AN IMPERIAL BLIND SPOT:

AN IMPERIAL BLIND SPOT:
HOW THE EPICENTER'S MONEY IS KILLING US TROOPS:
A NEW LOOK AT THE IRAQI INSURGENCY,
AND A GLIMPSE INTO ANTHONY CORDESMAN'S PROPOSED BOOK

D R A F T

In memory: Kenneth Lundgren



JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: ONE INCUBATOR OF THE IRAQ INVASION

On February 5, 2001, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) issued a press release, proudly announcing President Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz, Dean of JHU's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), as deputy secretary of defense. William R. Brody, JHU's President, expressed his dismay at losing Mr. Wolfowitz. But a warm thought comforted him: The country, he said, "is getting a very smart, very focused, clear-thinking leader." Paul Wolfowitz, he averred, "will serve the nation well."

President Brody should tell that to the orphans, widows, the maimed, here and in Iraq. His institution, the Johns Hopkins University, after all, bears a part of the responsibility for their tragedy. For years it had "dean-ed" one of the main champions of the Iraqi invasion. Mr. Brody should explain how "very smart" Mr. Wolfowitz was to the over twenty million Iraqis who will likely live in misery and bloody civil wars for decades to come.

Most importantly, President Brody should muster the courage to relay his confidence in the man to a little Iraqi girl, kneeling besides her father's body, a guard at a school, who fell before his little daughter's eyes; and she was weeping; God was she weeping; to no end; she was pulling her little defenseless body together, in defense against the bloody world that President Brody brought to her when he "dean-ed" the "very smart" Paul Wolfowitz. An AP photographer caught her through his lens, in late July, perhaps for the benefit of the JHU President.

Does the Johns Hopkins President have a little girl? Is he nonetheless able to empathize? Can he see the tragedy he dispatched onto Iraq?

You see, a little girl lost her dad. Can the ambitious and self-absorbed faculty at JHU, and the little mandarins at SAIS, appreciate this? Can the rich JHU President and his little mandarins appreciate the fact that the little girl lost her protector; that she lost his smiles and affection towards her; that she lost the meager income a guard makes, while Mr. Brody, his faculty, and Mr. Wolfowitz...they are swimming in paychecks and bonuses. And I bet they callously smile and laugh at times, so geographically remote they are from the tragedy the very focused man has visited on the little girl.


Paul Wolfowitz wasn't alone in fostering the idea of invading Iraq, though he seemed to be the "brain" behind it. Much more important and cruel men, "very smart" and "very focused," figured highly in that scheme: The Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, to mention only two.

But one hardly expects a dean at a university to want to draw blood--or to be so mediocre. But blood he drew, and mediocrity he took to a higher plane, along with his nefarious team in the Bush Administration.

Those who criticize the Iraq war as unnecessary (including Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury's fame) are missing the point. The Iraq war: It was an act of mediocrity and naked sadism.

And Dean Wolfowitz stood at the heart of this sadism. The sad truth is that no Arab Uncle Toms in diplomatic and government circles, those who one would expect the dean to meet, will ever dare tell Mr. Wolfowitz and his superiors that they were a bunch of sadists. (I use the past tense to allow for the possibility that even sadists have room in their self-righteous and sick hearts for introspection, guilt, and regret.)

Arab and Arab-American Uncle Toms in their hearts of hearts know that Mr. Wolfowitz's superiors hate Muslims, in particular the Arab ones. Such is their "Christian" constituency. Not to mention those with Likud sympathies. The only Arabs or Muslims they like are the ones who can enrich them in the Persian Gulf, and the self-hating Arab Uncle Toms who tell them what they want to hear. These Uncle Toms are desperate for tenure, job security, television appearances, an erection, and various petty advantages.

ANTHONY CORDESMAN AND HIS PROPOSED BOOK

Located in the same town as JHU's SAIS, probably in the same Northwestern quadrant of the city, is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). What is it? Putting on my college student hat, I would say it's one of those outfits that is intimately connected to the foreign policy community, yet another place where this community compartmentalizes away some of its brain.

Vaguely, I remember Georgetown University removing its name from that outfit, perhaps for concern that it would tarnish its international image. CSIS could turn into a SAIS, couldn't it; and Georgetown wasn't about to see a Paul Wolfowitz use it to plan the invasion of a much weaker country, and orphan little girls. (Georgetown instead had once been home to a Secretary of State under President Clinton, who thought the starving of 500,000 Iraqi children was a price worth paying to squeeze out Saddam Hussein. Talking about racism! Thankfully, she was not of such mediocrity as to push for invasion on the advise of charlatans, and disturb the precarious balance of power in that neighborhood.)

Isn't academia a despicable place? What a ugly institution it is that Johns Hopkins University, where not a single progressive academician or little budding imperial mandarin raised her voice in protest!

Come Anthony Cordesman. Along with Patrick Baetjer, Mr. Cordesman of SCIRI is taking a stab at the insurgency in Iraq; he is trying to understand it, and perhaps be of help to the men and women in uniform sent there by a mediocre leadership. But is his stab of any help?

Recently, Mr. Cordesman and Mr. Baetjer posted a draft of their book on the internet and solicited comments and additional data. Out of respect for Mr. Cordesman, SPC will take a stab at the subject. The book: Iraq's Evolving Insurgency. I will be referring to Mr. Cordesman as the author, for convenience sake, with apologies to Mr. Baetjer.


MR. CORDESMAN HAS HAD IT!

The reader is startled that Mr. Cordesman would come out and say it--lay the blame! Caveats aside, Mr. Cordesman does it:


It is...clear that too much credence
was given to ideologues and true
believers in the ease with which such
a war could be fought and in effective
nation-building. These included neo-
conservatives in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, the Office of
the Vice-President, and some officials
in the National Security Council, as
well as several highly politicized
"think tanks"
P. 3.

I nearly cried.

Mr. Cordesman dives into an extensive list of failures on the part of the military and the political leadership. I disagree with him over some of his assumptions--e.g., that better planning for stability operations and nation building would've avoided the insurgency.

I think the US alliance with con-artists, the prominence of pro-Likud neo-conservatives and pro-Likud self-hating Arab Uncle Toms, the use of Israeli advisors, and the coordination with Iranian-trained military groups, all doomed the invasion from the outset. But, as some of my impulsive clients at times think to themselves, as things stand following their impulsive acts: "It's neither here nor there." Water over the damn.

