American mistakes

[Guest Mustefser]

http://www.aljeeran.net/viewarticle.php?id...pg=index&art=mp

 

In Arabic.. The head of police commados force, the one who did great job in Mosul and Samara , assure that he got confirmations that his force will get all the support from the new governemnt.. He was talking to media in Baghdad.. He said also that his force was established with very limited resources to the extent that he bought his force arms from the market rather than waiting support from coalition forces which he said were very lazy in supporting him!!!

[Guest Mustefser]

http://www.aljeeran.net/viewarticle.php?id...pg=index&art=mp

 

In Arabic.. The new ellected governer of Kerbala freezed two units of new police after allegations that personals were paying 200 dollars to the officers to accept them.. After investigation , it turned out that the officers were contracting the creation of the two units by paying 75 thousands dollar to the ministry ogf interrior.

The governaor asked the ministry about this and called it as un fortunate.. He affriad that a lot odf sadamees and criminals might get into these "Maghweer" units established by the former minister.

 

Very funny.. 75k dollars for a unit, then the officers get it from poor Iraqis who wanted to defend their country.! Unbeleivable!

[Guest Guest_Tajer]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/01/feldman.html

 

Interview with Naoh Fedelman

[salim]

Today on CNN , US, there was an intersting one hour program about Iraq..

The program was trying to be balanced in covering both good and bad. However there was some points that I wanted to highlight

1-The program never mentioned the word "Terror" when refering to the killing of Iraqis.Never mentioned the Qaeda operations or Zarqawee

2-There were two main interviews with some wealthy Iraqis, while there was missing coverage of middel class intellectuals, engineers, teachers, artists, who are the most beneficiar and important.

3-CNN keep ignoring Iraqis when there is a need to have some Arab speaking reporters to replace non-arab speaking.

4-There was a main stream idea in the program that what ever democratic step Iraqis doing, this would not be considered democracy!

[Guest M99]

American media has a false vision of democracy that they constantly promote and sell.

 

Modern democracy if defined by the declaration of independance, not CNN. True democracy assumes nothing except the inalienable rights of every individual endowed upon them by their creator and the inalienable right of every society to define their governance through majority consent.

 

CNN defines democracy as the system that shares the values of American journalists. To them, the paramount achievement of democracy is freedom of press and freedom of speech.

[Guest Guest_salim]

Below example of some American libral media coverage to what is happening in Iraq..

Trying their best to cover the Sadamist/salafee terrorist face on such criminal acts by putting it as a secterian fight.. It so funny to call a hit on Alnahda bus station which control traffic to main east part of the country with Baghdad, where more than 200 bus line starts/ends to provinces such as Kirkuk and deiala, with significant Sunni Arab.. The Nahda station is one of two main stations that serve six million people city.. What a silly!!

 

The assault, the deadliest in a month, took place at the height of morning rush hour at Iraq's equivalent of the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan.

 

It appeared to be aimed at Shiite Arabs boarding buses and shared taxis bound for cities in the south, and further inflamed sectarian tensions. The attack also underscored the Sunni-led insurgency's ability to strike, seemingly with ease, at some of the most important infrastructure.

 

The bombings coincided with the formal resumption of negotiations over the new constitution, which is now due by Monday, after the Parliament voted for a one-week extension of the deadline. The three major ethnic and sectarian groups in Iraq - the Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds - remain deadlocked on fundamental issues that will shape the future, particularly the right to carve out autonomous regions. The Bush administration is putting enormous pressure on Iraqi leaders to complete a draft this week.

[salim]

http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/Politics/2005/10/94607.htm

 

In Arabic.. A very serious report from inside Libenon.. A lqaeda's branch "Jund AlIslam" are growing so fast within the Lebanies and Palestianian Sunni community in Traboli and Saida in Lebanon. Specially in Ain Alhilwa palestinian camp.

 

Have in mind that Mr. Bakri of England landed in Traboli one month abgo after being expelled by British on bases of relations with Qaeda.. There was an announcement by Qaeda groups " Zarqawee style" of igniting a sacterian war in Libenon. Some in the west might thought this as a good developement as there will be a conflict with Hizbuallah "Alqaeda enmy no. 1", but I think this will to be very dangrous. The problem is if you ecourage these people on short sight mind goals, you can't stop them later as Libenon is in the hart of the Sham Arab region with so many sympaziesers in Syria and Jordan

[Texas Gentleman]

(from todays Wall Street Journal)

 

A Soldier's Story

"The Iraqis are in the fight," says Gen. David Patraeus.

 

BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK

Saturday, October 15, 2005 12:01 a.m.

 

WASHINGTON--David Petraeus is not a physically imposing man. Slight, and slightly awkward, he looks every bit the egghead general (he has a Princeton Ph.D.) he is.

