Saddam Hussein's execution by U.S. military occupation forces in Iraq again shows in sharpest light the nature of the criminal occupation. The execution of the legal president of Iraq was a brutal colonial outrage intended to insult Iraqi national sovereignty. It was orchestrated so as to enflame sectarian and religious hatred among Iraqis.

The unofficial cell-phone video circulating on the internet shows that the atmosphere was truly that of a lynching. It was a chaotic scene with insults, abuse, heckling catcalls and ridicule while Saddam Hussein remained defiant and calm.

As outrage has grown in Iraq and internationally at the execution, its timing and the manner in which it was carried out, the U.S. corporate media has gone to exaggerated lengths to describe the execution as an Iraqi affair, a decision of the Iraqi High Tribunal, a body over which the U.S. occupation forces supposedly had little control or influence.

The Iraqi High Tribunal is a creation of the U.S. occupation forces. Its creation was a desperate effort to justify the illegal and criminal invasion. From the beginning the tribunal was a totally illegal court-expressly prohibited by international law. Under the Geneva Convention, which the U.S. government signed, an occupying power is explicitly prohibited from changing the judicial structure or establishing new courts.

L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003, established the tribunal. U.S. occupation authorities appointed all judges and personnel, and the U.S. Congress established a $128 million fund to pay the court's expenses. U.S. advisers drafted the laws of the court.

During the U.S.-staged trial, three defense lawyers were assassinated. The Iraqi High Tribunal used coerced witnesses, heavy censorship, isolated the defendants and denied them all visitation and legal rights. Even the court announcement of the death sentence was timed to the weekend before the U.S. midterm elections last November.
Washington controlled trial, execution

Right up to the execution, Saddam Hussein was at all times in the hands of the U.S. military. He was captured by U.S. forces and held at the U.S. base Camp Cropper. For his execution, he was taken by U.S. helicopter, under U.S. guard, to Camp Victory, another U.S. base. U.S. forces transported the Iraqi executioners and the collaborators who were to serve as witnesses.

The U.S. officials chose executioners and collaborators who were identified as being of Shiite heritage apparently to throw the blame on all Shiites in Iraq for Saddam Hussein's execution. Remember it is the U.S. occupation forces who decided who can run for office and how the Iraqi government is structured. They protect the thin layer of puppets and collaborators within the Green Zone.

A statement from the former ruling Baath Party after the sentencing last November noted that "the theatrics that have been called a trial are nothing but [U.S.] America's way of putting the onus of the crime of executing Saddam Hussein on the stooge government."

The timing of the execution on the Eid al-Adha, one of the most sacred holidays of the Muslim year, added further offense and outrage to the act. This holiday is traditionally a time of peace, of putting aside quarrels and anger-at least for the duration of the holiday. It follows the time when millions of Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca. It is religiously unacceptable and explicitly illegal, even under the U.S.-created constitution written for Iraq, to execute someone during this time.

The execution was an act of desperation and weakness at a time when the U.S. occupation has collapsed and the resistance is gaining strength. Rather than follow the proposals of negotiations put forth by the Iraq Study Group and other imperialist strategists who fear impending disaster for the U.S. in Iraq, Bush has signaled with the execution of Saddam Hussein a decision to escalate the war.

It is also suspicious that an "unofficial video" was released showing alleged Mahdi Army members taunting Hussein. Hussein's assassination follows news that the U.S. has stepped-up attacks and arrests of members of the Mahdi Army, led by Moqtada al-Sadr. This offensive too is part of a desperate attempt to further divide the country and cut off any avenues of negotiation or phased withdrawal for the U.S. forces.

According to sources who monitor Iraqi resistance web sites, these have contained messages warning resistance fighters that the U.S. occupiers are trying to provoke battles between the resistance and the Mahdi Army. These messages urge fighters to make the main target the U.S. occupation forces, and where possible to convince Mahdi Army militia forces to join the resistance against the U.S.

The execution had nothing to do with the alleged crimes of the Iraqi president nor can the trial be seen as a historic judgment of Saddam Hussein's role in Iraq. It is seen in Iraq and around the world as the act of a conquering power, intended for humiliation of a nation occupied against the will of the vast majority of the population.
U.S. supports many dictators

The war was never about bringing democracy to Iraq. This has always been a war about oil and U.S. corporate domination of the entire region. U.S. imperialism has never opposed dictators. It has installed, supported and armed dictatorships when it suited the interests of corporate profits. From their support and arming of dictatorships in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait today to the Shah of Iran, Mubutu in the Congo, Suharto in Indonesia, Pinochet in Chile, the U.S. government has supported some of the most brutal regimes in history, when it served Wall Street's interests.

In the 1980s Washington was ready to collaborate with the Saddam Hussein government when it wanted to use the Iraqis against the Iranian Revolution with the Iraq-Iran war. It was the old "divide and conquer" tactic, and Henry Kissinger even wrote about wanting to weaken both sides by having Iran and Iraq fight each other.

