Iraq Update

I don't think anyone believes for a second that Iraq couldn't get dramatically worse, but it's still disheartening to read about what appears to be the almost daily deterioration of security in the country. On top of continued findings of bodies in the streets and the unending attacks by insurgents (which bizarrely enough get second billing to the recent violence) we now have an incident in which it appears-but remains unclear-that American and Iraqi fores were to some extent involved in an attack on Iraqi militia members loyal to al-Sadr who were gathered in a mosque in Baghdad:

The raid Sunday at dusk on a compound in northern Baghdad produced wildly conflicting accounts of what happened, with the U.S. military announcing that Iraqi special forces had attacked armed "insurgents" and Iraqi Shiite leaders charging that U.S. troops had engaged in the cold-blooded killing of innocent worshipers loyal to a firebrand Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

The U.S. military said Monday that Iraqi soldiers killed 16 insurgents and wounded three others in a search operation in which they immediately came under fire...But Jawad al-Maliki, a member of the Dawa Party led by Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, said the soldiers had committed a "brutal crime" against innocents in assaulting a compound in the Shaab neighborhood that included a mosque and a Dawa Party office. Iraqi officials gave death tolls ranging from 20 to 37.

Somewhere in there is the truth. What's strange is the characteriztion by the military of the men that were killed as "insurgents." That term is used (admittedly with some flexibility) to Sunnis who are actively opposed to the U.S. and the Iraqi government, not to Shiite militia members (not even to Sadr's militia members who have fought openly with American forces.) Certainly the military knew they were raiding a mosque occupied by militia members, not insurgents, right? Surely they know which Mosques belong to Shiites and which belong to Sunnis. If this is "spin", it's very poor spin even or us here at home. And if it's not...well, does that mean even the military doesn't know exactly what happened, or isn't willing to admit to what happened yet?

Regardless, there is fallout from the raid:

Iraqi political leaders Monday angrily denounced a raid by U.S. and Iraqi special forces that killed at least 16 followers of an influential Shiite Muslim cleric, an assault that dealt a setback to U.S.-supported efforts to form a new Iraqi government and prompted calls for U.S. forces to turn over security responsibilities to Iraqis.

Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr also condemned the assault. "Innocent people inside the mosque offering prayer at sunset were killed," he told the al-Arabiya television news network.

The raid "has dangerous political and security consequences that aim to provoke a civil war for political purposes during a critical political period of the process of forming a government," Maliki said at the news conference.

Having even members of the government-in which Iraqi government security forces were involved-come out against the raid shows how angry Shiites are over the raid. While I seriously doubt that the raid was conducted on "innocent people" it's certainly hard to argue that an 80-year old Imam was a combatent in any sense of the term, and so far we seem to have no clear explanation from our forces as to what actually happened. And while I've been touting Stephen Biddle's plan for Iraq here and at other blogs, certainly nothing he proposes calls for outright attacks on Shiites militias as part of any effort to contain them.

As for the man who started this whole mess, this story in today's NY Times states President Bush indicated to Prime Minister Tony Blair how he was determined to go to war in late January of 2003, whatever weapons inspectors on the ground did or did not find in Iraq:

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides. "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

This is news is hardly a surprise. It's long been clear that some in the Bush administration were seeking to go to war in Iraq even before the 9/11 attacks and used the attacks as a justification for war. It's also clear that the issue of WMDs was used merely to justify just such a war. So it's no revelation that as we approached the zero hour, our famously incurious President would decide we were going to war whatever happened to it's primary justification. What is somewhat surprising is that he would so boldly declare just that to Blair. I suppose President Bush was drunk on his own resolve and determination, but to state flat-out to Blair that it didn't even matter if there were no WMDs found or not is...well, just stupid. That Blair continued to support our drive to war despite such a declaration is something the British can't be too happy about it either.

Not only that, but it appears President Bush had some hare-brained schemes for getting us into war with Iraq even if the WMDs issue wasn't sufficient:

The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.

In case this isn't clear so far: the presence of WMDs was irrelevant to Bush and his administration in determining whether or not to invade:

And in the catagory of "things said that one wishes one could take back":

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

I understand that there is limited utility at this point to harping on again and again to what this administration did to get us into war. But there is utility in it, in that forcing some sort of accounting on these activities will either a) spur those in the administration to admit to their mistakes and begin making a sincere effort to get their shit together in Iraq(admittedly unlikely and/or useless) or b) getting them and/or Republicans who supported this war out of office in 2006 and 2008 in an effort to replace them with someone who knows what the hell they're doing (if it's not or won't already be too late.)