Required Reading Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Or CliffsNotes for all those articles "everyone is talking about" that you meant to read, honest you did -- and that I read over Thanksgiving weekend while blogger babe was being loved to pieces by his adoring relatives.  I'll be putting up notes on these one at a time over the next day -- keep checking this post as it grows...

Jim Fallows in The Atlantic on why Iraqis "have no army...and aren't even close."

James Bamford, of Puzzle Palace fame, on the PR firm 'hired by the CIA to help 'create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power'"... in the United States.  It's called The Man Who Sold the War.  (thanks to Steve Clemons for catching this piece -- check out his explanation, over at The Washington Note, of why Bamford is worth reading even if you don't usually peruse Rolling Stone.)

Yep, the new Sy Hersh piece in the New Yorker that everyone is filling up each other's inboxes with.

I'll point you again to the new Pew-CFR poll -- actually, people aren't talking enough about this one -- and my friend Lee Feinstein's insightful commentary on it, which he has been making everywhere, to anyone who will listen. 

And, for amusement, the Daily Telegraph piece on John Bolton that got a write-up in the Times a couple weeks back.

So, Fallows first.  This piece walks through an extensive timeline to lay out and support the contention that the US has not acted particularly serious about training Iraqi troops; that until very recently a training assignment was a career-killer, and training slots were hard to fill; and that the only prospect for "the emergence of a viable Iraqi security force" involves the US making "certain very long-term commitments to stay."

The piece is worth reading for its useful history of how one would not want to plan, organize and manage the dissolution and re-creation of an army in a strategically-important country.

Fallows' conclusions and prescriptions are rather more problematic -- and they pose problems for folks on all sides of the Iraq debate.  Here's his sum-up:

In sum, if the United States is serious about getting out of Iraq, it will need to re-consider its defense spending and operations rather than leave them to a combination of inertia, Rumsfeld-led plans for "transformation," and emergency stopgaps.  It will need to spend money for interpreters.  It will need to create large new training facilities for American troops, as happened within a few months of Pearl Harbor, and enroll talented people as trainees.  It will need to make majors and colonels sit through language classes.  It will need to broaden the Special Forces ethic to much more of the military, and make clear that longer tours will be the norm in Iraq.  It will need to commit air, logistics, medical and intelligence services to Iraq -- and understand that this is a commitment for years, not a temporary measure.  It will need to decide that there are weapons systems it does not require and commitments it cannot afford if it is to support the ones that are crucial.  And it will need to make these decisions in a matter of months, not years -- before it is too late.

This raises some questions for Joe Biden and indeed for all of us who want to put in place exit benchmarks tied to training.  Are we really ready to sign up for this?  If not, should we be honest and say so?

But all Fallows' conclusions also presuppose the view, that an Iraqi military cannot function until it is trained to the nines in everything from calisthenics to building a non-commissioned officer corps to creating an esprit de nation that would replace ethnic and sectarian identities.  But you can also find folks who know a fair amount about warfighting to say that it's not training that Iraqis are lacking, it's exactly the desire to stay together and fight as a united military -- and that no US trainer can teach.  What matters more, training with the US in place or shared responsibility in place of the US?  It's a question Fallows doesn't even address.

**Later comment -- I commend Dan Kervick's further critique of this piece in our Comments section.  Lots more to think about.

James Bamford, erstwhile CIA employee and then author of a groundbreaking CIA expose back in the 1980s, is about the last person you'd expect to find writing in Rolling Stone.  There must be a good story on why his piece is there and not somewhere else, and I'd love to read it.  The Man Who Sold the War is well-written, compelling, not over-sensationalized or explicitly ideological.  It's just a great -- and chilling -- profile of how a former McGovern and Carter campaign staffer came to be helping fake Iraqi defectors feed their stories to Judy Miller and push public opinon in the US and elsewhere toward war.  And how easy this seems to have been to do.  Bamford never says this, but lots of government, private and journalistic organs ought to read this story and be verrry embarrassed.

