CURRENT UPDATES: October 12, 2006

Dear Friends,

After all we’ve been through with the Republicans in power-war on Afghanistan, war on Iraq, war on civil liberties, billions of dollars wasted, hundreds of thousands of people killed; after all the lies they told… wouldn’t it be something else if they were voted out of control of the House and Senate because Mark Foley sent some nasty emails to teenagers?

Don’t get us wrong… we’re happy he’s been exposed, and that he’s finally being brought to some account for abusing his position, and we’re happy about the heat the whole leadership is feeling as a result. But if “heads are going to roll,” it would be nice if they rolled for all of the reasons that they deserve to go.

In this issue of the Arms Trade Resource Center’s E-Update we offer resources for understanding North Korea’s nuclear test and review some of the policy options available to Democratic leaders concerned about Iraq.

I. “WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT NORTH KOREA?” ASKED BUSH
II. IRAQ: STAY THE COURSE OR CUT AND RUN?

I. “WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT NORTH KOREA?” ASKED BUSH

There is a lot to say about North Korea’s recent nuclear test: Here is what President Bush said at his news conference yesterday:

"The best way to convince Kim Jong Il to change his mind on a nuclear weapons program is to have others send the same message. The inability to convince people to move forward speaks volumes about them. It ought to say to all the world that we're dealing with people that, maybe, don't want peace, which in my judgment . . . requires an international response."

President Bush has been learning about the closed society for a long time. Some lessons have come from strange corners, and just turned up in Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial. In it he recounts a conversation between then Governor Bush and Prince Bandar, who was then Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the U.S.

Bush: "Bandar, I guess you're the best asshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing."

Bandar: "Governor, what is it?"

Bush : "Why should I care about North Korea?"

Bandar said he didn't really know. It was one of the few countries that he did not work on for King Fahd.

Bush: "I get these briefings on all parts of the world and everybody is talking to me about North Korea."

Bandar: "I'll tell you what, Governor… One reason should make you care about North Korea."

Bush: "All right, smart alek, tell me."

Bandar: "The 38,000 American troops right on the border." ..."If nothing else counts, this counts. One shot across the border and you lose half these people immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a chemical or biological or even regular attack. The United State of America is at war instantly."

Bush: "Hmmm, I wish those assholes would put things just point-blank to me. I get half a book telling me about the history of North Korea."

And, he is trying to pin the whole nasty state of affairs on the Clinton administration? A break, please… now.

The real problem with the Bush administration’s approach to the North Korean nuclear problem is two fold:

1) It has never put forward a concrete proposal for ending the stalemate over this critical issue, and never agreed to one-on-one talks with Pyongyang;

2) Instead of sticking with the outlines a plan that had some success during the Clinton years - moving forward on economic assistance and political recognition in exchange for capping, and then eliminating, Pyongyang’s nuclear program - the Bush policy has consisted of veiled threats (“axis of evil”) and economic attacks. For example, shortly after the framework of a deal had been worked out by the six parties involved in negotiating with the North, the U.S. took action to try to exclude the North Korean government from using the world banking system.

Finally, as usual with Bush administration “diplomacy” it has not taken the military option “off the table” - hardly an encouragement to the North to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Resources:

STATE OF DENIAL: Bush at War, Part III, Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster p. 13
The full exchange between Bush and Bandar, which a walk-on by Colin Powell at the end has been making the rounds of the internet, and is online at:
http://roxanne.typepad.com/rantrave/2006/10/all_you_need_to.html

“Solving the Korean Stalemate, One Step at a Time,” New York Times Op-ed, Jimmy Carter, October 11, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/opinion/11carter.html (free registration required)

“In a Test, a Reason to Talk: Bilateral Diplomacy Could Still Roll Back North Korea's Nuclear Arms Effort,” Selig Harrison, Washington Post, October 10, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901035.html

II. IRAQ: STAY THE COURSE OR CUT AND RUN?
Or… Run the Course, Cut the Stay These are Not Real Choices

“We're constantly changing tactics to achieve a strategic goal," said President George W. Bush on Wednesday October 11th, adding that “stay the course” is only one piece of his strategy in Iraq. He elaborated, saying: "My attitude is, Don't do what you're doing if it's not working-change.’Stay the course' also means don't leave before the job is done."

