iraq

George Bush never ceases to amaze.  Being the most irrelevant and least popular President in living memory is clearly not enough for this admirable polymath; he's now become the first person in history to genuinely provably exist at 180 degrees to reality.  What else can one conclude from this gem: after months of praising himself and his buddies for reducing violence in Iraq, he's now praising himself and his buddies for increasing violence in Iraq.

“It was a very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law,”

After all, there's nothing that speaks louder of a strong, united democracy than its ability to start a civil war.

On the subject of the British troops still sitting at the airport with their collective thumbs up their arses waiting for Mr. Brown to do the decent thing (don't hold your breath, lads), the Decider has these words of comfort:

Mr Bush said that the pullback had been “based upon success” in quelling violence

Yes, our success in quelling violence has created the room for a successful transition to violence.  Meretricious, George!  Even better, the British strategy of pullback and pullout as soon as decently possible has created the perfect conditions for our own surge right back into Basra!:

"Three big militias are currently engaged in a particularly bloody battle in southern Iraq.

"U.S. and Iraqi forces are involved in a huge operation to attack an Al-Qaeda stronghold in Mosul.

"But after that, the plan is to turn the coalition's attention on to Basra and we will be urging the British to surge into the city."

So, to sum up, the Blairwatch understanding of things is:

Some Iraqis (A), acting entirely on their own after a visit from Dick Cheney have offensively gone on the defensive by sending thousands of troops against some other Iraqis (B) who are viciously staying exactly where they have been for months under a ceasefire.  Iraqis A, deeply unpopular in their own country, backed by the even more unpopular US military machine and whose political origins lie mainly with Iran, are going to reduce malevolent Iranian influence and strengthen Iraqi democracy by destroying Iraqis B, a nationalist resistance movement led by a hugely popular home-grown avowedly anti-Saddam, anti-Iranian, pro-Iraqi figurehead.  This policy will if necessary be supported by a significant surge in troops from a key ally that doesn't actually have any troops to send and won't send any of the ones it does have in a million years.

You've got to hand it to Dubya, when it comes to taking the biscuit he goes right out there and buys the McVities factory.

Once again the British government responds to allegations of torture - This time by a former SAS soldier by a serious investigation issuing a gagging order against him.

In this move we turn from being a modern state and debase ourselves down to the standards of a tinpot dictator.

This is not the action of a govenrment with nothing to hide.

*UPDATE* Full Statement

This statement was prepared and read by Ben Griffin, ex-SAS soldier, at a press conference on Monday 25 February 2008.

Our government would have us believe that our involvement in the process known as Extraordinary Rendition is limited to two occasions on which planes carrying detainees landed to refuel on the British Indian Ocean Territory, Diego Garcia. David Miliband has stated that the British Government expects the Government of the United States to “seek permission to render detainees via UK territory and airspace, including Overseas Territories; that we will grant that permission only if we are satisfied that the rendition would accord with UK law and our international obligations; and how we understand our obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture¹.” (Taken from a statement given to the House of Commons by the Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Thursday 21 February 2008)

The use of British Territory and airspace pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of Extraordinary Rendition in the first place. Since the invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 UKSF has operated within a joint US/UK Task Force. This Task Force has been responsible for the detention of hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq. Individuals detained by British soldiers within this Task force have ended up in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, Balad Special Forces Base, Camp Nama BIAP and Abu Ghraib Prison.

Whilst the government has stated its desire that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed, it has remained silent over these other secretive prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinately without charge. All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions, International Law and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Early involvement of UKSF in the process of Extraordinary Rendition centres around operations carried out in Afghanistan in late 2001. Of note is an incident at the Qalai Janghi fortress, near Mazar-i-Sharif. UKSF fought alongside their US counterparts to put down a bloody revolt by captured Taliban fighters. The surviving Taliban fighters were then rendered to Guantanamo Bay.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003 this joint US/UK task force appeared. Its primary mission was to kill or capture high value targets. Individuals detained by this Task Force often included non-combatants caught up in the search for high value targets. The use of secret detention centres within Iraq has negated the need to use Guantanamo Bay whilst allowing similar practice to go unnoticed.

