It's existing; it's not living

Bilal Wahab, Iraqi Fulbright Scholar and EPIC spokesman was on NewsHour last night to discuss daily life in Iraq. Joined by Shahla Waliy, a Fulbright Scholar from Baghdad and Anthony Shadid, the Middle East correspondent for The Washington Post, Bilal described what it is like to live in an a country where the police are complicit in murders and kidnappings, and violence is constant.

"So when you have an issue, when there's a burglar at the door, when there's a terrorist to report, when there's a militiaman who is doing some crime or a gang at the door, who are you going to call? Are you going to call the police? How are you going to call the police? ...when your protector is your own aggressor, I think that will have a great impact on the people when there's no one to trust."

Iraqis rarely go to work or school these days out of fear for their lives, anyone who can afford to has left the country, and the hope offered by the removal of Saddam Hussein from power now seems untenable.

All in all, Bilal explains that"

"…life is unbearable. It's existing; it's not living."

read the transcript, download the audio or watch the streaming video of the broadcast

New Legislation to Save SIGIR

The New York Times is reporting that Congressional Democrats will introduce new legislation next week that will renew the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s (SIGIR) mandate to oversee reconstruction efforts in Iraq while greatly increasing its investigative reach. This is in response to a recent Republican-backed provision sneaked into a large military authorization bill that called for the closure of the SIGIR office in one year.

This is great news. It has become clear from the errors committed during this conflict by firms such as Halliburton and Parsons that oversight in Iraq is fundamental to our reconstruction efforts there. Besides the billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted, lackluster reconstruction efforts can endanger lives and will only prolong US involvement in Iraq.

Since its inception in 2004, SIGIR has saved US taxpayers approximately $405.1 million and its investigations have led to several convictions of American occupation officials on bribery charges. Its latest report, published in October, which I discussed extensively in an earlier blog posting, provided a detailed analysis of what progress has been made on the ground and where the most significant problems lie. SIGIR’s investigations of Halliburton alone uncovered tens of millions of dollars of wasted funds and found that the company has been exploiting a federal loophole to keep its activities in Iraq confidential.

One of the greatest problems in Iraq is a lack of oversight: Contractors and firms are not being held accountable for their actions. It should be inconceivable that the US do away with one of the only bodies that is successfully monitoring this phase in the Iraq conflict.

Where are they now? An Update on the Ground Truth Project

As the coordinator for EPIC's Ground Truth Project, I've had the opportunity to meet three extraordinary women who shared deep insight about their experiences inside Iraq. Over the past few months, EPIC has shared their perspectives through our Ground Truth Project interview series with the hope of inspiring meaningful policy change and citizen action in support of a better future for all Iraqis. Recently I had the chance to catch up with the Project's first three interviewees:

Update on Nadje Al-Ali: Nadje was recently featured on a U.S. speaking tour which included a press conference in New York City at the Women's Media Center. She also participated in a panel discussion at Emory University entitled, "The War in Iraq - and the Wider Conflict." Nadje plans to release her latest book, Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present, in 2007.

Update on Dr. Rashad Zaydan: In a recent email to EPIC, Rashad encouraged us to continue our work to amplify the needs of all Iraqis. She wrote:

Dear friends,

All Iraqi people -- widows, orphans, people with disabilities -- are looking to your efforts to bring peace, freedom and justice to our country. Try to concentrate all good efforts to end our years of suffering.

With all our prayer to your success,

Dr. Rashad

Update on Laura Poitras: Last week, Laura wrote to EPIC about a recent conversation with Dr. Riyadh, the main subject of her acclaimed documentary, My Country, My Country. Dr. Riyadh is very concerned over the security situation in Baghdad, and he fears for the future of his country. He told Laura, "Tell America that there is no safe place in Baghdad...We are losing our country." Laura promised to continue to update EPIC about Dr. Riyadh and his family.

For more on-the-ground perspectives from Iraq, visit the Ground Truth Project.

Economic Development is the Solution

Professor Eric Davis of Rutgers University was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer recently to discuss how economic development could help curb the violence in Iraq. He explains that without improving the economy, there is little hope of reducing political violence and moving towards political stability. While Bush has stated on many occasions that the Iraqi economy is key to stability in Iraq, has done very little on the ground to develop the economy beyond what's needed for the most basic reconstruction.

Davis argues that while contracting jobs to Iraqis certainly helps in the long term, it does not produce sustainable results:

"It's not enough to go into a neighborhood and just pay somebody to do some work for a while and then withdraw. As a matter of fact, if you look at the interviews with Iraqis in the recent effort of American and Iraqi troops to suppress sectarian violence in Iraq, all the Iraqis would say, "Yes, we have peace now, but unless we're able to turn the economy around, once the American and Iraqi troops leave, the sectarian violence is going to return all over again." And, lo and behold, that's exactly what happened."

Widespread unemployment is primarily fueling the insurgency and crime syndicates. Lacking alternatives, many of Iraq's unemployed, the youth especially, are being recruited into these dangerous positions. As Davis notes most Iraqis do not consider militias or criminal syndicates sustainable occupations, and would readily trade their guns in for a hammer.

