Ramadi Enjoying New Sense of Hope and Optimism

Things started to improve when I was in Ramadi in the first half of 2006. But it's really improved in the year since then.

I left the Ramadi area in June 2006. According to an ABC news story, there were 450 attacks in that month. A year later, in June 2007, there were only 25.

The image you see above is Ambassador Ryan Crocker in downtown Ramadi, without a flack vest. It is working between the US and the Iraqis, because they understand more all the time that we're there to help.

Click here to view the ABC News Story.

The Right Balance: Iraq Memories, Rocky/Hannity Debate, and "Free the Film"

I had the good fortune of appearing on The Right Balance again yesterday. We discussed what it's like to have been home from Iraq for nearly a year, who won the Rocky/Hannity Debate, and whether PBS will Free the Film. Click "Read More" to be able to hear the segments.

In the first segment, instead of giving a "blatant capitalist plug" (one of Greg's favorite Greg-isms), I gave his show one. Greg's show, despite its not being as big as Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, is in my opinion the best talk show out there. Click below to find out why.

Greg asked me to talk about my memories of Iraq, which, after being home for nearly a year, are much more poignant than I thought they would be. I still have a great concern for the successful transition to liberty of the Iraqi people.

Following a false start, I explained to Greg Allen my perspective of the Rocky Anderson/Sean Hannity debate of a couple weeks ago, including that I think Rocky won the debate, and that although Sean made some good points, I think he makes a living being a buffoon.

Below is a portion of the last segment, where I talked about the importance of PBS making available the documentary segment entitled "Islam vs. Islamists", which I have written about here , here, and to some extent here.

Below are links to my previous interviews on The Right Balance.

• March 23rd, with Greg, as well as Dave Jeffers, whose son Eddie is currently serving in Ramadi, Iraq.
• My first ever radio interview on Thursday, March 8, 2007. (See if you can tell if I am nervous.)
  

Back on The Right Balance

I was invited to appear on The Right Balance with Greg Allen again yesterday. We continued right where we left off a few weeks ago, and I was very pleased with the outcome. I hope you will be, too. We were able to talk about the spiritual aspect of the war on terrorism, and how our faith makes us want to serve.

Greg is a member of the Society of Quakers, the other guest, Dave Jeffers, is an Evangelical, and I am a Mormon. But it was an interesting meeting of the religious minds during the segment. Dave's son Eddie is currently serving in Iraq.

We agreed that everyone--Quaker, Evangelical, Muslim, Mormon, so on and so forth--is a child of God, and that we should treat one another as such.

We talked about how it seems, despite the problems with the war in Iraq, caused largely by the mismanagement of the Bush Administration, we feel like we're part of something big, something magnificent that can ultimately bring freedom to the people of Iraq.

We discussed the concept that everyone was born with a conscience, and nearly everyone can distinguish good from evil. And that nearly everyone yearns for freedom, because freedom feels good.

So take a listen. (It's broken up into 3 segments, because my hosting service charges me for larger than 10MB files!)

Segment 1

Segment 2

Segment 3

The best counter-insurgency tactic is to let the people know you care.

The second best counter-insurgency tactic is to let the people know you share their values.

Serving Iraq on "The Right Balance"

Greg Allen has one of the most thoughtful and provocative radio programs in the United States today. It was my good fortune to be on his show this morning. In the segment (included below), we talked about my service in Iraq and my feelings about how things are going. Greg's show is called The Right Balance. Click the image at right to go to his website.



About 3 or 4 months ago, I began listening to the Accent Radio Network. One of the shows I still listen to in the mornings while getting ready for and driving off to work is The Right Balance with Greg Allen. I was immediately impressed by the show because it was not bombastic and it interviewed a wide variety of well-spoken and very interesting people. Almost every day I hear on The Right Balance of a web site that I want to check out or a book that I want to read.