I have here an account taken from an interpreter interviewed by the organisation Human Rights Watch (http://hrw.org/reports/2006/us0706/2.htm). He was based at the detention and interrogation facility within Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport during 2004. This facility was used to interrogate individuals captured by the joint US/UK Task Force. In it are the details of numerous breaches of the Geneva Convention and accounts of torture. These breaches were not the actions of rogue elements the abuse was systematic and sanctioned through the chain of command. This account is corroborated by an investigation carried out by NYT reporters into Camp Nama and the US/UK Task Force, which appeared in the New York Times on March 19 2006. Throughout my time in Iraq I was in no doubt that individuals detained by UKSF and handed over to our American colleagues would be tortured. During my time as member of the US/UK Task Force, three soldiers recounted to me an incident in which they had witnessed the brutal interrogation of two detainees. Partial drowning and an electric cattle prod were used during this interrogation and this amounted to torture. It was the widely held assumption that this would be the fate of any individuals handed over to our America colleagues. My commanding officer at the time expressed his concern to the whole squadron that we were becoming “the secret police of Baghdad”.

As UK soldiers within this Task Force a policy that we would detain individuals but not arrest them was continually enforced. Since it was commonly assumed by my colleagues that anyone we detained would subsequently be tortured this policy of detention and not arrest was regarded as a clumsy legal tool used to distance British soldiers from the whole process.

During the many operations conducted to apprehend high value targets numerous non-combatants were detained and interrogated in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civilians in occupied territories. I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.

The joint US/UK Task Force has broken International Law, contravened The Geneva Conventions and disregarded the UN Convention Against Torture. British soldiers are intimately involved in the actions of this Task Force. Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett David Miliband, Geoff Hoon, Des Browne, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown. In their respective positions over the last five years they must know that British soldiers have been operating within this joint US/UK task force. They must have been briefed on the actions of this unit.

As the occupiers of Iraq we have a duty to uphold the law, to abide by the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture. We are also responsible for securing the borders of Iraq on all counts we have failed. The British Army once had a reputation for playing by the rules. That reputation has been tarnished over the last seven years. We have accepted illegality as the norm. I have no doubt that over the coming months and years increasing amounts of information concerning the actions of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be become public.

Whilst the majority of British Forces have been withdrawn from Iraq, UKSF remain within the US/UK Task Force.

¹Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.”

Ben Griffin
25 February 2008

The narrative of the post-Blair UK policy in Iraq is fairly simple - declare victory and leave, preferably without seeing anything disturbing on the way out, like a nascent Shia theocratic regime with large amounts of oil.  The latest definition of victory comes from head of the interestingly named 'Basra Development Commission', who is of course a Brown appointee from the inexhaustible supply of bankers and financiers that he uses on these occasions, one Michael Wareing (KPMG).  Apparently:

Wareing, 53, told The Observer that security had improved significantly
in recent months and was no longer an issue for investors. 'If you look
at many other economies in the world, particularly the oil-rich
economies, many of these places are quite challenging countries in
which to do business,' he said. 'Frankly, if you can successfully
operate in the Niger Delta, that is a very different benchmark from
imagining that Basra needs to be like London or Paris.'

Hang on, what was Kim Howells saying the other year?  Ah, yes, March 2006:

"People describe Iraq as a mess,"
"But it is a mess that can't launch an attack now on Iran; a mess that
won't be able to march into Kuwait; it's a mess that can't develop
nuclear weapons. So yes it's a mess but it's starting to look like the sort of
 mess that most of us live in."

[I'd forgotten that he said that invading Iraq would reduce the chances of an invasion of Iran.  Ho ho ho.]

What Mr. Wareing is actually saying is 'you don't need to have security and stability to pull the oil out, you just need to provide enough security in the right places, and fuck the locals'.  This is essentially what happens in the Niger delta, and is evidently Western capital's idea of a good place to do business.  Something's very, very wrong with the morals of the Brown government if they think that this attitude is how you do international development.