In an op-ed he recently penned, Davis suggests a two stage program to push forward economic development:

"Initially, the funds couldbe used to create WPA-type jobs reminiscent of the New Deal. Such jobs would replicate the Commanders' Emergency Response Program that the U.S. military has used so successfully to quellpolitical violence. CERP funds have created temporary jobs for men in areas characterized by high levelsof insurgent activity, leading to a sharp decline in violence, gratitude on the part of those lraqis put to work,and benefits to the local community, such as the removal of garbage and sewage, filling potholes andpaving roads, repairing schools and police stations, rebuilding sewer systems, drilling water wells, clearingirrigation canals and building clinics.

Once violence began to decline following the implementation of a WPA-type program of job creation, the economic reconstruction fund could organize a second phase in which small economic projects would be promoted to provide sustainable employment. Bakeries, schools, new markets, expansion of hospitals, and construction work represent the type of activity that could immediately put large numbers of lraqis in sustainable economic activity which could both pump money into the economy and add to Iraq's socia capital."

The US should not solely bear the costs of these programs. Our allies in the Middle East, particularly the oil-producing countries who are awash in oil revenues, need to help fund these programs. After all they stand to lose more than the US if Iraq becomes a failed state; they don't want an extension of Iranian influence in Iraq and they certainly don't want violence from Iraq to spill over the border into their countries.

Incidentally, EPIC will be publishing an interview next week with former Army captain and founder of War Kids Relief, Cpt. Jon Powers. In the interview Cpt. Powers discusses the problems facing Iraqi youth, unemployment chief among them, and explains how US NGO's can help give Iraqi youths a future.

Help Iraq Help Itself

Frederick D. Barton, a director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at CSIS, wrote an op-ed in the NYT yesterday that urges the United States not to punish PM Maliki for his recent defiance of the US. Barton claims that Maliki's independence may be our best chance for a sustainable Iraq and the only way the US can leave the country within a reasonable time-frame.

"As America moves away from its Iraq engagement, the United States government is in need of being saved from itself. The administration cannot find a way to leave because of its own early rhetoric and the advocacy of many Democrats for a timetable...The United States has suggested in the past that if the Iraqi government invited us to leave, we would oblige. We must prepare ourselves for this event. While being shown the door is never comfortable, the United States is ready to leave and the conditions are not likely to get better."

He concludes: "Mr. Maliki’s new independence is America’s best chance to salvage the muddle Iraq has become. Let’s not get in his way."

Meanwhile in Iraq...

As Democrats celebrate their electoral gains, I think it's worth reminding them as well as Republicans that a widening civil war continues to rage in Iraq. With the campaigning over, its time for our elected officials to put aside their partisan differences and begin the work together to develop a more sensible policy on Iraq. Regardless of how enormous the challenges may be, they have a responsibility to our nation, our troops, the 28 million people of Iraq, and international security to find a new way forward in Iraq.

As a not-so-subtle reminder of the ongoing life-and-death situation in Iraq, here's what happened on Election Day according to Reuter's AlertNet.

BASRA - A British soldier on sentry duty at a base in central Basra was shot and killed on Monday, the British military said on Tuesday.

FALLUJA - A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. military patrol killed three civilians, including a student, and wounded eight others, including three students, in the city of Falluja, 50 km (35 miles) west of Baghdad, doctor Mohammed Abdul Kareem said. A police source said seven were killed and 10 wounded in the incident.

SAYAFIYA - Police arrested a local al-Qaeda leader called Ali Hamid al-Dulaimi in the town of Sayafiya, 75 km (40 miles) north of Kut, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier died on Monday night from wounds sustained in a roadside bomb attack on his vehicle in northwest Baghdad, the U.S. military said; Iraqi police and army arrested 13 people described as "terrorists" and 88 suspected insurgents during the last 24 hours in different parts of Iraq, the General Command of armed forces office said; A total of 10 bodies were found with gunshot wounds during the last 24 hours in different districts of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said. Some of the victims showed signs torture; Gunmen attacked a Civil Defence Centre and kidnapped four employees, two of whom were later released, in a southeastern suburb of Baghdad, an interior ministry source said.

MAHMUDIYA - Police found the bodies of two people and a decapitated head in the town of Mahmudiya, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

KIRKUK - Gunmen killed a policeman in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAIJI - U.S. forces killed two suspected insurgents and detained two more in a raid the U.S. military said was linked to a suspected senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq near Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad.

An early Veterans' Day gift: Bush announces Rumsfeld's Resignation

This morning the New York Times editorialized: "Whatever this election accomplished, it did nothing to end the rancor and distrust that define current American politics. Yet, as the campaign went on (and on) there was one issue on which people from both parties appeared to be finding common ground: Donald Rumsfeld has to go."

In a few minutes, President Bush will announce the resignation of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Let's review his record:

(1) Establishing the Office of Special Plans (OSP) which cherry-picked, manipulated and possibly even manufactured intelligence to build a case for invading Iraq. Led by Douglas Feith, the OSP greatly exaggerated what little evidence there was of Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction (WMDs) and sought to discredit CIA reports on the absence of any evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Even the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (which expresses the coordinated judgments of the US Intelligence Community made up of 16 intelligence agencies) was forced to admit that its "judgments" of Iraqi-al-Qaeda ties and a WMD threat were based on "sources of varying reliability." For the intelligence community to include information based on questionable sources (such as Iraqi defectors who had been vetted-and-coached by the Iraq National Congress and a forged Nigerian document about a shipment of nuclear material to Iraq) in a National Intelligence Estimate shows how warped the process had become.

