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Saddam tells judge will stop attending hearings

9.20am Wednesday December 6, 2006

AMMAN - Saddam Hussein wrote to the judge in the ethnic Kurdish genocide trial to tell him he would no longer attend court sessions to protest against being repeatedly silenced from speaking, his chief lawyer said today.

In the letter which was handed to a defence team lawyer who saw him on Tuesday, the former Iraqi leader said he and his defence team had been denied "clarifying the truth" over his role in a military campaign that killed up to 180,000 people.

Saddam, who is awaiting an appeal against a death sentence from a separate case for the killing of Shi'ite villagers in the 1980s, was furious when the judge refused to give him an opportunity to refute prosecution allegations he swindled US$10 billion ($14.56 billion) of state assets.

"When I tried to clarify what happened by raising my hand three times I was not given a chance," Saddam wrote in the handwritten letter released by his lawyers.

Chief defence counsel Khalil Dulaimi said Saddam's refusal to attend any future hearings reflected the former leader's firm belief he had been denied the right to properly defend himself.

"So I tell you I cannot take these continued insults from you and others ... and I ask you to relieve me from attending the sessions of this new farce and you can do whatever you want," Saddam said in the letter.

The Anfal trial opened in a Baghdad courtroom on August 21 and has heard more than 70 witnesses in 27 hearings, most of whom have described the campaign that ravaged Kurdistan.

Prosecutors are expected to present documents on Thursday linking Saddam to the killing of Kurds, court officials said.

Venezuela
In Hugo's hands
Dec 4th 2006 | CARACAS
From Economist.com

A greater concentration of power for the president

Reuters
WHEN Hugo Chávez first took office as president of Venezuela, in 1999, he made no mention of socialism. But as he celebrated another crushing victory in reasonably fair presidential elections on Sunday December 3rd the controversial leader claimed that “more than 60% of Venezuelans voted not for Chávez but for a project that has a name—Bolivarian socialism”.

Mr Chávez can certainly claim a mandate. Preliminary results gave him 61% of the votes, compared with 38% for his challenger, Manuel Rosales. But it is far from clear quite what the voters understand “Bolivarian socialism”—named after a 19th-century independence hero—to mean. Polls suggest that many people think it has something to do with social welfare projects and the redistribution of Venezuela’s substantial oil income. But most (perhaps 80%) reject any idea of adopting a Cuban-type system, despite Mr Chávez’s cosy relationship with Fidel Castro and the fondness of both men for rhetoric about their “indivisible” revolutions.

Nor does the Venezuelan president spell out what his work-in-progress entails, beyond more control for himself and his supporters. On the political front he talks of giving more “power to the people”, which means grassroots “community” councils will get more clout and resources, sidestepping bureaucracies and conventional local government. Existing political parties, whatever their leaders may think, may possibly be replaced by a single, revolutionary party. And, in a supposed bid to remove obstacles to “the people’s will”, a constitutional amendment will be proposed to let Mr Chávez run for office as many times as he likes.

Mr Chávez calls this “participatory democracy”. In reality it implies more concentration of power in his hands and a greater emphasis on his semi-religious rapport with the masses. The only institution that is likely to be strengthened is the armed forces, which increasingly resembles a revolutionary militia under the direct control of the president himself.

It is not obvious where all this leaves the opposition. The president made an effort to be magnanimous in victory by dedicating a few “words of recognition” to his adversaries, acknowledging their respect for the democratic rules. But Mr Chávez does not always play by these himself. Perhaps carried away by the campaign, he declared in his closing rally in Caracas, the capital, that there was “no room in Venezuela for any model other than the Bolivarian revolution”.

For his part Mr Rosales, the social democratic governor of the western state of Zulia, was quick to concede defeat, though he questioned Mr Chávez’s margin of victory. Despite strong pressure from the radical wing of the opposition to take to the streets, he rejected calls to challenge the overall result. He is presumably hoping to unite the opposition, and to invigorate it for later elections. But that will require his attracting large numbers of “chavistas”—a task that may be made easier if Mr Chávez decides to take unpopular steps towards Cuban-style socialism.

