Iraqi Prime Minister announced yesterday that unemployment has declined from 50% to 20% and inflation has gone down from 60% to 16% in Iraq.

Update: the credibility of this source has been called into question. If you have information that validates (or invalidates) this information, please post it in the comments below.

UpdateInflation has been verified. Source: comment, Central Bank of Iraq

Is Bush seeking funding for war or for peace? Having recently read Bush Asks for $46 Billion More for Wars I was struck with the cognitive dissonance of this statement.

Why is the phrasing always "funding for war(s)"? US is trying to bring peace, are we not? 20th-century imperialism doesn't exist, US has no interest in "dominating the world". Who is US anyway? We live in a united economy with borders only defining which government gets to keep the taxes. Hans Roesling did an excellent presentation on how the world has changed in recent times and the change has been tremendous. The borders between countries have metled with China, Russia, US, France, Israel, Germany, etc. becoming part of one larger economy with human and business relationships between people of different countries becoming far stronger than political relationships. After all, no matter how much we might have disagreed with French policies, can anybody in their right mind imagine a war between US and France (except at the dinner table over some French cuisine especially if you add a Brit or two to the mix)? Besides, what France and Britain? Europe is now the EU even united by a currency. One of my closest friends is from Shanghai now working in London, I am involved in a business in Tokyo. US is just a large body that is part of a larger social mass and country names might as well be street or county names that simply make it easier for you to identify your location.

And now, when US is fighting radicals to establish social and economic stabilityMiddle East/etc., Bush seeks funding for wars makes it sound like US is the cause of violence in the world.

I think it should instead be "Congress approved another $X Billion to establish peace in Afghanistan/Iraq/Middle East/etc."

A lot of us complain that there is a gross lack of balance with respect to attention that the good news coming out of Iraq gets compared to the bad news. Iraqis, at great risk to themselves, do some phenomenal things and perhaps it is time that citizen journalism took steps to acknowledge as much.

Hence, we are starting a new NV group, which will focus on the success stories coming out of Iraq. I should say that we are all well aware of the fact that life in Iraq is difficult and us facing a lot of problems. But it is a travesty that bombs and death drown out the successes of hard-working Iraqis seeking peace, justice, and stability in their land.

URL: iraqsuccess.newsvine.com

On July 11, 2007, the first graduates of a business-skills pro-gram developed in partnership between a local district council and the Baghdad Small Business Development Center (SBDC) received certificates marking their completion of "How to Start Up or Improve a Business." Supported through Izdihar, a USAID-funded program promoting private sector development, the five-day course at the Baghdad SBDC teaches modern business principles and strategies. Participants — a combination of community leaders and business owners — learn how to craft business proposals and marketing plans, manage finances, leverage technology, and access credit.

One of the most useful roles of the blogosphere is its service as an open-source intelligence-gathering medium. You can draw on the expertise of people around the world at the touch of a button. We saw this with typography experts during the Rathergate scandal; Photoshop experts during the Reutersgate debacle; and military experts during the Jesse Macbeth unmasking.

Now, it's the statisticians and math geeks' turn. Remember that massively-publicized 2004 Lancet Iraq death toll study? It was cited in nearly 100 scholarly journals and reported by news outlets around the world. "100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq" blared the Washington Post in a typical headline.

There were attempts made by lay journalists to debunk the 2004 study (as well as the 2006 follow-up study that purported to back up the first). But none of those dissections comes close to a damning new statistical analysis of the 2004 study authored by David Kane, Institute Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. I read of Kane's new paper at this science blog and e-mailed him for permission to reprint his analysis in its entirety here so that a wider blog readership could have a look.

Discusses a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. The full survey can be found here:
http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/257.pdf

There's a lot (a lot) more to the survey than just that question and just that region so, as always, you're well advised to click and skim. A few samples, though, to lure you in. This first chart suggests that as a general but not ironclad rule, the closer a country is to Israel the more suicide-happy they are. The standout numbers are of course for the Palestinians, who continue to set the standard for savagery against which all others are measured.

The surge has basically been chasing the terrorist and criminal gangs around the suburbs of Baghdad, or even into northern or western Iraq. This has taken its toll. Time spent in flight cannot be spent planting IEDs or killing people. Putting all these guys on the road, also makes them more susceptible to capture. A lot of important terrorists have been captured this way. The chief liaison between al Qaeda headquarters and al Qaeda in Iraq was nabbed, as well as many mid-level terrorist cell leaders.

The United States hopes a meeting between the U.S. and Iranian envoys to Iraq will push Tehran to change its behavior in Iraq even though their last meeting showed no tangible results, the State Department said on Monday.
"One would hope you would see a change in Iranian behavior. I can't tell you whether or not we will see that. It is up to the Iranians," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack of the proposed meeting in Baghdad on Tuesday.

A recent discussion raised a good question that people who support the war in Iraq need to be able to answer: if we take only domestic interests into consideration (i.e. we do not discuss bringing democracy to the Middle East), why was the war in Iraq started? If Iraq is not directly connected to 9/11, why is it reasonable to suggest that 9/11 triggered/lead to the war?

My answer is that Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the entire Middle East is a connected ecosystem with terrorism being a tool of which Iraq is a part of. Iraq had significant relationships with numerous terror organizations. Moreover, Iraq even had a relations with Al Qaeda, although, as the 9/11 commission found, they were not operational.

So, suppose that there is indeed a system that uses terrorism as a tool. What is the danger? The danger is that this tool would be used - something I discussed more extensively here.

So what is the solution? The solution is reform. Then the next question is whether there was a political solution to the problem. In my view, there wasn't. (This is something I really need to elaborate on in a separate article). If politics alone would not get the job done fast enough, that means that US had to choose a more aggressive strategy. To that end, Iraq was possibly the optimal target to begin the change in the region.

From a political point of view, US invaded Iraq because Iraq failed to show transparency to the UN and failed to demonstrate that there was no ill intent and that there were no WMDs. For more, please see Details of violation of 1441. However, to me it seems that this was more of a political game - the administration knew that they needed to initiate change and that there was a necessity for aggression (whether they were right is a subject for a different discussion, as I mentioned above). Once they arrived at that decision, they used the political tools at their disposal. That is, if Iraq was not part of the bigger picture, I can imagine Iraq getting away with violation of 1441 with UN eventually issuing yet another resolution that really really really is really seriously the very very last one... seriously...

