Counting down to the June 30th deadline in Iraq

Tony Blair believes he and George Bush have been subjected to a "huge propaganda campaign" over Iraq.

As he told journalists at his monthly press conference - more than once - his opponents are out to suggest the coalition is trying to occupy the country and steal its oil and, in the process, is ready to attack religious sites and abuse human rights.

This is probably not paranoia on the prime minister's behalf. But he clearly believes his opponents are scoring points in the propaganda war.

So he came to the briefing determined to follow President Bush's lead and combat it wherever he could.

To that end, he promised that he and the president really meant it when they said the transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government at the end of June would be total.

Al-Qaeda remains a viable and effective "network of networks" and has been galvanised by the war in Iraq, according to the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

--

The IISS says the war in Iraq has focused the energies and resources of al-Qaeda and its followers, while diluting those of the global counter-terrorism coalition.

US forces in Iraq present al-Qaeda with what the report calls its most attractive "iconic" target outside the United States itself.

The report also addresses the broader issue of relations between Islam and the West, saying the Bush administration did not fully appreciate that the 11 September attacks were a "violent reaction to America's pre-eminence".

To win hearts and minds, the report says, the appearance of American unilateralism needs to be tempered.

IISS site here

Awwwwwwwwwwww, diddums

There was an evocative line near the beginning of the speech, when President Bush drew a contrast between the competing visions: The terrorists "can incite men to murder and suicide, but they cannot inspire men to live, and hope." This encapsulates the root distinction between our side and enemies of freedom in clear, objective terms. Death is their way of life. This is a contradiction; it cannot endure. We promote life, in all its complexity, diversity, and potential. Imagine a positive outcome — not even the best case, just a very good one — a free, democratic Iraq; a strategic ally; a market for goods and a source for resources; an inspiration to others in the region who will see freedom and prosperity and wonder why their leaders deny it to them. This may be difficult to achieve but it is by no means impossible. It is much better than the alternative. It would be wonderful if we had no challenges, yet as the president said, "this is the world as we find it." Fortunately, we do not have to accept the world as it is.

'Total' meaning UK and US soldiers and citizens would be subject to Iraqi law?

Somebody should tell poor Tony that the "propagandists" are "coming up" with stuff like this because of things like early 2001's "Plan for Post-War Iraq" (via O'Neill) and the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf being damaged! It's not something new, that's just gonna come out of nowhere, no, IT'S SOMETHING OLD...AND DIRTAAAAAY.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=BEPYMFRHWCYDSCRBAEKSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=5251636

Iraqis Say U.S. Soldiers Steal During House Raids
2 hours, 3 minutes ago

By Luke Baker

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Besides the prisoner-abuse scandal, there is another, more pervasive problem Iraqis say they suffer daily at the hands of U.S. troops -- theft of money and other property during aggressive American raids.

Over the past 14 months of occupation, U.S. forces have carried out literally thousands of raids on homes across the country, routinely seizing money, jewelry and other property from Iraqis suspected of "anti-coalition activities."

Items are generally confiscated on suspicion they could be used to finance attacks against U.S.-led forces, and the U.S. military says it has had some success in cutting off funding for insurgents via the policy.

But Iraqis say the raids often target the wrong people, are carried out in an aggressive, even destructive manner and complain that lifetime savings, precious jewelry and family heirlooms are regularly stolen in the process.

Adel Alami, a lawyer with Iraq's Human Rights Organization, says the majority of the cases his group deals with involve Iraqis seeking compensation for lost property and cash.

"It's a huge problem, almost everyone has something to say about gold, money and other valuables going missing and they don't believe they'll ever get them back," he told Reuters.

Last year, Wajiha Daoud, an 80-year-old widow, had her house in a middle-class neighborhood of old Baghdad raided by U.S. troops who said they had "high-level intelligence" that the home was a safe house for Saddam Hussein loyalists.

During the raid, which lasted around 30 minutes, the woman and her family, who live across the street, were kept outside.

"When we went back in, the house was half-destroyed," said her son Musadaq Younis, an English-speaking computer technician.

"All the furniture was slashed with knives, tables and chairs were broken and the windows smashed. They didn't need to break down the front door -- I told them I had the key."

SAVINGS GONE

But that was not the worst. When Younis' sister arrived she immediately rushed upstairs to a small cabinet and found it empty -- $5,000 in cash, gold and other jewelry, including her wedding ring, were missing. "She went white," said Younis.

The family filed a claim against the U.S. military -- a complex process that took nearly three months to get a reply. In response, the military said the raid was justified and no compensation was owed. The officer who commanded the raid told Younis: "My soldiers aren't thieves."

Being comfortably well-off and employed, the impact of the loss on the family was not too great, but for hundreds, if not thousands of other Iraqi families, raids on their homes can prove devastating, socially and financially.

"Confiscation and theft during raids is rampant," said Stewart Vriesinga, a coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams, a non-profit group that documents abuses in Iraq.

"Soldiers don't seem to understand the Iraqi custom of not using banks -- a lot of people keep fairly substantial sums of money at home. A soldier from Kentucky or wherever sees that and thinks the person must be up to no good, so he takes it.

"We sure don't know how much money has been taken from (Iraqis)...but it's enough to have serious socio-economic consequences," he told Reuters.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition said he was aware of Iraqi complaints of theft during raids and said some U.S. soldiers had been disciplined for "inappropriate conduct." But he said the problem was "very rare, extremely rare."

"We're aware of it... But there's also the possibility of Iraqis making malicious claims," said Captain Mark Doggett.

Doggett said when are items are confiscated, a receipt is always given. If the owner is eventually found to be innocent, items can be recovered, he said. But many people who have had property confiscated say no receipts were written.

Vriesinga estimates that in nine out of 10 raids, the home owners raided are innocent, but suffer huge consequences.

"If the husband is hauled off as a suspect, the family has lost its breadwinner and often lost its savings and cash as well," he said, citing a recent Red Cross report which referred to up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees being innocent.

If Iraqis file complaints, it comes down to a case of the Iraqi suspect's word against the American soldier's, he said.

"If there's any doubt, then it's assumed the Iraqi is lying -- the Americans are creating enemies by the score."

http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.php?reposid=/multimedia/tds/stewart/jon_7131.html

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/24/bush.iraq/top.iraqis.ap.jpg

From CNN: Bush suddenly being very solicitous of Iraqis here in the States seeking medical treatment.

NOT BAD: The president's speech last night gets a B+ rating from yours truly. He did much of what he needed to do, even explaining what has gone on in Fallujah and Karbala and Kufa. It began abruptly, but soon settled down. The critical point that the swift victory over Saddam paradoxically made the occupation more difficult - because Saddam's minions were able to escape, melt into the population and fight another day - was made early on. Bush could have made more of it - and should do in the weeks ahead. People need to be reminded who the enemy is; and why he's worth fighting. My own sense of what was new was the clear and emphatic declaration that the transfer of sovereignty June 30 will be real. That's critical - and critical to deliver. I also liked the way the president unapologetically linked what we are doing in Iraq with the broader war on terror. Critics like to believe that Saddam was somehow utterly unconnected to broader terror, had no potential to enable it, and was too secular to cooperate with al Qaeda. They're wrong on all counts. In the wake of 9/11, a Saddam-Zarqawi alliance would have been a terrible threat. Now we have a Baathist-Zarqawi insurgency. And we have had a year to defeat it. Threading the needle of sovereignty, transfer of power, battling terrorism and coordinating elections is still a massive undertaking. But I was reassured by the president's speech. It's a beginning. He now has to make a version of it again and again and again. He is up against a press corps determined to make this transition fail, in order to defeat a Bush presidency. He will need true grit to withstand it.

STILL DEFENSIVE: But I must also add some comments about the manner of Bush's speech. He seemed exhausted, which is hardly surprising. But he also seemed defensive. He doesn't want to concede errors, because, in this polarized climate, the opposition will seize on them for their own narrow purposes. But he should trust the public and dwell more on the inevitable setbacks and failures of warfare. He should not be afraid to tell us when we have suffered losses. He should not be wary of conceding that he and everyone else under-estimated the strength and tenacity of the insurgency. He still seems brittle to me in his accounts of what has transpired. It makes optimism less credible and hope more elusive.

Then: "The oil revenues of (Iraq) could bring between $50 (billion)and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. . . . We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, March 27, 2003

Now: "Iraqi oil production has reached more than 2 million barrels per day, bringing revenues of nearly $6 billion so far this year, which is being used to help the people of Iraq." -- Bush, Monday

Critics like to believe that Saddam was somehow utterly unconnected to broader terror, had no
potential to enable it, and was too secular to cooperate with al Qaeda. They're wrong on all counts.

That's some sweet, sweet crack he's smoking. Now that WMD has collapsed as a cause, this seems to be a total 'it is because WE SAY SO' approach to the situation.

everyone has potential to "enable terror" as long as they can make checks out to "HAMAS, INC."

CNN reports on various Asian and Arab media reactions to the speech. Similar reporting from the BBC here.

"He lies. We don't believe anything Bush says. The Americans have not done a thing for Iraqis. And now he promises to hand over power to Iraqis in a democracy after handpicking the people in the Governing Council," Haidar Majeed, a trader, said on Tuesday.

--

"I wasn't interested in Bush's speech. America has been all talk and no action. I will regain an interest in politics when I see developments on the ground taking place," said Jabbar Luay, 25, a former soldier eating pistachios in the blistering heat.

--

"The Americans can move a tank to Iraq in two days yet they can't even give us more than two hours of electricity a day for the air conditioning," said Fallah Hassan, sipping bitter Arabic coffee with fellow unemployed Iraqis.

"Saddam used to cut off the electricity to punish us and now we see the Americans living in his palace with no electricity problems while we suffer."

--

"We have never seen a member of the Governing Council in the streets talking to the Iraqi people, or checking on the unemployed and other problems," said Hamid Hassan, a plumber.

Iraqi policemen and security forces, who have lost hundreds of comrades to bombings by insurgents, are skeptical that American troops will leave security in their hands.

"Bush is a scorpion. He is a liar. He is sneaky, making all kinds of promises when he just wants to control Iraq," said policeman Ayman Haidar.

"I was tortured and they dislocated my shoulder under Saddam. Now the Americans say they want to help the police take over security. I don't believe them. They will never leave."

While many Iraqis are furious with the U.S. occupation, some fear a quick departure of American troops could unleash more security problems.