Did you get that? If “Stay the Course” doesn’t “Get the Job Done, we will change policies and “Stay the Course” until the job is done. At least I think that’s what he meant. There are a few things that Democrats can do to differentiate themselves from this kind of mobius strip logic. The good ideas can be summed up in three phrases: listen to the Iraqis, listen to the troops, and listen to the American people.

LISTEN TO THE IRAQIS
In September, 104 members of the Iraqi Parliament sponsored a resolution asking the U.S. military to withdraw. It was not front page news here. In a procedural move, the resolution was tabled for six months, even though (or perhaps because) it could have garnered a majority in the 275 member Parliament. This is the case because as many as 80 members are routinely absent from the proceedings.
Recent polls find that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want the U.S. troops to leave. At the end of September, the Washington Post reported on a State Department report “Iraq Civil War Fears Remain High in Sunni and Mixed Areas,” which found that nearly three-fourths of residents of Baghdad said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq.” Sixty-five percent of those questioned were in favor of an immediate pullout.

A large majority of Iraqis - 71% - say they would like the Iraqi government to ask for U.S.-led forces to be withdrawn from Iraq within a year or less, according to a new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). They find that an overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people believe that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing. There is also growing confidence among Iraqis that their own army can protect the country without U.S. troops on the ground. If the United States made a commitment to withdraw, a majority believes that this would strengthen the Iraqi government.

Iraqi anger at the U.S. presence is so strong that the PIPA poll found that support for attacks on U.S.-led forces has grown to a majority position- six out of ten Iraqis. Support appears to be related to a widespread perception, held by all ethnic groups, that the U.S. government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq.

The whole notion that U.S. troops are the only thing standing between Iraqis and total civil war is wrong on two counts. 1) the Americans are not a force for stability or calm in the country and 2) the Iraqis do not want civil war.

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi writer now working with Global Exchange, unpacks the myth of Iraqi civil war in an essay for Foreign Policy in Focus that should be required reading in the halls of power. He asserts that the roots of conflict are “political rather than sectarian and the best solution is finding a way to bring the troops home.” After surveying Iraq’s long history of intersecting ethnicities and religions as well as the ways in which differences have been manipulated in the past, Jarrar locates one of the major sources of the current conflict in Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer’s set of decisions about re-making post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. The “new political order engineered by the U.S. resulted in deep divisions between Iraqis,” but not along the Sunni/Shia fault line we hear about so often in the United States, says Jarrar. Rather, he argues the real battle is being waged by “Iraqis who were against the occupation” who “began attacking and killing other Iraqis who were taking part in the new government or its military and police forces.”

Jarrar offers a telling example of the United States military’s inability (or unwillingness) to quell violence after insurgents bombed and partially destroyed the al-Askani Mosque in February 2006. He writes, “Hundreds of news stories and political speeches were written around the world within hours of the bombing predicting a full scale Sunni-Shia war in Iraq.”

That did not happen, in large part because leaders of different groups worked together diffuse tensions. Jarrar writes: Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani, an influential Shia leader, “made a very rare appearance on national TV to ask his followers to calm down.” Muqtada al-Sadr, the founder of the Mahdi Army and a leader to many poor and disaffected Shia’s “cut short his visit to Lebanon to return to Iraq, where he deployed his followers and militias around the country to protect Sunni mosques from attacks and started a new trend of Shia-Sunni joint prayers.” The actions of these two leaders, other religious and political leaders across the spectrum, with the help of millions of their supporters around the country, managed to contain the situation in a relatively successful way that prevented any military clashes between Shia and Sunni establishments. Jarrar concludes, “Iraqis worked alone, without any help from the U.S.-led coalition, and prevented a full-scale sectarian civil war.”

