Due to the attack on the mosques, the Iraqi Army can no longer be regarded as securely under American control in my opinion. The Iraqi government which is really controlled by the interior ministry and not by the elected leadership is attacking the Sunni minority and the Iraqi troops under American control are sympathetic to this cause and will soon no doubt simply become troops under the control of the interior ministry. America is losing any control it had over events in Iraq.
This from Nyceve reporting a Iraqi blogger “on the ground” in the aftermath of the mosque attacks.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2006/2/24/164553/342#1
There was not much to hear in our area, apart from the occasional thud and fire exchange, which are really usual everyday experiences for the last 3 years. There was no presence of security forces that I could witness. Friends from areas around Sadr city said pickups full of armed men in black were patrolling the streets, unchallenged by Iraqi security forces. Many people swear that the Interior ministry forces are explicitly siding with the Mahdi militiamen in their rampage of arson and plundering. Most of the mosques in Baghdad are now closed and surrounded by barbed wire.
The Iraqi Army which is almost exclusively Shiite will probably be breaking away from American control and siding with the Peshmerga and other militias in Iraq who are heavily under the influence of Iran. This is part of Iran’s strategy to nullify any attack by America on it. The Ministry of the Interior has recently come under criticism by Americans for torturing Sunni detainees. The reason for the criticism is that the Americans, who also use torture, see the Ministry of the Interior as allied with Iran and as their enemy. The Interior Ministry force is essentially meant to be a police force but they have become a militia force commanding more than 30.000 Badr militia fighters who were trained in Iran as well as many other militias. The Iraqi Army is not under their control, but it is under their influence. And I believe the attack on the Shrine increases that influence and it would a small matter for them to agree to move themselves over to control by the ministry rather than American forces.
This means that the U.S. may be about to lose control over the Iraqi Army. Recently the U.S. has come up with a plan to build up the Iraqi Army.This from Voice of America:
The Iraqi Army has been billed as the U.S. Army’s ticket home. As part of the 11-point-five billion dollar effort to build up the new Iraqi Army, the U.S. Military is embedding small, ten man teams of American soldiers, called Military Assistance Transition Teams, into Iraqi units to help them develop.
The idea was not to build up the army, but to keep an eye on them. The Americans saw this defection coming. The Iraqi Army is made up of militiamen who have infiltrated it, (from the Ministry of the Interior and other militias) people looking for work, and some insurgents. None of these groups have any loyalty to the American’s overseeing them. The Americans have been worrying about this and now it appears the Army is about to switch and join the militias who are controlled by Iran and not by the titular heads of the Iraqi government or the Americans. Some of the Army will go home, but it appears on the brink of dissolving.
It is not civil war that threatens American interests it is the defecting and or dissolution of the troops they claimed to have trained.
This makes the urgency for a U.S. attack on Iran more imminent. The defection of the Iraqi troops to the Interior Ministry will make it clear to Bush that his invasion was a failure. The defection is being orchestrated by Iran in an attempt to counter the upcoming attack upon it by the US by air. I believe they hope to embarrass Bush as much as possible, in hopes that public sentiment and outcry will prevent him from attacking Iran and causing another debacle like the one in Iraq. The debacle is intended by Iran to be the dissolution of the Iraqi Army.
The Iraqi Army which is almost exclusively Shiite will probably be breaking away from American control and siding with the Peshmerga and other militias in Iraq who are heavily under the influence of Iran.
For the record, I just want to point out that the Peshmerga is the longtime Kurdish Iraqi militia and is very much at odds with the Iranians.
Oh, your right I meant to say the Badr group. i wrote about this before a million times, Sorry.
I will correct it.
Stu Piddy, more than we know. It just may be in the works as we write. BushCheney, Rummy and Condi will not be deterred. Insane.
Let me take a few bytes of your diary for an extended comment. I was about to update a diary I did on Feb 14 “Is US Attack on Iran Imminent?” as your post went up. I won’t link to it unless permitted. My diary was followed by Larry Johnson and G. Parrish on the topic.
