Iraq analysis

[Al-khiyal]

Fifteen killed in car bomb attack in Kirkuk

June 30, 2009 -- At least 15 people were killed and around 20 wounded in a car bomb attack on a market area in Kirkuk on Tuesday, an interior ministry official told AFP. The blast occurred around 6 pm (1500 GMT) in the central Shurga district, he said. The blast devastated the area, an AFP reporter at the scene added.

[Al-khiyal]

4 U.S. soldiers killed during Iraq cities pullout

June 30, 2009 -- Four U.S. soldiers were killed in combat shortly before the American military completed a withdrawal from Iraq's cities, and the prime minister assured Iraqis that government forces taking control of urban areas on Tuesday were more than capable of protecting the country.

Nouri al-Maliki said in a nationally televised address that "those who think that Iraqis are not able to protect their country and that the withdrawal of foreign forces will create a security vacuum are committing a big mistake."

The withdrawal that was completed on Monday was part of a U.S.-Iraqi security pact and marks the first major step toward withdrawing all American forces from the country by December 31, 2011. President Barack Obama has said all combat troops will be gone by the end of August 2010.

In the attack Monday against U.S. forces, the military said the four soldiers who were killed served with the Multi-National Division-Baghdad but did not provide further details pending notification of their families. It said they died as a "result of combat related injuries." It was the deadliest attack against U.S. forces since May 21, when three soldiers were killed and nine others wounded in a roadside bombing in southern Baghdad.

There was a significant spike in violence before the June 30 withdrawal. More than 250 people were killed in a series of bombings, including one on June 20 that left 81 dead outside a mosque in northern Iraq and another in a Baghdad market on June 24 that killed 78. Al-Maliki has blamed the attacks on al-Qaida in Iraq and the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

"I congratulate the Iraqi people on this day, June 30, when the U.S. forces have withdrawn from Iraq cities in accordance to the forces withdrawal agreement," al-Maliki said. "We consider this day as a national holiday and it is a joint achievement by all Iraqis." The Iraqi government has named June 30 National Sovereignty Day and declared a public holiday.

President Jalal Talabani said the day could not have happened without the help of the United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003 and ousted Saddam — who was later convicted by an Iraqi court and executed in December 2006. "While we celebrate this day, we express our thanks and gratitude to our friends in the coalition forces who faced risks and responsibilities and sustained casualties and damage while helping Iraq to get rid from the ugliest dictatorship and during the joint effort to impose security and stability," Talabani said.

Describing June 30 as a "glorious page" in Iraq's history he warned that "security will not be achieved completely without the proper political environment and without a real national unity and reconciliation." Iraq marked the day with an overnight display of fireworks, while thousands attended a party in a park where singers performed patriotic songs.

The midnight handover to Iraqi forces filled many citizens with pride but also trepidation that government forces are not ready and that violence will rise. Shiites fear more bombings by Sunni militants; Sunnis fear that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces will give them little protection. If the Iraqis can hold down violence in the coming months, it will show the country is finally on the road to stability. If they fail, it will pose a challenge to Obama's pledge to end an unpopular war that has claimed the lives of more than 4,300 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Some U.S. troops will remain in the cities to train and advise Iraqi forces. U.S. combat troops will return to the cities only if asked. The U.S. military will continue combat operations in rural areas and near the border, but only with the Iraqi government's permission. The U.S. has not said how many troops will be in the cities in advisory roles, but the vast majority of the more than 130,000 U.S. forces remaining in the country will be in large bases scattered outside cities. There have been some worries that the 650,000-member Iraqi military is not ready to maintain stability and deal with a stubborn insurgency.

[Al-khiyal]

Fifteen killed in car bomb attack in Kirkuk

Kirkuk car bomb kills 26

June 30, 2009 -- At least 26 people were killed and around 56 wounded in a car bomb attack on a market area in Kirkuk on Tuesday, a high-ranking police official told AFP.

An interior ministry official, who had earlier put the toll at 15, said the blast occurred around 6 pm (1500 GMT) in the central Shurga district.

An AFP reporter at the scene said the blast devastated the area.

[Al-khiyal]

Bomb kills Iraqi soldier and wounds 10 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, July 2, 2009 (Reuters) -- A roadside bomb blew up as an Iraqi army patrol passed by in Baghdad on Thursday, killing one soldier and wounding 10 two days after U.S. troops pulled out of cities and handed security to their local counterparts, police said. The bomb was the first in Baghdad, police said, since Tuesday's partial U.S. withdrawal, a day labelled "National Sovereignty Day" by Iraqi authorities elated at what they see as a major step to shaking off a foreign occupation. The pullback from urban centres is a major milestone in a bilateral security agreement that calls for the last of the U.S. soldiers who invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein to leave the country by the end of 2011.

