Philippines had the largest number of new IDPs in 2008. Some 600,000 people fled their homes

TO BE NOTED:

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New Figures, Analysis Suggest Internal Displacement on the Rise

Created May 6 2009 - 9:02am

A new report [1] by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre [2], or IDMC, indicates that the number of internally displaced persons, or IDPs, remained at a record high in 2008 —26 million people were displaced within their own countries, mostly due to violence. The tally is the same as in 2007, which was a record since the early 1990s, but some concerning trends are emerging.

The Philippines had the largest number of new IDPs in 2008. Some 600,000 people fled their homes due to fighting between the government and rebels [3]. Other countries where large numbers of people were newly displaced in 2008 include, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Columbia, Sri Lanka, and India. Sudan tops the list, with a total of 4.9 million people displaced. Internal displacement affects all regions of the world and is not limited to countries, like Iraq, that remain at war.

To put 26 million internally displaced people in perspective: the figure is more than twice the population of Zimbabwe [4].

On both the global and the national scales, IDPs remain a challenging issue. While massive movements of people within countries fundamentally change their populations, the international community remains unsure about what to do about it. Indeed, the IDMC report states that while 52 countries are affected by internal displacement, only 14 countries have legislation or policies that specifically address the issue.

With new countries affected in 2008, it’s clear that internal displacement will be a persistent problem. In fact, we may even see the number of displaced people increase as countries become more restrictive at their borders and fewer people are able to cross into countries and claim refugee [5] status. John Holmes, the head of the U.N.’s humanitarian operations, elaborated [6]:

The number of internally displaced will rise significantly due to anticipated increases in the intensity and frequency of natural disasters. That is why we need to focus urgently on finding appropriate solutions for IDPs to end their displacement and their dependence on relief assistance."

Now, on the sixth anniversary of the invasion, it seems appropriate to include data from the conflict in Afghanistan as well.

TO BE NOTED: From the NY Times:

"SINCE the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we have compiled charts on the state of the country for the Op-Ed page every three months. Now, on the sixth anniversary of the invasion, it seems appropriate to include data from the conflict in Afghanistan as well.

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Times Topics: Iraq | Afghanistan

As President Obama looks to reduce the number of troops in Iraq — and the Baghdad government has achieved 7 of the 11 “Iraq index” benchmarks we have laid out, which include steps like establishing provincial election laws and enacting pension and amnesty laws — the situation in Afghanistan is increasingly cloudy. Many security indicators are clearly unfavorable, though some economic, educational and health care trends are at least heading in the right direction.

While the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have their own particular dynamics, there is still much to learn from the comparison. The metrics we have chosen to highlight for each conflict expose some of the key differences: Iraq has lots of oil, Afghanistan has lots of opium; the Iraq coalition includes barely any participants besides the United States and Iraq itself, whereas the Afghanistan effort involves some 30,000 non-American NATO troops.

Of course, some statistics that are important in one conflict are of less value in another. In Iraq from 2004 to 2006, levels of violence were extremely high and threatened to tear the country apart, suggesting that civilian fatality rates were the key metric; they may be less crucial (though still important) in Afghanistan. Today, national-level political issues like how to share oil revenue pose the chief threats to Iraqi stability, while more basic problems like security and building roads and schools demand much of policymakers’ attention in Afghanistan.

Iraq had long been a functioning middle-income state before the American-led invasion of 2003, but Afghanistan had been extremely poor and anarchic for decades. This may explain why, overall, Afghans have had more modest expectations about the future than have Iraqis. However, after more than seven years of an American presence, polls suggest that this Afghan patience may be wearing thin.

Jason Campbell is a research analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Michael O’Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro are fellows at Brookings. Amy Unikewicz is a graphic designer in South Norwalk, Conn."

"We wanted technocrats," he went on, "and we were left with the tribes."

Shadid in the Washington Post on Iraq:

Hamid al-Hais is a tribal leader and party boss, part sheik and part showman, in Anbar province. The tribes, he thinks, are kingmakers. (By Anthony Shadid -- The Washington Post)

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SOURCE: | The Washington Post - January 24,

"Iraq Election Highlights Ascendancy of Tribes
In Anbar, Clans Are Coddled, Cultivated

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 25, 2009; A01

RAMADI, Iraq -- In rugged western Iraq, once the bastion of the insurgency against the American occupation and now a freewheeling arena of electoral politics steeped in payola( YEP ), the conversation in the tribal guesthouse in Anbar province was the equivalent of a stump speech.