Saddam Hussein was not executed because the U.S. occupation forces considered him a dictator. Although he had in the past been willing to make deals and to maneuver with imperialism, Washington saw his real crime as his refusal to hand over sovereignty or the control of the rich resources of Iraq. He refused to bow down to the New World Order. He was executed because he stood in the way of U.S. imperialist reconquest of the Middle East.

Corporate power in the U.S. was determined to turn back the control of the nationalized oil gained through the 1958 revolution in Iraq. This nationalization had transformed Iraq into a prosperous, rapidly developing country with the highest living standard in the region-a modern, secular country with free education and free health care.

The U.S. ruling class as a whole, the entire political establishment, the corporate media and both houses of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, supported the 1991 bombing and massive destruction of Iraqi cities, industries and educational institutions. They also supported the 2003 bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq.
U.S. war crimes

U.S. imperialism has committed numerous war crimes in its effort to subjugate Iraq. Its Pentagon has used bunker busters, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, napalm and radioactive depleted uranium weapons on the cities of Iraq. Thirteen years of U.S.-imposed starvation sanctions resulted in 1.5 million Iraqi deaths from malnutrition and disease.

Since the 2003 invasion, U.S. occupation forces have carried out massive round-ups, systematic torture and humiliation of defenseless prisoners that the whole world knows about through photos from Abu Ghraib. The U.S. occupation has created a chaos that has shut the schools and universities and hospitals, left even the capital, Baghdad, without potable water, sanitation or more than four hours of electricity a day.

Wholesale corruption by tens of thousands of U.S. contractors has resulted in the looting of reconstruction projects and the theft of tens of thousands of cultural artifacts. Almost four years of occupation have resulted in over 600,000 Iraqi deaths and the flight of 2 million Iraqis from the country.

Whatever criticisms of and charges Iraqis have against Saddam Hussein, it was their sovereign right to decide his fate, free of outside occupation forces. The independent Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies recently polled Iraqis on whether they were better off under Saddam Hussein's government compared to the chaos and humiliation of today. Almost 90 percent declared that Iraq's situation was better and more stable before U.S. occupation.

The movement that stands against the imperialist war in Iraq and demands that all U.S. troops be brought home needs to also raise its voice against all forms of the colonial occupation. U.S. corporate contracts and laws that have privatized and looted Iraqi resources must be canceled. Hundreds of U.S. bases, thousands of U.S. checkpoints and scores of secret prisons must be closed. The illegal courts must be disbanded.

Finally, it is essential that this movement demand that U.S government and military officials be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for their actions in Iraq.

Sara Flounders is a co-director of the International Action Center, which organized protest demonstrations on Dec. 30 against the execution of Saddam Hussein.
Articles copyright © 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Thirty-two years later, as much of the world celebrated religious and cultural holidays, and prepared to greet the new year 2007, its newspapers and electronic media outlets depicted photographs and video of the hanging of former Iraq Dictator Saddam Hussein. The 21st Century and the freedom-loving US government approved a good old style 1800's hanging in Iraq. Hussein, guilty of mass murder, swinging from a rope in a stairwell somewhere in Baghdad. In 1975, Ford and Kissinger gave a green light to Indonesia's invasion of East Timor which left some 200,000 dead.

As an aside, perhaps Americans should be reminded of its history with hangings and what's likely to come from 21st Century military tribunals. According to Wikipedia, "the largest single execution in United States history was the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota people convicted of murder and rape in the Sioux Uprising. They were executed simultaneously on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. A single blow from an axe cut the rope that held the large four-sided platform, and the prisoners (except for one whose rope had broken, and who consequently had to be restrung) fell to their deaths.[7] The second largest mass execution in United States history was also a hanging: the execution of 13 African American soldiers for their parts in the Houston Riot. Notably, both incidents involved ethnic minority defendants, and military tribunal judgments in time of war."

Appetite for Destruction

The two images from the Vietnam War and the photo's and video of the hanging of Hussein capture in vivid detail the end results of strategies and tactics designed and executed by incompetent American leaders. Failure is everywhere in the stills and video. Failure to manage risk, failure to anticipate, failure to understand, failure to have compassion for human life, failure to accept change, failure to realize that perception is often not reality. Title, rank or advanced degree have never been a barrier to poor decision making or the maniacal drive for power to ensure a lasting place in world history. On what basis can one make such an outrageous claim?