Anyway, the point is that Iraq was part of a larger ecosystem and the administration used all political means at their disposal to reach their objective - something that is to be expected. But let's think why they needed to use this reasoning? Why couldn't they simply say "We need to be more aggressive with reform in the Middle East!" Well, because they would get nowhere. Case in point: Sudan, where US has been attempting to apply political pressure, sanctions, threats without follow-throughs and there is no successful resolution in sight.

Why is that? Because the public, overall, is ignorant and would not have supported invasion of Iraq until after some calamity occurred. Strangely, Saddam giving money to suicide bombers against Israel is not seen as significant by a great number of people, although I would consider it a direct attack on the West (US, Europe, Israel are so economically and socially integrated that it is hard to consider them as all that separate). It's the tragedy of ignorant democracies - domestic emotion counteracts reason and sometimes politicians have to choose between using politics to pursue reason or to be defeated by emotion.

There have been some spectacular and shameful examples of emotion overtaking reason. Just to cite a few:

• Clinton stopped operations in Mogadishu when negative press brought the heat down onto the administration in 1993.(Wikipedia)
• Events in Mogadishu actually were a precursor to failures in Rwanda (Wikipedia)
• Another example is the shameful withdrawal from Viet Nam, which abandoned millions of people with devastating results for decades. And this despite the promises made by US to support South Vietnam in case the North attacked.(Wikipedia)
• Or, going even further back, US reluctance to enter WWII I think is also something that speaks volumes with respect to flaws of the democratic societies. Not to mention how the world just stood by appeasing Hitler as he and Stalin simply split up Poland... well, we all know how that turned out.

This is commonplace and it takes great politicians to be able to maneuver within the democratic framework between emotional ignorance and socio-economic human reason, which often results in very difficult catch-22 decisions. And, at the risk of being lynched here on NV, I'd say the Bush administration has been rather intelligent at walking the fine line between politics and reality and, if they are successful, may be well judged by history.

While Iraq is not central to the 9/11 Commission Report, I thought it could be interesting to see what they have to say about it.
Holy crap.
While certainly not conclusive evidence of extensive collaboration, the 9/11 report seems to give a great deal of weight to the charges that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It also rains on the parades of one Mr. Clarke, who had claimed Iraq was a diversion, that there was "absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever". In fact, it is quite devastating on that point, using Clarke's own words. We'll get to it.

Key Documents.

• A report made by Hans Blix on March 7th
• Basic facts
  concerning establishment of UNISCOM (why Iraq was supposed to disarm in the
  first place)
• Iraq
  timeline according to UN
• Resolution 1441 -Main
  page
• British Report (Feb. 3, 2003) (PDF)
• (BBC) Overview
  of previous major resolutions
• Overview of resolutions
• Chronology of UN
  inspections

A few specifics:

• As Part of Paragraph 7, resolution 1441 reads:

UNMOVIC and the IAEA shall have unrestricted rights of
entry into and out
of Iraq, the right to free, unrestricted, and immediate movement to and from
inspection sites, and the right to inspect any sites and buildings, including
immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to Presidential
Sites equal to that at other sites, notwithstanding the provisions of resolution
1154 (1998) of 2 March 1998;

• White
  House Chronicles Past Iraqi Obstruction of Inspections (17 September
  2002)
  • White
    House Compares Iraqi Non-Compliance Tactics to Those of 1996 (12
    February 2003)
  • US Department
    of State - Response to Terrorism
• Iraq's
  history of playing games with the UN
• A report made by Blix on March 7th states
  explicitly that they have NOT received full cooperation from Iraq.

• Paragraph 5 of UN Resolution states:

5. Decides that Iraq shall provide UNMOVIC and the IAEA immediate,
unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and all, including
underground, areas, facilities, buildings, equipment, records, and means of
transport
which they wish to inspect, as well as immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted,
and
private access to all officials and other persons whom UNMOVIC or the IAEA
wish
to interview in the mode or location of UNMOVIC’s or the IAEA’s
choice pursuant
to any aspect of their mandates; further decides that UNMOVIC and the IAEA
may
at their discretion conduct interviews inside or outside of Iraq, may facilitate
the
travel of those interviewed and family members outside of Iraq, and that,
at the sole
discretion of UNMOVIC and the IAEA, such interviews may occur without the
presence of observers from the Iraqi Government; and instructs UNMOVIC and
requests the IAEA to resume inspections no later than 45 days following adoption
of
this resolution and to update the Council 60 days thereafter;

However, in the report provided by the inspection team (PDF),
paragraph 27 reads:

27. In accordance with paragraph 5 of Security Council resolution 1441
(2002),
UNMOVIC has the right to conduct, at its sole discretion, interviews with
Iraqi
officials and other persons with or without the presence of observers from
the Iraqi
Government, both inside and outside of Iraq. In the review period, UNMOVIC
requested 28 individuals to present themselves for interviews in Baghdad (without
the presence of observers). At first, none of them agreed. At the meeting
on 19-20
January, the Iraqi side committed itself to “encourage” persons
to accept interviews
“in private”. Immediately prior to the next round of discussions,
Iraq informed
UNMOVIC that three candidates, who had previously declined to be interviewed
under UNMOVIC’s terms, had changed their minds. UNMOVIC is currently
examining the practical modalities for conducting interviews outside the territory
of
Iraq.

Other quotes from the same report:

38. In December, UNMOVIC asked Iraq to provide, under the fourth
subparagraph
of paragraph 7 of resolution 1441 (2002), the names of all personnel currently
or
formerly associated with some aspects of Iraq’s programme of weapons
of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles. The Iraqi response was received at the
end of
December. However, it was deemed to be inadequate, as it did not even include
all
those who had been previously listed in Iraq’s full, final and complete
declaration.
Iraq has since then supplemented its list of participants in the missile programme,
and has declared itself to be ready to do the same in the other disciplines.
This
matter is still being followed up.

Question discussed is Iraqi compliance

68. In comments on this question, a distinction has been made
between
cooperation on “process” and cooperation on “substance”.
UNMOVIC has reported
that, in general, Iraq has been helpful on “process”, meaning, first
of all, that Iraq
has from the outset satisfied the demand for prompt access to any site, whether
or
not it had been previously declared or inspected. There have thus been no
sanctuaries in space. Nor have there been any sanctuaries in time, as inspections
have taken place on holidays as on weekdays. While such cooperation should
be a
matter of course, it must be recalled that UNSCOM frequently met with a different
Iraqi attitude.

Paragraph 70

(g) It has not yet proved possible to obtain interviews with
Iraqi scientists,
managers or others believed to have knowledge relevant to the disarmament
tasks in
circumstances that give satisfactory credibility. The Iraqi side reports that
it
encourages interviewees to accept such interviews, but the reality is that,
so far, no
persons not nominated by the Iraqi side have been willing to be interviewed
without
a tape recorder running or an Iraqi witness present.

