U.S. looks to export drone technology to allies

Phil Stewart WASHINGTON Thu, Mar 25 2010 The Global Hawk, an unmanned surveillance aircraft, taxis at an air force base near Adelaide in this April 24, 2001 file photo. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday he hoped to export coveted U.S. drone technology to allies, despite legal hurdles, and played down the threat from rival drone programs in nations like Iran. Gates, testifying at a Senate hearing, said it was in the U.S. interest to try to help friendly nations get drone technology, despite limitations on exports imposed by an international pact. "There are other countries that are very interested in this capability and frankly it is, in my view, in our interest to see what we can do to accommodate them," Gates said. The drones have proven to be a crucial technological advantage for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq, allowing it to remotely track and kill insurgents and giving troops eyes-in-the-sky battleground imagery in real time. The CIA has used drones armed with missiles to ramp up its covert campaign to kill al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan. "The reality is so far we have been in situations where (drone) technology cannot be used, or has not been used against our troops anywhere," Gates said. But that might not remain the case, he said. He cited Iran, which he has said is providing limited support to Afghan insurgents, and which is developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. "Iran has UAVs and that is a concern because it is one of those areas where I suppose if they chose to, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, they could create difficulties for us," Gates said. Still, he called UAVs "relatively slow flyers" that could be neutralized by the Air Force if they threatened U.S. forces. "I actually think our ability to protect our troops from these things particularly in a theater of combat like this is actually quite good," he said. Militant groups, as opposed to other countries, were a bigger concern when it came to the spread of drone technology. "My worry would be capabilities like this getting into the hands of non-state actors who could use them for terrorist purposes," Gates said. PENT-UP DEMAND The U.S. aerospace industry estimated in December that U.S. military demand for unmanned aircraft would double over the next five years after rising 600 percent since 2004. It is also hoping for growth abroad. The industry wants to change the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, a pact among at least 34 countries aimed at curbing the spread of unmanned delivery systems that could be used for weapons of mass destruction. Gates said he shared concerns of lawmakers about the spread of the technology to adversaries and "about these capabilities getting into the hands of those who are our adversaries." But he also said the United States had only sold UAVs to Italy and Britain so far. "With respect to export ... I think there are some specific cases where we have allies with whom we have formal treaty alliances who have expressed interest in these capabilities," he said. "And we have told them that we are limited in what we can do by the MTCR, but I think it's something we need to pursue with them." Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk, which provides surveillance capabilities, has drawn interest from countries including South Korea, Japan and Singapore as well as Britain, Spain and Canada, a company spokeswoman said in December. Washington announced plans to give Pakistan surveillance drones but Islamabad also wants shoot-and-kill drones, like the Predator, which may be armed with Hellfire missiles.

General Works to Salvage Iraq Legacy

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and THOM SHANKER JOINT SECURITY STATION LOYALTY, IRAQ — In the muddled aftermath of Iraq’s election, the American commander here, Gen. Ray Odierno, landed at this base on the edge of Baghdad and reviewed the plan to close it. Joao Silva for The New York Times Gen. Ray Odierno, left, the top American commander in Iraq, recently met with soldiers at a base in Baghdad. He is reviewing plans for a troop withdrawal. Gen. Ray Odierno with Iraqi officers in Baghdad. He is working to hand over responsibility for Iraq's security to Iraqi forces. An Iraqi police division has moved its headquarters to the base, once the fortified enclave of Americans alone. The outcome of Iraq’s election, the torturous effort to form a new government, remained in doubt, but the withdrawal of American troops in this part of the country — “the thinning” of them, as the general put it — proceeded, seemingly irrevocably. “How we redeploy, how we turn this over,” General Odierno told the officers who gathered to brief him in a room crowded with flat-panel television screens and wallpapered with maps, “will go a long way to determining how this turns out.” “This” is the end of the war in Iraq, a conflict that General Odierno has shaped as much as any other American commander. From the 2003 invasion to the capture of Saddam Hussein, from the bloodiest days of sectarian carnage to the counteroffensive known as the surge, he has served the administration that started the war and now the one whose president campaigned to end it. As the senior American officer in Iraq since the fall of 2008, he has struggled against popular anger and apathy at home and fought internally for Iraq’s share of matériel increasingly flowing to Afghanistan. Ultimately, he is laboring to salvage the legacy of a deeply unpopular war. “People have to get past why we came here,” he said in an interview after his briefings, referring to the bitterly disputed reasons for invading Iraq seven years ago this month. “You have to stay away from that argument and understand we’re here,” he went on. “We have an opportunity. It could be better not only for the United States, but for overall stability in the Middle East. And we should take advantage of that.” Results from an election considered crucial to Iraq’s democratic evolution suggest a potentially explosive split in power, but General Odierno said he would meet President Obama’s deadline to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq to 50,000, from 98,000 today, by the end of August. Among those expected to leave Iraq then is the general himself. As the officer who must carry out Mr. Obama’s order to “responsibly withdraw from Iraq,” General Odierno plays a role that is changing over time: from a commander who ran military operations across the country to one who now must give way to local security forces — even as he exerts influence behind the scenes. In the months ahead, the general said, he anticipates that he will focus less on combat missions and more on trying to build Iraq’s still feeble security, political and economic institutions. That, he said, will require a sustained effort extending beyond the troop withdrawal. During a visit to Washington before the election, the general said he was advocating the establishment of an Office of Military Cooperation within the American Embassy in Baghdad to sustain the relationship after the Dec. 31, 2011, deadline for withdrawing all American troops. He expressed doubts that the Iraqi government would request the presence of American ground forces after the deadline, although the bilateral treaty leaves open the possibility. “We have to stay committed to this past 2011,” he said. “I believe the administration knows that. I believe that they have to do that in order to see this through to the end. It’s important to recognize that just because U.S. soldiers leave, Iraq is not finished.” Or as Col. David M. Miller, commander of the 10th Mountain Division’s Second Brigade, told the general as he described plans to keep financing water and greenhouse projects on Baghdad’s outskirts even after his troops pulled back to a more remote base in the desert: “We’re not just cutting and running.” General Odierno has now been in Iraq for 45 of the 84 months of the war, a period of his career that parallels the uneven narrative of the conflict, for better and worse. His tactics as commander of the Fourth Infantry Division in Salahuddin in the months after the invasion in 2003, which were criticized as overly aggressive, created a public impression of him as a heavy-handed, even brutish, leader. Thomas E. Ricks, the military writer who has waged what amounts to an argument of years with the commander, stridently criticized General Odierno’s first tour in Iraq for what he said were ogre-like tactics and bitingly called him “Shreko” in an online column last month. Many people dispute such characterizations, portraying him as a skilled commander who helped devise and then carried out the counterinsurgency strategy that, with the increase in soldiers that President George W. Bush announced in January 2007, helped stem the sectarian violence. The senior commander at the time, Gen. David H. Petraeus, received most of the public attention, but officers and analysts say that General Odierno made the strategy a success. “Petraeus fought the war ‘up,’ but Odierno fought it ‘down,’ since he was responsible for implementing the new counterinsurgency strategy, which he did very, very well,” said John A. Nagl, an Iraq veteran who now is president of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan policy institute in Washington. He said General Odierno’s contributions remained “underappreciated.” General Odierno navigated the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration far better than his counterpart in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was forced into retirement in May 2009 because President Obama and the Pentagon leadership felt he had not done enough to reverse the drift in a war long overshadowed by Iraq. The Obama administration’s focus on Afghanistan has created tensions behind the scenes as General Odierno has lobbied to keep as many troops and weapons as possible, while still reducing the force here to meet Mr. Obama’s planned withdrawal. In secret video-teleconferences at the Pentagon, he has animatedly resisted the transfer of too many intelligence drone aircraft, essential for surveying the battlefield and defending American and Iraqi forces when necessary. “His argument is: ‘I still have a job today. I still have this geography to cover. I have to manage the risk,’ ” a senior Department of Defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the classified strategy sessions. “He’s like a pit bull on a poodle. He’s just not going to let go.” In two recent interviews, though, General Odierno acknowledged that he was preparing for a day when the Iraq campaign — and his role in it — ended. Asked if the war in Iraq was effectively over, he replied with some hesitation, then at length. “War is a very different concept,” he said. “This is a — I call it more of an operation, not a war. We won’t know if we were successful, as I said the other day, for 3, 5 or 10 years. And successful will be what the government of Iraq does with what we’ve given them, and how we continue to support them and the relationship that we develop with them post-2011.” By the time he leaves, he will have spent more than four years in Iraq, like tens of thousands of soldiers, at great personal cost. In 2004, his son, Lt. Anthony Odierno, lost an arm when a grenade slammed into his Humvee while he was on a patrol in Baghdad. Family members do not discuss it publicly, although the experience no doubt deepened their commitment to wounded soldiers. The general’s wife, Linda, put the family’s golden retriever, Tootsie, through a special program to be trained as a “therapy dog,” and they regularly visit troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. General Odierno’s remarks to soldiers at the base here suggested that each casualty affected him deeply. In a recent meeting with the Second Brigade’s commanders, General Odierno brought up an accident the day before that had killed two soldiers. Their armored vehicle rolled over, possibly as a result of reckless driving. “It’s a waste,” he told the officers. He later pinned Purple Hearts on two soldiers wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their guard post. “Even when you are a general,” he told dozens of soldiers attending the medal ceremony, “this business is very personal.”