What's the record of the US leaders since 1975? Some of the highlights include: Vietnam War; Cold War (post Cold War mis-management); Iranian Revolution/Hostage Crisis; Iran/Contra; HIV/AIDS (1980's); Grenada War; War on Drugs; Panama War; Iraq War I; Iraq War II; Afghanistan War I; Somalia I (think Blackhawk Down); Yugoslavia/Bosnia War; Ethiopia vs Somalia War (US now backing Ethiopia); War on Terror; Israel vs Lebanon/Hezbollah (US backing Israel); Lebanon Stability Operation (200 plus US Marines needlessly sacrificed); botched presidential election of 2000 decided by US Supreme Court; 911 attack on New York City, New York and Arlington, Virginia; military tribunals,; income disparity (US middle class disappearing); tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; health care cost increases; record foreclosures and bankruptcies in 2006; 2007 recession looming; sanctioned domestic electronic surveillance, refusal to honor international treaties, nuclear proliferation (Egypt and Saudi Arabia will now build nuclear reactors); global warming; over 3,000 Americans dead and many more thousands maimed in Iraq II and Afghanistan I; military families on food stamps; unprecedented national debt, unreliable infrastructure (electrical grids, for example); 911 Commission and Iraq Study Group; and now trial balloons being floated for a return to military conscription.

But the nail in the coffin, so to speak, is that "The Vote" does not matter one bit. The 2006 mid-term elections in the USA sent a clear signal to US leaders that the time had come to get out of Iraq. And yet as the new year enters, Democrats and Republicans, CEO's and Generals are united in their support for a troop "surge" in Iraq. Those in charge in America are creating the conditions which lead to open revolt. When votes do not matter, when draconian laws and regulations weigh on people, when employment is uncertain, and there is no longer any outlet for expression, frustration and anger set in. That leads to violence.

Operation Roadrunner

And what do the folks in charge offer as solutions? Catch phrases and information manipulation. Over at the Pentagon the thinking on Iraq II is something like this: go long, go short, maintain, get out, go left, go right, go, go down. Is this what $1 trillion a year buys. Meanwhile, the President, with his staff in tow, tells the American people. "...My heart breaks everyday for our dead soldiers and their families. Next question...Go shopping." Are you kidding?

What;s next!? Cartoon character Wylie Coyote briefs the Joint Chiefs, President Bush and incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Speaking on guarantee of anonymity, a source who was at the briefing said that, "Mr Coyote provided some keen insights that are applicable to the Global War on Terror, The War on Terror, The Long War, The Asymmetrical War, The Irregular War, The Calling of Our Time War. The President and Joint Chiefs were receptive. The Pentagon feels that if Mr. Coyote had the space, sea and land assets that we now have, he would have caught that Roadrunner whom we see as an example of your basic modern day Al Qaeda/Anti-American terrorist. Mr. Coyote was far ahead of his time in the use of technology from defense contractor ACME and his understanding and application of psychological operations techniques. We appreciate his timely advice."

The world waits in horror for a congressionally mandated commission co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton and Former President George Bush II to study every commission created from 2001 to 2008. Why not Homer Simpson and Sponge-Bob Squarepants?

What more can be said about the down right crappy leadership that the American public and the world have endured for a little over three decades. Clinton promised "A Bridge to the 21st Century." That bridge needs to be demolished and a new one built. Unfortunately it is going to fall to the next three generations to fix it, if they can. It's time to listen to the words of Malcolm X, speaking at Oxford Union, UK in 1964.

"I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare ,who wrote something that moved me. He put the words into a character named Hamlet who said, 'To be or not to be'. He had a doubt about something. 'To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.' Compromise. 'Or to take up arms against a a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.' And I go for that. If you take up arms you'll end it. But if you sit around waiting for the ones in power to change things you'll be waiting a long time. In my opinion young people today, whites, blacks, browns whatever else there is, must realize that they live in a time of revolution, a time of change. Those in power have abused it and there has got to be change. A better world needs to be built and the only way it is going to get built is by extreme methods. I will stand with anyone, I don't care what color you are, as long as you want to change the miserable condition that exists on this earth."

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political and national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

If press reports are correct -- that George W. Bush will approve a troop "surge" in Iraq of 17,000 to 20,000 soldiers -- the follow-up question must be whether the escalation will do anything but get more Americans and Iraqis killed while only forestalling the defeat of Bush's war policy.

Even top advocates for the "surge," such as retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and neoconservative activist Frederick W. Kagan, have argued that U.S. troop levels must be increased by at least 30,000 for 18 months or more to bring security to Baghdad, what they call a "precondition" for any successful outcome.

"Any other option is likely to fail," Keane and Kagan wrote in an op-ed article in the Washington Post on Dec. 27, 2006.

So, the more modest escalation of up to 20,000 soldiers would appear to represent what might be called "Operation: Save Bush's Legacy," with the goal of postponing the inevitable until 2009 when American defeat can be palmed off on a new President.

Right now, Bush seems caught between his determination to stave off admission of failure and the shortage of U.S. troops available to throw into the conflict in Iraq. Just to reach a 20,000-troop increase, Bush would have to delay the scheduled departure of two Marine regiments now deployed in Anbar Province.

The escalation to 160,000 troops, from the current 140,000, also would be hard to maintain for long, since the Pentagon has warned that existing troop levels in Iraq already are straining the U.S. military and forcing repeated tours for soldiers and Marines.

Yet all the signs point to Bush going in that direction. Over the past few weeks, he even appears to be orchestrating a slow-motion purge of senior military leaders who oppose the "surge" and instead favor a phased withdrawal.

First, Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Nov. 8, just two days after Rumsfeld sent Bush a memo suggesting a "major adjustment" in Iraq War policy that would include "an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases" from 55 to five by July 2007 with remaining U.S. forces only committed to Iraqi areas that request them.

"Unless they [the local Iraqi governments] cooperate fully, U.S. forces would leave their province," Rumsfeld wrote in his Nov. 6 memo.

Proposing an option similar to a plan enunciated by Democratic Rep. John Murtha, Rumsfeld suggested that the commanders "withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions -- cities, patrolling, etc. -- and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance."

And in what could be read as an implicit criticism of Bush's lofty rhetoric about transforming Iraq and the Middle East, Rumsfeld said the administration should "recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) -- go minimalist."

Though many Americans viewed Rumsfeld as the personification of Bush's "tough-guy" strategy in the Middle East, the Defense Secretary's downfall may have been caused by his going wobbly on the war.

Mistaken judgment

Washington insiders also may have been wrong when they interpreted Bush's selection of former CIA Director Robert Gates as a concession to the "realists" advocating a disengagement from Iraq. It may actually have been the opposite -- the replacement of a disillusioned Rumsfeld with a dutiful Gates.

The "conventional wisdom" was misguided, too, when it assumed that Bush would interpret the Democratic victory on Nov. 7 as a sign to begin winding down the Iraq War. Instead, Bush signaled his disdain for anyone suggesting a troop withdrawal.

In Amman, Jordan, on Nov. 30, Bush mocked the expected recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by longtime Bush Family adviser James Baker who considered a troop drawdown combined with a revived Israeli-Palestinian peace process and direct talks with Iran and Syria as the only realistic course.

But Bush declared that U.S. forces would "stay in Iraq to get the job done," adding "this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."

When the Iraq Study Group issued its formal report on Dec. 6, Bush gave it a cool reception and indicated it would be only one of several reports on Iraq that he would consider. Bush said he wanted Gates to undertake a review with the U.S. generals.

During a classified briefing at the Pentagon in December, Bush then reportedly made clear to the brass that he had no interest in finding a way out of Iraq. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, described Bush's message as: "What I want to hear from you is how we're going to win, not how we're going to leave."

Soon, there was a drumbeat from White House allies and from neoconservative circles for a military escalation, not a gradual withdrawal. That suggestion, however, was countered by a Pentagon leak revealing that the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed an escalation because they doubted it could achieve any lasting strategic objective.

Bush, who has always insisted that he listens to his generals on military matters such as troop levels, reacted to their resistance to the "surge" with a purge.

The first to be pushed to the door was Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East who suddenly announced that he was accelerating his retirement which would take effect in March. Abizaid, who speaks fluent Arabic, was criticized by some in Washington for being too concerned about Arab sensibilities.

Getting the bum's rush with Abizaid will be Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq who had called the idea of a troop escalation unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. The New York Times reported that Casey would be replaced in February or March, several months ahead of schedule.

"As Baghdad spun further out of control [in 2006], some of the President's advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory," the Times reported.

By ousting "surge" opponents -- from Rumsfeld at the Pentagon to the top commanders in the Middle East -- Bush and his neoconservative aides in Washington appear to be taking personal control of the Iraq War strategy.

The President seems determined to put in place a military hierarchy that will fall in line with his edicts, rather than disagree with him.

The Iran Gamble

But less clear is whether Bush will stop at a 20,000-troop escalation in Iraq or whether he will "double-down" his Middle East bet further by expanding the war beyond Iraq's borders to confront other U.S. adversaries in Syria and Iran.

Along with Israeli leaders, Bush has declared that Iranian progress on a possible nuclear bomb is unacceptable. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has even called the prospect an "existential threat" to Israel.

But Bush and Olmert are facing a ticking clock if they want to act before they lose one of their few remaining international allies. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has agreed to resign from his post sometime in the spring.

So, with Bush purging his regional military commanders by March -- and presumably replacing them with more pliable generals -- the next few months could prove to be crucial for the future of the Middle East.

Though Bush may yet back away from the idea of expanding the war beyond Iraq, his apparent decision to escalate U.S. troop levels there suggests that he will do whatever he can -- even if it bloats the death toll -- to escape the opprobrium of having committed perhaps the greatest strategic blunder by any President in U.S. history.

With 3,000 American soldiers already dead along with possibly a half million or more Iraqis, Bush is determined to escalate the war in the Middle East into a pitched battle for his presidential legacy.

"The consequences of failure are chaos and disaster. And these people ... want to destroy the United States of America," McCain said.

His remarks came as Bush prepares to announce a shakeup of US Iraq policy, which reportedly could include sending tens of thousands of additional troops to supplement 140,000-strong US force already there.

But a troop surge has found little support in Congress, with McCain one of only very few voices speaking up in favor of such a policy.

McCain takes over this week as the top Republican in the Democrat-led Senate Armed Services Committee. The Democrats took control of the Senate and House of Representatives Thursday following their November elections triumph.

