Prisoner exchanges

Things are no less confusing in Iraq today than they have been over the last six years.

A week ago, Mr. Askari said in an interview that Asa’ib al-Haq was willing to “join the political process and to abandon their armed activities,” but that the group could not do so unless its leader, Qais al-Khazali, was released.

Mr. Askari said the release of the British hostages had been part of the negotiations.

“This is a very sensitive topic because you know the position that the Iraqi government, the U.S. and British governments, and all the governments do not accept the idea of exchanging hostages for prisoners,” he said. “So we put it in another format, and we told them that if they want to participate in the political process they cannot do so while they are holding hostages. And we mentioned to the American side that they cannot join in the political process and release their hostages while their leaders are behind bars or imprisoned.”

A senior member of Mr. Sadr’s movement, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity, sketched out how the exchange was expected to take place: a British hostage would be freed within two days of Mr. Khazali’s release, he said, adding that that there might also be an agreement to swap one detained member of Asa’ib al-Haq member for each kidnapped Briton.

Previous efforts to get all parties to agree to a deal failed, and American officials said Asa’ib al-Haq had broken an earlier cease-fire.

The Khazali brothers were captured by the Americans in Basra on March 20, 2007. Qais al-Khazali was accused of being one of the two masterminds of the Karbala killings of the five American soldiers two months earlier.

"A change in political tenor" in Iraq

A new security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq has been stalled for several weeks now, and a real danger existed that U.S. soldiers would still be in the country -- but confined to their bases -- when the U.N. mandate expired at the end of the year.

But with an Obama victory, things may get unstalled quickly.

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.

“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

Mr. Obama has said that he favors a 16-month schedule for withdrawing combat brigades, a timetable about twice as fast as that provided for in the draft American and Iraqi accord.

Many Shiite politicians had been under intense pressure from Iranian leaders not to sign a security agreement. Iran, which has close ties to Shiite politicians, has feared the agreement would lay the groundwork for a permanent American troop presence in Iraq that would threaten Iran.

But now, the Iraqis appear to be feeling less pressure from Iran, perhaps because the Iranians are less worried that an Obama government will try to force a regime change in their country.

In recent weeks Mr. Ameri, who spent years in Iran and leads the Badr Corps, a onetime paramilitary arm of the Supreme Council, was one of several senior party members who appeared to be reflecting Iran’s concerns with a reluctance to endorse the pact.

Of course, given the volatile and fractious state of Iraqi politics, the security agreement could still be delayed. But with Iraqis believing that Mr. Obama, as president, would move faster to withdraw American troops, Iraqi and American officials said obstacles to a security agreement appeared to be fading.

Climbing out of a deep ditch.

Shifty

Flip flops. Always popular among Republican flim flam sellers.

I think we can be pretty certain that the latest campaign narrative about Obama "shifting his position on Iraq" is coming from the McCain campaign. Good job by Axelrod shooting it down on CNN.

Surgitude

Bobo:

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Reality:

The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops President Bush launched in January 2007 as an 18-month effort to curtail violence and build Iraqi democracy, government investigators said yesterday.

While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet.

The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets.

Bush's strategy of January 2007, the GAO said, "defined the original goals and objectives that the Administration believed were achievable by the end of this phase in July 2008." Not meeting many of them changed circumstances on the ground and the pending withdrawal of the last of the additional U.S. forces mean that strategy is now outdated, the report said. The GAO recommends that the State and Defense departments work together to fashion a new approach.

More reality:

BAGHDAD, June 24 -- Two U.S. soldiers and two American civilians working for the U.S. government were killed in an explosion Tuesday morning in Sadr City, a vast Shiite slum where security had improved dramatically in recent weeks, U.S. officials said.

The blast occurred at about 9:20 a.m. inside a government building.

Still more:

BAGHDAD — A security guard for an Iraqi politician grabbed his Kalashnikov automatic rifle and opened fire on at least a half-dozen American soldiers, killing two of them, during a meeting with Iraqi officials in a village southeast of Baghdad on Monday, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

The number of casualties was in dispute. The American military command in Baghdad said that two American soldiers had been killed and that three others and an interpreter had been wounded. The Interior Ministry official said that in addition to the two soldiers who had been killed, at least six other soldiers had been wounded. The gunman was killed in the firefight.

According to the Interior Ministry official, the attack took place as American soldiers were attending the opening of a park in Madaen, a village along the Tigris River about 20 miles from Baghdad. Madaen was the scene of horrific sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite gangs in the years after the American invasion in 2003. The official described the attacker as a security guard for a member of the provincial council.

Missionless accomplished.

"50 soccer games"

McCain is surely right about one thing, even though he retracted it later, he will lose if more progress isn't made in Iraq.