Economically, Mr Chávez may declare tighter restrictions on private enterprise which already chafes under price and exchange controls and is likely to face import restrictions too. He likes to call capitalism the root of all evil, and opposes proposals by the United States, and others, for more free-trade in Latin America. He says he would “replace” capitalism with a system based on “solidarity” and barter, with a strong role for co-operatives and what he calls “social production companies”, which redistribute all or part of their profits to the needy. But in all these areas the details remain hazy.

Coming close on the heels of the victories of left-leaning candidates such as Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, the Venezuelan result may lead some to conclude that the populist left is sweeping all before it in the region. But the Venezuelan model, which depends almost entirely on a strong state, fuelled by massive flows of petro-dollars, has yet to prove that it can be reproduced elsewhere, or that it can be sustained when the oil price drops. If he is to govern, as he intends, for another quarter of a century, Mr Chávez will no doubt have to devise a more sustainable system.

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December 5, 2006
Maliki Urges Regional Meeting on Stabilizing Iraq

By JOHN O’NEIL and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq called today for a regional conference on stabilizing his country, an idea that is backed by the United Nations but is opposed by other Iraqi leaders, among them the country’s Kurdish president and Mr. Maliki’s chief Shiite rival. The conference idea has also been received coolly by President Bush.

Mr. Maliki said in Baghdad that his government would send envoys to neighboring countries for discussions on how they can contribute to reducing the violence in Iraq.

“After the political climate is cleared, we will call for the convening of a regional conference, in which these countries that are keen on the stability and security of Iraq will participate,” he said, according to a translation provided by The Associated Press.

Mr. Maliki also said that later this month, he will convene an often-postponed reconciliation conference meant to bring together warring groups within the country.

Mr. Maliki said that the regional conference would be held within Iraq — not elsewhere, as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has suggested — and that it would focus on offers of assistance, not discussions of solutions, according to the A.P.

While Mr. Maliki has traveled to Iran to discuss security, he had otherwise been resistant to the idea of involving other countries.

The idea enlisting Iraq’s neighbors in a multilateral effort to calm the internal fighting in Iraq was floated earlier this year by Congressional Democrats. It received a boost this fall when the chairman of an independent bipartisan panel on Iraq, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, suggesting that the United States open talks with Iran and Syria. The panel, called the Iraq Study Group, is widely expected to include a call for some kind of international discussions among the recommendations it will release on Wednesday.

And Mr. Annan has made his own appeal for such a gathering.

But the idea has gained as many opponents as supporters. Iraq’s Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, responded to Mr. Annan’s suggestion by saying, “We became an independent sovereign state, and we decide the issues of the country.”

On Monday, Mr. Maliki’s chief Shiite rival, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, flatly rejected the idea after a White House meeting with President Bush.

Mr. Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said, “We believe that the Iraqi issue should be solved by the Iraqis, with the help of friends everywhere, but we reject any attempts to have a regional or international role in solving the Iraqi issue.

“We cannot bypass the political process,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.

The opposition inside and outside of Iraq reflects the complexity of its relations with its neighbors, and the extent to which Iran’s rising influence has became a central issue in the region.

Iraq’s Sunni neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have lobbied Mr. Bush in opposition to any talks that would include Iran, fearing that such a step would add to the growing power and influence of the Shiite religious government in Tehran. Representatives of Arab governments met today in Cairo to discuss how to keep Iraq’s turmoil from spreading, Reuters reported.

The Kurds whom Mr. Talabani represents have created their own, largely peaceful mini-nation in Iraq’s north, and are presumably reluctant to invite consultations with neighbors like Turkey and Iran, both of which have large Kurdish minorities and worry about any independence movement among them.

Mr. Maliki and Mr. Hakim both have close ties with Iran, but Mr. Hakim is seen as the more closely Tehran-aligned of the two. He has been the main proponent of partitioning the country into autonomous regions, an idea that Mr. Bush, Mr. Maliki, the country’s Sunnis and its Sunni neighbors all strongly oppose.

