspiracy theories are common among Arabs and may seem laughable to outsiders. But in Iraq, where rulers from British colonists to Saddam Hussein regularly played one ethnic group against the other, imagined plots can seem reasonable - a fact that may have dire consequences for US efforts to build a stable Iraqi government.
Opposition to constitution

Indeed, ethnic and religious groups typically at odds are now standing united against the US-backed push for Iraqis to adopt a new constitution in a referendum om Friday and elect a permanent government in December. These steps, they say, are really intended to tighten the grip of America and Britain - the old master in Iraq - on the counry's oil wealth.

"Zarqawi is ... a myth that America has created to put a face to the terrorism it wants to stoke in this country to justify its continued presence," Sheik Amer al-Husseini, a top aide to radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

"If there was no more terrorism in Iraq, there would be no reason for the United States to remain ... making it harder for them to ... force this constitution on Iraqis," said al-Husseini.

Such arguments only add to confusion among many Iraqis who already are faced with different views from religious leaders. The radical al-Sadr has hinted he opposes the new constitution, while Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Iranian-born cleric who holds the greatest sway over Iraqi Shi'ites, has urged its passage.

US officials had hoped that such rifts, more common between the Shi'ites and Sunnis, would have been overcome with the June 2004 handover of sovereignty and the January elections that brought the current government to power.

But each time, the same hardline Shi'ite and Sunni groups who had ridiculed the war to topple Saddam as a US effort to seize control over Iraqi oil, remained unconvinced.

As a result, little has changed in Iraq, once the seat of proud Islamic empires upon which Iraqis now look back in wonder as they survey a landscape pockmarked by bombs and sown with civilian corpses.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1814710,00.html

'Trophy' video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi drivers

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 11:55pm GMT 26/11/2005

A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The video has sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.
Last night a spokesman for defence firm Aegis Defence Services - set up in 2002 by Lt Col Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guards officer - confirmed that the company was carrying out an internal investigation to see if any of their employees were involved.

The Foreign Office has also confirmed that it is investigating the contents of the video in conjunction with Aegis, one of the biggest security companies operating in Iraq. The company was recently awarded a £220 million security contract in Iraq by the United States government. Aegis conducts a number of security duties and helped with the collection of ballot papers in the country's recent referendum

Lt Col Spicer, 53, rose to public prominence in 1998 when his private military company Sandlines International was accused of breaking United Nations sanctions by selling arms to Sierra Leone.

The video first appeared on the website www.aegisIraq.co.uk. The website states: "This site does not belong to Aegis Defence Ltd, it belongs to the men on the ground who are the heart and soul of the company." The clips have been removed.

The website also contains a message from Lt Col Spicer, which reads: "I am concerned about media interest in this site and I remind everyone of their contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the media without clearing it with the project management or Aegis London.

"Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody."

Last night a spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "Aegis have assured us that there is nothing on the video to suggest that it has anything to do with their company. This is now a matter for the American authorities because Aegis is under contract to the United States."http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/27/wirq27.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/27/ixworld.html

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
Bush's Exit Plan: Fomenting Civil War in Iraq?
Our guest today writes that civil war has already begun in Iraq. He has the center spread in the current issue of the paper called, "Bush’s Exit Plan: Civil War." He says, "With the war stalemated, repeated deployments wearing down morale of U.S. troops and too few new recruits to maintain force levels, the Bush administration may be deliberately provoking civil war as its “exit strategy.” The goal is not so much to exit Iraq, but leave behind a skeletal military force that would maintain the network of permanent bases under construction throughout Iraq while maintaining access to massive oil deposits in the North and South. Breaking Iraq into a series of mini-states, a strategy being pushed by some White House allies in the media, is seen as one way to ensure these goals."

* Arun Gupta, Editor with the New York Independent newspaper of the New York Independent Media Center.http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/03/1419259


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4901786.stm

Last Updated: Wednesday, 12 April 2006, 09:48 GMT 10:48 UK
Iraqi death squads 'not police'

Iraq's interior minister has admitted death squads and other unauthorised armed groups have been carrying out sectarian killings in the country.
But in a BBC interview, Bayan Jabr denied allegations that these groups were linked to his ministry.
Mr Jabr blamed the proliferation of civilian security companies and licensed protection agencies used by other government ministries.

'Out of order'
In his interview with the BBC, Mr Jabr said despite appearances, those involved in recent attacks were not genuine police officers.
"Terrorists or someone who support the terrorists... are using the clothes of the police or the military," he said.
He said problems also stemmed from the existence of non-governmental security agencies like the Facility Protection Service, an armed force set up during the US-led administration of Iraq in 2003 to guard official buildings.

Mr Jabr called the 150,000-strong FPS "out of order, not under our control". He also implicated the involvement of about 30,000 civilian security guards operating in Iraq.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4901786.stm




http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

‘The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 8:59 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2005

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1721588,00.html

Iraq car bombers 'from Algeria'
15/06/2005 08:00 - (SA)

Dakar - Up to 20% of suicide car bombers in Iraq are from Algeria, a result, a senior US military official said, of growing co-operation between Islamic extremists in North Africa and like-minded Iraqis.

