"The Alberto Gonzales of the Intelligence Community"

In a letter written Saturday to former CIA Director George Tenet, six former CIA officers described their former boss as "the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community," and called his book "an admission of failed leadership."

The writers said Tenet has "a moral obligation" to return the Medal of Freedom he received from President Bush.

They also called on him to give more than half the royalties he gets from book, "At the Center of the Storm," to U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and families of the dead.

The letter, signed by Phil Giraldi, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Jim Marcinkowski, Vince Cannistraro and David MacMichael, said Tenet should have resigned in protest rather than take part in the administration's buildup to the war. ...

The writers said they agree that Bush administration officials took the nation to war "for flimsy reasons," and that it has proved "ill-advised and wrong-headed."

But, they added, "your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership.

"You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq."

Full text of letter.

Not As Green As Before

From an interesting account of life in Baghdad's safe haven, the "Green Zone":

Fear permeates the lives of the Iraqis who remain inside the walls. Some have long since lost their jobs working for contractors or the Army but won't leave the Green Zone because too many of their neighbors and relatives know they worked for the U.S., and they are afraid of being killed. The Iraqis who live here have a simple word, barra, that they use over and over again to refer to the rest of Baghdad outside the Green Zone. It means "out there." If they were anywhere but Iraq, their stories would sound like paranoid delusions. All the gates are watched, they say. Their names are on hit lists. One woman, who used to do laundry for a British security firm and now lives in an abandoned market stall with her three children, has received messages on her cell phone telling her "Your blood will wash all over your body." She's afraid to go out of the Green Zone because of the threats, and since she lost her job and handed in her ID badge, she wouldn't be able to get back in without an escort.

Pretty soon, the choice may be made for her. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq claimed in an April 13 statement to have had "support troops" that infiltrated the Green Zone to launch the attack on the parliament cafeteria. As a result, squatters who continue to live in the Green Zone without official permission are now considered an unacceptable security risk. A family that fled the first battle of Fallujah in 2004 was told last week by U.S. military police that by June 1 they will have to leave the hallway they converted into an apartment or they'll be kicked out.

Say What?

George Tenet -- beginning the publicity blitz for his account of his days as DCI -- is complaining bitterly about how the administration blamed him and the CIA for the "intelligence failure" regarding Saddam's phantom WMD.

He is saying that his "slam dunk" quote didn't refer to evidence of the existence of banned weapons or weapons programs in Iraq, but rather to the ability of the White House to make a successful case to the public that these weapons were real.

One big problem with Tenet's explanation here. The CIA had lots of evidence that Saddam did not have WMD. Yet he is saying that he was an important participant in the administration's PR campaign to convince the American public that there was an urgent need to attack Iraq.

The CIA is prohibited by law from propagandizing the American people. (I am not claiming that blowback from stories planted overseas doesn't make its way into the American media -- that is one of the workarounds that is long established and accepted by the national security cognoscenti).

The episode just doesn't look good.

Two former CIA officials said the part of the book with the most new information focuses on post-invasion warnings. The book "plowed some new ground as far as agency views and comments on the situation on the ground in Iraq," one official said.

In particular, the readers said, the book describes warnings from the CIA station in Baghdad that were greeted with dismay and mounting suspicion within the White House, including a November 2003 assessment that described the situation as an insurgency.

After that assessment was leaked to the press, Bush summoned Tenet and other CIA officials to the White House and warned that he didn't want anyone in his administration to use the term "insurgency," according to the officials.

Doubtlessly true there. But it gets worse.

Tenet, who served as CIA director for seven years, engages in some hairsplitting over his role in certain controversies. He acknowledges having used the term "slam-dunk," for example, but in his interview with "60 Minutes" he insisted he had not meant that the evidence was unequivocal that Iraq possessed banned weapons — only that he had believed the government could make a compelling case to the public.

Good thing that he received a $4 million advance from HarperCollins for the memoir.

If anybody gets serious about his role in the Info-Op against the American people, he will need the money.

"Making Martial Law Easier"

How many pipe bombs might it take to end American democracy? Far fewer than it would have taken a year ago.

The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public order," or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.

The media and most of Capitol Hill ignored or cheered on this grant of nearly boundless power. But now that the president's arsenal of authority is swollen and consecrated, a few voices of complaint are being heard. Even the New York Times recently condemned the new law for "making martial law easier."

It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president's ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from "Insurrection Act" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act." The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." The new law expands the list to include "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition" -- and such "condition" is not defined or limited.

These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur, and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster (and awards more farm subsidies) when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist "incident" could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall.

The new law also empowers the president to commandeer the National Guard of one state to send to another state for up to 365 days. Bush could send the Alabama National Guard to suppress antiwar protests in Boston. Or the next president could send the New York National Guard to disarm the residents of Mississippi if they resisted a federal law that prohibited private ownership of semiautomatic weapons. Governors' control of the National Guard can be trumped with a simple presidential declaration.

