From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Talk about parroting distortions - the ultimate distortion is that a person
using free speech on our airwaves criticizing the bungling of this
administration is causing the Iraqis to not support their government. How
about a more realistic view of the Iraqi government or rather the
non-existance of one?


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH24Ak03.html

1: The Iraqi government - a group of 'talking heads' A minimally viable
central government is built on at least three foundations: the coercive
capacity to maintain order, an administrative apparatus that can deliver
government services and directives to society, and the resources to manage
these functions.

The Iraqi government has none of these attributes - and no prospect of
developing them. It has no coercive capacity. The national army we hear so
much about is actually trained and commanded by the Americans, while the
police forces are largely controlled by local governments and have few, if
any, viable links to the central government in Baghdad.

Only the Special Forces, whose death-squad activities in the capital have
lately been in the news, have any formal relationship with the elected
government; and they have more enduring ties to the US military that
created them and the Shi'ite militias who staffed them.

Administratively, the Iraqi government has no existence outside Baghdad's
heavily fortified Green Zone - and little presence within it. Whatever
local apparatus exists elsewhere in the country is run by local leaders,
usually with little or no loyalty to the central government and not
dependent on it for resources it doesn't, in any case, possess.

In Baghdad itself, this is clearly illustrated in the vast Shi'ite slum of
Sadr City, controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army and his elaborate
network of political clerics. (Even US occupation forces enter that
enormous swath of the capital only in large brigades, braced for
significant firefights.)

In the major city of the Shi'ite south, Basra, local clerics lead a
government that alternately ignores and defies the central government on
all policy issues from oil to women's rights; in Sunni cities such as Tal
Afar and Ramadi, where major battles with the Americans alternate with
insurgent control, the government simply has no presence whatsoever. In
Kurdistan in the north, the Kurdish leadership maintains full control of
all local governments.

As for resources, with 85% of the country's revenues deriving from oil, all
you really need to know is that oil-rich Iraq is also suffering from an
"acute fuel shortage" (including soaring prices, all-night lines
at fueling stations, and a deal to get help from neighboring Syria, which
itself has minimal refining capacity). The almost helpless Iraqi government
has had little choice but to accept the dictates of American advisers and
of the International Monetary Fund about exactly how and what energy
resources will be used. Paying off Saddam Hussein-era debt, reparations to
Kuwait from the Gulf War of 1990, and the needs of the US-controlled
national army have had first claim.

With what remains, so meager that it cannot sustain a viable administrative
apparatus in Baghdad, let alone the rest of the country, there is barely
enough to spare for the government leadership to line their own pockets.


"Mark"  wrote in message
news:44ed00ce$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>
> "Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
> news:44ecfa70{at}w3.nls.net...
>> I'm not the only one calling it a civil war.  Nor do I pine for the
>> incompetence of the Bush Administration whose actions were instrumental
>> in creating the conditions for those deaths
>
> Not you, but the Dems in office that continually carp and whine and
> intimate that they'll cut and run at the earliest opportunity (hell, it's
> not intimation, it's fact) are the ones causing greater death for our
> troops, for Iraqi citizens, and greater sectarian violence in general,
> because the average Iraqi watches their BS on TV at night and wonders if
> he should stand up for his new government, if the US is going to cut and
> run if the Dems take majorities. I can't say as I blame them. Let us pray
> the Dems don't get control, cause that's gonna cause one hell of a sea of
> glass in the middle-east. Bush has been trying to avoid that, the Dems are
> trying to ensure it.
>
>> http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/20/hagel-iraq-civil-war/
>> Today on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said that Iraq is in a
>> "very defined civil war" and that the Middle East is
"the most unstable
>> we've seen since 1948."
>
> Exactly. The status-quo was BS, instability was the goal.
>
>
>> It appears that commanders need permission from the White House to even
>> use the term 'civil war'. If one is not going on why would the term be
>> banned?
>
> If you'd followed the link I provided to the interview with the top Brit
> in Iraq in the previous message, you'd have read this:
>
> "I think it's very important that we talk -- we don't talk about civil
> war, because of itself it is -- it's inflammatory language. It is implying
> that the situation is worse than it is. It therefore encourages, amongst
> other things, adventurous media reporting. It could encourage a certain
> degree of despondency in the political constituencies of both of our
> countries.
>
> But above all, I simply don't think it is an accurate statement of the
> situation that we're currently involved in. And I'm sorry to sound as
> though I'm being sort of rather didactic in a military way, but I think
> it's important that we use the proper language to define the situations
> that we find ourselves in."
>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/21/AR2006082100
798.html
>> Former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, Ned Walker, said if military
>> commanders were talking about civil war they must have been given
>> permission from the White House to do so and Bush was testing public
>> opinion by uttering the phrase.
>
> He wasn't testing "public opinion," is that all this is to
you guys 24/7?
> Bush doesn't give a shit about public opinion, he ain't running for
> anything --- Damn why is that so hard to swallow? He was allowing them to
> breach the subject because so many dimbulbs have been uttering it non-stop
> for so long.
>
>> Of course now the term 'miniature civil war' has now been offered
>>
>> http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Aug22/0,4670,IraqBritishCommander,00.html
>> WASHINGTON - The British deputy to the top U.S. commander in Iraq said
>> Tuesday the country's sectarian conflict is not a full-blown civil war
>> but could be described as a"civil war in miniature."
>
> Again, *if* you'd read my previous link maybe you'd see some frigging
> context to that point; not just parrot some more distortions.
>
>
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5