The Resistance Bloc Will Not Be Appeased

Michael J. Totten - 03.22.2010 - 8:41 AM Hezbollah’s reaction to Israel’s plan to build 1,600 apartments in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem might help President Barack Obama understand something that has so far eluded him: the Syrian-Iranian-Hamas-Hezbollah resistance bloc will not allow him to appease it. “The scheme is yet another part of a Judaization campaign,” Hezbollah said in a statement quoted by the Tehran Times, “that targets the holy city of al-Quds [Jerusalem] and a provocation of Muslim feeling.” If Obama expected a little appreciation from Israel’s enemies for making the same point with more diplomatic finesse, he was mistaken. “The Zionist plan to construct hundreds of homes in al-Quds,” Hezbollah continued, “truly shows American cover to it.” So not only is Obama denied credit for standing up to Israel’s government, he is accused of doing precisely the opposite. Anti-Americanism is ideological oxygen for partisans of the resistance bloc. They will no sooner let it go than they will stop breathing. Their entire worldview and political program would turn to ashes without it, much as Fidel Castro’s would without socialism. When the United States doesn’t follow the script, they just lie. If we extend a hand in friendship, they’ll bite it and try to chew off a finger. If we take their side once in a while to appear evenhanded, they’ll twist the truth until it looks like a sinister plot, then they’ll bite us again. A couple of years ago Hezbollah stretched a banner across an overpass near Lebanon’s international airport that said, in English, “All our catastrophes come from America.” Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah would have an awfully hard time climbing down from that high a tree even if his Iranian masters would let him — and they won’t. They’ve been calling Israel the “Little Satan” and the U.S. the “Great Satan” since Jimmy Carter, of all people, was president. The resistance bloc would remain viciously anti-American even if the United States declared war on Israel and bombed Tel Aviv. Maybe — maybe — that wouldn’t be true if the U.S. were the little Satan instead of the great Satan, but even then it probably wouldn’t matter that much. Resistance-bloc leaders, like anyone else in the world, may enjoy watching their enemies slugging it out with each other, but that doesn’t mean they’ll warm to one or the other all of a sudden because of it. That’s how the Iran-Iraq war looked to us in the 1980s. It was a “red on red” fight where two regimes we detested bloodied and weakened each other. Henry Kissinger summed up the sentiment on our side: “It’s too bad they can’t both lose.” And that’s how the American-led invasion of Iraq looked from the point of view of Iran’s rulers in 2003. They had every reason in the world to hate Saddam Hussein more than anyone else in the world. His army killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians in an eight-year war he started less than a year after Ayatollah Khomeini became Supreme Leader. (Israel, meanwhile, has never fought a war with Iran and hasn’t killed any Iranians.) Yet the United States earned no points whatsoever for taking out their most dangerous enemy and placing their Shia co-religionists in the saddle in Baghdad. There are, of course, millions of Arabs and Iranians who detest the Khomeinist-led resistance bloc and feel threatened by it, including about half of Palestinians. Most are less ideologically severe, and some have already made peace with Israel. Perhaps the Obama administration is hoping the U.S. can increase its standing with them by publicly sparring with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Even if it works, though, it won’t make any difference. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can’t be divorced from the region-wide Arab-Israeli and Iranian-Israeli conflicts. If all the moderates in the whole Arab world were to drop their hostility to the U.S. and Israel and yearn for a peaceful solution, Hamas and Hezbollah, with Syrian and Iranian backing, could still scotch peace talks and peace treaties with kidnappings, suicide bombings, and missile attacks whenever they felt like it. Resolving this mother of all quagmires would be excruciatingly difficult even if all four pieces of the resistance bloc were taken off the board yesterday. In the meantime, bruising our alliance with Israel to grease the skids on a peace process to nowhere is gratuitous

Breaking with Israel

By RALPH PETERS New York Post If the Obama administration continues to betray Israel, will any ally ever trust us again? We've been viewed as a fickle (if mighty) partner at least since the 1970s, when we abruptly dumped allies from Saigon to Tehran. Now the White House not only delights in insulting our closest traditional ally, Britain, but has intensified its diplomatic pogrom against Israel -- our only respectable ally in the Middle East. President George W. Bush was mocked for shooting from the hip, but this administration fires with its eyes closed. Obama's unbalanced actions shrivel confidence among allies around the globe -- partners we need. Policy differences are one thing, but gratuitous attacks by the White House are quite another. Has Obama's vaunted intellect been so easily seduced by the myth that Arab extremists long to be our pals -- if only Israel would go away? Yes, we spend diplomatic capital -- and Yankee dollars -- on Israel. Would it really be wiser to spend it on the wretchedly corrupt Palestinian Authority and Hamas? Anyway, we've spent a hell of a lot more on Iraq, which Obama's anxious to abandon. No Palestinian leader has offered up a fraction of the compromises made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Obama demands that the Israelis make all the compromises, giving their mortal enemies a free pass for their transgressions. (If releasing terrorist prisoners is a helpful confidence-building measure, he could release Khalid Sheik Mohammed . . .) It's surreal to watch our president act as if terrorist organizations, autocracies and outright dictatorships are morally superior to Israel's rule-of-law democracy. The aura of unreality extends to the assumption that Israel, faced with threats to its very existence, can be bullied by a White House aligned with its enemies. The Israeli government's capable of doing stupid, counterproductive things. Israel's raucous democracy sometimes falls hostage to nasty splinter groups. But it remains the only country in the neighborhood where an irate electorate can vote offenders out. Does Obama honestly believe that tilting against Israel will have any positive effect on the Arab world's moral incompetence and ingrained anti-Americanism? Apparently he does. The roots of this month's diplomatic debacle lie in Cairo -- where Obama preened and pandered a year ago, sugar-coating the Arab world's self-made problems, groveling before Islamist bigotry and fatally encouraging Palestinians and their manipulators to believe that the US had turned away from Israel. The result has been the collapse of the fragile peace process, which tumbled from direct negotiations back to grudging proximity talks (that have yet to occur). Israel's on guard. Arabs are intransigent. And progress is dead. All thanks to Obama's arrogant refusal to do his homework before his Cairo apologia. ("No-Drama Obama?" Check out the riots in Jerusalem). And all this seems fueled by emotion, not sober analysis. The president's glee in humiliating the Brits stems from his ties to Kenya at an impressionable age, back when liberation rhetoric was in vogue. He behaves as if the Brits still rule in Nairobi, whipping servants and potting lions from the veranda. (This freeze-dried activist world-view also nudges Obama into emotional sympathy with the likes of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and imbues him with a rosy picture of Russia.) Regarding Israel, a lifetime of extremist associations has infected Obama with an emotional loathing for the Jewish state and a romantic vision of Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters. (Anti-Israeli and naked anti-Jewish rhetoric is endemic within left-wing hate-church congregations, such as that led by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.) Obama's Cairo diatribe was hailed by the left as the greatest speech given by an American president (as were all of Obama's speeches back then). It may, indeed, prove great in its effects -- but the results all look negative for America, Israel and freedom. Sorry, Mr. President: The Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians, Hezbollah, Hamas, Russians, Chinese, Chavistas and all those enemies you've rushed to embrace are not going to love us -- or you. Cease your mad affairs. Come back to our marriage with our proven allies. Betraying Israel may give you emotional satisfaction, sir, but it will bring us no lasting benefits. Israel is, literally, flesh of our flesh. Don't stick a knife in it.

