Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 16/08/07 - 03/11/07

Petraeus: White House won't write report

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 Congressional Democrats, back from a quick trip to Iraq, said U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus assured them the White House wouldn't write his upcoming report.

Petraeus, the overall military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are scheduled next month to give Congress a definitive report on progress in the war.

A number of news reports cited sources who said the report would actually be written by the Bush administration. A CNN poll earlier this month said 53 percent of the public suspect the report will try to make the situation look better than it is and 43 percent said they didn't trust the report.

But the three Democrats returning from Iraq said Petraeus assured them that he and Crocker would be writing the report themselves.

Rep. Kendrick Meek of Florida said they asked Petraeus whether "there been any involvement from the administration taking a hand in his report and he assured us that that was not the case, that he and the ambassador were writing the report."
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 Congressional Democrats, back from a quick trip to Iraq, said U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus assured them the White House wouldn't write his upcoming report.

Petraeus, the overall military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are scheduled next month to give Congress a definitive report on progress in the war.

A number of news reports cited sources who said the report would actually be written by the Bush administration. A CNN poll earlier this month said 53 percent of the public suspect the report will try to make the situation look better than it is and 43 percent said they didn't trust the report.

But the three Democrats returning from Iraq said Petraeus assured them that he and Crocker would be writing the report themselves.

Rep. Kendrick Meek of Florida said they asked Petraeus whether "there been any involvement from the administration taking a hand in his report and he assured us that that was not the case, that he and the ambassador were writing the report."

Petraeus said he has "briefed the president and he has briefed (Defense) Secretary (Robert) Gate, but as far as he's concerned, that he is writing Â… his recommendations (in) that report and testimony."

Rep. Michael Acuri of New York said the Iraqi government wasn't taking advantage of the breather provided by the surge in U.S. troops. "The surge was intended to create stability for political reconciliation in Iraq," he said, "and that simply hasn't happened."

Petraeus: White House won't write report : World

UN discovers chemical in archives of weapons inspectors - Summary

New York - Former United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq have discovered traces of chemical substances, including the poisonous gas phosgene, in their office in New York and have called on US authorities to investigate, a spokeswoman said Thursday. "There is no immediate risk or dangers and the UNMOVIC staff is still working on the premise," UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

She said the inspectors discovered two small metal and glass vials with liquid substances that were recovered from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility Al Muthanna in 1996. The inventory showed one of the vials contains phosgene suspended in oil.

The other vial contains nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) reference standards which were used to calibrate chemical analytical equipment.

"Following discovery of these items, UNMOVIC chemical weapons experts sealed the packages and placed them in a safe, which was then isolated in a secured room," Okabe said. "The experts also tested the environment surrounding the packages using a portable chemical detector and found no concentration of toxic vapours in the air."

Phosgene is a poisonous gas and major industrial chemical used to make plastics and pesticides. It is converted into liquid for shipping and storage.

Inspectors of the UN monitoring agency known as UNMOVIC were charged with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the US-led military invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and compiled a huge archive of materials found in Iraq and brought back to New York for study.

Okabe said the UN informed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation of the discovery and the FBI sent agents to investigate.

The group of inspectors has been disbanded, but a staff of 17 experts remained in charge of the archives and inventory at their office in New York. During their years of intense work in Iraq, which began after Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the inspectors did not any weapons of mass destruction.

But US President George W Bush used the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as one of the justifications to sent US troops to Iraq in 2003.

UN discovers chemical in archives of weapons inspectors - Summary :

Hoshyar Zebari: we delivered a protest note to Iran and we are waiting for the reply

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraqi foreign minister said “We delivered a protest note to Iran about Kurdistan region’s shelling by Iranian artillery”. He also said that they asked Iran to stop the shelling because only innocent people will suffer.

He said that KRG and Baghdad government are in contact but solving this problem by Baghdadgovernment is in KRG’s interest.
Zebari preferred solving the problems with Iran in formal, diplomatic ways.

PUKmedia :: English - Hoshyar Zebari: we delivered a protest note to Iran and we are waiting for the reply

The Curfew is Still Continuous in Karbalaa

The curfew that has been imposed in Karbalaa city is still going on with a large deployment for the security forces to arrest the suspects.