OK, I will read Sy Hersh tonight and post on it tomorrow.  I promise.  Interestingly, whatever he puts in his pieces, he apparently says things even more pointed and scarifying -- if true -- in his public speaking engagements.  I have never heard him myself, but have twice read notes from his speeches that made my hair stand on end.  I do think he is not always exactly 100 percent in everything he says and writes -- wasn't he big on the theory about a TWA flight being brought down by the US government a while back -- but it's still worth paying attention.

I keep nagging people to look at the Pew/CFR poll for reasons that are nicely encapsulated in something Lee Feinstein says:  the lens through which people view national security is no longer the "let's roll" post-9-11 desire to get out in the world and right things.  It's the "other folks should solve their own problems" lens that comes from feeling over-extended in Iraq and under-appreciated around the world.

to be continued...

 

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

I much admire Fallows's work, which is generally first-rate. But the current Atlantic article is weighted down by a number of conventional assumptions that diminish its persuasive impact. I don't know for sure that those assumptions are wrong, but the fact that Fallows doesn't even raise them and subject them to critical examination tells me that he is stuck intellectually. He's in a cognitive quagmire. And the way Fallows is stuck is emblematic of the way America is stuck. The piece by Nir Rosen in the same issue of the Atlantic does a much better job of grappling with the important questions.

Fallows suggests that our main problem is that there is no Iraqi Army to "lift the burden" of fighting the insurgency from Americans. He suggests over and over again that highly trained and professional US forces are in Iraq keeping a lid on an uprising that would exlode across the country if the US leaves. The notion is that the US is there performing some sort of vital security job, one that it is performing so successfully that the Iraqis cannot do it themselves.

But this is surely a debatable point! The presence of Americans in Iraq is without doubt one of the major causes of the violence. Granted, not all the Sunni insurgents have limited war aims. But surely a very substantial portion of the insurgency is organized around the dominant goal of getting the Americans out. That is why they are fighting. They attack Americans, and Iraqis that collaborate with the Americans, in order to end the US occupation. Once Americans are gone, a sizeable portion of the insurgency will declare victory, demobilize and melt back into their communities.

So it is a big mistake to say, "We can't leave, because if we leave who will be left to defeat the people who are fighting in order to get us to leave?" Duh! This circular justification is like a boxer saying, "I can't quit this fight, because if I do who will be left to prevent my opponent from beating up the referee and audience members?" Surely the other boxer is there to fight his opponent. When the first boxer stops fighting so does the second boxer. It is at least worth considering that with the US out, Iraq will face less violence, not more, and many insurgents, having fulfilled their patriotic or religious duties as they see them, will return to the task of taking care of their own communities.

The violence may abate even more if the US departure is accompanied by a disbanding of the doomed and temporary Iraqi government, a Shiite and Kurdish alliance of opportunity which Fallows assumes without argument ought to be saved. The agents of that government form the second large group of targets of the insurgents, and when that government is gone, many of the attacks will cease. Fallows suggests that the key to preventing large-scale warfare and loss of life in post-US Iraq is for the Iraqies to possess a national army that is large enough and powerful enough to defend the current regime and provide security for the whole country. But couldn't it be the case that the existence of such a national army, and the bastard regime it is supposed to represent, would only serve to provoke more violence? Many Iraqis seem determined not to be ruled by such a national army.

I don't doubt that Iraq after the US would face much civil conflict, and the potential for large-scale civil war. Not all of the fighting, to be sure, is directed against Americans and the America-backed government. But that conflict is already occurring, and we have stupidly put ourselves into a position of taking sides in it. Shiite and Kurdish militias run death squads, engage in ethnic cleansing, and abduct people for torture. Yet we don't really fight against them because they are on "our side", and allegedly comprise the "Iraqi government". We fight only against "the insurgents". So in other words, we are the supporters of the Shiites and Kurds in a war of conquest and domination over the Sunni Arabs.

As others have suggested, a better strategy for preventing large-scale civil violence in Iraq is to disengage from our fight with the Sunni Arab insurgents, and thus cease backing the other side in the civil war, and redeploy our troops so as to remain in the area to prevent and deter major eruptions of violence, while getting out of the way of the internal struggle. At the same time, we can bring other regional parties into the decision-making process, and begin to work together toward an authentic political solution that is not based on the current regime and the meddling Washington constitutional formula it represents.