Mr. Maliki’s visit to the White House was part of an effort by Mr. Bush to reach out to a wider range of Iraqi leaders than he has previously met. Next month, he will receive Tariq al-Hashemi, the leader of the most powerful Sunni Arab party in Iraq.

Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, outlined the strategy of trying to meet with Iraqi politicians to gather support for the Iraqi government in a classified memo that was shown to and published by The New York Times last week.

“Press Sunni and other Iraqi leaders (especially Hakim) to support Maliki,” Mr. Hadley wrote in a section outlining how the White House might drive a wedge between Mr. Maliki and Moktada al-Sadr, the strongly anti-American Shiite cleric and militia leader on whom Mr. Maliki depends heavily for support.

By meeting with leaders other than Mr. Maliki, Mr. Bush runs the risk of undermining the Iraqi prime minister — whom he declared “the right guy for Iraq” during their meeting in Amman — by seeming to hedge his bets with others who might claim power if the Maliki government fails.

In an interview with Fox News, Mr. Bush said he had raised the issue with Mr. Hakim. “I said, ‘I just want you to understand, as you know, I met with the prime minister, the head of the government,’ ” Mr. Bush said. “And that I don’t want the prime minister to construe that this meeting in any way doesn’t support him, and he said, ‘Look, I understand that as well.’ ”

Mr. Hakim’s close ties to Iran also pose potential problems for the Bush administration. His party, usually referred to by its acronym, Sciri, was founded in Iran; its armed wing, the Badr Organization, was widely accused by Sunni Arabs of operating death squads in the aftermath of the American invasion.

Mr. Hakim dismissed those charges on Monday in an appearance at the United States Institute for Peace after his White House visit. “We reject all those accusations,” Mr. Hakim said when asked by a reporter if his organization was responsible for murder, torture and abduction. He added: “We say there is no evidence. Nothing of that happened.”

At the White House, the press secretary, Tony Snow, was peppered with questions about why Mr. Bush was even meeting with Mr. Hakim.

“This is a man who spent 20 years in Iran when Saddam Hussein was in power,” Mr. Snow said, “but he’s also made it clear that he sees himself as an Iraqi leader, not someone who is beholden to Iran.”

John O’Neil reported from New York and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington.

Demonstration At White House Calls Attention to Iraq's Assyrians

GMT 12-5-2006 16:1:23
Assyrian International News Agency
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Faced with growing repression by Muslims, Christians from an ancient tradition in Iraq are calling on American political leaders for help before their entire community is extinguished.


Christian Assyrians and some of their supporters demonstrated in front of the White House yesterday, highlighting an alarming trend reported by the U.N.: While representing just 5 percent of the Iraqi population, 40 percent of the refugees fleeing the country are Assyrians.


One of the speakers at the rally, Nina Shea of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom in D.C., told WND that because of the "ethnic cleansing," the Christians want an autonomous district in Iraq they can administrate.


The zone, called the Nineveh Plains Administrative Unit, would allow Assyrians and other Christians to practice their faith, speak and teach their language, and work their land without fear of persecution.


Unlike the Sunnis and Shiites, the Christians have no militia and are completely defenseless, Shea said.


"They need to administrate their own governmental unit to protect themselves," she said. "Otherwise, with the chaos and violence and persecution targeting Christians for religious reasons, which the U.N. has documented, they will disappear.


Shea insisted it's in the interest of the U.S. to take a stand.


With the loss of the highly educated and skilled Christians, she argued, Iraq is "experiencing a brain drain as well as sane drain -- a force of moderation and a bridge to the West."


"They have served the U.S. in Iraq nobly, and they will leave a real vacuum," said Shea.


While the Christians in Iraq have been repressed for decades, Shea pointed out, they have suffered more since the war began, with kidnappings, crucifixions and dozen of churches bombed by jihadist terror.