"We need an American presence until we have elections," said 41-year-old Musa al-Rubaie

Around this heavily Arab Detroit suburb where thousands of Iraqi refugees have made their home since a 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein was crushed, Bush's comments were generally welcomed, albeit at times with skepticism.

Iraqi-Americans here said they've been lied to too often to take everything at face value, but this time, they're willing to be more trusting.

"I believe that the country will get the elections," 24-year-old Nasser Nasser said while watching Bush's speech broadcast and translated over an Arabic television station.

"He says he's going to give this and that, but I'm worried that this is all for votes," Nasser couldn't help but add, as he munched on a kabob wrapped in pita. Even so, he said the United States should remain after a new government is in place because he believes an early exit could lead to civil war.

In that you don't trust what people they find or you don't trust the process in how they find them? As it stands, I have no immediate reason to disbelieve the sentiments those quotes; neither do I think they represent everybody.

"I just think it's a lost cause," said Spec. Will Bromley, a gunner who sits inside the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and mans a 25mm cannon whose rounds can blast walls to pieces. "This has become harder than we thought. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein, that's one thing. Getting Iraqis to do what we want is another. It's like we want to give them McDonald's and they might not want McDonald's. They have to want it or we can't give it to them."

Sgt. Jerry Sapiens, a specialist in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, suggested there was no end in sight. "We're in the baby-sitting phase and my question is, how long can we baby-sit for the Iraqis? We want the Iraqis to change, to be like us, and to do this we will have to be here forever."

"The enemy is not the same as before," said Spec. Matthew Aissen, a medic. "I fear that people who use religion as a power point are taking over the place. It's a power struggle. Our weak point is they think we are evil and we're not so popular, so we become part of the mess."

The 1st Armored Division was supposed to be out of the powdery sand, 100-degree heat and explosive danger of Iraq a month ago. After a year in the country, they were scheduled to be back in green and placid Germany, their home base.

During its tour, Company A has seen all sides of the post-invasion phase of the Iraqi conflict. It was originally tasked to safeguard Baghdad neighborhoods, fight insurgents and crime, uncover arms depots, defuse roadside bombs and oversee reconstruction projects.

Duty in Iraq was scheduled to end in April, but in a surprise decision, the Pentagon ordered the 1st Armored Division to stay on for another three months. The disappointment was evident among many of the soldiers here, and has sharpened their doubts.

Capt. Andrew Lomax, Company A's executive officer, was scheduled not only to return to Germany, but also to end his Army service. He now worries that when he enters his post-service period as a member of the Army Reserve, he could be called back to active duty at any time. "Some of us need to make life plans. We're obviously short of forces in Iraq. Suppose the country just wants to split apart? Can we live with that? Or another dictator comes? Are we going to fix that? There are plenty of troublemakers and Iraqis who tolerate them. You could have units here forever," he said.

good going, GI. At this very moment, marketing executives across the US are furiously scribbling "IRAQ WANTS BURGER KING"

In conversations with Company A soldiers, pessimistic outlooks appear to predominate, although some express positive views on the direction of the occupation. Frequently, opinions varied according to rank. The higher the rank, it seemed, the greater the tolerance for uncertainties in Iraq. The more likely a soldier was to make a career of the Army, the deeper his expressions of enthusiasm and the more muted his criticism.

Lt. Col. Sexton, the battalion commander, is aware of the doubts and complaints of some of his troops, but regards them as misplaced. Overthrowing Hussein and hunting down Shiite rebels are two sides of one mission, he argues. "It's all for the same reason, to build a democracy and to better Iraq. The war is the same," he said. "If what we do gives Iraqi citizens instead of armed mobs the chance to make their own decisions, that's what's important."

I have to worry when this kind of political/strategic conflation is being used (implicitly or not) in terms of justification and motivation both. We don't have anything like commissars in the military and I would rather not see anyone starting to take on that role.

"Last May, possibly, there was a chance for this thing to succeed. People were happy. Then we started arresting people" for carrying ammunition, said Bromley, referring to operations to disarm Iraqis in Baghdad. "It's been easy for enemy recruiters. They just wait for something bad to happen, like if someone shoots up a family. They just have to wait, and the recruits come in."

"They don't have to like us, they just have to want to succeed and make Iraq better," O'Day responded.

"The Iraqis don't trust us," Bromley went on.

"That's why we can't abandon the fight now," O'Day shot back.

Someone's shouldering the white man's burden big time...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/international/middleeast/09KURD.html?hp

An Iraqi interim deputy foreign minister, Bassam Qubba, has been killed in an attack in the capital, Baghdad.

A foreign ministry spokesman said unidentified gunmen fired on his car in al-Azimiya district on Saturday morning as he was on his way to work.

Mr Qubba, the ministry's senior career diplomat, was shot in the stomach. He was taken to hospital but died shortly afterwards, the spokesman said.

His driver was also hurt but there are no details so far of his injuries.

The foreign ministry spokesman said he was shocked but not surprised by the murder of Mr Qubba.

He expected such attacks to increase as the handover to the interim government on 30 June neared.

With less than three weeks to go before sovereignty returns to Iraq, American and Iraqi officials are saying that much of the transfer has already happened.

The new interim Iraqi government has been formed, the old governing council has been dissolved and the majority of the ministries, including some crucial ones like oil, transportation and foreign affairs, have been turned over to Iraqi management. Meanwhile, both American advisers and Iraqi leaders said their roles had already shifted, with Iraqis running day-to-day affairs and Americans dispensing advice — and dollars.

Walid Saleh, planning director for the Water Resources Ministry, said his ministry used to be controlled by a team of six American water experts. Now, Mr. Saleh said, these advisers have become "consultants."

"They work for us," Mr. Saleh explained. "They are very good technicians and they give us expertise. But we make the decisions."

The United States will continue to steer Iraq through its control over the $18.4 billion reconstruction budget and the presence of 140,000 American troops, who are struggling to end the insurgency. On Saturday, a Foreign Ministry official of the newly named government was assassinated.

Besides the money and troops, a large United States Embassy is being built on the grounds of the occupation authority in central Baghdad, essentially to serve as a shadow government.

Yet the process that has been unfolding, with Iraqi leaders taking control of government operations and American advisers receding into the background, provides the clearest preview yet of what the American-Iraqi dynamic will be like after June 30.

Rather than going after top government figures who are well protected, the insurgents appear to be targeting middle and upper level officials who lack adequate security.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. forces would do "everything we can to "try to defeat these murderers." However, Powell told "Fox News Sunday" that "it's hard to protect an entire government."

Now, Stuart was talking of a time about how we need to fight against the terrorists and mullahs, and how well we're doing that in Fallouja:

In the wake of a truce last month that averted an all-out assault by U.S. Marines, the conservative Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad has taken on the trappings of a mini-republic that lives largely according to its own rules, in defiance of the potent American military force that remains poised on its doorstep.

Fallouja's status as an autonomous fiefdom — where local people say insurgents rule the streets and an increasingly austere brand of Islamic law has taken root — could embolden other towns, particularly in like-minded Sunni tribal areas, to challenge the legitimacy of the country's transitional government as a scheduled hand-over of power to Iraqis approaches.

And the woes of a U.S.-sanctioned security force in this city on the banks of the Euphrates could bode ill for efforts by the American military and occupation authority to appease rebellious pockets of Iraq by setting up locally recruited forces intended to co-opt insurgents. In the dusty streets of Fallouja, the early May pullback by the Marines to stave off close-quarters urban combat and the likelihood of heavy civilian casualties is touted as a glorious victory for the insurgents, who enjoy overwhelming support here.

The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said.

The strikes, carried out against so-called high-value targets during a one-month period that began on March 19, 2003, used precision-guided munitions against at least 13 Iraqi leaders, including Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, Iraq's No. 2 official, the officials said.

General Ibrahim is still at large, along with at least one other top official who was a target of the failed raids. That official, Maj. Gen. Rafi Abd al-Latif Tilfah, the former head of the Directorate of General Security, and General Ibrahim are playing a leadership role in the anti-American insurgency, according to a briefing document prepared last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The broad scope of the campaign and its failures, along with the civilian casualties, have not been acknowledged by the Bush administration.

In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq's new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same way as U.S. military forces are now immune, according to Iraqi sources.

The U.S. proposal, although not widely known, has touched a nerve with some nationalist-minded Iraqis already chafing under the 14-month-old U.S.-led occupation. If accepted by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, it would put the highly visible U.S. foreign contractors into a special legal category, not subject to military justice and beyond the reach of Iraq's justice system.

The U.S. request, confirmed Sunday by Allawi's office, is one of a number of delicate issues revolving around government authority that will confront the incoming U.S. ambassador, John D. Negroponte, when Allawi's interim government assumes formal sovereignty June 30.

Although the Bush administration repeatedly has promised that Iraqis will receive authentic sovereignty, the U.S. military has made it clear that U.S. officers will remain in charge of security, the country's top concern. People here widely assume that U.S. influence will remain decisive for a long time in almost every domain.

The in-control status of U.S. troops and officials -- from Humvee drivers who demand priority in traffic to civilian administrators intervening in the choice of Iraqi leaders -- often has been cited by Iraqis who oppose the occupation on nationalist grounds. The civilian contractors, particularly armed security personnel, have generated similar resentment from Iraqis, many of whom long ago tired of having foreigners tell them where they can and cannot go.

A truck packed with explosives rammed into a convoy of foreign contractors and exploded in a massive fireball today, killing at least 13 people during morning rush hour.

Among the dead were two Britons, one Frenchman, one American and another foreigner of undetermined nationality, the American military said. A spokesman for General Electric said three of its employees, and two others contracted by the company to provide security, were among those killed.

The blast also wounded more than 60 people, including 10 foreign contractors, the military said.

Minutes after the explosion, a crowd of young men poured into the streets and rushed toward the wreckage.

As Iraqi police officers stood by, the mob stomped on the hoods of the crushed vehicles and smashed the windows, and lit American flags on fire.

"Oh Ali!" some yelled.

"Long live Sadr!" shouted others, referring to radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

A squad of American soldiers arrived shortly afterward and was greeted by a hail of rocks. The soldiers stayed for a few minutes and then pulled back.

Numerous attacks have plagued the rebuilding process
Sabotage attacks on a southern Iraqi oil pipeline have brought oil exports to a standstill, the oil minister says.

Thamir Ghadhban said blasts on Monday and Tuesday had damaged a pipeline from the southern oilfields - severing the flow to the Basra oil terminal.

It was the second attack on the Basra terminal - one of the few operational outlets - in just over a month.

