hawkers hawking

Pentagon said drawing up plans for strike on Iranian camp

 

Military focus shifts from nuclear facilities to Revolutionary Guard

 

The Pentagon is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an alleged insurgent training camp in Iran, according to the UK Sunday Times‘ Michael Smith.

Attributing the assertion to Western intelligence officials, Smith asserts that US officials have become increasingly frustrated with Iran’s Republican Guard force — an elite corps of the country’s military — which the Bush Administration has designated a terrorist group. Western officials have accused Iran of helping arming rebel militias in Iraq, and have accused Iran of supplying IEDs.

Smith was the first to reveal the Downing Street Minutes, an account of a secret 2002 meeting between Bush Administration officials and British intelligence surrounding Iraq, in which MI6 director Richard Dearlove remarked that facts around Iraq were being “fixed” around a policy for war.

“US commanders are increasingly concerned by Iranian interference in Iraq and are determined that recent successes by joint Iraqi and US forces in the southern port city of Basra should not be reversed by the Quds Force,” Smith writes.”‘If the situation in Basra goes back to what it was like before, America is likely to blame Iran and carry out a surgical strike on a militant training camp across the border in Khuzestan,’” he quotes a defense official as saying.

Nuclear facilities ‘not targets’

Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker and RAW STORY’s Larisa Alexandrovna revealed internal Pentagon planning in a buildup to a potential Iran conflict. Since the reports ran, however, rhetoric about Iran has been toned down and concerns of a potential all-out war have diminished.

American officials are opposed to any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Smith says. They believe, however, that an attack on a militant camp could send a message to the Republican Guard.

CBS News reported last week about a potential strike on Iran.

“Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq,” they wrote.

“U.S. officials are also concerned by Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf as well as Iran’s still growing nuclear program,” CBS adds. “New pictures of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant show the country’s defense minister in the background, as if deliberately mocking a recent finding by U.S. intelligence that Iran had ceased work on a nuclear weapon.”

Sources told Smith that no attack was planned on Iranian nuclear facilities. Such attack plans have been criticized, because many of Iran’s facilities are located underground and not all locations might be neutralized by an airstrike.

If an attack happens it will be on a training camp to send a clear message to Iran not to interfere,” one intelligence officer said.

first lady escapes & shia combat continues

Iraq’s first lady escapes attack; US troops kill 18 Shiite fighters
The Associated PressPublished: May 4, 2008

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s first lady escaped unharmed from a bomb attack that hit her motorcade and injured four body guards in downtown Baghdad Sunday.

U.S. troops killed 18 Shiite extremists in unrelenting street battles in the capital’s Shiite militia strongholds. Iraq’s government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said there was no “conclusive” evidence that Shiite extremists have been directly supplied with some Iranian arms as alleged by the United States.

The U.S. military said Sunday that 11 al-Qaida insurgents were killed over the weekend in central and northern Iraq and a powerful roadside bomb killed four Marines Friday in the deadliest attack in months in the former al-Qaida stronghold of western Anbar province.

President Jalal Talabani’s wife, Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed, was headed to the National Theater to attend a cultural festival when her motorcade was hit in the Karrada district of Baghdad, the president’s office said. It was not immediately clear whether she was the target or it was a random bombing.

Amid spiraling violence, al-Dabbagh and U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll vowed to maintain crackdowns on Shiite militias and al-Qaida insurgents in a news conference on Sunday.

The military also said it used drones and Bradley fighting vehicles to kill 18 militants in several clashes in Shiite militia strongholds of Sadr City, Shula and New Baghdad on Sunday.

Iraqi health officials said at least 10 people — including two children — were killed in the past 24 hours in Sadr City, a slum of 2.5 million people and a stronghold for the Shiite Mahdi Army militia of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is believed to be living in Iran. It was not clear whether any Shiite extremists were among them because health authorities did not provide a breakdown.