"If anything happens to any of our candidates, even a scratch on one of their bodies, we will kill all of their candidates!( THAT'S MY KIND OF ELECTION )" bellowed Hamid al-Hais, a tribal leader and party boss whose voice was like his build -- husky, coarse and forceful.

"That's right," shouted another sheik, who had suggested -- in jest, inshallah -- that a friend resolve a dispute by strapping on explosives and blowing himself up.

"Of course!" yelled another, who had accused the governor of urinating on Anbar.

"We'll break all the ballot boxes on their heads!" Hais declared, wagging a finger.

Part sheik and part showman, with a dose of barroom humor, Hais leads a party that has helped make Iraq's provincial elections this month the first truly competitive vote in Sunni Muslim lands since the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003. By all accounts, that is a good thing( I HAVE TO AGREE. YIKES. ). But the results of next Saturday's ballot may say less about the campaigns themselves than about the political geography of Anbar, where tribes, sprawling clans steeped in tradition and courted by the U.S. military, enjoy more power than at any time since the Iraqi monarchy was toppled half a century ago.( I'M OF TWO MINDS ON THIS. TRIBALISM SEEMS A DISASTER, BUT IMPOSSIBLE TO GET RID OF. EVERYWHERE. )

Here, the new Iraq looks like the old one, imbued with politics that might be familiar to Gertrude Bell, the British diplomat and adventurer who drew the country's borders after World War I.

There is a saying heard these days in Anbar: "Everyone claims they have the love of Laila, but Laila loves none of them." In other words, Laila gets to choose. The same might be said of the tribes, whose mantle everyone claims and which often demand a tidy sum for their support. Coddled and cultivated, the tribes are kingmakers.

"The center of power in Anbar," Hais called them as he sat in the guesthouse, decorated with purple, red and yellow plastic flowers, with 25 tribal leaders gathered over a sprawling, artery-clogging dish of chicken, lamb and a slab of fat, mixed with rice.

The Americans might have hoped the tribes had less power, Hais said, in their vision of a modern state built on the rule of law. "But now," he added, "they're stronger."

It is still democracy, the sheik insisted, gruffly.

A soft-spoken doctor, Sabah al-Ani, managing a crowded clinic in Fallujah, shook his head at the assertion. "If you believe in a stone," he said, "you can say it's God."

"We wanted technocrats," he went on, "and we were left with the tribes."

A Perfidy of Politics

Raad al-Alwani, another sheik in the mold of Hais, is one of more than 520 candidates in Anbar who are running on 37 electoral lists, though only a handful have real clout. His posters adorn blast walls, cluttered with the symbols and portraits of his opponents. Promises are few. Politics are often reputation, and a name usually suffices. "You're aware of me,( I SAY THIS ALL THE TIME )" one candidate declares, a bit menacingly.

In such places as Najaf and Karbala, steeped in Shiite Muslim scholarship, the turbaned clerics often speak in abstract metaphor and sometimes impenetrable analogies. When they speak. A grand ayatollah is still remembered for answering almost any question posed to him with one of two phrases: yajuz or la yajuz, possible or not possible.( HE SOUNDS LIKE HE'S BEEN STUDYING THE TALMUD. )

In Anbar, a desert bisected by the Euphrates River that stretches west of Baghdad, such reticence would qualify as effeminate. And Alwani, as he likes to point out, is a man.

To guests, he hands out a leaflet with seven pictures of a bloodied corpse. "This is the fate of anyone who dares attack the house of Sheik Raad Sabah al-Alwani," it reads.

His criticism runs fast and no less furious.

He loathes the Iraqi Islamic Party, an heir of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the most powerful Sunni parties that has controlled the province since elections in 2005. "I wouldn't work with them even if the Euphrates River changed directions and flowed back to Syria." He barely disguises his disgust at his former allies in the Awakening, a tribal gathering sometimes called the Sons of Iraq that helped defeat the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in Sunni regions with U.S. support. Cowards, he said. "And liars, too. How are they not?" The same goes for Harith Dhari, a cleric who once spoke on behalf of the Sunni community but now lives in exile in Jordan. "A barking dog," he said dismissively.( I LIKE THIS GUY. VERY CLEAR. )

That leaves the tribal leaders, he said -- at least the ones he deems honorable. They are men who boast of their sway over the vast networks of clan, patronage and loyalty that the tribes in Iraq represent, and of their history in organizing Iraqi society for centuries and serving as a pillar of the monarchy installed by the British. Members of Albu Fahd, the largest tribe in Anbar, with a leadership determined by sometimes elusive consensus, say they can mobilize 80,000 voters -- and almost as many men with guns.