Meanwhile, what's really happening in Basra?  The conventional view, that Moqtada Sadr just gets stronger by waiting, is still holding true, he's renewed his ceasefire and seems to be waiting for the next elections which could well ratify his increasingly powerful position.  He is, of course, not the kind of chap our suits want to do business with, but he ticks all the boxes for Iraq - a Shia nationalist with proper anti-Saddam credentials, apparently reasonable relations with the Sunnis (his distance from Iran helps here), not involved in the current corrupt puppet government, enjoys mass support and who wants foreign troops out now.  W. Pat Lang has an interesting piece on him here.

Meanwhile, actually on the ground there [via Juan Cole]:

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the governor of Basra,  
Muhammad Misbah al-Wa'ili, has charged the Iranian deputy consul
in that city of plotting his, al-Wa'ili's, assassination. He demanded
that the central government look into the charges. He said that the
Iranian consulate gave a large sum of money to one of his body guards
to discover his exact itinerary.

and, quoting the same Observer that's printing enthuasiastic bullshit from Brown's man:

Last week four British soldiers were injured, one seriously, by a
roadside bomb during a night patrol and three contractors, two Indian
and one Sri Lankan, died on the British base after it was hit by 19
rockets in 24 hours. Two private security company staff were injured
after a visit to the Basra Children's Hospital. Negotiations for the
release of a kidnapped British photojournalist continued without a
breakthrough.

In other words, the people we handed over to aren't in charge and the usual militia mob who forced us out to the airport are now trying to finish the job.  Still, we can be thankful that 'it's no longer an issue for investors', eh?

Tony Blair, eh?  Tony Bloody Blair.  In the middle of a banking crisis prompted by greed and chicanery, the master of greed and chicanery picks up not one but two jobs with big financial organisations.  Amazing.  Anyone would think they'd picked him for who he knows rather than what he knows - after all, banks need all the friends they can get just now (right, Darling?).

On the other hand, the Telegraph reports that JP Morgan don't actually expect him to turn up.  I don't know about you, but paying £2m a year to keep Tony out of the office sounds like a good investment for almost anybody.  Think of it as protection money - if only Saddam had paid up, presumably, Tony would have invaded someone else.  Watch out for him in your neighbourhood if you haven't got the requisite finance.

Talking of Iraq, TYR has a typically incisive analysis of why and how the 'surge' failed, based on sound military principles of deployment of reserves.  George and the neocons, true to their principles, basically gambled the US Army away for a short-term boost in domestic ratings, while blathering on about the desirability of a strong USA capable of imposing its will on the world.  The key thing is to ask your local tiresome neocon apologist is why, if the surge is such a wise all-conquering strategy, they've got themselves into a position where it's the only weapon they can't use any more, any where but the fire is still burning.  That's before we even get round to mentioning Afghanistan.

Tony's decided that he does 'do God' after all. He praises the American system where politicians talk openly about God - or rather right wing Christianity - indeed it is obligatory.

But the chilling quote is this

Tony may 'do God', but will he ever 'do consequences'?

Meanwhile, God's more traditional spokesmen are also giving interviews such as this thoughtful piece on Rowan Williams (pdf):

So far, neither Tony or The Almighty has explained why God was telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope that going to war in Iraq was wrong, but was telling Tony to go bomb the bastards.

And that is why we should keep religion out of politics.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
As occasionally happens on blogs, a random comment on a wholly different topic (the return of refugees to Iraq, which whatever your views has got to be seen as positive) matches up with something important we're already interested in.  In this case, a piece on the estimable SST (required reading, I think) brings in another snippet illustrating how urgent getting Iraqi employees of British (and indeed US) forces out of the area has become:

I think we've all come to terms with Tony's utter belief in his decision to go to war in Iraq. He'll probably defend it to his dying breath. However it's still difficult to read or hear any of his pronouncements on his legacy. Remember that? The L word was the driving force behind the last year in office, where he was clinging on by his fingertips.

Various accounts have come out and I think pleading, begging and groveling were a more accurate description of his inner circle. What remains terrifying is how one man could ignore all the advice he was given and push the nation into war.