Iraq is seeking to increase pressure on Iran, accused by the United States of financing and training Shiite militants in Iraq and of funneling lethal weapons into the country. Iranian officials have denied the allegations.

A five-member Iraqi delegation returned Saturday from Tehran where they held meetings aimed at halting the suspected Iranian aid to militiamen.

Asked about reports that some rockets made in 2007 or 2008 and seized in raids against militias were directly supplied by Iran, al-Dabbagh replied: “There is no conclusive evidence.”

Al-Dabbagh said Iraq wants friendly ties with Iran and stressed both countries share common interests.

“We can’t ignore or deny we are neighbors. We do not want to be pushed in a struggle with any country, especially Iran,” he told a news conference.

“We are fed up with past tensions that we have paid a costly price for because some parties have pushed Iraq (in the past) to take an aggressive attitude to Iran.”

Iran’s Fars news agency reported that Iranian negotiators told their Iraqi counterparts that as long as the U.S. carried out attacks against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, Iran would not restart security talks with the Americans.

Driscoll said the “multinational force endorses all dialogue.” But he added that Iranian involvement in Iraq was mostly an “issue between the government of Iraq — a sovereign nation — and Iran to discuss and seek resolution.”

Al-Dabbagh said Iraq is “seizing every opportunity to establish good relations with Iran” but that security crackdown was an internal affair. “No other party, except the Iraqis, has anything to do with this issue,” he said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been battling militia members for weeks as part of an Iraqi government crackdown on the fighters. The clashes have caused deep rifts among Iraq’s Shiite majority and have pulled U.S. troops into difficult urban combat.

Al-Dabbagh said the government has been largely unable to implement a US$100 million (€64.69 million) project to rebuild Sadr City because of lack of security. The poor neighborhood badly needs rehabilitation of sewage, water and electricity networks.

“We continue to target Special Groups that are causing majority of violence,” Driscoll said, referring to elite fighters allegedly backed by Iran.

Militia members have been blamed for firing hundreds of rockets or mortars from Sadr City into the Green Zone, the U.S.-protected area housing the American embassy and much of the Iraqi government.

In the past month, more than a dozen people — including two American civilians and soldiers — have been killed inside the zone during the attacks.

Driscoll also said there was “no place for al-Qaida” to hide in Iraq and U.S. troops were continuing to hunt them down in Diyala province and the city of Mosul, where many are believed to have fled north from Baghdad.

In Anbar, the Marines were killed Friday, but no other details of the incident were released. It was the most lethal attack in that province since Sept. 6, when four Marines were killed in combat.

phase four plans for rebuilding iraq scrapped by rumsfeld?

Retired General Ricardo Sanchez levels charges of dereliction of duty against Rumsfeld and the Bush administration

As we commemorate the passing of five years since George Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” stunt on the U.S.S Abraham Lincoln, new information has come to light that shows just how convinced the administration was at that time that the war in Iraq was over. Originally, the Pentagon had prepared a post-combat Phase IV plan for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq. Somewhere along the way this plan was shelved, and all the generals and military staff in Iraq assigned to its implementation were called back home. It was clearly understood among the commanders in the field that this decision to ignore Phase IV came with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s approval, and therefore with the full knowledge of the National Security Council, Vice President, and President.

But once it was clear that Phase IV was essential due to the unexpected success of the insurgency, Rumsfeld tried everything he could to shift blame away from himself and the administration. He expressed shock to his generals in the field that “no one had told him” that Phase IV had been rescinded. He then put in writing his assertions that he was completely unaware of such a critical decision, even though his written approval to order the Phase IV staff back to Kuwait existed in multiple copies. He blamed his generals for this disastrous decision, withheld promised promotions, and tried to bribe them with offers of sinecures in the Pentagon if they kept their silence. A thorough report establishing Rumsfeld’s fault was written by a Pentagon audit commission, but Rumsfeld impounded all copies of the report and kept the information in it secret.