The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it.

International Compact For Iraq Meets Real World

Finding a political solution involving Iraq's neighbors and the larger international community is, of course, the only way for the U.S. to extricate itself from our self-made predicament in Mesopotamia.

Nobody should have imagined, though, that the diplomatic legerdemain would be easy going.

U.S. and Iraqi efforts to win international support to help stabilize Iraq are running up against serious obstacles, with key countries balking at provisions for debt relief and others concerned about blanket endorsement of an Iraqi government that has failed to follow through on many political promises, according to sources involved in the negotiations.

Kuwait, Russia, China, Iran and other governments are concerned about signing a proposed resolution that calls for 100 percent debt relief for oil-rich Iraq, given the tens of billions of dollars each country is owed in debt or in war compensation by Baghdad.

The proposed resolution, obtained by The Washington Post, is designed to endorse the new International Compact for Iraq -- a five-year plan covering political, economic and social development in the war-torn country. The compact is the product of almost a year of negotiations. It will be the subject of a May 3 meeting of all major countries and institutions involved in Iraq, to be held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The next day, Iraq's neighbors and members of the international coalition in Iraq will discuss efforts to stabilize the country. But differences have also emerged on a second draft resolution for the May 4 meeting, with Egypt and Kuwait proposing different versions, according to sources involved in the conference.

An Asinine Slogan For An Asinine Concept

We weren't terribly impressed around here when Rumsfeld debuted the nebulous slogan "The Long War" for U.S. misadventures in the "war on terror." See New Propaganda Catchphrase: "The Long War".

The masters of war are premiering a catchy new propaganda slogan: "The Long War." This is an attempt to inure Americans into seeing nothing abnormal about a state of permanent war. ...

"We can't agree it's global, we can't agree it's terrorism, but we all generally agree it's a war . . . [and] it's going to be long," Carafano said. "Transnational terrorism is the problem of the 21st century."

Everyone agrees? Who is this we? You and all the other defense industry jerkoffs, that's about it. And the cowardly sheeple who are your natural constituents.

It seems that now the current brass are equally unexcited about using that particular formulation.

When the Bush administration has sought to explain its strategy for fighting terrorism, it has often said the United States is involved in a "long war" against Islamic extremists.

The phrase was coined by Gen. John P. Abizaid before he retired as head of the Central Command. It was intended to signal to the American public that the country was involved in a lengthy struggle that went well beyond the war in Iraq and was political as well as military.

It would be a test of wills against "Islamofascism," as President Bush once put it. It would also be a historic challenge that spanned generations much like the battles against Communism.

As it turned out, however, the long war turned out to be surprisingly short-lived, at least at the command that pioneered the term. After taking over last month as the head of Central Command, Adm. William J. Fallon quietly retired the phrase.

Military officials said that cultural advisers at the command had become concerned that the concept of a long war alienated Middle East audiences by suggesting that the United States would keep a large number of forces in the region indefinitely.

Report Coming This Week From Petraeus

This Week, (the commander of the U.S. forces, Gen. David) Petraeus is scheduled to make his first comprehensive report to Congress on the implementation of the so-called surge strategy. He will face a Congress deeply divided over Iraq, with Democratic leaders doubtful about the prospects for success and headed for a showdown with President Bush over setting a troop withdrawal deadline. Using a formulation he is likely to employ in testifying to Congress, Petraeus said it is too soon to make any judgment about how many troops will be needed and for how long. "It will be another two months before all the troops are on the ground," he said. "We only have 60 percent of the troops in place. There has been some progress, but it will take months, not days, not weeks." And, he added, "at the end of the day it will require Iraqi political steps to foster reconciliation among Iraqis."

Very true about the need for reconciliation, but this is a decidedly bad development:

A forbidden love affair that ended with a young woman being stoned to death led to more bloodshed Sunday when gunmen dragged 21 members of a religious minority off a bus and shot them dead, Iraqi police and witnesses said.

The incident in the northern city of Mosul was shocking in its brutality and frightening for the specter it raised: that violence between Muslims and non-Muslims could aggravate the already volatile ethnic conflict there between Arabs and Kurds. The victims were Yazidis, an ancient sect that is neither Christian nor Muslim and whose Kurdish followers have faced persecution under a succession of rulers.

Iraq Withholding Civilian Casualty Numbers From U.N.

The U.S. military in Iraq goes out of its way to assert that they keep no tally of Iraqis killed during the war.

That is supposedly the responsibility of the Iraqi Health Ministry.

On Friday, a spokesman for the U.N. human rights office in Baghdad said the organization would not report Iraqi civilian casualty figures in its next report, to be released next week. For months, the totals have been a key gauge of violence in Iraq and the government's attempts to bring the rule of law.

"The reason behind that is we have not been given the numbers," said Said Arikat, a spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq. "The minister of health would not release it. They did not give us a reason. I don't know why." Arikat added that his office made a complaint to the government.