(2) Seizing Pentagon control of the post-invasion nation-building in Iraq, despite his and the President's own admission that the military doesn't do nation-building.

(3) Failing to heed the advice of countless experts (including uniformed officers and war colleges) about how to plan and prepare for the "day after" Saddam Hussein... like how the looting and chaos would prove to be far more destructive than the military invasion itself.

(4) Pressuring war-planners to cut the number of U.S. forces sent into Iraq . Rumsfeld repeatedly brushed aside calls for a larger occupation force for several reasons: (1) arrogance: Rumsfeld felt he truley understood modern warfare and that the military was stuck in the past in terms of strategy. Besides a strategy of minimal force had proved successful in Afghanistan, and so Rumself assumed same would be true for Iraq. (2) the war could have been postponed, perhaps indefinitely : a force of 300,000-500,000 troops would have taken significantly longer to deploy, Congress may have been loathe to allocate the additional funds necessary and with this delay there was a possibility that a diplomatic solution may have been realized. But Rumsfeld wanted his war, and he wanted it as soon as possible, so he disregarded the advice of Army generals and sent a much smaller force than was needed.

(5) Appointing men and women based on political loyalty to President Bush rather than relevant expertise on Iraq, Arabic, or post-conflict reconstruction.

For this look no further than Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran's brilliant book Imperial Life in the Emerald City:

"...applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration... Many of those chosen by [Jim] O'Beirne's office [at Rumsfeld's Pentagon] to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting. The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors."

(6) Appointing and presiding over L Paul Bremer's disastrous mismanagement of the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) including:
(a) Disbanding the one institution the U.S. military needed as a partner more than any other in order to secure Iraq and restore public order: Iraq's National Army. The result, more than 300,000 men with guns thrown onto the streets of Iraq, making them more part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
(b) Ordering the de-Ba'athification of Iraqi institutions, despite the fact that many -- if not most -- Iraqi civil servants joined Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party out of fear for their families or to ensure career advancement.
(c) Exacerbating ethnic and sectarian conflict by appointing an Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) largely composed of ethnic and sectarian-based opposition parties
(d) Failing to account for billions of dollars of Iraqi revenue

(7) Appointing Lt. Gen. Sanchez to the head of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. Sanchez became infamous during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as the senior commander in charge at the time. Abu Ghraib has often been portrayed as a lapse in judgment on the part of several rogue soldiers; however, the reality is that Sanchez actually signed off on these incidents of prisoner abuse. Beyond Abu Ghraib, Sanchez is can and should be held responsible fo rmuch of the violence and chaos that grip Iraq today. Sanchez came to Iraq with orders to quell an insurgency in its infancy and restore order to Iraq. He went about it in the worst way possible. Sanchez employed a doctrine of "search and destroy", using exaggerated firepower and dealing with Iraqis in the harshest way possible. These tactics completely alienated Iraqis, and encouraged them to hate America and its soldiers. What's more, the strategy was completely ineffective in terms of putting a stop to the violence. By the time he left a year later, Iraq was in complete turmoil, with insurgent attacks and crime

(8) Authorizing elections that further polarized and cemented divisions within Iraqi society along ethnic and sectarian lines.

(9) Torture at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run detention facilities Though commanders in the field ought to bare the brunt of this scandal, Rumsfeld was certainly complicit in the prisoner abuse that took place in Iraq. He approved of these interrogation tactics for use not only in Iraq but in Guantamo as well.

(10) Failing to hold himself or anyone accountable for gross misconduct and failures, and repeatedly ignoring Congressional requests for information

Sadly I could go on.

Army recruiting standards at a dangerous low

Emily documented the case of Steven Green, a former Army private who was sent to Iraq despite a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and criminal record and recently indicted on 17 counts of murder, sexual assault and obstruction. She mentioned that Green wasn’t the only one; that the Army had lowered its recruiting standards to allow thousands of people with criminal records to serve in Iraq.

Well it seems that the Army has since been digging even deeper for new recruits. Take for example, Spc. Anthony Vanderpool:

"The government's own military doctors knew that Spc. Anthony Vanderpool was mentally unbalanced. He had been admitted to the Bronx and Manhattan Veterans hospitals for major depressive disorder, dizziness, spells, auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideation, according to his V.A. records. And this was before he even went to Iraq." More

Vanderpool was in Iraq for ten months where he was depressed, paranoid, suicidal and on heavy medications. At one point he was treated by a psychiatrist in Iraq who recommended that Vanderpool’s weapon be confiscated as he was a threat to himself and others. This was not enough to send him back home, though eventually Vanderpool was honorably discharge after he “spun out of control."

Vanderpool’s story is not unique: The US has sent thousands of mentally unfit soldiers to Iraq since the war began. In May of this year the Hartford Courant reported on the Army’s practice of sending soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other combat-related illnesses back to battle. I suggest you read the entire report as it is very interesting, but it is the case of Sgt. Syverson that really got me.