An exaggeration perhaps -- not uncommon here( YOU THINK ?) -- but not by far.

In the early years of the occupation, Anbar seemed monochromatic in its sentiments. There was an occupation, people often said, and it was the duty of Muslims to resist it. Bordering Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, with a porous frontier, the province soon became the most lethal locale for the U.S. military -- al-Qaeda in Iraq effectively ruled swaths of its flat desert. The revolt by the Awakening that began in 2006, led by tribal leaders such as Hais and Alwani, vanquished al-Qaeda and brought a remarkable, if precarious, calm. In Fallujah, once an insurgent stronghold where the mutilated and charred bodies of contractors were strung from a bridge in 2004, in an indelible image of the war, the popular restaurant Hajji Hussein has reopened, drawing throngs of customers for kebab reputed to be the best in Iraq.

But as Alwani's criticism testifies, postwar Anbar is a complicated landscape of shifting loyalties, often pushed and pulled by American largess that has made tycoons of men such as Alwani, who flaunts two prized falcons at his palatial home worth $4,000 each. Even the Awakening itself is in tatters, nearly all of its original leaders having deserted it.

"People here don't have principles. Their principles are zero," said Alwani, sitting with another tribal sheik, Jassim Swaidawi, a man he described as his dear friend.

Alwani left the room, and Swaidawi acknowledged his own fleeting loyalty.

He planned to vote for someone else. "I haven't told him yet," he admitted.

The perfidy of politics here has made for a scramble as sheiks and the Iraqi Islamic Party try to cobble together a slate of candidates that can claim the greatest breadth of tribal support. The Islamic Party is unpopular but still powerful given its presence in the government, access to the official budget and recourse to patronage that awards jobs in the state and security forces.

Some have recoiled at the ferocity of the competition.

"By God, all these parties are making for us fitna," discord and conflict, said Mishaan al-Jumaila, a tribal leader in Garma, a town near Fallujah that was once so dangerous no one but its residents dared venture there.

Beneath the tumult, residents say, it is clear that the tribes, wherever their loyalties, whatever their divisions, play the decisive role. Of the most powerful groups, only Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni parliament member drawing support from the still-substantial sympathy for Hussein's Baath Party, stands apart. The rest claim the tribes' mantle.

Hais's party, appropriately called the Tribes of Iraq List, offers candidates from 11 clans, among them the powerful Albu Fahd. No less insistent is the Islamic Party, which has staked its future on its own tribal alliances. One list joins a few of its candidates with the remnants of the Awakening, led by Ahmed Abu Risha, whose brother, Abdel-Sittar, led the movement until he was assassinated in September 2007, inaugurating its divisions. Another list claims the support of Amr Abdel-Jabbar, deemed by many as Anbar's preeminent sheik. Its leaders make clear the Islamic Party is the junior partner.

Of the 29 candidates, 15 are tribal figures. The Islamic Party has 12, but they had to agree to let the tribes vet, then choose, their candidates from a pool of 25 nominees.

"As the lead partner," said Abdel-Rahman al-Zubaie, who heads the Tribal Council of Fallujah and is himself a candidate, "we had the right to say the final word."

He shook his head, in a look that comes from stating the obvious.

"Of course," he added.

'I Speak From Bitterness'

In a land of swagger, Ali al-Rahal is modest. Amid the bombast, he is retiring. And in a campaign where money talks, he is penniless, having sold his and his wife's wedding rings to pay for campaign posters.

Rahal is a leader of the Sons of the Two Rivers Movement, a group of secular liberals running under the slogan "Together for Development." Shiites and Kurds sit on their board. So do a Christian and a Jew, one of the handful left in the country. They advocate human rights, transparency, an end to corruption and the rehabilitation of Iraq.

"We consider this real democracy," he said.

And no one seems to be listening. No one really can. The movement has almost no way to get the word out.

One party member sold his car for $4,000. Another donated $1,250. They are considering auctioning off their red and gold furniture, lonely as it is in an office bereft of posters, party literature and the campaign pens tribal candidates pass out.

"We can't even afford these," Rahal said, waving a leaflet the size of a playing card for one of their candidates. "And this is something simple!"