Also, taken from (http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/timeline_1997.html)
- this does NOT fall under Resolution 1441, but it does violate previous resolutions.

June 1997 - Iraqi escorts on board an UNSCOM helicopter try
to physically prevent the UNSCOM pilot from flying the helicopter in the direction
of its intended destination.

WASHINGTON - If Senate Democrats could enact their plan for Iraq, how many American troops would remain there?

That's not a question to which Democratic leaders gave a precise answer Tuesday.

The Democratic vehicle for trying to change Iraq policy is the Levin-Reed amendment which says that some U.S. troops could remain in Iraq for counter-terrorism and training of Iraqis, after the bulk of the 158,000 now deployed were withdrawn.

Recently, when discussing the Iraq war, assuming that one of the reasons for the invasion was liberation of the Iraqi people, the following question was posed: Why Iraq? What makes Iraq so special? Why not Sudan? Why not Iran? Why not North Korea or a plethora of other countries where there is gross social injustice? Iraq was, arguably, not the worst in human rights violations.

Possible answer: the purpose was not just liberation of Iraqis, but to take the first step with the end purpose being decentralization of governments and liberation of people in all applicable countries reducing net human suffering/rights violations everywhere. If this was the purpose, Iraq could have been strategically the optimal "first step".

Let's re-frame the question in the following manner. We have three types of countries:

• Group 1 - us: low violation of human rights. Ex: US, UK, Japan, etc.
• Group 2 - them: high violation of human rights. Ex: former Iraq, Iran, Sudan, North Korea, etc.
• The Rest: somewhere in between.

So let's assume that we frame the conflict as "us vs. them". US is leading this conflict due to their socio-economic position in the world (or because US is most scared of consequences of "them" using terrorism+WMD as a weapon). Let's all accept that US is leading this conflict. Then, when making decisions, they have to take the following variables into account (both short and long-term):

• C1 - Casualties 1: Loss of Group 1 (us) civilian lives
• C2 - Casualties 2: Loss of Group 1 (us) military lives
• C3 - Casualties 3: Loss of Group 2 (them) civilian lives
• C4 - Casualties 4: Loss of Group 2 (them) military lives
• T - Time that it takes attain the objective of transitioning all countries out of Group 2 status
• P - Political credibility
• $ - The amount of resources that is spent by Group 1

Depending on what model you use, the consequences for C1, C2, C3, and C4 may be different, with the age-old question of what is better: short-term high cost or long-term higher cost with varying probabilities. (i.e. should we start a war and lose 200,000 lives in five years with probability of 80% or not start a war and lose 2,000,000 lives in 40 years to oppression with probability 50%). It's a damning question and I do not envy any political figure faced with it. Anyway, this is an aside, let's assume that we want to balance things out and some measure of military action is found to be necessary - the question now is where should US have struck to get the most effect: Iran, Iraq, Sudan, etc.?

What does it mean "to get the most effect?" It means attempting to minimize T (time to solve the problem) while minimizing C1, C2, C3, C4, (casualties domestic and foreign) and $ (financial burden). Throughout the process, the higher P (political clout) is, the easier it is for Group 1 to pressure Group 2 into change without a military confrontation, but military action may reduce T (time to solve the problem and transition everybody out of Group 2).

With that in mind, let's look at why Iraq could have been a good decision:

1. Legally optimal - P up: Iraq was legally in violation (UN Resolution 1441) giving a legal reason for military action, which is politically important improving P (political clout). Side-effect: Following through on 1441 also improved UN political credibility so that UN may be able to avoid military showdowns in the future.

2. Financial advantage - $ down: Iraq has oil, which lightens the financial burden of reconstruction minimizing $.

3. Political Credibility for Future Disputes - P up: Iraq was strong enough for other countries to take notice if Iraq went down, giving the Group 1 credibility for future military and political claims (P goes up). For instance, Iran will take the possibility of a military confrontation much more seriously than they would have before the US-Iraq war thereby improving the possibility of a political solution. Invading Sudan would not impress Iran.

4. Minimizing US military lives - C2 down: Iraq was weak enough that US had fewer casualties than if they went directly for Iran or North Korea, which minimizes C2 (loss of Group 1 military lives).

Alternative: Iran
So let's take Iran as an alternative: if US went after Iran, C2, C3, C4 would be much higher than they were in Iraq. $ would remain the same probably because Iran has oil reserves of their own and P would go significantly higher, because going after Iran would have been equivalent to going after the biggest kid on the block. P would have been undermined however as there was no legal framework to invade Iran, which would have put US at odds with UN, not to mention the economic conflicts that would be caused with Russia and China. So invading Iran would have been a very risky move.

Alternative: Sudan
Let's then take Sudan. Invasion of Sudan would have significantly reduced C3 and C4 while probably keeping C2 low, but it would result in very high $ and very low P, which wouldn't do much to help with other countries. Having said that, I personally believe that C3 and C4 would be reduced significantly enough to justify military intervention.

Conclusion: So, all in all, if the purpose was to decentralize power and introduce democracy and respect for human rights into all countries that are below some reasonable threshold, Iraq may have been strategically the optimal first step that minimizes short and long-term loss of life and financial expenditure and provides the most impact.

Philosophy and Morality:This, naturally, leads to another discussion: war leads to significant short-term loss of life. Why is there a need for an aggressive conflict at all? If my understanding is correct, if the problem of centralized governments is not addressed in the short-term, the long-term consequences could be devastating. I also find it disgusting that the West stands by as inhuman atrocities are committed across the world... I think that the best strategy may be to threaten existence of leaders in countries where there are violations of human rights. That is, provide an incentive for them to fix problems. For example, the leaders of Sudan could be told: if you do not meet the following benchmarks, you will be destroyed (by way of assassination). This gives top leaders a reason to either solve problems or to step down. There should be no reason why atrocities in Sudan should be tolerated and it is sad to see countries more interested in financial gains over tragedy that is taking place as you read this article.

After seeding an article covering the assessment report, I thought it would be interesting to the NewsVine community to see the breakdown of the assessment with respect to progress in Iraq. The full report can be found at:

Final Bench Report, July 12th, 2007

Here is my breakdown:

Satisfactory (6)

• (i) Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review
• (iv) Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.
• (ix) Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.
• (xii) Ensuring that, as Prime Minister Maliki was quoted by President Bush as saying, "the Baghdad Security Plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation."
• (xiv) Establishing all of the planned joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.
• (xvi) Ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.