Then again, Mr. Cordesman throws something else at me--at me, personally:

The fact remains...that every failure
listed was ultimately a failure at the
highest levels of US policy and the
direct responsibility of the President,
Vice President, Secretary of Defense,
National Security Advisor, Chairman of
Joint chiefs, and service chiefs.

P. 6.

I fall off my chair in a greasy spoon that hides in a public building, fried chicken sprinkle to the floor, napkins, a smelly hot dog (when in trial defense attorneys eat anything), and my hot tea. This happens on a steamy summer day when the A/C had broken down, and sweat mixes with grease to make my suit unbearable. I'm so embarrassed. Public defenders, and various kinds of gangsters (fancy personal injury lawyers, fancier insurance lawyers, prosecutors, jurors, detectives, police officers, street criminals and their families) all take pity.


THE INVASION COULD HAVE WORKED--NOT.

I go on reading. Once again, Mr. Cordesman proceeds from the precept that the invasion and occupation could have worked: "The US failed to treat Iraqis as partners in the counterinsurgency effort for nearly a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and did not attempt to seriously train and equip Iraqi forces for proactive security and counterinsurgency missions until April 2004...." (P. 10)

This precept is false and necessarily leads to unhelpful conclusions, to illusions, and to wishful thinking--all dear to the Bush Administration's people in their non-ending and nauseating spin.

That the training of Iraqi troops to quell the insurgency would have obtained (and would obtain) stability and success for the invasion is a bad take on what has and is taking place in Iraq. What the US is currently doing--the training of Iraqi troops to quell the insurgency--is the prescription for a more violent civil war. The US is training a Shiite and Kurdish militia, donning government uniforms, not a national army. The sad truth:" These better-trained soldiers one day likely will turn their guns on their trainers--U.S. troops. Endless mediocrity.

By his own admission, the police commander of the predominately-Shiite city of Basra commented in late May, 2005, that around 13,000 of his men respond to various militia and preoccupy themselves with settling scores with former Baathists. (This issue has been revived in early August 2005 on the pages of The New York Times.) Aren't a good number of these troops the United States is training nothing more than a version of the Iranian-trained members of the Badr Brigade in government uniforms? And in a state of civil war, as is currently the case in Iraq, in the presence of seas of money (see below--the section on theory), wouldn't these troops split a la Lebanese army during that country's civil wars? Wouldn't they take with them all those better weapons and use, Shiites against Sunnis, Kurds against Sunnis, Shiites against Americans? And, very possibly, Sunnis and Shiites against Kurds and Americans--as a civil war is hardly one war, but a series of wars, with ever shifting alliances.

In Lebanon, the infusion of money by the Palestine Liberation Organization and one distant Arab country, coupled with the severe strain sectarian massacres placed on the allegiance of the troops, led to the division of the army along sectarian lines and for a more violent civil war. The same conditions, I submit, are present in today's Iraq . What makes this administration think it is the only one with money?

SPC predicted in one of its earliest issues that Arab Sunni army officers would seek to ignite a civil war as a way of thwarting the invasion. They were late in starting things, but they seem to have caught up. They and the new Islamist Baath (all the Islamist groups which sprouted to protect the Arab Sunnis from the US-Iran-Likud alliance--from their point of view and for all practical purposes) have now been on that course for quite a while.

What's delaying an outright civil war (a la Lebanon, circa 1975-1982) is that the Shiites are not reacting in a manner that is sufficient to have a speedy displacement of population take place. For one, the young Shiite leader, Muqtadha as-Sadr, has applied some breaks on population transfers. A large number of Muqtadha's Shiite constituency lives in the Baghdad area; I suspect therefore that his compromise position towards the Arab Sunnis is meant in part to lessen the possibility of such transfers.

To train the new troops is to make the civil war much more violent. By definition, the ones who have an incentive in quelling an Arab Sunni insurgency are the Shiite sympathizers of SCIRI's Badr Brigade and Dawa, and most of the Kurds. This would be civil war and not the quelling of an insurgency. Very few Sunnis would be willing to direct their guns at their brethren, especially when the Shiites retaliate by mowing down Sunnis. They've already started, donning government uniforms, but have not reached the point of suicide bombings of their own.

The civil war is ablaze in the center of the country and in the north, which is portrayed here to be living in a state of relative stability. It hardly is. In mid-June of this year, a terrifically gruesome suicide bombing took place in Kirkuk, on the same day as the swearing-in of Masoud Barazani as President of Iraqi Kurdistan. Over one hundred died or were wounded. And it's no secret that the Kurdish militia and the Kurdish intelligence agency, Asayesh, backed by the US military, have been abducting hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk and locking them up in prisons in northern Iraq. Not to mention their torture; not to mention the missing.

And to think that the Bush Administration and the military really intend on staying in Iraq! They can't leave all that oil, come what may, for Iraq is one of the very few places where the world (i.e., the US and China) can expect oil production to increase significantly, once violence ceases, if ever. Though capacity forecasts conflict, China's continued expansion, activated by the American Federal Reserve's pumping of money, and the Bush administration's fiscal irresponsibility, should keep demand high (See below)--especially once China's middle class begins to drive large Urban Assault Vehicles, and the American middle class heats and cools the millions of new homes and mc-mansions it built with the Federal Reserve (and China's) cheap money. (China has bought substantial amounts of the ten-year Fed notes at the relatively low rate of about 4%, which as financed the cheap mortgages.)


COUNTER-INSURGENCY REVISITED

Mr. Cordesman then proceeds to pick at the lateness and methods of "counter-insurgency warfare." Here again I found myself pondering at the approach--that, had counter-insurgency begun earlier, and had it not made mistakes, all would have been so much better.

At the risk of repeating myself a thousand times: The very idea of invading Iraq was the mistake; it disturbed a regional balance of power that was precarious at best. It offered the United States and a puppet regime in Iraq as the balancing entities of Iranian power. It couldn't work; if anything, it would play in favor of Iran and Sunni Islamic fundamentalism:

(1) Because Baathist Iraq, even in its stale ideology of Arab nationalism, still provided an alternative to Sunni Islamic fundamentalism, and would've done even better but for the US-motivated sanctions against it. Had Baathist Iraq been still around, the sponsor-du-jour of unconventional warfare could not hope to monopolize the Arab Sunni street, as is the case now.
Now it can; now it has; now it does.