Everyone rails against the corruption in Anbar these days. Complaints run rife against the Islamic Party, accused by detractors of everything from skimming off contracts for tens of millions of dollars to build a hospital, a factory for artificial limbs and a sewage system to trying to bribe journalists with $40 Citizen watches. Sheiks protest, but their outrage seems more indignation that a rival managed to somehow steal more than they did.

To Rahal, though, that corruption speaks to a deeper malaise in postwar Anbar. To bring peace, the Americans chose allies -- tribal leaders such as Hais. To rebuild Anbar, they awarded vast contracts; in a glass case, Alwani framed a certificate of appreciation from the U.S. military that declares him "one of the best contractors the Marines have ever worked with." The result has left Rahal and liberals like him adrift in a landscape stitched together by the tribes, their new wealth and the alliances that ensued.( WE END UP COMPROMISING OUR PRINCIPLES. NECESSARY, BUT DISTASTEFUL. )

It has left him resentful, too. "Saddam Hussein gave the sheiks 5 million dinars each, right before he was overthrown, and they turned around and used the money to buy the Americans lunch. This is true," Rahal said. "You can buy and sell a lot of the sheiks for a glass of Scotch."

"Forgive me if I'm forthright," he added. "I speak from bitterness."

A few days later, Rahal showed up for an appointment at his office, which was now locked. The landlord had kicked the group out for failing to pay the $600-a-month rent. The landlord's assistant said he planned to confiscate the furniture, too. Whispering, Rahal pleaded with him to use the office for just a few minutes, and he reluctantly agreed.

A Coming-of-Age Fight

For a man, just 40, whose name was known to few outside his family in Ramadi before the U.S.-led invasion and Hussein's fall, Hais carries authority well.

In his Toyota Land Cruiser, Anbar's equivalent of a Cadillac, he takes the wheel. "I drive better," he said.

He scoffs at the idea of visiting a mosque and brags of his 2,000 olive trees and show horse named for his oldest son, Adham. He shows off his scars: a partial right finger and two wounds in his right leg, suffered in a clash in 2007 with al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"The Americans told me to be afraid. They said I should fear something, but I swear to God, I've never felt fear," he said. "God doesn't want me to be killed."

Since the American invasion, myths have always seemed to shape the sentiments of Anbar. During the battles for Fallujah in 2004, residents traded stories about birds guided by God casting stones at Apache helicopters and a scented breeze that descended on fighters as they battled U.S. troops. Hais has his own lore, the story of the fight he and other tribal leaders waged against al-Qaeda in what they call a liberation and a revolution.

To him, that struggle was a coming-of-age, his in a province where his generation will wield far more power than their fathers, some of whom fled abroad during the fight.

The older sheiks "are like verbs in the past tense( INTERESTING )," Hais said. "We rely on the tribes to the greatest extent. But not the sheiks of the tribe. The sons of the tribes."

Even he seems surprised, though, by the power he was delivered.

"If you look into my heart, you'll see that I don't think the power of the tribes is a good thing," he said, sitting underneath portraits of fellow sheiks and friends and family killed in the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. "With the fall of Saddam Hussein, we were ready to gaze up at skyscrapers, and all we found was houses destroyed and streets abandoned."

"This is what we got," he said.

For a moment, his rough humor subsided. So did his swagger. And for once, he turned reflective. "If we had a modern state, we wouldn't have to rely on the rule of tribes," he insisted. But until then, "a little bit of evil is better than more."

"A little bit of evil is better," he said again."

He's probably right.

"the rapid rise in use and scale of private security contractors has strained the Department's ability to effectively manage them."

Hardly a surprise. From the Washington Post:

"IG Faults Oversight Of Security Contractors
State Dept. Might Have Violated Rules

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 10, 2009; A10

The State Department may have violated federal regulations( REALLY? ) in turning over management aspects of its multibillion-dollar private security contract in Iraq to other contractors, the department's inspector general concludes in a report released yesterday.

The report, produced by a regional IG office established last year to keep closer watch on expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan, says the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security had been "highly effective in ensuring the safety" of diplomatic personnel in Iraq. There have been no casualties among U.S. diplomatic and civilian officials protected by contractors under the bureau's supervision.( GOOD NEWS )

"However," it says, "the rapid rise in use and scale of private security contractors has strained the Department's ability to effectively manage them." Department efforts, the IG found, were "undermined by frequent staff turnover, understaffing, increased workload, and the lack of standardized operating policies and procedures( REALLY? )."