The Shiite-controlled Iraqi Health Ministry has been long involved in impeding accurate reporting of civilian killings, see Shiites Suppress Body Count After Mosque Bombing.

Senator Puts Colombia Aid On Hold

A U.S. senator has frozen $55.2 million in military aid to Colombia while he discusses with the State Department accusations that Colombia's army chief colluded with illegal paramilitary groups.

The move by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) came as some members of his party push for a tougher line on Colombia, which has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid to fight left-wing rebels and the illicit drug trade.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is under scrutiny as he fends off a scandal linking several of his lawmaker allies to the militias, which are accused of drug trafficking and massacres during their war with the left-wing guerrillas.

Leahy is chairman of the subcommittee that oversees aid to Colombia.

Leahy spokesman David Carle said the senator wanted to discuss his concerns, including those stemming from a Times report last month citing CIA documents that say Colombian army commander Gen. Mario Montoya worked with the militias.

Colombia's government has rejected the CIA accusations.

Rights groups have long charged that militia commanders worked with the armed forces to assassinate suspects they believed were linked to the guerrillas.

"The U.S. Congress should maintain a hold on military assistance to Colombia until alleged links between paramilitary groups and state officials are thoroughly investigated," U.S.-based rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said in a joint statement.

Baghdad Adjusting To "Surge"

At least 173 people died in Baghdad on Wednesday in a series of major explosions, making the day the capital's deadliest since the onset nine weeks ago of a much-touted U.S.-Iraqi security plan.

The violence capped a dreadful seven days that began with a stunning suicide attack in the Iraqi parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone. At least 363 people have died in Baghdad in the past week.

Pentagon officials urged patience, saying two of the five U.S. brigades ordered to Iraq as part of the security plan have yet to arrive, although some at the Pentagon privately expressed concern.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in Israel, blamed al-Qaida for Wednesday's attacks and said military planners had anticipated such actions "to make the plan a failure or to make the people of Iraq believe the plan is a failure."

But one official at the Pentagon sighed at news of the bombings: "We don't have enough troops. It would take another 100,000" to properly protect Baghdad. Another planner said: "We are just trying the same things over and over again." Neither would agree to speak on the record, citing the sensitivity of the topic.

Outside the Pentagon, military experts urged the Bush administration to reassess its plan, which until the past week had reduced the number of unidentified corpses found on Baghdad's streets but has done nothing to stop mass-fatality bombings.

"Which one is better: assassination squads or spectacular bombings?" asked Kevin Ryan, a retired brigadier general who's now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "They have to readjust."

Telling Us What We Want To Hear

Wishful thinking?

Or a reassuring message for foreign consumption?

Iraq plans to take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the year end, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Wednesday, after growing pressure to say when U.S. troops would leave.

But he said there was no easy way to end the raging sectarian violence which continued in the capital as two car bombs killed 20 people and wounded 30 in mostly Shi'ite areas.

Anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr withdrew his six ministers from Maliki's cabinet on Monday to press for a pull-out timetable for the 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

In a speech delivered on his behalf at a ceremony marking the handover of southern Maysan province from British to Iraqi control, Maliki said three provinces in the autonomous Kurdistan region would be next, followed by Kerbala and Wasit provinces.

"Then it will be province by province until we achieve (this transfer) before the end of the year," Maliki said in the speech delivered by National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie.

Rubaie said this could happen even sooner.

"We are working very hard to get all provinces to have control and transfer security responsibilities ... well before Christmas," he told reporters in English after the ceremony.

Gotta love the reference to Christmas by Rubaie -- a Shiite.

We know who the intended audience is.

U.S. Soldier Goes On Trial In Absentia In Italy

A U.S. soldier went on trial in absentia Tuesday for the shooting death of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Iraq two years ago, a case that strained relations between Rome and Washington.

The judge immediately adjourned the proceedings against Spc. Mario Lozano, 37, until May 14 for technical reasons.

The agent, Nicola Calipari, was shot March 4, 2005, on his way to the Baghdad airport shortly after securing the release of a kidnapped Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena. Sgrena and another agent who was driving the car were wounded.

Lozano was indicted in February on charges of murder and attempted murder. ...

"What happened was not the fault of the checkpoint, but the fault of the Italians who did not have any military escort," said Cardinali. Lozano's current lawyer was not immediately available for comment.

Rome has not sought Lozano's extradition, but the Pentagon has indicated that he would not be extradited anyway, saying it considered the incident a "closed matter." ...

U.S. authorities have said the vehicle was traveling fast, alarming soldiers who feared an insurgent attack. Italian officials claimed the car was traveling at normal speed and blamed the U.S. military for failing to signal there was a checkpoint. It also contended that stress, inexperience and fatigue played a role.