It comes two weeks before the US-led coalition is due to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government.

The latest attack has effectively stopped the flow of crude through Iraq's main export route for the second time in little more than a month.

Ninety percent of Iraqi government revenues comes from oil, and the flow of funds is essential to pay for the country's reconstruction, says BBC business reporter Mark Gregory.

Iran massing troops on Iraq border

Beirut, Lebanon, Jun. 15 (UPI) -- Iran reportedly is readying troops to move into Iraq if U.S. troops pull out, leaving a security vacuum.

The Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, monitored in Beirut, reports Iran has massed four battalions at the border.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted "reliable Iraqi sources" as saying, "Iran moved part of its regular military forces towards the Iraqi border in the southern sector at a time its military intelligence agents were operating inside Iraqi territory."

Perhaps there will be an invasion when we finally leave.. in 2007

President George W Bush has refused to set a timetable to hand over ex-President Saddam Hussein to the interim Iraqi government.
Mr Bush told reporters "appropriate security" must be in place first.

The US and the Iraqi government do not want "lax security and for Saddam Hussein not to stand trial", Mr Bush said outside the White House.

Iraq's prime minister has said he wants Saddam Hussein to be handed over before the 30 June transfer of power.

Iyad Allawi told al-Jazeera television on Monday this would happen "within the next two weeks".

The Red Cross has said he must be freed or charged before the end of June.

A rocket slammed into a U.S. logistics base near the city of Balad Wednesday afternoon, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding 21 people, the military said.

Fourteen of the injured were taken to the U.S. Army's 31st Combat Support Hospital and seven were treated at a clinic on the U.S. base, known as Camp Anaconda, according to a military statement.

Balad is 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Also in Baghdad today, saboteurs blasted a key southern pipeline for the second time in as many days Wednesday, shutting down Iraq's oil exports, and gunmen killed a security chief for the state-run Northern Oil Co.

The latest attacks at Iraq's oil sector have slowed the process of reviving its economy after decades of war, international sanctions and Saddam Hussein's tyranny. Insurgents also are targeting the country's infrastructure apparently to undermine confidence in the new government, which takes power from the U.S.-led coalition June 30.

Iraq on Thursday suffered another of what have become daily bursts of carnage, a devastating car bomb that killed at least 35 people in front of a Baghdad recruitment center, terrorizing residents of the capital and sapping their confidence in the new U.S.-sponsored government.

Another car bomb went off hours later in a village 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing six members of the paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and wounding four, according to the U.S. military. The two explosions added to a list of attacks directed against Iraqis who cooperate with the new administration that U.S. occupation authorities have set up in hopes it can gradually begin governing the country.

Seeking to reassure Iraqis that his government can still assert control, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ventured from his U.S.-protected office and visited the site of the blast in downtown Baghdad. Against the background of charred wreckage, he pledged anew to overcome the bombings, assassinations and other assaults by insurgents that have risen in a mortal crescendo in the days leading to June 30, when Iraq is scheduled to recover limited sovereignty after 14 months of U.S. military occupation.

"We are going to face these escalations," he declared. "The Iraqi people are going to prevail, and the government of Iraq is determined to go ahead in confronting the enemies, whether they are here in Iraq or whether they are anywhere else in the world."

Allawi's suggestion that a foreign country could be involved in the increasingly violent insurgency was echoed in a more explicit way by Interior Minister Falah Naqib, who said support for the violence was coming from some of Iraq's neighbors. Although pressed at a news conference, he declined to name the countries he was blaming.

Iraq's security forces are being restructured to tackle the wave of violence ahead of the transfer of power on 30 June, the interim PM has said.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said top security officials would report to him and he announced the formation of a special force to combat insurgents.

...

Speaking at a Baghdad news conference, Mr Allawi said all the security forces were being reorganised to concentrate on the fight against terrorism and he was taking overall responsibility for national security.

"Our capabilities will enable us to take necessary action against forces of evil, " he said, adding that a national directorate for internal security was to be set up.

Mr Allawi said that until Iraqi forces were fully capable, his country would continue to need outside support, particularly with equipment.

He also said that the decision by the US-led coalition authorities to disband the Iraqi army was a mistake.

The government was considering imposing emergency law in some areas to try to bring the security situation under control.

"We might impose some kind of martial law in some places, if necessary, in accordance with the law and in respect to human rights," he said. "We will do our best to strike the anti-Iraq forces."

Mr Allawi said he had drawn up the plan after consultations with US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the senior civil servant in the UK defence ministry, Kevin Tebbit.

Thousands of ethnic Kurds are pushing into lands formerly held by Iraqi Arabs, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to ramshackle refugee camps and transforming the demographic and political map of northern Iraq.

The Kurds are returning to lands from which they were expelled by the armies of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors in the Baath Party, who ordered thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed and sent waves of Iraqi Arabs north to fill the area with supporters.

The new movement, which began with the fall of Mr. Hussein, appears to have quickened this spring amid confusion about American policy, along with political pressure by Kurdish leaders to resettle the areas formerly held by Arabs. It is happening at a moment when Kurds are threatening to withdraw from the national government if they are not confident of having sufficient autonomy.

In Baghdad, American officials say they are struggling to keep the displaced Kurds on the north side of the Green Line, the boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region. The Americans agree that the Kurds deserve to return to their ancestral lands, but they want an orderly migration to avoid ethnic strife and political instability.

But thousands of Kurds appear to be ignoring the American orders. New Kurdish families show up every day at the camps that mark the landscape here, settling into tents and tumble-down homes as they wait to reclaim their former lands.

The Kurdish migration appears to be causing widespread misery, with Arabs complaining of expulsions and even murders at the hands of Kurdish returnees. Many of the Kurdish refugees themselves are gathered in crowded camps.

American officials say as many as 100,000 Arabs have fled their homes in north-central Iraq and are now scattered in squalid camps across the center of the country. With the anti-American insurgency raging across much of the same area, the Arab refugees appear to be receiving neither food nor shelter from the Iraqi government, relief organizations or American forces.

"The Kurds, they laughed at us, they threw tomatoes at us," said Karim Qadam, a 45-year-old father of three, now living amid the rubble of a blown-up building in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. "They told us to get out of our homes. They told us they would kill us. They told us, `You don't own anything here anymore.' "

I was payday for the Falluja Brigade, a dusty, flat, 100-degree day in late May, and hundreds of the brigade's soldiers were gathering at the city's railway station on the north end of town. A month before, during the siege of Falluja by 4,500 United States marines, this same railway station was attacked by American helicopters after insurgents inside the station fired rocket-propelled grenades at Marine snipers nearby. But now things were very different. On May 1, as Falluja and the world braced for an all-out assault by the marines, the siege was suddenly called off. The marines announced they were pulling out and ceding control of the city to a new, all-Iraqi force. The man who engineered the deal was Muhammad Latif, a 66-year-old former Iraqi Army colonel from Baghdad. Latif promised the Americans that he could pacify Falluja with a corps of laid-off soldiers from Saddam Hussein's army. Some would be former members of the Republican Guard, the elite force responsible for the regime's darkest hours, and some would be drawn from the insurgents the Americans had been fighting -- a very different situation indeed.

Now the 2,600 members of the Falluja Brigade were packed into the railway station to collect their monthly salaries. Three Iraqi officers with big, Saddam-style mustaches and constellations of stars on their shoulders sat along one side of a table in a stuffy little office in the back of the station, counting out stacks of cash: $150 for sergeants, $250 for majors, $300 for colonels; all in crisp U.S. bills, all provided by the U.S. government. The line of soldiers waiting for their pay snaked out the door, through the railway station and into the heat. Many were dressed in faded combat fatigues with a jaunty eagle insignia on their shoulders, signifying high rank in Hussein's army; some had red triangles just below their shoulders, the mark of the Republican Guard. In just a few weeks, Falluja had gone from de-Baathification to re-Baathification. The problem, it seemed, had become the solution.

Latif trotted up the steps of the railway station wearing a gray polyester suit. Unlike his men, he never wears a uniform. He had an assistant with him, also dressed in civilian clothes. Neither man was armed.

''General,'' said one soldier standing by the door, using the Arabic word, liwa. He cut a quick salute.

''How's your health, general?'' asked another as Latif stepped inside. (Latif later confided: ''They always say 'general.' But I'm not a general. Colonel, maybe, but not a general.'')

Latif strode past the soldiers pressed against the walls. There was barely room to pass. ''General, general, general, general,'' they said, a one-word echo chamber as he advanced down the musky hallway. When he walked into the pay room, which used to be the conductor's office, the men with the big mustaches barely looked up. Latif didn't say a word to them. They, in turn, said nothing back -- not ''sir,'' not ''general.''

Two U.S. Marine officers were standing in the pay room, off to the side. They were advisers, here to report back to Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the top Marine general in Iraq, on the progress of the Falluja Brigade. One carried an assault rifle, the other wore a pistol in a holster and both were dressed in full battle gear. Across the room, the Iraqi soldiers approached the table one by one, leaned over to sign a form, took their money and signed again. Both marines looked impressed by the drill.

''Man, these guys are organized,'' said Lt. Col. Scott Hartsell. ''They have a disbursement officer; they have a payroll; they have proper records.'' He smiled. ''Hell, they were a professional army after all.''

The Marine officers motioned to Latif, and the three men stepped aside for a private chat. My interpreter, Khalid, and I found ourselves suddenly alone. The officers behind the table noticed me and glared in my direction. Khalid started to get a little twitchy. ''It's like a joint chiefs meeting of the Republican Guard,'' he whispered to me. ''These guys are bad guys. They hate Americans. Let's get out of here.''

The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority.

The ambitious, 15-month undertaking stumbled because of a series of mistakes that began with an inadequate commitment of resources and was aggravated by a misunderstanding of Iraqi politics, religion and society in occupied Iraq, these participants said.

"We blatantly failed to get it right," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who served as an adviser to the occupation authority. "When you look at the record, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that we squandered an unprecedented opportunity."

Viewed from Baghdad since April 2003, the occupation has evolved from an optimistic partnership between Americans and Iraqis into a relationship riven by frustration and resentment. U.S. reconstruction specialists commonly complain of ungrateful Iraqis. Residents of a tough Baghdad neighborhood who welcomed U.S. forces with cold cans of orange soda last spring now jeer as military vehicles roll past. A few weeks ago, young men from the area danced atop a Humvee disabled by a roadside bomb, eventually torching it.