 

But in Iraq--where he first governed Mosul as commander of the 101st Airborne and then took over training of all Iraqi security forces in June 2004--he is something of a giant and one of the foremost authorities on many of the major questions about the war: Did we have enough troops? Which Iraqi leaders are most effective? Was it a mistake to disband Saddam's army? What is the current state of Iraqi security forces?

 

That his answers are likely to please neither side in these debates--he simultaneously thinks Ahmed Chalabi is too uncompromising when it comes to former members of Saddam's Baath Party, but also that Mr. Chalabi is committed to reaching out to Iraqi Sunnis and "in the best position to do that of anybody in the government"--is all the more reason to listen to them. For in addition to an impressive résumé, he also has an independent mind.

 

My encounter with the general this week is less dramatic than our first meeting--in Baghdad this August. It was the tail end of what had been a massive dust-storm and we were scheduled to fly, along with virtually the entire Iraqi government, to a graduation ceremony for security trainees at Numaniyah, southeast of the capital. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari had already canceled, citing the weather. But due solely I suspect to Gen. Petraeus's determination, our fleet of Blackhawks did in fact take off from the Green Zone helipad and fly blindly for about 15 minutes before even he had to concede that there was no choice but to turn back. My consolation prize was a surprisingly frank briefing from the general over a spartan lunch of bologna sandwiches.

 

"You would have seen a unit in training which happened to be the Seventh Division, and those elements now have been deployed into Anbar province," he tells me on Tuesday. This time our venue is a boring Washington conference room, chosen only for its proximity to the general's other appointments of the day. Recently returned from Iraq to take command of U.S. Army training at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., his views are in demand. The week before he briefed President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the chairman of Joint Chiefs. The day of our interview, Mr. Rumsfeld is again on the schedule.

 

Gen. Petraeus seems a little less in his element in Washington. Perhaps he's nervous, or perhaps it's just the hyperalert air of a man who knows the fate of his work of the past 15 months will largely be determined over the next two--starting with today's referendum on the proposed Iraqi Constitution. That's because the Iraqi security forces he built will face their stiffest challenge yet in trying to protect the vote, and because their future will of course be dependent on who ultimately gets elected in December. "The most important coefficient," he emphasizes, "is the political environment."

 

As for the immediate challenge of today, Gen. Petraeus says he's not only optimistic, he thinks there's a good chance the process will actually have a galvanizing effect on morale. "The January elections were a defining moment for the Iraqi security forces," he says, by way of comparison. "They took a huge lift from those elections--their performance and the support they got from the Iraqi people following that, with several of their policemen martyring themselves to smother suicide-vest wearers. And since that time there's not a case of an Iraqi unit folding, going out the back of a police station."

 

He's alluding, of course, to the miserable performance of Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)--both army and police--during the simultaneous Sunni and Shiite (remember Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army?) insurgencies in April 2004.

 

Gen. Petraeus is careful (too careful) not to blame this on the strange combination of inattention and control-freakery that characterized the security strategy of L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority. But when pressed, he concedes he was tasked to fundamentally reshape Iraqi security forces in June that year for a reason. "The original conception for the Iraqi military was a force that would be used to defend the territorial integrity of Iraq," he says. But the interim government that assumed control of the newly sovereign country "wisely and inescapably recognized that the biggest threat to Iraq was internal, not external, and those forces that were being trained and equipped and invested in, for whom infrastructure was being rebuilt, clearly needed to help Iraq fight the insurgency."

 

Thus was born the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq, or "min-sticky"--an awkward acronym even by military standards. One of Gen. Petraeus's frustrations is getting people to understand that things really have changed since then.

 

"Is Joe Biden convinced?" I ask, referring to the Delaware senator who spent the summer claiming that only a handful of Iraqi battalions were of any use. "You'll have to ask him," replies the general, launching into a survey of the state of play: "There are now nearly 120 army and police combat battalions [about 750 men each] that are 'in the fight.' And 'in the fight' by the transition readiness assessment means they are either Level One, Level Two or Level Three. Now certainly, roughly 80 of those are Level Three, which means 'fighting alongside.' In other words they're fighting literally side by side with our forces. They're not yet capable of independent operations on their own."

 

But "nearly 40 now are Level Two or better. . . . That's hugely significant because it's at Level Two, at the 'in the lead' category, that means they're doing independent operations. They're not fully independent though, and that's what Level One means. It means they need no Coalition assistance whatsoever."

 

He offers an example: "In one case, one of the units was reassessed from One to Two. It's doing the same mission, by the way, on Haifa Street in Baghdad. It's just a case of someone being asked, 'Are you sure they're really Level One?' and he said, 'Well maybe they do need a little help from the Coalition in logistics so I guess they properly should be Level Two.' The truth is they actually got a little bit better in that month or two since they were reassessed. . . . They own their own area of operations."