Among the atrocities documented this year:


Father Paulos Eskandar, of Mor Afrem Syriac Orthodox Church, was kidnapped Oct. 9 by Muslims and decapitated two days later. He was murdered despite Christians fulfilled a demand to post a text on the church doors condemning the pope's statement about Islam.
On Oct. 4, a car bomb detonated in a Christian area and killed nine people, including Georges Zara, member of the Assyrian Chaldean Syriac National Council.
A 14-year-old boy was crucified and stabbed in the stomach, mimicking what was done to Jesus, in Albasra.
On Oct. 21, in Baquba, a group of veiled Muslims attacked a workplace where a 14-year-old boy named Ayad Tariq worked. The men asked the boy for his identity card. After seeing he was Christian the men asked whether he was a "dirty Christian sinner." Ayad answered: "Yes, I am Christian, but I am not a sinner." The rebels yelled he was a dirty Christian sinner and continued to grab him and to scream, "Allahu, Akbar! Allahu, Akbar!" The boy then was decapitated.
In August, 13 Assyrian Christian women in Baghdad were kidnapped and murdered.
In January, churches were bombed in Basra and Baghdad.


Shea noted that the Kurds, who control the north, have been denying the Christian Assyrians many of the benefits that have come from U.S. largesse.


The electric grids created by the U.S., for example, are left to the discretion of local governments to distribute and manage, and the Christians say they aren't getting their fair share. They cite instances of Kurdish villages receiving electricity while neighboring Christian villages are denied service.


Shea said she has been raising the plight of the Iraqi Christians with the U.S. government for several years, including in a face-to-face meeting with President Bush in her role as a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.


She has not received a positive response.


"One of the issues here is that the Christians don't create trouble, they are just victims," she said. "They don't blow up things, so they don't get attention.


Some have told her the U.S. government doesn't want to establish a precedent of favoritism, by responding to special pleadings.


But Shea argues, "It's not favoring one group to make sure they get their fair share of U.S. construction aid.


The White House did not respond to WND's request for comment.


www.worldnetdaily.com

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What Went Wrong
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A Sober Look at Iraq
By Michael Rubin
Posted: Monday, December 4, 2006

ARTICLES
National Review Online
Publication Date: December 4, 2006

According to the New York Times, the Baker-Hamilton Commission will call for a drawdown of U.S. military presence in Iraq albeit without a timeline. The proposition is lose-lose. The logic that an imminent withdrawal of troops will force the Iraqi government to be more responsible is nonsense. Iraqis will side with strength; they will interpret withdrawal, promised or actual, as weakness. Nor does a creating a vacuum provide a solution to a security problem. If the president accepts the report, it will confirm U.S. defeat in Iraq. Inside-the-Beltway spin and diplomatic word parsing are irrelevant. What matters is street perception. And, even if the president does not accept the report, its very presence will embolden Iraqi insurgents and militias. Any doubter need only listen to the recent rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.


Resident Scholar Michael Rubin

What Went Wrong?

As Iraq goes sour, assigning blame has become a Washington past time. It should be welcome. To learn lessons avoids their repeat. While no one in Washington seeks another military conflict, the Baker-Hamilton recommendations bolster adversaries’ overconfidence. Miscalculations in Tehran, Damascus, or Pyongyang could force the U.S. military into conflict.

The situation in Iraq need not have been so bad. There have been several watershed decisions, the outcomes of which have fundamentally altered policy and debate.

There will be plenty of blame to go around. Policymaking is organic. No memo rises through a department or agency without a dozen officials approving. Sometimes, their edits change happy-to-glad; there was a quip in the Pentagon about one official who would edit a stop sign if he had the opportunity. More often, alterations would reflect debates, compromises, and insertions by those at a higher level who had information or directives about which more juniors staffers were unaware. Such a bureaucracy is why so many foreign-service officers dislike their Washington postings and why Pentagon officers and Langley’s analysts grow frustrated.

Policy proposals from different buildings get hashed out at interagency working groups, coordination committees, and meetings. Principles decide big issues at the National Security Council. Sometimes bureaucracies would win debates, and sometimes they would lose. While many critics of Iraq policy bestow blame, they often practice anachronism, removing policy arguments from context and failing to recognize how nodal decisions outside any single individual’s control changed situations.

