Logic Of U.S. Deployments Points To Preparation For Iran

NUKEWARS
The Logic Of US Deployments Points To Iran
Iran.
By Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington (SPX) Jan 24, 2007
The logic of the new force deployments President George W. Bush has approved for the Middle East appeared geared towards launching an air strike against Iran or deterring Iranian retaliation rather than preparing for a major change in U.S. strategy to win the war in Iraq.
As we have noted in previous coverage, the much hyped "surge" strategy the president has approved to strengthen U.S. forces in Iraq, especially in Baghdad, will be almost negligible in its boost to U.S. troop numbers in and around the Iraq capital in the short term.

By the end of February, only 7,000 additional troops are currently scheduled to be sent out. The impact those numbers by themselves can have on a city of 7 million people will be negligible. The U.S. Army's own latest manual on counter-insurgency warfare calls for a ratio of 20 troops to secure 1,000 of the general population who need to be protected, as Trudy Rubin pointed out in the Philadelphia Inquirer Friday. That would require 140,000 U.S, troops to secure Baghdad alone.

By contrast, the build up of U.S. air and sea assets in the Persian Gulf area is far more massive than the "surge' in ground troops. A second aircraft carrier battle group is being sent to join the USS Eisenhower carrier battle group already in the region, in effect doubling its air striking power.

In terms of the new tactics that Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, President Bush's choice to replace Gen. George Casey as ground forces commander in Iraq, is expected to implement, this makes no sense. Petraeus is a renowned student and exponent of the traditional principles of counter-insurgency war.

He has advocated greater U.S. force levels to be deployed on the ground at grassroots level, especially in Baghdad, and that they be spread out around the city's many neighborhoods rather than bunched up in a defensive posture in the heavily defended Green Zone in order ensure increase protection and security for the general population.

Adding more aircraft capable of striking at ground targets, but only at the expense of devastating more civilian areas, increasing civilian casualties and thereby generating far more active support for the Sunni insurgents, makes no sense in terms of this policy.

Besides, the greatest strain on U.S. forces in Iraq is on the manpower of the Army and Marines ground combat forces, not on carrier-based pilots. The insurgents have no air force of their own and what ground-fired, hand-held anti-aircraft missiles they have appear to have had negligible impact on the unquestioned U.S. air superiority in the theater.

Similarly, as we have also note din previous columns, the appointment of Adm. William Fallon as the new Central Command, or CENTCOM, commander-in-chief, makes no sense if his primary mission is expected to back Gen. Petraeus in fighting a classic counter-insurgency campaign more effectively in Iraq. Adm. Fallon is widely respected in the Navy and by Bush administration officials.

But his primary expertise is in running the PACCOM, or Pacific Command, which he has done with great distinction, and in being one of the U.S. Navy's most experienced directors of deploying carrier-based air assets against land targets. This expertise too would be superfluous against the Sunni insurgency. However, it would be of the greatest importance in the event of any U.S. air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, or if the Bush administration was anticipating some kind of widespread Iranian attempt at retaliation.

The same logic applies to the president's approval of sending new Patriot PAC-3 anti-ballistic missile batteries to the Middle East. The Patriot is the finest anti-ballistic missile system in the world. But it appears entirely superfluous to the many needs of the hard-pressed U.S. combat forces in Iraq.

However, if Iran were to attempt to launch any of its Shihad -3 intermediate range missiles at U.S. forces or allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States or Israel, then the Patriot deployments would be of the greatest importance.

Even the extremely small augmentation of U.S. ground forces in Baghdad takes on a different significance when interpreted from the perspective of possible Iranian retaliation against future U.S. or Israeli air strikes. It is not remotely enough to make a significant difference in providing security to the general population of the Iraqi capital.

But the additional forces could be of crucial importance in deterring or putting down a new rising by the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr. Washington has been pressuring Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to commit Iraqi army forces to suppress the Mahdi Army. But the Shiite Maliki has been very reluctant to commit his army, which is Shiite dominated, against a force that has heavily infiltrated it.

None of these assessments mean that a U.S.-Iran military clash in the region is automatically inevitable or imminent. Prudent military commanders always try and anticipate dangerous contingencies that may never come to pass. Or the new military assets may be intended for other regions. However, the fact remains, their relevance to current and projected U.S. military operations in Iraq appears very unclear. And their relevance to having to constrain or defeat a hostile Iran appears obvious.

Robert Fisk: Banality and barefaced lies

Robert Fisk

Here in America, I stare at the land in which I live and see a landscape I do not recognise

Published: 23 December 2006

I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect. Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at the faraway region in which I live and work for The Independent - the Middle East - and see a landscape which I do no recognise, a distant tragedy turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and barefaced lies. Am I the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter?

I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights".

Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is "afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...". A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, "is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them".

Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book - until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour - Egypt - secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print", ho! ho!) then felt free to tell its readers that Carter had stirred "furore among Jews" with his use of the word "apartheid". The ex-president replied by mildly (and rightly) pointing out that Israeli lobbyists had produced among US editorial boards a "reluctance to criticise the Israeli government".

Typical of the dirt thrown at Carter was the comment by Michael Kinsley in The New York Times (of course) that Carter "is comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa". This was followed by a vicious statement from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who said that the reason Carter gave for writing this book "is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media. What makes this serious is that he's not just another pundit, and he's not just another analyst. He is a former president of the United States".

But well, yes, that's the point, isn't it? This is no tract by a Harvard professor on the power of the lobby. It's an honourable, honest account by a friend of Israel as well as the Arabs who just happens to be a fine American ex-statesman. Which is why Carter's book is now a best-seller - and applause here, by the way, for the great American public that bought the book instead of believing Mr Foxman.