Contracts require security companies to submit "muster sheets" verifying personnel are present and available for work. But the report says contracting and government security officers did not effectively review the sheets. Although contractors had "recurring difficulties" maintaining their staffs of marksmen, emergency services technicians and interpreters, the department "never invoked the financial deduct penalty clause for this violation( COLLUSION. CRONYISM. )."

The report says contractors had been hired to keep track of government equipment supplied to security contractors in Iraq -- including more than 500 vehicles, 7,500 weapons, $4 million in annual ammunition purchases and "sensitive communications items." The contracting of this "inherently governmental function," it says, was a possible violation of federal acquisition regulations( YES ).

Patrick F. Kennedy, undersecretary for management at the State Department, said, "The department takes any review seriously, but always looks at the context in which operations are taking place." Officials emphasized the report's conclusion that diplomatic personnel had been effectively protected.( ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS. GOOD ARGUMENT. )

The report does not address the specific performance of any of the three security firms State employs in Iraq -- Blackwater Worldwide, Triple Canopy and DynCorp International, which in turn have a total of 1,290 security workers there. Blackwater, with 968 employees in Iraq as of September, is by far the largest and handles diplomatic security in the capital and much of the central part of the country.

There is no mention of the indictment last month of six Blackwater guards in a 2007 shooting incident in Baghdad that left at least 14 Iraqi civilians dead. The incident led Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to change procedures for guarding diplomatic convoys and to calls to cancel Blackwater's contract when it is due for review this spring. An umbrella Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract covers the State Department's relationship with the three companies, each of which is capped at $1.2 billion in payments over a five-year period, with annual reviews, for services in Iraq and elsewhere. The current contract was first signed in 2005.

The IG found that neither the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad nor the Bureau of Diplomatic Security had reviewed( UNREAL ) how many security contractors were needed or where they should be deployed since the embassy opened in June 2004 -- a period of rapid security change, for better and for worse, in Iraq. Last August in Kirkuk, for example, investigators found 14 guards assigned to protect one Foreign Service officer. In the embassy's Basra regional office, 113 security contractors were assigned to guard personnel who had left their fortified military base only five times since January. At Tallil Air Base, north of Basra, "there were no security protection movements for more than six consecutive months despite the 30 to 53 security specialists stationed there," the report says.( GOOD WORK )

Officials interviewed by inspectors "explained the high operational tempo( HOW ABOUT MORE RESOURCES FOR THIS. IT MIGHT ACTUALLY HELP SAVE MONEY ) in Iraq limited their ability to make an in-depth assessment of security requirements and determine whether the current configuration of security assets still made sense."

All of these services should have been done by our servicemen, who, frankly, deserve the private contractor's pay.

"Barack Obama is unlikely to want to spend precious capital pursuing his predecessor for war crimes"

From the Guardian:

"Jonathan Freedland

• 
  
• The Guardian, Wednesday 24 December 2008
• Article history

'Tis the night before Christmas and the season of goodwill. The mood is forgiving. Our faces warm with mulled wine, our tummies full, we're meant to slump in the armchair, look back on the year just gone and count our blessings - woozily agreeing to put our troubles behind us.

As in families, so in the realm of public and international affairs. And this December that feels especially true. The "war on terror" that dominated much of the decade seems to be heading towards a kind of conclusion. George Bush will leave office in a matter of weeks and British troops will leave Iraq a few months later. The first, defining phase of the conflict that began on 9/11 - the war of Bush, Tony Blair( AND I LIKE BLAIR ) and Osama bin Laden - is about to slip from the present to the past tense. Bush and Blair will be gone, with only Bin Laden still in post. The urge to move on is palpable( IT'S EFFECTING THIS FINANCIAL CRISIS ).

You can sense it in the valedictory interviews Bush and Dick Cheney are conducting on their way out. They're looking to the verdict of history now, Cheney telling the Washington Times last week: "I myself am personally persuaded that this president and this administration will look very good 20 or 30 years down the road.( DELUSIONAL )" The once raging arguments of the current era are about to fade, the lead US protagonists heading off to their respective ranches in the west, the rights and wrongs of their decisions in office to be weighed not in the hot arena of politics, but in the cool seminar rooms of the academy.

Not so fast.

Yes, the new year would get off to a more soothing start if we could all agree to draw a line and move on. But it would be wrong( I AGREE ). First, because we cannot hope to avoid repeating the errors of the last eight years unless they are subject to a full accounting( TRUE ). (It is for that reason Britain needs its own full, unconstrained inquiry into the Iraq war.) Second, because a crucial principle, one that goes to the very heart of the American creed, is at stake. And third, because this is not solely about the judgment of history. It may be about the judgment of the courts - specifically those charged with punishing war crimes( I AGREE ).

