Bush defends Iraq war on fifth anniversary

This is from the IHT. McCain talks of winning a major victory against Islamic radicalism. But the radicalism they are fighting in Iraq hardly existed during Saddam's reign. It was nurtured by the invasion itself! The Iraq war has been a huge boon for recruitment as far as Islamic radicalism is concerned.
Note that Bush fails to mention the fabled weapons of mass destruction that was the rationale for the invasion not overthrowing Hussein. Note that the right of the U.S. to overthrow any leader that it doesn't like is presupposed but not argued for. As Chomsky put it in an earlier post: The U.S. owns the world. I guess it can do what it likes with its property and no one would ever question their right to do so.
How else can one explain that Iran can be said to be meddling in Iraq affairs by a country that occupies Iraq, the U.S. The U.S. is not meddling because it owns Iraq and it has managed to get a UN resolution that gives it title until such time as the final ownership terms are negotiated with the government that was birthed by the occupiers.

Bush defends Iraq war on fifth anniversary
By Steven Lee Myers

Thursday, March 20, 2008
WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush used the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq to make the case for persevering in a conflict that could have many more anniversaries. Democrats accused him of lacking a strategy to win and withdraw.

Bush, speaking before troops, officers and defense officials at the Pentagon on Wednesday, in his frankest acknowledgment yet, said the costs of the war, in lives and money, had been higher and longer-lasting than he had anticipated.

But he remained unwavering in his insistence that the invasion of Iraq, which began in March 2003, had made the world better and the United States safer.

"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," he said. "The answers are clear to me. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight that America can and must win."

The anniversary starkly illustrated the divide between Bush and Democrats who control Congress - and between the Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, and the two senators seeking the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At a community college in Fayetteville, a military town in North Carolina, Obama noted that the war in Iraq had now lasted longer than the Civil War, World War I and World War II, although it has been fought on a far-lower scale than those conflicts.

"Where are we for all of this sacrifice?" he said. "We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained."

Clinton, appearing at an American Legion post in Huntington, West Virginia, argued for a cautious withdrawal of troops that would begin within 60 days of her taking office. "Every one of you who has served knows, withdrawing troops can be as dangerous as inserting them," she said.

By contrast, McCain, who visited Iraq this week, issued a statement saying that the United States and its allies in Iraq stood "on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism."

As it has in the past, the anniversary galvanized the critics of the war and, to a lesser degree, its supporters. Bush gave his speech as sporadic, relatively small but raucous protests erupted in Washington and in other cities, leading to dozens of arrests.

"How much longer?" read a banner along the president's route to the Pentagon across the Potomac.

Iraq has receded somewhat as an issue in the campaign. And the scale and fury of antiwar protests appeared to have diminished from just a year ago, before Bush ordered a "surge" of additional U.S. troops to Iraq that has resulted in a decline in overall violence there.

Still, the war stirs intense emotions on both sides. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said the war had damaged America's reputation, strained its military and now threatened its economy.

"With the war in Iraq entering its sixth year," she said in a statement, "Americans are rightly concerned about how much longer our nation must continue to sacrifice our security for the sake of an Iraqi government that is unwilling or unable to secure its own future."

Obama criticized both of his rivals, McCain and Clinton, for their initial votes for the war. "Here is the stark reality," he said."There is a security gap in this country - a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions."

He also seized on a gaffe McCain made on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan, when he confused the main branches of Islam and the support for each by Al Qaeda, a Sunni-dominated group, and Iran, a Shiite-majority nation. McCain corrected his statement after Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is traveling with him in the region, whispered in his ear. "Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades," Obama said. Obama said that as commander in chief he would begin withdrawing a brigade or two each month, beginning immediately. His plan, he said, would reduce the U.S. force in Iraq to only the number required to secure the U.S. Embassy and maintain a counterterrorist force. Even that, he acknowledged, would take until 2010.

The number of troops in Iraq is at the center of the administration's attention right now. The top U.S. commander, General David Petraeus, is scheduled to appear before Congress in April to present his recommendations on what to do after a withdrawal of the 30,000 additional troops ordered to Iraq by Bush last year.

Those troops brought the total number to a peak of more than 160,000; by summer, roughly 140,000 are expected to remain. Military and administration officials have indicated that there should be a pause in any further reductions to see whether security in Baghdad and other cities deteriorates. One administration official said on Wednesday that the outstanding question was how long a pause would last.