Fallows, like many Americans, is too invested in the the projects that Americans happen to have started, and is not thinking clearly about the furure of Iraq. He never considers the possibility that the security of the people of Iraq would be best achieved by dropping the quixotic commitment to a unified national regime, particularly one fashioned by the United States, and allowing the country to devolve into separate communities under home rule. This is the way events seem to be trending anyway. Perhaps when the US leaves, the current regime will fall not with a bang, but a whimper. Perhaps with no army that really wants to defend them, the officials of that government will simply go home to their own communities without a fuss. That's my hope anyway

[bob mcmanus]

"Readers and colleagues often ask me why a Shiite majority and the Kurdish Peshmergas couldn't just take care of the largely Sunni Arab guerrillas. The answer is that the Sunni Arabs were the officer corps and military intelligence, and the more experienced NCOs, and they know how to do things that the Shiites and Kurds don't know how to do. The Sunni Arabs were also the country's elite and have enormous cultural capital and managerial know-how. Sunni Arab advantages will decline over time, but they are there for this generation, and no one should underestimate the guerrilla leadership. If the Americans weren't around, all those 77 Hungarian T-72 tanks that the new Iraqi military now has would be in guerrilla hands so fast it would make your head spin.

Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim complained to the Washington Post that the US itself was holding back the Iraqi army (which seems to be mostly Kurds and Shiites) from going after the Sunni Arab guerrillas in a concerted way. But this prospect is the other reason that the Shiites and the Kurds can't just take care of the Sunni Arabs. If one isn't careful, it would turn into a hot civil war on ethnic grounds (I don't mean 38 dead a day, I mean it would be ten times that). And if the Shiites and Kurds massacre Sunni Arabs in the course of fighting the guerrillas, the Saudi, Jordanian and Sunni Syrian publics are not going to take that lying down and volunteer fighters would flock to Iraq in real numbers." ...Juan Cole

Juan Cole

One real reason we are still in Iraq is that Sistani and the Shia know they would lose quite quickly if we were not protecting them. The Neo-Baathists use an anti-occupation rhetoric, but attack Americans and our collaborators because we are the first line of defense for the Shia.

I have sometimes imagine the brutal strategy of letting the factions wear each other out, but with a somewhat opposite analysis. Oil and the religious/political sites are too valuable a prize to be abandoned by any faction. Barzhani will not give up on Kirkuk, and the Sunnis will not simply retire to the Western desert. A divided Iraq is a zero-sum game, and the parties will not stop fighting as long as the valuables are in play.

[asdfadfdasf]

movistar

no se pierda el interesante caso movistar

title="movistar">movistar

antes de nada siempre hay algo

no se pierda el interesante caso movistar

title="movistar">movistar

antes de nada siempre hay algo

Carta abierta de Alejandro López Fernández con dni número: 32654324-M a
Telefónica Móviles España S.A. (telefonica moviles españa es mas
conocida por todo el mundo como movistar)

“
Queridos hijos de puta:

Acabo de recibir vuestra asquerosa carta de mierda dónde me amenazáis
para que os pague una factura de 1834,56 euros que sabéis que yo nunca
he consumido y que es totalmente injusta, sin embargo a pesar de obrar
las pruebas de lo que digo en vuestro poder, es decir en vuestros
servidores de datos, insistís en que pague, resumen:

SOIS BASURA

Mira que simpática es esta carta:

Muy Sr./a mío/a:

El saldo pendiente en su cuenta con TELEFONICA MOVILES ESPAÑA, S.A.,
correspondiente al número/s de teléfono cuyo detalle se adjunta, asciende
a la cantidad de 1834.56 euros.