In many ways, the occupation appears to have transformed the occupier more than the occupied. Iraqis continue to endure blackouts, lengthy gas lines, rampant unemployment and the uncertain political future that began when U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad. But American officials who once roamed the country to share their sense of mission with Iraqis now face such mortal danger that they are largely confined to compounds surrounded by concrete walls topped with razor wire. Iraqis who come to meet them must show two forms of identification and be searched three times.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. entity that has administered Iraq, cites many successes of its tenure. Nearly 2,500 schools have been repaired, 3 million children have been immunized, $5 million in loans has been distributed to small businesses and 8 million textbooks have been printed, according to the CPA. New banknotes have replaced currency with ousted president Saddam Hussein's picture. Local councils have been formed in every city and province. An interim national government promises to hold general elections next January.

But in many key quantifiable areas, the occupation has fallen far short of its goals.

The Iraqi army is one-third the size U.S. officials promised it would be by now. Seventy percent of police officers have not received training. When violence flared across the country this spring, many soldiers and policemen refused to perform their duties because U.S. forces had failed to equip them, designate competent leaders and win trust among the ranks.

About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.

Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.

Iraq's emerging political system is also at odds with original U.S. goals. American officials scuttled plans to remain as the occupying power until Iraqis wrote a permanent constitution and held democratic elections. Instead, Bremer will leave the Iraqis with a temporary constitution, something he repeatedly promised not to do, and an interim government with a president who was not the Bush administration's preferred choice.

The Daura Power Plant in southern Baghdad was supposed to be a model of the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq. Bombed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and neglected by Hussein's government, the station could operate at no more than a quarter of its rated capacity, leading to prolonged blackouts in the capital.

After CPA specialists toured the decrepit facility last summer, they vowed to bring it back to life. German and Russian firms were hired to make repairs, and it was placed atop a list of priority projects intended to achieve a 6,000-megawatt goal for national electricity production. More power, Bremer hoped, would improve the economy and daily life enough to reduce violence and stabilize Iraq.

Today, the Daura plant is indeed a model -- of how the U.S. reconstruction effort has failed to meet its goals.

The German contractors fled for their safety in April. The Russians departed in late May, after two of their colleagues were shot to death by insurgents as they approached the plant in a minivan.

Inside the facility, parts are strewn on the floor, awaiting installation. Iraqi technicians in blue coveralls lounge around, smoking cigarettes and waiting for guidance. In the turbine room, graffiti on the wall reads: "Long Live the Resistance."

The CPA intended for the Daura plant to be producing more than 500 megawatts of power by June 1. But the best it can do at the moment is 100 megawatts -- half of its output of last summer.

"We were supposed to have improved," said Bashir Khallaf, the plant director. "But we have gotten worse."

Iraqi and U.S. officials said, was the failure to provide enough equipment to the police and the Civil Defense Corps, a 40,000-member paramilitary force. At the Rafidain station, only half the 140 officers have handguns. There are only 10 AK-47 assault rifles in the armory, three pickup trucks in the parking lot and two radios in the control room. Body armor is nonexistent, save for a few U.S. military vests worn by guards at the front door.

"How can we defend ourselves if we don't have guns and radios and cars?" said Maj. Raed Kadhim, the senior officer at the station. "The Americans promised us all of these things. Where are they?"

The sympathy for Sadr today at the Rafidain station -- on Fridays, officers pin his picture to their uniforms before going to the mosque -- suggests that the odds of getting the police to resist the cleric's militia have not improved. The scope of the confrontation could have been smaller, according to several CPA officials, had U.S. forces moved against Sadr in August, when an Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant for him. Instead, they allowed him months to build support for his anti-occupation views.

By April, with the CPA's internal polling showing 80 percent of Iraqis holding positive views of Sadr, the CPA should have sought a political solution, the officials contend. At the very least, they argue, CPA strategists and military commanders should have realized that many Iraqi security officers would side with the cleric.

"The Americans misunderstood us," Kadhim said. "We will fight for Iraq. We will not fight for them."

Life inside the high-security Green Zone -- what some CPA staffers jokingly call the Emerald City -- bears little resemblance to that in the rest of Baghdad. The power is always on. Shiny shuttle buses zip passengers around. Outdoor cafes stay open late into the night.

There is little effort to comply with Islamic traditions. Beer flows freely at restaurants. Women walk around in shorts. Bacon cheeseburgers are on the CPA's lunch menu.

"It's like a different planet," said an Iraqi American who has a senior position in the CPA and lives in the Green Zone but regularly ventures out to see relatives. "It's cut off from the real Iraq."

Because the earth-toned GMC Suburbans used by CPA personnel and foreign contractors have become a favored target of insurgents, traveling outside the Green Zone -- into the Red Zone that defines the rest of Iraq -- requires armored vehicles and armed escorts, which are limited to senior officials. Lower-ranking employees must either remain within the compound or sneak out without a security detail.

Although the CPA has tried to bring Iraqis into the CPA headquarters for meetings and other events -- there has even been an "Iraqi Culture Night" in the Green Zone -- the inability to mingle with Iraqis has isolated the Americans. "We don't know the outside," the senior adviser to Bremer said. "How many of us have gone out to buy a bottle of milk or a pair of socks?"

Instead of building contacts at social events in the city, CIA operatives in Baghdad drink in their own rattan-furnished bar in the Green Zone. Instead of prowling local markets, CPA employees go to the Green Zone Shopping Bazaar, where the most popular items are Saddam Hussein memorabilia.

Limited contact with Iraqis outside the Green Zone has made CPA officials reliant on the views of those chosen by Bremer to serve on the Governing Council. When Brahimi, the U.N. envoy, asked the CPA for details about several Iraqis he was considering for positions in the interim government, he told associates he was "shocked to find how little information they really had," according to an official who was present.

John Agresto arrived here nine months ago with two suitcases, a feather pillow and a suffusion of optimism. He didn't know much about Iraq, but he felt certain the American occupation, and his mission to oversee the country's university system, would be a success.

"Like everyone else in America, I saw the images of people cheering as Saddam Hussein's statue was pulled down. I saw people hitting pictures of him with their shoes," said Agresto, the former president of St. John's College in New Mexico. "Once you see that, you can't help but say, 'Okay. This is going to work.' "

But the Iraq he encountered was different from what he had expected. Visits to the universities he was trying to rebuild and the faculty he wanted to invigorate were more and more dangerous, and infrequent. His Iraqi staff was threatened by insurgents. His evenings were disrupted by mortar attacks on the occupation authority's Baghdad headquarters.

His plans to repair hundreds of campus buildings were scuttled by the Bush administration's decision to shift reconstruction efforts and by the failure to raise money from other sources. His hope that Iraqis would put aside differences and personal interests for a common cause was, as he put it, "way too idealistic."

"I'm a neoconservative who's been mugged by reality," Agresto said as he puffed on a pipe next to a resort-size swimming pool behind the marbled palace that houses the occupation authority.

"We can't deny there were mistakes, things that didn't work out the way we wanted," he added. "We have to be honest with ourselves."

Agresto's candor is unusual among the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. bureaucracy responsible for the civil administration of Iraq until June 30. He is one of the few American officials here to speak on the record at length about the shortcomings of the occupation. In his case, the frustration comes from the sense of a missed golden opportunity: to reconstruct Iraq's decrepit universities and create an educational system that would nurture and promote the country's best minds.

U.S. military commanders here are calling it Operation New Dawn.

Starting July 1, with the transfer of limited sovereignty to Iraqi authorities, military helicopters will switch to flying "friendly approaches" instead of menacing ones, U.S. soldiers will go on patrol only when accompanying Iraqi security forces, and any shooting of U.S. weapons meant to harass or interdict will require higher-level approval than before, military officers here said.

In Mosul, Army Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who leads a brigade of armored Stryker vehicles and other forces, said he expected that his troops would assume a much lower profile.

"On July 1, what I want Iraqi people to say is: 'Where are the airplanes? Where are the Strykers?' " Ham said last week. "What they'll see instead will be Iraqi forces."

For U.S. troops in Iraq, the coming political change -- from occupying power to supporting partner -- is supposed to be accompanied by a major shift in military mission and tactics. While legally still authorized under a U.N. resolution to use "all necessary means" to ensure security in Iraq, U.S. commanders say they intend to reduce combat operations, concentrate on training and assisting Iraqi forces, and promote local governance and economic development.

U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledged in interviews and in briefings to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz last week that their plan was sure to be complicated by two main factors.

First, many of the 215,000 members of Iraq's fledgling forces are far from ready to take over much of the security burden. And second, the deadly insurgency that emerged shortly after the U.S.-led invasion last year continues to bring fresh waves of violence, most recently a surge of assassinations and attacks on oil facilities.

Under such uncertain circumstances, U.S. military authorities are trying to show at least their willingness to step back and let Iraqi forces take the lead, but are hedging their bets by keeping U.S. troop levels at around 140,000 and girding for a gradual turnover of operational responsibility.

Struggling with bureaucratic problems in spending the money appropriated by Congress to rebuild Iraq, American authorities are moving quietly and quickly to spend $2.5 billion from a different source, Iraqi oil revenue, for projects employing tens of thousands of Iraqis, especially in the country's hot spots, Bush administration officials say.

The spending program, which was started unannounced, has been undertaken in consultation with Iraqi ministers, despite misgivings that the oil revenue belonged to Iraq and that it should be set aside for use when Iraq's sovereignty is restored, scheduled for June 30.

Because of deteriorating security and complex delays in contracts that have slowed the spending of the $18 billion in Congressionally appropriated money, occupation authorities say they decided recently that they had to spend the Iraqi money to build schools, factories and oil fields, and to turn Iraqis away from violence.

"The security needs were just overwhelming," said an occupation official. "Would we rather have been able to save the money and have a nice kitty? Sure. There's always a tension between putting money to work right away and having it available for a tough year next year. This is the way we resolved it."

The weekly meeting of the Rashid district council began last Wednesday with a prayer for two of the group's 33 members. One was in critical condition at a U.S. military hospital after being shot seven times in an assassination attempt. Another was in hiding after gunmen attacked her house and killed her brother.

"Let us remember our martyrs," Sami Ahmed Sharif, the council chairman, intoned as his fellow members stood, turned their palms to the ceiling and bowed their heads.

There were no other residents of the Rashid district to observe the moment of silence or the rest of the proceedings. Council members voted to close the meeting to the public because of fears that assassins would slip in and mark members for death. To enforce the decision, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers surrounded the council building and stationed snipers on the roof.