(2) The United States, offering itself as the country to balance Iranian power, in the age of the perfection of mass mobilization and unconventional warfare, is the same country that revolts the masses in the Arab world (and Islamic world) for its sponsorship of Israeli settlements and expansion, for its Arab-hating pro-Likud bias (especially the Bush Administration and its so-called neo-conservatives), and for breaking up a Sunni-governed country, starving it, and smashing it to pieces. The United States therefore could not mobilize a single Abu Abed (to use a Lebanese folkloric mover of Beirut Sunni masses in Nasser’s days); by smashing a more-or-less Sunni power, the United States has further strengthened the position of the Islamist power in the neighborhood. And, now that this Islamist power has seen what transpired in the American invasion of Iraq, it probably has arranged its house in such a way as to wage a massive unconventional war against oil installations should the US ever muster the number of troops needed to wage a conventional war--an unlikely proposition. Iran rules the roost, so to speak, and the Bush Administration has done it the favor.

All the Arab Sunni masses needed was a sponsor-du-jour to come to Iraq's aid. And there's always one--by definition. Does the United States or the American military really believe they can avoid Israel's miserable performance with its Palestinian nationals? That country's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been an outstanding disaster (as occupations are) for both Palestinians and Israelis. Not to mention that the grinding length of that occupation has entrenched Islamists in Palestine, and America's mess should entrench the same people in Iraq. These Islamists are the designers of a resistance movement that is by far more lethal and effective than anything that preceded it. Any reluctance on the part of the Israelis to return to pre-1967 borders will give the Islamists rich issues to use to mobilize the Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs. (not the governments; these don't care.) And there'll always be a sponsor(-du-jour.)


COUNTER-INSURGENCY OR NOT, THE OCCUPATION COULDN'T WORK

In other words, the invasion, a hugely mediocre and hateful idea, couldn't work. For it to have worked, Iran and Israel would have had to be re-made, a mission impossible. Put differently, the invasion supplanted what should have been done:

1) Defuse fast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by sponsoring a Palestinian state on all of pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza, and by paying reparations. Anything short of that provides (and would provide) fodder for the sponsor-du-jour.

For the Islamists had succeeded at linking the US occupation of Iraq with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza–a phenomenon which SPC highlighted a while ago. And that inflamed spirits beyond the level that would obtain by the Iraqi invasion in-and-of-itself. Can't anyone see that the very fact that Arab fighters flock to Iraq to blow themselves up is evidence of the hyper-mobilized state of the Arab Sunni masses? Does anyone have any doubt that Abu-Musaab al-Zarqawi is perceived as a pan-Sunni-Islamic hero in the Arab world and beyond? Hello! The Arab press and its columnists don't mirror the Arab street. They can condemn terror and horror till the cows come home. It won't matter a single bit. Most--no, all--are financed by governments; and many now are on the US payroll. The Arab street, which hardly ever paid attention to them, still doesn't; it has its own means of communication; it culls, cuts, and pastes of what it sees and what it hears, and keeps itself hyper-mobilized.

Are the Iraqi Arab Sunnis a minority?

Israel and the Bush people see the Arab world though the lens of sects and minorities. Accordingly, they repeat the mantra that the Sunnis in Iraq are a minority. But Iraq is not an entity that exists in a continent away from Asia and the Arab world. Where Iraq sits, with its porous borders, the country stands wide open to its Arab Sunni surrounding. Thus viewed, the Sunnis are closer to being a majority, de facto. And no minority can for too long a time repress a majority; it can only con it--never repress it for an extended period of time, walls or no walls. Not to mention that the US should not under-estimate the ability of Iraqi nationalism to evolve, once again, in a manner that joins Sunnis and Shiite together. (The Kurds are a more difficult case. If anything, their new arrogance will probably provide the cause celebre for the mending of fences between Sunnis and Shiites. SPC is not unsympathetic towards the Kurds; but let's be real. Kuwait may offer another cause around which Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites will mobilize.)

(The porousness of the borders, I suspect, is helped along by the regional governments closing their eyes; Jordan and Saudi Arabia can't afford a Shiite-dominated regime in Iraq and their people are in a state of extreme hyper-mobilization about what they see as the US destruction and dismantlement of Iraq; Syria and Iran aim to fail what they see as the US-Israel project for Iraq and the Middle East, in which Israel would be the center, and the Arab world the periphery. Instead, Iran aims to be the center.)

But a new Iraqi nationalism (which may very well rebuild the balance of power in the region) will hardly be the product of the con-artists who rode American tanks into Iraq, later dancing on top of the coffins of American young men and women, to oversee state contracts and fatten their faces, and the faces of their friends in Washington. If I were to guess, the new Iraqi nationalism will sprout out of such places as Sadr City, Kirkuk, and Tal Afar.

Thus, Mr. Cordesman's very focus on "counter-insurgency" and its timing, misses the point. Counter-insurgency in Iraq is civil war in camouflage clothing. Resistance movements welcome repression ("counter-insurgency"); it is, after all, their life and blood. Isn't it?


MASSES, MASSES...SO HYPER-MOBILIZED

2) Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen--all live on the edge of severe poverty, and therefore their masses are open to mobilization. Gulf money from oil is not reaching these countries in any manner that is significant to make a dent in the politicization and mobilization of their population. Nor is any of them engaged in serious effort to limit the exponential growth of their population. (That applies to the Gulf countries as well, though these have the money--for now.)

If anything, the Yemeni government's pro-Iraqi stand in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had lost it a dear source of income. Until then, Yemenis could work in Saudi Arabia without needing a Saudi sponsor who would share in their income. They sent home over $2 billion in remittances. After the war, the Yemenis were sent home, never to return in the numbers they once had. The current Yemeni government has tried to regain some favor with the Saudi government, even dropping claims of sovereignty over significant pieces of land on the border they share with the Saudis.

But the Saudis have proven reluctant to welcome back the Yemeni diaspora. After all, Osama bin Laden is a popular figure in Yemen. The Saudis fear that the Yemeni workers could have within them bin Laden sympathizers. Still, a system should be found for oil-rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to streamline Arab workers into their territory and pay them relatively higher wages that is paid for the multitude of foreign workers. It would serve GCC interests to have stability next door, and these Yemenis should prove helpful should Iran decide to ignite the fires of ethnic-religious nationalism in the region. (Never forget that, if cornered, Iran will quit its current relative civility towards the Gulf governments, and ignite ethnic-religious nationalism. For instance, one third of Kuwait's population is Shiite. Can the Kuwaiti government, with Iran so close, be able to control the rebellion of their already unhappy Shiites, especially if the Arab Sunnis and the Shiites ban together in Iraq ?)

