IRAQ IN CHAOS

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Car bomb kills president of Iraqi Council

A suicide bombing killed the head of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council as his car waited at a checkpoint near coalition headquarters today, a major setback to American efforts to stabilize Iraq just six weeks before the handover of sovereignty.

And

Saleem, a Shiite Muslim in his 60s, held the rotating presidency of the 25-member Governing Council for May. He was the second council member slain since their appointment last July; Aquila al-Hashimi was mortally wounded by gunmen in September.

Insurgents also have targeted police and army recruitment centers and other Iraqis perceived as owing their positions to the Americans.

The U.S. military said the car bombing was a suicide attack and Kimmitt said it had the "classic hallmarks" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant with links to al-Qaida.

However, a previously unknown group, the Arab Resistance Movement, claimed responsibility, saying in a Web site posting that two of its fighters carried out the attack on "the traitor and mercenary" Saleem.

Also, on the WMD front:

A roadside bomb containing deadly sarin nerve agent also exploded "a couple of days ago" near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said today, adding two explosives experts were treated for "minor exposure."

But don't get your hopes up, hawks and warmongers, because:

Two former U.N. weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and David Kay, said the shell was likely scavenged from a dump and did not signify Iraq had stockpiles of such weapons.

Click here for the rest.

And from the New York Times courtesy of Eschaton:

Military Police Got Instructions at Iraqi Prison

Several military police officers and their commanders at Abu Ghraib have said that military intelligence officers directed them to "set the conditions" to enhance the questioning. When General Taguba asked what safeguards existed to ensure that guards "understand the instructions or limits of instructions, or whether the instructions were legal," Colonel Pappas acknowledged that there were no assurances.

"There would be no way for us to actually monitor whether that happened," Colonel Pappas told General Taguba. "We had no formal system in place to do that."

Colonel Pappas continued, "To my knowledge, instructions given to the M.P.'s, other than what I have mentioned, such as shackling, making detainees strip down or other measures used on detainees before interrogations, are not typically made unless there is some good reason."

Individual interrogation plans were drafted for each detainee, and were approved by Colonel Pappas or his deputy, he said. In every case, he said, the plans followed the guidance in the rules of interrogation that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top ground commander in Iraq, approved on Oct. 12.

In his report, General Taguba concluded that Colonel Pappas was "either directly or indirectly responsible" for the actions of those who mistreated and humiliated Iraqi prisoners.

Click here for the rest.

So, just to sum things up a bit, in March of 2003, the United States illegally invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The "major combat operations" went well, routing the Iraqi army as expected, with few American casualties. That's when things started going to hell. Looting and violent crime became widespread for a time. The weapons of mass destruction that supposedly justified the unprovoked American attack turned out to not exist. Not long after the period of looting, the Iraqi insurgency became organized, and US deaths began to rise--meanwhile, the Bush administration denied, for a time, that there was an insurgency. Around this time it became apparent that a quick transition to democracy in Iraq was not going to be happening in the few short months that had been promised. Bush's approval rating started to fall. American approval of the occupation began to fall, but quite a large portion of the country still supports both Bush and the war.

Then the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. Then it became clear that this was not an isolated incident--prisoners were being tortured in other locations around Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo. Now it is starting to look like these abuses were ordered by commanding officers; it remains to be seen just how far up the chain of command this goes.

Iraq is in chaos. And for some reason that I simply do not comprehend, the occupation continues. It's time to cut and run. It's time to bring the boys back home.

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