A few days ago I e-mailed Greg and told him how much I like his show, and told him a little bit about my service in Iraq. An e-mail conversation ensued, followed by a telephone conversation in which he asked if I would like to be on his show. My only radio experience is having called in to two talk shows in my life, but I decided it would be a fun thing to do.

It was. If you'd like to hear the interview, click on the player below. Check out Greg's show as well. I think you'll be impressed. Then drop him a line and tell him you think he has one of the best radio talk programs in the country. Because he does.

Iraq Gotsta Decide Who to Dance With

Did you ever get asked to the high school dance by more than one person? Was it pretty hard to decide who to go with? Iraq is entwined in the same dilemma. It has two suitors, and it can't make up its mind which one it likes best. Or maybe it can.

When you got asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance in high school by two different girls, what did you do? Were you the guy who made the decision to go with one of them and then lived with it, or were you the one that tried to go on two dates the same night? Did it make it worse that the two people who asked you out hated each other's guts?

Iraq has a big problem. The United States and Iran have both asked Iraq to the big dance. I think I know which one she wants to go with, but she won't make up her mind. As it stands, Iraq cannot hope to please both America and Iran, whom to call titanic adversaries is an understatement.

A recent article from the Chicago Tribune captures the dramatic irony:

"We want to maintain good relations with our neighbors, especially Iran," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told a news conference Thursday in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. "We have long borders with them, we have local interests with (them) and we would like to have this relationship not in the shadow of the others."

"We want good relations with everyone, whether Iran or the U.S.," he said. "The problems between the U.S. and Iran must not get solved in Iraq."

It ain't gonna work.

For several months, the US has claimed that Iran is involved in inflaming the passions of violence and war in Iraq. Recently this fact has become obvious. The problem comes for the US when the Iraqi government calls for the release of Iranian personnel who are clearly involved in stirring up contention and death in their neighbor country.

We all know the maxim "dance with the one that brung ya". Well, it's high time that Iraq decide who they got brung by. Was it them? Or us?

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki recently stated:

"There's a contradiction because America sees Iran as an enemy, whereas the Iraqi government sees Iran as a friend," he said. "The most important country with influence in Iraq right now is Iran, and these issues should be well and thoroughly discussed between America and Iraq."

And a Kurdish member of parliament said:

"Any escalation between Iran and the U.S. will be negative for us," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator. "If you exclude the Sunnis, the majority of Iraqis think of Iran as a friend."

Maybe they already have decided.

al Qaeda and Iraq: A Connection? Clinton Says Yes

Conventional liberal opinion blames the Bush Administration for inventing a tie between Iraq and al Qaeda. Why, then, is 'conventional memory' so short as to forget that the Clinton Administration had the same fear?
Read Part 1 of this Series: al Qaeda and Iraq: A Connection?
Potential terrorism involving al Qaeda and Iraq were alive and well during the Clinton Administration. With regard to these two threats, Daniel Benjamin, one of President Clinton's terrorism experts, said:

Nothing concerned the Clinton Administration more than the dangers of WMD proliferation and the possibility of these terrible weapons falling into the hands of rogue states and terrorists.

The Tokyo subway sarin gas attack had just occurred, killing 12 people.

As early as 1995, Sudan began to establish a chemical weapons program. It's primary assistant in the fledgling process was Iraq. This was intended to help Iraq

circumvent the the UN's military and trade embargo on Iraq.

As UN inspections of Iraq began to run into stiff resistance in late 1997, and as Saddam Hussein began to breathe out more threatenings against "American and British interests" in early 1998, President Clinton presented an ominous outlook to the country.

There is no more clear example of this threat [of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons] than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us.

Less than a week following Clinton's February 1998 remarks about Iraq's activities, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwah against the United States and her allies, coming to the defense of Iraq.