Mr. McCain said he believed opinion was shifting to his point of view, referring to a recent USA Today poll that, he said, showed that “now the majority of Americans believe the surge is succeeding.”

The USA Today/Gallup poll he was apparently referring to, however, found that not a majority, but 43 percent of Americans believed the troop increase was “making the situation there better,” an increase from 22 percent last July.

The poll, conducted Feb. 8 to 10, also underscored just how unpopular the war continues to be, with 60 percent saying it was a mistake.

Yet the new dynamic in Iraq — with American casualties plummeting and violence in Baghdad falling to 2005 levels — has altered the political landscape for Mr. McCain since last summer, when American troop deaths spiked and his candidacy ran aground.

That's not a true correlation. McCain's campaign didn't stall because of Iraq. Republicans don't like him, that's why he stalled. He just got extremely likely that Romney never could get traction, Giuliani ran a really bad campaign, Huckabee never had the resources, and Thompson...well...enough said about him.

Anyway, McCain know defines "victory" as "it's generally quiet."

Mr. McCain has continued to paint a far rosier picture than the Democratic candidates, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, about military progress in Iraq, as well as political gains. He said Monday that his close friend and supporter Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, had just returned from Iraq, where he flew over Baghdad and counted “50 soccer games going on.”

“It’s generally quiet,” Mr. McCain said, “recognizing there will be suicide bombers for the foreseeable future, just as the Israelis continue to encounter suicide bombers because they’re the most difficult thing to counter in warfare.”

It's interesting, we've really stopped talking about "Iraq," but rather focus almost exclusively on "Baghdad." Don't know much about geography, but I believe it's a fairly large failed state. So let's see, we should be about ready to reduce troop levels soon, right?

Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, head of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that by July the troop total was likely to be 140,000. There were 132,000 troops there when President Bush approved orders to send five more Army brigades to Iraq to improve security and avert civil war.

General Ham also announced that the Pentagon believed that United States force levels in Afghanistan would be at 32,000 in late summer, up from about 28,000 now. The current total is the highest since the war began in October 2001, and 3,200 more marines are scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan this spring.

It had been widely expected that some support troops sent to Iraq with the five extra brigades would need to remain, even after July. But until now it was not clear what the number would be.

General Ham stressed that his projected number of 140,000 was subject to change depending on security conditions, but it was the first time the Pentagon had publicly estimated the total.

Asked if the total would be below 132,000 by the time President Bush leaves office next January, General Ham said, “It would be premature to say that.” Among the support forces needed beyond July, General Ham said, are military police officers, logistics troops, aviation forces and a headquarters staff to command combat forces in an area south of Baghdad. The headquarters of the Third Infantry Division was installed there as part of President Bush’s increase in forces in April. It will be replaced this summer by an unspecified unit, General Ham said.

But Huckleberry Graham saw some soccer games. From a helicopter. What gives?

BAGHDAD — An explosion aboard a crowded bus traveling to the Syrian border from Mosul killed at least nine passengers on Tuesday morning, according to Iraqi officials.

There was confusion about the source of the attack. Military officials said a passenger detonated a suicide vest aboard the bus. Employees at the bus company where the driver worked attributed the explosion to a roadside bomb.

The attack took place about 500 yards from an Iraqi Army checkpoint in the town of Tmerat, 50 miles west of Mosul, where scores of recruits routinely gather at an Iraqi Army base, according to a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The recruits were probably the target and the bomb may have exploded prematurely, he said. Brig. Khalid Abdulsatar confirmed that nine had been killed and eight injured.

United States military pressure coupled with a change of allegiances by Sunni insurgents and a cease-fire by Shiite militias in southern and central Iraq has pushed remaining insurgents north to Mosul, US and Iraqi officials say. The city of two million has been the scene of fierce fighting in recent months and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki recently promised a “decisive battle” with insurgents there after 45 civilians were killed a month ago when a building was blown up in a Mosul neighborhood.

In northern Iraq, fighting continued for a fifth day as Turkish forces attacked P.K.K. rebel bases, while the Iraqi cabinet in Baghdad condemned the incursion and, in a statement, demanded its immediate halt.

So, now U.S. troops are in the midst of a civil war and an expanding regional conflict.

Turkey's current military offensive inside northern Iraq has touched off a crisis - one to which several other players in the region have contributed.

Although the ultimate responsibility for ending this crisis falls on Turkey, all of the others, including the United States, must do their part to prevent a larger regional conflagration.

Turkey's ostensible reason for sending 10,000 troops into the mountainous north of Iraq is to punish the separatist guerrilla group known as the PKK for its terrorist operations and attacks on Turkish soldiers inside Turkey.

However, the Kurdish Regional Government in the north of Iraq has charged that Turkey has an ulterior motive: to destabilize that relatively peaceful and prosperous area.