Eyewitnesses mentioned that the Police and Army forces were deployed largely since this morning in the main streets of the city and requested from the citizens to remain at their homes and the shop owners to close their shops.

An informed source in Karbalaa mentioned that “the Iraqi forces started yesterday storming some areas in the governorate to arrest the suspects after the bloody accidents in the city which resulted in killing 42 and wounding 282 persons.”

worth mentioning that the PM and commander in chief of the armed forces Nouri al-Maliki has visited Karbalaa city and ordered to impose a curfew in the city.

PUKmedia :: English - The Curfew is Still Continuous in Karbalaa

President Talabani to Remain in Sulaimaniyah

A close source from President Talabani announced to our site that his Excellency decided to remain in al-Sulaimaniyah city until further notice to supervise directly on the Cholera disease improvement in al-Sulaimaniyah, Kirkuk and Raniya.

The source hasn’t mentioned the period of President Talabani’s residence in Sulaimaniyah, but he said that his Excellency will remain until the elimination of the disease.

Dr. Barham Ahmed Salih the PM Deputy will remain with President Talabani for the same purpose, as the source added.

PUKmedia :: English - President Talabani to Remain in Sulaimaniyah

Brown: We Have No Plan to Withdraw From Iraq

Gordon Brown, British PM, in his first meeting with president Bush, announced that there is no plan for quick withdrawing British Forces from Iraq, therefore the British political analysts regard his policy unlike Blair’s, the ex-PM, because very often the opposition pushed Blair to withdraw their force from southern Iraq.

Simon McDonald, Brown's chief foreign policy adviser said that Brown doesn’t have any clear plan for withdrawing British forces from Iraq.

PUKmedia :: English - Broun: We Have No Plan to Withdraw From Iraq

Opinion Piece - Middle East

The need for an old foe
If chaos is to be averted in the Middle East, Washington must give Russia a more active role

Nearly 40 years after the Americans escaped from the rooftops of Saigon, this great country may be on the verge of a second retreat, this time from Iraq. To be sure, this exodus has not begun yet, and President George Bush's recent speech on the "lessons from Vietnam" suggests that he is in denial. How superficial the parallel was that he drew has been noted by many. The consensus is that the speech was little more than spin, preparing official reaction to the publication of General David Petraeus's report on the effects of the "surge" of US forces in Iraq.

Yet no amount of spin or simplification should conceal the magnitude of the Iraq disaster and the damage to America's reputation. On all counts, US planners misread how their "liberation" would play in Iraq and in the region as a whole. Today, the image of American predictive power has sunk as low as that of its intelligence services.

Among the numerous lessons that the US must learn from its Iraq misadventure is that the help of Russia is crucial. If Washington hopes to retreat from Iraq without igniting a Middle East powder-keg, it cannot persist with its approach of the last decade, in which no opportunity to humiliate its old foe has been missed. Dick Cheney's speech in the Baltic states concerning human rights in President Vladimir Putin's Russia is just one example. It is difficult not to feel some sympathy for Mikhail Gorbachev's charge of hypocrisy: this from a country that runs Guantánamo, practises extraordinary rendition and has come close to resorting to torture in its own territory.

Worse still, American treatment of Russia on a whole range of issues has nourished resentment and assisted the reawakening of Russian national pride. The Russians had to stomach this in the late 90s. Not any longer, however, given their newly discovered wealth in oil and gas. Here, too, the US has blundered, pushing swaths of Europe to adjust their interests to fit in with Russian energy wealth. Inviting Putin to have a lobster meal with Bush is hardly the way to make up for blunders stemming from a philosophy which he knows full well has not changed.

Giving a more active role to Russia in "managing a phased new settlement", along with a genuine attempt to solve the Palestinian issue, could be the first real steps towards neutralising the American fear of chaos and local strife. For in the region Russia has better links with countries such as Iran than the US does, and acting in concert with the US, it could forestall rash decisions by other neighbouring countries to intervene during the transition. Of course that would mean that American oil giants would henceforth have to share and not monopolise the "action". But then, are we not told that American involvement in the Middle East was never motivated by financial gain but mounted in the interests of a wider and more lasting stability? Satisfying Russia's crumpled pride might also help reduce tension even in Europe.