In its November 24th, 1997 issue, Time magazine spoke of

the merging of the output from a government's arsenals, like Saddam's biological weapons, with a group of semi-independent terrorists, like radical Islamist groups, who might slip such bioweapons into the U.S. and use them. It wouldn't take much. This is the poor man's atom bomb. A gram of anthrax culture contains a trillion spores, theoretically enough for 100 million fatal doses. The stuff can be spread into the air with backpack sprayers or even perfume atomizers. The U.N.'s specialists say that 100 lbs. of anthrax bacteria sprayed around a city of 1 million could kill 36,000 people within a week.

ABC News details in March of 2006 that, among other things, pre-war documents obtained by American forces in Iraq indicate that:

"Osama bin Laden Contact With Iraq"

A newly released prewar Iraqi document indicates that an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995, after receiving approval from Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden asked that Iraq broadcast the lectures of Suleiman al Ouda, a radical Saudi preacher, and suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. According to the document, Saddam's presidency was informed of the details of the meeting on March 4, 1995, and Saddam agreed to dedicate a program for them on the radio. The document states that further "development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties to be left according to what's open [in the future] based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation." The Sudanese were informed about the agreement to dedicate the program on the radio.

...

(Editor's Note: This document is handwritten and has no official seal. Although contacts between bin Laden and the Iraqis have been reported in the 9/11 Commission report and elsewhere (e.g., the 9/11 report states "Bin Ladn himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995) this document indicates the contacts were approved personally by Saddam Hussein.

It also indicates the discussions were substantive, in particular that bin Laden was proposing an operational relationship, and that the Iraqis were, at a minimum, interested in exploring a potential relationship and prepared to show good faith...

On August 20, 1998, Tomahawk missiles struck two targets: (1) an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan (the missiles missed their target, as a terrorist summit there had been postponed), and (2) the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, in which Iraq had allegedly been helping to create chemical weapons.

Clinton Administration Undersecretary of State, Thomas Pickering said at the time:

We see evidence that we think is quite clear on contacts between Sudan and Iraq. In fact, el Shifa officials, early in the company's history, we believe, were in touch with Iraqi individuals associated with Iraq's VX program.

Even further, the Clinton Administration first made the claim that al Qaeda and Iraq had a relationship. Then Secretary of Defense William Cohen, being questioned by the 9/11 commission on March 23, 2004 about the bombing of the al Shifa plant, had this to say:

Now, I was criticized for that, saying, you didn't have enough. And I put myself in the position of coming before you and having someone like you say to me, "Let me get this straight, Mr. Secretary, we've just had a chemical weapons attack upon our cities or our troops and we've lost several hundred or several thousand. And this is the information which you had at your fingertips. You had a plant that was built under the following circumstances, had you manager that went to Baghdad, you had Osama bin Laden who had funded at least the corporation, and you had traces of EMTA and did you what? You did nothing? Is that a responsible activity on the part of the Secretary of Defense?" [Emphasis added.]

I agree with Secretary Cohen and the Clinton Administration. It is irresponsible to categorically dismiss the possibility that Iraq and al Qaeda had a relationship, especially when they were working in the same country to build chemical weapons.

Read Part 1 of this Series: al Qaeda and Iraq: A Connection?

655,000--Why Didn't I Think of That?

The journal Lancet, that paragon of truthfulness and impartiality, recently 'reported' that at least 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the American invasion in 2003. I never put a pencil to the numbers, but Common Sense Political Thought has.

October has been considered by America's enemies to be the worst month for killing in Iraq since--well, ever. That in and of itself is hard to believe after the uncovering of just one of Saddam's mass graves, by the way.

Even if you take the number of deaths at face value given by the United Nations for the month of October 2006, and multiply it by the number of months that Coalition Forces have been in Iraq, it doesn't even come close to 655,000.

The Iraqi government is vehemently disputing the death figure trotted out by the United Nations. Even one death is too many, but what point could there be for the Oil-for-Food Alumni club to exaggerate the terrorist bloodbath in Iraq?

Oh, I can think of a few... ;-)

Iran and The Bomb - Part 2

Iran learned a lot during its initial foray into building nuclear weapons. It all hinged on this one premise--don't do it the way Saddam did. Iran has been very successful at furthering its own nuclear ambitions as a result.