Unsatisfactory (6)

• (ii) Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba'athification reform.
• (iii) Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shi'a Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.
• (x) Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions in consultation with U.S. Commanders without political intervention to include the authority to pursue all extremists including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
• (xi) Ensuring that Iraqi Security Forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law. - Not satisfactory, "however, there has been significant progress in achieving increased even-handedness through the use of coalition partnering and embedded-transition teams with Iraqi Security Force units."
• (xv) Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently.
• (xviii) Ensuring that Iraq's political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the ISF.

Other (6)

• (v) Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections. - overall not satisfactory, but requires breakdown:
  • Establishing the IHEC Commission: Satisfactory
  • Elections Law: Not satisfactory. Drafting of the law has just begun.
  • Provincial Council Authorities: Not satisfactory.
  • Provincial Elections Date: Not Satisfactory
• (vi) Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty - Pre-requisites not in place. Also not clear whether this should be a near-term goal.
• (vii) Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the constitution of Iraq. - Pre-requisites are not in place.
• (viii) Establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan. - "The Government of Iraq -- with substantial Coalition assistance -- has made satisfactory progress toward reducing sectarian violence but has shown unsatisfactory progress towards eliminating militia control of local security."
• (xiii) Reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security - "satisfactory progress toward reducing sectarian violence but unsatisfactory progress towards eliminating militia control of local security."
• (xvii) Allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis. - "satisfactory progress in allocating funds to ministries and provinces, but even if the full $10 billion capital budget is allocated, spending units will not be able to spend all these funds by the end of 2007."

White House report indicates progress on political and security goals in Iraq. In a total of 18 benchmarks, 8 showed satisfactory performance, 8 indicated more needed to be done, and 2 were inconclusive.

The report indicated progress "on both substantive issues and technical details in the constitutional review process" and "gave a mixed assessment on several aspects of the elections commission". It indicated "lack of satisfactory progress on de-Ba'athification" and "unsatisfactory progress on equitable distribution of oil and gas revenue".

Despite the overall decrease in civilian casualties, benchmarks have not been met with respect to ability and political neutrality of Iraqi forces.

The report forecast an increase in insurgent violence. In particular, AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq), a group that claimed loose affiliation with Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, is likely to step up violence to attempt to influence US public opinion to erode support for US tropps in Iraq.

The article ends with the following:

"Tough fighting should be expected through the summer as Coalition and Iraqi Forces seek to seize the initiative from early gains and shape conditions for longer-term stabilization," the report said. "These combined operations, named Operation Phantom Thunder, were launched on June 15, 2007, after the total complement of surge forces arrived in Iraq. The full surge in this respect has only just begun."

Benchmark report can be located at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/iraq/2007/FinalBenchmarkReport.pdf (Thanks fsalvato)

Update: I published my review of the report here. I didn't see the 8/8/2 distribution. Mine was more like 6/6/6 with respect to Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory/Other.

I see the situation in the Islamic world to be equal to the 1930 and the Nazis in Germany. The average German was just trying to survive, make a living, ignoring the gross warning signs that something very dangerous was growing in their own back yard. Their heads were buried in the sand while this pit bull snarled. "It won't bit me and if I ignore it long enough, it will go away," type of thinking. Most did not embrace the Nazi ideals, they just remain aloof from them. Surely, these ideals would not affect them. As time passed they found out the truth and suffered the consequences of their self-imposed blindness. These extremist would torture and kill you if you dissented. An unbelievable idea to them at that time...

Spooky, Brian thinks that Iraq and Iran are just peaceful countries trying to get by in this tough world - underdogs next to the mighty bully US. The explosions that take thousands of lives that are set off by the freedom-fighters in Iraq are against the imperial US and are not the fault of said freedom-fighters. It was the US, who, uninvited, came to a country full of money and oil, which was repressing its people to make them happy, supported freedom-fighters in Israel, and would support freedom-fighters fighting US. Think about it. It all makes sense... US is now trying to decentralize the government in the region giving people the ability to vote, just so that they can dilute the government power so that US, one big corporation with Bush as its president, McDonalds, WalMart, and the rest its departments, can swoop in for the kill. They want to turn God-loving Iraqis into automatons with 2.5 kids and white picket fences! They want to turn Iraq into a kitsch, which, as Kundera said in his Unbearable Lightness of Being through Sabina, it's better to live in the communist Russia (or would be in this case Iraq) than in a kitsch. And Brian, knowing this kitsch all too well, living in the pseudo-comfort of the West, he is fighting for the average Iraqi who, like Brian, if they made it to the statistic of 2.5 kids and would able to speak their mind without limit, would not have much to speak of due to complete shallowness, intellectual void that the society failed to fill. It is against this shallowness, this overwhelming emptiness, that Brian is fighting. Against people making their own decisions, because they are little people. Given the choice between their cultural identity and cheap produce from chain-stores, they would all rather become subjugated to the 9-5 routine existence with their average consumption of average goods. They are cowards. They don't know what's better for them. Brian knows. And he knows that US would bring them their intellectual and spiritual demise, sabotage their culture. In fact, if Brian wasn't a mental cripple, prisoner of his white picket fence, a product of American society forcefed the American Dream, a man completely devoid of aspirations, real education people get in totalitarian countries, and other aspects that would make him an adult human, if he had these things, he would go to Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, or elsewhere and strap on that bomb and blow up them ignorant American boys who, for a couple of bucks, kill, maim, devour women and drink children's blood because they are mercenaries, animals, cruel, despicable. Brian is our beacon of hope, our beacon of freedom. People like him are our Kundera standing up for intellectual integrity as controlled by the state and cultivated by adversity. Let the nukes rip through Europe, let mayhem roll through humanity, let the West collapse like those buildings in the movie "Fight Club". Let tyrants castrate their societies of free will instead giving them direction - guiding them onto the moral high ground! Let people be free through repressions. Let people rip each other to shreds and retain their cultural identity. Let Iraq and Iran be what they may - it is their path. And, most importantly, damn Bush. Burn Bush Burn Bush Burn Bush!

For the record, in case you missed it, this bullcrap was written as satire in response to another thread. Brian, I chose to pick on you, I hope you don't take it personally, but it blows my mind. In the referenced article, people were asked if they want US to win. And a comparatively large percentage said no. What does that mean? What do you stand for? US is spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives in an attempt to give a country and its people freedom and yet people say they want US to fail? Forget how the war started - what should happen now? Do people want Iraq to go back to the way it was? They want repressions for people? Control of thought? Why? Aside from Kundera's idiotic statement with respect to the almighty kitsch existence (which some friends persuaded me may be a reflection of Sabina's eccentric lunacy rather than that of Kundera himself), and pure hatred for all things Bush, I don't see any reason why people should want US to fail. That's like asking "Do you want people to be happy" and getting an answer "No, I want them to die. I want them all to die".