Ah, the sound of silence.

Suicide bombers?

This is the first I've seen of this.

Meanwhile...

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq-- Three separate but related wars are being waged in this country now, and the third one, against Shiite extremists, is the most worrisome, according to the commander and senior staff of the U.S. Army division patrolling Baghdad.

The first, against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that U.S. officials believe is foreign-led, is going well despite occasional spikes in violence, such as Friday's dual bombings of Baghdad marketplaces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is "frustrated" but "not defeated," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview last week.

The second fight, against the domestic Sunni insurgency, has become dormant in many places in the past year, as about 80,000 armed men, many of them former insurgents, switched sides and came onto the U.S. payroll with groups that officers here call "Concerned Local Citizens."

The third conflict, and perhaps the most vexing for U.S. commanders, is with Shiite extremist militias. More than two-thirds of U.S. casualties are caused by roadside bombs, particularly by high-tech anti-armor devices, planted by those groups.

Overall, senior U.S. officers find the state of the wars unexpectedly good, and are allowing themselves to begin speaking optimistically. "A year ago, I didn't see any way it was going to work out to our advantage," said Col. James Rainey, the 4th Infantry Division's director of operations, who is on his third tour of duty in Iraq. The difference now, he said, is "remarkable."

We've heard that song before, and tactics and pressure points have changed in response.

Foreclosures?

I was thinking about this last night.

WITHDRAWAL....Over at TPM, William Hartung reviews the bidding and concludes that "this week's Democratic presidential debate underscored the fact that none of the party's frontrunners supports a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq any time soon." He recommends reading the timeline put together by the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs to get a good sense of just where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama stand on the subject.

Bottom line: although Obama has been consistent in opposing the invasion, he and Hillary have taken pretty similar positions on withdrawal since then. I'd say that's about right, and over the past few months what few disagreements they had have been sanded down even more. I have a very hard time really seeing any daylight between them at this point.

No one is really talking about this, but what will it do to the new president's "timetable for withdrawal," when he or she is reminded that we're just now putting the finishing touches on the Popeye's franchises on the permanent military bases and that we've finally fixed the annoying plumbing problem in the largest embassy every built?

Just sayin'.

Crappuccino

Roy.

We've reached the point with this war where what ordinary people would regard with horror and revulsion is perceived by its fans as great news. Of course, as ever, they're not nuts, we're nuts. "If peace arrives even in Baghdad," sighs Totten, "...somebody, somewhere, will complain that Iraq has been taken over by the imperial powers of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Starbucks." I say, send Starbucks now: their product tastes like foul water, too, but at least it's been boiled.

And see Kia, in comments.

The Basra model

Gates admits the serious people who led us into Iraq never foresaw the level of Sunni Shiite violence there. What are they going to do when the violence further fractures into Shiite Shiite violence?

As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.

Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.

After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003, British forces took control of the region, and the cosmopolitan port city of Basra thrived with trade, arts and universities. As recently as February, Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq "where things are going pretty well."

But "it's hard now to paint Basra as a success story," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad with long experience in the south. Instead, it has become a different model, one that U.S. officials with experience in the region are concerned will be replicated throughout the Iraqi Shiite homeland from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. A recent series of war games commissioned by the Pentagon also warned of civil war among Shiites after a reduction in U.S. forces.

For the past four years, the administration's narrative of the Iraq war has centered on al-Qaeda, Iran and the sectarian violence they have promoted. But in the homogenous south -- where there are virtually no U.S. troops or al-Qaeda fighters, few Sunnis, and by most accounts limited influence by Iran -- Shiite militias fight one another as well as British troops. A British strategy launched last fall to reclaim Basra neighborhoods from violent actors -- similar to the current U.S. strategy in Baghdad -- brought no lasting success.

I'm sure General Petraeus will figure something out.

Meanwhile, up north.

BAGHDAD, Aug 6 — Five ministers suspended their participation in meetings of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s cabinet on Monday, sending a warning signal that they may pull out of his increasingly isolated government if their demands are not met.

The five are members of the secular Iraqiya coalition led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a moderate group whose lawmakers are drawn from across sectarian lines. Their move, coupled with the largest Sunni Arab bloc’s decision to withdraw its six ministers last week, struck yet another blow to Mr. Maliki’s faltering efforts to present his religious Shiite-led coalition as a “national unity” government.

In the northern city of Tal Afar, hailed as a success story in March 2006 by President Bush, a suicide truck bomber drove into a densely populated Shiite neighborhood on Monday morning, killing at least 28 people, including many women and children. Many of the children were playing hopscotch and marbles in the street, witnesses said in telephone interviews, and officials feared that the death toll could climb.

Another Friedman Unit should probably do it.