In short, the very invasion of Iraq disturbed the regional balance of power. The illusion that the United States could supplant Arab Iraq and balance Iranian power was just that--an illusion.


SO MANY MISTAKES

There is something to Mr. Cordesman's list of mistakes--the one, for example, where he addresses the failure of the US to provide jobs or pension for career army officers, or co-opt them into the nation-building effort. (P. 10) Still, I maintain that the very idea of invading was where mediocrity lied, and everything after...just couldn't work. The invasion and the early implementation of the occupation were the result of a hodge-podge coalition of forces, none of them sympathetic to Arabs, all viciously hostile to Muslims and Arabs, or cynical at best. These people's anti-Arab racism (anti-Semitism, really) so limited them intellectually that they were bound to screw up. The Iraq project therefore was doomed to fail, both as an invasion (the Iraqi troops went home with their weapons and got ready for the resistance war to come) and as an occupation (if the US tilts towards the Sunnis the Shiites would draw closer to Iran.)

The invasion itself was made possible by the September 11 anger of the American public. The coalition which took us there seemed to include:

(1) Pentagon strategists who thought control of Iraqi oil would give the US leverage over China's foreign policy.

(2) The President himself, who seemed to have a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein. Hussein's Mukhabarat (state intelligence) was alleged to have ordered the assassination of the President's father while visiting Kuwait. The President's father on television was thrilled at the capture of Saddam Hussein; our President seemed to be so happy at the killing of Hussein's sons. This sadism against people who, in the end, are weaker than the US, could not have escaped the Arab Sunni masses. (Bill Clinton, in contrast, had ordered the bombing of the Mukhabarat (intelligence) building in Baghdad and the Hussein regime had behaved afterwards.)

(3) The President's political advisors who could use a "victory" in his re-election campaign. The President's circle of neo-conservatives had led him to believe that the war will end in an easy rout. Hence his victorious landing on an aircraft carrier–another arrogant and sadistic sight that did not escape the Arab and Sunni masses.

(5) The good-for-Israel pro-Likud crowd, including neo-conservatives, and liberal and conservative Arab-haters at national newspapers and in various "think tanks."

(6) Iraqi con-artists and Arab Uncle Toms, treated special by the neo-conservatives at the Pentagon. These and the "very focused" neo-cons (unbelievably) persuaded an American administration that the invasion and its aftermath would be a piece of cake.

(7) Last but not least, the heartland's crusaders, who wanted to exact revenge for September 11. Our President and Vice-President egged them on; they needed to mobilize them in order to lure them into a war for oil. Accordingly, they intentionally and falsely linked Saddam Hussein to the September 11 horror.

Still, keeping the Sunni troops and their officer corps on the payroll would not have been a bad idea. For not keeping them on the payroll has meant that the entire Sunni state had every incentive to re-organize itself, this time as a mostly Islamist one. It seemed clear that the Sunni army officer corp had learned not to fight the US conventionally, based on their encounter in Desert Storm. The state therefore never disintegrated; it remained there, a secret state, armed. Not paying the dismissed Sunni troops meant they would flock to that secret state, which skeleton was there as a contingency plan in case of invasion.


A NEW AND SECRET STATE IN IRAQ?

As things stand, the evidence seems to indicate that this state has all but merged with al Qaeda--or at least is coordinating closely with it--and is using the international terror network of this organization to achieve policy objectives inside Iraq. Bombing the subway in Madrid and then again in London has to be seen as a logical tactic to get Spain and the United Kingdom (UK) out of Iraq, and isolate the United States. Both the Baath and al Qaeda would logically share in that stratagem, but the Baath has never been known to have had an international terrorist network, one that includes non-Arab speaking Pakistanis. Since Iraq is their country, not al Qaeda's, it would stand to reason that the Islamic Baath is leading the insurgency and calling the strategic and tactical shots, so to speak. Additionally, it would equally stand to reason that the Baath would call on al Qaeda to use its terror network overseas. The standard I'm using: "More likely than not." This new alliance/symbiosis is not without its problems: the blowing up of Sunni recruits in places such as Tikrit couldn't be blessed by the Baathist leadership. But this crack will not weaken the insurgency, not as long as the Badr Brigade and the Kurdish troops are controlling the new state.

(The tactic worked. Spain withdrew its troops, and the UK's Defense Minister John Reid, begging for a halt to possible further attacks in London, had a document leaked, allegedly written earlier, that the UK would be slashing its troops in Iraq from 8500 to 3000. You can expect more concessions from the UK to the Iraqi and Iranian secret states in the future. One possibility: Britain should be expected to politicize the Israeli nuclear arsenal as a concession towards Iran. Some signs of this have already bubbled up. Britain has a few thousand hostages in Iraq; they're called "troops.")

It could also be that al Qaeda was behaving independently.

Oddly, however, once all foreign troops withdraw, does the Sunni secret state believe it can win a military confrontation with the coalition of the Kurds and the (Iranian and American trained) Shiites? Doubtful. How does this strategy then (and it is a strategy) make sense?

One possible answer: The Iraqi Sunni state is confident the Shiites will eventually side with it against the secessionist Kurds.

Another possibility: Perhaps this secret Iraqi Sunni state--or an important part of it--is already coordinating with Iran's secret government directly and not only through Syria. (In one of the earliest issues, SPC had predicted an Iraqi-Iranian mutual defense treaty. Maybe it's happened already, but with an Islamist Iraqi government.) The kidnaping and murder of Egypt's Ambassador, Ihab al-Sharif, in early July, and the subsequent murder of the Algerian diplomats, in late July, and the earlier attack on the Bahraini and Pakistani ambassadors, do achieve Iranian goals, and only marginally Iraqi Sunni goals. In other words, the older secular Baath, even if it had flocked to the Sunni secret state, should not want to see these Arab and Muslim ambassadors killed–or pushed out of the country. That Baath could use all the Arab help it can get, even from America's Arabs. But the same doesn’t apply to Iran and its ally–the new Sunni secret state. The pressure on pro-American Arab ambassadors reveal (likely) that the Sunni secret state is coordinating closely with Iran's secret state. Iran's goal: To keep away from Iraq Arab and Muslim proxies of the United States. Egypt is hardly on Iran's list of best friends.