Forensic investigations have provided the 20% figure for Algerian suicide car bombers in Iraq, and shown roughly 5% from Morocco and Tunisia, the US officer with responsibilities in Europe and Africa said on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to defer for reasons of protocol to US commanders in Iraq.

The majority of foreign bombers in Iraq are believed to come from countries in the Arabian gulf, mainly Saudi Arabia and Yemen, US officials say.

In an interview on Tuesday, the US officer said ties between underground terror cells across the region were increasing, resulting in more co-operation, money for the Iraq war and a stepped-up flow of Islamic extremists from North Africa.

The officer said the numbers had increased, but gave no specific figures.

He said increasing efforts on the part of Algerian, Moroccan and Libyans security services to combat local terror cells were resulting in extremists joining international operations, but that they would later return home.


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6885875/site/newsweek/

Iraq: Unmasking the Insurgents
Shadow war: The elections won't stop the bombers, but quality intel--and luck--might help.

By Rod Nordland, Tom Masland and Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Through the beginning of August, NEWSWEEK was able to count 108 suicide bomb attacks cited in news reports and military press releases--about 1.5 a week over the span of the occupation. But according to military intelligence officials in Baghdad, there were 49 car bombs in September alone, 103 in October, 133 in November (when the United States launched its assault on Fallujah) and 84 in December. Not all these were suicide attacks: the military estimates that 50 percent were. The Allawi government has tried to reach out to some key figures in the insurgency, including Mudher al-Kharbit, brother of the sheik bombed by the Americans in 2003. One informed source says Allawi has even tried to initiate contact with Younes al-Ahmed, a key Baathist commander. "The crucial point in the whole of our antiterrorism strategy is how to split these groups," says national-security adviser al-Rubaie. But to begin to do that, the threat of the suicide bombers has to be contained--because most of them have no roots in Iraq, and no stake in its future.

Among those who have been identified are Yemenis, Syrians, Palestinians and even some European citizens. But Iraqi and U.S. officials, as well as sources inside the resistance, say there are especially large numbers of young Saudis who have taken the same path that al-Shayea did to the streets of Baghdad. According to DeFreitas, most of those suicide bombers whose identities have been ascertainable in the last six months were from Saudi Arabia. The typical profile is much like Ahmed al-Shayea's, twentysomethings and even teenagers from comfortable middle-class families. "They have got no experience, they are not trained," a Palestinian jihadi told NEWSWEEK. "They just have to drive the vehicle. But these boys--17, 18 years old--are important." What motivates them? "I think their religion is better than others'," he says. "They are rich, they are educated, and they need nothing, but they see that in this fight they will win either victory or heaven. This is their ideology. Either way, they win." Unless, like al-Shayea, they live to tell the tale.

With Babak Dehghanpisheh in Baghdad and Mark Hosenball in Washington

The United States has reacted by funnelling more money and troops into north and northwest Africa to train and equip armies to combat the growing threat from local terror and insurgent groups like Algeria's Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which is believed to have links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States.

The globalists have a good reason for doing what they are, I hope...

Top Shiite Cleric Balks at Plan for Iraq
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S.-backed plan to form a political coalition of Iraq's Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds - a glimmer of hope in a nation torn by sectarian violence - failed to win the crucial support of the top Shiite cleric Saturday.

Lawmakers who presented the plan to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf said they were told the unity of Shiites, who have the largest bloc in parliament, had to come first.
By shunning the coalition plan, al-Sistani sought to unite the Shiite's fractured 130-member United Iraqi Alliance. But his decision - which carries great weight with the country's Shiite majority - significantly weakens American hopes for a national unity government and strengthens the hand of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sistani's decision may not doom the proposed coalition, but it significantly reduces the it's chances.

``There are obstacles in the face of forming this coalition, because al-Sistani does not support it,'' said Hassan al-Suneid, a top aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
An official close to al-Sistani, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the cleric ``will not bless nor support any new bloc or front. He only supports the unity of the Shiites.''

The proposed coalition - which would not have included al-Sadr's supporters - could have isolated the militant cleric, commander of a militia army blamed for many sectarian attacks.
One of al-Sadr's key demands is a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6300064,00.html

in the first place.

End USA involvement NOW.

is not just leave Iraq, but rise to deal with the real terrorism problem directly. It has its root in the 50 years of state-sponsored terrorism that has been going on in both directions with Israel and Palestine. That is one area where we need to use our muscle to force those parties towards peace. We need to be engaged with all of the countries in the region rather than the cowboy talk of "evil empires".

Democrats need to do a better job of framing the discussion. It is not about walking out of Iraq. it is about taking real steps that will make that region -- and the whole world -- a more peaceful place.

Clearly leaving Iraq is an important part of that process, but it is not the only step.