Iran is using the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah as a "proxy" to arm Shiite militants in Iraq and Tehran's Quds force had prior knowledge of a January attack in Karbala in which five Americans died, a U.S. general said Monday.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi civilian deaths dropped to their lowest level since the start of the Baghdad security operation, government figures showed Sunday, suggesting signs of progress in tamping down violence in the capital.

But American casualties are running high as U.S. forces step up pressure on Sunni and Shiite extremists in and around Baghdad.

At least 1,227 Iraqi civilians were killed in June along with 190 policemen and 31 soldiers, an officer at the Iraqi Interior Ministry's operations room said. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the figures.

MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

"If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it," Giuliani said.
The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.

"But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?" Giuliani said. "If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer."

"I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," Giuliani continued. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense."

He added: "The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us."

Suppose you are sick and need heart surgery and you meet someone who claims to be able to do it. To see if they are for real, you decide to ask them a couple of basic questions to ascertain their medical knowledge:

You: What is an immune system?
Them: I don't know.
You: What is the normal body temperature?
Them: I don't know.
You: What is the function of the heart?
Them: I don't know.

So they don't know the basics about the human body, yet claim to be able to help you. At this point, you could rightfully label them an idiot and become very angry as this person could have put your life in danger if they started to treat you.

This is simple. I think we can all agree on this. Then why do we tolerate idiocy in politics? Almost everybody nowadays has a strong opinion about Bush and Iraq. Yet you ask them some basic questions and most don't have a clue. Moreover, they shrug these questions off without either researching answers or adjusting their position. Is this not idiocy?

Please note, in posting this, I am not arguing for or against Bush and his policies. I am arguing against ignorance and idiocy, which seem to be overtaking NewsVine.

This post is strongly-moderated.

UPI reporter Pam Hess on CSPAN speaking about her recent experiences in Iraq. She goes there looking for answers. Looking for what is really going on in Iraq despite all the rhetoric being slung by the left and the right here in the States. In this video, she describes what she found there.

In a recent post titled Newsinve: Just tool of Liberal Media, an interesting discussion ensued regarding the political slant on newsvine. Below is my theory on why this is so:

1. Assume that distribution of the left and right in the society is about 50/50

2. The left supports social programs and increased government funding. The focus is on the group rather than individual and people who push forward this position are largely from the areas that benefit from implementation of its ideas. Thus it is the academia, members of gorvernment-funded programs, artists, people with unionized jobs, etc.

3. The right supports reduced government spending and pushes more to empower individual success. Like the left, the right also benefit from their positions and, as to be expected, come from different circles: investment bankers, entrepreneurs, economists, businessmen, corporate, etc.

On average, from personal observations (I have not looked into data regarding this subject), people from the right (Group 3) spend significantly more time on their job with higher intensity* than people from the left (Group 2) thereby significantly reducing the amount of time they can dedicate to NewsVine and other non-job-related activites. The result is that, with 50/50 distribution, Newsvine would see a significantly higher participation from the left than from the right.

Having said that, I've also noticed that the left is largely emotionally driven, while the right is more grounded. This means that the articles and commentary written by the right on political issues would, on average, be more poignant and reasonable than those coming from the left. Does this in itself provide a balance? Am I wrong or am I looking at things through a conservative = interesting prism? I don't think so. What I know is that, on NewsVine, the people whom I would consider to be the best writers in terms of subject knowledge, structure and style are center and right-leaning contributors. This came to me as a rather surprising revelation as the left has the academia, who ahve excellent style (on average better than that coming from the average right), but have trouble maintaining a reason-based position.

My hope is that Newsvine will push people to educate themselves and that eventually, regardless of partisanship, honest calm reason and analysis will prevail leading us to an agreement and/or understanding.

* - "with higher intensity" - Added on at 5:36 PM EST

BAGHDAD, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Up to 100 foreign fighters cross into Iraq from Syria every month, the U.S. military said on Monday, as Syria's foreign minister held talks with Iraqi leaders to pledge his country's help in tackling insurgents.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have long accused Damascus of doing little to stem the flow of Islamist fighters and weapons across its long, porous border. Syrian officials say sealing the border is impossible and that Iraq must do more to patrol its side.

"We don't know how much they (Syria) are assisting this effort, but we don't know how much they are trying to preclude it either," U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem met Iraqi officials, including Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, on the second day of a landmark visit. Iraq and Syria severed ties when Syria sided with Iran during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

It was also the first time a Syrian minister has visited Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and is a rare visit by any senior Arab official. It comes amid increased talk of diplomatic efforts to involve Iraq's neighbours Syria and Iran in helping to end the violence ravaging the country.

Bush's allies have urged him recently to open the door to talks with Tehran and Damascus to seek their help in stabilising Iraq, where insurgent violence and sectarian attacks are threatening to tear the country apart.

But Moualem, who said on Sunday that a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal would be the best way to reduce violence, said he was not in Iraq to "please the United States".

"I am nobody's godfather and not a mediator for the United States," he told a joint news conference after talks with powerful Iraqi Shi'ite Islamist leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

"In this current situation there is no dialogue between Syria and the United States," he said.

But there is growing talk in Washington that the Iraq Study Group, which is examining strategic options in Iraq, will advocate greater U.S. cooperation with Syria and Iran as the administration considers a change in course on the war.

Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus and says it will not authorise higher-level contacts because of Syria's suspected role in supporting violent militants, Iraqi insurgents and opponents of Lebanon's government.

"We still see foreign fighters coming, between 70 and 100 a month coming accross the Syrian border into Iraq," Caldwell said, figures in line with the past year.