Where is the United States military in all of this? Fox News reported that, "U.S. military units in the Baghdad area were told Thursday morning to halt all but essential travel." Another news source noted that "The U.S. military ordered the U.S. soldiers in Baghdad to stay in their barracks and not to circulate if it could be helped."

In spite of this unity across “sectarian lines,” President Jalal Talabani told world leaders assembled at the United Nations in September that coalition forces would remain in the country until Iraqi security forces are “capable of ending terrorism and maintaining stability and security,” a phrase torn right from the Bush administration’s playbook.

LISTEN TO THE TROOPS
Iraq Veterans Against the War was founded in 2004, and has grown from a few soldiers to a significant organization with members in 32 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and on numerous bases overseas, including in Iraq. They call for:

• Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq;
• Reparations for the pillaging and destruction of Iraq so that ordinary Iraqi people can control their own lives and future; and
• Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.

In another measure of anti-war sentiment amongst troops, there are at least 10 veterans who fought in the Iraq and Afghan wars running for Congress this term. All but one are running as anti-Iraq war Democrats.

Patrick Murphy, a former West Point professor who served in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division, is running for the House of Representative seat in Pennsylvania’s 8th district. He says, "We need a change in direction in Iraq. That is why we need leaders to stand up and say, Mr. President, it is time to bring our troops home."

An October 2006 poll, conducted by VoteVets.org Action Fund, does not measure soldiers and veterans attitudes about the war, but finds that men and women in uniform have plenty to complain about in the war in Iraq. A clear majority of veterans -- both active duty personnel as well as National Guard and Reservists -- believe the Army and Marines are over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the veterans polled returned home, many encountered emotional and physical health problems as well as economic hardship, indicating that the impact of their service extends beyond their tour of duty. A March 2006 Zogby poll found that nearly three-quarters of American troops think the U.S. military should set a timeline for ending its engagement in Iraq.

LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S.
If you only listen to the administration, you would think that there are no choices. None of the choices promise perfection for the Iraqis or for U.S. troops stuck on the ground now. But if we wait for that option, we might as well be waiting for hay to turn to gold.

Former Senator George McGovern has a “Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now,” written with William R. Polk, a leading authority on the Middle East. He sets the beginning of phased withdrawal for December 31, 2006 through June 30, 2007. During that time, they see the Iraq government engaging the temporary services of an international stabilization force to police the country.

Other elements in the withdrawal plan include an independent accounting of American expenditures of Iraqi funds, reparations to Iraqi civilians for lives lost and property destroyed, immediate release of all prisoners of war, the closing of American detention centers, and offering to void all contracts for petroleum exploration, development, and marketing made during the American occupation. The details of the plan are contained in their new book Out of Iraq, just published by Simon and Schuster.
Erik Leaver of Foreign Policy in Focus outlines a five-step “responsible redeployment” plan which includes the United States taking the following steps:

1) End offensive operations in Iraq
2) Implement Senator Joseph Biden’s proposal for a regional conference that will produce a regional nonaggression pact.
3) Provide economic and political incentives to unite instead of divide the country
4) Work with Iraqi military units to demobilize militias and insurgents
5) Follow Congressman John Murtha’s plan for strategic re-deployment by moving a limited number of U.S. troops to regional allies while bringing the rest home in the next six to twelve months.

Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress who served in the Reagan Pentagon, has also formulated a five-step plan.

1) Reduce U.S. troops to 60,000 by the end of 2006 and to zero by the end of 2007, while redeploying troops to Afghanistan, Kuwait, and the Persian Gulf
2) Engage in diplomacy to resolve the conflict within Iraq by convening a Geneva peace conference modeled on the Dayton Accords
3) Establish a Gulf Security initiative to deal with the aftermath of U.S. redeployment from Iraq and the growing nuclear capabilities of Iran
4) Put Iraq's reconstruction back on track with targeted international funds
5) Counter extremist Islamic ideology around the globe through long-term efforts to support the creation of democratic institutions and press freedoms.

