Only about 700 foreign fighters entered Iraq this year

The insurgency in Iraq was and remains mostly Sunni and Iraqi. Sixty percent of the 700 foreign fighters who arrived in Iraq this year to help the Iraq insurgents came from America's allies, Saudi Arabia and Libya. From the fort Worth Star-Telegram:

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. -- The New York Times

BAGHDAD -- Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the U.S. in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior U.S. military officials.

The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid's target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.

The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006.

The records also underscore how the insurgency in Iraq remains overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni. U.S. officials estimate that the flow of foreign fighters was 80 to 110 per month during the first half of this year and about 60 per month during the summer. The numbers fell sharply in October to no more than 40, partly as a result of the Sinjar raid, the officials say.

Saudis accounted for the largest number by far of fighters listed on the records -- 305, or 41 percent -- U.S. intelligence officers found as they combed through documents and computers in the weeks after the raid. The data show that despite increased efforts by Saudi Arabia to clamp down on would-be terrorists since 9-11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, some Saudi fighters are still getting through.

Libyans accounted for 137 foreign fighters, or 18 percent of the total, the senior U.S. military officials said.

So the insurgency in Iraq is primarily Iraqis with little external support. If bin Laden's al Qaeda is doing anything (beyond just world-wide fundamentalist jihadi public relations on TV and the Internet) it isn't doing much of anything at all in Iraq.

That means the fighting in Iraq is almost entirely an Iraqi internal civil war rather than being caused by international terrorism, so U.S. troops are not fighting international terrorism while they remain in Iraq. It looks like our diplomats should be working with the governments of Saudi Arabia and Libya prevent or find and catch the volunteers going to Iraq.

The other part of the war on terror should involve the U.S. fighting a real public relations battle on TV and the Internet. The key is to gain control of the hearts and minds of the majority non-aligned people in the Middle East. They can be reached by offering the same messages of hope that won the Cold War, but the only thing the Bush administration has offered with the invasions and threats of invasions and bombings is reasons to fear and hate America. Any effective PR battle will be delayed until AFTER the U.S. withdraws from Iraq and Dick Cheney stops threatening to bomb Iran.

That is not to say the military is not needed to go after terrorists. Military force is still needed to go after the really nasty creeps like Bush's friend, bin Laden. (Why was he ever allowed to escape from Tora Bora?) Instead Bush and Cheney got our military totally bogged down in an unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq which is mostly counterproductive to the effort of effectively going after terrorists on a world-wide basis.

The presence of American troops in Iraq at present is doing little except destroying the combat effectiveness of our troops, damaging our reputation world wide with the collateral damage and the Blackwater (and other) mercenaries, while simultaneously destroying the American federal budget in case those troops are really needed somewhere.

Consider this, also from the bottom of the same article in the fort Worth Star-Telegram:

General speaks out: Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, said he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year. "The improvements in security produced by the courage and blood of our troops have not been matched by a willingness on the part of Iraqi leaders to make the hard choices necessary to bring peace to their country," Sanchez said in remarks to be aired Saturday for the weekly Democratic radio address.

Our real enemies are not in Iraq now, if they ever were. It is time for us to apologize to the Iraqis, offer reparations and get out of their country. It is time to get serous about fighting international terrorism and leave the Iraqi sideshow.

The Iraqi corruption

Iraqi corruption, much of it run from various offices of the Maliki government, is a major barrier to Iraqi development. The Mahdi Army is in control of the Health Ministry and diverts drugs into the black market to finance its operations. In the meantime, investigations into government corruption elsewhere have been stalled when the Prime Minister, Malaki, has stepped in to protect his supporters. MSNBC has the story.

This provides confirmation to an earlier report that says Iraqi 'government' refuses to take control of Iraq. There is no widely accepted single nation of Iraq and no strong-man government to force people to work together, so there is no nation-level cooperation for rebuilding Iraq. Instead there are separate tribes with militias of their own and all kinds of individuals out to line their own pockets, probably more as a survival process than from pure greed or evil intent.

It is not surprising that the Saudi Arabians have no confidence in the Maliki government and are working for its replacement. This is one more reason why Lt. Gen Odum had it right when he wrote that "American Victory in Iraq is not an available option." Every possible solution for a positive outcome in Iraq has depended on success by the Iraqi government, but his is one more indicator - a very strong indicator - that there is no effective government in Iraq.

Given the existing Civil War in Iraq, how likely is it that the problems of corruption can be solved? Can the Maliki government be replaced by a government with better prospects for success as a government?

Right now the very existence of the Maliki government depends on the presence of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. How can the U.S. responsibly pull out of Iraq? What happens when (not if) the U.S. leaves?

Getting into Iraq was a Bush - NeoCon idiocy. I wrote at the time that we were grabbing the tar baby and wouldn't be able to let go. Sure wish had had been wrong. Two things are very clear, however. First, the solution to getting the U.S. out of the disaster in Iraq will not be found by the Republicans or other idiots who got us into this mess. Second, whatever the solution is, it will not be a result of American military operations. It will be political and will come from cooperation with a bunch of people the current administration does not like and will not cooperate with, almost certainly including Iranians and Syrians.

Sunnis in Iraq especially have every reason to be very, very afraid. The only thing standing between the Sunnis being treated like the KKK treated freed American slaves after the Civil War is the U.S. military, and al Qaeda in Iraq is trying hard (generally successfully) to make that not work. Al Qaeda in Iraq is also doing everything possible to fan the flames of Sunni - Shiite civil war, again with a great deal of success. Iraqis and American soldiers and Marines will continue to be getting killed and wounded for the foreseeable future, and the absence of an effective Iraqi government is a major contributor to the set of problems.

Can you say "Gordian Knot?" Unfortunately, the idea of a clear, simple bold stroke that will resolve the set of problems ("Cut the Gordian Knot.") is what got the NeoCon-inspired idiots in the Bush/Cheney government into this mess in the first place. Bush is no King Alexander, and Iraq is no fairy tale legend. The future for Iraq looks bleak, as does the future for America in Iraq.

Iraqi 'government' refuses to take control of Iraq

All those 'good news' stories out of Iraq in which schools and hospitals have been rebuilt have left out the end results. From the New York Times via TPM:

...of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq’s national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million.

Of the projects taken over by the Iraqi government, the Iraqi's have not been able to operate many of them.

In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day. [Snip]

In fact, in the first two quarters of 2007, Mr. Bowen said, his inspectors found significant problems in all but 2 of the 12 projects they examined after the United States declared those projects completed.

This problem is not going to get better.

So far, the United States has declared that $5.8 billion in American taxpayer-financed projects have been completed, but most of the rest of the projects within a $21 billion rebuilding program that Mr. Bowen examined in the report are expected to be finished by the end of this year. Some of that money is also being used to train and equip Iraqi security forces rather than finance construction projects.

This does not indicate any likelihood at all the the U.S. will find it possible to 'win' in Iraq. The current Iraqi 'government' cannot succeed in gaining control of Iraq, and the Republican Administration cannot manage Iraq by itself. Under these conditions there is no possibility of bringing any form of stability to that nation.

In short, American success in Iraq is impossible. That is true no matter how success in Iraq is defined! There is no effective Iraqi government (outside of Iraqi Kurdistan) that Americans can depend on, and for the U.S. to adequately occupy Iraq would require at least half a million troops or more along with a U.S. draft to supply those troops. All of that is true even if the international repercussions of an attempt by the U.S. to actually gain and keep control of Iraq were ignored.

Those conditions are impossible to meet. Knowing that, the Bush administration has not even tried. The only question is when the U.S. troops will leave Iraq.