Obama's War in Iraq: Why Are Young Americans Still Dying in Iraq?

Why is this still happening?

Two U.S. troops killed in Iraq

By the CNN Wire Staff

June 14, 2011 6:31 a.m. EDT

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. service members were killed Monday during operations in southern Iraq, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

There were no further details about the incident, and their names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Violence has dropped dramatically in recent years in Iraq. Under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact, which set a timetable to withdraw American forces, U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by Jan. 1, 2012.

However, U.S. troops have increasingly been targeted by roadside bombings and mortar attacks, largely in Baghdad and southern Iraq -- a Shiite stronghold.

Five American soldiers were killed June 6, the single largest loss of life among U.S. troops since 2009, and the military says that attack is likely the work Shiite militia trying to take credit for driving forces out of the country.

Iraq - "US influence is falling by the day."

Sun sets on US influence in Iraq as deal on new government looms

By Patrick Cockburn

Independent

Thursday, 11 November 2010

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US Army soldiers on a joint Iraqi security operation in al-Noor village in Kirkuk province, north of Baghdad, yesterday

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The United States is facing a decisive political defeat in Iraq over the formation of a new government, as its influence in the country sinks lower than at any time since the invasion of 2003.

The increased power of Iran is expected to be underlined with a vote in parliament today inBaghdad to name the leadership after eight months of political stalemate during which political violence has continued throughout the country.

The US campaign to promote its favoured candidate, Iyad Allawi, as president appears to have failed spectacularly. Mr Allawi's al-Iraqiya party, which won most seats in the election on 7 March, is breaking up as several of its factions join the government.

President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator John McCain, who is in Baghdad leading a congressional delegation, all lobbied the Kurdish leaders to give up the post of President but without success. The incumbent, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are expected to be re-elected as the country's leaders.

Dr Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish leader and MP, said by phone from Baghdad yesterday there is "severe American pressure on us until now to give up the presidency", but said so far the Kurds had resisted it.

The US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq, but Mr Obama has made it clear that he intends to withdraw all of them. "American hegemony in Iraq is over," Ghassan al-Attiyah, a commentator and political scientist, said. "US influence is falling by the day."

Iraqi sources say the powerful job of Speaker of parliament is likely to go to Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni member of al-Iraqiya, who, along with his brother, controls the northern city of Mosul. Kamran Karadaghi, a veteran Kurdish journalist and a former chief of staff for President Talabani, said: "I expect Talabani to be President, Maliki to be Prime Minister and Nujaifi Speaker of parliament."

He added that American pressure on the Kurds to give up the presidency to the Sunni had been deeply resented and counter-productive; the Kurds have been closely allied with the US.

Mr Allawi, who was Prime Minister of Iraq at the height of the American occupation in 2004-05, appears to have overplayed his hand. His al-Iraqiyah party, strongly backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, won 91 of 325 seats in the Iraqi parliament in March. The State of Law bloc of Mr Maliki won 89 seats, the Shia religious parties, grouped in the Iraqi National Alliance, a further 70 seats, and the Kurds some 57 seats.

A secular Shia himself, Mr Allawi's voters were mostly Sunni and his al-Iraqiya party was always divided. He also seems to have exaggerated the ability of the US and the Sunni Arab states to make him prime minister or president. Influential Sunni politicians such as Mr Nujaifi, who is believed to control 20 MPs, has made no secret in recent days about his wish to be part of a power-sharing government. Dropping his previous opposition to Mr Maliki, he said earlier this week of his party that "there are signs of a deal".

The Speaker in the Iraqi parliament has a powerful and high-profile position, since he calls parliament into session and largely controls its work. If Mr Nujaifi gets the job this may go some way to satisfying the Sunni demand for a share in government. A former Industry Minister, he and his brother Atheel took control of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city with a population of 1.7 million, during provincial elections in 2009. They have been at daggers drawn with the Kurds in and around Mosul, but have reached an understanding with the Kurdish leadership.

Private talks between Mr Maliki and Sunni leaders were happening yesterday afternoon, but the Prime Minister appears certain of re-appointment.

Mr Attiyah said: "It is unbelievable how he has won the support of all those, like the Kurds, Sadrists, Iranians and others who wanted to get rid of him after the election."

His main strength has probably been that there was no obvious candidate on the Shia side able to replace him. Iran has outmanoeuvred the US in shaping the new government to its own liking.

Along with its ally, Syria, Iran has shown flexibility in dropping its earlier opposition to Mr Maliki and persuading the followers of the nationalist Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who did well in the Iraqi election, to do the same. It thereby reunited the Shia coalition which, with the Kurds, has ruled Iraq since 2005. The only Shia party left out is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, once seen as an Iranian pawn.