If we need Russia's help, we must seek an accommodation with it across a broad spectrum of issues. This will be neither easy nor painless, but the alternative is more of the same, as General Sir Richard Dannatt warned in a recent speech. To some of us this looks like an unending and unnecessary clash of cultures and religions, terrorism the only winner. Thus we must try all alternatives before committing to a "generation of conflict", as the general described it.

The Anglo-American axis must also swallow its pride and enlist the active support of Europeans, especially France, which was not the only major country to try, rightly, to pull the US back from its folly in Iraq but is also the only continental European state with a network of useful relations in the Middle East.

No amount of cosmetic enthusiasm should be allowed to disguise the formidable problems that lie ahead. To minimise the chaos that now prevails not only in Iraq but also in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to let us focus squarely on the threat of international terrorism and the restoration of peace to the Middle East, we hope that Washington learns the lesson of true unilateralism - and also realises that the damage caused by its bad planning and likely to follow its retreat will be mitigated only by involving global partners, not least in Russia and Europe. In short, the days when the US decided and its "friends" demurely followed must end.
The need for an old foe | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited

237 insurgents killed in Diyala

Iraqi and U.S. forces have killed 237 insurgents and arrested more than 300 suspects in military operations to pacify the restive Province of Diyala.

The operations started on June 19 and are reported to be still continuing. The pressure on anti-U.S. rebels and Qaeda elements in the province is reported to have forced them to flee to other areas.

Lt. Gen. Abdul Rubaie, the Iraqi commander of the operation, said more than 7,000 troops are taking part in the fighting and that there have been ‘good gains on the ground.’

He did not say whether Diyala, until very recently a major anti-U.S. stronghold, was currently under full government control.

But Rubaie said 35 new ‘security centers’ have been established in the province and that 3,821 volunteers have registered to work with the local force to police the region once the troops withdraw.

“We are working closely to intensify the security effort in areas that have witnessed military operations recently and in which the troops have succeeded in eliminating all aspects of armed presence,” Rubaie said.

He said the troops uncovered weapons dumps in the province including artillery shells, explosive charges, mortar shells and other light weapons.

A major find, according to Rubaie, was a factory where insurgents manufactured explosive charges.

http://www.rolclub.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=237050

U.S. weapons meant for Iraq used in Turkish crimes

WASHINGTON: Weapons originally given to Iraqi security forces by the U.S. military have been recovered over the past year by the authorities in Turkey after being used in violent crimes in that country, Pentagon officials said.

The discovery that serial numbers on pistols and other weapons recovered in Turkey matched those distributed to Iraqi police units has prompted growing concern by the U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, that controls on weapons being provided to Iraqis are inadequate. It was also a factor in the decision to dispatch the department's inspector general to Iraq next week to investigate the problem, the officials said.

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that they did not yet have evidence that Iraqi security forces or Kurdish officials were selling or giving the weapons to Kurdish separatists, as Turkish officials have contended.

It was possible, they said, that the weapons had been stolen or lost during firefights and smuggled into Turkey after being sold on the extensive Iraqi black market for firearms. Officials gave widely varied estimates - from dozens to hundreds - of how many U.S.-supplied weapons had been found in Turkey.

Over the past year, inquiries by U.S. oversight agencies have found serious discrepancies in military records of where thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces actually ended up.

The disclosure about the weapons in Turkey, part of those investigations, came on the same day that the U.S. Army announced moves aimed at addressing a widening contracting scandal that has generated 76 criminal investigations involving contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Twenty civilians and military personnel have been charged in a U.S. court as a result of the inquiries.

"The reports suggest we have serious issues in this area," Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters Wednesday, adding that the criminal inquiries and the reported diversion of Iraqi weapons to Turkey were major reasons behind his decision to take action now.

Gates sent the Pentagon general counsel, William Haynes II, to Turkey last month for talks with Turkish officials, who had been complaining for months that American-supplied weapons were being used in murders and other violent crimes carried out, they said, in some cases, by Kurdish militants.