Challenger overtakes Iraq PM in overall vote count

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and BEN HUBBARD (AP) – 15 hours ago BAGHDAD — A secular coalition challenging the Iraqi prime minister in the country's historic parliamentary elections has narrowly pulled ahead for the first time in the overall vote count, although it still trails in the crucial province-by-province count. The Iraqiya coalition, led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, seemed to be gaining momentum, taking a 9,000 vote lead nationwide, according to new totals released late Tuesday. But with about 20 percent of the votes still to be counted from the March 7 election, it was unclear whether that margin would give Allawi more seats in parliament, which will determine who will lead the government. The news came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his State of Law coalition accused election officials of manipulating vote counts and called for a re-count, a candidate from his bloc said. It was the prime minister's first challenge to the results, and his bloc drew a link between its accusations and Allawi, accusing some electoral commission staff of having allegiances to groups backing al-Maliki's rival. Iraq's vote counting has been winding and chaotic, with ballot results being portioned out piecemeal by election officials and almost immediately subject to fraud accusations. The winner will be tasked with forming a government that will oversee the country as U.S. forces go home. Crucially, with 79 percent of votes counted, al-Maliki's coalition was still winning in seven of Iraq's 18 provinces — including all-important Baghdad — compared with five for Allawi. That could prove important since parliament seats are apportioned mainly by how well coalitions do in the provinces, not according to overall vote total. Still, the momentum apparent in Allawi's overall, nationwide lead could be troubling the prime minister and his coalition, raising questions about how strong their lead is. The new vote results did not alter the picture much for the religious Shiite Iraqi National Alliance and the main Kurdish coalition, which lead in three provinces each. However, in the province of Tamim, Allawi was beating his main challenger, the Kurdish coalition, by only five votes. The province is home to the disputed city of Kirkuk, which is hotly contested among its Kurdish, Arab and Turkomen population. Allawi, a secular Shiite, has drawn on considerable Sunni support, likely due to his nonsectarian stance and repeated condemnations of the influence of Iraq's powerful Shiite neighbor, Iran. Al-Maliki has drawn on support in the Shiite south as well as in the capital. With so much at stake, several leading candidates have raised accusations of fraud. Before Tuesday's tallies were released, Iraq's prime minister accused election officials of manipulating vote counts and called for a re-count, a candidate from his bloc said. The prime minister's allegations surfaced in a complaint letter to Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission, saying al-Maliki's bloc "received reliable information that supervisors of the electronic counting center" are linked to rival groups contesting the race, including some supporting Allawi. Ali al-Adeeb, a candidate on al-Maliki's slate, said his coalition is accusing the counting center of doctoring the numbers and is calling for a re-count based on tallies done in the country's more than 50,000 polling stations before their ballots were sent to Baghdad. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter, which is signed by al-Maliki. It says the political allegiance of the counting center's supervisors undermines "their neutrality in administering such a momentous and crucial process" as the tallying of the votes. The letter singles out Hazim al-Badri, the electronic counting center's manager, claiming he is a member of a Sunni group allied with Allawi. Al-Badri could not be reached for comment. The letter also says the prime minister's coalition has information linking employees recently fired from the counting center to the same group. It calls for an investigation into the political ties of all officials and employees at the counting center and argues that final results should not be released until all complaints are investigated — "however long it takes." The counting process has been fraught with claims of fraud, mostly from the opposition. Others have criticized the electoral commission for disorganization and delaying results. "Because it's so tight, it's more tense and you are going to see more allegations of fraud. People could try to use that as a political weapon," said Michael Hanna, an analyst on Iraqi affairs at the Century Foundation in New York. He said al-Maliki's allegations could reflect the prime minister's coalition realizing their lead is not as strong as once believed. "It's hard not to be cynical about some of these claims, most of them actually," he said. Electoral commission official Saad al-Rawi confirmed the commission had received al-Maliki's complaint but said it was one of many to come in without concrete evidence. Al-Rawi said six workers at the counting center were fired, but for incompetence and entering incorrect data into the computers. Independent Iraqi observers and U.N. officials advising the commission say they have seen no evidence of widespread fraud that could undermine the outcome, though some worry the slow count could fuel suspicion. Others suspect al-Maliki's complaints have less to do with fraud concerns and more to do with improving his position for the months of political wrangling likely to follow the release of official results. No bloc is likely to win a majority, meaning the winning candidate will have to ally with rival blocs to form a government. "Al-Maliki is not in control of the situation and the tighter the race, the more coalition building he will have to do once he likely comes out first," said analyst Toby Dodge with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

As Iraq war enters final act, US readies for exodus of men and machines

Each night, in a giant base north of Baghdad, a team that moves armies for a living prepares for a mission that will define America's time in Iraq, more than any other act since the invasion seven years ago. Leading them is the senior American officer who will orchestrate the military withdrawal, a man who claims he has one of the highest job satisfaction levels in the country. "I have the best job in Iraq right now," says Brigadier General Paul Wentz, of the US military's 13th Sustainment Command. "There is no question about it." Whether that assessment is a reflection of the fraught earlier years of the occupation, or the imminent end of an increasingly unpopular war, or the fact that his staff have prepared so well that they can't fail, is open to conjecture. Either way, the men and women of the 13th Sustainment Command are raring to begin the biggest movement of troops and machines anywhere in the world since Vietnam, more than 40 years ago. The order to do so will probably come within 60 days of a result being declared from Iraq's recent general election. The count of votes is painstakingly slow – only around 65% of ballots had been counted more than a week after polling day on 7 March. But if, as the Obama White House hopes, the result is eventually deemed to be credible, the US commander-in-chief will call an end to the war that he has previously described as "dumb". As soon as Wentz receives the call from the commanding US general in Iraq, Ray Odierno, a massive network of trucks, planes and ships will start to evacuate around 45,000 troops and more than 1m tonnes of equipment, ranging from super-sized bulldozers to water coolers, as well as hundreds of different types of machines and weapons that were used to fight and run the war. The pullout looms as quite a payday for the Iraqi army. Late last year the US government set a cap of $30m worth of equipment that commanders can leave behind at each facility – a 15-fold increase from when guidelines were first written five years ago. A total of 31m items will be packed and stacked, including 43,000 military vehicles, 600-odd helicopters, 120,000 containers and 34,000 tonnes of ammunition. Shipping out is estimated to take 240,000 truckloads and 119 shipping freighters. The withdrawal will leave only 50,000 US troops in Iraq by 30 August, none of them in combat roles, and reduce the number of bases from 290 to fewer than 10. Even with the remaining US presence, the withdrawal will probably be perceived, in Iraq and elsewhere, as the final act of the war. It is a milestone Wentz is acutely aware of. "This will be a chapter in history and we will really try to make sure it's a good chapter in history," he says from an anteroom on the giant Balad airbase, near where his charges are still co-ordinating the movements of more than 3,000 US vehicles throughout Iraq each day. "Our guys are still busy and we like to feel we are making a difference. Success for us will be if we wake up in September and nobody knows we have gone." That may be the benchmark inside Iraq, where people long ago started to rail against the enormous, slow-moving American convoys that used to snarl traffic, and the often interminable delays at checkpoints manned by US soldiers. But, in the US, another key indicator is more important – not repeating the mistakes of the last American withdrawal from Iraq, in 1991. That pullout was blighted by delays, equipment losses and incompetence, and has since been seen as a case study of how not to do things. "We have learned a lot since then," says Wentz. "We don't have those Indiana Jones warehouses that nobody knows what's inside. "A lot of the bad things that came out of the first Gulf war have been fixed. We have introduced a lot of technology. This is very important to the American taxpayer. We have to be fiscally responsible and good stewards of government monies." Although the bulk of the heavy lifting is yet to begin, tanks and giant military trucks known as MRAPS are already on the move, some of the pieces leaving Iraq with the units they arrived with and others being readied for another war. "The equipment will be going south and will most likely be reworked in Kuwait and sent to the folks in Afghanistan," said Wentz. "Some of the containers will go out through the port of Aqaba in Jordan and also the port of Umm Qasr. Each month we are getting rid of more and more capacity, but, so far, they are largely component parts that have built up over the years." The preparation for the big move has been dubbed Operation Clean Sweep. Most troops will fly out of Iraq into Kuwait, where they will connect with a well-established military flight network back to America. Iraq's main roads are safer now, but the military still prefers to keep as many troops as possible away from the 10-hour drive south to Kuwait. The main thoroughfare down the spine of Iraq, known as Route Tampa, was built to move armies. The four-lane sealed highway was constructed by Saddam Hussein to move his troops and machines to the Iranian front and home again. It also gave him a direct route to Kuwait. The US and British armies used Route Tampa to get to Baghdad in 2003. And American convoys have continued to use it ever since, despite being extensively targeted by militants who launched ambushes and detonated countless roadside bombs from sand berms that line the roads. Captain Jason Vivian from the 80th Ordinance Battalion, based in Pennsylvania, is in charge of a clearing yard on the Balad base which will become one of the busiest hubs in Iraq when Odierno's move order is handed down. To him, getting the withdrawal rolling is the pinnacle of a career. "This is why I joined the military," he says, standing between cranes and rows of heavy armour. "The surge and the invasion were both important, especially for a logistician, but this to me is what it's all about."

Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki already wooing allies to try to form governing coalition

By Leila Fadel Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, March 15, 2010; A07 BAGHDAD -- Buoyed by preliminary results from last week's parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is courting allies in hopes of forming a new governing coalition that will allow him to keep his job. Maliki, a divisive figure many politicians would like to unseat, and his State of Law slate made a strong showing in Baghdad -- a key battleground with many parliamentary seats -- and the large, mostly Shiite population center of Basra, the southern gateway to Iraq's oil wealth. Maliki's slate is ahead in five other provinces among Iraq's total of 18, giving his bloc a narrow overall lead in partial returns. Iraq's electoral commission has struggled to tally votes because of technical problems and the complicated nature of the ballot. The results so far have been too incomplete to show who will capture the most seats in parliament. Maliki, who is a Shiite, has been talking to Kurdish officials, Sunni Arab candidates and leading figures from the Shiite coalition that once included him. The Kurdish alliance, in the past seen as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, is leading in the northern provinces of Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaymaniyah. Maliki's top rival, former prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who heads the Iraqiya slate, is attempting to woo the same political blocs. Allawi's slate has the lead in five provinces, including Nineveh, in the north, whose large population means that it controls a large number of seats. The slate also has a decisive lead in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, where more than half the votes have been counted, as well as a narrow lead in the mixed province of Kirkuk, a key area that the Kurds believe should be part of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Allawi traveled over the weekend to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, to discuss potential partnerships. Both Maliki and Allawi have cast themselves as Iraqi nationalists willing to cross sectarian lines to save Iraq from strife when the next government has formed. "They want a clear picture before committing themselves to any agreement with others," said Sami al-Askari, an independent Shiite legislator allied with Maliki, referring to talks that began with other coalitions this week. "This is between Maliki and Allawi -- two different groups and two different directions." Askari, a close confidant of the prime minister, said Maliki might have the upper hand because Iran prefers him over Allawi. Iran's closest political allies in Iraq -- notably the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq -- have so far done poorly. The Iraqi National Alliance, the Shiite coalition that includes the Supreme Council, is in the lead in the southern provinces of Maysan, Qadisiyah and Dhi Qar. Followers of the fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who are also part of the Iraqi National Alliance, are expected to make the strongest showing of those in the coalition. Although they may have a strong voice in the new parliament, Askari said, Maliki does not want them in his government. No one is expected to win a majority of seats, a development that could lead to months of negotiations before a government is formed. The political maneuvering could inflame tensions in the street, and already the delay in announcing the vote results has spurred cries of fraud. The electoral commission said it would release more-extensive results Monday that would include at least 60 percent of ballots cast in each of Iraq's provinces. More than 6,000 politicians vied for the 325 seats in the new parliament. So far, members of Maliki's bloc believe they have won 90 to 110 seats, while supporters of Allawi believe they have taken as many as 85 seats.