The nascent political institutions designed to replace the U.S. administration of Iraq are beset by challenges to their popular legitimacy and effectiveness, and by grave risks to Iraqis who have joined the experiment in representative government. As Iraqis prepare for their country to regain sovereignty, it is uncertain how much their political future will be shaped by the $700 million program in democracy-building that has been at the core of the U.S. occupation.

Inside the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, which will dissolve with the handover on June 30, some officials express doubts that Iraq's political system will conform to the American blueprints. "Will this develop the way we hope it will?" a CPA official involved in promoting democracy said. "Probably not."

New political institutions to replace Saddam Hussein's Baath Party dictatorship are among the chief legacies of the U.S. occupation. Every city and province has a local council. New mayors, provincial governors and national cabinet ministers have been chosen. The Shiite Muslim majority, shut out of power in Hussein's government, is widely represented, as are religious minorities and women. Hundreds of political parties have formed, and thousands of people have participated in seminars on democracy.

But Iraqis criticize the local councils and the interim national government as illegitimate because their members were not elected. The country's top Shiite cleric has repudiated the interim constitution drafted by the U.S.-appointed Governing Council. In several recent meetings about the country's political future, Iraqis who favor a Western-style democracy have been drowned out by calls for a system governed by Islamic law.

The cabinet, appointed by a U.N. envoy three weeks ago, has had little time to prepare to govern. Local councils, whose authority had been restricted for months by U.S. military commanders, are also stepping into uncharted areas, uncertain about their responsibilities and powers under a system whose inauguration is a week away.

Yet these uncertainties are overshadowed by the imminent threat of violence. Local council members who once welcomed constituents into their homes now keep armed guards at the front gate. Leaders of the national government travel in armored vehicles and work inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, an area off-limits to ordinary Iraqis. Many foreign contractors hired by the U.S. government to promote democracy have either relocated to Kuwait or hunkered down in protected compounds.

Despite those precautions, more than 100 Iraqi government officials have been killed during the occupation, including two members of the Governing Council. Over the past two weeks, the deputy foreign minister and a senior official in the Education Ministry have been assassinated. On Sunday, masked gunmen shot and killed the council chairman of Baghdad's Rusafa district and his deputy as they sat in a cafe.

Blackouts are ordered at night. Even flashlights are forbidden. Conspicuous landmarks are dismantled. Officers tell their men not to salute them, for fear they will be targeted by lurking snipers.

In the wake of a mortar barrage that killed California National Guard Spc. Daniel Paul Unger nearly four weeks ago, life has changed drastically at Forward Operating Base Kalsu, a scar of bulldozed earth and rubble that is home to Corona's Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 185th Armor Regiment.

Life is also different at the unit's brigade headquarters in Balad, about 68 miles north of Baghdad. There, on Wednesday, a rocket streaked into the Anaconda logistical base and exploded in a crowd of off-duty soldiers, killing three and wounding 26 others.

The explosion, which hurled shrapnel through walls, plate glass windows and vehicles, prompted commanders to order their soldiers to wear flak vests and helmets at all times. That particularly uncomfortable precaution was instituted as temperatures climbed well above 100 degrees.

There were no Californians among the casualties from Wednesday's attack, although a number are based in the camp, which is home to about 17,000 troops from several units.

Base Kalsu, roughly 20 miles south of Baghdad, is along the bottom of the volatile Sunni Triangle. The camp is just east of the Euphrates River in the heart of the Fertile Crescent, a vast swath of lush farmland and grape orchards nourished by a network of canals. Although the rural countryside the soldiers patrol is breathtaking, the base itself is bare of all vegetation and is home to only a cluster of tents.

The tents are riddled with shrapnel holes, but living quarters have been reinforced with a triple layer of sandbags. And the death of the first California National Guardsman in a combat role since the Korean War has weighed heavily on the minds of some soldiers.

Four other California National Guard troops, assigned to support units, also have died since the U.S. occupation of Iraq began.

"When you get attacked, that's a life-altering event," said Maj. John McBrearty, executive officer of the 1-185th, and a screenwriter in civilian life. "You realize quick that this isn't fun and games. This isn't summer camp anymore."

"A lot of guys look up at the ceiling of their tent a lot," said Platoon Sgt. David Harpst, 38, a postal employee from Oceanside. "They're wondering what's going to come through it."

Still other guardsmen complain bitterly that the attack was made all the more deadly by bureaucratic inertia within the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led entity that now governs Iraq. The coalition, soldiers and officers say, prevented the Army from removing a towering network of antennas that once populated the base. The structures, they say, were probably used as reference points in guiding the mortars onto Kalsu.

PLAN B
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds.
Issue of 2004-06-28
Posted 2004-06-21
In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war’s most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency—a campaign of bombings and assassinations—later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost.

The border stayed open, however. “The Administration wasn’t ignoring the Israeli intelligence about Iran,” Patrick Clawson, who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has close ties to the White House, explained. “There’s no question that we took no steps last summer to close the border, but our attitude was that it was more useful for Iraqis to have contacts with ordinary Iranians coming across the border, and thousands were coming across every day—for instance, to make pilgrimages.” He added, “The questions we confronted were ‘Is the trade-off worth it? Do we want to isolate the Iraqis?’ Our answer was that as long as the Iranians were not picking up guns and shooting at us, it was worth the price.”

Clawson said, “The Israelis disagreed quite vigorously with us last summer. Their concern was very straightforward—that the Iranians would create social and charity organizations in Iraq and use them to recruit people who would engage in armed attacks against Americans.”

The warnings of increased violence proved accurate. By early August, the insurgency against the occupation had exploded, with bombings in Baghdad, at the Jordanian Embassy and the United Nations headquarters, that killed forty-two people. A former Israeli intelligence officer said that Israel’s leadership had concluded by then that the United States was unwilling to confront Iran; in terms of salvaging the situation in Iraq, he said, “it doesn’t add up. It’s over. Not militarily—the United States cannot be defeated militarily in Iraq—but politically.”

Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who until last year served on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told me that late last summer “the Administration had a chance to turn it around after it was clear that ‘Mission Accomplished’”—a reference to Bush’s May speech—“was premature. The Bush people could have gone to their allies and got more boots on the ground. But the neocons were dug in—‘We’re doing this on our own.’”

Leverett went on, “The President was only belatedly coming to the understanding that he had to either make a strategic change or, if he was going to insist on unilateral control, get tougher and find the actual insurgency.” The Administration then decided, Leverett said, to “deploy the Guantánamo model in Iraq”—to put aside its rules of interrogation. That decision failed to stop the insurgency and eventually led to the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison.

In early November, the President received a grim assessment from the C.I.A.’s station chief in Baghdad, who filed a special field appraisal, known internally as an Aardwolf, warning that the security situation in Iraq was nearing collapse. The document, as described by Knight-Ridder, said that “none of the postwar Iraqi political institutions and leaders have shown an ability to govern the country” or to hold elections and draft a constitution.

A few days later, the Administration, rattled by the violence and the new intelligence, finally attempted to change its go-it-alone policy, and set June 30th as the date for the handover of sovereignty to an interim government, which would allow it to bring the United Nations into the process. “November was one year before the Presidential election,” a U.N. consultant who worked on Iraqi issues told me. “They panicked and decided to share the blame with the U.N. and the Iraqis.”

A former Administration official who had supported the war completed a discouraging tour of Iraq late last fall. He visited Tel Aviv afterward and found that the Israelis he met with were equally discouraged. As they saw it, their warnings and advice had been ignored, and the American war against the insurgency was continuing to founder. “I spent hours talking to the senior members of the Israeli political and intelligence community,” the former official recalled. “Their concern was ‘You’re not going to get it right in Iraq, and shouldn’t we be planning for the worst-case scenario and how to deal with it?’”

Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who supported the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq, took it upon himself at this point to privately warn Vice-President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq; according to an American close to Barak, he said that Israel “had learned that there’s no way to win an occupation.” The only issue, Barak told Cheney, “was choosing the size of your humiliation.” Cheney did not respond to Barak’s assessment. (Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

In a series of interviews in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, officials told me that by the end of last year Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government decided, I was told, to minimize the damage that the war was causing to Israel’s strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship with Iraq’s Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. Several officials depicted Sharon’s decision, which involves a heavy financial commitment, as a potentially reckless move that could create even more chaos and violence as the insurgency in Iraq continues to grow.

Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria. Israel feels particularly threatened by Iran, whose position in the region has been strengthened by the war. The Israeli operatives include members of the Mossad, Israel’s clandestine foreign-intelligence service, who work undercover in Kurdistan as businessmen and, in some cases, do not carry Israeli passports.

Asked to comment, Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said, “The story is simply untrue and the relevant governments know it’s untrue.” Kurdish officials declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the State Department.

However, a senior C.I.A. official acknowledged in an interview last week that the Israelis were indeed operating in Kurdistan. He told me tha

PLAN B
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds.
Issue of 2004-06-28
Posted 2004-06-21
In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war’s most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency—a campaign of bombings and assassinations—later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost.

The border stayed open, however. “The Administration wasn’t ignoring the Israeli intelligence about Iran,” Patrick Clawson, who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has close ties to the White House, explained. “There’s no question that we took no steps last summer to close the border, but our attitude was that it was more useful for Iraqis to have contacts with ordinary Iranians coming across the border, and thousands were coming across every day—for instance, to make pilgrimages.” He added, “The questions we confronted were ‘Is the trade-off worth it? Do we want to isolate the Iraqis?’ Our answer was that as long as the Iranians were not picking up guns and shooting at us, it was worth the price.”

Clawson said, “The Israelis disagreed quite vigorously with us last summer. Their concern was very straightforward—that the Iranians would create social and charity organizations in Iraq and use them to recruit people who would engage in armed attacks against Americans.”

The warnings of increased violence proved accurate. By early August, the insurgency against the occupation had exploded, with bombings in Baghdad, at the Jordanian Embassy and the United Nations headquarters, that killed forty-two people. A former Israeli intelligence officer said that Israel’s leadership had concluded by then that the United States was unwilling to confront Iran; in terms of salvaging the situation in Iraq, he said, “it doesn’t add up. It’s over. Not militarily—the United States cannot be defeated militarily in Iraq—but politically.”

Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who until last year served on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told me that late last summer “the Administration had a chance to turn it around after it was clear that ‘Mission Accomplished’”—a reference to Bush’s May speech—“was premature. The Bush people could have gone to their allies and got more boots on the ground. But the neocons were dug in—‘We’re doing this on our own.’”

