. . . While U.S. military officers have claimed that more than 90 percent of the military resistance was taking place within the Sunni Triangle, Lawrence Korb, a senior defence official in the Reagan administration, said after returning from a trip to Iraq earlier this month that the actual figures showed the central region accounted for only 60 percent of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces.
''Even when we were in safe areas and were driving to see a Shiite cleric (in the south)," Korb told the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), ''(the military authorities) made us wear flak jackets, and they had Humvees and armoured personnel carriers escorting us with guns pointed at the population. This is the so-called safe Shiite area,'' he said. . . .
<http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=21384> <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1203-06.htm> *****
***** Brookings Institute Conference on Iraq
Last April the American Enterprise Institute hosted a triumphal conference to toast victory in the Iraq War, which had been a key project of AEI and other conservatives in the US. On Tuesday, the more liberal Brookings Institute <http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe120303.html> did a different sort of postmortem. Policy wonks who had been to Iraq told their horror stories. The upshot is that
1. The US army's search and destroy mission in the Sunni Arab heartland is alienating the population needlessly.
2. There is a severe disconnect between the military goals (continued warfare at selected locales) and the goals of the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority (stability and legitimacy throughout the country).
3. The CPA is almost completely out of touch with the Iraqi people.
4. Crime and insecurity are still rampant in Baghdad for Iraqis.
5. Only 60% of attacks on Coalition military forces occur in the Sunni Arab triangle; i.e. nearly half are elsewhere in the country. The military clearly considers the South a dangerous place, as well.
posted by Juan Cole at 8:16 AM
<http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html#107043578194665537> *****
"Brookings Briefing: First-Hand Views from Iraq," Tuesday, December 02, 2003: <http://www.brookings.org/comm/events/20031202iraq.htm/> Full Transcript: <http://www.brookings.org/comm/events/20031202iraq.pdf> -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>