Put differently, the struggle for Iraq is pitting the US against Iran. The US is using allied Arab intelligence services to achieve some sort of parity with Iran's secret government and its proxies in Iraq. Iran has already built a close relationship with the new Islamic Baath. Iran knows better.

WHAT'S BEST ABOUT CORDESMAN'S BOOK

Mr. Cordesman's book is rich with data about such matters as the patterns of targeting and casualties of the insurgents. He offers an extensive list of methods used by the insurgents and the goal behind them. The authors do that well and are systematic in their treatment of the subject. My conclusion: What's best about the book was its disciplined categorization of the insurgency and its methods, the occupation and its problems and mistakes.


THE WORSE ASPECT OF THE BOOK: THE ABSENCE OF A CONNECTING THREAD--A THEORY

What's worse about the proposed book is the absence of a connecting thread, a theory. The draft leaves us with the feeling that the occupation forces and the insurgency are playing cat and mouse, in fighting and technologically. Its narrow focus still leaves the serious policy-maker (non-ideological, non-biased) and those concerned about the safety and effectiveness of the troops, at a loss as to what's next.

A THEORY: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

A theory would achieve three goals:

1) It would allow decision-makers to set realistic plans for the future, and not be living in a world of wishful thinking and illusion.

Here, I can't stress how important it is for these decision-makers to stop seeking advice from ideologues and right wing Uncle Toms. (I don't have another name for them; Mr. Cordesman should have a good idea who they are since they fill the air with bullshit, without ever an ombudsman to uncover their hidden political debts and sympathies.) So called think tanks, university professors who are sympathizers of foreign governments, ideologues who placed immense pressure on the intelligence community, put it on the defensive and forced its politicization--should all be shed.

And an alert team, as small as possible, with balance of power theory backing it, should replace them.

2) Theory (the connecting thread) would hopefully avoid mistakes of a similar kind in the future. (Dream on, huh?) It would, at the very least, preempt strategy that is based on wishful thinking, or that is biased one way or the other. This theory would borrow from the balance of power literature of the discipline of international relations, factoring in such phenomena as unconventional warfare (e.g., terror), never-ending generational mobilization (a continuing population explosion, bringing forth one hungry new generation after another, with resources too limited to satisfy their traditional reproductive needs), US domestic policies in the area of political economy (gluts and bubbles that end up fattening the pockets of US adversaries--China, Russia, and Iran), and relevant elements of area study, specific to the region in question, with a return to those experts who are not hateful of Arabs and Muslims, and to those who are not self-hating Arabs, the Uncle Toms of this disastrous adventure.

3) It would fill in the gaps left open by incomplete intelligence and would make sense of the intelligence that is gathered. These gaps are obvious in Cordesman's book when it comes to who is who in the insurgency, who they represent, and what is the source of their financing.

The need for theory is made all the more necessary by the need to understand the limitations of US military power. Here, US domestic concerns should figure highly--e.g. the relative dearth of troops, the political impracticability of the draft in the age of bubbles where all feel rich, even when they are not. Accordingly, reliance on regional balance of power systems wouldn’t be so bad.

Theory is important as a way of avoiding future adventures, if only because a retreat following military adventures weakens allies.

For instance, can anyone say that the US defeat in Iraq--sorry to say it, but it already happened, and SPC announced it soon after the invasion--would not leave its traditional allies exposed and weakened? Most of the Gulf countries have come to this realization and one can sense (strongly) that they are not about to alienate Iran in any way, since the illusion that the United States can protect them has evaporated after the devaluation of US power in Iraq.

NOTE:

It's bewildering how mediocre the Bush team was (and is), not to have thought in terms of basic balance of power and the repercussions to Gulf security of the elimination of a Sunni regime that had proven its effectiveness in checking Iranian (and Syrian) power. Not to mention the weakening of US position in the region, as all countries now have an interest in paying off China, Russia, and Iran for protection. If the Bush Administration went into Iraq because it thought Saudi Arabia was slipping away from it, and it thought it could replace it with a pliant Iraq, puppet government and all, the fact is that Saudi Arabia now has more compelling reasons to slip away--to pay protection money (contracts) to China and Russia.


ISSUES FOR A NEW TEAM

Whatever team takes over the coordination of the Iraqi occupation should keep some issues in mind:

--The elimination of a regional power that hitherto had balanced Iranian power, without an effective replacement, has boosted Iranian influence over Gulf countries to a level never seen before--not even during the years of the Shah. Among other repercussions of this phenomenon, Gulf countries should be expected to divert an increasing number of contracts to China and Russia, two sponsors of Iran, as a security pay-off.

--Saudi Arabia has every reason to be concerned. Had oil revenues not been so high (about $120 billion), would the Saudis be able to stem a Shiite rebellion, motivated by Iran, in their Eastern Province? Can the world afford a rebellion in that province where virtually all of Saudi Arabia's oil is found?

--Would Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, be able to stem a Shiite rebellion against a minority Sunni regime?

--Can Christian US troops, allied to an anti-Palestinian (majority Sunni and Arab) Israel, be able to effectively rein in these rebellions? Can the US muster one million troops, two millions?

--Would the American public ever stand for a draft to obtain these high numbers? Would the local populace accept these troops amongst them?

--Is Kuwait safe if ever it does not heed Iranian wishes, now that we all know that the US is incapable of fighting unconventionally in the Muslim world, counter-insurgency or no counter-insurgency?

--Is Qatar, home to al-Adid, the largest US base in the region, safe?

--Does it really matter whether the Iranian regime changes? If it does, can the U.S. absorb millions of Iranian immigrants to preempt a regime that would unleash its masses into Iraq and the Gulf States? Thus, can the US really afford a change of regime in Iran?

--Can Egypt, having become insignificant in the Arab world once it changed its Arab identity, becoming Islamic at the street level, and an Uncle Tom-like puppet regime at the decision-making level, be of any help to the US?

--Can impoverished Jordan, whose government survives on the smarts of its rulers (puppets but not Uncle Tom-like) withstand an onslaught of the Iranian masses, armed, into Iraq?