Turkish allegations that Iraq was being used as a sanctuary to mount attacks within its borders have strained relations between the Bush administration and Ankara over the past six months, with Turkey not ruling out a military intervention into northern Iraq to stop the activity.
U.S. officials said it appeared that the weapons found in Turkey had been given to Iraqi units in 2004 and 2005, when, in the rush to build police and army units, controls on distribution of firearms were much weaker.

General David Petraeus, who was then in charge of training and equipping Iraqi forces and who is now the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has said that the imperative to provide weapons to Iraqi security forces was more important at the time than maintaining impeccable records.

By checking serial numbers, U.S. officials confirmed that some of the recovered weapons, which included handguns manufactured by Glock, an Austrian weapons manufacturer, had been originally bought by the Defense Department for distribution in Iraq, the officials said.

Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, said at a briefing Wednesday that Gates was "deeply troubled by the reports and allegations" about problems accounting for American-supplied weapons in Iraq.

Pentagon officials said that the problem of weapons turning up in Turkey was part of a larger investigation being carried out by the Pentagon inspector general, Claude Kicklighter, a retired army lieutenant general, into how American-supplied weapons had been improperly accounted for and fallen into the wrong hands. "General Kicklighter has informed the secretary that he will remain in-country as long as it takes to find out if record-keeping problems persist, and if so, make recommendations to the commanders on the ground how to fix those problems," Morrell said.

U.S. officials added that they had not seen firm evidence that the firearms had been found in the hands of Kurdish separatists from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, a hard-line separatist group that for years has used northern Iraq as a sanctuary to carry out attacks inside Turkey.

In recent months, Turkish officials have accused Kurdish officials in senior positions in the Iraq government, including Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region, of actively supporting the Kurdish Workers Party. Barzani and other Kurdish officials say they do not support attacks by the party into Turkey.

At the Pentagon, Morrell, the spokesman, said: "If American-issued weapons have ended up in the hands of criminals in Turkey or terrorists in Turkey, that is not based upon the policy of this department or this government."

U.S. weapons meant for Iraq used in Turkish crimes - International Herald Tribune

Study: Withdrawal Possible Over a Year

WASHINGTON - Most U.S. troops can be withdrawn safely from Iraq in roughly one year and the Bush administration should begin planning the pullout immediately, according to a study released Wednesday.

With the exception mostly of two brigades of about 8,000 troops who would remain in the touchy Kurdish region in the north for a year to guard against conflict with Turkey, the U.S. troops would be moved to Kuwait initially, says the study by the Center for American Progress, a self-described "progressive think tank" headed by John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to former President Clinton.

A brigade and an air wing of some 70 to 80 planes would remain in the Persian Gulf country indefinitely. Meanwhile, the withdrawal would give the United States leeway to add 20,000 troops to the 25,000 in Afghanistan trying to counter Taliban and al Qaida forces.

How fast the troops depart from Iraq and go home depends largely on how much essential equipment goes along with the withdrawal, according to the study.

The troops could be out of Iraq in no more than three months if the equipment is left behind, a course not proposed in the study.
On the other hand, "if the United States does not set a specific timetable, our military forces and our overall national security will remain hostage to events on the ground in Iraq," the report said.

Even worse, an all-out civil war could compel a withdrawal of the U.S. troops, now numbering about 160,000, in three months' time, which would force leaving valuable equipment behind and preventing control of an orderly exodus, the report said.

The Bush administration is expected to disclose next month how large a withdrawal it contemplates and over what period of time. No consensus on when to begin and how deeply to cut has developed.

Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official who specialized in manpower and logistics there from 1981 to 1985, said in an interview: "It is essential that the military begin planning for a phased withdrawal from Iraq now so it can be safely completed within 10 to 12 months."

Korb, one of the authors of the report, said withdrawal proposals have varied from three months to four years.

The center's recommendation for withdrawal over a period of 10 to 12 months is based on consultation with military planners and logistics experts, the report said.

It proposed removing two combat brigades from Iraq a month while simultaneously reducing a proportional number of non-combat support personnel.

If the plan is adopted and U.S. combat units deployed in Iraq were not replaced as they went home the Bush administration could conclude the withdrawal by the end of next July "and with much more care than they did the invasion and occupation," the report said.

"The time for half-measures and experiments is over; it is now time for a logistically sound strategic redeployment," the report concluded.

Study: Withdrawal Possible Over a Year - Examiner.com