Gates keeps up pressure on Iran with Gulf visit

By ANNE GEARAN (AP) – RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Saudi leaders Wednesday that the U.S. effort for diplomatic engagement with Iran had come to naught and he asked for the influential kingdom's help to win wide backing for biting economic penalties against Tehran. The offer of talks with Iran to resolve doubts about the intent of its nuclear program remains on the table, U.S. officials said, but the United States has moved away from making outreach to Iran the primary goal. "We are certainly hopeful that the Saudis will use whatever influence they have, which is considerable, in this region and throughout the world to try to help us in our efforts at the U.N. so that we can get meaningful sanctions enacted against Iran," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said following Gates' sessions with Saudi King Abdullah and other senior leaders. The predominantly Sunni Arab Middle East — and Gulf nations in particular — have been wary of the growing influence of Shiite Iran, and Saudi Arabia has long warned of the potential for a nuclear arms race in the Gulf region if Iran gained the bomb. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states see Iran's expanding missile capability as a more immediate threat. The U.S. military is trying to reassure Gulf allies by buttressing its defense systems with upgraded Patriot missiles on land and more U.S. Navy ships capable of destroying missiles in flight. The Patriot missile systems, which originally were deployed in the region to shoot down aircraft, have now been upgraded to hit missiles in flight. Iran claims its nuclear program is aimed at the peaceful production of energy. The United States and Western allies openly scoff at that claim, and worry that Iran is closing on the means to build a weapon is behind the latest push for United Nations Security Council penalties on Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps. If approved, the new sanctions would be the fourth set of penalties applied to Iran over its disputed nuclear program. The Saudi foreign minister has expressed doubts about the usefulness of more sanctions on Iran, saying the world needs a quicker and more direct approach. "We see the issue in the shorter term because we are closer to the threat," Prince Saud al-Faisal said when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the Saudi capital in February. "We need immediate resolution rather than gradual resolution." Gates held no public events with Saudi officials Wednesday.

Saddam Hussein weighed nuclear 'package' deal in 1990

Iraq President Saddam Hussein, who was later executed, had sought the purchase of a $150 million nuclear "package" deal in 1990. By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, March 10, 2010 As troops massed on his border near the start of the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein weighed the purchase of a $150 million nuclear "package" deal that included not only weapons designs but also production plants and foreign experts to supervise the building of a nuclear bomb, according to documents uncovered by a former U.N. weapons inspector. The offer, made in 1990 by an agent linked to disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, guaranteed Iraq a weapons-assembly line capable of producing nuclear warheads in as little as three years. But Iraq lost the chance to capitalize when, months later, a multinational force crushed the Iraqi army and forced Hussein to abandon his nuclear ambitions, according to nuclear weapons expert David Albright, who describes the proposed deal in a new book. Iraqi officials at the time appear to have taken the offer seriously and asked the Pakistanis for sample drawings as proof of their ability to deliver, the documents show. "With the assurance of [Iraqi intelligence agency] Mukhabarat . . . the offer is not a sting operation," an Iraqi official scrawls in ink in the margin of one of the papers. Khan's alleged interest in selling nuclear secrets to Hussein has been reported in numerous books and news articles. An internal Mukhabarat memo that surfaced in the late 1990s discussed a secret proposal by one of Khan's agents to sell a nuclear weapons design for an advance payment of $5 million. But the newly uncovered documents suggest that Khan's offer of nuclear assistance was more comprehensive than previously known. A 1990 letter attributed to a Khan business associate offered Iraq a chance to leap past technical hurdles to acquire weapons capability. "Pakistan had to spend a period of 10 years and an amount of 300 million U.S. dollars to get it," begins one of the memos. "Now, with the practical experience and worldwide contacts Pakistan has developed, you could have A.B. in about three years' time and by spending about $150 million." "A.B." was understood to mean "atomic bomb," Albright wrote in "Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies," released this week. At the time of the 1990 offer, Iraq was embarked in a crash program to develop nuclear weapons in the face of a threatened U.S.-led attack over its occupation of Kuwait. By that date, Iraqi scientists had acquired a limited amount of weapons-grade enriched uranium but lacked several key components, including a workable design for a small nuclear warhead. Fears that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program helped propel the United States into a second war with Iraq in 2003, though a U.S. review later determined that Hussein was never able to mount a serious bid for the bomb after 1991. Aid from the Pakistani scientist could have accelerated Iraq's quest for a weapon if the Iraqi leader had not run out of time, writes Albright, a former U.N. inspector who now heads the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security. One memo cited in the book promised to provide "all the vital components and materials" needed to make fissile material, and added that "two to three Pakistani scientists could be persuaded to resign and join the new assignment" in Iraq. Copies of the original Arabic documents -- several with handwritten comments in the margins -- were shown to The Washington Post. The alleged nuclear offer to Iraq is broadly similar to proposals Khan reportedly made to Libya and Iran during the 1980s and 1990s. Khan, who is celebrated in his country as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was placed under house arrest in 2004 after he acknowledged his role in an international smuggling ring for nuclear technology. Pakistan says Khan acted alone in seeking to sell his country's nuclear secrets. But Khan, in a series of memos and letters obtained by The Post, says he carried out the instructions of senior government and military officials. In his book, Albright argues that Khan could have been stopped if governments and private businesses had been more willing to share intelligence. He cites results of a secret Dutch investigation into Khan's activities in that country in the 1970s, a probe that confirmed Khan's theft of sensitive nuclear blueprints, yet failed to result in a broader inquiry of a serious security breach. "One of the very few early opportunities to stop him was lost," he writes.

Iraq's Remarkable Election

Wall Street Journal The strategic benefits of an emerging Middle East democracy.It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq's national elections. Bombs and missiles, al Qaeda threats and war fatigue failed to deter millions of Iraqis of all sects and regions from exercising a right that is rare in the Arab world. Even the U.N.'s man in Baghdad called the vote "a triumph." On Sunday, 61% of eligible voters came out in Anbar Province, a former extremist stronghold that includes the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi. In the last national elections five years ago, 3,375 people—or 2%—voted in Anbar. The other Sunni-dominated provinces that boycotted in 2005 saw similar numbers: over 70% turnout in Diyala and Salaheddin and 67% in Nineveh, all higher than the national average of 62%. American Presidential elections rarely have such turnout. View Full Image Associated Press Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki casts his vote for the parliamentary election in the Green Zone of Baghdad, Iraq. Al Qaeda as well as Sunni and Shiiite extremist groups were defeated militarily by the surge, and this election continues the trend toward settling disputes through politics, not bombs. The remaining terrorists, far weaker and organized in smaller cells, tried hard to deter voting. Thirty-eight people died in various mortar, rocket and bomb attacks on election day. But the attackers had trouble getting near voting stations, and security in Baghdad and elsewhere was good and Iraqis brushed off these threats. The election result itself is up for grabs and won't be known for several days. Incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needs to build a new coalition with skeptical Shiite and Kurd parties. Though Shiite himself, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi attracted Sunni votes to his nationalist secular block. The Kurdish coalition may split. But the very uncertainty about the results is a sign of democracy's advance, and the drama won't go unnoticed in a Middle East where the victories are always landslides for the ruling party. The contrast with Iran's stolen 2009 vote couldn't be more dramatic, and even Al-Jazeera ran special coverage around the clock. President Obama deserves credit for resisting his own calls in 2008 for a quick American withdrawal. U.S. forces are considered by all sides to be honest brokers and guarantors of stability. So it was unfortunate to hear Mr. Obama, with the polls barely closed and no votes counted, promptly declare the election makes it possible that "by the end of next year, all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq." Too much blood and treasure have been spent there to make the mission hostage to a political calendar. The nature of America's engagement will change in Iraq, but it needs to be sustained and robust. Imagine if the GIs had left Germany eight years after World War II or abandoned the DMZ in Korea prematurely. There are dangers ahead in Iraq, including violence in the immediate post-election period. The neighborhood is still dangerous as well. The Iraqis aren't going to subject themselves to Iranian dominion, but a senior military official tells us that the U.S. now worries greatly about the "Hezbollah-ization of Iraq." Tehran gained experience exploiting sectarian divisions to make trouble in Lebanon. It has brought that to bear in Iraq, supporting Shiite extremists with arms and money, and their influence needs to be countered. Free Iraq also represents a great U.S. strategic opportunity. As Turkey turns away from Europe (in part after having been turned away) and Iran pushes for regional hegemony, Iraq can now become a strong U.S. ally in the region if we don't abandon the field. A strong presence in Iraq gives the U.S. important leverage against a rogue regime in Tehran bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon. We heard for years that toppling Saddam Hussein was a mistake because it empowered Iran. Now that Iraq is emerging as a unified democracy, the government in Baghdad can be a counterweight to Iran without the brutality and threat to the region that Saddam represented. Even as the number of U.S. troops declines, a sustained U.S. commitment will serve Iraq, the larger Middle East and American strategic interests.