CONNECTING CORDESMAN'S MISSING THREAD: HOW HAVE CHINA, RUSSIA, AND IRAN BECOME SO FINANCIALLY POWERFUL AS TO DERAIL AN AMERICAN IMPERIAL PROJECT?

Beyond a balance of power perspective, in which countries (China, Russia, Iran, and Syria) coalesce to balance the power of one that is becoming dominant (the United States) in a region, we need to understand how these coalescing nations are able to foot the bill for intervention and for insurgencies. In other words, insurgencies are expensive affairs--remember the one the US supported against the USSR in Afghanistan?-- and one necessarily needs to answer the question about afford ability. How are China and Russia, and their ally-in-chief, Iran, able to afford keeping the Bush Administration's Iraqi nightmare alive? To answer this is especially important in view of the fact the US commanders in the field, based on their interviews in the media, seem to lack a full understanding of what they are facing.

(Again, I have no hard evidence on money being passed to the insurgency; I'm deducing these ideas from a balance of power construct.)

Here it is:

The glut in dollars created by the Bush Administration (a fake "wartime" spending, a trillion-dollar tax cut, lowering taxes on dividend income, the near phasing-out of estate tax, etc...), added to the pumping of money into the domestic economy (the phenomenon of bubbles, particularly in real estate, where China has chosen to invest by buying billions upon billions of ten-year bonds) by the Federal Reserve Bank, have fattened the pockets of China (our factory) and Russia and Iran (sources of the oil commodity.) Bluntly: In Iraq, US troops are facing US money. It's not that China and Russia are paying Iran to pass money on to the insurgency (it's possible); instead, the more likely scenario is that Russia and China have now become wealthy alternatives to the US in the world of trade, affording Iran trade outlets. That explains the new Iranian President's statement, soon after his election, that Iran did not need the United States!!! (It doesn't. I don't think it needs Europe, either, especially if it has received assurances from Russia and China that they would stand by it financially, now that their governments are rich, thanks to the American consumer--thanks to Mr. Bush and Mr. Greenspan.)

Let me try and encapsulate the course this situation has taken, with the idea that a strategist cannot limit herself to the battlefield and, instead, has to consider the totality of the circumstances.

1. We live in a world that is militarily and conventionally unipolar (global military reach), but financially multipolar,

2. where the US's fear of a recession, channeled through elected officials' unrestrained ambitions to be elected or re-elected, prods it to pump terrific amounts of cash, domestically at first,

3. then overseas in the form of current account deficits, by buying lots from China; and catalyzing a government deficit by faking a war, and spending accordingly, without taxing, even giving a one-trillion dollar tax break, and reducing taxes on dividend income, and nearly (practically) eliminating estate tax,


4. such outflow of dollars reaching China and enriching it to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars , and fueling further its expansion, (Brad Setser, an economist, recently wrote that, adjusted for valuation, China's 2005 reserve accumulation is likely to be around $295 billion v. 195 billion or so in 2004.)


5. such expansion, along with that of the US, which is fueled by cheap money, inflating the value of assets, currently in real estate, which put yet more money in the pockets of consumers who end up buying Chinese,


6. pushing China to expand even more, industrially, to meet the American consumers' needs, and the rising needs of its own expanding middle class,


7. necessitating the import of increasing amounts of oil to back this expansion, pushing the need for oil through the roof, to the point where oil capacity hits a wall, and oil prices more than double,


8. turning Russia and Iran, two other adversaries of the US, rich from oil income,


9. such countries (China, Russia, and Iran) becoming financial poles in this financially multipolar world, and affording these "poles" the ability to thwart American imperial designs on the very oil they all need,


10. by sponsoring--directly or indirectly--whatever insurgency that would protect their interest in that very oil that they need for their expansion (China) and welfare (Russia and Iran),


11. which oil they would not have needed but for the glutting by the Bush Administration (federal government deficits) and the Federal Reserves (the pumping of cash into the domestic economy which ends up in the pockets of China-our factory--and Russia and Iran--our oil imports),


12. with pundits whose nephews and nieces have plum jobs in the Bush Administration, hooraying the entire phenomenon,


13. and US troops dying as a result, and Iraq entering a dark tunnel where no light exists at either end.


Do you get it? The glut which the Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve have engineered is in good part behind the death of US troops in Iraq! George W. (the Glut Get-Me-Re-Elected-at-Any-Price) Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan (the Bubble-to-Bubble-Let's-Pump-Cash-And-Say-There's-No-Inflation) Greenspan are at the heart of US imperial weakness. They have enriched China and Russia, providing trade alternatives to such regional powers as Iran, and even Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries--not to mention that their sponsorship of others has become yet more generous. (Russia forgave Syria 76 percent of Syria's $13.4 billion debt earlier this year. No one's forgiven Lebanon any of its debts!)



BALANCE OF POWER DOLLARS FLOOD IRAQ--THE WALMART EFFECT

How's the money being passed on to Iraq's secret state?

It would seem to me that the countries that the US eliminated from any advantages in contracts for Iraqi oil have every interest to see the US fail in that country. I exclude Germany, France, and the European community since, in the end, these countries are bound to the US for good or for bad, "freedom fries" notwithstanding. (If anything, France and the United States have drawn much closer, and have used Lebanon to build up confidence between them.)

And how, do explain, are Russia, China, and Iran financing the Sunni insurgency in Iraq?

Alliances and coalitions are forever changing to keep a balance of power in a state of equilibrium. (It really works.) When the US decided to eliminate competitors out of Iraqi oil contracts and become the dominant contractor for that oil, to control China, the balance of power automatically sought adjustment. Alliances had to be re-drawn: China and Russia went full speed on supporting the one country that could thwart US dominance--Iran. Iran, now a regional power, flush with oil money, made possible by the dollar glut, can provide its own economic and military aid; it uses Arab Syria to steer a part of the Sunni insurgency. Syria in turn cooperates, as yet another way for it to regain its Golan Heights from Israel--the very essence of its political consensus.

But how does it really work?

I don't know. But I can safely say that an insurgency of this magnitude needs money. And I don't buy into the idea that the Baathist state has such huge coffers to finance its own insurgency, or that impoverished Syria alone is doing it. If I were the intelligence services of those countries which were/are mandated to balance US power, I would probably have a network of businessmen and key-contacts through whom I can channel the money to the insurgents--money that can never be traced. Better yet, in this case, Iran and Syria sit next door, and the money can flow using their intricate network of contacts. So the Chinese and the Russians don't even have to activate their own networks. They can out-source the work!