He said U.S. and Iraqi soldiers had killed 425 foreign fighters so far this year and captured 670. Twenty percent were Syrian, a similar number Egyptian, and the rest came mainly from Sudan and Saudi Arabia.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen dressed in police uniforms staged a mass kidnapping at a Baghdad research center Tuesday, prompting Iraq's education minister to order all universities closed until security could be improved.
Government spokesperson Dr. Ali Al-Dabag told FOX News that 20 of the 50 people who were handcuffed and forced into vehicles in a lightning raid at 9:30 a.m. local time have since been released unharmed.
Al-Dabag said the government was responding to the crisis, adding that authorities had already collected information on the identities of the abductors and the whereabouts of the remaining captives.
Earlier reports said from 100 to 150 people, both Shiites and Sunnis, had been kidnapped from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Scholarships and Cultural Relations Directorate in Baghdad's Karradah district.
"I have only one choice which is to suspend classes at universities," Abed Theyab, Iraq's higher education minister, told parliament. "We have no other choice."
Theyab said he was "not ready to see more professors get killed," adding that he had repeatedly petitioned for more university security from the ministries of Defense and Interior, who command the police, but had received none.

(cont'd)

The War on Terror NewsVine group has been created and can be found at:

http://globalwar.newsvine.com

Please join and post articles that would keep track of the latest events, would support or discredit this global war.

I would ask that we not forget what is at stake here and that when you engage on this group, try to keep your egos out of discussions.

Foremost among the challenges confronting transition this quarter was the U.S. government's effort to ensure that the remaining money in the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Funds (IRRF) was obligated by the September 30, 2006 statutory deadline. It appears that the goal of full and effective obligation of the IRRF was met. As the U.S.–led phase of Iraq reconstruction nears its conclusion, it is vital that the Iraqi government attract broader international donor and private–sector support to finance continued development and reconstruction efforts. The Iraqi government faces several serious challenges in this endeavor: a deteriorating security situation; the inability of Iraqi ministries to execute their capital budgets; a lack of transparency within Iraqi ministries that inhibits anticorruption efforts; and the breakdown of the asset transfer process. With the October 2006 Quarterly Report to Congress, SIGIR identifies a number of areas where continued U.S. assistance is necessary.

If there is to be a debate cars, all participants in such a debate should be able to answer some basic questions such as "What is a car?", "How many doors can a car have?", "What is an engine?", etc. If all involved parties can not answer such questions that serve as a foundation, we are bound to end up with complete nonsense rather than a constructive discussion.

So I ask the following: what questions must all people engaging in discussions on the subject of Iraq be able to answer? Please preface the questions with "QUESTION:" when you respond with a question.

I hope that after we identify the most important questions, we may be able to go out and retrieve the answers so that we might begin to build a solid platform for discussion and understanding.

If you have sources that you feel may be of interest, please feel free to post them here under relevant questions or as a responses to this article.

Table of Contents

QUESTION: What is the GDP of IRAQ?

QUESTION: What is the economic structure of Iraq? How is small business developing?

QUESTION: How many civilians died after Bush declared victory? How has that number been changing?

QUESTION: What role does Iran play in Iraq?

QUESTION: What is the population of Iraq? How are they divided region-wise?

QUESTION: What is the general state of the infrastructure in Iraq? What is the difference in quality/extent of infrastructure between different cities in Iraq?

QUESTION: What are the main political factions in Iraq? How strong are they and what are their views on the major issues?

QUESTION: What is sovereignty? Is, or has Iraq ever been, a sovereign nation?

QUESTION: What did Saddam's government do to its people? What fraction had their rights violated and in what manner? That is, rather than looking at grotesque individual cases, we must know what was happening to the population as a whole.

QUESTION: What was the history of compliance with the UN? What is resolution 1441? What was UN's position Iraq's compliance with its resolutions?

More questions below...

Interesting link covering Business Climate in Iraq

The core of this site is an index of information sources about post-invasion Iraq. This includes a list of opinion polls carried out in Iraq, reports about the humanitarian situation, a collection of good sources of news about Iraq, and much else.

Popular information resources include resources on opinion polls in Iraq, economic development, and archaeological heritage.

A fascinating look into various mititary statistics.

Looking at the debates on the vine, I must admit: we've got issues. If the amount of time and effort the viners put into these discussions is any indication, we all have our hearts in the right place. We all sincerely believe that we are fighting for the truth, for a better life, "for peace, man"... Yet as good as our intentions may be, we not only fall grossly short of agreement, but more often than not, we almost never reach rapport. Why? Because we all come to conclusions based on our knowledge that we sincerely believe to be correct. Stop. Our knowledge?

Our knowledge is, well, extremely poor. Despite wikipedia, millions going into think-tanks, and social systems springing up all over the place, most people still do not have access to the basic statistics/analysis on the subjects about which we debate. For example, people argue that Iraq is a complete mess - when was the last time you look up the statistics on infrastructural developments? When was the last time you studied which areas are volatile and which are relatively stable? People call for US to pull out of Iraq yet how many people know about the extent of Iranian involvement? How many people have actually seen analysis of what would happen IF US pulled out? People talk about Israel, Palestine, Sudan, China, etc. etc. etc. but how many people take the time to study their subject? Almost none. Why? Is it because we feel that we must be responsible citizens of this world and consequently spread ourselves thin accross all important issues and do not have time for the details? Or is it because we do not have knowledge of where the necessary analysis and information is located and googling our subject is generally not very efficient at getting good critical analysis?

I would, perhaps naively believing that truth is more important, err on the side of the latter.

And so I suggest - as a response to this article, please post (as separate articles if you feel that the source may generate a discussion) sources of information that you feel are productive to discussions. Also, please post a comment in this article linking to those sources. If a sufficient amount of sources accumulates, I will attempt to create something resembling an evolving directory in the body of this article so that people can quickly access information on specific topics in order to have efficient discussions.

If you think something is a good source of information, please vote it up.

Follow-up article: Questions we need to be able to answer about Iraq in order to debate.

"I do believe there is no option for the international community to cut and run," Saleh said after talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair. "We need to understand that there is a need of utmost urgency to deal with many of the problems of Iraq, but we must not give in to panic."

Picture a game like Quake: a player controls a soldier in Iraq. He guides this soldier to an Iraqi gentleman and starts speaking with the Iraqi in Arabic actually speaking to the computer. Points are accumulated as the soldier says politlely "As-Salaam-Alaikum", which is a greeting meaning "Peace be upon you". The Iraqi responds with a greeting of his own. The soldier starts asking questions trying to get information... but wait. Points are lost. What's up? The soldier jumped into questions too fast and forgot to take off his sunglasses - rude, insensitive.

This weekend I attended NextFest and I saw a demo of just that game. The company is a California-based Tactical Language Training LLC, which you can find online at www.tacticallanguage.com. They provide language training combines with training in cultural sensitivity - wired, the magazine that hosted this convention, is pretty selective in whom they invite, so Tactical Language must have accumulated quite a reputation. While Tactical Language Training declined to comment on the exact extent to which their software is used to train US troops, they did say that it is pretty extensively used in the US Army and other US military branches.

