Vol. 71/No. 29      August 6, 2007

The report concluded that “satisfactory” progress was being made by the Iraqi government in 8 of 18 political, military, and economic “benchmarks” set by Washington. These included steps toward establishing semi-autonomous regions in Iraq, forming a Constitutional Review Committee, and aiding Washington’s latest military offensive.

Baghdad’s inability to come up with an oil law pleasing to the competing capitalist factions in Iraq—and their imperialist overlords—was deemed “unsatisfactory.” So too were efforts to reduce factionalism in the armed forces, to suppress local militias, and to establish an Iraqi Army capable of defending the Baghdad regime without tail-ending a substantial U.S. occupation force.

Progress in those areas will only be achieved, the White House report says, after the current offensive “is fully underway and generates improved conditions on the ground.”

“Tough fighting should be expected throughout the summer,” it notes. The targets of Operation Phantom Thunder are “primarily al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) havens in Baghdad, Babil, Diyala, and Anbar provinces.”

“Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s key weaknesses are an ideology that does not resonate with Iraqis and an indiscriminate brutality that alienates the people,” Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, told the New York Post in a July 10 interview. The interview came three days after a massive suicide bomb in a busy marketplace in a Shiite town in Diyala Province killed at least 130 people and injured 240.

Washington has made progress in winning the active support of some local militias and Iraqi politicians in their offensive.

“Until only a few months ago, the Central Street bazaar was enemy territory,” a July 8 New York Times article noted, describing Ramadi, one of the largest cities in Anbar province, where a U.S. offensive began last November. “Now, a pact between local tribal sheiks and American commanders has sent thousands of young Iraqis from Anbar Province into the fight against extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.”

U.S. forces in Ramadi have moved from a large base to more than 100 smaller posts throughout the city. According to the article, an average of 30-35 attacks took place in the province per day in February; by late June, that number was down to one per day.

The Pentagon announced today that similar pacts have been made with sheiks in the largely Sunni Arab Salahuddin Province. In Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, military spokespeople confirmed reports that members of a Baathist militia called the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade provided U.S. forces with information and assisted in the offensive against al-Qaeda.

In addition to al-Qaeda forces, U.S. military operations are also targeting groups in Iraq’s Shiite Arab population they claim have links to the Iranian government.

“The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that’s unfolding across the region,” U.S. president George Bush said in a news conference the day the report was released. “The same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map is also providing sophisticated IEDs [improvised explosive devices] to extremists in Iraq who are using them to kill American soldiers. The same Hezbollah terrorists who are waging war against the forces of democracy in Lebanon are training extremists to do the same against coalition forces in Iraq.”

According to an Associated Press report, U.S. troops killed six Iraqi policemen and seven others today in a battle in eastern Baghdad that erupted after U.S. troops seized a police lieutenant they claim is linked to a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The day before, five members of the Mahdi militia, a group linked to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, were killed in an air strike while allegedly planting a roadside bomb.
 
 
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