Finally, if the Democrats don’t want to listen to the Iraqi people, U.S. soldiers, or the American people, perhaps they will find the reasons they need to withdraw from Iraq by listening to Al Qaeda’s leadership. The terrorist network sees continued American presence in Iraq as a boon to their cause. For example, a letter from a senior al Qaeda leader discovered in the rubble of the house where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in June said the following: "The most important thing," wrote the al Qaeda official, is that "prolonging the war is in our interest."

As Joshua Holland concludes in an article for Alternet, “most Americans and Iraqis of every religious sect and political persuasion want the U.S. to set a timetable for withdrawal, but the Bush administration and Al Qaeda’s leaders believe it is in their best interests to prolong the occupation.What more does one need to say?”

On top of all of these arguments, there is the daily grinding reality for Iraqi civilians and American soldiers.

IRAQI CIVILIANS: 600,000 Dead?
A new analysis from Johns Hopkins University estimates that 654,000 more Iraqis died of various causes after the invasion than would have died in a comparable period before. The scientists attributed 600,000 of those deaths to acts of violence. The figure is a steep increase of their October 2004 estimate of 100,000 additional deaths as a result of the war. The new study uses a larger sample, but a similar method to the last study of Iraqi doctors surveying households and reporting births, deaths and the movement of people into and out of their households. When people reported deaths, researchers asked them about the cause and obtained death certificates in 92 percent of cases. The data were then projected onto the entire nation, about 26 million people.

Gunshots emerged as the leading cause of death, accounting for 56 percent of the total. Air strikes, car bombs and other explosions each accounted for 13 percent to 14 percent. Almost 60 percent of the deaths were among males 15 to 44.

On the other hand, the Iraq Body Count, an independent website which tracks deaths in Iraq through news reports, puts the death count at a maximum of 48,693.

U.S. SOLDIERS: Deaths Approach 3,000
Today’s New York Times reports on the death of an American soldier in Tikrit on Sunday from a roadside bomb in the last sentence of the daily grab-bag Iraq article.

Brandon Ashbury, 21 years old and Timothy Fulkerson, 20 years old, are the names of the last two soldiers killed whose names have been released by the Pentagon. They are numbers 2,735 and 2,736 as the war grinds on and on. Reuters reported on October 10th that the number of private military personnel killed in Iraq now stands at 647.

The Independent in Britain reports that 776 U.S. soldiers were wounded in action in September. This is the fourth largest casualty rate since the US/UK invasion and the largest since the Fallujah offensive in November 2004. According to Andrew Cordesman Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the number of wounded is “a much better measure of the intensity of the operations,” than counting the number of dead-because so many more soldiers now survive due to factors like better emergency medical assistance on the battlefield. During the Vietnam war there were three wounded for every one dead. In Iraq that ratio is eight to one.

PARTY LIKE IT’S THE END OF THE WAR
Despite these grim figures, the Pentagon and the White House seem to be born optimists. As Thom Shanker writes in the New York Times on October 5th, hidden deep in the military spending bill’s fine print last year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital "for commemoration of success" in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shanker writes, “The original legislation empowered the president to designate ‘a day of celebration’ to commemorate the success of the armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to ‘issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.’ The celebration would honor the soldiers, sailors, air crews and marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it would be held in Washington, with the $20 million to cover the costs of military participation.”

If at first you don’t succeed, try try again? The money wasn’t spent last year because we did not win the war last year. But in another flourish of hopefulness, Republicans re-inserted the money into the spending legislation approved by the Senate and House last week. The passage allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.

RESOURCES:
LISTEN TO THE IRAQIS
Raed in the Middle, Raed Jarrar’s Blog

“The Iraqi Civil Conflict: Another Reason for Bringing the Troops Home”Raed Jarrar, Foreign Policy in Focus, July 12, 2006

“Most Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Out Within a Year,”World Public Opinion, October 2006

LISTEN TO THE TROOPS
VOTE Vets

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

LISTEN TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
“Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now”

“Leaving Iraq: A How-To”Erik Leaver, TomPaine.com, September 5, 2006

“Strategic Redeployment Revisited”Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis, Center for American Progress, 2006

MORE RESOURCES

“Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates,” Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, October 11, 2006

Iraq Body Count