Less than a fortnight ago, in the news graveyard of a Friday afternoon, the armed services committee of the US Senate released a bipartisan report - with none other than John McCain as its co-author - into the American use of torture against those held in the war on terror. It dismissed entirely the notion that the horrors of Abu Ghraib could be put down to "a few bad apples". Instead it laid bare, in forensic detail, the trail of memos and instructions that led directly to the then defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld( DISASTER ).

The report was the fruit of 18 months of work, involving some 70 interviews. Most of it is classified, but even the 29-page published summary makes horrifying reading. It shows how the most senior figures in the Bush administration discussed, and sought legal fig leaves for, practices that plainly amounted to torture( THAT ARE TORTURE ). They were techniques devised in a training programme known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape or SERE, that aimed to teach elite American soldiers how to endure torture should they fall into the hands of pitiless enemies. The SERE techniques were partly modelled on the brutal methods used by the Chinese against US prisoners during the Korean war. Yet Rumsfeld ruled that these same techniques should be "reverse engineered", so that Americans would learn not how to endure them - but how to inflict them. Which they then did, at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and beyond.

The Senate report cites the memorandums requesting permission to use "stress positions, exploitation of detainee fears (such as fear of dogs), removal of clothing, hooding, deprivation of light and sound, and the so-called wet towel treatment or the waterboard". We read of Mohamed al Kahtani - against whom all charges were dropped earlier this year - who was "deprived of adequate sleep for weeks on end, stripped naked, subjected to loud music, and made to wear a leash and perform dog tricks". Approval for this kind of torture, hidden under the euphemism of "enhanced interrogation", was sought from and granted at the highest level( UNREAL. THE US ).

And that doesn't mean Rumsfeld. The report's first conclusion is that, on "7 February 2002, President George W Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al-Qaida or Taliban detainees". The result, it says, is that Bush "opened the door" to the use of a raft of techniques that the US had once branded barbaric and beyond the realm of human decency( I AGREE ).

For this Bush should surely be held to account( I AGREE ). And yet there is no sign that he will, and precious little agitation that he should. A still smiling Cheney denies the Bush administration did anything wrong. Note this breathtaking exchange with Fox News at the weekend. He was asked: "If the president during war decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?" Cheney's answer: "General proposition, I'd say yes."

It takes a few seconds for the full horror of that remark to sink in. And then you remember where you last heard something like it. It was the now immortalised interview between David Frost and Richard Nixon. The disgraced ex-president was asked whether there were certain situations where the president can do something illegal, if he deems it in the national interest. Nixon's reply: "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal( NIXON WAS LINCOLN COMPARED TO BUSH AND CHENEY )."

It is no coincidence that Cheney began his career in the Nixon White House. He has the same Nixonian disregard for the US constitution, the same belief that executive power is absolute and unlimited - that those who wield it are above the law, domestic and international. It is the logic of dictatorship.

But Nixon was forced from office, his vision of an unrestrained presidency rejected. If Bush and Cheney are allowed to retire quietly, America will have failed to reassert that bedrock principle of the republic: the rule of law( I AGREE ).

This is why there must be a reckoning. Bush will do all he can to avoid it: and it is wholly possible that one of his last acts as president will be to cover himself, his vice-president and all his henchmen with a blanket pardon. Even if that does not happen, Barack Obama is unlikely to want to spend precious capital pursuing his predecessor for war crimes( SAD ).

But other prosecutors elsewhere in the world should weigh their responsibilities( GO FOR IT ). In the end, it was a lone Spanish magistrate, not a Chilean court, who ensured the arrest of Augusto Pinochet. A pleasing, if uncharitable, thought this Christmas, is that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush will hesitate before making plans to travel abroad in 2009. Or indeed at any time - ever again."

I agree. They should at least be shunned.

"I say, Never AGain."

Juan Cole with an important post on Informed Comment:

"Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008

1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:

' At least 4.2 million Iraqis were displaced. These included 2.2 million who were displaced within Iraq and some 2 million refugees, mostly in Syria (around 1.4 million) and Jordan (around half a million). In the last months of the year both these neighbouring states, struggling to meet the health, education and other needs of the Iraqi refugees already present, introduced visa requirements that impeded the entry of Iraqis seeking refuge. Within Iraq, most governorates barred entry to Iraqis fleeing sectarian violence elsewhere.'

