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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Hershâs Article About Collaboration Between Israel and Kurdistan |
| 2004-06-22 |
| From The New Yorker, an article by Seymour Hersh. This is the entire first section, uncut. I highly recommend reading the entire article. In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the warâs most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency â a campaign of bombings and assassinations â later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost. The border stayed open, however. âThe Administration wasnât ignoring the Israeli intelligence about Iran,â Patrick Clawson, who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has close ties to the White House, explained. âThereâs no question that we took no steps last summer to close the border, but our attitude was that it was more useful for Iraqis to have contacts with ordinary Iranians coming across the border, and thousands were coming across every dayâfor instance, to make pilgrimages.â He added, âThe questions we confronted were âIs the trade-off worth it? Do we want to isolate the Iraqis?â Our answer was that as long as the Iranians were not picking up guns and shooting at us, it was worth the price.â Clawson said, âThe Israelis disagreed quite vigorously with us last summer. Their concern was very straightforward â that the Iranians would create social and charity organizations in Iraq and use them to recruit people who would engage in armed attacks against Americans.â The warnings of increased violence proved accurate. By early August, the insurgency against the occupation had exploded, with bombings in Baghdad, at the Jordanian Embassy and the United Nations headquarters, that killed forty-two people. A former Israeli intelligence officer said that Israelâs leadership had concluded by then that the United States was unwilling to confront Iran; in terms of salvaging the situation in Iraq, he said, âit doesnât add up. Itâs over. Not militarily â the United States cannot be defeated militarily in Iraq â but politically.â Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who until last year served on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told me that late last summer âthe Administration had a chance to turn it around after it was clear that âMission Accomplishedââ â a reference to Bushâs May speech â âwas premature. The Bush people could have gone to their allies and got more boots on the ground. But the neocons were dug inââWeâre doing this on our own.ââ Leverett went on, âThe President was only belatedly coming to the understanding that he had to either make a strategic change or, if he was going to insist on unilateral control, get tougher and find the actual insurgency.â The Administration then decided, Leverett said, to âdeploy the Guantánamo model in Iraqâ â to put aside its rules of interrogation. That decision failed to stop the insurgency and eventually led to the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison. In early November, the President received a grim assessment from the C.I.A.âs station chief in Baghdad, who filed a special field appraisal, known internally as an Aardwolf, warning that the security situation in Iraq was nearing collapse. The document, as described by Knight-Ridder, said that ânone of the postwar Iraqi political institutions and leaders have shown an ability to govern the countryâ or to hold elections and draft a constitution. A few days later, the Administration, rattled by the violence and the new intelligence, finally attempted to change its go-it-alone policy, and set June 30th as the date for the handover of sovereignty to an interim government, which would allow it to bring the United Nations into the process. âNovember was one year before the Presidential election,â a U.N. consultant who worked on Iraqi issues told me. âThey panicked and decided to share the blame with the U.N. and the Iraqis.â A former Administration official who had supported the war completed a discouraging tour of Iraq late last fall. He visited Tel Aviv afterward and found that the Israelis he met with were equally discouraged. As they saw it, their warnings and advice had been ignored, and the American war against the insurgency was continuing to founder. âI spent hours talking to the senior members of the Israeli political and intelligence community,â the former official recalled. âTheir concern was âYouâre not going to get it right in Iraq, and shouldnât we be planning for the worst-case scenario and how to deal with it?ââ Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who supported the Bush Administrationâs invasion of Iraq, took it upon himself at this point to privately warn Vice-President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq; according to an American close to Barak, he said that Israel âhad learned that thereâs no way to win an occupation.â The only issue, Barak told Cheney, âwas choosing the size of your humiliation.â Cheney did not respond to Barakâs assessment. (Cheneyâs office declined to comment.) In a series of interviews in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, officials told me that by the end of last year Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options. Prime Minister Ariel Sharonâs government decided, I was told, to minimize the damage that the war was causing to Israelâs strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship with Iraqâs Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. Several officials depicted Sharonâs decision, which involves a heavy financial commitment, as a potentially reckless move that could create even more chaos and violence as the insurgency in Iraq continues to grow. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #13 Am I missing something? I'm glad that the Israelis are allying themselves with the Kurds. What's wrong with both parties covering their bets? Both Israelis and Kurds have been the focus of Muslim hatred and both are smart enough not to put all their faith in America succeeding in the noble [ but misguided IMO]hope of using democracy to vanquish Islamic terrorism in the ME. The fact that Israel and the Kurds not mindlessly in lockstep with the WH might upset the idealistic sensibilities of some of you, who are safely esconced in a stuffed armchair in the USA, but Israel and the Iraqi Kurds do not enjoy the luxury of dreamers who live 6000 miles from the fomenting Sunni/Shiite inferno in Iraq. Get off your idealistic high horses and put yourselves in the shoes of Israelis and Kurds before automatically dismissing the content of this article. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-06-22 11:52:42 PM |
| #12 Sure, why not. That is, unless Mr. Sylwester can find something else to advance his agenda. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2004-06-22 8:22:42 PM |
| #11 Let's repost it again on Friday. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-06-22 3:14:22 PM |
| #10 Hersch is an amalgam of Jason Blair and Michael Moore with a dash of Jesse Jackson for panache and relevance. He's nearing the ranks of the self-parodies like Klugman, Fiske, and Dowd. |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-06-22 12:50:27 PM |
| #9 The border stayed open, however. âThe Administration wasnât ignoring the Israeli intelligence about Iran,â Patrick Clawson, who is the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has close ties to the White House, explained. âThereâs no question that we took no steps last summer to close the border, but our attitude was that it was more useful for Iraqis to have contacts with ordinary Iranians coming across the border, and thousands were coming across every dayâfor instance, to make pilgrimages.â He added, âThe questions we confronted were âIs the trade-off worth it? Do we want to isolate the Iraqis?â Our answer was that as long as the Iranians were not picking up guns and shooting at us, it was worth the price.â Assuming that this is true, this is so stupid. First off, how do they know that there aren't going to be Iranian agents mixed in with those making pilgrimages? This is another irritating example of political correctness at its worst. We're trying to stabilize and rebuild a country here, folks. It's bad enough that Iraq already has some internal problems that need fixing, and now an EXTERNAL problem in the form of unscreened Iranians crossing an unpoliced border is introduced? This is, quite frankly, just nuts. Secondly, what makes these guys think that it's only the wielding of a weapon by Iranians that would do damage? Ever heard of incitement? How about fomenting unrest? Iran is a known supporter of terrorism, so how could chumps like Clawson not assume that Iran would try to work its "magic" in Iraq when presented with the opportunity? The fact that the Israelis gave us sound advice only to see it dumped in the seeming interest of being PC is simply mind-boggling. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-06-22 12:23:47 PM |
| #8 Is this trend for "former officials" to cheap-shot policy from a lofty and solomonic height new, or did I just not notice it virtually filling such articles in eras past? I don't recall it from high officials in the Clinton administration. After all who'd want to be found dead in Fort Marcy Park? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2004-06-22 12:02:18 PM |
| #7 What a load of horsesh*t (speaking particularly of the last few paras). Is this trend for "former officials" to cheap-shot policy from a lofty and solomonic height new, or did I just not notice it virtually filling such articles in eras past? Barak sounds like an idiot here -- of course, given his record, there's some basis for this, but I think he's smarter than this. We've already "lost"? You can't "win" an occupation -- i.e. you can't achieve your objectives if it involves occupation, even if temporary? Huh? This is the sort of silliness one usually sees in, uh, clueless American journalists and think-tank hacks. But the howler is the "damage" to "Israel's strategic position". What? Eliminating the richest, most able, most implacably hostile Arab regime constitutes "damage" to "Israel's strategic position"? I guess Hersh is just much smarter than I, since he can make any sense of such an idea. Or, maybe .... |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2004-06-22 10:44:24 AM |
| #6 Oh, Christ, Mike. You actually believe Hersh? The guy never found a lie he wouldn't make his own. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-06-22 9:58:38 AM |
| #5 It was covered two days ago too. So what? |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-06-22 9:27:02 AM |
| #4 Didn't we cover this yesterday? |
| Posted by: Mike 2004-06-22 9:16:41 AM |
| #3 I guess two virus attempts results in a double post? |
| Posted by: B 2004-06-22 8:49:17 AM |
| #2 It's so fun watching Seymour flirt with the truth but be unable to get there because all things must lead to "Bush is stupid". What a waste of talent. |
| Posted by: B 2004-06-22 8:46:42 AM |
| #1 It's so fun watching Seymour flirt with the truth but be unable to get there because all things must lead to "Bush is stupid". What a waste of talent. |
| Posted by: B 2004-06-22 8:46:15 AM |