While it would be folly for anybody to use this software to jump to decicisve conclusions about US, the fact that such cultural training is undertaken by a military machine is indicative to a certain extent of its nature.

While the article itself is primarily devoted to Saddam's trial, I think those who question whether removal of Saddam is justified should read the following several paragraphs that were located towards the bottom of the piece:

The first witness of the day described how he served in the Iraqi army, was a prisoner of war in Iran, and then returned to his village in 1990 to find it destroyed and his wife and four children missing.

The witness then angrily recited a Koranic verse, directing it at Saddam.

"Do not think God is unaware of what the oppressors do, for he delays them to a day when all eyes are observing," said Aasi Mustafa Ahmed.

Witness after witness described how their villages were attacked and they were rounded up by security forces and imprisoned. Many never saw family and relatives again.

"If you gave me all of Iraq, it would not bring back my brothers," said witness Amina Ahmed Ali, drying her tears at the end of her testimony.

Thamina Hamid Nuri, wearing a white headscarf and sporting tribal tattoos on her chin, described her imprisonment and the death of three of her children.

"They beat my three-year-old son in front of me, he stayed unconscious for one-and-a-half hours. We were forced to drink contaminated water, the children vomited and suffered from diarrhea," she said.

Kurds have described people dying of poison gas attacks, suffering in hospitals with burning and peeling skin, and being transferred to grim prisons in the south of the country.

...

The media will not tell you how the Marines of the 3/1 retook the Haditha Triad region during Operation Rivergate in the fall of 2005 with minimal civilian casualties. The operation was planned in such a meticulous manner and with the intention to safeguard the residents of the city of Haditha that no civilian, Marine or Iraqi casualties were taken. The media won't tell you how the Marines worked for days on end to ensure a safe environment for the Iraqi people to exercise their right to vote in the December 15 Parliamentary elections. You won't hear about how a young Marine, upon positively identifying a vehicle that was used to attack Marines and Iraqi civilians alike, chased the car, on foot, through the streets of Haqlaniyah, and held his fire while the car escaped as he feared injuring civilians. You won't hear about how,after Election Day, insurgents mortared the polling center in Barwana, and killed five children and wounded several others. The Marines of the 3/1 rushed the children to Al Asad Airbase for medical treatment, and saved the life of one Iraqi child.

...

I saw Full Throttle reference this link, and thought it to be an amazing piece by someone who has been there.

Recently, Jimmy Havoc has accused me of "yapping" instead of noting progress in Iraq to prove my point.

Jimmy's credibility has been undermined by numerous statements made in the past that, to me, signify ignorance and unjust anti-US bias the epitome of which was his comparison of the Iraqi prime minister to Saddam (unjust, because US has done plenty to rightfully deserve an occasional thrashing) .

He has further supplemented this accusation with the following:

Electricity: Prewar: 3,958MW
June 2006: 4,300MW Stated Goal: 6,000MW to have been reached by July 1, 2004

Oil production: Prewar: 2.5 M barrels/day
June 2006 2.11 M b/d Stated Interim Goal: 2.5 M b/d revised down from 2.8-3.0 in February 2005

P. 34, most the money appropriated for Iraq aid ($20.9 billion) has been disbursed ($14.5 billion).

P. 35: all funds allocated toward restoring electricity have been spent. All funds for improving accountability of government have been spent. All but $1 billion for restoring Iraqi oil capabilities has been spent. - Source

Well, since Jimmy uses this source, perhaps we can use it as well to avoid questions with regard to the validity of the source... at least from Jimmy. He asks to quote some progress? Let's see what we can do:

Unemployment, after the invasion, in 2003, it was 50-60%. It has since steadily decreased to now being at 25-40%. (Page 32). It's high, things are not easy, but it's dropping.

Or perhaps we should look at the judicial system (Page 38), which reads:

All provincial courts are now operational and there exist 99 trained judicial investigators. 135 of
869 judges were removed because of substantial evidence of corruption or Ba'ath Party affiliation.

Another statistic I found interesting is the relative amount of car traffic, which, as of January 2005, was five times that of pre-war levels (Page 38). Or perhaps the telephone subscribers, which went from 833K before the war to 6.8 million as of March 2006 (Page 39). Or perhaps the number of internet subscribers that went from 4,500 before the war to 207,000 as of April 2006, which does not include users of internet cafes. (Page 39)

It might also be important that there is stable growth in the size of the Iraqi security force, which was 264,600 as of June 2006, which is just short of the goal of 272,566 (Page 25) and a declining international troop presence, which was down to 146,900 as of June 2006 (Page 20). It should be noted, however, that this decline is taking place after a major increase peaking in November and December of 2005 at 183,000. Nevertheless, since that spike, January of 2006 was at 157,000 and from then on, over the next half a year, the numbers declined.

If I might be so bold as to now venture outside of Brookings: the oil production has reached pre-war levels.

There have been improvements in education:

Enrollment in Iraqi schools has risen every year since the American invasion, according to Iraqi government figures, reversing more than a decade of declines and offering evidence of increased prosperity for some Iraqis. -Source

Or perhaps we should look at exports to EU, which went from 2.0 in 2001 down to 0.9 in 2003 and is now back up to 1.6 in 2006 (Source: Page 3 ). And that is before we talk about political successes.

As for spending the funds - does this mean that Iraq will be left to rot? Not likely. More funds will be allocated and reconstruction will be completed. The fact that these funds have been spent show the level to which the West has invested itself into rebuilding Iraq.

Are there problems? Undoubtebly. Most importantly, to my poorly educated eye, it seems that the insurgency was not expected to be as strong and, consequently, a large amount of resources had to be reallocated towards security consequently delaying many projects. This does indeed make things very difficult, but is far from failure. Consider this published by the World Bank in February of 2006:

Iraqi reconstruction is being stalled by the lack of security. Oil production and exports
have yet to reach prewar levels, and nonoil sectors remain sluggish. High unemployment,
poverty, and weak social protection systems dominate public concerns and threaten the
fragile democracy. Violence and crime, which have increased substantially since late
2003, hamper reconstruction and undermine governance efforts. Increased violence also
limits people's access to much-needed public services and thus stifles progress in human
development, particularly for the growing number of the poor and the vulnerable. Thirty
years ago, Iraq led the Middle East and North Africa region in social development
indicators, such as maternal and child mortality, nutrition, literacy, and secondary school
enrollment. Since then, as a result of decades of conflict, sanctions, and underinvestment,
living conditions have declined. Many of these indicators have fallen to the levels typical
for low-income countries.- Source

If you look at the rest of the document, it is evident that things are difficult, but there is undeniable progress.