This was quite a week. Condi went finger pointing and got rebuffed by the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians over funding for Hamas. Then came Dubaigate, the bombing of the Askariyah shrine and today, the foiled suicide bombing of the Saudi Oil Complex. Whew!!!
As Iraq’s civil war heats up and Americans are blamed, BushCheney are tallying.
Late evening, I read a troubling article in FT, Financial Times, (London) on U.S. preparations. The only coverage I’ve come across is Laura Rozen at her War and Piece blog. She calls it a scoop. Indeed it is.
Rumors of war are no longer rumors. It’s been in the planning since 2003. So what to make of the FT report? Of course there’s the usual spin and denial. But the pieces now fall into place.
Is the Middle East region about to be engulfed in flames? Well, stop the planet. I want off.
and has it firmly under strict crackdown, with population reduced through aerial bombardment, this problem, whether real or imagined, will no longer be a concern.
The US has strictly forbidden any foreign interference in the affairs of both Iraq and Afghanistan. ;->
I don’t think the U.S. will invade on the ground in Iran. Thats not a possibility. Just continous bombing so that can;’t focus on Iraq and haveto focus on at home.
That’s my take on what they are thinking. Of course it will backfire disastrously, I am sure.
Do you think they would try to OCCUPY in Iran. I can’t imagine such a thing.
I don’t think the US can control the oil. I don’t think that’s why Bush went into IRaq. Bush is just nuts. If they had gone to Iraq to steal oil at least that could have been described as a reason. They went there because Bush’s hallucinations of being chosen by God to “Lead” coalesced with the hillibillies (ex.Cheney) and out of it academics (ex.Wolfowitz) who make up his administration.
They are not smart enough to think about stealing someone else’s oil. If they send US troops to control the oil fields in IRan….that’s a joke. As if the IRanians havently thought of multiple counter measures.
They go into to IRan just to creat choas. Their motto is Israel’s model. Peace through chaos, Peace through multiple civil war.
Maybe someone will get to him before he does this. There’s a chance.
He is just a figurehead. And yes, they want chaos, and no, they don’t consider the people human, and yes, there are many Americans who believe God speaks through Bush and all the Biblical stuff about the Rapture etc, but while that is useful in maintaining domestic enthusiasm, it is basically about making rich men richer, as was every crusade. That is the purpose of colonialism, of military aggression. It was Gehghis Khan’s purpose, Leopold’s purpose, Hitler’s purpose, whichever warlord gang in Somalia happens to have more guns today’s purpose, and it is the purpose also of Washington’s warlords.
All the other motives are intended for you to have, not them.
What sounds dangerous and wacky and just plain stupid to you sounds like some money to Halliburton, Bechtel, et al.
Go read the PNAC docs again.
That’s too simplistic Ductape. Imperialism also had to do with the absolute inability to find a decent Chicken Tikka dish anywhere on Fleet Street. Thankfully, that had been remedied.
Chicken Tikka is big business. Just try getting the last of it in a buffet line.
You’ll see.
All I’m saying is that if some Sri Lankan explorers pulled into Philly harbor and got hooked on Hoagies and Tastycakes I can easily see them coming back in force several years later to take over the whole operation.
That’s all I’m saying.
He’s not a figure head. He has real power. The power of the presidency. They really do what he says. He’s not being manipulated by new cons, he simply is in agreement ( possibly for very different reasons) with those PNAC neo-cons like Wifflewitz.
I don’t think you understand that Bush is a real power. Nobody tells him what to do. He doesn’t like that. His motivation…to be destructive…is not intellectual….the neo-cons have the same motivation, the same sensual need to destroy….but they have an intellectual component to it. And that is outlined in the PNAC. Which is a recipe for destruction and acquistion that is intended by those who made it to fail miserably. They want it too fail. What they want is simply to destroy. It’s all about self destruction. That is ultimately what Bush and the Neo-cons are about. It is entirely a sensual act of rage.