Iraqis Defy Blasts in Strong Turnout for Pivotal Election

By STEVEN LEE MYERS New York Times BAGHDAD — Defying a sustained barrage of mortars and rockets in Baghdad and other cities, Iraqis went to the polls in strength on Sunday to choose a new Parliament meant to outlast the American military presence here. “Iraqis are not afraid of bombs anymore,” said Maliq Bedawi, 45, defiantly waving his finger, stained with purple ink, to indicate he had voted, as he stood near the rubble of an apartment building in Baghdad hit by a huge rocket in the deadliest attack of the day. Insurgents here vowed to disrupt the election, and the concerted wave of attacks — as many as 100 thunderous blasts in the capital alone starting just before the polls opened — did frighten voters away, but only initially. The shrugging response of voters could signal a fundamental weakening of the insurgency’s potency. At least 38 people were killed in Baghdad. But by day’s end, turnout was higher than expected, and certainly higher than in the last parliamentary election in 2005, marred by a similar level of violence. Official results are not expected for at least a few days. Sunnis who largely boycotted previous elections voted in force, and an intense competition for Shiite votes drove up participation in Baghdad and the south, election observers said. After seven years of a war whose rationale is deeply disputed in the United States, the Obama administration viewed the vote as a test of Iraq’s stability, a last milestone before the final withdrawal of American troops. The short and fierce political campaign could end up either solidifying Iraq’s nascent democracy or leaving the country fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines. But it was arguably the most open, most competitive election in the nation’s long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war. Despite a long delay, disputes over candidates’ qualifications, arrests, assassinations and finally an all-out assault by insurgents on Sunday morning, the election took place with only a few reports of irregularities. And by Sunday night, a rarity was emerging in a region dominated by authoritarian governments: an election cliffhanger. After the polls closed at 5 p.m., party leaders said two coalitions seemed to have fared best: the one led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has campaigned for a second time on improved security in Iraq, and another led by the former interim leader, Ayad Allawi, who has promised to overcome Iraq’s sectarian divides. As expected, neither coalition appeared to have secured an outright majority in the new 325-member Parliament, and so it was unclear whether Mr. Maliki had succeeded in winning another four years in office. That sets the stage for a period of turmoil — months, not weeks, politicians here predict — as the winning coalition tries to cobble together enough votes to elect a prime minister. Mr. Maliki’s supporters were already claiming that his coalition had won a majority of votes in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and other largely Shiite provinces in the south. And Mr. Allawi, also a Shiite, emerged as the unexpected standard-bearer of a bloc that appears to have done best among Sunnis in Anbar, Salahuddin, Nineveh and Diyala. In Washington, President Obama praised the vote. “I have great respect for the millions of Iraqis who refused to be deterred by acts of violence and who exercised their right to vote today,” he said in a statement. “Their participation demonstrates that the Iraqi people have chosen to shape their future through the political process.” The insurgent attacks began even before polls opened, with explosions reverberating through the early morning haze. For a while at least, the intensity of the barrage was reminiscent of the worst days of bloodshed in 2006 and 2007, when Iraq teetered on the precipice of civil war. Dozens of mortar shells and rockets crashed down on the capital, including at least six that landed in the Green Zone, where government ministries and embassies are clustered behind heavy fortifications. At least 13 bombs exploded. The deadliest single attack occurred when what the police said was a Katyusha rocket collapsed an apartment building, located in the Ur neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. The Interior Ministry said 25 were killed. Mr. Bedawi, who witnessed the carnage, said the attack hardened the resolve of Iraqis to vote. “Everyone went,” he said. “They were defiant about what happened. Even people who didn’t want to vote before, they went after this rocket.” The extensive use of mortars and rockets suggested that a weakened insurgency had to shift tactics, perhaps because it was unable to get cars or suicide bombers through an intense security lockdown, with some checkpoints erected every few hundred yards. The insurgents still fighting in today’s Iraq face a far stronger government, capable now of saturating the country with police officers and soldiers. Even more important, they face an Iraqi people far less willing to support, or even sympathize with, violent resistance against the country’s democratic government. Iraqis, seemingly inured to violence, even mocked the attacks. “We have experienced three wars before,” Ahmed Ali, a supporter of Mr. Maliki, said in Ur, “so it was just the play of children that we heard.” After three hours, the barrage subsided, and voting picked up as the country’s politicians implored Iraqis to cast their ballots. A ban on vehicles in the city was lifted, making it easier for people to reach polling places. Mr. Maliki, the Shiite who has served as prime minister since 2006, cast his ballot at the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone even as explosions rumbled. In a televised interview afterward, he, too, expressed defiance and optimism that turnout would not be diminished by the violence. “Normally, the beautiful days in life come after fatigue and difficulties,” he said. “The difficult labor produces a more beloved result.” The attacks united Iraq leaders across party lines. “These are the messengers of Iraq’s enemies, the enemies of democracy,” said Ammar al-Hakim, a leader of a Shiite coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance, that hopes to deny Mr. Maliki a second term. “It is a desperate and weak message.” The violence was not limited to Baghdad, though it was less lethal outside the capital. In Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, at least 20 explosions rang through the city of Falluja but no one was reported killed. In the Jolan neighborhood there, the scene of some of the most intense fighting when American forces besieged the city in 2004, loudspeakers at mosques beckoned voters. “Don’t be afraid of those cowards,” a police officer shouted from a rooftop to passers-by. A roadside bomb exploded in Kirkuk, while two struck in Mosul, in northern Iraq, including one near a polling station that wounded seven people. Mortar shells landed in Jurf al-Sakhar, a village south of Baghdad. A series of attacks also struck across Diyala, the volatile province northeast of Baghdad. Two of them were roadside bombs that struck an American and an Iraqi convoy, according to security officials there. At least four people were wounded, two of them Iraqi soldiers. Mr. Allawi also expressed resolve after the attacks, though in a late bit of campaigning, he criticized the “weakness” in the government’s security preparation. “You know that Iraqis do not get scared,” he said. “They will not be scared by tanks, bombings and explosions. They fought the British, as it is known, with simple weapons and kicked out the British empire. So this intimidation will not work.” Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric whose followers fought against the American military and Mr. Maliki’s government, urged Iraqi Shiites to vote. Mr. Sadr allied with the Iraqi National Alliance, which appeared to have fallen behind the other largely Shiite coalition, the State of Law, led by Mr. Maliki. On the eve of the vote from Iran, where he is said to be studying to become an ayatollah, Mr. Sadr seemed to accept Iraq’s political process. “Participation in the election,” he said, “is a sort of political resistance.”

Heroic British Pilot saves 20

A HERO Chinook pilot was shot between the eyes by a Taliban bullet - but flew on and saved all 20 aboard. Flight Lieutenant Ian Fortune, 28, had flown in to pick up casualties as a firefight raged between American and Afghan forces and heavily-armed rebels near Garmsir in Helmand Province. Target ... how Ian was shot Ian - who had TV presenter Mike Brewer on the aircraft filming a documentary - was advised to hold off on approach to the battle as it was "too hot" on the ground. He circled until troops reported incoming fire had calmed down. But as Ian flew in the helicopter came under attack - which continued as casualties were being loaded. Then as he lifted off Ian was shot. A bullet hit a metal rail on the front of his helmet which is used to attach night vision goggles. The round then penetrated his helmet hitting him between the eyes. It knocked his head back and caused severe bleeding. Hero ... Ian Fortune More bullets followed, hitting the Chinook's controls and shutting down the stabilisation system. But with blood pouring into his eyes, Ian battled with the controls to stop the chopper from spiralling out of control. Then with the aircraft lurching from side to side he continued flying for eight minutes before landing at Camp Bastion. Ian was taken to the field hospital and treated for his wound. It is the first time in the nine-year war in Afghanistan a pilot has been shot while in the air. One senior RAF source said: "This could have become one of the worst incidents of the conflict. "If the bullet had hit the pilot a millimetre lower, those on board wouldn't have stood a chance. "And had it not been for the skill of the pilot the result would have been the same." TV's Mike, 41, who was with a crew from the Discovery Channel, said: "The courage and heroism of the pilot was beyond belief."