Leverett went on, “The President was only belatedly coming to the understanding that he had to either make a strategic change or, if he was going to insist on unilateral control, get tougher and find the actual insurgency.” The Administration then decided, Leverett said, to “deploy the Guantánamo model in Iraq”—to put aside its rules of interrogation. That decision failed to stop the insurgency and eventually led to the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison.

In early November, the President received a grim assessment from the C.I.A.’s station chief in Baghdad, who filed a special field appraisal, known internally as an Aardwolf, warning that the security situation in Iraq was nearing collapse. The document, as described by Knight-Ridder, said that “none of the postwar Iraqi political institutions and leaders have shown an ability to govern the country” or to hold elections and draft a constitution.

A few days later, the Administration, rattled by the violence and the new intelligence, finally attempted to change its go-it-alone policy, and set June 30th as the date for the handover of sovereignty to an interim government, which would allow it to bring the United Nations into the process. “November was one year before the Presidential election,” a U.N. consultant who worked on Iraqi issues told me. “They panicked and decided to share the blame with the U.N. and the Iraqis.”

A former Administration official who had supported the war completed a discouraging tour of Iraq late last fall. He visited Tel Aviv afterward and found that the Israelis he met with were equally discouraged. As they saw it, their warnings and advice had been ignored, and the American war against the insurgency was continuing to founder. “I spent hours talking to the senior members of the Israeli political and intelligence community,” the former official recalled. “Their concern was ‘You’re not going to get it right in Iraq, and shouldn’t we be planning for the worst-case scenario and how to deal with it?’”

Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who supported the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq, took it upon himself at this point to privately warn Vice-President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq; according to an American close to Barak, he said that Israel “had learned that there’s no way to win an occupation.” The only issue, Barak told Cheney, “was choosing the size of your humiliation.” Cheney did not respond to Barak’s assessment. (Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

In a series of interviews in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, officials told me that by the end of last year Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government decided, I was told, to minimize the damage that the war was causing to Israel’s strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship with Iraq’s Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. Several officials depicted Sharon’s decision, which involves a heavy financial commitment, as a potentially reckless move that could create even more chaos and violence as the insurgency in Iraq continues to grow.

Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria. Israel feels particularly threatened by Iran, whose position in the region has been strengthened by the war. The Israeli operatives include members of the Mossad, Israel’s clandestine foreign-intelligence service, who work undercover in Kurdistan as businessmen and, in some cases, do not carry Israeli passports.

Asked to comment, Mark Regev, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said, “The story is simply untrue and the relevant governments know it’s untrue.” Kurdish officials declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the State Department.

However, a senior C.I.A. official acknowledged in an interview last week that the Israelis were indeed operating in Kurdistan. He told me that the Israelis felt that they had little choice: “They think they have to be there.” Asked whether the Israelis had sought approval from Washington, the official laughed and said, “Do you know anybody who can tell the Israelis what to do? They’re always going to do what is in their best interest.” The C.I.A. official added that the Israeli presence was widely known in the American intelligence community.

The Israeli decision to seek a bigger foothold in Kurdistan—characterized by the former Israeli intelligence officer as “Plan B”—has also raised tensions between Israel and Turkey. It has provoked bitter statements from Turkish politicians and, in a major regional shift, a new alliance among Iran, Syria, and Turkey, all of which have significant Kurdish minorities. In early June, Intel Brief, a privately circulated intelligence newsletter produced by Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. counterterrorism chief, and Philip Giraldi, who served as the C.I.A.’s deputy chief of base in Istanbul in the late nineteen-eighties, said:

Turkish sources confidentially report that the Turks are increasingly concerned by the expanding Israeli presence in Kurdistan and alleged encouragement of Kurdish ambitions to create an independent state. . . . The Turks note that the large Israeli intelligence operations in Northern Iraq incorporate anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian activity, including support to Iranian and Syrian Kurds who are in opposition to their respective governments.

In the years since the first Gulf War, Iraq’s Kurds, aided by an internationally enforced no-fly zone and by a U.N. mandate providing them with a share of the country’s oil revenues, have managed to achieve a large measure of independence in three northern Iraqi provinces. As far as most Kurds are concerned, however, historic “Kurdistan” extends well beyond Iraq’s borders, encompassing parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey. All three countries fear that Kurdistan, despite public pledges to the contrary, will declare its independence from the interim Iraqi government if conditions don’t improve after June 30th.

Israeli involvement in Kurdistan is not new. Throughout the nineteen-sixties and seventies, Israel actively supported a Kurdish rebellion against Iraq, as part of its strategic policy of seeking alliances with non-Arabs in the Middle East. In 1975, the Kurds were betrayed by the United States, when Washington went along with a decision by the Shah of Iran to stop supporting Kurdish aspirations for autonomy in Iraq.

Betrayal and violence became the norm in the next two decades. Inside Iraq, the Kurds were brutally repressed by Saddam Hussein, who used airpower and chemical weapons against them. In 1984, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K., initiated a campaign of separatist violence in Turkey that lasted fifteen years; more than thirty thousand people, most of them Kurds, were killed. The Turkish government ruthlessly crushed the separatists, and eventually captured the P.K.K.’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Last month, the P.K.K., now known as the Kongra-Gel, announced that it was ending a five-year unilateral ceasefire and would begin targeting Turkish citizens once again.

The Iraqi Kurdish leadership was furious when, early this month, the United States acceded to a U.N. resolution on the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty that did not affirm the interim constitution that granted the minority Kurds veto power in any permanent constitution. Kurdish leaders immediately warned President Bush in a letter that they would not participate in a new Shiite-controlled government unless they were assured that their rights under the interim constitution were preserved. “The people of Kurdistan will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq,” the letter said.

There are fears that the Kurds will move to seize the city of Kirkuk, together with the substantial oil reserves in the surrounding region. Kirkuk is dominated by Arab Iraqis, many of whom were relocated there, beginning in the nineteen-seventies, as part of Saddam Hussein’s campaign to “Arabize” the region, but the Kurds consider Kirkuk and its oil part of their historic homeland. “If Kirkuk is threatened by the Kurds, the Sunni insurgents will move in there, along with the Turkomen, and there will be a bloodbath,” an American military expert who is studying Iraq told me. “And, even if the Kurds do take Kirkuk, they can’t transport the oil out of the country, since all of the pipelines run through the Sunni-Arab heartland.”

A top German national-security official said in an interview that “an independent Kurdistan with sufficient oil would have enormous consequences for Syria, Iran, and Turkey” and would lead to continuing instability in the Middle East—no matter what the outcome in Iraq is. There is also a widespread belief, another senior German official said, that some elements inside the Bush Administration—he referred specifically to the faction headed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz—would tolerate an independent Kurdistan. This, the German argued, would be a mistake. “It would be a new Israel—a pariah state in the middle of hostile nations.”

A declaration of independence would trigger a Turkish response—and possibly a war—and also derail what has been an important alliance for Israel. Turkey and Israel have become strong diplomatic and economic partners in the past decade. Thousands of Israelis travel to Turkey every year as tourists. Turkish opposition to the Iraq war has strained the relationship; still, Turkey remains oriented toward the West and, despite the victory of an Islamic party in national elections in 2002, relatively secular. It is now vying for acceptance in the European Union. In contrast, Turkey and Syria have been at odds for years, at times coming close to open confrontation, and Turkey and Iran have long been regional rivals. One area of tension between them is the conflict between Turkey’s pro-Western stand and Iran’s rigid theocracy. But their mutual wariness of the Kurds has transcended these divisions.

A European foreign minister, in a conversation last month, said that the “blowing up” of Israel’s alliance with Turkey would be a major setback for the region. He went on, “To avoid chaos, you need the neighbors to work as one common entity.”

The Israelis, however, view the neighborhood, with the exception of Kurdistan, as hostile. Israel is convinced that Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, and that, with Syria’s help, it is planning to bolster Palestinian terrorism as Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.

Iraqi Shiite militia leaders like Moqtada al-Sadr, the former American intelligence official said, are seen by the Israeli leadership as “stalking horses” for Iran—owing much of their success in defying the American-led coalition to logistical and communications support and training provided by Iran. The former intelligence official said, “We began to see telltale signs of organizational training last summer. But the White House didn’t want to hear it: ‘We can’t take on another problem right now. We can’t afford to push Iran to the point where we’ve got to have a showdown.’”

Last summer, according to a document I obtained, the Bush Administration directed the Marines to draft a detailed plan, called Operation Stuart, for the arrest and, if necessary, assassination of Sadr. But the operation was cancelled, the former intelligence official told me, after it became clear that Sadr had been “tipped off” about the plan. Seven months later, after Sadr spent the winter building support for his movement, the American-led coalition shut down his newspaper, provoking a crisis that Sadr survived with his status enhanced, thus insuring that he will play a major, and unwelcome, role in the political and military machinations after June 30th.

“Israel’s immediate goal after June 30th is to build up the Kurdish commando units to balance the Shiite militias—especially those which would be hostile to the kind of order in southern Iraq that Israel would like to see,” the former senior intelligence official said. “Of course, if a fanatic Sunni Baathist militia took control—one as hostile to Israel as Saddam Hussein was—Israel would unleash the Kurds on it, too.” The Kurdish armed forces, known as the peshmerga, number an estimated seventy-five thousand troops, a total that far exceeds the known Sunni and Shiite militias.

The former Israeli intelligence officer acknowledged that since late last year Israel has been training Kurdish commando units to operate in the same manner and with the same effectiveness as Israel’s most secretive commando units, the Mistaravim. The initial goal of the Israeli assistance to the Kurds, the former officer said, was to allow them to do what American commando units had been unable to do—penetrate, gather intelligence on, and then kill off the leadership of the Shiite and Sunni insurgencies in Iraq. (I was unable to learn whether any such mission had yet taken place.) “The feeling was that this was a more effective way to get at the insurgency,” the former officer said. “But the growing Kurdish-Israeli relationship began upsetting the Turks no end. Their issue is that the very same Kurdish commandos trained for Iraq could infiltrate and attack in Turkey.”

The Kurdish-Israeli collaboration inevitably expanded, the Israeli said. Some Israeli operatives have crossed the border into Iran, accompanied by Kurdish commandos, to install sensors and other sensitive devices that primarily target suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. The former officer said, “Look, Israel has always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way—as balance against Saddam. It’s Realpolitik.” He added, “By aligning with the Kurds, Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq, and Syria.” He went on, “What Israel was doing with the Kurds was not so unacceptable in the Bush Administration.”