In a separate case, also an irritant to bilateral relations, Italian prosecutors have indicted 26 Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect in Milan as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

Anniversary of Largest Mutiny in History

Barbara Hendricks sang a requiem at Verdun. Prince Charles spoke at the Somme. And last week Queen Elizabeth paid homage at Vimy, another of the great battle sites of World War I.

But ceremonies will be decidedly less elaborate Monday as France observes one of its most tortured and enigmatic anniversaries: the start nine decades ago of the battle of Chemin des Dames, which led to the largest mutiny in modern military history.

The battle, fought on a barren ridge less than two hours from Paris by modern road transport, is seared into French collective memory and has fascinated historians as the moment when man said "no" to the machine gun.

The military story is horrific, if not unusual for World War I. At 6 a.m. on April 16, 1917, General Robert Nivelle sent an army of 1.2 million men into a battle roughly 130 kilometers, or 80 miles, northeast of Paris that would be France's go-for-broke gamble to end World War I.

The result was catastrophe. Underestimating the German advantage of entrenched hilltop positions, Nivelle found his offensive blocked. Still, he refused to let up, and at least 30,000 were killed in the first 10 days.

Then the soldiers mutinied. They did not retreat, but they refused to obey orders for further attack. Many officers had been killed, and their replacements were green. Amid a breakdown of hierarchy, the troops cursed their commanders, drinking and singing seditious songs in the trenches, according to published memoirs. Haunting questions persist about this dark chapter.

Military records are confusing, but it is known that as many as 40,000 men in as many as 130 regiments took part in insubordination. About 3,400 "mutineers" were taken before military tribunals in ensuing months; 554 were sentenced to death. The number of sentences actually carried out remains in dispute, but a figure of about 50 is widely cited.

"This is not just one more commemoration," said Yves Daudigny, head of the General Council in Aisne, the department where the battle took place. "This was an episode that was long blocked out of official memory." ...

In April 1917, all the basic ingredients for mutiny were present: three years of mud, rats, and lice in the trenches; mild spring weather; political revolt in Europe; and a classic tale of hubris.

Nivelle, a hero of Verdun the previous year, wanted a quick breakthrough, and he did not relent, even when nearly all signs pointed to defeat.

New CSIS Report: "Iraq's Troubled Future: The Uncertain Way Ahead"

Tony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies has issued a new report on the outlook for the war in Iraq, Iraq's Troubled Future: The Uncertain Way Ahead (22 page PDF)

Some highlights:

The United States faces extremely uncertain prospects in Iraq. It is more than possible that a failed President and a failed administration will preside over a failed war for the second time since Vietnam. Security is only one part of the story and even security in Baghdad is uncertain. ...

As General Petraeus and other US commanders have repeatedly said, securing Baghdad and its surroundings is only meaningful if the Iraqi government and Iraq's factions can work out arrangements for political conciliation or some form of peaceful coexistence. Local security at best buys time and opportunity to find a viable set of political compromises, and Iraq's complex mix of conflicts are national, not local.

Whether one calls the approach "ink spots" or "oil stains," we already have four examples of military action without a viable political solution. We have seen the light at the end of the tunnel in Saigon, Beirut, and Mogadishu; and it turned out to be on oncoming train. A security first strategy is unworkable, particularly one that is local rather than national. The ideological, political, and economic battles do not have to all be won at the same time, but they must be fought simultaneously, and winning the political battle to the point where some form of stable conciliation and coexistence are possible is the strategic center of gravity. The battle for Baghdad is only a tactic.

Like it or not, the US not only has an enduring strategic interest in Iraq and the Gulf, it has a moral and ethnical obligation to some 27 million Iraqis. The US invaded Iraq for all the wrong reasons, and then proceeded to "transform" it in ways that have done immense damage to the Iraqi people. As has been all too clear from the start, anger at Saddam Hussein's regime does not translate into support for a US-led invasion and the US has won little Arab Shi'ite or Arab Sunni admiration for its actions since the war. ...

In fact, if the US is to have any degree of success in Iraq and in any similar struggles in failed or broken states, it must take a hard look at how its efforts in civil-military affairs have interacted with Iraqi civil-military developments:

• The US invaded Iraq without a valid understanding of the Iraqi government, economy, and sectarian and ethnic differences. It did not have plans, staff, or aid money to deal with the situation; and did not have the force strength to provide security.

• When the US rushed to try to correct this situation, it did so with deep ideological prejudices and lacked the core competence to do so. It focused on US goals in political and economic reform. It focused on national elections and paper constitutions, rather than effective governance, and on rushed efforts to define a massive long-term aid program to "reconstruct" Iraq in American terms. It failed to recruit, deploy, and retain competent civilians, and plunged into a badly coordinated interagency nightmare.

• It took the US until early 2004 to realize that creating effective Iraqi security forces was a critical element of stability, until late 2004 for major resources to flow, until 2005 to realize that the army needed massive numbers of embeds and partner units and that the State Department could not staff the necessary kind of police training effort. It could not actually implement its "year of the police" in 2006, and had to rush half-formed Iraqi Army units into combat and local security missions they were often not ready to perform.

