The Rag Blog

Many Iraqi ministers are staying away from work, fearing attacks from militias or insurgents.

Violence has exacerbated in Baghdad with street battles reported daily in several parts of the city.

Despite the presence of tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops, residents say there is no street in Baghdad where one can feel safe.

“We live in a city which has gone wild,” one resident, refusing to be named, said.

Gunmen have already kidnapped a deputy minister and attacked the convoy of another, killing two bodyguards.

More than 100 people are being killed every day while the government and its U.S. masters are powerless in the face of the spiral of sectarian violence.

A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.

The White House’s concern was not that the Democrats would cut off funds for the war in Iraq but that future legislation would prohibit it from financing operations targeted at overthrowing or destabilizing the Iranian government, to keep it from getting the bomb. “They’re afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit on Iran, à la Nicaragua in the Contra war,” a former senior intelligence official told me.

You see it in the movies all the time. The hero, having vanquished his foe after a long and arduous struggle, rescues him from a certain death—usually the villain hangs from a window ledge, begging for his life, and the good guy proves his nobility by saving him. We all know what happens next: The villain pulls out a concealed weapon and tries once again to kill his savior.

In the movies, it’s just a way to morally insulate the hero from the ramifications of killing—this way, the audience’s bloodlust can be satisfied without moral qualms. It’s a nice cliché, but let’s face it: in real life, you’d let the guy drop the first time.

With the Democrats finally in charge of congress again, it’s Bush hanging from that ledge. And, while it might seem kind or even noble to extend a hand, the right thing to do is not just to let him drop; it’s to stamp on his bloodied hands to hasten his fall.

Republicans are scared to death about the Democrats’ subpoena power, and Detroit’s maverick rep John Conyers’ imminent status as chairman of the House Judicial Committee. But it appears they have little to fear. Next House Speaker and fundraising diva Nancy Pelosi has assured us that the new Democratic majority will not impeach Bush.

This is as unacceptable as it is predictable. The case for impeachment is a no-brainer. This administration has broken the law so egregiously and so often the list of charges could fill a book. You know at least some of the list by now—lying about Iraq, torture, domestic wiretapping, war profiteering, paid journalist plants, producing fake news, ignoring laws passed to rein him in, collusion with corporations, negligent homicide in the Katrina disaster, et cetera, et cetera. The Bush team makes Watergate look like a panty raid. Despite their fetish for secrecy, there is ample evidence of at least some of these crimes, and investigations would yield more.

Bush needs to be impeached because Bush worshippers just plain deserve it. It was they that were giddy with self-righteous rage, so desperate to take Clinton down that they didn’t care how pathetic their excuse was. They need to be paid back, and to know they asked for it. They need to be demoralized and dismissed before they take the government back and damage it further. They need, after all, to know their reign was a colossal failure, a blight on the record. They need to know that now and forever, George W. Bush will be to presidents what OJ Simpson is to all-star running backs. These people understand things in terms of winning and losing, and they need to know that, in the end, they lost.

Bush needs to be impeached because the only language these people understand is power. Their hearts will not be touched by forgiveness. Any mercy is a sign of weakness to them. If you want to earn a thug’s respect, you’ve got to kick his ass up and down the block. No negotiation. No compromise. Slash and burn. Teach these assholes a lesson. Leave them broken and gasping in a puddle of their own urine. Don’t ever let them forget the humiliation and the shame of it.

Dogged by serious allegations of human rights abuses in Iraq, a leading profiteer from the Iraq war engages in intimidation campaigns against journalists in America who seek to expose its practices.

Consider the unique problems faced by the corporate suits at CACI International, a defense contractor whose services have included “coercive” interrogations of prisoners in Iraq — interrogations most people simply call “torture.”

Think about the image problems a major multinational corporation faces after becoming inextricably linked with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, a firm whose employees have contributed to the iconic images of the occupation of Iraq — the symbols of American cruelty and immorality in an illegal war. What can a company like that possibly do to protect its brand name after contributing to the greatest national disgrace since the My Lai massacre?

FT. LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may be leaving under a cloud of criticism over his handling of the Iraq war, but his invasion plan — emphasizing speed over massive troop numbers — has consistently been held up by the administration as a resounding success.

With Iraq near chaos 3 1/2 years later, a key Army manual now is being rewritten in a way that rejects the Rumsfeld doctrine and counsels against using it again.

The draft version of the Army’s Full Spectrum Operations field manual argues that in addition to defeating the enemy, military units must focus on providing security for the population–even during the heat of a major combat operation.

“The big idea here is that stability tasks have to be a consideration at every level and every operation,” said Clinton Ancker III, head of the Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate and an author of the guide.

The field manual is the authoritative guidebook on how to conduct ground operations, which officers use to develop tactics for military endeavors, including war, counterinsurgency and peacekeeping. When completed, the manual will be taught to officers at all levels.

Before the war, Rumsfeld prodded Gen. Tommy Franks and others to design an invasion plan to fit his beliefs about how modern militaries should fight. When Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed and Baghdad seemed to fall in just 21 days, Rumsfeld and his emphasis on speed over mass got the credit.

But after the initial military success, the Pentagon was criticized for not doing enough to plan for postwar stability. And Rumsfeld drew objections for his dismissive attitude toward the disorder and looting in Iraq, particularly when he said, just days after Baghdad’s fall, that “stuff happens” in democracies.

The U.S. military’s effort to train Iraqi forces has been rife with problems, from officers being sent in with poor preparation to a lack of basic necessities such as interpreters and office materials, according to internal Army documents.

The shortcomings have plagued a program that is central to the U.S. strategy in Iraq and is growing in importance. A Pentagon effort to rethink policies in Iraq is likely to suggest placing less emphasis on combat and more on training and advising, sources say.

In dozens of official interviews compiled by the Army for its oral history archives, officers who had been involved in training and advising Iraqis bluntly criticized almost every aspect of the effort. Some officers thought that team members were often selected poorly. Others fretted that the soldiers who prepared them had never served in Iraq and lacked understanding of the tasks of training and advising. Many said they felt insufficiently supported by the Army while in Iraq, with intermittent shipments of supplies and interpreters who often did not seem to understand English.

The Iraqi officers interviewed by an Army team also had complaints; the top one was that they were being advised by officers far junior to them who had never seen combat.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — An antiterrorist database used by the Defense Department in an effort to prevent attacks against military installations included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that “a church service for peace” would be held in the New York City area the next month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding “nonviolence training” sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The Defense Department tightened its procedures earlier this year to ensure that only material related to actual terrorist threats — and not peaceable First Amendment activity — was included in the database.

The head of the office that runs the military database, which is known as Talon, said Monday that material on antiwar protests should not have been collected in the first place.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay were “enemy combatants,” according to a new report.

The analysis of transcripts and records by two lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, aided by more than two dozen law students, found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner should remain in custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest allegations against him.

“These were not hearings. These were shams,” said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall University law professor who along with his son, Joshua, is the author of the report. They provided an advance copy of the report to The Associated Press late Thursday and planned to release it Friday on the Internet.