Bush said he had made no decision but indicated that he would be reluctant to hasten withdrawals. "Any further drawdown will be based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders," he said, "and they must not jeopardize the hard-fought gains our troops and civilians have made over the past year."

Bush announced the war's start from the Oval Office on the night of March 19, 2003, declaring that the United States would "not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." (It later became clear that those weapons did not exist.) His remarks each March 19 since have paralleled the ups and downs of the war. In 2004 he appeared in the East Room of the White House with dozens of foreign diplomats and cast the war as "the inescapable calling of our generation." By 2006, with the insurgency worsening along with ethnic and sectarian violence, he spoke alone for two minutes on the South Lawn and spent most of that time speaking of soldiers' sacrifices. "It's a time to reflect," he said. Bush's speech at the Pentagon on Wednesday will be his last presidential address on the anniversary, and he reflected at length on the overthrow of Saddam, the rise of the insurgency, the lurch toward civil war, and the decision to send more troops. The latter he declared a success, saying that it led the way to the decision by many Sunni Arabs to switch allegiances and join U.S. forces against extremists that U.S. officials say are foreign led. He called that the "the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden." "The challenge in the period ahead is to consolidate the gains we have made and seal the extremists' defeat," he went on. Vice President Dick Cheney, who declared in June 2005 that the insurgency was in "its last throes," also acknowledged on Wednesday that the war had "lasted longer than I would have anticipated," but he, too, defended the effort and brushed aside popular antiwar sentiment. When told in an interview with ABC News that two-thirds of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, Cheney replied, "So?" When pressed, he added: "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."


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Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

Al Sadr calls for resistance to US occupation

There doesn't seem to be much new in his message. His rallies on the anniversary of the war obviously are attracting large crowds. The rallies seem more or less peaceful. Sadr himself is not risking arrest by appearing. He may or may not be in Iran. This report is from Der Spiegel.


Al-Sadr Calls for Resistance Against the US
Thousands of Iraqis have turned out to protest US troops on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has issued his fiercest anti-American statement in months.

Anti-American protests called by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr filled a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad on Monday, as the government imposed a curfew in the capital to keep order on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The April 9 demonstrations marked the day in 2003 when US Marines and the Army's 3rd Infantry Division took Baghdad. Thousands of demonstrators marched from Kufa to the holy city of Najaf, waving Iraqi flags and chanting, "No, no to America, yes, yes to Moqtada," with police lining the demonstration route. They weren't allowed to protest in Baghdad.


Photo Gallery: Iraqis Protest US Troops
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (7 Photos)

Al-Sadr -- who is in hiding -- had exhorted his followers over the weekend to attend the protests and end the recent fighting in the Shiite city of Diwaniya, where US forces began a mission on Friday to oust his Mahdi Army militia. Al-Sadr blamed the US for the continuing violence and said, in a statement distributed in Najaf on Sunday, "You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy ... God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them -- not against the sons of Iraq."

It wasn't an outright call to arms, but it was al-Sadr's most aggressive anti-American rhetoric since a security crackdown in Baghdad drove him underground almost two months ago.

The crackdown intensified on Monday. Vehicle traffic was banned in Baghdad starting at 5 a.m., but cars full of protesters flowed out of the capital city before the curfew to demonstrate elsewhere. The government on Sunday had cancelled the April 9 holiday, but quickly recinded the decree.


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"There will be protests marking the fourth anniversary," said Iraqi Army Brigadier Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the latest US-Iraqi security mission in Baghdad, to explain the vehicle curfew. "We don't want to give the terrorists a chance to use this opportunity."

Al-Sadr has officially been ordering members of his Mahdi Army militia to disarm ever since the crackdown started in Baghdad in mid-February. But his anti-American rhetoric hasn't slackened, and some of the violence has moved to Shiite towns in the Diyala province south of Baghdad, like Diwaniya. On Sunday a car bomb in another such town, Mahmudiya, killed 17 people and wounded two dozen while in Baghdad, the bodies of 17 people, some apparently tortured, were found across the city in the last 24 hours. The US military on Monday announced the deaths of 10 soldiers in Iraq over the weekend including six on Sunday.

The Iraqi government called last week for a broadening of the crackdown to other cities.

Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI released an Easter message on Sunday lamenting violence in Africa and the Middle East and decrying the "continual slaughter" in Iraq.

Anniversary of Iraq War

This is from a Bulgarian news agency.