 

I can vouch for the general's assessment of the Haifa Street unit's performance, as well as that of the Iraqi forces now manning Baghdad's once-perilous airport road. I was there in June 2004, when one couldn't be sure if the few Iraqi forces visible were the real thing or impostors who might kidnap you and sell you to the highest bidder. Today smartly outfitted ISF are visible everywhere.

 

"People keep asking, 'When will Iraqi security forces take over from Coalition forces?' " says Gen. Petraeus. "Well, they've been doing it for months. . . . There was a ceremony a few months back when Coalition forces transferred security responsibilities to Iraqis in Najaf. The same thing happened just a few weeks ago in Karbala. Mostly recently, within the last week, four districts within Baghdad have been transitioned to Iraqi security force control and I think that's roughly 20% of Baghdad."

 

I ask the general if it was a mistake to disband Saddam's army in the first place. He responds that the decision was a much "tougher call" than most critics realize, given that there was "no infrastructure left" and it was such a "top-heavy force": "We're told there were 1,100 former brigadiers and above just in Ninevah province." Did we send too few troops of our own? He had enough when he was running Mosul, the general replies.

 

If there is a question mark hanging over the Petraeus era, it is the massive procurement corruption that appears to have happened at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense on his watch. When I was there in August, a multitude of sources--U.S. and Iraqi, and including the new defense minister himself--told me that the ministry's budget had been essentially looted during interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government. The independent Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit had compiled a report documenting apparent kickbacks and worthless weapons contracts, and on the day of our interview this week the judge heading Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity announced that arrest warrants had been issued for 23 officials, including former Defense Minister Hazem Shalaan.

 

I ask Gen. Petraeus if he's aware of the development. "There is a sense, frankly, that there was some degree of corruption," he replies, but insists it involved "Iraqi money," not U.S. funds, and that some of the allegations might be "politically motivated"--both fairly feeble protestations. Building the Iraqi security forces is a joint venture in which there are not "American" and "Iraqi" funds. And the range of voices claiming corruption is too vast for it to be part of anybody's political vendetta against Mr. Allawi and his team.

 

A better explanation, which he also cites, is that corruption appears to have been endemic--and that it occurred in many other ministries besides defense. History will likely judge poor financial oversight to have been a widespread failure of both civilian and military occupation officials. One recent change is that Deputy Prime Minister Chalabi--with whom Gen. Petraeus worked closely, and whom he clearly respects--now chairs a Contracts Committee that reviews all tenders above $3 million.

 

Gen. Petraeus's record nonetheless remains one of massive accomplishment: He built functioning Iraqi security forces where few had existed. I ask him what he most wants Americans to understand about developments over there. "That Iraqis are in the fight," he says. "They are fighting and dying for their country and they are fighting increasingly well."

[salim]

I wrote lately

The problem is if you ecourage these people on short sight mind goals, you can't stop them later as Libenon is in the hart of the Sham Arab region with so many sympaziesers in Syria and Jordan

 

In his letter, Alzawahiree just confirmed my point that Alsham region is the most critical in the Qaeda road map to the Talaban Khilafa. Alzawahree went to put that region as the hart of Muslim land though Mekka is usually the one. I think this just because he knew that the mentality of many Sunni extreemists in Libenon/ Syria and jordan can easily nurture such goal. What we saw in such nurturing in the Iraqi west is just a simple example of what such sympathy might be in Alsham. In a visit to Syria three years ago to meet with my parents who came from Iraq, I noticed a strange thing.. Though the goverment was very hard with the Sunni extreemists, like Alqaeda, there was a Bin laden photo hanging in the bedroom of the appartment that I rent. I think the owner just forgot to remove before we get in. My son was shoked and asked me why they put there, I was buzelled too.. I said may be they want remember that there is some bad guys to kept our self away from. Some thing like the Islamic " Let god condemn Satan"!

 

Today thopugh as Iraqis , we suffer a lot from the policy of the Syrian regim that allow crimnials to pour into Iraq, I think there is a real need to be carefull not to end up having a talaban regime in Syria.. Any change in Syria should be well manged. On the other hand this should not be a reason to keep such Baathee regim over there. Syrians deserve to live like humans..

[Guest mustefser]

U.S. Should Repay Millions to Iraq, a U.N. Audit Finds

 

By JAMES GLANZ

 

Published: November 5, 2005

 

An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.

 

The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. The board did not, however, give examples of poor work.

 

Some of the work involved postwar fuel imports carried out by K.B.R. that previous audits had criticized as grossly overpriced. But this is the first time that an international auditing group has suggested that the United States repay some of that money to Iraq. The group, known as the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, compiled reports from an array of Pentagon, United States government and private auditors to carry out its analysis.