Too Bad for Christians in Iraq and the Rest of The Middle East

All the spin about the outcome of our invasion and occupation of Iraq cannot account for the blowback that has adversely affected Christians. That will only get worse with time and if we leave promptly, it will get worse for them faster. George Bush would have done better by Iraqi Christians knowing history better than he knew his bible.

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Baghdad church hostage drama ends in bloodbath

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says that the full death toll remains unclear

At least 37 people have been killed after Iraqi security forces stormed a Catholic church in central Baghdad to free dozens of hostages being held by gunmen there, security sources say.

Twenty-five hostages were among the dead, along with seven members of the Iraqi security forces and at least five of the attackers, they told the BBC.

About 100 people had been inside Our Lady of Salvation for an evening Mass.

The gunmen had reportedly demanded the release of jailed al-Qaeda militants.

The local TV station, al-Baghdadiya, said it had received a phone call from someone claiming to be one of the attackers, who said they were from the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni militant umbrella group to which al-Qaeda in Iraq belongs.

Reports said the attackers were not Iraqis, but foreign Arabs.

The raid came two days after a suicide attack on a cafe in Diyala province left 21 people dead.

'Priest killed'

Residents of Baghdad's Karada district, where the attack took place, first heard a loud explosion at about 1700 (1400 GMT), followed by gunfire.

Police said a group of armed men began by attacking the Iraq Stock Exchange building, and then took over the Catholic church just across the road, clashing with guards and killing some of them.

Security forces later surrounded the church and sealed off the area, with helicopters hovering overhead. Then they stormed the building.

Witnesses nearby said they then heard two explosions from inside the church and more shooting.

One eyewitness, who was inside the church, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that the gunmen "came into the prayer hall and immediately killed the priest".

The witness, who declined to give his name, said the people in the church had huddled into the main prayer hall when the gunbattles began with the security forces.

The gunmen reportedly threw grenades and blew their suicide vests.

There were no negotiations with the gunmen before the security forces stormed the church, reports suggest.

Witnesses also say they saw US troops on the ground and US military helicopters hovering above the scene, but the extent of their involvement is not yet clear.

"The operation has finished and we released all the hostages," said the commander of police in south-eastern Baghdad, Brig-Gen Ali Ibrahim.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says there are different figures from different sources for the number of hostages and attackers involved, and how many of each were killed or captured.

Earlier reports said that two security guards at the stock exchange had been killed before the attackers occupied the church.

Many churches have been bombed in recent years - including Our Lady of Salvation in August 2004 - and priests kidnapped and killed, but there has never been a prolonged hostage situation like this before, our correspondent says.

There are about 1.5 million Christians from ancient denominations in Iraq.

Iraqi Christians have been leaving the country in droves since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Iraq Ponders Its Future

My guess is the Iraq will flounder around and a new strongman will appear. At best he could be a Tito, at worse another Ayatollah. Another Hussein would probably be the best of the worst cases. The dream of democracy spreading from Iraq throughout the Middle East was after all an American dream. Reality is setting and the reality in the wonderful world of Islamic politics is a theocracy or a police state. Unfortunately for the Iraqis, without American force, the turf wars will accelerate. The Iraqi military will have to step forward and not in a way that was envisioned by the American nation builders. Too bad that.


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August 17, 2010
Iraqi Leaders Fear for Future After Their Past Missteps
By ANTHONY SHADID NY Times

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political elite, empowered by the American invasion and entrusted with the country’s future, has begun to deliver a damning critique of itself, a grim harbinger for a country rife with fears of more crises, conflicts and even coups as the American military withdraws.

“We should be ashamed of the way we led the country,” said Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a former exile and one of the country’s most prominent politicians.

The verdict by Mr. Abdul Mahdi, echoed often by his peers among the exiled opposition that followed American troops into Baghdad in 2003 and has led Iraq since, is a remarkable window on the apprehension that has seized the country today, still without leadership five months after Iraqis voted in an election meant to enshrine a new government.

As with so much here, the consequences are unpredictable. At least publicly, American officials had hoped for a power-sharing deal that would avert a more dangerous predicament, but those negotiations broke down this week. Even they have begun to worry about the implications of the impasse. “My sense is that there is impatience among the public with their politicians,” said Christopher R. Hill, the departing United States ambassador to Iraq, who had pushed for the deal before his departure last week.

For many Iraqis, especially those with memories of the four coups in the decade after the fall of the monarchy in 1958, the apprehension underlines a dangerous combination of forces here that long bedeviled the Middle East: an unpredictable, fractured military and rising popular frustration with an isolated political class that has at times seemed rudderless, even helpless.

In the end, many officials expect an eventual agreement on some sort of consensus government so inclusive as to be woefully weak, unable to assert itself and beset by stalemate over the laws necessary to shape post-American Iraq. But the failure of the elite that the United States helped to choose may serve as a lasting American legacy here, raising fundamental questions about the body politic it leaves behind as the American military departs by 2012.