In the real world, though, when a decision is made, policymakers at all levels have no choice but to accept it and fight the next battle with an eye toward pushing subsequent policy choices to the best possible outcome, unless of course they wish to reverse decisions or sway debate by leak. The indices of Bob Woodward’s books are a pretty good compilation of these A-list leakers. While bloggers and armchair quarterbacks can ignore trails of decisions and their aftermath, policymakers do not have such luxury.

Prewar Planning

Planning was poor. Emphasis on prewar diplomacy delayed preparation. In a diplomatic world where image trumps reality, senior officials felt substantive planning could undercut diplomatic optics.

Planning which did occur had insufficient coordination. Had working-level officials all operated under the same roof, coordination, which took weeks, could take days. Personality matters. Proximity can ameliorate otherwise festering interpersonal suspicions and bureaucratic rivalry.

The Future of Iraq Project was valuable as an idea forum in which all relevant offices within government participated, although it did not produce action plans.

There was also reliance upon bad advice. Many retired diplomats--like Baker-Hamilton report drafter Edward Djerejian--and a host of officials across the U.S. government felt that Iraq could be rehabilitated in 60-90 days. While some papers subsequently leaked contradict such claim, often such documents contained mutually contradictory statements, as bureaucrats avoided risk.

Implementation also undercut planning. It is all well and good to have Phase III and Phase IV plans, but if no official makes the call as to when one phase ends and the other begins, confusion reigns, and chaos--and looting--fills the vacuum.

What were the nodal decisions that changed the course of Iraq’s postwar development? First was the decision to occupy the country. In December 2002, I argued for Iraq's liberation and suggested Iraqis would welcome us (they did) unless we became overbearing (we did) and stayed too long (once committed, we have no better choice should of completion).

Incumbent in this decision was delayed restoration of Iraqi sovereignty. There was an active debate at the time about whether Washington would have more leverage over Iraqi politicians if there was an established political decision before liberation, or whether boots on the ground would augment leverage. In the end, the State Department and some in the National Security Council officials triumphed. Subsequent events show they were wrong. Their mistake created a new reality. What would the Iraqi government have looked like if the Pentagon had won that debate? It will take declassification of Pentagon and National Security Council documents to show, but suffice to say the canard of handing Iraq over to Ahmad Chalabi was not among them. That myth was the result of intelligence officers ten years into retirement seeking limelight by claiming falsely to have current information, bureaucratic warfare, and the imaginative mind of some journalists and bloggers.

Another nodal decision involved federalism. Before Iraq’s liberation, it was clear that federalism would be a priority for Iraqis. Here, U.S. policymakers lost an important opportunity to influence. While the Iraqis should have determined the final shape of their government within clear parameters, Washington could have better influenced the process by creating the right template. For example, when compiling Iraq’s fiscal year 2004 budget, the Coalition Provisional Authority could choose between determining the budget in coordination with the governing council, or fixing the budget by compiling requests from municipalities and districts through the governorate to the central government to adjudicate, negotiate, and then decide. The former was quicker, but the latter would establish a process which could institute administrative, rather than ethnic or sectarian federalism. For the sake of easing the Madrid Donors’ Conference, the Coalition Provisional Authority’s chief of staff decided to go by the former route.

Another error was to miscatagorize Iraqis. The Coalition did this in two ways. Some diplomats and officials became obsessed by the dichotomy between “externals”--those Iraqis who had fled into exile or lived in Iraqi Kurdistan, outside Baghdad’s control--and “internals,” those who remained and, presumably, had greater legitimacy. Others--myself included--paid too much heed to balancing ethnic and sectarian representation.

The external-internal split turned out to be a canard. One-in-six Iraqis fled under Saddam. But, many retained family ties. There was not a division akin to China and Taiwan. Before the war, it was clear that exiles--the Iraqi National Congress coalition including Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Iraq National Accord, Constitutional Monarchy Movement, and the two main Kurdish parties would play key roles. They have, with the exception of the Constitutional Monarchy movement. Had U.S. policymakers maintained a consistent template rather than changing the rules whenever exiles emerged as leaders, liberals would have had more opportunity to develop strategy. There also would have been less animosity toward American diplomats and policymakers.