Iraq faces biggest test yet of democracy

By Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY BAGHDAD — Iraqi air force 2nd Lt. Hassaneid al-Musa hopes that Sunday's national elections will be remembered as ushering in the end of the U.S. military presence here and the beginning of a safer, more prosperous Iraq. "Both the Iraqis and Americans have much to win and much to lose," said al-Musa, 24. "We both have to get this right, or we'll see the country move backward." The elections for 325 spots in the parliament are a major test of whether Iraq will survive as a democracy and an ally in the Middle East, say political and military figures in Iraq and the USA. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, says a smooth election is the key to a timely removal of the 96,000 remaining U.S. servicemembers in Iraq. Christopher Hill, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, says the vote will show whether Iraqis stand together without interference from malevolent elements in Iran. VIOLENCE: Suicide blasts in Baqouba kill 32 CASUALTIES: American casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond If the vote is viewed as unfair by any party, some Iraqis fear it could reignite sectarian violence and put pressure on President Obama to postpone his plan to withdraw all U.S. troops by the end of next year. "The situation could be very dangerous," said Ayad Jamal Aldin, a pro-American, Shiite parliamentarian running for re-election. "After spending billions of dollars and losing thousands of Americans, how is it in America's interest to leave while the situation here is still unsettled?" New chapter for Iraq For Iraq, the elections may signal the end of a perilous journey. Thirty years of a brutal dictatorship ended in 2003 with the ouster of Saddam Hussein by a U.S.-led military coalition. Elections in early 2005 aimed to unify the nation but were boycotted by Sunni Muslims. Sunnis are a minority in Iraq but the prime supporters of Saddam's regime, which had oppressed the majority Shiites for decades. In late 2005, another election was held in which Sunnis did participate. But al-Qaeda terrorists, shielded by Sunnis, undermined the nascent democracy with relentless suicide bombings that killed thousands, such as the blowing up of the revered Golden Mosque in Samarra. Shiites sent death squads out to kidnap and kill. Dozens of headless bodies appeared on the streets daily. In Washington, Democrats in Congress demanded the U.S. pull out. In 2007, the surge of troops ordered by President Bush arrived, the Sunnis backed away from al-Qaeda, and the violence ebbed. After Obama was elected in 2008, he vowed that Iraq would have to take care of its own security by late 2010. As the world waits to see whether the elections mend the nation or tear it apart, the candidates are busy pressing the flesh. "Let me remind you of the terrible situation we were in just a few years ago, and let us not forgot how much the situation has improved today," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a roaring crowd that responded with chants of "Let him work." Al-Maliki, a Shiite who is trying to remain atop Iraq's parliament, has barnstormed southern Iraq and Baghdad, holding rallies at soccer stadiums and visiting tribal leaders in predominantly Shiite areas where he is popular. At Shaab Stadium in Baghdad, al-Maliki told supporters that the election season's vibrancy was a credit to the progress Iraq has made under his stewardship. He touted himself as both a uniter of Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities and a defender against sympathizers to the former Baath Party of Saddam, who he says are intent on returning to power. Former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who is running on a Sunni-Shiite coalition, says he is better suited to maintain the peace. He says al-Maliki marginalizes the Sunnis and could reopen sectarian violence. Allawi promises to run a moderate government and strengthen ties to the Arab world. That leaves out Iran, also largely Shiite, which Allawi warns is trying to tilt the elections toward radical elements it has been supporting in Iraq. There appears to be no disagreement on the issue that Americans may care about the most: the status of U.S. forces. Both candidates want them out, and voters seem to be looking beyond the troops. What is important to Iraqis is that the next government address the people's needs, said Muhammad Hameed, who was among thousands of flag-waving supporters at al-Maliki's campaign rally. "We need the government to give us jobs, provide security and improve services," Hameed, 36, said. "And we need our leaders to be honest and without corruption." Echoes of American politics Some of the leading candidates from the most prominent parties are spending millions of dollars on television advertising and political consultants. One secular party, called Ahrar, even hired election strategists that have run campaigns of former Vermont governor Howard Dean and former Australian prime minister John Howard. In Fallujah, Effan Saadoun al-Issawi, 38, warmly embraces each voter he meets, a gun in his holster and an ammunition belt splayed on his chest. He speaks of Baghdad with the same disdain that some American politicians have for Washington. "What have these politicians in Baghdad done with all the money over the last five or six years?" says al-Issawi, one of the first fighters to join the Sunni Awakening movement, which helped push al-Qaeda out of Iraq. "We don't even know where they live," he says. "How can we go knock on their door and tell them our concerns?" Al-Issawi is among hundreds of candidates vying for a chance to represent Anbar province in the next parliament, and he represents a political revival in the Sunni-dominated province — despite an attempt by a Shiite-led government panel to prevent Sunni leaders from running because of alleged ties to the outlawed Baath Party. Omar al-Jabouri, who is running with the Sunni Tawafaq bloc, says the ban was an attempt by al-Maliki to distract voters from his record. "The people are looking for asphalt for the roads, better water and electricity and schools," al-Jabouri said. "But all the talk has been about who is a Baathist." No coalition is likely to win the 50% vote tally needed to form a government on its own. Hill said he expects it will take several months of negotiations between the various groups to seat a new government. "Will there be sectarian strife after the elections? That's our bigger concern at this point," said U.S. Brig. Gen. Kevin Mangum, who oversees troops in western Baghdad. "There are some questions about (whether there will be) good losers and good winners."

More on Newsweek's Cover Story about Iraq

Pete Wehner National Review Following up on my post from yesterday, I wanted to return to the Newsweek cover story on Iraq, which declared that “something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.” Here are some further thoughts on the story and what it tells. 1. The progress in Iraq has been truly remarkable, especially when one considers where things were at the end of 2006. Iraq was caught in a death spiral. The odds were stacked against us. And most people in Iraq and America — including almost all of the political class and virtually the entire foreign policy establishment — had given up on the possibility of success. The main question for them was the terms of our retreat and de facto surrender. 2. In Iraq we have seen the rebirth of a nation. The “emergence of politics” in Iraq — including the willingness of its political leadership to engage in compromise; the Iraqis’ passion for democratic processes and willingness to set aside sectarianism; a free press; and the respect and legitimacy the Iraqi military has gained among its people — is unprecedented in the Arab world. But the successes there remain fragile and can still be undone. Iraq has proven to be treacherous terrain for foreign powers. 3. With the passage of time, President Bush’s decision to champion a new counterinsurgency strategy, including sending 30,000 additional troops to Iraq when most Americans were bone-weary of the war, will be seen as one of the most impressive and important acts of political courage in our lifetime. And those who fiercely opposed the so-called surge were not only wrong in their judgment; in some instances their actions were shameful. (I have in mind those who insisted the surge was failing long after it was clear it was succeeding. For a recapitulation of the words and actions of the critics of the surge, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, go here and here). 4. Those like Joe Klein and Tom Ricks, who claimed the Iraq war was “probably the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history” (Klein’s words) and “the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy” (Ricks’s words), were wrong. Ricks went so far as to say in 2009 that “I think staying in Iraq is immoral.” Now, if we had followed the counsel of Klein and Ricks and not implemented the surge, their predictions might have been closer to the mark. (Bush’s decision was one of “adolescent petulance” and “the decision to surge was made unilaterally, without adequate respect for history or military doctrine,” Klein wrote on April 5, 2007.) As it is, if the positive trajectory of events continue and Iraq does end up reshaping the political culture of the Arab Middle East, the Iraq war will, on balance, have advanced American interests in the region. 5. What has unfolded in Iraq is not an accident or based on luck. It was the result of one of the most astonishing military turnarounds in American history. The story of how that happened, and the men who made it happen, will be studied for generations. And Gen. David Petraeus — whose views pre-2007 were not widely shared and were often resisted within the military chain of command — has already secured his place among the greatest wartime generals in American history. 6. The former American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker — another one of the heroes of this effort — said it as well as anyone has when he stated, “In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came.” The war has taken longer and been harder than any of us ever wished. There were terrible mistakes in judgment along the way. But very late in the day those mistakes were corrected, allowing something good and hopeful to emerge in Iraq. A nation that was broken is on the mend. A warring country is now peaceable, no longer a military threat to its neighbors or the region. A genocidal dictator is dead and gone. The Iraqi people are free. And a nation that was our enemy continues to work closely with us in rebuilding what was a shattered society. In 2006, the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami wrote a powerful and stylistically beautiful book, The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq. That gift, Ajami said, was the idea of consensual government. It is a gift we gave the Iraqis at the cost of many American lives and much treasure. It is a gift they appear to have received. “Iraq seemed the most forbidding place for a campaign of reform, the hardest soil,” Ajami wrote during the darkest days of the war. “Yet every now and then, that country offered glimpses of hope that Iraqis may yet pull off a decent political world that works. There were days its sectarianism seemed like an affliction that would never go away. Then there were hints that the multiplicity of its communities could yet support a politics, and a culture, of pluralism.” The Iraqis were not as enchanted with tyranny or indifferent to democracy as some critics of the war insisted. What America has done for Iraq, which had been brutalized for so long, may not be the noblest act in our history. But it ranks quite high. The Iraq war was, in fact, a war of liberation. And the liberation appears to be working. Nothing is guaranteed; “Everything in Iraq is hard,” Ambassador Crocker once said. But regardless of where one stood on the war and the surge, what we see unfolding in Iraq today is something to be grateful for, and to take pride in.