“I think it’s a valid question to ask: Is this system going to work for Iraq, given its history, its peculiarities and so on?” asked Ryan C. Crocker, who preceded Mr. Hill as the American ambassador to Iraq. “I don’t have an answer. But it’s a question that’s going to need to be dealt with.”

To a remarkable degree, Iraq remains haunted by the decisions of the earliest days of the occupation in 2003, when expediency trumped foresight.

Debates still rage in Iraq over the choices the United States made: disbanding the Iraqi military, the purge of members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and the decision to occupy Iraq rather than create a transitional Iraqi government. But perhaps the most far-reaching bequest was the power the exiled opposition and Kurdish parties have held in Iraq since 2003, filling a vacuum left by Mr. Hussein’s withering assault on any dissent.

Despite expectations that a more grass-roots leadership might emerge, only the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a populist cleric, have done so. Otherwise the names in 2003, with the exception of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, remain much the same: two former prime ministers, Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari; Ahmad Chalabi, an American ally turned critic; Mr. Abdul Mahdi; the Kurdish leaders; and two generations of Hakims, a prominent Shiite religious family.

Asked if the Americans bore blame for their prominence, Mr. Crocker said, “I don’t think so. You can ask the question, was the whole bloody thing a mistake? I don’t spend a lot of time on that. But if not them, then who?”

Palace intrigue only begins to describe the style of the political elite here since taking power, many of the players still imbued with a sepia-tinted recollection of a Baghdad only rarely mirrored in today’s rough-and-tumble streets. Most remain friends, at least in public. But the clandestine secrecy of exile, with its endless plotting and duplicitous maneuvering, still shapes their interaction. Then, survival was the goal; in many ways, it remains the same.

“Most of them, in my understanding, are still acting as if they’re in the opposition rather than trying to build a state,” Mr. Abdul Mahdi said. “I’m not excepting myself or any other.”

Between a flurry of meetings, another leading politician called his colleagues ineffective, overly impressed with the trappings of power and so greedy as to “border on being kleptocrats.” He added, “They put the immediate above the important and tactical issues above strategic matters.”

He was reluctant to speak on the record; to do so might upset potential allies.

“The same people, coming and going,” lamented Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker who served on the American-appointed Governing Council in 2003. “If someone died, he’s no longer around, but that’s it.”

As he spoke, his generator failed, plunging his house into the claustrophobic heat of a Baghdad summer. For a few hours, he suffered as does much of the rest of Baghdad, where electricity lasts for but a few hours, water is sometimes contaminated, trash piles up in the streets and the infrastructure is crumbling.

“We have failed for the past seven years,” he said.

In a hopeful irony, the very acknowledgment of that failure says something about a country still wrestling with the end of dictatorship; the ossified elite of Egypt and Syria would never do the same. Indeed, some politicians and analysts say that the political class faces an impossible task, beset by feeble and corrupt institutions, the vagaries of Mr. Hussein’s rule and a political culture that celebrates the spoils of victory.

Iraq’s neighbors, in particular Turkey and Iran, often unhelpful, have taken to playing politics here like a parlor game. To break the deadlock, American officials were pushing for a power-sharing agreement that would keep Mr. Maliki as prime minister, and Mr. Allawi in charge of security. But, Iraqi officials say, the Iranians are opposed to Mr. Allawi, while the Turks have lingering reservations about Mr. Maliki. Syria, Jordan, plus Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf are sure to want a say.

“We should blame ourselves as politicians because we allowed such countries to have so much influence in Iraq,” said Mithal al-Alusi, a former lawmaker.

The disenchantment is so pronounced, in fact, that many leaders see less a threat in the flagging but resilient insurgency and more in something unpredictable, what Mr. Abdul Mahdi termed “an adventurer” seeking to exploit chronic crises.

A leading politician related a recent conversation he had with a top Iraqi general. The politician asked about the possibility of a coup. The general, he said, deeming the talk serious, pulled out a map of the capital and provided a disconcertingly elaborate plan to execute one: overturning trucks to block the route from the main American base to the Green Zone, seizing television stations, besieging Parliament, and so on.

“When you’re president,” he quoted the general as asking, in utter seriousness, “can you make me minister of defense?”

Getting Nervous in Iraq

Iraqi army not ready to take over until 2020, says country's top general

Lieutenant General Babakir Zebari calls for US army to stay beyond Obama's 2011 deadline for complete withdrawal

Matthew Weaver and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 August 2010 08.20 BST

The Iraqi army is not ready to take over responsibility from the Americans, its most senior general has warned, as the White House insists the US army is on course to end its combat role in the country by the end of this month.

Lieutenant General Babakir Zebari told a defence conference in Baghdad that the Iraqi army would be unable to cope without backing from US forces.

He suggested the Iraqi army would be incapable of assuming control for another decade.