• The US military has had to transform its transformation to focus on counterinsurgency, stability operations, and nation building. Its military have been pushed into a wide range of new training and civil military roles. It still is badly short of experts and fully qualified translators (where it may still have less than 25% of its needs). At the same time, the military has been forced to use its personnel to make up for the grave shortfalls in US government civilian experts and the lack of cooperation from some civilian agencies.

• The US has just appointed an "aid coordinator" in Iraq that may have the strength to bring order to a chaotic mess. Its PRT effort is understaffed and underqualified, it still has poor security arrangements for its aid personnel, and only now is beginning to understand the full limits of Iraq’s oil "wealth," the depth of the structural problems in Iraq's economy, and the need to "reconstruct" in ways that take account of the need for money to flow to Iraqis, rather than foreign contractors; focus on Iraq's state industries, and examine the deep structural problems in Iraq's oil and agricultural sectors.

• As General Abizaid, General Casey, and General Petraeus have all pointed out at different times, tactical victories and military efforts are pointless without political success. The US supported a form of deBaathification almost designed to alienate the Sunnis, and removed much of the nation's secular core from power. The US insistence on national elections in a country without political parties, however, has left a legacy of government divided along sectarian and ethnic lines. The US pressure for a new constitution helped make "federalism" a key issue, and leave more than 50 fault lines in Iraq's government to still be clarified. Political conciliation has been far more cosmetic than real, adding Arab Sunni versus Arab Shi'ite, Shi'ite on Shi'ite, and Arab on Kurd tension and violence to the threat posed by hard core Sunni Neo-Salafi led insurgency.

• The "surge" strategy in Baghdad is the third version in 18 months of what is really a tactical effort to bring local security to the capital city. If it succeeds, it will probably be because the Shi'ite militias stand down, and the US effectively helps a Shi'ite dominated government "win." If it fails, it will probably be because US military friction with the Shi'ite militias becomes violent. It is not clear what the US strategy is if the US does win in Baghdad, or how this will deal with the broader Iraqi civil-military struggle involving Arab Sunni versus Arab Shi'ite, Shi'ite on Shi'ite, and Arab on Kurd. Capitalizing an US success almost certainly would require at least five more years of major US civil-military advisory and aid efforts in Iraq and it is far from clear that the US Congress will give either the current or next President the necessary time and resources.

• As was the case in Vietnam, the US has crippled its own efforts with poorly planned and executed programs that attempt to rush success and which lack adequate regard for local values. It has created reporting systems design to report success, not real progress or the lack of it, for its Iraqi force development and political and economic aid efforts. This reporting has slowly improved in some areas under the pressure of events, but much of the US reporting on Iraqi force development and economic aid efforts still lacks meaning and credibility. This includes basic data like Iraqi force manpower, unit readiness, aid efforts relative to requirements, and reporting on aid based on meaningful measures of effectiveness.

(...)

If the US is to influence the situation as effectively as possible, it must reinforce its existing policies with a new degree of realism and with the understanding that Iraqi civil conflicts, and anger against the US and its allies, must be dealt with far more honesty and integrity than the US government has shown to date. It also must prepare for years of continued effort, not a quick withdrawal. The civil-military elements of the long war are going to play out in 10-15 year periods, not according to the classic American plan: "simple, quick, and wrong."

Details of Petraeus' COIN Plan

From Robert Fisk:

Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.

But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.

The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course - American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers - participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.

The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial. The ID card project is based upon a system adopted in the city of Tal Afar by General Petraeus's men - and specifically by Colonel H R McMaster, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment - in early 2005, when an eight-foot "berm" was built around the town to prevent the movement of gunmen and weapons. General Petraeus regarded the campaign as a success although Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, has since fallen back into insurgent control.

No Thanks, Mr. President

Talk about a shitty assignment. No wonder the billet is going unfilled.

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. ...

The administration's interest in the idea stems from long-standing concern over the coordination of civilian and military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan by different parts of the U.S. government. The Defense and State departments have long struggled over their roles and responsibilities in Iraq, with the White House often forced to referee. ...

Besides Sheehan, sources said, the White House or intermediaries have sounded out retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and retired Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, who also said they are not interested. Ralston declined to comment; Keane confirmed he declined the offer, adding: "It was discussed weeks ago."

Kurt Campbell, a Clinton administration Pentagon official who heads the Center for a New American Security, said the difficulty in finding someone to take the job shows that Bush has exhausted his ability to sign up top people to help salvage a disastrous war. "Who's sitting on the bench?" he asked. "Who is there to turn to? And who would want to take the job?" ...

In an interview yesterday, Sheehan said that Hadley contacted him and they discussed the job for two weeks but that he was dubious from the start. "I've never agreed on the basis of the war, and I'm still skeptical," Sheehan said. "Not only did we not plan properly for the war, we grossly underestimated the effect of sanctions and Saddam Hussein on the Iraqi people."