Vote Seen as Pivotal Test for Both Iraq and Maliki

By STEVEN LEE MYERS BAGHDAD — A few months ago, building on genuine if not universal popularity, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki appeared poised to win a second term as Iraq’s prime minister. Now, as Iraqis prepare to vote in parliamentary elections on March 7, his path to another four years in office has become increasingly uncertain, his campaign erratic and, to some, deeply troubling. Far from consolidating power in the authoritarian manner that has plagued Iraq’s history, Mr. Maliki risks losing it through the ballot box. In a region where the traditional exit from power has been “the coup or the coffin,” as one Western diplomat here put it recently, the election has become a crucial test of Iraq’s post-invasion democracy, and of Mr. Maliki’s own fate. How he wins — or perhaps more significantly, how he loses — will more than anything else determine the country’s course in the coming years as President Obama carries out his promise to withdraw all American troops. Even his own supporters acknowledge that Mr. Maliki now appears isolated, imperious and impetuous, his re-election prospects hurt by events out of his control and by others of his own making. “I told him the other day, ‘You don’t have positions. You have reactions,’ ” said Izzat Shabander, an independent Shiite lawmaker who joined the prime minister’s electoral coalition and sounded as if he were having second thoughts. Mr. Maliki, who turns 60 in June, could yet prevail. According to politicians and polls conducted by parties and American officials, though not released publicly, Mr. Maliki’s coalition will very likely win the largest plurality of the new Parliament’s 325 seats. But it is unlikely to be anywhere near a majority. To retain his post, he will have to cobble together a postelection coalition among parties whose leaders seem able to unite only in the desire to elect a new leader. “The question was not whether they would win but by how much,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, referring to the confidence he heard in discussions here last year with Mr. Maliki’s aides. “At this point, they’re fighting for their lives.” Mr. Maliki, an outwardly dour man with a jowly face darkened by a perpetual shadow of a beard, makes a simple case for re-election. He has repeated it over and over during his campaign. “Today’s Iraq, dear brothers, is not the Iraq of 2005 or 2006” was how he put it at one rally in Baghdad, referring to the horrific sectarian bloodshed that very nearly devoured the country. It is both a boast of what his government has accomplished (with American help he rarely acknowledges) and a warning of what could return (when the Americans leave). Mr. Maliki is neither a charismatic leader nor a polished campaigner, but in a country convulsed by chaos and carnage, his message and achievements have resonance, even among his critics. “I consider him the savior of the country,” said Samira Ali, 56, a teacher from Basra, where Mr. Maliki ordered a military operation in 2008 that drove out the Shiite militias that once ran rampant across southern Iraq and in Baghdad itself. Initially viewed as a malleable sectarian figure when he emerged as a compromise candidate for prime minister after Iraq’s last parliamentary elections in 2005, Mr. Maliki has since demonstrated a willingness to act forcefully in the name of Iraqi nationalism and unity, even against those of his own Shiite sect. His refashioned his party, Dawa, into a coalition he called State of Law, with a campaign that promised security and order, and played down his party’s Shiite religious roots. In last year’s provincial elections, which elected legislatures for 14 provinces, State of Law fared best of all, making Mr. Maliki’s campaign for re-election almost seem inevitable. A series of bombings here in the capital in the last six months — as well as a slow boil of violence across Iraq — has certainly eroded his claims to have restored stability. But Mr. Maliki’s challenges extend beyond security alone. His strategy of building a grand political coalition representing all of Iraq’s sects and ethnicities was co-opted by most of his challengers — with better success, arguably, in the case of a coalition led by a former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who has assembled the strongest cadre of Sunni parties behind him. Among those Mr. Maliki unsuccessfully lobbied to join his coalition last fall was the most prominent Sunni subsequently knocked off the ballot, Saleh al-Mutlaq. Other prominent leaders also rebuffed him, including a former speaker of Parliament and the head of the Awakening movement in Anbar Province that joined with the American military and Mr. Maliki’s government to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. His most prominent Sunni ally, Sheik Ali Hatam al-Ali Suliman, said the voting bloc he represented in Anbar would never vote directly for Mr. Maliki. In fact, the candidates there disassociate themselves from Mr. Maliki, whom he described unenthusiastically as the best of an unappetizing choice. “I hope none of them win,” Sheik Ali Hatam said in an interview. As the incumbent, Mr. Maliki has also been hampered by the shortcomings of his government: the lack of development and jobs, grinding poverty, corruption and feeble services, which confront Iraqis every day. “It’s right to say that he provided security, but we live amid garbage dumps and in shambles,” said Ali Wardi Mizil, a scantly employed laborer in Basra who said he did not plan to vote for Mr. Maliki again. Others attribute Mr. Maliki’s diminished standing to a series of moves that have raised doubts about his respect for the country’s balance of power. Security forces under his direct command have been accused of carrying out politically motivated arrests, while other suspects wanted by American and Iraqi commanders have been placed on “do not target” lists by Mr. Maliki’s government. Last month, he ordered the military to intervene in a political dispute over dismissing the governor of Salahuddin Province. His supporters defend such actions as a necessary response to Iraq’s immature and volatile politics. “The Iraqis love a strong ruler,” said Jabbar Habeeb, a running mate of Mr. Maliki’s in Baghdad. Still, the Kremlin-like opacity of his decision-making — his own evident paranoia, sharpened by years in exile during Saddam Hussein’s rule — have made some of his decisions appear capricious and contradictory. A Shiite-led vilification of the Baath Party, which resulted in the surprise disqualification of scores of candidates last month, prompted Mr. Maliki to intensify his own statements to rally the Shiite votes he needs, even as it alienated the Sunnis he had once hoped to win over by appealing to a national Iraqi identity. When an appeals court initially reversed the disqualifications, Mr. Maliki denounced the ruling as illegal. Then two days later he reversed himself after meeting with the country’s top judge, in what was criticized as inappropriate interference. “A naked power play with sectarian overtones in that its most prominent victims are Sunni Arabs,” the International Crisis Group wrote of the disqualifications in a report released on Thursday, “it also reopened old wounds and cast a troubling light on Maliki, who only a year ago had won votes by eschewing sectarian rhetoric and has pledged to stitch together a broad nonsectarian electoral alliance.” Mr. Shabander, the lawmaker, said that Mr. Maliki sincerely believed in overcoming the country’s sectarian divide but that the politics of the de-Baathification forced him to cover his Shiite flank. “The prime minister was not strong,” he said, “because he retreated easily.” Tellingly, Mr. Maliki has delivered most of his campaign speeches in the south, where he is competing for Shiite votes against a largely Shiite coalition that after the 2005 election helped select him as prime minister. When he met with tribal leaders from Salahuddin on Friday, he held the event in Baghdad rather than traveling to the largely Sunni province. In his remarks then, Mr. Maliki reprised his claims to have restored security and promised to improve governance. He then, speaking most forcefully, denounced not only terrorists — or Baathists, an epithet that he uses interchangeably — but also politicians who advanced their cause through democratic means. He called them “bats who live only in the darkness.” “Now,” he went on, “they want to get back through the windows, through the doors, through the elections.” Amid oversize posters of him with a raised fist, Mr. Maliki vowed not to let it happen. “We worked hard to build the state,” he said. “We will not lose it to the whims and caprices of those who want to seize power.”