"Eight months ago, Staff Sgt. Bryce Syverson was damaged goods, so unsteady that doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center wouldn't let him wear socks or a belt.

Syverson, 27, had landed in the psychiatric unit at Walter Reed after a breakdown that doctors traced to his 15-month tour in Iraq as a gunner on a Bradley tank. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and was put on a suicide watch and antidepressants, according to his family. Today, Syverson is back in the combat zone, part of a quick-reaction force in Kuwait that could be summoned to Iraq at any time.

He got his deployment orders after being told he wasn't fit for duty.

He got his gun back after being told he was too unstable to carry a weapon."

He got his gun back after being told he was too unstable to carry a weapon?! This is unbelievable. Are we really so desperate for new troops that we will send soldiers to Iraq that could potentially put the lives of their fellow soldiers and the Iraqi civilians they are supposed to protect at risk? Where is the oversight? Isn’t this where congress is supposed to step in?

Apparently in June, Sens. Boxer, Kennedy, Lieberman and Clinton sponsored an amendment to the last Defense Appropriations Bill that called for more thorough mental health screening and detailed guidelines on what precludes deployment to a combat zone. However, the final legislation dropped a provision that would have required screeners to take a mental health history. And so those who suffer from mental health issues continue to be deployed to Iraq.

I'm horrified to think what it will take for the Army to address this issue.

'Power Shifts' in War-Ravaged Baghdad

On October 31, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. acquiesced to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s demand that the U.S. military lift its blockade of Baghdad’s Sadr City, home to more than 2.5 million Iraqis – mostly poor Shiite Muslims – and some of some of Baghdad’s most notorious death squads. One of the reasons for the U.S. military’s action was to hunt for a missing U.S. soldier who is believed to have been captured by Abu Deraa, the leader of one of Baghdad’s most notorious death squads.

On Wednesday, November 1, I appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer alongside Robert Grenier (a veteran CIA officer who served nearly a year as the CIA's top counter-terrorism official) to discuss this unfolding story. On the show, I emphasized the urgent need to put a stop to Baghdad’s sectarian death squads while also strengthening Iraqi sovereignty:

“[W]hat I think the prime minister has done is demonstrate once again that he's not ‘America's man in Baghdad’ and that he can exercise Iraqi sovereignty… [It’s] important for him to do that because that helps [to increase his] authority [and] ability to get things done. The question is: Will he then use that to get things done, particularly in reining in the death squads?”

Here’s the full transcript or streaming video of the segment. The Houston Chronicle, Reuters, CNN and the International Herald Tribune (via the AP wire) were some of the other Western news organizations that covered the ramifications of Prime Minister Maliki’s increasingly assertive exercise of Iraqi sovereignty.

According to AP:

“the armed death squads in Sadr City could increase their attacks against Sunnis across the capital, in the worst-case scenario. At a minimum, the action could send the wrong message to Sunnis…that their rivals in the Shiite militia can act with impunity and with political cover…”

Indeed, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi (a leading Sunni Arab political leader and the highest elected official of the Iraqi Islamic Party) has already threatened to resign over Prime Minister Maliki’s failure to confront Shiite militias. He predicted that the lifting of the U.S. military’s blockade on Sadr City would end a lull in sectarian death squad activity.

Did the U.S. military’s October 25 raid into Sadr City and subsequent week-long blockade reduce Baghdad’s body count, particularly in the first few days when militias operating out of Sadr City would have been the most disrupted? As the numbers are tabulated, that remains to be seen.

Scott Peterson of The Christian Science Monitor provided an opinion piece on Maliki’s recent orders to U.S. troops. He writes:

“Shiite from the crowded Baghdad district of Sadr City are reveling in what they deem their ‘victory’ over American forces after Iraq PM Nuri al-Maliki…ordered the dismantling of U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints surrounding the area…” his was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to “further assert his independence…just days before U.S. midterm elections, in which the Iraq War has become a defining issue…”

According to Peterson, after a week of tensions between Washington and Baghdad, Maliki’s aides said they want to increase the unpopularity of Bush and the Iraq War ahead of U.S. elections “to expand Maliki’s authority…” However, Maliki owes his ascendance to Iraq's Premiership to Muqtada al-Sadr, who controls the largest voting bloc within the ruling Shia coalition. In fact, Muqtada may turn out to be the biggest winner of the past week, and that does not bode well for anyone in Baghdad.

Update on the Mahmoudiyah killings

Steven Green, the former Army private arrested in the March rape and slaying of a 14 year old Iraqi girl while he was on duty in Mahmoudiyah was indicted yesterday on 17 counts of murder, sexual assault and obstruction. Green was discharged from the Army in May, not because of these allegations, but because of a “personality disorder.”

I’m glad he is no longer representing the US in Iraq, but he should never have been there in the first place. To field recruits for this war the Army has lowered its standards to a dangerous level. Green, for example, was allowed to enlist despite his having a criminal record and a history of drug and alcohol abuse. The US military has granted thousands of exemptions to new recruits with issues that would normally disqualify them from military service. In the first four months of this year, these special recruits accounted for 15% of all new recruits. So while Green is no longer on the streets of Baghdad, there exists the possibility that others like him are.