In 1991, Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani learned a few things after Saddam Hussein's very productive nuclear development facilities were partially uncovered.

1. Don't attack another country (Iraq invaded Kuwait) if all you have is chemical and biological weapons. Iran, although having recently been involved in a drawn-out war with Iraq, warned Saddam against the Kuwait invasion. Non-nuclear was and is seen by Iran as not a big enough deterrent to the United States. Iran still believes strongly that when its nuclear arsenal is fully ripe that the United States will be impotent in the face of it.

2. Make allies of fellow America haters in the region. Saddam was too busy being full of Saddam to see the importance of this concept. Iran, meanwhile, made associations that were lucrative to Pakistan, China, and North Korea. An initial payment of $50 million brought Pakistan on board the Iranian nuclear train.

3. Set up clandestine operations that are kept hidden from the eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and then build non- or small-functioning nuclear Potemkin Villages with which to present the image of cooperation with the international inspectors. One such smoke screen project was an experimental cyclotron installation in Karaj. This had a remarkable effect on European diplomats, convincing (and relieving them, perhaps?) that not only was Iran being 'cooperative', but also that their ability to enrich uranium was 'in its infancy'.

4. Make friends with the heads of the IAEA. Then they won't look so hard. IAEA heads, Hans Blix and Mohammed el Baradei, have made a business of looking the other way and intentionally under the wrong rocks when it comes to 'searching' for nuclear weapons. The years of covering for Iraq and Iran has now become more a case for them of saving face--not wanting to be embarrassed when it became clear that Iraq and Iran had significant nuke development facilities all along. More than once, IAEA investigators have been fired or threatened when they caught the scent of a fresh nuclear trail. In one case in Iraq, former IAEA investigator David Kay was fired as he arrived unannounced and was able to discover, with the help of US satellite imagery large machines known as calutrons being quickly ferried away from Tarmiya to the Abu Ghraib prison and military compound. Baker and some of his associates were able to photograph and later substantiate what they had seen. He and his inspection teams connected these dots with others and determined that Saddam had at least 3 separate programs that were as near as 3 months away from producing a nuclear bomb.

5. Make a moral claim for the need for nuclear weapons in order to counteract the ambitions of the Great Satan. Rafsanjani thought this was perhaps the biggest mistake Saddam made, never to combine his lust for domination with a seemingly innocuous claim that his nuclear research was exclusively for civilian purposes, such as medical and agricultural advances. Iran has not made the same mistake, timing its references to the Little and Great Satans with the necessity of Iran to gain nuclear parity with its enemies. Incessantly, as of late, Iran makes the completely spurious claim that its nuclear research is for non-threating purposes only.

6. Line the pockets of other governments who allow sale to you of both civilian items and items that have dual-use (including nuclear) purposes, so that it becomes an economic hardship for these countries to face the facts when the facts become evident. France, Germany, and other European countries fall into this category.

It was with obvious understanding of the Iraqi threat of nuclear weapons that Democrats and Republicans joined with President Bill Clinton to declare Iraq a rogue nation that must be dealt with before its nuclear ambitions came to full fruition. If was with this same understanding that members of Congress joined George W. Bush to declare war on Saddam Hussein.

If nuclear weapons facilities have not been found in Iraq, it is not because they weren't there before. They have been found there before, and both the Clinton and Bush administrations were perfectly rational to assume that Hussein was continuing to develop his nuclear program.

Maybe he was. A lot of individuals from the United Nations, to the IAEA, to Iran have a vested interest in ensuring that nuclear weapons are not discovered in Iraq. With the cover of the Oil-for-Food Alumni club, they could be anywhere.

Who knows? Somebody does. Saddam quickly scuttled some of his best military aircraft to Iran. What about nuclear warhead production equipment? Or was Iraq simply always a Potemkin village to obscure their joint nuclear ambitions in Iran?