While Sharif Ali bungled his political ambitions from the start, there remains in Iraq nostalgia for the past. Recently, some commentators have written about Saddam revisionism which ironically has more traction among U.S. progressives and anti-war activists than it does among Iraqis. Among an older generation, there is also nostalgia for some prominent military leaders from the Republican period, and also for the Hashemite monarchy. Even today, former military officers, tribal leaders across the sectarian divide, and al-Anbar notables suggest, more than the United Nation or regional governments, prominent Hashemite figures not involved in the Jordanian government would be welcome mediators and interlocutors.

What other policy decisions had significant impact on Iraq’s development? Again, the prewar debate about whether to train a free Iraqi officer corps is, in retrospect, very important. The decision to train in advance a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian fighting force not affiliated with any political party was slowed by a desire to emphasize diplomacy, questions as to how best to marshal, vetting, and interagency filibusters. Delayed by months, the conflict began before the bulk of volunteers could be cleared through a cumbersome vetting process. And so, the opportunity to both liberate and provide security fell by the wayside

Post-Liberation Decision-making

Journalists and many commentators overemphasize the decision to disband the Iraqi military. The Iraqi army, while an honored institution, had dissolved; there was no way to force conscripts to return. Many senior officers were guilty of human-rights abuses that made the U.S. scandal at Abu Ghraib pale in comparison. Midlevel officers became the bulk of the reconstituted army. A far better subject of criticism was the failure to continue military pensions in an orderly fashion. There has been little questioning of who was responsible for the pension decision.

The debate over de-Baathification and re-Baathification is more important. Some commentators and, perhaps, officials with long service in Baathist societies belittle the human rights violations of the Baath party. Feeling sympathies to their previous interlocutors, they do not understand the hatred that ordinary Iraqis have for Baathism. Still, in an effort to appear tolerant or perhaps offer political concessions to those uninterested in compromise, Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer reversed de-Baathification. Violence has grown proportional to re-Baathification. All discussion of a Sunni strategy likewise backfired. Not only did it play into Shiite fears and Iranian propaganda, but it undercut the notion of a unified Iraq.

Sometimes the devil is in the details. There was much discussion of how to organize elections. I had already left government by that point, but pushed hard for constituency elections rather than party slates, much to the annoyance of friends still in Baghdad. Some experts sought to reinforce the pro-party slate proposal with political dispersions and straw-man arguments having nothing to do with Iraq. It is too bad that Iraqis so often became a template to fight battles unrelated to Baghdad. While the debate became moot when policymakers made their decision, in retrospect this was a nodal point. Political systems absent accountability encourage both radicalism and corruption.

Other questions remain unanswered. Should the Coalition have shot looters? How could Abu Ghraib have been avoided? Why did Tehran get their media outlets up so much quicker than did Washington? Such unresolved, unanswered questions are worth considering now, before such issues ever again need to be actionalized. Also deserving of study is an understanding not of how journalists covered Iraq, but rather of how Iraqis reacted to the press coverage and how they interpreted external political debates.

Will Baker-Hamilton Repeat Mistakes?

One mistake which had immense impact on Iraq was misguided faith in diplomacy. Many present and former diplomats counseled engaging Syria and Iran. Neither Damascus nor Tehran kept their promises. Outside the Green Zone walls, it was obvious that Tehran and its proxies meant the U.S. harm. The British soft approach and U.S. navel-gazing gave Iran space to replicate a Hezbollah model to build militias and undermine government. Steven Vincent’s murder after exposing death squads in Basra should have been a wake-up call. Instead, commentators who had never been to Iraq sought to justify his murder.