The blast on Thursday took place in the Abu Nawas area of central Baghdad during the morning rush hour. Police said there had not been a single bombing in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, the first day the security of the inner city became entirely the responsibility of Iraqi police and troops. They said some checkpoints had been lifted on Thursday and some blocked roads opened up. It was not immediately possible to verify the claim that the bomb was the first but no major incidents were reported in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Violence across Iraq has fallen sharply since the peak of sectarian bloodshed in 2006-07, but insurgents such as al Qaeda continue to stage devastating attacks. The number of civilians who died violent deaths jumped in June to 373, up from a low of 134 in May, after a spate of major bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk -- including two of the deadliest bomb attacks in more than a year. U.S. and Iraqi officials say they expect insurgents and militants to try to take advantage of the U.S. pullback to launch more attacks and to test the Iraqi defence forces.

The leader of the Islamic Army in Iraq, thought to be the military wing of Saddam's outlawed Baath party, claimed the U.S. withdrawal was a victory not for the Iraqi government but for insurgents, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. "If anyone has a right to celebrate victory, it should be the resistance and its men and those who rallied around it and supported it among the children of our people and our Ummah (nation)," the "emir" of the group said in an online message monitored by SITE. "They are the ones who brought the occupation to a despicable defeat and made their remaining forces in Iraq demanding and very costly."

[Al-khiyal]

FBI reports describe Saddam Hussein's reasons for refusing UN inspectors

July 2, 2009 -- Saddam Hussein remained preoccupied with the threat from neighbouring Iran as the U.S.-led invasion loomed and would have sought a security pact with the U.S. if UN sanctions were lifted, he told an FBI interviewer in his jail cell before his execution.

In more than two dozen interviews and casual talks, the deposed Iraqi leader told FBI questioners that he refused to allowed UN inspectors to re-enter the country because he feared they would reveal to his chief adversary Iran the severely degraded state of Iraq's weapons capability.

Saddam, whom the successor Iraqi government hanged in December 2006, also denied having any connection to Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida, and said that if he wanted to join forces with a U.S. enemy, he would have sought a pact with North Korea or China.

Those details and others are revealed in newly released FBI reports of contacts between the jailed Hussein and FBI special agent George Piro, an Arabic speaker who met with the former Iraqi leader between February and June 2004.

The reports portray a deposed dictator who seems comfortable discussing subjects from Iraqi history to his daily work schedule and speechwriting practices with an investigator from the country that forced him from power. Hussein seems aware that he is to die soon, and justifies his record of modernising Iraq and surviving more than a decade of conflict with Iran and the U.S. and crippling UN sanctions.

The reports were released by the National Security Archive, a Washington group that obtained them from the FBI. The reports contain a few deletions, and one interview, from May 1, 2004, was redacted in its entirety.

Saddam denounced bin Laden as a "zealot". The former Iraqi leader described himself as a religious man and appears at least superficially pious, referring constantly to God and to Islam. But he said he believed religion and government "should not mix", and said he and bin Laden do not share the same vision.

Although he had been deposed by the American army and seemed to understand he would soon be handed over to the Iraqis and executed, Saddam remained fixated on what he describes as Iran's threat to Iraq. The two nations fought a brutal war between 1980 and 1988, costing as many as one million lives. He said that in recent years sanctions and UN inspections had degraded Iraq's military capability while Iran had strengthened its armed forces.

He said that during the run-up to the U.S. invasion in March 2003, he kept up his bluster about weapons of mass destruction in order to appear strong in front of Iran. Saddam said he believed Iran intended to annex majority Shia areas of southern Iraq, and saw the country as the greatest threat to Iraq. He said he viewed the other Arab countries in the region as weak and unable to defend against an attack from Iran. He said that he refused to allow UN inspectors to re-enter the country not because he still possessed prohibited weapons of mass destruction (he ordered the stock pile destroyed after the 1991 Persian Gulf war) but because he wanted Iran to believe he did.

"Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq," the report of a June 11, 2004 interview states.

Asked how Iraq would have dealt with Iran if the UN inspections and sanctions were ended, he said he would have sought a security agreement with the U.S. Piro agreed such an arrangement would have benefited Iraq, but said the U.S. would not quickly have made such a pact. He told Piro he wanted a more friendly relationship with the U.S., an ally during the war with Iran, but that the U.S. "was not listening to anything Iraq had to say".

Hussein declined several times to answer questions about his use of chemical weapons in the war with Iran. The FBI interviewers at one point show him a British-made documentary called "Saddam's Latest War", which offers evidence of atrocities and mass executions of Shia Iraqis. Saddam grew agitated and challenged the accuracy and neutrality of the journalist.

Hussein described a strict security regimen in the years before the U.S.-led invasion. He said he had only spoken on the telephone twice since March 1990 and never stayed in the same location for more than a day, fearful that high-tech U.S. surveillance would locate him. He said that the farm on which U.S. soldiers discovered him in December 2003 was the same place to which he fled after taking part in a failed 1959 coup attempt.