McCain said he believes US soldiers there are equally committed to the goal of fighting on in Iraq.

"I just recently visited them, including some who have been involuntarily extended," said McCain. "The morale is good. They understand what the mission is and they know what they need to do."

"I am convinced that if we leave and lose this conflict, the conflict will spread in the region, there will be chaos, and we will be sending in men and women into harm's way both in the region and other parts of the world," the former Navy pilot and former Vietnam prisoner of war told MSNBC.

"I've said for more than three years, it's long, hard, tough," McCain said.

"It's going to be very, very difficult. And we have to understand that. But we also have understand the sequences of failure."

Source: Agence France-Presse

This group - which includes William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard magazine, and Frederick W. Kagan, a military analyst at a prominent think tank, the American Enterprise Institute - was expressing concerns about the administration's blueprint for Iraq even before the invasion almost four years ago.

In their view, not enough troops were being set aside to stabilize the country. They also worried that the Pentagon had formulated a plan that concentrated too heavily on killing insurgents rather than securing law and order for Iraqi citizens.

These neoconservative thinkers have long advocated for a more classic counterinsurgency campaign: a manpower-heavy operation that would take U.S. soldiers out of their large bases dotted across the country and push them into small outposts in troubled towns and neighborhoods to interact with ordinary Iraqis and earn their trust.

But until now, it was an argument that fell on deaf ears.

"We have been pretty consistently in this direction from the outset," said Kagan, whose December study detailing his strategy is influencing the administration's current thinking. "I started making this argument even before the war began, because I watched in dismay as we messed up Afghanistan and then heard with dismay the rumors that we would apply some sort of Afghan model to Iraq."

If Bush goes ahead with the surge idea, along with a shift to a more aggressive counterinsurgency, it would in many ways represent a wholesale repudiation of the outgoing Pentagon leadership.

These leaders - particularly former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the departing Middle East commander - strongly resisted more U.S. troops and a larger push into troubled neighborhoods out of fear it would prevent Iraqis from taking over the job themselves and exacerbate the image of America as an occupying power.

The plan the administration appears moving toward envisions an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 troops, the majority of whom would be sent to Baghdad. The increase would be achieved by delaying the departure of Marine units already in Iraq and speeding the departure of Army brigades due to deploy this spring.

The neoconservative group had been the driving force in Washington behind a move against Iraq, even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They saw Hussein as a lingering threat to world security - a view bolstered within the administration following 9/11. And they argued that transforming Iraq into a democracy could serve as a model to remake the Middle East's political dynamics.

The problems with the war gradually undermined the clout they had wielded. But perhaps the more important hurdle to their views being heeded - especially on military matters - was the White House's refusal to see its Iraq policy as a failure.

That changed this summer, when the spike in sectarian violence and the failure of an offensive to secure Baghdad created what one Pentagon advisor called a "psychological break" within the administration. Until then, neoconservatives argued, the administration saw little proof that Abizaid's plan, which was backed by Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the military commander in Iraq, was failing.

The main reason for the new ascendancy of the neocon recommendations, said Kristol, is that "the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey theory was tried and was found wanting.... Some of us challenged it very early on, but, of course, then we were just challenging it as a competing theory."

Although Kristol, Kagan and their intellectual allies have pushed hard for their policy change for more than three years, they bristle at the notion that the idea of a larger troop presence in Iraq and a different approach to securing the country is wholly a neoconservative idea.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a leading Republican presidential contender, has been pushing for more troops and a different security strategy for nearly as long as Kristol and Kagan. Recently, support for a revised counterinsurgency plan also has gained support among military officers, active and retired. Perhaps most notable among this group is retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army chief of staff who signed on to Kagan's plan last month.

The case for change has been bolstered by actions the military has taken, including a successful 2005 Army offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Tall Afar, where midlevel officers used counterinsurgency tactics to suppress sectarian violence. In addition, the Pentagon released a new counterinsurgency field manual last month that largely echoed Kagan's thinking.

Some leading neoconservatives do not embrace the troop surge proposal.

Wolfowitz, for instance, ridiculed the notion that more troops would be needed to secure Iraq than were used in the invasion.

And Richard N. Perle, a former top advisor to the Pentagon who also advocated for smaller troop numbers at the time of the invasion, is known to be skeptical of the idea of a surge.

The plan's advocates acknowledge the split.

"Before the war, I was arguing for a quarter of a million troops in expectations we'd be there five or 10 years," said Gary J. Schmitt, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute who has worked closely with Kristol and Kagan. "Richard Perle, obviously somebody else who's thought of as a neocon, thought we should go in" with far fewer U.S. forces.

The neocons calling for more troops in Iraq and different tactics have pressed their proposals in public writings and speeches and in more private conversations within the administration.

Kenneth L. Adelman, another leading neoconservative thinker, recalled a meeting a year ago of the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisors to the Pentagon, where he pressed Rumsfeld - a longtime friend - to implement more traditional counterinsurgency ideas, such as keeping soldiers longer in their deployed areas so they could get to know the local population.