EPIC addressed this and the lowering of basic training stndards in a press release it put out in June:

"Given the role the U.S. military is playing in Iraq today, EPIC believes that President Bush and U.S. commanders must maintain the highest of standards for those who wear the uniform, particularly in a war zone where innocent lives are at stake. EPIC is deeply concerned about the U.S. military practice of lowering standards to meet recruiting goals."

At a recent speech in Washington, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, said, "I continue to believe that some of these things that are alleged here are not representative of either the values or the nature of our force, or a result of failures to address these things." That is fine and well, but when you compromises your values to recruit new soldiers, you must to a certain degree accept responsibility for their actions.

EPIC on NewsHour

Just a quick heads up: the director of the Education for Peace on Iraq Center, Erik Gustafson, will be a guest on tonight's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He will be discussing what options the US has in Iraq. He will be joined by Robert Grenier, former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism division. Check your local listings.

*Update
Here is the transcript and the streaming video

The new SIGIR report: the bad, the bad and the good

I apologize in advance for the length of this entry. If it's any consolation the report itself was 537 pages. In a nutshell, the SIGIR report demonstrates just how essential proper oversight is to reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Anyway on to the blog:

On Tuesday, the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction (SIGIR) released its quarterly report. Some of its findings:

Iraqi government is still spending very little of its own money on reconstruction projects and not for want of funds: it had $6 BILLION budgeted to major rebuilding projects this year

Of 142 primary health clinics funded by the United States, just seven are operational.

Perhaps one of its more sensational findings is that overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget on many reconstruction projects in Iraq, which of course leaves substantially less money than expected to improve the lives of Iraqis. The largest culprit is KBR a subsidiary of Halliburton whose overhead at the oil-facilities it was contracted to run accounted for 55% of its budget (approx. $160 million). Why so much? Halliburton sure isn’t too worried about the safety of its workers so I doubt it can all be going towards security.

Well apparently the US ordered KBR to Iraq and let them sit there for months at a time doing absolutely nothing. John Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general’s office explains,

“The government blew the whistle for these guys to go to Iraq and the meter ran. The government was billed for sometimes nine months before work began.”

Furthermore, the New York Times reports that,

“The findings are similar to those of a growing list of inspections, audits and investigations that have concluded that the program to rebuild Iraq has often fallen short for the most mundane of reasons: poorly written contracts, ineffective or nonexistent oversight, needless project delays and egregiously poor construction practices.”

Not surprisingly SIGIR also found that KBR sought to limit SIGIR’s oversight this quarter by improperly using the proprietary information exception to the Federal Acquisition Regulation. You can read more about that whole scandal here.

Sadly examples of poor construction practices abound and are especially prevalent in contracts for which there was little if no oversight. The construction of the Baghdad Police College has become the prime example for the failures of US reconstruction efforts. The College, which cost $75 million to construct, will likely have to be torn down due to leaking effluent (a nice way of saying human waste) caused by faulty plumbing that has compromised the structural integrity of the building. The Army Corps of Engineers handed out the police college contract out to the California firm Parsons which in turn subcontracted it to an Iraqi company. Needless to say Parsons didn’t really follow-up much with the subcontractors.

When it came time to build the police headquarters in Mosul, the Army Corps of Engineers realized how silly it was to go through firms like Parsons and started handing out the contracts directly to Iraqi firms. Good idea, except you still need some sort of oversight. The Mosul police HQ would suffer from similar problems as the police college. As a bonus, the station was also rife with shoddy construction that exposed security forces to unnecessary risk. This has implications beyond leaky faucets and the like: The US has been trying desperately to train the Iraqi police by stationing US troops with them. However, as should be expected, the US will not send their troops to stay in buildings like the headquarters in Mosul where they are easy targets.

SIGIR also revealed that 4% of the weapons that the United States had provided to Iraqi security forces could not be accounted for. That is 14,030 weapons unaccounted for. These weapons include semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Nice.

So far SIGIR has done a commendable job in overseeing the reconstruction effort in Iraq. Due to its audits, SIGIR has saved US taxpayers approximately $405.1 million since its creation in 2004. It has proven itself to be a much-needed watchdog instrumental in spotting numerous cases of waste, fraud and abuse. With the possibility of transferring reconstruction efforts to the Iraqi government in the near future becoming ever more distant, SIGIR is needed more than ever. Tragically, Congress decided right before it recessed to terminate the office in exactly one year. It is not yet clear what will come in its place.

Before I forget there was some good news in the SIGIR report:

the average national electricity generation peak capacity finally surpassed prewar levels (only took us 2 ½ years)

Oil exports averaged 1.66 million BPD, slightly surpassing the Iraqi goal of 1.65 million BPD

U.S. projects have provided an estimated 4.6 million people with access to water—
more than half the anticipated end-state of 8.2 million people. Also, 5.1 million
people have access to sanitation services from U.S. projects; the end-state goal is
5.3 million people.

This is all great news and it appears that we can count on achieving relative success in several other sectors, but at issue is sustaining these US funded projects as programs shift to Iraqi control. The US has planned and allocated funds for this, but who knows how successful the transition will be. I am certain, however, that there would be a higher degree of success should SIGIR still be around at that point.