Allegations regarding this matter have been made by one of the men closest to the battlefield consequences of this decision: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former head of Coalition Forces in 2004. Sanchez reports his accusations in a new book titled Wiser in Battle.. Critical excerpts from the book are now to be published in the upcoming issue of Time magazine at this url: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1736831-1,00.html.

Sanchez’s conclusions are as follows:

It turned out that the investigative team [Pentagon audit commission] was so thorough, they had actually gone back and looked at the original operational concept that had been prepared by CENTCOM (led by Gen. Franks) before the invasion of Iraq was launched. It was standard procedure to present such a plan, which included such things as: timing for predeployment, deployment, staging for major combat operations, and postdeployment. The concept was briefed up to the highest levels of the U.S. government, including the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and the President of the United States.

And the investigators were now telling me that the plan called for a Phase IV (after combat action) operation that would last twelve to eighteen months.

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had never seen any approved CENTCOM campaign plan, either conceptual or detailed, for the post-major combat operations phase. When I was on the ground in Iraq and saw what was going on, I assumed they had done zero Phase IV planning. Now, three years later, I was learning for the first time that my assumption was not completely accurate. In fact, CENTCOM had originally called for twelve to eighteen months of Phase IV activity with active troop deployments. But then CENTCOM had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over and Phase IV was not their job.

That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. Vice President Cheney knew about it. And President Bush knew about it.

There’s not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse Franks’s troop drawdown order, there’s no telling how much more damage would have been done.

In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.

That last sentence says it all. Criminal charges need to be filed against all the principals in the Bush administration. These are the very people who postured as the true American patriots, unlike those opposed to the war who were effete haters of America, ever-willing to appease the terrorist enemies of the United States. What Sanchez shows is that as early as 2004, the Bush administration was engaged in changing the historical record and covering up their tracks, while blaming others for the disasters their policies brought about. It was not even beyond them to blame the very military they professed to love and support, though by 2004 any general or admiral with their eyes open could see that these Republicans were only interested in using the military for the greater glory of the Republican Party. The deadly delay in getting decent armor to the troops in Iraq, and the Walter Reed scandal, should have been more than enough evidence that the Republicans had no interest in building up or supporting the military.

Sanchez’ allegations are as blunt and revealing as anything so far to come out of the Iraq War. He’s the first true Pentagon insider to reveal the depth of depravity, mendacity, and recklessness of the top officials at the White House. Perhaps this is why Time magazine is running excerpts from his book – they are too explosive to be ignored by even the most establishment media lackey. Will our politicians pay any notice, or will this be yet another scandalous insight into the Bush administration that will be filed away for the attention of historians only?

dreaming in the green zone

This may look like a sketch for an outdoor shopping village in any American city, but it’s actually what U.S. military planners are envisioning for the heart of the Iraqi capital. The five-year, $5 billion plan, is being proposed as a “dream list” for Baghdad’s Green Zone — the enclave where the Iraqi government and the new U.S. embassy are based.

US Plan Sees Shiny Future for Green Zone

By BRADLEY BROOKS and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA,AP

Posted: 2008-05-04 20:49:29

BAGHDAD – Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.

That’s all part of a five-year development “dream list” — or what some dub an improbable fantasy — to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.

But the $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, the lead military liaison for the project told The Associated Press.

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a “zone of influence” around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

Karnowski said a deal already has been completed for Marriott International Inc. to build a hotel in the Green Zone. He also said a possible $1 billion investment could come from MBI International, a conglomerate that focuses on hotels and resorts and is led by Saudi Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber.

Elizabeth Caminiti, a Marriott spokeswoman, declined to comment. Phone calls and e-mails sent to London-based MBI were not returned.

For the moment, however, it’s mortars and rockets — not investment money — pouring into the Green Zone, which includes the U.S. and British embassies, key Iraqi government offices and other international compounds. Militants have escalated their shelling of the enclave since Iraqi forces began a crackdown on Shiite militias in late March.

But developers are clearly looking many years ahead and gambling that Baghdad could one day join the list of former war zones such as Sarajevo and Beirut that have rebounded and earned big paydays for early investors.