Con el fin de evitar el traspaso de su expediente a nuestro
Departamento de Asesoría y de vernos obligados a comunicar su nueva situación al
Servicio de Información Crédito ASNEF/EQUIFAX [esto es una lista de
morosos], del cual somos miembros asociados, le agradeceré que el citado
importe lo haga efectivo en el plazo de quince días a contar desde el
recibo de la presente, de alguna de las siguientes formas:

• Cheque nominativo a Telefonica Moviles España, S.A. enviado por
correo a la dirección: C/ Llodio, nº 4 – 3ª Planta. 28034 – Madrid [Este
cheque se lo pides a tu puta madre y si ella no te lo quiere dar metete
los dos puños por el culo después de arrancarte los dientes hijo de puta]

• Transferencia a los siguientes datos bancarios del banco Santander
Central Hispano (SCH): Entidad 0049, Sucursal 1500, DC 02 y Número de
cuenta 2910384121. [Por supuesto que te voy a hacer una transferencia pero
de todas las hostias que pueda darte como un día te coja por la calle]

En ambos casos es imprescindible comunique el número de abono y
titularidad del mismo.

Para cualquier aclaración, tiene a su disposición nuestro Centro de
Atención al Cliente las 24 horas del día [por los cojones], en los
siguientes teléfonos: 1485 (609 desde su teléfono móvil); en el caso de
empresas, el 1486 (109 desde su teléfono móvil).

Atentamente le saluda.
[Métete tu saludo por el culo pero saca los puños primero]

Miguel Angel García
Gerente de Cobros [o sea el hijo de puta mayor del reino, igual que el
resto de casa de hijos de puta que es movistar]

Bueno bueno bueno

Decir que telefónica es una mierda (o que telefonica es una mierda) no
es algo nuevo, es algo que todos sabíamos, pero se os ha ido la mano y
habéis logrado hincharme las pelotas, más de diez veces he llamado a
vuestros putos números de mierda para intentar arreglar esto por las
buenas y no me habéis hecho puto caso.

como diría Palpatine...

biennnn

biennnnnnnn

biennnnnnnnnnnn

queréis guerra?

pues la vais a tener vais a lamentar el día en el que me conocisteis

tengo mucha paciencia y mucho tiempo (o eso creo) para joderos, hasta
el último puto gato en españa se va a enterar de lo ladrones hijos de
puta que son en movistar, y por cierto ¿que me quereis meter en una lista
de morosos por un puto telefono movil o teléfono móvil? pues me metéis
me suda mucho la polla mi poder no es tan banal como creéis y si no al
tiempo

bueno queridos hijos de puta de movistar empieza el juego nos
encontraremos por el camino, no tendré piedad si algún día me cruzo con vosotros
en la calle os voy a meter una bombona de butano por el culo así que
mejor no os crucéis conmigo

y por cierto, una nota aclaratoria para el presidente de movistar, ¿no
te da vergüenza dirigir una compañía de MIERDA? yo te respondo, claro
que no te la da PORQUE ERES MIERDA

PostData: querido presi de la compañía de mierda, el azar te libre de
que te eche el guante porque te mato a hostias, después de todo lo que
te voy a hacer vas a pedirme llorando que te mate
“

¿Pero de que va todo esto? (Por Traksler) (¿caso movistar? no, no creo)

Bueno yo soy un coleguilla de Alejandro y me ha tocado la ardua tarea
de explicaros a quien le pueda interesar de que coño va todo este
marrón. Me vais a perdonar que firme con pseudónimo pero es que aquí va a
haber tiros y esto a mi ni me va ni me viene. Yo sólo soy el mensajero.

Bien la cosa va de lo siguiente.

Cómo todos o casi todos sabéis Telefónica de España como su propio
nombre indica es una compañía que se dedica a prestar servicios de
telefonía en España. Uno de sus “satélites” es movistar que se dedica a la
telefonía móvil

Pues bien, Alejandro hace un tiempo contrató con movistar un servicio
de conexión a internet a través de teleléfono móvil, es decir lo que
conocemos como “conexión wireless umts”.

Es decir, tu tienes un teléfono móvil normal y corriente (o una tarjeta
modem móvil) y con ese teléfono móvil en vez de hablar lo que haces es
conectarlo a tu ordenador portátil y ya puedes conectarte a internet.