Iraq bitter and divided for invasion anniversary



20 March 2007 | 04:57 | FOCUS News Agency



Baghdad. Iraq on Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion with signs of growing bitterness against American troops and a new act of recrimination against Saddam Hussein's regime.
In the four years since the launch of the "shock and awe" military campaign just before dawn on March 20, 2003, Iraq has descended into a sectarian hell that has left tens of thousands of civilians dead, AFP reports.
At 5:35 am on that day, Tomahawk missiles and precision-guided bombs rained down on Baghdad targets as Saddam vowed that this would be "Iraq's last battle against the tyrannous villains."
On April 9, the Iraqi strongman's statue in a central square was torn down with a rope around the neck, in a premonition of his own hanging last December 30 after his convictionn for crimes against humanity.
His vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, was to follow him to the gallows on on Tuesday's anniversary, a lawyer from Saddam's defence team said.
US President George W. Bush, facing growing anti-war protests, pleaded for patience on Monday with his unpopular Iraq strategy and Washington's revamped efforts to restore order.
"The Baghdad security plan is still in its early stages and success will take months, not days or weeks," the embattled president said.
"It could be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home. That may be satisfying in the short run, but I believe the consequences for American security would be devastating."
Despite Bush's warnings, a new poll showed US public opinion on Iraq had soured further, with just 32 percent of Americans saying they favoured the war, compared to 72 percent on the eve of conflict four years ago.
And despite recent claims by the Bush administration that the month-old US troop surge in Baghdad was beginning to work, another poll by Western media organisations told a story of Iraqi pessimism.
Only 18 percent of Iraqis had confidence in US and coalition troops, while 78 percent opposed their presence, 69 percent said their presence made security worse and 51 percent said attacks on coalition forces were justified.
Protests have been staged across the United States and in several European cities and Japan, against the war that was originally based on a premise of eliminating weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
Commanders are now pouring 25,000 reinforcements into Baghdad to quell Sunni-Shiite fighting, the bloodiest element of the conflict and one which even the Pentagon admits amounts to civil war.
In western and northern Iraq, Al-Qaeda militants pursue their brutal insurgency against the US-backed government, while in the south and centre Shiite militias jostle for supremacy and control of oil resources.
The launch of the joint US-Iraqi security plan in Baghdad has driven some sectarian death squads from the streets, but car bombs still explode every day, scattering bodies and bloodied debris through crowded markets.
"There has been a steady decline in the Iraq situation since the invasion. Things have gone from bad to worse," said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director for the International Crisis Group, a respected think tank.
The raw figures do not tell the whole story of a complex crisis, but they make grim reading.
Since the conflict began, two million Iraqis have fled the country and 1.8 million have been displaced within its borders, according to figures compiled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties in the past four years vary wildly, but the Iraq Body Count website's figure of 58,800 is among the more conservative. The Baghdad government said 1,440 people were killed in January alone.
At least 3,203 American, 132 British and 124 other coalition soldiers have also died since the invasion.
Iraqi officials point to a constitution, endorsed by referendum, and the creation of a national unity government by an elected parliament -- with 25 percent of its members women -- as signs of progress since the dictator's fall.
US commanders, with a wary eye on plummeting public and political support for the war back home, also point to reconstruction and economic development efforts as the great untold story of the war.
Nevertheless, the violence and the corruption that has dogged Iraq's post-invasion reconstruction have delayed much progress in terms of utilities such as electricity supplies.
And a series of US security operations has so far failed to fill the security vacuum caused by Washington's decision to disband Iraq's Saddam-era armed forces which opened the field to Al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed militia.

Juan Cole: Celebrating Bush's Mistakes in Iraq

This is copied from Juan Cole's website. We could probably each add our own favorite mistakes. How about adding a photo of Bush on board that ship claiming that the mission was accomplished when things were hardly even started!

Bush's Top Ten Mistakes in Iraq during the Past 4 Years

10. Refusing to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when his incompetence and maliciousness became apparent in the growing guerrilla war and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

9. Declining to intervene in the collapsed economy or help put Iraqi state industries back on a good footing, on the grounds that the "market" would magically produce prosperity effortlessly.

8. Invading and destroying the Sunni Arab city of Fallujah in November, 2004, thus pushing the Sunni Arabs into the arms of the insurgency in protest and ensuring that they would boycott the January, 2005, parliamentary elections, a boycott that excluded them from power and from a significant voice in crafting the new constitution, which they then rejected.

7. Suddenly announcing that the US would "kill or capture" young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in spring, 2004, throwing the country into massive turmoil for months.