Senator Reed at Brookings

Senator Reed, who just returned from his 9th trip to Iraq, was over at Brookings last thursday where he made several recommendations on a future course of action in Iraq.

Here is a quick summary of those recommendations:
(1) Reining in the militias;
(2) Real reconciliation
(3) Real reconstruction;
(4) Regional strategy; and
(5) Resources

Some highlights of the speech:

On the whole “Clear, hold and build” strategy:

"…with American forces and Iraqi security forces we are pretty good at clearing and holding. Where we have persistently failed is in the building, and that has been a function, I think, not only of Iraqi capability of intention but also because from the United States perspective, we have never truly matched our military effort with a comparable civilian effort in terms of State Department personnel, AID personnel, and Justice Department personnel."

The problem is even though this idea is somewhat prevalent on the Hill and beyond, there is still no indication as to whether the White House will actually produce a shift in strategy to address the issue. Of course we have the Iraq Study Group headed by Baker readying its recommendations; One of which is likely to refer to this problem. But as Sen. Reed correctly noted, the group can only make suggestions; there is no guarantee that the president will act on them.

On whether we are “losing” or “winning”:

"I would say based on my observations that we have lost the initiative militarily and in terms of reconstruction and these efforts and that if we don’t get the initiative back within the next several months, then our position becomes increasingly untenable there. So we are not winning, but I don’t think we have lost."

So we now have to achieve in three months what we failed to in the last two and a half years. Forget for a moment whether this even possible. My misgivings are centered on our current Secretary of Defense and Vice President both of whom are likely to challenge, if not derail, programs that could potentially achieve stability.

On troop commitment:

"Much discussion recently has centered on the number of troops. I think it is easy sometimes to say, well, the solution is simple -- more troops -- but I think we have to recognize that if the Iraqi Government doesn’t make some basic political decisions, if we cannot ask them to commit their resources, if we cannot get international commitments for additional resources, and we cannot deliver these resources in a more effective way, then sending more troops will buy us some more time but it will not be decisive. If we can get the political right, if we can get the reconstruction issues correct, and if our commanders on the ground see that and sense that in the short term -- again, this has to be measured not just in number of troops but in time -- we can go ahead and at least consider a planned increase force structure. But right now, until we get the politics right, I don’t think that is the easy silver bullet for this problem."

It is nice to hear a politician actually think through an issue that has thus far been debated in absolute terms (bring them all home, keep them all there, send some more there). Reed is quite right to make political and economic reconstruction priorities, and prerequisites for any further troop deployments to Iraq. Much of the violence, regardless of how our media may construe it, is politically and economically motivated. It is not all about religion. Hell, in the south you have Shias fighting Shias. At issue is what Reed suggests we rely on to achieve this stability. The Iraqi government is quite the mess and although it is making steps towards economic development, it is tragically negligent when it comes to the state’s security. The government has gone as far as to release militants captured by its own security forces! Why? Well, unfortunately at the moment, many government ministers are beholden to the militias, as in many cases it was the militias that put them into power.

In terms of international support, the most crucial aid need come from Iraq’s neighbors and considering all that Iran and Syria are doing to undermine American efforts in Iraq, it is difficult to imagine that these two countries will begin to positively influence Iraq in the near future, let alone in the next 3 months. Sure it is possible that Iran and Syria will come around, after all they probably have more to gain from a stable Iraq, but I wouldn’t want to rely on that.

On what the government is missing in terms of nation-building capabilities:

"It might be institutional in terms of there is no department for this. Certainly, it is budgetary in terms of there don’t seem to be the funding streams, and there is not the automatic claim on funds that DOD has when you start talking about reconstruction efforts. I think the Administration pursuing a model based upon private contractors has proved very expensive and very ineffective. And so, I think we have to begin to rethink this whole approach…One of the approaches to this problem a few years ago was the Administration, at least the candidate, Governor Bush then, saying we are not going to do nation-building, so we don’t need any of this stuff. Now, we find ourselves in the most complicated nation-building we have done in a very long period of time, and we don’t have any institutional support or the budgetary support for it. Yet, I don’t think the Administration has thought how to do that."

The amount of money wasted by these private contractors is ridiculous. And should anyone really be surprised? The US government threw billions of dollars at these contractors without thinking to monitor their spending. Nations cannot be rebuilt on dollars alone, you need to have some sort of structure or strategy, otherwise you will surely get th type of reckless spending we have thus far seen. There have been several articles printed recently that refer to this issue, but I’ll include them in another post.

As an aside I found it interesting that not once during his remarks did he even utter the word “withdrawal.” Why? Simply because Reed understands that withdrawal at this stage is not a solution even worth mentioning.

My Country, My Country

I am sure that by now many of you have heard about the documentary “My Country, My Country” that is currently airing on PBS’ POV. The film offers a glimpse into the lives of Dr. Riyahd, a candidate for the Iraqi Islamic Party, and his family in the turbulent run-up to Iraq's landmark January 2005 elections. During the eight months it took to complete the documentary, the director/camerawoman/soundwoman Laura Poitras lived alone in Iraq, threatened by kidnappings and violent attacks on a daily basis.