The former Iraqi leader offered a few personal details. In one discussion, during which the cell's air conditioning was under repair, Hussein told Piro he was used to living a simple lifestyle. Asked to explain his numerous, extravagant palaces, Hussein said they were created as exercises for Iraqi architects and to keep enemies from pinpointing the location of top regime officials during meetings. Hussein also said he typically would try to take time out of his work schedule to read fiction, "something he enjoyed very much".

He said he had been keen to learn more about American culture, and had done so by watching Hollywood films. He said he took time every day to meet with ordinary Iraqis, but acknowledged to Piro that many would be too frightened to be candid with him.

Saddam was apparently aware that he did not have much longer to live. At one point Piro expressly reminds him that he is no longer president of Iraq, that he is "done", and that his life is nearing an end. Piro "asked him if he wanted the remainder of his life to have meaning, to which he responded yes".

[Al-khiyal]

Saddam Hussein stayed in Baghdad until city fell: FBI

July 3, 2009 -- Saddam Hussein stayed in Baghdad until just hours before it was clear the city was about to fall after the US-led 2003 invasion, according to newly released FBI interviews with the deposed Iraqi dictator. Summarising 27 interviews between January and June 2004, newly declassified FBI documents offer an unusual window on Saddam's view of himself and his legacy at the end of his life.

In the closing days of his regime, as U.S. forces swarmed toward Baghdad, Saddam said he stayed in the city up to April 10 or 11, 2003, until it appeared the city would certainly fall. He held a final meeting with senior Iraqi leadership and told them "we will struggle in secret".

"Thereafter, he departed Baghdad and began gradually 'dispersing' his bodyguards, telling them they had completed their duty, so as not to draw attention," the FBI said.

Asked about widespread reports he often used "doubles" while in power, Saddam "laughed and stated, 'This is movie magic, not reality.'"

Playing cat and mouse with his FBI interviewer, Saddam acknowledged no responsibility for leading his country into a series of disastrous wars that culminated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He refused to answer questions about his regime's use of chemical weapons against his own people and Iran, telling his interviewer, "I will not be cornered or caught on some technicality. It will not do you any good."

He acknowledged some mistakes in his dealings with the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction, but insisted that Iraq complied with UN Security Council resolutions to disarm after the 1991 Gulf War. "If I had the (prohibited) weapons, would I have let United States forces stay in Kuwait without attacking?" he is quoted as saying at one point.

The interviews were conducted by an Arabic speaking FBI special agent, George Piro, who questioned the Iraqi leader about plots, assassinations, the expulsion of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei from his Iraqi refuge, and Iraq's wars with Iran, Kuwait and the United States.

In their last "casual conversation" at a U.S. detention centre near the Baghdad airport on June 28, 2004, Mr Piro asked about Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda, a connection that Washington had played up in justifying the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But Saddam said the Iraqi Government did not co-operate with Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader. Bin Laden's ideology "was no different than the many zealots that came before him", Saddam told Mr Piro, according to the summary, which said the two "did not have the same vision or philosophy".

When pressed, the deposed Iraqi leader said he did not regard the United States as Iraq's enemy even though it opposed its policies. "If he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the United States, Hussein would have (co-operated) with North Korea, which he claimed to a have a relationship with, or with China," the summary said.

In earlier interviews, Saddam cast Iran as Iraq's biggest threat, and suggested he wanted Tehran to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq," according to a summary report.

"Hussein further stated that Iran's weapons capabilities have increased dramatically, while Iraq's have been eliminated by the UN sanctions. "The effects of this will be seen and felt in the future, as Iran's weapons capabilities will be a greater threat to Iraq and the region in the future," it said.

The farm where he was captured in a "spider hole" in December 2003 was the same place where he hid after a failed 1959 coup, the FBI said. Saddam was sentenced to death in November 2006 and hanged on December 30 that year.

[Al-khiyal]

Eager to tap Iraq's vast oil reserves, industry executives suggested invasion

July 3, 2009 -- Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power. That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," (.pdf file) was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves. "Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said. "Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the U.S. should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."

The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. James Baker, the namesake for the public policy institute, was a prominent oil industry lawyer who also served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000. Ken Lay, then-chairman of the energy trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report. At the time of the report, Cheney was leading an energy task force made up of powerful industry executives who assisted him in drafting a comprehensive "National Energy Policy" for President George W. Bush.

A focus on oil

It was believed then that Cheney's secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming. But Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency. In Ron Suskind's 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, O'Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq's oil fields would be carved up. Even at that early date, the message from Bush was "find a way to do this," according to O'Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." [The New Yorker, February 16, 2004]

By March 2001, Cheney's task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a list titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," according to information released in July 2003 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. A Commerce Department spokesman issued a brief statement when those documents were released stating that Cheney's energy task force "evaluated regions of the world that are vital to global energy supply." There has long been speculation that a key reason why Cheney fought so hard to keep his task force documents secret was that they may have included information about the administration's plans toward Iraq.