But in this context, why, I wonder, didn't The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel's cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn't Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn't Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa - one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid - paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin? This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate on Carter's book.

At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report - which doesn't really study Iraq at all but offers a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the green zone of Baghdad - dream zone would be a more accurate title - there are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis): a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli withdrawal from Golan, etc. But it's written in the same tired semantics of right-wing think tanks - the language, in fact, of the discredited Brookings Institution and of my old mate, the messianic New York Times columnist Tom Friedman - full of "porous" borders and admonitions that "time is running out".

The clue to all this nonsense, I discovered, comes at the back of the report where it lists the "experts" consulted by Messrs Baker, Hamilton and the rest. Many of them are pillars of the Brookings Institution and there is Thomas Freedman of The New York Times.

But for sheer folly, it was impossible to beat the post-Baker debate among the great and the good who dragged the United States into this catastrophe. General Peter Pace, the extremely odd chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said of the American war in Iraq that "we are not winning, but we are not losing". Bush's new defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he "agreed with General Pace that we are not winning, but we are not losing". Baker himself jumped into the same nonsense pool by asserting: "I don't think you can say we're losing. By the same token (sic), I'm not sure we're winning." At which point, Bush proclaimed this week that - yes - "we're not winning, we're not losing". Pity about the Iraqis.

I pondered this madness during a bout of severe turbulence at 37,000 feet over Colorado. And that's when it hit me, the whole final score in this unique round of the Iraq war between the United States of America and the forces of evil. It's a draw!

Another US crime in Ashaqi

Eyewitnesses say that the US occupation forces committed a crime against innocent people in Ishaqi.

The occupation forces besieged the homes of brothers Mohammed Hussein Jalmood and Mahmoud Hussein Jalmood, opened fire on members of the two families in the early hours today, to cover up the crime they air bombed the houses.

People of the area who rushed to the crime scene and removed the bodies from the rubble found that all victims had been shot at close range, which confirms that they were mass executed.

About 32 martyrs were targeted by the American forces intentionally among them 6 children and 8 women.

US State Dept. Official On Tony Blair: "We Typically Ignore Them And Take No Notice"

The Times November 30, 2006

Kendall Myers, a State Department analyst, said he felt "a little ashamed" at George Bush's treatment of Tony Blair


'London's bridge is falling down'
Tom Baldwin in Washington and Philip Webster, Political Editor

Damning verdict on one-sided US-UK relations after Iraq

State Department official says Blair is ignored by Bush

See pictures of the Bush/Blair "special relationship" from first meeting to "Yo, Blair"

Timeline

In a devastating verdict on Tony Blair’s decision to back war in Iraq and his “totally one-sided” relationship with President Bush, a US State Department official has said that Britain’s role as a bridge between America and Europe is now “disappearing before our eyes”.

Kendall Myers, a senior State Department analyst, disclosed that for all Britain’s attempts to influence US policy in recent years, “we typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business”.

He added that he felt “a little ashamed” at Mr Bush’s treatment of the Prime Minister, who had invested so much of his political capital in standing shoulder to shoulder with America after 9/11.

Speaking at an academic forum in Washington on Tuesday night, he answered a question from The Times, saying: “It was a done deal from the beginning, it was a onesided relationship that was entered into with open eyes . . . there was nothing. There was no payback, no sense of reciprocity.”

His remarks brought calls from British politicians last night for the special relationship to be rethought, but also attracted scathing criticism from one close supporter of the Prime Minister.

Dr Myers had hard words for his own Administration’s record in the Iraq war: “It’s a bad time, let’s face it. We have not only failed to do what we wanted to do in Iraq but we have greatly strained our relationship with [Britain].”

Dr Myers, a specialist in British politics, predicted that the tight bond between Mr Bush and Mr Blair would not be replicated in the future. “What I think and fear is that Britain will draw back from the US without moving closer to Europe. In that sense London’s bridge is falling down.”

The extraordinarily frank remarks will be seen as further evidence of the long-standing unease felt within some parts of the State Department over the direction of White House policy. They may also be an indication of the weakness of President Bush as he struggles to stop Iraq sliding into civil war and faces a Democrat-dominated Congress elected this month.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “These remarks reflect a real sense of distaste among thinking Americans for Mr Blair’s apparent slavish support for President Bush . . . The special relationship needs to be rebalanced, rethought and renewed.”

But Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham and a former Foreign Office minister, who supported the Iraq war, said: “After the Republican defeat in the midterm election, every little rat who feasted during the Bush years is now leaving the ship. I would respect this gentleman, who I have never heard of, if he had had the guts to make any of these points two or five years ago.”

Last night Dr Myers, who is thought to have attended the discussions over the infamous Downing Street memo in 2002 before the Iraq war, was disowned by the State Department. Terry Davidson, a spokesman, said: “The US-UK relationship is indeed a special one. The US and the UK work together, along with our allies in Europe and across the world, on every issue imaginable. The views expressed by Mr Myers do not represent the views of the US Government. He was speaking as an academic, not as a representative of the State Department.”

Privately, US officials are furious about the comments made by a man not even involved in the policymaking process, which can only rock relations at a time of high-wire tension in international diplomacy. Dr Myers himself was said to be considering early retirement.

He said on Tuesday that Mr Blair had been left “ruined for all time” by the Iraq war and that if he had “only read a book” on the last British invasion of Iraq in the 1920s, “he might have hesitated”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2478925,00.html

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