almost 50% want the US OUT OF IRAQ

even Service Commanders (are) refusing to be deployed into Iraq.

Troop moral .. is at all time lows ..

I don't care about the position. I care about the person's intelligence and common sense. As you get older, you'll realize social stature is no measure of either.

Hopefully, the democraticly elected leaders of Iraq, can get the infrastructure , army and police back in a good enough force, to improve their lot. Then it will have been worth it.

The Times November 03, 2006

America fights to take charge of UN peacekeepers around world

By James Bone and Richard Beeston

The United States is lobbying to put an American, possibly a general, in charge of all UN peacekeeping operations in a move that could offer Washington an exit strategy in Iraq.

The unprecedented US bid for the top UN peacekeeping post would place an American in command of the 95,000 UN peacekeepers in trouble spots from Lebanon to Sudan.

An American-led UN peacekeeping department could eventually help Washington to replace the US-led coalition in Iraq with a UN-flagged force, diplomats and experts say.

A US official confirmed yesterday that the Bush Administration was seeking the UN’s top peacekeeping post. The US only has 335 peacekeepers and 330 civilians serving with UN missions around the world, with the largest deployment being 239 police officers in Kosovo and 48 police officers in Haiti.

But Washington pays 26 per cent of the surging UN peacekeeping budget, which could rise from its current $5 billion a year (£2.6 billion) to $6 billion a year.

“We pay the most,” the US official said. “It almost goes without saying that if the Americans are spending the most money on peacekeeping we should have a say in the management of it. It’s about time.”

The peacekeeping job is so important to Washington that it is ready to relinquish its traditional control of the UN management department. Christopher Burnham, the American in that post, announced last week that he was leaving for the private sector.

The US official denied that there was any long-term plan to transfer responsibility for security in Iraq to the UN. “This has nothing to do with Iraq,” he said. “It has much more to do with Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia-Eritrea. These are the ones we are spending so much money on.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2435289,00.html

Published: 11/03/2006 12:00 AM (UAE)

Talabani wants US troops to stay for 'three more years'

Reuters

Paris: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Thursday that S troops should remain in Iraq for up to three more years to help bring peace to the country, envisaging a slower withdrawal programme than that suggested by Washington.

"We need time. Not 20 years, but time. I personally can say that two to three years will be enough to build up our forces and say to our American friends 'Bye bye with thanks'," Talabani told a conference organised by the IFRI think-tank.

Talabani gave an upbeat assessment of the situation in Iraq, saying life was relatively normal beyond Baghdad.

"There is no civil war. The media is focusing only on the negative side of Iraq. ... We need to give the real picture. It's not just car bombs.

"Visit Iraq from the north to the south. Never mind Baghdad," he told reporters.


http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/11/03/10079609.html

This is how Bush's Iraq mess is shaping up

This is how Bush's Iraq mess is shaping up
http://tinyurl.com/ygqlvh

Recent weeks have seen a university dean and prominent Sunni geologist murdered, bringing the death toll among educators to at least 155 since the war began.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Muslim group in the country, called the kidnapping “not only a crime but a major political farce.”

“How can 50 new vehicles move around in ... the area most heavily controlled by security agencies in the middle of the day?” the party said in a statement.

RIGA, Latvia (CNN) -- President Bush on Tuesday rejected suggestions that Iraq is in a civil war and vowed again he won't support the removal of U.S. troops from the war-torn country "before the mission is complete."

"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal," he said, calling the violence part of a plot.

White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said Bush and the Iraqi leader will be talking about "what steps Iraq needs to take and how we can support them."

Hadley also dismissed the notion that civil war has begun in Iraq.

"The Iraqis don't talk of it as a civil war. The unity government doesn't talk of it as a civil war," Hadley said. "You have not yet had a situation also where you have two clearly defined and opposing groups vying not only for power but for territory."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/28/iraq.main/index.html

The latest upsurge in Iraqi bloodshed, the conventional wisdom goes, has pushed the country to "the brink" of civil war. Testifying before Congress on Thursday, Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, said as much when he stated that "sectarian violence is a greater concern for us security-wise right now than the insurgency."

But to many analysts, Iraq is already immersed in a civil war. Some point to the hypothetical definition of a civil war recently offered by National Director of Intelligence John Negroponte as "a complete loss of central government security control, the disintegration or deterioration of the security forces of the country."

"In academic terms, this is a civil war, and it's not even a small one," said Larry Diamond, a former consultant to the provisional authority in Baghdad who is now critical of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq.

"I don't know how else you would describe something which has people from one community systematically attacking the other," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia during the civil war in the Balkans during the Clinton administration and who helped negotiate an end to the conflict in Croatia. "Sunni Arab insurgents have been attacking Shiite clergy, politicians and ordinary Shiites for simply being who they are ... and then you have a response, from the Shiites."