"What you need for counterinsurgency has been pretty clear for some time: You need to protect the population and get the population to fight the insurgents with you, or at least inform on them," Adelman said. "The fight is over the population, it's not over getting the enemy."

And much like they did when advocating for the invasion, these neocons have promoted their military strategy even at times when it was seen as politically unpalatable.

"What you can say about Fred Kagan and Bill Kristol, whatever else you want to say, is they've been constant in sounding this theme," said Eliot A. Cohen, a military analyst at Johns Hopkins University's international studies school in Washington who has advised the administration on Iraq policy. "You've had other people who have dropped in and out of this."

I'm stricken with a case of the "what ifs" and "if onlys"! What if Gates had been at the Pentagon in 2003 and Petraeus had been in charge of the US military in Iraq and Crocker had been there instead of Paul Bremer? These are competent professionals who know what they are doing. Gates is clear-sighted enough to tell Congress that the US is not winning in Iraq, unlike his smooth-talking, arrogant and flighty predecessor. Petraeus is among the real experts on counter-insurgency, and did a fine job of making friends and mending fences when he was in charge of Mosul. Crocker has been ambassador to Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan, and knows the region intimately (as does Khalilzad). Bremer had been ambassador to . . . Holland. Despite all the talk of the resurgence of the Neoconservatives with their "surge" (actually ramped up occupation) plan, this team is the farthest from Neoconservative desires that you could possibly get.

I wish these seasoned professionals well. They know what they are getting into, and it is an index of their courage and dedication that they are willing to risk their lives in an effort that the American public has largely written off as a costly failure. If the US in Iraq can possibly have a soft landing, these are the individuals who can pull it off. It is a big if.

What they are up against comes through clearly in the reporting on the situation in Iraq on Thursday. Police found 47 bodies in the streets of Baghdad on Thursday. Guerrillas set off two car bombs in the al-Mansur district, killing 13 persons and injuring 22. The NYT gives a graphic eyewitness account of the gruesome aftermath.

Guerrillas killed a US soldier in Baghdad with small arms fire.

Sunni Arab guerrillas also launched a mortar attack on the Shiite Shu'la district of Baghdad, injuring 9 civilians. The NYT piece mentions several other such attacks, as does Reuters. Police found four bodies in Hilla, in the mixed Sunni and Shiite province of Babel (Hilla is largely Shiite).

The Associated Press has been vindicated in having reported on an incident of sectarian violence based on an interview with Jamil Hussein. The Iraqi government initially denied he existed, and the US military put pressure on AP to retract. Now it turns out he does exist but will be punished for speaking to the press!

Gee, it turns out AP is more reliable on Iraq than Michelle Malkin after all. Since she's so eager to intern people, maybe she can do penance by putting herself under house arrest for the rest of the war as a punishment for spreading war propaganda.

The diary of the last two months in the life of the director of the Iraqi National Library and Archives. It is harrowing.

Every now and then, you have to take a lesson or two from history. In the case of George Bush's Iraq, here's one: No matter what the President announces in his "new way forward" speech on Iraq next week -- including belated calls for "sacrifice" from the man whose answer to 9/11 was to urge Americans to surge into Disney World -- it won't work. Nothing our President suggests in relation to Iraq, in fact, will have a ghost of a chance of success. Worse than that, whatever it turns out to be, it is essentially guaranteed to make matters worse.

Repetition, after all, is most of what knowledge adds up to, and the Bush administration has been repetitively consistent in its Iraqi -- and larger Middle Eastern -- policies. Whatever it touches (or perhaps the better word would be "smashes") turns to dross. Iraq is now dross -- and Saddam Hussein was such a remarkably hard act to follow badly that this is no small accomplishment.

A striking but largely unexplored aspect of Saddam Hussein's execution is illustrative. His trial was basically run out of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad; Saddam was held at Camp Cropper, the U.S. prison near Baghdad International Airport. He was delivered to the Iraqi government for hanging in a U.S. helicopter (as his body would be flown back to his home village in a U.S. helicopter).

Now, let's add a few more facts into the mix. Among Iraqi Shiites, no individual has been viewed as more of an enemy by the Bush administration than the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. American troops fought bloody battles with his Mahdi Army in 2004, destroying significant parts of the old city of Najaf in the process. American forces make periodic, destructive raids into the vast Baghdad slum and Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City to take out his followers and recently killed one of his top aides in a raid in Najaf. The upcoming Presidential "surge" into Baghdad is, reputedly, in part to be aimed at suppressing his militia, which a recent Pentagon report described as "the main threat to stability in Iraq."

Nonetheless at the crucial moment in the execution what did some of the Interior Ministry guards do? They chanted: "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" In all press reports, this has been described as a "taunting" of Saddam (and assumedly of Iraqi Sunnis more generally). But it could as easily be described as the purest mockery of George W. Bush and everything he's done in the country. If, in such a relatively controlled setting, the Americans couldn't stop Saddam's execution from being "infiltrated" by al-Sadr's followers -- who are also, of course, part of Prime Minister Maliki's government -- what can they possibly do in the chaos of Baghdad? How can a few more thousands of U.S. troops be expected to keep them, or Badr Brigade militiamen out of the streets, no less the police, the military, and various ministries?