Another issue involves the militias in general and firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in particular. Muqtada was not always so powerful; his organization established roots and grew over time, often with the benefit of outside funding. Muqtada’s rise is symbolic of another mistake. Rather than tackle problems head-on, U.S. officials wished them away. Problems metathesized. Investigative journalists have yet to uncover the debate surrounding questions of what to do about Muqtada in April 2003.

Personal Mistakes

An auto-da-fe is developing that demands mea culpas. While some conspiracy theorists believe so-called neocons to have had immense power and influence, the idea that three or four people within the U.S. government--to a man excluded from implementation and decision-making--could control hundreds of others is absurd. Still, everyone played a role in Iraq although. As is the case in government service, individual jobs were less than glorious, even if they were satisfying.

I was a reporting officer rather than an action officer. Decisions were taken by those living in the Green Zone, and the eight or nine people surrounding Bremer who are apparent from the index of his memoirs. Nevertheless, like all involved, I made mistakes of analysis along the way. I also should have given more credence to tribalism, although this revived with time and insecurity. While my private reports focused alarm at the spread of the militias, I wish I had emphasized the problem far earlier in my public writing once I left government.

As an outside analyst, I botched predictions on the last election. I thought Ahmad Chalabi could get five percent; but officially, he did not win a seat. In reality, I suspect he got one or two percent, although was sidelined after both he and Ayad Allawi lost a number of ballots spoiled by having their ballots spoiled by dual votes on the same ballot paper for the United Iraqi Alliance, apparently after the vote was cast. Can Chalabi make a comeback? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But he certainly has the connections and expertise to remain relevant in one capacity or another. His potential remains as a coalition builder. That he has become a lightening rod in Washington is irrelevant.

I was also wrong but pleasantly surprised to see Mithal al-Alusi do well. More seriously, I regret not recognizing Hazen al-Shaalan’s corruption earlier. Nevertheless, should there be declassifications of documents, I'll have no reason to hide my face. Indeed, the one issue which should unify supporters of the war and their critics is the demand that the U.S. government declassify all U.S. documents relating to policy and planning immediately, and release the material seized from Saddam. The latter may contain embarrassing material such as the names of those not only in Europe and in Arab media, but also in the United States who accepted gratuities from Saddam’s government. Avoiding embarrassment is not reason to withhold documents.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

Despite all the problems, do I still stand by the decision to liberate Iraq? Yes. Like U.S. diplomats and servicemen who have spent time in Iraq post-liberation, I have met too many Iraqis and seen too much good to regret my decision. Do I believe we need to press on? Yes. Do I believe U.S. foreign policy should look toward the long-term and push for democracy? Yes.

Many commentators focus only on mistakes. Every mistake permanently altered the path of history and the outcome possible to achieve. But, as bad as is the current situation, there might still be strategies to maximize results, improve stability and the strength of democracy, and gain the best possible outcome for U.S. national security. Among possible prescriptions would be improving police training and oversight and, if need be, the dissolution and reconstitution of the force.

Reviving the Commanders Emergency Relief Program model of aid is also worth consideration. Think Provincial Reconstruction Teams-on-Wheels. Failure to improve ordinary lives undercuts security. In a wartime situation, Washington cannot afford to have USAID take six months to allocate a paper clip, six weeks to study its use, and then six days to discuss new paper-clip applications at a conference at a luxury hotel in Amman. Perhaps if the Baker-Hamilton commissioners had embedded with U.S. military units across Iraq, the co-chairmen’s predetermined recommendations could be checked by ground truth. They could have balanced filtered presentations from senior officials with raw recommendations from privates, lieutenants, captains, and majors in units across the country. They also might learn from the junior foreign-service officers who often have excellent ideas which they are unable to push through a cautious and risk-adverse hierarchy.

Entrusting U.S. national security to a Syrian regime that murders Lebanese politicians and journalists and to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that supports militias is foolish. There is no evidence to support the assumption that Iran and Syria want a stable Iraq. Rather, all their actions show a desire to stymie the United States and destabilize their neighbor. More dangerous still than even this, though, is the naïve assumption that making concessions to terrorism or forcing others to do so brings peace rather than war.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.