What's changed?

The Clunking Fist has also shown the same dogmatic tendency, with the briefing against  Lord Malloch Brown, the duffing up of Admiral Lord West on the Prime Ministerial sofa and the happy slapping of the Boy Miliband shows that nothing has changed, nothing has improved.

More from the Independent/Times snippeting of Andrew Seldon's book on Blair.  OK, obviously we're getting the tasty bits, but indulge us:

Quite right too.  After all, the one adjective we never use about Tony Blair's foreign policy record is 'pathetic'.  We usually don't have enough space after running through murderous, larcenous, imperialistic, neo-colonial, neo-conservative, kleptocratic, illegal, ill-judged, dodgy, wasteful, detrimental, deceitful dishonest, two-faced, insincere, untruthful, mendacious, double-dealing...

Any more?

This was a very interesting meeting and I'm glad I was able to attend. My only regret was that I didn't take any notes so this is largely from memory. First of all, much kudos to Dan Hardie for working so hard to make this meeting happen and for chairing it so well. The speakers at the meeting were:

• Richard Beeston, senior Foreign Correspondent for ‘The Times’ newspaper
• Mark Brockway, a former Warrant Officer in the Territorial Royal Engineers, who ran the British Army’s Quick Impact Reconstruction Projects in 2003 and who hired a great many Iraqi staff in 2003.
• Ed Vaizey MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
• Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhondda
• Lynne Featherstone MP, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for International Development
• Andrew Alderson, banker responsible for reconstruction projects in Basra

Richard Beeston spoke about the important work Iraqi interpreters do for the military and also for journalists and diplomats. The Times has provided the best media coverage by far on the plight of Iraqi employees and the moral obligation Britain has to protect them. From Richard Beeston's speech it was evident that the plight of Iraqi employees is an issue close to his heart. He has reported on last night's meeting in today's edition of The Times with an excellent article that highlights the problems with David Miliband's offer in a concise way.

Mark Brockway spoke at some length on his experiences in Basra working with Iraqi interpreters. He was passionate about the problem and showed a Power Point presentation which outlined various aspects of the issue in great detail. He stressed the urgency of solving this issue now as former employees are in hiding while death squads tour the Basra region looking for them and threatening their families. Mark also relayed the close relationship military personnel have with their interpreters and recounted some incidences where they actually saved British lives. From his presentation and speech, Mark showed just how inadequate David Miliband's announcement is. It is impossible for many of the Iraqi employees to prove that they have been working for the British for 12 months because of the chaotic record keeping of the British. Added to this problem is the fact that many interpreters move to different employers. For instance, an interpreter may work for six months with a British regiment then move to work in a diplomatic capacity or translate for the Americans - and nearly always under a false name. Mr Brockway also highlighted the extreme difficulties of moving to Syria or Jordan in order to get asylum.

Conservative MP, Ed Vaizey stressed the cross-party support for the plight of Iraqi employees and how this is a moral issue rather than a political one. This sentiment was echoed by Labour MP,Chris Bryant and Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone. All three MPs acknowledged the important points about the danger of the '12 month' stipulation but that as frontbenchers they aren't free to criticise this without checking with their bosses, as it's an implicit commitment to a new policy. However, they all showed a keen interest to learn more and continue to campaign. Chris Bryant invited campaigners to email him with important points which ought to be raised and Lynne Featherstone drafted an Early Day Motion (EDM) for MPs to sign.

Andrew Alderson is a banker who was responsible for the allocation of funds for reconstruction projects in the Basra region. He has written a book on his experiences called Bankrolling Basra which has just shot up to the top of my list of books I want to read. Mr Alderson spoke of the problems he had in protecting the Iraqis he employed, particularly his personal assistant who was shot three times and left for dead while people close to her were murdered. She has now found asylum in Australia. She was further endangered by being visited by military personnel while recovering in a Basra hospital. This story outlined another part of the problem. If someone is wounded or killed while out on patrol with the British army, for instance, it is reported as such. However if an Iraqi employee is murdered on his or her way home, away from military or diplomatic installations, it is merely chalked up as just another murder in a lawless area.