In the course of the discussions, Sheehan said, he called around to get a better feel for the administration landscape.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," he said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence." Sheehan said he wrote a note March 27 declining interest.

Union Organizers Targeted In Colombia

Our choice of friends in many parts of the world tends to leave much to be desired.

Especially among the largest recipients of U.S. aid.

Zully Codina was a mother, veteran hospital worker and union activist. The last role was the one that cost Codina her life at the hands of paramilitary death squads, whose records show they collaborated with the country's intelligence service to liquidate her and other union activists.

Codina was killed on Nov. 11, 2003, when a gunman pumped three bullets into her head moments after she kissed her family goodbye and walked out of her Santa Marta home. Her murder remains unsolved, as do those of the vast majority of the 400 union members killed since President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002. ...

Recent disclosures about the purported role of the Colombian intelligence service, the Administrative Security Department, or DAS, in the murder of Codina and several other union leaders has ignited a political firestorm here that is reaching Capitol Hill just as the Bush administration is fighting for congressional approval of a free-trade pact with Colombia, the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid. ...

The Uribe administration's efforts have been hurt by the February arrest of the DAS's former chief, Jorge Noguera, who was charged with working with paramilitary members as they infiltrated the political establishment and silenced adversaries along the Caribbean coast. The illegal militias, organized a generation ago to fight Marxist rebels, have morphed into a Mafia-style organization dedicated to drug trafficking and extortion.

A clandestine paramilitary operative named to DAS by Noguera said in a recent interview that the intelligence service compiled lists of union members, along with details about their security, and handed them over to a coalition of paramilitary groups known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

"This list went to Jorge Noguera, and he made sure it reached the Self-Defense Forces," said the operative, Rafael Garcia, now in jail and working with prosecutors. "The DAS knows the movements of union members."

Noguera coordinated Uribe's run for the presidency in coastal Magdalena state in 2002 and was rewarded with the top job at DAS when Uribe won the election. As the scandal enveloped the agency, Uribe vigorously defended Noguera, calling him "an uncontaminated man and good person" and then naming him consul in Milan, Italy, when the allegations surfaced. ...

Uribe's government is the Bush administration's closest ally in Latin America and has received billions in U.S. aid to curtail violence. But in the midst of intense lobbying in Washington for a trade pact, Uribe has been buffeted by a widening scandal that has linked two dozen current and former congressmen, most of them the president's allies, with paramilitary groups.

"I think the trade pact is in jeopardy," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who recently met with union leaders in Colombia. "With each passing day, it goes higher and higher. It goes to military leaders, the head of the secret police and prominent politicians. I don't know how far this leads, but it's too close for comfort."

Apologists are saying the number of murdered unionists is down from previous levels.

That'll be enough to satisfy most people in Washington. The free-trade pact is hardly in danger. The "special relationship" with Colombia always allows for such trifles and minor irritations to be excused.

Shiites Growing Restive

Mookie and the Shiites are becoming more of a problem for the occupation.

Tens of thousands draped themselves in Iraqi flags and marched peacefully through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall. Demonstrators were flanked by two cordons of police as they called for U.S. forces to leave, shouting "Get out, get out occupier!"

Security was tight across Iraq, with a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in Baghdad starting from 5 a.m. Monday. The government quickly reinstated the day as a holiday, rescinding its weekend order that had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off.

The Najaf rally was ordered by Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric who a day earlier issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces, and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating "your archenemy."

Demonstrators marched from Kufa to neighboring Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. Those marching were overwhelmingly Shiite, but Sunnis - who are believed to make up the heart of Iraq's insurgency - have also called for an American withdrawal.

Some at the rally waved small Iraqi flags; others hoisted a giant flag 10 yards long. Leaflets fluttered through the breeze reading: "Yes, Yes to Iraq" and "Yes, Yes to Muqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq."

"The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people," said lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, as he marched. "After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded."

A senior official in al-Sadr's organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a "call for liberation."

"We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq with full sovereignty," he said.

Al-Sadr did not attend the demonstration, and has not appeared in public for months. U.S. officials say he left Iraq for neighboring Iran after the Feb. 14 start of a Baghdad security crackdown, but his followers say he is in Iraq.

Iraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen turbaned clerics - including one Sunni. Many marchers danced as they moved through the streets.

Business Is Business

Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country's nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa. ...

It is also not the first time that the Bush administration has made an exception for allies in their dealings with North Korea. In 2002, Spain intercepted a ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen. At the time, Yemen was working with the United States to hunt members of Al Qaeda operating within its borders, and after its government protested, the United States asked that the freighter be released. Yemen said at the time that it was the last shipment from an earlier missile purchase and would not be repeated.

American officials from a number of agencies described details of the Ethiopian episode on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal Bush administration deliberations. ...