Even now — with violence in Baghdad again creeping up — the faint hints of the development plan have driven up the Green Zone’s already sky-high real estate prices.

Land that a few years ago was going for $60 a square meter on 50-year leases in the zone is now going for up to $1,000 a square meter, American officials say.

Last week, a Los Angeles-based holding company for equity firms, C3, confirmed it was starting a $500 million project to build an amusement park on the outskirts of the Green Zone in an area encompassing the Baghdad Zoo. The first phase, a skateboard park, is scheduled to open this summer.

But any Green Zone project is literally starting from the ground up.

“There is no sewer system, no working power system. Everything here is done on generators. No road system repair work. There are no city services other than the minimal amount we provide to get by,” Karnowski said.

He noted that of 500 development projects carried out in Baghdad last year, not one was done in the Green Zone — with the exception of the building of the new American embassy.

The plan also envisions significantly reducing the non-Iraqi footprint in the Green Zone, a five-square-mile area crisscrossed by 15-foot-high blast walls and checkpoints.

About 50 percent of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the U.S. State Department or private foreign companies. If all were to go according to Karnowski’s plan, only 5 percent of land in the Green Zone will be in foreigners’ hands in five years.

Privately, American diplomats say the plan is, at best, wishful thinking.

Security is nowhere near the level needed for major development projects. Then there is the question of whether the Iraqi government even wants U.S. involvement in developing the center of their capital.

One diplomat, who asked not to be named because of no authorization to speak to the media, said they did not think Iraqis would want Washington to “turn this area into downtown Kansas City.”

But Both Karnowski and Iraqi officials said the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is interested in hearing U.S. ideas in developing the Green Zone, though many Iraqi leaders have expressed worries and words of caution.

“The Iraqi government wants to limit U.S. power in the Green Zone,” a top adviser to al-Maliki said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Iraqis also complain that the Americans — because they control security in the Green Zone — essentially hold a veto over the investors.

Karnowski acknowledged that American officials would vet potential investors because of a “vested interest.”

Some Iraqi leaders even have drawn parallels to the U.S.-backed development plan and what Saddam Hussein did in the area — known by its Iraqi name of Tashri during his regime.

Hussein stocked the neighborhood with family and tribal allies, political loyalists and members of his elite Republican Guard. Karnowski called the accusation “partially true.”

“Why do people build fences around their house? The intent is until such time as it’s much safer around here, you want to be able to influence what goes on,” he said.

The biggest hurdle to the plan is sorting out the true owners of property in the Green Zone, where “eminent domain by gun” was employed during the Saddam era, Karnowski said.

The chaos after Saddam’s fall also added the murkiness.

“It’s a jungle here,” said Hussein, a 28-year-old from Lebanon who started a contracting company about a year ago in Baghdad and rents out living space in the Green Zone on the side. “It used to be like the Wild West — you grabbed some property and said, ‘this is mine.”

Air Force Lt. Col. Monte Harner leads the effort to discover who owns the titles and consolidate the areas held by the U.S. military.

He said the Army plans to move a military hospital in the zone — now located in a former private medical facility — to a base nearby, freeing it up for Iraqi use. Also in the works is the consolidation of Green Zone housing used by American troops.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, a top adviser to al-Maliki, said there are also plans for development projects at the Baghdad airport west of the city, including a hotel.

American officials confirmed some projects would be carried out near the airport.

According to Karnowski, the United States will spend $120 million to demolish buildings damaged by air strikes during the opening days of the war.

Both Karnowski and Harner are aware their Green Zone plan is viewed as unrealistic by many, primarily U.S. Embassy officials.

“If you talk to people at the State Department, they still believe a hotel isn’t going up. But it is a done deal,” Karnowski said of the Marriott project.

Harner also believes even having a blueprint is important.

“You have to stake a goal in the sand before you can begin to move toward it,” he said. “Without a vision of what could be, you’re just treading water.”

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