 

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Cathy Mann, said the questions raised in the military audits, carried out in a Pentagon office called the Defense Contract Auditing Agency, had largely focused on issues of paperwork and documentation and alleged nothing about the quality of the work done by K.B.R. The monitoring board relied heavily on the Pentagon audits in drawing its conclusions.

 

"The auditors have raised questions about the support and the documentation rather than questioning the fact that we have incurred the costs," Ms. Mann said in an e-mail response to questions. "Therefore, it would be completely wrong to say or imply that any of these costs that were incurred at the client's direction for its benefit are 'overcharges.' "

 

The Pentagon audits themselves have not been released publicly. Ms. Mann said Kellogg, Brown & Root was engaged in negotiations over the questioned costs with its client in the work, the United States Army Corps of Engineers and Development has been set for resolution of these issues," Ms. Mann said. The monitoring board, created by the United Nations specifically to oversee the Development Fund - which includes Iraqi oil revenues but also some money seized from Saddam Hussein's government - said because the audits were continuing, it was too early to say how much of the $208 million should ultimately be paid back.

 

But the board said in a statement that once the analysis was completed, the board "recommends that amounts disbursed to contractors that cannot be supported as fair be reimbursed expeditiously."

 

The K.B.R. contracts that have drawn fresh scrutiny also cover services other than fuel deliveries, like building and repairing oil pipelines and installing emergency power generators in Iraq. The documents released yesterday by the monitoring board did not detail problems with specific tasks in those broad categories, but instead summarized a series of newly disclosed audits that called into question $208,491,382 of K.B.R.'s work in Iraq.

 

A member of the monitoring board said questions about the contracts "had been lingering for a long time." Once the audits are completed, said the board member, who asked not to be identified because he did not want to be seen as speaking for the United Nations, the results will give the Iraqi government "the right to go back to K.B.R. and say, 'Look, you've overbilled me on this, this is what you could repay me.' "

 

The monitoring board authority extends only to making recommendations on any reimbursement. It would be up to the United States government to decide whether to make the payments, and who should make them. But Louay Bahry, a former Iraqi academic who is now at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the board's findings would stoke suspicions on the street in Iraq, where there had always been fears that the United States invaded the country to control its oil resources.

 

"Something like this will be caught in the Iraqi press and be discussed by the Iraqi general public and will leave a very bad taste in the mouth of the Iraqis," Mr. Bahry said. "It will increase the hostility towards the United States."

 

The audits may also come at a bad time for the Bush administration, since Vice President Dick Cheney's former role as chief executive of Halliburton has led to charges, uniformly dismissed by Mr. Cheney and the company, that it received preferential treatment in receiving the contracts. The early Kellogg, Brown & Root contracts in Iraq were "sole sourced," or bid noncompetitively.

 

"The Bush administration repeatedly gave Halliburton special treatment and allowed the company to gouge both U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people," Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, said in a statement on the new audits. "The international auditors have every right to expect a full refund of Halliburton's egregious overcharges."

 

Some of those contracts were paid for with American taxpayer money, but others were financed by Iraqi oil proceeds. Because the monitoring board was created to oversee those proceeds, its audits focus only on the work that was financed with Iraqi money. The board consists of representatives from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Iraqi government.

 

Besides the Pentagon audits, reports from the private auditing firm K.P.M.G. and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a United States government office, were used by the monitoring board.

 

Because Kellogg, Brown & Root employs K.P.M.G. separately for its own internal audits, the firm recused itself from some of the work on K.B.R. The recusal temporarily threw some of the auditing work into disarray, since K.P.M.G. had initially said that the conflict would not prevent it from proceeding. Ultimately, the special inspector general took over some of the work that K.P.M.G. dropped.

 

But some of the K.P.M.G. audits that were carried out, relying on Iraqi ministry documents, turned up what appears to be clear evidence of mismanagement and corruption among Iraqi officials that was apparently unrelated to the K.B.R. work. In its report on the Iraqi Oil Ministry, the auditing firm used the euphemism "nonrefundable fees" for bribes in the awarding of oil contracts. "We found two cases," the report said, "where nonrefundable fees ($10,000 and $20,000) were charged to obtain tender documents (total contract value $150,302,897)."

 

Other entries suggest the existence of $600,000 in ghost payrolling in the Electricity Ministry and additional evidence of bribes.

 

The K.P.M.G. audits also show ample evidence of the chaos that permeated the early reconstruction effort in Iraq, with paperwork on hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts won by firms other than K.B.R. that were lost or never completed, making it difficult or impossible to tell if the work was carried out properly.

 

___________________________