Every time I see Jimmy Havok, Keld Bach, and others make US sound like the culprit in Iraq, it blows my mind that people would take childish stabs at the president when there is so much at stake: human lives. If you accuse someone who is claiming to be bringing democracy and stability to the Middle East (never mind the ulterior motives, if such exist) of some hienous deed, the least you can do is make sure that your claims are well founded. And if you are as intelligent as many people on NV, you might also attempt to play the devil's advocate to make sure that you did not come to the wrong conclusion.

The Left has a point that people should always be doubtful of the government, but what many on the Left fail to realize is that when there is unfounded skepticism on a large scale, it becomes detrimental. So please, criticise Bush, criticise US, let's work together to understand what's going on and place our political pressure upon politicians to do the right things. But please, let's do this in a calm educated manner with the purpose being lives at home and abroad rather than our egos.

07.03.2006 Update: A short article The Way Out of Iraq: A Road Map from Mowaffak al-Rubaie (Iraq's national security advosor). Discusses progress in terms of achievment milestones. A couple of exerpts:

Iraq has a total of 18 governorates, which are at differing stages in terms of security. Each will eventually take control of its own security situation, barring a major crisis. But before this happens, each governorate will have to meet stringent minimum requirements as a condition of being granted control. For example, the threat assessment of terrorist activities must be low or on a downward trend. Local police and the Iraqi army must be deemed capable of dealing with criminal gangs, armed groups and militias, and border control. There must be a clear and functioning command-and-control center overseen by the governor, with direct communication to the prime minister's situation room.

...
Thus far four of the 18 provinces are ready for the transfer of power -- two in the north (Irbil and Sulaymaniyah) and two in the south (Maysan and Muthanna). Nine more provinces are nearly ready.

With the governors of each province meeting these strict objectives, Iraq's ambition is to have full control of the country by the end of 2008. In practice this will mean a significant foreign troop reduction. We envisage the U.S. troop presence by year's end to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007.

Also, a Hillary Benn Outlines Iraqi Improvements seeded by Full Throttle.

Money, oil, and greed are all often given as reasons for why the US entered the war in Iraq. Any mention of noble intentions is met with a pseudo-academic skepticism: "May be... it would be nice. But no, not this administration!"

Well, hold on a second. What is money? Money is access to resources. OK, you will say, "Bush, Cheney, they all want power! They want resources!" Fine, I'll answer, what are they going to do with them? And that's when people scratch their heads only to respond with "Well, they just want more power..."

But, suppose you are Bush... or Cheney... or any high-ranking official. You've given up work in the private sector for the public one. You've dedicated your life to politics. You are already rich, putting your kids through college is the least of your worries and no amount of Benjamins will grant you immortality. What do you need more money for? What do you live for? It seems to become more of a philosophical question.

It would be pretentious of me to suggest what exactly goes on in the minds of US leaders, but what I find highly unlikely is that they would be chasing resources to pimp out their cribs or deck out their cool new rides. In fact, I think it would be fair to assume that such people indeed become public servants interested in the general good listening carefully to advisers while juggling socio-economic and political interests.

So next time you want to call Cheney a money-grabbing capitalist only interested in oil, please come with more than just accusations. "When? How? How much? Why?" would be good start.

I would like to lay down some ground-work for my understanding of the situation in the Middle East. While some statements may seem like gross generalizations, I find them to be true even though exceptions may exist.

Just so that there are no comments about my agenda, my purpose in all this is to attempt to understand what course of action would minimize the net suffering short, mid, and long-term and to support people in the US who would pursue this course. Consequently, I welcome all the information that might change my mind.

Generally, countries divide into two categories:

1) Decentralized or Western - countries where the governing body is accountable to the populace. Respect for the individual is at the core of the society. As a rule of thumb, free speech can be used to distinguish a Western society.

2) Centralized / Non-Western - the power is held by an elite largely detached from the population.

3) The Western countries thrive on social stability and economic growth.

4) The Non-Western countries contain a governing elite that is detached from the populace. This structure is very unstable requiring distraction and suppression of the populace in order for the elite to remain in power. This leads to aggression on part of the government against its people as well as attempts to create confrontation between its people and the outside world.

5) The Western and non-Western governments are not compatible with each other. It is to the advantage of the non-Western governments to create and maintain a state of conflict. The Western governments exert pressure on the non-Western governments for reform for economic, political, and humanitarian reasons with all pushing towards stabilization and integration.

6) It is to the advantage of non-Western governments to undermine the Western economy thereby reducing the pressure exerted by the Western governments.

7) Very soon WMD will become so easily accessible to non-Western governments, that it will be possible to deploy them anonymously on the Western soil by way of terrorism.

8) Consequently, if ever a point is reached when WMD can be anonymously deployed on the Western soil to the advantage of non-Western governments, sooner or later, it will happen. This is not paranoia, but economic and political reality. Thus, the question now becomes how to prevent this scenario from materializing.

9) The only way to prevent 8 is to not have situations when small groups of people have something to profit from destruction of the Western economy.

10) The only way to achieve 9 is to decentralize the non-Western governments creating accountablity to the people.

11) Politically, it would be ideal for the the decentralization to take place without a physical confrontation. This is the situation in China and is morally questionable as such an approach accepts gross human rights violations. Physical confrontation, however, is expensive, politically dangerous, and, while it might carry a lower cost in human lives overall, that cost must be paid in the short term and is consequently more painful.

12) Unlike China, prior to 9/11, the Middle East in general was not moving towards decentralization, but instead was steadily going away from integration with the West.

13) US lead an aggressive Western campaign making it clear that change must be accelerated. And if change would not take place gradually, it would be instituted by force.

14) Iraq was the first country to be decentralized aggressively. The Weapons of Mass Destruction, Resolution 1441, oil, etc. made Iraq a good start to push pro-Western reforms in the Middle East.

It should be noted that the situation get significantly more complicated due to the following factors:

A) Some elements in the Western and nominally pro-Western countries profit greatly from the old centralized Middle East and might not want to see change (France, Russia).

B) In the West, the populace is generally ignorant and due to lack of efficient distribution of information, there is a gross distortion of reality that propagates for economic and political reasons. (left media targeting left consumers, America-bashing, etc.)

There is much more to be said on the subject and, my suspicion is that each of the points above may be worthy of discussion and dissection. In your responses, please be constructive and respectful. So long as we are all interested in finding the best solution, we can all get along.