If you want to learn more about her experience filming in one of the most violent neighborhoods in Iraq and her thoughts on the current situation, I recommend reading the interview we recently conducted with her. Today, she also participated in an on-line discussion for the Washington Post. You can read the transcript here.

Also wanted to thank everyone that came out to our screening of “My Country, My Country” this past Monday and of course Laura for coming all the way down from New York to discuss her film with us. We hope to host like events in the near future.

Anyone hear about this?

Was reading through the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's Iraq Press Monitor section when I saw this:

Baghdad Declared an "Islamic State"
(Asharq al-Awsat) A new fundamentalist Islamic group, al-Mutayyibeen Coalition, under the leadership of al-Qaeda, has declared an "Islamic State" in Baghdad and five more governorates. It said this was in response to the setting up of Kurdish "state" in the north and Shia "federalism" in central and southern Iraq.

Apparently, this al-Qaeda linked group declared this “Islamic State” in a video posted to the internet. You’d think this would be a big news story considering the administration has specifically stated that the possibility of Al-Queda taking over Iraq is one of the greatest threats faced by Iraq, but after doing a quick scan of the major papers I came up empty. Regardless of their motivations for doing so, the newspapers are right not to attach too much importance to this development (though a brief mention wouldn’t have killed them.)

First off, who declares the creation of a state on-line? And can we really trust that a video anonymously posted on the internet is in fact authentic? Fortunately, whether the tape is authentic or not is really a moot point. Thing is, Iraqis regardless of sect, tribe or religion all seem to agree on one thing: they do not want al-Qaeda in Iraq. This has been shown time and time again in many polls, most recently in the WorldOpinion.org/PIPA one and is echoed almost daily in Iraqi discussions. Furthermore, regardless of who is declaring a state, most Iraqis do not favor the break-up of Iraq. It seems that most Iraqis earnestly want a more centralized government, despite what some of their top militia leaders (and some of our politicians) might say.

655,000

It really is a horrible pill to swallow, but it seems as though the numbers -655,000 civilians dead since the war began- published in the Lancet survey are accurate. EPIC has come to this conclusion after having reviewed the methodology employed by the survey with several statisticians and epidemiologists. Those who are skeptical of the survey or simply want to learn more about its methodology might want to read this excellent summary.

One group which has criticized the Lancet report is IraqBodyCount.org (IBC). I suppose before I go on I should mention that IBC compiles their figures using a “passive-surveillance system” meaning it simply scans newspaper articles and press statements for deaths and then adds them up. They seem to acknowledge in their faq that their numbers can only represent a sample of the deaths in Iraq as sadly not every death is reported; however, in the media their figures are represented as being the maximum number of civilian deaths.

Anyway, today the IBC, which estimates the body count at a far more conservative 50,000 released a press statement refuting the results of the Lancet survey. They go point by point, examining the implications of each finding published in the Lancet report and then explaining that given the implications, the findings cannot be accurate.

There are several things I want to draw attention to: First off, the IBC writes that the Lancet report implies that:

"Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued [which further implies] incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began.”

IBC does not take into account that these days you can simply report the death (usually with some confirmation) to a local police station and they will issue a death certificate. There is no need to go through the government and its ministries to receive it, so it should hardly be surprising that they do not have a record of said certificates. Odd that IBC would ignore this.

The IBC also claims that the Lancet Survey can't be right as that would mean that 1/10 of all victims of violence do not go to the hospital. Well perhaps doesn't account for the entire gap, but it has been well documented that Shiite death squads often prey on hospitals killing every Sunni in sight. In fact several Iraqis were quoted as saying they would prefer to chance death on the streets then go to a hospital where they believe it a certainty. So it is not entirely unreasonable to claim that a significant portion of Iraqis refuse hospital care when they fall sick or are wounded.

But is it too late?

Yesterday’s edition of the New York Times brings attention to a draft of a new counter-insurgency doctrine that is to be published next month.

"The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces…The new doctrine is part of a broader effort to change the culture of a military that has long promoted the virtues of using firepower and battlefield maneuvers in swift, decisive operations against a conventional enemy."

The document also states what Bush has been loathe to concede:

"Any use of force generates a series of reactions. There may be times when an overwhelming effort is necessary to intimidate an opponent or reassure the populace. But the type and amount of force to be applied, and who wields it, should be carefully calculated by a counterinsurgent for any operation. An operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if the collateral damage or the creation of blood feuds leads to the recruitment of fifty more."

Well it is about time. I cannot understand why it took this long for our military leaders to realize that strategies employed during major combat operations cannot be adopted when dealing with insurgencies or militias. I suppose it’s not too surprising considering the obstinacy of our government in regards to nearly ever other facet of the war, but I can’t even begin to imagine how many lives would have been saved and catastrophes averted, had the U.S. military adopted this doctrine to begin with.

But is it too late? Maybe I am being too cynical, but I wonder whether this shift in doctrine will have any meaningful impact. After all this is an entirely new doctrine. Won’t it take time to adequately train soldiers in it? That could take years.