Rebirth of a Nation

Something that looks an awful lot like democracy is beginning to take hold in Iraq. It may not be 'mission accomplished'—but it's a start. By Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Christopher Dickey | NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Mar 8, 2010 "Iraqi democracy will succeed," President George W. Bush declared in November 2003, "and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation." The audience at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington answered with hearty applause. Bush went on: "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." In Iraq, meanwhile, an insurgency was growing, terrorism was spreading, and American forces were in a state of near panic. They had begun rounding up thousands of the Iraqis they had come to "liberate," dragging them from their homes in the middle of the night and throwing them into Abu Ghraib Prison. At the time of Bush's speech, some of those detainees were being tortured and humiliated. Iraq had entered a spiral of gruesome violence that would kill scores of thousands of its people and cost more than 4,000 U.S. military personnel their lives. American taxpayers month after month, year after year—and to this day—would spend more than $1.5 billion per week just to keep hundreds of thousands of beleaguered troops on the ground, fearful that if they withdrew too quickly, or at all, the carnage would grow worse and war, not democracy, would spread throughout the region. Bush's rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And yet it has to be said and it should be understood—now, almost seven hellish years later—that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East. The elections to be held in Iraq on March 7 feature 6,100 parliamentary candidates from all of the country's major sects and many different parties. They have wildly conflicting interests and ambitions. Yet in the past couple of years, these politicians have come to see themselves as part of the same club, where hardball political debate has supplanted civil war and legislation is hammered out, however slowly and painfully, through compromises—not dictatorial decrees or, for that matter, the executive fiats of U.S. occupiers. Although protected, encouraged, and sometimes tutored by Washington, Iraq's political class is now shaping its own system—what Gen. David Petraeus calls "Iraqracy." With luck, the politics will bolster the institutions through which true democracy thrives. Of course, as U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad Christopher Hill says, "the real test of a democracy is not so much the behavior of the winners; it will be the behavior of the losers." Even if the vote comes off relatively peacefully, the maneuvering to form a government could go on for weeks or months. Elections in December 2005 did not produce a prime minister and cabinet until May 2006. And this time around the wrangling will be set against the background of withdrawing American troops. Their numbers have already dropped from a high of 170,000 to fewer than 100,000, and by August there should be no more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers left in the country. If political infighting turns to street fighting, the Americans may not be there to intervene. Anxiety is high, not least in Washington, where Vice President Joe Biden now chairs a monthly cabinet-level meeting to monitor developments in Iraq. But a senior White House official says the group is now "cautiously optimistic" about developments there. "The big picture in Iraq is the emergence of politics," he notes. Indeed, what's most striking—and least commented upon—is that while Iraqi politicians have proved noisy, theatrical, inclined to storm off and push confrontations to the brink, in recent years they have always pulled back. Think about what's happened just in the last month. After a Shiite--dominated government committee banned several candidates accused of ties to the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, there were fears that sectarian strife could pick up again. Saleh al-Mutlaq, who heads one of the largest Sunni parties, was disqualified. He says he tried complaining to the head of the committee, Ahmad Chalabi, and even met with the Iranian ambassador, thinking Tehran had had a hand in what he called these "dirty tricks"—but to no avail. Two weeks later Mutlaq nervously paced the garden of the massive Saddam--era Al-Rashid Hotel as he weighed his dwindling options. "I got a call from the American Embassy today," he said, grimly. "They said, 'Most of the doors are closed. There's nothing left for us to work.' " He shook his head. "The American position is very weak." But what's most interesting is what did not happen. There was no call for violence, and Mutlaq soon retracted his call for a boycott. The elections remain on track. Only about 150 candidates were ultimately crossed off the electoral lists. No red-faced Sunni politicians appeared on television ranting about a Shiite witch hunt or Kurdish conspiracy. In fact, other prominent Sunni politicians have been conspicuous for their low profile. Ali Hatem al--Suleiman, a tough, flamboyant Sunni sheik who heads the powerful Dulaim tribe in Anbar province, is running for Parliament on a list with Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. He scoffs at effete urban pols like Mutlaq: "They represent nothing. Did they join us in the fight against terrorists? We are tribes and have nothing to do with them." What outsiders tend to miss as they focus on the old rivalries among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds is that sectarianism is giving way to other priorities. "The word 'compromise' in Arabic—mosawama—is a dirty word," says Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who served for many years as Iraq's national--security adviser and is running for Parliament. "You don't compromise on your concept, your ideology, your religion—or if you do," he flicked his hand dismissively, "then you're a traitor." Rubaie leans in close to make his point. "But we learned this trick of compromise. So the Kurds are with the Shia on one piece of legislation. The Shia are with the Sunnis on another piece of legislation, and the Sunnis are with the Kurds on still another." The turnaround has been dramatic. "The political process is very combative," says a senior U.S. adviser to the Iraqi government who is not authorized to speak on the record. "They fight—but they get sufficient support to pass legislation." Some very important bills have stalled, most notably the one that's meant to decide how the country's oil riches are divvied up. But as shouting replaces shooting, the Parliament managed to pass 50 bills in the last year alone, while vetoing only three. The new legislation included the 2010 budget and an amendment to the investment law, as well as a broad law, one of the most progressive in the region, defining the activities of nongovernmental organizations. The Iraqis have surprised even themselves with their passion for democratic processes. In 2005, after decades living in Saddam Hussein's totalitarian "republic of fear," they flooded to the polls as soon as they got the chance. Today Baghdad is papered over with campaign posters and the printing shops on Saadoun Street seem to be open 24 hours a day, cranking out more. Political cliques can no longer rely on voters to rubber-stamp lists of sectarian candidates. Those that seem to think they still might, like the Iranian-influenced Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, have seen their support wane dramatically. Provincial elections a year ago were dominated by issues like the need for electricity, jobs, clean water, clinics, and especially security. Maliki has developed a reputation for delivering some of that, and his candidates won majorities in nine of 18 provinces. They lead current polls as well. The word skeptics like to fall back on is "fragile." No one can say for sure whether the Iraqis' political experiment is sustainable. Many U.S. officials see themselves as the key players who hold everything together, massaging egos and nudging adversaries closer together. Some are already talking about revising the schedule whereby all U.S. troops would leave the country in 2011. But the greater risk may be having the Americans see themselves as indispensable. The fiercely nationalistic Iraqi public still chafes at U.S. interference and resents any Iraqi politicians who seem to be too much in Washington's pockets. Ali Allawi, who was minister of finance and minister of defense early in the post-Saddam government, describes the current scene in Iraq as a "minimalist" democracy built around a "new class" of 500 to 600 politicians. The Middle East has seen this kind thing before, he says, in Egypt and Iraq under British tutelage in the first half of the last century. Then, the elites learned to play party politics, too, but not to meet the needs of the people. "That ended in tears," says Allawi. In Iraq today, conditions seem more likely to reinforce than to undermine the gains so far. Iraqis have been hardened by a very tough past and now, coming out the other side of the infernal tunnel that is their recent history, many share a sense of solidarity as survivors. "Identities in Iraq are fluid, but there is more of a sense of an Iraqi national identity," says Middle East historian Phebe Marr, whose first research trip to the country was in 1956. You notice this, for instance, at the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, where conductor Karim Wasfi manages to extract harmony from Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, and Bahais. Some of the women musicians wear the hijab, or headscarf; others do not. During the height of sectarian violence in 2006, almost half of the orchestra fled the country. Those who stayed behind got death threats, and one was killed. During one concert they had to play against the contrapuntal percussion of a firefight just outside the hall—but play they did. "It was about survival," says Wasfi. Wasfi now says there are audiences asking for the symphony to perform even in conservative religious towns like Karbala, in southern Iraq. And bigger cities like Baghdad and Basra are regaining their old cosmopolitan airs. Abu Nawas Street along the Tigris River is once again lit up with lively restaurants serving broiled fish and beer. Liquor stores that had closed up shop during the height of the civil war now stack cases of Heineken and boxes of Johnny Walker Black in front of their doors. University students, once cowed by militias like the Mahdi Army, are feeling freer. Sawsan Abdul Rahman, an English major at Mustansiriyah University, says in the past she felt obliged to cover her head. "I wear a miniskirt now," she says. The changes are more than superficial. As economist Douglass North pointed out last year in his influential book Violence and Social Orders, the key to building stable societies is to create a web of institutions that people can fall back on when governments, or mere politics, fail. Iraq is beginning to do just that. The country not only has the freest press in the region, but the gutsiest. More than 800 newspapers and TV and radio stations have aggressively gone after politicians and sleazy businessmen. The country now has more than 1,200 trained judges, and courts have convicted senior officials on corruption charges, with more cases pending. Women's groups, too, have asserted themselves, pushing for 25 percent of provincial councils to be female and forcing the Education Ministry to roll back a proposal to separate boys and girls in school. Perhaps the most encouraging sign is that Iraq's military has become one of the most respected institutions in the country. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq continue to carry out horrendous suicide operations, and some analysts expect the terrorists to step up their activities if sectarian tensions increase, and as American troops withdraw. But they no longer seem to pose an existential threat to the central government, and have inspired near--universal revulsion among Iraqis. Nor do most close observers fear the opposite—that the Army might become too strong and mount a coup. "I think people mention this because it's been such a recurrent theme in Iraq's past," says Ambassador Hill. "But we're certainly not seeing signs that the military is interested in engaging in politics." Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military in 2007 and 2008, says the more relevant question is whether Iraq's political leaders might try to use the military for sectarian purposes. Prime Minister Maliki, who directly controls some counterterrorism forces, has been accused of targeting Sunni rivals using those troops. But, says Dubik, Iraqi commanders are "very much attuned" to the danger, and generally do not launch such missions without broader approval. "They are really trying to develop a mature process." Neighboring Iran remains a concern. Tehran continues to compete for influence in Iraq using every means at its disposal, including trade, religious ties, diplomacy, and covert links to militias that target U.S. troops. But since Iran's own contested presidential elections last June, its influence has diminished. Seyyed Sadeq, the police chief in the Iraqi city of Al Amarah, is a Shiite who trained with the Iranian-supported Badr Brigades, and was based in Iran throughout the 1990s. Several of his Iraqi friends from those days remained on the Iranian payroll after 2003. Members of the Quds Force, the branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that runs its foreign operations, "used to come here every month or so," says Sadeq. "But recently it's been every six, seven months. I am hearing that Quds Force commanders are busy with the internal operations in Iran so they don't have much time to pay attention to Iraq." Most important in the long term is the fact that whoever rules in Iraq should be able to take advantage of the country's enormous and largely untapped wealth of oil and natural gas. The Kurds in the north, the Shiites in the south, and now the Sunnis in the west of the country can all lay claim to enormous fields—and even without a hydrocarbon law on the books, the government is finding ways to work with foreign oil companies to exploit these resources. Industry analysts believe Iraq could raise its output from almost 2.5 million barrels a day to 10 million by the end of the decade. Even at current production rates, Iraq's revenues last year were $39 billion. This is what truly scares Iraq's neighbors. Yes, even the country's fledgling democracy is more vibrant than anywhere else in the region, except perhaps Lebanon (and Iraqis love to point out that America's own system isn't exactly working in textbook fashion right now). But more important, the foundations of a regional power are emerging, one that is equally threatening to Saudi Arabia and to Iran. (Some analysts believe Tehran's nuclear program is meant to intimidate and deter a resurgent Baghdad, not just Washington and Tel Aviv.) Iraq, for better or worse, democratic or not, will be a power to be reckoned with. Such is America's dark victory there. With Hussam Ali and Salih Mehdi in Baghdad, and Maziar Bahari Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/234281