The implications of what to call the violence reach beyond semantics, say analysts who believe civil war is already a reality. Until the United States faces up to the true situation on the ground, it cannot take the necessary steps that might help mitigate the deteriorating situation.

"The flaw that we've had in Iraq from day one is that we've been ostrichlike with our dealings in our reality on the ground in the country," said Galbraith, who now is a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. "At each stage of the process, the administration has been in denial about what's going on."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
/c/a/2006/03/12/MNG9BHMUG81.DTL

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun.

Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

"There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth," said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston. Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district.

As he spoke, the sights and sounds of battle grew: first, the rat-a-tat-tat of fire from AK-47 assault rifles, then the heavier bursts of PKC machine guns, and finally the booms of mortar rounds crisscrossing the night sky and crashing down onto houses and roads.

The bodies of captured Sunni and Shiite fighters will turn up in the morning, dropped in canals and left on the side of the road.

"We've seen some that have been executed on site, with bullet holes in the ground; the rest were tortured and executed somewhere else and dumped," Johnson said.

The recent assertion by U.S. soldiers here that Iraq is in a civil war is a stunning indication that American efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq are failing, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.

Some Iraqi troops, too, share that assessment.

"This is a civil war," said a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad.

"The problem between Sunnis and Shiites is a religious one, and it gets worse every time they attack each other's mosques," said the adviser, who gave only his rank and first name, Col. Ahmed, because of security concerns. "Iraq is now caught in hell."

U.S. hopes for victory in Iraq hinge principally on two factors: Iraqi security forces becoming more competent and Iraqi political leaders persuading armed groups to lay down their weapons.

But neither seems to be happening. The violence has increased as Iraqi troops have been added, and feuding among the political leadership is intense. American soldiers, particularly the rank and file who go out on daily patrols, say they see no end to the bloodshed. Higher ranking officers concede that the developments are threatening to move beyond their grasp.

"There's no plan - we are constantly reacting," said a senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/15201701.htm

BAGHDAD, March 5, 2006 — As Pentagon generals offered optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq had dissipated this weekend, other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi government and U.S. military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly.

"We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.

"It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last three years in Iraq," added Nash, who is an ABC News consultant.

Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, "If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004."

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCoverage/story?id=1689688&page=1

A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight for political power or control of an area. Political scientists use two criteria: the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second criterion is that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_war

civil war
n : a war between factions in the same country

http://dict.die.net/civil%20war/

civil war
Function: noun
: a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/civil%20war

One of Iraq's most pro-western figures and an ex-prime minister yesterday became the first of its leaders to express what most of his compatriots fear: the country is in the grip of a "terrible" civil war

But Mr Allawi, chosen by coalition forces to lead Iraq when its sovereignty was restored in 2004 and the leader who supported their assaults on Najaf and Fallujah, was adamant.

"We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," he said. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point. We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

Unless a new government was formed soon, ending political paralysis and re-establishing central authority, Iraq "will not only fall apart but sectarianism will spread throughout the region," he said. "And even Europe and the United States would not be spared all the violence that may occur as a result of sectarian problems in this region."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/20/wirq20.xml

THE US military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report.

"The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same in the troubled Anbar province, a senior US intelligence official said.

The report describes Iraq's Sunni minority as "embroiled in a daily fight for survival", fearful of "pogroms" by the Shiite majority and increasingly dependent on al-Qaeda in Iraq as its only hope against growing Iranian dominance across Baghdad.

"From the Sunni perspective, their greatest fears have been realised — Iran controls Baghdad and Anbaris have been marginalised," the report says. Moreover, most Sunnis now believe it would be unwise to count on or help US forces because they are seen as likely to leave Iraq before imposing stability.

Between al-Qaeda's violence, Iran's influence and an expected gradual US withdrawal, "the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point" that US and Iraqi troops "are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar". At least 90 US troops have died in Anbar since September 1.

The report paints a stark portrait of a failed province and of the country's Sunnis — once dominant under Saddam Hussein — now desperate, fearful and impoverished. They have been increasingly abandoned by religious and political leaders who have been assassinated or who have fled the country.

And unlike Iraq's Shiite majority or Kurdish groups in the north, the Sunnis are without oil and other natural resources. The report notes that illicit oil trading is providing millions of dollars to al-Qaeda while "official profits appear to feed Shiite cronyism in Baghdad".

The Iraqi Government, dominated by Iranian-backed Shiites, has not paid salaries for Anbar officials and Iraqi forces stationed there. Anbar's resources and its ability to impose order are depicted as limited, at best.

"Despite the success of the December elections, nearly all Government institutions from the village to provincial levels have disintegrated or have been thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by al-Qaeda in Iraq," or a smattering of other insurgent groups, the report says.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/us-unable-to-win-in-west-iraq-marines-say
/2006/11/28/1164476204830.html