Consider the "new way forward," then, just another part of the Bush administration's endless bubbleworld. And check out exactly what madness to look forward to in next week's presidential address via Robert Dreyfuss, a shrewd reporter and the author of the indispensable Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. Tom

The Surge to Nowhere
Traveling the Planet Neocon Road to Baghdad (Again)
By Robert Dreyfuss

Like some neocon Wizard of Oz, in building expectations for the 2007 version of his "Strategy for Victory" in Iraq, President Bush is promising far more than he can deliver. It is now nearly two months since he fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, installing Robert Gates in his place, and the White House revealed that a full-scale review of America's failed policy in Iraq was underway. Last week, having spent months -- if, in fact, the New York Times is correct that the review began late in the summer -- consulting with generals, politicians, State Department and CIA bureaucrats, and Pentagon planners, Bush emerged from yet another powwow to tell waiting reporters: "We've got more consultation to do until I talk to the country about the plan."

As John Lennon sang in Revolution: "We'd all love to see the plan."

Unfortunately for Bush, most of the American public may have already checked out. By and large, Americans have given up on the war in Iraq. The November election, largely a referendum on the war, was a repudiation of the entire effort, and the vote itself was a marker along a continuing path of rapidly declining approval ratings both for President Bush personally and for his handling of the war. It's entirely possible that when Bush does present us with "the plan" next week, few will be listening. Until he makes it clear that he has returned from Planet Neocon by announcing concrete steps to end the war in Iraq, it's unlikely that American voters will tune in. As of January 1, every American could find at least 3,000 reasons not to believe that President Bush has suddenly found a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

What's astonishing about the debate over Iraq is that the President -- or anyone else, for that matter, including the media -- is paying the slightest attention to the neoconservative strategists who got us into this mess in the first place. Having been egregiously wrong about every single Iraqi thing for five consecutive years, by all rights the neocons ought to be consigned to some dusty basement exhibit hall in the American Museum of Natural History, where, like so many triceratops, their reassembled bones would stand mutely by to send a chill of fear through touring schoolchildren. Indeed, the neocons are the dodos of Washington, simply too dumb to know when they are extinct.

Yet here is Tom Donnelly, an American Enterprise Institute neocon, a co-chairman of the Project for a New American Century, telling a reporter sagely that the surge is in. "I think the debate is really coming down to: Surge large. Surge small. Surge short. Surge longer. I think the smart money would say that the range of options is fairly narrow." (Donnelly, of course, forgot: Surge out.) His colleague, Frederick Kagan of AEI, the chief architect of the Surge Theory for Iraq, has made it clear that the only kind of surge that would work is a big, fat one.

Nearly pornographic in his fondling of the surge, Kagan, another of the neocon crew of armchair strategists and militarists, makes it clear that size does matter. "Of all the 'surge' options out there, short ones are the most dangerous," he wrote in the Washington Post last week, adding lasciviously, "The size of the surge matters as much as the length. ... The only 'surge' option that makes sense is both long and large."

Ooh -- that is, indeed, a manly surge. For Kagan, a man-sized surge must involve at least 30,000 more troops funneled into the killing grounds of Baghdad and al-Anbar Province for at least 18 months.

President Bush, perhaps dizzy from the oedipal frenzy created by the emergence of Daddy's best friend James Baker and his Iraq Study Group, seems all too willing to prove his manhood by the size of the surge. According to a stunning front-page piece in the Times last Tuesday, Bush has all but dismissed the advice of his generals, including Centcom Commander John Abizaid, and George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, because they are "more fixated on withdrawal than victory." At a recent Pentagon session, according to General James T. Conway, the commandant of the U.S. Marines, Bush told the assembled brass: "What I want to hear from you now is how we are going to win, not how we are going to leave." As a result, Abizaid and Casey are, it appears, getting the same hurry-up-and-retire treatment that swept away other generals who questioned the wisdom on Iraq transmitted from Planet Neocon.

That's scary, if it means that Bush -- presumably on the advice of the Neocon-in-Chief, Vice President Dick Cheney -- has decided to launch a major push, Kagan-style, for victory in Iraq. Not that such an escalation has a chance of working, but there's no question that, in addition to bankrupting the United States, breaking the army and the Marines, and unleashing all-out political warfare at home, it would kill perhaps tens of thousands more Iraqis.

Personally, I'm not convinced that Bush could get away with it politically. Not only is the public dead-set against escalating the war, but there are hints that Congress might not stand for it, and the leadership of the U.S. Armed Forces is opposed.

