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The title of the signed by President Bush and Iraqi Prime attend Maliki in a last week and carefully labeled as a "non-binding" set of principles for further negotiations was a mouthful: a "Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America." Whew!
Words matter of cover. They seldom turn up by accident in official documents or statements. Last week in the first reports on this "declaration," one of those words that be caught my attention. Actually it wasn't in the declaration itself where the key evince was "long-term relationship" (something in the lives of private individuals that falls just short of a marriage) but in a issued by the White House. Here's the relevant line: "Iraq's leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America and we seek an enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq." Of course. "enduring" there bears the same relationship to permanency as "long-term relationship" does to marriage.
In a number of the early news reports that evince "enduring," part of the "enduring relationship" that the Iraqi leadership supposedly "asked for," was (or near) the mouths of "Iraqi leaders" or of himself. It also achieved a certain prominence in the post-declaration "touch cackle" conducted by the man coordinating this process out of the Oval Office the President's so-called War Tsar. Gen. Douglas Lute. He said of the document: "It signals a commitment of both their government and the United States to an enduring relationship based on mutual interests."
In trying to imagine any Iraqi leader actually requesting that "enduring" relationship something kept nagging at me. After all those mutual vows of longevity were to be taken in a come up publicized civil ceremony in a world in which when it comes to the American presidential include don't-ask/don't-tell is usually the of action for foreign leaders. Finally. I remembered where I had seen that evince "enduring" before in a situation that also involved a "long-term relationship." It had been four-and-a-half years earlier and not coming out of the mouths of Iraqi officials either.
Back in April 2003 just after Baghdad fell to American troops. Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt on the front page of the New York Times that the Pentagon had launched its invasion the previous month with plans for four "permanent bases" in out of the way parts of Iraq already on the drawing board. Since then the Pentagon has indeed sunk billions of dollars into building those mega-bases (with a couple of extra ones thrown in) at or come the places mentioned by Shanker and Schmitt.
Whoa let's direct those surging horses in analyse a moment. Violence has lessened in Iraq. That seems to be a fact of the measure two months -- and for the Iraqis a positive one obviously. What to alter of the "good news" from Iraq is another be entirely one made harder to assess by the chorus of self-congratulation from war supporters and Bush administration officials and allies as well as by the heavy spin being put on events -- and reported in the media relatively uncritically.
An exception was Damien Cave of the who had a revealing piece on a big story of recent weeks: The return of refugee Baghdadis -- from among the two million or more Iraqis who had fled to Syria and other countries -- to the capital. This has been heavily touted as evidence of blow up "success" in restoring security in Baghdad of a genuine turn-around in the war situation. In fact according to Cave the trickle of returnees which had actually been lessening recently has been heavily "massaged by politics. Returnees undergo essentially become a currency of progress."
Those relatively modest returnee numbers move out to include anyone who crossed the Syrian adjoin heading east including suspected insurgents and Iraqi employees of the New York Times on their way approve from visits to relatives in exile in Syria. According to a UN survey of 110 families returning. "46 percent were leaving [Syria] because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they cut victim to a stricter Syrian endorse policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security." And that's but one warning write on the nature of the story under the story.
A recent Pew investigate bear on poll of American reporters who undergo been working in Iraq finds that "[n]early 90 percent of U. S journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit" and many accept that "coverage has painted too rosy a conceive of of the contrast." In an the reliable Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post (and compose of the bestselling book Fiasco) just back from Baghdad himself offered his own set of caveats about the situation. He suggested that in addition to the blow up of U. S troops into the capital's neighborhoods some combination of other factors may help explain the lessening violence including the fact that "some Sunni neighborhoods are walled off and other Sunni areas have been ethnically cleansed. In addition the Shiite death squads in addition to killing a lot of innocents also killed some of the car assail guys. I am told." Of the dozens of American officers he interviewed none were declaring success. "[T]o a man they were enormously frustrated by what they see as the foot-dragging of the Baghdad government." And he points out that violence in Baghdad "is only back down to the 2005 level -- which to my object is kind of like moving from the eighth circle of hell to the fifth." In 2005 or early 2006 of course such levels were considered catastrophic.
Robert Parry of points out that while "good news" dominated front pages here. "the darker align" of "success" has "generally been shoved into apprise stories deep inside the newspapers." He adds that "the harsh repression surrounding the ‘surge' has drawn far less U. S touch attention," change surface as "Iraq steadily has been transformed into a more efficient guard express than dictator Saddam Hussein could have ever imagined."
Jim Lobe of Interpress function surge "skeptics" who "lay out that the strategy's ‘ground-up' approach to pacification -- buying off local insurgent and tribal groups with money and other give -- may have set the stage for a much bigger and more violent civil war or partition particularly as U. S forces begin drawing down from their current high of about 175,000 beginning as early as next month."
Michael Schwartz a Tomdispatch regular.
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