Senior German officials told me, with alarm, that their intelligence community also has evidence that Israel is using its new leverage inside Kurdistan, and within the Kurdish communities in Iran and Syria, for intelligence and operational purposes. Syrian and Lebanese officials believe that Israeli intelligence played a role in a series of violent protests in Syria in mid-March in which Syrian Kurdish dissidents and Syrian troops clashed, leaving at least thirty people dead. (There are nearly two million Kurds living in Syria, which has a population of seventeen million.) Much of the fighting took place in cities along Syria’s borders with Turkey and Kurdish-controlled Iraq. Michel Samaha, the Lebanese Minister of Information, told me that while the disturbances amounted to an uprising by the Kurds against the leadership of Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, his government had evidence that Israel was “preparing the Kurds to fight all around Iraq, in Syria, Turkey, and Iran. They’re being programmed to do commando operations.”

The top German national-security official told me that he believes that the Bush Administration continually misread Iran. “The Iranians wanted to keep America tied down in Iraq, and to keep it busy there, but they didn’t want chaos,” he said. One of the senior German officials told me, “The critical question is ‘What will the behavior of Iran be if there is an independent Kurdistan with close ties to Israel?’ Iran does not want an Israeli land-based aircraft carrier”—that is, a military stronghold—“on its border.”

Another senior European official said, “The Iranians would do something positive in the south of Iraq if they get something positive in return, but Washington won’t do it. The Bush Administration won’t ask the Iranians for help, and can’t ask the Syrians. Who is going to save the United States?” He added that, at the start of the American invasion of Iraq, several top European officials had told their counterparts in Iran, “You will be the winners in the region.”

Israel is not alone in believing that Iran, despite its protestations, is secretly hard at work on a nuclear bomb. Early this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is responsible for monitoring nuclear proliferation, issued its fifth quarterly report in a row stating that Iran was continuing to misrepresent its research into materials that could be used for the production of nuclear weapons. Much of the concern centers on an underground enrichment facility at Natanz, two hundred and fifty miles from the Iran-Iraq border, which, during previous I.A.E.A. inspections, was discovered to contain centrifuges showing traces of weapons-grade uranium. The huge complex, which is still under construction, is said to total nearly eight hundred thousand square feet, and it will be sheltered in a few months by a roof whose design allows it to be covered with sand. Once the work is completed, the complex “will be blind to satellites, and the Iranians could add additional floors underground,” an I.A.E.A. official told me. “The question is, will the Israelis hit Iran?”

Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A. director, has repeatedly stated that his agency has not “seen concrete proof of a military program, so it’s premature to make a judgment on that.” David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who is an expert on nuclear proliferation, buttressed the I.A.E.A. claim. “The United States has no concrete evidence of a nuclear-weapons program,” Albright told me. “It’s just an inference. There’s no smoking gun.” (Last Friday, at a meeting in Vienna, the I.A.E.A. passed a resolution that, while acknowledging some progress, complained that Iran had yet to be as open as it should be, and urgently called upon it to resolve a list of outstanding questions.)

The I.A.E.A. official told me that the I.A.E.A. leadership has been privately warned by Foreign Ministry officials in Iran that they are “having a hard time getting information” from the hard-line religious and military leaders who run the country. “The Iranian Foreign Ministry tells us, ‘We’re just diplomats, and we don’t know whether we’re getting the whole story from our own people,’” the official said. He noted that the Bush Administration has repeatedly advised the I.A.E.A. that there are secret nuclear facilities in Iran that have not been declared. The Administration will not say more, apparently worried that the information could get back to Iran.

Patrick Clawson, of the Institute for Near East Policy, provided another explanation for the reluctance of the Bush Administration to hand over specific intelligence. “If we were to identify a site,” he told me, “it’s conceivable that it could be quickly disassembled and the I.A.E.A. inspectors would arrive”—international inspections often take weeks to organize—“and find nothing.” The American intelligence community, already discredited because of its faulty reporting on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, would be criticized anew. “It’s much better,” Clawson said, “to have the I.A.E.A. figure out on its own that there’s a site and then find evidence that there had been enriched material there.”

Clawson told me that Israel’s overwhelming national-security concern must be Iran. Given that a presence in Kurdistan would give Israel a way to monitor the Iranian nuclear effort, he said, “it would be negligent for the Israelis not to be there.”

At the moment, the former American senior intelligence official said, the Israelis’ tie to Kurdistan “would be of greater value than their growing alliance with Turkey. ‘We love Turkey but got to keep the pressure on Iran.’” The former Israeli intelligence officer said, “The Kurds were the last surviving group close to the United States with any say in Iraq. The only question was how to square it with Turkey.”

There may be no way to square it with Turkey. Over breakfast in Ankara, a senior Turkish official explained, “Before the war, Israel was active in Kurdistan, and now it is active again. This is very dangerous for us, and for them, too. We do not want to see Iraq divided, and we will not ignore it.” Then, citing a popular Turkish proverb—“We will burn a blanket to kill a flea”—he said, “We have told the Kurds, ‘We are not afraid of you, but you should be afraid of us.’” (A Turkish diplomat I spoke to later was more direct: “We tell our Israeli and Kurdish friends that Turkey’s good will lies in keeping Iraq together. We will not support alternative solutions.”)

“If you end up with a divided Iraq, it will bring more blood, tears, and pain to the Middle East, and you will be blamed,” the senior Turkish official said. “From Mexico to Russia, everybody will claim that the United States had a secret agenda in Iraq: you came there to break up Iraq. If Iraq is divided, America cannot explain this to the world.” The official compared the situation to the breakup of Yugoslavia, but added, “In the Balkans, you did not have oil.” He said, “The lesson of Yugoslavia is that when you give one country independence everybody will want it.” If that happens, he said, “Kirkuk will be the Sarajevo of Iraq. If something happens there, it will be impossible to contain the crisis.”

In Ankara, another senior Turkish official explained that his government had “openly shared its worries” about the Israeli military activities inside Kurdistan with the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “They deny the training and the purchase of property and claim it’s not official but done by private persons. Obviously, our intelligence community is aware that it was not so. This policy is not good for America, Iraq, or Israel and the Jews.”

Turkey’s increasingly emphatic and public complaints about Israel’s missile attacks on the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip is another factor in the growing tensions between the allies. On May 26th, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, announced at a news conference in Ankara that the Turkish government was bringing its Ambassador in Israel home for consultations on how to revive the Middle East peace process. He also told the Turkish parliament that the government was planning to strengthen its ties to the Palestinian Authority, and, in conversations with Middle Eastern diplomats in the past month, he expressed grave concern about Israel. In one such talk, one diplomat told me, Gul described Israeli activities, and the possibility of an independent Kurdistan, as “presenting us with a choice that is not a real choice—between survival and alliance.”

A third Turkish official told me that the Israelis were “talking to us in order to appease our concern. They say, ‘We aren’t doing anything in Kurdistan to undermine your interests. Don’t worry.’” The official added, “If it goes out publicly what they’ve been doing, it will put your government and our government in a difficult position. We can tolerate ‘Kurdistan’ if Iraq is intact, but nobody knows the future—not even the Americans.”

A former White House official depicted the Administration as eager—almost desperate—late this spring to install an acceptable new interim government in Iraq before President Bush’s declared June 30th deadline for the transfer of sovereignty. The Administration turned to Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy, to “put together something by June 30th—just something that could stand up” through the Presidential election, the former official said. Brahimi was given the task of selecting, with Washington’s public approval, the thirty-one members of Iraq’s interim government. Nevertheless, according to press reports, the choice of Iyad Allawi as interim Prime Minister was a disappointment to Brahimi.

The White House has yet to deal with Allawi’s past. His credentials as a neurologist, and his involvement during the past two decades in anti-Saddam activities, as the founder of the British-based Iraqi National Accord, have been widely reported. But his role as a Baath Party operative while Saddam struggled for control in the nineteen-sixties and seventies—Saddam became President in 1979—is much less well known. “Allawi helped Saddam get to power,” an American intelligence officer told me. “He was a very effective operator and a true believer.” Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former C.I.A. case officer who served in the Middle East, added, “Two facts stand out about Allawi. One, he likes to think of himself as a man of ideas; and, two, his strongest virtue is that he’s a thug.”

Early this year, one of Allawi’s former medical-school classmates, Dr. Haifa al-Azawi, published an essay in an Arabic newspaper in London raising questions about his character and his medical bona fides. She depicted Allawi as a “big husky man . . . who carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it, terrorizing the medical students.” Allawi’s medical degree, she wrote, “was conferred upon him by the Baath party.” Allawi moved to London in 1971, ostensibly to continue his medical education; there he was in charge of the European operations of the Baath Party organization and the local activities of the Mukhabarat, its intelligence agency, until 1975.

“If you’re asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does,” Vincent Cannistraro, the former C.I.A. officer, said. “He was a paid Mukhabarat agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff.” A cabinet-level Middle East diplomat, who was rankled by the U.S. indifference to Allawi’s personal history, told me early this month that Allawi was involved with a Mukhabarat “hit team” that sought out and killed Baath Party dissenters throughout Europe. (Allawi’s office did not respond to a request for comment.) At some point, for reasons that are not clear, Allawi fell from favor, and the Baathists organized a series of attempts on his life. The third attempt, by an axe-wielding assassin who broke into his home near London in 1978, resulted in a year-long hospital stay.

The Saban Center’s Flynt Leverett said of the transfer of sovereignty, “If it doesn’t work, there is no fallback—nothing.” The former senior American intelligence official told me, similarly, that “the neocons still think they can pull the rabbit out of the hat” in Iraq. “What’s the plan? They say, ‘We don’t need it. Democracy is strong enough. We’ll work it out.’”

Middle East diplomats and former C.I.A. operatives who now consult in Baghdad have told me that many wealthy Iraqi businessmen and their families have deserted Baghdad in recent weeks in anticipation of continued, and perhaps heightened, suicide attacks and terror bombings after June 30th. “We’ll see Christians, Shiites, and Sunnis getting out,” Michel Samaha, the Lebanese Minister of Information, reported. “What the resistance is doing is targeting the poor people who run the bureaucracy—those who can’t afford to pay for private guards. A month ago, friends of mine who are important landowners in Iraq came to Baghdad to do business. The cost of one day’s security was about twelve thousand dollars.”