There is a new website which has information about the campaign to grant asylum to Iraqi employees. It's called We Owe It To Them and it has details of the dangers faced by these people and their families. It is well worth viewing and supporting.

Among the people in the audience was an Iraqi exile, Mazin, who had worked for a Kuwaiti construction firm which constructed US bases. He gave a passionate speech on the difficulties in finding asylum and the horrors experienced by his friends and family. It was very moving and did much to ram home the message of the urgent need to solve this problem.

Here is a Radio Five clip with Dan Hardie explaining the inadequacies of the Government's current position on asylum for Iraqi employees of the British armed forces (courtesy of Ministry Of Truth).

More bloggage on this from David Cole, Sunny Hundal in CiF, Yorkshire Ranter (I'll add the reports of other bloggers as I find them).

For those unfamiliar with this campaign, here are some pointers.

1. Watch the video.
2. Write to your MP.
3. Let us know if you get a response.
4. Sign the petition.
5. Join the growing list of supporters.

OK.  Here's how it goes (I think):

1) We welcome General Petraeus' report on how wonderful things are if you put lots of troops in and patrol intensively out in the streets
2) We notice how wonderful things are in Basra now we've taken lots of troops out and stopped patrolling intensively in the streets
3) We win either way
4) We can get out now

'Declare-victory-and-leave was always going to be the exit strategy of choice, of course.  Odd that Mr. Brown seems to think that we've got to stay to see through the UN mandate, since it expires on the 31st December, and besides we were one of the countries that wrote it in the first place!  So Gladstonian!

[incidentally, it behoves all of us to read the bloody mandate, since Chairman Brown thinks it's so important.]

Whiff.  Smell it?  Apply for a 'package of financial packages', forsooth.  What's next, apply for a free tube of polyfilla to fill up the drill holes in your skull?  The timing is excellent of course, the MPs who go along tomorrow evening to the meet-the-bastard-bloggers festival can say a) Gordon's Doing Something and b) We'll Know Later This Week Exactly What.  Brilliant!  Masterful!

Bollocks.

Update - the meeting venue has changed, and you'll never guess who's behind it:

I'm almost tempted to turn up in the wrong room, just to give the Clockwork Orange a piece of my mind.

Update to Update

The Ranter has the relevant textual snippet:

Interesting story, about Air New Zealand secretly flying trooping missions for the US in Iraq and how much the NZ Government knew.  It's interesting for what it reveals about the Coalition of the Willing and how Bush works internationally, as well as an interesting insight into Aussie-NZ relations (which as anyone whose met a couple of them, aren't always the best):

Ladies!  Please!
[via]

So it was 1000 troops home by Christmas, not 2000 as leaked last night, but the effect is the same, take the Tories off the front page, answer the burgeoning 'support the troops' groundswell from the right and shoot the Lib Dems anti-war fox.  It's a (partial) victory for anti-war campaigners - if Brown didn't think troop withdrawal was a more popular policy than 'staying the course' he wouldn't be doing it.  You can always trust a politician to act in his own self interest and Brown's evidently interested in having an election that will have no talking points at all and no one to mention Mr. Blair's little Middle East adventure.  He doesn't do debate, conflict or old-fashioned electioneering, after all, he wants the Labour leadership 'election' writ large across the UK.

It's another break with Bush, too, Bush isn't remotely bothered by the astonishingly low level of support for the war at home, because he has no more elections to fight.  Brown, with a clear desire for Blair-free mandate, evidently is, and pulling troops back from Basra, back from patrolling and ultimately back to barracks is going to help avoid the dreadful trickle of clearly pointless UK casualties during a possible election campaign.  Except from Afghanistan, of course, but I think he'll keep that one going - public support is nowhere near as low as for Iraq.

A good set of comments on yesterday's Sy Hersh thread lead me to write a comment of my own, which rather grew, so it's a post.