2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.

3. Iraqis are materially better off because of Bush's war. In fact, A million Iraqis are "food insecure" and another 6 million need UN food rations to survive. Oxfam estimated in summer, 2007, that 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished.

4. The Bush administration scored a major victory with its Status of Forces Agreement. In fact, The Iraqis forced on Bush an agreement that the US would withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, 2009,and would completely withdraw from the Country by the end of 2011. The Bush administration had wanted 58 long-term bases, and the authority to arrest Iraqis at will and to launch military operations unilaterally.

5. Minorities in Iraq are safer since Bush's invasion. In fact, there have in 2008 been significant attacks on and displacement of Iraqi Christians from Mosul. In early January of 2008, guerrillas bombed churches in Mosul, wounding a number of persons. More recently, some 13,000 Christians have had to flee Mosul because of violence.

6. The sole explanation for the fall in the monthly death rate for Iraqi civilians was the troop excalation or surge of 30,000 extra US troops in 2007. In fact, troop levels had been that high before without major effect. The US military did good counter-insurgency in 2007. The major reason for the fall in the death toll, however, was that the Shiites won the war for Baghdad, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital, and turning it into a city with a Shiite majority of 75 to 80 percent. (When Bush invaded, Baghdad was about 50/50 Sunni and Shiite). The high death tolls in 2006 and 2007 were a by-product of this massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, a Shiite militiaman in Baghdad would have to drive for a while to find a Sunni Arab to kill.

7. John McCain alleged that if the US left Iraq, it would be promptly taken over by al-Qaeda. In fact, there are few followers of Usamah Bin Laden in Iraq. The fundamentalist extremists, if that is what McCain meant, are not supported by most Sunni Arabs. They are supported by no Shiites (60% of Iraq) or Kurds (20% of Iraq), and are hated by Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, who would never allow such a takeover.

8. The Iraq War made the world safer from terrorism. In fact, Iraq has become a major training ground for extremists and is implicated in the major bombings in Madrid, London, and Glasgow.

9. Bush went to war in Iraq because he was given bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. In fact, the State Department's Intelligence & Research (I & R) division cast doubt on the alarmist WMD stories that Bush/Cheney put about. The CIA refused to sign off on the inclusion of the Niger uranium lie in the State of the Union address, which made Bush source it to the British MI6 instead. The Downing Street Memo revealed that Bush fixed the intelligence around the policy. Bush sought to get up a provocation such as a false flag attack on UN planes so as to blame it on Iraq. And UN weapons inspectors in Feb.-Mar. of 2003 examined 100 of 600 suspected weapons sites and found nothing; Bush's response was to pull them out and go to war.

10. Douglas Feith and other Neoconservatives didn't really want a war with Iraq (!). Yeah, that was why they demanded war on Iraq with their 1996 white paper for Bibi Netanyahu and again in their 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to Clinton, where they explicitly called for military action. The Neoconservatives are notorious liars and by the time they get through with rewriting history, they will be a combination of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and the Iraq War will be Bill Clinton's fault. The only thing is, I think people are wise to them by now. Being a liar can actually get you somewhere. Being a notorious liar is a disadvantage if what you want to is get people to listen to you and act on your advice. I say, Never AGain."

So do I.

"The British government is doubling the maximum cash payment it gives to severely wounded soldiers after criticism "

How about another good news story. Mary Jordan in the Washington Post:

"LONDON, Dec. 15 -- The British government is doubling the maximum cash payment it gives to severely wounded soldiers after criticism that amputees and other veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars were not suitably compensated.( JOB WELL DONE )

The Defense Ministry announced Monday that the current limit of 285,000 British pounds, or $428,000 at current exchange rates, would be raised to 570,000 pounds, or $855,000.

The increase will apply retroactively( GREAT ) with the government dividing $15 million among 2,700 wounded soldiers who recently received lump sum payments.

In the U.S. military, injured service members with a "disability rating" of 30 percent or less qualify for a lump-sum severance payment. An Army specialist with three years of service could receive as much as $24,000 after a combat injury; a sergeant first class with 19 years of service would get as much as $129,000, according to Samuel Rutherford, director of officer and enlisted personnel management at the Pentagon.( THIS ISN'T ENOUGH )

Rutherford said that troops with higher levels of disability do not receive a lump sum but are paid a monthly annuity that in some cases can be as much as their base pay at retirement, plus complete medical coverage.