Whitley Bruner, a retired intelligence officer who was a senior member of the C.I.A.’s task force on Iraq a decade ago, said that the new interim government in Iraq is urgently seeking ways to provide affordable security for second-tier officials—the men and women who make the government work. In early June, two such officials—Kamal Jarrah, an Education Ministry official, and Bassam Salih Kubba, who was serving as deputy foreign minister—were assassinated by unidentified gunmen outside their homes. Neither had hired private guards. Bruner, who returned from Baghdad earlier this month, said that he was now working to help organize Iraqi companies that could provide high-quality security that Iraqis could afford. “It’s going to be a hot summer,” Bruner said. “A lot of people have decided to get to Lebanon, Jordan, or the Gulf and wait this one out.”

Insurgents launched a broad, coordinated offensive against police and U.S. occupation forces in six Iraqi cities Thursday, exploding car bombs and assaulting police strongholds in a string of attacks that killed scores of Iraqi police and civilians, as well as three American soldiers.

The attacks, which began at dawn and raged through the morning, were the broadest and among the bloodiest in an insurgency that has intensified markedly in the weeks leading up to transfer of limited sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government, scheduled next Wednesday.

The Iraqi Health Ministry, which received tallies from hospitals around the country, estimated 85 Iraqis were killed and about 300 injured. U.S. officials said the toll may be as high as 100 dead.

The spread-out attacks, in a country still trying to reorganize its ripped-up government and security services, generated a flood of confusing and contradictory reports in Baghdad. But through the fog emerged a clear impression that insurgent forces have the strength, organization and support to mount multiple attacks in the face of 138,000 U.S. soldiers and, by Pentagon count, more than 200,000 Iraqi security forces trained under U.S. supervision.

Remember the dead:

Tyson, a graduate of Santa Maria High School on California's Central Coast, is also survived by his father, Lee Tyson, four sisters and one brother.

"He loved the military," said his cousin Sigmund Crews. "All of his e-mails spoke positively about his experiences in Iraq."

On the other hand, in Tracy, a Bay Area bedroom community on the edge of the Central Valley, the mother of slain soldier McCaffrey spoke of her son as someone whose initial enthusiasm over the mission in Iraq evolved into extreme disillusionment.

At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, McCaffrey, a married father of two children, ages 9 and 3, was a manager with a Silicon Valley collision repair company. Overcome with the desire to do something for his country, McCaffrey, who grew up in Sunnyvale, west of San Jose, enlisted in the National Guard.

"He wanted to make a difference," his mother, Nadia, said. But after he arrived in Iraq this spring, she said, McCaffrey quickly began to question the U.S. mission there.

"He was overwhelmed by the hatred there for Americans and Europeans," his mother said. "He was so ashamed by the prisoner abuse scandal. He even sent me an e-mail to tell me that not all the soldiers were like that. He said we had no business in Iraq and should not be there. Even so, he wanted to be a good soldier."

The Arab satellite TV network al-Jazeera aired a videotape Sunday from a group threatening to kill a U.S. Marine it claimed to have captured by luring him from his post, and two Americans and several Iraqi boys were among those killed across the country in a succession of attacks.

A Defense Department employee was killed when rifle shots were fired at a cargo plane taking off from Baghdad's main airport, and a U.S. soldier was killed in a rocket attack on a base on the outskirts of the city. The Iraqi boys were killed when they were hit by mortar shells that apparently missed their target.

Late Sunday, al-Jazeera broadcast a video showing a blindfolded man in military fatigues as well as photos that appeared to identify him as Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun. In a statement, the U.S. military said that Hassoun, a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, had been missing from his unit since June 21, but it could not confirm that he had been taken hostage. Al-Jazeera said a group calling itself Islamic Response claimed that it had captured the Marine. Unlike videos of two previous hostages who were beheaded, the broadcast tape had no audio.

Earlier Sunday, another Arab satellite television network, al-Arabiya, broadcast a video of a Pakistani hostage whom kidnappers identified as a driver for the U.S. military. A group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has asserted responsibility for much of the recent violence in Iraq, announced Saturday that three Turkish workers were also being held.

The occupation of Iraq has increasingly undermined the core tenets of President Bush's foreign policy, according to a wide range of Republican and Democratic analysts and U.S. officials.

In going to war 15 months ago, the president's Iraq policy rested on four broad principles: The United States should act preemptively to prevent strikes on U.S. targets. Washington should be willing to act unilaterally, alone or with a select coalition, when the United Nations or allies balk. Iraq was the next cornerstone in the global war on terrorism. And Baghdad's transformation into a new democracy would spark regionwide change.

But these central planks of Bush doctrine have been tainted by spiraling violence, limited reconstruction, failure to find weapons of mass destruction or prove Iraq's ties to al Qaeda, and mounting Arab disillusionment with U.S. leadership.

"Of the four principles, three have failed, and the fourth -- democracy promotion -- is hanging by a sliver," said Geoffrey Kemp, a National Security Council staff member in the Reagan administration and now director of regional strategic programs at the Nixon Center.

The president has "walked away from unilateralism. We're not going to do another preemptive strike anytime soon, certainly not in Iran or North Korea. And it looks like terrorism is getting worse, not better, especially in critical countries like Saudi Arabia," Kemp said.

As a result, Bush doctrine could become the biggest casualty of U.S. intervention in Iraq, which is entering a new phase this week as the United States prepares to hand over power to the new Iraqi government.

President Bush's trip to the NATO summit meeting in Turkey comes at a time of diminished diplomatic strength, in which international organizations and individual countries have forced his administration into some strategic compromises, foreign policy specialists and diplomats say.

As Mr. Bush tries to press NATO allies to play a greater role in Iraq, he faces resistance from critics of the administration's previously unilateral stances who worry that the Iraq mission may be on the brink of failure, those analysts said.

The resistance from normally friendly countries like Germany, France and Japan, and from international organizations long dominated by the United States, has forced the administration to rethink its plans for security in Iraq and for persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. "What we are seeing is other nations joining to resist U.S. unilateralism and exacting a higher price," said Cliff Kupchan, vice president of the Nixon Center, an institute in Washington created by former President Richard M. Nixon that specializes in foreign policy. "We've seen pounds of flesh being exacted before. Now it's an aggregate pound of flesh."

Mr. Kupchan said international skepticism and domestic pressure from Americans seeking a more collaborative role with the world had prompted the administration to adjust its tone. But it may be too late, he said. "I don't think you can turn around three years of U.S. foreign policy with some midnight initiatives," he said. "The image of this president in the public's and the world's eyes is pretty much established."

At a time of widespread anti-American feeling in the Islamic world, Mr. Bush also took pains to praise Turkey for building a secular democracy that could serve as an example to other predominantly Muslim nations.

Meeting with local Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, he also described Turkey as a country that had fostered tolerance between its Islamic majority and its minority religious groups. "They represent the very best of Turkey, which is a country that is secular in politics and strong in its faith," he said.

He ended his remarks by thanking the assembled Turkish religious figures "for being so faithful to the Almighty God."

For Americans, the price of occupation has already been far higher than the White House imagined — in dollars, loss of life and erosion of U.S. credibility in the world. Before the invasion, the Bush administration predicted the new Iraq would be a self-governing, self-financing country that, with a little help, would quickly become a stable, prosperous and reliable ally. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said it was "hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself." Under the Pentagon's initial timetable, most U.S. troops were supposed to be home by now.

But the administration's expectations turned out to be based on bad intelligence and wishful thinking. Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, deliberately sent the minimum number of troops necessary to Iraq, with little provision for unpleasant surprises. Bush and his aides, who disdained "nation-building," did little to plan for what has become their principal foreign policy problem.

As a result, the administration was unprepared when the reality of Iraq fell short of its ideal. After the invasion, Baghdad's police force and civil service disappeared overnight. Looters destroyed the government offices to which U.S. advisors had been told to report. The economy, the oil industry and public utilities were not self-starting. An underground insurgency launched by what occupation authorities called "former regime loyalists" grew, and Shiite radicals and Sunni nationalists began their own military efforts, the latter with assistance from foreign fighters.

U.S. fighting units designed and equipped for war against Hussein's conventional army attempted to retool to battle guerrillas. The results, predictably, were mixed. American soldiers with no experience in the Arab world and no facility with its language found themselves kicking in the doors of terrified villagers.

Some Bush administration officials acknowledge that many of their initial expectations turned out to be wrong. "Of all the things that were underestimated, the one that almost no one that I know of predicted … [was] the resilience of the regime that had abused this country for 35 years," Wolfowitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month.

As a result, the United States is likely to remain deeply engaged in Iraq, with many thousands of troops on the ground and billions of dollars in spending, for years to come. The cost thus far — the lives of 850 American troops and perhaps $120 billion — is certain to rise.

It is far from clear that this commitment will win the prizes the administration sought: a real democracy in Iraq, a stable U.S. ally in the Arab world, a vital political and military base for a larger war against terrorism.

Instead, the question now is whether the United States and its Iraqi allies can succeed in staving off a far worse outcome: a bloody, dispirited Iraq, riven by civil strife, hostile to Americans — and, in a worst-case scenario, hospitable to terrorists.

I must say, any time Wolfowitz has to eat his words in public is an enjoyable situation. I'd prefer he start choking on them, though.

$10 says the US attacks them if they do

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey’s prime minister told President Bush Sunday he expected the United States to take action against Kurdish militants holed up in northern Iraq, Anatolian news agency reported.

It said Bush responded by reiterating a pledge to act against the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been blamed for a recent upsurge in cross-border attacks on security forces in southeast Turkey. "Erdogan expressed Turkey’s unease about the terror group PKK and Bush said concrete steps would be taken on this subject," Anatolian reported sources as saying after the talks.

The U.S. and Turkey’s traditionally strong ties have been strained by Ankara’s fears the invasion of Iraq could stoke instability that would allow the Kurdish north to secede.

Ankara worries Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq might reignite separatist unrest in neighboring south-east Turkey among its estimated 12 million Kurkish minority.

Diplomats had expected Turkey to raise the issue with Bush but they doubt oft-repeated U.S. promises of action will amount to much given the extent of Washington’s other problems in Iraq.

Still, we must be blunt. BushCo's stance was to say that first the job was done and then to continually invoke the idea that there will be struggle and death towards the achievement of an evanescent goal which has shifted and mutated the more it is clear it was not going to be achieved according to Wolfowitz's idiot fever dreams in particular. The more that BushCo's stance is repeated, the more those words and beliefs must be seen as the cynical mouthings they are. They are trash used to try and obviate bad news when other approaches might have prevented the bad news to begin with.

I hope that November 2004 will settle the matter on BushCo's front in terms of having to listen to them as government representatives, at the least.