Several officials said they first learned that Ethiopia planned to receive a delivery of military cargo from North Korea when the country’s government alerted the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, after the adoption on Oct. 14 of the United Nations Security Council measure imposing sanctions.

"The Ethiopians came back to us and said, 'Look, we know we need to transition to different customers, but we just can’t do that overnight,' " said one American official, who added that the issue had been handled properly. "They pledged to work with us at the most senior levels."

American intelligence agencies in late January reported that an Ethiopian cargo ship that was probably carrying tank parts and other military equipment had left a North Korean port.

The value of the shipment is unclear, but Ethiopia purchased $20 million worth of arms from North Korea in 2001, according to American estimates, a pattern that officials said had continued. The United States gives Ethiopia millions of dollars of foreign aid and some nonlethal military equipment.

After a brief debate in Washington, the decision was made not to block the arms deal and to press Ethiopia not to make future purchases.

Why Saddam Had To Be Linked To Al Qaeda

The underlying controversy is really old news, but is noteworthy in that officialdom is now acknowledging the manipulation (by creative interpretation and emphasis) of a key part of the intelligence that was used to sell the idea of war with Iraq.

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. ...

The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said (then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J.) Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.

Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.

"Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations," that CIA report said, adding that discussions on the issue were "necessarily speculative."

The CIA had separately concluded that reports of Iraqi training on weapons of mass destruction were "episodic, sketchy, or not corroborated in other channels," the inspector general's report said. It quoted an August 2002 CIA report describing the relationship as more closely resembling "two organizations trying to feel out or exploit each other" rather than cooperating operationally.

The CIA was not alone, the defense report emphasized. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had concluded that year that "available reporting is not firm enough to demonstrate an ongoing relationship" between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, it said.

But the contrary conclusions reached by Feith's office -- and leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war -- were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic, a circumstance the Pentagon report cites in documenting the impact of what it described as "inappropriate" work.

All the sophistry linking Saddam to Al Qaeda became necessary when the administration was not able to blame Iraq for the 9/11 attacks from the beginning.

Something went dreadfully wrong for the plotters that morning. More details about that cannot be specified at this time.

Too many people knew that the simultaneous attacks were the Al Qaeda M.O., and thus the administration was forced to go to Afghanistan -- a very undesirable distraction for those long eager to deal with Iraq -- before the main objective could be initiated.

The White House knew that the American people needed to believe that Iraq was responsible to some degree for the 9/11 attacks in order to support a war with Iraq. Thus, evidence along those lines had to be manufactured.

Congressional Trips To Syria: IOKIYAR

Three Republican congressmen who parted with President Bush by meeting with Syrian leaders said Wednesday it is important to maintain a dialogue with a country the White House says sponsors terrorism.

"I don't care what the administration says on this. You've got to do what you think is in the best interest of your country," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. "I want us to be successful in Iraq. I want us to clamp down on Hezbollah."

Washington accuses Syria of backing Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups it deems terrorist organizations. The Bush administration also says Syria is contributing to the violence in Iraq by allowing Sunni insurgents to operate from its territory and is destabilizing Lebanon's government.

Bush sharply criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for leading a delegation to meet with Syria's president, Bashar Assad.

The White House, however, stayed relatively quiet about a similar trip just a few days earlier by Wolf and GOP Reps. Robert Aderholt of Alabama and Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania.

CIA, FBI Interrogating Prisoners at Secret Facilities in Ethiopia

CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.

The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP.

Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland.

Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa.

U.S. government officials contacted by AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said American agents were following the law and were fully justified in their actions because they are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism. ...

Western security officials, who insisted on anonymity because the issue related to security matters, told AP that among those held were well-known suspects with strong links to al-Qaida.

But some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to AP only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation. ...

The transfer from Kenya to Somalia, and eventually to Ethiopia, of a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal, raised disquiet among FBI officers and the State Department. He is the only American known to be among the detainees in Ethiopia.

U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal's transfer and then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman for the State Department.

He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status.

An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was "disgusted" by Meshal's deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal.

"My personal opinion was that he may have been a jihadi a-hole, but the precedent of 'deporting' U.S. citizens to dangerous situations when there is no reason to do so was a bad one," the official quoted the memo as saying.

French Concerned With Electronic Voting Skullduggery

This article uses a bad example to illustrate the pitfalls of relying on modern voting systems.

The real problem with electronic voting happens when you never know anything has gone wrong, not newsmaking clusterfucks like last fall in Sarasota.

For France's Socialists, among others, the coming presidential election could descend into a nightmare like last fall's in Florida.

This is the first presidential election in France to use paperless computer voting. As many as 1.5 million of the 44.5 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots electronically in more than 80 municipalities around the country.

But with election day less than three weeks away, opposition to the electronic voting machines has grown, in part because a small percentage of them are made by the same American company whose machines were involved in a bitterly disputed Congressional election in Florida last November.