But how can Shiite Iran be financing its nemesis--the Sunnis? Can't Iran see that the heroes of this insurgency are blowing up innocent Shiites, the very group which forms the basis of Iran's expansion of its regional power? Would Iran really do it?

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NO WAR WITH IRAN.

Before I answer this question, I want to put to rest the idea that I am in any way calling for a war with Iran. (I do read your e-mails!) I don't think there's much to care about in Iran's expansion of its power. I don't. The US should be fine and regain its influence once a fiscally-responsible President is elected, who will put the American financial house in order. And the Arab world has turned into a cesspool of greed, gluttony, and prostitution, for the rich, and terror networks for the poor and the (economically) threatened middle class. So there's not much to care about.

Oddly, the expansion of Iranian power might just get the Israelis to wake up and strike a generous deal with the Palestinians and the Syrians, shedding their (the Israelis') illusion of superiority, paying for water instead of stealing it, and giving the region room to breathe and develop its tourism potential.

(Israel/Palestine and the immediate region around it have nothing but a more-than-less fictitious religious value; high tech and other scientific industries could easily be snatched away by brain-and-tech-institute rich India; and agriculture is way cheaper in Turkey.)

And the Gulf countries will reap the fruit of their mediocrity, having sheepishly eased the invasion of Iraq. (Instead of telling the Americans that they--the Arab politicians of the Gulf--know their region better, and instead of sponsoring serious strategy research institutes that would define their interests, they instead put their faith in some mediocre imperial mandarins who are forever tinkering with the stability of the region, deluding themselves that they know better. The mandarins were dying to get into Iraq; now they're there or, more exactly, young men and women are there, dying for the mandarins' arrogance and the sadism and mediocrity of their leaders.)

____________________________________________________________________________________


IRAN WILL NOT FUND SUNNIS; IRAN WILL.

Back to the crucial question: Would Iran really do it--foot the bill for the Sunni insurgency?

Yes. But why?

1. Some basics: Iran cannot afford to see the United States have bases in Iraq. These would be a dagger directed at the heart of the Islamic Republic. Iran cannot win a conventional war with the United States. Iran can win an unconventional war with the United States. (It is now.) Iran will wage an endless war of attrition against the United States; nothing fancy; no spectacular acts; nothing that would mobilize the American public to such an extent that one million US troops are dispatched to Iraq. It's okay to have some US troops in Iraq which Iran can use as hostages to obtain leverage against the United States, especially when it comes to Iran's intent to develop nuclear weapons to defend its expanding regional leadership; it wouldn't be okay to have too many troops since American strategists might falsely calculate that these would be enough to wage a full war, and the Islamic Republic's regime would have to fall on its contingency plan: Spread hundreds of thousands of Iranian fighters across the gulf, blow up oil installations, etc...No need for this. Better tinker with the US, and the US public opinion. When the Sunnis stop fighting, arm the Shiites. When the Shiites stop, lean on the Sunnis. Or join them both against the Kurds. An endless array of possibilities.

Now the answer:

Iran's Shiites in Iraq are not about to make life difficult for the United States, not to the degree achieved by the Sunnis--a necessity for Islamic Iran. The United States, using President Bush's glut, has probably bought out many of Iran's Shiite proxies--SCIRI and the Badr Brigade, Dawa, even Sistani. Iran still has thousands of operatives in Iraq, including a lot of double agents moonlighting for the US. But all of these could not wage anything like the Sunni insurgency.

Not to mention that the unleashing of Iran's operatives would risk an intra-Shiite civil war. Patience. Iran has time on its side. Right?

So Iran needs the Sunni insurgency, even at the cost of seeing Shiite civilians die.

2. By projecting its glut-induced financial power into the Sunni camp, in part through Syria, Iran can keep the Arab Sunni masses mobilized against the United States. These Arab Sunni masses are Iran's first line of defense against the United States, its junior Israeli partner, and the very base of its new power in the region. (Unlike the Shah, the Islamic Republic is relying on a closer connection to the Arab World via its masses which are reeling at the injustice in Israel/Palestine and what they see as an American-Israeli alliance that has impoverished and broken up an Arab country: Iraq.)

The Sunni insurgency, and the Likud government's hyper-sensitivity to anything that smacks of Palestinian pride, (the Israeli political consensus is truly suicidal, in good part because it cannot overcome the delusion that the Israelis are superior to the Arabs), keeps these masses hyper-mobilized--a wonderful achievement for the Islamic Republic. Truly ingenious. The Iranian press has made the injustices committed against the Palestinians an everyday matter for the Iranian public. You would think Jerusalem is ten miles away from Tehran.

You guessed it: They're smart; and we're dumb. We're stuck with an Israel that refuses to come to terms with the fact that the Palestinians and the Israelis will be living together. (The blame falls not entirely on the Israelis, but on their bosses too. Israeli leaders are Uncle Toms in their own right; the Bush administration bosses them around, but the Israelis mask their servility better than Arab leaders.) In addition, We're stuck with Arab governments which the Bush Administration has all but castrated with aid, cash, and the threat to dismantle yet another Arab country--Saudi Arabia.


IRAN, ARAB INTELLIGENCE SERVICES, AND THE KILLING OF SHIITE CIVILIANS

Which begs the question: If Iran is supporting the Sunni insurgency, wouldn't the bombing of Shiite civilians and Sunni retaliation get the Arab Sunni masses mobilized against the Shiites, and not the United States?

The answer to this is twofold:

a. Responsibility for maintaining security in Iraq falls squarely on the United States, the occupying power, and the Iraqi people--Sunnis and Shiites--will blame that country first and foremost. (They already have.)

The US thinks it can train Iraqis to replace it in repressing the insurgency. Good luck! There’s really no way out for the United States–unless it works to rebuild the regional balance of power---both ideologically and militarily.