Over the past few days, a swarm of Republican senators has come out against the surge, including at least three Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 in states that make them vulnerable: Gordon Smith of Oregon, whose remarkable speech calling the war "criminal" went far beyond the normal bland rhetoric of discourse in the U.S. capital, along with John Sununu of New Hampshire and Norm Coleman of Minnesota. In addition, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, less vulnerable but still facing voters in 2008, has questioned the surge idea. And a host of Republican moderates -- Chuck Hagel (NE), Dick Lugar (IN), Susan Collins (ME) -- have lambasted it. (Hagel told Robert Novak: "It's Alice in Wonderland. I'm absolutely opposed to the idea of sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly.") Even Sam Brownback, one of the Senate godfathers of the neocon-backed Iraqi National Congress, has expressed skepticism, saying: "We can't impose a military solution." According to Novak, only 12 of the 49 Republican senators are now willing to back Sen. John McCain's blood-curdling cries for sending in more troops.

Meanwhile, says Novak, the Democrats would not only criticize the idea of a surge but, led by Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, might use their crucial power over the purse. "Biden," writes Novak, "will lead the rest of the Democrats not only to oppose a surge but to block it." Reports the Financial Times of London: "Democrats have hinted that they could use their control over the budget process to make life difficult for the Bush administration if it chooses to step up the military presence in Iraq." A Kagan-style surge would require a vast new commitment of funds, and with their ability to scrutinize, put conditions on, and even strike out entire line items in the military budget and the Pentagon's supplemental requests, the Democrats could find ways to stall or halt the "surge," if not the war itself.

Indeed, if President Bush opts to Kaganize the war, he will throw down the gauntlet to the Democrats. Unwilling until now to say that they would even consider blocking appropriations for the Iraq War, the Democrats would have little choice but to up the ante if Bush flouts the electoral mandate in such a full-frontal manner. By escalating the war in the face of near-universal opposition from the public, the military, and the political class, the president would force the Democrats to escalate their own -- until now fairly mild-mannered -- opposition to the war.

However, it's possible -- just possible -- that what the President is planning to announce will be something a bit more Machiavellian than the straightforwardly manly thrust Kagan wants. Perhaps, just perhaps, he will order an increase of something like 20,000 American troops, but put a tight time limit on this surge -- say, four months. Perhaps he will announce that he is giving Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki that much time to square the circle in Iraq: crack down on militias and death squads, purge the army and police, develop a plan to fight the Sunni insurgency, find a formula to deal with the Kurds and the explosive, oil-rich city of Kirkuk which they claim as their own, un-de-Baathify Iraq, and create a workable formula for sharing the fracturing country's oil wealth.

By surging those 20,000 troops into a hopeless military nowhere-land, Bush will say that he is giving Maliki room to accomplish all that -- knowing full well that none of it can, in fact, be accomplished by the weak, sectarian, Shiite-run regime inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. So, sometime in the late spring, the United States could begin to un-surge its troops and start the sort of orderly, phased withdrawal that Jim Baker and the Carl Levin Democrats have called for.

Levin suggested as much as 2006 ended. "A surge which is not part of an overall program of troop reduction that begins in the next four to six months would be a mistake," said Levin, who will chair the Armed Services Committee. "Even if the president is going to propose to temporarily add troops, he should make that conditional on the Iraqis reaching a political settlement that effectively ends the sectarian violence."

That may be too much to ask for a Christian-crusader President, still lodged inside a bubble universe and determined to crush all evil-doers. And it may be too clever by half for an administration that has been as utterly inept as this one.

At the same time, it may also be too much to expect that the Democrats will really go to the mat to fight Bush if, Kagan-style, he orders a surge that is "long and large." Maybe they will merely posture and fulminate and threaten to... well, hold hearings.

If so, it will be the Iraqis who end the war. It will be the Iraqis who eventually kill enough Americans to break the U.S. political will, and it will be the Iraqis who sweep away the ruins of the Maliki government to replace it with an anti-American, anti-U.S.- occupation government in Iraq. That is basically how the war in Vietnam ended, and it wasn't pretty.

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular contributor to TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post, Tomdispatch, and other sites, and writes the blog, The Dreyfuss Report, at his website.

Copyright 2007 Robert Dreyfuss

The images broadcast in February, 2006 in television, after the publication of photographs of the abuse by The News of the World Sunday newspaper, show how the soldiers were beating the civilians near a food warehouse in Basora.

The film maker´s laughter and shouts can be heard in the video tape, in which the soldiers even kick a corpse, and subjected the detainees to different humiliations, as part of a supposed operation to catch thieves.

The British military agents were in charge of guarding a food warehouse, just a month after the US-British unilateral aggression against the Persian Gulf nation started.

Despite enough evidence to try at least the soldiers involved, the British Military Law considered that it was impossible to hold a trial against them for that crime after the period established for it.

The army leadership reserves the right to implement administrative sanctions against those who committed the abuse, which could entail expulsion from the armed forces

The scandal for the beating to the Iraqi civilians by the UK soldiers recalled the tortures by US forces to prisoners from the Arab State in the Abu Ghraib prison, in the outskirts of Baghdad.