"We have doubts about the reliability of these machines," Gilles Savary, a spokesman for Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, said in an interview. "I don't want to lecture America. But we don't want France to fall into the same Kafkaesque balloting as happened in the United States."

Last week, the Socialist Party called for a moratorium on using the machines until their reliability could be determined. The party also wants a debate on the issue in Parliament.

"Reliability" is not really the issue.

Electronic voting technology -- as used in modern political skullduggery -- can deliver extremely "reliable" results for those who seek to manipulate the tally.

The French should be focusing instead on engineered access that enables electoral abuses.

These machines are only as honest as the people who handle them.

More To Seizure of Brits Than Previously Advertised

From an article by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent.

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.

"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.

Mr Jafari was accompanied by a second, high-ranking Iranian official. "His name was General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Pasdaran [Iranian Revolutionary Guard]," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, now head of the Diwan (office) of President Talabani in Baghdad. Mr Pire previously lived in Arbil, where he headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Mr Talabani's political party. ...

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

The raid on Arbil took place within hours of President George Bush making an address to the nation on 10 January in which he claimed: "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops." He identified Iran and Syria as America's main enemies in Iraq though the four-year-old guerrilla war against US-led forces is being conducted by the strongly anti-Iranian Sunni-Arab community. Mr Jafari himself later complained about US allegations. "So far has there been a single Iranian among suicide bombers in the war-battered country?" he asked. "Almost all who involved in the suicide attacks are from Arab countries."

It seemed strange at the time that the US would so openly flout the authority of the Iraqi President and the head of the KRG simply to raid an Iranian liaison office that was being upgraded to a consulate, though this had not yet happened on 11 January. US officials, who must have been privy to the White House's new anti-Iranian stance, may have thought that bruised Kurdish pride was a small price to pay if the US could grab such senior Iranian officials.

Iran Fears U.S. Attack in Summer, Says Israeli MI Chief

Iran is making defensive preparations for what it fears will be a U.S. military attack this summer, Israel's military intelligence chief said on Sunday.

Major-General Amos Yadlin also told the Israeli cabinet that Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and Syria believed they could be targeted in any U.S.-initiated war against Iran, an Israeli government official said, briefing reporters on his remarks.

"What we are seeing is their preparation for the possibility of war in the summer. My assessment is that they are defensive preparations for war," Yadlin was quoted as saying, referring to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

The government official said Yadlin spoke about Iranian fears of a U.S., not an Israeli, offensive.

The official gave no details about the type of military preparations Yadlin said Iran was making to meet any U.S. attack.

"We are closely monitoring these preparations because (Iran, Syria and Hezbollah) could misinterpret various moves in the region," Yadlin said, according to the official.

April Fools in Baghdad

Rarely does one go to such an elaborate effort to pull off an April Fools' joke.

After a heavily guarded walk through a newly fortified Baghdad market, Sen. John McCain declared that the American public was not getting "a full picture" of the progress unfolding in Iraq.

McCain (Ariz.), who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, cited a drop in murders, the creation of a constellation of joint U.S.-Iraqi military outposts and a rise in intelligence tips as signs of the progress.

"These and other indications are reason for cautious optimism," McCain said, voicing an observation increasingly heard from U.S. officials.

The senator and three other Republican members of Congress appeared most impressed by their visit to Shorja market, citing the hour they spent there as proof that Baghdad was getting safer under a nearly seven-week-old security offensive.

"Never have I been able to drive from the airport, never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today," McCain said. ...

Last week, McCain said it was safe to walk some of the streets of Baghdad.

But Sunday's visit took place under heavy security. McCain and his delegation held a news conference inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices. Outside the Green Zone, they rode in armored Humvees protected by dozens of U.S. soldiers and wore bulletproof vests.

They visited a joint U.S.-Iraqi military outpost in the Karrada area of central Baghdad, which Iraqis view as one of the capital's safer neighborhoods.

Part of the Shorja market, normally one of the capital's busiest commercial districts, is now fortified with blast walls and barriers that cut off vehicle traffic. ...

"I, too, find myself leaving my day at the market in Baghdad with a new sense of cautious optimism that freedom might just work for these people," said (Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.)).

Pence said he was deeply moved by his ability to "mix and mingle unfettered among ordinary Iraqis" and to have tea and haggle over the price of a rug. The Shorja market, he said, was "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summer time." ...

At the news conference, McCain criticized Western and Iraqi journalists, including many who had covered Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, for not reporting the good news in Iraq.

One Iraqi journalist, speaking in English, asked him: "I just read on the Internet that you said there are areas in Baghdad that you can walk around freely?"

"I just came from one," McCain replied.

"Yeah, and which area would that be?" the journalist asked.

"What kind of security you had today?" asked another journalist. ...

After the news conference, reporters asked a U.S. Embassy official for the name of the market the delegation had visited. He declined to identify it, saying the market could come under attack. On Sunday night, U.S. military and embassy officials said it had been Shorja.