I am relieved that the new doctrine explicitly states the need to build up local institutions and encourage economic development, rather than focus entirely on a military solution. It is by discreetly empowering Iraqi NGO’s, encouraging civil society initiatives and addressing the unemployment crisis that the U.S. will create the conditions necessary for it to withdraw responsibly from Iraq. We must not forget that Iraqis are the only ones that can offer effective solutions to the problems that plague them. We'll see how it goes.

Maybe they got a discount

Three different Washington Post writers recently released three very interesting books that all deal to some degree with the war in Iraq. The first book by reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, exposes the ineptitude of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) during the two year period in which it governed Iraq. Chandrasekaran writes that when it came to staffing the CPA, experience was regarded as lesser qualification to loyalty.

"Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting."

Bob Woodward’ book, State of Denial, his third on the Bush administration, claims that there was considerable disagreement within the higher ranks of the White House over how to conduct the war. So much so that at one point a it seemed no one’s job was safe.

"A second term traditionally leads to personnel changes. The question was whether one of them would involve Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Card had to approach the issue with delicacy. Iraq was the centerpiece of everything now, and the president was clearly predisposed not to do anything that would disrupt the war effort. If Rumsfeld left, what would the impact be on overall momentum and on the morale of those who were doing the fighting? Rumsfeld had a virtual monopoly on defense contacts with the president, so there was no way the president could get independent information to answer those kinds of questions."

Woodward also reveals that while in May of 2006 Bush was speaking optimistically about the progress Iraq was making, secret reports that were being circulated at the time which Bush surely saw, contradicted what he said. Woodward presented this as a major bombshell on his recent appearance on 60 Minutes; however, as I recall there were a couple of official reports that were made public at the time, that showed increasing casualties, etc. It wasn’t really a secret that the situation in Iraq was getting worse.

Karen DeYoung’s Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell covers Powell’s entire career. DeYoung recently posted an excerpt of the book detailing the immediate events leading up to Powell’s infamous U.N. presentation. The excerpt describes Powell as being at odds with the administration in many instances, but in the end his soldier’s sense of loyalty won out.

"Powell had constantly found himself on the losing side of regular ideological combat inside the Bush administration, particularly against Rumsfeld and the powerful vice president, Dick Cheney, over Iraq and a host of other foreign policy issues. Though Powell had scored some victories, the rumored humiliations had been real. He had been purposely cut out of major foreign policy decisions more than once, and his advice often had gone unheeded or been only grudgingly accepted by the president. Why hadn't he resigned? The easy answer had the virtue of truth: Soldiers didn't quit when they disagreed with the decisions of their commanders. The fact that he had been out of uniform for nearly a decade was irrelevant to Powell; he would be a soldier until he drew his last breath."

Two steps forward...

In defense of the current state of affairs in Iraq one can always claim that at least the Iraqi people are better off now than when they lived under Saddam. However, as the New York Times recently reported, not much has changed for Iraqi journalists.

As if the threat of violence from militias wasn’t enough -130 have been killed since the 2003 invasion- the Iraqi government recently enacted a new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials. These new laws, some drawn verbatim from Saddam’s penal code, have been used to charge at least a dozen Iraqi journalists in the past year. The punishment for publicly insulting a government or public official can be up to 7 years in prison. In addition to this government crackdown, dozens of journalists have been kidnapped by criminal gangs or detained by the US military.

There is some silver lining to this whole story. The article goes on to say that despite these threats, Iraqi journalists have “achieved a new level of professionalism by working closely with Western journalists …[and] have become increasingly aggressive… Despite the danger, Falah al-Mishaal, the editor of Al Sabah, the government-run newspaper in Baghdad, said he enjoyed his job now because he felt like a real journalist. ‘Now, we are free,” he said in an interview in late July. “We can write whatever we want.’” But it may just get them killed or incarcerated.

New PIPA poll

Many of you may have already heard some of the more provocative findings of a recently released poll on Iraqi public opinion conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org and published by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) – the most prominent being that Iraqis now favor attacks on US troops.

Yesterday at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Steven Kull, the director of PIPA and editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org, presented the results of the newly released poll. On hand to interpret these results were Kenneth Pollack and Shibley Telhami, both preeminent Middle East experts. The two noted that the polling results relay the sense that Iraqis desire a strong federal government and are confident in their government’s ability to secure the country, though Pollack feels that their surprisingly high confidence in the country’s security forces is perhaps misguided. He notes that Iraqi government leaders have recently expressed views to the contrary claiming that the support if US troops is still crucial to securing the country at this stage.

One seemingly contradictory finding is that a majority of Iraqis disdain US troops, yet they still express confidence in Iraqi security forces which, as every Iraqi knows, are trained exclusively by US troops. Mr. Telhami offered a possible explanation for this discrepancy as well as for the oft-cited increase in the number of Iraqis who approve of attacks on US troops. Simply put, after the recent Lebanese war that has been a surge of anti-American sentiment in the Arab world. I’m sure this anti-American sentiment is only aggravated for Iraqis who see US troops on their streets everyday.

Positive developments found by the poll include: an overwhelming majority are opposed to al-Qaeda and bin Laden; virtually all groups disapprove of attacks on Iraqi police and civilians; and a majority of Iraqis want to get rid of militias.

Full Poll results are here
You can view the questions asked and methodology used here