I'm still not convinced that Brown's going to back an attack on Iran:

 * Brown the Atlanticist - he's much more of an Atlanticist than Blair ever was - Blair's meeting of minds with Bush had nothing to do with admiration for the American Way Of Life, since Bush has shown complete disregard for that, merely using the US for its power and wealth to meet his own ends (which are varied, but seem to boil down to both cheap oil , enriching cronies and imperial ambition at home and abroad).  I'm using 'Bush' here as neat shorthand for the whole AEI/AIPAC/Cheney nexus that seems to be at the bottom of what's been fucking things up, no one can argue that Bush came up with them himself, after all.  Brown strikes me as more of a classic conservative Republican - the morality is the ice-cold what's-good-enough-for-my-father-is-good-enough-for-me Presbyterian, not the hot-blooded blood-and-thunder Baptist.  Conservative v. Year Zero radical, in fact.  People like Brown grew up admiring an America that's ceased to exist post-Reagan, that legitimised the chase after wealth and power by means of religion.  Post-1980 the chase become all that mattered.

 * the Daily Mail.  Most read anti-war newspaper, publicised Craig Murray's pure-bred filleting of the Iranian hostage claims (which would themselves make using it as a casus belli trickier), editor great mates with Brown.  Brown's election strategy is definitely to appeal to Daily Mail Reading Woman, rather than Sun Reading Man, who isn't going to be tempted by Cameron and doesn't live in middle England marginals anyway.  If the Mail approves of Our Boys marching on Tehran I'll eat a copy.  No, make that two copies.  Of the Sunday edition.  The Sun and Times have started being openly hostile, which suggest that Murdoch doesn't feel Gordon is 'on board' to his satisfaction.

 * Economic rewards - as the NYT reports, the part of the US business community (who are indeed friends with Gordon) who backed the war for cheap oil, a quick win and new markets are now backing away.  Tom Friedman is their spokesman, and he's run out of his famous Friedman Units ('it'll get better in six months').  The Iraq War supporters shrink ever closer to the rabid triumph-of-the-will dead-enders.  So Gordon can't rationalise support as good for the economy - the Iraq experience suggests the complete opposite

  * Political rewards - 'hey, I've stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the worst-ever US President, a man deeply unpopular with all our other allies, a year before he leaves office with his bloody legacy plain to see and his movement decimated'.  What's in it for Gordon?

Indeed 'what's in it for Gordon' should be the question we all ask when we see claims that Gordon is backing Bush/is backing a new multipolar foreign policy/is backing whatever.  In the case of Blair and Iraq the Bliar got to suck up to George Bush at the height of his power, have the huge ego boost of ordering men into battle and satisfied his own warped sense of liberal values by persuading himself he was doing good.  None of those quite seem to fit the bill if Gordon goes for war - there's not enough Army to order into battle, Bush looks and smells like a dead duck and he doesn't have any pretend liberal values anyway, only genuine conservative ones.

Question for all of us - who would Brown like to deal with in the White House from January 2009?  Tricky one.  I say Hillary Clinton - she'll bring Bill, who the Labour Party always got on with, but she isn't going to embarrass Gordon by being more left-wing that him.

Other bloggage (British reaction to Hersh has been fairly sparse, perhaps like me it's taken a while to read all six pages):

Lenin's Tomb
Blood & Treasure (who understands very well what Mr. Brown is and isn't)
Booman Tribute on Hillary and Iran
D-Notice pointing out that even Blair didn't manage to get creationist ideology into science curriculums
Crooks and Liars on the US Iran War propaganda campaign - would it work here?
Sic Semper Tyrannis on Hillary and Iran
Think Progress with a couple of links to UK papers, including the Guardian on John 'Bombs Away' Bolton at the Tory Party conference, which is a good guide for you as to where the maddest neo-con around goes for support when in the UK these days.  He got interviewed on Sky, too.
The Green Ribbon making the point about the timing of the UK election and Gordon's support for war or otherwise

After more than four years of war in Iraq with 170 British soldiers killed, 3,800 American casualties and up to 1.2 million Iraqi deaths, David Miliband tells us that there was "never a military solution" to Iraq.

Now he tells us!