Saudi-Iranian Relations Since the Fall of Saddam: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Implications for U.S. Policy: Summary

The fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the war in Iraq have affected sweeping changes in the strategic landscape of the Middle East, radically shifting the regional balance of power. Old security paradigms have been thrown into question, and local states appear to be reaffirming, renegotiating, or rethinking their relations with one another and with outside powers. Saudi Arabia and Iran have in many respects been the central players in this unfolding transformation. The dynamic relations between the two powers have affected the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine with important implications for regional stability and U.S. interests.

Saudi-Iranian Relations Since the Fall of Saddam: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Implications for U.S. Policy: Preface and Contents

Saudi-Iranian Relations Since the Fall of Saddam: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Implications for U.S. Policy: Preface and Contents

Frederic Wehrey, Theodore W. Karasik, Alireza Nader, Jeremy Ghez, Lydia Hansell, Robert A. Guffey
National Security Research Division
RAND Corporation 2009

Sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundation NATIONAL SECURITY RESEARCH DIVISION

The research described in this report was sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundation and was conducted under the auspices of the International Security and Defense Policy Center within the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD). NSRD conducts research and analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Commands, the defense agencies, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Intelligence Community, allied foreign governments, and foundations.

“We Blew Her to Pieces”

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan by Aaron Glantz
Reviewed by Dahr Jamail
Inter-Press Service, 16/09/08

MARFA, Texas – Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers’ own words.

Unraveling Iraq_Twelve Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask About Iraq

By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com, Sunday 20 April 2008

Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here’s the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the “success” of the President’s surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans “say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties” and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq – and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:

1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military’s worst Iraq nightmare: Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a single overriding nightmare – not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into “Fortress Baghdad,” as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would find themselves fighting block by block, especially in the warren of streets that make up the Iraqi capital’s poorest districts.

When American forces actually entered Baghdad in early April 2003, however, even Saddam’s vaunted Republican Guard units had put away their weapons and gone home. It took five years but, as of now, American troops are indeed fighting in the warren of streets in Sadr City, the Shiite slum of two and a half million in eastern Baghdad largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. The U.S. military, in fact, recently experienced its worst week of 2008 in terms of casualties, mainly in and around Baghdad. So, mission accomplished – the worst fear of 2003 has now been realized.

Secret US Plan for Military Future in Iraq

Document outlines powers but sets no time limit on troop presence

By Seumas Milne
The Guardian, 08/04/08

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked “secret” and “sensitive”, is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorises the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit.

How will the Iraq war end?

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, progress is slow but violence is down. A three-part series on the war’s effects starts today with a look at what the endgame might look like.

By Peter Grier
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from March 18, 2008 edition

WASHINGTON – The Iraq war might end like this:

•Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds uneasily share power and wealth in a single state. Sectarian violence, as well as terrorism linked to Al Qaeda, are diminished but not eliminated. Overseeing all this are perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 US troops, deployed in Iraq for years, maybe decades.

•Iraq is partitioned, accompanied by a return to the widespread sectarian violence of 2006 – times two.

Secret Iraq Dossier Published

Secret Iraq Dossier Published
By Chris Ames
-New Statesman, 18/02/08-

Read the draft here

The secret first draft of the Iraq WMD dossier written by Foreign Office spin doctor John Williams has finally been published after a ruling back in January under the Freedom of Information Act.

The document contains an early version of the executive summary of the next draft, which was attributed to Intelligence chief John Scarlett. The document places a spin doctor at the heart of the process of drafting the dossier and blows a hole in the government’s evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.

Secret draft of Iraq war dossier to be revealed

Secret draft of Iraq war dossier to be revealed
By Gaby Hinsliff, political editor The Observer
-The Guardian, 17/02/08-

Read the draft here

The secret first draft of the notorious Iraq dossier that helped to take Britain to war is expected to be released tomorrow, in a victory for freedom of information campaigners.

The early version written by John Williams, then director of communications at the Foreign Office, has been the subject of a three-year legal wrangle amid hopes that it could reveal whether the supposedly intelligence-led dossier was actually based on a press officer’s script – and whether it was subsequently ‘sexed up’ by Alastair Campbell.

‘Dodgy Dossier’ Was ‘Wrong’, Its Author Says

‘Dodgy Dossier’ Was ‘Wrong’, Its Author Says
By Ian Griggs and Brian Brady
-The Independent, 17/02/08-

Read the draft here

The government official who wrote the first draft of the “dodgy dossier” that helped propel Britain into war in Iraq today admits, “We were wrong.”

John Williams, a former Foreign Office aide, said last night that publication of his document would expose how members of Tony Blair’s team were locked in a mindset that made military action inevitable.

Lima Tahun Propaganda Perang

Irak-Amerika Serikat
Lima Tahun Propaganda Perang

(Tulisan ini dibuat untuk memenuhi tenggat waktu 5 Februari 2008. Akibatnya, masih banyak hal yang seharusnya bisa dimuat. Insyallah, tulisan ini akan direvisi.)

Selasa kemarin, awal Februrari ini, merupakan tahun kelima sejak masifikasi propaganda perang Amerika Serikat (AS) kepada Irak. Irak adalah negara besar-kekuatan militer terkuat keempat di Timur Tengah sebelum menyerbu Kuwait-namun lemah karena embargo 13 tahun (1990-2003) oleh PBB.

Pukul setengah sebelas pagi, 5 Februari 2003, Menlu As Colin Powell menyampaikan sikap resmi AS di depan ratusan perwakilan negara di Dewan keamanan PBB. Direktur CIA George John Tenet duduk di belakang sebelah kanan Powell.

Iraq Partition

The Iraq Study Group Report

The Iraq Study Group Report

The War As We Saw It

The War As We Saw It
By Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
The New York Times, Sunday 19 August 2007

(Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.)

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

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IRAK PASCAKEMATIAN ZARQAWI

IRAK PASCAKEMATIAN ZARQAWI
Oleh: Wawan Kurniawan
Pendiri Kajian Internasional Strategis (KAINSA)

Tokoh teroris terkemuka Iraq telah tewas. Hari Rabu (7/6) kemarin, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi yang menjadi wakil al Qaida di Iraq menemui kematian setelah serangan udara AS menghantam tempat tinggalnya di desa Hibhib, 8 km utara Baquba, pada pukul 18.15 setempat (Reuters, 8/6). Dua pesawat F-16 menjatuhkan dua bom laser seberat 230 kg mengakhiri teroris yang kepalanya dihargai 25 juta dolar.

Sehari sesudah itu, konferensi pers dilakukan oleh PM Irak Nuri al Maliki bersama Duta Besar AS Zalmay Khalilzad dan panglima koalisis Jenderal George Casey. Dalam kesempatan itu, Maliki menyatakan ancamannya berupa tindakan tegas kepada gerakan perlawanan.

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