Es una experiencia muy gratificante irte a la playa o a lo alto de un
monte, con tu ordenador portátil y tu teléfono móvil y poder chatear,
mirar tu correo o buscar algo en el google.

Hasta aquí todo correcto pero que pasó?

Lo que pasó es que este tipo de conexiones a internet a través de
teléfonica tienen un riesgo grande, y es que te cobran por la cantidad de
datos que recibes y envías a internet (y no por el tiempo de conexión
como en una ADSL normal).

Es decir, tienes una tarifa plana en la que pagas 59 euros por
transferir a la red hasta un giga de información y a partir de ahí empieza a
cobrarte por kilobyte (y a cobrar mucho por cierto).

Lo que le pasó a Alejandro es que un virus (un gusano, del tipo
SYN_SENT al puerto 445) se coló en su ordenador durante 3 días, y el virus se
puso a enviar información, e información y mucha más información, hasta
que el giga fue rebasado muy ampliamente y duplicado varias veces. De
ahí la monstruosa factura.

Esa factura es indebida. Alejandro no consumió ese ancho de banda. Lo
consumió un virus maligno y no él.

Afortunadamente Alejandro es un doctorando en informática y se dio
cuenta a tiempo y pudo eliminar al agente maligno, pero el daño ya había
sido hecho.

Por otro lado, si Alejandro no fuese informático profesional la factura
podría haber sido de 12.000 euros o más...

Movistar con toda seguridad debió ver en la monitorización de sus
servidores que algo raro estaba ocurriendo porque de gastar 59 euros todos
los meses, el consumo se disparó sin justificación un 3000 por ciento,
pero Movistar se quedó calladita como las putas dejando que la factura
siguiese engordando.

Alejandro no fue informado en ningún momento de que LA LEY OBLIGA a que
exista la posibilidad de que si tu factura en euros pasa de cierta
cantidad se pare el servicio para que no siga aumentando el gasto (lo que
se conoce como LIMITE DE CONSUMO). Aparecía por la parte de atrás del
contrato en letra microscópica de esa que no se puede leer sin un buen
par de gafas graduadas. Ni Movistar ni sus esbirros informaron
explícitamente y con transparencia de esto a Alejandro, Movistar se quedó callada
como las putas.

Alejandro se prestó a entregar los logs (archivos dónde se guardan
datos de lo que ha pasado dentro de un ordenador) donde se probaba
fehacientemente la actividad de un virus (corroborable mediante prueba cruzada
con los distintos servidores) en las horas indicadas de “supuesto
consumo” pero nadie lo quiso ver, simplemente no le hicieron caso. Sólo le
dijeron que pagase: como las putas. Eso es lo que te dice una puta:
“paga y no me cuentes tu vida”.

Que sí, que yo también estoy de acuerdo, movistar sois una casa de
putas.

PostData: Vodafone no es mejor, también son unos chapuceros, ellos y
sus telefonistas “sudamericanos” (por qué será?); pero dentro de lo
chapuzas que son no son tan odiosos como estos otros y en algunas cosas
funcionan cien mil veces mejor.

caso movistar

[wow gold]

I like to earn the World of Warcraft Gold very much, I want to have a lot of warcraft gold in the game, i do not satisfy the old equipment and so i have to buy wow gold to buy the new equipment to make me strong. If i am very strong in the game i can get some cheap wow gold as the rewards in the game. So i like the game very much.

[Perfect World Gold]

I hope i can get Perfect World Silver in low price.

[eve isk]

If you have eve isk, you can get more. If you gave eve online isk to me, I still have my idea to achieve.

[angels online gold]

I hope i can get angels gold in low price,
Yesterday i buy angels gold for my friend.

[runescape money]

In fact, the
runescape money is expensive. I usually find
cheap rs gold from the supplier.

[Gustto Handbags]

In fact, the
runescape money is expensive. I usually find
cheap rs gold from the supplier

[drug alcohol rehab]

Good evening. Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
I am from Timor and also am speaking English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "To find rehabilitation centers for alcohol and alcoholism, drug abuse.The following alcohol and drug treatment programs resources were found in california."

Thanks for the help :-D, Kai.