The British government has been under pressure by military families and advocates to compensate the growing number of war wounded. Media campaigns have also drawn attention to the disparity between the large sums awarded in personal-injury cases involving civilians and the amounts paid to wounded soldiers.( GOOD POINT )

"Justice for our Injured Heroes," blared Monday's front-page headline in the Daily Mail. The tabloid had noted that a civilian servicewoman who damaged her hand in the office had received $725,000 in a civil case, while paratrooper Ben Parkinson, 24, who lost both of his legs, the use of one arm, his ability to speak, and much of his memory in a mine explosion in Afghanistan, had been offered $228,000 under the military compensation program.

Parkinson's payment will now double. The new Armed Forces Compensation Scheme will increase soldier's payments from 10 percent to 100 percent depending on the severity of injury, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. The most injured soldiers, in addition to receiving a lump sum payment, will also be entitled to lifetime monthly payments. That would mean that a severely wounded young soldier could receive more than $1.5 million over the course of his life, the statement said.

Britain's undersecretary of state for defense, Kevan Jones, said the armed force personnel "deserve the very best support," and that the new compensation package "will be a great boost to our injured personnel and their families."

Chris Simpkins, director general of the Royal British Legion, said the new program "is particularly good news coming just before Christmas."( VERY NICE INDEED )

"These pretty much state that everything in Iraq belongs to the government of Iraq "

I don't post a lot about Iraq, because I don't have a lot of faith in most sources, but I like the take of 124 Monkeys. Here's Sean DeCoursey:

"Today Iraq’s 37 member cabinet approved the proposed SOFA between the U.S. and Iraq by a 27-1 margin. Nine cabinet members were not present for the vote. Right now it looks like the deal will pass the Iraqi Parliament in its current form. So what exactly changes when the new agreement goes into effect on January 1st? After the jump I’ve listed the sections of the agreement that most jumped out at me as being significant changes and what they mean for the U.S. Italicized sections are directly copied from the SOFA. Two sentence summary at the very end."

Read the whole post. Here's the conclusion:

"Article Twenty Five

2. U.S. combat forces will withdraw from all cities, towns, and villages as soon as the Iraqi forces take over the full security responsibility in them. The U.S. withdrawal from these areas shall take place no later than June 30th , 2009

This is the biggie in the timed withdrawal section. I really don’t know what form U.S. operations would take after June 30. Are foot patrols still OK? Only if in conjunction with IPs? Will American troops be reduced to a giant quick reaction force (QRF)? However it turns out, expect a sizable drawdown of troop numbers either around this date or as soon after as it has become verified that this change is not immediately plunging the country into a lower circle of hell. President-elect Obama has said he wants to put more troops in Afghanistan. They have to come from somewhere, and this seems like a good place. The most likely form such a troop shift would take is units that are scheduled for Iraq in the coming months would be re-routed to Afghanistan and units coming home from Iraq simply wouldn’t be replaced.

In Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation series, there’s a part where they boil down all the diplomatic and legalistic talk from a bunch of mealy-mouthed diplomats into simple coherent statements. Apply that method to this SOFA and you get the following statement:

We’re Iraqi and we actually own and run our own country. Also, tell the American soldiers to quit being dicks.

Iraq got most of what it wanted in this deal. The neo-cons got absolutely nothing they wanted in it. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a win for everybody."

"in Baghdad, home prices have nearly doubled since last year. "

Freakonomics on the Iraqi housing boom:

"So who buys a luxury home in northern Iraq? Government officials, oil executives, wealthy Kurds from abroad. But the homes are selling slowly, and only time will tell whether the subdivisions of Erbil can avoid the fate of this Seattle subdivision, which the American housing crisis has turned into a ghost town."

Here's my comment:

I live in Tacoma, and I don’t even know where this place Stevenson is.

Anyway, I think that this is like the Bay Area where housing prices are down in S.F. and the hub area, but in outlying areas like the far suburbs and Central Valley, they’re way, way down.

So, I suppose, it depends on where Erbil fits into this map. Is it a hub, or an outlying area? Baghdad prices might remain pretty high even after a downturn.

— Posted by Don the libertarian Democrat

Some Good News From Iraq

This is at least some good news today:

"BAGHDAD — Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another.

“They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.”

The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital. The American surge strategy, which increased the number of United States troops and contributed to stability here, is drawing to a close. And a transition is under way to the almost inevitable American drawdown in 2009."

God I hope this is the beginning of a continuing trend.