The US's uncertain Iraqi proxies (Iranians in every way, really, though accepting of American glut dollars), and the new state it is trying to create–e.g., training of troops-- will never be able to balance Iranian power. And the US cannot stay there indefinitely, to back them. The proxies don’t have the ideology, to say the least, to stand up to Islamic fundamentalism. And, sadly for the troops, US leaders under Bush don’t have the smarts to know how to rebuild the regional balance of power. They are prisoners of their own ideology and their own spin, backed by an extensive network of a right wing media. This extensive network of snake oil salesmen spins defeats into victories and mediocrity into smarts; and gathers up a world of moronic Uncle Toms to agree with them that the imperial man's burden is..oh..so heavy and so misunderstood.


b. There is a distinct possibility that some of the bombings against Shiite civilians (as opposed to bombings against the Shiite state's institutions, such as against centers for police recruits, which exact collateral damage against civilians), had (and have) the blessing and support of one or more allied intelligence services, in the hope (desperate) of igniting a full-fledged civil war, forcing Iranian troops into Iraq, and therefore forcing the US to re-enter with more troops and fight the Iranian army. It is possible that the blowing up of the Jordanian embassy soon after the invasion, the kidnaping and murder of Arab diplomats, and the explosions in such faraway places as Sharm al-Shaikh are indirect Iranian responses (the secret state) to the involvement of the intelligence services of allied Arab governments in the bloodshed in Iraq, in particular against the Shiite civilians. Iran is on to these intelligence services. This is only a possibility. I have no evidence.


DREADING RECESSIONS: DOLLARS IN THE POCKETS OF CHINA, RUSSIA, AND IRAN

Where do Russia and China fit in?

Both are beholden to Iran, the local power that will defeat US designs on Iraqi oil. All know that Iraq's proven reserves are 115 billion barrels, and ranks third after Saudi Arabia (263 billion) and Iran (233 billion)--this according to the Energy Information Administration. But there is a distinct possibility that Iraq's reserves are significantly higher. Not only can Russia furnish Iran with assistance; Russia would expect Iran to provide protection for Syria in a tit-for-tat deterrence: Any American or Israeli move against Syria will beget an Iranian move against US troops (e.g., shooting down a plane now-and-then to rob the troops of safety in the air.)

The global tension between the US and China is not a secret. The Pentagon and the Chinese military have been at it. Offended by he Pentagon's classification of China as an increasingly significant threat, the Chinese military in mid-July unleashed General Zhu Chenghu, who threatened that if the Americans ever drew their missiles and position-guided ammunition on the target zone on China's territory, China, he thought, would respond with nuclear weapons. Though his statements were dismissed by many, they nonetheless revealed that we were (and are) in a state of undeclared tension with rich China.

Imperial Security Alert:

China would not be so bold without billions upon billions of dollars in reserves in its coffers--courtesy of President George W. (the Glut-in-a-fake-war-economy-to-get-re-elected) Bush and Chairman Alan (I've never seen a bubble I didn't like) Greenspan--and the American consumer at Wal-Mart.

So, you see, strategists, including Mr. Cordesman, cannot afford to limit themselves to what is taking place in the battlefield. Not only would time rob the battlefield perspective of its significance faster than the time it takes to describe it, it would deny US commanders the ability to comprehend what's around them. And what's around them, frankly, is way beyond the limited capabilities which the Bush Administration provided them.


SYRIA AND ITS GOLAN

What about Syria?

Syria plays a pivotal role for Iran in its balancing act against Israel. Hizballah can send hundreds of rockets into northern Israel should the Israeli Prime Minister dispatch Israeli planes to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. (The US has sent bunker busters to Israel; but the Israelis, for a change, seem to be pondering their three-billion dollar servility to the Bush administration; if Israel uses these bunker busters, Iranian and Hizballah missiles will fly into Israel's territory.) Syria and Hizballah can ignite the front should the need arise to mobilize further the Arab Sunni masses, if the US makes any military move against Iran. US officials have been playing a lot of carrot and stick games with Syria; but short of delivering back the Golan, they should stop wasting their time.

Just as our imperial mandarins never appreciated that Saddam Hussein's Arab nationalism was an antidote to Islamic fundamentalism and to its sponsor-du-jour, they seem to not comprehend a simple fact: The very basis of the Syrian political consensus (and its government) is the regaining of the Golan Heights. Any compromise on even one inch of those heights would spell the end of that government and the take-over by the Sunni Islamists, who would in the end have a more intimate relationship with the Iranian secret government--a much more dangerous situation for poor Lebanon.

(The US attempts to revive the Syrian Muslim Brothers, via Lebanon, is nothing short of a joke–another sign of desperation and mediocrity. The US destruction of Iraq, and the US financing of Israeli takeover of Palestinian lands, are way more powerful fodder for the mobilization of the Syrian Sunnis than anything the US-backed Syrian Muslim Brothers can muster.)

The US is now stuck. When it opens up to the insurgents, as it had in late June, the Shiite leadership issues threats. Abdel-Aziz Hakim, the de facto ruler of southern Iraq, threatened a sectarian war to burn the entire region, on the news of US opening to the Sunni insurgents.


WHAT'S NEXT? FOR ONE: NO SHAME FOR THE CRUEL AND THE MEDIOCRE

Iran will play Shiites against Sunnis against Kurds and will become the only arbiter in Iraqi politics. Unless, of course, the regional balance of power is re-established, which is unlikely under the Bush regime. (Re-establishing of the regional balance of power can be done.)

Iraq will live in a state of violence and misery for the next thirty to fifty years.

JHU President Brody and the Johns Hopkins University will self-servingly disconnect themselves from the orphaning of little girls, unleashing their SAIS onto other helpless countries. And more little girls will lose their dads.

Mr. Wolfowitz will collect fat paychecks at the World Bank and will self-servingly dedicate himself to alleviating poverty, instead of going away.

Mr. Rumsfeld will not do the right thing, either, and go away. Instead he will write his memoirs, which will be a best seller, hoorayed by the babblers in the press, whose nephews and nieces had plum jobs in the Bush Administration, and by a huge right wing media empire.

Mr. Cheney will enjoy his grandchildren whose father(s) are still in their lives, and will make money with the President.

And a new Carlysle-like group will emerge, to fatten the pockets of tormenters of little girls, both here and in Iraq.

What about Mr. Cordesman?

Oh, well, he'll retire in a state of disgust. Someone by the name of Patrick Baetjer will take his place, and will see yet more military adventures that end in disasters, presided over by Presidents who want to be re-elected come what may.

And little girls--little girls will still be weeping, to no end, in President Brody's Iraq.