"If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020," he said.

This is not the first time Zebari has said Iraq needs the Americans to stay longer, but the timing of his comments makes them significant.

Barack Obama has pledged to hand over military responsibility to the Iraqi government by the end of the August as part of plan to reduce troop levels to 50,000.

Zebari said the reduction in US troop numbers was "going well" but only because "they are still here". He predicted trouble next year when all the remaining US troops are due to leave.

"The problem will start after 2011 – the politicians must find other ways to fill the void after 2011," he said.

Last night the White House said Obama was satisfied that the US could finish its combat role in Iraq safely this month and meet the deadline for removing troops from the country by the end of 2011.

The president was briefed on withdrawal by his national security team and the top US commander in Iraq, Ray Odierno. The White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "The president heard directly from General Odierno, who said that we were on target to complete our drawdown by the end of August. Already we have removed over 80,000 troops from Iraq since President Obama took office."

Violence in Iraq has fallen since the peak of sectarian warfare in 2006-2007, but in July the number of violent civilian deaths from daily bombings, shootings and other attacks rose sharply.

US officials expect violence to worsen as insurgents exploit the failure of political factions to agree on a new government after an inconclusive parliamentary election in March. This week US-backed militia leaders have said al-Qaida is attempting to make a comeback in Iraq.

"There continues to be terrorists in Iraq. There continues to be acts of violence," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said. But they had not affected "the positive trends" in Iraq and the overall level of violence had gone down, Rhodes said.

The president received an update from the vice-president, Joe Biden, and Christopher Hill, the US ambassador to Iraq, on Iraq's troubled efforts to form a new government.

Biden's national security adviser, Tony Blinken, said frustration was building among Iraqis over failure to form a governing coalition. "There is a sense of urgency to move forward and get a government formed," he said. "We really believe there is forward movement. But it's not up to us."

Why are Americans leaving? Iraqis having buyers remorse.

June 26, 2009
Iraqis have second thoughts over June 30 date for US troops to leave

Alice Fordham in Baquba Times on line

For six years Iraqis in this restless provincial capital have been waiting for US forces to withdraw, in the hope that the area will return to being Iraq’s sleepy rural backwater.

However, with only days to go before the last American soldiers are due to pull out of Baquba and other Iraqi cities, the residentshaving doubts.

There are fears that a premature departure will lead to a return of sectarian violence or allow al-Qaeda to re-establish itself. Many would like the Americans to remain until security is restored permanently.

“After you guys pull out from the city I don’t know what our enemies are going to do,Thaban Hassan said. The head of an Iraqi Army battalion in Baquba, he told the American soldiers gathered in his office that “safety is not 100 per cent . . . why are the Americans leaving?”

Colonel Burt Thompson, the commander of US forces in the area, whose troops still patrol Baquba, admitted that Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, had taken a gamble by insisting that his forces take control according to an agreed timetable.

In the past few days a bomb hit a mayor’s convoy, another hit an Iraqi army patrol and there was a revenge killing of an al-Qaeda militant.

In line with the status of forces agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, which came into effect at the beginning of this year, all US troops will cease patrolling Iraqi cities from June 30.

Despite the spike in violence Mr al-Maliki has insisted that the withdrawal will go ahead as planned.

Colonel Thompson called this insistence political and said that he would prefer to keep US soldiers in Diyala province, which remains a hub for insurgents coming into the country, until after elections next January.

That view is shared by residents. Dhea Taha, 32, who lives with her children near Baquba, said: “The security situation is not stable in the first place ... there is an increase in terrorist activity.”

Mohammad al-Obeidi, the chairman of the Security Council of Qais and Khalis, areas of Baquba which still have sectarian tensions, said that Mr al-Maliki’s reassurances did not ease concerns.

“Iraq is like a baby right now," he said. "It needs people to look after it.”

The religiously and ethnically diverse province was split by sectarian conflict during the turmoil after the invasion and never fully recovered. Remnants of Sunni groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq and Shia militia, are still active.

A Sunni in Khalis said that she fled after her house was hit by gunfire last year but when she tried to return two months ago her family’s homes and businesses were still occupied by a Shia militia.

First Lieutenant Hatem, head of an Iraqi Emergency Response Team in Baquba, said that his troops have been hit by roadside bombs and targeted by kidnappers. One soldier was seized last week and a ransom demanded.

“After you guys pull out,” he said to his American allies, “the situation is going to be bad.”

The border with Iran is patrolled by the Iraqi Army, but he had little faith in them, saying, “all insurgents escape from the country through the border ... and of course weapons are smuggled across the borders.”

“I certainly see that insurgent forces will perceive June 30 as a gap in our security plan,” said Colonel Shaun Reed, a battalion commander. “I think we will see a spike in violence based on the idea that the Iraqi security forces aren’t ready.”