6. Replying to Baathist guerrilla provocations with harsh search and destroy missions that humiliated and angered ever more Sunni Arab clans, driving them to support or join the budding guerrilla movement.

5. Putting vengeful Shiites in charge of a Debaathification Commission that fired tens of thousands of mostly Sunni Arab state employees simply for having belonged to the Baath Party, leaving large numbers of Sunnis penniless and without hope of employment.

4. Dissolving the Iraqi Army in May, 2003, and sending 400,000 men home, unemployed, resentful and heavily armed.

3. Allowing widespread looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, on the grounds that "stuff happens," "democracy is messy," and "how many vases can they have?"-- and thus signalling that there would be no serious attempt to provide law and order in American Iraq.

2. Plotting to install corrupt financier, notorious liar, and shady operator Ahmad Chalabi as the soft dictator of Iraq, and refusing to plan for a post-war administration of the country because that might forestall Chalabi's coronation.

1. Invading Iraq

A Russian View: Iraq War Anniversary

The article is correct about the withdrawal bill not passing Senate. The article is definitely wrong about the Bush administration pretending their is progress in Iraq. It is still doing that constantly especially concerning the surge.

Opinion & analysis
The Iraqi blunder: four years on
14:15 | 20/ 03/ 2007




MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov) - On March 20, 2003 American bombs fell on Baghdad, signaling the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or in less exalted terms, the Iraqi war.

Now, four years later, this mission could be renamed Operation Iraqi Chaos. By different estimates, it has killed from 60,000 to 300,000 Iraqis, and plunged the country into what seems to be the fiercest civil war now under way in the Middle East.

America has already paid through the nose for this historic blunder - 3,217 soldiers killed, another 24,000 badly wounded, and $500 billion to fund the hostilities. But the time of the final toll has not yet come.

The world commemorated the gloomy anniversary with a weekend of antiwar marches and rallies involving thousands of people from New York to San Francisco, and from Madrid to Melbourne. The most popular posters were "Drop Bush, Not Bombs," and "Four Years Is Too Long."

There is probably only one man who could sip champagne to celebrate the lucky events, if his faith allowed this by way of exception: Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader.

He knows better than anyone else that the U.S. operation in Iraq has made only one contribution to the President George W. Bush-declared war on terror - it diverts energy and funds from the implementation of this global task. These resources could be used much more effectively somewhere in Afghanistan or South-East Asia. Today's Baghdad is not the frontline of the war against al-Qaeda. It is the favorite meeting-ground of its foot soldiers, and a symbol of their unity.

In these four years, U.S. political circles have dramatically changed their attitude to the use of force in Iraq. At one time, the U.S. Congress blessed the invasion in opposition to the UN. A majority in both chambers, including presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, voted for the war in the belief that it would save America from another September 11. Members of Congress reflected the views of their electorate - in March 2003 two-thirds of the U.S. population gave unqualified support to the Iraqi coalition's military actions.

Today, America has changed beyond recognition. A joint AP-Ipsos poll has shown that six out of ten Americans consider the Iraqi war a mistake and would like to end it as soon as possible.

The respondents are prone to think that American society has changed its attitude to the war because it has proved to be different from what they expected. It was not caused by the declared casus belli; Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the war was conducted by methods that are not appropriate for a country that claims to be the world messiah of democracy. It is enough to recall the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or the bloodbath of November 19, 2006 in Haditha, a village to the north of Baghdad, where an American patrol murdered 24 Iraqi civilians, including a 76 year-old man and a three-year-old child.

Finally, the battle for Iraq's liberation has degenerated into a conflict that even the Pentagon today recognizes as a civil war. There are grounds to think that America does not have enough soldiers to stop the mounting ethnic strife in Iraq. In the remaining year and a half, the Bush administration is unlikely to even pretend there is any progress in Iraq.

Capitol Hill, which the war has allowed the Democrats to take control of, is trying to reflect the reality in a new bill. It is designed to link the funding of additional troops in Iraq with the withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq no later than September 1, 2008, if not earlier. The troops will leave Iraq because the Iraqi authorities are unable to honor their commitments.

Most probably, the bill will be voted down in the Senate, which has an insignificant Democratic majority. Even if it passes both chambers, it will be vetoed by President Bush. His national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, has told the legislators that their initiative could turn Iraq into a terrorist paradise, as if this has not happened already.

The Iraqi saga has changed America's entire political landscape, with only one exception - the Bush administration continues to believe that it is possible to win a war on the other side of the globe.